You'll find out when you reach the top: you're on the bottom

Gosh. Three weeks since a post about Islamist insanity. Anyone would think they're developing a facility for pluralism.

No such luck, of course. It's simply too exhausting and too depressing to summon the faculties necessary even to try and make sense every day of the knots into which we as a society tie ourselves in an attempt to pacify extremist opinion. That's why it's so cheering, particularly so given the source, to hear Jack Straw's comments on the niqab.

Of course, he's positioning himself for a run at the deputy leadership of the Labour party. Whatever. There could scarcely be a worse person to occupy that post, which while Labour is in power means being Deputy Prime Minister, than John Prescott, for whom the word "yob" is perhaps an overestimation of his gentility and intelligence. If self-interested profile-raising is the only thing that will rouse politicians from their trough (of which more later) and get them to raise unpopular issues, so be it. It is particularly noteworthy in Mr Straw's case, since no-one gets elected in his consituency without carrying the Muslims. (Mr Prescott's attempt to slap Mr Straw down for his remarks merely betrays his (Prescott's) inability to come to terms with the fact that his time in high office is, blessedly, nearly at an end.)

But! Surely as one with strong liberal (ie libertarian, for the avoidance of confusion) leanings, I frown on attempts to dictate dress, whether forcing women into or out of the niqab? Well, yes. The difference is that whereas women forced to wear bin-bags are generally themselves the objects of coercion - from their hypocritical menfolk who are happy to wear all the relaxed Western clothes they can get their hands on while trying to shield themselves from the horror of temptation by forcing the female form to conceal itself - any law banning or restricting the use of bin-bags would merely codify our disapproval of such coercion; since so few women wear them voluntarily, it can hardly be said to be an infringement on choice. The state has the monopoly on coercion, and that coercion is best used only in the prevention of other, illegitimate, coercion.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Mr Straw has been untypically brave enough to start the debate, and we must now lean back and give gangway to the blast of self-righteous opprobrium that will signal the Left's attempt to stifle the debate by branding racist or bigoted anyone who doesn't buy into their orthodoxy. So much we know. Thereafter, however, ground must not be conceded.

Much the same can be said of, or more accurately should be made clear to, David Cameron, who in one of his recent "Webcameron" vidblogs asked, inter alia, three questions you'd never expect to hear from a Conservative: in fact I'd never expect to hear them from anyone but the most dyed-in-the-wool statist. "Should we ban advertising to children?" "Is it time to end cheap air travel?" "Are companies a force for good or not?"

The first two are reasonable enough points to raise. The targetting of non-adults by advertisers is certainly ethically questionable, and there are of course concerns beyond the economic regarding the proliferation of cheap flights. However, Cameron's mistake, one he makes worryingly often for an alleged Conservative, was, of course, to suggest that it is the place of the state to do anything about these problems. Children, of course, can be advertised to as much as advertisers like, but without the parents' involvement it would be a total waste of money since children get the vast majority of what money they have from their parents. It is surely therefore the parents' responsibility to ensure either that their children don't spend their money unwisely or simply to refuse to buy them the things they saw advertised and consequently want. As well as keeping the state out of family lives, this might teach children who would otherwise never learn anthing about it a little about the value of money. Similarly, "ending" cheap air travel, even on non-economic grounds, clearly entails price-fixing and would be yet another step on the road to a command economy and the concomitant state. Far better to continue to try to inform people about the true cost of their choices and try to persuade them to make different ones. Anyone at this point suggesting that most people are incapable of making the "correct" choices without coercion (coercion which would not, let it be noted, serve to prevent any more fundamental form of coercion, and would therefore be undesirable) I can safely denounce as an elitist with no understanding of liberty.

It is the last question that is truly staggering. "Are companies a force for good or not?" Uh, "Dave"? You're asking this question on a video that's being recorded on a tiny device prior to being uploaded on the Internet to be downloaded in minutes by people all over the world, who will then be able to transfer it to small portable devices and then watch and listen to you while they go to work! Who pioneered these technologies?

"Never mind that," is the answer. "The really important thing is, can I make political mileage out of exploiting people's ignorance of capitalism? Can I persuade them that companies desperately need regulating more severely and that I'm just the chap to do it? Can I make myself and my party seem indispensible while continuing to enjoy all the perks that come from my vocation being treated like a job?"

Companies are nearly always a force for good. Ambitious politicians are a much greyer area.