On Constable Potter’s face was that hard, keen look which comes into the faces of policemen when they intend to do their duty pitilessly and crush a criminal like a snake beneath the heel. It was the look which Constable Potter’s face wore when he was waiting beneath a tree to apprehend a small boy who was up in its branches stealing apples, the merciless expression that turned to flint when he called at a house to serve a summons on somebody for moving pigs without a permit.
-P.G.Wodehouse (Uncle Dynamite, 1948, quoted in Wodehouse Nuggets, selected by Richard Usborne, 1983)
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April 28th, 2002 | Comments are closed
 Which is to say, best taken in moderation. Racism is always poison because it is completely irrational, based on either stupidity or (even worse) pseudo-science. ‘Culturalism’ of the sort David Carr talks about however is just saying ‘the values of my culture are better than the values of that culture’… and it may well be true. Provided one realised that what matters is the liberty actualising aspects of a culture and not all the other clutter over which people periodically feel the need to kill each other, then a degree of ‘culturalism’ is not just ok, it is vital. Just don’t over do it as in the minds of some, it is not about which culture enables liberty and prosperity best but which culture ‘stinks up our streets with curry’ or ‘builds hideous Mosques in our Christian towns’. Discerning ‘culturalism’ is just fine but ignorant cultural chauvinism is not. I realise it is the former not the latter which David Carr is advocating, but it is a distinction worth making again and again. Like Slivovica or Whiskey, a little is a wonderful thing but too much dwelling on culture seems to send some people completely bonkers. April 25th, 2002 | Comments are closed
There has been a widespread outbreak of harumphing, moaning and hand wringing by the forces of statism across Europe over the rise of Jean-Marie Le Pen‘s National Front Party in France. Yet when Le Pen declares he is “socially to the left, economically to the right”, his remarks go reported but largely unchallenged. However somehow regardless of his being bitterly opposed to market driven mechanisms, free trade, ‘Americanization’ and globalization, the newspapers demonstrate yet again that the term “right wing” is largely meaningless. John Lichfield of the Irish Independent tells us “Let us not exaggerate. Let us shut our eyes and think of France, the real France” after himself pointing out that when you add the neo-fascist vote in France for Le Pen to the extreme Troskyist vote for the far left, it is a whopping 35% of the French electorate. Sorry John, you cannot write off one third of a country as ‘not the real France’. Violent collectivist statism is as French as camembert cheese, Laetitia Casta, the Eiffel Tower… and the Guillotine. It is the long process of erosion that French civil society itself has been undergoing for over 150 years that provides such welcoming ground for the Jean-Marie Le Pen’s of this world. Jaques Chirac is not part of the solution but is rather part of the problem. ‘National Greatness’ conservatives like him are no less statist than socialist Lionel Jospin or neo-fascist Jean Le Pen. There simply is no significant political constituency in France that does not see the state as being the very centre of society, rather than just its boundary keeper. Almost all significant interaction is touched on by the state and thus reduces society to a series of competing political, rather than social, factions, all clamouring for the violence backed recourse of the state to champion their interests. These people who are aghast at the rise of Le Pen are the self same people who tilled the soil in which he grows. Statist political interests of ‘left’ and ‘right’ appropriate a vast swathe of the national wealth, encouraging people to simply vote themselves other people’s money, and then wonder why folks have no time for tiresome and time consuming social integration or a dynamist assimilative culture. Why bother when it is clear that the normal way for solving all problems is the hammer of the state? You don’t like American products competing with French ones in the shops regardless of the fact other people want to buy them? “There ought to be a law against it” and both socialist Lionel Jospin and conservative Jaques Chirac agree with that. You don’t like the sound of all those English language pop songs on the radio and TV? “There ought to be a law against it” and both socialist Lionel Jospin and conservative Jaques Chirac agree with that too. If all these other unjust things are democratically sanctified, then if you don’t like Africans or Moroccans, well, I guess there ought to be a law against them as well if that is the way everything works. If everything is up for grabs by the ‘democratic’ state, well, don’t be surprised if everything really does mean everything. April 24th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Here’s a poser for Samizdata readers – does the institution of constitutional monarchy help to domesticate feelings of patriotism into something more civilized? Michael Gove, in a splendid column for the UK’s Times newspaper today, makes the point that the monarchy, precisely because it is composed of fallible human beings above the political fray, acts as a far healthier focus of national loyalty than often