The academics see the rise of anti-politics as a problem. The inherent premise being that more politics will be good for us. Therefore the low popular opinion of politicians makes political action more difficult. Guido thinks this is a good thing, that the low esteem in which politicians are held is reasonable, people have made a more realistic appraisal of the nature of those who seek to rule over us. Politicians complain that they feel beset by the media and hostile voters because 72% of people see them as self-serving. Good. People should not be afraid of politicians, politicians should be afraid of the people.
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I have never read or taken an interest in Harry Potter, I only bought one such book as a requested present for a young family member, for which I apologise. However, J K Rowling, Labour donor, renowned author and Cybernat 5-minute hate subject, has gone up in my estimation as she stood up for Donald Trump’s right to visit the UK, echoing the attitude of Voltaire.
We know what that destination is. She goes on.
Such a pity about the working, as my maths teachers used to say, but positive sentiments in favour of liberty and openness to debate are welcome and refreshing, albeit depressingly scarce in public debate. May 18th, 2016 | 72 comments - (Comments are closed)
 So, the EU is primarily a political project. Just think about it. The mantra of the Remain camp is “to trade with Europe you have to be part of it”. But this is bizarre. Nobody says “to trade with China you have to be part of it”. That would be very scary. They don’t even say “to trade with the USA, you have to be part of it”. Nobody suggests accepting the US constitution or the dollar as part of the price to trade with America. May 12th, 2016 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
The left has never properly come to terms with its past, and has never fully accounted for its history of anti-Semitism (which today goes under the guise of ‘anti-Zionism’). As the critic and filmmaker Jamie Palmer has written: ‘Soviet anti-Semitism was diligently and uncritically reproduced in the communist press and thus made its way into the ideological bloodstream of the left’. Unlike the very public repudiation of racism on the mainstream right, no similar detoxification has taken place in the ‘bloodstream’ of the left. Properly rooting out anti-Semitism begins by challenging fanatical anti-Zionism. It is perfectly possible to oppose the human rights abuses of the Israeli government without completely dismissing the Zionist project, which in its most basic interpretation means simply the preservation of Israel as a Jewish state. If the anti-Zionists wish to be consistent, they should be equally scathing about other movements for ethnic and cultural self-determination – such as that of the Kurds or the Palestinians themselves. The fact they rarely are should worry anyone calling themselves a progressive. – James Bloodworth, International Business Times. I probably share very different political and economic views from the author, but he is right to call out the vileness of those who defame Jews. Ken Livingstone really is a scumbag. Being a libertarian, I defend the right of people to say what they want, however offensive or daft, but it is worth pointing out that much of the Left and certainly people such as Livingstone have made part of their careers out of criminalising “hate speech”, so it would be deliciously ironic if such lowlifes were criminally prosecuted for some of this nonsense. In so many ways, the Left resembles a circular firing squad. April 28th, 2016 | 46 comments - (Comments are closed)
The contrast between the behaviour of the emergency services in both disasters (and note Hillsborough resulted in more immediate deaths than Chernobyl) is striking. The firefighters of the Ukraine are heroes in my book. To tackle a nuclear meltdown knowing this is probably “it” takes true grit. To stand on the half-way line whilst 96 people are crushed to death just a few tens of metres from you takes true cuntery. The Hillsborough inquiry verdict and the anniversary of Chernobyl provide a very stark contrast in the human spirit. I dedicate this post to the firefighters, And I condemn South Yorkshire Police. – NickM April 27th, 2016 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
Long before Chavez gained power in Caracas, Sanders expressed support for the suppression of dissent and censorship of the press implemented in his long-favored models of socialist Shangri-La: Cuba and Nicaragua. The Sandinista regime’s restrictions on the independent newspaper La Prensa “makes sense to me” he commented at the time, even as he sparred with Vermont’s Burlington Free Press over his Castro fanboy-ism. April 26th, 2016 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
Soon after the first Sears catalog was mailed in 1888, the catalog began to offer an astonishing array of goods to a population whose shopping had previously been limited to the local general store. Many such stores closed, unable to compete on price or selection. Yet, American prosperity increased. April 24th, 2016 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
The frat and sorority scene didn’t appeal to me at all. Back when I was at the University of Michigan, I went to a single frat party, encountered a bunch of drunk assholes, and never went to another. Wow. Imagine that: All the way back in the 80s, too — a young woman on campus making her own decisions about what works or doesn’t work for her…without assistance from the government or calls to discipline anyone. Radical, huh? – The ever magnificent Amy Alkon. April 21st, 2016 | 40 comments - (Comments are closed)
The referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU has thrown many things into sharp relief. It has made more visible the fraying of the Tory Party that has been brewing for a few decades now. It has demonstrated that the politics of fear is everywhere, being peddled by both the Leave and Stay campaigns, and even being openly celebrated by one pro-EU columnist on the basis that ‘fear alone has a purity you can trust’. But most strikingly, the referendum campaign has confirmed the death, or at least utter exhaustion, of a left that believes in democracy, in change, in people. In throwing its weight behind the Stay campaign, having historically been suspicious of the EU, the left has completed its journey from demanding democracy to supporting technocracy. April 20th, 2016 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
King is aware that monetary policy has been used to provide short-term gains at the cost of long-term pain – what he calls the “paradox of policy”. Despite extremely low rates, the global economy remains out of kilter. It’s a pity that King never considers Friedrich Hayek’s early work which suggests that economies become unbalanced when central bankers impose an inappropriate interest rate. But as King buys into the “savings glut” story, he doesn’t believe that monetary policymakers are to blame. For the man in charge of the Bank of England when UK bank Northern Rock went down, this is a convenient if not quite satisfactory conclusion. April 11th, 2016 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
Where did Mises stand on the issue of discrimination? He distinguished two kinds: that extending from choice and that imposed by law. He favored the former and opposed the latter. He went even further. He said that a policy that forces people against their will creates the very conditions that lead to legal discrimination. In his view, even speaking as someone victimized by invidious discrimination, it is better to retain freedom than build a bureaucracy that overrides human choice. “In an unhampered market society there is no legal discrimination against anybody,” he wrote. “Everyone has the right to obtain the place within the social system in which he can successfully work and make a living. The consumer is free to discriminate, provided that he is ready to pay the cost.” – Jeffrey Tucker quoting and discussing Von Mises in an article called Must a Jewish Baker make a Nazi cake? April 8th, 2016 | 38 comments - (Comments are closed)
The other day, driving around Liverpool (a fine but faded city), I heard on the radio a short item looking back on the experiment of a 1980s military government in Nigeria, whereby the General in charge, President Buhari (later to become a civilian, elected President, but only after being overthrown and jailed in another coup) had got his deputy to launch a ‘War Against Indiscipline‘ or ‘WAI‘ (why?) in March 1984.
This was, like most government ‘wars’ these days, directed against its own populace. But it was one with immodest objectives such as to get officials not to take bribes (rather than getting rid of officials’ jobs), stopping students cheating in exams, and getting people to learn the national anthem, not merely to get people not to fight for a place on a bus. I wonder what government’s programme inspired it? It seems to have a touch of a Lenin Saturday. Some elements had a slightly comical aspect, such as making civil servants turn up for work on time (anyone see that as a good idea?) with soldiers making them do star jumps in front of colleagues if they were late for work. Someone also named an album after the WAI, so it has some resonance in popular culture. There were others programmes too, a ‘clean-up’ campaign to improve hygiene, which I’m told persists to this day. I had not heard about this ‘war’ previously, in the 1980s a military government in Nigeria seemed to be about as regular as the US Congress hiking the Federal debt limit, it was more ‘when’ not ‘if’. Nigerian acquaintances and a family member doing business there had told me plenty of grim stories about the behaviour of police and soldiers in Nigeria as it was, I had not realised that a whole new justification for State thuggery had been dreamt up. Of course, there was the implementation, the basic idea seems to have been that the common soldiery would go around the country and would ensure that the civilian population ‘behaved themselves’. What, might you think, could possibly go wrong?
So was patriotism the first resort of a scoundrel? The radio programme reports beatings being handed out by soldiers. The ‘war’ ended when another faction in the military overthrew Buhari, and the effort at expressly changing popular behaviours by force was more or less at an end. One might hope that the example of this dirigiste thinking, which I now see faintly echoed in old Labour Party proposals for yobs to be marched to cash machines by police in order to pay an on-the-spot fine, might be enough to make those who seek to change behaviour (other than aggression) by force think again.
Impractical, is it not also tyrannical? Is living with other people’s annoying behaviour (when not affecting you or your property) that hard for people? Let people be, if they see a harmony of rightly-understood interests in queueing and civil behaviour, then fine. If not, then that is how they are. A government ‘war’ isn’t going to be the right answer, unless your end is war itself. And of course, there are the Nudge Nazis. But there’s nothing like nostalgia, and some are calling for the President to re-start this war. And in Benin, if this report is believed, a woman motorist lashed out at their own, newer, better WAI officials.
Back in Liverpool, this facade on the oddly-named State House caught my eye; the motto ‘Trade and Navigation‘, the State playing the biggest role in that city now. April 7th, 2016 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
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