Just whose fault the peril Gotham (not New York – honest) was. Indeed the peril of Western civilization.

Many people – but three billionaires spring to mind

One obsessed with money – no honour, good sense undermined by greed (leading to consequences he did NOT want). Jamie Dimon and so many others who supported for Obama for corporate welfare?

One with utterly perverted idealism – the George Soros figure. Secretly financing and organizing the Occupy Movement (and worse).

And the good billionaire – who has given up on the world, hiding with his bad memories in his
...continue Batman: the Dark Knight Rises]]> No long review.

Just whose fault the peril Gotham (not New York – honest) was. Indeed the peril of Western civilization.

Many people – but three billionaires spring to mind

One obsessed with money – no honour, good sense undermined by greed (leading to consequences he did NOT want). Jamie Dimon and so many others who supported for Obama for corporate welfare?

One with utterly perverted idealism – the George Soros figure. Secretly financing and organizing the Occupy Movement (and worse).

And the good billionaire – who has given up on the world, hiding with his bad memories in his house (thus leaving the world to the evil).

Greed.

Collectivism.

Despair.

- The ‘Right Honourable’ George Osborne MP

The rule of law is officially dead in the United Kingdom

A good way of understanding just how good a debater Gingrich is may be to compare him to Ron Paul – someone whose opinions I often agree with more than I do with the opinions of Newt Gingrich.

Ron Paul was asked about a radio interview where he appeared to say that Bin Laden should not have been killed by the Navy Seals (I, and a lot of other people, predicted that he would be asked such questions by Obama if Ron Paul
...continue The Fox News – Wall Street Journal debate]]> The best debater was, without doubt, Newt Gingrich. He would tear Barack Obama apart in a debate.

A good way of understanding just how good a debater Gingrich is may be to compare him to Ron Paul – someone whose opinions I often agree with more than I do with the opinions of Newt Gingrich.

Ron Paul was asked about a radio interview where he appeared to say that Bin Laden should not have been killed by the Navy Seals (I, and a lot of other people, predicted that he would be asked such questions by Obama if Ron Paul was the nominee).

The only way out of such a position is to apologize for one’s confused speech and say “OF COURSE BIN LADEN SHOULD HAVE BEEN SHOT”.

Instead we got a long complicated reply, comparing (at one point) Islamist terrorists in Pakistan to Chinese dissenters in the United States, and saying that the reason that people attack the United States is “because we bomb their countries all the time”.

And on and on (Taliban allies against the Soviets – the Taliban hardly existed at the time, Taliban totally different from Bin Laden’s supporters NOT TRUE THEY HAVE THE SAME THEOLOGY, and…).

Ron I agree with you that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have proved to be a mistake – and I was still almost booing at the television screen as you spoke (a lot of people actually present at the debate could not stop themselves booing you – how you spoke was just so offensive). I agree with your policies (on just about everything), but they way you express yourself…….. You do not just sound silly (and make errors of fact) you actually sound hostile to the United States and the West in general. As if you were an enemy of the West – you are not, but you sound as if you were.

And Newt Gingrich – he told a brief story about Andrew Jackson and “killing the enemies of America” and had everyone cheering him. As he did on virtually everything else…

“But he is still wrong about the issues” – no more wrong than Mitt Romney, Rick Perry (less than one percent of the vote in New Hampshire) and Rick Santorum. And he can debate vastly better than they can.

Still it is all pointless now.

Neither Rick Santorum or (even) Rick Perry will get out of the race and endorse Gingrich – which means that Mitt Romney will win on Saturday.

And that means it is over.

The candidate with the least good economic plan (although light years better than Obama) and the person who, when asked if he would support the new Obama law that allows imprisonment (without time limit) of citizens suspected of supporting enemies of the United States – said “yes” (and meant it).

People are to “trust in the good character” of the President not to “abuse this power” – well that is fine, let us see the end of what is left of the rule of law at once. As long as the President is of “good character”.

Oh well at least Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan Chase will be pleased.

I hear they have switched some of their support from Barack to Mitt – what a good sign of high moral character. Almost as good as being against abortion (as the most senior Elder of the Morman Church in Massachusetts), then being “pro choice” when in politics in Massachusetts, then being against abortion again (when running for the Republican nomination for President). Oh well my “do not say nasty things about Mitt” New Year’s Resolution did not last long – but he is going to be nominee after Saturday, so it is a last negative statement before I (and everyone else interested in defending the West) have to rally behind this man’s banner.

One must draw a sharp distinction between the person of the King (as a human being) and “the Crown”. In the clash against the Marxists, Mitt Romney will be “King” after Saturday (the Coronation is not till the Convention, but a King is King before his coronation) – so his personal imperfections will have to be overlooked, the oaths that I (and so many others) have taken to defend the West against the totalitarians, will bind us to him in the contest (regardless of what terrible end this riding leads to). The choice of not following the banner will still exist – but not as an honourable choice. The statement “the King will lead us to our deaths” may be true – but it is also irrelevant. After all the enemy will still be in the field, seeking to flee (on the grounds that the commander of our own army is useless) is just a “cop out”. When the banner is formally raised one follows the banner – even if it leads into a narrow valley, with the enemy in front and on both flanks. One can advice against it – one can even call the King an idiot to his face. But fleeing is not really an option – neither in honour (leaving everyone else to die), or in practicality (for the enemy will follow after they have done their business – in reality there is no real place to hide). And defeat is not predetermined – if one attacks fast enough (and fortune turns in one’s favour), one may be able to cut one’s way through, before the enemy has time to react.

To turn to lighter matters…. or, at least, the same matters expressed in a lighter tone.

Max Keiser (and the rest of the dodgy people) will be overjoyed – they are already using their “two Dollar whore” lines (and so on) against Romney. The attacks on Bain Capital may be unfair – but “loading companies with debt so that they fail after you walk away with millions” was a line used against Romney by the Wall Street Journal questioner, the left will use it also (and much more). They will love it when he is the nominee.

Which he will be.

Each candidate given time to express their opinions on serious matters – just that, nothing else. With even the order people spoke in determined by lot.

Not hard to think up – yet no previous debate did that.

And the “Candidates Forum” on Mike Huckabee’s show did do this.
...continue The best American Presidential debate so far was not a “debate”]]> Equal time for each candidate (no playing favourites), no audience to make animal noises, serious questions from people who are not media hacks (the A.G.s of three States – including the key States of Virginia and Florida) and no stupid stunts such as hand shows or video links to media plants.

Each candidate given time to express their opinions on serious matters – just that, nothing else. With even the order people spoke in determined by lot.

Not hard to think up – yet no previous debate did that.

And the “Candidates Forum” on Mike Huckabee’s show did do this. So a pat on the back due to former Governor Huckabee.

How did the candidates do?

Well Jon Huntsman did not show up (so he gets a fail) and Gary Johnson does not seem to have been invited (the one demerit that can be given to Huckabee), as for the rest……

Ron Paul showed his age (both in his thin voice and in the difficulty he had hearing what was said to him) – but he did advise people to read Bastiat’s “The Law” (perhaps the best reading advice any candidate has ever given). He also understood that the Welfare State is unsustainable (as well as being unconstitutional), but also that just waving a magic wand would not wish away the problem of the millions of people who have grown to depend on it – hence the need for transition programs. However, when questioned about terrorism he hinted (did not formally state – but hinted) that America being attacked was the fault of American policy overseas – and that is both vile and just plain wrong.

Governor Perry had some sensible ideas (on energy and on education) – but (as usual) was undermined by his inability, unless speaking from a prepared text, to speak in public (sorry but that is part of the skill set for a candidate).

Rick Santorum spoke with true passion about the things that really matter to him – the social issues (abortion and so on). This will appeal to those who share his passions – but, of course, turn everyone else away from him.

Michelle Bachmann had a lot of good things to say (and some less good) – but she also had that oft mocked (by Jon Stewart and co) fixed look in her eyes. I am certain there is something wrong with her sight – indeed I would not be astonished if it turned out she could not clearly see the people she was talking to. I know poor eyesight should not be relevant – but the look on someone’s face does matter. On budget issues Congresswomen Bachmann was good, on illegal immigration her hard line will alienate some people (especially as it is clear, from her whole manner, that everything she says is sincere – so when she says that eleven million people are going to be rounded up, that is exactly what she would do).

Governor Romney was the opposite – his look was perfect (straight at the people he was talking to – with a look of intelligent concern), his voice was perfect also – exactly the right pitch and so on. Content is not really his thing (deliberately so – as it would give the Obama people ammunition to fire at him in a general election, should he win the nomination), but his presentation was ideal. A very good performance.

That leaves Newton ‘Newt’ Gingrich.

The American Gothic (for that is what he is – an incredible mixture of good and bad in both policy and his personality). Speaker Gingrich’s personality is the opposite of mine – to him no position is unwinnable and he is certain that he is the person who can achieve victory. He could be surrounded by a legion of enemies – and be astonished at his good fortune in so many enemies falling into his grasp.

