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]
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War looms but life goes on. I’ve been reading Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Quite a few surprises already. I didn’t realise quite how vicious and unscrupulous the hostility towards sociobiology has been. But some of the book has been tough going, and in the toilet this morning I dipped into the later stuff I haven’t yet got to officially. I found myself in what I later identified to be Chapter 20, entitled “The Arts”, and in it I came across this (on page 416 of my 2002 BCA paperback edition):
As for sneering at the bourgeoisie, it is a sophomoric grab at status with no claim to moral or political virtue. The fact is that the values of the middle class – personal responsibility, devotion to family and neighborhood, avoidance of macho violence, respect for liberal democracy – are good things, not bad things. Most of the world wants to join the bourgeoisie, and most artists are members in good standing who adopted a few bohemian affectations. Given the history of the twentieth century, the reluctance of the bourgeoisie to join mass utopian uprisings can hardly be held against them.
What is startling is not the sentiments themselves. They are all pretty obvious stuff, certainly to me. What is pleasing is who is saying them, and in what context.
Pinker is a respected scientist and scholar, and a fearless and extremely capable defender of his scientific speciality – and scientific decency in general – against the attacks on it, both from the left (who accuse him and his ilk of being “genetic determinists”) and the religious right (who accuse him and his ilk of reducing the soul to a mere bodily function). The Blank Slate is only one of several very good books that Pinker has written. He’s relatively young, a personable and winning TV presence, and a terrific scientific synthesiser and populariser. To encounter notions that you usually expect to find only in the windy and ignorant writings of people who have swallowed the entire right-wing package and nothing else, and are booming forth with it in something like The Daily Mail or The Sun, is most pleasing. → Continue reading: Steven Pinker on modern art
So it appears that we are now a few days, or possibly even a few hours, away from being engaged in an honest-to-goodness, actual, balls-out, fighting war. Despite the misgivings of Antoine Clarke, I believe HM forces will acquit themselves admirably although there is no doubt that the bulk of the war effort will fall upon the much larger US contingent.
We are here now because Tony Blair has prevailed over the anti-war sentiments of much of his own party. Without wishing to sing his praises per se, he has confounded the sizeable number of British commentators who believed that he did not possess the spine to see through his pro-war commitment. He clearly does and he clearly has. Last night’s vote in the House of Commons, on a motion to delay hostilities with Iraq, was defeated despite a record number of Labour rebels voting for it and, ironically, with most of the opposition Conservatives voting against.
Of the Conservatives who voted for the motion, some are undoubtedly what Mark Steyn has called ‘defeatist patricians’. In all but name they are Social Democrats and are driven by sentiments that are not so much anti-American as they are pro-EU. For them, the top-down, corporatist paternalism of Europe is much more resonant of the natural order of things than the racey vulgarity they see as intrinsic to the American way of doing thigs.
But there are others on the British right who are vigourously opposed to Britain taking any part in the attack on Iraq not because they harbour anti-American sentiments (indeed, they heartily reject such nonsense) but because they believe that it is not in British national interests to do so. They are far from confident that any US administration would go to bat for Britain in the way that Britain has gone to bat for America and whilst this may or may not prove to be the case, they (and I) do have genuine cause for complaint about the kid gloves that successive US administrations have put on when dealing with the IRA.
However, it would appear that at least some of isolationist argument in this regard is based on the erroneous (and largely left-inspired) view that Tony Blair is merely acting as George Bush’s ‘poodle’; that he will get his ‘orders’ direct from Washington and that he will send British troops off to yomp around the planet in whatever direction the Whitehouse commands.
It is this kind of thing that makes for good copy, but it is not actually true. For good or for bad, Blair has very much acted as his own man throughout this whole affair. Had it not been for Tony Blair, the Americans would almost certainly have not agreed to take (the ultimately fruitless) UN route to disarming Saddam. Had George Bush had his way, the war in Iraq would, by now, have been over and done with. Try telling anyone in Washington that Tony Blair is their ‘poodle’. I think you will be sharply disabused of any such view. → Continue reading: The widening channel
The Western Roman Emperor Valentinian I (364-375 AD) refused to intervene in theological controversies “It is not right for me, a layman, to meddle in such things. Let the bishops whose business it is meet by themselves wherever they like”.
