Once again I find myself screaming at the odious Harriet Harman to, in short, stop trying to help. From the ‘they do it to us so why can’t we do it to them?’ school of ad hominum attacks, she tells us that men cannot be trusted in power, and argues that the Labour Party should always have one woman and one man as Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, or something.

It comes down, as always, to a collectivist interpretation of feminism and a individualist’s interpretation.

The collectivist likes to think in terms of collectives. So women are a collective, and to that collective are attributed lots of wonderful characteristics that are generally found in woman. Being caring. Being empathetic, etc. Each member of the collective, then, is assumed to have these general characteristics and therefore an individual woman in a position of power would bring said characteristics to the job.

Which is, of course, total bullshit.

The one true hard generalisation you can make about members of the ‘female’ collective is that they all know what it’s like being a member of that collective. The same can be said for the men in the ‘male’ collective, and I suspect this is the one that Harman is interested in.

To argue that leadership should have a representative from each of these collectives is typical of a collectivist mindset – that people belong to groups, and from those groups emerge leaders to represent their interests as a group. If those leaders advocate something, then it’s good for the collective even if the individuals within it suffer.

So is it a surprise that someone like Harman slurs men as a collective group, or that she believes both ‘groups’ should have equal representation? No. I mean, it’s the least surprising thing ever, after sliced bread selling more than un-sliced bread. It’s amazing it made even made the news.

Let’s now consider the individualist’s perspective on the whole issue of gender, of minority rights and everything else – take each individual on their own merits. That’s it. Race, gender, sexuality, disability, nationality – these are rarely relevant to whether or not a person is able to do a job.

“Ah,” cry collectivists. “People don’t though!” they argue, again generalising all human beings into yet another collective. “Ah ha!” I reply. “Perhaps if you stopped promoting collectivism and thus treating people as groups rather than as individuals, we wouldn’t have this problem?”

If only it were that simple – well it is that simple – if only it was that simple to smack such people over the head with the reality stick like that. Collectivism is the alpha and omega of racism, sexism, nationalism. “Ah but” they say. At this point another knock on the conk with the reality stick might be useful.

At completely the opposite end of the political spectrum from Harriet Harman and nearly 50 years ago, Ayn Rand – not someone I’m especially pleased to be referencing – wrote a book where the main character is a woman whose main dream in life is building rail roads, not the perfect white wedding or acquiring a pair of Manolo Balonicks.

Not only is this character technically competent (and good at maths) she’s accepted by her peers not for her appearance, but on her merits, for what she has achieved. The fact that she’s a woman is neither here nor there.

Perhaps if Hollywood ever does make a film version of Atlas Shrugged, Dagny Taggart will be transformed into a hard-working mum, struggling to juggle her career and her duties as a mother. Luckily the state helps her out by providing child care help, which allows her to go off and do her job properly. When she finally comes face to face with John Galt, she explains how without the state’s childcare help she’d never have been able to build the John Galt line, so basically he’s wrong and must be stopped – they end up having a bit of a gun fight and in the end Dagny blows John out of the airlock, saving the country. All the other industrialists, brought to tears by Dagny’s tale, return to work with cheer in their hearts.

Annnyyyyway….

See, I’d like to see a world where women were judged purely on their merits (and, in fact, see men judged on their individual merits too), and perhaps we’re getting there. But the answer, surely, cannot be Harriet’s way – the sense of entitlement as a ‘leader’ of a collective. The answer has to be for women to show what ability they have and, in short, not give a flying fuck whether or not men – as a collective – accept women – as a collective – as their equals. It simply doesn’t matter – what matters is the individual and the individuals they deal with whether you’re a man, chicken, goat or whatever.

I had the pleasure of finding a real, honest to goodness, Labour voter yesterday – let’s call him Joe – first such person I’ve come across in a long time. “Labour all the way” he said. I physically squirmed at this.

As odd as it sounds, it was like having a conversation with myself – except me from 5 years ago. It all started when someone mentioned this blog. I said, “if you’re a lefty you probably won’t like it very much.”

“Why?” Joe replied. “Are you a bit of a fascist? Do you hate immigrants? Do you hate the poor?”

I choke on my burger at this point.

It wouldn’t be fair to describe Joe as typical Labour voter. His parents are highly regarded in the socialist movement, and when Joe went out looking for work, he was banned from working for the Liberal Democrats – work for Labour, he was told, or don’t work for a political party at all.

This conversation, then, takes place a few years after he’s been working in the belly of the beast. Curiously I find myself on the wrong end of what should be a very simple argument:

The only legitimate justification for the state to force an individual to do something is to prevent that individual harming another individual. Forcing an individual to carry an ID card does not prevent an individual harming another individual, therefore there is no legitimate moral basis to compel anyone to carry an ID card.

Simples!

Or is it? Because my interpretation of what is ‘moral’ for the state to do is not axiomatic – it is simply what I believe.When I say, “this is right, this is good” that’s really just me denoting my approval.

Joe suggested that the moral basis for ID cards is the same as that for taxation – that it’s a social contract. If you want to live in the UK then you automatically sign up to this social contract which means you pay the taxes required of you and you allow to Government to put you in a database so that you can prove who you are.

“It’s the Greater Good, isn’t it?” I offered.

“Exactly,” he replied.

Once again I came back to the basic principle that civil liberties are an inherent good (without really being able to explain why) and that compulsory ID cards invert the relationship between Governed and Government.

I realise I’m talking esoterically about philosophical attitudes, and that I have no deductively sound arguments in favour of  civil liberties as a defacto good in their own right, that Liberty itself, as a good thing, is not universally acknowledged.

At every point, “The Greater Good” and “The Social Contract” effect – the ‘if you want to live here, you play by our rules and you pay your dues’ remains a perfectly acceptable counter-argument.

So an article in the Guardian about an immigrant’s experience at the hands of this BNP voter pandering Government was music to my ears this morning (and written about in top quality fashion by Devil’s Kitchen)

Cory Doctorow asks his Grandmother why she left the Soviet Union:

“Papers,” she said, finally. “We had to carry papers. The police could stop you at any time and make you turn over your papers.” The floodgates opened. They spied on you. They made you spy on each other.

This sounds like a powerful argument in favour of being watchful about the surveillance powers of the State, doesn’t it? Except it doesn’t. Even now Joe can reply, “well, they didn’t agree to the Contract, so they left, what’s the problem? Everyone who didn’t care stayed. Most people didn’t care.”

Which means we’re back where we started, where ‘Democratic Mandate’ gives Government the power to do whatever it wants and it’s up to us to comply or leave – very Labour.

The question now is whether or not we can ever find a hard argument in favour of civil liberties as an inherent good, in much the same way that democracy is considered an inherent good – something that people accept by default. Until then, civil liberties are little more than a minor annoyance for legislators who wish such a concept did not exist.

Perhaps such an argument can never be found, but it strikes me that if we’re ever to limit the power of the state to interfere with civil liberties then this is an argument that needs to be won, that the concept of a ‘free nation’ is something that people should value and want to fight for as a rule, not as an exception.

UPDATE: IanB has had a go at this thorny problem here.

UPDATE: Counting Cats has a go as well…

UPDATE: Costigan Quist says ‘there’s no such thing as the social contract’

UPDATE: Jock Coats claims that Social Contract contradicts the concept of self ownership