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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Net Zero is “in Nigel Farage’s sights” I have considerable respect for the Guardian‘s John Harris. Though a Remainer himself, he was one of the first left-wing journalists to see that the campaign to leave the European Union had popular support, particularly among the working class, and the reason he could see that while others could not was because he and his colleague John Domokos did what others did not and put in the legwork to report from “Anywhere But Westminster”.
But respect does not mean agreement. Mr Harris writes that “Nigel Farage’s hard-right faction won Brexit. Now net zero is in its sights” like that’s a bad thing.
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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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“Hard-right”
Seriously, WTF does that actually mean?
Everything he doesn’t like is far right.
No need to worry then.
Just the usual lefty view.
Which loses most elections.
“Hard-Right” is Right with Alcohol.
Hard right means anything to the right of Stalin or Lenin.
Farage is an admirer of Putin. I do not know if that makes him ‘hard right’ but it does differentiate him somewhat from the mainstream/centre right.
He is useless when it comes to foreign policy.
Most working class are patriotic as are the upper class. Many in the middle, the sneering middle classes as Starkey described them, are progressives and care nothing for the nation state. Most would think the working class are left wing but most want to work. The do gooders have helped create spongers and government dependents. Sorry to ramble. I cannot help but laugh when people try to slur Farage or Brexiteers as far right or being funded by Putin. Its pathetic.
Hard-right = right-wingers on Viagra?
Sorry, couldn’t help myself; it was too obvious 😉
Agreed, I like Nigel, but he has been naïve regarding Putin on many occasions, which gives his many detractors the gap to smear him as ‘Putin-Funded’.
I have the same issue with Peter Hitchens, who appears to suffer from the same fault on such foreign policy issues.
Sunday Telegraph editor Allister Heath has called for a referendum on the Net Zero agenda for more than a year. I suspect that some politicians hope that the soaring oil price and will allow them to quietly kill that idea off without being seen to make a public disavowal of it. It is as if it is still regarded as unsayable to go against the NZ idea.
Perry – “hard right”, in this context, means that someone says that the United Kingdom makes up about 1% of C02 emissions and rising Chinese C02 emissions mean that even totally destroying the British people (in line with “Year Zero” or whatever it is called) would make no difference to world C02 emissions.
If someone goes beyond that to actually question whether C02 emissions really are a terrible thing – then they are a “racist” (“Climate Justice is Racial Justice”) and a “transphobe” – as well as an “Islamophobe” (someone is doubly a “ist” and a “phobe” if they point out that American government agencies have been changing historic temperature records to try make periods of the past look less hot than they actually were).
Saying that 1+1=2 is especially “hard right” or “far right”. Whilst allowing the Communist Party Dictatorship that is the People’s Republic of China to constantly increase its already massive C02 emissions – is “liberal”, or “centre”, or “mainstream”.
I hope I have cleared everything up for you Perry.
Johnathan Pearce – a sharp distinction needs to be made between Nigel Farage and Peter Hitchens.
Nigel Farage made the mistake that because attacking the Ukraine would not be in the interests of Mr Putin, Mr Putin would not do it.
Mr Farage did not grasp that Mr Putin is a violent criminal who often acts out of passion not reason. Essentially Mr Putin is a follower of David Hume (without knowing it) “reason is, and ought to be, the slave of the passions” and “one can get an ought from an is”. A sane person says to themselves “that is wrong, so I ought not to do it” (ought from an is) and, in a sane person, moral reason restrains the passions (the desire to rob, rape, murder and so on). It is all very different with Mr Putin – at least these days (he may have been sane at one time). If he has a passion to do something (say have someone poisoned for criticizing him – or even invading a country even though the war will undermine his own regime) then he does it. Mr Putin (these days) thinks about these things after (not before) he does them – if he thinks about them at all. As a violent criminal (essentially an emotional street thug) he is rather easy for international establishment to manipulate, he is the ideal bogey man for them – because he really is an evil man.
Peter Hitchens – whether it is World War One, World War Two, response to the invasion of Ukraine, government railways, prohibition, Welfare State (the state replacing the family and other voluntary cultural institutions) or lots of other things, Mr Hitchens is rather different from Nigel Farage.
