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