There is one thing more wicked in the world than the desire to command, and that is the will to obey.
– W.K. Clifford (1845 – 1879)
|
|||||
|
In the Daily Telegraph of Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007 there is the following letter from Lesie Watson of Swansea (in Wales).
If the report is true Lesie, it means that there is still sometimes a reason to be proud to be English. July 3rd, 2007 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
 The most invidious part of ‘health authoritarianism’ is that it takes a very reasonable aspect of a state’s responsibility, that of defending against the truly collective threat of infectious plagues, and debases it to interfere with non-infectious diseases which only pose a risk to people who voluntarily enter private property where certain very obvious conditions pertain. And so we have the smoking ban on enclosed non-residential private property in Britain being imposed by classifying private property as ‘public places’. Never mind that you do not have to enter that privately owned property if you do not like the smell of it, or that the owners should be able to exclude people they want to exclude (such as smokers or for that matter, non-smokers) or that employees who do not like the working conditions can quit and go work somewhere else. No, the political class loves the idea of eliminating emergent civil society and extending political control ever deeper into people’s lives (this is usually described as making things “more democratic”), and the idea that private property is actually private is an intolerable obstacle to those whose world view is based on violence backed control of the lives of others. Many people have a deep seated psychological need to see others controlled, not because they are genuinely threatened by them but because they simply get off on controlling other people. The world is full of curtain twitching busy bodies who feel enlivened by calling down the power of the state on those of whom they disapprove for no other reason that it ’empowers’ them (it used to be ‘queers’ who got reported, now it is different types of nonconformists). No totalitarian system that has ever come to power has been able to sustain itself for long without appealing to this all too common psychologically defective demographic, relying on denouncement and informers to perpetuate a political order. And the only way to resist is to, well, resist. Find ways not to obey the rules. Subvert the meaning of statutes. Do not accept the ‘rightness’ of the prevailing bigotries. Speak out against the orthodoxies of though that underpin the control freaks. Call them what they are. Just find ways to be awkward, find ways not to cooperate, and confront those who assume they on on the moral higher ground and pour contempt on their world view. Just do not meekly cooperate. July 2nd, 2007 | 37 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is a story told of more than one matinée idol, and no doubt actionable, so let us call him The Star. The Star was rumoured in a big Hollywood prostitution case to have been one of the most regular [I almost wrote “biggest”] clients of the latest martyred madam. An interviewer caught up with him. – “Mr Star, is it true you hired call-girls.” It seems our madly interfering government now wants to police our private lives a bit more closely, and thereby make them a bit riskier. According to The Times:
A marriage or civil partnership is a clear, deliberate, decision. I don’t think the state should control the form of family that is possible, but at least those particular controlled forms are optional, and formally delineated. This opens the way for officialdom to delineate and the courts to investigate any relationship for an actionable degree of intimacy, and for divorce lawyers to open a whole new field of speculative actions. Divorce lawyers will just love the idea that there’s no minimum length of ‘intimate relationship’ involved, and that unilateral reliance by one party can create a liability for the other. And they’ve been agitating for it for years (e.g. in Solicitors Family Law Association, Fairness for Families: Proposals for Reform on the Law on Cohabitation, 2000 – sorry, can’t find that online). It would be an impressive feat on behalf of the state to make both marriage less attractive (some of its appurtenances – for those who want them – would come free) and at the same time to make sex and friendship outside marriage more risky – and possibly more risky the more affluent you are. It might do some good of course, undoubtably there are people who are mistreated by partners or mistaken about their rights. But to punish every other single person in Britain for the cruelty or ignorance of a few is an appalling way to go. The parade of motivated winners tells you what you need to know: mad clingy girlfriends, scrounging scrubs of boyfriends, family lawyers, smug marrieds, investigators, officialdom, and prurient tabloids. I can see a spin-off gain for the proprietors of anonymous, deniable, premises for lovers’ assignations. (Brighton?) Perhaps the Argentinian or Japanese speciality hotel businesses would get emulated here. But that would still be risky for the rich and famous. The only people certain to come out with improved credit (in both senses): proper, professional, prostitutes. June 11th, 2007 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
