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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“America is fighting the War on Terrorism for one reason: to Secure the American Homeland, whatever it takes. If that takes Empire, fine.”
Trent Telenko
I hope that the US destroys the North Korean Communist regime by the time I’ve posted this text. If there is a legitimate nuclear target anywhere on Earth right now, the North Korean plutonium refinery has to be it.
I also would give a cheer if Saddam Hussein were to end up dead in a traffic accident, or choke on caviar, or find breathing under a pillow difficult, or take a cruise missile up his fundament.
And I am crtainly not one of those people who hopes that lots of American troops die in Iraq over the next few months.
I fear that the British military capability is over-stretched and less effective than its champions would like us to believe. For this reason I am wary of jingoistic talk in London. I would prefer to hear about orders for a decent rifle, a decent tank, a fighter that’s actually operational and reassurance that the anti-chemical warfare suits work.
I also question the double talk about nukes in Iraq when the good reasons for toppling/killing Saddam are…
- he’s a national socialist tyrant
- he’s allegedly one of Al-Qaeda’s main financial and logistical backers.
I’m told there is evidence to back up this claim, so why the red herrings?
BUT, the comment which opens this posting worries me. First it is obvious that if President Bush were seriously taking this line (I don’t think he is, but Mr Telenko may know better), then Europe had better do a deal with the fundamentalists, because America is clearly prepared to sacrifice allies as part of “whatever it takes”, it has the ring of the Yalta betrayal about it. The history of Japan from 1902 to 1945 and its deteriorating relations with the British and Americans is a nasty precedent.
Second “if that takes empire, fine” is precisely the scenario in which libertarians should not (and many will not) support the US. Waco was not a crime because Americans were killed, September 11th would have been a crime if the only victims had been Latino office cleaners. “Homeland” is a very nasty term to the four thousand seven hundred million people who don’t have a US passport or a Green Card. If the War on Terrorism is about protecting the US at the expense of the rest of the world, we’ve got a new Iron Curtain coming down, this time in front of the Statue of Liberty.
I really didn’t expect my warnings about the long-term temptation of absolute power to be vindicated so quickly.
The trick to beating student unions is to force them to follow their arguments to conclusion. Student politicians tend to be the sort of student who enjoys controlling other people’s lives. They hear fond stories of student protests in the 1960s, but are disillusioned by the lack of interest in student politics among today’s undergraduates. Boycotts particularly appeal to this mindset.
Let’s say a student politician proposes that the union ceases trading with any business with involvement in Burma. The result of such a ban would be minimal. But why should only Burma be included? The boycott is because the country has a poor human rights record. Surely, therefore, the union should cease dealings any country that abuses human rights? It is much better to student politicians the idea that lots of products ought to be banned. That way, there are two possible outcomes. The boycott will be stopped by the Tory wets (who would put up with a boycott of Guinness but couldn’t cope if Gordon’s disappeared too). Alternatively, half the drinks in the union bar disappear overnight, in which case people stop going to the union, and its power therefore decreases. It’s a win-win situation.
The problem is that this strategy is far too risky when it comes to national politics. If you tell the government to be more consistent, it might actually do what you say, and mess up the entire country. It’s much better for governments to mess up the economy inconsistently than do it properly.
Reading David Carr’s criticism of the Galileo system reminds me of the Lord of the Rings.
Specifically the question is whether it is better for there to be one superpower, or several powers. David seems to take the view that the EU is evil, but the US is good… or at least less evil). As a centralised state emerges on the European continent, this may appear to some British Libertarians like nothing less than the re-emergence of the Dark Lord in Mordor.
Tolkien would possibly see as more complicated: the US acting perhaps like the doomed kingdom of Numenor. The US military hegemony as analogous to Galadriel taking the One Ring:
[Sam Speaks]
“But if you’ll pardon my speaking out, I think my master was right. I wish you’d take his Ring. You’d put things to rights. You’d stop them digging up the gaffer and turning him adrift. You’d make some folks pay for their dirty work.”
[Galadriel replies]
“I would” she said. “That is how it would begin. But it would not stop with that, alas! We will not speak more of it. Let us go!”
The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter Seven, The Mirror of Galadriel
How many American readers of Samizdata would agree that the British Empire was a force for world freedom? Not many judging by the numbers who think it was wrong for the US to intervene in both World Wars. The problem is that the British Empire was at times a force for free trade and at other times a mercantilist extortion racket.
