The headline of the print Daily Telegraph today trumpeted 'Mini-brothels get go-ahead to operate on your doorstep'. I immediately took a peek at my doorstep but alas nothing to report yet.

To recycle a well known quote: prostitution combines free enterprise with sex. Which one are you against?

As someone who follows such things I had expected the latest Home Office consultation exercise to go according to the standard pattern, thus:

1. Home Office makes suggestions for changes in public policy...
2. ...'evidence' is taken from interested parties including police in search of promotion, contractors in search of contracts, and researchers seeking posts on the new quango to be created...
3. Home Office considers, announces its plans have 'general support', ticks box marked 'public consulted' and carries on with making legislation for parliament to approve.

So I was gearing myself up to write a piece on the repulsive sight of a department torn between the desire to regulate everything and to maintain PC social norms. Citing the ignominious failure of the Victorian Contagious Diseases Acts, I was going to pour scorn on the futility of a regulatory regime that licensed brothels while denying the most basic economic rights to prostitutes, and created 'zones of toleration' in an effort to buck the market while punishing the streetwalkers it purported to protect.

The Goverment has shot my fox. And it turns out the fox was packed with explosives. Someone has overturned the (paradoxical) regulatory liberalisers and has decided puritan prohibitions are what we need. The move is instead to be to "Zero Tolerance" of 'kerb crawlers' - and quite without comment, the continuation of zero civil-law rights and next to zero criminal-law protections for prostitutes themselves.

The Home Office minister Fiona McTaggart was quoted yesterday on the BBC as saying that prostitution "is child abuse" because many prostitutes begin selling sex below the age of consent. That is an insane argument driven by the demands of moralism. By the same token unpaid sexual contact must also be child abuse, because most people's sex lives begin before that arbitary, if increasingly rigidly totemic, mark. Someone, somewhere, is making David Blunkett, who was responsible for the original pseudo-tolerant proposals, look like a liberal.

Does the devil's name begin with B? The emphasis on cleaning up public untidiness by bullying is of a piece with the respec' agenda. And there have been suggestions that the inate liberalism of the Home Office - not something spotted by many commentators before now - is interfering with the operation of the Anti-Social Behaviour Unit.

Just another brick in the wall, perhaps. But turning the public agenda on a sixpence, and producing plainly mad arguments for doing so, are ominous. The Head Boy is ever more a dictator, and ever more the apostle of social conformity.

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.

- Lord Gould of Brookwood (most decidedly New Labour) speaking at yesterday's Committee of the Whole House on the Identity Cards Bill.

Chilling, eh?

I file this under "Self ownership" because the Bill (do read it) seeks to end all that sort of thing. No more of the messy business of people deciding for themselves who they are and how much to involve the government in their lives.

Alexia Harriton, an Australian woman who is deaf, blind, physically and mentally disabled and requires round-the-clock care, is suing a doctor for allowing her to be born, with the full support by her mother. Never mind that rubella during pregnancy does not guarentee what happened to Ms. Harriton.

I have a better idea. If she is competent to sue the doctor, she is competent to tell the people giving her round-the-clock medical care to get lost and let nature take its course. Hell, she could tell one of them to leave a nice sharp knife or a cup of water and a bottle of sleeping pills within reach if she wants to expedite things and if she cannot manage that, well seeing as how her mother is so supportive...

Why should a doctor be liable for an 'act of God'? So he did not diagnose how thing would shake out correctly. Too bad, no one is perfect.

Seems to me that Alexia Harriton and her mother were born moral and emotional cripples too. Nature dealt them a seriously crap hand and that is truly tragic but it is no one's fault. It happens. Deal with it, but please, deal with it yourself. Think I am being a little harsh? Well I do not think so and I have my reasons.

My previous article seems to have sparked off a discussion amongst the commentariat on the difference between being called a 'subject' or a 'citizen'. To prevent that comment section from digressing too far, I thought it might be interesting to provide an article to revisit the topic even though I have written about it before.

There are some historical reasons why the British have been 'subjects' (as they were subject to the laws of the Crown), and Americans have been 'citizens'. The reality is that the British are 'subject' to are the laws of the democratically elected Parliament. As in truth the Royal Assent is nothing more than a historical curiosity, the actual differences between the individuals truly relate to state in the United States and Britain is less than it might seem. The principle differences of significance are be that as Britain is more democratic, individuals have less institutional defences against the power of the state, whereas in the United States, with its written constitution and clearer separation of powers, an individual has more structural defences against the excesses of democratic politics, at least in theory.

In my experience most people tend to think they are 'citizens' rather than 'subjects' of whatever nation issues their passport. However I have always though the term 'subject' was a far more honest word to describe the relationship between individuals and the state rather than the prouder egalitarian sounding 'citizen'. We are subject to taxes, we are subject to laws, we are subject to conscription of various sorts (be it military or judicial). Sure, we 'citizens' are empowered via the glories of democracy, but quite how being outvoted and then being subject to some law you oppose 'empowers' you is unclear to me, even if it is a reasonable law. To be a subject may seem demeaning but in truth that is what we are: subjects.

As it happens, I think the term is even more appropriate for US 'citizens' given that at least in Britain and almost every other country, to avoid your particular state making ownership claims on the product of your labour, you just have to leave the country and live somewhere else. States generally do not claim to own you independent of your location, just the territory you live on and part of your labour within that territory in return for its 'protection' (capisce?).

The United States, on the other hand, claims you owe them the obeisance of taxes regardless of where your arse is located anywhere on the planet, although in practice it often makes arrangements with other nations to only impose its demands if you make more than a certain amount. Yet the obligation to report your income from overseas and to pay the IRS is still there if they wish you to do so.

So if it is not just sovereignty over a piece of land that the USA claims, it actually contends that it owns part of your labour regardless of where you live, making you subject to taxation for merely having the permission to live in America even if you choose to live elsewhere, then you sure sound like a 'subject' to me.

Spiked carries a fascinating, if frightening, piece by Charles Pither, a private doctor, on the invasive requirements of galloping regulation on those working in the healthcare sector. Just being able to check and list their employees (and their own) slave-number online will no doubt come as a relief.

What I hadn't appreciated, until the man came to make his inspection, was all the personal data that we needed to keep for our staff (in a locked cabinet, of course). Two references, a recent photo, a copy of their passport, copies of their qualification certificates, a curriculum vitae with explanations for any gaps, a copy of their contract and job description.

Including the cleaner? Yes, including the cleaner. 'It's not me who makes the regulations', said the man from the HCC. 'The onus is on you to comply with the statutory requirements as set out in the standards of care regulations.

Read the whole thing, as they say.

What's most disturbing is how suddenly these bureaucratic personal checks have sprung up, and how it has happened with no resistence. The Health Care Commission was created by the Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Act 2003, and started its interfering on April 1st 2004. The Criminal Records Bureau was established under the Police Act 1997, but its functions have been rapidly widened, in legislation on children, education, financial services, and health, but also notably by a series of Exceptions Orders to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Acts that have made the idea of a spent conviction (an old, minor one you need not acknowledge) pretty much obsolete. The operative Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations are dated 2002.

Never mind 1890, it would be nice to get the British state back to the size it was in 1990.

On The Voice of Reason (slogan: "A penny saved is a government oversight"), there is a pretty clear headed little essay of what I think is most the reasonable position on this absurdly emotive case.

For many Americans who see the state as being the central and most important institution there is, the axis around which civil society orbits, the whole idea of 'dual nationality' is deeply disturbing. A person born in a different land can assimilate into civil society, adopt the mores, trappings and affectations of the place in which they now live and even accept being marked as a political subject of the government (become a citizen) but if they do not in fact repudiate being a subject of their previous home, to a statist American the question often asked is "can that person really be an American?"

I have heard people in the US say that of the many Jewish Americans who also hold Israeli passports and now increasingly that question is asked of Mexican Americans who retain ties to Mexico. Cosmopolitanism is seen as somehow dangerous and almost wicked. That dual nationality is particularly disturbing to some Americans is not surprising seeing as how the USA claims a proprietary interest in Americans nationals even if they do not live within the lands within which the US state claims sovereignty over (to the extent that even foreign people with US green cards who are not US subjects and who no longer live within US territory are still supposed to make US tax returns and incur US tax liabilities!). In most of the rest of the world, the moment your cross a national border, the nation you lived in generally looses interest in most of your economic and political activities, making dual nationality rather less emotive an issue other than in times of war between the two nations in question. Being a US 'citizen' is like having a big brand on your arse which stays with you regardless of where you go, making claims that US citizenship is somehow superior because it is not 'ethnic based' somewhat odd... it is more analogous to creating a new ethnicity, at least politically speaking, called 'American'.

But for many, probably more who hold dual nationality, it is just a means of being able to live where they please and cross borders to places where they have friends and family without being harassed by the state's border guards and pettifogging officials. The truth is that for the great majority of people the state is not the axis around which their life revolves and the bit of coloured cloth that flaps over them is really not a big deal.

As a 'rootless cosmopolitan' myself, I make no secret that I see collecting as many citizenships as possible as useful way to dilute the influence that states have over people. That does not mean I am blind to the possibility of political leaders in one country making mischief in another country by appealing to notions of 'Volk' or 'La Patria'... yet political antics can be trumped by simply allowing the natural (yes, natural) process of assimilation to run its course, rather than distorting and delaying that process with crazy 'identity politics' which reward primitive tribalistic attitudes, and social welfare programmes that invert the traditional motivate for people to become immigrants in the first place.

I am currently drinking a glass of gin and tonic. I bought the gin on a recent trip to France, taking advantage of the lower tax. No doubt some will find it appalling that I took advantage of tax competition. It is not just that I was starving Britain's public services, though, by buying from abroad. I was also escaping the UK government's incentive - the incentive to drink less gin.

Is it just me, or are taxes which attempt to change my preferences the most offensive? I really don't see why the state has any legitimacy in encouraging me to switch from gin to, say, orange juice. Should the tax system not try and be as neutral as possible, avoiding attempts to change my behaviour? Or are politicians really just better people than me, more competent in deciding my choices than I am? The government certainly appears to believe it is justified in subordinating my choices to its wisdom. Yet when I think about the nannies, two words come to mind: sod 'em.

... but if you think that means the idea of banning smoking in the UK has been condemned, you would be wrong. The headline appeared in the Telegraph above the article reporting that plans to restrict areas for smokers in pubs were denounced as inadequate last night by campaigners pressing for a ban.

The anti-smoking campaigners denounced the agreement of more than 20,000 pubs in Britain to introduce restrictions on smoking to make around 80 per cent of bar space tobacco-free within five years. Smokers in these outlets would be restricted to specified areas or rooms.

