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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An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.
– Voltaire
Over on Vodkapundit Stephen Green waxes lyrical about us Brits and speaks of us as ‘Congruent Forces’, a phrase which lends itself to so much more than the reactions to 9/11 and contains within it a recognition of ties that go beyond a common langauge
Thanks to the Bush Telegraph of Blogdom the Americans have learned that, despite the best efforts of our Sneering Classes, every voxpop opinion poll in the country puts support for the USA at over 90%! Is there any country in the world where pro-USA feeling runs so high? Come to think of it, does it run that high in certain parts of California?
This is more than a Fifth Column (although it is that as well); it is the big ghost in Blair’s machine, the great, immovable mass of Britain that he must, by some means or other, tear away from its Common Law roots and into the arms of Napoleon’s Code where rule of the people by the people is replaced by rule of the people by the their betters. Theirs is the other 10% and they are the New Aristocracy, taking their holidays in Tuscany while the vulgar, embarrassing , white-bread English serfs chug Budweisers in Florida and insist on defending their homes. The former, almost without exception, rely on various forms of government activity for their wealth and power. While the latter consist of the plumbers, electricians, small businessmen, shopkeepers, hairdressers and builders; the real ‘warp and weft’ of any country
This is the congruent force that goes deeper than World Wars or 9/11. It is a shared epistimology of liberty assumed not requested; of Magna Carta, Habeus Corpus and each to his own. A worldview that binds at a cellular level and is bedded in the sense of objective rightness that power over the individual should vest, ultimately, in that individual and not in the capricious favour of potentates
These are the values breathed into America by the great English and Scottish enlightenment and it is why Americans like Stephen Green rightly call us The Mother Country for the ‘American Revolution’ was not so much a revolution as a Civil War between the rebels trying to champion those ideas and their imperial rulers whose persistant continental wars had so wounded them
Yet, despite all the wars the British fought, because they too often tried to rape instead of seduce, in every bit of the globe in which the Sons of Albion planted the Union Jack they left behind those Common Law values and good administration and, hence, shaped so much of it. Britain gave birth not just to America but to Gibraltar and Hong Kong and New Zealand. It is not mere coincidence that, today, of the world’s top ten most liberal economies, no less than eight of them are former British colonies
Those Yeomen of England are now the Bloggers of Cyberspace and we lie beneath; we are chained in the attic, buried under the floorboards. That blury shape in America’s bathroom mirror is us; that shocking reflection in their bathwater is us. We are trying to communicate with you Americans. We’re trying to tell you something. We’re trying to warn you that Tony Blair may be sleeping with your President; he may be whispering sussurating, cooing declarations of eternal love in your ear, but really he is a murderer and he is trying to kill us. Can you hear us, America? Can you see us?
The ubiquitous Mommabear writes in with a rant about Amnesty International’s selective conscience
Where is Amnesty International when someone really needs help? If an individual is truly in jeopardy but not held by the “big, bad, Satan America”, forget about it.
Those NGOs who bleat and wail about The United States of America, with far too much support from biased and political media groups, should be held accountable for any detrimental or deadly results in this particular case. For openers, they should be stripped of their tax-free status; when they start lobbying from a political position, they violate the laws by which they are permitted to function. They need to be exposed, over and over, for what they really are: poseurs with political bias.
Here is a legal case that cries out for worldwide condemnation. If Amnesty International and other like groups fail to perform, castigate, or at least condemn this judicial situation, then they expose the truth about themselves, which belies their current posturing completely. They should be ashamed.
MommaBear
…very different things to different people. Let us consult the Oxford English Dictionary:
patriot /n.a person who is devoted to and ready to support or defend his or her country. ../patriotic adj. //patriotically adv. //patriotism n. [F patriote f. LL patriota f. Gk. patriotes f. patros of one’s father f. pater patros father]
Of course this also rather depends on what you mean by ‘country’
country n. (pl.-ies) 1 a the territory of a nation with its own government; a State. b a territory possessing its own language, people, culture, etc. […] 3 the land of a person’s birth or citizenship; a fatherland or motherland.
