Lindsay Perigo
The Politically Incorrect Show - 14/07/2000
[Music - Die Fledermaus]
Good afternoon, KAYA ORAAAA & welcome to the Politically Incorrect Show on the free speech network, Radio Pacific, for Friday July 14, 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]
Today, an easy little test for you. Spot the common denominator underlying the following three news stories from the last day:
#1 - "Retailers are continuing to sell bongs & pipes despite a new law prohibiting the sale of cannabis utensils. The health regulation, which became effective at the start of the month, was initially introduced by the National Government. It prohibits the importation & supply of cannabis utensils, including 'paraphernalia which may be used for administering cannabis.'"
#2 - "Cutting down a rimu tree in a Henderson housing subdivision has cost a contractor & its consultant engineer $14,000 in fines. Judge William Treadwell, sitting in the Environment Court, imposed the fines after the Waitakere City Council prosecuted for failure to obtain consent to remove the tree."
#3 - "When a knife-wielding man burst into his Chinese takeaway shop yelling 'Give me the money' on Tuesday night, Mr Li grabbed the nearest thing he could find - a large serving ladle - to defend himself, his wife & their 6-month-old baby, Annie. 'But I thought, no good, & found a bigger knife,' Mr Li said, displaying the sharp meat cleaver he used to frighten the would-be robber away. 'I ran to him & yelled, Ha! Ha!' Mr Li said. Detective Constable George Stanton said it was not the way police preferred businesspeople to deal with robberies, but he was pleased the Li family were unharmed."
The common denominator? Think about it. The first story tells you you don't own your body, since there are certain things the government has decided that you may not put in it, even to the point of banning "paraphernalia" used to ingest these substances. The second tells you that you don't own your property, since you may not remove a tree from it without bureaucratic consent, for which you have to pay & which may well be withheld. The third tells you you don't own your property OR EVEN YOUR LIFE, since you're not supposed to defend them when they're under threat. This last, in fact - that you don't own your own life - is the ultimate abstraction underpinning all three stories. It is what they all presuppose.
There is nothing unusual in these stories, of course, nor in the fact that these three presented themselves in the space of one day - this was a day like any other in the Democratic People's Republic of Aotearoa. But if we are ever to see the day when such events DON'T routinely occur, we must challenge the fundamental assumption that makes them possible. The belief that your life belongs to someone else, to society as embodied in the government, is the Bastille in which we are all currently imprisoned. Today being July 14, let us storm THAT Bastille with a vengeance, & raise high the banner of La Liberte.
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