Blog description.

Accentuating the Liberal in Classical Liberal: Advocating Ascendency of the Individual & a Politick & Literature to Fight the Rise & Rise of the Tax Surveillance State. 'Illigitum non carborundum'.

Liberty and freedom are two proud words that have been executed from the political lexicon: they were frog marched and stood before a wall of blank minds, then forcibly blindfolded, and shot, with the whimpering staccato of ‘equality’ and ‘fairness’ resounding over and over. And not only did this atrocity go unreported by journalists in the mainstream media, they were in the firing squad.

The premise of this blog is simple: the Soviets thought they had equality, and welfare from cradle to grave, until the illusory free lunch of redistribution took its inevitable course, and cost them everything they had. First to go was their privacy, after that their freedom, then on being ground down to an equality of poverty only, for many of them their lives as they tried to escape a life behind the Iron Curtain. In the state-enforced common good, was found only slavery to the prison of each other's mind; instead of the caring state, they had imposed the surveillance state to keep them in line. So why are we accumulating a national debt to build the slave state again in the West? Where is the contrarian, uncomfortable literature to put the state experiment finally to rest?

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Friday, May 29, 2015

Literary Ramble VI: Writing Against the Counter-Culture: A Wowser Literature. | Welcome to the Soberdome.



Apparently we have a writership of mums and dads with two and half kids, a mortgage and a Citroen which lives counter to the counter culture; that is, which stands for conformity, for being ‘inside’ in its content …


… [A literature that should be] on principle, refusing to use trigger warnings, knowing that offence-giving is vital medicine to vaccinate the population from the censorious tyranny of umbrage taking. A literature to which the notion of a ‘safe place’ would be repugnant if it weren't so hilarious. There should be no safety to, or from, writing. That's why though not of my politick, I was always going to love our own James K. Baxters and our irreverent, drunk, Sam Hunts ...


It is unsurprising I don’t have a big readership – freedom is passé nowadays, a busy-body bossy command state the accepted model for society (again): my most read post against Big Brother’s tax surveillance operations and the barbaric fallacy of the common good used to justify the tax take, has just over 22,000 reads, and my literary posts normally score around the 2,000 mark. Literary Ramble IV has been the top literature post at (currently) 3,264 page visits, albeit with continuing reads of about twenty to thirty per day – significantly, mainly out of the US. With that post weighing in over 18,000 words, I’m chuffed with that.

What I’m not so chuffed about is that every day the disappointing premise of Literary Ramble IV is borne out: today I find its correctness at a surprisingly mundane level.

To remind you of that premise:


State funding of the arts is leading to the stultification of western literature under the reactionary establishment of Left-Liberalism, also called Progressivism, which has largely captured the means of production via the agents and publishers, and quietly indoctrinates the authors toward a homogenised literature via creative writing courses in progressive saturated tertiary institutions. Ours is no literature that will seed Le Guin's resistance and change, or that can be ‘disturbed by power’, as Solzhenitsyn feared, because it’s a literature which embraces the ethic of that power, the supremacy of the state over the individual, and incredibly for the arts, a collectivism over individualism, with at its base, the tax take which funds a complacent publishing channel, while eviscerating our private lives, our digital innards disemboweled and served up in the offices of government officials.


A dead and dying literature, supplicant to the tax surveillance state for its victuals, no fight left in it.

From this premise, it will further not surprise that I am a writerly romantic. A lover of the rebel. I lov(ed) the rock and roll counter culture of Rolling Stones drunkenly wrecking hotel rooms, and Keith Moon throwing a tantrum over his drum set, then throwing his drum set at his audience.  I couldn't listen to their dreadful noise anymore, but I lov(ed) the punks of the 70s and 80s - my era - the glorious Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joan Jett, Blondie, and let’s not forget those anarchic lads, Sid Vicious/Johnny Rotten and the Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Damned, Dead Kennedys and Ramones. Go to one of those concerts and get all jazz hands and you’d rightly be thought retarded - and if you want some potent symbolism of the death of counter culture look at pop culture today: tailored, clean living boy bands, rap pap, and pop princesses.

Flowing from this and extending my literary manifesto of Ramble IV, I view literature as a necessary counter culture, also, produced by the outsiders and outcasts who are able to look in, quite possibly intoxicated, high or tripping – perhaps because of it - and then report back, steadfastly on principle refusing to use trigger warnings, knowing that offence-giving is vital medicine to vaccinate the population from the censorious tyranny of umbrage taking. A literature to which the notion of a ‘safe place’ would be repugnant if it weren't so hilarious. There should be no safety to, or from, writing. That's why though not of my politick, I was always going to love our own James K. Baxters and our irreverent, drunk, Sam Hunts.

