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 – unravelling of US higher education edition “Few phrases are as reliable as ‘my truth’ for identifying seasoned purveyors of cant and doubletalk. Truth isn’t something that can be identified or modified by a possessive pronoun. If my truth is different from your truth and your truth is different from her truth, these aren’t truths. ‘My truth’ is the device deployed to elevate the particular viewpoint of a member of a particular group or identity, by claiming the validation of the ‘truth’ for a narrow ideological cause.”
– Gerard Baker, Wall Street Journal ($). He was writing about the views of the President of Harvard, Claudine Gay. As of the time of writing, Gay is still in a job, but for how long?
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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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That truth is objective and universal – not subject to race, or sex, or social class, is the bed rock, the foundation, of education. Whether it is in mathematics, the natural sciences, philosophy, history, economics, or anything else. We may not reach truth – but we must always seek it, seek objective and universal truth in any subject.
“My truth” rather than objective and universal truth, is indeed a total betrayal of education.
Nor is this false doctrine evenly applied – the “my truth” of a white, male, heterosexual counts for little – counts for nothing, or less than nothing (goes negative) if the white, male, heterosexual is also a conservative.
When the basic foundations of Marxism, such as the Labour Theory of Value and the Economic Class interpretation of History, were all proved false – the left had a choice, a choice between abandoning Marxism and abandoning truth itself.
The Frankfurt School of Marxism, whose assumptions now dominate the education system (and much else) in many Western countries, choose the latter alternative – they choose to abandon the basic principle of objective and universal truth, of objective evidence and objective logical argument.
Basically they embraced madness, insanity, which is “my truth” – and now the madness has consumed the institutions, public and private, of much of the Western world.
By the way – this is why conservatives, such as Jonah Goldberg, who base their political philosophy on “defence of the institutions” are utterly WRONG.
We are not in the times of Edmund Burke, or even of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. The institutions, public and private, today are not in danger of being corrupted – they have been corrupted, it has already happened. The deed is done.
The institutions, public and private, can no longer be saved – no more than a rabid dog can be saved, even though that dog was once a beloved member of the family. The beast must die.
Claudine Gay – a serial liar and racist (who calls her racism “anti” racism) who was appointed President of Harvard on the basis of her skin colour and sex, and whose “academic work” (including her doctorial thesis) was based on plagiarism.
I contend that Claudine Gay is not some sort of freakish example – but is typical of the modern political, academic and economic (yes the corporations as well) elite.
I think this person should stay as President of Harvard – so that the evil of the institution, and the evil of the rest of the “elite” universities and “elite” government, corporate and media people, remains exposed and obvious.
The establishment can not be reformed, things have gone much too far for that, it must be destroyed.
Too many “conservatives” merely want to conserve the status quo, which they see as being the best state possible.
Problem with that is that anything enshrined in an “institution” should be suspect, based on the “institutional effect” of being captured by the left. Also, just because of what I’d term “institutional drift”, which is where Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy comes in.
The big problem with supposed conservatives and conservatism is that the people attracted to that ideology are almost uniquely unsuited to ideological warfare as conducted by the left. They’re effectively unarmed, unaware that they’re even in a fight.
And, there’s a part of this that exists only because the ideologues of the left have thrown it up there as a straw man to fight against. Witness the derogatory term “capitalism” for what would more accurately be termed “traditional economic activity”. They have to demonize it in order to convince everyone that it’s bad, and the supposed “conservatives” bought right into the whole thing hook, line, and sinker.
Over the entire spectrum, I’ll be damned if I see what the “conservatives” are supposedly “conserving”. Whatever it is, they’re manifestly terrible at it. And, frankly, I’m tired of the ideological combat that is obfuscating everything. The ideas of the left don’t work, but because the ideologically failed right can’t articulate its way out of a paper bag, here we are. A pox on all their houses.
I mean, for the love of God, if you can’t even come up with decent arguments for regulating and minimizing the egregious practice of infanticide that the left wants, what the hell good are you? I’ve yet to see anyone on the supposed “right” saying that hey, you spread your legs, you take these risks, and oh by the way, you don’t get to murder your way out of your personal problems.
Which, when you get down to it, is the entire effective argument for easy abortion as birth control. The “conservatives” also never point out the inherent hypocrisy of the left when they say that killing an innocent fetus is A-OK, but we dare not impose capital punishment on murderers. Not really sure how the hell that squares with the “Protect all Life” BS I was brainwashed with as a young male, but there ya go… “Protect all the life, except that which I, the female, find inconvenient”. That’s really what the pro-abortion types mean, but never articulate.
Really glad I’m not going to see the final form of all this cretinistic bullshit when it comes to a head.
Kirk: Why don’t you just accept the pro-abortionists aborting themselves out of existance, the future belongs to those who do have offspring.
