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25 January 2011

Hajek o Pinočeu, Salazaru demokratiji, ljudskim pravima...

Kao reakcija na pismo jednog čitaoca londsonskom Timesu iz 1978, koji ga je optužio da podržava razne desničarske, autoritarne režime poput Salazara i Pinočea, Hajek odgovara u pismu uredniku istog lista:

Sir,

Though I can scarcely expect you to find space in your columns for the instruction Mr William Wallace (July 24) evidently needs, I shall appreciate it if you can do so for a brief reply.

I have certainly never contended that generally authoritarian governments are more likely to secure individual liberty than democratic ones, but rather the contrary. This does not mean, however, that in some historical circumstances personal liberty may not have been better protected under an authoritarian than democratic government. This has occasionally been true since the beginning of democracy in ancient Athens, where the liberty of the subjects was undoubtedly safer under the ’30 tyrants’ than under the democracy which killed Socrates and sent dozens of its best men into exile by arbitrary decrees.

In Modern times there have of course been many instances of authoritarian governments under which personal liberty was safer than under democracies. I have never heard anything to the contrary of the early years of Dr Salazar’s early government in Portugal and I doubt whether there is today in any democracy in Eastern Europe or on the continents of Africa, South America or Asia (with the exception of Israel, Singapore and Hongkong), personal liberty as well secured as it was then in Portugal.

More recently I have not been able to find a single person even in much maligned Chile who did not agree that personal freedom was much greater under Pinochet than it had been under Allende. Nor have I heard any sensible person claim that in the principalities of Monaco or Lichtenstein, which I am told are not precisely democratic, personal liberty is smaller than anywhere else!

That a limited democracy is probably the best possible known form of government does not mean that we can have it everywhere, or even that it is itself a supreme value rather than the best means to secure peace, a defensor pacis or instrument of peaceful change of government. Indeed our doctrinaire democrats clearly ought to take more seriously the question when democracy is possible.

Perhaps they can be induced to reflect on this by pointing to the truism that, except in the direct democracy based on an assembly of all citizens, a democracy can never create itself but must always be the product of the authoritarian decision of a few – and be this only the decisions about the questions to be asked and the procedure to be followed in a plebiscite. After all, some democracies have been made possible only by the military power of some generals. And my old doubts whether a democracy can be maintained in a country which has not by different institutions been taught the tradition of the rule of law has certainly been only confirmed by recent history.

Yours faithfully,
F.A Hayek


HT Željko Simović, Borislav Ristić

Libertarijanizam, in flagranti, opet

Prethodni post je slikovita (i doslovno) kritika kolektivizma i socijalizma.

No, dozvolite da primetim da ima još većih nevolja od Kim Il Sunga. I da ovo što je predmet sadašnjeg posta, uz sve uvažavanje prethodnog, ima možda i većeg uticaja da dugoročne izglede slobode u svetu. Radi se naravno o tome ko zastupa ideje slobode danas.

Reason magazine je vrlo popularan, cenjen, ugledan, da ne kažem "fancy" portal, jedan od najuticajnijih i najčitanijih koji postoje.

Verujem da bolji poznavaoci savremen politike među vama neće mnogo iznenaditi kad kažem da su 2008 skoro svi autori i urednici ovog lista glasali za Obamu. I to pogledajte sa kakvim sve sumanutim, maloumnim obrazloženjima:

Reason Magazine, Presidential Poll 2008

Question 1. Who are you voting for in November?

"If the polls in my home state are close: Obama" - Peter Bagge, contributing editor

"Obama. The Republicans must be punished and punished hard." - Ronald Bailey, science correspondent

"I plan to vote for Obama mainly because he is not a Republican and not John McCain, who is temperamentally unfit to be president." - Bruce Bartlett, columnist

"For not a single "liberal" reason, I am voting not only for Obama, but for the GOP to be utterly spanked and sent into exile" - David Brin, columnist

"Barack Obama. All my life I've been waiting for a black president; Obama's not monumentally unqualified, and his solid-if-boring book at least had some unkind words for teachers unions. Also my kids like him." - Tim Cavanaugh, contributing editor

"Barack Obama, for two main reasons: The Republican Party, which has jettisoned its best inclinations and indulged its worst for the last eight years, richly deserves exile from the White House, and 2) because he shows an intelligence and temperament that suggest he will govern more pragmatically than ideologically—the best that can be hoped for from a Democratic president." - Steve Chapman, columnist

"Ralph Nader, because I never got the chance to vote for Gene Debs or Norman Thomas." - Bill Kauffman, columnist

"Barack Obama, since he's a genuine leader, with a good program for cleaning up Washington, and will be very good for business." - Craig Newmark, contributor

"Barack Obama, because he most exemplifies Reason and Free Minds" - Steven Pinker, contributor

"I really just want the Republicans to lose." - Damon W. Root, associate editor

"I am voting for Barack Obama, because I believe in hope and change and unicorns. Also, John McCain is dangerously mentally unfit to be president and has decided, with his choice of Sarah Palin, to complete the transformation of the GOP into a southern-centered party based on social division and cultural resentment." - Ryan Sager, columnist

"Living in the District of Columbia, I see little reason to mar my as- yet unblemished record of nonvoting. But if I lived in Virigina or Florida, I'd be ticking the box for Obama" - Julian Sanchez, contributing editor

"I'll be voting for Obama, because I think as a nation we're about to descend into a pile of hurt, and I want someone who is smart, pragmatic, and not prone to temper tantrums working to get us out of it as quickly as possible." - John Scalzi, contributor

"Barack Obama. I could give 100 reasons, but I'll just say civil liberties. He's not perfect, and yes, he sold out on warrantless wiretapping, but on the whole, he's been better in this area than any presidential candidate in my voting lifetime." - RU Sirius, nom-de-plume contributor

"I will vote for Obama on behalf of everyone watching in the world, because he’s the coolest to watch on television." - Doug Stanhope, contributor

"I’m voting for Barack Obama, the only remaining candidate whom I trust not to run the country (further) into the ground with stupid and erratic decisions, and who (miraculously for a Democrat) has run a less brain-dead, faux-populist campaign than the Republican." - David Weigel, associate editor

"I think an Obama victory would be the lesser of two evils overall, but I will probably vote for Bob Barr" - Cathy Young, contributing editor


To su ljudi koji idu okolo i prestavljaju se kao "libertarijanci", i koji ponekad štaviše imaju utisak da su ovlašćeni da dele ili uskraćuju libertarijanske akreditive, kao u slučaju Ron Paula. Libertarijanci kojima je Ron Paul rđav kandidat, ali je Obama super? Da, upravo tako.

To su ljudi s kojima smo mi pošli u rat. "Intelektualni predvodnici", avangarda, što reko drug Lenjin. Nije ni čudo što nam tako dobro ide.