I should despise the man. After all on policy he is as mercurial as Romney (accept that Governor Romney adapts his positions to suit the audience he is trying to reach, the ultimate democrat, small “d” – whereas Gingrich is always restless, always seeking new ideas, even if they contradict some of his older ideas, and is not wildly interested in saying what he is expected to say as he has total confidence in his ability to convince people that he is right), and in personal conduct…..

Governor Romney appears to have no vices (none whatever), no human is without sin – but “Mitt” appears to be as close to being without sin as it is possible for a human being to be, even his changes of policy are a sincere effort to win the support of the voters, and he tends to keep specific promises he makes to voters if he wins an election. Whereas to list the personal failings of Speaker Gingrich would take quite some time – indeed there was so many things that Democrat attack dogs appear to be confused over what specifically to attack him about, especially as, under the normal rules of politics, a Republican who has committed adultery or taken money from Fannie Mae, or has used political connections for his own advantage in office (and on and on) should slink away in shame (for a Democrat to do these things, and much worse, is fine as far as the media are concerned – but Republicans are held to a different standard).

Yet Gingrich shows no shame whatever… …His inner conviction that he is the solution to the crises facing the United States and the world is total – everything else is a petty matter of which he may formally repent, but does not really interest him and he treats those who are interested in such things with contempt.

“So I have taken your money and seduced your wife. What of it? Do you not understand that I am dealing with vital matters of war upon which our very survival depends? If you can not understand this, you are beneath contempt. Now get you gone – before I have you thrown from the castle wall”.

Speaker Gingrich has never actually used these words – but he has come close to it. And complainers (even hard core evangelical Christians) tend to leave confused – even apologizing to him for their silly words.

So I support Romney and oppose Gingrich? Errrr – Romney has all the passion of a mass produced table. Gingrich is a leader – someone who plans and works for the deaths of the enemy. Even his desire for money is a personal one, he holds the Federal government machine (with its hundreds of thousands of dependants and so many millions of dependants) in total contempt and has done his whole life – money that goes to it (rather than to him personally – as just reward for his victories…. at least that is how he sees the matter) is utterly wasted in his eyes. And, of course, he is correct about that.

Governor Romney is what he says he is – a businessman who want to please the customers (the voters) and would do his best to carry on pleasing them.

Speaker Gingrich cares about the war – the real one.

This was made clear even in the summation that candidates made at the end of the Forum.

Everyone else said about how they wanted people to be happy and so on.

Gingrich said something different….

“Join with me and we destroy Barack Obama and his Saul Alinsky radicalism”…

It was not the promise of prosperity.

It was a summons to war. But unlike making the Middle East fluffy (or anything absurd like that) it was a summons to a war that is worth fighting – indeed a war that must be fought because the left are already fighting it.

The left claim that Gingrich is like Richard Nixon, an absurd comparison. Nixon was a weak man full of Quaker doubt (he even sweated when lying – astonishing for a politician), who spent his time aping the policies of the left (they like welfare state spending – I will spend more, and I will introduce price controls and go and crawl to Mao and ……) in a desperate effort to win the approval of people he knew despised him (as if their opinion mattered).

Gingrich reminded me of someone else: Alexander Borgia in the latest BBC series on the Borgias.

Under all the vices is total sincerity – an utter conviction in the rightness of the cause and need to destroy (totally destroy) the enemy. And the intelligence to plan their destruction.

How could I fail to warm to that?

Under the title of “Poor By Definition” we are told that the Chinese government has adopted an international measure of poverty (support for international government, European-world-whatever, is one of the defining features of the establishment to which Economist magazine writers belong) which will mean that one hundred million extra people will get various forms of government benefit. This is “good news” – “for them” and “for the
...continue Economist magazine madness]]> People who know me are most likely sick of my ranting against the Economist magazine, but an article in the present edition deserves to be noted – as example of establishment statist folly.

Under the title of “Poor By Definition” we are told that the Chinese government has adopted an international measure of poverty (support for international government, European-world-whatever, is one of the defining features of the establishment to which Economist magazine writers belong) which will mean that one hundred million extra people will get various forms of government benefit. This is “good news” – “for them” and “for the economy”.

Let us leave the World Government (world definition of poverty, claim of entitlement…) stuff aside – like its support for the European Union, the international statism of the Economist is too demented (and too unpopular – outside a narrow international elite) to be worth further comment. I will just comment upon the social and economic claim being made in the article.

One hundred million MORE (not less) people getting various forms of government benefit is a “good thing”. Someone can only suppose it is “good for them” if they have ignored all the careful examination of what welfare dependence does, to individuals, families and whole communities. Works such as “Losing Ground” have been out for some time – but if the Economist magazine writers have not yet got up to speed with Aristotle and Cicero (who made similar points about the Greek and Roman worlds) it is perhaps too much to hope they would have read and understood more recent studies on how just handing out benefits undermines people – destroys families, undermines communities by destroying self help and mutual aid. And on and on – the growth of the “underclass” and the destruction of such institutions as the family among large segments of the population (the poor) all over the Western world, has been a central element of the history over the last 40 to 50 years – but the Economist magazine writers have totally missed it.

As for “good for the economy” this is the spend-our-way-to-prosperity fallacy that the Classical Economists (such as J.B. Say and Bastiat) thought they had killed off – but got a zombie rebirth with the influence of the late Lord Keynes. As Hunter Lewis points out in his “Where Keynes Went Wrong“, what we call “Keynesianism” (all the central fallacies) had been refuted long before Keynes was even born – even Karl Marx (not known as a hard core “right winger”) laughed at the absurdities of what is now called “fiscal and monetary stimulus”. However, neither the works of the Classical Economists or more recent works (such as those by W.H. Hutt.., Henry Hazlitt, Ludwig Von Mises and many others) have had any effects on the minds of the international elite – because they have never read such writers. Their education is confined to nonsense and, being intelligent (but not wise) and hard working people, they absorb the nonsense and it remains with them for the rest of their lives. They base all their policy opinions and proposals on a foundation of nonsense – which they learned (with great attention) in their early years. They are (falsely) taught that rejecting common sense is the mark of the “intellectual” (putting them above the common herd of humanity) – and so they reject common sense (basic human reason) with a passion, embracing the absurdities they are taught, perhaps, because what they are taught is absurd.

Lastly the Economist magazine article declares that the money is better spent on expanding welfare schemes than on Chinese banks. An odd statement considering that the Economist magazine has been the leading defender, in the English speaking world, of credit bubble banking and government bailouts. From the rather limited interventionism (corporate welfare) suggested by Walter Bagehot (third editor of the Economist and enemy of then Governor of the Bank of England who, quite rightly, thought that Bagehot’s suggestions would encourage all that was bad in banking) to the “unlimited” (their word – used repeatedly in articles) money creation (money creation from NOTHING) that the Economist magazine has supported in relation to bank bailouts in the United States and for bank, and national government, bailouts in the European Union. Again for the Economist magazine to attack money being thrown at the banks (anywhere) is very odd. The last demented spit of a demented article – the product of an intellectually bankrupt elite who are pushing the world towards bankruptcy. Not just economic bankruptcy – but social, cultural and moral bankruptcy also.

Today was a vote over whether or not extra hundreds of billions are to be spent – and to be spent by an European Union executive agency with arbitrary powers. At least 70% of the German people were against this – in spite of the intense propaganda of the establishment media.

Yet only 85 members of the
...continue Only 85 members of the German Parliament support the opinion of the people against yet more bailouts]]> The German people (like the British people and the American people) are overwhelmingly against the bailouts. But their opinion (like the opinion of the British and American peoples) has been ignored in the past – and vast sums of money have been spent.

Today was a vote over whether or not extra hundreds of billions are to be spent – and to be spent by an European Union executive agency with arbitrary powers. At least 70% of the German people were against this – in spite of the intense propaganda of the establishment media.

Yet only 85 members of the German Parliament voted to stop it.

It is the end – not just the end of any prospect that people will really face up to their problems (rather than scream for endless bailouts), but also the end for any pretence that modern government is in any real sense “democratic”. It is not a sudden emotional whim of the people that has been ignored – it is the settled opinion (conviction) of the people, which has been held (in spite of intense propaganda against it) for a long period of time, that has been spat upon.

“Vote them out”.

How? Both the governing CDU and the opposition SPD voted for endless bailouts and arbitrary executive power.

No doubt S&P did not do their job of rating risk very well. After all S&P is part of a de facto government established cartel of ratings agencies (the vast level of regulation makes very difficult for new companies to
...continue The corruption of the political and financial elite continues]]> As has been widely reported, Standard and Poor’s (S&P) credit rating agency is under criminal investigation for the “crime” of rating various financial instruments as low risk (“triple A”) when, in fact, these financial instruments were based on worthless mortgages (worthless as the original home loans were paid to people who had very little chance of ever paying them back).

