The Death of Martin McGuinness

I have a strange affinity for Irish Republicans. Perhaps it is because my grandfather fought with them during the Irish War of Independence between 1919 and 1921, or perhaps it is because I have an in-depth knowledge of the terrible history of British and English rule of Ireland. But most likely it is because I spent some time in Ireland during the 1980s when the Provisional IRA had effective control of significant parts of Northern Ireland and I met people who were almost certainly IRA members. They didn't seem like the evil people one imagines terrorists to be, although I was as appalled as anyone by the bombings at Hyde Park, Harrods and the Brighton Hotel that happened while I was living in England. I did not accept the IRA's justification for the murder of innocent people but I gained an understanding of what might drive people to commit such acts.

It was common knowledge in the Irish community that Martin McGuinness was the commander of the Provisional IRA in Derry and that he personally ordered, and perhaps participated in, many of the attacks in that city and further afield. I heard rumours that the British government, in spite of Margaret Thatcher's public statements to the contrary, was negotiating with the IRA, even back then. McGuinness was involved in those negotiations that led ultimately, under Tony Blair's government, to the Good Friday Agreement. McGuinness did some terrible things and I think it does him no credit that he never publicly owned up to his role in many terrorist incidents, but his willingness to negotiate the peace and power-sharing agreement showed he had a rational mind at least.

Someone once said that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, and with the passage of time many who would have been thought of as terrorists in their day are now considered to be heroes. The American revolutionaries were terrorists in the eyes of the British, as were those who fought in the Indian Mutiny, but no one considers them terrorists today. Events that are closer to the present time, like the attacks by Jewish groups Irgun and the Stern Gang that led to the establishment of the state of Israel, still tend to be more contentious. I think it will be a long time before McGuinness is universally considered to have been a freedom fighter, but if Western leaders like Justin Trudeau can mourn the death of a mass murderer like Fidel Castro, then anything is possible.

Why the West is looking to more radical candidates

We are seeing an interesting political trend across the globe at the moment and that is the rise of more radical political candidates. It started with the surge of UKIP in Great Britain and the libertarian presidential candidate Ron Paul in the United States, and more recently has seen the election of the Marxist Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the UK Labour Party and Socialist Bernie Sanders' candidacy for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. You could say Donald Trump is part of the trend, but Trump is less radical than any of the others (although he does represent an anti-establishment sentiment in the Republican Party). While we have yet to see the support for these more radical candidates translate into real political office, it is entirely possible one of them may end up leading their country in the next few years.

So what is happening here? Is it a hardening of "divisive politics" as Barack Obama would have us believe? Well, I guess you could call it that. What I think it is more precisely is a retreat from centrist politics.

If we look at major political shifts in the Western world since the Second World War, it is fair to say that there has been some significant swings. There was definitely a swing to the left up until the late 1970s. Britain, most of Europe, and even the United States saw a huge expansion of the role of the state, the rapid growth of welfare, and a corresponding increase in income taxes until they were at exorbitant levels (e.g. marginal rates of more than 90% in Britain). Then came Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and, here in New Zealand, the Lange-Douglas Labour Government. These leaders hauled back the expansion of the state and reduced taxes. Since 1990 most Western countries have been retreating from the more libertarian policies of Thatcher, Reagan, et al, and we have seen the rise of the 'third way' (as Tony Blair dubbed it), supposedly a middle ground between rampant socialism and hard-edged capitalism.

In reality, the so-called third way was really no way, at least in a philosophical sense. It represented the lack of a political philosophy, an anything-goes (or more precisely anything-that-can-win-an-election) approach to policy making. John Key's government here in New Zealand is the epitome of it and David Cameron in Britain is another archetype. They see themselves as pragmatists and believe everything should be a compromise.

The truth is that most people have a basic political belief system. It might not be very well-defined but they can tell you whether they think the state is too big or whether it should care more for the poor, whether we should raise or lower taxes, whether abortion and gay marriage should be legal, etc. They often hold strong views on these issues and don't like to compromise those views. The politics of compromise actually satisfies no one.

One of the problems for those of us on the classical liberal side of the political spectrum is, as Mark Steyn is fond of saying, we've lost the culture war. When almost every university lecturer, musician, film star, writer and other public figure is parroting the socialist-environmentalist mantra, there is only one side of the debate that is expected to compromise. You see this when President Obama talks about divisive politics - he's not talking about Democrats failing to compromise, is he?

The other problem that we've got is what James Delingpole so poetically calls the 'dog-shit-yoghurt problem'. If I like yoghurt and you like eating dog shit, the pragmatist says we should both eat dog-shit-yoghurt. I'm sure you can see the problem with this compromise, particularly for the yoghurt lover. Libertarians essentially want the government to leave us alone to get on with our lives. We don't need to force our beliefs on anyone else - we just need effective constraints on others forcing us to do things. Socialists want the government to interfere with everyone's lives, not just their own, because socialism doesn't work if it's only for those who want it. So they are always more willing to use force.

