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]
|
A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.
– Edward R. Murrow
Interesting predictions from both Jay Zilber and Glenn at Instapundit that Israel is setting the stage for the Jordanian reoccupation of the West Bank as the means by which Israel can avoid becoming host to what is well on the way to becoming a permanent state of Palestinian Intifada.
It is certainly a fascinating idea but I have one big question for these two esteemed blogpundits… what on earth is in it for Jordan? It seems to me that the Hashemites would have to be out of their minds to want to take on the responsibility for several million pissed off, radicalised, impoverished Palestinians.
Do not forget that in 1970-71 the Bedouin Jordanian Army forcefully crushed the PFLP after years of Palestinian agitation and violence, ejecting them from Northern Jordan at bayonet point (and leading to the creation of ‘Black September’). Do they really want to go through all of that again? Somehow I doubt it.
Jonah Goldberg over on National Review Online writes in Freedom Kills, one of the least informed articles about libertarianism I have read in a long time. Frankly I have read better from the ghastly Noam Chomsky, which is just about the biggest insult I have written in a very long time. The sheer depth of his complete and utter lack of understanding of what underpins libertarianism is summed up thus in two paragraphs:
In this sense, cultural libertarians are less bigoted than their liberal cousins. The libertarians think all ideologies – so long as there’s no governmental component – are equal.
Huh? So let me get this straight. People who are profoundly influenced by Ayn Rand or Karl Popper or Murray Rothbard or Hans-Hermann Hoppe et al, think all ideologies are the same? Has this guy ever actually met a libertarian in real life? What breathtaking ignorance of the subject about which he opines. If anything, libertarians only think all non-libertarian ideologies are the same in so far as they reject them as just so much morally subjective crap. Libertarians are the very antithesis of what he calls ‘liberals’ in that respect, hardly what he sneeringly calls “cousins”.
But of course, the flip side of this is that cultural libertarianism is essentially a form of arrogant nihilism. There are no universal truths or even group truths (i.e., the authority of tradition, patriotism, etc.) � only personal ones. According to cultural libertarianism, we should all start believing in absolutely nothing, until we find whichever creed or ideology fits us best. We can pick from across the vast menu of human diversity – from all religions and cultures, real and imagined � until we find one that fits our own personal preferences.
Now due to the fact libertarianism comes in many hyphenated forms, it is risky to generalize about ‘what all libertarians think’, but overwhelmingly they operate on the basis of objective epistemology (look it up, Jonah), typically of the Randian or Popperian type. As a consequence they strongly advocate objective morality as the only basis for legitimacy, rather than subjective prejudice-based state centred coercion of the sort Goldberg seems to think holds American culture together. If you hold that morality can only be valid on the basis of objective knowledge, how can we also be “believing in absolutely nothing , until we find whichever creed or ideology fits us best”? Almost everything he ascribes to libertarianism is in fact its antithesis.
At one point Goldberg says about himself “if I were smarter and more patient […]”, well Jonah, there is little chance any libertarian reading your incoherent rant would have thought otherwise on either point. Try actually reading Ethics of Liberty first (gawd knows there is enough about Rothbard to criticise, just not the on the grounds Goldberg does).
Addendum: Will Wilkinson on the enigmatically named The Fly Bottle also has no less that two excellent skewerings of the ignorant Mr. Goldberg’s dismal offering.
___
Thanks (sort of) to Hannah Biel for pointing me at the Goldberg article. I have been grinding my teeth as a result for the last few hours.
On the evening of September 23rd 1999, Harry Stanley, a 46 year old Grandfather, was returning to his home in Hackney, East London. He had spent the afternoon at his brother’s house helping him to repair a coffee table
Harry took one of the table legs home with him to work on. He wrapped it up in a plastic bag
On the way home, he stopped off at a pub for a drink. As he left one of the other patrons rang the police and reported ‘an Irishman carrying a shotgun’. (Harry was actually Scottish). The oblivious Harry continued on his journey home until he was some 50 yards from his front door when two policeman from the SO19 Armed Response Unit opened fire on him. One bullet hit Harry in the temple and he died instantly
Today, after a 12 month long enquiry, the Crown Prosecution Service announced that the police officers who carried out the shooting acted in ‘reasonable self-defence’ and would not face any charges
In the absence of a private prosecution by the Stanley family, we will never know quite what occured on that evening and why Harry is dead as police and witness statements and reports will remain filed away in the CPS cabinets. However, one doesn’t need to be privvy to these documents to ask some pertinent questions about why Harry Stanley was so ruthlessly gunned down outside his home
Harry was neither a terrorist nor a criminal and it seems highly unlikely that he would not have responded to some shouted warning. It seems even less likely that, confronted with the police, he would have tried to run or fight it out given that he was recovering from surgery for cancer. Is it all plausible that, acting on an unsubstantiated allegation, armed officers made a decision not to take any chances and simply executed him?
