My Dad The Corpse Is A Welfare Bum

This morning, I discovered a great new way for Labour voters to get money off other people. For one of your elderly relatives, you arrange to collect all of their government benefits , that is, the wealth stolen from other people like me and then handed over to you if you promise to keep voting Labour, minus 15% off the top, which the bureaucrats keep for their transaction expenses in arranging this theft.

You then wait for said relative to die, but you forget to stop collecting the benefits. Apparently 3,000 elderly relatives have been receiving pelf like this, while in the unfortunate state of being dead. So if we multiply in Milton Friedman's government inefficiency factor of around three, that takes us to about 12,000. Personally, I prefer Jack Maturin's more accurate government inefficiency factor of about 10, which usually proves a more realistic measure for how corrupt and useless governments become in any situation, given a head start and a fair wind.

This means that in the glorious sceptred isle of God's own country, the United Kingdom, there are now 33,000 corpses wandering about claiming UK government handouts. Whoever even thought that the land of King Arther wasn't still literally alive with magic? The welfare state is not only good for us tax slaves while shuffling about on this mortal coil, apparently it keeps us going well into the afterlife too! Those ancient Egypticans were obviously wasting their gold building pyramids. They should've been building welfare states, instead. Marvellous.

Save a Horse - Ride a Cowboy

I was being driven up from a night-time visit to the Iwo Jima memorial south of the Potomac, in Arlington Virginia, back to a hotel near the concrete people-mover horror of Dulles airport, when my driver asked me what I thought of country music. 'Isn't it some kind of Appalachian Mountain amalgam of Ulster Irish and English West Country folk music supported by a blend of African rhythym unwittingly brought up the Mississippi by slavers from New Orleans?'

'Have you heard of Dolly Parton?' he asked, ignoring my attempt at historical revisionism. Before I could answer he plugged his MP3 player into the car's dashboard and said, 'This ain't Dolly Parton.'

He then proceeded to play an album by Big & Rich, the starring track of which was 'Save a Horse - Ride a Cowboy'. After plugging Orson below, I thought I better try to restore some kind of North Atlantic balance.

If you ever get the chance, I heartily recommend 'Big & Rich', which is sort of like Stiff Little Fingers meets Crash Test Dummies meets the Banjo player from Deliverance.

If you ever get the chance, do have a listen. It really ain't Dolly Parton.

Bring Our Boys Home - Now

Two more poor bloody squaddies dead, and still Blair remains in office. That's 113 British soldiers dead now, all sacrificed on the altar of Tony Blair's evil ambition. How many more must die before this revolting man is removed from political office? As a former squaddie myself, who signed up because he believed one day he would get blown up in West Germany trying to stop an east european socialist onslaught, I want every single British serviceman and servicewoman to be given orders to leave the horror of Iraq before the end of the week. It is one thing to sign up and die defending your country from socialist invaders. But to die in a remote unwelcoming land on the basis of deliberate spin and lies to further the monetary greed of a vainglorious politician, who needs a U.S. post-prime ministerial lecture circuit to prop up his parasitic lifestyle and pay for the mortgage payments on his £3 million pound home, disgusts me beyond mere typewritten words.

As your last act on leaving office, tomorrow Tony, sign the order bringing our troops home. Do it now before another 100 die. Do it now before another one dies. And then in the name of God, get on that jet plane to the United States and never come back.

Orson - No Tomorrow

Okay, so I'm about seventy five billion nano-years behind the the times, but what a great track, from the American band who came to Britain to gain an audience! :-)

I nearly spontaneously danced down to the Ceroc dance classes we have here in Henley on a Wednesday evening, to meet a lively divorcee or three.

I hope Orson's new album, Bright Idea, due out next week, lives up to their promise contained in this single.

Yes folks, I am a Rock God, and I have my finger on the, errr..., pulse of modern Britain.

Gissa Job: Blair Makes His Pitch As World Controller

Although it makes no difference to me whether the pink lizard of Tony Blair rules Britannia, or the red and blue lizards embodied in Gordon Brown and David Cameron, it is amusing to watch their reptilian struggles for supremacy. And the boy Blair? He knows the game is up. In the Third Way of life, he is now the Third Man; hence, his pitch for a post-prime ministerial job, which you can read about here. I must say, to be so public in his pleas for tax-fed dollars, once he's turfed out of Downing Street, is a little demeaning for this self-styled Colossus, but what is a Doctor of Death to do, once the game is up? Swallowing his pride is the least of his worries. My only real surprise is that he didn't break spontaneously into the lyrics for My Way, at the end of his speech.

Just for fun, though, let's examine his Yosser Hughes style pitch, to see whether he'll get the position he deserves, however this time lifting wealth out of the pockets of the entire world, not just those of us unlucky enough to have him thieving off us in Britain:

Tony Blair last night challenged the world to unite around a policy of "progressive pre-emption" as he sought to shore up his legacy by linking the invasion of Iraq to a range of problems, from global warming and poverty to immigration.

Progressive pre-emption? I think a certain Austrian gentleman with a moustache couldn't have put a better argument for the needs for a World Reich, with supreme power granted to a single man representing the will of the world's Volk.

It's also heartening to see that he's falling back to the usual socialist excuse that because joined-up socialist government has failed in Britain, this is because it needs the whole world to be joined-up in a vast socialist enterprise to really work.

In a speech in Washington just hours after he and President George W Bush made strikingly frank admissions of mistakes in their handling of Iraq, the Prime Minister called for the world to help the new government in Baghdad. On his visit to Iraq on Monday he had seen a "child of democracy struggling to be born".

Ye Gods, what a sickening analogy. What we are witnessing, of course, is a massive civil war being born, with the two midwives of Britain and the United States looking on in horror as three nations emerges from the ruins of one imposed upon them by the French and British colonial powers in the early part of the twentieth century. Once the Kurds have their own country, we'll then witness a Kurdish-Turkish war, and once the Sunnis and the Shias have their own countries, the Shias will amalgamate with Iran, and then we'll have a real Middle-East war to die for, between the Persians on one hand and the Arabs on the other. No doubt the Israelites will find themselves embroiled to create a real imbroglio for War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. Oh what joy. Well done George and Tony.

He also called for radical reform of the United Nations and its sister bodies, the IMF and the World Bank, arguing they were out-of-date and incapable of confronting the financial and security threats facing the world.

I would have just said incapable. And left it at that. No doubt though, Tony has someone in mind to lead this reform. I wonder who this could be?

"Occasionally I look at our international institutions and think as I do about our welfare state: the structures of 1946 trying to meet the challenges of 2006," he said.

So why the haven't you done anything about it in the last nine years, such as abolishing the whole rotten edifice and freeing us from the welfare state's chains of poverty, dependency, and despair? Honestly, Tony. Why are you intelligent enough to see that the Welfare State is a crock, but too cowardly to do anything about it, except make it even more intrusive and even more insatiable for taxation theft? You're even stupider than I thought you were.

Mr Blair was clearly trying to move the domestic and international debate on from the rifts over Iraq to how to tackle future crises.

Yes, and when I was a small boy, if I knocked a plant pot over, spilling wet soil all over a white shagpile carpet, I was always keen to move the debate on too, perhaps to what was for lunch?

But the setbacks in Iraq inevitably overshadowed his visit to Washington, which may be his last as prime minister.

Well, we can but hope.

In a joint press conference at the White House on Thursday night, both leaders briefly dropped their usual staunch defence of the Iraq policy and expressed contrition for some past utterances and actions.

I wonder if this has anything to do with both men taking a kicking in appovals polls? They'd do better to follow Queen Victoria's advice, which helped her remain in political office for over sixty years: Never complain and never explain. (She'd probably still be Queen now, if she could've lived that long.)