No doubt S&P did not do their job of rating risk very well. After all S&P is part of a de facto government established cartel of ratings agencies (the vast level of regulation makes very difficult for new companies to compete in the credit rating business) and the government wanted its “affordable housing” policy to continue and part of that was for the original lenders (the banks and other such who had made loans to people who could not pay them back – partly to avoid legal action under the Community Reinvestment Act and partly because the Federal Reserve system was making lots and lots of cheap credit money available and it had to go somewhere) to be able to pass on the loans as securities and other financial products.

Also, of course, S&P (like the other ratings agencies) is paid by the people it is rating (not the people who want to check credit worthiness) so it has a perverted incentive to not look too closely at the financial products it rates – and the mortgage backed financial products (i.e. the pass-the-parcel-before-it-blows-up products) paid very well – especially as financial people (as financial people are apt to do) were using the mortgage based financial products as the basis for pyramid schemes – building vast constructions of debt upon them.

However, every single word of the above could be applied to the larger “Moody’s” Credit Ratings agency. For example, it was the credit rating enterprise that rated the (utterly demented) government backed (and government created) “Fannie Mae” and “Freddie Mac” (the organizations that own most American home loans) as perfectly safe.

Yet Moody’s is not under criminal investigation – why not?

By an odd coincidence S&P downgraded American government debt about a month ago – and (after observing the hostile reaction of the American government) Moody’s chose not to. Could this (as some have claimed) be the latest example of the “Chicago Way” where commercial “friends” get rewarded politically – and “enemies” get punished?

The existing regulations already gave the government (via such agencies as the SEC) vast (and, to a great extent, arbitrary) power. But the passing of “Dodd/Frank” (an Act of Congress named after, arguably, the most corrupt members of the Senate and the House of Representatives at the time) completed the process of turning the American financial system and markets it a political toy – totally under the control of the government. And presently it is a very corrupt government – dominated by Chicago Machine people (from the President down).

However, it is hard to have much sympathy for the financial companies and traders – they are, after all, addicted to government subsidies and have long stopped being anything to do with “free enterprise”.

For example, whenever a vast new government subsidy orgy is announced (such as a new round of funny money creation by the Federal Reserve – or a promise of a vast bailout for European banks) the markets go up not down. The long term is of no interest to most players on the market – they care only about the new money that government creates (from nothing) and their personal chances of getting some of it.

They (most of the financial elite) and the governments (for the other governments are much the same as the American one) are made for each other – it is just a shame that the rest of humanity has to live on the same planet as these people.

The day when the serfs (the few serfs there actually were in France) were freed and the day that all the old taxes and feudal restrictions were abolished.

Yes I know that what went before this day was evil and what came after this day was evil – but the day itself was good.

The one good day of the French Revolution.

Although (before the pedants start to bash me) I know the repeals did not fit into exactly this 24 hour period.

But the 4th of August has become known for the pro liberty moves.

For example, I am no friend of the Slave Empire (sorry the “Slave Holding States of America” popularly known as the “Confederacy”), and I consider the struggle against the Axis Powers (National Socialist Germany, Fascist Italy, and the Empire of Japan) and the struggle against international Marxism, as two great achievements of the United States and Britain (and their allies) in the 20th century – not as shameful statism which should be condemned.

I even supported going into Afghanistan. It seemed the correct response to
...continue Is the Afghan War lost?]]> I am not a consistent non-interventionist – as some people are fond of reminding me.

For example, I am no friend of the Slave Empire (sorry the “Slave Holding States of America” popularly known as the “Confederacy”), and I consider the struggle against the Axis Powers (National Socialist Germany, Fascist Italy, and the Empire of Japan) and the struggle against international Marxism, as two great achievements of the United States and Britain (and their allies) in the 20th century – not as shameful statism which should be condemned.

I even supported going into Afghanistan. It seemed the correct response to 9/11 and the other attacks by Bin Laden organization, to hunt him down and to hunt down his ally Mullah Omar, the creator of the Taliban – contrary to popular propaganda the Taliban was not created by the CIA to fight the Soviets.

However, it soon became clear that the Bush Administration was not making the hunting down of Bin Laden and Mullah Omar their top priority – which is most likely why the two men remain un-captured almost a decade after 9/11. Instead the Bush Administration fell in love with the Woodrow Wilson style “nation building” agenda of the “neo-cons”.

My attitude to the neo-cons is more nuanced than the attitude of most libertarians – in that I do not despise all of them. For example, I regard Frank Gaffney as a professional, I do not share some of his political opinions, but he is not a fool. Unlike most of the leading neo-cons who lined up to list the mistakes of the Bush Administration in Iraq and Afghanistan (mistakes often directly connected to their own wildly optimistic assumptions – a “detail” they tended to leave out) for Vanity Faire magazine in 2004 – in return for a promise that the article would not be published till after the election. That they were genuinely surprised when the magazine promptly broke this promise indicates a level of stupidity bordering on mental retardation. However, most neo-cons seem to believe that all cultures are fundamentally the same, and that all people everywhere would be happy democrats (small d democrats) if only the nasty dictators were removed and a lot of help given by the American (and British) taxpayer. To be polite this point of view is in error.

The Founding Fathers, like most political thinkers in Britain at the time – indeed even up to the First World War, were very wary of the word “democracy” (associating it with mob rule – whipped up by demagogues) and held that even a Constitutional Republic could only exist in a certain culture – a culture of mainly moral people capable of strong self control (thus making external control unnecessary), dominated by ideas of self help and mutual aid, not envy of those who had things they did not, and filled with a profound and stable religious faith – and not any old religion, but specific types of religion. This did not mean that they did not support freedom of religion (on the contrary they most certainly did), but they did not believe that, for example, a land where most people believed in a religion that justified the plundering of others would have a good polity.

In many ways a “Republican people” are the exact opposite of a “Democratic mob” – but such distinctions are utterly lost on most neo-cons, whose policy in Afghanistan ignored such ideas.

The regime of President Karzai in Afghanistan is, let us please be blunt, utterly revolting.

His drunk dealing brother, the rest of the endless corruption, the President speaking out of two sides of his mouth (attacking the West – and working with the enemies of the West, whilst demanding ever more aid) stinks to high heaven.

A debate should have been had long ago about whether President Karzai (and the rest of his regime) are typical products of a corrupt local culture (a culture that made “nation building” a non-starter as a policy) or whether the regime was made up atypical people, and that if they were not in office perhaps “nation building” might actually work.

Let us give the neo-cons the benefit of the doubt and assume that President Karzai and company are atypical (the scum has risen to the top – after all it often does in Britain and the United States), even with this assumption there is still a vast problem.

The rigging of the last Presidential election in Afghanistan. The Obama Administration both did nothing to prevent the rigging, and did nothing after the rigged results were announced. At that point many observers gave up all real hope for the Afghan war.

However, the neo-cons clung to their policy – we must “work with Karzai” (that Karzai was also “working” with the Sunni Taliban, to try and save his own skin, and with Shia Iran, caught taking vast sums in cash from Iranian representatives, did not seem to impress the minds of the neo-cons). Trusting the Karzai seems like a mistake straight out of “Carry on Up the Khyber” – but then I doubt the great minds who influence policy watch Carry On films (most likely they would think they are “racist” anyway).

The Taliban will, most likely, murder Karzai eventually – but that will not stop the man, as foolish as he is corrupt, desperately trying to make deals with them (especially as the Obama Administration has basically suggest this by saying they are going to draw down American forces – pretending victory as a 2012 election stunt). And the “hastener” Shia regime in Iran (working to cover the world in “fire and blood” so that the 12th Iman may return and exterminate all infidels – much like the Book of Revelations with the Anti-Christ winning) does not really think much of Karzai either, they most likely intend to give him the death of ten thousand cuts, but that will not stop them giving him money – or stop the man trying to please them by telling them everything he knows about Western political and military matters. The Taliban, being radical Sunni, reject the idea that the man on the white horse being the 12th Iman – to them, as with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood generally, he will be the Mahdi – but they are happy with the exterminating the infidels all over the world bit.

We can not carry on like this – as recent events have made clear.

Contrary to what is being reported the news of the burning of a copy of the Koran in Florida did not at once set off severe trouble in Afghanistan (“where or what is Florida?” seems to have been the general response). It was President Karzai decided to whip up trouble that various UN aid workers (and so on) were cut to bits – and it was not the Taliban who did it, the attack was in the north (not in their southern strongholds) and was by a mob – not by a small team of terrorists.

After Karzai did his double dealing dance of (I am using more plain language than he did) “my beautiful warriors, we can not tolerate this insult – kill! KILL!” and “my dear Western friends, you see how difficult the people are to control – you must sent me more money, and get rid of those irritating auditors…” the scales should have fallen from the eyes of even the most stupid neo-con – but it was not “just” this.

