A Destiny to Master

Taking hold of your presence in the universe is oft a great task to grasp. Your existence relies on your efforts to maintain itself. Without input your being within reality ceases. It ends abruptly, however strong the desire to continue.

This world offers you the freedom to think, feel and live. I argue however that it is the masses that are prepared to command other's individuality for their own personal gain, throwing liberty to the dogs. I do not call this a system of kindness or necessary human action, but taxation. Despite forever promoting the interests of the public, it is through the rule of government that humanity has become enslaved unwittingly. Through this, the goal of government and central planning becomes justified, but in no way does it subscribe morality to its cause. Plundering effort by the collective stakeholders is always theft; always an assault on liberty and your right to life.

Despotism holds a new name – democracy.

Should another have sway upon your life's dividend, I ask why? I ask how? I ask what right there is to challenge one's existence and force compensation where none is due. For every dollar that is taken from me, for every minute of labour I have contributed that does not return to me, it equates to just as much bondage – just that much of my life stolen.

Seemingly the world is created on non-effort; at least this is what a socialist may have you believe. That the world gives, or ought to give more than is distributed freely, is a fallacy that has no future in the millennia to come.

With those that agree with social freedoms, there is a tendency to place economic freedoms in a different category. If you support a person’s right to euthanasia (in effect, their right to do what they please with their life), and at the same time agree with redistributed wealth, there would be little consistency to your views. If consistency isn’t within your views, then there is no foundation to your convictions – there is no logic!

The nature of humans to divide and group certainly provides a strong inclination against freedom, but it can rarely be justified when looking at the core of our existence. We all have the right to pursue our own destiny, and at the same time, have no right to direct another’s. It remains yours to conquer and nobody else’s.

Anarchy, State & Utopia...

I’ll take a quick stab at defending anarchy (more closely, anarcho-capitalism), because it seems to be taking a bad rap from statists of all degrees with the perception it is only a Utopian ideal or ignorant et cetera.

My property is my effort. Indeed it is the ultimate expression of my effort; a mark of my existence. When does my effort become that of the state? What becomes of my effort when I have no definable right, but what others feel is just by the collective?

Consensus, or middle ground is the result of a group having their property taken by tax and getting it back in altered portions. How often is the outcome equal? And if it was equal, why contribute to the great bureaucracy of government in the first place?

I would say that democracy is a great disbeliever of morality within humans (perhaps second to religion). We are innately bad…

Joe down the road needs a hand up, so we need to coerce our terrible nation through tax to give him that hand. We can’t be charitable? We can’t be trusted to help that man?

How much do we pour out of our pockets every day to help find a cure for cancer? Is that through the wisdom of democracy? Or is it through the wisdom and morality of the individual willing to pass on his effort (albeit for altruistic gratification)?

I am growing more discontent with the LDP (Liberty and Democracy Party) simply for its tiptoeing around rights. Social rights are clear in the party…that is it. The consensus drawing on everything else is pitiful. To be honest it was the main motivator for finding another party outside of Labor and Liberal.

Participation in a democracy with clear property rights before the law is the only form of government that will hold any ounce of morality, and one that liberty and freedom enshrines.

I do believe in the rule of law, and I do believe in fundamental rights. Rights that cannot, under any circumstances, be contradicted. You either hold title over your efforts, or you don’t. There is no middle road.

I’ll give two quotes –

“The law perverted! The law - and, in its wake, all the collective forces of the nation. The law, I say, not only diverted from its proper direction, but made to pursue one entirely contrary! The law becomes the tool of every kind of avarice, instead of being its check! The law guilty of that very inequity which it was its mission to punish!” Frederic Bastiat’s The Law.

“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law,’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.” Thomas Jefferson.

Your attention please...

Words, letters, sounds, everything you see; your perception and experience has been moved by me. Even the little voice inside you has been sent a stray. You may understand, but should you feel empty after reading this, too bad. I have taken a piece of your life, and made you dwell in a direction that would not have occurred should I not have written and projected this feeling of mine. Now, interconnected by experience, everything moves you. Because you can only be aware of what you are aware of, you have surely been altered. A reality altered on an ever changing course.

Your right to offend me

It looks like the offensive police have been out in force.

