Even The Police Are Getting Hacked Off With The Police

Actually, that's kind of harsh: Coppersblog has always been a bastion of common sense, so I'm not surprised to find that even they are starting to object to the police's 'arrest early, arrest often' policy.

They make an important point: not only is this sort of thing lead to victimisation of innocent members of the public (like here!), it also results in police officers wasting huge amounts of time on this rubbish.

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.

Art Souls

Sounds like Canada is just like Britain, at least to judge from the comments to this post. This is my favourite:

I wonder if I could get a Canada Arts Council grant for the piece of Canadian art that I've envisioned. It's a headstone made of feces, with Pierre Elliot Trudeau's name on it. Standing on one side is a statue of a farmer (made of wheat, beef, and oil) who is urinating on the headstone, and on the other side are statues of two naked males (one white, one black) holding hands, and 'showering their love' on the headstone. It symbolizes the truly Canadian aspect of how Western Canada feels about our most controversial P.M., and the love that the gay and ethnic community feel for him for espousing minority rights.

Do you think I could get a couple of million for it?

Meet The New Boss...

Further evidence for my theory that the worse public sector bodies get at their real jobs, the more they want to expand into social engineering. Like Stan says, I'm sure most folks would rather have a reliable bin service - but keep reading to the end for the ironic twist.

And Now For Something Completely Different

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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?

Liberals: Sick Or Evil?

Evan Sayet is bang on about the militant nihilism at the heart of modern liberalism. The only thing I'd add is that liberals also love the feeling of superiority they get from sneering at those bumpkins with their stupid 'morals'. Consider their latest baby seal: Gary Glitter.

Liberal elitism is plenty annoying at the best of times, but supporting child rape is a new low even for them. Needless to say, that's not quite how the left describes their position. The liberal butt monkeys are out in force - so called because of their habit of penning articles announcing that 'of course, we all agree that child rape is bad BUT....'.

Personally, I'm thinking 'of course, we all agree...' is the liberal equivalent of 'I'll be honest with you...'. Maybe the right should start using the same formulation for addressing issues we have no intention of doing anything about, as in 'Of course, we all agree arts funding is too low/class sizes are too big/social workers don't get enough respect'?

Actually, that's giving the left too much credit. It's not just that they don't want to turn up the heat on nonces, they objectively side with the paedophiles. Look at the proportion of liberals in the MSM (approximately 100%) who denounce anti-paedophilia activism as 'hysteria'. Really? What would be the correct reaction to child rape? Apathy? Ironic detachment? Warm applause? And if the abduction and subsequent sexual torture of a child doesn't raise any hackles on the left, what would? The assailant having a cigarette afterwards?

Incidentally, I'm thinking that if you're are intending to cast yourself as an iconoclast standing up to the mob, that probably requires more than spouting the self-same talking points as everyone else in the MSM. Just how much uniformity does it take for liberals to stop pretending to be Henry Fonda in 'Twelve Angry Men'?

Ditto, with the left's other moronic talking point, claiming the anti-paedophile effort is all a 'witch hunt'. Really? Wouldn't that characterisation be dependent on the hunters in question not continually capturing huge numbers of witches?

Hmmmm... you know, I'm thinking that if the liberal elite could denounce paedophiles with nearly as much passion as they denounce the folks who call for stronger action, the public might actually start to have some confidence in their commitment to dealing with the threat. Instead, we get what we always when liberals confront evil: stupid hair-splitting and absurd PoMo "what do you mean by 'evil' ?" arguments. Consider that the lefty blogosphere has hailed this piece of dreck as a modern day Gettysburg Address - only better!

Sarler's retarded point is that we can't take any action against paedophiles without deciding whether they're evil or mad (also, we can't read with the light on until we solve that whole wave/particle duality thing).

Well, no room for misquote there anyway. Never mind the need to protect the innocent it's all about the perp. Meanwhile, sane people answer the question like this: who cares? Whether bad, mad or vessels of demonic entities, they're a threat and they need to be dealt with.

Speaking personally, I'll start to believe the illness made 'em do it just as soon as someone can show me a case where these crimes were committed in sight of a uniformed police officer. Until then, it seems like they can resist their impulses just fine when they need to.

Sarler's argument would set new levels for stupidity, except that the rest is is even worse. She claims to be shocked - shocked! - at the revelation that predators can face other punishments in addition to jail time. Wait until she founds out this is only the tip of the iceberg - take drunk drivers losing their licence or fraudsters being disbarred from company directorships, for example. For that matter, would Sarler claim wife beaters denied shotgun licences are also victims?

All of which neatly answers Sarler's other asinine point. Sarler tries that most trite of liberal charges: it's all about the hypocrisy! Why, asks our learning-impaired elitist, are people enraged by paedophilia but not crimes of violence? Well, coming back at you libs! Why aren't liberals penning long articles calling for more understanding of tax evaders, firearms offenders or folks accused of hate speech?

