Sean Gabb
1) This is short notice, but there will be a Libertarian Alliance meeting on Monday the 9th March 2009, starting at 7:00pm. The meeting will be in the upstairs room at The Coach and Horses on Great Marlborough Street, Soho, London. To find out who the speaker will be, and to ask any further questions, send e-mail to David McDonagh mcdonagh10@yahoo.com
2) The Chris R. Tame Memorial Lecture will take place on Tuesday 17th March 2009 between 6.30pm and 8.30pm at the National Liberal Club, One Whitehall Place, London SW1 (nearest tube Embankment). Professor Kevin Dowd will speak on “Lessons from the Financial Crisis: A Libertarian Perspective”. For further details, contact Tim Evans tim@libertarian.co.uk
3> Here is a video of my speech to the Marlborough Group on the 22nd February 2009. In this, I take issue with those who claim that British law and the British Constitution have been breached by New Labour. Constitutional lawyers like Michael Shrimpton are wholly correct that whatever goes through Parliament has the force of law. He is also right that the Queen cannot be held to have broken her coronation oath – any Act that conflicts with the words of her oath are taken to have altered the meaning of the oath. My reply is to ask “so what?” The law and Constitution exist to enable ordinary people to live in peace and freedom. They draw their legitimacy from the extent to which they achieve this purpose. When they stop achieving this purpose, or when they begin to frustrate this purpose, they become illegitimate, and can rightly then be overthrown and replaced. Where the Monarchy is concerned, I argue that, whatever the lawyers may claim, there is a contract with us. We agreed in 1688 to regard these people as the Lord’s Anointed, and they agreed to respect our rights, and also to protect them. Since the present Queen has broken her side of the bargain, she had no right to our deference. This speech was given in the heart of England to a meeting of rather elderly conservatives. There was barely a single person there who had not been made by circumstances into a fan of Oliver Cromwell. Here is the speech link:
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-1760896777516663004
4> My speech to the Oxford Union on the 26th February 2009 went very well. I will write a full report of this in the next week or so, but am very busy at present.
Best wishes,
Sean
I have just viewed Dr Sean Gabb’s speech to the Marlborough Group with interest. The subject matter of the Constitution needs radical ventilation and it pleases me to see it underway, not before time. Here in the USA where the Englishmen who promulgated the Declaration of Independence sum up the need for liberty in the face of tyranny, now more than ever it appears there is a need to look to the roots and ignore the fripperies of the state. Walter Bagehot understood this point well. It isn’t working in the way we expect that it should, it has been subverted pure and simple, the pageantry is all very well, it is the beast beneath the gloss that needs taming.
Now more than ever, it appears to me that there is a need to look to fundamentals and find a way to put forward a “how to”, as per the LINUX manual, to parlay a future better than the present. That was where Dr Gabb left his speech pendant on how are we to go from here. We are at the “what is to be done” phase.
Government has run wild and bailed out reality altogether over here and it seems that the same is the fate of Old Blighty. At last I am moving to New Hampshire to “Live Free and Die” in the Granite State, that being said, one is not absolved from the creeping threat to liberty following us everywhere in the mad fiscal and financial shenanigans of our governments. With the best will in the world, it looks as though hard times will be hard times for real after all this mania cools and reality sets in.
At what point is the state ex cathedra the constitution? If all the money is fiat and there is no real cash left then what? Maybe we are about to live through the answer to that one. I will look forward with interest to the creation of the “how to” and perhaps join in the discussion of its creation.
On a personal note, Mugabe finished off my inheritance from my grandfather in Zimbabwe. The money was in a blocked account (Thanks Mr. Wilson and others in the UK government) it is now worth so little the Standard Bank can’t afford to send me a statement. I imagine they will write it off soon.
Hyperinflation can happen, my only good fortune is not to have to live in the country where it happened. Though on that point I am now beginning to fear that it just might happen here.
Constitutional reform is vital there is a need for a real deal not a New Deal.