TWO CHEERS FOR SWITZERLAND
Paul Marks

Caroline Sinclair's article in the Spectator of July 27th 1991 is to me sadly typical of many modern articles in that it is a series of observations and complaints rather than a logically thought through argument. It does not lead anywhere. No real principles can be gleaned from it.

The article is on Switzerland. It attacks the place for various things.

It lists a series of abuses - people committed to mental hospitals, a child taken from a mother, interfering and nasty police, lots of petty regulations about mowing the lawn, no noise after ten o'clock at night (in France it is 10.30pm in similar residential areas), regulations on brackets for flower pots, and so on.

However, this sort of thing is hardly unique to Switzerland. Similar tales could be told of other welfare states such as Germany or Sweden.

Caroline Sinclair presents no evidence that Switzerland is more interfering than, say, Sweden, and shows no knowledge of the differing ways of operating of different Swiss Cantons, more on which later. Instead she says:

... the Swiss civil and criminal codes are orientated not to the needs of the individual, but to the minimisation of that individual's impact on the state and society.

All welfare states would claim that their regulations are for "the needs of the individual". The question is not putting different people in charge or what words they speak, but who makes the decisions, officials or individuals with their own money and at their own risk. This choice should be faced not avoided with waffle.

However some specific charges are made against Switzerland. First: Swiss secrecy laws. Yes, it is wrong that a man should receive a twenty year prison sentence for leaking the information on his company, the worst that should happen is that he should be sued for breach of contract if he had a duty of confidentiality.

But what is also wrong is that the "laws" by which the European Commission forbids "price rigging" and encourages informers. Price rigging is an agreement among companies to charge similar prices. There is nothing wrong about this if it is not enforced by violence and of course the principle source of violence backed price rigging is the EEC itself.

The main attack in the article however is the attack on the Swiss system of near universal military service. Here there is failure to understand the Swiss concept of citizenship. To the Swiss a citizen is someone who is prepared to defend his fellow citizens. If the people who do not wish to serve also stated that they did not wish to vote - which enables them to help decide when others should fight and with what equipment they should fight - the libertarian would support them. However, the great majority do not wish tok opt out of the state. Far from it. For the most part they wish greatly to expand it, for example with ever higher welfare benefits. In short they are quite happy for violence to be used to finance their schemes, but not to train to defend their fellow citizens.

There is another issue here. If those who do do wish to serve were genuine pacifists who would not call for help if attacked they could be respected, but would they not expect help if attacked?

There are not arguments for compulsion, merely for thinking. But are Swiss conceptions of citizenship outdated?

They are indeed ancient. The armed freemen of a local community deciding their affairs, electing their leaders, originally by a public show of hands and the like, were once widespread amongst Indo-European tribes, but are not quite dead even outside Switzerland. For example in New Hampshire, each March, the inhabitants of each town come together to defide a large portion of taxes and regulations without the aid of a priestly caste of politicians and administrators to decide for them. If one does not like arrangements in one town, one moves to the next rather than out of the whole state. New Hampshire taxes are the lowest in the USA. Even in Britain there is still the Territorial Army, successor to the old militia - once the fyrd. A ghost of local organisation and individual responsibility remains.

Things have changed. Women today are full citizens and recent evidence in war would seem to indicate that they are certainly capable of the obligations of citizenship.

Switzerland today is no longer a true Confederation of Cantons united for common defence. The federal government has grown. It seeks ever more taxes, regulations and inflation. But Switzerland is still more free than many lands; Cantons still vary and therefore compete for population. The central state is stil more restricted than elsewhere. Did Caroline Sinclair not wonder why the house she mentions fell by 75% in value when transferred to France? It is not because the Swiss distort the rented property market. Indeed 75% of Swiss rent their homes. It is because Switzerland is a better place to live. To put it crudely, the Canton taxes and federal taxes she complains of are much lower than French ones. Only in June, against the will of the government, the people, by referendum, threw out the introduction of VAT.

As for "no right to strike on economic grounds" the lady means no right to break contracts. The masses of the unemployed in "progressive" countries are no doubt cheered by their "right to strike".

Perhaps the notion of the armed free citizen is outdated. Perhaps the future is a hi-tech tyranny of government and "private" companies in a corporate state. But some hope not, and that a man does not have to be Rambo, that the ordinary citizen, rich or poor, can cooperate with others to help in his own defence.

Yes Switzerland is a land of "chemical and pharmaceutical multinationals", but the Swiss do not believe that liberty and industry are incompatible. Indeed liberty promotes industry and industry creates the wealth to buy weapons and defence and the leisure to learn to use them.

New Hampshire has the highest output per person in America. It also has one of the highest memberships of the National Rifle Assocation. Again like the Swiss, the people of New Hampshire keep their personal weapons and ammunition at home, a thing Police States tend to discourage, although partly due to the laws, automatic weapons are rarer in the USA than in Switzerland. Neither of these areas is known for violent crime.

It may be that the future holds nothing but darkness and evil, with people writing pathetic letters to the European Commission, the European Court and the United Nations about the International Convention on Human Rights, the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, not realising that the EEC, UN and the like are threats not aids to liberty.

But not all is confusion. Some remember or half remember what law, obligation, duty, really mean.

In the words of the New Hampshire state motto, which could also still be the motto of Switzerland: "Live Free or Die".