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]
|
Some of the comments that we got yesterday after the Community Organiser from Chicago was elected were wonderful. Here is my personal favourite:
First, demonize him and ascribe his motives to evil and malfeasance, not just policy differences. We should proclaim often and loudly that he is not our president, that he stole the election and he has no mandate. We should repeat false stories about him, no matter how crazy or wrong, until they are accepted as common wisdom. We should create lies and urban legends to smear him and demean him. We should ridicule any verbal slips or gaffes, and ascribe them to his native stupidity and intellectual vapidity. We should accuse him of every sin and crime under the sun and attempt to have him impeached for policy differences, which we should call crimes. We should undermine any programs he wants to pass by misstating their goals and content. We should take quotes out of context to make him seem ridiculous and to make him seem mean-spirited. We should repeat often that he doesn’t care about people who aren’t the same race as he is, and that he is only out for his own kind. We should claim that he is going to try to force a coup and take over the country by force. We should claim he’s going to lock up any dissenters. We should loudly scream about losing our rights and interfere with his speechs and disrupt any gatherings of his party. Our politicians should cynically misstate his policies to make him look bad.
Update: one or two commenters are outraged by this and the words “native stupidity” have prompted at least one commenter to accuse me of being a racist in putting this paragraph on the blog. For goodness sake: the whole point of the comment was that it was written by a very bitter man who understandably feels that it is time that Obama should be attacked in exactly the same way as was Bush, who after all has been constantly attacked for being stupid, for his Texan drawl, whatever. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
I don’t normally respond to comments by adding to my original posts, but in this case I think it is necessary to lay down a marker to all those Obama supporters out there who might get twitchy when their hero gets any flak: criticism of Mr Obama is not some form of disguised racism. If the Democrats and their cheerleaders in the MSM spend the next four years trying to ward off all criticism of their man as racist, they will demean the genuine examples of racism that still exist. Further, they will, either unwittingly or not, harm racial harmony in the US and elsewhere. They will also deserve our contempt.
Jonah Goldberg over at National Review Online’s The Corner blog makes the point that the election of Mr Obama, by a landslide, does rather crush the idea that colour is any longer a serious bar to achievement in the US. Well he has a point, although I am sure there are still plenty of racists around who might try to hinder the efforts of others on grounds of race. But as we free marketeers like to point out, outside the world intermediated via political coercion, being a bigot imposes a serious cost on the bigot, since being prejudiced against a smart, hardworking person on the grounds of their skin colour is stupid. A rational employer, for example, even if he is a bigot, will employ people if he or she can get a competitive edge thereby. That is why markets can have a general tendency, if they are allowed to work vigorously, against bigots, even if racial prejudices persist.
With the institutions run by the state, meanwhile, Mr Goldberg argues that with the election of Mr Obama, it is going to be much, much harder for defenders of racial quotas in things like university admissions to continue with the idea that reverse discrimination is required any longer. Hmmm. I personally am a bit skeptical: there is such a large vested interest in maintaining the politics of grievance that getting rid of reverse discrimination will not be easy. But I think one welcome aspect of Mr Obama’s election is that he will emphatically knock down the image of America as closed to non-whites. It has been nonsense for years of course, as a prominent, black economist like Thomas Sowell has been pointing out. Condi Rice and Colin Powell’s advancement to the summit of government hardly squares with the idea of a bigoted Republic, although having served under Republican administrations, they do not get much of a pass from the MSM. But the grievance industry, as an unintended consequence, just took a big hit with the election of the Community Organiser from Chicago. That is surely a good thing.
I attended a US Election Night Party in central London last night. It was wall-to-wall Obamamaniacs. They had badges (or ‘buttons’ as you Americans call them) on sale and while my first choice would have been Bob Barr, I chose a McCain/Palin one just to piss everybody off. Significantly, the Obama/Biden badges were on sale at £5 each while the McCain/Palin ones were going for a knock-down £3. A portent of things to come, I thought.
Anyway, since Perry has manfully tried to steer us all towards optimism this morning, I felt compelled to sink my hand into the mud, dredge up a big, smelly, greasy, filthy dollop of pessimism and smear it all over you. Oh come on, you know you love it really.
So, the USA has finally got its version of the Tony Blair/New Labour revolution and, if our experience is anything to go by, then ‘get ready for da pain’. I wish someone had had the foresight to slap an export restriction on it. It means (as if you have not already guessed) a whole heaping helping of new taxes and regulations but, most tellingly, a huge expansion in the public sector payroll. What better way to ensure future election success than with an army of loyal, grateful and dependent voters? That’s how they did it here. Welcome to the client-state. Can they do it? Yes they can. And they will.
