Kyrel Zantonavitch's new review on Amazon of my book, 'Total Passion for the Total Height,' prompted me to start re-reading the thing myself. As I made my way through the Introduction I became quite exercised by the trenchant accuracy of my own observations, and motivated to lift myself from the pessimistic funk induced by the horrors of which I write. It occurred to me that I'd never published that Introduction here. Here it is (oh, and of course, buy the book if you want more!):
Introduction
I'm proud to present at last this selection from my writings, speeches and radio and television editorials—most of them since the time I founded The Free Radical magazine in 1994. One year earlier I had left TVNZ, pronouncing its news and current affairs "braindead." At that time I was also presenting a pro-freedom breakfast session on, of all places, World Service New Zealand, the local break-out of the anti-freedom BBC. From then till now my single-minded over-riding passion has been to proselytise for liberty. The samples of my polemics reproduced here, I fondly suppose, would, if absorbed and acted upon, be sufficient to liberate New Zealand—and indeed the world—from the slave-pen of statism.
Fat chance of that, however. To say I've been breaking wind against thunder would be understating it somewhat. New Zealanders are less interested in being free now than when I set out on my mission. Thomas Jefferson said that the natural order of things is for government to gain ground and liberty to yield. Anti-Liberty, it seems, is a monster that grows multiple new heads every time one is lopped off. Not just in New Zealand but worldwide, the old-style totalitarianism of places like the Soviet Union has been replaced by soft tyranny via the relentless advance of the Nanny State and Political Correctness. These are smart forms of creeping despotism in line with the strategy of Gramsci, of whom I write here. Generating a counter–"Long March through the Culture" is proving to be well-nigh impossible, and it may well be that only a much-deserved international cataclysm will jolt survivors into repairing to government confined to securing the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
As it is, libertarians are hit by multiple whammies. At the same time as freedom is subject to ongoing assault, government education churns out citizens too conceptually catatonic to identify the assault, or even to understand what freedom is. Never in the field of human discourse have so many had such universally audible megaphones ... and had so little to say (see my short diatribe on "Faecesbook"). All these zombies have the vote, which they will cast for whoever dangles the biggest bribe. Generation Airhead, steeped in the culture of "cool," is all too eager to be gathered up by Nanny's tentacles and dumped into her suckhole, an amorphous mass of conformist blobs. Political Correctness dictates that no one may cause offence, meaning no one may say what I just said, rendering political discourse so blandified that the parties are indistinguishable one from another, with the ostensibly pro-freedom parties intimidated into making their message unrecognisable (see "The Blandification of [N]ACT"). In many fields, mediocrity is valued and deliberately cultivated over excellence (see "The Rice for the Putts" and "The Dunce-ification of Everythink"). Collectivism is running amok. President Obama can utter a crudely communistic, envy-driven atrocity such as, "If you own a business, you didn't build that," and his burgeoning constituency of Occupy Wall St dregs cheers him to the echo (see my various articles on "The Anti-American President"). Conceptual dysfunction is so rampant that "rights" are now deemed to pertain to puddles but not people (see my ruminations on eco-fascism).
All of this is rather a lot to take on, especially when doing so makes one a pariah; this is not a culture that welcomes dissenting voices. I personally am now black-listed by all media; this book has been turned down by a string of publishers who praised its content but deemed it unlikely to sell and/or too hot to handle. This response from one of the heavy hitters was typical:
”While you are indeed a very clever and accomplished writer and communicator, our list wouldn't be the natural home for a book such as yours. As a general trade market publisher we don't specialise in handling political or philosophical works, which is what I think you have presented in this selection of your published views and commentaries. Very clearly expressed views, eloquently and cleverly articulated views - but on balance a much more serious book with weightier themes than we would feel able to do justice to - perhaps this might be better suited to one of the University presses?”
Yeah, right!
Ultimately, the Anti-Liberty Monster's many heads must all be lopped off in one fell meta-swoop. Whether or not this can happen without the catalyst of a shocking global cataclysm is moot, but the fact remains: a philosophical revolution is what's needed. The doctrine that man is a sacrificial animal who exists for the edification of the collective—the equivalent of a dutiful ant that has no right to chart its own course—must be, to change the metaphor, uprooted. The opposing proposition, that each human being has the right to live his life as she chooses, as long as he doesn't infringe the right of others to do the same, must become as ingrained as statist sacrifism is now.
I hope this book serves as ammunition for that revolution.