I've been reading Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass by Theodore Dalrymple. It's a collection of essays, drawn from his experience of 40 years of hospital and prison work.
It's gruesome stuff. The overwhelming pattern I'm seeing is that the English underclass has been carefully taught that whatever happens to them, whatever choices they make (or won't make, because NOT making a choice invariably leads to events happening anyway), that whatever they do - they're not responsible for it. They emphatically deny responsibility for their own situations, and when it's pointed out to them - they shrug. "What can you do?" they say in essence, and go back and do the same things that got them in trouble in the first place.
You might want to check it out. It's a compelling read - even if it'll leave you queasy in spots when you think about the implications of what a permanent underclass means for England - and the US. (Because we're working pretty damn hard at setting up our OWN underclass. You know what they say the road to Hell is paved with - and we've been producing a lot of paving stones in the name of progressive politics.)
J.
Comments (2)
It seems almost unbelievable that voters can become so apathetic to this kind of behavior.
Posted by Ben USN, (Ret) | January 14, 2007 6:25 PM
Posted on January 14, 2007 18:25
Ben - they ARE the voters! Re-electing every politician that promises them a handout or tells them they're the downtrodden but HE will help them out of their misery, believeing every professor who comes out with some new theory to absolve them of responsibility for their own actions - in the end it's about NOT taking responsibility for their own actions.
In a way it's kind of a synergistic reaction - the politicians need an underclass to keep them in power, so they pander to that underclass... but they've got to be careful and make sure that underclass doesn't actually improve their lot ... so a lot of the problems that could be solved never get acted on, and a lot of pretty stuff that in the end is detrimental gets put into place.
J.
J.
Posted by JLawson | January 14, 2007 10:18 PM
Posted on January 14, 2007 22:18