afforded by more “modern” republics, like, say, France. As our society becomes more individualised, multi-ethnic and diverse, it is surely more, not less, important to have institutions that can provide some kind of common bond. Think, for example, how the breakup of the Hapsburg empire after the First World War led, in short order, to an upswelling of often unpleasant nationalism in the states composed out of its demise. If the electoral travails of the French tell us anything, it is that, even after five republics and the Empire of Bonaparte, they still haven’t figured out the value of constitutional monarchy as part of a truly liberal order. April 24th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Tony Millard writes in from Tuscany in Italy to express his views on Le Pen, multi-culturalism and over-enthusiastic well-diggers I am now a regular reader of the Samizdata (or the Lib Sam as I like to call it) and enjoy most of the articles. What I find depressing at the moment is that as I raise my gun to shoot a topical bunny I see hundreds more all around me – Le Pen, the UK Budget, Italian politics, NHS, multi-clutch-and-graspism, blah blah. It has taken a while to start shooting them down as I currently have a well-digger on my farm here in Tuscany. Charming chap, though he has a habit of trying to reach magma in order to enhance revenues (they are paid by the foot) so I’m keeping an eye, as they say. Whilst overseeing the keen well-digger, I heard a number of things on Radio 4 yesterday that disturbed me, to say the least. Most of the afternoon’s bulletins were taken up with a slanted condemnation of Le Pen by an almost constant referral to the “thousands” or, in extremis, “tens of thousands” of protesters on the street. Not one single reference was made to the fact that he did after all garner the votes to oust Jospin from the fight. Odder still was my recollection that by comparison last year’s Countryside Alliance pro-hunting march in London was supposed to have produced in excess of half a million people on the streets. However, the general reporting slant was decidedly unfavourable. Hmm. I am not exactly sure of Monsieur Le Pen’s precise political destination and would probably find it on the crude side. I am not a supporter by any stretch of the imagination, so no skin off my nose, if he doesn’t win the presidential seat. What I do find shocking though is the childishly obvious suppression of any voice that dissents from the European melting pot theory, and the assumption that any anti-immigration stance implies a shaved head and a tattooed forearm. The problem does not reside in the shape (or lack) of a haircut or the pattern of a tattoo. We are wasting time arguing about the mode of travelling when the real need is to decide on the destination. What happens if we ‘prove’ that the mass immigration of 40 years ago to date was ‘wrong’? The argument is sterile (and therefore futile) as the situation is with us and cannot be humanely reversed. We might as well argue and debate a meritocracy based on the colour of people’s eyes. On the basis that someone born in Europe is an honorary Caucasian, most of the population is on a level. What we must therefore focus on is the evils of the tiered language and cultural gap currently opening and prompted by the left. Le Pen is gaining support from the Franco-Jewish population (courtesy of Radio 4 news) and why? Buried at around 3.30pm in the yesterday’s programme was a possible answer – they are apparently regular victims of Muslim violence in the Parisian suburbs and have had enough. Allowing a separate ‘nation’ to grow within the EU is societal suicide. I am, in accordance perhaps with the previous Lib Sam articles (see related article links below), a fervent supporter of anti-multiculturalism in its accepted sense – that is I believe it’s a load of rubbish and smacks of left wing appeasement and head-buried-in-the-sand denial of reality. Realpolitik is that we like our neighbours to be like us and we all, whatever our racial origin, need to face up to this reality. Incidentally, my oldest friend is from Sri Lanka. Unless you saw him, you would not know. He is an Englishman, like Nathan Rothschild aspired to be and in the end considered himself to be. Perhaps, more needs to be done to foster the true concept of Englishness or Frenchness or whatever, and less time should be spent on muddled searches a là: Mr Blair for a sort of crypto-Britishness that is designed to please and appease rather than make sense of cultural and racial diversity. Tony Millard (Tuscany, Italy) April 24th, 2002 | Comments are closed
And, what’s more, he’s a talentless, pretentious wanker. For those who have never heard of him (consider yourselves fortunate), he is a former stand-up ‘comic’ now-turned novelist who rose to fame in the 1980’s with his fiery brand of allegedly funny invective. In reality, his routine was a barely-concealed vehicle for his bone-headed left-wing polemic which he played out in front of adoring and similarly-minded audiences at a time when comedy cabaret was the spearhead of the left-wing resistance movement in Thatcher’s Britain. All young Ben had to do was to call Mrs.T a ‘mad old cow’ to have his monolithic audience shrieking with delight and appreciation. Hardly the mark of comic genius. What made it even more galling was his cynical adoption of a painfully fake working-class cockney accent just to ensure that