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]
|
Samizdata quote of the day The EU is quite clear however that it stands as the champion of democracy, just not the kind of democracy that involves people voting. No, for the EU democracy means compliance with the EU’s standards and rules – any departure indicates a drift towards un-democracy that must be checked by sanctions and punishments, even if people voted for it. The EU’s democratic principles, you understand, trump stuff like elections and voting; they are a purer form of democracy, crafted by unelected officials and demagogues free from popular approval. And yes, there are many in Brussels who actually believe all that.
– Raedwald
|
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.
|
It’s probably true the blunt will of the voters isn’t as good as the bureaucracy in the day-to-day maintenance of state functions. The problem is without actual democracy the bureaucracy will eventually arrange things so it’s the major beneficiary of state power and not the citizens.
And the problem with that is?
Unless…wait, you’re not actually a bureaucrat are you? How are you even allowed to post something on the internet?
/sarc
And yes, there are many in Brussels who actually believe all that.
Plenty in Islington too. And most of London. And most of… you get the idea.
“Democracy is all very well, but why give it to the people?” – Audrey fforbes-Hamilton in the BBC’s ‘To The Manor Born’
Every bureaucracy wishes itself to be an aristocracy.
Oh, yes. And if it all sounds oddly familiar, remember the words of a certain Mikhail Gorbachev: “The most puzzling development in politics during the last decade is the apparent determination of Western European leaders to re-create the Soviet Union in Western Europe.”
I don’t say that the EU intends to build a one-party state with a command economy (although the former rather depends on what you mean by “party”), but the insitutional structure is very – one might say disturbingly – similar, and the attitude of the élite towards the citizenry is almost identical.
If “day-to-day maintenance of state functions” means those functions the voters want done, then I dissent. Everything the state does not yet regulate is done by the citizens – and much the state does regulate only gets done in spite of the regulations. Everything the state outsources is done privately, with the state merely choosing the contractor – could not the relevant local voters make that choice directly? The state does an awful lot these days and is not famous for doing it well.
I’ve noticed in increase in saying one thing and doing another amongst authoritarian leftists.
I apologise for the OT I’m about to launch on. Mods, please feel free to delete if you feel it is inappropriate.
In Ealing until very recently many women walked down the street and were faced with a choice. On their left was the Marie-Stopes abortion clinic in which the life of the growing human organism inside their womb would surely end. On their right was a group of Catholic old biddies with rosary beads and signs reading “we can help you keep your baby”. The people on the right have now been legally banned from being there following a campaign from people who call themselves (get this!) pro-choice. In fact it is their repeatedly started desire to insulate women who wish to procure an abortion from all dissenting opinion because those women are “vulnerable”. Standing across the street disagreeing with them is “harassment” and “intimidation” apparently. Never mind that we have laws in the UK covering such things, and in 20 years there wasn’t a single arrest for either at that site. No, if the law said it wasn’t harassment, then the law was wrong and needed to be changed. This was justified with unsubstantiated claims of mad Catholics screaming at people (disturbing the peace, already illegal, zero arrests) and throwing holy water on them (common assault, already illegal, zero arrests). Don’t worry, you can still harass and intimidate women 100m down the street, so you’ve still got your precious “free speech”. That’s the new definition of harassment by the way, the one that simply entails disagreeing with their choices. Not the old kind because that’s still illegal everywhere. On the plus side by moving the protest down the street, women seeking to purchase (through the taxpayer) the product Marie-Stopes sells at great profit will be protected from any distressing idea-on-brain action that might lead to them changing their mind.
It is similar to the people who want to ban any form of therapy for those with same sex attraction who would prefer not to live that way, or to ban any professional person, e.g. teachers, doctors etc from suggesting to those who present as transgender to consider whether they really are transgender and whether any other therapy than a sex change operation might be helpful. No one is saying that anyone should be forced to accept these interventions. But why should these options be banned purely on the grounds that some people may be offended.
The idea of a pan-European state, as developed by the likes of Arthur Salter and Jean Monnet in the 1920s, was to avoid another World War by taking power out of the hands of politicians, who may or may not be elected, and giving it to an elite caste of bureaucrats, similar to Plato’s “philosopher kings”, who would rule with justice and wisdom, without the need to sully themselves by pandering to a mere electorate, most of whom would not be nearly as intelligent.
Of course, it would be essential to maintain a form of democracy, which is why the EU has a “parliament”, but unlike any other parliament in a functioning democracy it cannot draft new laws; that is solely the job of the Commission, which is the abode of the philosopher kings.
The absence of democracy in the EU is a feature, not a bug. It is not meant to listen to the people, it is meant to rule them with wisdom and fairness, but not actually to afford them any real power. This is why the Brexit referendum so shocked them. To imagine that the people of a member state could decide their future, and ignore the advice of their philospher kings, must have been profoundly disturbing to their world view. It might even give ideas to the other plebs. It might lead to an outbreak of democracy!
Clearly, something must be done.
Spot-on, John K. But if you tell that to people who haven’t heard it before, they’re unlikely to believe you. And I don’t blame them: it is shocking, what’s been done in Europe, and hard to believe that it has proceeded so far.
I am not a Democratic absolutist – I believe there are certain core principles that are beyond majority vote, such as Freedom of Speech.
So I will not denounce the European Union for opposing absolute democracy – although I will denounce them for being liars, as they claim to believe in democracy and clearly do not. But the principles the E.U. places above democracy are not the principles I place above majority vote, indeed E.U. principles are NOT COMPATIBLE with pro freedom principles, such as those found in the American Bill of Rights.
Slightly OT, but I was out shopping today minding my own business when I was approached by some pro-EU fanatics campaigning for a vote on the Brexit deal.
I simply asked why, as Hungary was ruled by a super-majority of ‘Fascists’, we should stay in an arrangement where Fascists could have a say in our government, which we could do nothing about, and wasn’t it better if we were free from the risk of rule by fascists or their votes?
I didn’t get an answer.
Leftism is often orwellian in terms. Meaning of course they use opposite-speak. One working definition of democracy is Mob rule. What operates in the EU is the opposite of mob rule. It’s demagogues and tyrants pretending to speak for the masses and who actually don’t care what the masses think or say. Hence the constant propaganda.