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Perhaps it is the little things that gradually turn people against the priggish, curtain twitching statists who cannot bare the idea of people doing as they please.

People generally shrug wearily at the annoying impositions and regulations that grow by the year but that is why it is important that folks like us and journalists like Tom Utley let it be known that it is not alright that these things happen. We also need to convince people that those who enforce and apologise for the endless regulations are not alright either, they are psychologically twisted by compulsions to impose their will on others. Perhaps it will be when enough of society see the idea of prohibiting people from doing peaceably doing consensual things as the psychologically disordered behaviour that it is will real progress be possible.

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In a land where Mormons, Muslims, and masochists walk side by side, and none is specially positioned to certify the correct concept of value, the role of government is not to pick a philosophy and shove it down our throats. It is to provide a reasonably neutral framework that allows each of us to pursue our ends peacefully in the light of our own convictions about the good. There’s a reason liberal democracies get top marks in happiness

- The always highly readable Will Wilkinson, of the CATO thinktank and blogger, dissecting UK economist Richard Layard's argument in favour of more state intervention and higher taxes to make us all happier (yes, really).

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Guy Herber's excellent article The public mood (while the public moo-ed) got me thinking about the nature of the 'Radical Centre'.

The Radical Centre seem to have the same obsession with control that the fascists and communists had but unlike them, it is control for control's sake rather than in the service of some clear ideology: there is no Blairite or Clintonite (or even 'Bushite') 'The Communist Manifesto' or 'Mein Kampf'. They do not seek the triumph of Volk or the dictatorship of the proletariat, they just seek to replace all social interactions with politically mediated interactions. They seek to regulate everything via a total state that does not organise mass rallies or collectivise farms, it just wants a world in which nothing whatsoever is private, everything is political. Their symbol is not the Hammer and Sickle or the Swastika, it is the CCTV camera.

Perhaps this also explains the radical centre's transcendent hatred of the USA's system of checks and balances: the US Bill of Rights takes whole sections of civil society and tries to place them outside politics (free speech, the right to have the means to defend yourself etc.). Sure, it fails miserably as often as it succeeds but at least the notion that not absolutely everything is subject to politics is part of the American cultural DNA and that, rather than the US government's policy towards, well, anything, is what makes the US anathema to the Radical Centre (including the US Radical Centre).

The Radical Centre has also been called 'Authoritarian Populism' because it seeks to impose the popular will by force and it does not much care what that will is. Just as liberty for liberty's own sake is the objective of the Classical Liberal/Libertarian rather than some 'overarching narrative' as was the case with the radical statist left and statist right in the corpse filled 20th century, the Radical Centre seek control for control's own sake with no particular grand reason in mind other than to perpetuate a political class whose reason for existence is to make decisions about other people's lives.

The reason they dislike us so much is that to attack regulatory statism is to attack these people's very reason to exist and we challange them on a profound psychological level. They need to control other people just as we need to control our own lives.

The Radical Centre is our demonic reflection.

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I am feeling less of a lone loony than I did. After a decade of my saying the key thing wrong with the demon eyes campaign was that the slogan ought to have been: 'New Labour: Old Danger' because the electorate should not have the purported newness reinforced, more and more people in the chattering classes seem to be accepting that there is a danger. Even such fringe lefty agitators as Clifford Chance LLP have offered severe warnings about the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill. Too late?

The War on Liberty may never end, but it became a general action only in the 90s - just about the time, the Wall being down, and the net routing round borders and censorship, we free-lifers had begun to feel we were winning. Now I find I am doing my bit with NO2ID and we are gearing up for a ten-year campaign. Grand constitutionalist coalitions are being proposed left, right, and centre (which I'm sure are meritorious). The differences between Peter Hitchens and Mark Thomas begin to be indistinguishable when the establishment is of the extreme centre...

What worries me is that this ferment is still superficial, a speck of mould on Mr Blair's Horlicks. It concerns the tiny minority of the population that reads the serious press, say 10% - and of those only the avid followers of politics, maybe a quarter of that. The readers and writers of blogs are fewer still, and more introrse.

The mass of the population of Britain is nescient, complacent, and has no interest in the abstractions of liberty, or the threats from power assumed only to be threats to others, to bad people. Many people are happy to claim the status of an 'ordinary' person, with "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" from officialdom, while being paradoxically susceptible to fears of everything else. Passively concerned with material welfare, security against virtual risks, and gossip, they graze and are milked as the livestock of the state.

This is Foucault's concept of governmentality in action. Not, pace his fans on the left, a neo-liberal order, but a post-liberal order in which the foundational institutions of liberalism - liberty and individuality, rule of law, the separation of private and public life, a civil society and a political sphere distinct from one another - have ceased to have a meaning for even the bulk of the middle-classes.

Where is the cattle-prod that will change the public mood?

