Is mankind's highest ideal to live without
incident or adventure? And if so,
when did this begin?

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?

Just 150 Afghan voters dared to go to the ballot box in the area of Helmand province where British soldiers sacrificed their lives to secure a safe election day, it was revealed yesterday.

The figures were released as the British Ambassador to Kabul admitted that troops could be engaged in combat in Afghanistan for five more years.

The Electoral Commission in Kabul said that early estimates of voting in the former Taleban stronghold of Babaji, north of Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital, indicated that few exercised their right to vote last Thursday. Several thousand people could have voted.

via Four British soldiers die for sake of 150 votes – Times Online .

From the Mises store:

How Government in the Ancient World Tried to Deal with Modern Problems

What a fantastic way to learn ancient history: via the parallels with modern times.

H.J. Haskell was a journalist with a huge background in ancient history, and here he does what everyone has wanted done. He details the amazing catalog of government interventions in old Rome that eventually brought the empire down. He shows the spending, the inflating, the attempt to fix prices and raise wage, the infrastructure boondoggles, the gross displays of public entertainment, the welfare scams, and much more.

At every step he draws a parallel with modern times. Modern governments also destroy the money to fund the state, extend vast military empires that are unmanageable, try to control the market order, and attempt to rig political decision making in order to buy off the population.

The comparisons between then and now generate ominous lessons for our times.

This book was a smash hit when it first came out in 1939, and yet it went out of print, and hasn’t been in print in half a century.

It seems fascinating and the PDF of the book is available here.

Update: From the conclusion:

The fundamental modern social problem is the problem that Rome failed to solve. It is the problem of building a unified yet free society, with decent minimum standards of living. A society so intelligently and justly organized that there is no menacing submerged class. A society that provides reasonable incentives for the free rise of a general staff of competent managers whose ranks are always open to fresh recruits. A society that develops a social pressure under which leaders accept an enlightened and far-sighted view of their responsibilities. This is the society which the long experience of Rome sets as a goal before the modern world.

As ever, it seems, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Beth’s Grandma talked us through some key memories today, from a life lived in just two central Birmingham streets:

• The earthquake, which rearranged the furniture, despite people sitting on it.
• The tornado, which filled the lounge with electrical fire, burning out the TV, before moving on to destroy in adjacent streets.
• Running through the streets during a WW II air raid, trying to find space in one of the bomb shelters, only to be turned away, and nearly tripping over an unexploded bomb.
• The time Grandpa saved a man’s life after his leg had been wrecked by an incendiary bomb.
• The time Grandpa — a train driver — hitched an engine to a train of bombed and burning cattle wagons and drove them out of Birmingham, with German bombers overhead, to avoid compromising the blackout.

Tough little lady, Grandma. And much as this is an economic crisis, things could be worse.