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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Some readers who enjoy British history may recall that period in the 18th Century when highway robbers like Dick Turpin acquired a certain notoriety as they held travellers at gunpoint and stole valuables while simultaneously charming their female victims. Like most such ‘legends’, the truth was usually rather grubbier and more unpleasant.
Well, I had an example of being charmed into surrendering a large chunk of my wealth by force the other morning. As in the USA, where working-age citizens are currently going through the chores of filing their IRS forms, the British Inland Revenue is busy getting us all ready to pay our taxes. I received a form which said, “You have been chosen to receive this new short tax return.” Golly, how grateful am I supposed to feel? I have been ‘chosen’, apparently. It is made to sound as if I have been invited on board a millionaire’s yacht off St. Tropez for a spot of weekend sailing.
Even worse, the form ends with the little motto, no doubt dreamed up by some clever chap, “Tax doesn’t have to be taxing.” Aahhhh! You see, the Inland Revenue can make the experience of telling us how much wealth we must pay out an easy, even pleasurable experience.
Why do I go on about this? Well, in a subliminal way, forms like this encourage the citizen to accept the tax burden as a natural, and even wholly benign part of the human order. It is another way of wearing us down. And that is a bad thing. Personally, I am actually glad that the Americans have a nasty time filing their tax returns because once a year it reminds the citizens of Jefferson’s Republic of just how far they have gone from the modest government ambitions of the Founding Fathers. The easier we Brits can pay our taxes, the less angry we might be about the taxes in the first place.
Of course, this all leaves aside the issue of whether, even in a minarchist or anarcho-capitalist order, we could get by without some form of collective funding for stuff like external defence and internal courts and so on. I have a few thoughts but it is too big a topic for a single blog item. I’ll have to return to this point another time. Of course that’s no reason why others cannot have a go. Comments welcome as always.
The forthcoming Olympic Games which are to be held in the birthplace of this event, Greece, promise to cause a few headaches. In particular, security services around the world must be wondering what level of risk is being run in holding an event relatively close to the Middle East, and in which lots of Americans, Brits, Israelis and other parts of Dubya’s great Zionist/Halliburton conspiracy are taking part.
So while I was chatting to a work colleague about Greeks’ own views of the situation, I came across a corker of a quote from an unnamed Olympic official:
Greece hasn’t hit the panic button yet. That is because it hasn’t even installed the necessary wiring.
Brilliant.
Sometimes a widely-practised custom falls out of use in a way that, looked at with hindsight it seems amazing to us that humans could behave in the ways they did. Consider the Romans’ love of gladiatorial combat, for example. Perhaps in future our descendants will read with amazement about the habit of inhaling tobacco smoke or drinking intoxicating and health-affecting beverages known as wine and beer.
Well, one activity to have disappeared from Western life is the practice of duelling. I thought about this after watching a remarkable film, recently released on DVD, called The Duellists, a film set in Napoleonic France and starring Harvey Keitel and David Carradine. One of the earliest directional efforts of Ridley Scott (who later did stuff like Gladiator and Bladerunner), it is an excellent work. Keitel’s character obsessively pursues his vendetta against his opponent, although the affair ends not in the death of either, but the humiliation of one. → Continue reading: Pistols (or swords) at dawn
One of the great pleasures and advantages of living in Pimlico, in central London, is its proximity to one of the world’s great art galleries, The Tate, a fine classical building looking over the Thames. Recently my girlfriend and I went around two separate exhibitions and had two contrasting experiences not far different in extremes from the North Pole and the Sahara Desert.
The first exhibition was a display of Pre-Raphaelite art, from that group of talented, romantic and at times eccentric group of artists in the middle of 19th Century England. They took their inspiration, as the word pre-Raphaelite suggests, from the Renaissance artist Raphael. Some of them were intensely religious, while others took a passionate interest in the natural world.
I must say I have mixed reactions to their art. Some of the paintings, particularly the coastal seascapes and the depictions of the Swiss Alps, were stunning. Others, while rendered with incredible attention to detail, left me rather cold. There is something almost rather mannered about this art, as if it was produced by someone trying too hard to impress. On the whole, however, I could not fail to be struck by the descriptive lust of these artists, their desire to convey the world as they saw it and as it could be.
