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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Just when you think that language cannot possibly become any more twisted or discourse any more debased, up pops a reminder that we still have a long way left to fall:
The 1971 shooting of students by government forces in Mexico’s so-called “dirty war” has been classified by an investigating prosecutor as genocide.
While marvelling at this breathtaking and brazen ridiculousness of this charge, I note that it is merely the opinion of a prosecutor as opposed to an official verdict. However, if it becomes an official verdict I trust that no-one will be surprised.
Like the word ‘rape’, the word ‘genocide’ has increasingly been deployed as a political trigger word and abused to the point where it has not just been devalued but is perilously close to being stripped of every smidgeon of meaning. I suppose we will have to find a new term to describe the extermination of an entire race now.
This particular case may or may not go any further but it almost does not matter. The point is that the bar has been lowered again and the occasion will not go unmarked among that class of jurists and campaigners who weave together the fabric of supranational laws.
Within ten years, charges of ‘genocide’ will be laid against people who tell racist jokes.
Britain has been rocked this past week by shocking and totally unexpected revelations that have ripped apart the fabric of our national complacency and destablised our settled worldviews.
Prior to this week, it was an unquestioned given that the British National Party was an organisation that was fully committed, both in principle and practice, to multiculturalism and ethnic diversity.
But this article of faith has now been torn to shreds, thanks to the efforts of brave, crusading BBC reporter who went undercover to join the BNP and discovered (brace yourselves, please) that some BNP members are racist!!!!
The evidence he collected includes one BNP member, Steve Barkham, confessing to a violent assault on an Asian man, and a prospective election candidate admitting to a campaign of pushing dog excrement through the front door of an Asian takeaway.
I can hardly believe my own eyes and ears but I have to accept the terrible truth. We must be grateful to the BBC without whom we would all still be wallowing in ignorance and delusion. → Continue reading: You can take that to the bank
I think I may have stumbled upon (or possibly even coined) a counter-cultural smear word for deployment by the good guys against the bad.
I was having lunch with a business associate today and, at some point, conversation turned to discussion of a mutual acquaintance. While groping for the right words to describe this persons character, the word “liberophobe” just seemed to pop out of my mouth.
Liberophobia – an irrational fear of freedom.
I do not not know whether this word popped out of my brain prior to popping out of mouth or whether is was lying subliminally in wait as a result of my having heard the word elsewhere. In any event, I am far more concerned about spreading this meme than I am about claiming any moral rights to the term.
‘Liberophobic’. I like it and I recommend that it be put to good use by whoever feels so inclined.
I always knew there was something fishy about the Spectator. My suspicions were confirmed by the article which surfaced for air last week (but which I have only just got around to reading).
The author is very troubled by the apparently catastrophic collapse in fish stocks:
In a single human lifetime we have inflicted a crisis on the oceans, comparable to what Stone Age man did to the mammoth and the sabre-toothed tiger, what 19th-century Americans did to the bison and the passenger pigeon, what 20th-century British and Norwegians did to the great whales, and what people in this century are doing to rainforests and bushmeat. This crisis is caused by overfishing.
The emotionally overdone analogies (integral to any discussion concerning wildlife or the environment it seems) could well tempt me into dismissing his entire thesis. But that would prevent me from making what I regard as a more important point so, for now at least, I am willing to play along with the proposition that fish stocks are, indeed, under some degree of threat. In any event, I have no evidence to the contrary.
But at this point the author of the article and I part company, as the former goes on to lay the blame for impending eco-disaster on the proliferation of celebrity chefs with their apparently insatible appetites for exotic fish dishes. A conclusion so absurd as to be almost worthy of satire.
In common with every other ‘opinion former’, the author draws on what he regards as an unarguably correct and obvious equation: if some species of fish are dying out it can only be because we greedy, selfish humans are eating too many of them. Not once does it seem to occur to the author that if that equation were true then we surely would have chomped cattle, pigs, sheep and chickens into extinction long ago.
The dwindling numbers of marine animals is a ‘tragedy of the commons’ arising from the fact that the high seas are insufficiently owned. Apart from some nationalised coastal waters, fishermen are pretty much at liberty to trawl for as much fish as they can lay their hands on anywhere they please, anyhow they please and as often as they like. There is simply nothing to stop them.
In such circumstances, it is hardly surprising that they fail to husband or manage the species they live off. There is no incentive for them to do so. However, if stretches of sea were owned in the same way as land is owned then not only would the owners be able to bar trespassers but (as with land farmers) they would have an commercial incentive to find ways to breed as much edible marine life as possible for human consumption and resultant profit. Hence the countless millions of farm animals in the world despite the prodigious rate at which we humans kill and eat them.
