Dalrymple asks in City Journal, “Are pre-2008 bankers the moral equivalents of British looters?”
No interpretation of events is final, so it is not surprising that a war of words has begun over the meaning of the riots in London and elsewhere. What is perhaps more surprising is that even conservative commentators, for example in the Daily Mail and the Spectator, have drawn a parallel that might have been expected from members of student socialist societies in the 1960s, comparing the looters who have terrorized Britain to the bankers who were involved in the financial crisis of 2008. For these pundits, the looters only did retail what the bankers did wholesale.The comparison is alarming for several reasons….
Well, as for a antidote to sloppy thinking, this may be of interest http://www.modernwisdom.co.uk/
Note, Dalrymple is a contributor.
Also, I notice there’s someone taking Theo’s name in vain (maybe not entirely in vain) responding to Monbiot’s recent article
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/22/economic-growth-environment?commentpage=all#start-of-comments
Thanks for those links, Ajax. I ordered a copy of the Modern Wisdom journal and look forward to reading it.
You’re welcome Steve. Hope you enjoy, I was impressed, of course, with TD’s contribution.
I feel rather strongly about trying to stay true to dictionary definitions… denotation. I know I’m prone to being uneconomic, sloppy, with the truth, as it were.
I’m curious about what TD thinks of people like this:
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23977153-mask-up-properly-academic-tells-looters.do
Speaking of sloppy riot thinking… Helen Mirren makes a feeble assesment here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-15052176
actually I’ve not seen all the interview (not sure how long it’s available online)
The blurb on the link says: “Dame Helen Mirren talks to Andrew Marr Shakespeare’s female roles”
What little I know of Mirren she strikes me as the sort of person who thinks Shakespeare is a training programme, the ultimate purpose of which is to land a lead role in a James Bond movie; or similar such movie.
Actually my knowledge of Shakespeare, in spite of the impression I may have left elsewhere on this blog, is very limited… in breadth anyway, maybe not so much in depth.