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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Since they are vehicles by which ideas are spread, it stands to reason that definitions are important. Very important. There is nothing controversial in this view but I often feel that it is a principle more honoured in the breach than in the observance.
So I was delighted to read this article by Michael of 2 Blowhards wherein he demonstrates the flagrant absurdity of American left-wingers being referred to (and declaring themselves to be) ‘liberal’.
This is a point that we at the Samizdata have made previously and with good reason because American ‘liberals’ are not liberal at all, they are socialists. It sticks heavily in my craw to have to refer to these people as ‘liberals’ when the policies they favour and the ideas to which they subscribe (state interventions and pre-planned outcomes) are diametrically the opposite from anything even resembling classical liberal theory.
This is not just word-play, it is important. As Michael points out:
“One of the tricky things about “liberal” is that it’s just such a damned attractive word. It’s nice to think of yourself as being a liberal person. “I don’t care if my neighbor’s gay” equals “Thus I’m a liberal.” Sure, why not?”
This rings true. The word ‘liberal’ being associated with the qualities of being decent, humane and fair, provides a perfect cover for advancing an agenda which turns out to be largely indecent, horribly unfair and often inhumane.
American socialists are guilty of Definition-rustling. They have stolen a term that belongs to us and used it as camouflage behind which they have surrepticiously advanced their forward lines. I think it is time that we venture forth to take back that which belongs to us. Michael agrees:
“I also find it helpful to refuse to let the American left get away with calling itself liberal. I insist on referring to them as leftists, and to their views as leftism. Why let that crowd of sentimentalists, thought-police and socialists maintain exclusive ownership of a word as beautiful as “liberal”?
Why indeed, Michael. Far better to strip them naked and force them out into the open where the whole world can laugh at their grotesqueness.
Posted from Bratislava, Slovak Republic
Here at the only Internet cafe in Bratislava that I can find, I am struggling with a crazy Eastern European keyboard and what are for me the difficulties of using�yahoo. It’s an arkward combination, not made�anz easier bz the fact that whenever I tzpe z I get y and whenever I tzpe y I get z. So it comes out as zahoo unless I concentrate verz carefullz.
But enough of trivia. I got to Bratislava last Friday and leave next Monday, and so far it’s been great. I have lucked into a classical music festival, the initials for the Slovak title of which are BHS. So when I went to the concert on Saturday, I thought, oh no, they�ve done a truly tacky sponsorship deal. But all was well.
The concert however was dull, I thought.��The solo pianist, Ivan Moravec, is world-renowned, but frankly he made his two pieces, the Franck Variations for Piano and Orchestra and the Ravel Concerto, sound to me like run-throughs. Maybe it was me. Maybe it is that he looks like a waiter. Whatever, everyone else seemed happy.
But then on Sunday, there was Vladimir Ashkenazy conducting the Czech Philharmonic in Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony. It was sold out of course, but I went along anyway, and a Japanese gent sold me a ticket, for the Slovak equivalent of about £6 sterling ($9 US). Unbelievable. As was the performance. For once all the flim-flam of classical musical ovations – a loud a pretentious ‘bravo’ as soon as the last chord went silent, vast gobs of flowers for the lady solo singers and even for the gentleman conductor, constant returns to the platform for more applause, rhythmic applause – all seemed entirely appropriate. → Continue reading: Eastern European Idylls
Graham Turner asks in an article in the Telegraph Can the Conservative Party recover?… and of course the answer I would give is no. It is fascinating to watch the Tory Party Conference. I have not enjoyed myself as much since I last saw Dawn of the Dead.
The new Tory manifesto is starting
to take shape nicely
Iain Duncan Smith continues to amaze me with his triviality and casual insults to potential supporters. The latest thigh slappingly funny remark is that he dislikes the ‘doggerel’ found in Roman Catholic Masses. Not in and of itself a momentous observation, but then please keep in mind that this is the man who would presumably like Catholics in Britain to vote for him so that he can be the one plundering private assets instead of those nasty labour people.
Did anyone hear front bench advocacy for
genuine capitalist solutions and free trade over
all the blather about ‘public services’ being paramount?
