The Last Ditch

Same-sex couples could create children; but should they?

Link: Same-sex couples could create children - Telegraph.

Instinctively, I feel this technology is wrong. I would not use it and would disapprove of anyone who did. However my personal revulsion is no reason to want a law against it (as we have at present). There are many things I find revolting which are (or should be) legal.

After many years of infertility treatments, research is now beginning to show (as I would have predicted) that the children of infertile couples are more likely to have health problems than those of parents who conceive without scientific intervention. Sometimes there is a good natural reason why a couple can't conceive, which it is morally wrong, or at least highly irresponsible, to ignore. Sometimes one or both parents could conceive easily with someone else, but together they simply represent a poor genetic combination. My children have been the greatest joy in my life and I feel very sorry for any couple that can't conceive, but in their place I think I would accept Nature's harsh verdict. I would think it better to give a loving home to a child in need of adoption, than to risk producing one of my own to suffer.

Of course, in these uncomfortably mystical terms, Nature has given no verdict on the capacity of same sex couples to reproduce. They may both be perfectly capable of conceiving with a wide range of partners. Perhaps there is less reason to object to their conceiving by artificial means than there is for infertile heterosexuals? However, any combination of genes untested by Nature represents an increased risk which I would not personally take.

In the end, it's impossible to legislate sensibly for these matters. The drive to reproduce is so powerful that many couples will take the risks of genetic defects. If their country bans a technology, they will travel to another to use it (or they will simply do it illegally). Scientists are far more driven by curiosity than ethics, so there is no effective way to legislate against such research. The idea of legislating against knowledge disgusts me anyway! Some same sex couples will be eager to use this technology in order to make a political point. I fear for a child conceived for such a reason, but many are conceived for much worse (or none).

My ethical problem as a libertarian is this; while I am all for being able to take risks for myself, I struggle with the notion of taking them for an unborn child. In such cases it is the child who will live with the consequences of the parent's choices. What do you think?

Abolish Income Tax

Link: The UK Libertarian Party - Income Tax.

Britain's newest political party has made its first policy announcement and it's a corker. Follow the link to read all about it.

The UK Libertarian Party

Link: The UK Libertarian Party - Welcome.

Britain has a new political party, which I am glad to be able to support. Membership is only £10 (though feel free to contribute more). Follow the link for details. There is, no doubt, a long road ahead. Taking on the established political parties, united in their view that the voting public is a mere source of cash for their respective schemes, will not be easy. At least someone has made a start.

The picture shows the new party's flag flying in Second Life, from the stern of my avatar's yacht.

The psychology of a libertarian

Sometimes I worry that my personal response to state power is a matter of psychology, not reason. My parents were strict. Though essentially a charming and well-behaved boy, I spent my childhood always “in the wrong.” It was meant kindly, of course, but independence came as a relief. I set out on adult life determined that no-one would tell me what to do again. Faced with anyone who tries to put himself in loco parentis, my reactions can be fierce.

The present government certainly seems to see itself as a substitute parent. It expresses concerns about our health, suggests we don’t know how to bring up our children and - as if we were teenagers living at home - takes a large slice of our money to spend in ways we would never have chosen.

Our health and welfare are simply not their business. How anyone can be such a lack-brained, pusillanimous milksop as to think that they are? I can understand the politicians who seek power rather better than the craven individuals who meekly submit to it. I have known many a weak individual overcome his well-merited sense of personal inadequacy by bossing others about. But who the hell enjoys taking orders?

Perhaps the sons and daughters of milder parents respond differently to those professing concern for their health and well-being? Perhaps they are more inclined to welcome such attentions? I wish they weren’t. I can’t help feeling that if the statist thugs devising new laws and their lickspittles enforcing them were met, daily, with the same reaction from millions that they reliably encounter from me, our country would be a better place.

The Custodian: The government as paedophile

Link: The Custodian: The government as paedophile.

The Custodian is a new blog to me. Thanks are due to Fabian Tassano at Mediocracy for directing me to this interesting piece. I am not sure I buy the paedophile analogy, but I certainly think all prudent citizens should approach government as if dealing with a psychopath.

Libertarians are the True Social Parasites?!

Link: Monbiot.com » Libertarians are the True Social Parasites.

This may just be the most offensive piece of twaddle the Guardian has ever published. From a newspaper that enjoys the services of Polly Toynbee, that is a big claim. Monbiot delights sneeringly in the hypocrisy of Matt Ridley, who went cap in hand to the Bank of England on behalf of Northern Rock’s depositors. This, despite having written articles railing “…against taxes, subsidies, bailouts and government regulation…”

Ridley is a hypocrite, perhaps. To extrapolate that everyone whose lips are not firmly clasped to the flowing nipple of Mother State is also a hypocrite is a stretch. Even for the man whose name is so close to “moonbat” that one wonders if the pejorative was invented for him.

To extrapolate that small-State libertarians are “parasites” is beyond a stretch. It’s just stupid. Were it up to us, there would be no Central Bank to bail Northern Rock out. Absent the moral jeopardy created by State guarantees of deposits, depositors would have spread their money widely and chosen banks with care or would have lost it. I doubt if Northern Rock could have attracted many depositors without the State's original guarantee (and the hope of the bigger one produced in a crisis).

