The European Left and the Fall of the Euro

My latest article in the American Thinker is up.  The essay focuses on the idea that Europe has somehow learnt from its mistakes and will now abandon the Euro and the European project as a whole.  It is the argument of the article that this thesis is false, and that the elites of the European governments have no intention of admitting their mistakes.  It is therefore necessary to understand that the bailouts will continue until the right can take control of individual national governments and slowly dismantle this failed project.

The article can be found in its entirety here.

Now Italy too?

Greece, Spain, Portugal and now Italy? Well, as bonds go beyond 7% it seems inevitable that they will need bailing out - if that is even possible, which many economists doubt.

What is so interesting about the downfall of the Italian economy is that it is one of the world's largest economies, and it has demonstrated just what a nasty machine the Euro is when it can take down a giant as big as Italy.

Certainly some responsibility lies at the feet of Berlusconi and his party - especially as it was under him that Italy went into the European project with a full throated cry - but it also shows just how false the promises of the New Europe were.

The idea was one enormous superstate with layers of government, "fair" taxes paying for more and more government projects, and a united currency encouraging everyone to, you know, just get along. How did that work out for you?

The result has been a continent submerged in debt, with too many free-lunchers and not enough people paying into the system. It is no coincidence that Italy is borrowing at 120% of GDP and is the third biggest borrower behind the US and Japan. It is entirely symptomatic of the continental mentality that has throttled the European economies.

What is truly frightening about this whole thing is that there is no reason why this can't happen to most EU countries, who have all been encouraged to borrow and spend beyond their means.

Two Prime Ministers have resigned this week. As the Eurozone falls deeper into turmoil, how many more will follow?

The Tories Are Lacking Principle

So, George Osborne has announced that there will be no new tax cuts before the next election. Hopefully Cameron will do another one of his Heath-like U-turns on this in the next year or so; if not, we won’t see the economy recover for the foreseeable future, and the Tories could get panned at the next election as a consequence.

No amount of massaging the figures can hide the obvious – our economy is stagnant. Granted, we aren’t in an economic crisis yet, but Britain is not moving forward in the way that we would like. This shouldn’t surprise anyone who adopts a conservative economic analysis. Britain’s specific economic problems are twofold – excessive spending and a dwindling private sector. It is a common myth that it is just “the deficit and debt” that are the problem. It is true that they are worrisome, but the enormous deficits are symptomatic of the real problem – excessive spending. Part of this spending problem is because our job-creating private sector is being scared abroad by oodles of red tape and high taxes, meaning we have to spend more money on unproductive public sector jobs and welfare.

Fixing the problem from a conservative (small c) perspective is simple – cut the spending (which we’ve already started to do, albeit slowly) and make Britain a more pro-business country, after hard-left socialists like Miliband, Cable, Balls and Brown have scared businesses away, or discouraged them from forming in the first place with their anti-business policies and taxes.

Therefore to most conservatives the answer is clear. Get us out of the EU – the number one source of stupid costs and red tape, cut useless spending projects, and limit government spending to the legitimate roles of government. Finally, cut taxes to a level that fosters the private sector and maximises revenue, not one designed to punish “the rich” and to try and redistribute wealth. This is the road to recovery and everyone with a conservative brain knows it.

Yet this is not a Tory party with a conservative brain; it is a party that is like an eighteen year old girl wanting to win X Factor. As a consequence it is more interested in what it looks like than doing the right thing; hence Cameron’s determination not to be seen as the party of those evil, horrible rich people.

If the Tories are the eighteen year old wannabe-singer, then the Lib Dems are the fat, loser friend that offers bad advice, convinced of their own self-importance because they happen to be friends with the popular girl. It is this useless, misguided friend that no-one likes anymore who is calling for property taxes, caps on bonuses, and the retention of the 50p tax rate on successful job-creators. The problem is that the Tories are listening.

Britain is a tired country, just like it was in the 1970’s, with unions too powerful, no private sector, high taxes propping up inefficient public sector industries, and too many people unable to find employment and stuck on welfare. Thatcher found a way out of this by following a pure conservative ideology, and by the end of the 80’s she had won three terms, and had turned Britain into a prosperous economic powerhouse.

The Tories can have the same success this time round, but only if they stop paying attention to their image and what people think of them in the short term, and stop listening to their annoying little friend that no-one else likes or cares about.

