Only In America

Posted on Tuesday, 20th March 2012 by Ozboy

I’m exaggerating. It’d be de rigeur for any dictatorship worthy of the name. But the latest Executive Order of President Barack Hussein Obama, National Defense Resources Preparedness, signed last Friday with virtually no fanfare at all, is gob-smacking in its scope and abandonment of all pretence of congressional democracy. Go have a read.

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Posted in United States of America | 42 Comments

More Dollars Than Sense

Posted on Sunday, 18th March 2012 by Ozboy

Still hammering away on my next thread, so I thought I’d ask you about the topic currently doing the rounds over at DT: “Quantitative Easing”, or QE.

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Posted in United States of America | 13 Comments

Agree Or Else Part II – The Silencing Of Dissent

Posted on Tuesday, 6th March 2012 by Ozboy

Our God-Emperor beat me to it.

The Australian Government’s Finkelstein Report, released last Friday, is the stuff of all freedom-loving people’s nightmares. It proposes the establishment of a new bureaucracy, the News Media Council, to “regulate” all forms of print media, including online blogs like this one, with as little as 15,000 hits per year. They can force retractions, edits, dissenting opinions and rights of reply at whim. Strewth, I’ll have to put Izen on a retainer! The new statutory authority will not be required to give reasons for its rulings, to which there will be no right of appeal. Orwellian madness.

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Posted in Australia, Libertarianism | 60 Comments

The Darkest Debate

Posted on Thursday, 1st March 2012 by Ozboy

In this thread, LibertyGibbert will look at the topic which, more than any other, divides Libertarians. It’s a topic I have been reluctant to raise on this forum till now; indeed, I have been advised by some of you that no rational online debate on it is possible; given its ongoing relevance, though, I have decided to bite the bullet and give it a go.

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Posted in Libertarianism, Rights | 203 Comments

A Servitude Of Convenience

Posted on Saturday, 18th February 2012 by Ozboy

Quite often while I’m explaining the meaning of Libertarianism to friends or acquaintances, I’m met with a response which runs along the lines of but Ozboy, government can do so many things for us more efficiently than we can do them for ourselves. I have been pondering the truth of this for some time and thought I might start a discussion on the issue.

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Posted in Libertarianism | 63 Comments

And So Say All Of Us

Posted on Friday, 3rd February 2012 by Ozboy

Election poster from Harold Wilson's 1966 UK election campaign. He may very well do YOU good - but at whose expense?

I’m currently looking at GE’s recent thread at the DT, lamenting the rise of the Welfare State and the normalization of welfare dependency, helplessness, and self-righteous mendicancy; a subject LibertyGibbert has previously visited in detail.

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Posted in Uncategorized | 74 Comments

Ugly Australia

Posted on Monday, 30th January 2012 by Ozboy

This isn’t the thread I had planned to write.

Actually, I had planned to put out an essay last Thursday—Australia Day, commemorating the 224th anniversary of the arrival of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove. I had planned to tell you how happy I was to live in what I regard as the greatest nation on earth. How, despite all its problems, many of which I have detailed at great length on this site, Australia still affords its citizens a greater chance of liberty, and a degree of control over their own lives and the potential to pursue their own happiness by their own efforts, than just about any other country on the face of the earth. I wanted to express to you my own pride at being a living, working part of Australian society, with our inherent laid-back egalitarianism, our friendly acceptance of each other irrespective of national or racial background, our preference to pursue national rivalries on the sporting field rather than the battlefield, and even our willingness to send our nation’s finest into harm’s way when we believed the peace of the world to be threatened.

Those are the things I feel, the things I believe. I still do. But this year, Australia Day raised an ugly spectre of a past that refuses to die.

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Posted in Australia | 54 Comments

A Very Selective Blindness

Posted on Saturday, 21st January 2012 by Ozboy

What if a journalist had asked JFK this sort of question in 1960? Or Clinton in 1992?

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Posted in United States of America | 34 Comments

Waste Not, Want Not

Posted on Wednesday, 11th January 2012 by Ozboy

A very happy New Year to you all.

Well, it seems the world is still here: Europe hasn’t imploded (yet), America is not yet (completely) certain of getting another four years of Obama; North Korea hasn’t deployed nuclear missiles (or Alec Baldwin), and Global Warming, following the coldest start to summer Sydney has seen in 50 years, is feeling decidedly chilly.

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Posted in Libertarianism | 89 Comments

A Few Days Yet

Posted on Friday, 6th January 2012 by Ozboy

G’day folks,

I had planned a new post out today. Unfortunately, Santa’s main present for me at Christmas was a recurrence of this damn chest infection that laid me low in 2011. So I’m getting some rest, and I hope to have LibertyGibbert up and running again sometime next week.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on A Few Days Yet