The US empire to come is unlikely to be as restrained as the British Empire, because of the socialist ethos of state imposed education, and crusades such as ridding the Third World of cheap (child) labour, the War on Drugs, the War on Tax Evasion, trying to impose a worldwide age of sexual consent, banning alcohol before 21, but making it almost compulsory thereafter, the imposition of American patent law worldwide, and of course, global weapons control.
In other words, although US global supremacy starts better than the Soviet dream of a worldwide Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, it could end up the same:
“That is how it would begin. But it would not stop with that, alas!”
Which is why I hope the Galileo system works, and that other countries develop stealth bombers… and that nuclear weapons proliferate.
The truth is out there. It has been for some time. Ten years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the brute thuggery endured by the Eastern Europeans and the poverty and despoilation to which they subjected, are common knowledge. Likewise the pitiful carnage of Cambodia’s ‘Killing Fields’. The blood-chilling stories of cannibalism in North Korea are corroborated by too many sources to be regarded as mere speculation.
Of course, we crusading capitalists knew all along and made no secret of it, while our left-wing compatriots waspishly accused us of being, well, ‘capitalists’. It was the very worst insult they could muster and carried with the implication that we were liars and wreckers. For so long as they could avoid being confronted with the terrible truth, they could dance ecstatically in the Elysian Fields of La-La Land.
But no longer do they have any excuses. They may still swoon for the nostalgia of heady, revolutionary days gone by but no longer can they plausibly deny the life-sapping horror that the philosophy of Karl Marx has wrought upon mankind.
Nonetheless, and to my abject disbelief, students pound the streets of Seattle and Genoa waving ‘Hammer & Sickle’ flags while, emblazoned on their T-shirts, are the images of Mao, Lenin and Che Guevarra. Just what is going on inside their addled brains? It is as if they are suffering from some grievous malady that has struck them completely blind to the glaring lessons of very recent and eminantly accessible history.
If you have been as astounded by all this as I have, then this (somewhat lengthy) article in the Economist may be of interest:
“Books on Marx aimed at undergraduates and non-specialists continue to sell steadily in Western Europe and the United States. And new ones keep coming. For instance, Verso has just published, to warm reviews, “Marx’s Revenge” by Meghnad Desai, a professor of economics at the London School of Economics. Mr Desai argues that Marx was misunderstood and that the great man was right about far more than he is given credit for. In August, Oxford University Press published “Why Read Marx Today?” by Jonathan Wolff. It too is an engaging read. The author, a professor at University College London, is a particularly skilful elucidator of political philosophy. In his book, he argues that Marx was misunderstood and that the great man was right about far more than he is given credit for.”
→ Continue reading: Why old commies never die
In so far as this slogan declares a beautiful and simple truth, it does not prompt me to go and read James Lileks. But that’s because I already do read James Lileks. Avidly and regularly (doesn’t everyone?).
All the more reason, then, for a particular phrase or position in his column to stand out for me and ignite a bonfire of ideas in my head. This time, the great man says:
“…make a crack about “Women’s Studies” departments, as I did in yesterday’s screed, and people think you’re opposed to women’s studies. I’m not.”
It is taken from the screed that inspired the above-mentioned slogan and it is a view from which I beg to differ. I am opposed to ‘Women’s Studies’. I am opposed to all ‘studies’ be they women’s, social, peace, gay, ethnic, media, vegan, enviro-mental or any other ‘studies’ one may care to mention.
‘Studies’ are not about studying. They are nothing whatsoever to do with pushing forth the frontiers of knowledge. It is not about learning, it is about anti-learning. ‘Studies’ are the colonies of the marxist academic imperium established to train future operatives in the principles and means of deconstruction and social engineering. They are the proving grounds of the middle-class kleptocrats that spend their lives absorbing wealth while serving in NGOs, committees and state bureaucracies, manipulating and publishing statistics and information in order to advance their naked political agendas.
‘Studies’ are a cancer, a rot. Cut open any ‘studies’ department of any university and a million saprophytic creepy-crawlies will pour out, scurrying frantically away from the light. ‘Studies’ are a leukemia attacking the healthy cells of a civil society. Cauterise them, remove them, incinerate them and let the body grow strong and healthy again.
Such is the quality of the balkanisation nostrum that it can, simultaneously, be a cornerstone of establishment thinking and also packaged up as new, different and ‘radical’. As evidence, please see the case of ‘Ms.Dynamite’, a 21 year-old British recording artist who has proclaimed that her future lies in the political realm:
“There is not anyone in the Cabinet who can relate to me or that I can relate to.”
Welcome to the club, Ms.Dynamite.
