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February 2017

The Red Star and the Swastika














Has Political Correctness Gone Mad?



Cressida Dick







The dangers of virtue signalling on the internet

Twitter Users Pledge To Fly Thousands Of Refugees To Live In J.K. Rowling's Mansions - MILO NEWS.

It's unwise for wealthy leftists to "virtue signal" on the internet. They may get called out. Kudos to author, film-maker and controversialist (troll, if you prefer) Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich on Twitter) for offering to fly "up to 100 refugees" to live in JK Rowling's mansions. I think all of us who can spare a few quid should chip in. 

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Not only will I buy a plane ticket for a male Syrian refugee of fighting age, but I will pick him up in my car from any UK airport to deliver him to whichever of JK Rowling's mansions she nominates. I look forward to the three of us having a cup of tea together as she welcomes him into her home.
Let's get this clear once and for all. You are not being “kind" or “generous" when you demand that others be taxed or otherwise compelled to do something you think is good. If you are a social justice warrior multi-millionaire then, until your every spare room is crammed with "refugees" and they are living in tented villages on your acres of manicured lawn, you have no right to demand that poor people be forced to have them as their neighbours.

Housing the politically homeless in our brave new political world

Fascinating though world politics is at present as the insurrection against PC sweeps the free-ish world, Britain is for once the most interesting place. Once upon a time in our country every little boy and girl who was born into the world alive was either a little (classical) Liberal or else a little Conservative. Then came Mankind's greatest catastrophe, Karl Marx. The Labour Party was sired as his bastard child on religious non-conformism. The mighty Liberals – in many ways the natural party of government in a trading nation that despised busybodies – degenerated into the apology for itself now comprehensively mis-named the Liberal Democrats.

I am a socially and economically liberal free market man who believes in minimum government and maximum individual freedom. I aspire (subject to removing the perverse incentives of corporate and individual welfarism) to global free movement of both goods and people so that every economic object and player can find its, his or her highest and best use. I believe that's the best hope not just for Britain, but for the entire human race if we aspire (as we should) to raise us all from material, cultural and spiritual poverty. 

The post-Brexit, post-Trump political battle lines seem to have been drawn up between "globalism" (a dysphemism for "free trade") and protectionism (the second most stupid idea in history, but still dangerously powerful among the economically illiterate). So it looks like we are heading back toward the old Conservative/TruLib™ or Tory/Whig divide. The realignment will take some time to work its way through though. Firstly, for example, the Labour Party (which still commands some tribal loyalty) needs to finish committing suicide. The new players, UKIP and the Greens, need to submit to the discipline of the electoral market and form consistent political and economic stances.

In many ways I am as politically homeless in this new alignment as I was in the old. UKIP is a strong candidate to replace the Labour Party, but I don't fit in its mercantilist ranks. The only thing I have in common with the Trumps, Farages and LePens of this world is that I believe when someone does move to another culture they should assimilate. I see NO obligation on a host country to modify any legal, ethical, religious, social or political norms to make new arrivals feel at home. 

I don't feel comfortable in the Conservative Party either. It's more inclined towards free markets than the other contenders but it's socially illiberal and inclined to build a scarily powerful state. Yes, it's a successful fighting force with a lot of internal cohesion and has been much strengthened as an electoral machine now that Brexit has removed the only threat to its unity. There is no doubt it will be one of the potential parties of government in the new order and in the likes of Dan Hannan it has some sound thinkers but I hunger for a home that is more authentically TruLib™.

The only element of my beliefs the Labour Party sometimes seems to  favour is free movement of, if not goods, then people. However that's certainly not from rational conviction. Labour fears/hates its traditional voters, now too sophisticated for its outdated Marxist schtick, and wants to ship in naifs by the million to replace them. Welfare recipients, rent-seeking intellectual idlers and other government dependents are its main voter base so it also wants to farm those unproductives. It therefore represents a perfect storm of cultural and economic impoverishment. Even if – as now seems unlikely – it survives, Labour is clearly not my party. 

I can't even muster the strength to explain why the Greens are not for me. Life is too short. Let's just say loincloths and camp fires are not my style. 

Which leaves the LibDems. Historically they have the right credentials. There are still some Gladstonians there, though they are not exactly in the driving seat. Once they stop grieving about Brexit and move from their present denial through anger to acceptance they have a real opportunity to be the party of free trade and an open, tolerant society. I see no signs at present that they even begin to aspire to the mantle of alternative government, but who knows? It lies in the street where Labour discarded it. Someone must surely pick it up?

What is hate crime and does it matter?

