good read, but just the photograph at the top of the article raises many questions. for instance the existence of the photograph itself: how was it possible someone was there at that exact moment to make that photograph (or a still from a video)? who was filming/taking photographs there? but perhaps more importantly is the question how is it possible (plausible) that a 'random' onlooker happened to have a bread knife with him; and how is wielding it in his hand considered a 'right'? or is he defending himself? if so, self-defence against what?
"....Coskum’s actions had clearly caused ‘distress’ because they had led a random Muslim onlooker to attack him with a knife....." << 'clearly'; 'because'....? since when makes distress one wielding a knife? perhaps it's distress that triggered Coskum's actions. have experts been involved in establishing that knife-man was experiencing distress, have they elaborated on that in court?
this is a horrible case, whatever way one looks at it. basically a copy of a book was burned, not a religion. humbly recommended: watching Monty Python's 'Life of Brian', very sobering.
horrible! still doesn't explain the sudden appearance of the knife-wielding man and the over-the-top aggession. difficult to say how genuine this incident was.
Malaise indeed. The community which finds stabbing offensive did not have its rights protected when the political decision was made that the stabee should be prosecuted first. It seems opposition to the religion, which can have no human rights, was speculatively conflated with opposition to members of the religion in order to secure a conviction.
The narrative that a Muslim who happened to be passing was offended by Coksun and just happened to be carrying a long knife for no particular reason is not credible. Did he snatch the holy book and attempt to put out the flames? Or did he proceed directly to administering the punishment for defilement?
Meanwhile, the transvestite 'Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence' are never prosecuted in the UK.
It's really difficult to tell from the footage (https://www.instagram.com/reel/DKaBUzXp9Am/). The guy sort of appears from nowhere - one wonders if he was a neighbour watching from a window who just picked up a kitchen knife and went into action?
The attack appears to have taken place at the security barrier on Rutland Gardens London SW7. The knife-wielding man walks through the gate of the building Rutland Court at the end of the video.
I've seen no evidence of that so far. The Turkish Embassy is in Belgrave Square, one kilometre east-south-east of Rutland Gardens. It's the Turkish Consulate and Labour Office which are in Rutland Gardens, according to online sources. Rutland Court is an apartment building.
In "democratic" Britain (and in the US Constitution) we have tried to get around this issue by splitting the State into several parts.
The part of the State that enforces the rights (the legal system) is separate from the part that makes the rights (parliament). The enforcement part of the State is free to decide who has rights, BUT it must follow the rules (laws) set down in writing by parliament.
Parliament is not bound by the Human Rights Act (but the legal system is). Parliament can make any law it likes, including a law that breaches the Human Rights Act.
Some Lefties try to pretend that the Human Rights Act constrains parliament, but of course it does not. It only constrains the executive and the legal system. In the final analysis, parliament could even repeal the Human Rights Act itself.
Of course the Human Rights Act has so many exceptions written into it that it is empty anyway, but that's another story!
Yes, and that separation between the juridical and legislative elements of the State is difficult to maintain. Whenever law is interpreted by a judge he is in fact himself making law - which is, really, 'legislative' in the broad sense!
It has been decreed in modern liberal philosophy that there is no such thing as 'neutral' law, that law is completely political - it is another branch of politics, so to speak - and its entire raison d’être is to achieve political goals.
I suppose it’s obvious, but I’d never really thought about it until reading your essay, that once you go down the road of establishing human rights in law, you have to recognise that those rights will need to have a hierarchy of importance to address the situations where those rights conflict. And even in the world pre HRA 1998 when freedom of speech was merely a common law right most of us probably accepted that in the implicit order of priority the right not to be slandered or libelled ranked above the right to freedom of expression. However what nobody could ever have contemplated was that there would ever be such a thing as a right not to be offended.
