Without the state

Liberty

Apropos the previous post:

In time, however, a democratic republic came to occupy a large portion of the earth's surface, and made itself felt as one of the most powerful members of the community of nations; and elective and responsible government became subject to the observations and criticisms which wait upon a great existing fact. It was now perceived that such phrases as "self-government," and "the power of the people over themselves," do not express the true state of the case. The "people" who exercise the power are not always the same people with those over whom it is exercised; and the "self-government" spoken of is not the government of each by himself, but of each by all the rest. The will of the people, moreover, practically means the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people; the majority, or those who succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority; the people, consequently, may desire to oppress a part of their number; and precautions are as much needed against this as against any other abuse of power. The limitation, therefore, of the power of government over individuals loses none of its importance when the holders of power are regularly accountable to the community, that is, to the strongest party therein. This view of things, recommending itself equally to the intelligence of thinkers and to the inclination of those important classes in European society to whose real or supposed interests democracy is adverse, has had no difficulty in establishing itself; and in political speculations "the tyranny of the majority" is now generally included among the evils against which society requires to be on its guard.

Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant—society collectively, over the separate individuals who compose it—its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence: and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism.

Reclaim the streets

While it is the US that tells every one else about liberty, it is also the US that seems to generate stories like this.

It is a dreadful story on two counts - first that this cop sat and watched an old woman struggling across the street and according to the official line, putting herself in danger, without moving his a*** (I'm British - we spell it differently) to help and then to compound his crass behaviour hands her a ticket.

It seems to me that one of the root causes of this behaviour  is the long standing US attitude to public services. Because workers in the public sector are seen as scroungers off the public purse, they have no standing and are given no discretion.

An elderly woman in the town where I live regularly went to the next town some 6 miles away to see her friend, riding on her electric scooter. Sometimes the battery failed, sometimes the police stopped her because she was genuinely a road hazard on narrow English country roads, but so far as I can tell she was never booked and the police took it all in good humour.

I think this is more than ageism - I think it is an indicator of a general callousness of those whose job is supposedly to be in the public service.

What is the slogan? - 'Protect and Serve' - protecting thir own and serving their own interests it seems.

"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more" should be the reciprocal slogan - get out there on carts, with child buggies, zimmer frames and reclaim the streets.

All I know is that first you've got to get mad.  (Shouting) You've got to     say, 'I'm a human being, god-dammit!  My life has value!  So I want you to get up now.  I want all of you to get up out of your chairs.  I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!'  I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!'  Things have got to change.  But first, you've gotta get mad!  You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!'  Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it:  'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

Incidently - the actual quote came from the American Atheists' web site - another area where the US needs to look to its own behaviour before lecturing the rest of us.

"Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in 'sharing their vision of American society.'  Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry."

Disturbingly, Atheists are "seen as a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American public," despite being only 3% of the U.S. population according to Dr.  Edgell, associate sociology professor and the lead researcher in the project.

[Main story via Ronni Bennett]

GW in free fall.

Via here, comes this brilliant animation. All we need now is 'Insert name here...'

It appears that he is stable unless nudged. I bet you can't resist it!

Now that is interesting

In the  middle of a typical comment stream on one of the less interesting Metafilter posts is this comment. Read it.

Finding a voice

I was reading blogs of course before I started this one. In the course of that I had some e-mail correspondence with Rebecca Blood, whose advice to any blogger is simply to write and in the process of writing, you find your own voice. One blogger I know who has certainly found her voice is Ronni Bennett, who writes consistently and brilliantly about getting older without any mawkishness or sentimentality.

I am always irritated when people say, “I don’t feel 65.” Or 70 or 75, etc. Of course they do. Since not one of us knows what it feels like to be older than we are, whatever we feel is what that age feels like. Equally irritating are recent boomer slogans such as “50 is the new 30.” Anyone who can’t tell the difference is a case of arrested development and a contributor to our youth-crazed, ageist culture.

