The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
– Winston Churchill
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Whereas I thought readers of this blog would be interested, given we have previously discussed the creeping nationalisation of charities and other voluntary organisations by Britain’s Borg-state. For foreign readers I hope it throws light on an icy subtle totalitarianism. What makes this doubly creepy is that it is a legal policy seminar. That hints at further powers perhaps to coerce the ‘third sector’, as well as to co-opt and to corrupt it. Though the new Companies Act 2006 constrains the independence of action of commercial firms and non-profits in unclear ways, it is yet a shadow in the corner. So if you are a voluntary organisation but not a charity, don’t spend money on party politics, and don’t accept government or local authority or quango or bound-charity money, then you are currently still beyond state control and not obliged to provide a ‘public benefit’.
June 12th, 2009 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
 In just over one month’s time, some of us space geeks will be hoisting a glass or several to mark this 40th anniversary. I was only a three-year old toddler when Messrs Armstrong and Aldrin climbed out of the craft and onto that dusty, sun-blasted place called the Moon. 40 years. Popular Mechanics has a good look at what it all meant. I think a good place to mark the occasion would be down at Greenwich, London, near to the Royal Observatory. June 12th, 2009 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
Some right-wing Americans got very upset when Jon Stewart, the TV comedy/news guy, monstered the CNBC “Mad Money” front-man Jim Cramer a few months ago. They had a point; it is clear that at least in some of his shows, Stewart tacks left. But whether unwittingly or otherwise, he was very fair in an interview recently with Peter Schiff – who by the way is possibly running for political office. Mr Schiff is a hard-money capitalist, an attacker of the Fed, of the bailouts of Bush/Obama. I wrote about him a while back. And Schiff used the platform of this very popular show to beat the drum for free markets, sound money, and getting rid of the Fed. Good for Jon Stewart, at least on this occasion, for giving Schiff a platform. June 11th, 2009 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
Books that try to convey important philosophical ideas can sometimes be a bit of a struggle to read. Much as I liked Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged for the sheer sweep of the novel and the way it tackled all manner of topics, I’ll be the first to concede that some folk out there will find that type of book a daunting read. But a shorter, and highly engaging, example of something rather similar has been out for a few months now: “Old Nick’s Guide To Happiness”, by Nicholas Dykes. I will not give the plot away but to say that Mr Dykes’ novel is based in the wilds of Scotland, focusing on what happens when a young man, who is shortly to head off for Oxford as an undergraduate, gets lost and hurt during a hiking expedition in the Highlands, and how he falls in with a rather unusual couple living there. There are lots of discussions of philosophy and ideas along the way, but is done in such a charming way that the reader, whatever their views, will not feel they are being lectured at. Admittedly, if you are a religious fundamentalist, deep Green or hardline collectivist, then this book will drive you nuts. I have known Mr Dykes for several years and he has been a regular writer for the Libertarian Alliance, among other places. I liked this book very much and I hope Mr Dykes tries his hand at another novel. As he realises, abstract treatises are all very well, but if you can convey ideas through the medium of fiction, with strong characters, a good plot and plenty of engaging detail, it can be far more effective. The Left, if I can be permitted to use that term has long understood this – it needs to be understood by those who work in the broadly classical liberal tradition, too. And the same point applies even more, perhaps, to the world of TV drama and films. June 11th, 2009 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
Drunken sailors generally spend cash that they’ve already earned themselves, rather than running up debt to be paid by others. If our politicians started spending like drunken sailors, it would in fact represent a dramatic improvement. – Instapundit yesterday. The Bishop likes it also. June 10th, 2009 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
London is today in the grip of a tube strike. Tube as in underground railway. For a brief summary of the anti-strike arguments, try Burning Our Money. (Burning Our) Money quote:
In other words, another bit of earth will get scorched. June 10th, 2009 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
Via such blogs as this one (see the list of recent postings on other blogs), and this one (the previous list being how I got to that blog), I today encountered a video of someone called Ian Plimer plugging his latest book, which is called Heaven and Earth. Watch it here. And here (via this posting) is a piece about an Aussie politician who seems to be following Plimer’s lead. I am no scientist, and politically I am heavily in favour of the free market capitalism that the Green Movement wants to shut down or at least castrate. So I would say all this. But I can honestly say that I find Plimer more convincing than those persons who talk about climate change as if the urgent need now is to stop all climate change (impossible) of as if those who doubt their prophecies of apocalypse (such as me) believe that climate is not now changing. The climate always changes. Plimer is eloquent, and relatively brief. Even pro-AGW greenies would find this, I think, a quite useful short compendium of all the arguments against their views, in fact they already are using it this way. That’s if they are interested in answering arguments, as some are. The clearest insight that I personally got from this video performance