ALS: thoughts on freedom

Australian Libertarian Society Blog

HN Nicholls & ALS Friedman dinner: labour market reform

Come and join the Hon Peter Reith and Professor Judith Sloan for dinner as they discuss labour market reform at the Kookaburra Cafe on Wednesday the 15th of February.

This ALS Friedman dinner will be co-hosted by the newly formed Queensland branch of the HR Nicholls Society, chaired by Graeme Haycroft.

When?     7pm, Wednesday 15th of February
Where?   Kookaburra Cafe: 280 Given Terrace, Brisbane
What?      Pizza, ribs, salad, chocolate cake & good debate
Who?       Hon Peter Reith, Prof Judith Sloan & others
Topic?     Labour market reform
Price?      $30 ($25 for ALS students)

You can RSVP by e-mailing john.humphreys99@gmail.com or by joining the facebook event. This is an open event, so please feel free to invite friends, but you must RSVP to ensure a place at the dinner.

=======================

About the speakers:

Peter Reith has degrees in law and economics and worked as a solicitor before entering politics. He served as shadow Treasurer for the Liberal Party under John Hewson and was involved with the “fightback” policy document. In government, Peter served as the Minister for Workplace Relations and then Minister for Defence, until retiring in 2001.

Judith Sloan has 1st class honours in economics, and two masters degrees (from Melbourne & LSE). She has worked previously as the Director of the National Institute of Labour Studies, Professor of Labour Studies at Flinders, and a Commissioner at the Productivity Commission & the Australian Fair Pay Commission. Judith is currently an Honorary Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne and a contributing economics editor at The Australian.

January 17, 2012 Posted by | Events | , | 5 Comments

Andrew Bolt, Race and Identity Politics

WARNING: VERY LONG POST

In a recent court decision, conservative commentator Andrew Bolt was found guilty of breaching the Racial Vilification Act (Eatock vs. Bolt, see http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/FCA/2011/1103.html ).

From the classical liberal perspective, the good intentions behind the Racial Vilification Act do not justify the existence of the Act; Free Speech is an absolute right which is only bounded by fraud (for example, in the case of actual defamation) and coercion (i.e. making threats of violence or similar forms of extortion).

I am not a viewer of Andrew Bolt, although in full disclosure I did once send him an email which corrected a philosophical mistake of his; he accused Postmodernism of being Metaphysically Subjectivist (i.e. people’s minds literally remake reality). I believe that to be mistaken since Postmodernism is Epistemologically Subjectivist, typically on philosophical grounds derived from German Idealist thought. This has been my only interaction with his work in the past, and I know little about him. Although I was pleasantly surprised when reading his Wikipedia page that he’s an Agnostic rather than a religionist.

But the reason for this post is that I found a specific comment about the Bolt case interesting from the perspective of political philosophy.

Commentator Brian F. McCoy argued that the ultimate issue in the Bolt case wasn’t freedom of speech. He identified the core issue as “freedom of identity” (see http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=28512).

What a fascinating concept.

“Identity” in the context of the case was referring to social identity or the groups with which one identifies.

The following article is not so much a deliberate argumentative essay per se. Rather, it is a set of commentary on a series of interconnected issues raised by the Bolt affair. In it, I will cover epistemological and philosophical considerations relating to the concept of “social identity” and I will also discuss the various analytical frameworks and assumptions that are used when dealing with the concept. Ultimately I will launch into a discussion of Brian McCoy’s “freedom of identity.”
Read more »

December 8, 2011 Posted by | Civil liberties, Economics, Events, General, Indigenous affairs, Law, nanny state, Other blogs, Philosophy, Politics, Pop culture, Religion, The media | 6 Comments

Important: November 17 deadline Mises Seminar

We have just been informed that the venue has imposed a deadline to buy tickets to the historic Mises Seminar in Sydney. Tickets must be purchased by November 17. So you have about 2 weeks left to make up your mind: will you join us or will you stay home?

October 30, 2011 Posted by | Events | 2 Comments

Interview with Dr. Chris Leithner

If you don’t know who Dr. Chris Leithner is, listen to this interview. Chris will be speaking at the Mises Seminar on the following topic: “The Evil Princes of Martin Place: The Panic of 2008 and Why We Should End the RBA”.