And when IDS finally implodes, or more likely people just forget his name, it seems that chubby paleo-statist Kenneth Clark still hankers after party leadership so he can revive the glories of the Ted Heath era…
Now this is almost better that Evil Dead…
Kenneth Clark’s supporters were much in
evidence this year
 Update: I have now sobered up and I would like to apologise to all of our readers who happen to be undead… in no way was I implying all zombies are members of the Conservative Party. 
Alice Bachini has posted an interesting reply to my recent article called The world is a messy place. Alice writes in When is violence OK?:
Bashing people for the purpose of communicating something moral might sound like an oxymoron, but I don’t think it is. I think the idea “No to badness!” is expressed usefully, and anyway, sometimes the only alternative is between that or “Yes to violence!” in the non-bashing alternative. It might seem generous to absorb the other person’s nastiness by taking it on the chin and walking off in silence, but unless they interpret this in the right spirit, it’s worse than useless.
I could not agree more!
Making dire predictions about the organisational abilities of the European Union is a fairly safe bet I reckon, but even I have been taken aback by the speed with which this prediction (from early April):
“So, cue another round of horse-trading, bickering and monumental waste as each part of the Galileo project is apportioned out according to who makes the most noise. The French will build the electrics, the Italians will build the housing, the Belgians will make the navigation system, the Germans will make the rocket boosters, the Spanish will make the launch platform, the Austrians will make the sandwiches and Sweden will provide the environmental protestors.”
has become this reality:
“Germany and Italy are fighting it out within the European Space Agency for the right to provide the main production base for the satellite system, to which EU governments gave the green light in March.
Their dispute has prevented the ESA from beginning work on the project and risks setting back its projected completion date of 2008.”
I submit that I am entitled to enjoy a brief frisson of self-congratulation.
[My thanks to Philip Chaston for the second link]
“Socialism in its contemporary watered down form is little more than envy disguised as principle.”
-Martin Pot, the Institut Héraclite
Eminent blogger Alex Knapp of Heretical Ideas thinks beyond the impending war against Iraq
As you can tell by the title of this post, this discussion isn’t about whether or not it’s ‘properly libertarian’ for the U.S. to wage war against Iraq. I’m going to assume that as a given. The question that has been running around in my mind is this: what is the libertarian case for regime change? Or, to be more specific, there’s a clear libertarian case for toppling a government that proves itself to be a danger. I don’t think any libertarian thinks that, once World War II started, the only goal of the Allies was to contain Germany within its borders. Clearly, Hitler and the Nazis posed a danger, and it would have been suicide for the world to simply let them rebuild again. However, what about the aftermath? Is there a libertarian case for the Marshall Plan, rebuilding the nations of the former Axis powers, etc.? This is a particularly vital point of discussion when it comes to Iraq.
The Libertarian case for Marshall Plans
First, let’s look at a ‘Marshall Plan’ for Iraq. At first glance, it looks like the libertarian case is easy: ‘we’re against it.’ After all, libertarian theory relies heavily on the idea that neither state-supported safety nets nor foreign humanitarian aid are moral or effective. Yet a Marshall Plan would seem to combine qualities of both. However, there are several factors that differentiate the rebuilding of a country after a war from the twin devils of welfare and foreign aid. → Continue reading: Libertarians and regime change
It is necessary to guard ourselves from thinking that the practice of the scientific method enlarges the powers of the human mind. Nothing is more flatly contradicted by experience than the belief that a man distinguished in one or even more departments of science, is more likely to think sensibly about ordinary affairs than anyone else.
– Wilfred Trotter
That’s it, then. Prime Minister Tony Blair has been warned that military action against Iraq to force a regime change would breach international law. According to the Financial Times, he received confidential advice from Attorney General Lord Peter Goldsmith and Solicitor General Harriet Harman that international law would allow military action in “limited circumstances” to support U.N. resolutions, but it rules out war to achieve regime change.
Apparently, the legal advice explains why Blair has shied away from openly calling for a “regime change” like U.S. President George W. Bush who wants to see Saddam Hussein gone regardless of whether United Nations inspectors return to check Iraq’s weapons capability.
