I don’t pretend to know the details of what has happened. I have never met OH or Obo, I don’t know what history there is or how far back it goes or anything at all, really. I don’t consider it any of my business.
OH might shut this blog down and close his account on Blogger, or he might allow me to keep the place warm until he returns. The decision is his, I’m just glad he decided to take a few days to think about it. Obo is also thinking about whether to continue as a blogger or not.
For myself, I will stop when the power goes off or when the ever-tightening legislative noose finally silences the last protesting voice.
Because it’s about more than spats between individuals. It’s about more than personalities. It’s about more than whether we agree or disagree on any single issue. I know blogs typically have small readerships. I don’t even collect stats on mine. I know blogs are largely read by those who already agree with the author and by a few of those whose smugness oozes from the screen as they ‘refute’ the blogger’s post with an irrelevant or distorted comment. I know blogging will not change the world.
But if we don’t try, who will? Nailing a proclamation to a church door was once a very effective protest, but it will achieve nothing today aside from a column-inch in a local paper saying ‘vandal sticks nail in church door’. Picking up salt on a beach was once the start of a movement that liberated a country. Now it would achieve no more than a fine based on some obscure environmental law. Hell, our so-called civil servants don’t even need a law to arrest someone any more. Just ask a photographer.
Maybe nobody is reading this. Maybe nobody ever will. Maybe anyone who happens by will just snort at the rantings of an old cripple and laugh it all away. Maybe nothing I say will ever cause so much as a ripple in the world. Or maybe it will. All I can do is say it, and see what happens. That’s all any of us can do.
I noted the gleeful encroach of several anonymous Righteous in this spat. I’m not talking about friends of OH and/or Obo who have taken sides as they see fit. I’m talking about those who would exacerbate the spat and who would extrapolate it to the party of which both were, until recently, members. OH has left the party but that does not deter those who would like to see the whole libertarian ethos quashed. I have seen frequent references to ‘right-wing libertarian’ which seek to portray the entire idea as something from the mind of Goebbels. I have seen many attacks on both these bloggers, while they are both at a low, designed to shut either or both of them down.
We have heard, so many times, about the EU and the government’s desire to shut down the dissenting voices of the blogs. Why? If we’re no more than an irritating background buzz, why shut us down? Why are the Righteous so delighted at the silencing of this blog and Obo’s, when they publicly dismiss all such blogs as the rantings of paranoid lunatics? Why the continued attempt to ostracise libertarians with the ‘right-wing’ or ‘xenophobe’ labels? Why is the Gorgon’s favourite circus midget so intent on stopping these rantings?
We don’t agree with each other on a lot of things. We each hold our own opinions and will defend those opinions. We do not speak with one voice, as the Righteous do. We believe in free speech, including the rights of others to speak, even if we think they talk rubbish. We are not a ‘blogger conspiracy’. Most of us have never met and never will. We do not take to the streets with placards, we do not advertise our blogs on billboards. Blogs are found by those who are looking for them. They are not something you come across by accident. So where’s the threat?
The threat is in that sheet of paper nailed to the door. It’s in a handful of sandy salt. In themselves, they are nothing, seen by few people, and are easily dismissed – but it’s what they represent that matters. They represent one man’s refusal to accept that things Have To Be This Way and his enunciation of hs beliefs. What happens next depends on how many are of a similar mind, how many are prepared to stand up and say ‘Enough’ with him.
If the Church could have taken Martin Luther’s paper from the door before anyone saw it, don’t you think they would have? If the British could have slapped the salt from Gandhi’s hand before anyone saw he held it, don’t you think they would have? Someone, somewhere, will post something on a blog that will change the world. I don’t know who or when, but the more blogs there are, the more readers see them, the more likely it is to happen.
The loss of OH is more than the loss of an entertaining writer and sweary blogger. The same is true of Obo, if he decides also to call it a day. They are the loss of chances where that one post, that one earth-shattering set of words, could appear and change the way we all see the world. Every silenced voice is more than the loss of one individual’s opinions. It is the loss of a chance to be shown a way out of the mess we live in now.
That’s why the ginger midget is scared. That’s why the government and the EU is scared. That’s why the Righteous want the blogs silenced. Not because of what we say. Because of what we might say.
If OH agrees, I’ll keep this blog running but on the understanding it’s his blog and he can take it back anytime. I will not take sides in the OH/Obo fight because it’s none of my business and because both of them are necessary components of the fight against our Righteous future. I hope, in time, they will both be back.
I don’t want a future where everything is banned except those things we are permitted. I don’t want a future where our choices are made by the Great Ones and we have to agree or face re-education. I don’t want a future where those who seek a little independence are punished.
That is what we have to look forward to, if we let the Righteous silence us.