IDS has got it, poor man. Too bad nobody else has.

As you Northern Affairs Director, I live too close to Bootle for comfort – about 20 miles. The local jokes are:

“Q:    Why do ________ people go to car boot fairs in Bootle?       Ans:    To buy the stuff back”.

“Q:   What do Scouse boys get for their birthday?      Ans:      Your boy’s bike”.

This is all very sad, it marks the beginning of a long Dark Age to come, and it could have been avoided in the absence of socialism, or of collective failure of nerve at a critical time.

Firstly, it IS the fault of the individual people who live in “sink” estates, because the only reason for a crime to occur is the decision of the criming-person to execute it, and persons ARE answerable for their own actions. Nobody is forced to violate the natural Rights of others. If they do, then they have decided to so do. Natural Rights IMHO exist even if no human beings had ever lived. It is like Physics. 

Secondly, it is the fault of voters in those sinks for failing to not elect socialists to “represent them”, who wanted liberalism and individual freedon dead, on purpose, for their own purposes. I have blogged long and tirelessly about the blame for the destruction of Germany’s cities by Harris, and that it lies with the German voters themselves in 1933. A sentient population ought to watch out for threats to itself from within it.

Thirdly, it is our fault as liberals, for going to sleep on the job, between the 1850s and now, and not advocating and pressing, with main force, dire measures against such things as “Trade Unions”, and “Councils”, and other Soviets.

IDS published, near the start of his report, which I got the gist of here, the following;

Tuesday, July 10, 2007, 3:37PMWhy social breakdown is so difficult for government to deal with“All of the work that we have done has reinforced the importance of the first three years on a child’s cognitive and emotional development. The emotional brain is largely created in the first 18 months of life and its auditory map is formed even earlier, by 12 months. Furthermore, it has also been shown, alarmingly, that a child’s education developmental score at 22 months can accurately predict educational outcomes at the age of 26.”

This stat in Iain Duncan Smith’s report illustrates the difficulty for public policy in dealing with the whole problem of social breakdown. You can have the best schools in the world but if social advantage is entrenched by the age of three, then they won’t make much difference–at least for this generation. The question of how the state can strengthen the family but without nationalizing family life is the $64,000 question of contemporary politics.

IDS has merely highlighted what 62 years of socialism (getting perilously close to the 75 of the USSR) have done to what was the single most perfectly functioning civilisation in the history of the world, and which did more good for more people in more continents than any other.

I may come back to this one, but I am ordered to clear the table for Dinner, by the Home Secretary.