After an enjoyable day out with fellow libertarian troublemaker Andrew Ian Dodge, I settled in a for a quiet night in front of the television and watched about half of an interesting, if rather depressing, documentary about the late British comedian, Frankie Howerd.
He ranks alongside the late Peter Sellers and Terry Thomas in my pantheon of eccentric Brit funnymen. Howerd was the master of the double-entendre, teasing his audiences with riske jokes at a time when censorship of the press and popular entertainment was still relatively strong by modern standards. He is probably best known for his role as a comic slave in the Roman comedy, “Up Pompei!”, accompanied by his usual refrains such as “No missus!” or “Titter ye not”. (He’s an acquired taste, I will admit).
The programme on Howerd’s life focussed on his private life, which was not particularly pleasant. Howerd was a homosexual and in the post-war years up to the 1960s before gay relationships were legalised. In consequence, Howerd conducted his personal life on the fringes of the law, and at times was vulnerable to blackmail.
With all the current concerns about state ID cards, European Union cross-border arrest warrants and the like, it is easy to become despondent about the threats to our individual freedom. But we should not forget that in that much maligned decade, the 1960s, a group of people like Frankie Howerd were liberated from the bigotry of the law. In certain areas, the cause of liberty has taken a leap forward, and we should not forget that fact.
Oooooh, shut yer face!!
Did you mean risky or risque?
On New York cable TV they showed ‘Passport to Pimlico’ last night. Great Flick and possibly a libertarian classic.
Any thoughts?
“Howerd was a homosexual and in the post-war years up to the 1960s before gay relationships were legalised.”
Not to be pedantic, but gay relationships were non-legalised, not legalised. They were legal (ie: there was a law about it, in this case prohibitive) before. By becoming permitted (but not required), gay relationships became non-legal (not having to do with the law).
Why is it when people state what a fine thing it that gay sex has been legalized, I always thing about the AIDS epidemic and the 10’s of thousands of victims of that disease, gay and straight.
I start thinking about all those hemophiliacs who had to die.
Then, about all those infants in the California NICU’s who got blood transfusions.
Of course, I then think about Arthur Ashe. (For younger readers, he was the Tiger Woods of my generation.)
Then, I start thinking about the ineffective public heatlh measures taken to stop the epidemic, all in the name of protecting the privacy of gay men (even though gay sex is now legal).
I then think about the 10’s of thousands of people in the USA who have HIV (20,000 new infectiions per year) and don’t know it but who would be benefited by drugs treatment. But, because there is no mass screening for the disease, they go untreated. Again, we know why.
On the other hand, if a straight man is picked up in a police trap trying to hire a prostitute (in the USA), his marriage and career are over.
Yes, we have come a long way.
Somewhere in the saga of the legalization of gay sex and the AIDS epidemic, there must be a lesson for libertarians. Dare I say it? Freedom without responsiblity is license.
It is, and it can be a problem.
It will be argued that what someone does in his own bedroom is his own business. Fine, but as with all liberties, only insofar as it doesn’t prejudice others.
HIV is a serious public health concern. It is perfectly true that, in the west at least, sensible precautions, screenings and control/eradication measures are not taken, or not taken as consistently as they should be, largely for fear of upsetting the “gay community”. There is widespread denial in the west that homosexuals are a major risk group, despite huge amounts of epidemiological evidence to support this.
Personally, I don’t see why the sexual predilictions of some 3% of the human male population should prevent sensible and rigorous public health precautions being taken.
Perhaps it’s illiberal, but I do think some (many?) libertarians forget the idea that although you should be able to do pretty much as you like, you MUST consider the wider effects of your actions – otherwise you are not being libertarian, just irresponsible. In many cases, they do NOT affect only you.
Frankly, or Frankie-ly, I don’t see this particular liberalisation as progress.
EG
Jeez I know it’s the weekend and some of us may be slightly inebr…ineebree… er pissed, but what are you guys going on about! i thought the thing was about frankie howard. He the sad (arnt they all, cue stock tabloid feature) and rather nasty preditory homosexual of limited comedic talent (I saw the documentary too). Hell would you like to live in life’s memory for “Up Pomaeii” What’s all this aids stuff about? Every gay I know has cleaned up his act vis a vis sex, which is more than can be said for hetro “it doesnt exist” and if it does then shagging even more people will make it go away sub saharan attitudes -are you listening Nigeria and S Africa? Howard didnt give a shit for anyone else but himself. Had he been the right generation, he would have caught aids and passed it on with not a thought for anyone else. A nasty but sometimes funny man, just like Jim Davidson. Ah but that’s another post!
