Everyone said “You can’t unseat the Political EnemyClass by voting them out. Well, I say: “it has never been tried before, and we shall have to see.”

David Davis

Clown or fruitcake?

(from Matt at the DT)

Today, for the first time a rather historically large number of British voters get to be able to elect, if they like, candidates for “Council Seats” (this to say in honest countries – “socialist Soviets”) from the United Kingdom Independence Party. Now, the Libertarian Alliance goes out of its way to be perennially nasty to all the parties extant in the UK, from time to time, and sometimes all at once. But it’s natural that a little more of our ire and frustration is reserved for those which are more truly socialist than others: for I at least can’t figure out how it might be possible to be what some people call themselves, which is “libertarian socialists” (yes I have heard that one) or even “left libertarians”, although that might just be possible.

This round of elections for regional soviets councils is notable for the frantic and public attempts by other parties, particularly the Tories, to make direct and sometimes ad-hominem attacks on the reputations and backgrounds of rather a lot of UKIP candidates. I’ve been watching British elections since 1959, more or less, and haven’t noticed any such thing on this scale ever before. If they occurred, such assaults tended to come from the socialist left.

The entire British political-class, ably egged on by the BBC, appears to have taken fright at the idea that, for once, letting people vote for who they’d like might actually change things, and not to that class’s liking. As I type, there are no results yet from vote-counting, but the morning may be interesting.

I want to continue by offering a libertarian-based policy position document for a party such as UKIP, were it to, let us say, win a majority in a regional soviet, or even a general election. But as rheumatoid arthritis is making my elbows increasingly non-functional tonight, typing is a little strenuous and exciting. So I’ll save that for a post in the next couple of days or so when the painkillers have kicked in.  Meanwhile, commenters might like to add their own suggestions.

 

(Incidentally, the headline owes a little credit to Air Marshall Arthur “Bomber” Harris”, who used a similar expression when someone suggested that “you can’t win a war by bombing the enemy alone”.)

May Day “Un-American?” It’s as American as Apple Pie!

by Kevin Carson
http://c4ss.org/content/18578

May Day “Un-American?” It’s as American as Apple Pie!

Most Americans think of May Day, if they think of it at all, as some sort of communist holiday. Their awareness of it is based mainly on a vague memory of parades of military hardware on Red Square and Soviet leaders’ “fraternal greetings” to leaders of the state communist regimes of their Warsaw Pact satellites. If you’re unfamiliar with the history of May Day, you might be surprised to learn not only that it originated in the United States, but that it was strongly supported by American free market anarchists. May Day — the international holiday of the workers’ and socialist movements — was created by American workers, right here in the good old U.S. of A.

Margaret Thatcher and the cult of personality

by Robert Henderson
http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/margaret-thatcher-and-the-cult-of-personality/

Two Cults

Margaret Thatcher was the subject of a cult of personality. This was not the result of calculated propaganda, but simply the creation of her extraordinary personality. Because the cult of personality developed not in a totalitarian state but a country where public opposition was possible, there were two cults of personality attached to her in a relationship which mimicked the matter/antimatter duality. These were the Thatcherite religious believers fulfilling the role of matter and the Thatcher-hating Left acting as the antimatter.

Both the matter and the antimatter Thatcher cults were potent. The religious believers bowed down before the great god MARKET (and Thatcher was his prophet) and, when things went wrong, did what all religious believers do until they lose their faith, denied reality by simply pretending something had not happened or by giving a calamity some absurd spin to ”prove” the god had not failed.

Popping Pills With The Romans

http://ancientandmedievalmayhem.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/popping-pills-with-romans.html 

I was recently reading a book (the historical fiction, Conspiracies of Rome by Richard Blake if you were to wonder) and early on in the book there were a few references to pills. Of the medicinal kind. ‘Buying pills from the Apothecary’. ’ Pills rattling in a metal pill box’.

 

This got me to thinking about pills in Ancient Rome. I had not come across any reference to them in an early Roman setting before, not in non fiction and not in fiction.  That is not to say that there are none, just none that I have come across or remember. And, as is the way with me when I sense there is something new for me to learn about periods of history that interest me, my mind was awash with questions.

