There’s been a powerful article on the New Yorker web site this weekend.
It documents the hundreds of millions of dollars David and Charles Koch have given in the USA to fund those who promote so many of the issues this blog opposes.
These are the people behind the Cato Institute that does so much to promote tax havens.
These are the people behind the Heritage Foundation.
These people are paying for the Tea Party movement,
What do these people think. Take this:
Many of the ideas propounded in the 1980 (Libertarian Party] campaign [they funded] presaged the Tea Party movement. Ed Clark told The Nation that libertarians were getting ready to stage “a very big tea party,” because people were “sick to death” of taxes. The Libertarian Party platform called for the abolition of the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., as well as of federal regulatory agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Energy. The Party wanted to end Social Security, minimum-wage laws, gun control, and all personal and corporate income taxes; it proposed the legalization of prostitution, recreational drugs, and suicide. Government should be reduced to only one function: the protection of individual rights. William F. Buckley, Jr., a more traditional conservative, called the movement “Anarcho-Totalitarianism.”
And why do they fund these think tanks:
That November [in 1980], the Libertarian ticket received only one per cent of the vote. The brothers realized that their brand of politics didn’t sell at the ballot box. Charles Koch became openly scornful of conventional politics. “It tends to be a nasty, corrupting business,” he told a reporter at the time. “I’m interested in advancing libertarian ideas.” According to Doherty’s book, the Kochs came to regard elected politicians as merely “actors playing out a script.” A longtime confidant of the Kochs told Doherty that the brothers wanted to “supply the themes and words for the scripts.” In order to alter the direction of America, they had to “influence the areas where policy ideas percolate from: academia and think tanks.”
These people want to destroy democratic politics as we know it.
They want to change society forever so that it becomes a brutal place for all but the elite winners — like them.
They deny our right to think for ourselves.
They deny climate change.
They deny the need to compensate for the abuse of the market.
They want to destroy our rights to choose.
And these are the ideas that the anarcho-capitalists who comment here, often endorse.
These are the ideas that creep into the Taxpayer’s Alliance.
And from there into the Mail and Express.
And into the Tories.
This is what we face: corrupting capitalisms that wants to destroy our society.
Cameron and Clegg are just starting that process.
But they pave the way for much worse.
And big money funds this. Daily. And I am sure it funds those who promote this vicious creed.
And that’s what we have to oppose.
Because such groups set out to destroy all we value.
They do so with a low profile. From tax havens. Behind fronts. And they do so with a mixture of respectable activity. But the aim is to destroy our democracies none the less.
This is the challenge we face.
Wake up and smell the coffee. This is what’s out there. And it’s spreading, like a cancer.
It’s what the left has to kill for good.
Without money to match only ideas can win the day.
There’s some serious thinking to do.
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Richard – a good comment on a good article, spoiled by ridiculous hyperbole. Cameron and Clegg are not Koch-drones (the latter certainly isn’t) and Britain on the whole has not faced the same pernicious omnipresence of economic snakeoil as the states. Indeed Danny Alexander just said that taxes aren’t going to go down for the next five years. Happy?
This piece highlights one of the problems with your overly simplistic approach of describing anybody who doesn’t agree whole-heartedly with you as “right wing” and treating them all as interchangeable.
Take for example:
“And these are the ideas that the anarcho-capitalists who comment here, often endorse.
…
These are the ideas that creep into the Taxpayer’s Alliance.”
Take a look at the Taxpayer’s Alliance today and you’ll see them arguing in favour of increased state funding of roads and against road pricing, which is at odds with the idea you quoted that “Government should be reduced to only one function: the protection of individual rights. ”
as for:
“…And from there into the Mail and Express.”
I don’t associate either of those with arguing in favour of “the legalization of prostitution, recreational drugs”
The world is complicated and not quite as black and white (or left and right) as you tend to imply.
Koch by name…
[sorry couldn’t resist]
[…] Ritchie: These people want to destroy democratic politics as we know it……..They deny our right to think for ourselves……..They want to destroy our rights to choose……But they pave the way for much worse. And big money funds this. Daily. And I am sure it funds those who promote this vicious creed. And that’s what we have to oppose. Because such groups set out to destroy all we value. They do so with a low profile. From tax havens. Behind fronts. And they do so with a mixture of respectable activity. But the aim is to destroy our democracies none the less. This is the challenge we face. Wake up and smell the coffee. This is what’s out there. And it’s spreading, like a cancer. […]
How do people like that never learn the lessons of history?
