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]
|
Thanks to Chris Tame of the Libertarian Alliance Forum for flagging up this story by Marc Morano of CNS News:
A man who turned the tables and fatally shot a would-be carjacker in Nashville this week deserves a “good citizenship” award for fighting crime, according to a national gun advocacy group.
According to published reports, Billy J. Brown stopped at a convenience store in South Nashville at around 1:00 a.m. on Dec. 29 to get a snack. When he got back into his car, he was surprised by two carjackers demanding that Brown start driving.
Instead of following orders, Brown pulled out his gun and shot and killed one of the carjackers who had jumped into the backseat, according to police and press reports. The other carjacker fled the scene, but was later apprehended by police and reportedly admitted to the attempted carjacking. Brown has not been charged with any violation of the law, but the local district attorney is expected to review the case.
“I hope there is some agency at the state level that is prepared to reward this guy or give the guy an award appropriate to the circumstances,” said Joe Waldron, executive director of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, in an interview with CNSNews.com.
“[Brown] deserves some kind of a good citizenship award,” Waldron said.
→ Continue reading: “A complicated issue”
I have been asked on more than one occasion why I smoke cigarettes. The answer is all too simple. I smoke cigarettes because I enjoy smoking. No, I love smoking. I love the film-noiresque pose of cupping my hand around a lighter in a breezy street; I love the silky rolling comfort of the little cylinder between my fingers; I love the draw of tangy, rasping smoke into my lungs.
Let’s face it, smoking is sexy. The effortless self-assurance required to exude sex-appeal is precisely the quality required to look good with a cigarette. Healthy food is not, and will never be, sexy. Working out is not sexy either, regardless of the number of leotard-clad catalogue models prancing around aerobically to 80’s disco beats.
Smoking is sexy despite being dangerous. In fact, it is all the more arousing because it is dangerous. It is a daring and insouciant accomodation with a prowling, patient, predatory beast. For those of us who will never know the adrenalin rush of sitting in the cockpit of a Tornado or an F-15, smoking is a defiant dalliance with death.
For me, cigarettes are like a mad, unpredictable and fatally attractive mistress. Even though I know her wild behaviour, her endless painful taunts and unreasonable demands are both eroding my life-force and gouging out my bank account, I love her desperately and irrationally. And for all that she hurts me, I must have her in my life.
Until now, that is. Because I am in the process of ending this corrosive love-affair. Why? Because although I believe that the risks of smoking have been exaggerated for political reasons, even I can no longer ignore the symptoms of the harm being done to my respiratory system. Wheezing after climbing a flight of stairs is one thing but combine that with the trademark hacking, staccato cough I have now developed and that’s enough to set alarm bells ringing. I fear that if I do not end this relationship soon, then my mistress will do me some harm from which I will not have the option of being able to walk away.
So, as I type these words, it is now two-and-a-half days since I stubbed out what I hope will prove to be my last pleasure stick. Despite the nicotine patch on my arm, I am fighting the tickling, torturous craving that sweeps over me in savage, but mercifully brief, waves. Whenever they come they are accompanied by the roaring sound of my mistress banging frantically on my front door demanding to know why I have suddenly stopped returning her calls. Given time, she will tire, get the message and leave me alone. By my reckoning, after four days of this hell, things will get easier.
By this time next week, I hope I will have completely de-coupled myself from this harridan and although I know I will be a better man for being free of her tyrrany, I also know with doleful certainty that I will miss her forever.
Whenever David Carr writes one of his we are doomed doomed pieces, I try to cheer myself up by pondering the excellence of capitalism and its products, with a view to giving one of the better ones that extra boost into product super-stardom that a mention on samizdata surely guarantees. And of all the candidates in range of my personal ain’t-capitalism-great? scanner, I think that the one I’m most impressed by at the moment is Swiffer cloths.
Says Cynthia Townley Ewer of OrganizedHome.Com:
Electrostatic dry sweepers fill a household cleaning niche. While these dry mops won’t replace a damp-mop for stain or dried soil removal, the new sweepers are far superior at picking up and removing dust and dry debris.
Use electrostatic dry sweepers before damp-mopping to remove loose dirt and speed mopping chores. Use them between damp-mopping and instead of daily sweeping or vacuuming.
The cloths alone are great dust removers for televisions and computer equipment, and will take dust from furniture quickly and easily. Without a doubt, these new products represent a true innovation, and have a place in today’s organized home.
I am myself a satisfied Swiffer customer. I find Swiffers invaluable for those deposits of dust that accumulate over the months and years. Whenever, as happens from time to time, I need to rearrange some of my possessions, such deposits as these used to have to be moved as if manoevring a delicate item of scientific investigation, in order to avoid hurling all that dirt into the air and perhaps into my respiratory system, which functions imperfectly at the best of times. Now, I Swiffer the offending deposit. I ensure clean TV and computer screens by Swiffering them also, just as Ms, Townley Ewer says.
