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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Told you – and anyone who would listen – so Am I still going to be regarded as a wild-eyed loony by quite so many members of the general public after this?
Probably. Note the delicate way in which one big file on everything in your life – a British Dang An – is justified by a lacrymose anecdote about a family having to have dozens of contacts with government agencies after someone died. Who makes them do that in the first place?
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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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Mess things up so you can justify the destruction of it. A typical ploy.
Blair wants “minority report” ASBOs now, too. So much the better for implementing it. How long before we are ASBO’d for being Libertarian and voting for a non-approved political organisation (the EU is itching to do this, is my suspicion)?
If something is over-complex, you do not fix it by adding more layers, abstractions and complexities. If the individual needs to deal with too many state organisations then the first reaction I have is are they all necessary? I am pretty certain that they are not.
If a centralised point for information is useful, then why not allow multiple private organisations (Google, Yahoo!, one’s bank) to provide it? Oh no, not enough scope for…dare I say it, control, abuse and corruption? The government’s job is to ensure valid and trustworthy weights and measures, not produce the goods!
You do noble work in opposing the government’s attacks on civil liberties Guy.
Even if your efforts are not successful (and, as you know, vast forces stand against you) this does not invalidate them. As “The Flashing Blade” (a French television series from my youth) put it “it is better to have faught and lost than not to have faught at all”.
I forgot to mention the latest government attack upon civil liberties (although you, most likely, will already have heard of it).
The latest idea is that people who have been found guilty of no offense what-so-ever are to be forbidden to travel overseas (this is NOT a matter of them skipping bail – they need not be on trial for anything), or to use a telephone ……. (and to have their civil liberties taken away in various other ways), if they are considered (by the powers-that-be) to be “suspicious”.
This is the sort of thing that was often tossed out by juries in Imperial Russia – and (in the same pre First World War period) was not even tried by the government of any other civilized nation.
“The latest idea is that people who have been found guilty of no offense what-so-ever are to be forbidden to travel overseas”
Latest? Latest?!
Well, I glad to see someone standing up for traditional English values and common law, and bringing back the writ ne exeat regno. Ah! The Golden Age of civil liberties and freedom, before we had all this modern erosion of standards…
I think actually this is an old controversy – last applied to my recollection to football hooligans, stripped of their God-given right to travel abroad and smash up foreign cities. Oh, for the days of Empire again. You have to join the Army, now.
The right to a passport has never, strictly speaking, been a right. The monarchy has been able to suspend it at will, certainly since the 17th century. Something about stopping all the English Bishops running off to Rome to hatch plots with the Pope, I think. I have heard of similar sorts of restrictions dating back to Roman times. (Less controversially, it is used to this day in kidnap cases, to prevent suspect husbands taking their daughters back home to marry their cousins.)
The right to use the telephone has had a rather shorter history, apparently, not appearing anywhere in Magna Carta. (Unlike the right not to to be convicted on the evidence of a woman. Where did we lose that one?) You do certainly, on being arrested, have the right to a telephone call, and I’d be interested to know how the police handle this one when faced with the subjects of such court orders.
To be serious for a moment, and apologising in advance for my tone: I’m certainly against the erosion of civil liberties, and we have certainly lost quite a number over the centuries, but I can’t help feeling that the case for their preservation is not assisted by journalists and civil liberties campaigners making fictitious “rights” up.
I do sincerely apologise for being so snarky, but to the extent that I feel strongly about liberty, it is more than distressing to see the credibility of the case spoilt by campaigners who go over the top and start making stuff up. Certainly, you can argue if you wish that it ought to be a right (although in the case of terrorists seeking training in Pakistan, you’re going to have to talk quite fast). You can argue that it is morally right too. But you have to argue the reasons and test criteria and the merits of borderline cases, first. The argument that “we’ve always done it that way” holds no water – there are many things we’ve stopped doing and a damned good job too.
