Sean Gabb's Blog, page 3
August 22, 2014
Greening Out Interviews Sean Gabb
Dr Sean Gabb is a writer and broadcaster and academic. He is the author of twenty books, which include ten novels and three volumes of poetry. He has been commercially translated into Italian, Spanish, Greek, Slovak, Hungarian and Chinese.
He joined the Libertarian Alliance in 1979. He became its Director in 2006, shortly before the death of its founder Chris Tame.
We talk about Libertarianism in the UK, conservatism, the NHS, UKIP, mass immigration, gay marriage, Scottish independence, Marxism and much more.
Filed under: Media Appearances
August 20, 2014
Man Bites Dog.
by Anna Raccoon
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AnnaRaccoon/~3/QVEVUN-aNeQ/ Man Bites Dog.
It is possibly unfair to infer that Kathy Hook is a dog – bitch might have been better. ‘Man bites Bitch’ – doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
She was voted ‘Unsung Hero’ by BBC Sports – not on Youtube, but here is a link to the BBC report. She is a 6th Dan – in fact the highest rated woman in Taekwondo. She runs a Taekwondo Club in Newcastle.
She used to run the club with Paul Ford, but they had a falling out. Ms Hook has had quite a few fallings out with people. She has not long finished a suspension imposed by the Sports Resolution Council.
She is a highly competitive lady, and doesn’t like to lose – anything.
When she fell out with Paul Ford, she threw his young children out of the Martial Arts Club they had been running together. Paul would tell you that this was the first act of retaliation.
She didn’t stop there though – she resorted to the weapon du jour of the modern woman – and claimed that Paul was pedophile. She printed up A4 leaflets on her trusty computer and pushed them through the front door of the neighbours houses. As you do.
“Do you know you have a paedophile on your street?”
“Arrested last year – found with videos of children in his house.”
The Police merely gave her a ‘caution’ for this act. It’s not that serious in their eyes, making a false allegation.
The local pedo-hunters took it seriously though; ‘a woman has made an accusation and the man isn’t in prison’ – Cover-up! Victim Blaming! and all the other ritual chants the mob trot out on these occasions.
Vigilantes complied with this call to arms, and dutifully beat Paul up.
Fortunately, they didn’t set fire to him on the village green in front of the local children, as has happened to others falsely accused of pedophilia, and he managed to limp away.
Just as far as his solicitor. He’s not a wealthy man, not in the Freddie Starr league – but he took her to court for Libel.
Yesterday, Sheffield County Court awarded him £10,000 in libel damages, £1,850 for his legal advice costs, and £650 for his own time on the case.
It’s nowhere near sufficient compensation for the nightmare he has lived through – and it is, apparently, more than Ms Hook possesses, so he probably won’t see a penny.
Had Kathy Hook taken her complaint to the police instead of sending out those leaflets, we would never have known who she was – she would have been granted anonymity – for life.
Should there be a second incident of her making accusations of sexual assault against children – the unfortunate recipient of future allegations would not have been able to google this account and know that she had done it before.
We are frequently told that it is necessary to name ‘alleged pedophiles’ in order that ‘other victims’ may come forward and know that they are not alone – the same applies to those who make allegations.
They too need to be named, so that others pilloried by their allegations can be similarly reassured and emboldened to take action. It has only just occurred to me that it could be the same determined groupie who has made allegations to Operation Yewtree against every famous person he/she ever met – and we would never know.
It cuts both ways.
Filed under: Liberty
August 15, 2014
Cliff Richard: A Brief Comment
According to the BBC, Cliff Richard’s home has been searched in connection with claims of a sexual assault committed in 1985 against a male who was, at the time, under the age of sixteen. They entered his property while he was away, and he appears only to have heard about the search via the media.
I comment as follows:
1. Let us make the unlikely assumption that the complainant was two in 1985. He would now be 31. More likely, he is in his forties. What has he been doing for the past 29 years?
2. What evidence did the police expect to find after 29 years? Why did they send eight officers to search Mr Richard’s house? Why did they not contact him before the search? Why did they tell the media instead?
3. I believe that no one should be charged with any offence alleged to have happened more than three years before a complaint, where the only evidence is the word of a complainant. This limitation does not apply to charges supported by objective evidence. Also, I allow exceptions where the complainant was under the age of 18 at the time of the alleged offence – though only so far as charges may be brought within one year after a complainant has reached the age of 18. At present in this country, old men are being put on trial, on the unsupported word of anonymous complainants, for offences alleged to have been committed in the distant past. This is not justice.
Here is Mr Richard’s comment on the search:
“For many months I have been aware of allegations against me of historic impropriety which have been circulating online. These allegations are completely false. Up until now I have chosen not to dignify the false allegations with a response, as it would just give them more oxygen. However, the police attended my apartment in Berkshire today without notice, except it would appear to the press. I am not presently in the UK but it goes without saying that I will cooperate fully should the police wish to speak to me. Beyond stating that today’s allegations are completely false it would not be appropriate to say anything further until the police investigation is concluded.”
Filed under: Crime, Law, Liberty, Scumbags, sex and more
August 13, 2014
Salmond is a chancer in the mode of Paterson and Law
by Robert Henderson
Alex Salmond is a chancer in the mould of Paterson and Law
Robert Henderson
William Paterson was the main mover of the Darien disaster which bankrupted Scotland in the 1690s through a mixture of ignorance, general incompetence and embezzlement; John Law was the Scot who ruined the currency and economy of Louis XV’s France through the use of paper money backed by land. The men had something in common with Salmond: they were both hideously reckless. This disastrous trait was evident in spades during the first of the debates between Salmond and Alastair Darling on 5 August 2014.
