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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An imagined conversation Democratic Undergrounder 1: “Dude, Bush is a god-damn fascist. I asked everyone I know and like no one voted for him! Patriot Act, wiretaps made easier, locking up people in Guantanamo Bay without a trial… he’s like some whacked out Christian dictator!”
Democratic Undergrounder 2: “Yeah man! It’s so good to see Chavez in Venezuela sticking it to Bush’s buddies in the oil business! He’s gonna make Venezuela totally free now!
Democratic Undergrounder 1: “That’s right! Did you hear? He’s been given powers to rule by decree and now he can close down opposition newspapers, silence non-socialist radio stations and throw his political enemy’s asses in jail if they don’t do whatever his decree says.”
Democratic Undergrounder 2: “Woah, cool! One day I hope we’re as free as that in the USA!”
Of course, I am just imagining that discussion. I am sure nothing like that ever happened.
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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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Hah. As an aside, our friend from Arkham must own a particularly sturdy pair of Wellington boots to be able to brave the swamp of bile and foamy spittle that is your typical DU thread.
DU commenters are even more moronic than those at LGF.
“Democratic Undergrounder 1: “That’s right! Did you hear? He’s been given powers to rule by decree and now he can close down opposition newspapers, silence non-socialist radio stations and throw his political enemy’s asses in jail if they don’t do whatever his decree says.””
Just like your late idol, Pinochet.
Quoth the Samizdata Village Idiot:
So, it’s wrong when a thug with free-market notions does it, but it’s perfectly fine when a thug with collectivist notions does it?
I’m confused. More likely, I’m just a dumb flatfoot, but I thought that thugs was thugs and that thuggish behavior was wrong no matter who did it. I must be missing a nuance here. I’ll never get elected in Massachusetts! Oh teh noes!!!11!1!
Troll. Chavez (i.e her buddy) really is being praised over on DU whereas when they discussed Pinochet when he died in an article on Samizdata, the analysis of the article hardly praised him, it just pointed out he was small beer compared to so many of the people idolized by the left.
But then trolls just react to trigger words, so what can you expect.
I did notice that you omitted the last line….
“Whoa Comrade Dude, pass that doobie over here.”
I still find it amazing that leftists continue to insist that they are not totalitarians–and do it with a straight face. I have yet to figure out if they actually believe that they aren’t, or that they’re just lying. The similarities between the most strident leftists and those they hate the most (i.e. strident right-wingers) are uncanny, yet they view themselves as diametrically opposed.
The one benefit to this is that at least these two groups who share the same overall goal (that of controlling other people’s actions and lives) are constantly battling each other and therefore occupying and weakening each other.
Alfred E Neuman,
How right you are. I went to school with a lad who became extremely left-wing in an enviro-hippy kinda way. He ended up doing 10mths in chokey for affray. Him and his ANL pals had gone down to a boozer in Leeds with the specific intention of causing a fight because there was a BNP meeting on that night… Well you can imagine the chaos that ensued. The cops were called and they were all nicked.
James,
Why do you think the LGF commentariat is as dim as it appears to be? I find it odd because Charles seem quite sharp and the editorial content is fairly on the mark but the commentators are just nuts, ill-informed or utterly inane.
Just like your late idol, Pinochet.
Well, Pinochet at least brought prosperity and wellbeing to his country, while Chavez is destroying the economy and impoverishing his people like leftie thugs always do.
Mention of Pinochet here is as likely to provoke an empty headed knee jerk reaction (mixed metaphor I know) as mention of Chavez on DU. The fact remains that we are not talking about left vs right but totalitarianism vs democratic freedom. That freedom, however, includes the freedom to elect idiots like Galloway, Chavez and Spanish Mayors like our friend in the post earlier.
ian,
But doesn’t real freedom also include not being dominated by such idiots? Aren’t some rights inalienable?
Republican undergrounder #1: “Let’s kill ’em all!”
Republican undergrounder #2: “Yeah! Right on! Christ is with us – c’mon, let’s go!”
{</tongue-in-cheek>}
No, not really. We are talking about totalitarianism vs personal liberty, not the freedom to vote for certain other people to be thrown into jail because they don’t like the government. The fact Chavez was elected is a magnificent example of why the words ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ do not belong together. Democracy is at best a tool for mitigating the power of the state, it should never be an end in and of itself. The example of Venezuela should be a really good reminder why separation of powers and constitutionally limited governance matter vastly more that that bloody fetish-word ‘democracy’.
That is rather like saying the freedom to do what you wish includes the freedom to hit people on the head with hammers and take their money, otherwise you are not really free. It is a splendid example of why a liberal constitutional republic with separated and limited powers (i.e. more like the way the USA is supposed to work and at least to some extend still does) is so vastly superior to a more unfettered democracy (like Venezuela, or Weimar Germany or for that matter, the UK).
As long as the dictator loathes the US/capitalism/globilisation then the left will forgive him no end of sins. The only thing they care about is the fact they loath the US, Britain and Jews.
Honorable exception: Harry’s Place
Mary, if you read this blog, you will know that many of us condemned Pinochet, notwithstanding the fact of his regime having left Chile with a broadly free and prosperous state. His regime’s torture and acts of murder were indefensible. I said so.
Some people have tried to defend Pinochet, but I am not one of them.
Why are you all even replying to this repeated apologist for fascism? If the best MAR can do when Chavez’s establishment of a dictatorship is pointed out is talk about Pinochet, who JP was actually none too flattering about in his article, she reveals the paucity of her views perfectly adequately herself. Move on please.
I think that libertarians and conservatives often fail to understand the full weight of the situation in Venezulela.
Allende was elected by about a third of the voters and was eventually outlawed by the Congress in Chile (which gave Pinochet the excuse for his coup although, of course, he dismissed Congress as well).
