I brought prejudices acquired during the Cold War to the struggle between civilisation and Islam, but tried – and try still - to be careful to see the differences as well as the similarities between the two struggles.

In this spirit, I at first thought that whereas Soviet communism was ideologically breakable, Islam is not breakable. More than a billion souls believe in it, and however true it might be that it is evil and repulsive nonsense, saying this would accomplish very little. It would merely poke the hornet's nest with a stick. But slowly, I have been coming round to thinking almost the complete opposite. Not only does denouncing Islam as evil nonsense establish the mere right, of us civilisationers, to denounce Islam - along with our right to say anything else we might want to say - true or false, nice or nasty, sensible or daft. Such talk also, I am starting to believe, strikes a dagger into the heart of the enemy camp, by spreading doubt in it about basic beliefs and hence sewing discord and confusion. I used to think that Islamists were indifferent to such ideological attacks. Now, I am starting to believe that they fear them very much. Hence all the murder threats. They sense that this is one of their weakest and potentially biggest fronts in the struggle. The biggest front of all, in fact.

And even if only a few "apostates" materialise, they are of huge significance, for they bring with them deep knowledge of the enemy we face and how we can see the enemy off.

Another advantage of ideological attacks on Islam is that arguments about - and in favour of - "apostasy" unite civilisation, and divide its enemies. We civilisationers argue fiercely with one another about how to oppose Islam, but almost all of us believe that if you want to criticise a religion non-violently you should be allowed to, and that if you want to abandon a religion you should be able to do that without getting extremely violent grief, or even the threat of it, from those who still do believe in it. Talking like this or doing this may be rather daft, and very unwise, and get you shunned by polite society (i.e. scared society), but ... yes, it should be allowed. I am content to regard all who say that they disagree with the claims in this paragraph as the enemies of civilisation that they are, not just from the point of view of the mere truth, but on tactical grounds. Put such cretinous pro-Islamist fellow-travellers on the defensive also, I say.

And now I read this article (linked to about a week ago by Instapundit) in which it is claimed that the trickle of converts from Islam that was all I had so far noticed is actually whole lot more than that. It tells of a spectacular growth in the number of converts from Islam. Conversions have been happening in a steady flow for decades, but recently they have become a torrent, world-wide. Mostly these people are converting to Christianity, but sometimes just to not-Islam. Bossiness and terrorism and constant fighting is, it seems, not just repulsive. It actually repels. People are leaving the religion of war and joining the religion of, approximately speaking, peace - or joining no religion at all. Islam is only still growing numerically because it is growing so quickly by purely biological means. As far as the flow of converts is concerned it is now in headlong retreat.

So, is this true? Is this allegedly huge exflux really happening? I have heard nothing about it before, but that could merely mean that I am ignorant. Or is the exflux just wishful thinking on the part of Christians, talking nonsense to keep their spirits up?

This is one of those before-I-entirely-forget-about-it and better-late-than-never postings, for which deepest apologies to all who might mind that I didn't put it up a week ago, when I should have.

So anyway, some while ago Antoine Clarke and I did one of our occasional recorded conversations about politics, here and in the USA. After we'd talked about the mess the US Democrats have got themselves into (I suggested a coin toss to settle it), we then mentioned the Libertarian Party, and the fact that they will soon be choosing their Presidential candidate. And after that, we switched to libertarian politics on this side of the pond, the point being that, in a very small way, there is some UK libertarian politics to report, in the form of the recently founded UK Libertarian Party. Antoine mentioned that the UKLP was having some kind of public event in the near future, and I mentioned this possibility in the blog posting I did in connection with all this. And "Devil's Kitchen", one of the bosses of the UKLP and also a noted blogger, left a comment:

We have a general meeting and piss-up from 3pm this Saturday (29th March 08), upstairs at St Stephen's Tavern, Westminster.

Do feel free to drop in if you so desire …

So, I did. This was just over a week ago, as I say. As I made my way there, I feared the worst, namely a little clutch of social dyslexics as old as me and as badly dressed as me, but even fatter and even uglier, some of them clutching grubby plastic bags full of newspaper cuttings. I got there nearer to 6pm than 3pm, and immediately thought: oh dear, I am too late and they have all gone. The first floor of the St Stephen's Tavern was, you see, full of normal people. But just as I was about to leave and go home again, the guy who turned out to be Mr Devil's Kitchen himself hailed me. He even recognised me. So, I went over, and asked him which of this enormous throng of people were the UKLP. "They all are", he said.

I did not stay long, because I was trying to recover from a nasty cough and cold. Also, what with these people looking so normal, and hence of potential political significance, I did not want to infect them. But I stayed long enough to discover that they all seemed to have lives and jobs and brains, and social antennae, and the looks to match. Mostly they were twenty somethings or thirty somethings, mostly male but with a few young women. I was allowed to take photos, but the ones without flash were too blurry and the ones with flash (which I seldom use) made all concerned look like horror movie extras, because my red-eye thingy was either not switched on or else is useless.