We shall never know for the officers in question will not stand trial. What should stand trial though is the policy of victim disarmerment which has left Britain with a duopoly of fire-power between state agents and criminals. If you’re not one you must be the other and holding something that could possibly be interpreted as a weapon gives said state agents a carte blanche to rub you out and call it ‘self-defence’. After all, as far as they are concerned you must be a dangerous criminal, right
The British police have advertised the fact that anyone found in a public place with a gun or something that looks like a gun will be met with lethal force. But such is the depth of anti-gun hysteria that this policy of extra-judicial execution is not only tolerated but demanded and will clearly be acted upon in the event of rumour/allegation/sniff/hint/outright lie. No chances are to be taken and no questions are to be asked
For us in Britain it is now too late to change this state of affairs but for those Americans reading this please remember Harry Stanley when the victim-disarmers tell you that guns are dangerous. Tell them that over here in London, table-legs can get us killed by the very people we pay to protect us
I am sending in a vital article from Bosnia-Herzegovina tonight. But the problem with being with my friends in here in Sarajevo is that I now have little sticky crumbs of baklava in between the keys of my portable computer (no, sorry, not the infamous biMac I was fantasizing about before but a real Titanium PowerBook) and there is cigarette ash everywhere. But if there was no baklava crumbs and cigarette ash, I would not believe I was here. Yes, I know I am rambling but I am slightly drunk on Stara Sljivovica and hopped up on endless tiny cups of nuclear strength Bosnian coffee.
Ok, the important information now: over on the wonderful blog Mind over what matters, there is a picture of Jay Zilber in bed. It is soooooo cute!
But what I want to know is who is that funny looking guy that he is lying on?
Tim Blair has written an utterly hilarious piece about a loopy article in the Sydney Morning Herald that contends that the appeal of Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings is fundamentally racist. Chris Henning writes
Harry and the hobbits, with their takeaway racism, offer the same comfort for the whole world: join our tribe, be special with us, despise our subhumans.
To which Tim Blair replies
Which is almost exactly what my eight-year-old niece told me after she’d read her first Potter book. “I feel better now about the destruction of my community, Uncle Timmy,” she said. “Now can we please go out and kill some Jews? Please, Uncle Timmy! You promised!”
Outstanding. Read the whole of Blair’s article, it had me howling with mirth.
And thus, when the pseudo-democratic authoritarian regime of Vladimir Putin, notable for crushing the free press in Russia, come out in favour of gun-control (victim disarmament) advocates in America, it becomes clear that supporters of well armed liberty are well and truly on the right track. According to World Net Daily, our liberty loving Russian ‘friends’ have done exactly that
Russia supports restrictions on U.S. gun ownership, according to official sources, pointing out that after the events of Sept. 11 gun sales in the United States increased. The blame for increased gun sales, according to Moscow and anti-gun activists, lies with gun manufacturers. “American firearms manufacturers saw their chance at profiting from the tragedy of people scared of threats from international terrorists,” Moscow declared. Asserting that “a nationwide campaign has been launched to advertise pistols and guns,” Moscow referred to a recent press conference held to “draw attention to gun makers’ marketing efforts.” The event included participation by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., and Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice. The statements were reported by the Voice of Russia World Service, the official broadcasting service of the Russian government.
I can only assume that this is actually a plot by unknown well meaning NRA sympathisers within the Russian establishment, because I can hardly imagine a better way of encouraging a surge in US civilian gun acquisition than ‘The Official Russian State Media does not want you to own weapons’. Superb. Well done, Vlad. I knew you were on our side really.
Our most recent new link is the wonderfully named Recovering Liberal. The term ‘liberal’ obviously being used in it’s North American sense (i.e. illiberal). The subtitle is a particular delight: sacred cow slaughterhouse. Excellent. At first glance this blog seems more neo-conservative that libertarian but is a good read nonetheless. After all, us capitalists gotta stick together!
Whilst on the subject of interestingly named blogs, I would be interested to hear from readers what blog titles tickle their fancy (regardless of content).
My favourites are Opinionated Bastard, Fevered Rants and, possibly the best, Where HipHop meets Libertarianism.
What do you think?
Addendum: Yikes. What could I have been thinking? How can I write about interestingly named blogs without a tip of the hat to The Edge of England’s Sword and The Fly Bottle, both of whom we are already linked to (see side bar).
There is a good article by Douglas Carey called Wartime’s Lost Liberties over on the Ludwig von Mises Institute site.
Many others say that any lost liberties will be restored once the war is past us, or once terrorism has been eradicated. Although history has shown us that the most egregious laws and orders are usually rescinded eventually, each bold step by the government has led to even bolder steps in the future.
That is the trouble with laws: they are easy to pass but hard to repeal. One merely has to look at the idiotic British Pub Licensing Laws, introduced as a ‘temporary measure’ to curtail alcohol related absenteeism in the factories during World War I. They are still on the books today.