Paedophilia is a live topic because this is where the left has decided to concentrate its latest efforts on defining deviancy down. If the liberal elite spent its time taking out onions for violent sociopaths, then there would be 'hysteria' (also known as 'public outrage') over that too. As it is, they don't, so there isn't.

That's the thing. However leftists try and hide it, it's quite obvious that they just don't think paedophilia is that bad. This is why they denounce critics as hysterical, while degenerate filth gets hailed as artistic genius. True, they can't yet get the age of consent actually wiped off the statute books, but they can give the law the death of a thousand cuts.

The only problem is the one the liberal agenda always faces: public scrutiny. Unfortunately, the lumpy, dumpy citizenry isn't yet onboard with our sofiticayted friends and their attempts to rebrand child rape as just another 'alternative lifestyle'. In fact, so frustrated has the left been by the failure of attempts to mainstream the sexual exploitation of children, they're starting to sound kind of... what's the word? Ah yes, hysterical.

As a rule, the more over-heated liberal rhetoric, the more ludicrous their arguments. In this case, the near-lunatic ranting can't hide the sheer weirdness of their position. The right's position is simple enough: every predator who ever lived isn't worth the life of a single innocent child, but what's with liberals? How did the folks who keep jibber-jabbering about standing up for the weak and the vulnerable end up proposing policies that objectively help sexual predators, and in particular, demanding that captured perverts should face nothing more serious than a brief term of none too uncomfortable imprisonment alongside fellow enthusiasts, after which they should be permitted to return to their vocation with the tacit support of the left?

As Sayet would sayet, there is no objective criteria by which you can place the rights of a pervert over those of his victim, yet that is what the left is doing. Never mind the predators, what's with liberals? Sick or evil ?

The Victimhood Is Weak In This One

Victimhood poker in the Five-oh? You betcha!

JuliaM administers a righteous kicking, so I've only got one thing to add. Let's just check the scorecard here: airport screeners are forced to screen 88 year old grandmothers, paraplegics and toddlers, lest they be accused of profiling, but it's OK for PC Plod to pick up a black dude on the grounds that he's driving a blue car. Hey, how many blue cars can there be out there?

But no: women don't lie about rape, so I guess this must all be another Right-Wing Myth.

Nazis, Nazis Everywhere!

You'll miss this type of quality reporting when the BBC is gone! As a matter of interest, does anything out there not remind them of Nazis? Well, apart from a totalitarian cult that wants to take over the world and exterminate the Jews - that's just pure coincidence.

But let's not let the superficial idiocy hide the deeper stupid. A shocking BBC report finds pedigree dogs are frequently unhealthy? Who knew? Well, apart from everyone, obviously.

Yes, a narrow gene pool can lead to weird mutations spreading through the general population, but this is GCSE science. Ditto, breed standards are frequently weird and unnatural. Take the slopping back of the German Sheperd - or rather don't, it should be straight, and the quest for bent back dogs has lead to endemic hip problems in the breed. Both issues - and does the BBC even know the difference between the two - are well known.

But even that's not it. What's the BBC accusing dog breeders of? They only select from a tiny pool and insist on criteria that totally screw up the ability to perform even basic functions? Hmmmmm... I believe the phrase that pays is something about 'motes and beams'.

They Weren't Sensitive This Time

Another day, and another plot by those sinister Men Of No Appearance. But wait... I see a possible clue further down:

Ch Supt Andy Rhodes, of Lancashire Police, said: "These arrests and subsequent searches of the nearby premises will be conducted with sensitivity and carried out as quickly as possible to ensure minimum impact on the three areas concerned.

Say, you don't think...

But don't accuse the police of pandering to ethnic minorities. Nope, it's only certain - riot prone - minorities that get Chief Super Sensitive stopping by. Other minorities get this.

Yes, I'm sure suicide is an extreme reaction, but that's the thing - the police's carpet bombing approach makes it inevitable that vulnerable people like this will be caught up in one of their muscle-flexing exercises in low-level thuggery. Bottom line: if the victim had topped himself shortly after being beaten senseless by freelance thugs, no one would blink at connecting these two events, so why the reluctance now?

Yes, the police have to investigate complaints - even ones made by loonies - except they clearly didn't actually do any investigating here. There was never the slightest evidence against the victim, excepting the testimony of a known nutcase, but that was enough for these thugs to destroy a man's life.

Incidentally, even if you're an uber-authoritarian this should still worry you. These people are paid to prevent and detect crime, yet it now turns out that they're really spending their time giving random Chinese guys a hard time. Forget the specifics, these guys were given public money to do a job, but instead they were busy dealing with bogus make-work. How exactly is this different from dodgy builders who knock on the door to tell 80 year olds they've got some slates missing?

