Some Good Points ... From a Socialist?

I was reading posts on Planet Atheism, an aggregator of atheist sites, when I noticed one about the London riots written by Anna Johnstone. I've never been on her blog before, and was surprised to see forthright condemnation of the rioters, and points that would normally be made from the right. Despite being a self-described socialist, Johnstone apparently doesn't buy into the cult of victimization the pervades the left. Instead of excuses for the rioters, there was the following:

These rioters are NOT freedom fighters of any kind regardless of what they claim to be! They are an insult to the idea of a free society. As a socialist I am disgusted with the lot of them and have been seriously considering my stance on corporal punishment over the last couple of days.

She writes about her own strict upbringing in contrast to kids allowed to run wild.

I now believe that my parents actually did know what they were doing and I thank them for it. They were preventing my brother and I from turning into the sort of selfish, greedy animals committing these vile acts in our major cities. They didn’t let me grow up thinking that the world owed me anything.

And when was the last time you heard this much sense from the left?

I was taught that a social safety net was just that: a safety net. It’s there so nobody who falls on hard times has to starve or go homeless and it should not under any circumstances be abused or in any way taken for granted or relied upon as an indefinite source of income especially if we are able to work.

There's more.

I am getting rather sick and tired of hearing how ‘Austerity measures’ have led to these riots: they haven’t. This began as an outraged cry over a bungled arrest. What has happened since is completely unrelated to said shooting. The violence and destruction which has followed is in no frame of the rational mind, neither proportionate or appropriate.

Now granted, she does attribute the mindset of the rioters to "a left-over bi-product of the Thatcherite brand of ‘Individualism‘ and her despicable policy of ‘there is no society,'" which I found pretty funny. She might want to read Max Hastings' much more convincing argument. But overall the post is right on the mark. I will return to her blog to see her thoughts on other topics.

More on Shooting the Rioters

In the previous post I called for the police to shoot rioters who use firebombs against the police, or who set fire to occupied buildings. John Hawkins at Right Wing News agrees, although he goes much further.

Many people think of defense of a nation as the very first job of government, but there’s actually an even more basic task that the government has to fulfill: Maintaining order.

In extraordinary situations, when you have widespread breakdowns of public order and shops are being looted, cars are being burned, rocks and bottles are being thrown at police, and civilians are being murdered in the street, if the government can’t quickly re-establish order using normal means, it’s completely justified in using lethal violence to do it

I think lethal police response should be more selective, but I agree with his view of the responsibility of government. And he makes a key point.

you may say this is unfair to thugs in the street, but we should be much more worried about the lives of innocent people who are being assaulted and property owners whose livelihoods are being unfairly destroyed.

Exactly. This attitude tends to separate the right and the left, and is one of the many reasons I will always be on the right. When I look at a riot, my sympathy is with the people being assaulted, the owners of the cars being destroyed, the families left homeless when their buildings burn, the shopkeepers who are robbed, and all the other victims. The last thing I worry about are the feelings and rights of the scum doing the rioting.

Rioting Scum Continue to Rampage Thru London

In an extremely belated and underwhelming response, police in London are warning that they are going to use plastic bullets against rioters. They should have been using real bullets on the first night to kill the firebomb throwers. People who attempt to set others on fire, or who set fire to occupied buildings are attempted murderers. Those observed in the act of such attempted murders should be shot on sight by police, or anyone else. Since the UK has largely disarmed its people, and stripped away the effective right of self-defense, it falls to the police to maintain order and protect the public from these rampaging gangs of human scum. From what I've seen in British news reports, so far they've done a miserable job.

While driving to work yesterday I heard an NPR report on the riots. Their reporter interviewed a woman whose apartment complex was set on fire. She told how while she and her family were fleeing for their lives, their home destroyed, looters were laughing and stealing rugs from a shop on the ground floor of the building. As I've written before about mob violence, these sorts of situations are one of the few times that excessive police force, which would normally be police brutality, is actually called for to restore order. People who act as part of a violent mob or gang, who commit acts of arson, and who think the chaos they've caused is an excuse to appropriate other peoples' property are predatory vermin that needed to be suppressed as quickly as possible with overwhelming force. When a government fails to do so in these situations, its lack of action encourages more vermin to crawl out of their holes and take part in the feeding frenzy.