Why libertarians should support the integrity of the Lords

The most precious thing at this time is our liberty because it is being eroded by everyone from the UN to the EU to Westminster [and Washington] to the local council. Every day there’s some new little incursion, explained away as some administrative necessity or to keep us safe.

So far we’re all agreed, yes, that we need personal freedom plus the freedom to set up a business, live where we want and basically how we want? As Longrider says, this does not mean “do as thou wilt”. There are limits which stem from courtesy for our fellow man and woman near us.

Again, no problem thus far, right?

The divide comes when we debate how to achieve and preserve that liberty. The leftist will happily allow Clegg, Millipede or iDave to legislate for it, as in “they should ban this”, “they should insist on this”. Both the true libertarian and centre-right conservative who wants to see our old lifestyle preserved don’t buy government sticking its oar in.

There’s no need.

More than that, anything at all which the government proposes is not for our good. Thus, when three parties support Lords “reform” or actually Lords destruction, wise people begin to fear. These bstds are never going to support anything which will not give them further powers over us.

It’s all about power and about nothing else.

Therefore we, as libertarians and/or small c conservatives should be ultrawary of supporting the misnamed “reform”. That’s the word they like to apply to it but it’s not “reform” at all. Reform is when there has been a bad situation and it’s improved. That is not the case here and many learned people have commented on that.

Just one changed word is necessary to convey this. Rather than be rebels against Lords reform, in fact we are patriots for Lords integrity. The people pushing the proposals are the quislings, not us. We are for self-determination.

There are two good arguments for supporting Lords integrity:

1. The lower house wishes to take away freedom

What these bstds actually want, if you look at the proposals, is to ram through control of both houses into the hands of the strongest and least principled thugs in the lower house. They play the democratic card in their fork tongued argument, whilst having shown you and me that they have not the least interest in democracy, in terms of you or me having a voice.

This is a power grab, pure and simple and what’s worse, it’s being done by non-comps, richard craniums, people of low moral compass. Their power grab needs to be opposed with maximum prejudice.

I carry no torch for the lords themselves. Maybe they were lizards in Merovingian times, maybe not – I couldn’t care less. What I do know is that these “barons” have no power any more to press me to their army, to take away my livelihood or beset me with laws which strip me of my dignity. They’re not remotely interested in me.

They’re interested in a good lunch and sleeping it off in the house, whilst occasionally raising a hand to pass some legislation … or not. Until Blair white-anted them, they were an effective bulwark against lower house tyranny. They were more approachable than any government minister.

People are far too ready, like Master William Roper, to sweep away the law, the institutions which have served to preserve the status quo and that status quo is always seen as oppressive by the Will Ropers. Why? They have their castles, I don’t want their castles, it does nothing for me – let them live there in their wild animal luxury.

All I want is for them to be a bulwark against the tyranny of the lower house and if these lords are a bit reactionary and fuddy-duddy, so much the better. I’d rather entrust my future to their slumbering away than to Clegg’s and Milliband’s pro-active slavery.

2. The Enoch Powell argument

One of the co-authors at my place, Wiggia, sent this from Jerry Hayes who has reprinted the speech by Powell from 1968 when Lords reform was defeated largely as result of this. It’s well worth a read:

There can be no elective second chamber in the legislature of a unitary state. Wherever elective second chambers exist, they exist in federal states, where one chamber represents the component parts as such, and the other chamber represents the whole population, as such. The classic case is the United States. The proposition is axiomatic, because it is self evident that there cannot be two alternative equally valid representations of the same electorate. If one is more valid than the other they cannot co-exist: for where a more valid representation exists, there is just no justification for paying attention to a less valid representation.

A few simple theorems are sufficient. Suppose in a unitary state like the UK, one chamber is elected by a simple majority (like the House of Commons) and the other chamber by some variety of proportional representation. Which is to prevail? The simple majority chamber says:’no it is we who represent the people: you are only a caricature and a distortion.’ One chamber must destroy the other and no constitutional device or convention will avert that.

And then Powell at his most logically simple.

Nothing is more handy for those engaged in political management, otherwise known as the art of governing, than a goodly reservoir of patronage, a pocketful of baubles by the description of which the wheels of governance can be greased. Thanks to the English virtue of snobbery, we enjoy in this country the blessings, unknown across the Atlantic, of inexpensive patronage. Of that patronage there is no source more convenient or plentiful than is afforded by a prescriptive upper house in the legislature.

From Wiki and Heffer:

There was an instinct, inarticulate but deep and sound, that the traditional, prescriptive House of Lords posed no threat and injured no interests, but might yet, for all its illogicalities and anomalies, make itself felt on occasion to useful purpose. The same sound instinct was repelled by the idea of a new-fashioned second chamber, artificially constructed by power, party and patronage, to function in a particular way. Not for the first time, the common people of this country proved the surest defenders of their traditional institutions.

With a rampant UN/IMF/CBs/BIS/C300 controlling our politicians who are now doing their bidding, we need some sort of bulwark. The best bulwark is us all joining together in glorious revolution but can you seriously see that happening in the near future – us combining?

The second [maybe interim] solution, in our country uniquely, is the Lords in the form it once was. Forget about power and privilege, forget about the politics of envy. I don’t want your money, you shouldn’t want mine and I don’t even want the banksters’ money, except as a matter of principle feeding it back into the coffers of the genuinely needy.

What I do want is a State institution which reins in the State and the State here is iDave, Clegg, Millipede and local council bandits, including Common Purpose.

Therefore, the integrity of the Lords should be supported by anyone valuing freedom and calling him or herself libertarian.