One Year On

Finally, something good comes out of Washington DC: just one year after District of Columbia vs. Heller, DC homicides are on track to reach their lowest levels since 1964 -before the ban came into effect.

The Washington Post reports that DC had 66 homicides during the first half of the year, down from over 80 this time last year. If the trend continues, DC should report about 130-135 homicides for the year - well down from 189 last year, as well as the 494 back in 1991.

Perhaps, critics may argue that it is too early to tell if Heller vs. District of Columbia has finally turned DC's murder rate on its head. Nevertheless, the early signs do look promising.

A Culture of Fear

Much to the annoyance of the many conservative bloggers on the Kiwi blogosphere, most libertarian commentators on the internet on this side of the ditch have been out in full force protesting the Drug War. Of course, it makes sense given how the murder of a policeman, shooting of three other people, and 50-hour siege in Napier started, after all, in a "routine drug bust". But one can rant forever on the drug war -it's much deeper than just who's selling what to whom.

Now, in true benefit-of-the-doubt fashion (something akin to "Who is John Galt?"), most people will shrug it off as an isolated incident; after all, this guy did try to shoot 21 people, and opened fire at a friend's house four years ago. The more politically motivated will talk about gun control -we already hear reports about the number of unlicensed guns in New Zealand, and guns being sold freely over the internet. But no one will address the truly pressing concern in New Zealand, and indeed all of Western Society, that led to this siege: the culture of fear -and the accompanying culture of hopelessness- that has penetrated New Zealand society, and how it all leads to tragedies like this. This fear isn't about foreign wars and natural disasters; this is fear of friends, fear of neighbours, fear of government.

The culture of fear has always been present in dictatorships, the Soviet Union being the greatest example. If a neighbour didn't like you, he could simply denounce you -you would be dead soon. If you were caught saying something totally insignificant that the Party didn't like, you would meet a similar fate, and you always had to watch your back.

However, it has always been a rarity throughout the fundamentally optimistic Western World, and New Zealand has never, until recently, had any symptoms of a culture of fear. Similarly, a culture of fear has developed in the United States -observe that a recent cop shooting was over a fear that Obama was going to take away people's guns- Britain and France (riots, and all). To trace the development of the culture of fear seeping through Western society, we need to look at recent political developments.

Let's take Britain, as an example. At the end of WWII and into the 50s and 60s, Britain was hailed as a model society -a society in which you knew your neighbours and would always be happy to help. Its crime rates were some of the world's lowest. At the end of WWII, Lee Kuan Yew, of Singapore went to Britain to find out how they managed to create such a polite society, to try to recreate that culture in Singapore. Nowadays the opposite is true: Britain's crime rates are some of the highest in the Western World, and broken families abound.

In the United States, much the same occurred. In the words of Walter Williams:

"During the 1940s and '50s, I grew up in North Philadelphia where many of today's murders occur. It was a time when blacks were much poorer, there was far more racial discrimination, and fewer employment opportunities and other opportunities for upward socioeconomic mobility were available. There was nowhere near the level of crime and wanton destruction that exists today. Behavior accepted today wasn't accepted then by either black adults or policemen." Indeed, according to a recent documentary,* among the victims of many violent crimes, they will not tell who is was that shot, stabbed or assaulted them!

The same is now occurring in New Zealand. With the exponential growth in government powers in all three countries, a culture of fear is taking flight. So what happened in these last fifty years?
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In philosophy, we saw a much greater emphasis being placed on the "common good"* through the rise of political correctness, and a move away from an objective, independent reality to the primacy of consciousness -observe how art devolved from being based on human interpretations of an objective, proper reality (romanticism through to art deco), to negating such an idea, putting all emphasis on "feeling" (expressionism through to post-modernism). By therefore negating man's existence into inexplicable feelings, modern philosophy helped to destroy the idea of self esteem, and a moral existence.

This had profound implications on society. What would be the result if human actions were based, not out of value seeking rational individuals basing their actions on production, but out of people who believed that no such thing as a rational individual could exist, and that freedom meant freedom from reality, to be administered, by force, from the producers of the world? The idea of a human became one who survives only by short term actions against one another.

Indeed, modern liberalism bases its ideas on the principle that, as men have to be rational producers to survive, no such thing as total liberty (from force and fraud) exists, and that producers have a duty to feed the non-productive.

The outcome has been, and continues to be, the breakdown of human relations. Men can only live in harmony when they deal with each other as rational beings, through the paradigm of values. At this point, liberals will talk about how the welfare state** and "working together" is the antidote to the culture of fear; conservatives will discuss religion and community. Both will say that selfishness is the cause of the culture of fear, propose collectivist solutions, and call for the heads of the productive to roll.
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Political developments have reflected this trend in attitude. In centuries past, it would have been completely unthinkable that government should have as much control over private affairs, citizen's money and business that it does today. According to the US Libertarian Party, in 1950 the total money collected by all forms of government was 2% of total income. Nowadays, it is often an entire year's salary for a working family. There are over four million security cameras in Britain (all of which seem hopeless in preventing Islamist attacks, somehow).

When a government subscribes to the culture of fear, it does not trust its citizens with their lives or money. People must be controlled.

These developments in turn isolate the citizenry from those assigned to protect their rights -that's where Jan Molenaar, the man behind the Napier siege, comes in. A culture of hopelessness, increases in crime, and a dramatic decrease in living standards, has always been the result of a culture of fear - often followed by dictatorship, either of the proletariat, the Aryan Race, or some form of supreme leader.