Valentinian tolerated all sects of Christian (bar the Manichees) and even allowed the traditional pagan rituals to take place in the Senate House in Rome – the alter of Victory remained in place, and the Vestal Virgins and the other ancient Roman priesthoods continued.
Valentinian was not a half hearted Christian – he had been an open Christian during the time of the pagan Emperor Julian (when being a Christian was not exactly a good strategy for promotion).
Nor was Valentinian a kindly man – for example he had men who tried to dodge conscription burned alive.
It was simply that religious toleration was a perfectly respectable point of view for a Christian in Valentinian’s time.
The other point of view (that at least non Christians should be persecuted) was widely held also – for example by the powerful Ambrose, Bishop of Milan. Valentinian’s own brother (the Emperor of the East – Valens) persecuted Christians that held to a different point of view to himself (as Valens was an Arian this meant persecuting people who held what later became the mainstream point of view). But the matter was not clear cut – one could be a Christian in good standing and not support persecution. → Continue reading: Augustine
Although a system may cease to exist in the legal sense or as a structure of power, its values (or anti-values), its philosophy, its teachings remain in us. They rule our thinking, our conduct, our attitude to others. The situation is a demonic paradox: we have toppled the system but we still carry its genes.
-Ryszard Kapuscinski, Polish journalist, 1991
Malcolm Hutty has some interesting perspectives on something more commonly associated with nasty dictatorships: Spontaneous Pro-Government Protests… only this time they are the real things!
BBC News 24 reports that there are protestors outside the French embassy in Washington D.C. decrying French obstructionism on the U.N. Security council. Footage showed that the equivalents of usual street protests were present: placards screaming “Remember Normandy”, and bottles of wine ceremonially poured into the gutter.
This strikes me as a rather unusual story in two respects. Firstly, when half a million people on the streets of London protesting UK government policy on hunting and the countryside barely trouble the BBC for a mention, why do a few Americans merit coverage for a viewpoint equally antithetical to the BBC party line? Is this just an example of News 24 desperately needing footage to fill its airtime? Or has the imminence of war persuaded their editors to recognise that Bush-n-Blair aren’t the only supporters of ousting Saddam?
Secondly, stripped of all the ephemera, this was essentially a pro-government political protest. Such things may be common on the streets of Baghdad and P’yongyang, but are not generally the done thing in western democracies.
I wonder whether the protestors saw what they were doing as “supporting America” or instead as attacking a powerful foreign regime that was interfering with their own disposition, as realised through their domestic political leaders. Curiously, seeing people with whom I identify strongly adopt the tactics of really alien cultures prompts in me a new sympathy for misguided Leftist foreigners.
Next thing you know, the BBC will be filming an Israeli pizza parlour nearly bankrupted by the fear of terrorism, and I will suddenly (and unwillingly) decide that the Palestinians should own the freehold there anyway. Who knows? If the BBC dared to drop its own bias briefly, nations might speak a little more peace unto other nations.
Malcolm Hutty
Peter Briffa is absolutely smoking tonight… and I hope he puts me in touch with his supplier! He has a series of ‘future quotes’ from a veritable constellation of leading Tranzis, such as this gem from Germaine Greer:
This is not a war about oil. This is not a war about blood. Forget all that male, patriarchal propaganda. No, this is a war, above all, about the penis. The penis of war versus the vagina of compassion. Not since I was sitting on the dunny on Bondi Beach, and a whole team of beer-swilling Collingwood footballers came in and gang-raped my great grandmother have I witnessed such bloodlust.
Outstanding.
Recommend that they avoid such ridiculous non-advice as this lot of BBC rubbish (thanks Natalie Solent) which I fisked today over here, and tell them this:
The war in Iraq will happen in Iraq, not in Bromley, Guildford or Kansas City. If it’s anything like the last gulf war, it will kill far few people than Saddam has since the last gulf war. But it might kill fewer people. And anyway, the world already contains some disgusting countries where people are killed by their own governments for no reason, which is why the war in Iraq is happening: to reduce their number, and improve things.
