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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 – Resistance is not futile We are many, they are few. The Welsh Rugby fans did their country proud and they did the cause of liberty proud by defying the petty little tyrants who would rule our lives and restrict our speech. And a big fuck you, to Chris Bryant, which is what he deserves. It is by resistance to tyranny that we make it unworkable. There is a lesson here.
– Longrider. The key to winning the culture war is to actually fight the bloody thing.
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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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Indeed. On another, similar note, the Hogwarts game is under fire from the usual suspects. Professional streamers are effectively self censoring because they don’t want to be cancelled by the bullies and lose their sponsorship. The simple way to deal with this is for gamers and sponsors alike to ignore the bullies. Let them do their worst. If no one plays their game, they lose.
I remember visiting Cardiff Castle, some years ago, and even from there I could hear the Welsh singing at the Rugby ground – they were playing Scotland (and won).
Yes the “Woke” forces are in charge of all institutions in Wales – but the ordinary people are fighting back.
Yes indeed – people can only win the Culture War, a war launched against ordinary people by the “Woke” elite, if we actually fight this war that has been forced upon us.
I wish I had been in Wales to hear the people sing “Delilah”.
Never the less, it is a vile song.
FrankS – there is always a critic.
One of the problems is that most people just do not understand what is hitting them – and that is understandable, because what is hitting us is bizarre.
For example, if someone had told Walt Disney before he died in 1966 “Sir, you know that Herbert Marcuse person who is teaching down the road, after you are dead his Frankfurt School Marxist followers will, eventually, take over your company” – he would have laughed. Yet, eventually, this happened.
The problem is that the young future corporate executives (and everyone else) are not taught any other world view at school or university – so it is Frankfurt School “Woke” “Critical Theory” Marxism, or nothing. Indeed the assumptions of the doctrine “racism”, “sexism”, and-so-on are so ingrained now that they are not even taught as a doctrine – they are background assumptions now, the average Corporate boss does not even know of their Marxist origins.
One can not beat something with nothing – so, as John O’Sullivan and others have pointed out, one must teach an alternative world view to future administrators (government and corporate).
The government of Hungary is light years away from perfect – but at least (as it is advised by people who understand this stuff – such as John O’Sullivan) it is not sitting baffled and confused when faced with the “Woke” Marxist attack.
The Milton Friedman view of the apolitical corporation will not work – everyone, including corporate bureaucrats, has some world view or other, and that influences what they do in life. So the question is – what world-view are they going to have.
Saying “it does not matter” or “none” – just concedes the conflict to the left.
“But all that concedes the argument that everything is political” – I suppose it does, for it is certainly true than any organisation or institution that is not determinedly “right wing” will be taken over by the left. Neutrality, being apolitical, just is not tenable.
However, this song is in no way a “celebration of male violence” or any other such lie – as the lyrics show – “forgive me Delilah” and “as they come to break down the door”.
The man bitterly regrets what he has done – and (but this is NOT the reason he regrets what he has done) he knows that other men will come to arrest and punish him.
Should we no longer be allowed songs about the more grim aspects of life then? Maybe we should ban every song except Honey Honey, On Top Of The World and Sugar Sugar? I see that Burt Bacharach just died recently, maybe his output would be anodyne enough for you?
GB News is going down the toilet. There is no free speech or liberty.
We’re going to ban a song that mourns one fictional death, but flock to Star Wars with its billions of fictional deaths?
Re: fighting back: Why do you think Biden and the Libs want 82,000 more IRS agents hired? Why do Lib admins strive to break the gig economy and get everyone back on “employee” basis? People ARE fighting back, in their own ways. One way concerns tax compliance.
I agree that ‘Delilah’ is a vile song. That does not justify a ban.
A song I truly loathe, intensely, is ‘Mack the Knife’.
Stuart Noyes – Neil Oliver will be the test as regards GB News.
If they stab Neil Oliver in the back, as they (to please Ofcom) stabbed Mark Steyn in the back (and just after the heart attacks that almost killed him – real classy) then it is over for GB News.
As for Ofcom – it will only have its powers removed it companies make a public stand against it, if they denounce it. If they “keep up a real stink” against Ofcom – to try and break through the mad pro Ofcom cult in the government and in Parliament.
No more “Compliance Officers” and “training” – publicly denounce the whole thing, in a coordinated campaign.
