Blogging could be light this weekend

My weekend is crammed full of all manner of jollities which may preclude time and space for blogging. I shall of course update as and when I can. My weekend starts tonight with a politicalbetting.com party, which should be hugely enjoyable.

Another Day, Another Teenage Stabbing

Yet again we wake to the news of a teenager being stabbed, or rather I awoke to it being a kind of afterthought story. It appears that we are becoming grudgingly accepting of what seems a modern fact of life. The stabbing of anyone is a tragedy, but I think the stabbing of a teenager by another teenager is a monumental tragedy. That being so it is disturbing that society is just shrugging its collective shoulders as the victims mount up. I am of the quaint old fashioned notion that no crime is acceptable, however teenagers wielding deadly weapons in anger is unacceptable to a different degree of magnitude. As a society we should not be pushing this down the agenda, we should not be meekly accepting it as a fact of modern life. I think I am justified in being morally aghast at the spate of teenagers being stabbed or in some cases shot by other teenagers. What kind of society is this becoming?

We really need to start clamping down hard on this form of crime. The idea that such depraved behaviour should be tolerated is anathema. I don’t think that this sort of story should be pushed down the bulletins. We should be confronted with the full scale of the problem, if we are not we are in danger of allowing it to spiral even more out of control. We do not yet know the name or age of the latest victim, we do know that there is a family being laid out on the rack watching their child in hospital with serious injuries not knowing what the long term impact is going to be. I fell for them desperately, it must be a complete nightmare, and it is a situation that too many families are cast into these days.

I am not an expert in juvenile crime, I do not know what the solution to this is. Somehow though we must tackle the fact that far too many of our teenagers are resorting to criminal violence to solve their disputes. We must look at what is going wrong that these young people feel the need to carry such weapons. Whatever the reason we need to tackle that as simply penalising the carrying of knives more harshly isn’t going to be half as successful and will probably breed fresh issues. What I know for a fact though is that we shouldn’t simply go on watching even a part of this generation of young people destroying itself.

David Davis website

David Davis website will be here later. I suggest everyone who is passionate about liberty and freedom pops along to it and takes a look. I will be once it is live.

Second Europe Post of the day

I tend to steer well clear of the Europe debate, there are plenty of contributions to it. Most of what I want to say gets said by others. However watching the reaction of the EU to the temerity of free citizens making a choice for themselves other than the one that the EU would make for them is utterly breathtaking. I don’t usually get angry about the EU, I don’t foam at the mouth about it. However my mouth is becoming distinctly more foamy. I just want to scream at the top of my voice “When will you actually f***ing get it?”

The EU is could be hugely beneficial. It is right that countries co-operate when and where they can. The problem is that the EU is entirely process driven. Every treaty is concerned with how to go about co-operating. To boil it down to a basic level, do we in our streets negotiate huge documents about the way to go about dealing with the situation when Johnny kicks his football into Mr Smith’s vegetable patch? No we deal with issues as they arise, and when the football goes into the neighbours garden we knock on the door and retrieve it and apologise for the incovenience. Why can’t a similar approach work with regard to the EU, why do we need enormous protocols and massive bureaucracy? Why can’t the nations of Europe resolve their problems as they arise instead of trying to develop massive architecture that then creates resentment and bad feeling in the people of Europe. I think it is high time for a very very different vision of Europe.

Europe never ceases to amaze

So the Irish voters voted no to the Lisbon Treaty. According to the terms of that treaty which demands ratification by all or the treaty cannot come into effect, the Treaty should now be in the morgue awaiting a decent send off. Any sane set of individuals would realise that the Treaty is impossible to implement and start to think about a new solution. However one can never accuse the Euro establishment of sanity.

It seems that the Irish result is being blatantly ignored. Either the Irish will be forced outside the circle like the unpopular schoolkid or they will be obliged to ‘get it right’ this time in a new vote. This betrays the cynical heart of Europe, the Henry Ford approach to European democracy - you can give any answer you like providing it is yes. Eurosceptics suffer because they are unprepared to play the same game as the Europhiles. The Eurosceptics adhere to quaint notions of the ‘rules of the game’, Europhiles are happy enough with the rules until it means they lose the game then they simply alter the rules. This is why the public in Britain and elsewhere is increasingly suspicious of the EU. I don’t think they are hostile to the concept but they are very hostile to being taken for fools. The leaders of the EU need to realise that when people say no, it isn’t a licence to carry on regardless.

