Dear All,

Here is the latest digest of Libertarian Alliance articles. You can see that our writers have been busy, arguing with the world – sometimes with each other – about politics, economics, war, religion, plus history and the arts.

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Yours in Liberty,

Sean

🏛 British Politics

The Education of the Fit and of the Unfit: Britain’s War on Talent — Marian Halcombe
Britain has built an education system that rewards mediocrity and punishes ability. Marian Halcombe shows how vast sums are channelled into “inclusion” and “support” for the unfit while the gifted are neglected, demoralised, or driven abroad. Bureaucrats congratulate themselves on compassion as they subsidise failure, while the bright and disciplined are denied challenge or respect. Equality has become a national death wish. When the fit must carry the unfit indefinitely, excellence vanishes—and so does the civilisation that once depended on it.
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Bring Back the Gallows: Crime, Eugenics and the Death of Justice — Marian Halcombe
Marian Halcombe revisits Britain’s uneasy relationship with punishment and mercy. She argues that a society which treats crime as illness, not choice, inevitably abandons justice. The abolition of capital punishment did not make the country gentler—it made it evasive, sentimental, and cruel in new bureaucratic ways. By stripping punishment of moral meaning, modern Britain excuses the wicked while patronising their victims. This is not reform but degeneration: a culture that no longer believes in evil, or in itself, can only moralise impotently as disorder multiplies.
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Brit-Cards: The Keystone of Our Total State — Alan Bickley
Alan Bickley examines the steady introduction of “Brit-Cards,” digital identifiers sold as convenience but designed for control. Behind the slogans of efficiency lies an architecture of surveillance: biometric data, central databases, and algorithmic policing. Bickley warns that the British state is moving from bureaucratic muddle to total management, in which citizenship becomes a conditional licence. What began as harmless admin will end as permanent supervision, linking finances, health, and political obedience. His essay exposes how this system grew quietly, without consent, under both parties’ rule.
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Ben Wallace: The Jailer’s Plea for Chains — Alan Bickley
In this essay, Bickley reviews the pronouncements of former Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, who now calls for tighter security laws and greater conformity. What appears as patriotic firmness is, he argues, the language of servitude. Wallace’s “strength” is the strength of the turnkey—authority without imagination, power without vision. Bickley dissects how the managerial right has internalised the ideology of its enemies: a passion for control disguised as duty. The piece is both character study and warning against those who mistake obedience for order.
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Digital ID: The Petition Ignored, the People Betrayed — Alan Bickley
Over 2.7 million Britons signed a petition rejecting Digital ID. The government brushed them aside. Alan Bickley’s essay charts this act of contempt as part of a wider collapse of democratic accountability. Digital ID, he explains, is not about “ease” or “security” but conditioning: a passport to services that can be revoked at will. Once identity is centralised, freedom becomes provisional. Bickley’s prose is cold with anger, exposing how bureaucratic convenience masks political betrayal. The people petitioned politely; the regime replied with indifference.
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The Free Speech and Association Act — Reginald Godwyn
Reginald Godwyn publishes a draft parliamentary bill that would restore freedoms long forgotten—speech, conscience, and voluntary association. His Act would prohibit employers, banks, and institutions from punishing lawful opinions, forcing them to choose neutrality over ideology. It is a legislative challenge to the censorship industry: tribunals, NGOs, and corporate HR departments that now police belief more zealously than any church court. Godwyn’s proposal reads like a Charter of Liberties for the twenty-first century—direct, uncompromising, and rooted in the conviction that speech is not a privilege but a birthright.
👉 Read the full bill and commentary

💷 Economics

Free Trade and Protection: When “If p then q” Meets Power — Bryan Mercadente
Bryan Mercadente explores how pure economic logic collides with political power. Free trade, he notes, is impeccable in theory but often disastrous in practice when manipulated by states and corporations. The classroom syllogism—“if p then q”—assumes honesty and reciprocity that rarely exist in geopolitics. Using vivid examples from manufacturing, energy, and currency policy, Mercadente shows how elites preach free trade while practising protection for themselves. The essay blends wit and analysis to ask whether abstract models can survive in a world run by rent-seekers and technocrats.
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Free Trade and Hard Reforms: A Reply to Bryan — Sebastian Wang
Sebastian Wang responds to Mercadente with measured scepticism. While accepting that global trade has been captured by oligarchs, he defends its original principle: voluntary exchange between civilised nations. Protectionism, he warns, is no cure—it breeds inefficiency and political patronage. Wang calls for “hard reforms”: restoring honest money, dismantling subsidies, and re-industrialising through freedom rather than tariffs. His reply transforms the debate into something richer than ideology—a conversation about power, prudence, and how liberty might rebuild what bureaucracy has destroyed.
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🧠 Libertarian Philosophy