And then, after a slurp of wine – we were at a private viewing – we set off to another part of the Tate for an altogether different experience, namely, a selection of ‘art’ (I will explain the inverted commas a bit later) by some of the world’s newest artists, including the so-called enfant terrible of the Brtitish art establishment, Damien Hirst., and Sarah Lucas, about whom I had not heard before.
Some of the exhibits featured dead animals inside tanks containing fluids, bits of sausages, live fish, a brain, bottles of wine, a bucket, and other bits and pieces I could not readily identify. Two exhibits were models of people undergoing surgery, with nothing showing apart from their genitals. Several large oval-shaped boards were covered with hundreds of dead butterflies. An empty full-size truck cab, plastered in its interior with tabloid newspapers, had a man’s arm pumping up and down in a familiar sexual act. In fact, several exhibits seemed to portray human bodily functions, as if the exhibits had been assembled by a sniggering, slightly conceited 12-year schoolboy trying to shock his elders.
I will not deny Hirst and others like him are folk with a certain talent. They are talented in much the same way that pickpockets can be said to be talented. But to what effect? So much of his art seems to shout, “I am taking the mickey out of you stupid, repressed middle class wankers”……No doubt Hirst thinks he is being ever so clever and subversive, and judging by the large audiences for his work, he probably is. What perhaps is forgotten is that the image of the artist as the mocker of bourgeois sensibilities, far from being daring and new, is in fact very dated, and bang in line with the ethos of the Modern Art establishment. They are the bores of our age.
There you have it. About 150 years from the Pre-Raphaelites, we have gone from the ability to portray nature with passionate concern for accuracy, and an essentially warm embrace of human life, to lumps of meat in tanks, and to images of human beings sitting on the toilet, smoking a cigarette. Perhaps these folk really have caught the meaning of Blair’s Britain, after all.
Addendum: if you are as disgusted as I am by the bogus nature of much modern art, but cannot always put that disgust into words, then I strongly recommend the book, What Art Is, written by Louis Torres and Michelle Marder Kamhi. It unashamedly defends representational art, questions whether certain forms, such as abstract painting, really can pass muster as art, and perhaps controversially, argues that photography does not pass the test. I do not agree with everything in the book but it is well worth the attention.
Let’s take some time off away from the gloomy issues of the day to drool over the latest creation of the Ferrari empire. This car looks fantastic.
A four-door car that does 200mph. This model looks particularly good in silver, as is the case with a lot of famous Ferraris. Is capitalism wonderful or what?
Some time ago I posted here that the weekly British publication, The Spectator, edited by Tory MP and jolly good chap Boris Johnson, had lost some of its quality and class.
I can just about take reading Simon Jenkins on why we should stop worrying about terror, even if his comments are published on the day of the Madrid horror. I can even take reading Ross Clark on why we should learn to love speed cameras and pay inheritance tax, or learn from Sir Max Hastings as to why we British are so much finer military strategists than those awfully common Americans with their silly Apache helicopters. And of course the Spectator has the brilliant Mark Steyn, who looks increasingly uncomfortable amid the snobs, America-bashers, Murdochphobes and BBC castoffs like Rod Liddle.
But that magazine’s ‘High Life’ columnist, Taki , is neither witty, interesting or informative. His writings frequently plummet depths I thought it impossible to tolerate in that magazine. He has got into difficulties before over his outspoken attacks on the often Jewish policymakers and intellectuals he associates with the neo-conservative movement. That of course is not necessarily proof that Taki is an anti-semite, and it is a charge one should only make with great care.
But when you read about Taki’s thoughts in this week’s magazine (link requires registration) on the “wallet-lifting” Richard Perle, what on earth is one to suppose Taki is getting at? (“Those People, you know, very crafty with money”).
One might ask why one should care. Well, I care about the fate of what has been at times the finest magazine in the English language, a place that has inspired me with writers of such grace as the late Colin Welch and the brilliant satire of the late, and much missed, Auberon Waugh. We also need, in a healthy media world, a weekly alternative to the awful New Statesman. But the Greek boy has always been the bad smell at the back. Time for him to go. Go on Boris, make my day.
The drivers of Britain’s famous black cabs, especially those widely used in London, are renowed for the robust independence of mind they bring to their job. Enterprising, hardworking and usually full of sharp intelligence, the drivers of our black cabs are a welcome reminder that parts of the British economy are in fine fettle. (My only beef is that they all seem to be West Ham soccer fans).
