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Tonight on BBC Radio 3 An update regarding tonight’s ‘Undercurrents debate’ on BBC Radio 3 Night Waves, 9:30 pm UK time (also via Internet).
The topic is:
Is Democracy Dead – superceded by the power of the markets and the media?
Participating will be George Monbiot, John Lloyd, John Kay and me.
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Is Democracy Dead – superseded by the power of the markets and the media?
What a very peculiar question. What does it mean?
I’ll be listening in, but one thing: you’re going to miss the England game, Perry!
Dear God I hope democracy is dying. The last thing I need is more of the majority voting to steal my money and limit my freedoms.
Screw democracy. I want LIMITED GOVERNMENT, which is impossible once the population can vote us into a State of mutual plunder.
Was democracy ever actually alive? Can an abstract idea ever “die”. Watch out for the sticky arguments and leftist intellectuals pervading the BBC.
On the other hand, as libertarians should we even listen to a state sponsored monopoly in case it lends creadability to their cause.
What a dilemma!
Is there a phone-in element to the programme Perry?
I am not sure, Harry.
Ask Monbiot how he feels now that his currency wishes have come true.
Listening to it now. It’s quite funny, listening to three guys all being terribly polite, when you know all of them just want to take Monbiot aside and say,
“George, you’re out of your skull, mate”.
Blimey O’Reily!
Not. A. Word. In. Edgeways.
Here’s a curious thing. There was a great deal of talk about “power,” but no definition of what “power” was.
I thought that Monbiot tended to bully you somewhat. He seemed to have you floored with his jibe that you believed that those with the most money should have the most votes.
It’s a simplistic caricature of course, but it is a short and memorable slogan. It might have been more effective if you could have answered him with a one-liner, especially since the presenter didn’t seem interested in letting you give a counter argument, or preventing Monbiot from shouting you down.
I can forgive Monbiot his vanity, his confusion, and his lack of understanding of others points of view, but his difficulty in allowing anybody to express an opinion he disagrees with demonstrates a totalitarian cast of mind (wholly in accordance with his political views) that I find quite repulsive.
Did you notice that Perry never, not once, got the floor?! The moderator did not ask him a question directly like she was doing with the other three. Perry could only talk, if he butted in and that put him in an ‘awkward’ position of having to fight for attention. That resulted in an unequal position that the other three happily exploited.
Also, Perry was coming from a different ‘metacontext’. The rest, although disagreed on the detail, at least shared their collectivist, crypto-socialist context. The need for a metacontextual argument has never been clearer…
Well, done, Perry. I would have been so fed up with them from the start and probably ended up just ‘barking’ at the lot.
I’m with Chris Goodman – Monbiot was his usual, bombastic self throughout the broadcast.
What I find doubly disturbing is that the BBC is giving him yet another platform for his wrong-headed and nonsensical views tonight, on Newsnight.
As I type, he is giving exactly the same inquisitorial performance on TV, using satellite delay to talk down an American commentator.
Isn’t it strange how someone like Monbiot gets so much access to the BBC (complete with his little self-presented exposition before the ‘debate’) while we hear so little of other views?
I suppose having Mr. de Havilland on the programme at all was an achievement -but we are still a very, very long way from receiving even-handed treatment from the BBC.
Perry,
I have got the whole thing taped. Well done.
Monbiot really is a wretch. He kept trying to smother you with his own crass interpretations of what he thinks you stand for. That the presenter let him get away with it speaks for volumes for where her sympathies lie.
In a free market the power is not with the rich – it’s with the law.
Anyone else notice how during the intro it was said, “Samizdata.com”? I wouldn’t suggest trying it out; after the pop-ups you are directed towards a Canada.com site. Ewww…
I did not hear the show, but well done Perry for getting on the programme in the first place.
The description of the programme as described by some of the comments above doesn’t surprise me at all. Nothing surprises me about the BBC any more.
Anyway, even though Moonbat is a total jerk, it may dawn on him, as a result of having folk around like Perry, that there are more folk out there who disagree with his refried Marxoid views than he once thought.
Let’s face it, Perry sounded soft as shite in that in that discussion. It wasn’t the first time a libertarian has been taken apart on the radio either.
A vital truth I picked up from the promo for Penn & Teller’s [i]Bullshit[/i] is that people aren’t so much interested in the content of a verbal discussion as its temperature. A righteous ranter (George Mombiot) or a kindly heartstring-puller (Fabian Society) will always beat a quiet explainer. Logic is very limited in its ability to penetrate emotional, but there is no logic that emotional hysteria cannot tear to shreds.
The left is stereotypically po faced, worthy, self flagellating and overwhelmingly “nice.” The best counter argument is to be nasty and [b]funny[/b]. People will enjoy a good rant, and will be more receptive to your argument if you pepper it with the best bits of your argument than if you take the calm but meet approach.
The best thing you can do is to twist your opponents attacks in your favour. Remember Harry Enfiels’s “Loadsa Money” character from the 80s? There was an interview were one of Thatcher’s righteous lefty critics tried to trump her with a bile laden “Mrs Thatcher, you want to create a Loadsa Money society.” The Iron Lady’s reply. “Yes.” Brilliant!
[i]Someone[/i] must have written a decent book on this…
It was Monbiot versus the rest, and he got fifty percent of the show. But that only gave him more time to make an idiot of himself. After speaking a whole lot of bull about the World Parliament, about half way through the show he said he didn’t want it to have any legislative power. So it’s literally a talking shop. Complete buffoonery. Hoist by his own petard. The more he’s on the media, the more he exposes himself as a self-contradictory twit.
Well done, Perry, for not nutting him. Lesser men…
Well I don’t think I was ‘taken apart’, Kit. Crowded out, perhaps…
It was a useful experience. I will certainly do it differently next time and not just assume the presenter will do her job.
I thought the others made fools of themselves by saying they were “scared” of Bill Gates!!! Yet they couldn’t answer WHAT power he had over us because in fact he has none.
Oh and Gates has done more for Africa than Mobiot could ever dream of. $500 million to AIDS research compared to hot air – no contest.
The “we are not phytoplankton, we are not elephants, we are not cats….we are human” line was priceless. I suggest that as a motto for the New World Government.
Great job Perry, I would have died laughing. Still chuckling, in fact. Deeply amusing. Well, deeply scary and amusing. Be afraid, be very afraid…..
Perry did fine. The only thing he needs to do is lower the tone of his voice. Moonbat was highly amusing with his “species awareness” crap…something I must say I have never felt. He continued his idiocy on Newsnight last night…he claimed that the US/UK were the chief beneficiaries of the UN. What a prat.