Deja Vu

We Did Start the Fire

Tags:

David Cameron,

John Chrysostom,

looting,

politics,

riots

2011: The London riots began as a reaction to a police shooting, but have since morphed into general lawlessness throughout much of England, the source of which varies from looter to looter. Prime Minister David Cameron responded to the spreading violence, paying condolences and endorsing civility:

Let me, first of all, completely condemn the scenes that we have seen on our television screens and people have witnessed in their communities.

These are sickening scenes—scenes of people looting, vandalising, thieving, robbing, scenes of people attacking police officers and even attacking fire crews as they're trying to put out fires. This is criminality, pure and simple, and it has to be confronted and defeated.

I feel huge sympathy for the families who've suffered, innocent people who've been burned out of their houses and to businesses who have seen their premises smashed, their products looted and their livelihoods potentially ruined.

I also feel for all those who live in fear because of these appalling scenes that we've seen on the streets of our country. People should be in no doubt that we are on the side of the law-abiding—law-abiding people who are appalled by what has happened in their own communities.

387: In response to an unwanted tax imposed by the Emperor Theodosius, a mob of citizens and local officials of Antioch tore down painted wooden panels and bronze statues of the imperial family and dragged the loot through the streets. After setting fire to a house and attempting to ignite more buildings, the riot was finally quelled by law enforcement. John Chrysostom, at that time a governing priest in Antioch, awaiting a possibly harsh retaliation from the emperor, delivered a homily lamenting the disruption:

What shall I say, or what shall I speak of? The present season is one for tears, and not for words; for lamentation, not for discourse; for prayer, not for preaching. Such is the magnitude of the deeds daringly done; so incurable is the wound, so deep the blow, even beyond the power of all treatment, and craving assistance from above. Thus it was that Job, when he had lost all, sat himself down upon a dunghill; and his friends heard of it, and came, and seeing him, while yet afar off, they rent their garments, and sprinkled themselves with ashes, and made great lamentation. The same thing now ought all the cities around to do, to come to our city and to lament with all sympathy what has befallen us. He then sat down on his dunghill; she is now seated in the midst of a great snare. For even as the devil then leaped violently the flocks, and herds, and all the substance of the just man, so now has he raged against this whole city. But then, as well as now, God permitted it; then, indeed, that he might make the just man more illustrious by the greatness of his trials; and now, that he may make us more sober-minded by the extremity of this tribulation. Allow me to mourn over our present state. We have been silent seven days, even as the friends of Job were. Allow me to open my mouth today, and to bewail this common calamity.

Who, beloved, has bewitched us? Who has envied us? Whence has all this change come over us? Nothing was more dignified than our city! Now, never was anything more pitiable! The populace so well ordered and quiet, yea, even like a tractable and well-tamed steed, always submissive to the hands of its rulers, has now so suddenly started off with us, as to have wrought such evils, as one can hardly dare to mention.

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