Tuesday, August 26, 2008

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?

No comments: