Jeff Durstewitz writes in the Wall Street Journal:

Europe has been riding on our economic coattails and sheltering under our defense umbrella since the end of World War II nearly 65 years ago. Our markets have been open to European goods, and our strong currency and relative affluence — the product of our much-maligned free-market economic model — have provided Europe with a ready buyer. (Question: How worried were French wine-makers about Americans boycotting French wines in 2003? Answer: très worried.)

While providing a huge market for Europe’s goods, we’ve also substantially relieved the European powers of the burden of defending themselves. Yes, France has an aircraft carrier and a nuclear force de frappe, but it’s not really capable of projecting significant force around the world anymore. Germany, the world’s third-largest economy, has a vestigial high-seas fleet and a modest air force. Even the Royal Navy is a shadow of its former self. “The U.S. last year spent about 44% more on defense than all other NATO members combined,” Robert Wall recently noted in Aviation Week.

By assuming Europe’s defense the U.S. has, in effect, allowed it the luxury of extremely expensive and ultimately unsustainable social-welfarism.

The great irony here is that the European model American leftists envy couldn’t survive without its despised cowboy counterparty. If the U.S. economy weakens because of increased regulation, heavy-handed unionization, and higher taxes and debt to support an expensive social agenda — all policies Mr. Obama and the Democrats in Congress are pushing hard — it will hurt Europe.

The market for Europe’s exports will shrink, and the U.S. will be less able to defend Europe. Europe is also facing a demographic cataclysm in the near future because of low birth rates (under 1.3 children per woman in the EU, well below the 2.1 necessary to maintain the population). Thus Europe will be increasingly unable to sustain its current welfare state, the very model that the left in the United States adores.

We strongly recommend this brilliantly clear, highly informative, and supremely  relevant speech by Colonel Richard Kemp, CBE, erstwhile Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan. Its subject is ‘the practicalities, challenges and difficulties faced by military forces in trying to fight within the provisions of international law against an enemy that deliberately and consistently flouts international law.’ The good against the bad. 

We only question whether reporters will tell the truth when they are shown it in the ways that Colonel Kemp advises. With reason, we do not trust the mainstream media. They have demonstrated amply and often that they are, for the most part, on the side of the terrorists.  They are the ugly.

As we have said before, beware of nationalized ‘health care’. It is not care so much as control, to the ruin of the patient/victim.

Mark Steyn writes:

This is the story of a decades-long cancer survivor who survived the cancer but died of an NHS [National Health Service] bedsore:

During four weeks of what her family describe as “torture” in a bed in East Surrey Hospital, the sore resulted in a fatal blood infection and she died on October 27.

Her son Adrian Goddard, who lives in the US, said: “She survived cancer for 40 years, then died from a bedsore.

“It is just beyond belief that they could let a bedsore develop to the point where it actually kills someone from septicaemia.”

He said the nurses seemed largely unconcerned by the growing size of the sore and his mother’s increasing pain…

“The level of crisis that attracts their attention has to be very high for them to put down their biscuits.”

When we quote stories like these at NRO [National Review Online], we get a lot of e-mail saying these are just “anecdotes.” And yes, if you look on yourself as being part of a government health system of millions of people, getting a bedsore and dying in hideous pain is no big deal in the scheme of things. But I look on myself as being part of the Mark Steyn health system. So if I get a bedsore and die, as far as I’m concerned, that’s a 100% systemic failure. The difference between government health care and a private system is that, under the latter, you’re free to say, “This dump’s filthy. I’m going to the state-of-the-art joint five miles up the road.” You may have to get out your checkbook, but ultimately the decisions are yours.

In a government system, the decisions are the bureaucrats’, and that’s that. My father is currently ill, and the health “system” is doing its best to ensure it’s fatal. When an ambulance has to be called, they take him to a different hospital according to the determinations of the bed-availability bureaucrats and which facility hasn’t had to be quarantined for an infection outbreak. At the first hospital, he picked up C Difficile. At the second, MRSA. At the third, like the lady above, he got septicaemia. He’s lying there now, enjoying the socialized health care jackpot — C Diff, MRSA, septicaemia. None of these ailments are what he went in to be treated for. They were given to him by the medical system.