Some people get disgusted – I guess it is the ‘yuck!’ factor – at the idea that a person can sell his or her own kidney for money, for example. We seem to live in an era of warped values about the donation and use of human body parts, as this article in Reason makes clear. It appears that in some jurisdictions, just about everyone is allowed to make money from the business of using human tissue and bone for medical purposes – except the people from whom the tissue and bone is taken (I think we can take it as read at a liberal blog like this that killing people for their body parts is wrong). Virginia Postrel, the US-based writer, underwent surgery to give one of her own kidneys to a friend and made sure said friend is alive today (what a great woman Virginia is). As a classical free marketeer, Postrel does not understand why it is so terrible that such acts should be done for financial gain. She has a long and typically thoughtful piece on the subject here. She responds to those who fear that poor or gullible people might be led into selling their body parts out of financial desperation, but that is an argument about curbing poverty, not reducing human freedom. Ultimately, I own my body, and not the state, not the rest of the UK population, not Tony Blair, not god or the Great Cheese Monster in the sky. Of course, a “market in organs” may attract shysters and unscrupulous doctors, but as the Reason article I alluded to makes clear, there are plenty of shysters in the system now. Of course, in a country like Britain where a lot of the population drink like fish, it is debatable whether anyone would want to buy our kidneys, or even take them for free. April 24th, 2007 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Edmonton Aging Symposium was held at the University of Alberta last weekend, and a number of important anti-aging scientists attended , such as Aubrey de Grey and Gregory Stock. The Symposium discussed the prospect of developing and implementing many anti-aging technologies, with the Methuselah Foundation and the Supercentenarian Research Foundation providing positive positions on the technology. The Symposium featured a debate between Gregory Stock and Daniel Callahan, a bioethicist from the Hastings Centre for Bioethics, on the virtues and vices of anti-aging technology. Callahan’s bioethics appears to be a code for denying individuals choice on the grounds that society has more urgent goals:
Gregory Stock provided a reported response that did not reject the bioethicist’s assertion that research funds, usually paid for by us, be redirected to societal goals:
These incidental benefits would be byproducts of the research. Yet, we should be grateful that anti-aging research is tarred as immoral by bioethicists. Research into lifestyles and prevention is a code for science that justifies directed diet and behaviour. This will ensure that controls are placed on those behaviours, foods and enjoyable activities which conflict with the list of societal goals, as decided by the state. Supporting anti-aging research is a private and public good. April 6th, 2007 | 40 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has increasingly wielded its regulatory powers in recent years, as infertility treatments have become more common and diverse. Some of the regulator’s decisions have been criticised as arbitrary or inappropriate, using an ethical calculus to coerce parental choice when it is not required. Their latest intervention is controversial, though based upon clinical outcomes. At present, multiple embryos are implanted in the womb to increase the probability of a successful birth. This has potentially undesirable consequences if the health of the mother or the children is impaired. Studies have monitored infertility treatments and demonstrated these drawbacks.
This should be viewed as additional information that clinicians would take into account when advising their patients and making a diagnosis or a recommendation. If the regulator had drawn attention to these studies and noted that inspectors would wish to see these taken into account during diagnosis, no observer could criticise such diligence. However, we live in New Labour Britain, home of targets and micromanagement:
This is a decision that should rest between the doctor and the patient. If the patient is aware of the risks and responsibilities, they may then take the difficult decision required in this matter. It is not up to HFEA to usurp clinical practice and private judgement in this matter. April 1st, 2007 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
I read the headline of John Lloyd’s article in the FT Magazine this week, and I read it again, and again. Every time it seemed to make less sense than before:
Regardless of what it is or is not right for the government to do, state intrusion means something is no longer a matter of private morality, or morality at all. It is certainly not private, once the state is involved. And regulation displaces morality. The capacity for choice is required for morals to play a role. Reading the article was even more perplexing. To the extent Lloyd’s piece is about the Catholic/gay-adoption argument, it is as tedious as most of the vacuous discussion on the question. What engaged and enraged me were his premises. Mr Lloyd in this discussion treats the state as a kind of super person, possessed of its own opinions and moral sense, and that hectoring people who do not conform to those pseudo-desires is legitimate.
