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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Which is to say, best taken in moderation. Racism is always poison because it is completely irrational, based on either stupidity or (even worse) pseudo-science. ‘Culturalism’ of the sort David Carr talks about however is just saying ‘the values of my culture are better than the values of that culture’… and it may well be true.
Provided one realised that what matters is the liberty actualising aspects of a culture and not all the other clutter over which people periodically feel the need to kill each other, then a degree of ‘culturalism’ is not just ok, it is vital.
Just don’t over do it as in the minds of some, it is not about which culture enables liberty and prosperity best but which culture ‘stinks up our streets with curry’ or ‘builds hideous Mosques in our Christian towns’. Discerning ‘culturalism’ is just fine but ignorant cultural chauvinism is not. I realise it is the former not the latter which David Carr is advocating, but it is a distinction worth making again and again. Like Slivovica or Whiskey, a little is a wonderful thing but too much dwelling on culture seems to send some people completely bonkers.
The Brians (Linse and Micklethwait) are going to argue right past each other on this soccer thing until they realize what the real problem is: Americans do not get, and have never gotten, The Real Deal when it comes to soccer. We are used to seeing baseball, basketball and hockey played at the highest level in the world; but Americans never get to see the very best soccer players as they toil away for the likes of AC Milan, Arsenal, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, etc. The soccer [MLS and indoor mutations] that most Americans do get to see, frankly, DOES suck and IS rather boring, but I do enjoy tuning into the English Premiership, where 0-0 and 1-0 matches are the exception rather than the rule.
I think that American sports would do well to emulate some of the things they do in Europe! (And ask yourself, Mr. Linse, whether you really want to see scantily clad cheerleaders at a match between Paris St. Germain and Auxerre, for example.) I love the idea of “relegation” — every year, the top few teams in one league and the bottom few teams in the next highest league have to switch places! Imagine Major League Baseball played under these terms — instead of an American and National league that are equals, fashion an upper and a lower division. No more making excuses about small markets and such — small market teams would mostly play each other in the lower division, occasionally getting bumped up to play the big boys.
I have been away from the Blogosphere for a while, because I recently moved from my native Detroit to Washington DC, but I did enjoy ringside seats for the weekend’s, uh, festivities downtown. It is easy to dismiss the protestors as uninformed stooges duped by Chomskyite / Naderite garbage, and too many bloggers have already dwelled on their behavioral and rhetorical excesses for me to bother piling on. But I did come away with a few impressions of my own …
— there is an excellent book by Brink Lindsey (of The Cato Institute) called Against the Dead Hand: The Uncertain Struggle for Global Capitalism. Lindsey points out that, while both proponents and critics of “globalization” talk as though globalization is happening at breakneck speed, nothing of the sort is actually occurring. The world is becoming more liberalized, but it is happening at a snail’s pace. So what are all these people protesting against, exactly?
— it seems fashionable at these protests to compare the plight of the Palestinians to that of the civil rights struggle in the US. More than one advocate described the Palestinians as “the [big N’s] of the middle east.” This is an idiotic and meritless comparison. The Civil Rights movement here was about creating individual liberties for African-Americans … whereas the Palestinian question is about the conflicting claims of groups to govern a certain land mass. And regardless of whether the Palestinians get their own country, they are not much into individual liberty!
— It’s too bad none of the anti-IMF protesters knew what they were talking about (e.g. what the IMF is, what it does, who pays for it, etc.) because the IMF does deserve to be roundly roasted for creating a culture of global financial moral hazard. But hoisting a sign that reads: “IMF = International MoFo” doesn’t cut it.
— shouldn’t a committed “anti-globalist” also oppose things like global government, the United Nations, etc.? Just a thought.
I would like to thank Daniel Antal for his lucid and informative observations about Pim Fortuyn and for illustrating the many reasons why it is wrong for me to bracket him in with Jean-Marie Le Pen.
I have no doubt that there are qualitative and ideological differences between all of the so-called ‘far-right’ politicians in Europe but it does occur to me that they have all, to a greater or lesser degree, ridden to power on the back of the anti-immigration tiger. That they are all perceived as racists is due to the fact that the current political-media establishment is unable to grasp the difference between ‘racist’ and ‘culturalist’.
