Allow The Bard to insult you

 

Shakespeare wasn’t just a master dramatist, he was a master too of the Ancient Art of Insults—a Fine Art now all but dead.

To mark the fabulous Pop-Up Globe’s extended season, here’s a selection of his bellicose wit form his finest plays

It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

I'll beat thee, but I should infect my hands.

I must tell you friendly in your ear, sell when you can, you are not for all markets.

Tempt not too much the hatred of my spirit, for I am sick when I do look on thee.

She hath more hair than wit, and more faults than hairs, and more wealth than faults.

Thy sin’s not accidental, but a trade.

Thine face is not worth sunburning.

Your virginity breeds mites, much like a cheese.

Thou are pigeon-liver’d and lack gall.

You speak an infinite deal of nothing.

Away, you three-inch fool.

A weasel hath not such a deal of spleen as you are toss’d with.

Thou art a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-liver'd, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar, and the son and heir of a mungril bitch.

I do wish thou were a dog, that I might love thee something.

You are now sailed into the north of my ladies opinion, where you will hang like an icicle on a Dutchman's beard.

A most notable coward, an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise breaker, the owner of no one good quality.

No longer from head to foot than from hip to hip, she is spherical, like a globe, I could find out countries in her.

Drunkenness is his best virtue, for he will be swine drunk, and in his sleep he does little harm, save to his bedclothes about him.

That trunk of humours, that bolting-hutch of beastliness, that swollen parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuffed cloak-bag of guts, that roasted Manningtree ox with pudding in his belly, that reverend vice, that grey Iniquity, that father ruffian, that vanity in years?

Thy tongue outvenoms all the worms of Nile.

There’s no more faith in thee than in a stewed prune.

Methink’st thou art a general offence and every man should beat thee.

If thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them.

Thine forward voice, now, is to speak well of thine friend; thine backward voice is to utter foul speeches and to detract.

I do desire we may be better strangers.

Thou art a boil, a plague sore, an embossed carbuncle in my corrupted blood.

Thou art like a toad; ugly and venomous.

You should be women and yet your beards forbid me to interpret that you are so.

Thou art unfit for any place but hell.

You are as a candle, the better burnt out.

Want to be randomly insuted as if by The Bard? Then check out the Shakespearean Insulter, based on the very fine Shakespeare Insult Kit.

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A coward's budget [updated]

The New Zealand Government's gross debt — the amount taxpayers must service — will now increase by another $73b by 2029, reaching a massive $283b.  That's $94,000 for every New Zealand family (with nearly $6000 of that just to pay the government's interest!).

Things are desperate. It's the middle year of an election cycle. Time for something bold.

No?

No.

Its not about doing more with less, or vainly trying to to. It's about doing less with less. Less with our money.

Ms Willis has failed us on both counts.

Let me give you two examples. (Three Four if you count my polite suggestion yesterday to gradually raise superannuation age, and include Lindsay Mitchell's today to time-limit welfare assistance.")

Several years ago when Helen Clark's Labour Party was about to lose an election , then Finance Minister Michael Cullen placed a fair proportion of New Zealanders onto welfare. His Welfare for Working Families programme made sure that, until ended, more than half of the country will now be beneficiaries. On the mooch. More than half of the country pulling down more from other taxpayers than they can ever give back.

This National Party Finance Minister could have done nothing with the programme — allowing inflation to make the maximum threshold for the programme dissolve.

She could have ended it altogether — signalled in good time, of course, to let folk plan ahead — but ending it could have saved $2.5-3billion. 

Instead, she raised that threshold below which working families get welfare. Around 142,000 New Zealand families. Which means even more working New Zealanders will continue to be moochers off (further normalising the behaviour perpetuating the Welfare State).

Many years ago a National Party Finance Minister introduced an Accommodation Supplement to, supposedly, help out poorer renters. Of course, it did nothing of the sort: instead if helped out their landlords, who could simply raise their rents to meet this new "supplemental" monetary demand for their supply. The Supplement — a grant to landlords — currently costs around $5 billion.

This National Party Finance Minister could have announced a lowering of the Supplement, saving some of those billions.

She could have announced it would end altogether, saving them all (while lowering rents). Instead, another expensive, destructive market-distorting subsidy continues.

I highlight these two measures because, for all Nicola Willis's hand-wringing about being prudent, about being responsible, about needing to achieve a surplus — and with the economic system flatlining while government debt vaults up decade by decade, bold measures to get there are not just a nice-to-have but a have-to-have — this budget is neither prudent, nor careful nor responsible.

Not being bold is to be irresponsible.

It's to be a coward.

Opposition parties are trying to paint this as an austerity budget. National Party pollster David Farrar boasts that it isn't.

It bloody should have been.

More here from others:

The Taxpayers’ Union is slamming Budget 2025 as a waste of time and hype, asking ‘is that it?’

"Nicola Willis has failed,” says Taxpayers’ Union Spokesman Jordan Williams. “This Budget could easily have been delivered by Grant Robertson."

“Willis promised to tackle the last Government’s ‘addiction to spending’. Spending is going up as a proportion of the economy in this year’s Budget compared to the current year. Core Crown Expenses are forecast to be 32.9 percent in 2025/26 compared to 31.8 percent under Robertson in 2022/23.

“She promised to balance the books. The OBEGAL never gets into surplus according to Treasury forecasts. Willis has had to make up a new measure to exclude the ACC deficit to create an illusion of a laughably small surplus in 2029.”

