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]
|
Political assassination is becoming something of a national pastime in Russia. The latest victim is Sergey Yushenkov , a Liberal Party deputy in the Dumas who was gunned down yesterday outside his apartment building in Moscow.
Russian Liberals are ‘Liberal’ in the European sense of the word, not the American sense i.e.
He was a strong proponent of military reform and favoured the creation of a free market in Russia when many deputies were dragging their feet.
Of course, murder is always murder regardless of the opinions held by the victim, but in this case Russia has lost one of the genuine good guys and at a time when they need all the good guys they can get.
There are no indications as to who carried out the murder or why.
R.I.P. Mr.Yushenkov.
You’ve just got to laugh really. Certainly that was my reaction when I happened upon this development, courtesy of Bill Herbert:
A coalition of lawyers and human rights groups yesterday unveiled a bid to use the UN’s new International Criminal Court as a tool to restrain American military power.
In a move Washington said vindicated U.S. claims that the court would be used for political purposes, the rights activists are working to compile war crimes cases against the United States and its chief ally in Iraq, Britain.
What, no mention of any intended actions against Saddam Hussein? Some mistake surely? I mean, if Great Satan and Little Satan are in the dock then surely it cannot be so hard to cobble together a half-way decent case against the Ba’athist regime as well?
Of course, we all know the reasons why that is never going to happen; the same reason that truly does vindicate the American determination to have nothing whatsoever to do with the International Criminal Court. But, for once, it is worth examining this in just a little more depth.
So, I followed the link in Bill Herbert’s post to this article in the National Post which provides a bit more background:
They said five eminent international lawyers will outline a case against the United States and Britain next month for submission first to an international “alternative” court called the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal in Rome, then the prosecutor’s office of the ICC in The Hague.
The ‘Permanent People’s Tribunal’? What’s that all about? I’m ‘people’ and yet I have never heard of them nor do I recall appointing them to sit in judgement on my behalf. → Continue reading: A long way from Nuremburg
A commenter called Johan from Sweden got me thinking about memes and their uses.
Next time you hear of a new tax or a new abridgement of civil liberties such as surveillance or free speech or conscriptive ‘education’ or an increase in regulation of what you do even on private property or any of the host of democratically sanctified violence backed imposition on civil society, the meme to start trumpeting should be clear:
Not in my name!
The socialist left and statist right are both big on majoritarianism whilst paying lip service to the right of minorities… well I have news for you, we are all a minority of one in the final analysis. Just because someone votes for the state to help itself to your money, remember to protest loud and long and give lie to the myth that democracy empowers anyone except the political factions able to manipulate the system.
Not in my name!
It may not stop them but every little bit that de-legitimizes the politicization of civil society under the blanket of democracy is a step in the right direction.
Peter Cuthbertson discusses the importance of concepts and semantics to defining a political meta-context
If your arguments are irrational and unconvincing, and the consequences of people listening to them harmful and destructive, then you really need to have some other factor on your side to succeed. Sadly, those who advocate socialism, statism, lilly-livered liberalism and an ever-expanding government have just this. For almost every modern political argument is conducted in a lexicon that favours them, every debate being a competition between those who can use leftist language most convincingly – usually the left, unsurprisingly.
Daniel Hannan covered this phenomenon 18 months ago in The Spectator. It isn’t that the language prevents you arguing against the left – it’s that it prevents you doing so while still sounding as kind and as decent as your opponent.
‘Greed’ now means low taxes, while c’ompassion’ means high taxes. ‘Fairness’ means state-enforced equality, while ‘unfairness’ means an individual’s right to better himself. Any discussion of the relationship between government and citizen is perforce conducted in loaded terms. You can still make the case for greater liberty, but not without sounding rather nasty.
The column in question was far more focused on the problem than solutions, though he did note that there was hope for the future. However, the fulfillment of these hopes would require conscious effort to reclaim the political vocabulary. How can we achieve this? → Continue reading: Reclaiming the political lexicon
The recent war in Iraq has of course thrown up many examples of actors and actresses, many of them from Hollywood, who have taken a stand against war. What is interesting is that there appears, according to David Skinner in the Weekly Standard to be a divide in public life between the acting and sports communities, if one can use such a collectivist catch-all term like “community” (yes, I am aware there are nuances here). For example, while “documentary” producer and all-round blowhard leftist (I refuse to be polite) Michael Moore denounces Bush and the war, golfing god Tiger Woods (one of my heroes) takes a diametrically opposite stance, saluting the bravery of American soldiers on his personal website.
What is going on here? For example, I don’t really know what British sportsmen and women like Manchester United’s David Beckham or English cricket captain Nasser Hussein think about such things, although Hussein’s recent decision not to play against Zimbabwe during the World Cup attests to a moral fibre not usually seen among the thespian community. And I admired the fact that Beckham, apparently, asked for the Stars and Stripes to be laid in the mddle of Old Trafford, Manchester United’s home ground, at the start of a match just after 9/11. Skinner reckons that sportsfolk, unlike actors and actresses, have to deal in reality of a sort that makes them better suited to taking a view on issues like war.
I particularly liked this paragraph:
As competitors who directly face opponents, athletes may have less trouble accepting the probability of enmity between nations. They become famous over the strenuous opposition of other people. Their professional lives are in fact defined by antagonism and opposition. They have to individually dominate other players, and help their teams dominate other teams.