In Venezuela Chevez has been reelected by 60% of the vote and is fully supported by Venezuelian Congress.
The main alternative to Chevez at the last election was a Social Democrat who offered the poor MORE money (he would have given them the oil money directly, rather than through the Chevez bureacracy and he would not have wasted th money on international power politics), the people heard what the Social Democrat offered (there were still private radio stations and so on at the time) and believed him – AND THEN VOTED FOR CHEVEZ.
In short the voters backed Chevez not in spite of his threats to everyone who owns property, but BECAUSE OF THOSE THREATS.
As Perry said in a previous post, the only sensible advice to give anyone in Venezuala who does not support totalitarianism (whether they own property or not) is GET OUT NOW.
Hard though life is in Colombia (and more than forty years of war with such forces as the F.A.R.C. have a lot to do with why life is so hard) people have a chance over the border in Colombia – there will soon be no chance in Venezuala.
As we wrote in October…
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
– H.L. Mencken.
I feel very very sorry for the isolated voices of reason in Venezuela (Samizdata has long linked to several English language Venezuelan focused blogs… see Venezuela News and Views, The Devil’s Excrement, The V Crisis and Caracas Chronicles, all listed in our sidebar under ‘regional specialists) but clearly now is the time for rational Venezuelans to face reality that the fight has been lost and Venezuela has to be allowed to decent into the hell Chavez and his many supporters clearly wish to take it. There is simply no realistic way to stop them. Get out, sell what you can, take as much as you can with you and torch anything you cannot to deny it to those of your former countrymen who are your enemies. There may come a day for you to settle accounts with those responsible but that day is not today.
The lessons of history are quite, quite unequivocal as to what is going to happen and anyone who remains wilfully blind to the coming horrors is at best a fool.
Perry, point taken. Perhaps as this blog’s editor it is time that you used your perogative as owner of this site to give this troll the order of the bullet. She’s trying our patience for long enough.
“Get out, sell what you can, take as much as you can with you and torch anything you cannot to deny it to those of your former countrymen who are your enemies.”
That’s some hyperbole !
Calm down.
Lefty demagogic caudillos aren’t a rarity in Latin America. In fact they are more abundant than the right wing variety. These nuts come and go and sometimes go and return (remember Peron, Ortega…). Chavez is rather “business as usual”. In due course he will be gone too. People survive somehow.
It seems to me that, until now at least, after some good years in power, Chavez hasn’t yet started murdering people. Neither has he deported them, nationalized the media (like Putin) or closed the borders. He might do those things, but he might also not do them. So far, he is mainly talking, and that too is characteristic for South Americans – a lot of talk and little substance.
The last time I was successfully trolled like that, Jerry Garcia was still alive.
During previous coups, the coups were always put down by a part of the Venezuelan army called the Guardia Nacional. (Or the GN is a paramilitary body but not the army itself, I’m not sure). More to the point, the GN was a formation in which I don’t believe Chavez ever served.
Therefore, I’m guessing there’s probably less personal loyalty to him there. Now that he’s been in a position to control promotions for some years, at least at the upper ranks, there’s got to be at least some. However, the GN has had their “Guardian of the constitution” status wired into their institutional culture and that has to be working on the minds of at least the midgrade officers and NCO’s.
Siete dias en Mayo, anyone?
Anyway, how does one pick a side between a democratically-elected collectivist thug and the coup that deposes him?
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So that’s all right then!
The disconcerting thing about Chavez is the oil factor – his regime is essentially self-funded, and no matter what destruction he wreaks over the economy, it can effectively be papered over with oil money. Not only that, but he may breath some life into Cuba that could sustain Castro’s successor for another generation.
They used to talk of oil economies as the Dutch disease, we may need to reassess that idea in terms of the totalitarian regimes springing up in oil rich nations like Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuala.
Brendan, that is why it is called The Devil’s Excrement.
So I guess being an engineer in the oil and gas industry, I’m a Devil’s Excrement Advocate…
Actually, the project I’m working on now is in South America, but not in Venezuela. I have previously worked on projects in Saudi Arabia, Khazakstan, Scotland and Thailand.
I really like this quote, can we say “cognitive delusions”?
from DU: “only dictatorial powers will result in a true democracy”
…simply amazing.
Actually, T E, that is probably a true statement.
True democracy is antithetical to the constitutional individualism that we thoughtlessly equate it with. Anything less than dictatorial powers and the two wolves might not get to eat the one sheep for lunch.
Anything less than dictatorial powers and some compromise, some limit, will be imposed on the decisions of the majority.
For true democracy … total democracy, the majority must have the absolute power to dictate.
I don’t think Chávez is bussiness as ussual. Granted, he’s not embarked in a cambodian-style hyper-accelerated and deadly path to communism. That’s too dramatic and counter-productive from a tactical point of view.
He has been instead eroding very slowly the basic individual freedoms venezuelans enjoyed before him (not that we had many). first, one small change here and people would not notice, then another small change there, and people would dismiss our warnings as fear-mongering, and so on.
Now he has cracked down the mostly socialist opposition and is starting to accelerate. The he retook office on jan. 10th he said, while swearing over the constitution, ‘socialism or death!’, which to me is a direct and inminent death threat.
But still Venezuelans are thinking this is another pupulist idiot, mostly harmless and mostly words, when in fact he has announced, well in advance, each and every one of the confiscations of freedoms and property he has perpetrated, and since nobody was paying attention and everybody thought he was just speaking, he had a free hand and has got away with them.
However, I’m not so worried about Chávez himself (he’s demonstrated to be a coward everytime he has had the need to fight), but about the extremist radicals who support him and are pressing him to take broader and deeper action against productive venezuelans.