Neil’s Note:
While looking for something else, I re-discovered this missive, which I wrote way
back in the autumn of 2010. For some reason, I don’t think I have actually
published this one before. While many of my views have moved on since 2010, I
am nevertheless publishing it now with just a few minor edits.
With hindsight, I
see I was grossly optimistic on the timescales for our fightback against
oppression. And I over-estimated how long Silly Lizzie Windsor would live. But
things are starting to change now, I think. The rise of Reform UK is one
symptom of this. The recent, unexpected re-election of Donald Trump is another.
I get a feeling that our enemies’ political paradigm and their credibility are,
at last, beginning to fall apart.
* * *
I walk northwards along
the Albert Embankment in the September afternoon sun.
It’s 2035. I am over
80 years old now; and I cannot walk quite as fast as I could in my prime. But I
can still walk well.
The Ugly Years
I see an empty
bench, raised on a small dais like many others along the river bank. I have
only been walking ten minutes, but the opportunity of a sit-down is hard to
resist.
Across the river, I
see an early Victorian monstrosity. It used to be the headquarters, from which the
politicals and their hangers-on had ruled over us before the Revolution. I am
about level with its south end. And I recall a walk I had done twenty-five
years ago, also in September. I had sat, that day, on this very same bench.
2010 had been right
in the thick of the Ugly Years. In that time, the politicals and their cohorts had
set themselves to control us, to rule over us against our wills. They had made
bad laws and intrusive regulations to hem us in, and set traps to catch us out.
They had imposed more and more bureaucracy on us in everyday life.
They had schemed to
violate our rights and to destroy our civil liberties. They had given police
more and more powers. They had spied on us, and recorded our movements. They
had treated us as if we were no more than bits of information in a database.
Their financial
mis-management had all but destroyed our economy. They had taxed us almost out
of existence. They had taken away any chance hard-working people had of ever
getting decent pensions. And they had kept on thinking up new excuses to take
away even more; green taxes and minimum prices on alcohol, for example.
They had spent the
proceeds on things which did us no good whatsoever – like wind farms – and on things
that were positively harmful to us, like foreign wars, bloated bureaucracies
and spying on us with cameras on every street corner. They had taken away the
earnings of productive, honest people, and used them to benefit a corrupt
political class and its bureaucratic, enforcement, media and corporate Establishment.
Some of the politicals
had been a bit less evil than others, of course. And we had enjoyed, in theory,
the protection of the rule of law. But the laws that the politicals had lobbied
for and made had become divorced from law. And law had become divorced from its
essential purpose, justice.
All this had been
accompanied by a torrent of rationalizations. Safety, security, health, recycling,
helping the vulnerable, protecting children, fighting terrorism – the
politicals never tired of inventing good-sounding excuses for the bad things
they did to us.
There was lots of vile
propaganda, too. We were a blight and a burden on the planet, we were told. We were
bombarded with fear and guilt. Fear of terrorism, fear of overpopulation, fear
of runaway climate change. And guilt for being selfish, for damaging our
environment, for endangering species, for not doing enough to help the poor and
needy, for letting down future generations. Our civilization of economic
productivity and trade was not sustainable. We had to change our lifestyles
drastically. We had to go “green,” and save the planet. And we had to act NOW!
Of course, anyone
with half an ounce of common sense knew, even back then, that this was all hogwash.
Sham Democracy
There seemed to be
nothing we could do to get ourselves treated as we deserved, treated as human
beings. We had, it was true, something called democracy. It let us vote, every
so often, for which political party could claim the limelight for a few years. But
the corrupt political parties, and the Establishment that fed off them, had had
an unshakeable, vice-like grip on power. And the three main parties, all in on
the scam, had ensured that dissenters could never grow powerful enough to challenge
them.
A lot of the main parties’
candidates, and so a lot of our so-called representatives, didn’t represent
anything other than their own party’s political agenda. They were no more than
apparatchiks. So, even if an individual’s vote could have made a difference – which
it never had, of course - there was no-one who both had a chance of winning,
and was worth voting for.
