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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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You can always count on Sean Gabb to take a controversial line. And on the British Empire in India (he says it was in many ways a good thing), he is not frightened to do so, even if it means saying things that have driven a few Indian or expat Indian readers into a rage. (I urge readers to read the entire Gabb piece).
There have been empires of a fairly liberal nature, and at times, it is fair to say, that there was greater respect for life, liberty and property under certain relatively liberal empires than in sovereign, nation states. I have heard the Austro-Hungarian Empire defended on such grounds; the British Empire was in some ways a pretty loose-knit thing (it had to be – we did not have the manpower to run it in a more heavy-handed way); and certain other empires might have stacked up quite well when looking at what replaced them. But, and this is surely the key point: we are talking about empires. They developed out of conquest, of kicking out rulers or property owners of various kinds, and moving in. Sometimes the invaders were actually invited in to get rid of the existing scumbags, but usually not. (Malta, in the late 18th Century, asked Lord Nelson to kick out the French who had taken control of the island. The Brits stayed until the early 1970s).
So, it does rather make me scratch my head to read Sean’s defence of the BE when I consider that, for example, he and many others like him in the Libertarian Alliance have fiercely criticised the European Union as a sort of France-German imperial regime, imposing a certain kind of social democratic worldvew. Libertarianism is not a monolithic creed (thank god), but on the face of it, the presumption must be that a believer in liberty must look askance on empires and conquest, and be wary of attempts to rationalise it by reference to certain outcomes that are only known after the event.
Take another sort of “empire”: the Brussels elite of the European Union – who are not exactly respectful of democratically expressed “no” votes in referenda, may defend their ambitions as being high-minded, and indeed, there is a sort of “new imperialism”, known as Transnational Progressivism, or Tranzi for short. Or take the case of US foreign policy, also sometimes damned as imperialistic. It is also worth noting that Sean, and other critics of the American-led military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, have condemned what they see as the “neocon” doctrine of seeking to spread democracy and liberty into barbarous lands at the point of a bayonet (or Apache helicopter). But that is exactly how Sean frames the case in favour of the British Empire. Odd. The likes of Joseph Chamberlain, Lord Curzon and other priests of empire (not to mention Kipling) were the neocons of their time. (In fairness to Sean, he also criticises the conflicts in the ME as not being about the defence of British interests).
Some of this support of empire also explains, so I understand it, some of why Sean Gabb casts Churchill as a villain of 20th century history, as a destroyer of empire. Gabb claims that by refusing to capitulate to Hitler in 1940 and sue for peace and leave Western Europe under Nazi rule, Churchill ensured that the British Empire was finished, whereas had we been neutral in the 1940s, then – so the argument goes – the Nazi-dominated Europe of the time would have left the Empire alone, or at least for a fairly long period. Although obviously horrible for those Europeans under Nazi rule, avoidance of war with Germany would at least have spared the Empire all the losses it suffered.
I am not convinced of this line of reasoning. First of all, it is far from clear, given Hitler’s record as being a serial breaker of treaties, that any non-aggression pact signed between Britain, its Empire, and Germany, would have been worth the paper it was written on. If the Empire had stayed out of military conflict with Germany, that would have given Hitler the knowledge of having a free hand against Russia, making it far more likely that Germany’s invasion of Russia would have been more of a success. From Bordeaux to Vladivostok would have been one, huge national socialist empire, greedily looking south at the oilfields of the Middle East under British influence, potentially threatening the Suez Canal and link to India. It is hard to see how such an immense landpower would have been able to rub along with the British Empire without conflct in the medium term.
In any event, the Empire, while it may have come to an end sooner than it did due to the immense costs of WW2, was already in a state of flux: Canada, New Zealand, Australia and other dominions were moving towards greater self government; there was a vigorous, pro-independence movement in India during the 1920s and 1930s, and suppressing that movement with the use of armed force hardly sits easily with a libertarian credo.
