Would sharia law be preferable to the regime that our current ruling class has in store for us?
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Discussion point XIVJanuary 21st, 2008 |
 69 comments to Discussion point XIV |
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What, I have to choose between the rock and the hard place?
No.
Actually I am all for a market in polycentric law 🙂
Polycentric law? Not practicable. Too many libertarians ignore cultural practicalities, largely by imagining that the states they propose will be full of people much like themselves. This kind of thinking afflicts Rothbard’s utopian writings, for instance.
People are culturally tribal. The more notional cultural distance between people sharing the same geographical area, the greater the tension between groups. Western libertines trying to share a space with sharia assholes will come to blows. The two groups simply find each other morally repugnant. Societies can’t function like that. You end up with a centralised tyranny attempting to to forcibly keep the groups apart.
If some benighted society on the other side of the world are stoning people for having a fling, well, there’s nothing I can do about that. If it’s the next door neighbours, sorry, I can’t live with it, and most people feel something like that however much one may wish to lecture them about how they shouldn’t. That’s the top and bottom, long and short of it.
I’ve no interest in finding an accommodation with sharia law. People want to come to my country and join in? Great, welcome aboard folks, all the best to you! Want to come here and live like a mediaeval retard? No, fuck off, I’m not the least interested in that.
It just won’t work. Come to that, even if it would work, I don’t want it to. Up yours, dark ages fucktards of the world.
I don’t buy into that dichotomy, it’s not the one or the other.
What the current ruling class has in store for us – in a big chunk of Europe, not just the UK – is a combination of the worst from both sets. If it’s not, they hide it very well.
As to the original question, no, sharia wouldn’t be preferable to the progressivist tyranny. Awful as the latter is, at least it’s ultimately negotiable, which sharia isn’t, as it’s a legal system** based entirely on the question, “what would L. Ron Mohammed have done?”. As such, it’s entirely impervious to rational debate. Also, the progressive regime is not in even vaguely the same league of brutality. The progressive miserablist regime is unpleasant, but it sure as hell doesn’t bury women up to their waist and throw stones at them until they’re dead.
Which is worse, a smoking ban or hanging homosexuals? Not much of a comparison, is it?
*Mind control cult, that is.
The jizya does sound very much like the ‘flat’ tax I have long been a proponent of. However after due consideration, I would say ‘no’.
Attorneys are an insufferable lot already without having a sacred function.
If you’re a male muslim (or willing to convert), yes.
For anyone else, no.
Um, jizya is a punitive tax on non-muslims designed to impoverish them into conversion while funding the islamic regime. Hardly what most people mean by a flat tax.
No. Unequivocally.
Sharia law is deemed eternal and unchallengeable; the corporate Eden-Olympia does admit of change, even as it attempts to pre-empt and ‘guide’ it.
Thaddeus,
You are asking me to compare whatever schemes NeuArbeit has in store and fuck knows what they are with Sharia which at least has the plus-point of being defined.
Much though I hate to say it, I will take the slings and arrows of outrageous Labour over the sheer evil of the mullahs any day of the week.
Having read the whole of that Telegraph article well, oh for fuck’s sake Thaddeus! It’s dark age barbarism. Oh and BTW the crime rate in Saudi isn’t “very,very low” if you include domestic abuse of wives, daughters and domestic servants (more accurately slaves). Or endemic corruption.
The whole idea that sharia has something to offer to the English common-law tradition is insane. I like middle-eastern food, they do fine rugs and nifty tile work but can we leave it at that?
Short version. I will take what our current lords and masters fling at me and ignore it as much as possible but I’ll be buggered sideways before I refuse to let my wife out of the house unless her hair is covered. Buggered sideways by her I might add. And I don’t even want to think of what with.
More seriously I am anti- having parallel legal frameworks in place. I’m all for contracts being drawn up in all sorts of imaginative ways but to have totally different legal structures is just mad. Practically speaking, being Muslim is irreversible so I see this as potentially hideous. You’re born into a Muslim family and you are therefore permanently under their jurisdiction? Pull the fucking other one! My wife quit Christianity a few years ago and what happened? Nowt. No baying mobs, no being held down by her siblings while her parents beat her up, no nothing… Can we extend the same freedom to former Muslims if we tolerate the beards running kangaroo courts?
No, it’s gotta stop. If they want to base jurisprudence on the recitation of a demented C7th kiddy-fiddler and camel piss drinker they can fucketh off in the direction of Islamobad or Riyadh or whatever shit-hole bastion of the One True Faith they desire. They don’t do it in my parish. No fucking way. Not on my watch. Not in my England.
You scratch someone as socially liberal as me and you uncover a complete reactionary.
I’ll just add a “no” along with everybody else’s.
Absolutely not. The only way you can change a closed god-like rhetoric is through decades or even centuries of bloodshed. One has hope of recovering liberty when the law is passed down as “Parliament Saith…” but such is near hopeless if replaced by “The Almighty and Infallible Lord Saith…”
I’ll take Gordon over OBL any day.
