"The Peasants Are Revolting"

There is an overwhelming amount of commentary on the riots taking place in the United Kingdom, firstly in London and spreading out to the provinces of the country. What is taking place is truly shocking and thoroughly depressing. Brighton is yet to 'kick off' but it wouldn't surprise me if at some point it did.

So, what is really happening? Here are my thoughts...


A Perfect Storm

What we are seeing is a perfect storm of a number of factors contributing to rioting youth in the country.  This is a storm that has been brewing for a long time and while each of those taking part in the riots is personally responsible for their own actions before God and man, it has to be said that this is a crisis forged primarily by successive Governments who have failed abysmally to tackle social problems in the country and it won't surprise anyone incredibly that I believe the largest factor in all of this is the country's abandonment of Christianity.

The Welfare State

A day or two ago, my friend George told me of a young man of 21 who has been kicked out of the bed and breakfast in Worthing because social services have severed their ties with him now that he is of the cut off age for State involvement in his care.  He'll have to present himself to the Council as homeless. The State has taken on a parenting role in the life of its citizens unseen in previous generations. The State is also, unfortunately, a terrible parent, incapable of showing concern or love. It is cold, faceless and often over-bearing and brutal. Only parents, real parents, are able to raise children and to teach them to stand on their own two feet. The State has willingly and quite deliberately made its citizens dependent upon it, often for whole lifetimes, but there can be no relationship with it. Nothing is expected of citizens and work is an optional extra. Readers will be aware of my own dependency upon the charity of my own parents and employment is something I am trying to address, but at least real parents are able to encourage responsibility as well as provide a 'safety net'. I'm well aware that I may have found myself on the street or in Grand Parade if I were not so privileged.

William Beveridge: Proponent of Welfare State

Now, the State has usurped the role of the family to such an extent that it is expected to provide income, housing, education (and not a good education at that), pensions, healthcare, and a whole gamut of responsibilities which hitherto were not expected of it. Families are breaking down and the State has become the parent. This was a process enacted quite deliberately.

The socialist architects of the welfare state believed that the family was a roadblock in the path to creating a 'just' and 'equal' society, just as religion is a dangerous concept that hinders citizens' ability to see the glorious State as the sole object of their worship. An 'equal' society, meanwhile, is a goal that is utopian in outlook and, like all utopias, is and always will be thoroughly unachievable in practise. Even Heaven itself is not an 'equal society'. The same State that has, in the words of Pope Benedict XVI pushed God "out of the public sphere" has made the State to be God-like in power and in responsibility for our 'welfare'. If the State is a terrible parent, then it is an even worse 'God'. Another factor is that the State has not taught these children well. It hasn't been able to pass down moral values because its moral values are so arbitrary, incoherent and relativistic.

The State abandoned Christian moral teaching and now it is paying a heavy price. Instead of teaching children about marriage, family and sexual ethics, it instead threw condoms at the children and gave them sex education lessons. Then, the State is surprised when STIs go through the roof, teenage pregnancies and abortions are rife and children behave as if there is no consequence to sexual immorality when that is exactly what the State taught them. This is something that has been supported by the media and Hollywood, and let's face it, when was the last time you watched a Hollywood movie in which the leading protagonists search for a condom before the love scene? In all ways, the State has been unable to build a morality that replaces Christianity which yields a return of objectively moral behaviour. Instead, it has egged children on to believe that there are no consequences to objectively bad behaviour and glorified sexual licence.

Could they not see there was a sale on?

The Glorification of Materialsm

Never has a country's culture been so materialistic and artificial.  We can look at the images of teenagers happily walking away from Currys with plasma screens and, if we want, and mock them, but at the end of the day, nearly every organ of the mass media has glorified earthly riches and material possessions as the key to human happiness, from technological toys and goodies, to video games, to clothes, cars and alcoholic drinks. Never has a society been so enrapt in materialism and worshipped it so much that it presents itself to society as the only thing for which to live.

