Most of us have at some point or another encountered individuals who blithely dismiss the need for concern – or even discussion – about acts of serious malfeasance or general moral breakdown on the grounds that similar miscreant behaviours have occurred throughout history. This argumentative equivalent of a Gallic shrug, typically delivered in a didactic, Father Christmas tone, is essentially an ad hominem accusation that anyone who takes an interest in, or expresses concern about, recent events and trends has lost his sense of perspective due to a putative failure to realize that there is, in fact, nothing new under the sun.
In a Telegraph column titled “Why we need a ‘moral panic’ over last week’s riots”, Ed West takes exception to this form of indifference that masquerades as wisdom. Responding to one particular proponent of the tiresome “it’s happened throughout history, so chill out” meme, he coins a keeper of a phrase:

The Economist’s Bagehot suggests that we shouldn’t get our knickers in a twist about the riots, quoting previous examples of moral panic about social disorder, crime and youth culture to show that last week’s events are nothing new. He cites articles about “young delinquents’ in 1913, 1956 headlines about ‘rock’n’roll babies’ and even reports from 1815, and compares them with recent newspaper articles. His conclusion: we should avoid “moral panic” and a rush to “historically-illiterate judgment”.

I’ve heard this fallacy so many times that I think it really needs a name – perhaps the “moral panic fallacy“. It holds that because people in the past have expressed concern and alarm about crime and social decline, therefore such concern today must be mistaken. (emph. mine)

The data West provides suggest that modern-day concerns about crime and social decline are neither mistaken nor the result of “historically-illiterate judgement”:

In 1955…there were 500,000 crimes recorded in England and Wales; in 1992 there were 5.1 million, after which the crime statistics system was changed. Even in the 1930s indictable offences were a tenth what they are today – despite large numbers of people living in grinding poverty (actual poverty, not “BlackBerrys and £100 trainers poverty”).

Seems there is something new under the sun.

Between 1901 and 1941 there were never more than 400 recorded robberies in the whole of England each year. But in 2001/2 there were 6,500 in the borough of Lambeth alone…

Purveyors of the moral panic fallacy should try to gain a little ‘perspective’ in lieu of advising others to do so.

New Jersey Superior Court Justice Mary Beth Rogers recently issued an injunction in which she forbid striking unionized Verizon employees from:

“…dropping, spreading, throwing, placing or otherwise causing nails, glass, cinder block, spikes, feces, clubs, rocks, screws, or puncture devices of any kind, or any other object of debris to be thrown or strewn in, on, or about Verizon’s driveways, parking lots, entrances, exits, vehicles.…”

h/t.
In related news…

Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Carol Platt Liebau, 2009 – [W]hen he was at the HLR you did get a very distinct sense that he was the kind of guy who much more interested in being the president of the Review, than he was in doing anything as president of the Review. A lot of the time he quote/unquote “worked from home”, which was sort of a shorthand – and people would say it sort of wryly – shorthand for not really doing much. He just wasn’t around.
Donald Trump, 2011 – Here we have a country that really is going to hell in a handbasket. Let’s not kid ourselves. What’s happening to this country is horrible. All over the world, they’re talking about it. And we have a president that’s constantly — whether it’s Martha’s Vineyard or someplace else, constantly on vacation. I mean, all the time he’s on vacation!
Related: I’m like Lincoln, except when I’m like MLK. Except when he’s like Paris Hilton.