Over a period of eighty years, hundreds of critics have been laboring to improve the taste of the American people in music, literature, drama and politics. And today, as a result, Nevin, Tobani and Tosti are program favorites over Brahms, Beethoven and Bach; James Oliver Curwood is thirty thousand times more popular than James Branch Cabell; Anne Nichols is fifty thousand times more popular than Hauptmann; and Calvin Coolidge is President of the United States. [George Jean Nathan, The House of Satan (London: Knopf, 1926), p. 99.]

Children are forced to attend school, where their teachers are forced to teach what the government decides. As every schoolboy knows, this is for their own good, because their parents cannot be trusted to educate them. Now, the government might be right; children may be better off away from their parents and at school. But forcibly taking children away from their parents, even if only for six hours a day, and with the best of intentions and even the best of results, is still a forceful activity, synonymous with kidnapping.

In the future, perhaps, we will look on compulsory attendance and compulsory curriculum at schools differently. Maybe we will have people who had absolutely nothing to do with it apologising on our behalf. Maybe certain victims of poor schooling would value that.

Mencken made a similar comment:

[The mob] looks for leaders with the necessary courage, and when they appear it follows them slavishly, even after their courage is discovered to be mere buncombe and their altruism only a cloak for more and worse oppressions. Thus it oscillates eternally between scoundrels, or, if you would take them at their own valuation, heroes. Politics becomes the trade of playing upon its natural poltroonery — of scaring it half to death, and then proposing to save it. There is in it no other quality of which a practical politician, taking one day with another, may be sure. Every theoretically free people wonders at the slavishness of all the others. But there is no actual difference between them. [H.L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy (New York: Knopf, 1926), p. 50.]

What next? Will drunks, dole recipients, criminals, idiot journalists and other left-wing Australians demand that the Rudd government apologise for the policies of the Howard government? It would be an improvement over what the Rudd government is doing now.

Although the Prime Minister’s acknowledgment that the Labor Party does not include “the best and brightest minds” deserves praise, the fact that the idea was developed or at least approved by the Labor government invites skepticism. Who, for example, chooses “the best and brightest minds”? Should it be done by logical argument? If so, you don’t need the direct participation of “the best and brightest,” for if you can accurately choose which is a logical argument, then you hardly need to contact their author; there are no copyright issues with policy proposals.

And going beyond the “three year electoral cycle” is all well and good, but what happens at election time when the Rudd government has abolished the Welfare State, the Department of Education, the Department of Health, etc? The best and brightest minds would advocate this, but it would surely mean Labor losing the next election, for one could not imagine the Liberal Party practising and praising classical liberal principles.

Political economy is quite a straightforward, simple and specialist discipline. It involves acknowledging that if you tax one group of people to give money to another, then one group benefits at the expense of another, and, consequently, the incentive for everyone (both tax-recipient and tax-payer) to satisfy customers rather than government diminishes. It also involves acknowledging that taxation is not voluntary, just like robbery is not voluntary. Allowing a bunch of pretentious academics to escape from university and practise political economy is like organising a robbery with genuine masterminds and long term planning behind it.

The best government is always made up of the less optimistic, who rightly believe that neither they nor anyone else are qualified to rule. But with a collection of self-proclaimed and government-sanctioned experts, one doubts whether the “experts” will not ask for a large scale confiscation of the property of civilians (through taxation) to fund their schemes. Chances are they are ignorant of economics, and will neither consider going through voluntary channels and approaching business with their ideas, nor try convincing the populace before they try convincing the government.

Surely, the best way to decrease human-induced fossil fuel emissions is to have high and demand higher petrol prices. Yet this obvious and simple line of reasoning is totally ignored by all sides of the political spectrum.

There is also the little element that petrol companies should be allowed to charge whatever they want for what they sell. If they decrease the price of petrol, then they will get more customers. If they increase it, they may get more profit per litre but sell less litres and make it easier for competitors. But this issue is for petrol companies, not government agencies whose income comes from taxing — forcibly taking money away from — the people.

The ACCC should lead by example and compete on fair terms; to simply steal off people (through taxation), then complain, with the threat and use of force, that other people are making money and satisfying customers without the aegis of force, is a bit hypocritical. The ACCC has a government-granted monopoly; this gives it the authority to forcibly stop and punish so-called “monopolistic” but voluntary behaviour!?

[E]very senator in the great council of a nation, after he had delivered his opinion, and argued in the defence of it, should be obliged to give his vote directly contrary; because if that were done, the result would infallibly terminate in the good of the publick. [Gulliver's Travels (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1961), pt. III, ch. VI, p. 201.]

With another application, G.K. Chesterton:

The very fact that we have seen a remark made a hundred times in the newspapers is normally a very good reason for seriously considering whether the opposite is not true. [Vol. XXXIV of The Collected Work of G.K. Chesterton, ed. Lawrence J. Clipper (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991), p. 588.]

