By now we’re all well-informed of the widespread rioting and looting in Britain. But there is a mystery at the heart of it: motive. There must, one ponders, be some reason for large groups of people to break the law so wantonly and destroy their neighbors’ property in such egregious ways. Smaller-scale but similarly frightening incidents have occurred in the United States as well in recent weeks. They were preceded by rioting in Greece and other countries of Europe. What’s rather startling about the anarchy in the UK is how widespread it has been. One article (quoted below) says the London police force of 31,000 couldn’t handle the problem, and reinforcements had to be brought in. Think of that: 31,000 police overwhelmed by mobs. Looking at the pictures of the riots is sobering: the amount of destruction that bands of impassioned youths can cause in a supposedly modern, forward-looking Western society should wake that society up. Looking a little more deeply, we can see some clues to possible motivations for the riots. Here are some quotes from an article in a London paper: The small crowds of very young men and women, of every skin colour, typically dressed in almost identical hooded sweatshirts, were
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