But Mr Hitchens is not here to defend himself – so it would be unfair to go any further.
@ Paul Marks
Some of your comments are interesting, some are much too long. Some are hard to understand.
Today you have said ‘Saying 1+1 = 2 is especially ‘hard right’ or ‘far right’.
I assume that’s a rhetorical device you are using, you don’t really assert the truth of that statement.
But ‘American government agencies have been changing historic temperature records’ reads as if this is a serious statement that you really mean.
Can you please give evidence in support of your claim? At the moment I do not find it easy to believe.
If people remember the old roleplaying game “Dungeons and Dragons”, Xi of the People’s Republic of China is “Evil Lawful” or “Evil Neutral” – he has evil objectives (he wishes to cause suffering – to enslave and to kill), but he uses his reason (instrumental reason – not moral reason) to achieve his evil desires.
Mr Putin may have been like that at one time – but now he is more “Evil Chaotic” in that, de facto, he has rejected reason even in instrumental terms.
Which is rather alarming.
Moral reason – “it would be morally wrong of me to use nuclear weapons to kill millions of innocent people”.
Instrumental reason (someone like Xi) – “if I use nuclear weapons on other people it would be nice to watch them die – but they will use their nuclear weapons on me, and I do not want to die”.
Evil chaotic – “nuclear weapons, I can burn millions of people to death – wonderful! that would be great! Ha! Ha! Ha!”.
Let us hope that Mr Putin is NOT quite that far gone. But he clearly does do evil things without really thinking about the consequences – which is alarming.
‘Hard-right’, ‘far-right’, ‘extreme-right’ are phrases which help John Harris and others like him reconciles their emotional view of themselves as reasonable with their intellectual knowledge that Brexit won Britain’s votes. If we woke up tomorrow reincarnated as Russians in Russia, our political views would, I fear, not be even in the unexpressed centre, let alone the centre of the safe-to-say range of politics, but we would not call ourselves extremists. John Harris refuses to call himself hard-left, yet knows the centroid of British politics is pretty far to his right, therefore …
“I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die” now “I hang my head and cry”.
Both instrumental reason, and moral reason, are important things. If we are indeed to “walk the line”.
And, as much as we might like to think so, there is not much that divides most of us from someone like Xi – or even someone like Putin.
Give in to the darkness within all of us (the passions we have to fight every day of our lives) – and we join them. And it is a hard road back – a very hard road.
James Strong (March 14, 2022 at 1:48 pm), I’m always glad of an excuse to encourage people to (re)read my old posts. 🙂
Ten months ago, I wrote The ‘soft bigotry of low expectations’ is getting harder. It quotes the woke view of two and two. Not long after, I posted on a more general aspect of Maths is Racist … .
Earlier, a wrote a poem on the subject. The two-and-two-relevant line has a couple of links.
HTH
Good posts Niall – good posts.
Reason is dying in the Western World.
When the Labour Theory of Value, and other key elements of Marxism, were refuted, the left had a choice – abandon their politics, or abandon reason (in anything other than a tactical, instrumental, sense) – and they choose the latter option, they abandoned reason.
Frankfurt School Marxism (Woke ism) is very cunning – but its reason is only instrumental (only a “slave of the passions” as David Hume would put it), at heart it is irrational (it has to be – if it is to continue to support its irrational, and evil, objectives).
If they, to achieve their objective of destroying the West, have to (for example) claim that “mathematics is racist”, OF COURSE they will do that – they have rejected moral reason, to them reason is just a means-to-an-end (the end being to achieve their passion for Collectivism).
Unfortunately (and partly due to the institutional cowardice of “conservative” forces who throw real conservatives under the bus – out of FEAR), the Frankfurt School “Woke” Marxists increasingly dominate the education system and the wider culture – including the Big Business Corporations.
The West is, therefore, being murdered.
Paul,
Do you not think the cultural assault on maths is basically because maths is hard and sociology isn’t? Freud almost got it right. It’s not “penis envy”, it’s “physics envy”.
The race element here is ludicrous. I mean I’m one of those new-fangled guys who uses the Hindu-Arabic numeral system! Or is that cultural appropriation? And what about that algebra and algorithms?
