David Davis
Sadly for Diddy-Dave-Camoron, Hannan has said unsayable things in the context of the Zeitgeist. It is good. It shows up how there is no possible party that could have a chance of gaining power that could get us out of our statist mess.
Sean Gabb and I reluctantly agree that, in the event of a revolutionary Libertarian Government being elected in England, the NHS could not be dismantled straight away: we would be killed. But it will remain a secondary objective for destruction.
We shall simply have to wait a few days, burn its paper-records and mallet its disks into the dirt, while all the rest of the nation’s ex-“public-employees” are nursing their financial wounds and hurt pride.
The doctors and the better nurses will look after themselves: everyone needs them, will need them, andat least the doctors will have money put by, for they are already rich. My half-brother has a TVR racing car, and he’s only 36. Good nurses will be re-employable immediately. Everyone else is superfluous.
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Is there no possibility that the NHS would be able to stand in a libertarian state? I know that this would go against the basic core of libertarianism, but isn’t it the job of the state to look after it’s citizens. I mean, look at America, which has privatized health care, people are looking at $1000s of dollars for what we get for free.
Louedmimedave.” $1000s of dollars for what we get for free”.
I had no idea that threre were still people who think health services in the UK are free. Simply amazing! And for years Broon has been tipping lorry loads of EXTRA money into the NHS. The third biggest employer in the world, free!
That was the sickest remark in a long time!
Christ, sorry to offend.
I agree with all of this. The NHS is an abomination, funded by theft, supported by a voting army of brainwashed people who have been trained to think of it as a matter of national pride. The brainwashers have successfully wrapped it in the blanket of patriotism and buttered it with a ladle full of fear, guaranteeing a pavlovian reaction to any suggestion that it should be changed or that it is in any way wrong. “People will die if we change the NHS” is the cattle cry. Absolutely pathetic, and frightening that so many people are so completely and thoroughly controlled.
Over the last few days, as the Americans try and destroy Obamacare, the NHS has been held up as an example by some of them of how bad such a system would be. People in the UK have been slighted, offended by what they perceive as attacks on something they are proud of as a great achievement. It makes no sense to rebut false statements made by people in other countries for their own ends, especially when their ‘wrong’ ideas will not impact on the NHS in any way. Their criticisms are something to be laughed off, not bristled at. But that is not my main point.
Some Home Educators have joined in with the ‘We love the NHS’ campaign. This is really very odd.
If, God forbid, a child of these Home Educators breaks their arm falling out of a tree and has to be taken to Accident and Emergency, they will immediately be faced with a barrage of questions, the first one being, “Where is she at school?” If you answer, “We Home Educate”, the alarm bells could well go off, ending in you being flagged, put on some absurd register, visited by Social Services and your Autonomous Learning brought to an abrupt end.
That is the same NHS that some deluded Home Educators ‘Love’; the NHS is an arm of the same state that is now planning to destroy their children’s education, their ability and right to parent as they see fit, the same state that has caused parents to flee the country so that their children do not face abuse… and they Love them.
This has nothing to do with wether or not collectivist health is the best way to get healthcare to the maximum number of people; this is about LOGIC. If the NHS protected their privacy and acted solely as a provider of care there would be no problem with regard to their Home Educating, or the privacy of their medical records. The fact is that the NHS is now not only about healthcare – it is a soft way to control and monitor every family in the UK.
If you do not vaccinate, Home Educate, have rowdy rough and tumble boys, have ‘fat’ children, or are in any way not in the mainstream, being in contact with the NHS is potentially dangerous to you; you are at the mercy of the prejudices of the medical staff you come in contact with. Some Home Educators may think that this is completely ridiculous. Sorry, but that is the reality in a country where the truth about Home Education has not been efficiently expressed to the population. It happens in the US also. By all means, use the Google to find your own examples.
No one in their right mind can ‘love’ such a ‘service’, and being a Home Educator, at this particular time, it is absolutely incomprehensible that any Home Educator could ‘love’ them.
Saying that you ‘love the NHS’ is like saying you ‘love the state school system’ simply because someone in another country said that ‘State schools in Britain are absolutely terrible’. If you love the NHS, then you should love the State Schools also – they are branches of the same tree.
