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Paul Marks laments the timing and cost of upcoming events
The Mont Pelerin Society is holding its conference in London next week. Rumour has it that the price of actually attending the conference is quite absurd (over eight hundred pounds) [Editor: fortunately the Liberty 2002 Conference is only a mere £75].
However, there are fringe meetings and I have asked, and been allowed, to attend two of them (the panel discussion on the future of freedom at the Institute of Economic Affairs at 18:30 on Monday and the debate on a good and free society between Roger Scruton and Stephen Davis at the Travellers Club, 106 Pall Mall at 18:00 Tuesday).
Contrary to what is sometimes said there are still people in the Conservative party who are interested in liberty – but many Conservative activist types will be down on the south coast (perhaps listening to John Redwood and Co, at a Selsdon Group fringe meeting, explaining why Conservatives should “Stand up for Capitalism”).
To have the Mont Pelerin Society conference clashing with the Conservative Party conference is unfortunate.
Paul Marks
LIBERTY 2002: The European Conference of the Libertarian International and the Libertarian Alliance. This event will take place Saturday/Sunday November 9th/10th 2002 – 10.00am-6.00pm, at the National Liberal Club, Whitehall Place, London SW1A 2HE, England.
It costs £75 for the entire weekend, and if you’ve got that sort of cash to spare and you want to meet a throng of like-minded people including a truly excellent slate of speakers, face-to-face (remember that idea), then it’s a bargain.
It is especially attractive when you consider that the event is taking place in one of London’s most splendid buildings. And it’s our building, for it dates back to the time when liberal meant liberal. We can’t permanently reclaim it, but we can at least occupy it for one weekend. The staircase alone is worth the entrance money.
Follow the link above for booking and payment details, and to see the excellent list of speakers, and to find further links to their websites.
Then you clearly have not been exposed to the Daily Mirror.
They call it an editorial. I call it a vomit-inducing hagiography, the final paragraph of which has the capacity to keep you awake at nights like the trauma of a mugging:
“It was a magnificent speech from a man who is rapidly becoming the greatest figure in world politics, second only, perhaps, to Nelson Mandela.”
Anyone care to hazard a guess as to who is number 3 on their list? Personally, I shudder to think.
There is an excellent article in the Telegraph which serves as a splendid example of just why so many libertarians regard democracy, as it exists in most countries, with profound ambivalence.
So they are being frogmarched back to the polls to reverse the decision they reached just 15 months ago. This is European democracy, Henry Ford style: you can reach any answer, as long as it is yes. In simply refusing to recognise the outcome of the first referendum, the government makes the point of the No campaigners more eloquently than a thousand speeches.
[…]
Mr Ahern and his supporters are relying upon the electorate accepting that there was something wrong with the June 2001 referendum. Although it produced a clear 54-46 victory for the No side, the turnout was just 35 per cent. This mandate is considered sufficiently unsatisfactory for another to be sought, although nobody for a moment believes that Ireland would be holding a second referendum had the same numbers produced a Yes vote.
If you ever wanted a demonstration of the fact the last thing democracy is about is ‘the consent of the people’, this is it. It is about justifying the actions of political elites.
Blogger Alice Bachini rejects yet another collectivist ‘one size fits all’ approach to the problem of juvenile crime
If a certain group of people is identified as causing particular kinds of crime, is it OK to legislate against the rights of that group? Say, black men were proven to be responsible for 90 percent of stabbings. Would that make it OK to ban black men from buying or owning knives? What if white men between twenty and forty were responsible for 95 percent of all drink-driving deaths? Should we make a law banning them from pubs except between certain hours of the morning, say?
Obviously not. Which is why it is a good thing that plans to bring in an ageist curfew in Corby have been shelved. But of course, no-one there is concerned about the civil liberties of people under fifteen. The argument seems to be between those who want something done about certain kinds of crime perpetuated by this age group, reasonably enough, and those who think more football and youth clubs are the answer to immoral behaviour, which, they aren’t. And I don’t have any easy answers either, but I do think some kind of intelligent understanding that young people are human beings like the rest of us would be a good start.