First off I have met people who would contradict any definite statement I would make on a scientific subject, or refuse to admit she even heard it. Now, I’m a scientist, and have a reputation for making sense in these things — I was the science guest of honor at that particular SF con. She said she was a scientist too, she had a degree in library science. (Okay, that’s taxonomy – but I was talking about the connections between science and engineering.) I would not be surprised if she would object today if I told her 1+1=2. Paul has quite possibly run into it too. https://farleftfacts.org/white-people/math-yes-math-is-racist/ In her particular case everything was sexist.
Now, you wish a reference to the American government changing historical temperature records, I do not have one immediately at hand. Would you settle for the Australian government?
https://jennifermarohasy.com/2019/03/jones-at-rutherglen-more-cooling-generates-global-warming/
@ Ellen
Yes, thanks. That the Australian government did it supports the main point, so that works fine.
As for denying 1+1 = 2. I can’t comprehend that. Seriously. Maybe I’m hard-right. More likely they are mad.
@c JAmes Strong
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/02/21/noaa-and-nasas-recent-sea-level-rise-claims-are-all-wet-the-data-doesnt-support-it/
I’d say Farage largely has sound foreign policy instincts. Right about the European Union, right in thinking Trump would win in 2016, was rightly opposed to British involvement in Iraq, Libya and Syria, always supported strengthening the British military, opposed to mass immigration, etc. On a balance sheet I’d say he’s been a net positive.
Ellen,
I’m impressed with the SF con thing! I think that the answer lies in the bowels of Christ. A genuine scientist can give an answer to a lot of things but will also just know they might be wrong or that a better answer may be found or maybe they just don’t know. Or maybe nobody does. It’s related to a critique I’ve got a bit, “You’re meddling in things you don’t understand!” My usual reply is that I could, “Meddle in things I do understand but where’s the fun in that?”. Science, real, true, science requires a level of humility – if not in front of your peers but in front of the greatest arbiter of ’em all – The Universe. It’s a messy business. It is very different from the bizarre teleological stuff which is essentially motivated towards a specific end and which can never be wrong because it is ideologically right.
I’d say Farage has definitely been a net positive. If he gets us a vote on Net Zero, I’d say he will increment his positive side perceptibly.
The times are propitious (ominously so in some ways). Add the energy effect of Russian sanctions to the already ugly costs of Net Zero and serve up a side helping of the supply dislocations (e.g. fewer and costlier lorry drivers means higher wages for a non-elite group, which is good, but I’m getting an impression it is adding to the effect). It is not only in the US that tax hikes, heating bills and petrol costs may all add up to something those on non-elite salaries may notice.
Nick M – yes indeed.
Niall and Ellen – yes Nigel Farage is a net positive, he did not think Mr Putin would attack as he did – but a lot of people made the mistake of thinking that Mr Putin would act in his own interests (not act like a rabid dog).
James Strong – my point was that the establishment claim that just saying obvious things proves someone is “hard right” or “far right” and, therefore, EVIL. So they do not have to refute anything that such an evil person says.
As for changing the past – Tony Heller may be a contrarian old Jew (I can say that – check my family name), but he has a point about the changing of the past.
American government agencies have been doing it more and more – because, otherwise, their predictions do not work.
It is hard to change a temperature reading for today – because people can just do the reading themselves. But changing the temperature readings for many years ago…….
Who would be contrarian enough to go and check the old records to see if the government is lying?
Most people just believe what they see on a computer screen when they do an internet search.
This will not end well.
The US blob were comprehensively wrong-footed by Trump’s victory in 2016 – and they made sure, by whatever method and at whatever cost, that they didn’t lose the next one.
Similarly the UK blob were completely caught out by the result of the EU referendum that same year; they too will make sure – at any cost – that it doesn’t happen again.
Farage may get his referendum, but he’ll be buried.
Peter MacFarlane – I fear you are correct.
It becomes harder (not less hard) to bear the blatant rigging of the 2020 United States Presidential Election with each passing day – watching that senile nonentity Joseph Biden trotted out as the “Leader of the Free World”.
A Net Zero referendum might not be formally rigged – but the public have been saturated with propaganda for many years.
Still we have to try – we can not just give up on the United Kingdom.