As a result, for
decades many – perhaps even most - of those who voted had done so, not for
someone they wanted and respected, but for whichever party they disliked the least.
Further, as the politicals’ behaviour towards us became worse and worse, many people
began to feel alienated from the system. Those who could began to vote tactically,
for whichever party was most likely to unseat the one they hated most. (I recalled,
for instance, that I had voted Tory back in ’87, purely from a desire to keep
Labour out).
I myself had
reached, by the early ‘90s, another level of alienation yet. I had come to think
that even a vote for the least of several evils is still a vote for evil. I
felt contempt and loathing for politics, and for all the political parties. With
only a very few exceptions, I felt no fellowship with, or respect for, anyone
that took an active part in politics. So, I became a conscientious non-voter.
For, not only would to vote have been to dirty myself in the politicals’ muck.
But also, to vote for the party that gained power would have been an act of
aggression against all those unjustly harmed by that party’s agenda.
There was worse. The
“constitution,” under which we were supposedly governed, had for much of the
time allowed the leader of the party in power almost unlimited scope to do to
us whatever he or she wanted. Back in the ’70s, Quintin Hogg had called the
system an “elective dictatorship”. He had been right.
A few in the
Establishment had seemed to have become aware, that many people were unhappy with
what was being done to them. So, they aired schemes, like changing the mechanics
of voting. But that was just fiddling with trivia. For it totally ignored the
real problem – that the entire system was organized for the interests of the
political class and their hangers-on, and against the interests of good people.
Oh yes, and on top
of all that there was the EU, and the bad laws it spewed out like an erupting
volcano. And there was the UN and its agendas. And, in particular, the green
agenda that fraudulently sought to destroy our civilization, and to force us
back to pre-industrial times.
Brian Haw Square
I walk on along the
river. I watch commuter boats whizzing under the bridge ahead. Thanks to the
march of technology, they go a lot faster now than they used to.
I turn left on to
the bridge. It’s packed with tourists. I hear American and Australian accents;
but the majority seem to be Chinese, or Indian, or Malaysian.
I pass the
monstrosity. It’s a museum now; a monument to the follies, the evils, and the
ultimate demise of politics.
There’s a lot of
traffic in the square beyond. For single- or two-seat electric cars are the way
many Londoners get around today. So, I take the underpass – it hadn’t been
there in ‘10 – to the patch of green in the middle. It’s now called
I sit on a bench,
and contemplate the Paradigm War. With hindsight it’s easy to ask, why did it
take us so long to understand what we needed to do? For it all seems so obvious
now.
There had been, for
thousands of years of human history, two paradigms, or ways of doing things – an
economic way and a political way. And the Paradigm War between the two had reached
its crisis point in the early years of the new century.
The Economic Paradigm
The economic paradigm
centres on the human individual. In the economic way of doing things, each
individual makes himself or herself valuable to others, trades with others, and
receives in return his or her deserved rewards.
To make the economic
paradigm work in a society, four fundamentals are necessary: responsibility,
justice, law and equality.
Responsibility has
two aspects. First, each individual is responsible for, at the minimum, trying to be a productive member of the
economy. And second, each individual bears responsibility for the effects of
his or her actions on others.
The second
fundamental is justice – objective justice, or, as I call it, common-sense
justice. The idea is, that each individual deserves to be treated as he or she
treats others. Those who behave well – honestly, peacefully, productively –
deserve to be treated well. And those that behave badly deserve to be treated correspondingly
badly.
The economic
paradigm, through justice, gives people a strong incentive to behave well
towards others. So, it encourages an environment of peace and prosperity. And it
supports freedoms and human rights for all individuals. Only one thing may ever
override individuals’ rights and freedoms; and that is objective justice.
The third
fundamental is the rule of law. The one and only purpose of law, in the
economic paradigm, is to implement justice – common-sense justice. Law must
start from the premise that no individual deserves, at least in the round and
over the long term, to be treated worse than he or she treats others.
