online anyways?
bored enuff yo read this??
>>> ARTROCKER 172 EDITORIAL <<<
Yesterday morning, as I wended my weary w. to Artrocker Central it seemed to me
that the world wore a smile on its face, the trees seemed particularly green,
the junkie on the corner wore a carnation in his button hole or, as the poet
Browning would have it: 'The lark's on the wing: The snails on the thorn: God's
in his heaven - All's right with the world!' There was a lightness to my step as
I realised why - my freedom had been saved, Blair's attempt to turn this into a
police-state had been rejected, 'Freedom an English subject's sole prerogative'
as Dryden put it, as long ago as 1685.
I don't think Blair knows his Dryden - or his Burke, Kipling or even Lenin for
that matter - unlikely as it may seem even old Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov knew where
the threat to freedom lay; 'While the state exists, there can be no freedom.
When there is freedom there is no state.' - which is pretty rum stuff from one
of the original state-ists.
But I take no pleasure from the imminent decline of Tony, I know that the
real danger lies in Gordon Brown who appears to have been granted some sort
of dynastic right to rule (how very democratic!). Brown is an old fashioned,
dour faced puritan and as such perfectly represents the power base of New
Labour - after all, one look at the electoral map
(http://www.qwghlm.co.uk/projects/electionmap/) will tell you that it's the
North (still whingeing on about Mrs. Thatcher and blaming here for
everything like it was 1982) and Scotland that keep these people in power,
from the Midlands down the map turns extremely blue.
Meanwhile, back in the 1600s Locke had something to say about it:
'...however it may be mistaken, the end of law is, not to abolish or restrain,
but to preserve and enlarge freedom.'
Tom Artrocker
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