Posted on 02/24/2005 12:32:34 AM PST by ijcr
A former colleague of mine was involved as an expert witness for the defendant in a civil case not long ago. A short time thereafter, he bumped into the judge at a golf clubhouse, who half recognised him.
"Are you a doctor?", he said.
"Yes", replied my colleague.
"And weren't you a witness in a case recently?"
"Yes".
The judge then asked him what he thought of the outcome. My colleague replied: "I think that the defendant would have received a fairer hearing in a kangaroo court run by generals in a South American military dictatorship".
I need hardly say that this remark brought the conversation to a close. But as reported, it set me thinking about the nature of our own freedom: how much freer are we than the citizens of a South American dictatorship (in the old days, where there were such things)? How free, exactly, are we?
I don't want to indulge in any self-pitying false comparisons. We have neither Gestapo nor Gulag, and it is an insult to all those who have experienced such things in their own flesh and blood (or bone, as they say in Spanish, perhaps more accurately) to compare our small tribulations with theirs. Irritations are not tragedies.
Nevertheless, I think we are less free than we used to be. The weight of the state is making itself everywhere felt. In my former professional life as a doctor, for example, I was obliged more and more to obey the dictates of ministers, rather than those of my medical beliefs.
Whereas when I started out on my career all that was necessary to continue in practice was that I should be qualified and that I should refrain from behaving in an egregious or outrageous manner, by the time I retired this year I had to fulfil all sorts of requirements, all of which (in this age of evidence-based medicine) were quite without evidence of use or efficacy. But that is not the real point of such requirements: they are not there to improve the quality of medical practice; they are there to let us all know who is boss. And even if they were effective, which is intrinsically very difficult to prove, they would still represent a loss of liberty.
The fact is that the requirements laid down by ministers and their bureaucrats now take up fully half the time of senior doctors, when they could be doing clinical work, and this at a time of shortage of medical manpower. Most doctors, except for the apparatchiks among them, are profoundly unhappy about this, and are taking retirement as soon as possible.
An increasing proportion of medical graduates never practice medicine, because the career is now so deeply unattractive to them, and they can do better elsewhere. Having brought this situation about, the government has launched its Improving Working Lives initiative, still failing to realise that it is the sinner, not the saviour.
There are other ways in which the state (by which I mean all agencies vested with public power) weighs increasingly heavily upon us, quite apart from the fact that we spend nearly a half of our working life paying for it. Here are a few random indicators:
1. The other day, at dawn, a large council vehicle parked outside my house with a very tall crane-like attachment, from the top of which photographs were taken of the neighbourhood, including my house. No one had felt obliged explain why, or for what purpose the photographs were to be used. The city is the council's and the fullness thereof.
2. Once a year, I receive through the post a letter marked with the exhortatory words, "Don't lose your right to vote – register now". Added to this is the warning, in case I don't feel like exercising my right, "Failure to comply could lead to a £1000 fine". This is like being accosted by a beggar in the street who simultaneously appeals to your charity and menaces you if you don't cough up.
3. Every few months, I receive a letter from the TV licensing agency, who do not believe that I do not have a television. Once again I am threatened with a £1000 fine, and also warned that my house will soon be spied upon unless I buy a licence.
4. When I drive out in my car, I am immediately in the presence, every few hundred yards, of cameras. (The British are now the most heavily surveyed people by CCTV in the world. There were more than fifty CCTV cameras in the hospital in which I worked, most of them hidden.) I don't want to drive like a lunatic, and in fact conduct on the road is the one aspect of British behaviour that is still superior to that of most foreigners, and was so even before the cameras were emplaced. Even if they are effective, and reduce accidents, they add to the pervasive feeling of being spied upon by the state.
5. Our police now look more like an occupying military force than citizenry in uniform. They are both menacing and ineffectual (quite an achievement), and even law-abiding citizens are now afraid of them. If you want to ask the time, don't bother a policeman. I know from medico-legal experience that the police are far more interested in preserving themselves from the public than from preventing or investigating crimes, up to and including attempted murder. This is not because, as individuals, they are bad men and women; it is because of the same kind of bureaucratic regulation imposed on them as it has been imposed on doctors and other professions.
6. I own a flat in London and have recently learned that I must replace a boiler, not because it does not work or because it is dangerous, but because the regulations have changed, for reasons that it would be impossible to discover, except that they obey the rule of Keynesian economics to stimulate demand and keep it stimulated. And this in practice would mean that, if I still want gas heating, I have to put a new boiler in my living room.
And so it goes on – and on. Very rarely nowadays do I feel myself free of the state. Its power has increased, is increasing and ought to be decreased. But I am not the man to do it. By retiring, I have withdrawn myself from it as far as possible. Il faut cultiver notre jardin.
