The Libertarian Alliance: BLOG

David Davis

We don’t really do quotes of the day for we have not time to scratch our arses…but… 

“It does seem that most people are inherently leftist, simply
because leftist arguments are emotionally appealing on a
shallow level, but to investigate further requires patience -
something most teenagers don’t have.

Just the other day I was talking to someone who first called
themselves a liberal, then said that property was theft, and
then advocated Marxian type of communal ownership. So I don’t
have to look far to see confused people.”

Socialism seems messianic, moral and majoritarian. Always. By hijacking and corrupting the innate human urge to do good, it achieves its ends which are evil.

Everyone wants to help the poor, for example. That’s why we all put up with the crinimally-corrupt and malevolent “Fair Trade” scam, and we don’t roar into supermarkets in our jackboots (all Libertarians wear jackboots, all the time: did you not know?) and tear out the fixtures on which the stuff is displayed, and torch them in the car parks… So it’s only a small step for really nasty guys to pretend that they share your belief in the Gospels of Christ, for example, to make you feel like a shit for not giving them money to “help the poor with”. Then, when you have laughed in their faces, they come back next day, with guns, asking for double.

I remember arguing, in 1977, with a man who would not buy a copy of “The Free Nation” (anyone remember the Freedom Association?) saying he was a “Christian Socialist”. I thought at the time that this was an oxymoron. 

David Davis

To get out of the statist mess we have let ourselves grow round us, there were three options:

(1) Let the Libertarian Alliance be a think-tank and broad church for the airing and publication of widely-different ideas about Law, Liberty and opinion. On the whole, we manage this very well. But the LA’s officers are broadly agreed that this organisation ought not to be the nucleus of a political party.

(2) Infiltrate the Conservative Party - the least statist of the major parties with already-established grass-roots organisations. Thus to redirect the supertanker, as it were, at least towards a more classical liberal course. This I remember was once Chris Tame’s favoured strategy.

(3)  If this could not be achieved, try another (such as UKIP?)

(4) Failing all else, smile with benignity on any sound Libertarian efforts to go it alone.  See for this, the UK Libertarian Party, and a formal welcome onto this chaotic stage, to you guys!

Clearly if something is not done about the creeping tyranny emanating from Westminster (be it driven ultimately by the EU or not, and I increasingly think not) then the battle for individual freedom in Britain is lost. There are some who think it already is. The failure of the Tories to do more than rearrange the deckchairs on the Titanic is inexcusable. So is the failure of UKIP, the other current Last best Hope, to recognise that (a) to invite a major speaker without exhaustively checking his views on contentious and infammatory issues and (b) to then ban him from speaking again because he expressed one of them in passing.

So we are left with the Libertarian Party. I personally am relieved at last that such a thing exists, although the official position on this of the LA, insofar as we have one, is atheist or agnostic. It may concentrate the minds of the more aware voters about what’s happeneing to us. If it splits the “Tory vote”, so be it; the Tories have not shown any inclination to fight the real battles of liberty for at least 25 years.

I’m sure that if it invited Sean to speak, he’d re-iterate what a burden he would be to its electoral chances, and in return they’d greet his contribution in the spirit in which he offered it.

By Tim Evans 

The Committee of the Libertarian Alliance is delighted to invite you to the first

Annual Chris R. Tame Memorial Lecture and Drinks Reception

to be held on Tuesday 18^th March 2008 between 6.30pm and 8.30pm

at the National Liberal Club, One Whitehall Place,

London SW1 (nearest tube Embankment).

On this occasion the speaker will be Professor David Myddelton on

‘How to Cure Government Obesity’.

The dress code for this event is lounge suit or smart casual.

To confirm your attendance please RSVP to  Dr Tim Evans at tim@libertarian.co.uk

Professor David Myddelton is Emeritus Professor of Finance and Accounting at Cranfield University. Chairman of Board of Trustees of the Institute of Economic Affairs and Chairman of the National Council of the Society for Individual Freedom, in the late 1960s he was involved in the Young Libertarians along with the LA’s founder Dr. Chris R. Tame.