I first came on Ronni however not via her blog but on Fotolog with her shop by shop tours of Bleeker Street and Carmine Street in her beloved Greenwich Village. Her mixture of anecdote, history and reflection, gave me much more of a sense of the place than any guide, even without ever having visited, to the extent that occasionally I see scenes in film and TV shot in this area and feel that I know them.

A couple of weeks ago I did a guest post for Ronni, while she was searching for a new home, away from New York.  My piece was about the approach of 60 - I'm a few years behind Ronni and today is her 65th birthday. Like her I am contemplating a move - in my case I have only been in the town 16 years, but like her I felt that this was my last home, the one where I finally went out feet first. For various reasons this will not be so, but again like her, the move has triggered a rethink about what I want to do with the years ahead - realistically a lot fewer ahead of me than behind me. That process is still going on, but Ronni's own reflections have helped and will I am sure continue to help.

This is I think one of the great things about blogging. Forget the hysterical claims to rival 'Main Stream Media', blogging is about community, about finding a voice for yourself in that community and in Ronni's case becoming a voice for that community. Single handedly it seems she has ferretted out all those 'elderbloggers' who write from what must be a huge accumulated weight of experience, about the things that matter.

So here's to Ronni at 65 and let us hope for many more years blogging from her.

[One of the other birthday posts for Ronni includes this wonderful video clip - oh how I hope it isn't staged!]

Florida cops threaten people who ask for complaint forms

officer: Where do you live? Where do you live? You have to tell me where you live, what your name is, or anything like that.

tester: For a complaint? I mean, like, if I have --

officer: Are you on medications?

tester: Why would you ask me something like that?

officer: Because you're not answering any of my questions.

[via Boing Boing]

This quote is by no means untypical. Read other transcripts of a CBS investigation in South Florida. See more here and watch the videos for some appallingly agressive behaviour.

More here about an attempt by one of the officers filmed to prevent the show being transmitted (he lost).

Here for the Police Complaint Centre. If only 1 in 10 of the cases recounted here are accurate it is still a pretty horrific position.

I wonder how our own police would react to such investigations?Independent Police Complaints Commission

Let's be Angry

I know it sounds soppy, but what Eden has proven to me is a belief that together we can change the world into a better place. The trouble is that we say we should be doing it for our children and our children's children, but that's a cop out. We should be doing it for us. We should be angry about the things we don't like; we should be angry that as a race we abuse the resources around us, that we don't care for our environment, that we have no proper understanding of what a sustainable future looks like, that commerce is all too often unethical. Eden proves that all these things are surmountable and that human behaviour can change. If we get angry now then maybe 1,000 years from now, people will remember this as the time when we grabbed life by the throat and said, `we can make it better'.

Tim Smit in this book

Big corporate tries to undermine government relief efforts in New Orleans

In a classic demonstration of 'corporate caring', BellSouth are trying to undermine a key part of the emnergency recovery programme in New Orleans, post-Katrina

Another hurricane season starts in June, but this year it’s a political storm that is threatening to shut down New Orleans’ jury-rigged Wi-Fi service. After Katrina ravaged the Big Easy six months ago, Greg Meffert, the city’s chief information officer, got downtown businesses back online by opening the city’s wireless mesh network—originally deployed to link surveillance cameras—to anyone who needed it. For free. “Now it is the lifeblood for so many businesses,” Mr. Meffert told Red Herring. With Internet service still down in more than half the city, he estimates more than 15,000 people use the city’s 512 kbps (kilobits per second) network.
...

No Emergencies

“The vendors, the BellSouths of this world, are not only going to force us back, making our existing Wi-Fi illegal, but also they want to close a loophole for emergencies so that we would not do this again,” said Mr. Meffert.

...

Legal or not, Mr. Meffert said he and Mayor Ray Nagin plan to keep offering the service as long as they feel an emergency exists.

“If I have to go to jail, I guess I will,” he said. “If they really want to play that game, I guess they are right. But we simply cannot turn off these few lifelines we have to our city and businesses.”

[via Rebecca Blood]