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I am just as keen on universal civil liberties as the next Samizdatista, however I must concede that the case of India vis-à-vis the Danish cartoons made me briefly question my blanket commitment to the freedom of the press. I yearn for a major Australian newspaper to have the stones to print these cartoons in self defence and defiance, however I would argue that any editor of an Indian publication who allows them to be published is astonishingly irresponsible, given India's history and continuing record of bloody communal violence. If these cartoons found their way into a publication with a moderate degree of circulation, the question would not be "will there be deaths?", but "how many?" Upon reflection, I certainly do not believe that government censorship is the answer, however it is marginally more justifiable there than in any other nation I can think of. Because of this, it is crucial that Indian editors exercise their judgement wisely - and not publish the cartoons. Hopefully there will come a time when India is not the exception (regarding this issue) amongst countries governed by the rule of law.

I should mention that I have huge faith in the wisdom of Indians.

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Mick Hartley yesterday blogged, in response to this, about the slippery slope that the smoking ban is towards the top end of:

My point isn't that there's no truth in this. Of course there is. We know nicotine is addictive, never mind the whole nervous what-to-do-with-my-hands-in-this-tense-social-situation stuff which adds to the compulsion. But when you start going down this road, where do you stop? The more we find out about neurology and psychology the more we discover all these compulsions and genetic predispositions and all the rest of it, and behaviour which used to be seen as a matter of moral choice gets therapeutised as a manifestation of some syndrome or other. Antisocial bastard? He's got mild Asperger's Syndrome. Greedy pig? A compulsive eating disorder. Arrogant sod? Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Carry on and ultimately, at some level where Buddhism meets neurophysiology, maybe all our decisions are illusory, and the active responsible agent who's supposed to be making all these personal choices just disappears.

Great stuff, but I'm not sure that I entirely agree. If this was indeed the slippery slope involved, I would be with Mick Hartley in wanting us to stay at the top of it. But I don't think it is. I think the smoking ban is about pollution, and about the way that pollution is seen as not being a property rights issue, but instead as a criminal assault issue. Blowing smoke at someone is now seen as like stabbing them. The result is similar; it just takes a little longer. Next on this slippery slope are not individual behaviours, like being a greedy pig, so much as other smoke-belching activities, like driving cars and airplanes, with the rules of what exactly constitutes "smoke" being ever more tightly written.

After all, smoking has been turned from a mere habit into a crime by this ban. And crimes are all about the individual responsibility of the criminals who commit them. I do not hear anyone saying that smoking is an illness, the way they do about drinking alcohol too regularly and too much.

You can argue, and I do argue, that "passive smoking", like smoking itself, is something you do, and consent to doing, by being near smokers rather than keeping away from them, which you can do if property rights are allowed to operate, and to create areas where smoking is forbidden by the property owner. As Mick Hartley says, in circumstances like that,: "you turn around and go elsewhere".

But what about people who are obliged, in various degrees, to consort with smokers? Does the fact that a battered wife "consents" to being abused (by not earlier abandoning the abusive relationship) excuse the abuser, when the battered wife finally gives up on the relationship, and calls in the police and presses charges? And what about children raised by smokers? Is that not like beating them every day for no reason? That is the parallel that we now find ourselves arguing about.

And if the argument is that cars and airplanes stink up the entire planet, nobody has anywhere to go to escape from that kind of repeated assault, if that is what it is. So there is no consent argument against banning those nozious practices. Collectivists love pollution, because pollution often is collective, that is, hard to avoid.

So if you want to apply the "what next?" argument to the smoking ban, think noxious fumes, and also things like evil electrical effects from phones, power stations, heaters, carpets, etc. Actually don't. Don't give them ideas.

Where neurology arguments might push us down a slope is in those areas and arguments where it is said that this or that crime should actually be less of a crime than it is now. Things like small robberies committed by the unemployed, by ethnic minorities, or by the physically handicapped, etc. Then, I think that Mick Hartley's argument would be spot on. But smoking is not that kind of issue at all. Not at the moment anyway.

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On the Adam Smith Institute blog, Eamonn Butler points out that millions of people in the USA who vote Republican and Democrat nevertheless subscribe to values which are broadly 'libertarian'.

And of course when you add in the millions who decline to vote at all not (just) because of apathy but because there is no party which really reflects their world view (and that may well include the US Libertarian Party), it does make you wonder at the disconnect between those numbers and what you see reflected in the media and political system.

I am often asked why so many libertarians/classical liberals/minarchists are averse to pursuing careers in politics and I usually reply that the question is like asking why so many honest people do not pursue careers in mugging and armed robbery.

This is why we are at an inherent disadvantage against statists when playing by their rules and why I have long suspected that the idea of small-state parties may be a waste of time*. The type of people who are attracted to politics are almost always psychologically predisposed to solutions which are force based as a preference to some social solution, particular as it is rare for force to be effectively directed back at them personally in a non-abstract way. As I have said before, people who go into politics generally have more in common with members of street gangs (although with less need for personal fortitude) both psychologically and morally than with most of the people who vote for them. Do Tory or Republican politicians really want to wield significantly less power over the nation when it is their turn in power compared to their Labour or Democrat counter-parts? It is very hard indeed to be a genuinely decent person and a politician.

