The F-Word

So, now we've caged Ian Huntley - for the next couple of years anyway - it's time for the knee-jerk overreaction to a side-issue. It looks like the Data Protection Act is up for a kicking. Given that the pressure for the act to be passed in the first place mainly emanated from the type of bearded whiner who worries that MI-5 are monitoring how long he spends on tits.com, this is strangely appropriate. A case of fighting fire with fire, or rather hysteria with hysteria. Still, in as much as the media has been prepared to scribble at great length about data definitions and the like, it's noteworthy how little attention has been paid to any issue wider than 'how do we stop perverts getting a school caretaker's job'. Liberals normally need sedating not to talk about 'root causes', but here they are manifestly avoiding the issue. So solidly observed has been the fatwa against speculation on whether Carr and Huntley's horrible family backgrounds may have made them the scum they are today that it suggests liberals have finally found an f-word they don't think should be used in polite company.

Needless to say, Theodore Dalrymple, the social conservative's social conservative, has been prepared to plunge straight in. Unfortunately, his article gives houseroom to two of the worst liberal myths. Really, Teddy, being the type of person who would commit horrible crimes is not the same as actually committing them. Likewise, it is possible to be genuinely opposed to something without that opposition revealing some deep-seated psychological flaws. Still, this article is virtually a lone example of the mainstream media suggesting that this case may raise questions that don't necessarily involve the Information Commissioner.

Dalrymple points out that, far from being an aberration, Huntley and Carr are representative of a large part of Britain's citizenry. I wouldn't necessarily go that far, but it's certainly true that both their adult lifestyles and their upbringing were nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, they were raised and lived in exactly the circumstances that we on the right are constantly being told we have to embrace in the hip'n'happening new Britain. Morals are out, do whatever you want is in. Twelve year old kids need access to birth control, but fathers are an optional extra. We on the right can say what we like about Huntley and Carr, but how about liberals ? For forty years, liberals have worshipped at the temple of Self. Now, belatedly, they find there are some forms of indulgence too extreme even for them. Welcome to the show.

Maybe Huntley and Carr were born bad, but if their nature was evil, then their environment could hardly have been better designed to produce amoral scum. Something has gone seriously wrong with British culture. Liberals response has been to claim that we need more of the same, that the answer to soaring family breakdown is to make it easier, that the failure of sex education to limit teenage pregnancies proves we need more of it…. The collapse of the family is the most serious problem facing Britain today but the liberal response to it is to sneer at those who won't join them in putting their hands over their ears and singing loudly whenever it's mentioned.

Two young children were slaughtered. Liberals think that proves we need to look at the rules covering data storage - could there be more proof of how morally and intellectually exhausted the modern left is ?