Medicine and the people who dispense it should never be a threat to the patient. The many stories of nurses and doctors abusing patients in the ways described above are examples of the most appalling lapses of the duty of care that medical professionals all have. You should be able to go to your doctor, be able to confide in him and know that whatever you say to him is completely private and that what you confide will not cause other agencies to swoop down on you.
Your body belongs to you. You should be able to visit a doctor, receive treatment based upon informed consent, and not have to worry about any other aspect other than the medical service itself. Your records should be absolutely private, and the fact that you seek medical attention and do not have a mainstream lifestyle should not be an automatic trigger for subsequent investigations. That is the baseline that medicine should work from; how it is payed for and organized is another matter, but at the very root of medicine is confidentiality, consent, and care.
I think you are correct and that we have moved beyond the possibility of rescue from dictatorship. The people who surrounded and worked with Margaret Thatcher (except for the prominent traitors who eventually trashed it all) managed to turn the tide at the end of the 70s. I don’t think that will be able to happen again, and what was unimaginable to many (not you) a few short years ago is rapidly becoming reality. As the dams against collectivist action and thought are breached the mighty and furious flood built up over the last 30 years, is sweeping away the remnants of freedom. Freedom itself is being discredited and established as uncool.
The Tories have allowed themselves to be persuaded they need to be more collectivist (which has been cleverly associated with “caring”) and discredited themselves with the exceptions of a few. There is no Thatcher in sight who would be able to lay hands on effective power and challenge the collectivists now.
A small thought. The danger is not the collectivists but the totalitarian individuals who control the collectivists. Democracy plus a controlled main stream media equals dictatorship.
We have arrived.
It’s simple….Greedy Dr’s and the BMA are a threat to the health of the nation.
My mental health is at risk, I cannot cope with the tax’s. These money grabbing individuals keep milking the system and to cure my anxiety they prescribe me drugs to make it feel well and ok.
We students of post marxism of course can all recognise Gramsci’s “cultural hegemony” in operation here. Poor Dan is too far outside its comfort zone. It’s the equivalent (I just said over at LFAT) of some politician in the 60s saying that homosexuality should be protected by law, and gays should be able to marry one another. Regardless of the merits of the argument, it would have immediately been buried in moral outrage, from both the ruling elite and Teh Masses. Which is why we need some kind of gramscian approach, as libertarians, to slowly turn the cultural hegemony oil tanker onto a new heading. Basically, politicians can never be more radical than the hegemony will allow them. Hannan is correct, but he seems a bit naive regarding this. Besides all else, if he’s going to go on rightwingextremist TV saying such things, he ought to realise that everything he says has to be absolutely bombproof; those within the cultural hegemonic value system can speak whatever absurdities they like and nobody of significance will challenge it; for those outside, the most minor error or exaggeration will be ruthlessly exploited by our Enemy.
I’ve been brushing up on my Keynes, and one striking thing is how our society has become exactly what he and his fabian friends intended. The Ruling Class is the civil service now; and to directly attack them is beyond acceptability. This is very much “top down socialism” in which the bureaucrats &c their associates are the masters. To desire to be a civil servant (“public service”) is now considered the most laudable intention, as it once might have been to enter the priesthood for instance. Nobody is allowed to criticise firemen, health workers, etc. It just can’t be done.
But ultimately, politicians like Hannan can’t lead us in a new direction. Politicians never can. Just as the socialists needed to create mass support for their policies and then put politicians in place to implement them, then so, somehow, must we.
Sometimes the solution to a problem can become quite simple if one can just get the hegemony out of one’s own mind, emotions and approach?
Perhaps Dan Hannan is on to a good thing – insofar as it goes.
The main problem with this “hegemony” thing is that it moves the obstacles raised by criticisms, problem-situations and situational logic into the realm of mass psychology. Critical rationalism does not thrive on mass psychology; and neither does methodological individualism.
It does seem odd, that defending people from illness should be viewed differently than protection against aggression. With funding following the patient, resources will flow to better healthcare providers. The argument for National Insurance is separable from State healthcare provision. Healthcare is required for the young and the older population; Its costs necessarily impinge on thosein between, who needed it when they were too young to pay; and who will need it more as they age.
