The Politically Incorrect Show - 24/03/2000

[Music - Die Fledermaus]

Good afternoon, KAYA ORAAAA & welcome to the Politically Incorrect Show on the free speech network, Radio Pacific, for Friday March 24, 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!]

Those of you who know me at all well know that one of my pet hates is weasel words - words that take a long time to utter, are replete with qualifications, & usually indicate the speaker's unwillingness or inability to state a clear-cut position. You can recognise such types by their penchant for prefacing anything they say with "It has been argued that" or "It could be argued that" which absolves them from responsibility for what it is they are about to say has been or could be argued. Sometimes, on the other hand, weasel words are preceded by something like, "Let me make one thing perfectly clear," whereupon the speaker proceeds to embark on a tortuous journey of obfuscation. A classic example was one I quoted in The Free Radical from Jenny Shipley when she was Prime Minister: "One thing I am personally clear about is that I don't think we can leave the ownership of major assets in Auckland in anything other than a certain state." That's telling 'em, Headmistress!

Now it would appear that the likely Republican nominee for the American presidency, the supremely dorkish George W. Bush, has been taking lessons from the Headmistress. I quote from an e-mail I received from Barbara Branden, who will be known to some of you as the author of the book, The Passion of Ayn Rand:

In a TV ad on negative campaigning, George Bush says, "In conclusion, I would just like to conclude by saying that I trust American voters not to be unaware of what they should be aware of, and that I think that their awareness of their own awareness is what will ensure that I am not the candidate who is unelected come election time."

Barbara comments:

"Figure out what George means by that sentence. If, as president, he gave marching orders like that, the generals wouldn't know whether to invade Panama, bomb Belgrade or go back to the barracks."

Pity the poor Americans, confronted with a choice between a philosophical spastic like Bush & a statist Greenie like Gore.

Now contrast Bush's verbiage with this, from Ronald Reagan:

"I am going to talk of controversial things. I make no apology for this. It's time we asked ourselves if we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers. James Madison said, 'We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government.' This idea, that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power, is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

"You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream - the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order - or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.

"The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing."

And so on. Reagan actually gave that speech on behalf of then Republican nominee, Barry Goldwater in 1964. Goldwater himself got into a heap of trouble for not mincing his words. It was he who said, "Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue; extremism in defence of liberty is no vice." Those words sent chills down the place where Richard Nixon's spine should have been. Nixon of course was the arch-obfuscator.

My point today is not so much to argue for what Reagan & Goldwater said, but to applaud them for stating their convictions unequivocally. Politics now in this age of the spin-doctors has become the art of saying nothing in the longest possible time - better that than run the risk of offending someone. It's not only morally bankrupt, it's boring.

Spare a thought for the Americans as they endure several months of artificial combat between George W. Beat-about-the-Bush & Al Snore.

Politically Incorrect Show, saying what it means & meaning what it says ... 309 3099.

---

If you enjoyed this, why not subscribe?