And that, I fear, is where we're heading.
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Notes:

*Many people say that there was actually less emphasis on the individual in the old British Empire than now. However, times of war aside, subjects of the Empire were very astute as to their individual rights which were considered sacrosanct -in effect, going to War, as an example, was to safeguard these rights -not for some purely collectivist reason such as an arbitrary idea of "Britain is good". For a further discussion of this idea, refer to Ayn Rand's essay "Philosophy: Who Needs It".

**Many leftists claim that the reforms of the 1980s and 9os are the cause of the culture of fear. However, economic reforms come and are now going, and the culture of fear can be traced far back before the 1980s. Institutions and cultures are two different things, and capitalism works with a culture of entrepreneurship to accompany it -not a culture of fear.

References:

http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4770
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=5012
http://www.lp.org/issues/family-budget
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6108496.stm“Killadelphia”; Narrator: Louis Theroux
The Economist
A further discussion of the ideas of art discussed here and their philosophical meaning can be found on Not PC, or other Objectivist websites and blogs.

EFA Repealed!

Well, this crept up on everyone. Parliament has, just this afternoon, repealed the Electoral Finance Act.

Looks like Labour saw the light, too, calling the EFA a "mistake". All parties -except the Greens, whoopdie-doo- voted for the repeal.

An excellent day for free speech in New Zealand!

The Right to Protest?

Recently in Social Studies, my class has been assigned a book called "How Many Lightbulbs does It Take to Change a Planet: 95 Ways to Save Planet Earth". The Idea is that we would chose one of the 95 different topics on all manners of leftist ideas about climate change, take notes and do a PowerPoint presentation about it.

One of the ideas in the book is "Protect the Right to Protest". Alright, but this is what the left, through its self-anointed moral supremacy over climate change, has been stifling. If you speak up against the IPCC, the climate change "consensus" or Al Gore, you are thrown out of the climate change debate in days, if not hours. Suddenly, you have all these environmental "scientists" pouncing on you, saying that you're wrong and giving no particular reason, only data that has been spewed up a million times. For proof, look at what happened to the Great Global Warming Swindle -and that's one of the nicer examples.

The right to protest hasn't been stifled directly in the political arena -indeed, it's the politcal arena that the left wants to avoid over opposition to climate change. The left, in all its talk of "tolerance" and "cultural/political/economic diversity", has to maintain a clean, public image of what it is, and what it stands for. To its credit, it has been pretty successful. You're unlikely to see quotes like this on the front cover of a newspaper:

"We have wished... for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us back into the stone age..."

or that:

"You think Hiroshima was bad, let me tell you mister, Hiroshima wasn't bad enough!"*

Admittedly, those two quotes were said a while ago. But if you were to tell any random earth-hugger on the street about those quotes, they'd just shake their head and call you a nutter. There are many more quotes like the two above, but you'd be lucky to find anyone who knows about them.

Consider this fact: the environmental movement has successfully manufactured their ideology around a natural, scientific phenomenon: human-induced climate change. To most people within and supportive of the environmental movement, it's not about the control or the end of industry, it isn't about human quality of life -it's about global warming, or climate change. These people see scientific climate change as a primary -they don't consider anything else in the ideology as a possible primary. For them, it's alright to sacrifice human industry, technology, wealth, comfort, etc to Gaia -because climate change is a primary. Even if that did nothing to the climate, it's still the primary.

It's that idea that has left possible unbiased environmentalists completely open to bombardment by the environmental movement and its theories on climate change.

Also, as it is supposedly based on scientific fact, the supposed primary of climate change is seen as an absolute -for instance, man's mind is an absolute (although his using it is not), reality is an absolute. This is how the environmental movement has made the scientists who are skeptical of climate change seem absolutely crazy. Climate change is neither a primary nor an absolute, but the marketability of it as such has been used to devastating effect.

So, the right to protest against envirofascists? Surely, it exists in the political realm. But the rather simple idea of climate change has been manipulated so much in the philosophical realm that it's crazy to challenge the idea of anthropogenic global warming. To outsiders, you're protesting against an absolute (no matter how many studies say otherwise). The environmental movement keeps its credibility by making climate change its primary -not the end of industry and commerce, and relegating productive man back into the slums.

And as I've said many times before, isn't the idea of us all pitching in to make a collective effort for the good of the planet and future generations just lovely? Perhaps not for us selfish Objectivists, or anyone else who can look behind all the environmental rhetoric, but for the common Joe New Zealander, who has already been brought up with such principles during NZ's socialist era, they sound great. After all, we will all die if we don't -climate change, according to what Joe's heard so many times before, is an absolute.

The only thing getting in the way -productive, selfish man. The man who produces instead of sacrifices himself for the "common good". Sounds like a certain book!

But this is even worse. If you think sacrifice on the altar of the "need" of other people was bad, this is sacrifice on the altar of the environment -the truly unthinking.

Luckily, as Libertarians, we have the chance to hit at (or to protest at) where it hurts. The left for decades, long before the environmental movement arrived, has been going on about the need "tolerance" and "diversity" -which developed into the ideal of "protecting the right to protest". These principles developed as a way to get leftist rhetoric into the classrooms and onto the TV screens, but they have tripped up over themselves. After all, at school, you're not going to get a flogging anymore for expressing an opinion -the teachers have to grin and bear it, at worst. After all, it is in the name of "tolerance" and "diversity" -and when opinions can be put to people so bluntly, no leftist will try to stop you.