The same holds true north of the border, I am glad to say. This week I was up in Scotland for a business conference and on my way from Edinburgh Airport, the driver immediately felt free to tell me what he thought of British finance minister Gordon Brown (also a Scot) and his budget. (Brown delivered his budget speech to the House of Commons on Wednesday).
It is fair to say that this obviously hardworking driver despised the whole tax-and-spend culture of the present Labour government. The driver waxed lyrical in his hatred of Scotland’s new spendthrift and recently devolved parliament, wasteful public spending across the board, and of course, the ludicrously bloated costs of the new Scottish parliament building. The latter subject, in particular, is a scandal of monstrous proportions. The people of Scotland are truly steamed up on this issue.
My driver was true to the bracing laissez faire values of that great Scot, Adam Smith. My only problem, though, was that I understood only about a third of what the chap said.
Some of those opposed to the military ouster of Saddam Hussein’s regime, such as libertarian isolationists like Jim Henley, for instance, have repeatedly maintained that there was little or no regular and operational contact between the unlamented dictator and operatives of al-Qaeda and other radical islamist forces. The lack of a clear link remains a central plank of opposition to George W. Bush’s doctrine of going after regimes which sponsor terror. At most, such critics contend that the Iraq links were no more than low-level and no justification for military action. Of course, much of the evidence for a link prior to 9/11 was circumstantial at best.
Well, if it were the case that no link existed, why did the statement purporting to be from al-Qaeda after the Madrid atrocities make such a big deal of Spain’s involvement in the Iraq liberation, when, according to the naysayers, Iraq had nothing to do with al-Qaeda? In fact, the Islamo-fascists seem more convinced of a common cause with the fate of Saddam and his regime than antiwar types seem to do. Curious.
Of course, it may be that the islamists are opportunists, perceiving that anything that can sow discord between European nations and between Europe and the US is a good thing. It may also be the case that the islamists believe that any incursion by western, secular forces into a region they deem off-limits is a dishonour to them, and hence justification for retaliation. They obviously do not extend their islamic embrace to Shiite muslims, whom they have massacred in the hundreds.
Even so, the very fact that the Iraq and Afghan operations were mentioned as ‘justifications’ for the Madrid massacres ought to give pause to those who claim that those countries’ regimes had had no direct connection to islamist forces. Ousting the Taliban and Saddam Hussein were two major blows against fundamentalist terror. The terrorists know this better than anyone, which is why the message coming out of Spanish politics today is so troubling.
One of my favourite films, which I watched again last night on my DVD machine, is The Right Stuff. It superbly captures the era spanning the end of the Second World War and the mid-1960s, when test pilots like Chuck Yeager and astronauts like wisecrackin’ Alan Shepherd put their “hides on the line” to test new limits of speed and height in the early parts of the space race. Among the many things that jumps out of this marvellous film, made about 20 years ago and based on the book of the same title by Tom Wolfe, is the almost blase treatment of risk.
Right at the start, when Yeager is testing the Bell X-1, he manages to hurt his ribs through a late-night horseriding incident (he was racing his missus from the pub, like one does in Nevada). Next morning, on the day in which he eventually becomes the first man to officially break the sound barrier, Yeager is in agony. He realises he cannot shut the door on the plane with his right arm because of his injury. So he gets a colleague to cut him a length of stick so he can slam down the door with his only useful arm.
That’s right. The world’s most celebrated test pilot hit Mach One using one functioning arm. Not the sort of thing a modern health and safety bureaucrat would approve of, I am sure.
International news agency Reuters reports that a van, containing Arabic language tapes and detonators, has been searched close to the scene of today’s mass murders in Spain. So far, the authorities have maintained that the atrocities were the handiwork of terror group ETA, but there could be a possibility that Islamo-fascists had a hand in this affair, possibly even to the point of directing the operations.
The truth is that no-one can be certain for sure, and we must be mindful about jumping to conclusions. But given Spain’s support for the U.S.-led liberation of Iraq, and Spain’s proximity to north Africa, there is a serious possibility that Islamists may have played a part in this.
There is also the worrying thought that terror groups, who have come under growing pressure from law enforcement agencies and the military since 9/11, are becoming more desperate and hence willing to co-operate with those they would have previously ignored.
If true, it makes the sneering article by Simon Jenkins in today’s Spectator, in which he mocks Blair’s concerns over global terror networks and their access to WMDs, not only wrongheaded, but frivolous in the extreme. London, Paris, Berlin or Rome could be next. Nothing to worry about eh, Simple Simon?
