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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H H Monro – who wrote under the pen name Saki – was a writer of mainly short stories. In most of them the innocent and gullible find themselves in an unequal struggle with the sly and devious.
In his novel When William Came he wrote about what would happen in the event of a German invasion. It is not a particularly good novel but it does describe the process by which die-hard patriots find themselves ever more isolated as more and more of the smart set – desperate to carry on as before – adapt themselves to occupation
When war came, Monro was a man in his 40s and as such could have stood aside. Instead he joined up. He was killed on the Somme a hundred years ago yesterday.
One our regular-ish commenters posts under the same name as one of Saki’s recurring characters so it will be interesting to hear Clovis Sangrail’s take.
Tim Worstall:
Some say that membership of the Single Market, the ability to export without facing tariffs, is so important that we should accept the freedom of movement. My argument is exactly the opposite. I’m not against freedom of movement, regard it as being economically and morally useful in fact. But then some large percentage of my fellow Britons don’t think that way. My objection though is to the Single Market idea. For it isn’t just a system allowing tariff free exports. It’s an entire system for governing and regulating the participating economies.
Just as an example, one that rather boggled the mind this morning, there’re rules about when a supermarket can offer you free parking (that in itself will boggle the mind of many Americans, that parking must be paid for at a store?). If you go and buy whiskey, diapers and beef they can stamp your ticket, give you a voucher, and you get free parking. If your purchases include formula milk then they cannot stamp your ticket and you cannot get free parking. And yes, this is a result of an EU law. Must do wonders for adoptive mothers, those who simply do not produce enough milk and so on. But the entire ruling system of Europe thought this was important enough that there must be a law about it.
And the final sentence of Tim’s piece is the crunch argument for me as to why the Single Market is a cruel hoax (and Mrs Thatcher, who signed the Single European Act in 1986, kicked herself for not grasping this). We are told that to have access to the Single Market and the supposed benefits of such membership, “We” (Britain) “must” (because it says so, apparently) accept regulation of everything, down to the size of the plug on electric kettles, the rules governing sales of vitamins, the lot. And while no-one should have any illusions as to zeal with which local politicians in the UK might want to regulate these things, it is a million miles easier to resist such nonsense at the national level than at the supranational one, not least because MPs cannot hide behind the “Brussels made us do it and anyway we need to because of the Single Market” line they come out with.
Free of the EU, we are free of a great mass of legislative empire building that has, as such examples show, tiddly-squat to do with trade, commerce and entrepreneurship.
Of course, this debate does not touch on the fact that at the global, not European level, there are all manner of intergovernmental agreements and treaties that will continue to affect us in or out of the European Union. I can think, for example, of a global system coming into force called the Common Reporting Standard, a bland term that describes how scores of governments, ranging from the likes of Singapore to Germany, will swap financial data with one another to hunt down alleged tax evaders. And in one of those beautiful ironies, the US, home to Delaware, one of the most secretive legal jurisdictions on the planet, isn’t a signatory, and under Mr Trump, isn’t likely to be.
It has been argued that Brexit will make us freer. Not just in an economic or political sense, but also in terms of individual civil liberties. spiked’s Mick Hume wrote that ‘the referendum result is a triumph for free speech and a smack in the eye for the culture of You Can’t Say That’. And it is.
Post-Brexit Britain will no longer be bound by an EU Code of Conduct that seeks to police the online speech of over 500million citizens and ban ‘illegal online hate speech’. Or an EU law that encourages the criminalisation of ‘insult’. Or a proposed EU law that undermines fundamental freedoms by purging Europe of every last shred of supposed ‘discrimination’.
We can distinguish ourselves from our European neighbours that are intent on pursuing more and more censorship. Just over the summer it was reported that prosecutors in Spain initiated criminal proceedings against the Archbishop of Valencia for preaching a homily alleged to have been ‘sexist’ and ‘homophobic’. In the Netherlands, a man was sentenced to 30 days in prison for ‘intentionally insulting’ the king on Facebook. And in Germany a prosecution was launched against a comedian who made jokes against Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
These kinds of cases have become normal on the continent. So much so that they barely generate news. And they are often willingly cheered on by the EU and other European institutions. Britain can tread a different path.
There is just one, small problem: when it comes to censorship and the quashing of civil liberties, the UK doesn’t need any encouragement from the EU, or anybody else.
– Paul Coleman
It has been delightful to wallow in the grief of triggered leftists. Yes, their candidate lost. And no, they have neither self-awareness nor irony and that is bloody hilarious. But for classical liberals/libertarians or even smaller state Conservatives, the man who won is by no means our guy. Not by the longest of long chalks. Nor were most of his voters motivated by even the faintest approximation of our views. If we were rationally assessing what ideas won in the presidential election, we would be crying into our beers as much as our authoritarian enemies.
Not that I suggest we do so. I am far from depressed by Trump’s victory, though I agree with him in so few respects. Not least because our statist foes are about to relearn a proper fear of excessive state power and in particular of such undemocratic and unconstitutional devices as presidential executive orders.
