Bye bye Gaddafi, well done rebels and NATO

From the reports overnight, it appears that the Gaddafi regime is either in tatters or on the verge of engaging a final bloody battle. I wouldn’t put it past Gaddafi to do the latter, for the one thing that can be certain of the last 40 years of his regime, it is his willingness to lie incessantly and to react murderously on a whim.

There is, of course, great reason to celebrate the end of Gaddafi. He has spent his whole career following a megalomaniacal path of personality cult and self-aggrandisement, considering himself to be leader of Africa (and getting a semi-polite muted response from most of the rest of Africa, mainly because it looked forward to gaining some of his oil wealth in exchange for his friendship) and supporter of umpteen terrorist causes from around the world. He has over that period aided, funded and armed plenty from the IRA to the 1970s Marxist terrorist gangs in the West, such as the Red Army Faction and Red Brigades in West Germany and Italy. He supported communist insurgents in the Philippines, and often declared his solidarity with the Palestinians, though was not exactly a friend of the PLO. Of course he will be most well known in the West for the Lockerbie bombing in 1988 and the bombing of a West Berlin disco in 1986.   He also provided extensive funds to the Ceausescu regime in its development of a weapons industry (Gaddafi and Ceausescu were particularly warm with each other), whilst Romanian spies stole intellectual property from Western firms, and both countries developed chemical weapons.

Perhaps the one odd thing about Gaddafi is that you can almost always predict that he would be on the side of the dictatorial, the fascist, the murdering and the anti-Western. He supported Idi Amin in his fight against Tanzania, and granted the murderous brute asylum when he was overthrown. He supported the Iranian revolution and has long maintained warm relations with the Iranian Islamist regime.

He waged war against his dirt poor southern neighbour of Chad, and bombed a French airliner in retaliation for French intervention to protect Chad. All the time having warm relations with the USSR, and gaining Soviet arms. He pursued development of chemical weapons although has never used them. More recently, Libya sought to improve relations with the rest of the world, but notably provided cheap oil to Zimbabwe in solidarity with Robert Mugabe. He also supported the now fallen Tunisian dictatorship of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.

Domestically, he ran an economy almost entirely dependent on oil wealth that would rise and fall according to the price of oil. In the 1970s he embarked on a socialist programme that included at one point free supermarkets, but this all collapsed in the 1980s as oil prices dropped and economic sanctions from the West tightened up markets for Libya. The more recent rises in oil prices have helped, along with his sudden willingness to co-operate with the West following the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime. This, of course, saw him courting plenty willing to turn a blind eye to his past, from Prince Andrew to the London School of Economics.

Meanwhile, he ran a regime that was heavily focused on his own personality cult and the worship of his incoherent body of ranting called the Green Book. In this he mixes Islam, socialism and a disdain for free speech and liberal democracy in the style of an unhinged man. He would be funny, if he were not so lethal. Gaddafi was always ruthless towards political opponents or those suspected of plotting against the regime. Like any such regime he ran a ruthless secret police force, and Libya was never ever a haven for human rights.

Anyone with a smidgeon of belief in freedom will celebrate his overthrow, although it is unclear what will follow, it is difficult to imagine it could be worse. Certainly, the risk of an Islamist revolution seems slight in Libya. As a curious footnote, it might be worthwhile to find those in New Zealand who were once acolytes of Gaddafi. Like veteran Maori radical Mike Smith, the late communist radical Syd Jackson felt warm about Gaddafi’s regime. New Zealand’s media is all incredibly forgiving of those who were friends with mass murderers, but then again what can you expect from those who don't check their facts to justify an editorial line.

Meanwhile, keep an eye out for the fifth columnists in the West who will denounce all of this, who will claim that all along they opposed Gaddafi, but also opposed NATO’s intervention to protect the rebels and civilians from Gaddafi’s own war against his own people.   People like Andrew Murray, a noted sympathiser of the Kim Jong Il hereditary nepotocracy, who not long ago was damning the whole thing in the Guardian.  The ones who would rather sit on the fence and impale their moral reputation than accept that a people have overthrown a militarist dictatorship, that was more than willing to use its own army to crush opposition. For you see, for the leftist apologists of Gaddafi to accept that, they would have to accept that NATO did GOOD, that the UK and France (let’s not pretend the Obama Administration led this, or did more than come in behind) acted morally and justifiably against this murderous tyrant. Watch now as they point at Syria and say it is hypocritical not to intervene there, yet these very same people would oppose such a move. Watch as they deftly ignore Castro and Chavez's warm support for Gaddafi, brothers in blood spilling.  Dare a NZ journalist ask Hone Harawira's view on any of this?  Maybe someone might seek to go to Tripoli to do some research on the regime's archives and see how many lowlives worldwide were paid off by this regime?

