Warning : Political topic, click away if I’m going against any personal dogma about blogging and politics.
Ever since Ian Parker-Joseph, leader of the UK Libertarian Party commented on the 1984 entry, I have been reading about Libertarians in the UK and the Libertarian Party (1).
Having lived in Germany, but also as a qualified police agent in my home country, the 1984-issue is a sensible one for me, but also an issue of mixed feelings.
I actually do have NO problems with the gouvernment collecting my data. Get over it, but there’s no issue with a compulsory ID card, nor is there with handing over all my internet logs to the authorities. The problem only arises when this huge data collection can create paranoia, when there is no law protecting the privacy of citizens.
I must admit that when I came to the UK, the thought of being almost 24/7 on CCTV was a scary one, but soon I got used to this new form of Big Brother spying upon me. Especially since I had just left Germany, a country where it is NOT allowed to log IP addresses. The same country where a law regulates that internet providers log the login to the internet, emails and VOIP calls. This combined with a stringent set of laws on regulating the protection of personal data. The UK is not alone, Big Brother is watching you all over, in any country, and I seriously doubt that most so-called privacy anal-retentists browse online anonymously or avoid cloud based services such as GMail and Google Web History(2) and consequently block cookies from third parties such as ad providers, statistics programs and many more. Probably most of them have at least one credit card, and maybe even participate in several bonus card systems in their favourite shops, thus allowing everyone and their neighbours to analyse their spending patterns.
Your privacy is an illusion(3). I’m drifting. Back to the Libertarians.
Wikipedia offers, via the Internet Encyclopedia of Psychology, following definition of Libertarianism:
Libertarians are committed to the belief that individuals, and not states or groups of any other kind, are both ontologically and normatively primary; that individuals have rights against certain kinds of forcible interference on the part of others; that liberty, understood as non-interference, is the only thing that can be legitimately demanded of others as a matter of legal or political right; that robust property rights and the economic liberty that follows from their consistent recognition are of central importance in respecting individual liberty; that social order is not at odds with but develops out of individual liberty; that the only proper use of coercion is defensive or to rectify an error; that governments are bound by essentially the same moral principles as individuals; and that most existing and historical governments have acted improperly insofar as they have utilized coercion for plunder, aggression, redistribution, and other purposes beyond the protection of individual liberty.
Noble words, as is the case with almost any ideology. The principle of liberty has been forgotten in most parts of our world and has become the same illusion that your privacy is. A visit to the UK Libertarian’s website makes the ideology sound even better:
At long last there is another way forwards for our country; one which puts you, rather than the corrupt politicians at Westminster, firmly in charge. Our policies provide real-world solutions to the real-world challenges that we all face today, and do so whilst putting government and the State back in their rightful place as the servants, rather than the masters, of us all.
Who would not immediately want to become a member of this Party?
When you start reading their manifesto, feelings might chance be reinforced even more, depending on what your favourite movie is. Did you take the Red Pill and do you believe in The Matrix?
If you answered both questions with Yes go now and apply for your membership.
If you also are a firm believer in the morals(4) of the movie Fight Club, you will have even more sympathy for the LPUK:
We will amend the Firearms Acts to repeal the pistol ban, which has both completely failed to reduce armed crime and crippled our country’s ability to compete in the pistol shooting events in the Olympic and Commonwealth Games, while depriving law-abiding householders of the ability to defend their homes with one of the most suitable weapons available. [From the LPUK Manifesto, topic Law and Order]
Things become interesting here, especially when we hit over to The Devil’s Kitchen, a funny and well-written thought-provoking blog, started by one of the LPUK co-founders(5) (Warning: common offensive language). Actually a political blog right down my alley.
Today’s entry seems to fit the provoking, but also _scary_ mentality of the LPUK:
We might instead say that if we impose systems under which children are only forcibly separated from their parents under the very worst of circumstances, and under which parents are not always and unequivocally treated as evil abusers if they fail to live up to ideal standards of parenting, then sometimes this will mean that children will suffer horribly and die – but that it will avoid a far larger number of children suffering horribly by being taken into council care without good cause.
