So if the United Kingdom is in the grip of a “Blairite Tyranny“, what is the proper response?
After all, few would question the ethics of assassinating Adolf Hitler. The main complaint about the attempt on Hitler’s life is that it took as long as it did to be set in motion.
Even today, the ‘Third World’ is full of dodgy dictators whose death by tyrannicide would not be condemned by many, least of all their own victims.
However, few would actually argue that Tony Blair’s conduct of government, while authoritarian in operation and intention, merits his actual death by murder. If merit is involved, in my opinion, Blair deserves a sound thrashing from the Headmaster’s office, and ostracism by civilised members of society, and in any case, violence should always be a last resort in political life as in everything else.
But this begs the question: at what point does a ruler’s conduct become so vile and repulsive that tyrannicide becomes a morally plausible response? Does the democratic process increase the threshold, or lower it? Tyrannicides were applauded in ancient Greece; should we applaud them in this era?
[Editors note: please read this article carefully before commenting. It is NOT suggesting or even discussing whether or not Tony Blair should be assassinated, but rather is a discussion of how to deal with lesser variety tyrants. Comments suggesting Blair et al should be done in will be deleted as both unhelpful and seditious]
I think that where Blairite tyranny is concerned we’re looking at the ‘frog in a vat of boiling water’ syndrome – i.e. if you drop a frog (or a cabinet minister) into a vat of boiling water it will scream and try to get out, but place it in a vat of warm water and slowly bring to boiling and it will stay put.
The longer we sit back and do nothing about Tony Blair then the more damage he will do. Don’t forget that this man has already vowed to make sure that no following government (even a Gordon Brown one) will be able to undo his ‘legacy’ to the British – a legacy of cronyism that makes both Harold Wilson and David Lloyd George look like amateurs and a legacy of breaching so many civil rights as to make Michael Howard’s 1990’s policies look positively libertarian by comparison.
Yes we should by all means remove seek ways of removing Blair. But more importantly we need ways of detecting his ilk way before they become dangerous and preventing them from becoming so.
1. Everyone needs to know the true definition of a politician; Any person who has his hands in your pocket and has plans for regulating how you live.
2. Everyone needs to know what to do about such a person; Have them arrested on a charge of seeking to use unlawful force on another or others.
3. The charge of seeking to use unlawful force on another or others must carry a mandatory penalty of expulsion from the country for a period of not less than 5 years.
As usual, this is not thought thru. Killing Mr Blair will only lead to his Doppelgaenger, Big Broon, taking power.
The idea that fantasizing impotently about killing people changes anything is a delusion of both libertarians and liberals. (Remember 1984 (sic), when liberals lamented the IRA’s failure to murder Mrs T.)
Mr Wickstein – why not fantasize about killing Rupert M.?
Interesting.
Historically, tyrants mostly practiced eradication of opponents, selling their children into slavery, sowing the land with salt, followed by a small intimate celebration for their closest 3-400 sycophants. Such behaviour is just not feasible in so-called democracies these days – all that salt! The environmental fluffies wouldn’t stop twittering for weeks.
But if one converts the current situation into a metaphor of the above, then there is a case for Blair as a metaphorical tyrant deserving a metaphorical death – unceremoniously turfed out of Downing St, the Commons, reduced to the status of a whining has-been, trotted out for facile political observations that nobody listens to – a bit like Edward Heath in his latter days.
Unfortunately, like many a nasty that’s deposed rather than disposed of, he’d probably go into exile and hatch plots for revenge and a triumphant return at the head of an army of foreign mercenaries.
Now why do I associate the word ‘Brussels’ with this line of thought?
bta
The other point to bear in mind about an assassination of a tyrant is that invariably the wife then manages to take over the reins of power. Do we really want Cherie Blair declaring herself leader by default, followed swiftly by the abolition of both customs controls and the ban on receiving large wads of cash from Antipodean cancer charities?
I’d prefer Imelda Marcos – at least she had the decency not to pretend to be anything other than a tyrant, and she had better taste in shoes.