* = I would be more than happy to be convinced I am wrong on this

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To impose some perspective: it would take 58 terrorist attacks with the mortality rate of the 7/7 attacks for the toll to reach 3221, which is the number of Britons killed on the roads in 2004. It would take many more terrorist attacks to approach the number killed in the Blitz.

Our jitters about boarding underground trains may obscure, but they do not remove, the fact that the 'war on terrorism' is for us a very low casualty operation when compared to, say, the great wars of the twentieth century. If 7/7 evoked the Blitz spirit, it did so with an ounce of the Blitz threat. Our leaders and parts of the media, then, proffer a fear of death that is far removed from the chances of us dying. If we understand that the enjoyment of life in a democratic society comes from our liberties, we should see any reduction in our rights not as a sacrifice to security but as a give-away to those obsessed with death.

— Ben Walford on Spiked.

How many 7/7s make a Blitz? Roughly 775.

Totting up the figures given by the Israeli Foreign Ministry, gives us the total murders achieved by the most sustained bombing campaign directed against any liberal state. Deaths since September 1993 (not counting the bombers): 855. Real wars kill more in a single air-raid. Israel has over 500 deaths in road accidents every year. Even there, you are in more danger from your car than a suicide bomber.

Me, I am taking the tube.

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The contributors and most of the commenters to this site actively defend the free speech rights of fanatics, bigots, blasphemers and pornographers. Where the shield wall falters, that is where we go to fight. I think we have the right to be proud of that.

But I wonder if even we do not still have our sacred cows - sacred cows that need to be slaughtered.

I am fully aware that the disclosure I am about to make may cause outrage even among people who think of themselves as absolutists when it comes to free speech. I must apologise in advance to Perry and the others who have extended me the hospitality of this site for what may seem to be an abuse of it. I realise that there are some people who may think that, having said in public what I am about to say, they can never associate with me again. Forgive me. I feel I have to say this.

"Mornington Crescent" is not a real game. The rules and strategies you hear quoted by players are made up on the spot. Its only purpose is to have a laugh at the expense of those not in the know.

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"Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. No one can stand aside with unconcern; the interests of everyone hang on the result. Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the real historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us."

Ludwig von Mises, Socialism, (as quoted in The Wisdom of Henry Hazlitt, page 347, also well worth reading).

That passage, while written in the 1940s, carries a certain resonance now, I think.

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Toby Baxendale and I are working on an internet portal called The Liberal Online. It needs writers – maybe you could be one of them? The portal's intellectual starting point is with the philosophical radicals and Manchester liberals from the 19th century. Its motto is "For free markets not corporatism".

We are looking for a mix of article sizes. We would really love 800-1600 word essays which will be featured on the home page. But we are also after shorter, blog-length pieces too. There are going to be themed blog sections: there's one already called Rip Mix Burn which discusses intellectual property. There is going to be one on war (we're thinking of calling it War and Peace: is there a better name?) but from a Cobdenite point of view. Think Sean Gabb and Peter Oborne, not that fat guy who does films. Nutty wierdness is not what we are after, but well-argued radicalism.

We would like to get new talent, undiscovered people of great brilliance. Contributions are unpaid. If you would like to get in touch, drop an e-mail to alex @ theliberalonline.org

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A Samizdata editor sent me a communication from his current secret mountain lair, drawing my attention to this item from the Boston Review The Drifters: Why the Supreme Court makes justices more liberal by Jon D. Hanson and Adam Benforado.

Justices O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy—though they remain tied to their conservative mainstays on certain issues, such as federalism—both seem to have embarked on similar leftward journeys, particularly with respect to individual rights and liberties. Appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1981, O’Connor struck a resoundingly conservative chord in her early opinions on women’s and racial-minority rights, only to join with liberal colleagues in cases touching on the same issues over the last 15 years—most strikingly in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which upheld Roe’s central holding, and Grutter v. Bollinger, which vindicated a law-school affirmative-action program. Kennedy, also a Reagan appointee, was initially celebrated by conservatives as “Bork without the beard.” Yet he later provided key votes to knock down anti-sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas and overturn the death penalty for juveniles in Roper v. Simmons—prompting Dr. James C. Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, to rechristen him “the most dangerous man in America.”

[...]

Virtually everyone who dons the judicial cloak recognizes that, like most uniforms, it carries significant responsibilities and behavioral expectations—what social psychologists call a role schema. A judge’s role schema includes requirements of objectivity, balance, and restraint that powerfully frame a judge’s actions. As Justice John Roberts put it in his opening statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee during his nomination hearings, “Judges are like umpires. Umpires don’t make the rules; they apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules. But it is a limited role. Nobody ever went to a ballgame to see the umpire.” To guard her own legitimacy and that of the judiciary, a judge must create the impression that her decisions are the inevitable consequence of fair, non-ideological legal reasoning. A nominee who was a fervent advocate before becoming a judge will often learn to present decisions as neutral and arising naturally from the rule of law.

