I mean there’s enormous pressures to harmonize freedom of speech legislation and transparency legislation around the world – within the EU, between China and the United States. Which way is it going to go? It’s hard to see.
– Julian Assange
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November 28th, 2010 | 80 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Who the hell do you think you people are? – Nigel Farage MEP uses the TV cameras in the European Parliament in Strasbourg to berate the Euro-elite and to create another few minutes of video that is now starting to make some waves, particularly in the USA. Which means that it is that much more likely to get noticed over here also. That “people” should probably have come after the first “you” rather than the second, but it will do. As a major British Newspaper has now noticed, the Euro-project is starting to look not just seriously corrupt and seriously nasty but also seriously vulnerable. November 27th, 2010 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
The concept of positive freedom, therefore, is misconceived and cannot support the notion of welfare rights. The concept ignores the distinction between natural and man-made constraints on action. It ignores the distinction between failing to offer someone a benefit and imposing an actual harm. And the pursuit of positive freedom through state action violates genuine liberty. Someone who claims a right to a good that he has not produced (or acquired by some other voluntary means) is doing one of two things: either he is claiming a right to have nature supply him with goods without effort, which is absurd; or he is claiming a right to take goods from others against their will, which is unjust. – A Life of One’s Own by David Kelley, pages 76-77. I was prompted to dig out this quote following on from my posting just below about O’Rourke’s views on the difference between “gimme” rights and “get outa here” rights. November 25th, 2010 | 67 comments - (Comments are closed)
– George Friedman of STRATFOR, getting it far righter than one of his namesakes. November 24th, 2010 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
In the run up to the election I was constantly told my intention to vote UKIP would do more harm than good by diluting the Conservative vote and potentially allowing Labour to remain in office. My response to that threat was to point out that if Cameron was elected his statist policies and abandonment of what many still regard as Conservative values would be vindicated, thus exposing the country to the risk of a second Cameron term, and the certainty of a centre left, statist monopoly in politics. If Cameron failed, especially if UKIP could claim the credit, the Conservative party would tear itself apart in a very messy but exciting orgy of blood letting before the traditional Conservatives (the Thatcherites if you like) joined UKIP supporters to form a new, electable centre right party and we would have a real choice at the next election. Cameron and his allies would no doubt have joined their friends in the Labour party. The Conservative name would have died, being soiled beyond recovery. I fear the coagulation has saved Cameron and cost the country dear. – Commenter MarkE November 23rd, 2010 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
“The average American has regular contact with the federal government at three points – the IRS, the post office and the TSA. Start with that fact if you are formulating a unified field theory to explain the public’s current political mood.” – George Will, writing about airport security and the lovely TSA. November 22nd, 2010 | 31 comments - (Comments are closed)
November 18th, 2010 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
It didn’t used to be so hard to get the liberal message heard over the screams of reality. Journalism was once a respected profession where liberals ignored reality to portray themselves as unbiased newsmen while actually pushing people towards liberal ideas and away from thuggish reality. Reality still found ways to occasionally get people to listen to it, whether through economic conditions or war, but its message could be contained. Eventually, though, reality weaseled its way into the media, first through talk radio, then Fox News, and now the internet, where pajama-clad imbeciles with brains too simple to understand anything other than reality spout reality on numerous websites on a daily basis. November 15th, 2010 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
A disenfranchised population becomes an untrustworthy population, since it loses the habit of making its own decisions. The majority become childish in hundreds of ways, looking to the State as parent, complaining without displaying a willingness to any form of self-determination. The more liberty one has, the more indvidual responsibility is required of one to make rational, well-considered decisions in the context of one’s social and personal life. Most of us are educated to think we are not capable of this when, in fact, most of us are thoroughly capable but simply lack either the circumstances or the determination to test ourselves. An authoritarian, paternalistic State encourages us in this belief, by its actions as well as by its rhetoric. By its very nature it creates a morally enfeebled, child-like population. This population in turn ‘proves’ its inability to control its own fate and consequently ‘proves’ the need for the paternalism which created it in the first place. There is no fundamental difference between Tory and Socialist paternalism. – Michael Moorcock, The Retreat From Liberty, 1983 November 10th, 2010 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
Why is it that the BBC, in its reporting of David Cameron’s visit to China, keeps banging on about the supposed dilemma faced by the Prime Minister over whether to raise human rights abuse, and in particular the plight of Liu Xiaobo, a prominent Chinese dissident unable to collect his Nobel peace prize because he’s serving an 11 year sentence in a Chinese jail? There’s no dilemma here at all – except in the vague terms already referred to by Mr Cameron, this is not an issue which needs to be explored at all on a visit which is meant to be wholly about trade. Only the BBC, would, in oblivious disregard for the national interest, keep on trying to make something out of it. I seem to recall some ‘sensible’ commentator of the day made similar remarks about those who deprecated comparable government to government relations with Nazi Germany in the 1930’s over that whole tiresome ‘human rights’ thingie November 9th, 2010 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
That is, if this sentiment attributed to him does indeed reflect his thoughts:
How about considering that the same courtesy should be extended to everyone else in the world, Mr Olbermann? November 8th, 2010 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
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