And another:

I owe my success (as the millionaires say) to having listened respectfully and rather bashfully to the very best advice, given by all the best journalists who had achieved the best sort of success in journalism; and then going away and doing the exact opposite. [My Autobiography, ch. VIII, in vol. XVI of The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), p. 176.]

The following also appears in his autobiography, after the passage quoted above, but I find it more eloquent in the form he wrote it earlier:

A man might actually succeed in journalism by writing articles exactly appropriate to all the journals, and then putting them all in the wrong envelopes … I really think that it is about as safe as the opposite maxim that is so universally preached. [Vol. XXVIII of The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, ed. Lawrence J. Clipper (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), p. 378.]

1. Bolt does not mention H.L. Mencken, who said it all much better and much earlier (at the end of this post are four examples). If he has not read Mencken, then he is hardly qualified to be a journalist or political analyst, nor shown interest in being a good one; if he has read Mencken, then he is intellectually, morally and journalistically selfish and disgraceful, and unwilling to help, encourage and foster keen readers. Either way, it is a terrible insult to his readers.
2. Bolt does not apply his own writing to his own support of recent political panics. For example, on foreign affairs Bolt gets panicked very easily, and is as gullible, reactionary and interventionist as can be. If Bolt does not respect his own writing, far less should we; then again, perhaps we are better judges of that than he is.

The article itself is not particularly objectionable, and his reference to Robert Spillane deserves high praise; indeed (and unfortunately), it is one of the best (non-representative) examples of mainstream journalism in Australia today. But the best attempts deserve the most criticism; the rest provoke only despair.

As promised above, here are four (of many) relevant passages from Mencken:

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. [A Mencken Chrestomathy (New York: Vintage, 1982), p. 29.]

At bottom, the business is quite simple. First scare him — and then reassure him. First get him into a panic with a bugaboo — and then go to the rescue, gallantly and uproariously, with a stuffed club to lay it. First fake him — and then fake him again. This, in substance, is the whole theory and practise of the art of journalism in These States. In so far as our public gazettes have any serious business at all, it is the business of snouting out and exhibiting new and startling horrors, atrocities, impending calamities, tyrannies, villainies, enormities, mortal perils, jeopardies, outrages, catastrophes — first snouting out and exhibiting them, and then magnificently circumventing and disposing of them. The first part is very easy. It is almost unheard of for the mob to disbelieve in a new bugaboo. Immediately the hideous form is unveiled it begins to quake and cry out: the reservoir of its primary fears is always ready to run over. And the second part is not much more difficult. The one thing demanded of the remedy is that it be simple, more or less familiar, easy to comprehend — that it avoid leading the shy and delicate intelligence of the mob into strange and hence painful fields of speculation. All healthy journalism in America — healthy in the sense that it flourishes spontaneously and needs no outside aid — is based firmly upon just such an invention and scotching of bugaboos. And so is all politics. And so is all religion. [A Gang of Pecksniffs, ed. Theo Lipmann, Jr. (New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1977), p. 65.]

Wars are seldom caused by spontaneous hatred between peoples, for peoples in general are too ignorant of one another to have grievances and too indifferent to what goes on beyond their borders to plan conquests. They must be urged to the slaughter by politicians who know how to alarm them. [Treatise on Right and Wrong (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1934), p. 236.]

The ideal educated man is simply one who has put away as foolish the immemorial fears of the race … He is sure of himself in the world; no dread of the dark rides him; he is serene … [A] complete chronicle of the Republic could be written in terms of [ "the discovery, chase and scotching of bugaboos," "most of them imaginary,"] without omitting a single important episode … Public opinion, in its raw state,  gushes out in the immemorial form of the mob’s fears. It is piped to central factories, and there it is flavoured and coloured, and put into cans. [Notes on Democracy (London: Jonathan Cape, 1927), pp. 27, 29-30, 192.]

Dr Ron Paul is a Republican congressman from Texas who is running for the Republican nomination for President of the United States of America. He is 71-years-old. He has been a congressman for nearly 20 years. He is also an experienced obstetrician and gynaecologist, having delivered over 4,000 babies.

He is more right-wing, anti-socialist and conservative than Quadrant magazine; more anti-war, anti-prohibition of drugs and radical than any Australian left-wing group; more supportive of individual liberty and free markets than The Centre for Independent Studies. He is more uncompromising than our most radical think tanks, let alone political parties. He wants less government, but unlike most others who claim they do – including (say) the Howard government and Bush administration, which have not decreased the size of government – he means it. For example, he wants to abolish, not merely reform, the Department of Education, Medicare, the Federal Reserve (which he accuses of counterfeiting) and the Internal Revenue Service (which he accuses of theft). He wants all American troops brought home immediately, and has been against the Iraq war all along. He thinks America should be a Republic, not an Empire.

