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.
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I detect a distinct air of despondency in the ranks of the libertarian camp in ever seeing any point in voting for, or co-opting with, right-of-centre parties such as the Conservatives in Britain (see David Carr’s remarks) or the Republican Party in the U.S. (see Jim Henley in similar vein).
I see no reason for being surprised. Even if you support Bush on the war, as I do, albeit while detesting the Patriot act and the Dept. of Homeland Security, what is there to like? The vast increase in the budget deficit is a real worry – and I say that as a supply sider, not as a ‘deficit hawk’ – we have had the steel tariffs, the Farm bill, etc. Okay, the first tax cut was better than nothing, but not as good as a cut to marginal tax rates across the board. Oh, Dubya did at least stiff the Kyoto Treaty. But while he is probably a tad better than the likely alternatives, his GOP makes an unlikely suitor for libertarians.
As for the Tories, I despair utterly of them being in a fit state for any outreach to us. With the sole and erratic exception of shadow Home Secretary Oliver Letwin, there is not a single top-ranking Tory MP I come across who seems to have a thorough grasp of the extent to which our civil as well as economic liberties have been crushed.
Which leaves us with the usual cul-de-sac of a possible new party. And I cannot see how that is going to work.
Iain Duncan-Smith relaunched the Conservative Party yesterday, announcing that a future Conservative government would abolish tuition fees. Of course, political parties have to reach out to those outside their traditional supporters. But IDS is going about it the wrong way.
Margaret Thatcher got lots of people living on council estates to vote for her. It was not by being left-wing, but by applying her free-market principles to make their lifes better. By giving them the option to buy their houses from the state, she helped them to rise up the ladder of economic prosperity. By allowing parents to have a say in which state school their children could go to, power was taken away from government bureaucrats, enabling parents to take their children to away from failing schools. Her strategy for getting non-Conservatives to vote Conservative was entirely consistent with her principles. Voters believed her policies because they saw their consistency.
By simply adopting socialist policies – and moving the Tories to the left of Labour – IDS is alienating his core support. But worse, he is unlikely to gain the votes of those who support his policies anyway. There aren’t many Old Labour opponents of tuition fees that are going to jump ship and vote Tory. They are much more likely to vote Lib Dem, a rather more convincing party of socialism.
I believe I am guilty of taking the latest Conservative proposals on education out of their context. As a result, I made the mistake of regarding them as an aberration; a singular folly.
However, I should have examined these proposals in the round of their ‘Fair Deal for Britain’:
“The Conservative Party’s fair deal for everyone is built on a unifying commitment to ensure that no-one is held back and no-one is left behind…”
Seen in that context, a return to old socialist education policies makes perfect sense. After all, in a society where you won’t be able to turn round without running smack dab into the dead hand of the state, shoving you along a line of pre-determined ‘fairness’, you cannot expect higher education to be the exception, can you.
Just who is advising the Conservative Party these days? Who was it that convinced Iain Duncan Smith that Clintonesque pain-feeling was the wave of the future? What premium do they think they will derive out of being Labour-lite? What, precisely, is the unique selling point of socialism with a Tory twist?
If I thought it likely that I would get any answers I would put those questions on the back of a postcard and send it off to Tory HQ. As it is, I don’t think I’ll bother. I’m too busy adjusting myself to the next 20 years of New Labour.
I just came across this bit of news :
Assailants have gouged out the eyes of three brothers in central Pakistan in revenge for a similar incident 16 years ago. The brothers were kidnapped by 14 members of rival clans from the village of Kabirwala in the central province of Punjab on Monday night, police quoted relatives as saying, the Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) reported.
They were taken to another village where their eyes were gouged out “with a knife one by one…the brothers were in critical condition in hospital. …The attack was apparently in revenge for an attack 16 years ago blamed on the brothers’ family. No one had so far been arrested.
I do not know whether such incidents get reported mainly because of the spotlights directed at islamic and muslim societies or whether they are normal ocurrance, part of the fabric of society. I find such acts abhorent, although in principle I support individual’s taking justice into his own hands where the state or appropriate authorities fail him.
Also, the right to retribution should not diminsh with time, so 16 year delay would not necessarily bother me. But exacting revenge in the form of mutilation that is sponsored by a clan and carried out in the context of collective guilt, undermines the right of individual in that society to fair trial and proportionate punishment. It is barbarism, pure and simple.
In what is perhaps one of the greatest examples of political farce I have seen in quite a while, 53 Texas legislators from the Democratic party have fled the state capitol to avoid a vote that could cost their party seven congressional seats.
So let me get this right… it is okay to be a member of an elected assembly of lawmakers that passes laws compelling people to do this or that, but if you don’t like the laws being passed because it interferes with your party political agenda, well, screw democracy, just quite literally run away and prevent there being a quorum.
Okay, that works for me. Anything which bring into disrepute the elected bodies at the very heart of the system is just fine by me… I can think of few ways to de-legitimize the public face of democratically sanctified force which robs and regulates its ‘citizens’ that by having them act like petulant school children taking their ball home because they don’t like the other team’s rules. No quorum means no voting and no voting means no new laws on anything, at least for a while. Excellent.
It is pretty funny that they call themselves Democrats though, eh?
[Thanks to Shannon for the link]
Just under a year ago, the Prime Minister’s wife Cherie Blair expressed her sympathy with the plight of ‘suicide bombers’:
Speaking at a charity event in London, Mrs Blair said young Palestinians felt they had “no hope” but to blow themselves up.
