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August 19, 2011 11:00am by David Farrar

For young classical liberals

This conference is highly recommended. I know a dozen or so who have attended it, and all have raved about it.

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Comment39

NZ Politics
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Comments (39)

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YesWeDid

Is it only for white people with good teeth?
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August 19, 2011 11:12am
Longknives

Yeswedid- ??? Toothless Maoris don’t make great poster boys/girls- if that’s what you are suggesting….
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August 19, 2011 11:20am
Badger

I read “Free your wind”
:/
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August 19, 2011 11:32am
Scott Chris

Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy: (taken from the liberty and society website)

‘The heart of liberalism is the absence of coercion by others; consequently, the liberal state’s commitment to protecting liberty is, essentially, the job of ensuring that citizens do not coerce each other without compelling justification.’

I wonder what constitutes “without compelling justification”
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August 19, 2011 11:39am
bearhunter

Aren’t weekends away for politically like-minded young people simply indoctrination camps? I’m sure I read that in many comments here recently…
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August 19, 2011 11:40am
mikenmild

tsk tsk bearhunter
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August 19, 2011 11:42am
AG

My thought exactly, bearhunter.

I await the voluminous comments along the lines of “while shooting the participants might be a little bit extreme, what sort of evil ideology would engage in such a Nazi-like activity?”

So … OECD rank 22 kiwi, big bruv, Longknives, phoenix42, Put it away, et al … have at it!
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August 19, 2011 11:53am
Captain Neurotic

I can imagine the wankfeast now…
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August 19, 2011 11:57am
mikenmild

Well, the guy shows a bit of teutonic square-headedness, and his friend is almost the Rhine-maiden type,so I wonder exactly what they’re up to with these political ‘camps’. No doubt it is a more comfortable venue than the Ureweras though.
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August 19, 2011 12:08pm
Viking2

This appears to be voluntary and people can choose to attend or not. It would appear they can also decide to beleive or not.
Labour Camps are for those that are already indoctrinated at the craddle side.
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August 19, 2011 12:10pm
Viking2

Don’t complain MM. I could go camping with her. Looks much better than you. 😆
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August 19, 2011 12:12pm
Longknives

Mikenmild- I don’t know anything about this group but one would suggest that planning to blow up dams and kill the Prime Minister is a little extreme for their tastes…
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August 19, 2011 12:14pm
AG

V2,

He he he … so I guess the State should intervene to prohibit Labour camps (purely in order to protect the poor young folks who’ve been indoctrinated in their “craddles”)? Kind of like how it should teach the values of independence and self-reliance by providing young folks with benefit cards that only purchase State-sanctioned items?

In order to have a voluntary society, it is imperative that we have a strong State to suppress collectivism!
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August 19, 2011 12:16pm
mikenmild

AG

We could send them to ‘boot camps’.
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August 19, 2011 12:18pm
AG

@ Longknives: “I don’t know anything about this group …”

Given that, don’t you “find it a bit strange that the media won’t go into what this ‘camp’ [is] all about….who the hell were these people?” After all, you were VERY concerned about the issue here: http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2011/07/the_offensive_glenn_beck.html#comments
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August 19, 2011 12:19pm
Ed Snack

Perhaps the difference, for those to mired in leftism to notice, is that this is for young adults, you know, like those old enough to (perhaps) make up their own minds ? Unlike indoctrination camps where 13 and 14 year olds are taught to hate Jews.
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August 19, 2011 12:29pm
mikenmild

Are you sure it’s for young adults? Those two look very young to me.
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August 19, 2011 12:41pm
AG

You’re right, Ed! Only the left holds indoctrination camps for 13 and 14 year olds …

But wait! What is this?

“Here’s another option now that the kids are out of school: a weeklong seminar about our nation’s founding principles, courtesy of the Tampa 912 Project. The organization, which falls under the tea party umbrella, hopes to introduce kids ages 8 to 12 to principles that include “America is good,” “I believe in God,” and “I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable.””
http://www.tampabay.com/news/education/k12/tea-party-group-offers-summer-camp/1175119
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August 19, 2011 12:41pm
tristanb

I read “free your wind” too. And the expressions on their faces suggest that is just what happened.

I think the question that runs through everyone’s mind is how many girls will be there, what will look like, and just how “free” are they?
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August 19, 2011 12:43pm
Raging Glory

Libertarian politics = pussy and drugs
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August 19, 2011 12:57pm
adze

It’s probably a symptom of our Godwin-ad-infinitum zeitgeist that I could easily imagine an Art Deco sunburst pattern in the background with an eagle in the middle 🙂
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August 19, 2011 1:08pm
Phil

Libertarian politics = pussy and drugs

Alright, you’ve convinced me… where do I sign up?
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August 19, 2011 1:14pm
annie

The poster children look like happy-clappies and the conference comes across one that will end with everyone drinking the Kool-Aid.

