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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There was a time when the cry of liberals everywhere was that the State should keep out of the bedroom – no longer.
Andrew Brown of the Guardian has written an article entitled Why the Cornish hotel ruling should worry conservative Christians.
I think it should worry any person who in any aspect of his or her life is a minority or who might one day be part of a minority.
A law you like is passed; it coerces those you dislike. You rejoice, you “liberals”. But the wheel turns. You do not have to die old in order to live long enough to see what was once persecuted tolerated and what was once tolerated persecuted.
To hang your head when you are not guilty is an immoral act.
“The struggle for definition is veritably the struggle for life itself. In the typical Western two men fight desperately for the possession of a gun that has been thrown to the ground: whoever reaches the weapon first shoots and lives; his adversary is shot and dies. In ordinary life, the struggle is not for guns but for words; whoever first defines the situation is the victor; his adversary, the victim. For example, in the family, husband and wife, mother and child do not get along; who defines whom as troublesome or mentally sick?…[the one] who first seizes the word imposes reality on the other; [the one] who defines thus dominates and lives; and [the one] who is defined is subjugated and may be killed.”
The quote is from Thomas Szasz, psychiatrist and libertarian. The race to get your side’s definition in first perfectly describes the frenzy of the left wing media establishment to link the murders carried out by Jared Loughner to the right, the Tea Party, and Sarah Palin. I posted about the contrast between Guardian columnist Michael Tomasky’s haste to explain Loughner’s murders and his reluctance to explain Nidal Hassan’s murders here.
Over the last few days further evidence has emerged that Loughner was (a) simply a drug-addled madman, judging from his strange pseudo-logical screeds on YouTube and (b) had began to fix his mad rage on Gabrielle Giffords in 2007, after she gave what he regarded as an inadequate answer to his question, “What is government if words have no meaning?” At that time Palin was barely known outside Alaska.
A prescient remark from Thomas Szasz, then. Yet anyone who knows anything of his work and writings will have predicted that I am about to say that an apt quote is not his only relevance to this situation. Szasz is famous for opposing the many authoritarian crimes of the psychiatric profession: among them imprisonment without trial or appeal, assaults under the name of “treatment” (such as lobotomies, electric shocks, injections of drugs against the patient’s will), and collusion with the state to define dissent and eccentricity as mental ills. All very great dangers and he was right to oppose them, as he was right to oppose the prohibition of drugs.
And yet – there is Jared Loughner and the lengthening list of those like him. Lougher was is (Why do I keep saying was? He is alive and in custody!) a drug-addled madman who killed six people. “He should have been locked up before this” does not seem an unreasonable thing to think.
Clayton Cramer is a former libertarian. His article Mental illness and mass murder contains food for thought. This 2007 post by Brian Micklethwait is also relevant. I would welcome your opinions.
In today’s Guardian Michael Tomasky has written the following article about the murder of six people and attempted murder of many others, including Congresswoman Giffords: In the US, where hate rules at the ballot box, this tragedy has been coming for a long time. Some selected extracts:
… You don’t have to believe that alleged shooter, Jared Loughner, is a card-carrying Tea Party member (he evidently is not) to see some kind of connection between that violent rhetoric and what happened in Arizona on Saturday.
… So what particular type of nut is Loughner? We don’t have a full picture yet. But we have enough of one. His coherent ravings included the conviction that the constitution assured him that “you don’t have to accept the federalist laws”. He called a female classmate who had an abortion a “terrorist”.
In sum, he had political ideas, which not everyone does. Many of them (not all, but most) were right wing. He went to considerable expense and trouble to shoot a high-profile Democrat, at point-blank range right through the brain. What else does one need to know? For anyone to attempt to insist that the violent rhetoric so regularly heard in this country had no likely effect on this young man is to enshroud oneself in dishonesty and denial.
I would like to report to you that my nation is in shock, and that we will work together to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again. Alas, neither of these things is close to true. Of course an event like this is hard to believe in the moment; but in the context of our times, it’s really not surprising at all. Last summer, a California man armed himself and set off for San Francisco with the express intent of killing liberals at a nonprofit foundation that had been pilloried by Glenn Beck and others. Only the lucky accident of his arrest en route for drunk driving prevented the mayhem then.
The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence has documented more than two dozen killings by or arrests of rightwing extremists who intended to do serious political violence since 2008. One Tennessee man killed two worshippers at a liberal church, regretting only that he had not been able to ice the 100 liberals named by author Bernard Goldberg as those most responsible for destroying America. Giffords herself received threats after voting for the healthcare reform bill, and shots were fired through the window of her district office. An event like this has been coming for a long time.
