Rabble's Solution: Blame Thatcher

Yeah. They're really this stupid

In an interview with the authors of Wikinomics, Rabble co-founder Judy Rebick inadvertently offered the perfect explanation for some of the bizarre material that appears on that website.

The website is essentially reader-produced. Authors are encouraged to contribute based on reader response. That not only means that work that is otherwise unreadable tripe has an unusual staying power on the Rabble site, it also means that the pressure is on authors to produce work that is ideologically soothing, even if it's entirely idiotic.

For evidence, one needs look no further than a column published there by "social justice litigation lawyer" Jim Quail. In searching for an explanation for the Vancouver riot, Quail has reached a rather peculiar conclusion: blame Margaret Thatcher.

It actually offers a crash course in the process by which Rabble's material is produced:

Step one - disregard the facts: Or, better yet, write a column that doesn't rely on one. Not a single, solitary fact to back Quail's bold demagogic assertions.

Step two - disregard logic: The logical lapses in Quail's work are comically overwhelming. Take, for example, this bizarre passage:

"There is a world of difference between happiness and fun: fun is the drug that drives consumer-capitalism. It is the new opiate, displacing religion. Contrary to the line in the Beatles song, fun -- the distraction of immediate gratification -- is one of the things most readily bought with money. On the other hand, happiness -- the existential joy of human meaning and fulfillment -- cannot be purchased. Happiness flows from our involvement in the great collaborative process of society. Fun is essentially solitary, the cold inner loneliness of the party-goer’s relentless struggles to stimulate the pleasure-centres of the brain."

Apparently, Quail thinks he can actually quantify fun. Once one gets past this, it becomes difficult to not speculate on how Quail spent his youth. He proclaims fun to be solitary.

That doesn't seem to be the kind of wisdom that emerges from a person who spent his childhood playing baseball or street hockey with his friends. Rather, it seems like the kind of thought that creeps into the mind of a child who spends his time alone with his model railroad (today it would be video games).

Quail very clearly hasn't been to very many parties. The loner getting drunk by hismelf isn't really having a lot of fun; he's a loser.

Truthfully, fun is something that is typically shared with good friends and family. Yes, sometimes it costs money. But it doesn't have to. And contrary to Quail's assertion, it isn't really something someone can buy.

Comparatively, he declares happiness to stem from "our involvement in the great collaborative processes of society".

It certainly sounds like he's suggesting that the true path to happiness is not through personal achievement and self-actualization. It certainly sounds like he's suggesting that the true path to happiness is not through building strong relationships with one's friends and one's family.

No, Quail seems to be suggesting that the true path to happiness is through participation in massive left-wing "collaborative" social programmes. That idea, frankly, just speaks for itself.

It's with this particular bias in mind that Quail just can't seem to understand Thatcher. So, instead, he chooses to demonize her.

"Capitalism’s political leadership of the past four decades undertook the project of cultural vandalism with a vengeance. Their standard-bearer was England’s Prime Minister Thatcher, who famously summarized the atomization and negation of human society: 'there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.'"

It's true that Thatcher said this. She's never apologized for it, and never bothered to explain it. Personally, this author considers this statement to be a repudiation of the far-left's vision of society, one wherein people's individual efforts were to be directed toward collective goals. Rather, Thatcher viewed society as it is: made up of individuals with their own individual goals, dreams and desires, and that any collective goals have to be built out of those individual goals.

One thing that Thatcher stood firmly against was any sense of entitlement. Like it or not, one thing, more than anything, stood out in the Vancouver hockey riot: a sense of frustrated entitlement. At least in part, this riot was perpetrated by fans who had convinced themselves their team was entitled to win the Stanley Cup. When this didn't happen, they threw a tantrum.

Thatcher would never have tolerated the idea that anyone is entitled to anything. "Social justice litigators", on the other hand, approach their work with the idea that people are legally entitled to certain things; often things to which no entitlement exists.

It's that sense of entitlement that draws Greek protesters into the streets to protest against austerity progreams meant to save their country's economy. Although a riot over frustrated championship ambition seems more childish than a riot to preserve lavish social programs that are literally about to destroy Greece, at the core it's no less childish at all.