For example, those
who do not commit aggressions deserve not to suffer aggressions. Thus, law must
defend the peaceful against the violent. Those, who do not rob, deserve not to be
robbed. Thus, law must defend property rights. And those, who do not defraud, deserve
not to be defrauded. Thus, law must defend the honest against the dishonest. Any
other kind of “law” is a perversion.
The final fundamental
is equality. This is not, as some had seemed to think, equality of outcome, or
even equality of opportunity. For equality, in the economic paradigm, is moral equality. What is right for one to
do, is right for another to do under similar circumstances, and vice versa. Another
way to describe it is as equality before the law.
Some objected to the
economic paradigm, saying that it created winners and losers, rich and poor. But
this objection was easy to counter. For those who develop their abilities
furthest, and put most in to the economy, deserve all the riches they fairly
earn. On the other hand, those that are too lazy or too dishonest even to try
to contribute to the economy, do not deserve to be anything but poor.
Some, too, made out
that the economic paradigm discriminated against the sick, or the injured, or
the disabled. But that, also, was easy to counter. With one word – Insurance!
This is all easy
stuff, I think. Even a child should be able to work it out for himself or
herself. And yet, for so long before and during the Ugly Years, even the most
venerable professors seemed to find it hard to think these simple thoughts, and
even harder to articulate them.
The Political Paradigm
By contrast, the
political paradigm had centred on the political state, with its long history of
violence, war, deceit, intimidation and persecution. In the political way of
doing things, those with power simply did whatever they thought they could get
away with. And not surprisingly, this included lying, thieving and harming
innocent people.
The political
paradigm shunned the idea of individual responsibility. It sometimes held
common criminals responsible for their crimes, to be sure. But those that
lobbied for, made and enforced bad political policies that harmed innocent
people, were never held responsible for what they had done to those innocent
people.
Indeed, two of the
guiding principles of political states had, centuries ago, been sovereign
immunity and irresponsibility. Briefly put, “The king can do no wrong.” So, state
functionaries were not to be held responsible for the effects of their actions.
And they could claim immunity from prosecution for what they did.
Of course, the
politicals had tried to make out that this wasn’t so any more. They tried to
tell us that officials were as accountable as any of the rest of us. But this
was obviously a lie. You only needed to look at one example – the murder by
police of Jean Charles de Menezes in ’05, and what followed – to see through
it.
As to justice, in
the political paradigm, justice meant whatever those in power wanted it to
mean. That was why politicals and their authoritarian intellectual cohorts had constantly
spewed out nonsense ideas like “social justice” and “environmental justice”.
In the political
paradigm, the state could, if the rulers decided they needed to (whether the
“need” was real or not), override the rights and freedoms of any individual. That
in itself was bad enough. But the state could also be manipulated by the rulers
for their own interests and those of their cronies. And they could use their
power to hurt those they didn’t like. That was why politics always created and increased
injustice. And that was why the Ugly Years had been such hell to live through.
In that time, the
rule of law had been supplanted by the rule of bad laws. The law mill had been
working for decades at ever increasing speed, cranking out laws. Laws to violate
our rights and kill our freedoms, laws to bloat the state and its bureaucracy,
laws to re-distribute wealth from the politically poor to the politically rich,
laws to impose on us political correctness and faddist agendas. And they took
away more and more of our earnings to fuel their nefarious schemes.
As to equality, the
political paradigm, like the economic, had had its winners and losers. The
winners, the politically rich, enjoyed power, and the unearned wealth and
status which flowed from it. And the losers – the politically poor, who
included virtually all the honest, peaceful, productive people – were shat
upon. The political state in those days, I think, could have been summed up in
two words; institutionalized inequality.
All Things English
I continue across the
square, with Westminster Abbey to my left. It has not changed in twenty-five
years; except that its opening hours are now more convenient for the tourists
on whom it depends for its income.
People sometimes ask
me why, after the Revolution, we allowed such a symbol of the bad old days to
stand, and in such a prominent place too. My usual reply is to quote
L.P.Hartley: “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”
I take the underpass
leading south-west, and turn right, through small streets to the Westminster
Arms. All this walking and thinking is thirsty work; I need a beer. The pub is small,
dark and crowded. But I manage to find a stool in a relatively quiet corner.