1) Why is the marriage and career of a straight man over when he is picked up in a police trap trying to hire a prostitute and yet gay sex is legal?
2) Sexually transmitted diseases can increase as a result of sexual promiscuity therefore homosexuality ought to be illegal.
3) Let us stop protecting gay men with ineffective health measures!
Call me old fashioned but this is the sort of logic that leads to people being labelled as stupid.
Oddly enough, fellow bandmate, John and I watched the same show as it came on right about the time we stopped rehearsals. A glass of wine in hand and pizza helped us along. It was a rather interesting show. Unlike Kenneth Williams who was disgusted by his sexuality, Howerd actually pursued his desires. It was a well done show and basically gave the viewer an interesting history of the vagaries of showbusiness and popular culture in the UK. What struck me as most amusing is that most of his core audience had no bloody clue he was homosexual.
Euan Gray (fan of taxes, ID cards) says what an adult does in a bedroom is okay so long as it doesn’t prejudice others. Riiiight. So does this mean, for example, that straight couples should be forced, by law, to only engage in sex with certain precautions?After all, sexually transmitted diseases have not just been the preserve of non-straights down the centuries.
So Euan, do you want to re-criminalise gay sex between consenting aults? It seems to be the logical outcome of your comments. If I am wrong then clarify, perhaps.
Jonathan – I am not a fan of ID cards or taxes and never said that I was. I see the former as inevitable and the latter as necessary, given that I also see the existence of some form of state (and therefore funding for that state) as in practice necessary. Pragmatism, not enthusiasm.
If people have rights and liberties, it is irresponsible to exercise them without considering the effect on others. I am by turns amused and bemused by the apparent assumption on the part of some libertarians that rights and liberties can or even should be exercised heedless of the consequences. I think this is irresponsible and immature.
It is not the business of the state to attempt to regulate the sex lives of the people. This is pointless and in any case impossible. However, I do believe it is the responsibility of the individual to exercise his rights sensibly, with restraint where appropriate and always with an understanding of how such exercise affects others. I also believe that in some cases general public health concerns outweigh the physical desires of the people, and therefore in this case that however vocal or influential the homosexual lobby may be this should not restrain society from accepting necessary measures to contain and hopefully eradicate the disease.
I am not particularly concerned with what men want to do to each other in private. Or women. Or any combination thereof. I am concerned, though, that the persistent influence of the homosexual lobby makes it difficult in this case to take sensible measures to prevent a rather unpleasant disease. I do not think that homosexuality should necessarily be proscribed, but given its nature and that of the particular disease I think it is sensible for people to exercise some degree of personal restraint.
Unfortunately, many people seem to labour under the misapprehension that pretty much anything they want to do is ok because they want to do it, all “lifestyle choices” are equally valid, etc. This is a mistake, IMO.
EG
Euan, fair points all but to repeat, what actually do your “sensible measures” consist of? If you mean gay men using their common sense, who could possibly argue against that? But my sense from your earlier comment was that you regarded the state of affairs post decriminlisation in the mid 60s as a bad one. That implied in my eyes that you wanted a change in the law. You haven’t really answered that point.
As for ID cards being inevitable, well, we’ll see about that. Not if I have anything to do with it.
The idea of national ID cards is a bit excessive. However, I recall a Reader’s Digest article claiming that a few phone calls, an internet connection, and the right lawyers, you can find a person’s every public detail already, so it’s not a major crisis.
Before you think that criminalizing homosexual relationships will solve anything, remember that, for the law to apply equally, we would also have to criminalize all other forms of sex, and, without sex, we wouldn’t be here. Outlawing sex would eventually lead to the end of the world, with the exception of a few who skirt around the law.
AIDS and other STD’s are a problem for everyone, and a discriminatory law won’t solve it.
Yes I have:
I’d have thought that was plain enough.
Yes, they are, which is why public health measures which could deal with this problem should not be obstructed on hysterical “you’re a homophobe” grounds. AIDS, however, is a bit more of a problem than the others because it is, so far, incurable.
Actually, it would, just as discriminatory laws solve problems such as typhoid and tuberculosis – identification, quarantine and treatment irrespective of sex, sexuality, etc., discriminating on the grounds of infection. This isn’t going to happen in the case of HIV because any attempt so to do will inevitably be seen as homophobic.
I would advocate precisely the same measures in case of cholera, typhoid, TB, plague, etc. What’s so special about AIDS?