In contrast, here is the article that Michael Tomasky wrote when Major Nidal Hasan murdered thirteen people and attempted to murder many others: American, for better or worse. Some selected extracts:
We have much more to learn about Hasan before we can jump to any conclusions. A New York Times profile of him from yesterday notes that this army psychiatrist, who’d presumably heard many blood-curdling war stories, obsessively feared being sent over to Iraq or Afghanistan. But it then says that the FBI has monitored some internet postings by a certain Nidal Hasan that spoke positively of suicide bombers, comparing them to soldiers who risk their lives for their comrades. The Times didn’t know if it was the same Nidal Hasan.
For all most Americans know about Palestinian culture, Nidal Hasan could be as common a name as Dave Johnson. The Palestinian is an unknown person in the US. Jews are a part of the country and have been for decades, but average Americans pretty much know Palestinians only as suicide bombers. Sadly, for some Americans this event will reinforce an image of a people who resort first to mindless violence.
…
We should assume until it’s proven otherwise that Hasan was an American and a loyal one, who just snapped, as Americans of all ethnicities and backgrounds and political persuasions do. And, as is so rarely the case in these situations, he’s alive, so we’ll have a chance to hear him express his views some day.
Health and safety kills off the Lear of a lifetime. Jim White writes in the Telegraph:
Earlier this week, I went with my son to see Derek Jacobi in King Lear at the Donmar Warehouse. We were so close to the action we were almost in it. It was clear that the enthusiasm expressed in Charles Spencer’s review for this paper was not misplaced: the actors delivered the poetry brilliantly, the pace crackled and fizzed.
For 50 minutes, we were entranced. Then: bang. Just as Kent had been sentenced to a spell in the stocks, the lights went out. For a moment, I thought this was a directorial ruse, and that the next scene would find him in some Tarantino-style torture chamber. But no. It was a power cut.
The house lights cranked into action, and for a minute or so, the actors carried on, the scene barely diminished by the reduced visibility. Quite right, too. As this was a show almost spartan in its freedom from special effects, there seemed no reason not to continue. The communication of the verse would have been as powerful in the gloaming.
But then a technician announced that since there had been an outage, the performance was being cancelled, for – you’ve guessed it – health and safety reasons. “Your safety,” he said, “is our number one priority.”
I struggle to know how to respond to this. Could I, perhaps, take a line or two, as suggested in my title for this post, from another of Shakespeare’s plays:
Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more.
Or could I say, begone, abominations. You are dead things that pretend to live.
There is furious debate in the comments to this article in the Guardian by Naomi Wolf, in which she argues that “Julian Assange’s sex-crime accusers deserve to be named”.
Do they? He has been after all.
I just don’t know. Neither about Assange’s case, or the general case.
On a point of fact, Wolf is quite wrong in claiming that the rule of law by which the plaintiff in a rape case is given anonymity is a “Victorian relic”. Commenter “snoozeofreason” said that anonymity was introduced, for what were seen as feminist reasons, in the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1976. This link to RapeCrisis, an activist group, confirms that fact. It also argues in favour of anonymity for the accuser but not the accused. I reject that. The only thing of which I am sure is that the accused and the accuser should be treated the same: anonymity for both, or for neither.
Naomi Wolf is an icon of feminism. In making this argument she has broken ranks with other feminists. Schadenfreude at the the sight of them rending each other is never far away, but schadenfreude does not actually give me an answer as to whether anonymity in rape cases is a good or a bad thing. I have bitterly criticised feminists and anti-rape activists in the past for their wilful denial of the possibility of false accusations of rape. I sneer at Naomi Wolf’s late discovery of this type of possible injustice. Yet she makes a strong argument:
“Though children’s identities should, of course, be shielded, women are not children. If one makes a serious criminal accusation, one must be treated as a moral adult.”
Against that is a more nebulous pressure, but one with deep roots in the human psyche: rape is different from other forms of assault. The trauma of a rape victim, male or female, does not arise only from the physical injuries received. Harm is done to them by having the fact that they have suffered such a violation made public. Some victims would feel unable to come forward if it were to be made public.
Yet other rape victims argue that this reluctance merely reinforces the barbaric idea that there is something shameful in being raped. We use the word shame to mean too many things.
Too old. Too gay. Too rich. Too weird. These are some of the objections raised to Elton John and David Furnish adopting a son born of a surrogate mother.
Is this a good thing? I have no idea. Ask me, or better yet, ask young Zachary in 2028. (Until then, leave him alone.) Should it be allowed? I think so. Even on the most harsh interpretation possible of Mr John and Mr Furnish’s probable ability to give the boy a good start in life, there is no denying that billions of children are born to a worse one.
That was the peg. This is the coat. A great big dirty overcoat that will not hang up neatly and drips over the floor: what objections ought to be enough for the state to forbid people to adopt?