Watch also as Obama, suddenly come out of his shell, to proclaim a kind of victory months after he was the do-nothing President.  

This is a victory by ordinary Libyans, who watched their neighbours in Tunisia and Egypt reject tyranny.  It was supported by NATO, but only because Cameron and Sarkozy were determined to prevent a bloodbath on their doorstep (and had a degree of guilt for how UK and French governments had appeased the regime in recent years).  Italy and Germany were obstructive, the USA tagged on behind.

Now is a chance to rebuild, for Libya to be a friend and for the truths of Gaddafi's decades of waging war on the outside world and tyranny on his own people, to come out.

UPDATE:  The New Statesman reminds us of some of Gaddafi's erstwhile friends.  Remember the one career where you can be feted internationally, at the expense of foreign taxpayers, whilst maintaining a record of mass murder, is to be a politician.  Yet so many people still like politicians to make decisions for them.

Professor Juan Cole writes top ten myths of the war in Libya.  It includes the perpetual (and vile) claim that it is all about oil.

Ed Miliband's scapegoat for looters

It is the mainstream view in the UK that the riots reflect, in part, a breakdown of morals. Politicians across the spectrum have said this, even Labour Leader "Red" Ed Miliband said the riots were "inexcusable". He knew that taking the line of Ken Livingstone that the riots were because of cuts, would have ended his political career as Labour would have been sidelined, even by its loyal sycophants - the BBC and the Guardian - as being on the fringes. So he waited, now it is a moral breakdown, but not one that is the responsibility of the people who rioted or their parents.

The problem is not the systematic failure of the welfare state, education system and a fundamental breakdown of ethics among hundreds of thousands, it is “greed, selfishness and gross irresponsibility” he is reported as saying by the Daily Telegraph. He accused David Cameron of a “shallow and superficial response”. He ought to know, he is the master of it.

On the face of it, most would agree with such a phrase, but within it lies something far more pernicious.

For he deflects blame from those who actually committed the crimes, or those who negligently don't police their children (or even encourage them) to say:

The bankers who took millions while destroying people's savings: greedy, selfish, and immoral; the MPs who fiddled their expenses: greedy, selfish, and immoral; the people who hacked phones at the expense of victims: greedy, selfish and immoral

The moral relativism comes out once again, but most disturbing is how he can't see the underlying contradiction in his empty argument.

MPs' expenses are an easy target, not one anyone will disagree with. He included it because it looks “introspective” for an MP to blame “his own”. However, it is curious that it took a Conservative leaning newspaper – the Daily Telegraph – to “out” all of this, and it “outed” MPs from all parties. It wasn’t Ed Miliband who did it. Of course the qualitative difference between MPs who get legitimate expenses paid and those who got more is rather insignificant, although Ed will claim it is material. It is OK for MPs to be paid for by taxpayers, who have no choice to pay them, not OK if the MPs get more by committing fraud and lying about it - noting that obfuscation of the truth, and telling half stories is the stock and trade of being an MP.  Ignoring his acquiescence during this entire period, and his full participation in the last government is a demonstration of that. 

He raises the phone hacking case, because it is part of Labour's vendetta against News Corp for turning on it, when they had been getting on so well when Blair led the party.  The phone hacking cases are under investigation. They are alleged cases of trespass into people’s voicemail accounts. Certainly a serious concern, but then again it is not quite the same as destroying someone’s home, or business, or murdering them, or raping them. Is it Ed? However, this is part of Ed’s monologue that you can point fingers at “big business” or in this case privately owned media that isn’t slavishly sycophantic to his view of the world, or he himself. Phone hacking is an initiation of force, but is different dramatically in terms of degree of impact and consequences to the riots.  Yes it is a criminal case, but why not raise the spectre of the students who looted the Conservative Party headquarters, or the shootings and knivings in low income areas?  That would be shifting blame to the perpetrators you see.

However, note how he put his enemy number one in the sights.  Labour has a new scapegoat to blame for the economy, the deficit and now social breakdown and disorder.  

