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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What distinguishes libertarians from other political obsessives is that our goals are rather more long-range than merely the next round of Senate elections or the fiscal policies some mediocre politician.
The presentation of the X-prize today to Burt Rutan is the portender of greater things to follow than the inauguration of either a President Bush or a President Kerry. The launch of an annual contest (the X Prize Cup) is a sign that the rate of private space technology growth could be about to grow exponentially.
Those who might reasonably argue that without the right policies in Washington, commercial space flight would never happen are missing the broader picture.
It is no longer a question of if, but when and where the launch sites will be. The USA could almost close down tomorrow, the technology is out there and people will get out of this planetary orbit. One could almost say that the US has achieved its historic purpose. Once spread out among the stars, it will take centuries to bring all the colonies to a statist heel, if ever.
The liberal-leaning USA Today describes The Guardian today as a “left-leaning British newspaper”, showing a rather more sophisticated understanding of British political culture than the self-styled most intelligent newspaper in the UK can demonstrate of the world.
We now know that Clark County, the target for a Guardian operation to get out the vote for the Democrats, was the only county in Ohio to switch from a Democrat majority to a Republican one. The idea that Holland Park socialists living in £5 million homes could communicate with the concerns of a district of Ohio where $100,000 is considered a lot of money to spend on housing is bizarre.
In fact it is the exact reverse of the old Tory caricature: grandees looking down their noses at the ‘Great Unwashed’ and telling them what to do, for their own good of course. The true sign of just how ridiculous the Guardianistas are, they have no idea how arrogant and stupid they sound in the real world.
Every conservative and libertarian criticism of President Bush is at least partly justified. He has not vetoed any spending proposal from Congress. He has presided over a terrible budgetary situation (to the point where I almost oppose the tax cuts on the grounds that the budget deficit has to be contained first). He did introduce steel tariffs (which did not win him Pennsylvania or Michigan). The policy in Iraq worries me (since the spectacular successes of liberating Bagdad and later capturing Saddam Hussein) by looking all too similar to the political fudges of Vietnam in the late 1960s. I like the idea of the US spending money on Iraqi state education and a national health service no more than I would like it in Camden. I still think North Korea was and remains a bigger threat to the West than Iraq. The Patriot Act is at the very best a temporary necessary evil. And I am not so sure about “at the very best” or it being “temporary” and “necessary”.
But the tribal test of elections is simple. All the bad guys, the Guardian readers, the little-Hitler bureaucrats, anti-smokers, the Socialists, idiot British Conservatives like Alan Duncan, the Palestinian 9/11 cheerleaders, the terrorists, the UN crooks, virtually the entire Left worldwide. They are the ones reaching for Kleenex, anti-depressant pills and shaking their fists at God.
All the people I know that are cheering are the good guys. I have even made this Guardian article my home page on IE, so that every morning for the next few weeks, I am reminded that We win and They lose sometimes.
Over on Fox News website:
LATEST HEADLINES
– Official: Arafat in Coma
– Arafat Congratulates Bush
Food for thought.
Over at the Daily Kos, things are are, how can I put it – deflated. I followed their coverage on the basis that the longer it took to post and the more shrill the content, the better things were going.
Robert Reich looking like he’d just developed piles on the air, whilst trying to pretend that everything was going according to plan provoked deeply uncharitable thoughts in me. I like watching BBC coverage on occasions like this. You can rely on Nanny BBC to dig out scores of ‘independent’ collectivists to first announce their confidence in victory before squirming in the face of reality.
Has anyone seen Michael Moore lately?
I have received this letter from an Iraqi concerned citizen, who wishes to remind U.S. voters of the historic importance of their choice on November 2.
Dear voter,
I am an elderly man. Under the Clinton administration I had an excellent well-paid job. I took many vacations and had several holiday homes. Since President Bush took office my life has completely changed, and in every respect for the worse.
I lost my job.
I lost both my sons in the terrible Iraqi war. I lost my homes. I lost my medical insurance. In fact, I lost practically all of my possessions and found myself homeless.
Adding insult to injury, when the authorities found me living in bestial conditions, far from helping me, they arrested me.
I shall do whatever Senator Kerry wishes to ensure that a Democrat is returned to the White House next year. Bush must go!
There. I thought that all Americans would like to know what a man of my years thinks of the Bush administration.
Thank you for taking the time to read this letter.
Best wishes,
Saddam Hussein
[thanks to the French libertarians for forwarding this to me from this blog.]
So who’s the Girlie Man now?
