These are the three things that matter most to me - fighting for them is the reason I remain in politics. Little else matters when you get to the crunch - free speech opens the doors of discovery, free enterprise allows us to create wonders from that discovery and free trade allows the riches of that discovery and creation to be shared by all.
These things are also the reason why I'm right-wing rather than left wing. And I'm reminded again just how much the left will always fall back on protection - the route to stagnation, stasis and the promotion of poverty. Here's some chap called Hines in the Guardian:
Progressive protectionism by contrast would instead allow countries to wean themselves off export dependence. It would enable the rebuilding and re-diversification of domestic economies by limiting what goods states let in and what funds they allow to enter or leave the country. Having regained control of their economic future, countries can then set the levels of taxes and agree the regulations needed to fund and facilitate this transition.
Clearly Mr Hines has never been to North Korea! Yet this proposal - little different from the autarky that thrilled Mussolini, fascinated Franco and led to Pol Pot's murderous 'year zero' - is made seriously by a left-wing commenter in a leading English newspaper.
The left really don't understand this freedom stuff - it's not just that free speech, free enterprise and free trade are morally right, it's that they are better in practice too! And when we limit freedom to speak, to do business or to trade, we make ourselves poorer in spirit as well as poorer in the pocket.
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