What Does a Political Campaign of Speaking Truth to Power Tell Us?

By Vinay Kolhatkar

April 24, 2024

Editor’s Note: Savvy Street’s founder, Vinay Kolhatkar, was invited by the Libertarian Party (Australia) to run as their candidate for the byelection triggered by the resignation of Australia’s former Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, in the federal seat of Cook, named after explorer James Cook, whose statues in Australia have been exposed to vandalism.

In Australia, the conservatives are aggregated in a coalition of two parties called the Liberal Party and the Nationals (LNC). The LNC is one of the two major parties. The Liberals profess to be classically liberal on their founding documents and website but have long since capitulated to polls demanding more climate action. See, for example, “On Election Day, Australia Commits Climate Suicide,” a roundup of the 2022 federal election.

The Libertarian Party was previously called the Liberal Democratic Party, which led to some confusion votes benefit occasionally. A name change was forced upon the party by a court case initiated by the Liberals, and the name Libertarian Party (LP) was chosen in October 2023. The word “libertarian” is not in the Australian lexicon. The idea was to run on a platform of seven truths that the Liberals dare not speak up about and showcase the LP as a knowledgeable truth teller, in an intense three-week campaign.

This was only the second time that the LP ran under a libertarian banner. The first was also a federal seat byelection in Victoria in which the LP secured 2.6% of the vote. In Cook, NSW, the LP secured 6% of the vote. On polling day, the Australian Electoral Commission had 39 booths open. They also had four polling booths for a whole two weeks prior to that. Voting is compulsory in Australia. Only a major party could cover each booth every day with volunteers handing out How-to-Vote (HTV) flyers. Broadly speaking, the LP secured 6-14% of the vote at the 13 booths it covered well and below 6% at the 26 booths it did not cover. Cook has been a safe Liberal seat since 1975, and they won it again very comfortably.

The outcome is only somewhat indicative of the percentage of voters who have awakened to the seismic faults in our politics.

Election outcomes, however, are decided by many factors—the lack of knowledge of real economics and major truths (e.g., climate) is one major factor. Javier Milei’s adviser, for instance, argues that most Argentinians have voted for change, rather than turned into a nation of libertarians. Thus, the outcome is only somewhat indicative of the percentage of voters who have awakened to the seismic faults in our politics, but it concurs with the anecdotal evidence on the hustings and particularly at the poll booths. Given the establishment’s enormous and expanding influence over academe, research, and media, moving that percentage up will remain a massive challenge in the foreseeable future. But there are people out there willing to make substantive sacrifices of time and energy to make things happen. Among them are many libertarians. For a political novice, this was the most pleasing outcome: the volunteered support of so many who hardly know you but they see the common cause, which is of considerable value to them, too.

The marketing material below is taken from the campaign webpage archive, which can be found here.

The Woke-Marxist Agenda Is Malicious

Wokeism arose from neo-Marxism with a goal to subvert Western civilisation. We must resist the woke attack on family, business, art, education, economics, medicine, history, philosophy, and religion.

To be woke is to make oneself aware, especially of issues of injustice, inequality, poverty, etc. What’s wrong with being sensitive to such issues, to being woke?

One wrong is that some of the injustices are made up, they’re not real. Or they are wildly exaggerated. Secondly, where they are real, e.g., poverty, the solutions proposed are the wrong ones (more fascist control by government). Thirdly, merited inequality is a natural outcome in human society. Inequality expressed in data pertaining to groups is not proof of unmerited discrimination.

Where did “wokeism” come from?

Karl Marx was credited with laying the foundation for Communism—a society in which the State controlled the whole economy. The communists thought that the United States and West Germany would collapse, because their grand teacher, Karl Marx, told them that capitalist societies carry the seeds of their own destruction.

But this didn’t happen. Instead, Soviet Russia and East Germany collapsed. Later, even Communist China was forced to adopt market reforms in order to feed its people.

Well before that, the spread of communism stalled in between the two world wars. In this inter-war period, scholars got together at Goethe University in Frankfurt at the Institute for Social Research. The scholars were dissatisfied, not only with capitalism, but even with Soviet-style communism. They created a new paradigm (Critical Theory) that sought to explain history. Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist, expressly encouraged them to subvert Western civilization from within by conquering the institutions that are at the cutting edge of culture—academe, media, think tanks. Over the past 90 years, these new Marxists (aka Cultural Marxists) have largely succeeded in their long march through the institutions, and have come to dominate academe, media, Hollywood/art, and consequently, politics.

