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.
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The best way to destroy the credibility of a socialist is… … to write down what they say and then publish it for all to see.
Take a look at how Rachel Cunliffe hangs Jeremy Corbin from a lamp post using a rope he has woven with his own words, showing him to be a Marxist who has read very little Marx, a supporter of Vladimir Putin and the dismemberment of Ukraine, well disposed towards Irish Republican Army, Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists, and would like to see Britain get what Venezuela is getting. He must have something against food and toilet paper.
In short, Jeremy Corbin is the candidate who will keep the Tory party in power for the next decade 😀
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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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But…but…that’s out of context…It’s not what I MEANT! The facts, and my opinion have CHANGED since then! You don’t understand! Um….”usage!”. Er….you can’t reprint that because “intellectual property copy rights”.
Yeah, THAT’S the ticket!
Social Justice Warriors ALWAYS lie.
I suspect that Mr Corbin will eventually lose (given the Labour party P.R. system) and then the BBC (and so on)will hail the new “moderate” leader of the Labour Party.
But even the vile Mr Corbin could became Prime Minister – given the likely (post bubble burst) state of the world economy in 2020.
It is also interesting that so many Labour party members support a man of totalitarian beliefs – because he has totalitarian beliefs.
In short the “paranoid” Paul Marks was always correct about these people.
The Seppos elected a nutcase for President.
as the Conservatives scrape around for Labour policies to copy and implement.
I’ve never heard of subscribing with a gun to one’s head. What an obsene mockery, “subscription”. That’s like saying that beatings will continue until morale improves.
(quote)In short, Jeremy Corbin is the candidate who will keep the Tory party in power for the next decade :-D(/quote)
And yet a supposedly ‘right wing country’ like America elected a far left totalitarian not once but twice, by healthy margins. What makes you so sure the same thing could not happen in the UK?
Actually, A far-left totalitarian whose sales pitch featured his objective of “fundamentally transforming America.” *@&*$%&@#
All I can say is that plenty of dead people and their dogs (or at least dead people — dogs generally have SOME sense) voted early and often, and of course they were supplemented by numbers of the walking brain-dead, or people with the distance vision of a near-sighted cave cricket.
As for your offspring, I have little confidence that the majority of votes will go to the likes of Rand Paul or Scott Walker or even Rick Perry.
Especially not with the thief who openly espouses having The Gov do his dirty work (and thinks Kelo was a great decision) and whose positions and financial support have been forthrightly Proggie talking about pulling a Ross Perot. (Golly, ya think?) Of course, he has acquired a following amongst people one once thought to be fairly sane sort-of-conservatives/libertarians.
Your fact and your point remain, ragingnick. I still hope you folks can manage to get your country back before it goes the rest of the way over the cliff.
The last election.
“And yet a supposedly ‘right wing country’ like America elected a far left totalitarian not once but twice, by healthy margins. What makes you so sure the same thing could not happen in the UK?”
I dnt think the UK indigenous feel the same degree of “white guilt” that the US population does – even if said feelings are cruelly manipulated by a shitty media class.
More revealing is the gasps of “about time” from the unreconstructed fellow travelers who kept their mouths shut about Blair till after he lost office.
In that i can include just about every Guardian columnist who see the return of “Michael Foot Jr”as a breath of fresh air rather than the cold stale waft from a tomb of long buried dumb ideas.
If the redneck oil province of Alberta can elect the socialist NDP anything is possible.
Thus Labour’s effort to replace them with more reliable voters.
Here in Australia the Socialists are having an internal discussion about what it means to call yourself a socialist. The old idea of nationalizing everything doesn’t seem to work, or to be in favour, these days, so are there any broad themes that Labor can claim and brandish?
Here is an idea so crazy it might actually work: act in the interests of the voters, instead of the interests of the ruling class.
That used to be the selling point of socialism, until people discovered that nationalizing everything, i.e. giving control of everything to the ruling class, is not in their (the people’s) interest. A party that calls itself “Labor”, is not supposed to remain socialist once it is discovered that socialism is not in the interest of the working class.
Providing welfare, health, and education at taxpayers’ expense has also been a disappointment. We need fresh ideas. What about cutting spending, deregulating, and stopping trying to change the culture?
“In short, Jeremy Corbin is the candidate who will keep the Tory party in power for the next decade”
I think you are wrong. Do you look at Telegraph supposedly the Torygraph? Now it is moving to cultural marxism in most articles. There are some anti-marxist opinions but it is just that.
Mr. Corbin’s quip about taxes being ‘the price we pay’ owes much to Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. There is quite a lot of already-existing criticism of the sentiment.