The authorities in Pakistan (not just the intelligence organization the ISI – but elements of the military and the civilian government also) have been playing a double game from the start. Taking money from the West (endless billions) whilst trying to make deals with the Taliban at the same time – even though the Taliban has made it perfectly clear that it intends to exterminate anyone in Pakistan who does not accept its interpretation of Islam (not “just” Sufi Muslims – anyone). Of course this does not stop the Taliban taking money from the Shia regime in Iran (any more than it stops Hamas from taking support from the Iranian regime) – the man on the white horse will decide who are the true Muslims (and who is to be exterminated) when he arrives. Of course none of this stops the over “educated” people who make up the establishment of Britain and the United States thinking they can “talk to the Taliban” – what would such talks be about? The method of execution for all infidels (including moderate Muslims) in the world?

However, the double dealing of the Pakistani government has now come out into the open.

Indeed the Pakistani regime (not the ISI – but the civilian government itself) has ordered out CIA employees from the country – because one CIA contractor broke the “rules” (he killed the people sent to kill him).

Intelligence has already collapsed in Pakistan (and around the world) because of the Obama Administration’s failure to even try and question anyone captured. Indeed the drone policy of Obama Administration (if there seem to be enemy about – blow the place up, do not worry the media will give you a pass if civilians die, because you are a Progressive like them) has the unspoken “we do not want prisoners because we do not know what to do with them” message. CIA prisons (around the world) have been closed and everyone has been informed that Army Field Manual is to be followed in trying to get information out of prisoners.

Therefore a de facto “no prisoners” policy is in effect (partly because there is no where to put prisoners, and partly because the Army Field Manual means that no information can be got out of them anyway). I am not a soft hearted person so perhaps the humanitarian side of the de facto “no prisoners – blow everyone up with drones, and anyone who happens to be anywhere near as well” policy does not bother me as much as it should. But the fact that the United States government is now as blind and deaf (as lacking in any real information) as it was before 9/11 (indeed, if anything, it has less information than it did before 9/11 – when the info was there, but no one had “joined up the dots”) does bother me.

What also bothers me is that with Pakistan now openly in the enemy camp the war in Afghanistan is utterly hopeless.

“Oh you are just an non-interventionist trying to justify despair, Paul”.

Is Charles Krauthammer a “non-interventionist”?

No he is not – he is, in fact, the king of the interventionists, and has been for many years.

Yet I have seen Charles Krauthammer (on several television shows – i.e. quite openly) saying that is hopeless giving the Pakistani government any more money – because they are now clearly (as seen by the kicking out of CIA employees) a hostile power.

Think about that – Pakistan a hostile power. And the supply lines to Afghanistan go through…..

Would anyone still like argue that the Afghan war is not lost?

The struggle with both the Shia “hasterner” regime of Iran, and the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood will continue (inside Britain and the United States as much as anywhere else), but the operation in Afghanistan appears to be totally untenable.

Did he willingly help the Nazis deport Jews to their deaths, and plunder their property? Did he, even decades later, describe this as the most happy year of his life, fleeing only when he feared that the Nazis would discover that he himself was a Jew? Or did he have no choice, acting in the way he did simply out of a desire to save his own life?

How much did the parents of George Soros despise religious Jews? Did his father really support world government, and pass on this belief system
...continue George Soros’ Big Lie – “Market Fundamentalism”]]> Debate about George Soros has got bogged down.

Did he willingly help the Nazis deport Jews to their deaths, and plunder their property? Did he, even decades later, describe this as the most happy year of his life, fleeing only when he feared that the Nazis would discover that he himself was a Jew? Or did he have no choice, acting in the way he did simply out of a desire to save his own life?

How much did the parents of George Soros despise religious Jews? Did his father really support world government, and pass on this belief system to his son? Or was he just a man who enjoyed made up languages? Did his mother, in spite of being a Jew herself, really hate Jews? Or was it just a mild distaste? Does George Soros today fund groups, including groups in the Middle East, that want to wipe Israel from the map, out of hatred for Jews? Or, perhaps, out of hatred for any nation or individual that wishes to be fundamentally different – not part of a standardized world order? Or is Mr Soros simply ignorant of the true nature of the groups he funds?

Does George Soros fund – directly and via the Tides Foundation – groups in the United States that employ Marxists because he shares their desire to impose totalitarianism upon the world (making a mockery of his supposed anti totalitarian stand in Eastern Europe in past years)? Or because (again) he simply does not know the true nature of the groups he funds?

My own opinion is that the above is simply unknowable.

One can not get into the mind of George Soros to know whether he really knows that he funds anti-Israel groups, and far left groups. And one can not prove one way or the other whether he knows that many of the Marxists he funds, via the Soros money that goes to the groups they work for, are in “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” alliance with Islamist groups.

Mr Soros may simply be an old man totally unaware of, for example, the irony of his “Open Society Foundation” in the United States being controlled by a far left ex high officer of the SDS – someone who would be no friend of Karl Popper. For Soros to fund enemies of the Open Society in the name of the Open Society may simply be the result of a man whose brain is decaying with age – and who is getting a lot of bad counsel from evil advisers.

However, the written and spoken opinions of George Soros can be known.

Mr Soros may not be a good writer (I am not good writer either), but at least his works are fairly clear on his central claim. Pick one book at random, and the central political point is the same in each of the works that deal with policy. And his works have been stating the same central point – the same central lie – since at least the 1990s, so it cannot be a case of senility. If you wish me to pick out a single work, I suggest you look at the Open Society: The Crises of Global Capitalism. Remember that the first edition was published in the 1990s – long before any supposed senility can possibly have been a factor.

So what is the central lie told by George Soros?

It is his claim that “Market Fundamentalism” dominated the Western world in the 1990s, and in the 2000s. A fanatical laissez faire gripped the West, with government reduced to unimportance.

This is simply not true. Not only did governments in the Western world take up sometimes as much half the economy with their spending, but the economies of the West were dominated by government regulations – and the financial industry was especially dominated by governments. Almost every aspect of the financial industry was controlled by thousands of pages of national regulations, and also international regulations – “Basel” and “Basel II”.

Not only was every major economy of the West dominated by a Central Bank pumping out credit money support – creating the very credit money bubble boom and bust that George Soros, and those he funds, claim was produced by “unregulated capitalism” (for this process of government backed credit money expansion leading to boom/bust see Meltdown by Thomas Woods), but in the United States itself, supposedly the heart of this evil unlimited free market, not only was the credit money expansion the policy of the (bailout after bailout, “stimulus” after “stimulus”) Federal Reserve Bank of Alan Greenspan (“Greenspan saves the world” were the headlines that greeted each crackbrained “rescue” operation that Greenspan launched from 1987, then on into the 1990s, then into the 2000s), but also the credit money itself was directed into the housing market by government policy.

As The Housing Boom and Bust by Thomas Sowell explains, it was government policy that the credit money expansion be directed into the housing market. Nor was this any secret. Iit was obvious and open to anyone who cared to look. It is simply not credible that a George Soros of the 1990s – not the man who may, or may not be, senile today – could not have known that this was not “market fundamentalism” but, on the contrary, an active and interventionist government.

Yet George Soros, in work after work, in interview after interview, attacks a “market fundamentalism” that simply did not exist. This is a man who was active in the financial markets at the time and in a major way, so ignorance cannot be the cause of what he has falsely claimed. Falsely claimed, again and again.

We are not dealing, in the Soros of the late 1990s at least, with an ignorant or senile George Soros – we are dealing with a man who says things that he knows are not true, indeed are the reverse of the truth. In short, we are dealing with a liar, someone pushing a lie so vast, so opposite to the truth and of such scale and importance, that it is operating on “the bigger the lie, the more it will be believed” principle, the principle followed by both the Marxists and the National Socialists.

Mr Soros supports – or claims to support- the economic ideology of the late Lord Keynes. He supports government credit money expansion and spending – “stimulus” – as the correct response to the very economic crash that previous government-backed credit money expansion caused (not, of course, that he admits that). He rejects the ideas of the Austrian School of Ludwig Von Mises and F.A. Hayek. Indeed Mr Soros attacks Hayek in some of his writings – which is odd for someone who claims to have Karl Popper as his mentor (Popper was a long time friend and ally of Hayek).

However, it must be stressed that the above point is not about economic theory:

Mr Soros could say, without lying, that “the 1990s and 2000s were a time of government dominance of the the financial industry, via Central Bank backed credit money expansion – and a good thing too”. That would be a statement of opinion, not a false statement of fact.

But what George Soros cannot say without lying is “the 1990s and 2000s was a time of market fundamentalism especially in the banking and financial industries”. That is simply a lie – and it is a lie especially in the case of the United States.

No doubt many American financial enterprises contained stupid and/or corrupt people – Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase, General Electric, and Goldman Sachs spring to mind. But “market fundamentalists” fanatically devoted to laissez faire? This is a lie – no more truthful than claiming that John Calvin was a fanatical Roman Catholic.

On the contrary, such enterprises as J.P. Morgan Chase, General Electric, and Goldman Sachs were, and are, dominated by interventionists. And Wall Street was full of important people backing Barack Obama, long before the crises of late 2008, in the hopes of even more corporate welfare – even more government intervention – than they got under Alan Greenspan and the Bush Administration. And these hopes were fully justified – see the book Bought And Paid For.

