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.
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The leader of the neo-fascist British National Party has been arrested by West Yorkshire Police on ‘suspicion of incitement to commit racial hatred’.
Now let us ponder that for a moment. Incitement to commit racial hatred. He has been arrested for trying to get someone else to hate non-white people. Now if he had incited someone to hate Manchester United supporters, the Old Bill in West Yorkshire would not have hauled him off for questioning, so clearly we are still permitted to suggest to others that they should hate some folks without being dragged into court, just not folks of a given race.
But please note he was not arrested for ‘incitement to violence’ against some racial group, he was arrested for inciting hate. He was arrested for trying to get people to think and feel, not act, a certain way. He was arrested for leading people into thought crimes. So they have outlawed certain emotions (i.e. hatred) and have moved to enforce that law against the racial collectivist Nick Griffin, because the hatred he incites is directed towards a certain classification of people.
Well I also happen to loathe, yes loathe, certain other classifications of people: communists, fascists, theocrats, some paleo-conservatives, members of Al-Qaeda and many flavours of socialists. I do not necessarily think all such people need to have violence done against them (well, members of Al-Qaeda excepted…) nor should they be arrested for thinking the things they do, but I do indeed think such people should be regarded with a fair degree of detestation. Moreover I have no hesitation inciting others to feel the same way towards such because those who would take away our liberties should indeed incur the hatred of those whose rights they would abridge.
I wonder how long I have left before I have to live somewhere else other than Britain if I wish to continue to have freedom of speech and stay out of jail.
It does exactly what it says in the tin. You either have it or you do not… and judging by many of the letters to the Telegraph, many on Britain would rather you not have it. In response to an interesting article by Charles Moore, we see…
Sir – I have been a regular reader of your newspaper for more than 25 years. I am very concerned to read Moore’s article: it is offensive and flawed. It may cause racial disharmony among four million British Muslims at a critical time.
Dr. Basil Adam Shihabi, Consultant Physician, Secretary General of the British Iraqi Medical Association, Stevenage, Herts
For a start, ‘Muslims’ are not a race, they are a religion. But that aside, if I wish to poke fun at the muslim religion, or any equally daft belief in invisible imaginary friends, I will damn well do so. At least the good Doctor is not calling for Moore to be prevented by law from saying what he wishes and that is an important thing to note. The fact Dr. Shihabi is free to respond in the Telegraph is proof enough that the deck is not stacked against him.
However…
Sir – Moore entirely misses the point about the proposed law against inspiring religious hatred. It is not aimed at those who laugh at religion or scorn it. It is aimed at the “kill the infidel” brigade.
Michael Gorman, Guildford, Surrey
What we have here is a touching naivety about the nature of states and laws in general. The law may be aimed at the “kill the infidel” brigade (I have my doubts) but that means other remarks which disparage and insult the muslim faith will be illegal and to just assume ‘people like us’ (as opposed to ‘them’) will not have the law enforced against them is preposterous.
Making insulting remarks about any religion is like shooting fish in a barrel but the right to say what you will is vastly more important than some imaginary right to not to be offended. Without freedom of speech the whole damaged edifice of liberty really is in the gravest peril and if not enough British people realise that then we are in serious, serious trouble.
A culture of bacteria, a gaggle of geese, a confusion of monkeys, a conspiracy of lawyers, an army of caterpillars, a parliament of owls… and an absurdity of lawmakers.
In response to rising violent crime in Britain, our political masters have proposed outlawing the sale of knives to people under 18. I assume that will swiftly be followed by laws requiring all unattended kitchens within every house in Britain containing a person less than 18 years of age be securely locked to prevent access to…
… large and really sharp knives.
Do anything, anything, no matter how self-evidently preposterous, rather than face the intolerable idea that the problem is not thugs with knives but rather victims without the means to effectively defend themselves.
Roll up, roll up ladies and gentlemen! Book your tickets for a day or two in the verdant British countryside where you will find thrills, spills, adventures, games, rides, puzzles, jokes, wheezes, teases, conundrums and wonders to behold:
The new law banning hunting with dogs is “so poorly drafted” no-one can define the offence, pro-hunt MPs say.
