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The great Californian ‘brain drain’ may be about to begin:
Those selfish Arnie voters have gone and done it now. See how they like struggling along without their philosophers. Hah! Serves them right. [My thanks to Crooked Timber for the link.] October 13th, 2003 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Great piece by Mark Steyn about the Arnie Californian triumph, making entirely justified fun of the Euro-sneerers.
Steyn also makes the point that Arnie won not just with his classically American Immigrant biography, but with his better policies. He says he’ll cut taxes and get the Californian economy moving again. It was policy what did it. This is what the EUro-media don’t get or refuse to get. And they wouldn’t, would they? Is Arnie telling the truth? In my opinion the best summary of his victory came from an anonymous Californian voter interviewed on Brit TV during the last few days. I have no idea when this was, or for what programme, or what the guy does for a living. But I do remember what he said. He said: “I rolled the dice. Gray Davis was the devil I know, and I know he’s running the state diabolically. Arnie says he’ll do better. I hope he’s telling the truth. My reason for being optimistic is that so far he’s done a damn good job of running his own life with fiscal effectiveness. Maybe he’ll do the same for California. I sure hope so.” Those were not the exact words, but that was the substance of it. It was impeccably logical, utterly clear-eyed. GD was a guarantee of ghastliness. Arnie has been competent being Arnie. Maybe – no certainty was expressed here, only the rational hope – maybe he’ll be competent enough to do what he promises for California. It was a democratic rerun of the Parable of the Talents, in other words. “Thou hast been faithful in a small thing, viz: being Arnold Schwarzenegger, so now we’ll make Master of a Great Thing, viz: Governor of California. And as for you, you idiot, you lose everything.” If Arnie messes up, as Steyn makes clear, prattling away in a funny voice about how he made good as a funny voiced immigrant won’t save him from public obloquy. Maybe we at Samizdata.net go on about this Arnie election too much here, when we ought to be telling all you Americans things you don’t know, British things. Maybe my next posting will be about that Conservative plan to have a locally elected “Sheriff”, instead of every police force everywhere no matter how insignificant being controlled by London, and of how disdainful everyone has been about that. “I mean, my dear, who knows what ghastly people will be chosen?” I say “everyone” will be disdainful. Maybe the voters will quite like it. Although electing a Sheriff is another thing Americans know more about than we do, of course. I know that we’re not supposed to be this gung-ho about democracy here. But if the choice is between US-democracy and EU-plutocracy – US-democracy being the system that allows body-builders etc. to become plutocrats as well and sort things out if the regular plutocrats do nothing except steal and swank around and mess things up like they do in EUrope – then I say US-democracy is often better. October 12th, 2003 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Age of Reagan: I 1964 –1980 This is a very long book (718 pages + another 100 pages of notes etc.) and it is somewhat daunting to realise that in due course a second volume will come to complete the story. It might be as well to say that this is emphatically not a biography, not even a political biography; the title and the sub-title The Fall of the Old Liberal Order make this clear. It is more a history of the times, from the anti-Goldwater landslide of 1964 to the Reagan landslide of 1980. The cumulative impression of the book itself is its richness and how its detail ministers to its analysis. And it is a sorry, not to say a frightening tale, telling as it does of the collapse of American self-confidence and the rise of the counter-culture of self-hatred amongst its elite. The narrative is admittedly partisan, but at the very least a case that needs to be put. As for the Presidents of the period, Hayward’s judgements are that Johnson was irresolute, reacting to events minimally, Nixon misguided, obsessive and unfortunate, Ford a mere stopgap and Carter simply disastrous. All of them seemed to have underestimated Soviet malevolence and overestimated Soviet stability; for the latter the intelligence services seem to have been especially at fault. For anyone who has been misled into thinking that Reagan was an intellectual nullity, here is ample evidence that he was an independent and original thinker, often insisting on keeping to his own line or script in face of criticism from his advisers and speechwriters. Many of his statements, which at the time seemed naive, questionable, wrongheaded or too extreme now seem merely farsighted. He was also optimistic about America and had no time for any rationale for its decline, such as Kissinger, student of the rise and fall of European states, believed in, or at least feared. Nor was he put off by the “complexity” arguments of those who despised him for his simple attitude to problems and their solutions. Some of his difficulties with his own advisers and supporters lay in persuading them that this attitude could be made plausible to the public as electorate. As much as the first two thirds of the book, however, has little mention of Reagan, for it is a history of how the US got into the messes that Reagan, it is fair to say, rescued it from. By far the biggest mess, which he was too late to do anything about, was, of course, the Vietnam War and it is quite plain that the left-leaning media and intellectuals, combined with political ineffectiveness and downright ignorance, contributed overwhelmingly to its being lost. To illustrate US political masochism: the two “war pictures” that had the greatest negative impact on home support – execution of the Vietcong prisoner and the napalmed little girl – won Pulitzer Prizes for the photographers. It is not exactly necessary to be reminded, but it is necessary to bear in mind that it was under two Democrat Presidents, Kennedy and Johnson, that the US entered and enmeshed itself in the Vietnam “quagmire” (though this is not a term I recall being used by the author). The muddled, incremental escalation of the conflict by Johnson is described in Ch 4. It was also a Democrat Congress, not the President, the hapless Ford, that abandoned the South Vietnamese, even refusing to supply them arms. Even more so was Cambodia betrayed, and the dignified reproaches of their leaders, as they refused the offer of evacuation by the American ambassador, to face certain death, make sad reading (p. 408). It is a terrible comment on what the consensus was that Reagan’s characterisation of the US effort in Vietnam as a “noble cause” was regarded as eccentric and chauvinist, just as later was “evil empire” (but for the latter’s vindication see The Week, 15/2/02, p. 13). All through the account is woven the political manoeverings of various, almost forgotten presidential hopefuls and their minions. The ups and downs of Reagan’s two bids for the Republican nomination and the campaign that won him the Presidency, are given in great detail. On the other hand, his two terms as Governor of California are more lightly sketched in (or are perhaps less memorable). A fine book, which should be better known. October 10th, 2003 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
Radley Balko has an article in Fox News today on a subject near and dear to my heart. Senator Fritz Hollings is at long last ending his dismal career. This is the same Senator who in 1986 attempted a media grand stand play over the graves of the seven Challenger Astronauts. He is the luddite who can not deal with the modern world of technology and information and who wants us to return to a post-WWII world of backbreaking labour. He is the Senator who wants to make the internet safe for Disney and the RIAA. For decades he has been the best Senator money can buy. I’m sure someone will miss him, but it certainly will not be me. October 9th, 2003 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
If I was a Californian I would be wary about expecting too much from the newly-elected Governor Schwarzenegger. Events may prove me wrong but I rather doubt that he will have much impact on life in California. Or even that much impact on politics in California for that matter. Some people, however, are expecting the worst. Below is a selection on unedited posts from the forum of the Democratic Underground and I give you my assurance that these are far from being the most lurid:
But who will speak for the ‘booger-eaters’ if not Arnie?
