Why FreeSate51?

Why indeed.

But, more importantly, why not?

For a while there we had the fastest growing economy in Europe, and now it's all gone. But have we ever had capitalism?

Issues of right and left in Ireland have always been swallowed up in other concerns like the so-called National question, and our two main political parties tend to dance around the 'centre' line, while our main left wing party has done a good job of sticking to the centre as well.

Times change, and as we stand here under mountains of debt we might consider looking at ways we have succeeded and failed in the past. Our "free-market" economy may have rewarded the odd entrepreneur, but the real machinations of our state-sponsored top-down China-style capitalism were geared toward enriching an elite that just so happen to be good mates with our chief political party.

How is this Capitalism?

P.J.O'Rourke has said that America has capitalism for the poor and communism for the rich. Ireland has the same, and NAMA proves it. Given a choice between protecting the people who have created our success and those who benefitted from it, the government chose the latter without a second thought.

We Irish cherish our freedom, but are happy to give it away to our government. Why? Is the fact that we are now governed by our "own" people an excuse for their incompetence, or is nationalism truly the last refuge of the scoundrel?

This blog broadly advocates the ideas of small-government Conservatism, currently most popular in the United States in the ideas of both Libertarians and Libertarian-Republicans. Our approach is simply that markets work best when government stays out of them, and economy is better off being run by the people who work within it, and not by politicians.

Libertarianism is Europe is often considered a left wing phenomenon, being associated with anarchists and various manifestations of an anti-establishment ethos. However, a growing wave of Right-Libertarianism is allying itself with Classical Liberal ideas about individual freedom and its relationship to property rights and the free market. Many formerly populist parties, such as Norway's Progress Party, have adopted free market ideas and identify themselves with Classical Liberal ideology.

Ireland's libertarian tradition dates back to Edmund Burke who said, among other things,
"In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority. "

Conservatism is Europe has long been associated with social conservatism, while liberalism tends to be a kind of 'social democracy' that is in reality a sort of Statism that stands in opposition to traditional Liberalism.

Libertarianism has adopted the slogan, Fiscally Conservative, Socially Liberal, and as such has been labelled an amalgam of left and right ideas. This is not so, and libertarians like to observe how the traditional left-right axis is misleading - in fact our current understanding of it derives from the ideology of Stalin! - and prefers to see the political spectrum in three dimensions.

See here for more information, along with a test you can take.

The political quadrant has two axes, the social and the economic, and better illustrates political opinions than the traditional single-axis model.