The Family
One should not miss the comparison over the last week of youth descending on the cities of two European nations. In England, hundreds of young thugs spent the week rioting with aimless violence and general impunity in cities across the nation. Meanwhile, in Spain, over a million young pilgrims arrived in Madrid to celebrate the Catholic Church's World Youth Day. Two more stark profiles of today's youth would be difficult to produce. I would just as readily entrust our future prosperity to the latter group as I would commit the former to prison sentences excluding them from any participation whatsoever in the future of planet Earth.
A social scientist somewhere should observe a representative share of both communities over the next several decades and report on their respective contributions to civil society. A subsequent report on the comparative methods of rearing employed during the tender years of these sample populations, including values instilled and disciple-enforcement, would provide a interesting - though predictable - social commentary.
The way to avoid scenes like those in London is rather simple. Madrid is presently full of one million examples. When the parenting methods which produce this latter sort are rejected, it's no great mystery why they turn out as little more than prison fodder. Simply because a publisher will print the latest breakthrough in child developmental theory, it does not follow that human nature will respond favorably to such progressive nonsense.
This is where it gets complicated. Your suggestion is just good old fashioned Catholic Progressivism, i.e. that virtue will be rewarded. Yet, the spanish youth are at a serious disadvantage when compared to the english.
The english in rioting demonstrate a keen ability to see the full scope of opportunity presented by a weaker police force and a break down in order. This ability to seize opportunity for self-enrichment, will hold them in good stead in the Darwinian real world.
Also this english vice is just the birth pains of austerity, while Spain and the other catholic states, Italy and Portugal join Greece in creating the PIGS.
In addition your views on english vice just don't explain the wild west or Australia. English political economy has a long history of vice, disorder and chaos.
In a funny and potentially related note, there is a painful set of questions that was asked to Gov. Perry about abstinence education in Texas. The questioneer denied that abstinence education worked, and pointed out that Texas was third in the nation in teen pregnancy.
Gov Perry responded that abstinence as a practice was 100% effective! He was no doubt correct. But I can't help but think that part of what makes Texas, Texas is a sort of resistance to virtue(or restraint in the presence of opportunity.)
That is the youth of Texas, like perhaps the youth of London, are going to take opportunities when they are presented to them. The State of course, as a matter of policy frowns upon looting and teen pregnancy.
But there is something about pussy and looting electronics, that doesn't respond favorably to such progressive nonsense.
"I would just as readily entrust our future prosperity to the latter group as I would commit the former to prison sentences excluding them from any participation whatsoever in the future of planet Earth."
You would say this, but I have no doubt that the youth of Spain were even more pious back in 1788, and that the youth of brittain who ended up in Australia were much more "opportunistic", yet Spain has fallen since then, and Australia has risen!
The prison sentences to New South Wales were intended to exclude the aussies from any participation whatsoever in the future of planet Earth, but it didn't work out that way, turns out that instead of being contrite, these criminals immediately set out to discover opportunities to put shrimp on the barbie.
Justin...
You and the ever-insightful Walter Russell Mead have the same idea....
https://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/08/21/inequality-grows-as-poor-ignorant-atheists-swamp-us/
I'll follow nobler souls in saying that this argument made on behalf of religion is "either blasphemous or stupid."