Dr Who is a Welfare Statist

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renegade_division
Number 587
Conspirator for: 14 years 39 weeks
Posted on: February 23, 2010 - 5:40pm

I am listening to Ziggy's podcast about Dr Who and his possible leftist persuasion, I am not sure why is there a big debate. I started watching Dr Who after I heard Gard talk about it many times, I started watching it from Christopher Eccleston(9th doctor). Around at the end of that season when Dr Who goes with Captain Jack and Rose back to World War 2(its that episode where a creepy kid wears a gas mask and keeps on saying 'Are you my mommy?'), where Dr Who tells that boy's mother "Don't forget the Welfare State"(right when they are trying to give her hope about allied victory in the war).

That line just greatly turned me off with the series, and I didn't watch the next season and the new doctor. I don't understand the big debate.


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LysanderSpooner
Number 234
Conspirator for: 16 years 11 weeks
Posted on: February 24, 2010 - 9:37am #1

As an older Doctor Who fan (I started with Tom Baker), that line from that episode bugged me.  I haven't yet listened to the podcast because I haven't made my way through the 1st 4 seasons of the "new" Doctor Who.  I also remember hearing at least on pro-Churchill comment in the series.  I would highly recommend Ralph Raico's "Rethinking Churchill", http://mises.org/story/2973.  Here's a taste:

 

Churchill as Icon

When, in a very few years, the pundits start to pontificate on the great question: "Who was the Man of the Century?" there is little doubt that they will reach virtually instant consensus. Inevitably, the answer will be: Winston Churchill. Indeed, Professor Harry Jaffa has already informed us that Churchill was not only the Man of the Twentieth Century, but the Man of Many Centuries.[1]

In a way, Churchill as Man of the Century will be appropriate. This has been the century of the State - of the rise and hypertrophic growth of the welfare-warfare state - and Churchill was from first to last a Man of the State, of the welfare state and of the warfare state. War, of course, was his lifelong passion; and, as an admiring historian has written: "Among his other claims to fame, Winston Churchill ranks as one of the founders of the welfare state."[2] Thus, while Churchill never had a principle he did not in the end betray,[3] this does not mean that there was no slant to his actions, no systematic bias. There was, and that bias was towards lowering the barriers to state power....

__________________

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In the past men created witches: now they create mental patients.
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Relinquish liberty for the purposes of defense in an emergency?
Why? It would seem that in an emergency, of all times, one needs
his greatest strength. So if liberty is strength and slavery is weakness,
liberty is a necessity rather than a luxury, and we can ill afford
to be without it—least of all during an emergency.

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ziggy_encaoua
Number 531
Conspirator for: 15 years 10 weeks
Posted on: February 23, 2010 - 9:45pm #2

When I first saw the title of this thread I thought it might of been a reference to my podcast

 

Anybody listened yet?


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jackjohn600
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Posted on: October 17, 2014 - 3:45am #3

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LysanderSpooner
Number 234
Conspirator for: 16 years 11 weeks
Posted on: February 23, 2010 - 10:28pm #4

I just noticed the podcast.  I was just responding to the thread.  I will listen ASAP.


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Gardner Goldsmith
Number 6
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Conspirator for: 18 years 21 weeks
Posted on: February 24, 2010 - 3:01pm #5

I loved Ziggy's production. I remember getting into the mini-debate with the then-authors of the New Adventures books when we were all at a Gallifrey convention in Burbank. I was the lone holdout that the Doctor passes through phases in how the producers portray his political philosophy.  When I pointed out to the "NA"writers that the production team during one phase of Tom Baker's era explicity said in the story "Android Invasion" that the Doctor has a "long association with libertarian causes", they didn't like that ooooone bit! :-)

Though Ziggy mentioned in the production that he beleives this use of the trm "libertarian" carried a more general meaning, as in "supporting liberty", I think that there are a few factors pointing towards the interpretation that it was explicitly "libertarian" as in politics. The term "libertarian" was fairly new in the public parlance at the time, as was the Libertarian Party. The year was 1976, and so the surge of the libertarians had juuust come to public attention. Given some of the other subversive ideas the writers and producers of that era put into the series (example: "The Sunmakers" and it's dig on corporate statism and taxes, example: the references to R.U. R. and the use of the name Taren Capel in "Robots of Death"), I think these guys intended to mention that the Doctor had an association with this radical, freedom-loving ideology.

