Thursday 24 July 2008

Saturday 19 July 2008

Back at A4E again, libertarianism

The rights to or of property and the rights of the person are not only unconnected but opposed to each other.

The rights of property are conditional and solely made possible by the consent of society. The rights of the person are absolute and objective. People always own themselves, while real and moveable property are late novelties of civilisation.

The Scandinavians have got the right idea in that they allow people to take wild plants even from private land. One of the pioneering effects of the Magna Carta, underpublicised beside the introduction of the rule of law and so on, was to allow people certain rights over what effectively became common property. This was omitted from later versions of the Magna Carta and published in the form of a seperate charter, the so-called Forest Charter. This cave common men the right to take vild foods, fire wood, the right of free warren and so forth. The right to subsist therefore came ahead of the right to ownership of property.

The libertarians on the other hand have the wrong idea. They want to keep their property unmolested but they don't want to pay for it. Property is easily taken when there's no bullying government to protect it. "We're the real anarchists", as I believe a fascist once said. And that's true. Fascists and bullies are the anarchists. They want rid of social conventions so they can do what they want with the rest of society. The libertarians are the turkeys voting for christmas.

"We fascists are the only true anarchists." -- The Duke, "Salo"

Anarchy is to remove the restraining forces of society. But those forces are there for good reason. The inevitable result of anarchy is fascism, rule by the strong over the weak. Rule by the unscrupulous over the unprotected.

Not to decide is to decide, as the say. You know what the result will be if you don't make a decision, so by declining to make a decision you know what the result will be as if you made the decision and enforced it yourself. Libertarianism is therefore persecution of the poor. To not help the poor, knowing the result will be greater impoverishment, is to cause that impoverishment. To do so in the name of preserving your property, which is reliant on the consent of those poor and the rest of society, is unjust.

Charity doesn't come into it. Don't engage in charity. Charity is a tax scam, the rich give money because it reduces their tax bill. They give money to save money and for other reasons too.

They give money being able to dictate how it is spent. They give it conditionally for gratitude and obedience and control. They dictate how it's spent, they demand adulation in return, they demand submission and money in return.

If the rich feel so charitably inclined there's an obvious course of action: pay your taxes and allow them to be spent in the democratically willed way, as is your civic duty. Don't play the "tax efficiency" game.

Saturday 12 July 2008

I didn't, anyway

"Plaintiff believes there is no empirical evidence which proves that the normal fantasy life of a child includes being victimized by satanists."
-- Napolis vs Aquino

Wednesday 9 July 2008

So much for the tule of law

I see a fault in New Zealand airport security. A letter in the Private Eye.


The writer had been boarding a plane and had seen a woman have her nail scissors confiscated. Once on the plane he smelt petrol and was alarmed. It's alright, though aeroplanes don't run on petrol. Reassured he got the staff to look for the source of the smell. It was a chain saw in the overhead box. Wasn't on the list of things to confiscate. Well done.


Also well done to the Dutch DWP which has decided unemployment isn't due to a lack of jobs, or a lack of training on the part of the jobless, but due to scientology-style past-life-trauma-caused mental defects. Reminds me, I saw "Dianetics" a bit ago. I threw it in the bin. Hence it will soon be the case that anyone declining past life regression will be denied their benefits. Well done Holland. Still not as bad as the Mossad voice-stress analysers.


Rational government in action, I suppose. The impartial technocracy wisely leading us on. Synarchy. The Samurai of HG Wells. The Brave New World. So forth. Rule, it's claimed, by the competent. The end of history. A historical inevitability.


Our disagreements having all been resolved by the passage of time and the advance of human knowledge. Of course it's not true. They are victorious, but this wasn't inevitable any more than Communism and the end of the bourgeous state was the inevitable end of Communism and industrial civilisation. The political state of the world is constantly a battle field and the result of previous battles. Those in power always want to make their power not only right but inevitable.


Fascism is corporatism, as Mussolini said.


The great battle of the twentieth century was between a left wing which believed in personal freedoms and redistributive spending and a right wing representing business and government power. I see the Communists of Stalin and friends as right wingers here. The nomenklatura were never interest in freedoms, the poor or democracy. As so often the forces of the right muscled their way over the left.


The Insurgent Army of the Ukraine, led by one Makhno but effectively an Anarchist organisation with elected leaders, wasn't wiped out by the Tsar's white but by the Communist Reds. Even after the Reds decided to blockade them so that they couldn't get any ammunition they defeated the Whites who were trying to cross their territory to Red controlled Moscow. But the Ukraines suffered the Reds to survive up in Moscow and they paid for it.

The fact is that their are always two paths, that of the common good and that of private gain. Left and right. Tax and spend and debt. The bottom of society is in favour of the common good as it's their good. The rich, the powerful and the violent are different.

The political parties have not taken us the the end of history or a synthesis of beliefs. This is no consummation of righteousness. They have conquered. The political parties no longer represent the poor on the one side the and rich on the other, even to the extent that they ever did. They now make up nothing less than a conspiracy against the people of Britain.

There can never be a rational government. All government is ideology. The ideology currently dominating is raw self interest. It's not rationality and it's not inevitability. It is self-interest and opinion, arrived at through the conquest by the right.

Vanguardism had long been the way. One gang leading the way to what they think to be right. In the past. No longer. Now one gang only, not one for each point of view but one for the only point of view and everyone else can vote for them or not vote for them, but can't hurt them either way.