Rod Liddle
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Dr David Nutt, the last government’s chief adviser on drugs, was sacked for pointing out this last fact. It is a fact, like it or not. I am not proposing we legalise ecstasy or ban horse riding; as the Americans put it, I’m jus’ sayin’. It may be true that we don’t know how egregiously ecstasy affects the brain many years down the line — perhaps this column is itself an indication of an ominous latent problem. But on the raw figures of people killed or hospitalised each year per thousand, weighted for how many do each activity, horse riding is easily more dangerous than taking ecstasy. That’s the sort of thing a drug czar should be allowed to point out, I think, without being sacked.
So, the sacking of Nutt was an absurdity — but it has nothing on the more recent sacking of Dr Hans Christian Raabe from his position on the government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. Raabe has been given the boot because he isn’t very keen on homosexuality. He also once authored a paper which showed a slight correlation between homosexuality and paedophilia. Nothing, then, to do with drugs. But it seems that in order to advise the government on any issue then you must agree with it on a whole bunch of contentious, utterly unrelated issues. Raabe is a rather muscular (and, in my opinion, rather literal-minded) Christian, from which devolves his belief that homosexuality is a bad thing. Opinion polls would suggest that at least 35 per cent of the country agrees with him on this; all of those people would presumably be kicked out of a job with the government as a consequence of their views. Maybe Hans should open a guest house instead.
There was a rather weaselly and indeed arrogant defence of the sacking of Raabe in the Daily Telegraph, by a chap called Tom Chivers, who argued that because his evidence for linking homosexuality and paedophilia was probably a bit thin, he could be sacked for his inabilities as a scientist. But that isn’t why he was sacked, is it? He was sacked because of his views about homosexuality — views which, while I might disagree with them, nonetheless accord with those of a significant minority of British people.
The rather wonderful thing, replete with symmetrical irony, is that Dr David Nutt was sacked by a Labour government as a consequence of a sort of political correctness of the right, whereas Raabe was sacked by a Conservative-led government as a consequence of a sort of political correctness of the left. Needless to say, Nutt believes Raabe shouldn’t have been appointed in the first place, because his views on drugs are just as trenchant as his views on homosexuality — Raabe thinks people shouldn’t take drugs, full stop, and there’s an end to it, thank you Jesus.
Perhaps Nutt is right about this, that Raabe was the wrong appointment, but it strikes me that the new government probably wanted a voice in their ear which did not agree with the liberal or libertarian consensus on the taking of drugs; they wanted someone who differed, but whose opinion might have been closer to that of a Daily Mail reader or the electorate, what used to be called the silent majority. But the trouble is that this sort of liberal consensus manifests itself throughout the top echelons of society — in education, social services, the judiciary, broadcasting and so on — precisely because if you challenge it in some way you will be hounded out of a job and castigated as a bigot, a racist, a sexist, a homophobe. You will be eviscerated, and you will have no redress because nobody who wields any sort of power will stick up for you. And this will be true even if your views do not impinge upon your job and for that matter even if you happen to be right. And so the liberal consensus remains unchallenged as a consequence of the quite extraordinary vindictiveness shown towards those who oppose it.
I don’t think it is overstating the case to suggest that this is a form of intellectual fascism. It certainly, at the very least, not merely restricts freedom of speech and freedom of conscience but also serves to close down debate. I suppose it shouldn’t bother us over much when two thick-as-mince sports presenters are sacked for having revealed themselves, in private, to be possessed of sexist opinions, even when they are opinions which are almost certainly shared by a majority of their viewers. But morally it was no less an outrage and no less an infringement of personal liberty than the sacking of Raabe.
The argument isn’t over… Rod Liddle blogs at spectator.co.uk/rodliddle
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