Mr Bush said he regretted his "tough talk" conceding that his "bring it on" dare to the insurgents in the summer of 2003 and his "wanted dead or alive" taunt to Osama bin Laden in late 2001 had sent the "wrong signal to people".

It certainly sent the wrong signal to the London Tube murderers, of last year. But I digress.

Mr Blair conceded that they had underestimated some challenges. In an implicit dig at the Pentagon he criticised the decision to bar members of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party from the Iraqi government after the fall of Baghdad.

So you spend untold billions on removing the Ba'ath lizards from power, only to reinstitute the same lizards afterwards? Was the whole thing really then just a bid by Blair and Bush to change the tutelage of the socialist tyrants of Iraq, from Saddam Hussein to themselves? So what was all that cant about freeing the Iraqi people from the Ba'ath party? I give up.

The most concrete proposals in his speech at Georgetown University yesterday concerned the UN. He called for more powers for the UN secretary general, and increasing the number of permanent members of the security council.

Here, we get to the meat inside the sandwich of his speech. I wonder who Blair thinks would make a good UN secretary general? Perhaps someone with prime ministerial experience, able to converse with presidents, used to jetting around the world's trouble spots, as an angel of mercy dispensing aid, hope, and justice? Hmmmm...it's a tough one.

In psychology, there's an effect studied in baboons where one baboon who wants to be the group leader will flag with his eyes to potential supporters, behind the back of the current King baboon. The aspirant baboon then tackles the current King, with the aid of these supporters, who on his victory then take up the newly vacant privileged positions in the group, as his lieutenants. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Tony Blair really is a baboon. You read it here first.

A council with no fixed seats for India, Germany, Japan and no representatives from Latin America and Africa was no longer "legitimate in the modern world" and must be changed, he said. "The danger of leaving things as they are, is ad hoc coalitions for action that stir massive controversy about legitimacy; or paralysis in the face of crisis." The G8 summits of industrialised nations should now also include China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Mexico.

In a free world, of course, there'll be no need for power blocs, as each and every one of us will be trading with billions of other people, as individuals. But if you do subscribe to the power bloc view of the world, what is the point of including everyone? That's like having a football team with 22 players and no opposition.

Tony Blair really is quite incredible. In one sentence he criticizes the UN for being too unwieldy and prone to paralysis. And in the next, he institutes a plan to make the G8 group more unwieldy and prone to paralysis. Quite simply incredible.

He said his vision was shaped by two crises early in his premiership - the war in Kosovo and the 1997 collapse of the Asian markets. "What these two crises taught me was that the rule book of international politics has been torn up," he said.

Well, in the first, it was Blair who tore up the rule book. In the second, this was just economic reality tearing a chunk out of the Keynesian idiots of Wall Street and the City of London, and their Galbraithian friends in government, who thought the laws of economics had changed to provide for unlimited growth forever. To mix these two entirely separate issues, of Kosovo and inflationary bubbles, however, is a stroke of genius by Mr Blair. Confuse, obfuscate, divide, and rule, has been the succesful ruling stratagem of all bandit tyrant classess since time began.

He may be an evil, dangerous, selfish and debauched man, but Tony Blair is really good at it.

Challenges such as global warming and mass migration "can only be tackled together. And they require a pre-emptive not simply reactive response".

Remove welfare states, and privatise all government property, and the migration problems between states, simply disappears. All you'll have then are people moving around the world to help make their lives better, usually by helping the lives of other people, by providing them with remunerated products and services. That's that problem solved.

And global warming is a chimera invented to provide politicians and their state clients, such as environmental lecturers in state-sponsored universities, to legitimise their control over the rest of us proles. Even if global warming does exist, which I doubt, the climate on Earth has always changed, and always will change, and so we should just get on with it and deal with whatever is thrown at us by nature, as it arises. So that's that problem solved.

What on Earth do we need politicians for? We just need a really good healthy dose of anarcho-capitalism. And it only really needs to be in one tiny part of the world, let's say the state of Alabama, or even just the tinier city of Auburn. If successful, the domino effect of the totally voluntary society could then cascade around the world, if left unchecked.

No doubt if Auburn or Alabama did manage to secede bloodlessly from the United States, Mr Blair would quickly send his UN troops in to make them sign up to his Global Warming, Human Rights, Drugs War, and Welfare State protocols, thus negating the whole experiment. But we can only live in hope that one day the shoot of anarcho-capitalism does manage to break through the morass of western government, at least in one part of the western world.

Mr Blair will face scepticism, in particular over UN reform which is bogged down. He stressed, however, that in nine years as prime minister he had become convinced that the traditional distinction between foreign policies driven by values and interests was wrong.

The only interests Tony Blair is concerned about are the interests of Tony Blair. And that dreadful West Wing puppet-controlling harpie he lives with.

Since the September 11 attacks "the greatest danger is that global politics divides into "hard" and "soft", he said. The idea that the "hard" get after the terrorists, the "soft" campaign against poverty" is dangerous and misleading. "We have to be prepared to think sooner and act quicker in defence of (those) values - progressive pre-emption, if you will."

It's official. Tony Blair is a fascist. And if you don't like it, once he's secured his aspired-for job as World Controller, be prepared to be on the end of some progressive pre-emption. You have been warned.

Pray, Dream, Wonder, Wish, and Hope

I had a dream last night. About Wayne Rooney's foot. In this dream, in the last minute of extra time against Brazil, in the forthcoming World Cup Final, Wayne Rooney comes on as the last England substitute, his first appearance in the tournament. He staggers on, shambles over for a Beckham corner, then hackles the ball over the goal line before once again collapsing in agony as he injures his foot again.

But what the heck, because he's just won the World Cup!

I wonder what the doctors will say today? The dreams of an entire nation are emotionally attached to the backlit film of an MRI scan.

AngloAustria prediction: If his foot is good, the Labour Party might win the next General Election. If his foot is bad, Labour are finished. The fate of a nation therefore depends upon the osteoclast and osteoblast cells of a Scouse exponent of the art of lumping pig's bladders around grassy meadows. You couldn't make it up.

But being a tribal Englishman, I shall be praying to every God I follow as the MRI results are released.

Well, it is Friday. Have a great Bank Holiday.

Shock Horror: Lecturers Go On Strike, Again

Strikes are, of course, almost becoming an entirely public sector phenomenon. You still sometimes get them in large former public sector organisations, such as British Airways and British Telecom, but it is almost always only the people in the public sector who think they have a right to force out higher salaries from the back pocket of the taxpayer, without even considering withdrawing their employment permanently, and risking the free market, like the rest of us have to.

I read the worthy pretensions of one such martyr, this morning in the Torygraph. Obviously, I sent him an email, immediately:

Hi Simon,

If you don't like the terms and conditions in your job, resign, and go and get another job doing something else, where you do like the terms and conditions. Even better than that, start your own business selling your services.

I'm sure a man of your obvious talent would easily be able to command a salary at least three times what you're currently earning, on the free market.

What? You don't agree? Well then shut up and get on with your job the taxpayer is currently being forced to pay you, regardless of your merits.

Rgds,

Jack Maturin

As someone forced to pay his wages, whether I want him or not, if Simon deigns to reply, it should be interesting to hear what he says.

A Figleaf of Freedom

The Torygraph may be a statist rag, but occasionally they run the odd piece which makes it worth a browse. Once such piece appeared in their comment pages this morning, by James Bartholomew:

We need a revision course on why capitalism is a good thing

Oh yes, and then there was the questionnaire on a different page:

Should the NHS pay for holistic medicine?

