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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On this day, nearly two hundred years ago, the artillery, cavalry and red coated infantry of Britain, along with their Dutch and Prussian allies, finally put an end to the tyrannical rule of Napoleon Bonaparte on the Belgian wheat fields of Waterloo, near Brussels. It was the Duke of Wellington’s greatest triumph.
Given that this blog is of course, such a great fan of the French political class (heh), I trust no readers of this publication would be so vulgar and unsophisticated to point out this salient historical anniversary to their friends and colleagues today.
I just thought you would like to have this titbit of historical information, gentle reader.
“Up Guards, and at ’em!”
– Wellington, June 18th 1815
My article yesterday about the Aidan Rankin piece in the Spectator, and some of the feedback in the comments section, got me thinking about the state of that magazine these days.
Frankly, it is a much diminished force, even though in raw terms it has a larger circulation than 20 years ago. I recall first reading this weekly back in the middle of the 1980s, when it had writers of elegance and dagger-sharp wit, such as the late and much missed Auberon Waugh (son of Evelyn Waugh), ex Daily Telegraph editorial writer Colin Welch (a great student of Hayek and other classical liberal writers), Ferdinand Mount and much more. There was even dear old drunken Jeffrey Bernard musing at the back of the mag about his slow vodka-assisted march towards the Grim Reaper, love of horseracing and racy women.
Alas, with the exception of the incomparable Mark Steyn and the odd individual firecracker of an article, there is more to annoy than charm about this publication today. It reached its high point, I think, when Charles Moore was editor more than 10 years ago. It has never really managed to hit the heights consistently since. It is all too often snobbish, cliched (like the Rankin article quoted above), and inexplicably still gives a perch for that old bigot, Taki.
The Spectator used to be a great sounding board for some of the more challenging ideas coming from conservative/libertarian circles. But today the magazine has lost much of its intellectual espri de corps. Instead we the likes of Matthew Parris bemoaning the demise of Saddam Hussein, for goodness sake.
I think change is needed. The current editor, Boris Johnson, is obviously too busy working as an MP and working on his role as the Young Fogey for the 21st Century to spend a lot of time improving the magazine. Something needs to be done.
I am of course far too modest to suggest a possible replacement.
Having been involved in British libertarian circles since I was in my late teens about 18 years ago – god that makes me feel old – I have gotten used to the charge that the likes of us are crazed dogmatists. In Britain’s notoriously anti-intellectual culture, being interested in ideas, and worse, ideas which question the need for most of what governments do, is to be branded as a dangerous nutter. (Mind you, having read abusive comments directed at yours truly by various LewRockwell.com types, I feel almost quite moderate and middle-of-the-road these days.)
Step forward Aidan Rankin, who in The Spectator magazine, charges that eurosceptics within the Tory Party and among libertarian circles are the “new Trotskyists,” every bit as militant and dogmatic as the old left. In a way, that is a backhanded compliment of sorts because it shows that folk like Rankin are at least becoming aware of our existence, even though they prefer to construct straw men for the purpose of easy knock-down pieces rather than describe us more accurately. Anyway, let us fisk:
On Europeans and other issues the Tories are still impeded – not by indecision as in the recent past, but by an insidious ideological rigidity, a right-wing version of political correctness.
Huh? Really? Has the Tory Party, in recent years, called for, say, total withdrawal by this country from the EU? No. But to read Rankin you would assume that to be the case.
Public scepticism about the single currency is matched by the lack of public support for Eurosceptic campaigns. This is because even to sympathetic observers such campaigns appear so often to be bitter and bigoted.
He has half a point. I think the eurosceptic lobby would do better to focus on the essentially illiberal nature of the EU rather than on the fact that is being run by vile Frogs, etc. → Continue reading: Straw men
The UK government has been announcing a number of changes to the membership of its Cabinet recently. Topping the news billing was the resignation of Alan Milburn, the Health Secretary. He is a key Blair ally and who had fought tooth and nail to set up “foundation hospitals”, which were a very tentative step towards making the health service more flexible. (I stress the word tentative. The change is a zillion miles from what I would like – total privatisation).
