Serenity: Introductory Speech, All-Candidates Debate (post: Jan 21, 2006)
Scarborough-Rouge River Libertarian Candidate
All-Candidates Debate at Albert Campbell Collegiate – Introductory Speech, Jan 11 ’06
Campaign Page
I’m concerned about the direction Canada is headed.
I’m concerned about foreign intervention and the bombing of civilians, and the humane treatment of prisoners, and with civil liberties.
And I’m concerned about the lack of liberty in general.
And that’s why I’m running as a Libertarian.
Liberty doesn’t mean freedom to hurt others, or freedom from responsibility.
Liberty means being free to do what you want with your life and property as long as you respect the rights of others.
The Charter protects some basic freedoms, but it doesn‘t go far enough.
The government has goals that tend to cancel out liberty.
Helping the poor, helping industry, improving the environment, … (*)
These goals – agree or disagree – are forced on everyone and are carried out through taxation and regulation and not through voluntary means.
The government makes these choices – not you personally.
The government manages a huge number of areas, including the economy, currency, broadcasting, etc. (**)
Many Canadians believe the government knows what is good for all of us.
In the science fiction movie Serenity, one of the characters, River, complains about her government.
She says, “People don’t like to be meddled with. We tell them what to do, what to think. Don’t run, don’t walk. We’re in their homes and in their heads and we haven’t the right.”
At the end of the movie, they see the terrible results and Malcolm Reynolds denounces the government’s belief “… that they can make people… better.”
Similarly, our government interferes (***) in order to manage your life according to what others think is best.
Thank-you.
Notes
*Other examples: improving your health, preventing you from buying unsafe products, protecting you from your own choices.
**Other examples: food, drugs and agriculture.
***Using taxation, regulations, victimless laws, social insurance numbers, etc.
In retrospect, the way I think now is more like this: The stated or, more likely, IMAGINED goals could be good, but what they are actually doing is not good and will not achieve those goals, because those aren’t the real goals. The same issue still comes up: we’re allowing too much power, very naively, to go to a special class of people who aren’t serving our interests. They serve the interests of corporations who promote and fund wars and social engineering (right and left). If they were good people who were under control democratically and served our best interests, and could be held to account, that would be a different situation, but would it be possible to achieve a system like that? Certainly it would not be possible unless real power was at the ground level in the hands of ordinary people, and they were in control of their minds and lives and believed in the same values about human life and freedom and rights. That is just not the case, but in a situation like that, possibly there could be a type of limited government that helped everyone protect themselves from predators of different kinds. To get away from talking about empty dreams of idealistic futures (usually dangerous ones), maybe we should think practically about what we can achieve in standing up for ourselves and others at this time, in this system. Part of that involves a long-term process of reversing beliefs that have been induced in everyone by propaganda, but what can we now do to show the falseness and contradictions in those beliefs?