This is a bit like the old “hard” totalitarianism versus “soft” totalitarianism debate. On the one hand, Sharia is much worse because it is more severe. Political correctness is awful but it is still preferable to stoning women to death for the crime of allowing themselves to be raped. On the other hand, the “progressive” political culture is far more insidious. It gradually encroaches on our lives and most of its victims welcome it along with the welfare cheques.
Someone who grew up in Tito’s Yugoslavia once told me that its collapse was inevitable because no-one in his generation fell for the state’s lies. It was so clearly absurd and oppressive that, after a couple of generations, it just imploded. On the other hand, the current governments of Europe show no obvious signs of slowing down their gradual but effective erosion of our liberties.
So, I could be contrary and claim that I would prefer Sharia law, simply because then people might finally wake up to what’s happening to them. But that’s probably just wishful thinking on my part, biased because the harshness of sharia law would hurt others more than it would me, so I suppose I’ll have to be honest and join the chorus of ‘no’s.
Well since our current ruling class don’t actively want me dead I would go with them over the mediaeval fucktards of Sharia anytime.
The word is no I believe.
Given that the ruling elite of Europe are a bunch of bullying wimps,it is possible we will get both.Whilst the RE find it easy to trample on the law abiding citizen,the RE cringes pitifully in the face of aggression.
Whilst not on point, I should like to point out to Ian B that the view “people are culturally tribal,” is not true as asocial orders evolve. With the exception of its original (much reduced) indigenous population, The U.S. is probably the only Western Culture that has evolved from the non-tribal. There is no hereditary cultural base of tribalism in the U.S.
In the British Isles, particularly in the U.K., those cultural origins were regulary destroyed by invasions, attacks and disease, though chauvanism remained.
Some attribute the weakness of “Eastern” social orders in responding to modern challenges to the failure of its populations to abandon the “security” or certainties of family, clan and tribe – and thus rely on functions of institutions such as Sharia and others that evolved as those societies encountered challenges in the past.
Okay, I’ll be different.
You’re all assuming that managerial rule will always be roughly what it is now. I don’t buy that. Once the disfunction produced by their rule becomes too great to ignore, how do you suppose they’ll address it?
I should also address something else. Clearly the enforcement of religious sex and family roles isn’t very popular here, but it’s naive to suppose the managerial class will always leave such matters to private taste. At least under Shariah distinctively human life can continue; I suspect if our rulers had their way forever we would eventually live like livestock.
No.
(And could somebody tell the idiots running the Telegraph website to offer a one-page printer friendly version of the article?)
Aaron:
Define ‘human’. But I do agree that it is a tough call – hence my first comment.
I hope you are not planting this question hoping that someone will invite you to explain why it is you think it would be so great for us to have Sharia Law here?
I know how your types work. Planting questions, and insidiously redirecting the conversation to your aims in a very methodological, taught fashion.
Are you working for a group like the Hizb? I’ve seen these methods all before at University where a member hijacked the class discussion only for one aim, to propagandise us students with his creed. I can recognise the insidious methods. I’ve seen your type out there working and posting to forums like this too. Well good luck. I doubt that many want Sharia around these quarters?
And my answer is no. You can’t elevate your system based on the weakness of another.
That’s what you are under Sharia or any such system (e.g. ancient Judaism as described in the Bibble, from which Sharia descends); it’s not just a legal system, it’s a complete life system that tells you how to behave in all things. You have no individuality, just orders and duty. How to pray, how to eat, what to eat, how to go to the toilet, what clothes to wear, what to say, what not to say, how to behave in all manners.
Progressivism is similar of course, because it has the same roots (in religious pietism).Which is why they too are fascinated with preventing/regulating pleasurable indulgence, particularly in food, alcohol and sex.
Absa friggin lootly NO!
Make em and brake em
is what I say
But one at a time!
Not two different ones pretending to be the same!
Gold stars to Nick M and Ian B.
See me in my Office later…
Darcy: I think you are not quite used to the nothing is sacred ongoing debate that is Samizdata. Loosen up a little bit and enjoy it.
Sharia is much worse because it is more severe.
No.
Sharia is much worse because it is based on the fantasy that it is a direct implementation of the word of God, and as such is immutable and for all time. It may not be changed or reinterpreted on the basis of a change in society or knowledge. It sets a society in stone.
Given that Allah does not exist, I refuse to acknowledge that sharia has any place in any society.
My opinion that anyone who could support the implemention of sharia is either a barbarian, a moral cripple or an individual so ignorant that their opinion is worthless, is a secondary issue.
Actually he does exist, and he’s asked me to tell you that Mohammed was not the Prophet, he was a very naughty boy.
Depends on the time frame. Sharia would be worse for the immediate future, but when it comes to what they have in store for us I just don’t know, at least Sharia might wake some people up. Though probably not for the best of reasons.
