We must end the idea that as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone
– David Cameron, more or less inviting law abiding people to start stockpiling material to make petrol bombs
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Dear Mr. Cameron, glad you beat the even worse guy, but… get stuffedMay 13th, 2015 |
 44 comments to Dear Mr. Cameron, glad you beat the even worse guy, but… get stuffed |
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Cameron is late to the party. We’ve been dealing with that mindset here in the U.S. for the last 6 years. It is now firmly ensconced at all levels of the entire Federal bureaucracy.
Glenn Greenwald just posted an article on this, too.
This is one of those issues which is difficult for me. I agree in principle with the idea the free speech should be an absolute. Yet, there’s a part of me which would like to see all Muslim extremists deported (if not shot), and their mosques burned and the ground sewn with salt. I just have to force myself to take a deep breath and remember first principles. Unfortunately, that’s difficult when the person whose free-speech right I’m defending would be more than happy to deny that same right to me.
Laird, just imagine Mr Miliband with those powers all tested and in place waiting to be perfected.
Judge by actions, not thoughts. You can’t kill every loony, there’d be not enough body bags.
One of the political issues (there are actually quite a lot) that I AGREE with my old enemy the person-in-Kent about is that the political elite (including the Conservative party leadership) have nothing but contempt for the basic principles of the Common Law.
They (the elite) believe in the Blackstone heresy – that Parliament can do anything it likes.
They are also utilitarians – they believe that the “public good” (nice and vague) is the only principle of policy – that there are no hard limits to government intervention.
If Mr Cameron is a Whig (as Charles Moore claimed) he is a “New Whig” – rather like the Duke of Bedford in 1789, welcoming the “active citizens” getting involved in politics and being “enlightened”.
Edmund Burke (a classic “Old Whig”) tried to explain matters to the Duke in his “letter to a Noble Lord” some years later – but the Duke of Bedford still did not understand, after all (to the “New Whig” mind) freedom was not the state leaving people alone – freedom was people actively getting involved in “public life”.
In this sense all the political elite are “New Whigs” not Old Whigs like Chief Justice Sir John Holt (or Edmund Burke almost a century later), let alone Tories (Tories certainly did not believe in the active state – the problem with them was that they had no answer, other than grumbling, if a King did decide to be active).
But will it work?
This getting the state involved to give young Muslims an alternative to Islam – the alternative being “active citizenship” and the worship of the state.
Well the French have been trying this for many years – and NO it is not a success.
Mr Osborne shows that this is no accident.
http://www.samizdata.net/2012/03/the-rule-of-law/
“But what would you do with the warriors of Islam Paul”.
Well I would not be letting in more as “refugees” for a start.
As for converting people to a different religion or philosophy.
A wonderful idea – but not something the state is going to be any good at.
And I doubt that Mr Cameron even understands that the problem is Islam – most likely he thinks the problem is the “perversion” of Islam.
After all, if he asks a Muslim scholar – that is exactly what they will tell Mr Cameron.
And as soon as the good gentleman has left the room, the Islamic scholar will burst out laughing.
Much like the French Revolutionaries who told the Duke of Bedford that the problem was the “perversion” or “distorting” of the Revolution.
And then burst out laughing as soon as the good gentleman left the room.
The state thinks it is fighting “extremists” who are “perverting a peaceful religion”.
It is not – the establishment elite (as usual) does not have a clue.
Oh dear. So tackling crime and violence isn’t enough. We now have to tackle “extremism”.
‘Freedom of speech. Freedom of worship. Democracy. The rule of law. Equal rights regardless of race, gender or sexuality. ‘We must say to our citizens: this is what defines us as a society. To belong here is to believe in these things.
Freedom of speech? Even for “extremists”? And even if someone thinks that what I say constitutes “hate speech”? And what’s this about “Broadcasting watchdog Ofcom to have powers to block videos online”? And what if I am seeking “radicalise” young people. (“Hey, kid. Wanna buy a book by Rothbard?”)
Freedom of worship? Well surely if you really believe in freedom of worship, you must allow people to worship as they choose – even if that includes human sacrifice of non-consenting humans.
