Freedom’s Price

Never one to miss an opportunity to suck up to the bully, Labour scion Dan Hodges barely manages to allow the bodies of those murdered in the Paris attacks on Friday to cool off before using his Torygraph column to call for us to welcome even more state intrusion in to our lives by supporting the monstrously illiberal Communications Data Bill (aka the Snooper’s Charter). This will, he believes*, ensure that London isn’t itself the target of such an atrocity.

He offers no evidence as to why we should do so, just the emotive plea of someone who thinks that he can gain security by sacrificing the civil liberties of 65m or so people.

Since his only attempt to justify this piece of useful idiotry when confronted on twitter was to repeatedly pretend that all the security services wish to do is have a look through people’s browsing history – as if that isn’t bad enough given the state’s propensity to try to hang you for what they find on your hard disk if they can’t get you for what they initially wanted – I thought I’d deliver a cold hard dose of reality to him and anyone else who thinks that this piece of legislation is a great idea…

The brutal truth, although you might not like it very much, is that the price of living in a liberal democracy is that occasionally we will be the victims of an outrage such as we saw in Paris on Friday night.

No, that doesn’t mean I want to see people murdered in cold blood. Nor does it mean that I disapprove of sensible precautionary measures that may prevent incidents (such as not allowing those with mental health issues to have access to firearms**).

What it does mean is that I am an intelligent, grown-up human being who accepts the possibility of it occurring rather than someone who is so scared that something bad might happen to me that I wish to sacrifice my freedom in order to be swaddled in the dubious comfort blanket of the police state.

Capisce?

* Whilst, no doubt, furiously working himself in to a state of pleasure at the thought of Theresa May in black leather standing over him praising him for this loyalty to the cause.

** Related to this is the need to stop kicking meaningful mental health reform in to the long grass.

6 Comments

  1. Dioclese says:

    It’s a fine balance isn’t it? Personal freedom against protecting the population for atrocities like the one one in Paris, 9/11 and 7/7

    We could argue all day about where that balance lies but the old argument is always ‘nothing to hide then nothing to fear’ were it not so easy to hack into peoples personal data and steal their identities to cover your tracks. That’s the danger – innocent people being prosecuted for something they didn’t do.

    What’s the answer? We just do the best we can…

  2. Paul Coombes says:

    The problem with intelligent, grown-up human beings is that they don’t need a lot of government. Politicians don’t like that because that reduces their importance. They want you to want to be looked after.

  3. james higham says:

    Yes, Clarissa, that’s right.

  4. […] Girl takes aim at Telegraph columnist Dan Hodges […]

  5. Well said. Being frightened in the aftermath of a terrorist attack is one thing (and understandable to a degree), but it’s quite another to use your platform of a daily column in a national newspaper to clamour for massive increases in the surveillance state.

    I also penned an open response to Dan Hodges, here:

    http://semipartisansam.com/2015/11/15/paris-terror-attacks-more-government-surveillance-is-not-the-answer/

  6. steve says:

    Excellent (yes, I know its old now, but I have time on my hands)