If we must have human rights law, and I’d rather prefer to return to the status quo ante HRA98, then as citizens we are entitled to know what this hierarchy is so that when we honestly exercise what we believe is our right, in the manner of Mr Cokrum, we know where we stand relative to other people and in sufficient detail. Would we, for example, be equally as liable to State penalty if we burned a bible as a Quran?
I also wonder how far the judge reached his conclusion based on a principled ranking of Muslim sensibilities over freedom of expression rather than on identity grounds. For example, say that the Quran burner was a Westernised, liberal Muslim who wanted to make the point that, despite being a devout Muslim, he wanted his fellow Muslims to recognise that in living in a secular society such as Britain it was important to acknowledge and accept the right of the majority population to ridicule and criticise Islam. And say that the objector was not a fellow Muslim but a white lady with no devout religion other than Social Justice, as signified by the Guardian tucked under her arm, who remonstrated and then resorted to knifing our enlightened Muslim in the name of Multiculturalism and the repudiation of Islamophobia. On whose side with the judge have come down in this (unlikely but possible) scenario? Would the judge wish to dismiss the sincere argument of a Muslim in defence of freedom of expression as a necessary component of Muslim integration into our society?
Yes, this is an astute comment. The intrusion of rights discourse into our constitution has resulted in a mess: we all have rights to things, but those rights all have to be traded off against each other on an ad hoc basis and there is no clarity about which right trumps which. The problem is that this suits the governmental apparatus very well, because making rulings about which right trumps which in one particular context or another is a justification for its existence.
New government To Do List: 1. Repeal HRA 1998, 2. Enact the US Constitution?
I have always liked the wording of the First Amendment:
" ‘Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech’"
because the premise is that freedom of speech is a natural right (and thereby also acknowledging that individuals have natural rights) whereas our flimsy Magna Carta does the opposite of purporting to give people rights, which in fact should have been acknowledged that they have by virtue of natural law.
Had the Tories any balls, as soon as Clegg was ditched, these were the first priorities. No particular order
1. Leave the ECHR. Original charter written by English lawyers based on the long standing rights WE gave the world. So we'd be left with real rights, which should protect us form the state, and not as now, weapons to oppress is.
2. Dump HRA. Same
3. Dump the (In)Equality Act, a truly pernicious piece of legislation which achieved - intentionally - the opposite.
Add to the Magna Carta, the 1689 Bill of Rights, and which remains on the statute book, though you wouldn't know it
Leaving the ECHR would be time consuming and full of legal snares. Treaties do not have direct effect in the UK - they need enabling legislation - hence the HRA 1998. Repeal that and job done. Ignore the ECHR.
Yes, repeal the Equalities Act ✅
Magna Carta is useless, failing as it does to acknowledge the natural rights of all of us; it graciously (sarc.) grants the right of habeas corpus, which actually pre-dates Magna Carta, and it sets up the idea of trial by jury. Nothing else. The 1689 Bill of Rights moved the King's powers to parliament, but the Executive retains the Royal Prerogative on many matters and should be abolished. The Royal Prerogative and lack of parliamentary oversight (which is pretty feeble anyway - I could give you several thousand words on that subject) is how we get sucked into these outrageous supranational organisations and how Starmer can ponce around promising our forces to protect the borders of random countries, even though he can't protect our own.
Our so-called constitutional arrangements might have creaked along when we didn't have a government of traitors and buffoons and Marxists, but they are hopelessly inadequate now. Talk about failing a stress test!
As for the sausage-fingered, closet Islamist, KC the WEF factotum..........he should be the end of the line with a big transfer of property to the National Trust.
Would that we would ignore the ECHR. Other countries do at will. Us? Well a huge number of Tories say we shouldn't leave it, as for Reform, well who know what they think any more with endless contradictory statements flourishing. There may beno other option but to vote for them, but Farage seems happier to hog the spotlight whilst their "policies" seem to get watered down by the day.
Maybe that's a politic move designed not to scare people away, but...