The accusation came after it emerged a Devon man had been told he could use his four dogs to “chase away unwanted animals” from his farm.
Because he did not intend to kill deer or foxes it was not hunting…..
Tory MP Peter Luff, another co-chairman of Middle Way, said that the legislation was “so poorly drafted nobody appears able to properly define the offence”.
“It is no wonder the government desperately wants to move on from this disastrous law. However, I seriously doubt the countryside will be that accommodating.”
Guaranteed fun for all the family.
Well, well, well. A famous showbusiness celebrity is making a big fuss about the crushing of dissent and the stifling of free speech.
But, this time, the claim has merit:
Blackadder star Rowan Atkinson has launched a comedians’ campaign against a government bill to outlaw inciting religious hatred.
The Mr Bean actor says parts of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill are “wholly inappropriate” and could stifle freedom of speech….
The main thrust of the bill creates a new Serious and Organised Crime Agency to tackle drug trafficking, people smuggling and criminal gangs.
Quite what religious ‘hatred’ has to do with drug trafficking and criminal gangs is quite beyond me but this appears to be another example of the government bundling up huge sheafs of seen-to-be-doing-something new laws and stuffing them altogether into one big, deliverable package. Perhaps they are trying to cut down on their printing costs.
Anyway, to the meat of the matter. I applaud Mr Atkinson for his taking a stand notwithstanding that it may be motivated by self-interest. That is still better than nothing. However, I expect that his pleadings will fall on wilfully deaf ears. HMG was rattling its sabre about new ‘hate speech’ laws even while the cement dust was still drfiting over New York. It was, near as dammit, their first response.
I have not yet read the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill but, in due course, I will. I do not expect that it will materially differ, either in theme or content, from similar recent legislative atrocities. That is to say, it will endow the state with sweeping new powers, give birth to lavishly funded and unaccountable agencies and usher in a whole raft of new laws that will be so widely and vaguely drafted as to make them dangerously open to interpretation and judicial activism.
Following the now familiar pattern of previous legislation, widespread enforcement will prove impossible. So enforcement will be selective, politically-motivated and high-profile with a handful of unlucky short-straw drawers nailed to the wall pour encourages les autres.
If that was the only outcome then it would be bad enough. That alone would be sufficiently capricious and despotic. But that is only the intended outcome. The unintended outcome could be a great deal worse.
A climate of cowed silence doth not a happy-clappy country make. The worst of it is not knowing where the boundaries are. What can we say? What can’t we say? The majority with something to lose will opt for saying nothing at all as the safest policy (and who can blame them?). Thus, there will be a Potemkin appearance of normality and what we have learned to refer to as ‘tolerance’.
But, underneath, the true picture will be much darker. The only way to successfully challenge bad ideas is to challenge them with good ideas but that is not possible to do if the bad ideas cannot be expressed in the first place. Similarly, resentments left unspoken do not simply whither on the vine and grievances (however irrational and baseless they may be) will not conveniently decay into half-lives like radioactive materials.
Instead these unstable elements will foment and fester and bubble away quietly in the dark until the solution has been transformed into a toxic and explosive substance. It will remain inert only so long as the lid can be kept firmly screwed down.
This senior British police officer tells the Daily Telegraph that householders should be able to use force, lethal force if necessary, to beat off burglars. Good. It may not immediately lead to a change in public policy but I get the feeling that a watershed was passed in the murder this week of City financier and Chelsea resident, John Monckton. Regular readers of this site will know that the crime was committed within a few yards of our own Perry de Havilland’s home.
I am not going to repeat all the arguments we have seen about the issue of self defence, both on this blog and in our comments section. For me it is simple – the right to life is not worth much if one cannot use the means necessary to defend it. Full stop, no ifs, buts or qualifications. What does strike me, though, is that restoring the right of self defence will also, indirectly, improve the quality of our police forces. There are still a lot of very brave, committed and smart people in the police. Such people join up not just for the nice pension but also out of a desire to put thugs behind bars and protect the public. By being turned into “the paramilitary wing of the Guardian newspaper”, as blogger David Farrer memorably put it, many good policemen and women may have been demoralised and driven out of the force.
