We are often asked to define our political stance.

We have a lot in common with Libertarians...

In that we believe in liberty as an essential human value, and would like to see the abolition of victimless crimes (especially the fun ones). We are very much in favour of entrepreneurship and take the view that if something is worth doing, it is worth doing at a profit. However, our talk of the wonders of making heaps of money is (so far!) mostly theoretical. Yet even though some of us do not even make enough money to pay any income tax, we want to see the gradual abolition of taxation. We think that anything government can do, a truly free market could one day do better and more cost-effectively. We are with the Libertarian movement wholeheartedly in many respects...

Except that we are not barking mad idiotarians who think that everything any government does is by definition wrong, or that the US government is just as bad as every mass-murdering aggressive dictatorship in sight – or, for that matter, France. We don't have a blind spot when it comes to the simple logic that being prepared to defend liberty is a pre-condition for liberty: si vis pacem, para bellum (if you want peace, prepare for war). We are not starry-eyed utopians who believe we own the blueprint for the perfect society. The perfect society will have to evolve: unlike many libertarians, we don't think that everything would be perfect if we could press that magic button to get rid of government. Like many Libertarians, we champion the freedom of the individual, but unlike many, we do not make an exception when it comes to children. We support the idea of a free-market in babies, but we thoroughly eschew the idea that children are in any way the property of their parents, the state, or anyone but themselves.

We are a bit like Republicans...

In that we revere the traditions of the United States and of the Anglosphere generally, we rather like Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice, and, especially since hearing that Condie is against gun control because she does not trust government, we are rooting for her to be the next President of the United States. We believe in the right of self-defence, including the right to kill someone who is about to kill us or who puts us in serious danger. Thus, in the world as it is now, we favour national defence, because no matter how good a shot one or more of us may be, we'd need a bit of backup in the event of a large-scale attack – not to mention a nuclear bomb. We think current US foreign policy could be a lot worse. We love political incorrectness and we are proud not to call ourselves ‘feminists’. So you could say that we are a bit like Republicans...

Except that we do not believe in increased ‘discipline’ in schools (unless you're talking about the sort of ‘discipline’ that my old headmaster was rumoured to be engaging in with Matron in the privacy of his own quarters). We don't approve of forcibly incarcerating innocent people in institutions, and since we are in favour of education, we cannot support the existing school system or any other so-called ‘educational’ system that tends to stultify and sabotage the learning process. We approve of abortion, divorce, sodomy, and a woman's right to wear trousers... or a burqa. We find the ‘anti-fornication’ laws of some US states frightening, to say nothing of the dry counties, the ‘war on drugs’, and other horrors associated with the Republican movement.

We are a bit like Democrats...

In that we are in favour of abortion rights, we think Bill Clinton should not have been impeached, we are enthusiastically in favour of stem cell research, and we are nauseated by the very idea of insisting that children be taught the Creationist myth as if it were fact. We are a bit like Democrats in that we think of ourselves as ‘liberal’.

Except that when we use the word ‘liberal’ we really mean liberal, as opposed to ‘anti-liberal’ as the word ‘liberal’ seems to mean in American politics.

(In Britain) We are in sympathy with the libertarian/Portillo wing of the Conservative Party (well they certainly need help!)... and we're right behind the Labour government's current foreign policy in regard to Iraq. We just wish the Labour Party was too.

(In Israel) We like Natan Sharansky and Ariel Sharon... and support reasonable factions within parties such as Likud, the Shinui Party, the Yisrael B'Aliyah Party, the Labour Party, the... well, if Israel isn't a good argument against proportional representation, we don't know what is. When are they going to wake up and realise that it is an unmitigated disaster?

(In Canada) To the extent that we can discern who's who in a country whose motto is reputed to be “as Canadian as possible under the circumstances”, we like the libertarian strands in the Canadian Alliance, including, for example, Garry Breitkreuz, who is bravely continuing to fight gun control. Leader, Stephen Harper deserves support for his position on Iraq.

We think death is overrated and conjecture that advances in science and technology will eventually make death a choice. We are atheists, and are suspicious of all organised religion. But we believe that there is such a thing as right and wrong.

We hate... communism, fascism, Islamofascism, Wahhabism, Eurofederalism, nationalism, idiotarianism, anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism, terrorism, racism...

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Note: In The Ethics of Liberty near the beginning of the section on Strategies for Liberty, Murray Rothbard says that if one were to have a magic button that, if pressed, would automatically transform our existing society to one governed by libertarian rules, one should press it. He argues that we should aim for the most rapid advance towards libertarian society possible, rather than a gradual approach. This is the epitome of the approach that we repudiate.