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2009 is going to be an interesting year, particularly in the USA. Big State Democrat Barack “The One” Obama crushed Big State Republican John “I Support the Bail Outs” McCain and this means the country is going to have a new president whose politics make him the most committed statist since LBJ. The country was given a choice between statism and statism and it voted for… statism.
Well to quote Mencken, the American electorate are going to get what they voted for good and hard, because this is also the year the global economy is truly going to crash, big time, plunging us into a recession and indeed a depression that will last longer and be driven deeper by the policies being implemented by governments on both sides of the Atlantic.
And this presents friends of liberty with a great many opportunities.
Never has there been a better time for cleaning house. The usual excuses given for pragmatic ‘broad church’ politics no longer apply on the so-called ‘right’… no amount of unity will change the fact that regulatory tax-and-spend politicians will be in charge for the next few years regardless of what people of a classical liberal disposition do. And so I would strongly urge such people to get into politics like never before, not primarily to fight the statist left just yet, but to create opposition parties that are actually worth voting for.
In short, I am calling on anyone who believes in liberty and limited government to reject all thoughts of party unity and work tirelessly to drive the statist right from their parties.
I am not calling for the ‘libertarianisation’ of the Republican party along the lines I would actually like, just for the party’s rationalisation. I am in essence calling for a nominally conservative party to become… conservative. The simple fact is that people can be fellow travellers on a path that leads to liberty without all marching in ideological lock-step. It just boils down to asking the question “do you want the state to have less control over people’s lives or more control?” If a person can honestly answer that they think the state is too powerful and needs to be reduced, that is a fellow traveller. → Continue reading: An appeal for disunity
The UK Culture Gauleiter, Andy Burnham, gives an interview in the Telegraph today in which he says:
If you look back at the people who created the internet they talked very deliberately about creating a space that Governments couldn’t reach. I think we are having to revisit that stuff seriously now. It’s true across the board in terms of content, harmful content, and copyright. Libel is [also] an emerging issue.
Actually the people who ‘created’ the internet did it so that parts of the state could stay in touch after a nuclear attack… the idea the net does not need the government was an emergent realisation that came later. And of course there is nothing a government hates more that being thought irrelevent, which is what this is really about. Internet censorship is never ever about ‘protecting’ people, it is about extending and maintaining state power. That is the whole reason why advocates of censorship pretend child pornography is vastly more prevalent than it actually is. And you may be sure kiddie porn will be wheeled out yet again in this latest attempt to expand the power of the state.
There is content that should just not be available to be viewed. That is my view. Absolutely categorical. This is not a campaign against free speech, far from it; it is simply there is a wider public interest at stake when it involves harm to other people. We have got to get better at defining where the public interest lies and being clear about it.
Which of course is indeed a naked, direct and unambiguous attack on free speech.
He is planning to negotiate with Barack Obama’s incoming American administration to draw up new international rules for English language websites. The Cabinet minister describes the internet as “quite a dangerous place” and says he wants internet-service providers (ISPs) to offer parents “child-safe” web services.
Yes, no doubt Andy Burnham dreams of marching forward with The One across the internet in a sort of virtual Operation Barbarosa, presumably with UKGov in the roll of the Loyal Ally. But then unlike Barbarosa, this attack comes as no surprise to the ‘enemy’ (i.e. folks like us) and there is that pesky ‘First Amendment’ on the other side of the Atlantic sitting like 20,000 T-34 tanks waiting at Kursk. There is a reason Samizdata is hosted in the USA and not on this side of the puddle.
This crass power grab needs to be opposed on every level and not just attacked on the sheer technical difficulty of making it happen but also assaulted morally and politically.
But I agree when he says “If you look back at the people who created the internet they talked very deliberately about creating a space that Governments couldn’t reach. I think we are having to revisit that stuff seriously now.” Yes we do need to revisit that and remind everyone that if the history of the previous century teaches us anything, it is that governments cannot be trusted. Free speech cannot be left to the sufferance of political systems and venal politicians like Andrew Burnham. We need to smite any attempt to encroach on the internet at every level and distribute technical ‘solutions’ to every initiative the state comes up as widely as possible regardless of what laws they pass.
We simply will not cooperate.
Christmas… I am gorged with all the bounty that western civilisation has to offer and rejoicing as I ponder the gifts bestowed by my friends. But I must say my favourite gift today was learning that Harold Pinter, a loathsome apologist for oh so many of the most vile mass murderers of modern times has finally dropped dead.
Good riddance and a pox on anyone who mourns his passing.
For me Christmas just got even merrier.
A conservative friend of mine in the USA sent me a link to an article in Weekly Standard called The Sector Formerly Known as Private: how Obama intends to use corporations to effect social change… and I must say that it somewhat surprised me. The following is largely based on the letter I sent him in return.
We’re beginning to get a sense of what the next four years will look like. It won’t be a conservative era, that’s for sure. Nor will it, despite appearances to the contrary, be a reprise of the Clinton era. Bill Clinton’s version of economic liberalism meant slightly higher tax rates on income and capital, a slightly more burdensome regulatory apparatus, lower deficits, and a commitment to free trade. The public sector didn’t meddle too much in the private sector. It was content, for the most part, to sit back and enjoy the tax revenue that the tech boom poured in. Obama’s liberalism will be different.
