Mister, We Could Use A Man Like Joe McCarthy Right About Now

Well, this certainly kills the myth that the chattering classes are soft on perverts.

It says a lot about where we're at as a society that our alleged betters insist that convicted paedophiles aren't dangerous, but passive smoking is. Apparently, it's true: enlightenment is just depravity gone to college.

But wait.... Tristan D'Arcy Hipster just e-mailed to say that there's no need to worry, our professional law enforcement personnel are on standby, ready to leap into action if any more offences are committed. Yes, indeed, just as soon as a threat appears the police will spring into action in a matter of months.

If this society really was in the grip of a 'paedo panic' we'd at least have MPs prepared to ask why these investigations are always pursued with all the vigour of an arthritic snail with a serious hangover.

Hipsters: Still Reliably Disgusting

Shorter O'Neill: Admire the sophistication of my refusal to condemn even outright insanity.

Like night following day, any outbreak of sadistic lunacy will be followed by the MSM's hipster contingent paying generous tribute to their own courage in refusing to condemn the killer. Free clue: it's only courageous if everyone else in the chattering class bubble isn't saying the exact same thing. For an MSM opinion writer to denounce the man on the Clapham omnibus as an unsophisticated brute is about as brave as George Galloway's warm up man denoucing Israel.

Hey, 'devil child' may lack nuance, but at least it also lacks any pretence to bogus insight. Meanwhile, O'Neall wants Dangerous Dan to get 'help and education'. Like what? 'Not Murdering People 101'? A quick course of aromatherapy? Colonic irrigation?

Hey, at least give us a hint here hipsters!

But no: their point is an essentially fradulent one. They want to contrast their own support for Therapy Nation versus the supposedly punative nature of the mob, but what's so sophiticated about their position? The science behind the rehab industry is about as reliable as a UEA climate model. O'Neall even cites the Bulger killers himself - the rehab industries' own flagship case, where despite a blank cheque and a policy of turning a blind eye to a string of offences, 50% of them still ended up back in jail anyway.

Hey, can you imagine how bad the figures are on the cases they don't want to talk about?

This is another case where conservatives have let liberals set the terms of the debate. It's not imprisonment versus rehab, it's the certainty of public protection versus pseudo-scientific garbage. Supporting the clowns and charlatans in the rehab industry is no more an intellectual position than believing your horoscope, and at least Jonathan Cainer doesn't want to set the Mad Axeman loose.

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!

The Rehab Industry: Like Astrology, But Without The Science

Now that the Pope has headed home and hipsters don't have to pretend to care about sex offences any more, normal service has been resumed.

If It Wasn't For Sneer Quotes, Some People Would Have No Way To Communicate

Heh. Timing is everything. A drive-by commentor on this post was mega, double, enraged by my criticism of libertarians: why, didn't I know, libertarians were totally super critical of liberal pandering to thugs? Then, wouldcha'believe it, Samizdata commented, apparently approvingly, on Alex Massie's Allahawful pay-no-attention-to-the-jihadist-behind-the-curtain article.

About Massie's article no more need be said than to repeat my original point: when exactly did we decide that putting sneer quotes round words counts as an actual argument? Equally though, I'm wondering whether those of us on the right might not have been suckered in to arguing over the minutiae with professional hair splitters like Massie when the honking great elephant in the room is THEY WANT TO BUILD A MOSQUE AT GROUND ZERO!!!!

I'm thinking that the whole 'wanting to build a mosque at site of a brutal Islamic terror attack' pretty much kills the 'moderate' thing stone dead. Still, for anyone still struggling with the whole concept, gay Chicago democrats explain it better than most of Britain's Certified Rightists.

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.

Lord Ashcroft Killed James Bulger!

Or possibly not, but at least that might get our fearless MSM to start investigating the increasingly bizarre revelations about John Venables, the certified '100% rehabilitated' killer... who's back in jail.

As I understand the hipster position, revealing what criteria the legal system used to determine that a convicted killer was, in fact, a fluffy bunny rabbit of a man may lead to the Earth falling into the Sun. Meanwhile, demanding critics of the government submit to the financial equivalent of a prostate exam has no negative implications whatsoever for democracy.