Which was a pity, because appearances matter, or they do if you are trying to start a political party. If your only concern is publishing things, the way it always has been with me, fine, look any way you like. But trying to be politicians and looking old and ugly means that you are not just old and ugly, but stupid and pathetic as well.

But I did stay for a bit, and I can report that the effort put in by my generation of libertarians and libertarian fellow-travellers, such as those who run and write for Samizdata, have most definitely not been wasted, if all these nice intelligent young total strangers were anything to go by, which they surely are. I have always been deeply pessimistic about whether libertarian parties can ever get anywhere, but have reluctantly come to the conclusion that although it is a dirty job, someone has probably got to do it, and whether they should or not, they will anyway, so why fight it? I wish these people all the luck that I fear they will need.

I also learned something else. Mr Devil's Kitchen is, like David Cameron, an Old Etonian. That's another thing that maybe should not count, but does.

London and the Database State

A mayoral hustings organised by NO2ID

Londoners are among the most watched people on earth. As well as housing Whitehall, Parliament and the other self-protecting security apparatus, London has many information and identity management systems of its own. How do candidates feel about the civil liberties and privacy implications of, among other things, the Oyster Card, congestion charging, telephone parking? Would they support or oppose national ID schemes as mayor? What is their attitude to the database state?

Invitations have been issued to every party with London representation at Westminster, in Strasbourg or in the GLA. Gerrard Batten (UKIP), Sian Berry (Green), Lindsay German (Respect/Left List), Boris Johnson (Conservative), and Brian Paddick (LibDem) are currently expected to participate, and written responses from other invitees will be read from the chair.

Chaired by Christina Zaba, journalist and NO2ID's Union Liason Officer.

Time: 7pm Tuesday 8th April 2008
Place: Friends House, 173 Euston Road NW1 2BJ
Free and open to all.

[I'd like to take this opportunity to remind EU and commonwealth citizens resident in London, they have a vote in this too.]

There is a great little article in Slashdot about a well known German hacker group, Chaos Computer Club, publishing the fingerprints of German Secretary of the Interior as part of their protest against state use of biometric ID.

The club published 4,000 copies of their magazine Die Datenschleuder including a plastic foil reproducing the minister's fingerprint - ready to glue to someone else's finger to provide a false biometric reading. The CCC has a page on their site detailing how to make such a fake fingerprint

Sweet. I suppose that is a 'hardware hack' of sorts!

On March 18th, it will be two years since the untimely death from cancer of Chris Tame, founder of the Libertarian Alliance, bibiophile, and sceptic about many things, including the time spent (wasted?) on party politics. There is a plan to commemorate the academic approach which Chris always thought was a key to winning the battle of ideas against collectivism of all shades, with the Inaugural Chris R. Tame Memorial Lecture, at the National Liberal Club, in London on Tuesday at 6.30pm.

The speaker is Professor David Myddelton, from Cranfield University. The title of the lecture is: "How to Cure Government Obesity," which sounds like the sort of obesity we really ought to panic about.

Admission is free BUT ONLY if you contact Tim Evans, the LA's president, by email: tim [at] libertarian [dot] co [dot] uk. Numbers are limited and there are some drinks afterwards. I expect a recording will be made and linked to on either the LA blog or website. I shall certainly be there.

I especially miss the wicked sense of humour and the fact that my office is above an Amnesty International second-hand bookshop. It's the sort of place Chris would have spent five minutes scanning ALL the shelves - even sport, in case a Tae-Kwondo manual showed up! Then he would have chatted for an hour with the Socialist or Liberal volunteers in the shop, discussing what he termed "the rape of the libraries" and (sincerely) pushing against climate change on progressive humanist grounds.

The very worthy folks of the Free State Project are holding an event in June in New Hampshire to highlight their work and maybe attract some more supporters.

[PorcFest 2008] is the FSP annual event as an out reach to those that are interested in migrating to promote Liberty and Freedom. We are trying to get the message out to a larger population that there will be a gathering of Liberty Activist coming together from anarchists to those working within the system meet and make the migration.

If you are interested in supporting the FSP and becoming a 'porcupine', check it out!

The fine folks on The Line is Here (subtext: an anti-nanny state collective) have started something called the Picador Project which may be of interest to our USA based readers.

The Picador Project was started in order to combat what many of us see as a root problem underlying the pernicious rise of the nanny-state mentality in our society. Namely, that too many people believe they are entitled to gifts from the government, coupled with a government all too willing to hand those gifts over in return for a few basic human freedoms and a monopoly on “truth.” This sort of trouble being a perennial consequence of basic human nature, utopian schemes of running off and starting over are never the ultimate solution. Thus, if we want to preserve our way of life, we have to face these troubles here at home and conquer them.

Check it out.

I have always been fascinated about the techniques of promoting ideas. I remember reading the Libertarian Alliance's tactical notes as a student and finding them a thought-provoking read. Organisations, it seems to me, that really do well at promoting ideas have worked out a relatively simple technique, or series of them. They repeat the technique and receive political wins over and over again.

