Did crazy welfare benefits play a role in the U.K. riots?

Like millions of us, Richard Fernandez has been watching the riots in the U.K. He notes that virtually all the riots have no connection to the original event, in which police fatally shot a gang member while trying to arrest him.

Fernandez lived in the Filippines during Marcos and survived violence from both left and right. It's given him a keen eye for spotting trouble before it arrives. Here's his take:

Left to themselves, the [offspring] of the Welfare State would fare poorly. Without skills, having torched their surroundings...they would pick their surroundings clean and then [starve to death].

But even the hardest-boiled conservatives are unlikely to let that happen--and so this [cohort of shiftless louts] will have to be rescued from natural selection to at least some extent. But to what extent?

The bounds of the problem are obvious. People must not be [totally] shielded from the consequences of their actions [but] neither must they be left to die. Between these extremes there might be some trajectory of “tough love” which [might reduce the numbers of those who refuse to work].

Just idly curious: Why should the state--more precisely, the dwindling number of working, taxpaying citizens--make more than a nominal effort to shield anyone from the consequences of their actions? After all, doesn't it seem that the whole idea of "being free" implies the ability to make your own decisions and then either reap the consequences whether they're fabulous or sad?

Second: Once the Welfare State has created an idle, dependent class, does anyone see any hope of reversing that process? A few decades ago some fraction of shiftless and often criminal louts could sometimes be moved to responsibility by fathering a child--and the realization that if they didn't start working, that child would almost certainly spend time hungry and cold. But now that the state has taken responsibility for all children, that no longer happens.

At least there's one good from the U.K. riots: They've made it possible for Americans to discuss the problems created by Leftist policies--i.e. the welfare state. Before a few days ago anyone who predicted this sort of thing was dismissed as a "wingnut" or right-wing raaacist. So even if we do nothing to avoid the same riots here, at least we now have a chance to discuss the problems that have already laid the groundwork for them.

Because sadly, we will do nothing to change course. Having created a cohort completely dependent on government checks, the Left will never admit that this was a bad idea, but will blame corporate jets or "subsidies" to oil companies, or "the rich" when the inevitable riots materialize.

Being a progressive means not only never having to apologize, but never even having to admit that your policies were fatally flawed. It will always be someone else's fault.

George W. Booosh!