Is It Time for a Peaceful Revolt? – Australian Gold Miner Ron Manners Make the Case to the Liberty International World Conference
Be An Activist!, it’s much more fun than being a spectator!
Liberty International World Conference 2024 – Texas
15-18 November 2024
So good to be with such a dedicated group of libertarians and, equally important, to renew my association with this great annual event.
I was an active participant at the very first Libertarian International World Conference in Zurich (1982), again at the second one in London (1984).
Those conferences influenced me in adding more ‘intellectual weapons’ to my early arsenal.
Again, I hope to gather more ideas from your combined wisdom here.
Something for me to take back to Australia and in return, I would like to share with you a few thoughts on what has worked for me (over the years) and even, what has not worked for me. Hopefully, this will save you time. Time being the ultimate finite resource.
Yes, we have a huge task ahead of us if we aim to ‘Libertarianise’ the entire world but let us not be overwhelmed.
If we start with ‘libertarianising’ ourselves, we can adopt strategies that even under scrutiny of ‘cost-benefit studies’, will turn us into net winners, but only if we remain focused.
It is our duty to remain optimistic. Much emphasis is made on Leadership (like everywhere you watch, read, and listen), pushing every aspect of Leadership. We cannot all be leaders.
Many of us have other things to do, so let us give equal emphasis to Leadershipon the one hand, and Followship on the other hand.
This was explained well by Sir Niall Ferguson in a recent ARC (Alliance for Responsible Citizenship) panel discussion which was in the form of an interview by Australia’s Greg Sheridan. The panel included Niall Ferguson and John Anderson, a former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia who has become one of our leading intellectuals.
Greg Sheridan, handing over to Niall Ferguson…said
Niall, looking out on the West, are we in the fight with a good shot, are we going backwards, what is your net assessment.
Niall – Well my message is that leadership is important, and John was right about that, but we also need to act at the grass roots. The most important message I have for people here at ARC is be active citizens because the threats to our freedoms don’t just come in at the top level, they come in within your school, they will turn up in your college campus, on your alma mater, and you have to be ready to fight the ground game to make sure that crazy ideas, whether it is about race or about gender, don’t become part of the schools’ educational system, that you have relied upon and you are sending your children or grandchildren to.
So, leadership yes, we need it, and it needs to be strong. But the followership is just as important and that is what ARC is all about. Each and every one of you can do more of the fighting which Jacinta Nampijinpa Price just talked about, in your own daily lives. It works too! When the ‘woke’ director of human resources decides that it is time to do a little bit of intersectionality training, say no! Just say no to that stuff. I think if we all do that, we will have followership as well as leadership.
Greg Sheridan – And John, what about your grandchildren, what do you think of the future for them?
John Anderson – I think my response to that would be to say, ….. I think in an age which is surprisingly disinterested or even hostile toward the best interests of our kids, I cannot think of a policy area that we ought not to approach with an attitude of what will this mean for our children, economic policy, environmental policy, defence policy, tax policy. Dare I say it, fiscal policy and monetary policy, and our disgusting willingness to live beyond our means and engage in intergenerational theft.
I could expand on that!
Above is an extract from an ARC YouTube. For entire YouTube go to:
So, let me echo that call to action. Be An Activist!
And, it’s much more fun than being a spectator!
Having decided to become an activist, you could select which of the ‘four roads ahead’ fit your talents and passions.
Each ‘road’ can be effective but there will be one that takes you forward in perfectly pitched harmony. Just as in music, you will know when you have made the right choice. You will have the right mix, and no-one else can guide you with this selection.
I see the four roads as follows:-
Education (as being a precondition for any meaningful increase in freedom).
Economic self-protection and self-preservation. How individuals can protect themselves against inflation and other government policies. Always remember that if you get ‘wiped out’ you are of little use to anyone.
Political action and its use to roll back the power of the State and restore the rights of individuals.
Non-violence, peaceful forms of civil disobedience (against governments and bureaucrats when they go beyond their legitimate functions). I always remember the wise words of Ayn Rand, “They can only do to you what you permit them to do.”
May I expand on these ‘four roads ahead?’
Education has been my own choice, following a short but energetic sojourn into politics… but more on that later.
Education is important in developing the partnership of freedom and self-responsibility. These are interchangeable terms as self-responsibility is impossible unless one be free, and one cannot be free if not self-responsible.
My mentor, Leonard E. Read (the founder of FEE.org), suggested that education is a civilized alternative to ramming ideas down the throats of others. Instead, if we have a clever idea, just work on it. If it is any good, others will then borrow it from us.
This is the ‘road ahead’, for our Mannkal Foundation. The philosopher Eric Hoffer once wrote, “The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people.”
Mannkal Foundation’s track-record, over almost thirty years, is that we have processed over 2,500 young students through our programs, and this has given us time to evaluate how successful we have been.
I estimate that about 5% of those scholars have gone on to become activists, and that is a pretty good result when you realise all the other competing influences in this world today.
Our Mannkal’s Alumni have created their own organization – they run regular events and four of them are currently running as candidates in our upcoming elections.
