London is burning...

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Well, I'm happy you can see this all in the abstract and pretend to impartially deconstruct arguments from an ivory tower. You can't imagine some unforeseen horror that might rock your placid sense of security in this world.

Also, my point of contention with Fnord was that he seemed to imply that he has no moral obligation to pay taxes in support of a social safety net. Nothing, nada, zilch. All because he didn't receive any benefit from the system, mr big strong self-made man.

I personally believe in violent revolution. Bakunin realized that "the state" would NEVER go away unless it was completely and violently SMASHED. That said the London rioters should be burning down Parliament, Buckingham Palace, and the banks in the City of London rather than little shops in their own neighborhoods. It's an unfortunate reality that rioters are always burning down the wrong things. I hope that Americans are smarter than that, and burn down the government and banks rather than strip malls. I would also like to see us burn the bankers and politicians alive, and smash and destroy all of their wealth.

What constitutes total crap is a matter of opinion.

Bottom line is we will either learn to make real compromise on both sides to make progress everyone can live with or people will stop participating in the system and start killing each other.

We've done it before. Remember a little thing called the civil war? Americans aren't above killing each other to make a political point despite what some folks here might think.

Let me say it one last time. The American political system is not a spectator sport for people too mean-spirited and barbaric to appreciate professional wrestling.

It's a system of governance designed to let us work out our differences peacefully as we strive to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty.

When system stops working because one side or the other or both engages in willful obstruction there's no reason to participate any longer. That leaves people with grievances and no peaceful way to deal with them.

What do you think is likely to happen next?

I would argue the American Civil War was because we compromised too often instead of putting our foot down earlier and end slavery.

The Civil War happened because the South couldn't accept the fact Abraham Lincoln won the Presidential election.

Hey, conservatives – look what you made them do!

"This is the uprising of the working class," said a London anarchist taking a momentary break from smashing things on Monday. "We're redistributing the wealth." Said another, "[We're showing] the rich we can do what we want."

If you have been keeping up with the news from Britain, then you know who bears the blame for this: conservatives!

The "deep cutbacks in social programs" made by the government of Prime Minister David Cameron "have hit the country's poor especially hard," reported a major U.S. newspaper, "including large numbers of the minority youths who have been at the forefront of the unrest."

The "unrest." Nice touch.

This line has been trotted out by others — most notoriously "Red Ken" Livingstone, the former mayor of London. As well as a London MP who cited "disillusionment." And an analysis on Salon that blamed "youth unemployment." And NPR ("The unrest has spread, apparently spurred by anger over the high cost of living" as well as economic "disparity"). And The Washington Post's Courtland Milloy (the rioters are "striking out in anger over the theft of their futures").

A scholar at Johns Hopkins blames "austerity cuts." So does The New York Times: "Economic malaise and cuts in spending and services instituted by the Conservative-led government have been recurring flashpoints for months." Reuters says a "sense of disenchantment" is shared by a "generation of young people with opportunities that fall well short of their aspirations." And —

Well, you get the point: Yes, the hooligans have destroyed family businesses, trashed London institutions, sent millions of real and sweat equity up in flames, inflicted misery on thousands of innocent people. But one mustn't judge too harshly. One must try to understand. And to mollify.

You hear that sort of flummery a lot.

Or at least you hear it when the perpetrators of mayhem are objects of liberal approval. Labor unions, demonstrators against global free-trade agreements, environmentalist activists — they have legitimate grievances that must be addressed. The blind rage of young people in working-class neighborhoods is the product of socioeconomic conditions. They should not be held responsible for their actions — the people who created the conditions should be held responsible. (David Cameron, this means you.)

Funny thing, though: You didn't hear that sort of guff in 2009, when middle-class conservatives turned up at town halls across the country to vent about health-care reform. Back then, the town-hall events were filled with "angry, sign-carrying mobs," wrote Politico, which lamented the way constituents were "shouting criticism" at members of Congress. Signs and criticism: oh my!

"Angry mobs" were trying to "destroy president Obama," fumed Democratic Party leaders back then. "This is something new and ugly," seethed Paul Krugman of The New York Times, which described the town hall events as "brutal." No one seemed interested in the root causes of the sign-wavers' agitation then. You didn't hear much about the "disillusionment" and "disenchantment" of tea party protesters who marched on Washington in September 2009, and again the following March.

To be fair, after the Taxpayer March on Washington on 9/12, Reuters did pause to wonder what the source of public anger was: "Protests Against Obama: Race or Policy?" it asked, noting how "former President Jimmy Carter said out loud what Democrats had been whispering for a while, that the protests against the country's first black president are tinged with racism."

When conservatives wave signs, it's not "unrest" caused by a "sense of disenchantment." It's because they're bigots. Society as a whole is not to blame; they are, individually. They need an attitude adjustment. When violent mobs of young people burn down a city, though, they are not individually responsible — society as a whole is (or at least that part of society that ostensibly ticked them off). They don't need an attitude adjustment: conservatives do.

Memo to Britain's ruling party: Look what you made those poor kids do!

This neat bit of rhetorical jiu-jitsu ensures that, no matter what happens, one side is always to blame.

Here in the U.S. we've just been through a budget showdown in which the side that wanted government spending to grow at a slightly less rapid pace than the other side wanted was denounced as terrorists in the literal sense. So far, none of those who called peaceful tea-party activists terrorists have flung the same accusation at the British rioters who have inflicted genuine terror. Interesting.

To be sure, those progressives seeking to understand what motivates the rioters in London do not actually endorse their behavior. They do not think individuals — no matter how aggrieved — should take it upon themselves to storm into other people's shops and homes and "redistribute the wealth" as they see fit. After all: That, such progressives say, is government's job.

Perhaps they're just getting warmed up.

It was practice they are preparing for their US tour xD

What happened to your keen awareness of false equivalency MP? AoS is pro death penalty, and even pro DP for Bernie Madoff, but he's not suggesting that Madoff be extra-judicially tortured to death as VW seems to be calling for. AoS seems to be calling for stricter enforcement and punishment within the judicial system, where as VW is calling for straight up vigilante action, and of a most sadistic sort to boot. There's an awful lot of daylight showing between those two positions, and honestly I think you know it, but don't want to alienate VW who you think of as being on your "side". Feel free to jump in here if I'm going wide of the mark, that's my read anyway. Not your best work IMHO, the spelling and such isn't normally like you either, perfectionism and all. I'd think about walking this one back, I don't think you really want to try and carry this particular water.

What constitutes total crap is a matter of opinion.

Bottom line is we will either learn to make real compromise on both sides to make progress everyone can live with or people will stop participating in the system and start killing each other.

We've done it before. Remember a little thing called the civil war? Americans aren't above killing each other to make a political point despite what some folks here might think.

Let me say it one last time. The American political system is not a spectator sport for people too mean-spirited and barbaric to appreciate professional wrestling.

It's a system of governance designed to let us work out our differences peacefully as we strive to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty.

When system stops working because one side or the other or both engages in willful obstruction there's no reason to participate any longer. That leaves people with grievances and no peaceful way to deal with them.

What do you think is likely to happen next?