First out of the blocks was Longrider, who takes us away from abstract political ideologies and brings in a bit of pragmatism.

Libertarianism in its pure form is anarchy. If you are to have individual freedom, sooner or later you are going to need commonly accepted rules to govern the limits of that freedom. Put simply, all freedoms are limited to a greater or lesser degree. I do not profess to have the freedom to do as I please if it hurts others or impinges on their freedoms. The moment we accept this principle, we have stepped away from the brink of anarchy that is the absolute of libertarianism.

None of the libertarian bloggers I frequent appear to be offering anarchy as an alternative to what we have. This means that they recognise the need for some form of collective behaviour where individuals are unable to achieve their aims alone. We need government for foreign policy, policing, defence, local services, for example. Therefore, we accept (grudgingly) the need for general taxation to fund these activities. Depending on just how extreme is the individual will decide just how large that list is. So all of those libertarian bloggers are prepared to compromise. It doesn’t damage their libertarian credentials, though; it merely makes them pragmatists.

Longrider is absolutely correct. There is probably not a single (sane) person on the planet who thinks that there should be no government. But this is precisely my problem with a lot of the arguments put forward by libertarians.

It is a contradiction to say that government intervention in the economy is a bad thing, then to turn around and say that the government should do everything it can to control immigration. Either interfering in the economy is bad or it isn’t. Make your mind up.

I am not saying that everybody has to make a black and white choice between having a lot of government invovlement or none at all. Far from it. I sit in between, like most people do. It is not inconsistent to want free trade in goods and services but to want a restriction in the movement of labour.

But this is the thing. Once you accept that some government intervention can be a force for good, you have voided your ability to use “small government” as a mantra, a panacea for all economic ills.

It is no longer good enough just to say, for instance, “the government should reduce taxes because government intervention harms the economy and restricts my freedom.” Because in DK’s instance, he has decided that, in the case of movement of labour, govenment intervention improves the economy and that freedom matters not a jot.

I should now link to DK’s post now as the issues are becoming intertwined. His post contains not a single sweary-word, which AntiCitizenOne in the comments reckons means that “you can tell he was angry”. Heh, sorry about that DK.

DK is at pains to point out that while he is broadly in favour of free trade, he has reservations when it comes to labour.

I have reservations about the free trade in labour for reasons that I shouldn’t have to expand on beyond saying that my reservations are based on the fact that humans are not homogenous. If we were, we wouldn’t be having all this ruckus about Muslims, veils, etc.

The thing is, DK is probably right that there are problems with culture, language and so on that mean that in reality free movement of people can be a genuine problem (even though I think most of the “problems”, particularly with the debate about veils at the moment, are exacerbated and blown out of proportion by the government and the media).

But cultural issues are not the only things that vex DK about migration.

Our policy of poaching trained nurses from Africa and the Phillipines or doctors from India has been criticised, for instance, because it leaves already impoverished countries lacking trained medical staff. And now, of course, many of our medical staff cannot find jobs here and are looking to go abroad (but you can pretty much guarantee that they won’t go to the Phillipines or Africa.

Now, one can argue that this is precisely what the free market is about, but it is difficult to conclude that it does not both countries, in general terms, worse off.

In the short term it probably does make at least one of the countries worse off. In the long term it would probably make everybody better off. A proponent of the free market would usually say that if there is such a high demand for nurses in the Phillipines, surely it will encourage many more people to become nurses in the Phillipines because wages will be increased.

Here’s what The Economist had to say about migration of Poles a few months ago.

Even the emigration of a million-odd Poles has its upside. It is better to wash dishes in London than to be jobless at home. Many Poles abroad are learning new skills, languages and attitudes that will stand them in good stead when they return, as most do. Freedom of movement inside the EU means that, unlike previous generations, most Poles are not emigrating for ever.

All I will say is that short term losses for long term benefits are usually relished by libertarians. Who can seriously argue that cutting welfare benefits would not make anybody worse off in the short term, even if it makes them better off in the long term?