“The connotations that come with the word politics are basically middle-class, rich white men who don’t give a damn about what we think. That’s not me speaking as a black person but as a young person.”
It’s the Rocky Hip-Hop Picture Show. Ms.Dynamite is doing the ‘Time-Warp’ and we’re back in the 1960’s.
“I feel that Britain is still an extremely racist country.”
Sounds like she’s been tuning in to that middle-class, rich white man Jack Straw. That’s precisely what he’s been telling us for years.
“It’s important to learn about everybody’s history. I think the only way to overcome racism and discrimination is to learn where we’ve all come from.”
Ah yes, that must explain what the British National Party are trying to do.
Still, all things being equal I expect that Ms.Dynamite will embark upon a successful career in politics sooner or later. She will slide effortlessly into the NuLabour machine.
Last Wednesday evening, I had the pleasure of being wined and dined at the Chez de Havilland in the company of the man himself, Brian Micklethwait and a delegation of student bloggers responsible for the St.Andrews Liberty Log.
Spending an evening with these fine, upstanding examples of student life rather put my own persistant grumbles into perspective. Judging from what they have to say about their fellow students at that fine old institution, it has become a Seat of Unlearning. Our dinner companions, it would appear, constitute an oasis of sanity amid a vast, barren desert of addled brains.
One example that sticks in my mind, is a story related by one of the students, Alex Singleton. I believe I recall the details with reasonable accuracy but I’m sure I will hear smartly from Alex if this proves not to be the case.
It seems that St.Andrews University Student Union has its very own ‘Equal Opportunities’ Commission. Or, at least, it used to have one because our Alex managed to get himself elected to head it and then promptly proceeded to trash the entire operation and render it unusable. Chalk one up for the good guys. However, in the midst of performing this great service for mankind, Alex was approached by a diminutive fellow student who wanted Alex to take up her claim that she was a victim of discrimination because of her lack of height.
→ Continue reading: Apart-height
Following on from yesterday’s fracas, first-hand reports are now on-line at the website of the Countryside Alliance.
Of particular note is the report from Parliament Square by Simon Hart:
“There isn’t a single person who was in Parliament Square today who has the slightest desire to do anything other than lead a life free from political interference and to respect the rule of law.”
That sentiment has a vaguely familiar ring to it. I’m sure I’ve heard it somewhere before.
Mark Steyn is in rare form, delivering a splendid satirical roasting of the detestable Harold Pinter.
‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer had a very shiny nose,’ Pinter continued. ‘You know why that is? Depleted uranium’?
[…]
“George W Bush says he’s dreaming of a white Christmas,” sneered Mr Pinter. “But for the rest of us it’s a nightmare. I wake up feeling like a man trapped in a snowy knick-knack with his face pressed up against the glass howling, ‘Let me out of here’, only to be buried under another ton of artificial flakes.”
Splendid stuff. It is a continuing marvel to me that Pinter can still appear in polite society in Britain without having doors slammed in his face.
TANSTAAFL Times is dead. In early 1996 I founded a libertarian newspaper called TANSTAAFL Times. The title was based on Robert Heinlein’s coined motto: There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. To date the publication has made me a small profit (under $100). The original intention was to publish twice monthly and as material became available I would shift to a weekly format.
The first edition carried two cartoons I drew (badly) myself, a news report and an opinionated feature article. It sold for 50 pence and went like hot cakes at a Libertarian Alliance conference. I had little trouble finding subscribers, my peak being 97 and with a peak print run of 250. I doubled the price without any problems.
Despite these low circulation figures and the fact that I paid contributors, I never made a loss. I managed to sell advertising space which alone covered all my costs except postage.
So why did only 24 editions appear in six years? After all if Samizdata offered to pay $50 for a 500 word article or a cartoon, I’m sure our editors would be at risk of being crushed in the stampede of eager wannabe contributors.
I took a lot of criticism, some of it to my face, for the failure to produce regular editions of TANSTAAFL Times. True, 24 editions is six times more than the average periodical achieves in a lifetime (anything more than five editions is a sort of success). The critics didn’t help, because they failed to understand the nature of editing a periodical.
I calculated that there were 74 distinct tasks involved in producing TANSTAAFL Times properly. As owner, editor, chief columnist, sole reporter, designer and subscriptions administrator (I’m forgetting some of my job description) I estimated that the job could not properly be done in less than eight days a month. But this assumed that I had material to publish. The reason that I offered $50 per article was twofold. First I wanted to be able to refuse rubbish. Second I wanted to attract lots of libertarians with something to say.