The Cultural Marxists believe that:

An uncontrolled society always divides its people between the powerful and the weak, but, for Cultural Marxists, the division is not limited to economic power. Genders, races, religions, and ethnicities all have divisions by way of the oppressors and the oppressed.
The whole of human history can be seen as a struggle between unequal parties.
Every unequal outcome is caused by oppression. Cultural Marxists love affirmative action and quotas, even if they discriminate against minorities that do better than average.

They are so convinced of the superiority of their worldview, that, like the armed communists of old, they will use any means to achieve their ends.

We are seeing the effects of the neo-Marxist cultural agenda:

Vandalism of James Cook statues.
Revisionism of history. See, e.g., the outcome of Google’s AI app, Gemini.
The politicization of medicine (which began in 2013 with the recklessly unscientific assumption that gender can be changed by surgery).
The worldwide war on free speech via a so-called war on MDM. Australia is very much part of this global war on free speech.
Government support for mainstream (Marxist) media to get money from social media platforms that already give them free publicity.
The rise of “stakeholder capitalism”, which is a Trojan horse for fascism.
ESG, a Woke-Marxist invasion of corporations.
In 2023, the Labor government wasted about $400 million dollars of taxpayer funds on the Voice Referendum.
“Hate speech” laws and other regulations restricting free speech.
Cancellations of the brave and the truthful (E.g., Dr. Peter Ridd argued that he was fired by James Cook University in Queensland after 27 years for expressing contrary views on the climate alarm and the Great Barrier Reef).

See also:

Essays:

Books (available as Kindle and paperback versions, some also as audiobooks and audio CDs):

The Great Reset and the Struggle for Liberty: Unraveling the Global Agenda, by Michael Rectenwald
The Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, by Ayn Rand
Media Wars: The Battle to Shape Our Minds, by Vinay Kolhatkar and Walter Donway
Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, by Stephen Hicks

Global Warming Alarmism Is a Scam

The claims of global warming alarmists do not hold up to scrutiny by real scientists and scholars. Yet billions of tax dollars are wasted on repeating this false narrative. We need coal-fired power stations to reduce the cost of electricity and eliminate the risk of future energy shortages.

Some people recognise the possibility that the transition to “renewable” sources of energy may well be unnecessary, but they believe that it’s better to be “safe than sorry”. Even some libertarians make this error. Some people argue that we will eventually need to transition to renewables, so why not now?

Unfortunately, neither of these reasons stand up to scrutiny.

Firstly, it is a monumental blow to our economy to transition to the heavily subsidised and unreliable sources of energy. The result will be blackouts and brownouts, a far higher cost of energy, an economy pushed into depression, and Australia structurally hastening toward what Paul Keating once famously called “a banana republic”.

Secondly, Australia is extremely rich in coal and gas. There is absolutely no need to force a transition in the foreseeable future. And a free market in energy will make whatever transitions become necessary in the future.

There is a large body of literature that shows that the climate is not affected by human emissions, that the UN models in use are riddled with poor theory and even worse practices, that their models have zero predictive value, that fossil fuels spectacularly enrich our lives, and that the brave few in academe who dare to be truth-tellers are denigrated.

But why would a government act against its own citizens?

A government is composed of human beings working within certain norms. Some of them lust for undeserved power, prestige, fame, or fortune. Most elected officials would merely be insignificant “public servants” with average pay if there was no crisis and the government was never needed to meddle in the economy.

But once a crisis is manufactured, billions of dollars can be globally directed at advancing a consensus of causes and cures, and the consequential largesse of money, power, and prestige is shared between elected officials and their cronies in the bureaucracy, business, and science.

A government is composed of human beings working within certain norms. Some of them lust for undeserved power, prestige, fame, or fortune.

