Knee-Jerk Scepticism Is Gullibility Standing On Its Head

Item number 1017 in why I don't take libertarians seriously: the way they claim the state is rubbish at everything, except when their goofy conspiracy theories requires the state to be a finely-oiled machine. Consider Exhibit A.

Hey, it's possible the little rat is being set up, but in so far as we're talking about a twisted loser terrorist groupie with delusions of granduar who's suddenly been propelled to global celebrity, I'm thinking a vast worldwide conspiracy might not be the only explanation for him getting named as a sexual predator (of course, the whole belching zillions of secrets thing also argues against the idea that the CIA are secretly controlling the world).

Still, in so far as libertarian's new pin-up is a guy who's aligned himself with some of the most virulently anti-freedom elements on the planet, at least we need hear no more about the compromised, and compromising, nature of democracy.

You First, Libertarians

Shorter Worstall: you can't make the New Libertarian Order without breaking a few eggs.

See, I told you - this is who libertarians are.

It speaks for itself, except for one more thing: how come all the people who talk about the necessity of Martyrdom Operations are still not dead?

Hey, don't be 'Timmy All-Talk', get down to Parliament Square now with a petrol can and a set of matches, otherwise the Infidels Statists will have won!

Liberal Sinks Own Boat, Libertarians Climb Aboard

Smug liberal freak David Aaronvitch advances a stunning new argument: people who don't dig the gay agenda are secretly gay themselves.

Hey, fat boy, 1975 called: they'd like their talking points back. Well, either that, or Dave's standard issue leftism means he secretly fantasises about indulging in orgies of tax-cutting.

All of this is his way of claiming that the right are really huge hypocrites - unlike leftists who have no morals at all and don't care who knows it. Also - and I know this may shock you - Dave's noticed that some folks in the Third World aren't down with sorting sex out man to man....

Don't worry though. The obnoxious open borders booster manages to swerve round the obvious implication of his position. See, Western supporters of traditional values are totally the same as the people who want to string up interior designers.

Still, that's not the biggest outbreak of humbug in his article. Try this:

The sexual conservative’s true hypocrisy is that he doesn’t really believe in his own idealisation. Men will be inflamed by the sight of hair, women will bear other men’s children at the fall of a veil, boys will suddenly cast off the tedious ways of heterosexuality and put on the gaudy garb of gayness.

Say what? There's only one side of the great divide that obsessed with the idea that men can be inflamed at the drop of a hat. Hell, the article itself makes no sense unless you assume that, without the iron grip of PC, our nation's socio-cons will be out there whipping the public up into a queer-bashing frenzy.

Compared to the reigning ideology on the average university campus, social conservatives are the John Stuart Mills de nos jours. Which is lucky because libertarians are increasingly giving up the fight, throwing their own ideology under the bus as soon as the chance to score some hip points comes along. Quote of the day? Really?

There's the obvious point that Fatty Dave's deliberate collapsing of the distinction between those who support traditional values, and those who want to impose them, is a common trick of the totalitarian-minded, but it goes a little deeper than that. One of the central points of libertarianism is the distinction between those who use violence and those who don't - to suddenly decide that it's no big deal after all is to expose just what a fraud most modern libertarianism is.

Even More Blogwars!!!!!

Don't be shocked, but paedophile apologist ShortBusRider refused to answer my question about whether or not Zuzanna Zommer could have been saved by a harder line on paedophiles. He claims it's not a fair question because killer - and convicted rapist - Michael Clark might just have killed someone else anyway.

Really - that's his argument for going soft on predators: they'll probably just kill someone else anyway. See, that was kind of what the right was saying...

Oh, and never mind that his pals did all but send Clark a set of steak knives as a housewarming present. We're not talking about a master criminal here. Clark specifically said that he wanted to get out of Scunthorpe as too many people were alert to his history of sexual violence, so the libs set him up in Leeds next door to a family with young children.

Hey, be happy these people don't feel the same way about drunk drivers. Otherwise, they'd probably meet them at the prison gates with a bottle of Bells and the keys to a BMW.

Of course, this also raises - for the third time - the question of why these people aren't so enraged about drinks drivers losing their licences in addition to jail time. I don't think we'll get an answer either:

I’m not going to bother fisking the rest of this asinine rubbish – as it is merely more of the same ill-informed, hysterical tabloidesque assertions, stupid assumptions, willful ignorance and bullshit. It’s why I usually keep away from this particular subject – people cannot or will not discuss the issues without resorting to stupid and emotive nonsense.

See, he totally could explain why *suspected* footy hooligans should lose their passports, but convicted child rapists shouldn't, only he's, like, totally busy and stuff.

Personally, I'm just glad these people eschew the overheated invective popular amongst the lower orders.

Meanwhile, I guess it's down to the rest of us to try and find any key parts of their doctrine which differ from those of the paedophiles themselves.

