London Riots Caused by the Tea Party?

It took longer than I thought it might but, sure as shooting, some limp, bilious liberals have decided that the London Riots are the fault of the Tea Party.  Maybe not our Tea Party, but its east coast (waaaaaay east coast!) franchise warped in both space and time to the British austerity program, instituted by Prime Minister David Cameron.  In an op-ed piece in Thursday’s New York Times, Professors Richard Sennett and Saskia Sasson (a husband/wife team of Sociology professors who evidently work both sides of the Atlantic) put their teamed intelligence together (I’m sure that equaled a number in three digits) and decided that Cameron’s closing of libraries in the afflicted areas brought on the riots.  Really?   Do they really think that those thugs were driven over the brink by an expired library card?  I’ll bet most of those rioters couldn’t slap a subject and verb together if it kept them out of hell. 

            But it had to happen.  The minute London exploded there had to be weak handed, rheumy eyed professors in all the soft sciences (sociology, women’s studies, ethnic studies, so-nebulous-we-don’t-have-to-deal-with-math-or-science studies…) gathering around in coffee-house camaraderie looking for some way to blame all of the world’s ills on conservative politics.  The last thing they want to see is yet one more example of a failed old European socialist democracy.  But the failure is there.  It is a cautionary tale for all of us in this country.  The left wants desperately to move this country toward a civil socialism and the falling dominoes of that model in Europe are not helping their argument.  The, “so-sociologists” in question actually prove the folly of their approach with their own words. 

1:  They point out that the unemployment rate of the thugs (around 20%) was the same in both the boom times of the past as well as now.   I ask, why are they shocked that lazy, undisciplined, irresponsible youths aren’t at work?  Who would want them?  This proves that people who face no consequences for not working will become indolent.  Solution:  Make working profitable and nonworking painful.

2:  They say Prime Minister Cameron was good at convincing people on the need for cuts, but failed on specifics.  I say, this sounds like a criticism of President Obama who continues to come down in favor of motherhood and apple pie, but, as Gov. Pawlenty so eloquently put it, has not recommended a single specific cut.  Solution:  No more passing the bill to find out what is in the bill. 

3:  They speak of closed and shuttered shops, playgrounds and clinics, all, “victims” they say of the austerity cuts required by the British Parliament to balance their dangerously lopsided books.  I say this is where they prove the wisdom of the Tea Party in getting the federal government out of the business of artificial employment, childcare and clinics.  Solution:  Let me make this as clear as I possibly can (pardon my shouting), The national government has no business spending our tax money to provide services better provided by the private sector and not sanctioned by the Constitution! 

4:  They caution that if America follows a conservative path and turns from the Nanny-state philosophy, that we will face the wrath of disaffected (read disappointed that they aren’t getting every blessed thing they want for nothing) young people.  Actually, we have already seen some of this in the whining Wisconsin unions and way too many college students who have time to attend flash mobs instead of working their way through school.  This reinforces the fact that we need to stop this creeping, insidious cult of entitlement. 

Rule Britannia, and keep the faith.