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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Sometimes you read something that you have every reason to believe was written by a sane, intelligent and logical person, and you are shocked. Shocked at how incredibly twisted this sane, intelligent and logical person’s perspective could be regarding one singular subject their pen encountered. Tim Blair points out such an example. To quote the estimable Mr Blair’s post:
Graeme Blundell’s review of The Falling Man includes a curious claim:
In an extraordinary act of national media self-censorship, several days after the photograph appeared, it vanished. Papers across the US defended themselves against charges of invading a dying man’s privacy and turning tragedy into pornography. The photograph became impermissible. There was a deeply held belief the deaths of the jumpers weren’t proper, indeed that they were cowardly. [JW – Blair’s emphasis, not mine] The images that came to symbolise the day were of helmeted heroic rescuers working in the rubble and the jumpers disappeared to the shameful websites that traffic in autopsy photos and videotapes of executions.
The commenters at Tim’s site rightfully voiced their disgust at such a sentiment. I could not help but marvel at the sheer ignorance betrayed by the author’s reading of events, too. I quite confidently assert, with no supporting evidence, that not one media outlet in the Western world even briefly pondered cowardice as a motive of those wretched jumpers. The fact that Blundell so egregiously detects this wildly inaccurate perception as a “deeply held belief” amongst many suggests to me that this is his own delusion, which is where the ignorance part introduces itself. When trapped out on a stricken building’s precipice – with intolerable heat and the promise of excruciating pain at one’s back and cool, open air at one’s front – people do jump. I cannot possibly know or understand what would be running through a desperate victim’s mind at a time like that, but I would guess that a very basic, elemental survival mechanism – buried deep in our ancient animal instincts and wholly unencumbered by conscious and cerebral rationality – might well be invoked. Step back into a hellish inferno and certain death. Step forward into benevolent – tragically fleetingly benevolent – open air and possible survival. Only one profoundly ignorant of the human condition would mistake the latter choice as an act of cowardice.
On a lighter note; since I have mentioned Tim Blair here, I may as well press an unrelated fact. The man is right up there with the very wittiest writers in the blogosphere. In the middle of a gadfly-esque post confronting the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s marketing of a book published by them (the book is also written by an ABC science broadcaster) – whereby Blair contrasts a strident and hyperbole-ridden stance towards the rather wacky and more-or-less harmless Intelligent Design movement with the ABC’s generally sheepish reaction to the world’s most dangerous religious phenomena – we stumble across Exhibit A:
I’m not religious, so I don’t have a God in this fight
Brilliant.
Right, I am taking a break from scribbling about the iniquities of inheritance tax, dumb airline security and so forth to link to this terrific article by Ed Brayton about golfing phenomenon and American icon, Tiger Woods. Even if you do not give a two-foot putt about the game, this article is a fine study of the sheer force of will that has propelled a man to become the master of his sporting world:
I have to admit to being absolutely fascinated by Tiger Woods. I’ve followed his career closely, despite doubting him initially. I remember watching the press conference when he announced that he was leaving Stanford and turning pro. I particularly remember watching Phil Knight, CEO of Nike, talk about the $40 million contract they had signed with Woods, and I remember laughing out loud and ridiculing Knight when he said that Tiger Woods would transcend the game of golf the way Michael Jordan and Muhammad Ali transcended their sports.
No way, I said; not a chance. No matter how good he is, no matter how much he dominates the sport, golf will never be anywhere near as popular as basketball or boxing and that will limit his fame and his standing in relation to the rest of the sports world. Golf is too much an exclusive sport, too tied in with the rich and the well born to have the kind of universal appeal that other sports have. And it’s solitary, one man by himself, with no defense to be played and no one on one competition to fuel rivalries. Yeah, I’m glad I didn’t put any money on that prediction.
Brayton’s blog, Despatches from the Culture Wars, is definitely worth a regular visit, too.
It seems that academia is in league with the legal profession and the growing army of largely pointless psychologists and ‘counselors’ who treat the myriad of syndromes which we are told plague society.
Blackberry email devices can be so addictive that owners may need to be weaned off them with treatment similar to that given to drug users, experts warned today. They said the palmtop gadgets, which have been nicknamed ‘crackberries’ because users quickly become hooked on them, could be seriously damaging to mental health.
