We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.

Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

Samizdata quote of the day

I am not going to talk about religious beliefs but about matters so obvious that it has gone out of style to mention them. I believe in my neighbours. I know their faults, and I know that their virtues far outweigh their faults. “Take Father Michael down our road a piece. I’m not of his creed, but I know that goodness and charity and loving kindness shine in his daily actions. I believe in Father Mike. If I’m in trouble, I’ll go to him. My next-door neighbour is a veterinary doctor. Doc will get out of bed after a hard day to help a stray cat. No fee – no prospect of a fee – I believe in Doc. I believe in my townspeople. You can know on any door in our town saying, ‘I’m hungry,’ and you will be fed. Our town is no exception. I’ve found the same ready charity everywhere. But for the one who says, ‘To heck with you – I got mine,’ there are a hundred, a thousand who will say, “Sure, pal, sit down.” I know that despite all warnings against hitch-hikers I can step up to the highway, thumb for a ride and in a few minutes a car or a truck will stop and someone will say, ‘Climb in Mac – how far you going?’

I believe in my fellow citizens. Our headlines are splashed with crime yet for every criminal there are 10,000 honest, decent, kindly men. If it were not so, no child would live to grow up. Business could not go on from day to day. Decency is not news. It is buried in the obituaries, but is a force stronger than crime. I believe in the patient gallantry of nurses and the tedious sacrifices of teachers. I believe in the unseen and unending fight against desperate odds that goes on quietly in almost every home in the land. I believe in the honest craft of workmen. Take a look around you. There never were enough bosses to check up on all that work. From Independence Hall to the Grand Coulee Dam, these things were built level and square by craftsmen who were honest in their bones. I believe that almost all politicians are honest. . .there are hundreds of politicians, low paid or not paid at all, doing their level best without thanks or glory to make our system work.

If this were not true we would never have gotten past the 13 colonies. I believe in Rodger Young. You and I are free today because of endless unnamed heroes from Valley Forge to the Yalu River. I believe in – I am proud to belong to – the United States. Despite shortcomings from lynchings to bad faith in high places, our nation has had the most decent and kindly internal practices and foreign policies to be found anywhere in history.

And finally, I believe in my whole race. Yellow, white, black, red, brown. In the honesty, courage, intelligence, durability, and goodness of the overwhelming majority of my brothers and sisters everywhere on this planet. I am proud to be a human being. I believe that we have come this far by the skin of our teeth. That we always make it just by the skin of our teeth, but that we will always make it. Survive. Endure. I believe that this hairless embryo with the aching, oversize brain case and the opposable thumb, this animal barely up from the apes will endure. Will endure longer than his home planet – will spread out to the stars and beyond, carrying with him his honesty and his insatiable curiosity, his unlimited courage and his noble essential decency. This I believe with all my heart.

R. A. Heinlein.

20 comments to Samizdata quote of the day

  • tdb

    As much as I resent what is going on, the rampant pessimism among my fellow libertarians is bizarre. Ultimately, in some sense, the above is true. I don’t know about the honest politician part, but everything else is so.

    I think it’s more important to focus on those things, and make them stronger.

  • Thanks for that Jonathan, very much needed.

  • Eric Tavenner

    I thought “This is pure Heinlein,” about half way through.

  • veryretired

    The 20th century was a humanitarian catastrophe akin to the years of the Black Death, except it was even worse, being self-inflicted.

    I am not surprised when many people become discouraged and pessimistic when confronting the current lunacies in our social and political life. There is a depressing amount of stupidity and corruption at all levels, compounded by the current fashion of an expansive state interfering with ever more aspects of the ordinary citizens’ daily life.

    But, having said all that, I also find myself to be cautiously optimistic for the long term.

    We have overcome enormous challenges, corrected deep and significant faults in our social fabric, achieved things that were only dreamt of in past ages as fables told of the gods.

    James Michener, in the first part of “Hawaii”, describes the gruesome and terrifying rituals of the islanders’ religious beliefs, which involved human sacrifice to appease a host of malevolent spirits, and asks a deceptively simple question—How could people living in an earthly paradise allow their lives to become such a nightmare of fear and death?

    They allowed a small group, who desired to control the lives of others above all else, to dictate who should live and who should die, based on a purely irrational set of myths.

    Told from their earliest days that only the deadly rituals of their priests and rulers could save them from the angry spirits that powered the volcanoes and hurricanes, they fell through the looking glass.

    Well, we may not all live in a tropical paradise, but, in any realistic historical context, we in this society are living in the land of milk and honey. It has been built by centuries of hard work and moral courage, overcoming numerous threats, both from external foes and internal faults.

    I believe we are approaching a major transitional phase. The bankrupt collectivism of the 19th century theorists, defeated and discredited by the bloody efforts of free people during the 20th, has been resurrected once again, in various disguises and reformulations, for one more attempt to defeat the idea of the individual, and replace it with the worship of the collective.

    This is an ancient conflict, and will never be completely resolved as long as the lust for power poisons the human heart.

    The trumpet sounds again, the lines are being drawn out, those who demand liberty are called to their duty.

