I am a member of the Australian Democrats – a lonely task, seeing we polled under 2% in November’s federal election.

While distributing how-to-vote cards to HTV volunteers prior to the election, I was struck by a distinctive commonality among party supporters: all had wildly unkempt weedy gardens.

The AD’s are splendidly non-conformist folk, but I dont see that they all have to be non-conformist in the same way – that is a new conformity with its own rules, prohibitions and penalties.

My question is – Are the UK LibDems similarly united?

Whereas Al Gore jointly won the Nobel Peace Price in 2007 and has greatly put the issue of Climate Change as an issue throughout the globe.

For creating a new literary world upholding the importance of individual responsibility and initiative, and the importance of personal love and loyalty in the face sometimes of crass offical state meddling.

Check out the Tales of Beedle The Bard on amazon.com especially the tale of the enchanted fountain

He’s quite anti-vampire though – I think characterising Vimes as non-racists is over simplistic – his liberal tendencies come because he thinks he ought to be – or because it would dishonour the Watch – not because he believes it to be intrinsically right

And I would hardly characterise the Guild based over regulation of the Vetinari regime as laissez faire or liberal.

Though Pratchett would be a good choice – and also someone who is criminally under-rated as a writer. Probably I’ve always thought because he writes far to many books to be a serious writer.

“Ankh-Morpork, alone of all the cities of the plains, had opened its gates to dwarfs and trolls (alloys are stronger, Vetenari had said). It had worked. They made things. Often they made trouble, but mostly they made wealth” “

Since when was “campaigning against excessive materialism” a “good liberal theme”? Where are these campaigns? How do they define “excessive materialism”? How do they want to stop it?

I’d have thought the liberal position would be that each individual is free to be as materialistic or unmaterialistic as they like.

His readership in the UK is huge. Those who have read his books will know that underneath all the humour and fantasy is a very liberal philosophy.
There’s too much to mention but, for example, books such as “Equal Rites” and “Monstrous Regiment” have a theme of , well, equal rights for women. The hero of “Small Gods” is an honest priest trying to stay one step ahead of a corrupted fundamentalist religion. One of his best characters , Commander Vimes of the City Watch, is about as non-racist as you can get – he offers jobs to dwarves, werewolves , zombies and even golems. (this may strike non-readers of Pratchett as pretty flippant, but in it’s own context it’s very serious stuff.)

The most famous fantasy books in the last 50 years have been the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I like those books, but Tolkein has a huge amounts of killing, has races such as orcs with no good qualities whatsoever, and a lot of monarchs. Pratchett is on the side of the people.

To quote from Pratchett’s novel “Feet of Clay”:

“You are in favour of the common people?” said Dragon mildly.
“The common people?” said Vimes. “They’re nothing special. They’re no different from the rich and powerful except they’ve got no money or power. But the law should be there to balance things up a bit . So I suppose I’ve got to be on their side”.

Later on in the same book he’s ordered to destroy a golem:

“In order to keep the peace, the golem will have to be destroyed”
“No, sir”
“Allow me to repeat my instruction”
“No, sir”
“I’m sure I just gave you an order Commander. I distinctly felt my lips move.”
“No, sir. He’s alive, sir”
“He’s just made of clay, Vimes”
“Aren’t we all, sir? According to the pamphlets Constable Visit keeps handing out. Anyway he thinks he’s alive, and that’s good enough for me.”

I can think of no individual who has spread a liberal , tolerant philosophy more in the last 20 years than Terry Pratchett. And now would be a very good time to give him some credit for it…

I got the quote from Krugman from a review he wrote of False Dawn, which can be found at http://www.pkarchive.org/cranks/gray.html

To quote Paul Krugman (who would be a contender for this award if we lived in the states): “He is certainly not a liberal, in either its 19th-century or modern American senses. Instead, he is an old-fashioned conservative – paleoconservative? – in the tradition of Burke, or of modern representatives like James Goldsmith, Edward Luttwak, and once and future U.S. presidential aspirant Pat Buchanan (whose new book The Great Betrayal sounds many of the same themes as False Dawn). What he really wants is a society in which people stay in the neighborhoods in which they were born, stay with their spouses, and stay with their traditional cultures.”

I haven’t read much of his writing but I was under the impression that he has not been a liberal since the eighties (even then he was a classical liberal) and that he has now thrown his lot in with the anti-globalisation left rather than pro-globalisation liberals.