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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You don’t have to hold an anti-interventionist stance regarding Iraq to feel mighty queasy about this story in the Washington Post, which covers a case where the U.S. Army seized the family of an Iraqi officer, threatening to hold the family until the person concerned co-operated with the Army’s requests.
Lovely. If the coalition wants to hand propaganda material on a plate to those who would have preferred Saddam to remain in charge than that we should have liberated that country, then this sort of thing is just ideal.
I hope the persons responsible are dealt with harshly for this.
And I don’t want lots of comments about how “Pearce has turned into a peacnik idiot yada-yada”. Kidnapping is wrong. Period.
Blogger Jim Henley of Unqualified Offerings looks into the issue of American football teams whose names have sparked controversy, such as teams calling themselves the Redskins, and so on. Now I don’t want to enter the swamps of that particular controversy, which Jim negotiates with customary dexterity. No what struck me is this – why don’t European sports teams have such names at all?
For example, consider the Premiership football (soccer to you barbarians in the colonies) league. The teams are called Manchester United, Liverpool FC, Tottenham Hotspur, etc. Not many references to ethnic groups there (though of course football does have its ethnic issues, as any Glasgow Rangers or Celtic fan would point out). The nomaclature of football is pretty tame, even while the makeup of the teams and the fans is not.
Look elsewhere. English cricket teams are named after counties of England. All very staid. Of course when you go outside the field of professional sports, it can get a bit more interesting. I occasionally play cricket for a side called The Pretenders. (My favourite cricket team was called The Corridor of Uncertainty!). But at the professional level at least, British teams sound about as exciting as a German movie without the subtitles.
Why are our teams sporting such dull names compared to our American cousins? I need enlightenment on this subject.
Angelina Jolie, curvaceous star of the latest movie based on mega-hit computer game, Tomb Raider, reckons that the busty, heavily-armed heroine is a role model for women. Hmmm. An interesting thought. Croft knows how to handle guns, is mighty tough in a fight, and is rather easy on the eye (as Ms Jolie assuredly is). The ultimate libertarian heroine, perhaps?
A feature of popular culture in these past few years has been the ascent of the kick-ass female movie/tv star. Think of Buffy, for example; the character Trinity in the Matrix films, or the ladies on Charlies’ Angels. I think the whole thing got started with the likes of Honor Blackman and Diana Rigg in the old Avengers television series, and in some of the better James Bond movies.
One thing all these women have in common is that they are a million miles away from the ‘victim culture’. Nothing passive or helpless about them. It seems that popular culture is diverging increasingly from the political and legal realm. On the one hand, you have superheroes and heroines on the Big Screen. On the other, you have twerps suing fast-food joints for ‘making’ them fat.
I wonder what explains this divide?
I have been enjoying the television documentary of the American war of Independence shown over on the BBC (yes, that pinko channel!), presented by military historian Richard Holmes.
Bestriding around the countryside, Holmes is excellent. He even looks the part with his bearing and military moustache – you could imagine him in an army officer’s uniform circa 1940.
During his trip Holmes asked some locals on a bus travelling near Charleston about what the war meant to them. One elderly lady gave an articulate take, arguing about the issues of taxation, representation and liberty. And then he spoke to a young guy, probably in his early 20s, who came out with this gem. I paraphrase slightly:
Well, it was all about rich folks, who just did not want to pay their taxes. If it hadn’t been for them, we’d be British, and enjoy (!) socialised medicine.
So there you have it. Some of the younger American generation wish that George Washington had lost so that all Americans could use the National Health Service.
Don’t know whether to laugh or cry, really.
Dale Amon on these pages rightly notes the anniversary of the Moon landings of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. Well, it seems that another Armstrong is pushing back the boundaries of the possible on a slightly lower-altitude setting, in the current Tour de France.
Yes, I know, and before any churlish types feel the urge to carp, cycling is not exactly the most visually exciting sport around. But anyone who has actually taken part in competitive cycling, or seen, as I have, such folk shoot past on a French mountain pass, can only gasp in astonishment at what Lance Armstrong has achieved.
And being nice to the French, there can be few doubts that the Tour is one of the most physically demanding sports events known to Man.
