Sometime back in the last century when NuLabour stormed to power, the then leader of the party promised that his government would be "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" - a soundbite aimed at those suffering from Attention Span Deficit Disorder - or as they prefer to be known - journalists.
Well, Labour lived up to their promise and have, since coming to power, introduced 36 billion new offences* to criminal law including the offence of improperly weighing a herring. One wonders how we survived all this time with rogue herring weighing going on - thank Gord we've put a stop to this heinous crime.
Meanwhile, real crime - from petty low level stuff to violent assaults and life threatening attacks - has risen inexorably. Now I do not believe for one moment that this is what Labour wanted. I'm sure that - like most politicians - they really believed they had the ideas to tackle the crime and social disorder that blights the lives of more and more people in Britain today - but when it actually came to doing something about it they discovered it was a lot harder than they thought.
This is my problem with the position of "libertarians" who claim that they can somehow impose law and order on society by having fewer rules and laws. I've no doubt that there is plenty of scope for removing laws from our statute books, but the issue of dealing with real crime and disorder will still remain and I have never seen anyone provide an answer for dealing with that.
Labour introduced these myriad of new laws simply because they felt they had to be seen doing something. They genuinely want to reduce real crime and social disorder, but they have no plan for coping with the the thing which breeds crime and social disorder.
When Labour promised to be "tough on the causes of crime" they did so based on the belief that crime is caused by poverty but they ignored the fact that the bulk of their supporters in the first half of the last century were genuinely poor people - considerably poorer than the poor of today - who never ever felt the need to resort to criminal activity as a consequence of being poor.
Poverty does not cause crime. Moral collapse causes crime. Unless and until someone does something to address the issue of morality in society today then nothing they do will have a significant impact on crime and disorder - and this is as true for libertarians as it is for Labour.
Up until the 1950's, that morality was provided by Christianity but this was systematically dismantled by social revolutionaries in the years since leaving a moral vacuum which remains today. Something needed to fill that vacuum on society but never has and this has led to the explosion in crime and disorder.
The response of the government has been to do the only thing any government can do - invent new laws and put in place more measures to try and catch criminals. The result is that we are far less libertarian than we were in the 1950's and are now the most watched, monitored, tracked and scrutinised nation in western civilization.
The only way you are going to be able to change that is to instill some sort of morality back into society so that the government no longer feel compelled to watch and monitor us and to dream up new ways to catch criminals such as DNA databases or ID cards (neither of which will be effective).
The instilling of that morality has to be done from an early age and the state has the ideal way to do that through state education - but that risks accusations of "indoctrination" or, worse still for the progressives, being judgemental. Besides which, how can teachers teach things which they don't believe? Such as that sex is illegal if you are under 16 and confined to marriage.
I'm a Christian, so it is no surprise that I believe the teaching of the Christian faith is the best way of restoring our morality. I'm open to new ideas, but there are none forthcoming except from other faiths - particularly Islam. Let me make it quite clear that I am not arguing for religion in government - just for the restoration of morality in society.
My belief is that this is best achieved through Christianity, but I am certain that if we do not make a conscious effort to restore that to society then Islam will be the moralising force that will fill the vacuum left by Christianity and Britain will become an Islamic state. Then you really will see religion in government!
* A rough estimate
2 comments:
Never underestimate the importance of correctly weighing a herring.
Please note that Islam is not a religion. It is a way of life.
As a reference look at Iran. The Ayatollahs are the dictating what the people of the country can do and are using the militia to enforce their will.
Post a Comment