It looks distinctly creepy.
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August 19, 2011 2:06pm
Ed Snack

Mikenmild, of course it’s a photo, but having children myself in the early teenage years I would have said as a minimum 18, and probably more like 20 years old. And at that age, unless they’re taught something illegal then they are free to chose what they attend. I wouldn’t say that of 13-14 year olds.

AG, sure, anyone can hold camps for children, but teaching what looks to be a relatively bland mash-up of American Civics with perhaps a religious twist doesn’t really rate with me like instructions on hating Jews. Looking at that description though, not likely to be very popular with 8 – 12 year olds, too boring for a start.
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August 19, 2011 2:31pm
AG

Ed,

Ah! So it’s not “indoctrination of kids” that we really oppose, it’s the wrong sort of indoctrination of kids. All we need now is the State-approved list of OK things to indoctrinate in. On that point, I think we can all agree that camps which teach people to hate jews are “a bad thing”. But seeing as that doesn’t relate to anything under discussion, it doesn’t get us very far.

(I know, I know – cue comment on how the Norwegian Labor Youth Camp was having courses on how to defeat the Israeli blockade of the Palestinian territories and how this is equal to hating jews and so the camp really WAS just like the Nazis had … it’s all here for anyone who wants to see how crazy works: http://noiri.blogspot.com/2011/07/another-look-at-norway-labor-party.html)
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August 19, 2011 2:47pm
Chthoniid

@YesWeDid

Is it only for white people with good teeth?

It looks like a stockphoto shot, the sort of thing you’d find if you had ‘young people’ and ‘sign’ as your search terms. These pretty much only give you three body types to choose from- White, E Asian & Black.
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August 19, 2011 3:11pm
RightNow

@AG – you too linking to the ‘Tea Party Summer Camp’? Did you even read what’s at your link?

“Tampa Liberty School will meet every morning July 11-15″

My kid’s kindergarten has a better chance of meeting the definition of a ‘camp’

This, on the other hand, pushes all the buttons for ‘Christian indoctrination’
https://www.firezone.co.nz/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1645:northern-easter-camp-2011-recap&catid=103:news-northern-division&Itemid=100074

Ooh, those evil Sallies eh?
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August 19, 2011 3:24pm
cha

Ooh, those evil Sallies eh?

The sallies showed their garden variety bigotry in 1986 but Jesus Camp, taking indoctrination in bigotry to a new level.
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August 19, 2011 3:36pm
William Fussey

Liberty and Society Conference is indeed worthwhile. I went in April 07 and absorbed a lot. It wasn’t just full of libertarians, although there were a few of those, there were also members of Australian Labor and Greens as well as Nats from NZ (which included me at the time). There was much healthy debate about a range of topics. Below are some extracts from my blog post on the weekend and therefore my views at the time.

Friday Night: There were about 30-35 of us including 5 New Zealanders. The speaker at the dinner was Tanveer Ahmed – a fascinating speaker. He discussed issues related to muslim integration and of the forging of one’s identity. He discussed ideas of the conflict between first, second and third generations of immigrants such as how the first generations often desires to cling to the traditions of the old world, attempting to limit their children’s interaction with white Australians. He pointed to how their strong opinions leads to differing forms of extremism among the later generations. A lot of the speech reminded me of one of my favourite novels: “White Teeth” by Zadie Smith in which these issues are thoroughly explored through one of the novel’s strands – the depiction of one muslim Bangladeshi’s family having emigrated to England.

Saturday morning saw Nick Southwood talk to us about the political philosophy of classical liberalism. It was a wonderful session: since I’d already looked at many of the issues in a first year philosophy paper it was easy to get a handle on. He’s a big fan of John Stuart Mill – and used him to get to the crux of the issue a few times: the fundament of classical liberalism being the harm principle, that anything goes unless it causes harm to others. Quite self-explanatory really – although defining harm can be quite tricky. It was quite a wide ranging talk on the theories of the philosophy of liberalism and managed to encompass a fair amount – such as the ridiculousness of utilitarianism. In the second half of his session he talked about groups – whether liberalism would allow one to sign up to a group that forced one to endure or do certain things – providing there was an exit strategy. This provoked a very healthy discussion – especially when we were in our breakout groups. One group came up with the extreme example of forming a snuff club whereby a member would join on the monday, agreeing to be shot on the friday, and waiving the right to an exit strategy. Nick seemed to think that one couldn’t consent to homicide. I asked him if this meant there was a limit to liberalism, and if so how one would decide where to draw the line. He couldn’t answer. Anyway – the hypothetical philosophical puzzles was one of the highlights of the weekend!

After lunch it was over to Jason Potts for the economics session. Jason is very strongly libertarian and is of the view that the market will solve everything. The market came across as Jason’s God. He even extends this to the privatisation of education which was an idea that provoked a lot of debate. In response to comments regarding ‘what about the poor?’ he seemed to think that they could just take out huge loans on their 5 year old child’s future educational needs. He certainly disagreed with some of us who thought a limited amount of paternalism in the education sector was justified. I think perhaps Wolfgang Kasper would have been a preferable lecturer for this section by what others have said.

