Arrogance of Authority

A great case of someone who let his own arrogance overcome any doubts he might have had. A Justice of the Peace in Louisiana has decided not to sign a marriage license because the couple are of mixed race.

Now I happen to accept his claim that he is not racist, and that he simply believes the marriage is less likely to last. This does not necessarily show racism. What it does show is that he thinks his views are more important than this couple’s decision about their own life, and that he thinks that statistical norms should determine an individual case.

Another time where someone should have more doubts.

Hat tip Instapundit.

Who Are They?

Who do these people think they are, that like to tell us what to do?

I read two unrelated stories today, on first site they could not be more different. One is about American school children cycling the other about customer reviews of British prostitutes. The common link is that both have regard to officials telling others what to do, when rightly it is none of their damned business, and in both cases they are seeking to act beyond their rightful authority.

Both the Saratoga Springs School Board and Harriet ‘the Harridan’ Harman have decided what is good for other people’s safety, and demands that those people fall into line with those decisions, regardless of their own judgement.

Just as without the School Board’s ruling parents would not be forced to send children to school by cycle or foot, no prostitute on the Punternet website is forced into her profession. Note that the website has prominent information for reporting suspected child prostitutes or forced/trafficked girls.

Why does the Saratoga Springs School board have jurisdiction over how a child is brought to school by his parents? Why did a state trooper attend the school to enforce this ban? Why does Harriet Harman think that she has jurisdiction over a website hosted in California, where not even the State Governor or the President has authority to control web content?

Thanks to The Bleat and Man Widdicombe, via Muffled Vociferation for today’s helping of bemusing officialdom.

Orwell’s Forgotten Predictions

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a book from which most people only know one concept, that of being under constant surveillance. It is far from the most important concept in the book.

Not a Sheep highlights today a satirical comparison of 1984 and Brave New World, Aldous Huxley’s idea of socialist Utopia. The cartoon goes much further than that shallow idea of being watched, but does not address what I always felt to be the most important themes in 1984, Newspeak and corruption of history. It is too long since I read Brave New World, and I cannot remember if or how Huxley addressed these issues.

In 1984 language was changed to control thought. Words were not to be used, others no longer had all the same meanings and others still had their meanings reversed. In that way it was intended to control thought, because abstract thought without language is very difficult (and all but impossible to communicate) and control of language allowed control of what could be thought in that language.

While I agree with the cartoon that Huxley’s vision is closer in many ways to developing reality, Orwell did get the language concept right. The authoritarian left is quite literally doing what Orwell predicted.

There are words we cannot say, concepts we cannot express without being the object of contempt or hatred. Other words and concepts have been twisted to the reverse of their original meanings. Words such as 'liberal', 'tolerant' and 'progressive', concepts such as anti-racism, anti-fascism and diversity are used to mean exactly the opposite.

An important slogan in 1984 is “Whoever controls the past controls the future. Whoever controls the present controls the past”. Winston Smith, the protagonist, works is the Ministry of Truth changing the records of history, the control of the past.

The left has altered history, in a wide variety of ways. We are told that European culture is solely responsible for slavery, when the truth is that until European culture developed to ban slavery it was almost universal. We are told that FDR saved the world from depression with his ‘Keynesian’ and other socialist policies, when they actually deepened recession into depression, and Keynes later disavowed them. We are told that racism is historically right-wing, when from the Democrat Party and unions in the Southern USA to Nazis and Communists it has been far more a factor in the left.

Unless we wish to succumb to shrill left-wing authoritarianism we must take back our history and take back our language. In order to do so we need to challenge bias in government, education and the media, especially powerful, influential special interest groups like the NUT and the BBC.

Political Policing

The words ‘politics’ and ‘police’ have the same root, but they have drifted too far from the root and too close to each other. Polis meant a body of citizens or a city state, police protect them and politics represents them.

Now politics has moved away from that body of citizens, as have the police. I have previously made plain my disdain for the idea of hate crime. I don’t think motive should be important unless it mitigates the crime (for example self-defence). Setting apart certain groups as more important victims is not blind justice. Allowing the police and prosecutors to judge motive means they are automatically politicised.

In front of me is a case in point, in a copy of the Operational Directory for Sussex Police. Several parts of the ‘Hate Crimes’ section are politically controversial or likely to encourage misinterpretation.