This is literature and art as the outside. The other. A literature questioning and poking and prodding its quills into everything that is received culture, every assumption, and all, ALL authority. Literature that is important. Literature that has purpose. Literature that can’t write when its freedom is bounded and won’t accept boundaries. Literature that won't accept censorship. A literature with its progeny traceable directly to the Enlightenment and the rational, individualistic ethos arising from that rebellion against the ancient regimes. A literature that knows collectivism means controlled lives lived inside the prison of each other's minds, which is the Gulag.

This when the Gulags of the twentieth century are still visible on the arms of living humans, not just in the history books, thus there was no excuse for this crumbling of resolve.

Concomitant with this – free living is a package deal; stay with me … - on the intimate, mundane details of traipsing through a life, I love booze. I love wine. I love martinis. I love whiskey, brandy and gin. I love these things also because nanny state would control them by admonition, rationing or prohibition, along with sugar, with salt, and with fat - all, of course, for my own good. Noting that to say I love booze is not to say I’m some type of raving alcoholic, I most certainly am not - well perhaps raving - but I have to make that qualification, because along with the ascendency of that gender and racially divisive politics and segregation known as identity politics, spawned by progressive collectivism, has come the busy-body, judgemental age of the wowser (and worse, the censoring social justice saint – Jesus Christ, Allah or George save me from the good intentions of the earnest eyeing my money). Thus my attacks on Labour MP Iain Wowser-Galloway when he had his wowser blood alcohol limit passed this last twelve months: I wrote then this would only punish the responsible, while those that drink to excess and drive would be oblivious to it, meaning the road toll wouldn’t be changed. And I was right; the road toll has gone up, dramatically, as rural hospitality and community are being destroyed – (don’t panic, this comes back to literature soon enough):





I thought this tweet the end of that. I’d made my point, knowing the clock would never tick tock back toward freedom: it only does that after revolution. However, needless to say - getting back to first premises - I wasn’t expecting this:







Told you I’d get this back to literature.

The @GoingWestFest Twitter account is the account of an annual literary festival, namely, quote: Going West Books & Writers Festival is an annual literary festival that takes place each September in West Auckland. And in case you just missed it, this literary festival account just admonished, nay, lectured me about the harmful effects of alcohol. If I have to explain my point, even to the post punk generation, then you, dear reader, are beyond the point, certainly of hope.

Move along, there's no counter culture to be found here. I would know our literature was in better shape if the Going West Festival had tweeted me this: Charles Bukowski drinking on the set of French television program Apostrophes - those were the days (hattip Steve Braunias - Twitter) ...




I had not fully understood, even in my Literary Ramble IV, the extent of the fail of our twenty first century progressive-centric-big-brother-state-wowser literature. Apparently we have a writership of mums and dads with two and half kids, a mortgage and a Citroen which lives counter to the counter culture anymore; that is, which stands for conformity, for being inside in its content, and I have no doubt backs the abuse right of the all-powerful state to prohibit alcohol from me, plus good times generally – no guesses as to what such a writership’s attitude to drug legalisation is, (and within an historical literary context what a tragedy that is).

Twenty first century literature has crumbled in all its strait-laced sobriety to this: the gutter of normalcy (and it ain’t looking up at the stars. It’s not dreaming at all, and is the last three-bedroom-toilet-and-en-suite you’ll find freedom loving peeps having a good time expressing themselves in.)

It’s all gone. Read my Literary Ramble IV.

There remains only to end on an ill-founded request I know will be ignored: will the boring-bound-prohibitionist-bureaucrat running the West Literary Festival Twitter account please put it carefully down. Take a step back from it. Another step. Now fuck off to Nanny and turn in early with your milk hot chocolate and butter short bread. You shouldn’t be anywhere near such a noble, important art, as this art of rebellion to authority, and today’s unprecedented abuse of the state’s authority with its regulation upon regulation, law upon law, snoops, spies, officials and IRD auditors inveigled into every intimate sphere of our private lives, where even language is being determined for us by those social justice thugs as between what is acceptable and what is not. Yes, we live in a near total surveillance State and our writing community, incredibly, is on the side of It, worshipping at the altar of redistribution and taking the rich pricks down, along with the right of each one of us to be left alone - I know that; but please, I don’t need your haughty lecturing on the harms of a ruddy drink reminding me of it.

The. End.

Of. Everything.

Welcome to the Soberdome.


Excuse me if I excuse myself for one of these ...




Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Lecretia Seales: Crown Case is Repugnant.







