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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His supreme blogness, Glenn Reynolds, links to an NYT article on how American firms are increasingly warming to hiring former military personnel, on the grounds that the quality of such hires are getting better and are frequently far better than those who have never been in the armed forces. Hmm. It is the sort of story that might be dreamed up by an army recruiter saying: “Join the Army and when you want to quit, make a great life afterward”. That makes a lot of sense. For most people, a lifetime in the forces is not something they would ever want to contemplate, but a short spell, maybe. I know quite a few people who have got decent careers and businesses after having served in the forces, and I notice a few patterns. Of those I know, the following:
My father (RAF navigator): farmer.
RAF jet pilot: air traffic controller, West Drayton.
RAF Defence Rgt: Senior security manager, public transport.
SAS operative: security advisor, South Africa, Middle East.
Army officer, cavalry rgt: salesman, farmer.
Tank commander: hedge fund administrator.
Army officer: wealth management industry job-search executive.
Australian navy officer: property developer.
US navy officer, financial journalist.
US navy submariner: software engineer, paramedic, post-grad student at Columbia.
South African army: landscape gardener, property developer.
Army officer: property developer.
Army officer: pharmaceutical industry executive.
Army sergeant: pest control business owner (no irony intended!).
RAF tailgunner (WW2), social worker.
The last one always struck me as poignant. The man is now in his eighties, was a tailgunner on Lancasters during WW2 and saw his fair share of death and destruction. He ended up running a youthclub for kids in Pimlico for much of his adult life and one of my relations benefited from his tender care.
I’d be interested in seeing if commenters with military backgrounds ended up doing anything comparable to the stuff above, or something totally different.
Johnathan has already posted a remembrance for this day, but I would like to add a hearty “Thank you” on behalf of the Samizdata editorial staff to all the US and UK warriors who have fought and died for us over the ensuing years.
We will not forget you, either.
I find myself wondering if Britain is a Communist country.
“If the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland were a Communist country you would not be allowed to ask that question.”
I think I might be. If Britain was under Marxist rule (which is what is normally meant by “a Communist country”) I think the rulers might allow me to ask how long we were going to be under socialism before we reached the end state of advanced communist equality – they might even give me a date when the new society would be achieved. The Soviet rulers did this from time to time – normally many decades in the future.
“The means of production, distribution and exchange are not under public control – so we have not even reached the socialist stage yet”.
That would be a better reply. However, almost half of the economy is taken by government spending alone (if one takes account of Mr Brown’s smoke and mirrors), and the rest of the economy is so controlled by endless regulations that it is at least close to be under “public” (if by this we mean state) control.
But it is really the near universal propaganda that got me wondering if was living under Communist rule.
This site is not called ‘samizdata’ without reason. In Britain there are many sources of information – books, magazines, newspapers, television and radio broadcasters. But on many matter they all say the same thing.
Take the example of the bailout/takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the United States.
In America Fox News, so denounced as statists by so many libertarians, had many critical voices on Monday September 8th. On Neil Cavuto’s “Your World” show both M. Malkin and Bob Barr (who are very different from each other on so many political issues) both laid in to the corrupt statism. And Mr Cavuto also did so. The next day (Tuesday 9th September) Ron Paul was on the show – continuing the attack. Later on the 8th of September the Brit Hume show (although Mr Hume himself was away) Ed Crane of the Cato Institute was on denouncing the bailout/takeover. There were, of course, other voices and perhaps to let Fannie and Freddie go bankrupt would have been even worse than what the government did – but this is not my point.
My point is that there was no dissent in Britain – from any media source. The BBC did not even report in its main news shows that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were created by the government and run by political cronies. The leftist Independent newspaper gloatingly declared that President Bush had “torn up years of lassez faire polices”. The claim that there has ever even been a “lassez faire” policy in the United States under President wild spending Bush is such a blatant bit of agitprop that it is hard to know how to respond to it.
And the so-called ‘Conservative’ newspapers? No dissent anywhere – at least none I could find. In fact the Daily Mail was demanding something similar for Britain.
It must be remembered that in Britain ‘Conservative’ means ‘Conservative party’, it does not mean conservative in any philosophical sense.
And it is not true that in Communist countries there was only one legal party – often there were several political parties (organized into a ‘front’), as long as they all supported the regime.
But it is not just this one example.
Take another incident on Monday September 8th – the Fox News refutation of “the Americans killed lots of innocent kids” lie that was going round the world.