This question makes the usual statist assumption, of course, that the NHS has a perfect and total right to exist in the first place, and then to bleed us dry in wasteful tax 'donations'.

Oh well, can't win them all.

BTW, I've left a comment on the NHS questionnaire, which may get through the moderator. You may like to leave a comment of your own? The column does seem to have attracted a large number of the great and the good, many of them state clients in the medical professions, who perhaps need a small dose of freedom to refresh their day? What fun.

Pip pip!!

Robert LeFevre - Obligation and Responsibility

Index: Robert LeFevre Commentary Abstracts

The talk following this one, 'A Definition of Freedom', is an absolutely pivotal one in LeFevre's series. But before he gets there, LeFevre needs to ensure he has a complete foundation in place with the aid of this sixth discussion, on the related terms of 'responsibility' and 'obligation'. This talk is interesting in its own terms because it points out the subtle changes in language, over the last fifty or so years, where collectivists have assigned many of the language-based attributes of the individual to the group, with the individual subsequently becoming subsumed into collective groups via this culturally controlled shifting process.

The Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci may have been the highly successful prime mover here, from a Marxist point of view, with his brilliant cultural analyses on the prime importance of language. But this response, by LeFevre, is an equally brilliant riposte by one of history's great libertarians, to try to get the domain of our language back into the control of the individual. It is only ever an individual who speaks, after all, even if a Marx, or a Lenin, or a Gramsci, and never the disembodied voice of some will o' the wisp collective. But let's get back to Mr. LeFevre and his thoughts on responsibility and obligation:

Obligation and Responsibility - MP3 Audio File

Two very important concepts come close together, in the terms responsibility and obligation. These two words symbolize a pair of very important ideas, but their different meanings have become blurred over time until, in modern times, many people use the words as interchangeable synonyms. But LeFevre wants to clarify that they do not mean the same thing. They convey opposite ideas, he states, and we should be clear about each of them.

Responsibility begins with Latin prefix, re-, which means again, turning about, or turning backward, as in the words repeat, redo, or repetition. The word 'responsible' therefore possesses a chronological component going backwards in time. When we use it we are talking about things already done in the past. It should not be used when speaking about anything in the future, but only when talking about events in the past or in the immediate present.

(Other words making use of the re- prefix include rearrange, rebuild, recall, remake, rerun, and rewrite – see, http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/re-.)

It is only individuals who can be responsible, says LeFevre, but in modern times the word responsibility is often ascribed to groups rather than individuals, especially when an individual does something they shouldn't. For instance, a man may rob a filling station. But in the modern age he's not responsible. It is the fault of his family, his school, his society, his geography, his racial background, but never his fault. LeFevre contends, however, that it is the man's responsibility. He initiated the action. Therefore, he is responsible.

As an aside, LeFevre also notes that the word responsibility is often tied into negative actions. A man may be responsible for constructive or positive things, such as writing a great piece of music, but here the credit goes to group again, or to the school, or the church. In a neat twist, the group is made responsible for making the man good enough to do the great thing.

To come back to the main point, we tend to socialize responsibility and attach it to some kind of group. For example, notes LeFevre, the John F. Kennedy presidential assassination was nonsensically ascribed to the city of Dallas. But the city of Dallas didn't stand up and pull the trigger. An individual did. Which individual? We may never know, says LeFevre, because that's the way with government investigations.

(LeFevre is the master of the subtle dig.)

But it was somebody, who pulled the trigger, and not the city of Dallas.

This process of spreading responsibility grew as the assassinations spread through the 1960s. The second Kennedy shooting was ascribed to California and the whole of the United States was made responsible for the killing of Martin Luther King. Which is an absurdity, claims LeFevre, because it is always an individual who initiates any action. When a man initiates an action, he is responsible, and nobody else.

There is another aspect of the word 'responsible'. It is trying to indicate ownership. If a man initiates an action, he is the owner of that action. But once again, in our modern milieu, there is a peculiar tendency to always pass off responsibility and the ownership of actions, to a larger collective group.

This brings LeFevre onto the word obligation, which stems from the Latin ob- prefix, for looking forward or facing ahead.

(See http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ob- , and words such as observe and obverse.)

An obligation, says LeFevre, is a requirement that must be faced in the future or a responsibility that will be assumed in the future. Imagine a line, representing 'right now'. Responsible actions are all to the left of the line. Obligations are to the right of line, but once you assume an obligation, it shifts behind the line into the past. You always have to assume an obligation.

If you initiate an action, you are responsible for the action. This is automatic and you cannot get out of out it. But obligation is totally different. It is a volitionally assumed responsibility, although these days we seem to get it all mixed up.

To a modern day collectivist, the man robbing the filling station is not responsible for his theft, but he does somehow have a moral obligation to join the army, or pay welfare taxes. He has no such obligation, thunders LeFevre! An obligation must always be voluntary, otherwise we get problems. If in the modern age we did agree that the individual could become obligated to the group, without deciding to become so obligated, we would end up, with many monstrous situations. Of course, this is where are, says LeFevre, and part of the reason why we're in such a mess.

(Once again, we have to pinch ourselves to remember that LeFevre is speaking in 1970.)

If a collectivist gets into trouble financially, they turn to someone else who just happens to be there and says 'you are obligated to help me, because we're part of the same group.' But what kind of a crazy world is this, asks LeFevre?

The world has become distorted and grotesque, where men in high places of authority make mistakes and then start passing these responsibilities off as obligations to the rest of us, saying we are obliged to pull them out of the mess they got themselves into. It is fine if you want to volunteer to help these men, but absurd to claim we are obliged to do so.

Even in law, a contract is always assumed null and void, if made under force or the threat of force. But now we have a society where it is assumed we have automatic obligations to the army, to the Red Cross, and to the poor. But we have no such obligation, states LeFevre, and we are not responsible. We have an opportunity to help, but it is no more than that.

LeFevre then rounds out his piece with two stories. The first story is about one of the readers of his newspaper in Colorado, whom he managed to convince wasn't responsible for a murder across the country in Oklahoma City. He then follows this up with a similar tale about whether he would be obligated to adopt an orphan, if one walked into his room. He ends by saying that he is not responsible for all the orphans in the world, and he not obligated to them. He may have the opportunity to adopt any orphaned child he came across, but that is as far as it goes.

And now we are clear about the meanings of the terms responsibility and obligation, we can move into a discussion on what freedom is.

(Which is a discussion worth waiting for.)


Previous: Sacrifice and Molestation

Is Anarcho-Capitalism the New Homosexuality?

As one of the miniscule number of anarcho-capitalists in this country it can sometimes be a little tricky at social events. Only at a very small number of such events can I speak my mind freely, on the rare though always highly enjoyable occasions where I get to meet my fellow travellers. We literally meet in rooms not much bigger than a closet, and afterwards skulk in the most minute corners of anonymous bars.

Admittedly, the numbers are growing. At one recent meeting, we couldn't even get everyone in the closet. One unfortunate soul had to sit outside in the corridor. Yey, I can hear you think, today the closet, tomorrow the upstairs landing!? But what is much worse is mingling in what you might call polite society. Around 99.999% of intelligent people, in this country, are socialists. Some call themselves conservatives, some liberals, and some Labour supporters, but to me, because they all believe in government intervention in society, they are all socialists.

