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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

· Historical views · Philosophical · Slogans & Quotations

True, they were hypocrites. Jefferson himself was clearly aware of the ghastly contradictions. Pity they did not apply their own wise philosophies even-handedly, but they didn’t. That is was why Samuel Johnson hated them. And yet, their good ideas stand on their own merits.

– Perry de Havilland in response to “How do you respond to people who say that the Founding Fathers were hypocrites for owning slaves?”

June 20th, 2020 | 33 comments - (Comments are closed)

Samizdata quote of the day

· Opinions on liberty · Philosophical · Slogans & Quotations

“Rather than aiming for a better future, woke militants seek a cathartic present. Cleansing themselves and others of sin is their goal. Amidst vast inequalities of power and wealth, the woke generation bask in the eternal sunshine of their spotless virtue.”

– John Gray

(As a reminder to readers, quoting a person does not imply I endorse everything that the writer in question says. Gray is a decidedly mixed bag of a thinker. Far, far too gloomy for my liking and he buys the whole Green deal, or at least he did. But this essay makes important points about the parallels between the culture war being played out in the West right now and the madness of the 15th and 16th centuries. Yes, I think those parallels are accurate. This is a rat with a long tail.)

June 18th, 2020 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)

Similarities between today and Ulster in 1969

· Irish affairs · Mindless "Inequality" Blather · North American affairs · UK affairs
  • Riots
  • Claims of discrimination
  • Calls for the police to be abolished
  • Involvement of communists
  • The media taking the side of the rioters
  • The creation of no-go zones for the police
  • Calls for the army to be used
  • Attempts to appease the rioters

I need hardly remind readers that over the following 30 years some 3,000 people were killed and that even though now the killing has stopped the enmity remains.

The similarity is intentional.

June 17th, 2020 | 32 comments - (Comments are closed)

But what if she did consent?

· Privacy & Panopticon · Self ownership · Sexuality · UK affairs

The BBC reports,

‘Rough sex’ defence will be banned, says justice minister

The so-called “rough sex gone wrong” defence will be outlawed in new domestic abuse legislation, a justice minister has told MPs.

Alex Chalk said it was “unconscionable” that the defence can be used in court to justify or excuse the death of a woman “simply because she consented”.

“Simply”? Is the fact of her consent unimportant, then? If a woman (or indeed a man) chooses to engage in rough sex and as a consequence is accidentally killed by their partner then that does excuse their death, in the sense that any person who accidentally kills another person is excused from the guilt of murder. Depending on circumstances they may be guilty of a lesser crime, reckless endangerment perhaps – I do not know the legal details. But murder requires an intent to kill or cause grievous bodily harm.

He said it would be made “crystal clear” in the Domestic Abuse Bill that it was not acceptable.

The bill, for England and Wales, is due to become law later this year.

Jess Phillips, Labour’s shadow minister for domestic violence and safeguarding, spoke on an amendment proposed by Labour MP Harriet Harman and Conservative MP Mark Garnier to the legislation, to prevent lawyers from using the defence, but withdrew it following assurances from Mr Chalk.

The campaign group We Can’t Consent To This, which wants the defence outlawed, said the minister’s response was “a big step forward”.

The very name of their group treats adult women like children. If this group wants to ban rough sex, they should have the guts to come out and say so. Some of their complaint seems to be that the rough sex defence has been used by men who truly were murderers to delude a jury into acquitting them. But the same could be said of any defence against any criminal charge: all of them will have at some time been successfully used to enable guilty men to go free. What alternative system do they suggest? The great eighteenth century jurist William Blackstone said, “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.” Would they prefer to reverse that ratio?

June 17th, 2020 | 30 comments - (Comments are closed)

Hey, let’s make it a three-way racial grudge match!

· Arts & Entertainment · Historical views · Indian Subcontinent · Self defence & Security · UK affairs

“The purity of a revolution can last a fortnight” – Jean Cocteau

I thought from the start that most of the “solutions” the Black Lives Matter protesters demand would make the lives of black people worse, but (as with the Me Too movement before it), the BLM movement would never have got off the ground if there were not justifiable anger at real abuses.

To fight real abuses is hard. It might require thought. It might require compromise. To fight images of dead men is much more exhilarating. Don’t worry, you still get to crack heads.

The Leicester Mercury reports,

Gandhi statue campaign ‘a distraction’ from Black Lives Matters – Leicester East MP Claudia Webbe

Leicester East MP Claudia Webbe says a campaign to remove the statue of Mahatma Gandhi risks being a distraction to the Black Lives Matter movement.