And fuck, if we’re libertarians rather than just blathering cunts, we might say that this is the *right thing to fucking do*.
A very powerful but dangerous message, prone to be understood wrongly. Ad rem and also bordering the style of propaganda which always will be listened to when countries experience negative economic downturns. The same style of propaganda alike style, which made the secessionist Vlaams Blok popular in the Belgian 1991 elections. The style of propaganda which could lead to a bump in popularity, because in a country driven by binge drinking a petty crime, isn’t it true that everyone has the right to defend themselves? And we admit:
Allowing people to carry firearms certainly will lead to the death of several people on the compulsory Friday after work binge drink, but at least the victims will have had the opportunity to shoot back.(6)
Libertarians of the LPUK, let’s rehearse the populist blogging style once more please.
The ‘Harsh’ Facts
- I like thought provoking, harsh and highly aggressive opinions if based on factual truths.
- I must admit that The Devil’s Kitchen could quickly become my favourite UK blog
- DK has the potential to bring the highly offensive(7) blogger madbull back.
- I consider myself a Libertarian.
- I like to provoke and select quotes just to ridiculize things. Fisking?
- This is how I discovered the awesome Philosophy of Liberty animation.(↩)
- Chances that most users of the Google Toolbar actually know that their queries are saved are rather SLIM.(↩)
- Unless you are consequent(↩)
- I use this term loosely(↩)
- Multi-authored nowadays(↩)
- Following quote should be added here, but I do not condone the LPUK stance on firearms: And fuck, if we’re libertarians rather than just blathering cunts, we might say that this is the *right thing to fucking do*(↩)
- As once said by Libertarian Kn@ppster(↩)
It became obvious you weren’t interested in making a serious point when you made references to the Matrix and Fight Club.
That’s how people to whom we would refer as ‘jackasses’ argue.
@The Kusabi, actually I am too new to the LPUK to make serious criticism. I support many views I found back on the LPUK site, and also on LPUK _affiliated_ sites, other views I don’t share.
I’ll stick to my words about PDF’s entry: powerful, ad rem, but dangerously prone to be misunderstood and invite to more a more populist style. Otherwise, yes I like most I read at DK.
Franky,
Thank you for your compliments, and your comment. Just one point about this paragraph…
“The UK is not alone, Big Brother is watching you all over, in any country, and I seriously doubt that most so-called privacy anal-retentists browse online anonymously or avoid cloud based services such as GMail and Google Web History and consequently block cookies from third parties such as ad providers, statistics programs and many more. Probably most of them have at least one credit card, and maybe even participate in several bonus card systems in their favourite shops, thus allowing everyone and their neighbours to analyse their spending patterns.”
The point is that I can CHOOSE not to use GMail or Google Web History. I cannot CHOOSE not to have an ID card, or be filmed on CCTV, etc.
As it happens, I have no credit card and no store card: I do useGMail, but I do it in the full knowledge of the possible consequences. I clean cookies and am careful about my online presence.
However, the big point here is choice: it is massively important: indeed, it is the crux of the matter, especially as far as ID cards are concerned. In Germany, I think that everyone has to have one (?) but that is not the case here, and it is not the government’s privilege to tell me who I am.
They work for me (or so the supposition goes), not the other way around.
DK
DK,
thanks for passing by. I agree with you, but we have different backgrounds. I come from the ‘continent’ and am used to IDs and ISPs having to save data. Hence I might see less harm in those, although I wished the UK had similar privacy laws as aforementioned countries have.
But as said, CCTV was a _shock_ and I certainly agree with the 1984 campaign!
Sadly things are deriving more and more every day and there are even plans to register every prepay phone purchase in a near future and the UK is becoming more and _G.W.Bushian_: The War on Terror is not a wildcard to control everyone, but the gouvernment thinks differently.
Yes, after I will have ranted some more, I can see myself become a member.