libertaridan

[libertaridan]

[libertaridan]

It’s Good To Be Sceptical

Apparently, there is no evidence that red meat causes cancer after all. So, now who do we believe?

…Bradley Johnston, associate professor at Dalhousie University, said: 

“Based on the research, we cannot say with any certainty that eating red or processed meat causes cancer, diabetes or heart disease.”

The study’s author elaborated: 

“From 12 randomised controlled trials enrolling about 54,000 individuals, we did not find a statistically significant or an important association in the risk of heart disease, cancer or diabetes for those that consumed less red or processed meat.” (https://tinyurl.com/yyvwdv4l)

The perpetual variation in the direction ‘science’ and ‘experts’ point, on any issue, matters. The ‘ordinary person on the street’ may not be a scientist, but they’re also not stupid and can spot evidence that what they’re told ‘experts’ claim isn’t always: (1) what experts actually claim, (2) even certain (as claims change or are superseded), or (3) supporting of the conclusion they’re told it supports. In other words, they can spot ‘sciencism’ when they see it and are, rightly, dubious.

What is sciencism? At its core sciencism is the belief that anything which can be presented as though it is backed by science ought to be believed.

Over the years, however, enough claims have been found to be false, or misrepresented in their connotations, or superseded, as to make scepticism a reasonable and necessary position. While that is frustrating for those who make scientific claims which are then not believed, it actually places the unbeliever in a more scientifically rational position than those expecting automatic acceptance of the claim.

It’s accepted that healthy scepticism is essential for real science, yet it is criticised when it’s applied by ordinary people to scientific claims. What sciencism demands is, essentially, blind faith in scientific claims. It’s built on the appeal to authority logical fallacy, and often others too including cherry picking, appeal to emotion, the bandwagon, the black and white fallacy and so on.

It’s important to note that none of this means the claims being made are false, but it does provide reasonable grounds for scepticism. A scepticism which ought to be equally applied to counter claims and a scepticism that applies to previously ‘unimpeachable’ ‘settled science’ about margarine, carbohydrates, red meat and others.

When it comes to bigger claims scepticism is even more important. On climate change the sheer weight of demands about individual freedom, state control, lifestyle and economy being made on the back of increasingly hysterical claims, makes our scepticism essential. A review of expert backed climate predictions, revealing a long list that has utterly failed to be reliable, certainly makes scepticism the more logical path. Against this we’re expected to believe the latest climate claims are better precisely because they are new. But were not all claims new at one point? In the world of climate change they have failed to deliver their dire conclusions.

There’s no reason, therefore, to rush headlong into global green socialism, throwing the baby out with the bathwater, on the basis of the latest panicked claims. Funny how the answer is always what globalists would have demanded anyway, even if Carbon Dioxide wasn’t labelled a bogey man – more state control, less freedom and higher taxes. Marrying climate change to the push for ever bigger more powerful state doesn’t help their cause. Environmentalism has cried wolf too many times to be automatically accepted when all of that is at stake.

The truth is out there, but promoters of sciencism don’t necessarily have it.

Being sceptical of sciencism, especially with climate change, protects your liberty.

[libertaridan]

Lockdown Kills, and Covid Kills

When one takes time to ponder our present situation, and look beyond the heavily virus centred spin of the news-cycle, we must accept the tragic reality that lockdown kills and covid kills.

What surprises me, though, is the number of people who, when presented with this fact, process this information only in collective terms. The fact that lockdown kills and covid kills becomes almost instantly a simple numerical problem – whichever kills the least number of people is the one ‘we’ should do. As if ‘we’ are not individuals, as if the ones who will be inevitably be harmed have no lives, loves or feelings, and may simply be weighed as one lost among many beans and discarded – the individuals be damned. As if, it doesn’t also impact on those having these thoughts – such is the narcotic of collectivism they lose even how it applies, absorbs and nullifies even themselves.

Those who find comfort in collectivism conflate the actions and powers of government with all of us, ‘we’, or ‘society’. As if everything the state ever does, did or will do, was done in some way by each of us.  This is nonsense. Surely they must have noticed the huge gulf that separates government from themselves. Can they really not tell the difference between themselves and their actions, and those of the state? It is a most persistent hook in the mind, but it is simply false equivalence. It’s hard to imagine what fuddling of the mind could cause one to believe they and everyone else is responsible for government action as a group, but once believed the individual is lost and gets swept along in whatever it imagines the collective pronoun wraps it up in. Government is not me, you or them, nor does it do our bidding. The acts of government are not my acts, nor yours. Vision, and thinking, get much clearer once that is accepted. There is no ‘we’, there are individuals, with lives, loves and needs.

When individuals can get beyond collectivism the Covid-19 problem and the array of responses on offer take on a new appearance. From that vantage point many of the harms of covid and harms of lockdown may be foreseen. They also cease to be merely arithmetic, and the real lives of real people can be considered. It’s from this position that I favour much reduced state intervention. We don’t need lockdown, stasi neighbours, and 1984 fear and regulations. We need reliable and trustworthy information. We need to know how to protect ourselves and the vulnerable. And then we need to be free to do it, while taking into account our own individual and family circumstances. One size doesn’t fit all, but a collectivist approach ignore this, and causes great harm as a result. There is and was no justification for the coercive authoritarian lockdowns which have caused untold damage of their own, to many whom covid would not have harmed at all.

Many no doubt imagine they are being good citizens by swallowing blindly every mandate handed down from the state. But it is not virtue to remain ignorant of the harm done by the very strategy they blindly embrace, it’s just plain old ignorance in the end. It’s precisely because covid kills and lockdown kills that it’s not for you, me, or the government, to pick the winners and losers and thereby force harm on others. Those who feel virtuous for only caring about the people covid kills may be free to do so, but they don’t have the right to inflict their one-sided myopic view on everyone else by force. If people are going to risk harm to themselves and loved ones in either case – and they are – the more moral approach is to provide true information and let individuals and families govern themselves to meet their own individual and very specific situations.

Apart from the narcotic of collectivism, there are other barriers to accepting that lockdown kills. It’s tough to face up to the fact that one might have been advocate, or accomplice (even unwittingly), to the harm of others. Further barriers are created when individuals feel they got ‘a good deal’ from present strategy – maybe they enjoyed a few months on Furlough, maybe they didn’t lose anyone or anything because of lockdown and are not at risk to, maybe all their eggs are in the covid-kills basket not the lockdown-kills one. It’s all perfectly natural – but it’s also not fully informed. After all, who among us wonders how many were killed over the last few months, or will be killed in the coming months, by the very policy that we may perceive as having been good? It can require quite the epiphany to accept lockdown has its own harms attached. The emotional jolt of this realisation can be buffered by rejecting the false equivalence that government is ‘society’ is  ‘you’. They did this. You might have been sleepwalking, you may have gone along with it, even in good faith, but you didn’t make the laws.

I wonder who among us really grasps the truth of what being between this rock and hard place of covid really means. It needs to be examined to be understood.

Let’s say it was all down to you. Would you be ok with exchanging a ‘lockdown life’ for a ‘covid life’, with you being the one to decide which person should be harmed as a consequence of lockdown to save which person from catching covid? And if not you, who does get to decide? When someone decides is it purely a numbers game? Should we pretend none of those affected by our decision are people, so long as we save numerically at least one more life than we would have lost then we choose that path? Should it be that so long as the hive (and you) survives, the other individuals be damned? Or, should it matter who is saved versus who is killed? Is one person’s life worth more than another’s? Or, what if lockdown kills, before their time, more young people and more middle aged, but covid kills more eighty-two year olds… is it fair to trade one for the other? And who would you trade for who? And if you knew the middle aged person would have had another thirty odd years to go, cut short now, and the eighty-two year you old saved now would die of something else in just six months… would that change your decision? And who gets to decide?

