Liberty Alone

One of the points I’ve come across whilst reading around the Heller vs DC gun control case* is that the first gun control laws were brought in after the US Civil War.

They were brought in, not to protect ordinary people, but to prevent black people and former slaves from having weapons. That is to remove the ability of blacks to defend themselves against their former owners and to entrench racist politics in the former slave states.

Its like the gun control laws in the UK which were originally brought in to prevent the working class from gaining access to them to try and ensure the dominance of the political classes over them.

The origins of weapons control were not about protecting people but about keeping power over people. That is the effect the laws have today. Ensuring the coercive classes have control over the productive classes, whether the coercive classes be the state or the criminals of the ‘red market’.

As for the decision in Heller, its a step in the right direction, the court has decided that there is a constitutional right for the individual to possess arms, kept in a usable state, for self defense, but it stops short of affirming an absolute right to bear arms and the decision will be used to justify new restrictions.

(* most of this comes from the radical left who oppose gun control).

The shortest way to turn a radical into a conservative, a liberal into a tyrant, a man into a beast, is to give him power over his fellows. Witness the recent vote in the British Commons on the abolition of the death penalty. Under the administration of the Tories every member of the present ministry voted against the gallows. Under Gladstone’s rule John Bright alone remains true to his record; while Sir William Harcourt, whose name stands on the lists of previous years in antagonism to capital punishment, went so far as to speak in its favor. Such is the effects of a little brief authority.

Benjamin Tucker - Liberty Vol. 1 Issue 3 September 3, 1881

Power turns many people against previous principles. Even seeking power does so as electoral politics shows.
Lord Acton was correct, yet all political parties seek to expand the power of government rather than reduce it.

Today is Martin Luther King Day in the US.
To commemorate this extraordinary man and fighter for liberty, a man who managed to unite so many, of all races, of so many political views and religions, here’s his most famous speech:

I’ve just come across a blog which features videos related to liberty, TV Liberty.

I’m currently ‘watching’ (more listening to) a discussion between Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins about their atheism and secularism.
Its very interesting. They are very tolerant and level headed. Sometimes they disagree, sometimes they agree. Well worth watching if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

I hope this is right:

Using these figures:

93% of children currently in the state sector and this costs £69.4 billion. Extending this to cover 100% of children would then cost:
(7/93) * 69.4 = £5.2 billion extra. Less than the costs of ID cards, probably less than the Olympics will cost and for immeasurably higher benefits.

Parents who were paying school fees will now be taxed more on savings and purchases as well, making up a small amount of that.

The improvement in quality of education, across the board, will also make this well worth it in my opinion. Extending the choice the privileged few have to the many makes it worth it. Giving people power over their own lives, enfranchising them makes it worth it.

I find it strange that people who are often willing to spend a lot of money on things like free care for the elderly will shirk away from spending it on our young, on those who will care for us in our old age.

The whole reason for my arguing for choice, be it through vouchers or another way, is that it improves the chances of the poorest and most vulnerable in society. That it offers opportunity and hope to those who lack currently lack it.

Freedom and liberty should be the aims of our party. Choice gives both those and improved standards. What more could we ask for? (apart from a complete eradication of all suffering…).

Liberals face a twofold challenge when it comes to green issues. Firstly there is the obvious challenge of coming up with solutions to green issues, secondly there’s the more insidious and less obvious challenge - challenging the collectivist consensus on green issues.

Most environmental pressure groups are collectivist and as such they are opposed to liberty and freedom. Just as Plato said that what was good was only what was good for the stability and persistence of the state, or fascists said that what was good was what was beneficial to the state, or class warriors said that the good of the class defines goodness, the environmentalist says that what is good is what is good for the environment or nature or the planet.

This is fundamentally opposed to liberalism since it doesn’t care about the individual. The individual human is incidental. Its true, the arguments can sound human based, but they again to not take the individual into account, simply the human race, humans in the collective.

The other fatal flaw with this approach is more a practical problem, it is not enough to say ‘this is good for the environment’, it will have trade-offs, often in the environmental arena. For example, a Prius may emit less carbon dioxide whilst being driven, but it requires a large battery which contains many pollutants. Is one form of pollution worse than the other? How do you decide?

The liberal challenge is to formulate an environmentalism based upon the individual and freedom. We are given two entries by the collectivist environmentalism. Firstly we can highlight the lack of concern with the individual and the human in much environmentalism. For example, organic farming has some environmental benefits, but if we were to adopt it as a universal farming method millions, if not billions, would starve as it is simply not as productive. Likewise, the hardships which giving up cars would produce may be attractive to neo-puritans and romanticists, but to most people the car is an essential part of their quality of life.

The second entry is to point out the contradictions inherent in much environmental rhetoric, to point out that benefits in one area have costs in another, often environmental costs.

So what do we do? How do we start this liberal environmentalism?
Firstly we learn from environmental ideas. For example, organic farming has some advantages - the lower usage of pesticides, better water retention, less fertiliser usage and more wildlife. Unfortunately is has the fundamental flaw of having a low yield which means it simply cannot produce enough food for the world. The liberal naturally would never ban organic farming, but neither would they subsidise it. Instead we should look towards new methods of farming which have many of those aspects yet also have a high yield. Today we know much more about the effects methods of farming have on the environment which means that we can approach farming in a new way. Of course, this means scrapping agricultural subsidy which is consistently shown to harm the environment.