He said that the looters were acting like the legendary “bankers who took millions while destroying people’s savings”. Who were they Ed? Doesn’t matter, as it has become part of Labour folklore that the recession is entirely because of bankers, and the budget deficit is because of bankers. What people’s savings were destroyed Ed, when the government guarantees up to £85,000 in personal bank deposits? Who did bankers “take” from? Their employers? Since when is being paid your salary and bonus, but making bad business decisions “taking” something like committing arson, murder, rape, vandalism or thieving? Yes some banks made out loans to people who couldn’t pay them, but these were decisions made by consent. The more fundamental problems were around those who invested too heavily in property in some locations, when moral hazards weren't identified and monetary policy that offered fiat money as unearned credit.  The financial crisis was a series of errors and mistakes, largely by people who took decisions that were legal and unsustainable, including politicians.  Bank bailouts should never have happened, but does Miliband truly think people who make monumental catastrophic business and public policy errors are like criminals?  By what measure does he rank himself, his own colleagues, and his former leader Gordon Brown as being a part of all of this?

As Allister Heath said today in City AM:

Many of the looters – especially the younger ones – would have had no idea that MPs abused their expenses. Britain’s dispossessed minority does not watch the news or read papers; many are functionally illiterate, having been let down by sink schools, collapsed families, terrible neighbourhoods and gang culture. The vast majority are so far from the mainstream of the economy that they don’t understand what investment bankers do. The only rich people they are properly aware of are footballers, entertainers or local gang leaders. There is no empirical link between the crisis of 2008, the subsequent bailouts and the looting of 2011.

The moral bankruptcy of his moral relativism is astonishing. Ed was happy being part of a Labour government with billions of tax revenue fed from banks and their staff, to pay for its generous welfare state, Leninist style health system and overexuberant capital expenditure. However, now he treats them as “the enemy”. Fine Ed, close the City of London, see how much of the UK’s GDP disappears when you treat an entire sector of the economy as if they were feral youth who do nothing but destroy.

After all Ed, when have you EVER created wealth? You’ve never created a business in your life. You’ve never really worked for the private sector, for the people who pay taxes. You’ve spent your life living in a very exclusive part of London, absent of poverty and those you claim to give a damn about. Raised on Marxism, you’ve never seriously questioned what you were weaned on, and now you want power, and you damn thousands of people who bring income into the country and live lifestyles that are NOT criminal (but pay buckets of tax that you and your colleagues live off of).

Think for a few moments about the moral equivalency Ed Miliband has put together.

Bankers who made poor judgments about investments that bankrupted their employers, (but not the politicians who used taxpayers' money without consent to rescue the banks) are the same as the:

- Driver of the car that mowed down three young men on the footpath in Birmingham;

- The boy who beat an old man into a coma for complaining about a fire lit in front of his home;

- The boy who raped a girl of 13 in the riots after mugging her;

- The men who stole from the student who already had a broken jaw;

- The man who set fire to a shop just to watch it burn down;

- The groups who lined up in a queue to steal from shops.

Ed Miliband doesn’t pick on the people who raise feral children, doesn’t pick on the ASBO laden chavs who have hounded pensioners into early graves, doesn’t pick on the multi-billion pound deficits his government created that the next generation of children and grandchildren have to pay back, doesn’t pick on the unionists who constantly want more money from struggling taxpayers.  He doesn't think they are selfish.  Not the salaried medical staff in the NHS who have absorbed much of the doubling in real health expenditure in the last government.

No, you see Ed Miliband is the politician for the looters, the dependents, the people who have jobs paid for by the effort and entrepreneurship of others.  Ed is the politician for the welfare beneficiaries, who aren’t grateful for the taxes that others paid for them to be housed, fed, clothed or for their kids to be raised, educated etc. Ed is there to demand that even MORE money be borrowed from future generations, that even MORE taxes be taken from the peaceful, productive, hard working and entrepreneurial, and that it is because if you don’t, the feral underclass will riot – and it is because there are bankers who make bad decisions.  Ed is there for the public sector workers, the people who get paid, on average, more than the private sector.  The people who get more generous pensions, more pay rises and who are all carried by the private sector.

He should be an easy target for the Conservative Party, but it is a zone of philosophical vacuousness, as is seen by the disgusting Louise Mensch who in a matter of days has both embraced statist authoritarianism in suggesting the government “shut down” social networking sites at times of crisis, and in accusing History Professor David Starkey of racism, because he clumsily claimed there were many youths of the white underclass who now talk the language of the black underclass. 

