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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Anyone who frequents our comment sections can hardly have failed to notice that several of our serial commenters are profoundly collectivist racists who like to call themselves ‘race realists’, whilst at the same time affecting implausible pretensions to be supporters of liberty. Fortunately this does not seem to fool anyone if the reactions of other commenters are anything to go by. A person may hold whatever prejudices they wish but when they make it clear they value their notions of the good of some collective volk over the rights of individuals to pursue inter-racial relationships, and would use the state to give those notions the force of law, it should be clear that person has little conception of what ‘liberty’ means.
Now as this blog is private property, we can delete comments and/or outright ban people for no better reason than the editorial pantheon simply feels like it. Although we do not use pre-publish comment moderation, just as a newspaper editor can publish (or not) whatever letters are in keeping with the mores of the publication in question, we too have that right post-publish and we do indeed occasionally exercise it when we delete unwelcome comments from spammers or blogroaches.
However although we are within our rights to handle our comment section as we wish, we dislike excluding contrary views to those expressed in our articles unless we see a very good reason to do so. Whilst reader comments are an optional adjunct to blogging (many highly successful blogs do not have them at all), at Samizdata.net we do indeed appreciate the contribution commenters make and thus are loath to over-manage what they write, provided a reasonable degree of civility and topicality to the article are observed.
However when collectivist racists start using Samizdata.net to consistently promote an agenda, and are condescending and misogynistic to boot, it is time to show them the door without insincere regrets. Now I realise that given the personalities involved, this will be seen as proof of the irrefutability of their positions regardless of the fact they have repeatedly had the sand kicked out of them intellectually on many occasions by some very insightful people. To put it bluntly, I am not unduly concerned and a certain Monty Python episode comes to mind.
For me as editor the final straw was hearing that one of our contributors was loath to write on certain topics because of the near certainty that the discussion would be immediately hijacked with the same flawed but stridently put arguments that had been convincingly demolished time and time again in earlier comment threads. Although I always urge our contributing writers, the Samizdatistas, not to actually write with comments in mind but rather what is on their mind, this for me was intolerable and more or less mandated action on my part. Henceforth comments by the people in question will be summarily deleted from the blog.
As you might surmise, I am not writing this article for the people who are being banned from commenting but rather for other readers whose opinions (and disagreements) I value more highly, and also for the Samizdata.net contributors as both an ex cathedra editorial policy statement and a not uninteresting discussion point on the nature of blogs such as Samizdata.net and internet discussion generally in its varied forms.
Alice Bachini has decided to bring her blogging career to an end. At least for now.
I really have got to the end of the blogging phase that started a year and a half ago when I created this blog under the old title you can still see if you look up the stats. I’ve said everything I wanted to say here, met lots of interesting people and had a huge amount of fun. And now my creativity is going into new demanding projects and as a blogger I’ve run out of anything original to say.
I am sure she has not run out of original things to say because people like Alice seldom do. However, operating a solo-blog is a demanding and time-intensive business and, if there are other things that she wants to do with her life then I can sympathise with the need to boldly prioritise.
She intimates that she might return to blogging at some point in the future and I certainly hope she does. The blogosphere, particularly the British end of it, needs all the voices of reason it can get.
As a parting gift, her final (if indeed it proves to be ‘final’) entry consists of a fulsome and righteous rant:
It’s fine to blow people up if your cause is anti-Americanism. Only capitalists should be pacifists: because that way, they will lose the war. Evil fucking hypocritical bastards. Every single one of them should go and live in a country whose values they actually support. But I suppose they don’t want to strap pretend bombs to their kids, give them machine guns and parade them in the streets.
In the traditions of good performers everywhere, she has left us all wanting more.
A good many of the Australian bloggerati (including Scott Wickstein and myself) attended a fine blogger bash in Melbourne over the weekend. A splendid evening was had by all, and photos have been put up in various other places, but there was just one additional thing I have to share with the world.
This is Tim Blair.
Notice the glass of the pale coloured yellowy stuff in his hand. Tim spent the whole evening drinking chardonnay. He made some feeble excuse about how is is trying to reclaim chardonnay for capitalism, but I was not entirely convinced about his protestations. He did, after all drink a lot of chardonnay. In fact he couldn’t stop.
Could the whole Right Wing Death Beast thing be an act, when Tim has such an extreme characteristic of the enemy? I am fearful.
In response to a couple of kind inquiries from readers, a quick update on my personal situation. The job search grinds on, although I am getting some good interviews. Later this week I go to Dallas to interview for a position I would very much like to land. Home to Texas! Spin a prayer wheel for me.
My visit a few weeks ago to the Minneapolis gun show was semi-productive. I got to handle a number of pistols, and pretty well settled on a 4-inch barrel, single stack .45 as the kind of gun I will eventually purchase to carry. The Kimber was veerry nice, but pricey, as was the Springfield. The HK USP Compact may just carry the day, though. Sadly, more research will be needed, more gun shops will be visited, and a regular paycheck will need to be found, before this issue is closed.
Spotted at Samizdata.net HQ, a well known Samizdatista demonstrates multi-tasking…
… he may well have also been touch-typing on a laptop under the table using his toes.
