Real Liberals

29/07/2024

All those who believe in democracy — left, right, and center — must speak up about Venezuela.
People’s votes must be respected.

Silence is complicit in autocracy.
🇻🇪

08/05/2024

"The tug of war between conservatives and progressives can only affect the speed, not the direction, of contemporary developments. What the liberal must ask, first of all, is not how fast or how far we should move, but where we should move."
--Friedrich Hayek, May 8, 1899-Mar 23, 1992

08/04/2024

"You could not have political freedom unless you have economic liberty—in other words, free enterprise—because wealth is not created by government, it is created by the talent and enterprise of individuals in an atmosphere of freedom."

Margaret Thatcher, Oct 13, 1925 - Apr 8, 2013

15/02/2024

"In the 1980s Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher built a new conservatism around markets and freedom. Today Donald Trump, Viktor Orban and a motley crew of Western politicians have demolished that orthodoxy, constructing in its place a statist, 'anti-woke' conservatism that puts national sovereignty before the individual."

It’s dangerous and it’s spreading. Liberals need to find a way to stop it

27/02/2022

Stand up for freedom and democracy.

08/04/2021

Margaret Thatcher passed away 8 years ago today.

Longest-serving British PM of the 20th century, first woman PM, free-market revolutionary, and freedom fighter.

We need her zeal for individual freedom more than ever.

07/03/2021

Freedom is indivisible. Once the State controls the means of production, distribution and exchange, all of us become dependent upon it. The whole nation becomes dependent upon the decisions of the bureaucracy and the politicians. And it is obviously so. If the State is the only source of capital, then only those ideas, those people, and those aims which are approved by the State can get the money for development.

____

1975 Jul 1 Tu, Margaret Thatcher.
Speech launching "Free Enterprise Week".

18/10/2020

"The persecution of the Uyghurs [...] is the most extensive violation in the world today of the principle that individuals have a right to liberty and dignity simply because they are people."

It is also the gravest example of a worldwide attack on human rights

13/09/2020

Apparently, it's David Hume's turn to be cancelled... Shame on you, University of Edinburgh. Stupidity knows no bounds.

"THERE is a Set of Men lately sprung up amongst us, who endeavour to distinguish themselves by ridiculing every Thing, that has hitherto appear'd sacred and venerable in the Eyes of Mankind.
[...]
There is another Humour, which may be observ'd in some Pretenders to Wisdom, and which, if not so pernicious as the idle petulant Humour above-mention'd, must, however, have a very bad Effect on those, who indulge it. I mean that grave philosophic Endeavour after Perfection, which, under Pretext of reforming Prejudices and Errors, strikes at all the most endearing Sentiments of the Heart, and all the most useful Byasses and Instincts, which can govern a human Creature." --David Hume

https://www.ed.ac.uk/news/students/2020/equality-diversity-and-inclusion-an-update

An update on the work of the University’s Equality & Diversity Committee and its Race Equality and Anti-Racist Sub-committee.

20/06/2020

“It may be said without exaggeration that the great extent and rapid increase of international trade, in being the principal guarantee of the peace of the world, is the great permanent security for the uninterrupted progress of the ideas, the institutions, and the character of the human race.”
—J.S. Mill

16/06/2020

Within our universities we must uphold freedom of thought and of discussion. We must debate the burning issues. We must fiercely fight the battle of ideas. And we must do all this in a spirit of good humour, tolerance and mutual respect.

Freedom of discussion is something more than just freedom of speech. Discussion requires a willingness to listen as much as a capacity to debate. Through discussion we both teach and learn - and the wider the discussion goes the more likely we are to increase the stock of human understanding.

Freedom of discussion may be threatened in several ways.

Most obviously it may be deliberately suppressed, discouraged or penalised by the authorities.

It may also be reduced as individuals are intimidated out of their beliefs by those subtle and corrupting pressures so well described by Alexander Solzhenitzyn as the “censorship of fashion” .

Or it may simply wither - deprived of light and life by a collective desire to pursue a so-called “consensus” at any price, even the price of principle. John Stuart Mill in his famous essay On Liberty wrote: “if all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”

There is also a material loss when a dull uniformity, of the sort which socialism like other totalitarian impulses before it encourages, comes to replace individuality and diversity.

______

1991 Oct 3 Th, Margaret Thatcher.
Speech at Jagiellonian University in Krakow.