William Watson: ‘Free’ but dumb vs. freedom

With Rod Liddle gone, it falls to much lesser lights to describe the deficiencies of those who govern over us. Photo by Colin McPherson/Corbis via Getty Images

Article content

My favourite columnist died last week, Rod Liddle, 66, of The Spectator, the venerable British magazine once owned by Conrad Black and edited by Boris Johnson, who went on to be London mayor and then British prime minister. The current editor is Michael Gove, former Conservative education minister, justice minister and Tory leadership candidate. The current Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, was director of digital at The Spectator as recently as 2015. She contributed a tribute to Liddle — a smart, well-written one — to last week’s memorial issue: “Rod was outrageous, dark, rude and extremely funny … deliberately provocative … poking fun at the po-faced moralizers who want to lecture everybody while leading hypocritical lives themselves.” Though he also challenged unhypocritical ones who were wrong nevertheless.

Article content

Article content

In his tribute, Gove — whom The Spectator voted “minister of the year” in 2011 after his education reforms restored emphasis on writing, spelling, math and science — said what he heard most often from Spectator readers was that, “Rod is the first page I turn to every week.” Yes, that was always tempting. Or you could save him for later, like keeping your favourite colour Smarties for last. Always a hard choice. Whichever you chose, a Rod Liddle column seldom disappointed.

Article content

Article content

Article content

He took on all the hard subjects, the ones that could lead to cancellation — though “took on” puts it mildly: he charged at them directly, swinging a battle axe over his head. And he wrote exactly what many people thought but were afraid to say, certainly in print but also not within hearing distance of Siri or Alexa. Nor did he shrink from gleefully insulting the intelligence of those who disagreed with him. Personal denigration usually devolves to simple-minded surliness that diminishes everyone involved. Think talk radio. But Liddle wrote with such slashing, swashbuckling panache you couldn’t help but laugh — out loud, often enough. I expect even some of his targets appreciated the skill with which they had been carved up by a pen that some of his memorialists compared (exaggeratedly, I think) to Jonathan Swift’s.

Article content

Article content

Anyway, with Liddle gone it falls to much lesser lights to describe the deficiencies of those who govern over us. Without agreeing they are “a convocation of the third-rate” (as Liddle described them in his final column, Kemi Gives Me Hope, about that self-same Kemi Badenoch) it can be said that one of the main ideas pushed forward by this generation of politicians, that more and more things should be “free,” is very dumb. And that “free”/dumb is a real threat to what is truly valuable, namely freedom.

Article content

Article content

Why is “free” dumb?

Article content

Nothing is truly free. Not lunch, as a famous economics aphorism tells us. The salty lunches not charged for in 19th-century saloons stoked a person’s thirst, prompting the conclusion there was no such thing as a free lunch. Today, many “free” conference lunches require listening to a speech. Free love? “Grief is the price we pay for love,” a wise woman, Queen Elizabeth II, observed after 9/11. Dermatologists remind us of other costs. Free speech? Never without consequence, as often to the speaker as those spoken to. Free will? Choice has consequences, not all pleasant. Free radicals? Wikipedia tells me these electron-deficient molecules do harm to membranes and molecules they run across.