→ Continue reading: Swiffer!
You are born in a place and time not of your choosing. Growing up you learn about your surroundings, people and places. You are intelligent and start thinking about ideas, history, the world around you and your place in it.
Imagine all sources of information and knowledge are controlled by the state. The world you live in is the only alternative you know. You may have heard of other ones but you have no means of understanding them from the images and details that seep through. Most people around you form their views on the information that the state provides and controls. That means your parents, family, teachers, friends, colleagues… the entire society or what’s left of it. And, of course, there is an enemy out there, set on destroying the utopia the state is leading you to. Can’t trust the outside, they are devious and destructive. They are the enemy of freedom itself, as defined by the all-knowing and all-embracing state.
But as I said, you are intelligent and things don’t add up, your world doesn’t quite fit. This may happen to you as a teenager, when rebellion comes naturally but confidence to take it further often does not. You are not taken seriously and told to wait and see – life will teach you… Or it may come later in life, when the purpose of your everyday efforts suddenly escapes you and you feel the need to recapture it before it’s too late. Alas, you have a family, children, committments and a new set of insecurities collected over the years, that make you vulnerable and any deviation from the norm too risky.
If you are lucky, you have an aged relative or two who remember a different life, free and full of variety and perhaps can explain principles and rules other than those governing the claustrophobic world around you. You start thinking the unthinkable, you see the full horror of your existence and decide to fight the system. You go out in search of people like yourself in hope that you are not alone in your displacement.
Here the interesting part of the story ends. What comes next is dangerous, lonely, depressing, and often pointless.
You find an Underground, a Dissident Movement that may accept you and share with you the mindset and information you need to resist the state propaganda and its violence. You learn just how much of your life and personal details are monitored by the authorities and if you overstep the line, you abandon everything you have taken for granted. You live in pervasive fear and helplessness punctuated by an occassional underground meeting where you share a few political jokes and keep each other assured that it is not you who have gone insane but the society. For that is the main purpose of a dissident movement. Information, its dissemination and a chance to experience a collective spirit that helps you overcome the terrible sense of isolation.
Fear, clammy and unheroic, is your daily bread, not thoughts of liberty, of human rights and of making history. Oh yes, you dream of freedom but not in terms of lofty concepts of a freedom fighter. You want to learn, see and understand the world imagining how superior those who have the freedom to do so must be. They are free to read whatever they want and go wherever they want and so their knowledge and understanding must surpass yours.
And you wait, with the others, for something to help you change your world. You can’t do much, although you have already risked a lot. You wait for a spark, a collective project that would make your sacrifice meaningful. If the government is afraid to use brutal tactics (due to external pressure, no doubt), mass demonstrations and civil disobedience are a likely option. However, if the government is brutal beyond restraint, then your only salvation is help from the outside.
My question to all those who believe in liberty and the rights of the individual and all things beautiful: would you really fight for them? Would you be willing to put your life and perhaps the lives of your loved ones at risk and do so without any guarantee of success? Would you be ready to shed your blood in the name of liberty without knowing whether you are making history or just adding to the list of nameless victims of the tyranny? Would you be able to remain certain that you are right and that everybody else is wrong when the only world you know is the one where they are right? Because those are the choices you have before you, not one of clarity and moral certitude, supported by intellectual arguments and discourse. Every act of resistance, however insignificant on the large scale, is a small victory for sanity and human spirit. But more often than not, it is not enough to defeat the enemy.
The nature of tyranny in places like Iraq and North Korea is one of unrestrained brutality and although they may collapse economically one day, like the Soviet Union did, ultimately it is not just a matter of brave local people standing up for what is right: in such places to do that is tantamount to suicide… the state must be decapitated and realistically that will only happen via foreign military action of some sort (either military aid or outright invasion).
One could argue that it is not the responsibility of foreign taxpayers to free others from tyranny and perhaps this is true, but do not kid yourself that this is a ‘pro-liberty’ response. The US and British Armies cannot impose liberty in Iraq, only the Iraqi’s can do that, but foreign armies can destroy tyranny.
Free Iraq.
I was struck by two contrasting emotions upon reading this editorial in the Telegraph. First, pleasant surprise that views of such obvious common sense have found their expression in a major British news organ but, secondly, dismay that this fact should come as a pleasant surprise at all.
“Since the Government’s “total ban” five years ago, there are more and more guns being used by more and more criminals in more and more crimes. Now, in the wake of Birmingham’s New Year bloodbath, there are calls for the total ban to be made even more total: if the gangs refuse to obey the existing laws, we’ll just pass more laws for them not to obey. According to a UN survey from last month, England and Wales now have the highest crime rate of the world’s 20 leading nations. One can query the methodology of the survey while still recognising the peculiar genius by which British crime policy has wound up with every indicator going haywire – draconian gun control plus vastly increased gun violence plus stratospheric property crime.”