Overall the event was a truly depressing affair, being little more than a shouting match. Salmond spent most of the time with a fixed condescending smile glued to his face while Darling, thinking he had to be seen as assertive, frequently sounded and looked peevish as he adopted a behaviour horrendously at odds with his reticent and mild personality.
The discussion was horribly narrow, being concerned almost entirely with the material advantages and disadvantages of independence and even there much was either omitted or barely touched upon, for example, the large numbers of businessmen warning of a likely decamping from Scotland to England of many organisations if there is a YES vote or the loss of UK government contracts if Scotland becomes a foreign country. Other issues which had economic implications but a much wider significance, most notably immigration, remained unmolested by the debate. To a significant degree the debate was limited in scope by the disproportionate amount of time taken up by Salmond’s refusal to give a straight answer to the question of what currency Scotland would use if the vote was for independence . More of that later.
Completely lacking was any mention of the consequences of a YES vote for the rest of the UK in general and for England in particular. The debate was conducted entirely on the basis of what was to the advantage of Scotland. The fact that the programme was only available on terrestrial television in Scotland on STV or streaming through the STV Player (which crashed because it was unable to handle the demand) made some unkind souls see this as ironically symbolising both the exclusion of the rest of the UK from the debate and the many warnings from various quarters that Scotland would be a shambles if it goes alone.
Darling had the better of the debate simply because Salmond was so inept . Making cheap gibes about Westminster and repeatedly telling the same old evasive lies on any topic which caused him problems did not go down well even with the sizeable studio audience . The polling after the programme confirmed it. The YouGov poll taken after the debate showed those who have decided which way to vote will vote 61% No and 39% YES. With the undecided included there were 55% supporting a No vote and 35% backing independence, with 9% undecided.
Salmond was particularly weak on the question of the currency. He started from the objectively false claim that the Pound belongs to Scotland as much as it does to England. Darling counter-argued that the Pound belonged to the entire UK.
Legally speaking they were both wrong. The Pound Sterling is the English currency which Scotland was allowed to share when they signed the Act of Union in 1707, viz.
XVI That, from and after the Union, the coin shall be of the same standard and value throughout the United Kingdom as now in England, and a Mint shall be continued in Scotland under the same rules as the Mint in England; and the present officers of the Mint continued, subject to such regulations and alterations as Her Majesty, her heirs or successors, or the Parliament of Great Britain, shall think fit.
The Scottish pound became defunct at the same time. If Scotland repudiate the Act of Union of 1707, they lose the right to use the Pound Sterling in the sense that they no longer have a political right to share the Pound on an equal basis with the rest of the UK.
Scotland could of course simply use the currency, but they would have no say over its the management, no printing or coining rights, and the Bank of England would not act as lender of the last resort to Scottish financial institutions. Scotland would also have the problem of buying enough Sterling on the open currency market. To do that she would have to sell goods and services abroad to provide the wherewithal to buy Sterling.
During the time set aside for the Salmond and Darling to question one another, Darling asked Salmond repeatedly what was his Plan B for the now that all three main Westminster Parties had stated categorically that there would be no currency union between England and Scotland if there was a Yes vote in the referendum. Salmond simply kept on repeating that if there was a Yes vote Westminster would cave in and accept a currency union. This so angered many of the studio audience that Salmond was roundly booed as time and again he evaded the question of what would happen if there was no currency union.
Salmond has stuck to the same line on the currency since the debate saying in an interview that “There is literally nothing anyone can do to stop an independent Scotland using sterling, which is an internationally tradeable currency.…the No campaign’s tactic of saying no to a currency union makes absolutely no economic sense. But it also makes no political sense, and is a tactic that is a deeply dangerous one for them.”
This is classic head-in-the-sand Salmon. His position is built upon two ideas: (1) that anything he demands for Scotland must happen simply because he has demanded it and (2) that any attempt by the English to point out dangers or look to their own interests is illegitimate and bullying. At one point Salmond made the incredible claim that if Westminster did not grant Scotland whatever they demanded Westminster would be denying the democratic will of Scotland. This piece of Lilliputian arrogance was sharply knocked down by Darling, who pointed out that all a YES vote would do would be to empower Salmond to negotiate terms with the rest of the UK.
At another point Salmond claimed that if there was no currency union , Scotland would not take a proportionate share of the UK national debt. Incredibly Darling did not challenge him on this issue, most probably because he would have had to say that if they did not take their share, Westminster would have to veto Scottish independence which is, legally speaking, ultimately dependent on the UK government agreeing terms.
No opinion poll over in the independence campaign has shown the YES camp ahead. The odds are heavily on the referendum will producing a NO result. If the ballot produces a seriously bad result along the lines of the YouGov poll cited above, Salmond and the SNP could be in a very difficult position because it would put another vote on independence out of the question for a long time, perhaps a generation. There would it is true be new powers given to the Scottish Parliament, but the ones likely to be on offer are likely to be things such as Scottish control over income tax rates and the collection of the tax by the Scottish government. Such developments would mean the Scottish government having to take the blame for tax rises or public service cuts if taxes are not raised. That would make the Scottish government and Parliament much more prone to unpopularity than they are now. If that happens, those living in Scotland would probably become less and less enamoured of the idea of independence because they would have had a taste of what both sides of government – taxing and spending – were under a Scottish government.