It is an interesting piece, which repays reading the whole thing. As the extract shows, the authors are taking tips from Roland Barthes.

It is a continual source of interest to me that American conservatives are so much distressed by social liberalism, wanting iron rules upheld in personal lives, when they are happy with particularistic treatment for collective entitities (and even pseudo-entities, such as religions, nationalities). But then I want judges to be socially liberal, without being "liberals" in the US sense.

I think the comparative law points are mistaken, but interestingly so. They do not make the error that British journalists often do, of supposing judges in Civil Law systems are just like Common Law ones. But they don't seem to want completely to acknowledge the radically (literally: at root) different legal and institutional context.

Perhaps this is because it is an uncomfortable fundamental truth that 'drift' is the soul of Common Law. Common Law adapts principles derived from facts to new facts. And facts are messy and infinitely varied. Common Law is compromise. "If the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"

The hidden assumption of conservatism here is that there is an eternal right answer ex cathedra, against which sinful people must be measured. It is not too far from the way Civil Law purports to apply first principles to every case. And I submit it has a similar consequence: the elevation of the prejudice of the authorities, the suppression of the authority of considered precedent and of real life.

Soi-disant 'conservatives' detect enemy action in compromise. They complain about "activist judges", but define activism as failure to enforce the extra-legal norms that they endorse. Give me Justice Roberts' conception of the judge's role as limited, arbitral, pragmatic: dealing with cases, not causes. If you abandon the rule of law and make the justice system into an instrument of social control (as in this more explicit example), you abandon the open society.

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As the report stage of the Identity Cards Bill approaches in the Lords, a reminder of one highlight from the first day of the committee stage Hansard, 15 Nov 2005, Col.1012:

Lord Gould of Brookwood: Both the previous speakers—the latter with great emotion—were arguing for freedom. We have to ask what greater freedom is there than the freedom to place a vote for a political party in a ballot box upon the basis of a mandate and a manifesto. That is the crux of it: the people have supported this measure. That is what the noble Earl's father fought for. But that is too trivial an answer. I know that. The fundamental argument is that the truth is that people believe that these identity cards will affirm their identity. The noble Lord opposite said that he likes to be in this House and how he is recognised in this House because it is a community that recognises him. That is how the people of this nation feel. They feel that they are part of communities, and they want recognition. For them, recognition comes in the form of this identity card. Noble Lords may think that that is strange, but it is what they feel. This is their kind of freedom. They want their good, hard work and determination to be recognised, rewarded and respected. That is what this does.

Of course it is right and honourable for noble Lords to have their views, but I say there is another view, and it is the view of the majority of this country. They want to have the respect, recognition and freedom that this card will give them. Times have changed. Politics have changed. What would not work 50 years ago, works now. It is not just me. I have the words of the leader of your party:

"I have listened to the police and security service chiefs. They have told me that ID cards can and will help their efforts to protect the lives of British citizens against terrorist acts. How can I disregard that?".

This is not some silly idea of the phoney left. It is a mainstream idea of modern times. It is a new kind of identity and a new kind of freedom. I respect the noble Lords' views, but it would help if they respected the fact that the Bill and the identity cards represent the future: a new kind of freedom and a new kind of identity.

This is the sort of rhetoric that makes my blood run cold. Here's a prefiguring example:

In our state the individual is not deprived of freedom. In fact, he has greater liberty than an isolated man, because the state protects him and he is part of the State. Isolated man is without defence
- Benito Mussolini

Terry Eagleton (from a review of Paxton's Anatomy of Fascism in the New Statesman) elucidates the connection:

Conservatives disdain the popular masses, while fascists mobilise and manipulate them. Some conservatives believe in ideas, but fascists have a marked preference for myths. If they think at all, they think through their blood, not their brain. Fascists regard themselves as a youthful, revolutionary avant-garde out to erase the botched past and create an unimaginably new future.

All supporters of the old-fashioned conception of individual liberty, whether they think of themselves as left or right, conservative or progressive, must do what can be done. Resist. We should not expect any quarter for outdated ideas under a new kind of freedom.

[cross-posted from White Rose]

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There are a variety of juicy multimedia files available on the Libertarian Alliance site, including some from Samizdatista David Carr (who is threatening to resume blogging on Samizdata when pressures of work permit).

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I have been rather puzzled that no one has written about events on Sark. And it has finally occurred to me that, rather than sitting about saying "why has no one written anything?", I should write something myself.

Sark is an island (or technically a small group of islands) in the English Channel. It was part of the holdings of Duke William of Normandy (William the Bastard) and since his conquest of England in 1066 the fortunes of Sark and (what is now) the United Kingdom have been, in some ways, linked.