Tony
IanB:
Yet the Wolfenden Report recommended legalization in the mid-Sixties; and this has been reflected by a host of changes since then.
Tony
The “marriage” issue presents difficulties, especially when religion is included in the “marriage contract.”
Tony
Critical rationalism does not thrive on mass psychology;
I don’t give a damn about critical rationalism. I’m entirely interested in acquiring useful knowledge that will help us counter our enemy, and understanding how and why they have won is an essential element in that.
Hey, sorry to may be/seem tedious. I did seriously mean about getting the hegemony out of our own minds. I meant that we have been so conditioned that we go along with it when we try to structure answers. We can’t help that. It has moved into our assumptions (sub concious) and we are pretty much helpless to fight it other than to get away from it.
I might think about the necessity and possibility of delight and you may think gay.
And, hey, LoudmimeDave, no it is not the state’s job to look after us. The state should mainly back off and we should look after ourselves. Individual freedom and responsibility. But I don’t think anyone is offended. If they were that would be their problem. As the LA director has pointed out, no-one has a right not to be offended.
Critical rationalism is the main means whereby we understand our world. The source of objective knowledge. Learning from our mistakes.
What do you suggest we use instead??
Tony
Good point from John B. If one is offended, just go away and stop listening. Simple. People cna say what they wish, so long as they do not actually initiate violence themselves, as well.
However, I put it to you all that libertarians are _/not barred from/_ using @unimaginably effective and therefore Western-technological@ violence in retaliation, where any sort of pre-capitalist-scumbag/warlord/”religious leader”/”deeply-revered-scholar”/intellectual/wannabe-hunter-gatherer/ etc has previously either used it or @conspired to use it@ or @procured its use@ .
But…
It __/is/__ good and right and moral, to slay the Devil. Even if he just says stuff.
And I didn’t mean Chris Mouncey – natch!
The problem is: who is the Devil?
If, like me, you believe in objectively accountable Good, and objectively accountable Evil, there is no problem at all. You know who to hit, and you will fire without hesitation.
But I predict that old Tony will have something to say about this, and soon!
It is? It may be an ideal, but we know that in practise scientists are verifiers, not falsifiers.
We, meanwhile, are in the midst of a political and social struggle, and we need whatever tools will be of use to us, whether philosophically impure or not. If your Popperian approach is not suited to mass psychology, then another apporach is required, since in this struggle, mass psychology is very important.
“And, hey, LoudmimeDave, no it is not the state’s job to look after us. The state should mainly back off and we should look after ourselves.”
John B, but this obviously alters for each individual, such as some will be better off than others naturally. It goes on the asumption that each individual can automatically look after themselves. What about children born to impoverished families? This ultimately results in a loop, giving families with low income a more difficult ride than people that manage comfortably. Incorporating the state into this family doesn’t seem such a bad idea. Example; The EMA that some kids get ultimately benefits them and pays for them to actually get to school in a morning. Without this money, they would have finished after compulsary education, which some might not want.
(I’m not a socialist)
Yes, Loudmime, we are not in a perfect world. It seems the best is to go for directions (with an ideal point of arrival, okay.) As a direction, the suggestions of Dan Hannan in the blog following this one, seem to be doing well.
I think if the collectivists got their hands off the vast wealth they and theirs consume on themselves and their pet projects there would be loads left over to look after us all rather well and priorities would change because provision would no longer be a problem.
It’s not so simple.
Sir Karl put it like this:
“It is often said that the problem with people is that we are clever — perhaps too clever — but we are also rather wicked; and it is this combination of cleverness and wickedness which is at the root of most of our problems.
As against this I would say that we are good — perhaps too good — but we are also rather ignorant; and it is this combination of goodness and ignorance which is at the root of so many of our problems.
This approach has the great advantage that we know a lot more about enlightening ignorance than we know about combating wickedness.”
I agree with this, Dave.
Tony
Tony has a good point here
Whether Dan Hannan has an effect over here or not, he was definitely one of the “englishmen on tv” i saw being used as justification by those that took to the streets in the usa this week. Serious opposition over there must be a good thing, right?
I like the idea of an incrementalism of our own, and i suppose that through blogs like this we have made a start, but where next?