Even if there is a NO vote with a small majority, much of the difficulty which would occur with a heavy defeat for the YES side would still exist, for it would still be improbable that another vote on independence . would be held for at least ten years. During that time those is Scotland would have plenty of time to become disenchanted with their government having to make the type of hard decisions on taxing and spending which are the common political currency of a fully fledged state. Indeed, things might even be more awkward if the referendum is close rather than heavily against independence. That is because the closer the vote the more powers Westminster are likely to grant Scotland. The more powers given to Scotland, the greater the opportunity for those in Scotland to blame the Holyrood government rather than Westminster.
There is also the unresolved question of England’s place in a devolved UK. In the event of a NO vote and the granting of greater powers to Scotland (and Wales and Northern Ireland) there will be pressure for the number of Scottish MPs to be reduced, for an English Parliament or English votes on English laws. This will eventually produce circumstances which reduce or even completely exclude Scots from English domestic affairs.
Both the increased powers for Scotland and the reduced participation of Scottish MPs at Westminster will make it more and more difficult for the Scottish devolved government to blame Westminster for so much of the decision making will occur in Scotland. In addition, if the Commons becomes increasingly an English chamber through English votes for English laws or a completely English chamber if it is used as the English Parliament, that will produce English politicians who will not be able to neglect English interests as they are now more or less completely neglected.
What does Salmon really want? He certainly does not want true independence because he wishes to have a currency union with the rest of the UK, to keep the Queen as head of state and to join the EU, which would be a much harder and intrusive taskmaster than ever England would. I suspect that he does not want a YES vote but rather narrowly won NO vote. That would allow him to get the most potent form of DEVOMAX.
What will be the consequences if, against all the polling evidence, there is a YES vote? Salmond will rapidly find himself in the mire. His fantasy world is one in which there a currency union, England acts as lender of the last resort if Scottish financial institutions fail, Scotland is allowed to join the EU on the terms they now enjoy as part of the UK, England continues to push huge amounts of money by way of defence contracts and research grants to Scotland and the revenues from North Sea oil and gas continue to flow like ambrosia from heaven.
There is not one of the elements in Salmond’s fantasy world which will be realised. Even our Westminster politicians would not agree to a currency union which would involved England underwriting the Scottish financial system. The EU will be less than delighted at the prospect of one of the major EU members losing part of its territory to an independence movement because of the precedent it set for places such as Catalonia and those parts of Italy which favour the Northern League. It is likely that Scotland would have to apply for membership like any other applicant. This process would be both time consuming, perhaps several years, and Scotland would have to sign up to the requirements which any new EU applicant has to agree to, including membership of the Euro. There is also the possibility that the remainder of the UK could veto Scotland’s application to join the EU.
As for contracts for defence work and research grants, Westminster would have every reason to keep those within the UK. At best, Scotland would have to compete for the contracts and research grants as just another EU member. At worst, the rest of the UK might vote to either leave the UK or remain after obtain concessions which allowed preference to be shown to business and research institutions within England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Either way Scotland could easily find itself excluded.
That leaves the oil and gas dream. Production of the oil and gas in Scottish waters and the tax collected has been steadily declining, viz.:
Significant production decline and increasing costs have led to total revenues from UK oil and gas production dropping by 44% in 2012-13 and by 24% in 2013-14. In the last two years Corporation Tax revenues have declined by 60% from £8.8 billion in 2011-12 to £3.6 billion in 2013-14 and Petroleum Revenue Tax by 45% from £2.0 billion to £1.1 billion in 2013-14. [These figures
are for the
entirety of UK
oil and gas
production,
some of which
is in English
waters].
The decline is likely to continue, perhaps even speed up, as shale oil and gas deposits are increasingly being exploited. Nor should the possibility of other energy advances such as cheaper and safer nuclear power be ignored.
But those are only part of the problem for Scotland If the vote is YES. There are many public sector jobs in Scotland which deal with English matters, for example, the administration of much of the English benefits system. All those jobs would leave Scotland. Many Scottish businesses, especially those in the financial sector are likely to move at least their head offices to England. There would have to be border controls to stop immigrants using Scotland as a backdoor to England. More generally, the Scottish economy is dangerously dependent on public sector jobs. These jobs would almost certainly have to be severely culled. The Scottish economy is also very narrow with drink, food, financial services and the oil industry making up much of the private enterprise part of it.
The danger for England would be a Scotland which got itself into a terrible economic mess and Westminster politicians bailing the country out with English taxpayers’ money . However, because the politics of the rest of the UK would of necessity become ever more centred on English interests, that would become a very difficult thing for the Westminster government to do.
Salmond’s attempt to lead Scotland to independence on a wing and a prayer is horribly reminiscent of Paterson and Law’s behaviour 300 years ago, with the idea riding way ahead of reality.
Filed under: Liberty, Scumbags
Shared Information: What’s Its Real Purpose?
by Stewart Cowen
http://www.realstreet.co.uk/2014/08/shared-information-whats-its-real-purpose
Shared Information: What’s Its Real Purpose?
Police want greater access to our medical records (and ‘other information’), as discovered by JuliaM. The Guardian reports,
Police want new and expanded rights to access medical records and other confidential data without an individual’s consent, a senior police chief has told the Guardian. Sir Peter Fahy, the Greater Manchester chief constable, said the extra access to sensitive data was needed to help police cope with growing numbers of vulnerable people.