…and what is quite literally the ‘money quote’…
[She] added: ‘Employers provide programmes to help workers with chemical or substance addictions. ‘Addiction to technology can be equally damaging to a worker’s mental health’.
It is not hard to see where this is going. Owning a Blackberry can be pathologised into ‘Information and Communication technology (ICT) addition’ and clearly any company not providing professional help for ICT addiction could well be negligent (i.e liable to be sued) for ignoring work related harm caused to employees.
Academics love pathologising things as that leads to grants for ‘further study’, psychologists love it because they can make a fortune as ‘counselors’ treating the afflicted, lawyers love it when academics pathologise something as that means a company can be sued for causing someone to ‘catch’ a ‘recognised syndrome’, and of course politicians love it because that means clearly there is something here that must be regulated and perhaps even taxed more to discourage it.
But what is the solution if your Blackberry is messing with your mind? Turn the fucking thing off when you go home. Sorted. My bill for your therapy session is in the post.
“If Israel uses its military decisively to wipe out Hezbollah, such an action will simply create a whole new generation of terrorists.”
Someone close to me recently lectured me on this fact. It appears to makes sense prima facie, but such an enlightened-sounding utterance falls apart as an empty truism with the addition of a little perspective. The Middle Eastern conflict must be viewed from a long-term angle, whilst attempting to countenance the ramifications of the alternative tactic mentioned. Those who might be attracted to the deceivingly pacific fog shrouding the above statement would benefit from realising that by strategically not responding in kind to a belligerent act by zealots like Hezbollah is no silver bullet to the problems of the Middle East; on the contrary, such a strategy may well carry consequences that could ultimately be unthinkably awful.
A powerful expression of the quote I provided above can be found in Steven Spielberg’s recent movie, Munich. The moral of that tale is identical to the one pronounced by my close relative; if one hunts down and kills those who planned and carried out the kidnapping-murders of the Israeli athletes at those fateful Games, all one does is inspire a new and more brutal generation to rise up in its place and start spreading increased chaos.
In response to this assertion, I ask; was this same generation not destined to pollute the earth with their hatred and intolerance in one form or another? Israel, by its relatively frequent, um, non-diplomatic actions, may well have inspired many, many Muslims to embark on violent jihad over the course of its existence. However, if Israel left – for example – the horrors of the Munich Olympic Games unanswered, it is perfectly conceivable that the people who reacted to Israel’s subsequent blatant retaliatory assassination programme by joining Islamic militant movements would readily join the same sorts of organisations (or even Arab state militaries) when inspired and emboldened by a flaccid Israeli reaction to a travesty of this kind, or perhaps an aura of weakness created by such a profound act of Israeli inertia in the face of this sort of crime. Long and rambling sentence, sorry. Considering that the existence of Israel is an anathema to so many Middle-Eastern Muslims, Israeli inaction and the perception of Israeli weakness is plausibly just as strong an inspiration to take up arms against the relatively tiny Jewish state as a hail of super-potent Star of David-marked precision-guided missiles.
The overarching problem – and this extends beyond Israel and into the international arena – is Islam and its unique propensity, amongst the major religions, towards radicalism. It seems more than likely that Israel will defeat Hezbollah in the future, however I have no doubt that some other radical Islamic organisation will fill any breach left expeditiously. If radical Islam’s nature is hydra-like, as those urging Israeli restraint imply from the above quote (and I believe they are correct), chopping off the heads of the hydra when they appear until the organism is exhausted through struggle or circumstance seems a perfectly logical grand strategy for the enormously durable West to pursue over the decades.
