Kerry McCarthy receives 1984

Dear old Kerry has received her copy of 1984 and is just as dismissive as Tom Harris was (incidentally, the latter has added a comment of mine to his endorsements).

I think I know what, if he was writing 'Down and Out in St Pauls and Easton', George Orwell would have made of businessmen in BMWs paying drug-addicted teenagers £20 a time for sex on their way home from work. Freedom? For who? [sic]

So, yet another Labour MP has dodged the issue at hand, and decided to respond with a snide remark. Mind you, I wasn't exactly expecting contrition from this bunch of patrician fuckwits: an overweaning arrogance is what characterises these bastards.

But, just occasionally, Kerry has said a sensible thing or two: she did, for instance, vaguely agree with me that the government should not be legislating as to what food people eat. Mind you, Kerry is very anti-smoking and happily backed the ban: as I have said before, all of this "social justice" shit is simply MPs forcing their own personal morals onto the rest of us.

So, as is becoming traditional, let us look at darling Kerry's voting record, shall we? (And here are her expenses.)

• Voted against a transparent Parliament.


• Voted very strongly for introducing a smoking ban.


• Voted very strongly for introducing ID cards.


• Voted very strongly for Labour's anti-terrorism laws.


• Voted very strongly against an investigation into the Iraq war.


• Voted very strongly for replacing Trident.


• Voted for equal gay rights.

Well, will you look at that little lot, eh? Sure, Kerry has absolutely nothing to learn from 1984, has she?

UPDATE: Kerry has posted a "response", although it is a response to some comments rather than the issue of the totalitarian state which NuLabour is putting in place. I won't bother to refute her largely erroneous assertions, apart from to reiterate something very important which Kerry obviously doesn't grasp.

I don’t think ‘freedom’ is sacrosanct if by that you mean the freedom to oppress, exploit, abuse, harm others.

No, Kerry, nor do we libertarians: you must, surely, be aware of the non-aggression principle?

It holds that "aggression," which is defined as the initiation of physical force, the threat of such, or fraud upon persons or their property, is inherently illegitimate. The principle does not preclude defense or retaliation against aggression.

The non-aggression principle typically includes property as a part of the owner; to aggress against someone's property is to aggress against the individual. Thus, the principle leads to the rejection of theft, vandalism, murder and fraud.

Where we differ, dearest Kerry, is that we libertarians believe that this principle applies to the state as well as to everyone else. Although, as some of the more eagle-eyed of you will have noticed, I am a Consequentialist Libertarian and the non-aggression principle is not central to my personal philosophy.

But this is because I am not an anarchist and I do believe that the state has a small (very small) role to play: it does, however, form a large basis of my beliefs and it certainly applies to criminal justice.

(However, in Patrick's philosophy, for instance, I don't think that I'm going too far to say that the non-aggression principle is absolutely axiomatic.)

But, instead of attempting to criminalise ordinary citizens through the creation of an endemic surveillance society, we would do what you have so consistently failed to do: build more prisons, punish criminals properly (no automatic early release, for instance) and accept no mitigation for crimes committed.

So, you see, Kerry, we certainly do not approve "the freedom to oppress, exploit, abuse, harm others" either philosophically or practically-speaking. But, unlike you, we would do rather more than mouth platitudes.

And if you would like a more detailed fisking of Kerry's "response", there's one at the LPUK blog...