Entirely Predictable Consequences to Free Speech

I have written before about the unintended consequences, and the unspoken but intended consequences of laws, and especially of laws made in haste, made by an over-confident, bullying executive with a cowed legislative chamber or with weak or non-existent opposition.

The consequences of legislating against religious intolerance were not only predictable, they were widely predicted. Famously Rowan Atkinson and a few other comedians, making their living pointing out ridiculous pomposity of which religion can be a rich source, complained that such laws would be used to stifle entirely harmless and in fact important speech, including humour and debate.

Thus the charging of two Christians who are alleged to have argued with a Muslim guest should not be a surprise. It was not the stated intent of any law to criminalise entirely harmless disagreements, and the government at the time of the 2006 Religious Hatred Act’s progress denied that this would be the case. Worryingly the police did not even use this Act, although the same spirit is clear in the wording of the charges under the 1986 Public Order Act, an act intended to calm street disturbances, as being “religiously aggravated”. Are the police using the 2006 Act to guide their prosecution under the 1986 law, or are they making up the law as they go along? religious intolerance was not illegal in 1986, in fact I didn't think it was illegal now. Is this a generally accepted rider to a charge, and if so on what basis?

The Muslim woman in question might have been offended, but nowhere is it suggested she was threatened in any way. Where did anyone get the idea that a person has the right not to be offended? If freedom of speech is not the right to offend people then what is it? No-one objects to inoffensive speech, by its very nature, so its freedom need not be assured.

Incidentally I was reluctant to use the Daily Mail link above, due to the sometimes-justified reputation for over-the-top reporting, especially on this sort of issue. However after reading the Letter From A Tory about this my brief search only revealed one other national newspaper story. That was unsuitable because The Independent lied in the very first sentence that summarised the story, and lied in a way material to the events. Mr and Mrs Vogelenzang were not, as stated, charged with a racist offence.

Is the Independent simply incompetent? Does that incompetence show up some underlying tendency to see all politically-incorrect speech and action, from the most harmless to the most heinous as equivalent? Was this a deliberate attempt to make the Vogelenzangs look bad, and justify their arrest? It was at best farcical incompetence that should have been followed by a prominent apology and a sacking, at worst snide, disgusting, libellous dishonesty.

The Importance Of Opposition

Why I doubt the wisdom of consensus politics

Life is easy for anyone who has power or authority if no-one questions their use of that power. Life is extremely difficult if alongside power and authority there is effective opposition.

However without effective opposition then good decision making on difficult or controversial matters is almost impossible. Arrogance and ignorance dominate if the only voices heard are in agreement. That is why the term ‘yes-men’ is so pejorative. Any decision important enough to be taken by government is also important enough to hear and judge the reasoning for both (or indeed all) sides. To listen requires at least some level of doubt.

The Conservative Party seemed at one time to recognise this, and when Margaret Thatcher was seen not to be listening to those who disagreed with her she was removed. New Labour only ever cared about power, and silenced internal dissent ruthlessly while despising the opposition. For most of the time opposition was weak, and Labour took full advantage of that weakness. That is why so much New Labour legislation has had unintended consequences where they have been incompetent, or consequences that were not those the authors claimed to be striving for.

Barack Obama never had effective opposition before he entered the race for the White House. He was a Chicago politician in the Democrat Party, which not only has all-but-guaranteed office but a party machine of legendary ruthlessness and corruption. Even in his work as a law professor Obama did not have the usual academic opposition, for the simple reason that he appears not to have published anything. He lectured, but there was little to challenge what he taught.

During campaigning Obama did see opposition, but once he was the Democrat candidate the media shielded him from and effective scrutiny of his policy (or lack of it) and political history. When he did see any his response was petulant, aggressive and ignorant. Obama wanted to silence opposition, not listen to it and response, and he or his agents have often used his skin colour to do so, accusing anyone who disagreed with him of being racist however strong their argument.

Once in power Obama did not anticipate opposition, with Democrats holding the House of Representatives and a filibuster-proof Senate majority.

However opposition to Obama’s policy out in the real world has been so consistent and vocal that it has had practical influence. The massive changes he wanted to make to the healthcare system in the USA are unlikely to pass in anything close to the form he wanted.

How did Obama respond to the debate about the issue ion his latest major speech? As Power Line notes in an excellent article he called it bickering. Now this is one line in a long speech, but I see it as the most telling. Along with many other attacks on his opponents it shows that Obama does not understand the importance of debate, the vital role played by debate.

In addition the Power Line article highlights several passages in Obama’s speech where he claims the opposition is lying when it seems he is the one being dishonest. While the bill might not have death panels or give free coverage to illegal immigrants the results are the same. British experience with NHS tourism (people who are not entitled to care coming to Britain just to get treatment) and the decisions of NICE suggest that Power Line is right.

The Power Line article also shows how useful opposition could be if Obama really wanted to improve healthcare (as opposed to help his socialist backers). The debate has brought up many ways of improving healthcare, such as opening state markets, tort reform and decoupling insurance from employment, that would certainly improve health and be supported not only by Republicans but most importantly by the people.

In his election campaign Obama claimed to want that consensus politics that I so distrust. In fact what he wanted was for others to agree to his ideas, he didn’t want to listen to theirs. I am glad in a way that he does not want consensus, glad he has not reached out for a cross-party back-room deal. It has energised his opposition; the health bill has been studied by opponents while proponents admit to not having read it.

Even better his opposition is within the people, it is a grassroots movement, whatever socialists say. The Republican Party has so little to do with the effective opposition that it has been wrong-footed. It has not taken advantage and realigned itself with the protesters, many of whom are non-aligned or even Democrat voters.

However it is a pity he didn’t use the opposition, listen to those opponents.

The demands for consensus politics must be resisted. Any action of government should be challenged by intelligent, reasoned opposition. Then it is far more likely that new legislation will not only have the intentions stated by proponents but it might actually achieve those intentions as its sole consequence.

Dehumanising the ‘Other’

I have been highly critical of the race 'equality' industry before. Reading a recent case of torture, rape and murder again brought its pernicious influence to mind.

Via Instapundit I came across an horrific story of a terrible crime in Tennessee. The crime itself is sufficiently covered in that blog post and the stories it links, so I will only recount the barest details relevant to my point.

A young couple, Chris Newsom and Channon Christian, were taken at gunpoint. He was tortured and killed , she was tortured, raped and killed over a period of 24 hours. During her captivity the young men involved left the house where Channon Christian was trapped and went about their daily business before returning to repeat their crimes. During this time at least one woman was present in the house, probably more than one, and knew that Channon Christian was there, although with no direct involvement in the crime.

Katie, the blogger who posted the Mamapundit story linked above, suggested that there was no evidence that  race played a role in the crime. I think that it is possible that on one level this is not about race, not about blacks killing whites per se.

I think that on some level this is about young blacks killing people of a different race, and how identity politics that make it increasingly likely that one race does not identify with another. The ‘equality’ industry has a vested interest in emphasising differences, in pulling communities further apart.

I don’t think that is why the men carried out vicious crimes. That was evil. What I think it explains is how they could be so sadistic, how they could go about their normal lives in between, and even more clearly I think it is how Vanessa Coleman, the woman who admitted to being in the house, could be there yet do nothing for Channon Christian.

Vanessa Coleman has been told over and again by the race industry, by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, even by the Democrat Party, that she is a black first. She has been told that whites are different and don’t care about her, in fact that white people are responsible for her problems (of course to socialists Miss Coleman certainly is not responsible, nor are her parents). With all that propaganda dehumanising both Miss Christian and Miss Coleman, why should Vanessa Coleman care?

I have written about the logical conclusions of the race industry, and these aspects of the case are, sadly, not entirely surprising to me. There are better responses to racism, and they can be very promising. We just need to defeat the lies behind Critical Theory before a rational response becomes normal.

