The left-wing intellectuals treat Socialism similarly, defining it by its outcome. If it doesn’t succeed in bringing about the said fairness and harmony with production in the hands of the workers, then it can’t have been Socialism. And out of the window goes the real world, the one we live in. If we were to say that Socialism seeks to achieve these goals, we’d be able to judge if it has ever succeeded to any degree. Because it never has, we’d be entitled to conclude that it doesn’t work. Kristian says it’s like performing a raindance. If it is done as an attempt to bring rain, we’d be able to judge how effective it was in practice. But if a raindance is defined as “a dance that brings rain,” then any dance that didn’t do that was clearly not a raindance.
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Venue: a very noisy Adam Smith Institute gathering at the House of Lord a few days ago. Her: Putin and Trump are in favour of Brexit, does that make you question your support? March 23rd, 2019 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
 There should be no such thing as a ‘hate crime’… If someone gets assaulted & hit with a brick, their identity group should not make the crime more or less of a crime. And stating an opinion should never be a crime (such as what gender someone else is). – Perry de Havilland, discussing this amongst other things. March 20th, 2019 | 35 comments - (Comments are closed)
Unfortunately we are at the stage now where the streets (so to speak) need to go visit their MPs, rather than the other way around. Voting is not the only way to express a political opinion. – Perry de Havilland, who is just cheerfully channelling the zeitgeist
March 17th, 2019 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
Generally these days ‘liberal’ means someone who supports profoundly illiberal positions. But as ‘socialist’ means someone who wants to replace social interactions with politically mediated interactions, it seems they are named after what they want to destroy. – Perry de Havilland March 12th, 2019 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
The British political firmament as a whole is hardly blessed with a multitude of bold, original thinkers, and such figures certainly aren’t among the fabulous seven, the daring eleven or whatever number of forgettable non-entities currently comprise The Independent Group. All of which is a great pity. As this blog has noted over and over and over and over and over and over again, Britain has entered a period of political discontinuity – a time when the existing political settlement, with its narrow range of policy options, are no longer adequate to the challenges at hand. Such periods of discontinuity require politicians to think the previously unthinkable in terms of policy solutions, not to flee their former political parties in an outrage that people are actually starting to do so. March 11th, 2019 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
The problem with this article is it fails to note that becoming a Marxist because you’re young and unhappy is no more laudable than becoming a Nazi for the same reason. – Samizdata Illuminatus February 25th, 2019 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is a huge mistake to blame this [anti-Semitism] on Corbyn alone. This did not all appear out of nowhere, Corbyn is just the obvious pustule on a much deeper problem underpinning collectivism – Perry de Havilland February 24th, 2019 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
I have never been a great Trump fan, but I am in awe of how he drives his enemies insane. And I am not speaking figuratively, I mean literally insane, batshit moonbat loonytoons crazy. Trump Derangement Syndrome is to Bush Derangement Syndrome as Pneumonic Plague is to a Common Cold. – Perry de Havilland, as part of an on-line discussion elsewhere about ‘Out‘, a homosexual advocacy publication slamming Trump for pressuring Iran to decriminalise homosexuality. Yes, seriously. February 20th, 2019 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
Whenever I hear people stereotyping based on gender. “Women vote this way”, “Men act in this manner”, I am reminded of the great contrast between Britain’s two women Prime Ministers. Thatcher, won a brilliant renegotiation of the EEC, trounced the unions, denationalized vast swaths of obscene nationalized industries, and was one of the four people instrumental in ending the cold war. May, the other lady from number 10, apparently couldn’t negotiate the purchase of a sausage supper for fifty quid in the local fish and chip shop. Apparently, it is more to do with the content of your character than the content of your underpants. December 8th, 2018 | 29 comments - (Comments are closed)
For instance, antifa groups have objected strongly to being lumped in with the Tommy Robinsons and Proud Boys of this world, whom they vehemently oppose. But they have no grounds to complain. The Guardian reports that these same activists welcomed PayPal’s ban on McInnes. They are all too comfortable with big corporates policing political activity, they just want other people to be policed. Regardless of one’s political views, we should be as worried by PayPal’s decision to bar Tommy Robinson as its decision to bar antifa groups. We need to push back against PayPal’s attempts to clamp down on groups it considers to be hateful or intolerant, and we need to challenge those who want to outsource censorship to the tech giants. November 13th, 2018 | 33 comments - (Comments are closed)
Much as Paypal has shown that it can stop providing services to customers for what appear to be political reasons, the domain name registrar GoDaddy stopped providing services to Gab, resulting in their web site disappearing from the internet. Recently they found an alternative registrar, Epik, who have written a blog post about why they decided to accept Gab as a customer.
Refusing service to a customer does not violate the non-aggression principle, but when you need a service provider to help you speak to people it is very useful to find one who thinks that freedom of speech is a good thing. Epik should be commended for their stance, and more importantly, their stance is a reason to use their services. To make sure there are service providers who take your business, it is helpful if there are plenty to choose from and that at least some of them have friendly policies. For this it helps if there are low barriers to entry and minimal state interference in the policies of service providers. Points of centralisation can be a problem. About this, Epik say:
Various government bodies are in charge of various parts of domain registration, depending on where you are in the world. Technology to decentralise this would be helpful. Perhaps something like Namecoin could be the answer, or perhaps there is another way yet. November 9th, 2018 | 29 comments - (Comments are closed)
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