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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For decades, every school and university in the West has been teaching that the feelings of the protected classes trump rights of free expression.
The media are ruled by it, politics is in thrall to it, and each and every citizen of all these great, free, democratic societies knows in the back of his or her mind that if you dare say the wrong thing, you will be keel-hauled.
We’ve all watched it happen. We’ve complained and objected and had various hissy fits. The PC crowd just shrugged and found some more terms that were offensive, some more victims that needed to be protected, some more ideas that demonstrated a depraved, sexist, racist, whatever-ist mind and needed to be cast out.
I don’t care who this guy is, or how ironic it all is. What difference does it make. The suppression many predicted, and so many others played down, is here.
Did you think they were kidding?
– Reader and commenter veryretired, on this thread.
Copy protection is guaranteed to fail because it’s a house of cards. No matter how sophisticated the software, it takes only one person to break it, once, and the music is free to roam and multiply on the peer-to-peer file-trading networks.
– Damian Kulash, lead singer of OK Go
“I think this nanny state business, you know, is just nonsense.”
– Tony Blair, today’s BBC2 Newsnight, responding to the allegation that he is creating a nanny state
And another thing – the argument that we can all support Cameron’s leftward lurch because it’s all an act and he doesn’t really mean it – he is lying pretty low. I might be prepared to give someone the benefit of the doubt on the grounds that they are telling the truth, but to give someone the benefit of the doubt in the hope that they are lying through their teeth?
– Wolfie
Veisalgia– the medical term for the common or garden hangover. I suspect that there has been a slight epidemic of veisalgia in the ranks of Samizdata’s contributors and editors lately. A useful word to know when filling out sick leave application forms for work.
Last century over 170 million people were murdered by their own governments, and your government doesn’t want you to have a gun. Doesn’t that bother you just a little?
– Unknown
Now that they have a fairly sensible and popular sceptic policy on Europe, the Conservatives react with wounded surprise when polls say that the public still do not respect them on the subject. But the reason is very simple: again and again, their actions have belied their words.
– Charles Moore
But, whatever the crimes of our forefathers, this is the country of Drake, Clive and Kitchener, not of Tipu Sultan, Shaka Zulu or the Mahdi.
– Max Hastings
These whiners are the same people who complain of American cultural imperialism because people like Coke and Starbucks. [Yet] there is no more rigid, aggressive, ignorant bunch of cultural imperialists in the world than Muslims who, as a group, are intent on forcing their preposterous beliefs on the rest of the world. Give me Starbucks any day.
– Commenter Verity on the ‘Satanic Cartoons’ controversy.
Are you uncomfortable enough? Good. Welcome to my world.
– Adriana Cronin-Lukas, on dealing with day to day annoyances of Eastern Europe’s post communist legacy
Tony Blair showed just how courageous he is… he chose to face up to an internal battle based on one idea – the European Union – rather than just doing his job as just Britain’s prime minister.
– Jacques Chirac
Pity Samizdata.net does not have a catagory for articles called “Treason & Betrayal”.
Protectionism does not aid development. Developing countries with open economies are catching up with rich ones; those with closed economies are falling further behind.
– Andrew Mitchell, the UK’s Shadow Secretary of State for International Development
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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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