A propos of my earlier post on what recent legislation we should try to repeal in order to reclaim our lost civil liberties, I was struck by the thought that it might be easier to simply repeal every piece of legislation introduced since 1997.
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I recommend this, a speech given by Sean Gabb on Monday night to the Young Conservatives. Said he: close down the BBC, the Foreign Office, much of the Home Office, the Commission for Racial Equality, anything to do with health and safety, etc. etc. Quote:
As a libertarian myself, I have long resisted the idea of class warfare. I hate the collectivism of such notions. I mean, I have friends, including libertarian friends, who work for the BBC. (I also have a relative in a rather interesting position in the BBC, I have recently learned. You meet all sorts at family funerals. He thought of the BBC iPlayer, or so I’ve been told.) But, on the other hand, if a Gabbite government ever did materialise in Britain quickly enough for me to witness it, I would not object very strenuously. But whatever I may feel about this extraordinary event, it certainly was an event. Why, even Instapundit noticed it, or rather he noticed the Volokh Conspiracy noticing it, which is how I noticed it this morning. What would be really good would be if the lefties picked up on it and said: “This is what those evil Conservatives really want to do!”, and if Sean then repeated it all to something more like a truly national audience, adding “if only”. Or, if truly national pundits start linking to the thing, which amounts to the same thing. Even better would be if the opinion pollsters start asking the actual voters, the actual people, how they feel about Gabbism, and if quite a lot of them say: sounds good to us. Because, equally interesting, and from a libertarian point of view just as controversial, is what Sean says about state schools and state hospitals and state welfare:
None of this is new to me. I am sure I could dig out earlier Free Life Commentaries in which all this is said. In fact, come to think of it, Sean wrote a book about all this, didn’t he? Yes he did. But this time, he said it to a politically quite interesting audience. I am not going to stop opposing government spending on schools and hospitals and welfare merely to suit Sean Gabb’s suggested strategy for the Conservatives. But, I do love how Sean (I assume it’s Sean) describes this speech (here) as having been greeted with “a combination of silence and faint applause”. Springtime for Gabb has come early this year. Or, to switch to another showbiz comparison, it must have been a bit like this, that Michael Jennings linked to from here earlier today. Is there perhaps some kind of Law of Speeches to the effect that all truly significant speeches are greeted thus, and that only speeches saying absolutely nothing of interest get standing ovations? It would make sense. February 18th, 2009 | 40 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Bishop Hill comes up with a list of the legislation that an incoming UK government should get rid of to restore some of the civil liberties lost over the past decade or so. As he accepts, this is probably only scratching the surface of the issue, but still. The sheer quanity of the legislation that has been brought in, and its scope, is pretty startling even to a grizzled veteran of chronicling such outrages. Maybe the simple solution is to repeal all the acts in one go. February 18th, 2009 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
The movie “Pride and Predator” has just gone into production. And yes, the plot is exactly what you think it is. February 18th, 2009 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
Hollywood has dutifully churned out yet another cinematic agitprop paean to a leftist ‘martyr’, this time Ernesto Guevara. So let us recall the real ‘Che’ and try to discern why many supposedly democratic, civil libertarian liberals still swoon over this Stalinist mass-murderer. The meticulous myth of Senor Guevara is of a handsome Argentine heroically helping Fidel Castro’s guerrillas liberate Cuba from Fulgencio Batista’s military dictatorship in 1959. Then he became a global revolutionary icon inspiring the downtrodden to rise up everywhere, even personally leading rebel warriors in the Congo before being executed doing the same in Bolivia in 1967. The (communist) party line says Che personifies the selfless humanitarian courageously fighting for ‘social justice’. He is the Marxists’ martyred Christ figure replete with pictures of his half-naked corpse riddled with bullet holes. And the classic poster of an angry young Guevara has scarred countless college dorm rooms for over 40 years, putting a face on the eternally young rebel for angry adolescents everywhere. The real Guevara was a reckless bourgeois adrenaline-junkie seeking a place in history as a liberator of the oppressed. But this fanatic’s vehicle of ‘liberation’ was Stalinism, named for Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, murderer of well over 20 million of his own people. As one of Castro’s top lieutenants, Che helped steer Cuba’s revolutionary regime in a radically repressive direction. Soon after overthrowing Batista, Guevara choreographed the executions of hundreds of Batista officials without any fair trials. He thought nothing of summarily executing even fellow guerrillas suspected of disloyalty and shot one himself with no due process. Che was a purist political fanatic who saw everything in stark black and white. Therefore he vociferously opposed freedoms of religion, speech, press, assembly, protest, or any other rights not completely consistent with his North Korean-style communism. How many rock music-loving teens sporting Guevara t-shirts today know their hero supported Cuba’s 1960s’ repression of the genre? How many homosexual fans know he had gays jailed? Did the Obama volunteers in that Texas campaign headquarters with Che’s poster on the wall know that Guevara fervently opposed any free elections? How ‘progressive’ is that? How socially just was it that Che was enraged when the Russians blinked during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and withdrew their nuclear missiles from the island, thus averting a nuclear war? Guevara was such a zealous ideologue that he relished the specter of millions of Cuban lives sacrificed on the altar of communism, declaring Cuba “a people ready to sacrifice itself to nuclear arms, that its ashes might serve as a basis for new societies”. Some humanitarian! Che was a narcissist who boasted that “I have no house, wife, children, parents, or brothers; my friends are friends as long as they think like me, politically”. This is a role model for today’s ‘post-political’ voters claiming we should get beyond partisanship? Adding to the ridiculousness of the Che cult is that he was virtually a complete failure. As a medical doctor, he never even had a practice. When put in charge of the Cuban economy at the start of Castro’s government, his uncompromising communist diktats ran it completely into the ground, from which it never recovered. Humiliated, and also angry that Castro was not fomenting enough revolution abroad, he then tried to lead such quixotic adventures in Argentina, the Congo, and Bolivia, failing miserably everywhere while sacrificing the lives of scores of naïve, idealistic young followers as deluded pawns in the service of his personality cult. Another reason he fled Cuba in the mid-1960s was the complete mess he made of his private life. Though he preached sexual purity to his colleagues, he was a shameless adulterer who abandoned two wives and many children, some legitimate, others not. As a grandson put it, “he was never home”. The public Che who supposedly had such great love for humanity privately could not stand most folks. Guevara’s promiscuous communist adventurism was the pattern of a terminal adolescent running away from his problems to get caught up in some heroic crusade against his eternal bete noir, ‘Yankee imperialism’. So why do so many well-heeled American libs still admire this thug? Are the young simply ignorant of his execrable record and drawn to the image of the dashing young rebel? Do older progressives feel guilt for their free market prosperity, and showing solidarity with Che absolves them? Do hippies-turned-yuppies get nostalgic for their youthful protests and rationalize that the symbolism of Che as a ‘social reformer’ eclipses his actual horrific human rights record? And are some American Guevaraistas truly dangerous leftists who seek to emulate their icon and destroy our free, democratic, capitalist society? Ask that guy wearing the Che tee-shirt. February 17th, 2009 | 44 comments - (Comments are closed)
This is on my Amazon wish-list. I love the mad, over-the-top style of the late Terry Thomas and from a young age, was delighted by his crazy turns of phrase, his hilarious demeanor and wonderful portrayal of the upper class cad. I must say that every time I am unfortunate enough to see Gordon Brown, The Community Organiser or Sarkozy on the television, it is hard not to shout out in true TT style: “What an absolute shower!” Where did the expression “absolute shower” come from, by the way? February 17th, 2009 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
One of the best journalists out there, Claudia Rosett, responds to the dimwit assertion in parts of the MSM that “We are all socialists now”. Quite. I would also be happy to see someone write denying that “we” are all Keynesians now, by the way. Who is supposed to be the “we” is never quite explained. It is just assumed by the issuers of such pronouncements that all those in positions of power and influence have signed on to a particular world view. Rosett, as I remember, did great work in helping to expose that sink of corruption and double-dealing that was the Oil For Food Program of the United Nations, yet another reason for shutting down that organisation. February 16th, 2009 | 32 comments - (Comments are closed)
Taking a break from the financial tsunami and idiotic politicians, here are some wonderful infra-red photos. (Via David Thompson). February 16th, 2009 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
Did politicians rumble the trade? Did governments, or international forums or symposiums, provide the sharp instrument? Did academic research and expertise expose the dodgy product? Did statutory regulators apply the pin? No, the free market wised up and pricked this bubble. Politicians and finance ministers (if they had had the power) would have tried to keep it inflated. The market puffed itself up, and then, without intervention – despite intervention – the market let itself down. The speed with which this has happened has been awful, but however inconvenient for many or catastrophic for a few, correction is not a failure of the market, but a success. February 15th, 2009 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
Pure genius this is…
Voters want to see fewer foreclosures and more bank lending to ordinary consumers. No doubt they do. I assume they also want more sex, better cars, more holidays and yet another Rocky movie to be made. Or maybe a Caddyshack remake. So the political and financial elites decided that if more and more people could be made home owners, that would benefit both sections of said elite, or as I like to call them collectively, the Political Looter Class… tax money and government guarantees (which are not cost free) and, when necessary, actual threats to financial institutions that were reluctant to loan money to people who might well not ever pay it back, pushed the number of homeowners ever higher as ever more money was borrowed by John Q. Public and invested in mortgages. The political looter class was happy and so were the millions upon millions of people who voted for them again and again and again. And of course why should everyone not be happy? A loan is a bank asset, right? And banks with more assets can lend more money, and that means even more people, voting people, can buy houses. Well yes loans are a bank’s ‘assets’… but only if there is a realistic chance of that loan ever being paid off, otherwise it is in fact a liability (or more accurately, a loss, although through the mystical