So it's on this different set of ideals -originally enlightened ideals from the enlightenment, before having a post-modern spin put on them- that we need to protest to combat leftist ideals. Ironically, what were, and still are some of the most attractive ideals of the left can be used against them. Not just in environmentalism, but everywhere.

*Both quotes from The Free Radical no. 73, page 27.

ACT for America

Some of you who look at my Libertarian and Objectivist links from time to time may have seen a link called "ACT for America". ACT for America is an American organization dedicated to fighting for American values, security and freedom against radical, militant Islamism, which has been increasingly entrenched in American society, since before 9/11. It is founded by America's answer to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Brigitte Gabriel.

Brigitte Gabriel was born in Lebanon in 1965 and immigrated to America after the Lebanese Civil War. After immigrating to America, she founded the American Congress for Truth, dedicated to repudiating lies and propaganda about Israel and America's role in the fight against radical Islamism, constantly thrown about in the media.

Gabriel has first hand experience of the violence of radical Islamism in Lebanon. She says:

"I was born in Lebanon and raised as a Christian. When the Lebanese Civil War broke out, our family and our Maronite community came under vicious attack by Islamic extremists. They promised to destroy us, and today the country is nearly all Islamic.

I was nearly killed by a mortar. Our home was destroyed. We lived in a bomb shelter for seven years. Most of my childhood friends were killed. That's how I know about this fight."

On the site, she doesn't just target radical Islamism, she also targets political correctness, which is the philosophy which allows radical Islamism in the West, unabated. She says, quite frankly:

"Political correctness will literally kill us."

She also talks about why radical Islamists are out to destroy the West and its values, how they go out it, and what will the outcome will be if it isn't stopped. She stands up for Western values, and makes it very clear what her organization is about:

"...to be a collective voice for the democratic values of Western Civilization, such as the celebration of life and liberty, as opposed to the authoritarian values of Islamofascism, such as the celebration of death, terror and tyranny."

Brigitte doesn't just oppose Islamism on practical grounds, she opposes it on moral grounds. She doesn't oppose it simply because of terrorist acts, she opposes it because of its hatred towards Western civilisation and values, and its philosophy based on death.

Brigitte Gabriel and her organisation(s) enable America to have what Europe and the UK didn't: a clear and principled voice against radical Islamism.

ACT for America-before it's too late!

Chinese Olympics: No Boycott

As you may have seen recently, there has been a load of debate on the NZ libertarian blogosphere as to wherever the 2008 Olympics should be held in China, due to its totalitarian government and human rights abuses, including mobile execution vans*.

I agree that China does have some serious problems with its totalitarian government, still communist in many respects. But it's for those reasons that I'm NOT for the boycotting of the 2008 Olympics; they could be ideal in shedding light on the current regime in China -just what it's been doing recently.

Up until now, commentators on both the left and right have been largely ignoring China's totalitarian aspects, instead focussing on China's recent economic boom, which has had a great effect in creating a Chinese middle class and getting many Chinese out of poverty. Most of this phenomenon occuring in China, however, has been largely concealed to the Exclusive Economic Zones and big cities. Outside of these growth-magnets, many Chinese still live in squalor, under an oppressive government that, despite the lift of regulations and introduction of some property rights since the 1980s, is still essentially communist, especially in social and political terms. Many of these people go to live in the cities to work in the factories, with very little money.

So, hopefully these Olympics will shed light on the plight of Chinese people who haven't been able to escape to the glitzy, Capitalist cities. It all depends, however, on whether the world wants to watch.

And while China's government is a concern, I wonder if it is the primary reason behind John Minto and other figures of the far left organizing protests and raising lefty "awareness" of the situation in China. Many of these people -whether in London, Paris, San Francisco or NZ- were wearing Mao badges 30 years ago, and not just because it was "the thing". China was FAR WORSE back then. I suppose they just hate the Capitalist elements that have been introduced since then, and the fact that a big, evil bourgeois class has been created.

But, at the end of the day, the only nation that can tame the tempered Chinese Dragon is the United States. Luckily, they, unlike Europe, actually act on their values and beliefs.

*Ever wondered why China's imprisonment rate is less than in the US!?

China FTA

So, New Zealand, in a few days time, is going to have a revolutionary free trade agreement with China, the first Western nation to do so. And as usual, John Minto and his group are out protesting in force, trying to end any economic ties which might, in time and in force, actually contribute to the freeing-up of China in other areas.

It is true that the treatment of Tibetans by the Chinese Government is to be questioned. But one question: how will a free trade deal such as this one contribute to the (supposed) violence and mistreatment? A free trade deal doesn't mean that China as a whole, or the government, is trading with New Zealand -individual businesses are. A free trade deal would also contribute to the flow of citizens between the two countries, which means that New Zealanders have more prominence there than they would without the deal.

A free trade deal doesn't necessarily mean that Kiwi jobs are lost, either. Instead, it gives us a chance to specialize. Just as China is flooding the NZ market with cheap goods, we can export products, such as meat and diary goods, to them. China is a HUGE market, and New Zealand has to look for its niche there -like Western Australia has done with its raw materials (and look at them!).

Free Trade means that the two countries can engage in more peaceful business activities, and corporations in either country can learn off corporations in the other, and become more flexible. Free Trade also means more flow of capital resources between the two countries.

