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]
|
Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism
Ann Coulter
Crown Forum, New York 2003
‘Liberals’ are the villains of this book, and its first word. How it became pejorative would need research more diligent than that to unearth the origin of ‘neoconservative’. Still respectable in the United Kingdom, though most of us are aware that the Liberal Democrat party stands on the left of New Labour, in the United States it is a label which those to whom it is affixed seem reluctant to display and wary of using even in discussion. Ann Coulter, it is hardly necessary to say, is dealing with ‘liberals’ in the United States and, while confident that her designation of her quarry is well-understood, she states, for additional clarity:
“Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy… They are either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America’s self-preservation the difference is irrelevant. Fifty years of treason hasn’t slowed them down.”
Taking more than one chapter to deal with the case of Alger Hiss, Coulter begins by emphasising to what extent he was protected by the government establishment, as high up as the two Presidents, Roosevelt and Truman. Hiss’s guilt would probably never have been established but for the persistence of Richard Nixon in 1948, more than nine years after Whittaker Chambers had defected from the Communist Party and as a Soviet agent and then reported to a high government administrator that Hiss, his brother and “at least two dozen” others working for Roosevelt were Soviet spies, an allegation which Roosevelt himself simply laughed off. The documentary evidence against Hiss produced by Chambers, in Hiss’s own hand or typed on his typewriter was sufficiently overwhelming to have him convicted, not of espionage (prosecutions for this have a time-limit) but for perjury.
Yet it would not be too much to say that the media, academic and ‘establishment’ consensus that had been incredulous about the accusation remained incredulous about the verdict, up until and even after it had been verified by opened Soviet archives. Before their British opposite numbers preen themselves on being different, however, it might be as well to remember that the famous quartet of traitors – Burgess, Maclean, Philby and Blunt – were never pursued, prosecuted and imprisoned, as was Hiss – the incredulity or inertia of the ‘establishment’ was quite enough to prevent that happening. → Continue reading: ‘Liberal’ as a dirty word
Unlike our Dale Amon, I am not going to endorse a candidate – in fact, I am rooting for a 269-269 electoral tie, just for the sake of making history – but I still find the horse race intriguing. I was overwhelmed with requests (okay, two people asked) to run one last version of the election monte carlo that I offered last week. Apart from updating the probabilities, I did a few things differently this time:
– if the price was greater than 90 or less than 10, I changed it to 100 or 0, so that only the swing states impact the model.
– I kept track of which states were most likely to end up in the winners’ column; I wanted to know which states were the kingmakers. (Well, we already knew which states, but I wanted a way to quantify it.)
– I ran a few different scenarios, taking different swing states off the table (i.e. setting their probabilities to 100 or 0.)
Scenario I: every swing state up for grabs
BUSH: 5972 wins, avg. 275.82 electoral votes
KERRY: 3843 wins, avg. 262.18 electoral votes
TIE: 185
Florida ends up in the winner’s column 7578 of the 9815 scenarios where there is a winner. After that, the most ‘decisive’ swing states are Ohio (6515), Wisconsin (5636), New Mexico (5606) and Iowa (5521.)
Scenario II: Bush wins FL, everything else is up for grabs
BUSH: 8227 wins, avg. 287.70 electoral votes
KERRY: 1586 wins, avg. 250.30 electoral votes
TIE: 187
So basically, Kerry almost has to have Florida at this point.
Scenario III: Kerry wins FL, everything else is up for grabs
BUSH: 3083 wins, avg. 260.46 electoral votes
KERRY: 6692 wins, avg. 277.54 electoral votes
TIE: 225
Bush has more ways to win without getting Florida than Kerry does. Let’s try one more …
Scenario IV: Bush takes OH and WI; FL and other states are contested
BUSH: 8313 wins, avg. 291.05 electoral votes
KERRY: 1515 wins, avg. 246.95 electoral votes
TIE: 172
If Bush can take these two Midwestern states, he becomes a prohibitive favorite.
A few other desultory remarks:
– who says the country is more divided than ever? My favorite political story of the week: South Dakota, except for the Indian reservations, is a conservative state, and it is tough for a Democrat to win. So Democratic Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth, in the heat of a tough reelection battle, has pledged that, should the election end in a 269-269 tie, she will vote for Bush when the House of Representatives has to choose the president.
– Since I’m rooting for the 269-269 tie, here’s one way it could happen:
source: World66.com
– Finally, Megan McArdle, guestblogging for Glenn Reynolds, offers the best election day advice of all: use the electronic political markets to hedge, just like a farmer would use the grain futures markets to hedge against the possibility of low selling prices at harvest time. If you don’t want Kerry to win, bet a few bucks that he DOES win, so you can at least drown your sorrows with some hard-earned beer.
Some members of the journalist profession need to be explained things slowly and clearly. Scott Burgess undertakes that ungrateful task and tries to get the message through to Polly Toynbee.
… Welcome to the new media world, Polly.
Up until now, an information elite has been able to misrepresent and manufacture fact with virtual impunity – sometimes accidentally, sometimes as a deliberate means of pushing a chosen agenda.
