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.)


Previous: Emotion and Motivation
Next: Obligation and Responsibility

UK Government Saves the World

Apparently with nothing better to do than slug another industry with yet another pointless and expensive regulation, the Communist Health Minister of Britain, Caroline Flint, will be making drinks companies put health warning labels on bottles of wine.

Despite a complete lack of any evidence whatsoever that any of these labels will prevent the consumption of a single drop of alcohol, anywhere in the country, Ms Flint wants to get in the papers to boost her image and so this regulation must be passed by our betters so she can get more exposure.

It seems there's been a terrible rise in binge-drinking, recently, and Ms Flint is determined to stamp it out, albeit with utterly pointless controls like this one.

Perhaps she could stick a warning label on her friend and master, Tony Blair, who recently introduced 24-hour drinking into Britain. Now I'm all for a complete lack of regulations in every single voluntary-trade industry you can think of, but if you did believe in governments and their right to interfere in our lives for our own good, what do you think would be the most effective way of preventing a serf from drinking 'too much'?

• Sticking a warning label on bottles of wine


• Keeping all alcoholic retail outlets closed at 11pm

Yup, it's a tricky one. But it would seem our joined-up government is incapable of grasping it. I wonder how many new Lordships there are in the alcohol industry?

POSTSCRIPT: I think Von Mises summed this up best. If we, the people, are too stupid to be allowed to purchase bottles of wine without government censure, why are we clever enough to vote in politicians like Ms Flint? Answers on a postcard please, to Ms Flint at Westminster marked 'Having your cake and eating it'.

Peace is War

Are you worried about Condaleeza's latest warning to Iran that only the US has a God-given right to explode nuclear weapons over the heads of civilians?

You should be. Because with the failure of the Iraqis to bend their knees to US hegemony, the only show in town is going to be an invasion of Iran to take the eyes of US voters off the continuing inflationist failure of the Republican Party.

I took a little flak a month or two ago when I suggested that the US government would be instigating an Iranian invasion, but I'm afraid the curse of Maturin is once again weaving its evil magic. The American Army will be in Iran within two years. You read it here first.

London will experience its first open-air nuclear explosion shortly afterwards. From the bunker, Tony Blair, who'll still for some reason be in power, will say the two events are unlinked. And then we'll get a really lovely Fascist military dictatorship to die for.

Welcome to the 21st century.

Chaordic Catallaxy - A Quote for all Seasons

I came across this fabulous quote this morning. Thought you might like it:

"Simple, clear purpose and principles give rise to complex and intelligent behavior. Complex rules and regulations give rise to simple and stupid behavior." - Dee Hock

Dee Hock is the founder of VISA credit card company.

Although not outwardly an anarchist (boo, hiss, etc.), Mr Hock did coin the term Chaordic, which seems a mightily Austrian concept to me. Whether or not the word Chaordic is simply a synonym or sub-term for Catallaxy may be debatable, but Mr Hock is a man obviously on the side of the angels. I shall burn all of my Mastercards immediately.

The Gifts of Government Geeks

Calling all Geeks!

As business is a bit slack this week in the run-up to Easter, I thought I should report upon a little-discussed phenomenon, which is; what happens to Geeks when they work for government agencies, particularly those Geeks who work for 'Security' organs; i.e. those organs dedicated to increasing the security of the state by removing everyone elses?

For as thou shalt see, it is a law as rock-solid as the propensity of Bonking Jorris Bonson to matriculate with attractive wenches, that if thou shouldst work for thine government, as a Geek, thy shouldst become fat, clad in nylon, or otherwise repellent to the opposite sex, as witnessed by these government Geeks below:


Whereas if thou shouldst rebel against thy government and seek to destroy its organs from within, thy shouldst become slim, clad in leather, or otherwise irresistible to the opposite sex:


So Geeks, thee haveth been warned: Work for thy governments and thou shalt be sex Pigs. Work against thy governments and thou shalt be sex Gods. Which choice haveth thee in mind for thine Geekness? Be thy careful out there. Go forth and grep!