    In battles great and small, physical and rhetorical, the moral dilemna of our age will be resolved—is the liberty of the individual to be preserved, or will it be submerged in the will of the masses, as defined by our political rulers?

    I am the spiritual heir of the 1st Minnesota, and the step-child of the 2nd. Show me the gap in the line, that I might know where to stand.

  • MlR

    The best of humanity? Yep.

    The lot? Nope.

    I love Heinlein. And the optimism he represents.

    But I don’t have it.

  • Let me take that out for special attention:

    “..the unseen and unending fight against desperate odds that goes on quietly in almost every home…”

    …or on the battlefield, or in the hospital emergency room, or in the school or numerous other circumstances – it goes on and on without ever making the news. We are surely going to need every drop of it for that distant sound approaching.

  • Dave McKay

    I believe in – I am proud to belong to – the United States.

    Well I don’t. And I do not “belong” to it, regardless of what the IRS thinks.

  • Johnathan Pearce

    Dave, I don’t think RA Heinlein felt he was a serf of the US. Quite the opposite.

  • Heinlein felt that certainly there were reasons to support his claim about a fundamental decency whatever the background. In his address at the U.S. Naval Academy of April 5th, 1973, he told the cadets this story from his natal Missouri:

    “I said that “Patriotism” is a way of saying “Women and children first.” And that no one can force a man to feel this way. Instead he must embrace it freely. I want to tell about one such man. He wore no uniform and no one knows his name, or where he came from; all we know is what he did.”¨In my home town sixty years ago when I was a child, my mother and father used to take me and my brothers and sisters out to Swope Park on Sunday afternoons. It was a wonderful place for kids, with picnic grounds and lakes and a zoo. But a railroad line cut straight through it.
    One Sunday afternoon a young married couple were crossing these tracks. She apparently did not watch her step, for she managed to catch her foot in the frog of a switch to a siding and could not pull it free. Her husband stopped to help her.
    But try as they might they could not get her foot loose. While they were working at it, a tramp showed up, walking the ties. He joined the husband in trying to pull the young woman’s foot loose. No luck  —
    Out of sight around the curve a train whistled. Perhaps there would have been time to run and flag it down, perhaps not. In any case both men went right ahead trying to pull her free  … and the train hit them.
    The wife was killed, the husband was mortally injured and died later, the tramp was killed  — and testimony showed that neither man made the slightest effort to save himself.
    The husband’s behavior was heroic  … but what we expect of a husband toward his wife: his right, and his proud privilege, to die for his woman. But what of this nameless stranger? Up to the very last second he could have jumped clear. He did not. He was still trying to save this woman he had never seen before in his life, right up to the very instant the train killed him. And that’s all we’ll ever know about him.
    This is how a man dies.
    This is how a man  … lives”

  • I don’t care about the long term. I care about the time of my life, and the salient feature of that time is the destruction of my country.

    Optimism can go get fucked. I know what we’re all going to have to go through until Someday, and that’s all I care about, now.

    The stars can care for themselves.

  • ahem

    “I believe in – I am proud to belong to – the United States.

    Well I don’t. And I do not “belong” to it, regardless of what the IRS thinks.”

    McKay: For my money, you can sod off.

  • Brilliant and heartening stuff by Heinlein. We need doses of that sometimes, to keep our spirits up.

    I am also quite sure that there are still such places as those he described, but I don’t hold out much hope of them surviving the current GramscoStalinist onslaught.

  • jon livesey

    I agree that Heinlein is a good writer, and I read all of his books when I was a student, but I have always felt that he has the same basic problem as Rand, which is that he writes works of fiction in which the characters act in ways that are convenient for the author’s philosophy. That doesn’t automatically mean the philosophy is wrong, but it does mean that what Heinlein writes isn’t terribly good evidence for it.

    And as for this piece, it’s wonderfully humanistic, but it consists of claims, not evidence. What would we actually find if we were able to go into Heinlein’s town and test his claims about his neighbours empirically? What if they don’t support one another as he says?

    And what about the claim that freedom depends on “endless unnamed heroes from Valley Forge to the Yalu River”? Maybe it depends on the printing press instead, and what Heinlein says is just patriotic fluff. Surely he doesn’t think freedom is an “American” phenomenon.

    Inspirational writing is inspiring, but that’s about it, IMHO.

  • veryretired, thanks for that! I’ve printed it out and posted it on my office notice board so I may occasionally read it again easily.

  • krm

    I think he was 1/2 right – hell, even 2/3 right.

    Alas, there is that remainder. The distilled evil, destructive sociopathetic, self-centered band of bastards that hold back the part of humanity Heinlein talks of.

  • Dave McKay

    McKay: For my money, you can sod off.

    Why is that, ahem? Do you work for the IRS? Or are you just offended I won’t just drink the mindless poison Koolaid of nationalism? And would you like to know where you can stick your money?

  • veryretired

    MB—thank you for your kind comment.

    A little while ago, I finished a very good history of the Pacific naval campaigns of WW2.