Speaking personally, nothing says 'robust scientific process' like an unaccountable cabal of activist liberals awarding each other contracts to carry out a process we aren't allowed to know anything about. I wouldn't say the rehab industry was slippery, but I hear the folks at UEA are complaining that they're ruining the good name of science. Meanwhile, the only way the MSM will take an interest is if Lord Ashcroft turns out to be moonlighting on the parole board.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm thinking we ought to be drawing a chalk outline around British journalism right about now.

Amy Winehouse Was Right

Achtung Peasants! Our hipster betters command you to support the release of this guy. After all, everyone knows the rehab industry is the very model of scientific rigour and impeachable integrity.

Besides, what could possibly go wrong?

Truthers Gone Wild!

Laban points out a guy who's blown the lid! off the death of St Jean the Martyr.

Yes, indeed. It's easy to mock, but mainstream Trutherism isn't much better these days. Here my old pal Tommy explains how just because the Truthers couldn't even get a verdict against Captain Chaos herself, Cressida Dick, she's still, like, totally guilty:

Yes, the jury in the "health and safety" show trial - used by the state to put the matter on hold until it was "old news" [it was a conspiracy to hide the conspiracy? - DJ] - specifically exonerated Ms Dick [well, quite - DJ]. Perhaps the lethal errors were all made after she - as Gold Commander - transferred control to CO19. Certainly there is no proof she was involved in discrediting an innocent victim in the disgraceful campaign of lies and spin which followed Jean-Charles's murder [yep, it's another conspiracy theory - DJ]. Perhaps history will even remember her for her role as head of the Metropolitan Police's "Diversity Directorate" more than for that day of national disgrace [opinion stated as fact without supporting argument - DJ]. Perhaps.

The question still remains. In honouring a woman whose name is tied to that monstrous injustice, what message, dear reader, does our Prime Minister intend to convey? [Message? How about 'YOU LOSE, LOSERS'? - DJ]

Still, don't get the feeling I'm bracketing Indymedia guy with the mainstream of Trutherism. After all, at least our pal from Bristol's conspiracy theory is internally consistent. Once you accept his fundamentally loopy premise, the rest of it hangs together. That sets him apart from the rest of the Truther movement.

Indeed, not to give aid and comfort to the insane, but if Truthers are genuinely enraged over their failure to land a glove on their hate figures, they might want to try producing a coherent story. It speaks to the essential bigotry driving this movement that no explanation is required for just why, say, police officers would cooperate with a vast conspiracy to terminate a small-time crook. They're pigs, it's what they do, init?

UPDATE:

Walk them cats back! An anonymous commentor claims to be shocked - shocked! -that anyone could call Truthers conspiracy nuts, claiming they just question police procedures, to which I reply thus:

i/ the only way the death of St Jean could have got more publicity would have been if he was riding along with Princess Di. In so far as the Truthers have been trying to blow the lid! on this case for nearly five years, I think we can safely conclude all the answers are in. They may not like them, or believe them, but there's something deeply gutless about claiming they're just 'asking questions'. They're not, they're making accusations and they should come out and say that - although, to be fair, Tommy certainly does that, which leads on to point two...

ii/ If the Truther were really just concerned about procedures, they'd write about that, instead of ranting about 'Death Squads' and the like. Au contrair, from the start the Truther movement regarded this case as a Rosetta Stone that exposed dark forces that were secretly pulling the strings behind the scenes in the sham democracy of the United KKKingdom.

It's way too late to pretend they're just concerned about how cops do their thing.

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.

Nigerians On A Plane

Thinking further about yesterday's post, it's no wonder the left is emphasising the whole Nigerian thing. After all, the Ummah's Undie Bomber might not have damaged any planes, but he's sure blown a hole in the left's credibility.

There's the obvious point that - again - the passenger on an airliner who turns out to be a terrorist is the one who fits perfectly the profile for a terrorist (or would have done if airlines were allowed to profile passengers). That ought not to be a surprise, but it sure seems to keep passing the left by. If the evidence for Gerbil Worming was as strong as the evidence for profiling, conservatives would be biking to work, but instead the left insists that since profiling wouldn't necessarily pick up one of those Chinese Catholic suicide bombers we hear so much about, the whole thing's a bust.

