Regrettably, we must conclude that our culture is being dictated by two-year-olds. I do not literally mean children of two years of age, some of whom are among my favourite conversationalists. I mean people with the mental age of a two-year-old. That is, people who have never been told ‘no’ and have gone through their adult lives behaving as such.

These are people who have never been told ‘no’ and have gone through their adult lives behaving as such

The rot began with the green lunatics. I’m all for saving the environment. Most people are. But the moment vandalism became an acceptable way to persuade people of your cause was where things went wrong.

There wasn’t nearly enough concern three years back when a London jury refused to convict six vandals from Extinction Rebellion. These men and women had taken hammers to the glass frontage of the Shell HQ in London. They were filmed doing so. One of them explained her thinking to the court: ‘I want to make cracks in a window and I want it to sound like a big event is happening.’ Another defendant said he had to attack the Shell building because ‘we do not have time to effect change through the usual process’.

In vain did the judge explain to the jury that their role was not to adjudicate whether the vandalism was ‘morally justified’. The jury decided that the vandalism had been in a good cause. So everyone was found not guilty and set free.

Similar decisions have arisen in the case of parallel causes. During the summer of 2020 a crowd of people in Bristol judged it to be within their rights to graffiti and tear down a statue they disapproved of before kicking it into the water. The hilarity and glee with which the statue of Edward Colston was treated – and the fact that it was exhibited lying on its side, still scrawled over, as a piece of ‘public art’, did not seem a good precedent.

For instance, I find almost every work of art put on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square to be offensive.

QOSHE - The new vandals / Who put the toddlers in charge? - Douglas Murray
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The new vandals / Who put the toddlers in charge?

18 30
14.03.2024

Regrettably, we must conclude that our culture is being dictated by two-year-olds. I do not literally mean children of two years of age, some of whom are among my favourite conversationalists. I mean people with the mental age of a two-year-old. That is, people who have never been told ‘no’ and have gone through their adult lives behaving as such.

These are people who have never been told ‘no’ and have gone through their adult lives behaving as such

The rot began with the green........

© The Spectator


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