He has gone, supposedly to “spend more time with his family”, to use the hackneyed expression, according to this report by Reuters. And yet that report by Reuters does not mention the significance of Milburn’s departure at all. Why not? Blair is in trouble at the moment for the shambolic state of our public services – sure to be a future election issue – and allegedly exaggerating the WMD threat in Iraq. A key ally of his has gone. You would have thought this fact would have been noted. It surely suggests that Chancellor Gordon Brown, who was at loggerheads with Milburn, has seen off a key rival.
Be interested to see what the estimable Stephen Pollard, who has been following this issue with customary rigour, makes of all this.
There is quite a procession of folks headed for Mars at the moment, according to this BBC report. Coming relatively soon after the awful Shuttle disaster, it is heartening to see some actual stirrings of decent activity in the space field at the moment.
Godspeed to them all.
A quick suggestion – given the differences within the libertarian section of the political jungle about the case for or against armed intervention in other states, what do fellow contributors and commenters think about us setting up a one-day conference or suchlike on this topic?
I’m really interested to set something up, probably here in London. (But of course I would hope some non-Brit folk could be persuaded into coming).
Blogging is fantastic but sometimes there is still a place for face-to-face debate. And you get to hold the event right next to a pub!
Arthur Silber, whose “Light of Reason” blog I generally admire, is not very happy so it seems with our own Perry de Havilland for his recent dig at Jim Henley over the outcome of the recent Iraq war. Now, I am not going to revisit this increasingly well-flogged dead horse.
No, what I want to consider is a more general issue of principle. Arthur is a follower, in broad terms, of the ethical egoist philosophy set out by the late Ayn Rand. Rand denounced all those philosophers who enjoined Man to sacrifice his happiness and values for some other, usually mystical or collective, “good”. Instead, she set out an alternative, the “virtue of selfishness”, questioning why it is wrong for man to acquire and keep a value, including non-material ones such as respect, and freedom.
Arthur’s basic disagreement, so it appears, with those like Perry and I who have advocated toppling Saddam seems to rest on the idea that is is “altruistic” and hence wrong, to wish to liberate countries such as Iraq. No truly “selfish” libertarian could possibly endorse such regrettably altruistic behaviour, particularly if it costs blood and treasure. Force is only ever justified, on this view, if one has been directly attacked already and has the names, addresses and confessions of the attacker.
I think Arthur misses a key point. Consider the following – suppose that it is clear (and it is) that the bulk of Iraqi people hate Saddam and want rid of him (the Baathist thugs who benefitted from his rule are naturally not so keen). Suppose that the Coalition’s armed forces regard it is a great value to them that they should serve in forces which enable them to liberate folks from tyranny. This would be even clearer if they were funded like mercenary armies by consenting adults rather than through coercive taxation. Well, if these sort of considerations apply, the liberation of Iraq is a deeply “selfish” act on the terms that Rand would have seen it. It is a positive sum-game for both the liberators and the liberated.
Now of course none of the above resolves the more immediate issues of whether Bush and co exaggerated the WMD threat, whether Iraq was the most pressing issue after 9/11, or whether Saddam was clearly in direct cahoots with terror groups. My point is more fundamental. Many isolationists seem to have elevated the non-initiation of force principle to the level where it inadvertently seems to endorse the existence of particular nation states, including those run by the most brutal folk imaginable. What is so libertarian about this? Why should an Iraq, Soviet Union or a Nazi Germany’s national borders be accorded the same respect as those of a liberal democracy?
By all means let us preserve good manners in the libertarian parish. But those who argue that intervention a la Iraq is always and everywhere wrong are not, in my humble opinion, entitled to claim that those who differ are not libertarians.
And by the way, 99 percent of the stuff on Arthur’s blog is just brilliant.
Howell Raines, chief editor of the New York Times, that bastion of liberal-left opinion, has resigned, following the recent scandal surrounding young ex-reporter Jayson Blair, who fabricated numerous reports for a period of several months.
It would be arrogant to claim that Raines, who devoted inordinate editorial resources to covering such crucial matters as the admissions policy of the Augusta golf club while forces were fighting in Iraq, could be described as the victim of the blogosphere. But nonetheless bloggers like Andrew Sullivan have been relentless in chronicling how this paper has lost its way under Raines’ leadership.