I think the polarisation of politics is not a bad thing for libertarians because it forces people to examine the arguments and decide what they really believe. When people have had no choice but to eat dog-shit-yoghurt for years, it is not a bad thing for the yoghurt seller when they are forced to choose between the two dishes.

Scottish Yes Vote the End of 'Great' Britain

While here in New Zealand we wrestle with the choices of who is the least bad political party in a crowded general election field, on the other side of the world a more crucial vote is about to take place. I am writing, of course, about the Scottish referendum on independence, which, if you believe the polls, is going down to wire.

Like most distant international observers, at first I regarded this referendum as something of a sham. Early indications were that the 'No' vote would win by the best part of 20 percentage points and that the Scots would soon get back to complaining about the weather and their lack of success on the football turf. My reaction to the latest poll, which has the 'Yes' vote one point ahead, initially was shocked disappointment. Britain is the country in which I have lived the most years of my life after New Zealand and I have a immense fondness for the place.  But on consideration, another part of me concludes that 'Great' Britain died a long time ago and the dismembering of the corpse is overdue.

Britain today is a country that ignores mass child abuse in the name of tolerance. It is a country where you can be arrested for quoting its greatest prime minister. And it is a country that chose to launch the Olympic Games with a celebration of a moribund public health system in which people are much less likely to survive cancer than in other countries. In other words, it is not a country its citizens should be particularly proud of. However, does that justify the Scots seceding?

The problem for the Scots is that the things they want to preserve by becoming independent are the things that have caused Britain to decline from its former glory. They want more National Health System, more welfare and more government interference in their social and economic lives. They think they are a more caring society than the rest of Britain and they want even more of it. The problem for the Scots is that England, or more specifically the Southeast of England, pays the bill and they delude themselves that North Sea oil will continue to pay for their already over-extended Socialist economy. Nothing could be further from the truth. North Sea oil is already starting to run out and without it the Scottish economy will look more like that of Greece or Portugal.

But in my view the worst thing about a Yes vote in the referendum is that it is a point of no return. Britain seemed like a lost cause once before - in the 1970s - but Maggie Thatcher dragged it kicking and screaming back into a position of world political and economic leadership. I have liked to think that the decline since Thatcher was just one more good prime minister away from being reversed. A Yes vote will lock in that decline and Britain will never be Great again. Personally I feel that is a very great shame.

Tony Benn was a great Socialist

I have been a libertarian since university but in politics I hold the greatest contempt not for those who have diametrically opposed political beliefs but rather for those who insist on always occupying the so-called "middle ground." At university one of my best friends was a revolutionary Marxist. He used to joke that "come the revolution you'll be first up against the wall...bang, bang, bang!" My response was always, "not if I get to you first!" We both knew that neither of us was entirely joking and that, given the right circumstances, we might one day find each other on opposite sides of a fight that involved more than just rhetoric, but we were best mates nevertheless and liked nothing more than a heated political debate. Occasionally we found common ground, such as our contempt for crony capitalism and religious conservatives.

When I lived in the UK in the 1980s there were two politicians whom I admired. Both towered over their peers in the philosophical sense. Margaret Thatcher, of course, was the first of these. The other was Tony Benn. The former Viscount Stansgate (for Tony Benn had renounced his peerage in the 1960s so he could sit in the House of Commons) was a doctrinaire Marxist and as such, I had little in common with him politically. But I admired his principled beliefs and his forthright manner in expressing them.

Benn believed in a pure, democratic Marxism that is, in my analysis, as illusory as fairy dust. He stuck to his principles, even when they put him in conflict with those who would ordinarily be his allies. He detested the Soviet Union and he was as much a thorn in the side of the Labour leadership as he was to the Tories. I had the impression that there was a reluctant mutual respect behind the open contempt between Benn and his political nemesis, Margaret Thatcher. Certainly, he had a sense of humour where Thatcher was concerned, introducing to parliament in 1990 a private members' bill entitled the Margaret Thatcher (Global Repeal) Bill.

Tony Benn died last week aged 88. I tip my hat to him as that rarity in politics these days - a man of principle and courage. Give me a Tony Benn any day over the unprincipled likes of Tony Blair, David Cameron or John Key.

Liberal Means Anything But

One of the common characteristics of dictatorial regimes is that they recognise early on the need to control the language. This is because language is a proxy for thought. People may dissent in their minds but that is of little effect if they are incapable of expressing their dissent. George Orwell recognised this in his novel, 1984, with Newspeak, the approved language of his fictional dictatorship.   Newspeak was designed to ensure people could not communicate opposition to the regime and one of the means of doing this was to confuse synonyms and antonyms, thus eliminating words like 'bad' and replacing them with euphemistic alternatives such as 'ungood'.

Orwell's novel was prescience of the Western world today.  The political left-wing in our so-called liberal democracies has achieved what Hitler and Stalin could only have dreamed of - an almost complete stranglehold on the language. 

