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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Samizdata quote of the day The constitution and laws of a State are rarely attacked from the front; it is against secret and gradual attacks that a Nation must chiefly guard. Sudden resolutions strike men’s imagination; their history is written, and their secret sources made known; but changes are overlooked when they come about insensibly by a series of steps which are scarcely noted. One would do great service to Nations by showing from history how many States have thus changed their whole nature and lost their original constitution.
– Emmerich de Vattel, The Laws of Nations or Principles of Natural Law, 1758
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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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Wow!
‘New’ book for me to read.
Thanks.
Salami tactics?
I found it online here. I’m not sure about reading it all on a computer but I can get a pretty good idea if I want to get a hard copy.
I would suggest the Federalist Papers as a companion book. It was depressing for me to read it and see how far we in USA have fallen by the hand of the “Living Document” types.
Do not forget the antifederalist papers (Patrick Henry, George Mason and the others), but yes James Madison and the others are certainly worth reading.
Yes the “Living Document” people are scum. Oddly enough one can trace the decline of the word “liberal” to this subject – as in a “liberal interpretation of the powers of the federal government of these States”.
Liberal as in “broad” – it goes back a long way.
If the collectivists want to amend the Constitution they can try to do that, and if they want a new one they can call for a Convention (if two thirds of the States agree they get a Convention – in theory it is less difficult that getting an Amenment). But they choose to do neither – they choose to ignore or twist the words of the Constitution, that is why they are scum.
I seem to remember that Vattel was a Swiss who took the best in Pufendorf (and left out the bad stuff).
I recall Edmund Burke citeing V.