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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It has been said that the best political arrangement when it comes to protecting liberty and constraining the size of government is when no party controls all branches of government. Gridlock is liberty-friendly, on this view. Well, the idea that it is bad for a single party to run the entire shebang does seem to be borne out by the skyrocketing spending going on in the United States under George W. Bush. Bruce Bartlett, a Reaganite Republican of long standing, has written a blistering indictment of Bush’s record on spending.
Bush ran back in 2000 (it already seems a long time ago) as a “compassionate conservative”, and only the most gullible must have ignored the fact that this was codespeak for spending lots of other people’s money. I fear very much that we could get the same outcome if David Cameron ever leads the Tories back to power by promising the same menu as his Labour opponent.
I get the impression – and that is all that it is – that some conservative writers are getting a bit fed up with Bush, and I am not just talking about the cack-handed post-invasion phase in Iraq. On a whole list of bedrock issues for conservatives, such as federalism, free markets, respect for liberty and privacy, this administration has fallen way short. It has not even delivered on Social Security reform in any meaningful way, and the tax code is as hideously complex and full of distortions as ever.
The ideal gift idea for that collectivist friend in need of enlightenment and help in doing maths. (Thanks to those clever folk at the von Mises Institute.)
Clive Davis approvingly quotes a book by a fellow called Rod Dreher, a “crunchy conservative” (whatever that is) who is, we are told, a passionate environmentalist, a disliker of suburban sprawl, shopping malls (oh, the vulgarity!), television (ditto), McMansions (huh?) and other regrettable features of consumerist, dollar-obsessed America. Instead, this fellow, who sounds rather like an American Roger Scruton (of whom I am an admirer, at least in parts) is a fan of government restrictions and regulations, and mentions the case of the U.S. Pacific Highway, left pristine and free of crass development by land-use regulations.
There is nothing actually all that new in conservatives embracing controls on development. The very word, conservative, is based on the desire to conserve and protect what exists from the new. During the Industrial Revolution, conservatives like the Poet Robert Southey railed against what they saw as the ugliness of industrialism and the associated sprawl. (Some of the dislike was also based on snobbery and fear of an pwardly mobile and undeferential middle class). The trend has continued. It was that perfect symbol of cuddly English fogeyism, Sir John Betjeman, who took potshots at suburbia, penning one of his most famous verses about that place to the west of London known as Slough. (The former Poet Laureate asked Hitler to bomb it).
What is so striking is how unoriginal and old-hat all this sort of thing is. More interesting to me, however, are those writers who do not imagine that shopping malls or mock-Tudor mansions in Surbiton deserve our scorn. Virginia Postrel has recently written approvingly of a book actually describing sprawl rather than automatically condemning it.
And let’s face it, most of us, particularly those with children, live in suburbs or are moving there. It is a conceit, I reckon, of people who have no children, and who do not need the space, to take potshots at those who have decided to leave the supposedly hip inner city. It remains a mystery to me why the desire of people to live in a bit of space and comfort drives certain intellectuals nuts. Maybe it is the garden gnomes.
The 2012 London Olympic Games could be hit by electricity blackouts as energy supplies fall off, according to a poll of scientists and other eminent folk in this story by the BBC. Well, pole vaulting and javelin throwing have not been done in the dark before, but I guess it might have a certain novelty.
Seriously though, how should one take these jeremiads about impending shortages to electricity generation? This excerpt from the BBC story makes it clear that many analysts believe that solutions must embrace technologies including nuclear power:
All 140 respondents to the survey said that the best way to ensure energy security for the future lay in a diversified mix of electricity generation, including renewables, coal, gas and nuclear
This story of a few days ago suggests the opposition Tories might, in their quixotic desire to appear Green, ditch the nuclear option. This seems rather ironic given that some figures in the environmentalist movement have started to embrace nuclear energy as a way to cut carbon emissions (while not being blind to the problems of nuclear waste disposal and the large capital outlays involved in building nuclear powers stations).
I am an agnostic on nuke energy. If it can, in a free market, hold its own compared with other energy sources, fine. But given the vital importance of electricity to our modern, information-age economy, it is madness to tempt disaster by shutting down options now.
You may have already heard this but I laughed out loud when I came across this: an officer involved in Dick Cheney’s recent difficulties is called Captain Kirk.