Democracy? So, if you happen to reject democracy, you don’t belong here? Woe betide the non-violent, law-abiding person who has Hans Herman Hoppe on his bookshelf. Or, even worse, gives it a glowing review on Amazon.
All this reminds me of why I never was impressed by Cameron.
Good grief. I bow to no man in my contempt for Cameron, but :
“We must end the idea that as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone”
startled even me. Memo to self – stop being so naive.
Mr Ed : “just imagine Mr Miliband with those powers all tested and in place waiting to be perfected”
I’ve never found this one convincing. I can’t imagine the likes of Mr Miliband bothering overmuch with precedent.
What Cameron is talking about is people stay one millimeter inside the law, while actively teaching others to think in ways that will cause some of them to break the law – massively.
Criminals, like bacteria, adapt. Corrupt politicians learn how to collect graft without ever making an explicit deal that can be charged. (Dumb ones still do that and get caught. Clever ones, like the Clintons, take in millions, and don’t get charged with anything.)
This has led to laws criminalizing behavior which is not explicitly corrupt. For instance, former governor McDonnell of Virginia is now in prison for accepting over $150,000 in gifts from people doing business with the state. It was never proved that any of these gifts was a bribe for a specific action. But the Rolex watch, the use of a Ferrari, the $50,000 no-interest loan, the designer-goods shopping spree didn’t all just happen because McDonnell had a pretty face.
Cameron is talking about jihadist preachers and agitators who propagate Islamic-supremacist theology, repeat fraudulent claims about persecution and war crimes against Moslems, glorify dead or imprisoned terrorists as “martyrs”, and continually urge the study of Koranic passages such as the “Sword Verse”.
Eventually one or three or five of their pupils go out and commit some dreadful terrorist act. And then the operators of the school or mosque the terrorists attended say “We broke no laws. Those men acted on their own. We are all law-abiding here. We never told them to do terrorism.” And the preachers at the mosque down the road, who preach exactly the same stuff, say “We have broken no laws. No one from here has done any terrorism.”
Yet.
The law justly prohibits explicit incitement to commit a specific crime. What these agitators have discovered is that crime can be incited by indirect means. The jihadists whose methods are described above never tell anyone to do anything. What they do is, over time, is inculcate beliefs and attitudes that justify jihadist terrorism. And only a few of the targets actually do it.
If a jihadist preaches to several hundred Moslems such that a few will be inspired to commit terrorism, what current law has he broken? Can it be proved that he wanted that result, or knew definitely it would happen? And yet it is clear that terrorism is what the jihadists want, and what they expect.
If five thousand jihadist clerics preach to a million Moslems such that every three or four months, two or three Moslems commit five or ten murders, and this goes on for years… The cause and effect are clear, but there is enough distance between them to prevent any prosecution under current law and practice.
What then is to be done? Cameron is saying that current law and practice will be altered to deal with such men; that their present immunity is going to end.
Is this a very dangerous precedent? It is. But this is a dangerous problem, and the progenitors of it are very skilled at sheltering in the limitations of the law.
Thanks, Laird, for the link to Glenn Greenwald.
I liked this sentence – and particularly the way it ended:
When pressed on what “extremism” means – specifically, when something crosses the line from legitimate disagreement into criminal “extremism” – she evades the question completely, instead repeatedly invoking creepy slogans about the need to stop those who seek to “undermine Our British Values” and, instead, ensure “we are together as one society, One Nation” (I personally believe this was all more lyrical in its original German).
Naive stuff, Rich. As shown by the last government’s “anti-terror” legislation, the real aim of it is to increase the state’s power over the rest us.
Members of the herd occasionally becoming dinner for the wolves is a good thing for the state. It frightens the herd and justifies the state continually increasing its control. The state has no interest in stopping it.
Even though I’m an American I must say that there is nothing wrong with Mr. Cameron that couldn’t be fixed with thirty feet of rope or a firing squad.
I, for one, trust that Mr Cameron’s heart is pure and that this abridgment of unalienable rights will never be extended beyond the initial group at which it is targeted.
Those seeking reassurance may look to civil asset forfeiture in the USA. It has stubbornly resisted any attempt to expand its target pool beyond that which those who wrote it into law had in mind.
