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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St. George’s Day What it has contrived to be is this: a place of extraordinary, almost accidental richness. The common law, grown from below like something organic, from precedent and custom and the quiet accumulation of ordinary cases, the idea that law is not handed down from above by sovereign will but earned, argued, tested, revised. Parliamentary democracy, which we invented and then spent several centuries apologising for exporting. This language, this mongrel, scavenging, irresistible language that has borrowed from everyone and been diminished by no one, that can be the King James Bible in one register and the Shipping Forecast in another, and both are beautiful, and both are unmistakeably themselves. The music. The painting. The literature. Turner’s light, Elgar’s longing, the particular English melancholy that is not quite despair because it knows, somewhere, that the lark will rise again above the hill.
– Gawain Towler waxes lyrical on St. George’s Day
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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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And this beautiful jewel is held in the hands of such a repulsive, craven, feckless loser as Keir Starmer who has no understanding of these amazing inheritances passed on to him.
It reminds me of that passage from the aforementioned King James Bible:
We can only hope for a new St. George. perhaps St. Nigel, to rise up and slay this dragon of a state that has left this beautiful Shire in ruination.
Fraser,
What Mr Towler says about the English tongue is correct but it is so much more than the poetry of Shakespeare or John Donne. It is in the common vernacular of “Viz” that we find, frequently, the best word to describe Sir Keir. That word is “cunt”.
A fine, heartfelt essay by Towler. Our political elites know none of it.
I had no idea that he could write that well.
It’s positively elegiac.
Shakespeare wasn’t averse to a cunt pun, see Henry V.
Totally off topic, but something I have noticed is that, according to my memory, in Britain “cunt”, as an pejorative, is primarily use to refer to men, whereas in the USA is is almost exclusively used of women.
I use Firefox. It gives me a daily feed which varies from the very useful to… Well this from “The Independent”. This is a lament for a failed chat show…
If Claudia Winkleman’s fringe is a “National Treasure” then we is fucked. It is not just that I can’t stand her (and am I the only one who can’t quite recognize her from Davina McCall?).
On St George’s day I think of a man who changed the World (and lived walking distance from where I grew up), George Stephenson. I was born in Newcastle, I am proud to be English and have made the walk to Wylam a few times to visit his house (There is also quite a good pub nearby). So that makes me a Geordie three ways. I also support NUFC but I don’t wanna talk about that this season. Or most seasons – we all have our crosses to bear.
A few years back I was in Cambridge and I got to see Trinity College’s first edition of Newton’s “Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica”. Newton’s personal copy with his own annotations for the second edition. That is beyond a national treasure so I suppose I can’t really contrast it with a dismal B-lister’s hairstyle.
Newton, Stephenson… Those folks are why we are even on this goodly internet and not (to quote my late grandmother, “Still eating shit in the trees”).
Look-up “Stephenson Guage”. Now that’s my George!
rhoda,
Also Hamlet. “Country Pleasures” is not a walk in the park!
Fraser,
Well apart from you joshing us by the use of the word “perjorative” in the circs… I have never, ever heard “cunt” used in anything other than the most vulgar and extremely angry language. Note in common English English usage it is usually paired with words like “utter” or “total”. Finish this for me with two words, “Peter Mandelson is a…”.
What I think makes English swearing so epic is not just how visceral it is but how rythmic it is. And if you don’t agree I shall have to find a stranger in The Alps…
I think a huge difference in US/UK swearology is I think the Septics out-fuck us we but we hold our own on the cunting.
Yes indeed, as Bracton showed, so many centuries ago, the Common Law is an effort to apply in the circumstances of time and place the principles of Natural Justice – that these principles were more important than Acts of Parliament (Parliament did not even exist in the time of Bracton – so the idea that Parliament created the law is false) was reaffirmed by Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke (for example in the once famous case of Dr Bonham) and by Sir John Holt – Chief Justice from 1689 to 1710. Tragically according to Blackstone in the 18th century all this can be overridden by Parliament who can, for example, declare that having blue eyes is a “crime” – and one punishable by being tortured to death. The American Founding Fathers rejected Blackstone (although modern textbooks imply the opposite) and, for example, the Ninth Amendment is a display of the rejection of Blackstone. Today not only is Parliament allowed to rip up the principles of the Common Law – but it is even allowed to hand over this (vile) power to unelected bodies – this has been going on for a very long time (see Chief Justice Hewitt “The New Despotism” 1929).
