David McElroy

If you happen to be in the Australian state of Victoria, be sure you don’t insult the politician in charge of gambling. (Or his staff, either.) It might just cost you $12,000 under a new law set to pass.

Politicians are some of the most thin-skinned people I’ve ever known. It’s not true of all of them, but many of them believe there’s one set of rules for you, but another set for themselves. They’re free to say whatever they want about you, but heaven help you if you speak ill of them.

The latest example of this double standard comes from Victoria, where the state government is making it a crime to insult the state gambling officials. According to an Australian newspaper, a spokeswoman for the government explains the move this way:

“This provision protects officers of the gambling regulator from bullying or intimidation when exercising powers at the direction of the Minister for Gaming. The minister can look after himself, but does not believe that those working on his behalf should have to put up with harassment.”

Let’s be honest. If you believe in free speech, you believe people have the right to say what they want, even if others find it insulting. If you believe in legal limits to free speech, you don’t believe in real free speech. I want to hold people responsible for fraud or libel their words might be used for, but stopping people from simply insulting others is wrong. That isn’t what free societies do.

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I already knew Warren Buffet was a fool, but I didn’t know until now that he’s also a hypocrite. It turns out that the man who begs the U.S. government to raise taxes on wealthy folks has an ongoing tax liability at the company he runs. Berkshire Hathaway’s own auditors believe the company owes the IRS more than a billion dollars in unpaid taxes.

The grisly facts of Buffet’s situation are laid out in an article by a website run by Americans for Limited Government. It’s not a pretty picture if you’ve been a fan of the Wizard of Omaha. (Download the PDF of the Berkshire Hathaway annual report to see the specifics on Page 54.)

In Buffet’s opinion piece for the New York Times, he said:

“Most [wealthy people] wouldn’t mind being told to pay more in taxes as well, particularly when so many of their fellow citizens are truly suffering.”

It sounds to me as though Buffet is less worried about the suffering of his “fellow citizens” than he is in influencing politics. As I’ve pointed out before, Buffet is very welcome to contribute his own money to pay for big government if he’d like. He’s even more welcome to pay up the billion dollars that his company’s own auditors believe the company is likely going to owe. Since he’s not doing either of these, it suggests something else.

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One of the most common sentiments you see at many political protests is summed up by this sign. Whether it’s Tea Party types or Occupy Wall Street types, they all believe that they represent “real people” and they express the desire to “take back our country.”

This is the heart of the problem with trying to live in a coercive state based on a majoritarian system. The vast majority live under the delusion that most people are like them, so “our country” means whatever it is that they believe it means.

So when Tea Party types talk about taking the country back for what they believe in, they’re not in the majority. Nowhere close, in fact. But when the Occupy Wall Street types talk about themselves being “the 99 percent,” they’re even worse. They’re just plain delusional.

We’re not one big happy family — and there’s no reason to keep pretending that we have anything other than civic propaganda and a bit of geographic history that keeps us together. Why don’t we let go of the illusion that we all have to live under the same rules? Why don’t we let each other go — and let groups establish their own independent cities or enclaves wherever they can legally and morally acquire the land?

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