So what do you do? Well, you keep your mouth ultra shut. If you were to ever view your true feelings at any typical London dinner party, it would take about 17 micro-seconds to be shown the door as a raving mono-maniac, never to be invited again. Believe me, I know this through bitter experience. So the choice is, do you wear your anarchistic heart on your sleeve, or do you mumble your way through life discussing cricket and rugby to get thought of as some kind of harmlessly mild eccentric because you refuse to discuss politics? Coward that I am, I'm afraid I've taken the low road to societal inclusion. It's either that or be cut off entirely from virtually all human physical conversation. Because there is nothing that people hate more than having their political views challenged, except for perhaps visiting dentists. Which is kind of weird really! The discussion of politics is supposed to be an intellectual pursuit. But if you scratch it, any political discussion always seems to rapidly revert to the basest form of emotional tribalism. But I digress.

There may be only a few of us anarcho-capitalists around, mostly hiding in closets. And there may be just one or two who actually walk the streets proud to advertise our true nature. But should we be disheartened? Should we get depressed because so few intelligent people seem to share our thoughts and feelings? Only if we have failed to read the lessons of history.

Just look at Quentin Crisp, the naked civil servant. For decades he was seemingly the only homosexual in Britain. Yes, people whispered about Kenneth Williams too, but Earth Mother Goddess Hattie Jacques seemed to mask his nature too, with her Matron routine in the Carry On films.

The bravery of Quentin Crisp is legendary. Despite failing to serve in the army in World War II, he was perhaps the most courageous man in Britain, routinely risking the worst forms of physical harrassment on the streets of London.

But look at Britain now. Just take a stroll past the Admiral Duncan pub, in Old Compton Street, on a warm Spring evening, or Canal Street, in Manchester. Although they may be a minority, Britain is absolutely heaving with homosexuals, none of whom are afraid of the feelings of polite society. And they achieved this through the bravery of people like Quentin Crisp.

Although we will never stoop to campaigning for special government favours to help our cause, perhaps we, the anarcho-capitalists, if we stick to our guns and refuse to get depressed, can achieve a similar level of success. We believe that we represent the true innate feelings of humanity, which have only been masked by a continual propaganda operation by the state. The state needs to keep this propaganda operation going night and day, to sustain itself, with its control of virtually all educational outlets, plus great swathes of the media, particularly the BBC.

Therefore our plan must be to continually work on getting them out of this propaganda operation. Once we have freed people's minds, their true human action nature will quickly reassert itself. And although we may seem powerless up against the entrenched bureaucracies of the Department of Education and the BBC, Quentin Crisp was similarly powerless against the entrenched laws forbidding homosexuality.

But he beat them. He was the victor. He won.

We can win too. But only if we stick to our guns and keep the fight going, till we all draw our last breath. What have we got to lose? A life not worth living as a government slave? So stick to your principles, stick to your beliefs, and keep fighting the enemy without giving up hope or without giving up an enthusiasm for a life of freedom for everyone. We have nothing to lose but our chains.

Fight them until we can't.

Stephen Fry - Rancid Offal in a Suit

There was a time last year, during the Ashes cricket series, when I almost forgot that Stephen Fry, an increasingly well-padded Gentleman these days, was a Leftist. As we of the suffering classes, Stephen Fry and I included, sat glued to our rooftops watching Freddie Flintoff et al rescue that little urn from our Australian cousins, without even once thinking of Eric Morecambe, I even felt a level of common humanity with this revolting sack of faeces.

But then he had to spoil it.

If you visit the following site, you may be able to watch Stephen Fry's side-splitting report on the This Week program, hosted by Andrew Neil, for a few more days, before it disappears into the great Bit Bucket in the sky:

This Week

You may even be able to read what he said, here:

This Week - Stephen Fry

In uncomprehending disbelief I listened to this arrogant man, who makes even yours truly seem meek and mild in his utter condescension towards the whole of the rest of humanity. I sat there waiting for him to tell me he was joking. But as his report unfolded, rambled into a swilling wine glass, I realised he meant every fetid patronising word. Here's a sample:

"Almost the whole of my text at the moment, in my head as I fall asleep, is summed up by the word 'contempt'. Contempt, in politics, for the hypocrisy, the double standards, the double dealing, the corruption and the moral suasion. It's almost impossible for me to explain just how deeply I feel contempt. I want to go into detail - and I think you'll be rather shocked, and I hope rather edified, by what I have to say. Cant and hypocrisy. So who are these terrible hypocrites? Who are these double dealers? Who are these liars and fraudulent corrupt people? Well, you're listening to one of them: that's me. And I'm talking to millions of them: that's you. It's not the politicians, God bless them."

And he means it. Yes, this lumbering champagne-fuddled fop thinks that the fault for the mess we endure in society can be laid plain and square at the foot of the door of society. The decivilisation all around us has nothing to do with government, seen by some as the enemy of society, oh no. In fact, if it were not for our government, God bless them, things would be far, far worse. That he believes this bilge is one thing.

But for me to be forced to pay for a television licence, so that this man can be paid even more filthy socialist lucre to tell me, to my face, that I am a liar, a hypocrite, and a cant-filled piece of filth, and that I should get down on my knees and beg to have even more government, simply beggars witless belief.

Read the rest, if you can stomach it. I'll leave you with his witty ending repartee:

"...all governments serve us. They serve the filth."

Well thank you, and goodnight Stephen Fry, you putrid Polymathic man.

What of course he won't do, being an ardent New Labour supporter, who helped bring the revolting toads in, in 1997, is come down from his mountain of arrogance and admit he got it all wrong. In the last few months his intelligence has made him realise what a ghastly government we are now existing under, and gave him two choices:

• Either, admit he was wrong and tell the world he should never have supported New Labour, and perhaps going further than that, that socialism doesn't work


• Or, that he is still right, and in the infamous words of Labour MP, Stephen Pound, it is the people who are the bastards

The monumental arrogance of the typical über-socialist once again shone through with his decision to go with option two, as it almost always does. It is not socialism that is the problem, they think, these über-men, it is humanity. Why won't people just accept that socialism is wonderful and then get on with it? Why do they keep persisting in being so damn human? Hence, the incessant urge to try to create New Socialist Men and Women, as exemplified by all those Stakhanovite poster boys of the old Soviet Union.

Well, Stephen, why won't you just accept that you are wrong? That you made a mistake. And that socialism is about as useful as a fist up the derriere of Norman Lamont?

Do try to reason it out, old boy. You never know, you may even become an anarcho-capitalist if you work at it hard enough. You have the intelligence. But do you have the mental strength? As a recovering socialist myself, I can help you. Here's where you need to begin:

Human Action: The Scholars Edition

Good luck.

Official: Lunatics Running Asylum System

And I quote:

Five illegal immigrants were arrested yesterday while working as cleaners in the Home Office department responsible for removing illegal immigrants.

Is there really any more that has to be said? Bring on Hoppeian private security systems, right now.

Apparently, on hearing that he had been selected as secretary of state for health, a year or two ago, Dr John Reid was heard to say, in his best Glaswegian accent, "Oh f**k, not health." One only wonders at what he said when the news came through he was going to be home secretary. I almost felt sorry for this Bull-headed Marxist Rottweiler. Almost. But not quite.

It's Fat and It's Ugly

And no, I'm not talking about John Prescott's facial appearance. I'm talking about the appalling Airbus A380, that horrible EU concocted bid to rival the US airline industry. So why is this plane appalling? Because it has been a horrible and gigantic gamble with billions upon untold billions of stolen taxpayer cash in soft loans and grants to build the damned thing, cash which otherwise would have been spent on far more productive uses by the tax producers themselves.

When the Fat Meister himself, Gordon Brown, proclaimed this plane yesterday as a triumph for British industry, what he chose not to see were all the British jobs lost as a result of all the taxes imposed on private British business so the Department of Trade and Industry could then lavish their friends in the airline industry with the resultant pilfered funds. The people building this plane couldn't get the private market to fund this horrible behemoth, because even now the whole project is viewed as, pardon the pun, a gigantic risk.