Also tragically lawyers and judges are not really taught the basic principles of private property right natural justice (jurisprudence) as much as they once were – horribly “Social Justice” (the arch enemy of justice) now has great influence.
So neither Parliament or judges can be trusted.
The difference between individual and majority consent was well understood even in the Middle Ages – so even if we declare that Acts of Parliament are the will of the majority (a dubious assumption – indeed an incredibly dubious assumption as most Members of Parliament do not even read Acts of Parliament and the people have no idea what Parliament is passing, and voting for a different political party would, mostly, NOT change what Parliament rubber stamps) rule by Parliament must not be confused with liberty – with freedom.
As Gough (Oriel Oxford) pointed out in his 1940s book on Locke, one of the strangest things in the writings of Locke is that he seems to ignore the well understood (understood for centuries before his time) distinction between majority consent and individual consent. The liberty of the sheep is not respected if the sheep is outvoted by two wolves on the matter of what to have for dinner.
For example, being disarmed “by Act of Parliament” is not, in practice, different from being disarmed by order of the King – ditto restrictions on Freedom of Speech and everything else.
“But Parliament can change its mind” – so can the King.
“But we elect Parliament” – please see above.
Or just see the Commonwealth of Virginia – where the State Legislature is frothing at the mouth with its lust to destroy Freedom of Speech and to disarm the public (and-so-on), indeed both the Governor and and Deputy Governor (who are open in their hatred of individual liberty) and the Attorney General, who wants to not only murder conservatives – but also wants to murder their children, were democratically elected – and democratically elected AFTER the murder of Mr Charles Kirk.
However, I would still argue that up the Second World War the United Kingdom was more of a free country than most places in the world – including most countries in Europe. Indeed there was the afterglow of this tradition of liberty even as late as the time of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher – indeed as late as the time of Prime Minister Liz Truss, although this lady was crushed by a vicious establishment sabotage and smear campaign – which made her very name a sneer to most people.
@NickM
Well apart from you joshing us by the use of the word “perjorative” in the circs
“Cunt” is sometimes used anatomically, often when you and your lady friend have consumed a lot of alcohol. But I do want to say that I don’t actually like the word all that much. It is a bit too brutal for my liking. I think it was Germaine Greer who said it was the last word in the English language that can truly shock, though I don’t think that is true any more (for sure racial epithets can be quite jarring), but for sure in the United States it is still quite a bit more shocking than in Britain or AusNz.
Personally I prefer the word pussy. It is so much more pleasant, lyrical to the ear than the blunt, harsh Anglo Saxon “cunt”. Pussy sounds like something that’ll jump up in your lap for you to stroke it. Which I find very appealing.
It is also worth pointing out that the pejorative version of pussy is almost the opposite of the pejorative version of cunt. Not quite strictly, but I don’t imagine one can be both a cunt and a pussy at the same time. Which is strange because dick is largely synonymous.
OK, returning to our usual programming of bucolic England and its “pleasant pastures seen.”
You ask me, why, tho’ ill at ease,
Within this region I subsist,
Whose spirits falter in the mist,
And languish for the purple seas.
It is the land that freemen till,
That sober-suited Freedom chose,
The land, where girt with friends or foes
A man may speak the thing he will;
A land of settled government,
A land of just and old renown,
Where Freedom slowly broadens down
From precedent to precedent …
– Alfred, Lord Tennyson, You Ask Me, Why, Tho’ Ill at Ease
Philip Scott Thomas – that is a good poem by Lord Tennyson, and it was true when he wrote it.
Obviously it is not true now, and has not been true for many years – (the state was on the rise, even as proportion of society, as far back as the 1870s – and since the Second World War the United Kingdom has actually been less free, in some respects, than many other Western nations) – but it was true when Tennyson wrote the poem.