Until such times as the oceans are parcelled up into ‘watersteads’, stocks of marine animals will continue to decline. If you want to save the seas from becoming a watery grave, privatise them now.
As the sort-of unofficial Samizdata consiglieri, I have occasionally had to advise the editors about the laws that govern them things we can and cannot say. Fortunately, we have managed, thus far, to steer clear of unwelcome attention from the authorities.
However, that task (and my sort-of job) could be about to become a degree of magnitude more difficult:
Inciting religious hatred is to be made a criminal offence under plans unveiled by Home Secretary David Blunkett.
The government failed to get laws introducing the offence passed by Parliament in the wake of the US terror attacks in 2001.
In a speech in London, Mr Blunkett revived the proposals.
He said he was returning to the plans as there was a need to stop people being abused or targeted just because they held a particular religious faith.
As mentioned in the linked article, this proposal was first hastily put forward by David Blunkett as a knee-jerk response to the WTC attacks in 2001 and justified as necessary measure to counter the whirlwind of anti-Islamic hatred he believed was about to blow (but which never actually did).
At the time, an outcry made him back down but once these ideas get into gear it is next to impossible to prevent them trundling forward. They are like cancer; you think you may be in remission only until such time as it comes creeping back.
I have yet to see the draft legislation so I consider this to be an interim condemnation. However, if recent history is anything to go by, then the laws that finally get embossed onto the statute books will be badly drawn, inchoate and so indefinite in scope as to be open to alarmingly wide interpretation by a now thoroughly politicised police force and judiciary.
Nor can we expect enforcement to be anything like fair (insofar as I am able to use that word at all in this context). Again, precedent indicates that it will range from selective to chaotic with the really nasty creatures going unscathed while the unlucky and politically easy targets have the book the thrown at them.
As much as anyone, I love to lampoon the ‘PC’ culture but I don’t much feel like laughing anymore. Current public discourse is already sufficiently timid and amaemic without further legal mechanisms designed to lock up our minds and sterilise our conversations. I do worry that the effect of all this will be that people eventually turn inwards to small groups of family and trusted friends, eschewing any sort of public life or discussion altogether for fear that it is just too risky.
I realise that some may find these concerns a little overwrought but just as it takes time to construct the machinery of public control, so it takes time for the effects of that control to manifest themselves and a nation where people have to speak in whispers or codes is a despotic and unpleasant one regardless of how bouyant the economy may be.
This is not what the future should be.
The annual London Gay Pride march took place earlier today.
Typically, I pay no heed to the occasion. This is partly due to the fact that I have no strong feelings about it one way or the other but also because it has now become just another piece in the cultural jigsaw of London life. A part of the social furniture really.
However, now into my 3rd year as a blogger, I find that I have a heightened sense of curiosity so I wandered over to have a look at the promotional website.
I rather regret bothering to do so as it makes excrutiating reading. Apparently as much devoted to disabled and asylum-seeker ‘rights’ as homosexual ones, every page drips with exquisitely pitched right-on-ness. In fact such is the extent of the dogmatically po-faced sincerity that some of it is unintentionally hilarious. For example, the line up of guest speakers includes:
Ida Barr, artificial hip hop from Music Hall Veteran and Rally Compere.
Now that means that Ms Barr plays hip hop music that is not genuine or does it mean that she merely hops around on an artificial hip? If the latter, then that is not what I call entertainment.
Julie Felix, singing against inequality, injustice and war for the last 40 years.
Clearly the number one choice when you really need to get the party swinging.
Wesley Gryk, Solicitor for the UK Lesbian and Gay Immigration Group Gay Asylum seeker.
If I made up a group called ‘Gay Asylum seeker’ (and I consider myself somewhat remiss for not having done so) then not only would I not be believed but I would also be pilloried for exaggeration and hate speech.
There is no mention anywhere of any stop-the-war or anti-globo ranters but given their leech-like ability to latch themselves onto any passing warm-blooded creatures it would not surprise me in the least to find out that a whole sackload of them had tagged along for the ride as well.
There is nothing here about pride, much less freedom of association or individual sovereignty. This is all about group-think and the fostering of grievance cultures. What was once an understandable public protest against unjustifiable persecution has become a portmanteau of victimologies. It is as if the organisers are seeking to stitch together some coalition of alleged unfortunates with the thread of an earnestly cultivated sense of self-pity.