I’d be happy to do that, but the whole thing is a Trojan Horse. Witness the way MAID is now a norm in Canada.
Sad fact is, “abortion rights” are an opening wedge for these creatures. Witness the Netherlands and its easy acceptance of euthanasia. Once you accept that abortion and infanticide are fine, then there’s an easy step to “Yah, your health care is too expensive, go die…”
You cannot have a halfway-house between “Human life is precious and should be defended” and “Human life is meaningless and can be ended at the convenience of whoever…”
It starts with easy abortion for birth control, and ends with the doctors putting you down because they’ve decided your “quality of life” is insufficient. Effectively, state-sponsored murder.
You can look the other way while the pro-abortion types kill their kids, but in the end? It will be you they come for, eventually. You either resist this crap when it begins, or you eventually find that they’ve nibbled away at everything until the utterly ridiculous extreme that they piously promised would never come about actually happens every single day in every single hospital or care facility.
Hear, Hear!!!
Except that i am uneasy with the word ‘elite’. ‘Establishment’ is more like it: a mutual admiration society within the ruling class. (The ruling class including people such as Thatcher, Reagan, Trump, DeSantis, who do not admire and are not admired by the establishment.)
Incidentally, ‘my truth’ translates into German as ‘Mein Wahrheit’.
Could be the title of a book.
Reminds me of a popular quote from ‘Cloud Atlas’
“Truth is singular. It’s versions are mistruths.”
Thinking about it, “Does calling for a genocide of Jews constitute harassment at your university?” was not the most important question to ask. A better question would have been: “Antisemites are obviously over-represented at your university. Do you give preference to antisemitic applicants, or do you teach antisemitism? Or both?”
“”Archeology is the search for fact, not truth. If it’s truth you’re interested in, Dr. Tyree’s Philosophy class is right down the hall.”
-Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones, Jr., Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Truth is not empirical. There is always wiggle room in it. But data and facts are a different story. There is a reason it is “my truth” and not “my fact”.
Nor is this false doctrine evenly applied – the “my truth” of a white, male, heterosexual counts for little – counts for nothing, or less than nothing (goes negative) if the white, male, heterosexual is also a conservative.
Paul, but a “white, male, heterosexual” is intrinsically conservative. Even if they aren’t. Many on the left think in utterly racist, sexist terms. They believe it is utterly inconceivable that someone due to the mere accident of their conception and birth isn’t an intrinsic enemy.
OK, i haven’t even visited the US for almost 2 decades, but my understanding is that you can thrive there as a hetero White man, as long as you dissociate yourself from the stereotypical (i.e. working-class) hetero White man, and support “progressive” causes.
The same goes if you replace ‘White’ with ‘Jewish’, only more so because the Jews are not allowed to sympathize even with middle-class Jews. See Sally Kornbluth.
SG, I’m a white hetero U.S. guy. I hang out with working class people all the time, I fight progressivism as I can, and I’m thriving all over the place.
If I went completely internet-free, I doubt much of this woke nonsense would even make itself known to me. If I merely avoid driving into the big city, life is just as it was decades ago.
(The Covid hysteria era was the one exception to this, but that’s over.)
@bobby b
SG, I’m a white hetero U.S. guy. I hang out with working class people all the time, I fight progressivism as I can, and I’m thriving all over the place.
First of all I am very glad to hear you are thriving. Second, I think this is illustrative of something I have said before. The United States is destined for disaster and all the vain hopes of “if we elect this guy it’ll fix it” are vain indeed. Sensible people have to accept the fact that the US as a beacon of liberty is a thing for the history books. America is heading toward (may already be) an oligarchy with Stazi type internal “security” enforcement, and economic ruin fast heading our way.
So what do we do? As I have said before there are two options: either move somewhere less oppressive, or build yourself a bubble here where you have fences, protections and defenses against all this stuff. It sounds to me that that is what you are doing, and I very much commend you for it. I am sure you have thought of this, but two things to think about is money — the US Dollar and American banks are not a good place to keep all your money, and visibility — the next article about victims and victimizers carries a lot of weight, so keeping your head down is important. Of course an outlet with an anonymized name allows you to continue expressing your views. (Unless we elect Nikki Haley of course. Though I doubt Samizdata will be the first target of her snooping.)
One of the choices you made, which I think is one I need to think about, is to move out of the cities and suburbs. There is a certain safety in unimportance, and small town folk tend to be more self reliant and more skeptical of elite theory than those in larger urban centers.
There is a third option, but it isn’t one we really want to use and that is to start slinging lead downrange. Claire Wolfe was right 30 years ago when she said America was at that awkward stage, and while we haven’t quite gotten to killing folk yet, I can see the needle has moved much closer to that side.
