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]
|
Dr. Jan Fortune-Wood is a freelance writer and home educator. She is a supporter of Taking Children Seriously and writes on home education, autonomous education and non-coercive parenting from a libertarian perspective. Her third book, Bound To Be Free deals in depth with the hidden costs of so called ‘free’ education, including further discussion of the issues below
According to last week’s Independent on Sunday a new mental health campaign sparked off by the fear that parents may face jail over compulsory drug orders for their children if a new Bill becomes law. Not content with collecting personal and private data on parents and children via the Orwellian Connexions scheme, the Blairite regime is now proposing to parent our children for us still further by accusing parents who do not favour drugging their children of being negligent and denying their children medical treatment.
The use of the ADHD drug, Ritalin, continues to rocket – 208,000 in 2001 compared to 2,000 a decade earlier. Compulsory treatment orders are a symptom of a culture which treats children as products and an adjunct of administering a brutal, centralised ‘free’ education system. Those who do not conform to this ‘one size fits all’ educational machine are ‘bad’ and/or ‘dysfunctional’ and can be diagnosed and treated. The more the system feels threatened, the more aggressive the intervention. In a collapsing state education system so-called hyperactivity disorders such as ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) are popular tools of control and neatly shift the focus of failure away from the non-individually responsive institution and onto the child.
There are an increasing number of doctors and psychiatrists who consider that there is no objective difference in the behaviours of so called ‘normal’ and ADHD children. There are even some, like Thomas Szasz, who put these objections vigorously, pointing out that feeding children what is effectively ‘speed’ in order to curb what is not a disease, but a ‘catch all’ for troublesome behaviour, is a matter of adult convenience and control, not of medicine.
Formerly, quacks had fake cures for real diseases; now, they claim to have real cures for fake diseases.1
When big brother is threatening to drug your children so that they can be more suited to the homogenised environments of state schools perhaps its time not only to fight back, but to ensure that more and more people are aware that they can opt out of the system entirely and choose the freedom of home education. The hidden costs of so called ‘free’; state education are on the increase – not only through massive taxation, but also via services delivered with increasing menaces to civil liberties.
Dr. Jan Fortune-Wood
1 = Chemical Straitjackets for Children by Thomas S. Szasz
© 2001 The Foundation for Economic Education
The Samizdata.net editors were out searching the streets of London for a new HQ… when they suddenly spotted the perfect address!
1. noun. One who reads many blogs but leaves no evidence of themselves such as comments behind; a silent observer of blogs.
2. noun. One who reads many blogs but has no blog of their own; a blog-watcher or blog voyeur.
Usage: “But, Mikey, I can’t have a blog of my own! I’m a blurker!”
Paul Marks laments the timing and cost of upcoming events
The Mont Pelerin Society is holding its conference in London next week. Rumour has it that the price of actually attending the conference is quite absurd (over eight hundred pounds) [Editor: fortunately the Liberty 2002 Conference is only a mere £75].
However, there are fringe meetings and I have asked, and been allowed, to attend two of them (the panel discussion on the future of freedom at the Institute of Economic Affairs at 18:30 on Monday and the debate on a good and free society between Roger Scruton and Stephen Davis at the Travellers Club, 106 Pall Mall at 18:00 Tuesday).
Contrary to what is sometimes said there are still people in the Conservative party who are interested in liberty – but many Conservative activist types will be down on the south coast (perhaps listening to John Redwood and Co, at a Selsdon Group fringe meeting, explaining why Conservatives should “Stand up for Capitalism”).
To have the Mont Pelerin Society conference clashing with the Conservative Party conference is unfortunate.
Paul Marks
LIBERTY 2002: The European Conference of the Libertarian International and the Libertarian Alliance. This event will take place Saturday/Sunday November 9th/10th 2002 – 10.00am-6.00pm, at the National Liberal Club, Whitehall Place, London SW1A 2HE, England.
It costs £75 for the entire weekend, and if you’ve got that sort of cash to spare and you want to meet a throng of like-minded people including a truly excellent slate of speakers, face-to-face (remember that idea), then it’s a bargain.
It is especially attractive when you consider that the event is taking place in one of London’s most splendid buildings. And it’s our building, for it dates back to the time when liberal meant liberal. We can’t permanently reclaim it, but we can at least occupy it for one weekend. The staircase alone is worth the entrance money.
Follow the link above for booking and payment details, and to see the excellent list of speakers, and to find further links to their websites.
Then you clearly have not been exposed to the Daily Mirror.
They call it an editorial. I call it a vomit-inducing hagiography, the final paragraph of which has the capacity to keep you awake at nights like the trauma of a mugging:
“It was a magnificent speech from a man who is rapidly becoming the greatest figure in world politics, second only, perhaps, to Nelson Mandela.”
Anyone care to hazard a guess as to who is number 3 on their list? Personally, I shudder to think.
There is an excellent article in the Telegraph which serves as a splendid example of just why so many libertarians regard democracy, as it exists in most countries, with profound ambivalence.
So they are being frogmarched back to the polls to reverse the decision they reached just 15 months ago. This is European democracy, Henry Ford style: you can reach any answer, as long as it is yes. In simply refusing to recognise the outcome of the first referendum, the government makes the point of the No campaigners more eloquently than a thousand speeches.
[…]
Mr Ahern and his supporters are relying upon the electorate accepting that there was something wrong with the June 2001 referendum. Although it produced a clear 54-46 victory for the No side, the turnout was just 35 per cent. This mandate is considered sufficiently unsatisfactory for another to be sought, although nobody for a moment believes that Ireland would be holding a second referendum had the same numbers produced a Yes vote.
