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.

Prince Charles

He's finally gone off the edge.

According to Reuters, he's publishing a book called "Harmony", about how man's recent pursuit of wealth and prosperity (read: the pursuit of happiness) is, in his words, "dangerously disconnected" from the natural world.

What an utterly ridiculous statement from a man in line to become the next King of the nation that led the world in Industrial growth in the 19th Century- thus paving the way to the prosperity enjoyed today, and the nation that first implemented, on a national scale, the ideas of the rule of law, individual rights, and common law, that founded Western politics. A nation without the ideas of which America, and no other Western nation, could exist, let alone develop originally.

So, after the death of Queen Elizabeth, I propose:

-New Zealand immediately declares a Republic;
-The Prime Minister of the time becomes the President of the new Republic; and
-A constitution is drafted similar to the US Constitution, to keep the British ideas of Rule of Law and Individual Rights alive and well.

Luckily, given the recent results of a poll by the Republican Movement, it looks like that may -may- just happen.

One Dead (So Far) in London Riots

The riots in London over the G20 meeting have left one protester dead. Frankly, this doesn't surprise me.

The further left you go on the political spectrum, the more violent protests usually are; and in a protest as vehemently anti-capitalist as this one, events were bound to turn violent. Violent protests, far from being a form of free-speech, are in most cases just a lot of angry teenagers and twenty-somethings who:

- have never run a business, let alone the huge businesses they've been protesting against;
-have never had responsibility for their lives assumed by other people. Most protesters are not working-class people with a genuine interest in living independently -they're usually middle class.
-turn not to principles on reality, but the arbitrary to justify their assertions ("everything's relative", "you can't prove reason's relationship with reality", "one man's freedom is another man's chains" etc)
-think their ideas are "rebelling against the system". They think they're "cool" for the lack thereof.

If the protesters are really interested in the plight of the poor, they'll engage in the most noble and greatest of all human actions: the act of production- of which their reckless violence is the opposite.

Daniel Hannan

If you have not already seen him, here is Daniel Hannan, MEP for South-East England, taking on Gordan Brown over his recent economic policies... a great speaker making excellent points.

Racial Progress in Europe?

While the NAACP in the US is claiming that banks unfairly targeted black home-buyers with easy credit, a new study conducted in Germany and Eastern Europe has found that fully 5% of German 15 year olds is a neo-Nazi, with larger numbers in the far-right of German politics.

This is why I hate the detractors of America pointing to Europe as an example of racial equality: beneath the clean exterior of European statism, a huge amount of social tension still exists in the continent. In parts of Britain and France, huge numbers of Muslim immigrants live in huge ghettos that the police won't go into, where Islamic violence spreads -almost all Islamic terrorist attacks in Europe are carried out by Muslims who've lived there their whole lives in the countries they hate. In Germany and Eastern Europe, neo-Nazism is on the rise amongst teenagers and young adults, with the accompanying crimes*. In Russia, the situation in Chechnya is all the proof of racial tension in Putin's new USSR.

With racial tensions as bad as they are in Europe, perhaps race relations have in fact improved the most in that most racist of nations, the USA?

*from the article: "Government figures have shown anti-Semitic crimes rose at the end of last year."

PC Gone Mad

Truly appalling. Gordon Brown is called names! It's an offense to everything good and decent!

This is the Britain of today, in which political correctness permeates from every corner of society, especially politics. In the article, Lord Foulkes (god knows how he got that title) says about Clarkson's comment:

"He has insulted Gordon Brown three times over: accusing him of being a liar, having a go at him for having a physical handicap, and for his nationality.

"It is an absolute outrage of the worst kind.

"Disabled people will be up in arms about it, Scottish people will be angry and it should concern all of us that the prime minister has been accused of lying."

There is a common phrase for people espousing views like this: pull your head in. Or, more accurately: grow up.

More Links for your Enjoyment

At last, rock-solid proof that voting Labour really is dangerous for your health. Instead of lining the pockets of ad agencies, simply surfing YouTube could've done the trick for other political parties campaign advertising.

Also a delightfully politically-incorrect video on social etiquette that might annoy some feminists.

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!

