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 man writes very well and very entertainingly, but I wish he would stop using the word ‘liberal’ to describe people who want to restrict and often abolish liberty.
Liberal is a good word, and we who believe in liberty should keep hold of the word tight. Calling shameless collectivists, who believe neither in economic nor ‘social’ liberty nor any other kind of liberty, ‘liberal’ will destroy this good word.
When someone disagrees with you about how to protect and extend liberty, he is still entitled to be called a liberal. When he stops even bothering about liberty and starts saying that liberty is neither an important end, nor even an important means towards the achievement of other worthy ends, then what sense does it make to let him take the word liberal off with him into the tyrannical bog that he has blundered or marched into?
In the USA, it would appear that the battle for this word was won and lost long ago. But on this side of the Atlantic, the word ‘liberal’ still means something far more truly liberal. We must keep it that way.
This short posting is the sort of thing I am objecting to:
Further proof of the moral degeneracy of Liberals. Not only pushing even more legislation restricting free speech, but loading it down with caveats to protect people whitewashing their favourite murderers.
The point is a good one, as are so many points made by this writer. But… Liberals?
I also think that describing your very sharp views as coming from the ‘House of Dumb’ is, well, dumb. He is not a bit dumb, and I am sure he has his reasons for doing this, but whatever they may be, if I learn them I do not expect to be persuaded by them. Irony perhaps? Whatever. Argumentatively speaking, calling yourself dumb amounts to constructing a huge open goal for your opponents to tap in a succession of soft goals. One of the basic rules of propaganda is: do not put yourself down. Speak out with clarity, seriousness and sincerity. By all means make trivial jokes about yourself, but the seriously wounding jokes should always be on the other fellows. ‘House of Dumb’ ought to be a blog dedicated to the idiocies of the non-liberal, anti-liberal collectivist creeps, and it briefly crossed my mind while writing this sentence that maybe this is what the man had in mind, which would have made this sentence read very foolishly. But then I remembered that he calls himself ‘DumbJon’. It is his own house that he is talking about, just as I had been assuming. And his very name, never mind his blog’s name, is a pre-emptive cringe. Right wingers bloggers do this a lot, with their I-know-what-you-think-I-am-but-I-don’t-care names. They think it is showing toughness and wit. It think it is admitting that you are wrong before you even open your mouth.
I repeat, I really like how ‘DumbJon’ writes, and I agree with point after point that he scores against his hated “liberal” anti-liberals. I particular, agree with him, as many ferocious opponents of Islamism or “Islamic extremism” often do not that Islam itself is a huge problem for the West, rather than the Islam problem merely being a few nutters who take it too far. What the nutters do is take Islam seriously, just as they claim to.
Anyway, having made my points about liberality and dumbness, I will leave it at that and continue to read House of Dumb with profit and pleasure. It is obviously far too late for ‘DumbJon’ himself to consider any name changes. But, to any other worthy people with ideas like his who are still wondering what to call their blogs, I say: do not be ironic about yourself if you want to be truly persuasive and truly wounding to those whom you seek to wound. Do not build the insults of your opponents into your descriptions of yourself and of your ideas.
And do not hand your opponents compliments that they do not deserve. Do not, for example, call people ‘liberal’ when they are nothing of the kind.
And how do I know? It has passed Julian’s Tesco Checkout Girl Test (TCGT).
Michael Totten has some more great stuff from Lebanon that you just will not read in the mainstream media.
And remember he does not have a news organisation behind him, so he trips and reportage are all funded from his own pocket and from donations from readers.
Dorian Lynskey in The Guardian has written about the blogosphere in a way that had me grinning by the end of the first paragraph…
I’d love to see his reaction to the Guardian arts blog, where the dynamic often suggests that the argument has spilled out of the crowded bar and escalated into a punchup in the car park.
Yes, the comment sections of blogs, and indeed blog articles themselves, can get a bit like that at times. Although he is writing about the ‘Arts’ blogosphere, some of what he observes also pertains to the political and punditry blogosphere… and some does not, which I also find quite interesting.
However where I think Lynskey is not quite correct is where he writes…
Many of the people who post [comments] on blogs appear to be annoyed not by what the writers say so much as the fact that they’re in a position to say it. You can spot this type because they write things like : “You’ve only written this to provoke a reaction.” Or: “Why did you even write this? What a waste of time.” As if writing to complain about a waste of time were not, in fact, a bigger waste of time. Or, my favourite: “Typical Guardian.” Perhaps they also post on the website of Practical Caravan magazine, complaining: “Typical Practical Caravan. So caravancentric.”