Free Trade has had innumerable benefits for many countries throughout history, and a NZ-China FTA will not be different in its overall outcome over the course of several years. Free Trade is good for opening countries up and making them more transparent, moderating and/or ending government-imposed violence, such as in Tibet. Free Trade acts as a check on a nation's military record, and has been very successful in stopping international conflicts. The benefits from a nation acting in its rational, economic self interest will always outweigh the perceived "benefits" from a nation acting in its irrational, political self-interest.

Suggestions For America, the UK, and NZ on Crime

In the light of all the recent ugly spates of shootings going on the United States in the moment, I have compiled a list of suggestions for tackling crime, with special regards to violent crime such as murder and rape, where the US easily tops the developed world. The same suggestions also need to be implemented in Britain, where criminals can get away from almost any non-violent crime (and which tops all other nations minus Australia for total crime), and New Zealand, the country with the highest number of sexual assaults, property crimes and gang membership per capita of any country in the world.

End the "War on Poverty". Cancel any new government housing projects, and gradually destroy the old ones. The huge government housing projects in, for instance, New York during the 1960s led to the formerly wealthy neighbourhood of the Bronx, to the North-east of Manhattan, to become one of America's worst neighbourhoods, which helped New York reach over 2,200 murders a year in 1989 (without being much better for 30 years before). By placing these huge behemoth buildings full of poor people indiscriminately around the city (in which crime skyrocketed as opposed to the neighbourhoods these people used to live in), wealthier people moved out, out to the suburbs* -hence, the "white flight" which destroyed many good inner-city neighbourhoods. These new government projects also destroyed many older neighbourhoods in which poor people used to live in, which would've been very lively -and safe- neighbourhoods before people got lumped in together, and crime boomed.

As in New Zealand, the War on Poverty created an "entitlement culture" in which poor people, rather than working for the great American Dream, demanded it. The American Dream was/is about personal responsibility, and pride and rationality in one's self and actions. The "entitlement culture" of the 1960s onwards demanded the results of the American Dream. Then there is the lack of pride in one's self and achievements which led to this "entitlement culture", which led to the destruction of belief in one's self and actions -which led to crime. Like every other time in history, this period of US history when the sacrifice of others was used to justify the sacrifice of one's self had negative consequences, in this case leading to a surge in crime -which is actually one of the better outcomes throughout history.

The War on Poverty was also the time in American, -arguably world- history when the most money was poured solely for the purpose of defeating poverty -perhaps only rivaled by the New Deal. However, consider the effects on America's economy and its poorest people had that costly trillion dollar investment not happened. Consider instead, the employment of millions of America's poor, instead of having those same people commit crimes like armed robbery to pay for drugs, alcohol, women and gambling -with true values, such as family, work and self-esteem coming last. Consider how much better America's manufacturing industry would have fared, and how smoother the transition to a service-sector economy would have been, if the American government didn't spend that money, and thus Detroit could have survived better. Also, it should be considered that during Clinton's welfare reforms, putting limits on welfare, crime in the US dropped dramatically, and the murder rate was sliced in half.

Note that many African-Americans and African American families were moving up, economically, until this time despite segregation. The end of this trend, as well as events that affected African Americans as a whole, is one of the reasons for race riots and racist attacks and crime during the 1960s and following decades.

Slash regulations on employment, business transactions and business regulations. Many poor people are unskilled workers, who have very little chance of getting what most people in developed countries would call a "decent job". But even a very cheap, dangerous job is better than not being employed at all -and business regulations, such as, most infamously, the minimum wage, destroy employment, by cutting out all workers from the economic ladder who produce less value per hour than the minimum wage demands you be paid. Because of this, studies in the US have stated that 100,000 people are out of work when the minimum wages goes up, even by a few cents. Cutting off the bottom of the economic ladder doesn't magically make them all richer. If so, we should theoretically raise the minimum wage to $1,000,000 dollars.

Regulations on who a business can hire, and safety regulations, also cut off the poorest from entering the workforce. This is because such regulations, like the aforementioned minimum wage, require that a worker has to produce above the total net cost of the regulations, as well as other costs and wages. If a business is forced to have certain regulations in place, an unskilled worker has less chance of entering the workforce, because he can't produce as much as his skilled colleagues, and can't cover the cost of his employment. Obviously, an unskilled worker may need to sacrifice safety for wages, or wages for safety, depending on what he needs and values. But keep in mind that he can still choose his employer, and that creates competition even amongst him and his future employers, because he's now part of the labour market.

Other regulations that prevent unskilled workers entering the workforce are the affirmative action and equal employment laws. Because all businesses, regardless of wealth, have to obey this law, a company may have to forgo the employment of an unskilled man because they're forced, to hire a woman, regardless of her skills, to meet their requirements. And because there's no objective way to determine whether a company hires on the basis of race or productivity under such laws, more productive people will have to forgo employment, because a person of different gender/race is needed, regardless of how productive the two prospective employees may be.

When someone is out of work for a long period of time, even if it is because of genetic qualities that can't be controlled as discussed above, the lack of respect for the self -and others- disappears, and someone with no such respect won't spend the money he does have to properly improve his situation -he only acts on the expediency of the moment, which leads to drug violence, gang violence and impulsive actions, regardless of the consequences.

Get back to the traditional punishment-and-restitution system of imprisonment. Let the prisoners know that what they did was WRONG. The softening of the jail system, in both America and other parts of the world such as Britain and New Zealand, led to a massive surge in all crime types of crime -ranging from theft to terrorism- in the 1960s onward. Beforehand, America's murder rate in 1960 was at half of what it was in 1934, and would be very low today if that trend continued, and the same applies to NZ and Britain. Why did the murder rate soar so dramatically during the 1960s?