How about balancing different forms of pollution? The LibDems already have the start of a possible solution - green taxes. Such taxes upon polluting activities at a level which accounts for the damage they do (don’t ask me how to calculate that). It allows us to simply evaluate the trade-offs between different methods and products as individuals. It also allows us to trade-off polluting activity with our own desires, removing conflict between the individual and external environmental problems.

Other areas which liberalism already has solutions are those which produce the tragedy of the commons. The Common Fisheries Policy is an excellent example. The absence of property rights means that people have no concern for protecting their future fishing ability and seek to maximise short term gains.

Liberals are also skeptical of collective action. The Kyoto treaty has nice noble aims, but is absolutely ineffectual. Government is not in a position to simply dictate the carbon output. The negotiations will again be based upon short term gain for the countries involved, just dressed up in spin.

Perhaps carbon trading is part of the solution. A liberal idea of trying to create a market and letting individuals or companies decide what the carbon allowance is worth to them.

An area I think the LibDems currently get it wrong is recycling. Perhaps recycling is good for the environment, but there are arguments that it is not. The best way to sort this out seems to be to tax pollution and environmental cost. Then if recycling is good it would be the cheapest method of waste disposal, or perhaps even profitable (as it currently is for many metals). If it was profitable then the waste disposal companies would even pay us for the opportunity to recycle our produce, or at least offer lower prices. This would then offer an incentive for us all to recycle and take the time to sort our rubbish.

The liberal method does not simply ban or force people to behave in apparently good ways. It seeks to make markets work and to let individuals make their own choice. It doesn’t rely on received wisdom but seeks to establish the truth and utilise technology. It does not rely on strong, wise government and it preserves individual freedom and liberty.

The ideas I’ve sketched out are by no means meant to be correct or the best methods, but they are meant to serve as a starting point.

The essential idea is that liberals can, and must, pursue environmental aims in an individualist and liberal manner rather than the collectivist manner that so many environmentalist groups pursue.

With the smoking ban coming into effect soon, Tim Harford destructs the so-called economic arguments for the ban.

The irony that the ban is in ‘public spaces’ yet forces people out from private spaces where the public are allowed to enter into actual public spaces is startling.

I’m sure debate will rage about this briefly (and then we’ll get on with our lives, grumbling as we go). For my personal convenience this is great. I hate cigarette smoke, it will be nice to go to a restaurant or pub without having to breath in the smoke, but from a liberal perspective it is wrong. It is forcing the government’s will into private property.
I don’t agree with the argument about protecting workers, they receive higher pay in return for putting up with the smoke and applying the same reasoning to other jobs will eradicate them. If there were real desire for non-smoking pubs then there’d be a lot more. I know of few which have the old saloon and public bars with no smoking in the saloon bar and people do seek them out, but the demand doesn’t seem to be there, or is fulfilled by non-pub alternatives like coffee shops and cafes.

Our old radical friend Cato had some very wise things to say about power and its nature:

We know, by infinite examples and experience, that men possessed of power, rather than part with it, will do any thing, even the worst and the blackest, to keep it; and scarce ever any man upon earth went out of it as long as he could carry every thing his own way in it; and when he could not, he resigned. I doubt that there is not one exception in the world to this rule;… This seems certain, that the good of the world, or of their people, was not one of their motives either for continuing in power, or for quitting it.

It is the nature of power to be ever encroaching, and converting every extraordinary power, granted at particular times, and upon particular occasions, into an ordinary power, to be used at all times, and when there is no occasion; nor does it ever part willingly with any advantage.

Cato’s Letters No. 115 - Trenchard, February 9, 1723

Alas! Power encroaches daily upon liberty, with a success too evident; and the balance between them is almost lost. Tyranny has engrossed almost the whole earth, and striking at mankind root and branch, makes the world a slaughter-house; and will certainly go on to destroy, till it is either destroyed itself, or, which is most likely, has left nothing else to destroy.

Cato’s Letters No. 73 - Gordon, April 21, 1722

This is why we must seek to restrict the power of government and the state and why we must resist the ever increasing powers the government seeks to grab using fear and terrorism as an excuse.

This will be controversial amongst the left-wing progressives, but I can’t help thinking that the progressive movement planted the seeds for the neo-conservative international interventionist agenda.

The core of the progressive movement was ‘new freedom’ or ‘new liberty’ which was a wordplay to reverse the liberal view.
The liberal view is that force is not allowed except in retaliation of the use of force against you or your property. This was the basis of freedom and liberty (not that this was followed all the time by politicians). The change the progressive movement brought about was to allow the use of force against people ‘for their own good’. Force should be allowed to bring ‘freedom’ which is the state brought around by the use of force. (As an aside, this is the origin of the current use of liberalism in the US - force used for a person or community’s own good is thought to be justified).

The neo-conservative international policies can be characterised as interventionism in the affairs of foreign states to bring what they view as freedom.

Where’s the difference between the progressive and neo-con view then? Apart from the area over which force is used? The progressive uses force against the individual and community, the neo-con against another state. The logic and thinking however is the same - force is justified if the end is to be called freedom.

Is it any wonder that Tony Blair, a product of the progressive tradition in the UK, went along with the US in the ill-fated adventure in Iraq? Especially after he’d seen the relative success of intervention in Sierra Leone and Kosovo.