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]

Totalitarianism in the United States of America in 2009?

The power of the American left (the “liberals” the “progressives” the “radicals” – call them what you will) is very great. About 9 out of 10 newspapers lean to the left in their editorials (and, to be blunt, in the rest of their content also – from news coverage to book and film reviews) and most television networks also lean to the left. Some more than others – but the general direction is plain.

This is perhaps the result of the “education system” – in which the “public” (i.e. government) schools are dominated by people with a leftist world view. They are saturated in this view of the world during their time at college and it is reflected in what they teach and how they teach it – and in the open political allegiances of their organizations. And would anyone like to deny that the vast majority of American universities are dominated by the left?

In Congress the Speaker of the House is someone, Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, who would have been considered way to the left of the Democrat mainstream only a few years ago. And Speaker Pelosi has shown that the oft mentioned moderate “Blue Dog” Democrats are a busted flush – they are people who fall in line when the Speaker and her associates put the pressure on.

In the Senate, Harry Reid was once considered a moderate – but these days it is clear he is either on board with the left, or just a front man (a cardboard cutout) who does not prevent the control of the Senate by people like the senior Senator for Illinois.

But in spite of all of the above it is clear that the left is not satisfied – they demand total control of all aspects of life, totalitarianism.

This is made clear by such evidence as the effort by elements within the Californian courts to de facto ban home schooling (by demanding that parents have teaching training qualifications – indeed perhaps in every subject they teach) and that private schools only be allowed to hire people who have undergone a training process that the left control.

In other States (such as supposedly strongly conservative Tennessee) there are efforts to refuse to recognise the qualifications of children who did not go to approved schools – it seems that independent testing is not considered enough, indeed is the very thing that the left wish to avoid.

And at the Federal level there is a very strong movement to use all the agencies of the government (from the FCC to the IRS) to eliminate or castrate that minority of media outlets where the left do not already have the main influence.

All under nice sounding words of course – such as “the fairness doctrine”, or “freedom” and diversity”, but, under the Orwellian words, the intent is plain – no dissent will be tolerated. Either it will be declared “hate speech” or it will be declared “biased”. With an “unbiased” presentation of news and current affairs (and everything else – from music to sports) being a leftist one of course.

And with judges that a President Woods Fund Obama would appoint and who would be confirmed by a Democrat Senate, with a Republican minority brow beaten by “main stream media” that the left already control (who will declare that any opposition is “racist”), there will be no First Amendment problems (or any other constitutional problems) for any of the above.

The Bar in almost every State in under the control of the left (and I am not just talking about the ambulance chasing Trial Lawyers Association). Which is why States in which the lawyers have great influence in deciding who become judge, the courts are on the left. For example, Alaska is a very conservative State, but the courts are very much on the other side.

There will be no real resistance from the legal establishment against a leftist takeover of the Federal courts (to make them all like the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals) – there is no great love for things like the Second Amendment in this establishment.

“The internet Paul, the internet”.

The power of the left on the internet is actually very great – and not just in organizations like MoveOn (which claims three million activists), but in the internet companies themselves. Companies that most of us use (such as Google) have already shown which way they lean – whose world view they share.

And even if some (perhaps rather difficult to reach) conservative and libertarian websites remain – so what? Sorry, but a handful of websites with no broadcasters to work with are not going to defeat the left.

“But surely the rich in America will not allow the left to take over”.

This view shows the influence of the false doctrines of Marxism. The billionaires are not going to prevent anything – indeed they are often supporters of the left.

Billionaires like Warren Buffet may be more moderate than such men as George Soros, Peter Lewis and Marc Cuban – but they are still no more likely to come to the defence of talk radio than they are to oppose higher taxes (in fact they are often the loudest voices demanding higher taxes).

Indeed many of the billionaires in the United States resemble the baddies in Ian Fleming’s James Bond stories (super rich people in league with the Reds) more than they do the sustainers of the “intellectual superstructure of capitalism” of Marxist theory.

“But what about the big corporations”.

Such as General Electric?

The controllers of MSNBC and NBC (The distinction between the two has been breaking down for some time) can hardly be called enemies of the left.

I suspect that even nationalization would not really bother the top management at General Electric – they would not have to explain why the share value has done so badly over the last five years. Life would be so much less irritating without any real shareholders.

After all such de facto government owned entities (for all the claims that they are private) as Fannie Mae do not prevent top managers earning many millions of Dollars – ask Senator Woods Fund Obama’s friend Mr Johnson.

