Nanny Statism's Spoiled Brats

David Warren writes that the Vancouver mayhem is revelatory--and not in a good way:

We have seen a spectacle of Canadian youth that should be seared into national memory, together with some scenes from the G20 summit in Toronto, last year, and take your pick of demonstrations in Montreal.

Each puts the lie to our national self-image -sold successfully to the more credulous abroad -that we are a polite people, a restrained and civil people, a people in charge of our testosterone levels.

That the rioters were almost all young, goes without saying. That is when testosterone runs high. Older guys like me, must own to a docility that is largely biological, in this and every culture. Nature is speaking here; just as it speaks through the underemployed young of the Islamic world, who are offered terrorism and civil insurrection as the only practicable outlets. Just as in Greece, and elsewhere in Europe, we watch the anarchy that accompanies the disintegration of the Nanny State, among a generation that knows only how to demand and take, and will give nothing...