DOWN TO THE DOCTOR'S: Home brew, home invasion and home worship

Libertarianz leader Dr Richard McGrath ransacks the newspapers for headline and stories affecting our freedom.

This week: Home brew, home invasion and home worship

1. Sly-grogging ‘to pay for restoring car’ – An 80 year old man distills spirits in his garage and sells the products to willing adult customers for an agreed price. No-one is forced to buy, sell or drink the stuff. The free market at work.
       Does Nanny approve? Not on your life. You see, Edwin Wilson doesn’t have a permission slip from Nanny, called a licence, to sell his home brew. And Nanny gets very upset when people don’t tell them about their private fund-raising activities, because if Nanny doesn’t know about it, then it can’t set its enforcers to work collecting Nanny’s cut of the profits (taxes).
       The state can’t just leave people like Edwin alone, because it needs the money to spend bribing other people to vote for them. It’s all about keeping politicians in power.
       What would a Libertarianz government do? It would leave Edwin alone, provided he didn’t try to sell liquor to minors, and allow him the dignity of being self-reliant and able to earn an honest living. Giving him the freedom to operate his business unmolested might give him an opportunity to forego any claim on the taxpayer via the state-provided pension he no doubt currently receives.
   
2. Commissioner expects new firearms policy by Xmas – Following the shooting of two policemen in Christchurch, discussion of arming policemen has again emerged. Sadly however, the obvious way to circumvent future scenarios of this type is overlooked.
       The elephant in the room is this: The escalation of violence occurred because the two officers involved had decided to investigate a house that smelled of cannabis. And handling cannabis is currently illegal. If the house smelt of incense or fried chicken, there would have been no reason for the policemen to try and execute a search of the house, and no reason for the occupants to fear visitors. It was the smell of an illegal substance that set the whole sorry train of events in motion.
       The libertarian solution to what is essentially a non-problem (a house smelling of cannabis) is to legalise all acts of non-aggression—which includes adults making, selling and smoking dope. That is not to endorse the cannabis industry, but to remove it from the sphere of crime, where it simply does not belong. If cannabis handling was legal, talkback callers would not now be wringing their hands over bringing back the death penalty and allowing police officers to carry side-arms.
       For the record, a Libertarianz government would absolutely not restore the state-sanctioned killing of private citizens, and would allow both police officers and law-abiding New Zealanders to carry firearms for self-defence, including handguns.
   
3. Church forces ‘secular NZ’ retreat – Following their latest atrocious decision, the Human Rights Commission, along with Race Relations Conciliator and communist sympathiser Joris de Bres, should be tipped out on their arses and told to find honest work—should anyone be foolish enough to employ them.
       In a decision that betrays both complete ignorance and craven cowardice, the Human Rights Commission has accepted the Catholic Church’s objection to statements that New Zealand is a secular state and that religion is a private matter.
       Of course New Zealand is a secular state—unlike Iran, we do not have a state-sanctioned religion which inflicts Sharia law on its people and allows acts of barbarism including the rape, honour killings, floggings and stoning of women. Of course religion is a private matter—if people want to worship goblins and ghosts, that it their business. So what if people are ‘offended’ that others could even question their faith-based dogma?
       Any government worth its salt should separate state and religion, just as it should separate state and the economy, state and banking, state and sport, state and the health industry (the state and everything with the exception of the armed forces, police and justice systems). And just incidentally, on the basis of decisions like this, the state should look at separating itself and Joris de Bres.

When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; when the government
fears the people, there is liberty.
- attrib. to Thomas Jefferson