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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In response to a contention that I made in the comments section of an earlier Samizdata.net article that ‘wealth redistribution’ was intrinsically immoral, a commenter replied:
Have you considered that many people consider wealth redistribution morally right, and consider it morally right to use violence to achieve it?
Well I happen to believe in objective (albeit conjectural) truth, and hence objective (and yes, conjectural) morality, so the subjective views of other matter little to me when deciding what is and is not a moral use of violence. I understand that statist people think it is ‘moral’ to take my money under threat of violence. I also know that some people think it ‘moral’ to prevent mixed marriages, ‘moral’ to kill Jews, ‘moral’ to treat women as chattels, ‘moral’ to jail people for sodomy. So what?
To say my property is there for others to help themselves to is to negate the very existence of several (i.e. ‘private’) property, which is of course what paleo-socialists are quite up front about wanting to do and modern socialists want to do in the fascist manner (i.e. allow ‘private’ property whilst regulating its use to the point ownership becomes a meaningless notion).
Yet without several property, there is no modern western civilisation, let alone liberty, so taking my money is not just theft, it is an assault on civilisation itself, and I have no objection to using violence to defend it. I am all in favour of shooting burglars that a home owner finds in their house, so my views on tax collectors and the people who sent them (i.e. anyone who legitimises what they do) should not be hard to figure out. The only reason I am not out shooting people and putting bombs in cars is a purely utilitarian cost/benefit analysis that it is not the most effective way to secure my liberty and the liberty of others. Those who love liberty can (mostly) play a waiting whilst economic reality has its way with the nations just as it did with the Soviet Union, but that does not mean fighting figuratively and literally for liberty is not moral. In fact, it is really one of the most moral reason for fighting there is.
Here are four pieces of advice. The first two are evil, the last is prudent
and the third is, um, British I suppose.
– James Knowles
Well, the days roll by and the uncertain drumbeat of war continues. Counting myself as a marginal pro-war type, I must say I have begun to wonder about how far and for how long a military campaign in the Middle East will spread. Will Bush’s pre-emption doctrine end with Iraq, or be applied to other nations? (France – heh-heh!). What about Saudi Arabia? And there are dozens of other countries, not especially chummy with the West, which could be places where folks are cooking up WMDs which could get into the hands of thugs of various descriptions. Just how far could the war on terror go? 100 years?
Here’s an idea: I think one key strategy for encouraging people to depose odious regimes and bring in something better must be a continuous push for greater free trade. I am not being naive, I think. Trade is the great solvent of social strife, while protectionism tends to be the harbinger of such strife.
For example, I’d be happier with the case for going into Iraq if it were tied to a clearly-stated willingness, on the part of the US government and its allies, to immediately lift ALL restrictions on imports of Iraqi goods (such as they are) in the event that Saddam and his thugs fall from power, as in “We will bury Saddam for you for a fistfull of dollars”.
And given that Iraq is probably one of the most secular states in the Middle East, a concerted campaign to promise Iraqis that they can join the capitalist party once Saddam has gone is sure to make it easier for his regime to crumble under pressure. This sort of policy may even encourage people in Iran, for example, who are currently trying to depose the Mullahs, to re-double their efforts.
There’s been a lot of debate about how much “stick” we should apply to defeat terror. I don’t think it idiotic though, to debate the merit of a bit more “carrot”.
You’ve probably all heard about the bin Laden martyrdom tape by now. In it, OBL says he will probably die in a martydom operation this year.
OBL is the leader and financial backer of al Qaeda. It is difficult to believe he would voluntarily remove himself unless there were a good reason to do so. I posit several possibilities.
- He’s actually been dead since Tora Bora. The new leadership has found him a useful bogey man against the West. They have tried to make the Afghanistan front look like a US failure by saying OBL escaped. They can’t run the game forever. As in a soap opera, they must remove the character eventually but wish to do so in a story enhancing way. If there is a successful and terrible attack on the US, they may claim OBL was personally responsible. If no identifiable bits are found, they claim he ascended bodily into heaven like Jesus. At the very least they create a Legendary Mythic Figure; at best they Deify Him.
- OBL’s kidney problem or complications from it due to his Tora Bora stay or perhaps injuries are such he has only a limited time to live. He has decided he will do more for his cause by becoming Mythic than by dying in a bed.