I contemplate the
renaissance of the English pub since the Revolution. People, who formerly could
not earn enough to afford to go out, now can. With “luxury taxes” like those on
alcohol abolished, they can do it surprisingly cheaply too. Our scrapping of
drink-driving laws gave village pubs, in particular, a new lease of life. And
we reduced alcohol-caused accidents in the process. For, when people are
treated as responsible adults, they are more likely to behave as responsible
adults. (And if someone did cause a death while driving in an unfit state, the
charge could be manslaughter).
We also abolished
the smoking ban in pubs. We returned the choice of whether people may smoke in a
particular part of a pub to the individual with whom it rightly belongs – the publican.
Other things English
have not done so badly, either. English cricket is once again at the pinnacle
of the world game. The English breakfast is again seen as what it is, the
finest way for any human being to begin any day. And the English common law,
which during the Ugly Years had become like a dark, overgrown forest with
dangerous predators lurking in it, has been re-planted. We revolutionaries pruned
it down to its very roots, and it now flourishes again.
The English
language, too, has become even more popular world-wide since the Revolution. It
can now, truly, be said to be de wereldtaal.
And there has been a
resurgence of traditional English values. To name a few: Individual freedom and
independence. The rule of law, and equality before that law. Tolerance, and a
sense of justice and fair play. Honour and honesty. Contempt for those that try
to take for themselves unearned power or wealth. And, not least, what used to
be known as the Protestant work ethic.
The Scots, the Welsh
and the Irish, meanwhile, have done their own things. We trade with them in a
friendly manner, but none of us interferes in each others’ affairs.
The Libertarians
Refreshed, I cross
the road into St. James’s Park, and turn left. At the end, I fork right,
towards what is now the Buckingham Palace Hotel. It’s run by some of the
younger
I find a park bench,
and think again about the past. Since the late ‘80s, I had been a member of a loose
and disparate movement of radicals. We had generally answered to the name
“libertarians”; though I myself didn’t much like the word, preferring to think
of myself as a true liberal.
Our philosophy was
one of individual freedom. But there were as many different approaches to that
philosophy as there were individuals in the movement. We had our anarchists,
who wanted to abolish the state altogether. We had our minarchists, who wanted
a teensy-weensy little state. We had our idealists, who seemed to think they
could create liberty by using the democratic process to take over the state. We
had those who were basically Enlightenment conservatives. And we had those who,
if they had lived a century or so before, would have been Marxists.
We each did what we
did, working towards freedom in our own ways and in those areas in which we
were most interested. We met every so often, to listen to the ideas of our most
prominent intellectuals and activists. And some of us got pleasantly drunk
afterwards.
Right Wing, Left Wing, Down Wing
In the days before
we understood the Paradigm War, libertarians had tried hard to work for freedom
inside the political system. We had not had much success.
In the ‘80s, the conservatives
or Tories, the right wing, had seemed our natural allies. They were, like us,
anti-communist – remember communism? Many of them supported a fair degree of economic
freedom. And some of them seemed to be quite decent chaps, eh what? But it had eventually
become plain that they weren’t really on our side.
For, all
conservatives’ thinking was backward looking. That is almost the definition of
a conservative. The really nasty ones – their thinking thousands of years out
of date – believed that might makes right. So, they allowed relative economic
freedom, but only so they could build the biggest possible war machine.
The nicest of the
conservatives, on the other hand, were only two or three hundred years out of
date. They shared our Enlightenment values, and supported economic freedom for
its own sake. But conservatives, as we eventually came to see, couldn’t let go
of the political paradigm. Even with the best of wills, they couldn’t see past
the state to what needed to come next.
So, some of us tried
seeking allies on the political left – so-called liberals. After all, most of
them were, like us, against aggressive wars, racism, religious intolerance, elitism
and abuse of power by officials. Many of them were decent on things like civil
liberties and free migration. And they were more open to new ideas than conservatives.