Which is point two right there. The left's always justified its opposition to profiling on the grounds that they have supa-smart alternatives - all of which utterly failed in this case. No fly lists and no liquids allowed? No problem!

The precise details of how exactly the various governments screwed it up are still being revealed, but one thing's for sure: the only serious opposition the Boxer Bomber faced was from the random collection of civilians on the flight with him. Indeed, while the professionals were asleep at the wheel, the ordinary Joes - or Jakkes - attacked with such skill and effectiveness that I understand the hipsters want to have them all jailed.

Even more surprisingly for students of hipster rhetoric, these de facto citizen soldiers managed to achieve all they did without slaughtering any Sikh pharmacists or inadvertently imposing the Fourth Reich.

But that's not the best of it: in so far as this particular Man of No Affiliation had the background of a Nigerian David Cameron, that would tend to debunk just about every excuse hipsters have ever deployed for that completely random collection of individuals who keep getting caught up in terrorist incidents. Poverty? Disenfranchisement? Lack of educational opportunities? If this guy's a victim, who isn't?

Leadership!

Stephen Glover writes well in support of the Tory rebels in Norfolk, but he misses the essential contradiction in the Nu Tory position.

The hipster trash claim that the whole 'ideology' thing is dragsville. The job of the modern MP is, supposedly, to manage the business of government rather than advance any particular agenda, so who cares if they're sleazy, providing they can really get to grips with the NHS, right?

The problem with that is there are approximately no companies in Britain where someone can sleep with a senior manager, land a plum job and then claim it's everyone else who has the problem. In any serious industry, Liz Truss would have been shown the door the moment this was uncovered.

But still, that's not it. There's something else going on here. For all that Cameron's drones keep whining about 'inverted snobbery', 90% of the time when his fancy education is cited, it's by one of his cultists claiming that he was born to lead. Really? 'Cause I'm thinking if a trifling matter like a rebel constituency in Norfolk brings out the Sweary Mary in him, he may not be exactly ready for prime time. Those pesky country folk refuse to support his candidate and suddenly he's auditioning for the lead in the English-language version of Downfall - that's the guy we need representing us on the world stage!

He's Not Galileo, He's The Pope

Yep. I feel the same way about the Prof Nutt pity party.

All things considered, Nutt would appear to lack at least two of the main qualifications for martyrdom. Take his supposed claim to victimhood: he was a quangocrat, now he's not. Ah well. Burning at the stake this isn't.

Hey, it's hard to say anything nice about our politicians, but at least we can throw them out every now and again. Fringe kooks like Nutt worm their way into the body politic without the barest public scrutiny, and push their own agendas without any democratic mandate whatsoever. Rooting out rogues who hijack public office to advance extreme ideologies is exactly what our elected representatives should be doing.

This is Humbug No 1 right there: Nutt is exactly the kind of quangocrat member of our permanent ruling class who libertarians routinely denounce, but now it turns out he's a fellow drug bore, he's Leonidas at Thermopylae. Huh?

Then there's the other thing: what principle if he defending anyway? The supremacy of science? But science-based arguments have to be balanced against the wider social issues. Again, this is exactly why we have a Parliament in the first place.

More to the point, what science is this exactly? When he says that horseriding is more dangerous than Ectasy, does that mean in the sense that more people are called each year falling down stairs than going over Niagra Falls in a barrel? Or maybe he means people who die while in the act of taking drugs vs riding? Or does he mean in some other sense? To the point: how dangerous drugs are is a live issue in science, but now here's Professor Nutt announcing Ex Cathedra The Correct Scientific View on Drugs.

Well, no: nothing is more antithetical to science than some pompous prat arbitrarily deciding that his views are certified scientific and everybody who disagrees is an ignorant savage.

For that matter where's the evidence that Nutt's preferred model of credentialed ubermen producing centrally planned truth is any better than the market place of ideas? True, the free market gave us reality TV, but at least The X Factor never caused mass starvation.

No, Nutt is not about the science, but he's a great example of a modern scientist: whiny, entitled and actually quite nasty when it all comes down to it.

You Can Never Underestimate Liberal Morality

Don't speak too soon! The hipster pushback has already started.