It's Margaret Thatcher's message of personal responsibility that holds incidents such as the Vancouver riot at bay. It's the collectivist ideal that Quail champions that ells people that collective guilt erases personal responsibility -- and results in bizarre excuses for apologies that attempt to dissemble any sense of personal responsibility.

Then, of course, there's the ultimate punchline. Considering the age group of the majority of the rioters seen on CTV and CBC news footage, most of them likely have no clue who Margaret Thatcher is.

But fortuantely for Jim Quail, he publishes his work on Rabble.ca: where something doesn't need to be factually or logically sound, so long as it's ideologically soothing.

Think of it as a political opiate for morons.

Time to End the Political Levy in Canada

In a recent episode of The Michael Coren Show, the issue of a donation by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers to support a Canadian contribution to a flotilla to break the Gaza blockade became an issue of feirce contention.

Ontario Federation of Labour President Sid Ryan was asked if the donation represents tax dollars supporting Alternatives International -- a Montreal-based radical organization -- in international grandstanding against Israel.

Ryan insisted that this was basically the use of private money to support this cause by the workers' choice, not public money. And he's right. And also he's wrong.

He's right that while Canadian postal workers are paid with public funds, that money is no longer public funds once paid out to workers. It becomes theirs to do with as they choose.

But Ryan is wrong in insisting that this represents workers doing as they please with their money. That simply is not the case. This is a case of funds collected through union dues being used for political purposes, regardless of the view of individual workers.

The individual worker has limited opportunity to have a voice in whether or not the dues they pay will be used for these kinds of activities. That's decided by a relatively-small number of delegates at union conventions.

The worker doesn't have the opportunity to leave the union or withhold their dues if they object to these decisions -- the Supreme Court has allowed unions to force workers to pay dues in closed-shop environments, regardless of whether or not they're actually extended membership by the union.

This kind of story gives Prime Minister Stephen Harper -- governing with a majority -- the opportunity to do something that would aatisfy two ends: take a stand for thousands of disaffected union workers across Canada, and make the far-left really wail.

Harper's government should follow the British example of Margaret Thatcher and end the political levy in labour unions.

In Britain, the political levy was the use of mandatory funds collected from union members to fund the Labour party. As per the law, labour unions are not funding political parties in Canada. What they are doing is funding non-party political organizations.

The Harper government should pass a law that would ban unions using funds collected through mandatory union dues to fund political activities of any kind -- this includes third party campaigns at election time. If unions want to collect voluntary fees from members to fund those activities, that should still be permitted.

The far-left, quite naturally, will wail about losing their ability to force unionized workers to fund their activities regardless of their own will. Harper should simply let them wail. No one will care.

The thousands of workers in Canada, particularly those practically conscripted into union-coerced political bondage, will appreciate finally having the opportunity to decide if their money will fund far-left radical political projects or not. Perhaps union executive committees will even become a less-appealing job for demagogic leftists.

It's time to end the political levy in Canada. End it now.

Nice.

Labour leader preemptively dancing on Margaret Thatcher's grave

Some Nexus readers may recall the days after Ted Kennedy's death, when certain left-wing bloggers declared that right-wing bloggers were "dancing on Kennedy's grave".

The best available evidence was gathered and examined. With the exception of a handful of individuals, it turns out this allegation was untrue. Although the individuals in question refused to accept the evidence regardless of how overwhelming it was, there was no realistic basis for that politicizing Kennedy's passing.

On the left side of the aisle, however, it seems to be a very different story.

With concerns over Margaret Thatcher's health mounting, it seems that some left-wingers -- such as Keir Morrison -- aren't waiting for Thatcher to actually die before the dancing begins.

Morrison, who won election to Nottinghamshire Council last week, was recently spotted wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the words "a generation of trade unionists will dance on Thatcher's grave."

If it were merely Morrison, a youthful member of a Morrison family dynasty on Nottinghamshire Council, caught up in this it would be one thing.

But Labour leader Ed Miliband still has yet to offer a reasonable explanation as to why he would willingly be photographed with Morrison; both of them all smiles.

A spokesperson for Miliband's office has claimed that Miliband didn't know the slogan was on Morrison's T-shirt. If anyone, anywhere in the world, believes that, that spokesperson likely also has a slightly-used clocktower to sell them.