was Plimer’s claim that the AGW (as in anthropogenic global warming) people are all atmospheric scientists (insofar as they are scientists at all), who are plugging their apocalypse without looking at any other kinds of scientific evidence, or much in the way of historical evidence either. He also says that this particular evidence is itself very threadbare, but that is a distinct argument that I have long known about. I was also interested that Professor Donald Blainey [Correction: Geoffrey Blainey], an Australian historian whom I have long admired, is in his turn an admirer of Plimer’s book. Big plus, for me. Plimer is optimistic that the current economic woes, woes that really are now being experienced by our entire species if not our entire planet, together with the little bit of cooling that has recently been happening, will concentrate people’s minds on what a load of humbug the AGW scare is. No doubt pessimists commenting here will say that the damage has already been done, and will take decades to undo. I’ll pass on that argument. I now guess that the next argument for AGW here in Britain is going to be that since the BNP also says AGW is humbug, it must be true. June 10th, 2009 | 151 comments - (Comments are closed)
Here is a highly thought-provoking article in Forbes magazine about the phenomenon it refers to as “gentry liberalism” – a term designed to capture the mindset of the sort of person who has voted for New Labour in the UK and Mr Obama’s Democrats in the US. It is, of course, such a shame that the word liberalism has been bent out of shape to mean something rather different, but the underlying logic of the article is hard to contest. Of course, Mr Obama has a while yet in power, but if I were one of his campaign managers, I’d look at the massacre of left-of-centre parties in Europe with a certain amount of forboding. He’s not invincible, not at all. June 10th, 2009 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
I would hope, however naively perhaps, that a forthcoming UK government, after the current shambolic one, might take the axe to some of the quangos – quasi-autonomous governmental organisations – that cost so much and do relatively little that is of any use. So it is frankly laughable that the Conservative Party’s idea for controlling public spending (you mean hopefully cut it, Ed), is to set up something called the Office of Budget Responsibility. Oh please. What the heck is the Treasury department supposed to be for? The problem of controlling, and cutting, public spending is both simple and hard: simple to understand – there’s way too much spending, and we need to slash it – and hard, in that it will involve facing down various vested interests. Previous governments that have cut spending, or tried to do so, such as the Thatcher administration, did not have to set up some daft “office” to address the issue. The trouble with this idea is that it shows how the current Tory party feels it must distance itself from the harsh decisions that will have to be made to shrink public spending from its current horrific levels. But this is an impossible task – far better to be blunt with the public. June 10th, 2009 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
In an earlier piece here today, Perry de Havilland referred to the great fuss that Britain’s broadcasters are now making about the rather small successes of the BNP in the Euro elections, and their relative silence concerning the much bigger success achieved by UKIP. True. UKIP is indeed being ignored, and the BNP is indeed being talked up. But I don’t think it’s right to dismiss the talking up of the BNP entirely as tactics. I think that genuine fear is being expressed by our former gatekeepers of correct thought. The rise of Adolph Hitler has been obsessively taught in British schools for the last generation or so, as the very definition of that which Must Not Happen, yet now, something not wholly unlike it appears to be happening, here in Britain! Calamity! I say “former” gatekeepers of correct thought because that is surely the other thing now happening that scares these people. The internet, as we enthusiasts for it have been saying ever since it got started as a mass phenomenon a decade ago or more, entitles people to say whatever they like. They no longer need the permission of anybody more important to reach a quite large audience with an opinion that quite large numbers of people agree with but which the Gatekeepers disapprove of and want suppressed. Very suddenly, in a matter of a year or two, servile and carefully crafted letters to the newspapers, that conceded almost everything but cunningly managed to slip a tiny few incorrect thoughts past the Guardians, could be forgotten about. A blog can now be cranked up, and the blogger can tell it exactly how he reckons it is. Potential supporters can be directed with a link to the manifesto of whatever crank party the blogger happens to approve of or find interesting. If a Gatekeeper now wants to quote a “crank” out of context, Google ensures that the rest of us can read the opinions of said crank, in context, whether the Gatekeeper himself deigns to include an actual link or not. My eldest brother is a UKIP activist, and I sense in him none of the frustration that he and his UKIP brethren used to feel, about being ignored by the masses, because then ignored by “the” (there then being only one great lump of them) media. When he now knocks on a door, the householder knows just what Elder Brother stands for. Conversation can immediately proceed to the matter of what a splendid front garden or front door the householder is presenting to the world, thus establishing that although firm in their opinions, UKIPers are still humans, able to see the world through eyes other than their own. Seemed like a nice enough bloke. Yeah, maybe I’ll vote for him, if I don’t fancy any of the others. That the big media are still trying to ignore Elder Brother now no longer worries him. The Gatekeepers now have to convince him, and all the other people who think as he does, that he and they are wrong. Good luck with