The “expert view” is determined. This view is impervious to actual evidence and trumpeted incessantly like it is a fact. It is only natural for anyone in the citizenry except the exceptionally scrupulous to fall for it. Further, economically and militarily, Australia is a smaller player on the world stage, and even sincere elected officials find out that merely questioning the narrative becomes a career-limiting move. No wonder Tony Abbott only speaks frankly now that he has exited politics. Scott Morrison was happy to deliver a coal-o-phobia speech to Parliament as Treasurer but became compliant to the climate narrative by the time he reached Kirribilli House. The torrent of pressure becomes an avalanche that carries all with it. Only the bravest remain standing—the libertarians are among them.

As soon as you begin to entertain this hypothesis in your mind, you will see the evidence for a scam—scientific, political, and financial—begin to mount.

A brief foray into alarmism’s history shows that:

Climate alarmism began with the Club of Rome meeting in 1968.

Climate alarmism began with the Club of Rome meeting in 1968. They published their report in 1972 (in 2024, they joined their successor, the World Economic Forum, a U.N.-sponsored organisation). In 1971, TIME magazine carried an ominous warning of a freezing weather forecast on its 31 January cover story titled “The Big Freeze”.

In 1975, both TIME and Newsweek wrote articles about the “coming ice age”.

As Andy May reports “Government-funded research told us we were all going to freeze in a new ice age in 1977.” Then, in 2006, TIME had a dire prophecy again on its 3 April cover, this time titled “Special Report: Global Warming” with the added words “Be worried, be very worried”.

Now, does that sound like we need a weather crisis? Quoting May again:

Federal money allows unelected bureaucrats to control scientific research. They dictate the projects, and often the outcomes. They use selective leaks to the press to embarrass anyone who tries to interfere with their control. They trade in fear and relish it. Anyone who disagrees with them is suppressing “science.”

They also use an ignorant and compliant news media, to demonize privately funded scientific research as “corrupted” by “evil” corporations. Government research is “science” and privately funded research is corrupt. Using this narrative, they become the “truth,” and no contrary views are allowed.

Despite that stick-and-carrot approach, many real scientists have come forward to attest that:

Research funding is largely controlled by governments and those who favour this narrative (which now includes peers in the peer-review network who have signed up to prestige and funding) get funding for preconceived conclusions.
There’s cancellation and denigration of those who dare to disagree. This is not a scientific approach of free and vigorous discussion tested by reality as the arbiter. Science is not decided by consensus.
There’s no need to influence the energy mix; it should be decided by the free market.
A 43% reduction in emissions by 2030 will turn Australia into a banana republic.
CO2 levels were way higher even in previous ice ages.
CO2 levels follow, not lead, atmospheric warming.
Endless subsidies to EVs, solar, wind, even seaweed, are setting the stage for a financial disaster in addition to brownouts and blackouts.
Money allocated to promoting alarmism is estimated to be a hundred times the funding given to sceptics. Some of these funds are used to denigrate the truth-tellers and hide contrary evidence.
Fossil fuels, in combination with capitalism, have brought unprecedented gains in standards of living the world over. And nearby pollution caused by fossil fuels is solvable by technology and can be dealt in tort law.

As Ayn Rand argued back in the seventies:

Ecology as a social principle . . . condemns cities, culture, industry, technology, the intellect, and advocates men’s return to “nature,” to the state of grunting sub-animals digging the soil with their bare hands.

The Ayn Rand Letter, III, 25, 1

Over 1,200 climatologists, environmental scientists, geologists, pollution meteorologists, and climate researchers from over 35 countries have signed the World Climate Declaration entitled “There Is No Climate Emergency”, in which they declare:

There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm. We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050.

Warming is not always negative but may, in fact, be positive, for many regions. There is no known optimal or “natural” global temperature, even if global temperatures could be managed the way the carbon elites want everyone to.
It is arguable that increased CO2 levels lead to a greening of the planet, including benefits accruing to agriculture.
Global dissemination of the narrative is managed by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). IPCC models cannot even fit the past, let alone predict the future. They are not based on proper scientific forecasting techniques. The best-fit models for recent historic data as well as for predictive ability have been models that assume no change from the millennia-long cycles.
The climate is insensitive to increases in greenhouse gases.
Atmospheric CO2 levels are themselves only a small part of total greenhouse gases.
Human activity has a negligible effect on atmospheric CO2 levels.
The sun has different levels of radiative intensity, and this is overwhelmingly the cause of Earth’s climatic variations.
Independent meteorologists focussed on solar, lunar, and planetary cycles do much better at predicting weather (including rainfall) than by using the UN-disseminated general circulation models (GCMs).
Despite the gravy-train stimulus and cancellation threats, consensus among real scientists is nowhere near 97% as is often claimed. And science, in any event, is settled by reality, not by democracy.