Citing the usual care-and-concern-for-the-citizen line we have come to rely on as the excuse to trample over our rights.
Even the British Medical Association is against it as it breaches confidentiality and trust. As Julia writes,
…you know you’re on the wrong path when the BMA are saying ‘Woah there! That’s a bit too strong!’, don’t you?
If the ‘system’ was trustworthy, it might be a good idea, but unscrupulous officers could do a lot of damage with such information.
If someone is mentally ill, it is easier to pin a crime on them if the police are under pressure and the real perpetrator cannot be found?
That’s what happened to Barry George, who was found guilty of the murder of Crimewatch presenter Jill Dando.
But even before the case got to court there were concerns that the police, under immense pressure to catch Miss Dando’s killer, had been so desperate to secure a conviction that they had fallen into the trap of making the facts fit into their hypothesis, rather than forming a hypothesis based on the facts.
Whereas, previously:
He was immediately ruled out as a suspect, because police were certain the killer was a professional hitman hired by a jealous former boyfriend or gangster with a grudge against Crimewatch.
More recently, of course, it has been suggested that she was about to blow the lid off a BBC paedophile ring.
Mr George spent eight years in prison before finally being released for wrongful conviction. He was refused compensation ‘for not being innocent enough’!
I am also reminded of ‘social misfit’ Stefan Kiszko, who was jailed for sixteen years for a crime he could not have committed and sadly died the year after his release.
There have been calls for the past few years to make climate change ‘denial’ a mental illness.
In the future, anything could be reclassified as a mental disorder and people locked away, as happened in the Soviet Union to political dissidents. Access to medical records and ‘other information’ will only aid in that process of political persecution, which is almost certain to happen the way things are going.
Knowledge is power, so why do they really want to know our medical history? Why does the Government really want every one of our telephone calls recorded and emails and visited website URLs stored? Why has the Scottish Government really initiated the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill which means that all Scottish children are given a “named person” as a sort of State guardian and information can be shared?
I have to shake my head at these privacy laws (the ones designed for us, not them). I have to abide by privacy legislation as a retailer and am obliged to have a company policy on it.
Obsession with privacy has become so ridiculous that people who work for the government are scared to tell you anything.
For example, until recently, a friend used to go to the same church as I used to, where half of the members work for the NHS. After the service, people congregate for up to three-quarters of an hour (or more) chatting over tea and biscuits (I’m sure that’s the main reason a fair proportion attend).
My friend asked a fellow church member, who is a physiotherapist, about how another church member was getting on. She replied that privacy laws meant that she wasn’t allowed to discuss the matter. A friendlier response, even if it had been a refusal to give details, might have been more appropriate.
Maybe we’ll have to start issuing freedom of information requests to our friends!
Even crazier was when the same friend went to the surgery so he could collect a patient friend to drive her home. He asked at reception if she was out of the doctor’s yet, to be told, “I’m not allowed to give you that information”.
Yet they want to know all about our lifestyles, so they can nanny us. A few years ago I decided to refuse to cooperate.
Maybe it’s not only to nanny us (shepherd us in the direction in which they want us to go). When you register at a new practice and they ask if you smoke and drink and if so, how much, maybe it’s to deny us treatment in the future, because it is clear that the money is not there to sustain the NHS, even in its current state of disrepair, for much longer.
Today, Frank Davis has a post about a department of the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, “If You Don’t Quit, We Won’t Operate?”
Similar reports have been around for a few years now, yet in 1999, Gordon Brown as Chancellor of the Exchequer decided,
SMOKERS WILL start contributing directly to their own healthcare through an NHS tobacco tax….
Smokers are surely legally entitled to treatment or they have been defrauded?
As an aside, Breitbart took up the Scotsman’s story and added,
Despite the best endeavours of the anti smoking lobby, what is little known is that the only objective research done into the lifetime costs of treating smokers compared to other lifestyles was completed in 2008 by the Dutch Health Ministry.
The results calculated by actuaries found the lifetime cost from the age of twenty was the following:
Healthy: €281,000
Obese: €250,000
Smokers: €220,000
Yes, smokes (sic) are 22 percent cheaper to treat throughout their lifetime, mainly from premature mortality.
That’s not to mention the extra huge savings in pensions and care home costs for all the smokers who allegedly croak from a “smoking-related illness”.
But as is perfectly clear, the anti-smoking agenda has nothing to do with health, just as I am sure that the data-sharing schemes are not for our benefit.
Filed under: Liberty
The Problem of Democracy
by Nick Lands
http://www.xenosystems.net/the-problem-of-democracy/
The Problem of Democracy
Recent discussions (on Twitter, primarily) have convinced me of the need for a ‘Neocameralism for Dummies’ post, providing a succinct introduction to this genre of political theory. The importance of this is obvious if Neocameralism is conceived as the central, and defining pillar of Neoreaction. In preparation for this task, however, it is necessary to revisit the socio-historical diagnosis from which Neocameralism emerged (in the work, of course, of Mencius Moldbug). That requires a brief prolegomenon addressing the NRx critique of democracy, focusing initially on its negative aspect. Neocameralism is introduced as a proposed solution to a problem. First, the problem.
Government is complicated. If this thesis seems implausible to you, it is probable that you will have great difficulties with everything to follow. It would take another (and quite different) post to address objections to this entire topic of discussion which take the approximate form “Government is easy, you just find the best man and put him in charge!” All social problems are easy if you can ‘just’ do the right thing. Infantile recommendations will always be with us.
