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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So moves are afoot to lock the UK into the EU, sponsored by a man who is by any reasonable definition a traitor, by the name of Andrew Duff.
Pass whatever laws you wish, Andrew dear…as long as Britain maintains its own armed forces, ultimately British society can elect to rid itself of its onerous ties to socialist Europe, at bayonet point if required regardless of your meaningless legalisms… at which point it might be best for all concerned if you decided it would be prudent for you to stay in Brussels rather than come back to what you clearly do not regard as home.
In the Victorian era a curious belief was prevalent that sovereign states ought to have governments that were reasonably efficient and solvent.
– Byron Farwell
Peace – in international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.
– The Devil’s Dictionary, 1911 edition.
There’s a nice review by blogger Pejman Yousefzadeh of Ayn Rand’s 1940s classic The Fountainhead, and it got me thinking not so much about architecture, where I think Rand’s views were often an uncritical acceptance of Modernist ideology, as about the fact that she missed a key argument for free enterprise – it can be a lot of fun! Let’s face it, the main hero, Howard Roark, doesn’t come across as the kind of guy to let his red hair down at a blogger bash, does he?
I think one of the unacknowledged aspects of liberal capitalism is that it can tap into humans’ need to play and experiment. Paleo-conservatives like David Brooks, author of Bobos In Paradise, which is a mild send up of 1990s America, seems almost offended that geeky tech entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley and elsewhere liked to have fun even as they made – and later lost – their billions. But what’s the problem with that? In fact, one of the most potent memes we can inject into the culture is the idea that not only is collectivism morally and economically bankrupt, it is also bloody boring. For a good and more considered take on this point, Virginia Postrel’s excellent The Future and Its Enemies is highly recommended.
some graffiti: tblives!
Graphic from ‘Blue Skies of Freedom’ blog (click)
He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points to a career in politics.
– George Bernard Shaw
There are five Great National Delusions. The first is that there are solutions to all the problems. The second is that only a strong centre can solve the problems. The third is that the strong centre must embody one’s own views exclusively. The fourth Great Delusion is that heroic surgery is required, and the fifth, that the heroic surgeons must be oneself and one’s cronies armed with scalpels as big as machetes.
– Louis de Bernieres
You liberals thinks that goats are just sheep from broken homes
– Anon
Are you guys ready? Let’s roll!
– Todd Beamer, Flight 93, 11th September 2001
Leather trousers should be tight because they are to men what ‘Wonderbras’ are to women
– Andrew Ian Dodge of Dodgeblog fame, at the 2B3 tonight.
Rydell has a theory about virtual real estate. The smaller and cheaper the physical site of a given operation, the bigger and cheesier the website.
– William Gibson, All tomorrow’s parties
Lewinsky and Clinton have shown
What Kaczynski must surely have known –
That an intern is better
Than a bomb in a letter
When deciding how best to be blown
– Winner of a limerick contest on Long Island – the requirements were to use the two words, Lewinsky and Kaczynski (the Unabomber), in a limerick
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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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