One final point, to which I am indebted to Paul Marks for pointing out: there was a brief campaign, led I think by the likes of Joseph Chamberlain, to create an Imperial Parliament in which all members of the Empire would have had some sort of representation, perhaps like a sort of BE version of the EU Parliament in Strasbourg. The idea never really got off the ground as a serious political venture.
For all of the talk about a fourth branch of government, calling to account corruption on both sides of the aisle, and informing the people’s decisions with transcendent objectivity, the media has always been a bullhorn for specific biases. The virgin media of our youth did not exist, and it should not exist. As with every other facet of life in a free society, it is only competition that creates progress and openness. In media, this means diverse views and diverse sources, calling not only corrupt politicians into account, but each other as well.
– Jeremy D. Boreing
From a WSJ review by Trevor Butterworth of Joel Mokyr’s The Enlightened Economy:
But the power of knowledge would not, by itself, have given Britain its formidable economic edge; the Continent, too, had an array of scientific genius as brilliant as any in Scotland and England. (Think only of the French chemist Antoine Lavoisier.) The reason for Britain’s exceptionalism, Mr. Mokyr says, lies in the increasing hostility to rent-seeking – the use of political power to redistribute rather than create wealth – among the country’s most important intellectuals in the second half of the 18th century. Indeed, a host of liberal ideas, in the classic sense, took hold: the rejection of mercantilism’s closed markets, the weakening of guilds and the expansion of internal free trade, and robust physical and intellectual property rights all put Britain far ahead of France, where violent revolution was needed to disrupt the privileges of the old regime.
Such political upheaval in Europe, notes Mr. Mokyr, disrupted trade, fostered uncertainty, and may well have created all kinds of knock-on social disincentives for technological and scientific innovation and collaboration with business. Much as we might deplore too many of our brightest students going into law rather than chemistry or engineering, it is not unreasonable to think that many of France’s brightest thinkers were diverted by brute events into political rather than scientific activism (or chastened by poor Lavoisier’s beheading during the Revolution).
Thus Montesquieu may have advocated free trade as passionately as Adam Smith, but Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” – the canonical text of the Industrial Enlightenment – fell upon a society primed to judge and implement it as an operating system. Evangelical and liberal alike shared in the vision of “frugal” government, as Mr. Mokyr puts it. In the opening decades of the 19th century, Parliament took an ax to itself, pruning the books of what were now seen as harmfully restrictive laws.
I have my doubts about whether robust intellectual property rights did much to encourage the industrial revolution, but apart from that …
This books is now in the post to me, thanks to Amazon, that characteristic trading innovation of our own time.
I suppose reading books like this is, for a British libertarian, an experience somewhat like that of a religious believer contemplating the delights of the Garden of Eden. It may be a bit bogus, in the sense that like all earthly Edens this one was decidedly imperfect and probably felt just as discouraging to its contemporaries as life seems to a lot of us now, a lot of the time.
For who knows? Maybe the times we are living through now may be looked back upon by later generations as similarly Eden-like, either because we are now making huge intellectual (as well as more obvious economic – think Amazon) progress, but we can’t quite see it (maybe any decade now our Parliaments will take axes to themselves), or because times are about to get a lot worse.
I hope (although I promise nothing) to report back here about whether the book deserves the above praise.
Any politician who first stirs up love amongst you is trying to steal something from you.
– Tom Smith
My native land of Australia is having a federal election on August 21, in which Liberal Party leader Tony Abbott will challenge Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who came to office in a party coup a mere five weeks ago. For those who are interested, I recently recorded a conversation with Patrick Crozier, in which he attempted to interview me about the issues at hand.
In this conversation, we cover issues such as how the Australian political system differs from the British system (and perhaps more crucially, how Australian political parties differ from British parties), just how and why Kevin Rudd managed to go from having some of the highest opinion poll ratings of any Australian Prime Minister to being tossed by his party in approximately nine months, the issues at hand in the electioin, and The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin.
Overhanging all this, though, is the recent party coup against Kevin Rudd. We spend quite a bit of time attempting to figure out the man’s downfall, and trying to figure out exactly how such a man became PM in the first place.
