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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How I feel about the “Occupy Wall Street/London/Whatever” I came across this good collection of messages via Tim Sandefur. “We are the 53 per cent” puts my sentiments across exactly.
I don’t want to sound overly harsh; some of the Occupy Wall Street people, as Brian Mickelthwait notes, might have some decent views and with a bit of outreach, could be helped to understand the statist dimension to our current problems. But I am afraid that with a lot of them, I tend to share the scornful analysis of George Will.
Talking of those who feel they work too hard to spend their time protesting, there are echoes of Sumner’s “Forgotten Man”.
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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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In observing OWS, I am reminded of the old observation of the dog chasing a Mac truck –
What’s he going to do with it if he catches it?
This is all you need to know about OWS.
http://occupywallst.org/forum/proposed-list-of-demands-for-occupy-wall-st-moveme/
And it has already entered congress. Take a look at this idiot:
http://dailycaller.com/2011/10/12/jackson-obama-should-declare-a-national-emergency-add-jobs-with-extra-constitutional-action/
As a rule, I abhor the whole “We’re just not getting our message across” attitude. However, I think there is potentially an opportunity here to at least let people see things from a perspective that they haven’t considered before. If they then choose to reject it, that’s another thing but I think there’s a real window to plant some seeds (to mix metaphors).
This news from Breitbart – on the “organisers” of OccupyWallStreet should throw a few cats among the pigeons.
http://biggovernment.com/thomasryan/2011/10/14/the-email-archive-of-the-occupywallstreet-movement-anarchists-socialists-jihadists-unions-democrats/
These people ARE statists.
No doubt there are a few sincere people at some of these protests – people against bailouts and the whole corrupt Federal Reserve, Bank of England, European Central Bank….. (and so on) system.
However, the people in charge of these protests (and anyone thinks that noone is in charge is flat wrong) are the “usual suspects” – Marxists and Communal Anarchists (red flagers and black flagers) with a large number of “useful idiots” thrown in.
Finance?
The unions – these days the American unions are more under Communist influence than at any time since the 1930s.
But not just them – for example many internet business enterprises (such as Google) are involved. Partly because their bosses want the brands to seem “hip” and “with it” (a lot of the protestors are people with large amounts of desposable income – able to afford to buy “Eye Phones” and what not), but partly they share more moderate forms of leftist beliefs themselves.
“Social Justice” is not a vile term meaning mass murder – not to many corporate big shots (with their half remembered college education). They do not know that the idea that all income and wealth rightly belong to the collective and should be “distributed” according to some “just” rule, means that they (the corporate big shots) get wiped out.
They think they are dealing with idealistic well meaning kids – and the shouted death threats mean nothing to people like E.S. (the head of Google) who thinks only in terms of more “stimulus” to boost “demand” for products in the economy (such as those advistised on Google).
Such people are very intelligent (they really are – that is how they became so rich), but they are not wise.
They are businessmen – who think, deep down, everyone is motivated by money.
They can not concieve of people to whom money means little – who are (instead) motivated by hatred and cruelity (such as the people BEHIND the young “useful idiots” we see in the television pictures).
“How come you understand the mindset of the people behind the protests, the people you claim are motivated by hatred and cruelity, Paul?”
Errr – for a very bad reason (I think, to use an American expression, I will “take the Fifth” on that).
“Why do not the media expose the Communists and Communal Anarchists – and why do not the media expose the union and corporate finance links?”
Remember who “the media” are.
In television the main American television news is NBC – which, even though General Electric is giving up its majority stake, is still basically “Obama Central”.
The leading American newspaper (the one that the others follow) is (and has been for many decades) the “New York Times” – the home of “objective and scientific journalism” (that just happened to have covered up for Stalin in the 1930s, pretended that Castro was not a Communist in the 1950s, and on and on)..
And the leading American news magazine is (and has been since the 1920s) “Time Magazine”.
The magazine that says (for example) that conservatives have “lost the argument” on social questions (questions that were not settled by political debate – but by the ARBITRARY POWER of the Supreme Court, in total disregard for the Constitution of the United States).
“Off topic Paul”.
Is the following off topic?
What is the front cover of this week’s edition of Time magazine?
“The rebirth of the silent majority”.
Who is this supposed to refer to?
The Occupation Collectives in New York and other cities of course.
Expecting the media to expose the far left (or even their financing by the clever fools of big business) breaks on the fact that the leading “mainstream media” ARE THE FAR LEFT.
They are not people who “half remember” the collectivist ideology taught in the universities (like so many big bankers [who dominate organizatiosn like J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs….] and other such do) – they fully remember it, they lapped up every word.
A society where the schools and universities are dominated by the left must expect to have a mainstream media that is dominated by the left also. Especially in these days of “educated” journalists.