While with actors, he says:
when show-business types triumph, victory comes on a wave of public admiration that can make it seem like they were just elected the public’s favorite human being. If competition is the watchword of sports, adoration and acclaim are the watchwords of show business. This kind of career makes for a weak political education as one grapples to understand why a president would take actions certain to make him unpopular in important parts of Europe and elsewhere.
I think he is definitely on to something. Maybe libertarians should forget about ever trying to network in the artistic community and get on the golf course instead.
Some years ago I read some interesting ideas about the standards of the Victorian gentleman. Superficially they were very strict. There were things gentlemen just ‘did not do’, but the superficial inflexibility hid a deep pragmatism. Sometimes one has to break standards in order to keep them. One must have ‘rough men’ on the borders and in the dangerous lands. One must sometimes compromise oneself or commit a crime against ones deepest beliefs and suffer a lifetime of remorse so that others may blissfully exist ‘within the code’.
This is why we need the Anti-war Libertarians. They are there to remind us that war is in general a bad thing; it is something which often expands state power. They provide us with an unbending code against which we must judge our actions.
Libertarians are thinking beings, not robotic ideologues. There are times when we must knowingly do things we find distasteful simply because it is the world we live in or because an action protects something we hold dear. The existence of a code, is important. Without one each new action defines a new central position which is no position at all.
We Samizdatistas are the rough men and women at the borders of Libertopia, ready and willing to sacrifice our souls that others may sleep peacefully with their more strict adherence to gentlemanly libertarian behavior.
Guess who owns Monica Lewinsky’s old flat at the Watergate?
Her former neighbors, the Doles, bought it to enlarge their own living space.
I have been out of communications for the last week or so. Due the inability of Vodafone customer service to ring FEDEX to get a check delivered, I have yet to get international service running on my mobile. Living without a mobile phone is a terrible thing. How do people exist in the dark ages Before Mobile?
I’ve also been without ethernet connection since I do not yet have an 802.11b (wireless) card. So I may sit thirsting Ancient Mariner like in a cafe filled with wireless internet chatter but unable to drink.
Although I was well connected in Connecticut, I was totally occupied with an R&D job there and barely took time to skim Fox News each night before falling into an exhausted sleep.
So that is why I have not been commenting much on the war. I had thought it might at least last long enough for me to get a few licks in before the end. That was not to be. Modern warfare, like modern culture and technology have speeded up to an almost post-human time scale. If I had gone on business for two months during WWII little would have happened. Or perhaps I should say, little in terms of modern hyperspeed warfare. A major battle might have been engaged and fought to conclusion; a invasion might have established a beach head; the Battle of Britain might have started and be reaching a peak of ferocity… but the war would not seem to have changed in its’ essence.
Contrast 1938-1945 with March-April 2003. It started as I left Belfast and its’ effectively over as I sit here in DC barely a third of the way through a series of consultancy jobs. They held a war and I’ve mostly missed it.
It’s a fast old world we live in.
The UN, meaning significant portions of its membership such as France, Germany, Russia etc. are refusing to simply lift sanctions against Iraq automatically until they get their way politically… which is to say to dilute US and British control over post-war Iraq.
So even after Ba’athism is gone, the sanctions could be maintained. In short, the people backing this are saying “do what we want or we will make the Iraqi people suffer even though the regime the sanctions were designed to contain is now gone”.
And the thing that really sticks in my craw is that these sanctimonious bastards think they have the moral high ground.
More evidence, as published by Reuters today (and not in its “oddly enough” pages) is coming out that Saddam’s Iraq was a key supporter of Islamic terror. Looks pretty damning to me.
Come on peaceniks, please tell us this is all a CIA-inspired plot.
Our worst suspicions have been confirmed. The British Chancellor Gordon Brown is suffering from SARS (Severe Acute Robbery Syndrome) but every time he sneezes it’s the rest of us who catch the cold:
Pay increases in the private sector have slumped and are not enough to cover Gordon Brown’s tax increases, figures from the Office for National Statistics showed yesterday.
Economists were alarmed by the news as it could make the recent downturn in high street spending prolonged. It may also be politically significant, especially for Mr Brown.
The last time millions of voters had their pay packets cut because of tax increases was in 1974, when the then chancellor Denis Healey put 3p on income tax. Over 21m people currently work in the private sector.
I don’t know how many people work in the public sector but I do know that the number is much higher than in was in the early 90’s. Since 1997 especially, the ratchet of taxation (both direct and indirect) has gradually been cranked up to fund a staggering growth in government. The Labour Party’s natural constituency, the middle-class kleptocracy, has been showered with money and perquisites as a reward for their loyalty while, even now, they moan interminably about a ‘lack of resources’.
Meanwhile, the 21 million wealth creators have sadly bought the lie that only by accepting an ever-increasing burden can their lives improve. These Atlases may soon want to shrug and give their allegiance to a genuine tax-cutting, government-shrinking political party.
Sadly, we don’t have one in this country.
Now, you simplistic burger-munching Americans, you’d better pay attention and start trembling in your cowboy boots because Timothy Garton Ash of the Guardian has got a stark warning for you:
America is on probation. That, in four words, is my verdict on Gulf war II.
Did you hear that? Is that anything less than crystal clear? You’d better just watch your step, that’s all. Otherwise you’re going to be in really, really, really, really, really, really BIG TROUBLE!!
|
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.
|
Recent Comments