The Wardman Wire

From Doug Chaplin, an article of many themes, including comparing Chris Dillow to a Libertarian Conservative:

Chris Dillow has in my view the most significant criticism of Rowan Williams.

In saying that the UK’s adoption of part of Sharia law is inevitable, I suspect the Archbishop of Canterbury is making the same mistake he made in calling for laws against “cruel speech.” He’s failing to see that there should be a (big) space between individuals and the law, a space filled by civil society.

In a free society, consenting adults should be able to settle disputes however they like; this might entail recourse to a coin toss, Sharia, Beth din or whatever. The job of UK law is merely to ensure that consent is free, informed and not too onerous.

Despite his ostensible Marxism, this looks far more like a classic conservative libertarian argument. But it seems to me that in part, the space for aspects of Sharia that the Archbishop was talking about fits far more into this communal space of civil society, than into the realm of law. I’m not sure whether Rowan Williams would agree: some aspects of his lecture make me think he would.

Doug himself comments on maintaining that separation, once society no longer has a common (at least in theory) outlook:

I think there is an ambiguous and confused relationship between the law and morality, and over recent decades there has first been a decoupling of many areas of specifically Christian morality from legislation, and subsequently, particularly in the last decade, a great many morally driven pieces of legislation, whose morality is rather ad hoc and du jour and whose purpose is social engineering: fox-hunting, homosexual law reform, anti-smoking legislation and more.

Moral Judgements in Technocratic Uniforms

The angle that fascinates me is the number of people who will go to considerable lengths in 2008 to justify their value judgements in technocratic (or sociological) language, having conducted their campaign in a high-pitched screech of moral indignation in order to - in my view - short-circuit a rational debate.

Examples? Moral indignation in ostensibly rational clothing seems to run across the spectrum:

• Sometimes it’s groups (from MPs to policemen to bus drivers) demanding inflation linked pay increases “as my right” (in a world when Greens are arguing for the end of growth - really?)
• The recent demands for a heavy prison sentence for the driver of a car using a mobile phone in an accident where a cyclist was killed after running a red light to “deter others from using mobile phones whilst driving”. (Not a sausage about deterring cyclists from going through red lights. It seems to me patently obvious that the cyclist was half to blame by going through a red-light.)
• Groups such as PITA (moral judgement there) virtually dribble moral indignation, as the rest of us naturally produce saliva.

The argument for a reasoned small-government Libertarianism has never been clearer or more necessary.

Wrapping-Up

Welcome to the new witch-hunt generation. Check your job-title for dangerous misspellings before you choose your career. Or, alternatively, don’t live next door to Sun-readers.

And - since I started this article with him - let me make it clear that I think Rowan Williams is the “still, small voice” of reason, suggesting that we should actually talk about things rather than demonise groups and individuals in our society.

Tags: doug caplin, metacatholic, rowan williams, islamophobia

[tags]doug caplin, metacatholic, rowan williams, islamophobia[/tags]