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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“I have only one firm belief about the American political system, and that is this: God is a Republican and Santa Claus is a Democrat. God is an elderly or, at any rate, middle-aged male, a stern fellow, patriarchal rather than paternal and a great believer in rules and regulations. He holds men strictly accountable for their actions. He has little apparent concern for the material well-being of the disadvantaged. He is politically connected, socially powerful and holds the mortgage on virtually everything in the world. God is difficult. God is unsentimental. It is very hard to get into God’s heavenly country club. Santa Claus is another matter. He’s cute. His nonthreatening. He’s always cheerful. And he loves animals. He may know who’s been naughty and who’s been nice, but he never does anything about it. He gives everyone everything they want without thought of a quid pro quo. He works hard for charities, and he’s famously generous to the poor. Santa Claus is preferable to God in every way but one: There is no such thing as Santa Claus.”
PJ O’Rourke. (Page XXii of Parliament of Whores). Of course, now that the Democrats are led by a Chicago machine “Community Organiser” who is prepared to throw inconvenient former allies under a proverbial bus, it is unclear if O’Rourke’s relatively charming portrayal of the Democrats really holds any more. But hey, any excuse for a Christmas reference.
Hilarious (H/T, Glenn Reynolds).
I occasionally come across comments, usually expressed with a sort of “how terrible!” undertone, that more people recently voted in the X-Factor singing talent show on the ITV station in the UK than voted in the 2005 General Election. But there is another way of looking at it: the fact that more people care to vote for their favourite singer than the various types of authoritarian statist twerp in fact shows that the Great British public have a healthy set of priorities.
In case any commenter sniffs at my possibly making nice comments about the X-Factor, I don’t like the show, although I find that there is something gruesomely compelling about Simon Cowell and some of the acts.
When you read this passionate denunciation of the sheer intellectual cowardice of the Conservative Party over the issues of tax, public spending and the banking sector, ask yourself again: who gives a brass farthing as to whether David Cameron and friends win power next year? Who?
“There is no reason to doubt that Mr Brown’s statement that he went into politics because of his horror at the effects of unemployment. Unfortunately, he forgot one of the few laws of political economy: that the road to unemployment is paved with work creation schemes. He is likely, therefore, to go down as something like the patron saint of unemployment.”
– Theodore Dalrymple, from “Not With A Bang But A Whimper”, essays on current affairs, page 79. The whole chapter from which this paragraph is taken is a brilliant summary of everthing that is wrong about the current prime minister.
James Delingpole delivers the goods on the latest blow against AGW alarmism. It has come from Russia. The story is not quite so “John Le Carre” as the theory put up recently by Sean Gabb, however.
Happy Christmas!
Following on from Brian’s post immediately below this one, is what can only be described as an encouraging story by Bloomberg, stating that the chances of a deal being agreed by world leaders in Copenhagen are remote. Excellent if true.
Al Gore has been caught out basing scary scenarios on what turn out to be highly questionable figures. What I am starting to notice – despite the efforts of some, not all, parts of the MSM – is that AGW scepticism is getting more of a hearing in the media. The effects of the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia are not fading; if anything, the momentum behind this story is building.
Near where I live in central London, there is a big construction site and one of the most impressive things about the work going on has been to watch the crane-driver deftly move the huge arms of the crane around to lift and place different materials. I don’t suffer from vertigo but I certainly would not have the guts to sit up in the cab at the top, or be able to easily face the long climb up and down. The crane-drivers are one of those group of construction workers that make much of the modern urban skyline possible. So here’s to them. And here is a nice article about this feature of the modern urban landscape.
“The upgrading of the G20, Gordon Brown’s plans for planetary financial regulation, and the Copenhagen climate summit (whose inauguration of a transnational bureaucracy to facilitate the multitrillion-dollar shakedown of functioning economies would be the biggest exercise in punitive liberalism the developed world has ever been subjected to) are all pillars of “global governance.” Right now, if you don’t like the local grade school, you move to the next town. If you’re sick of Massachusetts taxes, you move to New Hampshire. Where do you move to if you don’t like “global governance”? What polling station do you go to to vote it out?”
– Mark Steyn.
Just in time for the Season of Festive Cheer, The Times (of London) reminds us all again of what is likely to be the biggest foreign policy issue for the next few years. There appears little likelihood that a future possible Conservative administration will have much of an idea of what to do about it, and of course we have a Nobel Prizewinning Chicago-machine politician in the White House. Not an encouraging state of affairs.
A number of governments – the UK and German – have used information stolen from a Liechtenstein bank in a bid to hunt after alleged tax evaders. And now, there is a story that data has been stolen from HSBC Private Bank (Suisse), divulging data on scores of French clients. The French government, you will not be surprised to learn, gentle reader, is probably not all that shy of using stolen material. It will be interesting to see what happens to such data. Here is another news report.
As I keep saying in my defence of tax havens, bank secrecy is not really about allowing dodgy folk to squirrel away ill-gotten gains, which is the usual image presented these days. (That is not to say that such secrecy has not been abused in the past). In past ages, groups fleeing persecution – such as Jews from Nazi-controlled Europe – availed themselves of banking secrecy in order to protect what was left of that wealth. We should not be so naive as to imagine that even without a repeat of such horrors, there is not a need for client privacy to be rigorously enforced. It is monstrous that governments should use stolen material in this fashion, but then, as the founding editor of this site likes to remind us, the state is not your friend.
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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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