Just as free trade in labour has its problems, free trade in everything has its problems. These are usually played down by libertarians — think of income inequalities. But in the case of labour, DK is placing an emphasis on them.

As I said, it is perfectly fine to hold these views, even if the explanations for holding these views seem inconsistent. But that is the thing. It is not the views themselves that I object to — although I may not necessarily agree with them, that wasn’t the point I was making. It is the explanations of these views that need some fine tuning.

Since DK has revealed that in his opinion government intervention can be a force for good, he has become a utilitarian like the rest of us. It is no longer good enough just to call for smaller government for the sake of smaller government which is what most libertarians spend much of their time doing.

Longrider also puts forward this favourite argument of those who would like more controls on migration.

The argument comparing movement of peoples within the UK and peoples moving in from outside is fine but for the small matter of numbers. Just how many people can we accommodate before it becomes too much?

But people have been predicting such a Malthusian catastrophe for centuries and it has never happened, not in Britain at least (and famously the world has a food surplus). Incidentally, the fact that a Malthusian catastrophe has never occurred is also one of the most popular (and convincing) arguments put forward by climate change / peak oil deniers. Somehow, for some on the right, while it means that nothing should be done about climate change, it suddenly becomes a major problem when it comes to migration. Strange.

DK points at water shortages in the south east as evidence that it is happening, but I don’t buy that. People just as commonly point at climate change or the privatisation of water companies as causes of those water shortages, but DK wouldn’t see it as a reason to nationalise the water industry or treat climate change as a top priority.

Given that population growth in the UK (and Europe) is reaching a plateau, and that population in Scotland has actually been declining, the idea that the UK is somehow running out of space is absurd. Anyway, if we were genuinely unable to accommodate more people, nobody would want to move here, would they? That’s how the free market supposedly works you see.

The Devil’s Kitchen likes to describe himself as a libertarian (as he did in a self-congratulatory post today) and makes much of his support for free markets — albeit almost always in terms of how much tax he has to pay.

But yesterday all of that talk about free markets was thrown out of the window when he approvingly posted a video of Swivel Eyed Farage on Sunday AM.

DK says:

And, on current showing, there is simply no major party that supports the libertarian agenda (I believe that UKIP are the closest that we have, hence my support for them).

Ukip libertarian? I hardly think so. Here is Swivel Eyed Farage in action.

I read one person somewhere (sorry, I’ve forgotten who) complaining that the amount of time Ukip was given on Sunday AM wasn’t enough. Having now watched the clip, I can understand why. If it continued for much longer it probably would have counted as a Party Political Broadcast. How Farage could get away with making such glaringly inconsistent statements almost in the same breath without anything less than fawning deference from Huw Edwards is beyond me.

Farage said:

Should somebody who’s interviewed as a school teacher and then changes faith midway through be allowed to teach a class of children when they can’t see her face? I wouldn’t have thought so, no.

Immediately afterwards, when Huw Edwards asked about the British Airways worker who was asked to cover her cross, Farage’s response was the exact opposite! One rule for Muslims and another for Christians.

Well I find that amazing, I mean British Airways are one of those companies that have consistently been anti-British… So I’m not surprised at all by BA’s behaviour.

Later on he says:

The underlying philosophy that runs through every single Ukip policy is that we want less government interference in our lives.

But predictably, just one minute later, he advocates the view that governments should be able to tell people where they can and can’t live. The reason why? As DK says:

His point about differing GDPs is a good one, I think, and forms the basis of my reservations on the unfettered free trade of peoples between countries. It seems to me that, inevitably, should you allow this, many more people will flow from the lower GDP countries into the high GDP countries and, realistically, that there will be far fewer emigrating to those lower GDP countries.

