Constrained democracy can be a splendid check on state power but unconstrained democracy just shifts the locus for where the seat of tyranny lies.
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The stunt pulled by pro-hunting protestors of intruding into the inner sanctum of the House of Commons has produced a large number of very predictable responses. MPs and other establishment figures harrumphed that “Parliament’s privileges have been infringed!” and “This is an attack on democracy itself!” and “We must protect this most important of our institutions!” and “The protestors must not alienate people by acting so despicably!”… Well I have a suggestion for the pro-hunt protestors: ignore all those remarks because the only way to win is to fight your battles on ground of your choosing. As David Carr pointed out earlier with regard to when one of the protestors in the Commons shouted “This isn’t democracy. You are overturning democracy.” – Wrong. This is democracy in action and you are on the receiving end of it. What they really, really need to understand is that the majority of people in Britain are urban folk who are at best utterly indifferent to the protestor’s concerns and frequently somewhat hostile to them. The hunters and their supporters cannot hope to convince a majority that hunting is something that is either important or even needs to be tolerated. Do not waste your time making arguments about ‘country livelihood’ or ‘managing pests’ because not only do most people not believe you (such as me, for example), most simply do not care because they feel no particular affinity with you. It is preposterous to argue that the only effective way to put down vermin is to chase them on horseback with hounds. It is simply not a matter for highly questionable utilitarian arguments but rather for arguing for free association to do what you will on private property. That is the only coherent and more importantly resonant argument to make. If gay men can congregate together in clubs to do things the majority of people find deeply distasteful, without having to worry about being raided by the fuzz, why cannot foxhunters congregate together to do things the majority find distasteful without worrying about the Boys in Blue showing up? Successfully point out to gay rights activists that making the prejudices of the majority the law of the land is not something they should be comfortable with… and suddenly the class warriors behind the hunting ban might find it much harder to ‘bash the toffs’ as the implications of where this is clearly heading starts to dawn on altogether different groups. In short, stop making invocations to the graven idol called ‘Democracy’ because it will not hear your prayers. Accept that you are a heretic and raise up an idol of your own. Call it, say, ‘Liberty’ and then challenge your enemies to denounce it. If you want to defend your liberty to do things in free association with likeminded folk on private property, you will have to come to some very sobering realisations. → Continue reading: Confronting reality September 18th, 2004 | 77 comments - (Comments are closed)
 I frequently hear “Oh blogs, they don’t really have any influence” and “What real difference do blogs make?” – Individually it is certainly true that popular blogs like Samizdata.net or even Godzilla-blogs like Instapundit are dwarfed in numbers of eyeballs they attract by major newspapers and TV networks… but just as a single piranha is not so fearsome a beast, a large school of them is another thing all together. When you look at a blog, you are just looking at a single node: you need to stand back and look at the network. Tony Blankley over on Townhall.com has written an interesting article called A revolution in news:
This is the distributed intelligence that has been discussed here before. Blogs have in many ways been over-hyped but that is mostly because it is not blogs that are the revolutionary driver… it is the blogosphere. Old media is learning the hard way to be sure of their facts because somewhere out there, sitting in front of a computer in Biloxi or Berlin or Bombay, is someone knows the subject you claim to be an expert in a damn sight better than you do with a whole lot of bloggers looking over his shoulder.  September 15th, 2004 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
It seems that the same idea has indeed gone out like a clarion call from many watchtowers and mountain tops and it must be a great time to be in the gun store business in the good ol’ U.S. of A.  (joyous tip of the hat to Freedom Sight for the link) September 15th, 2004 | 78 comments - (Comments are closed)
…well, arms shops actually. The absurd ‘assault weapon’ ban which prohibited certain weapons on the basis of largely aesthetic criteria, has expired in the USA as of today. However as Dubya made it clear that if there had been enough support for extending the ban in Congress, he would have signed it into law rather than try and veto it, please resist the urge to feel much gratitude for his lukewarm support for the Second Amendment. However it was passed before and could certainly happen again. And so I urge all the redoubtable gun owning men and women of the USA to run, not walk, to their nearest gun shop and purchase nice Kalashnikov or AR-15 or Ruger Mini-14 or FAL or M-14 or whatever, plus a goodly selection of flash suppressors and high capacity magazines, thus ensuring that there are soooooo many of the damn things in circulation that any future ban will simply have no effect. Use the power of the Buycott, have fun at the range, arm yourself to the teeth and, best of all, absolutely enrage advocates of gun control in the process. I mean, how good it that? 