But the left had
serious problems as potential allies. They had fallen, almost without
exception, for the green agenda and its “humans cause catastrophic global
warming” fraud. And they saw inequalities of earnings – even if fully deserved,
for example due to better developed skills or greater effort – as a problem to
be “rectified”. So, they liked to impose harsh taxes, to seize the earnings of those
who honestly earned success. Thus, they became enemies of the economic
paradigm. (And they did not seem to understand that, in trying to “rectify” one
inequality, they were creating a different, and far greater, inequality!)
Some of us had flirted
with the UK Independence Party. For many of us could heartily agree with their
core belief – the EU was a menace, and had to be escaped from or otherwise gotten
rid of. But they weren’t, short of a revolution, going to get power. And, if
they did, they would soon become like the conservatives.
That left – apart
from a few fringe loonies - our worst enemies, New Labour and the greens. They
formed what I liked to call the down wing. They both wanted to destroy any
chance of economic prosperity. And they both wanted to destroy our rights and freedoms
too.
To summarize: The
political bird had three wings. Right-wingers loved the state and its political
paradigm. Left-wingers hated the economic paradigm and prosperity. Down-wingers
did both.
No, there was no
point at all in trying to ally with anyone inside the political system.
The Paradigm Warriors
I had joined the libertarian
movement back when the game had been keeping the ideas of freedom alive in a
hostile intellectual climate. I had
stayed in it through the worst of the Ugly Years. During that time, our task
had been to invent, and to evaluate, routes to freedom which might prove
achievable. And I was still there when the game changed again, and we became Paradigm
Warriors.
Taking the long
view, the political paradigm had gradually been losing momentum over the
centuries. So, every so often, the politicals had felt the need to start a new
ruse, to fool or to cow people into supporting their paradigm. That was why
absolute monarchy had given way to constitutional monarchy. That was why we had
“democracy”; and why it was such a sham. That was why we had suffered nationalism
– and the wars it spawned.
That was why we had
a bloated, unsustainable welfare state, too. If the welfare system was as good
as the politicals claimed, it would have eliminated poverty, wouldn’t it? But
it hadn’t. No, the true purpose of the welfare state was to try to fool people into
believing that the state was on their side.
That was also why
the politicals were so damned active. They liked to make themselves the centre
of attention. They kept on doing
things to us, hoping that we would notice them and fawn on them. They didn’t
seem to realize that what they did to us actually made us angry and disgusted.
That was also why
they had foisted on us the green scare agenda. The politicals hoped that people
would buy into the scares, accept their measures to “save the planet,” and shower
thanks and respect on them. But instead, we saw through the ruse to the lies
beneath. So, we came to feel for those that promoted the green agenda, not the
respect they craved, but the contempt and hatred that they deserved as
fraudsters.
The politicals had
come up with ruse after ruse. But they had started to run out of workable ruses.
Forward-thinking people had begun to see that the political system was unsustainable;
that the state was out of date. And that we might be able to hasten its demise by
joining the Paradigm War, on the side of the economic paradigm.
So, as Paradigm Warriors,
our job had been threefold. First, to kick the intellectual foundations out
from under the political paradigm. Second, to explicate the economic paradigm.
And third, to sell it to the many who were – most of them unknowingly –
desperate for it.
For, if good people
were offered a real choice between the two, deciding between the economic and
political paradigms was a no-brainer. Only the corrupt, lazy, aggressive and
deceitful – in other words, common criminals and the political class – would
choose the political paradigm.
Community? What Community?
One major difference
between the two paradigms was that the economic paradigm is bottom-up. In the
economic paradigm, individuals simply associate, work and trade together, and
then disassociate. There is no need for people to feel a collective identity,
beyond the team with whom they are working for the time being.
The political paradigm,
on the other hand, was by its nature top-down. So, it required people to feel a
permanent collective identity; to feel a part of the state. The politicals, I had
noticed, now referred to their state as “the community”. The reason, I
presumed, was to try to give us a warm feeling of membership in their political
system and their state.