Arrogant Bureaucrats

In a recent post I mentioned that one way of silencing opposition was the ‘won’t you think of the children’ ploy. A classic example in the letters page of yesterday’s Telegraph, from Sir Christopher Rose, Chief Surveillance Commissioner.

It is unfortunate that you repeated the criticism of local authorities for using their Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act covert surveillance powers against dog fouling. This is, at best, a half truth.

It is unlikely that the use of those powers would be necessary or proportionate in relation to fouling a pavement. But fouling a children’s playground is much more serious, as dog excrement contains a parasite which can cause blindness in children.

I suspect that many people would welcome the use of these powers to reduce that risk.

The risks he mentioned are minor, otherwise how could we possibly allow a family with young children to even keep a dog? Covert surveillance makes a tiny difference to that already small risk. This is critical in deciding whether a response is proportional, yet Sir Christopher does not even mention statistics, instead ‘Just think of the children!’

What is more this has never been discussed openly as a reason for use of these powers. It should not be for a bureaucrat who clearly has no idea of proportionality or of people’s concerns about covert surveillance to decide such things.

The Left Don’t Want to Know

Or ‘Better Left than right’.

Sorry for the hiatus in blogging. Have had a busy week working and visiting family.

However I did catch Glen Reynolds’s link to this clip of a television debate in America about the proposed changes to the healthcare system. In the clip a chap called Paul Krugman, a self-proclaimed ‘liberal’ New York Times blogger, asks the few Canadian members of the audience if they think their government-run health system is terrible, and although the proportion is not given, all or nearly all of them said they thought it was terrible.

What I found really telling was not that this was a great argument against Obama’s plans (which it is of course) but Mr Krugman’s response, which was “Bad move on my part!”.

So what Mr Krugman is saying is that it is more important to win a TV debate than to learn something (that there might be a lot of people who have a bad impression or a bad experience of government-run healthcare) or that the debate comes to the best answer it can. Left-wing ideology seems, by extension, to be more important to Mr Krugman than good healthcare.

Often I get the same impression from the current UK government and the British left in general, on the subject of the NHS but even more on education, where the ideology of ‘equality’ is more important than the actual welfare of young people. Comprehensive education is important enough to ignore its failings, equal access is more important than maintaining the quality of education at our world-class universities, and instead of dumping ideologically-driven teaching methods and curriculums in schools which have damaged state education the universities are told to bias their selection against privately-schooled applicants.

There are more examples, certainly in the welfare system, in defence, on the EU, where winning the argument is more important than finding the best course, but it is more dangerous in education and health, where the results will last for decades or are often fatal.

I also think this theme fits in well with my previous post on the intended consequences of legislation being to keep power; the intentions might also be to keep ideological purity.

Update: Obama and the British Labour Party have the same dislike of the concept of education vouchers (despite Obama saying that he would consider the issue on merit). This looks more like left-wing dogmatism than rational objection with more evidence. Yet more evidence here, but still Ed Balls, Gordon Brown and Barack Obama would rather be Left than right.

Update: It appears that Paul Krugman holds a Nobel Prize for economics. It also appears that he has no desire to get the correct answer to a problem, and that he knows nothing at all about people’s response to incentive (which is core to economics and econometrics), since he fails to understand the limitations of government-run healthcare. Are they giving away Nobel Prizes with Cornflakes now?

Unintended Consequences and Small Government

Fausty has a link to an essay on the Ludwig von Mises Institute website about consequences that are not the stated intention. I deliberately expressed the concept in an ungainly way, because not only does the essay consider unintended consequences but the possibility that the stated consequences are not the true reason for the policy; the actual desired consequences might be to increase power or gerrymander for the politicians putting the policy forward.

This essay is one of the most coherent arguments I have seen for libertarian politics and for small government. It gives a powerful condemnation of the core ideas of socialism, but also a convincing argument that left-wing policies are in some cases deliberate, cynical power grab, ignoring the negative consequences to the public.

Of course I have talked about unintended consequences before, but the essay is a far broader, more fundamental discussion of the issue. Do have a read.