Further Thoughts on the Legacy of Margaret Thatcher

By Sean Gabb

Because I’m busy on something else, this will be an abbreviated argument, and will be short on facts. But I feel obliged to give some explanation for my claim, made elsewhere, that Mrs Thatcher did great harm to British industry and to the industrial working classes.

The lefties claim she pulled the plug out of the British economy in the early 1980s, and deliberately put millions of workers on the scrapheap. The Thatcherites claim that all she did was to allow the liquidation of previous malinvestments, and that the industrial concerns that failed were unviable. Both are wrong, but I suspect the lefties – if for other reasons than they normally give – may be less wrong than the Thatcherites.

The good is oft-interr-ed with their bones

David Davis

Since Margaret Thatcher is to be in-terr-ed tomorrow, I just thought we’d throw one last punch at her enemies and ours. I found this wonderful piece on The Last Ditch the other day, and one para deserves to be highlighted in our usual way:-

“If you want to know who freedom’s enemies are, mention her with approval. Mad eyes will light up all around you and foul sentiments will fill the air. Note their names and never leave them alone with anything you value; material, spiritual or ethical.”

Yes of course, I _know_ that we object to her having

(a) made the British State more efficient – as a recipe for disaster one would recommend this since the British-Political-Enemyclass is efficient already at making a powerful tyrannical state, and

(b) because she failed to absolutely destroy socialism at home and in the world, before members of that same EnemyClass destroyed her.

But I think that Tom Paine’s paragraph sums up who we are up against, whatever we as classical liberals think of Thatcher herself. I think we can lay her to rest now. May The Iron Lady Rust In Peace.

El legado de Margaret Thatcher

http://www.miseshispano.org/2013/04/el-legado-de%C2%A0margaret%C2%A0thatcher/

Note: A most fluent and generally exact translation. I’m also impressed by the very helpful editorial note on the meaning of Enemy Class. SIG

15 Abril, 2013

Autor: Sean Gabb

Mucho será dicho durante las próximas semanas acerca de los “logros” de Margaret Thatcher. Lo dicho se dividirá entre los elogios del ‘Daily Mail’ y las quejas del ‘Guardian’. Mi visión personal es que ella fue algo malo para Inglaterra.

Ella comenzó la transformación de este país en un estado policíaco “políticamente correcto”. Su gobierno se comportó con desprecio por las normas constitucionales casi hasta el punto de regodearse por ello. Incorporó leyes de lavado de dinero que ahora se han extendido hacia una supervisión general sobre nuestras cuestiones financieras. Ella facilitó las condiciones para las pesquisas y confiscaciones policíacas  Incrementó el número y poder de la policía. Debilitó al juicio por jurado. Debilitó las protecciones del debido proceso de los acusados. Le otorgó a las agencias ejecutivas el poder de multar y sancionar sin que medie el debido proceso. Comenzó los primeros pasos hacia la criminalización total de la posesión de armas.

How Much “Civilization” Does Your Tax Money Buy?

by Kevin Carson
http://c4ss.org/content/18310
How Much “Civilization” Does Your Tax Money Buy?

Tax Day, April 15, is traditionally the time of year when liberals trot out that old Oliver Wendell Holmes chestnut: “Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.”

But what kind of “civilization” are we paying for? At the federal level, if you include not only the nominal “Defense” [sic] budget, but Veterans’ Affairs, the military aspects of NASA and the Department of Energy, interest on the national debt from past wars, etc., military spending is nearly half the total budget.

Margaret Thatcher: Wrong on many things, but right on the one thing that mattered – or so argues Christie Davies

by Christie Davies
http://www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blog/archives/002117.php

Note: “Mrs Thatcher had destroyed the entire working class movement.”

I cannot regard this as in any sense a positive achievement. Certainly, many trade unions were at least obstructive. But they were mostly obstructive where management was already crap or underwritten by the taxpayers. What she did was to create an environment where the unions could be captured by Enemy Class scum, and where the members could be degraded to the status of “human resources.”

I also suspect that much manufacturing was destroyed not in the negative sense of letting failed businesses go under, but in the more positive sense of manipulating the currency so that otherwise viable businesses failed. I do not believe the Thatcherite vision for this country had room for large scale manufacturing in native hands, in which millions of skilled and semi-skilled workers could balance personal autonomy and collective security. Her economic legacy is a country dominated by the least entrepreneurial middle classes. The underclass is a product partly of indiscriminate welfare for those who will not work, but also of severely constrained opportunities for those at the bottom.

