Idle Thoughts

Where should government end?

Mike Casey’s latest blog post raises an important issue with broader implications than the ill-conceived grab for control of the internet by the Australian Labor Party.

The internet is the way of the future, it is not something to control, it is something to educate about and encourage.

This raises two points: one tactical and one philosophical.

The tactical point relates to the open internet movement: I have written previously how the debate threatens to become on over the rights of aficionados of pornography to access their pornography. Mike is dead right to point out that the issue is one of control, the ability for the government to control the internet. The open internet crowd would do well to frame their argument in those terms.

The philosophical point is that the limits of legitimate government power have been expanding lately, and without much debate. In just the last few days, we’ve seen the following examples:

• In the UK, laws are proposed which will allow police to enter private buildings and seize posters which may be deemed by authorities to infringe on the benefits enjoyed by sponsors of the London Olympics. At one time, sponsorship agreements would rightly be deemed to be private contracts, and the ability for other people to engage in competing sponsorship be seen as a normal activity in a free market. No longer: now the State may enforce the rights of corporations to advertise exclusively. And I’m assuming that the UK government won’t use the laws in action against protestors.
• In the idiot state of New South Wales, the idiot premier engaged in art criticism yesterday, decrying that someone should submit a painting featuring a pedophile for the Archibald Prize. Leaving aside the sheer vacuousness of the criticism, portending that art may only be of “nice” subjects, how is this any different from Nikita Khrushchev’s visit to an abstract art exhibition, which enraged him to the point of calling the works “dog shit”? It’s not, and the government has no legitimate place offering art criticism in any liberal democracy. Yet there it is.

(The premier’s criticism is also instructive of the how the NSW ALP views the citizens of their state: dullards unable to make critical judgements of art, and prone to moral panic).

The legitimate limits of government expand daily, without conscious debate of the proper role and power of government. In a free society, the powers of government must be curtailed, and when those powers expand, the only result is a loss of freedom.