The ideal that lasting peace could reign in the Middle East if Israel would simply act passively towards its aggressors when she comes under attack is delusional nonsense. Israel is (again) biblical territory in Huntingdon’s oft-quoted, prescient – and surely by now undeniable – Clash of Civilizations, and ultimately the conflict between the liberal West and conservative Islam is a fiendishly complicated, opaque and unpredictable game of strategy that will be played out over many, many years. Every move in this game has the potential to yield both highly predictable and confoundingly unpredictable consequences. It is predictable that when Israel neutralizes an external threat using its military, a certain kind of person will be motivated to fight this force. Conversely and equally predictably, if Israel fails to respond adequately to an external threat, the enduring pan-Arab desire to drive the Israelis into the sea will stir in the heart of the same sort of person, provoking a similar outcome. I fear Israel, due to its location, will suffer negative long-term consequences emanating from the actions of the armed belligerati of conservative Islam, regardless of whatever strategy Israel chooses (ranging from rank appeasement to overwhelming military retaliation) to deal with blows bestowed by these aggressors, for that is the nature of the consolidated foe. Hence, Israel needs long-term support from the Western world. Israel may not be a liberal place itself in many ways, but in many ways it is the (somewhat unlikely) vanguard of liberalism.
I was struck by a comment from Professor Michael Clarke, writing in The Times yesterday: “Commercial aircraft represent globalism and high technology – they shrink the world and threaten cultural conservatism.”
Symbols are important because they illustrate the cloudiness of motives and social dynamics. They show the world is not black and white, neatly predictable. Not divided into the elect and the rest. People’s motives are mixed, and they often hide them from themselves or express them to seem grander than they are.
Which is why I do wish otherwise sensible people would stop taking Islamist loonies at their own evaluation. The same were not taken in by the 1970s liberationist terrorists’ claim to be the vanguard of The Revolution. We knew we had the Soviets in the background, quietly encouraging the mayhem for imperial reasons, but no one with a brain believed the workers and students actually were going to rise up and overthrow the bourgeois state.
They are self-identified as Muslim holy warriors, fighting on behalf of the Umma, but actually they are a tiny unrepresentative group. There is no more physical threat from the average western Muslim than there was from the average 1970s trades unionist. They might in a large minority have beliefs which if taken literally would have scary results (Sharia v. state ownership of the means of production). Those need to be disputed and opposed, but
such uncontemplated dreams and their achievement are far apart.
Terrorists for an abstract cause fit a very, very specific profile: spoiled middle-class kids of more education than brain, and petty-criminals made good who find their psychopathy is accepted and admired by the former when applied to the cause. He is not an evil genius; he’s a very naughty boy. → Continue reading: A clash of symbols
My career in student politics lasted approximately 2 minutes. Recollected, hazily, over a distance of 25 years, it went like this:
GH to Conservative stallholder at fresher’s fair, eagerly: Is this where I join the FCS?
Student hack (horrified): Oh no, we don’t have anything like that here!
So I never did join the FCS. Unlike, I suspect, many of blogistan’s more venerable residents. Now Tim Hames is doing a radio history for the BBC. I am not sure how to read this. Are people like us now history? Or has Hames persuaded someone in the commissioning department that the FCS generation is about to come to power, as a generation of 70s New Lefties did under Blair, in heavy disguise, but with their ideals intact?
That would be a lovely thought, but there is a problem with that theory. Part of the reason the Tory Party was in such an appalling mess by the 90s was the foolhardy destruction of the FCS which drove out of the party a generation. Old Labour, in the 70s, on the other hand, clasped the New Lefties to its bosom: paid for fraternal trips to Cuba and Bulgaria, gave them speechwriting and policy jobs, helped them in the Long March Through The Institutions that was achieved by the turn of the century. The New Left base is strong. The New Right are even now outcasts. They (we?) are not close to power, unless I am much mistaken. Not even in alliance with the RCP…
Still Hames’ piece is full of delightful quirks. I liked in particular his treatment of Marc Glendenning, whom he insisted on giving the full grandeur of Marc-Henri, “a philosopher-king among politicians”. I did not meet Marc until quite recently, and though I have thought of him up to now as a conspicuously pleasant and interesting chap, I will look at him now in a whole new light. Would bended knee be appropriate, I wonder?
The New American Century is beginning to prove trying. I have remarked here before about the spreading fondness of governments for extraterritoriality, and the cartelisation of states. The global War on Drugs of the last century has been almost entirely driven by the US, but has operated through state cartels. Non-Americans can hold themselves and their countrymen to blame for going along with the moralistic folly.