Nor this is the first time that someone high up in Labour has embarrassed their party like this. Last year leadership hopeful John McDonnell declared he would have liked to to travel back in time and kill Thatcher while she was still Prime Minister.

He was applauded for the "joke".

It seems that so blatantly wishing ill on Lady Thatcher has become a quite ordinary practice among the British left. Nor does the Canadian left by any means seem immune.

Be aware. It's just how these people operate.

Uncovering the Fingerprint of Communism on the British Coalminers' Strike

British coalminers' union accepted communist funds

A dirty secret of the cold war has come to light recently, as a study by Dr Norman LaPorte and Stefan Berger have revealled that Britain's National Union of Mineworkers accepted funds from East Germany in the midst of its 1984-85 coalminer's strike.

The revelation casts further light on a key page of cold war history.

The strike was considered a key ideological confrontation of the cold war. The British coal industry had been nationalized since 1946, when the Labour Party government of Clement Attlee passed the Coal Industry Nationalization Act. Coal mining in Britain would henceforth be managed by the National Coal Board until its privatization by the Thatcher government in 1987.

The strike began when the Thatcher government moved to close coal pits that were unprofitable, and had become a liability to the government. (The Tories had already attempted once to do this in 1981, but abandoned these plans in the face of a strike.)

The government's plan to close 20 pits -- at the cost of 20,000 jobs -- spurned the NUM to begin strike action.

But the Thatcher government was prepared for the strike. The conversion of many British power plants to oil, as well as pre-strike stockpiling of coal, allowed the government to ride the strike out and outlast NUM strikers.

If not for the financial intervention of the communist German Democratic Republic, one wonders how long the NUM could have held out.

The ferrying of these funds to NUM was seemingly an international affair.

"The documents talk about the possibility of using a 'go-between' from the French communist union CGT [General Confederation of Labour] who would deliver the money straight from Eastern Europe to representatives of the NUM," Berger explains. "They also allege that the East German FDGB union {Free German Trade Union Federation) helped the miners by providing free holidays for the families and children of British miners in the German Democratic Republic."

"The FDGB, the documents say, also co-ordinated the shipping of food parcels, clothing and so on to British miners," Berger continues.

The East German communists saw the coalminers' strike as a choice opportunity in the ideological struggle between communism and capitalism.

"The communists perceived the NUM as an ally in the international class struggle against capitalism - hence the close interest in the strike," Berger added.

Nor was the coalminers' strike the only time NUM associated with east European communists.

"Relations between the NUM and east European communism had been good since the 1960s," Berger explains. "It was among the first major trade union federations to call for the recognition of the GDR."

"However it was by no means the only union with a cosy relationship with East European communism," Berger continues. "By the late 1970s, 24 of 44 members of the general council of the Trades Union Congress represented unions which had 'fraternal relations' with East European communist unions."

"It was, above all, the anti-capitalism of left-of-centre British trade unionists which made them believe that East European communism was on the right path," Berger concludes. "The British Left ignored massive human rights abuses and the lack of basic freedoms behind the Iron Curtain because they believed that the basic development in the direction of socialism was right."

It was this same willful ignorance of the atrocities of communism that had turned George Orwell -- who helped popularize coalminers as a left-wing political cause celibre with The Road to Wigan Pier -- away from his admiration for socialism and led to the clear anti-communist attitude expressed in Animal Farm.

(Orwell, it could be said, may have been history's first neo-conservative.)

The revelations regarding the 1984-85 coalminers' strike could, in time, lead to deeper investigation of the 1974 coalminers' strike, in which NUM managed to bring down the Conservative government of sir Edward Heath.

With intrepid historians such as Stefan Berger and Dr Norman LaPorte exploring these issues, one can only wonder how many more such episodes could be revealled.

The Crass: How Subversive Was it?

When one measures the influence of bands from the late 1970s-early 80s punk rock, many presume that The Clash were the most influential.

If one were to judge the matter according to influence on popular music as a whole, they would be correct. But in terms of inluence on punk rock more specifically, many punks would argue that the Crass is more important.

While many punks respect the Clash, they idolize the Crass.

If the success of a punk band is to be decided by how politically subversive their music is, the Crass were incredibly succesful. As related in There is no Authority But Yourself, the Crass managed to become a Parliamentary controversy during the Falklands War, when the band received -- and disseinated -- information alleging that the British ships struck by Exocet anti-ship missiles were ordered not to deploy chaff (an anti-missile countermeasure) in order to divert attack from a naval ship carrying a member of the Royal Family.

