The Christian Science Monitor, which is not exactly a regular read for yours truly, says it has further documents alleging that Labour MP and all-round jackass George Galloway was on the take from the late unlamented Iraqi regime. Well – we shall see.
A point strikes me – is a man’s views about certain issues automatically more suspect if he has been receiving cash payments? It is sometimes claimed, for example by anti-smoking fanatics, that the views of libertarians on the smoking issue are invalid if they have, for example, been working for a big tobacco firm like BAT or Philip Morris. But surely we need to focus on the validity of the views themselves, and not whether they were given by people receiving money.
Ultimately, whether Galloway did or did not receive payments will not substantially alter my views of him. Even if he had not received a single penny from Saddam, I still regard Galloway as a vile individual for his shameless defence of Saddam’s regime over many years. In some ways, if he held his views for free and was truly sincere, it almost makes it worse.
While Galloway’s alleged bribery by Saddam does not make the man’s views any more credible, whether he received money from an enemy regime or not makes the difference between him being a traitor (which is a serious crime) and a mere idiot (which is not a crime at all). That is what makes them so important.
Yes, because he can’t actually get hanged just for being vicious and evil.
Peter, fair point sir. Ditto Alice. My argument, though, is that there were grounds for judging him a traitor even before these allegations, since he has called on Iraqi soldiers to resist the US and British forces in Iraq. That is treason in my book.
Of course, I do not think he should swing for his vile views.
If the man spoke his mind honestly then by all means criticize his views.
But this man spoke against common sense abusing the prominence of his official title and the trust of the voters that elected him for money.
That’s prostitution. He’s a whore. Not stupid… mercenary.
Whatever happens to him… even if it’s imprisonment… lives were lost every day because of his obstructionism paid for through back-door deals.
Make a proper example of him… hang him. Not legally… a crowd should gather, toss a rope over a tree and hang him leaving his body to rot… then every passersby could see what becomes of those who sell lives for a pocketful of coppers.
I’m much more apt to trust someone who’s open and honest about where his funding comes from. If you’re hiding your funding source, what else are you hiding.
Also, it’s not unreasonable to suspect the altruism of a person who takes money from a source interested in changing his opinion. To believe that that won’t have any effect on his opinion is naive, I think, at best.
We all remember how terrible “Tory sleaze” was of course, don’t we? What was that awful moment some MP accepted a thousand pounds to ask a question in the House?
What’s all this stuff about “treason” and “traitors”?
I thought this was a a libertarian board?!!!
The Monitor is most distinguished US paper without an obvious political color. While the NYTimes and the WallStreetJournal have obvious preferences on how the news ought to come out, the Monitor’s desires are not immediately apparent. From Mr Galloway’s point of view — in Britain, do felons lose their “Mr”?– there couldn’t be a worse paper to find these documents.
I’m interested that libertarians default to the assumption that people are truth-seekers. Yes, I know that Marx thought that was silly but Marx is only repeating what he learned from Hobbes, Adam Smith, James Mill, etc. While it might be useful to debate this way, the truth-seeking assumption induces a motivational heterogeneity between those who pursue the public good of truth and those who pursue the private good of happiness.
cydonia,
You can still have the concepts of treason in a libertarian society, even one with no state.
I think a big part of the reason that Mr Galloway is getting criticised so much is that he seems to stand for everything we don’t like.
[…]
I am tempted to be very critical of Mr Galloway but,
and he’s such a nice man that people don’t tend to openly critisise him,
I wonder if this issue is upseting him more than the collapse of the Soviet Union?