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]
|
Ship of fools Here is a sharp item over at Reason magazine’s Hit & Run blog about the sort of credulous characters who go to various collectivist places and write gushing prose about how marvellous these places are. What is particularly satisfying is that it focuses on Matthew Yglesias, one of those bloggers whose reputation I have never been able to fathom.
For readers interested by the “ship of fools” headline, I got it from a wonderful piece by PJ O’Rourke, about the sort of tourists who used to go to the old Soviet Union to witness the many delights of central planning. It is in his classic, Republican Party Reptile.
|
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.
|
That was the one where the American Communists were convinced the USSR provided everything their citizens could possibly want…but they brought their own toilet paper! Hilarious!
Well I’m convinced. Where do I buy my ticket to Utopia? I want my four apartments, and I want them now!
We gave Matthew Yglesias a bit of a kicking back in the day on this very blog.
… oh yes and he is a true e-thug, who makes remarks which if delivered in person might well result in a fist in the face.
The guy is a piece of crap.
Headlines from history-
“Jews Having Great Time In Babylon, Say Progressive Chroniclers”
Just to be fiddly and annoying, “Ship of Fools” started as a Hieronymus Bosch allegorical painting circa 1500, then became a novel by Katherine Anne Porter, then a movie, then a meme. It’s a consistent and useful image.
It’s also a song by Robert Calvert on the album Lucky Leif And The Longships.
It was also spread by Michel Foucault that a literal Ship Of Fools existed in the Middle Ages on which mad people were incarcerated. Which isn’t true.
Well, we have an entire flotilla headed our way…
I just re-read ‘Ship of Fools’. Amazing to think that it was written in 1982 and there are still dunderheaded Leftists who think the Soviet Union was a model society.
“Wherever there is a jackboot stomping on a human face there will be a well-heeled Western liberal to explain that the face does, after all, enjoy free health care and 100 percent literacy.” — John Derbyshire
I’m so stealing it Kim.
Here’s my entry into the fame books- a new name for all socialists and communists and fascists: Programmaniacs! they suffer from the delusion that everything can be planned (by them), and if we would all just get with the program, life would be paradisical!
Programmania, and Programmaniac. what happens when the planning part of the brain gets too big.