Well, the two British embassy staff arrested by the Iranian government are to be put on trial.

Guardians Council chief Ahmad Jannati said: “Naturally they will be put on trial, they have made confessions.”

…

“In these incidents, their embassy had a presence, some people were arrested,” Ayatollah Jannati told the thousands of worshippers at Friday prayers, according to news agencies.

…

Ayatollah Jannati added: “After the election, the enemy could not stand people’s joy. The enemy made an effort to poison the people. They had planned a velvet revolution before the election.”

He said the UK foreign office had warned of possible “street riots” around the 12 June election and had advised its nationals to avoid public places.

This is a shrewd move by the Guardian council. The implication of British involvement in the riots seems to us to be an attempt to excuse the riots as the wicked interfering hand of foreign powers, rather than the protests being at the whim of the Iranian people.

One excerpt from the article caused us amusement:

Historians says the distrust between the UK and Iran stems from the 1800s, when Iran – then Persia – was forced to concede territory to Russia in a treaty drafted by a British diplomat.

Thank God (sic) for the BBC’s official historians. I now feel enlightened.

Iran has arrested eight British embassy staff in Tehran

The UK has demanded the immediate release of Iranian staff at its Tehran embassy who were arrested on Saturday. Iranian media earlier reported that eight local staff at the mission had been detained for their “considerable role” in post-election riots.

The House of Commons has the candidates for Speaker giving their speeches. If you’re a reader from the UK, you can watch it live here.

Little Green Footballs makes note of the BNP’s friends in America.

Nick Griffin MEP was elected to the European Parliament last Sunday. He has carefully tried to foster a moderate image, portraying him and his party as misunderstood and vilified by the media. Here are some details about his background however.

Art is no longer a hobby; it is a job. This is the consequence of statist government. Between 2008 and 2011, the Arts Council England (ACE) is expected to distribute £1.6 billion of public money. If one is to think of the drastic cuts made in the last Budget, one must ask why only £4 million is being taken from the ACE’s pot. Even the strongest advocate of big government would surely concede that the government must protect its people before it entertains them.

The defence budget is facing a £2 billion cut next year, and by 2011, the NHS must find £2.3 billion of savings and education £1 billion. Why then, one asks, does the funding for the arts continue? In a recession, should government be providing money for sharks to be floated in formaldehyde for little perceivable reason?

Classical liberals and large sea creatures should be worried. Labour has developed the polar opposite of Milton Friedman’s idea of government. In early 2008, the Culture Minister Margaret Hodge called for City workers to provide more private donations to the arts. But with a new tax rate of 50%, there is a predictable lack of response from those of whom the government demands altruism. There is weary outrage among libertarians that government is happy enough to injure vital public services but then insist on greedily preserving a socially progressive image.

The American equivalent of the ACE is the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), which gets around $126.3 million (£79 million) per year. This appears a paltry sum when compared to the ACE’s £463 million budget for next year, even more so when one considers the vastly greater amount of government spending in the US. America’s arts rely heavily on private donations – and citizens, both rich and poor, are eager to provide. As a percentage of GDP, the charitable contributions from individuals in the US are twice that of in the UK.

The relative lack of philanthropy towards the Arts in the UK has several possible reasons. The most obvious answer is the respective states of our collections of taxes. The huge welfare state and social interference that exists in the UK is no more than an arrangement of forced charitable donations. Taxpayers feel they have little left, and indeed little obligation, to provide charity for others. This is especially true for local charities, for why should the upkeep of local community be important if government forces politically correct and culturally manufactured community upon us?

The commensurately greater amount of charitable giving in the US can be attributed to the individuals’ quest for community. For example, 45% of American citizens’ donations are given to religions and local charities, as opposed to 13% here. The endless social interference has backfired once more.