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
– Lord Acton
Well, when he is not a fascist… Daniel Antal, a Hungarian economist currently visiting London, takes the view that David Carr was wrong to tar Dutchman Pim Fortuyn with the same brush as the neo-fascist Frenchman Jean-Marie Le Pen
I have to disagree with some of David Carr‘s analysis in What say ye, Fukuyama? regarding the extreme nationalist ‘right-wing’ successes in Europe recently. I do not think Jean-Marie Le Pen is comparable with Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands or the Schiller Partei in the German local elections in the Bundeslander. I think these parties have challenged a profoundly decadent strain of European cultural relativism. I have not completely read through through Schiller’s or Fortuyn’s manifestos yet, but my first impression is that Dutchman Pim Fortuyn is the first populist leader who started a strong movement to defend the current level of liberties and democratic institutions rather than being behind some atavistic fascist movement.
Fortuyn is not racist: he discriminates on the issue of Dutch language skills as a measure of cultural integration. The Muslim immigrants refuse to learn Dutch and are thus seen as being ‘unavailable for democratic dialogue’. Fortuyn says that he wishes a new anti-discrimination paragraph in the Dutch constitution because he wants to criticize the Islamic immigrants who refuse to accept western norms of human rights. He says that inciting violence against these groups should be banned, but not merely criticizing them. He is a sociology professor and proud to be gay, and he says he is quite thankful for the Dutch Liberal democracy for the fact that he need not hide away all his life because of his sexual orientation. He accuses the non-Dutch speaking immigrants of hatred towards homosexuals, extreme oppression of women, sexism and such things, thus he should not be lumped in with the ‘far right’ like Le Pen.
The shocked left-wing, whose ‘multi-cultural’ agenda is facing its strongest challenge in the last three decades, accuses Fortuyn of discrimination when he says things like: “Islam is a backward religion, whose followers see us Westerners as an inferior race.” And he questions the first article of the Dutch constitution, which bans discrimination. “If it means that people are no longer allowed to make discriminatory remarks, I’d say this is not good. Let people say what they want. However, there is another important line to be drawn: one should never incite violence.” In short, Fortuyn is advocating an approach not unlike the US First Amendment.
Also not indicative of neo-fascist views is Fortuyn’s anti-militarism: he wants to have a Dutch navy only, but no army or airforce. He wants a smaller government, a cause close to the heart of any libertarian. He wants to change the Dutch election system, in which currently people vote for party lists and thus the political elite never changes and there is no personal responsibility in the system. This is a far from undemocratic or unreasonable aim. Fortuyn attacks segregation in the cities, denouncing it as ‘city apartheid’. However, he gives a ‘right wing’ answer to the problem: Dutch education without cultural relativism. He says that refugee welfare benefits should be contingent on Dutch schooling: only those should receive Dutch education, learn the Dutch language and some aspects of the achievements of the broader Dutch culture will qualify for welfare benefits. This is not exclusion: this is a new and ‘politically incorrect’ way of rejecting the exclusion of ghettoization.
I do not want to praise Fortuyn too much before knowing more about his manifesto. But I believe that people who are proud of their liberties and the culture from which they sprang should listen to him carefully. Analyse the left wing media with caution and bemused skepticism: they are not beyond outright lying when a populist politician like Fortuyn seems to be not just challenging the unquestioned world view of the left from an unexpected direction but doing it successfully.
Daniel Antal (London/Budapest)
There has been a widespread outbreak of harumphing, moaning and hand wringing by the forces of statism across Europe over the rise of Jean-Marie Le Pen‘s National Front Party in France.
Yet when Le Pen declares he is “socially to the left, economically to the right”, his remarks go reported but largely unchallenged. However somehow regardless of his being bitterly opposed to market driven mechanisms, free trade, ‘Americanization’ and globalization, the newspapers demonstrate yet again that the term “right wing” is largely meaningless.
John Lichfield of the Irish Independent tells us “Let us not exaggerate. Let us shut our eyes and think of France, the real France” after himself pointing out that when you add the neo-fascist vote in France for Le Pen to the extreme Troskyist vote for the far left, it is a whopping 35% of the French electorate. Sorry John, you cannot write off one third of a country as ‘not the real France’. Violent collectivist statism is as French as camembert cheese, Laetitia Casta, the Eiffel Tower… and the Guillotine.
