Today in history

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1854 The Republican Party is founded in Wisconsin – the party was founded on the principles of opposing the growth of slavery (good), strong national defense (good), but also highly regulated and protectionist business (bad). Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican President.
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1972 The Shanghai Communique was issued jointly by Mao Tse Tung and Richard Nixon on the conclusion of Nixon’s groundbreaking visit to communist China. At that point, the US continued to not recognise the People’s Republic of China, but maintained diplomatic relations and military bases on the Republic of China in Taiwan.

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The key breakthrough was the following portion of the Communique
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“There are essential differences between China and the United States in their social systems and foreign policies. However, the two sides agreed that countries, regardless of their social systems, should conduct their relations on the principles of respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states, non-aggression against other states, non-interference in the internal affairs of other states, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence. International disputes should be settled on this basis, without resorting to the use or threat of force. The United States and the People's Republic of China are prepared to apply these principles to their mutual relations. “
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..and more shocking for Chiang Kai Shek, precipitating the Republic of China (Taiwan)’s withdrawal from the United Nations, was the announcement by the US that:
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“The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position. It reaffirms its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves. With this prospect in mind, it affirms the ultimate objective of the withdrawal of all U.S. forces and military installations from Taiwan. In the meantime, it will progressively reduce its forces and military installations on Taiwan as the tension in the area diminishes.”
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In short, the US announced it was abandoning its direct defence of Taiwan against Chinese attack – Chiang Kai Shek felt betrayed by the USA. Peace between the USA and the murderous tyrants that butchered and starved tens of millions of Chinese seemed like madness. However, Nixon was not concerned with anything other than isolating the Soviet Union – he knew that peace with China would help protect US interests in Asia, and see China turn its effort towards the USSR. It was realpolitik – your enemy’s enemy is your friend. After the 1972 New Zealand election, one of the first foreign policy moves of the Kirk Labour government was to recognise the People's Republic of China, which meant concurrently terminating diplomatic relations with the Republic of China (Taiwan).
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And in 1983, the last episode of MASH was broadcast to a US audience of over 100 million viewers.

Abolish the crime of blasphemy!

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No Right Turn has drafted a bill to abolish the crime of blasphemy. I blogged a while ago about how Richard Worth MP for – not Epsom - had noted this crime remains in the Crimes Act, but hadn't shown any appetite for repealing it. It can only be prosecuted by agreement of the Attorney General, but it is still there - and no free and open society should retain it. Duncan Bayne has also supported it on his blog.
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I fully the repeal of this odious crime and I am certain Libertarianz will as well. I challenge Rodney Hide or Heather Roy to make it a private member’s bill, and help prove ACT can be a liberal party. I doubt Labour will support it, with mealy-mouthed words about protecting our trade with Islamic countries, I doubt National will either - too many Christian conservatives riled up with the South Park cartoon no doubt!
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Ghost of Goldwater, has blogged delightfully, but in a blasphemous way. Should doing this remain a crime - subject only to the Attorney General being a religious zealot?

David Benson Pope

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I have only one comment about DBP – I appeared in front of a select committee that he sat on, to present a submission on a Bill. He was rude and obnoxious, and wasn’t unafraid to express his contempt that “we” had even bothered to put in a submission. He asked questions about why a libertarian would be in an organisation, because aren’t we all individuals, he asked whether Libertarianz as a party really existed. He wouldn’t discuss the Bill concerned, wasn't interested in debating why he supported it, he just wanted to be abusive. Of course, as much as I wanted to tell him to stop being an uglier version of David McPhail’s Muldoon, I had to be polite – you don’t get allowed into select committees any other way.
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What a prick.
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I don’t really give a damn how much of a bully or pervert he was as a teacher – if there are people who are victims, then let them press charges or stand up in public to do their finger pointing. However, he is a bully, and he props up a government that used taxpayer’s money to campaign – the people of Dunedin South have a lot to answer for, and I hope the bastard’s political career is over as soon as possible.

Why freedom?

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AJ Chesswas challenged me a couple of weeks ago to give a "philosophical and moral justification of libertarianism" after I blogged about his views on sex, morality and the state (he has since decided to stop blogging and the vigorous debates on his blog have been removed by him).