- OBL is having internal problems as has been hinted. We have been wrecking his organization and morale is bad. He is stepping aside and will use his death to become a Mythic rallying point for existing forces. He would expect a spectacular death, whether it was true or not, would bring in a flood of new recruits.
- OBL is simply a religious fanatic and wants to go to Allah and claim his houris. Perhaps, but I do not read him as stupid. He is probably willing to die in his cause but only if – in his eyes – it advances his over all cause.
- We have fatally disrupted his network. He prefers death to the humiliation of capture. If he does so spectacularly, he becomes Mythic and Immortal. He may hope to inspire another to arise and take up his cause in the future.
We should be prepared for the Diefication card. It’s not been played in centuries.
British soldiers currently stationed in Kuwait have broken with military tradition in order to deliver what they believe is a powerful message to the world.
Stripping off their desert khakis the men of the 7th Armoured Brigade laid down in a sand dune and spelled out the phrase, ‘SADDAM IS TOAST’ by arranging their own naked bodies to form the letters.
Lance-Corporal Steven Rowsley said afterwards:
“We were a bit embarrassed at first. And doing the ‘S’ was a bit tricky. But we think it was worth it in the end. My whole unit was really up for it.”
The officer in charge of the demonstration, Captain Roger Hackwood said:
“We realise that it’s a bit unorthodox and we know that some people will be shocked. But we couldn’t think of any better way to get the strength of our feelings across to the anti-war movement back home”
The Ministry of Defence has declined to comment.
I’m certain all have been following the Orange Alert in the US. If, as
George Tenet said today, these threats are about radiological or chemical attack on the US to occur this week then the Weasel Axis are following a very, very dangerous course.
If the headlines on one day are “France blocks NATO protection of Turkey” and the next day it is “10,000 feared dead in DC Attack” then France can expect to recieve a level of anti-frenchism verging on pure hatred. The damage would last until the American youngsters of this generation are dead and gone.
And worst of all for the dirigiste… they will have to defend their own the next time, something they have proven summarily incapable of in the past.
Maybe the Germans will help them.
So the British TV tax has gone up by another £4.00 (1.5% above inflation) to provide the unelected lefty-establishment BBC with an extra hundred million for lavish lesbian costume dramas and unintelligible Open University nonsense.
As someone who could rather do with a cheque for £116 (the new license fee) right now, I seriously resent the assumption that tricking ever more money out of people is justified or good. As a capitalist, I think stealth-taxing is undermining our economy, putting people out of work and creating extra poverty. And as an arty-farty, I can see with my own eyes that the BBC does not deserve the cash: there is nothing on BBC1 that one can not find on ITV, and nothing on BBC2 that Channel 4 does not do just as well and with the exact same political bias.
I went to the BBC’s own website to see what they had to say about it, and found this:
“Why doesn’t the BBC take advertising? Because this keeps the BBC independent of advertisers and other commercial pressures.”
Actually, the BBC is stuffed full of advertising: mostly advertising for itself and its own products. But do the plotlines of ‘Coronation Street’ (ITV soap) get bent out of shape by endless sponsorship references, while ‘Eastenders’ (BBC soap) remains impartially naturalistic? Of course not. And I doubt that all the commercial TV and radio stations would accept that their news is rubbish because their journalists are influenced by advertisers, either.
“The BBC’s Governors ensure instead that it is run in the general public interest. They are accountable for the BBC’s independence, and also ensure that it reflects British culture and minority interests.”
So the BBC’s governors know what is good for us better than we know ourselves: paying them £116 a year is good for us, and choosing to watch the independent, erm, commercial channels clearly rots our minds. Minority groups don’t buy advertised products, therefore they don’t watch non-BBC TV, therefore non-BBC TV does not show anything they might like to watch.
“If the BBC carried adverts or sponsorship, commercial pressures would dictate its priorities instead of the general public interest.”
But people choosing what to buy is the general public interest: it’s ordinary people doing what they want with their own money. If people don’t buy any more revolting liqueurs because of “Sex and the City” sponsorship, the sponsorship will stop and the annoying mini-ads will go. But the point is, however annoying those ads, who do you know who would choose to pay £116 a year to opt out of seeing them? Exactly. Which is why it’s illegal not to pay for the BBC, even if you only ever watch commercial channels and cable.