A 6,000 name petition is calling for the sculpture of the Indian leader and civil rights campaigner to be taken down from the plinth in Belgrave Road where it has stood since 2009.

The petition was launched after a statue of Bristol slaver Edward Colston was toppled during a recent Black Lives Matters protest and dumped in the city’s harbour.

The organisers of the Gandhi statue petition said he was a “fascist, racist and sexual predator” who brought “inconsolable suffering” to millions of people during the partition of India before his assassination in January 1948.

That has enraged many people from the Indian community in Leicester East.

You don’t say!

Ms Webbe spoke out on the issue of the Gandhi statue after her predecessor as MP Keith Vaz arrived with city councillors and community volunteers to throw up a symbolic human ring around the piece of art.

Mr Vaz, who stood down as an MP after more than 30 years representing his city constituency prior to December’s General Election, had vowed to “defend it personally”.

June 16th, 2020 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)

Samizdata quote of the day

· Health & medical · North American affairs · Slogans & Quotations · UK affairs

To be fair: I don’t eat food. Food here is so unsafe I decided years ago to subsist only on internet memes.

– Perry Metzger, in response to this breathtaking absurdity.

June 15th, 2020 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)

Samizdata quote of the day

· Philosophical · Slogans & Quotations

“The only corner of the world that you can control is yourself.”

– Richard Cooper, of the “Entrepreneurs and Cars” show he does (he’s one of the “manosphere” chaps out there), talking about the shit-show going on lockdowns, identity politics nonsense.

I don’t buy into all of his views – I am not a big evolutionary psychology fan – but he is on the mark here in this brief broadcast. He looks like a guy on the edge a bit, in a state of despair. I suspect there are an awful of lot of others like him out there now.

June 14th, 2020 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)

Person of colour dares not sign name

· Deleted by the Woke Media · Education & Academia

It shouldn’t affect the strength of my argument above, but for the record, I write as a person of color. My family have been personally victimized by men like Floyd. We are aware of the condescending depredations of the Democrat party against our race. The humiliating assumption that we are too stupid to do STEM, that we need special help and lower requirements to get ahead in life, is richly familiar to us. I sometimes wonder if it wouldn’t be easier to deal with open fascists, who at least would be straightforward in calling me a subhuman, and who are unlikely to share my race.

The well-written open letter from the professor with no (safe to add) name has (of course) been cancel-cultured from where it was first put, but I you can read the whole thing here (and I recommend you do). It is also on pastebin, and another link to the text is here.

(I wrote this as a Samizdata quote of the day – h/t instapundit – but decided the title needed to tell you something not in the bit I quoted. Read the whole thing.)

June 13th, 2020 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)

Discussion point

· North American affairs · UK affairs

The far-Left’s attempted putsch in places such as Seattle and the statue-defacing/removal frenzy in the UK, among other outrages, are a delayed reaction not so much to a specific police act in Minneapolis, but because the far Left suffered a major electoral setback in December 2019 in the UK (yes, I get that the Tories ran to the political centre, but it was still a reverse for Corbyn & Co) and also because of the dawning horror that Trump could well retain the White House in November. Trump was on course to win because of factors such as the Russia-gate scandal that wasn’t, the pre-COVID-19 economy, the fact that the Democrats are led by people either out of their minds or losing them to infirmity, etc. So street politics – or “riot ideology” fills the vacuum of political power that parts of the far Left perceive they have lost. (See a related discussion here.)

Related thoughts from Joel Kotkin on the economic drivers of anger (not that he is excusing it).

June 12th, 2020 | 39 comments - (Comments are closed)

A list of abuses

· North American affairs · Opinions on liberty

I saw the following list of problems with the US legal and law enforcement system, which taken individually may not appear to be major issues in terms of it being a “systematically unjust” country, but which taken together do tend to suggest there is a big problem. This is mirrored to a certain extent in other countries, such as here in the UK.

qualified immunity;
LEO unions;
LEO militarization;
inadequate civilian oversight;
plea bargains;
victimless criminal statues (e.g. drugs, sex-work, immigration);
occupational licensing;
civil asset forfeiture;
eminent domain (esp in re gentrification);
unaccountable fines & fees, and quota-based policing;
private prisons;
FISA Courts; and
no-knock warrants.

That is a good list for radical classical liberals and small-government conservatives to get to deal with.