My observation is that no one is clever enough to decide. Not you. Not me. Not government. No one. And no one has the right to coerce harm against some in to avoid harm to others. Not you. Not me. Not the government. No one.

The bitter reality is that there isn’t an everyone lives option.

So what is to be done? Treat it as a numbers game, and decide a policy which will have the effect of skewing the rules against some in favour of others, with deadly consequences for those harmed by your intervention? Pick the side that helps you, or those you happen to see or know about, to the detriment of those you’re ignorant about? There are ways to justify almost any approach. But, sadly, ‘I tried my best’ doesn’t bring the dead made by a policy back to life. The very act of intervening at all means those intervening can no longer just blame the disease either – they steered the boat – they crashed the boat – their actions played an active part in who was lost.

But these are real people and not numbers. And the interventions of those ‘in charge’ do have direct and deadly consequences for individuals.

It’s perhaps best explored in terms of the Trolley Problem. A train is coming down a track. Along the track is a set of points at which the track forks into two tracks. Beyond the points on one track there is a person. On the other track there are ten people. Meanwhile you are standing by the lever which controls the points. From where you stand you can see the train, and the one person on one track and the ten people on the other track. You have the power to pull the lever and choose which track the train goes down. What will you do? Direct the train to the one to save the ten? But what if that one was going to cure cancer later in life? What if the ten are ex-convicts who have just finished serving their time and just been released? Would that alter your decision? What if the ten are all old and frail? What if the one is just a toddler? Would that alter your decision? In this scenario you don’t know any of this, you’re just next to the lever, dumbly ignorant of most of the details. But you do know this – that if you pull the lever what ever happens next is because of you, and whether you act or not someone will get hurt.

Applying this scenario to the covid situation, one track represents lockdown consequences, and one represents covid consequences. But you’re even more blind than the person in the scenario. Because with the covid situation you don’t even know how many people are on each track. And if you pull the lever at the wrong time its likely to derail and harm people on both tracks.

In such a situation how could one even decide what to do with the lever? And how would one decide to pull it?

This is the rock and the hard place. No one is offering immortality here. But isn’t it morally wrong to take an action that imposes harm on others without their consent? In medical care there is a first principle of ethics – first do no harm. But the covid response imposed on us all did and does harm – lots of it.

As I said before, there isn’t an everyone wins option. Because there is no everyone wins option the decisions about that, morally, must be taken by each individual. So I believe it does come down to individuals being fully informed. Getting themselves and their families off the train track so to speak. Families working to protect their vulnerable members and free to make the right decisions for their family needs, about work, business, travel, health.

Our present government is possibly the least trusted to make such decisions on behalf of others. Yet many fear that the individuals around them cannot be trusted to act correctly without government coercion. But I have long found that puzzling. If individuals can’t be trusted, why on earth would you trust the individuals in government far removed from the consequences? That fear ought to be more real when government decides on behalf of us all – given its poor reputation. At least I can trust most other people to at least be interested in the survival and wellbeing of those they love. I can say no such thing about the machinery of the state. As Dr. Thomas Sowell put it “It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.”

Frederick Bastiat back in the 1800s spotted the tendency of government policy to be blindly damaging in his essay “That Which is Seen and That Which is Not Seen” (it’s worth a read: http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html). This blindness in policy is caused by focusing primarily on instant gratification and short term highly visible consequences, but ignoring longer term effects which are often negative.

In his FEE article, Jon Miltimore explains why politicians continue to use harmful lockdowns and draconian restrictions even if they are ineffective: “While passing harmful restrictions that achieve no public good might seem irrational, they are rational if one assumes that politicians are operating out of their own self-interest like anyone else—not for “the common good”.”

And what short term self interested consequences might motivate politicians most? Over to Dr. Thomas Sowell again to give us a clue: “No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems—of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind.”

Government covid policy was never really about ‘following the science’ in my opinon. Arguably fear of public opinion and the Twitterati played the biggest role in the government’s incompetent, illogical, inconsistent and deeply damaging response to covid. As I see it, the response was political all along. Consequently political self-interest can become a huge factor in determining political action, to the detriment of what is actually best, and harming many people in the process.

That’s why I favour giving reliable information about how to protect oneself and shield the vulnerable, and then letting individuals and families make the decisions that meet their specific needs. Coercing harmful policy on some in the pretense of avoiding harm is unethical. Given the correct information and without their freedom to act being restricted, the vulnerable and their families will protect themselves. They will lock themselves down according to need, while others with different needs will not. Imagine a world in which people take responsibility.

Many will no doubt point to the differential in death rates between different nations with different approaches and claim that proves lockdowns work. But that is a response that is itself short term. It focusses only on the relatively quickly visible effect of the covid impact (while questioning not a bit the veracity of what is being reported – a different issue). But it takes no account whatever of the longer term consequences that aren’t so rapidly visible, but are also harmful – those of lockdown. Those who say Sweden messed it up are simply only looking at the damage on one of the train tracks, they’re not looking at the other one at all. They’re simply more blind to the consequences of lockdown, and lacking half the stats, and only seeng covid information they draw a conclusion for which they have only partial evidence. But those lockdown consequences will be tallied and only then will any of us truly know.

That’s the point. Both lockdown and covid harm and kill. Professionals all focused on only one of those don’t tend to have much to say on the other. But being unaware or ignoring the other doesn’t make it go away. Human nature is that we want to know what we’re taking part in is saving not harming. But we don’t have that luxury with this. I don’t blame people for pulling away from the news that what we think is helping some is actually harming others. We didn’t sign up for that, but that is what we have. I’m not a covid denier, but nor am I a harms-of-lockdown denier. All of that is only valid anyway if we only care about the numbers (rather than people), and we don’t even have numbers that aren’t challenged.

When we see the individuals and the consequences for real people we accept the bitter reality that in the present covid responses we’re trading lives and harms, and forcing harm on some in our attempt to save others, perhaps without their consent, perhaps even fatally. We wouldn’t steal someone’s organs to save someone else, but to trade harms falls into that category.

I’m staring the reality of both sides in the face, I don’t have the luxury of imagining that one isn’t occurring, or that only numbers matter, or that the harm of the strategy may not be worse than the harm of the disease – and certainly will be for many, if not in total in the end when the final toll is counted (if those in power even dare admit it).

It may be human nature for people in government to feel they should ‘do something’ (‘anything’), and for people to demand they do. But that does not excuse, and should not lead to, the harm of doing the wrong thing.

The wrong thing is anyone pretending they know what’s best for others, and in pretending to know, to then imagine they should impose their views by force. The wrong thing is coercing a policy that harms others who would not be harmed except for the policy. It’s time to stop talking and thinking in collective terms. We are individuals with lives and loves and feelings. We all have unique situations that cannot be centrally planned for. Because it’s individuals who get harmed, so it is individuals who should choose how they manage their own situation, having been given reliable information.

[libertaridan]

Gutless Rebellion

It could have promised so much, but delivered so little. The potential rebellion of about 80 back bench Tory MPs over the renewal of the Coronavirus Act was thwarted, first by the Speaker who didn’t select the Brady Amendment due to legal uncertainty it might bring about (though he had strong words for the Government about treating Parliament with contempt it was, just that – words). Then it was thwarted by the MPs themselves by failing to vote against renewal – something which might have put a rocket up the Government by sealing words with actions – except most didn’t. Such is the power of the party Whip perhaps, or such is the tendency for some representatives to obey the party line.