For those of us who knew only too well that this was going to be the result of the absurd and destructive war on self-defence there is a certain amount of satisfaction to be had from having been proved right. But, equally, a mounting despair at the seemingly wilful refusal of most Britons to learn from, or even acknowledge, the evidence that is staring them smack, bang in the face.
Even now, the straightforward truths expressed in this leader would be totally absent from the thoughts of any British journalist and even if that were not so, I suspect none would dare put them into print. We have Mark Steyn to thank for this serice.
“After Dunblane, the police and politicians lapsed into their default position: it’s your fault. We couldn’t do anything about him, so we’ll do something about you. You had your mobile nicked? You must be mad taking it out. Why not just keep it inside nice and safe on the telephone table? Had your car radio pinched? You shouldn’t have left it in the car. House burgled? You should have had laser alarms and window bars installed. You did have laser alarms and window bars but they waited till you were home, kicked the door in and beat you up? You should have an armour-plated door and digital retinal-scan technology. It’s your fault, always. The monumentally useless British police, with greater manpower per capita on higher rates of pay and with far more lavish resources than the Americans, haven’t had an original idea in decades, so they cling ever more fiercely to their core ideology: the best way to deal with criminals is to impose ever greater restrictions and inconveniences on the law-abiding.”
It may seem bizarre these days, but I grew up believing and parrotting the lockstep axiom that the British police ‘are the best in the world’. It is an assertion that may appear obnoxiously arrogant but, considering how things used to be, may be understandable. There was a time when the British police were charged with enforcing laws that were, for the most part, sensible and it was a task to which they devoted their energies with commendable vigour all whilst remaining routinely unarmed and fostering a public perception that they were both honourable and decent. → Continue reading: The sleep of reason
This year we are likely to see a regime change in Bagdad and if we’re very lucky in Pyongyang. Brussels would be taking optimisim perhaps a bit far!
It occurs to me that this is an area in which libertarians who are sceptical of the public relations exercise known as the “Saddam’s the worst thing since Hitler” can agree with the libertarian interventionists. It also shows up the fundamental dishonesty of the leftist “peace” campaigners.
Talking to a “peace” protestor a couple of weeks ago I was informed of the following alleged facts:
- that Iraq was a client of the US and armed by the Reagan and Bush senior presidencies.
- that the people of Iraq would bear the brunt of any US led military intervention.
- that the sanctions against Iraq were killing hundreds of children every day;
- that the US was only interested in manipulating the oil price, though I’m clear whether it is supposed to go up or down.
- that the “peace” protestors are against any war and in no way endorsing the Iraqi regime (which remains nameless).
Contrast the claims with the attitudes of the same people about the regimes of general Pinochet in Chile and the apartheid regime in South Africa.
- The left claimed that both were US client states, so why didn’t the peace protestors defend those regimes from proposed US sanctions? Obviously the “client state” claim is irrelevant or untrue.
- If the people are going to suffer most from military action, how come they don’t defend the German people who suffered from a terrible invasion in 1945: Soviet troops were ordered to rape every German woman they could find in Berlin. The “peace” protestors are not normally known for minimising the trauma of multiple rapes on women and children.
- How come the South African children who presumably suffered from the leftist inspired sanctions against South Africa weren’t worth defending? Perhaps they were meant to suffer and become useful puppets in a Soviet war of liberation.
- So where were these “peace” protestors when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands in 1982, or when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, or Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1980 (admittedly they must have been confused by this one)?
Funny how it’s only the regimes that support socialism (preferably of a racialist tendency) or anti-modern theocracy that are deemed worthy of “peace” protestor support.
A Commie is a Commie is a Commie. There are grounds for opposing war, but the Communist Dictator Defence League isn’t one of them.
One of the Georges – I forget which – once said that a certain number of hours’ sleep each night – I cannot recall at the moment how many – made a man something, which for the time being has slipped my memory. Baxter agreed with him. It went against all his instincts to sit up in this fashion, but it was his duty and he did it.
– P. G. Wodehouse (in Something Fresh: A Blandings Story, 1915)
No one seems to have mentioned the death of Joe Foss (who died on New Year’s Day) here yet. As I have just read his obituary in the Daily Telegraph (link to article is currently down) I had better write something.
Joe Foss was a true American Hero, “Ace of Aces” in the struggle against the Japanese in the skies over the Pacific, destroying at least 27 enemy aircraft personnally. He was a fine officer and an inspiration to the men who served with him. He survived being shot down and spent hours drifting in shark invested waters. Joe Foss was also a fine thinking officer who never let his aircraft be tricked into hunting enemy fighters – if this meant letting enemy bombers through to attack U.S. air bases.