Although Elizabeth II is the head of state of Sark it is not part of the United Kingdom (people who are from Australia, New Zealand, Canada or some other places will not be surprised that one can have the same head of state without being part of the same country), but the government of the United Kingdom does stick its nose into the affairs of Sark in some ways.

For some administrative purposes Sark is part of the Bailiwick of Guernsey (which is also not part of the United Kingdom). However, unlike Guernsey, Sark has not introduced such things as income tax. Guernsey introduced a nominal income tax at about the time of the First World War and then an income tax of 20% at the start of the Second World War - sadly never repealed.

Nor is Sark a democracy (as Guernsey is). The hereditory "Seigneaur" (the Channel Islanders origninally spoke Norman French after all) is assisted by a council of 40 land tenents (the "Chief Pleas") which undertakes the duties of government. In the 1920's 12 elected deputies were added to the Chief Pleas but (as far as I know) they have never sought absolute power for themselves (sorry, absolute power for "the people").

Thus Sark has avoided democracy (and many of the "postitive" welfare rights that so many people now seem to believe must go with it). And is indeed known as one of the last strongholds of so called "feudalism" in the world.

Sark has had problems over the centuries (invasions by pirates, the occupation by the Germans in World War II and so on), but its most serious problem has turned out to be the coming of the Barclay twins.

These two brothers (who own, amongst other things, the Telegraph newspaper group) bought the tenancy of the island of Brechow some years ago. This is an island just off the coast of the island of Great Sark and part of the Sark group of islands.

Like all tenants the Barclay twins were required to swear loyalty to Elizabeth (their supreme feudal overlord) and to pay a 13th of the price they had paid for the tenancy to the Seigneur (their direct feudal overlord).

Sadly the Barclay twins have not been loyal to the Seigneur. Perhaps they feel justified in being disloyal because they have more money than him, or perhaps it is because they know that it is no longer a common practice to physically punish people who betray their lord.

The first sign of the disloyalty of the Barclay's came when they appealed to international "human rights law" for the right to leave their tenancy to a female if they so choose. (Sark has had a female Seigneurs, such as the famous "Dame of Sark", Sybyl Hathaway, who stood up to the Germans during World War II - but the laws on landholding do favour males.)

Now (last week) the Barclays have gone further. Again using international "human rights law" (with the help of the United Kingdom government) the Barclays have demanded that Sark introduce democracy.

Why should a libertarian care about any of this? Indeed why should not libertarians support the Barclays? After all the Barclays' use the word "freedom" a lot and present themselves as proud individualists standing up to an oppressive government.

I admit that partly I just resent the end of old custom (the idea that a little place is governed by old traditions - a variation in a bland world), and I also happen to dislike the Barclays.

Leaving one country (to reduce your tax bill) is fine - but it is not fine (in my book) to then toss your weight about in your new country demanding that the ancient laws be changed and calling external powers (including the very United Kingdom government you moved to Sark to get away from the taxes of) to back you up.

But it is more than this.

No one has to stay on Sark. It may be "feudal" but there is no Serfdom there (as far as I know there has never been Serfdom on Sark) and the people do not want this new system of government (for all the patronising talk from the Barclarys about wanting good relations with the "common people" and desiring to educate them about modern political doctrines - "forcing them to be free"?).

Finally consider the off the cuff remarks of the Seigneur (Michael Beaumont) "nothing much is human rights compliant here" and "of course we will have to have a lot of civil servants now".

I think this tells us what we need to know about a lot of modern conceptions of "human rights" and "democracy".

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I have just spent the day at Liberty 2005, the Libertarian Alliance run conference being held over this weekend at the magnificent National Liberal Club. As well as listening attentively, I snapped photos.

Here is speaker number three today, Syed Kamall MEP, in action:

And here is Gabriel Calzada who will be first up tomorrow morning:

Syed was most impressive, and I am confident Gabriel will be too. No time to elaborate now on what is actually being said at this gathering, but I hope I will manage to later.

These two pictures, and another eighteen, at my place.

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The headline really says it all:

'Safer Cigs' Condemned

But I will copy and paste the first few paragraphs of the story anyway:

Anti-smoking campaigners are fuming at the development of a "safer" cigarette designed to reduce the risk of cancer and heart disease.

British American Tobacco (BAT) is planning to use a new filter system which removes more toxins but still allows nicotine to enter the lungs.

The new brand - which could be launched next year - would look and taste like normal cigarettes.

But John Britton, a professor of epidemiology at Nottingham University, told The Daily Mirror: "These new cigarettes could be more like jumping off the 15th floor instead of the 20th.

"Theoretically the risk is less - but you still die."

Whereas, we happy persons who do not smoke may confidently expect to live for ever. Oh yes.

My thanks to Mark Holland for the link to this piece.

