This post is a first guest article from Charles Crawford, who normally resides in his Blogoir. It is an edited version of his post The Disastrous Death of Common Sense, which first appeared at the Commentator.

Over the centuries English property law has invented many ingeniously pragmatic ways in which property can be owned. One key distinction shows itself every time a couple take out a new mortgage. They are offered a choice: a ‘tenancy in common’ or a ‘joint tenancy’.

The difference is as simple as it is profound.

Under a tenancy in common, the property is owned by A and B in specific shares (eg half/half, one third/two thirds); A’s share can be sold or bequeathed to someone else, so B now co-owns the property with that new person.

By contrast, if A and B own under a joint tenancy there are no identifiable shares: if A dies, A’s share automatically goes to B.

In other words, property ownership can be the sum of many discrete, separable parts each owned by a different individual, or a single phenomenon in which many owners each have an equal claim on the whole. For property, read society or community.

And then contemplate the sprawling philosophical disaster of ‘multiculturalism’.

The whole point about multiculturalism is that it treats any given social space as, in effect, a tenancy in common. Each group (as defined by multiculturalism) has a specific stake and specific interests: the gays, the blacks, the women, the disabled, the under-class all have formally defined rights and identities.

This very idea of course leads to what any normal person would see as insane if not wicked contradictions: thus it is vital that lesbian couples be given the right to adopt children, but also vital that ‘white’ couples be stopped from adopting ‘black’ children. But for multiculturalists it all makes perfect sense: the property rights of each atomised multicultural ‘community’ must be ring-fenced.

This philosophy is all about emphasising differences: some real, but many phony and synthetic.

By contrast seeing society as a ‘joint tenancy’ in which what people have in common is far greater than what divides them suggests very different policy approaches, not least non-racial adoption policies.

So, what has ‘caused’ this startling outbreak of flash rioting?

A central part of this philosophy is to deny if not denounce (literally to de-construct and de-legitimise) traditional values and unifying symbols. See Twitter, the Guardian and Independent passim.

Under multiculturalism what precisely unites us?

The Monarchy?

Sneer – white privilege and oppression.

The Law?

Sneer – rich man’s justice.

British history?

Sneer – written by imperialist winners.

British economic success?

Sneer – just the rich getting richer at the expense of the poor.

The British public?

Sneer – bring in more immigrants and let them stay in ghettos not learning English.

British democracy or even democracy itself?

Sneer – a tool of oppression and false consciousness.

British literature?

Sneer – too many dead white men.

Family values?

Sneer – repressed middle-class neurosis.

Separating Right from Wrong?

Sneer – oppressive class-based value judgements.

And so on.

For a gold-plated example of progressive sneering, check out the Nobel Prize lecture of Harold Pinter:

‘There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.’

Tell that to the ruined shopkeepers across London.

Thus every day in every way our society is infiltrated by divisive sneering.

Most of it emanates from publicly funded organisations captured by the sneering classes (universities, BBC, NGOs, local councils, quangos). And over the years the consequences of this tsunami of state-subsidised sneering compound up, not least in the way people think about what they themselves represent in society and what society ‘owes’ to them.

This in turn gnaws at deepest instincts of personal self-respect. How dare the government make ‘cuts’?

It’s my money, especially if I have done nothing to earn it!

The multiculturalist chattering classes see the looters and rioters with mixed emotions. There is lurking (sometimes not so lurking) pride that ‘the system’ has been ‘challenged’ so brutally by these ‘protesters’ who have ‘reclaimed’ (sic) the streets.

Those of us who refuse to succumb to progressive nihilism must heave a deep sigh and confront the extraordinary horror seen on the streets of London and other cities and towns.

It’s bad enough having to pay to put it right – money which could have been spent on new investment. Most difficult to tackle in its vile abstractness is the philosophical problem: the insolent assumption that anything (anyone?) can be challenged and destroyed simply because the rioters and looters feel like it. And the implicit blackmail threat that if we don’t give these people whatever they want, they’ll start it up again.