False dichotomy and all, this is the authentic voice of the New Labour branch of civic republicanism: ‘citizenship’, which is to say personhood, defined by duty to the state-collective. He notes entirely accurately that:
The square brackets there stand for the omission of two and three-quarter paragraphs, so apologists for the New Labour point of view may object that the last clause refers only to removing some disadvantages from homosexuals. But I am not being unfair. Ensuring that society as a whole observes the new order is the key to the project. Despite there being other theories of the welfare state that I and other Samizdatistas might reject but that are less repugnant to human autonomy, we are now offered a Hobson’s choice: be treated as drone in the sense of a worthless idler – or become a drone in the Borg sense, actually not a fertilising drone but a sterile ergate, emptied of all capacity for moral choice. What is the eGovernmental equivalent of soft hands, marking the unproductive drones out for hounding to destruction of their dronish identity? Inadequate contribution. Failure to comply with whatever compliance is required. You will not will incorrectly. You will comply. February 11th, 2007 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
In Australia, the federal government’s propaganda tends to condescendingly heckle citizens about various issues that are pretty much always best left to the individual’s discretion – not unlike the output from NuLabour’s Ministry of Truth – similar beast, albeit with a more sinister bark. So in Britain you get this (probably one of the more egregious examples), and in Australia, this (ditto). On balance, the naff Australian stuff is the lesser of two evils, but it is still deeply irritating, patronising bilge. Take the abovementioned ‘understanding money really pays off’ campaign the government is running via billboards and television commercials. Thanks so much for spending my tax money on delivering that sterling piece of advice – let me just make a note of it on my invisible typewriter. The most wasteful entity in society is wasting more of our money by telling us to mind our pennies! That is rich – even if we are not. Still, it is exactly the sort of hypocritical, wealth-destroying enterprise one would expect the government to embark upon. However, it is pretty depressing when your (private sector) employer gets in on the act. I arrived home today to find the company I work for have decided to post me a brochure titled ‘Safety At Home’. Apparently “every day is Safety Day – think safety 24/7”. It is full of handy tips along the lines of “don’t hold any part of your body over a boiling kettle – steam can be hotter than water” and “read labels before use…take notice of cautions and warnings” and “try not to stick your head in the oven when the gas is on but not lit – unless you feel suicidal. If you feel only slightly suicidal, keep reading this brochure and you will want to get it over and done with in no time at all.” And in the foreword from our CEO:
Where does a nice big steaming hot mug of “fuck the hell off!” flung at your nether regions fit into your Safety at Home recommendations, Mr CEO? And get the hell out of my house while you are at it, you finger-wagging ponce. Shareholders bankroll enough useless expenditure via the taxation system as things are; corporate nannies are not welcome. Give us our money back. January 30th, 2007 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
… on TV programmes he (quite sensibly) does not watch. Her Majesty’s Government was actually doing something about Big Brother. Granting him more arbitrary power. The Telegraph’s legal editor explains:
Read the whole thing here. The Bill itself is here. Observers of government will notice that it is, unusually for important legislation, being introduced in the Lords. I would welcome any theories why. January 18th, 2007 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
Among the useful tasks accomplished on the Christmas visit to my mother’s house was dealing with (i.e. disposing of) most of my old correspondence. They say that the difference between a radical and a conservative is 20 years. So what should I make of this?
Though there are some ways my opinions have evolved (I no longer accept, even for rhetorical purposes the mirror-magic conception of “organised crime”, for example), I am still making the same point to a deaf establishment 20 years later. So, very nearly, is George. Is there no mellowing path for a libertarian? Am I a singualar case of arrested development? Or is the generational reversal thesis sense when applied to musical and fashion-sense, nonsense on social and political questions? The OR may not be exclusive, folks. December 28th, 2006 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
I must say that I like the style of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Rather than playing the game with mealy mouthed statements so typical of a lot of think-tanks, they push their ideas with a catchy boot-to-the-goolies like “Smoking is healthier than fascism”. Not surprisingly this is available on a tee-shirt from those most righteous pranksters, Bureaucrash. I feel a purchase coming on… December 4th, 2006 | 41 comments - (Comments are closed)
|
   |
||||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||