Still, this set me thinking. These people keep telling us that, oh yes, they do hate paedophiles too, so what's missing from this case? Here we have a 43 year old individual who drugged and raped a girl he knew to be underage despite her clearly refusing consent. If sexual predation has any meaning at all, this is what it means, but gosh darn it! it turns out that even this doesn't clear the bar for hipster outrage. In what sense do they oppose paedophilia?

Ayn Is Innocent!

Great post by NNW over here, but there's one thing I don't agree with. The whole 'Objectivism' thing was intended as a rebuttal to libertarianism which, even back then, was sliding rapidly downhill into the moral equivalence sludgebucket.

I'm sure Ayn Rand would be no friend to a police service that refused to actually provide any actual policing services. Equally, she would have no problem with condemning this kind of harassment as objectively wrong. Then again, you can say the same for Frank Field or, for that matter, Clement Atlee. It's not about the state.

We're not screwed because the state is too big or too small, we're screwed because our political culture is mired in exactly the kind of goofy relativism Rand predicted years ago. Some are liberals, some are libertarians, but all are firmly wedged in the Starbucks of the soul where objective reality is, like, squaresville, dude, vicious thugs are just sticking it to The Man and it's considered a winning argument to sonorously intone 'first they came for the violent headcases...'.

UPDATE:

Knew I had it somewhere....

Here's Ayn Rand on libertarianism:

All kinds of people today call themselves “libertarians,” especially something calling itself the New Right, which consists of hippies, except that they’re anarchists instead of collectivists. But of course, anarchists are collectivists. Capitalism is the one system that requires absolute objective law, yet they want to combine capitalism and anarchism. That is worse than anything the New Left has proposed. It’s a mockery of philosophy and ideology. They sling slogans and try to ride on two bandwagons. They want to be hippies, but don’t want to preach collectivism, because those jobs are already taken. But anarchism is a logical outgrowth of the anti-intellectual side of collectivism. I could deal with a Marxist with a greater chance of reaching some kind of understanding, and with much greater respect. The anarchist is the scum of the intellectual world of the left, which has given them up. So the right picks up another leftist discard. That’s the Libertarian movement.

UPDATE II:

Actually, the quote at the bottom of the page sums it up even better:

Libertarians are a monstrous, disgusting bunch of people: they plagiarize my ideas when that fits their purpose, and they denounce me in a more vicious manner than any communist publication, when that fits their purpose. They are lower than any pragmatists, and what they hold against Objectivism is morality. They’d like to have an amoral political program

Today's Non-Mainstreaming Story

Like the man says, this case is beyond satire. Still, three things bear repeating.

Firstly, we have another entry for the 'Tory cuts' file. The left keeps telling uas that any cutbacks in government spending means people dying in the streets, then we find that the taxpayer is stumping up for aphrodisiacs for perverts.

Second, there's this from probation service spokesman John McAngus:

We could not and would not restrict the use of prescription medication, be it Viagra or anything else. What we do is our utmost to help sex offenders address their offending behaviour.

Hmmmm.... so absent 'offending behavior' - I think he means child molestation - what would be the other use for Viagra?

I'm kind of getting a mixed message here. We told parents shouldn't worry about known perverts walking the streets because they're closely monitored by Brer John and pals, but now it turns out an unrepentant predator has been stockpiling powerful aphrodisiacs and that's just yawnerooney.

All of which brings me onto my final point: this is a perfect example of liberal projection. You can't open the paper without seeing some hipster douche whining about so-called 'paedo panic'. Well, here we have one of the poor, suffering nonces and it turns out he's not only been allowed to offend again and again, public servants are all but acting as his accomplices. Or, to put it another way, everything the right said was, well, right. Meanwhile, the hipsters are whining about non-existant atrocities committed against paediatricians. Just who's peddling hysteria and myths here?

Most Important Operation Evah! Vs Medics Of No Appearance

Yep, it's a mystery alright: a lot of young doctors aren't down with abortion. Gosh, it's almost as if the profession is filling up with folks who don't recognise the imperatives of hipster life.

No wonder these people are cracking up under the strain:

[Chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service Ann Furedi said] Abortion is an absolutely essential, life-saving part of medical care - it may not be the most glamorous medical speciality on the face of it, compared to stem cell research or - but it is seen as heroic work by the women that it helps.