What they accepted, instead, was a mealy mouthed assurance they would be consulted more if it was convenient, with so many caveats it’s not worth the toilet paper its written on in terms of restraining the Government. Perhaps this is not surprising, safety in numbers and all that – weak MPs are unwilling to really take a stand when they can make a token gesture and then hide behind the cabinet and sit tight. What sounded like big talk was offered just enough of what sounded like a worthless compromise to let rebels save face while continuing to go along to get along. What is also not surprising is that this has been hailed in some places as the government ‘caving in’ rather than the tiresome brushing-off it really offered. How some media sources love to spin drama out of very little.

The ‘compromise’ contains nothing by way of guarantees, didn’t amend a single line of legislation, and is worth as much as anything we’ve been told… yes, that little. Matt Hancock’s statement contains enough loopholes and ‘buts’ as to make the compromise sound, well, like business as usual in the new normal:

“We will consult parliament,” he said, “and wherever possible, we will hold votes before such regulations come into force. But of course, responding to the virus means that the government must act with speed when required.

“And we cannot hold up urgent regulations which are needed to control the virus and save lives. I am sure that no member of this house would want to limit the government’s ability to take emergency action in the national interest as we did in March.”

In other words, crisis is still the rallying cry of the tyrant. Nothing has changed. Our rights are still watered down, and Government may still do whatever it wants to dilute them further within the Act and might let Parliament have a say first… and might not.

So, who did have the guts to stand against this extaordinary amount of unaccountable ’emergency’ power?

Seven Tories: Peter Bone, Philip Davies, Philip Hollobone, Esther McVey, Desmond Swayne, Charles Walker, William Wragg.

Six Labour: Rebecca Long-Bailey, Dawn Butler, Kevan Jones, John Spellar, Graham Stringer and Derek Twigg.

Nine Lib Dems: Daisy Cooper, Ed Davey, Tim Farron, Wera Hobhouse, Christine Jardine, Layla Moran, Sarah Olney, Jamie Stone, Munira Wilson.

One Green: Caroline Lucas.

One Alliance Party: Stephen Farry.

Notably missing was Graham Brady the amendment proposer, and Steve Baker who allegedly spearheaded the rebellion and may be remembered for his emotional criticism of the Act when it was first approved – before promptly voting in favour of it, and then voting to renew it 6 months later. So much hot air, and no action.

My thanks go to the MPs who actually did stand against the extension of powers. There are better ways of handling this than that Act, these few MPs know it, I know it, lots of the public know it. It’s time the Government and rest of Parliament acted like they knew it too.

[libertaridan]

Against Arbitrary Application of the Law

It sounds like it’s straight from a dystopian novel, but this police department’s real life algorithmic ‘minority report’ issues directions to police, who ‘follow orders’, relentlessly, obediently, day or night, in a computerised attempt to ‘break’ individuals the formula says are ‘bad’, until they “move or sue”.

The harassment often begins even before evidence of a crime has been found, something most of us would object to, and certainly anyone serious about their libertarian values.

At the non-libertarian end of the spectrum Beria, the infamous sidekick of Stalin, coined the phrase “show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.” What did he mean by that? He meant just about anyone has something that could be twisted to be of interest to authoritarian enforcement – zero wrongdoing or lack of evidence was no barrier.

Ayn Rand, however, put it another way: “There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”

Given this reality, virtually every one of us will have breached some law, code or regulation. Why haven’t you been pulled up about it? The law has bigger fish to catch perhaps – but if the law ever decided it wanted to pull you up, odds are it could find something. And if not, the experience of being pursued will have been harassment enough to serve as a warning – stay in line! What line? Whatever line they tell you.

Think you’re safe from such a tactic? Unlikely. Do you know how many laws and regulations there are? It’s impossible for you to know right now, a very rare few would have the ability to memorise all the ways you might fall foul. It also has the opposite effect, even if innocent will you ever be certain you are enough to push back?

Under normal circumstances that might be balanced by the fact law enforcement can’t memorise all the laws and regulations either. But a computer, an algorithm, that uses criteria fed to it, that doesn’t care about bad memory, and it doesn’t care about cause (or even the lesser probable cause). It just generates a list of people to be singled out.

If you are singled out for special attention, then someone finding that one way you’re in breach of some regulation few knew or cared about, is so much more likely. Take, for example, the deliberate search for “code violations” which the police use to harass their computer generated targets, explained in the article. Your grass is too long – have a fine.

Too many rules, mean too many ways to be singled out, and too many ways for people to worry they might have slipped up, even if they haven’t. And since resources can’t possibly pull up everyone, but still might pull up anyone, the ‘rules’ are tantamount to a mechanism for arbitrary arrest.

Pasco County where this is happening is in the US, but there’s no need to think that here in the UK we’re safe behind Magna Carta. If you think the law isn’t arbitrary, just consider the apparently different approaches being taken against peaceful ‘anti-masker’ protesters when compared to other recent protests. Selective application of the law is what makes it arbitrary and therefore biased. Could that look arbitrary to you? Under Coronavirus ’emergency powers’ there are even more opportunities for this abuse of power.

Churchill said, “if you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.” But I wonder, perhaps not the regulations, but how they are selectively used… that could destroy all respect for the law.

What’s the cure? Apply the law equally to everyone – not just the people you’ve singled out, base action on actual evidence, and have as few rules as absolutely necessary to defend individual rights. It’s not rocket science – it’s called being a libertarian (in other words, being a good neighbour).

Families were subjected to around-the-clock visits from deputies, who often arrived without evidence of a crime.

Source: A futuristic data policing program is harassing Pasco County families

[libertaridan]

Non-aggression Against Tyranny

A core libertarian value is the non-aggression principle. Refraining from first strike force is fundamental, as is refraining from any form of theft, bullying, coercion, misrepresentation, false witness or slander whether carried out by individuals or organisational systems – as each are a form of aggression against the individual, causing harm to others. The antidote to all these things is respect for individual rights, a determination to let evidence be the guide before judgement and to avoid any tendency of the end justifying the means.

Organisations and individuals that uphold such principles are hard to find, and we can experience disappointment because of the human frailty or bad dealing we sometimes come across. Because of libertarians’ acceptance of non-aggression, favouring truth, justice, fairness and reasonableness, they are unwilling to lend their loyalty to individuals and organisations that fail to display these important attributes – whether those organisations be governments, businesses or even political parties. In a nutshell libertarians reject aggression wherever they find it.

Sadly, the tendency to abuse power and to control others, is sometimes found in human nature. Some even draw the conclusion that peace and happiness can only be achieved if their particular vision of perfect order is achieved – regardless of the means by which it comes about or which principles they break in the process. As Jeffrey Tucker put it:

“People who can’t imagine order without imposition always end up favoring power over liberty.”

Such people cling to power, even as that clinging damages the very thing they want to cling to. Even those who think they pursue liberty can become, to coin a phrase, ‘authoritarians for liberty’. A contradiction that betrays their core values, becoming in a moment the very thing they oppose. But true liberty cannot be obtained or preserved by abandoning the principles on which that liberty relies.

What can libertarians do when they come across organisations or individuals whose behaviours do not match libertarian principles that are important to them? If it’s some way of working, or organisational culture they are unhappy with they might try to use persuasion, they might present evidence to support their position and make a good case, they might seek to work to bring about the needed change, but if that fails then what? If aggression is directed against an individual then self defence is a permitted response for libertarians, but even that is held within reasonable bounds to avoid the individual overstepping and becoming a first aggressor themselves. Libertarians don’t let the fear of others’ aggression lead them to become first aggressors preemptively. Defensive action being reasonable, the requirement for allegations to be supported by evidence, are all part of libertarian values of non-aggression. If someone wants to bypass these principles to get their own way, even in the belief they are in the right, they might unwisely temporarily (or permanently) abandon the principles they claim to espouse and try to use force, to behave unfairly, to break their own rules, to seek to bully or manipulate others into adopting their wishes. They might seek to justify their ruthless use of aggression in the process, imagining that the ends justify the means. But to so do would be a total dereliction of core values.