There was a time (and not all that long ago either) when homosexual men in this country were unfairly treated by the state so I fail to understand what is so attractive about revelling in an alleged pariah status that is demonstrably no longer the case. If homosexuals who are inclined to buy into this sophistry could learn to chuck it off and just live their lives, then that really would be a liberation.
I could not possibly let the day pass by without reference to the death of Marlon Brando.
As far as I am concerned, there are actors, good actors and then there are stars. Brando was a star. But of all the roles he played, I will remember him best for his potrayal of mafia boss, Vito Corleone, in the Godfather. Not only did his enormous screen presence seer itself into every frame, but he took this character and turned it into a genuine cultural icon.
R.I.P Marlon Brando.
Meanwhile, in Gotham City:
People who kill bats or destroy their roosts are to be targeted in a nationwide police campaign.
Officers are to be trained in how to investigate damage to roosts as part of Operation Bat, which is officially launched on Wednesday.
Police will also be warning builders, roofers and pest control workers that it is a crime to destroy bat roosts.
Ker-pow! Take that, you builders. Spla-tt! Not so fast, roofer-man. Ka-boom! It’s the Gotham City jail for you, pest control worker.
Conservationists hope the crackdown will help protect dwindling native numbers of the nocturnal mammal.
With the added benefit of thwarting the fiendish plans of The Joker, The Riddler and The Penguin.
Surely you do not have to be Superhero to appreciate that the very essence of private property is exclusivity. That means the owner is entitled to eject all manner of other living things regardless of the number of legs and wings they possess. Otherwise, what is the point of private property? If we are obliged to maintain our homes as wildlife sanctuaries then we may as well revert to living in forests under the shelter of banana leaves.
Never mind the ‘dwindling native numbers of nocturnal mammals’, what about the dwindling native numbers of property rights?
I just hope that these apparently well-connected ‘conservationists’ do not take it into their heads to add wasps, rats or cockroaches to their little list.
Wealthy property tycoon, Will Hutton, is having himself a right old grumble today.
He is angry because other people are not paying enough tax and it is all the fault of those wretched Americans:
Equally, would our readiness to stand by progressive taxation have been so weakened without the view from the US that high rates of income tax on the rich are morally and economically wrong?
We had Mrs Thatcher, but arguably her dominance in British politics would have been less secure had it not been for the succour she took from American policies and conservative ideas. Britain is not a slave to American influences, but it cannot ignore the international common sense which the US more than any other nation shapes.
But, and lest anyone think that Mr Hutton is mindlessly anti-American, salvation is at hand. If US Conservatives have crippled the British left then American socialists can help them to cast away their crutches and enable them to walk tall again:
But opinion is moving. My bet remains that it will carry John Kerry to the White House – just. Of equal importance is the fact that neo-conservatism is on the defensive and that American liberalism has its best chance to regain ground for the first time in a generation.
It is not just American politics that could be transformed by Iraq, but our own. To believe in universal rights and fair societies might become respectable again.
Ergo, Mr Hutton believes these things are not respectable now.
For the most part, this is standard, nay boilerplate, Sunday fare for Guardianistas. Something to be to scanned in approvingly over a nut roast washed down with a steaming pot of fair-trade, dolphin-friendly, non-judgmental eco-coffee.
But if his regulars are unable to appreciate the sumptuous irony here then I can because Mr. Hutton is a member of that peculiar class of British metropolitan scribblers who are forever bewailing what they see as American dominance of our economy and culture and demanding that we look to Europe for inspiration. Yet Mr. Hutton feels himself unable to make the case for socialism without the bulwark of a Democrat President in the Whitehouse and notwithstanding the fact that Europe is a social democrat lock-in.
I think the truth is that Mr Hutton has lost the capacity to make the case for ‘universal rights and fair societies’ under any circumstances. But if he insists on blaming Ronald Reagan and George Bush for this descent into rhetorical impotence, then that is just fine by me.
I am going to have to find some new term to adequately describe the condition of ignorance that renders its sufferers unable to comprehend the inevitable truth that state-control means political control.
A shining example of this tragically far-too-common form of myopia can be found in one of today’s letters to the UK Times [note: link may not work for non-UK readers]:
Sir, Once again the NHS is set fair to become the filling in the Labour and Conservative policy sandwiches, and yet neither party recognises that the biggest problem besetting the service is the very political control each espouses.