And my wife and I were only talking at Breakfast about how KC seems determined to bring an end to the monarchy. I'm a big fan of constitutional Monarchy - they are the most stable democracies we have; but I always thought that the death of the late Queen would signal the end here.
All gone to shit not to put too fine a point on it. And I have no doubt that Starmer is personality disordered, a traitor like his best mate Harmer
FUBAR doesn't even begin to describe it. Some stiff backbone will be needed to deal with this, with people being prepared to say NO and to speak the truth regardless.
As ever, a concise illustration of the sheer nonsense of the existence of something labelled ‘human rights’. I’ve previously made the point that a right can only ever be granted by something, or someone. David’s excellent honing in on the issue of who/what is the grantee, clearly points the finger at ‘the State’ as the only possible answer to that question. The only other possibility would be, as David alludes, a religious/cosmic power.
It follows that the inability of humanity to create a system of societal organisation in which every individual accepts a natural ‘duty’ to respect the existence of every other individual, has resulted in the necessity to create a society in which a system of governance has been handed that religious/cosmic power to become the grantee of rights.
The obvious problem is that, having handed that power to government/the State, the electorate become powerless (other than instigation of civil war/revolution) to do anything other than abide by whatever the State has decided, at any given moment in time, is necessary to enable the State to conflate the concept of acting in the public interest with a continuance of its power as the grantee of rights.
That the ‘rights’ are enforced by dint of legislation, which only the State has the power to create, has resulted in an ever increasing lunacy whereby the State’s only rationale is to create legislation and so the statute books get ever more expansive because once ‘on the books’, legislation is rarely, if ever, rescinded.
So, the concept of ‘rights’ is actually a non sequitur. Humanity has granted them to themselves, in an effort to overcome the societal inability to govern itself. Every other sentient organism on this planet abides by the natural laws of existence and they live/die as a result of what nature metes out.
I see no need for the analysis of Kojeve, the ECHR wording quoted in the example re. freedom of expression seems to me clear in itself about the need to arbitrate between different 'rights' in the fashion that was done by the judge in the recent case under coinsideration.
So, essentially, what we have now is victim 'Top Trumps', and the outcome depends on where you sit in the victim hierarchy. Muslims are apparently quite near the top.
An excellent article that aids our understanding of Carl Schmitt’s take on elite theory, particularly in relation to liberal democracies. Schmitt outlined that ‘sovereign is he who decides on the exception’. This is pertinent in our increasingly two-tier system and reveals ‘freedom of speech’ as a legal fiction, contingent upon, as you demonstrated, the determinations of our elite regarding the exceptions.
Neema Parvini has referred to this as ‘the myth of the neutral state’, meaning that the state and politics were never, and could never be, separate. (BTW, his book ‘The Populist Delusion’ is an excellent chronology of Elite Theory).
Yes - it’s an important insight but it does pre-date Schmitt. It’s really a feature of what has been called ‘political jurisprudence’. Schmitt is the one who brings it into sharpest focus.
Great article - thank you. The phrase “human rights” is clearly an oxymoron, because as we are increasingly witnessing in the courts, judges are interpreting law on the basis of a hierarchy of rights for groups, a hierarchy that they decide upon, so that an obviously wronged party is instead made out to be in error of the interpretation of the law. The person committing the wrong is now placed as the victim and the victim becomes the one performing a greater wrong according to the hierarchy! Rights appear to trump freedoms when its freedoms that should confer rights.
Does this idea also relate to the idea the State can decide what terrorism is and isn't?
As The Telegraph article mentions ' Concern over mass migration is terrorist ideology, says Prevent.....Online guidance says ‘cultural nationalism’ could be a reason for referring someone for deradicalisation '.
I have always thought "we" are only ever allowed to exercise the "freedoms" "they" allow us. As a woman, I have always believed women have been allowed out of their box by men and, go too far, men will put us back. This is seen in the fashion for men in dresses to compete in female sporting events or read stories to small children whilst wearing lipstick. Power gives and power takes away. By this reckoning, we can assume it's only a matter of time before the Muslim element take offence at pork products in shops, unveiled women in the streets and dogs in the park. The law is an ass.
