The Myth Of The Morally Neutral State

The Canadian state is a lot of things but morally neutral is not one of them. Surprisingly, however, the idea that modern liberal and democratic governments constitute Impartial Observers enforcing no particular moral code, remaining above the scrum and delivering unprejudiced decisions in all instances, is strangely popular among Liberals and, stranger yet, among Conservatives as well.

David Cameron, leader of the British Columbian Conservative Party presented this view in a recent speech in Glasgow which earned considerable media attention:

I think the time has come for me to speak out about something that has been troubling me for a long time. I have not found the words to say it sensitively. And then I realised, that is the whole point.

We as a society have been far too sensitive. In order to avoid injury to people's feelings, in order to avoid appearing judgemental, we have failed to say what needs to be said. We have seen a decades-long erosion of responsibility, of social virtue, of self-discipline, respect for others, deferring gratification instead of instant gratification.

Instead we prefer moral neutrality, a refusal to make judgments about what is good and bad behaviour, right and wrong behaviour. Bad. Good. Right. Wrong. These are words that our political system and our public sector scarcely dare use any more.

I sympathize with Cameron's position but I dissent from his conclusion. We live under anything but a morally neutral state. What he means, clearly, is that he does not support the kind of morality our state currently endorses and enforces.

Pierre Lemieux explains:

So, we are living under a morally neutral state? Try telling this to individuals who are denormalized because they smoke tobacco or are jailed because they consume drugs or provide them to consumers, who have their children seized by the state because they don’t teach them state-approved morals, who pay taxes to support government programs based on egalitarian ethics or other state activities they disprove of, who are brainwashed by the subsidized environmental religion, or who are prohibited by law (in theory or in practice) from defending themselves against gun- or knife-wielding thugs. All these people and others have moral values imposed on them by the state, that is, by force. Nothing morally neutral about that.

The best example, perhaps, is the recent troubles with free speech and the Canadian Human Rights Commissions. It is impossible to argue that the prosecution of Steyn and Levant for "hate speech" and "Islamophobia" does not assume the morality of the left, to wit, that our freedom of expression can be properly subordinated to a newly-enforceable "right" not to be insulted.

Ultimately, I conclude with Lemieux:

What is needed in Canada as in the U.K. is not a wishy-washy retreat from a neutral morality that doesn’t exist, a substitution of Liberal fantasies for Conservative hang-ups, but a revolution that would abolish the state’s moral authority and let individuals at liberty to make their own moral choices. The solution is to minimize the moral content of public policy and require that the state avoid taking sides between its citizens, except in matters of murder and other violent crimes. Such a true morally neutral state would allow the re-establishment of efficient private morality.

Cameron's article represents a strong and passionate advocacy of the traditional Canadian values of freedom and liberalism. Read the whole thing for a more nuanced analysis of the question of state neutrality.

Prince Harry For The Crown: If We're Going To Have A Monarch, He Might As Well Be Awesome

Prince Harry has been serving on the front line in Afghanistan for a couple of months now. It's too bad the story leaked because you'd have to think the damage has been done and for the time being it won't be safe for him to serve, particularly on the front line.

CTV has the story:

Prince Harry has been secretly serving on the front line in Afghanistan since December, Britain's Ministry of Defence said Thursday.

Officials said the prince, who is third in line from the throne, is still in the country.

"He has been fully involved in operations and has run the same risks as everyone else in his Battlegroup," Chief of the General Staff Sir Richard Dannatt, who is head of the British Army, said in a statement Thursday.

Britain's media officer in Helmand said Thursday that Harry has been in Helmand fighting for the past ten weeks.

He said a decision was yet to be made on whether he would be pulled out of the region due to security concerns following the leak.

...

Prince Harry, who is trained as a tank commander, is a Second Lieutenant in the Blues and Royals regiment of the Household Cavalry of the British Army.

"What the last two months have shown is that it is perfectly possible for Prince Harry to be employed just the same as other Army officers of his rank and experience," said Dannatt.

"His conduct on operations in Afghanistan has been exemplary."

I'm no great fan of the monarchy as an institution but I figure if Canada has to have a King, let's make it a good one. Apparently he's third in line for the throne so I figure if we ask the two ahead of him really nicely we'll have ourselves a fighting king in no time.

UPDATE: Great post on the subject over at Taylor & Company. Check it out.

