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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A Muslim is somebody who believes that a man called Muhammad… passed on certain revelations and instructions directly from God Himself. By logic, a non-Muslim is somebody who does not accept that Muhammad was any such prophet, and thereby rejects his teachings as not having come from God… If, contrary to Muhammad’s claims (assuming he has been represented correctly), we do not believe that he was any such prophet from God, what do we truly think of the man?
The answer must be one of three possibilities: either Muhammad was a liar, or he was deluded, or he was mad. These are the only possible conclusions of the intellectually honest non-Muslim. Let us ponder one of the three possibilities – that Muhammad was a liar. Would it be unreasonable then to posit that a man willing to deceive many thousands of people, perhaps out of hunger for power or self-aggrandisement, could be labelled as ‘evil’? If so, on what basis do we object to an extremely negative portrayal (either graphic or prose) of such an ‘evildoer’?
Whether or not such a portrayal may appear ‘gratuitous’ or provoke widespread anger, it would nonetheless be a justifiable expression of dissent. Therefore, to place legal sanctions on any such piece of literature is to necessarily outlaw opposition to, and disagreement with, Islam to a logical denouement; this suggests we are implicitly calling for the abolition of the right to proclaim oneself a non-Muslim in clear and in certain terms. That is, one may still be a nominal ‘non-Muslim’ free of harassment, but one cannot explain and defend one’s position in any significant detail without committing the act of blasphemy.
– from On the Right to Give Offence by Steve Edwards quoted today by David Thompson
Blogger Patrick Lasswell had a real world encounter of the ‘dial 911’ kind that shows whilst civic virtue is a good thing, it is even better when the upstanding citizen has a firearm to hand when investigating a disturbance.
Hiding in my front yard from a shotgun armed maniac last night made me reflect on my libertarian leanings. The Second Amendment never seemed so clear to me as an individual right as I waited for the police to arrive, and waited. I was carrying only a telephone and a flashlight, and updating the 911 operator as the lunatic passed twenty yards from my position it occurred to me how very much I appreciate owning rifles, and how very, very far away they were at the moment.
Read the whole thing. Fortunately the encounter in question was ‘merely’ alarming, yet clearly there was potentially for a shooting and thus Patrick was in violation of Jeff Cooper’s First Rule of Gunfights: have a gun.
Patrick, you live in the USA so you have no excuse to emulate the disarmed civilian population of Britain.
“My faith in airport security has never been the same since I noticed that the man confiscating the shaving foam in my hand luggage (while leaving me with the razor) had the word HATE tatooed on his knuckles.”
– Daniel Finkelstein.
Clarkson is a hero, and Monbiot is a chicken.
– Why Monbiot is so Miserable
The smoking ban was a mere tasty morsel. It has roused the appetite of the beast without bedding it back down again. The hungry beast has drawn blood and it wants more:
Government ministers should shrug off media accusations that they are running a nanny state and introduce tougher public health measures, experts say.
The Nuffield Council on Bioethics said the time had come to consider a whole host of interventions in the UK after the introduction of a smoking ban.
Its proposes raising alcohol prices, restricting pub opening hours and better food labelling to fight obesity….
The report by the panel of experts, which include scientists, lawyers and philosophers, said there was a balance to be struck between individual freedom and wider public protection.
Welcome to the latest phase of the old ‘public choice’ paradigm. You have to choose between freedom and prosperity. You have to choose between freedom and fairness. You have to choose between freedom and safety. And the wheels of the world turn round and round to the music of the rhythm of history.
Okay. let’s gird our loins, saddle up and prepare for battle again but, this time, let’s make sure that we don’t go charging off in the wrong direction. It would be easy to lose this stage of the war and, as always, the odds are stacked against us. But lose we will for sure if attempt to fight it on the enemy’s ground and what I mean by that is accepting that there is a such a thing as a choice between freedom and health and then attempting to persuade people to choose freedom and to hell with their health. If the public believes that this is the choice they must make, then they will choose to be healthy and, before we know it, we’re standing around scratching our arses and wondering what went wrong while the triumphant, braying beast tramples everything in its path.
We must not make the mistake of arguing that health does not matter. It does matter. As every exhortatory elderly relative has croaked at one time or another, health is the most important thing. But that is exactly why we need more freedom and less compulsion. The healthiest societies are the the most liberal and prosperous ones, while the unhealthiest are invariably the poorest and most statist and centrally planned prescriptions for health will be no more successful than centrally planned prescriptions for the economy. The public must hear, again and again, that the “choice” being presented to them by the likes of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics is vexatious, counterfactual and perverse.