I would be interested in your take on gato malo's libertarian analysis in light of your recent post on the inevitability of the State taking sides as the only Third party to enforce human rights.
Society is a wreck, therefore dismantle the State and free people to pursue the Good Life as cooperating Individuals who will create a (virtuous) Society and a Just State protecting Negative Rights only? Because there is a subset of humans who are not fundamentally capable of abstract morality... and never will be?
/quote
this is a sort of hideous inversion from sound ideas like “society and a just state exist to protect the negative rights of the individual” and turn them inside out into “society exists to allow the least reasonable to make positive demands of everyone and anyone and to live aggressive, oppressive lives consequence free.”
it’s like they have been mind wiped of the basic ideas of cause and effect and accountability.
this is, i fear, the point. it’s the exact goal of ideas like the soros “open society” movement that has been so prolific in taking over DA and AG and prosecutor offices. these turned out to be cheap ways to grab large swathes of societal power because it does not matter one whit what the law says if those who enforce it do so selectively. the selfsame screechers bawling “no kings” have placed unaccountable authoritarian power in the judiciary elevating it to a position of societal dominance as “keeper of what’s allowed” and the determinant of who gets held to account for what.
there is a quite substantial subset of humans who are not fundamentally capable of abstract morality and such structures essentially turn them in to civilizational WMD’s.
good read, but just the photograph at the top of the article raises many questions. for instance the existence of the photograph itself: how was it possible someone was there at that exact moment to make that photograph (or a still from a video)? who was filming/taking photographs there? but perhaps more importantly is the question how is it possible (plausible) that a 'random' onlooker happened to have a bread knife with him; and how is wielding it in his hand considered a 'right'? or is he defending himself? if so, self-defence against what?
"....Coskum’s actions had clearly caused ‘distress’ because they had led a random Muslim onlooker to attack him with a knife....." << 'clearly'; 'because'....? since when makes distress one wielding a knife? perhaps it's distress that triggered Coskum's actions. have experts been involved in establishing that knife-man was experiencing distress, have they elaborated on that in court?
this is a horrible case, whatever way one looks at it. basically a copy of a book was burned, not a religion. humbly recommended: watching Monty Python's 'Life of Brian', very sobering.
You can see the footage here: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DKaBUzXp9Am/
I think possibly Coskum's friend or fellow-activist was filming the incident, though perhaps he ought to have stepped in!
horrible! still doesn't explain the sudden appearance of the knife-wielding man and the over-the-top aggession. difficult to say how genuine this incident was.
Malaise indeed. The community which finds stabbing offensive did not have its rights protected when the political decision was made that the stabee should be prosecuted first. It seems opposition to the religion, which can have no human rights, was speculatively conflated with opposition to members of the religion in order to secure a conviction.
The narrative that a Muslim who happened to be passing was offended by Coksun and just happened to be carrying a long knife for no particular reason is not credible. Did he snatch the holy book and attempt to put out the flames? Or did he proceed directly to administering the punishment for defilement?
Meanwhile, the transvestite 'Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence' are never prosecuted in the UK.
https://youtu.be/RyAniqEkxz4
It's really difficult to tell from the footage (https://www.instagram.com/reel/DKaBUzXp9Am/). The guy sort of appears from nowhere - one wonders if he was a neighbour watching from a window who just picked up a kitchen knife and went into action?
The attack appears to have taken place at the security barrier on Rutland Gardens London SW7. The knife-wielding man walks through the gate of the building Rutland Court at the end of the video.
So he was embassy staff?
I've seen no evidence of that so far. The Turkish Embassy is in Belgrave Square, one kilometre east-south-east of Rutland Gardens. It's the Turkish Consulate and Labour Office which are in Rutland Gardens, according to online sources. Rutland Court is an apartment building.
