It’s Déjà Vu All Over Again

Don’t be shocked, but the Home Office has just announced plans for greater representation of victim’s families in the judicial process. I’m as much in favour now as I was the first six hundred times it was announced.

Needless to say, the usual suspects are enraged. My favorite was the guy arguing against it on Tuesday’s edition of the Jeremy Whine show. And what was his day job ? Why, he was a barrister who represents criminals at their parole hearings. Huh ? So families having a right to speak at these hearings means the end of British justice, but high-priced barristers speaking for the criminals is no problem at all. Are we to believe that the taxpayers pays these guys £180 per hour for a cool, dispassionate litany of the facts of the case ?

There are plenty of reasons why an ideal court system should eschew the emotive and the subjective, but that’s not the system we have. Au contraire, Liberals firmly believe that the defense should be able to stage a whole circus parade of psychologists, sociologists, social workers and representatives of every other branch of the Heinz 57 varieties of junk science. Liberals don’t object to these plans because they believe in dispassionate logic. No, the real reason Liberals object was given away two decades ago.

PRISONER #1: [rather eloquently] Transported for life to the colonies, and for
what? Scum I was to that beak, nothing but scum. 'Tis for my accent and my
situation that I am condemned. 'Tis for the want of better graces and the
influence they bring that I am to board this prison hulk.

PRISONER #2:
And all those murders you done

Faced with absolute evil, the standard reaction of the Liberal is to insist that actually the issue is terribly complex. We need to understand the root causes, to analyse the big picture, to swallow whole any absurdity, Twinkie defenses and all - anything except condemn. Yet here the victim’s families are, selfishly reminding us that what we’re talking about isn’t some abstract philosophical matter, or some eccentric quirk of nature. It really is about all those murders. Ordinary people going about their daily lives have been slaughtered by savages, and the Left’s instinctive reaction is to worry about the killers. But don't call them soft on crime.