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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Libertarians will be deeply concerned to learn that the authorities of the Orwellianly-named “Samizdata” have hidden from their readers that Natalie Solent’s most recent reading matter was not “?” as appeared in the summary of what all the Samizdata posters just read (an obvious ploy; the world public has long known that “?” is a Pokemon, silly). It was actually a whole pile of 1997 copies of House and Garden given to me by my next door neighbour. Clearly the powers-that-be considered this insufficiently intellectual. In a compromise move Ms Solent has offered a real-life clever person’s book she read just too late for the deadline: Getting the Message, a history of communications by Laszlo Solymar. It’s full of interesting nuggets. Here, for example, is an excerpt from a law passed in France in 1837:
Anyone who transmits any signals without authorization from one point to another one whether with the aid of mechanical telegraphs or by any other means will be subject to imprisonment …
And here is the text of a warrant issued by the British Government to the Post Office during the Boer War:
to produce, for the Information of the Intelligence Department of the War Office, until further notice any telegrams passing through the Central Telegraph Office (in London) which there is reason to believe are sent with the object of aiding, abetting or assisting the South African Republic and the Orange Free State.
Plus ça change…
Some people ask:
“Why shouldn’t our government keep out products from third world countries? We don’t owe them a living.
That is right, we don’t. What we owe to them, and to our own people too, is the ordinary right to buy and sell what they please, along with all the other ordinary rights to life and respect for property. Tariffs against African imports mean that we in Britain pay more than we ought and the people in Africa are arbitrarily forbidden from bringing their wares to our attention – it’s up to British individuals whether they buy or not.
So the European Union, having stopped Africans making a respectable living as producers and traders by denying them access to us, then bestows a lesser largesse via ‘Third World Aid’. Adding insult to injury, the EU then expects gratitude from the very people they have discriminated against. Of course what happens is that Africans, now being dependent on largesse rather than their own efforts, take on the character of beggars, whiny when desperate and sullen when temporarily a little better fed. We in our turn take on the character of patronising social workers-cum-lords of the manor. What a pity, when we could be interacting as equals and fellow human beings.
Lots of high octane posts on Samizdata today, covering many issues of topical importance. That’s why I’d like to talk about a thirty year old TV show. According to Phil Farrand’s Nitpicker’s Guide, these top 10 reasons for violations of the Prime Directive include No. 10 “The Stupid Machine that ran the planet didn’t allow any touching and kissing”, No. 6 “The inhabitants were using a bunch of stupid computers to fight their wars like pantywaists”, culminating in No. 10 – Kirk’s personal No.1 – I noticed my hairline receding that day.”
I knew I had become a real hard-core libertarian when I started getting genuinely outraged on behalf of the right of the inhabitants of gangster-obsessed Sigma Iotia II not to pay protection money to the Feds in “A Piece of the Action.” I reckon that episode indicated subliminal acceptance by Rodenberry of the Federation’s real nature, that of a protection racket that breaks its own rules whenever convenient.
Farrand also takes Star Trek (both Classic and Next Gen) to task in a way that will find, perhaps, less sympathy with the Samizdata crowd: their attitude towards religion, which is that it will have no place in their nice clean universe (unless it’s PC American Indian religion, that is. There are no Christians, Moslems, or Hindus to be seen – and nearly all the alien religions turn out to be covers for a ruling elite of some sort *. Babylon 5, though written by an agnostic, treats the subject far more plausibly.)
* = That’ll get the comments coming about present day religions.
I couldn’t resist throwing this BBC News 24 historical morsel into the stew of debate about possible cooperation between Jordan and Israel. King Hussein wanted Israel to bomb Syrian forces during the Black September crisis of 1970, according to British Government documents released thirty years later. Notice Mr Heath being as wrong about Hussein’s prospects as about everything else.
BTW, my post of earlier this afternoon now appears quite loopy. I often think this about my own past writing but to think it after a delay of hours rather than years is unusual.
When I first heard – at the school gates where I ought to be now – that some spectacular act of terrorism had taken place in America, some chime of memory struck about the date. I did wonder whether September 11 was the thirtieth anniversary of some event in Hussein’s expulsion of the Popular Front? I never did track it down, though.