Very interesting article, thanks, David.
In "democratic" Britain (and in the US Constitution) we have tried to get around this issue by splitting the State into several parts.
The part of the State that enforces the rights (the legal system) is separate from the part that makes the rights (parliament). The enforcement part of the State is free to decide who has rights, BUT it must follow the rules (laws) set down in writing by parliament.
Parliament is not bound by the Human Rights Act (but the legal system is). Parliament can make any law it likes, including a law that breaches the Human Rights Act.
Some Lefties try to pretend that the Human Rights Act constrains parliament, but of course it does not. It only constrains the executive and the legal system. In the final analysis, parliament could even repeal the Human Rights Act itself.
Of course the Human Rights Act has so many exceptions written into it that it is empty anyway, but that's another story!
Yes, and that separation between the juridical and legislative elements of the State is difficult to maintain. Whenever law is interpreted by a judge he is in fact himself making law - which is, really, 'legislative' in the broad sense!
It has been decreed in modern liberal philosophy that there is no such thing as 'neutral' law, that law is completely political - it is another branch of politics, so to speak - and its entire raison d’être is to achieve political goals.
I suppose it’s obvious, but I’d never really thought about it until reading your essay, that once you go down the road of establishing human rights in law, you have to recognise that those rights will need to have a hierarchy of importance to address the situations where those rights conflict. And even in the world pre HRA 1998 when freedom of speech was merely a common law right most of us probably accepted that in the implicit order of priority the right not to be slandered or libelled ranked above the right to freedom of expression. However what nobody could ever have contemplated was that there would ever be such a thing as a right not to be offended.
If we must have human rights law, and I’d rather prefer to return to the status quo ante HRA98, then as citizens we are entitled to know what this hierarchy is so that when we honestly exercise what we believe is our right, in the manner of Mr Cokrum, we know where we stand relative to other people and in sufficient detail. Would we, for example, be equally as liable to State penalty if we burned a bible as a Quran?
I also wonder how far the judge reached his conclusion based on a principled ranking of Muslim sensibilities over freedom of expression rather than on identity grounds. For example, say that the Quran burner was a Westernised, liberal Muslim who wanted to make the point that, despite being a devout Muslim, he wanted his fellow Muslims to recognise that in living in a secular society such as Britain it was important to acknowledge and accept the right of the majority population to ridicule and criticise Islam. And say that the objector was not a fellow Muslim but a white lady with no devout religion other than Social Justice, as signified by the Guardian tucked under her arm, who remonstrated and then resorted to knifing our enlightened Muslim in the name of Multiculturalism and the repudiation of Islamophobia. On whose side with the judge have come down in this (unlikely but possible) scenario? Would the judge wish to dismiss the sincere argument of a Muslim in defence of freedom of expression as a necessary component of Muslim integration into our society?
Yes, this is an astute comment. The intrusion of rights discourse into our constitution has resulted in a mess: we all have rights to things, but those rights all have to be traded off against each other on an ad hoc basis and there is no clarity about which right trumps which. The problem is that this suits the governmental apparatus very well, because making rulings about which right trumps which in one particular context or another is a justification for its existence.
New government To Do List: 1. Repeal HRA 1998, 2. Enact the US Constitution?
I have always liked the wording of the First Amendment:
" ‘Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech’"
because the premise is that freedom of speech is a natural right (and thereby also acknowledging that individuals have natural rights) whereas our flimsy Magna Carta does the opposite of purporting to give people rights, which in fact should have been acknowledged that they have by virtue of natural law.
Yes - they knew what they were doing.
And the Equality Act.
Had the Tories any balls, as soon as Clegg was ditched, these were the first priorities. No particular order
1. Leave the ECHR. Original charter written by English lawyers based on the long standing rights WE gave the world. So we'd be left with real rights, which should protect us form the state, and not as now, weapons to oppress is.