In other countries in Europe and certainly the Arab world, looting has taken place, but it has been largely for food amid rising prices.  In this country, teenagers are looting for Playstations and raiding JD Sports, presumably because they think that £120 trainers and computer gamestations will make them happy. They won't, of course, but society has, both subliminally and overtly, been telling these children that these things will make them happy. Of course, we know that only Jesus Christ can make people young and old happy, but successive Governments have told us that "we don't do God". It is ironic that these are not even 'Thatcher's children' but the children of the vastly wealthy owner of homes and, presumably, cars in many countries, Tony Blair, who, while doing his best to undermine the role of Christianity in the country with distorted 'equality laws' had a track record of voting pro-abortion, making it obvious that his priority was not God but mammon. These children find themselves locked out of the party, which they sense is nearly over with coming 'cuts' promised, and so are taking what they believe belongs to them and setting fire to shops in the process.


The Loss of the Moral Authority of the Establishment

These children may be so poorly educated that while looting they give Waterstones a miss, but they are, undoubtedly 'streetwise', so streetwise, in fact, that people don't want to be on the street when they are around. They may find it difficult to express their anger in words - I haven't seen any placards for instance - but they might sense that the establishment has lost the moral authority that it may once have had. The expenses scandal might just have been a tipping point, for instance and the Arab Springs may have planted a seed in some minds. These children are running around looting and thieving from shops, while MPs have been running around looting and thieving from the treasury on second homes, duckhouses and the rest. Bankers and investors have, quite obviously, looted the country for whatever it was once worth and nobody has been called to account, but that is okay because it is just ' high risk trading'. It is going to be hard for MPs to moralise in future, though they will give it as a good stab as they can.

Many commentators have pointed to the absence of fathers being key to why these children are running riot, but few have pointed out that the abandonment of Christian values and fatherhood is not just something which has afflicted the poor, but the rich also.  It is universal. How many Telegraph and Daily Mail readers, for instance, have had more than one wife, or girlfriend, or committed adultery and have children with more than one woman? Many of the rich who behave as the poor do are even glorified in the mass media. Footballers who have affairs, who pay for abortions, musicians and well-known actors and stars who have strings of women or men as sexual partners are lauded as heroes. Divorce and marital break-up is a huge problem in the country but it seems to be okay for the rich to do it because their wealth protects them from any public criticism. When the rich are wild and reckless and act without restraint, they are just 'searching for the right person', but when the poor are wild and reckless and act without restraint they are 'feral youths' and fathers of multiple children.

These children may be, as I said, poorly educated, but they are not blind. They can see that the 'moral degradation' or 'moral decay' is not something confined to their deprived communities, but something that runs through society, from the rich to the poor like a stick of Brighton rock. The rich would love the poor to embrace Christianity because that would solve a lot of problems, but they would rather not do it themselves because they are having a great time and never fall into public criticism, because the rich who misbehave are even glorified for doing so while their wealth protects them. The children of divorced rich couples will have problems forming relationships. The now rioting children of the absent fathers will not be comforted with money after the custody battles and here we are today. The sins of the rich are imitated by the poor and with devastating consquences for society and so the question is who is really to blame? Telegraph readers will hate it, but maybe we really are all to blame after all, since nobody in authority is anymore able to claim the moral high ground - Politicians, parts of the media and even the police themselves are corrupt and everybody now knows it.

All of society tells children that sex is a commodity and that material possessions make people happy. These children have been taught to value both sex and materialism in the same unrestrained manner as the rich do. The result is anarchy on the streets of London and provinces around the United Kingdom and the main reason that these riots are taking place is because Christianity has been rejected by society as a whole. The words of many who are condemning these children ring hollow because sex, drugs, money and possessions are the false gods not just of the poor, but of the rich as well. They want these teenagers to repent but are unable to do so themselves. Christian morality and moreover, Jesus Christ, has been promoted to neither the rich or the poor and result is that, as George said to me last night, "the peasants are revolting". It is without doubt, however, that the rich are pretty revolting too...