Sunday morning’s lecture was delivered by Daryn Jensen and it was to do with the state of law. The second half of the session was good as we went off into breakout groups and analysed the State of Victoria’s Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001 with relation to some real-life situations, and whether they could have been charged under the Act. This of course led to a discussion about how far liberalism should extend into law – whether or not hate speech legislation for example can be justified.

The afternoon session was a real highlight. Peter Saunders discussed issues of the Welfare State and social policy. He provided a number of absorbing facts that highlighted the problems of welfare dependency in Australia (and New Zealand). There were some amazing statistics about how much the economy has grown, the country become richer, and yet significantly more is spent on welfare than ever before. He also pointed out things like how about half of the money we pay in tax comes straight back to us. He also introduced some interesting concepts such as negative income tax. The question was even asked whether the welfare state could and should be dumped entirely. Peter himself though is not really a libertarian, more classically liberal and hence has broadly similar views to myself on these issues. It was also mentioned about how cutting down the welfare state would get a public reaction about how the right-wing ‘doesn’t care’ about the poor etc – when it is in fact right-wing policies that tend to benefit the poor. But this line of reasoning often comes up against the brick wall of public ignorance and prejudice.
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August 19, 2011 3:41pm
RRM

I can hear them now…

It’s just AWFUL how much tax my Daddy has to pay to support beneficiaries, solo mothers and dead-beats.

I’m a liberal Arts student at University so I know all about hard work and standing on my own two feet!

***VOMIT***
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August 19, 2011 4:06pm
Scott Chris

cha – Jesus camp. Scary.
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August 19, 2011 4:20pm
andrewfalloon

Absolutely agree with what DPF and William Fussey have said, it is an amazing experience.

I’d take issue with the suggestion that it is only for classical liberals – yes, there are elements of classical liberalism, as there are elements from other strands – conservatism and libertarianism, but the course is for anyone with an interest in policy and freedom; the only real requisite being an open mind.

I went in 2006, and my now fiancée (far more socialist than i’d like to admit) went a year later. Both of us took a huge amount out of it, primarily a better understanding of what believe.
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August 19, 2011 4:21pm
Put it away

Cue all the feeble comments from people who prefer the state to tell them what to do.
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August 19, 2011 6:17pm
Other_Andy

The same people making spurious comparisons…

There is in my opinion a difference between the Norwegian Labour Party camps and the Tea Party ‘camps’ and this Liberty and Society conference.
Anybody can (and does) attend the Tea Party ‘camps’ and this Liberty and Society conference. And those arguing that the Tea Party is a political party still don’t know what the Tea Party is and stands for.

The Norwegian Labour Party camps are organised by a political party for members only.
The Norwegian camp was run by the Youth Movement (Formed after a merger of the Communist Youth League and Socialist Youth League of Norway) of the Labour Party and the island is owned by the Workers’ Youth League, the youth wing of the Labour Party.
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August 19, 2011 6:46pm
big bruv

Oh yes..I can see it now…scores of liberals yelling….”I should be free to take what ever drugs I like, I should be free to put any substance into my body, who are the state to tell me what I can do?”

What they don’t say is …” and the state (tax payer) can pay for my rehabilitation when I decide I want to come clean”
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August 19, 2011 8:32pm
niggly

To those earlier commentators, stop picking on the young adults in the pic …. they can’t help being Aussies!
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August 19, 2011 8:36pm
Ed Snack

Ah AG, you did get it, only that Norwegian camp was a little more than “breaking the blockade”, but let that pass. Nothing on what they were or were not teaching or whatever at that camp could justify what happened of course.

Actually, I’d be against any “indoctrination” as such, and there are wide views about what constitutes indoctrination and at what age that might apply. For example a camp that adults, even if young adults, attend entirely voluntarily, and I think it is different to one that children under the age of 16 say, attend. For the first, short of illegal material, almost anything goes, one has to presume that unless one endorses action against thought crimes, that adults are entitled to make up their own minds. But with children, even quite old children, one presumes that the subject matter should be more carefully treated. It is easier supposed to be easier to “indoctrinate” children. Yes, I’d support some limits on what you could indoctrinate children in, wouldn’t you, or is it open slather in your world view AG ? Open slather of course for the “right” indoctrination. Far from it being a classically liberal idea, indoctrination is in modern times almost symptomatic of the left or the religiously intolerant.
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August 19, 2011 9:03pm
mikenmild

I wouldn’t think ‘classic liberals’ would endorse ‘limits on what you could indoctrinate children in’. Surely that would be the prerogative of the parents. It wouldn’t be the role of the state to decide what children could or could not be taught.
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August 19, 2011 9:08pm
Clint Heine

The only thing I’d be wary of is letting Young Nats anywhere near it when their gasp of individual freedoms and liberty isn’t really their strong point.

But more funny are the lefties here that claim immediately, without even know anything about the event that it is a “right wing” event. It’s proof that the left think freedom and a free society is the haven of the right – while statist control and collective stupidity belongs to the left.

Thanks to every one of you leftards for admitting it so readily.
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August 20, 2011 9:13am

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