The beast will not stop. It will not change its mind, grow tired, get distracted or give up. The stakes are too high. But that is not the same as saying that it is unstoppable. We just have to make sure that we shoot its legs from under it. Nothing less will do.
I went to watch Elizabeth – the Golden Age – as I had mentioned a few weeks back and I was pretty impressed, despite a few jarring notes (Francis Drake barely gets a mention in the defeat of the Spanish Armada, rather like overlooking Nelson at Trafalgar). But the film was overall good entertainment, if not dead-accurate scholarship. One thing stuck in my mind on the way home: the man who played Philip II of Spain was very convincing in the role of a religious maniac, a man swinging between rhapsodies of hatred for Elizabeth and tearful despair. I thought to myself: “This guy looks like a stunt double for the current leader of Iran”. I mean, he really does. Creepy.
There is a huge plume of smoke rising from Stratford, east of the City. Nothing on the news as to the origin of this. Mobile networks are already becoming overloaded.
UPDATE: Spectacular plumes, but terror motive “discounted”. Any jokes about London’s taxes going up in smoke can be made in the comments.
The Malaysian carmaker Proton has announced plans to develop an “Islamic car”, designed for Muslim motorists.
Any suggestions as to a name?
I find this Hollywood writers strike fascinating but puzzling. On the one hand, we have long been told, Hollywood crawls with waiters who serve scripts to movie people with the coffee, lift attendants who type deathless dialog during their lunch hours. On the other hand, Hollywood is grinding to a halt, because the Union, and all those sympathetic to unions, really can withdrawn a great chunk of the raw material essential to the entertainment industry.
Rather than announce the answer to the what’s-going-on? question, I will simply ask it of the Samizdata commentariat. What’s going on?
Is this an industry in decline, having a quarrel about a diminished pie? Or is it a quarrel about new territory (digital rights), in other words a quarrel about an increased pie? Is this TV and the movies on their last legs, or TV and the movies getting the ground rules established for marching profitably forwards into the internet age? Is that actually what the quarrel is about? The studios say: it is a famine out there. The writers say: it is a feast.
My heading says one thing that I do observe with confidence, which is that if you want small screen entertainment, perfectly crafted to fit in with your exact preferences and prejudices, there is still plenty of it out there, which is not going to go away or stop being made any time soon. So, is not this a rather bad time for Hollywood to be strike-bound? Are not the professionals simply handing the future to the blackleg amateurs? Or am I missing something?
I want the strike to last for ever, on politico-philosophical grounds. As a libertarian I am not against strikes in principle. An individual should be allowed to withdraw his labour. So should an organised group of individuals, and attach any conditions they like to ceasing to withdraw that labour, just so long as organised does not mean violent (the alternative to such rules is slavery). Nevertheless, the kind of writers, and the kind of people generally, who like striking, unions, etc., and who believe that striking, unions, etc., is what has made the word rich (rather than productive work), mostly have the kind of opinions I would like to see severely muted, indefinitely.
I could get my wish, at any rate for quite a while:
They want more money for their work when it is used online than Hollywood studios are willing to pay. Because the strike is over matters of principle, not just dollars and cents, it could last for months.
But what are these principles exactly?
Just over 20 minutes from the time I am writing this, a quarter of a mile from my flat, people will line up around the Cenotaph, Whitehall, to commemorate the fallen. Wars involving our servicemen and women are being fought as I write. I leave aside for this post whether we should or not be fighting said wars, let us leave that for another time. There are various charities and organisations that people can support to help those who have suffered from their service as well as support the families left bereaved or in serious hardship.
My old man was a RAF navigator in the 1950s and he has several old squadron buddies who served in combat and could use a bit of help. So this is the charity I’ll be supporting this year: the Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund.
And anyway I wanted to see what it would feel like ordering a three hundred quid starter
– Giles Coren, reviewing the St James’-Ukrainian restaurant Divo for The Times.
The capacity at will to do something improbable (and quite possibly stupid) in order to find out what it feels like is to my mind the measure of a society worth living in. Mr Coren did not have to consult religious authorities about that starter, and no government inspector determined for him whether it was fair or appropriate fo him to do so, or insisted on him having counselling first, or afterwards. He is not confined in a fixed universe of approved experiences. For how long? The vigilantes are abroad, though they are coming for the poor first. And everyone ought to be free to be daft, not just oligarchs.
There has been a change in the policy on policies, and therefore all the policies have had to be rewritten in order to be in compliance with the new policies policy
– A compliance officer at a large investment bank, during a compulsory compliance training seminar this week.
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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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