Osborne and Cameron have the opportunity to put Britain back on the road to prosperity – cut spending, reduce red tape, drop the EU, and cut taxes across the board to stimulate the private sector. Failure to do this will cost them the next election, and the blame with be on their shoulders. Unfortunately, from Osborne’s statements last week, it seems that they do not have the courage to do what they must.

Anders Breivik is No Conservative

If you’re a conservative, you can guarantee that if there’s a terrorist attack or an act of violence, there is going to be a pack of leftists letting you know that it is somehow your fault.  The rise in Irish terrorism was blamed on conservatives because apparently it was Margaret Thatcher that had upset them; when the planes hit the Twin Towers on 9/11, we had academic leftists like Noam Chomsky informing us that this was actually the fault of neoconservative US foreign policy; when London was bombed on 7/7, that was because Britain had bent the knee to conservatives in America on Iraq; when Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot earlier this year along with other innocent civilians, this was due to “hateful rhetoric” from right-wingers such as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck (despite the fact that the shooter identified himself with anti-capitalist left-wing views).

So when it was first reported that some nutter had set off bombs and had started shooting people in Norway, I knew that conservatives would be blamed for it somehow.  To prove my points, when the first reports came in that a radical Islamic group had taken responsibility, lefty journalists started pointing towards Norway’s involvement in Afghanistan – “Shouldn’t have gotten into bed with Bush” was the implication.  It was the fault of conservatives!

And of course when it turned out it was in fact a blonde haired, blue eyed (did you ever hear a news report inform you about the colour of someone’s eyes before?) Norwegian, it was still the fault of conservatives.  However, this time it was actually partly justified; as drips of information came in, we found out that Breivik actually claimed to be a conservative, was against forced multiculturalism, opposed the appeasing of radical Islam, wasn’t a fan of the European Union and opposed his nation’s open immigration policy.

Could this be the case, could we have found this “violent conservative” that the left have been warning us about?  Whenever a conservative group gets momentum, such as the Tea Party in America, we have hysterical leftists telling us about how it’s going to provoke violence etc, despite the fact that almost all political violence belongs to either Islamists, radical leftists or plain old nutjobs.  Was this the exception that proves the rule?

In short, no.  A closer look at Breivik doesn’t fit the model of “angry conservative” that many in the media are trying to fit Breivik into.  My first suspicion that something wasn’t right was when the media told us that this guy was right-wing “just like Timothy McVeigh.”  I winced at this, because the “Timothy McVeigh = Rush Limbaugh Republican” is one I hear a lot in America.  Yet although McVeigh was a registered Republican and was against the federal government, that was about as far as it went.  His primary motives for the Oklahoma bombings were the attack on the Waco compound (which garnered more objection from the left than from the right) and his opposition to the Gulf War, in which he accused the US of hypocrisy for having WMDs and not letting Iraq have them too – a staple left-wing view of the time!  I’m not arguing that he was left wing, just that McVeigh doesn’t fit the mould made for him.

Suspicions were raised further when we were told that Breivik’s manifesto had enormous chunks of it lifted from the manifesto of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.  Would this be the same Unabomber who, although opposing what he called “leftism”, was motivated primarily by his ardent anti-capitalism and called for a “worldwide revolution” against industrial-technological society, and described the Industrial Revolution and its consequences (i.e. global capitalism) as the biggest disaster ever witnessed by the human race?  The Unabomber’s manifesto was not a right-wing document by any stretch, so why is Breivik using it?

The real answer is that there is some truth to the media reports, but the correct conclusions are not being drawn as they are based on false premises.  There is a widespread view that both McVeigh and Kaczynski were right-wing terrorists and that by association Breivik is too.  Throw in his anti-EU, anti-multiculturalist sentiments and we have the classic right-wing terrorist, right?
Wrong.  The fundamental flaw with this logic is that it assumes McVeigh, Kaczynski and Breivik all had coherent political ideologies, and close examination proves this to be false.  Picking out a few beliefs that sounds right-wing is not a sufficient analysis.  Yes, Breivik was anti-EU (does this make anti-EU politician Tony Benn a right-winger then?) and yes he rants about the effects of cultural Marxism, but he is also anti-individualist, anti-globalisation, anti-free trade, he uses Kaczynski’s anti-capitalist rants as his own, his actions don’t suggest he is pro-life, and he spends much more time wittering on about reforming the “Knights of the Templar” than talking about anything else – perhaps it’s all Dan Brown’s fault?