The 'anti-choice extremists' for the smoking ban, apparently encouraged by evidence suggesting that a big drop in tobacco sales in Ireland due the prohibition on smoking in pubs, are pushing for more. Deborah Arnott, director of Action on Smoking and Health (Ash), said:

This is a last desperate throw of the dice by the biggest players in the pub trade. They spin their plans as a smoke-free initiative, but they are nothing of the kind.

They will still leave their non-smoking customers gasping and leave more than half the country's pubs unaffected.

I must be missing something, I did not notice any spin for a smoke-free initiative. It is a question of choice, not an imposition of a health-fascist measure.

Rob Hayward of the British Beer and Pub Association, which brokered the deal, argued with sensible points:

Clearly with the number of non-smokers on the increase companies want to reflect that in the way they run their pubs. We want to see better choice for non-smokers. At the same time we believe in freedom of choice and a policy that will still allow smokers to enjoy a night out with their friends in the pub.

Indeed. I do not like cigarette smoke in pubs, bars and restaurants although I am partial to a good cigar. But I do like the right of owners to let customers do in them what they wish on their premises. And it seems that even a government survey cannot produce better than 20 percent support for a total ban.

Surveys nothwithstanding, the ban in Ireland caused a 15 per cent drop in trade. A similar loss of business in Britain would lead to the closure of 5,000 pubs. And that's got to be a bad thing.

I did a few postings on my Education Blog at the beginning of this month, but these aside I've taken the whole of the month off from blogging. And now, my Internet Connection willing, I am back.

It was not so much that I was fed up with blogging, more that there were other things that needed doing, seriously, with the kind of concentrated attention that daily blogging was making impossible.

My home needed new shelves for books and for classical CDs, and it needed old shelves, laden with Libertarian Alliance pamphlets that nobody now needs, to be emptied and taken down. Mounds of papers needed to be sorted and classified, and space had to be created for them then to be stored in such a way that they didn't just get muddled together again. Two notorious no-go areas (the big cupboard and the space under the desk in my bedroom) were … gone into, and cleansed.

I did do one radio spot about … oh, something or other, and at the end of the month I hosted my usual Last Friday meeting (thank you Paul Marks – excellent talk and an excellent evening). Oh yes, and I did a talk about Classical Music for Tim Evans's Putney Debate on the Second Friday. But basically I took a holiday from pontification more profound than I can ever remember having enjoyed since I got started as a politificator at the beginning of the nineteen eighties. I did carpentry, sorted through papers, and in between times I socialised with friends (including some of my fellow Samizdatistas), undistracted by the self-imposed duty to tell the world what it should be thinking, or even to think about it.

It was a blessed relief suddenly to find myself in a world where the only problems that mattered were my own, and my own to grapple with and to solve. Yes, I have had Internet Connection problems, but I can deal with them, provided only that I get seriously stuck into them. And yes, carpentry can be exhausting. As was taking out about three dozen black plastic bags of rubbish, with about another two dozen still to go. But what a joy to be obsessing only about things that I could personally do something about.

My kind of politics is very anti-political, as is a lot of the politics here. But it is still politics. And there is a world of difference between sneering and jeering at the buffoons who rule the world, or who think they do, or who pretend that they do, and truly not giving these people the time of day, for day, after day, after day. It really was very refreshing, and not, I believe, an experience I will soon forget.

I even stopped reading Samizdata.

Now that I have resumed reading it, I am glad to see that I was not essential to its continuing success. (I would not want to be writing for a group blog that depended on me.) I did read a book or two during August, and I did inevitably do the odd spot of abstract thinking, about this and that. So I return to blogging action with a mind that is not completely blank. Meanwhile, my deepest thanks to the Samizdata editorial team for not nagging me, and for letting me rest in peace.

Advice Goddess Amy Alkon, whose writing is always good for a laugh, has a disturbing piece on her site about how useless the police were when her car was stolen. On one occasion, a friend spotted her car and, when she rang the police to tell them exactly where they could find it, she was fobbed off by a disinterested operator who read from a script and did not send officers to retrieve it. Later, when the man she knew (and the cops strongly suspected) had stolen her car was known to be at home, Alkon called the LAPD and told them exactly where they could pick him up. The police receptionist told her that no detectives were around, and that she'd have to call back the next day to speak to anyone who could help her.

In the end, Alkon had to get her car back from the thief herself, using good old fashioned shame and hostility. She even enlisted her mother in trying to guilt him into returning items that were in the car when he stole it. But few will be surprised at what the real consequences were for the thief.

Fred still hasn't been arrested. The case was knocked down to a misdemeanor and so the police can't go into his house to pick him up...So far his punishment has amounted to being forced to disconnect his phone, probably because he couldn't take the telephone harassment from me and, especially, my mother. Still, I don't regret the experience. I had great fun moonlighting as a private detective, I gained newfound faith in humanity, thanks to the Rambler nuts and the other near-strangers who went out of their way to help me, and I'd learned a surprising little lesson: In Los Angeles, crime pays.

Of course this state of affairs is not confined to Los Angeles. Everyone seems to know someone who has been similarly screwed over by police bureaucracy and incompetence. I know some good cops. But pieces like these make it all the more puzzling to me that so many people trust the police so unquestioningly, both to serve and to protect. Do they genuinely believe that the system is stacked in their favour, or is it something people tell themselves in order to feel secure?

Some time in June I was contacted by the production company responsible for making a radio programme called 'Straw Poll' for BBC Radio 4. They asked me to join the panel for a forthcoming debate on the proposition that 'We Should Not Legislate Against Obesity'.

I agreed.

The format of the show is a panel which consists of four speakers, two of whom are in favour of the proposition and two of whom are against. The debate is thrashed out for about 30 minutes or so before the studio audience is given a chance to put questions to the panellists. The studio audience then vote on the proposition.

The programme was recorded last July 19th at a Central London location. My opponents were two doctors representing Orwellian-sounding NGO’s whose names I have not forgotten because I never bothered committing them to memory in the first place. On my side was a very polished and very professional PR spokesman for the food industry.

Prior to the recording we were all asked to prepare 90-second opening statements. This was mine:

Having presumably grown bored with their crusades again tobacco and alcohol, the health fascists and professional busybodies have now turned their attentions to food in what is clearly an attempt to conquer new worlds.

As with previous and similar campaigns, the case against so-called 'fatty' foods is being advanced by means of a toxic mixture of junk statistics, unsubstantiated claims, gross generalisations and manipulative attempts to tug the national heartstrings by claiming that it is all to 'save our children'.

But even if their ludicrous claims had a basis in fact (which I very much doubt) that would still be no excuse for them to browbeat our politicians into passing more laws and regulations. Protecting us from ourselves is not a legitimate function of government and we should all be at liberty to eat, drink and consume whatever takes our fancy and as much of it as we jolly well like without interference from self-appointed guardians no matter how 'caring' they claim to be.

This attempt to hobble the advertising industry is just the first stage in what is sure to prove a long campaign aimed at getting us all to accept government control over our diets. This is a very bad idea but only a part of a general trend towards every greater micro-management of the individual by the various organs of the state. But the more decisions that are made on our behalf the less inclined and empowered we are to make decisions for ourselves.

Unless this creeping tendency is reversed, it is going to result in a nation of infantilised and dependent people who have been stripped of both the will and the capacity to take responsibility for their own lives.

Nothing is unhealthier than that.

I started as I meant to go on. I am rarely minded to compromise and, before the show had even commenced, I had switched myself fully over to attack-dog mode.

I think it fair to say that I gave the producers their money’s worth. They had set me up in the role of Resident Heartless Monster and I set about my assigned task with aplomb and enthusiasm. While the doctor-types dutifully trotted out their stock scary statistics ("Junk food is killing 46.8 innocent children every nanosecond") and my PR ally produced his own data to prove that his industry was already doing enough to encourage healthy eating, I tore into everyone like a Tasmanian Devil, denouncing the food fascist careerists and their manipulative agenda-advancing lies.

I truly, madly and deeply enjoyed myself.

However, the studio audience did not enjoy me. In fact, they clearly despised me. I was advised beforehand that they were drawn from the same database that is used to fill the studio for BBC's 'Question Time' and, hence, our British readers will need no further explanation as to why. By the time we were 10 minutes into the debate I could already hear the hisses and boos emanating from the back of the room. It only spurred me on to even greater heights of 'insensitivity'.

I informed my PR debating ally beforehand that we would lose the vote and lose we did. Crushingly. I think he was not best pleased as, in common with most people in his position, he was hoping to make an impression as a model of compromise and co-operation. Instead I rather think he was peeved about being tainted by my 'extremism'.

But I went home a happy man. The vote is a matter of complete indifference to me. What matters is getting the message out and, as far as I am concerned, the victory was mine because of three members of the studio audience who came forward after the show to express their agreement with me. I gave them all Samizdata.net cards and thanked them for their support. Little by little we roll back the tide.

And the message will be going out again tomorrow evening (August 6th) to a far larger audience when the show is broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 20.00 hours UK time (and again on Saturday afternoon at 13.15 hrs UK time). Again, the proposition will be a put to a vote (this time by phone-in) and, again, the result of the vote is of no consequence to me. What matters is that more people will hear what I had to say and, though I will not be on hand to give out cards this time, some of them will at least learn that they are not alone.

I think I have settled on my nomination for Most Frightening Story of the Year. Given the current political climate, the competition for this prestigious title is ferocious but, having carefully assessed the many excellent candidates, I have to put this one forward as the front-runner:

A radical scheme to vaccinate children against future drug addiction is being considered by ministers, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.

Under the plans, doctors would immunise children at risk of becoming smokers or drug users with an injection. The scheme could operate in a similar way to the current nationwide measles, mumps and rubella vaccination programme.

What they mean is that it will be shuffled in under the same 'health' rubrics.

Childhood immunisation would provide adults with protection from the euphoria that is experienced by users, making drugs such as heroin and cocaine pointless to take. Such vaccinations are being developed by pharmaceutical companies and are due to hit the market within two years.

Note the use of the word 'protection'. As if emotions are an affliction from which we need to be spared. I wonder what else can be neutralised? Hate? Love? Anger? Curiosity? Rebelliousness? Will this herald the age of 'Stepford' kids?

The Department of Trade and Industry has set up a special project to investigate ways of using new scientific breakthroughs to combat drug and nicotine addiction.

To add to all the carnage already caused by the psychotic Conservative drug war, it has now provided a legitimising ideology for these fantasies of chemical zombification.

Journalist Nancy Rommelmann writes, after a surprisingly (to me, anyway) pleasant evening spent with feminist writer Susan Faludi, of sitting on the back steps of her home with her husband and a glass of wine:

It must be hard-wired into humans to want a little patch of earth and grass, a peaceful place to sit at the end of the day, or the beginning, and think, ours.