Margaret Thatcher responded to these reports by declaring the Crass to be persona non grata within the British Conservative Party. This decree led to Labour Party MPs teasing the Conservatives about who had or hadn't listened to the most recent Crass record.

That is a feat that the Sex Pistols, even at the height of their fury, was never able to match.

Remember Kids, It's Conservatives Who Are Thuggish and Violent ;)

John McDonnell muses about assassinating Iron Lady

One of the more interesting ways to assess one's character is to ask them what they would do with a time machine.

If they could go anywhere in history, and change anything they liked, what would they do?

Labour leadership hopeful John McDonnell has his answer. He says that he'd like to "go back to the 1980s and assassinate Thatcher".

As in Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher -- one of the famed "big conservative three" of the 1980s, alongside then-US President Ronald Reagan and then-Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.

McDonnell made the remarks to a leadership candidate forum for labour unions. His remarks reportedly drew applause.

McDonnell has yet to get on the ballot for the Labour leadership -- party rules dictate that candidates must collect 33 nominations from sitting MPs in order to be formally nominated. However, if fellow candidate David Miliband -- who, along with his brother Ed Miliband and Ed Balls, has received his 33 nominations -- has his way, all six declared candidates will appear on the leadership ballot regardless.

In McDonnell, it appears that the Labour Party has a problem. McDonnell, along with Diane Abbott, are clearly the candidates of left within this race.

It's a key demographic that the party needs to keep in touch with. But candidates like McDonnell musing about assassinating a former Prime Minister -- while hiding behind the notion of victimhood because he was employed by a union, not working in the industry the union represented -- will only drive much-needed moderates away from that demographic, and possibly out of the party altogether.

There's clearly a moral reason why McDonnell cannot be allowed to simply write the remark off as "a joke". But there are practical political reasons as well.

The Labour Party cannot afford to let John McDonnell simply walk with that particular remark. It may be better off if McDonnell never manages to reach the 33-nomination threshhold.

John Major's Revenge

Sir Major calls out Tony Blair on Iraq War

Revenge, when executed most masterfully, is often executed over a very long period of time.

More than 12 years after being defeated by Tony Blair, former British Prime Minister Sir John Major may be very close to having his revenge. And he's waited a very long time indeed for it.

When Sir John Major took power as the British Prime Minister, it was in relief of Margaret Thatcher, a leader whose autocratic tendencies had made her increasingly unpopular with the British public and increasingly at risk of sparking an outright revolution within her own party.

Likewise, when current British Prime Minister Gordon Brown took power as Prime Minister, it was in relief of Blair, a leader whose foreign policy missteps and the use of Prime Ministerial power that facilitated them had made him increasingly unpopular with the British public and increasingly at risk of sparking an outright revolution within his own party.

As has been the case for Brown, Sir Major's tenure as Prime Minister seemed ultimately doomed from the very beginning. Much of this was due to his predecessor's actions.

Considering the declining state of Thatcher's mental health, time -- and human decency -- have sorely limited Sir Major's opportunities to seek retribution on his Prime Ministerial predecessor.

But there's always the next best thing: seeking retribution against the man who defeated him.

Sir Major -- who was the Prime Minister during the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War -- recently weighed in on the events swirling around Britain's Iraq War Inquiry. Sir Major has joined the growing ranks of those who are suggesting that Blair deceived them in order to gain their support for the war.

"I had myself been prime minister in the first Gulf War, and I knew when I said something I was utterly certain that it was correct, and I said less than I knew," Sir Major said. "I assumed the same thing had happened and on that basis I supported reluctantly the second Iraq war."

And while Sir Major would very likely agree that the removal of Saddam Hussein as the President of Iraq was a good thing, he doesn't feel it was sufficient justification for the war.

"The argument that someone is a bad man is an inadequate argument for war and certainly an inadequate and unacceptable argument for regime change," Sir Major insisted. "There are many bad men around the world who run countries and we don't topple them, and indeed in earlier years we had actually supported Saddam Hussein when he was fighting against Iran."