One of the main reasons, as well as the ones already stated, is that the jail system, instead of the traditional and effective system of punishment-and-restitution that characterized jail systems in all three countries and made Britain revered as a very safe place, was replaced by a system where crime was never quite your fault, and prisoners had the luxury of not needing to know what is was that they did wrong -which is a deep philosophical issue. Restitution was replaced by rehabilitation, -except how can you be "rehabilitated" if you don't know what you did wrong. Rehabilitation, without restitution, is useless, and it is one reason why 80% of American jailbirds are repeat offenders. The process of correction begins with knowing what one did wrong, and setting out to rectify it. But as recent events have shown, it's impossible to have the latter without the former. To be thrown in jail for murder, without a proper moral understanding of what murder is and why it's wrong, is to be unable for the moral consequences of committing murder, no matter how many times it's committed. Not to mention, it's very easy to get past rehab by simply lying your way through, and concealing your trues thoughts and feelings of it. This philosophy on criminals, which spurred from the relativism of the time, Removed any need to know why murder is wrong, and thus got people thoroughly annoyed when they were thrown in jail for reasons they don't know. Thus, prison riots.

Observe the hopelessness and worthlessness of those committing crimes. To commit a crime is fundamentally an act of self-hate; it is the clearest expression of the belief of worthlessness of one's self, and the lowing of one's self to the level of an animal, that he must destroy the values of other people, which are also his means of living rationally -to harness values- and that no one should be above his level. To commit a crime is to declare that one's self is lower than an animal, and that his values that he finds in other people, plus their own values, are worthless, and that no one else, all being equal, is above him. Of course, the scope of this expression ranges from the smallest theft to the largest murder.

Observe the irrational mentality of a serial killer. He is a man without hope and self-esteem, a man who puts self-doubt, neglect and abuse above any value. A man with such a low esteem of himself, and can't find values in oneself, also can't find values in another man; he is alien to the concept of rationality and self-esteem He sets out on a process of self-destruction, mixing together the worst elements of society to form a concoction fully expressive with his view of humanity. First, he may turn to drugs, than to guns and destructive concepts (such as with the Columbine High Murderers), and then to murder. With this mentality, he has no idea why murder is considered wrong, but he is displaying it.

This is in contrast to a productive man, and his pursuit of values. A productive man may not be as rich as the man above, poverty doesn't necessarily equate crime; but instead, the productive man is able to pursue his rational values, which moves him up in the world, and his self-esteem -and as thus, the way he treats others- increases. This isn't a possible concept to the man who seeks out on self-destruction, unless the remnants of rationality that he locked up can see the world he created for himself, and set out to change it.

(One place where the destructive mentality sets in is at school, as I've discussed, but that's a whole different story.)

Promote gun ownership amongst law-abiding people. American gun-haters yearn for a place where they can escape to, free of guns. Luckily for them, such a place exists in America; it's called Washington, DC. Similarly, they should hate any place where everyone has a gun; such a place exists, it's called Switzerland.

A gun by itself, can't murder people; it needs to fall into the hands of the irrational to do that. But observe that, as any murder case shows, irrational men don't abide by the law - if guns are banned, they'll happily buy a gun off the black market, or smuggle one in. If a gun is what he wants as his murder weapon, a gun's what he gets. Only rational men abide by the law, which serves to disarm innocent civilians in a murder. He could carry a less lethal weapon around with him, such as a knife, but throwing a knife at a man 10 metres away will likely do nothing.

In Edwardian London, the crime rate was only a tiny fraction of what it is today; similarly, it was common that, if a crime was committed, for a policeman to use a civilian's gun to stop a criminal. A murder was really, really big news, and the fact that everyone owned a gun was a good thing, and so it was. A similar case exists in Switzerland, and there, they get their guns free of charge from the military!

Contrast Edwardian London, or Switzerland, to Washington, DC. Soon after the city's gun ban went into effect, the murder rate skyrocketed, and to watch crime as it took place on the street was common. Even though Washington has come a long way in combating crime, the murder rate is still spiked. The result was that murderers still got their guns, and civilians had to get them from out-of-state or the black market, possibly resulting in jail time. Many similar laws are in place in America's most dangerous cities, which keep crime high in the ghetto, no matter how far other neighbourhoods have come.

As a final point on guns in America, observe that less than 1/4 of Americans actually own a gun.

Finally, DON'T become Europe. Somehow, pointing to the more peaceful (even though this is only half the truth) societies in Europe seems to justify the Left's position on crime. In fact, Europe, even with less violent crime than the US, actually has more property crime and fraud, in which Germany is King. Also, go into, for instance, a poor Parisian suburb -most of whom are just as bad as their counterparts in US cities. Although I don't have proof to say so, a lot of the difference in crime can probably be put down to differences in what is a homicide, and differing views on violent crime.

Even if the differences can largely be explained by difference in reporting, there's still the fact that Europe had to endure division, two world wars, and near complete destruction at the hands of the Nazis in the 20th Century. America never had to endure such destruction, and there were few lessons to be learnt in the World Wars, compared to what Europe endured. Perhaps having this lesson shoved down their throats in the World Wars is the reason why European societies seem to be peacefully, compared to the US.

