Challenging Nandor

"Nandor - part of the 'ban-this-thing-and-compulsory-those things' Green Party - has been politicking while stoned again," says Libertarianz spokesman Russell Watkins. Watkins says that Green MP Nandor Tanczos' claim that McDonalds have somehow 'trodden' on 'youths' free speech' by not allowing 'Tearaway' magazine to be placed in McDonalds restaurants suggests that "Mr Tanczos might well benefit from some basic lessons in property rights, and in free speech."

Watkins clarifies: "It is not unusual for aging hippies like Nandor to confuse genuine rights with bogus ones, as this current example exemplifies. It almost sounds like Nandor wants 'free' speech to be compulsory. Nandor champions the right of youth to free speech, but doesn't offer McDonalds any support to exercise their right to decide what literature they have displayed on their property. What he forgets, or perhaps doesn't understand, is that your right to free speech does not require that anybody else provide you with a lecture hall, or a hamburger restaurant, within which you may disseminate your views. This is 'free' speech only in the sense that someone else is paying for you to talk."

Watkins concludes with a challenge to test if Nandor really believes what he is saying. "In the interests of testing the consistency of Nandor's misundertanding of what the right to free speech consists, I ask - no demand!! - that Nandor and the Greens display the following in all of their electorate offices: Libertarianz literature, the novel 'Atlas Shrugged', 'The Free Radical' magazine, Bjorn Lomborg's 'Sceptical Environmentalist', and full-colour laminated McDonalds menus. Let's see just who is treading on whose 'free' speech, shall we?"

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