political arts it does not actually get called that as often as it logically should when the ‘loss’ is incurred by a member of a voting block the likes of Barney Frank, or for that matter, George Bush, wish to pander to). I only state this obvious fact because it does not seem obvious to the political section of the looter class. It was of course always obvious to the financial sector of the looter class, which is why all those ‘assets’ (which were actually liabilities) were wrapped up in complex financial packages and splendidly ‘securitized’ with the open connivance, indeed encouragement, of the political elite… and whilst there is absolutely nothing wrong with securitization per se, it ain’t quite so splendid when it is being used to spread what we now call ‘toxic debt’ throughout the entire financial system, making it enormously harder and often impossible to assess loan risk. But to the entire political looter class, and I mean not just the elite elements but also including the millions and millions of people who took loans they could not repay and voted for the people whose regulations provided the perverse incentives for banks to loan money to them, the important things was to… keep lending. And this, boys and girls, is what we call a Credit Bubble. And why do we call it a bubble? Because when loans are given out at a rate greater than actual economic growth can support, the amount of loans (assets) that go bad increases because the increased lending was not supported by an increased ability to pay the loans back… and when that fact becomes clear, people with money suddenly stop lending… the ‘bubble’ bursts. And when the state decides to fix that by motivating more people to borrow by reducing interest rates to almost zero, that of course makes no damn difference at all because lenders, not borrowers, are the ones suddenly back in touch with reality. And just because the government (i.e. central bank) says “the price of loans is 0.1%”, that actually does not mean jack shit, because the genuine price of loans has to include the premiums needed to cover bad debts. Moreover if it cannot be determined how risky it may be to lend due to the poisonous spread of toxic debt, it is safer to just hold onto the money rather that flush it down the toxic debt toilet. And how are the political looter class trying to remedy this situation? Well they are trying to re-inflate the bubble with the extra added spice of making the secured assets (property) even harder to repossess (in effect un-securing questionable loans either by fiat or with money plucked from the government’s magic money tree). Pure genius. And the next news item just around the corner? Think about US Treasuries… or ‘Junk Bonds’ as they will soon be known. ‘Screwed’ does not even begin to describe it. February 14th, 2009 | 39 comments - (Comments are closed)
I just picked this out as a potential SQOTD:
However, follow that last link and you will learn that the Conservative Party, in the person of Chris Grayling, may be retreating, a bit, from its former public position of craven retreat, so the Conservative bit of this story is not over yet. Yes, ban Wilders, says Grayling, but ban lots of others also. The Conservatives may well split on this, and I for one do not give a damn. Two further quick thoughts: First, I find all this elaborate condemnation of Geert Wilders by the Right-On tendency rather nauseating. We abominate what he says, but free speech is sacred and therefore he should be allowed in rather than being given the oxygen of publicity, but if he has broken the law then, blah blah blah, he should not be allowed in. This seemed to be the default position on Question Time last night, which I semi-watched. Usually there is only one but in these kind of weasel statements, but in this case there have often been two buts, with the second but being the but that craps all over everything before it, including whatever less ignoble turds emerged from the first but. But according to Guido, Wilders has not broken the law. And what Wilders says is that Islam is a huge problem because it preaches violence to those who do not submit to it. Which it does. Read the Koran, like this guy did. It is a vile piece of writing. People who grumble and splutter about statements like that are either Muslims or cowards or both. They just do not want to have to think about it because if this is true, which it is, it is all just too depressing. Second: democracy. What we are witnessing here is democracy, not some perversion of it. If enough voters threaten violence, then the state will cave in, and nothing like fifty percent is required. Half a percent threatening to dig up pavements or set fire to things is more than enough, provided another five or ten percent, sprinkled around all those marginal or potentially marginal constituencies, are willing to back, defend, not condemn, such threats with their votes. Votes, in other words, are violence. I fondly remember an ancient black and white movie telling of how, towards the beginning of the nineteenth century, the plebs of Britain got votes. A key moment was when a brick came crashing through the window of a room where some political toffs were discussing it all. Either we get this organised, they told each other, in other words either we have more democracy, or the bricks will keep on coming. I am still for democracy, for the usual Churchill reason of it being better than the alternatives, but it is messy. Personally, I am grateful to Geert Wilders, and even a little bit grateful to whichever coven of scumbag politicians it was who banned him from coming here. Some life has consequently been breathed into an argument which, while being just as important as ever, looked like it was becoming, what with all these Credit Crunch dramas, a bit passé. February 13th, 2009 | 37 comments - (Comments are closed)
A good friend of mine and fellow blogger, Andrew Ian Dodge, who is also an occasional commenter here, writes about his father, who died this week after an illness. Rest in peace. February 13th, 2009 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
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