Take the terms 'left-wing' and 'right-wing' - what do they really mean?  Left-wing originally referred to those on the left side of the French revolutionary legislative assembly.  Those who sat on the left opposed the monarchy and supported the establishment of a republic.  Those on the right side of the chamber supported the institutions of the Old Regime, although not the monarchy itself.  In other words, the left-wing supported change, i.e. they were radicals, the right-wing didn't, i.e. they were conservatives.  In the Western world of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries these terms have lost their original meaning and distinction.  Left-wingers are often the most conservative in that they want to preserve the established order of a strong, central government and comprehensive welfare state.  Right-wingers are often the ones advocating change, seeking to reduce the role of government in the economy and to roll-back the welfare state.  Thus we had Maggie Thatcher, a Conservative who was more radical in her policies than any modern British prime minister.

Left-wingers have co-opted the term 'extreme right-wing' to imply Fascist or National Socialist beliefs.  This is ironic to say the least because, as the names suggest, both Fascism (deriving from the Italian word for 'group') and National Socialism (literally Socialism to achieve nationalistic goals) have more in common, at least in desired outcomes, with the democratic Socialism that most liberals espouse than with anything their modern opponents believe.

The word 'liberal' has similarly lost almost all of its original meaning.  Today it is interchangeable with the term left-wing.  Classical liberalism, as typified by the writings of 17th Century English philosopher John Locke, was all about individual freedom and rights and had little in common with the political beliefs of latter-day liberals who advocate for an all-powerful (albeit, they would say, benevolent) state.  In the Newspeak of today's Western democracies, 'liberal' means the exact opposite and those who think of themselves as classical liberals prefer to use the term 'libertarian' to distinguish themselves from the faux-liberals of the left-wing.

There are many examples of this topsy-turvy use of plain words for political ends.  Those who advocate equal treatment of different races before the law are labelled 'racist', those who would prefer to judge individuals on their merits rather than on their sex are 'sexist', and those who dare to question the political orthodoxy on climate change are 'deniers'.

The motivation for this misuse and misappropriate of language is always the same as that of Big Brother - to prohibit debate and control thinking.  This is reason enough to resist such hegemony at every turn.  Language defines the terms of any debate.  Concede the language and you concede the argument.

Maggie Thatcher was my Prime Minister

I was in my early 20s when I went to live in England. Maggie Thatcher had already been in power for several years. The Falklands War was won but she was still doing battle with the miners' union and others who wanted to return Britain to the stagnation and apathy that characterised life in Britain since the Second World War.  British politics in the decade up until Thatcher's election was the politics of appeasement – successive governments caved into the unions and left-wing grievance groups and the moribund economy reflected a lack of enterprise and initiative that was evident to any visitor.

What I most admired about Maggie Thatcher was her courage. She was an outsider, not part of the Tory establishment at all. She was a compromise candidate when she was elected to lead the Conservative Party following the inept Ted Heath, but she quickly made the job her own. It is often a characteristic of great political leaders that their greatness does not become evident until they step into the leadership role.  I am sure that few people in the Conservative Party in 1975 would have realised that they were electing a leader who would go on to become the longest serving British prime minister of the 20th century and one who is now remembered by many, including me, as the greatest peacetime leader of the current era.

Her critics today accuse her of enriching the powerful at the expense of the little man, but my experience of living under her leadership was the opposite. She was very much of her lower middle class origins and she never forgot it, priding herself on knowing the prices of groceries and empathising with the difficulties of the average family in making ends meet. She took on the entrenched interests of the unions, but she also took on the rich and powerful. At the same time as she was pursuing her policy of a "property owning democracy" forcing local bodies to sell their huge holdings of council flats and houses to tenants, she was also doing battle with the Dukes of Westminster and Cornwall, the two largest property owners in Britain (the latter, of course, being the pseudonymous title of Prince Charles) to sell ground leases that their families had tightly held for many centuries to the leaseholders.

I didn't agree with everything that she did it. For example, I think she prolonged the conflict in Northern Ireland (although, to her credit, it has emerged subsequently that she initiated secret negotiations with the IRA that ultimately resulted in the Good Friday Peace Agreement).

Her historical achievements will be recognised long after her petty critics are forgotten – winning the Falklands War at a time when Western nations seemed incapable of winning any sustained military battle, staring down the Soviet Union together with Ronald Reagan with the resulting collapse of that evil regime and, most of all, showing Britons that they could once again call their country "Great."

I think the best tribute to "our Maggie" came from MP George Galloway, who is best known for his support for the murderous President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Galloway said that he hoped Maggie Thatcher rotted in hell.  I am sure Maggie would not be upset by such a comment from a thug like Galloway.  In any event, if that is her final destination, I imagine she will be sitting there clutching her handbag, drinking her glass of sherry, and pressing her point in a debate with Thomas Jefferson, John Locke, Benjamin Franklin and Winston Churchill.

Maggie Thatcher demonstrated that a person of principle could stand by those principles and still be elected leader of a major Western nation.  The unprincipled, weak-willed, expedient politicians who dominate the leadership of almost every Western government today would do well to observe her example.