There remains one other course of action. As Larken Rose explained:

“When enough people understand reality, tyrants can literally be ignored out of existence…”

When persuasion and evidence have failed, and aggression or tyranny remains, a peaceful, non-aggressive alternative is for a libertarian to exercise their right to freedom of association and move on. In moving on libertarians may consequently relinquish power – but this is something they of all people ought to find comes naturally – clinging to power is not for libertarians. In doing so libertarians may come to find that departing, of their own free will, from the tyranny they deplore is the appropriate peaceful, non-aggressive, response to it – and the most libertarian thing they can do.

[libertaridan]

The Power of Moral Authority

As I reflect on the various management styles of individuals I’ve worked with, both in politics and without, I recall some really excellent examples, some… not so excellent (I’m pleased to say those I work with at time of publishing this are all excellent), I sometimes find myself recalling one of the worst examples I ever came across – when former head of OfSTED, Michael Wilshaw, was quoted in 2012 as saying:

“If anyone says to you that ‘staff morale is at an all-time low’ you know you are doing something right.”

Really? He thought low morale was a success indicator? I hold this up as a particularly fine example of ego being the core driver, regardless of the human cost in self esteem, confidence and vitality of others. In holding his view Wilshaw was, in my opinion, blind to the fact that he was missing a key component that would net the success he wanted far more effectively than by crushing the morale of those he needed to bring it about. He was missing the component of moral authority.

Moral authority is arguably the opposite of formal authority, though they can co-exist in the same person at the same time, they can rarely be used simultaneously.

Formal authority is bestowed by virtue of job role, rank, position, contract. It is expected by right, even demanded, rather than given freely.

Moral authority, on the other hand, has no rank or position, or power to demand anything. Yet when freely given has arguably far more power to move people and achieve goals than any amount of formal authority. Rather than demanding, it leads by example. Rather than sacrificing others, it sacrifices itself.

In his book “The 8th Habit” Stephen R. Covey explains the powerful difference between the two.

“When conscience governs vision, discipline and passion, leadership endures and changes the world for good. In other words, moral authority makes formal authority work. When conscience does not govern vision, discipline and passion, leadership does not endure, nor do the institutions created by that leadership endure. In other words, formal authority without moral authority fails.

“The words “for good” means that it “lifts” and also that it “lasts”. Hitler had vision, discipline and passion but was driven by ego. Lack of conscience was his downfall. Gandhi’s vision, discipline and passion were driven by conscience, and he became a servant to the cause and the people. Again, he had only moral authority, no formal authority, and he was the father and founder of the second largest country in the world.

“When vision, discipline and passion are governed by formal authority void of conscience or moral authority, it also changes the world, but not for good, rather for evil. Instead of lifting, it destroys; rather than lasting, it is eventually extinguished.”

(Stephen R. Covey, The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness, (Simon and Schuster, Australia, Sydney, 2004), pp70)

Moral authority is an essential within modern competitive organisations. Good examples must be given, managers and leaders must talk and walk, because where they simply choose to ignore conscience and crush morale as a “motivator”, moral authority is unlikely to be arriving on the next train.

Morality

The “moral”, in “moral authority”, is inextricably intertwined with morality. The problem is very real. Managers and leaders, acting on ego, undermine their own moral authority and have nothing to replace it with but more ego, and it becomes a vicious circle.

If managers and leaders are to have moral authority, that means honesty and integrity as a bare minimum. Traits that are often the opposite of the egocentric approach. Traits that, quite frankly, scare those who are habitually egocentric in their management style – they like making allegations but they hate needing evidence, they like ‘drama’ but they hate cool reasoned consideration, they like pointing at others but cannot bear to see the flaws in themselves – it allows them to get away with maintaining their approach. Honesty and integrity are too transparent, too open, it is scary for the egocentric.

Again, in “The 8th Habit” Covey describes the traits of the egocentric:

“Ego focuses on one’s own survival, pleasure and enhancement to the exclusion of others and is selfishly ambitious. It sees relationships in terms of threat or no threat, like little children who classify all people as “He’s nice” or “He’s mean”…

“Ego works in the face of genuine crisis but has no discernment in deciding how severe a crisis or threat is…

“Ego can’t sleep. It micromanages. It disempowers. It reduces one’s capacity. It excels in control…

“Ego is threatened by negative feedback and punishes the messenger. It interprets all data in terms of self preservation. It constantly censors information. It denies much of reality…

“Ego is myopic and interprets all of life through its own agenda…”

(Stephen R. Covey, The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness, (Simon and Schuster, Australia, Sydney, 2004), pp78)

It seems obvious that such an approach to management and leadership is unlikely to result in the kind of success most organisations crave. As long as ego supersedes conscience, the success of an organisation is being undermined, and the true capacity of others is being crushed.

Ego will ultimately lose

The world is changing, as Covey also discusses in his book, the old industrial age is dying, and the principle of “servant leadership” hand in hand with the new age of “knowledge workers” is growing. With that in mind the following from Robert K. Greenleaf serves as a warning, to managers who cling to the egocentric industrial model, but also as an opportunity:

“A new moral principle is emerging which holds that the only authority deserving one’s allegiance is that which is freely and knowingly granted by the led to the leader in response to, and in proportion to, the clearly evident servant stature of the leader. Those who choose to follow this principle will not casually accept the authority of existing institutions. Rather they will freely respond only to individuals who are chosen as leaders because they are proven and trusted as servants. To the extent that this principle prevails in the future, the only truly viable institutions will be those that are predominantly servant-led.”

(Robert K. Greenleaf, “The Servant Leader,” Servant Leadership: A Journey Into the Nature of Legitimate power and Greatness, 25th Anniversary ed. (Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 2002), pp. 23-24.)

A sustainable future for any organisation and your success at any worthy goal is built not on ego, or prowess, or a sense of entitlement, but on conscience, honesty, integrity, vision, discipline, passion and personal responsibility.

As a libertarian these are essential, and where they are found in deficit you can simply choose to withdraw your consent, to withdraw your allegiance, and move on as you choose.

[libertaridan]

Beyond State Schooling

Has lockdown proven we don’t actually need state schooling? That there are better ways of getting an education rather than rely on the government?

Putting the criticisms and worry generated by the state response to missed exams aside, for now, this is likely the start of a long conversation. But let’s begin by considering this briefly. It’s worth noting that our present system of education was invented in the 1800s to meet a very specific need – an obedient and trained population, discouraged of original independent thinking, with teaching limited to those licensed by the state delivering a standardised curriculum – designed in the industrial revolution and built on the Prussian model which wanted obedient soldiers as the end product.

Award winning teacher John Taylor Gatto wrote:

“In the long history of the human race, until the mid-19th century, no such institution as universal forced schooling (following a government design) ever occurred, because the idea is so ridiculous on its face.” (1)

Education expert Sir Ken Robinson, wrote:

“One size does not fit all. Some of the most brilliant, creative people I know did not do well at school. Many of them didn’t really discover what they could do—and who they really were—until they’d left school and recovered from their education.” (2)

In spite of the challenges lockdown posed, I can’t help thinking it perhaps offered more educational opportunities than barriers for those who wanted to seize them. Individuals were finally free – during ‘school hours’ – to pursue education and learning of things that resonated with their interests, passions and inclinations, rather than the ‘one size fails to fit all’ standardised curriculum.

