Anyone can get angry, but . . .

In this period when all our institutions are under assault by the barbarism, racism, intolerance, and violence of the wildly inappropriately named Social Justice/Critical Theory, it is pleasant to take solace in ancient wisdom of the Classical Liberal and Age of Enlightenment inspiration.

From Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle, Book 7, 1152b 15, edited by Roger Crisp. Link is to an older translation. Emphasis added.

Enough has been said, then, to show that virtue of character is a mean, and in what sense it is so; that it is a mean between two vices, one of excess and one of deficiency; and that it is such because it is the sort of thing able to hit the mean in feelings and actions. This is why it is hard to be good, because in each case it is hard to find the middle point; for instance, not everyone can find the centre of a circle, but only the person with knowledge. So too anyone can get angry, or give and spend money - these are easy; but doing them in relation to the right person, in the right amount, at the right time, with the right aim in view, and in the right way - that is not something anyone can do, nor is it easy. This is why excellence in these things is rare, praiseworthy and noble.

Hence the call from Classical Liberals to the riotous mobs of Social Justice/Critical Theory adherents - What is the problem you want to solve?

We can see the uncontrolled fury and anger. It is easy to be angry. But what is the problem to be solved?

The absence of any clear or coherent answer is telling. It appears that the riots are simply a rejection of the prosperous, progressive, safe status quo. It is a rejection of progress and the embracement of retrogression. The desire seems to be to return to the pagan and uncivilized belief sets against natural rights, personal freedom, rejection of group identity, rejection of collective guilt, rejection of heritable guilt. All those consequential assumptions which have stood everyone in such good stead.

All to be discarded because of the fanatic religious beliefs of the tiny minority of Social Justice/Critical Theory acolytes. Those who want to return to primitive tribalism, group identities, banishment of individualism, enthusiastic embracing of racism, collective guilt, and heritable guilt.

Problem solving and progress is a trait of Age of Enlightenment thinking and Classical Liberalism. And the roots go all the way back to Ancient Greece when we first understood that it is easy to be angry but that undirected anger, that destructive anger is merely the revving up of an engine that accelerates us towards bad outcomes.