12 February 2014

yet more power for police, judges etc.

● Consider:
– The British legal system is already groaning under the weight of hundreds of interventionist laws brought in since 1997.
– Every week seems to produce fresh evidence suggesting that the police (charged with the job of impartially enforcing the law) have ceased to be trustworthy and are promoting an anti-individual agenda, largely aimed against the bourgeoisie but hostile to civil rights in general.
– So why would MPs want to bring in yet another legal prohibition which for decades we did perfectly well without?
Allegedly the purpose of the smoking ban in cars is to avoid health risks to children. But there has been no public clamour for such a ban.
Since the push for the legislation seems to come from politicians (and other members of the il-liberal elite) rather than the electorate, we have to ask what the motivation is. Perhaps it’s because politicians don’t like leaving their immense power unused and are usually itching to “do something” – preferably something that restricts the freedom of others and brings them more under the power of the state.
Children can provide interventionists with a convenient rationalisation, as the liberty issue becomes more blurry when dealing with minors. However, if you take family intervention by social services as an example, and judge by the ratio of harm caused to harm prevented, it looks as if the motivation there has similarly been more about exercising power than about protection.
The voting at Westminster on the new ban has proved revealing about people’s position on the libertarian-authoritarian spectrum. As Deputy PM Nick Clegg notes (according to James Forsyth in the Mail on Sunday), the measure is clearly illiberal.
Meanwhile, as politicians fiddle with top-down leftist ideology – no doubt inspired by their university ‘politics’ and ‘philosophy’ courses – public infrastructure continues to deteriorate.