He is an uncompromising defender of individual liberty and free markets, opposed to all protectionist measures whatsoever. He follows the American Constitution, which may seem terribly archaic and unusual a thing to do, but, after all, it is what Presidents swear to uphold when they enter office. But then, keeping promises is also quite archaic and unusual these days.

He is not afraid to express his contrary views. He votes against bills that would give his constituency benefit at the expense of others. He is often the only member of congress, from any party, to vote against a bill. He only votes for measures approved by the Constitution. For this reason he is often called Dr No.

Imagine a principled Liberal Party member in Federal Government, who almost always voted and spoke out against his party, in the name of free markets and smaller government. This is what Ron Paul does in the U.S.

He recently accused Rudy Giuliani, on live television, of not reading The 9/11 Commission Report or doing anything constructive to prevent a situation like 9/11 from happening again. Dr Paul believes that America’s interventionist foreign policy – for example, its military presence in Arab holy land in Saudi Arabia, its deposing of the Iranian government 50 years ago and its decade long bombing of Iraq prior to 2003 – explains why those who live in those areas and those who consider them sacred do not support America and some want to attack it. He does not defend terrorist attacks; indeed, he would support military attempts to find terrorists overseas, but not under the guise of a war to spread democracy, which he believes will just continue to provoke would-be terrorists and serve the absolute opposite of its intended purpose.

In his opposition to an American Empire and foreign intervention he is in the tradition of the American Founding Fathers. For example, John Quincy Adams, who is not currently accused of being un-American, like Dr Paul often is, said:

“America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standards of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force.”

The recent surge in Dr Ron Paul’s popularity – as evidenced by “Ron Paul” being the most popular search term on blogs in recent months, his winning of most online polls and increased media coverage – should not be surprising. What is surprising is that he is not far more popular.

Even the American military supports him: he has received more military contributions than any other Presidential candidate, Republican or Democrat, in the last quarter. Remember, Dr Paul is a fierce and constant critic of America’s military campaigns. It is often claimed that Dr Paul does not support the troops; at least the troops support him.

In the upcoming Federal Election in Australia we should vote for Dr Paul. Do not expect to find his name on any ballot paper, but vote for him anyway. It should not concern us that the candidate might not want to know anything about our country. We are not asking that he accept the candidacy or do anything at all; all we want is to follow what he stands for, as we should all display on our ballot and – since government is consensual and representative and the electoral process communicates this, as everyone seems to think – those who want to follow Ron Paul should be allowed to. If this is not democracy, then nothing is. Our Prime Minister had no problem following the policies of a clueless American; it is only right that we be allowed to follow a smart one.

(This post was partly due to Walter Block’s incitement. See also my post on whether Ron Paul can win.)

Albert Jay Nock — in Snoring as a Fine Art and Twelve other Essays (Rindge, NH: Richard R. Smith, 1958), pp. 13-14, PDF@brilliantLvMI — said that:

[T]here is too little snoring done — snoring with a purpose to guide it, snoring deliberately directed towards a salutary end which is otherwise unattainable—and that our society would doubtless be better off if the value of the practice were more fully recognized. In our public affairs, for instance, I have of late been much struck by the number of persons who professedly had something. The starry-eyed energumens of the New Deal were perhaps the most conspicuous examples; each and all, they were quite sure they had something. They had a clear premonition of the More Abundant Life into which we were all immediately to enter by the way of a Planned Economy …

I do not disparage their premonition or question it; I simply suggest that the More Abundant Life might now be appreciably nearer if they had put enough confidence in their premonition to do a great deal less thinking, planning, legislating, organizing, and a great deal — oh yes, a very great deal — more snoring.

A similar message can be found in G.K. Chesterton, Sidelights, pt. 2, ch. VIII, in vol. XXI of The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), pp. 566-568:

[M]ost Americans are born drunk and really require a little wine or beer to sober them. They have a sort of permanent intoxication from within; a sort of invisible champagne which needs to be weighted and soothed and supplemented by something corresponding to the glass of port with which the English were accustomed to conclude and settle their dinner. Americans do not need drink to inspire them to do anything; though they do sometimes, I think, need a little for the deeper more delicate purpose of teaching them how to do nothing.

We all know the conventions required to make the English hero conventional. One of the first is that he should be comfortable even when he is uncomfortable. When perched upon the breaking bridge above the yawning chasm, he shows he is an English hero by smoking a cigarette, with a slightly bored expression, or even perhaps (with a polite gesture) yawning, like the chasm.

Something else to ponder is what the Japanese call inemuri. I have not yet been able to find much information on that. Also, the film Alexandre le bienheureux (1968) may be of some relevance, but I haven’t located a copy yet. And lastly, look up dolce far niente.