So I was very interested to read this BBC News feature. It explains a technique used repeatedly by the prolific TaxPayers' Alliance. According to the article (which quotes TPA supremo Matthew Elliott):

[The TaxPayers' Alliance] specialises in using the government's own data and Freedom of Information requests to winkle out examples of public sector waste; packaging it up into brief, media-friendly research papers, complete with an eye-catching headline figure to give reporters a ready-made "top line".

"Journalists' budgets have been cut back massively and yet they have to produce much more content. They haven't got time to do a lot of the investigative stuff they used to do in the past.

"So when we present them with some primary source material, it's guaranteed to be a good story."

Simple but effective.

A most interesting document has come into our possession - and quite coincidentally, we understand, into the possession of several other well-known blogs. It is a scan of the internal document of the Identity and Passport Service outlining the new implementation strategy for the UK's identity card scheme, liberally annotated by the experts at NO2ID.

We think it tends to disprove the denials only just issued by HM Government in relation to the scheme, as well as some half-lies and full lies they have been telling all along. (It may also show up the feeble grip of Gordon Brown's paper Stalinism. "In government, but not in power," ministers will rubber-stamp anything - just as long as it doesn't look like a retreat.) But judge for yourself: (pdf 1.17Mb)

The Stockholm Network people are trying as hard as they can to parlay their Golden Umbrella Awards into something truly significant. So they were pleased when Perry de Havilland did a piece here about the awards dinner last week, and even more pleased when Instapundit linked to that posting. And they were also delighted by this Wall Street Journal piece by John Fund. With awards ceremonies, what matters is not so much the dishing out of the awards as the matter of whether anyone else cares, or can be persuaded to care. This event was good. But it is the response to the event that will surely mean that the corresponding jamboree next year will be better.

Fund, who presented one of the awards, to a Bulgarian by the name of Dimitar Chobanov, begins his piece thus:

The Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the American Enterprise Institute and other free-market Washington think tanks are known to many Americans. What isn't generally understood is that there has been an explosion of free-market think tanks around the world that are increasingly challenging the conventional view that government is the solution to society's problems.

Like Perry, I was part of the throng, and in a piece I did about these awards for another European think tank last week, I made the same point about free market think tank expansion. Whereas Fund sees these enterprises spreading beyond the USA, I see them spreading beyond Western Europe, but however you slice this story, free market think tanks are spreading.

In among being impressed by all this, I took photos. Usually, when I take photos at pro-free-market events, my only questions are: How many women are here and how nice do they look? But the photography I did at the Golden Umbrellas focussed more on what was being officially talked about. Those ladies I did snap were snapped because they were on the stage, like Mistress of Ceremonies Karen Horn, Janet Daley and Cécile Philippe. There were plenty of other fine looking women present that night, but I concentrated my picture-taking on the people who were giving and receiving awards. And as well as photographing them, I listened to what they were actually saying. Which you can also do by going here.

Many of the Samizdatistas attended the Stockholm Network's Golden Umbrella Awards last night, an event that was described to me as the 'Free Market Oscars'. The intention is to encourage the people working in the varied pro-market think-tanks and advocacy groups around the world by acknowledging their contributions to the cause of liberty.

In truth I attended with moderate expectations as I have struggled to say awake through all too many award ceremonies, but was surprised at how well the event was managed and produced and although it may damage my credentials as a cynic, I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

Helen Disney, the Stockholm Network's CEO, is one of the most focused and appealing people on the free market scene and her team, such as Tim Evans (who as many of you know, also wears a Libertarian Alliance hat), should be congratulated on managing such a great event. The Master (Mistress, surely?) of Ceremonies was Dr. Karen Horn of the Cologne Institute for Economic Research and former economics editor for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. She was an outstanding choice, attractive, witty and very engaging, thus setting a wonderful tone for the evening.

The after-dinner speech was delivered by C. Boyden Gray, the imposing US Ambassador to the EU. He is a terrific speaker and I found his less than flattering remarks about the US legal profession most endearing. There was very little to disagree with in his advocacy of reducing limits to free trade and he was frank about how this needs to happen on both sides of the Atlantic.

Another notably good speaker was Ján Čarnogurský, the former Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic. In fact the only speaker who hit the wrong note was Iain Duncan Smith MP, who launched into a defence of his own think-tank, the Centre for Social Justice, although by the time he had finished speaking I still had no idea who he was defending it from or what the hell it actually does.

For details of who won what, see here, but the big winner of the evening was the Bulgarian think tank, the Institute for Market Economics, who walked away with two well deserved prizes. I was also delighted to see the very worthy UK based Taxpayers Alliance come away with an award. The TPA are like a fact-checking 'urban guerilla' organisation of thorn-in-the-side activists who have achieved results out of all proportion to the resources at their disposal.