The Chris Tame Legacy

I never knowingly met the man, so unfortunately I can't pass any direct comment, but it was good that the Daily Torygraph did an obituary on Chris Tame, to help throw some light onto his work, which seems to have sparked something of a Tamist rethink on the Torygraph. For instance, Danny Kruger has written a great Tamist article, most of which I agree with, entitled Liberty is a subject they won't teach in Brown's nurseries. (Keep it rolling Danny. You may not be a libertarian, but I think we'll be on the same side of the barricade when the revolution comes.)

All the 800 pamphlets Kruger mentions, which somebody in the Stupid Party may read some day, can be accessed here.

As a very occasional co-traveller with the other Libertarian Alliance, it might seem a good time for the two libertarian alliances to get together. But then we are hit with the eternal problem of all anarcho-capitalists everywhere; they really do hate collectives. Which sometimes is a damn shame.

On a personal note, if I manage to leave even a tenth of the input created by Chris Tame to help us all reach a Totally Voluntary Society, when the Great Belgian Beer Brewer calls me to the Cherry Orchard in the sky, I'll have been doing well. So let us hope that his work eventually gets the results it deserves. And thank you, Mr Tame, for having provided us with so many weapons to help us attack the enemy. You will not be forgotten.

Bonkers Bonson Jorris

It's bad enough when your local MP is Bonson Jorris. But when he's nationally known as Bonking Jorris Bonson, it's enough to make you want to join the local Tory Party to help bring that monkey down, or at least help him stop slapping it quite so often.


Ok, it's a great national laugh that he is what he is, and he does do a great deal to help our charities here in South Oxfordshire, but Mr Bonson, if you're reading this, would you please mind keeping Charlie in his trousers a bit more often please? As a former front five rugby man myself I understand the temptations of strong drink and loose women, but you're becoming a public disgrace.

For my sins I know the man in the local Tory Party who finally brought down Michael Heseltine, in a local Jam-and-Raffles party coup, and I know his moods. I haven't enquired how the land lies just yet, seeing as I'm now sans politics, but don't be surprised if the blue rinses who live round our way find Bonson's antics slightly less hilarious than the rest of the country. Though knowing the old trollops, they'll probably fancy him for it. Poor old Marina. What a banana.

The Austrian Pilgrimage

Albert Einstein once famously stated that God doesn't play dice. So how does the great wild-haired astrophysicist explain the double-six God threw on Manhattan island, in the mid-twentieth century, when He used the subterfuge of historical accident to fuse together two of the greatest geniuses who ever lived? If everything is relative, the fifteen minute walk between the creation points of Human Action and Man, Economy, and State is one heck of a quantum coincidence?


But enough of this footling. History is full of enough examples of the flowering effect of genius to go some way towards explaining this - one thinks immediately of the Socratic chain from Socrates himself, the first murder victim of democracy, through the Lucifer of Plato, towards the resurrection of enlightenment in Aristotle - however, as an Austrian, it is still reverentially exciting to walk the route between the two creation points of two of the greatest books ever written; I now know what it is to be a Christian pilgrim on the road towards Antioch and Jerusalem.


I took the New York subway up from Times Square to 96th Street; this was the typically dispiriting experience of public transport everywhere - escalators weren't working, the staff behind the armoured glass at the help desk didn't want to help, and everything was shabby and dirty - but I was going to get to 777 West End Avenue if it killed me.

Having emerged into the clean sunlight again, I strode up Broadway towards 97th Street and made a left turn. At this point I took an internal thermometer reading to find my heart beating much faster than usual. I was, ridiculously, as excited as a small boy who knows he's getting a bicycle for Christmas; it's a strange thing, the human brain. I could feel the power of religion pulsating through my veins and the mythological significance of the number 777; I finally understood the accusation that we Austrians are just another cultish religion. But what the heck. I walked onwards, turning up the hill towards Mecca and the long-time Manhattan apartment home of Professor Ludwig von Mises and his good lady wife.