This isn’t so necessary for other venereal diseases, the majority of which are relatively easily cured by conventional treatment.
EG
But we should not forget that in that much maligned decade, the 1960s, a group of people like Frankie Howerd were liberated from the bigotry of the law.”
Alas, more gay men were prosecuted for indecency after decriminalisation than before. This from Graham Robb’s interesting study of homosexual life in the 19th century Strangers, which read through a libertarian lens suggests that the smaller victorian state was rather less persecutionary its meaty 20th century incarnation. After all, much of the case for reform was argued on the grounds that it would ease the suffering of those already burdened by the sickness of homosexuality. I think this argument appeals to more paternal instincts than the pursuit of individualism.
Social change is more important than political change. The latter is, I think, only really effective when it follows rather than leads the former. George Monbiot uses the decriminalistaion of homosexuality to back up his “democracy is a magic bullet” arguments.
Despite repeated prodding from Jonathan it is still remarkably opaque precisely what special ‘measures’ Euan Gray thinks is necessary to defeat the spread of AIDS. What can be seen with shining clarity though is that, protestations to the contrary, he is a particularly ghastly homophobe itching to impose his ‘final solution’ to the ‘gay problem’.
Rubbish. As I said, quite clearly:
Not much opacity there, I’d have thought.
It’s not a “gay problem”. It’s a public health problem in which homosexual (and bisexual) men happen to be a major (but not the only) infection vector.
EG
I have no problem with peope being homosexual, bisexual, heterosexual, whatever they want. I said this perfectly clearly earlier, but perhaps it was buried in other text and you missed it.
What I do have a problem with, though, is people thinking there are no limits of restraint or regard for others in their exercise of their own liberties. As I also said before, you may have noticed, I consider this to be irresponsible and immature.
I don’t care if they’re homosexual or not, the same concept should apply.
EG
BTW, my sympathies for Howerd were a bit tempered by revelations of how he bullied vulnerable young folk in the stage business. Not very nice man in that respect.
I have no problem with peope being homosexual, bisexual, heterosexual, whatever they want. I said this perfectly clearly earlier, but perhaps it was buried in other text and you missed it.
No, I didn’t miss this. I explicity discounted it as disingenuous.
Your whole purpose in posting has nothing to do with concern for public health but is to traduce homosexuals. I cannot imagine what fools you think you are deceiving by denying it.
Why?
I am just so jealous of this ability some have to have a clear and perfect understanding of what other people mean, even when those other people clearly, explicity, consistently and repeatedly state the opposite.
If you actually read what I had written, you would have noticed that I did not say anything against homosexuals, but rather against the counter-productive influence of the homosexual lobby which tends to prevent public health measures…oh, what’s the point, you know so much better than I do what I think.
EG
Euan, I certainly would impute bad motives towards you on this topic but when folk talk about the state power of quarantine in this instance, it reeks of coercive state power against a vulnerable minority. Consider STDs as they have affected gay and straights. How would you quarantine them? For how long? In what sort of places? With what sort of redress in a case of misdiagnosis?
Also, our comments on ID cards are directly relevant here. The State already has information about our health to a certain degree via the NHS. But consider that if one’s health, sexual orientation, financial affairs etc were available in one place via a compulsory ID card, then sudden incarceration, whoops, quarantines, would be a lot easier to enforce.
No doubt the exercise of state power is for our good. It always is…….for someone else.
It sort of scans better if you insert a “not” after the third word 🙂
There are those who would happily consign HIV cases to a remote island somewhere and sink the boat. I think this is unnecessary. Really what is needed is a targeted health education campaign aimed at the really high risk groups – in this country, drug abusers and male homosexuals. The problem is, though, that PC means this isn’t going to happen, and we live with the not entirely accurate assumption that everyone is equally at risk – they aren’t.
I suppose, in extremis, you might consider detaining those who refuse to exercise restraint even with the knowledge that they are infectious. It is already a crime to knowingly infect somoeone with HIV, after all, and that includes through sex. But then, how are you going to know who is doing this? If it becomes enough of a problem (yes, I know, how much is “enough”?), I think you could justify detentions. But, in the long term, it will not be a problem for humanity. Just as the advances in hygiene followed from a desire to prevent all too frequent plagues and epidemics, I suspect that there will be a moralistic backlash against unrestrained sexual licence especially if HIV becomes a really serious threat to western civilisation. On the other hand, the high risk vectors might just die out. Time will tell.