So, our educational project has been successful, but it is very slow and let me assure it is really challenging work, particularly dealing with out ‘woke’ universities. I weep!
Economic self-protection and self-preservation. It sounds simple and logical that we will always make decisions that will protect ourselves from inflation and other government policies.
But this is not the case as many of these damaging policies are ‘sold to us’ by politicians, as being to our benefit.
A short course in the vital branch of economics called ‘Public Choice Theory’ will alert you to how legislation is written in favour of those few who receive the concentrated benefits (they have much to gain so will work the hardest to lobby for this legislation). For many years Mannkal has sponsored an accredited course in Public Choice Theory which clearly demonstrated that.
The prohibitive costs of such legislation are always designed to be spread over a large number of people. These substantial number of people will carry that burden as it is not ‘life threatening’.
What is ‘life threatening’ is the multitude of such burdens. Financial Illiteracy will guarantee that your later years will not be your best years.
If you are successful with your economic self-protection and self-preservation ‘journey’ you will always have sufficient funds to defend yourself and contribute to supporting your allies on the educational and political ‘roads ahead’.
If you have chosen to go into business and run a company to achieve your end goals, may I suggest an excellent guidebook. Its author is a Canadian academic, Jaana Woiceshyn. The book’s title is How to be Profitable and Moral. It is an excellent book that illustrates how to run a company on Randian principles. Available in print or Audible.
The third ‘road,’ political action and its use to roll back the power of the ‘state’ and restore the rights of individuals.
My own brief sojourn into politics was with nine other Australians in 1974, we formed the Workers Party / Progress Party (Murray Rothbard helped us with the platform document). That interesting experiment was covered in a chapter, ‘Our Very Own Political Party’… see Heroic Misadventures link to free eBook − https://www.mannwest.com/books/heroic-misadventures/
Was our political venture successful, did we take over Australia?
No, but we did get three libertarian politicians into parliament and ever since then there has always been several active and effective libertarians in Australia’s parliament.
We were successful in introducing a few clever ideas from the Libertarian Movement. Namely:-
The concept of victimless crimes in the sense that if there is no victim there can be no crime.
Sunset Clauses, limiting the life of legislation. Strangely enough it was the Labor / Socialist Party that stole both these ideas from us, and we willingly let them take possession.
Our political party virtually ended when an individual, called Malcolm Fraser, was elected as Prime Minister. He had just had his photo taken with Ayn Rand and his speech writer captured many free market libertarian concepts for his election speeches. So we relaxed!
However, as Prime Minister, he obviously did not understand these concepts and went on to become one of Australia’s worst Prime Ministers.
This does not indicate that you should stop trying the political method as circumstances are always changing. This political ‘road’ starts with a careful study of ‘just what is the legitimate role of government?’
It is not easy to answer this question, and that degree of difficulty is deliberate! For us to say that ‘we are not interested in government or politics’ would only be a satisfactory answer if government or politics would leave us alone, so there is every reason to step inside this murky mess (or as Donald Trump calls it ‘the swamp’).
Australia has its own ‘swamp’. It is called Canberra.
Way back, in 1977, when I was still drawn to the political path, I ‘booked’ what was then called a ‘long distance trunk line telephone call’ to Antony Fisher. Fisher, in the United Kingdom, had founded the Institute of Economic Affairs and later the Atlas Network. His political influence fascinated me, hence my telephone call to enthusiastically encourage Fisher to visit Australia.
Although he did say that he intended to visit, I do not think he ever managed a visit as my various personal meetings with him were always elsewhere.
Our telephone call was long (in those days interrupted every three minutes with ‘warning beeps’) and as I had several questions for him, with his permission, I recorded his responses. I then transcribed his comments about ‘bringing economic principles to politics’.
His method consisted of completing thoroughly researched studies and making the resultant information freely available to politicians; intellectuals, the media, and other avenues through which the public are normally ‘educated’.
He explained the need for these studies as follows:- “One self-imposed trouble of politicians is that they are terribly busy and have little, if any, time for research. MPs have an impossible job when government becomes involved in every detail of our lives. Laws reach the statute book without proper discussion. This result is inevitable so long as parliament is trying to do work which no parliament can ever do.
The average politician does little or no research, and without a sound understanding of principles he is unlikely to be constructive. It is easy to be negative and easiest of all for a politician in opposition to be critical when the ruling party has been in government long enough to have proved itself no better than the last. This is why politicians spend time attacking each other and the public get bored with the process.”
“Research publications issued by political parties are bound to be biased, and therefore attract little attention for the press and the intellectual world. The many political compromises in producing a ‘package deal’ will probably mean that the parties cannot resist increasing taxation and government action, thereby helping to build up the syndrome which is so harmful. Because government decision-making is not based on principles, an inevitable result is that countless ‘deals’ are made to meet the demands of pressure groups. As each group seeks to achieve privileges at the expense of others, and as all the others are doing exactly the same, the ultimate result must be a highly uneconomic system based on restraint and compulsion”, Fisher said. “Lacking fundamental principles as guides, the politician and his party organisation are like amateur explorers marching in step to an unknown destination without a map, navigational equipment of any factual knowledge of the stars.”
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