Of course ever more taxes, regulations and outright government control (from the oil refineries to insurance) makes no economic sense – but that has not stopped the left in the past and will not now.

“But why should non-Americans care what happens in the United States?”

Because the brutal truth is that neither Britain or any other part of the West can stand if America falls – there is not, and can not be, any Plan B.

Even ineffective dissent cannot be tolerated by the Europe’s authoritarians

Daniel Hannan has a short but pointed article about how the European Parliament does not hesitate to ignore its own rules if it means they can crush euro-sceptic dissent.

The European Parliament operates a corporatist system: in order to move amendments, propose debates or qualify for campaign finance, MEPs are required to join trans-national Groups. To incorporate such a Group, you need at least 20 Euro-MPs from five states. This means that, alongside the big Groups – the Christian Democrats, Liberals, Socialists, Communists and Greens – there is also a little bloc of Euro-sceptics called Independence and Democracy. There was also, briefly, a Euro-fascist alliance (erroneously termed “far Right”), which fell apart because its block-headed members couldn’t stand one another.

The new rules, drawn up by the Labour MEP (and touchy blogger) Richard Corbett, would raise the thresholds to 25 MEPs and seven states, making it harder for dissidents to register. What are they so scared of, these Euro-fanatics? After all, we sceptics represent no more than 50 or 60 MEPs out of 785. Why not treat us as an Official Opposition, thereby demonstrating their fair-mindedness and bestowing a measure of legitimacy on their institution? Because they can’t bring themselves to do it. They hate us too much.

Disgraceful but hardly surprising.

The truth is out there (II)

Sometimes the internet opens one’s eyes to whole new ways of seeing the world. A fabulous comment over on David Davis’s semi-blog (no permalink I could see, under “Sky News Debate with Tony McNulty”):

David Davis doesn’t want a real debate on the Orwellian State – he wants a controlled one that’s only on his terms with safe people like Tony Benn and Bob Geldof.

Assault on privacy online continues

Pretty gruesome stuff happening. This is old news:

The ongoing Google/YouTube-Viacom litigation has now officially spilled over to users with a court order requiring Google to turn over massive amounts of user data to Viacom. If the data is actually released, the consequences could be far more serious than the 2006 AOL Search debacle.

But this not so. And happening via backdoor of telecoms regulation.

The Telecoms Package (Paquet Telecom) is a review of European telecoms law. […] buried within it, deep in the detail, are important legal changes that relate to enforcement of copyright. These changes are a threat to civil liberties and risk undermining the entire structure of Internet, jeopardising businesses and cultural diversity.

The bottom line is that changes to telecoms regulations are needed before EU member states can bring in the so-called “3 strikes” measures – also known as “graduated response” – of which France is leading the way, but other governments, notably the UK, are considering whether to follow. A swathe of amendments have been incorporated at the instigation of entertainment industry lobbying. These amendments are aimed at bringing an end to free downloading. They also bring with them the risk of an unchecked corporate censorship of the Internet, with a host of unanswered questions relating to the legal oversight and administration.

The Telecoms Package is currently in the committee stages of the European Parliament, with a plenary vote due on 1st or 2nd September. This does not leave much time for public debate, and it reminds me of the rushed passage of the data retention directive (see Data Retention on this site). It is, if you like, regulation by stealth.

These two items have in common the attempt to undermine the infrastructure of the net/web by controlling those who provide or maintain it. Not good.

Samizdata quote of the day

On that miraculous Saturday, therefore, when the Vulcan took to the skies again – there was perhaps only one regret – that the bomb bay was not filled with ordnance, with the destination Brussels via Westminster.

EU Referendum. The author had been to watch the magnificent example of Cold War aviation take to the skies once more. Here’s a link to a site about this splendid aircraft.

Winterson commits genre

Oh my God! Jeanette Winterson has written a science fiction novel, The Stone Gods, as a speculation. Nor has she taken the marketing escape of disguising her presence by the addition of the cunning initial. There she is, in plain sight, unadorned, investing the enterprise with the gravitas of her literary reputation. As Ursula K Le Guin remarks, Winterson commits genre.

The story appears to involve a parable of our own world, allowing Winterson to derive her own dystopia from Orwell’s tradition of extrapolation. Unleavened by reality or experience, the future is a hell of advertising and reality television. Did she read Pohl and Kornbluth? Whilst Winterson’s themes of abandoned childhood and the nature of adoption inform much of her fiction, this departure allows us to see how literati react to the symbols of ecological disaster and despair.

