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]

Samizdata quote of the day

Do you want to help to kill an African? It’s very easy. Just sign Christian Aid’s petition against free trade.
Stephen Pollard

Samizdata quote of the day

Satan has no suicide bombers
– Unknown

Samizdata quote of the day

George W. Bush is a lying, collectivist, protectonist, big-government statist and I despise him. The only, and I do mean only reason I want him to win the election against the other lying, collectivist, protectonist, even bigger-government statist who I despise is to see the stunned faces of those people on the left when they get their arses kicked. Its an expensive ‘cheap thrill’ but I take ’em where I find ’em.
– overheard at a get-together of Samizdatistas recently

Samizdata quote of the day

Russians do not have an equivalent of political correctness. Russian politicians don’t get brownie points for competitive empathy. There is no inclination to take a therapeutic view of cultural conflict.
Jim Kunstler

Samizdata quote of the day

The left thinks that the issues around the TANG service are relevant – Bush was AWOL then, Bush lied about WMD, both instances involve acronyms, and can’t you SEE the cloven hooves? It’s the same sort of thing that gripped the feverish elements of the Right in the 90s: Clinton winked at drug-smuggling out of Mena, therefore he sold nuclear secrets to the Chinese for campaign donations. ISN’T IT CLEAR? But that sort of nonsense was confined the margins; the editor of the Clinton Chronicles wasn’t sitting in the presidential suite at the 2000 convention like Michael Moore sitteth at the left hand of Jimmy Carter in 2004.
James Lileks via Hugh Hewitt

The internet is a thing of many wonders

I cannot help but suspect that Babbage and Turing never really envisaged the marvellous uses to which computing devices would be set.

Cats? Fish? Click here.

Samizdata quote of the day

The plans differ; the planners are all alike…
– Frédéric Bastiat

Samizdata quote of the day

When under the pretext of fraternity, the legal code imposes mutual sacrifices on the citizens, human nature is not thereby abrogated. Everyone will then direct his efforts toward contributing little to, and taking much from, the common fund of sacrifices. Now, is it the most unfortunate who gains from this struggle? Certainly not, but rather the most influential and calculating.
– Frédéric Bastiat

Samizdata quote of the day

To initiate terrorism is to justify your very own apocalypse, many more Arabs and Chechens are going to die than Americans, Europeans and Russians, because our ability to carry out terrorism is greater than theirs.
Dalmaster

Samizdata slogan of the day

Every great movement must experience three stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption.
– John Stuart Mill

Samizdata slogan of the day

Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses.

– H. L. Mencken

Samizdata slogan of the day

If pigs could vote, the man with the slop bucket would be elected swineherd every time, no matter how much slaughtering he did on the side.
– Orson Scott Card