The looters in some dim way probably talk among each other about ‘respect’, but in substance they don’t respect other people, the law, any idea of self restraint. Above all, they don’t respect or begin to understand the slow power of compound interest to build and sustain wealth down the generations.

They don’t know where the value of what they are smashing and burning in fact originates. They don’t know where the streets they plunder come from.

They’ll be curbed and contained, of course.

But then what?

Charles
Crawford August 13, 2011 at 10:07

As the diverse comments above and the wider tsunami of media ‘analysis’ go
to show, it’s impossible in practice – and perhaps also in theory – (a) easily
to identify any especially strong and immediate ’cause’ of these disturbances,
let alone (b) then proceed to work out some policy responses which might
actually make a positive difference.

My view of all this draws on my life in the Diplomatic Service in late
apartheid S Africa, post-communist Russia, post-conflict Bosnia,
post-Milosevic Serbia and finally EU-joining Poland.

In each of these countries there were large numbers of people who in one
way or the other were poor, alienated, disaffected, angry and so on. Yet none
of them produced the smirking gleeful destruction seen in England this week.
Read this brutal piece by Theodore Dalrymple to see what I am getting at: http://www.spectator.co.uk/essays/all/7157308/its-fun-to-smash-things.thtml
– especially this brilliant paragraph:

“Terms such as ‘unrest’ and ‘disaffection’, which trip so lightly off the
tongue of those who do not want to face a far more disturbing reality, do not
explain the behaviour of the rioters. It is obvious, for instance, that if
there were any justice in the world — at least if justice is the right return
for voluntary effort and conduct — the young rioters would be much worse off
than they are. Their problem is not that they have been given too little, but
that they have deserved nothing.”

Where do we find the ‘root cause’ for such perniciously bad and mainly
banal, ignorant attitudes amongst these rioters? Hopeless parenting? Weak
schools? Corrupt politicians? Greedy capitalists? All the above and more? Yes.

But where did the hopeless parenting and weak schools and the rest
themselves come from? Tempting as it is to blame the Welfare State (what a
creepy term that is, when you think about it!), other countries have extended
‘social’ provisions yet do not end up with the trashy sub-literate urban yoof
that we have spawned.

My conclusion is that the sheer size and reach of the modern state in our
modern lives has usurped for many people basic understanding of self-respect
and self-restraint. And that this is creating compounding conditions for all
sorts of incredibly bad ideas and instincts and habits to proliferate. The
more so when you add in all the sneering, and in many parts of public life a
refusal to be ‘judgemental’ about anything.

NB That last one is then reinforced by a ‘human rights’ culture which
allows almost any form of tackling poor performance to be denounced as
‘bullying’; this in turn leads to a collapse in any organisation’s staff
appraisal systems and so allows incompetence free rein (see schools,
passim).

But so what?

The very fact that the state is so big and bloated and corrupt and
incompetent means that reforming it is now in fact impossible. Maybe radical
change on a scale likely to affect these now embedded nihilistic attitudes can
come only with a shared sense of national focus brought about by a far greater
and much worse upheaval – a new World War, or failing that the abrupt
departure of the UK from the EU, an event which would force us to look at many
policy issues from first principles once again…

Matt
Wardman August 13, 2011 at 11:41

Thanks for coming back to respond.

Matt

Bob Lomas August 13, 2011 at 09:40

The overriding problem is that we are being dishonest with ourselves as a
people by refusing to admit to ourselves and accept that we are no longer a
sovereign and self governing nation state. With the surrender of the supremacy
of our laws and Constitution to foreign rule our Parliament is now a sham, an
unlawful institution, the monarchy a charade.

Until such time we as a nation face up to these truths and take steps to
reconstruct the lawful machinery of the nation state corruption will flourish
and anarchy will ensue. A referendum on the EU would only compound the act of
treason that took us into it. Affording the people an opportunity vote in
favour of the permanent destruction of the supremacy of our Constitution would
place all so engaged subject to the Treason Act 1351 and the Treason Felony
Act 1848, both of which are extant, unless we accept of course that our laws
are now meaningless and we are but political serfs subordinate to a foreign
power. As in all life once the head is removed the body dies and decays, a
condition now manifest in this nation.

carol42 August 12, 2011 at 23:42

Charles Murray predicted all this about 20 years ago and was howled down
for it. I wish the Times would serialise his book again and, as he wrote then,
we will segregate them, ignore them as long as they stay in their own self
created ghetto should they break out of this then beware. All Blairs children
of course.

