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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Another recommended article for fellow Blogistas: Ralph Peters, a retired U.S. Army officer and author of “Fighting for the Future: Will America Triumph?”, has a piece in Opinion Journal called Riyadh is at the root of much evil, arguing that the most important source of instability and terrorism is Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. will have to confront it at some point. My knowledge of Saudi Arabia is thin so it would be good to get some discussion going on whether folk think the guy has a point or is wildly overstating the case.
Tom Burroughes
tom.burroughes@reuters.com
In response to an e-mail from a reader that asked me “Why do you distrust the state so much? How else do you expect order to be maintained and property protected?”… I present the following gem from the Daily Telegraph:
A LANDOWNER was arrested by police he had summoned to help him after more than 60 “ravers” had broken open a padlocked gate and started a party in one of his barns.
[…]
“It was like being a farmer in Zimbabwe,” Mr Benton told Radio 4’s Today programme. “The police stood outside the gate while inside people were smashing up my property and they were doing nothing about it.”
Does that answer your question?
So the Euro is born. Did I say ‘born’? Birth is a natural process. I meant ‘incepted’. From rag-tag bits of body politic it has been sewn together, laid on a slab, given a jolt of electricity and made to walk. Doubtless we shall all watch in fixed horror as it lurches through the verdant European mainland strangling small, helpless economies. I hope they don’t accuse us of not warning them
The economic arguments against the Euro have been made both here and other places with accuracy and reason and, whilst not wishing to marginalise any of them, it is worth bearing at the forefront of our minds that there is a deeper and even more sinister threat posed to this country by the European Empire than inflexible interest rates. Liberty is not just about money
Full absorption into Euroland means not just the surrender of our currency but also the extinction of our Ango-Saxon Common Law heritage. A system where the laws were passed up not handed down; where liberty was assumed, not requested, where the citizens informed the state not the other way around and the King himself was bound by them. It is not merely through the production of a few well-rigged sailing ships that this under-populated and otherwise insignificant little island became the richest country in Europe, opened up vast tracts of the globe to trade and civilisation, built the biggest empire the world has yet seen and spawned the industrial revolution. It is because of it’s Common Law heritage and organic constitution that allowed it’s citizens the freedom to innovate and the dynamism to practice
It is this guttering flame that we libertarians hold in our hands
But this will be consigned to the history books (and may not be safe even there) to be replaced by Corpus Juris and the Napoleonic Code; the continental heritage of laws handed down to the people from the princes and potentates; where citizens are granted a mere licence and where the lives and liberty of the common folk are ‘protected’ by a pottage of grandiose-sounding Convention rights, all of which can be countermanded at any time by the stroke of a bureaucrats pen. It is not for nothing that, of all the countries in mainland Europe, it is only Switzerland that has managed to stay the course of the 20th Century without despotic government, invasion or violent revolution
The is the precipice on which we teeter. It is winter in Britain and I am not talking about the weather. With our entire political and media class seemingly hell-bent on completing the subsuming of this country into the Euro-Imperium (even the ones who say they are skeptical are probably lying) what can be done to prevent this unique flame of liberty from being extinguished forever on these islands?
Across the Atlantic Ocean lies Britain’s birthchild, the fruit of it’s loins and, perhaps, it’s finest monument, the United States of America; a country which owes it’s vast wealth, power and freedom to the those same Common Law Anglo-Saxon values it inherited from it’s parent. Indeed, that America is the now the great repository and shining amplifier of those values is almost certainly why it has earned both the fear and antipathy of the grasping and paranoid European elites
In times of peril, a mother cries out for her child and a child clings to her mother. These truths we hold to be self-evident
Over on the The Catallaxy Files, top notch bloggah from down undah Jason Soon has an outstanding post about immigration.
However on the Blogical Suspects, that doctor of intestinal blogages, Will Quick suspects we Samizdatistas may have over indulged during the New Year’s festivities and developed blogorrhea due to our high volume of postings. I guess we need to cut back on the philosophical roughage, but at least we are letting it out unlike a certain un-named blog, which is clearly very full of it.
Just joking Charles, and hey Brian, we think you are rather nice really (“some of my best friends are liberals, honest”) and feel free to send us more of those pictures. hehehehe.