As Kerry McDonald, of the Foundation for Economic Education put it:

“The vast technological platform that is now at our fingertips makes self-education accessible to all. It also makes clunkier forms of learning, like sitting passively in a classroom memorizing and regurgitating information from textbooks and a predetermined curriculum, seem passé at best. …Humans have an instinctual drive to learn and are able to learn an incredible amount of knowledge and skill in their earliest years. This natural curiosity continues into adulthood, but is often dulled by a forced system of education that prioritizes schooling over learning. The ability to self-educate can be schooled out of us, leaving us dependent on others to be taught. Technology changes the relationship between teaching and learning. It empowers the learner, supports the rapid change of knowledge creation, and lets the learner decide what to learn, when, and from whom. Learners may still choose to be taught, but their teachers work for them.” (1)

Is it just possible, that classroom learning designed over a century ago is an anachronism? Has lockdown shown we don’t need school – except perhaps on a superficial level, as a place to put our kids while parents work? Has the government response to the lack of exams demonstrated even they are not essential – do skills and knowledge matter more than grades? Certainly many graduates of 2020 will be proving that to future employers and Universities without any exams at all.

But what do you think? Can we do without the state school system? Is real education better achieved by technology? Is classroom schooling an out of date throwback to bygone era? Could genuine education leave schooling behind?

References taken from: (1) Boyack, Connor. Skip College: Launch Your Career Without Debt, Distractions, or a Degree. (2) Robinson, Ken. The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything.

[libertaridan]

“…Never take a course that will silence you…”

John Jay Chapman’s commencement address to Hobart College, New York, in 1900, has been a huge influence on my libertarian philosophy. I share it here, that perhaps it might influence you too.

When I was asked to make this address I wondered what I had to say to you boys who are graduating. And I think I have one thing to say. If you wish to be useful, never take a course that will silence you.

Refuse to learn anything that implies collusion, whether it be a clerkship or a curacy, a legal fee or a post in a university. Retain the power of speech no matter what other power you may lose. If you can take this course, and in so far as you take it, you will bless this country.

In so far as you depart from this course, you become dampers, mutes, and hooded executioners. As a practical matter, a mere failure to speak out upon occasions where no statement is asked or expect from you, and when the utterance of an uncalled for suspicion is odious, will often hold you to a concurrence in palpable iniquity.

Try to raise a voice that will be heard from here to Albany and watch what comes forward to shut off the sound.

It is not a German sergeant, nor a Russian officer of the precinct.

It is a note from a friend of your father’s, offering you a place at his office. This is your warning from the secret police.

Why, if you any of young gentleman have a mind to make himself heard a mile off, you must make a bonfire of your reputations, and a close enemy of most men who would wish you well.

I have seen ten years of young men who rush out into the world with their messages, and when they find how deaf the world is, they think they must save their strength and wait.

They believe that after a while they will be able to get up on some little eminence from which they can make themselves heard.

“In a few years,” reasons one of them, “I shall have gained a standing, and then I shall use my powers for good.”

Next year comes and with it a strange discovery. The man has lost his horizon of thought, his ambition has evaporated; he has nothing to say.

I give you this one rule of conduct. Do what you will, but speak out always.

Be shunned, be hated, be ridiculed, be scared, be in doubt, but don’t be gagged.

The time of trial is always. Now is the appointed time.

(“The Unity of Human Nature,” address delivered before the Hobart Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, Hobart College, Geneva, New York, on commencement day (June 20, 1900); republished in Chapman, Learning and Other Essays (1910, reprinted 1968), p. 185.)

[libertaridan]

A ‘Conspiracy-tape’ Letter

Conspirators ought to fear that in attempting to hurry us they awaken us to a sense of our awful situation. For they who see our position as it really is, must never forget how totally different it ought to appear to us. They have introduced a change of direction in our course which is already carrying us out of our true orbit; but we must be made to imagine that all the choices which have effected this change of course are necessary, trivial and revocable. We must not be allowed to suspect that we are now, however slowly, heading right away from the sun on a line which will carry us into the cold and dark of utmost space.

For this reason they are almost glad that we are still a ‘democracy’. They know there are dangers in this; but anything is better than our realising the break we have made with true freedom and our natural rights. As long as we retain externally the habits of a democracy we can still be made to think of ourselves as those who have had a change of government but whose individual state is much the same as it was a few weeks ago. And while we think that, they do not have to contend with our explicit rejection of a definite, fully recognised, corrupt and malignant conspiracy that seeks to overthrow our freedom and give conspirators total control, but only with our vague, though uneasy, feeling that something isn’t quite right of late.

They ought to give this dim uneasiness careful handling. If our uneasiness gets too strong it may wake us all up and spoil the whole game. On the other hand, if they suppress our uneasiness entirely through controlled ‘fact checking’, no-platforming, and removing posts — which the more awake in liberty among us will probably not allow them to do quietly — they lose an element in the situation which can be turned to their advantage and our loss.

If such an uneasy feeling is allowed to live in us, but not allowed to become irresistible and flower into real rejection or revolution, it has one invaluable tendency where conspirators are concerned. It increases our reluctance to think about the awfulness of our situation. All humans at nearly all times have some such reluctance; but when thinking of the awfulness of our situation involves facing and intensifying a whole vague cloud of half-conscious fear and helplessness, this reluctance is increased tenfold. We hate every idea that suggests we are being slowly trapped and stripped of rights and freedoms by tyrants, just as men in financial embarrassment hate the very sight of their bank statement. In this state we will not necessarily omit, but will increasingly dislike, anything that reminds us of our buried suspicion that something isn’t right in London, Washington, Geneva and The Hague. We will think about it as little as we feel we can, and forget it as soon as possible. We will dread nothing so much as credible information that supports that which we fear. Our aim will be to let sleeping dogs lie, even if it allows woke wolves to be liars.

As this condition becomes more fully established, conspirators will be gradually freed from the tiresome business of staying under cover. As our uneasiness and our reluctance to face it cut us off more and more from reality, and as habit renders mind numbing distractions harder to forgo, it will be discovered that anything other than the dreadful truth attracts our wandering attention. We will no longer need a good book, or film, which we really like, to keep us from seeing the truth; a rerun of a show we barely enjoyed the first time round will do. We will rather spend our time not only in conversation we enjoy with people we like, but in conversations with those we care nothing about on subjects that bore us, long into the night on social media. Rather than face reality we can be kept up late at night, not roistering, but in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that we are only half aware of them as we keep scrolling, until we are too weak and fuddled to shake it off.

These may seem like small things to hold us back, but do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which we are separated from possession of the facts. It does not matter how small the individual distractions are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge us away from the light of freedom and into the grip of tyranny. For the conspirators the safest road in bringing us into their hell is the gradual one — the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

Note: The 12th letter in “The Screwtape Letters”, by C. S. Lewis, which inspired this post, resonated so many similarities with the machinations of ‘wannabe’ world rulers, that it’s almost a parable for current affairs. Bernays, author of the infamous ‘Propaganda’ would possibly approve of such an approach, but I prefer truth and freedom.

[libertaridan]

Do We Live In A Democracy? Should We?

In my view many people today largely believe three false things about democracy:

That they know what it is;

That they should want to live in one as currently experienced;

That they do live in one.

We shouldn’t settle to live in a democracy as we currently experience it. It’s not a real democracy and emphasises all the negatives while diminishing many of the positives that ought to come out of living  in a democracy. It would be better, instead, to live in a Republic, but I’ll come on to that. Some people might say I’m splitting hairs and I’m happy to accept that, but I do think it matters.

Around 400 BC Plato rejected the Athenian manifestation of democracy because he believed it to be anarchic, lacking in unity, deferring to the impulses and whims of citizens, and run by fools. On virtually all of those points, if he said them today, he would be right.

According to Plato democracy mistakes anarchy (his use of the word) for freedom, and must degenerate into tyranny or mob rule (which I would argue is just another kind of tyranny).