The fact that different countries have different GDPs is not a good argument against “the unfettered free trade of peoples between countries”. GDP is a measure of all of the income earned in an economy. So if you say that a country has a lower (per capita) GDP than another, that just means that the average income of a citizen of that country is lower.

Different people have different incomes. That is a fact of life. These differences in income exist within Europe. They also exist within the UK. They also exist within Kirkcaldy.

If this is so much of a problem that the government has to set some kind of limit to immigration, then it must also be enough of a problem to set a limit to the amount that people move within a country. There would be quotas on the number of people who can move from the Highlands to the Home Counties. They would build a moat around Ferguslie Park.

But they haven’t. That’s because the economy can cope with people of different economic backgrounds moving around the country. It is a fact that Scots prepared to move to England and English people prepared to move to Scotland in search of work will make more money than if they just stayed where they were born.

The economy as a whole benefits from this free movement of people. If Mr S from Scotland is really good at making widget X which is made in England, Mr S will move to England to work in job X because that’s what he’s good at, so he’ll make the most money there. And because he’s really good at his job, he makes widget X more efficiently than the average Mr E from England would have. Because Mr S is better at his job, firm X’s costs are lower and the benefits are spread to the economy as a whole.

Just because the line on the map has moved doesn’t make this fact untrue. And this isn’t just some pie in the sky economic theory. I am sure that everybody can think of several people who have moved long distances to get a job because they could see the clear benefits of doing so. DK himself is an Englishman living in Edinburgh for crying out loud! Just imagine how much of an economic shithouse the world would be if nobody ever moved away from their place of birth.

I really don’t see how it can be consistent to support a free market within a country but then advocate that the free trade — which is supposedly so beneficial to all — should end at the line drawn on a map.

Given that DK is such a “libertarian”, I am sure he will be familiar with the section of libertarian poster boy Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations dealing with protectionism (Book IV, Ch II). Smith might be talking about goods, but I cannot see any reason why what he says does not apply to labour aswell. If anyone has any reasons I would love to hear them.

Saying that the fact that countries have differing GDPs is a problem for a free trade area is a bit like saying that having firms of differing sizes is a problem in an economy. It is not. DK is probably right when he says, “there will be far fewer emigrating to those lower GDP countries,” if free trade of peoples is allowed.

This kind of thing is usually celebrated by libertarians. It’s freedom of choice, you see. So when there is competition, firms that don’t match the expectations of their customers have to adapt in order to survive. It is exactly the same for countries. When people can pick and choose where they live, governments are forced to take a long, hard look at the way they are running their economies. Sometimes they might even reform.

If, as libertarians suggest, it is the case that cutting back on welfare benefits, lowering corporate tax and so on improves a country’s economy and living standards, then open borders will force governments to adopt these policies as they try to attract jobs to their economies.

I thought that was what DK wanted? But by opposing the “free trade of peoples”, he could well be supporting the continuation of the welfare state.

Funny, because that’s not what she’s saying today.

I think that over the past couple of years, the level of understanding within government of the scale of the threat that we face from… Islamist individuals and organisations has really increased and I think that as a result of that we have to take to a new level our partnership with those Muslim organisations who are showing real leadership on those issues.

So is your faith a private matter as Ruth Kelly said last year, or is it a matter for state intrusion as Ruth Kelly has said today?

Ruth Kelly has rejected claims that the government is “demonising” Muslims, after reports it is to ask universities to spy on student suspects.

The communities secretary said many groups understood the need to work in a new way to “face up to” the threat.

She urged council chiefs to help battle extremism – saying it was an issue for all communities, not just Muslims.

Ruth Kelly — the communities minister — is a person who refuses to say whether she believes that sex between two consenting adults is a sin or not. She is a member of an extreme religious organisation that advises women on what they can and can’t wear. But she will defend her precious Labour government whenever it criticises a different religion for advising women on what they can and can’t wear. It is sickening.

