Chris R. Tame does “Wogan”, 15th March 1989 from Sean Gabb on Vimeo.
On the 15th march 1989, Chris R. Tame, currently the Campaigns Director at FOREST, appeard on the BBC1 “Wogan” programme to discuss the rights of smokers.
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Life is so cruel – Dr Tame looks so healthy in this, yet within a few years he was gone.
This was also just about the last year in the United Kingdom when a libertarian would be treated as part of the general discussion – in a little while after this libertarians (if considered at all) were treated as freak show animals.
The late M.A. Bradford replied to someone who said that “Reagan is just rhetoric” – that “you will miss that rhetoric when he is gone”.
Mrs Thatcher was the same, in this respect, as Ronald Reagan. Although not a libertarian herself her “rhetoric” opened a space for libertarians to speak – and, yes, even be heard.
By 1989 in the United States pro smaller government language had been replaced by “I want to be the education President” (George Herbert Walker Bush) and soon in Britain John “we have spent more money than Labour promised to spend” Major would become Prime Minister.
There was no more “space” for libertarian ideas to be heard.
“But Paul to suggest that some leading politicians have to be open to libertarian language for libertarian ideas to be heard, is a council of despair”.
It may be a “council of despair”, but it is also the truth.
For example, Governor Abbott of Texas is not a libertarian – but his rhetoric and, to some extent his policies, create space for libertarian ideas to be heard.
If Chris Tame was alive today and speaking in Texas he might not be agreed with – but he would not be considered a space alien freak either (as, alas, we are so considered here – when we are considered at all).
There is no such space in the “national conversation” in the United States – which is dominated by Mr Obama’s efforts to expand the size and scope of government and (half hearted) Republican efforts to resist the Obama expansion of the size and scope of government. There is simply no space in this “national conversation” for people who actually want to reduce the size and scope of government – hopefully this will change in the Republican primary process (the Senator Rand Paul campaign and so on), but I would not bet on it.
And it is the same in the United Kingdom.
If Dr Chris Tame returned (healthy) to Britain today what could he say – that would be heard.
Chris Tame would be ask to “show his passion for Social Justice” (for the doctrine that all income and wealth rightly belong to the collective, “the people”, and should be “distributed” according to some state principle of “fairness”) and when he replied that he did not believe in Social Justice, indeed that he regarded it as evil, he would either not be heard at all – or stared at, as if had two heads, and asked to leave.
Chris Tame might still be heard in a place like Texas, or some other States, – but not here.
Lastly I must praise Dr Sean Gabb, a person who I have had so many heated arguments with over the years (heated arguments that have rather more to do with my terrible anger and despair with the condition of the world and of the ideas that dominate the “conversation” – than they do with anything else).
Dr Gabb will go anywhere and defend the rights of smokers – or attack any other form of prohibition. For example, pointing out the “success” of prohibition in turning hard drugs from a problem of a few American inner cities when we were born – to a situation today where places like small town Vermont are awash with heroin (the “State of the State” of Governor of Vermont this year was entirely about how heroin and other drugs are sweeping through the population of the State, causing vast suffering).
Dr Gabb does not care, or appears not to care, that he is treated as a freak.
Nor does Dr Gabb seem to care when the “Stepford students” chant “racist” when he is talking about fiscal policy (taxation and government spending), and “Fascist” and “Nazi” when he is expressing opposition to prohibition (i.e. the exact opposite of the policy position of the real Fascists and National Socialists).
The “Stepford students”, with their cold dead fish eyes, are not listening to what is being said – their conditioning at school and university (and via the media) means they do not really hear what is being said to them.
I doubt that even Dr Chris Tame could break through to their minds now.