Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the
tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds

Something posted by Big Brother Watch on DNA prompted me to glance back at Albert Speer’s Inside The Third Reich. In the conclusions to this book, the war criminal wrote, referring to his final remarks at Nuremburg:

The criminal events of those years were not only an outgrowth of Hitler’s personality. The extent of the crimes was also due to the fact that Hitler was the first to be able to employ the implements of technology to multiply crime.

I thought of the consequences that unrestricted rule together with the power of technology–making use of it but also driven by it–might have in the future. [...]

“The nightmare shared by many people,” I said, “that some day the nations of the world may be dominated by technology-that nightmare was very nearly made a reality under Hitler’s authoritarian system. Every country in the world today faces the danger of being terrorized by technology; but in a modern dictatorship this seems to me to be unavoidable. Therefore, the more technological the world becomes, the more essential will be the demand for individual freedom and the self-awareness of the individual human being as the counterpoise to technology… [...]”

“The catastrophe of this war,” I wrote in my cell in 1947, “has proved the sensitivity of the system of modern civilisation evolved in the course of centuries. Now we know that we do not live in a earthquake-proof structure. The build-up of negative impulses, each reinforcing the other, can inexorably shake to pieces the complicated apparatus of the modern world. There is no halting of this process by will alone. The danger is that the automatism of progress will depersonalize man further and withdraw more and more of his self-responsibility.”

Dazzled by the possibilities of technology, I devoted crucial years of my life to serving it. But in the end my feelings about it are highly skeptical.

In the book’s afterword, Speer explains that he wrote the book not only to describe the past, but to issue warnings for the future. Though from time to time Big Brother Watch gets on my nerves through its tone, I feel it fills an essential niche: we shall always need someone to remind us how dangerous technology can be.

The Economist described Speer’s book as “A classic”. I recommend it for a perspective on why we shall always need Big Brother Watch.

From bella gerens, an excellent explanation and defence of libertarianism:

The truth is that advocates of freedom are found all over the political spectrum, but the only true libertarians are the ones who advocate it at all times in all circumstances, from the bedroom to the wallet – who believe that ‘freedom from’ is the only state of being consistent with the dignity and majesty of humankind.

‘Freedom from’ is the most important part of that ideology. Freedom from coercion. Freedom from interference. Freedom from oppression.

‘Freedom to’ is where the misunderstandings enter. People on the right think libertarians are advocating freedom to burgle, rob, rape, murder – because they read ‘freedom’ to mean ‘freedom to do whatever you please.’

People on the left think libertarians are advocating exploitation, pollution, callousness, and the primacy of making (and keeping) money above all else – because they read ‘freedom’ to mean ‘freedom to do whatever you please.’

And both sides think libertarians consider the laws we have prohibiting these activities to be a restriction on freedom.

When will they realise that they don’t understand?

It is now undeniable that a century or so of managerialism — of thinking the state knows best and is entitled to trespass on your private property for your own good and for that of your fellows — has succeeded in creating a segment of society within which anything goes and from which it is increasingly hard to escape: a segment populated by libertines who torment themselves and others despite a state which tries desperately to care for them at vast expense, an expense it forces on everyone, including those of meagre means.

Of course, the approach has now also succeeded in ruining us all, though not all have yet realised it, while delivering a state with tremendous power over our lives, and virtually every aspect of our lives too. Consider:

The state now looms far larger in many parts of Britain than it did in former Soviet satellite states such as Hungary and Slovakia as they emerged from communism in the 1990s, when state spending accounted for about 60% of their economies.

The question now is not how state power should be used to save us, but how state power can be gracefully dismantled so that we can save ourselves and one another from a system which plainly does not work.

What should now follow is a social system of mutual cooperation based on private property and the rule of law. Whether such a system comes to pass is up to us.