“I always felt this country was going down the tubes when the television folk replaced Basil Brush with Roland Rat.”
My dad, with his finger on the pulse as usual. Here is a tribute page to television’s most superior fox.
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February 11th, 2007 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
 I read the headline of John Lloyd’s article in the FT Magazine this week, and I read it again, and again. Every time it seemed to make less sense than before:
Regardless of what it is or is not right for the government to do, state intrusion means something is no longer a matter of private morality, or morality at all. It is certainly not private, once the state is involved. And regulation displaces morality. The capacity for choice is required for morals to play a role. Reading the article was even more perplexing. To the extent Lloyd’s piece is about the Catholic/gay-adoption argument, it is as tedious as most of the vacuous discussion on the question. What engaged and enraged me were his premises. Mr Lloyd in this discussion treats the state as a kind of super person, possessed of its own opinions and moral sense, and that hectoring people who do not conform to those pseudo-desires is legitimate.
False dichotomy and all, this is the authentic voice of the New Labour branch of civic republicanism: ‘citizenship’, which is to say personhood, defined by duty to the state-collective. He notes entirely accurately that:
The square brackets there stand for the omission of two and three-quarter paragraphs, so apologists for the New Labour point of view may object that the last clause refers only to removing some disadvantages from homosexuals. But I am not being unfair. Ensuring that society as a whole observes the new order is the key to the project. Despite there being other theories of the welfare state that I and other Samizdatistas might reject but that are less repugnant to human autonomy, we are now offered a Hobson’s choice: be treated as drone in the sense of a worthless idler – or become a drone in the Borg sense, actually not a fertilising drone but a sterile ergate, emptied of all capacity for moral choice. What is the eGovernmental equivalent of soft hands, marking the unproductive drones out for hounding to destruction of their dronish identity? Inadequate contribution. Failure to comply with whatever compliance is required. You will not will incorrectly. You will comply. February 11th, 2007 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
Back in my day, the toms weren’t much to look at, but you look at these Polish birds in London these days and yer think, blimey, I’d pay money for that! – So said a London taxi cab driver the other day, starting off with what I had taken to be the preamble to an anti-immigration rant to a captive audience (me) but which turned out to be a hosanna to the value to the British gene-pool of the latest wave of mass immigration. He said because of the area he worked, he frequently picked up and delivered high class ‘courtesans’ to their place of gainful employ. February 10th, 2007 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
Vladimir Putin, the former KGB member who runs Russia as if the Soviet Union was still alive and well, does not like the fact the US is prone to take military action outside its own borders, claiming it is causing a new arms race. Arms race? With who? China is certainly arming itself but sclerotic Russia? I would love to see some figures for Russian arms procurement over the last ten years to get some insight into the true strength of Russia as a serious military power. The Russian GDP is about $1.7 trillion… i.e. slightly less than Italy… and does anyone really loose much sleep over what the President of Italy thinks? Still, it seems a bit perverse for a man who seems keen to sell technology to Iran to be complaining about all those things the pesky Yanks are doing which are not in his interests. February 10th, 2007 | 76 comments - (Comments are closed)
This man writes very well and very entertainingly, but I wish he would stop using the word ‘liberal’ to describe people who want to restrict and often abolish liberty. Liberal is a good word, and we who believe in liberty should keep hold of the word tight. Calling shameless collectivists, who believe neither in economic nor ‘social’ liberty nor any other kind of liberty, ‘liberal’ will destroy this good word. When someone disagrees with you about how to protect and extend liberty, he is still entitled to be called a liberal. When he stops even bothering about liberty and starts saying that liberty is neither an important end, nor even an important means towards the achievement of other worthy ends, then what sense does it make to let him take the word liberal off with him into the tyrannical bog that he has blundered or marched into? In the USA, it would appear that the battle for this word was won and lost long ago. But on this side of the Atlantic, the word ‘liberal’ still means something far more truly liberal. We must keep it that way. This short posting is the sort of thing I am objecting to:
