SERFDOM VIA THE SOCIAL SERVICE STATE

Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, wants to take the control of Australia’s Medicare System away from the States and centralise it in the hands of the Commonwealth Government. So? What’s new?
We are indebted to Louis Cook who reminded us of the legacy of Eric D. Butler. In an essay written in 1949, “The Labour-Socialist Road to Serfdom”, Eric explained the real intention behind the 1944 Referendums brought forward by the then Labor Government. One of the objectives was the nationalisation of the health systems of the various states. It was a blatant grab for Power in the drive for a Socialist State of Australia.

Lou extracted two sections from the essay and they are reproduced on the League’s website in the Political Democracy section under “Nationalising Australia’s Medicare”. Study it carefully gentle reader and ask yourself if this is still not the intention of the Labour-Socialists.
As an economic productive system, socialism has proved itself a dismal failure. They don’t seem to get anything right so why should they be allowed to interfere in the important sphere of personal health? The drive to socialise Australia was never more apparent than under the Rudd Government.

“The exploitation of the Social Service idea to sap the independence of the individual and to help bring him under centralised control has always been a major aspect of 'Socialist’ technique. The Labour-Socialists are at present stressing the importance of their National Health and "Free" Medicine Schemes...”  Eric D. Butler 1949.

IT IS ABOUT ONLY ONE THING - GINORMOUS GOVERNMENT

Journalist Mark Steyn should be congratulated for his clear thinking. It’s a pity the ‘conservative’ journalists in this country don’t have the same ability. Or is it because, for all their ‘blah’, the Australian versions fit his description of an American ‘republican’ ‘conservative’ and even ‘democrat’ equivalents. Where are the warning bells for this country? Our own Prime Minister is busy on the campaign trail selling his brand of Collectivist Health Care – and barely a peep from the so-called freedom-loving ‘conservatives’ whether in journalism or politics!

Labor’s WWII 14 Powers Referendum
How many Australians are aware this is not the first attempt by Socialist-Labor forces to centralise Australia’s Health Care System ? We have placed on our website at www.alor.org/ at >politicaldemocracy/nationalising-australia-s-medicare< a portion of a paper written by Eric D. Butler in 1949 on the push to centralise the health system during the war years under the then Labor government. There really is nothing new!

Now on to Mike Steyn: The Dakota Beacon March 5, 2010.
“So there was President Obama giving his bazillionth speech on health care, droning yet again that “now is the hour when we must seize the moment”, the same moment he’s been seizing every day of the week for the past year, only this time his genius photo-op guys thought it would look good to have him surrounded by men in white coats.
Why is he doing this? Why let “health” “care” “reform” stagger on like the rotting husk in a low-grade creature feature who refuses to stay dead no matter how make stakes you pound through his chest? Because it’s worth it. Big time. I’ve been saying in this space for two years that the governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-centre political culture. It redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state in fundamental ways that make limited government all but impossible.

In most of the rest of the western world, there are still nominally “conservative” parties, and they even win elections occasionally, but not to any great effect (Let’s not forget that Jacques Chirac was, in French terms, a “conservative”). The result is a kind of two-party one-party state: Right-of-centre parties will once in a while be in office, but never in power, merely presiding over vast left-wing bureaucracies that cruise on regardless.

Republicans seem to have difficulty grasping this basic dynamic. Less than three months ago, they were stunned at the way the Democrats managed to get 60 senators to vote for the health bill. Then Scott Brown took them back down to 59, and Republicans were again stunned to find the Dems talking about ramming this thing into law through the parliamentary device of “reconciliation”.
And, when polls showed an ever larger number of Americans ever more opposed to Obamacare (by margins approaching three-to-one), Republicans were further stunned to discover that, in order to advance “reconciliation”, Democrat reconsiglieres [CORRECT] had apparently been offering (illegally) various cosy Big Government sinecures to swing-state congressmen in order to induce them to climb into the cockpit for the kamikaze raid to push the bill through. The Democrats understand that politics is not just about Tuesday evenings every other November, but about everything else, too.

A year or two back, when the Canadian Islamic Congress attempted to criminalize my writing north of the border by taking me to the Canadian “Human Rights” Commission, a number of outraged American readers wrote to me saying, “You need to start kicking up a fuss about this, Steyn, and then maybe Canadians will get mad and elect a conservative government that will end this nonsense.” Makes perfect sense. Except that Canada already has a Conservative government under a Conservative Prime Minister, and the very head of the “human rights” commission investigating me was herself the Conservative appointee of a Conservative Minister of Justice.

