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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Samizdata quote of the day “We must have faith in the social and economic benefits of the free market. A real programme for prosperity will progressively remove the barriers to wealth creation in Britain today. We need to open ourselves to risk and treat adults like adults. The stock of regulations must be reduced: we should trust people to make their own mistakes and learn from them. And the flow of new regulation from the EU must also be reduced: our aim should be to take back control of employment and social regulation…
“We must reduce and simplify taxes so we can take on with confidence the long term challenge of competing with China and India for jobs. This means not only proper control of public spending, but also a thoughtful and long-term strategy for tax reduction.”
– David Cameron MP
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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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Shock! Horror! David Cameron has come out with views on something people on Samizdata might agree with – namely free trade and tax reduction.
A brilliant speech, but for the fact that there is not a single policy or firm proposal, just a load of hot air. These words could have been said by a Tory wet or a right wing Tory without raising any eyebrows. Cameron is demonstrating that he can waste oxygen like the best of Nulabour, and good luck to him if it gets him the top job.
I’ll believe it when I see it happen.
Cameron is more libertarian than his predecessors.
“I am an instinctive libertarian who abhors state prohibitions and tends to be sceptical of most government action, whether targeted against drug use or anything else. And on the drugs issue, libertarians and sceptics can have a field day. About the only thing all our witnesses agreed on was that the government’s strategy was a failure and prohibition over many decades had not worked.”
Melanie Philips deplores Cameron, “who represents — by his own admission — a libertarian agenda”. If Mel hates him its probably a good sign.
If you want your ideology pure, party politics is not for you. if you altruistically want to advance liberty for all, rather than liberty for yourself, you have to engage in politics as it is, not as you would want it to be.
There is not going to be a libertarian revolution, therefore I want to support the most libertarian candidate in all contests. Cameron is that man.
I am prepared for disappointment.
John East writes:
“These words could have been said by a Tory wet or a right wing Tory without raising any eyebrows. ”
Even more to the point, they could have been said by Gordon Brown, or Tony Bliar.
They might also have had their fingers crossed behind their backs.
Having read several articles by and on David Cameron I am sceptical of the reported words. Like one other comment I will/would believe it when/if it happens. I do not think he views the EU as part of the problem and like his predecessors will ignore it.
“our aim should be to take back control of employment and social regulation…”
Hmm. Not THAT ambitious then?
I am an instinctive libertarian
All very encouraging until one recalls that Roy Hattersley also calls himself an instinctive libertarian.
Although I am no Cameron fan, I still welcome words that say that government spending should be controlled (of course I would say “cut” – but the people will not accept that yet), taxes should be reduced and regulations be reduced.
G.Cooper is correct Mr Blair and Mr Brown might say the same (and, yes of course, they would be telling lies – as they have increased taxes, government spending and regulations). I hope that Mr Cameron is not telling lies – although I have no way of knowing (he has no track record to judge).
Did Fattersley really describe himself as an “instinctive libertarian”?
I suppose it proves that he has a sense of humour (or is just too stupid to appreciate the truth).
My own view is that few, if any, of us, are instinctive libertarians. We should recognise that we all have a tendency to want to restrict the liberty of others for what we perceive as good reasons. The point is that we should constantly challenge this tendency in ourselves.
Me too, Perry. The words are empty. I notice there was no development of any of these fine ideas. Just a ragbag of empty words.
Did Fattersley really describe himself as an “instinctive libertarian”?
He habitually describes himself as a libertarian – usually as a preface to some demand for a massively authoritarian measure. One good example is Hattersley writing this:
There are some fundamental principles with which the true libertarian can never compromise. One of them is the inalienable right of idiots to smoke themselves to death.
Before going on to demand an all out ban on smoking in pubs and resaurants.
He also assured us that he was an avowed civil libertarian just prior to explaining that the case for identity cards in Britain is irresistible.
There is almost a general law of political rhetoric here, and not just with Hattersley, that whenever a politician describes themselves as an instinctive libertarian we need to start fearing for our liberties.
It is always a rhetorical trick when politicians invoke the word libertarianism. None of them mean it and Cameron is no different. This fatuous Tory poppinjay should receive no soft indulgence from libertarians but rather his every action and utterance should be met with unsparing criticism.
Given some comparative advantage over one’s electoral opponent, other than the details of one’s prospective policies (in Cameron’s case this is due to his appearance and general demeanor), any candidate for party leadership would be wise to keep his cards close to his chest.
Cameron’s campaign talk (or lack of it) is much like sensible boxing; feint blows by all means to keep your opponent on his toes, but do not telegraph your actual blows.
As in hand-to-hand combat sports, a political candidate.