And therein lies one of the problems with Patriotism. When some one says ‘I am a patriot’, what the hell does that actually mean? Let’s take me, for example. My mother was American and I have lived about one quarter of my life in the USA. My father was British and I have lived a little under half my life here. For purely accidental reasons, I was actually born in the Netherlands. I feel both/neither British and/or American. So much for the complicated heredity and biology. Now for some ideology: I personally reject as illegitimate any function of the state which is not related to the defence of the individual liberty of people within their area of control, within a broad reasonable definition of those terms. I see the State as, at best, a provider of a service (security) in much the same way as I see the Pepsi-Cola Beverage Company as a provider of cans of fizzy brown liquid. I do not accept the very notion of ‘citizenship’ as I regard that as tantamount to denying me free association with non-citizens and implies the State somehow owns me in some way.
So can I be ‘patriotic’?
To the State? Absolutely not. Try to make me pledge allegiance to Old Glory or the Union Jack or the Tricolour with the intention of extracting an admission of loyalty to the state and I will set it on fire instead. And if it is on a tee shirt saying “Try to burn these colors asshole”, the wearer might just get their wish. Try to conscript me and the state will discover that I am not a pacifist and have no problem with using force against someone who tries to impose servitude upon me: starting with the guy who tries to serve call up papers on me.
And yet…
I live in London at the moment but I have ‘Old Glory’ displayed in my front window for all to see. Try walking down Upper Cheyne Row in Chelsea and you will see which is my house. It has been there since September 12th 2001. I do indeed feel an affinity for what James Bennett aptly calls The Anglosphere. I regard myself as a member of a cosmopolitan, English speaking global community, a civil society far greater than any mere nation state. For all its flaws, that extended society is the best hope for freedom and liberty the world has ever known and that is something worth defending. Unlike British society, which has a myriad cultural and regional symbols redolent with meaning, only Old Glory, the Stars and Stripes, the Star Spangled Banner, truly represents not just the American state but also American society, warts and all. Truth is I much prefer the Gadsden flag (see side bar of this blog) but most people would not know what it means. And so that is why the Stars and Stripes is stuck in my window for all to see. It was not just the people of New York who were wounded, it was all of us and that is a point I think well worth making publicly.
So is that ‘patriotism’? Opinions vary.
There is a funny post on the NRO Blog ‘Corner’ by Rod Dreher relating to Lord of the Rings. The final remark is hilarious… but they do kind of have a point!
Double bugger! If Ken Layne is to be believed (and of course he should), it sounds like we missed one hell of a party in Los Angeles, hosted by our pet pinko and true gentleman, Brian Linse.
Perhaps we need to organize a London (and environs) Blogger Bash along similar lines. Sounds like a damn fine idea to me!
It appears that US soldiers being sent to the Philippines to fight against Islamic Abu Sayyaf guerillas are welcome to clean up that nation’s mess and possibly get killed doing so, but only if they are kept away from local ‘sex workers’ (remember when they were called prostitutes?). As the commanding officer of the US troops must look after his men’s morale, he should march up to Philippines President Gloria Arroyo, hand her a packet of condoms and a Koran, followed by the single word: “Choose”.
Like so many nation states, it appears the Philippines thinks it actually owns the bodies of its subject-citizens and who they may freely associate with.
The European ‘Kommisariat’ is deeply concerned about Europe’s lack of progress in the field of biotechnology
Apparently, Europe is light years behind the USA in development and commercial application (snigger). The solution? A brand new ‘Policy Initiative’ (read ‘Five-Year Plan’) which will involve all of Europe’s biotech companies being made answerable to the suits in the European Commission for the ‘Great Leap Forward’ which is now required of them and the Commission, for its part, will ‘assist’ by means of various ‘initiatives and proposals as appropriate’
Having been ordered to compete with the USA one wonders what fate awaits European bio-engineers should they fail? Exile in Siberia? I wonder if the European Commissioners have stopped for even a second to ask themselves why companies in the USA are so far ahead? Probably not. The idea that central plans don’t work is unknown to the Eurocrats; the reality that innovation and enterprise are smothered by ‘initiatives and policies’ is offensive to them. It is as if the Soviet Union is still the blueprint for them (while being an object lesson for everybody else)
Anyway, the American biotech companies shouldn’t bother losing any sleep. If this is the way that their European counterparts are going to be forced to play their hand, then the existing gap will only grow wider
Unfortunately, this is not a hoax
[Editor: this story is totally fowl]
I am quite convinced that the only law that will never, ever be broken is the law of ‘Unintended Consequences’
Who ever imagined that the Thai 10-Baht coin would be indistinguishable from the 2-Euro coin?