But that idea of community
had broken down. It was only a small step from voting for the party you hated
least – or not voting at all – to feeling revulsion for the politicals and for their
entire system. How, for instance, could any honest, peaceful human being feel any
sense of community with those that had started an immoral war in Iraq, on the
basis of nothing but a pack of lies? Or with those that had claimed that human
activities caused catastrophic change in the climate, with no proof at all,
just a load of non-science, propaganda and appeals to authority?
Any community that I
could feel a part of, I used to say, would blackball Blair, Brown and Blunkett,
and all the rest of New Labour. And most of those in the other parties, too. I
knew I was not alone in this thought.
But I went further.
I came to understand that those that supported a political policy – any political policy – that harmed
innocent people, were assaulting those innocent people. Using politics against
good people, I thought, is like mugging them. No; worse. For it perverts law,
the very instrument which should defend us good people against the bad ones,
into a weapon with which to persecute us. So, I felt for the political muggers and
their supporters, not fellowship or community, but anger and hatred. They owe
me compensation, I thought; I don’t owe them anything but the contempt they
deserve.
With hindsight, it’s
obvious that political democracy had always contained the seeds of its own
downfall. For politics always led to injustices. And, as the injustices
mounted, the victims became angry. Good people lost – as I had - any sense of community
with, or obligation to, those that promoted or supported the policies that
harmed them. Fellowship is supposed to be a two-way process, we thought. So, unjust
politics broke apart the feeling of community, that was necessary to sustain
democracy. It destroyed the very sense of “we” that had given the democratic
idea its legitimacy in the first place.
A big part of our
job as Paradigm Warriors, therefore, had been to bring people to a new and
sustainable sense of community. The new community we promoted was the world-wide
fellowship of civilized human beings. That is, the community of all those who
follow the economic paradigm. And who reject the political paradigm, and all those
that use it.
But like the men and
women of the Renaissance, we looked not just forward, but back to the best
traditions of the past as well. We found it very helpful, that many of the
values of our new paradigm were also traditional English values. So English
people, along with their new sense of community in civilization, could still
feel an Englishness – but an Englishness based on English values and culture,
not on politics.
It was also helpful
that England – as opposed to Britain - had had no political existence for 300
years. It was, therefore, less of a wrench for English people to adopt the new thinking,
than it was for people in many other places.
And that is why the
Revolution happened first in
The Road to Revolution
Our big chance came
when the generation who had been schooled beginning in the late ‘80s and ‘90s –
the guinea-pigs for the “national curriculum” – came to sufficient maturity to
understand what was going on. They had been subjected since youth to a torrent
of brainwash. But many of them had come to know it. Some went further, and
consciously resisted it. And soon they came to resent it, and to feel disgust for
the politicals that had tried to brainwash them.
Imagine, then, the power
which was unleashed during the second decade of the century, when these people,
having reached their 20s or early 30s, discovered the ideas which we radical old
fogeys – for most of us libertarians by ‘10 were well over 50, some even in
their 80s - had struggled so hard and so long to preserve and to explicate for
others. And that had been the proximate cause of the Revolution.
Key to dividing
friend from foe had been the idea of common-sense justice, which was loved by
those of the economic paradigm, and hated by those of the political. Like a
mental meat-cleaver, it separated the metaphorical sheep from the goats. For
honest, productive, peaceful people naturally want to be treated as they treat
others. It’s in their interests! And fraudsters, thieves and the aggressively
violent fear it, because common-sense justice will punish them as they deserve.
We had formed an
organization that would run candidates for office. It was not a political
party. Indeed, it was explicitly against politics and the political paradigm.
Our candidates did
not talk about what was “best for Britain,” but about what was “best for you”
and “best for good people”. They promoted the economic paradigm – the way
forward to a society of peace, justice, freedom, prosperity, honesty and a
bright and happy future. They compared and contrasted it with the political
paradigm, with its wars, its injustices, its bad laws and unnecessary restrictions,
its heavy taxes, its lies and deceit, and its stifling, going-nowhere atmosphere
of fear and guilt.
Our candidates asked
the question: Who the hell needs politics? They promised the common-sense
justice that everyone deserved. They promised that they would never allow
peaceful, productive, honest people to suffer for the sake of the violent, or
the lazy, or the dishonest, or anyone with a political agenda.