– ‘Tom Paine‘
In 1992 Democrats won the men’s vote, and finished only 2 points behind with white voters. Support from both groups has plummeted since. Male voters and white voters have been hearing from Democrats how sexist and racist they are for 20+ years now — what did you expect would happen?
She knew what she was selling, and so did the American public. This was 100% an own goal: Hillary chose to run a far left “SJW” campaign pandering to Black Lives Matter, illegal aliens, and the most corrosive feminists & GLBT activists she could find. She gave white Americans and men the finger, and both groups responded in kind.
– Neil Edmondson
I am not rowing back on my dislike and distrust of Trump for a host or reasons. (To give just one, when he spoke about his desire to spend big on infrastructure in his acceptance speech, I fear the worst about the direction of public spending. Let’s hope he is bluffing and will have to face some hard financial realities.) However, even a small-government conservative/libertarian such as I, who thinks most government actions can be performed from the back of a truck or from an insurance office, enjoys the discomfiture of the Left at his victory, and the defeat of Clinton. The worries about what a Trump administration can do can wait a few days. Let’s wait until Monday.
Here is Rod Liddle in the Spectator:
The deplorables are rather wonderful people, aren’t they? Both here and in the United States. The people’s revolution continues apace, defying the odds each time, defying the pollsters, defying the elite. I cannot tell you how pleasurable it was to scamper downstairs on Wednesday morning to check out the reaction on the Guardian’s website. It kept me cackling for hours. The previous morning the paper had concluded its fatuous leader column with the words: ‘Americans should summon a special level of seriousness and display a profound responsibility when they go to the polls.’ That alone had made me yearn for a Trump victory — the arrogant, chastising tone which liberals, especially European liberals, always adopt when dealing with commoners and plebs, the people who do not buy into their palpably failing and idiotic worldview.
So yes, let’s bask in this. But like I said, enjoyment will be limited, not least because I worry that people such as Liddle are so keen on Trump. Consider, Liddle holds socialist or “Blue Labour” views on economics. He likes big public spending, taxing rich people, economic protectionism, and stopping immigrants from taking “our jobs”, as he has written in the past (he subscribes to the lump of labour fallacy, as far as I can tell). Mixing Big government, a form of socialism and nationalism is not a brew I want to drink at any time of the day. He is only libertarian in the sense, as far as I can see, that he thinks it means being naughty and offensive and forgets the economics bit – all Saturday Night Live and no Milton Friedman.
Of course, I know quite a few small-govt. types who are hoping that the GOP-controlled Congress will, despite owing Trump a favour for his victory, will resist some of the more outlandish attempts to hike spending, bash cheap imports, etc. Once again we will read from the “liberal” (in the American perversion of that word) commentariat about the need for checks and balances on the Presidency (funny, that); such calls went quiet during the Obama years when the Lightbringer was firing off his executive orders and zapping people in drone strikes. Maybe Trump will pleasantly surprise us – let’s hope so. In fact, expectations perhaps have been so low that his ability to surprise on the upside could be quite big. He is known to be able to turn on the charm and let’s face it, his ability to keep going during this campaign, despite some setbacks (partly self-inflicted) shows a certain bullish grit.
Richard Epstein’s essay at the Hoover Institute on the election is a must-read.
Gene Healy’s exploration of the “imperial” presidency, published by CATO a few years ago, is also good.
I have watched this play out on campus after campus. I have watched dissident student groups invite Milo Yiannopoulos to speak — not because they particularly agree with his views, but because he denounces censorship and undermines political correctness. I have watched students cheer his theatrics, his insulting behavior, and his narcissism solely because the enforcers of campus goodthink are outraged by it. It’s not about his ideas, or policies. It’s not even about him. It’s about vengeance for social oppression.
Trump has done to America what Yiannopoulos did to campus. This is a view Yiannopoulos shares. When I spoke with him about Trump’s success months ago, he told me, “Nobody votes for Trump or likes Trump on the basis of policy positions. That’s a misunderstanding of what the Trump phenomenon is.”
He described Trump as “an icon of irreverent resistance to political correctness.” Correctly, I might add.
– Robby Soave
…in comedic opportunities. They are going to come think and fast and this truly is a great time to be in the satire business.
Oh the humanity!
In this time of echo chambers and knee jerk slogans, shall I donate money to the Guardian to understand alternative views. The press is dying and alternatives still remain vulnerable to pressure and corruption. We have no online Private Eye, such an important component if we relax planning laws.
Investigative journalism is still required!
And as I said above, if he can send the Clintons to jail that will be extremely beneficial for the country. Not out of any malice to the Clintons (well deserved though it might be) but simply as a marker to say “corruption in politics has at least an outside chance of ending you in the big house.” I think that would send shivers through the political establishment and make them a little less careless and a little less greedy as they milk the public for their own self enrichment.
But I could be entirely wrong. And he might also fire a nuclear weapon at Paris if a Hollande statement is carelessly translated to suggest his penis is of inadequate length. It is a dice roll.