In context – Plato was a statist, preferring rule by ‘philosopher kings’, a rare or mythical few who are wise but unwilling or lacking the ambition to rule over others. It is against this locus of power that he compares democracy and so we can understand why Plato called democracy anarchic – lacking a central plan and purpose and leader to ‘get the job done’. Perhaps if such wise and benevolent people Plato believed in could always be found, he might be on to something, unfortunately world history from ancient to modern times shows that such people are rare, and rarer still in positions of power. Instead the ‘man who can’ ends up being incompetent or a dictator. In most cases give someone a little power, as they suppose, and they immediately begin to exercise it badly to the harm of others.

It seems we can choose the tyranny of an all-powerful single ruler in a king or dictator, or the tyranny of mob rule in a modern unchecked democracy.

To highlight the inherent flaws in an un-checked democracy James Madison, one of the Founding Fathers of the USA, said this:

“…there is nothing [in democracy] to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.” (James Madison, Federalist Papers Nos. 10 and 51)

According to him, if you want protection for weaker people, or people who think or believe differently, or who are outspoken, and if you want personal security, or to defend your property rights, you won’t get any of that certain in a democracy.

And he’s right, isn’t he? The form of democracy we live in hasn’t protected your property rights, has at various times and in various ways punished or coerced those who believe differently, or wish to live differently, to the great mass of people.

Here’s the thing, unchecked democracy allows people, you, me, our neighbours, our work colleagues, ordinary people, to use state power to do things to us that they couldn’t otherwise do. Things they wouldn’t dream of doing on an individual basis. None of your neighbours would dream of stealing money from your wallet every night to pay for their gym membership. But more than you realise think its OK to vote for higher taxes so you can fund the local leisure centre which you don’t use but they do.

Do you see what I mean?

Through democracy what is to stop your neighbours from voting higher taxes that rob you of your earnings? Or passing laws to tax the size of your garden until you have to sell up because you can’t afford to keep your own property? Or to ban things you like? Or coerce you to do things you don’t like? Where are the limits on this tyranny of mob rule?

There are none. And here is why.

Because the only limit on democratic mob rule comes through a limit on State power.

Why?

Because the result of democratic activity is enacted by state power. Limit the state, and you limit democratic mob rule or “collective force”. Instead of mob rule we might use the term “collective force”, it’s the same thing.

It is precisely for this reason that the Founding Fathers of the USA sought to address the criticism of James Madison, that “…such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property…”, by combining democracy with a republic (which is a State in which supreme power is held by the people, and flows up from the people to their elected representatives and elected President – rather than a monarch).

Within the republic framework, the Founding Fathers placed limits on State power within a written constitution. And this is important. Because where a government is limited, so is the opportunity for democracy to become tyrannical mob rule or of “collective force” likewise limited.

And we do want to limit that. Because without any limits democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. James Madison made that point very clear.

So, to use the two wolves and a sheep analogy, a government limited by a written constitution would not, for instance, have the power to kill the sheep to feed the wolves. It wouldn’t matter if it was two wolves voting against one sheep, or two hundred thousand wolves voting against one sheep, the government wouldn’t be allowed to do it, and so such a vote would be invalid, and have no effect.

And that’s really important for democracy, that’s how minorities, the weak, the outspoken, the ‘different’, you, your family, your freedom and your property are protected. Through a constitution that limits government, and which says government can’t hurt these people no matter how many people vote for it.

Bastiat, the French political philosopher, said the legitimate role government should be limited to as one that defends each person (their life), their liberty, and their property. The Law should be nothing more, and nothing less, than this. To him there is no place for “collective force” other than in defence of these three rights.

Such a government is indeed the aim of libertarians worldwide.

That’s what we want, right? We want to be protected. We don’t want to have to worry each election that this time we’re going to be the sheep being fed to the majority wolves. Right?

We don’t have such a limited government here.

According to Bastiat, in his essay “The Law”, governments as he experienced them, and it’s no less true for us today, governments have perverted the law. Bastiat says:

“…unfortunately, law by no means confines itself to its proper functions. …it has acted in direct opposition to its own purpose. …to limiting and destroying rights which its real purpose was to respect. The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder. And it has converted lawful defense into a crime, in order to punish lawful defense.” (Bastiat, The Law)

And we will recognise the behaviour of our neighbours, and even ourselves, at the ballot box when we read some of his further explanations.

“…Man can live and satisfy his wants only by ceaseless labor; by the ceaseless application of his faculties to natural resources. This process is the origin of property.

“But it is also true that a man may live and satisfy his wants by seizing and consuming the products of the labor of others. This process is the origin of plunder.”

“…when plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law, all the plundered classes try somehow to enter — by peaceful or revolutionary means — into the making of laws. According to their degree of enlightenment, these plundered classes may propose one of two entirely different purposes when they attempt to attain political power: Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in it.” (Ibid.)

This is what happens when government perverts law away from defence of life, liberty and property.

Ezra Taft Benson, former secretary for Agriculture under Eisenhower, had this to say about legalized plunder:

“Once government steps over this clear line between the protective or negative role into the aggressive role of redistributing the wealth through taxation and providing so-called “benefits” for some of its citizens, it becomes a means for legalized plunder. It becomes a lever of unlimited power that is the sought-after prize of unscrupulous individuals and pressure groups, each seeking to control the machine to fatten his own pockets or to benefit his favorite charity, all with the other fellow’s money, of course. … With each group out to get its share of the spoils, such governments historically have mushroomed into total welfare states. Once the process begins, once the principle of the protective function of government gives way to the aggressive or redistributive function, then forces are set in motion that drive the nation toward totalitarianism.” (Benson, Former Secretary for Agriculture under Eisenhower)

The answer, says Bastiat, is to restrict the law… or, in our words – limited government.

Well, we want it, but we don’t have it.

Because in the UK, there are no such limits on government. There is no written constitution stating what those limits are. The limits are legislation which can be changed at any time. We’re living in such a time now, the Coronavirus Act, as it’s known, imposes some of the most tyrannical restrictions we’ve ever encountered – and you and I weren’t asked for our consent. Let that sink in. The right to assembly, freedom of association, freedom of religion, even the ability to work was stripped away just like that! We can argue about whether it was justified – but my point is that it happened without any reference to your views on the matter. This is unlimited government in action. (We found ourselves in the EU in the same kind of way, with no reference to us – bear that in mind too.)

In the USA, at least in principle they are a republic, and any and all powers not specifically granted to the Federal government a retained in the individual states, and then it’s down to the constitutions of each state after that. Texas is an example of a republic in the republic. But in the UK, we’re not a republic of any kind. The courts recently ruled, among all the fighting over Brexit, that Parliament is sovereign – not you, and not me. In my view that is something that needs to change.

But even in the parliament is sovereign ruling we’re neither a republic nor what I would call a democracy.

Think about what happens in elections? You vote, for a person. Then they do whatever they do until the next election. How much voice do you actually have? You only get a referendum when Parliament decides to give you one. The whole Brexit campaign, that’s still going on by the way, showed exactly how little democracy we actually have on one hand. But then the spending promises in an effort to buy your votes with your money and your neighbour’s money show how much we do have on the other hand. We have just enough democracy for those in power to legitimise and maintain their power – not much more, and probably less.

I put to you another definition of democracy, one which we don’t enjoy now, but which I prefer. It’s much closer to pure republicanism, and it’s certainly libertarian…

How about we let each individual in the country make their own choices for themselves? Millions of little votes each day, manifested by the actions they take, in the direction they prefer. What, for instance, is more democratic than the free market – instead of cronyism and subsidy, each business transaction is a real-time vote in favour of a product or service, those who serve their customers best – they succeed, those who don’t – they fail. There is no coercion in this, no state or government picking winners and losers, there is just millions of individuals voting by choosing to do business or not. That to me is the ultimate democracy. Each represents themselves, making choices they believe will help them meet their individual objectives in life.