I’m not sure which would be worse for the long term prospects of the Labour Party, a narrow Corbyn victory or a narrow Corbyn defeat. The repercussions of either one will be hilarious to watch.
Call it the Gawker and Vox Media effect. For any paper with an online presence that stuff generates lots of ad views because it is a patently didiculous load of phooey which has a cult like following of loud idiots who will spread it far and wide on social media which attracts more and more people to click the link or comment so they can say how stupid it is.
The same thing happened with teh Graun which went from Monbiot type nonsense to Valenti type nonsense because of clicks and for the same reason it will happen to other papers with an online presence except, perhaps, the daily mail as it has gone in for a different form of clickbait.
There are limits on what even a determined (and evil) President can do.
In his heart (or rather that void into Hell that serves him in place of a heart) Comrade Barack Obama would like to turn the United States into a socialist state.
He has not done so – because there are limits on what even he can do.
There are no limits, none, on the British Parliamentary system.
If Mr Corbin became Prime Minister (not impossible in a world economy in crises – as will be the case), there is no limit on the harm he could do.
‘He has not done so – because there are limits on what even he can do.’
From what has been ‘accomplished’ so far by this cabal of evil, I sure haven’t seen many limits.
The idiot Boehner’s promise, yes promise, NOT to impeach Obama and, in so many words, ‘no matter what he did’ has given Obama and company ( anyone who believes that Obama is the master mind behind this catastrophe needs to listen to him when he goes ‘off teleprompter’ or the interview / questions go ‘off script’ )
free reign for the next 18 months !!
Name ONE THING which Obama has attempted that has been stopped.
The nuclear deal with Iran is just the latest. Anyone wonder why Obama was more interested in the U.N.’s approval than approval from Congress ? Could it be that he KNOWS Congress will not ( can not ?? ) stop him ??
There have been NO repercussions for ANYTHING done by Obama&Company. ANYTIME there is any objection the battle cry of ‘racist’ goes up and the objectors are cowered into silence. Now, no one even objects any longer – why bother.
That’s a bit of an overstatement, innit?
First of all, there is the Queen. Being old enough to remember the fate of the Italian monarchy, the Queen would presumably object if Parliament declared a dictatorship; and of course the armed forces have sworn loyalty to the Queen, not to Parliament.
Then we must distinguish between Parliament and the PM: usually, Parliament will vote for whatever the PM wants, but there are limits.
Still, of course it’s true that other countries have better checks+balances.
The Queen who saw her Uncle forced off the Throne in a far more deferential time.
The Queen whose assent to an Act of Parliament can be obtained from the Lords Commissioners, albeit technically at her command.
The Queen whose position reminds me of President Kalinin of the Soviet Union, who reportedly, at Stalin’s behest, signed his own wife’s death warrant, weeping from grief and powerlessness.
Of course, we do not know what the Queen has done, or said to politicians over the many years of her reign. No one under 65 or so would have any memory of George VI.
Given what has passed during her reign, double jeopardy, Parliamentary sovereignty, free speech, one might wonder what Her Majesty has protected us from.
I rest my case, it is worse: This comes form the mouth of a Tory:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11780517/MP-use-anti-terror-powers-on-Christian-teachers-who-say-gay-marriage-is-wrong.html
I used to think that was true, but it really doesn’t matter what someone jotted down 200 years ago if nobody is willing to actually follow it. Obama has done lots of things that overstep the limits of his office. And… nothing. Nothing from Congress. Nothing from the courts.
I see no advantage to the American system at this point. We’ve had so much “yeah it says that but they didn’t really mean what the words say” reinterpretation of our founding document it’s essentially been rendered meaningless. The president can do whatever he wants, from starting wars to snooping though your computer to prior restraints on what you can say to using the apparatus of the bureaucracy in a campaign aimed at burying you under audits and investigations.
Unfortunately, Eric is correct. We can have a nice long discussion on the reasons for this, but it’s clear that no one with any power seems to have any interest in reining in the federal government, and no one in the federal government seems to have any interest in reining in the president.
The sad fact is, ours is a “federal” government in name only. In reality it is clearly a national government, with the states having long been relegated to the status of functional irrelevancies rather than co-equal sovereignties. The (wholly predictable) result is the mess we have today. The only real surprise is the eunuchs presently serving as Speaker of the House and President of the Senate. How two men so lacking in character, any appreciation for the separation of powers, or simple party loyalty could have ascended to those heights is truly incomprehensible. At least Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi (despicable as they are) stood for something and fought for it.
Many people pointed out even in the Founding period that Impeachment would prove to be an impractical (indeed almost impossible) process.
I am not admirer of the Speaker of the House – but neither he or the Majority leader of the Senate can “impeach” Obama.
