The Political Aquarium: March 2010

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Freedom of Speech (Just Watch What You Say)

The recent lobbying scandal exposed by Channel 4’s Dispatches has seen former Labour ministers Stephen Byers, Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt suspended, pending an inquiry. The three amigos were filmed ‘allegedly’ offering to sway Westminster decisions in exchange for thousands of pounds.[1] This sleazy episode is just the latest in a long line of misdemeanours and mismanagement by our political leaders. I don’t think they realise the full extent of popular disgust over their avarice. For example, witnessing Lord Mandelson kneeling in obsequiousness on a recent Newsnight ,as he complimented former Tory Chancellor Ken Clarke’s financial acumen, engendered disgust, alienation, and anomie in this particular viewer. If Mandy could have sweet talked the Lib Dem representative, we may have witnessed a ‘double dip’ more carnal than financial.

I’ve never felt further alienated from Westminster politics, and I’ve never trusted politicians less. It is depressing and frustrating spending hours on end searching for work and hearing the same old doublespeak sound-bites from politicians. Those in our society who contribute most- nurses, social workers, those working with vulnerable children and adults, and mental health workers, are downtrodden, undervalued and underpaid. Yet, despite the continuing financial crisis, which could as easily deepen as improve, bonuses are already being paid to bankers and politicians are still ‘on the take’; as the old Mafia saying goes ‘one hand washes the other’. We are told to trust the government and the banks: that they ‘know what they are doing’, that this is ‘just a dip, things will pick up again.’ I wonder how catastrophic things have to become before our leaders admit that it is not the performance of the financial machine which is pathetic, but that the machine itself is broken beyond all repair. Financial recovery this time around must also provide in-built safeguards and assurances for Third World and developing countries, because if we are struggling here in the West, be assured that conditions of poverty and deprivation in these areas are compounded beyond belief by this crisis. Financial recovery after WWII did not even take Third World or developing nations into consideration, and the seeds of the current crisis were sown in the form of the explosion of credit debt in the US from the 50s to 60s. We should look at a system which is fairer for all, and is not based on greed and exploitation, because it is patently obvious that the current system hurts us all and encourages inequality, injustice, division and hatred.

The Home Office recently wasted £10 000 of taxpayer’s money losing a battle to keep rapper Snoop Dogg out of the UK. Snoop Dogg may yet face further problems over performing in the country due to previous criminal convictions. However, he won his case on the basis of his right to freedom of expression.[2] Government officials had banned Snoop from entry to the UK in 2007 because they feared that the MC would incite gang violence in some of his fans who could already be involved in criminality and his visa was refused because he had previous convictions for drugs and firearms offences. It is amazing that our Government thinks that our sensibilities are so fragile. It is a pity that the Blair Government was not positively influenced by the acid house counterculture when it used an ecstasy anthem (‘things can only get better’ by D: ream) to herald its General Election victory in 1997. However, the only kind of trip Blair was on was a power trip, and, like Snoop, (although not convicted), Blair is suspected of complicity in serious firearms offences- up to 2008, according to the revised ORB survey, there had been an estimated 1,033,000 civilian deaths in Iraq since the invasion in 2003.[3]

We don’t need rappers like Snoop Dogg to influence us towards a path of gangsterism: we’ve got much more powerful crooks in Westminster. In the words of Public Enemy’s Chuck D – ‘The Government’s gangster so cut the crap, there’s a war goin on, so where y’all at?’

[1] http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/episode-guide/series-57/episode-1

[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/7403573/Snoop-Dogg-US-rapper-wins-100000-legal-fight-to-visit-Britain.html

[3] http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:poYbDjVlYVkJ:www.opinion.co.uk/Documents/Revised%2520Casulaty%2520Data%2520-%2520Press%2520release.doc+site:opinion.co.uk+revised+casulty&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ie

Contrasting Libertarian Traditions in the US & Europe

Classic libertarianism, like most political ideologies, had a European conception. However, it was most readily accepted and flourished across the Atlantic, where it influenced the political leanings of the founding fathers of the modern-day United States.

The British philosopher John Locke is associated with the codification of Libertarian thought in his magnus opus “Two Treatises of Government”.[1] This was an explicit refutation of the political philosopher Robert Filmer, and an implicit critique of Thomas Hobbes. Both had written in defence of the traditional monarchical system, whose merits were in debate in the 17^thcentury. Writing in the wake of the English Civil War, Filmer and Hobbes were strongly in favour of a dominating, unifying, enforcing sovereign authority in the shape of a monarch.[2] [3]

The mode of political discourse at this time was based on what is known as Social Contract Theory. This was based on Hobbes’ imagining of a “State ofNature”, a unpoliticized state of being. It does not refer to a particular moment in human history to which one can look to and observe a world free of political influence, but rather, it refers to the state of the human condition when it is absolutely free of any political interference or social constructed institutions. For Hobbes, the state of nature meant a dangerous existence which was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”. This required the metaphorical social contract with a monarch which the citizens entrusted with keeping their security.

For Locke, the state of nature was not as dismal as painted by Hobbes. Instead, the sate of nature was virtuous as it allowed liberty and human nature ensured that neighbours’ actions were, for the most part, in concert. However, a social contract to allow minimal government was endorsed by Locke, as a means to preserving this liberty and providing the means to which individual freedoms could excel. This is the classic libertarian stance and was readily accepted by the founding fathers of the United States as the political basis for their new federation of states, which mandated direct government at the state, rather than national, level.

The libertarian standpoint is still very strong in the modern America with strong libertarian lobbies within the two major parties, and a smaller libertarian party also contesting elections. Even in the literary and motion-picture culture, in Randian heroes such as Howard Rourke and John Galt,[4] and in the hero protagonists of many old Westerns that celebrate the fiercely independent frontier spirit, there is a proud sense that libertarianism is in step with the American ideal and US exceptionalism.

While analysis of libertarianism in the US has often been best viewed in light of the American laissez-faire capitalist structure that prevails there, conversely, in Europe the tradition of libertarianism has traditionally been most associated with those who protest state socialism, which is seen as the injection of government into virtually every aspect of the state and therefore being the most suffocating system of government on individual freedoms and private property. Unlike the synchronicity of US libertarianism with the prevailing political culture and tradition, there is a distinctly counter-culture or political-opposition flavour to libertarianism in the European context.

The Austrian school of economics, a school of libertarian economic thought, was established by Ludwig von Mises and argued against the socialist trend in Europe in the early 20^th century, as European states began to adopt a so-called European Social Model, based around the emergence of the welfare state.[5] Mises decried that “The continued existence of society depends upon private property.”[6] However, the welfare state is an almost uniquely European, and proudly European phenomenon, and consequently libertarianism is relegated to the meek but important role of critique and reason.