From Ian B over at Charlotte Gore's place.
I think the single biggest problem libertarians have is that we can only talk about liberty abstractly because most people have never really experienced it very much. It’s like offering freedom to the inmates of an institution… you open the doors and beckon them outside, but they stay inside, scared that leaving means nobody will make them jam roly-poly on Tuesdays.
The problem in a nutshell.
5 comments:
Hmm Jam Roly-Poly.
If Ian B had a blog he'd be absolutely massive.
It's not beyond human comprehension, surely?
We all know how much better traffic flows when the lights are down. People who used to enjoy fox hunting can remember the old days. We all know why the pubs are closing. Hobby photographers know what it's like to be hounded at every turn. We can all remember the first time we looked old enough to be served in a pub or go into an '18' film.
Most of us receive very little from 'The State' in the way of 'services', above and beyond what would (hopefully) continue even under a libertarian government (police, defence, legal system, weekly bin collection etc), and so we wouldn't miss all the quango nannying anyway.
And so on.
Charlotte: I'd agree, his comments are always very insightful.
MW: Would that people could see it like that. Talking to those I know about libertarian ideas generally receives approving sounds but you can se from their eyes that they don't truly believe such things possible.
Charlotte, I have recently started blogging at Counting Cats In Zanzibar. However I am not yet massive :)
For me growing up as a boy in the fifties, always seemed to be fun and free, nobody interfering in every aspect of our lives, and going on holiday to my maternal grandparents in Plymouth felt warm and safe.
But in the sixties a cooler breeze began to blow. Peoples’ rights and the growth of feminism was on the march, there was nothing that couldn’t be argued against and brought crashing down if need be.
For me the sixties spawned a maggot pile that’s had a great time getting bigger, more rotten and stinking ever since. An infant bureaucratic nightmare was already stretching its ugly legs, just waiting to be set free on an unsuspecting blighty. Small things at first, like crash helmets on motorbikes, proliferating road signs, and signs that told you to keep off the grass, or don’t walk here, or park your car there after a certain time…those of you old enough could easily add to the list.
Political correctness was something God was still working on then, and was yet to complete his sandwich course…boy has he made up for it ever since!
One of the most spiteful pieces of social engineering ever to crawl on to the statute book was finally let loose on July 1st 2007, to loud acclaim by bigots one and all…of course you know what that is.
With each new fad that pops up, the ruling elite jumps onboard and unwittingly or otherwise cuts away the next layer of our civil liberties…mass gullibility is the grist that turns this mill.
Political correctness in the country that I once loved has yet to reach critical mass, and I suspect will take decades before implosion brings release from this nightmarish tyranny.
On that basis the smoking ban is perhaps here for good, at least long enough to see me out…and my friend of twenty years, also a pipe smoker. We used to pub crawl round Nottingham, putting the world right with a pint and a well filled briar …well old chum we’ll meet up again, but not in this life time…how about the next…and the beers are on me – eh?
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