Makes no difference. Once the state swells to a certain size, the people available to fill the ever expanding number of government jobs will be statists – sometimes hardcore Marxist statists, sometimes social-engineering multiculti statists, sometimes fluffily “compassionate” statists, but always statists.
The short history of the post-war welfare state is that you don’t need a president-for-life if you’ve got a bureaucracy-for-life: The people can elect “conservatives”, as the Germans have done and the British are about to do, and the left is mostly relaxed about it because, in all but exceptional cases (Thatcher), they fulfill the same function in the system as the first-year boys at wintry English boarding schools who for tuppence-ha’penny or some such would agree to go and warm the seat in the unheated lavatories until the prefects strolled in and took their rightful place.

Republicans (Liberals/Nationals ?) are good at keeping the seat warm:
A bigtime GOP (Grand Old Party) consultant was on TV crowing that Republicans wanted the Dems to pass Obamacare because it’s so unpopular it will guarantee a GOP sweep in November. Okay, then what? You’ll roll it back – like you’ve rolled back all those other unsustainable entitlements premised on cobwebbed actuarial tables from 80 years ago? Like you’ve undone the Federal Department of Education and of Energy and all the other nickel’n’dime novelties of even a universally reviled one-term loser like Jimmy Carter?

Andrew McCarthy concluded a shrewd analysis of the political realities thus:
“Health care is a loser for the Left only if the Right has the steel to undo it. The Left is banking on an absence of steel. Why is that a bad bet?”

Indeed. Look at it from the Dems’ point of view. You pass Obamacare. You lose the 2010 election, which gives the GOP co-ownership of an awkward couple of years. And you come back in 2012 to find your health care apparatus is still in place, a fetid behemoth of toxic pustules oozing all over the basement, and, simply through the natural processes of government, already bigger and more expensive and more bureaucratic than it was when you passed it two years earlier. That’s a huge prize, and well worth a mid-term timeout.

I’ve been bandying comparisons with Britain and France but that hardly begins to convey the scale of it. Obamacare represents the government annexation of “one-sixth of the US economy” - ie, the equivalent of the entire British or French economy, or the entire Indian economy twice over. Nobody has ever attempted this level of centralized planning for an advanced society of 300 million people. Even the control-freaks of the European Union have never tried to impose a unitary “comprehensive” health care system from Galway to Greece. The Soviet Union did, of course, and we know how that worked out.

This “reform” is not about health care, and certainly not about “controlling costs”.
(As with Medicare), it “controls” costs by declining to acknowledge them, or pay them. Dr William Schreiber of North Syracuse, New York, told CNN that he sees 120 patients per week – about 30% on Medicare, 65% on private insurance plans whose payments take into account the Medicare reimbursement rates, and about 5% who do it the old-fashioned way and write a cheque. He calculates that, under Obamacare, for every $5 he now makes, he’ll get $2 in the future. Which suggests now would be a good time to retrain as a realtor or accountant, or the night clerk at the convenience store. Yet Congresswoman Louise Slaughter (Democrat, New York) justifies her support for Obamacare this way:
“I even had one constituent - you will not believe this, and I know you won’t, but it’s true - her sister died. This poor woman had no dentures. She wore her dead sister’s teeth.” Is the problem of second-hand teeth a particular problem in this corner of New York? I haven’t noticed an epidemic of ill-fitting dentures on recent visits to the Empire State. George Washington had wooden teeth, but presumably these days the Sierra Club would object to the clear-cutting. Yet, even granting Congresswoman Slaughter the benefit of the doubt, is annexing the equivalent of a G7 economy the solution to what would seem to be the statistically unrepresentative problem of her constituent’s ill-fitting choppers?

Is it worth reducing the next generation of Americans to indentured servitude to pay for this poor New Yorker’s dentured servitude? Yes. Because government health care is not about health care, it’s about government. Once you look at it that way, what the Dems are doing makes perfect sense. For them”.  