2. Dump HRA. Same
3. Dump the (In)Equality Act, a truly pernicious piece of legislation which achieved - intentionally - the opposite.
Add to the Magna Carta, the 1689 Bill of Rights, and which remains on the statute book, though you wouldn't know it
Leaving the ECHR would be time consuming and full of legal snares. Treaties do not have direct effect in the UK - they need enabling legislation - hence the HRA 1998. Repeal that and job done. Ignore the ECHR.
Yes, repeal the Equalities Act ✅
Magna Carta is useless, failing as it does to acknowledge the natural rights of all of us; it graciously (sarc.) grants the right of habeas corpus, which actually pre-dates Magna Carta, and it sets up the idea of trial by jury. Nothing else. The 1689 Bill of Rights moved the King's powers to parliament, but the Executive retains the Royal Prerogative on many matters and should be abolished. The Royal Prerogative and lack of parliamentary oversight (which is pretty feeble anyway - I could give you several thousand words on that subject) is how we get sucked into these outrageous supranational organisations and how Starmer can ponce around promising our forces to protect the borders of random countries, even though he can't protect our own.
Our so-called constitutional arrangements might have creaked along when we didn't have a government of traitors and buffoons and Marxists, but they are hopelessly inadequate now. Talk about failing a stress test!
As for the sausage-fingered, closet Islamist, KC the WEF factotum..........he should be the end of the line with a big transfer of property to the National Trust.
Would that we would ignore the ECHR. Other countries do at will. Us? Well a huge number of Tories say we shouldn't leave it, as for Reform, well who know what they think any more with endless contradictory statements flourishing. There may beno other option but to vote for them, but Farage seems happier to hog the spotlight whilst their "policies" seem to get watered down by the day.
Maybe that's a politic move designed not to scare people away, but...
And my wife and I were only talking at Breakfast about how KC seems determined to bring an end to the monarchy. I'm a big fan of constitutional Monarchy - they are the most stable democracies we have; but I always thought that the death of the late Queen would signal the end here.
All gone to shit not to put too fine a point on it. And I have no doubt that Starmer is personality disordered, a traitor like his best mate Harmer
FUBAR doesn't even begin to describe it. Some stiff backbone will be needed to deal with this, with people being prepared to say NO and to speak the truth regardless.
As ever, a concise illustration of the sheer nonsense of the existence of something labelled ‘human rights’. I’ve previously made the point that a right can only ever be granted by something, or someone. David’s excellent honing in on the issue of who/what is the grantee, clearly points the finger at ‘the State’ as the only possible answer to that question. The only other possibility would be, as David alludes, a religious/cosmic power.
It follows that the inability of humanity to create a system of societal organisation in which every individual accepts a natural ‘duty’ to respect the existence of every other individual, has resulted in the necessity to create a society in which a system of governance has been handed that religious/cosmic power to become the grantee of rights.
The obvious problem is that, having handed that power to government/the State, the electorate become powerless (other than instigation of civil war/revolution) to do anything other than abide by whatever the State has decided, at any given moment in time, is necessary to enable the State to conflate the concept of acting in the public interest with a continuance of its power as the grantee of rights.
That the ‘rights’ are enforced by dint of legislation, which only the State has the power to create, has resulted in an ever increasing lunacy whereby the State’s only rationale is to create legislation and so the statute books get ever more expansive because once ‘on the books’, legislation is rarely, if ever, rescinded.
So, the concept of ‘rights’ is actually a non sequitur. Humanity has granted them to themselves, in an effort to overcome the societal inability to govern itself. Every other sentient organism on this planet abides by the natural laws of existence and they live/die as a result of what nature metes out.
You've kind of stated the problem of law and politics in modernity, there, Stephen!
I see no need for the analysis of Kojeve, the ECHR wording quoted in the example re. freedom of expression seems to me clear in itself about the need to arbitrate between different 'rights' in the fashion that was done by the judge in the recent case under coinsideration.
