Protesters?

The political correctness of this world amazes me. Usually it takes place in this country, however, we are not alone. For the first three days of the recent rioting in England, the BBC referred to the rioters as protesters. Quite possibly when the event which led to the riot first started, they were protesters. They lost that designation when the first window was shattered and the looting began. The BBC did not change their stance until criticism began in the newspapers and they still are not very apologetic about it. Obviously, they just don't get it. Too often today the media tries to downplay terrible events, as if they are afraid to offend the guilty parties. I do understand and accept that before somebody is tried and convicted you call them the alleged suspect, but you don't have to minimize what they did. If it is only an accusation you can give the person the benefit of the doubt, but when someone is witnessed in the act why are we protecting the perpetrator?

We have not seen anything in this country on the scale of what happened in England, but we are seeing some well-planned mob action. Early this summer Philadelphia had a major problem with flash mobs, but arresting 70 youths and returning them to the custody of their parents seems to have calm down the situation. The flash mobs have now taken an extra step. On August 13 a 7–11 in Germantown, Maryland, was robbed when a flash mob appeared and just started grabbing merchandise. Here is the video of that robbery:



Hopefully from that video at least a few people will be identified and arrests will be made. Should we be calling that group protesters? Of course, I'm not sure what they would've been protesting. Maybe it was the fact that society requires them to actually work and earn money to buy things and not just give them what they want.

I have no answers for the solution of this problem, but I do believe a lot of it is caused by the upbringing of today's youth. Some schools don't want teachers to fail their students. Life's best lessons come when you learn from your mistakes. Rules have become more guidelines then something that is actually enforced. Unless, of course, the rule is absolutely ridiculous, then is it administered with an iron fist. I will do another post on that topic later. Right now it seems enforcement is done at either extreme, and we need to get back to the middle, but mostly we need to be consistent about the rules. Children today get enough mixed messages. We don't need to send them more.