And if we’re being honest, there is a fourth option: National Divorce. That’s the one I want at this point. I have nothing in common with the values of a place like NYC or SF and am tired of being ruled by those types simply because they have the numbers.
If either of those scenarios were to take place, I am certain there would be some serious economic problems that came with them, but it would be better than being ruled by DC.
@Steven R
There is a third option, but it isn’t one we really want to use and that is to start slinging lead downrange.
I don’t think this is a moral option. Ultimately the reason America is kaput has little to do with politicians, it is rather the people themselves who believe in significant majority in some of the worst ideas. So, I don’t consider it moral to make other people go against their will at the point of a gun. We, lovers of liberty, are entirely outvoted.
Plus, we are also outgunned. The best you could hope for is a kind of “french resistance” type situation, and I don’t want to live my life that way.
And if we’re being honest, there is a fourth option: National Divorce.
America tried that a while ago, and the results were not good for the petitioning spouse.
Neither of your ideas has any chance of success. It is far better not to delude oneself in a flight of fancy of what might save us. Rather we have to accept the facts as they are and adjust our lives and choices appropriately. This is not a matter of despair or giving up. It is a matter of making life choices based on the reality of the situation we find ourselves in.
It is kind of like some person who is deep in credit card debt. On the one hand he might play the lottery with the little money he has, and maybe, one in a billion chance, that’ll dig him out of the problem. But a better “face reality as it is rather than how we want it to be” strategy is getting down to the the task of managing spending, getting better income, paying off high interest first and so on, the various strategies that can, over time, for sure get him out of the bad situation he is in. However, dreaming of redemptive fantasies is rather more enjoyable than the boring slog of doing what needs to be done.
If either of those scenarios were to take place, I am certain there would be some serious economic problems that came with them, but it would be better than being ruled by DC.
The most likely outcome would be large amounts of time in jail. Better to be ruled by DC than being Bubba’s new girlfriend, locked down under the rule of corrections officers. But there are better strategies than both.
BTW, as a follow up to this, I continue to listen to Vivek Ramaswamy and I love that guy. He is a true libertarian (or he plays one on TV anyway). I’d vote for him in a second, and I think someone like that really could make a difference (more in terms of slowing the crash than recovering from it, but we all gotta die someday.) But it is illustrative of the situation the country is in that he has very little prospect of success. Even among people here they loathe the guy.
So that is the problem, people don’t know what is good for them, so they vote for their own destruction. Not much you can do in a country full of suicidal ideologues who are more interested in virtue signalling and how they feel about things than they are in bringing themselves success.
However, despair not, there are options. In fact, if you think about it, looking to a politician to save you is about as un-libertarian as it gets.
There are always options, for individuals and groups, especially if you have resources and abilities. For the country, I’m not so sure, at least in the short term (of a decade or two.)
I’ve been re-warming to Ramaswamy (in spite of some issues I have with him), but at this point it’s more of a pointless mind-game than any real sense of looking at a viable candidate for president. 2024 is going to bring another Dem president – too much bitter and angry division amongst the right for any R candidate to have a chance, and too many dumb people who believe that the right is the party of hate. (I have to laugh at that – the left is composed of a bunch of groups that all push their own hatreds that have banded together to fight “hate”, not understanding that “justice” can be read as “hate” if the last thing you really want is justice. Shades of Rand.)
Take heart – doing the “melt into the woodwork” method of survival becomes much easier once your kids hit their mid-twenties and you can see that they’ll all do well, that they all have goodwill and abilities and ambitions. That by itself is wonderfully freeing. You can handle your own needs without feeling torn when you realize that they can handle their own needs just fine.
What I hate is the feeling that it’s an abandonment of that part of society that still values what I value. But that part of society seems to be getting smaller and smaller, and we’ll all probably just re-find each other later, in less woke places. So, off to the desert once again!
It is increasingly my view that until the mass of sensible people in our country embrace the moral imperative of employing violence in defense of their person and property, we will continue to have the problems we are having.
To be magnanimous and tolerant of the wacky antics of hard-left stormtroops is not a good thing. When rioters take to the streets to burn, loot, and murder they should be met with a grimly determined militia of normals who are willing to kill them if pressed.
Where is this mass? The candidates and philosophies I would call “sensible” lose daily in elections all over the country. We’re where we are through democratic means. Stupid voters, to be sure, dumb people convinced that 2+2=5 though some of the wiliest psy-ops in history, but I’m not yet to a stage where I’d rule them by force. That way lies chaos. If we won that way, what would be the point? (That doesn’t mean not defending oneself. That’s not an option. But taking over by force – naw.)
No, I think it’s heads-down time for a bit. This is 1916 Russia. It’s going to take some time for people to realize how fooled they’ve been. It’s time to say, screw the population and the society, and simply watch out for yourself and your own people, and minimize the power the masses have over you.
