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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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On the subject of Anti-Americanism Over on the Social Affairs Unit blog, Michael Mosbacher takes Seamas Milne to task for the idiotic statement in the Guardian that the people fighting the US and UK are the ‘real’ liberation movement in Iraq, not the people who toppled Saddam Hussain.
On the broader topic of anti-Americanism however Mosbacher points out that Seamas Milne has a quite a way to go before he reaches the ‘stature’ of that florid friend of tyranny the world over, Harold Pinter, who has long been a pet hate of mine and others on this blog.
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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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Here’s a nutty, yet optimistic idea:
Maybe Iraq needed two revolutions, one to get rid of Mr. Hussein and another to get rid of the US. Perhaps the final stage of victory in Iraq will be when USG forces are driven out and replaced by an improved local system. Maybe both US intervention and US “defeat” are necessary.
In a similar vein, Iran had a revolution to get rid of the abusive US puppet dictator. Unfortunately, crazy religious nutjobs ended up on top. (Sane civilains don’t challenge police states militarily. Those eager to reap their heavenly reward, however . . .) Eventually we expect (hope?) that the nutjobs will get old and die, and subversive capitalists and other refomers will take their place. Things will then presumably be more or less ok.
Things change over time. On Sunday we in the US will celebrate the beginning of a bloody war with all you murderous, oppressive, Monarchist British bastards. And yet today Britain LEASES NUCLEAR WEAPONS from the US.
I have never liked that canard… if the Shah’s regime was a ‘puppet’ then I assume you think policy for it was directed by the puppet master (the US) and not by the Shah’s own political apperatus? He did in fact get aid from the US due to his anti-communist stance but that did not make him a ‘puppet’ any more than Greece was a ‘puppet’ of the USA in the 1970’s.
I know the idea is hard to fathom but most of what happens in the world, good and bad, does not happen because men (or Condoleeza) in Washington wills it to happen. The people who run the US are not even nearly clever enought to actually ‘run’ the world.
Britain in 1776 was a parliamentary democracy with a constitutional monarchy… about 2% of the population could vote, which was slightly more that could vote in the USA after independence.
For a while, I was actually a bit upset by the screaming anti-Americanism of Pinter, Milne, that loopy wench that writes, er scrawls, rather, for the Independent, Michael Moore, Barbara Eherenreich, et al.
But then I realized – this is just the thing that is needed to discredit these anti-Western warriors. We need to see them as they really are, and the hypocrisy of all their peacetime platitudes (“our dissent is the truest form of patriotism; we support the troops but…; in principle we’re in favor of private property, however…”) will be pierced. Ordinarily they amble along inflicting great damage on the social fabric, without having to stand up and state their true beliefs, thus presenting a fixed target, and taking the risk of political obliteration.
So I’m all in favor of this anti-American lunacy right now; it’s the same mental defect that pervades the environmentalist religion; the no nukes kooks; and those who have to destroy every traditional edifice of society in the name of “progress”, not knowing where we are progressing to or why, but simply because change must be good. We need to know who they are, let them make their ridiculously irrational arguments, and defeat them.
So we should cheer on the moonbats. Let them make their points. Encourage them to speak up. Let the thousand flowers bloom.
Then, when they’ve spoken, publicize their words. Let the mass of the electorate, who have neither the time, nor the inclination to pay close attention to politics, know exactly what these most illiberal of liberals are saying.
We should use the left’s own commentary against them, and hang them on a gibbet constructed of their own words. It is the easiest way to be rid of them for a time.
And by the way, Alexa, you are full of it when it comes to U.S. voting rights. By the end of the American revolution, “the eligible electorate numbered from 60 to 90 percent of free males, with most states edging close to the high end of that range.” See this reliable resource. In other words, probably around 40% of the population had the vote.
I’d recommend that you chuck Howard Zinn’s books out of your history reading list…
Hmmm.
No offense but the reason why the Shah of Iran was deposed was due to President “The Village Idiot” Carter.
Amusingly enough the mullahs that replaced the Shah were even more destructive and violent than the Shah ever was.
Hmmm.
“Britain in 1776 was a parliamentary democracy with a constitutional monarchy… about 2% of the population could vote, which was slightly more that could vote in the USA after independence.”
Interesting.
Can you back that statement up with fact or are you just pulling this out of your ass?