The private airline industry is heading towards smaller planes that can fly direct to smaller airports, giving passengers greater flexibility and convenience. The EU sponsored market, meanwhile, is going Leviathan-style, in some kind of phallus waving war with the US government. Only a few airports will be able to handle the damned thing, meaning many point-to-point flights will necessarily entail the shuddering horror of multiple flight connections. Ye Gods.

And even if you only want to fly between Heathrow and JFK, or Paris and Los Angeles, without stopping at any of the lovely places in between, can you simply imagine being at the back of the queue of 700 people trying to get through US border clearance? Imagine two of these monsters landing together? That's right. That means you, yes you, Johnny Economy Flyer, will be at the back of 1400 grisly time-consuming idiots, while the men in black pore over visa waiver forms stating that the 1,399 people in front of you are not now, nor have they ever been, international terrorists.

No doubt these heavily subsidised planes will be snapped up by airline bosses, such as Mr Richard Branson, because they will be quite literally cheap at half the price. So no doubt one day I'll end up on one of the damned things. But have the EU superstate learned the lesson of Concorde? Have they created a non-market desired product, which even untold subsidy can't sustain long-term? We shall see.

Unfortunately, alas, even if the project ultimately fails it will take decades to play out. So those of us living under the Heathrow flight path are going to be seeing a lot of this horrible fat plane, coerced into existence by horrible fat men like Gordon Brown. In the meantime, will somebody please send our dear Reichs Chancellor a copy of Bastiat's essay, That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen? Not that this fat Marxist plank will understand a word of it, even though Mises.org have kindly translated it into English for him. God rot his eye.

God bless Jeff Tucker and Lew Rockwell.

Oh No, Not Big Brother Again!

So, who you backing to win this year? For me, it has to be Grace. Why? Because she thinks all taxes should be abolished because they "do her head in".

Superb.

Though obviously, I never watch this load of old monkey nuts. Honest.

Gouge, Gouge, and Gouge Again!

Governments are stupid.

They are really stupid. But how governments often reveal their stupidity is in the way they finance themselves. For they do it by three gouging measures:

• Taxation


• Borrowing


• Inflation

Usually in that order.

But instead of being really sophisticated and cleverly managing a blend of all three, governments tend to go for gouging on one measure; they then get hit by political pressure; they then gouge on a second measure, and then onto the final measure, before eventually coming back to the first again, after having replaced a sacrificial executive component. Here's the program model:

• A population is disgruntled with a government. In order to survive, the government realises it has to change its executive, in the same manner that a master criminal often has to change his identity.
  
  
• Once the government has changed its executive, via the tedious process of a democratic election, one of the rules is that the bright-eyed hullo clouds, hullo sky clod-hoppers who comprise the new executive body, must come in with a promise not to raise taxes.



• This executive then immediately raises taxes. Usually under a deep surrepticious layer of cloaks and daggers.



• They get away with this, for a bit, because they'd promised not to raise them and people were foolish enough to believe them.



• Following Lincoln's dictum about not fooling all of the people all of the time, however, the political pressure mounts and the new executive has to slow down its gouging on these surrogate tax rises.



• It now starts borrowing, generally using the excuse that because the economy has slowed down, more investment is required. Obviously, they never mention the reason the economy slowed down was because of their increased tax pilfering, because that would simply frighten the horses!



• Obviously, borrowing today is taxation tomorrow, with added interest, but who cares about tomorrow!



• This increase in borrowing, the second gouge, is usually accompanied with promises of capital investment strategy, and long term cycle repayment, even though we all know the borrowed cash is simply to be fed straight down the maw of the Guardian-reading classes, who need brand new Saabs and brand new second homes in Portugal.



• Eventually, after squeezing out the productive sector's ability to borrow and invest, in the real sense of the word invest, the political pressure mounts again and the government is forced by voting movements to curtail this burgeoning growth in borrowing. Curses.



• So now they're really in a hole. With a voracious need for ever-increasing government spending to feed the maw of the unproductive Guardian-reading sector, what do we do now, Clive?



• Fortunately, from Clive's point of view, growth in the productive economy has slumped again, due to his grabbing of all the available investment funds on the bond market, so, first, play up the message that you're looking at ways to stimulate the economy, hypocritical crooks that you are.
  
  
• Second, start bragging about how you have heroically kept inflation down to record lows for several years (by the heroic process of only increasing the money supply at 2.5% faster, each year, than the productive sector of the economy grows).



• Then promise that, whatever happens, you will be pegging inflation back at all costs, with further such heroism.



• Then, obviously, you get your central bank to start inflating. It's a no-brainer, really. If you get caught, just say you were pump-priming, as is recommended by Mr Galbraith et al.



• Though now you get into a bit of a hole. Because inflating is really addictive, in the manner that opium farming in Afghanistan is really lucrative. A little bit of inflation is nice; hardly anyone notices. So you quickly give in to the feeling that a lot of inflation is even better; it certainly buys a lot of Saabs, as any NHS doctors' car park, in this country, will tell you.



• Until of course, the people who generate all of this wealth wake up and notice. House prices start ramping up as the increase in the money supply is fed into the property sector, and then general prices start rising too, faster than wages may rise, as money borrowed on rising house prices feeds in. And now your executive is screwed. This doomed executive cuts back the inflation, in a desperate bid to cling to the fiction of power, which creates systemic Cold Turkey habit kicking effects throughout the productive and unproductive sectors of the economy, plus you now have no means of feeding the truly powerful maw of the Guardian readers. And so the government decides to replace the executive again, in a hilarious scam called a general election.



• And guess what the new executive promise? Oh yes. No more taxes!



• Joy. This new executive may decide to replace Guardian readers with Telegraph readers, but in the end, it's still the same old maw.



• Just as an aside, at some point in the cycle some kind of war must be initiated with some Johnny Foreigner, the further away the better. This is the only way the cycle can be maintained, because given a choice between security and freedom, most voters will opt for security, thus giving you an excuse for more taxes at the start of the next loop.
  

So where are we now in the cycle? Well judging from this article I read this morning, we're just about to head into sector three.

Who needs The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money by Mr Keynes, a favorite amongst Marxists, when you have AngloAustria to provide you with such cogent examples of how government really works.

Actually, I started out by saying I thought governments were stupid. Of course, I was wrong. The way they keep fooling their enslaved societies, who are dim-witted enough and brainwashed enough to think democratic elections change anything other than the outer skin of the Vampire, means that it is we the people who are the truly stupid ones. Well done the state education system! It wouldn't have been possible without it.

Welcome to the pleasure dome.

Taxes Make You Happy

If ever you wanted a reason why the BBC should be emasculated, with all of its assets distributed amongst licence-fee payers, and all of its staff heaved out of their tax-fed sinecures and made to fend for themselves on the free market, look no further than the appalling series on BBC2 at the moment, The Happiness Formula. And I quote:

"For Britain to become a happier nation, economic growth should cease to be the top priority of government," says Lord Layard, government adviser and professor at the London School of Economics.

Talk about B.B.C. standing for "Buggers Broadcasting Communism". And to think I'm made to pay at the point of a gun for this Marxist drivel.

Here are the economist's plans for making everyone's live happier:

The most important thing we can affect is the values which our children acquire. Schools should teach them systematically that the secret of a happy life is in giving to other people. Evidence-based programmes exist for doing this, and should become a part of our core curriculum.

