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 “In the 19th century, the British would have answered Mr Riley-Smith’s question “What has trade to do with human understanding” very readily. It has a great deal to do with it, we would have said. Commerce is the main means of peaceful intercourse with other people. It is the circulatory system of the world. It is part of the constitution of liberty which, as the author rightly says, we exported to America. If we have forgotten this, it is we, not the United States who are – both metaphorically and literally – the poorer.”
Charles Moore, writing about what he regards as an interesting but in some ways wrong-headed book about America by Tristram Riley-Smith.
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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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I think that if we British have forgotten so much – and we have, judging by what I read – then it’s mainly a triumph of Hollywood.
Americans live in a constructed pseudo-reality, a self-flattering fiction of history which paints them as central to everything and denies that they built on the efforts of others.
To a large extent, popular culture in the UK has imported this fiction and made it our own view of history.
In both countries we now see a sharp disagreement between what scholars say about history and what Hollywood, popular historians, and the media say.
God, you Brits have wonderful newspapers. It’s hard to imagine anything that intelligent appearing in an American paper. Well, maybe in the Wall Street Journal, but not in any general-purpose paper.
I really like the discussion of American awareness of the Constitution in the middle section.
Thanks for the link!
The best newspaper in Australia is ‘The australian’, owned by Murdock. It features world news, AND it has been highlighting the arguments of climate-change querists and sceptics. Unfortunately, no page three topless girls. Oh, well…
Americans live in a constructed pseudo-reality, a self-flattering fiction of history which paints them as central to everything and denies that they built on the efforts of others.
You’re a few years behind. Now our fictional history is self-flagellating, and all of our achievements (and yours, too) were really the achievements of brown people in the Middle East, Africa, and South America that we stole for our own benefit. Apparently the only things we’re responsible for involve polluting and clubbing seals.
I’m watching a documentary called “How the Earth Was Made”. It started with the formation of the planet 4.5 billion years ago, and has just reached the ice ages of the last few million years. I’ve seen it before, but find the subject endlessly fascinating, so I can watch it over and over, learning something new each time.
The US, at 200+ years, is the oldest functioning democratic republic on the planet. We have won that argument. Even the most grotesque totalitarianisms of the last century have had to pretend they were, somehow, representative governments.
But, as the ice inexorably waxes and wanes on timescales almost beyond human comprehension, so too does the relentless human drive to rule others constantly re-assert itself in new formations, new disquises.
Here in the US, we face a seemingly irresistable movement toward the beaurocratic, corporate state. It remains to be seen if an unruly population of citizens, used to considering themselves as a free people, will submit to the gentle mercies of the legions of “Mr Thompsons” who seem to be gathering on the horizon.
To paraphrase one of my favorite characters, Chief Dan George in “Little Big Man”, it must be admitted that there seems to be an inexhaustible supply of fledgling autocrats.
And what, in the final analysis, do all these squinty little toads desire to control more than enything else?
The economy.
And what is it, this fabled, mythical, incomprehensible thing called “the economy”.
It is people living. It is the sum total of what we do, make, consume, use, contribute, and take away.
Whenever you hear that the regulators “just want to control some of the excesses in our economic life”, just remember the high priest in “Apocalypto”.
He only wanted to cut out that little muscle in the middle of your chest. You get to keep the rest.
Nuke, SI has no page 3 topless guys either – nobody is perfect.
“Americans live in a constructed pseudo-reality, a self-flattering fiction of history which paints them as central to everything and denies that they built on the efforts of others.”
That last part is just silly (of course most of us know that we “built on the efforts of others”), but as to the first part Mr. Livesey needs to lift up his head and look around. We are central to everything. We are the largest economic and military power on the planet, and we assert our interests everywhere. If that’s not “central” I don’t know what is. Of course, whether that’s a good thing is an entirely different question, but let’s at least start with a recognition of reality.
(Is it possible that Mr. Livesey is merely pretending to be British, but is actually French? That would explain a lot!)
I guess I hit a nerve.
No, you just made a silly.
“Americans live in a constructevd pseudo-reality, a self-flattering fiction of history which paints them as central to everything and denies that they built on the efforts of others.”
I would argue that in the basic American conception of the individual and his proper relation to society, in his skepticism of the government’s ability to build better lives through legislation, and in his ability to see commerce and wealth creation as forces that enrich lives rather than impoverish the human condition the average American still has a clearer, more moral and truer grasp on reality than the Average European.
Most Americans might not enthusiastically embrace libertarians but Europeans lack the cultural context to even imagine it.
The book is a classic piece of deception.
The blurb on the book suggests that the work is going to denounce how America has fallen from its ideals of liberty into ever more statism – yet the content of the book suggests that America’s problems are due to their being too much liberty.
As for history:
Over the last several years Americans have been been reading and thinking about their history far more than they have done for many years – this is partly due to the work of Glenn Beck and others, but to a great extent Beck and so on are just part of a move that started on its own, with millions of ordinary people.
As for Tristram Riley-Smith – he is utterly ignorant of European and British history (let alone American history) – especially the history of culture and thought.
This is shown, as Charles Moore points out, by Trrstram Riley-Smith’s absurd view that commerce is someone alien to human understanding.
A view that would have been considered as absurd in (out of so many examples) an Italian city state of the Renaissance, as it would have been in 18th and 19th century Britain.
Britain (even the British upper classes) were not always dominated by contempt for trade, industry and economic work generally. The Keynesian Cambridge view – that prosperity can be created by spending (now that is real “consumerism”) and that the only “high” thought is artistic thought has only been dominant quite recently.
For example, Lord Salisbury (1830 to 1903 – Conservative Prime Minister into the 20th century) was a an aristocrat from the Cecil family (centuries of “public service”) yet he regarded his work as the director of a railway company as good and NOBLE work of the mind – profits being the outward sign of human progress.
There was a time when the English aristocracy were good estate managers – taking pride in making their estates more profitable and investing in trade and industry (the Marquess of Rockingham, Burke’s patron, is a classic example of this).
It was not always common practice to favour the “higher sodom” or to rush off to join the KGB or some other anti American outfit.
And I am sure there are many decent upper class people now (in fact I am sure there are) – it is just that decent upper class person is not likely to get promoted in the Foreign Office.
Um. “Fog Shrouds Channel, Continent Isolated” to quote a famous British headline. Not that a tu quoque response is any less silly than the original point.