EU begins to blossom
A series of stories from England displays the features of the emerging transnational order:
Posted by Jim Kalb at April 07, 2003 04:34 PM | Send Comments
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/2457429.stm Old hat, but merry old England can now be justifiably classified as a police state. Posted by: Jason Eubanks on April 7, 2003 5:46 PMJason, this article was discussed at “View From the Right” when it came out, and it’s well worth posting again. Who would’ve thought the country of ORWELL, NO LESS, would come to this! It’s beyond mind-boggling … it’s absolutely sobering and, yes, frightening. How any individual or group who supports this arbitrariness, this totalitarianism rearing its ugly head IN THE MOTHER COUNTRY — THE COUNTRY OF BURKE, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! — how anyone who gleefully, shamefully supports this civil and moral crime (because of what it does to their imagined enemies) can imagine FOR ONE INSTANT that it won’t in due course turn on them, exactly as they now use it against others, is incomprehensible. Of course, that’s not the reason it’s wrong — but one would think they’d see AT LEAST THAT! Somehow, they don’t. Posted by: Unadorned on April 7, 2003 6:32 PM Tony Blair has been a great guy but his instincts - and those of his party - run towards statism, bureaucratic control, and unaccountable supra-national organizations. As a result, all sorts of traditional British liberties (which we’ve inherited and often expanded) are indanger of being quashed by the Euronannies. I wish we could offer the British some viable alternative to joining the EU. Posted by: Wim on April 14, 2003 11:53 AMWim, there are two ways to lose your most important liberties: surrender to a statist bureaucracy or surrender to an absolutist belief in free markets. Europe and America share both characteristics, but Europe tends more toward left liberal statism, whilst America more strongly represents right wing free market liberalism. I wouldn’t wish either option on my friends, although the right liberal way does seem to leave more space for conservatives to operate within. Posted by: Mark Richardson on April 14, 2003 9:27 PMMark, what is wrong with an absolutist belief in free markets? I mean, how could a person’s liberties be violated so long as no-one in an unfettered free market refrained from force, fraud or theft? Posted by: Arthur on April 15, 2003 3:29 AMArthur, I suppose it depends on what you mean by liberty. If all you mean by liberty is the freedom to do what you want, then I suppose an absolutely free market poses no problems. But what if your sense of freedom is tied in with being able to live your life according to your own better nature within a community? An absolutist belief in free markets is inevitably detrimental to this kind of freedom. For instance, an absolutist belief in a free market requires that capital and labour be able to move freely around the world. This means that nations are no longer able to establish immigration restrictions to uphold their own ethnic traditions, nor are they able to limit the intrusion of foreign cultural influences. Similarly, an absolutist belief in a free market requires that there be no restrictions on the economic participation of women. This undercuts the traditional role of men within the family as providers, and the traditional role of women as homemakers. The clarity and stability of traditional family life suffers as a result. Similarly, an absolutist belief in a free market requires that the efforts of a community to protect a valued physical environment are overridden by the individual right to dispose of property as desired. In other words, it means that I can disregard the wishes of an entire community and knock down a valued heritage site as part of my individual property rights. None of this means that capitalism is inherently wrong, or that we have to have a centrally planned economy. It just means that an intelligent regulation of the free market is required to uphold a set of higher values. Posted by: Mark Richardson on April 15, 2003 9:37 PMMark Richardson writes: Sure it does. An “absolutely free market” can be as free or as tyrannical as any other abstractly utopian arrangement; what distinguishes it from other utopias is that it uses a semantics of “property” to describe its coercions. Posted by: Matt on April 16, 2003 12:26 AM |