The point is a good one, as are so many points made by this writer. But… Liberals? I also think that describing your very sharp views as coming from the ‘House of Dumb’ is, well, dumb. He is not a bit dumb, and I am sure he has his reasons for doing this, but whatever they may be, if I learn them I do not expect to be persuaded by them. Irony perhaps? Whatever. Argumentatively speaking, calling yourself dumb amounts to constructing a huge open goal for your opponents to tap in a succession of soft goals. One of the basic rules of propaganda is: do not put yourself down. Speak out with clarity, seriousness and sincerity. By all means make trivial jokes about yourself, but the seriously wounding jokes should always be on the other fellows. ‘House of Dumb’ ought to be a blog dedicated to the idiocies of the non-liberal, anti-liberal collectivist creeps, and it briefly crossed my mind while writing this sentence that maybe this is what the man had in mind, which would have made this sentence read very foolishly. But then I remembered that he calls himself ‘DumbJon’. It is his own house that he is talking about, just as I had been assuming. And his very name, never mind his blog’s name, is a pre-emptive cringe. Right wingers bloggers do this a lot, with their I-know-what-you-think-I-am-but-I-don’t-care names. They think it is showing toughness and wit. It think it is admitting that you are wrong before you even open your mouth. I repeat, I really like how ‘DumbJon’ writes, and I agree with point after point that he scores against his hated “liberal” anti-liberals. I particular, agree with him, as many ferocious opponents of Islamism or “Islamic extremism” often do not that Islam itself is a huge problem for the West, rather than the Islam problem merely being a few nutters who take it too far. What the nutters do is take Islam seriously, just as they claim to. Anyway, having made my points about liberality and dumbness, I will leave it at that and continue to read House of Dumb with profit and pleasure. It is obviously far too late for ‘DumbJon’ himself to consider any name changes. But, to any other worthy people with ideas like his who are still wondering what to call their blogs, I say: do not be ironic about yourself if you want to be truly persuasive and truly wounding to those whom you seek to wound. Do not build the insults of your opponents into your descriptions of yourself and of your ideas. And do not hand your opponents compliments that they do not deserve. Do not, for example, call people ‘liberal’ when they are nothing of the kind. February 9th, 2007 | 34 comments - (Comments are closed)
All credit to the Guardian for risking accusations of heresy for publishing such impious sanity. February 9th, 2007 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
A law firm I use sends out a regular newsletter to their business clients. This arrived in my mailbox some time back. At first I just read it and thought ‘interesting’. But reading it again, I think it may be of interest to some Samizdatistas. Sections 1 and 2 seem reasonable enough. Section 3 is iffy. But, starting with section 4, some things definitely look like, if actually enforced, they will have a substantial effect on business in China and its overall economic trends. Things like this are what may provide concern for China’s continued economic growth:
We have a lot of commenters and contributors who travel to China; presumably some of them have business there. I would be interested in knowing what they think of these proposed labor market reforms. Will China actually try to enforce all of these parts of the law, or is it just for show? And if they do enforce it, what will the repercussions be? February 9th, 2007 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
Richard North has a terrific review of the book “Affluenza” by Oliver James. Even reading the cover of this book while browsing through a Waterstone’s shop the other day, I could tell that a book called “Affluenza” was bound to trot out the argument that we comfortably-off westerners were being ruined by too much of a good thing. Flumoxxed by thousands of choices of toothpaste, CDs, breakfast cereals, cars, wallpapers, books, foreign holidays and designer clothes, we just cannot cope. All this stuff, all this wealth, is crippling us. North will have none of it:
Well, since “selfishness” is often a pejorative way of saying that people wish to be happy and prefer to breathe and have a good time rather than be miserable, I usually automatically tune out criticisms of capitalism on the grounds that it fosters selfishness. Even if one is not a great admirer of the late novelist Ayn Rand, I think it is fair to credit her with re-connecting with the old Aristotelian tradition in pointing out that happiness, enjoyment of the material things of life can and do go hand in hand with virtue and goodness. Well all is said and done, when a collectivist/socialist/fascist/some other bully attacks liberalism for “selfishness”, what they are really demanding is that we live our lives according to their – selfish – desires for a particular utopia. → Continue reading: A great demolition of a very, very silly book February 8th, 2007 | 29 comments - (Comments are closed)
This morning, when I read Guy’s post about his and the public’s responses to the letter bombing, I felt a thrill of excitement. I have been expecting and looking for signs that this time is finally coming. I actually have found some comfort in the acceleration of the recent decline of liberty and privacy in the UK. It is slow declines that go undetected and unchallenged. Generations may forget, but individuals remember. When good intentions run amok, individuals remember what the original justification was. James Madison in Federalist 51, said “Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.” Recognition of this danger seems to be unique to English cultures. Being farther removed from the UK, I have a different and wider perspective. My expectations come from reading more Tolkien than Times. And from reading history, not histrionics. English literary and political history is one of awakenings. In the past millennium, freedom has been won in sweeping victories, and is only lost through neglect. For two of my favorite authors, Lewis and Tolkien, awakening was the sole plot line of virtually their entire life’s work. Dickens’s best known character is Ebenezer Scrooge, and his story is the essence of an awakening. This struggle against obsessive domination by a big brother state will be difficult with many wobbles and diversions. There will be times when backward steps