Next speaker I’m interviewing is Dr. Andrew Dahdal, who is speaking about why fiat paper money is unconstitutional. Did you know the founders of Australia were against government paper money? That’s why they inserted section 115 into our Constitution: ‘A State shall not coin money, nor make anything but gold and silver coin a legal tender in payment of debts’. Stay tuned for the interview, and feel free to suggest questions I should ask Dahdal.

September 20, 2011 Posted by | Events | 4 Comments

“There Outta Be A Law!” – Toddlers And Tiaras Edition

“There Outta Be A Law!” – Toddlers And Tiaras Edition
By Andrew Russell

Ever since the announcement that Universal Royalty Beauty Pageant was planning to hold a children’s beauty pageant in Melbourne, plenty of Australian parents flocked to the latest and greatest Moral Panic. The pageant is now over, but the Moral Panic makes for interesting analysis.

As is depressingly typical in Australian politics, said parents (mostly affiliated with the group Pull The Pin) were not happy with merely privately boycotting the event or protesting it; they aim to make children’s beauty pageants illegal in Australia (see: http://www.pullthepin.com.au/). In other words, “I don’t like it, so There Outta Be A Law against it!”

The Pageant was going to feature Eden Wood; child Beauty Queen who was extensively featured, gyrating around in a pink sequinned Stripper Cowgirl outfit, on several Current Affairs shows. Eden cancelled; conflicts between Today Tonight and A Current Affair prevented her from attending.

As per usual, the Moral Panic over Universal Royalty’s event included every libertarian’s most loathed four-word logical fallacy; “think of the children!”

According to both Pull The Pin and Australians Against Child Beauty Pageants, these events harm the stars of the show. They harm the children they claim to be celebrating.

Pull The Pin’s petition for laws against child pageants (http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/pull-the-pin-on-beauty-pageants-for-children.html) reads as follows;

“We believe that child beauty pageants instil harmful messages in children (girls in particular as they make up the majority of participants), including that their looks are their currency.

We feel that child beauty pageants are exploitative and not in the best interests of the child, but the commercial interests of pageant promoters and parents living vicariously through their children.

We would like to see age restrictions applied (16+) so that the decision to compete against their peers in a beauty contest is made with full consent, and when their emotional maturity better enables them to fully comprehend and handle any negative self esteem impacts. We oppose the narrow gender messages child beauty pageants help perpetuate, doing nothing to improve the status of women in general, and encouraging ever younger games of ‘compare and despair’.”

In this article, I will make four basic arguments;
1) Fears of ‘child sexualization’ are clearly overblown,
2) Some anti-Pageant forces may be acting out of wounded pride rather than the interests of the children,
3) The Pageant critics make some very legitimate identifications of problems with child beauty pageants, but these problems are also found in children’s sports and no one is trying to ban them,
4) Finally, there seems to be a troubling undertone of xenophobia amongst anti-Pageant forces.
Read more »

August 9, 2011 Posted by | Civil liberties, Events, nanny state, Politics, The media | 9 Comments

Counting Jedi.

There has just been another instalment of the old “24 Hr media cycle” lament from Canberra. This time it’s from Julia, who is fretting that that the Internet and pace of the news cycle were working against in-depth discourse. Don’t get her wrong, she jurst lurves the opportunities of the Internet and rejoices in its influence in the “democratization of public space.” (This may put her at odds with Communications Minister, Conroy, who is obsessed with censoring it.)

The gist of these arguments is that the constant need to feed the cycle results in a lack of depth in debate with the result that politicians appear to be shallow and puerile. No explanation is given of why they appeared that way before the rise of the 24 hr cycle which has retaliated by blaming the government’s 24-hour spin cycle.

In an example of the problem, Federal Assistant Treasurer Bill Shorten called for Australians to respect the census and not kid around. He feels that the question on religion should only be answered in ways that the government recognizes. He has specifically banned Jedi’s, and Pastafarians, none of whom will be counted. The Jedi faith responded with a press release today: Read more »

August 9, 2011 Posted by | Civil liberties, Events, Humour, Politics, Religion | 4 Comments

« Previous Entries    

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 106 other followers