his ‘cred’ with the comrades wasn’t sullied by any admission of his rather comfortable middle-class origins and first-rate education. He coupled his ‘comedy’ career with a full-blown activist agenda, shouldering his way to prominence in every trendy lefty/green campaign imaginable from benefit gigs for striking miners to marches against cruise missiles, you name the cause, Elton was there and sounding off. He is every inch a bedsit-Che Gueverra who got lucky. Still, it worked for him and he ended up with his own series on the BBC (natch!) but when the current Labour government was elected, Elton mysteriously left our TV screens. Job accomplished I suppose and, with that, he more or less retired from life as Doyen of Anti-Establishment Radicalism to marry, sire and settle down as a sort of ‘grand old man’ of the British left whose opinion is still canvassed by a new generation of ‘meeja dahlings’ who seem to regard the wretch as some sort of Oracle. An example is this interview in the Al-Independent where readers are treated to an opportunity to submit their fawning questions and, in response, get drivel like this:
Well, it’s reassuring to know that Elton’s ‘personal line’ stops short of doing adverts for banks but is far enough advanced to enable him to utilise those same banks as repositories for the considerable personal fortune he has amassed from his showbiz career. I wish I had known about this question-and-answer session a little sooner, then I could have logged on and posed my own burning question: ‘Ben Elton, why are you such a wanker?’ [Update. How very rude of me to fail to acknowledge that the above-mentioned link comes courtesy of excellent fellow British blogger Peter Briffa] April 21st, 2002 | Comments are closed
There has been a big demonstration in Washington D.C. which was referred to by Dale Amon in a previous post. Radley Balko of The Agitator followed the going on in person and reported:
Now this is wonderful news. The sight of groups holding up signs saying ‘a suicide bomber is a poor man’s F-16’ standing next to an anti-globalization protestor is just about the most sublime sight I can imagine. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. This public conflation of toxic idiocies is providing people who are pro-capitalist or pro-Israel or pro-war-on-terrorism, or any combination thereof, with what can only be described as a ‘target rich environment’. Juicy. April 20th, 2002 | Comments are closed
The great American satirist P.J. O’Rourke uses his usual combination of deadly-sharp wit and smart understanding of economics to launch a salvo at government regulations in his article How to Stuff a Wild Enron. In this case, he argues that the collapse of U.S. energy titan Enron, far from proving that we need more regulations, proved that regulations can make such catastrophic problems more likely and more dangerous. Here is a killer paragraph: Regulation creates moral hazard. We don’t understand finance, but it is regulated, so we’re safe. “Regulation,” Jerry Taylor (a friend) says, “dulls the sense that you would take into an unregulated situation. If you hear screaming in the middle of the night, you assume it’s hot sex, not murder.” The line about sex is brilliant. If only all discussions about market economics and the perils of big government were so racy. April 19th, 2002 | Comments are closed
I have gone straight from the buzz of London to the grey nostalgia of Prague and am now sitting in an internet cafe named appropriately Globe. I can hear English being spoken as this is a favourite place for the English-speaking ex-pats and my inner Anglospherometer is telling me that it’s time to blog. I have been in Prague for two days now and given that this place is in a different world in terms of mentality and time, please take the following comments as potentially confused ramblings of a travelling blogger… In the short time I have been here I have managed to cover a multitude of activities – checked out (no pun intended) what is new in Prague since my last visit two years ago, visited a monstrous museum of modern art (previously communist archives, the building, not the pictures, obviously…), had a blazing row about nationalism and political discourse in the Mittel Europa and managed to send two Jehovah’s witnesses on their way amicably and within twenty seconds! I am particularly proud of the last one… I have been thinking about the best way of debating in a place like Central Europe where a Western style of discourse does not create the expected responses. Roll on the popularisation of shared meta-contextual discourse…! The usual evolution of an argument from a thesis through antithesis to a synthesis, does certaintly not apply here. A statement is made, often categorically, so a thesis is born. However, presenting an anti-thesis is dangerous as the aforementioned blazing rows are certain to ensue….What is needed is some kind of validation of the grains of truths carefully exctracted from the original statement. This is interesting (and frustrating) but I think it springs from the need of the Central Europeans to assert their intellectual identity by having it first recognised by their debating opponents. Then, perhaps, room for sneaking an anti-thesis in is created, en route to a wonderful and all encompassing synthesis, providing ample justification for gallons of lovely alcohol to be consumed. As a second thought, who needs shared