So, government brainwashing and propaganda is absolutely tickety boo, according to this fine educationist, no doubt something he learned in his time advising former Russian governments on economics. And if you don't want to pay taxes and spend your own time fixing the problems of other people, no doubt the government is justified in making you do so, against your will, because in so doing, in depriving you of your earned wealth and leisure time, they are really making you happy; who'd have thought we wouldn't do this voluntarily then? The British government really are the Joy Division of modern times.

The least happy people in our society are people with a record of mental illness. Three-quarters of people with depression or hyper-anxiety receive no treatment, although psychological therapies exist which can cure over half of these terrible cases. Such therapies should be available free on the NHS.

No thought then, that perhaps the prevalence of hyper-anxiety and depression in the United Kingdom might have been caused by the ever-increasing state-client dependency of 61 years of the British welfare state, as symbolized by the dysfunctional NHS? Has unhappiness increased in society at the same rate the government has increased? No doubt if it has, it is only a coincidence hardly worth mentioning. And perhaps if only the government had grown even faster, it would have offset this mental trend to destabilization?

Advertising makes people feel they need more and thus makes them less happy with what they have. As in Sweden, we should ban advertising aimed at children under 12.

Oh no, back to the late much unlamented John Kenneth Galbraith. Will we never be free of these tax-fed idiots?

I know, let's ban cars, aeroplanes, deoderant, disposable sanitary towels, disposable nappies, iPods, personal computers, Bluetooth phones, McDonalds, neoprene wetsuits, or anything else people were too stupid to realise they didn't really need, but were fooled into wasting their money on, according to our betters and masters at the London School of Economics, who know so much better than we mere poor stupid proles.

First of all this state-sponsored professor is saying we should forcibly brainwash children into believing socialist new man crap, at tax-fed institutions, and then we shouldn't let them choose to see information which can help them tune more clearly into the world of business, trade, and the personal satisfaction of desires.

The phrase "fracking hypocrite" springs to mind.

We should stop apologising about taxes: if people pay more tax as they work harder it will discourage us from an even more fevered way of life, sacrificing further our relationships with family and friends. We should also persist with income redistribution, since an extra £1 gives more happiness to poor people than to rich. That argument also implies redistribution to the Third World.

Arbeit macht frei.

Just what has that idiot Keynes done to our neoclassical economists? No doubt the professor lives in a hair shirt, lives on £3,000 pounds a year, and voluntarily gives away the rest to Bhuddist monks in Bhutan, to sit contemplating the joys of poverty. No doubt.

The BBC should be privatized, immediately.

Parallel Universes: Battlestar Galactica

For those who think the BBC is great value, mainly because people like me are forced to pay for the programmes that they like to watch, they may never have seen an episode of Battlestar Galactica, currently running on Sky One. Which is a terrible shame, because it's a great series. And what an episode we had last night, especially for the fans like me who love all the parallels between the people of the twelve colonies, with their quasi-US democratic constitution, and the current people of Earth, currently being subjected to a competition between an ever-expanding US-state worldwide hegemony up against rival hegemonies such as the Russian Federation, the EU, and the Chinese communist party.

Obviously, the chief baddie in Battlestar is an Englishman, once again proving the rule that quality programs always require quality evil Englishmen, but let's just run through last night's parallels on the joys of democracy, to get a flavour of the show:

• The "good" president tried to steal the election by faking several thousand ballot papers, apparently for the people's own good.
• The "evil" president won the election, by appealing to the lowest prejudice of the masses, simply because he wished to gain power for his own personal ends.
• The entire population of approximately 45,000 were compelled, in a manner reminiscent of Uncle Joseph Stalin, to live on one particular planet, putting all their eggs in one basket, despite about 22,000 of them vehemently disagreeing with this policy.
• The 22,000 were proved right when, at the end of the program, they became slaves to the Cylons (a sort of updated Cybermen race), because of the democratic decision to force everyone to settle on this one planet.
• The presumably monopolistic state navy, having spent a year in orbit spending state-procured funding in preparation for a possible invasion by the Cylons, cleared off the moment the Cylons appeared, to save their own skins. What a waste of taxpayers' money that was!
• Just before the Cylon invasion, there were, can you believe it, union problems on the ground, with thousands of workers threatening strike action, despite the constant threat of Cylon invasion.
• Once in power, as president, the evil Englishman quickly became a debauched corrupt dilettante living in luxury, while the peasants lived below his window in cold pneumonic tents, as he threatened their union leaders with summary imprisonments for daring to challenge his rightful democratic rule.

Oh yes, it's all there in Battlestar.

So how did the people of these twelve lost colonies get stuck in such a mess? Because they all felt an ideological committment to their damned stupid constitution, despite this having been drawn up many centuries before in entirely different circumstances. Which sort of shows you the power of ideology.

So how did the twelve colonies get in such a terrible situation in the first place. Because the Cylons had nuked all twelve of their home planets in a sudden attack, wiping out virtually everyone, including 99% of the space navy. And how did they do this? Because all twelve planets and the navy were under the control of a single monopolistic defence agency, which had all of its single-network computers taken down by viruses just before the attack, rendering all their defence systems useless against the nuclear-armed Cylons. Merely as an aside, the evil Englishman was used by a Cylon agent to give her access to these systems to plant the deadly virus, but now I'm only quibbling.

So wherever you look on Battlestar, you find democracy, government monopoly, corruption, and failure, continuously working side by side, to create misery for society. 'Twas ever thus, I suppose.

So how would a free society have coped with all the challenges thrown at the 12 colonies? Well, for a start, there would have been at least 12 separate defence agencies, possibly many more, with no chance for the Cylons to take out the whole defence system in one move.

Even if the Cylons had managed this feat, and they're clever critters, why this need for the whole of humanity to keep sticking together all the time, in one big commune, making the life of the Cylon gunners really easy, with all these fish in one barrel? There's no compelling reason why the whole of humanity should stay together in one big lump. We evolved in groups of 500, or less, and so the 45,000 who survived could easily have split into 90 or so groups, confounding the Cylons with a Diaspora rather than a Moses-style crusade, to find a single promised land. And even if the whole of humanity had stayed together at first, when escaping, they didn't all have to live on the one planet. The 22,000 could easily have gone their own way, and away from the dangers of the Cylons.

For a final possibility, even if they had all decamped to the one planet, it seemed unlikely that everyone would continue living on the one cold damp site, especially if they felt oppressed by a ruling tyrant. Surely those union members, who felt so aggrieved to go on strike against the presumably communist government, would simply have walked to another part of the planet, to set up life there on a huge frontier of wilderness.

But hey, it is only a TV program, and you need democracy, government monopoly, corruption, and failure, to create all of the life and death tensions necessary to build up the anger, frustration, and drama required to get people like me to watch, I suppose, just like all those endless TV and hospital programs which feed on the same ingredients.

Now we could also talk about how the 12 colonies run themselves economically, or even what the economy of the Cylons could be based on, seeing as they are just lumps of metal or protoplasm that live forever; but we really don't want to get into the difficult territory of defining a human being as being any kind of self-defined individual that carries out purposeful action, otherwise we'd have to define the Cylons as humans. And that really would be going just too far!

Next week, apparently, the Navy will fly back and deal with the Cylons. I can't wait. Go Admiral Adama, go! (He's the Moses figure, by the way, as played by the splendid Edward James Olmos.)

446 Of Our Rapists Are Missing

Take a government agency, any government agency, and whisk for five minutes. Add three egg noodles, a bag of lemons, and a large packet of of over-stuffed nuts. Then, blend in a £14 billion unaudited budget and watch the whole jam doughnut unfold.