Oops – I must be getting tired! Leaving sentance litter around like that….
Everyone’s cynicism turned up to Max? Great!
Of course it’s hot air – he’s in opposition he can’t do anything anyway, he could have laid out a 30 point plan for restructuring the civil service and it would still have been nothing but hot air – However, surely we can take some comfort in the fact that this politician, currently in the middle of a popularity contest, recognises that these words (not words relating to more handouts and more control) are the ones that will find resonance with those he wants to be popular with.
If you expect politicians to do things you want them to do you have to demonstrate that you will form a constituency for them, saying ‘yeah, politicians, what a load of cr@p’ just means they’ll look for someone who will vote, and so things get done for civil servants – and not small business owners. As Paul said:
“you have to engage in politics as it is, not as you would want it to be.”
JayN and Paul Marks- well said.
The cynicism and naivete on this site is beyond belief sometimes. Of course he is not going to flesh out detailed plans and nor should he.
I would describe myself as an instictive libertarian. If I’m obliged to make a snap decision or follow a rule of thumb I tend to be very libertarian. If I actually stop and think hard about the issue I become far less libertarian. Just goes to show….
Every politician talks about cutting taxes when he’s out of office. If he gets in, he says ‘Ah, but when we got to see the books we found that the last lot had got the finances in such a mess that with the best will in the world we couldn’t really… got to protect the pound… maybe in five years…’
Cameron has uttered nothing but the blandest, emptiest, buzzword-ridden waffle. He’s a smooth-faced cipher who’s never done a proper day’s work in his life, and whose chief claim to fame is distastefully flaunting a disabled son and a speed-freek relation. Only in the moribund world of Westminster politics could he be considered gifted, or for that matter young.
Tory politics has become a junk pile for people who haven’t got what it takes to be top-flight lawyers or bankers.
I think very few people are instinctive libertarians. Very often the libertarian solution to a particular social problem is very far from being intuitive or obvious and it takes a lot of hard thought to fully appreciate the correct libertarian position on a specific issue.
Instinctively most people reach for some quasi-authoritarian ideology when first considering a social problem and I do not exclude myself from that failing.
Contra ‘J’ it is when we subject these ideas to some hard critical thought that we realise the truth of libertariansim.
‘Instinctive’ libertarians are unreliable allies what is much better are ‘intellectual’ libertarians. Those who remain committed to libertarianism after all the hard thinking.
Luniversal, I am not admirer of DC – in fact I made a rather bitchy remark about him the other day – but since when has this man made political hay out of his disabled son? That is a particularly nasty accusation.
Cameron has uttered nothing but the blandest, emptiest, buzzword-ridden waffle. He’s a smooth-faced cipher who’s never done a proper day’s work in his life…..
Good to see that Luniversal is not sparing the criticism. Cameron, like all politicians, will do as he does but while he is playing a modern day Alcibiades we should remember that our role is that of Socrates.
I completely agree with Luniversal.
Sorry, Mr Pearce, if you haven’t seen Cameron trading on his child’s disability you must simply have missed the coverage.
“our role is that of Socrates.”
Quite. Yet on a not entirely ironic/cynical reading, surely a sense of humour is necessarily a significant qualification for Prime Minister? After all, what better antidote is there to the overblown sense of self-importance that by definition affects PMs than a healthy sense of humour (if not something a little stronger)? A socratic dialogue on this would be something for the late Ronnie Barker.
Nevertheless, that Cameron remains a bit of a card due to a lack of information (including on the drugs thing) does tempt me to the possibility he may yet harbour, less a sense of humour, and more an as yet barely concealed Alan Clark-like tendeny to debauchery…
IIRC Clark was in the habit of using the name of an adversary (Thompson) to refer to the call of nature one answers whilst sitting on the toilet. I am not an expert on toff mannerisms, being a lowly commoner myself, but perhaps Cameron also refers to ‘taking a Davis’ in this way?
Luniversal/ GCooper: you are both being particularly nasty about Cameron.
The only gratuitous references about Cameron’s son that I have seen/read are the ones made by insipid, idiotic commentators who use it as a stick to beat him with.
The fact that he has a disabled son means he can talk about the difficulties/issues of such a situation with first hand experience.
If Cameron didn’t talk about his son, I’m sure he be criticised for not being open enough!
Does anyone think that the way to gain supporters, whilst in opposition, is to bang on about libertarian issues? Libertarianism is a principle that most Tories hold fast but as they are the opposition it’s not possible to set the agenda.
mbe wrtites:
“Luniversal/ GCooper: you are both being particularly nasty about Cameron.”
I can’t speak for Luniversal, but you are right about me: I was being particularly ‘nasty’ about Cameron.
