Peter, I know your interest in pursuing this conversation any further is limited,

[Peter]

Don't think I did, did you? I don't think you're a liberal. You're an authoritarian, big-state lefty.

It is certainly how it read.

What you write above is not a new proposition. It’s the quintessential paradox of western political philosophy- freedom in the first person and freedom from the second.

The law has traditionally (not so much recently) tended to focus on the separation of thought from deed. You can believe any old cobblers you choose and it will not impact on my liberty unless you act on it. One could argue here that the problem is not that these men have an appalling attitude to young white girls, it’s that they acted on that by raping them. You may also blame me (or the liberals) for the fact that they felt that they would get away with it.

I could point out the irony of you challenging beliefs based on these outcomes while at the same time being ultra critical of any modern law that attempts to tell us what we are allowed to believe or attempts to criminalise any action that is deemed to be based on belief. Thus common assault is commonly a slap on the wrist- give the CPS the slightest notion that the assault may have been motivated by race and it becomes racially-aggravated public order with a possible two year prison sentence.

You can’t have it both ways. If we are to go down the road of telling people what they can and can’t think then we must all travel together. And of course that works both ways- I am not saying that it is fine to pass laws telling us we have to like benders while at the same time excluding Muslims from it.

This is, of course, a legal perspective. The rule of law MUST trump all other beliefs, faith-based or otherwise. That is surely the crucial difference between us here in the West (with our separation of church and state) and them in their various ****holes where religion still dominates or explicitly rules.

The rule of law, b. Always a vote winner