By the way – if anyone starts claiming that Neil Oliver is an Anti Semite who is pushing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, that person (whoever they may be) can go jump in the nearest lake.
How about “Goodbye Earl”? Is that to be banned too? Or does that get a pass because it is about killing an abuser?
“Run to the Hills” is full of murder in the Old West. How about the Marty Robbins “El Paso Trilogy”? “Janie’s Got A Gun”, “Long Black Veil”, “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”, “Psycho Killer”, “I Don’t Like Mondays”, “Hey Joe”, “I Shot the Sheriff”, “Cocaine Blues”, “Highway Patrolman”, and those are just the ones off the top of my head.
It reminds me how after 9/11 Clearchannel Communications, which had bought something like 20% of US radio stations after Clinton signed the law letting big corporations basically buy the airwaves which is why now most radio stations are owned by one of three or four companies, had a list of songs their stations could not play because it might offend listeners.
I like the free market, but I’m not thrilled with a handful of big companies decided what is and is not culturally acceptable.
A song about a murderer expressing remorse and about to be captured and punished is now vile? It’s a sad song but I do not see it as approving of, much less glorifying, the murderer or his vile act.
“I saw the light on the night that I passed by her window
I saw the flickering shadows of love on her blind
She was my woman
As she deceived me, I watched and went out of my mind
My, my, my, Delilah
Why, why, why, Delilah
I could see, that girl was no good for me
But I was lost like a slave that no man could free
At break of day when that man drove away, I was waiting
I crossed the street to her house and she opened the door
She stood there laughing
I felt the knife in my hand and she laughed no more
-chorus
So before they come to break down the door
Forgive me Delilah, I just couldn’t take anymore
She stood there laughing
I felt the knife in my hand and she laughed no more
-chorus
So before they come to break down the door
Forgive me, Delilah, I just couldn’t take anymore
Forgive me, Delilah, I just couldn’t take anymore”
James Strong
Yes, I get why you might loathe Mack the Knife. Weirdly, I like it, maybe for the – legitimate- reasons you loathe it. It’s shamelessly amoral, cruel and nihilistic, and MacHeath is an appalling person we are invited to admire. But when listening to it, I think about the 18th century of John Gay. If you read The Newgate Calendar, you will be horrified at the barbarity of the London of The Beggar’s Opera, and the song has a sort of authenticity.
Unless it’s being sung by Bobby Darin, of course, whereupon you are simply correct.
Resistance is not futile. It is voltage divided by current.
Ohm, my.
I am unaware of a proliferation of young men stabbing unfaithful girlfriends as a result of emulating the killer of Delilah.
I am only too aware of the very real damage caused by other young men living their lives in pursuit of the misogynistic drug and violence gangster culture glorified in pretty much all rap (and its endless derivatives) music over the past quarter of a century. Yet criticism of the latter is undeniably muted.
Criticising rap would be racist.
https://newsthump.com/2015/11/09/tom-jones-proved-right-as-dna-test-reveals-200000-year-old-black-ancestors/
Criticising Tom Jones is also racist.
Steven R – a few companies dominating everything is NOT the free market, it is the Cantillon Effect.
The reason I bang-on-about-this so much is that I keep coming upon people (good people) who think that what we have now is a free market. Not only has the state been on the rise for about 150 years (longer in some areas, such as the German and Italian lands), but we now live in a Cantillon Effect world (named after Richard Cantillon an Irish economist of some three centuries ago). It is no longer a matter of cheating at the margin – the whole system is corrupt, rotten to the core. A vast Credit Bubble – endless money-from-nothing pushed out to the connected. That is not a free market, it is nothing to with a free market.
In Russia in the 1990s a Credit Money economy under President Yeltsin collapsed – this was used to claim that “the free market has failed – we need the return of a strong state under a strong leader”, but the institutional corruption of Credit Money is nothing to do with a free market, it is legalised fraud.
Money should be a commodity that people choose to value (not something they are forced to value by legal tender laws and tax demands) and lending should be from Real Savings (the actual sacrifice of consumption) not money-created-from-nothing by governments or bankers.
Fred Z – thank you for giving the full lyrics, thus proving the point that this is not a “celebration of male violence” or all the other false “Woke” claims.
Stonyground and John – noted indeed.