I hope they are--the innocent fear not the watchers; indeed, they appreciate their vigilance...as do I here.
I have nothing further to say to you
Nor do I to you...this will end the second I don't see an "new posts to you" at the end of my refresh button with the name "Mad Ivan" attached to it--not before...
That's one sure way to never hear from me again...
(Not the abuse minister...the argument minsiter...make sure you get the right room. /grin)
of course if you have to ask you are proving my point...
Just not too much currency, lest the police confiscate it without laying charges.
I'm sorry mate but as far as I see, America's freedom is seriously under attack. The moral thought-police are systematically 'purifying' your media. I mean, look at the crisis that exploded after Jackson's 'wardrobe malfunction'. The whole country was in paroxysms of fear and angst over a split-second image of a woman's breast. When I heard about that, alarm bells rang. Over here, we get to see that kind of stuff - and lots more - all the time. Doesn't it piss you off that a bunch of moralising morons are dictating what you can and cannot watch on TV?
I understood it was a hypothetical. My understanding was that if the same sermon was given in the UK it would lead to arrest. (and I was being somewhat tounge in cheek with the poster)
The Philly 5 were ultimately released. We have bad apples here in the US...the prosecutor that authorized those charges should be disbarred - you just don't arrest people under those circumstances.
While the UK is clearly not free...MHO is that the US is just a shade behind you.
G'day.
See #67.
Read the list, UK is the 7th freeest, the USA is the 13th.
http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/countries.cfm
You can't really argue with that, especially as it was compilled by such a fine organisation as The Heritage Foundation, of which Rush Limbaugh has said,
"Some of the finest conservative minds in America today do their work in The Heritage Foundation"
http://www.heritage.org/about/
oh, and BTW...I didn't have to pay the government a license fee to see that malfunction.
I still can't get over that fact...that you guys on the othe side of the pond need a license for a TV.
I'm wondering how long it will be before the screaming Socialists over here want to license personal use TVs, radios and computers???
Its not so much that we British need a licence for a TV like Americans would need a licence for a gun or a pet wolverine: the TV licence was the only means of paying for the BBC (the only TV service back in the days of Lord Reith) and was therefore mandatory.
Now the BBC has become (IMO) your lefty-NPR writ large, it is a problem. But back when it was providing quality TV with no ads, few in the UK had a problem with it.
"The whole country was in paroxysms of fear and angst over a split-second image of a woman's breast."
No, we weren't. We were disgusted that a family show turned into an MTV bump-and-grind sex simulation. It just isn't appropriate. Believe it or not, parents not only have sex, we enjoy it, but we don't want it on the TV for our kids. When they're older, they can make their own decisions about the value and quality of the popular culture, but until then, we want network television to remain tame and family-oriented. God knows that people who want to watch sex can do so at almost no cost 24-7 if they want-- it's all over cable TV, the internet, movie rentals, magazines, etc., etc..
But, can we please keep just a small portion of the public square suitable for people of all ages, for families? Thank you for your support.
own a tv; you do.
own a gun; you can't.
I know that if the governemnt comes through the door of my home they will have obtained a warrant from a judge based on probable cause. You don't because your government isn't so restrained.
I have 10 very specific individual rights enshrined in a document - you don't.
That (document is/those rights are) continuously under attack by people who say they want us to live under a governmetn like yours...and they are very anti-individual rights. What does that tell you?
So the Heritage Foundation can stick it's study. And as I've previously posted, the US is definately right behind the UK in restricting individual rights in favor of the State.
That said, I'm still a citizen and you're still a subject. I'm a politically sovereign entity under our form of government and your are not under yours.
Any questions?
Interesting...so now the State has competion from private TV? Hadn't heard that.
The problem with the Beeb is that 27,000 mostly left of centre shiny bums rely on it for their living.
If it is forced to live in the real world and earn its own living, there will be redundancies and those people and their families friends and sympathisers are unlikely to back the government which wields the axe.
Turkeys tend not to vote for Christmas.
It's a too typical tactic of people who don't have a leg to stand on to point to newer members sign on date, as if to say, you just started forming your opinions on the day you became a member, therefore they are without merit.
It seems a "newbie" is anyone who signed on at least one day after they did.
Strictly speaking British people don't need a licence to own a TV, just to watch the BBC. Its a tax or subscription, not a licence except by an accident of nomenclature.
Several court cases have been won by "licence-dodgers" on the basis that their TV was for watching non-BBC products. I will be joining their ranks when I've adequately researched the subject.
What a quote! You have encapsulated the problem concisely, as usual. :0)
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