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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In a recent e-mail newsletter Harry Browne made an interesting historical point about the US Pledge of Allegiance:
“Returning to the Pledge of Allegiance, it was composed in 1892 by Francis Bellamy (link requires registration) a socialist, specifically to help young children become good little citizens of the Fatherland.
The idea that our children should be pledging allegiance to government smacks of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union — the very antitheses of what America was meant to be.”
I grew up reciting the Pledge every single morning of my life for thirteen years… and until this day never knew its’ history. You just assumed you were taking part in a tradition that went back to the founding of the Republic. You pictured young Abe and his school mates reverently reciting it in their one room red school house.
At the time when the Pledge was written the American social elite were having a love affair with all things Prussian. The efficiency of German State planning was all the rage before the turn of the previous century.
I somehow don’t think this is quite the message those of the conservative quadrant wish upon their children.
Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. (OH) was convicted of tax evasion in a Federal court recently. Interestingly, he is an outspoken tax critic. Does anyone remember a similar case about 15 years ago? Traficant is not the first congressional tax critic to be silenced with a prison sentence.
Attorney Linda Kennedy from Virginia believes there was significant judicial misconduct by Judge Leslie Brooks Wells. You might want to read about it. If you find yourself in agreement, you might even want to join in the complaint.
“Quis custodiet istos custodus?”
First, they kicked the Kyoto Protocol into touch. Now, they’re sticking it to the International Criminal Court.
Will America’s flagrant unilateralism and contempt for world opinion ever end?
I CERTAINLY HOPE NOT
Is the American brand of capitalism sick? Socialists and other opponents of the free market order are bound to assume so following revelations that American communications giant WorldCom hid nearly $4.0 billion of costs, a fact which now threatens the firm with bankruptcy. The story comes hard on the heels of the demise of Enron, GlobalCrossing, Tyco, and accountancy firm Arthur Anderson.The situation is a mess.
First off, what has happened in nearly all the cases mentioned above is fraud, albeit fraud on a scale to make one’s eyes water. In a capitalist system run by fallible, gullible and weak human beings, such fraud is going to happen occasionally, human nature being what it is. The law must take its course and the malefactors in these cases must be punished severely, and seen to be punished severely. Already the chill winds of the market are exerting their effect. Investors increasingly demand a premium for holding U.S. stocks and especially those in the technology sector, which has been at the centre of these recent shenanigans. The shakeout will be brutal for some, while those of us with stock portfolios are bound to suffer as well.
Such sagas tend to follow a pattern: rampant gains in a market, followed by a sharp drop; gradual revelations of corporate wrong-doing; shock among the public over the scandal, and then calls for a new set of rules or new watchdog to prevent things going wrong again. Except that they do go wrong again and the cycle is repeated. Similar scandals have happened before and will recur. The system is not fail-safe, which is why ordinary investors must never assume that just because there are rules or watchdogs, they therefore don’t need to be careful about their investments.
More generally, opponents of the market who cite present-day cases as proof of capitalism’s weakness overlook a key point. Namely, fraud is not peculiar to capitalism or indeed business as a whole. Finance ministers perpetrate precisely the kind of accounting chicanery of which a number of these U.S. firms stand accused. Think, for example, about the financial fiddling in which European governments engaged prior to the launch of the euro. If politicians were subject to the same rules on accounting honesty as businessmen, a good number of our political masters would be behind bars.
Finally, as Rand Simberg pointed out, the bulk of these offences happened during the 1990s, when a certain Bill Clinton was President, or so I recall. Makes it kind of hard for the left to taint George W. Bush with this, though that won’t stop them trying.
Although I am not an uncritical fan of Lew Rockwell‘s flavour of libertarianism, he has written an excellent article about that most inconsistent of the many conservative intellectual inconsistencies… conscription.
His article about acceptable face of state slavery is on the Lew Rockwell.com site.
It is interesting that some of the same people who claim the United States is the ‘freest country in the world’ seem to have no problem with supporting so many American ways of denying the very concept of self-ownership and replacing it with state ‘social’ ownership rather than ‘several’ property… and even extending to a person’s actual body.
It looks likely American lawmakers will soon agree airline pilots (as do all of us with a Blue Passport) have an inalienable Second Amendment Right To Bear Arms. Or in this particular case, pilots have a Right To Protect Our Sorry Arses. Support is apparently overwhelming. The public and the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) with strong support of air service staff are solidly behind it. There’s hardly a discouraging word to be heard in the halls of the Senate… with the exception of our old friend Senator Fritz “I’m For Sale” Hollings (D Disney) who is worried he’ll lose the terrorist vote if they all get shot before the next election.