The Conservative Party is incapable of fighting the cultural battleground in favour of individual liberty, personal responsibility, respect for property rights and disrespect for those who seek to promote violence as a way of life. It is palpable in its unwillingness to defend bankers in public as a sector, because mindless populism overrides principle, which is the norm in the party of people who believed they were born to rule.

Miliband's call for responsibility is achingly hypocritical, when he evades any responsibility for his part in a government that created the economic conditions for the financial crisis, for its part in overspending every year after Labour's first term, for its part in creating a client-voter sector of welfare dependents, suckling off of the state tit, with Labour's endless "programmes" to help them into work, whilst never letting Nanny State ever really take away the milk.  Never confronting the client-funders, like the teaching unions, who resist pay or conditions that reflect performance. 

The people who take responsibility in Britain the most, are the people he is least interested in.  Those are the entrepreneurs, the business people, the employers, the families who raise children at their own expense, the people who aren't dependent on the state.   He preaches wholesale abdication of responsibility in his embrace of the Leninist NHS, which has a philosophy of people not having to ever take responsibility for their health, for the state will pay.  He preaches the same with state pensions - don't save for retirement (a chance to tax you), the state should pay.  He preaches the same with housing - if you buy a home, pay a tax on the transaction, if you don't buy a home or pay private rent, the state will pay.

His philosophy is bankrupt, his approach to public policy has palpably failed, and now he shifts blame on the perpetrators to bankers, MPs and the news media.  

He has no answers, and through his disgusting moral relativism, has shown his own moral and intellectual bankruptcy.

A prescription for the UK

It has been a week since thousands of mostly young people across London decided it was time to steal, destroy, assault, abuse and ultimately murder others, in a decadent frenzy of Anthony Burgess style amorality.  The responses have been extremely varied, but the overwhelming one has been concern about the need to restore law and order.  Two main concerns have driven the discussion, one has been the importance of adequate policing, the other has been discussions as to "why".

Once one takes away the vile ambulance chasing point scoring of many on the left (and the Green Party in NZ has disgustingly decided to take advantage of the suffering of others to advance its own agenda of "give 'em more money and make some jobs for 'em"), and the undertones of racist anti-immigration and calls for serious violent intervention from some on the right, there must be an acknowledgement of a whole series of government policies which can be said to have failed to address the creation of what is at best, a feral, parasitical underclass of people with no hope, little aspiration beyond hedonistic whim worshipping and with substantial "chips on their shoulders".

The ridiculous argument that this was about racism is shown up for its absurdity in the overwhelming diversity of those arrested and filmed participating.   However, there is certainly an element of distrust of police in areas dominated by, in particular, the Afro-Caribbean community.   Yet the same is true of the "chavtowns" filled with neanderthals.

The link with poverty has more substance, but it is not real poverty in the sense of starvation, homelessness or no access to education or healthcare, but poverty of aspiration, concentration and determination.   However, this doesn't answer why the roll call of people turning up in courts are from backgrounds of being in middle class employment, or university graduates, or even upper class schoolkids.  These "individual examples you can pick out" as one leftwing commentator claimed, are inconvenient, for they don't fit the race-poverty classification that fits the philosophy.

So what should be done?  As I wrote before, I naturally resist "throwing money at the problem", the idea that more government welfare and manufactured government jobs (which takes money from others who create jobs) is a solution is simply absurd, for there has never been this much welfare, and making people less independent and less successful by making them clients of the state even more, is not going to change attitudes of esteem and expecting others to solve their problems.

Furthermore, simply adopting an authoritarian kneejerk approach to policing, including the notion that the state should shut down social networks at times of crisis, is simply too late, as well as sacrificing the freedom of the law abiding on a grand scale, to address the criminality of a small number. 

So my approach is to look at the stages of life of a typical member of the underclass, and to pinpoint the failures of public policy in all of them.  The key is that the government is not the solution, but changes in public policy should make a difference.  However, there is no quick fix unless one wants to take an authoritarian eliminationist approach that would permanently deprive any criminals of freedom, and have the state police parenting on a terrifying scale.  That could eliminate a feral underclass by creating a feral police state. 