David Davis:
Sir Karl’s good thinking, not originated by me. Smiles
Tony
Whoops! – More of what the LA is doing – promote awareness of what is going on. What is being done to us and the planet in the name of saving us from ourselves and whatever lies are going on. But more by promoting the reality of things. The prosperity of freedom and responsibility. Promote the awareness. Challenge lies where appropriate. Support people who are effectively doing that, like Dan?
I would start some kind of campaign to challenge some lies, I guess. Make onself very unpopular. Become known as a racist, fascist uncaring Nazi. But don’t slip into the rhetoric of the National Front or any other similarly deceived or tricked group (the BNP is trying to be somewhat cool, plus/minus). Keep love as one’s motivation. Genuine care. One can go on and on, I guess?
You cannot become known as an uncaring etc. etc. without giving people reason to think you are. Your ideas then attract the genuine article, confirming peoples’ worst fears. We already have that problem with racists and Social Darwinists. And you turn a noble principle into a mere collection of policies. This cannot be good.
Tony
Ouch!! Tony, where you been the last few years/centuries?
Ever hear of a guy called Enoch Powell, for one?
John B:
Oh, I get around…
Yup, I heard of Enoch Powell. Read some of his writing. Met him. Intense. He signed one of my books. I am reminded of one of his critics, who said: “Some of us get off the train of logic before it hits the buffers.”
Too often, Powell was strong on the things he was bad on, and weak on the things he was good on.
When he started on about “grinning piccaninnies” doing reprehensible things he blew it big time. “Powellite” came to mean visceral nationalist racism, with a free-market gloss. He and his coterie became more and more marginalized. Kinda sad, really.
Tony
This article says it better, in more detail.
Tony
—————
Enoch was wrong about the rivers of blood
By Robert Harris
Published: 12:00AM GMT 27 Nov 2001
” ONE day, someone will write a book about the great political story of our time: the strange death of Tory England. Its theme is irresistible: how did the most electorally successful party in the world come to collapse into an irrelevant, squabbling rabble of nonentities, with no realistic possibility of returning to power?
I thought of this the other day when I picked up a copy of the current issue of The Spectator. I should guess that pretty well everyone who is anyone in the Tory party reads it. Circulation is a record 60,000.
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It is edited by my esteemed fellow columnist Boris Johnson, a Tory MP with one of the safest seats in the country. And this week’s main article is by Simon Heffer, one of the most widely read Tory commentators of the age. All in all, this is about as blue chip as it gets.
But hold on a tick, old bean, as Boris might say. What’s this? “How Enoch saw it coming,” proclaims the cover. “Simon Heffer on Powell’s warning against multiculturalism.”
Inside, we discover that Enoch Powell’s famous “rivers of blood” speech of 1968, reviled for a generation, was actually a prescient warning of the social tensions exposed by the war in Afghanistan. He was right all along!
To make this point requires considerable mental gymnastics on Mr Heffer’s part, for what is striking about Powell’s speech, re-reading it today, is that any analysis of it would be better entitled “How Enoch got it wrong”.
Powell’s thesis was developed from a remark supposedly made to him by a constituent, whose ambition was to see his children emigrate (a slightly ironic aspiration in the context, perhaps, but then Enoch doesn’t seem to have been big on irony): “I shan’t be satisfied till I have seen them all settled overseas. In this country in 15 or 20 years’ time, the black man will have the whip hand.”
It was on this startling proposition that Powell built his speech, including his notorious description of an elderly white lady, who “finds excreta pushed through her letterbox”, who is pursued down her street by “charming, wide-grinning piccaninnies” chanting “Racialist!” at her (the “one word they know”), and who is “convinced she will go to prison” because of the forthcoming Race Relations Bill.
Powell agreed: the proposed Bill would indeed allow immigrants to “overawe and dominate” the native population. He predicted as a consequence race riots “of American proportions” and, of course, most famously, rivers “foaming with much blood”.
That Britain has had its share of racial tensions in the past 33 years is undeniable, but a moment’s reflection shows that Powell’s predictions were way over the top. The rivers don’t foam with blood.
The “black man” very obviously doesn’t have the “whip hand” over the white (we have yet to see a single black cabinet minister, for example, or a black national newspaper editor). Nor have we experienced anything like the racial unrest that occurred in America in the 1960s (34 dead and 1,000 injured in the Watts riots alone).