Everyone has heard stories of how social workers seem to actively enjoy seeing would-be parents contort themselves to fit through ever-tinier hoops of social worker righteousness. So you’re a smoker? Shake of the head. I see you are fat. Tut tut, going to have to lose a few pounds, aren’t we? What’s this – you are a Christian who disapproves of homosexuality? I am afraid… oh, you are a Muslim. That’s OK, then.
I read an account by one couple who said that the sight of a four-pack of beer bottles among their shopping on the table was enough to make their inspecting social worker devote a whole paragraph to their incipient alcoholism in her report. I heard of another who deduced from a couple’s dog being overweight that they had a dysfunctional attitude to food. What fun, to be your own Sherlock Holmes and have the consequences your deductions played out in human lives. These are the powers they would gladly take over all parents. Be warned.
Most here will be as angered as I am by the thought of children remaining in council care, becoming more harmed and mentally stunted by it with every month that goes by if the eventual fates of children who grow up in care are anything to go by, while people who would have loved to give them a good if not perfect home are turned away.
But can we dispense with the State altogether?
Without the social workers, how are you going to stop paedophiles, cultists, Fagins, and would-be owners of slaves from adopting children?
Not that I am recommending such behaviour as this to any Samizdata reader, of course.
What developments favourable to liberty will happen during 2011?
… and a happy new year to all.
I can now safely say that Mr Tommy Sheridan, once the lion of the Scottish Socialist party, displayed more than comradely affection while visiting a Manchester sex club called Cupids. In 2006 it was not safe for the News of the World to say this: Mr Sheridan successfully sued the paper for libel. If his life were a play this would be Act III when the hero seems all-conquering. Enter Iago:
The jury’s verdict implies that it also believed that it was Sheridan whose voice was heard on a secretly recorded video confessing that he made these admissions. The video, taped by his former friend George McNeilage and bought by the NoW for £200,000, became a central part of the perjury trial. Sheridan insisted it was a forgery.
Sheridan has been told to expect a prison sentence.
When he gets out he can have a chat with Jeffrey Archer. They will have plenty in common.
I find the sheer, vulgar symmetry of both of their stories fascinating. You could plot their fortunes as a sine curve. It’s like the plot of a Jeffrey Archer novel, only less subtle.
And Samuel told all the words of the LORD unto the people that asked of him a king.
And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots.
And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots.
And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers.
And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants.
And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants.
And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work.
He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants.
And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the LORD will not hear you in that day.
Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, Nay; but we will have a king over us;
That we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles.
– 1 Samuel 8 verses 10-20, King James Version
WikiLeaks: Cuba banned Sicko for depicting ‘mythical’ healthcare system.
According to the Guardian (!):
Cuba banned Michael Moore’s 2007 documentary, Sicko, because it painted such a “mythically” favourable picture of Cuba’s healthcare system that the authorities feared it could lead to a “popular backlash”, according to US diplomats in Havana.
The revelation, contained in a confidential US embassy cable released by WikiLeaks , is surprising, given that the film attempted to discredit the US healthcare system by highlighting what it claimed was the excellence of the Cuban system.
But the memo reveals that when the film was shown to a group of Cuban doctors, some became so “disturbed at the blatant misrepresentation of healthcare in Cuba that they left the room”.
Castro’s government apparently went on to ban the film because, the leaked cable claims, it “knows the film is a myth and does not want to risk a popular backlash by showing to Cubans facilities that are clearly not available to the vast majority of them.”
Back in 2007 I mentioned a milder version of the same reaction among British people to Moore’s depiction of “empty waiting rooms and happy, care-free health workers” in the NHS.
UPDATE: Hat tips to commenters Jock and Alisa. The Guardian story has now been corrected to say that Sicko was shown in Cuba, confirmed on Michael Moore’s own website. Pity. That was a fun meme while it lasted, but truth must prevail. Moore says that the cable was purely a lie. Not necessarily: indecision as to the “line to take” is not exactly unknown in totalitarian regimes. Both showing the film and forbidding it have their dangers from the point of view of the Cuban rulers.
This round to Michael Moore, but I shall defiantly repeat something I said in 2008:
When the history of Fidel Castro’s rule in Cuba comes to be written all that stuff about the excellence of the healthcare system will turn out to be lies but the claim of high literacy rates will be more or less true.
Communist education gets results because force is near to the surface. I acknowledge but do not approve … A further advantage of communist education is that the wishes of the teachers are given almost as short a shrift as those of the pupils.
Force works well in education because the forcers can look at the forcees all the time they are doing the forcing. It works less well in healthcare and very badly indeed in agriculture.
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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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