Deadman has pointed out an article where a Gold Coast teenager had been charged with offensive behaviour for wearing a 'Jesus is a cunt' t-shirt.

Click here to see the News story.

"The Reverend Matt Cunt [sic] of the Helensvale Baptist Church said it was sad people spoke about the Lord in such a way. "

Alright, so this guy finds it sad, and the police think it is criminal to be offensive.

Let's turn this around in an appropriate manner. I want all religious people to be charged for making false and misleading science, for pursuing their own happiness in an intrusive fashion (whereby it limits my freedom), denying the use of contraception in Africa where millions are dying of AIDS each year, their offensive anti-abortion protests to which I don't agree (hey, I find it offensive...), their psychological abuse of children, their physical abuse of children, their destruction of human innovation, their coercive abuse of the law, and the discrimination of minority groups.

Which is more offensive? Are lies not a crime far worse? These religious people are the ones that are offensive. They are the ones that should be muzzled. The truth is always more palatable than lies no matter how coarse...

Ok, I'm not so naive as to contradict myself. I know I'm offensive and I know they are offensive, but I'm not going to be silencing thoughts or opinions because they don't agree with me. Right or wrong, the truth will shine through.

The Egotistical Altruist: A Walking Contradiction

The outspoken altruist takes pleasure (they will deny this) in placing themselves at the forefront of human kindness. Claiming slogans of self-sacrifice to be the only way, and rousing (false) courage develops an appearance of moral fiber, to which the altruist will thrive.

I will not deny my pleasure in being an egoist. I will not however attempt to tax favour from people for lulling them with empty rhetoric. I will not deny what is clearly natural amongst us. The altruist will place others above himself to edify, and egotistically gain satisfaction from it. The altruist will deny it. They will deny nature, and claim themselves bigger for it.

Hypocrisy! A rationally self-interested being borne out of nature, denying what is inherent in it (principally the supremacy of numero uno) for a clear motive of an expanded ego. A twat – no less.

I say this only for the outspoken altruist – those that wish others to be like themselves; these are the hypocrites – these are the ludicrous and obscene. These people push an ignorant vision of global self-sacrifice. Would much be left? Can a being survive by placing others, at all costs, above themselves? If one can’t, then what should stop a group – the world – following the same fate?

I fear a world in doubt; a civilization unsure of themselves and not capable of standing out or achieving. Blind subservience to a lost cause will not improve our condition, but, rather, altruism is a drain on society and a leech on progress that should be torn apart with wide scrutiny.

I maintain that any person requesting or requiring people to drop their values of self-worth and live for others, is acting as the bigger man and taking the moral high ground to lift themselves above the population and achieves (for their own selves) precisely what they want others not to do. A position much to be ridiculed for the ignorance of their arrogance is undeniably evident!

I had typed this rant a while before discovering an appropriate term (thanks to deadman) describing what we all follow, knowingly or unknowingly - "psychological egoism".

Letter to a misguided party

Indeed a portion of the Liberal party contains pro-business ideas, but true liberalism provides no assistance or affirmation of a particular group. When we take on the name Liberal, we do not need, nor want a reputation for defending the ‘rich’. We rather wish to hold as our ideals, that of entrepreneurial zeal, individual action and responsibility, our rights to property and ownership, and above all, liberty. Liberalism is for the free and independent choice of all individuals; swayed by no special interest or group but the common right of all to be free to choose. Our means to achieve these ends lies in laissez-faire, free market devotion (in other words capitalism).

Capitalism has become a much hated term and consistently linked with “exploitation”. The vale of distinction of the employer and employee is immense. But, no greater fallacy has existed. It is always and ultimately the free action of individuals within society. The ability of men and women to trade at will, in terms that are favourable to all parties. Capitalism which has become corrupted by misunderstanding, means freedom. It is the liberty of individuals and allowing one’s own effort (in which I mean income) to be mutually exchanged. This is the freedom of Australian’s to expend their effort in any way they wish.

A person’s life is their effort, where should they be limited or controlled in the way they dispense with their effort, they have lost their freedom. They have lost control of their lives. They are no longer individuals of free action, but controlled subjects at the whim of the few that rule over them.