Mind you, the next time I go to France, I am taking the autoroute.
Formula One motor racing has suffered from becoming increasingly dull as a spectacle in recent years. There seems to be less overtaking. The cars often look silly with their gaudy advertising and don’t have the aesthetic grace of old. Partly, I think, this perception of dullness is down to the increasingly safe nature of the sport. It is a terrible thing for folk to admit, but it is now much more difficult for a motor racer to get killed than during the heyday of Fangio and Jim Clark (arguably the two greatest drivers ever). I have actually driven around the old Nurburgring circuit in the Rhineland area of Germany – the track that nearly killed Nikki Lauda back in the mid-1970s. I was driving in a regular saloon car with my Dad and got out, shaking and trembling after negotiating the twists and turns of the track. How a driver could have thrown one of those massive old Auto-Unions or Mercedes around such a track and emerge unscathed is a miracle. No wonder the Germans rebuilt this fearsome track into something much safer
So maybe the loon who chose to walk on to the circuit at Britain’s Silverstone track on Sunday was trying to inject an element of raw danger back into the sport. It was very lucky – and also a tribute to the bravery of the one of the track marshalls, that no-one got killed.
What was this twit thinking? No doubt the usual wailers from the nanny state brigade will start demanding all kinds of fresh controls and restrictions. And I have no doubt that our flat-earth chums from the anti-globalista movement will have motor racing in their cross-hairs eventually. All those gas-guzzling fast cars with their C02 emissions, ugh!
Last evening I attended a seminar hosted by the Conservative Party group, cChange on the issue of civil partnerships. Civil partnerships are being advocated by the present Labour government as a way of enabling gay and lesbian couples to legally formalise their relationships in a number of ways, allowing them to take advantage of some, if not all, of the advantages now accruing to married heterosexuals.
I am not going to rehearse all the various arguments in favour or against such a move. Suffice to say that, unless some overwhelming public interest or danger can be shown to exist, the burden of proof should rest on the shoulders of those who would ban any adult – important qualification – wishing to enter into a lifetime commitment with any other person (s). (Yep, that includes polygamy, in case you are asking).
A number of other bloggers much more qualified than I, such as British ex-pat Andrew Sullivan and the group blog at the Volokh Conspiracy have argued as to why gay marriage, for instance, would be entirely consistent with a broadly socially conservative worldview. Sullivan points out that allowing gay men – like himself – to marry would probably reduce, not raise, male promiscuity and actually strengthen the bonds of civil society, including heterosexual marriage.
Last night’s seminar was interesting for several reasons. Arguing for civil partnerships was Conservative MP for Buckingham, John Bercow. Arguing against was Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips. I was pretty impressed by the quality of arguments on both sides. Bercow gave a broadly libertarian argument, one based on the idea that although ‘traditional’ marriage was a Good Thing, there was nothing so fragile about it that enabling non-straights to marry would send the world spinning out of control. → Continue reading: Civil unions
It is getting mighty hot around here. For the last few days I have been saying a silent prayer to the inventor of modern office air conditioning. Without such technology, it is hard to imagine how much of our present-day economy could work at the pace it does. Large parts of the southern U.S., for example, as well as financial hubs like Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Frankfurt would be unworkable.
Come to think of it, air-conditioning is probably one of the most economically significant inventions of our time. It may even be more important than the internet, though I may be shot for even suggesting this.
Meanwhile, this report has some sizzling stats on how hot it is getting. I am a bit of a skeptic on the issue of the Greenhouse Effect, and naturally suspicious of the Green agenda thereon, but it is easy to see how this theory gains traction in such sweltering conditions as we have at the moment.
Right, time for an ice-cream.
There is a fine article in The Times today (link requires registration and may not work outside UK) by Mick Hume, bemoaning the decline of belief in individual responsibility and the growing use of the word “addiction” to describe almost every form of repetitive behaviour.
As the article can only be read through registration (grrr), here’s the opening gaff:
“We are becoming a nation of addiction addicts. Our society has become hooked on the habit of blaming human behaviour on some form of addiction. Apparently normal people – doctors, scientists, politicians (normal? ed), even journalists (ditto? ed) – seem incapable of resisting the urge to inject “addict” or “dependency” into any discussion of social problems.”
