In Part One of this essay, I discussed the role of police hesitancy in contributing to the spread of the British riots. The issue there was where aggression was turned; whether outward, in the form of physical destruction,  or inward, in the form of guilt. That the rioters turned their aggression outward was essentially definitional. What was odd was that it was the police, who should have been in the business of suppressing the destruction through force, were unable to do so because their aggression had been turned inward. Britain was being burned down and they were the ones who were feeling guilt. 

Inflation is a subtle way to make you pay for the corrupting gifts you had accepted.

Regrettably, this column often needs to deal with the trends of the economy. Politics, especially the “getting elected” aspect of it, is being economized. As a result, and increasingly, the governors’ economic policy responds to the dictate of political concerns. The intertwining of the two areas that are meant to be separated is not accidental. Collectivists converted the framework within which societies produce their livelihood to a political matter, that is, into a something that is steered by those that hold power. This capture of economics by politics causes havoc. The consequences of the political steering of what would otherwise be a natural process, is characterized by derailments. The record confirms the ultimate failure of collectivistic approaches. This new order, within which society is organized as an association for satisfying its member’s needs through production, wobbles.

A few days after the riots in Britain last summer, I happened to be at an academic conference. The British were well represented and I asked a few of them for their thoughts. They were appalled, of course, but they could certainly understand the motivations of the rioters, it seemed.  The cuts that had been announced by the government bore a large part of the responsibility. These people were so deprived, and the cuts would take away whatever they had. So the riots were the government's fault, you see. And then there was the atrocious behavior of the rich, what with MPs diddling their expense accounts and all. So it was their fault, or perhaps the inequality in society that had given them the money to diddle with. Or it was the fault of capitalism, which had caused them to feel they needed things that they could not ever hope to buy, and so they had to do what they had to do in order to get them. Their method was regrettable, but they were not to blame; they had been forced into it.

How you are cast discreetly in the role of the sucker.

Remarkable things are imposed on you and you might not even notice. It begins with the currently frequent helping intervention of politics in economic matters. There are three questions regarding the disbursed, supposedly stimulating, gifts of politics; Are you getting your due, are you receiving what someone else has created, or are you paying a lot for the little you get. The growing burdens of the existing system are real while the long-term consequences promise devastation. For the tort, you will not even be able to attain official victim status. That position is already occupied. The game we play is to take it from someone to benefit so-and-so. Especially if you think otherwise, you are in this game the one from whom it is taken to give the loot to someone else.

Can Moscow scale down inherited Soviet ambitions?

Great powers are a special breed. Until the First World War, the “Great Powers” were European entities. Membership in that club enabled its participants to extend their control beyond the Continent. These dependencies were by location, but also by tradition, population, and development, unlike the “mother country”. Due to the difference came the ability to discover, to subjugate and to colonize. Europe’s dominance expressed its high development. The decisive advantage, the knowledge, the institutions, the economy behind it, was concentrated in that small area. For long, these factors could not be copied outside the European culture’s sphere.

Sprayers disclose a compromising wish list.

Some movements score because they can hide their real agenda. The barefooted opt for them because they are misled to project upon these their desires. By voting accordingly, they mandate what the real intentions of their chosen favorites entail. Our day’s Left is a major beneficiary of the frequent confusion. 

About the helpers, the help, and the victims.

In the manner of condors that hover over cadavers, flocks of helpers are congregating over the landscape. Their purpose is to save forcibly even those that might have failed to ask for succor. The circumstances under which the rescuees are helped happen in ways that undo us. 

The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the exclusive right to tax Americans at the federal level. Yet Congress continues to give away this most fundamental responsibility to international organizations, the most dangerous of which is the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Some time ago, a lady that visited here from Laguna Beach has raised a question. How does one manage to fill a weekly column? The response was that the problem is –thanks to the self-induced crisis of our self-doubting culture – an easy one. The difficulty is not finding a theme but to decide what to skip. Your correspondent has dozens of pages filled with ideas tagged to become the subject of future columns. The list lengthens menacingly while its “gems” are superseded in favor of new urgencies. This aspect of the job has again manifested itself. This unplanned presentation derives from having attended an event. 

Whose Ox Is Being Gored?

For years I’ve been in stubborn denial every time the Left accuses conservatives of sowing hate. Now I’ve learned the Left has been correct in its charge. In fact I’ve rarely found as much inflammatory hate speech as turned up in a column (May 30) by a Murdoch media empire superstar, who writes for The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post and is frequently on The O’Reilly Factor, Debbie Schlussel. The column was titled “Poles were complicit in Holocaust: Outrage over Obama Gaffe is Fraudulent, Ignorant.” And the diatribe gets even nastier as one reads on. Schlussel rages against Obama for apologizing for an apparent mistake when he described Nazi death camps as “Polish.” The columnist is even more strident against Rush Limbaugh, that “self-hating Jew Matt Drudge,” and other Republican luminaries for suggesting that German Nazis, not Poles, were responsible for the Holocaust.