It’s indeed time to confront the climate racket head on. It is time to let the market rekindle our coal-fired plants, remove the ban on nuclear power, and let the market freely pursue coal-seam methane gas. It’s time to stop all subsidies to unstable solar and wind, and let a free market deliver cheap and plentiful energy. As the cost of power feeds into every industry, it’s not just your electricity and gas bills that will be coming down, all costs will.

That’s what libertarians will do—free the market. Vote Libertarian.

See also:

Books:

Climate Change: The Facts, by John Abbott and 11 others
Green Murder, by Ian Plimer

Sites:

https://wattsupwiththat.com/

Essays:

Race & Gender-Based Quotas Are Immoral

Quotas based on race and gender are racist and sexist. They also reduce the credibility of deserving minorities and discriminate against true merit. The use of legal force to achieve preordained outcomes in diversity is immoral.

The initiation of force is essentially immoral. It takes away the autonomy of individuals. Organisations and corporations should also be free of government and neo-Marxist diktat. They have a natural desire to succeed and do well, and it is in their best interest to hire and promote individuals by merit.

But it is true that merit does not always win; bigotry does exist in society. But dividing society between whom the neo-Marxists deem as the oppressed groups and the dominant groups, and giving it organisational, or worse, legal force, is the worst way to go about correcting it.

Quotas not only reduce the credibility of deserving minorities but they even discriminate against meritorious minorities that outperform other groups.

Quotas are essentially an argument for collectivism. Every human being has an individual identity—you may like and promote Latin music, African drumbeats, indigenous art works, Italian espressos, and love the Australian outdoors. You may vote Labor, Liberal, or Libertarian, or hate the idea of compulsory voting. You are an individual defined most uniquely by you, and not by your heritage, genes, gender, sexuality, race, or skin colour. You can choose to be proud of your heritage, embarrassed by it, or be indifferent, because you had no hand in it. Whether your grandfather served with the ANZACs or whether he was a Nazi official does not matter. As Ayn Rand said, you are a “being of [a] self-made soul”.

Culture does not belong to anyone. One can only appropriate private property. Hence one cannot appropriate culture. You can take what you like from any culture and make it a part of you, and all that Libertarianism asks of you is that you do not initiate force or fraud. We are against giving offence being a legal wrong; we cannot even predict who takes offence at what. But Libertarianism does not ask you to become offensive—deliberate in-your-face rudeness will have adverse effects for your social life and career, so where possible, let’s be nice and polite, but vigorously truthful in our discussions.

The biological truth is that there are only two genders with incredibly rare exceptions. But race is a complicated concept—is a person with a 1/16^th indigenous ancestry brought up by a well-off white family an indigenous identity? And if you can identify as a woman when you are a man, if mere desire and affirmation is to rule over biology, then can one identify as indigenous to take advantage of quotas?

Instead of splitting hairs like this, let’s just promote a colour-blind, race-blind society focussed on true merit alone.

Instead of splitting hairs like this, let’s just promote a colour-blind, race-blind society focussed on true merit alone. Hence, competition for being a pilot or a professor or a politician ought to be gender blind as well. Gender ought to matter only where it should matter—e.g., shouldn’t women’s sports allow only XX-chromosome blood type to compete? One’s blood type is set for life; one can’t fake that blood test.

See also:

Only Real Capitalism Will Reduce the Cost of Living

The idea that authorities need to stabilise the economy by adjusting interest rates and budget deficits is nonsensical. History proves that only real capitalism has simultaneously delivered low taxes, zero inflation, and a growing economy.

From 1815 – 1914, both the UK and the US had zero-to-negative inflation (in aggregate) over a hundred-year period while economic growth remained strong.

From 1815 – 1914, both the UK and the US had zero-to-negative inflation (in aggregate) over a hundred-year period while economic growth remained strong. This is because the UK was on a gold standard while the US was then on a bimetallic standard. Virtually all inflation, defined as an unreasonable expansion of the money supply, is created by governments. Virtually all consistent and generic price-rises across the board are due to governments alone.