If you ever wanted a demonstration of the fact the last thing democracy is about is ‘the consent of the people’, this is it. It is about justifying the actions of political elites.
Blogger Alice Bachini rejects yet another collectivist ‘one size fits all’ approach to the problem of juvenile crime
If a certain group of people is identified as causing particular kinds of crime, is it OK to legislate against the rights of that group? Say, black men were proven to be responsible for 90 percent of stabbings. Would that make it OK to ban black men from buying or owning knives? What if white men between twenty and forty were responsible for 95 percent of all drink-driving deaths? Should we make a law banning them from pubs except between certain hours of the morning, say?
Obviously not. Which is why it is a good thing that plans to bring in an ageist curfew in Corby have been shelved. But of course, no-one there is concerned about the civil liberties of people under fifteen. The argument seems to be between those who want something done about certain kinds of crime perpetuated by this age group, reasonably enough, and those who think more football and youth clubs are the answer to immoral behaviour, which, they aren’t. And I don’t have any easy answers either, but I do think some kind of intelligent understanding that young people are human beings like the rest of us would be a good start.
My other main suggestion is to make it easier for young people to do proper, money-earning work. As long as the system continues to ban kids from doing honest mornings on low-paid milk rounds on the grounds that this interferes with their totally pointless unpaid days of school, it is actively preventing many of them from finding a good way forward with their lives.
Alice Bachini
The debate over guns is a clash of cultures, a confrontation of different kinds of character, a disagreement over social philosophy and even, though few notice this, over free will and determinism. The contending factions don’t need guns to detest each other. They would anyway.
– Fred Reed
I’m off on holiday soon, and I nearly forgot to mention it. We got an email from Shams Ali:
Hi there!
With reference to your passage in the BLOG:
“And that is when it starts to become confused. Who exactly is going to do the applying? Evidently not ‘politicians’, but somebody will have to. What is a “non-political government” when it’s at home? What ‘fundamental principles’ are these? Perchance, the Law of Sharia?”
The confusion arises from the human habit of jumping at conclusions without having done the spade work to dig out the facts.
The “fundamental principles” are enumerated and defined at
www.worldjustice.org/principles.html and the rules of their application at www.worldjustice.org/rules.html also the reasonings for the need for such institution are described at www.worldjustice.org/wcj.html and some history of it all at www.worldjustice.org/history.html for the difference between government and politics see www.truth-and-justice.info/govpol.html as for Judaism, Christianity and Islam see www.truth-and-justice.info/religions.html and for the various “isms” see www.truth-and-justice.info/isms.html. You will also find some stuff on government, politics, unions, pensions, etc., by browsing the www.truth-and-justice.info/issues.html – and all that stuff is the tip of an iceberg.
Once you’ve gone through the stuff, I would like to hear from you what exactly YOUR “libetarianism” is, or, in other words, whom do YOU propose to favour and at whose expense?
regards,
shams ali
I’m more of a Popperian than Shams and I think that jumping at conclusions is very different from jumping to conclusions. If it isn’t Sharia, and if Shams tells us it isn’t Sharia, then fine, it isn’t Sharia. But he doesn’t answer that with a yes or a no. Instead he tells me I have to do an iceberg of homework.
It’s an old trick. You write long tracts, and refuse to supply short summaries and short answers to short questions. The idea is that people will immerse themselves in your oh-so-elaborate thought processes, but the reality is they mostly ignore you on account of you being a pompous git. I shall do neither. I have glanced at some of my homework, and now I’m just going to carry on communicating – guessing, asking and answering. If Shams Ali doesn’t like it, tough. We’ll talk about him amongst ourselves. → Continue reading: Another open letter to Shams Ali
I think I might have a civil claim against the BBC. I was watching the news from the Labour Party Conference this afternoon whilst eating a sandwich and nearly choked when the BBC Political Correspondent Andrew Marr concocted this radiant gem:
“The important thing for the world right now is the continued dialogue between Washington and Blackpool”
My apologies to non-UK readers because you really do have to be British to fully appreciate just how pant-wettingly hilarious that statement is.
It’s the way the blogosphere works. Something happens in your back yard. Instapundit picks it up and tells you about it, and you get to work. It, in this case being an article in the New Statesman called “Bloggers of the Left, Unite!”, by James Crabtree. The New Statesman not itself being very blog-friendly, Crabtree decided to put his piece up at the “iSociety” bit of one of his his own websites. Here’s how it ends.
Should the left worry? Definitely. The blogsphere is an example of Willard Quine’s coherence theory of truth: that things are true if they agree – or appear to agree – with other things that are held to be true. Right-wing bloggers are thus creating their own world, in which their truth exists often without debate. And the same may be about to happen in the UK. The journalist Stephen Pollard, the only British political blogger on the left, notes: “There are plenty of new British political blogs. And they are all – all – on the right.” But political blogging is in its infancy here. It remains up for grabs. Got a computer? Got a view? Get blogging. There is a war to be won.
Or lost.
“Blogsphere”? Is that what they’re going to call it?
There appear to be no links from iSociety to “all – all” – or even any-any of – those right wing Brit-blogs, nor to Instapundit nor to Andrew Sullivan, both also mentioned in the piece. Wouldn’t want people actually trying to find out for themselves how unthinkingly and unargumentatively right wing or not as the case may be said blogs might be. For someone declaring war, Crabtree seems somewhat reluctant actually to engage with his enemy. But I suppose that when the attacks do start to come, from real blogs, there will be links.
And as for Stephen Pollard being “on the left” … Smack in the Blairite centre middle, more like, and with all kinds of market bells and whistles attached. Ditto Crabtree, to judge by who’s paying for his web activities.
|
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