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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From each as they chose, to each as they are chosen.
As one of the most influential libertarian thinkers of the 20th century, Robert Nozick certainly deserves a tip of the hat from Libertarian Samizdata. His book Anarchy, State and Utopia is an excellent debunking of coercive statism generally and John Rawls’ book Theory of Justice in particular. Although I must confess I have never been a fan of Nozick’s essentially intuitive approach to rights theory, it would nevertheless be churlish not to recognize his enormous influence in stemming the intellectual tide of statism. He had a key role in widely propagating libertarian memes and adding hugely to the developing libertarian meta-context.
Robert Nozick, philosopher, born November 16 1938; died January 23 2002
Our ISP e-mail problems have been sorted out and we are receiving all e-mails properly once more.
Anyone one who did not receive a reply to an e-mail sent to us in the last 24 hours or so might want to send their e-mail again as it does seem that the dircon server ate a few incoming mails. Yummy.
As Glenn Reynolds on Instapundit points out, it is nice to see National Review On-line deciding to copy Samizdata’s format of multi-contributor blogging. I am sure we were foremost in their minds the whole time 
Update: Cal Ulmann over on Where HipHop and Libertarianism meet has a rather entertaining take on NRO Corner<. Cal wrote:
The Corner on National Review Online is National Review’s attempt at a blog. They don’t want to call it a blog though. I guess that would mean their opinions are no better than anybody elses opinions.
Samizdata seems to be having e-mail problems (or rather the ISP through whom the e-mail routes is having problems), so we may not be getting all incoming mail at the moment (as of 23:15 GMT). It is unclear how long this problem has been going on. I shall report when we are back in touch with the blogosphere.
Let me state that I do not expect a paleo-conservative like Pat Buchannan to actually agree with libertarian views, but what I do expect is that, if he is going to comment on them, that he actually takes the time to figure out what libertarian views actually are before opening his noise making apparatus.
I have had numerous e-mail on his ludicrous article called Does libertarianism lead to statism?. Over on Dodgeblog, there is also a rubbishing of Buchannan that speculates what his real motivation for the remarks might be. The section of Buchannan’s article that best sums up his complete lack of comprehension regarding what libertarians actually do stand for is:
As these immigrants are also far poorer than Americans, they are disproportionate users of social services — i.e., health care, food stamps, rent supplements, legal services and general welfare. Immigrants have become the principal propellants of the growth of the welfare state.
Libertarians to Buchannan: Read this carefully
The state has NO legitimate role in health care, food stamps, rent supplements and ‘general welfare’… Libertarians do not support the very existence of the theft based welfare state! Eliminate that and the only people who will be willing to emigrate to another country under those conditions are self selecting high initiative folks who want to avail themselves of employment and entrepreneurial opportunities…i.e. exactly the sort of people who came through Ellis Island and made the USA the wealthiest nation on earth. I fail to see a problem with that!
So in essence Pat Buchannan’s thesis of genius is that “libertarianism leads to statism because non-libertarians have imposed welfare policies that libertarians regard as both immoral and economically unsound”. D’oh!
Thanks to Virginia, Andrew, Hank, Ann, Anne, Ivan, Jorge, Margarthe, Will and Dieter for also baring their fangs via e-mail regarding the utterly clueless Buchannan article. I have never received so many e-mails that made almost exactly the same points on the same issue!
Which is nothing to do with herpes, I assure you.
Sorry but our hosting server has maxed out and thus you may (or may not) have problems seeing the pictures you have have come to see… this will be fixed by tomorrow.
Sheesh… we try to bring a little class and glamour into the blogosphere but I guess there is no keeping some people happy. Glenn on Instapundit accuses us of not showing a faithful representation of semi-recovered bloggstress Natalija Radic (scroll down six articles for the ‘offending picture’ of a suspiciously healthy looking Natalija).
There… are you happy now? This picture even shows the amazing disappearing cat “Little Monster” prior to his absconding during Natalija’s hour of need. Can we please have our journalistic credentials back now, Glenn?
There is an excellent editorial in The Telegraph called Not your business, Mr Straw which makes the points that need to be made about the Al Qaeda prisoners in Cuba
Yesterday’s Mail on Sunday [Ed: mouthpiece of the British Idiotarian right], on the basis of a few photographs, told its readers that the suspects had been “tortured”. This has sparked some predictable howls of rage from America’s traditional foes on the Left – may of whom were oddly silent when the Taliban were practising genuine torture on their own citizens.
Although the US is understandably being careful with potentially dangerous men, there is no evidence of human rights violations. These, after all, are not prisoners of war, but terrorist suspects.
The whole point is that these people are accused of either terrorism or war crimes, neither of which accord them the protections of the Geneva Convention, not that such legalisms are all that important. What is important is that they be treated in an objective, appropriate and reasonable manner according to the nature of what they are: extremely dangerous terrorists.
Our very own Balkan Blogger, Natalija is showing signs of life once more, so expect a wave of post-illness Croatian candor and Slavic snideness from the banks of the River Sava
Welcome back.
A picture is worth a thousand words.
USS Clueless gives a series of baffling remarks about Somalia. As far as I can figure, Steven seems to think the USA was the primary aggrieved party in 1993 when it tried to carry out the UN’s behest and help impose a central government on Somalia at gunpoint. Forget the daft movie, read the excellent book for a more balanced view.
So if the Somali government is now to be the next target, where exactly is this ‘Somali’ government? Exactly why is Somalia about to be attacked and in what manner? Somalia does not have an army like the Taliban did, it is just a heavily armed society. Does the US attack everyone with a gun? Well, that is pretty much everyone. I expect they will tend to shoot back unless a great deal of political finesse is used.
Unqualified Offerings wrote an article a while ago pointing out why the UN/US actions pretty much guaranteed a fight with the so called ‘warlords’ in Somalia. I have always thought this part of his analysis was spot on
No, the racism of the Somali intervention had more to do with the familiar liberal/left “soft racism of low expectations.” Because the reason some Somalis were starving was that other Somalis, with guns, wanted them to starve. Starvation was a weapon of war. “Warlords” were the root cause of starvation, and starvation was a means to an end, and that end was power. “Warlords” are nothing more nor less than politicians; if the claim offend thee, call them “politicians of a type.” By making it its business to “prevent starvation” the Bush administration put itself in the business of thwarting warlord ambitions. That’s not the racist part. The racist part is that, as was clear at the time, the idea that the warlords would take exception to this took the US government, media and public completely by surprise. Then the US announced its plan to disarm the warlords, which is to say, turn them into non-warlords, which is to say, vitiate their claims to power. Again, it wasn’t racist to try to disarm the warlords as such. But one could only imagine the warlords not objecting to this, and violently, if one somehow couldn’t imagine that these swarthy foreigners took themselves and their own ambitions seriously. One had to believe either that the warlords were attempting to shoot and starve their enemies into submission by mistake, and would be grateful when shown the error of their ways, or that they had made the decision to try to shoot and starve their way to power lightly, and that once US attention turned like the gaze of a stern yet kindly parent upon these errant children, they would cast their little eyes down, mutter “Sorry, mom,” and go play right. In US perceptions, the warlords could have been idiots, children or cowards. What US policy could not have been based on was a sober appreciation that the US was setting itself against serious, adult power brokers who cared more for their own plans than American ones.
Yes indeed. This may have come as a shock, but folks do tend to act in what they think are their own interests, even black folks in Africa. How about that?
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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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