Samizdata reader Kate Redmond wrote in pointing out that view similar to mine regarding the dismal Taliban member John Walker are appearing beyond blogland. Kate writes
I have finally started to see some vaguely similar sentiments in the mainstream press. I don’t know if you saw this article by Mark Steyn this
week:
I’m not in favour of trying him for treason: Alan Dershowitz and the other high-rent lawyers are already salivating over the possibility of a two-year circus with attendant book deals and TV movies. But there is another way: on page four of John Walker’s US passport, it states that any American who enlists in a foreign army automatically loses his citizenship. Mr Walker wants to be Abdul Hamid: Mr Bush should honour his wishes. Let us leave him to the Northern Alliance and let his San Francisco fancypants lawyers petition to appear before the Kabul bar, if there is one. It would, surely, be grossly discriminatory to subject Mr Hamid to non-Islamic justice.
Actually, what it says in my U.S. passport is that, Under certain circumstances, you may lose your U.S. citizenship by performing, voluntarily and with the intention to relinquish U.S. citizenship, any of the following acts: […] (3) serving in the armed forces of a foreign state
So, I guess the crux of the matter for Steyn’s argument is whether Walker intended to renounce his citizenship. I’m not certain that it’s not possible to serve in a foreign army without losing one’s citizenship. I believe I’ve heard of American citizens who have served in the Israeli army and I know Swiss-U.S. dual citizens who almost certainly do their mandatory Swiss military service.
Similarly many US citizens served with the British military prior to America’s entry into WWII, notably the pilots who flew for the RAF during the Battle of Britain. There were also US ‘Internationals’ with the Croatian HV and HVO during the recent Balkan Wars and certainly the State Department never made any attempt to go after them. I think the ‘certain circumstances’ quoted above is intentional legal wiggle room, thus it very much depends on exactly whose military you have joined. Joining the French Legion Étranger is not likely to get people hopping up and down (though in reality most US members of the LÉ claim to be ‘Canadian’) but signing on for a jaunt with North Korea, toting a Kalashnokov with the Cubans or becoming Abdul Hamid and joining the Taliban is a rather different matter.
I must say the prospect of the likes of Alan Dershowitz turning John Walker into some cause célèbre is quite an unpleasant thought and I love Mark Steyn’s suggestion on that matter. On the contention that anything that thwarts Alan Dershowitz must surely be in the national interest, Walker should loose his citizenship on that basis alone.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
– Mark Twain
I’ve long thought myself reasonably knowledgeable on World War II, and in particular on the air war. I had heard Belfast was bombed by a few planes at some point. One friend told me his father sat up in the hills and watched the bombers flying in. I’d seen mentions of it in various histories of the air war, but one is left with the impression the entire Battle of Britain was in the south of England. In terms of strategic importance, it was. London, Coventry and various attacks on other English cities were the heart of the action. That is where the “The Few” fought and died in the Battle of Britain. Squadrons went north for training and reforming. Other raids happened here and there but nothing that was terribly important to the course of the war. A couple raids on Belfast? When you read that amidst the history of the war in the skies over London it hardly registered even if you were sitting in Belfast. The unbidden first thought to cross one’s mind as Belfast resident was that we were doing quite a good enough job blowing it up ourselves. Why on Earth would we have needed any help from strangers?
The first raid was what I had believed it all to have been like. A few bombs on a Harland and Wolff factory, a few deaths here and there. That is what I had always believed had happened here.
I was very, very wrong as I found out tonight from a BBC Northern Ireland commemoration taped in our new Waterfront Hall. Local artists (several of whom I know from my many wastrel nights as a working musician in Ireland) sang period songs in between the film clips and dramatic readings of the words of those who lived through the raids. It is well worth the viewing but since most of you can’t do that, the web site is the next best thing.
900 people died that night on April 15th, 1941 in a second raid on a nearly defenseless city. The first had been a revelation to the Germans. No fighters defended the city. A handful of anti-aircraft guns were the sum total of defences. That was all there was to face over 200 He111’s and Ju88’s that roved at will over the city. Even those few defending guns were silenced when the telephone exchange was destroyed and all coordination lost.
In terms of numbers killed it was the worst single raid carnage of the Battle of Britain but one. Did any of you know that? I certainly did not.
The third raid came on May 4th of 1941. Belfast was still nearly defenseless. There were a handful of defending Spitfires and Hurricanes. This time “only” about 200 people died in the rain of incendiaries that devastated the city. But the destruction was far more complete. It left Belfast as devastated as any city in England and perhaps worse than most. Vast areas of housing were levelled in the conflagration that was visible from the Glen Shane pass 45 miles away. Ships were sunk in the harbour; the city centre was half destroyed.
No matter how much one reads the history of that terrible time, it gives one pause to realize the scope of the war was so vast that raids as devastating as these are reduced to minor historical footnotes.
|
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.
|