Courts: Reality Now Illegal, Libs: Yeah, We Never Really Liked It Anyway

Mainstreaming? I see no mainstreaming!

Like I keep saying, if liberals ever denounce vampires as a 'right-wing myth', start laying in garlic and stakes.

Needless to say, the logic on show in this decision is up to the usual standard. There's no facility for offenders predators to seek a review of their inclusion on the register. Well, y'know, apart from the whole 'trial by a jury of their peers' thing. That's the review right there. They were found guilty and put on the register as part of their sentence.

Ah, but that's the thing: even people with Captain Hook's feel for the public mood can sense that going easy on predators just days after their crimes have been described in open court might be a little too obvious. They'd much rather kick that can down the road until the public spotlight moves on, and a whole bunch of folks making a life and a living out of supposedly rehabilitating dangerous predators can get together and decide that the dangerous predator in question is indeed rehabilitated.

This is the crucial issue. The hipsters would rather we kept the whole thing on the abstract level, as though a penchant for sexual predation was a psychological quirk like claustrophobia or OCD. When our alleged betters whine about 'emotionalism', this is what they mean: folks reminding the public that for every offence there's a victim who's life will never be the same again. How're they supposed to keep up the whole Therapy Nation vibe when people keep dumping bodies on the floor?

Still, even stating all the above is giving this argument too much credit. Let's pretend that the rehab industry isn't a bunch of sleazy snake oil salesmen and all these freaks really need is a psychological oil change and some karmic WD40 - they're still convicted sex offenders and the Register is merely calling them what they indisputably are.

Again, this is a crucial battleground in the culture war. What is PC if not an attempt to prevent people calling stuff what it is? It says a lot about how good the hipsters argument really are that they want to stop anyone actually discussing them.

(Oh... and by the way, how come libs aren't taking out onions for wife beaters unfairly refused firearms certificates? They've served their time - shouldn't they get the chance to have their cases reviewed too? Presumably by the owner of the local gun shop. Fair's fair!)

Rights Round Up

Apparently, 'free speech' now requires that you post your cv on-line.

See, that's the problem with a political monoculture: there's no one around to tell liberals that their arguments don't make a lick of sense. Try this:

The public was entitled to know how police officers behaved and the newspaper's readers were entitled to come to their own conclusions about whether it was desirable for officers to communicate such matters publicly.

So the public is enitled to find out how police officers behave but it's not desirable for police officers to tell them. A-huh!

On the other hand, some people deserve their privacy.

Civil rights group Liberty is backing the relatives of two convicted killers who claim their human rights have been breached - after police used the criminals' faces in a poster campaign.

The number of shootings in Greater Manchester dropped by 92 per cent following the arrest of gangsters Colin Joyce and Lee Amos, so they were featured in a billboard which thanked the public for coming forward with evidence against them.

But members of the two men's families are now seeking compensation from the police, claiming they weren't warned about the posters in advance, or given a chance to object.

Hmmmm.... I guess we'll never know why people call Liberty a bunch of leftist kooks.

Needless to say, the moral absurdity of the case has no impact on its likelehood of success. No, siree, Jack! It turns out that the police will be required to show they considered the impact on the rest of these dysfunctional clans of psychopaths beforehand or else (although, in their defence, neither killer has been known to express 'strong opinions').

Still, we must not let the specific absurdity blind us to the more general one:

The relatives say they've suffered increased hostility as a result of the posters which graphically show how old Joyce and Amos would look by the time they were released from jail.

Good. The mark of a civilised society is that being a scumbag does bring consequences. True, it may be impossible to prove beyind reasonable doubt that the relatives are criminals themselves (so far) but then again, no one's talking about jailing or fining them. Nope, we're talking mild social stigma, or, as I like to think of it, treating low-life vermin like the sub-human filth that they are. When exactly did we decide that gangsta baby mammas had the fundemental human right to be treated as worthwhile members of the public?

This is another reason why the hipster's faux libertarianism doesn't work. These people claim to hate Big Government, but they absolutely despise the idea of communities regulating themselves through tactics such as shaming, social ostracism and the like. It's all too suggestive of squaresville morality for these rebel tigers. The trouble is abscent that moral framework all you're left with is government, and that can never be enough - which probably explains why they're so desperate to stop anyone talking about how their idiot ideas work in practice.