Our Editor, using the magic that is Adobe Acrobat, has sent me a rough electronic draft of Free Life 36 - that is to say a rough draft of everything else in this issue but this - to prod me into jotting my jottings, and to supply me with stuff to jot about. So I've already read the rest of this issue, approximately speaking, and I'm flattered and delighted that so many nice-sounding strangers have seen fit to comment on my opinions in the correspondence page. Unlike those early Free Life correspondents of the mid-nineties with funny American-German names, these ones seem to be real.

My main reaction to the Great Gabb/Micklethwait Debate so far is: that I have no illusions about my abilities to persuade people in power of the truth and wisdom of my libertarian opinions, or even to bother with them that much. I don't recall ever claiming that I had "Socratic dialogues" with politicians, of the sort that have any effect on the politicians themselves or their various doings. What I do claim, as Mr Sorens especially gets, is that third parties (and fourth parties and ten thousandth parties) listening in on my Socratic Dialogues are susceptible to persuasion.

Free Life readers outside the range of the Non-World Service of the BBC should not get any exaggerated ideas about how often or for how long I am as yet permitted to engage in such debates. At present it seems to happen about once every week or two, and mostly only for a few minutes. But when I do broadcast I generally manage to emit a few worthwhile sound bites. My latest little effort, last Sunday morning on BBC Radio 5 (which lasted for about ten minutes) included a reference to the badness of criminalising the conversations of "consenting racists in private", a sound bite which makes several big points in no time at all. I managed to criticise the newly created legal category of a racially motivated crime with exactly the right degree of unease that I do truly feel, without myself coming across as any sort of racist. The talk then turned to the varieties of public style and atmosphere made possible by the private ownership of public space.

By constantly placing such sound bites into the public ear, and by making available pamphletised reinforcement of them to all who want to explore further, I and my Libertarian Alliance comrades can reasonably hope to have some effect, on this generation of decision-makers by slightly changing the environment in which they operate, and on later generations of decision-makers by changing the way that they think.
 

That such longer term thought alteration is possible was illustrated by my last-but-one Socratic Dialogue (or rather Multilogue - pardon my Latin/Greek), on BBC Radio Scotland earlier last week in connection with BMW's decision to sell Rover Cars, in which the assembled throng discussed the rights and wrongs of government subsidies to industry. It was truly amazing and most refreshing how confidently we who opposed such subsidies (for I was joined in my condemnations of them by several Scottish callers-in with a lifetime of practical experience of their extreme harmfulness) did so with such moral and intellectual confidence, and how feebly those who still clung to their contrary axioms spoke of nothing except how sad it was and how angry and betrayed they felt. The sound bite count was about nine-one to us: "it's our money" - "what about the unfairness to other workers who aren't rescued?" - "culture of subsidy" (I said that first and others repeated it) - "crowding out" - "subsidies are the problem, not the solution", and so on. The only response was that the "strong pound" was the real problem, although actually the pound isn't that strong; it's the Euro that's week. I also got to trash (someone had mentioned how he wanted a "level playing field") the notion that free trade can only be practised safely if everyone else is doing it too. A Conservative Party woman, who popped up on Question Time the next evening, confined herself to criticising the government for not having cleared the subsidy they were trying to give to Rover with the EU, who now apparently have the power to suppress such things. But as was well explained, the scale of the further subsidy now being argued about would be enough to keep Rover going, at its current loss rate, for about another two months, such is the scale of the Rover disaster.

So, two decent little performances then. Most listeners ignore it all. But a few don't. And then the true Socratic Dialogues get underway, inside the heads of people who, for example, sort of assume that you have to have subsidies to industry, but now realise that some very bright and eloquent and experienced people think that you shouldn't. A convinced socialist, who genuinely believes that without subsidies the British Motor Industry would have collapsed years ago, hears, for the first time in his life, that not everybody shares this assumption, for here are these old Scottish geezers opposing subsidies not because they don't care a fig about British car making, but because they care about it very much. Others have assumed that racism, being extremely nasty, should obviously therefore be as illegal as it is possible to make it. Yet here's this bloke, who isn't a racist himself, making a distinction between this kind of racism and that kind. Hmm. What about that then? Interesting.

Others already agree with me, but didn't realise that anyone in the entire world thought like that with sufficient self-confidence to say such things in a radio studio, or was clever enough to get into a radio studio to say them. They are greatly cheered up, and are stirred into speaking out more themselves. They may even ring up the Libertarian Alliance and get sent some pamphlets. And so it goes. Socratic Dialogue doesn't change the world completely, straight away. What does? But it still works.
 

I don't get asked onto the Radio in spite of my libertarian extremism, but because of it. This is something I learned from watching the socialist extremists of my youth in action. Official, front-bench-controlled political multilogue is as dull and stale and consensual and pessimistic as it's ever been in living memory. "There's only one way to do politics. It doesn't achieve anything much these days, but what else is there?" That's the dominant mood. The currently dominant view of Britain's National Health Service, for example, can be summarised thus: "It should be given zillions more money, but it won't do any good." I join in by saying: "You're right, what you people are doing is indeed useless. You should stop doing it and stop taxing us all for it. Here's how great it would be if you did that." Libertarianism the way I try to do it is both provocative and positive, the way socialism used to be. (This is why I keep jotting on in these jottings about how great the great stuff is that capitalism is allowed to do, like, in this jotting, Adobe Acrobat. What a programme! Libertarian Alliance artwork bouncing around the entire globe! Wow wee! That's going to happen Real Soon Now.) When on the radio, as I do from time to time, I chicken out of being Mr Libertarian, I always regret it, not just because I missed the chance to be Mr Libertarian, but because I'm less likely to get asked back.