The Republican Party (which I care little for) is probably buggered. Not only is it going to take them a long time to get over the now-universal loathing of ‘Bush and the neocons’ but they are also likely to paralyse themselves with an extended period of intra-party squabbling about which directon to take. Furthermore, it is very unsafe to assume that they will move in the right direction. We made that mistake here after the Conservatives got their clocks cleaned in three consecutive elections. “They have no choice”, we said “but to take the party in a more free market, libertarian direction”. Boy, were we wrong about that. Instead, they decided that what they needed was a big dose of what the other guy was having. Don’t be surprised if you find that the whole centre of American political gravity has shifted semi-permanently to the statist/left.
However, libertarian ideas (which I care a lot for) are also probably buggered. The Keynsians are busy priming their pumps which means that not only are things going to get worse, they are going to made worse. But do you think that Mr. Audacity and his chums are going to get the blame for that? Think again. “Unregulated, free market capitalism” (as if we have ever been within a cruise missiles range of any such thing) has already been fingered as the culprit for this crisis of regulatory statism and that gigantic lie has now become the accepted narrative. As I always say, its perceptions that matter. For crying out loud, the epidemic of violent youth crime in this country is still being laid at the door of Margaret Thatcher (“She created a greedy, me-first society where nobody cares about other people”).
Furthermore, we can expect to have to deal with an emboldened IslamoLeft. Regardless of whether or not there is any objective justification, they will see this as a vindication of their efforts meriting a redoubling of their political ‘jihad’. I’m not necessarily referring to bombs on buses here but, if I was them, I would be drooling at the sight of all those 20-something “Yes we can” chanters and gearing up to harvest a fresh crop of Useful Idiots (a Western commodity so reliable that it really ought to be the subject of a futures contract, like pork bellies or cocoa).
So, there we have it. Several reasons to be uncheerful. What do we do? I have no idea. Probably carry on doing this. What else can we do?
Have a nice day.
And come back soon.
Missing you already.
Unlike many, well, most of my compatriots, I am not filled with a deep sense of gloom and foreboding at the prospect of the most left wing president since FDR gaining the Whitehouse. In truth, I can see many reasons to think it may well be a far better outcome than if a Big State Republican like McCain won.
Of course Obama will bring an avalanche of policies that will be truly appalling and quite wicked, of that I have no doubt, much like his predecessors in office in that respect. As the global economy continues to come unglued, everything Obama does to deal with the mounting crises will in fact make things worse. Civil liberties will be hammered, all in the name of ‘fairness’, and the flood of regulations pertaining to every aspect of economic life will grow into a drowning ocean.
And that is actually the good news.
Why? Because in truth the Republicans under John “I support the bailout” McCain would scarcely have done much better. The economic global meltdown is only just starting to roll: if you think the sub-prime mortgage crisis was the biggie, just wait until you see the fallout from the fun and frolics of the impending mess in other areas, such as debt swaps. This is all going to get worse, a lot worse, and Obama is going to do absolutely everything to dig the holes deeper. Looking back on this period ten to twenty years from now, the Republicans crying into their beer tonight will be saying “thank Christ it was not us in office then”.
The lesser evil is not going to win this time and much as it may not seem that way now… or any time soon I suspect… in the long run this has a far far better chance of leading to the rebirth of a genuine pro-liberty, pro-market political culture, something which the gradual incremental surrender of recent times made impossible (such as the ‘pragmatic voting’ of people who want a smaller state for Republican candidates who ended up growing the regulatory state).
Many will find the glee of the statist left over the next few days and weeks hard to endure, but to be honest I have been walking around with a grin all day. Finally the era of gradualism is over and the masks are going to come off. The USA has voted for statism and it is going to get exactly what it voted for at a juncture in history where it will very quickly be impossible to hide the cost of those votes.
Obama is not the start of a new era, he is the death knell for the old one.
Blimey, those Atlas Shrugged themes keep on coming. Glenn Reynolds has a collection of reader thoughts about how, assuming Obama or for that matter, McCain wins, entrepreneurial vigour will be hit by any rise in taxes, particularly things like capital gains tax. Obama wants to raise CGT, which would be damaging to the US equity market, hence pension savings, not to mention curb new business formation. Way to go, Barack! Even so, the idea of entrepreneurs consciously choosing to cut back on any business plans while they sit out the first year or two of a leftist presidency is striking. Small businessmen and women are not getting much attention from politcians right now. No surprise: small businesses are disruptive; they tend not to be much interested in screwing subsidies or other benefits out of the state and are consequently not widely chased for campaign contributions. For sure, now and again a politician might talk about “helping small businesses” but there is a sort of going-through-the-motions aspect to it which means the pols do not really care that much. Just ask Joe The Plumber.