So true, so simple, and yet anathema to so many.

Read the rest of Nancy's post for some unsurprising-but-fun gossip that she and Faludi exchanged about a certain tiresome feminist whinger extraordinaire.

Today I bought a great book in a remainder shop. It is a year by year history of London, strong on strange and intriguing events, not heavy with the theorising. Lovely.

It is a blogger's delight. I have already culled three postings from it - two for here and a 'how very odd' posting here.

Here is another fascinatingly odd factoid, entry number six for the year 1729:

WIFE-SELLING IN THE CITY

It was reported that 'Last Wednesday one Everet, of Fleet Lane sold his wife to one Griffin of Long Lane for 3 shilling bowl of punch; who, we hear, have since complained of having a bad bargain.'

A salutary reminder that 'Christian' men could be fairly primitive to Christian women, not so long ago. Many Muslims still are, of course. But if we Christians can mend our ways, they surely can too.

But then I suppose you already knew that. After all, state's often think it is justified to outlaw consensual sex-for-sale (unless it is part of a package involving marriage, of course). Now however, it seems even what you do with your private bits in a non-sexual way is the business of a bunch of priggish regulators.

You think not? Well that is what Georgia's political masters reckon (that is Georgia in the USA not the one in the former USSR). It is now illegal for an adult woman to get a genital piercing. Now I realise that the USA already claims de facto ownership of its subjects (a much more realistic term than 'citizens') even when they wander off to foreign lands, but I though that these notions of owning folks only applied to the fruits of their labour, not their actual bodies (yes, I realise this may be wandering into a touchy area given the USA's interesting history of intrapersonal economic relations, particularly in places like Georgia).

Now if some woman is subjected to non-consensual genital mutilations, I have no problem regarding that as criminal, but will someone tell me how a bunch of legislators can think they have the right to tell a woman what she can do to her own labia and clitoris for her own private aesthetic reasons? To me the law itself is an affront, but far more shocking is that every single one of the members of the Georgia legislature feel they have the right to tell a woman what she may do with her own body for her own private ends.

(via Jessica Lyons: Naturalis)

The other day I came across this article during some random Web surfing, which contained a fairly familiar conservative hammering of what is loosely defined as the Baby Boomer Generation, that portion of the mostly Western population now on the verge of hitting the age of retirement.

In essentials, the argument runs like this: baby boomers are self-obsessed, adopted some mind-bindingly dumb (mostly left) political views; undermined respect for any kind of authority; addled their brains with drugs during the infamous Sixties and now expect we younger folk to shoulder the burgeoning cost of keeping them in retirement. Blah, bloody blah-blah.

Yes, you may have guessed it - this writer (born in that greatest of years, 1966, about a month before England won the soccer World Cup) is not entirely sold on the conservative critique, even though I share some distaste at the dumb political and cultural stances that were taken by said generation. But one thing which I frequently note is this - the BB generation is often attacked for being self-interested and focussed on acquiring self-esteem. But wait a minute. As a libertarian and unashamed individualist, I have to ask: what is wrong with wishing to improve one's life, exactly? After all, one of the most widely books in that stiff-necked era, that of the Victorians, was Samuel Smiles' hymn to self-improvement.

Surely, anyone who believes their life is their own, and not that of the State, Volk, proletariat, God, Allah, or the Great Green whatever, will embrace the notion of self-improvement. After all, much of the libertarian movement we know today, with all its different strains, acquired a considerable amount of energy during the 1950s and 60s. David Friedman, for example, who is the son of Milton Friedman and a leading exponent of anarcho-capitalism, might be regarded as a baby boomer. A good number of those who were inspired by the ideas of author and philosopher Ayn Rand were baby boomers. The Libertarian Alliance's own director, Dr Chris R. Tame, and LA editorial boss and Samizdata.net scribe, Brian Micklethwait, were of the boomer generation.

To put it another way, let us avoid the groupthink mentality that would bracket a whole generation under one heading. The BB generation contain a fair share of boobies, charlatans and fools. It also contains folk I greatly admire and am proud to call my friends.

That's it, I've had enough. I just could not believe my ears, last night, listening to some po-voiced BBC reporter agreeing with some equally pompous do-gooding UK doctor that British people simply cannot be trusted to look after their own health. They also agreed that Wanless Chinder's HM Treasury proposal, to introduce yet more tax-funded social engineering into British health care, was a desperately needed breath of fresh air.

Jesus H. Christ. Just when will you people get it? When will you get it into your thick skulls that it is your damned social engineering policies, over the last sixty years, which have created all of your alleged problems in the first place? When you take away people's responsibilities for their own health care, by providing them with an MRSA-infested paid-for-by-everybody-else National Health Service, the obvious response is for many of them to start abusing their own bodies, or at the very least to start taking less care of themselves. Why? Because someone else will be forced to pick up the pieces afterwards, that's why. So what the hell, let's eat another cream cake, let's drink another bottle of whisky. Because the NHS will pay for any liposuction I may need, afterwards, and the NHS will always supply me with a new liver, should I need one. And if they refuse to, then I'll sue them for a loss of human dignity.

Take, for instance, asthma patients who smoke. I came across many of these, as a medical student, when I worked in the Northern General Hospital, in Sheffield. So why do they smoke when this lands them in an oxygen tent manned by a medical student making a mess of their right-arm, in his pitiful attempts to take blood samples from them every morning? Because the NHS supplies all of the Ventolin Inhalers they may need, supplies all of the incompetent medical students they may need, and supplies all of the sick notes and hospital beds they may need, to help their damaged lungs recover from their stupid and continuing nicotinic self-abuse. Some of them were even happy to be there, to spend a few weeks away from home, relaxing, getting paid on the medical sick note, watching television all day, and chatting to nurses and medical students. Oh yes, and when well enough, slipping outside for a quick smoke.

Would they abuse their bodies as much, smoking with asthma, if they had to supply their own wages insurance, had to pay the full cost for their own Ventolin supplies, and had to pay for their own hospital treatment insurance, to pick up the pieces, at a special ten times rate for asthmatics testing nicotine-positive on their blood samples? Of course they wouldn't. And will more social engineering and more extravagant government targets make them quit smoking? Are you kidding me? They're in hospital, facing death through smoking, right in the face. And a subsidy on Kumquats funded by a tax on chocolate Kit-Kats is going to make them give up? Beam me up, Nanny. Even an outright ban on smoking would only stop them for a few weeks, until the rapidly expanding tobacco and chocolate black markets got them hooked back in again.

When nanny supplies a comfortable cot and a bottle of warm milk, baby is just going to lie there lapping it up, even if it begins a process of artery clogging. And by the way, just what divine right is it you possess anyway to stick your noses into their lives, even if they did choose to be so stupid? I suppose, you might say, because Joe Taxpayer is forced to fund the NHS, so Joe Taxpayer, in the form of your good selves, has the right to make people obey health diktats. I have a better solution. Let's get rid of the filthy disgusting chippy-staffed NHS, instead, problem solved. And let's not forget the sheer hypocrisy of your leading priests, as they genuflect at the font of the God of Society.

You've got lardy High Priest Gordon Brown, whose fat jowls are now dropping well below his tailored shirt collars, and the even fatter and the even lardier Head Whipping Boy John Prescott, whose broad face is the very road map which highlights the dangers of personal over consumption.

And then, of course, there's Social Engineer-in-Chief and Lord High Defender of the Faith, Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, a coffee-abusing man who can only carry out his job because there's a team of heart specialists waiting 24 hours a day at the Nomenklatura Hospital, in Chelsea, waiting for him to collapse again through overwork, so they can re-start his heart. I assisted in such procedures, in the Rotherham General hospital. But despite what Blair's aides have reported, even when such heart restart procedures are scheduled, they are never routine. Stopping and re-starting someone's heart, to get it into the correct sinus rhythm, is not something you do either lightly or while scoffing a Kit-Kat. It is always dangerous and it is sometimes lethal. Everyone around the table, especially the man with the shock paddles, gets a big hit of adrenaline when the capacitors charge up. Many people die in hospitals. But it's not every day you get to personally perform the action which kills them, especially when it is the bare chest of a British Prime Minister in front of you, all smothered in conductive K-Y Jelly.

But yet we all have to take lessons on health from this workaholic man, who is driving himself into an early grave through endless political briefs and night-time flights, because he is Social Engineering Superman. Despite heart restarts, which are nature's way of telling you to stop politicking and to start gardening, he still knows better than the rest of us as to how we should look after our own health. He even has the right, apparently, to force us how to look after our own health, through taxation and social engineering, because assorted health fascist Guardianistas, who make their obscene gravy-train living from the health-and-welfare monster that is the British state, say that he has this right, as they float around in a comfortable tax-funded sea of their own, smoking cannabis, drinking Chardonnay, and engaging in dubious STD-inducing night-time practices of sexual self discovery.

Well, good luck to you in your private lives. But if you do it, why can't anyone else? Your stupid social engineering, your filthy hospitals, and your unbelievable waste in the NHS, make me, and everyone else, sick. We will all be a damn sight better off, if we simply got rid of all you social engineers, and all of your terrible self-defeating Nanny State works, which make everything worse rather than better. Do you never learn anything? Sixty years of continuing NHS failure and your benighted solution is yet more of the same. It is simply unbelievable. It is time this ratchet was broken.

In the comment section of David Carr's article here on Samizdata.net called Government Property, one of the commenters, Tim Haas, suggested the inimitable Dissident Frogman should come up with a suitable graphic... and indeed he has!

click for larger image

A question for all those people who support the introduction of a national ID card scheme.

Cattle get tagged.

And slaves get branded.

Which one are you?

Ms Shipley, a Labour MP, says allowing the adverts for burgers, biscuits, crisps and fizzy drinks to appear between programmes watched by the under-fives counters the government's efforts to encourage healthy eating. And so she hopes that ministers will listen to her arguments and back her Children's Television (Advertising) Bill, which will outlaw advertising during pre-school children's TV programmes that feature food and drink high in fat, salt and sugar.

My bill will ensure that children's health is placed before commercial interests.

Ms Shipley, responsible for the Protection of Children Act 1999, is supported by more than 100 MPs and 90 national organisation, including the National Heart Forum, Women's Institute, National Union of Teachers and National Consumer Council.

I have been overwhelmed by the massive favourable response my proposals have received from parents, health professionals and the wider public. There is a growing consensus that a ban is the only way forward as self-regulation is demonstratively not working. Unfortunately, some sections of the food and advertising industries have not heeded the public and professional calls for responsible marketing.