Could Hoppeian private defence agencies possibly do any worse than the British Home Office, at providing reasonable protection at a reasonable price? If the entire British Home Office was disbanded tomorrow, and its entire budget repatriated to the taxpayers it was stolen from, would British people be more at risk from violent criminals or safer? After reading the following article, I think the answer is a total no-brainer. See if you agree:

We have lost 446 foreign criminals, says Home Office

Whoops!

The Government has lost more than 400 foreign prisoners it now wants to deport after they were released from prison without being considered for removal.

Butter fingers.

The total includes a murderer and eight sex offenders.

Nice.

It emerged yesterday that the missing 446 are among 649 out of the original 1,023 foreign convicts whom the Home Office has decided to throw out of the country if it can find them.

No doubt it will use this as an excuse for why everyone will need to have compulsory ID cards tattooed onto their arms and read by laser scanners in every public space, twenty times a day once Gulag Britain becomes a reality.

From memory, I can think of only one example of more blatant incompetence by the British government; but at least the Charge of the Light Brigade had a certain pointless magnificence to it.

Police and immigration officials are trying to track down the potential deportees. A total of 98 sexual or violent offenders are among the 446.

Are they sure it's only 98, or is it 57, or is it Quarg Squared minus Rumpelstiltskin? Who can tell!

So far, the Home Office has only managed to deport seven convicts out of the 1,023.

Good effort. But is it worth £14 billion?

The number of killers, rapists and child abusers within the 1,023 who were wrongly released has almost doubled since the first assessment given three weeks ago by Charles Clarke, the then home secretary. Then the Government said there were three murderers. Now there are four.

I'm sorry. Now I'm really confused.

The fact that the Home Office cannot find the murderer, reportedly an Albanian, and the other eight who are rapists or child molesters - who should all be on life-long licence or the Sex Offenders Register, and whose whereabouts should be known at all times - will embarrass the new Home Secretary, John Reid.

It's OK though. He's only been doing the job a week, so there's no-one to blame really. Apart from possibly Margaret Thatcher, about a hundred years ago, for creating, err...., a culture of hostility in this country towards Brutal Communist attack-dog thugs dressed up as caring sharing cabinet ministers.

So, too, will the assessment that 57 of the 179 prisoners among the 1,023 who are classed as "more" or "most serious" have committed further crimes since their release without proper consideration.

And so down the rabbit hole you'll go, Dorothy ... into a land of madness.

Of these, 19 involved violence or a "sexual element", which means at least 19 traumatised victims - a shocking statistic which would almost certainly have cost Mr Clarke his job had Tony Blair not sacked him already.

Don't worry, Charles. Gordon Brown has already promised you a nice fat job, once he's PM, with a nice fat pay packet, to go with your nice fat stomach. Oh, what a joy it is to be a nice fat politician.

In a breakdown of the offences the 1,023 were jailed for immediately before being wrongly released, which was published on April 25, there were 19 guilty of murder, manslaughter, rape or "sex offences (minors)" - what the Home Office has said were "most serious offences".

Well, that's all right then. I mean, nineteen out of 1,023 is only a measly 1.86%; hardly worth mentioning really.

On April 28, Mr Clarke told the Speaker of the House of Commons the "most serious" total was in fact 13. Yesterday, Mr Reid said it was 35.

And Uncle Tom Cobbley chipped in with 57. Or was that 93? I forget.

The previous estimate for more and most serious offences has now risen from 150 to 179.

Down from a previous high of 17 in the rankings, and rated as the top British contender at the forthcoming Wimbledon tournament.

The Home Secretary said he had now "widened the definition of serious offences to include all cases where there has been any conviction for offences involving violence or a sexual element" and this category now ran to 144, in addition to the 35.

A hundred and forty-four? That's even more than Uncle Tom Cobbley! Though it sounds a suspiciously round number to me. Someone in the Home Office has obviously been reading Lord of the Rings again, and borrowing the "Gross" of party invitations Bilbo Baggins used, to make it seem like they didn't make the number up.

Oh, those foolish people. They think we don't know!

Officials said the figures had changed to reflect the worst offence in the convict's file, not just the offence they were being punished for when they were released.

And on Tuesdays, the cake trolley in the Home Office has Black Forest gateaux, rather than lemon cheesecake. It's the only thing the civil servants wake up for.

The question of how many of the 1,023 are out of the country or locked up is far from clear.

No kidding.

In the "most serious" 35, three of the four murderers are "within our control". In other words, one is not. A total of 23 of the other 31 "most serious" are now "within our control or deported". One of the 35 has been deported. Six of the 144 have also been deported.

Ummm..."within our control". An interesting statement. When pressed, a spokesman at the Home Office defined "within our control", as meaning the offender under discussion had been contacted by their last known mobile phone number and had agreed to appear at Paddington Green police station, Tuesday week. Probably.

In total, according to the new figures, 203 prisoners are "either under our control or have been deported in removed".

It looks like they're following the John Prescott line on obfuscation. When pushed into a corner, start using a new form of language. You'd think all those Double Firsts from Oxbridge who populate the Whitehall civil service would at least try to use English.

Home Office sources indicated, however, that "under control" may mean detention or release under electronic tagging.

I love the use of the phrase "may mean", sort of like "they have escaped their tag and we don't know where they are", but without the embarrassment.

In Commons exchanges, Mr Reid said that many of the "serious and systemic" failures which led to the release of 1,023 foreign offenders had been in existence for decades.

Oh my God, John Reid really is trying to blame Margaret Thatcher! I think it may be time to remind this brutal communist thug that he and his friends have been in power now for longer than World War II. Considerably longer.

"I believe we are uncovering some very serious and systemic underlying problems in the whole of the relationship between prisons, probation, deportation and so on," he said.

Oh, good.

His Tory shadow, David Davis, asked when the Prime Minister's undertaking to "automatically" deport every foreign national who had served a prison sentence would be met.

Knowing Tony Blair, the day after he's removed from office by the Labour Party.

Mr Reid said he intended to ensure that foreign nationals who served "significant" custodial sentences were automatically deported.

Or forced to spend a day living in the mind of John Reid, John Malkovich style. Can you imagine anything worse? Except perhaps being taken roughly from behind by John Prescott.

He added: "I cannot give you a date by which that will be achieved but I can assure you that that is my strategic objective."

What a load of old Cobbolds.

I remember a Croatian general once said a plan without a timetable on it is simply a piece of paper.

I think the time may be coming soon when we in the miniscule British anarcho-capitalist movement can bring on the vision of Gustave Molinari, and the removal of the state monopoly on personal protection. It is going to become far too dangerous to live in Britain, otherwise. Unless, of course, you're a cabinet minister with your own personal Metropolitan Police protection unit.

Perhaps as an alternative tack we could create a new Jeffersonian declaration of independence from the British government. If we do, we should adopt Robert LeFevre's addition:

"That to secure these rights, each man is qualified to select for himself that agency or those agencies which seem to him best suited to protect his life and his property, to maintain his freedom, and which lie within his ability to afford ... that whenever any agency evinces characteristics of tyranny, he is well within his rights and his powers to discharge that agency and find another more suitable to his inclinations and finances."

Magnificent.

The East is Red

Bulgaria and Romania are still on track to join the European Union at the start of next year, provided they demonstrate major efforts to tackle fraud and corruption, the EU has announced.

Apparently, they're not nearly fraudulent or corrupt enough yet, to be allowed to join.

Buy That Man a Large Glass of Champagne!