This is as true of Australia as it is true of Venezuela, only the degree differs.

Why do governments create inflation? Mostly because they have fallen for the largest scam ever perpetrated on humanity—Keynesianism. Keynesianism is the blisteringly stupid idea that governments or independent agencies (like the RBA or the ACCC) must step in to “help” the economy by amending interest rates, or conducting deficit spending to stimulate the economy, set ceilings and floors on prices, improve “competition”, and change regulations at will. Exactly the same mechanism as in the climate racket was in play when the world’s largest scam began. In “real capitalism” the government does not interfere with the economy, it serves the function of upholding individual rights and enforceable contracts, providing law and order, and a defence of the nation’s sovereign borders.

In a free economy, the most crucial piece of information that businesses need to make decisions is the free-market price, the price consumers are willing to pay for their product. They are able to assess their own costs, assuming all prices (some of which are their costs) are determined in a free market.

Businesses make errors, but all businesses are not at all prone to a systemic error in a free economy. Hence, the idea that a free economy is predisposed to periodic booms and busts (i.e., systemic errors by businesses) is absurd. Booms and busts are caused solely by government interference.

The idea that an “independent” agency needs to “stabilize the economy” by manipulating the price of credit (i.e., interest rates) is literally insane. Like all prices, interest rates need to be determined by a free market.

The idea that governments need to stimulate a sluggish economy with deficits, curb excesses with taxes, and control prices with legislation belongs to the economic asylum.

How is it that every major country on earth ended up in the economic psychosis ward?

The politicians and the central bankers are so delusional that they think they are doing some good for society when they are causing irreparable harm.

In 1936, these absurdist ideas were presented by a Cambridge mathematician who never grasped real economics. Of course, governments looking for an excuse to spend taxpayer money (and beyond) loved all the absurdism. The power to spend, the power to put price floors and ceilings, the power to manipulate interest rates, the power to tax incomes, goods, exports, imports…you name it—it was much too heady. The power lust quickly convinced them that they were Good Samaritans, helping out the general public with their grand schemes. Thus began the biggest scam of all time where the initiators—the politicians and the central bankers—are so delusional that they think they are doing some good for society when they are causing irreparable harm.

And now we have currency untethered to real value, a mere promise by a government to pay, a fiat currency. All inflation in Australia is created by the government assisted by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA). We can end all inflation, most unemployment, and create a high-growth economy if we let the free market work. Including letting the transactors choose what money will be in each transaction, whether it be gold, bitcoin, or something else. The best money rises to the top. And it’s not the fiat paper money of empty Venezuelan promises.

The double jeopardy of Australia’s debt approaching one trillion and reducing fossil fuel usage by 43% by 2030 will make blackouts, mass poverty, and hyperinflation a real possibility in Australia. And 2030 is only six years away.

As Ayn Rand noted:

Capitalism did not create poverty—it inherited it. Compared to the centuries of precapitalist starvation, the living conditions of the poor in the early years of capitalism were the first chance the poor had ever had to survive. As proof—[see] the enormous growth of the European population during the nineteenth century, a growth of over 300 percent, as compared to the previous growth of something like 3 percent per century.

Cronyism, meanwhile, is as old as history, it’s the longest-running scam ever. Cronyism makes matters worse: it’s not true capitalism. A textbook illustration of cronyism happened recently with Qantas. Qantas offers a Chairman’s Lounge only for politicians, lobbyists, bureaucrats and major company CEOs. As ABC says, “You can’t [even] buy your way into it”—it’s only by invitation. There are even wood-panelled doors that cannot be found by the uninitiated—top secret doors, hushed tones, large spaces—add to the intrigue.

Top secret? We all know how much lobbying goes on in a crony economy.

During the pandemic, the Liberals gifted $2.7 billion of taxpayer money to Qantas. Gifted? Yes, you heard it right. If a fiduciary like Bernie Madoff takes your money for “investment” and uses it for himself or his friends, he lands in jail. As he should.

Our processes for subsidies are so lax that no one will go to jail for wilful wastage of billions. Meanwhile, crony CEO Alan Joyce went home with an estimated $24 million while Qatar Airways was prevented from increasing their flights to Australia.

