Craig Murray is included on Brian Micklethwait’s list of UK libertarian bloggers and, ingrate that he is, starts moaning about the list – emphasis added:

In the vast majority of cases, libertarian here plainly means "right wing conservative" or "neo-con" … The peculiar thing is, that these neo-con "Libertarians" have, by and large, little or no concern for civil liberties. Very few of these "Libertarians" blogged about the shooting of Jean Charles De Menezes, against detention without trial for 42 days, about police violence at the G20 summit. These "Libertarians" do not want to see Guantanamo closed, and are quite happy with extraordinary rendition and the use of torture.

Not only will you search the large majority of them in vain for any condemnation of the use of torture in the "War on Terror", but some of them – like Charles Crawford, for instance – have actively blogged in favour of the use of torture…

Plainly the word "Libertarian" is being misappropriated by these people, and stretched beyond any natural meaning in the English language.

So, folks, unless you accept Craig’s definition of what the word means and his little list of the Ishoos which define moral rectitude, you’re not only not libertarian – you’re a Nasty Neocon. Sorry, but there it is.

Craig reminds me of my favourite P G Wodehouse line:

He expressed the opinion that the world was in a deplorable state. I said, ‘Don’t talk rot, old Tom Travers.’ ‘

I am not accustomed to talk rot,’ he said.

‘Then, for a beginner,’ I said, ‘you do it dashed well.’

Update:  Welcome readers from Iain Dale and Craig Murray and anywhere else.

One of the comments below from ayewecan asks if this posting is my defence.

Defence to what? To the wild swing of Craig’s fist as it flails through a non-existent target? He of course gives no link on his site to anything I have written to bear out his assertion.

The Search function on this site (type in torture) handily takes anyone interested to a number of postings I have written on this subject. Read away and identify if you can where I have "actively blogged in favour of the use of torture".

What this blog and in a rather different way Craig’s blog do is look at public policy issues through the eyes of a former senior diplomatic practitioner. Both of us have served in countries under violent repressive regimes. The question then becomes, how to deal with the moral and practical policy dilemmas which necessarily arise?

The Torture issue brings to a head a lot of these dilemmas. In part because it in fact is a number of different but usualy overlapping questions:

  • is it always wrong in a democracy to use any sort of force against prisoners to try to extract information for a wider public good?
  • what if any use should a democracy make of such information extracted by non-democracies?
  • even if you think it is reasonable to use some of this information in some extreme circumstances, what about the risk that innocent people have been tortured as part of that process?

It is not immoral or a sign of complicity in torture or ‘to blog in favour of the use of torture’ to pose these questions and try to pick one’s way to a defensible conclusion.

This is precisely what raving neocon President Obama is now doing, as former President Clinton did before him – and why eg Nancy Pelosi has ended up in such a tangle.

Anyway, a good summary of my own views can be found here and here.

Finally, back to Craig. He does land some good punches now and then.

This is a powerful posting, for example. Here is more of a glancing blow on Guido, trying to set up an argument that a youthful Guido’s contacts with the BNP discredit his libertarian positions now. (Guido responds in the comments.)

Note that here Craig cites as an example of his own moral worthiness his former membership of the Anti-Nazi League, a group of lumpenly aggressive Trotskyists. Nothing to be proud of.

My view? Craig has a different political view to mine. We argue fiercely. But he is illogical and inconsistent, and I rather like him.

Sounds familiar?