Da Moreonz Wuz Rite

On the plus side, I guess we now know why the Legal-Welfare complex was so anxious to stop anyone reporting on the case of John Venables, the completely rehabilitated murderer now back in jail.

Yes, indeed: Venables has gone down for nonceitude, and plenty of would-be emperors are facing a charge of indecent exposure.

Hell, even after Venables got picked up and the story of his drug-fuelled odyssey of violence started to leak out, our betters were busily explaining how, while they found these allegations 'troubling', one should resist the temptation to be seduced by the partial and subjective reporting of the so-called 'tabloids' into somehow questioning the carefully-calibrated process of...

GUILTY!

The results are in, and it turns out that the tabloid-reading, coupon-clipping, Ford-driving, Tesco-shopping, chip eating, TV watching, semi-owned-on-a-mortgage-dwelling scum were right. 100%, take it the bank, straight in the x-ring, bang on. Our self-appointed betters? Not so much.

All of which raises a philosophical question: if all the alleged super-geniuses were wrong, in what sense are they actually smart? Isn't superior cerebral functioning meant to prevent you talking rubbish?

Then again, there was always an essential tautology in their arguments: if you believed in the rehab industry, you were clearly super-smart, because only super-smart people could understand why the rehab industry was worth supporting.

Ah huh!

Now, in a carefully-controlled experiment, Certified Liberal Big Brains were given a metaphorical, and indeed literal, blank cheque to rehabilitate a loveable scallywag, and it all went a bit Pete Tong. Then they lied about it for years on end, claiming Brer John was both being closely monitored and under tight parole conditions - neither of which can possibly be true in the light of his ability to indulge in a consequence-free, coked-up brawlathon.

Indeed, the readiness of liberals to proclaim their faith in rehab, even absent any actual scientific basis, confirms what we always knew: liberalism really is a Godless cult.

All of which throws new light on liberal criticism of real religion. Transmutation might sound a little strange, but it's no sillier than maintaining that a convicted killer who gets out of his face on drugs and brawls his way round the one city he's banned from, is actually a pillar of the community. More to the point though, I guess it wraps it up for the whole 'paedo priests' thing.

The charge against the Catholic Church is that instead of punishing pervert priests they preferred to send them to therapy, then move them to a different parish where they could strike again. Sound familiar?

Of course, there is one obvious difference: in one case therapy was based on a load of superstitious nonsense, in the other it was based on Christianity. Then there's the other thing: at least the Church didn't announce that any pervert priests it moved where obviously completely cured and anyone who said otherwise was clearly some kind of subhuman monkey.

And let's not forget the other unlovely member of the hipster's pantomime cow. Yes, indeed: libertarians claim people should hire their own air force, crack should be available over the counter and the Royal Mail is part of a conspiracy to get people used to state employees intruding on their property. Meanwhile, state employees bleed the tax payer dry to provide bogus therapies, release dangerous lunatics out onto the streets, then lie about it for years?

Nope, nothing of interest there.

Consistent libertarians might claim it says something about the untrustworthy nature of state employees operating behind closed doors, but that would means rubbing ideological shoulders with the proles. Nope, if it came to a choice between opposition to statism and class loyalty to their fellow elitists, that was never going to be a tough one for libertarians.

The bottom line is that this is issue is the perfect microcosm of the divide in modern politics. For years the right - the real right - has allowed liberals to cast this as a debate between the unenlightened rabble and the sofiticayted elite. We were assured that the ability to put sneer quotes around words like 'evil' was, in and of itself, a brilliant argument. Meanwhile, to suggest that some things really were beyond the pale was evidence of near-retardation.

The point is not just that the right was right - these days, that pretty much goes without saying - it's that the left wasn't just wrong, their whole claim to intellectual supremacy was based on pseudo-scientific drivel and outright fraud. Liberalism is Scientology without Tom Cruise.