Freedom is in Peril

TYC is enjoying the summer vacation (and planning some changes for the new season), but we’ve not taken our eye off the ball entirely. Our chums over at KeepRightOnline spotted my Facebook profile picture – lovingly borrowed from a World War II British morale-boosting poster (you may be more familiar with the ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ version).

It struck me, though, that this poster - Freedom is in Peril: Defend it with all your might – is deeply apropos the current political climate. The government is moribund, and nothing is more dangerous than a wounded foe. Desperate to cling on to their political existance New Labour are thrashing about for populist, opportunistic initiatives, and you can be sure that Liberty will, as always, be the first victim.

So, as KRO ask, what are you doing to defend freedom?

And for propoganda of your own, http://www.freedomisinperil.com/ do a sound range of ‘Freedom is in Peril’ merchandise.

(I found the site via Facebook’s targetted advertising – how scarily well FB knows me!)

Warwick Libertarians launch

Tom Wales from the newly formed University of Warwick Libertarians has penned a great opening blog post on why students should stand up for liberty.

“You may be excused for assuming that the pursuit of liberty is old hat.

Global intervention to save fal­ter­ing banks, mas­sive Gov­ern­ment debt and a na­tion­al ID card sys­tem cost­ing more than five bil­lion pounds all seem to sig­ni­fy a shift of power from peo­ple and busi­ness to Gov­ern­ment.Why should stu­dents seek to chal­lenge such paradigms? What is in it for us in our cosy lit­tle bub­ble of War­wick?

As stu­dents, we are af­fect­ed by the con­trol­ling grasp of Gov­ern­ment in many more ways than oth­ers. From next term, all in­ter­na­tion­al stu­dents will be forced to hold ID cards. On this issue, NUS Pres­i­dent Wes Street­ing hits the prover­bial nail on its head: “By sin­gling out in­ter­na­tion­al students from their peers with bio­met­ric iden­ti­ty cards, a group al­ready at risk of stig­ma­ti­sa­tion will be in­deli­bly marked as dif­fer­ent.”

The issue is even scari­er if we as­sume that Gor­don Brown gets his way and they start to roll out amongst the gen­er­al pub­lic from 2012. The implica­tions of de­nial of rights to those who refuse to take them out and a na­tion­al ID reg­is­ter con­tain­ing DNA and other bio­met­ric in­for­ma­tion gives the power to Gov­ern­ment to fol­low every as­pect of our lives.

“Func­tion creep”, the in­evitable use of the sys­tem for more than just iden­ti­ty check­ing, and the de­mands of the se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices in the “War on Ter­ror” would no doubt en­cour­age any weak-​willed Gov­ern­ment to cur­tail the civil lib­er­ties of card-​car­ry­ing cit­i­zens even fur­ther. It is the start of a slip­pery slope for the fu­ture of Britain.

A poll last year by the Joseph Rown­tree Re­form Trust mea­sured that a ma­jor­i­ty of cit­i­zens are against the cards and a quar­ter strong­ly against them.

In ad­di­tion to this, mas­sive spend­ing and bor­row­ing under Gor­don Brown’s gov­ern­ment has par­tic­u­lar rel­e­vance to every stu­dent that wish­es to stay and work in the UK. We will be ser­vic­ing the debt for years to come, just as the gen­er­a­tions be­fore did so to pay for the Sec­ond World War.

Labour has amassed debts equal to £23,000 for each man, woman and child in the coun­try. Gov­ern­ment debt re­pay­ments alone equal the amount cur­rent­ly spent on the Po­lice Force. Whilst Labour and Con­ser­va­tives argue about how many pub­lic ser­vants have to be sacked in order to re­duce the bud­get deficit, bet­ter fi­nan­cial man­age­ment in the past means that we could af­ford to em­ploy even more if we so wished.

In order for this sit­u­a­tion to change we don’t just need a change be­tween the two par­ties in Gov­ern­ment, we need a greater cross-​par­ty clam­our for change. The for­ma­tion of a lib­er­tar­i­an so­ci­ety here at War­wick will give us the chance to broad­en our un­der­stand­ing of Gov­ern­ment and its many fail­ings.