Monbiot perfectly expresses the Socialist’s contempt for his fellow-man when he writes:

Whenever modern humans, living outside the narrow social mores of the clan, are allowed to pursue their genetic interests without constraint, they will hurt other people. They will grab other peoples’ resources. They will dump their waste in other peoples’ habitats, they will cheat, lie, steal and kill. And if they have power and weapons, no-one will be able to stop them except those with more power and better weapons…

In what a man fears you will do to him, you learn what he would – given the chance – do to you. God preserve us all from being in the power of George Monbiot. I did enjoy the semi-digested Marxian references to the supposed paradise of the hunter-gatherer clan – the “hominid troop” for which our Georgie is so nostalgic. The purpose of the State is, in his view, to put us into the same relationship with each other that we enjoyed in that state of grace.

“…We need a state that rewards us for cooperating and punishes us for cheating and stealing. At the same time, we must ensure that the state is also treated as a member of the hominid clan and punished when it acts against the common good…”

Since, inevitably, the State will define “the common good,” one wonders whom he thinks he's fooling, apart from himself. The present British mega-hominid has pigged itself out at the common trough, and its minions in law enforcement have simply declined to bring charges. What a joke.

Where was Monbiot during the 20th Century, when cheating and stealing was elevated to new levels in societies where the State was tasked as he would wish? Who were Hitler, Beria, Stalin, Mao, Chirac, Blair, Prescott and Castro but men with “more power and better weapons” and access to the wealth of their fellow-men that only a mighty State can confer?

I read the Guardian for material for my blog. It never fails. Nor does it ever fail to remind me of the strange world of BDSM. BDSM “submissives,” however, are playing a sexual game. They have agreed codewords to alert their “dom” or "domme" that the pain has become too much. The Guardian’s “subs” relish their enslavement to that great Dominatrix, the State, but there is no codeword that will stop it from stamping on their most delicate parts with the spiked heels of State Power. They may like that. Forgive me if I don't. And forgive me if I find it deeply offensive that, having suffered from the parasitism fostered by Labour my whole life, I should be called a parasite myself.

Don't be smug about V-Tech killings

Link: BBC NEWS | World | Americas | US university killer was S Korean.

Britain's anti-American media were all over the sad story of the V-Tech killings. They tore gleefully into America's "gun culture" and its people in general. Let's get this straight. This horror didn't happen because the killer was American. It didn't happen because he was ethnically Korean. It happened because the poor young man was mad.

"Ah, but he had such easy access to guns." Yes, he did. Unfortunately, since the university authorities had made the campus "gun-free," his victims did not. There was no-one there to return fire. Most of the victims would be alive today if the university had not banned guns.

Some Britons seem to enjoy it when something like this happens in America, but Britain has no moral standing to judge America harshly.  Violent crime is declining in America and rising in Britain. The risk of being violently attacked in England & Wales is already higher than in America and rising. In Scotland, the situation is worse. Many killed or injured with knives or other weapons in Britain, would be alive and unharmed if their assailants had feared they might have a gun.

The main disadvantage of widespread gun ownership in America is that suicide is easier. 58% of America's gun deaths are self-inflicted, which is one reason you have to be careful when gun control advocates choose to compare "gun deaths" rather than homicides. Only 38% of America's "gun deaths" are homicides and some of those are justifiable (e.g. self-defence).

Britain's only statistical advantage in the field of crime is that our homicide rate is lower. America counts all reported offences. We remove homicides from the statistics if all suspects are acquitted (although the victim remains dead). We might not show the V-Tech killings in our statistics at all, if they were found to have been committed by a mentally-disturbed person (see Home Office Statistical Bulletin 02/07). America's statistics more accurately reflect the total number of victims.

It's hard to say what the statistical difference would be if comparable figures were available, but it seems reasonable to suspect that some of Britain's advantage would be lost.

Burglaries are twice as common in Britain as in America and 53% of them (because of improved household security) now take place when the homeowner is present. In America only 13% of burglaries take place while an occupant is home. American burglars do not have the benefit of a government guarantee that all properties are undefended. Would anyone in America have frightened my wife like these guys? I don't think so. They would have been afraid that she or some kindly neighbour  would have shot them. That fear would have neutralised all their advantages of youth, strength and disregard for reputation.

To carry a licensed gun in America, you must - in every State - have a clean criminal record. Am I naive enough to expect American criminals to obey America's gun control laws? No. The naive ones are those who expect British criminals to abide by Britain's. They simply don't. While, by definition, no law-abiding citizen in Britain is armed; one-third of young criminals own or have access to a gun. There may be as many as four million illegal firearms in Britain.

For most of my life, I shared the common British view that America's attitude to gun control was crazy. However, disarming the law-abiding has proved to be disastrous. The British State can't or won't protect us. We were stupid to let it disarm us.

Can we please just shut up about V-Tech? We have no leg to stand on.