Law came into existence for practical purposes. By offering peaceful resolution of disputes, it reduced violence; for example acts of revenge and feuding. By prohibiting force and fraud it facilitated peaceful trading and made the modern world possible. The post-Enlightment West – certainly the Anglo-Saxon Common Law part of it – has therefore usually operated under the practical principle that;


The 20th Century may one day be analysed by historians in terms of its retreat from that principle. In Common-law countries, "judge made law" (we Common Lawyers prefer to think of it, quasi-mystically, as "discovered" by the judges rather than made) still develops incrementally for practical reasons, but many modern statutes in both Civil and Common Law jurisdictions are now essentially didactic in purpose. They set out to change "wicked" minds, not inhibit wicked behaviours. Very often they are designed to appropriate an emotional word (e.g. "hate" or "discrimination" or "racism") and constrain its meaning to fit leftist ideology. Or to invent new words like "islamophobia" or "transphobia" to suit an ideological purpose.

As The Diplomad recently observed,  


So-called "Hate Crime" is a classic example. Why does it matter what motivates someone who offers you violence? Is your injury worse? Are the consequences greater? Of course not. If you are dead the killer's motives (while analysis of them may help the police to catch him or her) scarcely matter to your loved ones. They certainly won't care whether the killer's reason was logical or not. If you are injured it doesn't matter to you either. As folk-singer Tom Paxton used to joke about his military training in the use of the bayonet, 

Oh no, here comes someone with a bayonet! What'll I do if he yells at me?!

The purpose of "hate crime" is to promote the political view that the life and safety of protected group x, y or z is more valuable than that of group a. In one of those dog-chasing-its-own tail contradictions that only leftist "intellectuals" can truly enjoy it is (by their own warped logic, which I deny) hate speech against group a — the group it implies is comprised of "haters" unworthy of the law’s fullest protection. 

Let's say my gay pal and I meet some anti-social gentry on our way home from the pub. They call him "queer" and me "fat". Both statements are meant to be hurtful and both are accurate. Then they knife us and we die. Or maybe they call him queer and say nothing to me. Maybe they just kill me because I am a witness. Am I less dead? Is my murder less heinous? Of course not. In the classic Age of Reason formulation all humans are equal before the law. The very idea of "gay rights" is offensive in those terms, because one only needs to be human to have equal rights. No other attribute is required. It's perfectly reasonable, if a society discriminates legally against a type to eliminate that error. As chairman of my University's Conservative Association in the 1970s I led my colleagues to take part in a "gay rights" march calling for the remaining crimes pertaining to homosexuality to be repealed in Scotland and Northern Ireland. We were protesting, very rationally, a shortfall in legal rights for homosexuals.  But it's the very same error we opposed to go on from that to demand gays acquire greater rights.

The law in Western social democracies now differs from that rational, even commonsensical, view. My gay chum's murder is a hate crime and more serious than mine. If he were black, brown or yellow, the same. And what if they are themselves gay or black and kill him for fraternising with me? Is it hate crime then? Oddly, no. That, in modern left-wing thinking, is just karma.

Hate crime is a legal concept born of the Marxist social “sciences” (sneer quotation marks entirely deliberate). Like all the social “sciences” it is designed to create contradictions in society that can only be resolved by deploying state violence to raise funds with which to employ social “scientists” in unproductive jobs with fat pensions. This rot should have been stopped decades ago. No lives have been saved by it. Some may have been lost. Certainly the affection for groups thus "protected" has not increased. The people who promoted the concept however have achieved their sinister goals. They have dubious statistical evidence that hatred is (a) endemic in the majority population and (b) rising as they constantly tweak the definition to that end.

In reality, the purpose of the “hate crime” concept is to generate hate. Committing such a "crime" is pointless to an actual bigot. If you are a bigot with power, you will silently exercise it in line with your bigotry. If you are a bigot without power, you don't matter. Such actions benefit instead the class of "victims", whose elevated legal status it justifies and the class of government-employed busybodies and academic social "scientists", whose parasitical existence it supports. Which accounts for the phenomenon of "fake hate crime".

I strongly suspect on the basis of Cui bono? that much "hate crime" is of this type. The Left has a supply-and-demand problem with bigotry: there isn’t enough to go around to support their world view  – and the "equalities" industry on which so many of them fruitlessly live. Given that they claim that US college campuses are more rife with rapes than war zones, they make those up too. "The Patriarchy" is the most widespread conspiracy theory in the world and as laughable as Icke's lizards. As a former partner in a City of London law firm I think, if it existed, I would have been invited to the meetings.

As socialism itself is hate-driven ideology (the National variety based on race hate and the International variety on class hate) perhaps it's not surprising that the Left promotes the concept so ferociously. As I noticed in decades of practice as a commercial lawyer, the wrongs people most fear are the ones they are themselves most likely to visit on others. The violent conduct of the "Love Trumps Hate" protestors across the United States at the moment suggests that it's still best to characterise people by their actions, not their words. If the current insurrection against political correctness in the West achieves nothing else, let's hope it makes the law once more reflect that simple truth.