There is such a thing as society -
it’s just not the same as the state.

Via Libya and the War Powers Act – NYTimes.com, comment on Obama’s conflict with Congress over whether US participation is within his authority:

It would be hugely costly — for this country’s credibility, for the future of NATO and for the people of Libya — if Congress were to force President Obama to abandon military operations over Libya. However, Mr. Obama cannot evade his responsibility, under the War Powers Act, to seek Congressional approval to continue the operation.

…

But the 1973 act does not apply solely to boots-on-the-ground, full-out shooting wars. It says that 60 or 90 days after notifying Congress of the introduction of armed forces “into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated,” the president must receive Congressional authorization or terminate the mission.

The subject came up in Foreign Office questions on 7 June, when Richard Fuller pipped me to it:

Richard Fuller (Bedford, Conservative)

The good work of our armed forces, the Department for International Development and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in Libya depends on the support of the United States. Does the Foreign Secretary have any comment to make on moves in the US Congress to review President Obama’s decision on his commitment to our efforts in Libya?

William Hague (Secretary of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs; Richmond (Yorks), Conservative)

This has been a long-running constitutional issue in the United States of America between various Presidents and Congress, and I probably have enough on without wading into American constitutional theory. We are assured by the US Administration that—[Interruption.] No, I really am not going to wade into that. We are assured by the US Administration that they are entirely satisfied with the powers they have to undertake the operations that they are undertaking and that those operations will continue.

So there we have it. For my own part, the US War Powers Resolution seems simple enough and the NY Times is right: President Obama cannot evade his responsibility to secure Congressional approval. He should do so.

Via “1945-1998″ by Isao Hashimoto, a thought-provoking video which puts a particular context on nuclear detonations and radiation:

This piece of work is a bird’s eye view of the history by scaling down a month length of time into one second. No letter is used for equal messaging to all viewers without language barrier. The blinking light, sound and the numbers on the world map show when, where and how many experiments each country have conducted. I created this work for the means of an interface to the people who are yet to know of the extremely grave, but present problem of the world.

There were 2053 nuclear detonations in the period.

Ex-fighter pilots and relatives of war heroes joined commemorations as Sir Winston Churchill’s stirring ‘so much owed by so many to so few’ speech was read out, prompting tears in the crowd.

The actor Robert Hardy began reading out the speech at 3.52pm, exactly 70 years after the wartime prime minister delivered it in Parliament.

via War planes mark 70th anniversary of Winston Churchill’s Battle of Britain speech – Telegraph.

You can find the text of the speech here.

Today is the anniversary of one of the most extraordinary battles fought during the Cold War.

The battle by the (Glorious) Gloucester Regiment against an entire Chinese army at the Imjin River was one of the most exceptional moments of the war against totalitarian socialism. So, please, if you are minded, do join me to remember what price people paid on all sides in the battle between freedom and state control.

You can find a related video here. I will be helping in another constituency today, while reflecting on this quote:

I see now more clearly than ever before that even our greatest troubles spring from something that is as admirable and sound as it is dangerous — from our impatience to better the lot of our fellows.

– Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies: Volume 1 (Volume 2).

So here I am,  back online in our new High Wycombe home, just in time for this revolt against reason:

Following the ‘climategate scandal’, Mr Blair said the science may not be “as certain as its proponents allege”.

But he said the world should act as a precaution against floods, droughts and mass extinction caused by climate change, in fact it would be “grossly irresponsible” not to.

If I understand Blair correctly, he is following up his recent assertion of the form ‘we were right to go to war, irrespective of the facts’ with an assertion that ‘we should intervene heavily in the operation of society, irrespective of the facts’. This is sheer ideology: why not extend this philosophy to every social problem? I suspect he would answer, “Why not indeed?”

I am put in mind of my favourite philosopher, Karl Popper, who lived through mankind’s greatest period of social planning, with all the misery it entailed:

I see now more clearly than ever before that even our greatest troubles spring from something that is as admirable and sound as it is dangerous — from our impatience to better the lot of our fellows.

And:

We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than only freedom can make security more secure.

Not forgetting:

It seems to me certain that more people are killed out of righteous stupidity than out of wickedness.

Popper began of course, like Hayek, as a socialist. He simply came to his senses when he saw what it entailed.

A week or so ago, my wife and I had lunch in High Wycombe’s noodle bar. I struck up a conversation with the young waiter – I forget how it began – and found myself answering his complaint that he didn’t know what politics was about with, “It’s about whether we should have a planned or a free society.” He answered, “I know what I want, but I don’t know who will give it to me.” I explained that a vote for me is a vote for a free society, which lifted his spirits.

What a pass we have come to if the young think there is no hope for a free society. What would our grandparents say, after all they went through?