This argument reminds me of the one that also rages about contraceptives, 'safe' sex, and so on. On one side you have people saying that surely safe sex is better than just plain old sex. On the other, you have people blaming contraceptives, because these are by no means totally safe, and only serve to excuse and encourage the evil thing itself, sex intercourse, with all its attendant dangers.

Both arguments have some force. But if you think that with that comparison I am trying to put all obsessionally controlling puritans in the same box, labelled "Obsessively Controlling Puritans", you are quite right.

Still, I suppose it is better to have people roaming the earth pursuing their moral equivalents of war than to have people actually fighting wars.

You could argue that we here at Samizdata do the same, but that we just pick on different sinners, such as obsessionally controlling puritans, and different sins, such as obsessionally controlling puritanism.

The difference is that we are correct! Oh yes! All violations of freedom of choice are dangerous, and it is no excuse to say that you have found a way to violate freedom rather less than before so that's alright then! Oh no! Let virtue reign unsullied!!

Amen and have a nice day.

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The ever-perceptive Harry Hutton makes a good point:

The West is losing the War on Arson, along with the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, the War on Fare Dodgers, and some other wars I don't remember right now. Is it time to consider decriminalisation? Making it illegal just drives it underground and gives it a false glamour, like filleting haddock on a wooden surface*. If burning stuff down were legal it could be taxed and controlled, as in Holland. There was a most interesting piece about it in The Economist.

The filleting haddock thing is explained thus:

*Banned by the 1990 Food Safety Act, since when cases of food poisoning have obviously rocketed.

I have never liked the "it gives it a false glamour" argument against banning drugs, for precisely the reason Harry pinpoints, which is that the same thing applies to bank robbery, arson, and so on, and they are falsely glamorous but so what? I prefer the simple "it's wrong to ban something that isn't an aggressive attack on the rights of others" argument. Terror is an attack on others' rights. Fare dodging is stealing, ditto. Haddock filleting on a wooden surface you can avoid, by not doing it, and by avoiding restaurants where they do it, if you really mind it that much.

Personally I think that the old ways of preparing food are less poisonous than the kind that the EU now demands, and I think those figures that Harry Hutton links to back that up, as he implies. But why has reported food poisoning abated since 2001? Have people stopped bothering to report it? Have some of those vulnerable to it died off? My guess is that the restaurants that poisoned their customers have been identified and shunned by those wanting a meal. After a period when new and safer rules were introduced and new and safer food preparation methods mandated, which was obviously extremely dangerous, the worst excesses of the new regime are now starting to be avoided, but obviously not yet as successfully as happened before the new and safer safety regulations were introduced.

If there must be laws against food poisoning, let them be laws against actual food poisoning, rather than against practices which, in the opinion of EU officials who just want to regulate stuff for the pure pleasure of it, might be poisonous, although less poisonous than any imaginable alternative.

The other argument I like to use about alleged crimes without actual victims which ought not to be crimes is the practical point that these are harder for any policemen to find out about. If you commit the crime of filleting a haddock on a wooden surface, and you and your dinner guests happen to prefer haddock filleted thus, why would any of you inform the authorities? Laws against victimless "crimes" are easily broken, by otherwise law abiding persons, and thus lower general respect for the law.

The trouble with that argument is that many real crimes are a source of shame to their victims, and they will not tell the police for that reason. Banks, for instance, do not want the fallibility of their security systems to become too public. Many property thefts are, as our current Government never tires of telling us, our own fault, and we are justly punished for allowing such thefts to be committed. Dare we bother the police with news of our trivial and self-inflicted misfortunes? But that is insufficient reason to make stealing that the victims are ashamed of legal, even if in practise that is pretty much how things are.

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Glenn Reynolds recently interviewed Ray Kurzweil, the futurist thinker who has recently come out with a new book, The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. I first came into contact with Kurzweil's ideas when I read his earlier book, The Age of Spiritual Machines. In this, he expounds his idea of the Law of Accelerating returns, which holds that technological progress grows at an exponential rate.

If you are not familiar with the idea of the Singularity, the Wikepedia page is a good place to start.

It must be emphasised that the ideas and predictions made by Singularity enthusiasts should be examined with caution. I myself am hugely optimistic about the possibilities, however, I should point out that futurists have a patchy record. This is not because they are bad; it is rather a reflection that our technological society is now so complex that understanding the various trends of our society is becoming too much for a single individual. Singularity enthusiasts concede this, and part of the reason why the term 'singularity' is used is that beyond the 'singularity' we can not really comprehend what will happen. (Just as an event horizon clouds everything within a black hole.)

However there are some features that most futurists agree will occur as progress nears the Singularity, and my purpose is to ask some questions about how they will affect issues dear to the heart of this blog.

The first question concerns artificial intelligence. As Kurzweil says:

The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light.

