Tolerance and self-discipline are best learned at home

"The mob violence we have seen is not the work of an oppressed ethnic minority trapped in poverty by prejudice that is centuries old. Nor is it an uprising against a serious threat to the Australian way of life. Rather, it is the work of thugs acting out their puerile fantasies of masculine power by brawling in the streets. This is unacceptable – and the people who must tell them are their parents and community leaders.It is certainly a message the thugs and buffoons who rioted at Cronulla in suburban Sydney last weekend need to hear. But it also applies to the bandittis of Middle Eastern men, often Australians of Lebanese extraction, who assert their identities by brawling in the streets. These are men whose families have failed them, men who have grown up without learning to respect the culture they live in. Men who do not understand that in Australia respect is earned and that being a male does not allow any individual to be disrespectful to women. Certainly this is not a problem confined to men of any ethnicity, class or religion. Lebanese Australian males have no monopoly on sexist behaviour. But there is ample evidence that small groups of them have never learned they cannot impose their values on any unwilling individual. And they need to hear it from their families. Better them than from the police and the courts."