Her steaming pile of wisdom was delivered just hours after one of them had murdered 19 Israelis.
But that was then. This is now:
The prime minister’s wife Cherie Blair was forced to pull out of a London charity event following the threat of a suicide bomb attack.
Assuming the threat was genuine, it looks like Mrs.Blair’s outreach exercise was a waste of time.
The bete noir of much of the left, Ariel Sharon, appears to be ‘doing a Nixon’. Just as only Nixon could go to China without a collapse of domestic support, perhaps Sharon can make peace with the PLO, secure Israel’s pre-1967 borders and compromise on the settlements.
He is being branded a traitor by Jewish settlers, a war criminal by pro-Palestinians and a pariah by the usual suspects. So he must be doing something good. He clearly has a difficult task in balancing Israel’s security against peaceful compromise, but with the new strategic reality in the Middle-East, his task might be easier.
Paul Staines
It appears that Los Angeles is well and truly in the tarpits:
Los Angeles is getting pummeled by economic woes beyond its control. Like so many Western cities, vital services are provided by the county. And L.A. County is $800 million in the red.
[…]
The sheriff’s department, which provides support for the city’s police, has cut 900 deputies and closed two jails. Baca says any more cutbacks will jeopardize public safety.
[…]
And so the county’s only option is to cut back services — vital services the city depends on.
[…]
“I’d cut back on something else instead of lifeguards. Someone who would save your life, I wouldn’t cut back on that,” said 15-year-old Michael Harter, playing with his brother in the surf.
But the truth is, most of these things are not “vital services the city depends on”. Lifeguards? Sorry but no one is forced to go swimming, so if lifeguards are so damn important then allow companies to provide the service on a fee paying basis. Health? Do it all privately. Education? The state has no business whatsoever involved with the education in the first place, particularly in this era of cheap internet access and in a country with probably the most efficient and inexpensive phone system in the world.
Security is a legitimate concern, so the solution to the problems faced by the sheriff’s department should be clear… cut back on everything else, scrap irrational drug prohibitions (less jails will be needed) and remove all the ludicrous restrictions on ownership of the means of self-defence (less police will be needed).
The thrust of the linked article is that ‘Los Angeles is in crisis’.
Bullshit.
It is the city government of Los Angeles and the people who think that theft based appropriation is the only way to satisfy their needs (which usually means wants) who are in crisis, and far from being ‘beyond its control’, this is a crisis of their own making.
Good.
If you have not checked out the Dissident Frogman‘s groovy new multi-lingual blog, then now is the time to rectify that oversight. However be careful not to push the red button.
Dissident Frogman is one of the best pro-liberty sites on the internet and is a reminder than there is more to France than Weasels. Just remember not to push the red button.
The Frogman is still working on the site so updates are a bit patchy at the moment; however it is worth checking it out now just to marvel at the sheer technical virtuosity of his graphic design talents. Note the ‘Busted Beards Al-Qaeda Fragboard’ in the sidebar…
…it adds a whole new meaning to the term ‘hit counter’
BUT DON’T PRESS ANY RED BUTTONS!
Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
The good news is that British Conservative Party appear, at long last, to have developed a will to challenge the Labour government. The bad news is that they are doing it by moving to the left:
A Tory government would scrap university tuition fees in a wide-ranging overhaul of higher education unveiled last night as part of Iain Duncan Smith’s campaign to offer voters “a fair deal”.
Parents whose children expect to go to university after 2005, the likely date of the next general election, would no longer have to worry about finding £9,000 to pay for an average three-year course if the Tories won.
Not only are the Tories moving to the left, they are actually positioning themselves to the left of New Labour. It was Blair’s first government which scrapped the taxpayer-subsidisation of higher education, hence the introduction of ‘Tuition Fees’ which simply means that those who wish to attend University have to pay to do so.
The Tories are promising to place this burden back onto the exhausted taxpayer.
The Government will find itself arguing for charging students more, while the Tories will be proposing a return to free university education.
Only in a country such as this, where there is barely any concept of the link between government spending and taxation, can subsidised education be described as ‘free’. As if the act of the Treasury raiding your bank account in order to pay for your University course is much fairer than relying on you to raid your own bank account.
But, bizarre as it is, that is the way things are seen over here and I suppose I cannot blame the Tories for wanting to pander to the bottomless British appetite for more government and ever-higher taxes. After all, their job is to get elected.
Speaking for myself, I can’t be bothered to vote. There is nothing to vote for.
Health fascism? Islamofascism? Same thing?
[My thanks to Marc Brands for posting this to the Libertarian Alliance Forum]
I have always regarded blogging as a labour of love. At the very least it is means for people with something to say to the world to get these things off of their chest. But, let’s be honest, recognition out in the wider world is sweet and makes the effort all the more worthwhile.
So Natalie Solent can justly feel as pleased as punch that she can count the venerable Mark Steyn among her fans:
As to sites I like, a lot of them are the obvious ones, like National Review, but if I had to single out a non-big-media site, I’d put in a word for Natalie Solent, who writes from somewhere in England and has a way of looking at subjects from odd angles with interesting historical allusions.
Muchos kudos to our Natalie.
[My thanks to Steve Martinovich of Enter Stage Right for heads-up]
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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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