“And she promised growth. But the headline measure – an accelerated depreciation regime – is basically no better than what the last Labour Government tried immediately after COVID.”

“According to the Budget documents, the Government's headline ‘growth’ policy adds just 1 percent to GDP over 20 years. It is laughable in its small size.”

“More spending, more debt, and nothing to materially shift the dial and grow the economy. It’s not a Growth Budget, it’s a fudge-it."

Further:

"Spending as a share of GDP is materially higher than in the last fiscal year Grant Robertson was responsible for."  

Liberty Scott:

It's very much a centrist budget to not please those wanted a balanced budget and shrinking of the state, and of course isn't a budget of new grand larceny and profligate handing out to preferred causes, it basically just holds the line of NZ's Jacinda-era bloated state. ... a[nother] kick-the-can-down-the road budget.

Eric Crampton mentions some political sleight-of-hand:

"At some point, we have to wonder about the fiscal responsibility provisions in the Public Finance Act matter, because those effectively say you should not be running structural deficits for a decade, and we will have been running structural deficits for a decade. The ones during Covid were excusable - now, not so much. ....

"If you want to see the state of the government's books on the more traditional OBEGAL measure, rather than the one that excludes substantial ongoing ACC deficits, you have to go to the "Additional materials" in the online appendix. 

"Here 'tis. No return to surplus."

Michael Reddell:

"The Growth Budget" has just one growth-oriented policy [i.e., accelerated depreciation for business investment], estimated by Treasury to raise GDP by a mere 1% over 20 years (0.5% in total in the next five). 

"We were, of course, promised 'bold steps.' 

"Simply unserious."

UPDATE: More from Michael:

"[T]he government chose to title its effort [yesterday] 'The Growth Budget.' The Minister spoke today against a backdrop emblazoned repeatedly with that label.... the Prime Minister made a big thing of the need to accelerate growth ... The Minister of Finance in announcing the Budget date ... [boasted] 'the Budget will contain bold steps to support economic growth' ...

"They did not deliver.

"There was a single growth-oriented initiative in the Budget ... [T]he best Treasury estimate is that it will lift GDP by 1 per cent, but take 20 years to do so

"This year’s Budget represents another lost opportunity, and probably the last one before next year’s election when there might have been a chance for some serious fiscal consolidation. The government should have been focused on securing progress back towards a balanced budget. Instead, the focus seems to have been on doing just as much spending as they could get away with without markedly further worsening our decade of government deficits. ...

"We used to have some of the best fiscal numbers anywhere in the advanced world, but as things have been going – under both governments – in the last few years we are on the sort of path that will, before long, turn us into a fairly highly indebted advanced economy, one unusually vulnerable to things like expensive natural disasters. ...

"The government seems to have become quite adept at rearranging the deckchairs (cutting spending that they consider low priority and increasing other spending) but they are choosing to make no progress at all in reducing the structural deficit. ...

"Which brings us to the most recent IMF Fiscal Monitor released a few weeks ago [showing how our] primary deficit now compares ... Depending on your measure we were (based on HYEFU/BPS numbers) worst or close to worst in the advanced world. Today’s Budget will have done nothing to improve that ranking."

#SaveTheHumans: Of Iconic Lions and Hysterical Hyenas

Guest post by Lindsay Perigo

The fathomless fatuity of Faecesbook infantiles and their ilk on or off the Internet—not to mention the warp in their moral compass—has been abundantly evident this past week as they have gone into outrage-overdrive over the killing by a recreational hunter of Zimbabwe icon Cecil the Lion. It was the wont of Cecil, a tourist attraction, to roam around Hwange National Park, where he had protected status. On the occasion in question he was lured out by hunting bait. The hunter, American dentist Walter Palmer, was unaware of Cecil's identity and celebrity status. Having acquired, he claims, a legal bow-and-arrow permit, and the right to hunt with it, Walter shot Cecil. But not fatally. Cecil fled. He was found two days later, despatched with a rifle shot and beheaded.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) co-founder and President Ingrid Newkirk released a statement that included the following:

Hunting is a coward’s pastime. If, as has been reported, this dentist and his guides lured Cecil out of the park with food so as to shoot him on private property, because shooting him in the park would have been illegal, he needs to be extradited, charged, and, preferably, hanged. [My bold—LP] To get a thrill at the cost of a life, this man gunned down a beloved lion, Cecil with a high-powered weapon. All wild animals are beloved by their own mates and infants, but to hunters like this overblown, over-privileged little man, who lack empathy, understanding, and respect for living creatures, they are merely targets to kill, decapitate, and hang up on a wall as a trophy. The photograph of this dentist, smiling over the corpse of another animal, who, like Cecil, wanted only to be left in peace, will disgust every caring soul in the world.

Hollywood bimbo Mia Farrow tweeted the address of Palmer's dental surgery, presumably so that deranged PETA-types would go there, do a Baltimore on his premises and do to him what, in other circumstances, Cecil might have done: tear him limb from limb. Or, perhaps, hang him.

Oscar Wilde characterised fox-hunting as "the unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible." It may be that Mr. Palmer did something unspeakable. There may well be a legal and moral case to make against him for the terrible suffering he inflicted upon Cecil; regardless, what he did was not remotely—or shouldn't be—a hanging offence. That, however, is not my concern here. My issue with the unhinged zealots rampaging on Twit-Witter and Faecesbook is that few of them have any business invoking "caring souls" in any of their ejaculations whatsoever since their stunning indifference when it comes to murder and torture perpetrated upon human beings by totalitarian dictators shows them to be as uncaring as it's possible to be when it matters most. By their conspicuous silence, these people support those despots!