My other main suggestion is to make it easier for young people to do proper, money-earning work. As long as the system continues to ban kids from doing honest mornings on low-paid milk rounds on the grounds that this interferes with their totally pointless unpaid days of school, it is actively preventing many of them from finding a good way forward with their lives.
Alice Bachini
The debate over guns is a clash of cultures, a confrontation of different kinds of character, a disagreement over social philosophy and even, though few notice this, over free will and determinism. The contending factions don’t need guns to detest each other. They would anyway.
– Fred Reed
I’m off on holiday soon, and I nearly forgot to mention it. We got an email from Shams Ali:
Hi there!
With reference to your passage in the BLOG:
“And that is when it starts to become confused. Who exactly is going to do the applying? Evidently not ‘politicians’, but somebody will have to. What is a “non-political government” when it’s at home? What ‘fundamental principles’ are these? Perchance, the Law of Sharia?”
The confusion arises from the human habit of jumping at conclusions without having done the spade work to dig out the facts.
The “fundamental principles” are enumerated and defined at
www.worldjustice.org/principles.html and the rules of their application at www.worldjustice.org/rules.html also the reasonings for the need for such institution are described at www.worldjustice.org/wcj.html and some history of it all at www.worldjustice.org/history.html for the difference between government and politics see www.truth-and-justice.info/govpol.html as for Judaism, Christianity and Islam see www.truth-and-justice.info/religions.html and for the various “isms” see www.truth-and-justice.info/isms.html. You will also find some stuff on government, politics, unions, pensions, etc., by browsing the www.truth-and-justice.info/issues.html – and all that stuff is the tip of an iceberg.
Once you’ve gone through the stuff, I would like to hear from you what exactly YOUR “libetarianism” is, or, in other words, whom do YOU propose to favour and at whose expense?
regards,
shams ali
I’m more of a Popperian than Shams and I think that jumping at conclusions is very different from jumping to conclusions. If it isn’t Sharia, and if Shams tells us it isn’t Sharia, then fine, it isn’t Sharia. But he doesn’t answer that with a yes or a no. Instead he tells me I have to do an iceberg of homework.
It’s an old trick. You write long tracts, and refuse to supply short summaries and short answers to short questions. The idea is that people will immerse themselves in your oh-so-elaborate thought processes, but the reality is they mostly ignore you on account of you being a pompous git. I shall do neither. I have glanced at some of my homework, and now I’m just going to carry on communicating – guessing, asking and answering. If Shams Ali doesn’t like it, tough. We’ll talk about him amongst ourselves. → Continue reading: Another open letter to Shams Ali
I think I might have a civil claim against the BBC. I was watching the news from the Labour Party Conference this afternoon whilst eating a sandwich and nearly choked when the BBC Political Correspondent Andrew Marr concocted this radiant gem:
“The important thing for the world right now is the continued dialogue between Washington and Blackpool”
My apologies to non-UK readers because you really do have to be British to fully appreciate just how pant-wettingly hilarious that statement is.
It’s the way the blogosphere works. Something happens in your back yard. Instapundit picks it up and tells you about it, and you get to work. It, in this case being an article in the New Statesman called “Bloggers of the Left, Unite!”, by James Crabtree. The New Statesman not itself being very blog-friendly, Crabtree decided to put his piece up at the “iSociety” bit of one of his his own websites. Here’s how it ends.
Should the left worry? Definitely. The blogsphere is an example of Willard Quine’s coherence theory of truth: that things are true if they agree – or appear to agree – with other things that are held to be true. Right-wing bloggers are thus creating their own world, in which their truth exists often without debate. And the same may be about to happen in the UK. The journalist Stephen Pollard, the only British political blogger on the left, notes: “There are plenty of new British political blogs. And they are all – all – on the right.” But political blogging is in its infancy here. It remains up for grabs. Got a computer? Got a view? Get blogging. There is a war to be won.
Or lost.
“Blogsphere”? Is that what they’re going to call it?