A venture capitalist would have made a $2.7 billion convertible loan, convertible at prices of under $3 a share into an equity stake. Around June 2023, the Qantas share price had hit $6.60. Investors could have doubled their money. Even the Trade Workers Union secretary remarked that “In many countries around the world large amounts of investments in airlines includes equity stakes or the potential for equity stakes, as we have seen in New Zealand, Germany, Korea, Hong Kong and others.”

But the Liberals, who are being touted in this byelection as “good financial managers”, did not even have the sense to make all this a loan repayable with interest. The Liberals can’t be sent to jail for their financial negligence during the pandemic. But for not acting like fiduciaries, they deserve to be punished at the polls.

See also:

Books

Capitalism, The Unknown Ideal, by Ayn Rand
Capitalism; A treatise on Economics, by George Reisman
The Inflation Crisis and How to Resolve It, by Henry Hazlitt
The Rothbard Reader, by Rothbard, Salerno, and McCaffrey
Inflation: What It Is, Why It’s Bad, and How to Fix It, by Forbes, Lewis, and Ames
The Government Against the Economy, by George Reisman

Essays

Australia Does Not Protect Free Speech

Politicians continue to infringe upon our freedom of speech. Federal and state “hate speech” laws and regulation will severely curtail open dialogue and reduce the limits of permissible speech.

Australia is the only “Five Eyes” country to not protect freedom of speech constitutionally from the persistent overreach of politicians.

Australia is the only “Five Eyes” country to not protect freedom of speech constitutionally from the persistent overreach of politicians. The Five Eyes (FVEY) is an Anglosphere intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This alliance of the English-speaking peoples may have emerged from Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech. But today, instead of protecting our people from the ravages of government prying and censorship, our governments are actually wanting to practise it.

In Australia, politicians have invaded free speech with absurdist federal and state “hate speech” laws, and the extremely dangerous MDM regulation (which is a global wave that will severely curtail open dialogue by purportedly cracking down on misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation). We are vulnerable to an ever-compressing “Overton Window”—the limits of permissible speech are narrowing.

Facebook and other social media have been incessantly pressured to adopt neo-Marxist norms, disguised as “community standards” and imposed on their members as a way of curtailing conservative speech. Artists, scholars, and scientists face an increasing threat of disruption of their events, cancellation, and even the loss of jobs. Dr. Peter Ridd, a scientist with a 27-year standing at James Cook University in Queensland, was fired after he expressed his scientific view about the Great Barrier Reef and climate change. In a subsequent court case, the university claimed that he was fired for disparaging his colleagues and breaking a code of conduct rather than for his scientific views.

The net result will be that the government itself will become the biggest purveyor of MDM—misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation, if it hasn’t already.

When it was a startup, Facebook was funded by a subsidiary of the CIA. Facebook, Google, and Big Tech are nowhere near as independent of Big Government as a classically privately-owned corporation in a free economy would be.

The net result will be that the government itself will become the biggest purveyor of MDM—misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation, if it hasn’t already.

See also:

Books:

The Great Reset and the Struggle for Liberty: Unraveling the Global Agenda, by Michael Rectenwald

Essays:

They Lied to Us About COVID

Anthony Fauci’s “noble lies” are typical of arrogant bureaucrats. Australians deserve to know the truth. We want a Royal Commission into the COVID response including vaccine injuries, risky research, and alternative cures. Never again should we be locked down or lied to.

Alina Chan is a molecular biologist specializing in gene therapy and cell engineering at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. She partnered with the famous science writer, Matt Ridley, to write Viral, the Search for the Origin of COVID-19. The book was published November 16, 2021.

When Andy May, a petrophysicist, reviewed that book, he wrote:

It is not surprising that as government has taken over funding scientific research, scientists have migrated from research that helps people, to researching possible catastrophes, no matter how remote the possibility. Science has devolved from improving human lives to developing plots for disaster movies. And, if humans can be blamed for the catastrophe, it is even better, then the politicians can mandate people change their lives “for the greater good.” The politician’s power then increases because exercising power increases it and people will give up their freedoms in exchange for security, whether the danger is real or not.