Basically, the point is that we are going to build machines that have artificial intelligence, that can learn and become self aware. This idea has been kicking around Hollywood for a long time and, indeed, is screening at the moment (Stealth). While Hollywood invariably presents such technology as being hostile to its own creators, there seems no logical reason for a self-aware machine to be hostile. However, it might well decide that it is alive, and demand rights, as in Bicentennial Man. The issues that movie raises about the definition of 'life' and 'rights' could provide enormous headaches in this century, and could keep lawyers busy for decades.

The prospect of this may cause governments to interfere to prevent the development of self aware technologies.

Complicating this is the prospect of not only machines becoming like humans, but, humans becoming more like machines. Geeky technophiles are likely to fall in love with the idea of using technology to enhance themselves. I would love to have memory implants and the like myself. So the definition of 'human' and 'robot' possibly will get cluttered; fear, uncertainty and doubt from the wider community will be another huge issue.

Another issue that the Singularity might well bring into sharp political focus is healthcare. Life extension technology is one of the promises of the Singularity; ageing is likely to be reversible. The prospect of immortality, a human dream since the dawn of time, could be realisable within the lifetime of many of us.

This is sure to attract more political attention. The temptation of governments to interfere, to attempt to 'socialise' medical progress as an attempt to spread the benefits could well be irresistible. It is the natural way of things that wealthy people are best place to take advantage of new technologies, and this may cause considerable political stress in democracies and give new powers for the State in non-democracies. Consider the prospect of an immortal Robert Mugabe.

There are bound to be many more problems and questions that the technologies of the Singularity will bring to us. I have not even touched on the huge privacy implications. The sooner that friends of liberty start to ponder these questions, the better chance free societies will thrive rather then suffer.

Like all past technologies, the question of whether or not they are a blessing or a burden is likely to be decided by how humans decide what to do with them, rather then by the technology themselves. Although, with self-aware machines, this might be the last time we have to answer such questions alone.

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James Waterton of the Daily Constitutional sees the need for more hardcore activists to spread the word for classical liberal values... and he also sees the need for more people to read his excellent articles. We agree with him on both counts

I was having a chat today with two friends about the nature of a market society. Both guys are intelligent, open minded and lacking ideological zeal. After talking about this and that, the discussion turned into me defending the free market of commerce and culture. Neither of them are heavily interested in politics, however they both articulated their positions with cognisance and we had a good discussion.

Because of the above discussion and the assumptions my friends held of the free market, I came to realise that - as enthusiasts of the free market - we do very little to actively promote the cause and its benefits. We hope our continually improving lives do the talking for us. Trouble is, these benefits can be twisted by people who do not agree with us. We are getting rich, says Green Left, at the expense of those in the third world and/or in our underclass. This is rubbish, of course, but it is an easily grasped concept, no matter how misguided. A group like Resistance goes out to a lot of schools to talk to students about the beauty of socialism. It is rich pickings for them there, because the simplistic truths of socialism appeal to minds that are neither sullied with the realities of human nature nor self-supporting adults. It is not hard to make a teenager feel bad about our society. Ask them if they lead a comfortable life. Show them a few pictures of starving African children. Let them join the dots. Child's play.

Trouble is, as we all know, widespread socialism was a dismal failure, and the few countries that continue to fly the banner are collapsing failures. However kids - especially compassionate kids - are still easily conned. Okay, maybe conned is the wrong word. They are just not offered an alternative point of view, and what they are being shown by our leftist friends is easy to understand and makes sense prima facie. I was a high-minded socialist back in the day, and I believed a whole manner of things that I find utterly repugnant today. For example, I considered that an absolute majority was always right. Someone backed me into a corner once and posed the following scenario - if an absolute majority decided that it was okay to kill me, would I have a problem with that. I sacrificed sanity for consistency and answered, no, I would not, if that is what the majority wanted.

I have found that this kind of woolly thinking is common in politically aware teenagers, and I believe it is because they are never offered an alternative. Socialism appears to make sense. No one tells them how it produces undesirable outcomes. Even when the aforementioned teenagers embrace adult reality and do away with socialism and the chimeric solutions it offers, most still retain a general distrust of free markets into their adulthood, even though they more often than not have trouble justifying their position if prodded. In regards to my friends, I was presenting a model that they did not know a great deal about. They knew its ostensible failings, but knew little of its strengths. They would possibly never considered, and certainly never accepted, the moral argument for a free market. They knew my case was logical, however the conditioned response of the average young adult to free markets made them still suspect that "something was wrong" with capitalism, free markets, individual responsibility etc. even though more often than not they could not put their finger on what it was. This syndrome is politically important, because when multiplied across society, it has implications on policy and how far the remaining vestiges of the socialist state can be rolled back - for the good of all.