In this case, I’d argue against the latter rule on the grounds of being bloody stupid, stopping people using the telephone is like stopping Gerry Adams talking on TV. And the former rule is pretty unenforceable too: if immigrants can get into the country illegally, I don’t see why they couldn’t get out. But it isn’t a recognised civil liberty. Sorry.
Oh, and I apologise for being in a bad mood, lately.
I’ve been having some problems in my everyday life recently, but it isn’t fair to take it all out on you guys. I’ll try to take a break from it.
I think actually this is an old controversy – last applied to my recollection to football hooligans, stripped of their God-given right to travel abroad and smash up foreign cities. Oh, for the days of Empire again. You have to join the Army, now.
Indeed, and the vile Football Supporters Act now extends to ID cards. Be a suspected fighter, lose all civil capacity at the will of the authorities.
The right to a passport has never, strictly speaking, been a right.
Indeed. But the obligation to hold a passport in order to be permitted to travel is relatively recently imposed. So recently that it has never been given legal status, having been created by regulatory bullying of transport companies and INS bullying of travellers.
The monarchy has been able to suspend it at will, certainly since the 17th century.
Not quite. A passport is granted at will. It was a privilege to allow one assert the protection of HMG when abroad, and a convenient counterpart to the visa that was only required to enter the more despotic countries in former times.
“Suspension” of a passport was until the mid 20th century no universal bar to travel. In a glorious piece of historical irony, it became so more or less simultaneously with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Which is as good a demonstration as any of the fatuity of a culture of rights: a right implies a grantor who may withdraw it, and general prohibition. You don’t need to be told you have a right to something if you are habitually free to do it.
To say something is “not a recognised civil liberty” implies that it doesn’t matter much that you are not free to do it: that there are two categories of freedom, some readily dispensed with, some more or less privileges, with someone in authority entitled to determine which is which. That to me seems remarkably like the ‘human rights’ model.
Which is as good a demonstration as any of the fatuity of a culture of rights: a right implies a grantor who may withdraw it, and general prohibition. You don’t need to be told you have a right to something if you are habitually free to do it.
Surely it is that people have the right not to be hindered by the State. This puts the default as movement/freedom, and imposes the obligation to comply on the State, not for the State to grant. The wording in the charter is Napoleonic, as it were.
Is it not the case, however, that football thugs travelling to matches is in the environs of “probable cause”? Football thug travelling to Florida? Not justified to suspend travel in my view. However, if a football thug is tried and convicted, then there might be justification for extended parole, not free to travel on match days…though it sounds like a parking restriction in Highbury.
Alas, the road being built by the government leads to Exit Visas. I think this is what they want – a population supine and obedient so they may continue to take a holiday. “Marvelous”. It just might work.
TimC,
The Football Spectators Act [not “supporters”] as I wrote earlier], was amended in Blair’s year of greatest atrocity by the Football (Disorder) Act 2000, to provide in s14B for “banning orders made on complaint”.
This is not punishment for those convicted of an offence – it is punishment for those who it appears to a relevant chief officer of police have “caused or contributed to any violence or disorder” anywhere. Violence and disorder are very broadly defined. Disorder includes: “(b) using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour or disorderly behaviour, (c) displaying any writing or other thing which is threatening, abusive or insulting” (my emphasis).
Thanks for the clarification, Guy. Indeed, an atrocity.
Next: PC Savage issues banning order over a loud shirt, offensive wife and urinating in a public convenience.
Pa Annoyed makes some interesting points, and Guy adds to them.
I’d like to throw in the case of vehicle speed on roads, as another example, along with passports, ID cards, etc.
As we know, speeding is not the underlying issue; it is car crashes and damage to life and property.
The problem is that the government wishes to have a more efficient way of stoping vehicle damage to life and property: than punishing people who do it, having obtained good evidence against them.
Likewise, doubtless, the placing of travel restrictions on suspected naughty bishops committing sedition while in Rome, suspected naughty muslims training for terrorist attrocities, and suspected naughty football supporters looking for any old reason for a fight.
But does this sort of thing not eventually risk abuse of authority? And are we, issue by issue, there yet?
Best regards