Sure, they said “drug barons”, but they were thinking “everyone”. I wonder what DC is thinking?
Laird,
I’m a free-speech absolutist. I’ve always defended the right of Holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis to say the things they do, even though I think they are vile, because I view them as intellectual firewalls, as it were. Once they’ve been silenced, the authorities will quite likely come for me. After all, in politics there is always, always, always a next step, whether it’s anti-smoking campaigns or, as the other rob pointed out, asset forfeiture laws.
Perhaps you should see Muslim extremists in the same way.
Instead of limiting freedom for everyone because of an intolerant minority, perhaps they should stop admitting the intolerant into the country and setting them up on welfare. I lived near Canary Wharf for a while and every time someone spat on me on the DLR because I asked them to stop bullying people or a mob pushed their way through the local mall, I wondered why this was necessary – to import hundreds of thousands of people with no skills and an unbending, intolerant culture.
What was the point of it all?
I’m generally an open borders person but to then set them up in a council flat with free healthcare and a site for a new mosque so they can simply recreate their backward and intolerant belief system – well, where’s the logic?
According to the papers, Cameron and the Conners had polling suggesting they were winning three weeks before the election. How did they keep the smugness off their faces?
Laird, all very fine but then pass a law…
The question is not whether an arsehole politician will win, for they are all arseholes, but rather the real question is which politician is marginally less of an arsehole.
Cameron wins, but only by a cunt-hair.*
*An accepted measurement here in western Canada, by all right thinking craftsmen, of the minimum measurable physical distance. It is much smaller than the fat units used by physicists, atoms and quarks and sparks and strings and whatnot.
Schrodinger’s Dog, I agree with you; I’m a free-speech absolutist, too. It’s just that there are times when some small part of me wishes that I weren’t. Life is immeasurably easier for people who don’t have principles.
It’s all in this speech by a fictional Sir Thomas More. Rather than stop subsidies to vicious layabouts, rather than repeal laws that might inhibit others calling out these people, rather than declaring allegiance to a foreign, hostile army treason, Mr Cameron would cut down all the laws in England that protect freedom for the sake of a soundbite, and let the Home Office and police run around the country with these powers, and targets to meet. The ideas are wrong on their face, and he is, on his own terms, either naïve to think that they won’t be twisted by bureaucrats into wider tools, or, more likely, he knows that they can be so twisted and cares naught.
Lee Moore: it would save Labour time, and give them a nice riposte to those who object, and a chance to laugh at the population.
Rich Rostrom:
So pass a law for certainty. Or, if you post something on Samizdata that leads someone to make a criminal ‘-phobic’ comment, have you not done the same as those you encouraged?
http://youtu.be/PDBiLT3LASk
Laird, I’m afraid I disagree with your last sentence very strongly.
It is the people who ooze through life, always looking for an easy way out of any difficult, complex moral situation, who have the most anxiety, indeed, fear, over every decision they make.
Those who are guided by a thoughtfully developed set of principles may agonize over whether they are making the correct decision in this case or that situation, but they have a moral anchor which holds them steady against changing tides, and, unless they betray their own true beliefs, consoles and reassures them that they have acted in good faith.
Those who act only in the expediency of the moment are trapped in the most terrible and damaging human dilemma of all—either attempt to lie to oneself continuously that you are really a good person, or admit that your moral character is an empty, bankrupt account, containing no value upon which to build a life.
One of the little speeches I have given my children in their youth was a very simple image—every day you will have to look at yourself in the mirror. You may be able to fool everyone else with lies and pretense, but you will always know the truth, and it is incomparably better to look into the face of someone you can respect as a person of honor and integrity, than to gaze into the eyes of a charleton who must fear exposure every minute of every day.
And that is the true ease or lack of it in life. Live your life as a leaf in the breeze and fear every minute that the gust will come which blows you away, or live without fear, knowing your feet are firmly planted in reality, and your honest evaluation of it.
I would submit the latter makes life easier, and immeasurably better, than a life without any principles at all.
Upon further reflection, there is one other basic question that HMG’s proposals raise.
Is terrorism or extremism something that this country has never faced before?