On the other hand I’m probably being overly optimistic.
Since many secularists believe that Christians want to impose a theocracy, why not add in the Mosaic Law as “option c?” As a Christian and libertarian, I would prefer option c to either of them on the grounds that anyone who has read the Mosaic Law knows that it is far more hands off than either options a or b, and has higher standards of evidence than modern secular American law. For all of its problems, the Mosaic Law does not tolerate the sort of corruption that we Americans deal with routinely in our legal system. Prosecutors and cops would be sentenced to hard time and even death under the Mosaic Law left and right for what they do in the War on Drugs, let alone many other areas of corruption. Yeah, that “informant culture” that police rely on to get drug convictions? Totally not kosher in the Mosaic Law.
I’m not in favor of any of these options, but I think that if you have to choose one of them, the Mosaic Law would be clearly a lighter burden on most libertarians than Sharia or modern secular law as it will be in 10-15 years.
What I favor is a classical liberal state that is neither explicitly secular nor religious. If your government gets big enough that that is an issue, your government is too big. It’s that simple.
at least Sharia might wake some people up.
No.
This is camel nose in the tent stuff. Once the camel gets his nose in, the rest will try to follow.
Keep the camel out, all of the camel. For all time.
Further – all citizens should subject to the same laws in all circumstances. No exceptions or differences on the basis of sex, class, colour, political affiliation, geographical location, or, emphatically, religion.
If someone wishes to make themselves subject to another legal code, in addition to the one all are subject to, that is their free choice, but the state may not recognise, condone, cajole or condem on the matter other than on the basis of standard contract law.
If I want to belong to the local church, mosque, synagogue, chess club or flower arranging society, I agree to observe their rule book; I agree to a contract. Where the rule book conflicts with my rights or obligations in law, the rulebook is void.
So let it be with sharia. For those who are lunatic enough to want it, that is.
I see.
Well I’m lesbian, and I live with my life partner and our daughter. I don’t fancy getting stoned just so that others can learn from my example, nor am I willing to marry a man and pretend to be straight. At best, as a woman, my life as an independent professional would be over. Actually, my life as an independent anything would pretty much be over.
So I think I’ll pass on your grand experiment in raising social conciousness.
But if you’re willing for us to implement the anti-sharia law, where everything is the same except it’s men and straight people being oppressed, then I’m game…
While i would say no to sharia law, if I’m not mistaken one cannot charge a person for violating Islamic moral codes if the evidence were obtained illegally e.g. via surveillance or snooping or random checks on private residence. Apparently privacy is more important than getting a conviction.
This is camel nose in the tent stuff. Once the camel gets his nose in, the rest will try to follow.
I suppose that’s a fair concern.
So I think I’ll pass on your grand experiment in raising social conciousness.
I wasn’t trying to suggest we actually hold an experiment!
Just saying that I don’t think Sharia would last whereas our “own” unfortunate policies could be with us for a thousand years.
Are you working for a group like the Hizb?
You must be new.
As you may have guessed from the avalanche of ‘no’ responses, the commentariat around here tends to have a strongly negative view of pretty much anything that infringes on their right to do pretty much whatever they want (so long as it doesn’t harm anyone else).
The point of the discussion seems to be to try to determine if the ultimate condition of the nanny-state will be as restrictive to personal liberty as sharia is.
Unfortunately, the avalanche of ‘no’ hasn’t really yielded much in the way of substantiative discussion.
Hard to argue with that:-)
Let’s be clear; they do not “want to offer Sharia law”, they want to impose it.
Alisa;
I really do mean that managerial rule, if allowed to develop without limitation, will end up like like Brave New World or Anthem (or Plato’s Republic). That won’t ever happen in the real world because society will become too disfunctional to survive before we get there, but it’s what “our current ruling class has in store for us”. Set against that, Shariah does permit recognizably human experiences. Families or family-like communities are the natural setting for human life. Maybe disfunctional human life, or human life made worse by bad customs, but the life experiences of its people would be (are) of the same genus as ours.
Ian B;
No surviving pre-modern religion actually “tells you how to behave in all things”, except in special cases like monks. Telling you how to behave in many things, including things you rightly consider your own business, is irksome, but not on the same order as what I believe is the logical destination of our current political trends.
It is the nose of the camel. They will want little Islamic statelets next in Bradford and Dearborn, MI. Hell, they’re already doing it with the conivince of the state. Honour killings, forced marriage (and then dragging the rest of the family over from crapistan), FGM are rife in the UK. There’s more than enough morons (and I really mean that) in government circles who think “it’s there culture init”.
Our chinese minority don’t bind feet and our Hindus don’t burn brides if they come with a poor dowry so basically muslim immigrants can straighten-up and fly right or piss off.
When I lived in Nottingham there was a story on the local news. In Derby there were gangs of Muslim men prowling the streets and beating up women who were “scantily clad”. They thought they were toms. They were in fact Derby University students coming back from clubs. That’s a cultural disconnect with very nasty consequences. Now, who has to shift their viewpoint? Us or them?