Skyscrapers-Canary Wharf Tower

Situated in the heart of London's once derelict docklands, stands what is currently Britain's tallest building. The Canary Wharf Tower, or One Canada Square, is 235 metres high with 50 floors filling that space. The building was completed in 1991, during the renovation of the Docklands which made it one of London's most popular attractions and living areas.



The Canary Wharf Tower has an iconic, 11-ton pyramid at the top, which serves as a beacon for planes in the area. The whole tower contains 130,130 squares metres of office space.

In London's current building boom which is seeing significant changes to the London skyline/s taking place, the Canary Wharf Tower will be overtaken by the London Bridge Tower (the "Shard of Glass") by the end of this decade, with several new towers in the City supposed to overtake it as well. But the Canary Wharf Tower is still expected to be the largest, and most iconic of the towers of the Docklands.

...The British...

Kiwis are fat and ugly. Our cities are disasters, and our wine is disgusting. Well, according to a new book put out by British author Duncan Fallowell, entitled "Going As Far As I Can".

In it, he goes spewing about how his trip to New Zealand was a disaster, and how New Zealand as a whole is a disaster. He criticizes every aspect of NZ, calling Christchurch a "visual disaster zone". Auckland is "not my type of town", and Wellington is worse. He said that NZers were fat and ugly, covered in too many tattoos (which is true in some aspects, but also true for every other nation, including Britain, as well). Our wine has no taste with a "slight chlorine finish".

And yes, he is from Britain. Beautiful Britain, with commieblocks, weird accents from all over, no real scenery (which you have to go to Scotland to view), and terraced worker's houses compromising most cities. Don't forget it was out-and-out socialist from the 1950s right until Ms. Maggie Thatcher (who, despite her very conservative outlook, did wonders for Britain considering the state it was in).

Cheap little hypocrite.

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.

Brit Gets It Right!

The bumbling Brits don't usually get it right first time; but on the subject of education, this guy gets it dead spot on.

And he thinks Britain gets it bad!

The Republic of New Zealand

There has been some firing up of debate recently, especially in the Dominion Post, over whether NZ will be a Republic one day. Although 55% of NZers are still against it (why?), top Kiwi politicians have said that New Zealand will be a Republic eventually-just not today.

But why not now? The British Monarchy is symbolic of an Empire long gone. The Queen, although she holds a lot of theoretical power, actually has very little say in the day-to-day running of things, in both Britain and here. Essentially, she is a figurehead, and little more.

A Republic means that NZ can self-govern itself. We are a mature nation, and no longer dependent on Britain for everything. The head-of-state will no longer be a foreigner living half way around the world, but a Kiwi who was elected in by popular vote.

Becoming a Republic can also put NZ on the path towards Libertarianism, as it implaces the belief (well, actually, the fact) that we are a mature people and can make decisions for ourselves-and can stop living off someone else. Plus, there's always the sense of freedom going around...

Iran Releases Britsh hostages

The fourteen men and one woman taken hostage by Iran for allegedly tresspassing in Iranian waters have finally been released, easing international tensions between Iran and the West (for now, anyway). President Ahmedinejad of Iran said he forgave the British Perssonal, but said that Britain "was not brave enough" to admit that they'd tresspassed into Iranian waters.

The hostages boarded a plane headed for London for Tehran, being escorted onto the plane away from journalists and the media. The fifteen flew business-class to London. British Prime Minister Tony Blair welcomed them when they arrived in London.

The Iranian President also met the fifteen hostages in person. Although everybody is happy that the hostages have finally been freed, several British newspapers have been asking questions about the situation. Ahmedinejad has also defended Iran's right to develop nuclear weapons.

Skyscrapers-Swiss Re Tower

This odd but beautiful tower is the Swiss Re Tower, in London, England. Also known as "The Gherkin", the Swiss Re Tower stands 180 metres above London streets and is the third tallest building in the city, after the Natwest Tower (behind it) and Canary Wharf. The Swiss Re Tower was completed in 2003 and has since became a very famous structure. It has 41 floors and a total of 64,470 square metres of floor space.
The building is known as an environmentally-friendly structure, using 40% less energy than a tower of the same size. The tower's double-glazed windows are designed to trap cool air within them, to save energy otherwise used for air conditioning.

The Swiss Re tower is located in an area of London called "The City", near famous landmarks like St Paul's Cathedral.