Although it is more or less a policy of mine to not write directly about comments made regarding Samizdata.net articles, it is a policy occasionally worth ignoring.
Many commenters have reacted poorly to David Carr’s article AZNAR KNEW!!!. Whilst it is the readers prerogative to judge articles here as they see fit, I must disagree with some of the views put forward that it was an inappropriate article at a time of such truly hideous moment. I do not say so out of an urge to ‘circle the wagons’ but rather because many of the commenters are fine people whose opinions are of value to me. And because I think they are quite wrong, I feel I must say why, as Chief Editor of Samizdata.net, that I am delighted David wrote such a piece and published it now.
It is a ‘humorous’ article in so far as satire is an appeal to humour, but that does not mean David is laughing at what happened. Just as Jonathan Swift was not laughing at the Irish famine when he penned A modest proposal, so too is David drawing attention to something deadly serious.
It is at times like this when we most need to pour scorn on the people who are, by virtue of their world views, indirectly part of the problem. This hideous and evil act must be met with force and implacable resistance… and it is that sort of response that the people who are the targets of David’s satire will work tirelessly to prevent.
All David is doing is shining a light on them and now, not later, is the time to do that. The fact that what David wrote is close to the bone is what makes it effective. Why? Because it is only a few degrees off the non-satirical screeds we will actually be reading in a few days.
Now of all times, while the stench of death and horror are fresh in Madrid, it is right to point out that some well meaning people’s views, and some not so well meaning, are nothing less than an apologia for mass murderer. Ideas have consequences and that it what David was writing about.
Übersportingpundit, the Australian based sports blog to which Brian Micklethwait, David Carr, and myself also contribute, has been down for a couple of days because the domain name expired without being renewed. Normally I think one should laugh at someone whose domain expires the way you would laugh at someone whose car has run out of petrol, but blogmaster Scott Wickstein assures me that he did not receive a renewal notice. (Perhaps it was swallowed by a spam filter or something). In any event, for those who have noticed, the site is back up. As a bonus, non-Australian readers can read and take pleasure in the fact that the Australian cricket team is not doing so well in its first test match against Sri Lanka.
Also, we should observe that Scott has suffered so much from the loss of his blog that he has been driven to writing guest posts for Samizdata. So give him some sympathy.
Not long ago, our beloved David Carr did a characteristic posting here entitled The joys of pessimism.
Here is how David ended that posting:
I heartily recommend pessimism. It enables you to amaze your friends with your powers of prediction and bask in the satisfaction of being borne out by events.
As he constantly is, I am sure you would all agree.
I remembered this while I was dipping today into Hitler and Churchill – Secrets of Leadership by Andrew Roberts.
Here is what Roberts says, on p. 93 of my 2003 hardback edition, about Winston Churchill’s wartime leadership:
‘Long dark nights of trials and tribulations lie before us,’ he warned in an especially bleak radio address. ‘Not only great dangers, but many more misfortunes, many shortcomings, many mistakes, many disappointments will surely be our lot. Death and sorrow will be companions of our journey, constancy and valour our only shield. We must be united, we must be undaunted. We must be inflexible.’ One man who immediately recognised the strategy behind Churchill’s dismal honesty was Joseph Goebbels. ‘His slogan of blood, sweat and tears has entrenched him in a position that makes him totally immune from attack,’ wrote the Nazi propaganda chief in a magazine article entitled ‘Churchill’s Tricks’. ‘He is like the doctor who prophesies that his patient will die and who, every time his patient’s condition worsens, smugly explains that he prophesied it.’ By preparing the public for bad news, Churchill denied the Nazis the full propaganda value of their victories. They could not wreck national morale if Britons had already heard the worst from the Prime Minister himself.
So now we know. David is really trying to cheer us all up.
 
The bulldog breed
There is an interesting article by Peaches Geldof about the perils of being a little bit too free and easy with one’s innermost thoughts on-line.
Mandatory reading for all Journal Bloggers!
One of the many things I love about novelist Ayn Rand is her idealistic view of the human form, especially when shorn of its drag-down weight of socialist commitment. This view of humanity is best portrayed, I think, in her stunning short book, Anthem, especially when Randian hero Equality 7-2521 is described by his lover, Liberty 5-3000, as being beautiful. Equality 7-2521 then re-christens himself Prometheus, after the Greek deity who created mankind in the image of the Gods.
Anthem is a marvellous book, and I’m glad to see that Boston airport’s Terminal E shopping mall was carrying so many copies, on a recent visit to the socialist wonderland of Massachusetts. You very rarely see this lesser-known Randian masterpiece in UK bookshops.
What you also rarely see on blogs like Crooked Timber, another socialist wonderland, is an acknowledgement that mankind is of itself a wonderful thing. With a site name based directly on the Kantian principle that mankind is intrinsically flawed, its thirteen professors of economics, philosophy, politics, and sociology, work to the premise that we feeble creatures of mankind need an overarching social democratic system to live by, as a consequence of our crookedness. Oh, how Ayn Rand would have applauded this use of Kantian philosophy. → Continue reading: Crooked Timber – An anthem to marxism
Cecile du Bois is getting grief at her school for opposing affirmative action. Her teacher asked her what she thought about it, and Cecile told her the truth. She is against it. And for that, she got all the grief.