In ad­di­tion to the ques­tions of civil lib­er­ties and mas­sive Gov­ern­ment spend­ing, lib­er­tar­i­an pol­i­tics ques­tion the very as­sump­tions that exist in so­ci­ety. Why should cer­tain drugs be con­trolled? Is in­ter­net pira­cy a bad thing? Should Gov­ern­ment be in­volved in cur­tail­ing pros­ti­tu­tion?

Con­se­quent­ly, in order to shape the fu­ture of British pol­i­tics we shouldn’t be scared to think out­side the box. Rather than act­ing as a fringe party, War­wick Lib­er­tar­i­ans will be open to mem­bers of all par­ties as well as peo­ple who hold just a pass­ing in­ter­est on the issue.

The root of the many branch­es of lib­er­tar­i­an­ism is a be­lief in free­dom. How­ev­er, as the ac­tions of Gov­ern­ment be­come more and more authoritar­i­an that basis is be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly frag­ile.

I hope you can join us in sup­port­ing that the metaphor­i­cal tree of lib­er­tar­i­an­ism, and hav­ing a damn good time in the pro­cess.”

Students should get involved with Warwick Libertarians here.

Happy Birthday, Liberty!

To all our American readers – raise a glass to freedom on our behalf as you mark 233 glorious years of liberty!

The best thing the British ever did for freedom may well have been letting the Colonists win the War of Independence

Abhishek Majumdar on Home Schooling

“State control over schools will be viewed as an unfortunate aberration, and parents who today home school their children will be lauded as being ahead of their time”

Now we should not be so naive as to assume that this attack on the fundamental right to educate your children away from the State, spearheaded by the great Ed Balls, will be conducted openly. Rather, it will be done in an incremental manner, with each successive concession representing a step towards the loss of parental freedom. This is why it is so essential to fight the government at every step, no matter how trivial it may seem now. Governments given an inch will not hesitate to take a mile, especially where matters of children’s education is concerned.

So what motivation could a Labour government, or the State in general, have for attacking home education? For the answer, one needs to look at the extraordinary effectiveness of home schooling. Research has shown that home educated children tend to have better social skills and to perform as well as, if not better than, their school-educated peers in examinations. This is especially true of children from disadvantaged backgrounds. The numbers speak for themselves: the population of home schooled children has risen rapidly in the UK over the past decade, to well over 50,000 today.

Parents who pull their children out of school are exercising the ultimate protest against the British school system, which has since the 1960s been the subject of a gigantic and failed experiment in social engineering. The collapse of standards and discipline, and the replacement of academic selection with selection via postcode or daddy’s wallet, has massively damaged British education. Add to this the incessant targets and bureaucratic interference of New Labour, plus the rise of politically correct curricula that deny British history and promote underage sex, and it is no wonder home schooling is rising in popularity.

In short, home education is an embarrassment for the government. It represents the part of society that its bureaucracy-obsessed managers cannot wield control or influence over. Just as the left has always viewed ambitious working class people with suspicion, so it dislikes parents who do not need its magnanimity or ideologically-driven programmes. And to add insult to injury, there is no evidence that home schooled children are worse off; in fact the opposite.

It was therefore only a matter of time before Labour sought to stick its interfering nose into the lives of parents who bravely flout the system by educating at home. It is imperative for liberty and for the continued success of thousands of children, that home education is defended all the way. There may come a point, many decades hence, when State control over schools will be viewed as an unfortunate aberration, and parents who today home school their children will be lauded as being ahead of their time.

Abhishek writes his own blog – check it out here.

YOU can write for TheYoungConservative. We accept submissions from any young activist of any pro-liberty political party, or no party at all. To dicuss, email us: edward@theyoungconservative.co.uk

I’ll Keep My Freedom, You Can Keep The “Change”

At the invitation of the Young Britons’ Foundation, I’ve written a guest post over at YBF.org.uk. Given a free rein as to topic, I took my inspiration from a bumper sticker I found at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in February. In the article I argue that Britain doesn’t need change, it needs liberty.

“In the wake of recent events, and for as long as politicians have sought votes, the buzz words have been ‘reform’, ‘change’, ad nausea. But all this is just so much window-dressing. Brown can fiddle with how they’re elected, and Cameron can fiddle with their roll call, but none of this gets close to the heart of the problem: Government is the problem.”

