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 Your argument of not visiting the magazine racks, well, what if I want to buy a magazine? And if I wanted a copy of “Jewish Idolatry”, would I find it next to the “Nazi Party Weekly”?
– Sceptical Antagonist in a comment that caused much mirth here in Arkham 😀
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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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I was pleasantly surprised the last time I went to a magazine rack – there was the Spectator with “Osbourne’s Housing Bubble” all over the cover, a good article and other good articles also (for example on the Candadian monetary bubble – and how the British government has brought bubble man Carney here).
Praise where praise is due – I attack British publications (including the Spectator) often enough, so I must must give praise now.
I suspect that the Nazis would fund ‘Jewish Idolatry’, as it sounds like their sort of magazine! JI is probably the monthly mag for the local fuhrer.
Australia and New Zealand are two of the very few countries in the world without a strong historical tradition of antisemitism.
It must be baffleing for an Australian to see that the rest of the world has (for thousands of years) been obsessed with persecuting Jews (why are you doing this? leave them alone! STOP IT). And it is not just an historical thing – for example the Church of Scotland passed a death-to-the-jews policy (whilst hypocritcally denying it was any such thing) only last week.
I wish I could explain this world attitude to you Nick – but I can not.
Because I do not understand it myself.
Yes, but as a libertarian, I can see the problem! This is the old problem of outsiders inside a culture, the individual not conforming to the mob. An aspect of all human personalities wants to let the mob decide for you- hence lynch mobs. Here in Australia we have the tall-poppy syndrome. If you stand out, there is a tendency to try to cut you down and make you average again. So you just need to understand that antisemitism is the mindless mob trying to eliminate the one who insists on being different, on sticking with his own culture.
Have I explained it to you?
You have hit the nail on the head, Nick. Still, no need to do the same to Paul.
Paul, what was this death-to-the-Jews measure from Scotland? It never made the news here.
Then again, I suppose you don’t hear about the small, but annoying, groups of pro-palestinians who end up sounding like simple anti-semites in our Universities here in Sydney. They want a boycott of a shop owned by a Jew, as a way of sending a message to Israel. They’ve had no success, but they keep trying.