The regime of the Marxist Mugabe in Zimbabwe itself is a classic case in point. Mugabe has the blood of tens of thousands on his hands, beginning in the 80s and continuing to the present day. Notwithstanding an exemplary new constitution approved by referendum (allowed by Mugabe under extreme duress) in 2013, laws remain in place that stifle free speech and suppress dissent. While it is nominally otherwise, Zimbabwe remains in reality a one-party state. Women engaged in political opposition are routinely raped by Mugabe's goons. Journalists who write critically of him are still likely to be beaten up by those same goons. In its latest Freedom in the World Report, the respected Freedom House still classifies Zimbabwe as "unfree" (its other two categories being "free" and "partly free"). Which champion of Cecil the Lion, which PETA assassin, has ever had a word to say about this?

Gay sex continues to be illegal in Zimbabwe. According to Mugabe: "It degrades human dignity. It's unnatural, and there is no question ever of allowing these people to behave worse than dogs and pigs. If dogs and pigs do not do it [sic], why must human beings? We have our own culture, and we must re-dedicate ourselves to our traditional values that make us human beings. ... What we are being persuaded to accept is sub-animal behaviour and we will never allow it here. If you see people parading themselves as Lesbians and Gays, arrest them and hand them over to the police!"

Not just mutual penetration, but hugging, kissing and holding hands by members of the same sex are imprisonable offences. When the US Supreme Court gave the nod to gay marriage, Mugabe mockingly sought Obama's hand. (Actually, it would be a good match. Economically speaking, Mugabe is merely Obamarx on steroids, without pesky constraints.)

What men may not do to each other in Zimbabwe, Mugabe has assuredly done to the economy. Years ago he confiscated the farms of 4000 white farmers and handed them to blacks who had no clue what to do with them, fast-tracking his country to basket-case status. At the time I write this, 1 USD = 361,900 ZWD.

Again I ask, where are the PETA assassins and their fellow-travelers in all of this? Nowhere in sight. In truth, if you pursue them on such matters, you find that typically they're sympathetic to the regimes of Zimbabwe, North Korea, Cuba, Iran, ISIS et al, since those regimes are anti-capitalist and anti-America ... and American capitalism, of course, is the origin of all evil, including cruelty to animals. PETA's hysterical hyenas may be up in arms about the posthumous beheading of Cecil, but where are they on the live beheading of humans by ISIS? People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are remarkably unfastidious when it comes to the unethical treatment of people. Indeed, we might say of Ms. Newkirk and her ilk that they are "overblown, over-privileged little people, who lack empathy, understanding, and respect for living human beings."

Rights pertain to the species capable of conceiving them—human beings. Cecil had no concept of rights—just ask any zebra or tourist he might have eaten. Humans may arguably bestow honorary rights on animals incapable of conceiving them (or protect them via ordinary human property rights), and prosecute each other for their breach, but let's keep our empathy for Cecil in perspective. It shouldn't blind us to or trump—much less justify—man's inhumanity to man.

---

Lindsay Perigo is a former television newsreader and interviewer, a present-day professional voice coach, and a capital music reviewer for Capital magazine.

He can be found at his website, SOLO for Sense of Life Objectivists, his website LindsayPerigo.Com, and even—on occasions—at Facebook.

"You have no enemies, you say?"

A poem by Charles Mackay (English Chartist poet, 1814–1889) on those who say they "have no enemies" ...

You have no enemies, you say?
Alas, my friend, the boast is poor,
He who has mingled in the fray
Of duty, that the brave endure,
Must have made foes.
If you have none,
Small is the work that you have done.
You’ve hit no traitor on the hip,
You’ve dashed no cup from perjured lip,
You’ve never set the wrong to right.
You’ve been a coward in the fight.

[Hat tip Lisa Van Damme]

.

Why are dentists such a pain in the wallet?

Deborah Hill Cone asks an obvious question in this morning’s Business Herald: Why are dentists so gosh-darned expensive?

I see a lovely dentist who “cares for cowards,” plays hot jazz and gives me nitrous oxide – it’s fabulous, like going to a pleasant nightclub where you can’t talk or dance because someone is fiddling with your mouth.  Until you get the bill.  Open wide, wallet. Last time it cost $3300 for a crown and a filling.

Ouch! 

I have tried and tried but I don’t understand why dentists are so expensive.  If I go privately to see another sort of medical specialist who has trained for a squillion years – a neurologist or a dermatologist, say – they are likely to charge me about $400 an hour.  Even factoring in the fact that the dentist has an assistant, a whizzy chair and more technology the, difference in fees seems startling.

Yes, it does – especially to one whose profession would kill to charge $400 an hour!

And dentists only have to tell people to floss, not that they have a brain tumour.

True. 

Now, I have a confession to make. I’m a coward when it comes to dentists too – I blame a bad experience back at the school murder house many years ago at the hands of one of its badly-trained institutional torturers – and the twin pains of drill and wallet-ectomy have made me a very reluctant visitor to dentist’s offices since.  I’m sure I’m not the only one.

So here’s your chance to talk up your own favourite angel of dentistry: who can you recommend to readers like me who need their fangs fixed, but are reluctant to pay through the nose for another pain in the mouth?

And feel free to explain why all the others are so gosh-darned expensive.