Now, however, the US is starting to apply its laws in ways that purport to apply in the rest of the world, and to reach into other states and impose those laws on their residents, their citizens, who would have had every reason to believe they were entitled to live according to local custom. I suspect that this is partly a phenomenon of power, that any other state with the power to do so would be similarly tempted. But the US, a state founded on the principle of limited self-governance, should know better. Unfortunately limited self-governance looks more and more tainted with unlimited self-righteousness. As with the War on Drugs, so with the War on Terror – “the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.”
Last week we had the NatWest three: charged with a ‘crime’ against a British bank in Britain that neither the bank itself nor the normally trigger-happy FSA and Serious Fraud Office had taken any interest in, yet extradited to Texas – “transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences.”
This week the chief executive of an internet gambling firm listed on the London Stock Exchange is arrested air-side on ‘racketeering’ charges on his way to Costa Rica The basis appears to be that some Americans choose to gamble online, and for their immorality someone must be punished – that the person is a foreigner operating entirely legally according to the foreign jurisdiction he does business in does not bother the feds, who “subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws.”.
Something is askew when the US federal government purports to operate such an extraterritorial jurisdiction over a Briton, but will not touch gambling in the Native American territories on the fiction that they are independent.. try putting anything but tobacco in your peace-pipe, and see how far being in an Indian Nation exempts you from the mission of government. You probably will not get that far. Nor have I seen signs of a civil war being levied against Nevada and New Jersey. US forces will happily bomb obscure Peruvian and Afghan drug fields over enormous logistical difficulty, and without regard for (foreign) casualties (“…plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people”). Meanwhile Las Vegas – a large, well illuminated target close to several major air-bases is mysteriously still standing.
Forget several property for a moment. To insure any of the rights we have against a global tyranny, we need de facto several jurisdiction: separate and equal station among the powers of the earth. The state does have a value, folks. But we forget at our peril that the key one is to defend us against other states. If they club together against their peoples, or subordinate their power to other states, then states might as well not exist. The limiting cases are places like Congo where neighbouring powers prey at will on the population.
This should mean something:
Her Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State requests and requires in the Name of Her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let of hiderance, and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary.
But I do not think it does, much. Even Britain, notionally a Great Power, scarcely pretends to assert its power for the protection of its own people’s interests.
There has to be somewhere to run or all the world ends enslaved to a monopoly of power. Let us have some diversity. Disunited nations would be a good thing. What will it take to get nations to declare their independence of the international system?
Recently, I heard someone describe the Australian constitution as the second best in the world. No prizes for guessing the best. Since the recent 4th of July celebrations, I have been revelling in the bracing ideological purity of the Constitution of the United States of America, and I have no doubt that it is superior to the constitutions of other nations – in the mind of a liberal, anyway. What of Australia’s, however? It is hopelessly outdated and largely irrelevant – the form of state it envisions bears little likeness to modern Australia. For example, the office of Prime Minister is not mentioned at all and most of the mechanics of government exist thanks to convention rather than doctrine. It is not a bad constitution; mainly for the fact that it contains none of the Fabianesque “positive” rights (citizens have a right to a life free of poverty, etc) which tend to enable and then entrench statism. Such caveats are common in most modern constitutions, to their great detriment. If Australia’s constitution is the second best in the world, it is certainly a very distant second. As regular commenter Chris Harper said in a recent Samizdata thread,
The Constitution of the United States of America, one of the great works of human thought.
Quite. In contrast, Australia’s constitution is passable only due to the elements it does not contain – surely there are a number of superior (in ideology and effectiveness) national constitutions in place today. So what is the second best constitution in the world?
You would think Switzerland’s should be a contender. It is a country that holds a number of liberal values as national traits. It is also admired by many of the Samizdatistas, who tend to be a rather liberal bunch (for the most part). One would not be being unreasonable if they predicted that the Swiss constitution is a relatively liberal document. However, if you did predict that, you would be wrong. I did a little research to test my above hypothesis, and was surprised with what I discovered. Far from being one of the best constitutions around (from a liberal perspective), I believe the Swiss document to be one of the worst – if not the worst. For a start, it is too easily altered. According to Wikipedia, the original Swiss constitution was altered to include
the “right of initiative”, under which a certain number of voters could make a request to amend a constitutional article, or even to introduce a new article into the constitution. Thus, partial revisions of the constitution could be made any time.
Worse still, a revised version of the constitution that came into force in the 1990s
is subject to continual changes
due to
constitutional initiatives and counterproposals[.]