I find it infuriating Heron, QC, is being paid money taken from me by force to argue a case against my rights, and the right – the most basic right to own our health outcomes - of all individuals to die with dignity.

Yesterday he admitted that at some future stage New Zealand will have a euthanasia law, yet then went on to make sure that Lecretia Seale must possibly die in a painful manner, or undignified fashion, she would find appalling – hence her case: that’s bullshit. Worse, what Heron, QC, and the Crown want forced on Seales is in her terms - and mine for myself, if it came to that - cruel and unusual punishment: I hope the QC is not sleeping well.

Today Heron, QC. reaches peak stupidity with his argument against Seales desire of the choice to die with dignity - ‘what if it goes wrong’?

If the criteria for performing a medical procedure is the risk of it going wrong, then there would be no medical procedures: indeed, if you look at the side effects on any pill box, a doctor couldn’t prescribe an asperin. That risk is borne by Lecretia, or the individual concerned; it is no valid argument against euthanasia, and shows how weak the Crown case is. And of course it’s a weak case because it is arguing the Crown’s, and via that, the mob’s, ownership of our bodies. Plus all arguments against euthanasia invariably end up mired in the superstitious fantastical, fairy tale beliefs of Christianity, and are against lives lived based on reason.

Finally, yes, an adversarial justice system is crucial to the proper functioning of the free society, wrong-doers must have their day in court to argue their case, however in this instance, voluntary – and there’s the clue, voluntary - euthanasia, the only victim is likely to be Lecretia Seales, and her victimhood is being argued for by the Crown. That's why this case in which the Crown is arguing against our basic rights, and for a brave, intelligent woman to die in conditions she finds anathema, is pissing me off. It should piss you off too, and all people of reason.

There has only been one point on which Heron QC is correct throughout: this question should not have been up for Seales to take to court in such poor health with so much at stake for her; it's the true ambit of a properly functioning legislature founded in protection of our rights. But the number of our politicians even talking about this most important case being conducted in our courts this week? NONE.

Mob rule was always a broken concept: in this case its vicious.


Further Reading:







Friday, May 22, 2015

The End. #Budget2015








And:





The National Party’s budget yesterday was a socialist shocker. It’s a budget that will only grow dependency on a more and more powerful Big Brother Tax Surveillance state. For my overseas readers, National was supposed to be our party of limited government which professed belief in a small state - small 's' - and an individual’s freedom to be left alone pursuing their happiness, so long as they harmed no one. But yesterday Finance Minister Bill English proved the lie of this. His budget grows welfare, indeed, advantages welfare living relative to working, and contains nothing (NOTHING) for hard working freedom lovers, business people, risk takers and entrepreneurs – because National understands with how the free society is brought so low in the twenty first century, it only needs pander to the Statists. Symbolically this budget throws millions more dollars of taxpayer money at the government spy agencies, including IRD to audit the lives of tens of thousands more Kiwis. In the long game English and Prime Minister John Key probably think they are being clever taking the centre left and creating a viable ACT Party, but in actuality all they have done is use their reign to cement in the State as a huge, brutish disruption in the lives of the free, and in a way an honest and professed Left Labour Party could never have done so thoroughly, because this is about bad philosophy spooned into the gaping maws of sheeple upon an electoral deception, indeed, a blatant fraud of misrepresentation.

I feel as gutted as those on the Left after the 2014 election when Labour was defeated so soundly, and I feel like this because yesterday the National victors enacted a Labour budget, and my eyes are finally opened – they always were, every English budget has involved a bigger State spend than the last Labour government, but this budget rubs it in, and in a way that can no longer be ignored.

I don’t know, quite, what my above Twitter Timeline means, I don’t think I’m flouncing – perhaps I am - but it is a final turning point, somehow. I only see total disengagement from the political process as an option which allows any degree anymore of pursuing my own happiness. One certainty is I can't see myself voting again in any general election anytime soon.

Bill English and your Progressive chums: you arses. Traitors, who have just disenfranchised the majority bloc of your voters: go to hell.

Footnote I:

Direct from IRD's Tax Policy eletter this morning, this National Government budget - the below means tens of thousands of individuals to be bullied by the State, their private lives destroyed (and destroyed totally) ... welcome to the twenty first century Big Brother Tax Surveillance and Police State: don't be looking for the free society here, that's long done and buried:

Budget details announced on Thursday include a further Budget allocation of $74 million over five years for Inland Revenue’s investigations activity. This will target property speculation, and for tackling the hidden economy and aggressive tax planning strategies, Revenue Minister Todd McClay announced today.