Hollings and his friends will no doubt be wheeling out all the hackneyed arguments agin it. They’ll regale us with visions of pilots with the aim of an Imperial Storm Trooper who failed his Rifle Qual. Or like a posse from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, blowing holes through passengers, windows and wings while missing the hijacker standing Jedi-like six feet away. And of course dozens of passengers strained out of the airplane through centimetre holes while the rest balloon up and die in “Outpost” airlock-like technicolour gore.
But it ain’t that way in real life.
Many pilots are ex-military pilots who are well at ease with firearms and are just as likely to drop the sucker on the first shot as not. And as to the holes in the fuselage… that brings me to a story.
I was sitting in a hotel bar in Denver (doubt anyone is surprised at the story so far) late one night a couple weeks ago. It was a fairly quiet night. The three of us around the small round table were getting served rather quickly. But this was not your ordinary group watching sports and women in a hotel bar. The scene would not have been out of place in a movie about the making of the first A-Bomb. The table top was filled with napkins covered in arcane “back of the envelope” calculations made by a physicist friend who actually did work with Dr Teller at one time.
Among the many problems solved amidst the constant stream of engineering lubricant (Sam Adams is a nice beer for a Libertarian) were: “Will normal pots and pans survive launch in a gas gun at 3000 Gravities?”… and “What is the bleed down time for a Boeing 747 with a bullet hole in it?”
The answer to that question was: a good fraction of an entire day. And that was making the assumption the cabin pressurization was static. Which it isn’t, so basically a couple bullet holes in the frame won’t even make the system blink.
What we have here folks is your basic non-problem.
Erratum: As one reader pointed out, the movie name was Outland, not Outpost!
Last month, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft acknowledged that privacy is a central concern for e-businesses and individuals alike and announced the appointment of a new Internet privacy aide within the office of the Deputy Attorney General, who will be charged with the protection of consumer rights on the Net. Other than customer service, no single issue has hampered the growth of online business more than public perception of Internet businesses compromising in the privacy of individuals. Although new privacy aide’s initial assignments will apparently be focused on the FBI’s controversial “Carnivore” e-mail surveillance system, Ashcroft’s decision apparently signals the government’s recognition of personal privacy online as an national priority.
Or does it?
On May 30 John Ashcroft also gave the FBI expanded authority for its agents to monitor Internet chat rooms, Web sites, and commercial databases in search of clues to suspected terrorist activities; and to initiate inquiries at libraries and other public places without a warrant or even the need to show that a crime was committed. The new guidelines allow the FBI to send undercover agents to any event “open to the public”—including political gatherings and places of worship—to look for signs of terrorist or criminal activity. The agency will also be able to collect information on consumers through magazine subscriptions, book purchases, charitable contributions, and travel itineraries.
The new powers clash dramatically with the obligation of public libraries to maintain the privacy of their records, an issue that caused consternation when the FBI confiscated library computer records following the terrorist attacks of September 11. And last month Mr Ashcroft said something to the effect that churches, libraries and the Internet are public places where law-abiding citizens should have no expectation of privacy.
I have voiced my objections to such powers wielded by a government agency in a previous posting. It was encouraging to see that P.J. Connolly of InfoWorld takes issue with Ashcroft’s position that people have little, if any, expectation of privacy in public places.
“I don’t know about you, but I insist on a certain amount of privacy in public places. I don’t let store clerks recite my credit card numbers over the phone if their swipe terminals malfunction. I certainly don’t let people get too close to me when I’m using an ATM. You can bet that I want to know why someone wants my Social Security number, driver’s license information, or anything that I consider my business and no one else’s. If I don’t insist on the same degree of privacy in my Internet transactions, I’m asking to get robbed.”
He also admits to being ‘a conflicted libertarian’ (small ‘l’) who doesn’t trust any governmental institution that he can’t walk to and challenges his audience:
“Spare me your e-mails claiming that the war on terrorism requires that we give up our freedoms and similar drivel…. I do want to know how many of you think what you ordered from the online grocery or pharmacy is the government’s business, absent any crime being committed. Depending on the response I get, I may need to redefine what it means to be an American.”
That’s the spirit. Together with yesterday’s postponement, and hopefully amendment, of the Regulation of Investigative Powers Act (RIPA), it is a positive blip in the battle against the steady erosion of personal freedoms by the state. 
Yes, the USA is through to the last eight of the World Cup, despite, our news people are telling us, nobody in the USA giving a damn. But of course that’s the reason. Why did those wretched Irishmen miss all those penalties yesterday? Because the Irelandosphere in its entirety was watching in agony, and the poor fellows knew it. If you’re a Mexican with a chance of scoring, all those millions of Mexicans, brothers and cousins and uncles among them, clustered round their TV sets, howling and gasping like wounded animals, flash through your mind at the critical moment and your legs turn to seaweed. In contrast, when a US player gets a shot at goal, it’s between him and few dozen other Ivy League type blokes, none of whom are that bothered, so in it goes. USA 2 Mexico 0.