I repeat that Mrs Thatcher must be judged not by the hopes and wishes of those who supported her, but by the present state of affairs that she did most to enable. SIG

Margaret Thatcher was a great Prime Minister because she was right on the one issue that mattered in her time – the need for socialism to be defeated both in Britain and in the World. The views expressed here are those of Christie Davies, not those of the Social Affairs Unit, its Trustees, Advisors or Director.

In Praise of Margaret Thatcher

by Leon Georgiou

Margaret Thatcher was no libertarian hero — her policies were a mixture of success and failure — but I feel the classical liberal articles on her have been too harsh. Poll tax, Green concerns, and an increase in state spending were obviously awful, but you simply cannot ignore the mass privatisation, right to buy, and removing taxpayer subsidies for the failing coal mining industry.

The Hatred of Maggie

by Anna Raccoon
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AnnaRaccoon/~3/lAMfe-NhemI/

The Hatred of Maggie

I understand that at certain “street parties” held to “celebrate” the passing of the late Lady Thatcher one of the songs of choice was “Ding, dong, the wicked witch is dead.” As others have observed, many of the charming, upstanding individuals who attended the gay events were not even born when Thatcher came to power. Why was she so hated? Why does this persist?

I think the first reason is very simple. She broke all taboos by being a woman. She emerged from a world dominated by the male Old Boy Network in Parliament and on the wider political stage. The heavyweight union bosses who wielded power over much of the country like so many latter day robber barons were not moisturizing metrosexuals. They were a largely Marxist bunch of middle aged, heavy hitting chauvinists. Neither the comfortable, old school and discredited public school boys of the Right who had been content to let the country stagger to towards a lingering, less than genteel obscurity, nor the Left’s bully boys of the Politburo-in-waiting looked well on this alien, active, female persona who was willing to challenge their entrenched interests.

Give Scotland its Independence – Now!

by Anna Raccoon
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AnnaRaccoon/~3/wcJhkC0a46c/

Note: Margaret Thatcher was neither a libertarian nor a conservative. Whenever she claimed to be either, she was a fraud. This being said, it is also worth noting that the people now celebrating her death hate her not for what she did, but for what her supporters wish she had done. We have no reason to love her. But those most vocal in hating her are people who hate us. See, for example, how The Independent republished my “Legacy of Margaret Thatcher” article yesterday, and left everything in except my complaint that she tightened the censorship of discussion on immigration and race. SIG

The Thatcher Paradox

by Justin Raimondo
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2013/04/09/the-thatcher-paradox/

The Thatcher Paradox
The Iron Lady’s surprising legacy

The queen of the Anglosphere is dead. In death, as in life, there is no middle ground where Maggie Thatcher is concerned: leftists dance in the streets, celebrating her demise, while conservatives mourn the passing of the “Iron Lady.” The irony is that she was never guilty of the alleged crimes attributed to her by the former, just as she never really earned the approbations of the latter.

British leftists are dancing a jig because they believe Thatcher introduced the politics of “austerity,” victimized the poor, and was a relentless reactionary to the end: the truth is that her timid and gradualistic approach to dismantling the British welfare state failed, and failed spectacularly, as Murray Rothbard pointed out at the time here, here, and here. The “Thatcher revolution” had the same success rate as the “Reagan revolution,” i.e. it never succeeded in rolling back the advancing role of the State in British society, only in slowing its galloping onset to a brisk trot. As British libertarian Sean Gabb points out, as Prime Minister she was a corporatist, rather than an advocate of free enterprise. Worse, from a libertarian point of view, she was a dedicated enemy of civil liberties whose depredations against traditional British respect for individual rights paved the way for the current Orwellian control freaks who have turned Merrie Olde England into Airstrip One.

Does Thatcherism mark a radical break in British Politics?

Jock Coats
http://jockcoats.me/does_thatcherism_mark_radical_break_british_politics

[I was extremely frustrated by this coursework essay in the end. There is just so much one could say on this subject and distilling it down into 2000 words does it no justice. But I hope the tactic of reducing it to one core idea that proves the whole, however much more that is, to be radical works!]