There are two general lines of democratic apologetics. The first, and politically by far the strongest, is essentially religious. It too is best addressed by a post of its own, themed by Moldbug’s ‘Ultra-Calvinist Hypothesis’. For our purposes here we need only suggest that it is quite satisfactorily represented by Jacques Rousseau, and that it’s fundamental principal is popular sovereignty. From the NRx perspective, it is merely depraved. Only civilizational calamities can come from it.
The second line of apology is far more serious, theoretically engaging, and politically irrelevant. It understands democracy as a mechanism, tasked with the solemn responsibility of controlling government. Any effective control mechanism works by governing behavior under the influence of feedback from actual performance. In biology, this is achieved by natural selection upon phenotypes. In science, it is achieved by the experimental testing of theory, supported by a culture of open criticism. In capitalist economics, it is achieved by market evaluation of products and services, providing feedback on business performance. According to systems-theoretical defenses of democracy, it works by sensitizing government to feedback from voters, who act as conductors of information from actual administrative performance. This is the sophisticated liberal theory of democracy. It explains why science, markets, and democracy are often grouped together within liberal ideologies. (Bio-Darwinism, naturally, is more safely neglected).
How could this beautiful political design possibly go wrong? Merely by asking this question, you have set out on the Neoreactionary path.
Moldbug’s answer, and ours, begins by agreeing with the sophisticated liberal theory in its most abstract outlines. Democracy is indeed a system for the functional tuning of government, operating through electoral feedback, and predictably enhancing its specialized competence, as all reiterating experimentation-selection mechanisms do. Democratic political machines become increasingly good at what they do. The problem, however, is that their functional specialism is not at all identical with administrative capability. Rather, as they progressively learn, the feedback they receive trains them in mastery of public opinion.
The long-circuit, assumed by liberal political theory, models the electorate as a reality-sensor, aggregating information about the effects of government policy, and relaying it back through opinion polls and elections, to select substitutable political regimes (organized as parties) that have demonstrated their effectiveness at optimizing social outcomes. The short-circuit, proposed by Moldbug, models the electorate as an object of indoctrination, subjected to an ever-more advanced process of opinion-formation through a self-organized, message-disciplined educational and media apparatus. The political party best adapted to this apparatus — called the ‘inner party’ by Moldbug — will dominate the democratic process. The outer party serves the formal cybernetic function demanded by liberal theory, by providing an electoral option, but it will achieve practical success only by accommodating itself to the apparatus of opinion-formation — perhaps modifying its recommendations in minor, and ultimately inconsequential ways. It is the system of opinion-formation (the ‘Cathedral’) that represents true sovereign authority within the democratic system, since it is the ‘reality principle’ which decides success or failure. The monotonic trend to short-circuit dominance is the degenerative process inherent to democracy.
If you want the government to listen to you, then you have to expect it to tell you what to say. That is the principal lesson of ‘progressive’ political history. The assertion of popular voice has led, by retrospective inevitability, to a specialized, super-competent political devotion to ventriloquism. The disaster, therefore, is two-fold. On the one hand, government competence in its primary responsibility — efficient governance — is systematically eroded, to be replaced by a facility at propaganda (in a process akin to the accumulation of junk DNA). As government is swallowed by messaging, residual administrative competences are maintained by a bureaucratic machine or ‘permanent government’, largely insulated from the increasingly senseless signals of democratic opinion, but still assimilated to the opinion-formation establishment by direct (extra-democratic) processes of cultivation. Lacking feedback from anything but its own experiments in mind-control, quality of government collapses.
Secondly, and even more calamitously from certain perspectives, culture is devastated by the politicization of opinion. Under a political dispensation in which opinion has no formal power, it is broadly free to develop in accordance with its own experiences, concerns, and curiosities. In a significant minority of cases, cultural achievements of enduring value result. Only in cases of extreme, provocative dissent will the government have any interest in what the people think. Once politicized, however, correct public opinion is a matter of central — indeed all-consuming — government attention. Ideologically installed as the foundation of political legitimacy, it becomes the supreme object of political manipulation. Any thought is now dissent if it is not positively aligned with society’s leading political direction. To think outside the Cathedral is to attack the government. Culture is destroyed.
To be a Neoreactionary is to see these twin eventualities starkly manifested in contemporary Western civilization. What democracy has not yet ruined, it is ruining. It is essentially destructive of both government and culture. It cannot indefinitely last.
The subsequent question: What could conceivably provide a solution? That is where Neocameralism is introduced.
Filed under: Liberty
UKIP Reminds The Coalition How A Free Society Works
by Dick Puddlecote
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DickPuddlecote/~3/junv-Atdfjg/ukip-reminds-coalition-how-free-society.html
UKIP Reminds The Coalition How A Free Society Works Today is the last day of the government’s second plain packaging consultation exercise, so if you were planning to submit something you have until 11:45pm tonight to do so. You can find the online submission form at this link and some suggestions from me in this article from last month.
Since posting that, some of you have kindly shared your responses and they were – as usual – impassioned and well written. It was also a nice surprise that someone from UKIP shared their party’s detailed response with me too. The Grocer has picked out a few interesting snippets, but here are my personal favourites.
Firstly, the intro is a delight as UKIP contemptuously scolds the government for forgetting what their role is meant to be in a supposedly liberal country.