I was quite struck by how young most of the think-tank and activist people in attendance were and that is surely a good thing.

My sparser (even) than usual blogging lately is largely the result of the expanding demands of NO2ID. Thank you to everyone (including several Samizdata contributors) who has added to the avalanche of cheques into our legal fund. The bank clerks in Marylebone High Street are grateful for the work, too.

We (NO2ID) are about to make things even more fun by recruiting a new cohort of refuseniks to join those 10,000 immortals who committed themselves in 2005. In the aftermath of the HMRC data-sharing scandal, the British public is ready for the message that the only way to stop the state from debauching your personal information is not to give it a chance.

When Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne vowed to defy the ID scheme recently, it quickly became clear that not many people really understood what this meant. We have formulated a nice clear promise that anyone at all can make, and set it free, online and off. It will be an interesting exercise in network effects.

What follows is a piece I wrote for public distribution explaining the point of the whole thing:

You might be prepared to go to gaol rather than have an ID card. But you can't.

David Blunkett has been smugly pronouncing that there will be no ID card martyrs because the intent is to have a system of penalties – like monstrous parking fines – hard to contest in court. So further punishments would relate to failure to pay, not ID cards. That silly distinction is currently irrelevant, since powers of direct compulsion have been dropped, for now. It has not stopped Mr Blunkett repeating it, though.

Subtler minds have been at work. The Home Office plans to make you to "volunteer". It hopes almost all the population will "volunteer", before most people have even noticed what is happening. Well before it rounds-up and force-fingerprints a few pariahs. Official documents will one by one be "designated", so that you cannot get one without at the same time asking to be placed – for life – on the National Identity Register.

The civil servant, Sylvanus Vivian who originated this idea in 1934 – yes, that’s right, nineteen thirty-four – called it "parasitic vitality". In other words, the scheme is a vampire. It has no life of its own, and thrives only if it feeds.

There is its weakness. We, collectively, can choose to starve the Identity and Passport Service. It only works smoothly if few are prepared to face a little inconvenience to resist. It only works at all if a large majority of the population can be hypnotised into thinking that it is just routine, no big deal. If enough of us refuse to be bled willingly, the beast will either starve or show its fangs.

Already 'e-Passports' have been used as a pretext to build a chain of interrogation centres to service the ID scheme. But further growth of the parasite will be harder to hide. Which is where you come in.

Making martyrdom hard, made resistance easy too. Actually breaking the law at this stage is hard to do. There is scarcely any ID card law to break; it is designed to be brought in silently by regulations, alongside administrative changes.

So that’s why NO2ID is suggesting a new form of non-violent direct action: pre-emptive resistance. You can do something positive now. Something totally legal; that has its own life, not determined by us, but by you. Anyone can do it. Anyone can help others do it. The more who do, the easier it is.

You can resolve openly, and clearly, not to do those specific things that give the ID scheme its "parasitic vitality":

I solemnly and publicly promise that:

• I shall not register for a national identity card
• I shall not supply personal details or fingerprints to a National Identity Register
• I shall not apply for any document or service if joining the National Identity Register is a condition of obtaining it
• I shall not co-operate with any Identity and Passport Service interview concerning my identity.
• I also promise by my example to encourage others to do the same.

In just one month of 2005, over 10,000 people pledged online not to register. Many more will take this NO2ID Pledge, and pass it on to others. Maybe the Government thinks it could force tens of thousands to submit by denying them access to their own lives. It would be a very brave Government that tried.

Why is this scum called animal rights activists?

A notorious extremist group says it has tampered with more than 250 items containing the antiseptic, which is mainly used to treat children suffering from cuts and grazes, as part of a long-running campaign against an animal testing laboratory.

The group, calling itself the Animal Rights Militia, said it targeted Savlon in a "clear and uncompromising" manner because it believes its Swiss manufacturer, Novartis, to be a client of the research centre Huntingdon Life Sciences.

And it warned its campaign would continue unless the pharmaceutical firm ends its links with HLS.

The Telegraph article seems to serve as a platform for their statement and agenda instead of a report that these criminals have been arrested and appropriately dealt with.

He wrapped up his Friday broadcast with carefully bracketed video of young Republicans in Washington. His softly presented outrage leads to the inevitable conclusion that he is embracing the libertarian principle of individual, personal action. The only other possible interpretation being that he is a sanctimonious hypocrite.

Ending his July 27 broadcast of Bill Moyers Journal, he makes his opinion very clear that unless someone has committed to personally experience the greatest possible cost of what they are advocating, their opinion is without standing and worthy only of ridicule and moral reprobation. His quiet anger is directed at people who advocate actions for which others will bear the burden. I for one consider this to be a marked improvement in Moyer's politics. Prior to this he has always identified strongly with activists who want to force the rest of society to bear the burden for their projects. I look forward eagerly to seeing him apply his new standard to every guest that he invites onto his program. It will be refreshing to only hear opinions from people who have first made a total personal sacrifice to a cause, before they may express belief in the justice of that cause. Because, Bill's right. If you have not given yourself totally to some great endeavor first, 'volunteering' others is the very essence of hypocrisy.

transcript excerpt:

BILL MOYERS: ... Less than a month ago, July 6, Private First Class LeRon Wilson, and another member of his platoon were killed when their military vehicle hit a roadside bomb south of Baghdad.