There can be few political figures or concepts that provoke such visceral and opposing reactions amongst political friends and foes as Margaret Thatcher and “Thatcherism”. Clearly Thatcher’s period in power was sufficiently remarkable to have sparked such intense feelings, but what do we understand by “Thatcherism” and in what ways might it represent a “radical break in British politics”?

Thatcher: why celebrate? Her regime and her legacy are our own fault!

by Jock Coats
http://jockcoats.me/thatcher_why_celebrate_her_regime_and_her_legacy_are_our_own_fault

I want to get on and write my essay attacking the very basis of the state that every one of our Prime Ministers has fought to uphold and develop with their own elite and more or less authoritarian vision. But I was reading the Glenn Greenwald piece in the Guardian about stifling criticism of the dead, public or private figures and I wanted to respond.

Margaret Thatcher and the Degradation of “Freedom” in Right-Wing Discourse

by Kevin Carson
http://c4ss.org/content/18188
Margaret Thatcher and the Degradation of “Freedom” in Right-Wing Discourse

I confess my first reaction to news of Margaret Thatcher’s death was to stifle a yawn. After all, she’d been long past doing anyone either good or ill. But after witnessing the sorry spectacle of reactionary old men at the Adam Smith Institute and Heritage Foundation attempting to crawl into Thatcher’s coffin and be buried alive with her, and people at Mother Jones who should know better referring to her policies as “free market extremism,” I feel compelled to write something.

Gabb on Thatcher

By Gary Chartier On April 8, 2013

http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2013/04/gabb-on-thatcher/

Sean Gabb, of the UK Libertarian Alliance, offers a fairly acidic take on the late Baroness Thatcher.

Jury Nullification: A Barrister Writes

by Howard R. Gray

Juries have a duty to try the case according to the law: this is trite. The judge is the tribunal of law, and the jury is the tribunal of fact: that is the simple rule of how criminal law works, and also just as trite. Judges in England are allowed broad scope to direct juries on the law and often put forward their views of the facts usually pre-seasoned with the exhortation that it is “up to you ladies and gentlemen of the jury” about any particular point they deem in need of comment.

That being said, there is a plethora of rules that they must use to put to a jury about particular points of law and about the standard of proof that must always be there in their directions. For example the “you must be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt” and “satisfied so that you are sure”, then they go on to give examples. There are the Turnbull directions on corroboration of witness testimony and so on. Each factual element that has a contentious nature must be directed upon in the judge’s homily to the jury at the end of the trial. Failure to adequately direct a jury can result in the verdict being set aside on appeal. Jurors needn’t be too worried that justice will be denied; appeals are often successful.

Should David Cameron Apologise for Amritsar? by Sean Gabb

Should David Cameron Apologise for Amritsar?
By Sean Gabb

http://www.libertarian.co.uk/multimedia/2013-02-20-apology-sig.mp3

On Wednesday the 20th February 2013, I was asked by the BBC to comment on David Cameron’s “apology” to the Indians for the events at Amritsar in April 1919. A few hours later, I found myself on air with Keith Vaz MP, who was a Minister in the Blair Government. Without transcribing my words from the recording, here is what I said:

“I do not expect the Prime Minister to apologise for what happened at Amritsar. No more do I expect the Indians to apologise for the Black Hole of Calcutta, or for the bestial atrocities committed by the sepoys against British woman and children during the Mutiny.

“However, while there are doubtless Indians who get a thrill from watching the grandchildren of the white sahib grovel in the dust, this apology or semi-apology is really about British politics. Whether Conservative or Liberal or Labour, we are ruled by a cartel of cultural Marxists. Part of what they are about involves rewriting British history as a catalogue of shame. That alone explains why our leaders keep going about the world, apologising to every group of foreigners who may think they have a grudge against us. I am proud of my country and of its history. I want no part of this.”

To put it mildly, this is not an opinion heard very often on the BBC. But I was then asked about the principle of historic apologies. Instead of discussing the principle more than in passing, I took the opportunity to say this:

Human Accomplishment and the English

by Robert Henderson

In his book “Human Accomplishment” the American Charles Murray calculates the contribution to civilisation made by individuals throughout history up until 1950. To give his calculations as much objectivity as possible he measures the amount of attention given to an individual by specialists in their field in sources such as biographical dictionaries – put crudely, the greater the frequency of mention and the larger the space devoted to an individual, the higher they score.