And there it was, on the other side of the Avenue, about a hundred yards away up on my left. I stopped to take it in; I was almost too nervous to continue. Here I was, surrounded by millionaires' lackeys rambling with flocks of poodle dogs, and I found myself hitting a force field of insane resistance. Shoulders hunched, I crossed over West End Avenue to begin the assault on the summit. And before I knew it I was there.

By the way, this is the last time I mock Christians who visit the crypt at Bethlehem or the Garden of Gethsemane in Jerusalem; yes, this was simply a pile of bricks on a hill, but this was where Human Action was written.

The numerals of 777 were located about 8 feet off the ground in a small brown serif font, on a cornerstone, and I found the actual entrance to the apartment block itself around the corner on 98th Street, rather than on West End Avenue. The sedate brown entrance awning rippled in an unruffled breeze, resplendent with a cream 777 in the same font type as the cornerstone marking. Time to look upwards.

The building had about 12 floors. As the Professor lived in Apartment 12E, if I’d got my counting right, this placed the creation point of Human Action rather appropriately on the top floor. As befits a Viennese nobleman, the 12th floor was bedecked with some rather ornate decoration topped off with a green copper cornice. Standing outside the front entrance, breaking about 57 local bye-laws on monstering residents, I once again found myself being eyeballed by a small grey-haired doorman, rather unusually one without a hat. The end of 98th street fell away, quite sharply, to my right, down to the Hudson River, which I could spy between the trees; so Von Mises, on leaving the building, would have had access to a little greenery and water to remind him perhaps of Lake Geneva, where the bones of Human Action had been constructed in Nationalökonomie

Okay, so it’s a little melodramatic, but just for a moment I could feel his ghost turning his head to the left to look at the river, as he left the apartment building; I wondered what colour the Hudson was back in the 1950s?

To escape this ghost, I decided to head back down West End Avenue to find the nearby haunt of Uncle Murray Rothbard. Which of the two was the greater genius? I suppose that’s a bit like asking a committed Christian whether God the Father or God the Son was the greater, so I’ll skip the question; I do know, however, that to visit Uncle Murray’s former home was a rare pleasure whereas to visit Professor Mises’ former home was a dutiful pilgrimage. Make of that what you will.

Sloping back down the hill, I threw one last look back to the top floor of 777 West End Avenue, from whence Human Action had emerged, the building still an Arthurian rock on a hill’s crest. Bidding adieu, I then got on with the business of skipping around all the chatting dog handlers to head back towards downtown Manhattan. One street, two streets, nine streets, and I made my left turn. A brisk walk along 88th Street to Broadway and I was almost there. I thought it appropriate that Uncle Murray lived on the corner of Broadway. When the New York government imposed the road grid on Manhattan and confiscated the land for Central Park, one of the only roads to break the planners’ rigid wet dreams was Broadway, which had originally been an Indian trail paved over by the Dutch before the British invaded from the north, breaking through the wooden wall at the southern tip of the island to overrun New Amsterdam.


So Broadway defies the controlling strictures of state imposition and thereby brings a measure of chaotic life and energy to the otherwise moribund grid, creating place, structure, and gaiety, along a tangential axis; you may have heard of 42nd Street but you have definitely heard of Broadway. Yes, this was a very Rothbardian place.

But I got my bearings all wrong, as I approached the Professor’s apartment. Hitting Amsterdam Avenue without finding the number 215, I retraced my steps, and then there it was on the corner of Broadway, with the number on a wall painted over the same creamy colour as the wall. No awning, this time, and no obvious doorman, but it still looked a solid enough building. Uncle Murray’s apartment was 2E and I hoped it was the one right above me, spreading out over the entranceway. I could hear cackling, for some bizarre reason, and felt the shade of a giant imaginary polka-dot bow tie settling over the street. I wondered now who might live behind these brown slatted wooden windows set in a creamy stone wall? Do they know, I thought, who was there before them, and if they did, would they care?

Once upon a time you could have, and often did, squeeze almost every anarcho-capitalist in the world behind the walls of Apartment 2E, 215 West 88th Street, Manhattan, New York. But now, although the pavements aren’t yet teeming with coachloads of us, we probably have enough for a decent sized conference in Hawaii. And it was all due to the efforts of these men, led by Rothbard in the Circle of Bastiat, who made their spiritual home up in this place above me.

