The Politically Incorrect Show - 20/07/1999

Music - Die Fledermaus

Good afternoon, Kaya Oraaa & welcome to the Politically Incorrect Show on the free speech network, Radio Pacific, for Tuesday July 20, proudly sponsored by Tuariki Tobacco 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!

Yesterday I spoke of the Association of Compulsion-Touters' conference in Auckland over the weekend. Across town, another bunch of Politically Correct state-worshippers were gathered - New Zealand Last. Leader Winston Peters quoted Leo Tolstoy at the beginning of his speech:

"I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it can be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread in to the fabric of their lives."

Meaning, it's damned hard for people to admit they're wrong. And it is. It was clear from our encounter with Mr Peters at the Trirds Inquiry that nothing short of a miracle will move Mr Peters from his view that majorities are always right; the bigger the majority, the more right it is. That is a view that would have horrified Leo Tolstoy, as would every single view that Mr Peters went on to express in his speech over the weekend. You see, Tolstoy loathed government. "Government," he said, "is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us." Tolstoy would have been appalled at the litany of proposed new government interventions that Mr Peters reeled off. Tolstoy, unlike Mr Peters would have called for the abolition of government as we know it altogether. Contrast Mr Peters' enthusiasm for compulsory taxation & coercive government with this marvellous passage from Tolstoy:

"An improvement in the condition of the people is possible only through the abolition of organised violence. 'But organised violence is government. And how can we live without government? Without governments there will be chaos, anarchy; all the achievement of civilisation would perish, & the people will revert to their primitive barbarism.' But why should we suppose this? Why think that non-official people could not arrange their life themselves as well as government people arrange it, not for themselves but for others. We see, on the contrary, that in the most diverse matters people arrange their own lives incomparably better than those who govern them arrange for them. Without the least help from government, and often in spite of interference from government, people organise all sorts of social undertakings - workmen's unions, co-operative societies, railway companies, and syndicates. If collections for public works are needed, why should we suppose that free people could not without violence VOLUNTARILY collect the necessary means, and carry out all that is now carried out by taxes?"

Funny, Mr Peters didn't quote that!!

Or this:

"The age for the veneration of governments, notwithstanding all the hypnotic influence they employ to maintain their influence, is more & more passing away."

Tolstoy said that a hundred years ago. He was tragically wrong then, as the twentieth century, the century of collectivism, yielded up more & more despotic governments & became the bloodiest period in human history by far. He may not even be right now. But if there's to be a twenty-first century at all, he has to be. If we are to have a future, the rhetoric & mindless veneration of statist demagogues like Mr Peters must be consigned once & for all to the past.

Politically Incorrect Show, beating the bastards back - 309 3099.