If it’s us then it’s like me going to France, hiring a car, and insisting on driving on the left and expecting 30 million French motorists to comply with my whim.
Oh, and Ian Bennett is correct. They want to impose it on Muslims so that Muslims remain seperate and non-integrated. It’s part of the plan afterall. Keep the Ummah united until it’s time to strike the big blow. I wonder how many Muslims who are against terrorism are merely against it for tactical reasons. I mean they can never sign a conclusive peace treaty with the infidels can they? Only a hudna.
Aaron: I see your point, and it has some merit. However, it’s not for nothing that I asked you to define ‘human’. Objectively we are all humans, but subjectively every one of us defines “humanness” (to avoid confusion with humanity as human race) differently. Just to pick some random examples, as much as I despise Hilary Clinton, still I have much more in common with her than I do with OBL or Ahmadinejad – and I live in the ME.
I think that you are wrong about that. I am very strongly family oriented – much more so having grown up without one to a large extent. But I’d much rather forgo the whole family experience, than find myself in a family that those people have in store for me. Granted, the alternative the likes of Hilary-It-Takes-A-Village offer is not much more appealing – hence my first comment:-)
The damn bot again. Aaron, I hope it shows up soon.
I’m not clear what point you’re trying to make. A state implementing the laws of the Pentateuch would be as draconian as Sharia. I don’t know whether Islam is what you count as a “surviving pre-modern religion”. You seem to be saying, “no religion is like this, except ones that are” by your first sentence.
Only a minority of modern Jews follow the Mosaic Law strictly, and no state enforces it. A much larger proportion of Muslims follow the Sharia. But the rule systems are there, and are entirely tyrannical. If some individual is insane enough to hate bacon sandwiches or fear clothes with fringes made of mixed fibres, well that’s up to them. If the state starts punishing people for eating bacon sandwiches or wearing polycotton briefs, that’s far beyond “irksome” and is qualitatively the same as the progressivist destination. They are all cultic belief systems intended to impose social control by micromanaging the life of the individual, constantly reminding them in everything they do that they are part of the cult.
Check through the bible and you’ll find that God’s commandment “thou shalt not kill” is given less emphasis than “thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk”. Micromanagement of the everyday; of diet, of clothing, of speech or of sexual matters, is common to belief-system based tyrannies, of which Progressivism is one. The intent is to focus the individal all the time on following the rules and thus glue them into the mind controlled paradigm.
NO!!!!!!
There are two Jihads. The explicit and aggressive Jihad waged by terrorists and supported by Islamic states, and the Jihad implicit in Islam, imposed at the ballot box by demographic conquest. The latter, I suspect, is rarely followed consciously, but is an objective consequence of ordinary peaceful Muslims perpetuating Islamic traditions and practices i.e. their intent is irrelevent.
The regime that the current ruling class will impose, is in fact, Sharia, because soon the current ruling class will be, or be in the service of, Muslims. There is not one predominantly Muslim nation, to my knowledge, with the basics of liberty, freedom of speech, freedom of press, etc.
Interesting that we try to counter arguments for Sharia law by being rational and in so doing are trying to weigh consequences. There is alas no evidence that Sharia law or its proponents have the slightest intention of being rational.
The big plus for Sharia-lovers is someone with a hidden agenda can announce “God says you must do this” and then proceed with plan A, knowing that any objection is the ultimate sin (and therefore punishable) of denying God’s word. Of course you haven’t yourself heard God say any such thing but hey, the priests say they have done and so that’s all that matters…
Sharia is unfair, barbaric and out-of-touch, though it can – thanks to our silly leaders and the MSM such as al-beeb with a corporate “on our knees” approach – seem moderately useful. In the same way the ten commandments is useful, though coveting your neighbour’s ox is out of fashion right now.
So the swift answer is “No, never” to Sharia. But then we have to follow that up with the question as to why so many of our great ones think it is okay. What is the benefit for them in allowing this horrible system of suppression and ignorance to grow and fester in the west?
Allowing it for votes? Hmmm, maybe, but that’s like turkeys wanting Christmas to come early this year.
I and other contributers to this blog want neither Islamic nor managerial tyranny.
What we should discuss is the ways in which they are similar and could merge into something worse than either on their own.
They are similar in that Islamists and illiberal liberals prefer collective security to individual freedom.
To stop them merging we should continue to criticize them both especially by pointing out that they are similar.
We should also continue to present alternatives.
Alternatives will need to build on and keep some elements of both traditions.
I happen to know that the second quote occurs three times in the entire bible. Off the top of my head I can remember 4 occasions in the Pentateuch alone when the first comes up and there are many more.
Your meta-narrative* is wrong. For this reason you will not find no evidence to support your meta-narrative in the bible so I suggest you stop trying.