Although I never had the privilege of meeting Murray Rothbard, it was enough this day to have made the effort to be there.

And so back into the swamp of the New York public transportation system, at 96th Street, to visit the creation point of Atlas Shrugged.

This had been a very strange and a very good day.

On the train down, I recalled the Mises.org MP3 files by George Reisman and Ralph Raico describing the relations between Rothbard and Rand. What if the bespectacled one had managed to persuade the caped one to become an Austrian and bring all of her fans with her? Where would we be now with our movement? Do we need to somehow generate more Austrian fiction to try to pull more people into our belief in a Totally Voluntary society? Or is Robert Heinlein enough?

Oh well. If I get a good enough novel idea and manage to write it down I’ll let you know. In the meantime I would like to thank my business client this week for giving me the opportunity to visit Manhattan, for providing me with an apartment just off Times Square, and for lending me his limousine to take me to and from the airport.

I may not be a Master of the Universe, but it was nice to have pretended to be one for a few days. And so back to Blighty, the sceptred isle of a thousand shattered dreams to see how Gordon Brown had further wrecked my life with his communist aspiration of state thralldom for all. Roll on the anarcho-capitalist revolution. It can’t come soon enough.

And thanks to Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard it is still possible that it will come. Thank God for both of them.

The Atlas Shrugged Trail

Having visited the Upper West Side, to track down the creation points of Human Action and Man, Economy, and State - to be described later - I caught the Manhattan redline subway down to 42nd Street, then hopped on the purple line to Grand Central. I decided that if this time I was going to get the correct address for the creation point of Atlas Shrugged, I should walk to it directly from Grand Central, to pay homage in the appropriate manner.


This time, unlike Rand's later home at 120 East 34th Street, the building matched my initial expectations; it looked classy, it possessed a fine fluted limestone phallic architecture thrusting up the central column, and a 1930s art deco red brick exterior. The apartment building looked like it had been created by an architect who cared, rather than by an architect knocking out another trading position for groceries. All in all, as I stood across the street taking in the beautifully proportioned stance of the building, I could only question why Ayn Rand had moved to her later sad sack of bricks on 34th Street, once the Atlas Shrugged millions started to roll in; here was a building, on 36th Street, that even today breathes energy and virtue. Today, behind its italicized maroon street awning, it is full of eye surgeons, but like a well-fondled lady at Ascot, it still looked in its prime.

I'm afraid I had the rather mischevious thought that the only reason Ms Rand moved to 34th Street, was because it enabled her to drown in the cheaper flattery of all her acolytes who couldn't afford the grander appointments of this more magnificent edifice. Oh I know I shouldn't mock, but for a woman who professed such an admiration for sculpture, 120 East 34th Street is an early Henry Moore Earth Mother up against this far more pristine Michaelangelo's David at 36th Street.


What made the difference even clearer was the walk back to Grand Central. I really felt like I was in the heartbeat of something important. As I walked along the left side of Park Avenue, I felt like a King, a Wolfian Master of the Universe, as the grand columns of Dagny Taggart's imperial reserve marched towards me.

Striding through the clear cool air of a Manhattan evening, just to the right I caught an inspiring glimpse of the silverine arched rainbow of my favorite Manhattan skyrise, the Chrysler Building, before the classical elegance of Grand Central overwhelmed me.

Yes, Atlas Shrugged may be full of one-dimensional characters, but it is still stronger than a hatful of plutonium, and I feel sure that much of this strength comes from its creation at 36 East 36th Street. The building is full of energy, even now, and I'm sure this radiated into Rand's Remington-Rand typewriter as she pushed out the book's pages, all those long years ago.

The other horrible place she moved to, on 34th Street, is a dispiriting pile of out-of-date mince in comparison, and now I'm unsurprised she stopped writing novels and simply descended into a self-obsessed love myriad with all of her strange Canadian minions.

Having seen and compared the two buildings, her complete cessation of fiction creation now makes much more sense; Stephen King is a great believer that the place you create your fiction is centrally important to your work, and that if you find a great spot where the words flow, you should do whatever it takes to spend all your time there.