Good stance and correct breathing: now that is what I call gun control September 13th, 2004 | 65 comments - (Comments are closed)
I do not have a weight problem, I have a height problem September 12th, 2004 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
We are having a dinner party at Samizdata.net HQ and our recurring toast this evening (with excellent Polish flavoured vodka and apple juice) is:
 It just seemed the appropriate thing to say on September 11th. September 11th, 2004 | 80 comments - (Comments are closed)
On this anniversary of the attacks in America by Al Qaeda, Ayman Zawahiri has produced a video taunting the USA that an article in the Daily Telegraph rightly describes as sounding desperate:
Reaction from ‘on high’ to the tape is also interesting:
It seems to me that the notion Bin Laden is still alive becomes more preposterous by the month. If Zawahiri, who is debatably the ‘chairman of the board’ of Al Qaeda, can make a video for propaganda purposes, then so can the biggest fish of all, Osama Bin Laden. For Bin Laden to produce such a video would yield a veritable propaganda blockbuster which would rally the faithful and infuriate his enemies at a time when it is hard to see how anyone could reasonably claim that things are going well for the bad guys. So unless we see Bin Laden’s ugly face on our screens wagging his finger at us infidels sometime before the Presidential elections in the USA, I will stick to my firmly held assertion that he is rotting in a collapsed tunnel somewhere in Afghanistan and continue with my Elvis analogues when people claim the contrary. And like Elvis, no doubt we will get sighting of him for the next 30 years as both sides have a vested interest in claiming he is alive (one to make him a Robin Hood figure, the other to disarm arguments against whatever ‘needs to be done’). Yup, I will believe them when Elvis himself walks into a studio in Nashville and does a ‘muezzin remix’ of ‘Blue Suede Shoes’. Bin Laden is dead and may he not rest in peace. September 11th, 2004 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
The sort of dependence that results from exchange, i.e., from commercial transactions, is a reciprocal dependence. We cannot be dependent upon a foreigner without his being dependent on us. Now, this is what constitutes the very essence of society. To sever natural interrelations is not to make oneself independent, but to isolate oneself completely. September 10th, 2004 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
Hate crime. What it is exactly? Opinions vary but in essence it means that a given crime, such as assault, murder or defamation, will be treated more seriously if the perpetrator is judged to be motivated by certain politically disfavoured prejudices. It means that if someone smashes a bottle in your face because you are black (or catholic or muslim or homosexual), rather than because they want to steal your wallet or because they caught you in flagrante delicto with their girlfriend, then that is more serious. The actual substance of the crime is not what makes it a ‘hate’ crime, just the motivation to commit it against a member of a designated group of people based on their race (which in reality means ‘certain races’), religions (meaning ‘certain religions’) or sexual orientations (meaning ‘homosexuals’), that then becomes a hate crime… crimes against philanderers, drunks, football supporters, loud mouths etc. are not hate crimes. You may hate supporters of Celtic Football Club but if you bash one of them over the head with a two by four, that is not a ‘hate crime’, it is just assault and perhaps GBH. Unless of course the Celtic supporter in question happens to be a nominal Catholic but you are a nominal Protestant. It is a criminal act which attracts extra sanction because of what the perpetrator was thinking at the time. In short, a ‘hate crime’ is a ‘thought crime’, albeit one usually only applied to thoughts held by certain politically disfavoured classifications of people. Do you really trust something as corrupt and fallible as a political process to create laws not on demonstrable facts (who hit who with the two by four) but on what people think? Sure, motivation matters: for example being put in fear of your life can justify violence in self-defence, even (sometimes) in Britain. But to legislate that certain groups are more sacrosanct than others is collectivism at its most intellectually pernicious because it denies the individual basis of rights and assigns value on the basis of group membership. We all know where that can end up. If you think laws should be based on crimes against individuals regardless of what race/religion or sexual orientation they have, then you might want to go over to the Hansard Society on-line consultation on Hate Crime in Northern Ireland and tell them that group rights are not a form of human rights, they are their antithesis. September 7th, 2004 | 42 comments - (Comments are closed)
September 6th, 2004 | 30 comments - (Comments are closed)
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