Back in the day, this would have been the point where I'd have written 2000 words on how the obsession with harassment of the innocent was both the perfect mirror-image of the left's belief that actual criminals were just citizens exploring an alternative lifestyle, and the natural result of their goal of decoupling the law from morality, in favour of law as the arbitrary exercise of state power. But that was then, and this is now, so instead I'll leave it to Ayn:

It is a grave error to suppose that a dictatorship rules a nation by means of strict, rigid laws which are obeyed and enforced with rigorous, military precision. Such a rule would be evil, but almost bearable; men could endure the harshest edicts, provided these edicts were known, specific and stable; it is not the known that breaks men's spirits, but the unpredictable. A dictatorship has to be capricious; it has to rule by means of the unexpected, the incomprehensible, the wantonly irrational; it has to deal not in death, but in sudden death; a state of chronic uncertainty is what men are psychologically unable to bear.

We Are Winning

Who'd have thunk it? A bare plurality of the public support the BBC. Hmmmm... do you think the same Beeboids who sneer at the massive margins for the death penalty and against the EU constitution will suddenly embrace the concept of majority rule after all? At least until their support finally drops below 50% anyway (which on current trends will be next Tuesday)?

No subject shows BBC bias like the BBC itself. Here we have almost half the country opposed to the idea taking money off poor people to give to Metropolitan lovies, but you wouldn't know it if you only watched the BBC. On the contrary, not only does the BBC treat its opponents as Unpersons, it regularly airs long promos publicising its own brilliance in terms that would make Kim Jong-Il blush.

Add in backing vocals from the left's choir insensible and never in history has there been such a wall of noise in support of a bad idea, but they're still losing.

Also losers: our potemkin conservative party. Under the divinely inspired leadership of the Ayatollah Khameron, the Tories haven't just refused to attack the BBC, they've even started stroking it. Opponents of the BBC have found themselves shunned by the conservative establishment, but it's the Tories that have been left on the kerb. While Official Conservatives were arguing that you had to go along to get along, grass roots activists were cutting the ground out from under the BBC.

Equally important, the campaign against the BBC was, and is, a virtual anti-matter version of Khameronism: instead of smug elitists issuing forth carefully-tailored messages aimed at C1 football fans who eat pizza, the BBC's getting battered by ordinary folks who's main source of evidence is the BBC's own reporting, and main tactic is simply fact-checking that appalling rubbish.

There's nothing sophisticated about the campaign against the BBC, and doubtless the BBC would claim the folks involved aren't nearly as exciting as Shami and the rest of their activist pals - in fact, all things considered, there's only one positive thing you can say about the anti-BBC folks: they're winning!

Social Conservatism In A Nutshell

It all comes down to this:

There are saints, there are people who know that there are saints, and there are people who don’t know. One should aspire to rise at least to the middle condition.

Certifiably Liberal

To adopt a Coulterism, the dividing line in politics is no longer between right and left, so much as between sane and crazy.

Today's 'Trust Me, I'm A Doctor' Story

Ooops - forgot to check: are we allowed to mention this without being accused of hating doctors?

Hey, You Know What Schools Need More Of? Feminism!

Why, yes, that idea does come from a wacademic, how'd you guess?

Of course there is one rather large problem with the theory that schools aren't drinking enough of the femiloon kool aid:

Dr Ringrose said most schools see gender equality in terms of exam results, where girls now outshine boys in most subjects.

Well, quite. In so far as the best objective data of school performance indicates that it's boys who are getting the shaft, this would tend to blow Little Miss Victim's thesis clean out of the water. But no - La Ringrose has an agenda to push and she sure as hell isn't going to waste time arguing about 'facts'

She called for teachers to discuss feminism and suggest positive role models, who could include figures such as Virginia Woolf, suffragettes' leader Emmeline Pankhurst and even the cartoon character Lisa Simpson.

Well, I'm all in favour of telling kids the inspiring story of how a socialist weasel recovered and blossomed into a fanatically pro-war social conservative, but I'm not sure about the other two, what with one being a loony who topped herself and the other being a FICTIONAL CHARACTER.

Gosh, it's a real mystery why feminism is being laughed out of the public square!

Teenage chicks may not be, like, totally smart but even they can recognise a bunch of losers when they see them. After all, Paris Hilton may be the definitive example of a celebutard, but at least she's more fun than Ringnose and the rest of the freaks babbling on about how Virgina Woolf drowning herself really stuck it to The Man.

That's the real knock on feminism. Sure, amongst other things there's the irrationality, the deranged hatred of men and children, the immaturity and the obsession with victimhood, but the real problem with feminism is the problem with liberalism in general: it's just so brain-grindingly miserable.

Victory In Iraq!

Yep, guess the fighting must be over.

It's not clambering for position over the bodies of better men, it's moral authority, right?

Liberal Jounos Mugged By Reality Chinese

Hey libs, how equal are all cultures looking right about now?

Hoplophobes In Hell

OK, now can we say these people are crazy?

Exactly

On the subject of movies, this is equally true in Britain:

This is exactly where you and every other supporter of Canadian arts and film blows their argument. These are - not - our stories. Our stories as a nation would never be funded. If they were our stories people would see them. That's how that works.

No, these are the stories of a fringe group of largely well-off white, liberal elites in the Toronto, Vancouver arts scene. That is why they are terrified about losing funding...because then they would have to tell our stories which is exactly what they do - not - want to do.