Lindsay Perigo
The Politically Incorrect Show - 20/11/2000
[Music - Die Fledermaus]
Good afternoon, Kaya Oraaa & welcome to the Politically Incorrect Show on the free speech network, Radio Pacific, for Monday November 20, 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!]
I feared it would happen, & it is happening. The government is wising up. It realises it cannot go on frightening the horses the way it has in its first year if it wants to be re-elected, & so is going to pull its scary head in. Helen Clark told the Labour Party conference over the weekend that Labour needs three terms to achieve its agenda, making the pragmatic requirements of re-election a priority. Personally, I'd rather see them carry on as alarmingly as before & get thrown out after one term, but I can readily see that Ms Clark's strategy could keep her where she is for the nine years that she wants. If government delivers no further blows to the solar plexus of business - bearing in mind that paid maternity leave is still to come - it's perfectly possible that business will recover somewhat from the previous blows & carry on delivering the goods. Out of what she steals from this Ms Clark may continue to be able to pay her bludger-supporters to breed more bludger-supporters. It's possible the politics of plunder will become irretrievably entrenched. Perhaps THIS is the agenda Ms Clark speaks of that will take three terms to achieve?
Notwithstanding the ultimate economic unsustainability of such a culture, its longevity can be greatly enhanced by entrenching the ideas that underpin it. If we can all be persuaded that we are members of a tribe to which we must make sacrifices, plunder is a cinch. Dissidents can easily be dismissed as "the lunatic fringe" as the productive sector plods ever more dutifully into the sacrificial furnaces, accepting that plunder is an unchallengeable norm. Why do I get the uneasy feeling that Ms Clark's agenda was actually achieved long before she came to office, & that she is merely consolidating it?
French parliamentarian Frederick Bastiat saw this all coming one hundred & fifty years ago. "Sometimes the law defends plunder & participates in it," he wrote. "Thus the beneficiaries are spared the shame, danger & scruple which their acts would otherwise involve. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons & gendarmes at the service of the plunderers & treats the victim - when he defends himself - as a criminal. In short, there is a LEGAL plunder ... How is this to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, & gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime."
That rumbling noise you hear is Monsieur Bastiat rolling in his grave.
Ms Clark's weekend comments indicate that she fears there are still pockets of resistance to her government's plunder & that Labour & the Alliance must become more subtle as to how they commit it. Alas, the resistance IS to the extent & methods, rather than the principle, of the plunder - the resisters cannot see that they are ALL Murray Willises from the day that they become involuntary "customers" of the IRD. Given that this is so, the newly-subtle Ms Clark can probably rest easy that she's there for life.
Pour me a gin, would you, Ruth?
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