Overall it’s just that Birkenstock stamping on a human face, forever, again isn’t it?
|
|||||
|
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] Authors
Arts, Tech & CultureCivil LibertiesCommentary
EconomicsSamizdatistas |
Samizdata quote of the daySamizdata Illuminatus (Arkham, Massachusetts) · Civil liberty, Law & Regulation · Environment · Slogans & Quotations April 22nd, 2020 |
 12 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
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. CategoriesArchivesFeed This PageLink Icons   |
|||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||
I wonder, does putting free speech tenth and last in the list of dread threats to humanity mean they see free speech as the greatest threat of all, or as the least? I’m guessing the former. The other nine merely threaten the end of the world, or of humanity, or of something, at some near but regularly-extended date, whereas free speech threatens the credibility of regularly extending that date.
They can’t stamp on your face with Uggs if you smash their knees with a Louisville Slugger!
Sorry, I don’t know the popula brand names of Cricket bats in UK.
Metaphorically of course.
“…does putting free speech tenth and last in the list of dread threats to humanity mean they see free speech as the greatest threat of all, or as the least?”
I am guessing that they put it last so that first reading all the previous items, already popular with lefties, act to enhance the sense of a crisis that must be solved by abolishing dissent. Putting it first would not work as well.
“In a world … on the brink of destruction … one small group of heroes … will save us all …”
They are the stars of the film, how could they possibly be wrong? And if we oppose them, that makes us the villains. You know what is supposed to happen to the villains …
The first nine are mere tactical beliefs, and could be replaced by pretty much any similar list.
The last is about power and control, and is the absolute essence of the thing.
CaptDMO,
Pick axe handles where I come from. Readily available and heavier at the end, like a hammer.
“The 10 threats are climate change, environmental decline and extinction, nuclear weapons, resource scarcity (including water scarcity), food insecurity, dangerous new technologies, overpopulation, chemical pollution, pandemic disease, and denial and misinformation.”
Without the irony that the ideologies such as that proposed are actually the _cause_ of all of the above
The biggest clue is “dangerous new technologies”, a technology is only dangerous in the wrong hands – you can use an ultrasound to check an unborn child’s health, or to determine it is the “wrong” gender for your cultural necessities.
Good point, pst. They try to hide their real agenda behind all the ‘good’ they will do with it.
It is basic to (a very strong strand of) the left that people are politically perfectible; evil can always be localised in some economic system, prejudice, culture, lack of ‘correct’ instruction or other specific cause from which people can be freed by the efforts of the left – without unavoidable side effects, because the problem had an external cause, not the innate demands of human nature, scarcity or whatever. In this way of thinking, it is indeed the technologies that are dangerous, not something innate to people that a political programme can only ameliorate.
So I’m agreeing with Runcie – unqualified talk of dangerous technologies is indeed a clue to the philosophy of the speaker. At the same time, I note that ameliorating Runcie’s particular example seems pretty easy even from one left-oriented viewpoint (no ‘wrong’ genders, except maybe white male) but hard from another (‘abortion on demand, no questions asked’) – as was Runcie’s point, I guess.
I must hasten to add that the line isn’t mine, not originally. Can’t recall where I did see it, a few years back at least, might even have been here.
Another very good argument for Vivobarefoot shoes. Won’t get much face-stamping done wearing these.
I’m not one to entertain conspiracy theories, but if the CCP was trying to persuade everyone that single-party totalitarianism is superior, rather than simply throwing the PRC’s weight around (and I think the distinction is worth bearing in mind), it could hardly have come up with a better plan than releasing a novel long-incubation virus into a world already up to its eyeballs in authoritarian panic-merchants and doom-mongers while releasing and encouraging propaganda to the effect that it has handled things so much more efficiently than dumb ol’ America with its stupid liberties, checks, and balances.
“Without the irony that the ideologies such as that proposed are actually the _cause_ of all of the above.”
Indeed. There’s only one threat to humanity, and it isn’t on the list.
Good post.
Tyranny “for our own good” is still tyranny.
And tyranny by “nice people” who wear Berkinstocks is IN THE END the same as tyranny by Nazis in jackboots.
Either people have rights AGAINST the state or we do not.
And if we do NOT have rights AGAINST the state – then the future is the road to the gas chambers.
Nice Francis Bacon, William Petty, Thomas Hobbes, David Hume and Jeremy Bentham will lead us to the gas chambers.
If there are no rights AGAINST the state – then Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao and so on committed no crimes, because they decided what law is and what crimes are.
“It could not happen here” – what about when the economy totally collapses and there is mass starvation?
The government of that time will not say “our own policies led to this economic collapse” – on the contrary they will state that their policy was for the “greatest good of the greatest number” and that they “must” now follow certain other policies…….
“It” can “happen” anywhere – anywhere the population allows the “nice” government to have such unlimited powers.
And the “nice” people in the Birkenstocks (the “liberal” minded people – with their “Green” desires) would be happy to see a greatly reduced population.