They do not have the votes.
Impeachment is not done by majority vote – it is done by a two thirds vote.
And Republicans do not have two thirds of the Senate.
As long as Mr Obama does not do something that will make DEMOCRATS vote to impeach him – talk of impeachment is empty.
As for dreaming of a Royal intervention in Britain.
Sadly – not a chance.
One might as well put one’s faith in the elves and pixies.
I believe that Roger Sherman was correct about the Presidency that the Constitution created.
The office was created for one man, George Washington, who could be trusted not to abuse the vague powers of the office.
But an office should not be created with one man in mind – one should think of the sort of person who might get that office in the future.
And “we can impeach” is a hollow answer.
After all, I believe, not a single Federal judge has ever been impeached for twisting the Constitution – violating it.
Impeachment is an impractical process.
This is one place where the British system scores.
A simple majority vote (not two thirds) of the House of Commons would make the position of the Prime Minister untenable.
The true enemies of Mr Corbin are not “the Queen” or other such.
They are some of his fellow Labour M.Ps. – who may be planning a move against him, should he be elected Leader.
In response to Mr Ed, and indirectly to Paul Marks:
The case of Uncle Ed could work both ways: the Queen should be wary of showing sympathy for fascism.
Except that, i suppose, the Red Army did not swear loyalty to Kalinin.
My point is not what a monarch actually does, but what her existence prevents governments from doing. The Queen does not need to do anything to prevent Parliament abolishing elections: it’s her power to do something that prevents it … for now. In the long term, no way has been found to prevent an increase of the power of the ruling class, between one revolution and the next: i call this the 2nd Law of Political Thermodynamics.
Snorri, the oath of loyalty is a mirage. The Royal Navy does not require an oath of loyalty upon enlistment.
The British Army and the Royal Air Force require an oath of loyalty since the Acts of Parliament that provide for their existence so provide. The requirement for an oath, or the wording, could be abolished or changed, or deemed to be changed, in an afternoon by Parliament.
It is right that the existence of the Queen gives a budding tyrant just that little bit of uncertainty as to where the chips might fall in the event of a full-blown loony becoming Prime Minister. Hence the Left hate the Monarchy as a potential brake on their plans. There is also the nuclear question, with a hint of an answer from a former UK CDS, Field Marshal Lord Guthrie.
Correction: It seems that Kalinin’s wife was not executed, but sent to the GULAG until her release shortly before his death.
Mr Ed: thank you for your informed reply. Just wanted to remark about this:
But the people already in the services, including the top brass, have already sworn the old oath, and if they are required to swear a contradictory oath, then either they’ll refuse or nobody will trust them, not even the people who imposed the new oath.
BTW while reading your comment, the examples of King Juan Carlos in 1981 and King Bhumibol in 1992 came to mind; though Thai politics seems quite complicated and i do not claim to understand it.
Snorri, firstly, one of the supposed Parliamentary levers over the Army (and the other Armed Forces) has been various acts such as the Army Act 1955, the Air Force Act 1955 and the Naval Discipline Act 1957, all essentially replaced in 2006 as it happens. They provided the legal structure for the Armed Forces and discipline. The Army Act 1955 lapsed after a year, [section 226(3)] unless extended by an Order in Council (the parent of the Presidential ‘Executive Order’ in the USA), so if the Army misbehaved and Parliament and the Queen’s Ministers lost control, the legal basis for the Army and military disciplne would collapse, and there was notionally no ‘standing’ Army.
Re: oaths: The way that UK law works. an Act of Parliament could be passed to deem all oaths to the Sovereign to be in fact oaths of loyalty to, say, Tony Blair, and the Blairmacht would then have been born de jure, if not in name. No member of HM Forces who had sworn an oath would have any ground of complaint, and the oath is, iirc, to HM QE2, her heirs and successors, who could, by Act of Parliament, be the said Mr Blair, even if HM were still alive. The death of a Sovereign does not dissolve the Army in the UK, and they do not, I believe, re-swear after a Sovereign dies.
Paul Marks,
What are those limits exactly? And precisely how did they come to be established? Do these limits change overtime?
I think there are no fundamentally permanent limits on government size and even Paul Marks would have to admit that nobody in the 1910s would have expected FDR to be capable of expanding government as he did. Likewise folks in the 1980s would have designated as insane anyone who then predicted what Obama would do in the early 21st century.
Popular opinion seems to be the primary and inherently temporary bulwark against the government expanding faster than it does a priori.
But government expands; the limits do change; there seems to be no limit on the limit, though.
There must be sovereignty. Insofar as sovereignty is established by belief it need not be established by action.
The American experiment in representative and limited government is an abysmal failure.