I also ask you once again to please, please look up what the word “pietism” means and to desist from using it as you use it.
* that concerning belief-system based tyrannies, of which Progressivism is one.
I don’t believe my meta-narrative is wrong. Progressivism is a moral code. The policies it enacts and states it creates are driven by moral fundamentalisms.
I use pietism to describe much of that moral code, which is driven by pietistic morality- i.e. a view that it is the job of the individual to improve the moral character of his society in any way they can. This is what they seek to do. Sweden for instance, home of the “social model”, is described by others, not me, as “secular pietist”. That IMV is what progressivism in general is. It’s based on the idea of imposing a moral character on society, “reforming” people from “bad behaviours”. This is why progressives, like their (religously) pietists forebears, are so obsessed with food, drink (and by extension drugs) and sex. Same mindset with a slightly different flava.
Off the top of my head here, the milk seething business is part of God’s first 10 commandments on Sinai and repeated twice more. Most of His commandments are similar pettiflogging irrationality (shellfish are evil, endless lists of nice frocks for the priesthood, don’t touch menstruating women, your house must have a battlement) which far outweigh the more recongnisably rational laws, which are nothing special anyway (a law against murder, well duh, never wudda guessed that). The primary tone of the Levitical laws is the same as sharia; an all-encompassing lifestyle code policed by clan leaders (we are a nation of priests), hence the apparently innocuous “honour thy father and mother” is really telling you to obey orders from the head of the family, the same absolute control muslims have over their children up to and including killing wayward ones (which is why again the Levitical code helpfully tells you to stone to death disobedient offspring). It and sharia are cut from the same cloth, they differ only in details. They’re primitive tribal codes. If you went back in a time machine to ancient Judea, you’d find it looking like a current Islamic state. They fought their war against modernity 2000 years ago when they took on the Romans. We see something similar occurring today.
Worryingly, a splinter sect of fanatical Jews eventually overwhelmed Rome; the Christians. Let’s hope we don’t get a replay of that with Islam. Frankly it’s not looking good though. Which is why we need IMV to get past the conservative “family values” malarkey. It’s a less extreme code but the same qualitatively as sharia, descended from the same source. We’ll never win if we’re publicly tacitly agreeing with the old bearded men in dresses of Islam about how nice girls ought to behave, and stuff like that.
Because of Sweden’s Lutheran heritage. (Big hint there)
No, just no.
No. It might be more accurate to say it was an all-encompassing lifestyle code for clan leaders. Though still wrong.
The verses you are referring to are in Deuteronomy and give a legal framework for such a punishment, but in no wise tell anyone to stone their son.
How would an injunction to honour your mother be telling you to obey clan leader? Interestingly in a repetition of the verse using a verb translated as “fear” Mother is placed first.
What about all those blokes at the Battle of Lepanto?
Your meta-narrative does not fit either progressivism (which is generally libertine though you won’t admit it) or the bible or anything much to be honest. Abandon it.
Oh no, not another thread turning into Comparative Religion for Dummies. For the record, I tend to agree with Gabriel, but then I am Jewish, so maybe I am biased. Ultimately though, I really don’t care, and neither should you. The writers’ (whoever they were) intentions don’t matter any more. What matters is how the followers interpret their books right now, and how are they likely to interpret them in the future. Just my two cents.
Oh, pooh. You’re just not looking. The progressive code (currently) grudgingly allows sex outside marriage, then piles on a whole heap of moral impositions that people a few generations ago wouldn’t have believed. It’s deepy joyless. Luckily, most youngsters have learned to ignore it.
If you don’t like “pietist”, well- here’s Rothbard on here again. Sweden I’ve already mentioned. Look also at the closely intertwined British Labour Party and Scottish Methodism, or Gordon Brown, proud son of the manse, describing how the little people came up to the big house to be reformed by his wise priestly father. But if “pietist” is too denominational, perhaps you can offer another word to describe restrictive relgious moral codes, with an impulsion to impose them on society, translated into a secular form as progressivism. Really, I hate arguing semantics. It’s often difficult to find an appropriate word as most of the useful ones have been twisted beyond use (esp. “liberal”). I’m all ears.
Oh, well that’s alright then. So long as it’s just an option.
In the Judaic society there are some enforcement roles given to mothers, rather than just fathers. The obligation to circumsise being one obvious one. Remember, we’re talking about a law made for societies in which extended family groups, clans, were the building block, not one married couple with 2.4 in a semi in Surbiton.
No doubt an apologist could manage to claim the Quran is a lifestyle code for mullahs, not their flock.
As to the milk seething, my apologies, my brain is rusty. I did go through the whole narrative once and I’m remembering from that. It’s an odd narrative with Moses sprinting up and down the mountain with God apparently yelling commandments regardless of where he is. Kid seething is the final commandment of the first batch of commandments. Quickly flicking through Exodus though, I note that among the collection of commandments in this first batch we find (21:17)
“Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.”