The areas that matter are, in summary:

- Welfare policy should not reward breeding by people unable or otherwise unwilling to be parents;

- Welfare policy should not remove responsibility for raising children or paying for children from both parents;

- Welfare policy should not reward additional breeding by people already on welfare;

- State and council owned Corbusier style hothouses for crime demolished and the land sold.  One of the grimmest failures of social engineers has been putting large numbers of underachievers together in close proximity;

- People on low incomes should not pay income tax;

- Parents, teachers, police and others in loco parentis should not fear disciplining their children using reasonable force for restraint or to protect themselves, others or their property;

- Serious violent and sexual criminals should never be permitted to reside in the same household as anyone under the age of 16;

- Schools should no longer be funded based on politically specified criteria, but on whether parents send their children to a school (or do not);

- Governance of schools, including curriculum, rules and philosophy of education should be driven by those with the greatest vested interest in its success, parents of children at the school;

- Schools should have freedom to pay good teachers what it takes to attract and retain them, and the means to incentivise better performance by poor teachers, or remove them;

- The criminal justice system should be focused on protecting the public from the acts of criminals, particularly recividists;

- The criminal justice system should offer one chance for rehabilitation for first time offenders that are not a danger to the public;

- Parents of underage offenders should be presumed to have civil liability for the acts of their offspring, and criminal liability for incitement to commit crimes;

- The justice system should not spend time and money on victimless crimes;

- The state should not fund culture, music, television or other media that may be implicated in promoting a sub-culture of violence, hate and misogyny;

-  Tax and economic policy should allow people to keep the fruits of their efforts, and not be seeking taxpayer money;

-  Laws and regulations should positively support private property rights and welcome entrepreneurship that respects this, and not welcome those who seek to restrain such rights to protect their own businesses and homes from competition;

-  Laws and regulations should not make it difficult to hire people at pay and terms and conditions they are willing to accept, nor to remove them if they fail to meet the terms and conditions of the contract;

-  Politicians and bureaucrats founds guilty of theft from taxpayers or corruption should be subject to the full force of the criminal justice system;

- The state should not bail out businesses that fail, nor those who invest in them.

None of that is detailed, but it is in recognition that decades of welfarism and "we know best" interventions by politicians have failed.  They have nurtured an underclass that is willing to attack and destroy those that pay for its very existence.  They have nurtured an education system on the wistful hope that everyone will be equal, but which rewards poor quality teachers and starves funding to pay excellent teachers well.  They have promoted a culture of entitlement and dependency whereby large numbers of people expect they have "a right" to the money of others, and fear having to fend for themselves.  They have promoted a culture of blame and bigotry by the underclasses towards anyone but themselves.  Never blame those who didn't study at school, never blame those who bred with little thought of the consequences, never blame those who don't turn up to job interviews, never blame those who vandalise, steal and assault, always blame those who set up businesses and "didn't put anything back into the community" (one excuse I heard in the past week), always blame "the rich", the so-called "lucky", the "racists", the police, the council, the government.

For decades now, the Western world has been beset by this corrosive philosophy of:

- You have rights, you should always assert rights, many of those rights are over other people to give you what you demand;

- You can't get anywhere unless other people "give you opportunities", you're implicitly unable to take care of yourself without the government, the council or other people giving you "respect";

- You have a right to express yourself, however you wish, to whoever you like, and they have to give you that right, and after you've abused them, and even vandalised their property, they STILL should give you a job, paying you what you want, to work when you want, how you want, dressing how you like, turning up when you feel like at, because "it's your right";

- It isn't your fault if you do anything wrong, it's because of "society" or "the government" or any other group you care to feel aggrieved by;

- You're not responsible for your life, other people are responsible for giving you what you need to stop you attacking them;

- If you do something wrong, it's ok, because "everyone else does it" and because "some people don't respect you" and because "the system doesn't fit people like you".  

It is ALL that.  That is why there were riots in the UK, it is why some parts of the UK are feral no-go areas for anyone who look half respectable.  It is why a significant minority of children leave school functionally illiterate, innumerate and socially inept, and then go on to do the one thing humans are good at, breeding, because they get rewarded for it.   It is the culture and philosophy of post-modernist, moral relativism, it has a Marxist thread running through it, and it is de riguer in universities, local authorities, teachers' training colleges and all left wing political parties, and more than a few in right wing parties.

It is bankrupt, and the vast bulk of the population knows it is so.  The empty calls for "more jobs", and "understanding" are wrapped in demands to effectively pay protection money for those who have failed.

The road out of this cesspool is going to be long.  It requires fundamental welfare, housing and education reform at the root and branch.  It requires a change of approach to the criminal justice system.  However, more than anything it requires a long term cultural and philosophical change in attitudes towards the family, communities and the individual.