Nevertheless, my favourite US drama today is the lady forest ranger who confessed that, in the course of burning a letter from her estranged husband, she had also set fire to the entire state of Colorado. Why did she confess? Easy. This is the ultimate in saying: “Look what you made me do!” Hell hath no fury, and so on. But this does make we want to rethink female equality when it comes to owning or controlling thermonuclear weapons.
Robert ‘I don’t blame them for hitting me’ Fisk makes a rare intelligent point in the UK daily newspaper, The Independent. He points out that the U.S. government’s proposal to finger-print certain Arabs and Muslims from a set of Middle East countries will not apply to people travelling from Saudi Arabia, despite the fact that the men who attacked the U.S. on September 11th were mostly Saudis.
He is right to point out the absurdity of this. While I detest much of Fisk’s reflexive anti-American, anti-Israeli rhetoric, on this point he is right. Saudi Arabia is the country which has contributed the lion’s share of terrorists waging their war against the West. The sooner that Western policy-makers recognize that fact and reduce our reliance on their oil, the better. (This is already starting to happen due to growing ties with oil-rich Russia). Of course, whether fingerprinting will make an iota of difference to catching would-be terrorists is another point entirely. Predictably, Fisk does not object to the U.S. government fingerprinting persons on a matter of principle, but mainly to use it as a stick to hit Bush.
In the recent Samizdata article American Perfidy it is claimed that “apart from the tax cut” Mr Bush has allowed his agenda to collapse.
Actually (as I and others have pointed out) “apart from the tax cut” Mr Bush did not have an agenda worth talking about (just a lot of waffle about being “compassionate” by handing out tax payers’ money to religious charities). To be fair if Mr Bush had gone into the 2000 election with a decent agenda he would have lost. The “window of opportunity” that existed in Britain in 1979 and the United States in 1981 has gone. Just over 20 years ago most people would have accepted real budget cuts and deregulation, but this mood has past. The public (in both the Britain and the United States) are now obsessed with the “public services” and see new regulations as the correct response to any problem from Enron to hay fever.
Sadly the judgement on Mr Reagan and Mrs Thatcher must be that they had a chance but failed (in terms of regulations and welfare state programs government is bigger than ever now) – although in both cases one can produce a case for the defence (Mr Reagan faced a House of Reps controlled by the Democrats, Mrs Thatcher was surrounded by traitors from day one…). As for Mr Bush – he never had a chance. The media were against him, the “intellectuals” and their universities were against him, the Republicans did not have firm control of the Senate – all these things might have been overcome. However, Mr Bush faces a general public the majority of whom are statist – and against that what can he do?
Oh by the way – no Mr Clinton did not favour free trade. Mr Clinton liked trade agreements if they led to regulations being imposed on countries (especially “pro labour” union type regulations) and he especially liked trade deals if they helped build up the old dream of a world government (replacing G.A.T.T. with the W.T.O. was a fifty year old dream in certain circles in the U.S.) – one step at a time was Mr Clinton’s way (after the health care defeat early on in his administration). However an actual free trade deal – no, Mr Clinton never very keen on them.
Paul Marks
Last September two very big towers in New York were zapped by terrorists, and ever since then the argument has bubbled along about what ought to be done with the site once all the debris was cleared away, as it now has been. I’ve only just seen the piece in which, last Wednesday (which I’m learning is like a month ago in blog time), Anne Coulter says: rebuild and rebuild big! I agree, and I hope (and I learn that) New York does, and probably will.
Ask yourself this. What would Al Qaeda want? A park and some silly sculpture? They’d love that. That would be game set and match to them. Two huge concrete and metal fingers raised to the sky, or maybe one even bigger one, featured on every other photo of New York for the next five decades? They’d hate that. There you go.
The recent massive U.S. government increase in subsidy to its domestic farmers comes in for a deserved and amusing mauling from Daily Telegraph journalist and Tory MP Boris Johnson. He is right to point out that by signing off the vast increase in aid to American farmers, Bush has compounded the damage to international free markets made when he agreed to steel and lumber tariffs earlier in the year.
On a broader point, this makes me wonder whether Bush is headed for going down in history as one of the most protectionist Presidents since the Second World War. On the domestic front his pre-election agenda seems to fallen apart with the exception of the tax cut. Instead, Bush is resorting to pork-barrel politics to shore up support in supposed key states for the Republicans ahead of the Congressional elections this autumn. Of course, we libertarians hold no illusions about politicians as a group, so I suppose Bush’s slide into cynicism should not surprise us. But I never thought I could write the following words – I am beginning to miss Bill Clinton. At least he believed in free trade, if nothing else.
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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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