FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - Because They Enjoy it

Rant Number 452 bis 11 August 2011

Covenants without the Sword are but Words Thomas Hobbes

Anyone seeking to grapple with the lawless youths running amok through English cities should meditate on Boswell’s Life of Johnson. On Saturday, 11 April 1772 that great Englishman – one of my heroes - said: ‘Children, being not reasonable, can be governed only by fear. To impress this fear is therefore one of the first duties of those who have the care of children...It is the duty of a parent...it is the duty of a master...no severity is cruel which obstinacy makes necessary...the discipline of a school is military. There must be either unbounded license or absolute authority. The master who punishes not only consults the future happiness of him who is the immediate subject of correction; but he propagates obedience through the whole school...’ and so on.

The reason why law and order have broken down in parts of London and other English cities is because the rampaging young no longer fear. They do no fear the police, who fear being incriminated under current legislation if they intervene robustly. They do not fear the general public, who fear being themselves arrested, should they tackle the thugs. They do not fear the courts, the judges, restricted by liberal sentencing rules. They do not fear prisons, run today not by warders but by the inmates. They do not fear, therefore they are having a field day.

Police cuts, the media blab. Tories responsible! Not enough police on the streets! Fun blame game but irrelevant. Again and again, witnesses tell of plenty of police standing by and doing sod-all. Why? Because they fear. They fear being criminalised if they knock a thug’s head too hard. The cops do not have the instruments with which to stop the thugs, who are not afraid of them. Fear exists but, alas, on the wrong side.

Why are the thugs looting, burning and robbing? Unemployment, exclusion (‘the shame of our excluded underclass’ The Independent writes), hopelessness, racism – the usual litany of excuses. But many of the ‘kids’ are still at school – how can they be jobless? Racism? Many of the victims belong to racial minorities.(‘This would not happen in Jamaica!’ an old lady shouted at Ed Milliband.) The innocent student seen on TV mugged and robbed by vile youths was Malaysian, not a pink-skinned Brit. Exclusion? Actually, a looter is someone who by his beastly behaviour excludes himself from civilised society, not the other way around.

Journalist Peter Hitchens hits the nail on the head when he says that we live in an excuse culture. The tendency is to excuse. Always make excuses for lawless behaviour. Papers like The Independent and The Guardian are at the forefront of such mentality. In so doing, they badly harm to those whom they seek to excuse. They should grasp what John Locke, the philosopher of toleration, well saw. He praised a mother who chastised her child eight times, before she was subdued. ‘For, had she stopped at seventh act of correction, her daughter would have been ruined’ commented Dr Johnson. Just punishment, in other words, is ultimately in the interest of those who are punished. A view as popular as hell today but English society is reaping the result of ignoring its truth.

Why then are the lawless kids robbing, looting, burning and hurting? Tired, tedious sociology pundits apart, the commonsense answer is provided by Clint Eastwood in the old movie Dirty Harry. The creep he is up against, Scorpio, commits crime after crime against innocent young people. Some pompous, well meaning liberal guy asks, ‘Why does he do it?’ Harry the cop has no doubts. Scorpio does it ‘because he enjoys it’.

Because they enjoy it. Stealing, robbing, burning, even killing can be enjoyable. Horrifying to beautiful souls who have never rubbed shoulders with average human beings but divine wisdom has known that all along. The Bible commands men to love another precisely because that is not what they generally tend to do. ‘Love your neighbour’ needs to be enjoined, because sometimes people may want to kill their neighbour – you see that happening all the time.

I will confess it. I would rather enjoy vandalising the cars of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Theresa May and, yes, even of Boris Johnson, London’s waffling, mumbling Mayor. I would also enjoy thrashing the looters a lot. I am deterred, however, by my Freudian superego, my Christian conscience and, last but not least, my fear of the law. A law soft on criminals off but pretty implacable, I bet, on poor, aging priest like me...

Breakdown of the social contract, the Guardian opines. Nonsense. No such a contract was ever signed between governors and governed. Thomas Hobbes, an early theorist of the social contract idea, speaks of a ‘covenant’ but, as Bertrand Russell points out, it is a myth. However, Hobbes is right in stating that covenants without the sword are but words. Such contract, to exist, would need enforcing. But the putative contract between state and citizens is not being enforced. We have seen banks being shut for fear of attacks (tempted to join in that one...aaargh!), buildings set on fire, citizens made homeless, shops looted – the police looked on and did nothing.

There is a silver lining. Citizens are banding together to resist the thugs. For once the cliché word ‘community’ has a meaning. Sikhs on Southall – wonderful Temple there, I visited it last year – are defending their place of worship and their shops with sticks and swords. Turkish shopkeepers in Hackney are arming themselves, too. And Muslims are ready to guard their mosques. Interesting it is faith groups which are setting a civic example in self-defence.

(Christians don’t appear but then the Church of England means nil in the nation’s life so that’s that. Still, that is a tragedy because it is the Church’s God-given task to bring errant children and men to the knowledge of God. Then redemption can start. Even thugs and criminals are souls made in the divine image. No sin can efface that.)

But Hobbes is right. The right of self-preservation is absolute. If the state fails to uphold it, as it patently has, the people have a natural right to defend themselves.

Where do we go from here? Only one way: down, down, down. Parliament reconvenes tomorrow. Expect an ocean of words but no action. It is all a charade. The charade of democracy. Until people will decide that they have had enough.