Fox News had reporters actually on the raid in question, who had filmed the raid and openly denounced the “killed these kids” claims as lies.
This would simply not happen in Britain. Even if a British television crew had been on a raid with special forces – it would never call the crying and screaming “relatives of the murdered children” (who can cry and scream on que whenever they are told to – and can produce pictures of dead bodies) liars.
“We are libertarians, we are anti-war” – I am saying be “pro-war” (perhaps the Afghan war is all wrong), I am saying tell the truth. Something that does not happen here – on any television or radio station. If you were with someone and know they did not kill kids then it is your duty to say so. And, if dead kids are produced, to ask who really killed them. That would not be done by any British network.
But it goes a lot further than this. For example, today I went round the bookshops in my home town of Kettering Northamptonshire – a typical British town if there ever was one. In every shop there were Senator Obama’s books, and so there should be – he may be elected to a very powerful position, so what he has to say is of interest.
But in no shop was there any book that was critical of Senator Obama.
No “Obama Nation“, or “The Case Against Barack Obama“, or “Audacity of Deceit” or “Obama Unmasked“.
Perhaps these books are useless (although the first two are best sellers in the United States), but why were they not on the shelves?
“Because they would not sell” – how does anyone know, if they are not put on the shelves?
And why are the same leftist propaganda books on the shelves for ever – even though people do not buy them?
For example, in the local “W.H. Smith” there is copy of “What’s wrong with America?” (what is wrong with America seems to be that it is not yet sufficiently Marxist) – and it has been the same copy for at least two years (I know that because there is a bend in the cover).
Does this sound like commercial behaviour by a profit maximising private company? American libertarians often complain that the United States is capitalist in name, but semi-socialist in reality.
Actually that is rather more true of Britain.
Here is a tribute to the firefighters who lost their lives on this day, seven years ago, trying to rescue those attacked by mass murderers in New York City.
May they all rest in peace.
There is a new computer game out there, called Spore, which takes up on the theory of evolution. Looks like fun and educational, as many such games are, a fact that critics of computer games rarely seem to take on board.
Here is another item about this game.
I thought I would let all of you be the first to know I have won my election bid to the National Space Society Board of Directors.
The last time I served on the board it was still called the L5 Society 🙂
What women, if any, have been part of a US Presidential team garnering a least one vote in the Electoral College?
Tony Suruda got it: It was the LP ticket of John Hospers and Toni Nathan in 1972. She took one electoral vote, making her (as far as we know) the first woman to ever do so.
Ed King has added the second: The Democrat’s ticket of Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 with 13 electoral votes. They came from Minnesota and DC.
Now some more LP triivia: What state was the vote from?
Sam Duncan got it. It was indeed Virginia.
Now, What was the back story behind the vote? (I will admit that even my memory is a bit hazy on the details).
For extra credit, since I do not know the answer: Are we correct that she was the first? This is perhaps more a James Taranto type question since he is an expert on US Presidential elections.
Bob Barr and Wayne Allen Root have offered the LP Vice-Presidential slot to Ron Paul.
The question is: “Will he take it?”
If I were a betting man, I’d give it 1 in 4, but the very thought of bringing all those Paul supporters over to our side is enough to set a Libertarian’s heart a flutter!
Congress notes that the Government proposes to require workers in aviation to enrol in the National Identity Scheme in 2009. Congress has deep concerns about the implications of the National Identity Scheme in general and the coercion of aviation workers into the scheme in particular. Congress sees absolutely no value in the scheme or in improvements to security that might flow from this exercise and feels that aviation workers are being used as pawns in a politically led process which might lead to individuals being denied the right to work because they are not registered or chose not to register in the scheme.
Congress pledges to resist this scheme with all means at its disposal, including consideration of legal action to uphold civil liberties.
Overwhelmingly carried by the TUC. Coming not very long after the British Air Transport Association (the association of airlines and airports) expressed its “joint and determined opposition to the proposal” [pdf], this suggests the current scheduling of the UK National Identity Scheme may have some problems.
Expect yet another repositioning shortly. (My guess: it’ll be about “immigration control”.)
Over at the Cato Institute blog, contributor Daniel Griswold argues that the US, the world’s biggest user of energy, is not quite as dependent on energy from only a few nations as one might think. I agree. Energy “independence” sounds like a smart strategy if you fear that a handful of nations, run by thugs, have a heavy armlock on energy supplies. Fortunately, Mr Griswold argues, it is a bit more varied than that.