Blogwars!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh no! The libertarians are angry with me! It's a crisis alright - scowly, geriatric teenagers are closing in from all sides!

First up, it's ShortBusRider. He's heard the old line about how bad arguments should be refuted not just named, but he thought it was all a statist trick. God knows what his point actually is, so I'll make it real easy for him, and boil it down to one question: would Zuzanna Zommer be alive today if we'd been less concerned about the rights of a known predator? Yes or no?

But that's just a warm-up. Uber Libertarian Tom Paine - after complaining that I called him a liberal (check the title of the post here) wheels out the Sarler (non-)paradox, but still avoids the central absurdity. Drunken Duncan may have chalked up a hatrick of DUIs because he's an alcoholic, or it may just be that he's a tool, but either way that doesn't change the fact he's still a danger to other road users.

This is what so revealing about these people. They're all about the criminal. Surely the natural starting point is the protection of law-abiding members of the public? Yes, the courts should consider whether Duncan would benefit from doing the 12 step program or not, but not to the point of compromising public safety (and again, I still haven't heard any cases of paedophiles so driven by their condition that they strike in the presence of uniformed police officers).

But that's not even the best of it. He complains about me criticising paedophiles thus:

Take the word "paedophile" and replace it with "murderer", "racist", "homophobe" or (in an earlier age) "homosexual" and the passage works just as well as demagoguery.

Yes, and if we change 'War on Terror' to 'War on Cute Puppies', that proves Bush hates dogs.

Huh?

Words have meaning. In particular, 'paedophiles' means people with at least one - and usually multiple - convictions for victimising vulnerable young people. That's why this next sentence is just bizarre:

Everyone should have the same legal rights as everyone else unless and until convicted by due process of law.

Again: huh?

Is there any evidence of a sizeable body of opinion in favour of victimising the innocent? Really, am I missing something here? For the record let me make clear I'm against persecuting the innocent. Also: carpet bombing, genocide and dropping anthrax spores in the water supply.

Now, back to stuff people are actually saying.

Those rights should then only be removed (or rather suspended) until the expiry of the sentence passed by an indpendent court in accordance with the law.

You mean when Drunken Duncan gets released he can drive himself home? Bet he can't. Plus, I'm guessing his cell mate Phil the Phraud might have a bit of trouble working in finance or becoming a company director. Meanwhile, banning orders preventing foreign travel - the very thing that these people are so steamed about - have been in place for football hooliganism for years.

Hey, this is all settled law. Just who's getting thrown in a tailspin by S-E-X again?

Then there's this:

It is not libertarianism which is leading to "clamping down on the rights of the non-depraved," it is such addled, tabloid emotionalism as this.

The witch-hunters cannot have it both ways. However much they may describe any attempt at rational thought as "...near-lunatic ranting..." If they are allowed to get away with their afternoon-TV, chav sentimentalism, what next?

And thus was refuted the claim that their position was driven by snobbery and elitism.

Meanwhile, a night time trip around our nation's town centres will confirm just how successful breakfast Radio 4 pretentious ninnyism has been in bringing order to our land.

Yes, paedophile sex is a vile assault. It is a repulsive attack upon innocence. So are many other kinds of assault on the weak and defenceless.

Yes, and you people never pen long articles complaining that we're all being too tough on the Mad Axeman, or defending the right of wife beaters to own shotguns. Some sauce for that goose?

Anyway, wasn't it these folks who were just jabbering about how it could all be a sickness? Even those of us on the right will agree there's a compulsive element to all this - we just don't think it rises to the level of an 'irresistible impulse' as it were (or, at least, not till we get a positive result to the 'within sight of a policeman' test). On the other hand, we're all supposed to hate those Southern US churches that claim to 'pray out the gay' even as we're told that all it takes is a bit of psychic WD-40 and a slice of therapy and suddenly the, as it were, paedosexuals with multiple convictions for crimes against children will never look at a child again.

Two of the most significant characteristics of predators is that they're likely to reoffend, and they escalate the degree of offending as time goes on (you know, sort of like a guy with convictions for child pr0n who goes on to get convicted of child rape, to choose an example completely at random). Put it this way: the evidence for those two propositions is at least as strong as the evidence for the effectiveness of rehab. This is why we think paedophiles should be treated differently to those who indulge in merely instrumental violence, like muggers or bank robbers.

Hey, even if you buy into the whole Ferapee Nation 'the illness made them do it' deal, you have to see benefits from leading them not into temptation, right? Meanwhile, the rest of us get the same benefits from restricting the liberty of convicted paedophiles as we get from ensuring that wife beaters don't have guns in the house. We might not stop them reoffending, but we sure can make it harder for them and make it more likely they'll be stopped before they can inflict serious damage.

But even that's not it. The real question is this: is there a moral equivalence between convicted felons and innocent citizens, and should we be required to balance the interests of the two? To ask the question is to answer it - but not if your main interest is adolescent rebel posturing.

