Sunday 24 May 2009

The libertarian menu

Elsewhere on the internet, Charles Crawford is sticking pins into Craig Murray about his post complaining at the right of the libertarian blogosphere.

The peculiar thing is, that these neo-con "Libertarians" have, by and large, little or no concern for civil liberties. Very few of these "Libertarians" blogged about the shooting of Jean Charles De Menezes, against detention without trial for 42 days, about police violence at the G20 summit. These "Libertarians" do not want to see Guantanamo closed, and are quite happy with extraordinary rendition and the use of torture. Not only will you search the large majority of them in vain for any condemnation of the use of torture in the "War on Terror", but some of them - like Charles Crawford, for instance - have actively blogged in favour of the use of torture.

Libertarians in favour of detention without trial? Libertarians for Guantanamo?

Libertarians for Torture?

Plainly the word "Libertarian" is being misappropriated by these people, and stretched beyond any natural meaning in the English language. Some of the most prominent "libertarians", like Paul Staines, have not only been completely silent on civil liiberties, but have flirted with racism in the past. Staines' site is very often homophobic, and is not the only one on Mickelthwait's list.

Libertarians against gay rights?

Libertarians against Immigration?

So, Craig has given us a list of boxes that must be ticked by each blog in order for it to fulfill his criteria to be 'libertarian'
  • The Jean Charles De Menezes shooting
  • 42 days detention
  • Police violence at the G20 protests
  • Extraordinary rendition
  • Torture
  • Guantanamo
  • Gay Rights
  • Immigration
So now I'm going through my spreadsheet of ranked libertarian blogs and checking which ones fullfill all the criteria.

Its going to take me a while to duplicate Craig's efforts in this area, there's a lot of blogs, 125, and a lot of blog posts. But hey, this is important.

However, I gotta say, it is a bit, prescriptive and arbitary. I always assumed that libertarianism was a broad church and you didn't have to agree with everyone, just as long as they subscribe to the policy of "Get the hell out of my way".

Also, would you really expect economics blogs like UK Housing Bubble and the Adam Smith Institute to post about Jean Charles Menezes? or are they exempt from that criteria?

It could be, to paraphrase Charles Crawford, that Craig Murray is full of shit.

But bless him, if he's a libertarian, then he's my brother, and if I have a barbeque this afternoon, then he's welcome to come round.

**UPDATE**
Okay, this going through blogs is insanely boring, but out of the top twenty libertarian blogs listed sixteen of them did blog about the Jean Charles De Menezes shooting, the 20% who didn't hardly constitute 'a vast majority'. Maybe when I go through the other hundred blogs, no one else'll have written anything, but its not likely.

Name
Jean Charles
Menezes shooting
42 days detention

Guido Fawkes
link
link

Samizdata
link
link

Burning Our Money
link
link

Devils Kitchen
link
link

Daniel Hannan
link
-

UK Housing Bubble
-
-

Adam Smith Institute
-
link

Old Holborn
link
link

Craig Murray
link

link
Mr. Eugenides
link
link
link
Obnoxio the Clown
link
link

PJC Journal
link
link

An Englishman's Castle
link
link

Tim Worstall
link
link

Mark Wadsworth
-
link

UK Libertarian Party
link
link

Capitalists @ Work
link
link

Ambush Predator
link
link

Bishop Hill
link
link

Douglas Carswell
-
link

5 comments:

  1. I should love to come round to a barbecue. But you'll have to tell me where you live.

    Craig

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wot, no drugs? Not much of a libertarian menu is it?

    :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. I actually wrote a series of 20 posts called "Basher for Liberty" about David Davis' campaign on 42 days.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I also blogged on the 42 days, very quickly and strongly about the death of Ian Tomlinson and generally on Gay rights in the general context of what you put into to your own orifices is none of my business. Gitmo, torture and rendition probably I haven't because you can't blog everything.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Sorry, I took all the drugs. Which mental institution is it that Murray was in?

    ReplyDelete