On the other hand, there are times when a music video is worth a thousand words. People without the time to listen to our conversation might instead consider simply watching this, which I think gets to the bottom of Kevin Rudd fairly quickly.
Unfortunately, although the conversation is timely and should be posted quickly, I have not had the opportunity to give it a great deal of editing. (I am presently in Romania, as part of having a life, and a touch short of editing facilities). As a consequence, the conversation still contains a few ums and ahs and pauses, and I think it is a little slow in starting. However, for those who want to give us a fair shake of the sauce bottle, I think it is pretty coherent once we get going. Enjoy.
Bryan Caplan has some thought-provoking comments about Paul Johnson’s “Modern Times” – in my opinion, one of the greatest works of history by a historian of any era, let alone ours. Johnson, a devout Roman Catholic who has written about, and met, many of the leading figures of post WW2 history, including Churchill, is a writer never afraid to let you know his point of view. He enjoys overturning certain stock images of historical “heroes” and “villains”; he memorably defended the reputation of Calvin Coolidge, a much underestimated POTUS, and tries his best to be nice about Richard Nixon (I think he does not quite succeed), and reminds us of what a great old fellow was Konrad Adenauer. Johnson is also merciless towards Ghandi, whose reputation he trashes.
The great thing about the man – now in his 80s and still going strong as a writer – is capacity for narrative, for making history a story; he is stickler for dates. You really do get the “sweep of events” from Johnson, in much the same way you would from an Edward Gibbon, Hugh Trevor Roper or a TB Macaulay (whom he some ways resembles). (Here are more thoughts on Johnson in the same blog.)
Like Caplan, I am not entirely sure that moral relativism captures the full nature of what went wrong in terms of the 20th Century, although I think Johnson does capture quite a lot of the problem with that concept. For me, the ultimate disaster of that century was the idea of the omniscient State and of the associated idea that governments, run by all-knowing officials, could solve many of the real or supposed problems of the age. The 20th Century was not unique in witnessing the growth of government, but it was an age when government had, like never before, the technology at its disposal to be immensely powerful, probably more so than at any time since the Romans (and even the writ of Rome had its limits). We are still, alas, in the grip of that delusion that government can and should fix problems, although there is perhaps, hopefully, a bit more cynicism about it than say, during the late 1940s when the likes of Attlee were in Downing Street.
Johnson is right, however, to point out that in a world where there is no stated respect for the idea of impartial rules and law, no respect for reason and for the idea of objective truth – or at least that it is noble to pursue truth – that terrible consequences follow; every irrationality, might-is-right worldview, will fill the vacumn. However, unlike Johnson, I do not think that morality requires the anchor of belief in a Supreme Being, and he tends to make the mistake, like a lot of devoutly religious folk, of assuming that atheists, for example, cannot arrive at a moral code, which seems to rather overlook the role of people such as Aristotle, who had a huge impact on views about ethics, and from whom other religions have borrowed (think of the Thomist tradition in Catholic thought, for instance).
Stephen Hicks, in his book on post-modernism, comes to a similar conclusion in certain respects. Another gem of a book is Alain Finkielkraut’s gem, “The Undoing of Thought”.
The sleep of reason really does bring forth monsters.
It seems that the Saudis and the UAE have got upset about the use of Blackberrys for such evil purposes as enabling young men and women to get a date. Various so-called “national security” issues are also cited.
Sheesh.
According to a Janes newsletter:
US Navy successfully tests laser with close-in weapon. The US Navy has for the first time in a maritime environment successfully destroyed four unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) targets with a laser, essentially proving the basic premise of adding a directed-energy weapon to Raytheon’s Phalanx close-in weapon system. The trial was sponsored by the US Naval Sea Systems Command’s (NAVSEA’s) PMS 405 Directed Energy Weapons programme office and used the navy’s own Laser Weapon System (LaWS) equipment, developed in conjunction with the Dahlgren Naval Surface Warfare .Center Dahlgren Division, combined with a Phalanx weapon mount.
