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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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.
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
– H.L. Mencken
Prostitution is a combination of sex and free enterprise. Which one are you against?
– Unknown
A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.
– Edward R. Murrow
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
The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.
– Herbert Spencer
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
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
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
You are not a libertarian unless you accept as axiomatic that, at its core, society must allow individuals to make their own choices in the pursuit of self-defined ends
– Perry de Havilland, said at a ‘Brian’s Friday’ event
Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.
– Winston Churchill
Beyond its entertainment value, Baywatch has enriched and, in many cases, helped save lives. I’m looking forward to the opportunity to continue with a project which has has such a significance for so many.
– David Hasselhoff, Actor
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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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