And even if they didn't, by logical extrapolation, if the Doctor supports liberty in general, then he must not be a socialist, right? One cannot be a socialist, in the political-philosophical sense of the term, and believe in freedom for each man...


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ziggy_encaoua
Number 531
Conspirator for: 15 years 10 weeks
Posted on: February 24, 2010 - 3:31pm #6

Gardner Goldsmith wrote:

if the Doctor supports liberty in general, then he must not be a socialist, right? One cannot be a socialist, in the political-philosophical sense of the term, and believe in freedom for each man...

No because socialists also believe in freedom, but their sense of freedom is generally positive freedom though not exclusively.

 

Always remember dude libertarians don’t have a monopoly on the term liberty.

 


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Gardner Goldsmith
Number 6
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Posted on: February 24, 2010 - 6:52pm #7

I understand what you mean, Zigster, but the trouble is this: when socialists engage in voluntary socialist collectives, they are actually no longer being socialist, but voluntarist, ie, libertarians who are making individual choices with individual consent that places them into an agreement with others to share in the fruits of their labor. It's not true socialism. This is the distinction that I try to make to those who say that one can be a libertarian socialist. In the end, one is really not a socialist at all, but a vol.untarist libertarian who has made an apriori agreement with other individuals to work together. There really no distinction between that and two people working together as business partners with certain business parameters and profit sharing guidlines agreed to before hand.

The terms positive freedom and negative freedom both really revolve around individual choice, and socialism as a political philosophy does not allow for that real choice. It imposes the superstructure of majority control through the state and involuntary servitude. It does not allow for the holding of a property in one's self, because it stands in opposition to the primacy of the individual. It supercedes the primacy of the individual, choosing instead the collective without asking the individual if he wants to be part of the collective. If the invidual IS asked, then it's not real socialism in a political-philosophical sense. It's voluntarism, based in individual choice at the outset. It's consent and agreement and contract, not socialism.

If I choose to share my cookies with you, that's not socialism, that's individual choice. Likewise if we agree to share an apartment or the cookies we buy with the fruits of our labor at a music project or something, it is our choice. If we have a hundred people who agree to be part of our group, it's still not really socialism, it's choice and profit sharing -- private market decisions that socialism in a political sense can never allow.

:-)


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mothyspace
Number 545
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Conspirator for: 15 years 5 weeks
Posted on: February 24, 2010 - 7:09pm #8

There's a book that could be written about Dr Who and Libertarianism I reckon :)

__________________

I used to be the man. Until I decided to stick it to myself - mothyspace
A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. – Edward R. Murrow
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1W0pP6A8BE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlMuAuZ6DS8


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FUR3jr
Number 468
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Conspirator for: 15 years 23 weeks
Posted on: February 25, 2010 - 11:15pm #9

I have watched many doctor who shows, but the Doctor with whom I am most familiar is played by Tom Baker.  I find the stories from Phillip Hinchliff and Douglas Adams to be far superior of any other scripts.  btw. I listened to the Podcast, and plan on giving it a second listen over the weekend.  I will call the Liberty Conspiracy Hotline ( 206-984-1069 ) and expound upon my initial impressions on the Dr. Who pod.

FURB read's The Doctor, Who...

 


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LysanderSpooner
Number 234
Conspirator for: 16 years 11 weeks
Posted on: March 10, 2010 - 8:44am #10

I just finished watching "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" with William Hartnell.  Two things jumped out at me.  The black market trader (the Earth has been pretty much destroyed and most humans are dead) asked for gold or other precious metals in exchange for food.  In another scene, The Doctor refuses an offer of a gun.  But he does qualify his refusal by saying that he doesn't take life unless his is reasonably threatened.


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