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 The truth may set you free, but since the media is firmly on the side of serfdom, I doubt we will ever hear truth about socialism from big media. The recent attempts to define “journalist” in the US may indicate that the system realizes that the internet has made the ability to control internal news more difficult.
However, international reporting is where the legacy media still has a lot of power and it has been and will be used to protect their ideological partners (like Cuba and Venezuela) from responsibility for their failures. The media watches socialists ‘create a desert and call it prosperity’ over and over again and lies about it. This has been going on since Duranty and the NY Times won Pulitzers for lying about ‘Papa Joe’ and the early USSR.
– Gary Poteat, commenting here on Samizdata.
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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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“The media watches socialists ‘create a desert and call it prosperity’ over and over again and lies about it.”
It’s not even just the “legacy” media, it’s the squiggly little leftie bloggers too. I just had an exchange with one of them who seems to believe that governments set the minimum wage low in order to “hold down wages across the board”. When called on this obviously ridiculous claim, he runs away spluttering vague ad hominems and refuses to allow any more comments on the thread.
That legend (from the New Testament) appears in in its Greek text over the façade of Cabel Hall at the far end of the Lawn facing the Rotunda at the University of Virginia.
Since it was first translated for me in 1939, and its source explained, I have wondered if the original Aramaic (pre-Greco) aphorism was not conditional.
Yes – for if one does not know the truth one is a slave to the liars (in a modern context – both the modern “education system” and the “mainstream media”).
As for “journalists” – the word “journalist” is not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution of the United States. This idea of a CASTE of “journalists” came with the “Schools of Journalism” in the very late 19th century – one of the ways the Progressive movement gained its stranglehold.
The First Amendment is for ordinary people (not a special caste), just as the Second Amendment is for ordinary people (not a special caste).
The Meeja can never leave a lie untold or smear unspread pushing their Fabian agenda.
In Australia there’s concern about illegal immigrants entering by boat from Indonesia and claiming refugee status, Tony Abbott sworn in as Prime Minister last Wednesday promising to stop the boats has had the navy intercept two vessels unload the human cargo and return them to Indonesia by unloading them onto Indonesian Navy vessels. There was a tragic incident where there was loss of life and the Meeja flew into a rage against Tony Abbott, the vessel heeled over 50 metres from the Indonesian shore, but this was Tony Abbott’s fault, aren’t we lucky to have an independent press to report the truth?
Meanwhile the Swiss Army watches Europe and justifies its continuance by wargaming an invasion by looters from a disintegrating France.
They are not fooled.
Paul,
The problem is, this special licensing, on the surface, doesn’t touch the First Amendment. What it does is give special privileges and protections to officially sanctioned journalists.
Whether that, in itself, is a breach of the constitution is something for the Supreme Court to determine.
Counting Cats NO IT IS NOT “for the Supreme Court to determine”.
If what the Constitution of the United States is can be decided by a few government appointed judges – then it is dead.
The same is true of any other Constitution in any other country.
Leaving the basic liberties of the people to the whims of government appointed “justices” in funny robes is insane.
It is like trusting the media – as illogical in Australia as it is in the United States (or Britain).
Congressman David Crockett (not “Davy” please) did not trust the Supreme Court (any more than he trusted the newspapers) to defend the Constitution (he remembered who appoints these people – the very government they are supposed to limit), he openly pointed out in the House of Representative that they had NO RIGHT to take money by the threat of violence and spend it on stuff that was not SPECIFICALLY LISTED in the Constitution of the United States. The “common defence and general welfare” is the PURPOSE of the specific powers listed in Article One, Section Eight, there is no catch-all “general welfare spending power”.
Hence (eventually) “You can all go to Hell – I am going to Texas”.
“And he ended up dead Paul”.
We all die (and as one grows older one starts to see death as the friend she is), but we do gain – if we die for good principles (rather than for nothing – for we will die either way), we gain an honourable death (and there is indeed such a thing).
Paul,
Fair point, I had reservations as I wrote that line. However, the issue was this de facto licensing and whether it is a breach of the first amendment.
Paul, are you familiar with this book,the Liberty Amendments?
Much of what you’ve said echoes in a style similar to what that book is about.
I tend to think that a significant portion, if not nearly all that comprises the “MSM”, may be likened to the Praetorian guard. Truth matters not, ideology is the only coin of the realm, and the only ideologies tolerated by the Progressives are their utopian ideologies, roughly translated as “we are the masters, shut up, take it, and obey.”
This fight, which in reality is about the free dissemination of fact, obviously is far too important to the ideologues of the progressive persuasion to not do all they can to muddy the waters. Clarity of thought is not a characteristic of the progressives, as all facts must first be filtered, and regurgitated back to us as “transient truth”. It is transient by observing how the progressives shift their attacks according to the exigencies of their respective ideologies.
Journalism is far too important to leave it to any government to decide; truth ought never be abandoned to those chosen by the government to be the Witchdoctors of approved truths.
Fair point Cats.
Michael – no I have not read the book, but I suspect I would agree with it.
By the way – East Tennessee is still (in part) David Crockett country.
It was split in the Civil War as there was a lot of anti slavery sentiment (the Hollywood view that all white Southerners supported slavery is wrong) – indeed the First and Second Districts of Tennessee have returned Republican members of Congress for – well just about for ever.
But NOT big government Republicans – not people who would have agreed with Lincoln (let alone the Progressives) on economic policy. Their economic opinions were (and are) more in line with people such as Salmon P. Chase (rather than Lincoln).
People in places such as Athens Tennessee want government to be small – as did David Crockett.