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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I detect something of a ‘first principles’ air hanging over this blog at the moment. An impatient urge to push rudely past the tennis-match formality of polite debate and embrace the raw, beating heart of the matter.
This atmosphere may not last and, truth be told, I hope it doesn’t, lest it descends into an arid aesthetism that tends to mitigate heavily against the kind of rumbustious fun we prefer to trade in. That said, I wish to strike while the iron is hot and use this window of opportunity to get something off my chest (where it has been squatting like a toad).
Over at ‘The Edge of England’s Sword’ the otherwise reliably insightful Iain Murray has been conducting his own personal War on Drugs. Iain has referred to a report indicating the cannabis is not a ‘gateway’ drug (i.e. people who use cannabis will not necessarily gravitate towards using ‘harder’ drugs such as cocaine, heroin etc). Iain takes the view that the report is misleading for reasons that, I daresay, he could explain with his customary precision. I think it is fair to say that Iain, along with many others, opposes drug legalisation.
I take objection to Iain’s position and not because I have any persuasive evidence as to whether cannabis is or is not a ‘gateway’ drug. It is because I simply do not care.
→ Continue reading: First, they came for the opium…
Here’s another “wonder of capitalism story. Yes folks, Internet connections on passenger airplanes. As Patrick Crozier of Transport Blog, who piloted me to the story, puts it:
Look, no Ministers of Transport, no Euro-directives, no dirigisme. Isn’t greed good.
I suppose, what with Samizdata being in the gloomy mood it’s in just now, various among us will find ways to be depressed even about this. Either (a) it will offer terrorists new ways to hijack airplanes, blow them up or even fly them into famous landmarks, without even being on them. Or else (b) it will be annoying to have to sit next to a surfer or emailer, especially if he has a sound card. Like portable phones on trains all over again, in other words.
But I’m impressed. Patrick has now bestowed upon me automatic posting rights to Transport Blog, for when he isn’t in the mood. So maybe one day I’ll do a celebratory posting to TB from an airplane:
“Patrick and transportsmen everywhere, how are you my old mates? How’s things? Trains all late as usual, are they? Cars and buses and lorries all jammed up? Good, good. I’m now two and half minutes away from landing at Stanstead. I estimate I’m somewhere north of Watford. I’ve been delayed by strong cross winds but I’ll be at arrivals in thirty three minutes and expect to be back at base in one hour and forty seven and a quarter minutes, approximately, can’t be sure exactly. You may have to delay the meeting by three and a bit minutes, maybe four. Or so. I’m doing my final approach now. The flaps are coming out into flap mode. The wheels are now down. No, I tell a lie. Yes, here they come. Oops. Rather bumpy, my son, rather bumpy. But mustn’t grumble, know what I mean? Have to unplug now. See you at head office in one hour, forty two and eleven sixteenths minutes. Give or take. Gotta rush.”
Maybe not. Seriously, when I’m actually on that airplane I’ll have something better than that to say, and it will be good to keep up with the blogs. I think this is very good news.
Even more significant of the inherent weakness of the collectivist theories is the extraordinary paradox that from the assertion that society is, in some sense, more than merely the aggregate of all individuals, their adherents regularly pass by a sort of intellectual somersault to the thesis that, in order that the coherence of this larger entity be safeguarded, it must be subjected to conscious control, that is, to the control of what in the last resort must be an individual mind.
– F. A. Hayek
A British court today has ruled that Darren Taylor, a burglar who was stabbed to death with his own knife by homeowner John Lambert, was lawfully killed.
Taylor and his accomplice, Ian Reed, both high on drugs and drink, burst into the Lambert’s home and held a knife to the throat of Mrs Lambert, demanding £5,000 from the couple. In the ensuing melee, John Lambert managed to kill Taylor and drive off Reed.
When the police finally arrived, they arrested Mr Lambert for murder, although all charges were later dropped against him whilst the surviving criminal, Ian Reed, was sentenced to eight years in prison for robbery.