It is the long process of erosion that French civil society itself has been undergoing for over 150 years that provides such welcoming ground for the Jean-Marie Le Pen’s of this world. Jaques Chirac is not part of the solution but is rather part of the problem. ‘National Greatness’ conservatives like him are no less statist than socialist Lionel Jospin or neo-fascist Jean Le Pen. There simply is no significant political constituency in France that does not see the state as being the very centre of society, rather than just its boundary keeper. Almost all significant interaction is touched on by the state and thus reduces society to a series of competing political, rather than social, factions, all clamouring for the violence backed recourse of the state to champion their interests. These people who are aghast at the rise of Le Pen are the self same people who tilled the soil in which he grows.
Statist political interests of ‘left’ and ‘right’ appropriate a vast swathe of the national wealth, encouraging people to simply vote themselves other people’s money, and then wonder why folks have no time for tiresome and time consuming social integration or a dynamist assimilative culture. Why bother when it is clear that the normal way for solving all problems is the hammer of the state? You don’t like American products competing with French ones in the shops regardless of the fact other people want to buy them? “There ought to be a law against it” and both socialist Lionel Jospin and conservative Jaques Chirac agree with that. You don’t like the sound of all those English language pop songs on the radio and TV? “There ought to be a law against it” and both socialist Lionel Jospin and conservative Jaques Chirac agree with that too. If all these other unjust things are democratically sanctified, then if you don’t like Africans or Moroccans, well, I guess there ought to be a law against them as well if that is the way everything works. If everything is up for grabs by the ‘democratic’ state, well, don’t be surprised if everything really does mean everything.
Brian Linse says, among all the other things he said on Monday 22nd, that football (or “soccer” as he calls it) is boring. He proposes a number of USA-type “reforms” to rescue it from its current state of total global obscurity.
Personally I thought that the highlights I watched last night of Real Madrid’s 0-2 first leg victory over Barcelona in Barcelona – an amazing result for Real, which virtually guarantees their place in the European Champions League final in Glasgow, against either Manchester United or Bayer Leverkusen – were about as good as sport can get without my own team being involved and winning gloriously.
But if you agree with the (Ain’t No – pah!!) Bad Dude, probably because you are also an American, or perhaps because you think that blogging and politics and whatnot are more important than “soccer”, then go to Soccernet Europe (the “soccer” disease is spreading I’m afraid) to find out how boring football is when Stefan Effenberg is involved.
Effenberg is currently out of the Bayern Munich line-up for having (a) “long been a controversial figure” and now (b) for saying in a recent interview that unemployment benefit should be cut, and then refusing to take it back.
(My thanks to Antoine Clarke for pointing me to this story.)
Here’s a poser for Samizdata readers – does the institution of constitutional monarchy help to domesticate feelings of patriotism into something more civilized?
Michael Gove, in a splendid column for the UK’s Times newspaper today, makes the point that the monarchy, precisely because it is composed of fallible human beings above the political fray, acts as a far healthier focus of national loyalty than often afforded by more “modern” republics, like, say, France. As our society becomes more individualised, multi-ethnic and diverse, it is surely more, not less, important to have institutions that can provide some kind of common bond. Think, for example, how the breakup of the Hapsburg empire after the First World War led, in short order, to an upswelling of often unpleasant nationalism in the states composed out of its demise.
If the electoral travails of the French tell us anything, it is that, even after five republics and the Empire of Bonaparte, they still haven’t figured out the value of constitutional monarchy as part of a truly liberal order.
Tony Millard writes in from Tuscany in Italy to express his views on Le Pen, multi-culturalism and over-enthusiastic well-diggers
I am now a regular reader of the Samizdata (or the Lib Sam as I like to call it) and enjoy most of the articles. What I find depressing at the moment is that as I raise my gun to shoot a topical bunny I see hundreds more all around me – Le Pen, the UK Budget, Italian politics, NHS, multi-clutch-and-graspism, blah blah. It has taken a while to start shooting them down as I currently have a well-digger on my farm here in Tuscany. Charming chap, though he has a habit of trying to reach magma in order to enhance revenues (they are paid by the foot) so I’m keeping an eye, as they say.