I certainly wouldn’t want Tony Blair murdered. However, if we lived in even a half-civilised country, he and his capos would be frog-marched to the gallows and submitted to lawful justice.
I have openly pondered whether MI6 could come up with a creative solution to the likely tenure of Princes Charles (http://www.libertarian.org.au/blog/readArticle.jsp?articleID=8076441), but of course I would never imply that anything so drastic as assassination ought to be considered!
That is, “Prince Charles”.
Re Blair, Britain’s not big enough for his talents! His charm! Europe’s not big enough! He’s up for the Secretary-Generalship of the UN – the world! I assume Kofi’s been pencilled in for a helicopter crash sometime within the next six months. Six billion people whose lives need Tone’s iron-fisted micromanagement. Hed needs to stretch himself.
An MI6 solution would be nice.
Julian Taylor, I don’t agree that when one gets rid of a tyrant, his wife inevitably takes over. The good people of Romania had the good sense to shoot both Ceaucescus when they stepped out on the balcony to wave at the crowds.
Well, we can dream, but more reastically speaking, surely there is a constitutional lawyer out there who could find grounds for having Tony Blair arrested and banged up for 30 years?
Frogive my ignorance of Britush history: are there precedents, previous cases of PMs being murdered or executed ?
For if not, you’ll have to make TB King before you can chop his head off.
Sorry, I yeild to no one in my loathing and contempt for one T. Blair, but to be discussing assasination is beyond the pale.
The man may be an authoritarian shit, but he is no tyrant, or at least he has shown no sign that I can recognise. He may regard his friends and family as above the law but he has not yet started regarding himself as the law.
Perhaps a more realistic way of undoing some of the damage done by TB would be to encourage support for a Labour MP opposed to some of his work, with the aim of them challenging Brown for the leadership when Blair stands down. Although admittedly, no name springs readily to mind.
Chris Harper – He does regard himself as the law. That’s why he doesn’t bother going to the House of Commons.
I want him arrested, publicly humiliated and banged up for 30 years.
We should be careful here, should Dear Leader Tony have an accident then he does have a poison pill in place in the form of the Civil Contingencies Act. You want New Labour still in power and that thing being activated? Get rid of them democratically then get rid if it and then Tony can have his short back and sides at the Tower.
Even if I thought it legitimate, which I don’t if someone can be removed lawfully, I can think of no more effective way of augmenting tyranny than assasination, or attempted assasination of a political figure. This is especially true under present British conditions.
Blair is quite personable as holier-than-thou authoritarians go – and there are so many around that one gets used to that. Unlike several commentators (and unlike them I suspect, having met her), I rather like his wife. It is Blair in power I hate and fear; Blair out of power would be a cipher.
Spencer Parnell PM. shot dead on the steps of the House in 1812 Jacob.
guy herbert – Being personable is a stock in trade of tyrants. That’s how they get into their position. Just as charm and the ability to be terribly amusing are the stock in trade of conmen. It comes with the territory.
Cherie Blair is a piece of shit. She has subverted British law with this Court of Human Rights crap, which her husband brought in. She goes through the Green Channel carrying gifts worth thousands of pounds. She speaks for an Australian cancer charity, and her fee is over half the takings. She is offered a free gift by a department store in Sydney and she gallops up and down the escalators like a contestant on Supermarket Sweep.
I don’t care whether you like her or not; she is human garbage.
Rather then letting some random Yahoo slaughter your politicians, codify the practice
(Excuse the self linking, couldn’t resist, and I think it fits)
Remember that you, and/or your fellow countrymen deliberately, and with malice aforethought have thrice elected TB with overwhelming majorities, the last time barely six months ago. If you believe in democracy, as most of you would claim, then shut up. If not, welcome to the real world. I recommend reading “Death of Democracy” by Hans Hoppe.
Stop it right now. On the other side of the pond we have had “writers” who have called for the assasination of George W Bush. It’s ugly and stupid.
The real issue for American Liberals and for British Libertairians is the same. They need to convince the majority of the populace of their way of thinking.