It would be nice if there was a presumption of innocence when the cops show up and see situations such as these. After all, when the cops shoot a man dead for no good reason at all, it is just taken as a given that it was lawfully done. In John Lambert’s case, his rights were ultimately upheld but it is hard to escape the feeling that there is one rule for agents of the state and another for its subjects.
Alas, the ‘British Disease’ appears to have spread to Australia:
“Australia is set to ban more than 500 types of handguns and will give people six months to hand in their arms or risk going to prison.”
Is there still time for free Australians to fight back? If so, then I urge them not to make the same mistake that gun-owners in the UK made by trying to defend gun-ownership as necessary to the continued participation in shooting sports. Minority sports are casually expendable. Not so, the right to self-defence. It is the latter that you must fight for. It also has the benefit of being the truth.
Make sure every Australian knows that. Shout it from the top of Ayers Rock.
Samizdata Illuminatus occasionally has a turn of phrase that I can only envy:
“This bespeaks a political elite on the Continent of Europe that is increasingly aloof and out of touch with ordinary citizens. On one level, this is encouraging, because such arrogance usually comes before a fall from grace. However, it also suggests that if the situation is not tackled soon, the anger boiling up in Germany and elsewhere could turn ugly.”
I don’t know about Germany but I can report that to some extent the problem of an out of touch elite may be addressed in France. Unlike anywhere else in Western Europe the French presidential election in France this year produced a second round run-off between one right-wing sleazeball and a beyond the pale authoritarian populist. The Socialist Party candidate got less than one in five votes on such a low turnout that the abstention rate alone spoke of “a crisis for democracy”.
In Britain we’ve become so accustomed to hearing hyped up scaremongering every time a racialist candidate gets more than 500 votes in Blackburn, that we don’t realise that the scared commentators in France were, well… really scared.
Unlike Britain, most of Europe contains large numbers of people who actually know what it’s like to have soldiers kick down the door of their home, or a neighbour’s. → Continue reading: “Oui, premier ministre!”
Richard Miniter, who gave a speech at the Libertarian Alliance conference described by David Carr, enthusiastically recommends this essay by David Warren, entitled “Wrestling with Islam”, which I missed when it came out during last month.
Choosing paragraphs to excerpt is difficult, because, as Miniter says, it is all so good. Try this:
Elsewhere, we encounter the old elites, but find them like beached whales, still nominally presiding over the societies which they have helped destroy, economically, socially, religiously, and in every other practical way, so that there was nothing left for them but to find a new excuse for holding on to power, and someone else to blame for what happened.
In Pakistan, for instance, the elites are certainly still there, only beginning to be diluted by the arrivistes from the Islamist madrasas. From the other side, they are bled by emigration, for the engineers and the technocrats, and the other functionaries of the New Class, are leaving as fast as they can to the West. It is an economic imperative, there are diminishing opportunities at home; for where there is no oil to pump and refine, there tends to be precious little else in the way of an economy. They wash their hands of all those five-year plans, and get quite peacefully on planes for Europe and America, where they can hope at least to stay solvent. And all they are really leaving behind is the poor of their societies, to fend for themselves.
The New Class that remains, which by now is becoming rather an old class, finds itself enmired in a more and more urgent search for some new silver bullet, some fine new theoretical scheme to replace the tried-and-failed socialism, if for no other reason than to justify their own purchase on elitehood. The alternative is to slide down from eminence, into those mushrooming brick, stick, tin & mud suburbs that they must fear in a way that we, who have not seen them up so close, can never fully understand or empathize with. It is no small thing to lose your place in the social order; and especially in an order with such deep shafts.
→ Continue reading: David Warren wrestles with Islam
Germany’s hapless Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has dished out insults at the musician who penned a chart-topping song that Adriana wrote about last week, taking a crack at Germany’s onerous taxes.
Well, tough luck, Gerhard. It seems the Chancellor doesn’t like the fact that the crippling confiscation of German citizen’s money is provoking satire as well as anger. When a politician starts bashing the comics and music makers, it is a clear sign he or she is in trouble – big trouble.
