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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I am a fairly regular reader of New Scientist for its take on fast breaking technological news. The magazine does have a downside though. It is very… well… representative of UK “liberal” politics.
I have just finished an item in the 29-Nov-2002 issue, “I see a long life and a healthy one…” about entrepreneurial companies making genetic testing available to the consumer. One would think a science magazine would be praising them for taking cutting edge science and bringing it to the consumer in an affordable and appealing way while potentially creating many high paying jobs for scientists in the UK, generating yet another path for massive capital infusion into genetic and health research and adding to UK exports to top it off?
Naaah.
I’ll let these quotes from the article stand on their own:
British regulators were caught on the hop when Sciona’s tests first went on sale. No one had foreseen that consumers would suddenly be able to learn something about their genes without a doctor’s agreement, or even knowledge.
Another option would be to return control of genetic testing to the medical profession, banning companies from providing tests unless requested by a doctor. Companies say this is a step too far towards meidcal paternalism, and argue that people have the right to obtain genetic information about themselves. But [Helen] Wallace [of GeneWatch UK] disagrees: “We need to ensure proper consultation through GP’s to ensure that people understand the implications of taking a test,” she says
What could I possibly add?
Who would you pick as your ‘Newsmaker of the Year’? Who do you believe has had the most significant impact in 2002? It is a tough one, isn’t it. So many candidates, some for good reasons, some for bad reasons.
However, on the assumption that you are at all interested in this kind of thing, then you might care to toddle along to the BBC Website where they have very helpfully published a shortlist of suitable nominees for you to consider:
- Jimmy Carter
- Bill Clinton
- Louis Farrakhan
- Alan Greenspan
- Jeremy Hardy
- Prince Harry
- Ali Hewson
- Henry Kissinger
- Michael Moore
- Christopher Reeve
- Clare Short
Now I do not wish to appear overly judgemental or anything, and I am always wary about jumping to conclusions, and I realise that you must not go around accusing people of all sorts of things for no reason or putting two and two together and coming up with five, but I honestly do think that the BBC have an ever-so-slight left-wing bias.
Or do you think I’m being too hasty?
‘Spirited’ is the word I would use to describe this article by stalwart Guardianista Polly Toynbee in which she pours all the hot water she can boil over the ‘Tory Press’ for what she regards as a ‘naked political assault on the government’.
Perhaps ‘vituperative’ is a better word. She certainly does not pull her punches. But what really caught my eye was this most damning conclusion:
“The question is why do we tolerate a press that is the worst in the western democratic world? Wild, unaccountable to anyone, anything goes and no one can stop it: what politician would dare call for a privacy law in the face of their wrath? The only hope is public revulsion.”
Being more than a little intrigued by this prima facie hypocrisy, I found myself composing (and then sending) a little request for clarification:
“Is this not the press of which you are a very prominent part, Ms.Toynbee? Or are we to take it that you consider yourself to be above and beyond the rest of the ‘unaccountable’ rabble?”
A not unreasonable question I thought. A view shared by Ms.Toynbee as she was kind enough to respond to me (albeit tersely):
“I do not regard the Guardian as in the same business as the Mail.”
I believe that my question has been answered in the affirmative.
“Jesus Christ was so little minded to give specific guidance as to politics that he didn’t even deal with the issue of slavery. And these twits think that it’s heresy to be in favour of the free market or against the UN.”
Funny how that same topic has kept coming up recently. Just the other day, I posted the words above on my own blog. Now Christopher Pellerito’s comments in the post just below this one, and the Howie Carr and Joe Bob Briggs articles he quotes, have got me thinking.
“What would Jesus do?” when first coined might have been a good phrase to prompt Christians to examine their own lives in the light of Christ’s example. There is nothing logically wrong with that principle, employed with due modesty. Christians Socialists, Conservatives and Libertarians all may sincerely believe that their political beliefs either flow from their religion or are at least compatible with it. (Not all of them can be right, but that’s one for another post.)
However the WWJD phrase has now become little more than a hook for anybody to make any claim they like about divine backing for their side in whatever temporary and local kerfuffle happens to be in the paper this week, secure in the knowledge that the authority they quote is scarcely going to gainsay them.
At least, not yet.