Let us gloss over the absurd American use of the word ‘liberal’ when they actually mean ‘illiberal’, but my response to “We’re beginning to get a sense of what the next four years will look like” was… we? Was article author Matthew Continetti not listening to Obama during the campaign? Has he not examined the copious record of the vile man’s public statements ever since he entered politics? Nothing Obama is going to do should be unexpected. For Obama to do anything unexpected he would have to slash public spending and roll back regulation.
Is it really only now dawning on some people that Obama ain’t Bill Clinton? But guess what, do you actually think McCain would have shrunk the state and lowered the regulatory interference that not so much led to but actually mandated the sub-prime melt down? McCain is the one who is Bill Clinton, just with zipped flies and less charisma.
Let the whole stinking system of patronage politics burn I say because nothing is going to change for the better until the piles of garbage and rats in the streets reality rubs people’s faces in the true cost of voting in a political class who thinks wealth is something that is created by political actions rather than markets. Hell, it does not matter what I think, just look at the numbers as the economy slows, then contracts, and at the same time state expenditure actually increases. Do you really have to be an Austrian School economist to see the implications of that?
Never was there a better time for openly authoritarian regulatory statists to be in power, right when the global economy is on the edge of an abyss. There will be no economic growth to mask the expansion of the state this time. Personally I am looking up at them standing on the edge and chanting “Jump! Jump! Jump!”
Just at the point where the state’s tax take will nose dive because of the economic slow-down, the USA has elected someone who is going to massively increase ‘public’ expenditure. The money will come from where exactly? Tax the middle class? That kills consumption and the economy tanks even more. Print more money? That fuels inflation and the economy tanks even more. Screw it out of productive sectors of the economy? That makes marginally productive businesses go bust and makes them all cut their labour forces and increases unemployment… and the economy tanks even more. My guess is that by the time he is done Obama will do all of the above. It does not matter that the media will love The One all the way down to the crater, the pain will be spread around so widely no amount of propaganda will be able to shift the blame. If the so called ‘right’ cannot turn that into political success a few years from now then they are worthless fools.
A lot of people are going to get hurt and that is just too damn bad. Has the GOP actually run a free-market candidate for president since Barry Goldwater? Well Reagan was at least half way there, but only half way, but I give him a free pass because busting the Soviets actually was worth the money he spent. The GOP is as much to blame as the Democrats for where the USA is now, so a plague on both their houses. The situation now is exactly where ‘pragmatic’ and ‘realistic’ voting gets you. Why anyone who wanted a smaller state would have turned out and voted for McCain was beyond me… and of course many did not, they stayed home in droves and quite right too.
Guys, you have been voting for the lesser evil for so long you may have lost sight of the fact that you have been voting for evil, just a tiny bit less than the other guy. Well no more easy options, no more putting the day of reckoning off for some point in the future… the day of reckoning has arrived and I for one am delighted. Do your worst Obama… to quote Lenin’s inspiration Nikolai Chernyshevsky, “the worse, the better”. Do not think of it as a disaster but rather an opportunity to actually create an opposition worth voting for. Never has there been a better time to destroy the political careers of really large numbers of Big State Republicans.
That is what I think. Have a nice day.
Whenever you hear a politician, particularly a Tory politician, use the term “fiscally responsible“, this is a codeword for… will make no difference.
The true meaning is “we will not actually reduce the size of the state, we will just move the pain around a bit”.
Unlike many, well, most of my compatriots, I am not filled with a deep sense of gloom and foreboding at the prospect of the most left wing president since FDR gaining the Whitehouse. In truth, I can see many reasons to think it may well be a far better outcome than if a Big State Republican like McCain won.
Of course Obama will bring an avalanche of policies that will be truly appalling and quite wicked, of that I have no doubt, much like his predecessors in office in that respect. As the global economy continues to come unglued, everything Obama does to deal with the mounting crises will in fact make things worse. Civil liberties will be hammered, all in the name of ‘fairness’, and the flood of regulations pertaining to every aspect of economic life will grow into a drowning ocean.
And that is actually the good news.
Why? Because in truth the Republicans under John “I support the bailout” McCain would scarcely have done much better. The economic global meltdown is only just starting to roll: if you think the sub-prime mortgage crisis was the biggie, just wait until you see the fallout from the fun and frolics of the impending mess in other areas, such as debt swaps. This is all going to get worse, a lot worse, and Obama is going to do absolutely everything to dig the holes deeper. Looking back on this period ten to twenty years from now, the Republicans crying into their beer tonight will be saying “thank Christ it was not us in office then”.
The lesser evil is not going to win this time and much as it may not seem that way now… or any time soon I suspect… in the long run this has a far far better chance of leading to the rebirth of a genuine pro-liberty, pro-market political culture, something which the gradual incremental surrender of recent times made impossible (such as the ‘pragmatic voting’ of people who want a smaller state for Republican candidates who ended up growing the regulatory state).
