It seemed, at first, that the recent English riots would leave David Cameron’s government reeling — for a conservative party in power is supposed to stand for law and order, if it’s supposed to stand for anything. To lose the streets to the mob — to respond, as Home Secretary Theresa May did, by saying that Britain policed only with the consent of the community — was nothing if not an affront to a community under siege. It was as if the rights of the mob to pillage needed to be balanced against the rights of the many to be protected.
And yet, it is the left and not the right that has been politically discombobulated. Trapped by a political tradition that too often sees moral judgment as a way to ignore the struggles of the oppressed, many on the left equivocated — and then worse, became outraged at the tough sentences being meted out to rioters by the courts. Lord MacDonald, a Liberal Democrat peer, decried the legal response as lacking “humanity or justice.”
It took the Guardian — the voice of Britain’s university-educated left-liberal establishment — to point out the disconnect, most of all from working class sentiment. It published the results of a Gallup poll last week showing that almost 70 percent of the British public supports tough sentencing for the rioters. Notably, those who earned the least (and who understood the cost of losing all you had) were significantly more in favor of a tough response than those who earned the most. This did not go down well. “Morons,” one Guardian commenter said of the revenge-seeking masses.
The middle-class left’s preference for aligning with the underclass at the expense of the working class is one of the most significant and possibly destructive developments in modern politics (as well as a gift to the right that will keep on giving). The problem is that you can’t keep arguing for more government to protect the individual from the harshness of society, while simultaneously arguing for less government to protect society from the harshness of the individual.
This preference for individual rights over responsibilities is reflected in a new book by the Canadian legal scholar Joel Baken, titled “Childhood Under Siege: How Big Business Targets Children.”
Baken’s thesis is that corporations are predators and that government needs to treat them as, in essence, pedophiles. The corporate psyche is beyond self-regulation. His arguments mix issues of legitimate concern — such as the increasing use of psychotropic drugs to medicate children’s behavior — with mindless agitprop: Children, he says, are also being poisoned by increasing exposure to toxic chemicals in the environment due to “unreasonably high proof of harm” in federal regulation. This dogma of environmental activism would be dispelled if Baken actually spent some time with federal regulators here or in Canada, or cracked open a toxicology textbook.
But a lawyer bent on prosecuting a simplistic theory isn’t interested in complexities, and so on and on it goes: The corporations are fattening our kids with junk food and forcing them to play horrific video games for hours and hours. Children, in Baken’s world, appear to enjoy the most incredible agency, heretofore unknown in the history of humanity. They lead dissipative lives, eat what they want without restraint and spend endless hours pursuing leisure over learning. And yet, they don’t, really. Somehow corporate culture and advertising does this to them.
As many British commentators asked while watching kids frenetically loot stores — where are their parents?
In Baken’s world, the slumbering wrinklies eventually show up, because he needs them to demand government intervention.
Which makes you wonder, if parents have the agency to demand more government regulation, why do they not have the agency to regulate their children’s behavior? Does it really need to be explained to parents that letting their kid drink the equivalent of 16 cans of soda a day is wrong? (This is the consumption for the 99th percentile for male teens, according to a disaggregation of NHANES nutrition data by Bremer et al.) Is this really something only the government has the power to stop?
What about establishing limits on sitting in front of a screen, which for preschoolers averages an astonishing four hours a day? How can government change that more effectively than a parent? An electricity tax? A screen tax?
In Britain, the conservatives have clawed their way out of political catastrophe by remembering that the language of morality is much more effective at articulating responsibilities than government regulation is at explaining why you should be responsible. As Britain’s chief rabbi, Lord Sacks, noted in a commentary on the riots, Freud was right when he said the precondition for civilization was the ability to defer the gratification of instinct. Only ethical training can achieve this.
Still, for parents who share Baken’s interventionism, Aristotle, the great proponent of ethical training, saw the family as the original model for the state, which means they are free to be their own governments and regulate their children as much or as little as they like.
And yet, it is the left and not the right that has been politically discombobulated. Trapped by a political tradition that too often sees moral judgment as a way to ignore the struggles of the oppressed, many on the left equivocated — and then worse, became outraged at the tough sentences being meted out to rioters by the courts. Lord MacDonald, a Liberal Democrat peer, decried the legal response as lacking “humanity or justice.”
It took the Guardian — the voice of Britain’s university-educated left-liberal establishment — to point out the disconnect, most of all from working class sentiment. It published the results of a Gallup poll last week showing that almost 70 percent of the British public supports tough sentencing for the rioters. Notably, those who earned the least (and who understood the cost of losing all you had) were significantly more in favor of a tough response than those who earned the most. This did not go down well. “Morons,” one Guardian commenter said of the revenge-seeking masses.
The middle-class left’s preference for aligning with the underclass at the expense of the working class is one of the most significant and possibly destructive developments in modern politics (as well as a gift to the right that will keep on giving). The problem is that you can’t keep arguing for more government to protect the individual from the harshness of society, while simultaneously arguing for less government to protect society from the harshness of the individual.
This preference for individual rights over responsibilities is reflected in a new book by the Canadian legal scholar Joel Baken, titled “Childhood Under Siege: How Big Business Targets Children.”
Baken’s thesis is that corporations are predators and that government needs to treat them as, in essence, pedophiles. The corporate psyche is beyond self-regulation. His arguments mix issues of legitimate concern — such as the increasing use of psychotropic drugs to medicate children’s behavior — with mindless agitprop: Children, he says, are also being poisoned by increasing exposure to toxic chemicals in the environment due to “unreasonably high proof of harm” in federal regulation. This dogma of environmental activism would be dispelled if Baken actually spent some time with federal regulators here or in Canada, or cracked open a toxicology textbook.
But a lawyer bent on prosecuting a simplistic theory isn’t interested in complexities, and so on and on it goes: The corporations are fattening our kids with junk food and forcing them to play horrific video games for hours and hours. Children, in Baken’s world, appear to enjoy the most incredible agency, heretofore unknown in the history of humanity. They lead dissipative lives, eat what they want without restraint and spend endless hours pursuing leisure over learning. And yet, they don’t, really. Somehow corporate culture and advertising does this to them.
As many British commentators asked while watching kids frenetically loot stores — where are their parents?
In Baken’s world, the slumbering wrinklies eventually show up, because he needs them to demand government intervention.
Which makes you wonder, if parents have the agency to demand more government regulation, why do they not have the agency to regulate their children’s behavior? Does it really need to be explained to parents that letting their kid drink the equivalent of 16 cans of soda a day is wrong? (This is the consumption for the 99th percentile for male teens, according to a disaggregation of NHANES nutrition data by Bremer et al.) Is this really something only the government has the power to stop?
What about establishing limits on sitting in front of a screen, which for preschoolers averages an astonishing four hours a day? How can government change that more effectively than a parent? An electricity tax? A screen tax?
In Britain, the conservatives have clawed their way out of political catastrophe by remembering that the language of morality is much more effective at articulating responsibilities than government regulation is at explaining why you should be responsible. As Britain’s chief rabbi, Lord Sacks, noted in a commentary on the riots, Freud was right when he said the precondition for civilization was the ability to defer the gratification of instinct. Only ethical training can achieve this.
Still, for parents who share Baken’s interventionism, Aristotle, the great proponent of ethical training, saw the family as the original model for the state, which means they are free to be their own governments and regulate their children as much or as little as they like.
