The American Spectator

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Special Report

(Page 2 of 2)

It seems that after the Thatcher interregnum and the revival of Britain's health and spirits that it brought, socialism is back with a vengeance -- and vengeance is the operative word.

The bright spot in all this is that the government is clearly doomed and without any hope of survival at all. At a recent by-election its candidate managed 3% of the vote and fifth place on the poll. In the meantime, however, Britain has in many ways reverted to all the worse inefficiencies, repression, corruption and cultural destruction of ideological socialism. Adam Smith said it took a lot to ruin a nation and the Labour government seems determined to spend its last miserable months finding out just how much.

BLAIR'S ENEMIES FURTHER to the left have often called him "B'Liar" over the British commitment to Iraq. But Blair's biggest lie -- which he may in some confused way have actually believed -- was that under him Britain would have a pragmatic, non-ideological, managerialist government.

Australia's new Labor Party Prime Minister Kevin Rudd similarly came to power at the end of 2007 projecting an image of pragmatism and moderation. He claimed specifically to be an "economic conservative." He began his term of office with meaningless stunts and PR exercises -- an "apology" to Australian Aborigines on behalf of whites for having taken their land, whose effect in actually improving Aborigines' conditions has been precisely zero, and a bizarre "summit" in Canberra of 1,000 unelected people, supervised and guided by the government, to distill ideas for policies looking towards the year 2020 -- an exercise in extra-parliamentary and corporate-state fascism only mitigated by the fact that it seems already forgotten. Practically no one except some of those involved took it seriously.

Now, however, it seems Mr. Pragmatic Nice Guy has had his day and Mr. Not-So-Nice Ideologue is coming forward.

Despite the fact Australia produces only about 1.2% of the world's carbon emissions, which makes no difference whatsoever to climate change, be it real or imaginary, the Rudd government has adopted a hard-line ideological position on climate change and carbon trading, which will impose on Australian businesses and consumers the biggest load of regulations ever, and desperately handicap industry and mining.

It would be a worse-than-dubious idea at the best of times, but when Australia, export-dependent, is already suffering the effects of the world economic turmoil, it is bizarre. The Wall Street Journal Asia has commented: "Rudd just wants to do what every Labor politician likes: tax industry and redistribute the proceeds, at huge cost to the economy." Leftist ideology stops dead any thought of nuclear power, though Australia has very limited oil reserves. To quote Australian commentator Janet Albrechtsen: "No more Left and right? Wrong. As Australian voters are now discovering, under the post-partisan talk is crafty election rhetoric." America, perhaps, might observe and heed.

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Business, Law, Iraq, Russia, Africa, North Korea, Socialism, Fascism, Immigration, Oil