And I’m not complaining, I am merely expressing my frustration with the atmosphere of being “weird, and going against the flow”. My very own friend advises me not to speak my mind if I am going to offend anyone. And yes I did, I poured it all out, given the opportunity because the discussion was on womens rights and for some reason my teacher asked me if I agreed with affirmative action. Does affirmative action relate to womens rights? Not in my world it does. I guess in her world where being against illegal immigration and calling African-Americans “black” are racist, it does. Well, if asked a question, I am compelled to answer honestly. My mother suggested I could have asked her what it had to with Mary Wollstonecraft, but I was so flustered by her laughter at me, I replied. I said “No”. And did that cause commotion!
Go to Cecile’s blog and read the whole thing.
I can just about understand (although I despise) the way that Cecile’s classmates (if that is the right word) are treating Cecile, but some way ought to be found of communicating to Cecile’s ‘teacher’ that she is now being deservedly trashed for profoundly unprofessional conduct on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, and everywhere else in the world where the blogosphere counts for anything if this posting has the desired effect.
Isn’t education supposed to encourage people to tell the truth and to stick up for their ideas? Someone she can not manipulate and ridicule should also tell this Grade A Bitch of a teacher that there are impeccably non-racist arguments against affirmative action, like: affirmative action exposes all those people from ethnic minorities who do get ahead to the accusation that they are only did well because they were given an unfair advantage, even if they actually got ahead entirely on their own merits and by their own efforts. Affirmative action encourages racism, in other words. Hasn’t this ignorant woman even heard of this line of argument?
And even if she has not, she has no damned business encouraging all her other pupils to pick on one pupil, just for expressing an opinion, honestly and courageously.
If you agree with me about this, please do at least one of the following things.
- Add a short comment to Cecile’s own blog, supporting and sympathising, and do it now. Warning: when I tried to do a quite long comment I came up against a thousand character limit, so don’t try to write at too great length. Something short and nice, and soon.
- If you are yourself a blogger, then write about this thing yourself, and link to this posting. Link to Cecile’s blog as well, of course, but the particular advantage of linking to this piece is that the number of linkers will be automatically counted and announced here, and people reading this will be able to swing straight over to your blog, and then link to you themselves. I’m going to do a piece about this on my Education Blog just as soon as I can.
- Put a supportive comment here as well, especially if you want to say something that makes use of more than a thousand characters. Cecile will definitely get to read it because I’ve already promised this posting in my comment at her blog.
It is not strictly relevant to the rights and wrongs of how she is now being (mis)treated, but since it may cheer her up, I will add it anyway. In my opinion Cecile is a terrific writer, and very possibly destined for literary superstardom. (She is certainly obeying rule number one for being a writer, which is to Live Interestingly, and rule number two, which is to get started with Living Interestingly good and early.) Be sure to scroll down, past all her links to other people, to the links to her own archives and previous postings. I particularly enjoyed her description of going to the movies with her Dad and brother, which Cecile’s Mum also liked. LOR: LOL.
If only for coining the phrase prostitute college, Cecile du Bois is destined for world fame sooner or later.
As a few (very few) kind emailers have noticed, I have been pretty much out of circulation the last couple of months. There are a couple of reasons for this.
First, there just isn’t much going on that has caught my eye. We are seeing a bunch of pre-existing patterns play out, with little new in such arenas as the Iraqi war or domestic US politics. Its all blah blah blah, same old same old. Bush lied, Halliburton is a bunch of crooks, you are all helpless victims of the corporations, etc. ad nauseum, but very little new in the way of facts to move the discussion forward, really. I find the Democratic primaries intensely uninteresting – none of the candidates will do anything to make the US a freer, more vibrant society, so a pox on all of ’em. If GWB ever does anything on the domestic front that I approve of, you will be the first to know, but don’t hold your breath. I certainly won’t.
Second, my apathy toward current events probably has a lot to do with the fact that I have been laid off (Friday is my last day), and have been spending most of my energy scratching for a new position. The circumstances of my departure (law firm political backstabbing) are guaranteed to produce a jaundiced attitude in even the most callous of self-reliant free-marketeers, which has doubtless colored my view of the larger world.
One ray of sunshine – the Wisconsin Senate voted last week to overturn the Governor’s veto of a concealed carry bill. The even more Republican Assembly has it calendared for today, which they wouldn’t do unless they also have the votes to overturn (barring an outbreak of utter incompetence from Assembly leadership, a possibility I wouldn’t dismiss out of hand). So, it looks like Wisconsin will legalize concealed carry at the exact instant that I lack the funds to score a new gun. Bah.
Speaking of which, suggestions from the commentariat on concealed carry guns are hereby solicited. I have one, and only one, non-negotiable requirement – .45 only. No Europellets, no marketing department hybrid calibers like the .40, just good old, puts-big-holes-in-people, .45s for this Samizdatista.
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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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