Looks pretty unequivocal to me. Depends what “curse” means of course? Swearing at them, or a magical curse? After all God believes in magic-
“Do not allow a sorceress to live.”
(22:18)
Screwed up me HTML. Should have been-
“well- here’s Rothbard on
pietism and progressivism and here again.”
Alisa;
I don’t think family is simply an experience like others which one can choose rationally to have or forego, any more than language is just another skill. Some unfortunates have always been deprived of either or both, but the fact of their humanity doesn’t make their loss any less fundamental.
In any case, the inclinations of the members of your particular family count for much more than the formal law about families.
Ian B;
How do you get from special cases within one religion to whole religions being “like this”?
There is no legal punishment prescribed for either of those in the Mosaic Law; both are treated as entirely cultic matters. I don’t recall the details, but as far as eating unclean meats I believe the action prescribed was a washing.
I have checked through the Bible and this is completely wrong, although I couldn’t have answered in the detail Gabriel did. The fact that you think the no-kid-seething rule is part of the Ten Commandmends would seem to indicate you have at best a vague idea of what the Bible says.
You’re engaging in hyperbole and I don’t think you even realize it. The mere existence of rules about those things in not micromanagement. Every society has those, either in the form of formal law or of some combination of law and informal social norms. Some of them will always strike someone as petty, and some may really be bad ideas.
Your later snide mentions of Christianity (which has the fewest rules governing daily conduct of any major religion I know of) and family values, show that your objection is much wider than the existence of certain rules. I doubt I’ll be able to adequately answer your actual objections in this venue, but I would say this: your variety of libertarianism cannot defeat managerial progressivism, because you’re trying to beat something with nothing. That is, you’re trying to replace an order — a bad order, which is destructive of liberty and, if pushed far enough, of human sociality itself — with a mere absence of order. But an order is necessary for the existence of society; the only question is, what kind of order? The breakdown of informal order means its replacement by formal order backed by force. The managerial class hates Christianity far more than it does libertarianism, and that’s why. (They divide over how seriously to take Islam as a rival.) Christianity is an alternative to progressivism, libertarianism by itself isn’t.
I’m with ya Ian B!
I’ve had a fucking ’nuff of prudes (who are invariably secretly depraved beyond belief) snooping in the bed-chamber and I think you’re right about religously based mores allowing sharia an easy inroad.
Because I’ve heard enough “liberals” consider Islam to be merely a stricter version of Christianity. And I know how much our lords and masters would love us to “give up the booze and the one night stands”. Oddly enough my wife lived on Baker Street when I first became aware of how puritanical the left can be.
But, I’ve dated Christians of almost all stripes and a Jew (and an atheist communist lesbian but that’s another story) and guess what? They didn’t take notice or I was especially charming in my velvet jacket and sneakers. I suspect the former but would prefer the later to be the case. I don’t think that applies with Muslims though. Islam is that weird thing. A seriously breeding religion that is anti sex as fun. Not unique in that but very effective nonetheless.
Upon which thread did you post your email address again? Yeah, I could find it but I’m lazy, though I wouldn’t mind dropping you a line. Not least to point out that green pubic hair does nothing for me (or most folks?). I’m sure something other would turn-up, self-employment springs to mind.
Gabriel,
So what’s wrong with libertines?
Aaron,
Tommyrot. Absolute bilge. Individual freedom is enough and it doesn’t require fairy tales from the desert to sustain it. You are shading very close to saying such nonsense is necessary for society and I’m saying that I can be a moral human being without it.
I am a proper agnostic. I don’t believe in anything. Hell, there’s a few things I go along with because they seem likely but that’s your small onion.
So do these rules have any force or not? I don’t believe that you’re so naive as to think an ancient Israelite who persists in eating ham sandwiches and wearing snazzy clothing wouldn’t suffer at the hands of his tribe. He’d be an apostate, by breaking God’s law and, at the very least, thrown out of the nation. Cultic laws are imposed by cult members. They’re not optional. Surely you know that.
I apologise for daring to criticise that which I do not know perfectly, and likewise having even less knowledge of the Quran and Das Kap I will never criticise Islam, or Marxism again. Indeed, I’ve only read the EU Constitution once. Guess I can’t comment on that either. Heh.
The point I was making, as I’m sure you’re aware, is that the Mosaic Code is a vast litany of ridiculous laws (kid seething being just one example) whose number far outweigh the “famous 10” but which Christians arbitrarily ignore and so do most Jews, because they’re so fecking silly. Got a battlement on your house? Keep the festival of booths? Pull the other one. The weight of those laws far outweigh the few that Christians proclaim as “THE 10 Commadnments” and if any state applied the entire code as written in the Bible, it’d be a hellhole equivalent to sharia of pettiflogging interference, and petty flogging for trivial crimes, which was my point. The difference with Islam is that under Sharia they do apply their entire prophet’s code- and that’s why Islamic states are murderous hells.
