NYT Editorial: Wrong Answers in Britain

[markpkessinger]

Editorial

Wrong Answers in Britain

Published: August 17, 2011

< . . . >

Mr. Cameron, a product of Britain’s upper classes and schools, has blamed the looting and burning on a compound of national moral decline, bad parenting and perverse inner-city subcultures.

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The thousands who were arrested last week for looting and for more violent crimes should face the penalties that are prescribed by law. But Mr. Cameron is not content to stop there. He talks about cutting off government benefits even to minor offenders and evicting them — and, in a repellent form of collective punishment, perhaps their families, too — from the publicly supported housing in which one of every six Britons lives.

He has also called for blocking access to social networks like Twitter during future outbreaks. And he has cheered on the excessive sentences some judges have been handing out for even minor offenses.

Such draconian proposals often win public applause in the traumatized aftermath of riots. But Mr. Cameron, and his Liberal Democrat coalition partners, should know better. They risk long-term damage to Britain’s already fraying social compact.

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Read full article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/18/opinion/wrong-answers-in-britain.html

[NashVegas]

1. Me And My Old New Wave Fan Friends

Had no trouble at all finding music videos depicting or referring to late 1970s turmoil in the streets of the UK.

People act like this is something new.

Hardly.

And isn't it funny how, when it happens as it is in the Middle East, they're freedom fighters, but when it happens in the Western world, we get Kent State?

[provis99]

2. Moral decline is indeed responsible.

But it is the moral decline of the conservatives and Tories which is to blame, not the decline of others.

[applegrove]

3. +1