And many good people,
who had come to despise the politicals but had never had a chance to do
anything about it before, flocked to join us.
Our enemies, of
course, at first ignored us, then belittled us, then attacked us (verbally,
legally or on occasion physically) and smeared us. But their attacks backfired.
Indeed, our enemies scored a series of increasingly spectacular own goals. And
people came to see the state for what it was; an outdated, immoral
organization. They saw the politicals and the Establishment that fed off them for
what they were; criminals and worse.
As discontent
mounted, good people had started openly to flout unjust and intrusive laws. There
were anti-political protests, and civil disobedience. And there were tax
strikes – particularly by small businesses.
There was some
violence, much of it started by the police; for many of them took the
politicals’ side. The army, though, was another matter. Because of what they
had been ordered to do in
So, in October ’17 –
ironically, 100 years to the month after the Bolsheviks had taken over
Mr. Good, Dr. Wood, Mrs. Hood and Mr.
Mahmood
When our side took
power after the Revolution, we had much to do in a very short time. Four members
of our side took the principal roles in implementing the new paradigm. (I use
here, not their real names, but nicknames I gave them).
Mr. Good was not
only the figurehead, but also the one who held everything together. He was the
one who set the tone for what the others did, and kept everyone aware of what
was happening. He also personally dealt with the most controversial issues. For
example, agreeing to extradite from England to Iraq the instigators of the war there.
Dr. Wood was the
financial genius. He reduced the functions of government right down to their
core – civil law, criminal law and defence against aggression. And he
privatized all services previously provided by the state, which people were
voluntarily willing to pay for. The rest of the bureaucrats he sacked, and
cancelled their pensions. Then Dr. Wood
wound up the morally and financially bankrupt political state, and distributed
its assets among its creditors.
Mrs. Hood
represented the people of
Mr. Mahmood was
responsible for justice within
Mr. Good and his
friends set in motion, too, a plan to bring objective, common-sense justice to every
individual in England. That included retrospective justice. We made every one
of the politicals and their hangers-on take full, individual responsibility for
the bad things they had done to innocent people. We made them pay reparations
to all those they had damaged through wars, re-distributory or confiscatory taxes,
stifling regulations, unjust laws, bureaucratic waste, corruption or harassment,
or police harassment or brutality. And we punished them in addition, as harshly
as they deserved. We didn’t show them any more compassion than they had shown towards
us. For common-sense justice doesn’t pull its punches.
But equally,
common-sense justice is not vindictive. Once they had fully compensated all
those they had harmed, had taken the punishment that was due to them, and had
committed themselves to the economic paradigm, then even ex-politicians could
be re-admitted to society. But not, of course, until they had paid their dues
in full.
The Orange Peelians
I get up and walk
along the north side of the park, towards
But today in 2035, I
reflect, the police are very different. After the Revolution, we had sacked the
entire police force, and re-hired only those who were prepared to commit to
doing the job properly. We made them keep to principles similar to the ones
laid down in the 19th century by Sir Robert Peel. And we changed
their uniforms to bright orange jackets. So, many people now call them the
Orange Peelians.
Police no longer
enforce laws, as they did before the Revolution, for the sake of enforcing
laws. Instead, they are a resource to support peace and justice. Our cities and
suburbs are a lot quieter too, because police today will be prosecuted if they
use sirens without good reason.
I walk through the
arch, and reach the south end of Trafalgar Square. It’s still called
I turn right down
Results of Revolution
I think of some of
the changes which have happened since the Revolution. There are no taxes any
more. Courts, police and what few prisons and what little military defence are
still necessary, are all financed by allowing the English pound – which is
otherwise tied to a basket of commodities – to be inflated at 1½% per year. All other services formerly
provided by the state have been privatized. And the welfare of those, who through
no fault of their own cannot support themselves, has become a matter for insurance.
Or, in extreme emergency, charity.