No, not really, I do not think people care that Lynskey is in a position to say what he says. I think what he is observing here is not resentment that he has a gig writing for the ‘Grauniad’ but rather a change in the culture regarding the whole journalistic profession.
People have realised that whilst they may not be journalists, they no longer need to be one in order to editorialise the news. In short, journalism is no longer an ‘institution’, it is just ‘something people with opinions do’. Some people get paid for it and other do it for free. In a sense, we are the journalists now in that we are the ones keeping journals of our opinions on the outrage-of-the-day. People who work for newspapers might be better described as ‘newspaper men’, many of whom are formatting commoditised information, or as ‘reporters’ if they are collecting information to be formatted. The editorialising role is something that the mainstream media has now largely lost their lock on.
If the Guardian tells me car bomb has gone off in Baghdad or a British minister has resigned, I believe them. However I do not need the Guardian to tell me what the significance of that is as the low-down regarding what was behind said ministerial skulduggery is probably better and fresher on Guido Fawkes.
However he is quite correct that criticising a Guardian article in the Guardian’s own comment section for being a ‘typical Guardian article’ is rather bizarre. What were they expecting? It is all the stranger as people in the UK have the advantage that most clear eyed British journalists make little pretence that their newspaper is not partisan (unlike in the USA when the preposterous myth of journalistic impartiality persists), by which I mean each paper has an identifiable political editorial line that colours everything it does… people understand that the Guardian is a left wing statist newspaper, the Telegraph is a right wing statist newspaper with occasional classical liberal pretensions, the Independent is the Al Qaeda House Journal, etc. etc.. Just as people do not read Samizdata and expect to be confronted with a paean to the NHS (that is the Guardian’s job), they should not expect to read an article in the Guardian calling for an end to state education (that is our job).
Nevertheless, love it or loath it (one guess), the Guardian has always been far and away the most internet savvy newspaper and Lynskey seems to have a much better grasp of what blogging is about than the irascible Keith Waterhouse.
For those of you who have been following the story of the Pakistan born ex-Muslim blogger ‘Isaac Schrödinger’ who has been seeking asylum in Canada, I am delighted to report a very happy ending.
Michael Totten has written a couple very interesting articles called Hezbollah’s Putsch and Hezbollah’s Christian Allies.
Well worth checking out as you just do not see stuff like this in the mainstream media all too often. Also consider dropping your mouse on his PayPal donations button to support his excellent international reportage.
From all of us at Samizdata, to all of you, our loyal readers and commenters, a very Merry Christmas!
A large contingent of Samizdatistas were seen making merry and getting blotto at the party of a certain Reuters journalist tonight. As Christmas party season is in full cry, blogging may be a bit… sporadic… over the next few days.
Apologies for not flagging up sooner that I recently had a recorded conversation about Samizdata with Perry de Havilland. It took me over a week to edit the thing, by which I mean over a week to get around to stitching the two chunks it happened in together (I find everything involving computers to be hard until I know how to do it). And after posting about it on my blog, it has taken me another two days to mention it here. I had a busy weekend. But the mills of Samizdata grind small, and slowly. A week and a half’s delay will make no huge difference to the big picture, or to the meta-context as Perry likes to call it.
Anyway, click here to have a listen. It lasts about forty minutes.
Our conversation reminded me of something I first heard myself say to Madsen Pirie a long time ago, in the old Alternative Bookshop. What will this achieve? – said Madsen, waving some pamphlet I had just done in my face. I replied: “In the short run, nothing. In the long run, everything.” Samizdata is like that.
Jackie D liked it too.
Today, assuming the plan goes according to plan, I will be doing another of these things, with Alex Singleton, about… Gilbert and Sullivan. There is more to life than what governments do.
Hosting company ‘Watching America’ are currently under a sustained (two days and counting) denial-of-service attack and as a result various blogs may be hard or impossible to access as a result. Consider this a public service announcement. Methinks some lynchings are in order.
I had the pleasure of meeting U.S. blogger Stephen Green, of the excellently entitled Vodkapundit, a few months ago at a party in London. Stephen has been ill, lost a lot of weight, and I must say I got quite concerned when he stopped posting. He now explains what has been going on. It looks as if the fella is going to be all right, which is terrific news for him and his wife and child. Feel free to nip over to his site and give him your best wishes.
I am looking forward to the Colorado Scribe posting up more of those cocktail recipes again. Mine’s a gin and tonic.
Steve Edwards has administered a particularly welcome hatchet job on critical aspects of the ostensibly benevolent, world government-loving Bahá’í religion. Check the comments – the Bahá’í faithful have piled in.
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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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