    Currently, I am reading “Team of Rivals”, about Lincoln and his cabinet leading up to and during the Civil War.

    Considering the deadly and implacable threats that free people have already overcome, the current batch of pathetically inept and cowardly antagonists are definitely minor leaguers.

    No matter. My first grandson will be one year old next Saturday. His birthright is the pearl of great price.

    I will not allow it to be traded for a bowl of pottage.

  • Johnathan Pearce

    Dave, Ahem, keep your cool, please. The editors around here decide who can “sod off”, and believe me, they frequently do.

  • Paul Marks

    As the Welfare State has expanded so the “moral capital” (the character) of the population has declined.

    I do not doubt that Heinlein spoke the truth about the Americans of his time and place – but what he says would be mistaken if it was meant ot be about Britain in 2010, or about large parts of America now also.

    Are most Americans still as Heinlein decribed them? So the, so the (so called pessimist) Glenn Beck believes?

    But what if Mr Beck is wrong?

    What if most modern Americans are “social justice” believers – mindless Obama zombies (many educated at the leading universities), telephoning asking “where do I apply for my free health care?”

    This is an empirical question and we will soon know the truth.

    Want honest politicians who will actually cut government spending and regulations rather than increase them?

    (And do not reply “I do not care about politics I will just ignore the state” – because that is just B.S., goverment will tax, spend and regulate whether you try and “ignore” it or not).

    Well if you do want honest smaller government canidates they are stepping forward in the United States.

    Will you support them in the Primary contests?

    Will you help them win the Primay contests (against establishment Republicans) and then win the election?

    If the reply is not “yes I will” then you are handing over the United States to the mindless Obama zombies – chanting “give us our Obama money from the Obama stash”, “we love Obama”, “tax the rich”, “down with the corporations” (the rich people, and the corporations, who backed Obama should think hard about what exactly most of his supporters really want to do to them – remember it is not “the CONSERVATIVE rich” or the “CONSERVATIVE corporations” it is ALL of them the left want to destroy).

    And if the United States of America fall the rest of the West can not stand.

    And not just the West as in the European West – for example, in spite of (or because of) the endlessly (year after year) increasing “health, education and welfare” spending of the Indian government the Maoist movement gains more strength every day.

    A force of 81 paramilitary police was almost wiped out only a day or so ago (only three men survived – all badly wounded, to be taken alive by the Reds is not a good idea, this is a fight to the last bullet and if no help comes, save that bullet for yourself, war).

    To think that the Maxist movement is confined to Comrade Barack Obama and the “education system” and “mainstream media” is a terrible mistake.

    Those people who tell me that “do not worry Paul – the Marxists these days are just a bunch of pen pushers who could not fight their way out of paper bag” are quite mistaken. Even about the United States.

    Remember it is not Tea Party people who throw bombs and burn things at their demonstrations (and outside their demonstrations) – it is the LEFT.

    The fact that msm do not cover leftist violence in the United States does not mean it does not take place.

    Believe me – the left in the United States (and so on) are no different in their souls from the leftists who attacked that Indian police patrol a day or so ago.

    Anyone who doubts me – I hope you understand your error before it is too late.

    There must be no excuse for the enemy to declare an “Emergency” – they do not yet control the armed forces, but an “Emergency” would give the chance to gain such control.

    Already the msm is being used to brand any opposition to the “Progressive” (i.e. Marxist) agenda as “violent”, or “extreme” or “racist”.

    Give the enemy (Obama and co) no excuses, no AMMUNITION.

    Jeff Jones and the other Marxist terrorists have not gone away (for example the “Apollo Project” of Mr Jones wrote the almost trillion Dollar “Stimulus” Bill of last year as part of the “Cloward and Piven” tactic of bankrupting the United States) and the only thing they regret is that they did not plant more bombs.

    The younger Marxists do not need to form terrorist groups – they sit in offices in Washington D.C. (and in New York msm offices, and the offices of most of the universities and many of the schools in the nation).

    Vote them out of power (remember they do not control the whole government machine yet – for example the MILITARY is still mostly outside their grasp), stop buying their media products (this is what Ayn Rand called “the saction of the victim), and STOP FUNDING their universities and schools.

    Do this whilst you still can.

    It is still not too late.

  • jon livesey

    “I do not doubt that Heinlein spoke the truth about the Americans of his time and place…..”

    Well, you should doubt it. You should question it, be sceptical, and maybe even try to research it. Any time someone appeals to a golden age in contrast to today, and then says the difference is this and that policy, you should wonder what the difference really is.

    Heinlein’s dates are 1907-1988, so he grew up in an America of segregation, lynching, separate water fountains and education, and race riots.

    Maybe there was harmony *within* racial groups, maybe whites supported whites, but to suggest that we’ve lost much “moral capital” since Heinlein was a boy is really stretching it.

    Heinlein says “I believe in my whole race. Yellow, white, black, red, brown”, but does that reflect something about the actual society he lived in, or is it just easy talk?

    I’m seriously beginning to wonder what golden age it is that the Teabaggers are trying to get back to.