So this is not a matter of George Soros supporting Keynesianism against the Austrian School. It is a matter of George Soros telling a “big lie”, the “market fundamentalism” lie. And telling it, again and again and again.

George Soros claims that this non-existent “market fundamentalism” is the main threat to an “Open Society”.

Mr Soros is quite open in stating that he does not consider “totalitarianism” to be the main threat to his “Open Society”, on the contrary it is the free market (“market fundamentalism”) that is the threat to his “Open Society”.

Can there be any clearer evidence that Mr Soros is not a follower of Karl Popper? Contrary to his claims.

Karl Popper, the friend of F.A. Hayek, whatever his other faults might be, spent his life fighting totalitarianism (Marxism, Fascism and National Socialism), not fighting freedom.

To George Soros the West is a terrible example of freedom gone too far.

Please think about that – the government dominated West, where, in nations like the United States, the economy is, for George Soros, dominated by the flow of government credit money, and a vast web of regulations and the power of officials, is freedom gone “too far”.

So what would things be like if George Soros had his way?

Clearly things would not be more free than they are today. Indeed even the existing level of freedom is unacceptable to Mr Soros – this is “market fundamentalism”.

It is impossible not to conclude that George Soros is trying to create a society that is even less free and even more government dominated than society is today.

And it is also clear that Mr Soros supports world regulation. We know this because he has said so, again and again, almost whenever he opens his mouth or puts pen to paper. World governments must “cooperate”. Yhere must be “world governance, (if not a formal world government. There must be no question of people having a free society to a flee to, for that would be “market fundamentalism”, a threat to the totalitarian “Open Society” that Mr Soros wishes to create. One can hardly have a society which can be best be understood as a boot coming down upon a human face (for ever) if people can just leave and go and live in lands of unregulated “market fundamentalism”.

Once this is understood, the funding of various Marxists and other totalitarian collectivists by George Soros, via the money he gives to their organizations directly or via the Tides Foundation, becomes far less strange. And one does not have to believe that Mr Soros has gone senile or has been deceived by evil advisers. It is simply a matter of their objectives, at least in part, being the same as his. In short George Soros is George Soros – not Karl Popper.

Also, as an atheist, Mr Soros may simply see radical Islamists as fools, as people whom he can manipulate for his own ends. The idea that religious people are all stupid is a mistake that other atheists have made, including highly intelligent atheists. So the alliance between his far leftists and Islamists need not bother George Soros. After all when the “barriers to world peace” (Israel, United States. …) are destroyed, he can get rid of these Islamists, and perhaps get rid of the Marxists as well. They are all stupid, no match for him. …

Mr Soros may be quite correct in his contempt for religious belief, although it is still odd that “religious” leftist groups in the United States should take money from a man who has nothing but contempt for the religions these leftists are supposedly believers in. However, of one thing I am certain of is that Mr George Soros, whatever he may think, is not God. He is not nearly so superior to the Marxists he funds, or to the Islamists, as he thinks he is. If he thinks, as he appears to think, that he can just use them and then get rid of them, then the great George Soros, no matter how high his IQ may be, is a fool.

It is easy to laugh at George Soros. I have almost fallen into that trap myself in the last paragraph. After all he is a man who has for decades denounced lack of regulations, yet who makes his living in the Hedge Fund industry, which is perhaps the only part of the financial industry not totally controlled by regulations. If regulations are so good, why has Mr Soros spent his whole life trying to avoid them? Here is a man who attacks tax avoidance, yet who bases his fund in the Netherlands Antilles. “Do not worry about Soros – he is a hypocrite, a corrupt joke, not a serious threat”.

However, it is too easy to laugh at George Soros. His actions are a threat to a real “Open Society”. By funding, both directly and via the Tides Foundation and other front organizations, the groups for which so many Marxists and other collectivists work, Mr Soros has done great harm to the cause of freedom. He has put vast resources into the hands of ruthless collectivists who will stop at nothing to destroy the free society around the world. Indeed Mr Soros has empowered some people with the same ideology that he once claimed so strongly to oppose in Eastern Europe.

Today (April 5th 2011) the various socialist and Marxist-socialist groups are having events around the world – including many events in the United States, where they increasingly control various trade unions and the overall AFL/CIO union organization, and where their power in schools and in universities is especially noteworthy. It is no accident that Bill Ayers went into producing works for teacher training, without changing his totalitarian “We Are One” ideology.

Mr Soros has funded many of these totalitarians, by giving money, directly and via the Tides Foundation and other front organizations. He cannot honestly claim that he has no moral responsibility for the actions they are planning even as I type these words.

This is not the place to debate the existence of the “I” (the reasoning, self aware, self) and to argue that agency is not an “illusion” (although
...continue The rise and decline of freedom in Britain – the decline and rise of the State]]> Freedom/liberty is defined in different ways. Some people talk of “free will” of agency, of the ability (sometimes and to some extent) to choose. Of how human beings are just that (beings) not flesh robots whose actions are either determined by a process of causes and effects going back to the start of the universe or are a matter of random chance (neither determinism or random chance being agency – being human choice).

This is not the place to debate the existence of the “I” (the reasoning, self aware, self) and to argue that agency is not an “illusion” (although if it is a illusion who is having the illusion – humans being simply being flesh robots), but I will say that if humans are not “beings” (not agents) then freedom is of no moral importance. No more than it is of moral importance whether water is allowed to “run free” or constrained behind a dam. But then, of course, if there is no agency (no freedom of choice) then there is no morality anyway. A clockwork mouse does not have moral responsibility – and neither would something that looked like a human being but was, in fact, not a “being” (an agent – a choosing “I”) at all.

As for the position that it is “compatible” that a human might have no capacity what-so-ever to choose any of their actions (including lines of thought) and yet still be morally responsible for them – well it is not compatible, basic logic does not allow us to have our cake and eat it as well.

Others talk of freedom in terms of stuff – goods and services.

Such people may or may not accept that humans have the capacity (sometimes to some extent) to make real choices – but they hold that even if humans do have the ability to make choices this does not mean they should be allowed to.

People will make the wrong choices – they will do things make the world a worse place, even for themselves.

To some extent the political libertarian actually agrees with that – after all we do not believe that people should be allowed to make the choice to rob, rape or murder other people.

Or, rather, they should be allowed to make the choice – but not to act on it (aggression should be opposed), and they should be punished if they do act upon it.

Some people have suggested that we be called “propertarians” (rather than libertarians) because of our opposition to chosen actions that aggress against the bodies and goods of people – to which my response is “if you want to call me a propertarian do so – I do not take it as a insult”.

However, the political libertarian (such as myself) tends to deny that non-aggressive choices – choices that respect the bodies and goods of other people, tend to be “wrong” in general.

We hold that most people, most of the time are more likely to get things right than the “great and the good”.

Not just “were you ten times and wise you would not have the right to impose your plans upon myself and others”, but also “even if you were ten times as wise you would still muck it all up”. Indeed it would be claimed that the clever elite are not “wise” at all – for if they were “wise” (rather than just clever) they would understand that trying to “plan society” always ends badly.

In part at this point we move from philosophy to political economy – economics… The statist claims two things, that giving the state (under the control of the “correct people” of course) control of resources (money) and people (via regulations) will make life more prosperous – and that this prosperity is “true freedom”.

In terms of economics this is just flat wrong. To prove their case (the case that collective control will produce more prosperity than allowing people to get on with things as best they can) will produce higher material living standards the statists would have to refute the most basic laws of political economy as outlined by such thinkers as Bastiat or Ludwig Von Mises. And normally the statists have not even opened their works – let alone come up with any refutation of their reasoning.

In fact more statism tends to produce less prosperity than would otherwise have been the case.The grand process of finding better ways (technologically better or organizationally better) of producing goods and services may continue for some time – but less well than it would have gone without the “help” of the state.

Also even if people were better fed (and so on) with increasing statism – this would not be freedom.

A well fed slave is not a free man (although he has the capacity for freedom – as the Stoics noted) – and a free man who is starving to death is still a free man

In short “you are wrong and it would not matter if you were right”.

More statism does not produce more prosperity, it produces less prosperity than would otherwise have been the case. And even if the opposite was true this would not be freedom – goods and services (even “happiness” – which may have very little to do with goods and services anyway) is not freedom. The supporter of “positive freedom” (in the sense of goods and services – not in the older sense of the control the passions by our reason) is caught in a category mistake.

Having given some indication that freedom is possible (i.e. that human beings are a different sort of thing from a clockwork mouse) and that the rise of the state is a “bad thing”, as it can not achieve its objective of making people better off, in the long term, than would otherwise have been the case (indeed that it makes people worse off than they otherwise would have been) and that material prosperity is not “freedom” anyway… I had better outline the actual historical events:

The key historical events in the decline of freedom in Britain – the rise of the state.

A word of warning – the reader may well note an bias towards English matters in what follows (indeed a confusion of Britain and England) this is true. I will mention other places from time to time, but my prime area of historical interest, in relation to this island or islands, is England.