Additionally, if you were to read the Bible as it’s written, rather than as you prefer to think it is, you’d realise that “THE 10 Commandments” have no “The” about them. They’re just 10 commandments out of scores of commandments, with no more emphasis given than to kid seething or harvest festival. I don’t think kid seething is “part of the famous 10”, but it’s a commadnment, offered in the same tranche of commandments by the furious smoky mountain god. Read Exodus from around chapter 19 on. You may also note, if you make the effort, that the famous 10 commandments weren’t written on the stone tablets; what Moses came down the mountain with was reams of crap about how to build the tabernacle. It’s retconned in Deuteronomy, I believe.
It’s not hyperbole to note that religious cults use micromanagerial rules as a mind control technique. It reminds the cultist that they’re the property of the cult, all the time, and discourages them from thinking independently. No society needs rules about what foods you may eat or what clothes you may wear or which hand to wipe your arse with. These are insane. It is this mindset I am arguing against.
“Snide”?
Christianity doesn’t follow the mosaic law, never did because it never would have sold to the Gentiles. Its unnecessary beliefs regarding, say, sex are now largely not enforced due to Christianity being kicked off its perch a few centuries ago, to our enormous benefit.
I’ve written a lot on this site already on this subject, and those who disagree generally lampoon my POV as being in favour of chaos. I am not. I am in favour of getting rid of unnecesary laws and rules. If I must argue against absurd Bronze Age sexual busybodying by proposing some other form of sexual busybodying, that’s no use to me.
You’re using the liberal argument of “freedom would be nice but it’s not practical”. This is rubbish. Libertarians have a fine set of rules based on the good principles of life, liberty and property rights. This is the moral code of libertarianism if you want to call it that. It requires no further supplementation of arbitrary injunctions against ham sandwiches, beer, shagging behind Spaggers or wearing mixed fibres. There is plenty of “order” to be found in a libertarian and “libertine” society. Order spontaneously forms between people. What you’re arguing for is for some higher authority to make rules that favour what you think is “right”, which seems to be based on “family values”, which is watered down Mosaicism, another mild form of the sharia. Which is the point I’m making.
Conservatives believe that their arbitrary interference based morality is universal. It’s not. It’s the product of a Judaeo-Christian heritage. Ridding ourselves of that dreary, arbitrary prudish heritage is not “the breakdown of informal order”. It’s the continuation of the shrugging off of religious diktat. A society without it is happier, freer and all around better off.
I don’t know how to sell libertarianism. Maybe it can’t be sold. Sometimes that’s true of good ideas. Maybe we’ll fall under sharia, or the progressive misery. But if the only alternative to Islam or Collectivism is praying to somebody’s angry God, our lives dictated by religious tracts and interfering priests, that’s a counsel of despair. Christianity isn’t an alternative to progressivism. It’s an earlier version of it. We can only escape one collectivism by submitting to another?
No. I want better than that.
Hey, it’s a free market. You don’t like it, go buy something else. That’s how it works, isn’t it?
It does not seem to occur here that a Deity (anthropomorhic or not) needs no “Law.”
Human interactions (with one another and their surroundings) seem to call for or require “Law.”
Law is thus more likely a human function, for human, not Deific ends (which have proven pretty indecipherable so far – a few always claim otherwise, but pass on).
In determining a preference amongst systems of “Law,” we might well be guided by what each system represents itself to be, and thus what it portends for human interactions; not least the ability to “adjust” the system.
Who believes that? Not me. It’s our heritage and we are lucky enough that it’s a good heritage, so we should keep it.
Baloney, observant Jews obey the same cultic rulings (which are, indeed, non optional in a moral sense) now, indeed much stricter versions of them. The only ‘punishment’ is social ostracism and barely even that.
You are inventing a background to the bible and then condemning it on the basis of your phantasm.
Both these claims are empirically false. Your meta-narrative does not hold true, but it may be correct for whatever parallel universe you’re posting from.
Again, no relation to the real world here. The 19th century in Britain was if anything the most Christian there has ever been.
Just stop tlaking about things you know nothing about. The 10 commandments are repeated in Deuteronomy in a manner which plainly gives them special status.
Rothbard appears to use “pietist” to mean American puritans, who he defines primarily in opposition to Lutherans. It’s odd because though the man is a certified kook, he’s not generally ignorant.
The term you are lloking for doesn’t exist, because it describes a phenomenon that doesn’t really exist outside the heads of certain meta-narrative mongers.
“Would sharia law be preferable to the regime that our current ruling class has in store for us?”
That IS what they have in store for us.
Ian B is a tragic figure really. The west gets less and less religious and instead of getting freer, it gets less free and the less religous the area the less free it becomes.
So, instead of admitting that he is wrong, he repeats himself over and over and over and over again.
Gabriel: and that, good sir, is your last ad hominem, please.
Also I would indicate you look up causation and correlation and learn the difference.
Both Ian and I are making casuative arguments (well actually only he is in this thread, but I have in plenty of others).