Responsible marketing?! But of course! The left honorable Lady knows what's right for our children and if the companies are just not going to listen, well, we will have to do something about that (defiant look, tight lips, chin out). Yes, we shall bloody make it a law so all those disgusting images will not pollute our children's pure souls... and bodies. Bad, bad companies. BAN THEM!

It is a knee-jerk reaction, yet another page from the government's book of we-know-what's-good-for-you-and-we-will-force-you-do-it-even-if-it-kills-you.

I am no fan of junk food that I think is an Abomination unto Gastronomy and neither am I fond of large companies that in their enormity occasionally start behaving like states. But proposing a law that bans adverts of greasy food and sugary drinks is the most stark example of the dellusions governments suffer about their role in the society and individuals' lives. The quote from Brian's excellent post about the menace of government's attempt to deliver outcomes contains the right message:

Government is not there to promote all the virtues. It is not there even to restrain or punish all vices. It is there to restrain and punish a very restricted set of vices, of the kind that cause direct and unjustified hurt to others, of the sort which if unpunished and unrestrained would mean people regularly coming to blows with each other. As individuals, government ministers may regret the fact that so many of us fail to display as much in the way of virtue as they might individually like, but so long as we do not do too much, too obviously, of the vice variety, they will not, in their official capacity, bother us.

Hear, hear, the honorable Lady and Gentlemen.

Bernie Greene wonders just how scientific is the science behind the smoking debate?

Epidemiology began with a fellow called John Snow investigating to find the cause of a cholera epidemic in London in the 19th Century. He had the idea that it might be coming from contamination in a well. So he took a map showing the locations of wells and plotted the incidence of the disease on the map. Sure enough they were mostly in close proximity to one particular well. He had the well put out of service and there were no more new cases of cholera. That is a simple story of logic and surveying intelligently applied to test a theory.

It is very unfortunate that it was so simple to solve. He might then have left a better example for his followers.

What if he had found that the 166 ¹ total cholera cases were scattered all over the map pretty evenly but that they all had pink carnations on their coats? One hundred thousand people wore pink carnations and 99,874 did not get cholera.

What does he do now? Well if he were a tobacco investigator he would petition the government to do something about pink carnations. But let's say he is a brighter boy.

He decides to go and interview the cholera cases in more depth.

He asks them all kinds of questions about themselves and about pink carnations - how many years have they been wearing them? How old were they when they started? etc. etc. He gathers all the data and looks for similarities. He gets a few things and tabulates them. He then interviews other people who don't have cholera but who do have pink carnations. He asks all the same questions again and tries to find something about pink carnations that is consistent among those who don't have cholera and is absent from those who do, or vice versa.

He finds one item in common. The cholera sufferers all work in the City though they live all over London. There are lots of carnation wearers in the other group who also work in the City and don't have cholera. So he knows that working in the City isn't the cause either so he correctly calls it another correlation just like pink carnations. But he now has two correlating pieces of data and a line of enquiry worth following.

He now goes back to the cholera group and asks a single new question. "What can you tell me about working in the City and wearing pink carnations?" They tell him it is the thing to do. They tell him all the ladies like it. They tell him their bosses like it. They tell him they buy them from a vendor right next to St Paul's Cathedral. etc. He notes their responses and tabulates them again. He asks the same thing of the non cholera group that also works in the City. They give him lots of very similar answers but on where they buy them from the answers vary and none of them are anywhere near St Paul's Cathedral. So he now has a third correlation and this one is far more promising as it is entirely absent from the non cholera group. He knows it isn't the cause itself because lots of people who go to St Pauls don't also get cholera but in combination with pink carnations he knows it is a significant correlation.

He gets the vendor to close down for a few weeks to see if it makes a difference to the number of new cholera cases. There are no new cases after 10 weeks where formally there had been several new cases each week. This is progress he thinks. He could stop right here, have the vendor permanently closed down and that might be enough to prevent further cases. But as he still doesn't understand how pink carnations and a vendor near St Pauls can be the cause of a cholera epidemic he continues to investigate.

He sets up a watching station opposite the vendor and sits there for many hours watching him ply his trade. He notices one thing that seems to offer a really plausible cause covering all the factors he has so far noted. A woman empties a huge chamber pot into a hole immediately behind the boxes of pink carnations. The scientist walks over and sees that some of the former contents of the woman's chamber pot have spilt into the boxes holding the carnations. He finds they contain the feces of several cholera victims the woman tends to.

It wasn't as easy a case to crack but it does illustrate what a scientist dedicated to truth and who won't compromise with logic would do.

In the case of smoking research I would say that back when the Hill/Doll study of 1956 was done an honest and worthwhile conclusion would have been:

We now know that most cases of lung cancer occur in smokers of a certain amount of tobacco after a long period of time in a very small number of cases relative to the number of smokers who smoke that amount for that long. Tobacco smoking isn't the cause of lung cancers but it is connected in some way that we don't yet understand. We can predict that many more smokers will get lung cancer than will non smokers. Something like 24 times as many. But we must also say again that there are far more smokers than there will ever be cases of lung cancer. This in itself makes it obvious that something else is involved.

Further because we can predict that a very small fraction of all smokers will account for the majority of lung cancer victims, and that because we don't know why this is so, we must responsibly inform smokers of this increase in risk. We must also inform smokers that the risk, whilst small compared to all smokers, is of a grave disease that is likely to be very painful and also fatal. Obviously smokers themselves have to decide if they want to cut down or quit smoking altogether because, as a scientist, our job is to research and discover threats to life but that it is the individual's responsibility to act on that information as he
sees fit.

We now have something new to discover. Most cases of lung cancer occur in a small number of smokers, but if smoking were the cause of those cases then what is preventing it in so many more cases? If smoking is not the cause of lung cancer then what factor is present in those smokers who do get it but which is not present in those who don't?

That to me would have been a logical, decent and honest approach. It may not have been so easy to understand as "Smoking causes lung cancer" but it would have been a whole lot more honest and the consequences of that could have changed subsequent history in many dramatic ways, and might have led some curious researchers into the field who would have known that there were still very significant questions to get answered, and they may have been capable of getting those answers by now.

Instead they told the government that tobacco was causing lung cancer and demanded that something be done about tobacco! Wrong target and thoroughly irresponsible as scientists in my opinion. That was a defining moment in the history of tobacco and it has been in decline ever since. Unfortunately so has epidemiology.

¹ Don't know what the actual number was. This was to make it closer to what Hill/Doll found with regard to lung cancer and smokers. 166 out of 100,000 after decades of 25 grams per day.

Competing interests: I once worked for a tobacconist shop. I am also a
pipe smoker. I'm not a scientist and I could be wrong. I would
appreciate being shown where with logical rather than ad hominem
argument.

Bernie Greene © 2003 . All Rights Reserved

Tomas at Teekay's Coffeeshop has an excellent post on how the Czech police decided to go after the oldest profession and benefit from register all hookers in a special database. The software for this essential exercise was provided by the UN.

After raiding 475 nightclubs past weekend in a well-meant effort to combat organized slavery, the Secretary of Interior Mr Gross (nomen omen) came up with this idea that prostitutes are to be monitored. The official goal is to find out about the movement of prostitutes within the EU.

Police will enter the data about anyone who looks like a hooker, after checking and recording data on your citizen ID card (it's mandatory to bear it at all times). Main source of data will be nightclubs and bars of certain sorts, but the police isn't limited to these venues only.

Central European babes are not known for their coy dress sense

Apparently, it is enough for a girl to wear something 'crazy' for her to end up in the National Hooker Registry. And there is no recourse, just as there are no rules, no checks, no appeal. Tomas concludes:

The next step will be regulated legalization: with all of them registered and monitored, the State will make a liberal gesture and allow some prostitution. Carefully controlled, with price limits, annual re-registration, you name it. Of course, it will also be much easier to monitor the customers of such services, and that could come in handy, too, right?

I think he may be on to something there...

...the state does, in the person of Mr. Justice Sumner, that is who owns your body.

Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign
- J.S. Mill, On Liberty, 1859

Given that so many in the 'free world' are subject to compulsory educational conscription, how many people are in fact 'sovereign' over their own minds? And in an era in which the state can force you to put certain chemicals in your body regardless of your wishes, are you sovereign over your own body? If you are a child, clearly not... and even if you are an adult, clearly not.

The mothers, the sole carers of their daughters, argued that immunisation should be voluntary and it was not right to impose it against the wishes of a caring parent and it would cause them great distress.

The elder girl had asked not to be given the MMR jab but had asked for meningitis protection. Some parents fear the MMR vaccine could be linked to autism, even though doctors and most experts say there is no evidence of a link.

Mr Justice Sumner decided both children should receive the jab because the benefits outweighed the risks.

But her views obviously count for nothing. If you do not truly own the insides of your body, then what are you? "The elder girl had asked not to be given the MMR jab". Is she a slave? A serf? A chattel? I have fulminated before on that particular issue when confronted with people arguing for mandated mass medication... the issue is not one of health but rather 'who owns your body'. What the judges and doctors who would use the violence of state to force other people to change the chemistry of their own bodies show us is not that they care, but rather their totalitarian mindset.

Can it really surprise us that the state does not respect individual property rights or the right of self-defense if it does not even respect the right of individuals to judge what chemicals should or should not be put in your own body? This is not a minor issue because it goes to the very heart of whether your perception of freedom is an illusion or not.

The proposed EU regulation of blogs and other forms of Internet speech being suggested by the Council of Europe (a quasi-governmental think-tank whose views have inordinate sway with the EU's policy making elite) is very revealing about what lies at the heart of The Great European Project.

Steven Den Beste has written a rather good article on why the press is treated differently than broadcast media which use the finite resource of the electromagnetic spectrum. One can argue that as the EM spectrum is finite, it is reasonable to share out its use and as clearly not everyone can set up a radio or TV station, some rules to prevent the use of the media from becoming over mighty are justified. This is not quite how I see that issue myself but the contention is far from absurd.

One can even make the far less supportable assertion that because in reality setting up a newspaper is far beyond the means of most people simply because it is so expensive, the state should regulate the press, at least to some extent. Not surprisingly I flatly reject this notion and think the only defence individuals need against the established press are laws against libel. However the thinking behind this sort of regulation is at least easy to understand and can, if you accept the state as an essentially benevolent neutral institution (which I certainly do not), be seen as a way to prevent abuses of power by an over-mighty media corporation given the vast asymmetry of access to public opinion between a newspaper and an individual.

