Burning Down the House: debate shifts to 'why' on UK riots

BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE: Michael Weiss on the riots in London. 'Social exclusion', he writes, is a problem, but it doesn't excuse the lawlessness and looting on the streets of London. Nor, for that matter, does it justify the actions of those who perpetrated the afore-mentioned looting. It might also be worth mentioning – as Weiss did in his column – the shooting of Tottenham resident Mark Duggan by the Metropolitan Police, which is being used flippantly as justification for violence demonstrated against innocent, disinterested business owners and commercial enterprises. I think Anne Applebaum put it rather well in her column for the same website just days earlier: "The rioters themselves do not wave signs. They do not chant chants. They weren't protesting any particular government policy, as were student demonstrators in London last winter. They have not sought publicity for their views, if they have any. They hid from cameras and dodged journalists. And thus did they become the inkblot in a kind of national Rorschach test: Everyone sees in them the political issue they care about most, whether it's welfare dependency, budget cuts, the decline of public education, or—my personal favorite—the rise of a vulgar and amoral public culture. And yet it is their lack of politics that most clearly defines them." Indeed. I'll reiterate my comments from a couple of days ago: we're dealing with thugs, not activists.

The Times weighs in on the why question. "Some commentators have blamed modern society at large. The Daily Telegraph struck a popular chord when it blamed a “culture of greed and impunity” that it said extended to corporate boardrooms and the government itself. Many politicians, meanwhile, have lashed out at technology — including the instant messaging that encouraged looting — for whipping up the crowds. But as more details of the crimes emerge, the picture has become infinitely more complicated, and confusing. In some of the more shocking cases, the crimes seemed to be rooted in nothing more than split-second decisions made by normally orderly people seduced by the disorder around them." Read on.