The Plight Of Women In The Islamic Republic Of England

It's a great article, if a bit long. Definitely required reading, class.

From The Independent:

Up to 17,000 women in Britain are being subjected to "honour" related violence, including murder, every year, according to police chiefs.

And official figures on forced marriages are the tip of the iceberg, says the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO).

It warns that the number of girls falling victim to forced marriages, kidnappings, sexual assaults, beatings and even murder by relatives intent on upholding the "honour" of their family is up to 35 times higher than official figures suggest.

The crisis, with children as young as 11 having been sent abroad to be married, has prompted the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to call on British consular staff in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan to take more action to identify and help British citizens believed to be the victims of forced marriages in recent years.

...

"We are bringing three girls a week back from Islamabad as victims of forced marriage. We know that is the tip of the iceberg, but that is the failure end. It has to be part of education within the communities and the children themselves."

Women who have been taken overseas to be married against their will are now being rescued on an almost daily basis. The Government's Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) handled approximately 400 cases last year – 167 of them leading to young Britons being helped back to the UK to escape unwanted partners overseas. And it is not just women who are affected. Home Office figures show that 15 per cent of cases involve men and boys.

In an attempt to crack down on the crimes being committed in the name of honour, police are to introduce a new training package that will give all officers instructions on handling honour cases. In addition, detectives are believed to be conducting a "cold case" style review of previous suicides amid suspicions that cases of honour killings are more common than previously thought.

Almost all victims of the most extreme crimes are women, killed in half of cases by their own husbands. Sometimes murders are carried out by other male relatives, or even hired killers. The fear that many thousands are left to endure honour violence alone may be supported by the disturbing details of the incidence of suicide within the British Asian community. Women aged 16 to 24 from Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi backgrounds are three times more likely to kill themselves than the national average for women of their age.

A report published last week by the Centre for Social Cohesion found that many women felt unable to defy their families and therefore "suffer violence, abuse, depression, anxiety and other psychological problems that can lead to self-harm, schizophrenia and suicide". James Brandon, co-author of Crimes of the Community: Honour-based Violence in the UK, said: "The Government is still not taking honour crime seriously. Until this happens, the ideas of honour which perpetuate this violence will continue to be passed on through generations. Religious leaders, local authorities and central government must work together to end such abuses of human rights."

The human cost of honour crime was vividly captured in a haunting video message from murdered Banaz Mahmood, who revealed how her own father had tried to kill her after she abandoned her arranged marriage and fell in love with another man. In the grainy message she told how he plied her with brandy – the first time she had ever drunk alcohol – pulled the curtains and asked her to turn around.

The 19-year-old fled, but less than a month after making the grainy video on a mobile phone, Banaz was dead. Her naked body was found buried in a yard in Birmingham in 2006, more than 100 miles from her London home. She had been raped and tortured by men hired by her uncle to kill her. Mahmood's father, uncle and one of her killers were sentenced to a total of 60 years in jail for the murder.

And the fatal potential of honour disputes was laid bare last month when a coroner said he was convinced that a Muslim teenager who feared she was being forced into an arranged marriage by her parents had suffered a "vile murder." Ian Smith said the concept of an arranged marriage was "central" to the circumstances leading up to the death of 17-year-old Shafilea Ahmed, whose decomposed body was discovered on the banks of the River Kent at Sedgwick, Cumbria, four years ago. After running away from home in February 2003, Shafilea told housing officers: "My parents are going to send me to Pakistan and I'll be married to someone and left there." The tragic story of the bright teenager who wanted to go to university and study law is far from the only example of the anguish suffered by British teenagers in recent years.

What a horrendous state of affairs. This has been creeping into the UK slowly but, recently, it has become less of the exception and more of the rule. For example, can you believe that the Archbishop of Canterbury declared that he welcomes sharia law for England since it would unite the country, and that PM Gordon Brown supported him? It's beyond my comprehension. We've seen the face of sharia law a thousand times but the above article brings the point home. Sharia law looks like upwards of 17,000 women in Britain being subjected to "honour" crimes. In practice, sharia law means intimidation, subordination, and a life of fear and repression for women. It's a barbarous and medieval code that needs to be denounced for what it is.

Allah save Canada from a fate such as sharia law.

H/t Ace (who received the blogger of the year award at CPAC last week!)