For his bravery and skill Joe Foss won the Congressional Medal of Honour and many other decoratons.
However, Joe Foss was not just a good Marine – he was also a man of grit in civilian life, helping to save his families’ farm in Depression hit South Dakota (after the early death of his father) by hard slog. After the war Joe Foss turned down a vast sum of money for the film rights to his life (he was to have been played by John Wayne) because the film company wished to include a love affair that did not occur.
From running a flight school in Sioux Falls South Dakota Joe Foss served his State as Governor and in the United States Congress – before being defeated by George McGovern.
Joe Foss then became an outstanding broadcaster famous for such long running series on American rural life as “Joe Foss Outdoorsman”.
Joe Foss’s commitment to liberty did not weaken with age and he was President of the National Rifle Association from 1988 to 1990 and was staunch in his belief that Americans had the right to be armed to defend themselves and others “period”.
Michael Peach, the home educating house dad, doesn’t only write about home education. He has this to say about the current state of British gun control:
Two teenage girls have been shot dead in Birmingham. Details are sketchy as nobody wants to talk to the police but it seems they were shot outside a party and a car was riddled with bullets, at least thirty shots were fired. Already the call has gone out for stricter gun control with the government now considering a minimum sentence of five years for carrying an illegal weapon.
This misses the point completely. The situation is this … the bad guys have got guns. No amount of extra sentencing is going to change this. It is time to stop messing around and let the good guys have guns too. Would the gunman or gunmen have been able to fire at will if he thought someone else was going to fire back. He / they had a gun and could just take their time and fire at will knowing they were totally unthreatened. Just the thought that he might get shot himself would have made him think twice before going on the rampage.
As is now being proven everyday on the streets of the UK Gun control does not work.
And yes, this was the same incident that Perry de Havilland noted here yesterday.
The significance of this is not just what Mike says, although heaven knows it’s true enough; it’s who he is. Britain’s home-educators are a less God-fearing and more string quartet playing, Labour voting, Guardian reading, vegitarian, sandal-wearing, woolly knitting, woolly wearing, woolly minded lot than those of the USA. If just a tiny number of those people even get to hear that someone like them thinks that the gun problem in Britain now is that people like us don’t have enough guns, then the long term beneficial effect could be enormous. This is, after all, an extremely simple idea to grasp, even if your first reaction to it is one of pure horror, and once someone has put the notion in your head, it is hard to shake it out.
In the USA, if I get the picture right, believing what Mike says is fairly normal, and in some parts almost de rigeur. Not everyone does believe it, but everyone knows that others do even if they don’t. Right? (Commenters feel free to correct me if I need it.) In Britain, such is the primitive state of this debate that the number of people willing to say things like this in public, such as on the radio or even in a blog, is as close to zero as makes hardly any difference. But as we all know, the difference between hardly anyone and actually no-one can be all the difference. So special kudos to people like Mike who are willing to say such things.
In general, Mike’s blog is well worth the regular attention of samizdata readers.
Jeffrey Tucker has written a superb article about conservative statist central planning, but one paragraph stands out for me:
Central planning has several universal features. It is coercive. It bypasses the needs of the consumers for the sake of politics. It relies on edicts which may or may not reflect reality. It does not take advantage of the price system, profit, or loss. It is impervious to change. It ignores local conditions. It does not permit flexibility according to circumstance. It robs those who know the most of the ability of make decisions and innovate. It creates incentives to obey the plan but diverts attention from the real goal, whatever it may be (and it may be the wrong goal). It ends up over utilizing material resources, underutilizing human ones, and not generating the intended results.
What could I possibly add to that?
The Home Office is to publish a consultation paper to help gauge how much electronic invasion of privacy the public is willing to accept.
This is a second attempt at a code of practice for controversial snooping laws, the first draft code was shelved by the government after causing outrage among privacy advocates who protested against allowing
a broad range of government agencies, including all local authorities, the NHS, the Postal Services Commission and the Food Standards Agency, to demand the communications records of Internet and telephone users.
Home Office officials insist that the new consultantion document to be published early this year will be placed in the public domain and show the totality of how data is accessed. All departments responsible for authorities accessing communications data are being asked for help to make sure the paper properly reflects what is being done and by whom.
I bet you anything that the ‘whom’ will be faceless government departments with names George Orwell would be proud of.
The state is not your friend
Crikey! This news story suggests certain elements in the Chinese police are actually concerned about privacy, so much so that they apologised to a family after busting into a man’s house where the guy was watching porn with his wife.
The world turns. Are we getting close to the point where China, a communist state albeit one hurtling ever faster down the capitalist path, may be becoming more concerned about privacy than Britain?
|
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.
|