We can have this. We can even have it here in the UK.

To achieve it we need to elect MPs who believe in this and are willing to start undoing things that have been done in the past. We need to shrink the size and reach and power of the state. Then, with all the state meddling gone, with all the trappings of former democratic decisions that represent people imposing their views on their neighbours in things that were none of their business, gone! Then we can have this.

To get it we need more people to understand the true nature of democracy, how in its really vital form it naturally exists when people are free in all of their free choices as sovereign individuals while protected in their life, liberty and property.

The unlimited government we currently experience robs people of these freedoms, ultimately limiting naturally occurring democracy to whatever Parliament permits while it overreaches and perverts the true purpose of law away from the defence of life, liberty, and property to maintaining and growing its own power.

On that basis, back to the question. No. We don’t live in a democracy. We must not be fooled by the fact we get to vote every so often. This is all theatre. What we currently experience as democracy is the activated perversion of the law, in which the power of the state increases as electors fight between themselves via the ballot box, who will be the next victim of the next perversion of the law.

I choose individual sovereignty and individual freedom – that is where real democracy is manifest, and nowhere else. Until we have that, we don’t live in a democracy.

[libertaridan]

Australian Fires Survivor Was Fined For Culling Trees

When the state drags you to court and fines you for fire hazard reduction measures that later save your life.

There are many in this world who worship the cult of ‘experts’ or government, stubbornly insisting that they always know best, better than the people on the ground floor, and better than the people directly affected by the issue at hand. By itself such firm belief is not a problem (we all know people who really, really, really think they know) if we can choose to ignore them we can simply say – so what? But marry such people to the coercive machinery of the state and the choice is suddenly gone. Liam Sheahan, resident of Victoria, Australia, decided to clear trees and shrub around his home to create a break in case of a fire. For this act of common sense he was fined $50,000 for “illegally clearing trees” by his local council. But when the Black Saturday bush fire came and he, his family and home survived. Clearly, he was vindicated in his decision.

As the saying goes, it’s dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. We might add, it’s more dangerous to follow along with government when it is wrong.

What, then, about the countless others who, either believing in the rightness of the state and its experts, or afraid of the legal penalty associated with disobedience, took no such self-defensive action? Who in government will pay for such devastation and such loss of life? If clearing ground near your home to prevent spread of fire incurs a fine of $50,000, what fine will be levied against ‘experts’ and legislators who applied the coercive threat of law that restrained individuals from taking action that could have saved them, while doing nothing to prepare in their place?

We know the answer. No one material to these decisions will pay. There may be compensation perhaps, there may be ‘government assistance’, but these are all taxpayer funded. No ‘expert’ will pay, no legislator will pay, no councillor will pay, no executive will pay, and because there are no real consequences for being so wrong such people in ivory towers will continue to cause harm.

Liam Sheahan cleared trees and shrub within 100 metres of his home in the hills of central Victoria in 2002 to create a firebreak in case of a blaze. His was the only house to survive Black Saturday.

Source: Black Saturday survivor fined for culling trees backs hazard reduction

Image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bush_fire_at_Captain_Creek_central_Queensland_Australia..JPG

[libertaridan]

Vaccination Without Consent

I’m in favour of vaccination, but Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s call for compulsory vaccination, back in September 2019, didn’t get the attention it deserved – I’m going to address it now. It struck me as the kind of ‘well meaning’ but plain bad policy we can come to expect from increasingly invasive government in the UK. Hancock wants to make it easy to become vaccinated if you’re not, but also mandatory – it sounds like a recipe for slapdash to me. And slapdash and medical procedures (especially compulsory ones) should not go together. He’s right to be concerned about the falling number of vaccinations for childhood diseases, and to be worried that the UK has lost its measles free status. But it’s one thing to be rightly worried, and another thing to wrongly fix it. And a wrong thing done for the right reasons is still a wrong thing.

As I said, I am in favour of vaccination. I am vaccinated, my kids are vaccinated. The science is sound and the medical outcomes good when we see the population as a whole. But there is a massive leap in the wrong direction, in my opinion, to see the overall picture benefit and conclude that vaccinations should be compulsory and tied to school attendance. That’s because everyone is different, not all vaccines suit all people. Sure, the risks of serious side effects are low, and the risks of the diseases we get vaccinated for are deemed higher, and so most people choose to vaccinate and are better off for it.

However, one size doesn’t fit all. According to a 2003 Guardian report, the vaccine pressure group Jabs registered 2,000 vaccine-damaged children between January 1994 and August 2003. That equates very approximately, based on my own back of an envelope calculation, to about 0.03% of the kids born in that decade. The risk is low, but for the small percent of individuals affected badly it’s very real.

It’s understandable, therefore, that some parents might be hesitant, when the state’s blanket approach seems to ignore the outliers, the ones that could be worse off from ‘the jab’. And there is another problem, people can’t talk about it. To even point out this fact of life is to open oneself up to the accusation of being an anti-vaxxer. I hope I’ve already made my position clear. But let me be clear about something else, it’s not for the state to abandon making a solid case for vaccination and force it on people instead. It’s against their human rights for a start, and I suspect they will get much more criticism and withdrawal by taking such an approach, thereby damaging their cause rather than helping it.

The reality is that it’s parents and guardians who need to take responsibility for each of their children’s health, and each child could have different needs. Parental responsibility and individual needs are both things a heavy handed compulsory approach will likely negate. Will the state offer immunity testing? Screening for negative reactions to specific vaccines? Single jabs as alternatives to the combined vaccines to anyone, and everyone, who requests them? Or will they just push children through on auto and then ignore the consequences.

Rather than forcing vaccination by legislation, those pushing this should be making a better case for vaccination and doing more to restore confidence. They can do that, as well as extend actual knowledge about each vaccine, by effectively applying the “yellow card” system which requires doctors to report any bad reactions. This doesn’t always happen as Jackie Fletcher of Jabs explained in the 2003 Guardian report, in relation to adverse post vaccine reactions “Doctors are told that vaccines don’t cause problems, so they don’t link it and fill out the card”. Fixing this type of hole would go a long way towards restoring the faith of those who’ve lost their trust in vaccinations.

What parents and children don’t need is patronising or bullying. We all want the best for our kids, and we want to feel confident that our kids are not being harmed when we think they are being helped. Legislation to coerce vaccination works against building confidence. Listening to parents, providing screening and a flexible approach to those who want it, will build confidence. Legislating for coercion is not only lazy, but a degree of authoritarianism we don’t need in this country.

[libertaridan]

It’s Dangerous To Be Right When The Government Is In The Wrong

From Helmuth Hübener to Julian Assange, nothing changes, tyrants hate the truth!

The trial of Julian Assange is an example of the state arbitrarily picking and choosing which bits of the constitution it wants to apply to which people, simply because it doesn’t like the truth being exposed. To get round this the US argues that as a non-citizen its constitution doesn’t apply to Assange, but then we must reply by referring to Senator Ron Paul’s observation that in that case Assange, a citizen of Australia, can hardly be tried for treason against the USA.

But we don’t expect the US establishment, and those angered by having the truth told about them, to pay much attention to aspects of law they find inconvenient. (They didn’t for extraordinary rendition, they won’t now.) And, we can see cold irony in a state reacting to having its past bad dealing exposed with yet more bad dealing.

What’s the lesson we ordinary people should take from this? Ignore the crimes of the government – because in telling the truth they will call you the criminal.

