Electricity Prices: Our Duty to the Environment

A Libertarian Case against Mass-Immigration

A Libertarian Case Against Mass Immigration
Keir Martland

Political Notes No. 197

ISSN 0267-7059 (print)
ISSN 2042-2776 (online)
ISBN: 9781856376594

An occasional publication of the Libertarian Alliance,
Suite 35, 2 Lansdowne Row, Mayfair, London W1J 6HL.

© 2013: Libertarian Alliance; Keir Martland

Keir Martland isPage Editor of The Libertarian (http://the-libertarian.co.uk). He was a member of the Conservative party for four years and Secretary of his local Conservative Future branch for nearly two before resigning. He defines himself as a paleolibertarian or a propertarian or Rothbardian/Hoppeian, and less and less as a classical liberal or libertarian due to the infiltration of the UK movement with Marxists.

The views expressed in this publication are those of its author, and not necessarily those of the Libertarian Alliance, its Committee, Advisory Council or subscribers.

FOR LIFE, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY

Government Property is an Oxymoron1

The consensus among modern libertarians seems to be that free immigration is the only libertarian stance possible in this debate because of the ‘economic benefits’ and that those who oppose free immigration are just statists who want the government to control who can and can’t move about from here to there.Conversely, it is my opinion that a state policy of open borders amounts to an infringement of property rights and that, consequently, border controls tighter than those currently in force are perfectly compatible with propertarianism, though certainly not compatible with the modern, vile, Marxist flavour of libertarianism to which many of us have become accustomed.

Biography of Marcus Junius Brutus

Marcus Brutus (85 BC – 42 BC): Purger of Tyranny
Peter Richards

Libertarian Heritage No. 30

An occasional publication of the Libertarian Alliance,
Suite 35, 2 Lansdowne Row, Mayfair, London, W1J 6HL.

ISBN: 9781856376600
ISSN: 0959-566X (print)
ISSN: 2042-2733 (online)

© 2013: Libertarian Alliance, Peter Richards

Peter Richards is a Hampshire businessman and writer. Besides being a supporter of the LA, he is a member of the Rationalist Association, the Society for Individual Freedom and the Freedom Association. He has also contributed to The Freethinker, Right Now! and The Individual. In 2011, the Book Guild published Free-born John Lilburne: English Libertarian: And Other Essays on Liberty, many of the chapters of which were first published by the LA or SIF.

The views expressed in this publication are those of its author, and not necessarily those of the Libertarian Alliance, its Committee, Advisory Council or subscribers.

FOR LIFE, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY

Introduction

Excellent Brutus!Of all human race
The best!

These words were written by the 17thcentury poet Abraham Cowley.1He is referring to Marcus Junius Brutus the Younger, better known to us as Brutus, one of the leading conspirators responsible for the assassination of Julius Caesar on 15th March 44 BC.Brutus was a prominent politician during the latter years of the Roman Republic but he is best remembered for the what happened on the Ides of March at the Theatre of Pompey.Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar has ensured that his story has continued to be told through the ages.

Curse of Babylon by Richard Blake: Coming Soon!

Censorship and the Woolwich murder

by John Kersey

It turns out that ITV’s video of the comments made by one of the murderers in the Woolwich atrocity yesterday was censored. Not, you might imagine, to remove graphic images of bloody violence, but for a different reason.

If you watch the broadcast version of the ITV video, you can see that a voiceover has been put over the beginning of the tape. The killer is speaking, but we can’t hear what he is saying.

 Now watch the full version of the same tape here.

The censored words are, “There are many, many ayah throughout the Koran [referring to religious verses] that says we must fight them as they fight us, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” In other words, this is further evidence that the killer used the Koran to justify his actions. Why do you think that people didn’t want us to hear that?

Reflections on the Woolwich atrocity

I don’t have time for a long comment, and am only 1,000 words into chapter 2 of my novel. But no one in the LA has commented on the Woolwich murder.