But if all else fails, Europe was just as, if not more, peaceful during its years of laissez faire before the events of the 20th Century came along.
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Those are the six issues America (and the UK and NZ) have to tackle if they want to cut crime permanently, and as it happens. To combat crime, the "entitlement culture" and culture of hopelessness in the ghettos need to be replaced by the self-esteem and rational thinking of the original immigrants, from the statist regimes of Europe. Gun ownership should be promoted among law-abiding citizens, and imprisonment should be based on the old system of punishment and restitution. To build self-esteem, productivity is needed amongst the poorest people of society, and to do that, regulations on business, employment and trade need to be scrapped. Only with these reforms, can the US, the UK and NZ go back to the level of safety before the 1960s, when most of the reforms and legislation that raised crime levels were introduced.

Waitangi Days on "Not PC" Has Something to Celebrate

Now, for another posting of an article; but it's so good, I'll leave all the discuss to it. If you'll make your way over to Not PC, he has an excellent piece on New Zealand's national holiday tomorrow, Waitangi Day. It's a highly recommended read.

PS: Lindsay Perigo at SOLO also has released a good press release about the subject.

Man Arrested For Flicking Son's Ear

So, we have problems with gang shootouts, daily stabbings, murder over graffiti and bodies floating down rivers, but apparently, according to the New Zealand government, that simply doesn't matter. Instead, it's far more important that parents get arrested over flicking their son's ear to stop them from possibly killing themselves from running over the road.

Last month, a man was arrested under NZ's new anti-smacking legislation in central Christchurch. The do-gooder who called the police was an schoolteaher, and within a few minutes was surrounded by five police. Now charges have been laid against him. I wonder how many murders were going on when the police were dealing with this man, who potentially stopped his child's death.

Since I'm in a bit of a rush now, I'll get more details when they arise.

First Casualties of the EFB/A

The Electoral Finance Bill/Act came into effect two days ago, meaning that any voices who oppose the government can effectively be silenced by the power of the gun, the government deciding who's fit to receive money to campaign and who isn't, and who is allowed to donate money and who isn't (all the while supporting the ideas of those who they don't support with their own tax money).

The first casualty on this war on free speech, ironically, is Helen Clark. At the start of the new year, a group called "People Power" threw a rock through the window of her electoral office in Mount Albert, to protest the act. It wouldn't be the first time someone has vandalized Helen Clark's electoral office; the first time, however, the offender was charged with sedition (!).

Tim Shadbolt, the usually Labour-leaning and provocative mayor of New Zealand's southernmost city Invercargill is now touting the opposition to the Act, telling his citizens and those of the entire country to not vote Labour.

To protest this act further, Cameron Slater of Whale Oil and Andy Moore of The Section 59 Blog have started up www.dontvotelabour.org.nz, and they could be the first people brought to court under the new law.

...but where's their $1200 that supports claim that the Act will stop? Maybe they should realize that the $1200 cap on personal anonymous donations is truly pitiful compared to the $4.8 million of public money Labour spent on election campaigning in 2005. But which party received the most anonynous funding last year? ACT!

Or perhaps you'd like to do a Chris Trotter, getting quickly off the actual issues to do a bit of scaremongering non-existent concepts in his twisted, Marxist view of reality.

Labour's Public Beheading

If there's any better argument against the Electoral Finance Bill, it'll be coming next year. As I've discussed below, the Electoral Finance Bill is the primary reason for Labour's recent slip in the polls -and the rise of National so that it can govern alone.

Democracy isn't perfect, but when it comes to legislation like the Electoral Finance Bill, voters can use their power to oust the government that enacted it, and, at the least, influence future governments to repeal it. In a free and fair democracy, regardless of how much advertising is put up to influence voters to change their minds, truly terribly acts like this will never keep any government in power for long.

The Electoral Finance Bill won't destroy Labour because it'll lose support from the centre, it'll destroy Labour because of loss of support from the left. Hone Harawira, a hard Maori Party leftist who detests anything white in NZ, has come out in direct opposition to the Bill. Tim Shadbolt, the mayor of Invercargill, has done the same thing, promising to break the law. The Maori party, who generally vote with Labour on most issues, stands in the opposition. Unfortunately, the Greens who generally have a good track record on issues of free speech, have followed Labour like the headless chickens they are. The Human Rights Commission, the Law Society and even Greenpeace (!) have voiced opposition to the Bill, although whether Labour will be hypocrites when it comes to leftist violations it yet to be seen (which it probably will be).

Add on the complete lack of support from the middle class, and you get a beheading spectacular in nature.

Slavery -Essay For School

Slavery -By Callum McPetrie

Slavery was an institution as old as humanity itself. It meant the ownership of one person by another, meaning that the slave was legal property. Often, the slave had to work constantly in bad conditions, and it was their owner who decided everything about their life. Although some owners were kind to their slaves, and gave them a certain amount of control over their lives, this was not often the case, especially in the early 19th Century when mercantilism, which propped up colonies around the world by the European powers, was in charge.

A History of Slavery

Slavery had been around for a very long time before then. Slavery was a commonplace institution in Egypt, where the pyramids were built off slave labour, and Ancient Rome, where people of conquered regions were made slaves (in fact, the word “slave” is said to have come from the word “Slav”, which was the race of people Romans made slaves most often). Slavery was also commonplace throughout the East, in China and the Indian sub-continent.

In the Dark Ages in Europe, and to a lesser extent Britain, slavery was replaced by serfdom. Serfs were similar to slaves in many ways. The Serf was tied down to a certain area of land, and worked in similar conditions to slaves who also worked on farms. Serfdom was a consequence of the feudal economic system in Europe at the time. It relied entirely upon agricultural output, so serfdom was considered inevitable. Life as a serf wasn’t easy, and many rebellions broke out because of it. Russia was the last country to abolish serfdom, which came about in 1860 under Tsar Alexander II. In most countries, however, it was abolished hundreds of years earlier.

