British MP’s “In Tyranny We Spend!”
by Mara MacSeoinin, United Kingdom
Anyone who lives in England for a significant period of time realises that there’s always something to complain about in this increasingly Godforsaken hole of a country. The Daily Telegraph has been a veritable scandal-broth for the past fortnight, exposing MPs’ expenses abuse blow by painful blow: the MP who claimed for a floating duck house. (In a country where homelessness is massively on the increase, they build homes for ducks at the taxpayers’ expense: but then, we as a nation have always preferred animals to people.) The MP who claimed for 30,000 calendars. The MP who claimed for her husband’s iphone; the husband who tried to claim for pornos at the taxpayer’s expense. The MPs who claimed for eyeliner, lavatory seats, lightbulbs, tealights, chocolate Santas, manure and to have the moat dredged at their manor house. The MP who tried to claim for two Remembrance Day wreaths: a perfect example of someone who really cares about honouring the Fallen. I wonder how many young men would have gone Over The Top had they known that the people whose future they were fighting to secure cared so little for their sacrifice?
What most commentators have overlooked during the MP expenses debacle is that the MPs have done nothing ‘wrong’ — either from a technical or a social perspective. They’re following the highly individualistic, self-motivated code that the majority of people operate by, but this doesn’t make them free: it just means that they’re out for the main chance, to get as much as they possibly can. In the ‘old days’, in the kind of Gentleman’s Club to which Gordon Brown has erroneously compared today’s Parliament, MP’s on the whole wouldn’t dream of using other people’s money in such a way, whether they were ‘entitled’ to it or not, because to do so was considered ‘dishonourable’. In the old days, those who broke the Code were sent into the wilderness, shunned entirely by their peers; today, in a nation without honour, we are all in the wilderness. Our ability to liberate ourselves from dishonourable conduct lies just under our noses: instead, we demonize those who are supposed to represent us politically, who are the worst manifestations of ourselves.
Somewhere in 20th century England the compass needle swung round from optimism for humanity’s future to its diametric opposite. Humans are seen as wreckers. Our government actually hates, despises and fears us: it wouldn’t so calmly and arrogantly throw away our freedom to protest peacefully, speak freely and travel unhindered after 90 minutes of committee discussion if it had any belief that we were essentially good, rational beings. But their hatred is rather mitigated by the fact that we don’t really like ourselves that much, we don’t know who ‘we’ are: if we did, we’d trust our own judgment rather than letting politicians do our thinking for us.
‘Liberty’ is a funny concept and one that has no definition in 21st century England — yet. It used to refer to a state of being; now it’s used in an ambivalent ‘free from’ sense. Free from persecution. Free from scrutiny. Accountable only to God and conscience. Responsible. And yet none of these definitions quite cut it because attitudes have changed so radically, ’science says’ determines so much of what passes for public wisdom these days, that the idea of listening to conscience rather than the libido is laughable. Liberty is axiomatic. The problem with axioms is that they are defined by their attributes. Once those attributes become obsolete, the axiom itself tends to die pretty quickly. When people talk about civil liberties, they tend to make the issue personal rather than general. This affects me. Why can’t I say/do what I like. And the majority of those who talk of ‘the people’ wouldn’t pour water on them if they were on fire.
What we’ve forgotten as a nation is that liberty if it is to be resurrected has to be reciprocal. So if you don’t pour water on someone who’s burning, to use an exaggerated metaphor, you don’t motivate others to do the same for you. Do unto others might be considered incredibly old-fashioned, but it works. Liberty - and by extension the political philosophy of libertarianism - relies upon a strict internal moral sense: nobility. You don’t do something to be seen to be noble: you do it because it’s right. You have to: no-one else can do your thinking for you: you’re on your own. And better to be a noble sort of person than a ‘useful’ one: a person who attempts to be all things to all men and loses their principles entirely. You don’t deny another’s liberty, because you will end up with bars on your own window. And you don’t let governments preach about ‘liberty’ and ‘security’ as if they were opposite extremes: they are not, and such a claim defies logic, commonsense and decency. True liberty is the ultimate security, because those lucky enough to enjoy it will afford their neighbour the same kind of protection from harm that they would want for themselves — and will severely punish those who threaten them. In a quote which applies as much to contemporary England as to Revolutionary America, Samuel Adams uttered a heartfelt plea for the maintenance and upholding of nobility:
“A general dissolution of the principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy…. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader…. If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security.”
Tags: Big Government, British Government, Communism, Corrupt Politicians, Corruption, England, MP's, Oligarchy, Politics, Socialism, Spending Money, Tax Payers, Tyranny, UK, United Kingdom
