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]

Samizdata slogan of the day

Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.
– Frédéric Bastiat

Samizdata slogan of the day

It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder
– Frédéric Bastiat

Samizdata slogan of the day

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul
– George Bernard Shaw

Samizdata slogan of the day

It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It’s that they can’t see the problem.
– G.K. Chesterton

Samizdata slogan of the day

The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles.
-Jeff Cooper

Samizdata slogan of the day

The world knows it as Silicon Valley, a name coined in 1971 by the editor of a microelectronics newsletter; but on the Rand McNally Atlas it is the Santa Clara Valley, a 40-mile by 10-mile strip running from Palo Alto to the southern suburbs of San Jose, at the southern end of the San Francisco Bay Area. It constitutes just over one-third of the 1312-square-mile Santa Clara County. In 1950 it was the prune capital of America.

    The opening sentences of Chapter 14 (“The Industrialization of Information – San Francisco/Palo Alto/Berkeley 1950-1990”) of Peter Hall’s Cities in Civilization

Samizdata slogan of the day

Thank God Stalin antedated Photoshop.
– Alex Kroll Jr in a comment on this posting last Sunday.

Samizdata slogan of the day

“…..in order to restore international peace and security”
Draft of the US-British Resolution on Iraq. Peace and Security. Ha.
Bomb us already, stop pussyfooting.

Salam Pax

Samizdata slogan of the day

Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.
– H. G. Wells

Samizdata slogan of the day

Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.
– Adam Smith, 1755

Samizdata slogan of the day

Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us.
– P. J. O’Rourke

Samizdata slogan of the day

A Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy.
– Benjamin Disraeli