It is easy, in the current fears about the state of the world economy and what might be in store, to lose sight of what has actually been achieved in recent years. Fuelled by a mixture of education, supply-side tax cuts, a benign regulatory climate and the emergence of computers, small businesses in California’s Silicon Valley and other parts of the world have driven much of the growth seen in the past 20-plus years. Sure, big businesses get on the front page of Time or The Economist, but the small, or not-even-yet-started firms are the ones that matter. If the “animal spirits” of entrepreneurs are held back, we are all in a lot of trouble.
Anway, unlike some people who seem to want to torture themselves by sitting up all night to watch the elections, I shall be heading off to watch the latest James Bond film. Friends tell me it is not as good as the last one, with too much head-spinning action and not enough characterisation or jokes. But watching Daniel Craig blasting along in his Aston surely has to be better than watching Mr Magoo or The Community Organiser from Chicago. It is a shame Mr Fleming could not have written a novel where a bunch of crooked politicians wind up in a pool of sharks. Maybe that should be the next plot. Perhaps I’ll go ahead and write it.
Many of you will remember that back before the Democratic primary I was one of those who argued for a term of Hillary to help the Republicans understand that small government, liberty minded people won’t vote for the lesser of two evils indefinitely. My goal was and is always long term and I think four years of Hillary would have been a Carteresque setup for a popular swing in the direction of personal liberty and small government.
Three factors I didn’t anticipate have changed the dynamic since then. Any one of them would be an argument against that plan but, taken together, they add up to a veto. → Continue reading: I decided to endorse McCain/Palin
Dizzy, of Dizzy Thinks fame, recently made an interesting prediction, concerning the attitude of Brits towards the USA:
If Barack Obama becomes President-Elect next week, don’t expect any of the snide anti-american Brits, Aussie and others to change their tune. They’ve had a hate figure in Bush for the past eight years, and I don’t doubt that Barack Obama will become an equal hate figure within a short amount time.
I do doubt this. I think that much anti-Americanism is really anti- a particular part of America, and this hatred is felt with equal strength by other parts of America. President Bush, after all, is not only hated in Britain. Many Americans hate him too. And Obama is from a very different part of America to the part that gave us President Bush. Obama is from one of the parts that hates President Bush.
I recall the Clinton years. Had the (very large) part of Britain that now hates Bush wanted to hate Clinton, it would have had at least as much to work with as it has had with Bush. But it didn’t want to hate Clinton, and it didn’t. Likewise, it won’t want to hate Obama, and it won’t.
Well, we shall probably soon see.
It is becoming increasing difficult for me not to concur with Paul Marks’s ahead-of-the-curve branding of MARXIST upon the much kissed behind of Barack Obama. At the very least, his political compass swings disturbingly left on economic issues – to a degree I was not aware of. Previously, I could dismiss his “spread the wealth around” comment that arose from the infamous encounter with “Joe the Plumber” as a spot of ill-chosen populist rhetoric in a campaign unusually heavy on populist rhetoric – which, by the standards of US Presidential elections, is saying something. However, the rediscovered 2001 radio interview in which Obama explicitly advocated redistribution of wealth suggests to me that Americans ought to take him at his word when he talked of spreading the wealth around in that Ohio driveway.
Of course, this is electoral kryptonite in the USA, and the Obama campaign’s denials came hard and fast. Quoting from a CBS News article:
“This is a fake news controversy drummed up by the all too common alliance of Fox News, the Drudge Report and John McCain,” said Obama spokesman Bill Burton.
“In this seven year old interview, Senator Obama did not say that the courts should get into the business of redistributing wealth at all.”
That is technically correct, but Burton is lying by omission. It is indeed true that Obama did not say in the interview that the courts should get into the business of redistributing wealth. However, what Burton neglects to mention is that he said they should not because they wouldn’t be any good at it and that going through the legislature would be much more effective. He also went on to say that the civil rights movement’s greatest tragedy was that it failed to massively redistribute wealth to the victims of racial discrimination in the USA. This 2001 recording of Obama advocating a redistributionist policy has convinced me that Obama’s “spread the wealth around” remark to Joe the Plumber was a genuine insight into his inner beliefs – beliefs that he would not dare expose to the American public who, by and large, fundamentally oppose them. In 2001, Obama stated that the legislature would be a better tool for redistributing the wealth of others to black people. Then, he was in his mid to late 30s, an age when most people’s political views have solidified. In 2008, one wonders if he now believes the executive would be even more efficacious? It is not such a stretch.
As for the Obama camp’s deeply duplicitous claim that the 2001 interview was deliberately misinterpreted by the Right, well, why break the habit of a campaign and start being honest? I am not denying that the McCain campaign has, on several occasions, twisted the truth out of all recognition over a number of issues. But at least they don’t cloak themselves in self-righteous, holier-than-thou fervour while doing so. If I had a vote in this election, the constant and largely unchallenged spectacle of Obama and his camp trumpeting their integrity – whilst they dissemble and weasel their way to November 4th – would be as good as any motivation for me to pull the lever for McCain.
