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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The story of 15-year-old British man Seb Clover who has sailed across the Atlantic ocean to the Caribbean is a tonic to my jaded tastes. At a tiime when we are precoccupied by Iraq, economic woes, higher taxes and assaults on our liberties, it is good to know that the spirit of adventure lives on in our youth.
It is of course difficult to know whether the current spate of young Brits taking up such challenges hints at anything happening in our culture. But it is difficult to turn on the telly these days without seeing some young Brit reaching the South Pole, sailing single-handed around the globe or performing some other feat. It may be that a few young people have retained sufficient amounts of enterprising spirit to do such stuff, and not much further can be inferred from that. I am not so sure. Are such things a sign that youngsters are not quite the dumbed-down, listless and cynical lot that our Cassandras in the chattering classes make out?
Meanwhile, back to the doom and gloom…
I have long wondered whether anti-Americanism can be regarded as the last acceptable form of racism among our chattering classes. Of course, “racism” might be stretching things a bit far but when it comes to reflexive bigotry, anti-Americanism fills the space once reserved for non-whites, Jews, Catholics, dissenters, atheists and others. Of course anti-Semitism is still around these days, as many bloggers have sadly had cause to state.
Michael Gove in the Times on Wednesday says the toughest challenge of Tony Blair’s rule would be to challenge and face down the anti-Americanism of the Left.
Because the Times’ website archive is a paid-for one, I will quote one of his most telling paragraphs here in full:
Why then do the myths of America the Hateful take such powerful hold? Because anti-Americanism provides a useful emotional function which goes beyond logic and reaches deep into the darker recesses of the European soul. In centuries past those on the Left who wished to personalise their hatred of capitalism, who sought to make it emotionally resonant by fastening an envious political passion on to a blameless scapegoat people, embraced anti-Semitism. It was the socialism of fools. Which is what anti-Americanism is now.
Gove makes a number of excellent points, although I would add that hatred of the U.S. is sadly not a monopoly of socialists, since there have sometimes been elements of knee-jerk dislike of Uncle Sam from the political Right. There is a generation of conservatives (either of the lower or upper case C variety), mostly in their middle age, who dislike America for its post-Englightenment secularism, entrepreneurial gusto, popular culture and challenge to the old British Empire. But in the main these days hatred of America is a left-wing phenomenon.
I am not sure how to attack this prejudice. But for my part I tend to adopt a deliberately reflexive support for the U.S. in most things, even to the point of giving the U.S. the benefit of the doubt in cases where a strictly dispassionate person might not. This can take trivial forms. I make a point of marking the Fourth of July, proudly tell my friends that I have American relatives serving in the U.S. Air Force, and will often stick up for George Bush in pub chats about the world at the slightest opportunity. (I once caused a lady at a dinner party to go very red in the face by saying how pleased I was that Dubya had stiffed the Kyoto Treaty).
The America has a lot of noisy enemies. No harm in making some noise on its behalf. And may God rot Harold Pinter and other opponents of Jefferson’s Republic.
Fellow bloggers and cricket nuts Brian Micklethwait and Antoine Clarke may have their own reasons for why Australians are currently vastly better than the English at playing cricket, notwithstanding the fifth and final Test match, which England won by a canter.
I reckon this story could explain why Aussie cricket fans are, well, able to get fully behind their team, and hence cheer their heroes to victory on a depressingly regular basis.
Crikey! This news story suggests certain elements in the Chinese police are actually concerned about privacy, so much so that they apologised to a family after busting into a man’s house where the guy was watching porn with his wife.
The world turns. Are we getting close to the point where China, a communist state albeit one hurtling ever faster down the capitalist path, may be becoming more concerned about privacy than Britain?
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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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