I'll write more about these policy areas in due course, and the fundamental philosophical changes that are needed.  This is not a call to go back to times when women were treated as second class citizens, or when one set of religious teachings were to be imposed on all, nor to return to the patronising bigotry towards people because of race, sex or sexuality, but it is about recognising an age when people did respect others, had consideration for the lives and property of others, and took responsibility for their own lives and actions.

It is, most of all, about removing the state funded safety blanket for anyone whenever they do anything harmful to themselves or others, bearing in mind that nothing stops people choosing to provide whatever they want to others on whatever terms they wish.

Libertarianz in 2011

Libertarianz members are having their annual conference this weekend.   I've been a member of the party for 14 years, so it is hardly surprising that I have supported it every election since.   However,  as I get old it raises some fairly fundamental issues about my participation in politics and my desire to change the terms of the political debate in New Zealand, and change New Zealand public policy.

The first time I was ever able to vote was 1990.  I voted Labour.  Why?  Because for months beforehand I watched National oppose the privatisation of Telecom, with Jim Anderton.  Because for the years before I watched Roger Douglas transform the economy, largely in a rational and extraordinarily courageous manner - for little he did was popular or for short term gain or popularity.  I was less than comfortable with the new bureaucracies for "Women's Affairs", "Youth Affairs", the reintroduction of compulsory unionism, and the new leftwing racism and subjectivist mysticism seen in the creation of the Treaty of Waitangi industry, but I grew up under Rob Muldoon.  I saw National as the party not of free markets, but of kneejerk resistance to change.

Yet in 1993 I voted National, for I saw the same courage in Ruth Richardson.  I despised National's embrace of an authoritarian feminist agenda for censorship, the sellout on education and Jim Bolger's ridiculous embrace of electoral reform, but the big political push at the time was from the authoritarian thieves of the Alliance, and the bottom feeder Winston Peters and his personality cult of followers.   Of course, Bolger sacrificed Richardson on the altar of pragmatism.

In 1996 I voted ACT, because I hoped that following Roger Douglas's first act, there could be hope of a National-ACT coalition implementing further reforms, especially exposing the health and education sectors to competition, and choice.  However, ACT was profoundly disappointing.  From talking of abolishing income tax, to flat tax, to lower tax.  More fundamentally, I had moved on philosophically.  I had read Hayek some years before, but had now read The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand and became an objectivist.

My philosophical position became clear.  I had long been an atheist, but as an objectivist I had a rational grounding for not only believing in small government, but also an ethical basis for capitalism and for life.   I joined Libertarianz.

Of course it isn't very hard to become disheartened belonging to a small political party that has not come close to being elected.  However, there has been influence, with terms like Nanny State being used more and more, and political discourse starting to talk about government not being the solution to everything, but it would be fair to say it hasn't met expectations.

The alternatives have not been promising either.  ACT under first Richard Prebble and then Rodney Hide, was all very well talking about economic freedom, but personal freedom was uncomfortable.  Simple libertarian points like questioning the war on drugs or censorship were not where ACT could go - for it had more than a few fundamentally conservative backers.

Of course there was also Don Brash and the National Party in 2005, campaigning in part to end the leftwing racism that had the state privilege Maori above others, regardless of their need and personal position.  However, that campaign was ruined by the mainstream of National, which like Bolger in 1996, prostitute it all to try to win elections, and which is conservative in the small "c" sense.  As in do as little as possible to change.

So the issue has been and remain simple.

Do I remain pure and honest and principled, and continue to put my full New Zealand effort into Libertarianz, or do I compromise and put efforts into ACT, or even National to influence those that do have entrees into actual political power?  Are they in conflict?

This election, libertarians nearly faced an obvious answer.   Rodney Hide's performance in ACT has been roundly disappointing.  He's been little different from a National Minister, with his great performance being in largely implementing Labour's local government policy.   The only crowning success will be Roger Douglas abolishing the compulsory membership of the University branches of the Labour and Green Parties known as student unions.

Don Brash led ACT looks like it could be different.  Despite the blunderings of some who are incapable of being truly racially colourblind AND wise to how others can portray it,  it may be different.

As I get older, I get impatient, and I want change to happen sooner rather than later.  I have priorities for change which are focused around education, reform of the welfare state and protection of property rights, as well as a fundamental shift of the criminal justice system away from victimless crimes, but being focused on deterrence and protection of the public from the violence of others.