As it happens his causative argument contravenes all the known facts so it must be wrong. The difference between correlation and causation doesn’t come into it unless we were trying to establish the truth of my causative argument (which does fit the facts), but I wasn’t.
Here’s a hint, Gabriel; emphatically stating a personal belief doesn’t actually make it true.
I’d love to see how sharia actually applies to most of the things that fall into my lap.
“In the name of the Profit (Peanut Butter Upon Him) I have stopped you for speeding. No, you may not see the lidar, and to deny its existence is blasphemy…You may either pay this within twenty days, or appear to contest it on the court date appointed by Allah the most whatever. If you do not appear, then you are an infidel dog and shall be stoned!”
Not that most people I deal with would object to being stoned. This is Colorado, after all.
No, because I’d essentially be forced to convert. Whether that’s a good thing by itself or not, I tend to display a rather poor attitude towards such ultimata.
And no, because of the way that the hadith discusses dogs. I like my dog a hell of a lot better than I like most people.
MikeT:
(I have a bad feeling that I’m going to regret this.)
Meaning what, exactly?
(Should someone post the .jpg of Admiral Ackbar yelling “It’s a trap!”?)
Good God in heaven….
The U.K. allows Tribal Witch Doctors to intervene in divorce and financial proceedings? But only for Muslims? i.e. – unequal protection under the law?
I used to wonder why England had so many Ultra-Libertarian blogs. It’s getting clearer. I’ve got to stop reading so much history and catch up on Current Affairs.
Can someone point me toward any books, sites, or posts that might explain how this legal situation evolved?
Gabriel – please take no offense over my use of the word “evolve”.
Can someone point me toward any books, sites, or posts that might explain how this legal situation evolved?
Yes – Read Samizdata, EUReferendum.blogspot.com and Tim Worstalls blog, all for the entire time they have existed. Picking out whichever postings sound interesting, and following the relevant links to wherever.
That is about the best education you could get on how this country got into its current state.
Gabriel – please take no offense over my use of the word “evolve”.
Sigh,
My attitude is, if someone takes offense at the use of the term ‘evolve’, then I will happily heap all the offense on them that I can.
Well there are four major schools in the Sunni tradition of understanding Islamic law. The smallest and least favoured was picked up (after centuries of neglect) by Wahabbi in the 18th century – but it only became really important after the House of Saud got all that oil money.
And the Shia (5s, 7s, and 12s, ) have there own understanding of Islaminc law (the Iranian regime are 12’s – but there are differences even among 12’s).
Still the whole thing seems a bit arbitrary.
For example, every Islamic ruled country has fiat money – even though Islamic law would seem to forbid this (they should be using gold and silver coins – and not debasing them either).
Still what do I know – I can not even read Classical Arabic.
No doubt removing a women’s makeup with a bit of material with a razer blade in it is much more important than limiting government in any way.
In their refusal to limit government power (whatever the traditions of Islamic law say) the Islamic radicals (both Sunni and Shia) have a point in common with our own rulers.
Gabriel – you are being too hard on Murry Rothbard.
“Well that is a bit much comming from a person who never misses a chance to kick Rothbard now he can not reply”.
Yes I know – but there is one rule for me, and a different rule for everyone else (well that is my position).
Rothard did not contrast what he considered the bad guys in American religion “with Lutherians”.
He held that Lutherians were divided.
What Rothbard was on about was the division between those Christians who tried to build Heaven on Earth (or at least something like it) and those who thought one could not do this.
You might think that Murry Rothbard had a Roman Catholic wife and was influenced by people who either were Catholics or became Catholics.
It is division in all the major demoniations of Christians.
Including the Roman Catholics – especially since Vatican II.
Between those who concentrate on building the Kingdom in this world and those who think that this is (at best) folly.
In the past one way to tell (just by looking) was that those who tended to favour a lot of ceremony and ritual (and lots of stained glass, and robes and high music and….) tended to be “other world” regarding – and those that did not tended to want to build the Kingdom here.
But this is not a perfect test.
For example, (as Rothbard knew) some very plain Protestants were antistatists, and some very High Church people were statists.
In the end it is just a rule of thumb.
To find out someone’s opinions just looking round their Church is not enough – you have to ask them or read their writings.
To make this “up to date”.
Hillary Clinton is straight from the “Social Gospel” type of Progressive theology, seeking to build the Kingdom in this world.
Or (to put in very simple terms) Senator Clinton is a space monster.
No. Socialism is ultimately a secular set of convictions, amenable to rational disproof – of which there is a bucketload. As Nick M says, a religious belief system which admits of no error and where heretics are regarded as fair game for murder is disgusting.
Islam’s treatment of women ought to be sufficient answer anyway. I agree with Ian B’s doubts over polycentrism. I just cannot see stoning-to-death of adulterers existing side by side with the English Common Law. It would be like a murderer sharing a flat with a Quaker.