What I loathe most of all, however, is the idea that living off coerced money rather than earning it like everyone else makes you a superior benevolent authority better able to judge and further the ‘interest’ of the people you stole from. That’s why Marxism is the same as organised crime, except worse.
I want my £116 back.
Drop what you are doing and follow Instapundit’s link to the Washington Post article on German Minister Joschka Fischer’s past.
To be fair, many, many people at the time would have been involved to some level or have known some of these people. I imagine more than one amongst us cringe at the memory of things they did as kids. Why, I knew a person who knew Bernadette Dohrn (later of the Weather Underground) when she was a teenager. This was a status conferring thing. We’d sit around the Student Union and say “Wow, man, like you really, like knew her? That’s like, really far out! Pass that over would you?”
There was a certain cachet about those who “did something”. None of us would have dreamed of doing anything really destructive. We even had a team clean up the administration building (Warner Hall) before we handed it back in the morning [we took it over the night after the Kent State murders]… all tidied up and us on our way just in time for the staff arrival at 8am. Wouldn’t have been nice leaving all our coffee cups and candy wrappers laying about from the overnight demonstration, now would it? Such was CMU.
I particularly remember the Coke machine on the second floor (first floor in the UK). If you gave it a sharp punch in just the right place, a cup dropped into the dispenser, a relay clicked and you got a Coke. Free. By the end of the night almost everyone had mastered this student survival art.
I’m afraid the youthful Joschka and his violent friends would have laughed at us for our bourgeoise values.
It was another time and place and has little connection with today’s world. For many of us they are fond memories of a time past. It was fun. Sadly, there are those who are forever sitting in the Student Union of their minds. They have not moved on. They do not live in the world that is.
I’m not saying Joschka is quite that stuck, but the Washington Post story does tell us “where he is coming from”.
MORE:Glenn posteda link to an even worse bit of Joschka’s past straight from the mouth of General Ion Mihai Pacepa, a former Nicolae Ceausescu intelligence chief. Fischer is connected via a number of insider sources to a Libyan terror operation run by Carlos “the Jackal”.
The French libertarian movement is split over war with Iraq, though needless to say, not for the purely venal reasons of Chirac, the bespoke purveyor of nuclear technology to national-socialist dictators.
Most of the French libertarians I have been in touch with seem torn between a quasi-Randian view: “exterminate all practitioners of violent irrational beliefs” and the absolutist horror of any state violence. With a president like Jacques Chirac (imagine a cross between Richard Nixon, Walter Mondale, Bill Clinton and George Bush senior: with NONE of their redeeming features), such scepticism about the morality of one’s own government seems reasonable. My fear about America is that unlike most Americans, I assume that the next US president could be almost as bad. But that’s another issue.
A distinctive voice in France right now is Jacques Garello – a French Catholic economist of the Austrian school. Professor Garello has hosted the summer university of the “nouvelle économie” at Aix for twenty five years, probably the most significant event of it’s kind in Europe. Here M. Garello considers the case for a “just” war:
The error consists in talking of a war against Iraq, when it really is a war against terrorism, and a legitimate case of self-defense of universal civilisation against barbaric forces which happen to find support and encouragement in Iraq.
He goes on to suggest that the real purpose of French diplomacy in refusing to side publicly with the US is the fear of the millions of potential Islamic militants in France: they would rather ignore the problem than fight it.
*= The Other France
Yesterday France, Germany and Belgium announced that they are invoking an unprecedented NATO procedure to prevent the United States lending support to Turkey to defend its border with Iraq. Washington was disconcerted and dismayed by last week’s move. Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, described the Franco-German action as a “breathtaking event” that would “reverberate throughout the alliance”.
Turkey has invoked Article 4, that requires members to consult together when, in the opinion of any of them, their territorial integrity, political independence or security is threatened. It is the first time this has been done in the history of the alliance, thus ensuring an urgent and high level debate over the Franco-German action. The impact of that action is questionable for a number of reasons.
John Keegan has an insightful analysis of the reasons for the rift and the potential fall-out.
- Turkey has bilateral defence agreements with the United States, which allow military aid outside the NATO relationship.
- The Patriot missiles offered to Turkey are under Dutch sovereign control and so not subject to NATO interference.
