Our need for paedos: why society obsesses over child abuse

The most remarkable thing about the paedophile panic is how insatiable it is. Nothing - but nothing - seems capable of satisfying this weird modern lust for discussing, discovering and punishing potential harmers of children. So as soon as one suspected abuser of children is found, the search for the next starts, regardless of how flimsy the evidence might be - as in the case of the 'child sex ring' in Westminster, which right now is fuelled far more by rumour than by anything resembling evidence. Why can't it be satisfied? Why will it not end? Why does it always stagger on, zombie-like, to feast on more rumours and speculation about rampant child abuse? It's because the underlying cause of the paedophile panic remains unaddressed, unfixed. And that cause is modern society's desperate need for moral clarity, for a sense of moral purpose, in an era when the old moral certainties have collapsed and the question of what is right and wrong, good and bad, is more confused than ever. In such a shaken, relativistic climate, the paedophile has emerged as the clearest personification of evil, the creature against which we might juxtapose ourselves and in the process discover what it means to be good. This is why every element of the elite, from the political class to all sections of the media to the charity world, has devoted itself to panicking about and posturing against paedophiles: they need these devils, wherever they might be found, to try to magic up a new morality in a post-moral era.

source: Article 'Our need for paedos: why society obsesses over child abuse' by Brendan O'Neill; www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/our-need-for-paedos-why-society-obsesses-over-child-abuse/15335#.U9zWutb8sji; spiked; 7 July 2014