Also I am not going to consider ancient history.

Perhaps the person in a hunter gatherer band was more free than someone today, or perhaps the leader of the band horribly persecuted weaker members (I do not know – I would guess it varied).

Perhaps fields in the bronze age were worked by slaves at the mercy of their lords, or perhaps they were not (again I do not know – although I rather doubt it).

Perhaps with the collapse of the Roman Empire (and its vast taxation) in the 5th century AD there was a period of great freedom for farmers in some parts of the island of Britain (at least before the Germanic warbands reached them), or perhaps there was not. Again I do not know.

Basically I am going to deal with recent centuries – and leave the ancient past to people who know something about it.

First it should be noted that is some ways freedom has not declined.

For example acts of sodomy were punished for centuries and since the 1960s they have not been punished – this is advance for freedom. Whatever one may think of sodomy in moral terms – it should not be a matter for the criminal law.

Also, at least since the Norman Conquest, women were denied their property rights upon marriage – up till the late 19th century. And marriage itself (whilst in Christian theory a free choice) was often decided upon by the parent or guardian.

Also in Ireland in the 18th century (a century that was perhaps the golden age of freedom in England) Roman Catholics had very little property rights (till the late 18th century) and both they and Protestant Dissenters (the latter group often ignored by historians and others) were persecuted in other ways also. The economy of Ireland was so distorted by the “Penal Laws” that even after they were repealed Ireland was left (mostly) a land of peasant plots, a “catastrophe waiting to happen”, and it did happen – in the horror of the 1840s.

Indeed religious freedom was not fully established in these islands till the 19th century. Although I am not one to agree that there was widespread religious persecution in England in the 18th century (although there was intense fear and distrust of Roman Catholics – partly for political reasons, the claims of the Pope and the rivalry between England and Catholic France and Spain) – sorry but Dissenters not being allowed to take degrees from Oxford and Cambridge does not rank as “persecution”.

Regulations are hard to measure.

Which regulations should be ranked as important (in regards to reducing freedom) and which less important?

With the size of the state (the proportion of civil society it takes) things are hardly easy (for example virtually every writer assumed that taxes in Ireland in the 18th century were lower than in Britain – till Edmund Burke pointed out that as proportion of economic output they were much higher in Ireland than in Britain).

Also many of the (essentially 16th century Tudor) regulations that existed in 18th century England were not enforced (there was not formal civil service structure to deal with such matters) indeed they had never been fully enforced – certainly not in northern England (where such things as complex economic regulations passed under Elizabeth the first were basically a dead letter in places like Lancashire).

However, it is the case that many of these regulations (restricting not just freedom of trade, but even freedom of movement) were not formally repealed till the early 19th century (this is the argument against considering the 18th century the golden age of liberty – even in England).

Nevertheless, it tends to be the case that as the state increases as a proportion of civil society (as government spending goes up faster than economic growth) so regulations also tend to increase. And as the state declines as a proportion of civil society – so regulations tend to decrease.

For example, the deregulation of the early 19th century happened at a time when the state was declining in relative size (in relation to civil society) with the end of the French wars.

And the “set the people free” deregulation under the Churchill and Eden in the early 1950s happened also at a time when the state was declining as a proportion of civil society.

In any case this is the judgement must be made – and I am going to now concentrate on government spending and taxation, not regulations.

At the start of the 19th century taxation was very high by historical standards – not as high as it now, or (perhaps) as high as it was during the last period of the Roman Empire, but still very high.

Perhaps as high as a quarter of all of economic activity went to the state at the start of the 19th century. One reason who people were so eager to leave for the United States (not just from Ireland, but from England, Scotland and Wales also) where after Jefferson’s reforms there were no internal Federal taxes at all – i.e. America was the land where the income tax collector and the excise (taxes on internal goods not just imports) man were unknown.

This high taxation was for three reasons:

Firstly the very high cost of the French wars of the early 1800′s is the first (and obvious reason), Britain was fighting for its life (just as England had done against Philip II of Spain and Britain was to do against Germany in the 20th century) so no expense could be spared.

But there were two other reasons…

The policy of financing wars by vast borrowing (rather than just by taxation) that had been followed for a century. Those people (including historians) who boast that the Bank of England (created in 1694) allowed England to finance its wars are essentially talking out of their backsides.

The Bank of England financed nothing – it was just a way of borrowing money, and the people you borrow money from have to be paid back one can stress how the Bank of England meant lower interest rates – but really this misses the point.

The point is that wars cost money (lots of money) England was a richer country than France (per person) because it was (already) a more free country (see above for the economics of that) so it was able to finance more military spending (per person) than France was. Thus England was normally able to win its wars with France – even though England was greatly outnumbered…. but only at a terrible cost.

By the late 18th century half of all government spending went simply on servicing the National Debt – and this was still true in the 1820s.

For every Pound raised in taxation ten shillings just vanished into what William Cobbett called “The Thing” (the money dealers of the City of London and their political friends). This led to endless taxes – as was noted in Scotland after Union with England in 1707. Taxes on the poor had been almost unknown in Scotland, taxes were for well off people – the taxes on the well off continued, but after unification the poor got taxed as well. Union may have been unavoidable (due to Scotland bankrupting itself with the insane scheme to set up a colony in the Americas) but anyone who says the poor in Scotland were not hit by it is wrong. And the burden of excise taxes and so on did not go away – more imposts and duties came over time.

But there was a also a third reason for the very high level of taxation at the start of the 19th century – less important than the first two, but still interesting.

Welfare…

Contrary to certain BBC historians (Michael Woods) government poor taxes (rates – as opposed to charity) were not the invention of the 1834 Act (in fact this Act was a desperate effort to reduce the poor rate, not to introduce it). In fact they go back to Acts under the Tudors in the 16th century.

However, in the 18th century the burden of the Poor Rate (although often complained about) was not vast, if someone in the parish really could not work (very young, very old, hopelessly crippled) the Justices of the Peace had the legal task of making sure that they did not starve to death (in Scotland and Ireland the law was different than it was in England and Wales) and they had the power to levy a local tax to get them the money to prevent this happening. If someone could work but did not – then the J.P.s could take action against them (if they were a burden on the parish) a punishment or a threat of being sent to a workhouse (not an invention of the Act of 1834 – it existed in the Act of 1723) normally inspired the able bodied poor to find work (in Ireland they most likely would not be punished for having no work – but the local taxpayer would not be feeding them either).

However, in 1782 a Act of Parliament was passed that might have come from the brain of Gordon Brown – it allowed the magistrates to levy a poor rate to subsidize the wages of those people who were actually in work.

Starting in the village of Speenhamland in 1795 (under the pressure of the French wars) this system spread like a plague in England and south Wales.

Of course people in work liked having their wages “topped up” (as it were), the ratepayers did not like it (at least most of them did not – see later) but the magistrates were unelected so there was not much they could to about it.

The largest farmers (with a lot of hired labour) might get by with this system (the Parish was basically paying a lot of their wage bill), but small farmers (who had few hired hands, other than their own family) faced a heavy burden.

And it was a burden that got worse.

In the 18th century when peace came so the bills for govenrment spending got less – and so it proved after the end of the French wars in 1815, but the bills for the Poor Law did not get less.

At first it was thought to be the deflation (the return to sound money after the fiat money inflation of the French wars) – but the burden carried on into the 1820s and 1830s.

Hence the Poor Law Reform (Workhouse) Act of 1834. No more would the able bodied be paid not to work – or have their wages topped up.

True those who were judged to be incapable of work would still be paid (and it is often forgotten that there were twice as many people on “out relief” as in Workhouses – even under the new system), but if you were capable of work and presented yourself as a burden on the parish – into the Workhouse with you.

For all the bad reputation of this Act it was a clear success in rural areas of England and Wales – people who had insisted they could not possibly manage without tax money suddenly found they could when told “so you are able bodied and can not manage your own life – well is it the Workhouse for you then”. The Poor Rate fell – and fell dramatically over time. And yet the poor were NOT starving to death – in fact the mid 19th century is a time of dramatic increases in real wages, although there were setbacks (the coming of the Irish in the 1840s, the war of the 1850s, and the effects of American Civil War in the early 1860s) in spite of all these setbacks wages were dramatically higher in 1870 than they had been in 1834.

The story in the big cities is more mixed – few people actually had their wages topped up when they were in work (because, contrary to the myth, factory work was better paid than farm work), but the old Poor Law was useful during bad period for trade (when there were fewer factory jobs to be had). Under the New Poor Law for those capable of work it was the Workhouse or (perhaps) nothing so there were riots and so on. Partly motivated by one of the Jeremy Bentham elements of the Act – they belief that people could be taken to the Workhouses or kept their against their will (to a utilitarian of Bentham’s type “happiness” not freedom was what was important – and he believed that even forced work made people “happy”).

It should also be noted that for the first few years the Poor Rate in the northern industrial cities actually went up under the new system – hardly what was intended.

But was any of it needed anyway?