In the 15th Century, Europe was on the rise again. As a result of the new mercantilist economic and foreign affairs policies in European countries, Europe looked for new land on which to build colonies, which led to explorers of the time like Columbus, who discovered the Americas in 1492 and carried many slaves on his ship, and Magellan. Mercantilism and colonization first became popular in Portugal, which started the slave trade, and Spain, before spreading to Britain, Holland and France.

In order to make mercantilism profitable, slavery was reinstitutionalized. Slaves were brought from Africa, both to Europe and its colonies, especially the Americas. Both the slave trade and work as a slave were brutal, and incredibly dangerous. Many slaves in the colonies did the same things that serfs did, which was to work on the land. Slaves, however, did far more dangerous work, usually on cotton plantations.

Enlightenment, Economics and Abolition

But in the 18th Century, the tide was turning against slavery. The Enlightenment was at its height, which produced many great minds dedicated to the principal of individual rights and freedom –which stood in direct opposition to the principles of slavery. Mercantilism was being attacked by the economists of the day, such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo, who promoted capitalism –the economic system that logically followed from Enlightenment principles. As well as these men, many people opposed slavery on moral grounds, such as William Wilberforce. In the 18th and 19th Centuries, the great debate of the time wasn’t capitalism vs. socialism; it was capitalism vs. mercantilism and the aristocracy, opposed to change -and pro-slavery. The latter included many of the English writers of the time, such as Thomas Carlyle and Charles Dickens. Because of the economists’ opposition to slavery, the writers called economics “the dismal science” –a modern phrase that came from the pro-slavery conservatives of the time.

Two countries took the lead in the crusade against slavery: the (northern) United States, which was very new at the time, and Britain. The northern American states became some of the first places in the world to abolish slavery outright, and the founding fathers were planning to put a clause in the US Constitution to abolish slavery, which was rejected by the south. It took a long, gruesome civil war to get the southern American states to also abolish slavery. It should be noted here that the south was agricultural, and because of this slavery was commonplace, and the south was worse off than the north.

Britain, led by William Wilberforce and influenced by the great economists of the time, abolished the slave trade in 1807. This came at great expense to the government, which happened to be fighting in the Napoleonic wars at the time, and outlawed slavery outright in her empire some thirty years later –the first country in Europe to do so.

Abolishing slavery came at great expense to Britain. But over time, their investment was paid off. Slavery prevented slaves from using their talents to the best of their ability, instead consigning them to brutal physical work. After the abolition, slaves were somewhat freer to use their talents to the best of their ability, which greatly helped the slaves and the economy as a whole. It was on this premise that the economists advocated the abolition of slavery.

Other European countries abolished slavery soon afterwards. In France, the French Revolution of 1789 helped towards this, but France soon found itself in the dictatorial grip of Napoleon. It took another revolution, that of 1848, which also took place in Austria-Hungary and Prussia to properly set things straight.

The Effects Today

Slavery affected, and continues to affect, many people in a bad way. This is why decolonization was widespread after WWII. Slavery is outlawed everywhere, except in shady countries in Africa such as Sudan, where people still own slaves.

Slavery had the effect of dividing people into races, an effect which is still felt today, although not as greatly as it used to be felt. This led most importantly to the civil rights movement in America, where race riots were common in the 1960s and 1970s. Many societies still have a degree of racial division that can trace its roots back to slavery in the mercantilist era, and some of the problems associated with race today. Even so, the average African-American has as high a per capita GDP as the average Swede –which is 1/3 lower than the total American average.

In Europe, division of races is an increasingly large problem, which occasionally breaks out in riots in France. Germany and Switzerland also have similar divisions, which are manifest in their laws, especially immigration from North Africa. Immigration is a larger problem in Europe than the US, as immigrants tend to put money into the country in the US in the form of productivity, and take money out in Europe, usually in the form of welfare benefits.

Conclusion

Slavery was a horrid institution in human society, and considered normal for most of human history. It took a revolution of thinking in the 1700s to change this, and revolutionary economics, based on man’s mind as his highest asset, not the hands he slaves with.

Modern slavery came about as a consequence of mercantilism. Although it could be argued that mercantilism has its benefits, its costs were far greater. Mercantilism was also a system of government intervention, not of free markets. The move to the free market was one of the reasons slavery was abolished.

It was the great and courageous minds of the day that had slavery abolished. For that and for other reasons, we have to thank those minds for the prosperity enjoyed in Western nations today.

Petition to the Governor General

The Electoral Finance Bill, opposed by the Human Rights Commission, the Law Society and even Greenpeace, is set to pass before long. However, there is one way we can stop it dead in its track, without Helen Clark being able to do anything: that thing is to get the NZ Governor General, Anand Satyanand, to not sign it. A petition has been put forward to make him refuse to sign the bill, by the tireless freedom fighters on Kill the Bill! So do so, before it's too late!

~Callum

At It Again!

Auckland has staged its second march against the Electoral Finance Bill, which took place yesterday. And a much larger crowd turned up, matching the 5,000 that John Boscawen, who the organizer of all of these marches, wanted. Keep up the good work, guys!