In this charmingly selfish, materialistic, self-obssessed age of port-modernist relativism, it is rather difficult to try to persuade people to take some heed for the effects of their actions. All life choices are valid, and what have you. The individual is all that matters. I find this profoundly depressing, and I think it is a serious flaw in libertarianism. Liberty is good, but with restraint. Oh well.
I do agree, though, that this is an example of where central ID registration can be abused. One can indeed imagine “preventive” detentions just because someone is known to be homosexual, a drug abuser, was once seen holding hands with another man, etc. That’s a valid concern.
On the other hand, might the expectation of these things inevitably happening not be something of an over-reaction? Assuming we manage to maintain some form of democracy (in practical terms, let’s not bugger around with semantic hair-splitting on what “real” democracy is), would the state really want to control people that much? Where is the advantage? Would they, realistically, get away with it for long? Looked at in the most unflattering light, the state wants people to be docile and do their duty – obey the law, pay taxes, and produce another generation of obedient tax-payers. There isn’t much more the state really wants or can use from the people, other than in lunatic places like North Korea or under totalitarian regimes.
As I said in the ID card thread, I think the cards are unnecessary. They could be used for malicious purposes, but to assume they inevitably would be so used is, I think, reacting a little too much. However, if they’re unnecessary, then the waste of £3 billion on them is also unnecessary.
EG
I think of the inability to deal with HIV/AIDS effectively is a great case of the price of discrimination. Society chose to discriminate against gay people for a long time which made it difficult to treat HIV/AIDS as just another contagious disease.
I’ll spot Mr/Ms Gray (Euan is a really foreign name to me) that in the early years of the AIDS epidemic gay men in the US were no angels and confounded some potentially good policy. But, at least in the US, they did get their act together to a considerable degree and actually became something of a (flawed but real) model of medical establishment/community cooperation (albeit the ride was bumpy).
Since people (especially men) have never been known for rationality when it comes to sex, there’s been backsliding in the recent past, but it is generally recognized as such.
Generally Mr/Ms Gray’s postings in this thread read like conservative anti-gay writing from the mid-80’s.
It should be noted that those conservatives essentially wanted the liberty to stigmatize homosexuality and pay no price for it, which HIV/AIDS made difficult.
It’s Mr.
Euan means John. It’s Scottish, unfortunately.
Sigh. Another one who reads and yet sees only what he wants to see.
Frankly, I really don’t give a damn if HIV affects only gay men, straight men, lesbians, Mongolian camel herders or whatever. I don’t care what people get up to in their bedrooms, or with whom, or with what domestic appliances.
What I do object to is the illusion that you can freely exercise your liberties without considering the effects on others. There is a price for that, like it or not. Politically correct society seems reluctant to accept this, particularly in the case of homosexuals, and that was the point I was making.
Why did it make it difficult? I have no interest in stigmatising them, I just don’t see the connection here.
EG
Neither do I. What I saw was a measure to discriminate based on illness, which has been proven to be a legal measure, instead of a strong reaction against homosexuals.
Paul,
Discounting any part of a writing is dangerous. It can cause spiteful misconceptions about others’ positions on the issues. Following such flawed logic, I could probably take only the discriminatory remarks of the banned commenters and use them to prove that this blog is detrimental to womens rights! But, since I read the whole thing, I see that it is not. You need to let go of your bias, read the entire text, and then draw an accurate conclusion. Then, if you hold the same views, I would like to know how you arrived at your conclusion, since it seems to make no logical sense whatsoever.
Euan writes that “you might in extremis decide to detain those who refuse to exercise restraint even if they are infectious”.
First, how do you prove that a person with HIV is “refusing to exercise restraint”? Do you follow him/her around? Put hidden cameras in his/her bedroom? Monitor how many condoms they buy?
I am glad you see the point of why ID cards with centralised info could be a threat, though. Of course, the potential for fraud, mistaken IDs and computer error can only be imagined. Not very reassuring.
There are those who would happily consign HIV cases to a remote island somewhere and sink the boat. I think this is unnecessary.
Please be sure to tell us when you do think this is necessary. This is a common rhetorical trick. Suggest some absolutely preposterous ‘solution’ first and then your own ghastly and tyrannical agenda seems ‘reasonable’ by comparison.
It was also good of Euan to point out that the glaring flaw in libertarianism is ‘liberty’. If we were only wise enough to just get rid of that bit.
alex,
You write:
You need to let go of your bias, read the entire text, and then draw an accurate conclusion.
My conclusion is entirely accurate.
I would like to know how you arrived at your conclusion
Well, if it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck…….
