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.

Two Articles on Atlas Shrugged

A year after having read Atlas Shrugged, two good articles comparing the events in the book to real life events in this current financial crisis:

'Atlas Shrugged': From Fact to Fiction in 52 Years

Britain, by Ayn Rand

Too sad.

Glenn Jameson, National SOLOist

So, Glenn Jameson over at SOLO, is a "key creative talent" behind National's latest billboard campaign. Many people, such as Peter Cresswell, are up in arms over it.

However, I digress. Frankly, so what?

The fact is, he has the right to go and work for whoever he wants to work for. He has no "duty" to go and work anywhere. Isn't that what Objectivism is about? Glenn was acting in his rational self-interest. Given the choices, benefits and consequences involved, he decided to go and work on the National Party's advertising team. This does not necessarily say, however, that he agrees with the National Party and what it stands for. Indeed, he has a rather pragmatic justification for his work with the National Party.

All things considered, I too would rather have him work for, say, the Libertarianz, just like most SOLOists and Libertarianz. But it should not be held against him. He chose to do what he considered to be the best thing to do out of all his choices. He looked at the National Party's views and compared them with his. And he took the job.

Besides, when this is all over, he's pretty much free to do whatever he likes again. It's merely for this election campaign that he has decided to work for the Nats. He has not done anything wrong, on any level. Yes, we may question why he did go and work there, but we should not:

a) feel morally superior; and

b) go on a Medieval witchhunt, just because he made a decision in his rational self-interest that we may disagree with.

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.

Interesting Debate on SOLO

An interesting debate is occurring on SOLO at the moment (as there is always), over the inherent immorality of slavery, which came from my essay below. The argument can be seen here. My page on SOLO is here, and the SOLO main page can be viewed here.

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.

Rudd's Victory a Step Back for Oz

Rudd's victory in Australia-purely on the grounds of appealing to the lowest common denominator-is a step back for Australia, one of the better countries in this irrational and inconsistent world. At SOLO, Hilton Holder, the Australian co-coordinator, discussed the results and what they mean for Australia.

And it ain't good.

Atlas' 50th Birthday Celebration

All manner of Kiwi SOLOists got together in Wellywood on Saturday 27 (last saturday) to celebrate 50 years of Ayn Rand's magnificent and world-changing novel, Atlas Shrugged. It was a good time, with several speeches, great food and the launch of Mitch Lee's new pet project, Samazdat-the SOLO newsletter, launched every two weeks. Here is me at the event:

Yes, I'm quite well aware of the fact that I look like Rose O'Donnell in the photo (and be aware that photos are never capture you tres bien-it's in greyscale). Plus, I've been sick. And that jacket I'm wearing there is BIG.

Feel-Good Environmentalism

The majority of the Environmentalists, despite the real underlying motives of the movement (specifically, the end of industrial civilization and in some cases man itself), are not actually anti-man and anti-industrialism per se. One of the main reasons why Environmentalism is so popular, but is rarely discussed in political circles, is that it is a feel-good system.

The reason for the whole feel-goodism of Environmentalism is that people are falsely made to believe that the movement is actually something good. For many young university ideologues, for instance, what could be better than going out and saving the whales?

But the feel-good Environmentalists fail to see beyond that. They think that, because it feels good, it must be good, even though basic knowledge teaches us otherwise. Drugs, for instance, feel good, but the effects are not necessarily so. To a serial killer, murder can also feel good-but murder is hardly a good thing. This is what many Leftists fail to realize-and, as thus, set the scene for tyranny and hardship. The best example of Leftist feel-goodism leading to such an outcome would be Cuba. Even today, Leftists ignore Cuba's problems, instead just blaming them on-and what else would you expect-the US embargo (despite the fact that Cuba trades with every other nation).

The feel-good aspect of Environmentalism comes from the fact that Environmentalism, like the whole of the Left in general, is about appealing to emotion rather than reason. This is why so many Leftist revolutionaries are young and extremely idealistic. They are immune to the ugly reality that lies beyond all the "I'm saving the environment!" nonsense. Once again, these young Environmentalists think that because it feels good, it must be good. And I suppose that's why so many young people take drugs.

This indoctrination, combined with the utter failure to look at Environmentalism rationally before joining up (most people do so because it's "the thing" or an act of rebellion) is similar to the tactics used in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia. What could be cooler than joining in a revolution against the evil Capitalists?

Objectivism and Libertarianism use the opposite appeal. Instead, they appeal to reason. Instead of getting idiotic teenagers to rebel against the evil Capitalists, they get those teenagers-me, for example (despite the fact that I'm not an idiot)-to look at the improvements by the West in living standards during the past two centuries, and to look at the underlying philosophy behind those increases. It's obvious which system caused those increases.

Finally, after 110 million dead under Communism, far more under Socialism, and the other collectivist and statist terrors throughout history, the lesson is getting through. From the Forbes Magazine article Atlas Shrugs Again:

"Today's left doesn't have anything positive to offer to young people. When they were socialists, there was at least something they were fighting for, and they believed in a right and a wrong. Today's leftist agenda is negative and nihilistic--focused on stopping industrialization, capitalism and even Western civilization. But young people want positive values. That's why religion is so strong today, because many view it as the only thing that promises a brighter future."

What Yaron Brook at the ARI doesn't say is that the reason the Left paints such a nihilistic portrait of the future is why Environmentalism is so strong. To any random man on the street, it's about doing your part for the Environment. So what he says, albeit true for a lot of the Left, doesn't apply to feel-good Environmentalism. To most young people, especially considering the Leftism that is feed into you almost daily at school, it's about saving the environment-not about ending Western Civilization. Feel-good Environmentalism is responsible for the irrational Environmentalist witchhunts, and for the "live Earth" concerts and protests every other day, but that's a completely different story.

If we are to succeed in bringing down Environmentalism and the reality of it-not what most people think it is, we need to target the feel-goodism that has made it so successful.

The Greatness of Man's Mind in His Buildings

Man's mind, when put to use, can be a marvelous thing. We witnessed this today with the Burj Dubai overtaking Taipei 101 as the World's Tallest Building. Although it is now officially the tallest, it still has around 200-300 metres left before topping out, at about 800 metres (the official height is being kept a secret).

The greatness of the mind when put to use can produce incredible feats of engineering. This has been seen throughout the ages, from the Pyramids and the Sphinx of Ancient Egypt, to the Colosseum during Rome's heyday, the great Cathedrals of the Middle Ages, the bridges and tunnels of the Victorians and recently skyscrapers soaring several hundred metres into the air.

But these aren't just "big box" buildings, or brutalist 1960's commercial commieblocks; man's great buildings are also feats of engineering and aesthetics. They are designed to be look good and feel the same way. They are true feats of man's mind. (to the point, I think we all know why Howard Roark's career was an architect!)

Keep up the good work, architects of the future-and don't return to the 1960s!

Interesting Article on "Libertarian Anarchists"

Although the two words, put together in their proper use is an oxymoron, I have recieved an interesting article put together by an Objectivist (in the USA, of course-he takes the word "Libertarian" completely different to us) called "Anarchism vs Objectivism. The article can be viewed in the link below:

http://www.hblist.com/anarchy.htm

New Blog at SOLO

I've set up a new blog over at SOLO. Much of the stuff over there will be from this site, but there will be the odd occasion when there's an exception, so keep your eyes peeled there, as well.

~Callum