Continue reading the full article over at the Young Britons’ Foundation website

Go to Freedom Week 2009

Freedom Week is an annual one week seminar Cambridge University. Running from 13 to 17 July 2009, 30 lucky UK students will live and learn liberty at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge University. Renowned lecturers teach students about the basic philosophy of a free society based on individual liberty and the free market.

The one week format allows students to form a network with fellow students, lecturers and think tanks which will help them to defend freedom at university and in their future careers.

Freedom Week is free for the students, and paid for by private donations. All you need to do to attend is apply – quickly – before the places are all allocated.

To apply go to www.freedomweek.org.uk and send in your application. The deadline for applications is 25 May, but the earlier you apply, the more chance you have of being accepted. For any questions, please contact JP Floru , or Xander Stephenson

Facebook reference: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=76503354025

Young Writer on Liberty 2009

The Adam Smith Institute invites you to enter their new competition which is open to anyone under the age of 19. There are some great prizes on offer for penning just a few hundred words on Liberty.

To enter you simply have to write three, short, different articles on the subject of:

The Three Greatest Threats to Liberty in 21st Century Britain

The title of each article is entirely up to you.

1ST PRIZE:
- £500 cash prize
- 3 articles published on www.adamsmith.org/blog
- 3 books on the subject of liberty
- 2 weeks work experience at the ASI
- Invitation to the prize giving on the ASI Summer Boat Party

2ND PRIZE:
- 2 articles published on www.adamsmith.org/blog
- 2 books on the subject of liberty
- Invitation to the prize giving on the ASI Summer Boat Party

3RD PRIZE:
- 1 article published on www.adamsmith.org/blog
- 1 book on the subject of liberty
- Invitation to the prize giving on the ASI Summer Boat Party

To enter:
- you have to be under 19 years of age at the time of entry.
- all articles must be under 400 words.
- the entry must reach the ASI by the deadline of 15th June 2009

Please email andrew@adamsmith.org for more information.

Apply for Freedom Week 2009 today!

Freedom Week 2009

Do you want to learn about individual liberty and the free market?
Is the free market the cause of the economic crisis? Or is there another explanation?

FREEDOM WEEK is an annual one week seminar for 30 UK students at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge University.

Renowned lecturers teach students about the basic philosophy of a free society based on individual liberty and the free market.

Free market think tanks come along and introduce themselves.

The one week format allows students to form a network with fellow students, lecturers and think tanks which will help them to defend freedom at university and in their future careers.

Freedom Week is free for the students, and paid for by private donations.

Freedom Week is organised by Freedom Alliance, a not for profit organisation.

Freedom Week 2009 will take place from 13 to 17 July 2009.

APPLY NOW !

Go to www.freedomweek.org.uk and send us your application.

The deadline for applications is 25 May, but the earlier you apply, the more chance you have of being accepted.

For any questions, please contact JP Floru , or Xander Stephenson

Growing up with Freedom

A student friend was reminiscing recently about watching Alvin and the Chipmunks as a child, and when I thought back, I realised the only episode of that show I could recall was the one where they tear down the Berlin Wall:

And there was me thinking it was Reagan…Still, it may go some way to explaining how I ended of the political persuasion I did. We need more pro-freedom cartoons; somehow I doubt the Telebubbies ever inspired anyone to do anything, except perhaps less hard drugs…

(Is that a very young ToryBear at 0.20?)

Revolution in a Box – FREE!

This has to rank as one of the best ideas we’ve seen in a while.

The folks at Bureaucrash are offering a “Revolution in a Box” to the first 1,000 people to complete a short survey on the Bureaucrash Social website. All you need to do is sign up (it’s free) and answer the two questions (they’re very simple…) and they’ll mail you your kit. The RIAB includes a host of literature, flyers bumper stickers, magazines and other goodies, but our favourite is the spread of six stickers, featuring

• Enjoy Capitalism,

• Freedom: My Anti-Gov,

• Liberty or Death,

• Liberty Will Prevail,

• Taxes = Violence, and

• Who Owns You

Whilst Freshers is still a long way off, this pack could give you some excellent resources and ideas for what to hand out come the new academic year.

If you’re planning to launch a pro-liberty organisation in your area or on your campus then again this pack could well be a powder-keg of ideas to realise that ambition.

GET YOURS TODAY!

Hat tip Students for Liberty