A milestone, this. I'm going to disagree with
Natalie The Wise, because
she's made the usual Libertarian case for why the state shouldn't stop people wearing burqas:If you want to keep your freedom to drink what you please on the public street then fight for the freedom to wear what you please on the public street.
But what about public drunkeness, then, and the fear and misery of those whose nights are blighted by drunks fighting at their windows and pissing in their gardens? And what about the cloth-entombed women, projecting an image of both slavery and Islamic aggression, who may or may not have chosen to wear the black bag?
My answer is substantially the same to both social problems: as a society we have chosen to deny ourselves the very tools of private social action (no, that is not a contradiction in terms) that could make things better.
For decades we have denied ourselves disapproval. For decades we have denied ourselves property rights. For decades we have denied ourselves the right to free association, which necessarily includes the right not to associate.
These tools are the ones we have the right to use. They are also the right tools for the job. They, unlike the tools of coercion, will not turn in our hands and cut us.
The burqa is not a matter of giving Muslim women the same clothing freedoms as the rest of us; it is a matter of making them a specific exception to various laws and regulations which already exist. There are lots of things I am not allowed to do when wearing a mask, and quite rightly, in my opinion: going through airport security, loitering in a bank, walking into a school playground. This is Northern Ireland. Imagine what would happen if I were to walk into a school wearing a balaclava. Anyone going to protect my clothing "rights"? I bloody hope not. Yet a polite request to a Muslim woman to remove
her mask while on the premises would land the headteacher in court. She doesn't have equal rights; she has extra ones.
And sure, yes, as I've said before, we need more public disapproval. The word "judgmental" should not be derogatory. But, for that to work, you need to be dealing within a civilised framework. When it comes to the burqa, we are dealing with — in some cases — and, for obvious reasons, we have no way of knowing until it's too late which cases they are — people who will hurt us, even cut us dead in the street. We're not discussing a civilised debate here.
In general, I would say that strong private institutions are a bulwark against the type of creeping Islamification - or capture by other minority groups - that concern many of the commenters to this thread ... Contrast that with the position of state institutions, which includes state laws. These are a much more realistic target for capture by determined minorities. If, say 3% of the population feel really strongly about some issue and 97% are apathetic it is actually quite a realistic proposition for the 3% to get laws passed to steer things their way. Much easier than out-purchasing the other 97%, certainly.
A good point well made, but it's already happened via another method: violence. I don't think anyone really knows what proportion of Muslims in Britain are extremist Islamists willing to perpetrate sometimes lethal violence against infidels and apostates, but it doesn't need to be large: just a small handful of violent lunatics is enough to unleash enough violence to create enough news stories to change all our behaviour. If I'm running a shop and a group of people walk in all wearing burqas and I don't like it, sure, I could express my disapproval. But, of course, I'm going to be asking myself: Just how much do I disapprove? Enough to get a beating? Enough to risk an angry mob storming my shop? Enough to be killed? Enough to risk my family? And chances are I'll hold my tongue — even if the people who've entered my shop are in fact comepletely reasonable sane people who don't even want to wear bloody burqas and whose reaction, had I spoken up, would actually have just been to have a nice chat about it. Most people aren't likely to risk finding that out.
So a small group have changed the behaviour of the majority to accommodate their extremism. And this is exactly the sort of situation that we have a state with a police force for. We need a law to be passed — not necessarily a burqa ban, but
some sort of law — in order to get back to the state we should be in: the state where civilised discussion is possible.
The commenter
Ian B asks:How does one define when citizens can cover their faces? Below a certain temperature? When it's snowing? It's not as if you can really define what a burka is.
Those who wear the burqa, even if they actually want to, don't just feel like wearing it on the street quite a lot. They
insist on wearing it
at all times, often to the extent of taking action against anyone who asks to see their face. When the rest of us cover our faces for whatever reason, the same is not true.
So don't define what a burqa is. Just apply the same rule to everyone: sure, you can hide your face because of the cold or because you're disfigured or even because of your religion, on the condition that you reveal your face when asked. And allow anyone who dislikes face-hiding to refuse entry. Banks can refuse entry to motorcyclists who refuse to remove their helmets. Let them refuse entry to anyone else, whetever their religion, who refuses to remove any kind of mask. At the moment, they can't.
That's one solution, but I'd go a bit further. There are a number of laws which are simply codifications of our society's social norms and conventions. This particular one has never been codified up till now because it hasn't been needed, but wearing a mask in public certainly has been considered for hundreds of years in Britain to be the behaviour of criminals. The big change here is not the proposal to ban the burqa: that'll just be affirming the long-established norms. The big change happened a few years ago, and was the decision to protect the "right" of certain people to wear masks at all times. There is no such right in Britain.