The Libertarian Party believes there’s a need for a Royal Commission on the pandemic response by the Australian government as mentioned in the Honourable John Ruddick’s inaugural speech. The terms of the Commission should cover:

Why is such a risky “gain of function” research done at all?
The lab-leak origin of COVID and lab safety.
The deliberate ignorance of prophylactics (Vitamin C, D, Zinc plus HCQ/Quercetin) by the government.
Threats to GPs not to prescribe any generic medicine that may assist as a prophylactic or as a cure.
mRNA vaccine compulsion, especially for people below 30.
mRNA vaccine leakiness and efficacy.
Unprecedented indemnity to Pfizer, AZ, and Moderna.
The downplaying of all other cures (Methylene Blue, NAC, and others); the top two already had peer-reviewed literature published in 2021.
Why did mRNA vaccine injuries exceed all other “real” vaccines put together (a real vaccine is one that uses a dead or weakened microbe).
There have been excess deaths since the pandemic.
Regulatory capture by Big Pharma and a monopoly (TGA) over approvals (no competition among regulatory agencies).
The phenomenal negligence of aspiration before vaccination at vaccination centres, a practice not recommended by the Big Pharma manufacturers, a negligence which may have caused some or most of the vaccine injuries.

See also:

Need for vaccine aspiration confirmed, why is this not being done
Could This Be the Most Startling News of the Pandemic Yet?
https://www.libertarians.org.au/covid_policy
The Dark Horse podcasts by Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying

Captain James Cook Is a Heroic Figure

Captain James Cook was a man of science, who “helped pioneer new methods for warding off scurvy”. He was praised as “the greatest navigator and explorer of his age”. Vandalising his statues is a crime.

James Cook has been praised by historians for “making peaceful contact with countless local tribes”. He has been called (see Timothy Sandefur’s essay) “the greatest navigator and explorer of his age—perhaps of all time”.

By all accounts, Cook was a man of science. He “helped pioneer new methods for warding off scurvy”, a disease that in his times, many sailors lost their lives to.

Demonising James Cook for the ills of imperialism is unfair.

Demonising James Cook for the ills of imperialism is unfair. Further, many heroic figures of history—from Albert Einstein to Martin Luther King, from Mother Teresa to Mohandas Gandhi, all the way 2,300 years back to Aristotle, are not without some or the other controversy clouding their legacy. Heroes are often imperfect.

Captain James Cook was entrusted by the Crown with discovering Terra Australis Incognita (the unknown southern land). The ship he commanded, The Endeavour, did all that and more. Cook was not even part of the First Fleet that landed on Australian soil in 1788, let alone commandeering it (he died in 1779). Unfortunately, indigenous people were also vulnerable at that time to Dutch, French, and Spanish imperial expansionism, and later, to Imperial Japan. Colonialism was arguably inevitable.

Libertarians are against imperialism. But Great Britain, although far from perfect in its capacity as an empire, was also home to the Age of Reason (aka the Enlightenment), to the scientific and industrial revolutions, to the scientific method of Francis Bacon, to the science of Isaac Newton, and to the philosophy of John Locke, which heavily influenced the founding documents of the United States and classical liberalism (which became libertarianism in the 20^th century when the American Marxists corrupted the word liberalism). England also gave the world Magna Carta, arguably the first document to legally constrain government and monarchical overreach; it also gave the world habeas corpus, and the right to a jury trial. England was the first nation to outlaw slavery. England’s scorecard should also reflect all the great things she did achieve.

But do we even need a scorecard? We now have the capacity to move forward with open dialogue, accepting the best that England bequeathed the world without adopting the ills of imperial expansionism. And that’s what we should do, rather than tear down or vandalise statues of Captain James Cook.

See also:

Books:

Captain Cook, by Alistair MacLean.

Essays:

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About the Author: Vinay Kolhatkar

Vinay Kolhatkar is a freelance journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and finance professional. He is the Chief Editor of The Savvy Street. Vinay has authored a TV pilot screenplay Undercover: The Story of Jamila, and two literary thrillers A Sharia London and The Frankenstein Candidate.. He is also the co-author of Media Wars: The Battle to Shape Our Minds. More about Vinay is at the Founder page.

Translating deep thinking into common sense