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]
|
Absolute crackerjack from Timothy Sandefur:
But the conscience of the free west, too, is much in need of reaffirmation. Many of us have come to take for granted the freedom of expression that our forefathers fought so bravely to secure. It is important for us to engage in free speech now, to remind ourselves of what these rights mean.
These rights are not just for us. They are human rights: all people, everywhere, are entitled to freedom, toleration, and peace. And our free societies respect the freedom to write, and speak, and publish as the right of all—from west and east, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, atheist. You are welcome to join us: to write and publish your own criticisms of our society, or even your own offensive cartoons ridiculing things we hold dear. But whether you join us or not, we will not be silenced.
We will not be silenced, or made to fear, and we will not be persuaded to accept the idea that silence in the face of injustice is just, or that appeasement of those who threaten us is safe, or that pretending we are not afraid, by saying we are just being culturally sensitive, is honorable. The right to offend, to chastise, to ridicule and condemn: to these, we will hold fast, knowing as our ancestors knew a century and a half ago, that all freedom, and all that makes life a joy instead of a burden, depends upon it just as slavery depends upon silence and terror.
On that, we will not equivocate. We will not excuse. We will not retreat a single inch. And we will speak.
Some people in the US and beyond might have imagined that the young, appealing chap who was a senator and who ran for office in 2008 was the sort of person capable of giving the kind of speech that Sandefur has written here. We now know very different. What brief remarks he now makes on that subject are, as far as I can see, far too late and too little.
I just came across this tour de force of a speech by Dan Hannan at the Oxford Union, courtesy of David Thompson. Thank goodness for YouTube.
I particularly like the bit at the end, where Hannan shows that he knows more about the Levellers than do those arguing against him. “Proto-libertarians” is a very good description of just what kind of libertarians the Levellers were. They certainly weren’t socialists.
Just over thirteen minutes in length. Lots of good points made in a very short time, despite interruptions from the floor. No wonder Hannan’s debating opponents looked so scowly and unhappy, as Thompson notes.
When I was 12, a guy who was a ham radio operator moved in. My uncle had gotten me started on radio, but then he went off to the war–he worked in Britain on the radar project. Anyway, this guy had a background in electronics and he was willing to teach me what he knew. That was just as the war was ending, so there was all this war-surplus electronics on the market, dirt cheap. With the little bits of money that a kid could earn, I could buy piles of electronics, and try to figure out what they were and why they were that way and how I could modify them. That was how I got my start–you could afford to do experiments, because the stuff was so cheap. You could build up equipment and try things, just to see what happened.
– Carver Mead, quantum physicist, as he later became. He helped drive some of the inventions of the modern age, such as hearing aids. His brief reflections on how and why he became interested in science make me wonder whether today’s schools are doing a very good job in the West of firing such enthusiasm. Or maybe I am being grumpy: why don’t commenters share their stories of how they got interested in a particular field?
Likewise, in terms of domestic European politics, giving in to far-left Syriza would certainly strengthen economic illiterates in popular anti-euro parties like Italy’s Five-Star Movement, and Spain’s Podemos, the last thing Merkel desires. The euro itself hasn’t been particularly troubled by the crisis, with Italian and French bond yields holding steady. Surely, as some have reported, Merkel is right to think that now is the time to sever the weakest link.
– John Hulsman
I LOL’ed.
Close, but no cigar this time. Bodes well for the future tho.
– Elon Musk
Dear Electoral Commission,
Thanks, but we’re not registering with you and we’re not going to pay any attention to your rules.
Yours in freedom,
Paul Staines
Editor Guido Fawkes’ Blog
– Guido makes his position clear.
Earlier this week, Brian Micklethwait of this parish gave an excellent talk about sport and how it sometimes has taken the place of military activity as far as -mostly- men are concerned. Brian will want to perhaps go into this issue in a lot more detail on his own but one question that came up is how such an issue relates to women. Well, a recent trend has been the rising involvement of women in front-line combat operations. They are not yet doing so in the UK infantry, although that could change soon, but in the Royal Air Force of the UK, that is now the case:
A woman who has become the first to command an RAF fast jet squadron is expected to lead bombing missions over Iraq this summer.
Wing Commander Nikki Thomas, who took charge of the newly reformed No 12 Squadron at RAF Marham in Norfolk yesterday (Fri), flew a daring low mission to help foil a deadly rocket attack on a UK base in Afghanistan.
The 36-year-old is a weapons system operator with extensive experience of combat operations, clocking up more than 35 missions in Afghanistan within three months alone.
This is a woman with a lot of guts. Consider the fact that she knows that, in the event of her aircraft being hit, she might have to eject over land run by Islamists who are not going to be amused at being bombed by Western, feisty women. But then women in the Kurdish regions have already been showing that when it comes to dealing with these thugs, there are no real differences between the sexes when it comes to courage and skill.
There is also a broader point. With professional, volunteer forces, there is a premium on young, fit, smart people who have the ability to do a challenging role. Flying a fighter plane is not the sort of thing anyone can do. Given the ruthless process of selecting for flight training, it is pretty clear that a person who can reach the rank of this RAF officer and do what she is doing must be top-class. The pool of talent is finite. So if a woman is good enough to do this, well fine by me.
And this has nothing to do with PC nonsense, by the way. There is no room for Political Correctness in flying a supersonic jet.
… that he is in the wrong line of work and so are his employees apparently.