Tories and toryism

Tories never change their spots. Said Tom Paine of the repellent breed in 1776:

"And what is a Tory? Good God! What is he? I should not be afraid to go with a hundred Whigs against a thousand Tories, were they to attempt to get into arms. Every Tory is a coward; for servile, slavish, self-interested fear is the foundation of Toryism; and a man under such influence, though he may be cruel, never can be brave."

And in 1960 Ayn Rand observed:

Today's "conservatives" are futile, impotent and, culturally, dead. They have nothing to offer and can achieve nothing. They can only help to destroy intellectual standards, to disintegrate thought, to discredit capitalism, and to accelerate this country's uncontested collapse into despair and dictatorship.

And now? Nothing really needs to be said, except perhaps to observe the front bench of the National Party...

Fixing leaks with the printing press

Did you notice Building Minister Maurice Wimpianson talking over the weekend about how his head hurts when he wonders how his government is going to “fix” New Zealanders’ leaky homes – a problem said to have a bill upwards of $11.5 billion? How “a Government who's running deficits - and has a forecast track of deficits for many years out - has to just sit there with its head in its hands, saying, 'Well, I just don't how to do this'.”?

This is after a week of public meetings in which he essentially re-released Shane Jones’s policies from 2008, while assuring afflicted home-owners that he knew what he was doing.

What he didn’t say, either last week or last weekend, was that he and his boss John Key have a dirty little secret the implications of which few have yet picked up on: that they intend to use to extricate their government from the problem: they intend to use the power of the printing press to quietly inflate home-owners out of the problem:

    “If we can ensure that a homeowner has guaranteed access to funds, and a guaranteed ability to repay [he told a Guyon Espiner too dim to realise what he was saying]. . . we can allow inflation and we can allow rising house prices to let people fix their home and actually move on and move out of the situation.”

As I said when John Key let that news slip last November,

    “Key’s plan to wipe out the billions of dollars of leaky home liability (and by implication the tens of billions of dollars his government is spending that it hasn’t got) is not to address the real problems, it’s going to be to print money – the age-old remedy of quacks, charlatans and short-sighted so-called statesmen.”

No wonder it looks so appealing to this lot.

Quite apart from all the damage inflation does to an economy, inflating the way out of the problem is simply a way of making savers transfer their resources to afflicted home-owners without the process being noticed.  It’s a coward’s way to fix things.

No wonder this lot have adopted it as policy.

Does calling a spade a spade dig your own hole?

Amid a blogosphere brimful of bickering and a polis rife with passions, Burgess Laughlin comes out on his own blog in favour of ... reasoned debate!  What on earth?

    In the last few years, I have frequently examined many advocacy websites. One of my purposes was to identify the manner in which the authors made their points. In some weblogs, one element of style stands out: insults to opponents. These writers call their opponents names such as: nutbars, nutjobs, morons, cowards, idiots, goat herders, ragheads, and scum. They also use adjectives such as: moronic, idiotic, stupid, nuts, crazy, loony, insane, delusional, and childish.

I plead guilty.  Meanwhile, Laughlin continues.

    Why do these writers [ie., me] use insults? Judging from their statements of purpose and the contents of their weblogs, these writers want the world around them to adopt certain views. Do these writers think that insulting their opponents will persuade their opponents to revise their values? I am not sure of the answer. I have only a "working hypothesis."?"

Answering for myself, I have two answers:

1. Colour.
2. Calling a spade a spade.

We're not having a debate in a university lunch room here.  If I can entertain, inform and enlighten by using reason and emotion, then all the better for both my readership and my advocacy.

What say you, dear readers?

[Hat tip Objectivist Carnival at Rational Jenn's]

Lifting your spirits

On such a day as this, what can you do to lift your spirits without forgetting the atrocities of last night?

I recommend music, especially music that represents the best of the culture that is presently under attack. Listening to the best of the west is almost like an act of defiance, a reminder that this is what we're defending against the nihilists.

So what works then? Jean Sibelius' 2nd Symphony is presently doing wonders for me. Ralph Vaughan Williams' 'Rhapsody on a Theme of Thomas Tallis' has also hit the spot, and I fully expect Jesse Norman's rendition of Richard Strauss' 'Four Last Songs' and Wagner's five 'Wesendonck' lieder to do it for me shortly. And I note Craig is listening to and enjoying Noel Coward's 'London Pride,' as I did earlier when I followed the link he posted.

And even Radio New Zealand have offered something to look forward to. Tomorrow afternoon they begin a two-part programme on, in my estimation, America's greatest composer: Duke Ellington. (Word has it that RNZ have their programming streamed somewhere, but I'm blowed if I can work out where.) And Duke perhaps should have the last word on rising above adversity: "I merely took the energy it would have taken to pout," he used to say, " and I wrote some blues." And such effortless-seeming blues they are too. I can't wait.

When is it okay to use a mass murderer in your advertising?

I have a friend, who, like me is heartily disgusted with Powershop.co.nz using the image of a mass murderer in their advertising. As she says, it’s bloody vile, so she’s sent them this excellent letter:

I think it is absolutely disgusting that you have used an image of Che Guevara to advertise your energy. Of course, in a society of free speech, that is your privilege to do so. This man is not a great revolutionary, he is a mass murderer and a coward, and whoever made this decision to use his image ought to be ashamed of themselves. At least do your homework and find out what he was responsible for. Power, at the cost of thousands of deaths of innocent people who did not hold his ideal? Give me a break! Despicable.

I await their reply with interest.