So if we want to be able to encourage smart and good people to be coppers and restore the reputation of the boys in dark blue, then restoring the liberties and protections of our Common Law is an integral part of that goal. All good Bobbies should be cheering on the rights of self defence.
Last night I had some friends and business associates around for dinner here in Chelsea. It was an agreeable evening at which some interesting conversations were had, some good food was enjoyed and some nice wine drunk.
And at around 7:00pm while all that was happening in my home, some 50 yards away my neighbour John Monckton was stabbed to death and his wife seriously injured by a pair of young vermin who broke into their house.
Of course the state forbids people like the Moncktons from owning the means to defend themselves. And the CCTV cameras on our street? I cannot tell you how much better they must make everyone around here feel. The police who have closed off my street are festooned with all manner of weapons and body armour but given that their actual role in modern Britain is little more than clearing up the mess after another disarmed householder has been butchered, perhaps waterproof coveralls and mops would be more suitable equipment for our tax funded ‘guardians’.
Bitter? You bet. The world is full of predators and we are required to face them disarmed and as much in fear of the law as the criminal who attack us.
The state is not your friend.
It was a peculiar juxtaposition of programmes. First I watched the latest episode of Spooks, on BBC1 TV, and then I watched the BBC Ten O’Clock News, without pushing any buttons on the TV because that was on BBC1 TV also.
The News was dominated by David Blunkett‘s difficulties, largely self-inflicted, it would appear. There will be an independent inquiry into whether Blunkett fast-tracked a visa application for his ex-lover’s nanny, and the Prime Minister announced that he was confident of the outcome, which was an odd combination of circumstances. If the Prime Minister is so sure, why the independent inquiry? Why can he simply not say why he is so sure of the impeccability of his Home Secretary? And as another talking head opined, it would now take a brave independent inquirer to fly so completely in the face of Blair’s clear statement of what he wants the answer to be. Which means that if the independent inquiry does endorse the Prime Minister’s view, the suspicion will remain that this was because of the Prime Minister publicly demanding that answer instead of because the answer is true. So whichever way the independent inquiry goes, the stink will either be strong, or strong.
Spooks (a programme I have had cause to mention here before) was a even more lurid soap opera than usual – of junior Ministerial wrongdoing (he murders a girl, then resigns to spend more time with his family (sound familiar?)), of a famed rock and roll couple (she has her baby kidnapped to keep them in the news, but it goes wrong, the baby dies, and he finally murders her in a rage and then shoots himself). Downing Street was presented throughout as relentlessly manipulating a deranged state of public sentimentality (not least in calling in the Spooks to sort the matter in the first place, instead of leaving it to the Police), as in the grip of electoral desperation, as total hypocritical, and generally as a huge cover-up machine. If this show is any clue as to the state of public opinion, out there in Middle England, we have our answer to that question about why the Prime Minister does not want to explain why he believes his Home Secretary to be innocent of all wrongdoing. Middle England would not trust such pronouncements further than it could spit them. The Prime Minister is not trusted. → Continue reading: Public life, private life and public trust – reflections on two consecutive TV programmes
If David Blunkett falls from office because of his shenanigans between the sheets, I do hope that civil rights activists will not see this as a sign from God (be it Cthuhlu or whoever) that the truly perilous state in which British liberty stands is about to take a turn for the better.
Nothing Blunkett has ever done was done under his authority alone. The accelerating rate at which common law is set aside and ancient liberties debased have been the product of decades of antipathy to non-collectivist rights and individual liberty, a process which was well under way when David Blunkett’s Tory predecessor was in power: would-be future Prime Minister Michael ‘a touch of the night’ Howard.
The fall of a ringwraith might be cause for some brief rejoicing (I will certainly be raising a glass or two that day!) but please remember there are plenty more where he came from. Sauron lives at Number 10 Downing Street, not in the office of the Home Secretary.
When was the last time you heard a Tory leader say something like this?
We believe in ‘bio-diversity’ in ideas and cultures. In common with ecologists, we recognise that long-term strength springs only from a multiplicity of divergent and often conflicting influences, not from standardisation. We believe that rivers should meander, not be straightened by statute. In that sense, we are truly conservative.