Yes, I know we could argue that the internal contradictions at the heart of Rand's statist libertarianism may have prevented her writing a sequel to Atlas Shrugged, but maybe the answer to this strange retirement from fiction is simpler; she should have stayed in the same apartment where she discovered the creative genie who helped her generate her masterpiece. Football managers don't change winning teams. Writers shouldn't either.

If ever you get the chance to visit New York, visit these two buildings yourself and see what you think. I'd be glad to hear your opinion if you do.

120 East 34th St - The Home of Ayn Rand

This long-time home of Ayn Rand, in New York, is particularly worth visiting for a reason I'll cover later. In my personal pilgrimage around Manhattan, I made this my first stop because it's very handy to get to if you've just tried to emulate Tom Hanks at the top of the Empire State building.

I never usually carry a camera when visiting such important places, as I normally want to simply hold and enjoy the moment in my memory, but here's a satellite photo I managed to dig up.



Situated between Park Avenue and Lexington Avenue, the building sits on that part of 34th Street which begins a gradual descent into the East River, which I could see sparkling in the distance on a brisk sunny day, without a single cloud in a flawless blue sky. I counted about 18 floors to this rather non-descript red-brick block; Ayn Rand lived in Apartment 6G. Fortunately, however, I wasn't allowed to go any further than the green awning, which reached to the kerb, as a sign on the front of the building was quite clear about the point.

NOTICE
This is private property
I'm sure Ms Rand wouldn't have wanted it any other way. However, although I'm sure in every way that the apartments inside were luxurious, the red-brick façade was rather a disappointment. I had been expecting Roarkian brushed aluminium and glittering polished shards of armoured glass, a single fused point raised to the stars by Titans; but to find a slightly crumpled brick exterior and 18 bland storeys gathered together by the architectural genius of a wombat, was certainly less than I would have expected from the authoress of The Fountainhead.

But the position?

The position was everything. Just down the street from the Empire State Building, and less than 10 minutes walk from Grand Central, between Park Avenue and Lexington, this apartment building was exactly where Dagny Taggart would have chosen to pass out the hours between her trysts with all those innumerable lovers.

However, something else made up entirely for the disappointment of the building's appearance; the welcoming mat at the entrance, guarded by a suspicious looking doorman who kept his swivelled eyes pinned firmly towards this mad-eyed libertarian, bore the immortal words, 'The Murray Park'.

Now it was too much to beg that the building had been renamed in honour of the author of Mozart was a Red, but if you think the Statue of Liberty is the most ironic statue in the world, for this building, of all buildings, to be named The Murray Park, made it well worth the 45 minute walk back to my own apartment just off Times Square.

Marvellous.

I'm sure the doorman was pleased too. I bet he's sick of people like me turning up, staring up, and looking like grinning baboons; another Rand fan or simply another New York lunatic? I hope they pay him more than ordinary doormen.

What didn't make up for it was learning back at my apartment that although Ayn Rand had spent many years at the block I'd just visited, dying there in 1982, she had actually written Atlas Shrugged at 36 East, 36th Street, a couple of blocks away; presumably when she had less cash in the bank.

Bugger.

But before I go there, I've got to get to the homes of Professors Mises and Rothbard, first. In my ordinal scale of values, the places where Human Action and Man, Economy, and State, were written, come a long way above Atlas Shrugged, though in the limited time I have in Manhattan the actual creation point of Atlas Shrugged still easily makes it into position three.

Sorry Ayn, to put it third, but at least I've been to the place where all your mad Objectivists spent all those years having sex with each other, smoking filtered cigarettes, and torturing mere humans with philosophical debate.

It just seems strange that there isn't any kind of monument outside, such as you would find in London. However, on reflection, with Manhattan being a beacon of private property, who wants to have a State nailing blue plaques to their buildings and putting up ugly statues outside quiet residences, anwyay? It'll only attract more nutcase libertarians like me, and who wants that? So Adieu 120 East 34th Street; Upper West Side here we come.