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 “I don’t want to remake America. I’m an immigrant, and one reason I came here is because most of the rest of the Western world remade itself along the lines Sen. Obama has in mind. This is pretty much the end of the line for me. If he remakes America, there’s nowhere for me to go – although presumably once he’s lowered sea levels around the planet there should be a few new atolls popping up here and there.”
– Mark Steyn, who despite his recent legal hassles, has not lost his sense of humour.
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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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My problem with Obama and Michelle is not the colour of their skin but their complete ignorance and arrogance. Can anyone imagine the hue and cry from the media if a Republican had declared there were 57 states in the US? It’s this level of ignorance that boggles the mind. Harvard should sue for defamation! Hillary’s (Yale law) declaring the Yukon as part of the US way back when seemed to be the height of such ignorance but no – it just goes on. Don’t these people know anything?
So people can be free anywhere that isn’t somewhere.
Well, there are plenty of places here in Texas that ain’t exactly “somewhere.” I reckon i’ll just stay right here in my little nowhere town that has practically nil police presence, and i’ll be sure to raise my middle finger in the general direction of Washington as the USSA goes to hell.
Johnathan Pearce has done an admirable job editing an unremarkable column.
So Obama’s rhetoric is not like Kennedy’s? And good rhetoric is no good thing? Glad to know that. Too bad nobody let Ronald Reagan or Winston Churchill in on that second point. Or their voters.
And Mark Steyn knows very little about America if he thinks a single president can ruin it for the rest of us. Or has America been one election from ruination for the last 232 years? Does he think historians believe that clocks would run backwards if Polk hadn’t won or, say, Mondale had?
And if Israel’s security is so important to him, why isn’t he in the IDF? This is America. Israelis are probably all very nice people, but they do not vote here and they do not pay taxes here. If anybody said this kind of stuff about any other country, its oddness would be apparent. What would Mark Steyn think about public handwringing in regard to Azeri or Icelandic national security?
If either were diminished, should we risk a nuclear exchange on US soil to protect them? If not, why for Israel?
Michiganny, cool it. I think Steyn knows perfectly well that other politicians have been fine wordsmiths with a gift for the telling phrase; however, in the case of say, R. Reagan, their telling phrases often plugged into important truths, such as Reagan’s great crack that the most terrifying thing anyone hears is the expression, “We are from the government and we are here to help.”
The trouble with Obama is that he is, as far as I or Mr Steyn can tell, remarkably conventional in his Big Government views.
I am sure America will survive an Obama presidency. It has survived worse.
My problem with the Democratic party is that it has been lurching off to the left for some time now, and it has become more and more dominated by protectionist, know nothing but very self important and arrogant leftists with a rather purist agenda. Obama seems to be the purest example of this to be nominated as a presidential candidate, and I think if elected he will attempt to do some pretty dreadful stuff. The fortunate thing about the US is that it does have checks and balances, the senate is conservative enough that he is unlikely to be able to do too much inimpeded, and is only likely to get a couple of years before a more hostile congress is elected to counter him.
“another six weeks of insurgency sounds about right, after which it will peter out” – Mark Steyn December 2003
Mark Steyn lol
[I]n the case of say, R. Reagan, their telling phrases often plugged into important truths, such as Reagan’s great crack that the most terrifying thing anyone hears is the expression, “We are from the government and we are here to help.”
For real. Just ask a Nicaraguan peasant.
O’Barmy will turn the USA into Canada. That’s what gets Steyn. A man who is BTW probably knocking on a bit for the IDF and in anycase is free to have an opinion.
Israeli security matters because the Islamists have Israel as like target number one and if Israel falls then they’re moving on to Al-Andalus and I don’t see a Charles Martel anywhere? Do you? Your comments about Iceland and the Azeris are utterly specious, Michiganny. Neither country is surrounded by a lot of folk who want to destroy it (perhaps the cod want their own back on the Icelanders – that’s possible, I guess) and are currently firing home-made rockets over the border. Neither have the threat of the likes of that mad bastard in Tehran developing nukes and calling for the Zionist entity to be wiped from the page of time.
If Iceland faced a credible threat then I’m sure the US would help it’s ally. It currently doesn’t because the cod haven’t got too pissed off.
In truth the cod really should get their own back on the Canadians (and the Canadian state in particular) before going after Iceland.
Yes, I know the Canadian cod are all dead, but perhaps the Icelandic cod can avenge their western brothers?
In Cod We Trust
Quite a nice riposte, Josh; proof that even the Gipper’s foreign policy was not perfect. I hope you are not naive about the Sandanistas, mind.
“America will survive an Obama Presidency”.
I wish my posting on the threat of totalitarianism in the United States had appeared here J.P.
Then perhaps you would know how far things have already gone – and how clear the intentions of the left are.
They already control most schools and universties and (via both general education and specific “training”) most of the print and broadcast media.
I also explained how their influnece does not exculde the large corporations or the individual billionaries.
