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 The conventional word that it employed to describe tyranny is ‘systematic’. The true essence of a dictatorship is in fact not its regularity but the unpredictability and caprice; those who live under it must never be able to relax, must never be quite sure they have followed the rules correctly or not. Thus, the ruled can always be found to be in the wrong.
– Hitch-22: A memoir. By Christopher Hitchens, page 51.
This is probably the best autobiography I have ever read. In the passage above, he’s referring to his life in an English public (ie, private) school.
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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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When I served my sentence in that gulag, I well-recall the last of the printed School Rules that were issued to each boy and posted everywhere:
“Any breach of Common Sense is a breach of the School Rules’.
Even at that tender age, I recognized the hand of the petty despot when I saw it. It’s a great catch, that catch-22.
llater,
llamas
Should “regulatory” be “regularity”? I assume so and recommend others to assume so, unless we are all contradicted.
Brian, fixed. My bad.
I recommend it too. If you get it on kindle it is (or was when I bought it) quite cheap.
Odd that a socialist should object so eloquently to tyranny. Or was he bragging rather than complaining?
Let us be sure to give credit for this quote where it is due.
Ayn Rand said, famously,
It will be of little avail to the people that laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood: if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow. — James Madison, Federalist 62
C. Hitchens admits he is a man of contradictions. Despite being an ex-Trotskyite, the other side of him abhors repression of the weak and helpless. The evidence of this is the extent of which he is reviled and demonized and shunned by his former socialist control freak “friends”.
Hitch 22 both fascinated and repulsed me.
Nevertheless, I pray for the restoration to health of this brilliant man.
To LW. When did Hitchens become an “ex-Trotskyite”. This is not a criticism, as a Hitchens fan who has disagreed with his politics I am curious.
So dictatorial tyrannies are a lot like being married, only they have guns and can put you in jail.
I am reminded of something I read about the GULAG.
It was an exchange between a prisoner and a guard. The prisoner said he was following all the rules; the guard said “I can find 10 violations on you right now” – and proved it.
Capriciousness is is key – so is intrusiveness that can always find a reason to punish.
Pettifogger wrote:
‘So dictatorial tyrannies are a lot like being married, only they have guns and can put you in jail.’
Ever meet my first wife? Check on both counts, and the arbitrary & capricious part as well. How dumb I were . . .
llater,
llamas
Christopher Hitchens does not follow the party line of the left (even of the Trotsky left).
For example, he is pro life (anti abortion).
“But C.H. is an athiest” – where is it written that people who do not believe in God have to get a kick out of killing babies? Which is how a pro life person sees the situation (without even going into the vileness of “live birth abortions”, Barack Obama, or using babies as food – Progressive Prof Peter Singer of Princeton).
By the way – good comment Jack Tallent.
Both the Boeing and Gibson Guitar cases are good examples of the unpredictability and capriciousness you describe.
Don’t remember the author and title, but an american wrote a book recently that said every american was a felon, but didn’t know it, because the current regulatory code is so complicated that everybody can be found guilty of something.
Hitch, as LW points out, admits that there are a lot of contradictions in his positons. As near as I can tell, he’s trying to create a philosophy of libertarian socialism. He either doesn’t realize, or refuses to admit, the inherent contradiction between the two.
richard40 – yes.
Cousin Dave – yes.
It reminds me of a passage in the ‘The Good Soldier Svejk’, where Svejk recounts an incident of his earlier army service. A sergeant-major lined up the men and asked each of them a question. The soldiers answered one way and are punished. Svejk answered another way, seemingly giving the SM what he wanted, but is punished more severely than the others. When Svejk tells this story to Quartermaster-Sergeant Vanek, the latter says that the army has to be like this. No matter what you do, you will be in trouble. Without that you can’t have discipline.
So, is it BAD that any US male, known to have pissed on a tree, can be found guilty of a felonious “sex crime”, imprisoned, forced to pay/attend “re-education therapy, stripped of his right to vote, denied firearms or “weapons” of any kind, barred from “certain public zones” or “public” housing, denied freedom of travel, etc. etc.
all because “common sense” dictates he must have “exposed” his Jonathan Thomas (apparently, to ANY potential passing women, children, or livestock) in order to piss on a tree?
The same logic from “If a tree falls in a forest, and
there’s no appointed gub’mint official to document the phenomena, does that PROVE that other-than-elite men(sic)-made carbon de-sequestering exacerbates the global warming that’s killing our children and pet cats?”