I am reminded of the case of Helmuth Hübener, a young German during WWII who became convinced the Nazi government was lying after listening – illegally – to BBC broadcasts on a shortwave radio. He used what he heard to compose various anti-national socialist texts and anti-war leaflets, of which he also made many copies. The leaflets were designed to bring to people’s attention how skewed the official reports about World War II from Berlin were, as well as to point out Adolf Hitler’s, Joseph Goebbels’s, and other leading Nazis’ criminal behaviour.

So far, so much like Wikileaks.

On 5 February 1942, Helmuth Hübener was arrested by the Gestapo at his workplace. While he was trying to translate his pamphlets into French and have them distributed among prisoners of war he had been noticed by a co-worker and Nazi Party member, who denounced him.

On 11 August 1942, at age 17, Hübener was tried as an adult by the Special People’s Court in Berlin, who were in charge of matters of treason. Hübener was sentenced to death. After the sentence was read, Hübener faced the judges and said, “Now I must die, even though I have committed no crime. So now it’s my turn, but your turn will come.”

And so will all of our turns if telling the truth becomes a crime. The parallel between the behaviour of the US and UK states towards Assange, and the Nazi state towards Hübener, should concern us greatly. The outcome of this case sets the precedent for us all, whether we can report on the crimes of state actors, whether we can point out their lies, or whether we really do live under tyranny.

[libertaridan]

The Uncomfortable Relationship Between Guns and Freedom

The cause of freedom has always been one worth defending, no matter whose freedoms are under attack, no matter who is the attacker. Today US citizens mark the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. with a federal holiday. But in 2020 in Virginia it was marked rather differently than usual when 22,000 citizens converged on the State Capitol to demonstrate against a move to curtail their freedom – new gun restrictions being imposed by the State’s Governor.

It can seem strange to us in the UK to watch this stand-off play out between the State Governor and citizens, with even police taking the side of ordinary people against the Governor. Here in the UK we began to lose our gun rights about 100 years ago and have seen them steadily eroded over the passing decades – the paranoia and cynical opportunism of the British establishment evident throughout.

The US is a different place though, founded on revolution against tyranny, the right to bear arms is a founding principle codified in the second amendment to the US Constitution. Gun owner rights advocates frequently cite their right to be armed as a key deterrent to state attacks on their rights. Something Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam is finding out today as armed citizens peacefully mingle together, with their guns and banners, including one picturing a rifle with the words “come and take it”. That’s the object lesson for these peaceful demonstrators, no one is coming to take their guns precisely because they are armed and united. It’s an effective check on government tyranny, which is how the Governor’s dismissal of Constitutional rights is viewed. “This is about losing one of the base freedoms that we have. Without it, all the others fall right behind it,” said one demonstrator. And he has a point, as history demonstrates that terrible atrocities have been inflicted by governments against their own unarmed people.

We can take the example of Nazi Germany, whose Minister for the Interior, Wilhelm Frick, promulgated laws forbidding Jews to own weapons in 1938, then barely 3 years later the regime hatched what became known as the ‘final solution’ to kill the jews, over 1 million children included. Or we can look to more recent times, in 2012 the Chávez regime in Venezuela banned private gun ownership, but in 2017-18, under Maduro, pro-democracy demonstrators were shot dead by government forces in brutal retaliation to their call to end the oppressive socialist regime.

Against that backdrop perhaps we can have some sympathy with Second Amendment supporters in Virginia pushing back against Governor Northam’s disregard of their constitutional rights. Pushing back before it was too late is something Venezuelans can only wish they had done. “Guns would have served as a vital pillar to remaining a free people, or at least able to put up a fight,” said Javier Vanegas, 28, a Venezuelan teacher of English now exiled in Ecuador. But too late, is always too late.

What can Virginians learn? Power changes hands, they can’t guarantee the safety promised by the regime removing their guns will be honoured by future wielders of power. A sobering thought – one that might keep us Brits awake at night, and counting our lucky stars Marxism didn’t gain power at the last election.

And if the history of the world’s oppressive regimes is not enough reason to encourage the anti-gun lobby to think twice, there is at least one other important lesson from the Virginia demonstration for those who think triggers pull fingers – nobody got shot. The only arrest at the demonstration was of a woman who refused to remove a bandanna covering her face – though perhaps even that is a step too far in what is called a ‘free country’.

A free country is what we believe we have because 60 or so years ago millions of our relatives did take up arms against a tyrannical foe across the water, on the water and in the air. We know that guns were essential in pushing back tyranny then, and we don’t worry too much about that because we imagine such tyrants exist elsewhere. But elsewhere wasn’t what it was for Jews in Germany, and elsewhere wasn’t what it was for demonstrators in Venezuela, or Tiananmen Square, or any other government atrocity against their own people. Elsewhere isn’t what it was for peaceful voters in Catalonia or those resisting tyranny in Hong Kong. Has it been luck that Britain has been different of late? Are our leaders somehow made of finer clay? Have we moved on and left far behind in Peterloo, or Amritsar, a less civilised age of British rule? Or is it something a future generation must experience too?

As if to distract from the issue, here in the UK the social stigma the state has effectively constructed against guns is compounded by a whipped up paranoia against other inanimate objects – knives. So much so that the checkout assistant had to confirm my middle aged wife was over 18 when purchasing a butter knife. Even the common sense of that decision has been relegated to ‘computer says no’ procedure. But no need to worry, knife crime and shootings are rife, pepper spray legal in EU countries for self-defence is harder to obtain in the UK than a shotgun, and while you might become a victim at least you won’t be a perpetrator. Cold comfort indeed. But it’s a free country we’re told, so let’s hope it stays that way, because if it ever isn’t there won’t be anything you can do about it except run.

So, to the Virginians I say, stick with it, the alternative perhaps carries too high a price.

More on this issue: https://www.npr.org/2020/01/20/797895183/richmond-gun-rally-thousands-of-gun-owners-converge-on-virginia-capitol-on-mlk-d https://www.npr.org/2020/01/15/796666321/virginia-governor-declares-state-of-emergency-ahead-of-pro-gun-rally https://www.foxnews.com/world/venezuelans-regret-gun-prohibition-we-could-have-defended-ourselves

[libertaridan]

When Seconds Count, Self Defence is a Human Right

When seconds count, the police are only minutes away. The shooting at a Fort Worth, Texas, in December 2019 resulted in two innocent people being killed, before the gunman was taken down. A deep tragedy for the victims and their families and friends.

Yet, the number of casualties could have been much greater, had there been no armed civilians attending church that day, and the congregation had been forced to run, hide and wait for the police. The fact that at least one member of the congregation could shoot back, stopping the attacker, is why this wasn’t worse.

And it’s not just the US where violent attacks happen, we’ve seen it in France, in New Zealand, in other places and here in the UK. In December 2019 the homicide rate in London had reached its highest point in a decade. And a concerning spike in murders occurred in February and March of 2018 when the per-capita murder rate was higher in London than in New York.

Only in the last three days of December 2019 two teenagers were badly injured in a shooting and stabbing in northeast London, a 23 year old man was stabbed in Sheffield, a 17 year old boy was stabbed in Dudley, a man in his 20s was stabbed in Birkenhead, and a woman has been stabbed in front of her young child in London. We’re not magically protected in the UK.

Where violent attacks happen here most people are forced to run, hide, be victims or improvise with makeshift weapons of defence. When it happens it is suddenly very real.

It’s clear that preventing law abiding people from having the means to defend themselves puts them in greater danger. If violent crime is to be prevented only the intended victim is present to do it, they must be allowed the means.

It’s time for the immediate re-classification of pepper sprays and other non-lethal aids to self defence, and then a longer term review of all firearms legislation and licensing.

Only the law abiding obey the law, while criminals do what they want to be armed and at an advantage to unarmed targets. It’s time UK law stopped making ordinary people into victims. It’s time to have this discussion. Self defence is a human right.