In the US, Liberals have a real problem they were once a majority and they blew it by their irresponsible conduct of domestic policy on crime and foreign policy in general. Their anti-Bush campaign makes them look deranged, which is not far from the mark.
In the UK, Libertairians need to do the work that was done a generation ago in the US. They need to convince their fellow citizens that “A man’s home is his castle” and that the right to bear arms is an important human right.
Robert Schwartz – It might help if you got yourself a deep familiarity with the British character before lecturing us with your simplisms. Britain is not America. Most people in Britain do not want to own a gun. They do not think it is an important human right.
BTW, the phrase, correctly worded, is: An Englishman’s home is his castle.
But that is NOT what is being suggested. And I quote:
Please read the whole article carefully before commenting!
Harold
Sit down, calm down and the vapours will pass. Neither I nor my fellow countrymen voted in Nu Labour – I’m English (and Irish, when the passport arrives.) Being someone who believes that credit should go where credit is due, I direct you north of Hadrian’s Wall and west of Offa’s Dyke.
Jacob
John Bellingham is the man you’re looking for.
Thank you Nate! You took the words right out of my mouth.
One of the problems in dealing with the statist tyrannies of the modern western world is that the bad PR decisions of last century’s tyrannies have been cast to one side: no more jackboots, goose stepping or ludicrous salutes. The British Stasi is as likely as are you or I to wear a business suit (indeed, often they can afford better clothing; have you noticed the number of policemen wearing Jermyn Street shirts? Shocking)
What I mean is, there is on the one hand a respectable tradition of questioning the point at which a tyranny justifies tyrannicide and, on the other hand, as several people have noted on this page, a certain democratic mandate for a certain TB, as well as the risk of US Dem-style lunacy in discussing such a thing.
My own answer is to hold the British public in contempt. Doesn’t get us anywhere, but it has the merit of keeping me sane (Bah).
I have no idea how to persuade the GBP how to understand what is happening and I have no hope that it’ll happen. I am pretty sure we are inexorably on the road to violent revolution i.e. the endgame for all tyrannies.
In short, I agree that talk of tyrannicide is barking mad: not because TB is not a tyrant but because it is a disreputable Bolshevik solution which ignores the unfortunte reality that msot of our ridiculous countrymen do in fact vote for this tit and others like him.
Oh, and it was Spencer Percival, not “Parnell”, the assassinated PM
Good to see the Blair revenge fantasies are coming out. Perhaps the poster above would like to go into detail on how they would like to see Blair humiliated – perhaps something Abu Graib -esque? One of the nicest things about Thatcher was the way she particularly wound up a certain kind of old school lefty. I do dislike Blair greatly, but if he displays a similar talent for making Ayn Rand fanboys foam at the mouth, maybe he’s not all bad.
But it’s a fun game to play ‘justify the assassination’. I assume Stalin and Hitler are straight it. You could argue a case that all South African aparteid era leaders also belong in, in which case you can also include Mugabe – well worth doing.
It’s less clear what to do in Iran – I think he probably gets to live. Uzbekistan is a bit different – I reckon offing the guy would be fair enough.
Chavez definitely stays in my opinion, as does Castro (maybe), but we can retro-actively do in Pinochet.
Edward Lud – “the unfortunte reality [is] that mostt of our ridiculous countrymen do in fact vote for this tit and others like him.”
No, they don’t. Most of our countrymen do not vote at all. In other words, most of our countrymen would not vote for Tony Blair on a bet.
After all, few would question the ethics of assassinating Adolf Hitler.
Perhaps I’m one of them, although not from an ethical perspective. I subscribe somewhat to the theory that the situation brings forth the man, not so much the other way round (kind of what War and Peace was driving at. I am not convinced that the rise of Nazism and WWII was down to Hitler alone. Had he not been born, somebody else would have in all likelihood trodden a similar path to war, using similar methods.
