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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Gold is not going up at all, paper money is going down.
– Detlev Schlichter
What I’ve described is essentially a top-down process, yes, that has gone bottom-up, as I’ve described so far, across official levels at Departments very widely. Now we have to make sure that nothing has fallen between the cracks in the stakeholder engagement process, but I think this issue of top-level Government buy-in to it is very important. I see it as a feature of the way that the new Government goes about its business. The approach of Cabinet Committees, with Ministers taking them very seriously, officials being energised by the fact that Committees will come back, rather than the Committee process being in any sense a formality, is something that in a lot of processes, not just relevant to the NRP, is galvanising much better across Government co-ordination in a very productive way. I think this applies to the NRP, as to lots of other things.
– Lord Sassoon, Commercial Secretary to the Treasury, makes everything clear. Helen Szamuely found it here.
The greatest passions, however, require privacy, and the good society would not deserve to be so-called if it lacked ample opportunities for seclusion and solitude. In work and in love, creativity requires time alone, to think and plan. Great, passionate works of art are not usually brought into existence by committee. The deepest friendships and loves also need time away from prying eyes to blossom; time to share intimacies not shared with others; time to build a special microcosm of private meaning within the wider, public world. A society devoid of privacy would be a society with no room for great passion, and hence not a place I would want to live. Warrantless wiretaps and extensive networks of closed-circuit television cameras have contributed to the United States and England being ranked alongside other “endemic surveillance societies” like Russia and China, according to Privacy International. But those who say, in defense of such invasive government actions, that people who have done nothing wrong have nothing to hide, reveal a profound misunderstanding of the importance of privacy. Privacy matters not because of the bad that it hides, but because of the good and the great that it nurtures.
– Bradley Doucet
“I just caught the last couple of minutes of a cable-TV documentary about Playboy magazine, which featured a clip of Hugh Hefner opining about the huge cultural impact the magazine has had in its 50-plus years of existence. And it struck me as an illustration that, even in the realm of culture and ideas, it’s the supply side that makes the greatest difference. Two young men in the mid-1950s had vastly different ideas of what the American audience really wanted and needed, and ventured forth to create magazines that reflected these views. Hugh Hefner, convinced that America was too sexually conservative and really needed to let its hair down, founded Playboy in 1953. Bill Buckley, convinced that America was too politically liberal and needed to restore its older, small-r republican virtues that had been eroded in the Progressive and New Deal eras, founded National Review in 1955. Now, think about how these ventures must have appeared at the time. Playboy was an outrage to conventional pieties about sexuality. National Review was an outrage to conventional pieties about politics. How much money would you have bet, at the time, that either one would survive for very long? “A dirty magazine? Won’t people be embarrassed to buy it?” “A magazine that’s to the right of Eisenhower and Nixon? Are there that many real fringies out there?” But the supply side takes a chance. And, quite amazingly, both ventures succeeded beyond imagining. Playboy bore fruit in the Sexual Revolution, which may already have reached its high point but shows little sign of receding. And from National Review emerged Reaganism, and conservatism as the broadly dominant system of political thought in recent years.”
Michael Potemra.
It is an interesting piece of commentary. Is it really true, though, that conservatism (however defined) is the “broadly dominant system of political thought in recent years”? I suppose it might be to the extent that the rise of Obama is in fact an aberration rather than anything else. But even if that is true, then it would be nice to see this reflected, long term, in the relative decline, not rise, of state power and spending.
Anyway, Hefner and Buckley were indeed very influential figures, no doubt about it. I have always had a lot of time for Hefner – he upsets the sort of people who need to be upset.
Update: Hefner has taken his business private.
“For as long as I can remember, I have been shouting at my TV screen. Possibly the first occasion would have been circa 1971, in sheer irritation at the infuriating, self-defeatingly named kiddie programme Why Don’t You Just Switch Off Your Television Set And Go Out And Do Something Less Boring Instead? Perhaps it was even earlier than that. Though I liked Teddy, I used to find Andy Pandy incredibly wet. Bill and Ben were incomprehensible. The Clangers whistled too much. ZsaZsa the Cat and Kiki the Frog were quite maddening in the way they ganged up on Hector the Dog. As for Florence in the Magic Roundabout, what a goodie-goodie!”