We believe in freedoms, not rights. ‘Rights’ are afforded by a ruling class which, by presuming to grant them, presumes also to withdraw them. We spurn them, and maintain that freedom to do what we will, provided that we do no harm to others, is ours by right of birth alone. In that sense, we are truly liberal.
It follows, then, that we have many policies which, whilst they motivate our desire for Independence, are not directly related to that struggle. It follows that, so soon as we are free to do so, we will rescind those bans imposed upon us from without in recent years, trusting instead to the courtesy and responsibility of the British people. It follows that we will deregulate business, cease to interfere in family life and restore to the people the freedom to divert themselves as they will, subject only to the provisions of Common Law.
– Roger Knapman, UKIP Leader
Very interesting indeed!
Travelling to distant lands often has the effect of changing your perspectives about your own country to some degree or other. After returning to Britain from my trip to the USA earlier this week, I was struck by how leaden and grey London appears in November compared to the pastel, azure balminess of the California coast.
But, that said, I was born here in Blighty and I have had a lifetime of getting used to its forbidding and dismal winter skies. Besides, there are other and newer characteristics that make me wonder exactly what type of country I have returned to. They are altogether more pernicious and have nothing to do with the climate:
In the aftermath of my experience, I started some purely anecdotal research on the type of behaviour and attitude displayed by the police towards me. In speaking to friends, acquaintances, tradesmen, cab drivers and people in the pub I rapidly came to realise that a quite staggering number of ordinary, law-abiding people had endured similar experiences.
To discover precisely what ‘experiences’ the author was forced to endure, you will need to read the entire article. I recommend it in particular to our non-British readers so that they can get some idea of what is happening to this country.
The account of the ordeal left me with a ball of cold mercury in the pit of my stomach. For what happened to him could just as easily happen to me or any number of my friends, relations or colleagues.
And this is merely a taste of things to come. The hors d’oeuvres before the main course. We will not enjoy this meal.
Rather oddly for British politicians Mr Blair and his New Labour associates have heard of libertarianism. This is known because Mr Blair and co often sneer at and attack libertarianism. This is logical enough. After all the present government (like so many governments) has increased taxes and state spending, produced endless new regulations and shows contempt for the principles of law (or ‘civil liberties’ as the modern way of saying this goes).
However, Mr Blair and the rest of New Labour also talk about their support for ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’. This would seem to show a contradiction in that New Labour attacks freedom and shows contempt for libertarianism (i.e. the non aggression principle which seeks to limit the threat of violence to the defence of persons and their possessions) and yet claims to stand for freedom.
Normally at this point I might be expected to examine, in detail, the dispute in political philosophy between ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ freedom. But I think only a brief examination is needed. ‘Negative’ freedom is basically ‘hands off’, and ‘positive’ freedom has mutated from an old belief (going back to Classical times) that true freedom was control of the passions by reason (i.e. freedom as moral self improvement), to a belief that “positive” freedom is material possessions – in short the more money someone has or the more services that are open to him the more free he is.
I would then carefully explain that it is a false choice, as the state can not develop the moral responsibility of individuals by imposing lots of regulations (indeed such a state undermines the moral development of people) and nor can statism (more regulations, higher taxes and so on) promote prosperity or reduce poverty (again statism undermines prosperity and, in the long run, increases poverty over the level it would have otherwise have been). In short the way to advance ‘positive’ freedom (however one defines it) is to advance ‘negative’ freedom.
However, as I said above, I do not believe that a detailed examination is needed here (although I admit that the ‘positive’ freedom people have much more to say, and ‘negative’ liberty, on its own, may not be enough to advance the control of reason over the passions).
The reason that I do not think a detailed examination is needed is that I do not believe that Mr Blair is thinking of “positive liberty” as an alternative when he is sneering at libertarianism. Shocking as it may sound I believe that Mr Blair, when he uses the word ‘freedom’, just means the freedom of the government to do as it likes. Certainly he means a democratically elected government (a nondemocratic government will not do).
But a democratic government should do what it likes as long as it does not undermine the democratic process itself – that is “politics is freedom” as the political philosopher Bernard Crick (much admired by Mr Blair) said in his In Defence of Politics (first published back in 1962, but many editions).
It is the political process that is freedom to Mr Blair, not the freedom (‘negative’ or ‘positive’) of individuals.
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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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