At this point it is worth reflecting that the ultimate result of WWII was, if I may use this word, “satisfactory” – and I use that term loosely, and only in the sense that the bad guys lost. Were Hitler not such an incompetent military commander who insisted on overuling his generals and surrounding himself with yes-men, the outcome of WWII might have been very different. If we take the position that the German losses in the USSR were a decisive factor in the war, what if an alternative leader had not invaded the USSR, or had done so and won (the Germans were certainly not far from victory in Russia at one point)?
Of course, we have to assume that an alternative to Hitler would have invaded Poland to begin with, but I doubt that was the sole idea of one individual. And of course, later in the war would have been a good time to bump off Hitler. But it is usually assumed when answering this question that an alternative to Hitler could not have been any worse. I wonder if a competent alternative, but with the same aims and ideals, might have been a whole lot worse.
Surely the problem is not merely that Blair is a star fascist, but that the British political culture is such that his party has been voted into government three times in a row. Whether with a non-voting majority or not.
Tyrannicide is not the issue. How did Shakespeare put it? “The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” Of course, events subsequent to Caesar’s murder were to show just how little Brutus and his allies had actually achieved.
J, as an unashamed fan of Ayn Rand’s fiction (if not her whole philosophical system or her creepier acolytes), I very much doubt the old girl would have favoured murdering a democratically elected leader. She would have used him as the model for a villain in Atlas Shrugged, perhaps.
I personally think all this talk of bumping off Blair is a bit silly.
Verity – “Most of our countrymen do not vote at all. In other words, most of our countrymen would not vote for Tony Blair on a bet.”
Be that as it may I struggle to believe that the people who don’t vote Labour (i.e. those who vote for all the other parties, or who don’t vote), make this choice because of their love of liberty.
Moreover, the democratic market is like any other. Of course it can be regulated and manipulated. But if there was such demand for a party promising to roll back the state, ought we not by now to have seen the emergence of just such a party?
Opposition to Blair, Blairism, Labour is entirely unprincipled and incoherent among most people, who would deplore the feudalism of human rights legislation one day and demand the bread and circuses hand outs of the welfare state the next.
If a tyrant poses an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to one or others, then killing him would be an act of self defense.
Isn’t that already the law?
Of course that implies that people are being killed already, and also skips over the whole “lawfulness” question.
First, a word of disappointment. You Brits should have corrected RAB when he claimed that one Spencer Parnell had been assassinated while PM. In fact, the assassinated PM was Spencer Perceval.
Second, as a bloodthirsty American who comes from a country that began in violent revolution, let me say a word against both assassination and violent revolution. I strongly believe that violent resistance to government is rarely merited and rarely successful. I will not say “never”, but I think that it is generally futile. If such acts are to succeed, the overwhelming majority has to support them, and if the overwhelming majority already opposes the government that strongly, there is no need for violence in the first place as the government, even if a tyranny, cannot stand for long.
That is not to say, however, that tyranny cannot be effectively opposed, even by extralegal means. I’m not opposed to violence in principle, but Gandhi showed that the British can be swayed by massive non-violent civil disobedience, and that, in some circumstances, the results can be far superior to the use of force.
Maybe Samizdata should start selling buttons for people to wear, saying “I’ll burn my ID card. Ask me why.” or some such. Perhaps Blair will make wearing such things illegal, in which case the appeal of wearing one becomes ever so much higher.
If the Parliament makes it illegal to protest at the Palace of Westminster, provide full employment for the police by organizing large anti-Blair protests there, week after week. Don’t even think of applying for an extraordinary permit of any sort as a free person does not need permission to petition his government for a redress of grievances.
If they make it illegal, as they have, to comment on a trial in which people are charged with doing nothing more than saying something offensive, then get a few thousand people to assemble conveniently near to a BBC studio and each, in turn, break that law. Fill the jails.
You can do things to spread the discontent and assure others they are not alone. Wear anti-government buttons. Sell anti-government buttons. Wear a black mourning band on your arm with the word “liberty” on it and explain that your loved one was individual freedom and you are sad about its death — offer the questioner a mourning band, too. Spread a meme that wearing some color of necktie means you’re against the tyranny. Be creative. But most importantly, do things, and encourage others to do them. Don’t sit still. Act.
Late as usual…………..