Paul,
‘Well, if it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck…….’
Glib epithets do not an argument make..
The attitude you demonstrate has stifled reasonable and honest debate about all kinds of issues since the Waffen PC Brigade stormed the moral high ground in the 60-70’s. Dissent is strictly verboten and anyone who dares hold an opinion that differs from your cosy sanctimony is pilloried as a hateful bigot. It’s a kind of tyranny and has absolutely nothing to do with libertarianism, nor the holy creed of tolerance you no doubt espouse.
But, I must say I find Euan’s arguments surprising. Startling even.
Pete,
I am sorry that your perception of my ‘attitude’ makes you feel inhibited in saying what you want. Perhaps you are victim to low self-esteem.
Low self esteem?
Please….
It gets tiresome having to engage with people who profess to all sorts of high ideals of tolerance and liberty, but are actually narrow-minded, parochial zealots. It just gets tedious. And why not try reading what people have taken the time write before stooping to the highly sophisticated level of calling them names?
Pete, you are entirely entitled to your views, and BTW, I would defend them as ardently as I would the right of adults to engage in whatever consensual relationships they wanted. It is a shame that authortarians on the right and left will not accord us the same respect.
Let’s keep things civil around here, folks and not try to impute bad motives where they might not exist.
“ooohhh, don’t madam!”
The flaw is not liberty, but the idea that one can exercise this liberty without regard for the consequences to others. Not all libertarians think like that, of course, but some, perhaps even many, do. Perhaps in the absence of state restraint the answer is personal restraint, but humanity doesn’t seem to be terribly good at that.
Surely not the bit about restraint in the exercise of liberty? I’m intrigued…
EG
The flaw is not liberty, but the idea that one can exercise this liberty without regard for the consequences to others.
Of course no libertarians ever argue for this entirely bogus position which Euan has made up only as a foil for his own anti-liberty views.
Pete,
I’m glad you’re managing to avoid stooping to name calling in your laudable effort to overcome your poor self estimation.
How can libertarians not believe in restraints on their actions? Surely liberty, by definition, is all about restricting people? I mean, if we are each entitled to act as we choose without interence, which is what I take a right to liberty to mean, then obviously we know that there are some actions that you are not entitled to do: namely those actions which interfere with others. Libertarianism is simply the belief that the only restrictions that be placed on people be liberty respecting.
Richard Garner makes an excellent point. When we talk about actions which harm others, of course, it is similar to discussions about “third party” effects such as pollution, etc. The traditional libertarian/classical free market view is to use private property rights as much as possible to resolve potential conflicts.
Personally, as a straight man, one of the reasons I support gay marriage, BTW, is that I think it will actually make gay men more responsible, as well as actually make for a stronger civil society. Check out Jonathan Rauch’s new book on the subject over at Amazon.
Richard’s point is absolutely correct. Richard is, of course, deeply learned in the arcane knowledge of libertarian theory. Euan, by contrast, hasn’t a clue what he is talking about.
On a different note, I’m just going to press you slightly Johnathan on this idea you have that ‘gay marriage’ will make gay men more responsible. This is a ‘conservative’ type of view which I am not at all sure will bear scrutiny. Why is not getting ‘married’ a less responsible option so long as one fully respects libertarian liberty. I would argue that respecting libertarian liberty is all the responsibility that is required of anybody, gay or straight, for a strong civil society.
Paul, just a point of clarification before I go further: I want the State out of the marriage business. Totally. The arrangements that men and women make with each other, of whatever gender, should be a matter for them and no-one else. I would imagine you are on the same page as me on that point.
The reason why I mentioned the “conservative” idea of gay marriage as a good thing from a civil society viewpoint was simply on the back of the idea, which strikes me as fairly uncontroversial, that allowing people to make binding, loving commitments to one another, and to have that commitment witnessed as a fact by their friends and families, and for that relationship to carry key force of law in terms of making agreements, etc, should tend to give such people a fuller stake in society (to use a slightly cant expression). I am not of course implying that if gay men want to live together without any formal ceremony that their relationship is somehow lesser. But for a lot of folk being able to have one’s personal affairs acknowledged in some public form is important to them. That is why I agree with folk like Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Rauch about this.
I partly used the “conservative” argument, though, to remind social authortarians that their repressive views, far from strengthening society, actually causes a lot of problems.
Be interested to know what you think on this, Paul.
By goodness, for a piece about a standup comedian, this thread is getting long!
“Of course no libertarians ever argue for this entirely bogus position which Euan has made up only as a foil for his own anti-liberty views.”
