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]
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Now that Will Wilkinson is back from his Teutonic debauching, The Fly Bottle is overflowing with typically excellent offerings.
Goldberg pretends to loathe grab-bag culture, but he and his ilk do it just the same when they pick Christianity over Celtic paganism and individual rights over collectivist subjugation. However, conservatives attempt to camouflage that their preferences are just preferences by constructing a highly selective narrative about “Western Civilization” that gives their preferences the illusion of intrinsic worth as necessary keystones of their fictitious cultural edifice. I’m not being postmodern here. I’m being descriptive.
Of the essentials of Western Civilization, Goldberg writes:
… some of the ingredients for Western civilization I have in mind are such categories as Christianity and religion in general, sexual norms, individualism, patriotism, the Canon, community standards of conduct, democracy, the rule of law, fairness, modesty, self-denial, and the patriarchy.
Why not Stoic mysticism, collectivism, military nationalism, absolute monarchy, slavery and the Napoleonic Code? Why don’t these go in Jonah’s grab bag?
Top notch stuff.
A great film and nice biscuits but…
Ginger Stampley spectacularly misunderstands not so much our views on the dynamics of insurrection, but the entire nature of the conversation that was taking place. Whilst I also think she gravely under estimates the polarisation going on in American society, I do not think that is really the issue. She says our views are based on dystopian fantasy. Well, yes… that is the whole point. Neither Walter nor I think the United States is ripe for armed groups to rise up against state tyranny… things would have to get far worse than they are for that to even be within the realm of possibilities as things stand.
I actually look to civil society in the United States, for all its many and variegated flaws, as the Anglosphere’s beacon of hope and regard it as almost certain to overcome the contrary tides of repressive statist stasis (well, almost certain). For there to be an armed insurgency in the US beyond that of fringe groups like the KKK, I would have to be quite wrong in my essentially optimistic long term view of US society. Yet if it turns out I am, and that Waco was just the first and most spectacular of many, then the dystopian fantasy would indeed be turning into dystopian fact, and the required ‘popular support’ for armed resistance Ginger talks about would indeed start to develop.
The reason I am so keen to prevent the attempted disarming of American society is that this is a wonderful litmus test of civil society’s health… and hence why I am increasingly pessimistic about already disarmed British civil society, which grows more like Stanley Kubrick’s vision of ‘A Clockwork Orange’ year by year as our common law rights are rachetted away by Brussels with the assistance of people like Tony Blair and Jack Straw and David Blunkett and Michael Hesaltine and Christopher Patten, all profoundly hostile to the essential underpinnings of non-state centred British civil society.
Thanks to Gary Larreategui for a small correction
Scholar of arcane Anglospheric Cultism, the eminent James C. Bennett of Miskatonic University, has turned up a disturbing fact after translating an ancient text. In a closed session address to Foreign Policy Research Institute, Bennett reported his findings:
H. P. Lovecraft got it garbled: It’s “In his house in Riyadh great Cthulhu lies sleeping.” That’s why the Saudi Whahabis hate all other varieties of Islam. Their form is really Cthulhu-worship.
Naturally the Saudi ambassador dismissed this as:
Obviously just another Zionist smear campaign and quite clearly racism against Middle Eastern people. So what if a few of us smell strongly of fish, commune with extraplanular creatures and have tentacles under our burqas?
Alarming stuff.
[Editor’s note: you need to have read H. P . Lovecraft’s horror stories to have the slightest idea what this means]
I came across a few articles on Newsbytes that you, dear bloggers, may find interesting.
The first deals with attempts to define and refine the Net in terms of national borders.
The next two concern privacy on the net and are worth the read. In this article, a killer found his victim thru the net while this older piece deals with your right to anonymity.
Thought provoking stuff. Enjoy.
When authorities warn you of the sinfulness of sex, there is an important lesson to be learned. Do not have sex with the authorities.
-From “Life In Hell” by Matt Groening
Tom Burroughes makes a great point with his new phrase, “False Market Fundamentalism Syndrome”. However, I think that for reasons of making it simple for the simpleton members of the press we should call it FMFS. It then sounds like a disease and we all know how the press like reporting on diseases, even ones that don’t necessarily exist. If it sounds nasty, press outlets like the BBC in the UK and CBS in the USA just on trying to be cutting edge in convincing the populace that absolutely nothing in life is safe.
Further the thoughts on ‘paleos’ of both left and right, it never ceases to amaze me to hear a senior politician make a pronouncement about how ordinary people feel about their freedom. It generally runs along the lines of; “they are too busy to be concerned with theoretical arguments about freedom. They are concerned with the money in their pocket, the state of the roads and public services.” The first time I heard this it amazed me to the core of my being.