Verity: Are you having a “bad hair day”? I thought I was on to The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler site…and even Americans sometimes get their quotations sloppy.
As for why TB is still, and will probably remain, in power, the apathetic sheep which consist the British electorate (thousands on the teat) are quite happy to have him there.
As to Mr. Bliar, he is not yet in this category. Disgusting and stupid as the British government’s policies are, they do not fall within the tyranny category.
And killing Bliar would make no difference, he’s just the face. These policies are imbedded in the British system and won’t change. Killing Hitler or Lenin might well have made a difference- I doubt that Goering or Zinoviev would have had the authority AND will to continue on their masters’ paths.
“He was duly elected/is popular” or some variation thereof are irrelevant. The slaughters by Hitler were both legal and popular, or at least popularly accepted, in Germany.
Mr Metzger – the Percival canard was already corrected, thank you kindly.
In a similar vein, we do not refer to ‘the parliament’ (as in ‘the Congress’), merely to ‘parliament’.
Lastly, does anyone know what happen to the socialists in the 60s and 70s who withheld that part of their income tax which they deemded went to pay for nuclear weapons? Were they imprisoned?
Perry and others thinking of starting a civil disobedience movement should read J.G. Ballard’s “Millenium People”.
The basis of the novel is that “the middle-classes are the new proletariat”, with the residents of Chelsea Marina, a gated community, so sick of school fees, private healthcare costs, stealth taxes and parking meters that they begin to attack icons of consumer culture.
Their “leader”, a charismatic paediatrician, Richard Gould, advocates attacking the middle-class meccas – the National Film Theatre, the BBC and Tate Modern.
Who is our Richard Gould?
“Most people in Britain do not want to own a gun. They do not think it is an important human right.”
I suspect that most people in Britain do not want to write a book, publicly express an unpopular political opinion, worship at the place of their choice, run for office, serve on a jury, read news in a free press, or vote.
Most Britons’ lives would be utterly unmarked if these rights disappeared tomorrow. The effect of the loss of the rights would come from the loss to others, others who DO exercise the rights and think them important.
Important human rights aren’t defined by popularity.
Hey !! Knock that shit off.
1) Elderly couple investigated by police for the “possible hate crime” of distributing Christian literature describing homosexuality as a sin.
2) Police investigating a guy that called a horse gay.
Both discussed just in the last few days on this blog !
When the N(ulab)KVD reads this, you guys could end up in the NuLag Archipelago.
Scratch my favorite blog. Rats!!
F
And no one is damn well suggesting it. I will be deleting further comments that even obliquely suggest otherwise.
Thanks to RAB and Pete_London for the info.
John Bellingham’s (the murderer) words in Pete’s link are remarkable. Maybe his act was wrong, but the spirit was right.
J
Chavez definitely stays in my opinion, as does Castro (maybe), but we can retro-actively do in Pinochet.
Here you show your full prejudiced colors. Castro murdered tens of thousands of his countrymen. There is hardly anybody as assassination-fit as he.
As to which tyrant deserves to be killed: without trying to debate the fine points – here is a rule: the one who kills people.
Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, Pol-pot, Idi Amin, Saddam, Assad – etc. etc. … it’s easy.
(Hitler’s goons, for example, started to murder people immediately upon Hitler’s ascent to power, so there was no need to wait until the war started…).
I have a better idea. Instead of the sprog we should kidnap The Dear Leader and the First Harpy. We should then demand a £10m ransom for the ghastly pair. Gordon would then say “Och aye, we cannae afford it” and that would be that. Of course, we would then be left with the problem of what to do with Gordon but one step at a time is what I always say.
Bad hair day all round, I’d say; incl. Perry.
“The one who kills people” isn’t enough. Churchill, Roosevelt, and Washington all “killed people”.
I wasn’t even obliquely suggesting killing Mr. Bliar. My point was that he is not a tyrant, the problems we see are not the result of his personal whim. Like it or not, NuLab is not a tyranny. Bliar is not a tyrant.
N(ulab)KVD, I love it.