that. As a radical libertarian activist, I built the entire early first half of my career (if you can call it that) contriving to navigate, with cunningly photocopied pamphlets, around Gatekeeper assumptions that such opinions just could not be sincerely held, by anyone who mattered. I helped to contrive a local internet, you might say, for London libertarians, and I helped to feed libertarian memes into low-grade BBC local talk shows. Ever since the real internet came along, I have had a great deal to say for myself, but have nevertheless been feeling somewhat at a loose end. All of which means, as the title of this posting proclaims, that the burden of proof has now been reversed. It used to be that someone who favoured radical tax cuts, or bringing immigration to a halt, or expunging the EU from British life, or that Jesus Christ is Our Saviour and gayness is evil, or that Islam is not welcome in these islands, or any other such challenge to Gatekeeper orthodoxy, had to prove to the Gatekeepers that his opinion was worth being heard and had some flicker of merit, perhaps because (see John Stuart Mill) it ensured that the Gatekeepers were at least prodded from time to time into keeping their orthodoxies in full working order. Now, the Gatekeepers, their gates electronically melted, have to explain why such notions do not have any merit, and why people should not vote for them. Since the Gatekeepers have spent all their lives loftily refusing to participate in any such arguments, instead only contriving verbal formulae to demonise all such notions as “extreme”, “selfish”, “old fashioned”, “racist”, “far right”, and so on, they are, not surprisingly, very frightened at suddenly having to overturn the habits of a lifetime. What, they wonder, if they make even greater fools of themselves than the internet, by telling voters directly about all these wickednesses, has made of them already? What if they join in these arguments, but then lose? Well, indeed. Last night, for instance, I watched a lady cabinet minister carefully refusing to reply to what the man from the BNP was actually saying, and instead insisting that the BNP is “really”, “essentially”, racist. By all means throw that last point in incidentally, but ad hominem attack and nothing else no longer works as an argumentative technique, because the argument is now raging anyway and Milady Cabinet Minister can only decide whether or not she joins in. The BNP can decide what it will now say, and say it. It does not need permission from Her Ladyship, or from her friends in the BBC or in the big national newspapers, to say whatever it wants to say, to anyone who wants to listen. The man from the BNP oozed confidence. The Lady Cabinet Minister looked uncomfortable. As it happens, I share quite a few Gatekeeper objections to some of these “extreme” ideas, even as I am enthusiastic about others of them. I quite like immigration, especially from Eastern Europe. Jesus Christ is not my saviour, and gayness is fine by me. I fear that if Britain leaves EUrope, economic freedom (let alone any other kind) may not erupt, but rather something far nastier and stupider and more xenophobic and more economically wrong-headed. And so on. But, I do favour radical libertarianism. And I do not like Islam at all, and believe that the only defence of its unchallenged presence in our midst that makes any sense is based on believing that what it actually says will be almost unanimously ignored by its supposed supporters in favour of far kinder and far gentler mis-readings of it. But then, I am not saying which opinions I think should be allowed and which not allowed. I say: allow them all. In fact, the nastier and more belligerent they are, the better it is for us all to be able to acquaint ourselves with them. Where I agree I will say so, and where I disagree I will say so. I just did. And when it comes to voting, vote for one of the little parties, that actually believes in stuff. Don’t waste your vote on the Conservatives, LibDems or Labour. What will voting for them accomplish? How will voting for those people tell anyone what you actually think and actually want? June 9th, 2009 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
Many people say that the poll tax funded BBC no longer matters – but I do not agree. The BBC matters less than it once did, but it (or rather parts of it) is still considered a source of serious discussion – and things said on the BBC go into the schools and colleges (via teachers and university lecturers – the sort of people who still actually listen to things like BBC Radio Four) and even into the entertainment media – as BBC money is still a major source of funding for comedians, and actors and even pop singers like to be thought of as “intellectual” so they follow what other people tell them are serious ideas. The BBC is not all “Eastenders” and other soap operas; it still considers itself in the business of spreading ideas (although, of course, even the soap operas spread ideas and attitudes) and the Reith Lectures, named after the founder of the BBC, John Reith, is what BBC thinks of as the high point of its “High Culture” mission. Of course the vile taxpayers may not actually listen to the Reith Lectures, or understand them if we did, but watered down and adapted forms of the ideas expressed in the Reith Lectures will be used to “educate” our children and even “inform” popular entertainers, so whether we listen or not is not really relevant from the point of view of the BBC. The Reith Lectures this year are to be delivered by what the BBC’s advertisements describe as “one of the world’s great philiosphers”, Michael Sandel, actually a Harvard professor who has spent his entire academic life repeating the statist mantras of the late John Rawls. In this context, see Antony Flew’s examination of the ideas such men stand for, which Flew gives in such works as “Equality: In Liberty and Justice”. → Continue reading: BBC Harvard ‘Philosophy’ is based on lies June 9th, 2009 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
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