Perhaps, along the lines of a famous tune, Sullivan and the rest should be humming:
“I can write clearly now that Raines has gone, I can clear all obstacles from my way…”
As is obvious from reading this blog, we boys and girls at Samizdata are not exactly big fans of the European Union and its attendant horrors of red tape and regulation. So, here’s an interesting experience of mine from last weekend. I managed to leave and enter France and then return without having a single item of paperwork inspected, including my passport. How come?
Well, I sailed to Cherbourg on a yacht from Portsmouth, stayed overnight in France and came back to Portsmouth. No passport check was carried out at either end. Now, I am sure if British Home Secretary David Blunkett were reading this (dream on!), he’d be aghast. (“You mean people can travel, breathe and eat without my express permission? Form a committee!”). But actually, I found the experience rather liberating. I was able to travel, using my own humble skills as a yacht sailor, to travel to and from a Continent without being troubled by officialdom.
And of course I loaded up the boat on cheap wine due to lower French duties on booze. So all in all the whole weekend was a poke in the eye for the offices of the Blairite state. C’est magnifique!
I am all in favour of the recent decision by shareholders of European drugs giant GlaxoSmithKline to vote down a proposed ‘golden parachute’ payout to its chief executive in the event that he ever got the boot.
The payment would have been $36 million, and while I yield to no-body in my admiration for the capitalist system, it seems perfectly fair if the owners of the firm – the shareholders – felt such a proposal was going too far. A case of property owners using their property as they say fit. Of course, by ‘too far’ we are entering the field of subjective judgement. It seems a bit odd that in an age where few bat an eyelid at the sums earned by Formula One racing drivers or footballers, so many get riled at such payouts to company bosses.
In any event, we are going to see more examples of big groups of shareholders like pension funds getting upset about this sort of pay regime. One thing slightly bugs me in that some of these pension funds are increasingly being seen by anti-globalistas and similar-minded folk as ways of inflicting their views on the world. The buzzword out there is ‘shareholder activism’. Let’s be clear here. It is our retirement money at stake. By all means let’s not vote in big pay rises for hopeless bosses, but tomorrow’s pensioners need the wealth generated by good firms of today – and often that means hiring the best people.
And that sort of thing comes at a price.
Cultural commentator – from a generally conservative vantage point – David Brooks has some interesting things to note about the popularity of men’s magazines like Maxim, and about what this says about our culture. In a nutshell, he suggests that this shows that the advance of feminism and even political correctness (however you want to define that) may not have produced the results some commentators may have wanted.
He also makes the point, which to my mind rang true, that ‘reactionary’ attitudes are often not the preserve of the upper classes, but often most deeply held elsewhere, such as among America’s rap music artists. Here’s a nice quote:
We have a dynamic urban culture that treats women like whores and that regards owning a Mercedes as the highest possible human aspiration, and the leading articulators of progressive opinion have nothing to say about it. They can’t seem to bring themselves to admit out loud that their most effective ideological enemies have turned out to be the same underprivileged people they wanted to rescue from oblivion.
This observation is hardly new. Yet even someone like yours truly, who likes to watch action movies, dreams of fast cars and feels no shame in enjoying pictures of lovely women, can feel a bit troubled about where things can be headed. I don’t know if the kind of things Brooks frets about are problems that have to be ‘fixed’ in some way.
There definitely has been something of a backlash in parts of our culture against the dictates of political correctness. It doesn’t surprise me all that much that the kind of mindless dreck published by the Maxim mags of this world is so popular. Maybe we are just observing the cultural equivalent of Newton’s law at work – every action has an equal and opposite reaction. It applies to space rockets and it applies to culture as well, maybe.
An update following my article on the Bruges Group meeting on Thursday (right before our previous hosting server went nuclear).
The Daily Telegraph is reporting that opinion polls show that the UK public both opposes the single currency and a proposed new EU Constitution.
Okay, okay, I hear folk say, opinion polls are not everything, and the ability of the British political class to stiff the public they are supposed to represent is a matter of record. Even so, Prime Minister Tony Blair is famed for his attention to the focus group. And if public opinion can be galvanised, he may stay his hand at wiping out what remains of Britain as an independent, self-governing nation.
Well, I always was the optimistic type of guy.
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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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