On racism

“In its more subtle form it is as damaging as in its overt form”

What more subtle form? How does the officer know if he is seeing subtle racism or just inconsiderate and unthinking behaviour? Is an officer going to look to find subtle racism reading that advice? How about if he sees subtle racism when someone reports a crime by a non-white, so the police ignore the crime and go after the victim or witness? I would not have considered that 12 years ago, now it is easy to believe.

“The term ‘racist incident’ must be understood to include both crimes and non-crimes in policing terms. Both must be reported, recorded and investigated with equal commitment”

Why should a non-crime “in police terms” be investigated by police at all? Why should they be investigated when there are not enough resources to investigate all crimes? If they are investigated at all why should they receive equal commitment?

“Incidents where visiting international students are the victims of crime will normally be recorded as racist incidents”

Why? This only goes to show that the way police define hate crime has no rational basis.

So the official guidance from Sussex Police advises that police see the bogeyman of racism and hate wherever possible, and to investigate even if there was no crime. This is advice to harass people for their thoughts and opinions. This is, quite literally, Orwellian. Reporting, recording and investigation of opinion as if we have no freedom of conscience is making political issues an offence.

Update: I spoke to a friend with police connections. One of the main reasons for identifying crimes against foreign students as racist is so that the files are easy to find from a large number of police reports. Remember that next time you see hate-crime statistics. Many of those are for convenience of categorisation, they are not hate crimes at all.

Funny how I don’t see this as reducing the relevance of my post.

Socialism’s Fundamental Flaw: Authoritarianism

Socialism is of necessity a political philosophy of coercion. At its core is the taking of money one person has earned for ‘redistribution’. That money is used for another person’s benefit, without the consent of the first. Without any consideration of the rectitude of that redistribution it must be authoritarian, however liberal the reputation of the left. Of course that one authoritarian streak in the Left tends to lead logically to authoritarianism in areas not directly related to fiscal policy.

Andy Burnham, the current Health Secretary, came out with a classic example in telling people on incapacity benefits that they ‘must exercise’. Of course I agree with Mr Burnham that people need to come off incapacity benefits.

In 1992 there were around 1.9 million people on incapacity benefits. By 1997 this had risen to around 2.7 million, and stabilised there. However since then the number claiming income support due to disability has risen by about 300,000, from around 820,000 to around 1.12 million by 2005 (I don’t have later figures).

Over this timescale there is no logical reason for such rises in benefit claims. People have not got less healthy, whatever the scare stories say. Western European development is a tale of increasing life expectancy and expectation of health. So there are an additional 1.1 million claims in a slowly-increasing population with improving general health.

What has happened is that benefits have become easier to claim and many people (probably close to a million) claim benefits they would not have been offered in 1992, for which John Major’s administration must take as much blame as Tony Blair’s.

The increase is largely in people who would otherwise be on unemployment benefits. However there is a problem in this. If state funds rather than private insurance is used, unemployment benefits should be just enough to manage a frugal existence, as they are a temporary stop-gap while more work is sought. They are not intended to maintain a lifestyle. They are a civilised society’s way of making sure even those on hard times can scrape by (the benefit trap and excessive benefits is not the subject of this discourse). Anything more discourages return to work, and harms everyone including the benefit recipient in the long term.

Incapacity benefits on the other hand should really provide a moderately comfortable existence, which might have to be protracted, so it is more likely that people who might be able to work would stay content with this income. People don’t have the choice of being well or ill, or rather they should not. Unfortunately it appears that many are signed off ill who are well.

Benefits are an authoritarian device, with central government deciding how much money to take, that they are presumed unworthy to make their own decisions in spending, and deciding who might be worthy of largesse. Therefore the Government feels able to command those people, that the Government thinks it is paying (of course it is not; we are paying them)

Here we come to the idea that Mr Burnham is telling people on incapacity benefits that they must exercise. On incapacity benefits there are those who are content with the income, and in a poverty trap as many would have a lower income if they did work. They themselves have no reason to make and effort to return to full fitness and to work. Mr Burnham feels they should be, to remove their burden from the state. Mr Burnham thinks he is paying for their lifestyle, so he feels able to tell them what to do.

Authoritarianism is therefore a natural result of socialism. Socialism infantilises the individual by making him or her a ward of the state. The state then feels it is justified and necessary to decide what the individual must do. I believe this is fundamental to socialism, not just a flaw of implementation.