WOMEN, THE LAW AND FEMINIST DOGMAS

by Ian Wilson LL.B.
Against the Lawyers series: Michael Black retires as Federal Court Chief Justice after 18 years on March 19, 2010. According to the article “Courts are Still to Do Full Justice to Women” (The Australian 22/1/2010, p.29) “Michael Black recently boarded a flight that was full of men at the pointy end of the plane. He felt the same way he does when entering a room full of males: “It’s just unnatural. It’s absurd. I am glad it’s no longer the case in the court.” Even though “great progress” has been made in getting women into law, there is more to be done to “do full justice to women” the title article says. The problem is that “brilliant young women” want to have families and men just don’t want the traditional maternal role. Maybe a female prime minister is needed? (“You didn’t hear me say that”).

However, the available evidence indicates that women are happier in marriages with traditional division of labour rather than this sort of politically correct egalitarian (or even matriarchal) arrangement. Research by Bradford Wilcox and Steven Nock, two University of Virginia sociologists, involved a sample of 5000 couples drawn from the second wave (1992-1994) of the US National Survey of Families and Households.
It was found that the more traditional the woman and the more traditional the marriage, the happier the woman was. Women were happier for their husbands to be bread-winners. So maybe the Australian lawyers are just reacting to the same forces?

Writers such as our own James Reed who sees some sort of conspiracy of feminists bringing down Western civilisation, should follow up this research (W. Bradford Wilcox and S.L. Nock, “What’s Love Got To Do With It? Equality, Equity, Commitment and Women’s Marital Equality,” Social Forces, vol. 84, March 2006).  

IAN WILSON DID ASK - "WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?"

by Betty Luks
I don’t think Ian Wilson could have realised the extent to which his article (“What’s Love Got to do with it? Plenty!” OT Vol46 No10, 2010) would stir my thinking. Referring to Professor Michael Detmold’s ‘Law of Love” 2009 lectures, Ian Wilson, reviewing Professor Detmold’s work, helped shine a penetrating beam of light on an important truth, but this time from an angle not considered for many a long year.

The Australian League of Rights insists on the fundamental importance of the Rule of Law and stresses the value of our system of Common Law protecting the rights of the individual, etc. The League’s objectives have not changed in all the years of its existence and are restated in every New Times Survey issue. But what was so inspiring was the gleam of light focussed on the history of the practical application - which is the ‘key’ to our understanding of our own history – of the 2nd Great Commandment, “love your neighbour as yourself”.

C.H. Douglas challenged his readers many years ago when he wrote:
“It must be insisted that Christianity is either something inherent in the very ‘warp and woof’ (weaver’s term) of the Universe, or it is just a set of interesting opinions, largely discredited, and thus doubtfully on a par with many other sets of opinions, and having neither more nor less claim to consideration”.

Can it not be said the Law of Love is just as much a Law of the Universe as is the Law of Gravity and the observance of both is for our own individual benefit as it is for our neighbour’s? The real, the organic history of the English-speaking peoples can be rightly understood only in the context of the Law of Love. It is not a Law to Love but a Law of Love.

A note of caution here, we mustn’t make the mistake of looking back through recorded history and imagining people thought and acted as does modern man. Not only does realistic history reveal the slow evolution (growth, development) of systems and institutions but also the slow evolution (growth, development) of the whole man himself.

Evidence suggests the Christian Faith was first carried to the Isles in the first hundred years after the death and resurrection of our Lord, and its slow growth among pockets of the peoples of the Isles took place over the centuries. As an example, look at the slow development of the concept of justice; the ‘justice’ meted out during the Anglo-Danish period was based on three things:
1. The payment of a ‘weregild’ or money payment for a wrong to be paid to the injured party or his kin – to prevent a blood feud erupting.
2. The new doctrines of the Church taught that: ‘Wrong doing had the further aspect of sin or moral wrong, to be expiated by penance’.
3. The peculiarly Scandinavian view found in Anglo-Danish laws – cowardly flight or desertion of one’s chief were dishonourable – ‘nidings voerk’ – to be punished as deeds unworthy of the free warrior. (“History of England” by G.M. Trevelyan, 1926)
The idea of the foundation of law being the “law of love” was the outworking of the Christian principle of loving one’s neighbour as oneself, by treating the ‘other’ as you would have the ‘other’ treat you. The Church taught it was wrong to steal, it was a moral wrong, a sin and by seeking to work in harmony with the Law of Love, the concept of ‘Contract (Bargain) – Don’t Steal’ developed.

