Hug A Thug

Kyle Smith, in his column in today’s New York Daily News, notes:  “In England, the shopkeepers have swept up the broken windows and the goons have temporarily retreated home to enjoy their new tracksuits and tellies.  What lessons have the country’s leaders learned from a days-long crime orgy?  That’s it time to finally confront a torched civil culture by forming ranks, marching bravely up to the fire and feeding it with a bit more therapeutic welfare funding.

“Prime Minister David Cameron, a former PR Man who still seems to think that issuing a press release makes for a brisk day’s work, …denounced the crime spree as ‘sickening’ and said a ‘slow-motion moral collapse’ must be put right.”

“Cameron promised a double-fisted response, which he dubbed the ‘security fightback” -- Wham! -- and the ‘social fightback’ -- Pow! . . . wait, what?  In other words, Cameron’s Conservatives offer no change on this from longtime Labor PM Tony Blair, who in 1992 famously promised to be 'tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.' Because we all know cops should keep hugs as well as handcuffs at the ready."

Smith goes on to write, “[Cameron’s] ‘social fightback,’ meanwhile, turns out to be a program to identify the 120,000 “most troubled” families and somehow heal them with, one supposes, therapy, counseling and sympathetic noises. He vowed to ‘develop a plan to help get these families on track.’”

Smith cites as an example of misguided socialism Anthony Burgess’ novel, “A Clockwork Orange” about a gang of drugged-up, violent sociopaths.  The 1962 book was made into a famous film by Stanley Kubrick (“2001:  A Space Odyssey), starring Malcolm McDowell as the anti-hero Alex, who is institutionalized after his murderous rampages.  However, Kubrick cut Burgess’ final chapter, Ch. 21, from the end of the film.  The chapter signifies the age of 21, at which Alex matures and, realizing everything he’s thought and done is wrong, turns his life around.  (An interesting side note:  David Prowse, the physical Darth Vader of Star Wars, plays a good guy bodyguard in this film).

Whatever good Burgess tried to do, Kubrick left in utter chaos.  1962 seems to have been the year for chaos; that year, the film version of West Side Story was released.  If you want to know what sociopathic thugs think of socialists, socialism, and social workers, pay attention to the musical number, “Gee, Officer Krupke.”  The joke is on us, and the socialist writers knew it.  Which is why Sen. Joe McCarthy wanted to have them blacklisted.  Walt Disney agreed, for which Hollywood sought for years to besmirch his good name and find a way to overtake his company, which they finally have, and now peddle television stories about the wonders of teenage pregnancy and release feel-good movies about environmentalism.

Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger’s novel, came of age in 1951, about ten years earlier, fueling teenage confusion, angst, alienation, language, and rebellion.  Then there was the 1955 film, Rebel Without a Cause, starring James Dean and Natalie Wood (who would later star as Maria in West Side Story).

During the 1960s, race riots in our major American cities, the adults of that generation were told they had to support the Great Society programs – buy off the minorities, in other words – if we wanted peace in our cities.  The bill has come in for that price and it will bankrupt our nation.

The minorities now have as fair a chance, through changed employment laws and educational opportunities, at getting a job and living the American Dream as anyone.  Only our businesses and corporations were taxed so heavily to support the Great Society that there are now no jobs for them to work at, much less the rest of us.  Taxation, bureaucracy, lax educational standards, exorbitant benefits, and zero population growth have driven our jobs overseas to countries with larger and more desperate populations willing to produce at lower wages.

In Europe, they are reaping what socialism has sown.  What sort of crop socialism will yield in America is yet to be seen.  Like a wild, aggressive plant species introduced into our country’s fertile soil, the Conservative Tea Party has been trying to root out the infestation, though the alien species has had a forty year period in which to take over our cultivated fields.

The trick is to get at the plants while they’re still young sprouts and cross-breed the strain until the invasive contaminant is neutralized, and the growth bred back to its more productive state.  That would seem to be what George Washington, the farmer, would suggest, anyway.

You don’t hug a thug or wheedle a weed; you yank it out of the ground.