I was thinking of LeRon Wilson a few days later as I came upon this internet video the independent journalist Max Blumenthal. He had gone to a gathering of young Republicans in Washington and interviewed some of them. Here are some excerpts:

JUSTIN YORK, UNIV. OF CENTRAL FLORIDA '10: We are all supportive of the war; we all believe that it is very important to win the war and to fight Al Queda in Iraq so we are not fighting them here in the United States.

DAVID CLARY, UNIV. OF ILLINOIS '09: I like the Republican standpoint, fight them over there not over here. That's what we're doing right now and we should keep doing it.

RACHAEL DAVIS, UNIV. OF ARKANSAS '09: Um, basically, what I don't think people understand is that, if it's not fought in Iraq, we don't win over there, it's going to happen here.

CLINT PETERSON, UNIV. OF NORTH TEXAS, '08: I think frankly we went there because Al Qaeda was already there, they may not have [had] the forces they have now but they were there and essentially if we leave there we give them a stronghold.

BLUMENTHAL: Why are you not fighting them over there?

DAVID CLARY, UNIV. OF ILLINOIS '09: Why am I not fighting them over there?

BLUMENTHAL: Yeah?

DAVID CLARY, UNIV. OF ILLINOIS '09: Because I'm in college right now.

BLUMENTHAL: Do you plan to enlist?

DAVID CLARY, UNIV. OF ILLINOIS '09: I haven't ruled it out.

BLUMENTHAL: Are you going to serve?

JUSTIN YORK, UNIV. OF CENTRAL FLORIDA '10: I've thought about it, thinking about it, haven't decided.

BLUMENTHAL: Undecided? Why aren't you serving currently?

JUSTIN YORK, UNIV. OF CENTRAL FLORIDA '10: Well I'm an undergraduate right now and I had a scholarship...I just didn't have any real urge...I just didn't have any strong urge...

RALPH KETTELL, COLBY '09: Why am I not serving? I don't know...I mean... I really support this country strongly and I...you know... I didn't enlist. There is not much else I can say. I don't think that you can't talk about this issue if you're not serving.

BILL MOYERS: Private First Class LaRon Wilson has been posthumously awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart. He was the 30th 18-year-old American soldier to be killed in Iraq. That's it for the JOURNAL. I'm Bill Moyers.

Joseph Rowntree, like other Victorian Giants, campaigned against social evils in the footsteps of William Wilberforce, the abolitionist. The list of evils are clear, universal, puritanically nonconformist and relevant to the twenty-first century.

When Joseph Rowntree, the chocolate baron, established his charitable trust in 1904, he charged it with seeking out and curing the great scourges of humanity

It should pay particular attention to war, slavery, intemperance, the opium traffic, impurity, and gambling, he said.

Now, the Rowntree Trust has become dissatisfied with traditional social evils. They are probably too fuddy-duddy and fail to move the charitably inclined. But Julia Unwin, the Trust Director, who also deputises at the Food Standards Agency, has a list...

The ambitious 18-month project will be launched with a lecture at the Royal Society of Arts tonight by Julia Unwin, the trust director.

She said: From the very start our founder had amazing far-sightedness in predicting that both the causes and manifestations of social evils would change over time. We are asking people: 'What is it that really appals you?'

Miss Unwin, deputy chairman of the Food Standards Agency, was reluctant to sway public opinion but said many new social problems arose from our growing affluence, including over-consumption; an ageing population; obesity; integration; alienation and political apathy.

You can add your vote here.

So, disgust with politics and choosing not to vote is now a social evil. How we can see the voluntary charity worker is now transformed into the professional disciplinarian, the whip of the public sector professional class, with all three mainstream parties as their political wing.

Cartoons, where would we be without them...

via Nasty, Brutish & Short

This is a rather gloomy public service announcement.

I wrote about the Serious Crime Bill in January. Since, it has proceeded quietly through the House of Lords, almost unchanged. Yesterday, so suddenly that I did not know it had happened, and was talking today about how NO2ID should brief MPs for its appearance, it received its Second Reading in the House of Commons. It is amazing that there has been no large scale protest about this

If you live in the UK (or are a voting ex-pat), you have a few weeks to write to your MP before it becomes law.

Update:

In response to popular demand, some more information. Here are:

On Part I of the Bill, a briefing note on Serious Crime Prevention Orders from the Conservative Liberty Forum.

On Part II, a somewhat more technical briefing (pdf)on the mindboggling abolition and replacement of incitement at common law from Liberty.

On Part III, A briefing I wrote (pdf) on the data-sharing aspects for NO2ID.