To call the developments coming out of Britain's Iraq War Inquiry "revelations" would be in error. As a matter of fact, many British commentators have been suggesting for yers that Blair deceived Brits in order to make the case for the war, and that the Inquiry is really only confirming those suspicions.

With Labour MPs like Ken Purchase suggesting publicly that Tony Blair left no legacy, and left Gordon Brown with little opportunity to leave one of his own, Sir John Major knows full well that Tony Blair's historical legacy will very much be decided by the Iraq War Inquiry.

Sir John Major has waited a long time -- nearly 13 years, in fact -- to get his revenge on Tony Blair.

After all these years, he may finally have it.

David Cameron and the End of Thatcherism

British Tory leader charts "more consensual" way forward

However British history books remember the current Conservative party leader, it won't be as "Iron" David Cameron.

Cameron continued his efforts to distance himself from the political legacy of Margaret Thatcher recently, as he spoke very candidly of the woman still known to Britons as the Iron Lady.

If -- some say when -- his party wins the next British general election (slated for sometime in 2010), Cameron has insisted that he will not address Britain's current fiscal status the way that Thatcher did during the 1980s.

Thatcher is remembered by many as one of the neo-conservative "big three" of the 80s, along with US President Ronald Reagan and (oddly enough) Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.

In the parlance of British conservatism, Thatcher was an avowed "dry". She favoured the reduction of government spending, tax cuts, controlling the growth of the money supply (thus impeding inflation) and reducing government regulation. Tories who opposed Thatcher's direction were lumped together with the label of "wet". (The phrase seems to have fallen out of vogue in the British Conservative party since the 1980s.)

Looking back on the 1980s, Cameron doesn't see Thatcher's program as an overwhelming success, and he says he wouldn't emulate it now.

"We never in the 1980s actually managed to cut public spending," Cameron noted. "The rhetoric was out there about the weight and the burden and all the rest of it, but ... this is a far more serious problem than we faced in the 1980s."

"This is something we need to do with the public sector, not to the public sector," Cameron continued. "This is very important: this is not some 1980s-style approach about cutting public spending."

The stage for Thatcher's conflicts with the civil service was set earlier. She was deeply angered by a prevailing view within the public service of the day that the role of civil servants was to manage Britain's decline from its Imperial status.

Cameron is apparently determined not to repeat that experience.

Cameron is avoiding outright criticizing Thatcher, however, as he realizes that this could alienate the right wing of his party.

Daniel Hannan, the Conservative Member of European Parliament who has been somewhat troublesome for Cameron on the health care file, recently outlined what he believes Cameron could learn from Thatcher.

According to Hannan (and Charles Moore, a Thatcher biographer), Thatcher's greatest political strength was her ability to give just as much information as she needed, and not tip the rest of her hand too early.

"Margaret Thatcher did extraordinary things, rescuing a country that Labour had demeaned and indebted. But these things were only vaguely hinted at in the 1979 manifesto. Although the broad outlines were clear – we would live within our means, the trade unions would be put in their place, Britain would stand up to the USSR – the policies were inchoate," Hannan wrote.

"Those who clamour for more detail from David Cameron would do well to look at what Thatcher was saying at this stage in the cycle – that is, in late 1978," he continues. "Although the direction she intended to take was evident, she was careful not to box herself in with detailed commitments. She knew her Milton Friedman well enough to understand the concept of dispersed costs and concentrated gains. If you promise to disband a particular bureaucracy, you will alienate its employees without winning commensurate thanks from the taxpayers whose burden you would ease"

"The way to tackle the structural cause of high spending and high borrowing is to ensure that budgets are set by elected representatives (who must answer to taxpayers) rather than unelected officials (who benefit from higher expenditure)," Hannan concluded. "At the same time, spending money as closely as possible to the ground is more efficient than setting budgets in Whitehall. In other words, the solution to our debt crisis is localism – which, as a happy consequence, would also solve our democratic crisis."

A new focus on localism would require the effective dismantling of some bureacratic organs that were set up by Tony Blair's Labour government to manage various quality of life indexes.

Public servants would almost certainly oppose the dismantling of such bureaucracies -- public servants tend to oppose anything that threatens their own job security -- which could be taken as contrary to Cameron's promised consensual approach.