June 11th, 2020 | 46 comments - (Comments are closed)

Keep your eyes peeled

· Arts & Entertainment · How very odd! · UK affairs

Julius Caesar, Act III Scene III:

CINNA THE POET: Truly, my name is Cinna.
FIRST CITIZEN: Tear him to pieces; he’s a conspirator.
CINNA THE POET: I am Cinna the poet, I am Cinna the poet.
FOURTH CITIZEN: Tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his bad verses.
CINNA THE POET: I am not Cinna the conspirator.
FOURTH CITIZEN: It is no matter, his name’s Cinna; pluck but his name out of his heart, and turn him going.
THIRD CITIZEN: Tear him, tear him! Come, brands ho! fire-brands: to Brutus’, to Cassius’; burn all: some to Decius’ house, and some to Casca’s; some to Ligarius’: away, go!

The BBC reports:

Sir Robert Peel statue removal calls ‘targeting wrong man’

Anti-racism campaigners calling for the removal of statues of a former British prime minister have been accused of targeting the wrong man.

There are several statues of Sir Robert Peel, who founded the modern police.

But city leaders said people appeared to be confusing him with his father, of the same name, who opposed the abolition of slavery.

In contrast the Robert Peel of the statue, to quote Wikipedia, “often started from a traditional Tory position in opposition to a measure, then reversed his stance and became the leader in supporting liberal legislation. This happened with the Test Act, Catholic Emancipation, the Reform Act, income tax and, most notably, the repeal of the Corn Laws.” He also, most pertinently, laid down the principles of policing by consent that many forces would do well to re-learn. Oh, and as Prime Minister he “supported William Wilberforce’s Anti-Slavery Bill wholeheartedly” against the opposition of many in his own party.

So there you are. Two Robert Peels, father and son, same name but very different people. This whole statue-toppling thing is stupid but a little mix-up like that did not exceed the base level of stupidity. Easy mistake to make.

The next bit, however…

Despite acknowledging the mistaken identity, campaigners are still calling for the Leeds statue to go.

[…]

Although organisers recognised they had initially referred to the wrong person, they said they wanted it removed because “we should not celebrate colonisers”.

The petition states: “With the legitimacy of current policing in question, the history of policing, its origins in colonialism and its role in suppressing dissent deserves greater scrutiny.

“Peel’s statue belongs in a museum, as part of an exhibition for others to learn about the history of British colonialism.”

Edit: There are two petitions currently running on Change.org relating to different statues of Peel. The first is “Keep the Bradford Robert peel statue” and the second is “Keep the Sir Robert Peel statue in Picadilly Gardens”

As the BBC article states, the petition to remove the statue of Peel in Leeds got its target number of signers. You can see it here.

Peel created the London Metropolitan Police in 1829, the ideas for which he developed while overseeing the British colonial occupation of Ireland. He was pivotal in setting up the police forces which maintained British rule in Ireland and a system which led to the poverty, famine and displacement of Irish people. Colonialism and racism – in this case anti-catholic sentiment – are central to British history. Not only that but with the legitimacy of current policing in question, the history of policing, its origins in colonialism and its role in suppressing dissent deserves greater scrutiny.”

That is an extract from the version they wrote after they were made aware that they had misidentified the Robert Peel depicted in the statue.

June 11th, 2020 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)

The revolting revolting rich

· Historical views · North American affairs · Political Economy · UK affairs

Ed West provided the quote about younger sons of Norman lords which became the SQotD for June 4th. He has now written a follow up piece, “Why the rich are revolting”

Today’s unrest involves two sections of US society, African-Americans and upper-middle-class whites, who together form the axis of the Democratic Party, but it is the latter who are far more engaged in racial activism. The “Great Awokening”, the mass movement focused on eradicating racism in America and with a quasi-religious, almost hysterical feel to it, is dominated by the upper middle class.

I knew that, but I did not know this:

That noble tradition of haute bourgeoisie revolution continues today, especially in the US. The Occupy movement, for example, is deeply opposed to the 1% but largely because they come from the 2-5%; Amy Chua cited figures suggesting that in New York, more than half it members earned $75,000 or more while only 8% were on low incomes, compared to 30% of the city. They also have hugely disproportionate numbers of graduates and post-grads among their members.

The wider Great Awokening, of which the 2020 disturbances are a part, is a very elite phenomenon, with progressive activists nearly twice as likely as the average American to make more than $100,000 a year, nearly three times as likely to have a postgraduate degree, and only one-quarter as likely to be black.

June 11th, 2020 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
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