Oh, the happiness of
not paying taxes! For, when you paid for a good or service in the Ugly Years,
you knew that you were also paying for the politically rich and the bad things
they did to you. But today, when you pay for a good or a service, you know that
none of what you are paying goes towards wars. None of it goes towards
political policies designed to harm innocents. None of it goes to an
authoritarian intellectual class. None of it goes on propaganda. None of it
goes on bureaucracies. None of it goes on spying on people. Oh, the happiness
of not paying taxes!
Even better, if
someone does start behaving badly, it is easy to take sanctions against them,
without needing to use law or police. For, if you don’t like the way they
behave, you don’t have to do business with them!
But perhaps the
biggest change brought about by the Revolution was a change in the climate –
the mental climate. The fear and guilt, that had characterized the Ugly Years,
was very soon gone. Instead, we had a new rationality and a new optimism. We
human beings – regardless of race or geographical origin – were going to fulfil
our potential. Yes, we were damn well going to do what was right and natural
for us to do! We were going to take control of our planet.
And we, the English,
were going to do what we could to spread the economic paradigm and the new
sense of confidence world-wide.
Not surprisingly, very
soon after the Revolution, investment began to flood into
With the Revolution,
there came also a new honesty in public life. With the political paradigm
destroyed, it was now in everyone’s interest to be honest. Propaganda became a
thing of the past, too. For most people today have fully functional bullshit
meters. The young have learned from us old fogeys!
There is, once
again, an English parliament. For new situations arise; therefore, it’s
impossible to have the rule of law and justice, without having at least some
kind of legislative. But the parliament has no full-time members or employees.
It meets, emergencies excepted, for at most two weeks each year. And it meets
in a purpose-built facility in Milton Keynes, which for the rest of the year is
a hotel and conference centre.
As to the
constitution, we allowed the incumbent to complete her term, but monarchical
power was going to end there. She made it to 100 – just – and so it was in ‘26
that the English monarchy ended. King William V’s post is now entirely
ceremonial, and he earns his living as a tourist attraction.
The word “
And the EU is no
more. As the Revolution went world-wide, our local friends simply sacked all the
EU bureaucrats in their countries, and wound up the EU’s institutions. The same
happened to the UN, too.
Today in 2035, we
the honest, productive human beings of
And we are trying
some exciting ideas on the justice front. We are currently trialling
Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s idea of “private law societies”. If it works, it will make
the provision of justice totally independent of geographical boundaries. And
so, will make it all but impossible for anyone ever to try to resurrect the
state.
Why Did They Do What They Did?
I turn left out of
the pub, then left again into
As I climb the steps
to the footbridge over the river, I contemplate the question: Why? Why did the
politicals behave as they did? And why did they bombard us with so much fear
and guilt?
Maybe, I think, I have
an answer. When the politicals said “we’re a burden on the planet,” were they
actually admitting that they were a
burden on the planet? When they said “our way of life is not sustainable,” did
they really mean that they knew their
way of life, their political paradigm, was not sustainable? When they told us “We
must change our lifestyles,” did they really mean that they had to change their lifestyles, to forfeit their unearned
privileges? When they hyped fears of climate change, was what they really
feared change in the mental climate? Did they sense, with fear, the coming Revolution?
And when they
accused us of endangering species, did they really mean that they feared their
own species – the political species – was endangered? Did they, perhaps, feel their
own unfitness for the new world? Did their fears stem from a visceral sense that
they, their state and their paradigm were doomed?
Well, I think with a
smile, politics, the state and the political paradigm are now all extinguished.
And good riddance.
Across The Tame’s
I continue across
the footbridge over the Thames. It’s an in joke, among us Paradigm Warriors who
remain, to lengthen the “a” and pronounce the name of the river as “Tame’s”.
This refers, of course, to Chris Tame, one of the first leaders of our movement
in
I look to my right,
and see that the London Eye is still there. Just to the left of it, there is
now another wheel, like an Enterprise wheel, but much bigger. It’s called the
London Revolution. It whirls its passengers round fast – no, very fast, about
90 mph – then takes them upside-down into the air. It gets bigger queues than
the Eye.
It’s starting to go
dark. And I already know that the Italian restaurant hard by