- America could provide the Awacs early warning aircraft if NATO refuses to send its own.
There is nothing new about the French being obstinate towards the United States in general and NATO in particular. France withdrew from NATO’s military structure in 1966 to pursue an independent foreign and defence policy. Later it attempted to revive the military role of the Western European Union, NATO’s long sidelined precursor, and then tried to invest the European Commission with defence responsibilities.
As long as the United States perceived the drive for European unity to be economic in thrust, the French efforts to create a parallel military structure within the western European NATO area were tolerated. It was the disputes over authority in Bosnia and Kosovo that eventually caused Washington to see the purpose of French policy as intended to weaken NATO. American acquiescence was eroded and led to hostility.
I whole-heartedly subscribe to Keegan’s view that the United States created NATO and has fostered its development and welfare devotedly over 50 years and that the alliance is, without question, the most important, successful and creative foreign policy initiative of the United States since the Second World War.
The French and Germans, not to mention the insignificant Belgians, seem simply, like tiresome neighbours, to be demanding attention. In so doing, they are inflicting damage on the organisation that secured their safety during the Cold War, and affronting the ally that guaranteed it, to a degree that cannot easily be forgotten or forgiven.
Several NATO members are unshakeable in their loyalty. They include this country, Turkey and probably Italy and Spain. Several of the new NATO states, Poland foremost, would be eager to offer basing facilities to troops withdrawn from Germany soil. The Belgians do not count. The Dutch seem solid. Denmark and Norway are, with reservations, good NATO citizens.
A map of NATO with a hole where Germany had been would look odd; but the map has looked odd for 40 years since the French went their separate way. Now that the Soviet threat is no more, Nato does not really need Germany, except for purposes of internal communication. Germany’s armed forces are in disarray, as are those of France.
An Anglo-Saxon NATO, plus Turkey, plus Scandinavia, plus Italy and Spain would still have the bases necessary to command the key strategic positions and the strength to keep the peace in the northern hemisphere.
I just hope the United States does not budge and ensures that the French and German leaders get exactly what they deserve for their unprincipled and self-interested behaviour. To me that would be France and Germany finally occupying positions on the international scene that are commensurate with their true significance rather than based on some historically misplaced delusions of grandeur.
Arguments are getting quite heated among libertarians about the claim that the US is a potential threat to freedom versus the view that the US is the best guarantor of freedom in the world today. I happen to agree with both statements.
It would be absurd to claim that the US is a worse place to live than peacetime Iraq, unless one happened to enjoy being part of a quasi-fascist police state. It is reasonable to worry about the potential threat to freedom posed by the world’s only superpower: there is no one to overthrow that state if it should go rotten.
I am disappointed in the complacency of some US libertarians and conservatives who ought to remember that wartime is the time when most encroachments on freedom can be justified. I have been accused of hype for using Hillary Clinton as an example of what a horrible US could be. Surely there can’t be anyone who thinks that none of Presidents Lincoln, Wilson, Hoover, F.D.Roosevelt, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Bush senior and Clinton were ever a threat to freedom? Or that no one will ever be elected to the US presidency who is a bad person?
I certainly wish the US forces in the Middle East a speedy and successful trip. I equally hope that the plan is to remove the tyrant with no or low civilian casualties, both for humanitarian reasons, but also because a post-Saddam Iraq will be less resentful of US troops if there hasn’t been carpet-bombing, or bad target intelligence.
I remain convinced that the British forces will either be as symbolic or ineffective as the Piedmont-Sardinian contingent during the Crimean War, or worse that they are headed for a repeat of Isandlwana, Majuba Hill, or Dunkirk. Bluntly the best troops in the world are cannon fodder when they run out of ammunition, the comms equipment doesn’t work and their boots have melted in the sun.
As for ID cards for use against terrorism. Yes they can help. Yes they are also a violation of personal liberty. But I would be rather more convinced if the British government weren’t providing safe havens for terrorists whether leftist, Islamist or Irish.
Good theories are sticky, but they still need advocating. Slowly, slowly the low-fat mantra is being replaced by acknowledgement in public places that constant blood-sugar swings mightn’t be very good for us. Slowly, slowly, free-market capitalism and libertarianism will stop being the standard butt of establishment sneers.
– Emma, in a comment on a posting by Alice Bachini
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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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