This is no good at all. Most liberals are deeply interested in durably enshrining the rights and freedoms of the individual; if these can be swept away on a majoritarian whim, then sooner or later it is likely they will be. Such ease of amendment dramatically weakens the document, although worse is to come. From the same Wikipedia article mentioned above:
[The] Swiss Federal Constitution has a certain peculiarity when compared to other constitutions in the world. It does not provide for any constitutional jurisdiction over any federal laws, that is, laws proclaimed by Parliament may not be struck down by the Federal Court on the grounds of unconstitutionality. This special provision in the Swiss Constitution is a manifestation of how democratic principles are held to outweigh the principles upon which the constitutional state is built.
What a terrible idea. A liberal would assert that the whole point of a constitution is to constrain majoritarian democracy – has the phrase “tyranny of the majority” been widely translated into French, German or Italian? This “peculiarity” consigns the Swiss constitution to complete irrelevance. Regarding the contents of the document – who cares? They can be ignored at any time by a majority of the Federal parliament. The constitution may currently be adhered to by Swiss federal politicians, but there is nothing enforcing their adherence. The only thing that stands between the relatively liberal arrangement the Swiss enjoy today and a Blairite soft tyranny (or worse) is the Swiss people’s enduring common sense and conservatism. I have met a number of Swiss folk in my time and have found that generally they are predisposed to exhibit both traits. However, events change people. Time changes people. If the Swiss elect a Tony Blair and the political circumstances allow it, such an individual could set about dismantling the various manifestations of Swiss liberalism, completely unrestrained by the toothless constitution. I am led to believe that the Swiss constitution is relatively popular in that country. For a generally conservative people, it is hard not to remark that they paradoxically admire a document that is inherently unconservative – dangerously so.
As for the second best constitution in the world, perhaps some of the readers of this post might put forward a few contenders.
(An English translation of the Swiss constitution can be found here – also via the aforementioned Wikipedia article.)
I recently read This is Burning Man by Brian Doherty, chronicling the remarkable phenomenon of the Burning Man annual festival/event/blowout in the middle of the harsh Nevada desert. Despite the occasional slip into Sixties hippyspeak which might suggest a sort of communalistic mushiness, the book contained at its core the profoundly rational message that we can enjoy civil society by reducing the state to its barest minimum. Very subversive of statism, Doherty writes with obvious passion for the festival and affection for the often nutty but loveable characters who have developed the event. A great way to while away the hours while waiting to catch my delayed flight out of Nice after a business conference yesterday. Money quote:
“Any political virtue I saw in Burning Man always had to do with its avoidance of politics as I see it – the game of some people telling other people what to do. Burning Man to me was about liberty, and ordered anarchy, the inherent strength and possible joys of a civilisation in which all the “government” you need can be purchased in a freely chosen market.”
I may even go there one day and try and combine a Burning Man trip with a visit to the magnificent Reno air race festival. Yowza!
Mike Hudack of blip.tv wishes all a happy Independence Day with a few thoughts worth noting:
The Fourth of July isn’t significant simply because it marks the beginning of independent American politics. It’s significant because it marked one of the first times that a group of people threw off the yolk of foreign leadership and chose self-government. It is significant because of the emphasis placed on individual empowerment and individual choice. It is significant, most of all, because of the ideal of America created on or around July 4, 1776 — an ideal that we have yet to realize, but that we continually strive for.
His personal hero of the American revolution is Thomas Paine, the author of Common Sense, whose arguments created conditions for writing the Declaration of Independence.
“[the] distinction of men into kings and subjects… [is something for which] no truly natural or religious reason can be found.”
and
“I challenge the warmest advocate for reconciliation to show a single advantage that this continent can reap by being connected with Great Britain.”
It is allowed to be idealistic today:
The moral here is a simple one. In 1775 and 1776 one man’s words ignited the firestorm that led to the Declaration of Independence. One man’s views on democracy, on republicanism, on individual rights and individual responsibility. One man’s views that almost didn’t get printed because no printer would dare put those words down in ink. Thomas Paine’s access to the printing press, thanks to Robert Bell, changed the world.