UKIP opposes Her Majesty’s Government’s intention to introduce plain packaging of tobacco products, as it infringes the principle of personal choice. Not that the government should need reminding, that’s how free societies work. Free people make free choices.
Quite. Perhaps this is why UKIP have been hoovering up votes recently, they seem to be the only party who can comprehend the concept of the state being subservient to the public which pays for it.
The response goes on to note how Jane Ellison (amongst other lies) claimed the Chantler review presented a “compelling case” in favour of plain packaging when it didn’t, instead describing any possible effect as merely “modest”.
UKIP also highlight that the government’s Impact Assessment – which itself was rated as unfit by the Regulatory Policy Committee (RPC), remember – clearly stipulated that “a policy to introduce standardised tobacco packaging would need to be justified and be based on expected benefits over and above existing tobacco control measures”, something that Australian evidence collected so far has comprehensively failed to provide.
What we have instead seen is a continuation of a long term decline in overall prevalence (masking a rise in teen smoking), and even that was most likely caused by a huge increase in tobacco duties, not plain packaging. There is, quite simply, no honest way that any government can possibly claim plain packs to be “justified” by “expected benefits over and above existing tobacco control measures” as the IA demands.
And finally, the denouement from UKIP reminds the government of one of their key promises in the early days of this coalition, something we can look back on now and confidently conclude has either turned out to be a catastrophic failure; or was a massive lie to begin with.
The proposed introduction of plain packaging for tobacco may be taken as a further example of the relentless interference of the state in the private lives of the British People. As recently as 1 July 2010, the Deputy Prime Minister stated: ‘For too long new laws have taken away your freedom, interfered in everyday life and made it difficult for businesses to get on…’ – How soon those who acquire power change their tune.
Indeed.
Every real indicator – as opposed to those imagined by what UKIP accurately call the “public health community and its quangocracy” – points to the upheaval and costs of plain packaging not being justified by any rational and objective observer … which is why the government, being the bloody government, will probably ignore rationality and go for the stupid idea anyway.
I’ve uploaded UKIP’s response here if you’d like to read the whole thing. If you’d like to tell the government what you think, as many fellow jewel robbers have already done, just click here and let rip before a quarter to midnight.
Filed under: anti-smoking nazis, Liberty
Wendy McElroy: “I will leave the movement if thick libertarianism prevails…”
by Wendy McElroy
http://www.thedailybell.com/editorials/35540/Wendy-McElroy-A-Letter-to-My-Father/#sthash.Rfi3Umvi.dpuf
Note: I agree with Wendy and with Keith. A libertarian is someone who a) wants to be left alone, b) wants to leave others alone, c) wants others to be left alone. All else is a matter of details. SIG
Wendy McElroy: “I will leave the movement if thick libertarianism prevails…”
Comment by Keith Preston
I apologize for my lengthy prelude to Ms. McElroy’s piece, but things are moving along in a way that merits comment. It would appear that totalitarian humanism is in the process of taking over libertarianism, which is predictable enough as libertarianism left too many gaps open that ultimately allowed totalitarian humanism to crawl in. This is the likely end of any movement that a) fails to embrace a genuinely revolutionary stance, b) fails to challenge the ideological superstructure of the ruling class, d) fails to develop an appropriate class analysis, and d) fails to embrace a hierarchy of priorities that recognizes the overlords of imperialism and their political bureaucracies as the primary targets to be attacked.
While I don’t claim to speak for anyone else on this question, I actually find this “thick vs. thin,” “humanitarian vs. brutalist,”left vs. right” controversy that has emerged in the libertarian milieu to be a double-edged sword. First, I have never personally identified with the mainstream libertarian movement. I’ve been a fellow traveler, written for some of their forums, and promoted some of their ideas, but that’s about it. I’m actually a pan-anarchist who embraces the entire spectrum of libertarian, anarchist, anti-state, decentralist, and anti-authoritarian philosophies, but applies this within the context of a wider pluralistic, pan-secessionist and anarcho-populist strategic paradigm. I’m a Nietzschean and a Stirnerite in philosophy, a Proudhonian in economics, a Bakuninist in strategy and criticisms of state socialism, a Kropotkinist in terms of historical interpretation, an advocate of Landauer’s approach to particularism, Goldman’s approach to feminism, De Cleyre’s approach to ecumenicalism, Spooner’s legal theory, Tucker’s petite bourgeois individualism, Malatesta’s insurrectionism, and many other positions I won’t continue to bore the reader with.
I appreciate the Rothbardian wing of modern American libertarianism, particularly its neo-isolationism in foreign policy, its civil libertarianism, and its opposition to corporate welfare. And I can even appreciate Milton Friedman’s outspoken opposition to the draft and the war on drugs during his lifetime. But I have always regarded the bulk of the American libertarian movement as simply another branch of conservatism, albeit one that’s more focused on economics and the state rather than social conservatism, religion, race, militarism or other aspects of the American Right.
While I share many of the views of the left-wing anarcho-communists and the “free market anti-capitalist” left-libertarians alike, the apparently irreconcilable gap between my position and both of those camps is that I reject the fundamentalist version of the standard left-wing “race/class/gender/gay/trans” paradigm that both camps subscribe to. While I consider this paradigm to be a legitimate worldview that brings worthwhile ideas to the table, I do not consider it to be the only legitimate paradigm or the only set of ideas that should ever be heard. Instead, I am an advocate of the Enlightenment/classical liberal idea of free inquiry, free speech, and an open marketplace of ideas, and the Jamesian pragmatist view that human knowledge is limited enough that a fair hearing for contending points of view and fair treatment of others ought to be balanced with what one regards as “true.”