UPDATE: MikeE received a reply from Powershop that claims a semiotic justification for using a murderer in their advertising: the image of Ché, they say “has been adopted as a symbol of change in pop-culture. This image now has its own meaning that has very little, if anything, to do with Ché the person - as shallow as that may seem.”

Note that it was them who used the word “shallow” first.

Still, they say, “The poster you refer to appeared alongside others with similar messages of change and revolution. These posters have now been taken down and image does not appear in our TV commercial.”

So thank goodness for small mercies, huh. However symbolic they might be.

Gun buyback: Correlation is not causation [updated]

THE LABOUR-LED GOVERNMENT'S compulsory 'gun buyback' legislation is said by the Deputy Prime Minister to cost somewhere around $300 million. That would buy a lot of policemen.

So clearly the Labour-led Government, along with everyone else in Parliament except ACT's David Seymour, has concluded that this compulsory buyback will keep New Zealanders a lot safer than a lot more policemen will.
That doesn't say a lot for our policemen. (Nor does that figure say anything about the realistic cost of the buyback, which is more like billions than millions.)

But what do we know about how much safer the compulsory gun buyback will make us?
The fact is, neither the Labour-led Government, nor anyone else in Parliament really knows, because they haven't and won't have the time to do that research.

What they are really relying on is the alleged popular success of the Australian compulsory gun buyback after the Port Arthur massacre. So it's worth asking just exactly how successful that gun buyback was in making Australians safer. So I went to look for research that did look at how successful that had been in reducing lethal violence. In 2016 Science Direct published 'A systematic review of quantitative evidence about the impacts of Australian legislative reform on firearm homicide,' which concluded:

Australian studies have not found evidence of changes in lethal violence following gun law reform. Empirical findings about Australian gun law reform contradict ‘popular’ views about those laws...

    These [studies] examined various different time periods, and used a range of different statistical analysis methods. No study found statistical evidence of any significant impact of the legislative changes on firearm homicide rates.

That sounds fairly conclusive, right?

In fact, if you look at the rate gun deaths from 1998 to 2014, you would think New Zealand and Australia already had the same restrictions on guns:

Source: GunPolicy.Org

And yet Australia already has these restrictions that New Zealand politicians are now eagerly rushing through.

So what is going on here? Why do those two declining figures (great news, by the way!) seem about the same even though the two country's gun laws are so different? Why does the popular 'knowledge' of the Australian buyback success not tally with the Australian studies that have found no evidence of changes in lethal violence following gun law reform? Why, in summary, do empirical findings about Australian gun law reform contradict ‘popular’ views about those laws.

And what does it say about the gun buyback programme that the decline began nearly a decade before?

The simple answer from the researchers is this: that the rates of gun death were going down in any case. The evidence from those researchers is that the buyback did not cause the decline (which as you can see form the graph above began before 1996) it simply correlates with its continuation.

Correlation is not causation. Perhaps the popular view is so different because that simple lesson is still widely unlearned.

SO WHAT DO THE the results of Australian research on their buyback programme over there tell us we should expect to see as a result of spending around $300 million on the compulsory buyback programme here? "The results," says one, "suggest that the [buyback will] not have any large effects on reducing firearm homicide or suicide rates." In short, concludes another:

Although gun buybacks appear to be a logical and sensible policy that helps to placate the public’s fears, the evidence so far suggests 23 that in the Australian context, the high expenditure incurred to fund the 1996 gun buyback has not translated into any tangible reductions in terms of firearm deaths. 

As I was saying, $300 million would buy an awful lot of policemen. Not to fool ourselves that more policemen would have foiled this or any other shooting -- because a police response time of 36 minutes even of the almost-miraculous 6 minutes* to arrive at a site where unarmed people are being shot is telling proof otherwise -- but if we must have knee-jerk law and rushed spending decisions as a result of this massacre, why not head down that path instead of criminalising otherwise law-abiding gun-owners. (Not forgetting that the murderer himself broke existing gun laws in modifying his weapon before his lethal spree, reminding us that no matter what laws are passed, criminals -- like gangs -- will still ignore them whenever they feel like it.)

AND IF WE ARE serious about avoiding another atrocity like this one -- which is after all the alleged aim of this expensive legislation being rushed through with such unseemly haste -- then another unanswered question seems to present itself, which is this: what would you might most want to have with you when a man with a gun bursts through your door and starts shooting? A policeman to defend you all would be a fine thing to have, but in their absence – and experience from around the world tells us that a policeman can never be there in time to defend us – what you may most want is something to scare the gunman off. Just as this arsehole-with-a-gun was finally frightened away by a very brave man threatening the coward with an EFTPOS machine and with a shotgun the gunman had already discarded.

Because self-defence is still legal in New Zealand, just, under Section 48 of the Crimes Act “If one fears for their life or that of another.” Good law. The very same law that police are covered by when using firearms for their activities. Law however that is not set in stone, and that the police have for some time been wishing to overturn.
Could the outcome of the Mosque shootings have been different if the police upheld the law on self-defence instead of vilifying anyone who uses firearms for self-defence? We can never know.

After the Christchurch atrocity, and the political reaction to it, crime researcher Dr. John Lott asks the obvious question:

Police are extremely important in stopping crime, but the police can’t be there all the time. The police themselves understand that they virtually always arrive on the crime scene after the crime has occurred. And that raises a real question, what should people do when they’re having to confront a criminal by themselves?

Anyone like to have a crack at answering that? Because your politicians haven't. And won't.