meta-context when you have alcohol? On my wanderings through Prague I have been walking along Wenceslas Square, the main square where the 1989 demonstrations of the ‘Velvet Revolution’ took place. I noticed that some shops are hiring people to walk around holding large placards to advertise their wares. This is a familiar sight in the West, especially in Oxford street, the main shopping street in London and I have often looked upon these as another sign of ‘unbridled’ capitalism. Here the locals tell me in a voice dripping with moral satisfaction that such advertising is going to be banned soon as it insults the human dignity. Mindful of my debating experience in this place, I meekly pointed out that perhaps these people may be quite content to earn some money by an activity that does not involve much effort and that by banning it, they will be deprived of the opportunity to have their human dignity offended at a price they are prepared to be paid… As expected I did not get far but I have acted as the lone voice of free market and capitalism. Today, I have seen a girl reading a book whilst at the same time holding a large sign advertising an Irish Pub… So much for insulted human dignity! I have another three days to go and depending on my ability to access the internet and my mental stability, I may blog again. If not, once in London I will no doubt find plenty to write about privacy and security, computers, markets and other far less nostalgic topics. April 13th, 2002 | Comments are closed
There are opportunities to enjoy stirring victories in the unlikeliest of places. Take, for example, the continued refusal of the Vatican to relent on the ordination of women priests. As a Jew (and a secular Jew at that) this is a matter which should be none of my concern but somehow I can’t help getting my shorts in a knot over it. Every time the Vatican issues another refusal, I let out a cheer of the kind I emit when my football team scores at home. It stirs my blood and reinforces my hope that the forces of darkness can be kept at bay. The reasons for my taking a stand on the issue become abundantly clear once you understand that the campaign to make the Church buckle is motivated not by matters of Catholic doctrine or faith but by a quite different agenda:
Sounds familiar? Of course it does. The handprints of the post-modern leftists are all over this campaign and the issue isn’t women at all really, the issue is revolution by stealth. The Catholic Church is in their cross-hairs as being an institution which is ripe for ‘deconstruction’. I can say this because I have witnessed this kind of ‘deconstruction’ campaign played out to its endgame against the Church of England. Each time it was attacked, it was foolish enough to relent to avoid bad headlines and every time it appeased, its antagonists just smelled the blood in the water and it sent them wild. So it died the Death of a Thousand Cuts and now the exsanguinated giant grovels embarrassingly meak apologies for its own existance to empty pews beneath the baleful glare of an irrationally hostile press. It didn’t help the Church of England that it was the official religion of the British State and, as that State lost its sense of destiny and moral purpose, so did the Church. But the Church of Rome has not been co-opted by any government anywhere. Membership is voluntary and, consequently, so is abiding by its rules. If you don’t like what the Church is doing then you can always leave. You can go and establish your own Church of PC Drivel and preach it to whomsoever will listen. No-one is stopping you. It is for that reason that I hope the Vatican continues to stick to its guns on this issue. I hope the Cardinals plant their feet, set their jaws, put up their dukes and fight resolutely. No compromises, no deals, no climbdowns, no retreats, no concessions and no surrender. If they don’t they will regret it. If they do then the dawn will soon come, the sun will rise shimmering over the horizon and send the moral-relativist vampires and their hideous acolytes screeching back to their coffins with nothing to show for their infernal efforts. Just Say No, Your Holiness.You owe it not just to Roman Catholics but to all the rest of us who live by the doctrine of reason. April 8th, 2002 | Comments are closed
I’m sorry but I cannot help myself. I am compelled to do these kinds of things and it’s all their fault really. They gave me the key to the castle and now I am running amok. It is late but I am awake and ready to wreak havoc. Brian and I have agreed, through our interactions in the mind-numbingly prosaic two-dimensional world of reality, that we actually agree with other about what we mean. We remain, however, at loggerheads at how best to express what we mean. I wonder if the lefties have this problem? Did they cross-swords with each other for years in the quest to find the appropriate linguistic tools with which to re-educate the bourgeoisie and dismantle the institutions of capitalism? Not ever having been a party to that party, I cannot say, but regardless of the procedures employed, they certainly managed to pick a winner in ‘multiculturalism’; a tool designed not to facilitate the voluntary interaction of free people but rather as a vehicle for spreading moral relativism. The task of moral relativism was to abolish judgement. For it is by judgement that we conclude that a flushing toilet is absolutely better than crapping