1. I DO argue for Euan’s views, and they are NOT anti-liberty. Paul, I suspect that you only read the parts of his statments that you wanted to hear as well, and this will be my last comment on the issue since you are apparently doing this to all of your reading and making rebuttal irrelevant.
2. Liberty without restraint = death
Liberty without regard for consequence means that if you’re unhappy with a person, you should be allowed to kill that person. In this scenario, you are free from being held responsible, and you are exercising liberty, right? If this were true, then the human population would’ve ceased to exist by now. The only way to promote self-government is to prove that the self-governors are equipped to handle the situation with dignity and respect for those who disagree.
God Alex, you prove exactly what I was talking about. You say
But this ignores the fact that…
Liberty = restraint
My right to liberty is your moral duty to leave me alone. My right to liberty is a restraint on your ability to interfere with my life. Get it?
So, when you write
you are totally wrong. Killing the person I am unhappy with violates his liberty. His right to liberty therefore serves as a restraint on my ability to kill him, obviously.
You write
Obviously we need to know where my right to liberty ends and yours begins. This is presently being discovered with ideology-shaking consequences by a group of anarchist-communists at Freedom Press, who have learned that, because of the risk of cross pollination, one person’s liberty to grow GM products might infringe on another’s liberty not to grow or consume GM products.
The solution, libertarians suggest, and the anarchist communists are saddened to find out, lies in property rights. My liberty ends and yours begins where my rights over a given resource end and yours begin. This is obvious, since my ability to do anything, such as consume GM products, must be predicated by a right to control the resources involved in performing that act. I have a right to use a knife to cut my bread, since I own the knife and the bread. I don’t have a right to use the knife to cut your throat since, though I own the knife, I don’t own your throat. My liberty is nothing more nor less than my ability to excercise my property rights, and it begins and ends where my property begins and ends.
I love the irony. The post ended with “Oooooh, shut yer face!!” and got a long thread. 🙂
Just to clarify, I know killing is wrong and violates the other person’s liberty. I was just trying to explain my point by providing a scenario in which it was acceptable.
I think this is true. However, when left to their own devices people on the average do tend to be less good, noble, honest and decent than libertarianism assumes – and indeed requires. The nasty guys will end up in charge. In a similar way, I believe, that people fail to live up to the theoretical assumptions made about them by Communism (although there are other reasons why Communism fails).
This is why we have states, churches, legal codes, etc. The mass of the people DO need guidance and some degree of external restraint, although I think the contemporary western state goes too far and the totalitarian state is just completely the wrong answer.
Most (but not all) people have a deep need for community, society and the sense of “belonging” to some trusted and reliable (for them) group or other. This further boosts the creation of states, law, etc. A focus on the self erodes the ability of such communities to develop and limits trust between people, to the detriment of the people as a whole – whatever the theory says.
I do believe that an anarcho-capitalist society would inevtiably and quickly revert to the concept of state and statute law, simply because however theoretically undesirable it may be, it does actually work surprisingly well. Why waste our time doing this, just to go round in a long circle? Why not just accept that the existence of a state is pretty much inevitable, and limit its power?
It is, in my view, insufficient and indeed downright dangerous to attempt to construct a society on the strength of academic theories about how people behave and what their expectations are. Reality, in the case of the mass of the people and not specific individuals, is frequently very different.
EG
Euan,
I agree with you for the most part, but I believe the government is too involved in our daily lives currently, and I feel that a good solution would be to introduce the concept of limited self government and eliminating the “nanny state.”
Yes, that’s what I would advocate – decisions should be taken and controls imposed at the lowest possible level consistent with practical reality. We’re getting far away from tittering comedians, but these are the sort of steps necessary to achieve this kind of thing:
reverse the permission for political parties to organise at a local government level (this has only been permitted since, I think, 1947);
reduce the size of local government areas;
enforce term limits for elected representatives at all levels, especially local;
create a simple constitution that limits the power of state and local government;
all local government finance to be raised locally. I like the idea of VAT being the responsibility of local governments only;
and my favourite, restrict the franchise to people who actually contribute something – maybe no representation without taxation, sort of thing? This would help avoid the expansion of welfare, and it is essnetially welfare systems that promote the nanny state. I’d go further, though, and say that those who are entitled to vote should also be required to vote, on penalty of a fine (which could go to charity, even).
So how about a thread to discuss the kind of and limits to the state, on the assumption that if we must have a state we should consider how it would function? 🙂
EG