His camp has been quick to snipe at Davis who, I agree, has bored us all to sleep several times now with this ‘I woz a council ‘ouse lad and me mum woz unmarried’ routine.
But isn’t Davis doing exactly what you are praising your dog for – using his experience to fight?
Many were quick to traduce Bliar for using his family and it seems to me Cameron has done much the same – and I don’t believe for a moment his managers haven’t sought a bit of sympathy in the process.
It’s mawkish and it’s cheap and it’s exploitative.
As for libertarianism, you’re confuing me with someone else. I don’t give a damn about party politicians banging on about something they cleary do not believe in.
What I want from Cameron are ideas – most specifically about Europe and how he proposes to restore our self-government. After that, I wouldn’t mind hearing something tangible about taxation, reduction of nanny state regulations and civil service waste.
About his child, I’m very sorry for him and his family but, beyond that, and as the man said: frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.
mbe writes: “The fact that he has a disabled son means he can talk about the difficulties/issues of such a situation with first hand experience.”
I hate to sound like hard-hearted Hannah, but so what?
Cameron was flogging his retarded son round the features depts and gossip columns for months before he declared himself a runner for the leadership. He was already aware that he had to find something, anything, that would make him look like an ‘ordinary person’ and not a mechanoid toff. His line was ‘I know all about the NHS, I’ve got treatment for him on it.’
You libboes want to spend a bit more time reading women-angled human interest drivel in the papers instead of the boring news pages.
As if it mattered which pro-war dummy echo of Bliar is going to lose the next election anyway! Do me a favour.
Luniversal tries gamely to defend himself, but it won’t do. I haven’t seen any serious evidence of him exploiting his son. I suspect that the expoitation is more in the minds of his enemies than DC.
By all means attack DC on the right terrain, and there are plenty of grounds for doing so. Leave out the personal stuff. It is pathetic and dishonerable.
I have had to re-read the comments from GCooper and Luniversal several times to ensure i haven’t missed something incisive or profound.
But i havent. Just the embittered, cynical ramblings of two nasty old people.
Johnathan – you seem like a reasonable person. Why do you humour these dreadful commentators. Do they fund this site?
Johnathan Pearce writes:
“By all means attack DC on the right terrain, and there are plenty of grounds for doing so. Leave out the personal stuff. It is pathetic and dishonerable. ”
Codswallop. If Cameron feels it is reasonable to use his son as part of his campaigning, then there can be no sensible objection to others finding it distasteful.
Or are you suggesting that commentators on Samizdata are only allowed to be objectionable about Bliar and Za-NuLabour?
GCooper, no, in direct answer to your question, I am saying that commentors are allowed to say what they want, but if they bash a guy for allegedly exploiting the fact of having a disabled son, they deserve to have their arses kicked if such a claim cannot be proven.
Funnily enough, I did not even know Cameron had a son with such problems until Luniversal, who seems to need to take a chill pill, raised the subject.
Let’s show some real class and deal with the issues.
Johnathan Pearce writes:
“Funnily enough, I did not even know Cameron had a son with such problems until Luniversal, who seems to need to take a chill pill, raised the subject.”
Then, I’m afraid, and as I said before, the fault is yours.
I had taken almost not notice of Cameron’s trail to the top until his recent leap for the stratosphere, but even I had both read about his son, in the Telegraph, seen it mentioned on TV and heard his problems discussed on BBC Radio 4.
It isn’t reasonable to chastise Luniversal (with whom, let it be said, I doubt I have ever agreed before) for commenting on something which is widely known, simply because you were unware of it.
“Let’s show some real class and deal with the issues. ”
If Cameron is being exploitative and tacky then that is the issue.
Have we learned nothing from already having suffered one exploitative, tacky, thespian strutting around the Westminster stage these past few years?
If there’s a chance Cameron is another, then he needs exposing. He is fair game and his tactics certainly are.
I knew about Cameron’s disabled child from The Speccie, and the writer writing the (sympathetic, because he has a severely disabled child himself) article clearly assumed that it was common knowledge.
So it’s all over the media, and if you didn’t know, Jonathan, that is not the fault of the commenters here. It would not be all over the media unless it had been put about assiduously, because no one is really interested in politicians families on this side of the Atlantic. It was put about deliberately.
I do like Cameron, and I think he is (as are many Conservatives in his generation) libertarian in orientation. (FWIW, I think Davies also sees the changed pattern of politics, though he makes more authoritarian noises to appease the reactionaries in the ranks.)
However, this rhetorical cliché worries me personally, even though I’m sure he could only put it this way in a public forum: We must have faith in the social and economic benefits of the free market.
