Nothing makes me realise my fundamental conservatism more than seeing so many members of the intellectual classes justifying street violence with sophistry & jargon. I hold the stupid unsophisticated bourgeois view that setting fire to other people& #39;s stuff is bad.
Whatever guff you hear about "praxis" from radical chic academics who& #39;d last about 3 minutes once the police were abolished & the most violent ruled the streets, at the end of a riot you& #39;re still left with some average guy, not very well-off, with a part of his life in ruins.
I once heard Theodore Dalrymple suggest that intellectuals, especially in pseudo-disciplines, dislike obvious truths - e.g. rioting is bad and should be stopped - because the obvious truth is a threat to a clerisy whose status depends on elucidating obscure meanings.
I& #39;m not against nuance - I& #39;m a Catholic, we have a long tradition of nitpicking & I agree with Aquinas that he who takes bread from another& #39;s excess, to save himself from starvation, is not a thief, properly understood. But this isn& #39;t the same as saying bad things aren& #39;t bad.