Rand Simberg is in lethal form reporting the death of Buddy, the Clinton’s dog, over on Transterrestrial
Best of the Web helpfully points out the other occasions when the Clintons were “deeply saddened.” I suspect that a couple of those 2200+ occasions were the deaths of Vince Foster and Ron Brown. I wonder if Buddy was about to write a tell-all book?
Nasty!
Besides the oversights and misreads by Charles Dodgson that Perry has already pointed out, Charles also missed the whole point behind my argument when he says
But the state is involved in sales of private cars in the United States; individual states maintain registries of who owns what vehicle. That’s what the funny metal plates with the numbers on them are all about. They also generally demand annual inspections, and will deny the use of a car even to that car’s lawful owner if they don’t like the smell of burning oil coming out of the tailpipe.
I was more hopeful in this bit where Charles stumbled upon the truth but then he picked himself up and hurried away as if nothing had happened.
As to the breathalyzers, that’s not tied to purchases, but the sad facts there are even worse. Even if you’ve already purchased a vehicle, the state will deny you the use of that vehicle — your own lawfully acquired property — for trifles like a few drunk driving arrests. And, as Walter seemed to acknowledge, most of them won’t let you drive unless you buy insurance, interfering with another private choice.
Yes. The state places many regulations on the use of your property after you buy it. It does not stop you from acquiring it nor does it specify from whom you can buy it or to whom you can sell it. In most states the local government is more concerned with collecting sales tax on the transaction than on who was involved in the deal. Indeed, all the use regulations only apply if you intend to operate the auto on public roads and lands. Keep it in the garage or drive it only on your property and you often don’t have to deal with any of that.
With guns, laws were originally of a similar “use type” and codified what was already common sense, i.e. no shooting in town, etc. The current trend in firearm regulation, however, interferes with the acquisition and possession, not just the use. That is a very important difference. I believe the technical term is prior restraint but perhaps a Constitutional scholar out there could clear that up.
This issue actually runs deeper than guns. It touches upon the fundamental worldview of individuals, states and the balance of rights. Are we subjects with a few privileges doled out by an over-riding state or are we citizens with basic rights that our chosen leaders must observe?
As you probably guessed, I lean very heavily toward the latter. While I value the US Constitution, I don’t believe it grants us any rights. It simply codifies what our basic rights already are. That’s the bit in the pre-amble talking about self-evident truths and inalienable rights. The US is different from most countries in that the government acknowledges its obligation to recognize those inalienable rights and vows to protect them. To the extent that it limits those rights and the liberties they describe, the government reneges on that promise.
I have to ask about this one too:
Which is what I think of people who try to protect their civil rights with guns. Any actual use of the guns against government authority turns into a firefight which, even Perry acknowledges, you basically can’t win:
Why then has every newly installed tyrant and dictator begun their reign by rounding up the guns in private hands? No to dwell too long in the past, but I believe it was Ben Franklin who said “Tyranny can not exist in the United States because the whole body of the people is armed.” (emphasis mine)
Charles may not realize it, but he is making our point when he states.
If Britain were just trying to maintain control and damn the consequences, they (Irish Republicians) would all have been rounded up and shot, along with any other Catholic who showed a hint of sympathy for the cause. There’s a ready stock of Protestant militants to serve as informers and triggermen …
Yup. You have some definite sectarian violence there. But what if the weapons are scattered across ethnic, racial, religious and economic lines and you can’t get one group to turn on the other? When everybody is a potential resister and willing to pay the price, you have to kill everybody to end all resistance.
Which brings us to the granddaddy of them all. Do you think the US military would fire on its own citizens? A very similar question was actually asked some Marines during a training exercise in 29 Palms. The exact question is in this article, but the upshot was something like: “Would you fire on citizens who refused to turn in illegal weapons?” 60% said no, 28% said yes, 12% didn’t care either way. The implications of those numbers could fill volumes.
But aren’t you just a teensy weensy bit curious why they asked?
Take a peek at On the Third Hand and you will see Kathy Kinsley urging the adoption of a weapon that when wielded resolutely against an ‘Islamic’ would-be hijacker, makes even the mightiest of handguns pale into insignificance… after all, a suicidal hijacker is hardly going to be afraid of being shot dead… but the prospect of getting their brains bashed out with one of these babies is likely to reduce them to paroxysms of idiot terror! Does the deviousness and innovation of the post-enlightenment mind know no bounds?