A President Obama would only be finishing the job started long ago.
And the objective is a lot more radical than “makeing America like Canada” (or whatever).
Home schooling will be de facto banned, and private schools will have to use “correctly trained” teachers.
Talk radio will be destroyed by “the fairness doctrine” – but it will not just be that, such things as “anti trust” and everything from the IRS to the FCC will be used to make the few remaining nonleftist media outlets do a deal.
The courts will be turned into things like the Californian courts (both the State courts and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals).
Congress is already under the influence of people like Speaker Pelosi – who previous generations of Democrats would have regarded as a sick joke.
Nor is it just he House (for the “blue dogs” have already proved themselves to be a busted flush), it is the Senate also – such creatures as Senator Durbin have great influence, and with control of the Executive Branch their influence would grow.
“America will survive an Obama Presidency”.
I wish my posting on the threat of totalitarianism in the United States had appeared here J.P.
Then perhaps you would know how far things have already gone – and how clear the intentions of the left are.
They already control most schools and universties and (via both general education and specific “training”) most of the print and broadcast media.
I also explained how their influnece does not exculde the large corporations or the individual billionaries.
A President Obama would only be finishing the job started long ago.
And the objective is a lot more radical than “makeing America like Canada” (or whatever).
Home schooling will be de facto banned, and private schools will have to use “correctly trained” teachers.
Talk radio will be destroyed by “the fairness doctrine” – but it will not just be that, such things as “anti trust” and everything from the IRS to the FCC will be used to make the few remaining nonleftist media outlets do a deal.
The courts will be turned into things like the Californian courts (both the State courts and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals).
Congress is already under the influence of people like Speaker Pelosi – who previous generations of Democrats would have regarded as a sick joke.
Nor is it just he House (for the “blue dogs” have already proved themselves to be a busted flush), it is the Senate also – such creatures as Senator Durbin have great influence, and with control of the Executive Branch their influence would grow.
“You are not talking specifically about Senator Obama Paul – you are talking in terms of a vast plot, which simply shows your paranoia”.
O.K. I will talk about Senator Obama.
His Marxist background is supposed to be off limits for attack – even though he came to Chicago to join his comrades, worked with them for 20 years and was working with them only last year.
O.K. let us ignore all that and just stick to his published policies in this election (i.e. nothing not mentioned this year).
Dick Morris (in the first chapter of his new book “Fleeced”) outlines what these policies are.
The United States will NOT survive them Johnathan.
The United States is already a credit bubble economy with a crippleing burden of ever growing entitlement programs and regulations.
The Unted States can not survive all the Obama stuff on top – period.
And the West can not survice if the United States falls – there is (and can be) no “plan B.”.
Senator Obama must be defeated – or it is game over.
Remember any economic collapse will simply be blamed (by the media over which the left will have a de facto monopoly) on greedy businessmen.
And quite a few billionaires and major corporations (including internet corporations) will rush out to agree that this is so.
Each failure of statism will be met with demands for more statism.
And most voters will not hear or see any real dissent from this line.
This is pretty much the end of the line for me. If he remakes America, there’s nowhere for me to go – although presumably once he’s lowered sea levels around the planet there should be a few new atolls popping up here and there.
That’s reminiscent of Jean-Francois Revel’s observation that, so long as there is a single rock in the world’s oceans that doesn’t have socialism, there will be boat people.
Always go for the easy rhetoric. Israel matters because Iceland is not threatened by Iran. You’re just lulling the Icelanders and their cod into a false sense of security.
And did anyone look up from his navel to see where Azerbaijan is? Between Iran and Russia, with chunks of it occupied by foreign troops. And here is the point: Their problems are big and as deserving of US time and attention as Israel’s. Which is not much.
Too true, why hardly a day goes by when CIA/MI6 aren’t beseeching those Spaniards to fortify their southern border. Finger absolutely on the pulse of events, Nick. Just don’t jeopardize your security clearance with this kind of intel. The Moors will be reading Samizdata, too. As soon as they leave the fifteenth century.
Having made the trek Monday night to Ontario, you’re spot on again. Not only are we all planning to give up our guns and begin “queuing” for healthcare, I saw the Canadians openly colluding with the Democra-Traitors even now.
That Harper bastard says the vehicles staged along the border are “mobile weapon labs” to entice Baathist/Qaeda operatives out of their spider holes, to make the place feel “more Iraqi.” But they leak maple syrup.
Why else would they be full of that deliciously and insidiously wonderful stuff if it weren’t to pour it down our otherwise patriotic throats? If Obama gets in, it’ll become law that couches must be called chesterfields, kids’ll have to go school until Grade 13, money will be every color of the rainbow! Welcome to AMERIDA!
And if The Home Of The Brave isn’t safe, who says Iceland’s cod are? Only the sheeple.
The Maple Leaf is waiting, quietly and politely waiting.
Nick M – that last pun was just Cod-awful !