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So here it is, after some attempt at writing a summary, I decided to be as succinct as I could be, while still walking through it step by step. The briefest version is:

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- existence exists - human beings have consciousness to perceive reality - human beings are living creatures and the sustenance of life is fundamental to anything else they do - in order to sustain life human beings must apply reason - in order to apply reason they must be protected from the initiation of force against their body and property, and have the freedom to think and act according to reason - and the highest reflection of life is the pursuit of happiness - as such, government should exist to protect people's bodies, property and freedom from the use of force by others, so they can sustain life and enjoy it. *phew*

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The longer version is:

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The libertarian position on government, is that government must exist in order to ensure that the four fundamental rights of humans are protected. These rights are:
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- life;
- liberty;
- property; and
- the pursuit of happiness.
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Government has a monopoly of legitimate violence to protect those rights, because individuals have those rights and have created government to serve them. The only action that can erode those rights is the use of force or fraud, force can end life, can restrain your freedom by prohibiting or compelling you, can take or destroy your property and can, as a result of losing the other rights, interfere with your happiness. Government exists to defend you against other human beings interfering with those rights. Your personal sphere is where all your rights exist, and your interaction with others is done on a voluntary basis, where rights are only important when the principle of voluntarism is abridged, because they PROTECT it.
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Why those rights? Why are there not other rights and why are these “rights” at all? The answer is simple – because they are absolutely necessary preconditions for life itself and arise from the facts of life.
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You may think that the “right to life” is all you need. However, the right to life per se, is quite fundamental and basic. It is your right not to be killed – but your right to not have force inflicted upon you although absolutely necessary, is insufficient in itself. Without this right, human beings live in anarchy and in need to be constantly vigilant against attack, which limits their potential to do anything beyond mere survival. This is, fundamentally, the right to deny others to violate your body, except by your choice (in which case it is not violation).
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You also need a right to “property” (I’ll come to liberty in a moment). Property is the fruit of what you produce, by applying your mind to the world around you. Whether you invent, discover or undertake actions that trade value for value, you gain property – such as food, tools, clothing, shelter. Without such property, you are unable to sustain life, because you need food, shelter and warmth – if you had no such right, others could steal and occupy your property, denying you the basics of survival. Having a right to property enables you to not only survive, but produce a surplus, and trade – enhancing your life. This is control over what you produce or earn (whether by work or as a gift, from a relationship). It is the right to deny others the possession or control of your property, except by your choice.
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You need “liberty” because in order to live, act and pursue property, you need the freedom to make your own decisions and act on them. This means not being compelled to act in ways that are contrary to your mind, or being prohibited from doing so. Liberty is freedom to be creative, to experiment, to explore and to make decisions surrounding your life. Without this, someone else is making your decisions and that person may not be motivated to protect your life or property. More importantly, it cannot be assumed, except in the transitional period of childhood (when reasoning matures) or severe cases of mental injury or disease, that one adult knows best how to respond to the environment for another. Why? If you assume a right to life and property, that means control over that life and property – the control over another’s life and property is the relationship of a master and slave. Regardless of whether or not the person wishing to inhibit liberty has good intentions regarding the life of the other person, denying that person the liberty to choose is abandoning the brain of that person. What may to one person be a destructive and negative action by another towards himself, may, to that other, be the pursuit of a rational value – for example, a person may wish to protect someone inventing a flying machine, because it could be damaging, but the person risking their life with such an invention is pursuing life, through valuing discovery and science. Similarly, it would be inappropriate for the person inventing to compel others to help, because others are pursuing different values - that are life affirming.
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So what about a man doing something “so clearly harmful” to himself. Is there not an obligation to act to protect him? No, there is no obligation. There is the freedom to advise, and attempt to convince – but to use force against his body or property assumes that, given all of the available facts, you know better in the pursuit of that man’s goals. Perhaps your goals for him are better. So why not? Firstly, you may not have all of the available facts, in which case you would be violating him. Note that you will never always be in a better position than someone else to make those decisions, and if you are in error, you have not only violated his body and/or property, but have made or prohibited him acting in a way that is consistent with his values – something you yourself would personally resist. Secondly, if you do, it is presumably because you have better values or better pursue his values .