Again, I am not trying to paint Breivik as a left-winger, nor do I deny that there are elements of conservative thought quoted in his manifesto, but ultimately Breivik is not a socialist loon, nor a conservative loon, he is just a loon.  His final tweet was a quote from John Stuart Mill, but I have not seen anyone try to say that he Breivik is a libertarian.  Whatever political “viewpoints” he espoused were the expression of his deranged anger, not the cause of it, and desperate attempts to crowbar him into a coherent political ideology are opportunistic and pointless.

Ed Miliband Reveals His Inner Marxist

It’s always nice to be proven right when making a political prediction, and thanks to Ed Miliband, it’s happened to me once again.  For in last week’s article, I predicted that the Murdoch hysteria would be so great that it would open the door for meddling politicians to initiate entirely unnecessary legislation and unconnected governmental interference.

Hey presto, a week later and we are being told by Ed Miliband, along with a whole host of other left-wing politicians, journalists and bloggers that the Murdoch empire needs breaking up.  Miliband has called for drastic new laws governing media ownership, and slammed Mr Murdoch for having “too much power over British public life.”  Ouch!

First of all, this condemnation may or may not be true, but it has nothing to do with phone hacking.  As we have been told repeatedly over the past few weeks, phone hacking can be performed quite easily by those with the knowhow and the will to do so; it matters not what sort of market share that person commands.  Additionally, any corruption by the Met Police is an issue to do with the integrity of the police force, and has little to do with the size of News Inc and/or News Corp.

So as predicted Miliband et al have been using this scandal to promote an agenda that has nothing to do with the phone hacking saga.  It is also interesting to note that neither Miliband nor Harman (who also condemned Murdoch’s structure as “too powerful and too rich) nor Kinnock (who has this week called for a press entirely regulated by the state) didn’t see a problem with all this when The Sun was supporting Labour from 1997 to 2010.

Yet what all this really shows is Labour’s condescending belief in the Marxist concept of “false consciousness” – the idea that the working masses can be duped by big powerful capitalists and will therefore actively fight against what the Marxists say are their real interests.  This get-out clause has been trotted out time and time again when middle class Marxists discover that the proletariat they claim to be fighting for actually don’t want any of their hard left nonsense.

It is this understanding that underpins Miliband’s attack on the power of Murdoch.  For when he calls Murdoch “too powerful” what he actually means is “too successful.”  For all Murdoch has done to become powerful is to provide news sources that people want to read or watch.  For in the free market the only people who are powerful are those who are successful in continuing to meet the needs and wants of the consumers, who have their own free choice whether or not to buy the product in question.

So when I (along with millions of Brits every day) walk into my newsagent and peruse the morning’s papers, I have a choice.  I can certainly choose to read a Murdoch paper like The Sun or The Times, or I can go for The Daily Mail, The Daily Express, The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mirror, The Daily Star, The Independent, The Observer, The Guardian or The Financial Times, along with a range of other papers that are perhaps not in wide circulation in the UK such as The Morning Star and The Wall Street Journal.  If I don’t like those choices I can shun newspapers altogether, and get my daily fix from online sites, blogs and Twitter.

Unlike the BBC – which forces taxpayers to fund it whether or not they approve of the service it provides or the views that it presents – the Murdoch Empire cannot force a single penny out of your pocket.  I for one have not purchased a Murdoch paper for years – that is the choice I have made.  Similarly, the people who do buy those papers make their own free choice every day whether or not to buy them, and read the views held inside.

Murdoch is therefore not powerful in the same way the BBC or the government are; he cannot force any money out of your pocket without you first giving it to him via the purchase of one of his products.  The only power he holds is due to the fragile and free relationship between business and each individual consumer that chooses to buy their products.  If people don’t like what is being produced, or are disgusted with the way in which they have gone about their business, they can stop buying the product immediately.  There is nothing forced about this relationship; that is, unless you subscribe to the Marxist view that the masses are nothing by mindless “sheeple” who can be brainwashed at the drop of a hat.

If the law has been broken, then the law should investigate and prosecute those involved.  Yet this should not be used by the left as an excuse to promote some pseudo-Marxist critique of the free market.  Murdoch’s power is nothing more than the fruits of success in providing the people with what they want, and in a modern Britain there should be no politicians slamming anyone for being successful in doing that.

