I’m currently keeping the link on the left to the Freedom Institute- a group of righty-fighty types- under review. (Our Evil Twin) Whether they will stay on the list of blogs will depend on their response to the uproar over the ugly post on immigration headed McDowell Hits Nail On The Head.
There are now 79 comments in response. At the moment, they still seem to be trying to defend what they posted, deny it says what it did say, say that they didn’t mean what they said, imply they’ll fight anyone who keeps bothering them about this and finally suggest that we all look at this piece of shiny foil on a stick in the other direction. None of this is good enough. At my most generous, I couldn’t say the post was anything other than sloppy, ill-considered and badly judged. At my least generous, I could think of other more serious possibilities.
I’ll be sending them an email shortly. Depending on their response, if any, I’ll decide whether they’re honest and wrong, as I believed when I put the link up, or just plain wrong.
Update: (10.33pm Monday 23rd May 2005) Richard Waghorne from the FI comments below. I’m afraid if that’s the response I will have to remove the link.
This is the text of the email I sent to them explaining my unease with the posting. Feel free to leave a comment if you agree or disagree.
Hello there
I see you provided a link to the site on your blog, for which I would normally be grateful.I’ve been reading your stuff for a while now. I disagree, sometimes strongly, with everything I read. I sometimes say so in you comments. Nonetheless, while I think your writers are frequently wrong, ill-informed and argue at a level which would be unsuccessful at the level of a schools debate, I also think that it is good that they are creating and reflecting their opinions in a public forum.
I have found your remarks to be generally respectful of other people, even my own irritated contradictions. And it is the fact that you have a coherent, broadly libertarian, policy outlook which you genuinely appear to believe is the best way to make people’s lives better that I linked to you from the tuppenceworth blog. Most of my readers would disagree with you, but the point of tuppenceworth is to reflect a range of world views, rather than just tell people what they want to hear. (In that regard, I might suggest that your own blogroll could usefully seek out some blogs that disagree with you.)
I am in disagreement with you again over your post ” McDowell hits the nail in the head”. However, this time I don’t feel like engaging in the discussion with your posters in the comments box.
I would like to say that I believe that this is the worst thing that I have read on your blog, as it is not an attempt to represent the libertarian view of life. Rather it is an appeal to the basest instincts in populist, right wing agitation.
Let me be clear- I’m a lawyer and I know that not everyone who arrives in Ireland and claims asylum will be successful. Not everyone who claims asylum ought to be successful. I think that this is partly the result of a flawed system- were there a way to apply to become a lawful economic migrant, as EU citizens can, then I think that many of the people attempting to find a better life here would choose to openly declare themselves as such.
But there is no such catagory of legal immigration here. Instead we have a system which gives the bare minimum it is our duty under the treaties signed by the state to provide. It provides the right to everyone arriving in the country to apply for asylum. And it gives the state the right to assess that application and accept it or reject it.
The phrases ‘bogus asylum applications’ or ‘bogus asylum seekers’ make no sense. Every application is legitimate. It is either accepted or rejected. An application cannot be bogus. Were I to claim I was an asylum seeker, when I have never made an application, I suppose I could be a bogus asylum seeker. However no-one who has sought asylum can legitimately be described in such a way. Again, their application can only be accepted or rejected. Until that happens they are simply an asylum seeker, as is their right. You’ll notice that Minister McDowell was careful in his remarks to use the word bogus, to invoke these fallacious phrases, but was too much the lawyer to use them himself.
The use of such terms cannot then be separated from the intent of those using them. That intent is to deny the rights of applicants to have their application for asylum given due consideration. And anyone who seeks to deny people their legal rights and expresses a wish for something other than rationality and due process to be the deciding factor in allowing or rejecting applications is a person your blog ought to have nothing to do with.
Attempting to justify his comments, and to defend himself from the opprobrium they have rightly provoked, your poster Dominico asked “what is racist in pointing out to [sic] the fact that certain immigrants are creating problems in the [sic] society?” The question can only be answered, I feel, by reflecting that if five people break a window each and we focus on the immigrant to the exclusion of the others and then tar immigrants with their crime, then we have committed a wrong ourselves.
I hope that reflection will provide the opportunity for a less reflexively defensive response to your reader’s concerns.
If it does not, I’m sorry to say that I will do the only thing I can to register my unhappiness with your decision, which will be to removed the link to the Freedom Institute Blog from my blogroll, giving the above reasons to tuppenceworth’s readers.
Yours faithfully,
Simon McGarr