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In order to determine if those values are legitimate, then you must define the purpose of your existence and the purpose of the existence of others. The answer to that is simple – life.
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Living creatures have one distinct difference from objects, in that they must act to sustain themselves to exist and reproduce. If they do not act, they will die. Life as a value is fundamental to everything else that a living organism may do – without it, everything else is utterly irrelevant. So the first value of every human being must be life. The process of sustaining life sees organisms sensing responses from their environment according to their actions – in general, actions which sustain life are pleasurable, such as food, satisfaction from completing a productive task and positive relationships. Those which are contrary to life produce pain, such as starvation, injury, frustration and sacrifice for no personal goal. As the sustenance of life is the fundamental goal of human beings, then the pursuit of happiness is the highest achievement of that goal. Human beings strive to experience pleasure, which is why the fourth right is the “pursuit of happiness”. The pursuit of happiness is fundamental to the sustenance of life, because nothing else motivates the continued sustenance of life other than happiness.
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This does not mean pursuing happiness in ways that are contrary to life – the short term pleasure from ingesting harmful drugs can result in subsequent pain. Hedonistic pleasures that ignore the need to sustain existence and pursue longer term happiness may not be in support of life. However, this then raises the issue as to whether there is any justification for one man to use force to stop another man from making choices in pursuing happiness that are destructive to his life. There cannot be. This is why you cannot force others to not undertake actions or to undertake actions that you believe are best for them - because you cannot experience the happiness of another or understand it. If you use force contrary to that person's happiness, then it is a direct violation of that person's life.
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The fundamental tool all human beings have to sustain their existence and pursue happiness is reason. Reason is a tool that cannot be used when force is inflicted, as force is a direct attack on reason. Force is the tool of the savage who seeks not to produce, trade or convince others of the merits of his ideas, but to make them – to enslave them. The rights to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness demand that no one initiate force against others. Indeed, liberty cannot exist when someone has the right to stop you from using reason in your pursuit of life, property and happiness.
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Can you argue that some people are not using reason in their pursuit of happiness so you have the right to do so, to stop them from acting contrary to their lives? No. If this were the case, then government could extend its powers into every action of a person’s life to protect them, to the point where it would micromanage what you eat, wear, where you live, your job and your relationships – because you did not make “rational decisions” in relation to them. Liberty to act in the pursuit of your own happiness, limited only by the rights of others to have the same liberty, is essential because there is no “other” way for happiness to be pursued. Happiness does not exist when life is governed by others using compulsion to short-circuit your mind.
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Now this is not all encompassing and does not answer all of the questions that will be raised, but I considered it better to write this and publish it, than to write a long explanation covering all eventualities. It also goes beyond libertarianism, because it is more than just about government, but about life and existence. It is Ayn Rand's philosophy of objectivism. It is also explained by Harry Binswanger on this posting by PC.

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Another post worth reading on this are on harmony of interests by PC, and Joseph Rowlands on the Meaning of Life. Even more from the Objectivist Centre on Objectivist morality. That article explains why honesty, integrity, independence, pride and benevolence are all virtues.

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So there you have it - prove to me that my life is yours!

Sue has no clue on business

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Sue Bradford has shown the Green Party ignorance about business by calling for Air New Zealand to “pull out of its job-shedding tail spin”.
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You see, despite it being your money that rescued the airline after your government refused to allow Singapore Airlines to give it the capital injection it badly needed to survive, the Greens don’t really mind if you don’t get a return on that investment. Earth to Sue, the airline industry is enormously risky and generally a bad investment (largely because many of those in it do it out of love not money), Air NZ is trying to save itself by being more efficient.
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She is concerned there hasn’t been consultation with the unions, which is slightly hilarious because, let’s face it, the unions aren’t going to say “well you’re right, all these departments really don’t do much good, so get rid of them and you can cut 20% of these departments because their practices aren’t up to world best in the airline industry”. Of course, if you read Air NZ's press releases, I doubt if too many of the jobs to be lost in the recent announcements are unionised - you see Sue, some of us don't want to join commie collectives with political agendas to represent our employment. I certainly never did - I had better things to do with my money that help get the Labour Party re-elected.

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However she gets two things wrong in her funniest statement:
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“We bailed out Air New Zealand because of the disastrous decisions of the former owners and management. We did not do this to see Air NZ become a mean, anti-worker company making more bad decisions.”
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Well, no Sue. Air New Zealand was bailed out because for months on end Cabinet refused to agree to the recommendations of the Air NZ board, and officials, that Singapore Airlines be allowed to make a major capital injection into the airline which would have raised its shareholding from 25% to 49%. That would have enabled Air New Zealand to carry out the massive restructuring that Ansett Australia badly needed (which only could be carried out after Air New Zealand acquired 100% of Ansett), largely resisted by the Aussie unions and conditions put on the sale of Ansett (so they lost the lot) and to survive the downturn of post 9/11 aviation. The government stopped the private sector from operating because it sat on its hands, and Qantas and Richard Branson did very well out of that.
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Secondly, besides the silly “mean anti-worker” comment – after all, if the employees didn’t like it, they wouldn’t stay, why is it a bad decision to become more efficient? Especially since whether Air NZ remains taxpayer owned or is privatised at some future date, this will indirectly benefit all taxpayers?