I also want a cultural change, a philosophical change that embraces the celebration of creativity, producers, innovators, science and reason.  One that embraces self-esteem and personal responsibility.  One that resists the post-modernist cultural meme that everything is ok, that all cultures are equal, that no values are more important than others.  One that celebrates life, that treats the inviolability of the bodies and property of others as sacrosanct, that embraces honesty, good will and benevolence in human relations.  Not the nihilist claims over the property of others, demand for rights that are actually demands on other people to be forced to surrender their bodies and property.  Most of all rejection of the racism, sexism and collectivist bigotry of the left, as well as of the far-right. 

In politics, I am keeping an open mind.  Beyond that, there must be other means and other ways to change the terms of debate.  However, my hope is that Libertarianz knows it is more than a party, but as a touchstone for those who believe government should only exist to protect people from the initiation of force by others, whether internal or external to a country - and that it is a monumental job to change a culture where it is considered absolutely normal for government to initiate force, and there is a preponderance of political parties who embrace MORE state violence.  The Greens, for example, are a party that positively embraces ever more state violence, in the warm, smiling shrouds of "fairness and equality".  

So I wish Libertarianz well.  It is the party I am most likely to vote for in 2011.  Yet I am keeping an open mind.  I would not be unhappy if there was a National-ACT coalition that saw substantive changes in education policy alone, to break the back of the dominant state sector, or which torn up the RMA in favour of private property rights or another major step towards more freedom.  However, I am yet to be convinced that there is enough substance for me to positively support ACT.  

Even if I did, it does not mean Libertarianz does not have a role.  However, it does have to be more clever about its messages and it needs to remember that the mass media only understands easy concepts.   For me, it is less government, more freedom.  It is about consistently believing that government shouldn't spend other people's money taken by force to give to others.  It is about believing laws should only exist to protect people's bodies and property from force or fraud, and that human relations should always be voluntary.

Left has the most to lose from the riots

Whilst leftwing commentators and the Green Party in New Zealand feel safe blaming the riots in the UK on “neo-liberalism”, UK Labour politicians have tried to be more careful. Whilst Ken Livingstone came out on automatic saying it was about spending cuts, Harriet Harman was cornered into saying she condemned it all, “but” and Ed Miliband more wisely has simply condemned the violence, with there being “no excuse” for it. This, of course, goes against his political instincts, for the bog standard Marxist/socialist point of view is that riots are related to class and race. Labour politicians wished they could parrot a “told you so” view that would say “this is inevitable”, much like the NZ Marxists have, but they can’t do so without alienating the vast majority of voters, including their own supporters.

For a start, few believe there has been such a massive turnaround in economic or social conditions in the just over one year since the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition took over. All to easy for Conservatives to say “you were in power for 13 years, what did you do about it”. A reasonable point for reasonable people. Now the true Marxist would claim Blair and Brown were the Tories in slow-mode, but when so many Labour MPs and candidates came from that era, it doesn’t wash well either. Ken Livingstone being the clear example of one who figured he could get away with it.

Secondly, the victims of the rioting are mostly people in Labour voting areas, who are either small business owners, their staff, or people whose homes have been destroyed or trashed. They live in the more dangerous, crime ridden, poorer parts of town, but they didn’t riot. In fact they hate crime as much as anyone, because they are more likely to be victims of it. You see, despite the identity politics of the left, the poor/dispossessed (if they ever did possess) attack their own, they rarely go elsewhere, and the majority of them do have morals, don’t steal, don’t vandalise. They have aspirations for themselves and their families like anyone else, which is why when anyone achieves it, they would tend to leave the rest behind and move to a nicer part of town.

Thirdly, whilst calling someone racist or making people even fear being accused of being racist has been their stock in trade in debate for decades, again so many victims are of racial minorities. South Asian Muslim or Sikh voters aren’t going to tolerate the claim that Afro-Caribbeans find it hard in British society, when they just get on with working or owning businesses, and ensure their kids get a good education. There are more than a few Afro-Caribbeans disgusted by this behaviour as well. The “race consciousness” that once tied is awfully frayed when people turn on their own.

Fourthly, many people have found it rather hard during the recession. Those who have had pay cuts, lost jobs, found it harder to make ends meet don’t tolerate the notion that when people are poor, they become criminals. Most people have self-discipline, and don’t have the “class consciousness” that the left so disgustingly implies those in poverty as having. In short, the racial and wealth stereotypes are as appalling inaccurate for the left as are the more banal ones on the far-right.