Scotland was a poorer country than England – the soil was not so good, wages were lower, the country was more damaged by civil strife (such as the revolt of 1745) and economic collapse (it is often forgotten that the “Highland Clearances” were motivated by landowners facing bankruptcy – great landowners in England did not fact that in the early 19th century). Yet most of Scotland managed to get by without a compulsory Poor Rate – right till the Act of 1845 (by the way Scotland learned by the English mistake – people might complain about the Workhouses, but they were their strictly by their own free will, their own choice).

Even in Glasgow (during the darkest days of French wars and the deflation after them) the Rev. Chalmers managed to look after the poor with voluntary donations alone. And even Chalmers’ worse enemies (and he had many – for religious and other reasons) did not claim that people were starving to death.

Perhaps the English “voluntarists” (such as those associated with the Leeds Mercury newspaper) could have done such a job in England – a richer country anyway. Without any need for the state.

After all government has no money of its own – just resources it takes. The Scottish example casts doubt on whether people really need the threat of government punishment to pay money to avoid other people starving to death on the streets of their town.

However the fact remains that neither the 1834 Act in England and Wales or the 1845 Act in Scotland led to any massive burden in Poor Rate (they were designed not to – it is possible to do that). And the locally elected Board of Guardians in England and Wales (elected by the ratepayers – not by those who got the welfare money as is partly the case with modern governments) neither allowed people to starve to death on the streets (more than happens in any time or place anyway – there will always be a few people who slip though any net) nor made living on welfare a comfortable “life style choice” (no sane person would want to live in a 19th century Workhouse).

As for Ireland…

A Poor Law was introduced there after unification with Britain. It was a failure – an utter failure.

Almost one third of the entire population of Ireland either died or left the country in the 1840s – a horror that most British people seem unable to grasp (then as well as now).

I do not know if things would have been much better even without government poor relief – but it did concentrate the poor together (for example on the “roads to nowhere” the public works projects the British government financed in Ireland) and it was sickness (not starvation) that tended to kill people. However, the basic structure of the Irish economy was a mess – it was not useless peasant plots in all parts of Ireland, but it was in most of Ireland. And that was a economic system that could only end one way – in horror.

And it was a structure the Penal Laws had created in Ireland.

The principle of taxes to fund poor relief in England and Wales (although not in Ireland and Scotland), as we have seen, goes back centuries. But that does not mean an out of control Welfare State as we have today.

And it is worth remembering what the causal words “out of control” actually mean. To give some sense of proportion…

In 1904 there was a terrible panic over a vast increase in the number of people dependent on the state – eight hundred thousand people were on poor relief in England and Wales (250,000 in workhouses). There is a trade recession (perhaps partly due to the costs of the Boer war, the costs of war normally being seen after it is over, although the human costs alone were about one hundred thousand lives).

Terrible – it led to (or was used as excuse for) demands that a Royal Commission be set up on the Poor Law (the Majority Report was bad enough, but it was demented “Minority Report” that the Liberal party government decided to follow). But look how small a percentage of the population it was – about two per cent of the people were dependent on government support even in a supposed time of crises.

Today well over 40% of total income is from state benefits.

Not those working for the government (which is also a vast amount of money), but just benefits.

In the United States (in the “Age of Obama”) it has reached a third of all income – here it is heading for half of all income (again even excluding the people who actually work for the governmental. Cloward and Piven must be pleased (well Piven is pleased – I believe her husband is uncomfortably warm at the moment).

And people wonder why my writings seem like a suicide note (and I do not deny that they do) why they basically boil down to “we are DOOMED (TM).

Think of the Roman Empire – but not with just the city of Rome (and a few other cities) with a large mob dependent on govenrment handouts, but rather about half the population of the entire Empire dependent on government benefits.

That would not have taken centuries to “decline and fall” it would have fallen within a few years.

Yes technology has changed – but the laws of mathematics have not changed.

This is why fundamental Welfare State reform (what Americans call Entitlement Program reform) is not optional – or rather there are two options, reform or die.

This growth was not natural – the principle of government Poor Relief existed for centuries without it.

There were not dramatically more people dependent on it in 1702 then there had been in 1602, there were a lot more people dependent upon it in 1802 (and still more a few years later), but this was dramatically pushed back after 1834 – and by the early 1900s even 2% of the population (remember this includes the old) on welfare was considered a crises.

So what caused the growth?

The first cause was the “Minority Report” mentioned above – basically a bunch of Fabian Socialists (plus useful idiots) produced a let-us-copy-Germany-but-with-a-few-extra-things-added-on report and Lloyd-George and co (including a young and sadly misinformed Winston Churchill) said “fair enough”. So we have old age pensions, health “insurance”, and unemployment pay (this was one even Bismark had not introduced in Germany – think about it, it is payment for not working). All with the bland assurance that none of these government benefits would undermine self help and mutual aid – such as the “Friendly Societies” that covered 80% (and rising) of industrial workers in 1911. Of course they start to go into decline almost at once – just as the Fabians (and so on) intended.

Secondly this was all extended in the 1920s and 1930s (largely by Neville Chamberlain) when such things as forcing local councils to provide council houses (to make up for a shortage of housing for rent – caused by the government’s own World War One rent control measures).

Thirdly there is the formal Welfare State itself in the 1940s.

The Beveridge Report of 1942 (to which, in the cabinet, only Sir Kinsley Wood and Winston Churchill expressed any doubts) and then the extreme interpretation of the report made by the Labour Atlee government after they came to power in 1945.

Since that time the Welfare State has grown and grown (under governments of both major political parties) and many reorganizations of it parts of it (such as the National Health Service, and benefits) have been made. However, they have all accepted its fundamental principles – so they have not restrained (let alone reversed) its growth.

More on size and principles…

The most obvious measure of state control is the ownership of industry (the “means of production”) the old style socialist dream (before they were converted to indirect control by government regulation and unions and community activist groups – what used to be called, in the days of the Empire and then of Hitler, the “German form of socialism”).

At its hight (in about 1951) the British government owned about 20% (or a bit less) of the economy (due to old nationalizations such as the telephone industry, and the orgy of nationalizations under the Atlee government after World War II), but almost at once this dream started to fall apart.

Not just because of the few denationalizations of the Conservatives after 1951 – but also because the nationalized industries themsleves went into decline.

The railways lost money hand over fist – they were then dramatically cut back and lost even more money (cut “feeder lines” and find out what the word “feeder” meant). It was the same with steel and coal – Labour governments closed more coal mines than Mrs Thatcher did.

By the time Mrs Thatcher became Prime Minister nationalized industries were about half the share of the economy they had been – and the lady (at leastO) cut it half again.

Direct state ownership has been a failure (a farcical failure) whereever in the world it has been tried, so socialists (in such places as Britain and especially the United States) are turning to the “German form of socialism” (the system mentioned above – the system of “War Socialism” during World War One, and under Adolf Hitler in the 1930s) of indirect control by the provision of easy credit money (for those who fit it), vast webs of regulations and control by activist groups. In Germany itself (partly due to a stronger tradition of family owned business enterprises and partly because of a caution drawn from history) the “German form of socialism” is actually less of a problem (even though their are trade union representatives on Boards of Directors and so on – the whole context is very different).

The other main threat to modern society is (as mentioned above) government spending.

The overall size of British government (local and national) as proportion of civil society must likely reached its low point in about 1870 – at government spending at less than 10% of national income (it is about 50% now). However, national government spending reached its low point in 1874 (the low point for income tax – most excise taxes and import duties being abolished long before).

It was in 1870 that the Forster Act was passed allowing (but not forcing) local communities to set up a School Board and levy Poor Rate – my own home town of Kettering Northamptonshire did not do this (till forced to after the Act of 1891) so the low point for statism here (unless one wishes to speculate about what things were like under the Anglo Saxons or whatever) would have been 1874 (not 1870).

However, this is to miss a vital factor – principles.

Certain principles were accepted long before 1870 that made the future growth of government much more likely.

For example remember that there were a whole web of vile economic restrictions passed by the Tudors (they not only restricted freedom of trade and freedom of movement – but a final demented Act under Elizabeth even tried to compel every ordinary person to do the same job as their parent, in a sort of throw back to the legislation of the late Roman Empire) – but that I suggested we not be obsessed with them because England lacked an administrative structure (a complex Civil Service) that could really administer them?

Think what Tudor ministers (such as Thomas Cromwell – with his unrealized dream of great formal department of state, rather like Jeremy Bentham’s 13 departments of state covering every aspect of human life) would have done with a structure based on the report that Charles Trevelyan and Strafford Northcote produced for a well meaning Gladstone after 1853 (you do not have to think very hard look around you, this is what men like Jeremy Bentham would have created).

This led to the Civil Service Commission of 1855 and the system by competitive examination (perhaps the worse possible system) introduced in 1870. No longer would government work be looked upon a perk for knowing a minister (or whatever) something to be done for a year or so (or whatever) or, at the lower levels, just clerking that one did because no other job was available at the moment. Now it would be a “profession” and people would devote their entire lives to this “public service” seeking the details of other people’s lives (for there own good of course). Hardly what Gladstone intended – but “the man in Whitehall knows best”.

