Feed the Beast

Theodore Dalrymple is writing about the English but exactly the same can be said about a portion of the Australian population. It is reflective of the welfare state and the results show how the misguided (and often manipulative) intentions of the 'tofu socialists' can create a Frankenstein monster...a monster one German philosopher called the; 'lumpenproletariat', and whose most obvious impulse appears to be the desire to bite the hand that feeds it.

Theodore Dalrymple:

The riots are the apotheosis of the welfare state and popular culture in their British form. A population thinks (because it has often been told so by intellectuals and the political class) that it is entitled to a high standard of consumption, irrespective of its personal efforts; and therefore it regards the fact that it does not receive that high standard, by comparison with the rest of society, as a sign of injustice. It believes itself deprived (because it has often been told so by intellectuals and the political class), even though each member of it has received an education costing $80,000, toward which neither he nor—quite likely—any member of his family has made much of a contribution; indeed, he may well have lived his entire life at others’ expense, such that every mouthful of food he has ever eaten, every shirt he has ever worn, every television he has ever watched, has been provided by others. Even if he were to recognize this, he would not be grateful, for dependency does not promote gratitude. On the contrary, he would simply feel that the subventions were not sufficient to allow him to live as he would have liked.

Though the recent riots have illustrated this alienation amongst the welfare class quite graphically I wonder how many 'middle-class' folk feel that they are just as 'deprived'. 20th century greed has possessed us to such an extent that we can no longer see how rich we are, only how much less than another we have.
We are all going to have a lot to answer for.