Health, like broadcasting, is too important to be the political football of major parties during the first skirmishes of an impending general election. The NHS needs a charter, it needs sensitive management, it needs to value and cherish its long-suffering staff and, above all, it needs to be isolated from the political process.
The man who wrote this letter is a doctor and is, therefore, unlikely to be either dim-witted or uneducated. Yet, he passionately demands (and no doubt expects) a government-run health service that is somehow ‘isolated from the political process’.
I have penned a letter of response to the Times pointing out that the only way to get politics out of healthcare is to de-nationalise it and allow provision to be bought and sold on the free market. However, I do not expect the editors of the Times will be inclined to publicise such heretical and ‘extreme’ views.
Our Glorious Leader is seeking the Holy Grail of truth:
The political debate over the new EU constitution will be a “battle between reality and myth”, Tony Blair has said.
For sure, but from which side of the battlefield is Mr Blair going to lead his charge? The massed ranks of reality or the dark legions of myth? Successive British governments have spent the last four decades lying like tinkers over the European Union, so I think it rather optimistic to expect any defections to the forces of light at this late stage.
For genuine reality-seekers, there is the EU Referendum Blog:
Mr Blair would be very pleased to know that we started the battle between myth and reality some time ago. We have been collecting, analyzing and disproving EU Myths and we intend to go on with that task. As soon as there is a round dozen, we shall send Mr Blair a copy of the collection in either electronic of printed format. We think he might find it useful.
I think he may consign it to the shredder. However, I expect the stout yeomen at the EU Referendum Blog will make their findings available to the rest of us in early course.
I cannot recommend the EU Referendum Blog highly enough. They dissect and analyse the absurdities and the cant of the European Union in meticulous and compelling detail. Right now, it is the most important blog in Britain (after Samizdata, of course!).
In common with many classical liberals, I find the case against allowing the physical punishment of children by their parents to be a compelling one. After all, if assaulting an adult is wrong then why is it any less wrong to assault a child? In fact, it is arguably a greater wrong to assault a child since an adult (well, any adult outside of the UK at any rate) can at least make a decent fist out of defending themselves, whereas a five year-old has no such capability.
I am also aware that most parents who resort to physical chastisement do so by means of a light smack on the rump and therein lies a whole world of difference from that tiny number of parents who hospitalise or even kill their children by the application of sustained and quite brutal force.
In other words, the whole issue is messy, complicated and shrouded in grey arears. However, and that said, I do not approve of state intervention:
Ministers are preparing to help outlaw smacking in return for guarantees that parents are not prosecuted for giving children “a playful tap”.
The Government is desperate to avoid defeat at the hands of a powerful cross-party alliance building behind moves for an outright smacking ban.
Without having had an opportunity to peruse the proposes legislation, I am already deeply sceptical about the claim that ‘playful taps’ will not be acted upon. As with most law enforcement, it is rarely the most heinous that are punished but rather the most vulnerable and, therefore, the easiest targets.
The Association of Directors of Social Services recently wrote to its members supporting the proposed change to the law. “We believe children can and should be disciplined and made subject to clear parental controls but that this can be achieved without inflicting violence.”
However, the organisation did admit that the introduction of a smacking ban would have “resource implications”.
Yes, those old “resource implications”. Therein lies the key. For it is all very well to announce that assualts on children will no longer be tolerated but the real questions are, who enforces this measure and how?
The answer is, who else but for Social Services, the Police and the various child-welfare agences? Provided the “resource implications” are addressed to their satisfaction it will be up to these newly-appointed Guardians to investigate claims of child-assault and prosecute the offending parents.
This is a very bad idea. Quite aside from the extra powers that will be granted to these agencies (and they already have a cartload), the implication behind that investment is that thse public servants are wiser, more relaible and and more humane that those dreaful abusing parents. The record does not bear this out.
Because I live in a nation without memory, I very often find myself reminding people of what happended in the late 1980’s when all of the above agencies became convinced that parents all over the country were engaged in serious child abuse as part and parcel of ‘Satan-worship’ rituals. It was a flagrant and rank absurdity but nonetheless this hysterical fabrication shot through the entire public sector and fourth estate like an outbreak of the plague.
Eventually, (and only after these fictions became unsustainable) calmer heads prevailed and ‘Satanic child abuse’ canard was quashed. But nor before several families had been effectively destroyed by what was, to all intents and purposes, a witchhunt.
Far from being infallible, or even reliable, the agences of the state have proved by their track record that they are mendacious, self-serving and pernicious. To hand them even more power over family life than they have now is to invoke a ‘cure’ that will prove far worse than the disease.
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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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