Stock up on them now before Charles Schumer starts demanding they be regulated and all purchasers licenced, thereby expanding the remit of the BATF yet further (renaming it the BATFS). It might be a good idea to bury a few in your deep freeze under the frozen peas where Federal snoops will not find them.
A further example of “why-oh-why-are-we-not-able-to-return-to-1890?” type commentary from paleo-conservatives (small c, as this applies to card-carrying Labour supporters as well as Tories), appears in the Thursday, January 3 edition of the Times newspaper (UK). Written by David Selborne, a leftist historian with strong authortarian leanings, in The Tories’ future can be found in their past, he chides the Tories for their concerns with freedom and urges them to come full-on and support the public sector instead.
As an example of Bourbon-style learning nothing and forgetting nothing, this takes some beating. (Consider the vast erosion of civil liberties and the Common law in the UK over the past 20 years). Selbourne has a valid point in bemoaning the neglect of civil society (Edmund Burke’s ‘little platoons’), but like most statists misses the obvious point that it has been the growth of the state, such as the monopoly education system, that has wreaked so much havoc. The poor man accuses the Tories of imposing market disciplines on schools. If only that were the case! I think we should arrive at a new name to describe the habit among such folk of accusing X of precisely the very opposite of what they are doing. Call it “false market fundamentalism syndrome,” perhaps.
Charles Dodgson at Through the Looking Glass takes us to task regarding our views on the interblog gunwars. Whilst some of his points just boil down to a matter of opinion, he also spectacularly misunderstands a few things. In this discussion we are dealing not so much with the rights or wrongs of guns but whether there is actually any point in owning arms as a hedge against tyranny.
Take, for example, Waco and Ruby Ridge. Both of them show American law enforcement at its absolute bloody worst, actually killing civilians; I would have liked to see some of the officers involved in these fiascoes go up on manslaughter charges at least. The victims in these cases had significant arsenals which proved, in the end, to do them no good at all. The reverse, if anything, at Waco at least; the Feds were at least nominally there to arrest the folks they wound up killing on weapons charges — if not for the guns, the Feds would never have showed up in the first place.
That is a strange way of looking at it, blaming the victims for, well, being the victims. It is rather like saying if people didn’t have valuable stuff worth stealing, they would not have to worry about being robbed. Certainly the US security apparatus is more than capable of picking off groups like the Branch Davidians or Randy Weaver if it is thus inclined, no argument there. Of course I would argue that looking at those incidents is rather incomplete unless you look at all the consequences, namely Oklahoma. One does not have to agree with or admire Tim McVeigh to see that the action he took in response to those events does seem to have raised awareness amongst the jackboot tendency in all governments that there can be costs to the application of tyranny beyond immediate calculation. If a few more Waco’s were to happen, I have no doubt more Oklahoma’s would have followed. Guns themselves are just part of the equation. It is just a matter of whether a critical mass of a society is involved or just a disliked fringe like the Branch Davidians.
Of course, I’m not arguing here that the answer to homicidal loons in the ATF is unilateral civilian disarmament.
Actually I suspect he is probably arguing for incremental civilian disarmament, but we’ll let that slide for now.
There are plenty of good reasons for responsible civilians to have access to firearms — self-defense, hunting for food, just plain sport. What I’m arguing against is the Samizdata crowd’s faith in gun ownership as a way for people to defend their other civil rights. When used for that purpose, the damn things just don’t seem to work.
It seems to have worked in Northern Ireland, regardless of whether or not you think Sinn Fein’s objectives are admirable or not. No superpower assistance required.
What makes the Samizdata claims here even harder to swallow is that they’re talking about loosely organized civilian irregulars repelling not just squads of rogue cops, but the combined United States military forces — the most fearsome military machine that has ever existed on the planet — on its own home ground. That may have made sense 200 years ago, when it’s how we kicked out the British. (Oh wait, it’s not. Never mind). But that was then; this is now.
Now here is where Charles really blows it. He seems to be describing a scenario in which a tyrannous US state is able to turn the US military, not just the thugs of BATF or the FBI, against a section of their own people without question. And just whose ‘home ground’ is Charles describing? The home ground of the families of those self same people in the US military. It is one thing killing Afghans from 20,000 feet up. It is rather different telling folks in the US military to fire on people in Kansas or Florida.
