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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Journalist, heal thyself “Why is it so hard for the authorities to win public trust? Maybe because they keep lying to us”, Gaby Hinsliff writes in the Guardian:
If you were to invent a scandal expressly to convince conspiracy theorists they were right all along, the story of the Afghan superinjunction would be hard to beat.
A secret back door into Britain through which thousands of immigrants were brought, under cover of a draconian legal gagging order that helpfully also concealed an act of gross incompetence by the British state? It’s a rightwing agitator’s dream. “The real disinformation,” wrote Dominic Cummings on X, a platform notably awash with real disinformation, “is the regime media.” Yes, that Dominic Cummings.
She’s not wrong about dishonesty and censorship from the authorities causing people to rightly distrust them, but she cannot see the elephant in the room because she is looking at the room from inside the elephant.
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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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Wow. If only the media would stop lying and gaslighting and causing paranoid suspicions, people would finally see that Big Brother truly loves them.
It doesn’t help when, after a bit of time passes, the supposed conspiracies often turn out to have been true.
Gaby Hinsliff does at least “get” that those like her that tilt left/liberal are in potential deep doo-doo because of this kind of thing. But do they draw logical conclusions?
Take the EU. Many years ago, the Observer columnist Hugo Young freely admitted, if memory serves, that the federal project was one that couldn’t be too clearly stated to the public, lest it provoke a backlash. I suspect a similar mindset applies to things such as “progressive” ideas about teaching literacy, Net Zero, and in this case, the management of immigration.
Hinsliff used to be political editor of the Observer. Her columns are a weathervane for how the soft left thinks on things.
Fun fact: her late Dad, https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/sep/20/geoff-hinsliff-obituary Hinsliff, was an actor and played Don Brennan in Coronation Street.
BBC was at it again on last night’s 22:00 ‘News’. Film (from trusted sources©, naturally) of a seriously malnourished child and its remarkably well fed looking mother. Also other footage from Hamas proving yet again that, even after more than two years of practice, they haven’t cracked getting Gazans to form orderly queues for free food. Or delivering more than the occasional random dollop into the multitude of waving kitchenware. Conspicuously absent, apart from the emaciated child, were any malnourished looking people in the crowd scenes.
I was well looked after and well fed as a child but before I hit my teens I could have passed as a severely undernourished child. I was just naturally a skinny bag of bones.
Yes – agreed Natalie, the “Guardian” is often guilty of the very thing it here condemns, although it is still correct to condemn it.
decnine – yes the anti Jewish propaganda of the mainstream media (not just the BBC) is both vicious and incredibly crude – only people who already hated Jews would believe, or pretend to believe, the propaganda line of the BBC (and the media generally).
Sadly elements of the British “Libertarian Alliance” (controlled by Dr Sean Gabb – although NOT personally written by this Gentleman) pretend that the BBC is biased in-favour-of the Jews (not against the Jews – in favour of the Jews) – and, basically, follow the line of Mr Corbyn and his new party on these matters.
So much for their oft professed concern for “England” – which, in reality, faces the same threat that Israel does, as does much of Western Europe.
Dr Martin Luther was condemned for statements of his that seemed to urge non resistance to Islam – this was at a time of Ottoman Islamic offensives (although Islamic forces attacked Europe from the 7th century to the 19th century – more than a thousand years, which seems to be ignored by many “educated” people) – Dr Luther later changed his position.
David Hume in the 18th century not only tried to undermine faith in Christianity (for example his essay on miracles basically says that miracles are false because they miracles – and this circular “logic” is, oddly, celebrated as “great philosophy”) – but also tried to undermine faith in NON religious liberty rights (in the sense of limits on government power) and the need to fight, and if need be die, in defense of liberty (his indifference to the “euthanasia of the constitution”) – Jeremy Bentham (a few decades later) was much the same. Such people are not really different to Thomas Hobbes before them – someone who could not understand (or pretended not to understand) why someone would risk death to defend the liberty of others.
For those who wish to defend European civilization, indeed wish to defend liberty (European or not European) such intellectuals are not an aid – they are a harm.
If liberty is to have any chance of survival, people must be prepared to fight, and if need by die, for the liberty of others – for the soul (free will – moral agency, moral responsibility) does indeed exist – even if it dies with body.
Each person fights a deadly war every day with the evil within themselves, if only in small ways (and when we fail in small things it can lead to big failings), we must try and follow moral reason against the passions (moral reason is not, and must not be, the slave of the passions – the role of reason is NOT “how do I get away with…..”). But the war within ourselves is not the only war – there are also external threats, both to ourselves and to others.
“This is wrong, so I ought not to do it” (ought from an is) is what every, sane, person does every day – but it is not enough on its own. There is also “this is right – so I ought to do it”.
Even if that means charging into a wall of swords to save others – if there is a reasonable chance that, by so doing, one will save them.
A possible counter argument to what I have said, would be – good passions. For example, a passion to defend the liberty of others, even if doing so means one’s own death.