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed into law a bill that will ban foie gras in California by 2012, unless a “girlie man” alternative to forcefeeding can be found to produce the delicacy.
I shall open my pot of inhumanely produced goose foie gras this weekend and savour it twice as much with a fine Sauternes. Next time I go to France I shall make a point of stocking up.
I get paid to write the occasional article about environment issues. One story which intrigues me is the often repeated claim that “Half of all living bird and mammal species will be gone within 200 or 300 years”. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is the source of much of this garbage.
Because half of all the world’s mammal species are supposedly in Australia, this equates to five species of mammal becoming extinct every year, or one mammal extinction every 2.4 months.
Not only can I find no reports of five mammals becoming extinct each year in Australia, but in 2003 a previously extinct species of wallaby was re-introduced to Australia from New Zealand. The UNEP media releases site contains no references to species becoming extinct, concentrating on announcements about hiring bureaucrats and how they spend money on studies. At least UNEP is honest about its priorities.
Are there really no mammals becoming extinct in Australia these days?
The six stages of an election campaign:
1. Enthusiasm.
2. Disillusionment.
3. Panic.
4. The Search for the Guilty.
5. The Punishment of the Innocent.
6. Rewards and Honours for Non-participants.
As my father used to say, diplomats are very good at marrying rich women and making polite conversation at cocktail parties, but don’t ever expect them actually to do something.
Taki
There are plenty worse [than Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan] in the nation’s upper house – John Kerry, Edward Kennedy, Christopher Dodd, Claiborne Pell, Alan Cranston and the appalling Howard Metzenbaum, to name just six.
– P.J. O’Rourke, Parliament of Whores (1991)
N.B. Top of the list of shame!
Senator John Kerry had one of those moments the other night.
For reasons best known to themselves, the Democrats have decided to hold their presidential nominating convention in Boston, Massachusetts. Two findings have emerged from this decision. First, that Americans outside the North-East are being reminded that the Democrats have a liberal New England candidate, with limited appeal outside his backyard. Second, that the traffic chaos caused by the Convention is very unpopular with the inhabitants of that town.
Conspiracy theorists claim that the Republican Governor of Massachusetts has deliberately botched up the arrangements.
So in front of thousands of baseball fans, Sen. John Kerry was introduced to throw the first pitch of the match between the Boston Red Socks against the New York Yankees on Sunday.
First, the fact that the Democratic Convention was happening in Boston was booed by virtually the entire 36,000 crowd. Then most of the crowd booed again (although there were cheers) when Kerry was introduced. Then the macho-man threw the ball short, and the catcher missed. Cue mirth, giggles and fun on the George W Bush blog.
Memo to politicians and actors: never work with babies, animals or baseball fans.
From David Carr’s posting (quoting the Independent newspaper):
Childhood immunisation would provide adults with protection from the euphoria that is experienced by users, making drugs such as heroin and cocaine pointless to take. Such vaccinations are being developed by pharmaceutical companies and are due to hit the market within two years.
I have a cunning plan.
Immunisation is crude and easy to avoid, especially for immigrants and people who move. What is needed is a form of treatment that is visible and difficult to fake. Vaccines can be expensive and there is a whole problem of producing and storing them. The paperwork involved in ensuring that all children have been vaccinated is complicated and errors can creep in.
So the obvious solution is a full frontal lobotomy with a tatooing on the forehead. Consider a few benefits of such a scheme.
- The pharmaceutical companies lose some business, but they avoid being associated with any screw-ups from the scheme. (This could be spun as an anti-corporate greed measure)
- No more juvenile delinquency, except the occasional suicides. (Blamed on tobacco companies)
- No more worrying about education standards: all children will be morons.
- Arguing about teaching methods will not matter. (Peace at last!)
- Parents no longer need to pretend to raise their children.
- The law can be changed: leaving a child alone at home will be no more dangerous than leaving the television switched on.
What is a little puzzling to me is how many schemes are being done to children which would be considered highly objectionable if applied to say ‘black people’.
Part-birth abortion is virtual infanticide, we have NHS doctors calling for premature children not to be incubated. We have conscription into schools, prohibitions of all sorts, cameras in classrooms to allow parents to watch, ID cards for children. Child rapists and killers can get shorter jail sentences than a child has to spend at school, (and they sometimes gets jobs in schools). Child criminals are effectively told to “do it again, you have to kill someone before we do anything”, so the honest children get preyed on.
The only short-term way of preventing this sort of abuse would be if children had the right to vote. Would four-year olds come up with worse lunacy than that which they have to endure?
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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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