Which may collectively clarify what I'm going on about. Or not. But take my word for it, this is very bad indeed. Worse than ID cards. If you have an MP, write to them.

Patrick Crozier defends Al Gore against the hypocrisy charge, in a way which I think is slightly mistaken. He compares Al Gore's vast greenhouse gas emissions with his, Patrick Crozier's, use of state regulated trains, which Patrick disapproves of, but still uses, unhypocritically. But I think that Patrick does not quite nail it. Gore is being somewhat hypocritical. He surely could fairly easily do more to reduce his emissions. But, those who disagree with Gore are being very unwise if they make that their central complaint about him. What matters is not the degree to which Gore is or is not personally doing what he says should be done by people generally, but whether he is right about what should be done.

I am talking here about the "we are not doing enough" way of winning - and of losing - arguments.

You win arguments in politics by saying exactly what you want and not stopping until you get it. Sometimes that means setting an impossibly high standard of improvement, because what you want is very hard to get. Tough. You want it? Say so. Never say you are entirely satisfied until you really are entirely satisfied. You do not win arguments by surrendering three quarters of your case before the argument even begins.

Suppose that Mr X announces a tax cut. I applaud, but I also say that although this is a small step in the right direction Mr X could and should have gone far further.

Suppose that you, on the other hand, oppose tax cuts, and want taxes to be higher, and higher, and higher, until the state dominates absolutely everything. The right way for you to oppose Mr X's particular tax cut is ... to oppose it! You should say: "This is a step in the wrong direction." But, if it is actually a rather small tax cut, what extreme tax enthusiasts are often tempted to say is that although it may be a tax cut, it is not a very big tax cut. The implication, and sometimes even the explicit claim, is that Mr X could easily have done more, "more" in such a case being awfully liable to sound like "better". Which is exactly what I, an enthusiastic tax cutter, am also saying. So, if you oppose the general direction of the policy that Mr X is going through the motions of supporting, but yet you complain that "Mr X could have done more" or "Mr X didn't really do that much", you are actually endorsing the agenda of your opponents. You are helping me to win. You are scoring, to put it in football terms, an own goal.

I think that all this bitching about Gore's gas emissions is achieving a similar outcome. Personally I am not sure whether it is wise to suppress greenhouse gas emissions. Is this necessary, or pointless and therefore economically harmful? Not sure. Still tracking the argument. I am inclined to think that the gases do a small amount of harm, but that the suppression of them does more harm, not least in weakening our technologically developing ability to respond to climate changes and climatic disasters,and that there may soon be far cheaper technology-based ways of getting rid of the gases. But, I am truly not sure.

But suppose that you are convinced, as many in my part of the political landscape are, that all this talk of greenhouse gases is a load of hooey. If this is your belief, then the last thing you should be doing is complaining that Gore is not doing enough to reduce his own emissions. On the contrary, you should be praising him for at least showing some commonsense in his personal economic and ecological conduct, and for having a lovely big house and generally living the kind of life that all of us should be happily aspiring to. Saying that he should cut his emissions, on the other hand, is to concede that the central argument of his movie is quite right, and his only mistake is in not doing even more of what you and he both agree should be done.

Those who oppose state education make the same mistake when someone who is pro-state education is observed sending their child to a non-state, fee-paying school. In this argument I am a convinced anti-statist, just as I am a total enthusiast for tax cuts being huge to the point of total state abolition. All state education should be ended, just as soon as that can possibly be contrived. But, when some Labour politician is revealed to be sending her kid to a half-decent fee-paying school rather than to a scumbag state school, I absolutely do not join the chorus of complaint about her "hypocrisy". On the contrary, I praise her for being the good and loving parent that she is. I do also say that I disagree with her about state schools in general, and say that her wise and correct decision for her child illustrates my belief that state education generally is bad, and that in this particular case, in choosing the non-state option she is not responding to some mere one-off aberration but to a general tendency for state schools generally to be rubbish compared to fee-paying schools. But the absolute last thing I do is try to bully the poor woman into sending her kid to some lousy state school when she can afford a better one.

No, I save all my vitriol in this argument for those truly and totally disgusting politicians who impose bad state schools upon their defenceless children out of mere ideological adherence to the general idea of state schools being good, even though they can afford to do what they know would be far better in their own particular case. That really is horrible. Consistently horrible. Stupid and evil, as opposed merely to good but stupid.

Back to Gore. If you think Gore is right about his gases, then it makes perfect sense for you to object that he emits too much gas himself. But if you think he is wrong about the gases, then for heaven's sake concentrate your efforts on explaining why. Do not let yourself be diverted (that link being a fairly randomly chosen example of the kind of thing I mean) into spreading enemy propaganda by agreeing with something else that your enemies are also saying, which is that Gore should indeed cut his emissions, and that by implication so should all of us.

To use another sporting metaphor: keep your eye on the ball.

I think I just wrote a Libertarian Alliance Tactical Note.

No no, not money. I need ideas.