I’m not talking about using violence to take over. I am talking about using it to stop the freaks from taking over.
But let’s say it is 1916. When the Bolshies lead a mob down the street to drag your well-to-do neighbor from his home, along with his family, are you going to keep your head down, or are you going to fight? If your plan is to close the shutters and keep your head down, understand that the mob will be coming down the street for you in the not-too-distant future, and everyone will be keeping their heads down then too.
Better to die in your yard with two smoking barrels and a couple of dead Bolshies on the grass than on your knees in the basement of the Lubyanka with a muzzle pressed against the back of your head.
I doubt we could stop the freaks from taking over. That’s what I won’t do, if they’re taking over democratically. But the scenario you suggest – the baying mob coming for specific people whom I like – that, to me, is a different scenario, one that I would agree falls into self defense. Bang.
@bobby b
the baying mob coming for specific people whom I like – that, to me, is a different scenario, one that I would agree falls into self defense. Bang.
That isn’t the way it will be though. Would that it were that simple. Rather it is the police coming to arrest your neighbor for his Twitter hate speech, and then them coming for the guy across the street for refusing to surrender his “assault rifle”. Assuming these were the laws of the land at what point do your flip to use self defense against people being arrested for what is criminal behavior as defined by the law, which is actually something that should never be against the law in the first place? If, in Germany in 1930s the cops were rounding up people for being Jewish according to the laws that the Nazis had passed, when do you say No, the hell with the law you’re not going to take my friend Benjamin and his family off to a work camp, or worse?
Most of this stuff happens to the people who stick out, the people who take a stand, the people who are very visible. The rest of us, not so much (though even in a herd of gazelles, although nearly all survive one is going to be unlucky enough to end up as a lion’s dinner.) In a sense the problem is greatly exaggerated here. I’ve been white, male and successful for a pretty long time and nobody has ever called me a victimizer to my face. The media makes the rare but horrible very loud. No doubt it’ll get worse, but like I say we have options, and we should be thinking about them now rather than when we don’t have those options any more.
The irony is that if the sensible cohort made it perfectly clear that they wouldn’t stand for that bullshit, whether it was done through ostensibly legal means or not, the freaks wouldn’t try it in the first place.
And that is the gist of what has been echoing around in my head for the last year. When the normals lose their moral clarity and their willingness to employ violence in defense of civilization, they provoke the antics of the freaks. It is the loss of moral clarity, coupled with the mistaken belief that we live in a post-violence society, that is the root cause of our current ills.
The normal contingent need to embrace the moral imperative to violent (and even pro-active) self-defense, or else they will be fighting mobs of cheering Bolshies in their own yards at some point in a grim future.
Yeah, I know. It’s always going to be a fine-lined sort of situation. And, if the example neighbor here was one who decided to poke the bear, what do I owe him? What could I do if I did owe him?
Heads-down is indeed the way to handle what’s coming – assuming that what’s coming is the will of the electorate. I can place great faith in our Constitution, but if all USSC Justices are selected by the woke, there’ll be no comfort there. Worse, if the electorate starts to listen to calls for a Constitutional Convention to amend it – that will signal the end.
Then I suppose I’ll return to the idea of the coffee plantation in Costa Rica. Or something similar. Something big enough to drag a lot of family and friends to. Getting my Spanish tightened up is going to be a priority.
Stop on down for the tequila anejo on the beach.
I’m afraid that this particular band of freaks is so ego-driven that any attempt to openly declare nonsubmission would just goad them into all-out war. Better to simply live as you wish to live while keeping them in the dark. It can be done. And, as I have no doubt that their ways will eventually crash society anyway, I’ll be able to stand back and laugh. Sadly.
(ETA: If you could see my weapons and ammo collection, you’d think of me as living the pre-violence dream. 😉 )
Yes Kirk – when the status quo is totally corrupted institutions, both public and private institutions, the task of the conservative is no longer to protect the institutions – but rather to defeat them.
This was understood by Edmund Burke himself – his campaign, over many years, against the East India Company which was the status quo in India.
The conservative does not support any regime that is power for a long time – otherwise it would be “conservative” to support the Chinese Communist Party regime and the Workers Party regime in North Korea – they have both been power for a very long time.
The conservative judges a regime by whether it is line with certain basic principles of natural law – see Chief Justice Coke and Chief Justice (1689-1710) Holt.
The present international regime is totally vicious – it must go.
@bobby b
Stop on down for the tequila anejo on the beach.
I’ll bring the limes… Actually I’ll bring some Highland Park, my father’s favorite whisky. It isn’t very tropical, but is perfect with cigars when the sun is going down.
That coffee plantation sure does sound appealing. (Though no doubt it makes you a racist — you know, wanting to be a LITERAL plantation owner 😀)