Morality reduces to Law:
Wilson wrote that according to Detmold: “Law does not need a moral foundation for, on the contrary, law does not reduce to morality but rather, morality reduces to law. Law historically came before morality and even today has a more basic nature than morality…”
But it was not Law imposed so much as it was a Body of Law that grew - and for their own sakes Australians need to grasp the difference. The violation of Peter Spencer’s property rights is as much our concern as it is his. If Peter Spencer’s rights can be violated then so can ours! The violation of the rights of that young indigenous girl while under the care and protection of a Queensland state authority (details now known as ‘The Heiner’ affair) are also fundamentally important. The Rule of Law must be for all, we must all be governed by that Rule of Law – including politicians and bureaucrats.

Further essential reading: “Christian Philosophy in the Common Law” by Richard O’Sullivan KC. (Photocopy) Price: $7.00 plus postage. “Responsible Government in a Free Society” by Geoffrey Dobbs. Price: $6.00 plus postage. “The Essential Christian Heritage” by Eric D. Butler. Price: $2.00 plus postage. “The Just Tax” by Geoffrey Dobbs. Price: $4.00 plus postage.  

OUR FOREIGN AID HELPS... WHO?... IS THAT RIGHT?

Thanks go to Andrew Bolt and his blogspot for the following – Sunday, March 21, 2010:
“You thought our aid budget was spent helping poor people overseas? Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Organisations which campaigned for the Rudd Government’s election in 2007 are among those given hundreds of thousands of dollars from Australia’s foreign aid budget. Under new rules announced in 2009, Ausaid can now fund education and awareness campaigns in Australia. Labor-friendly organisations are big winners from the $1.3 million handed out so far.

The ACTU has collected $147,000 for a campaign to educate workers on the Rudd Government’s international development aid program. Another $150,000 has gone to the Oaktree Foundation, founded by former young Australian of the Year Hugh Evans, for 1000 young people to travel the country educating the public about poverty alleviation and the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. The foundation was part of the 2007 Make Poverty History campaign and during that year’s election Mr Evans said it was planning a “full-scale” campaign urging people to support Labor’s position on foreign aid. Other winners include a program to bring Australian and Afghani youth together, via the internet, for an arts project showing they understand poverty and a rickshaw ride for 400 from Queensland to Tasmania.

Under the new rules, 10 per cent of Ausaid’s Australian NGO Co-operation Program’s budget can be spent in Australia on awareness campaigns. “Awareness campaigns” is what they call this propaganda and sponsor-my-fun now. Contemptible. Utterly contemptible. Update: Reader ‘Boy on a Bik’e says your aid dollars are indeed lifting some people out of poverty: AusAID - have a look at their annual report, in particular TABLE 10: AUSAID SES EMPLOYEE SALARY RANGE, 30 JUNE 2009.
$205 000-$219 999 - one employee : $175 000-$189 999 - two staff : $160 000-$174 999 - four staff : $175 000-$189 999 - one person : $160 000-$174 999 - one person : $145 000-$159 999 - three staff : $130 000-$144 999 - 22 staff :

Average Australian income - around $50,000. Yes, lots of AusAID staff have certainly been lifted out of poverty.”

Comment: Isn’t it well past time the people took back their right to contract (bargain) with their leaders on the percentage of their increase (their disposable income) they will pay for the administration of ‘government’? Better still, in this age of physical abundance with the introduction of the social credit proposal for a National Dividend for ALL and a Price Subsidy (as implemented during WWII) to eliminate price inflation - ALL would live well! And we would all have leisure time - even though our governments and bureaucrats think it is for them alone.

For those with access to the internet: Google in ‘Social Credit Wikipedia’ and you will find a most comprehensive explanation of the various aspects of Social Credit. Definitely well worth downloading and having your own copy to study. A number of social crediters keep a watchful eye on the site to ensure it is not ‘corrupted’.  

WAR AID - AND THE STUPIDITY

by James Reed
We are the world…we are the children. Michael Jackson sang that long before it was popular to make jokes about his “love” of children. Live Aid in 1985 brought together super rich rock stars to raise money for starving Ethiopians. It was bleeding heart globalism, big time.
Back in 1985 I felt that most of the money would not be spent on food for starving people but would go into the pockets of some local warlords. Surprise, surprise, the former head of finance with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front living now in suburban Perth (yes, everybody’s here!) has said that his organization hood-winked the NGO’s so that “the money, much of it, the rebel leaders put into their accounts in western Europe, in so many different places.”
And “some of it was used to buy weapons. The people did not get half a kilogram of maize” (The Australian, 5/3/2010, p.1). About 95% of the money raised by these concerts, the BBC reported, went into the control of rebel soldiers.

