Not Listening – the Left’s Favourite Tactic in Argument

Last night (Wednesday 16th February) I took part in a debate about drugs at the Institute of Economic affairs (IEA) in London. My opponent was a Mr Christopher Snowdon. I made arguments familiar to readers here, mainly the recitation of unquestionable facts and examples, about the deliberate decision of the British governing class to cease to enforce the laws against possession of (technically) illegal drugs, above all the laws against cannabis.

As usual, I might as well not have bothered. Much of the audience, Thatcherite liberals and ‘libertarians’ who have swallowed Friedrich Hayek, followed him up with a heavy helping of J.S.Mill and for some reason think they are conservatives, and my opponent,  whose contribution deeply disappointed me, sat there while I said these things ( I was going to say ‘listened’, but I think that may be a severe and misleading exaggeration) and then they continued to advance their standard argument, that this country is subject to a wicked and severe ‘prohibition’ of drugs, which causes grave harm and must therefore be ended. And then there were the usual patsies of the ‘Medical Marijuana’ fancy, long ago revealed by its inventor as a propagandist red herring.

They insistently use the word ‘prohibition’, to assert a wholly false parallel between the American ban on the sale and manufacture of previously legal, mass-produced and mass-consumed alcohol, with Britain’s wholly different drug laws. When the falsity (on every level) of the parallel is pointed out to them, they do not in any way engage, or enter into a proper discussion of the differences.  They just do it again.

I might as well have sent a cardboard cut-out of myself, for all the impact my assembled facts had on my opponent or much of the audience (judging, as one must, by their own spoken contributions). I live in hope that one or two people there might have gained something. But most (much like my absurd critic ‘Mev’, who wants to censor me for daring to criticise the Tory Party effectively, but daren’t quite say so, and so dresses his ignoble desire up as a call for ‘fairness’) they had armoured their minds against uncomfortable fact. They were impregnable.  

Something similar is evident in the often silly comments on my post about Lord Howe’s demand for enforced, total metrication.  My critics write as if I am proposing a similarly total ban on metric measurements. Far from it. I am perfectly happy for those who wish to use the metric system to be able to continue to do so. I am perfectly happy to accept that some trades and professions find it more convenient. My problem with it is that it is not suited to daily life or to the small commerce of individuals, and that I object to being bullied into adopting it. I also have a deeper objection, that it is ugly and soulless, and its loss in our daily life would be another barrier between us and our history and culture.

It is also suggested that I am in some way unable to cope with it. On the contrary. I went to proper schools where we were taught both systems, and conversion factors between them. I have lived in a country, the USSR, where its use was supposedly universal (actually, in private markets, it was, as it always is, adapted for human use). I have also live in a country, the USA, where its use is still marginal. The question of the Mars orbiter has nothing to do with either the metric or customary systems, but with the incompetence of individuals who failed to establish which system they were dealing with. Incompetence, as I have pointed out, can also have appalling effects in a universal metric system, as in the problem of severe overdoses which I am told is increasingly common in the NHS. I am against incompetence. But the point about metric measurements, in which it is quite easy to make a major error on an order of magnitude (whereas customary measures, with their different units for different levels of measurement tend to avoid this) is that it makes incompetence harder to avoid and detect within a universally-used system.

Some bore says there are no exact facts in the article about how popular or unpopular the metric system is.  Well, I would love to be able to launch surveys of opinion on this matter. But I don’t have the resources to do so.  I do recall a supermarket official recently noting that customers at his chain’s petrol pumps had been reducing their purchases from £20 to £10 at a time.  I do believe this is the way most people buy petrol, and I think that is significant.  What’s interesting is that, as is usually the case, discussions of this subject produce a large and often passionate response. Those in favour of preserving the customary system in daily life are usually eloquent and thoughtful. Those in favour of wiping it out by law are usually jeering, dismissive and unresponsive to the case of their opponents.  I just wish the defenders of the metric system would make a bit more of an effort to see the point of view of those who wish to preserve customary measures in daily use. But their system is fundamentally totalitarian in origin and purpose, so perhaps that is why they tend that way as well.

My favourite contribution comes from Ronnie James. What did I say to justify this bizarre explosion? I have no desire to compel him to be stuck in a darkened hole with breathing apparatus on, worrying about how much air he’s got in his tank. I should have thought he’d have decided on how to measure that before he got into the hole.

As for doing a day’s physical work, what exactly does that have to do with it?  In my long ago days of shovelling pig-muck and barley , I can’t recall the form of measurement mattering very much, nor even when I was slinging crates and rolling barrels at a (sadly now-defunct) brewery, though there were 56-pound bags of something or other that had to be hefted, and they stick in the mind. All that mattered was that you carried on until the muck or the barley was all shovelled, the barrels all rolled, the crates all slung, the sacks all hefted.  At the end of eight hours of that, I could watch any rubbish on the TV without complaint, and even enjoy reading, or rather gaping at  ‘Tit Bits’  and ‘Reveille’ before falling into a dreamless sleep. Takes you back, eh? It’ll be gas lamps, ten bob notes, bus conductors and town gas, next.

I have since then treasured Ronald Reagan’s remark (explaining his choice of the acting profession)  that he had always been told that hard work never killed anyone, but he wasn’t anxious to find out if this claim was true.

Unlike him, I know several shops and market stalls which, frightened by the Metric Martyrs case, now refuse to sell goods to me in pounds ( and interestingly their supposedly metric scales are not finely enough calibrated to sell me, say, 454 grams of coffee, my revenge on them for this cowardice, so it has to be 450 or 455). He attributes to me arguments I have not made and goals I do not have. Then he attacks me for these arguments and goals. I hope he enjoyed it. But it would have been better if he had actually dealt with what I said.

Ah well, that was the point I was making at the beginning.

By the way, Parliament never decided to impose the metric system on this country. There is no authority in English or Scottish law for any such programme.