Bit of a libertarian

"I'm beginning to believe that you are a bit of a libertarian" - AbbyGirlForever 18/5/05

Now, it's funny that Abby should be mentioning the Libertarian thing. I almost married an American woman once, long ago when I was young and stupid (as opposed to old and stupid like now). She always described herself as a Libertarian and it rather put me off because she and her foul, disfunctional family, were some of the most unpleasant people I ever met. Why did I nearly marry her I hear you ask? Well therein lies a story, the contemplation of which has caused me many sleepless nights and corresponding days of anxiety. Needless to say, I wasn't thinking with my brain at the time.

In terms of liberty, yes I fully embrace the Libertarian concept, as a concept. And I firmly believe that everyone would be much better off with smaller government and less control. As a political theory it works about as well as Marxism and it fails for the same reason; people are selfish. The family of the foul woman I nearly married (for the sake of brevity, let's call her "T" from now on) claimed they lived Libertarian lifestyles. They didn't file tax returns. T actually made up a false social security number when she was forced to pay tax in the US because she didn't want any tax paid in her name. But they had power of attorney over T's Grandmother, and still collected her state pension. Even when she died (in most mysterious circumstances) they continued to collect her state pension and cable it to England where it was cabled back to a different account for the purposes of laundering. They claimed that they were battling an unjust sytem and it was therefore justifyable. I say they were fair-weather Libertarians.

This was more than a decade ago. T's parent's went to enormous lengths to keep their lives secret. There were bank accounts in false names, all the mail went through mail box addresses, even the car had a false registration I believe. And they were nervous about me, because I was an outsider, couldn't be trusted. The thing that bothered me most about them was the fact that they had no forsight. T's parent's were in their 50s when I knew them. They had no money, no assets to speak of. They lived in rented accomodation. How did they expect to retire? They were already borrowing huge amounts of money from T and siblings just to stay afloat.

So, in short Abby, no, I am not a Libertarian, I'm just anti-government control. I don't know where I stand politically. I'm not a conservative (in the British sense). I think capitalism works better than socialism because you can't tax your way to prosperity, and I'd rather live in a prosperous state than a non-prosperous one. I have some left wing views. I hate the concept of a monarchy, why is it different to a dictatorship? I think the House of Lords has become a dinosaur and should be replaced with an elected upper house.

And on to something else. Here's an interesting story. A policeman from England was caught driving at 159 mph on a public road and the case went to caught. He was let off because he was trained to drive at those speeds and was merely "honing his skills". Does anyone else detect an odour of nepatism here? Click.