A specialty among children and alcoholics: the inability to defer gratification.
“At first it seemed as if the [London] riots were almost random with no basis in class or race. As the perpetrators have come to court, a different picture has emerged. Of those charged, 60% had a previous criminal record, and 25% belonged to gangs….The truth is, it’s not their fault. They are the victims of the tsunami of wishful thinking that washed across the West saying that you can have…children without the responsibility of parenthood, social order without the responsibility of citizenship, liberty without the responsibility of morality and self-esteem without the responsibility of work and earned achievement….Freud was right. The precondition of civilization is the ability to defer the gratification of the instinct.”
So wrote the chief rabbi ...
