Lindsay Perigo
The Politically Incorrect Show - 17/02/2000
[Music - Die Fledermaus]
Good afternoon, Kaya Oraaa & welcome to the Politically Incorrect Show on the free speech network, Radio Pacific, for Thursday February 17, proudly sponsored by Neanderton Nicotine Ltd, the show that says bugger the politicians & bureaucrats & all the other bossyboot busybodies who try to run our lives with our money; that stands tall for free enterprise, achievement, profit, & excellence, against the state-worshippers in our midst; that stands above all for the most sacred thing in the universe, the liberty of the human individual.
[Music up, music down!]
Much of my spare time yesterday was taken up with proof-reading the next issue of my magazine, The Free Radical, which will be out on Monday February 28. This is the fortieth issue since publication began in May of 1994, so I feel some satisfaction at the achievement of a minor milestone. And what a way it has come since that first issue. It's much bigger now, for one thing - 40 pages, advertisement-free, vs 16 back then, when one reviewer said, "Lindsay Perigo had better hope that size doesn't matter."
There were just three contributors to Issue One. I led off with an editorial explaining the magazine's philosophy & an article attacking the policies of compulsion promoted by Sir Roger Douglas in his book, Unfinished Business. "If people are forced by the state to partake of a product or service," I wrote, "even if it originates from the private sector & is dispensed more efficiently than by the state, what you have is not a free market." Six years later I still have difficulty getting that point across.
Then Deborah Coddington launched a powerful attack on the Human Rights Act in an article about Auckland rare books seller Anah Dunsheath, who had just been prevented by the Act from advertising for "an intelligent, pleasant, energetic, practical reliable lady, 40 to 50 years old, living within ten minutes of the city." Instead she had had to place an ad that didn't specify age or gender, & to process 208 replies, most of them from people she wasn't interested in employing. "Oh for the good old days," she exclaimed, "when one could say what one wanted."
The third contributor was philosopher David Kelley, who asked, "May we have the word liberal back?" "The classical liberals were individualists," he wrote - "Those of us who have kept the classical liberal faith were left without a name when the tern 'liberal' was hijacked by the social democrats & taken on a long & winding drunken joy-ride. If they've tired of the vehicle, having dented & scraped it beyond recognition, why don't they just leave it at the kerb? We still have the keys; we'll take it back - no questions asked."
Then there were the Hope & Horror Files, which have been a permanent fixture since, & another column from me called "Politicians' Euphemisms: The Truthful Half of the Forked Tongue." Thus:
"Tax avoidance: protection of one's rightful earnings from wrongful expropriation. Tax evasion: tax avoidance. Affirmative action: discrimination on the basis of race, sex, etc.. Black market: free market. Spending cuts: a decrease in the rate of increase in government expenditure. Civil servant: an otherwise unemployable person who is neither civil nor disposed to serve. Royal Commission: the first refuge of politicians confronted with an issue that might lose them votes. Task Force: the second refuge of politicians confronted with an issue that might lose them votes. Common good: individual bad. Compassion: theft. Democracy: the right to choose the thieves. MMP: the silliest form of democracy. Long-term, hard-core unemployed: politicians & bureaucrats." Etc.
Contrary to the predictions of its enemies, The Free Radical is still around, 40 issues on. I'm mighty proud of that fact. I'll be even prouder if, after 40 more issues, it has begun to have an impact - because, though I say so myself, it is only the ideas contained therein that can save this country from the burgeoning blight of socialism.
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