This bespeaks a political elite on the Continent of Europe that is increasingly aloof and out of touch with ordinary citizens. On one level, this is encouraging, because such arrogance usually comes before a fall from grace. However, it also suggests that if the situation is not tackled soon, the anger boiling up in Germany and elsewhere could turn ugly.
Sure, Gerhard. As logical as
assaulting someone’s fist with your face
The man who prefers his country before any other duty duty shows the same spirit as the man who surrenders every right to the state. They both deny that right is superior to authority.
– Lord John Acton
Last night I needed to make a tube journey, but the combination of ticket machines unwilling to take notes and ticket booths without staff meant that having arrived at my local tube station I had to leave it again and buy something – anything – just to get some change. Annoying. But the thing I did buy, a copy of yesterday’s Times, did contain a couple of valuable items. There was a deeply scary story about how Germany is going to hell in a handcart, by Rosemary Righter. And there was this letter to the Editor, which put the policies of the European Union in an even more negative light:
Poland and the EU
From Mr Rodney E. B. Atkinson
Sir, I have just returned from a book promotion in Poland, where even those MPs who had been in the forefront of opposition to the Communists told me that they found the EU far more oppressive and dismissive of Polish nationhood than their previous Soviet masters.
Laws were being forced through the Polish Parliament, at the behest of the EU, which had never appeared in any party manifesto, with little debate and which were not yet even law in the existing EU member states.
Perhaps the most insidious new provision in the Polish Constitution is that a law can be enforced in Poland even if it has not been translated into Polish. There can be no more disgraceful indicator of the true nature of the European Union as it constitutionally imprisons nations which so recently escaped from a different tyranny.
Yours etc,
RODNEY E. B. ATKINSON,
Alderley,
Meadowfield Road,
Stocksfield,
Northumberland NE43 7PZ.
December 3.
It was the last paragraph that got me. I hope that gets bounced around the blogosphere. It deserves to.
Not me, that is for sure. Even harder to figure out is the film going public… and after a chat with Hollywood film producer and blogger Brian Linse the other day, I get the impression from him that even Hollywood cannot figure out the film going public.
Take two movies, both based on computer games. Firstly, Tomb Raider, staring Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft.
Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft: striking a Lara-ish stance
The Tomb Raider series of computer games were massive and more or less redefined the genre. I thought they were all quite gripping and am very eager to get my paws on the latest episode of Lara Croft’s adventures, Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness.
Angel of Darkness: Lara Croft in all her pixellated glory!
As you might expect, I was rather keen to see Tomb Raider: The Movie, directed by Simon West. It had everything going for it: Angelina Jolie is an interesting looking woman and without doubt a technically skilled actress. Although she is not quite ready to challenge Gwyneth Paltrow for her crown as ‘Best-Yank-Actress-who-can-do-a-perfect-British-accent’, she is pretty damn good nonetheless.
The film clearly had a truly humongous budget, was adequately acted and tolerably directed in parts (with a couple startlingly bad scenes: it takes a certain perverse skill for a director to make a gratuitous shower scene with Angelina Jolie laughable for all the wrong reasons). Unfortunately the story line was weak, convoluted and confusing. Worst of all, the production was dire: it was almost as if it was three separate movies, casually spliced together, differently paced as if styled by three sets of completely unconnected film makers, then finally so badly edited as to make some parts of the story incomprehensible. Although Tomb Raider: The Movie was not utterly without merits, the overall effect was shockingly disappointing. 
And yet, due to the Tomb Raider/Lara Croft brand name and massive marketing, this clunker rode out the appropriately scathing reviews and was by no means a commercial failure in spite of costing a great deal to make. A sequel is in the pipeline.
And then let us look as the second movie, Resident Evil staring Milla Jovovich as Alice.