For example, if a newspaper polemicist wanted to contend that “Scandinavian countries are best of all” at overcoming obesity, it was unlikely that many would notice and connect the fact that: “Norway has the highest percentage of overweight men in Europe, according to a new report by the World Health Organization (WHO).”
Those who did notice such “anomalies” had no easy means of communicating them to others interested in issues of journalistic integrity.
As you see, that’s changing now. What you (and many others) are in the process of learning is that, from now on, reportorial sloppiness and dishonesty will be noted, exposed, and punished – quickly and very, very publicly.
Journalists who are accurate and honest have little to fear – the facts will out. Their less capable (and less truthful) colleagues risk the humiliation of public ridicule.
Best of all, in this new media environment the once-wise maxim “never get in an argument with someone who buys ink by the barrel” no longer applies – we all have barrels now. Ardent proponents of equality would no doubt applaud this development, were they not the ones whose superior status was now under threat.
Very Truly Yours,
Scott Burgess
The Daily Ablution
London
For more quality time with bloggers and Polly, follow the path that lead to the above document.
If you want to read about the truly extraordinary and deeply depressing paroxysm of anti-Americanism that has swept like a firestorm through the British media over the last few days and weeks (having merely smouldered for years), you can read about it here.
Of a particularly fatuous TV guide blurb (“Jonathan Dimbleby takes a critical look at the Anglo-US war on terror…”), Mark Holland has this to say:
A critical look! Just for a change. I don’t know about you, but for me all those “Hey it’s all going swell; Bush, Blair and Howard are doing fine; the oil for food scandal has lined the pockets of Saddam, the UN and Total Fina Elf; etc” documentaries have become a tiresome bore.
For me the most depressing British anti-American exhibit of the last few days was a rant by Peter Oborne in yesterday’s Mail on Sunday. Having ignored the Mail, Sunday or of any other sort, for years, I had no idea it was capable of sinking to these depthsm and I only spotted it because I shared some coffee with Michael Jennings in my local Café Nero yesterday.
This picture, of the front cover of the Review section, sums it up well:
Click to get it bigger and more legible. If you really want that.
This is absolutely not mere anti-Bushism, for Oborne is vitriolically nasty about both Democrats and Republicans. Maybe this piece is available to read on the internet, but I cannot myself find it. I am actually rather pleased about that. → Continue reading: British Anti-Americanism gone mad
Halloween… yes, many of the Samizdatistas duly did their duty on All Hallows Eve by going ‘bump’ in the night…
The girls were all spidery…
No, it was not tomato soup, it was the blood of virgins, honest
Paul was not used to women coming up and admiring his chopper
The host and hostess kill not kill all the trick or treaters to make the tasty stew
… but the true horror walks the earth tomorrow…
It seems like everyone has announced their decisions now: even Megan McCardle. So it is my turn… well, actually that isn’t really true. You see, I had to vote about two or more weeks ago to make sure my absentee ballot made it to Pittsburgh by October 31st so my decision cycle was a bit tighter than most.
It is not so much a difficult decision as a painful one. I have had to do something I have never done in my life. I started off Clean for Gene putting up posters when I was still a high school student; friends were out for McGovern… and then the LP came along and made me feel comfortable voting, something I had not really felt in the earlier elections.
I have election after election been perfectly happy voting straight LP. Even if I did not see my candidate take an oath, I at least knew I agreed with what they stood for.
Unfortunately, this year I again became, in Marshall Fritz’s words, ‘Politically Homeless’. The LP stand on the current war has left me in the unfamiliar and awkward feeling position of selecting the least of three evils.
Do not get me wrong. There is really only one of the three candidates whom I really loath and it is not Badnarik.
I also a worry this election might be another squeeker, something I was not expecting. I believed it would be a runaway. That appears not be the case. Votes do matter more than usual this time.
It really came down to a no-brainer though. I have voted for a Republican for President for the first time in my life. I do not agree with George Bush on many issues, but I do indeed agree with him on the war and the war cabinet is one I quite like. There is a minor plus that all the right people are totally off the wall and over the top insane about the prospect of him winning.
There is an undertone of religious intolerance against his obviously sincere and deep faith. I do not find this distressing despite my own total non-belief. I am a pure physical scientist, but just because I do not see need to posit a supreme being does not mean I do not respect those who do. I feel George is a good man and honourable. I simply do not buy the rantings of the left or even of some of our own. Disagree with him if you must, but please do not descend into ludicrous accusations.
I do not like some of his domestic agenda, but for the exact opposite reasons the Kerry side is against it. On the other hand, he has managed a number of political shuffles that appear to be one thing but whose outcome was not really that bad. The cloning research ‘ban’ appears to have been little more than a ban of state funded research, something no Libertarian could argue with.
But that is all secondary. We are in the middle, not merely of a war in Iraq, but of a global war on whose outcome our very lives may depend. I am too close to technology not to realize how much evil can be done by a small number of dedicated followers of the dark side.
I endorse George W. Bush for President of the United States.
|
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.
|