– Samizdata commenter Fraser Orr
Well I certainly hope against hope that I am completely wrong about Trump (yeah I know, the notion I might be wrong is almost unimaginable!) but at the very least it is going to be hilarious to behold the Niagara-like cascade of tears from Shelob’s Hillary’s true believers 😆
It will be interesting to see what kind of score settling happens as Trump is said to be a rather vindictive chap. Pass the popcorn.
Well, here I am sitting at my desk, with a telly on it and a computer screen on it, at stupid o’clock in the morning. I’m following the internet version of events here. When I started out following this, Clinton was reckoned to be 75 percent likely to win. Now they’re saying the same about Donald Trump. But since the first figure proved so fallible, why would I trust the second figure either? What is going to happen?
A few thoughts for our commentariat – including many who have actual experience of being in the USA, as I have not – to chew over, or not, as they please.
On Brit TV, a sensible blond woman (British) is talking about Obamacare and what a train wreck it has been. I suspect a lot of Brits are hearing this kind of thing for the first time. She also talked about education, another minus for Hillary, it would seem. And another Brit – middle aged, comb-over – has talked about Hillary’s use of politics to enrich herself on a grand scale. Again, how often has this been talked about on Brit TV?
So, simply in terms of their ability to report the campaign and its nature, the British media failed as comprehensively as the Clinton-supporting media look like they’re failing.
Related point: I suspect that Trump’s use of the social media is going to be talked about a lot in the next few weeks and months. Trump is being described as a political novice. But he sure as hell isn’t a media novice. He understands television. He understands how to get attention.
Now, finally, someone is telling Britain that Hillary Clinton is too “robotic”, not “warm”. They couldn’t “humanise” her. Trump was able to exploit this. Now they tell us.
About Trump. For the last year and however long it’s been, almost everyone has been underestimating Trump, and they were underestimating him still, only a few hours ago. And now, it is being said, by people on both sides, that Trump will be a ghastly President. He will be, if he just sticks to shrieking the things he shrieked at the beginning of his campaign, to get the attention of the kind of voters who hate all the damn politicians, definitely including those Republican grandees whom Trump has rolled all over, up to and including doing much better in the Presidential election. But what if people are still underestimating him? What if he is actually a quite good President? Even to the point where he starts making sensible noises about the size of the nation’s debt? What if he actually gets that you can’t just legislate manufacturing jobs back into existence? What if he turns out to be better at handling the Russians?
The US stockmarket, we are being told, is certainly of the opinion that Trump will now be the President, but a very bad President, as in bad for American business, certain for the sort of businesses that get quoted on the stockmarket. But are they right?
I wouldn’t put it past Trump to be rather a good president, because if there is one thing that is very clear about this man, it is that he does like to be liked, and the incentives he will face, if he does get the Presidency, will now change. If he does get to be President, he will be wanting to be thought of as a great President. Well, maybe not. Maybe he will concentrate all his efforts on having his revenge on all his detractors, both Republican and Democrat, and meanwhile let the USA itself go hell. But might he not turn out rather better than that?
Or, Trump may decide that the future of America, indeed of the world, is “progressivism”, and he might turn out to be another Obama. He was, after all, a Democrat for many years, was he not?
The British lefty, on the extreme left of my TV screen, is talking about a “cataclysmic” rejection of the “progressive agenda”, as personified by President Obama. Obamacare is going to be repealed! The horror.
That Obama guy, eh? Lots of Americans seem to think that he’s an idiot, but, a likeable idiot. They carried on voting for him, while he was the candidate. But as soon as Obama himself stopped being who you had to vote for, the vote for mere Obama-ism collapsed. Well, no, not collapsed. We’re talking a few percentage points. But that is enough to change things radically. That’s democracy for you. 50.5 percent, happiness. 49.5 percent, misery.
Now, a bearded young American is saying that if Sanders – the Venezuelan candidate, so to speak – had got the Democrat nomination, he would have been more likely to have won this thing. Maybe, unlike Hillary, Sanders could have made Venezuela seem appealing. Like I say, it only takes a single figure percentage to change things.
Other Democrats have been fulminating about how racist Trump is. Well, as for that, I have been watching the political left insult white people – particularly white men – for my entire adult life, ever since the workers of the rich, white West made it clear that they preferred the affluent society (such as it has been) to revolutionary Bolshevistic self-immolation. For me, the surprise is not that the white working class has fled from the left. For me, the surprise is that it has taken them so long.
They’re now talking about Trump being 93 percent likely to win it.
Now: Nigel Farage, calling this, if it happens in accordance with the above percentage, “bigger than Brexit”. He’s not assuming it, but he is struggling to keep his grin under control.
It’s gone down to 88 percent. LATER: up to 95 percent!
Well, well, well.
This election has kept me up for so long that I am now following the start of this cricket match between England and India. The smart money says India are about 88 percent likely to win that, by a landslide. To bed, Brian, to bed. Apologies for all the typos and grammatical cock-ups. I may need to clean this up in the morning.
I now see that, with admirable brevity, Natalie Solent has said the very same thing that I have been rambling on about at such tedious length. Oh well. Repetition is allowed here. ?!? Indeed.
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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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