A healthy put down by libertarian blogger Last Ditch of one of the most offensive arguments being made about libertarians, in this instance, a crack by environmentalist George Monbiot, a writer I often enjoy when he’s talking about something he knows i.e., not economics.
“This may just be the most offensive piece of twaddle the Guardian has ever published. From a newspaper that enjoys the services of Polly Toynbee, that is a big claim. Monbiot delights sneeringly in the hypocrisy of Matt Ridley, who went cap in hand to the Bank of England on behalf of Northern Rock’s depositors. This, despite having written articles railing “…against taxes, subsidies, bailouts and government regulation…”
Ridley is a hypocrite, perhaps. To extrapolate that everyone whose lips are not firmly clasped to the flowing nipple of Mother State is also a hypocrite is a stretch. Even for the man whose name is so close to “moonbat” that one wonders if the pejorative was invented for him.
To extrapolate that small-State libertarians are “parasites” is beyond a stretch. It’s just stupid. Were it up to us, there would be no Central Bank to bail Northern Rock out. Absent the moral jeopardy created by State guarantees of deposits, depositors would have spread their money widely and chosen banks with care or would have lost it. I doubt if Northern Rock could have attracted many depositors without the State’s original guarantee (and the hope of the bigger one produced in a crisis).
Monbiot perfectly expresses the Socialist’s contempt for his fellow-man when he writes:
Whenever modern humans, living outside the narrow social mores of the clan, are allowed to pursue their genetic interests without constraint, they will hurt other people. They will grab other peoples’ resources. They will dump their waste in other peoples’ habitats, they will cheat, lie, steal and kill. And if they have power and weapons, no-one will be able to stop them except those with more power and better weapons…
In what a man fears you will do to him, you learn what he would – given the chance – do to you. God preserve us all from being in the power of George Monbiot. I did enjoy the semi-digested Marxian references to the supposed paradise of the hunter-gatherer clan – the “hominid troop” for which our Georgie is so nostalgic. The purpose of the State is, in his view, to put us into the same relationship with each other that we enjoyed in that state of grace.
“…We need a state that rewards us for cooperating and punishes us for cheating and stealing. At the same time, we must ensure that the state is also treated as a member of the hominid clan and punished when it acts against the common good…”
Since, inevitably, the State will define “the common good,” one wonders whom he thinks he’s fooling, apart from himself. The present British mega-hominid has pigged itself out at the common trough, and its minions in law enforcement have simply declined to bring charges. What a joke.
Where was Monbiot during the 20th Century, when cheating and stealing was elevated to new levels in societies where the State was tasked as he would wish? Who were Hitler, Beria, Stalin, Mao, Chirac, Blair, Prescott and Castro but men with “more power and better weapons” and access to the wealth of their fellow-men that only a mighty State can confer?
I read the Guardian for material for my blog. It never fails. Nor does it ever fail to remind me of the strange world of BDSM. BDSM “submissives,” however, are playing a sexual game. They have agreed codewords to alert their “dom” or “domme” that the pain has become too much. The Guardian’s “subs” relish their enslavement to that great Dominatrix, the State, but there is no codeword that will stop it from stamping on their most delicate parts with the spiked heels of State Power. They may like that. Forgive me if I don’t. And forgive me if I find it deeply offensive that, having suffered from the parasitism fostered by Labour my whole life, I should be called a parasite myself.”
And more here about the statist’s psychosexual attachment to the state:
It’s not about the command given, but the response. These offences are not about restraining wrongs at all. They are about training citizens to instant obedience, and state servants to command. The more illogical, for that purpose, the better. When you call your dog to heel, do you want him to consider why? Labour only knows that the state, when guided by it, knows best. In its view, that’s all we need to know. To question is to be insubordinate.
Lila,
Even though I’m in the middle of moving I had to comment on this one. I always enjoy when one can sense a little rage in your posts. I have not read anything by him but Herr Monbiot sounds like a piece of work. I fear I will be yelling “cream puff” if I read too much of his dribble.
Peace,
Keith Snyder
Thank you. I agree with Perry de Haviland of the excellent Samizdata blog, who said (in the comments to http://bit.ly/aWFi9x);
“Secure mental hospitals for those with a compulsive psychological need to impose compulsion on others would be a great idea. We owe it to ourselves to help these vulnerable members of society.”
It’s hard to get people to see this.
Apparently, if you’re against taxes, you must be some slimy billionaire’s paid off apologist…
It doesn’t occur to people that people don’t become billionaires without some ability – if nothing more than the ability to cheat and swindle (let’s be as uncharitable about the rich as we can for the sake of strengthening the argument).
Granted that, it’s clear that people with money are going to be able to get out of any taxes with much greater ease than anyone else lower down on the food chain, however much we’re assured that it’s only “the rich” who are going to be affected by higher taxes.
No.
We can be sure that higher taxes on corporations only means more employment for tax lawyers, higher prices for consumers, and fewer jobs for workers.
Which translates into higher costs for the middle class wage earner who cannot write off his expenses as the rich can, via LLCs and corporations.
So the political class is really attacking the responsible wage and salaried class under the guise of soak the rich, populist rhetoric.
Soak the rich? When the rich control the SEC and everything else? It will be at best soak “some of the rich” – the politically unconnected rich…
So practically, the left’s policies undermine themselves.
Besides that, on moral grounds, why is it morally a good thing for money to be transferred from the people who made it (rich or middle class) to some other groups for services rendered at gun point and against the will of the first group?
Sure, I don’t respect “libertarians” so-called who support bail-outs and welfare for corporations. But the proper name for them is statist.. or hypocrite.