In today’s Guardian, Marcel Berlins ponders burglary, self-defence and being reasonable.

The problem, of course, is what constitutes reasonable force and who gets to decide. If you’re going to judge how others react in such a situation, and judge what is “reasonable,” you should first indulge in some pretty vivid empathy. Imagine you and your partner wake abruptly in the middle of the night. You hear a stranger moving about in the hallway outside your bedroom. Your newborn child is sleeping quietly, for once, in the room across the hall. There’s now an intruder between you and your child and his motives are unclear but certainly not benign. He’s obviously used force to break into your home at a time when you’re most vulnerable. It’s an act of premeditated violation and he may well use force again. Has he made these efforts in order to steal your property or to do you mortal harm? And, if interrupted, will the former involve the latter? What if your child wakes and starts crying?

Is it “reasonable” to assume that the intruder is merely a thief who doesn’t mind terrorising those whose homes he violates and whose property he steals, but isn’t prepared to do actual violence to his victims, even when cornered? And on what is that assumption based? Given the situation, and the fact your heart is pounding, do you really have the time and means to fathom the intruder’s motives and take them into account before acting – and acting without “excess”? Or do you use whatever force possible to disable the intruder before he can even think about harming you or your child? And what if the intruder is bigger and stronger than you? What if he’s armed with a knife or a gun? Are you going to wait to find out, dutifully bearing in mind the likelihood of subsequent legal disputation?

Wouldn’t it be wise to disable him as quickly as possible, by whatever means, rather than risk being at his mercy, along with the rest of your family? Doesn’t that most likely involve using as much force as can be mustered – say, with a decisive blow to the head using one of these – even if that risks the intruder’s death or serious, permanent injury? Is that “excessive or disproportionate” – or is it a basic moral imperative? And if the law doesn’t permit such things, and permit them unequivocally, don’t you have a right to be just a little “disappointed”? Don’t we want a world in which it’s the bad guys that are scared, and scared for very good reasons?

Mick Hartley on Freud, Marx and Hegel – and being antiquated. 

Freud didn’t cure anyone, or come to his conclusions through the hard work of trial and error. The analytic situation was merely the backdrop for what was really going on: myth-making on a grand scale… To use [Freud’s theorising] to explain Western literature, as generations of academics have done, following Freud’s example, is to hold up a mirror and believe you’re seeing through a window.

Thomas Sowell on some economic fallacies. (h/t, Lattenomics.) 

If it was really true that you could hire a woman for three quarters of what you could hire a man with exactly the same qualifications, then employers would be crazy not to hire all women. It would be insane to hire men. Not only would it be insane, it would probably put them out of the business because the ones that were smart enough to hire women would have such a cost advantage that it would be really hard for the others to compete.

Norman Geras on Seumas Milne’s latest apologia for Hamas.

Milne tactfully passes over what Hamas’s charter reveals about it: that it is a programmatically anti-Semitic organization which quotes from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and promises the killing of Jews. How is it thinkable that a Guardian journalist doesn’t notice this or, if he does, discounts it? It’s thinkable. In fact, it’s getting to be an old story. [There] was a time when it was kind of shocking.

Yet now it’s a routine pathology among a large part of the left, perhaps the larger part, and its mainstream British publication.

Thank God for the Guardian. No, really. I mean, where else would you turn to find a socialist named Jemima lecturing us on snobbery and the evils of the word “chav”? Yesterday, Tom Hampson and Jemima Olchawski, both pillars of the Fabian Society, urged Guardian readers to fret about their language:

We have to stop using the word “chav”… It is deeply offensive to a largely voiceless group and – especially when used in normal middle-class conversation or on national TV – it betrays a deep and revealing level of class hatred.

It’s interesting to note how readily vulnerability is assigned to “a largely voiceless group” that isn’t actually defined anywhere in the article. Apparently, it’s no longer necessary to specify who or what is vulnerable, or how; one can merely assert that something, somewhere is. But which “group” are we talking about? Poor people? Criminals? Antisocial youths? Or some subset thereof? 

We have heard it increasingly used in conversation over the last year, invariably to casually describe people “not like us” and very often used by people who are otherwise rather progressive in their politics.

Doesn’t that say something about the company being kept by the scrupulously leftwing authors, rather than, necessarily, the population as a whole?

You cannot consider yourself of the left and use the word. It is sneering and patronising

And that would be unheard of. Especially among those who hold in such esteem that thing called “middle England”.

The Harry’s Place blog is being sued by Mohammed Sawalha, President of the British Muslim Initiative.

Mr Sawalha says that the attribution of the phrase “Evil Jew” to him implies that he is “anti-semitic and hateful”. Notably, he does not take issue with our reporting of the revelation, made in a Panorama documentary in 2006, that he is a senior activist in the clerical fascist terrorist organisation, Hamas. The BBC report disclosed that Mr Sawalha “master minded much of Hamas’ political and military strategy” and in London “is alleged to have directed funds, both for Hamas’ armed wing, and for spreading its missionary dawah”…

Mr Sawalha is a man who prefers to conduct political debate by means of litigation. He hopes to bully those who oppose his vicious theocratic politics with threats of writs. I suppose that I should be relieved. Hamas’ usual technique is to murder those with whom it disagrees.

If you can help out, please do.

Update: Bearing in mind the house rules, the comments are now open again.

Readers of this blog may be familiar with the Guardian’s Julie Bindel, who thinks “[get] men off the streets” is “a fabulous slogan” and then wonders why some male readers find her rather stupid and objectionable. Ms Bindel insists on “naming men as the problem” and believes that “sexual violence is the only thing in the world that affects all women.” She also thinks that “male violence towards women and children… is pandemic” and “all women know that if we have not been raped, we are lucky.” Nuance of thought is not, it seems, Ms Bindel’s strongest suit, or an obvious aspiration.

As a riposte of sorts to such adamant idiocy, and to broader claims of “male privilege,” Ballgame has produced a Female Privilege Checklist, which highlights some of the less remarked benefits of being female. Among them,

My chance of suffering a work-related injury or illness is significantly lower than a man’s.

If I shy away from fights, it is unlikely that this will damage my standing in my peer group or call into question my worthiness as a sex partner.

If I attempt to hug a friend in joy, it’s much less likely that my friend will wonder about my sexuality or pull away in unease.

If I interact with other people’s children – particularly people I don’t know very well – I do not have to worry much about the interaction being misinterpreted.