This has key implications for liberty, not least because it is argued that the government’s snoopers’ charter proposal is a good idea in order to combat Islamic extremism. Islamic extremism in our country is a powerful confirmation of John Stuart Mill’s view (in chapter 16 of On Representative Government: read the section starting “free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities”) that free institutions are impossible in a culturally divided society. Cultural conflict encourages state control.

The “War on Drugs” is Really a War on You

by Kevin Carson
http://c4ss.org/?p=8757

Hardly a week goes by without me seeing another think piece on the question: “Are we winning the war on drugs?”

Liberalism: For Nations, not Empires?

by John Stuart Mill

Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities. Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of representative government, cannot exist. The influences which form opinions and decide political acts are different in the different sections of the country. An altogether different set of leaders have the confidence of one part of the country and of another. The same books, newspapers, pamphlets, speeches, do not reach them. One section does not know what opinions, or what instigations, are circulating in another. The same incidents, the same acts, the same system of government, affect them in different ways; and each fears more injury to itself from the other nationalities than from the common arbiter, the state. Their mutual antipathies are generally much stronger than jealousy of the government. That any one of them feels aggrieved by the policy of the common ruler is sufficient to determine another to support that policy. Even if all are aggrieved, none feel that they can rely on the others for fidelity in a joint resistance; the strength of none is sufficient to resist alone, and each may reasonably think that it consults its own advantage most by bidding for the favour of the government against the rest.
(Representative Government, 1861, Chapter 16 ”Of Nationality, as connected with Representative Government”)

Talkin’-’bout my Generation

David Davis

In the late afternoons of our lives, various thoughts occur. I had a cyberchat with my colleague, the Dear Leader of the Libertarian Alliance, Dr Sean Gabb, at some indeterminate time overnight last night. We both agreed on some things:-

The trouble with gay marriage

The issue of gay marriage comes back to the House of Commons this week, and the Prime Minister cannot by now be ignorant of the fact that his proposals are not exactly flavour of the month with his party. Indeed, I cannot remember anything quite this unpopular with the Tory rank-and-file since the heady days of the Maastricht Treaty, and the Conservatives are not by nature kind to leaders who appear to have lost touch with the grass roots – this, I recall, was one of the leading charges laid against the late Baroness Thatcher at the time of her downfall. How long now before a stalking horse rears his or her head against Dave?

I should begin with a simple statement of libertarian principle. The state has no business being involved in any way with marriage. It has adopted that role as a consequence of the mess Henry VIII engendered when he merged Church and State. Since marriage within the Church of England is governed by the law of the land, and not simply by canon law, it follows that when marriage takes place between persons who are not members of that church, the state must act as registrar in order that those marriages have equivalent legal standing. One simple answer to the matter would be to disestablish the Church of England and thereby reduce marriage to a matter of private contract with an optional religious component, but this is not under consideration at present.

What to do about political parties in the UK, and about democracy

David Davis

First of all, please could I admonish all the Chimpanzee-Type-writers who have posting rights from the Nissen Hut, that each chimpanzee ought to post his name is italics, and in blue, at the head of each post that he lets to be typed by the junior-chimpanzees? I’ve been doing it for years, but some of the other chimpanzees, particularly the “newbugs” recently inducted in the “1995 conscript class”, don’t seem to be complying with this order. It’s merely the good old collectivist principle of “best practice”, which of course drives most forms of modern British State Repression, that prompts me to ask this favour, of course in the interests of “enhanced health and safety”.

Then, what of all this “swivel-eyed-loons” business? We certainly can’t suggest on here who said it, or even if it had been said, but

Very Brief Reflections on Welfarism

Sean Gabb

My women and I spent yesterday with some friends who live in South East London. They gave us chapter and verse on a thoroughly dispiriting symbiosis of financially corrupt bureaucrats and quasi-bureaucrats and an underclass almost too radically degraded to count as human. To do justice to what I heard would take a long essay that I don’t currently have time to write. But I will give the instance I heard of an illiterate youth admitted to a college. He was let in so the college could get funding for him. Because of his illiteracy, he was provided with a “reader” and a “scribe,” presumably at further cost to the taxpayers.