Phil Woolas — whose brief covers race relations — suggested that a teacher should be sacked for wearing a veil. I doubt very much that Aishah Azmi’s decision to wear the veil at work genuinely created a barrier to communication.

Has Phil Woolas ever actually been in a classroom? Most schoolchildren spend the whole lesson just staring down sullenly at their desk, doodling on their jotters or gazing at somebody they fancy. It wouldn’t surprise me if there are some pupils who don’t even notice their teacher has a veil on or not!

More seriously, it is a fact that people are able to take in more information when they are not looking at the speaker’s face. Taking in information from somebody’s face is a waste of brain power. I find myself that when I have to listen carefully I end up focusing on a stationery object in middle distance. So in what way is covering your face going to make people listen less?

It is true that if somebody has hearing problems then they will have to look more at the face to understand what they are being told. But this shouldn’t even be an issue because Aishah Azmi was prepared to teach her class without the veil. Yet Phil Woolas still wanted her sacked.

That’s the person with responsibility for race relations adding to the chorus of whining about Muslims currently emanating from senior government figures. Attacks on Muslims appear to have increased ever since Jack Straw made his comments about the veil.

Congratulations to the communities and race relations ministers for doing their best to pour petrol on this race relations fire.

Update: And here is Mr Eugenides’ view.

Longrider has an interesting post on the rather manufactured outrage. I mean, surely the Pope isn’t meant to like Islam? Cos he’s, you know, not a Muslim? He’s a Catholic? Duh.

What I’d like to know is how many Islamic leaders have nice things to say about Catholicism. It would probably not go further than saying, “their stance on homosexuals is bang on the money”.

Let me just bring you some breaking news — the wires are reporting that a bear has been spotted shitting in the sea. Not really.

My mum was quite angry as well. At the moment I usually don’t rise out of bed until about midday or 1 o’clock, so she always knows the news way before I do at the moment. I was just watching the 1 O’Clock News when the story came on. My first thought was, “hang on — Muslims don’t bank.”

The family is only doing the sensible thing by avoiding a lightning from Harry Hutton.

(Thanks to Shuggy for the reminder of Harry Hutton’s post.)

Meanwhile, Lenin has a look at Boris Johnson.

Johnson’s piece is quite ridiculous. It is under the headline, “The British dream: we must all speak the same language.”

That’s a pretty rubbish dream if you ask me. The Americans have a dream aswell. It’s known as “rags to riches”. The idea is that anybody from any background can aspire to greatness. Boris Johnson’s big idea is to turn us all into clones.

We’ve all got to be as British as Carry On films and scotch eggs and falling over on the beach while trying to change into your swimming trunks with a towel on. We should all feel the same mysterious pang at the sight of the Queen. We do indeed need to inculcate this Britishness, especially into young Muslims, and the problem is how.

Lenin has the right idea:

Johnson hasn’t a chance, of course, since no one is British in the way that he would like them to be. I hate Carry On films, scotch eggs and the beach. I especially hate the fucking Queen.

Except I do like scotch eggs, but that’s not the point.

Back to Boris. Amazingly, he cites that far superior American Dream to back up his idea for a British Dream.

Americans all understand instinctively that they are equal citizens of the greatest country on earth, and they all have an equal chance of rising to the top of that country.

That is the idea of America, the American dream; and we have been comparatively hopeless at communicating any sense of the British dream, or the British idea. So what we must now do is begin the immense task with a few practical steps.

We should teach English, and we should teach in English. We should teach British history. We should think again about the jilbab, with the signals of apartness that it sends out, and we should probably scrap faith schools. We should forbid the imams from preaching sermons in anything but English; because if you want to build a society where everyone feels included, and where everyone shares in the national story, we cannot continue with the multicultural apartheid.

But what about those British people who speak Welsh, or Gaelic, or Scots, or Kernewek? What about those whose primary language is BSL? Shall we force them all to speak English now?

Jamie says:

As an Englishman, I’ll speak any language I damn well please in my own home. In fact, I’m going to start learning Urdu tomorrow. Stubbornness: how British.

