The Politically Incorrect Show - 22/01/2001

Music - Die Fledermaus]

Good afternoon, Kaya Oraaa & welcome to the Politically Incorrect Show on the free speech network, Radio Pacific, for Monday January 22, 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!]

So now, for the second time in living memory, it's President Bush. The old Chief who never inhaled has been ex-Hailed, a new one in-Hailed. That engaging shyster Bill Clinton has departed; King George W. has ascended to the throne. Americans have had a weekend of High Society hi-jinks & hoopla. What does it all portend?

Bush's inaugural address, while extremely well-delivered, was a worry. All that talk of "unity" doesn't sit well in a nation famously likened to a "melting pot" of disparate liberty-seekers from all corners of the globe. People "yearning to be free" passed under Lady Liberty's torch to BE free, not to be enslaved by politicians, tax collectors & other bureaucrats. They wanted government to stay out of their way, not take them over. They weren't concerned with national "unity"; they just wanted to be left alone to go about their business & hold their opinions peacefully. They enjoyed the "harmony" - not the "unity" - that came about when they WERE left alone. Bush's talk of "bringing people together" is all-too-suggestive of FORCING them together - consistent with the way government has been going in America for decades. The proposed tax cuts augur well; the meddling with education & Social Security does not - these are areas government should be getting out
of, not further into.

The problem is, there seems to be a waning constituency for the minimal-government vision of the Founding Fathers. As political scientist & philosopher Chris Matthew Sciabarra observes in the upcoming issue of my magazine, most Americans 'embody a "mixed economy" of the spirit, as Ayn Rand once observed.  Some lean conservative:  they want less regulation, except when it means middle
class "entitlements" or corporate welfare or rural farm subsidies or defense contracts or getting the government to promote prayer in public schools or to prohibit reproductive and sexual lifestyle choices.  Some lean liberal: they want government out of the prayer business, they want reproductive and sexual freedom, but they're too busy planning the next government boondoggle and tax increases to fund it.  Some nativists go all the way:  they want government regulation of everything - from the music and film industry to immigration and trade to homosexuality and abortion.'

Given these mindsets, it's scarcely surprising that most American voters, like their counterparts in the Sheeple's Republic of Aotearoa, seem content to stick with one or other version of Demopublicanism (or National/Labour statism). As Chris further observes: 'a renaissance of reason and freedom has probably been put on hold for now.'

How to change those mindsets? I wish there were an easy, quick way. All I can say right now is that we freedom-lovers, there & here, have our work cut out.

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