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 I cannot avoid coming to this conclusion – that there are too many great men in the world; there are too many legislators, organizers, institutors of society, conductors of the people, fathers of nations, etc., etc. Too many persons place themselves above mankind, to rule and patronize it; too many persons make a trade of looking after it. It will be answered – “You yourself are occupied upon it all this time.” Very true. But it must be admitted that it is in another sense entirely that I am speaking; and if I join the reformers it is solely for the purpose of inducing them to relax their hold.
– from The Law by Frédéric Bastiat (on the penultimate page (54) of this pdf edition)
Ah yes. To fight politics, you have to do politics. And before you know it, you are what you were earlier warning the world against.
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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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Was not Samizdata itself some years back described in the Guardian as being “about the politics of anti-politics”?
Indeed so.
One can try sticking to reality, to the truth, but it is not easy.
Really? I always thought defenestration was an architectural term.
Bastiat never himself sold out – and he was in the French National Assembly.
And there are many other individuals who never sell out.
Of course most people do (even the ones who went into politics to reduce the size and scope of the state, bit-by-bit sell out – as they do not like being hated by everyone around them, being treated as evil monsters by the media, and so on).
But not everyone.
And even those who are corrupted – can be shamed, they can (on some things) be brought to vote to reduce the size and scope of the state.
But, yes, the advantage in politics lies with statism – for that is the nature of politics.
By the way (as the Foundation for Economic Education and Freeman magazine long argued), Bastiat’s “The Law” is a classic (perhaps THE classic) text.
Ron Paul is right.
Ask a politician (or an academic or….) their opinion of Bastiat’s “The Law”.
If they have not read it they are ignorant – and why support ignorant people?
And if they have read it and oppose (even worse if they SNEER at it) it – then they are foes.
It is as simple as that.