The Lisbon treaty should be dead, it should remain dead and be buried. It may well be sacrificed, but you can see what will happen if it is. The Eurodrafters will get out their Thesauruses change a few words here and there that have no impact on the force of the articles and the whole squalid rigmarole will start again. It is a disgraceful way to behave.

Some good quotes on freedom

They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security - Benjamin Franklin

If you want to be free, there is but one way; it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors. There is no other - Carl Shurz

When liberty is taken away by force it can be restored by force. When it is relinquished voluntarily by default it can never be recovered. - Dorothy Thompson

The basis of a democratic state is liberty - Aristotle

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.  - Thomas Jefferson

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants. It is the creed of slaves - William Pitt the Younger

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe. - Edmund Burke

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.  - Thomas Paine

It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of one of those liberties which make the defense of our nation worthwhile.  - Earl Warren

Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death! - Patrick Henry

Liberty never came from government. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it. - Woodrow Wilson

 

Freedom is worth fighting for.

I have always been someone that believes that if you hold a value that you should be prepared to stand up and be counted for it. I therefore have an enormous admiration for David Davis who has stood up and said “Count me”. Freedom is a basic necessity for a functioning society, it is so tied up with out humanity that when freedom is in retreat our humanity is also in retreat. It is therefore necessary that someone stands up for freedom in a public and undeniable way.

I personally am with Lord Acton who said that “Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.” Anyone who is in politics and is not in favour of protecting freedom and liberty is in the wrong profession. I am convinced of that. Every generation must be a generation of fighters for liberty in the face of various tyrannies. Sometimes that fight will be easy. Sometimes hard. At all times it is necessary. The surest way for us to lose our liberty is not to fight for it. Liberty does not come without sacrifice, and the biggest sacrifice has to be our notion of its scope. We cannot promote a limited Liberty, liberty is universal or it is tyranny. Freedom is for everyone or it is for no-one.

The concept of universality of liberty is a controversial one. It means that we have to promote liberty to everyone regardless of the uses to which they will put that liberty. In the climate of today that then comes up against those who see the need for security. There will always be that tension between liberty and security. However Benjamin Franklin had it about right when he said “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. ” I agree wholeheartedly. We must find a policy of security consonant with liberty not a policy of security instead of liberty. We must also be wary of attemtping to have two-tier liberty, we must look to the words of Thomas Paine “He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. “

Those who advocate security at all costs, even that of liberty, argue that the world is a difficult and dangerous place. I agree that it is, I merely ask when has it not been? The world has always thrown up challenges to our safety, our freedom, our lives and our livelihoods. In all generations threats have arisen and been dealt with, but in no generation has their been such a creeping attack on liberty. The threat we face now is one in which the unspoken aim of those who threaten us is to change the nature of our society. They seem to detest the freedom that we enjoy, the liberty of conscience, the freedom to be different. It therefore strikes me as utter and complete madness that the prevailing attitude of many is that the way to go about dealing with this threat is to ourselves change the nature of our society. How can you promote our way of life without standing up for it? How can you defend freedom by undermining it? How do you spread liberty if you retrench it? Of course we need to battle the threat, but not by methods that do in any part the job of the threateners.

It is not only in an interntational context that liberty is being threatened. There has been an aggregation of powers to the government. Vast amounts of information is held on free citizens. Cameras spy on us, officials keep tabs on us. Then we have the DNA database on which the details of thousands of entirely innocent people are kept. In all this the government is declaring that it is suspicious of the people. In my view this is back to front and it should be the people that are suspicious of the government. I always return to that infamous phrase from Juvenal “Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” often translated as “Who watches the watchers?”. Who indeed?

I am a fanatical believer in freedom, it is the principle upon which all others rest. I believe most profoundly that if we are without freedom we are truly without hope. I believe that we can see the path that we are on, the signpost is clear “this way lies a tyranny”. We can see clearly the assault on our freedom in many guises but with one outcome. We can see the destination a dark place where we are secure only in the chains that bind us. Well I can also see clearly where I will be when we reach that nightmare. I shall be there in the last ditch, smashed in the struggle for liberty, cradling the embers of freedom that a new generation may fan them back to a flame. I sincerely hope that such a dramatic future is not necessary, and that the flames of freedom are kept burning. In every generation freedom must be fought for again, I will use every opportunity to fight and argue for freedom. Will you?

