Coulter and a lot of these media type (particularly discussing political issues) don't get paid if they speak intelligently.  They get paid my railing towards the errronous beliefs of a certain listener set, and getting their name out there.  They aren't paid to be right, just get viewers/listeners/readers.

In the case of Coulter she actually said Jews were Christians in one of her books.  She really can't say she she is on the ball as acturate, but engaging in childish namecalling seems to get her attention.  Again, as I said, a Lady Gaga in the political realm.  Her mileage on being an attention whore can vary.

To add to that, she stated that Jews need to be "perfected", in terms of converting to Christianity.

Well, apparently you don't understand social conservatism at all, then. I doubt there is anyone on Earth who believes that people develop in a vaccuum completely independent of the culture around them, but that isn't to say there still isn't an aspect of personal responsibility. Regardless, you still have to punish criminals, because to do otherwise creates a culture of tolerance for bad behavior, which in turn will only lead to more bad behavior. All Coulter is doing here is pointing out that, in her opinion, these riots prove the point that conservatives have long made: moral relativism and the welfare state are destructive things. It's fairly amazing to me that you don't understand this. I suspect your disdain for the messenger has rendered you unable to comprehend her message.

To be fair, she didn't blame minorities. Quite the opposite. She pointed out that, as opposed to in France where it has typically been Muslims who riot, in London it did begin with Afro-Caribbeans but was taken up by the feral, white underclass in no time flat.

If you were to look at classic conservatism, which is what Hobbes and others wrote on way back in the day, where you had a collective community that enforced values in it, and tried to preserve that which is.  Such individuals believe that the preserving of values they believe makes a country great.  Such individuals will have laws punishing violation of morality and so on. 

Well, what happened to what has been is that classic liberalism won out a lot of the debate, and the modern secular society came into being.  Along the way, Marxism gained a foothold in economic debate, and the government then because viewed by individuals with a liberal perspective as the means of progress for all individuals.  In Europe, socialistic leanings developed, and I believe you will see individuals who are conservative party there, advocating more government programs and supporting the welfare state.  This is not true in America, where conservatism now is mostly classic liberalism, outside of the area of morals.

In regards to disappearing in a puff of illogic, Libertarians would argue that conservatives do that.  They don't go far enough in their views of smaller government.  They have selective belief that some government meddling is bad, while others are good.  Like Coulter would support the drug war, and throw people in prison, and feel it is a good thing.  But then say the welfare state corrupts people.  What do prison do for people?  This is not logical:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qaiz8gNw3M

Duplicate post... ignore.

I don't think it's such a great idea to throw otherwise non-criminal drug users in jail myself, but her argument is remarkably consistent, and I agree with it. A lot of libertarian-minded folks want smaller government at every turn no matter what, but I think you have to go about it in the right order: until the welfare state is abolished, legalizing drugs would be folly. People have to choose between being free and having state-provided economic security. If Citizen A wants to shoot heroin directly into his eyeball all day long, I can't really give a fuck as long as he's paying for it. And if Citizen B chooses to be a ward of the state, that's fine, but he should be treated like one. So if the state tells him he can't eat this, or smoke that, or inject this, and that he has to exercise X number of minutes a day, that's the price he'll have to pay for not being his own man.

The only truly inconsistent argument I see being made is by liberals when they argue about the economic and moral case for universal health care and then turn around and say the government can't tell them what to do with their bodies.

Yep.  Ironically I think it's a negative side effect of the "everyone's special" culture.

Everything has consequences to it.  Without some semblance of society intervention to assist those who lives have fallen apart, to act as the said safety net, where people can recover (this need not be government), end result is that without it, where people are told they need to fend for themselves, you will actually see looting and rioting breaking out as people who made bad decisions felt they had no option but to rob.  Merely saying life is hard, and creating a jungle-like environment, isn't going to solve problems.  This is particularly true with drugs, where you create addicts who are compelled to fund their habit one way or another.   Of course, one could then advocate increased arming of citizens and allow business owners to gun down whomever goes into their store, and shoot beggers to clean up the streets.

Want a system for legalizing drugs, with a semblance of a social safety net?  If it is known that people will end up messing up their lives for doing drugs, you end up taxing drugs at a proper rate, using it to fund rehab programs, and then have individuals who want to use drugs to have to get a license to buy such drugs, stating they are fully aware of the consequences, and use the money to fund education programs for people who want to use it.  Businesses selling such drugs, if they sell to individuals who don't have a license to buy, they can be sued, and put out of business.  There are negative externalities that happen from drug use, that need to be accounted for.  The license to buy, is something that states you take full responsibility for your actions.

A welfare state isn't automatically the problem nor the cause, which is the glaring flaw I see in these (admittedly self serving from a US political perspective) arguments.

The only real issue with having a welfare state, which in fact applies to everything in society, is having a system that is open to exploit - such as deliberately having multiple children to claim more benefits. This is no different from having a global trading system that is equally open to exploit, for example... one could as easily criticize the obvious failings of the US system of social Darwinism and excess capitalism.

A welfare state makes sense in principal I believe, but it is, again as with everything in our society, the policing, enforcement and fair participation by individuals that are the challenges with any such policy.

In the UK in particular this is a longer term fallout of some poor social decisions, rapid multi-cultural change combined with the after effects of the class system and the loss of global position of the country.

The riots for sure did not happen because there is a welfare system. The abuse of the welfare system is simply another symptom of the myriad forces behind the circumstances that allowed the riots to occur.

The bottom line is, if you simply step back and seriously consider the real possibilities, no society on Earth is remotely perfect yet and flaws abound everywhere as a result of the organic nature of our species development and the random impacts of chance surrounding the formation of most of our cultures.