Finally, most want criminals to be punished and kept out of harm’s way. It is natural, human benevolence to feel pity and sorrow for those who have lost everything to deliberate vandalism, left and arson, and anger at those who did so to get luxury goods, or pieces of tat, or just to have a good time. It is immoral, and that sense of outrage and distress is what keeps civilisation together. People want a hard line against those who commit crimes, they don’t accept excuses because most people work hard for what they have and would do all they could to defend their families. They regard the rioters to be the enemy of all they have, and they’d be right.

The answers the left will offer will also fail to inspire. Of all the talk about poverty and compassion, and addressing the causes of crime, they have two answers:

- Give poor people more money (in one form or another) for doing nothing;

- Hire more bureaucrats to help poor people.

The bribery with welfare has already been tried, and Labour knows with the country nearly bankrupt, it can’t promise more money with any credibility (even Labour would have halved the budget deficit, albeit by simply cutting the growth of spending and increasing taxes). However, the far left (read, Green Party of England and Wales)will argue for more money for better housing, better state schools and more benefits so people don’t feel “desperate”, or in their own words “creating employment and training opportunities, advice, youth centres, and community services”. “Creating jobs” by taking money from those who actually create jobs by generating wealth, and building more youth centres and state services.  It isn't about producing anything, it is about using the wealth of others, taken by force, to keep people busy.

The language always used is the royal “we” by making everyone responsible. You’re not responsible for yourself, your family, your kids, your business alone, but for everyone else, including the feckless, the “breed without consequences” mob and those who are “alienated” – those same kids who bully your kids. You are responsible for them. This justifies this sort of statement:

we need to create a society where youth are not so extremely alienated in the first place

Not the parents, not the state schools who they are put through like widgets, but “we”, which means “give us more of your money so we can spend it”.

The thing is that taxpayers don’t want to do that. Even setting aside my libertarian hat, the majority view is not to increase taxes or welfare benefits. The far left couldn’t care less of course, because it will just keep saying “if you want this to stop, you need to pay more”, but democracy (which they putatively respect) says people don’t want that. They don’t vote for it. The British Labour Party tried selling that to voters in 1983, 1987 and 1992 and they didn’t say yes.

The UK is a liberal democracy. Most people believe people should get a fair go, that people shouldn’t be homeless, but also that if they wreck that home or make their neighbours’ lives a hell, they should lose the home they are given. Most people believe kids should all get an education, but if they waste it, or wreck the education of others, they shouldn’t be there. Most people believe people should work for a living, but if they are idle on welfare, don’t bother and then attack those who do work, they should lose their benefits.

Even if the public did vote for spectacular increases in taxes and welfare, it would be incapable of delivering. As thousands of entrepreneurs either arranged their affairs to avoid tax, or simply left, the purported revenue would not appear. In addition, the membership of the EU would guarantee growth in welfare tourism, ensuring the UK faced a sovereign debt crisis due to declining tax revenue and increasing welfare claims. Of course true socialists would leave the EU to put up trade barriers, so would chase away more businesses that don’t want to be excluded from their markets. Ultimately, the spiral of decline and stagnation would see the flight of more of the brightest and wealthiest, which could only be stopped by either reversing policies, or making it difficult to leave with ones’ money and assets. The latter would ensure the UK was abandoned even more rapidly as it would look more like east Berlin, where a wall was built explicitly to keep people from leaving.

In short, most people believe in people having opportunities, but if they ignore them, abuse them, or at worst turn on the people who took advantage of them to work hard to earn a living, they want little mercy. They don’t want their taxes spent on criminals, and don’t want them getting endless chances, following numerous offences for stealing, vandalism or assault. They want their homes, businesses and families safe, and don’t want to pay more taxes for people who aren’t grateful for what they get from others, and who will act parasitically towards them.

The answers so many on the left offer involve taking more money from employers, from people who strive for themselves and their families, and giving it to people who expect to be handed money, homes and jobs with no obligation, or paying for more people to be “employed” by the government in pseudo-jobs that don’t need doing anyway.

Add these carefully shrouded demands to throw money at potential rioters to the hand-wringing slogans of “racism” and “poverty causes crime”, and it leaves a bad taste in the mouth of the vast majority. Most taxpayers are not rich, by definition the majority of them are around the average in income and wealth, they consider vandalism and theft to be wrong, especially when the victims of that are people who are themselves not wealthy, or who have clearly strived to make something of their lives from little. They don’t think the way to solve the problems of immoral behaviour is to pay people to not be bad. In fact they are far more likely to demand that they no longer pay people who are!

It is why the British Labour Party has, by and large, been avoiding talking about anything other than the need for a tough approach to law and order.