Lindsay Perigo: Who Ordered the Cab?

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TWO MORE OF THE BEST PERIGO EDITORIALS FROM THE PAST WEEK

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Who Ordered the Cab?

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PI Show editorial that would have been, October 5, 2001

Good afternoon, Kaya Oraaaa & welcome to the Politically Incorrect Show for Friday, October 5, proudly sponsored by Neanderton Nicotine Ltd, the show that says bugger the politicians & bureaucrats & all the other bossyboot busybodies who try to run our lives with our money; that stands tall for free enterprise, achievement, profit & excellence against the state-worshippers in our midst; that stands above all for the most sacred thing in the universe, the liberty of the human individual.

Yesterday I wrote about the resurgent cannibalism of government intervention in New Zealand's economy. Today, right on cue, the government announced its revised "rescue package" for Air New Zealand, which amounted to re-nationalisation of the airline, $850 million of taxpayer money being used to acquire an 83% stake in it. Deputy Prime Minister Jim Anderton was fair cackling with glee, at one point joking (?) that a "people's taxi service" would be next.

His chickens will come home to roost soon enough. In the meantime we should remind ourselves that while it is "salvaging" a civilian airline, the government is disbanding our air force's combat wing. Defence of the realm is a legitimate government function & duty; "rescuing" airlines is not. For the cost of the bail-out, the government could have maintained an air force strike capacity for four more years. It refuses to reconsider this matter even in the face of the War on Terrorism. This is a despicable dereliction of duty & distortion of priorities.

Mr Anderton & his colleagues crow that Air New Zealand is an example of "market failure." The market did not fail; au contraire, it confronted Air New Zealand's management with the consequences of its decisions, &, left alone, would have left THEM to deal with those consequences. That's what markets do, & that's what should have been allowed to happen.

As Sir Robert Jones wrote in Saturday's Dominion:

"The most important proof of a working market economy is constant commercial collapse. New more vital players instantly emerge to fill the vacuum, succeed for a period, become stodgy & die in the face of smaller, hungrier & more vigorous competition."

Commenting on today's act of Kremlinism, the head of one of Air New Zealand's small competitors, Origin Pacific, protested in exasperation: "How can I compete with THAT?" Finance Minister Michael Cullen ridiculed him in Parliament, snorting, "Well he's hardly in a position to become our national carrier." Of course not - how CAN he be when an opposing player is not allowed to fail when it deserves to but is propped up instead by hundreds of millions of dollars of stolen money?!

Oh yes, roll on the People's Taxi Collective.

"You ordered a cab, Sir?"

"Yes - six months ago."

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Give Up!

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PI Show editorial that would have been, October 2, 2001

"Look back at history. Look at any great system of ethics. Didn't they all preach the sacrifice of personal joy? Under all the complications of verbiage, haven't they all had a single leitmotif: sacrifice, renunciation, self-denial? Haven't you been able to catch their theme song - 'Give up, give up, give up, give up'? Look at the moral atmosphere of today. Everything enjoyable from cigarettes to sex to ambition to the profit motive is considered depraved or sinful. Just prove that a thing makes men happy - & you've damned it. That's how far we've come. We've tied happiness to guilt. And we've got mankind by the throat. Throw your first-born into a sacrificial furnace - lie on a bed of nails - go into the desert to mortify the flesh - don't dance - don't go to the movies on Sunday - don't try to get rich - don't smoke - don't drink. The great line. Fools think that taboos of this nature are just nonsense. Something left-over, old-fashioned. But there's always a purpose in nonsense. Don't bother to examine a folly - ask yourself only what it accomplishes. Every system of ethics that preached sacrifice grew into a world power & ruled millions of men."

In the above quotation from Ellsworth Toohey in The Fountainhead, Toohey is not criticising "the moral atmosphere of today" but lauding it, explaining how it serves his collectivist agenda - "one neck ready for one leash." A "liberal" journalist said to me recently that Toohey was a ridiculous caricature who didn't exist in real life. I quote now from a Sunday Telegraph profile by Christina Lamb of Hafiz Sadaquilla Hassani, a defector from the Taleban secret police:

"At first Mr Hassani's job was to patrol the streets at night looking for thieves & signs of subversion. However, as the Taleban leadership began issuing more extreme edicts, his duties changed. Instead of just searching for criminals, the night patrols were instructed to seek out people watching videos, playing cards or keeping caged birds. Men without long enough beards were to be arrested, as was any woman who ventured outside her home. Even owning a kite became a criminal offence. 'Basically any form of pleasure was outlawed, & if we found people doing any of these things we would beat them with staves soaked in water - like a knife cutting through meat - until the room ran with their blood or their spines snapped. ... Maybe the worst thing I saw was a man beaten so much, such a pulp of skin & blood that it was impossible to tell whether he had clothes on or not. ... Nowhere else in the world has such barbarity & cruelty as Afghanistan. At that time I swore an oath that I will devote myself to the Afghan people & telling the world what is happening.'"

What is happening is that Ellsworth Toohey is ruling - & far from being a fiction, he is ubiquitous. Of course he is cruel - those who preach & practise self-sacrifice don't hesitate to sacrifice others: they notoriously are, or become, sado-masochists. And if his Taleban incarnation doesn't destroy the West, his anti-Taleban sacrifice-mongering Christian-God-touting "enemies" IN the West will.

We who know better must strive to smite Toohey in ALL his guises.

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