Do you honestly imagine that Arnie would work without a script?
Ze Democrats vill be deported. California vill be ‘democratrein’. Ze pure-blooded Californian Aryan folk must haf ze lebensraum.
And while you’re about it, get in touch with Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. They’ve got a score to settle too. Oh come on, chaps. Stop trying to put a brave face on things. You’re a bit upset, aren’t you. I can tell. I can always tell. October 8th, 2003 | 46 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is over. Arnold basically has kicked in the teeth of the opposition with a margin of nearly a million votes over his nearest competitor, former Hispanic secessionist Cruz Bustamante. Through the use of our secret Illuminati time communication technology (Codename Peabody), the Samizdata Editorial staff prepared deep cover for its two covert agents in California well ahead of time. With a libertarian intelligence matter of such extreme importance facing us – regime change in one of the largest economies on this planet – we have unstintingly sent two of our finest undercover agents: Perry “007” deHavilland and Adriana “Lara Croft” Cronin to look into the matter. They have left these shores and are expected to remain ‘in theatre’ for several weeks. We hope they will uncover details of the new governor’s purported Weapons of Mass Employment (WME’s). Good luck and good hunting!  Agent 007 practices laying down protective covering fire…  …while Agent Lara handles team self-extraction from maddened hordes of LA socialists I was given the names and details by an unnamed high Samizdata administration official who will remain unnamed but should of course be the target of a lengthy Blogosphere investigation so long as it is damaging to the administration and no one dares ask me any questions. October 8th, 2003 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
Matt Drudge is predicting a comfortable Ah-nie victory in California.
My prediction: the Guardian will denounce the result as an ‘illegitimate power-grab’ before the end of the week. October 8th, 2003 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
Over at Hit & Run, Jesse Walker notes that Robert Anton Wilson is a candidate in the California election, and reprints one of his position papers:
October 7th, 2003 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
All these dreadful things I never knew about Arnold Schwarzenneger. First off, he’s a ‘sex beast’:
And allegedly he’s also a ‘closet Nazi’:
I never gave Ah-nuld much chance of winning this election. Unlike California Democrats who are clearly convinced that they cannot beat him. October 4th, 2003 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Free State Project is a group in the USA looking to get at least 20,000 liberty oriented activists to move to a single state in the USA so that they can have more political impact somewhere rather than be lost in the sea of Republican and Democrat statists by being scattered across the country. And the result of the vote to see which part of the USA they would all move to is… New Hampshire. Godspeed to you all. I shall be watching this project with great interest.  October 1st, 2003 | 29 comments - (Comments are closed)
You just could not make this stuff up. Schools that won’t tell parents their kids have lice because it will hurt their feelings. Fraternities run through re-education camp equivalents for theme parties and such some thin-skinned zealot found offensive. Towns councils threatening to fine parents for allowing their children to play with toy guns… and even advising against allowing them to play in camo-gear. Schools that ban superhero costumes. The list just goes on and on. It is time for an all out anti-idiot offensive. Parents in idiot-enclave towns and students in moron-managed colleges must set out consciously to seek and destroy the legitimacy of the PC army. No one can take a laughingstock seriously, so we must laugh at them and share the laughter with our friends, neighbors and classmates. Public humiliation is a powerful weapon and it is easy to make fools of these people. They have already done the hard work for you. Harsh satire and extreme exaggeration work nicely. I once ran a guerilla theatre troop in Pittsburgh. We would appear suddenly at an appointed location in downtown or on campus with costume, leaflets and a prepared “theatrical production”. Our theatrical shock tactics were timed such we’d be on our way before anyone thought about it. It worked well. I only got kicked in the arse once. You will find a lot of the details on PC gone mad referenced here. September 29th, 2003 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
Today’s entry from Mark Steyn surveys the incompetence and general fecklessness of big gubmint and the quasigovernmental NGOs, in terms to warm any libertarian’s heart.
Nothing to argue with there, but go read the whole thing. With that, I am off for a week or so to hunt for the noble mule deer in the wilds of southern Wyoming. Complete written report on my return. September 28th, 2003 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
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