You might not want to talk about many of the actual specific evil things Saddam has done, in case they are upset by such details. Children don’t always want to see pictures of innocent mothers and babies gassed to death by their own government in their home villages, for instance. But you could say that Saddam is a vicious thug who has murdered many, many human beings, and the world will be better off once he’s out of power.
If they are having nightmares about terrorist attacks, you can explain how incredibly unlikely it is that one of these will affect them personally or anyone they know, and that you personally do not waste time worrying about it. Tell them terrorist attacks will be reduced once the governments that fund terrorists have been changed to better ones, which is why the Iraq war is happening.
And of course, find out whether they have been subjected to irrational antiwar nonsense from teachers or anyone else they know. My view, since watching a TV documentary about how British children ‘felt’ about 9/11, is that something very unpleasant in the current political climate is actively encouraging kids to feel personally bad and anxious about world events in coercive, irrational ways. For most children- still trying to learn how to read, play football, write stories and get on with their friends- people they never met being killed thousands of miles away should be no more upsetting than people they never met being killed in WWII.
But it’s easy to induce hysteria. “Oh dear, how awful! Isn’t it shocking, little Jimmy! Those people could bomb our home next! Now, how do you feel…?” Well, if the people you rely on for help tell you fairly clearly that you should worry, then you worry. A lot of antiwar propaganda consists of scaremongering, and our children are unfortunately very vulnerable to it. This BBC advice doesn’t address that: it’s part of the problem. Parents: protect your kids from antiwar propaganda: talk to them rationally about the war.
If you oppose a war to overthrow Ba’athist Socialism in Iraq but also claim to despise Saddam Hussain, then I can only assume that you are a ‘containment’ advocate… which is to say you view the policy of the last 12 years which prevented the Iraqi regime attacking it neighbours as an adequate response. You probably also think that containing Hussain within Iraq’s borders is all that is really in the interests of any outsiders (which in practice means primarily the USA and UK)… therefore what happens inside Iraq is really not germane. You might even add that you would be quite happy to see the Iraqi people overthrow Hussain, just not with our tax money or the blood of US and UK soldiers, thanks.
Okay, I do not agree but that is indeed a coherent argument to make.
However if part of your argument against this impending war is ‘many Iraqi civilians will be killed and thus it is unjustified’, then you are not making the ‘containment’ argument, nor are you making a ‘not in our national interest’ argument. What you are saying is that the interests of the Iraqi people are actually important to you and presumably have some objective value.
So ponder this: Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist Socialist regime has been in power since 1979… about 22 years. Although the figures for how many people his regime has murdered varies hugely depending on the source and which axe they are grinding (with the high figure being 2 million), I will assume that the one million statistic being widely bandied about is correct… and lets for now just gloss over the number of people tortured, imprisoned or driven into exile.
That is approximately 45,500 Iraqi and Kurdish people per year murdered inside Iraq by the Ba’athist government… about 125 people per day that Saddam Hussein has been in power (or equal to about two Waco massacres every day). This is a crude blood calculus of course but it does put the Butcher’s Bill up where it can be seen and priced. Even if the number was half that, it gives us some measure of the scale of the horror involved.
So if your argument against a (hopefully short) war to overthrow Iraq’s Socialist regime is based on the undeniable fact innocent people will die, you would seem to be saying that it only matters when Iraqis are killed if outsiders are the ones killing them… because Iraqis are already dying at the hands of the Iraqi state in prodigious numbers. If that is indeed your position, I would contend that you really do not give a damn about what is best for the Iraqi people.
When the air turned to poison in Halabja: the reality of peace in Iraq
In the past few weeks we have all indulged in a spot of frog bashing, which will continue, I hope, until Jacques Chirac steps down from his UN soapbox, from which he is currently preaching Justice, World Peace and Morality.
This may be yet another nudge to kick him off the moral highground that only the French themselves seem to take seriously. Not even Peter Hain, one of Britain’s leading Federasts, is fooled by France’s posturing. The Telegraph reports:
For the next four-and-a-half months, the former top brass of Elf, the [French] oil giant, will have to explain what happened to hundreds of millions of pounds diverted from company accounts for bribes and personal enrichment.
