The Liberal Camp and the British Riots.

Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes? That is the question being asked by the Left in and out of the news media (but mostly in).

A. Barton Hinkle on the British riots:

A scholar at Johns Hopkins blames "austerity cuts." So does The New York Times: "Economic malaise and cuts in spending and services instituted by the Conservative-led government have been recurring flashpoints for months." Reuters says a "sense of disenchantment" is shared by a "generation of young people with opportunities that fall well short of their aspirations." And—
Well, you get the point: Yes, the hooligans have destroyed family businesses, trashed London institutions, sent millions of real and sweat equity up in flames, inflicted misery on thousands of innocent people. But one mustn't judge too harshly. One must try to understand.

According to Janet Daley in the UK Telegraph they are not succeeding:

There is no national debate about the epidemic of riots and looting that spread through our cities like a bush fire. Out there in the real world, where people go about the normal business of life, there is no sign of the heated argument that the media is so determined to air. In fact, I cannot remember a time when there has been such crushing unanimity on a matter of public importance: the answers to the questions of why this happened, what went wrong when it began to happen and what needs to follow in its aftermath are considered so blindingly self-evident as to be beyond rational disagreement.

At the margins of this consensus, there are some distant noises off. They are the desperate cries of those who fear that they have lost the argument of a lifetime and who want to persuade the great mass of the population that what it saw before its own eyes, hour by hour, night after night on the television news channels was something else altogether.

Back to Hinkle:

Here in the U.S. we've just been through a budget showdown in which the side that wanted government spending to grow at a slightly less rapid pace than the other side wanted was denounced as terrorists in the literal sense. So far, none of those who called peaceful Tea Party activists terrorists have flung the same accusation at the British rioters who have inflicted genuine terror. Interesting.