It’s clear that, even if seriously intended, the Government’s welfare reforms are misconceived. I suspect that the only answer, short of cancelling all welfare entitlements without exception, is something like this:

An Evening with James Hansen

by James Oliver Deckard

The famous climate “scientist,” James Hansen, spoke at the London School of Economics on the 16th May 2013. Here is an account of his talk and its attendant circumstances.

How It Happened, chapter 1

Note: The Libertarian Alliance does not recommend or condone the use of violence to achieve political ends. Of course, the story published below is merely advice on how lawfully appointed Ministers of the Queen should proceed once in office. As such, it falls within the section of the Bill of Rights providing “That it is the right of the subjects to petition the king, and all commitments and prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal.” But the Directors and Officers of the Libertarian Alliance devoutly hope that the restoration of constitutional government will not require such extremes as are described below. SIG

A Case for Plebiscitory Democracy

by Eddie Johnson

For too long our political system has been under the control of a group of people who have never represented the people that elected them. A person who is elected by a constituency should no longer have the right of personal opinion. Their only concern should be voicing the concerns of the majority of their constituents.

When there is a vote in Parliament the elected representative should simply vote on what the majority of his constituents want.

We’re Losing Revenue! Quick, Let’s Tax E-Cigs!

by Dick Puddlecote
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DickPuddlecote/~3/K7wVLaAENEU/were-losing-revenue-quick-lets-tax-e.html

We’re Losing Revenue! Quick, Let’s Tax E-Cigs! Could this be what it’s really all about?

Italian MEP Giancarlo Scottà tabled this extraordinary written question a couple of weeks ago.

Intolerance (1916)

The more often I watch this, the more I am astonished and awed by it. Oh, to see it in a big cinema, with an orchestra playing! When Mr Blake goes to Hollywood, he will insist on similar spectacle.

Save Your Freedom – Please Retweet!

by Anna Raccoon
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AnnaRaccoon/~3/EumMDBkP-kM/
Save Your Freedom – Please Retweet!

We need to ‘gird our loins’ and go to battle folks, I need your assistance on this one! Please retweet this post to anyone you think might pay attention, and kick into action those who you think will continue dozing. I know its easier to continue playing solitaire – but you could put your computer to better use this morning, trust me.

I shall explain.

A year ago, I wrote of a worrying case where Social Workers went to the High Court for permission to enter the home of a person of sound mind because ‘it was thought’ that possibly they were making decisions as a result of ‘undue influence’ by their son who lived with them. No one actually knew whether they were or not, but on the basis that they might be – such permission was granted. Fair enough, a judge had listened to the arguments from ‘a’ social worker – we are not allowed to know who – and a document was drawn up delineating what subjects the son was allowed to speak of to his parents in their own home…in particular, he should not discuss with his parents any arrangements for securing the family home. What happened to the home in which he and his parents lived was to be entirely a matter for the local authority to decide if and when they thought it should be sold…..presumably if and when the parents became vulnerable through mental incapacity.

Sean Gabb on the Horrors of Internet Pornography

The Beeb woke me at the crack of dawn to deal with these fatuous and endlessly-recycled lies about the tendency of porn to turn good men into sex-crazed zombies. Don’t be surprised if I sound as bored here as I felt. The most interesting thing for me about the interview was staring up at the contours of my bedroom ceiling.

http://www.libertarian.co.uk/multimedia/2013-05-14-sig-porn.mp3

Emma West timeline

This is a timeline of the events concerning the prosecution and trial of Emma West, who was recorded on video while on a London tram. Her case has previously been the subject of comment here, in particular by Robert Henderson.

In the timeline below I have tried to record the dates relating to her trial and where possible the reasons for its interminable, Kafka-esque delays. My sources for this have been the printed media and a variety of blogs, so it is possible that some details may need amending. Nevertheless, I believe the overall picture of the way the powers-that-be are dealing with this fundamental freedom of speech case is damning. There are now two cases and multiple charges against West. Does anyone know what the current position is regarding these?

Whether anyone agrees with Emma West’s comments or not, she should have the right to voice her opinion in a free society without then having her life effectively put on hold by the marmoreal process of the courts, with the threat of prison and the forcible removal of her children hanging over her head.