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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The constitution and laws of a State are rarely attacked from the front; it is against secret and gradual attacks that a Nation must chiefly guard. Sudden resolutions strike men’s imagination; their history is written, and their secret sources made known; but changes are overlooked when they come about insensibly by a series of steps which are scarcely noted. One would do great service to Nations by showing from history how many States have thus changed their whole nature and lost their original constitution.
– Emmerich de Vattel, The Laws of Nations or Principles of Natural Law, 1758
With our troops safely back, the people of Iraq can then begin building a faith-based society emphasizing the same traditional values that motivate conservatives like you: women at home, prayer in school, capital punishment for homos.
– Howard Dean (channelled by blogging über-wit Iowahawk) is sniffing out votes in unlikely places.
The quote of the day slot is already taken, but this would have been my choice, had the choice still been mine to make:
If nobody said anything unless he knew what he was talking about, a ghastly hush would descend upon the earth.
That’s from Sir Alan (A.P.) Herbert.
She found it here.
Samizdata mostly manages to avoid ghastly hushes.
I cannot have a situation where businesses close haphazardly.
– Rt Hon Alistair Darling MP, speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme about the Sub-Post Office network, and neatly demonstrating the dirigiste mentality of the Scottish Raj
If reality contradicts your thoughts, that’s delusion. If your thoughts contradict your actions, that’s madness. If reality contradicts your actions, that’s defeat, frustration, self-destruction. And no sane being wants delusion, madness and destruction.
– From the Golden Transcendence, John C. Wright, page 212
Brooke’s main achievement seems to have been in preventing Churchill from losing the war.
– Patrick Crozier writes about Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke’s War Diaries
Your actions, and your action alone, determines your worth.
– Evelyn Waugh, novelist.
Via the excellent India Uncut, I reproduce this shortest – and most revealing – of short stories in its entirety:
He loaded all his belongings onto a truck and was driving to another town when he was waylaid by a mob. Eyeing the goods greedily, one man said to the other, ‘Just look at all that booty he is decamping with.’ The owner smiled proudly, ‘What you see here is my personal property.’
Some of the men laughed. ‘We know.’
There was a yell from the mob, ‘Don’t let this capitalist get away. He is nothing but a robber with a truck.’
It is a partition-era tale, but still remarkably relevant today – it has been institutionalised and multiplied across society.
The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
– Hubert H. Humphrey
Not everything left-liberals say is nonsense.
“Purchaser shall not sell or transfer any Cat purchased hereunder to anyone other than an immediate family member, and shall not offer to any person the purchase of a Cat or any genetic material from a Cat, the rights Purchaser may have under this Agreement, or any other right related hereto, without the Company’s express written authorization.”
– An extract from the click through licence one is required to agree to when ordering a genetically modified hypoallergenic cat from a company named Allerca. (Via Boingboing).
I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true. There must be some human truth that is beyond religion.
– Oriana Fallaci
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
– H.L. Mencken.
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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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