Via Neil, who still does not understand liberty, this from Conor Gearty:
The argument for compulsory DNA testing of the entire population and all visitors to the UK, so eloquently put by Lord Justice Stephen Sedley, has provoked another bout of anxious navel gazing by civil libertarians. Sedley is no reactionary but rather one of Britain’s most progressive judges, a man with an impeccable record of legal activism. If even this kind of person is now joining the Reids, Howards and the rest on the authoritarian side, does this mean Britain’s much-battered freedom has at last lurched into terminal decline? Is the police state that so many have warned about for so long finally on its way?
Frankly, there is much to be concerned about in Sedley’s pronouncement; he is effectively urging that because some people have been unfairly treated by the state, we should all suffer. This is wholly unacceptable. There is no justification for a whole population DNA database. That he is joining the Reids of this world is not a good omen by any means.
Fortunately the position is rather more complicated than this.
Indeed, no one (apart, possibly, from Neil) is claiming otherwise.
Just as the right is given to moral panics (teddy boys, hippies, hoodies)
Only if you waste your time reading the Daily Mail. The rest of us have no such qualms. This is gross generalisation and pure nonsense.
so the left regularly succumbs to freedom frenzies.
Er, no… it is elements of the left who are the ones attempting to crank down on our freedoms.
(*Note: I generally avoid using terms such as “left” and “right” as they are meaningless. However, Gearty uses these labels so I am responding in kind to maintain consistency.)
Each generation of committed civil libertarians has been convinced it is sure to be the last. Every home secretary is always the worst ever – until the next one comes along.
Ah, yes, the type of sweeping generalist twattery that would make Neil proud. Wholehearted horse-shit. No wonder Neil wanted me to read this piece of utter clusterfuck.
We can start by being more careful about language. The term civil liberties is confusing in that it includes both a commitment to the liberty of the individual and to political freedom, but these are not the same. The first is a liberal idea, rooted in that old English notion of the individual being above and beyond the state and with a natural right not to be interfered with by it.
I agree about the use of language and, too, that there are two issues here. Individual liberty though is tied in with the idea of political freedom. Without the former, the latter would be somewhat undermined. While I have always accepted a need for a state, I also want that state to leave me alone to manage my life as I see fit. It is not the place of Westminster or the town hall to micro-manage my life for me. It is not their place to modify my behaviour so that I buy products of which they approve – and if they think I am going to buy the truly awful Prius they can think again; I would sooner poke both eyes out than buy one and they are not by any stretch of the imagination “environmentally friendly” unless you are truly divorced from reality. Anyway, I digress.
Supporters of this idea are the people who break CCTV cameras and are affronted by being asked to stop smoking in public places. This kind of libertarianism is often quite reactionary and in its absolute form it is always being overridden – and rightly overridden – by government in the name of the public good.
It is not reactionary. I thought we were being careful about language here? Ah, but of course, one must demonise one’s opponents mustn’t one? While breaking CCTV cameras is quite rightly against the law as it is causing damage to property, their very existence, spying on our every move – all too frequently unnecessarily – is indeed an affront and objection is perfectly reasonable. So, too is the expectation that one can smoke in a public place. I don’t smoke and don’t like smoking, but have never been forced to put up with it and expect smokers to ask if I mind before they light up, which they invariably do. I don’t mind at all. Government constantly overriding these freedoms is not right and it is not for the public good. Control freaks are never satisfied, they never go away. Every nibble at liberty is followed by another. The list that Gearty quotes earlier in his article is a long way distant from the level of control government now seeks to impose upon us.
This perspective is better viewed as a presumption in favour of freedom, a reminder to us all that we need to be clear that there is, to use the language of human rights, a pressing social need for our interventions and that the exact extent of the damage we do to personal freedom has to be warranted by the goal we are seeking to achieve.
This, of course, is the common law principle of not causing our neighbours harm. We have gone way beyond this principle with the interventions now occurring. What we have now is managerialists seeking to manage every aspect of our lives and to mould us so that we think, speak and do what our masters expect of us – we must, for example, kneel at the alter of anthropogenic global warming – to do otherwise, to question to object is heresy and we become labelled “deniers” – there, language again.
Advances in technology are always throwing up fresh opportunities for public good via new invasions of this kind of liberty. Sedley’s proposals fit within this tradition: they deserve to be debated and not dismissed out of hand as heretical.
Ah, yes, the old technology makes it so bollocks. It was bollocks when I heard Neil spouting it, it is bollocks now that Sedley and Gearty are spouting it. Saying it over and over doesn’t make it so. Dismissed out of hand is exactly what it deserves.
Political freedom is different and should be much less easily susceptible to democratic override.
Civil Contingencies Act then? Prevention of Terrorism Act? I could go on…
The deployment of terrorism and public order law to control, sometimes to curb completely, political speech and public demonstrations is a serious matter. It is clear that, from this civil libertarian perspective, there are aspects of the Blair-Brown legislative record on these matters that give rise to legitimate concern.
You don’t say?
But critics need also to acknowledge the broader context. We are getting a lot of controlling legislation, it is true, but this does not mean past generations were much freer: in earlier days the local militia just shot you. Whatever might be said about this or that individual clause, much of today’s legislation – some of it mandated by human rights law, paradoxically – represents civil libertarian progress, a move out of, rather than into, a police state.
So, because past generations were less free, losing some of our liberty is okay? Bollocks! What we are concerned about is losing liberties we already have; liberties that those previous generations got themselves shot trying to gain in the first instance.
This really is the utmost twattery. Okay, I’ve simply run out of steam. This is typical of the nonsense so beloved of Neil Harding – am I surprised that he attempted to use it to justify his moronic defence of arrant control freakery? Not really. Still, it wasted half an hour of my life. It is probably worth pointing out that being a professor in something doesn’t make you right. Nor does it confer common sense. But then, this is the Guardian, so what did I expect?
Liberty: freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control.
It is not a difficult concept to grasp.
*edited for clarity.