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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To ask everyone to embrace everyone else is clearly absurd. Toleration is the best we can do, and what’s more, it works.
– Julian Baggini, encapsulating a much broader principle than that suggested by the context, an article in which he just stops short of telling Guardian readers that the categories ‘racist’ and ‘anti-racist’ are inadequate to cope with real, live human beings. Liberty requires only that we live and let live. It is made manageable by being civil. We do not need conformity. We do not need to love one another. We do not need to censor our opinions. Civility suffices.
The ‘private sector’ of the economy is, in fact, the voluntary sector; and the ‘public sector’ is, in fact, the coercive sector
– Henry Hazlitt, author of books including the superb Economics in One Lesson.
There’s a definite urge – don’t you have it? – to say, “The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.” What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation – further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they’re from the Middle East or from Pakistan. … Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children. … They hate us for letting our children have sex and take drugs – well, they’ve got to stop their children killing people.
– Martin Amis, quoted by Christopher Hitchens in his City Journal review of America Alone
Most of my old mates from Country Durham probably know how to download porn off the web (that’s what its really for after all) but I’d be willing to bet that to a man they think MySpace is where you part your car.
– Commenter ‘Albion’
So, Yates of the Yard has arrested another lacky of the Blair Regime as part of his investigation into the cash for peerages crimes. When will the Godfather himself be nicked? I hope that the boys in blue are forcibly taking blood samples from these perps. After all, as Blair himself would say, it is in the interest of all our security that suspects contribute samples to the National DNA Database. What if Levy or Turner or Blair’s criminality manifests itself in other ways? We must have samples in case they offend again.
– Charles Pooter
Producing a plausible TV show about international terrorism without depicting Muslims is like producing a plausible TV Western without depicting cowboys.
– The indispensable Robert Bidinotto
“Castro Reportedly in Grave,” begins an Associated Press headline. Unfortunately, the next word is “Condition.”
– James Taranto
Well-intentioned politicians are of two kinds, those who want to help people directly and those who want to free people so that indirectly they can help themselves. The distinction may sound like a quibble, but it is not.
– paragraph one of a Telegraph piece yesterday in which Tim Congdon explains why from now on he will be voting UKIP (thank you Iain Dale)
“And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.”
Edmund Burke, the 18th Century politician who has been described by historian and journalist Paul Johnson as the “greatest Irishman who ever lived”.
Well, fancy giving money to the Government!
Might as well have put it down the drain.
Fancy giving money to the Government!
Nobody will see the stuff again.
Well, they’ve no idea what money’s for –
Ten to one they’ll start another war
I’ve heard a lot of silly things, but, Lor’!
Fancy giving money to the Government!
– A.P. Herbert (no relation)
Thanks to Brian Walden for reminding me of this, in a brilliant but very depressing radio essay: Lessons from Herbert.
If the best we get by having a choice between a “democratically” elected Statist behemoth and a dictatorially selected Statist behemoth then we’ve got a major problem. So “scale” is important when discussing democracy. Granted local authorities can be corrupt as well, but the whole notion is to “set aside” bad government, not elect in a new batch of the same. In the end, the bigger the government, no matter how it is contrived, the more self serving and unresponsive it will be. The anti-federalists knew this, but lost out for the most part
– Commenter ‘Brad‘
I believe in democracy because I distrust the elites. I distrust the elites because I believe that self-deception is widespread, and the elites are particularly skilled at it. Accordingly, I believe that it is important for those in power to have the humility of knowing that they may be voted out of office.
Others believe in democracy because they are hoping to see the triumph of a particular elite. Many liberals want to see sympathetic technocrats manipulating the levers of government, nominally for the greater good. I see government technocrats as inevitably embedded in a political system that inefficiently processes information. The more they attempt, the more damage they are likely to do. Many conservatives want to see government used for “conservative ends.” However, I believe that the more that government tries to correct the flaws of families, the more flawed families will become.
– Arnold Kling
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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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