This Teheran Times story says that two of their nuclear scientists have been rearrested on suspicion of something or other to do with Afghanistan. Can the two stories be linked?
Well, if you’re going to have libertarian Kipling, you’d better get a good strong dose of MacDonough’s Song:
Whether the State can loose and bind
In Heaven as well as on Earth:
If it be wiser to kill mankind
Before or after the birth–
These are matters of high concern
Where the State-kept schoolmen are;
But Holy State (we have lived to learn)
Endeth in Holy War.
Whether the People be led by the Lord,
Or lured by the loudest throat:
If it be quicker to die by the sword
Or cheaper to die by the vote–
These are things we have dealt with once,
(And they will not rise from the grave)
For Holy People, however it runs,
Endeth in wholly Slave.
Whatsoever, for any cause,
Seeketh to take or give
Power above or beyond the Laws,
Suffer it not to live!
Holy State or Holy King–
Or Holy People’s Will–
Have no truck with the senseless thing.
Order the guns and kill!
Saying–after–me–
Once there was The People–Terror gave it birth;
Once there was The People and it made a Hell of Earth.
Earth arose and crushed it. Listen, O ye slain!
Once there was The People–it shall never be again!
…to point out that the 18 US Rangers in Somalia gave a good account of themselves. All honour to them. The fact remains that the point of military action is not to get a favourable kill-ratio but to win. If I wanted to bore you with a list of wars where the losing side killed more than the winners I would start with World War II, go on to World War I, and keep talking for a long, long time.
Not that I’m arguing with the main thrust here! Here’s some more forgotten dead people: 5,000 killed by chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein in Halabja.
…is not so completely wonderful as all that. As I understand it arbitrage is a zero sum game. As I never tire of pointing out – um, no, as I’m sick and tired of pointing out but keep doing it anyway – the wider world of laissez faire is a win-win game. Warm. Loving. Huggy. Capitalism. It’s a metacontext thing, Perry, like in your opening essay.
Bruce Willis, as you note, won’t get on a plane to Britain and is going to get a few rasberries come Die Hard Whatever It Is Up To Now. In this he follows the heroic tradition of Sly Stallone who wouldn’t fly for fear of catching Foot & Mouth from the loo seats, or something. Oh yes, I remember now, his problem was fear of what we used to call “terrorism”. Contrast our own magnificent Sting, up there on Concorde! Quite takes you back to the cutaways in Eagle Magazine, doesn’t it, “Another British World Beater!” Just don’t mention the cricketers.
On second thoughts, while I freely award boos and cheers to all the right people, let’s not get hung up on gesture politics. Or on giving unwarranted attention to the irrelevant political views of famous hunks.
BTW on my husband’s Eagle Book of Cutaways the de Havilland Comet is right next to the Short Solent flying boat. Isn’t that cute?
Like Dale Amon, I lose my co-blogging virginity today, indeed at this moment. That’s like not with for any tabloid journalists reading this. If any are, keep reading. You might learn something for a change.
Many hear will have heard me gushing on about (a) blogs and (b) being paid for them as the Wave of the Future etc. The “being paid” bit strikes me as important because only money can transform the provision of decentralised, unmediated news from a hobby of the intelligentsia to a major former of opinion. We need a system where you can, without effort, pay a tiny sum to read a web page.
But it’s not all good news. An obvious problem is that of preaching only to the converted. If the “team” list under the toilet sign at the top of the screen all contribute, this blog looks likely to become the Real Libertarian Alliance Forum. I find this somewhat worrying, and not only because it’ll make Mario Huet feel bad as his numbers go down through no fault of his own. We’ll all become – dare I invoke Banquo’s ghost? – atomised.
BTW I have set up my own blog at http://nataliesolent.blogspot.com. I don’t think my blogspot’s evolutionary niche lies in discussion. Rather I aim to just post comments about news stories and thoughts that interest me. So my dears, don’t be sad that I haven’t invited you, because I haven’t invited anyone. All I want in life really is to be a James Bond supervillain and have a cool wall of TV screens. My Birman cat already fits the part beautifully.
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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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