Mr de Havilland, sir, I can understand the itchy collars of the Samizdata editors at some of the bloodthirstier daydreaming this post unleashed (mea non culpa), but, having reread the original post twice, I think you are being just a tad evasive now.
It is true that the original post did not question whether Tony Blair should be knocked off. But what it did do was posit the Blairite Tyranny, a phrase with which I think Scott Wickstein’s post might reasonably be associated, with classical philosophical discourse on the arguments for and against tyrannicide.
In all the circumstances, it does seem to me that the original post was inviting discussion of a) does a tyranny exist in Britain and b) is it of a nature that, classically, would have justified tyrannicide.
I grant that is not an excuse for mouthing off dark fantasies but if there is a tyranny, as one of your co-editors, rightly I think, believes then, as he concludes “at what point does a ruler’s conduct become so vile and repulsive that tyrannicide becomes a morally plausible response?”
You cannot associate Blair with tyranny and, within the same breath, query the merits of tyrannicide without inviting some fairly obvious conclusions.
A difficult subject, I grant.
P.S. I have just scanned the comments again and, generally speaking, they are people saying ‘tyrannicide? that’s right out’. Scarcely a philosophical discourse, and maybe focusing too heavily on one part of the Wickstein post at the expense the other but equally not, perhaps, a cause for deep concern. But then, that’s easy for me to say.
Seditious?
Surely any self-respecting libertarian blog is seditious?
(As was Soviet samizdata)
Well I must be famous on this site for getting things half right ( much as I do in life!).
The tragedy is that I actually googled this up cos I had the name Parnell in my head, but didn’t think it right, he had much to do with Ireland if my crowded brainpan is downloading right.
I made sure I got his first name right, and inadvertantly typed the bloody wrong surname running round my head.
Mea Culpa as usual!
Please God I’ve got the Latin right! The last thing I need is for some John Cleese centurion turning up and making me write it out 100 times!!
This topic has some personal resonance. Oddly enough, had I been in my position a year earler, I would have been in able to kill a pre 1989 Eastern European dictator. I’d like to think I would have.
Who would be able to stomach the Diannaesque eulogies?
Mind you I hardly think the right or the left would be rushing to make a martyr of Princess Tony.
Perry E Metzger wrote a well-thought out post above, and all his suggestions are easy to execute. I think his ideas are very worthy of discussion. Yes. As it’s not illegal to petition our government without a licence from the government (within so many yards of the Palace of Westminster), go ahead and have demonstrations there, without a licence, every day. That’s a good idea and doable.
Wear a pin saying “I’ll burn my ID card. Ask me why.” That’s another easy to execute idea.
Staghounds – As most people in Britain are too wimpy and self-righteous to want to own a gun, you are not going to get them out on the streets demanding the right to bear arms as a human right.
.
I meant to write “as it’s now illegal to petition …”
Tyrannicide and Blair is a disastrous combination. Currently, the man and his machine can be rid of via the ballot box – and there is little or no argument regarding this fact. Despite Blair’s rolling back of civil liberties in the United Kingdom, things are no where near illiberal enough to justify extremes such as tyrannicide.
History will only judge modern day tyrannicide well under the following circumstances :
1) the ruler is utterly hated as a justifiable tyrant
2) those committing tyrannicide offer a (considerably) more liberal alternative
3) those that commit tyrannicide follow through on their offer when they assume power
Romania 1989 springs to mind. Anything other than the above lowers us to African standards of tyrant clan-based shuffling. Can Blair be remotely compared to Ceaucescu? I think not.
That is why talk of Tony Blair’s assassination is seditious. Those who would pull the trigger aren’t offering anything better; judging by their actions, things can only degenerate.
Julian Taylor said:
I’ve been using this metaphor my entire life, but apparently it is untrue.
(at least according to Snopes)
RK Jones
R K Jones – I’m glad to hear it. Can we now give the frog a rest and mint a fresh analogy?
Are you suggesting we should boil our frogs with mint, Verity? Hmm, yes, might make them taste better.
I’m sick to death of hearing about this boiling frog. For god’s sake think of something new. And I am not a froggie.
