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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Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses.
– H. L. Mencken
War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
– John Stuart Mill
If pigs could vote, the man with the slop bucket would be elected swineherd every time, no matter how much slaughtering he did on the side.
– Orson Scott Card
Liberty is to the collective body what health is to every individual body. Without health, no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.
– Thomas Jefferson
Time and time again,
translation seems to sabotage the words,
you know what is said,
is not what is heard…
– Soulwax, song: Conversation Intercom
Freedom of press is limited to those who own one.
– H.L. Mencken
Which is what is so great about blogs and the blogosphere. Got a view about something? Set up your own ‘press’ and blog it.
The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.
– P. J. O’Rourke
God isn’t interested in technology. He knows nothing of the potential of the microchip or the silicon revolution. Look how he spends his time! Forty three species of parrot! Nipples for men! Slugs! He created slugs! They can’t hear! They can’t speak! They can’t operate machinery! I mean, are we not in the hands of a lunatic? If I were creating a world, I wouldn’t mess about with butterflies and daffodils. I would have started with lasers, eight o’clock, Day One!
– from Time Bandits
Every dollar spent in a libertarian society on public goods will accomplish far more than a dollar spent by the welfare state. So even if a free society spends less money, it is far from clear that it will perform less charity.
– Patri Friedman, Catallarchy
Yes, Fahrenhiet 9/11 is ‘patriotic art’ in the same way Leni Riefenstahl’s “Triumph of the Will” was patriotic art… and both take a similar relativist view regarding the role of reality in film making
I have always suspected the notion blogging will lead us into a wonderful future of ‘participatory democracy’ was one of those ideas which withers away to nothing under closer scrutiny. Sure, we can ‘fact check the asses’ (as Ken Layne put it) of the established political/media classes but that only makes us bloggers ‘participants’ in the sense that calling the cops when the party next door is making too much noise makes you a ‘participant’ in the next door’s party.
I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who overcomes his enemies.
– Aristotle
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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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