Ellen Degenerate Does Her Part
Moonbattery — ... In related news, Britain has been named the worst country in the Western world in which to be a child. Theodore Dalrymple details how this distinction was achieved through the moonbattery-induced disintegration of the traditional family. With support from Hollyweird, America is doing its best to catch up. ...

The why of it
Cold Fury — ... correct. One might dismiss the stories of Scarlett Keeling and Shannon Matthews as the kind of horrific things that can take place in any society from time to time. But I think that they are the tip of an iceberg. As the liberal newspapers’ response shows, the problem with British childhood is by no means confined to the underclass. Our society has lost the most elementary common sense about what children need. As depressing as the whole thing is, read the all too familiar-sounding rest of it.

The end of England’s children
Michelle Malkin — Theodore Dalrymple notes the tragic end of childhood in England , and the end of judgment that has enabled it: A system of perverse incentives in a culture of undiscriminating materialism, where the main freedom is freedom from legal, financial, ethical, or social consequences, makes childhood in Britain a torment both for many of those who live it and those who observe it. Yet the British government will do anything but address the problem, or that part of the problem that is its duty to address: the state-encouraged breakdown of the family. If one were a Marxist, one might ...

Quote of the day
Hot Air » Top Picks — ... the main freedom is freedom from legal, financial, ethical, or social consequences, makes childhood in Britain a torment both for many of those who live it and those who observe it. Yet the British government will do anything but address the problem, or that part of the problem that is its duty to address: the state-encouraged breakdown of the family. If one were a Marxist, one might see in this refusal the self-interest of the state-employee class: social problems, after all, are their raison d’être .”

Tony Blair's Britain
small dead animals — Tony Blair's Britain Where the foxes caper unmolested, the government packs your school lunch and UNICEF declares the whole country unfit to raise children : Britain is the worst country in the Western world in which to be a child, according to a recent UNICEF report. Ordinarily, I would not set much store by such a report; but in this case, I think it must be right—not because I know so much about childhood in all the other 20 countries examined but because the childhood that many British parents give to their offspring is so awful that it is hard to conceive of worse, at ...

Annoy Europe - Vote McCain
Cold Fury — ... .  Honestly, you should lecture us more often because, well, you know better .  We’re children and we need it. I kid!  I kid!  I’m a kidder. Here’s some insider scoop for you, Mr. Freedland.  We crave doing the exact opposite of what Europeans want - because when it comes to understanding Americans, ...

The buck passed here
Belmont Club — ... this is a superstition shared by many coroners. At the core of Dalrymple’s critique is the idea that in many modern bureaucracies, appreances have become the actual measure of performance.  And things may now have reached the point where people have actually forgotten what the point of the job is. And yet this startlingly ineffective, Potemkin bureaucracy has become the preferred replacement for personal responsibility, which is rapidly going out of style. In another article in the City Journal , Dalrymple described what it was that the bureaucracy was expected to stand in ...