This was a system rather like that of Mandarin dominated China – which is where we get the nickname for senior civil servant “Mandarin” from. Intellectuals as far back as the late 18th century (Voltaire springs to mind) had suggested such a system for the West – forgetting the older wisdom of such thinkers as Montesquieu that the centralized and state dominated society of China was not the “most perfect in the world” (Voltaire), but rather something to avoid.

But this was not the only bad principle to be accepted in 19th century Britain.

The principle of a govenrment police (which would have horrified most 18th century Englishmen, who even thought the Bow Street runners smacked of France or some German “police state” – oh yes the term was in German thought at the time and included what we would call a “welfare state”, see F.A. Hayek’s “Constitution of Liberty” and “Law, Legislation and Liberty”, although the size of most German states in the 18th century made such dreams utterly impractical, Bismark was to alter that).

In Britain Sir Robert Peel introduced the London police in 1829.

And by 1856 every county in England and Wales (whether it wanted to or not) had to have its own police force.

That is a different world from 18th century England. Although the police were polite and deferential at first – and unarmed (where as the British people remained an armed people till the First World War – a “little” thing that has slipped down the memory hole).

In a free society (as Jefferson never tired of pointing out) the main body of domestic force lies with the people, in an unfree society in lies with the government. Britain slipped from one state of affairs to the other with so little fuss that most people did not even notice.

As late as 1911 it was considered normal for unarmed police (in London) chasing armed criminals, to ask for the help of armed ordinary people who happened to be walking by.

Just think about that for a little while

A false interpretation of such things as the French Revolution (presented as liberty going “too far”, rather than as Edmund Burke tried to explain, the increase of statism and tyranny) had prepared British opinion for an ever stronger state – so when such things as the gun control Acts came along there was little protest.

Just as their had been little protest about the Act of 1856 – on the contrary people of property thought that it would be a “good thing” they would no longer have to worry about protecting their own property and protecting other people, the state would do it all for them (in their hearts they were already half slaves).

Other principles…

The basic idea that the people must be counted, and measured whether they want to be or not (rejected by supporters of liberty – such as the Financial Secretary of Hong Kong in the 1960s “population figures – what would we want them for”) was conceded by the Census of 1801 (a return to the principles of the Roman Empire and the Doomsday Book). According to Walter Bagehot (third editor of Economist magazine and author of the vile “classic” the “English Constitution” of 1867 with its demands that “everything that it is safe to concede should be conceded” – referring to any demands for statism) this was no reduction of liberty only an “old women” objected to it, according to him (I like to think he was lying – as J.S. Mill lied in claiming that no one opposed the Labour Theory of Value of his father and David Ricardo).

No doubt only an “old women” objected to the Births, Marriages and Deaths (Registration) Act of 1835 either.

Good person this “old women” Churchill (in his young statist period) was still attacking her in the early 1900s – only this “old women” thought the new government welfare schemes and regulations were a threat to liberty.

Clearly the “old women” was Miss Marple – but I must get on.

As part of the Public Health Act of 1848, Edwin Chadwick slipped in a national Public Health Board – (straight out of the dreams of his master Jeremy Bentham) which would plan such things on a national scale. True it was abolished in 1858 – but, of course, it came back with a vengeance in the 20th century.

But where did even local statism come from?

It came from the Act of 1835 – what the Duke of Wellington called an Act for creating a little Jacobin Republic in every major town and city in England and Wales.

Certainly it was not sold as increasing statism – on the contrary the promoters of the Act (such as those in Manchester) claimed that having elected councils (rather than corrupt closed Tory Corporations – only one was left by the Act, the City of London “the square mile”) would lead to lower local taxes.

Even when taxes went up (not down) it was a temporary thing and taxes would come down soon – we are still waiting.

However, this is not entirely the fault of local politicians (“Paul – you are covering your backside” perhaps) as a weird principle was introduced in England and Wales.

Logically “local government” means (if it means anything) that local people (either directly or via elected representatives) get to decide what (if anything) to spend tax money on.

However, in 1875 the great “reformer” Disraeli got together most of the things that local councils could do (if they wished to – under about 40 previous Acts of Parliament) and made most of these things compulsory.

Local government (at least a logical understanding of the term) took a bit of a nock at that point – and things have got worse and worse since (especially with Neville Chamberlain’s antics during the interwar period) as for post World War II – well it best not to think about this period (unless you wish to lose your will to live).

By the way, also in 1875, Disraeli also put trade unions above the Common Law (or tried to with his Act of Parliament of that year) not just legalizing obstruction (“picketing” – a military term), but trying to put unions beyond being sued. Certain flaws in his plans delayed the destruction of the Common Law in this area (and the destruction of basic British industries such as the railways) till after the Act of 1906 (which put the matter beyond doubt – at least till Norman Tebbit, under Mrs Thatcher, tried to do something about it all).

But it should be remembered that the principle of the subsidization of local activities by the state had already been conceded as long ago as 1833 – the first annual subsidy for education in England and Wales.

In Scotland there were several education Acts (going back more than century before this) however, the system remained under local control (indeed basically Church control), contrary to what is often taught it is only after the Act of 1872 that one can talk of a national system of education in Scotland.

In England it is even later – the Act of 1833 leads to other subsidy Acts, which in turn leads to the Act of 1870 (the Forster Act), which then leads on to the Act of 1876 (if you have a School Board education must be compulsory) and then to the Act of 1891 – you must have a School Board (till they were abolished in 1902) and education must be free and compulsory. In short game over – England is now Prussia (at least in this respect).

Just to show you how far things had fallen – look at the front page of the “Daily Telegraph” for January 1st 1900 (or was it 1901).

Britain must imitate an another country – we must copy them in all things. For this country is the new top nation.

No not the United States (that just had the largest economic output in the world – so, of course, it does not even get mentioned) no it is Imperial Germany we must copy in all things.

Well the British upper classes had already started talking in a weird clipped way (no they did not speak like that in the 18th century) as if they were Frederick the Great and his Junkers. So I suppose the rest was natural enough – if one is barking mad.

Think – what would have been the reaction to a British publication in the 18th century that had seriously argued (not as a satire) that “we must copy the French in all things – they are better us, they are scientific, they are the wave of the future…….”

Exactly.

Under the chest thumping patriotism of the start of the 20th century – the leadership in Britain (Conservative as well as radical) had lost all belief in the principles of liberty. The ordinary people might still have been holding out (in part), but the leadership was rotten to the core.

Of course it was the same in the United States – where the self styled intellectual elite first fell in love with Imperial Germany (even when they urged war with Germany – they envied Germany as a rival, they did not hate the deeds of the German government) and then fell in love with the Soviet Union (just as so many of the British elite did).

Edward Heath going around licking the boots of the worst mass murderer of all time, Mao (responsible for the murder of some 70 million people), was following a “progressive” and “scientific” tradition that was a century old (at least).

All of a piece with his putting the nation into the EEC (now the EU), smashing up traditional counties (indeed traditional anything -from coinage to weights and measures), imposing wage and price controls, “scientific” planning, and so on.

“But Heath had a good war record” – being a soldier does not make you love the traditions of your country, and Heath’s education (the elite parts of it anyway) might as well be summed up as “down with Britain, death to Britain, Britain is always wrong” and so on.

When P.E. Moore (the American tutor of the once American T.S. Eliot) visited Oxford in the 1930s he noted that, under the ultra civilized surface, the principles of liberty were dead (utterly dead) among the elite.

Of course F.A. Hayek noted the same thing at the same time – thus he dedicated the “Road to Serfdom” to “the socialists in all parties”.

If one understands socialism in the indirect way that, for example, Adolph Hitler did – then nothing much has changed.

I have disliked Tim Congdon long before I knew who David Cameron was. I remember him at a conference long ago – his reply to my suggestion that lending should be from real savings, and that governments should not subsidize or bailout banks (via such methods as the Bank of England lending them money) was to suggest that I supported a
...continue A possible leader for UKIP whom I dislike more than I dislike David Cameron]]> Tim Congdon has thrown his hat in the ring to become the next leader of UKIP and that means UKIP could possibly end up with a leader whom I dislike even more than David Cameron (hard to believe, eh?).

I have disliked Tim Congdon long before I knew who David Cameron was. I remember him at a conference long ago – his reply to my suggestion that lending should be from real savings, and that governments should not subsidize or bailout banks (via such methods as the Bank of England lending them money) was to suggest that I supported a ban on overseas trade that (he stated) the Ming dynasty in China had imposed.

“Paul only you could hold a grudge over something like this” – not if the man had changed his opinions, but he has not (it is still corporate welfare all the way with him). Nor has he changed his manner – he does not debate, he just claims that foes do not understand banking.

If he means do not understand how to get paid lots of money for being an apologist for subsidies to the banks then he is right – although “understand” is not the correct word.