But you should keep asking it.

We do know already that this rushed legislation will be followed by other more considered legislation, imposing further restrictions on gun ownership, and considering again a programme of costly gun registration. If there is an agenda, it will become apparent then. We must hope, and remain vigilant, that the agenda does not go from vilification of this legal right to removing it from the books altogether.

Because then where would we and other brave men be when we do need to defend ourselves? 

THIS IS NOT AT all to say that a government has no moral right to regulate weapons. Of course they do. Governments (properly) hold the legal monopoly over the use of force in a given geographic area. That's a fundamental definition of what a government is. Being a primary means of projecting force means that weapons and the regulation thereof must be permanently on their radar. But by what principle should this be done? As philosopher John Mccaskey patiently explains, 

To see why it is proper for a government to regulate weapons and to understand the principles by which it should, we need to go back to some fundamental principles of moral philosophy, political philosophy, different kinds of rights, and the nature of government... 

    You have a natural right to defend yourself against an attack, using unlimited force if necessary. But it still might rightly be illegal for you to own or carry a gun... 

      Remember, the proper question is not, 'Why can the government restrict my access to guns?' The proper question is, 'What share of its legal monopoly on the use of force should the government share with its citizens?' The proper answer is, 'Whatever is needed for those citizens to protect themselves when the government cannot.'

Those remain a Q+A that this government, and this country, still need to have. Why don't you begin asking and answering it for yourself?

* * * * * 

* The New York Times lays out the probable response timeline which, however rapid, still allowed the murderer to leave the first place of carnage and drive across town to create another:

It is unclear exactly what time the gunman entered Al Noor, which was crowded with worshipers for Friday Prayer. But the police said that they received the first call for help at 1:41 p.m., and that the first officers arrived there six minutes later.
    The video recorded by the gunman, which was livestreamed on Facebook, showed a man trying to tackle him inside the mosque, only to be shot and killed.
    Six minutes after firing his first shot, he drove away. Three minutes later, a siren can be heard on the video as he is driving to the second mosque.
    The siren becomes louder, then fades, suggesting the police and the gunman may have just missed each other, with officers and medical personnel racing toward Al Noor as he was pulling away. 
    About 30 front-line police officers would be on the streets of Christchurch around lunchtime on an average Friday, said Chris Cahill, a detective inspector who is president of a local labor union for police officers.
        When that first panicked call came in, he added, the dispatcher would have sent all of them to Al Noor….

    The police said a special armed tactical unit arrived at Al Noor Mosque four minutes after the first officers, or 10 minutes after the initial emergency call…
    “Any police force in the world — to get to the scene in six minutes, a specialist team there in 10 — that would be a success,” Cahill said.
Patrick Skinner, a former C.I.A. counterterrorism officer now working for an American police department, agreed.
  “I’d say that the police response was rather quick in a tactical sense,” he said, noting that the officers were rushing into a violent situation that was still unfolding — and that had been encouraged by individuals espousing bigotry and hatred.
    Still, it was not fast enough. The officers arrived to a horrific scene, with the dead and wounded outnumbering the city’s usual on-duty police force.

.
.

Friday morning ramble

It’s not possible to talk here at NOT PC about every good story and every great link I read or you send me. That’s what my Twitter page is for, where you can can get all these links to great reading “live” if you’re visiting there regularly. But if you haven’t been reading regularly enough, or you wanted a wee reminder about something you meant to check out, then here’s your (ir)regular Friday ramble through this bunch o’ liberty links. 

• Lindsay Mitchell writes about Pseudo solution to pseudoephedrine problems, with evidence from bans on sales in Oregon.  This is the sort of thing John Key should be reading if he wants evidence-based advice.
• Can We Really Trust The Leading Economic Indicators? Um, not really, says Mish. http://tinyurl.com/ybpbu8q
• Water, cigarettes and sheep - the three currencies that helped rebuild a part of Iraq after the war. Another story of how money is a creation of the market, not a creation of governments.
  http://mises.org/story/3724
• HEALTH: There's "a problem in the U.S.A," alright. Another kid-cult video to join the hundred of other kid-cult video singing praises to the Messiah!
   http://tinyurl.com/y87e6vd
• Oops. Annette King can't tell the difference between the parody Sue Kedgely & the real one. Mind you, nor can Sue
  http://tinyurl.com/yek827s
  Wonder how Annette King will go with RogerDouglasMP:
  http://twitter.com/RogerDou...
• Westpac economists suggest NZ's floating exchange rate helps reduce the price volatility of its commodity exports. Interesting argument.
  http://tinyurl.com/yeay33g
• How inconvenient: “Ice melt during the Antarctic summer of 2008-09 was the lowest ever recorded...” But I’m sure you’ve already heard that news from your friendly, local, reliable mainstream news media, right? 
   http://tinyurl.com/ycl5mjx
• Uh, maybe not so reliable. UMR Poll says news media have credibility issue. Only 35% of NZers believe the media is accurate. That many?!
  http://tinyurl.com/ye4z8zh
• They’re trying to censor the internet – the buzzphrase for censorship is “net neutrality.”  Read “Net Neutrality: Toward a Stupid Internet,” and arm yourself for the coming battle.
  http://bit.ly/3vvoFR.
• There’s a frickin’ elephant in the schoolroom all right!
  http://bit.ly/OXKOW
• NZ Economic weather report: Electricity lines and power prices rising faster than the CPI . . . who would have thought that a government-owned and regulated ‘market’ would be so inefficient.
  http://tinyurl.com/ycc3c26
• NZ BabyBoomer lifestyles are ‘coming home to roost’ as credit defaults jump 19.4%.
  http://bit.ly/ky3uN
• Lindsay Mitchell looks at the true extent of unemployment: Most folk don't know how the unemployment rate is calculated, which is very convenient when you want to hide some embarrassing numbers.
   http://tinyurl.com/ydotfn7
• Hallelujah! NSW now require teachers to spend part of each day teaching the sounds that make up words.
  http://tinyurl.com/yc9lfwm
• Ecozealots ditched toilet paper for a year  . . . and they’re now selling deadtree books & packaged DVDs to “save the planet” – and to make themselves famous. A fair trade? 
  http://bit.ly/16FnxR
• Speaker Pelosi Hints at Massive US Tax Hike
  http://tinyurl.com/ydbabt5
• Here’s A Book Every Military Strategist and Politician Should Read . . . To learn more about the book, or read an excerpt, visit:
  http://winningtheunwinnablewar.com/
• Mish calls talk about those "secret" moves to trade oil in currencies signalled by Robert Fisk. "Ridiculous hype" he calls it.
   http://tinyurl.com/yd8xhx9