This is Tranzis at work using ‘international law’ to restrict national sovereignty, this time from within a national legal system. Let’s not forget their true agenda:
A good part of the energy for transnational progressivism is provided by human rights activists, who consistently evoke “evolving norms of international law” in pursuing their goals. The main legal conflict between traditional American liberal democrats and transnational progressives is ultimately the question of whether the U.S. Constitution trumps international law or vice versa. Before the mid-twentieth century, traditional international law usually referred to relations among nation-states: it was “international” in the real sense of the term. Since that time the “new international law” has increasingly penetrated the sovereignty of democratic nationstates.
It is, therefore, in reality, “transnational law”. Human rights activists work to establish norms for this “new international (i.e. transnational) law”, and then attempt to bring the United States into conformity with a legal regime whose reach often extends beyond democratic politics and the guarantees of the U.S. Constitution.
Or the United Kingdom or anywhere else…
Imagine you want to set up a business. Let’s say it’s a software consultancy. And let’s also assume that you require some capital funding to get you started. You decide to approach a variety of sources from wealthy private investors to banks to venture capitalists and in order to impress them you draw up a Business Plan.
Only, there is no Business Plan because you are forbidden from charging your customers. Yes, that’s right, you are obliged to give away your valuable time and expertise for free. Which means you are not a business, you are a charity. No business, no Business Plan.
Insane? Bizarre? Economically illiterate? Intellectually retarded? Yes, yes, yes and yes.
And that probably explains why it has been adopted by the British Conservative Party as their big, bold, brand new idea for the National Health Service:
“During the health debate, Dr Fox will say that hospitals would be able to raise cash however they wanted and from whoever they wanted.
They will, however, be barred from charging patients for treatment”.
I am so resigned to this kind of stupidity that I can no longer bring myself to be outraged about it.
How marvelous that state hospitals will be able to go to anyone for their investment; only wihtout being able to offer a return, no investor will touch them and they will be forced to go back, cap-in-hand, to HM Government (and that means us) and we’re right back where we started. In other words, the Conservatives are opting for ‘no-change’.
Despite endless tampering, tinkering, revamps, updates, initiatives, policy changes, shifts in emphasis, new approaches, fresh ideas, radical thinking, more funding, down-to-earth measures, sensible guidelines, new directions, even more funding and more wishful thinking than you can point a stick at, Britain’s unworkable Soviet-model health care system still won’t work.
But coming to terms with that is a pain barrier that nobody is willing to cross.
Do ‘snuff’ movies actually exist or are they merely an urban legend? I use the term ‘snuff’ movie in its traditionally accepted sense i.e. an act of murder which is committed to film or videotape and then replayed in order to provide some warped sexual gratification for the viewer.
I have been prompted to raise this question by a showing of the film “8mm” on British terrestrial television this evening. According to the makes of the film, snuff movies do exist but you have to go to considerable trouble (and expense) to obtain them.
I have never seen a snuff movie but even if I had been shown such a movie how could I know for sure that the ‘grisly murder’ I was witnessing was not, in fact, a very convincing simulation? After all, realistic and gory murders are simulated in mainstream movies all the time so the expertise clearly exists.
Another thing that occurs to me is the problem of marketing such a thing. How (and to whom) do the producers sell their snuff videos when they can hardly be advertised even in the most questionable publications? Furthermore, I am not aware of any criminal convictions (in the UK at any rate) in respect of the making or distribution of snuff movies.
On the other hand, contract killing certainly does exist and if one can pay to have someone murdered surely one can pay a bit extra to have the execution filmed. In the “8mm” film, the snuff movie is made to order at the behest of an extremely wealthy magnate. If they do exist, then perhaps that’s how it works.
I am no nearer to an answer but I am not sure I want to be. I never want to see a snuff movie and I’d like to think they they are, indeed, nothing more than exotic urban fairytales. But sometimes, the world can be a very ugly place.
There’s a market for “date rape” drugs and now a market for “anti-date rape drug” devices. Drink Safe Technology is producing ‘smart coasters’ which sniff chemical interference with drinks.
“You can carry this in your purse, take your drink to the bathroom with you, test it out, and if it comes out positive, you know something’s wrong with that guy you were talking to,” said Janita Patrick, a San Jose State University student. “Keep walking and get away.”
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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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