Jump in feet-first, you fool

Over the weekend, someone called Don Paskini decided to dip his big toe into the libertarian pool and see what all the fuss was about.

After a rather perfunctory foray into some libertarian blogs on Sunday afternoon, he discovered:

So I didn’t manage to bond with the Libertarians over the police database of dissident protesters. But I did learn about the merits of Tsarist Russia; that the government shouldn’t help women who are losing their jobs; that it’s wrong to pay people £7/hour or more if they live in Glasgow and work for the council; about how privatisation can create a market in whether our children get indoctrinated by the gays and about the Nazi ownership of our children by the state.

Not to mention that next time someone asks me for my opinion on a really, really stupid idea, I now know that a polite way to reply is to say that it sounds ‘impeccably liberal’.

But something still puzzled me. Why would a group of people who want another way forward for the country, who are extremely ANGRY and who fantasise about stringing up our elected leaders from lamp posts not be worried about the existence of a database which the state can use to monitor dissenters?

And then I thought about it from another perspective, and all became clear. Pity the poor Police Surveillance Officer, monitoring this drivel and having to decide what kind of security risk they might be. I suspect they would conclude two things:

1. Their policy aims seem to revolve exclusively around giving more to those who already have a lot of money and power, so probably not one to worry about too much.

2. And anyway, as credible and organised threats to the existing order go, they make the Socialist Workers Party look like the Bolsheviks.

I was going to take the piss, but one of the commenters appears to have got in his apologia first:

You have misrepresented the arguments on each of these sites in turn.

…

As for opposing the ‘dissident database’, when the time comes, you will find these chaps on the barricades. They don’t have to prove their credentials to you.

Thank you, Jonathan Miller, whoever you are.

In conclusion, I wish to point out that Don decided to test the waters because:

I took it and discovered that I was 40% liberal and 60% illiberal. It said: “Thank you for taking our test. But we think you may be more interested in an illiberal, statist party like the Labour Party or Conservative Party. If you wish to advertise your illiberal values, please find your blog badge below.”

It’s a brave political strategy for a fledgling party – “thank you for expressing an interest in our party, however you might be more interested in these other political parties.”

But I was not deterred and decided that I was going to build on the 40% that I had in common with the Libertarian Party. So I thought I’d pick an issue where I knew we would agree, and find out what leading Libertarians had written about it.

That issue, as it happens, was state surveillance and databases, based on an article from the Guardian about police records of protesters and campaigners. Don oh-so-astutely assumed that because the issue wasn’t the top post on the libertarian blogs during his arbitrary five-minute reccie, neither Samizdata nor the Devil’s Kitchen nor Old Holborn nor Bishop Hill nor the Libertarian Alliance are concerned about surveillance and databases.

Don, allow me to correct your misapprehension.

[H/T DaveA.]