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Riots in London and moral relativism and lack of respect for authority

If you are looking for an explanation of what is behind the “civil unrest” that seems to have taken everyone by surprise, here is an account from two girls in my childhood home, Croydon:

Just showin the Police and the rich people we can do what we want” about sums it up, I think. “I can do what I want” is the net result of moral relativism applied by the ordinary teenager affected by original sin and educated in a system that undermines any real foundation of duty to God, country or neighbour.

Few people have noted the irony of the appeals by the Police to parents to “contact their children.”

For several decades our country has undermined marriage, the family, and the rights of parents. Agents of the state can teach your children how to have sex, give them condoms, put them on the pill, give them the morning-after pill if it doesn’t work, and take them off for an abortion if that doesn’t work – and all without you having any say in the matter or necessarily even knowing about it. Now all of a sudden, we want parents to step in and tell their teenage children how to behave.

I heard something similar from another teenager involved in the riots on a NewsTalkZB news item at 2pm, along the lines of: "You disrespect us, we disrespect you. You need to show us respect." This is also a lack of respect for authority, authority of any type. Parental authority is the first authority that children come into contact with and if that is undermined, then there will be no respect for any authority whatsoever.

Related link: A shout to my friends from London ~ WDTPRS

Comments

  1. "Parental authority is the first authority that children come into contact with and if that is undermined, then there will be no respect for any authority whatsoever"

    The heart of the matter in one sentence.

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  2. More than a few have been pointing out, across the political spectrum that parents are scared to discipline their feral kids (too late of course) for fear they'll call Social Services and say they are abused. Teachers of course will do nothing, and the public are scared of being stabbed.

    40+ years of moral relativism reaping what was sowed, and the NZ Herald has the audacity to blame Thatcher.

    However, John Minto a year or two ago blamed poverty for those who beat up infants to death, so why should I be surprised?

    Fortunately, the vast bulk of the population here want a hardline against the thugs, but none will confront welfarism or the cultural nihilism that has filled the vacuum of moral relativism.

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  3. LibertyScott,

    I think it goes too much against the grain to really look at the causes of this, because that takes people into the scary realm of social conservatism, which is somewhat anathematic to the modern mindset.

    Just now David Farrar was talking on the radio about the fact that 80% of the kids in Tottenham don't have fathers. He mentioned jobs in that same statement, so everyone jumped on the jobs aspect and ignored the lack of fatherly authority in those kid's lives. They just don't want to go there.

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  4. In the last week or so I have been wondering if this really is the death throes of western civilization.

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  5. JJ,

    Yes, same here. I can't help but think of that post I wrote a month or so ago where I quoted an article on the Audacity of the State.

    Tyranny can nowhere succeed without pulling down the two most prominent pillars of political freedom, the pillars that have always provided for a roof or shield over the individual and his conscience. One pillar is the natural family unit; the other is the religious community. Of course, these pillars are not everywhere equally strong or upright. They may themselves be transformed into instruments of tyranny by this or that form of idolatry. But they are pillars for the simple reason that they do not concede to the audacious and immodest state the total authority it craves.

    The natural family unit confronts the state as an entity that claims rights not granted by the state but brought to it—rights the lawful state is obliged to recognize and respect. The religious community likewise claims rights and liberties that derive from a source other than the state, a source that transcends and relativizes the state.


    The State has been at war with both religion and family for a while now, yet does not realise that once both these pillars of society fall, so too will it.

    What's happened in England shows how easily social order can unravel and how much destruction can be caused by those who are barely civilised because they don't have functioning families and don't believe in anything.

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  6. Always love the "you're disrespecting me" line. It always emanates from those who deserve none, but think they should get it just because the have inflated egos.

    As such, it usually elicits laughter from yours truly.

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  7. Scrubone,

    Yep. It also reminded me of the attitude of two British teens on a tv show I saw a few months back, where they were so badly behaved, they were sent off to another country, to be looked after by a Christian family with strong rules for a number of days. The first day did not go well, and that line was used by the girl to her temporary parents. It took half a night outside with the mosquitoes before the two came inside to apologise so that they could have a shower and go to bed before the attitude started to break down.

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  8. Lucia

    Yes the absence of fathers is chronic, and although in many cases the fathers would be pernicious, the welfare state in the UK rewards feckless breeding. The result are hundreds of thousands of boys without positive male role models (gangs substitute), and a similar number of girls who are prey for the men their mothers go out with.

    One of the biggest issues is the emergence of "childrens' rights" which started being a fair response to serious cases of child abuse they were too often ignored (i.e. believe the father over the daughter being abused because adults are believed over kids), has now become a presumption in favour of children - always - and they know it.

    So parents, teachers, police and other adults fear confronting them, not only because the children might be violent, but because they will lie - blatantly - and claim they were attacked or whatever.

    When the feral underclasses do violence they apparently need "understanding", but when people want to restrain or protect themselves or their families, they need to be extra careful of face accusations of "racism" or "abuse".

    Curiously, the groups that are most prone to being feral are either working class white British or Afro-Caribbean young males (and more than a few females). Those from Asia (either Muslim/Hindo/Sikh or Confucian cultures) or eastern Europe don't. The central reason being how intact those family cultures are. Indeed, in most of continental Europe families are far more intact than they are in Britain/Ireland, and I suspect it is due, in part, to the legacy of the war, the protection non-English language cultures had from post-Modernist Anglo-Saxon philosophy influencing public policy and the lack of cultural cringe around national identity and culture.

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