Blair would be none the waur of a hangin’, as the man said, but it’s not practical politics. Perry Metzger’s advocacy of activism makes sense. For what it’s worth, I push libertarianism in the canteen whenever I think I’ll get somebody to listen, which is surprisingly, and heartingly, often (hint – start the conversation around tax).
An idea I’d like to see pursued is a collaborative effort to produce a book / web-site / TV series on individual real-life cases where people have been fucked over by the system – murdered by the NHS, driven to suicide by the Revenue, made homeless by the planning laws – with the policemen, tax-enforcers, town-hall jobsworths named and gutted in print, and the message: “Your taxes at work, folks”. As always, the meme to promote: “The state is not your friend”.
I recomend Buggery for prancing tyrants
Yuck. I would regard that as a reward, not an appropriate punishment!
I don’t suppose I’m the only one who got a little smile from the question, “Who is (our) Robert Gould?”.
Violence is not a good course, either morally or tactically, as long as there are other avenues remaining by which change may be accomplished.
The fact that achieving significant reductions in the power and intrusiveness of the state would be complex, difficult, and require a long term strategy does not justify a frustrated leap to violent means which would certainly lead to unknowable ends.
I suggest another exemplar of social change—Lech Walesa. His example appeals to me on several points.
Walesa was a common working man who responded to extraordinary times. He spontaneously captured the spirit of a legitimate cause against an illegitimate adversary. His emphasis was on non-violent means.
And, getting back to the “Who is …?” analogy, Solidarity’s position was non-cooperation with a repressive regime.
There is no way to tell when and how a situation might develop in which a well prepared person of moral and intellectual confidence might make a significant contribution toward the dismantling of the over-arching paternalistic state.
Who will be the next electrician to climb up on a car and grasp the megaphone?
“But if you throw a pebble into a bucket of three toed sloths…. they just lie there croaking… please stop it”
Peter Cook.
RK Jones
I bet if you shackled the cabinet minister to the bottom of the vat he wouldn’t be able to get out though. Thanks for the Snopes link though – it’s always enjoyable seeing science deflate popular myth.
RAB – Quit with the comments. You’re supposed to be monitoring and reporting on Celebrity Big Brother for those of us who can’t access it, but have trivial enough minds to care. You haven’t even reported back yet, I note. In case you don’t know, The Times Online has a CBB blog by its journalists – Hugh Rifkind, India Knight and Caitlin Moran. V good! Better than frogs and three-toed sloths.
I see that GG sang a number in an Elvis wig. I am sorry, RAB, but you don’t seem to be keeping up.
Comments suggesting Blair et al should be done in will be deleted as both unhelpful and seditious.
So much for free speech. Oh, that’s right, you don’t have that tradition in the UK.
Carry on, regardless.
This is a privately owned site and the only speech here is invited speech, is that so hard to understand? I do not feel like having the British security services sniffing around me over preceived threats against the prime minister. I prefer to pick winable (or at least fightable) fights of my own choosing and this is not one of them.
Ivan, this blog is private property so Perry wasn’t restricting your free speech. You’re free to suggest Blair should be done in on your own blog.
Note to self: refresh page before posting comments.
Sorry love, didn’t know I was supposed to!
Okey dokey, for those of you without the pig or the pokey, here’s what’s happening at big brother…
Are you bleedin sure about this now?
Ok.
Heavy vibes man! LIke it’s only a game right?
Yeah like Aushwitz!(No I’m not in denial I just can’t spell)
Gorgeous and Darron?, broke the rules, so they get summoned in to the box and told their penalty is to name three others for eviction.
So they do!
Me I’d have pleaded the fifth, and seen what the producers did with that. But vicarious pleasures eh?
The thing was, and you could see it coming from a Who like distance, that the whole thing is being shown to the whole house. So when the penitents get back to the main body a shitstorm of recrimination ensues!
Well I’ll leave it tantalisingly there for now…
If you wish me to continue I am much better value than the Times sight, India Knight my arse!
