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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Recommended reading for insomniacs with enquiring minds
We have received a few e-mails asking what books we would recommend for aspiring (or even perspiring) libertarians:
Dale Amon recommends for essential reading:
David Bergland “Libertarianism in One Lesson”
Frederick Hayek “The Road to Serfdom”
Murray Rothbard “For a New Liberty”
Bob Poole “Defending a Free Society”
Carl Hess “Capitalism for Kids”
Wendy McElroy “Freedom, Feminism and the State”
Thomas Sowell “The Economics and Politics of Race”
Perry de Havilland recommends for essential reading:
Murray Rothbard “The Ethics of Liberty”
Frederick Hayek “The Fatal Conceit”
Karl Popper “Open Society and its Enemies”
Virginia Postrel “The Future and its Enemies”
Also well worth a read:
Ayn Rand “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology”
David Deutsch “The Fabric of Reality”
Murray Rothbard “Man, Economy and State”
Edmund Burke “Reflections on the Revolution in France”
Karl Marx “Manifesto of the Communist Party” (know thine enemy)
Jean Monnet “Memoirs” (know thine enemy, part deux)
However if you like tracts on political economy served up as more bite sized morsels, you would be hard pressed to find a more varied body of works than the pamphlets of the Libertarian Alliance. Browse through the huge number of works on the Libertarian Alliance website, all available for free on-line in pdf format pertaining to all manner of topics (html format coming in the not-to-distant future).
The Libertarian Alliance website is undergoing a bit of an overhaul so it might look a bit strange in some platform/browser combinations. Feel free to complain to the Libertarian Alliance webmaster there and urge them to get it fixed 🙂
PC meaning Peikoffian Crap.
Okay, I realise it is actually Boxing Day now, but ‘Merry Christmas’ anyway. That’s Christ-mas… as in Christ. Son of God and all that stuff. It does not matter if you believe in Christ or not, because it does not change what Christmas actually is.
Although I am an extremely secular person, I do not hesitate to extend those sentiments to Samizdata‘s Christian readers in spite of the fact religion does not loom large in my life. Yet I think it is important to remember that Christmas is a Christian festival and thus I shall not hedge my Christian greeting with anything like ‘and you have a nice holiday too for those who are Atheists, Agnostics, Hindus, Satanists…’
Don’t get me wrong, I actually do hope any Atheists, Agnostics, Hindus, Satanists, Druids, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddists, Jews, Druse, Shinto, Pagans, etc. etc. who read the Samizdata have a really great and entirely secular couple days off… but then as that is all Christmas is to them, I do not feel any special need to be ‘inclusive’ if they are just hitching a perfectly reasonable cultural ride on someone else’s wagon. I often partake of bhangra-and-booze excesses during Diwali but I certainly don’t expect special ‘Diwali greetings’ from my Hindu friends because I am not Hindu. To me Diwali is just an excuse to eat good Indian food. Likewise I would hope that many atheist (or whatever) libertarians would have no problem with the idea of Christians (libertarian or otherwise) regarding Christmas as ‘their’ day. Yet some people do indeed seem to disagree.
Although I have been much influenced by objectivism, I do not actually call myself an objectivist as Karl Popper looms just as large in my philosophical views, probably more so in fact. I have nothing against objectivism per se, which I like to describe as a sub-set of libertarian thought because I know it will annoy certain people. However I do regard the ‘organised’ objectivism of Leonard Peikoff, of the Ayn Rand Institute, as essentially irrational and pathologically intolerant. Peikoff’s historical error riddled article about Christmas did nothing to change my views on the fatal justificationist structural flaw in his brand of dogmatic objectivism (yeah, yeah, send hate e-mail pointing out my ‘errors’ to the usual address). Let Peikoff pick any day he likes to celebrate the adulation of St. Leonard, Intellectual Heir to the Blessed Ayn… but to fail to understand that Christmas without a reference to Christianity is just another Disney theme event, is culturally illiterate and needlessly insulting.
However objectivism without Leonard Peikoff…ah, now that would be something worthy of a festival of its own! For precisely that, go to The Objectivist Center for Peikoff-free objectivism that includes tolerance and ideas that survive contact with reality. Go read what they have to say.
As for me, once I have finished reading the lyrical Sufic work ‘The Rose Garden‘, I shall be re-reading Popper‘s ‘Open Society and it’s Enemies‘.
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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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