Of course, part of what bugs me about the constant demand for energy independence is the concern that this might be a form of protectionism in drag, much akin to calls by western farmers for “food independence”, often just a thin excuse for tariffs on imports.
Last night I was on my weekly international phone call to my ‘boss’ to discuss progress on various agreements, proposals and such of our small Wyoming aerospace company. Before signing off we got into a discussion on Sarah Palin’s background and future prospects. Jim suggested I read his article in the Telegraph. I might add we both agree that ‘win.lose or draw’, she is now a force to be reckoned with in the GOP and will probably make her own Presidential run in the next decade.
I expect many of you will find it of interest also.
Although of course it is a joke, see the posting immediately below. As Jonathan has already noted, Guido Fawkes has had a lot of fun over the last few months noting that every time Gordon Brown comes out in support of anything, it immediately tanks. Andy Murray was Mr Brown’s latest victim, apparently. So when I read on the Coffee House blog this morning that Gordon Brown now supports Barack Obama, I knew that Guido would be crowing with laughter, if not now then very soon, and sure enough, he is. Obama, says a delighted Guido, is now officially doomed. Luckily, before posting this, I also checked out Samizdata to see if anyone else here was having a laugh about this, and of course, they are.
Apologies if you think I am duplicating here, but behind the hilarity of all this is to be observed an interesting re-arrangement of the political conventions, which is why I still put this thought up as a separate posting. More and more mere people, especially political people, like the ones who read Samizdata for example, have their particular preferences not just in their own countries and constituencies and districts and states and towns, but in ‘foreign’ parts also. The logic of the internet – even of instant electronic communication itself, which got started getting on for two hundred years ago – has always, to me, suggested global political affiliations, and in due course, global political parties. Certainly the Communist movement thought so. Maybe language remains a big barrier, but geography now matters less and less.
Remember that counter-productive attempt by the Guardian to swing the last (was it?) Presidential election against Bush? Many concluded that this proved the wisdom of political people staying out of foreign elections. To me it merely proved that if you want to help this or that side in foreign parts, make sure that you really are helping. Because attempts to help like this are absolutely not going to stop. As the very existence of Samizdata now nicely illustrates, this is all now one big Anglospherical conversation.
Obama’s idiotic campaign trip to Germany was, you might say, a self-inflicted version of that same Guardian blunder. But nor does that folly prove, to me, that campaigners should never go abroad and seek foreign support when campaigning, merely that they should choose their foreign supporters with more care than Obama did. Having the right sort of foreigners waving and cheering next to him can do a politician all kinds of good, now that the pictures can be flashed around the world in seconds.
Under pressure from the McCain camp, the Brown regime is conducting another of its hasty and shambolic retreats. All sorts of stuff gets read out by Mr Brown, or appears under his name in printed articles. But you don’t suppose that he actually reads it all beforehand, do you? Mr Brown’s people are now assuring us that it was one of them who inadvertently revealed this sentiment, rather than Mr Brown himself who actually said it. All Mr Brown did was allow his name to be attached to the bottom of a newspaper article. So once again, there is this pattern, of the political leader trying, but failing, to observe the old and obsolete conventions, against his natural instincts, but his mere people not being so inhibited about saying what they think. Sooner or later the world’s leaders will all follow their mere supporters, and stop pretending to be neutral in foreign elections. Their line should be, because this will be the truth: of course I’ll work with whoever wins, I’m a politician. But meanwhile, yes, I do most definitely have my preferences.
The particular awfulness and embarrassingness of Mr Brown’s particular expression of a preference in the US Presidential election should not detract from the more general interestingness of this little event. Inevitably, most of the commentary will be about how the Obama campaign may now have peaked (the comments on Jonathan’s previous posting are already saying yes it has), and about how the Brown regime is unravelling, definitely, again, some more. But I find the more general global political party angle at least as interesting.
After all, this is not now only Brown preferring Obama, which we all know he does despite any denials (does anybody at all in what is left of the Labour Party not prefer Obama to McCain?). This is also now the McCain team opposing Brown, and not caring who knows it. And by extension, and whatever Mr McCain may personally feel or even know about the man, helping David Cameron. After all, the heading at Coffee House says: “The McCain campaign mocks Gordon Brown”. So now Mr McCain is doing it too, whatever denials he may subsequently issue.
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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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