While I have been pleased to observe the growth of mainstream libertarianism in recent years, I have also been skeptical of the actual authenticity of its radicalism. For one thing, it seems to be in the process of being co-opted, either by the corporate right-wing or the cultural left-wing. My suspicion is that years down the road, the “conservative” libertarians who are mostly concerned with bourgeois economics will mostly be just another Republican constituency, and the “left” libertarians who are mostly concerned with opposing social conservatism will be just another minor shareholder in the PC coalition, and possibly good Democratic voters to boot.
I have recently written that the left-wing anarchist movement in its present form seems to be in the process of self-destructing thanks to the dysfunctional nature of its participants. This can only be a good thing as it will help to open the door for the cultivation of a higher quality anarchist movement. Likewise, if “thick libertarianism” (which, semantics aside, is just an effort to fuse libertarianism with the most fanatical forms of cultural leftism) comes to dominate mainstream libertarianism, then mainstream libertarianism will likely begin to self-destruct and implode as well, and for the same reasons, e.g. the dysfunctional nature of its adherents, the ease with which it can be co-opted by statist liberalism, the rivalries between victimological factions, its repulsiveness to outsiders, etc.
The disappearance of these watered-down or easily co-opted mainstream forms of anti-state activism and philosophies will then leave the door open for those of us who hold to what might be considered more “extremist” (i.e. genuinely revolutionary) positions to step in and fill the gap. For instance, our own audience here at ATS has grown significantly in recent years, and continues to draw support from an increasingly wider number of cultural and political currents. Overlapping tendencies have experienced a similar growth. These more radical tendencies not only embrace a more militant position, and stand in clearer defiance of the system, but are also far more immune to co-optation. Any authentically radical movement in the 21st century Western world must uncompromisingly attack the state’s plutocratic economic tentacles corporate from the right, and the state’s totalitarian humanist ideological tentacles from the left. Right-libertarians fall down on the job on the former, and left-libertarians fall down on the job on the latter.
We must cultivate a revolutionary anarchist movement that is authentically capable of attacking the system across the board, and possesses the intellectual and ideological equipment with which to do so.
The Daily Bell
There is an attempt to change the ground rules of libertarianism through introducing left-leaning attitudes and concepts. Two distinct approaches are in play within this attempt. I applaud one. I will leave the movement if the other prevails.
My friend Chris Sciabarra exemplifies the first approach. He wants to analyze the movement through the intellectual lens and tool of dialectics, which is usually associated with Marxism. By the term “dialectics,” Chris means “context setting” or “context holding.” All ideas are influenced by other ideas, institutions and events. In turn, they influence everything else. For example, you should not examine an idea such as emergence of labor unions in isolation. You need to consider the dialectics from which it arose in order to grasp what happened. For example, you need to consider the impact of World War I upon labor relations in America. I think Chris is correct and he adds value, even though I am cautious about a few aspects of his approach.
The second approach is found in the absurd and manufactured debates about “thin” and “thick” libertarianism – the “humanitarians” versus the “brutalists.” It is an attempt to introduce political correctness into libertarianism so that it is not enough to advocate nonviolence; you have to advocate it for the right reason, as defined by those who provide themselves as moral filters. They call me a brutalist. This means I will never violate your rights; your children, your property are safe in my presence because I respect your right to live in peace. But I don’t protect your children for the right reasons. For this, I am to be excoriated. This is the second approach to a new definition of libertarianism: People wish to analyze society not according to whether it is voluntary but in order to ferret out signs of power and privilege which they self-righteously condemn. Consider open source software. It has been castigated as a realm of privilege because it predominantly consists of white men. Open source software is source code that is thrown into the public realm so that anyone can modify and enhance it. It is a pure expression of free speech; the product is available to everyone for free; there are no entry barriers or requirements other than caring enough to learn code. Learning code is also available and free to all.
I think it was the condemnation of open source software that made me crack. Out of the goodness of his heart, my husband has devoted substantial time to what amounts to an intellectual charity. He pursues it for the same reason he repairs and gives computers for free to underprivileged children; he believes in the power of technology to lift people out of poverty. (BTW, I strongly suggest no one criticize my husband to my face on this point; I am likely to render the most Irish of all responses.)
Open source software is condemned for no other reason than it involves few women or minorities. This reflects nothing more than the choice of those women and minorities. It costs nothing to learn coding. Tutorials are available for free to all and everywhere. Correction: It does cost time and effort. The individual has to exert him or herself. I’m not willing to make the investment but neither do I blame the first white guy I see for my own inertia. If there is something in the culture of women and of specific minorities that prevents them from rising, then blame the culture. Don’t blame a white man like my husband who is falling over himself to provide a free service. (Correction: my husband is Hispanic … but that won’t give him a free pass. I mean, after all … the genitalia. And the grand critics of society don’t really care for accuracy.)
Last night, I contemplated my exit from a movement that considers me to be a “brutalist” after years of unpaid work promoting nonviolence. I found myself engaging in an emotional release that I’ve used for many years. I wrote a letter to my father. My dad died when I was ten years old. I loved him. I would not be a writer without him. I don’t even know if I’d be a good human being if he hadn’t taught me the meaning of kindness during my formative years.