No regime which supresses the many for the benefit of the few can last. What’s more – the few ususually go the guillotine/firing squad.
Spot on, except for one thing: this is not what the left has to kill for good. This is something that far more of us than just the left have to stand up and kill for good.
There are, in the various churches and para-church bodies around the world, many people with many different political views. There are sincere believing people on the right of the political spectrum (I’ve met some), as much as there are on the left and at points in between. But however much we disagree on how to get there, there has been a common aim in that political continuum: namely, that politics should create and support a community of some sort which will add up to more than the sum of its parts. And for all Christians there is also a further assumption: that the highest authority is not on earth and is not us alone.
The libertarian rejection of all authority beyond “me and my Armalite” is flatly incompatible with Christian beliefs about community and authority, and believers of every political shade should be loud and clear about that.
James Mac in Jersey
… it [the Libertarian Party] proposed the legalization of prostitution, recreational drugs, and suicide.
I would vote for all of those – and me a diehard leftie!
These people want to destroy democratic politics as we know it.
================
Completely the opposite.
Let me give you a scenario.
Every tax rise has to pass a referenda.
Would you get your tax rises passed the electorate?
The answer is for a quite a while, no.
However, you’re prepared to force a minority view onto the electorate.
So much for your democracy
It seems to me that genuine ‘minimal state’ libertarians are actually pretty few and far between in politics – even in US politics, let alone in the UK. Rather, most of the UK and US hard right have the aim of advancing multinational corporate power at the expense of public services and institutions like trade unions who protect working people. And they are happy to use aspects of the ‘big state’ to achieve that aim as and when necessary. Eisenhower identified it correctly in the 1950s – the ‘military/industrial complex’. And it’s only grown in power since then. I fully expect that the next stage of the austerity measures will be that right-wing politicians will start telling us that democracy is too expensive to maintain and we have to look towards the more efficient Chinese model where people don’t even get a vote. It’s happening to a limited extent already with the Coalition’s plan to diminish democracy by reducing the number of MPs.
The banking bailout should have had very very tough strings attached to ensure public control of the financial system – instead the bankers have enjoyed huge subsidies and are still running things their way with very little extra regulation.
Genuine libertarians should, in my view, be appalled at all this. With a few honourable exceptions, most don’t seem that bothered.
I presume, Richard, that to be fair, if you abhor the idea of those with funds to disburse supporting things they believe in, that you would equally abhor similar folk or organistaions supporting projects, report, research, and similar that you believe in? That would only be fair, I thing. So we’ll see you campaigning against the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Unions sponsoring tax research, the Ford Foundation… etc.?
[…] of the neo-liberal contempt for government — that overlaps with that of anarcho-capitalism, as I noted here. That same contempt for government and the rule of law that it upholds is indeed inherent in the […]
@Daragh McDowell
Alexander is being pragmatic
In the meantime his bosses seek to undermine the state and its capacity wherever possible. This is the neo-liberal agenda which overlaps with that of the anarcho-capitalists. I’ll write ore on the overlaps shortly and how each exploits the other to achieve broadly compatible goals
But hyperbole – I think not. That’s the reality I see
@Paul Lockett
Rubbish
Many of the people named in the New Yorker appear to be linked here with the TPA http://www.europeanresourcebank.com/
Oh and Howard Flight of the Tories too
I think my case is proved for me
@Nick
Democracy is not forcing the view of a minority onto the majority
It is the exact opposite
Which is why law created by democracy is legitimate
You are seeking to impose the view of the minority on the majority at cost to the majority
That’s defined as oppression
That’s what I oppose and you and the anarcho-capitalists are suggesting
“Democracy is not forcing the view of a minority onto the majority
It is the exact opposite”
That would be then: democracy is the forcing of the view of a majority onto the minority.
Ah, the old tyranny of the majority, get the industrious few to fund the feckless many.
@AVI
You’ve been reading too much Worstall – who I note does not seek to counter the arguments, but just argues in the style you have plagiarised
And what a crass argument it is!
Of course people have the right to lobby
But I challenge the right to overthrow democracy itself
Some of us think that somewhat different
Some of us think that totalitarian
But maybe you don’t mind
It’s just I do
And so do 99% in the UK, I suspect
And that’s why I’m worried
And yes – I do think the ConDe,s are deliberately exploiting anti-government sentiment (as is Blair) to facilitate the welath of a few – including themselves
It doesn’t take a genius to work this out
It’s what neo-liberalism prescribes
If that’s what you genuinely believe, it is truly frightening. Is there really nothing that a democratically elected government could do that you would condemn as illegitimate or oppressive? Apartheid? Religious persecution? Slavery?