More Unintended Consequences

Or at least I assume so. Maybe I am naïve, and should be even more cynical. I give Labour very little credit, but even I don’t think that when they said that the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act was intended to be used to counter terrorism they saw it being used to spy on those who had been hurt fighting terrorism. It is fairly obvious that the law was going to be used for surveillance with no connection to terrorism, otherwise the rules would have been more tightly written.

Politically, however, this is far worse than councils watching bins. The government’s relationship with the military has been bad since May 1997 but is terrible now, and continuing the meme of “nothing to hide, nothing to fear”, as the MoD does in this case, is not going down well in public.

As I have said before and I am sure I will say again, parliament needs to scrutinise legislation better. Ideally after more time has been taken to draft it. This government is all about panic reaction and guillotined debates.

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes

Who watches the watchmen?

Ambush Predator appears to be quite cross. She has reason to be, with police community support officers, aka plastic policemen, not even real police, just walking into people’s homes, uninvited.

A plastic policemen, PCSO Steve.

This is quite a shocking liberty, taken simply because a door or window is open. As Ambush Predator points out, residents of Haringey are able to leave doors open in complete security, according to police. I have lived in many places where I would leave the door unlocked if I went out briefly. If they shut the door i might be locked out. I have certainly always left doors and windows wide open if that made the house cooler or if it was convenient when I was at home. That is not an invitation for any non-feline to just walk in (I expect cats to do so).

It is just another way that the police, instead of doing the job we want them to take it upon themselves to interfere in people’s lives, investigating a harmless joke, or accusing people of thought crime, even fictional crimes. We do not live in a police state, and I know this is shouted too often, but it does seem that the government and police sometimes behave as if we were.

In the last few years the police have demanded and so often been given new powers and new roles, or authoritarian politicians have demanded that the police address a problem that is not a justified police matter. Often this is brought through parliament without due scrutiny, and when the law is not tightly enough drafted police powers are abused. The Association of Chief Police Officers often formulates police policy and interference, yet it is not even a government organisation, but a company limited by guarantee, accountable to its guarantors.

In the USA abuse of police power has gone even further, resulting in unjustified violent raids, killing of pet dogs for no reason, police corruption and even the death of innocent civilians and of police officers.

Police and local authorities have encouraged a vast increase of surveillance they aim at us. We must return the favour, and use surveillance at every opportunity to ensure that the police are held accountable.

Which is why this is so worrying an attitude from police:

Hat tip to Prats in Power for that one, but it is not an unknown or even especially unusual for police to try to stop photography, especially photographing them about there business. This is likely to get worse, since the passage of the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 which makes it an offense to gather information about a police officer “..of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism”. Such information could include a photograph.

Do not allow the police to tell you what you can and cannot photograph or film. You are allowed to film or photograph anything as long as you are on your own or public property, with a few exceptions from official secrets acts. You are certainly allowed to photograph police carrying out their normal duties.

So who watches the watchmen? We do. We must continue to do so, lest wandering in through an open door gives way to violent entry at four in the morning.

For the record I favour a strong, well-equipped and well-trained police force. Libertarianism is not anarchy, the rule of law is the first requirement for freedom. The rule of law however must extend both ways.

Update: edited to add comments on ACPO.

Update: A classic example of police abuse of a photographer and the need to photograph or film police actions in one story!

Update: Face it, examples are not difficult to find, of people photographing or filming police abuse, and the police compounding the abuse to try to prevent the evidence being collected. Thy even try to stop people photographing thugs.

The Unintended Consequences of the Law

or The Law of Unintended Consequences.

The legislatures of both the United Kingdom and the United States are currently being pressured into making new laws, or amending existing laws, with little debate, and even less understanding of the results of that legislation. The British Parliament is sitting for shorter times than ever, more debates are held with time limits than under any previous government. In the USA the new President’s administration is pushing new legislation with gay abandon, either in a fit of panic or, at the risk of sounding paranoid, in an attempt to push through the hard-left agenda he denied during campaigning.

