Freedom seeks consistency for long term relationship

Wednesday January 4, 2012

Martin Cullip says that self-interest leads to a selective approach to liberty among its defenders

During 2011, the left-leaning newspaper The Guardian has been the prime source for those interested in the Wikileaks affair. Quite rightly describing their coverage as ‘unrivalled’, they have continually defended revelations brought into the public domain by Julian Assange and argued against calls for regulation or censorship.

I tend to agree.

In the US, the issue of ‘net neutrality’, whereby restrictions on internet usage are curtailed, has been aggressively pursued by the Democratic Party.

I tend to agree.

Back in the UK, the most vociferous voices against the Digital Economy Act, which sought primarily to tackle online peer to peer file-sharing, were generally from the left of centre politically.

Typical of the left’s hostility to web regulation is Sunny Hundal’s recent article about the Press Complaint’s Commission apparently wanting to regulate blogs.

Again, the motives are sound and the commitment to liberty transparent, even if there are issues that require further discussion to protect the liberties of others.

Yet, away from the internet, when regulations are suggested surrounding real-life activities, the likes of Sunny Hundal are the most prominent in advocating more, not less, interference in our lives by government. There seems to be a distinct lack of consistency at play.

Demands for an unregulated internet are laudable, but how can that be squared with the opposing stance of calling for everything from health care, banking and education, through to diet and even politically incorrect comedy, being regulated and mandated by the state?

The answer probably has many factors, encompassing age, fear, comfort, indoctrination, and maybe more than a little selfishness.

The internet is an easily understood medium for the young. Just as the youth of the 1980s were famously able to programme the video recorder before their parents could find the ‘on’ switch, so are their modern equivalents instantly familiar with computerisation and access to online media. The fact that young people tend to also be receptive to leftist ideology, as best encapsulated by the quote variously attributed to Lloyd George and Churchill that “a young man who isn’t a socialist hasn’t got a heart; an old man who is a socialist hasn’t got a head”, just greases the wheels.

It is clear that young people are naturally pre-disposed to defending their rights on the internet, just as it is also true that they wish the real world to be more amenable to them. The problem is that the real world doesn’t favour the young so easily.

On the internet, being young is a massive advantage. The young know how to get around and how to use it proficiently, whereas oldies who don’t understand it at all just want to interfere, and see nothing but danger.

Outside the virtual, the opposite applies. Kids straight out of school see a world which is bewildering and scary. Fresh from an arbitrarily regulated microsphere of school, teachers and rules, they are thrown into a life which they are not experienced enough to understand. They don’t earn what older people do, they have lost the influence they had at school or college where they were the big fish, they haven’t developed a comprehensive view of life in all its glorious imperfections, and they just see a big mess that needs to be fixed in simplistic terms.

Since the left-leaning press, and political parties, now increasingly rely on the naturally occurring beliefs of the young, titles like The Guardian inexorably follow, as do the parties they favour.

Where older people fear an unregulated internet, so are the young wary of a real world which doesn’t have hard rules like they are used to. In both cases, everything needs to be reined in to a situation where the individual can feel like he is in control and able to manage it. In both cases, the government is called upon to intervene and instil more authority, more arbitrary rules.

Adam Smith famously wrote that each person in society naturally acts in self-interest and, although those bitterly opposed to his ethos would vehemently disagree, compelling proof is provided by the disconnect between attitudes towards internet regulation, and that of the real world.

It might be dressed up as ‘fairness’, but the fundamental reason for invoking authority in pursuit of restrictions or bans is still good, old-fashioned selfishness. Insultingly, it also comes with more than an implication that those who don’t feel the same way are unable to decide their own free will and so must be regulated for their own good.

Freedom in all its many forms is more agreeable. However, consistency in matters of liberty is a woefully undervalued attribute, even amongst its advocates, more’s the pity.