But when the Council of Europe start urging the EU to regulate blogs like this one, it should be clear that none of the arguments which can be applied to broadcast media and or the press apply here. As I mentioned in my previous article on this issue, if you have a cheap computer and a crummy modem, it still only takes about five minutes and no money whatsoever beyond your dial-up or broadband connection charges to set up a blog. There is no asymmetry of access to the public involved here. Granted, setting up an effective blog is another issue entirely, but simply getting viewable grievances in front of blogosphere eyeballs is simplicity itself.

So if anyone can set up a blog, and there is no finite resource in need of being allocated 'fairly' and there are no de facto capital related barriers to 'market' entry, what are we to make of this Council of Europe proposal to regulate us?

If I had to pick a single word to describe the root of this move to intermediate the state between on-line free speech and on-line readers, it would be Communitarianism. The notion at work here is much the same as that which I discussed when I rebutted Peter Hain's ideas for a totally political 'society'. If I write something and plonk it on the Internet, I cannot compel someone else to read it just as they could not have compelled me to write it in the first place. Yet the notion of a freely offered opinion via an almost universally available medium and a freely choosing reader assumes that individual choice (mine as writer and yours as reader), rather than some collective political will, is an acceptable basis for social interaction.

What the people at The Council of Europe find so offensive is that this simple process (I decide to write, you decide to read (or not)) is totally non-political. If you read my article and decide to leave a comment, and I decide to delete that comment, and you then decide to start your own blog to decry the things I write, where is the 'political community' in all this? Nowhere of course, because the actions described are purely social. There is no use of the collective means of coercion by either me nor the disgruntled reader. You do not get a vote on what I write and I do not get a vote on what you read... and if you start up a blog of your own to criticise me, I do not get a vote on what you write either and if I leave comments on your blog pointing out the errors of you ways, you can delete them if you choose to.

The understanding that civil society (the several actions of affinity and dis-affinity) and the political sphere (the control the collective means of coercion) are materially different is hardly a new observation. Yet it is the refusal to accept this by people who see force (politics) as the only legitimate means of interaction which lies at the heart of attempts to legally impose certain forms on how people express views on the Internet. It is not about enabling wrongs to be righted, or giving voice to the voiceless, or sharing the means of expression. As blogs are more or less free to set up and the Internet has essentially infinite in capacity to support them, that argument is simply a bare faced lie. This proposed regulation is just a particularly overt example of how the power elite in Europe will not tolerate anything which disintermediates the state because to deny any role for politics in something is to deny them any role. After all, they are not threatening to ban us (provided we comply with their directives), they are just demending we stop acting as social entities, following the customs and manners of the Internet, and start acting as political entities, comporting ourselves according to the politically formats laid out by the superstate's expresion of what they see as the collective will.

This is because if there is one thing communitarians hates above all, it is being ignored and excluded. A communitarian thinks not only is my business everyone's business, but the plurality has the right to use political interaction (which means force backed law) to vote on my every action... there is no real 'private life' to a communitarian, just a political one. In a quite literal sense, popularity is mandatory: you may only do what a plurality allows you to do.

In a perverse way, this policy proposal by the Council of Europe is almost good news: if they want to go to the effort to regulate us, that means they think we humble bloggers actually matter in the overall scheme of things. Our voices are being heard and the powers-that-be do not much care for the discordant non-state approved tune we are singing. Splendid.

Resistance is not futile. We will not be harmonised.

The nanny state is invited to strike again. The British Medical Association (BMA) is proposing a 17.5 percent VAT on high-fat foods like biscuits and processed meats to solve obesity-related problems, which cost the NHS roughly 500 million pounds a year. BMA spokesman Dr Martin Breach informs us:

There is an epidemic of obesity in the UK. You are what you eat and if that is the case the British public have a huge problem. Charging VAT on saturated foods found in processed meat products like sausages, pies and pastries, butter and cream, may help save some lives.

According to government statistics, one in five men and one in four women is obese. Obesity is a serious risk factor for heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, diabetes, muscle and respiratory problems and certain types of cancer.

One of the opposing arguments is that a punitive 'tax' on fatty foods would in fact work as a regressive tax since those on lower incomes generally tend to eat larger quantities of cheap, high-fat food.

Belinda Linden of the British Heart Foundation has the solution:

We need to educate people about the benefits of eating healthy foods and make them more responsible for their health. We also have to be sure that a 'fat tax' does not just end up penalising the poor without actually changing eating habits.

That's right. Change their eating habits, educate the masses! Be a nanny to the whole nation!

But the BMA has even a better answer. They say that the tax would hit food manufacturers hard and have little effect on the poor.

A fat-tax will remove food manufacturers' incentive to pump food full of fat. Instead they will fill processed foods with healthier ingredients and better selections of meat. Fat is a cheap by-product of the meat processing industry - they have mountains of the stuff and are desperate to use it, so they use it as cheap padding in foodstuffs.

Yes, let's fool around with the markets, the food manufacturers, supply and demand. That always works! And it is much more fun that finding out what really makes people fat!

They are assuming that their medical conclusions are absolutely right when it come to understanding the way human body processes fat and what its fat consumption ought to be. They are not taking into account results of recent research that more or less vindicated the (in)famous Atkins diet that sees higher consumption of unsaturated fats as positive and desirable. No, they are going to tax fat in one big lump regardless of whether there is any scientific rationale other then three decade of their stale dogma. Atkins may not be absolutely right either, who knows, but rather than finding out, let's mess with the markets, prices and taxes to teach people that they are not allowed to eat what they want.

Ah, but they need to be treated for serious and expensive ailments resulting from their over-indulgence on the National Health Service and at taxpayers' expense. Fine, denationalise the health service and let people carry the responsibility for their actions.

Soon there will be a tax on dangerous sports (serious injuries), driving, cycling or walking in towns (high accident rates), watching TV (makes you fat and stupid), and breathing in London (likely to get asthma and allergies).

This is the world in which the Big Brother marries the Nanny.

Hint: it is not about health and safety...
at least not your health and safety

Who owns you?

Tony Martin will not be released from jail. He will remain inside for the crime of defending his property for the full five year period of his sentance (he was initially sentanced to life).

The people who make up the parole board which has just decided that he poses an unacceptable threat to people who may in the future break into his home are wonderful examples of what Sean Gabb describes as The Enemy Class.

I strongly suspect their treatment of Tony Martin, found guilty of shooting dead a serial burglar in August 1999, has more to do with the fact he refuses to apologise or acknowledge any wrong doing in his act of defending his property from predators. That a group of parole board members whose salaries are paid by the state predating taxpayers should think that way is perhaps not such a surprise.

As I said before, the lunatics have taken over the asylum. As the political process in Britain has decayed to the point that there appears to be no political cost to the established power elite for the de facto criminalisation of self-defence (never mind that the state can gun you down in the street with scarcely a murmur), and de jure criminalisation of defending your own property, be it from the state or criminals (and the difference between them narrows daily), I wonder if people may simply start going out of their way to avoid involving the state in the aftermath of any act of self-defence.

As people seem to be unclear who to blame for the state deciding it is easier to prosecute law abiding homeowners than to go after housebreakers, and thus most seem unclear who are the correct people in need of having bricks thrown through their windows given that voting seems to make no difference, I expect sales of shovels, bin-bags, deep freezers, hacksaws and baseball bats to start increasing in high crime areas. There may even be a business opportunity for specialised discreet garbage disposal companies to assist this possible future trend.

The core of that problem is rooted in the contempt for private property found amongst the statists who make up the majority of the political class in Britain. Never forget that defending yourself is the ultimate expression of self-ownership and that is something the British state cannot tolerate, particularly the overt socialist parts: these people support 'democratic', which is to say political, control of the means of production and that includes your body. Just ask Tony Martin... the state is not your friend.

I have been taking a break from blogging, writing about Iraq and All That this past week in exchange for a much more enjoyable time working for a sailing examination off the south coast of the UK. But a few incidents and conversations with my fellow yachties got me thinking about some connections to this wonderful pastime and political stuff.

For starters, many nautical enthusiasts like me get into sailing because it embodies a form of freedom. For sure, there are thousands of complex rules operating at sea, many of which have accumulated like barnacles on the underside of a ship over the centuries, rather like the evolution of the rule of the English common law. And while they appear to be initially baffling, the rules of the High Seas make sense and actually liberate those who follow them. (Rules such as avoiding collisions and the use of navigation beacons, etc.)

Beyond such rules, what I like about sailing is that you have to obey and respect nature to master it. You are reliant on your own skills and knowledge and the voluntary co-operation of others in the same vessel. A skipper of a boat has and requires authority to operate a boat efficiently, but he or she cannot compel folk to be on the same boat in the first place.

Drawing big cultural implications out of all this has its limits, of course, but I cannot help feeling that those cultures most infected with the spirit of liberty have strong seafaring traditions. Sailing over long distances requires a natural spirit of enterprise. It requires skills and knowledge not best acquired at the point of a gun. It encourages the spread of language, particularly flexible languages like English. And seafaring folk have, in my experience, a robust, independent attitude towards life which sits well with the liberal outlook.

I spent a fair amount of money, not to mention a lot of energy, getting my sailing qualification ticket. I feel mighty pleased to know that I can now charter out a yacht in any part of the world's oceans. That's freedom.

History certainly does have a knack of repeating itself here in the UK. Just as we're about to embark on another war against a mustachioed despot, we're all set to bring back rationing:

"A ban on marketing fatty, salty and sugary products at youngsters is one of the options supported by the study from the Food Commission campaign group.

It also backs those calling for a nationwide promotion of healthy foods and a possible "fat tax" on junk food advertising."

But why stop there? Why not compulsory jogging every morning? Followed by an invigorating dip in ice-water? How about mandatory colonic irrigation, too?

Actually the question is redundant, because, whoever the 'Food Commission Campaign group' are, we all know that they have not the slightest intention of stopping there. They wll get what they want and then move on to Stage 2 (and Lord alone knows what that consists of). And because this is Britain we can all more-or-less write the script for these campaigns now. It is even becoming mundane.

I don't know who these campaigners are but perhaps, by some extraordinary stroke of luck, it will transpire that they have some connection with the WTC attacks. Then the Americans can come and drag them all off to Camp X-Ray.

P.S. Don't forget the hoods!

We all know about those archetypal laws. Parkinson's – work expands to fill the time available for its completion. The Peter Principle – people get promoted until they reach their level of incompetence. They're useful laws. They answer basic questions. Like: Why all the crap? Why is everything done so badly?

Well, I think I may have discovered another one of these universal laws, which answers the question: Why are so many people who you would think ought to be happy instead so miserable? I give you: Micklethwait's Law of Negotiated Misery.

It starts with the observation that more and more people are "self-managed" these days. Even people working inside giant business or governmental bureaucracies are being encouraged to think of themselves as free trading entrepreneurs, providing services in exchange for payment, in cash or in kind. Horizontal networking, self-starter, internal markets, intrapreneuring, etc. etc. blah blah blah.