The answer is that the UK has had plenty of terrorism – in living memory. The IRA, INLA, UVF, UFF, (and diverse other groups) killed far more people in the final three decades of the 20th century than Islamic terrorist have ever killed on British soil. There were plenty of people in Ireland in the 70s, 80s and 90s inculcating beliefs and attitudes that incited others to violence. There were plenty of people radicalising the youth of the north of Ireland. So, why did successive British governments not have the brilliance of David Cameron to take these anti-extremist measures?
Yes – the British government did introduce legislation, some of it questionable, in an effort to clamp down on violence. Yes, the IRA was banned. But Provisional Sinn Fein was not. And if Sinn Fein had been banned, does anyone, with the benefit of hindsight, believe that it would have done any good at all?
And come to think of it, the promotion of “extremism” and the radicalisation of young people in Ireland didn’t just begin in the 1960s.
In a free society, freedom of speech includes the freedom to “radicalise” others.
Criminalise opposition to :
Freedom of speech
Freedom of conscience
Equality before the law
These are the fundamentals underpinning a frree society. Islam is a fail on all three counts, the peddlars of victimhood and identity politics on at least two, so win!
Can I nominate Veryretired May 14th 06:21 for one of those Quote of the day thingies?
When the politicians talk about ‘British values’, they do not mean ‘Roast beef and ale’, ‘freedom’ and the rule of law, but a Young Pioneer version of their hobby horses. Here is non-statutory guidance on what schools In England are expected to do to promote British values, an excerpt, emphasis in bold,i.e. To protect respect for the rule of law, we will come after you if you have not broken it.
Rich Rostrom:”Is this a very dangerous precedent? It is. But this is a dangerous problem, and the progenitors of it are very skilled at sheltering in the limitations of the law.”
So this nonsense is aimed at Islamists –by the same gang that are doing nothing to stop tens of thousands more arriving every year?. That alone tells you that Camoron is not at all serious about anti-Islamic activity. WE are the kind of “extremists” he wants crushed.
In addition to the collection of petrol containers, you might acquire some 3D printers that can handle metal fabrication. You can never have enough belt buckles. /wink,wink,nudge,nudge/
Yes Mr Ecks – a political philosophy is not (or at least should not be) a suicide cult.
When the enemy is at the gates one does not open the gates citing “free migration”.
Mr Ed – yes Mr O. endorsing (with zeal) the idea retrospectivelaw.
“What you did was legal at the time – but I am going to make it illegal now, and punish you anyway”.
Even the Emperor Nero would have blushed as such a blatant violation of natural justice.
But Mr O. (and Mr C.) do not believe in natural justice (and neither do the media – OR THE VOTERS).
They are utilitarians – with their “public good” (dear Americans “general welfare” stinks of it as well, words that vague should not be in a legal document).
As for Mohammed.
The Islamists do not “misinterpret” him.
Any more than the French Revolutionaries “misinterpreted” Rousseau.
Had Rousseau lived to see the Revolution he would have cheered on the looting and murders.
And if Mohammed was still alive he would love (not be shocked by) the deeds of both Shia groups such as the Iranian backed “Party of God” in Lebanon and Syria.
And the deeds of the Sunni Islamic state group (backed by the Gulf states).
He would have loved it all – lapped it up.
Western government deny all this – they hide from the truth.
Therefore they are beaten (defeated) from the start.
If the government passed a “law” (a Statute) today confiscating all the private wealth of “the rich” (apart from those in government of course) the BBC would celebrate.
And so would the people who dominate the schools and universities.
Ludig Von Mises describes as similar “egalitarian sentiment” in Islamic culture.
The ruler (every so often) would confiscate the wealth of some rich person – cut off their head, and sell their family into slavery.
And the people would CELEBRATE.
Because they had been taught that their poverty was due to the “exploitation” of the rich.
This is why I hate the “left” – including the “libertarian left”.
They pander to one of the most base human emotions.
Envy of “the rich”.
Veryretired, I guess we’re simply going to have to disagree on this.
“Those who act only in the expediency of the moment are trapped in the most terrible and damaging human dilemma of all—either attempt to lie to oneself continuously that you are really a good person, or admit that your moral character is an empty, bankrupt account, containing no value upon which to build a life.”