I recently agreed to do another chat spot on 18 Doughty Street TV, and like a fool I picked Tuesday March 20th, i.e. this evening, all unaware that tomorrow is Budget Day, and we would all have to talk about the damn Budget. I hate, hate, hate Budget Days and Budgets, and conversations about Budget Day and conversations about Budgets, from the depths of my soul. I find the details of tax law deeply depressing and complicated, not least deeply depressing because so damn complicated. Plus everyone on regular TV drones on about it all for hour after hour, while saying (because knowing) extremely little, like cricket commentators when it is raining only not funny or interesting.

Anyway, I got an email this morning from His IainDaleness which included the following instruction:

We will talk about tomorrow's budget in the first half hour. Please come armed with three things you'd like the Chancellor to do and three things you think he actually will do.

Any suggestions? I particularly need help with the "he actually will do" bit. Generally, presumably, he will (a) kiss babies and (b) steal their lollypops. (A lollypop for whoever can pin down the movie reference there.) But more precisely, what specific horrors are in the pipeline? I assume a lot of anti-4x4 crap. But what else?

And, of course, suggestions about what he should do will also be trawled through with a view to me using the best of them tonight, probably without credit to the originator.

I think that the entire government down be shut down for ever and taxes lowered to zero. But I think they want something more precise than that. So far, I can only think of saying, again, that The Top Rate of Income Tax Should Be Cut to Zero, which I think is a brilliant idea, if only because it makes the current lot of leftier-than-thou Conservatives squirm.

I am now off to read what UKIP has to say, budget-wise. (So far I have not got beyond the heading. Which should surely say "fiddles" rather than "tinkers". The Emperor Nero was a violinist, was he not?)

Tomorrow is national No Smoking Day. Whoopeeeeeeee!!!!

I shall mark the occasion by puffing my way through at least one pack of my favourite Belgian cigarettes (not contributing to the cavernous coffers of HM Treasury makes the experience so much more enjoyable) while blowing great, billowing clouds of grey, acrid, carcinogenic fumes into the air.

I shall consider quitting if and when we ever have a national No Nagging, Preaching, Hectoring, Finger-Wagging, Pecksniffing, Condescending, Nannying Or Sanctimonious Sermonising Just Bugger Off And Mind Your Own Fucking Business Day.

I must say that I like the style of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Rather than playing the game with mealy mouthed statements so typical of a lot of think-tanks, they push their ideas with a catchy boot-to-the-goolies like "Smoking is healthier than fascism". Not surprisingly this is available on a tee-shirt from those most righteous pranksters, Bureaucrash.

I feel a purchase coming on...

Green on the outside, red on the inside.

I move that any member of this ubiquitous breed of activist shall henceforth be known as a "watermelon".

UPDATE: members of the commentariat have alerted me to the fact that I did not devise the "watermelon" double entrendre first. Fine - consider this post a propagation of an excellent and underused meme.

There are quite a few fans of Sean Gabb who read this blog, so they might like to be told, if they have not been already, that Sean will be on 18 Doughty Street TV this evening between 9 and 10pm, discussing libertarianism. Sean is a fluent and experienced media performer and should be well worth seeing and hearing.

Here is a picture of him that I took last weekend, hatching who knows what plots with fellow Libertarian Alliance supremo Dr Tim Evans, at the LA's Conference in the resplendent National Liberal Club.

Captions anyone? Mine goes: "One day all this will be ours! Ours I tell you!"

For information on the public meeting on Regulation of Investigative Powers Act consultations, check out Blogzilla.

I am now donating about $0.01 to the Mises Institute each time I do a search online. As my various writing committments require me to look things up at a rate of at least 20 a day, this means that I am raising a dollar a week (excluding weekends). Goodsearch, a Yahoo-based search engine, donates the money on the basis of the number of searches carried out. Details can be found here.

Most Samizadatistas will disagree with the Mises Insitute for being isolationist on foreign affairs, although this position is motivated more by a refusal to support collectivism (even the 'good collectivism' of a war of liberation) rather than the desire to see the USA lose, which is closer to the left's position.

On the other hand, the Mises Institute is consistently against bad economics, government regulation, taxes and socialist theory as much as practice.

If the Mises Institute is too radically libertarian for your tastes, you can select another charity, you can even switch from time to time. Come to think of it, I could switch beneficiaries as I search different topics, or on different days of the week.

I know how many readers and Samizdatistas enjoyed the glorious "Sod off, Swampy!" story from last year. Like the incorrigible news truffle pig he is, Tim Blair found that particular happy tale. This time Tim has prime beef on the menu. Here's a taste:

Protester Angie Stephenson says it was terrifying.

"The workers, they were standing around cheering and whooping and yelling and making lewd comments so we had to call the police and tell them to get out here straight away,"

A great example of workers' enterprise in the face of protesting menaces attempting to hinder a perfectly legal activity. I think I will pop down to the shops and buy some expensive fillet steak for dinner to further enjoy the labour of underappreciated abbattoir workers like those mentioned above.