Many will find the glee of the statist left over the next few days and weeks hard to endure, but to be honest I have been walking around with a grin all day. Finally the era of gradualism is over and the masks are going to come off. The USA has voted for statism and it is going to get exactly what it voted for at a juncture in history where it will very quickly be impossible to hide the cost of those votes.
Obama is not the start of a new era, he is the death knell for the old one.
Someone asked me what I was going to be doing on November 4th. I said I will most likely watch television, probably Battlestar Galactica or a re-run of Firefly. I may well go to dinner with my inamorata at some point and after that I may indulge my intermittent MMO habit and get a fix of virtual violence.
Gawd knows there is nothing else that I give a damn about happening on that day.
The Bailout Reader over on the Ludwig Von Mises Institute site is an essential reality based antidote to the crapulous ignorance on offer in the mainstream media on the current economic crisis. When it comes to economics at least, the Ludwig Von Mises Institute is hard to better.
If ever there was a ‘Crisis of Regulatory Statism’, look around you… this is it.
Read every word of it.
What follow is a somewhat edited version of a comment I left on a Hollywood gossip blog called JJ’s Dirt. As the blog owner decided not to approve my comment (as is indeed his right of course, so no nonsensical bleating about ‘censorship’… it is JJ’s blog and any comments on his turf are quite rightly at his unconditional sufferance. His blog = his rules), so I thought I would post my comment here. As it never saw the light of day, I have slightly expended it to more fully express my views.
I came across the article in a google search for something quite unrelated and saw a short list of people who are purported to be homosexual or bisexual in various so called ‘public’ walks of life in the USA. Although I am utterly indifferent to people’s consensual sexual behaviour provided it is not aggressively thrust unwanted in my direction, I have always been deeply uncomfortable with the self-righteousness of people who ‘out’ others. This was the trigger phrase that moved me to comment and my (slightly expanded) reply follows.
“The failure to come out on the part of figures in the public eye seemingly sends a message that homosexuality or bisexuality is something shameful that needs to be hidden.”
Or maybe they just have the notion that it is none of anyone else’s damn business and that unless they choose to openly discuss their private life, they should have their privacy respected by others when they are not on the job.
If someone is a politician, they are a person controlling the violence backed means of collective coercion and quite reasonably should have no right to privacy whatsoever, be it sexual, social or financial.
Being an athlete or actor/actress on the other hand is just a job, not a public office. Why should your wish to ‘out’ someone trump their wish to perhaps not have what they do in private known? Certainly no one can or should force you to stop this (unless they feel you have defamed them, which is a rather different issue that I am not addressing), but that does not make what you are doing right. Perhaps you define yourself by your sexuality but most homosexual people I know do not, so why try to force them to make common cause with you when they may well feel no affinity with you or your world view at all? It is already the case that in most of the civilised world (i.e. the western world) the law does not prohibit homosexual public displays of affection. You have legal protection against violence directed at you and being homosexual no longer mitigates your legal right not to be assaulted… and rightly so of course.
Moreover by and large you have tolerance socially too, in that people will not take action to try and stop you holding hands with your partner. That is what tolerance means. It is the natural right of everyone to have their consensual behaviour with others tolerated.
However if your ‘comfort’ means it is ‘acceptance’ you want from straight people, rather than just tolerance, well you may ask people for it but you have no right to it and a significant number of people will choose to not accept you. No one has a right to be accepted. As long as someone tolerates you (as they must), it is their right, not yours, to judge you according to their sensibilities.
In short, if all someone does is sneer at you and your partner holding hands in public, deal with it. The world is full of jackasses and always will be. But please, stop poking into people’s private affairs if they do not want them poked into. I do not think what you are doing is immensely harmful but it is neither admirable nor justified.
An agreeably splenetic Pat Condell video to get you in the right mood for the weekend…
One of the blogosphere’s brightest lights, Michael Totten, once again finds himself up the sharp end and brings some interesting reportage from Georgia. If you are interested in the real chronology of events and understanding why Russia, not Georgia, is the prime mover of this regional tragedy, check out his article.
The sheer number of articles suggesting that we are seeing a return to the day of the ‘Cold War’ are such that frankly I cannot even be bothered to link to one. Certainly the Russian Bear has been more overtly unfriendly as of late, and I do think Russia needs to be taken seriously in the way any collection of armed thugs need to be taken seriously.
However it is absurd to contend that Russia as a long term threat in the way the Soviet Union threatened the world for more than fifty years. Hapless Russia has a near mono-culture economy (GDP the size of Italy, for gawd’s sake) and catastrophic demographics that make Europe seem like a stud-farm (Germany, Poland and Austria more or less total the same population as Russia’s ‘hordes’). The appropriate personification for Russia circa 2008 is not an oil fuelled Genghis Khan, threatening to surge once more across Eurasia… no, it is more like a drunk with a knife unable to admit they have terminal liver disease… a vodka fuelled Genghis Khan’t if you will.
Surely a policy of political containment is really all that is needed while nature, rust and liver sclerosis on a Biblical scale do the rest. Probably the most damaging thing we could do to hasten the deflation of the absurd delusions of the thuggish Russian political class would be to make it easier for young Russians, and Russian money, to get the hell out of Russia and move west.
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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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