As people rally in the streets and towns of Iran to chant for freedom from the tyrannical theocratic dictatorship of 47 years, one is awed by their boldness and bravery. Relying on strength of numbers, they turned up night after night, even as terrorist thugs gunned them down with machine guns and sniper fire.
Funerals are turned into celebrations of life and freedom yet to be attained: mourning will come later. Singing and dancing, women with hair free of cover, join in the chanting and commemoration. Students locked on campus for months gather in numbers to protest, without regard for possibility of capture, torture and death that could most certainly await.
Protesting Iranians have come to the same conclusion as Polish extermination camp prisoner Witold Pilecki. Pilecki risked death by voluntarily entering the camp to record Nazi atrocities, escaped to publicise the evil occurring, before being recaptured and killed. Pilecki believed freedom is worth more than life.
Iranians seek to free themselves from the yoke of an unbearable Islamist dictatorship without freedom to speak, dress, gather or fair treatment under law. They are likely to be arrested, imprisoned, tortured and killed as was 22 year old Kurdish Iranian woman Mahsa Amini, arrested and killed in the custody of Iran’s morality police in Tehran, for not properly wearing a compulsory hijab.
Likewise, Pilecki was appalled by the viciousness and injustice of Nazi atrocities rounding up and starving, torturing and killing six million Jews in wholesale slaughter.
What have these remote causes to do with us? Plenty, as bureaucracies expand and dominate our lives. The bigger the bureaucracy, the higher the cost, so we have less control over our own lives. Socialism, like bankruptcy, happens slowly, then suddenly. Australia is lining up for both.
Freedom
Freedom is defined as the state of being allowed to do what you want to do; the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants.
All freedom has constraints. Families have rules for their own sanitation, health and development into useful community contributors. What families must confront is disruptive behaviour of young adult children rankling under advice from parents anxious to balance young adult desire for freedom from parental control with concerns for their offspring’s safety and future. Luxury of such dissonance seems petty, though no less real, when compared with young adults in Iran prepared to die for their freedom.
Should one wish to be a singer, musician, swimmer, athlete or any other high performing pursuit, there are also rules, regulations and personal disciplines to be addressed to attain success. For a singer, swimmer or trumpet player, even the natural act of breathing must be cultivated, refined and developed. For a rower, team fitness and discipline is crucial: all must turn up in time, pull their own weight in time, care for the craft and oars and store properly after use. Anyone with an appreciation of art, especially of the old masters, realises that they are geometrically precise, disciplined, delicate applications to create lasting treasures.
The wonder is that once the disciplines become embedded and automatic with practice, enormous freedoms and rewards accrue to the performer and the audience. It is in the perfection of discipline that freedom and reward flourish. By contrast, freedom to self-indulge in selfish, slovenly laziness that is offensive to family and community, unless arrested, enters an ever-narrowing spiral of discontent, loss of self-esteem and respect.
Bureaucracy
The bigger government gets, the greater the regulations, penalties and controls, and the more the productive private sector gets squeezed. At a personal level, it means fewer people are available to pay tax for pensions and benefits. We could end up like Greece under financial catastrophe a couple of decades ago when pensions were cut by 50%.
| That is why a new research report, Big Government Getting Bigger as Private Sector Stagnates, is so important as a wake-up call. In the Institute of Public Affairs’ Kevin You’s report recently released, shows that since 2000, government spending has increased by 165 per cent in real, inflation-adjusted dollar terms, while private sector investment and net exports have increased by only 40 per cent. “As a percentage of total output, it is very clear that household consumption has remained basically flat at around 50 per cent over the last 25 years,” Dr You said. “However, government spending has grown from 21 to 29 per cent of the economy, whereas private sector investment and net export declined from 28 per cent to 20 per cent.” He noted that with the rise of government spending Australia’s competitiveness had sunk. “Increases in government spending is associated with increased public sector workers and regulatory activities, which dampens productivity and investment.” “In 2004, Australia was ranked the fourth most competitive economy in the world, behind only the US, Singapore, and Canada according to the International Institute for Management Development’s (IMD) World Competitiveness Yearbook. “Since then, competitiveness and dynamism in the Australian economy have collapsed. Australia’s overall competitiveness ranking has fallen to 18th in 2025 as the public sector plays an increasingly greater role in the economy.” The government shows no inclination to rein in spending or reduce the number of public servants now costing $250b annually, merely seeking to raise taxes, ever more foolishly without cognisance of the consequences. Like the hyper-tax on tobacco which sent smokers to the black market and cost the government $10b in lost revenue and even more collateral damage of increased criminal activity, shop fires, regulations and policing. Hyper-taxes on superannuation, negative gearing and death are likely to go the same way. |
Health freedom
As demonstrated during the COVID lockdowns and since medical freedom is related to social freedom is related to economic freedom.
During the COVID period, so many people were locked up, lost their jobs for failing to comply with vaccination mandates and were arrested. Inner authoritarianism stirred in so many assuming moral superiority of compliance with baseless mandates.
Now we know that the vaccines were seriously flawed, having been developed so rapidly without proper clinical trials or ethical constraints, and promoted relentlessly by government and compliant media to create worldwide mass psychosis.
Seriousness of vaccine injuries were minimized and no report card on efficacy of the vaccines produced. Natural immunity was dismissed and efficacy of proven treatments like Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine outlawed. Vaccine hesitancy was crushed as well as anything about vaccine safety.
Follow the money. Vaccine companies made $billions, no doubt aided by the inter-relationship of regulatory personnel with their corporate boards.
Those wise and cautious enough to see the dangers to health and freedom to choose medical treatment for our own body lost out in reputation, approval and financially. With the wisdom of hindsight, their warnings and concerns have proven valid. Only now, as Trump overturned inordinate power of the medical mafia, is medical freedom being restored. Not so in Australia, where disruption and inordinate cost, including death and permanent damage lingers, is there any urgency to justify a diligent enquiry into the basis for constrictive mandates. Shameless and shabby. No respect for informed freedom of medical choice.
As the saying goes, If you can read this, thank a teacher. If you are reading this in English thank a soldier. Lest we forget, it was through the sacrifice of military that our freedoms have been won. Freedom should be treasured and actively defended. Too valuable to waste on ignorant, keffiyeh and flag waving grifters for terrorism who would be shot doing the same thing in the regions they support.