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Samizdata quote of the day

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The government forgets that George Orwell’s 1984 was a warning, and not a blueprint

– Chris Huhne

August 10th, 2009 |

11 comments to Samizdata quote of the day

  • Anon
    August 10, 2009 at 12:02 pm

    Now, where did he get that line from, I wonder?

  • MarkE
    August 10, 2009 at 12:13 pm

    I don’t think they forgot anything. Some read 1984, see themselves as Winston Smith and fear what they read while others read it, see themselves in the role of Big Brother, and like what they read. The latter would never see it as a warning.

  • Paul Marks
    August 10, 2009 at 2:32 pm

    Sadly Chris Huhne makes the same mistake that “George Orwell” made himself.

    Mr Huhne assumes that one can have state control of Civil Society (which is what the ever bigger “caring” government he wants really means) whilst still keeping “Civil Liberties”.

    Sorry – but you can not have this, not over the long term.

    For decades F.H. Hayek tried to explain that the fact that the German concept of the “Welfare State” and the German concept of the “Police State” were linked was NOT some historical accident of German thought from the 17th century onwards.

    It is a LOGICAL (not just an historical – history of thought) link. If you want the evergrowing “cradle to grave” caring government you are going to have to accept the police state of which it is part.

    Of course one can try and stave it off. For example the much attacked “administrative law and administrative courts” of Germany are NOT the cause of government abuse there – on the contrary they are efforts to place a vast government (the modern “social state”) under the rule of law (actually modern Germany has less ARBITRARY government power than Britain or the United States – such things as the ripping up of contract law in the Chrysler and General Motors cases would be HARDER to do in Germany not more easy to do).

    However, in the end, all the great efforts to combine the rule of law with a government that dominates such things as education, health and welfare are makeshifts at best – they fly in the face of the logical imperitatives of such a vast government.

  • mandrill
    August 10, 2009 at 3:30 pm

    It is not the government’s job to ‘care’. Their job is to protect our borders and enforce individual property rights, thats it. The moment a gov’t starts caring is the moment they start thinking they can tell us how to live our lives, it is also the moment we begin to stop caring for each other as we know that the government will do it for us.

  • Ian B
    August 10, 2009 at 4:12 pm

    We have sleepwalked into a surveillance state…

    Nice at least to see the use of the present rather than the future tense

    …but without adequate safeguards.

    but then he ruins it by reinforcing the myth that you can have a nice police state, if you tinker with the rules a bit.

  • Ian B
    August 10, 2009 at 4:13 pm

    Er, past tense actually…

    Not my strong point, grammar.

  • Chris H
    August 10, 2009 at 8:40 pm

    “Now where did he get that line from I wonder?” I think that I first heard it from Old Holborn or Guido Fawkes. Their constant references to 1984 prompted me to aquire a copy and read it. I have to say that I find the similarities between this book and modern Britain frightening.

  • Devil's Kitchen
    August 11, 2009 at 12:14 am

    I first heard it from “liberal Leftie” blogger Curious Hamster about four years ago…

    DK

  • Libertarian Tory
    August 11, 2009 at 12:26 am

    This is an admirable sentiment from Mr Huhne, but I see no evidence at all that the LDs really understand liberalism. They are hot on “judicial” civil liberty issues, I’ll grant you – ID cards, detention without trial, torture etc. – but completely undermine this with their moon-eyed support for the EU, support for all sorts of bans, and generic statist bollocks.

  • Cyclefree
    August 13, 2009 at 12:24 am

    I’m with you Libertarian Tory. Huhne, after all, was the man who refused to condemn the ban on Geert Wilders’ entering the UK. So not v. hot on free speech then. Plus this quote has been around for a while. He’s just jumped on a bandwagon.

    And Paul: interesting post. But isn’t this what Churchill warned about in the 1945 election: that the Welfare state would inevitable lead to the Gestapo state? Well, as far as I’m concerned, here we are. I no longer believe that I can trust a UK government to look after the interests of its citizens and I fear and despise the authorities and now think that I will need to spend time trying to outwit them in the hope of preserving the freedoms I grew up with

  • Paul Marks
    August 15, 2009 at 2:43 pm

    Cyclefree – yes.

    Churchill got that directly not only from Hayek (for which Labour denounced him for reading an Austrian born writer) but also from such works as Chief Justice Hewart’s “The New Despotism” (1929). Hewart being a “liberal of the old school”.

    One problem with British lawyers (at least the establisment) is that, for all their talk of “civil liberties, they do not see how ECONOMIC regulations undermine liberty and can mean an arbitrary destroying government (see Richard North and Christopher Booker on this over many years).

    At least German law understands that government economic regulations must not be arbitrary and must be subject to challenge (at least in administrative courts).

    Sadly German law not only does accept free speech (denying freedom to “protect freedom” is a hopelessly confused position) – but modern German lawyers will not even fully accept that the great German code of 1900 should not be overridden by every arbitrary whim of European Union law.

    This submission to authority is what undermined the resitance of German law to the National Socialist – the basic defences had already been undermined by the Weimar Republic (and by Imperial Germany) before the Nazis even came to power.

    The same legal thinkers who defend such things as banning pro Nazi speech, are rather slow in defending German law from real threats today.

    To give a specific example:

    “Competition law” (what Americans call “anti trust” law) is based on vague and arbitrary principles. It is not compatiable with the basic principles of German commercial law (or with the basic principles of French commercial law, come to that).

    However, because it is an E.U. policy they is not much protest from the German legal establishment.

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