Mark Steyn on Lessons of the London Riots

Mark Steyn'e weekly column in the Orange County Register is his take on the past week's mob violence in London. The bottom line:

Big Government means small citizens: it corrodes the integrity of a people, catastrophically. Within living memory, the city in flames on our TV screens every night governed a fifth of the Earth's surface and a quarter of its population. When you're imperialists on that scale, there are bound to be a few mishaps along the way. But nothing the British Empire did to its subject peoples has been as total and catastrophic as what a post-great Britain did to its own.

Read the whole thing.

Update: Theodore Dalrymple adds his tuppence worth.
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