Of course the general public has a lot to answer for, after all the natural reaction to almost anything is: “the government ought to do something.” It is critical for libertarians to counter this belief that the government is the answer to all problems. This suits statists of course since it is they who have been convincing the populace that the state is the answer to all their problems. Most depressing is that this belief pervades both the traditional left and right.
Andrew Ian Dodge
“What Sucks? Statism Sucks!“
Advocates of the imposition of irreversible transnational socialism (Trazi?) for Britain via the European Union, have long implausibly argued that it was a purely ‘economic matter’ rather than a political/constitutional issue. For the few credulous enough to actually believe that, the remarks of UK Treasury official Gus O’Donnell must have come as a bit of a shock.
Gus O’Donnell, the Treasury official charged with overseeing assessment of the tests, was cited in several newspapers on Friday as having said it would be impossible to reach a “clear and unambiguous” verdict on the tests. “Ultimately, it will be a political decision,” The Times quoted O’Donnell as telling a student seminar. But a Treasury spokesman said O’Donnell’s comments, taken from a careers presentation to a group of undergraduates in late November, had been “totally misrepresented”. “Mr O’Donnell has no recollection of saying ‘ultimately it will be a political decision’,” the Treasury spokesman said.
Ah, that explains it then.
via Reuters
Another recommended article for fellow Blogistas: Ralph Peters, a retired U.S. Army officer and author of “Fighting for the Future: Will America Triumph?”, has a piece in Opinion Journal called Riyadh is at the root of much evil, arguing that the most important source of instability and terrorism is Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. will have to confront it at some point. My knowledge of Saudi Arabia is thin so it would be good to get some discussion going on whether folk think the guy has a point or is wildly overstating the case.
Tom Burroughes
tom.burroughes@reuters.com
In response to an e-mail from a reader that asked me “Why do you distrust the state so much? How else do you expect order to be maintained and property protected?”… I present the following gem from the Daily Telegraph:
A LANDOWNER was arrested by police he had summoned to help him after more than 60 “ravers” had broken open a padlocked gate and started a party in one of his barns.
[…]
“It was like being a farmer in Zimbabwe,” Mr Benton told Radio 4’s Today programme. “The police stood outside the gate while inside people were smashing up my property and they were doing nothing about it.”
Does that answer your question?
So the Euro is born. Did I say ‘born’? Birth is a natural process. I meant ‘incepted’. From rag-tag bits of body politic it has been sewn together, laid on a slab, given a jolt of electricity and made to walk. Doubtless we shall all watch in fixed horror as it lurches through the verdant European mainland strangling small, helpless economies. I hope they don’t accuse us of not warning them
The economic arguments against the Euro have been made both here and other places with accuracy and reason and, whilst not wishing to marginalise any of them, it is worth bearing at the forefront of our minds that there is a deeper and even more sinister threat posed to this country by the European Empire than inflexible interest rates. Liberty is not just about money
Full absorption into Euroland means not just the surrender of our currency but also the extinction of our Ango-Saxon Common Law heritage. A system where the laws were passed up not handed down; where liberty was assumed, not requested, where the citizens informed the state not the other way around and the King himself was bound by them. It is not merely through the production of a few well-rigged sailing ships that this under-populated and otherwise insignificant little island became the richest country in Europe, opened up vast tracts of the globe to trade and civilisation, built the biggest empire the world has yet seen and spawned the industrial revolution. It is because of it’s Common Law heritage and organic constitution that allowed it’s citizens the freedom to innovate and the dynamism to practice
It is this guttering flame that we libertarians hold in our hands
But this will be consigned to the history books (and may not be safe even there) to be replaced by Corpus Juris and the Napoleonic Code; the continental heritage of laws handed down to the people from the princes and potentates; where citizens are granted a mere licence and where the lives and liberty of the common folk are ‘protected’ by a pottage of grandiose-sounding Convention rights, all of which can be countermanded at any time by the stroke of a bureaucrats pen. It is not for nothing that, of all the countries in mainland Europe, it is only Switzerland that has managed to stay the course of the 20th Century without despotic government, invasion or violent revolution
The is the precipice on which we teeter. It is winter in Britain and I am not talking about the weather. With our entire political and media class seemingly hell-bent on completing the subsuming of this country into the Euro-Imperium (even the ones who say they are skeptical are probably lying) what can be done to prevent this unique flame of liberty from being extinguished forever on these islands?
Across the Atlantic Ocean lies Britain’s birthchild, the fruit of it’s loins and, perhaps, it’s finest monument, the United States of America; a country which owes it’s vast wealth, power and freedom to the those same Common Law Anglo-Saxon values it inherited from it’s parent. Indeed, that America is the now the great repository and shining amplifier of those values is almost certainly why it has earned both the fear and antipathy of the grasping and paranoid European elites
In times of peril, a mother cries out for her child and a child clings to her mother. These truths we hold to be self-evident
Over on the The Catallaxy Files, top notch bloggah from down undah Jason Soon has an outstanding post about immigration.
