After my last post, I’ve taken the time to look around a whole bunch of Libertarian blogs on this crazy interweb thingy. Here are my findings:

• Libertarians are terribly fond of using 15 five-syllable words when a short, snappy little sentence will suffice. This usually indicates a desire to obscure one’s ideas in an intimidating fog of pretension. While complexity is often necessary to express complex ideas, a sincere and passionate writer strives to be understood by as many people as possible, and therefore attempts to avoid cumbersome and excessive jargon. Being wilfully obscure smacks of intellectual snobbishness.
• When they discuss unions, and the working class in general, I can hear a little voice whispering, “Ha ha! I’m better than you suckers!”. Perhaps it’s merely a kind of reverse class prejudice on my part and I’m seeing something that isn’t there, but it does seem that there’s a, “pull yourself up by the bootstraps, be more like us” mentality. It’s a thoroughly commendable attitude to flaunt towards those who do the menial tasks in society (such as sanitation and construction) when you are performing (or studying to perform one day) all of those really, really crucial tasks such as web design and management consultancy. Yes dearies, you truly are the engine of all that is great and good. 
• Younger Libertarians appear to have invented a whole new form of social interaction named drinking. It is an apparently pleasurable pastime involving the consumption of a liquid drug that they call alcohol. For anyone interested in this revolutionary activity, check the blog of almost any college-age Libertarian; you will find not only heady descriptions of what this activity involves (and helpful hints on preparing the most potent mixture of said drug) but also a great many pictures of them and their drug which they have cuntingly provided as a means of instruction and self-aggrandizement. 
• Libertarians seem reluctant to litter their blogs with pictures or quotes from famous Libertarians. I’m sure this is purely a matter of aesthetics… after all, bald old rich men aren’t terribly sexy. Instead, they appropriate (misappropriate, some might say) a whole range of somewhat more edifying cultural icons, such as George Orwell, Mikhail Bakunin, Aldous Huxley, Camus and Sartre, Dostoevsky and many, many more with their work on Penguin Classics. And they brighten the place up a bit with lots of pretty animations, which is nice. 
• For people who champion the individual, they look depressingly conformist. It’s a minor thing, but it’s kind of sad when young men dress like their fathers. I’ve yet to come across a Drag Libertarian, or even a convincingly, “street” Libertarian. They either look like young fogies or college cocks. Come on, where’s the bling? Where’s the cool? You know how they say politics is hollywood for ugly people? Well, it seems that Libertarianism is Anarchy for very uncool people… if you want to get a larger slice of that youth market, chaps, then you need to look a little more like Johnny Rotten and a lot less like Elvis Costello.

I should say at this point that I’m well aware of the thousands of embarrassing twerps out there who attach themselves (like Gap-clad barnacles) to the Socialist cause, but honestly Libertarianism has an abnormally high percentage of cringeworthy cunt-hairs in its ranks. I’m sure the sane Libertarians find them as eminently punchable as I do.

Anyway, time to clarify why I think the way I do and why I have no time for Libertarianism. The number one reason would be this notion that social welfare is a, you know, really bad thing and stuff.

I grew up in a council house (that’s government housing if you’re not British). My father, the son of a miner, would have died aged thirteen if not for the National Health Service, because prior to its’ creation his parents could not afford to pay a doctor, never mind paying for the treatment he needed (a place at a hospital / school in the countryside of Surrey, plus comprehensive asthma treatment). I attended a state school, as did every member of my family. I studied at university, my fees paid by the state, which also kindly provided me with a little beer money thanks to the student grant. Without state aid, I would not have attended a university.  

The same goes for my fathers’ brothers. Their education was also funded wholly by this intrusive state interventionism. They rewarded aforementioned bully boy state by becoming Teachers and Bank Managers. I know I know, how happy they would have been in the free market, content to know their place and be the assembly line drones they were required to be. Why should taxpayers pay for this outrage? Never mind that taxpayers have been repaid in full by the tax hike that goes with their rise in status, or that they’ve easily accounted for all that healthcare expenditure that my father robbed from taxpayers. Or that actually, my father paid for it all by himself.

When I took my first job, The Great State(an) really got its evil talons into me by giving me a tax credit that raised my income by almost a third. Which is why I was able to take the job in the first place. I was not eligible for government housing as it was scarce at this point. Margaret Thatcher had sold council houses to the private sector, and the market did the most fantastic job in providing affordable housing to working people. I needed the tax credit just to pay the rent. Buy? My manager couldn’t afford to buy. Actually, my managers’ manager couldn’t afford to buy. Still, how about that private sector? If I’d have had everything I needed, I’d never have worked for a promotion… but there was The Free Market Magic Carpet, spurring me on to bigger and better things, helping me to truly reach my potential so that who knows, maybe in ten or twenty years’ time, after three promotions and no holidays, and given flatlining inflation rates and house prices to go with my flatlining wages, maybe just maybe I could live in a house like the one I grew up in. Progress eh, you can’t beat it.

I don’t doubt that some Libertarians truly believe that their theories are sound and their ideology is humanity’s last great hope. Many of them mean well, but then, Genghis Khan probably meant well. I’m sure any Libertarian would take issue with all the above and pull some stat or economic theory out of their arse to, “disprove” it all, or else blame any inhuman market outcome on government meddling. But you know, I’m a simple soul. I like things I can feel and touch. Like a dole cheque if I lose my job, or a tax credit, or a healthcare system that treats my illness without checking my wallet first. But that’s just me.

The idea that government is some vast inhumane conspiracy hell-bent on making automatons of us all is just completely fucking ridiculous. Have you met these people? They’re idiots. I’m completely serious. I’ve worked in government, trust me. The people who do the real work are efficient and public-spirited. The people at the top are, for the most part, a worthless shower of bastards. They’re poncing around doing nothing. Government does not put power into the hands of a corrupt elite as a matter of course; if anything it prevents such an outcome by spreading power through many departments, among sometimes competing interests, with ”CEOs” who are not appointed from within but elected. Personally, when it comes to controlling my life and sapping my vital energies, “Big Government” does me less harm than that horrid woman on the Progressive commercial (oh how I hate that woman, please mummy make it stop). The more extreme Libertarians actually believe that government is so evil it should be abolished, which is like some brat at a party stomping around and shouting, “the party’s over”, when it’s not even his party. It’s our party, not yours. Now stop whining and eat your cake.

Ultimately, government is not necessarily some behemoth stomping all over us. I believe in the government of the helping hand, not the iron fist. And I am living proof that the government of the helping hand exists and that it works. Not theory, not student debate, real world stuff. I admit absolutely that I have a vested interest in Socialism, that I’m a Socialist because it works for me. But then, turkeys rarely vote for thanksgiving. Are there are any poor Libertarians out there? If so, then what the fuck are you doing?