This from “Britons have been violent and cruel for generations,” Hitchens’ latest column for Slate, an online magazine of news, politics, and highbrow cultural commentary:
I realized that the collapse of British society into a Hobbesian nightmare of mutual predation and despair was still some distance off when I caught two little straws in the wind. The first was a well-framed photograph of a badly scorched bit of London, taken on the morning after a night of riots and vandalism. Apart from heavily accoutered cops, the only human figures on the scene consisted of a forest of sleeveless forearms, all brandishing the long handles of mops and heavy-duty scrubbing brushes. The ordinary working day had scarcely begun, but the process of digging out and cleaning up, inaugurated by the volunteer locals, was already under way. Of course, I thought to myself. Inflict a physical disaster on any British city, but especially on London, and the inhabitants seem to know, without any previous training for the role, that they have been cast in a remake of Britain Beats the Blitz.Good people everywhere should stand up as the mortal enemy of stupidity and foolishness. Great and noble nations need not be undone by thugs and hooligans. Hitchens is a controversial writer — his views are frequently dismissed as fringe-dwelling, his opinions derided as the utterances of a pathologically egotistical loudmouth — but he gets it right here: petty violence cloaked in shabby excuses is a stain on our society. It must be stopped.