There appear to be no links from iSociety to “all – all” – or even any-any of – those right wing Brit-blogs, nor to Instapundit nor to Andrew Sullivan, both also mentioned in the piece. Wouldn’t want people actually trying to find out for themselves how unthinkingly and unargumentatively right wing or not as the case may be said blogs might be. For someone declaring war, Crabtree seems somewhat reluctant actually to engage with his enemy. But I suppose that when the attacks do start to come, from real blogs, there will be links.
And as for Stephen Pollard being “on the left” … Smack in the Blairite centre middle, more like, and with all kinds of market bells and whistles attached. Ditto Crabtree, to judge by who’s paying for his web activities.
There was special guest appearance today at the Labour Party Annual Conference in Blackpool in the shape of former US President Bill Clinton.
At least we were spared Hilary. Bill’s sidekick and trusty companion for the day was film-actor Kevin Spacey who managed to muscle his way into every photo-op like Zelig.
Clinton was on top form, pressing flesh and distributing his effortless charm. One could have been forgiven for forgetting which of the two men was the movie-star. And, boy, were the BBC impressed. The commentators could barely contain their hormonal surges as Clinton glided through the throng. I’ve heard of politicians making love to the camera before but never have I seen the cameras making love to a politician.
He made a speech to the Conference. A long speech. The text of it may be available somewhere out there in cyberspace but if I was you I wouldn’t waste valuable time hunting it down because a) it was dull and b) it’s of limited significance. However, perchance you are interested, here is the gist:
“Mah friends, I am so pleased to be here with you today because we all share a common vision; one of peace, one of hope, one of children. Children, children, children, children. That’s what we’re about: children. And that’s what the Third Way is all about; it’s about you, me, us all joining together to strive for a better world for children. Children anywhere, children everywhere. Not like those knuckle-dragging right-wing loons who don’t care about children. In fact, they eat children. We must not be like them. But we must also help them. We must help them to find a better way; the Third Way. So stay focussed and strong because I know that if we all work together and believe in ourselves we can make socialism work. Oh yeah, and Saddam is a real bad guy and he has to go. Thankyou. I love you lots.”
He got a standing ovation
Sunday’s news reported an amazing turn in the upcoming US New Jersey elections. While the subject is of scant interest to the majority of our readers, the sheer audacity of the gambit deserves at least a passing note.
The issue at hand is the New Jersey Senate race between Democrat (Liberal; Socialist) incumbent Robert Torricelli and Republican (Conservative; Capitalist) challenger Doug Forrester. In June, Torricelli had a commanding 14% lead and expected an easy victory. Then one of his 1996 campaign contributors was convicted of making illegal contributions and sentenced to 18 months in jail. Torricelli apologized for failing to report some campaign gifts, was reprimanded by the Senate Ethics Committee and everyone expected the issue to fade away into the politics as usual category.
But it didn’t. Forrester kept the issue alive, and the results of the last poll showed that people were tired of politics as usual. Torricelli had dropped from 14 points ahead to 14 points behind.
After recovering from their apoplexy, the Democratic Party decided something had to be done. Torricelli obligingly fell on his sword and, in an emotional farewell on Sunday, withdrew from the running 35 days before the election.
Now for the audacious bit. The Democrats appointed Frank Pallone to take his place and are currently trying to get him on the ballot despite the election law that clearly states all nominees must be on the ballot 48 days before the election. As a handy precedent, a couple years back in Missouri, Mel Carnahan died in a plane crash a few weeks before the election and they couldn’t replace him. That the NJ Democrats seek to swap in a pinch hitter simply because polls suggest their original candidate would have lost demonstrates their disregard for the entire election process. It is an attitude displayed all too often by politicians everywhere.
What does it all mean? Torricelli fell from grace because he flaunted the election laws. The Democrats current bait and switch tactics show they too put self-interest ahead of the law. It also shows they’re still playing politics as usual.
Hopefully, the voters will teach them a new set of rules. Stay tuned.
All hail the Web. And power to the people – at least those I approve of.
– Michael of 2 Blowhards, Aug 17, in a posting about the artistic significance of amazon.com
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