The abrupt end to the parliamentary wrangling over what we must now get used to calling the Identity Cards Act 2006 has taken many people by surprise. (Not least the parliamentary draftsmen, who find themselves with internal references to the Identity Cards Act 2005 in places.) I still can't quite figure out what happened, but am starting to think the timing is a matter of Tory electoral and media strategy.

For those benighted souls who are not yet subscribers to NO2ID's newsletter, here is our declaration of intent.

The Bill has passed - now the real fight begins.

One of our key tasks is to make the ID scheme politically unsupportable BY ANYONE. We have to make running on a platform that supports (in fact, that does not actively oppose) compulsory registration, a National Identity Register and ID cards political suicide for any party or politician going into any sort of election.

Starting NOW.

This is a long term goal, but one that is absolutely achievable in stages. We are already winning hearts and minds - a 30% shift in public opinion to date - and will continue to do so.

The Government knows that it has to win people over, too - it can't simply bully its way to its goal, like it did in parliament. But it'll be hampered by the scheme's costs spiralling out of control (with the attendant blast of bad publicity every 6 months), the technology failing (predictably or spectacularly), having to background-check and fingerprint perfectly law-abiding citizens, screwing up 1 in 10 (or more) people's details, issuing a card that is basically no use for anything much but scraping ice off your windscreen until 2013 (except maybe 'travel within Europe' - but then you're getting the thing alongside a proper passport...), etc., etc., etc. PLUS all the stuff we're going to do!

In May, there are local elections.

We ask that, before the elections, every NO2ID supporter and ID opponent in the country asks every single one of their potential representatives their position on ID cards, and makes it clear to them (especially those who defend the ID scheme) that they will NEVER vote for a supporter of compulsory registration or ID cards. This is not (yet) a 'decapitation' strategy, nor are we proposing tactical voting in May - but if enough people do this, the aspiring political class will begin to sit up and take notice.

How many letters, e-mails or meetings will this take? We cannot say. But if you get no response, send another letter - always keep copies - and start writing to your local paper, too: "This candidate refuses to engage with the genuine concerns of a potential constituent, how fit for office can (s)he be?". Turn up at hustings and wave copies of your unanswered letters. At some point you'll get a response - and the longer it takes, the worse the candidate looks. If you do get an interesting response, e.g. vehement opposition to the scheme by a Labour candidate, do let us know [send an e-mail to office@no2id.net].

None of this is hard to do. It just requires that enough of us get organised and DO it.

Please start this weekend - find out who your candidates will be. Get their addresses. Write the first letter, construct a questionnaire, see if any of them will respond to e-mail (but don't rely exclusively on it). And follow through.

In the next five weeks you could sow the seeds of defeat for the ID scheme in your area, but you'll never know unless you try.

Phil Booth
National Coordinator, NO2ID

What did you do in the war for freedom, Daddy?

(No excuses for those abroad. You can send us money by PayPal through a button on our site.)

The rally in Trafalgar Square today was attended by about 1,000 (at most by my estimate) very disparate people and was a worthy effort for a poorly funded ad-hoc team of folks.

My main criticism would be that most of the speakers seemed to have little concept of speaking to a wide coalition of people united by a single issue: If an Iranian communist or anyone else, wants to talk about freedom of expression at a rally in London, then I am happy to listen, but the moment they start talking about Guantanamo Bay, US foreign policy or 'just' economic systems, which are NOTHING to do with the issue at hand, I will quite bluntly thank them to stick their views where the sun does not shine. They would do well to talk about what we have in common and not remind me that we are in fact profound ideological enemies.

Peter Tatchell and Evan Harris were well received and made compelling points. However in my opinion Sean Gabb was without doubt the best speaker as he was direct, clear and uncompromising, and most importantly confined his remarks entirely to the subject of freedom of expression. He also spoke for about half as long as most as the others, eschewing off-topic rambling and partisan digressions, which also endeared him to many in the crowd. If an unreconstructed free market capitalist like Gabb can resist advocating capitalism at a pro-freedom of expression rally, I will thank communists, socialists, greens and anyone else to kindly show the same focus on why we came to listen to what they have to say.

On two occasions, The Plod tried to prevent certain signs being shown (one featured the Mohammed Cartoons on a placard from the Iranian Communist Party and another showed a mask of Tony Blair over a Nazi symbol). These incidents at a 'pro-freedom of expression' rally, and the presence of the police taking pictures of the crowd, were a useful reminder of the deadening hand of the state and just how precarious the state of civil liberties in Britain are.

Just a reminder that there will be a rally in Trafalgar Square tomorrow between 2:00pm and 4:00pm, Saturday March 25th. The Samizdatistas will be well represented there and I hope to get the chance to meet a few more of our commentariat at the event. Time to hold the line.

Actorist Susan Sarandon is in negotiations to play Cindy Sheehan in an upcoming telemovie portraying the latter's life.

(Via Drudge)