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

“This coup took place to protect your liberty. Some of you may find this strange, as you currently have less liberty, owing to my regime being a vicious theocratic hell. Well, to use a phrase of a friend of mine, try thinking outside the box. It is well known that to have a large degree of liberty, it is necessary to surrender a small amount to allow for police, security services and the like. We have taken this concept a step forward: since you have surrendered all your liberty, you now have even more liberty to do exactly what I say or die like the filfthy heretic scum you are. Feel free to agree with me on this point.”

– The Grand Hyrax, newly established God-King-Prophet-Emperor of Urn, the fourth planet of the sun Didcot. From the book God Emperor of Didcot by Toby Frost.

4 comments to Samizdata quote of the day

  • Ostralion

    This is as logical as ‘planned anarchy’. I, for one, will never visit Um, or the Didcot System. There are plenty of other systems to visit!

  • Paul Marks

    ” You do not understand, now we are free not to be free” (i.e. not to have the terrible burden of personal responsbility – of being a moral agent).

    A joyful young student to a doubting old academic (one of the small minority of German academics not to be a collectivist of one form or another) on the comming to power of the National Socialists in 1933.

    The devoted admirers of other political leaders place their lives into the hands of these leaders, the joyful eyes of the followers can see nothing other than what the leader wants them to see (for the admirers themselves “will” it that way) and their voices are a passionate chant of the leaders slogans.

    Anyone who opposes the compassionate policies of the leader is a heretic to be destroyed.

    We do not need science fiction to see all this – look at the United States over the last year.

  • Paul Marks

    Nothing, not finance, not industry, not education, not healthcare, nothing – must be outside the will of the Leader.

  • Translated from the original Farsi in which it was issued upon the elevation of Ayatollah Khomeini to the position of Supreme Leader.

    Re-issued by the Ayatollah Hominy to the protesters along with the admonition that to oppose him was to oppose God, suggesting that he had recently gotten a promotion that the rest of us had not heard about.