Ludwig von Mises: About Government and Social Co-operation — Oscar Grau
Oscar Grau revisits Mises’s central insight: that society itself is a cooperative enterprise built on voluntary exchange, not coercion. He explains how Mises grounded liberal order in human rationality and peaceful coordination rather than moral utopianism. In an age of technocracy and surveillance, Grau reminds readers that government’s only legitimate function is to protect cooperation, not to replace it. His essay reads like a short seminar in classical liberalism—clear, humane, and quietly revolutionary.
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Review of The Problem with Intellectual Property — Sebastian Wang
Sebastian Wang reviews Stephan Kinsella’s enduring challenge to the notion of “intellectual property.” He praises Kinsella’s logic: that ideas are infinitely reproducible and therefore cannot be owned without state violence. Yet Wang extends the argument, examining how modern economies depend on such fictions to enrich monopolists while stifling creativity. The essay bridges theory and politics, showing that to defend liberty one must strip law of its sacred cows. It is an invitation to think about ownership in a digital age without worshipping paperwork.
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Predatory Precaution — Neil Lock
Neil Lock turns the “precautionary principle” upside down. What begins as a plea for safety, he shows, ends as justification for endless control. From health mandates to environmental diktats, every “emergency” expands the state’s reach while eroding responsibility. Lock traces how fear became a governing ideology, and how precaution itself has turned predatory—devouring freedom under the pretext of saving it. His essay is both diagnosis and warning: risk cannot be abolished without abolishing life.
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Community, Society and Justice — Neil Lock
In this companion piece, Neil Lock defines justice not as state distribution but as the outcome of free cooperation. Drawing on economics, ethics, and cybernetics, he sketches a model of society built from voluntary networks rather than imposed hierarchies. The result is a vision of civilisation that thrives on reciprocity and reputation instead of bureaucracy and threat. His argument is philosophical but accessible—a manifesto for those who still believe that community can exist without compulsion.
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Politics, Power and Psychopathy — Neil Lock
Neil Lock examines the disturbing overlap between political authority and psychopathic temperament. Drawing on psychology and observation, he argues that politics selects for manipulation, deceit, and moral insensibility—the very traits most societies claim to restrain. The result is a managerial class incapable of empathy yet addicted to control. Lock’s essay is not conspiracy but anatomy: a calm, forensic study of how institutions reward pathology while punishing honesty. It ends with a libertarian alternative—governance without rulers, cooperation without predators.
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Bodrum 2025: Reflections on a Journey — Sebastian Wang
Sebastian Wang recounts his time at the Bodrum conference—a gathering of libertarian scholars, dissidents, and eccentrics. Part travelogue, part meditation, the essay moves from the turquoise Aegean to the moral architecture of freedom itself. Wang describes the subtle fraternity of those who still believe in truth without institutions, and learning without hierarchy. His prose combines irony with gratitude, portraying the event as both a celebration and a warning: that liberty can survive only when defended by those willing to think beyond comfort.
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⚔️ War / Foreign Policy

Trump’s Gaza Peace Plan: A Monument to Folly — Alan Bickley
Alan Bickley dismantles Donald Trump’s self-styled peace initiative for Gaza, arguing that it offered humiliation masquerading as diplomacy. The plan demanded Palestinian surrender while granting Israel immunity. Bickley traces how Western leaders sell subservience as strategy, and how the same elites who destroyed Iraq and Libya now claim moral authority in Gaza. His essay blends geopolitical realism with moral disgust—a record of empire talking peace while practising domination.
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In What Respect Is Hamas Winning? — Len D. Pozeram
Len Pozeram asks a forbidden question: what if Hamas, for all its losses, is winning the war? He argues that by surviving, by exposing Israel’s brutality, and by shifting world opinion, Hamas has achieved the only victory available to the weak—endurance. Pozeram’s essay cuts through propaganda to examine how asymmetric warfare turns moral resilience into strategy. He warns that Israel’s campaign, meant to crush its enemy, may instead have delegitimised itself.
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Trump Didn’t Humiliate Israel—He Took Orders — Alan Bickley
Contrary to media triumphalism, Bickley argues that Trump’s supposed confrontation with Israel was theatre. The United States remains bound to Tel Aviv by money, lobbying, and shared illusions of empire. Every gesture of defiance conceals deeper obedience. Bickley’s essay reveals how Washington’s foreign policy has become a franchise operation, enforcing Israeli priorities under the American flag.
👉 Read the full essay