We might laugh at the United States House of Representatives reaching the farcical level that those voting on the bill are not expected to read it (in fact the House Majority leader laughed at the idea that many would read it, and said that if only members who had pledged to read it first voted they “…would have very few votes”). Unfortunately in the UK our own House of Commons did not simply vote on passing control of 17% of the economy without having read the legislation. We ceded our entire constitution, ultimate control of every government decision and therefore of our lives through a treaty that was deliberately written to be unreadable.

There will be unintended consequences to this. New Labour has introduced unprecedented change. This includes creating criminal offences at an astonishing, rate, in a way that is utterly unfathomable. At times the rate of creation of new offences has been greater than one a day, the total topped 3000 long ago. Obviously this must criminalise some behaviour unnecessarily, because there was no huge clamour for these laws, there were not 3000 burning problems that needed solving. Worse than that, with so much legislation introduced with so little scrutiny some of the results of that legislation will be not as those voting for it intended.

For example under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 the police have greater power to stop and search in an area designated as a likely target. However the whole of London has been so designated since the law came into force. This is still the case despite criticism of the use of this power, including a report by the Metropolitan Police Authority two years ago.

When police are stopping people under the same Section of the Act for photographing famous buildings in London it looks like farce. However combined with the 2008 Act which appears to make it an offence to photograph a police officer, if the officer so decides, than sinister is perhaps a more apt adjective. If this sort of advice has to be given to the public and to police then the law is ill-written, and should be repealed until it can be remade. The link also describes incidents where the police abuse the Act.

There are far more cases. Anti-corruption legislation with unintended consequences for parish councils; pensions legislation that drove up costs; liquidity rules that drove down the value of pension and insurance holdings; the human rights act giving convicted criminals rights (especially to privacy) that they just should not have.

Of course even legislation that has been discussed at great length has unintended consequences. Anti-hunting bills have famously took up far more parliamentary time than they warrant, yet still the foxes suffer more since the ban than they did before, surely not the intent of the legislation.

There is one thing in common, and that is certainty. Governments that are certain they have right on their side, and that their legislation is well-drafted see no reason to debate at length. Anti-hunting campaigners were certain that they were right, so did not listen when told by the people who actually knew what they were talking about (few anti-hunt campaigners can shoot) that foxes would suffer. Suffer they did, for the arrogance of their advocates. Certainty means either that no debate is allowed (look at climate change) or that those who are certain do not listen to the other side of the debate (look at climate change).

That is why I have My Doubts.

Hat tips to Instapundit and Newsalert for the US House of Representatives story.

To Its Logical Conclusion

or the Law of Unintended Consequences

What is the consequence of anti-racist politics? If correctly directed then it is of course that racism dies a slow, sometimes painful death. Most people would like it to die quickly, even immediately, but that is not realistic. The consequences of incorrectly-directed anti-racist politics, race-industry politics, taken to its logical conclusion, appears to be an increase in racism.

The sacking of 200 workers due to their race cannot be called anything but racism. Whether they are black or white this is wrong. The fact that it appears that their replacements are not even competent simply compounds the offence. The further consequence is that many white people will be driven to think less well of blacks because of this. Non-racists see racism in a black political leader; mildly racist whites see injustice caused by blacks, and see more reason to be racist. Deeply-racist whites see their beliefs confirmed. So the result of anti-white racism is an increase in anti-black racism and so a greater divide.

I had a black colleague who told of his incredulity when discussing racism with a black friend. The friend insisted that a black person could not be racist; my colleague even brought another friend whose opinions he respected into the conversation, and was astounded when this friend also believed that only whites could be racist. This is itself racism of course, but it more importantly it is a huge block to resolving racism. Until a problem can be identified, it cannot be addressed. This is again a consequence of the race industry, one of its techniques to hide its racist nature as well as a way of perpetuating racism.

These problems are simply the logical conclusion of the race industry. The result of “affirmative action” and of sensitivity to discussing race. It is the result of dominance of identity in politics. The logical conclusion of a system where someone can profit from racism (and there is no doubt that people profit from racism, Al Sharpton being the obvious example) is that they will encourage racism. As any economist will tell you, incentives will eventually be followed.