Worse still, check out what Boris says before he suggests that everybody should become a robot.

It was not so much the horror of what they said on Newsnight, those Islamic wackos, one of whom, Abu Uzair, announced: “Even if I am British, I don’t follow the values of the UK. I follow the Islamic values. I have no allegiance to the British Queen whatsoever, or to British society.”

No, what was shocking was the unmistakably English accent in which they said it, the voices that marked them as complete products of our primary and secondary systems.

So hang on a minute. We’ve got to get everybody speaking English, to prevent people from having the sorts of views that the person with the “unmistakably English accent” has. So Boris demolished his argument in his own article.

I was surprised that some people felt that they had to change their political views in the aftermath of the London bombings, seeing it as a wake-up call. It is, though, different for me. As I explained on the 7^th, the bombs in London felt as distant as the ones in Madrid last year. (Perhaps if, say, Edinburgh were to be bombed by terrorists then I would maybe feel different, but I can’t tell.) And I didn’t have any reason to believe that London wouldn’t be a target for terrorists. I mean, London is a very high-profile city in an important western country — it’s surely bound to be.

I watched Straight Talk over the weekend, where the only topic of discussion was the London bombings. At one point they were discussing what Charles Kennedy had said — that Iraq was surely a factor. All of the panellists agreed that he had a valid viewpoint but that the timing was wrong. What a bunch of wusses. Surely the aftermath of a major event like the London bombings is the time to be forthright and honest about your views?

I am not saying, of course, that Iraq is the only factor in bombers’ minds. If Britain hadn’t gone into Iraq, Britain wouldn’t be exempt from terrorist attacks, for the same reasons I outlined above. But when the intelligence warned about the potential for Iraq to increase the threat of terrorism in this country, it’s difficult to just say that Iraq has nothing to do with it.

Here’s what they said in June this year:

Events in Iraq are continuing to act as motivation and a focus of a range of terrorist related activity in the U.K.

That was in the same report that prompted the government to decrease the threat assessment traffic lights of doom level. So if that bit of the report was right, how come the other bit of the report, about Iraq, is meant to be so wrong according to the government?

Ask the public (via Chicken Yoghurt).

Only 28% of voters agree with the government that Iraq and the London bombings are not connected.

Okay?

I also reject the idea that the mere suggestion that Iraq might have been reason why the London bombings took place is somehow making excuses for the bombers. Pure rubbish. I’ll say this: the London bombings were the fault of the bombers, and their accomplices, alone. Disagreeing with the war in Iraq is no reason whatsoever to go about blowing even more people up, and I would think that most people — whether they were for or against the war — would agree with that.

I was against the war in Iraq for a variety of reasons, one of which was that I thought that it would increase the threat of terrorism. The thing about the London bombings is that it gave both sides of the increasingly tedious pro- / anti-war debate more ammunition. Those who were in favour of the Iraq invasion say, “Look, we told you so, terrorists are everywhere, so we need to go get ‘em!” Those who were against say, “We told you so, Iraq increased the threat of terrorism.”

One last thought about it all. The revelation (one that reminded me so much of Monkey Dust) that the bombers were British born and bred, and most of seemed to be, on the surface, normal everyday people, to me kind of debunks the idea that all Islamic terrorists are the sort of people who you can’t have a discussion with.

Update: I like this post from Nosemonkey.

Of course, what this could be an indication of (my personal favourite theory) is merely that it’s a piece of piss to conduct a terrorist attack. You don’t need some vast intergalactic conspiracy of bearded men in caves. All you need is some desperate, stupid and psychotic people, access to the internet, and someone with the balls to track down some explosives. Or has every single suicide bomber on the West Bank or in Iraq since the occupation (yet more today, surprise surprise) been part of some vast, James Bond style organisation?

Update: Singing ‘la-la-la’ with fingers in their ears.