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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This story is already a little old but I thought I’d give my two pennies’ worth on the situation facing Danish statistics teacher Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, which was published over a year ago.
In a nutshell, Lomborg uses the evidence on which Greens rely to point out that by many yardsticks, life on planet Earth is getting better. As one can imagine, this has sent large parts of the Green movement and the anti-globalistas into a collective funk…
“You mean the world is getting greener, healthier and wealthier? But that’s just terrible! Heretic! Heretic!”
The response from many quarters has been nothing less than childish. A self-selected and rather Orwellian group calling itself The Danish Committee for Scientific Dishonesty has denounced Lomborg root and branch for the temerity of writing such a book and has sought to smear him and his academic credentials. So it is good to see the man himiself fight back. Check out the article by Lomborg in the online pages of the Wall Street Journal for his rebuttal of many of their claims.
Of course by writing in the WSJ, Lomborg has proved he is a mere lackey of the global free market capitalist conspiracy, so no doubt the doomongers will not pay a shred of attention. It might influence saner counsels, though.
And in the meantime, take a look at www.lomborg.com for an ongoing discussion of his book and associated issues.
By now, quite a few Samizdata readers will have learned of the infuriating plight of my good friends and fellow bloggers Andrew Ian Dodge and his lovely fiance Sasha Castel. They were able to spend just a few days in the UK owing to officials carping about (alleged) glitches in Andrew’s paperwork. Andrew and Sasha were forced to fly back to Maine earlier this week.
What is obviously incredible, considering that these are two citizens from Britain’s No 1 ally, is that they were treated in this way while, of course, thousands of folk enter this country successfully on false papers, or with no papers at all. Often many such folk disappear. Such people may even pose a security risk. The contrast between the treatment of Andrew and Sasha on the one hand and that of folk possibly entering Britain with hostile intent hardly needs to be stressed.
I guess this shows that as far as rules about emigration and immigration are concerned, we need a thorough overhaul in ways that encourage enterprising and good folk to live here like Andrew and Sasha. On a more positive note, may I recommend readers to look at Jim Bennett’s An Anglosphere Primer, which sets out ways in which these issues might be resolved.
In the meantime, my best wishes to two of the feistiest bloggers in the business. Britain has lost the chance to be host to two fine writers, not to mention two of the biggest heavy rock and opera nuts around!
Heard this rather good gag at a financial conference this morning:
A parish vicar dies and goes up to the Pearly Gates where he is greeted by St Peter. St Peter bids the vicar to step aside and sit on a wooden bench and wait for some formalities to be dealt with.
About half an hour later a farmer comes up, dressed in his overalls. “Ah, Mr Jones, welcome to Heaven! Please do step through the gates,” St Peter says. The vicar looks on, a mite baffled, but keeps quiet.
An hour later, a hospital surgeon of brilliant renown comes up, and again St Peter joyfully waves the good doctor through. Again, the vicar bites his tongue and waits to see what happens.
Suddenly, a sleek young man in a suit carrying a copy of the Wall Street Journal steps in. “Wonderful to see you Mr Gekko!” shouts St Peter. “So good to see you at last.”
At this point our vicar can contain himself no longer. “Why have you let in that capitalist pig through the gates while I, a humble servant of God, have to sit outside on a wooden bench?” the vicar exclaims.
“Well,” St Peter replies, “We let folk into Heaven these days because of results. You see, the farmer gets in because he produced food. The surgeon got in because he healed people. And you, dear vicar, produced no results. In your sermons most of the congregation fell asleep.”
“What sort of results did that hedge fund manager give, then?” asked the vicar.
“Well, that guy produced money for his clients. And unlike you, vicar, when he was at work, his clients were praying.”
All is not well in the Golden State of California these days as the citizens of that fine place continue to struggle under the governorship of Gray Davis, the man who helped acquaint Californians with the sort of power blackouts we Brits used to get in the unlamented 1970s.
This article (link courtesy of Virginia Postrel) shows how bad the tax revenue situation is on the West Coast, but also points out that the public sector there is as bloated as ever.
My recent trip to California last year confirmed such reports. One thing I was struck by was the poor quality of the freeways, in contrast to the smooth fast roads of neighbouring Nevada.
California could certainly use someone like Ronald Reagan, its last great governor, to shake it up and kick some ass in that state. Many political and economic trends seem to start on the West Coast, like the internet and tax revolts. A place for we Anglospherists to watch.
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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