You may have noticed, if you've been reading AngloAustria, that I've almost given up on doing political write-ups in the last few weeks, because Britain's political shenanigans have been so hilarious in their own right I thought it simply impossible for this weary hack to add anything to spice them up a bit, in true AngloAustrian style. One does tire immensely of the stupidities of British politicians, but as I see the collapse of democratic politics almost inevitable now, I've tried to concentrate on building up my business options to help me escape this land of 446 lost murderers and rapists, before the implosion begins. However, I was struck this morning by the words of Sir John Mortimer, that most champagne-sodden of all the champagne socialists who infect this once glorious isle, speaking about his friends in the Labour Party:

"It's totally exploded - it's dire. We are in the worst situation we have ever been in. Even in the dark Thatcher years, we thought something better was around the corner. This time, we know there isn't. It's intensely depressing. Gordon will be worse than Tony. But where else do we look? To Mr Thingamyjig on his bicycle? We'll have to vote Anarchist."

And so say all of us.

How splendid to hear an intelligent man coming across to the miniscule world of British anarcho-capitalism; top hole, sir.

Robert LeFevre - Sacrifice and Molestation

Index: Robert LeFevre Commentary Abstracts

The moral principle behind Professor Ralph Raico's Totally Voluntary Society is realised and established in Robert LeFevre's fifth monologue in the series:

Sacrifice and Molestation - MP3 Audio File

LeFevre begins by questioning the basic nature of man. People engage in action to better their own lives, he says; so far, no argument. Unfortunately however, sometimes they better their own lives by demanding sacrifices from others. As human beings we all create value mechanisms. But some of us are tempted, for whatever reason, to force these personal value mechanisms onto others, to satisfy our own situations. In other words, we sacrifice the wills of other people to satisfy our own wills.

But what about self-sacrifice? LeFevre believes in no such thing. Those engaged in what they call self-sacrifice, such as martyrs, he states, are merely massaging their own egos and achieving self-fulfillment rather than self-sacrifice. They want others to recognize how good they are and they want to wallow in their own self-actualized goodness.

For example, a man who can't swim may walk over a bridge spanning a stream. He may see a child drowning. If he throws himself in, is this self-sacrifice? No, says LeFevre, emphatically. The man is simply fulfilling his highest goal at that moment; he is trying to prevent the loss of a child. Although the man can't swim, he may be salving his own guilty conscience. If he is lucky, he thinks, he may even save the drowning child. Whatever happens, whether the man lives or drowns, he thinks he will gain approval and a substantial round of applause from the gathering multitude.

Thus, in the act of throwing himself into the water, the non-swimming man gains self-approval. In LeFevre's colorful language, the man wants to wallow in self-esteem and take a psychic profit in trying to save the child.

Let's imagine a different man in the same situation. He refuses to throw himself in. He simply says, "Sorry kid, I can't swim", and walks on by. So what is this man doing? In this case he is maximizing his own psychic profit by preventing a psychic loss; in this case, the needless loss of his own life through irrational token action. He has rationally identified that, because he can't swim, there is nothing to gain for anyone involved. He will almost certainly lose his own life and could even interfere with the escape chances of the child by dragging the child under. It is better for everyone, including the child, if this more uninvolved man simply walks on by.

Although this second man is not expecting immediate applause from the gathering multitude for walking on by, there may also be unseen people he considered in his decision. There may be those who understand his rationality and whose opinions count, in his reckoning of things. These unseen others may regard him as courageous for not jumping in and for not giving in to the senseless pressure of the multitude to do so. Again, the man may be trying to gain approval from those whom he thinks count. He could also be wallowing in self-approval.

So according to LeFevre, the nature of man precludes self-sacrifice. Sacrifice is possible, but self-sacrifice is impossible. So what does LeFevre imagine by the term sacrifice? Those who inflict their will on others are sacrificing those others. Indeed, if the second man above had jumped in knowing he would achieve nothing more than impede the escape of the child, in order to gain applause from the multitude, he would have been sacrificing the child upon the altar of his own glory; he would have been molesting the child.

Taking this principle further, if someone wants to commit suicide, preventing them doing so is an act of molestation, in the same way that killing them, if they didn't want to die, would also be an act of molestation.

Any action that may be considered beneficial by the multitude, but that is imposed upon an unwilling individual, is molestation. For example, insisting at the point of a gun that another man takes $100 dollars from you, who doesn't want your $100 dollars, is an act of molestation, in the same way that taking five cents from this man, at the point of the same gun, would also be an act of molestation.

It is all about the exercise of will. The question is: Who is running you? Is it you? Or is it me?

LeFevre also fails to believe in the usual distinction between good or evil. Man is egocentric, he states. He is always and at all times seeking the good for himself. He is never seeking evil.

(And here's where the Hobbesian scholars will have some fun.)

If men were basically good, then we would require no control from some appointed authority. If men were basically evil, then we cannot let any power to make them be good get placed in the hands of other men, because the men wielding this power would also, by definition, be evil.

Man is a profit seeker who seeks to maintain his own well-being by whatever he does. And this well-being, for all of us as individuals, can only be ultimately achieved in a truly free society, which is a society where nobody imposes force, molestation, and sacrifice, upon anyone else.

Every human being wants to exercise his own will, LeFevre states, and as long as he limits this will to himself, and to his own property, it has nothing to do with anyone else. We need to create a way of achieving this situation for everyone, in society, which is meaningful and successful; we need to create a society in which sacrifice disappears and where nobody sacrifices anyone else, for any reason whatsoever.

There arises a further problem with molestation and sacrifice, which makes the whole situation even worse. No man approves of his own molestation; LeFevre states this as a universal principle of natural law. All those who are thus molested are therefore victims of aggression. This causes a rise in levels of frustration; LeFevre also states this as a universal principle.

What is the problem with this? Frustration itself causes further aggression, where the molested may aggress upon a third party to relieve frustration, kicking the dog, thus causing an endless cycle of molestation, aggression, and sacrifice, spiraling out of control. Indeed, says LeFevre, it could possibly create mental problems if this frustration were to remain unrelieved. So if we reduce molestation, we can reduce aggression, thereby reducing frustration, and so break the cycle of sacrifice, which will ultimately increase humanity's general well-being.

We can also reduce fatal conflicts through the reduction of sacrifice. Molestation is the violation of someone's will by the will of another. This can happen between individuals, groups, or nations, and is therefore the initial cause of all wars and conflicts. Reducing molestation and the sacrifice of one group's values for the values of another group can also reduce the chances of life-threatening war between different groups of people.

Before he goes further, LeFevre spends some time splitting apart the related concepts of morals and ethics. These are separate, he states. Morality is that area of thought dealing as much as it can with objective reality. Morality is at the level of principle and at the level of nature. Morality tries to describe things as they are in nature and tries to avoid being a product of any human value system, unlike ethics, which is always a product of some human value system.

Morality covers those things that exist because of the nature of man as it relates to the nature of other men. For instance, a single man surviving on a desert island must follow natural law in order to survive. He needs food, water, shelter, and rest, and he must act sensibly to avoid risk and keep from falling off cliffs or drowning in the sea, if he wants to continue living.

If two men exist on the same desert island, as long as they both practice a moral system of non-molestation and non-sacrifice, they will both get along just fine. In LeFevre's idealistic moral situation, one should do nothing to the other to prevent them following the rules of nature to stay alive and to better their lives, as they see fit. There would be no obligation to intervene on the other's behalf and no prevention of the other's will, so long as they reciprocate this principle of non-intervention in the other's life and property.

To summarize, every human being rejects molestation and sacrifice at the hands of another. This is a natural principle, which can be used as a lever to create a moral human relationship system between all human beings. We should try to create a situation as if we were all alone. This would become a moral legal system based upon non-molestation.

To summarize the summary, it is the absolute natural right of people to mind their own affairs without interference from anyone else.

(Splendid.)


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