Okay. You're a self-manager, and maybe even self-employed.

There are four kinds of work you think about maybe doing.

1. There's work you love and are good at.
   
2. There's work you hate and are good at.
   
3. There's work you love and are bad at.
   
4. There's work you hate and are bad at.

The world pretty soon decides that you must stop doing (3) and (4) and of course, you are delighted to stop doing (4). If you insist on doing (3) you are going to have to do it as a hobby.

Which leaves (1) and (2), the stuff you are good at, and either (1) love or (2) hate.

How much do you get paid to do (1), work you love and are good at? If you are a good negotiator, then plenty, because you are good at it, and demand lots of money.

But what if you are a bad negotiator? You jump at the job and accept bad money.

How much do you get paid to do (2)? Chances are you get paid good money. Why? Because you will only consent to do work you hate if you are paid good money. So, with no great effort, you hold out for good money (even if all you thought you were doing was Just Saying No), and, because you are good at the work, you get paid good money. Eventually, someone makes you an offer you can't refuse, and you take it.

So, if you are a bad negotiator, unable to repress your natural desire to do what you love and to avoid what you hate, you get paid bad money to do work you love, and good money to do work you hate.

Bad negotiators can have semi-good lives if they can afford to oscillate between work they love and work they hate. For a while, they do that. But, by the end of that period the only way they know to make good money is to do work they hate.

Then factor in the following circumstance. They switch to a life in which they then have to make continuously good money. Wife, kids, mortgage. Maybe an addiction to an expensive type-(3) hobby. Or maybe the life they lead just happens to get much more expensive. Clang. The gates of the prison slam shut. From then on they must do work they hate, continuously.

Result: An inexorable tendency for the "self-managed" classes to negotiate themselves into lives of permanent misery.

Is this a truth about the world? I think it is. Am I the first person to have noticed it? Surely not. Certainly not in so many words. But maybe I am the first person to have nailed this extremely widespread experience down into a simple law with a simple name.

(If so, hurrah! I love it. And how much was I paid? Bugger all.)

Comments and links please.

Professor Malcolm Law, a leading nutritionist in Britain, proposed a solution to obesity increasingly prevalent among children. As with most health professionals who are given a public platform in this country his proposal reflected the spirit of our statist age. Faced with evidence that Britons are fatter than ever and that increasing numbers of children are classified as clinically obese, he argued that politicians should seize the initiative and force food and drink manufacturers to reduce the size of products.

Professor Law believes that nothing less than an end to the '20 per cent extra free' culture will stave off the kind of nationwide obesity which in recent years has swept across America. He pointed to a study carried out last year which revealed that diners who ate a large meal at one sitting felt no more hungry after eating a smaller portion - if the plate was full, in most the cases the diner felt satisfied with their meal.

"Forty years ago the Government forced the tobacco companies to reduce the tar content of their cigarettes in the interests of public health. A similar approach needs to be taken today with ice creams, chocolate bars and other products."

Note the language that our learned friend uses: "If we don't cut down on the size of our portions we will find that in future we have a much higher incidence of obesity and heart disease. There is likely to be a large public health impact."

This is the kind of attitude that has kept the NHS (Britain's National Health Service) in place and indeed as long it exists the 'public health impact' will always be an argument for the health fascists. As long as the taxpayers are required to cover the cost of the consequences of other people's actions, that is, a state-funded health system having to pick up the bill for the treatment of diseases associated with obesity, the 'statist' wolves in 'public health' clothing can make demands on the government to control our eating (drinking, smoking, living etc) habits.

And we know that the state is not your friend.

Capitalism Magazine's article, Abortion Rights are Pro-Life, has convinced me that my position in the debate on abortion is weak. I used to take the view that abortion violated the rights of a child, and that therefore it was immoral (in most cases). On the other hand, I didn't believe the government should do anything about abortion. As Milton Friedman said: "The government solution to a problem is usually worse than the problem." The last things I want to happen are backstreet abortions, mothers killing themselves and so on. It would be morally acceptable for government to protect the rights of the fetus, but not practicable.

The fundamental shift in my thinking is that I no longer believe that a fetus has individual rights - or, at the very least, I'm not so sure as I once was. As the article says:

"what it actually is during the first trimester is a mass of relatively undifferentiated cells that exist as a part of a woman's body. If we consider what it is rather than what it might become, we must acknowledge that the embryo under three months is something far more primitive than a frog or a fish."

I'm very happy for fish and cows to be killed to provide me with food, and the reason is that I do not believe they have the same rights as humans. If a fetus is more primative than these, how can I justify saying its rights are greater?

It appears that not everyone in Britain cravenly rolls over when confronted by authority.

After being fined for a very trivial motoring 'offence', Leon Humphreys reponse was, 'fight me for it':

"A court has rejected a 60-year-old man's attempt to invoke the ancient right to trial by combat, rather than pay a £25 fine for a minor motoring offence."

Not surprisingly, his invitation was declined and the fine increased. Still, you've got to award the guy some brownie points for his sheer cojones.

I am a fairly regular reader of New Scientist for its take on fast breaking technological news. The magazine does have a downside though. It is very... well... representative of UK "liberal" politics.

I have just finished an item in the 29-Nov-2002 issue, "I see a long life and a healthy one..." about entrepreneurial companies making genetic testing available to the consumer. One would think a science magazine would be praising them for taking cutting edge science and bringing it to the consumer in an affordable and appealing way while potentially creating many high paying jobs for scientists in the UK, generating yet another path for massive capital infusion into genetic and health research and adding to UK exports to top it off?

Naaah.

I'll let these quotes from the article stand on their own:

British regulators were caught on the hop when Sciona's tests first went on sale. No one had foreseen that consumers would suddenly be able to learn something about their genes without a doctor's agreement, or even knowledge.

Another option would be to return control of genetic testing to the medical profession, banning companies from providing tests unless requested by a doctor. Companies say this is a step too far towards meidcal paternalism, and argue that people have the right to obtain genetic information about themselves. But [Helen] Wallace [of GeneWatch UK] disagrees: "We need to ensure proper consultation through GP's to ensure that people understand the implications of taking a test," she says

What could I possibly add?

Comrades! We must abolish the cult of the individual decisively, once and for all
- Nikita Khrushchev

The main plank in the National Socialist program is to abolish the liberalistic concept of the individual
- Adolf Hitler

At a time when our entire country is banding together and facing down individualism, the Patriots set a wonderful example, showing us all what is possible when we work together, believe in each other, and sacrifice for the greater good
- Ted Kennedy, 2002

There is the great, silent, continuous struggle: the struggle between the State and the Individual
- Benito Mussolini

We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about what is best for society
- Hillary Clinton, 1993

All our lives we fought against exalting the individual, against the elevation of the single person
- Vladimir Lenin

Thanks to James Knowles for compiling these quotes

The image above, which I took about an half an hour before writing this article, shows an employee of Britain's premier cancer hospital, The Royal Marsden, standing by the front door having a cigarette. This is a man who works in a cancer hospital and comes face to face with the savage realities of what his habit vastly increases his risk of contracting, on a daily basis.

This picture says something very profound about human nature. One thing is for sure, it says more than any lengthy exegesis I could write about the futility of trying to use the violence of law to mandate behaviour the state feels is in the regulated person's "best interests". Ponder that.

August 17, on this day in 1795 the slave known only as Tula and his friend Bastian Karpata started a violent revolt against their oppressors.

Mad cow disease (vCJD), foot-and-mouth, MMR, salmonella in eggs... the list goes on and on. The reality of life is that no one has a monopoly on insight, intelligence and information. Yet the state would have us believe that in their case when they say something, is somehow of a higher order compared to any other institution or individual. After all, it that was not the case, how could the fact the state backs its views with the threat of violence be justified?

Yet time and time again we are told in patronising tones that the state's experts know best, to the extent the state is prepared to after our body chemistry regardless of our individual wishes. We are told for years "Of course British Beef is safe to eat. Our scientists tell us there is nothing to worry about and reports to the contrary are just scare-mongering"... only to discover it can in fact kill us in the most ghastly manner by boring holes in our brains .

Likewise, the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine is still foisted on people by Britain's national Health Service in spite of worries about potentially horrendous side effects. Fortunately, the culture of deference to authority has been breaking down for quite some time as the state finds itself dis-intermediated from the flow of information to people. As yet more information casting doubt upon the safety of MMR comes to light, those who decided to shun the state's advice and err on the side of safety for their children are shown the wisdom of their ways.

Yet the important issue here is not 'if it better to fluoridate water' or 'should I eat more folic acid' or 'should I immunise my children with single jabs or the three-in-one' or 'should I wear a seat belt'?'... but 'Why do I tolerate the state and the experts on its payroll overriding my views on issues which relate directly to my body?'

The fact is fluoride probably does make for better teeth, folic acid for better health, MMR is usually safe and seat belts often save lives. But why on earth entrust these decisions to such a demonstrably fallible institution like the state? We all make mistakes, but the price of individual error is largely confined to the individual making the error or at least to his immediate family or associates... the price for the state making an error however is far wider and much harder to mitigate. When the advice the state gives us proves to be flawed, that can be disastrous, but they it actually makes its views on health as a force backed mandatory law, that should be regarded as intolerable.

In the case of MMR, single vaccines are privately available off the NHS, yet due to the fact people have their money appropriated to fund the NHS regardless of their wishes, the state reduces their ability to actually make meaningful choices independently. In much the same way, you make correctly deduce your children would be better educated either at home or at a private school, yet because the state takes your money and pours it into funding state schools anyway, it greatly reduces the real choice of less wealthy parents to actually opt out.

We are told we have all manner of free choices in the wonderful 'representative' democracy in which we live (pick any western country), yet as long as the state appropriates such a large chunk of the money we earn and depend upon to actualise our wishes, the reality is that for many, choice is an illusion as they struggle to manage what remains of their unapproapriated several property.

Related articles
It is a matter of private choice, not a matter of 'public' health, Tuesday, June 18, 2002
Libertarian 'Public Health'?, Tuesday, June 18, 2002
The totalitarian mindset, Sunday, June 16, 2002

I agree that Logan (see previous article) is almost certainly not a totalitarian. However I stand by my contention that there is indeed no such thing as 'public health' except for communicable diseases not because I disagree with his self evident statement that 'The field of public health is primarily concerned with prevention of disease' but that 'health' is not in fact legitimately 'public' except in the case of communicable disease (and possibly some mental illnesses as well) as it goes to who owns a person's body.