President Chirac is reported to be deeply concerned that France is not embarrassed as it tries to establish itself as an alternative to America’s global leadership.
I bet he is! Watching him wriggle out of this one should be interesting. French interests? Oil? Bribes? Moi? Elf was founded by General de Gaulle as a state-owned company until 1994. Its original purpose was to serve as cover for operations the French government wanted to keep secret, whether bribing African and Latin American leaders or funnelling money into Swiss accounts for domestic political backers.
The key defendants are the former chief executive of Elf, Loik le Floch-Prigent, its former director of general affairs, Alfred Sirven, and Andrèc) Tarallo, known as Elf’s Monsieur Afrique because of his deep ties to the continent. In his testimony, Le Floch-Prigent says he urged M Mitterrand in 1989 to turn off the bribery tap. “Ah non,” he claims M Mitterrand told him. “Let’s carry on with what General de Gaulle started.”
If M Mitterand did not want to upset de Gaulle ‘legacy’, what are the chances that M Chirac, with his Gaullist tendencies, would have done so during his time in power? I wonder whether there may be an Iraq-Elf connection. Or is that just too much to hope for? In any case, Chirac’s fall, whenever it happens, is bound to leave an oily slick on the ground…
Here is a game to fill the time between newsflashes – Dr. Strangeblix…Or How I Learned to Start Worrying and Look for Bombs.
You are ice cool Chief U.N. Weapons Inspector, Dr. Hans Blix. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to enter a not-so-secret PacMan-style Iraqi laboratory and hunt down weapons-grade plutonium canisters, all the while avoiding the sentries and trying to keep your stress level at a minimum. You can try and distract the guards by throwing volumes of your ‘U.N. Resolutions’ around, but beware, there are only limited copies available. If you should fail your mission, Dubya’s gonna start “bomberizing” Iraq. Phew! Talk about pressure…
I may just have stumbled upon the reason for Mr.Blair’s enthusiasm to occupy Iraq. Having successfully disarmed the British, he is now on his way to do the same to the Iraqis:
Guns are very common in Iraq. Even so, gun shop owners say business has risen by 25 percent over the past month, with cheap pistols priced under $100 in highest demand. The shops are not allowed to sell assault rifles, but store owners say hunting rifles are selling fast.
Well, well, well. The ironies are so rich that you could float them on the stock market. Oppressed, tyrannized Iraqis can apparently walk into a shop and buy a shooter with the same alacrity with which they would purchase a packet of pitta breads and ‘free, democratic’ Britons can be prosecuted for possessing a toothpick!
Much to ponder in this, fellow seekers, but a couple of conclusions do spring readily to mind: first, democidal despot he may be but Saddam Hussein clearly trusts his own people far more than Her Majesty’s Government trusts theirs. Secondly, whilst not wishing to disparage the value of RKBA, it seems that it is not a defence against tyranny.
[My thanks to Sean Gabb for the link]
President Bush today announced that the “War on Transnationalism” was going even better than expected, with all three of the EU, UN and NATO about to collapse at the first sign of an American gun.
“Our troops are ready and waiting,” said Mr Bush, “and we are confident that all they need to do is stroll into Iraq sporting their latest combat gear, and the Tranzis will immediately start begging to be taken prisoner.”
“But how will we know when this so-called War is actually won?” asked a news reporter.
“Nothing short of the total collapse of political globalisation will satisfy our troops,” said Mr Bush. “Iraq is only the beginning. But we are developing better and more effective Weapons of Mass Happiness so that people can get liberated more quickly and easily, and have more fun when it happens. Did you know McDonalds is offering 15 minutes of internet time with every Extra Value Meal now?”
“Yeah?” The reporter eyed the clock.
“That’s right. Prime Minister Blair thought of it one day when he went out for an Egg McMuffin and had a sudden urge to catch up with Samizdata.net, only he’d left his ibook at home.”
“And is it true that you are really just Blair’s pet poodle, so desperate to please him that you jump on planes at a moment’s notice in order to be at his side?”
“We have a special relationship,” said Mr Bush, giving the reporter a Very Hard Stare until his victim almost fainted.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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