Hello, Dad. Your face is in front of me now as though your arm were around me and you were telling the truly, truly stupid jokes that you enjoyed so much. “You think your nose is running but its snot!” You haven’t really been in front of me for a very long time. You dropped dead on the pavement outside your work when I was ten. They rushed you to the hospital and my brother thinks you recognized him when you were being admitted but all that was wrap-up. I know you died alone on that cold slab of pavement and I never saw you again.
I am writing now, as I have written to you so many times since I was ten, because I need to figure something out. And you could always make me stop crying, you could always make things better. I am being called a creature of privilege because my skin is white. I am told you are a vicious “carrier” of political privilege because your skin is white. If you didn’t know you were racist, sexist and vicious, then this is allegedly proof of how ingrained your racism, sexism and viciousness was; you were in denial. That’s a neat trick to pull for anyone who doesn’t want to produce evidence and wants to win the argument by making it always circle back to their being right by definition.
Dad, I honestly don’t know what to do. You taught me to treat every human being with civility and compassion. I never saw you raise your hand and I rarely heard you raise your voice to anyone. But the movement that I’ve tried to call home is saying I am a brutal product of privilege. You, as a white man, are accused of creating privilege and committing injustice merely by drawing breath.
I lived with you, Dad. Every morning of your life you woke up, made sure your children were fed and then you caught a bus to go to work. You did what was necessary for my brother and me to have a better life, and you did it every single day of your life without complaint. You worked yourself to death to make sure I had a better future. All the “thin” v. “thick” libertarians, all the faux “humanitarian” v. “brutulalist” libertarians pretend to understand and have compassion for the downtrodden. They are frauds and poseurs. I can explain what deprivation means. It means growing up with a photograph of your father because you will never, ever see him again. He will never swing you in his arms. You will never again hear him whistle in the morning while he is shaving. At night, you will cry yourself to sleep because no one is there for a “mummy tuck.” That’s when the blankets are tucked tightly around you and the game is to not break the tuck … lest an Egyptian curse fall upon your head.
So, Dad, privilege. Apparently for these skin-obsessed people, the fact that our skin is white means we are part of the oppressive power structure. Much of the argument is based on slavery, which existed in the United States, and in Canada … not so much. But don’t quibble about facts. It does not matter that our antecedents – close enough in proximity to be great-grandparents – came over in boats from Ireland with a 50% chance of dying in transit or thereafter; hell, those were better odds than they faced back home with the potato famine. The people who consider me a brutalist and a de facto source of injustice because of my skin color, those people ignore the fact that the Irish were used in the prebellum South to do jobs, like clearing swamps, that were considered too perilous. After all, slaves constituted a capital investment. The Irish were as cheap as dirt. It doesn’t matter that “my people” were socially lower than slaves; we are still racist oppressors because we are white. Remind me who is the racist here. Me, or the people judging everything and everyone by their skin color?
I don’t mean to reduce everything to politics. That is an empty, cold place. But, Dad, I wish I could access your common sense. I would give a year of my life to feel your arms around me, telling me it was going to be OK. Please help me. When I was five years old and probably the most serious, somber little thing anyone had ever met, you made me laugh. You made sense of the world and put everything in perspective.
I love you, Dad. Now and forever. I hope there is an afterlife. Because never seeing you again seems too cruel to be true. Rest assured that as long as I stand I will never again allow anyone to strip you of individuality and coldly categorize you as an oppressor because of your skin color. You were a good man who lived a good life and loved your children … you were the salvation of me. Anyone who wants to call you vicious will have to walk through me to get that podium.
Why do I suspect loving my father may mean leaving the movement? What does this say about the movement?
- See more at: http://www.thedailybell.com/editorials/35540/Wendy-McElroy-A-Letter-to-My-Father/#sthash.Rfi3Umvi.dpuf
Filed under: Liberty
August 10, 2014
Announcement re L. Neil Smith
Note: Now Cathy has formally announced this, I will say how worried I have been by the decline of Neil’s health. For about five years, it’s been one thing after another. I hope that he will make a good recovery and be able to go home to his loved ones.
I will add that Neil has been one of the most significant libertarians of the past forty years. Of course, we need our economists and philosophers. But we also need our poets – that is, we need those who can inspire as well as explain. In more than thirty novels, Neil has reached out to the world at large, spreading the good news of what our lives could be like without the State and its attendant institutions of control. So far as libertarianism has a presence in popular culture, it is in large part thanks to Neil.
My own debt is more personal. I owe much to Neil’s advice and moral support. It isn’t from jealousy or rivalry that writers tend not to comment on each other. We are all trying to make a living, or just wrapped up in our own work, and paying attention to someone else is a diversion from this. Even so, Neil has always been astonishingly generous with his time.
In brief, my very best wishes to Neil and to all his loved ones. They are in my thoughts.
Oh, and, if anyone wants to go beyond thoughts, you can send some money to Neil and his family.
Sean
Cathy Smith Writes:
To our friends who have patiently refrained from asking, Neil suffered a stroke on June 28. He is currently in an excellent acute rehabilitation program at a facility in Northern Colorado and is making good progress. I’m happy to share information. If you want updates, please let me know by email and I’ll reply. Giovanni and I are working on making the house (built in 1949) accessible for Neil’s eventual return.
Neil, Cathy, & Giovanni
cathylz@netzero.com
Filed under: Announcements, Libertarian Fiction, Liberty