By definition every Christian believes that he or she will one day stand before Jesus. I can’t help wondering whether some Christians would be so presumptuous about putting words into Jesus’ mouth if the prospect of that final, consummate meeting were truly real to them.
Boston-area conservative talk show host and syndicated columnist Howie Carr (presumably unrelated to our own David Carr) wrote a column accusing Bernard Cardinal Law, archbishop of the beleaguered Archdiocese of Boston, of hypocrisy. In Carr’s words:
Until the recent unraveling of his corrupt empire, the sanctimonious prince of the church annually went to Beacon Hill to bang his tin cup on the State House steps, demanding ever more generous handouts for the shiftless, the indigent and the promiscuous. But now that it’s finally Law’s turn to buy a round, he’s tipping over tables in his unseemly rush to get out of the room. Money for sodomized altar boys? Don’t push me, pal. Ever hear of Chapter 11?
Now, this is a little off the mark. After all, bankruptcy laws don’t exist to help debtors weasel out of their obligations; they exist to provide for orderly payment of creditors. The point of filing under Chapter 11 isn’t to avoid paying out potentially massive liabilities; it is to ensure that you will be able to continue operating — and paying your creditors — under a worst-case scenario.
(For a quick refresher on US bankruptcy law, here is a nice little e-pamphlet from the Securities and Exchange Commission.)
But Mr. Carr may have tapped into a richer vein of thought here. (Even a blind squirrel finds a few acorns.) This is what I want to know: when did morality stop being about how you conduct your own affairs, and turn into a referendum on your political views?
Maybe there’s some of that in Rand — who wrote at great length about the moral superiority of capitalism and individualism, etc., and who remained a stern moralist in this arena despite a personal life marked by marital infidelity and other peccadilloes. But I think that Carr is correct in hanging this one largely on the liberal left. → Continue reading: Who would Jesus vote for?
I ask you, who would want to be a celebrity these days? If you aren’t being pestered by ‘peacenik’ goons to endorse their idiotic petitions then you’re having the strong-arm put on you by animal rights activists:
“An animal rights group is giving Liverpool’s homeless mink coats for Christmas.
Bond girl Barbara Bach and Playboy magazine centrefold Kimberley Hefner were among those who had donated furs..”
So they are taking mink coats from rich people and giving them to poor people. But, hang on, if wearing fur is wrong then surely it is wrong regardless of one’s social status, right? Apparently not.
“”We cannot bring these animals back – but we can send a message that only people truly struggling to survive have any excuse for wearing fur.”
“To show these furs were “recycled”, the garments had had white stripes painted on the arms, so the recipients would not be left “open to ridicule for wearing something so cruel”
“Recycled”? That’s not quite the word I would use. The word I would use is re-distributed because that is really the point of this whole exercise. The white stripe on the arm is nothing less than a badge of party membership, identifying the bearer as the ideologically sound beneficiary of plantation politics as opposed to those “open to ridicule” for resisting the moral blackmail and proudly displaying their property for all to see.
Not ridiculous: Giselle looks good in fur
The old class warriors have found some ingenious ways to hide their rhetoric and ‘animal rights’ is one of them. Of course, they are not really concerned about the fate of cute, furry animals. No, what really bothers them about fur coats is that they are a conspicuous symbol of wealth and, as such, are only acceptable if being adorned on the bodies of the duly appointed deserving.
And if you have ever wondered why mink and fur is so offensive but leather is unremarkable then may I suggest that it is because ‘ridiculing’ and strong-arming little old ladies and bulimic supermodels is a very safe way of exercising one’s alleged virtues. Taking on a 250lb Hell’s Angel is an altogether more risky proposition.
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As an anti-statist, free market capitalist libertarian, I am often ‘accused’ of being on the political right. Yet as so many libertarians will tell you, many of my ilk refuse to accept the statist left/right axis as having any relevance to us. One only has to listen to a pro-immigration libertarian such as myself and then listen to most Tories in the UK/Republicans in the USA to see an issue which shows the differences.
We often find that neo-conservatives agree with libertarian antipathy to Marxist and Keynesian state centred economics and the wealth & liberty destroying regulatory state. Yet to think that advocating laissez-faire makes us ‘right wing’ is to misunderstand just how large the cultural and philosophical gulf is between most true (i.e. capitalist) libertarians and most conservatives. Conservatives are about conserving, they are about continuity above all else… however libertarians are about liberty, conserving it where it can be found but also tearing down whatever impeeds it, regardless of whose sacred cows get gored in the process. We may wish to conserve what is objectively good but otherwise we are as Promethean as the Marxist left.
