Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Who Even Does That ?

Today's stupid attempt at victimhood: new legislation to outlaw inciting hatred against the disabled.

Huh ?

At least when the pink wedge were ploughing this furrow - if you'll pardon the phrase - it was a fairly obvious attempt to intimidate the religious. What's with all this ? Is there some group of people out there spending their time calling for the shooting of guide dogs and the like ? Seriously - I'd hate to think there's a whole new way to annoy liberals that I'm missing out on.

There's a too perfect for satire summation of the liberal mindset coming up though:
Damon Rose, editor of the BBC's Ouch website, said he had seen increasing stories about disabled people being bullied.

"There is something about the happy slapping culture which hasn't helped disabled people. Disabled people are 'interesting' targets in that way," he said.

"There doesn't seem to be a concept of hate crime against disabled people.
Ok, first up, we have a BBC report quoting a BBC staffer, so I guess we can dispense with the debate over whether or not the BBC is too incestuous. Ditto, in so far as we have a BBC staff member speaking out in support of oppressive curbs on freedom of speech, I guess that wraps up the whole 'impartiality' thing as well - but at least he's balanced by comments from... well, actually two other members of the grievance industry, both supporting this law as well.

But consider the fundamentally absurd logic on show. The argument is that thugs engaging in random street violence like to target the disabled for the sheer novelty, therefore the answer is to give attacks on the disabled a special status. Yep, that's liberalism all right: don't condemn the thugs, instead try and spin random criminality into generalised victimhood.

Of course, what it's really about isn't preventing as yet undetected cults from declaring a jihad on the deaf. Nope, it's about chilling debate, as even one of the hobblin' hustelers himself admits:
And David Congdon, head of campaigns and policy at Mencap, said it was important to try to "change the culture, to ensure people value each other equally".
So it's not about the huge number of people in wheelchairs being thrown off cliffs, after all. Instead it's about closing down the debate, so we won't be allowed to ask, for example, whether or not a guy so delusional he can't be held responsible for acts of hideous violence should be out on the streets in the first place. After all, asking that would be 'hateful'.

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