The government are incompetent

Another bunch of files have been mislaid, this is becoming habitual. If the government cannot keep secret information that it has a vested interest in keeping secret then what confidence can anyone have that it can keep information secure that it has less interest in. I am of course referring to our personal data that it more and more requires us to hand over. The revelation of more files going missing this weekend makes David Davis stand on the increasing surveillance state more not less relevant.

Are we witnessing the Principle Revolution?

Throughout history for every successful revolution there are half a dozen that never really get off the ground. The ones that fail usually do so because the revolutionary’s mistime their assault. David Davis explosive resignation yesterday on a point of principle is a revolutionary step. It remains to be seen though whether it will be successful or whether it will run in the sand. I hope it is the former, although some of the signs are pretty mixed. The political class are stunned, it is utterly left field and for a generation of the political class schooled in the art of positioning, calculation and triangulation this just isn’t part of their frame of reference. The media are likewise stunned because they have become used to the nature of the current political class so all the references they use are set to that political meme, David Davis has done something that a politician doesn’t do now and relied on his own judgement and prinicples.

If my friends are anything to go by though the reaction among normal non-political people is entirely different. Phrases like ‘breath of fresh air’ and ‘finally a politician with a principle’ are at the fore. Some agree with Davis, some do not, all admire him for actually taking a stand. It might actually be that David Davis catches a mood with this. I have long argued that politics should be about passion and principles and not about positioning. Every politician has a set of beliefs but too often these get suppressed as they climb the ladder because the modern art of politics is to define two extremes and attempt to split the difference. Along with that depressing approach is an attitude of doing not what is right but simply what can be got away with. This can we get away with it is one of the main reasons that civil liberties are under threat as never before, because governments have been getting away with it. David Davis is right to unfurl his banner against this.

I think though that David Davis has planted another concept back into politics, the concept of independent thought, principle and standing up for what you believe in. It needs to catch on, politics and government would be infinately the better for it. I think that David Davis has caught the public imagination on this. I hope he has because we need more principled fighters in our politics. I always had huge admiration for David Davis, if he pulls off a return to principle in politics and successfully defends liberty for future generations, the this country will owen him a bigger debt of gratitude than they would for any of the measures he could have introduced as a reforming Home Secretary.

David Davis - You absolute legend

Wow! What a day. What an absolute corker of a left-field announcement. When I first heard of David Davis’ decision to force a by-election over not just the passing of 42 days detention but the general drift of illiberalism I have to admit to being shocked. As I have had time to consider it over the course of this afternoon I have realised that this is a seminal day in modern British Politics. I cannot see anything of its like since the second world war. I cannot think that we will see anything like it again in our lifetime. This is a politician of deep conviction, huge moral courage and immense credibility preparing to potentially sacrifice his career and his future for the sake of his country. His constituents would have known before today that they were represented by a hugely substantial figure. If they back him and re-elect him they can know that they will be represented by a Titan.

In every generation, at all points in history, freedom and liberty need champions. Sometimes the task for those champions is easy, at other times it is hard, at all times it is necessary. Freedom is never guaranteed by default it is only guaranteed by those willing to defend and promote it. It is often threatened and attacked from without, rarely but recently it has been threatened from within. David Davis is taking a huge risk, opinion polls suggest that the public put security above liberty. He is absolutely right to take the stand he is because as I mentioned previously without liberty and freedom your security consists only of your chains.

The trend in recent years has been too much towards illiberalism, snooping, curtailing, curbing and diminishing freedom. Without doubt we face a grave external threat to out freedom, however the response has too often been a not dissimilar threat to our freedom from a government that should be protecting it. We have too often seen legislation that chips away our historic liberty by debate in a way that external threats have not been able to achieve by all the means of death and destruction. David Davis is only one man, but he has taken up an historic mission, he has had the courage to say “Enough”.

I fully support David Davis decision, he is a bigger man for having the courage to do it. He has shown that some things are bigger than partisan advantage, bigger than personal ambition, bigger than the interests of one generation. David Davis has seen that the continual pushing back of the frontiers of freedom must arrested and reversed. He has taken a look at 42 day detention, ID Cards, DNA Databases, masses of Cameras, snooping powers, and all the emerging paraphanalia of a modern technological tyranny and is screaming at the top of his lungs “NOT IN MY NAME”. It is incumbent upon all freedom loving democrats, regardless of politics, to join in and scream back “NOR IN OURS”.