UK Riots: A Warning Shot Across the Bow

UK Prime Minister David Cameron outlines the basic problem underlying the recent riots in the United Kingdom.

With all of the smoke and mirror talk in Washington, D.C. about fixing the budget and reducing the debt, with all of the talk about how Bush and Obama have hurt the US economy, with all of the talk about jobs and recession and scary stock market trends, what's lost is talk about the underlying causes of American decline.

I have no common ground with socialists and I also differ from many of my libertarian friends. Why? Well, socialism is based on a faulty utopian premise of equality of outcomes. Modern libertarianism, while identifying key economic problems, refuses to acknowledge the underlying causes of our present-day government woes.

You see, the problem stems from a lack of understanding and acknowledgement of the social ills that plague Americans. We suffer from social, as well as economic sickness.

The recent riots across London and the rest of the UK help to illustrate the point with a statement given by David Cameron, Prime Minister:

This crisis has been building for years. It is the result of a major cultural shift that took place in the 1960s and 1970s, and the long-term decline of the conservative values and institutions that had underpinned British society since the late 19th century. This process was marked by a collapse in the belief in marriage, a retreat of the police from the streets, a move away from tough penalties for property crime, the rise of moral relativism and rampant consumerism, the diminution of stigma as a restraint on bad behaviour and the entrenchment of welfare dependency. (The Telegraph)

Progressives will mock Cameron's statement. Socialists will dismiss it out of hand. Identity radicalism will fight against any ideals that don't actively accept their lifestyle du jour. Others will reject it because they disbelieve that there is anything like a moral standard.

But the simple truth is that the US and the UK are countries in decline - not from the loss of economic standing or military might, but from the loss of moral compass. We are decadent societies and history has proven time and again that decadence destroys great nations.

As Abraham Lincoln wisely put it 173 years ago:

Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!--All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.