Matt
Wardman August 12, 2011 at 21:22

@Dennis

I tend to agree on your DAG point.

However, I think that doing the
careful-examination-for-the-sake-of-objectivity thing inhibits judgement when
it is needed.

I agree with the author that Multiculturalism is a problem in that the
current situation becomes frozen; I’d draw a comparison with the USA – so many
problems there are because they designed a system so carefully balanced that
it cannot develop. Consider that they still have Grand Juries, which most
other countries dumped decades or generations ago.

I’d differ on the sneers, though – that is not one of just sneers but more
of an immobile media-politics. In any sensible word the ‘snearers’ would lose
their constituency. It is partly due to public gullibility that they are still
there.

(Disclosure: I edited this post for Charles C; the argument here is – with
CG agreement – formatted to be more punchy than the original at the link
above, which is 50% longer and more of an essay).

Dennis August 12, 2011 at 09:40

David Allen-Green blogged that civil disturbances are invariably used to
validate political opinions which people already hold; I think he was
right.

Whilst I have no difficulty in agreeing the author’s argument that the root
cause of this dreadful outbreak of lawlessness is to be found in sneering
disrespect: any number of modern phenomena, from rampant consumerism to human
rights, could be argued as its catalyst. Provided our theorist studiously
ignores historical episodes like the blackout gangs and the blitz lootings, he
will frame a convincing argument –particularly if his readers share his
politics.

Engineer August 12, 2011 at 10:36

But just sneering at him isn’t going to solve any of the problems, is it,
Dennis?

Dennis August 12, 2011 at 13:47

No sneer intended. In fact, I considered changing he to she in my final
sentence, but it was just too fashionable for me.

If I were asked for a solution, I would suggest that we accept there
will always be a disaffected, sneeringly disrespectful layer at the bottom
end of society. I would say that the only answer is a robust police
response coupled with robust punishment.

Engineer August 12, 2011 at 09:33

But then what?

I think there are, in effect, two related but seperate problems. The first
is the problem of how to deal with the current generation of disaffected
youth; the second is the problem of preventing the same mistakes with the next
generation.

The current generation of disaffected inner-city feral youth, gang members,
call them what you will, have got there because of lack of parenting and lack
of education. Both these matters are being extensively discussed elsewhere, so
I won’t dwell on them. How to correct the resulting deficiencies?

Maybe something like boot-camps might help – sort of National Service
without the weapons – strict discipline 24 hours a day aiming to teach
literacy, numeracy, respect for authority, then a bit about the history of the
country and how institutions of the nation work for the common good. Then a
bit of skills training, with particular emphasis on what might help them win
and keep a job. Think of it as further education, but an education starting
from the premise of no educational foundation and no platform of stable family
background – the first aim being to set solid foundations.

That would help with the second problem – that of not perpetuating the
failures to another generation.

It seems clear that something fairly drastic needs to be done. Ignoring it
will just perpetuate the problem.

Cascadian August 12, 2011 at 05:53

There will be no solution until people realise this is part of the long
march through the institutions and adoption of Marxist doctrine.

Thus up is down, deficits are investment, hope trumps hard work, self
evident means not apparent, and money can be spent even though it is yet
unearned and requires an additional loan for 40% of the spent value from other
insolvent countries.

We live in strange times, what is taught at universities is
for-the-most-part nonsensical pablum (except the hard sciences), amorphous
theories such as man-made climate change are adopted in a worldwide mania and
untold billions wasted trying to have some microscopic effect on a natural
phenoma that is misunderstood and changing constantly. Meanwhile real problems
of how to provision enough power in the future are ignored.

I will not live to see the resolution of these problems , and I am glad of
it.