That requires a degree of introspection of which most people are incapable (or at least unwilling to undertake). Stated alternatively, anyone capable of recognizing such moral dilemmas would probably have a reasonably coherent moral philosophy to begin with. But if you just “ooze through life”, making the expedient choice at every turn, you “know” that your good intentions make you a “good person”. No further thought is necessary, let alone any self-deception, and certainly there is no need to connect one decision with any another or to be troubled by unexpected (even if entirely predictable) adverse consequences. Such a person is serenely untroubled by moral dilemmas. For such a person life is indeed easy (from a philosophic perspective, anyway).
WOW!
In all this, no one notes that from the original point, the issue is NOT about LAW; it is about Rules of Policy (legislation, enactments, decrees, regulations, ordinances, interpretations, applications by discretion -and all their excrescences).
The Rules of Policy are supposed to have an objective of a “desired” social order and the relationships necessary to it. But, as Oakeshott averred, “there is no such thing as collective choice” by which that desire is determined. Consider first how it is
determined.
So, we are not talking about LAW here, but Rules, as Osborne noted. Be grateful for that much honesty in the land of fabrications (Enactments).
Next, on speech; are we looking at its use as an expression or instrumentality for an objective; a facility for communication or for the structure of a weapon?
The end purpose of the action may determine its legitimate place in our social order.
I guess I wonder when it was that all the known criminals, like the grooming gangs, *and* their enablers in the government, were convicted and punished? Seems like taking on yet another task to do half-assed…
RRS, I know that you’re always going on about the difference between “law” and “rules of policy”, but that’s really not germane to this discussion. For practical purposes statues (or “rules of policy”, if you prefer) are synonymous with “law”. I really don’t see that inserting pettifogging distinctions adds to the debate.
Obviously, the word in my previous post should have been “statutes”. What’s one “t” more or less among friends?
Oh, and with regard to free speech in general, here’s an interesting proposal from one Canadian on turning around the terms of the debate and applying some “sauce for the goose”, as it were, to intolerant leftists. Worth considering.
Mr Ecks @ May 14, 2015 at 9:49 am:
So you think this problem is absolutely unique to Islamists? No other religion, ethnicity, political faction, or criminal enterprise can or would ever exploit these weaknesses?
Or perhaps you think that banning Islam would solve the problem without in any way infringing on freedom of speech, thought, and conscience?
This is a hard problem, with multiple instances, and there don’t seem to be any easy answers.
“I just have to force myself to take a deep breath and remember first principles. Unfortunately, that’s difficult when the person whose free-speech right I’m defending would be more than happy to deny that same right to me.”
There is very little point in defending such principles when you are not living in the kind of place where they actually apply, and when that place is changing rapidly through the import of a culture that is radically opposed to freedom as a point of principle. In that kind of situation there comes a point where you need to defend yourself. And that can’t be done by referencing a reality that does not exist. If you stick to libertarian fundamentalism about free movement or certain other things then you will simply find your country changes as you protest ineffectively, until one day the social democratic state you once feared and opposed has been subsumed and you are living in yet another 3rd world dictatorship with a lot of people who hate you and who want you to die.
What we need to be doing as libertarians is pushing for the kind of changes that will make it harder for people to invade Europe, such as reductions in welfare and housing benefits, taxpayer status requirement for benefits, reduction of immigration, ending of foreign aid, and so on. A large proportion of Muslims are unemployed and probably unemployable. Ending subsidies for their unproductive lifestyles would do a lot to blunt the growth of Islam in this country.
Unless we are actually living in a libertarian world where our property rights are absolute and we don’t have to contribute to subsidies for failure, certain libertarian principles like free movement are only endlessly damaging. Don’t allow your principles to be used against you. Push for piecemeal change in the right direction in a tactical way.
“What we need to be doing as libertarians is pushing for the kind of changes that will make it harder for people to invade Europe, such as reductions in welfare and housing benefits, taxpayer status requirement for benefits, reduction of immigration, ending of foreign aid, and so on.”