Great quote to counter a popular straw man:
"An individualist is a man who lives *for* himself not *by* himself."
(Said by an 8-year-old girl!)

• Has the govt breached New Zealand's international trade commitments by funding Maori Television? Liberty Scott thinks so.
  http://tinyurl.com/yb66yvo
• Green Shoots? Nouriel Roubini says US unemployment will rise through 2010. US economy is "shopped out" he says.
  http://bit.ly/srh1h
• It’s way worse than we feared: @drmabuse interviews an FTC spokesman about the US Government’s proposed new "guidelines" to be forced upon bloggers.
  http://bit.ly/n5luu
• This report on the imminent demise of the US dollar is worth considering, but since it includes the words "Robert" and "Fisk," be sure to consider Mish’s assessment as well.
  http://tinyurl.com/yd9knqk
• American children singing songs of praise for Barack Obama are a little much, says Thomas Sowell, “especially for those of us old enough to remember pictures of children singing the praises of dictators like Hitler, Stalin and Mao.”

  “But you don't need a dictator to make you feel queasy about the manipulation of children. The mindset that sees children in school as an opportunity for teachers to impose their own notions, instead of developing the child's ability to think for himself or herself, is a dangerous distortion of education.”

  Read A Letter From a Child by Thomas Sowell
  
  
• What a great title for a blog post: 'The plural of anecdote is not data.' Love it.
  http://tinyurl.com/yd6cyc3
• Companies run regular fire drills, so why not regular phishing drills? Seems a fair question.
  http://bit.ly/IN5UL
• Peter Schiff: 'The real economic crash has just started' (Oct. 03) One hour speech on video.
  http://bit.ly/4bLscX
• Not mention the GDP delusion: "stimulus" & retail subsidies aren't "growth" - just more capital consumption
  http://tinyurl.com/ct97m6
• NZ Govt spending on the basis of a multiplier is suspect-anyone trying to sell these policies isn't to be trusted
  http://tinyurl.com/yatfku7
• ARC: "Just War Theory" Is Unjust to Americans - and to NZ soldiers in Afghanistan being put in harm's way.
  http://bit.ly/ykYMo
• Latest #parenting post at Rational Jenn’s is all about avoiding being a helicopter mum.
  http://bit.ly/kn97A
• He was arrested by a bully, betrayed by a coward, and now it’s being covered up by Big Brother.  Read about Dan Edge’s plight here:
   http://tinyurl.com/yag88w5
• The market should be replaced by democracy, says Michael Moore. But as Ludwig Von Mises would have told him if Moore could read, the market is democracy.
  http://mises.org/resources/...
• Jezebel.com’s take on Polanski and the Hollywood letters made Get Frank laugh a few times [Really good]
  http://bit.ly/e5VV5
• Okay, the Community Reinvestment Act helped spark the whole crisis in the first place.  So why do you think Team Obama aims to expand it?
  http://tinyurl.com/ycwc92c
• The Copenhagen Climate Change Treaty draft looks less of a climate treaty and more of a blueprint for world socialism.  Take a look.
  http://tinyurl.com/yd6dgq5
• The US  Federal Trade Commission will soon requires bloggers to disclose payments, dictating what counts as payment & disclosure.  Chilling.
   http://bit.ly/h26Xq

Something for politicians, mainstream economists and Reserve Bank Governors to think about:
“True, governments can reduce the rate of interest in the short run. They can issue additional paper money. They can open the way to credit expansion by the banks. They can thus create an artificial boom and the appearance of prosperity. But such a boom is bound to collapse soon or late and to bring about a depression.”
- Ludwig Von Mises, Omnipotent Government