RAB – I’ll stick with The Times blog, but thanks anyway.
Sniff.
You can be so cruel!
Ivan – you do understand that on private property, the owner of that property makes the rules?
This has nothing to do with your ability to go down to the House of Commons, as close as the nomenklatura deem you worthy, and shout your views. This blog is somebody’s house, not a taxpayer venue.
why delete them as seditious? If anything is seditious to Britain, it’s Blair himself.. Or are you simply afraid of punishment and shutdown by the state for excercising free speech on your weblog?
A related interesting question is why wars are accepable to governments but murder of other government leaders (as opposed to execution after show-trial after war) is not.
The Greeks praised tyrannicide perhaps because they didn’t accept it was an entitlement of a foreign power to kill many citizens on both sides in order to remove a ruler it didn’t approve of. Wars were things that took place between political entities, and the people weren’t to be sacrificed at the pleasure of rulers.
Why do kings , prime ministers , presidents and senators accept war, and the deaths of soldiers and noncombatants, but do not accept assassination of kings , prime ministers , presidents and senators ?
Hmm, that’s a real poser that is, I’ll have to think about it…
Exactly. As I have already said, I like to pick winnable fights and this is not one of them.
I am astounded that someone thinks someone like Perry, exercising control over his own property, is being unreasonable. Start your own blog.
In general my rule is: if the avenues to nonviolent removal of a tyrant have been closed off, plotting tyrannicide becomes legit.
NB: Nonviolent removal may remain a real option long after the mere law says it isn’t. Example: all the recent “velvet revolutions”.
The record for success in violent revolution is dismal. Offhand I can think of the USA, and that’s it. Even in the USA, the debts of war planted the seeds of an intrusive federal government.
Brief side comment — my apologies for saying “The Parliament” instead of “Parliament”. Articles shift as they cross the Atlantic — on this side we visit a friend in the hospital, etc.
That said, how many of you are willing to do something as simple as wearing “I’ll burn my ID card. Ask me why?” buttons on your overcoat? If not, why not? (Is there a UK equivalent of Cafe Press that would make selling them easy?)
Could any dictator have been better entrenched than Ferdinand Marcos and his lovely wife Imelda? He was in charge of the military, for god’s sake – and the capital structure of the country.
But tens of thousands – or was that hundreds of thousands? – of brave Philippinos did it.
And didn’t the Berlin Wall come down without a shot being fired?
I practically live in my NO2ID tee-shirts (and I suspect the same can be said for Guy Herbert)
I am astounded that someone thinks someone like Perry, exercising control over his own property, is being unreasonable.
I am astounded that someone who says they support civil liberties, refuses to practice said liberties in an arena where they have complete control (as you say, their “private property”). I wonder how you can expect the gov’t to uphold civil liberties when you won’t do it yourself?
Do you really believe anyone in power is paying enough attention to your blog to come down on you for threatening Mr. Blair?
Yes. 20,000 people a day come here, including MPs and civil servants.
Then you obviously do not understand what ‘private property’ actually means. Are you saying that if, for example, you libel someone here and thereby involve the blogs owners in a law suit because we did not delete your defamatory comment, we should just continue to allow you to libel people because you have some notion that your ‘free speech’ is at stake, regardless of the fact it is me who funds and organises where you are commenting? Are you also of the view that if I invited you to a party at my house, you would have the right to insult my guests and if I then threw you out, I would be abridging your civil liberties?
I am indeed upholding civil liberty here: mine. It is my private property and therefore it is the civil liberty to control my property that is at issue here.
Ivan has a communist mentality. He doesn’t understand the difference between public and private property.
I practically live in my NO2ID tee-shirts (and I suspect the same can be said for Guy Herbert)
They can be bought from here.
We’ve also just taken delivery of some rather smart enamelled lapel badges, available for a donation direct from NO2ID.
But we do need an energetic, competent, volunteer merchandising manager.
I, for one, would wear a badge saying “I’ll burn my ID card. Ask me why.” with absolutely no problems at all.
If someone would kindly direct me to a place where I can purchase one or three of them please..
Shane