– James Delingpole
I would say that one of the great benefits of blogging has been that where before a person would get dangerously high blood pressure watching or hearing some drivel on the TV or radio, now they can work off this rage by blogging about it.
Apologies to non-UK readers who may not get the children’s TV references in the quote. That is why Wikipedia was invented!
Socialists love analogies to Sweden. But they are always unconvincing because they are based on some fantasy Sweden, rather than on an actual Nordic country bordered by Norway and Finland. In the Sweden of lore, every single woman is also 18 years old, blonde, busty, lonely, naked and waiting for you in the sauna.
– Claire Berlinski, Why Thatcher Matters. Page 154.
One of the highlights of the book are the interviews she carries out with Neil Kinnock, former leader of the Labour Party. He comes across as the buffoon he is with a layering of rather pompous Welsh charm. And for those who might have forgotten the mid-80s, there is a vivid pen portrait of Arthur Scargill, leader of the National Union of Mineworkers. He was not just a Marxist, he was an avowed admirer of Stalin.
“There must be a way for Tony Blair to make money out of all this”.
Commenter on an article about the situation in Libya and other parts of N.Africa and Middle East. Well, our Tone has done jolly well so far.
A census – as any social scientist knows – is absolutely essential to modern government. We cannot plan social policy if we don’t know how many people there are, where they are, what they do, how long they live, etc. A non-judgmental collation of information – which is what a census is – is the bedrock of civilised society. Democracy and accountable government depend completely this kind of knowledge. If we lose it, government will be run by gossip, innuendo and Daily Mail after-dinner ‘common sense’ (as if it isn’t already, but hey)
– Guardian commentator tark
It will not do to chastise Obama’s budget proposal as a simple “refusal to lead,” a “punt,” or a “cynical political maneuver.” Obama isn’t failing to lead. He is very cleverly leading us toward an irreversible expansion of the welfare state. If Obama is reelected and in control when the entitlement crisis finally does hit, he will manage the country toward Euro-style taxes and Euro-style socialism. After all, in the midst of its current fiscal crisis, Obama is pushing Europe to expand spending, not contract it.
I like this post by Lexington Green (h/t Glenn Reynolds), although his vision of permanent Republican meltdown is overdrawn. Lexington rightly rejects the “failure to lead” framing, highlighting Obama’s strategic moves and long-term intentions instead. The notion that Obama plans to use Republican proposals for cuts to kick off a movement of “angry and mobilized” beneficiaries is exactly right. Obama’s 2010 attacks on the Chamber of Commerce and his infamous “punish your enemies” exhortation were efforts to do the same thing. I lay out the rationale behind this intentionally polarizing strategy in the final chapter of Radical-in-Chief. It’s a program deeply rooted in Obama’s past. And in the absence of an honest avowal of his plans and motives in the present, only the past reveals the truth about this president’s vision of the future.
Perhaps I’m wrong and “the president’s abdication of leadership” sound bite will be enough to defeat “the GOP’s heartless cuts.” Even so, as an alternative, I suggest: “Obama’s radical plans are leading us off a cliff.”
– Stanley Kurtz
“To all those under 30 who worked so hard to get this man elected, know this: he just screwed you over. He thinks you’re fools. Either the US will go into default because of Obama’s cowardice, or you will be paying far far more for far far less because this president has no courage when it counts. He let you down. On the critical issue of America’s fiscal crisis, he represents no hope and no change. Just the same old Washington politics he once promised to end.”
– Andrew Sullivan.
Hell hath no fury. Of course, if “excitable Andrew” had been paying a bit more attention to Obama’s past, Senatorial voting record, choice of friends and so on over the past three to four years, as our own Paul Marks has been remorselessly doing, then Sullivan would not have been shocked by Obama’s position on the deficit, or indeed, anything else. But it was so much easier to obsess about Sarah Palin or “Christianists”, wasn’t it?
I need to say this – you shouldn’t trust any government, actually including this one. You should not trust government – full stop. The natural inclination of government is to hoard power and information; to accrue power to itself in the name of the public good.
– Nick Clegg, interviewed by Henry Porter It is quite remarkable for a serving British minister to say this on the record. Public protestation of belief in the benignity and good intentions of the state is the normal standard.
I am, therefore I’ll think
– John Galt
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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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