Most other health related matters are essentially only legitimately private rather than public matters. I have no problem whatsoever with anyone spending non-appropriated monies (such as a philanthropic fund) to preach high and low the virtues of folate in bread/low fat diets/wearing seat belts/not smoking/not taking crack cocaine/wearing sensible shoes/eat more fish/eat less fish/avoid mad cow beef or whatever the health scare de jour is... provided the people being preached to 'for their own good' are free to respond with a loud yawn and a rude gesture if they are so inclined. Yes, it is legitimate to 'educate, persuade, and cajole individuals to take folate'... and to induce (not mandate) companies to produce folate bread... but it is not legitimate to mandate it and it was that I was objecting to.

To mass medicate, such as putting folic acid in bread or fluoride in water in such a way that people cannot realistically avoid changes to their body chemistry, is to suggest that the state and its experts actually have some over-riding ownership of everyone's physical body and they may adjust its chemistry as the likes of Professor N.J. Wald and Professor A.V. Hoffbrand see fit. Now it that is not a totalitarian value then I don't know what is. The issue here is not health but who owns your body!

On 27^th of May, two eminent medical professors wrote a letter to the Daily Telegraph newspaper. Professor N.J. Wald and Professor A.V. Hoffbrand are seriously peeved that the recommendations of the advisory scientific committee on nutrition (COMA) are not going to be supported by the government. Those recommendations are to require by law that all bread in the United Kingdom is fortified with folic acid. This is already mandatory in the USA. In their letter the government funded professors wrote:

We believe that the decision of the Food Standards Agency [not to accept the COMA conclusions] is a mistake and illustrates the structural weakness in our ability to make rational public health decisions. The problem goes further than folic acid. It affects our whole approach to public health.

The contemporary view is that public health is essentially an issue of personal choice. In fact, the essence of public health is that it is a collective strategy that does not require personal choice (it is just there for all to benefit from). At present, individual decisions relating to public health [emphasis added] are a separate issue. We need an agency that is mandated to consider public health in a rational, evidence-based manner, with the authority to recommend policy to government and monitor its implementation. We are, regrettably, far from this paradigm.

We hope that ministers will ignore the view of the Food Standards Agency and implement the strategy proposed by COMA, the Governments's own scientific advisory committee

First off, let me say that I certainly agree that increasing ones intake of Folic acid has beneficial effects (I take a pill of the stuff myself every day). However that efficacy or otherwise of folic acid is utterly irrelevant. By what warped moral value does COMA and professors Wald and Hoffbrand have the right to decide that the entire population are going to be medicated by the state? There is only one person who has the right to decide if I will add chemicals to my body and that person is me. The only conceivable morally justified circumstances in which I might be medicated against my will is that of highly infectious dangerous diseases, on the theory that if I have smallpox (or whatever) then I would pose a clear threat to others.

Yet that is not the case here, and neither is it in the case of water fluoridation. Both are probably harmless and even beneficial yet it would seem that the morality of using the violence of the state to impose the judgement of technocrats like Wald and Hoffbrand does not even get a mention.

If because it is said to be objectively beneficial to force people to ingest certain chemicals, then why not also allow Wald and Hoffbrand to decide what the nations subjects will be required to eat and not eat? High fat low fibre MacDonald's burgers? Why not just make them illegal and require all restaurants to serve state approved menus set by COMA? If these professors have no moral problem forcibly medicating millions of people every day 'for their own good' then why not try to reduce the incidence of heart disease by shutting down the burger joints and pizza parlours? Except for communicable diseases, there is no such thing as 'public health'. My diet and supplements are none of Wald and Hoffbrand's damn business. How dare they try to put chemicals in MY body without my personal and explicit permission?

Of course the totalitarian mindset demonstrated by these people, rooted in collectivist hubris and moral relativism, sees choice itself as irrational... morality does not even come into it. Yet even on the amoral utilitarian basis under which such people operate and to which they would required us to submit our very body chemistry, we all know how well the state's retained scientists can be trusted regarding 'public health'. Look at how well they did regarding 'mad cow disease'.

You might want to take some time today, of all days, to check out The Centre for Freedom and Prosperity. If you need to know why you should look into the idea of organising your life around off-shore banking and business, then might I suggest you need look no further than what today means for your personal wealth... or at least the part of it you are permitted to keep.

Avoiding tax all together can be difficult for most people but you owe it to yourself to try and minimise the extent to which you are financing your own repression (and mine too). It is quite possible to do it by using the law against itself, though frankly whatever means you have to use when dealing with the state is fine by me. Any oath or declaration extracted under the threat of force has no moral basis whatsoever and breaking it is just a matter of deciding based on risk/benefit analysis, not morality.

Joshua Marshall has been discussing why he does not approve of dual-citizenship in several interesting posts. Not surprisingly I see it in very different terms to him. It is not one of those things that I feel I must 'take him to task' over because I do understand his view and realise that the root of our disagreement lies much further up the causal chain than the issue of 'citizenship'. I see our difference of opinion as springing not so much from error but rather from radically different views of the world itself. He wrote:

To my mind, this isn't a conservative view. It's a liberal one. One of the things that makes us all equal as citizens is the fundamental reality that makes us citizens: membership and allegiance to this political community, this country. That's what allows an immigrant citizen to be just as much an American as the guy whose ancestors came on the Mayflower.

He is quite right that the way he reasonably describes 'citizenship' is indeed 'liberal' (in the American sense of the word: i.e. what Europeans call 'democratic socialist'). The 'political community' Josh describes is not civil society at all. Civil society is something to which people like me have no problem belonging and which does not require the permission (citizenship) of the state thus to do. No, what Josh is talking about is 'The State' because state and society are not the same thing. That is because civil society is not a 'political' community at all (i.e. a community in which politics, which is entirely about the use of force, governs the interactions), but rather a community which works by affinity and economic interaction rather than legislation.

In a sense I suppose it's not a very big deal. But doesn't this trivialize what it should mean to be a citizen of one of those countries? It's sounds less like a civic, national identity than a sort of heritage knickknack or heirloom. Citizenship isn't just about having a standing right of residency or something you have because you have some attachment or family connection to a particular country. I think it's something more than that -- particularly in the context of American citizenship.

Josh is also quite right that dual-citizenship trivialises what it does mean to be a citizen of one of those countries. His objections mirror those of Marx with his disdain for 'rootless cosmopolitans'. When a person sees political rather than social interaction as the core of society, then a person who stands outside, indeed above, the political structure in question is surely a threat to the authority of the political order. Yet globalization, technology and trade are indeed inexorably producing a larger and more culturally influential cosmopolitan class, not just a 'Jet Set' of people who work in banking and broking, but also a more broadly based group who have 'emigrated' yet retain close and active ties across the oceans in ways that were previously either too expensive or technologically impossible to maintain. In past times, a family moving from India or Jamaica or China to a new life in Britain or North America or Australia, would have only the slow and remote link of written mail sent by ship to stay in contact.

However in this era of global communications, it is a simple matter of picking up a mobile (cell) phone whilst out shopping to call your similarly equipped cousin 'in the old country'. I have myself moved continents several times in my life and yet have never thought of myself as an 'immigrant'. It was just that I moved to a place, acquired a house, worked there for as long as it suited me, and then... went somewhere else because that suited me better now. Britain, Ireland, South Africa, India, USA, Canada... so what? Each has their own cultures yet that Anglosphere meta-culture (and not just the language) is more similar than dissimilar on so many levels.

So when Josh says "It's sounds less like a civic, national identity than a sort of heritage knickknack or heirloom", well yeah... that really is all that we are talking about. A heritage knickknack. The Brits with their flavour of popular culture, Marmite, localised curries, irony intensive humour... the Yanks with their u starved spelling, shopping malls in the middle of nowhere, high fat diets, dynamic business culture... these are interesting and also trivial because compared to the shared cultural connections and similarities that are Anglosphere in nature and essentially trans-national, these other things are just the result of localised quirk rather than the rapidly evolving commonality of assumptions of the emerging cosmopolitanism.

Although I have mentioned before on this blog that I reject the moral validity of the very concept of 'citizenship', as a practical matter I think that because the state likes to insist on the importance of citizenship, well, the more the merrier then. The Smorgasbord approach to nationality is very appealing to 'rootless cosmopolitans' of the rapidly developing Anglosphere meta-culture, for exactly the reasons why Marx (and presumably Joshua) dislike it. Gaining the perspectives of not just Britain or America but Britain and America... and Israel and China and Slovakia and India and Croatia and Italy and Australia and Turkey... this is the 'cosmopolitanisation' process at work and also does wonders to export Anglosphere values of severalty, contract, technological civilisation and civil society to the rest of the world via the web of family and relationships, rather that the directed, force backed arbitration of what 'culture' should be that exclusionary states try to impose.

American civil society is something I admire and which spreads the values conducive to liberty as no other society currently does... but American citizenship particularly (more than any other advanced nation's citizenship) is rather like being branded like livestock. To have that brand means that, unlike almost every other state on earth, the US government will always claim a pecuniary interest in the private property that you acquire, even if you live outside the USA and make your living outside the USA and keep your assets outside the USA. Unlike other countries, which by and large lose interest in you the moment you step outside their borders, the USA actually makes itself your super-owner. The USA do not just claim a territorial monopoly on the means of force, it actually claims to own part of your labour regardless of where you are. It owns your labour not because you are in America, but because you are a citizen. That is the reality of how the US state actually sees its people (i.e. that citizens are the property of the state) even though that is not how most US citizens perceive the nature of the 'relationship'. Yet that is what I think the truth is beyond the perception: The USA does not just control land and what people do on that land (all states do that), it actually claims ownership of the anointed inhabitants themselves regardless of where they are.

The basis of the club and our membership in it is our fundamental equality. And the essence of that equality, as I see it, is that we've all thrown in our lots together. Some of us who were born here do it implicitly others who are newcomers did explicitly. But we've all committed ourselves to this group, this enterprise, this club, this nation. If some of us are American citizens and others of us are citizens of this and another country then we're not quite equal anymore. The basis of our equality and citizenship is challenged.

Indeed. But then I do not regard myself as 'equal' to other people. And nor does anyone else if they are being sensible. I regard myself as interacting within the frames of reference of a society and that, the shared understandings, the common axioms, the cultural shorthand...that is the basis for my ability to engage fellow members of this society, not some coloured bit of cloth or weird hand-over-heart declaiming and certainly not some damn bureaucrat or judge's imprimatur of 'citizenship'. Nor have I 'thrown my lot in' with anyone nor given them the right to presume that I have. When the state requires me to give my monies to others in tax, if I do so it is the vote of force, not some implied social contract. I have thrown my lot in with my friends and business associates, the ones I choose, and their citizenship means less than nothing to me when I judge the value of my relationship to them.