Dunblane Syndrome Strikes Again

So, The News of the World is gone. Yet if you think the high-pitched outrage that has been yelled at you over the last week is over, think again. Not only can we be sure of a constant drip of stories over the coming months, there is also too much political capital at stake for this to just be about getting The News of the World shut down.

For by breaching every code (written and unwritten) of decency, The News of the World have created the kind of public outrage that can be very dangerous if political opportunists are allowed to get their hands upon it – and this is exactly what is happening now. It is reminiscent of a phenomenon that can correctly be termed “Dunblane Syndrome.”

The Dunblane massacre in 1996 triggered spontaneous outrage and grief from the British public. The public mood in the months after the tragedy was emotionally sensitive to say the least, drifting between grief, anger and the desire that “something must be done” to prevent another massacre of innocent schoolchildren.

It was this emotionally taut mood that Tony Blair (at that point Leader of the Opposition) used to push forward his drastic anti-gun legislation. In his 1996 speech to the Labour Party conference, he famously responded to Tory criticisms that he was guilty of emotional blackmail with this sickeningly cheap shot,

“Well, if they had been in that gym, if they had talked to those parents, sitting on the tiny chairs where once their children sat, they would have been emotional too.”

The implication was clear; if you opposed Blair’s gun legislation (which would have done little to prevent Dunblane) then you didn’t care about dead children, or were too ignorant to understand – after all, you hadn’t seen the tiny chairs! The fact that Blair’s visit to Dunblane was a bipartisan visit with the Tories, and therefore they had talked to the parents and seen the tiny chairs, wasn’t allowed to get in the way of Blair’s “passionate” speech.

Say what you like about Blair, the fact is he knew how to get things done, and this was no different. The Tories didn’t want to be seen as people who didn’t care about dead children, and so shut up, and in 1997 the legislation was passed. Fourteen years later and the fact that gun crime has almost doubled, and that we have the highest burglary rates in Europe is still irrelevant – anyone who tries to revoke or change any of those laws will be tarred with not caring about Dunblane. Poor legislation described by the Home Affairs Select Committee at that time as “panic legislation” and that would never have been passed under normal circumstances was allowed through as wily, agenda-driven politicians tapped into an emotionally sensitive atmosphere.

Fast forward fourteen years and we have The News of the World scandal; a scandal that appears to be constantly evolving. It seems that the outcry from this will not be a short thing, but will be long lasting as more and more sordid details are drip fed to the public over the next few months. This opens the door for left-wing politicians and journalists with a grudge against Murdoch (“How dare he be successful and mildly right-wing!”) to steer this outrage to implement far reaching restrictions on press freedom that have nothing to do with the News of the World scandal.

The activities The News of the World engaged in are illegal, and therefore they should be investigated and prosecuted by the police. If there are questions of police corruption (as there were in the 2006 investigation) then it is that is a separate matter and should be looked at. As David Cameron correctly stated (over the hoots and jeers of the hyenas that pass for Labour MPs), now is the time for the rule of law to work and to take its course.

But that isn’t enough for the politicians and journalists looking to use this for their own political purposes. We are hearing the constant refrain that “there must be regulation.” Ignoring the fact that there are already press regulations, one should always be cautious when one hears cries for “regulation.” For “regulation” in and of itself is neither a good nor a bad thing; it is a question of what kind of regulations we are looking at, what specific regulations will be implemented, and what problems will it seek to solve that are the important questions.

Yet in this whipped up emotional frenzy, we will not see any of those questions asked nor answered. Instead, those with a long standing grudge against a successful media empire will call for the law to be bypassed with whatever haphazard, half-arsed, over the top legislation some slapdash committee of MP’s with no clue about journalism have come up with. Then, it will be forced through Parliament, with anyone who objects to it being put down as “not caring” about Milly Dowler, the Soham girls, Gordon Brown’s son and the 7/7 victims.

The big victim of all this will be press freedom – the most fragile of all freedoms, and the first to fall on the long road to tyranny. Dunblane Syndrome strikes again.

The Importance of Economic Freedom

This is a great little video about just how important economic freedom is.  In both the UK and the USA, even the limited economic freedom we enjoy today is under attack, and many people don't understand just how important it is, or believe that economic freedom only benefits millionaires and billionaires while hurting the poor.  This video helps to dispel this myth, and show the precise opposite to be true.  Enjoy!