A Place to Stand

This one is for the at least 50% of my readers who come from the USA.

On Tuesday there are Congressional elections which, with luck, will produce a Congress able to prevent the Democrats producing more trillion dollar stimulus/bailout/Obamacare spending programmes, all of which are immensely economically damaging & considerably increase the amount of political patronage in politician's hands - they thus damage both the people's wealth & their freedom. With better luck a major victory by the Tea (Taxed Enough Already) Party will be the start of an about turn in the relentless growth in the size of government (even under Reagan) which has been going on since WW1. Since China's economy is growing so fast it is within a few years of matching America's this may be one of the last chances to save western civilisation.

It is presumptuous of me to tell Americans how to vote in a US election, on the other hand I assume people turning up here are interested in my views.

My advice is, in fact rather more than telling people how to vote. I also suggest you try to ensure that some friend, relative or colleague also remembers to vote. In most elections the number of people on one side who forgot or didn't bother to vote exceeds the amount by which the winner won. Getting out the vote matters even more than persuading people.

The other thing to remember is that it isn't over on Wednesday. Political movements grind fine but they grind exceeding slow. This is simply an early battle. If government parasitism is to be rolled back a committed candidate is going to have to receive the Republican Presidential nomination & then win. That candidate need not be Sarah Palin, though I would be happy if it were as she has demonstrated executive competence in running Alaska, a clear understanding of problems & principles (it was her who called for drilling oil & starting nuclear plants "in January" if the ticket had won & was one of the early catastrophic warming sceptics when that was unfashionable), despite taking enormous strategic risks has barely put a tactical foot wrong since McCain selected her & has a unique gift enunciating ideas in language that normal people can relate to (eg "how's the gopey changey thing going"). The candidate should, however, have Palin's support since I don't trust any established politician who, after Tuesday, suddenly discovers they were enthusiastic for the principles of the founding fathers 7 the Teal party all along.
-------------------------------

For us in Britain there is an almost total media blackout on what the Tea party stand for - low tax, lessened government nanny statism & the small government principles the founding fathers wrote the US constitution to protect, which served America well in its growing years.

America, for all its faults, has a much more independent media than we. Britain's BBC is very similar to America's National Public Radio except that, since it has a near stranglehold on broadcasting it is even less accountable & more restrictive. While NPR fired somebody for being unhappy about aggressive Islam the BBC & indeed any UK terrestrial broadcaster, would never have hired him in the first place. As a recent example of BBC political control on their Film Night programme, nominally reviewing popular films the posh arty PC female idiot presenting it took time to explain that Capra's "Mr Smith Goes to Washington" is retroactively not a classic film because it makes Sarah Palin look good. No really.

The other factor, other than Stalinist media censorship", preventing Britain's freedom is that we have both a wholly corrupt FPTP electoral system which disenfranchises people voting for any but the 2 "main" parties & that the main parties are totally controlled from above so that the public have no role in nominating candidates & thus virtually no role in deciding policy. The other EU countries have proportional electoral systems so that new parties can rise unless they arrest or shoot them & not always even then. The US, while still having FPTP has popular nomination of candidates so that Tea party candidates can be nominated by Republican voters whereas in the UK the Conservatives would rather lose the election than court popularity by standing by their referendum promise.

However our politics is strongly influenced by the US's & a strong small government showing there will promote discussion of it here & hearten those who despairing that relentless government expansion had become inevitable.(& also do even more to discredit the totalitarian mainstream media which has censored serious reporting on what is happening). America may save gerself by this exertion & western society by the example.

Labels: British politics, Government parasitism, International politics