⛪ Religious Issues

Mrs Mullally and Canterbury: Sedes aut Corrupta aut Vacans — Sebastian Wang
Sebastian Wang writes in the austere Latin title’s spirit—either the seat is corrupt or vacant. His essay laments the Church of England’s descent into managerial platitudes, where theology has been replaced by corporate jargon. The piece reads as elegy rather than polemic, describing a church that no longer believes anything definite, yet cannot stop talking. It is a portrait of institutional decay seen through the eyes of someone who still mourns what was lost.
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Sarah Mullally and the Real End of Canterbury — Len D. Pozeram
Len Pozeram approaches the same subject politically, not theologically. He argues that the enthronement of Sarah Mullally marks the Church’s full capture by the global managerial left—the fusion of moral bureaucracy and corporate progressivism. The Church has ceased to challenge the world; it now imitates it. Canterbury has become a policy platform where faith is marketing and virtue signalling replaces belief.
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Dispensationalism: An American Heresy that Distorts Scripture and Endangers the World — Sebastian Wang
Wang traces the rise of Dispensationalism from 19th-century prophecy charts to 21st-century geopolitics. What began as a fringe reading of Revelation now underwrites American foreign policy, justifying endless war in the name of divine destiny. The essay combines theology, history, and political analysis to show how bad exegesis became imperial ideology.
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Christian Zionism — David Webb
David Webb explores how revivalist theology merged with nationalism to produce the powerful movement of Christian Zionism. What began as millenarian enthusiasm has evolved into a global political force aligning religion with state power. Webb’s calm prose exposes how prophecy was conscripted into empire, turning faith into justification for intervention.
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📜 History

Filth, Faith and Forbidden Desire: Noel Malcolm’s Tour of Early-Modern Sodomy — Bryan Mercadente
Bryan Mercadente reviews Noel Malcolm’s study of sexuality, repression, and hypocrisy in early-modern Europe. He finds in Malcolm’s history not only cruelty and superstition but the first stirrings of bureaucratic morality—the same urge to police private life that still thrives today. His review moves easily between scholarship and satire, reminding readers that every age claims enlightenment while practising its own inquisitions.
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Phthiriasis: The Lousy Death of Kings and Tyrants — Bryan Mercadente
A grimly fascinating excursion through medical folklore and moral symbolism. Mercadente recounts how rulers from antiquity to the Baroque were said to die devoured by lice—nature’s revenge on vanity and power. Behind the grotesque legend lies a meditation on decay, justice, and the inevitability of downfall. The prose is macabre, learned, and darkly humorous—a miniature moral history of corruption.
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🎭 Arts and Reviews

Stephen Fry’s Odyssey: The Case for Not Reading — Bryan Mercadente
Bryan Mercadente eviscerates Stephen Fry’s retelling of Homer, calling it “culture for people who never opened a Loeb.” The review mocks its narcissism, its ignorance of Greek, and its smug moralising. What masquerades as accessibility, he argues, is really dilution—the reduction of epic poetry to BBC chatter. Mercadente’s piece is both literary criticism and cultural autopsy: the dissection of a civilisation that prefers personality to genius.
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I Care a Lot (2020): A Libertarian Satire in Disguise — Bryan Mercadente
Mercadente interprets I Care a Lot not as feminist thriller but as an accidental libertarian satire. The film’s villain—an officially licensed “guardian” who robs the elderly under colour of law—is the perfect emblem of the modern state. The essay turns black comedy into political parable, showing how “care” becomes coercion once bureaucracy claims moral authority.
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In Praise of Castor Oil — Reginald Godwyn
Reginald Godwyn revives the forgotten virtues of an old household remedy. His piece blends humour with nostalgia: a defence of castor oil as both medicine and metaphor for a time when health meant discipline, not pharmaceutical dependency. Beneath the wit lies a libertarian moral—the wisdom of self-care against the arrogance of professionalised medicine.
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An Afternoon with Dr Gabb — Alan Bickley
Alan Bickley’s portrait of Dr Sean Gabb is affectionate, sardonic, and faintly terrifying. Over tea and pipe smoke, the two discuss politics, education, and the slow euthanasia of the English mind. Bickley captures Gabb as a man out of time—scholarly, indignant, and immune to modern euphemism. Their conversation becomes a miniature of a dying civilisation: the humour of those who see decline clearly yet refuse despair. This essay is both tribute and diagnosis, showing how resistance to conformity now survives in eccentric friendship and stubborn intelligence.
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Douglas E. French’s When Movements Become Rackets: Review of the PFS Trilogy — Sebastian Wang
Sebastian Wang reviews Douglas E. French’s chronicle of the Property and Freedom Society—a movement founded to preserve intellectual integrity against both state and market corruption. The trilogy charts how revolutions in thought decay into business models. Wang praises French’s candour and uses the review to ask whether any radical idea can survive success. His essay is at once literary criticism, history, and moral reflection: a defence of sincerity in an age that monetises everything, even rebellion.
👉 Read the full review
For more essays on liberty, history, and resistance to managerial decline, visit Libertarianism.uk or follow our updates on social media.

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