In the Daily Telegraph article Britain risks huge influx of east Europe migrants by Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor, we see loaded language even in the title: ‘risk’. How about calling the article:
‘Britain opens doors to those formerly oppressed by Communism’
or maybe:
‘Britain steals a march on Continental Europe in grab for east European labour’
But no. The thrust of the article is that only the wonderful Tories want to ‘protect us’ from the Eastern Hordes.
Ministers said that allowing migrant workers from these countries into Britain at the earliest opportunity would help the economy. But Oliver Letwin, the shadow home secretary, challenged the Government to explain why it had not made use of the transitional arrangements. “We live in a small and crowded island,” he said. “Why does the Government consider it appropriate not to have transitional controls when other EU countries have imposed them.”
Well it just so happens that the Telegraph article I am quoting from actually links to an article here on Samizdata.net from the Telegraph external links sidebar (cheers, guys!) called Why do people think that Britain is overcrowded? It really is not overcrowded and the idea we are somehow not going to be able to assimilate other Europeans is laughable. Oliver Letwin does not really care about providing the British economy with high initiative eastern European workers and entrepreneurs, he is just concerned with playing politics and attacking anything the dismal Blair government does, even when it is entirely correct.
As a bit of a “petrol-head”, I have been saddened by the recent demise of Formula One motor-racing, which is increasingly indistinguishable from a procession of cars with few chances for overtaking or for drivers to demonstrate their brilliance.
There are few characters or opportunities for eccentric outsiders to take the field, as in the great days of Fangio or Jim Clark. So it is encouraging to read that F1 bosses are trying as best they might to tweak the rules to make the sport get our pulses racing once again.
Of course we may end up being disappointed once more, but fingers crossed, this great sport can get a much-needed dose of excitement again. And of course all good libertarians should want a sport that celebrates fast driving, the internal combustion engine and obscenely-rich motoring moguls. You can bet that the Guardianistas loathe it. In fact, the killjoys would probably ban it.
Michael Jennings tackles, albeit only in passing, one of the late twentieth century’s most enduring and to many most mysterious of questions: why did Molly Ringwald, given the excellence of her performances in such fine movies as Sixteen Candles and Pretty In Pink, never make it as big in the movies as she should have? Why, from the late eighties onwards, was the Ringwald career ride mostly down hill?
I think I can throw some light on this problem.
Molly then
Ms. Ringwald was a totally convincing and attractive teenager, certainly from where I was sitting. However, she did have one drawback. She was one of those females who, through no fault of her own, gives the impression of being just one misfortune away from bursting into tears. In a teenager this quality is tolerable, even endearing. Why can’t those bigger boys see what a fine and sweet girl Molly is? Why are those rich bitches from the posh side of the tracks being so nasty to Molly? Poor Molly. Somebody do something. You, handsome rich boy, dump your shallow girlfriend and give Molly a ride in your red Porsche. And as for you Andrew McCarthy, for once in your life show a bit of backbone!
Unfortunately for Molly, however, as teens turned into twenties, and then thirties, and then whatever the lady is now, she still gives off the same victimhood vibe, and whereas this used to tug at the heartstrings; now, on those rare occasions when we still witness it, it merely gets on the nerves. What had formerly seemed innocently melancholy – an artless appeal for aid and comfort – now seems frozen into a manipulative routine that ought to have been caste aside. Girl-girls are fine, one of nature’s greatest bounties. But girl-women? Let’s just say that this is the kind of thing that has to be done right. So when Molly the Woman hove into view, still with the exact same lacrimosity threat problem, the reaction was: Grow up woman. Stop your whining. This is not the stuff of which lady film stars are made.
Molly now
Please understand, Ms Ringwald (after all we’re talking about a woman who may now have time on her hands and could well be reading this – especially if she thinks she might learn from this posting how she could become a movie star), please understand that I am not offering a personal criticism of your personal qualities, which are probably not at all as I have described them. I am talking about your screen persona, the way you come across in the cinema, in front of the cameras. You come across, on screen, as one of life’s victims, and what is worse as a victim not so much of circumstances as of an inadequately developed character. Sorry, but there it is.