In much the same way that if I ever marry again, I will not even tell the state because I refuse to accept it is anyone else's business, so too I urge people to regard their passports as an imposition, not a privilege. Treat your national passport as a way of getting to stand in the shorter line at the airport and not some sacred document. You do not have to be a citizen to be a member of a society, regardless of what the state says. If I can find a way to marketize citizenship, that might be my next entrepreneurial venture. Hmm... maybe 'Free American Passport with all purchases of fitted kitchens over $5,000: order a fitted Italian marble bathroom at the same time and we will throw in a Italian citizenship and 1,000 Frequent Flyer Miles!'...

Yes, I like the sound of that.

Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign
- J.S. Mill, On Liberty

Charles Dodgson takes aim and fires at Libertarians and our ideas which he clearly regards as ill-conceived and even harmful.

Mr.Dodgson uses an article from the Boston Phoenix exposing the slave trade in Pakistan.

"The bidding starts quickly. About 15 minutes into the bidding, one of the buyers asks for an inspection. The elderly woman removes the girls tunic, fingers the childs breasts, and then shines a flashlight into her open mouth to show that she has a good set of teeth. Bidding resumes with a certain intensity; some of the men can be seen rubbing themselves."

The article paints a truly pitiful vista and I share Mr.Dodgson's revulsion. What I do not share, though, is his rather strange conclusion that this is the kind of thing that Libertarians approve of:

"Libertarians argue for a society in which people solve their problems by making whatever commercial bargains they can, and the government takes an enforcement role, if that. The more radical among them suggest that society would be best off without any government at all, with nothing but private trade to regulate their interactions."

Not quite right, of course, but it is an indication of where Mr.Dodgson is going wrong and he is definitely going wrong even according the article he has used as his source which, further down, advises us:

"Precious few Americans know anything about the history of Pakistan, much less that ul-Haq’s reforms consolidated conservative Islam’s stranglehold on the national imagination. Fewer still know that, in the process of imposing Islamic law on the land, he created a culture of servitude for the poor."

Ah, that explains it then. Would all those Libertarians who are going around advocating the imposition of Conservative Islamic Law please stop doing it because you are distinctly off-message and giving people like Mr.Dodgson the wrong impression. Thank you.

Any genuine Libertarians could tell Mr.Dodgson that our ideas are based on the sovereign rights of individual human beings. A concept which, in both theory and practice, may lead to all manner of interesting and even exotic consequences, all of which are the very antithesis of slavery.

It is often said that a little learning is a dangerous thing. I don't know about that and I don't think that Mr.Dodgson is a man of little learning. The rest of his posting is devoted to taking our Johnny Student to task for his interpretations of the US Civil War in a lengthy rebuttal which appears to be both well-researched and informative.

No, I prefer to think that its a little misconception that is a dangerous thing and, of course, a big misconception is a really dangerous thing. Yes, I 'm happier with that.

...very different things to different people. Let us consult the Oxford English Dictionary:

patriot /n.a person who is devoted to and ready to support or defend his or her country. ../patriotic adj. //patriotically adv. //patriotism n. [F patriote f. LL patriota f. Gk. patriotes f. patros of one's father f. pater patros father]

Of course this also rather depends on what you mean by 'country'

country n. (pl.-ies) 1 a the territory of a nation with its own government; a State. b a territory possessing its own language, people, culture, etc. [...] 3 the land of a person's birth or citizenship; a fatherland or motherland.

And therein lies one of the problems with Patriotism. When some one says 'I am a patriot', what the hell does that actually mean? Let's take me, for example. My mother was American and I have lived about one quarter of my life in the USA. My father was British and I have lived a little under half my life here. For purely accidental reasons, I was actually born in the Netherlands. I feel both/neither British and/or American. So much for the complicated heredity and biology. Now for some ideology: I personally reject as illegitimate any function of the state which is not related to the defence of the individual liberty of people within their area of control, within a broad reasonable definition of those terms. I see the State as, at best, a provider of a service (security) in much the same way as I see the Pepsi-Cola Beverage Company as a provider of cans of fizzy brown liquid. I do not accept the very notion of 'citizenship' as I regard that as tantamount to denying me free association with non-citizens and implies the State somehow owns me in some way.

So can I be 'patriotic'?

To the State? Absolutely not. Try to make me pledge allegiance to Old Glory or the Union Jack or the Tricolour with the intention of extracting an admission of loyalty to the state and I will set it on fire instead. And if it is on a tee shirt saying "Try to burn these colors asshole", the wearer might just get their wish. Try to conscript me and the state will discover that I am not a pacifist and have no problem with using force against someone who tries to impose servitude upon me: starting with the guy who tries to serve call up papers on me.

And yet...

I live in London at the moment but I have 'Old Glory' displayed in my front window for all to see. Try walking down Upper Cheyne Row in Chelsea and you will see which is my house. It has been there since September 12^th. I do indeed feel an affinity for what James Bennett aptly calls The Anglosphere. I regard myself as a member of a cosmopolitan, English speaking global community, a civil society far greater than any mere nation state. For all its flaws, that extended society is the best hope for freedom and liberty the world has ever known and that is something worth defending. Unlike British society, which has a myriad cultural and regional symbols redolent with meaning, only Old Glory, the Stars and Stripes, the Star Spangled Banner, truly represents not just the American state but also American society, warts and all. Truth is I prefer the Gadsden flag (see side bar of this blog) but most people would not know what it means. And so that is why the Stars and Stripes is stuck in my window for all to see. It was not just the people of New York who were wounded, it was all of us and that is a point I think well worth making publicly.

So is that 'patriotism'? Opinions vary.

Last night I was in lovely Prague but tonight I am in more exciting but less lovely Belgrade. So let me tear myself away from my new biMac «hehehe» and give you a Balkan perspective on the articles by Dale Amon and Perry de Havilland regarding hairy John Walker in Afghanistan.

As a person who is not from what Perry interestingly calls the 'Anglosphere', maybe I see this matter of John Walker slightly differently. In what used to be Yugoslavia, people split along largely ethnic lines when the civil war ripped us apart. Yet many people made decisions to not let an accident of birth choose who they stood by. There were Serbs who joined the Croatian HV Army, there were Croatians who supported the Krajina Serbs, there were Croatians who joined the Bosnian 'Muslim' Armia rather than the Croatian HVO. There were Serbs in Yugoslavia who supported Milosevic and the paramilitaries and others who opposed them. Still others everywhere decided to support 'none of the above' and either refused to take up arms against anyone or moved abroad.

It seems to me, a person who turns his back on their ethnic origin and joins with another culture during a conflict is either a person of principle or a traitor. Which you are judged to be is only decided when it is all over. So for example, Croatians who supported the Serbian regime in Krajina are 'traitors' and Serbs who supported Tudjman's Croatia are 'principled'.

Why? Because if anyone can be said to have emerged the 'winner' in the Balkan Wars, it is Croatia. It is that simple. As the US has won the war in Afghanistan, it will be decided that Walker is a traitor. The winners make the rules and they write the history books. The winner is always right. Perry takes a position of pure and very good libertarian principle in this matter, but what Dale says is what will actually happen: the US will throw him in jail regardless for exactly the reasons he says.

It may not be fair or just or moral or even reasonable. But it is the truth. That is how the world works.

Dale's points are well made, particularly the one that when Walker joined the Taliban, he could hardly have reasonably expected to find himself at war with the United States! I have a slightly different take on it, however.

I think many of the comments regarding the dismal Walker begs the question of why is he being regarded as having any particular affinity or duty of loyalty to the USA at all? Just because he originated from there, how does that somehow make him irretrievably beholden? People come from all over the world and emigrate to America and the US has no problem with them 'becoming Americans'. So why is it so hard to see the process in reverse?

For goodness sake, if going to Afghanistan and joining the Taliban does not constitute the complete and utter repudiation of not just the United States but the entire western world, then I guess I don't know what does. When he was captured, as far as I know he was certainly not yelling "I'm an American! I wanna see the nearest American consulate!" Far from it. There should be no expectation that he still owes the US anything or the US owes him anything.

If it turns out he is a member of Al Qaeda, then he is still very much our enemy and should be treated in the same manner as we treated captured members of the SS or Gestapo or Nazi Party after WWII. If he is just a member of the defeated Taliban's army, as seems likely, then just question him and then dump his sorry arse back in the hell hole we found him in. Even if he was involved in the death of CIA man Mike Spann, so what? Walker was a soldier with the Taliban and we were the Taliban's openly declared enemy. People get killed in war. That is what soldiers do. Big deal.

I do not think Walker is 'just a misguided kid'. I think he is a misguided adult who made his choices freely and should reap the consequences of supporting a vile regime in Afghanistan. But his crimes are again the Afghan people who suffered under the Taliban, not the US. Unless he turns out to be a member of Al Qaeda, leave it to to the Afghans to deal with him.

It's a hard call without really knowing what Mr. Walker was up to and why. There is little doubt in my mind that he should be tried for Treason; whether or not he is convicted, whether or not there were extenuating circumstances is a matter for the courts to decide. The fact that he was found where he was found is rather damning evidence but is not "beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt".

What should be done with him if he is found guilty? That again is a matter for the courts. We don't know what he actually did so how can we decide his fate from in front of our comfortable computer screens? For all we know he could have been dragged along by events and lain cowering in the basement wondering at his own idiocy. Or perhaps he went to fight with the Taliban against the Northern Alliance never imagining he could end up fighting his own country. After all, on September 10th how many of us would have considered US forces in Afghanistan as even the remotest possibility? If that were the case he is a soldier of fortune who got caught up in the wrong war at the wrong time. A few years in prison and a slap on the wrist would suffice.

Of course as Glenn Reynolds has suggested a number of times, we could take it as given he has chosen to give up his US Citizenship. We could leave him to the tender mercies of his chosen enemies, the Northern Alliance. An article about his interrogation in Ananova seems to indicate the CIA men were thinking along these lines just before "the balloon went up":

On the tape, Walker is seen being brought to the two CIA men for interrogation. Spann is then seen saying to his colleague: "I explained to him what the deal is" and then tells Walker: "It's up to you." Dave then says: "The problem is, he's got to decide if he wants to live or die. If he wants to die, he's going to die here. "Or he's going to f****** spend the rest of his short f****** life in prison. It's his decision, man. We can only help the guys who want to talk to us. We can only get the Red Cross to help so many guys.

If he was there specifically to fight against America, there are no options. He should be put away for a very long time. And if he was actively assisting the al Qaeda... well that is another kettle of sharks entirely. He would, and should, face the death penalty.

Fortunately we have the right President for it.