in a ditch; that veal parmesan is absolutely better than grubbing in the dirt for berries. It is judgement and the unfettered ability to use it that underpins our civilisation, not the other way around. Our culture is the collective expression of millions of private judgements; it is the canvas on which they are painted and shown off to an awestruck world. Like all marxist tools, it has been employed with staggering success and the task of people like Brian and I is to blunt them and render them redundant. This is what we’re doing now, I hope. The first stage of this process is to clarify exactly what the word ‘multiculturalism’ means and why it must be rejected. I hope I have gone small way towards doing this. But, secondly, we must find instruments of our own by which we spread the idea that ideas themselves are more important than ethnicity; that far from being ‘non-judgemental’ civilisation requires that we be vigourously and unreletingly judgemental and thereby continue to improve the human condition. Ethnicity cannot be altered by judgement or at all but values (and, hence, culture) can. That makes the latter important and the former just boring. The term that both Brian and I are looking for is one that will satisfactorily encapsulate the idea that anyone can be judgemental and everyone should be. In this respect, may I respectfully suggest that the term ‘Melting Pot’ is not the term we should look to. I was a young boy in the 1970’s when I first became aware of the term and equally aware of the nature of its propagandists. They were the post-modern lefties and Gramschian marxists and ‘Melting Pot’ was their dry run; their prototype. It was a taste-it-and-see experiment from which they could calculate the likely success of their fully formulated plans that lay in wait. It was the equivalent of throwing it on the stoop to see if the cat licked it up. Well, the cat didn’t just lick it up, the cat lapped it up so it was full-steam ahead from that moment on. The term ‘Melting Pot’ worked so well for them because it tweaked all the right guilt nodules just hard enough to bring tears to the eyes but no so hard that it caused screaming. The screaming came later. It was right for them for the same reason it is wrong for us; because it manifestly fails to distinguish between ethnicity and culture and, in fact, actively sought to blur those two things into one It is time to give each of those concepts autonomy. My suggestion of the term ‘monoculturalism’ may come with as many Hydras as Brian suggests and maybe it should not be the settled choice. So I submit it as a place to start. The search continues. April 7th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Postings have been a bit thin today. That means (a) that the Samizdata team mostly have lives and in particular lives at the weekend, and (b) that another Perry de Havilland blockbuster is probably due. I look forward to it. Ah, the joy of writing when you know that your editor will accept your stuff, on account of your editor being you. I know exactly the feeling. In the meantime, to keep the blog rolling, here’s another quicky from me, on the same theme as that of my exchange with David Carr about multi- and monoculturalism, melting pots, etc., that of finding or not finding the right word for what you want to say. Some months back I gave an illustrated talk about politics – libertarian politics in particular and politics generally – in the movies. You will not be astonished to learn that one of the movies I played a bit from was Wall Street and nor will you be shocked to learn that the bit I played was that speech. However, it may surprise you that in that speech Michael Douglas does not say: “Greed is good.” What he actually says is: “Greed, for want of a better word, is good.” Maybe you knew that. I didn’t until I was preparing my talk and I strongly suspect I’m not the only one. And even if you did already know this, I hope you agree that this extra little phrase makes quite a difference. Plain “greed is good” is a brazen, screw-you-Jack, in-your-face announcement that vice is virtue, or to put it another way, that virtue doesn’t matter. “Greed, for want of a better word, is good” is no such thing. It’s a genuine attempt at moral debate. It’s a morally sincere attempt to challenge existing moral assumptions, of the sort now bundled up in the word “greed”, which is explicitly identified as an unsatisfactory word for what is really being talked about. Which of course is why the enemies of “greed, for want of a better word” took out the “for want of a better word” bit. The job of middlebrow propagandists like ourselves is, among many other things, to supply our ideological comrades and customers with better words, so that when they are making speeches about what they believe in, they don’t have to use phrases like “for want of a better word”. I’m off to France shortly for a holiday. When I return I will get a fixed-price internet connection sorted. I will then include lots of interesting blue bits charging off in all directions in my postings, like a real blogger. In the meantime, assuming I can get my hands on an emailing device of some kind, there may be a few further blueless postings from me about whatever holiday excitements I encounter, and about my views on the state of France. And then again there may not. April 6th, 2002 | Comments are closed
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