A black day for Spain. My heart goes out to the people of that wonderful country.
The other day I came across this article during some random Web surfing, which contained a fairly familiar conservative hammering of what is loosely defined as the Baby Boomer Generation, that portion of the mostly Western population now on the verge of hitting the age of retirement.
In essentials, the argument runs like this: baby boomers are self-obsessed, adopted some mind-bindingly dumb (mostly left) political views; undermined respect for any kind of authority; addled their brains with drugs during the infamous Sixties and now expect we younger folk to shoulder the burgeoning cost of keeping them in retirement. Blah, bloody blah-blah.
Yes, you may have guessed it – this writer (born in that greatest of years, 1966, about a month before England won the soccer World Cup) is not entirely sold on the conservative critique, even though I share some distaste at the dumb political and cultural stances that were taken by said generation. But one thing which I frequently note is this – the BB generation is often attacked for being self-interested and focussed on acquiring self-esteem. But wait a minute. As a libertarian and unashamed individualist, I have to ask: what is wrong with wishing to improve one’s life, exactly? After all, one of the most widely books in that stiff-necked era, that of the Victorians, was Samuel Smiles’ hymn to self-improvement.
Surely, anyone who believes their life is their own, and not that of the State, Volk, proletariat, God, Allah, or the Great Green whatever, will embrace the notion of self-improvement. After all, much of the libertarian movement we know today, with all its different strains, acquired a considerable amount of energy during the 1950s and 60s. David Friedman, for example, who is the son of Milton Friedman and a leading exponent of anarcho-capitalism, might be regarded as a baby boomer. A good number of those who were inspired by the ideas of author and philosopher Ayn Rand were baby boomers. The Libertarian Alliance’s own director, Dr Chris R. Tame, and LA editorial boss and Samizdata.net scribe, Brian Micklethwait, were of the boomer generation.
To put it another way, let us avoid the groupthink mentality that would bracket a whole generation under one heading. The BB generation contain a fair share of boobies, charlatans and fools. It also contains folk I greatly admire and am proud to call my friends.
Blogger and libertarian authoress Virginia Postrel, in her recent book, The Future and Its Enemies, made a telling point that having fun and free enterprise are increasingly being fused in the same activities.
She cited the example of sports like professional beach volleyball. Now, there are few activities which might excite the moral scorn of the miserablists of the left and right more than a group of young men and women (the latter in rather fetching garb, ahem) punching a ball to and fro over a net. Well, if the idea of volleyball as part of an enterprise culture offends the scolds in our midst, then how about skiing?
I have recently had my annual fix of shooting down ski slopes in the French resort of Val D’Isere, a magnificent resort . I enjoyed a fantastic week. There are few adrenalin-boosting activities to match it, in my view. And putting aside the obvious points about this activity, one thing struck me – skiing is a classic part of a capitalist, fun-loving, life-affirming culture.
Skiing is ‘pointless’ to those who think we should devote our energies to ‘higher’ activities, or who think that all those resources spent on ski lifts, skis, hotels and airliners should be diverted to other, worthier goals. Skiing is a vast industry these days. Unlike spectator sports such as football or cricket, skiing is 99 percent participant sport. Millions of people of all ages – mostly being relatively fit – go skiing in places all over the world every year.
Many of the people who work in ski resorts – guides, holiday reps, lift attendants, bar staff and so forth – all seem to form part of a new culture remarkably similar to the sort of laid-back surfing culture made legendary in southern California. While affecting a sort of casual demeanor, most of the people seem in deadly earnest about ensuring they serve the skiers well. A lot of the holiday staff, many of whom have taken big salary cuts to go to the mountains, seem to speak a sort of ‘leisure industry slang’, a sort of hybrid of Australian ‘matespeak’, Californian ‘coolspeak’, and in France of course, overlain with that Galoise-smoking sang froid of the expert skiier with his nonchalant posture.
Skiing is a major triumph of capitalist organisation and enterprise. And even in the French Alps, in the homeland of the 35-hour week and dreaded bureaucracy, it seems one of the most successful businesses in France. In fact, I got the impression that many staff in the French ski businesses have to work for far longer than is permitted under the nation’s job-destroying regulations.
And as a final observation, skiing is risky. Good grief, allowing folk to go down a slope without a State licence – are we mad?
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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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