Why is London on fire?
 
Theodore Dalrymple, a doctor, diagnoses the root causes in this opinion piece in The Australian: British rioters the spawn of a bankrupt ruling elite.

British youth leads the Western world in almost all aspects of social pathology, from teenage pregnancy to drug taking, from drunkenness to violent criminality. There is no form of bad behaviour that our version of the welfare state has not sought out and subsidised…
 
…They are therefore radically unsocialised and deeply egotistical, viewing relations with other human beings in the same way as Lenin: Who whom, who does what to whom. By the time they grow up, they are destined not only for unemployment but unemployability.

 
Dalrymple doesn’t mention faith or religion anywhere in the article. But where else do values like personal responsibility, a good work ethic, manners, respect for the law – and your fellow human beings (!) come from? Atheism?
 
When a culture replaces God with Government you get the London riots.
~~~~~~~~~~
 
Related: It’s not just London ~ at The Blaze: From London to the Rest of the World: Where is Violent Unrest Spreading Across the Globe?
 
~~~~~~~~~~
Updated [8-11-11]: Melanie Phillips (author of “The World Turned Upside Down”) has a great article on the riots at the UK Mail: Britain’s liberal intelligentsia has smashed virtually every social value. Basically in agreement with Dalrymple, Phillips hits harder on the amorality of modern society – and does recommend a faith-based cure:

Repairing this terrible damage also means, dare I say it, a return to the energetic transmission of Biblical morality…
 
…When church leaders stop prattling like soft-headed social workers and start preaching, once again, the moral concepts that underlie our civilisation, and when our political leaders decide to oppose the culture war that has been waged against that civilisation rather than supinely acquiescing in its destruction, then — and only then — will we start to get to grips with this terrible problem.
 
Until then, within the smouldering embers of our smashed and burned-out cities, we can only look upon the ruins of the Britain we have so dearly loved; the Britain that once led the world towards civilisation, but is now so tragically leading the way out.