In six years I received exactly three unsolicited articles one of which was 10,000 words long. One was published. I had one offer of cartoons, but no samples. For two years every week I begged a cartoonist (who complained that he was broke) to let me have a look at the rejected material he offered to Private Eye which they found too “politically incorrect”. I offered £20, £30, once going as high as £150. Nada. In total I managed to scrape fewer than twenty articles out of different authors, most of which refused payment. I note that Samizdata gets more contributions than that every single week.
I had intended to produce a glorious 25th edition of TANSTAAFL Times, I’ve written four articles for it. But the fact that I knew that I wouldn’t get any authors without a fight was simply a battle not worth fighting.
So I’ve decided to write this blog and acknowledge that Samizdata.net is achieving what I had hoped for, and that I’m better off, at least for the time being, as a regular contributor to this blog, than ruling my own dilapidated kingdom.
I hope in due course to put an on-line archive of the 24 editions of TANSTAAFL Times. In the meantime they can be accessed through the British Library. I like to think that TANSTAAFL Times was ahead of its time: offering a libertarian slant on current affairs. I will miss it.
Which is more reprehensible? A genuine belief in socialism and Gramschian deconstruction or a willingness to pay lip service to the ideas in order to curry favour with a particular constituency?
Either way, ‘Conservative’ MP John Bercow, once regarded as a radical free-marketeer, opens his heart to the Guardianistas in an article which is, shall we say, thought-provoking:
“For too long, Conservatives have ducked expressing their belief in social justice for fear of being disbelieved or derided. This taboo must now be broken”
Translation: Don’t be silly, we were socialists all along.
“Social justice is not about stopping people from becoming too rich; it is about stopping them from becoming too poor.”
Er…can you just run that one past me again, John?
“Although Labour ministers have not achieved as much as they would like, they clearly care even if they cannot always cope.”
Attaboy, John, you give ’em hell. Gosh, Labour must be terrified of you.
“So what is needed? First, review every benefit to ensure that it is focused on the most needy. Simplicity, transparency, targeting, fairness, effectiveness – these are the criteria against which policy must be judged.”
The Tories will throw even more money at the Welfare State than Labour will.
“The government cannot be the only supplier of assistance but should work with charitable groups, churches and community leaders.”
We will nationalise all the people.
“Discrimination is inimical to social justice. Conservatives should reject it without qualification. The case for equal treatment is not about political correctness, but about human decency. Where pay inequalities between men and women result from differences in skills or qualifications, this must be addressed. However, where inequalities are down to cowboy or chauvinist employers, Tories should side unequivocally with the individual whose right to fair treatment has been infringed.”
Yes, the Tories will hunt down those evil capitalist hoodlums wherever they’re lurking and flay them alive. You thought New Labour was tough on enterprise and freedom? Hah! Wait till you see NuTories in action.
“The first step to changing this negative perception would be to declare that helping the poorest pensioners, for example, should be a vastly higher priority than cutting taxes for the middle classes.”
Oh tsch, tsch. Surely there are loads of good excuses to plunder the middle class to the point of penury and not just pensioners?
“It is vital that Tories should aspire to govern Britain as it is, and not Britain as it was. That means valuing equally rich and poor, public sector and private, urban and rural, male and female, young and old, black and white, gay and straight.”
SWEETIES FOR EVERYONE!!!
” We must share the commitment of our fellow citizens to the ideal of social justice and demonstrate to millions of doubters that Conservatives will deliver it.”
The Tories must fully embrace state socialism and convince the electorate that only the Tories will deliver it.
Pitiful, eh. Now all you non-Brit readers have some idea of what we have to put up with in this country. Is there any wonder that we sound just a little jaded from time to time?
Who would you pick as your ‘Newsmaker of the Year’? Who do you believe has had the most significant impact in 2002? It is a tough one, isn’t it. So many candidates, some for good reasons, some for bad reasons.
However, on the assumption that you are at all interested in this kind of thing, then you might care to toddle along to the BBC Website where they have very helpfully published a shortlist of suitable nominees for you to consider:
- Jimmy Carter
- Bill Clinton
- Louis Farrakhan
- Alan Greenspan
- Jeremy Hardy
- Prince Harry
- Ali Hewson
- Henry Kissinger
- Michael Moore
- Christopher Reeve
- Clare Short
Now I do not wish to appear overly judgemental or anything, and I am always wary about jumping to conclusions, and I realise that you must not go around accusing people of all sorts of things for no reason or putting two and two together and coming up with five, but I honestly do think that the BBC have an ever-so-slight left-wing bias.
Or do you think I’m being too hasty?
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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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