It goes to show the stupidity of the rock philosophy message. Seduced by the cacophony of loud music, brain cells stretched to breaking point and language and logic dulled by meaningless, repetitious lyrics – the music world lives in a separate reality from the real world. If only it was the wealth of the rock stars that was lost, not the money of the people who followed these fools.   

SOME REASONS FOR BEING GLAD (STILL)

by Peter Ewer
Yes, things are grim here in Australia – in a relative sense. Yes, the forces of darkness are closing in. But I just had a good walk in the Autumn sun and with loads of natural vitamin D in my system, I consider: In Saudi Arabia a woman filed harassment claims without being accompanied by a male relative. According to the group Human Rights Watch, she has been sentenced to 300 lashes and 18 months in gaol!
Over in Iran a protestant clergyman has been gaoled for “converting Muslims” – he has been tortured and threatened with execution. In Pakistan a Christian couple received 75 years in gaol for allegedly touching the Qur’an with “dirty hands”. This is said to be an offence of blasphemy. Stories like this, reported daily at www.jihadwatch.com make me glad to be in Australia.  

THE ANTI-CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF PETER SINGER

by Brian Simpson
“Q10” in The Weekend Australian Magazine (6-7/3/2010) recently featured Peter Singer, born to Jewish parents and Australia’s best known philosopher. He has thought through the social consequences of utilitarian ethics – basically the idea that the goodness of acts involves assessing the consequences. He has championed animal rights, extending anti-racist and ant-sexist arguments to propose the doctrine of anti-speciesism – the rejection of a discriminatory preference for the interests of humans over animals.

An internet search uncovered a book review by Peter Singer entitled “Heavy Petting” (Nerve, 2001). There he argued that our horror about human/animal sexual relationships arose from the unfounded religious notion that humans were distinct from and superior to animals.
The article generated considerable controversy because here was a major philosopher endorsing bestiality between consenting animals! The essay received critical reply in technical journals (e.g. Critical Criminology, vol.10, 2001, pp 43-55). Critics pointed to a wealth of literature showing a link between bestiality and human violence and crime (see for review Journal of Interpersonal Violence vol. 27, 2006, pp. 910 – 923).

My apologies for raising an unpleasant topic but I think this issue really does show very starkly the differences between Christian philosophy and a materialist one which just sees us humans as animals. If we go down the materialist road then we are ultimately faced with the sort of conclusions that Peter Singer reaches. As an atheist he has done us the service of showing the absurdity of the materialist world view.  

IMMIGRATION AND THE SUFFERING OF STUDENTS

by James Reed
The “debate” centred round racism against Indian students continues. The Indian student body in Australia is between 90,000 and 120,000, making it something of a miracle if no such conflict occurred. Survey research has shown that about 80% of International students in Melbourne feel threatened (The Australian, 17/2/2010, p.7). Clearly then, this is not a problem of “racism” but a problem of immigration, bringing in too many racial minorities at the same time.

The Universities clamour for more immigration. But the reality is, as a Thai student put it in a letter to The Australian (17/2/2010, p.25) that “it is common knowledge among those who work in the sector that tertiary education has become a degree factory, providing certificates as a gateway to residence but rarely a path to employment.”

Students often end up in wage-slave positions here in Australia or just on the dole. This is the real face of “racism” -economic exploitation by the Establishment hiding behind “holier-than-thou-multiculturalism.” Both Anglo-Australia and foreign students suffer while the elites benefit.  

THE GOOD NEWS IS - WOMEN WANT TO BE WOMEN!

by James Reed
Good news for our viewpoint, bad news for feminism. A national poll of about 2,300 women found that three quarters of respondents aged between 18 and 65 believe that the family is the single most important thing in life (The Advertiser, 5/3/2010, p.3).
Women would rather spend more time with their families than pursuing their careers. God bless them! But so should men too put family first: most often “careers” means being just another gear in the capitalist system. Better to have less money and live simply than to be a wage slave to materialism.