Forget the guns. Where are these guys getting the bullets? Sustained combat operations of any kind chew up ammo at a ferocious pace, and current American combat doctrine seems to begin with the interdiction of supply lines, disruption of communication channels, and destruction of stores. Camouflage can delay this a bit, but the activity around these sites is more than likely to give them away eventually. Any industrial-scale production is likely to glow like a beacon on IR. And it’s difficult to deny the United States Air Force air superiority over East Texas.
Here Charles has a very strange view of the nature of insurgency. The US had air superiority over South Vietnam too and it was that sort of thinking which lost that war. The US military has lots of lovely ammo and in such a scenario, that is where much of the insurgent’s supplies would come from… this is ‘Insurgency 101’ stuff to be honest.
And from there, the comparisons get even sillier. Take Algeria, where Islamic fundamentalists are trying to mount a rebellion against a secular government.
Actually I was referring to the Algerian war of independence against France, not the current fun and games. And interestingly many French make the same claims that ‘France won the war but just lost the will to fight’. Funny that.
Which leaves Northern Ireland. I’m not sure which collection of homicidal maniacs Perry has cast as the freedom fighters here, or what he thinks they’ve achieved, but I don’t think the upshot there was fully protective of anybody’s civil rights.
And here Charles entirely misses the point as well has having a rather poorly informed view of the realities on the ground. The political policies of the IRA are not the issue in this discussion, their methods are. The fact is, Northern Ireland is the best analogy of all. The British have been unable to force its rule on a significant armed section of society and if circumstances ever drove a significant section of US society to do the same, all the fancy toys in the hands of the US military would count for as much as they do for British Army in Northern Ireland. As for what armed violence has achieved, would you argue that the civil rights of Catholics in Northern Ireland are not better now than they were in 1968? Of course they are. And why do you think that is? Reasoned political discourse backed up by women singing kumbayah? I don’t think so. If enough people support it, even if it is only a minority within a minority, as is the case in Ulster, violent insurgency does indeed work.
I am not arguing that is what the US should be headed for, of course not, but the fact is that arms in civilian hands are far more effective against one’s own state than a foreign one and all manner of fancy tanks, ICVs, artillery, aircraft etc., do not make a damn bit of difference in those sort of situations. The RAF has air superiority over Ulster too.
Now that the Euro is a fait accompli, the long slow glide begins, perpetually pointed just below the distant horizon. The interest rates prevailing across a very significant area of the industrialised world will now be set to suit the business cycles of France and Germany. Many predict that once the economies of Europe are integrated like that of the United States, that will cease to be a matter of concern. And of course they are correct, once the fringe economies are flattened.
As the structure of Europe’s diversified economies are slowly legislated into highest common denominator standards of ‘social fairness’ in order to protect the interests of French and German trade unions, uncompetitive businesses and their social democratic backers, a gradual leaching process will set in. Economic cycles will continue as ever, but each down turn will squeeze the non-core economies just that little bit more each time, favouring the parts of the economies whose main role is to service highly regulated French and German dominated sectors, rather than independent global export or entirely domestic sectors.
When economic dunce Ross Perot predicted a ‘giant sucking sound’ of jobs heading south of the border into Mexico, he did not seem to realise that all manner of spontaneous market mechanisms were also inexorably moving to adjust, rather than destabilise, the economies of the United States and Mexico. Mexican interest rates and currency fluctuations, and not just lower labour costs, were also of huge importance. Although trade was greatly liberalised, there was never any attempt to impose the US dollar on Mexico (or Canada), or make the writ of Alan Greenspan extend over the whole of NAFTA.
All that is different in Europe because whereas NAFTA has purely economic objectives, the Euro has mostly political ones. Sophisticated and relatively efficient European core economies will no longer have to deal with defensive depreciation of Spanish, Italian, Greek or Irish etc. currencies and will simply wipe out pools of local capital that might have buoyed up less effective local producers. This in and of itself is not automatically a bad thing, provided the local capital markets can adjust… which of course they will not be able to do. The mid to late 1990’s surge in the US economy was a disaster for Argentina, whose currency was pegged to the greenback, because unlike the US, it was not experiencing an economic surge. No mechanism was readily and incrementally available to off-set the asymmetries by allowing the currency to naturally devalue. With the Euro, which is in effect an ersatz Deutschmark/Franc hybrid, this same toxic effect will happen to Greece, Italy, Ireland, Spain, Portugal etc. with one big difference… it will probably happen to many of them at once when the cycle begins, as it surely will.