• "The politics [of global warming] are tough now because conservatives years ago allowed the debate to get away from them; frightened of being labelled nature-haters, they declined to attack anti-progress green arguments as they were being formed. Result: in 2009 they’re dealing with a full-blown religion, and they’re discovering that logic isn’t much of a weapon against faith.”  (Tim Blair’s throwaway remarks have more insight than most people’s long-considered arguments.)
   http://tinyurl.com/y9mh76z
• ‘Smart Growth’ and the coming ‘Housing-Led Recovery’ – or, to put it another way: ‘Oxymorons for Morons’ http://tinyurl.com/y97mqd2
• Apple vs Apple vs non-Apple. Have you heard about about the “moron in a hurry"?
  http://bit.ly/JJzNK
• COOL MAPS: How to explode the idea of over-population in three simple maps: The most populated country on earth, the Netherlands, shown at three different densities. So where’s the over-population?
   http://tinyurl.com/n7lryo
• Capitalism FAILS. Capitalism the movie, that is.
  http://tinyurl.com/ya4rusc
• The Australian Prime-Minister and the US Presidential family both regularly challenge the time-space continuum. Something at which Helen Clark wasn’t too bad either.
  http://tinyurl.com/y9dgkj2
• Caught in the Act: A funny tribute to guys who think they got the sneaky glance but got snapped.
  http://bit.ly/WkpAi
• Where’s the Top 6 - Beer Towns In New Zealand? Get Frank has the answers you’re looking for: http://twit.ac/pozb
• MORE COOL MAPS: Failed States: A neat interactive graphic showing which states in the world are at risk of failing.
  http://tinyurl.com/mb2y4z
• "Governments failed to let wages and prices adjust in the 1930s and they’re doing the same thing again now." No Virginia, governments don’t learn from their mistakes.
  http://tinyurl.com/ycaw6ns
• A restaurant that serves you what the last guy ordered offers a nice warning for all you 'market failure' theorists:
  http://bit.ly/1eC7Nn
• Here’s a novel idea for ObamaCare enthusiasts: considering the impact of health care “reform” on doctors: Investor’s Business Daily has done the heavy lifting for you:
  http://bit.ly/1sEPeS
• Psychological Distance And Poetic Excellence considered at the Poetry Blog. It works the same for art, you know.
  http://bit.ly/2U2IpE
• Environmentalists want to destroy four American hydroelectric plants. And you thought they liked renewable energy?
  http://tw0.us/2K0
• A dose of libertarianism would enhance our democracy, says 'former' Australian Fabian socialist.
  http://tinyurl.com/yeu5bor
• Read this amazing reply from a US librarian in reply to a request to remove a children's book on gay marriage. Would that all bigotry inspire such resolute eloquence.
  http://bit.ly/d9gdu
• Not sure how George H. Smith would handle this, but... Penn Jillette discusses the Beatles as proof of God.
  http://tinyurl.com/ycgvhcn
• Ireland's 2nd vote in 2 years on EU's Lisbon Treaty is a "yes." Given it was "no" last year, isn't it now one all? Or doesn’t it work that way with things the government wants?
  http://tinyurl.com/yc5nwzl

“Observe that in all the propaganda of the ecologists—amidst all their appeals to nature and pleas for "harmony with nature"—there is no discussion of man's needs and the requirements of his survival. Man is treated as if he were an unnatural phenomenon. Man cannot survive in the kind of state of nature that the ecologists envision—i.e., on the level of sea urchins or polar bears. . . .”
- Ayn Rand (1971), "The Anti-Industrial Revolution," Return of the Primitive

• Maybe you should keep this one on file for Sunday: Diana Hseih’s ‘Rationally Selfish Radio’ Podcast #11: The Ontological Argument for the Existence of God.  Or not.
  http://bit.ly/OZNwU
• It was supposed to be International Free Press Day, but the supposedly free press flunked it. “The Danish cartoons story was a test, and the civilized world failed it.” http://tinyurl.com/yfx3u78
• The decision to hold the Olympics in Rio may be bad news for Chicago, but it may be great news for America!
  http://tinyurl.com/ycb3glw
• What - or Who - Started the Great Depression? The answer in an abstract for a new working paper reads thus: Herbert Hoover.
  http://tinyurl.com/m8y64z
• On the occasion of Ludwig Von Mises’s 128th birthday, George Reisman pays him the ultimate tribute: "His teachings are nec­essary to the preservation of material civilization.
  Ludwig von Mises: Defender of Capitalism – George Reisman 
• Are We Raising a Generation of Wimps? Onkar Ghate answers at PJTV. http://tinyurl.com/y8hqsmq
• The 'U6' measure of US unemployment has risen to 17%. And since it’s similar to the methodology used during the Great Depression, U6 offers a better historical perspective on the severity of our current crisis – what this shows is that US unemployment is already at Great Depression levels, with the employment market still contracting. http://tinyurl.com/yetl37l
• Here’s Peter Schiff on ‘The Recovery That Isn't’
  http://bit.ly/WxiMI
• Israel Has A Moral Right To Its Life:Israel is [still] America's frontline in the war on terrorism. (2002):
  http://tinyurl.com/7borml
• Why the Palestinian People Do Not Deserve Independence (2002)
  http://bit.ly/68cGi
• The Purpose of a Palestinian State (2002)
  http://bit.ly/12vdk2
• Another warmist hockey stick broken? Here are the stories:
  http://tinyurl.com/ydtdlxj
  http://tinyurl.com/ybxaqnp
  http://tinyurl.com/yeeyrhm
  Or maybe not? Warmists defend the stick:
  http://tinyurl.com/ydrcduw
• Obama now has negative rating on 5 of the top 6 issues Americans now consider most important:economy, health care, budget deficit, unemployment, & taxes. http://tinyurl.com/ygxspga
• And finally, Nanny state drinking lawsthat a Sue Kedgley would love: Show a license to buy a pint.
  http://ff.im/-96HGC

"Money is the tool & symbol of a society built on mutual, voluntary trade rather than forced labor, duty to the state, or war."
-Ayn Rand

Enjoy!
PC