(2001 Obama interview and CBS article both sourced from Drudge)
Occasionally, whenever one of us Samizdata scribes writes about events in the UK, such as loss of civil liberties, or the latest financial disasters perpetrated by the government, or crime, or whatnot, there is sometimes a comment from an expatriate writer, or US citizen in particular, suggesting that we moaners should pack our bags, cancel the mail and come on over to America. Like Brian Micklethwait of this parish, I occasionally find such comments a bit annoying; it is not as if the situation in Jefferson’s Republic is particularly great just now, although a lot depends on where you live (Texas is very different from say, Vermont or for that matter, Colorado).
But considering what might happen if Obama wins the White House and the Dems increase or retain their hold on Congress, I also wonder whether we might encounter the example of enterprising Americans coming to Britain, not the other way round. The dollar is rising against the pound, so any assets that are transferred from the US to Britain go further. Taxes are likely to rise quite a bit if The One gets in, although they are likely to rise in the UK too to pay for the enormous increase in public debt, even if the Tories win the next election in 2010.
Of course, this is an issue at the margins. If I were an American looking to get out of a left-tilting America, there are many other countries apart from Britain I would want to live in, not least because the weather here is generally lousy, you cannot defend yourself with deadly force, and the place is so crowded. Switzerland is likely to be popular for those who want to go to Europe; some East European states will be attractive. And there is the whole of Asia to consider, possibly even the better bits of Latin America. But do not be surprised to read of a steady exodus of Americans in the next few years, assuming Obama proves to be as bad as some reckon he is. We might hear the accents of the West Coast or New York on the London Underground and in the bars of the West End a bit more.
Update: Here’s more on the collapse of the pound. At this rate, New Yorkers will be heading to London to do their Christmas shopping. Seriously, this shows that markets believe Brown has so badly mortgaged the UK economy on debt that Labour will try to turn on the money printing presses. And we know where that leads.
When reading on the internet about Islamic terrorism, commenters often mention that there is also terrorism by Christian fundamentalists in America, where there have been bombings of abortion clinics and shootings of abortion providers.
How prevalent is this form of American domestic terrorism? In recent years there have been round about 15,000 – 20,000 murders in total per year in the US. How many of these were of abortion providers?
Guess now. Scribble your answer down.
If you had asked me a few months ago I would have said three or four murders per year.
Considered over the last fifteen years I was overestimating somewhat. According to the best-known pro-abortion organisation in the US, NARAL Pro-Choice America,
Since 1993, seven clinic workers – including three doctors, two clinic employees, a clinic escort, and a security guard – have been murdered in the United States. Seventeen attempted murders have also occurred since 1991.
That figure comes from a document published in December 2007. So far as I know the figures have not changed since then.
However the phrasing “Since 1993 seven abortion clinic workers have been murdered in the United States” could be re-arranged, with equal truth, to say that “since 1998 no abortion clinic workers have been murdered in the United States.”
The last such murder was ten years ago today.
When I first found out this fact I was surprised. Again and again I have read comments that assumed that this type of terrorism was less deadly than Islamic terrorism but was nonetheless a steadily lethal undercurrent of American life – a death here, a death there.
In the fight against any type of crime, no victory can ever be anything but temporary. The most you can ever say is that the trend is down. There have been several attempted murders of abortion providers during the last ten years and the fact that none of them have succeeded must owe something to mere chance. As has often been observed, the terrorist only has to get lucky once. However it does now seem probable there will be zero murders of abortion providers during the presidency of George W Bush. I doubt that he will be given much credit for this, though if the trend had been otherwise he would certainly have been given the discredit.
Greg Nemitz is running a write-in campaign for the Idaho 2nd Congressional District:
I’m Gregory Nemitz. I’m a conservative Republican running for Congress as an official Write-In candidate for Idaho’s 2nd Congressional District.
Your Congressman, Mike Simpson, recently voted twice for the $810 billion bailout bill. You also need to know that the liberal Democrat candidate said she would have voted FOR the bailout.
I have absolutely no idea if we have any readers in that district, but if you are one, check out his campaign video.
Greg is an acquaintance of mine through aerospace circles. We first crossed paths on the internet a couple decades ago and I have even met him in person a few times.
Fox News asks the question: “Will Obama’s $604M Haul Kill Off Public Financing?” Ask any Libertarian and I am sure the answer you will hear is: “I certainly hope so!”.
No Libertarian presidential candidate has ever accepted stolen funds for their campaign. Perhaps the attempts to regulate political speech have simply reached the point at which even a Socialist Democrat recognizes they are better off not accepting State controlled financing.
If the Republicans stay out of the trough as well four years now, perhaps we will at least get the State out of campaign financing.
|
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.
|