Such words are very encouraging, especially coming from someone who has set up and runs a videoblogging community. It means that this particular community and the company behind it is driven by an understanding of the profound impact that individual creativity and its distribution will have on the future. And, surely, that is a Good Thing.
When someone denies the essential historical facts about the Jewish Holocaust, here at Samizdata what that means is you get moved into the category of presumed paleo-fascists or racist Jew-haters with whom intelligent discourse is highly unlikely to be possible.
Even so, when such remarks arrive in our comment section, that alone is (usually) not enough to get you immediately banned from commenting here. Opinions offered by members of the commentariat which are very much at odds with the world view propounded here by Sazmizdata’s authors are hardly rare and even more rarely constitute a ‘hanging offence’ (i.e. banning). No, what tends to get people banned is when they make (and keep making) assertions so preposterous that they are almost certainly not made in good faith.
For an example, take when someone makes obviously fantastical assertions to explain why Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ‘has a case’ when he denies lavishly documented historical facts of what occurred more than half a century ago in Central Europe, claiming he is not simply a racist Jew-hater (i.e. hates Jews for being Jews) but is rather just ‘anti-Zionist’ (i.e. opposes a political movement):
Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a case for querying the Holocaust. His argument is that Nazi Germany simply didn’t have the facility and technology to dispose of some six million corpses (or whatever it was) within the assumed time frame. Therefore, the authorized version, while not entirely a fiction, was a huge exaggeration.
So let me get this straight, the claim here is that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ‘has a case’, i.e. he is not a liar and/or a complete jackass if he thinks that Nazi Germany, a nation which produced and operated tens of thousands of combat aircraft, fielded the world’s first operational jet fighters, built and deployed the world’s first effective guided missiles, glide bombs, and military supersonic ballistic missiles, installed tens of thousands of concrete fortifications and shelters, placed hundreds of thousands of concrete and metal anti-tank obstacles across Europe, surrounded its cities with great flak batteries, laid thousands of kilometres of railtracks (re-gauging much of European Russia’s rail system!), had the logistic capacity to support millions of men equipt with vast fleets of motor vehicles in operational areas from North Africa to Norway and the French coast to the Urals, DID NOT HAVE THE FACILITIES OR TECHNOLOGY TO DISPOSE OF SIX MILLION DEAD BODIES OVER SEVERAL YEARS?
The notion is so absurd that I do not for a second think it could be said in good faith. That is what often gets a person banned from Samizdata.
Well, I had to return to normality eventually. I have just come back with the new Mrs Pearce from Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean lying off the east coast of Africa and south of the Equator. An extremely interesting island with a mixed history and a heady brew of different cultures, part Anglosphere, part French, part Indian and part African.(Here is a good collection of literature linked to it). About 11 hours direct flying time from London, the island is pretty much geared these days as a “romantic destination in the tropics”. I liked the place and its people a lot as we travelled around the various nature parks, looking at the coral reefs, the fish, birdlife and assorted animals. If I have one grumble it is that, much to my amazement, the whole island is besotted with English football. Egads, I go all this way and they are still raving about the World Cup.
It is funny what sticks in the mind, often completely unexpected. I discovered that the island produces some of the finest and most fantastically detailed model boats I have ever seen. You can, for a fraction of what it would cost in Britain, buy a scale model wooden Victory, or Constitution, or Sovereign of the Seas, or an America’s Cup racer, WW2 battleship, cruiser or Blue Riband liner. There is a substantial industry of locals churning out these boats. The Napoleonic era – when Mauritius was seized by the British from the French – seems to provide the inspiration for most of the models. Unable to resist – I am an amateur sailor anyway – my wife and I bought a model of the 1840s U.S. schooner Albatros, now sitting proudly on the mantelpiece. Hardwoods are the base for much of the boats that are made and as a result, will last for years. The detailing on the rigging, sails, tiny cannon and masts are incredible. (Okay, I am an overgrown boy at heart).
And of course while on the island I read Patrick O’Brien’s The Mauritius Command. For a moment, sitting on the beach sipping a beer, I thought I saw Lucky Jack Aubrey walking along, staring out to sea to spot French raiders…
Anyway, it has been good to give blogging a miss for a while and re-charge the writing batteries. Thanks to everyone for their good wishes and messages. I really appreciate it.
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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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