If someone had have presented me with the case for free markets when I was in high school, I would have probably dismissed it out of hand. However, planting the seed is half the job done. As it happened, I changed my stance a couple of years after graduation. It took about one and a half years of a relentless bombardment of logic from a bunch of Objectivists to bring me round. I am not an Objectivist myself, however they certainly influenced my current liberal outlook. The people I was talking to earlier today are probably where I was when I encountered the Randroids. Those guys took a year and a half to convince me; I wouldn't have even started to turn my friends around. On the whole, people do not radically alter their views easily. However, this process would be a lot easier and quicker if the pre-existing cynicism towards the free market that my friends held was not there.

Which is where we free market enthusiasts come in. The morality of Adam Smith's invisible hand is more sophisticated and is not as easily digested as the ostensibly moral "perfect equality" socialist model, however Free Marketeers should debate Green Left, Resistance and those of their ilk at schools or wherever they appear. Just taking a quick peek at their publications and arguments, it is quite obvious that anyone with even a thimble of debating flair could wipe the floor with these lefty halfwits and their demented, unreal truisms. Their creed is barren, it lost its dynamism long ago. However, it could rear its ugly head again with enough support. There are signs that it's happening already with governments across the world reversing the Thatcherite/Reaganite trend towards smaller government. I believe this has something to do with the fact that socialism's pallbearers are much better at spreading their message than the unknowing footsoldiers of capitalism toiling in banks, brothels, barnyards or any business large and small. The beneficiaries of the free market - that is pretty much everyone, even though realistically I could only expect enthusiasts to rally - need to understand that their right to trade freely is not inextinguishable. We should be making a stronger effort to communicate the superior free market message to the youth, if only to ensure that our way of living continues. The free market system is the hope of the world. Those who understand that should spruik its benefits to the neutrals and unbelievers. We should try much harder to sign up the former and sway the latter.

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'Just let us put in place our hierarchy of rights. The right to live. The right to go to work on the underground. The right to have an ID card. The right not to have data abused.'

Freedom has no natural place in a "hierarchy of rights". Freedom used to be what was left over when other people's rights to their choices were taken into account. But the priesthood seems keen to ensure that there are "rights" everywhere, with no space for anything else, and that "rights" are not options, they are compulsions. Lenin would be proud.

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A commenter in an earlier article here responded to someone arguing that Muslim immigrants should never have been treated as 'immigrants' in Britain but as 'guest workers' the way the Germany treat Turks in their country, making them much easier to deport when the powers-that-be decide it is time for them to go. His reply was:

...but removal of those guest workers is one hell of a job isn't it?

Quite so. Moreover it seems obvious to me that a significant number of Muslims in Britain have successfully integrated into British society just fine and I see no reason to pretend otherwise. Yet clearly we do have a major problem with an equally significant number of Muslims who have not assimilated, show no sign of doing so and are manifestly a source of recruits for Al Qaeda.

Endlessly blathering on about how "Islam is a religion of peace" or alternatively to call for expelling 'Muslims', simply because they are Muslims, is the sort of wilful blindness and one size fits all collectivism of a sort I would rather leave to socialists of both left and right. Anyone who values western liberal civilisation needs to think a little harder than that, avoiding both atavistic collectivism and a head-in-the-sand refusal to see we have a serious problem that will not go away on its own.

If what we are trying to defend is a pluralistic tolerant society, then we have to make sure that the message is not just "throw the wogs out!" but rather "You are welcome here if you are willing to assimilate to a sufficient degree."

But how does one define what that 'degree' is exactly? I am not talking a Norman Tebbit style "cricket test" but rather a willingness to tolerate 'otherness'. We do not need Muslims to approve of alcohol or women in short skirts or figurative art or bells or pork or pornography or homosexuality or (particularly) apostasy. We have no right to demand that at all and obviously not all Anglicans approve of some of those things, so why require that Muslims must? No, what we do have the right to demand (and that is not too strong a word) is that they tolerate those things, which is to say they will not countenance the use of force to oppose those things even though they disapprove of them. In fact it is not just Muslims from whom we must demand such tolerance.

If we can get them to agree to tolerate those things, then it does not matter if Muslim women wear burquas because as long as they are not subject to force, a woman may elect to say "Sod this for a game of soldiers!" and cast off that symbol of misogynistic repression... and if she does not do so, well that is her choice then... but she must have a choice. They do not have to look like us (I do not hear calls for Chinatown to be razed to the ground), they do not have to share our religion(s), or lack thereof, but they do have to tolerate our varied ways and if by their actions or words they show they do not, we have every right to regard them as our enemies and take action to defend ourselves.

For decades the supporters of multiculturalism have used tax money and government regulations to actively discourage assimilation of immigrants into the broader society, preferring to see communities develop which favour 'identity politics' better suited and more amenable to their own collectivist world views. And now we are paying the price for that. We will not be able to defend ourselves physically or preserve our liberal society unless we stop tolerating intolerance, and that includes not just fundamentalist Islam but also the anti-western bigotry of the multiculturalists.

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Surprise surprise. Today, the headline above this story, on the front page of the Guardian caused me to actually buy the thing. But I learned little I did not already know.

The profi