And have those “grinning piccaninnies” put many little old white ladies in jail?
“Poor Enoch,” Iain Macleod once remarked to the political columnist Alan Watkins, “driven mad by the remorselessness of his own logic.” And it was this same single-minded obliviousness to the consequences of his words, once his intellect was engaged, which led him on to other follies.
Thus Powell, the quintessential Tory, took the logic of his opposition to the Common Market to the point of resigning his seat and advocating a Labour victory in the general election of 1974, thereby opening the way to the 1975 referendum which eventually bound Britain more tightly to Europe than it had been before.
A similar, mad, Powellite logic now seems to have infected the whole Tory party. In this respect, Iain Duncan Smith is Enoch’s true heir. Think of it: Mr Duncan Smith has always virulently opposed closer integration with Europe – so much so, that as a backbencher he voted repeatedly against his own government, undermined John Major, fomented civil war in the Tory party, and helped bring to power a pro-integrationist Labour government.
Now we have the entertaining spectacle of Tory shadow ministers trailing round Europe trying to find out why the EU’s health, education and transport policies have proved so much more successful than ours, having been dispatched on this mission by the very man whose entire career has been spent reviling the “social costs” of the major European economies.
When this great book about the death of Tory England comes to be written, the curious Cult of Enoch will warrant a chapter to itself. “We have taken a long time to learn,” writes Mr Heffer, “but, had we only had eyes to see and ears to hear, Enoch tried to teach us.” Teach us what? Teach us that multiculturalism isn’t perfect? But what social system is?
And now that we have multiculturalism, what lessons can Powell’s inflammatory and tendentious ravings impart? The only candidate for the Tory leadership who seemed to appreciate that a different kind of party might be required for the 21st century was Michael Portillo.
But his candidature was destroyed in large part by the followers of the Cult of Enoch, chief among them its high priest, Father Heffer.
And so, nearly four years after the prophet’s death, we have arrived at the closest thing to a Powellite Tory party the country has yet seen.
Overwhelmingly white, mostly elderly, suspicious of Europe, nervous of minorities of any kind (racial or sexual), mildly barmy, unelectable, impaled and wriggling on the narrow point of its own remorseless logic: as Powell the classicist might have said, Si monumentum requiris, circumspice.
Or as Iain Macelod observed on another occasion: “I take Enoch’s train part of the way, but I get off before it crashes into the buffers.” Unfortunately, this time, the party forgot to jump.”
I would imagine the purpose of being well informed is to produce answers rather than pull the toys to pieces and then admire the mess until it becomes boring.
To have encouraged a labour vote was tactically stupid. I’m afraid the mortal clay has its weaknesses and in Paul’s words we see through a glass darkly. We do stuff up from time to time. And some of the words would now be considered very offensive but were fairly normal at the time they were uttered. I think what he saw is coming about and so potential rivers of blood is not too far off.
Wiki: “Powell argued that although “many thousands” of immigrants wanted to integrate, he contended that the majority did not, and that some had vested interests in fostering racial and religious differences “with a view to the exercise of actual domination, first over fellow-immigrants and then over the rest of the population”.[8] Powell’s peroration of the speech gave rise to its popular title. He quotes the Sibyl prophesies in the epic poem Aeneid, 6, 86, of “wars, terrible wars, and the Tiber foaming with much blood” (Bella, horrida bella, Et Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine).”
Regarding jumping the train, if the Tory party did anything it jumped too soon, nearly killed itself and the country, got back on board with Margaret Thatcher and then some folks within it’s number pushed it off again so the electorate turned to a Tory impersonator, Tony Blair, and ran with that.
Tony, do you love liberty? It is fading fairly fast and it’s a question of trying to hold on to it against the odds.
It is now endgame and we are seriously into the Brave New World.
But perhaps you might find that liberating?
“But perhaps you might find that liberating?”
No.
Tony
I am entering my junior year of undergrad and picked up this blog while I was browsing a for information related medics. I m pretty set on going to med school but of course have my doubts which some of them is answered here..
Another Fantastic blog post, I will bookmark this in my Digg account. Have a good evening.