The era of the ray cannon has arrived.
The North Korean football team has aroused the ire of the Dear Leader.
Early this month the players were summoned to an auditorium at the working people’s culture palace in Pyongyang, forced onstage and subjected to a six-hour barrage of criticism for their poor performances in South Africa, according to the US-based Radio Free Asia.
Only Jung Tae-se and An Yong-hak were spared a dressing down as they flew directly to Japan, their country of birth and where they play club football, according to an unnamed Chinese businessman the station cites as its source.
The “grand debate” was reportedly witnessed by 400 athletes and sports students, and the country’s sports minister. Ri Dong-kyu, a sports commentator for the North’s state-run Korean Central TV, led the reprimands, pointing out the shortcomings of each player, South Korean media said.
In true Stalinist style, the players were then “invited” to mount verbal attacks on their coach, Jung-hun.
The coach was reportedly accused of betraying the leader’s son, Kim Jong-un, who is expected to take over from his ailing father as leader of the world’s only communist dynasty.
Radio Free Asia quoted the source as saying he had heard that Kim Jung-hun had been sent to work on a building site and there were fears for his safety.
North Korea watchers said the regime had been hoping to attribute the team’s success to Kim Jong-un as it attempts to build support among military and workers’ party elites for a transfer of power.
It’s weird, this thing dictators have for sport. You spend decades building up your own and your dynasty’s power, and where do you end up? Wiith its continuation being significantly dependant on the outcome of some football matches, apparently. One almost feels sorry for Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un, prisoners of their own despotism. Of course the list of people to be sorry for in North Korea as a result of that despotism is long, and their names come last upon it.
An interesting piece about how the oil slick disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Something is getting attention: there is not as much of an oil spill as some might suppose. Apparently, in warm water like this, and due to certain acquatic organisms, the oil is gradually absorbed. It is, in a manner of speaking, gobbled up. (Belch).
That got me thinking that yes, oil slicks caused by human error are obviously going to cause a lot of anger and lead to tort lawsuits from affected parties, such as fishing businesses and owners of beachfront property, but then again, what about an oil leak that is caused by tectonic shifts in the Earth’s crust? In some geological areas, oil leaks of its own accord, sometimes in very large amounts. Which suggests that oil-cleaning technologies are a useful thing to invest in even if there were no offshore drilling.
None of this should, of course, remove any heat off those oil firms and contractors responsible for this disaster – which is what it is – nor indeed of the US government for its tardy response. However, it might help if more folk acknowledged that oil is the stuff of nature, and you know what, this stuff tends to move around occasionally, even without Man’s assistance.
(Apols for my light blogging of late and thanks to the others for all the great articles. I have been incredibly busy of late).
“The regard for the laws of nations, or for those rules which independent states profess or pretend to think themselves bound to observe in their dealings with one another, is often very little more than mere pretence and profession. From the smallest interest, upon the slightest provocation, we see those rules every day either evaded or directly violated without shame or remorse. Each nation foresees, or imagines it foresees, its own subjugation in the increasing power and aggrandisement of any of its neighbours; and the mean principle of national prejudice is often founded upon the noble one of the love of our own country.”
Adam Smith, taken from “The Wisdom of Adam Smith, A Collection of His Most Incisive And Eloquent Observations, Edited by Benjamin A Rogge, page 173.
We can confirm that eight of the nine people quoted on the website at the time either worked for the Identity and Passport Service (IPS), the Home Office or another government department or agency.
– A spokesman from the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) of the Home Office, in answer to a Freedom of Information request from Phil Booth of No2ID, asking how many of the people quoted on an IPS website expressing enthusiasm for the wonderfulness of their ID cards did in fact work for the government.
Actually, this was not a direct response to the FOI request, but was only admitted after the good Mr Booth demanded an internal review from the IPS after they answered the question with several lengthy paragraphs of content free bureaucrat babble the first time. Details thanks to The Register here.
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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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