The banal title invokes the destruction of Easter Island as symbol for the future of this Island Earth. What limits the visions of the future that mainstream writers depict as a simplistic outlier. The acceptable vision of the future is the resource crisis, the one that swamps our media daily, and forms the backdrop of Winterson’s love story.

The choice of future does not negate the quality of the story, and Winterson serves up a provocative narrative. Yet, does her painted future display a certain narrowness. The degrading and deserving darkness that many prophecy as the outcome of the civilisation they revile is easier to write than the complex and enriched society that few foretell and fewer understand.

Libertarian Presidential candidate is getting exposure

Bob Barr is looking more and more to have been an excellent choice to carry our banner this year. He is getting the sort of serious media coverage we have only dreamed of despite us working towards it for decades. Ron Paul’s run for the Republican ticket earlier this year has probably had a great deal to do with it.

On Sunday Bob appeared on CNN’s Newsroom and ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos

That is a lot of media impressions so I really have to congratulate him on a sterling start to the Libertarian Presidential Campaign. His job is not to win. That is just not possible yet. He is an educator who is out there to introduce our ideas to a mass audience for which a message of individual liberty is a novel experience. Bob is delivering in spades.

It is a good thing too: this is a message the general public will certainly will never hear from ‘the other guys’.

The last hurdle before the election

I thought our readers might wish to celebrate the end of a very long and arduous road that Carla Howell and her friends have trod. I have heard they have just passed the last hurdle and their initiative to end the income tax in Massachusetts will appear on the ballot this fall.

If you are in Massachusetts, help spread the news. This is your chance to roll back the State like it has never been rolled before.

Get out there and give the Massachusetts government a good extra hard kick in the goolies for us here at Samizdata!

A terrible book gets a demolition job

I must admit I have tended to view Naomi Klein, the author of No Logo, the anti-capitalist book, as a committed socialist but not obviously a downright liar. If this scathing review of her recent book, The Shock Doctrine, is accurate, then she he has appallingly traduced the late Professor Milton Friedman, accusing him of holding attitudes that he did not actually hold, such as over the recent invasion of Iraq (she claims he was for it, in fact he opposed it). The book, according to the review, reveals that she cannot figure out what the difference between a classical liberal and a neo-conservative is, for example. As the reviewer, Johan Norberg makes clear, a lot of “shock” events, like terrorist attacks, wars and hyperinflation do not work in the interests of classical liberals, but quite the opposite. In Weimar Germany, inflation destroyed much the middle class, helping to pave the way for Hitler. Wars have been used by national leaders to justify big increases in government powers that are often not rescinded. And so on. Klein either knows this, or cannot be bothered to mention it as it does not fit into her thesis.

Anyway, read the review. It is superb.

Apologies: I got the woman’s surname wrong, now fixed.

What the database state costs

That invaluable organisation, the Taxpayer’s Alliance, has worked out that the total cost of the various surveillance and data-gathering services favoured by the UK government is just under £20 billion, or about £800 per household. The figure is a total, not an annual sum. £20 billion is a huge figure, even in these times of inflated financial sums.

Now the question arises whether, if we really do face serious security threats – and I think we do – what else could that £20 billion have purchased that might actually have made us safer?

Of course, £20 billion could also enable quite a few tax cuts, but that is obviously hark heresy these days (sarcasm alert).

Samizdata quote of the day

Thousands are dying every year thanks to Britain’s health service not delivering the standards people expect and receive in other European countries. Billions of pounds have been thrown at the NHS but the additional spending has made no discernable difference to the long-term pattern of falling mortality. This is a colossal waste of lives and money. We need to learn lessons from European countries with healthcare systems that don’t suffer from political management, monopolistic provision and centralisation.

– Matthew Sinclair, TaxPayers’ Alliance (via Helen Evans)

I wish tennis victors would not climb over the building

One of the more annoying features of tennis today – certainly in the Wimbledon Men’s Finals – is how the victor often feels the urge to climb up the side of the stand after he has been declared the winner to embrace his family, girlfriend, mistress, personal trainer, etc. Last night, after winning the thrilling match against Federer, Nadal did all this, and then tried to climb all over the stand. I thought, “Christ, the idiot is going to fall off”. It would have been a bit tragic had this marvellous player suddenly injured himself in this way.

In future, Rafa, keep off the bloody stands.