However on the Blogical Suspects, that doctor of intestinal blogages, Will Quick suspects we Samizdatistas may have over indulged during the New Year’s festivities and developed blogorrhea due to our high volume of postings. I guess we need to cut back on the philosophical roughage, but at least we are letting it out unlike a certain un-named blog, which is clearly very full of it.
Just joking Charles, and hey Brian, we think you are rather nice really (“some of my best friends are liberals, honest”) and feel free to send us more of those pictures. hehehehe.
Rand Simberg is in lethal form reporting the death of Buddy, the Clinton’s dog, over on Transterrestrial
Best of the Web helpfully points out the other occasions when the Clintons were “deeply saddened.” I suspect that a couple of those 2200+ occasions were the deaths of Vince Foster and Ron Brown. I wonder if Buddy was about to write a tell-all book?
Nasty!
Besides the oversights and misreads by Charles Dodgson that Perry has already pointed out, Charles also missed the whole point behind my argument when he says
But the state is involved in sales of private cars in the United States; individual states maintain registries of who owns what vehicle. That’s what the funny metal plates with the numbers on them are all about. They also generally demand annual inspections, and will deny the use of a car even to that car’s lawful owner if they don’t like the smell of burning oil coming out of the tailpipe.
I was more hopeful in this bit where Charles stumbled upon the truth but then he picked himself up and hurried away as if nothing had happened.
As to the breathalyzers, that’s not tied to purchases, but the sad facts there are even worse. Even if you’ve already purchased a vehicle, the state will deny you the use of that vehicle — your own lawfully acquired property — for trifles like a few drunk driving arrests. And, as Walter seemed to acknowledge, most of them won’t let you drive unless you buy insurance, interfering with another private choice.
Yes. The state places many regulations on the use of your property after you buy it. It does not stop you from acquiring it nor does it specify from whom you can buy it or to whom you can sell it. In most states the local government is more concerned with collecting sales tax on the transaction than on who was involved in the deal. Indeed, all the use regulations only apply if you intend to operate the auto on public roads and lands. Keep it in the garage or drive it only on your property and you often don’t have to deal with any of that.
With guns, laws were originally of a similar “use type” and codified what was already common sense, i.e. no shooting in town, etc. The current trend in firearm regulation, however, interferes with the acquisition and possession, not just the use. That is a very important difference. I believe the technical term is prior restraint but perhaps a Constitutional scholar out there could clear that up.
This issue actually runs deeper than guns. It touches upon the fundamental worldview of individuals, states and the balance of rights. Are we subjects with a few privileges doled out by an over-riding state or are we citizens with basic rights that our chosen leaders must observe?
As you probably guessed, I lean very heavily toward the latter. While I value the US Constitution, I don’t believe it grants us any rights. It simply codifies what our basic rights already are. That’s the bit in the pre-amble talking about self-evident truths and inalienable rights. The US is different from most countries in that the government acknowledges its obligation to recognize those inalienable rights and vows to protect them. To the extent that it limits those rights and the liberties they describe, the government reneges on that promise.
I have to ask about this one too:
Which is what I think of people who try to protect their civil rights with guns. Any actual use of the guns against government authority turns into a firefight which, even Perry acknowledges, you basically can’t win:
Why then has every newly installed tyrant and dictator begun their reign by rounding up the guns in private hands? No to dwell too long in the past, but I believe it was Ben Franklin who said “Tyranny can not exist in the United States because the whole body of the people is armed.” (emphasis mine)
Charles may not realize it, but he is making our point when he states.
If Britain were just trying to maintain control and damn the consequences, they (Irish Republicians) would all have been rounded up and shot, along with any other Catholic who showed a hint of sympathy for the cause. There’s a ready stock of Protestant militants to serve as informers and triggermen …
Yup. You have some definite sectarian violence there. But what if the weapons are scattered across ethnic, racial, religious and economic lines and you can’t get one group to turn on the other? When everybody is a potential resister and willing to pay the price, you have to kill everybody to end all resistance.
Which brings us to the granddaddy of them all. Do you think the US military would fire on its own citizens? A very similar question was actually asked some Marines during a training exercise in 29 Palms. The exact question is in this article, but the upshot was something like: “Would you fire on citizens who refused to turn in illegal weapons?” 60% said no, 28% said yes, 12% didn’t care either way. The implications of those numbers could fill volumes.
But aren’t you just a teensy weensy bit curious why they asked?
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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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