The birth of Oswald's blog preceded mine by a few months in 2005. And my acquaintance with 'Oswald' preceded that. Today he has announced he is stopping. Lost the energy for it he says.
Far be it from me to speculate, put two and two together and make five, but I will. Are libertarians losing heart? Or do we just reach a point where everything we think has been said, and then some.
Back in the early 2000s we were more energised, had two political hinge-points (ACT and Libz) the tension between which, of itself, kept the passions stirred.
What do we have now? I am mildly mollified by a National government making some welfare reforms but in general we have the Greens in ascendency, National and Labour big-government protagonists both, ACT down the toilet and Libertarianz, for all their efforts and genuine people, gaining no traction.
And age comes into it. Our mortality looms larger daily but the desire to make our lives matter does not diminish. Making something may be giving our growing children the time and environment that launches their own adventure. It may be no more than leaving behind children and grandchildren who remember us fondly. But I speak for myself. I am not trying to second guess Oswald in this respect.
Oswald won't have made his decision lightly. Blogs become an integral part of your existence. Sometimes a welcome outlet, sometimes a tedious obligation. Certainly a habit, even an addicton, though I am sure real addictions provide more excites than blogs. Perhaps when the obligation aspect starts to overwhelm the creative vent, it is time to pack up. Even then you think, will the cessation be followed by regret or relief?
Anyway dear Ossie Bastable I will miss you.
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5 comments:
I never really thought of Ozzy as a libertarian - he didn't appear to have that strict subservience to the rugged individualistic doctrine that is a mandatory requirement to be one of the libz.
And as for the Libertarianz Party, they should concentrate first and foremost on economic issues - fiscal restraint, limited govt, low taxes etc and forget about all those other talisman irrelevancies like open border immigration, incestuous marriages, party drugs for school children and state endorsed extermination of the elderly and the infirm.
"Back in the early 2000s we were more energised, had two political hinge-points (ACT and Libz) the tension between which, of itself, kept the passions stirred."
When anyone spouts libertarianism to me I usually have a WTF moment.. as in.. well, as a conservative I already knew and believed in that.. the same way that crazy John Minto does. Its central to Catholicism that all humans are born with innate rights and free will and its well expressed in the US Declaration of Independence:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Plenty of people might object to the Creator bit but never the bits about unalienable rights, life, liberty and happiness.
So everyone has something of the libertarian in them be they left or right on the political spectrum.. they just choose to express it differently.
But you can only tease out the libertarian bits so far before running up against the fact we are social animals with a desire for fair and just governance, that tentacle of libertarianism has just hit the barrier we call the "majority rules".. at that stage libertarianism is reduced to arguing and mostly complaining about the rules.
To return to your comments on passion and age.. well, to mangle W Churchill, there are some political stances that impress the young, but you grow out of them.
Look at Rodney Hyde, he might have libertarian impulses but to get attention he had to bang on about conservative things like crime and expenses. Thats because as I said at the start, everyone has a libertarian streak somewhere in them but they have a stronger desire for mass organisation.. mind you, once things are organised they let the lib part express itself a bit more.
Labour type parties have the same problem right now.. they are failing because they've achieved what they set out to do and are struggling to find something else to be passionate about.. enter Global Warming.
To finish.. right now the US Supreme Court has heard three days on the legitimacy of Obamacare and is considering.. and the question that 3-4 of the judges have asked is "What are the limits of government?", and that I suggest, is the only track worth pursuing right now with passion.
JC
There are no more dire times for Libz to step up.
National is pussy footing: far too little too late. Worse, Judith Collins has just legislated away a central plank of the free press, the right to protect a source, and the government is in many ways living up to a National Socialist tag rather than a party representing any sort of limited government.
IRD are out of control trying to destroy the business sector, after over successive governments gaining all the laws of the Stasi and KGB in terms of being able to brutalise the privacy of every individual. Privacy? Forget it; you have none. And your life is owned by the bureaucrats.
SFO and and the new super clobbering bureaucracy at FMA have destroyed the rule of law completely in New Zealand, by being able to put on seemingly un-ending asset freezes (Hotchin now into month sixteen without charge or trial) and inappropriately operating in the civil jurisdiction (when their only rightful role is in the criminal jurisdiction).
The State has never been so off its leash and out of control (and still borrowing over $300 million a week, which is insanity). And if that's not bad enough, our tyranny of the majority is almost bound to vote in a Labour centred government in 2014, which means further wholesale distortions of a tax system already so complex few can understand it, let alone get it right, vast increases in taxation, including higher personal rates of tax, capital taxes, the lot. A country crushed under the evil of awful minds of Statists like Kim Jong Hickey and Jesus Morgan.
I've probably never been so depressed about the prospects for living free in a free, classical liberal society: we're so far from that, having to live under the edicts of unthinking sheeple, I don't know how we get out lives back from the Big Brother State anymore.
Anyway, I'm taking six weeks off, or as near to as I can. Live in my own head for a while. Perhaps all those who understand just how bad it has become, might want to set their minds to thinking on Stephen Berry's thoughts regarding a New Zealand Freedom Party.
(Your choice, Lindsay, but any way of getting SOLO onto your blog-roll?)
I can assure you ma'am we are not losing heart.
We are getting started.
Thing is, blogs are not really a powerful force in politics. Political blogs attract mainly people who are already politicised. Act/libber types will come to this and similar blogs and left wing types will go mainly to left wing blogs. Blogs, especially right wing blogs, attract mainly zealots, people who think they have ideas that everyone must know about but who most people find a little odd and would rather avoid. It is beyond me how a smallish army of individuals can keep up the blog output when feedback through comments is so meagre. People on the far right are way wackier than those on the left. Good on crazy Oswald for realising that there is more to life than blogging.
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