But one shouldn't make the mistake of assuming that Cameron doesn't intend to take on the public service unions at all. he noted that the unions, who recently advocated increased government spending, were "not [being] particularly realistic about the scale of the problem".

Cameron has also noted that he may address public service pensions as an issue. "Is it sacrosanct? No. Is there need for reform? Yes. Do we need to look at its affordability? Yes. Do we need to look at its costs for people who are on relatively high salaries? Yes we do."

Even in Cameron's promised shift away from Thatcherism as an ideology, it seems there may be some nuggets of Thatcherist methodology in Cameron's approach.

Whether or not David Cameron can overcome objections wtihin his party to a shift away from "dry" Thatcherism toward a "wetter" progressive conservatism is another matter entirely.

Freedom, Where Art Thee?

Adam Curtis is a British filmmaker known for being provocative and controversial. In The Power of Nightmares, Curtis argues that there really is no global terrorist network, and that organizations such as Al Qaida were simply made up in order to empower politicians.

Many viewers can -- and probably should -- find significant cause to disagree with that proposal.

But aside from being provocative, Curtis is also theoretically brilliant.

In The Trap, Curtis examines the impact game theory has had on societal institutions, and the way that government is managed. The overall affect, he reveals, has been anything but positive.

Individual freedom lies at the very soul of libertarianism -- one of the core elements of conservatism.

To the end of favouring individual freedom, many libertarians have used John Nash's game theory to prove that mutual suspicion, distrust and self-interest creates a natural equilibrium which generates an organic, non-coercive public order.

Yet Nash's game theory was not everything it was cracked up to be. Nash himself -- as portrayed in the film A Beautiful Mind -- was actually a paranoid schizophrenic, who believed he was surrounded by communist spies, and was a red-fighting secret agent.

This didn't stop theorists from embracing game theory and transforming it into a tool to forward Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek's favoured agenda.

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher harnessed the emerging theory of free choice economics in order to curb the power of the civil service. The civil service, it was bemused, acted primarily in its own interests. It was surmised that by privatizing public services Thatcher could force these insititutions to be more responsive to public demand and need by way of the profit motive.

American psychologist David Rosenhan -- who wanted to challenge the allegedly elitist nature of psychiatrists -- used these principles to go after American psychiatry. In an experiment in which he planted fake patients in various American psychiatric hospitals Rosenhan exposed the inability of psychiatrists to distinguish the genuinely mentally ill from his plants, who had been admitted on the basis of a single symptom.

In order to recover its credibility after the debacle, a mathematical system was designed that would take human judgement entirely out of the process of diagnosing potential mental illness and replace it with static yes/no evaluations based on combinations of specific symptoms.

In many cases, the diagnoses were completely computerized to the extent that patients could diagnose themselves without the aid of a psychiatrist. While this empowered these particular patients to the extent that they could dictate treatments to their doctors, it also set a precedent for the removal of human judgement.

The removal of human judgement from important issues -- whether this was through the computerization of institutions or through relentless bureaucratization -- has inevitably led to broad reductions in individual human freedom.

The argument was that taking away the options of civil servants to serve their own interests would free British people from the whilms of that civil service. Instead, civil servants and their patrons alike wound up even more tightly bound by convention -- enslaved by bureaucratic or electronic edict.

These constraints bind citizens almost anywhere in the world in any place where they interact with nearly any institution -- at school, at the library, at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Game theory can tell us many interesting things about many interesting facets of social life. But it isn't sufficient to try and build an entire society around it. To build a successful society -- let alone a successful conservative movement -- citizens have to be willing to move beyond mutual suspicion, distrust and self-interest to find a basis for mutual trust and mutual interest. These are things that are generally held within the confines of a successful social contract.

Social contracts exist in various forms -- between individuals, amongst large groups of individuals, and at an institutional level.

The institutional social contract is important to the functioning of government. When that social contract falls lax enough that public servants can refuse to perform their duties with little worry of repercussions a government is obligated to reinforce the boundaries of that social contract.

But to dismantle that social contract and replace it with an entirely artificial social construct only leads to a disempowerment.

If libertarianism is treated as the pursuit of individual freedoms, this is a result that must be considered at odds with it. This kind of disempowerment is a natural result of the pursuit of negative freedoms and the expense of positive freedoms -- whether that expense is intentional or not.