Libertarians: Liberals Against Tax

Also exposed by the Gary Glitter case: libertarians. We always knew they were just people who wanted to live in a liberal world, but without having to pay for it, and now no one can deny it.

Our friends in black have adopted the liberal position wholesale, even down to the snobbery. Hmmmmm.... apparently, the libertarian position is to trust the people, even though they're all morons.

More to the point, the libertarian position doesn't even make sense on its own terms. Unelected agents of the state have pronounced on Mr Gadd's case, and so the rest of us should just shut up? Huh?

Never mind libertarian principles, when did we stop being a democracy?

Even arguments about slippery slopes don't cut it. Harassing perverts who prey on young children is pretty much the definition of what the state should be doing. On the contrary, it is the people arguing that the state should declare itself neutral between degenerate felons and innocent citizens who seek to establish a new - and absurd - principle.

If you're going to insist that paedophiles have the same rights as everyone else, then you're arguing that everyone should be treated as though they were a paedophile. Once you claim there's no meaningful distinction to be drawn between the average citizen and degenerate filth, then you're faced with either letting maniacs run free or clamping down on the rights of the non-depraved. Doubtless, there will always be folks in government keen to push Option 2, but I'm not sure why libertarians would want to help them out.

In reality, no one really supports equal rights for vermin. Again, no one on the left is demanding that felons be given firearms licences - it's only the specific case of perverts that has these people claiming we're on the way to the Fourth Reich.

The liberal - and now libertarian - position is that a predator released from prison in the morning should be free to spend the afternoon reconnoitring the main routes to and from local schools, free of harassment, risk, interdiction or even minor inconvenience. It finds no support in any obvious concept of natural law.

Or take the Sex Offenders' Register. Here we have a list of all the active threats within a given area, but access is carefully restricted to agents of the state. Libertarian, how ?

This is the flip side of the supposed hysteria about paedophiles: the state really is conspiring to help perverts infiltrate unsuspecting communities - with entirely predictable consequences. It's easy to mock the 'nonce-spotters' who claim a father photographing his daughter in the park is an obvious pervert, but let's hear the flip-side of that. There really are perverts out there and, again, the right of felons to pass themselves off as ordinary citizens is not something that immediately follows from natural law, let alone cries out for government assistance.

Hell, if you're going to argue against welfare in general, surely your taxes going to help perverts set up shop elsewhere ought to be something of a sore point?

Where Did The Libertarianism Go ?

Samizdata has decided to go all Guardian on us.

As ever, the first riposte is to wonder why these advocates of Vulcan justice never seem to notice the queue of social workers, psychologists, aromatherapists and various other candidates for the Golgafrinchan B Ark, all lined up ready to file into court and explain why Joe Scumbag is the real victim.

Let's not have any pious sermonising about the need to cleanse our courts of emotionalism - the judicary are perfectly prepared to put with all manner of weeping and whailing, but only if it serves the cause of letting lowlife off the hook.

Equally, in so far as the argument seems to rest on the belief that we should trust our betters on the bench, rather than risk contaminating the process with the idiot emotionalism of the lower orders, it's an odd argument for Libertarians to make. Surely if you think people are ignorant morons, that kind of undercuts the case for Libertarianism ?

There's something more to it though. Communism fails, in part at least, because it requires people to sacrifice themselves and their own natural instincts to conform to some absurd ideological model of how things should be. Now the courts are going the same way.

It is entirely right and proper that people should demand, and even expect, that the courts should provide satisfaction - it is a natural human instinct, and we on the Right, above all else, recognise the importance of dealing with humanity as it is.

More to the point, the supposed contrast between the rationality of the courts and the fickleness of the (hypothetical) mob is a fraud. On the contrary, it is the pro-courts side that demands that the whole business of dealing with individual crimes be subordinated to the requirements of social engineering and political theatre. The public are remarkably consistent in wanting the punishment to fit the crime, it's the courts that want the punishment to fit the particular tactical needs of the political establishment at the moment of sentencing.

That's why it's so plain weird to see Libertarian's getting all misty-eyed over the courts. What could be more inimical to the spirit of Libertarianism than victims denied justice by the desire of the State to push its own agenda ?

UPDATE:

OK, there's a bit of life in the comments, so let me clarify my position. There's actually two debates here. The first is the specific question of what should be allowable in court. You can argue that courts should be the sphere of pure logic, insulated from emotionalism, but opposing victim impact statements, even while allowing testimony in mitigation from all manner of voodoo scientists, makes no kind of sense.

The second question is the wider one. What is the legal system actually for ? To protect the innocent and resolve disputes, or to pursue some abstract notion of justice ? It's perfectly possible to oppose victim impact statements even while opposing the determination of the courts to deal with crime solely in the abstract. For that matter, why should people who don't trust the state in any other context nevertheless trust state employees to deliver on such a slippery concept as justice ?