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 “By God, The Guardian is a loathsome newspaper; a local north London morning daily for Stalinist metro libtards, perpetually arrogant, snobbish, self-righteous, humourless, dull, relentlessly middle class, cowardly and cheap.”
– Rod Liddle
As regulars know, I am not Mr Liddle’s greatest fan but when he is on form, he really hits it out of the park, as they say in baseball. The whole piece is an exhilerating piece of invective, all the more delicious in that its targets deserve everything they get.
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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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Not to disagree with anyone, but is ‘relentlessly middle class’ supposed to be a bad thing?
It’s bad when it’s inherently hypocritical
That’s rather rich, coming from a man who was once on the payroll of the BBC – the Guardian’s broadcasting arm – as the editor of Today, the very Guardian newspaper of the air.
Rod Liddle is a cock. No matter how much you may agree with him I wouldn’t have thought that his opinion of The Guardian was worth a Samizdata post. Depressing…
It doesn’t help Liddle’s argument that his only concrete example of the guardians loathsomeness is an article eviscerating the equally loathsome Prescotts. Is the article tawdry unpleasant and vile? Yes indeed! However it couldn’t happened to more deserving targets.
If it was only that. They are traitors to their own cause when they invite Hamas and Hizballah.
Oh dear, just because a person might say or have done stuff that I disagree with, does not mean I won’t quote him or her if they say something I agree with or which points to an issue worth airing. Hell, I might even quote Noam Chomsky, although I admit that is a bit of a long shot.
Sure, I find plenty of what Liddle says is annoying. But he’s more or less right here (I read the article he objected to). Let’s attack Prescott for his views and behaviour, not because he’s a working class northerner.
“Samizdata Quote of the Day” means someone who writes for this blog thought the quote was interesting or funny. It doesn’t mean we agree with the quote – although it usually does. It doesn’t mean we necessarily like the person who said it, although more likely we do than we don’t.
I’ve once or twice put up something as a QOTD because I found it particularly loathsome.
Liddle is a funny bloke. When he’s good, he’s very very good and when he’s bad he’s horrid. Recovering lefty still in denial, I think, and sometimes drunk on the forbidden delights of saying mildly racist words to infuriate his former buddies.
How on earth he was ever in the running for the editor’s chair at the Independent which is the Guardian but not so right wing is a mystery.
Come on, Rod: get off the fence and say what you really mean!
Doesn’t matter who said it: it’s factually correct.
My favorite juxtaposition is “middle class Stalinists” — Oscar Wilde and Orwell would both have had difficulty in penning a better description of NuLabour.
Hell, I might even quote Noam Chomsky, although I admit that is a bit of a long shot.
Not so long. Even Noam can be sound on some issues.
If you’re in favor of freedom of speech, that means you’re in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise.
and
If we don’t believe in free expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.
and
It’s extremely important to preserve freedom of speech, and not to grant the state the right to determine what is or isn’t said. A sometimes conflicting right is privacy and protection against verbal or other forms of violence. Once the state is granted the right to prevent speech (writing, songs, etc.) that it claims might precipitate harm, we’re on a very dangerous slope.
And the Grauniad has changed just *how*, since the 1960s, and the 1970s, and the 1980s, et cetera ?
The subsequent bit about “Boden catalogue boot”, is hopelessly off-target, though. Boden is the British equivalent of preppy, nowhere near right-on enough for the stereotypical Grauniad reader or writer. Red or Dead?
I don’t hate the Guardian. I might hate people who form their entire worldview from reading it (still more the Indy). I do despise its arrant misunderstanding of anything to do with money and its promotion of poisonous New Left tax-lovers like Prem Sikka. But it does allow for a lot more variety of opinion than other organs of the left, and it will cover some state abuses that other bits of the press can’t be bothered with.
Even Liddle concedes it has pockets of good writing, but I think my preferences would be different from him. Gary Younge, for example, is a great writer and acute reporter. You just have to skip his opinions.
Somewhat offtopic but (tenuously) related; a comment I read on the guardian website today below a typically guardianish article about the evils of too much consumer choice. I think it is a perfect glimpse into the soul of the guardian reading class.
“Not long before the collapse of the Soviet Union, I was in a supermarket in the town where I went to university (Ames, Iowa, for the curious). A Russian woman was standing in the breakfast cereal aisle looking at the boxes with puzzlement. She asked me what all those boxes were and I explained to her. She looked at me with a mixture of shock and disgust. “All of it?”, she asked. “Yes”, I answered. “That is horrble! No one needs so many choices!” and she walked away, shaking her head and muttering, “Oh, you Americans!”.
I didn’t even get the chance to tell her that I agreed with her completely.”
Alisa,
Agree, don’t get that either.
The Guardian is kept afloat by the used car trade.
When I think of the Guardian I think of Authur Daley when he tried to put on airs and graces.
…metro libtards, perpetually arrogant, snobbish, self-righteous…
Precisely the problem with Alan Bennett. And Marcus Brigstocke, too.
“By God, The Guardian is a loathsome newspaper; a local north London morning daily for Stalinist metro libtards, perpetually arrogant, snobbish, self-righteous, humourless, dull, relentlessly middle class, cowardly and cheap.”
Still?
llater,
llamas
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Mr Rod Liddle is indeed a man from the heart of the enemy camp.
Actually that is what makes his (here quite correct) observations interesting.