Exactly. The use of the word addict is used by policymakers to assault the idea of Man as a being with free will. We are all essentially passive victims. By doing so, it opens the floodgates to authortarian control of our lives. Look at the massive lawsuits against tobacco firms. Now I hold no brief for such firms, but the idea that people become so “addicted” to X or Y that they are unable to resist is surely contradicted by evidence all around us of people quitting such repetitive habits. Millions of people have in recent decades quit smoking, for example, like the good David Carr of this parish. Many have taken the painful step of quitting hard drugs or quitting alcohol. Of course change can be acutely difficult, which is why we praise folk who take the step of leading a healthier life.
Addiction is a word in danger of being rendered useless by applying it to just about every form of behaviour which is either frowned upon or a repeat form of activity.
Come to that, I suppose I must be “addicted” to blogging. Help me nurse, I am using Movable Type again!
“But it may be that I shall leave a name sometimes remembered with expressions of goodwill in the abodes of those whose lot it is to labour, and to earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow, when they shall recuit their exhausted strength with abundant and untaxed food, the sweeter because it is no longer leavened by a sense of injustice”.
– Sir Robert Peel, British statesman (1788-1850)
The quote by Peel above, coming as it does from one of the greatest of British statesmen and a free-trader who paid a high political price for his convictions, ought to be remembered as we contemplate the recent trip by President George W. Bush to Africa, and indeed the trips by numerous western leaders to the poorer parts of the world.
We live in times when we are constantly told that it is the duty of the prosperous industrial nations to help lift their poorer peers, such as in Africa, to a wealthier state. And yet nothing could be more useful in that aim than if governments, such as those which support the EU and U.S. farm subsidies, chose the path of genuine laissez faire.
Sir Robert Peel may not be a name familiar to many people today – more’s the pity. He may be mainly known as the man who established London’s Metropolitan Police (which is why our police are still sometimes called “bobbies”).
When one considers how he put the industrial future and prosperity of the masses before the vested interests of the land by embracing free trade, the dimwits who inhabit our government today look very small indeed.
After recovering from the revelries at the blogger bash, there was no better way to unwind than enjoy a trip down to Greenwich, east London, and wander around the superb clipper sailing ship in dry dock, the Cutty Sark.
This three-masted, square-rigged jewel of 19th century sailing technology was built to carry goods like Chinese tea, Australian wool and other products at high speed to London. The vessel that could moor up at the great port of London ahead of the competition would get the best prices for its produce. These great beasts of the high seas were sailed with the kind of white-knuckle speed and skill that would put a modern America’s Cup yacht race to shame. They often frequently would beat steam-driven vessels over comparable distances.
When we think about today’s rows about globalisation it is easy to assume that so many aspects of economic life are new. They are not. Our Victorian forbears already conducted trade on a vast scale. Ships such as the Cutty Sark commonly had cosmopolitan crews from countries across the world. There were very few regulations governing who could join up as a merchant seaman.
Of course, many aspects of life have improved since then. I dread to think what it must have been like to climb aloft the Cutty Sark’s mainmast in a gale to reef in a sail with the ship rolling about – and you can forget anything like safety harnesses. But these men enjoyed an enterprising life which at times makes yours truly almost feel quite jealous.
When the state of California was hit by rolling power blackouts two years ago, some commentators at the time daftly blamed it on privatised electricity generation, when of course the real cause was the partial deregulation of power in the state. There was no market incentive for power generation firms to increase production, and ferocious environmental controls and “not in my back yard” planning wrangles also crimped capacity.
Well, looks like we could be headed for a similar fate here in Britain, for the first time since the unlamented 1970s, according to this article. If we have a bad winter in say, 2006, the lights could go out for part of the time.
Not all of this can or should be blamed on the current Labour government. But there is no doubt that its determination to suppress nuclear power, its failure to genuinely liberate energy supply and production, could leave the UK facing a serious problem. The economic consequences could be disastrous.
So when you find yourself brushing your teeth in the dark, think of the insincere, smiling visage of Saint Tony.
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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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