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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Sooner or later, every Marxist expresses his sense of public duty by first telling you and me what to say and then what to think.
– Henry Porter
He is speaking specifically of Ken Livingstone, but it is beginning to be clear that little of the former student left of the ’70s now in power has parted with the spirit of Howard Kirk. Mao may be the model more than Marx. The Long March Through the Institutions being near its end, we face an obsession with controlling the detail of other’s lives and eliminating the possibility of resistance. You will not escape by avoiding thought or being silent about dissident; it is necessary to act in the approved manner to show your enthusiasm for progress and democracy.
David Attenborough is forever finding unusual creatures in the deepest parts of the ocean. He tells us how they can see down there in the murky depths and how they mate. He tells us where they live, how they raise their young and how they use their tentacles to find prey. But he never tells us the most important thing: what they taste like.
– Jeremy Clarkson, the newspaper columnist and lead presenter of Top Gear, the BBC motoring programme. For people who do not know who David Attenborough is, he is the famous maker of very serious but also wonderfully filmed television documentaries about nature.
“We all have to compromise,” says Walt Chalmers (played by Robert Vaughn)
“Bullshit,” replies Frank Bullitt, (Steve McQueen).
From Bullitt.
I don’t care whether Monbiot read Sanskrit or the back of Frosties packets he is still a 24 carat felching tube jammed in the clacker of society.
– Commenter Nick M
These – suddenly – are great days for England rugby, but astonishing days, too. In front of a media-packed room yesterday, Brian Ashton, the England head coach, was asked: “What would it feel like to be Sir Brian?” And his genuine look of astonishment said it all.
– Owen Slot of the Times reflects on the transformation achieved during the World Cup by the England team (but Bryan Habana may prove too much of a handful for England next Saturday).
I know two people who have bought new computers lately. One, the president of my company, bought a Vista equipped computer for home use. As a result, our company will hang on to our old computers as long as possible and then consider switching to Linux. True, it’s only one small company, but I imagine this same scene is being played out everywhere.
– the point being not that this is any kind of revelation, but that Hugh MacLeod, recycling the experience of one of his many commenters, is making Microsoft (with whom he is now working) listen to such stuff.
I’m a blonde secular Jewish bisexual. That makes me very versatile. I can be secular when needed, I can be Jewish when needed, and I can flirt with anyone I need to. And it never occurs to anyone in the British media a Jewish woman might not be left of center so that was never a problem.
– So sayeth an American friend of mine when I asked her how she ended up working for the BBC.
I belong to a Facebook group called “Che Guevara was a murderer and your T-Shirt is not cool”. It has 10,935 members. It’s not nearly enough. To celebrate the anniversary of his death, why not join up and get on the right side of history?
– Marc Sidwell, with thanks to David Thompson for the link
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”
– General Charles Napier expresses a nineteenth century view of multiculturalism, quoted by Douglas Murray in the course of explaining that the West’s values are better.
I agree that there is nothing iDave could say that could convince me to vote Tory apart from “I resign”.
– commenter Nick M
It’s a pretty good piece, though author Bara Vaida calls me a “conservative,” which is only true if “conservative” is a synonym for “supports the war.” But then, that’s common usage these days.
– Glenn Reynolds
So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.
– George Orwell
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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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