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 quote of the day

Level playing fields are for those who lack the wit to find one tilted in their favour.

– Bob Lewis

Samizdata quote of the day

The future isn’t as far away as it used to be

– Dale Amon

Samizdata quote of the day

When bad men combine, the good must associate else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle

– Edmund Burke

Freedom is not empowerment

I just felt like posting this short piece from the inimitable P. J. O’Rourke that he wrote a few years ago.

Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It’s not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It’s not an endlessly expanding list of rights–the ‘right’ to education, the ‘right’ to health care, the ‘right’ to food and housing. That’s not freedom, that’s dependency. Those aren’t rights, those are the rations of slavery–hay and a barn for human cattle. There’s only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.

Quite so.

Samizdata quote of the day

Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

– H.L. Mencken

Samizdata quote of the day

Prostitution is a combination of sex and free enterprise. Which one are you against?

– Unknown

Samizdata quote of the day

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.

– Edward R. Murrow

Samizdata quote of the day

Censorship under whatever guise or excuse is the ultimate of evils because no other evil can survive without it. It is thus found to be advocated only by fools and those of evil intent.

– Dale Amon

Samizdata quote of the day

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.

– Herbert Spencer

Samizdata quote of the day

Unintended consequence is reality’s most profound joke on us all (but particularly on Marx, something Groucho understood but Karl never did)

– Perry de Havilland, said at a Brian’s Friday gathering

Samizdata slogan of the day:

John F. Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
Hermann Goering said, “Common good comes before private good.”
Draw your own conclusions.

– Samizdata Illuminatus

Samizdata quote of the day

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.

– Benjamin Franklin, 1759