Phasers off, gentlemen.
Andrew Sullivan, reminds me why I was a fan of his blog from the off and remain one:
Leave aside the issue of mob violence for a moment. No moderate Muslim or “sensitive” Westerner is defending that. What of the non-violent request: that one faith be granted its taboos, that Western culture must abide by them, that the law be reformed to protect religious faiths from blasphemy or offense? It seems to me that we should indeed avoid gratuitous insult of Islam, and Christianity, or any faith. But it is a complete delusion to believe that the major source of our problem today is something called “Islamophobia.” No: the problem is terrorism and tyranny propagated under the banner of Islam. Without that, no Danish cartoon could have been conceived of, let alone published. That is the real and far more blatant blasphemy. If 10,000 angry Muslims had marched in London after the bombing of a major mosque in Iraq, I’d be impressed. But they didn’t. Until they do, the West has nothing to apologize for. The Muslim world needs to take the beam out of its own eye, before it removes the speck from the West’s.
Reuters reports that the hunting with hounds is more popular than ever despite the move by parliament last year to outlaw the hunting of foxes with hounds. (Incidentally, foxes are increasingly a problem in the cities as they scavenge for food. I used to live in Clapham and the place was full of them).
It makes me wonder about whether the vote by MPs this week to ban smoking in public places, including private members’ clubs, will be easily enforced. Let’s hope it meets the same fate as the anti-foxhunting measure. I say this as someone who does not smoke or hunt on horseback (despite being a Suffolk farmer’s son, hunting with hounds never appealed, although I have shot the odd bunny rabbit from time to time).
Danny Finklestein has had a nightmare. About Britain becoming a despotic state. This one-time advisor to John Major (oh dear, we all make errors), even says this:
“But I have to admit that the legislation being debated in the Commons this week — the new ID cards, the smoking ban, the measure on the glorification of terror — has tempted me to take up smoking and start attending lectures about Hayek organised by earnest men with pamphlets in carrier bags.”
Nice patronising tone there Danny – I tend not to bother with carrier bags these days. Welcome to the concept of liberty and limited government.
As a bit of a diversion from fretting about Britain’s slide into a police state, take this quiz and see which sci-fi series you would be most comfortable in. Perhaps not surprisingly, Firefly turned out to be the one for me, followed closely by Battlestar Galactica. I feel comfortable about that. Thank goodness it was not Star Trek.
(Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the pointer).
MPs have just voted in favour of making it compulsory for Britons to have an ID card when they apply for a passport. Bastards.
U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney wounded a fellow shooter of quail in an accident. Well, I guess it shows what a gulf now exists between the U.S. government and our own. I cannot imagine a single senior Labour politician who would spend time out shooting. (Imagine John Prescott doing it. Actually, don’t). The story reminds me of another deputy leader, the late William Whitelaw (a decorated soldier in the Normandy WW2 campaign), who managed to fire some buckshot at someone during a grouse shooting meeting in the Scottish highlands.
Many politicians in the past have enjoyed the pastime of shooting game. Many MPs were landed gentry, who could not wait to get out of smelly London in the summer months and, once the game season started in August, would blast away at hapless birds, bagging them in prodigious quantities. And several paid the price. Robert Peel, Prime Minister in the 1840s, suffered a nasty buzzing in one of his ears after a gun went off too close. Salisbury and Churchill shot game, as did Macmillan and Alec Douglas Home. Across the big pond there was no greater hunter of game, of course, than Teddy Roosevelt.
All that tradition is fading out. I cannot imagine Tory leader David Cameron shooting game (imagine how that would jar with his trendy image) although his ancestors probably nailed whole flocks of pheasants in their time.
Anyway, the lesson of all this is that if you find yourself in the company of a politician holding a shotgun, stand well behind.
Thanks to modern safety improvements, motor racing is not quite as dangerous as it used to be – although it probably still takes nerves of steel to hurtle around a circuit in a modern F1 car – but if there is a sport that for me demonstrates sporting bravery at its most extreme, it has to be the downhill skiing and bob-sleigh events I am currently watching at the Winter Olympics near Turin.
Being only a moderately competent skier myself, I bow in awe when I see the pros hurtle down icy slopes at speeds touching 100 mph. Wow.
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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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