What Kojeve adds is really an explanation as to why rights always end up only applying horizontally and not vertically.
So, essentially, what we have now is victim 'Top Trumps', and the outcome depends on where you sit in the victim hierarchy. Muslims are apparently quite near the top.
An excellent article that aids our understanding of Carl Schmitt’s take on elite theory, particularly in relation to liberal democracies. Schmitt outlined that ‘sovereign is he who decides on the exception’. This is pertinent in our increasingly two-tier system and reveals ‘freedom of speech’ as a legal fiction, contingent upon, as you demonstrated, the determinations of our elite regarding the exceptions.
Neema Parvini has referred to this as ‘the myth of the neutral state’, meaning that the state and politics were never, and could never be, separate. (BTW, his book ‘The Populist Delusion’ is an excellent chronology of Elite Theory).
Yes - it’s an important insight but it does pre-date Schmitt. It’s really a feature of what has been called ‘political jurisprudence’. Schmitt is the one who brings it into sharpest focus.
Very good. And all this talk of "A" and "B" means I am now humming "See how the fates their gifts allot" from The Mikado...
(In fact "See how the State its gifts allots" might be an alternative title to your essay)
Great article - thank you. The phrase “human rights” is clearly an oxymoron, because as we are increasingly witnessing in the courts, judges are interpreting law on the basis of a hierarchy of rights for groups, a hierarchy that they decide upon, so that an obviously wronged party is instead made out to be in error of the interpretation of the law. The person committing the wrong is now placed as the victim and the victim becomes the one performing a greater wrong according to the hierarchy! Rights appear to trump freedoms when its freedoms that should confer rights.
Does this idea also relate to the idea the State can decide what terrorism is and isn't?
As The Telegraph article mentions ' Concern over mass migration is terrorist ideology, says Prevent.....Online guidance says ‘cultural nationalism’ could be a reason for referring someone for deradicalisation '.
The interesting aspect of that story is what it says about the regime's priorities. What does it want above all to protect?
Dworkin could not be more wrong if he tried...
I have always thought "we" are only ever allowed to exercise the "freedoms" "they" allow us. As a woman, I have always believed women have been allowed out of their box by men and, go too far, men will put us back. This is seen in the fashion for men in dresses to compete in female sporting events or read stories to small children whilst wearing lipstick. Power gives and power takes away. By this reckoning, we can assume it's only a matter of time before the Muslim element take offence at pork products in shops, unveiled women in the streets and dogs in the park. The law is an ass.
I would be interested in your take on gato malo's libertarian analysis in light of your recent post on the inevitability of the State taking sides as the only Third party to enforce human rights.
https://open.substack.com/pub/boriquagato/p/accounting-for-accountability
Society is a wreck, therefore dismantle the State and free people to pursue the Good Life as cooperating Individuals who will create a (virtuous) Society and a Just State protecting Negative Rights only? Because there is a subset of humans who are not fundamentally capable of abstract morality... and never will be?
/quote
this is a sort of hideous inversion from sound ideas like “society and a just state exist to protect the negative rights of the individual” and turn them inside out into “society exists to allow the least reasonable to make positive demands of everyone and anyone and to live aggressive, oppressive lives consequence free.”
it’s like they have been mind wiped of the basic ideas of cause and effect and accountability.
this is, i fear, the point. it’s the exact goal of ideas like the soros “open society” movement that has been so prolific in taking over DA and AG and prosecutor offices. these turned out to be cheap ways to grab large swathes of societal power because it does not matter one whit what the law says if those who enforce it do so selectively. the selfsame screechers bawling “no kings” have placed unaccountable authoritarian power in the judiciary elevating it to a position of societal dominance as “keeper of what’s allowed” and the determinant of who gets held to account for what.
there is a quite substantial subset of humans who are not fundamentally capable of abstract morality and such structures essentially turn them in to civilizational WMD’s.
/endquote