Whilst overseeing the keen well-digger, I heard a number of things on Radio 4 yesterday that disturbed me, to say the least. Most of the afternoon’s bulletins were taken up with a slanted condemnation of Le Pen by an almost constant referral to the “thousands” or, in extremis, “tens of thousands” of protesters on the street. Not one single reference was made to the fact that he did after all garner the votes to oust Jospin from the fight. Odder still was my recollection that by comparison last year’s Countryside Alliance pro-hunting march in London was supposed to have produced in excess of half a million people on the streets. However, the general reporting slant was decidedly unfavourable. Hmm.
I am not exactly sure of Monsieur Le Pen’s precise political destination and would probably find it on the crude side. I am not a supporter by any stretch of the imagination, so no skin off my nose, if he doesn’t win the presidential seat. What I do find shocking though is the childishly obvious suppression of any voice that dissents from the European melting pot theory, and the assumption that any anti-immigration stance implies a shaved head and a tattooed forearm.
The problem does not reside in the shape (or lack) of a haircut or the pattern of a tattoo. We are wasting time arguing about the mode of travelling when the real need is to decide on the destination. What happens if we ‘prove’ that the mass immigration of 40 years ago to date was ‘wrong’? The argument is sterile (and therefore futile) as the situation is with us and cannot be humanely reversed. We might as well argue and debate a meritocracy based on the colour of people’s eyes. On the basis that someone born in Europe is an honorary Caucasian, most of the population is on a level. What we must therefore focus on is the evils of the tiered language and cultural gap currently opening and prompted by the left. Le Pen is gaining support from the Franco-Jewish population (courtesy of Radio 4 news) and why? Buried at around 3.30pm in the yesterday’s programme was a possible answer – they are apparently regular victims of Muslim violence in the Parisian suburbs and have had enough. Allowing a separate ‘nation’ to grow within the EU is societal suicide. I am, in accordance perhaps with the previous Lib Sam articles (see related article links below), a fervent supporter of anti-multiculturalism in its accepted sense – that is I believe it’s a load of rubbish and smacks of left wing appeasement and head-buried-in-the-sand denial of reality.
Realpolitik is that we like our neighbours to be like us and we all, whatever our racial origin, need to face up to this reality. Incidentally, my oldest friend is from Sri Lanka. Unless you saw him, you would not know. He is an Englishman, like Nathan Rothschild aspired to be and in the end considered himself to be. Perhaps, more needs to be done to foster the true concept of Englishness or Frenchness or whatever, and less time should be spent on muddled searches a là: Mr Blair for a sort of crypto-Britishness that is designed to please and appease rather than make sense of cultural and racial diversity.
Tony Millard (Tuscany, Italy)
One definition of the Libertarian Samizdata ‘anarcho-militarists’ tendency
“You don’t believe there should be a state but if there is, it should be bombing the shit out of Iraq”
-Paul Coulam at the St. George’s Day Party tonight
No, not really… but Brian Linse is back home in L.A. after completing filming of his movie Den of Lions in Budapest. He is back to his old blogging habits at Ain’t no bad dude.
Cato Institute member, scourge of protectionist idiocy and blogger Brink Lindsey pays a fulsome and moving tribute to recently-deceased American steelmaker Ken Iverson, who tore up the script on how to make steel. Iverson reads like a character straight out of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. He founded the “mini-mill” model of steel production using scrap steel and smaller, less cumbersome production techniques, founding the North Carolina firm Nuccor.
Iverson consistently opposed tariffs and other protectionist measures, believing his style of business could flourish in a free market. His success as a businessman is a poke in the eye of deluded economists and vote-grabbing politicians who think that such key industries as steel can only survive under the umbrella of government support. Iverson proved the opposite. Ken Iverson was by all accounts very different from the sleek business figures of left-wing demonology. A down to earth character who took his own phone calls and motivated his staff. He surely will take his place in the Pantheon of real capitalist heroes. Reading his brief life story helped brighten my day.
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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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