Be wary when shopping for European prostitutes: they may be ‘ladyboys’
There may be better libertarian think-tanks around in Europe than the Irish Open Republic but if so I haven’t come across them yet. I don’t know if the editor, Paul McDonnell wrote the piece appearing below but, regardless of the authorship, it cuts through all the cant and recrimination to remind us who the real enemies are.
“Post ‘peace process’ Northern Ireland is like SimCity – a computer simulation game where you get to build and run a city – played by Social Democrats. During the peace process and its aftermath political life in the Province was immersed in a warm, enervating, bath of ‘reconciliation’, ‘mutual recognition’, ‘sharing of feelings’ and general ‘feeling’ of ‘pain’ all around. The politicians, think-tanks, civil servants, peace volunteers, community action groups, women’s groups, freed murderers of the innocent and, yes, even the White House all hunkered down in a general peace and love fest where a direct question was about as welcome as a swastika flag at Woodstock.
Of course before the whole thing got going no one thought to set conditions that Sinn Fein and their tattooed counterparts on the ‘Protestant’ side must both respect and actively support the enforcement of the rule of law. Any 12 year old playing SimCity realises that the police need to be able to uphold the rule of law or anarchy reigns and then it’s game over.
Not in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland today is what happens when Social Democrats do what they are best at. And what they are best at is Showing Concern Whilst Selling Out To Tyranny. Think of David Owen, Douglas Hurd, the British Foreign Office and the Bosnian Serbs. ‘Bombing the Serbs will make things worse’ etc. etc… Meanwhile thousands of innocents die. Likewise Northern Ireland is a product of the Social Democrat school of thought. Another name for it is fudge. Social Democrats are too influenced by the ideology that only groups, and not individuals, have real rights.Hence the ‘appeals’ to the gang who murdered the young postal worker – as if the murder of the young man was a genuine corporate act and not a conspiracy to, and commission of, murder. The ‘community leaders’ don’t want to insult anyone. If you are a murdering gang then you must be granted ‘parity of esteem’ with other groups.
Northern Ireland has been moulded into the Social Democrat narrative whose defining characteristics are mob rule and capitulation to mob rule – aka ‘achieving gender balance’, ‘equality’ and ‘parity of esteem’. The Social Democrat plan is to expand the public sector and use it as a vehicle to provide jobs for their friends and, as is the case in Northern Ireland, those whom they are afraid to confront. They pretend that they are ensuring ‘fairness’ and ‘equality’. This they do by making sure that if it employs thousands of people it doesn’t need at tax payers’ expense then at least the public sector must hire the right quotas of unneeded Catholics, Protestants, women and murderers.
The Social Democrats who sold the pass in Northern Ireland are the Irish political parties, the SDLP, the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, the British Government and former US President, Bill Clinton. The OUP cannot really be blamed. They were outgunned (literally) and they knew it. So when a postal worker is murdered, trades unionists take to the streets, political leaders ‘call for the violence to stop’. Sinn Fein blames the Protestants but nobody seems interested in catching and punishing the criminals.”
It is not just about huge multinational mergers or collapsing energy conglomerates… it is also about small entrepreneurs struggling to make a deal here and develop a property there. Tonight I am delighted to be able to take my good friend Nikki Brandt out to dinner in order to welcome her back to London after an extended stint in Jamaica. She has been trying to breathe some life into a holiday resort development out there in these difficult post-September 11th times. Londoner Nikki is a partner in a small and rather lovely hotel in Negril, on the western tip of Jamacia.
Clear proof that entrepreneurial activity leads to great legs
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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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