I am reminded of the seatbelt law. I know most libertarians will vigorously defend their "right" to drive without a seatbelt. Personally, I don't think anyone has a right to leap out in front of moving traffic, and I don't accept "But I've just been hurled through my own windscreen" as an excuse. But that's not the point. As anyone who's tried to put on a seatbelt as a passenger in a country without this law will know, the problem isn't one of freedom of choice. The problem is drivers who refuse to allow their passengers to wear seatbelts, because they consider it an insult to their driving skills or masculinity or penis size or whatever. The important effect of the seatbelt law was to allow people who had always wanted to wear seatbelts to do so when being given lifts by wankers. In a typical family car, there's one driver and three passengers, so the number of people whose freedom was increased is greater than the number whose freedom was decreased. Imperfect, sure, but that's humanity for you.
Similarly, the problem with the burqa is coercion. We all know it. Ban masks in public, and all those women being coerced are given freedom without being given the blame for asking for freedom. Great. Meanwhile, a tiny number of people are prevented from doing something that has never ever been socially accepted in this country and are denied a right that they never had. Boo hoo. More people will gain freedom than will lose it.
This article about upcoming car technology is very interesting and well worth reading, but the writer, Tom Evans, displays a huge glaring splash of ignorance the moment he veers away from the topic of cars:
Another very clever aspect is the harnessing of the 'wisdom of the crowd' -- how the actions of large numbers of people can help others make decisions -- a way of thinking that has grown up in the internet age. Examples abound, with perhaps one of the best examples being Amazon.com's 'people who bought this book also bought that one'.
No, this way of thinking didn't grow up in the Internet age. It's been around, and very successful, for thousands of years. And that Amazon example is not a good one, really. There are far better examples from the Net, but why bother with any of them when by far the best example is also the oldest and therefore the one people will be most familiar with:
pricing.
Honestly, some people.
Well, it ain't
this:The school, in Brent, northwest London, rejected the 12-year-old child because his mother converted to Judaism at a Progressive rather than Orthodox synagogue. M’s father is Jewish, but custom dictates that the faith line passes through the mother.
The judges said that “the requirement that if a pupil is to qualify for admission his mother must be Jewish, whether by descent or by conversion, is a test of ethnicity which contravenes the Race Relations Act”.
In. Sane.
In case you missed the implications of that, what England's distinguished legal scholars have decided is that it's possible to change your ethnicity by conversion.
As we all know, news broadcasters in America use helicopters. It's a perfectly good idea: you can get superb footage of car-chases and gunfights and fires and floods and things behind police cordons. But, at some point, it seems to have become more automatic than considered: they just send their helicopters to whatever the biggest story is right now.
I noticed this at the start of the Michael Jackson coverage yesterday — the very start, when no-one was sure whether he was dead or not and the crowd outside the hospital was still small.
"Michael Jackson's been rushed to hospital and reported dead? He's in the hospital now, either being treated or prepared for the morgue? We have to find out what's going on in there. Quick! Send the chopper to get some footage of the hospital's roof."
And then, having got that footage, they broadcast it. For ages.
Odd.
Either this is a brilliant and lucky accident, or someone called KateX has carefully analysed the way entries in
The Telegraph's online dating service are summarised in the ads that appear on the main site, and has written her spiel accordingly:
No, I couldn't help myself: I clicked and went and looked. The next word is "book." Must be a lot of disappointed single male Telegraph-readers out there.
I have to admit that I felt a spot of pride when the Evil Totalitarian Bastards Of Iran named Britain as Enemy Number One. Yes, not America; us. We are now a greater Satan than The Great Satan. Yay! Gordon Brown must be doing something right.
Fans of Barack "Bloody" Obama, take note: when the tyrant sends armed thugs out onto the streets to shoot dead any jumped-up slaves with the temerity to ask for freedom, saying "That's not very nice" is the bare minimum that a democratic world leader ought to be able to manage. Not "Oh, what an incredibly vigorous debate they're having." Your guy is so deficient that Gordon Brown — that's
Gordon Brown, weak leader of a dying government, with no democratic mandate as such, famous for being a bit of a nonentity, frankly — Gordon Brown has managed to be significantly more important and powerful and morally right than him on the world stage, by merely saying the bare minimum that any half-way civilised person would say. He didn't even follow up his words with a threat of action. Yet he still upset the evil child-murdering bastards more than Obama did.
Quit while you're behind.
Funnily enough, I got another tattoo yesterday, a few hours before reading
this story:Rouslan Toumaniantz said today that Kimberley Vlaminck 'absolutely' agreed she wanted 56 stars tattooed on the left side of her face.
But now the 18-year-old is suing Toumaniantz, claiming she had asked him for only three stars - and had fallen asleep during the procedure, waking up to a nightmare in her Belgian hometown of Courtrai.