The editor of the Independent has said “every instinct” told him to publish the Charlie Hebdo cartoons caricaturing the prophet Muhammad but described it as “too much of a risk”. The newspaper, along with the rest of the UK’s national press, did not reprint any of the satirical magazine’s caricatures of Muhammad or the cartoons from Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten, with which Charlie Hebdo first provoked international outrage in 2006.
Rajan instead put a striking cartoon by Dave Brown on his paper’s front page on Thursday, showing a hand with the middle finger raised emerging from the cover of Charlie Hebdo. But he was “very uncomfortable” with his decision not to reprint Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons, which he described as “self-censorship”.
Rajan said he had a duty to his staff and had to “balance principle with pragmatism”.
Balance? I see ‘pragmatism’, which is to say, abject cowardice in the face of danger brought by republishing cartoons from Charlie Hebdo… but I see no ‘principle’ on display whatsoever, just some waffle designed to distract people from mentioning his ‘pragmatism’ smells a lot like chicken shit.
Je suis Charlie. But if you do not republish, then you are not, so it would be better if you just STFU Rajan.
In the aftermath of the horror yesterday in Paris, I noticed that Mr Obama gave a speech, as many other national leaders did, expressing solidarity with France at this time and supporting free speech. I am sure I am not the only person to note how hollow Mr Obama’s comments sound in the light of how his administration conducted itself around the time of the attack in Benghazi when a film about Islam had been released. This isn’t narrow political point-scoring – Republicans and others are just as capable of getting themselves wrong on this issue. The point, rather, is that Western leaders need to be as ruthlessly consistent as possible. When the Obama administration was tested on this sort of issue, it wobbled. Islamist fanatics notice – it creates incentives among those who calculate that if they create enough hysteria, are sufficiently “offended” by something, that people will cave in. The most powerful country on the planet caved.
Another point worth making, particularly as people across the political spectrum seem to be genuinely shocked and appalled by this attack, is that far too many attacks on free speech these days are justified in the name of banning “hate speech”, and so on. Certain forms of expression may indeed be hateful and unpleasant but the best defence against that is indifference, contempt, or ridicule. And another point, particularly for the more anarchist-minded out there, especially those of a leftist bent, is this: if you want to vent, do so on private property, in a consensual way. The producers of the French magazine did that: no-one was forced to buy their product or forced to read it. It is not as if they sprayed their cartoons in public streets outside a mosque.
Apparently drawing something imaginary, a victimless ‘crime’ if ever there was one, leads the BBC to bemusement that Japan does not share the sensible consensus that criminalising thoughts is the way to go.
Expect more half-hearted bleating that this has nothing to do with Islam, but in any case even if it did, Islam is a religion of peace along with weasel words about “responsibility” to the effect that the magazine should not have “inflamed passions”. Simultaneously, expect a huge PR drive – supported by various lefty idiots – from Muslim groups who make it all about them, how they feel, and how they are now scared of a backlash before the bodies have even cooled. This is precisely what we saw in Australia a few weeks ago, and I don’t expect much from European politicians.
– Tim Newman commenting here.
A change of ownership at the Rose and Crown in Southwark means that Simon Gibbs (whose contribution as the Libertarian Home events organiser to the London libertarian scene featured prominently in the posting I did here at the very end of last year about all the 2014 speakers at my Last Friday of the Month meetings (Simon was my speaker in July)) is having to shift his ongoing programme of Libertarian Home meetings out of the Rose and Crown, and to go looking for a new regular venue. Tomorrow evening’s Libertarian Home meeting will be taking place in the Crown Tavern, Clerkenwell Green.
Simon says:
Immediately however I need a couple of things. I need you to spread the word about the new venue tomorrow, …
I hope this helps.
… and again as needed. I also need you to tell me what sort of venue you want. Does it need to be a pub? Is food important? What did you think of the beer at the Rose and Crown? Is the day of the week important? Do you value a speaker every month or are the socials as valuable?
My immediate reaction to the above is that this new venue is a bit of a walk from a tube station, more than was the old venue. Food does help. I don’t drink beer.
Perhaps rather more significantly, I quickly found, when I started organising my Last Friday meetings around 1990, that a speaker does help, if only by by ensuring that we didn’t just have the same damn conversation month after month. I personally like being formally addressed, and then getting to hear the responses of others (perhaps including myself) to what was said, one person at a time, rather than us all just standing around shouting in a pub. Socials are not speaker meetings, but speaker meetings can and should also be socials.
As it happens, there will be a speaker at this Clerkenwell Libertarian Home get-together tomorrow evening. Martin Keegan will be speaking about “The Evolution of Private Cooperation”, which I’m looking forward to hearing, and makes me more eager to attend. (Someone please comment to this effect, if this is not the Martin Keegan who will be speaking, or for that matter if I have it right.)
As for the first Thursday of the month thing (and as also for my Last Friday of the Month thing), well, what I have learned is that there is something to be said against this sort of arrangement, as well as in favour of it. For many, a particular, regular day of the week can be a real problem, because they regularly do something else that day of the week, or they regularly commune with their families over the weekend (weekends which often start on Friday rather than on Saturday morning). By calling his meetings 6/20 meetings, and by holding his meetings on the 6th and 20th of each month, the noted London Libertarian Christian Michel ensures that his meetings do not keep on occurring on the same day of the week. This means that people for whom weekends, or Mondays, or whatever, are permanently occupied, can still attend some of his meetings. Nobody of the sort who would really like to be showing up from time to time is permanently excluded. Maybe Simon might want to consider making a change of that sort. I’m not saying he definitely should make such a change, mind you, because keeping the regular First Thursday of the Month formula even as the venue is being tinkered with makes a lot of sense also. I’m just, as they say, saying.
|
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