Milla Jovovich as Alice: about to demonstrate how unhappy she is with her ex-boyfriend
The game that the movie is based on, similarly called Resident Evil is a big name in the Playstation console world, but it does not have anything like the brand recognition of ‘Tomb Raider’ and ‘Lara Croft’ with the general public.
Killer pixels: Veronica from the Resident Evil – Code V game
The Resident Evil movie, directed by Paul Anderson, clearly has a far smaller budget, it was marketed poorly to put it mildly and with the exception of Milla Jovovich (Fifth Element, Zoolander, Blue Lagoon, Two Moon Junction etc.) had a cast of more or less unknowns. Resident Evil had a simple but nearly flawlessly executed story, was artfully directed, skillfully produced and very atmospheric. It was well cast and Milla was excellent as the killer amnesiac conspirator known simply as ‘Alice’… and unlike the jarring T&A scene in Tomb Raider, the opening shower sequence with dazed Milla worked perfectly, setting the deliciously ill-at-ease tone for the whole movie.
In short, this movie rocks… vastly superior to ‘Tomb Raider: The Movie’ on every level. It has no pretensions to be high art or intellectually challenging, but it does exactly what it sets out to do with considerable flair. 
And yet unlike the dismal Tomb Raider, Resident Evil almost immediately vanished off the screens and onto video/DVD. Fortunately, because it cost so little to make, the picture seems to have still made a profit and thus in this case too, a sequel is in the pipeline called Resident Evil: Nemesis (which will no doubt cause confusion with the impending Star Trek movie called ‘Nemesis’). Movie making is a very strange business.
Go out and buy or rent Resident Evil: The Movie on DVD or Video, it is destined to be a cult classic. Avoid Tomb Raider: The Movie like it was smallpox.
Update: The Resident Evil follow-up movie has been retitled Resident Evil: Apocalypse, presumably to avoid confusion with the recent Start Trek movie flop called ‘Nemesis’
Sean Gabb‘s account of the debate he took part in yesterday evening, already referred to here (and assuming that yesterday is the proper word for the day that only ended a little over an hour ago), is already up and readable on his own website. The full text of what he said is there, together with his account of some other things he said during the Q&A. Recommended.
The titbit in the report of the evening that interested me most was somewhat off the central agenda. It seems that after the debate, which all went very smoothly and politely by the way, Sean was challenged in a rather interesting way by a young woman in the audience:
She began with flattery. She was a reader, she said, of Free Life Commentary on my web page and found it very interesting. The surest way to an intellectual’s heart is though his ego. This young lady will doubtless go far in life. She then asked why I was spending so much of my time on the mixed bag of losers and cretins who are the modern Conservative Party? Why not turn my attentions to the Liberal Democrats? These at least were already social liberals, and they might with a fraction of the effort I had wasted on the Tories come to some agreement on economic liberalism. Good question, and I had no ready answer. Perhaps I should think of one.
Yes do, Sean. I for one would love to hear it.
In this connection, our American readers in particular would surely appreciate some explanation of the parlous state that Britain’s Conservatives now find themselves in, especially when you consider how well the Republicans are now doing over there. Why is the political right that in such a mess here, while it is the left that is in trouble in the USA? I hope to offer a few answers to this question in a future Samizdata posting, but I have learned from bitter experience over the decades that what I say that I hope to do, and what I do do, are two things that often diverge with embarrassing completeness. So expect that when you read it and no sooner.
I cannot even hope to offer much on the subject of the Lib Dems, the young lady’s proposed alternative focus of Sean Gabb’s attention. Recently someone told me that there are clever young people in their ranks who are not completely indifferent to the claims of economic liberalism. Until then I despised the Liberal Democrats utterly, and had as little to do with them, and even with thinking about them, as I could contrive. But maybe they might make something approximating to libertarians some time reasonably soon. They’re already very sound about cannabis. And they are descended from the nineteenth century Liberal Party of William Gladstone. In the 1950s there were still old-fashioned Liberals like Jo Grimmond to be found among them, before they succumbed to the statism Mark 2 posture that they have adopted for the last forty years or so. Comments anybody?
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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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