So it is very fresh in my mind that... ah, how can I put this? It hurts like buggery. Sure, some people have higher pain thresholds than others. But no-one just drifts off and has a nap while having their chin tattooed. There's not much flesh on the chin; the needle would be practically scraping bone. It's not a bloody massage.
Toumaniantz claimed Kimberley was happy with the work when she left his shop in Coutrai but changed her mind when her father saw the stars.
His version just sounds so much more plausible than hers.
As an aside, I have to say that the guy's done a beautiful job and Kimberley looks gorgeous. Just a shame she's... well, you know.... She's already demonstrated her propensity to sue people, so I'll not publish my thoughts on her personality.
Not sure I could be bothered travelling all the way to Belgium for my next tattoo — especially since I live next door to an excellent tattooist, which is a tad more convenient — but, if you're in the Courtrai area, it might be worth popping in.
'I maintain that she absolutely agreed that I tattoo those 56 stars on the left side of her face,' he told newspaper La Derniere Heure.
'A witness, a woman who was present, has already been questioned by police, and she confirms it.
'But be that as it may: Kimberley is unhappy and it is not my wish to have an unsatisfied client. There is a way to remove the tattoos with the help of a laser. I accept to pay for half the cost.'
That's £4250 he's offering, just as a goodwill gesture, compared to the original cost of the tattoo of £55. That may be the best customer service I've ever seen. What a thoroughly decent guy.
Nothing to do with Iran,
this:Carlos Owens had handled all kinds of machines as an army mechanic, but he always dreamed of using those skills for one project: his own "mecha,” a giant metal robot that could mirror the movements of its human pilot.
Owens, 31, began building an 18-foot-tall, one-ton prototype at his home in Wasilla, Alaska, in 2004.
He didn't half. Go see the photo.
He foresees mechas having uses in the military and the construction industry but acknowledges that right now they’re best suited to entertainment. The first application he has in mind: mecha-vs.-mecha battles, demolition-derby style.
OK, I love this guy.
Here, in passing, I mentioned one of the greatest but often overlooked advantages of democracy:
Even if it's true that Bush is only doing what he's doing as part of a secret plot by Big Oil to take over the world, or by a sinister cabal to establish a New World Order, so what? That only actually matters in a tyranny. In a democracy, whatever our would-be leaders' true motivation, they have to get our support to get their way. And it doesn't matter whether they're lying about their motivations, because, when we vote, we're not. So, even if Bush didn't really give a damn about the Iraqi people, it didn't matter, because, for him to do what he was trying to do, he needed the votes of tens of millions of Americans. What matters is whether those Americans cared about the Iraqi people.
And now look
what's happening:Lots of folks argue — including President Obama — that Mousavi isn't that different from Ahmadinejad on issues like Israel and Iran's nuclear program and so why make such a fuss? I think this is an awfully static analysis of the situation. Sure, if the election had gone swimmingly and Mousavi had won, he might have been the dutiful Egon Krenz of the Mullahcracy, with some window dressing reforms to placate the masses. Or he might have done better than that. Who knows? But all of that is academic now.
Moreover, that debate is a little annoying because it tends to support the idea that this was a legitimate election in the first place. Mousavi was a handpicked hack. His leadership of the reform forces is by default or as Michael Ledeen put it, "He is a leader who has been made into a revolutionary by a movement that grew up around him." At this point the question is, do the people of Iran succeed or does the clerical politburo and its henchmen succeed. If the people succeed, the regime is in real trouble. It's amazing how so many observers doubt something the regime itself manifestly knows. If these protests weren't a threat to the regime and the established theocratic order the regime wouldn't be shooting people.
Mousavi didn't intend to be a reformer. But now he's been turned into one by his supporters. Democracy has this power, not just to choose its leaders, but to shape them.
I was one of those people who tended to disagree with Bush over the value of democracy. I thought that you needed freedom and a stable society first, then true democracy could take root. While he called for democracy, I called for liberty. And Iran was always a good example of why mere voting by itself isn't enough.
Or so I thought. We're seeing an evil and brutal regime under serious threat from the results of the sham elections that took place inside its rigged system. The dictatorship rejected hundreds of would-be presidential candidates, allowing only those whose unequivocal loyalty it could rely upon to stand. And it doesn't matter: the people are forcing their views into the system and into the candidate. Mousavi no longer has much choice in the matter: he's a reformer whether he likes it or not.
Looks like Bush was right after all: democracy
can lead to liberty.
I couldn't help but be amused by the news reports that there are allegations of election-rigging in iran.
This is news?
Obviously the election's rigged: that's built into the Iranian system.
What our news reporters would have reported, if they could still be bothered with thought or honesty or both, is that there are allegations of extra unauthorised election-rigging that isn't of an approved type.
