Lies, Libel and Neil Harding

Neil Harding is perpetuating his libellous allegation that I support illegal activity.

This is a fundamental disagreement. He cannot understand why I place him on the reactionary right of the political spectrum for opposing the smoking ban, *supporting speeding drivers and opposing any elected authority he deems are infringing on the rights of drivers.

(*my emphasis)

I have not, nor ever have, supported speeding drivers – this is a lie, plain and simple. Although, as the Devil’s Kitchen points out, lying and Neil are by no means strangers. What Neil is doing here is repeating the libellous allegation made in the comments to this post where he accuses me of having a laissez fair approach to speeding. As an erstwhile driving and motorcycling instructor, I take road safety very seriously and that includes the appropriate and legal use of speed. I do not, nor have I ever taken a laissez fair approach to the use of speed.

This post was never about speeding, nor was it about driving; it was about the burden of proof in criminal prosecutions. The factor that Neil either cannot or will not grasp is that one can acknowledge a point being made without necessarily agreeing with the actions of those making it. To do so requires a degree of reason, of being able to recognise that the world is multidimensional, to be able to recognise the underlying point without becoming bogged down in the illustration.

In the comments of same post where he seeks to take me to task he accuses me of arguing for the liberty of my favoured groups:

You have an absolutist idea of it always being a good thing for your favoured groups. You distort it by ignoring some people’s liberty in favour of others – usually drivers, smokers and homophobes over pedestrians, non-smokers and gays. This is why you are reactionary bigots – firmly on the right of the political spectrum.

Firstly, I am not an absolutist – try reading Samizdata sometime . While I take no pride in accusing Neil of being stupid; frankly, given his persistent attempts to misrepresent points that have been clarified (often repeatedly) it is hardly surprising that my immediate response is tetchiness when I am faced yet again with his inane pronouncements, sweeping generalisations and plain old Labour party dogma presented as if it was fact.

Now, let’s look for a moment at my favoured groups.

I do not own a car. Indeed, I particularly dislike the SUV, regarding it as entirely unsuitable for city driving. Frankly, the school run is a pain in the arse as the back roads become clogged to buggery with these behemoths. How, then, when arguing that people should be allowed to buy them free from penalty imposed by the local council am I arguing for a favoured group? Oh, that’s right, I am arguing for the liberty of a group people with whom I disagree.

I don’t smoke. I have never smoked. It is a disgusting and filthy habit. Yet I can and have argued that people should be free to do so without penalty. How, exactly, are smokers a favoured group? Again, I am arguing that people should be free to do something with which I disagree and personally find obnoxious. Hardly a favoured group, then.

Then there’s the homophobe jibe. Neil was referring to this post where I argued in favour of religious people being free to apply their rules on their property. So, are they a favoured group? Well, like Neil, I am an atheist. I find the homophobic bigotry exhibited by certain religious groups deeply offensive. They are hardly a favoured group, then. Interestingly, if you read the comments to that post, my stance was supported by a gay rights activist; a point conveniently ignored by Neil – but then, when reality contradicts his sweeping generalisations, Neil chooses to ignore reality. No change there, then.

The reason I have not argued in favour of pedestrians (of which I am one), non-smokers (of which I am one) and gays (no, I’m not), is that these groups are not under arbitrary attack by politicians intent upon micro-managing our lives.

To attempt, as Neil does in this discussion, to use the common law principle that liberty ends where it impinges on another’s liberty to justify the behaviour of the council in Richmond or to crush the rights of people who wish to exercise their deeply held religious beliefs is not only absurd, it seeks to misrepresent the principle. After all, if we believed that the act of driving a motorcar infringed on the liberty of others then surely the millions of people who drive would stop overnight; and those guest house owners may cause gay people offence, but they are not causing them active harm, nor are they impinging on their liberty. The common law principle does not apply here as no actual infringement of the liberty of others has occurred.

Contrary to Neil’s allegation, I am neither reactionary nor, for that matter, particularly right-wing. I simply object to control freakery and micro-management of our lives by politicians – that’s not reactionary, that is a perfectly reasonable response to totalitarian behaviour. My tetchiness and short temper is a perfectly reasonable response to persistent idiocy.

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Update: Neil was finally cornered into accepting that I had not condoned speeding:

I admit you have not advocated breaking the law, but when it comes to those drivers caught by a speed camera or parking fine – it is very clear where your sympathies lie. Are you arguing they were somehow not breaking the law despite breaking the speed limit?

My response to this somewhat mean-spirited admission was to ask why he had lied about it in the first instance. A question subsequently ignored and no apology has been proffered. Why am I not surprised? Note also, the illogical conclusions about my sympathies and the weird assumption based upon zero evidence (as is usual) that I have argued that speeding drivers are not breaking the law. My immediate reaction to such arrant fuckwittery is “WHAT!?!” No, even after a second and third reading, is still doesn’t make sense. The only reasonable conclusion is that he makes this rubbish up as he goes along, fuelled by his bigotry.

There was a time when I looked upon Mr Harding as a somewhat simple minded fool – the kind of useful idiot who, like Boxer in Animal Farm would trot out the party line obediently and unquestioningly; not particularly intelligent but harmless, nonetheless. However, on deeper inspection of his outpourings, there is a more sinister aspect. If one disagrees with Neil, one is demonised as a right-wing reactionary – or, if one persists in pointing out the stupidity of his arguments, one is mentally ill. I have been labelled as paranoid, for example. If you follow his rants about religion, you will note that the religious are accused of mental illness; in their case, they suffer from delusions. It is the quasi-religious rants about religion from people like Neil that gives decent atheists a bad name.

We have seen this demonisation and labelling people as mentally ill before in Stalin’s USSR. Neil is the person who, in a different place, in a different time, would have enabled the behaviour of such people to carry out their atrocities. Stalin did not act alone, nor did he have an army of monsters at his command, he had useful idiots who were prepared to follow the party line in the name of the public good – and all those people who were murdered or sent to the gulag were enemies of the state and deserved it. They, too, were right-wing reactionaries and the mentally ill.

Tom Paine asks below in the comments why I engage in a war of wits with an unarmed man – this is why. People need to see Neil Harding for what he is and what he represents.