SOLO-Australia Op-Ed: The Talented Mr. Rudd

February 27, 2008

There's a 9 point rise in Mr Rudd's popularity, as indicated by a recent poll published in The Australian.

This is hardly surprising given Mr Rudd’s propensity for pandering to the majority, but is it just me or are you also starting to develop an uneasy feeling of being herded into a cattle pen ... the way a passionate individualist would have felt during Hitler’s reign when browbeaten into popping a "Heil Hitler" salute?

I guess what's most bothersome about Kevin Rudd is that he shows no scruples in pandering to all majorities. On the one hand he sucks up to the eco-fascists and wannabe commies on the left with such abject acts as ratifying Kyoto, saying "sorry" and reestablishing the socialist economic influence of the unions.

No surprises there—after all he did represent the left ... but wait, does his latest drive to enforce web censorship indicate his desire to cater to the conservative right as well?

Well, I guess so. The federal Government's plan to have Internet Service Providers filter pornography and other internet content deemed inappropriate for children is going full-steam ahead.

Rather than pandering solely to his leftists supporters, his latest move of censoring the net shows his intent of wanting to play in the conservative's ball park as well.

My God, he's shooting for the whole ball of wax ... ruthlessly monopolizing the political landscape he is, this talented Mr Rudd.

Now, one would have to ask what incredible force a politician would have to use when attempting a task as daunting as the destruction of the individual rights of the citizens of a nation. Does he use death-rays, nuclear radiation, what?

The answer is no. As was the case with all his predecessors, including Hitler, Stalin, Pol-Pot, Mugabe and other assorted dictators, he too just uses that vague but deadly weapon called "the public good."

Obviously it helps if the individual rights of Australians are not explicitly entrenched in an inviolate "bill of rights" as in the US and Canadian constitutions.

Acess to a limitless slush-fund together with the privilege of holding the leash on state-controlled media doesn't hurt either.

However, the picture is never complete without the essential ingredient, "a majority," preferably a large collection of individuals harvested at birth and brainwashed by entrenched religion and a strict government agenda.

Only these conditions make for a suitable herd of sufficiently demoralized citizens blissfully ignorant and deprived of their natural status as proud sovereign individuals, and with a strong leaning towards voluntary sacrifice, either of themselves or of their neighbors for any cause that invokes the concept of "the public good."

Obviously this kind of mob rule is a numbers game ... objective fact and morality simply being substituted by the will of the majority.

Thus for example the rights of employers take second place to the rights of employees, simply because they are outnumbered.

Another instance is where Kyoto was ratified, and the rights of free citizens to use and generate as much energy as they can afford to was arbitrarily legislated out of existence by a mob who had been subjected to years of brainwashing whilst serving a compulsory 12-year public-education sentence.

This despite the objective facts that global temperatures are .3 degrees cooler than in the last 100 years and that zero global warming has occurred since 1998.

Europe and China have just suffered one of the coldest winters on record and more than 500 scientists have, at the expense of their livelihoods, already resigned and distanced themselves from the politically-driven IPCC, but yet the anti-global warming media bombardment and the shrill voice of politicians calling for greater energy cutbacks doesn't cease.

Lest I digress, let’s get back to the issue of censorship. Obviously in a free society the rights of both the consenting and unconsenting should be upheld, and therefore, just as consenting adults should have the rights to read and look at any material they wish to, so do children and unconsenting adults have the right not to be subjected to objectionable material.

When it comes to the Internet, there are hundreds of vendors offering software for filtering pornography and online content, and the choice of limiting access to this content to protect children properly belongs to the private domain of parents and adults. The state does not own the individual or his thoughts.

For government to enforce broad censorship is a gross violation of individual rights, and to force ISPs to uphold and enforce it is an act of enforced slavery.

As Ayn Rand stated so eloquently: "It is not very inspiring to fight for the freedom of the purveyors of pornography or their customers. But in the transition to statism, every infringement of human rights has begun with the suppression of a given right's least attractive practitioners. In this case, the disgusting nature of the offenders makes it a good test of one's loyalty to a principle." Furthermore...

"I do not regard sex as evil—I regard it as good, as one of the most important aspects of human life, too important to be made the subject of public anatomical display. But the issue here is not one's view of sex. The issue is freedom of speech and of the press—i.e., the right to hold any view and to express it."

Mr Rudd, please just get on with the only job in your jurisdiction, the job of protecting our individual rights and freedoms ... as for the rest, leave us alone.

Instead of taking a pay cut, why not curb your unbridled power-lust and follow the immortal example of Thomas Jefferson: "I have sworn ... eternal hostility to every form of tyranny over the mind of man," ... because if you don’t, we will curb it for you.