I (mostly) agree with that, and with your larger point. We certainly need to be pursuing those sorts of changes. But I don’t think you (I live in the US, not the UK, so I didn’t say “we”) have yet reached the point where the exigencies of self-defense demand, or even justify, the abandonment of principles. The answer to offensive speech is more, countervailing, speech, not censorship. Which is why I oppose all “hate speech” and similar laws (and why I rather like the tactical approach advocated in that article I linked above).
You know, this is a contentious topic, and rightly so. As much as we would like to be on the side of individual freedoms, there are times when you have to ask, “At what point do we draw a line, or is drawing a line ever justified?”
As some wise man once said, “The Constitution isn’t a suicide pact”, and he was right. I recall that the Germans, after having endured the vicissitudes of Nazi suppression of freedoms, drew up a constitution which guaranteed freedom of speech, with an asterisk which said, “…except for Nazis.” In other words, they recognized the inherent evil of a political movement, and seeing that allowing those bastards the potential freedom to undermine the constitution would be self-destructive, said “Nein.”
And here’s the rub. What we need to do is realize that Islam is not just a religion, but also a socio-political system which is not only oppressive, but intrinsically evil — yes, just like Nazism. The only difference is that for the Nazis, state control of industry was paramount, whereas with Islam, social control is more important. (I know, the Nazis had their own particularly vile social control vis-a-vis the Jews, but set that aside for a moment.) Where the Nazis had the Gestapo to enforce their control over the population, the Muslims use religious police to enforce theirs. The only difference between the two systems is the target; the oppressive ethos is identical. Absolute submission to the Party, absolute submission to the will of Allah (as interpreted by his mullahs): what’s the difference?
So why should a liberal modern democracy, for the sake of ideological consistency, allow in its society a movement which would destroy all the principles upon which the democracy is founded?
And yes, I’m quite familiar with the reservation, “Today it’s Muslims, tomorrow it’s ______ [fill in the group].” It’s a perfectly rational reservation, and one I feel keenly.
But at the end of the day, let’s at least recognize evil when we see it, and apply the asterisk to that specific evil.
We in the U.S. have that problem most of all, in that our Constitution specifically guarantees freedom of religion from State censure or control. But we need to realize that not all religions are benevolent, and Islam especially not — whether in its treatment of its own adherents, or those who aren’t. In that regard, it isn’t worthy of Constitutional protection, as if Islam could, it would overturn those same Constitutional protections.
Suicide pact, indeed.
It comes down to this: if the law is fucked, change the law. The state disregarding the law is never an option. Not ever. Bad law and a powerful state is bad enough, but no law and a powerful state is catastrophic, because no one is safe, not ever.
Yes censorship of speech is stupid. It is an authoritarian answer to the problem and not something libertarians should support. But removing subsidies, allowing hostile invaders to sink or swim (maybe literally), and making the general climate less bend-over-and-take-it, less state; more individual, more community. That kind of change hardens a place to takeover and it teaches the kind of lessons that make a society cohesive and its individuals both self sufficient and cooperative in a way that a state controlled society can never be.
I agree Tomsmith
We need to be a little bit more defensive, and a bit less about libertarian principles. Sometimes we will end up looking a bit like conservatives rather than liberals. Sometimes we will need to make common cause with people we do not exactly agree with. But it is what we need to do considering the magnitude of the demographic threat facing Europe and western civilisation in general. If we take all of the people that wish to come to here, many carrying cultures that are inimical to ours, then we will very quickly lose what it is we are trying to protect, and the relatively small change in that thing that we hoped to affect will be forgotten very quickly.
The survival of western civilisation is more important than libertarian philosophy because without it libertarian philosophy is dead. Libertarianism is a subset of western political thought. It doesn’t exist anywhere else.
“Sometimes we will end up looking a bit like conservatives rather than liberals.”
Well, that’s because on some issues (many, actually) I am more like a conservative than a liberal. But I do agree that there are times when we should make “common cause” with those with whom we disagree on other issues. That’s part of what being a “libertarian” means: we have a foot in both camps.
And the UK’s wonderful Interior Minister, er.. Home Secretary, wants pre-broadcast vetting of TV programmes for extremist content, fortunately the non-job Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (surely a job title imported from East Germany?) rejects the proposal.
Of course, the first programme to be barred would be Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose.