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The last 36 hours have seen a lot of traffic on the “Draft L. Neil Smith for President 2004” mailing list, most of it centered around you-know-what, the same obsession we’ve all shared this weekend. One refrain I’ve been hearing is, “I need to dig out my copy of that Victor Koman book”, Kings of the High Frontier.
I made the mistake of lending my copy to a former colleague a few months ago, who just now got around to mailing it back to me. See my own longer article on the book: there aren’t many copies of this superb work in publication. If John Ross‘ Unintended Consequences is “the Atlas Shrugged of the gun freedom movement”, then Koman’s book is “the Atlas Shrugged of the free space movement”.
Russell Whitaker
A Canadian Samizdata Reader writes in to alert us about the state of privacy & civil liberties in Canada.
The Canadian Privacy Commissioner yesterday released a damning report of the Canadian federal government with respect to its approach to the privacy of the citizens of Canada. According to him, fundamental human rights are at stake and September 11th is being used as an excuse for the infringements. Frankly, as a Canadian, I have been consistently dismayed with Ottawa’s response to all matters related to September 11th.
There are articles in the major Canadian newspapers – including the National Post.
“The government is, quite simply, using Sept. 11 as an excuse for new collections and uses of personal information about all of us Canadians that cannot be justified by the requirements of anti-terrorism and that, indeed, have no place in a free and democratic society.”
[…]
Mr. Radwanski also took issue with proposals that would allow the government to monitor Internet activities and cellphone calls, stating: “I do not see any reason why e-mails should be subject to a lower standard of privacy protection than letters or phone calls.”
[…]
Mr. Radwanski’s complaints about anti-terror measures relate primarily to “function creep,” when information collected ostensibly to stop terrorists is subsequently used for a host of other purposes.
Additionally, you can go directly to the source, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
Blogger Russell Whitaker has spotted a truly iniquitous case regarding legitimate self-defence in the United States
Ronald Dixon moved to Brooklyn, New York, from Florida not too long ago. The 27 year-old softspoken network engineer, a US Navy veteran naturalized from Jamaica, did not expect to have to defend the lives of his infant children from a vicious scumbag home invader. But defend them he did. Now, he finds himself in jeopardy, not for the defense itself (yet), but for the use of an unlicenced handgun in that defense! I’ve written a longer piece on this issue on my own site.
This is about as clear-cut a case of righteous home and family defense as I’ve seen recently in the U.S. This is also an unusual opportunity to overwhelm the Kings County (Brooklyn) District Attorney’s office with correspondance, demonstrating the reach of Anglosphere libertarian outrage.
Russell Whitaker
Whilst Samizdata.net is not trying to start a flame war with LewRockwell.com, it would be fair to say that once we stray out of the area of economics, we disagree with them fairly consistantly on issues of war and peace. Alan Forrester adds his views on the subject.
One of my favourite ways of thinking about libertarianism is that we ought to have libertarian institutions because people are ignorant. I’m not misanthropic, it’s just that outside a very narrow range of expertise people tend to know nothing and this ignorance means that we should strive to have a world in which people can offer advice to each other without making it compulsory. Interestingly enough there is a brilliant illustration of this within the libertarian community itself at Lew Rockwell.com, those Lew Rockwell fellows know everything there is to know about free market economics and I take my hat off to them in that respect. But when it comes to moral and political philosophy and in particular the morality and politics of war they don’t have a clue.
Take, for example, this bizarre piece: Bloodthirsty ‘Libertarians’ by Walter Block
“The libertarian non-aggression axiom is the essence of libertarianism. Take away this axiom, and libertarianism might as well be libraryism, or vegetarianism. Thus, if a person is to be a libertarian, he must, he absolutely must, in my opinion, be able to distinguish aggression from defense.”
How exactly one is supposed to derive all political wisdom from a single catchphrase rather than look at real problems and try to figure out how one could deal with them in away that is conducive to problem-solving I’m not sure. However, even on the basis of the non-aggression rule, the comments below are complete tosh.
“You don’t have to wait until I actually punch you in the nose to take violent action against me. You don’t even have to wait until my fist is within a yard of you, moving in your direction. However, if you haul off and punch me in the nose in a preemptive strike, on the ground that I might punch you in the future, then you are an aggressor.”
So let me get this straight. You’re standing atop a pile of dismembered corpses, laughing like a madman and brandishing a chainsaw covered in blood. You haven’t noticed me yet, but I’m a few hundred metres away with a telescopic rifle. Am I allowed to blow your head clean off your
shoulders or not? → Continue reading: Libertarianism is not about nonaggression, it is about liberty
My good friend and now literal comrade-in-arms Tom Burroughes visited me in the U.S. a few months ago, centering his visit around a side trip to Front Sight Firearms Training Institute in Las Vegas, Nevada. Tom has written up his impressions from his attendance at a 4-day Defensive Handgun course on my blog site.
Tom nowhere mentions this in his blog article, but I will: a few years ago, he wrote a nice little piece for the Libertarian Alliance called The Joy of Shooting: Preserving Freedoms by Making Regular Use of Them (pdf file). Re-reading his earlier piece, I’m particularly happy for him that he took the opportunity to get much more training. He acquitted himself well in the rigorous 4-day course in the desert, and I look forward to his next visit: I fully expect him to re-visit Front Sight… the next time, to become a rifleman. Good work Tom!
Russell Whitaker
Patrick Crozier has seen a round in the ongoing debate regarding state imposed ID cards… and he did not like what he saw.
Please don’t ask me why I was watching Richard and Judy (a sort of British ‘Oprah’) the other day but I was. They were having a discussion on ID cards with Tony Blair’s Big Buddy Lord Falconer on the pro-ID card side and Mark Littlewood of the pressure group Liberty putting the case against… and Littlewood lost.
I had better explain the way the argument went. Falconer said that it was all about cutting down on social security fraud and immigrants working without work permits. Falconer made a mistake in insisting on calling it an Entitlement Card (shades of the Community Charge) but otherwise he did fine. “Nothing to worry about” was the message.
Littlewood made two points. The first was that it didn’t work – there was plenty of experience on the Continent to show that was the case. The second was that it would be used by the police to harrass and intimidate members of racial minorities.
I have to say I didn’t find this particularly convincing. There is a rather odd belief in Britain that Continentals do everything so much better than we do. This is allied to the even odder belief that to criticize anything the French or Germans do is tantamount to xenophobia. To any “progressive” the argument simply won’t wash.
And as for the harrassment argument I am sure any self-respecting policeman can find ways to harrass people ID cards or not.
Which got me thinking – how would I make the case against ID cards? Well, for starters, I wouldn’t make it by making appeals to abstract notions like freedom and liberty. From what I can work out the vast majority of the British public simply have no concept of the term let alone a desire to see it preserved or extended.
The problem is that if you abandon abstracts you have to start talking in practicalities. You could mention that it is expensive, maybe a billion or so, but frankly in government spending terms that’s peanuts. And anyway, it does kind of miss the point. We are trying to make the claim that ID cards are a bad thing not merely an expensive thing which might do some good but that the costs outweigh the benefits.
You could say that it will prove very useful to future dictators and tyrants. But no one in Britain (outside libertarian circles) believes that will ever happen. “Goose-stepping Nazis here? Don’t be daft!” would be the attitude.
So, what on earth should we say? I think it is best to consider where the drive for ID cards comes from. Falconer himself said it: social security fraud ie the state and immigration ie the state again. This is a state policy to patch over the failures of previous state policies.
I think this is the line of attack that is likely to work best. Something along the lines of: “Isn’t it amazing. For a thousand years we Britons have been amongst the freest and most prosperous peoples of the world. In all that time not once outside a grave national emergency has our government ever forced us to possess identity cards. Even Bloody Mary had no use for them but this government does. What does that say about this government? I’ll tell you what. It tells us that it is uniquely incompetent…”
Well, that’s my stab.
Patrick Crozier
Paul Marks takes an interesting look at the relevance of Britain’s bloody history
How can a civil war, in the 12th century, between rivals for the throne of England be relevant to libertarians today? Surely the war was simply as it was presented by the contemporary (pro Stephen) writers – a lot of needless bloodshed brought about by the lust for power of wicked women?
However, I think the war is of interest.
First some background. Henry I was the youngest son of William the Conqueror, he based his claim to the throne of England (after the ‘hunting accident’ death of his brother William II) on the grounds that he was the only son of William I to be born after the conquest (i.e. after William I had been accepted as King of England) and in England itself.
To some people (such as Robert of Normandy – Henry’s older brother) such a claim appeared weak. However, by a combination of diplomacy and war Henry I made good his claim.
Henry had issued a charter of liberties limiting the lawless power of the Crown (in such matters as taxation and the security of property), he appealed not just to the Norman but to the Anglo Saxon (English) population and married Matilda (formally Edith) – daughter of the King of Scotland, but also direct decedent of the Anglo Saxon Kings of England going back to Alfred the Great. → Continue reading: Stephen and Matilda
David Goldstone has discovered that ‘voodoo economics’ is alive and well and living in Broadcasting House in Portland Place, London
Yesterday I discovered that:
The UK has the second highest rate of poverty in the European Union, with 22% in poverty compared to the EU average of 15%. Only Greece is higher. The Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands, with their highly-developed welfare states, have the lowest poverty rates.
Even worse…
The number of people living below the poverty line… is twice as high as it was 20 years ago.
How can this be? Have real incomes not risen in the last 20 years? Has trickle-down failed? Is capitalism not producing more capital? Should I take up socialism?
Well, it turns out that “poverty” BBC-style means anybody with an income below 60% of the median, regardless of the fact the purchasing power of that median has been almost constantly rising. How does the fact some people get richer (in fact most people over the last 20 years) actually make other people somehow poorer?
David Goldstone
Paul Staines says that British Chancellor Bordon Brown is, to put it bluntly, full of crap
I try not to bore Samizdata readers with shop talk, but the markets are saying that Gordon Brown is a liar, all the research I get (for what it’s worth) is saying blatantly that Mr Brown’s underwear is warm. “Liar, liar knickers on fire” goes the old English schoolground skipping rhyme. Typically:
“Sterling had a weak start in NY trading on a combination of overall dollar buying and the IMF report just released on the UK, expressing the Fund’s cool reception to last week’s pre-budget report on the grounds that it is “weaker than previous reports , causing it to affirm its 2.25-50% GDP forecast for 2003, which is below the government’s own forecast of 2.5-3.0%. The IMF criticized Chancellor Gordon Brown’s assumptions, which laid out the foundation of his revenue projections. The Fund noted an especially skeptical note on Brown’s decision to finance his revenue shortfall through borrowing.
UK November retail sales rose 2.0% year on year at their slowest pace in 2 years, following October’s 4.9% jump. The British Retail Consortium attributed the weak rise to unusually strong November sales last year, adding a hopeful note that that the poor figures may entice the BoE to cut rates. Unlike, the Fed, ECB and BoJ, the BoE has not eased its monetary policy, since last November.”
The British state is, pre-election cycle, going to raise government borrowing to finance a spending binge without raising taxes (too much for voters) and everyone knows Gordon is lying.
Paul Staines
Paul Staines reports on the latest rather splendid twist in the ongoing German anti-tax protests about which Adriana first reported last month on Samizdata.net
There is a brilliant story at wired news about a tax protest with a difference. It started as a wacky idea in an Internet chat-room but now thousands of Germans have sent Chancellor Schroeder their shirts. Schroeder has donated the thousands of shirts his office has received to charity. Shame he does not show some charity towards taxpayers…
The political campaign is being promoted with this rather fetching picture of Katja Kassin in the process of losing her shirt! Who says the Germans do not have a sense of humour?
Paul Staines
Paul Marks has seen spotted the true historical template for Tony Blair…
For some time now I have been puzzled by the fact that although Mr Blair has followed ‘left wing’ policies of ever more government spending, taxes and regulations he is widely seen as “free market”, “really a Conservative”, “very right wing” and so on.
I must stress that not only the ‘usual suspects’ (Marxists and other such) have used such language, but quite a few pro-free market and even libertarian people.
What I have tried to do is find people in history who have followed statist policies and still got a reputation as free market folk.
President Hoover comes fairly close. Herbert Hoover, as Commerce Secretary in the 1920’s, worked endlessly to increase the budget and powers of his department and showered President Harding and President Coolidge with bad advise (which, thankfully, they mostly ignored – indeed President Coolidge is supposed to have said “no one has given me more advise than Herbert Hoover – and all of it bad advise”),
As President, Herbert Hoover went along with big tariff increases and demanded that large companies keep up wage rates at a time when both prices and output were falling (thus ensuring vast unemployment) – and yet Herbert Hoover (“The Forgotten Progressive”) is widely seen as the free market man that President Roosevelt reacted against.
However, President Hoover was faced with the worst depression in American history (caused by a credit-money boom that he had nothing to do with creating) – and this is likely to warp the judgement of most men. Also Herbert Hoover was a man of strict honesty in his dealings with businessmen – which does not fit in with the cozy image (however false it may be, my dear libel lawyers) of Mr Blair and those known (however wrongly) as his friends.
I think that I have found a closer match for Mr Blair – someone who may indeed have served as a role model for him.
Louis Phillippe “King of the French” from 1830 to 1848:
Louis Phillippe was a ‘People’s King’ rather than ‘King of France’ you see, the son of the Duke of Orleans. His father had helped finance the French revolution and voted for the execution of his kinsman King Louis XVI, and has himself later been executed by his own comrades. Louis Phillippe came to power after a strong media campaign had helped whip up public hatred for King Charles X. → Continue reading: Mr Blair’s role model
Paul Marks poses a question about a hypothetical character who seems strangely… familiar
What does one do about the growth of government leading to the collapse of society?
In the United States if one is a Democrat there is no problem – such a person does not tend to believe that the growth of government causes any damage so one can tax and spend with a happy heart (until the cannibals tear out that heart).
But what if one is a Republican? Not a Democrat by another name (like the absurd Mayor Bloomberg of New York City), but the sort of Republican who (whilst he may have no libertarian principles) dimly knows that an ever expanding government will cause harm to society (i.e. the web of social interactions between human beings).
Let us say that one is the sort of Republican who spent his years at Yale getting drunk (rather than being teacher’s pet like his father), because he had enough sense to understand that what he was being taught was nonsense.
Well (if one is not a man of fanatical principle) one spouts off enough of the nonsense to get a “C average” (the lowest respectable grade), makes some networking contacts (that will prove of use later in life) and then goes off into the world.
Then say one becomes President of the United States (so one can not say “someone else will keep things going”), and faces a situation where defence spending (the only form of government spending that history shows is easy to cut) is going to go UP rather than down.
The “entitlement programs” (the Welfare State) continues to expand and society is under threat – so what do you do?
Perhaps you start by trying to find ways to “contract out” government activities, but (perhaps because you suspect there are no magic solutions to fiscal problems) you also announce that civilian government employees are going to get a 3.1 (rather than 4.1) percent pay increase this year – and justify it on “national security” grounds.
There will have to be many such moves if the United States is to be saved – but it is good to know that the President has some understanding (dim or not so dim) of the problem.
Paul Marks
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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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