out number the forward ones. But my confident expectation is that the history of Britain and of English speaking cultures everywhere is on our side. Liberty “lost in the pursuit,” will be reclaimed. It always has been. This event inspires a feeling that confuses a lot of people. They cannot quite put their finger on it. Some have mentioned schadenfreude. No. That’s not it. In fact, that particular viciousness is so alien to English speakers that we need to borrow a European word for it. I am confident that no person here takes any sick pleasure from that clerk’s suffering. The trail of English history is a search for justice, not redistribution of suffering. The feeling this event inspires is deeper than that and it is a just and justified one. This feeling is coming from our recognition of possibility, of alliance, of purpose; the first perceptions of a change in the direction of history. Since this feeling is one we have felt seldom and mentioned even less, it does not surprise me that it should go unrecognized. But when I read Guy’s post this morning, I felt it. Joy. February 8th, 2007 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
I just picked up Tuesday’s Guardian to do my clippings (everything is behind), and found an article by George Monbiot, an attack on loony-toon ‘documentary’ Loose Change, almost all of which I agree with. Even when he says:
He is right. Those are the real issues. He is on the wrong side of them mostly, but they are worth arguing about. When he suggests that the delusional state of politics is caused insufficient democracy, he is wrong about that too as there is actually too much, the principal form of governance in the English-speaking world being imbecility howlback. But at least he has identified the problem. Shock of recognition: Monbiot and I are brothers under the skin. We belong to recognisably the same impersonal, evolving, rationalist civilization in which there are real contentions, even though we have extremely different takes on it. The screw-Loose-Changers, bin-Laden-ists, the creationists, all live in a personified universe where humans are ants: someone is permanently in charge of everything, and anyone who disagrees is not just wrong but marked for destruction. February 8th, 2007 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
On occasion over the last 20 years I have met an animal-rights hysteric who sobbingly insisted the ALF “are not terrorists”, and that their campaigns of persecution were justified – though never someone who would say scientists should be murdered. Equally I have only rarely come across Irish republican sympathisers who passively supported the IRA in fighting ‘British colonialism’ – though never anyone who thought bombing civilians was a good idea. But yesterday alone I spoke to three people, respectable middle-class people in politics and business, who volunteered remarks on our latest letter-bombings that very much suggested they were pleased, and they expected me to be too. That is surprising enough. But the trouble is, dear reader, I was. I certainly do not want more bombings. I hope it is stopped before anyone is hurt. I would not countenance doing something myself that by deliberate action might injure some unknown other person. But nonetheless there is something in me that exults in this violence in way I – a person revolted by boxing and war-footage – have never felt. Someone, somewhere, is fighting back! There is no excuse for this. I am fighting back myself in a peaceful liberal way, through the legitimate means of political campaigning within the law. The persistent fantasy about long-handled bolt-cutters that springs out of the back of my mind 100 times a day, every time I see the snakey armoured cables of a CCTV camera, remains a fantasy. No need for violence. Not even against things, let alone people. And the spreading conception, that resort to violence is a right if people do not do what you want is a recipe for bloody anarchy. Violence is counter-productive. But my emotions, and those of my interlocutors, hint that just beneath the surface parts of Britain are boiling. A lot of people have had enough of the surveillance state, though they are bonded, compliant, cowed by the suggestion that to oppose it makes them “a friend of terrorists,” an enemy of Helfansafey, or even of Skoolzanospitalz. The people who spoke to me believed that whoever is doing it is doing it as a protest against the tracking of motorists, and that my public position as an uncowed opponent of the securocrats made me someone it was safe to say such things to. I hope that this is not as bad as it seems. I am sure that we are not so desperate, yet, in Britain that liberty requires insurrection. But I also hope that the bomber is not an isolated madman. I hope he is an extreme outlier of a general public anger at being constantly watched and continually chivvied by officialdom. If is, then a peaceful counter-revolution does require people to speak out against the inspectorate, not just to those they think might share their views, but publicly. February 8th, 2007 | 45 comments - (Comments are closed)
A U.S. politician wants to pass a law that would make it a crime to cross the road while listening to an MP3 player or some other device that presumably screens out the noise of approaching traffic. For one’s own safety, naturally. People who wear iPods while walking around are a menace to themselves and this sort of bad behaviour should be banned immediately, naturally (sarcasm alert). Alas, the story I have linked to does not give any examples of where a pedestrian was run over by a car because the person happened to be daydreaming while listening to Mozart or for that matter rocking to ACDC. Music, it’s the new menace. February 7th, 2007 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
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