I’ve said it before and I say it again: I want free markets because they are free, not because they are markets. My adherence to freedom is not a matter of faith in some utilitarian outcome (though it is fortunate that it is possible very frequently to point to utility), but because I think individual freedom is a good in itself, to be maximised as far as practicable–though unlike some I concede there may have to be quite a lot of practical constraints and trade-offs.
What’s much worse is this: We must reduce and simplify taxes so we can take on with confidence the long term challenge of competing with China and India for jobs.
The neo-mercantilist idea of economic competition between nations is a poisonous meme that really ought to be extirpated from the political discourse of those who affect to believe in liberty. It leads not to lower taxes but a corporate welfare state.
The National Interest and her half-sister the Public Interest have lives of their own, led according to power and prejudice. They are not concerned with the individual, nor even the aggregate, welfare of the population. Public Safety is of the same kin.
Okay, fellow commenters, so it was “widespread public knowledge” etc, that DC’s son was disabled. I still have not seen him (I did a bit of googling on the subject) making hay out of his predicament. As far as I can tell it has been handled pretty much as delicately as one could expect.
It is a pretty nasty slur on someone to accuse them of exploiting a child in that way. What is he supposed to do, lock the kid up in a broom cupboard?
Johnathon: The fact that Cameron’s son is disabled is widely known but only among those interested in ploitics – I’d wager that 90% of the public don’t know.
From what I’ve seen so far, I’m not generally a fan of Cameron’s leadership bid. However, I don’t think that he has exploited his son’s disability and, indeed, I think the experience he has gained as a result is a positive for his campaign, and potentially for the country, should he become PM. As I’ve said previously, real world experience is important in a leader to understand how things really work. Cameron may have little private sector experience but due to his son’s disabilities, he has experienced two failures of centralised monopoly public services – the government’s closure of many special schools (not because there wasn’t demand, but because New Labour doctrine says that children should be integrated into mainstream schools) and the disjointed, unaccountable service offered by the NHS (the subject of a – frankly shocking – article in the Spectator, as Verity mentions).
As shadow education secretary, Cameron has spoken about the special schools situation on several occasions, drawing on personal experience. I commend him on this – I am in favour of politicians experiencing the negative effects of government top-down action (although I wouldn’t wish this on his son).
HJHJ, Luniversal says about that Cameron’s son has been the subject of columns and features in “human interest” magazines – read “women’s” – for months. So it’s not just known to people interested in politics. You say you’d wager that 90% of the population doesn’t know – but from what Luniversal says, those interested primarily in politics are among the last few in the country to have heard about it.
It didn’t get into gossip columns and get written up in features by coincidence.
I do agree with you that it is a good thing that Conservative politicians have first-hand experience of top-down government failures.
I think there are more than a few contributors who might need a reality check here; the choice for the Conservatives is between Davis and Cameron, NOT a perfect libertarian candidate and someone less perfect. Within the constraints of reality the question is whether Cameron, who talks the talk but may not deliver, or Davis who is less willing even to talk the talk.
Phase two will see the winner of that contest facing Blown/Brair, both whom talk the talk and lie, having no intention of delivering any form of liberty because they believe we are too imature to be trusted and they really do know better.
I think there are more than a few contributors who might need a reality check here; the choice for the Conservatives is between Davis and Cameron, NOT a perfect libertarian candidate and someone less perfect.
Whoever the Conservatives choose as their leader the response of libertarians should be the same. To subject that persons actions and utterances to the most rigorous critical scrutiny, exposing and condemning his errors and welcoming any actual successes in adding to the sum total of human liberty that he manages to achieve.
What else would you suggest we do?
Verity: It may or may not be true that a proportion of the public are aware of Cameron’s son through “human interest” magazines, although I wouldn’t know as I don’t read them. However, I still think that even if correct, the proportion of the population that knew was/is still small.
I became aware a few months or so ago because of his part in the debate over the government’s closure of special schools.
Paul Coulam – I think we actually agree about this in that whoever leads the Conservatives should be judged on what they manage to deliver, not on their promises. What is not worth discussing is whether another candidate would be better; there are two names in the frame, and the choice is between those two only. For what it’s worth, I believe Cameron is the less bad of the two.
Another worry in the whole election is that Conservative local associations are often dominated by the sort of authoritarian retired colonel that can make being a Conservative so embarrassing, and they will not be looking for a libertarian candidate. I want to believe this is the reason for the lack of specifics in the campaigns so far, but that is wishful thinking.
Why shouldn’t we criticise Cameron’s behaviour? He totes his disabled kid around but won’t tell us if he took drugs 20 years ago– he plays the private life card as and when it suits him.
As for critiquing his policies, that’s like going fifteen rounds with a blancmange.