77% of collection methods here rely on spontaneous takings of loose change, whereas in the US there is a strong culture of ‘planned giving’ (this provides 61% of non-profit organisations’ income). Furthermore, according to the newspaper Chronicle of Philanthropy, 54% of the richest US donors said that they have made charitable donations because of tax benefits and incentives. In the UK, it is the charities that obtain tax refunds and not the individuals. The British charity Art Fund recommended tax incentives before the most recent budget, but these proposals were shot down, such was the government’s dislike of offering tax benefits to the wealthy. The difference that is apparent between the UK and the US is quite clearly a consequence of the statist British government.

There once was ample example of private charity funding in the UK, from schools to art galleries. This convention, argues the Institute for Philanthropy’s director, Hilary Browne-Wilkinson, ended as the introduction of an enlarged welfare state – after the Second World War – destroyed Britain’s tradition of Victorian philanthropy. Some proof of this can be found with the American NEA. When their budget was reduced by 40 percent, from approximately $170 million to $99.5 million, private giving to the arts actually increased by 40%. The economist David Sawers’ comparison of subsidised and unsubsidised performing arts realised that cultural venues would continue to flourish were government subsidies to be abolished

The argument that government funding allows penniless individuals access to the arts is a fallacy. Most of the funds go to immensely rich organisations that often cater to a very limited section of society. For example, post-modernist art appeals to a tiny minority, and its funding has no arguable benefit for most of the public. The only time I have vaguely approved of a Labour minister was when Kim Howells said of the Turner submissions, “If this is the best that the British art establishment can come up with, God help us. It consists entirely of conceptual bullshit and the final insult was to walk through a room of Francis Bacons and Henry Moores that exude artistic ability and humanity.” The often-used argument that post-modernism should appeal to classical liberals because its iconoclasm is a strong example of individualism is nonsense; these so-called artists subsist on the involuntary contributions of the collective.

Government funding also jeopardises the independence of the arts. Not only does this interference reveal the consequences of pseudo-multiculturalism, it can constrict the variety of art produced. Ralph Waldo Emerson stated that, ‘Beauty will not come at the call of the legislature…. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.’ David Sawers has noted that British government subsidies reduce the choice and variety in the art world, whereas privately venues are more flexible, and are responsible for many different artistic genres, such as the recent revival of early music.

After over a decade of Labour in power, with tens of billions wasted on bureaucratic nonsensical jobs, with the creation of an arts scene that government ministers admit is appalling, and in the middle of one of the worst economic crises the Western World has seen, we demand to know why illogical funding continues to be inequitably poured into the modern arts?  John Adams once said that, ‘”The science of government is my duty to study…the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, so that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.’

If government ends the funding of ‘culture’, the indiviual will then provide. Government is not a Crocodile Bird – there is no symbiotic relationship between the state and the individual. It is simply not the business of government to dictate inspiration and cultivate the art of the people. Trophies of creative thought will materialise from the free man, one who is not shackled by the chains of his self-appointed patron.

And so the New Generation should ask of this government: do not fund runners to jog through the Tate Gallery every thirty seconds. If you give us working hospitals, good schools, equipment for our Armed Forces and pensions, we will provide you with art that is far sweeter than money could ever afford.

Sam Westrop

Well, a group of English Classical Liberal students are going to be contributing to this blog for the next few weeks. I’ll start off by stating that Prime Minister’s Questions is occurring now. The topic of debate is reform of the Houses, separation of power of the legislature and executive, and the creation of a written constitution.

If you’re a British reader, you can watch PMQs live here.

But Mr Brown does not plan to allow the people their say on reform. Both Iain Duncan Smith MP (Con) and Bob Wareing MP (Independent) have demanded that the executive become accountable to the Commons.

Mr Brown leads a fragile government, and after a year of continuous scandal for the Labour Party, he knows that to leave any decision to the people will be just another disaster for his drowning Party’s attempt to survive.