Poverty of Values

It is not diminished economic circumstance that drives an individual to commit an act of terror or riot. It is a poverty of values that impels them. I remember the wife of then Prime Minister Tony Blair, Cherie Blair saying she understood the desperation that drove Palestinian suicide bombers. She explained that the poor murderers "feel they have got no hope but to blow themselves up" back in 2002. I wonder if after the 7/7 bombing Ms. Blair felt the same way? (The 7/7 terrorists came by the way from relatively privileged backgrounds.) Those who wage mob action against the ordered society are doing so not because they are economically deprived, but because they are miscreants. Many of those arrested have been squarely from the middle classes and a few have even been from wealthy backgrounds. What they lack is not means but a moral compass that was generally considered in past ages to be part of being human. The members of the mob looting and burning in Britain have forfeited their very humanity.