I have to admit, after years of studying them in the wild, I don’t understand liberals. They raise their banner to stoutly defend freedom in all its manifestations, rail against the nanny state, yadayada and when push comes to shove, they collapse back in fear of what might happen if things get “out of control”.

Of course the official “liberals” never have been such. The party under that name has offered greater freedom in a limited sphere – the control of capital – while tacitly admitting that the power of such to cause social disarray demands a strong state to enforce an abstract set of “values” – even if the public no longer hold such values, because they’ve been transformed by the market.

But from freelance liberals one expects a little more. Greg Barns, for example, who did a pretty thorough job on the Haneef case, seems to have got the vapours when it comes to the press exploring the multiply-sourced accusations that the late Senator Bob Collins was a paedophilic sexual predator.

Barns’s charge that the post-death publication of these allegations is opportunistic – because earlier use of them would have breached sub-judice rules and defamation laws – seems particularly wrong-headed.

The sub-judice law is a necessary (arguably) rule to protect the right of the living to a fair trial, the defamation law (even more tendentiously) a protection against gross character assassination. Once the reason for such rules – a living defendant – has gone, shouldn’t the truth be pursued with all vigour?

Barns is wrong, but he’s no coward. Other “liberals” or “libertarians” one can view less charitably. You would think that the recent “National Emergency” laws – de facto racial restrictions on individual rights – was, you would think, the sort of thing that a libertarian and practically all liberals, would stand up against.

Yet the reaction in lib hotspots like Catallaxy (and from at least one “libertarian” here, and here’s a clue it wasn’t Charles Richardson) was stunningly mealy-mouthed and feet-shuffling. What’s the matter gang? Scared of how it might look?

Of course there’s no riddle really. Liberals in the last analysis are attached to capital’s power, and most will sacrifice individual rights in service to it. It is left to the left to do all the heavy-lifting for political freedom.

Apart from the aforementioned Richardson of course. Anyone who’ll defend virtual kiddie porn on the basis of political principle is a man I’ll drink with – though not without first donning a bullet-proof vest.