Libertarian conferences
For the jet-setters among you — there are a couple of international libertarian conferences coming up. One in Europe and the other in America.
Conference organiser Mikolaj Barczentewicz asked me to pass on this invitation to the European get-together – which can be found here. The conference will be in Warsaw (Poland) from June 28-29, and has the support of Libertarian International.
The other libertarian get-together is FreedomFest, being held in Las Vegas, Nevada from July 10-12. The ALS did get an invite to participate, but it’s unlikely that we’ll be able to send over a delegation. If you would like to go over and waive the ALS flag, please contact me.
Compulsory Voting
This is a guest post by Philip Lillingstone.
You can find more information on this subject on his website, www.compulsoryvoting.org, but no further pictures of Paris Hilton.
Of all the reasons given to us why Australia (and the exceedingly few other countries that have compulsory voting) should retain it, I think the most spurious one is the one that informs us we ‘have a duty to vote’.
In times past when Australia was at war, women with white feathers might approach able bodied men on the street who were not in uniform, to suggest to them that they should heed a call of duty to their country. We are supposed to believe today is that each citizen similarly has a patriotic duty to his fatherland/motherland to do his ‘bit’ by making that great sacrifice and proceeding to the ballot box.
The fallacy of this argument I believe, is that of semantics. It would hardly be a stretch to define duty as an obligation to undertake a tangible service. We may be happy to perform our various duties but that does not belie the fact that the very nature of a duty is to do something primarily defined as that which the receiving party views as having value. Whether it be to give someone comfort in times of distress, to pay monies to the national revenue or take up arms in times of war. We may joke with our friends by declaring that the reason we are helping ourselves to the hot chips on their plates is because of our duty to test their food for poison, but in reality, an act done for self indulgence that can in no way benefit anyone else, can simply never be described as a duty. Read more »
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