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 – Orwell to a Samba beat “If free speech is a measure of a modern liberal democracy, Brazil is in trouble. A crackdown on expression and the denial of due process for those who contradict the state’s version of the truth dates back to 2020. Now it’s getting worse.”
– Mary Anastasia O’Grady Wall Street Journal ($). She is writing about Brazil’s clampdown on X, aka Twitter. Other countries are looking and watching.
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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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“If free speech is a measure of a modern liberal democracy, Brazil is in trouble.”
Only Brazil?
Brazil has the same problem with “democracy” as the US. Once in a while, the voters will elect a president unacceptable to the government. When that happens, speech has to be restricted until the voters get back with the program.
I’m not sure Brazil has ever been much of a measure of a modern liberal democracy. I mean it isn’t Somalia, but Brazil has always been a bit nuts, though perhaps not so much as its southern neighbor Argentina. It seems Ms O’Grady might rather focus on the sectumsempra of free speech going on in the UK right now. Britannia is, after all, the mother of much of what we think of as our civil rights.
And yeah, I chose a JK Rowling word for a reason. I don’t care for much of her politics, but she is a titan on these matters indeed, especially compared to the Voldemort currently residing at number 10.
Knowing Ms. O’Grady, I doubt she was writing only about Brazil, in a vacuum.
She’s warning the rest of us who are in systems that give lip service to freedoms but which in reality are run much like Brazil.
(Note: didn’t read the $$$ column, so perhaps I’m surmising what she makes explicit within.)