Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea. Blog, Internet resources, online reading groups, articles and interviews, Illuminatus! info.

Wednesday, May 12, 2021

A British 'Guns and Dope Party,' with good manners

John Stuart Mill (with his daughter, feminist Harriet Taylor)

You will recall that RAW invented the Guns and Dope Party, a libertarian party uniting the signature libertarian issue of the right (guns) with that of the left (pot). Although in the end, it seems to me what the party really stood for was "live and let live." 

The other day on Twitter, this caught my eye:

British politics is hard for an American to follow. I'm not claiming it's crazier than American politics (I don't see how that could be possible), I just don't follow it closely enough to understand it. I thought I kind of got the UBI and cannabis bit, but I was puzzled by third element of the new British party. So I asked "Why Good Manners?" and Brian explained, "To my mind, a tongue-in-cheek stereotype of 'conservative' Brit values -- just as 'gun nut' seems stereotype of U.S. 'NRA conservative'."

It's possible that the British may not always be able to make out how Americans think, either. In Cosmic Trigger, describing his job at Playboy magazine, RAW writes, "My job was editing the letters in the 'Playboy Forum,' and also writing the italicized replies in which the Playboy position was stated. This position is straight old-fashioned mind-your-own-business John Stuart Mill libertarianism, and (since that is my philosphy as well as Hefner's) I enjoyed the work immensely."

I noticed that in Daisy's Cosmic Trigger the Play book, this is changed to, "I take the mail and write the Playboy official response to it. Straight-up do-your-own-thing liberalism."

I wondered why Daisy had made the change. Should I read something into it?  I don't think John Stuart Mill wrote about cannabis, and I'm not sure about a UBI, either. Pretty sure he had good manners. I asked Daisy if she remembered why she made the change. 

"Hmmm no. Does he not say 'do your own thing' elsewhere in CT? Does seem an odd change. Maybe I thought the actor would trip over that many words. But I'm surprised I changed mind-your-own-business to do your own thing. And i suspect the switch from libertarianism to liberalism was a typo on my part... Hmmm one for the 2nd edition changes list!" she replied.

Well, no, I don't know that a fine writer like Daisy should change it. That wasn't what I meant. But I was still curious. "Thought maybe John Stuart Mill was unpopular," I wrote. 

"Clearly not popular enough!" she replied. 



No comments: