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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 Oh, and anyone in the government opposing [calls for Islamic dress for women to be banned in Britain] is to be conditionally applauded…
…they are right to reject this vile authoritarian notion…
…but if they opposite it because “Islamic dress is ok” then they are a horse’s arse and need to called that.
A burqua or any item of islamic dress for women is as “ok” as a Nazi arm band… and people’s ability to wear Nazi arm bands also should not be banned, but they sure as hell should not be applauded.
– Perry de Havilland
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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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Well if anyone can go naked in streets i can buy that. Otherwise no.
First of all the State limits what we can do to give a reply to a burka. In a store or hotel i would own i would not have freedom to say no.
Second i put my limit level at Burka. Like i don’t like to have in my country a barbecue where human flesh is eaten by consenting adults. Or burning the Hindu widow in a pyre even if she consents.
In country i want to be there are civilizational limits. If some want to that kind of stuff we just draw another border.
That certainly makes me less libertarian than others.
As I have said many times.
Because killing people is morally the same as wearing certain types of clothes?
It makes you no libertarian at all, to put it mildly.
“Because killing people is morally the same as wearing certain types of clothes?
I thought the reason was because of individual freedom.
If they are willing to be killed who are you to say otherwise?
It seems freedom was not so or was not the only reason.
I can extend that to many others visual disgusting situations. We can just start by going naked on the street. Why it should be forbidden?
The issue is for now visual, we can go for hearing and smelling too.
“It makes you no libertarian at all, to put it mildly.”
By your own ranking it seems for now you are not either.
I think we would all agree that a the owner of private property should be able to say “do not come into my place of business dressed like that”.
This claim that a place of business is somehow different from one’s home has a long history in law and philosophy – but it is still demented.
For example, J.S. Mill says, in “On Liberty”, that although he favours free trade it is not a moral question – nothing to do with the freedom he is talking about. This is because it is a moral matter for someone to be forbidden to buy something – but not a moral matter for someone to be forbidden to sell it (perhaps people can see why I used the word “demented”).
The 18th century legal writer Blackstone (rightly hated by the Founding Fathers of the United States – although not for this reason) declared that the state had the right to make an inn keeper accept any ciustomer (this can be extened from an “inn keeper” to any business) – where did this notion come from?
Blackstone the great “common law” man was actually getting it from ROMAN law (yes such things as the 1964 Civil Rights Act depend on the principles of Roman Law), specifically the law of the Empire.
There is no evidence (as far as I know) that inns were forced to accept customers under the Republic – but under the Empire gradually not only inns but all forms of business came to be seen as the servants of the state. With what people sold, what price they sold it at, and who they sold it to – all being a matter for the state.
That is why people think all these things are a matter for regulations.
Do not “ban the burqua” and people will not be able to “discriminate” against people wearing it.
Freedom is just not an option in the modern legal mind – it is one form of force or the other.
“But that means that civilization will collapse Paul – just as Classical Civilization did.”
I know that.
You thought wrong. If actions greatly impinge upon another without consent, sure, there is cause for law, but facile reductio ad absurdum fails because the magnitude matter: it is unreasonable to demand you be forcibly quarantined if you have a cold, it is perfectly reasonable if you have pneumonic plague.
If the sheer stench emanating from your property makes life intolerable to your neighbours, they have legitimate cause to demand the source be cleaned up. Likewise for extreme noise. Yet if you merely dislike the smell of your neighbours cooking or wish them to remain in absolute silence, it is not at all reasonable. This is because the issue is freedom in a social context, the freedom of others from extreme impositions on their own property. A person’s clothing hardly even registers on that scale.
Is it fine for the state to ban mini skirts? How about tee-shirts? And yes, I indeed have no problem with *not* banning nudity. If people think nothing of a tiny bikini at the beach that barely cover anything, is it not weird that we invoke the law when a few grams of cloth is removed? I recall once reading of a woman who spent the entire day walking around Miami (I think it was) apparently wearing a bikini, without any comment or complaint from anyone, when she in fact has her ‘bikini’ painted on her naked body.
The morality of using force when actually threatened or grossly put upon without consent is not hard to understand but it is a nonsense to think clothing can be seen in that way by a reasonable man. It should surely be left to the owners of private property and indeed the social pressure and (non force backed) praise or opprobrium of people in the street to decide what is or is not ‘appropriate’ clothing.
To ban the burqua by law is as immoral (and indeed as absurd) as imposing the burqua by law.
Why do you get to legislate what others can or can’t wear? Such fears are childish.
“I don’t find nudity or sexuality tremendously frightening or shocking at all – it simply isn’t. Every time I go into a locker room, I’m reminded of that. In the flesh, a whole bunch of people standing around doesn’t look like much of anything. We can kind of fetishize things, but it really is just a body.”
Julianna Moore
Well, Janine, it reallydoes depend on the body in question…
Banning burquas and nazi armbands annoys the hell out of the vile individuals who support the ideology behind the symbolism, that trumps anything, there is no loss of liberty so its difficult to see this as “authoritarian”.
We are still at war with fascism, when it’s all over, you can have your libertarian paradise.
‘Clothes maketh the man. Naked men haven’t done much for history.’
Or something like that….
I don’t think I’d include you in that “we” because guess which side I think you’re on.
Perry wrote:
I just thought that was worth emphasising, by restatement, though a few extra (parenthetic) commas might be good.
Best regards
“You thought wrong. If actions greatly impinge upon another without consent, sure, there is cause for law, but facile reductio ad absurdum fails because the magnitude matter: it is unreasonable to demand you be forcibly quarantined if you have a cold, it is perfectly reasonable if you have pneumonic plague.”
Well that is a bad example because it doesn’t adress the issue here .
Pneumonic plague affects me and others, like noise and smell directly.
If someone builds a pyre for widow, eat human flesh, makes sex in street all in consenting adults or runs naked does not affect me except as a shared identity of a civilization or a country.The issue is civilizational and identitary Vs freedom.
Who will be willing to fight to save a burka women/men in a War if they are a big part of population and they don’t want nothing to do with you?
I have not much problems with naked, it is btw the best way to not invite burkas.
“To ban the burqua by law is as immoral (and indeed as absurd) as imposing the burqua by law.”
“Is it fine for the state to ban mini skirts?”
That depends when it starts your level of “reductio ad absurdum” it seems. After it gets there everything can be forbidden with state power.
After a certain level of difference people should live in different countries.
After all that is the reason to have countries isn’t it?
Countries should be a part of a market of different choices.
Anyway the State problem will be only fixed when people can build countries at sea or space with artificial islands/boats and spaceships, unfortunately drawing new borders usually starts a war.
Which is why it is the perfect example, given you were making extreme examples yourself: Pneumonic plague etc. do indeed affect you and others… so does a person cooking lunch next door… but as I said earlier, magnitude matters.
And finally you start to move closer to the truth: some things should be illegal because they are objectively immoral (murder or theft for example) whereas others are just a matter of opinion.
And the fact that Britain does not need laws telling people what to wear is a glorious example of British ‘civilisation’ and culture… that is the very point the original article was making!
Adding laws more like those in Saudi Arabia, who do indeed tell women how they *must* dress, is a perverse way to try and defend Britain from Muslims who think nothing of using force to make people dress a certain way.
You do realize that at the end of it, islamic ‘civilisation’ is incompatible with dar al harb in all it’s manifestations. At some point this is not going to end well, for someone. And I know who I’m voting for.l
FWIW, Syria has just banned the Burkha. While by no means any sort of paragon of individual liberty, they’ve commented that they recognise (even if liberal apologists of islamism don’t) that the burkha is intented to be worn by its wearers, or the males who force them to, as an intentionally subversive religious statement against the concept of a secular state.
While personally I’m all for making subversive statements against the state, these folks have such a bad record of abusing the burkha to enable terrorism that I’d be fine with legalizing the burkha if it were also legalized for cops to require public strip searching of burkha wearers. Furthermore, I also support any rules that say that since the burkha intentionally limits the movement of its wearer, that it is a fire safety hazard and should be banned from all public buildings, restaurants, and workplaces on that basis alone.
And can cops strip search anyone wearing a kaftan or any voluminous dress? How about pregnancy dresses, will they also be liable to be strip searched without probable cause? Overcoats… how about overcoats? Ponchos? Insulated cold weather jackets and coats?
And as the state is going to set personal mobility and safety requirements for people’s personal clothing, presumably high heels are verboten too. Tight trousers? Banned. Lace dresses? Banned. Pencil skirts? Banned.
Soon we will all be wearing Mao style utilitarian state approved overalls because some fucking idiots, sorry but fucking idiots is not too strong a phrase, could not see what could POSSIBLY go wrong with allowing the state to decide what god-damn CLOTHES people can wear. For fuck sake how can otherwise intelligent people even consider such an absurd thing?
Sorry to digress, but I’m still trying to get my head around the phrase “for fuck sake”.
For fuck sake = An extremely common English expression with Anglo-Saxon roots usually deployed when confronted with something astoundingly foolish.
Laird is looking for logic in everything – he is known to be strange that way:-)
Sorry. I’ll try to do better.
I seriously doubt that is possible.
You’re right; it’s not possible.
At least shouldn’t it be “for fuck’s sake” (with a possessive)?
Of course it should – Perry is known for his defiance of spelling-conventions’ hegemony.
“Liberty” has decided to make my point.
They have responded to my MPs statement that he will not meet with people dressed in this way, by stating that that they will prosecute him if he does not.
In short an MP is a SLAVE – he must meet with (and serve) people he does not wish to meet with. Or face criminal punishment.
As I said – support for freedom (for actual “liberty”) is not something the modern legal mind can even understand.
Either this form of dress must be banned – or all people must be made to submit to it (by making refusal to submit to it “discimination punishable by law”).
The pro freedom position is just outside the debate.