I would hope that your view is an extreme outlier and that most people would view acts as oppressive or illegitimate based on the nature of the acts and not the weight of numbers supporting them.
@Richard Murphy
Sorry Richard, I disagree with you fundamentally (as well as your absurd caricature of ‘neo-liberalism.’) I don’t think that there’s a Tory plot to undermine British state capacity. They seek to expand state capacity in some areas, and withdraw it in others – even if only from a purely self-interested viewpoint. They are after all, politicians, and without state capacity to both articulate and enforce policy they’d be out of a job! If Alexander’s bosses REALLY wanted to fundamentally undermine and destroy state capacity, cutting taxes would be exactly what they’d order him to do, even by your own logic.
Now what is true is that they seek to withdraw the state and its capacity in areas where you believe that it should remain or be expanded. Fair enough – that’s a basic political disagreement and the reason we have electoral politics: to let the people decide whose ideas they’d like to see put into action. Koch and his crew may unfairly tip the scales in such a contest and I agree that the law should attempt to minimise such influence. But I don’t see the modern Tory party as excessively Koch influenced, and overall the media and political discourse in Britain is light years ahead of the States. Do we need to remain on guard against erosion? Of course. But rants about anarcho-capitalists seeking to destroy all we hold dear etc. are unlikely to be taken seriously.
@Richard Murphy
Richard – as someone whose studied politics and political science for the last decade, I must join in the chorus of those condeming this as a grotesque perversion of a definition of democracy. Any democracy worth the name grants its citizens certain fundamental inviolable rights. And the right to private-property is one of them. The rights and property of the minority cannot be abrogated/seized because the majority votes for it. I’m not a libertarian (far from it) and I think I’d sympathise with your position on most political issues, and I suspect this simplistic formulation is a bit of bloggorhea. But if not, and if you truly believe in absolute majoritarianism, I’m afraid you’re not in the ‘democracy’ business my friend.
@Paul Lockett et al
Oh purleese. The original quote from Richard upon which you are seeking to hang this nonsense was referring to David and Charles Koch and their like. This is indeed a tiny minority forcing their views on the rest of US/us by reason of the influence provided by their billions in political donations.
@Carol Wilcox
My comment was simply pointing out that taking a black and white view of the world where people are either “left” or “right,” with the members of each group having homogeneous views, is over-simplistic.
What is so bizarre is that before condemning it as nonsense, you implied the same thing, when you commented:
“… it [the Libertarian Party] proposed the legalization of prostitution, recreational drugs, and suicide.
I would vote for all of those – and me a diehard leftie!”
@Carol Wilcox
Exactly Carol
This is not a PhD thesis
Nor do I presume I have to caveat every comment
Daragh and Paul seem to live in the nit-picking extreme that delights in destructive analysis
If they were actually capable of reading in the round – if they bothered to think even – to place my comments in the context of this whole blog – they’d realise how absurd their comments are
But they didn’t do that
My comment, as you rightly say, was a response to the claim that all tax is theft and the imposition of a majority on a minority meaning democracy is wrong
NO! Democracy is not wrong
It’s the right thing
And of course it should be based on a constitution, and executive, a legislature, an independent judiciary, a strong fourth estate, and something much more than that – a tolerance of and respect for minorities as well – which I think I more than readily esppouse (frequently).
And given these conditions – especially the last – tax is legitimate
And yes it may well – indeed it will always – involve imposition of the will of a majority on a minority not willing to pay
Oh, shock, horror – there is a constraint on the liberty of the individual if they wish to live in society! Amazing! And of course, completely, and invariably true. Life is about compromise. Unless you’re a nit-picking libertarian of course – when there’s no such thing as society, empathy, or others even. Just you, your PC and the right to abuse.
Thankfully they’re easy to spot.
And thankfully they will always be a minority. At least if I have my way! Democratically delivered , of course.
@Howard:
Re your comments about minimal-state libertarians. You may be right about the UK; in the US there are few political figures yet, but they are pushing at the door. But you should watch Jersey, because there is every indication that the MSLs are setting the agenda, and their links with the City of London may well spread the cancer.
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