Blog description.

Accentuating the Liberal in Classical Liberal: Advocating Ascendency of the Individual & a Politick & Literature to Fight the Rise & Rise of the Tax Surveillance State. 'Illigitum non carborundum'.

Liberty and freedom are two proud words that have been executed from the political lexicon: they were frog marched and stood before a wall of blank minds, then forcibly blindfolded, and shot, with the whimpering staccato of ‘equality’ and ‘fairness’ resounding over and over. And not only did this atrocity go unreported by journalists in the mainstream media, they were in the firing squad.

The premise of this blog is simple: the Soviets thought they had equality, and welfare from cradle to grave, until the illusory free lunch of redistribution took its inevitable course, and cost them everything they had. First to go was their privacy, after that their freedom, then on being ground down to an equality of poverty only, for many of them their lives as they tried to escape a life behind the Iron Curtain. In the state-enforced common good, was found only slavery to the prison of each other's mind; instead of the caring state, they had imposed the surveillance state to keep them in line. So why are we accumulating a national debt to build the slave state again in the West? Where is the contrarian, uncomfortable literature to put the state experiment finally to rest?

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Showing posts with label Redbaiter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Redbaiter. Show all posts

Sunday, May 18, 2014

Labour’s Immigration Policy is Decidedly Conservative: Identity Politics Left & Right.

 

This post is partly to explicate the Libertarian advocacy of open immigration, and in doing so to demonstrate how libertarians don’t belong to either right or left politics, rather, existing  uncomfortably - though justifiably self-righteously because we do not call on others to pay for our ideals - in the schism between a free society and the authoritarian ones we now live in, governed by the brute fist of what has become a global, Orwellian tax surveillance state.
 

This morning I find leader of the Labour (Left) Opposition, David Cunliffe, is electioneering on what looks to be a Conservative immigration policy promising to slash net immigrant numbers from 40,000 per year to as low as 5,000. I write ‘looks’ because in fact Left politics in New Zealand has morphed via identity politics (that is, stereotyping bigotry) into a patriotic, nationalistic, protectionist and contradictory mess that makes a mockery of The Internationale. (I won’t even dignify this Labour policy with the economic argument against using immigration policy to ‘fix’ house prices, which is to miss, well, everything.) My initial response:
 








 

From this that arch-tweeter of New Zealand conservatism, Redbaiter, picked up on both this tweet, and an earlier statement by myself that drug legalisation was the litmus test of a free society. Note I like Redbaiter: there is a large divide between our views, but at least he has views held passionately, and I can have a good old ding dong with him on Twitter without him running childishly to the block, which far too many of New Zealand’s Left tweeters and bloggers do (though not all of them). I run the below Twitter timeline simply to show that Libertarians are not Conservatives, for we are social liberals, and to scope out (sorry everyone reading this from Christchurch where that has become a dirty word ) a policy of open immigration such as would exist in a free society constituted as a minarchy. I’ll do a final summary at end relating this theme back to my earlier posts on multiculturalism.
 












 

At this stage Redbaiter went to one of his own ‘themes’, which is the Chinese peril: you won’t be mistaken, but may be confused, at the associations this raises with both Labour and Green politicians statements against Chinese investment in New Zealand. The answer to the conundrum I believe lies not so much with economic ludditism - though that is part of it - but with the Left’s new found penchant with nationalism, born of protectionism - sorry, that's economic ludditism again - and long time conviction for identity politics; policy making, such as enforced quotas, on the basis of an individual's identity with a group (gender, race, etc) rather than a libertarian’s classical liberal individualistic ethic, and individual property rights as the only basis for law making. It’s a type of stereotyping the Left hold in common, ironically, with the authoritarian right, as exemplified in Redbaiter’s conservatism.
 
































 

For the record, typo alert, that tweet of mine above should read 'founded'. Anyway, then the reason why I like Redbaiter plus would be happy, if he were to uncloak, to carry the ding dong on over a bong … sorry, he’d have no part of that. Why I’d be happy to continue such debate over a beer at the pub:
 








 

But bottom line, there is only one word to describe what underlies Redbaiter’s, Labour, Green and for that matter, NZ First's, constant anti-Chinese sentiment: ugly.
 
 

Multiculturalism, Sharia Law and Open Immigration:
 

The other bogey the Right cite against open immigration is the threat of Islam and Sharia Law; to that I have two responses:
 

Firstly, the barbaric Sharia Law in every way I can think of breaches the non-initiation of force principle, thus much conducted under Sharia is rightly criminal behaviour in a free country. Western classical liberalism would never extend a hand to Sharia. So the crimes committed under Sharia in some (some only) Moslem-centric countries are not an argument against open immigration, including by a person of any race who describes themselves as a Moslem, for my understanding is a moderate Islam does not hold with Sharia.
 

Secondly, yes, of course I have huge ideological and philosophical issues with Islam, more so than with a Christianity which has thankfully has its sword blunted by the West’s Enlightenment, but, so long as any individual signs up to the non-initiation of force principle, and not to use our welfare system, then they are welcome here. Society has to be based on that. I have written on my views of this in my following blog post: Montesquieu and Islam: The Peaceful Crusade in Dunedin – Please Excuse my Discomfort.



Update 1: The Conservative / Libertarian Divide – Summary.

 

Firstly thank you to Brendan McNeill of AConservative Perspective for debating this with me in the below comments. The thread serves well to show the differences between Conservatives and Libertarians. Central to Brendan’s reasoning is the following:

 

I am capable of differentiating between Muslims as people, and Islam as a totalitarian religious ideology. Unfortunately we cannot tell by observation which Muslims will radicalize, and which will not.

If we accept that there is just as many good / bad Muslims as there are in the general make up of the population, adding the risk of radical Islam into the mix simply serves to make them the least desirable candidates for immigration.

 

Brendan would allow no Muslims immigrate to New Zealand. To sum up our differences, and my argument for an open immigration, I simply reason as follows.


A free society is not one where a group, such as Brendan’s conservatives, get to say, ‘yeah, not all Muslims are violent, but their belief system is awful so we’re letting none in, just in case.’
 

A society where that ethic rules is a bigoted tyranny of conservatism governed largely unknowably by subjective whim, every bit as bad as a bigoted tyranny of socialism - just with much better economics.


The opposite which I advocate, as a Libertarian basing first principles on individualism, is a free society in the form of a constitutional minarchy with an objective rule of law, and including, for the reasons I give above, open immigration with requirements for entry centred only as to each individual per their own case and history, not as identified with an arbitrary group, be it ethnicity, gender, religion, et al, which is always the (identity) politick of stereotyping and, ultimately, always, of bigotry.
 

Related:

Open Immigration: Marriage - Balwinder Singh & Glyn Kessell.

Open Immigration: Cutting Off Our Noses Because the Law Says So - Chinese Students.

 

 

 
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