The elimination of their basic rights to ownership over one’s own body, life and effort will never allow for a betterment of humankind and will always work in the reverse.

I will repeat again. Capitalism is not about the employer or employee. These two parties are almost irrelevant, or at least should be considered conjointly. It is the consumer which holds the power in the market. Or, more rightly, the market is the consumer. The consumer is without doubt the individual who chooses to spend their property and income on items that provide and satisfy them adequately. It is each and every Australian that maintains choice of where to shop, eat and live and provide for competition.

It is however, government intervention that limits the choice of the consumer. It is the government that erodes competition in a free society. Central economic planning, whether by minimum wage, fixed prices, subsidies or tariffs, will always limit the power of the consumer, which of course means you. When government decides to play with prices on products, it plays with you. If government levies a discriminating tax on a product, it has burdened you. When government provides a service by monopoly, or even allows a corporate monopoly, it has decided for you. Government as an institution has no faith what so ever in you the consumer.

It becomes largely ironic that the consumer elects these representatives to do the thinking for us and eliminate our right to choose. We elect these people with a lack of faith in our own capacity to think and act. In this climate, we are not able to live as peaceful, civilised Australians, for that is precisely what our government bureaucrats take away.

Milton Friedman put it wisely in his book Capitalism and Freedom where he said “underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself”.

As I have been listening to the various members of the Liberal party speak on policy direction (not the policies themselves), I have become extremely worried about this leaving behind, or ‘dumping’ if you will, of our very beliefs in the direction this state or country should be heading. Instead of allowing what we know to be right forming policy it becomes what ever the voting public can eat out of the ever growing government pie. This idea of consensus, or even moving to accommodate what has been proven wrong over the centuries is extremely disappointing. To this I refer to our middle class welfare which is now common place. We have lost confidence in our values, and sold-out our ideas on what is purely and simply a pathetic attempt at vote grabbing.

To be frank, if the voters of this country want high taxing, high spending government, the Liberal party would never be their first consideration. Let them vote Labor and watch this nation sink. It offers little help to the party to be playing ‘Big Brother’ and giving the ‘poor guy’ a hand as Labor will always hold that ground.

I find it extraordinarily surprising that I have to present to this party a reason to return and focus on our home ground; almost as if the concepts that the Liberal party had once adopted as core beliefs are thrown a sunder by false and ignorant consensus building. The party may lose it’s way at an increasing pace if we continue to ‘toe the line’ on flawed policy being spat out by the socialist governments presently in power.

Our party can, and without doubt ought to be focusing on policies that remove these boundaries on competition and choice in the market. We ought to drop tariffs as they drive up the prices of goods in society, taxes ought to be low, for each dollar extra in the hands of consumers is a dollar extra towards the production of goods that add value to the economy and thereby increase the standard of living.

The key to our focus ought to lie in increasing the maximum level of production. Each policy designed with this in mind will assuredly proceed with a real and clear advancement in the nation’s standard of living.

What we have to do as firm believers in free-enterprise, is prove how they can benefit everyone. We must define every step of the way with clear rejection of policy based on faith and feeling. Rather than tout voodoo economics like the socialists, we need to present our beliefs as truisms – facts that are undeniable.

To pull Tom Paine’s banner, it is to us that will promote what is simply ‘Common Sense’. We can show that we do not take one particular group or special interest into perspective, but the whole of Australia. Not just looking at the effects of policy on one area, but on everyone. This is our reason for a common sense approach to the direction of policy in this party, in this state, and in this country. We do not favour the employer or the employee, the rich, or the poor. We favour what is true.

Government holds a monopoly over the law, and with such power we must constitute ethical conduct as a supremely undeniable principle. This means the refusal of politics toying with the haves and have nots in society. Without coercing one through restriction or redistribution, we will axiomatically prove an ideology with no contradictions. We will show the left that it is acceptable to disagree, but that it is their principles that will not allow freedom and work strongly against society through mystical, dogmatic perceptions of the mechanics of human interaction and cohesion.

We favour each and every person in this country, and their rights to just and equal treatment from the law. The delusion of getting ‘something for nothing’ must be quashed.

This is common sense. This is right. This is liberal.