(It occurs to me that another bratpacker of that vintage and another would-be movie star, Rob Lowe, now to be seen in the political TV drama “The West Wing”, has suffered in recent years from a rather similar problem. Coming of age, beautiful. Come of age, not convincing. Not the finished article.)
But please understand also, Ms. Ringwald, just how fabulous you were in your all-too-brief years of glory. Sixteen Candles and Pretty In Pink are two of my all time favourite movies.
Remember the days when I was going on here about Brian’s Education Blog, but when there was no actual Brian’s Education Blog to go and look at. Well, now there’s another Brian Blog opening up Real Soon Now: Brian’s Culture Blog. I had been saving this posting or something like it for that. But when Michael opened up the Ringwald issue over at his place I decided that my analysis of this should be made public, now, and of necessity here. I hope that was the right thing to do. As for what’s holding up BCBlog, I won’t mention any real names but will say that the Atlas who carried the load so manfully when BEdBlog was getting started seems, temporarily, to be shrugging.
When a woman marries a wealthy man for his money, she is often described as having ‘married well’. Yet when a woman merely rents herself to a man, she is called a prostitute and threatened with legal sanction.
– Perry de Havilland
The Wild West wasn’t just wild, it was a scream:
“Marvel Comics plans to break new ground in the comic book industry by introducing the first openly gay title character in a comic book.
The character will appear in a revival of the 1950s title, “The Rawhide Kid.” Marvel expects a February debut.”
Here’s one gunslinger that will definitely be shooting up the bad guys.
Perhaps this is my own personal jaundice and nothing else but I seem to have found myself in an ‘issue-trough’. I think this is what journalists call a ‘slow news day’. I can seem to find anything worthy of truly sinking my teeth into and grinding away. I do detect the onset of a series of ‘Great World-Shaking Events’ in the offing but they’re teetering back-and-forth on the precipice so tantalisingly that they’re starting to lull me into a hypnotic trance.
Well, something will come along pretty soon, I’ll bet. But, in the meantime, I shall use this hiatus in the global narrative to indulge in a bit of mischief-making.
It’s becoming quite clear that the EU is adopting an increasingly anti-American character. As illustrated in this post from Perry a while back, the EU elites are actively marketing their project as being the plausible rival to the American ‘hyperpower’, the antidote to US-style ‘cowboy’ diplomacy and vigourous (which they see as ‘virulent’) market ideology.
The grumbling and foot-dragging from various European governments over US plans for Saddam Hussein are a symptom of this background antipathy not the cause of it. It’s already causing a rift in relations and that rift is only going to get worse. Having given up trying to forge an identity for their superstate, the EU elite are having to rely increasingly on an anti-identity and that anti-identity is Anti-American.
So, what could the US government do about this? Work round it? Fight against it? Try to mollify it? Options which are all expensive, difficult and far from guaranteed to succeed.
No, I can think of a better solution: open up the US to immigration from Europe.
It’s a policy that would have nothing but nothing but benefits for the US:
- It would attract vast numbers of bright, young, well-educated Europeans grown weary of the burden of their increasingly fossilised economies. They would sprout wings and fly in the more entrepreneurial environment of the USA.
- European immigrants would be able to assimilate seamlessly in a heartbeat and, more importantly, they would want to.
- It’s a no-cost policy. Not a penny of US taxpayers money would have to be spent.
- It’s a politically winning policy. The American left could hardly object unless they want to stand on an anti-immigration platform; the isolationist right won’t mind because, let’s face it, the overwhelming majority of Europeans are white, and libertarians cannot possibly have any cause for complaint. Thus all potential political opposition within the US is neutralised.
- America gets progressively richer and more dynamic while Europe’s enarques are left lording it over a constituency consisting of pensioners, cretins and Al-Qaeda sleepers.
So, if the EUnuchs get too far up George Bush’s nose, may I suggest that a heady revenge can be obtained by a mere stroke of the Presidential pen by which he could consign the aforesaid EUnuchs to a slow, lingering, humiliating death. It really is a win-win-win-win policy. In fact, from an American point of view, I cannot think of a downside.
Oh yes, sorry, I can think of a downside; some Americans living in the vicinity of any Ports of Entry risk being trampled to death in the rush.
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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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