Even the obvious aspiration to challenge the US dollar as a global reserve currency is doomed. The welfare states of Europe simply cannot compete on equal terms with the less regulated US economy, either in terms on underpinning asset returns or total global liquidity. For all its faults, such as the current lunatic credit binge, the dollar will remain the international reserve currency for the foreseeable future.
Although I have not been bullish on gold for a very long time, any European portfolio might do well to tuck a little yellow ‘mad money’ away and just forget about it for 10 years as a hedge against economic apocalypse, particularly as dollar interest rates are so unattractive right now. Anyone who is actually confident about the future of not just the Euro but the Euro zone, well I have this bridge in Australia I would like to sell you.
Be at war with your vices; at peace with your neighbors, and let every New Year find you a better man
– Benjamin Franklin
Hear the joyous cry from the minarets as they announce that the Fastest Burqa in Blogistan is back in business… spread the word around, guess who’s back in town?
Yes indeed, Natalie Solent had returned!
So we are told the year 2002 is significant because it reads the same beginning to end as end to beginning. We are somehow fortunate, if we are a certain age, to be alive for two of them (1991 being the other one). 2002 is significant for those of us of a libertarian ilk, however numerology has nothing to do with it.
We face a world in a flux, no more than usual, but in flux nonetheless. As I sit here writing this missive, Tony Blair is heading off to prevent a war on the Indian sub-Continent, convinced that his “president of the world” trick will prevent a 4th war between the two countries. Is Blair, even while still in office, to become the Jimmy Carter of the new century? Just the mere threat of his being sent to some far off land will make both sides question their motives for war. Blair will be appointed upon his retirement from Downing Street, UN “Meddler in Chief.”
No doubt the blind-man of justice, Blunkett is even now thinking of ways to ever erode Britons personal liberties. Is it me or is not odd that the Sheffield socialist now has more in common with a fundamentalist Christian mid-westerner than he does with his former socialist comrades.
One wonders if Blunkett and Ashcroft are in constant email contact regarding tactics on how to put their authoritarian plans in place. The only thing that is no mentioned is the punishment that dare not speak its name: the death penalty.
We live in a situation in the west, where to question the laws brought into help stop terrorism is to be seen as an appeaser. At the same time the sainted left in the media are allowed to be actual apologists for the terrorists. These people claim that the attacks on the 11th and since then are self-inflicted and deserved. The real apologists are allowed to operate, quite rightly, under the banner of a free press, yet free speech is being curtailed under awash of legislation.
2002 will no doubt see virtual countries coming into their fore, not for financial purpose,s but in order to protect one from prosecution. Data havens will become information havens where those who do not wish to follow the party line will be able to express their opinions freely outside the realms of persecution. Of course Europe and the UK now have the addition of Euro wide “arrest warrants” meaning that one can offend a Greek and be arrested in the UK, and sent there for trial. In case the Greek government wished to re-assure us, they spent the later part of 2001 harassing a bunch of airplane-spotting nerds. These spies would be some of the most incompetent in existence, sticking out like a black man at a Klan rally. If they are spies they could only be CIA, for no other intelligence service is that gormless.
It will be interesting to see if the EU uses these laws to start to shut down criticism of their utopian experiment Europe wide. No doubt this is more likely if the Euro has the wings of a turkey. Under the guise of “a threat to the economy of Europe” anti-Euro campaigners will be threatened with being dragged to Brussels for prosecution in Belgium’s notoriously speedy judicial system.
But I have gone off message. With all this going round in the world, what is the role of the libertarian activist? Are we to return to our sitting, chat and smoking rooms to ponder more theory? Are we to return to the underground and ponder when next to show our faces in normal political circles? Or do we have a role in attempting to hold back the authoritarian urges of both the traditional right and left? The socialists are seemingly impotent, more concerned with defending the “misunderstood” Islamists than defending their own liberties. In the extreme, Jack Straw has been heard boasting that his son has become a convert to Islam, a religion they both claim to be “inclusive” despite both Koranic verse and recent events.
I leave with this thought dear friends. What exactly are we the libertarian activists of the world to do in the coming days and months? What is our role in the post 9/11 world?
Of course in my case 9/11 is irrelevant, I carry on hammering on about classical liberalism until I die or Cthulhu rises from his slumber in R’Leth.
Andrew Ian Dodge
“What Sucks? Statism Sucks!“
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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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