There are two sides to the expulsion of Ayaan Hirsi Magan (a.k.a. Ayaan Hirsi Ali) from the Dutch nation and her resignation from the Second Chamber of the States-General, the Dutch Parliament.

Yes, she was a gain to Dutch society and politics. And yes, there was something thoroughly dishonourable about the action against her. Her well-to-do neighbours wanted to get rid of her bodyguard-encumbered presence because it brought the scary realities of multiculturalism a bit too close to home for comfort. Politician Hans Wiegel, a leading member of Ayaan’s own party, the Liberal Party VVD, and an establishment elitist who had earlier sabotaged the enactment of a bill instituting the right to citizen-initiated referendums, smugly commented: “We will not be hearing much from Ayaan anymore, and we will not miss her.”

Some 50 libertarians and anti-statist conservatives from 30 countries convened last month in the Turkish resort of Bodrum for the inaugural meeting of the Property and Freedom Society (PFS). The society is the initiative of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Professor of Economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and Distinguished Fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute (Auburn, Alabama).

Hans-Hermann Hoppe and others (such as Ralph Raico, Enrico Colombatto, Bertrand Lemennicier, etc.) are dissatisfied with the contemporary MPS because it has become too much of a mainstream organisation, shunning controversy, courting politicians and growing ever less radical. They want a society that stands athwart history, yelling Stop to the state.

The current debate on armed crime is depressingly predictable. Everyone agrees something must be done. Just about everyone agrees this something must include laws against the sale or carrying or simple possession of weapons. More controls on weapons, the argument goes, the fewer weapons on the street: therefore lower levels of armed crime.

Now, this whole line of thinking is nonsense. Many European nations have strict controls on the carrying of weapons. They also have high levels of armed crime. Indeed, we are reaching the point where we shall need to show proof of identity before buying knives and forks.

I had expected that travelling from Turkey to Greece would be like travelling from a poor country to a richer one. After all, Greece is part of the European Union (EU), while Turkey is not. Hence, taking the ferry recently from the Turkish town of Bodrum (the ancient Greek city of Halicarnassos, birthplace of Herodotos, the “father of history”) to the Greek island and town of Kos (birthplace of Hippocrates, the “father of medicine”) I was struck by a phenomenon in Kos which I had not seen in Turkey the previous week. Both Kos and Bodrum are affluent tourist resorts, but whereas in Bodrum one does not meet any beggars, one is accosted by them whenever one visits a church in Kos or walks through the ruins of the forum in the town center.

Martin van Creveld is an Israeli military historian and theorist, born in the Netherlands but living in Israel. He is the author of many books on military history and strategy, and has lectured at many strategic institutes around the Western world. I do not always agree with Mr. van Creveld politically. From an Internet search, I noted this quote by him in particular: “Given the balance of forces, it cannot be argued that a nuclear Iran will threaten the United States. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s fulminations to the contrary, the Islamic Republic will not even be a threat to Israel.” I strongly disagree. However, van Creveld is an historian by profession and of some repute, and his writings are articulate and to the point. I will use him to highlight some of the criticism made against the nation state today. The following quotes by him are taken from the essays or booklets The State: Its Rise and Decline and The Fate of the State, both of which are available online. To counter some of his arguments, I will use Roger Scruton, the eminent British philosopher and thinker who I personally hold I very high regard. Most of the quotes by Scruton will be from his excellent little book The West and the Rest: Globalization and the Terrorist Threat, some of which is also available online. Basically, anything written by Roger Scruton is recommended reading.

Assume you are a mid-level bureaucrat in a government regulatory agency, and you know your pay and title depend on how many regulations you are responsible for administering, and the number of people who work for you. Do you think you would push for more or fewer regulations?

Models of the economy and the environment have been politicized. You can bet that almost anytime a politician attempts to raise your taxes or pushes for a big, new government spending program, the justification is at least partially based on the results of some mathematical model. Al Gore, and many others endorsing the global warming rage, tell us the climate models show government must do something about global warming before we are all cooked (or at least lightly tanned).

The youth section of the Norwegian Fremskrittspartiet, the major conservative opposition party in the country, has set up a fundraising campaign in which they say they will buy Mullah Krekar a one-way airplane ticket to his home in Northern Iraq. Krekar, whose real name is Najmuddin Faraj Ahmad, is an Iraqi Kurd who received political asylum in Norway in 1991. According to Krekar’s lawyer the campaign is not funny and proves that the Fremkrittspartiet’s youth section has no respect for human rights.

David Cameron needs your support. Nine months ago, he announced that, as leader of the British Conservative Party, he would sever our party’s links with the ultra-federalist European People’s Party (EPP). In its place, he promised, he would create Conservative Group in the European Parliament, dedicated to national independence and personal freedom. Since then, he has been violently attacked by the Left-wing press – and, disgracefully, by a handful of Tories. Leaving the EPP, claim the Euro-zealots, will mean “leaving the mainstream”, “lurching to the Right” and “abandoning the modernising agenda”.

Today the French authorities closed down the website of “Tribu Ka”, a group of French black Muslims. The website contained anti-Semitic texts [some of which are quoted here]. Last Sunday evening about thirty members of Tribu Ka, armed with bats and sticks, staged a march through the Rue de Rosiers in the historic Jewish quarter of Paris, shouting “Death to Jews” and “Let the Jews fight us if they dare!”