Hitler and Islamofascism

Hitler was one of the most murderous tyrants of world history. He set off a great war that killed countless millions of people, killed innocent men and women on an incredible scale, and was the centrepiece of a philosophy -fascism- that still today continues to slaughter innocent men and women. A form of this tyranny and terror beyond words is the system that exists in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Palestine.

The similarities that exist in these countries are very similar to those of Nazi Germany:

Murderous tyrants and fanatic supporters: Hitler slaughtered millions in his day. Evil men such as Ahmedinejad still hang gays in Iran, and then boast in America about there being no gays in Iran! Another example is the recent lashing of a Saudi women for being in a car with men not related to her- and then raping her! Or the "death to Denmark, death to America" placards and riots that ensued after a brave Dane dared to publish portrays of Mohammed in a magazine. 9/11, and the Madrid and later London bombings. It all hails back to an era when Nazi supports burnt down the shops, homes and livelihoods of Jews, Poles, or anyone Hilter didn't like. And the constant excuses for carrying out murderous actions.

Evil philosophies: Islam isn't a "religion of peace" (this will be discussed later). Fascism was, and continues to be, an extreme form of statism, in which all power is given to a select few in the state. It is built on Nietzsche's concept of the superman. The Islamofascist philosophy of radical Islamists is merely an Islamic twist on normal fascism. The same goes with Ahmedinejad's theocracy in Iran, which is a cross between middle ages theocracy and modern Islamofascism. As seen in the example given above, Saudi Arabia is the same.

Islam is a religion. As has been said on SOLO (and this goes for all religions), it is a "stinking superstition". Although the adjective "stinking" can certainly be used to mean events happening under Islam's name as we speak, the "superstition" part applies to all religions. Because religion - belief in what may be true to guide us in life - is in direct contrast to knowing what is true, to guide our life on this Earth. Islam, in its current post-enlightened state (the Islamic "enlightenment" of the Middle Ages was achieved by men acting in their self-interest to advance their life on Earth) resembles Christianity during the Middle Ages. Or the worship of Hitler during WWII.

Pragmatic Supporters: The great majority of Muslims, both in the West and in the Middle East, are good people. The problem with these people - and admittedly there are some people who do speak out against the atrocities committed in the name of their religion - are pragmatists. They live their lives, follow their religion, and don't think twice about Islamofascism. The same was true with the Germans in under Hitler. Although it's hard for Muslims to speak out against a regime that terrorizes them, and the same was true with the Germans, what annoys me is the lack of speaking out by free Muslims, in the West. Instead, they're too preoccupied with yelling about Mohammed cartoons, or refuting claims like mine that Islam can lead (and often will lead) to evil regimes and tyrants.

It's this pragmatism that refutes the claim that Islam is a religion of peace. If that were so, there would've been demonstrations all over the world in response to 9/11, and Ahmedinejad would've been long overthrown. It wasn't until after WWII that the Germans saw Hitler's evil. Under a true "religion of peace", that wouldn't be the case just over the horizon.

Western Appeasement: I'm not one of those people who believes in going and blowing up Iran now. But then again, Hitler hadn't invaded anyone until what, 1937? Just two years before WWII started.

However, what was disgusting during WWII was the West's complete inability to do anything. Even when he started invading, no one was smart enough to stand up to his reign of terror until Churchill came around. America didn't enter the war until it got bombed itself. This appeasement allowed Hitler to take half of Europe in weeks. There should be no such appeasement toward today's Islamofascist regimes, and if they do attempt to invade, the West should be on it in minutes.

And the other part of Western appeasement is the PC attitude towards it all. The West should have no fear in denouncing Islam and Islamic regimes, for what they have created where they have been tried. And if anyone's offended... too bad! Free speech includes the right to be offended!

It's these four things that have contributed to the barbarism committed under Islam in the Middle East today. And unless these issues are dealt with in a consistent, objective manner, things will only get worse.

EFB Wellington Protest

It was two days ago, but I'm pleased to announce that the march against the Electoral Finance Bill (that I couldn't attend, but had several friends and family attending) here in Wellington was a success, with 200 or thereabouts turning out. Unfortunately for the protesters some Young Labour idiots happened to be in town, drowning the protestors out, but apart from that everyone had a good time.

Also, Auckland's going to have another go on December 1, at 2:30pm. Apparently 2000 protesters were not "good enough" for not good enough for Helen Clark, so John Boscawen is calling on 5000-or more-to turn up then.

Auckland March Photos

PC has on his blog pictures of the Auckland march against the Electoral Finance Bill, which 2000 people attended in the interest of preserving freedom. He also has an excellent article on the EFB-surely the most dictatorial bill ever to be thought up in supposedly Western New Zealand.

Let's see if the Wellington march will be better!

Marches Against the Electoral Finance Bill

John Boscawen from Kill the Bill! is organizing two marches against the Electoral Finance Bill. Please note that we have less than two months from 1 January, under the Bill, any political speech WILL BE ILLEGAL. For you jafas, the march is tomorrow (Saturday) from 10am onwards, from Town Hall to Queen Elizabeth Square. For people in Wellington such as I, the march will be on Wednesday at 12:30, marching from Lambton Quay to Parliament.

Unfortunately I have school that day. However, I could always fake sickness. :-)

Also, there will probably be marches in other parts of the country. Keep an eye and an ear peeled for any local marches in other cities.

Rick Giles is Back!

Rick Giles, the Kiwi detained in the US for well, essentially nothing, is back here, free in NZ. He is returning to normal life, once again doing podcasts for SOLO, and working towards the Libertarian Revolution. An article about his experience can be found here.

So how was it like, Rick?