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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Gene agrees with The Law is there to perpetuate the state, not protect its subjects and has his own perspective on who ‘owns’ the law
Contrary to the lesson from many of the cowboy movies I was reared on, that you can’t take the law into your own hands, I have learned that you dare not allow the law to be taken out of your hands.
Since the just powers of a government are derived from the consent of the governed, the government has no legitimate authority that is not a natural right of the individual, derived from the natural right of self defense.
To the extent that a government restricts one’s right of self defense, that government ceases to be a representative government and becomes just one more highwayman extracting a ransom from those who pass by.
Gene
Patrick Crozier, writer of the excellent blog UK Transport finds the issue of how parents treat their children a complex one for libertarians
On television (Powerhouse, Channel 4) just now were calls for banning parents smacking their own children.
I have to say I find myself divided on this issue. I used to just accept it as one of those things that parents needed “just in case”. But there has recently been a debate in libertarian circles – largely ignited by a talk Sarah Lawrence gave at one of ‘Brian’s Fridays’ (a monthly libertarian meeting in London hosted by regular Samizdata contributor Brian Micklethwait).
Sarah says that children are people too and are entitled to exactly the same rights as adults.
“Ah” I say “But what if a child is determined to cross the road and get run over? Got you there.” Apparently not. After all, if an adult stepped in front of a bus most of us would make some attempt to stop them. The more I heard about this line of thinking the more I liked it. It would no longer be possible to “send” children to schools – so no more juvenile prison camps. Would we end up with a generation of illiterates? Probably not. Those children who are home schooled tend to do very well. And anyway, the present system needs little help in raising children who can’t read.
But back to smacking. If it is illegal to hit an adult it should be illegal to hit a child. Unless, of course, it is consensual. Boxers knock seven bells out of one another but no one gets arrested. Likewise sado-masochists. OK, so some of them do get arrested but they shouldn’t.
So, do I think children will consent to boxing matches with their fathers or engage in sado-masochism? Probably not.
But there is an issue here. If children have rights so do adults. One of these is to throw their children out on the street. In fact this is about the only fallback that parents have if children have rights. This is pretty unpalatable – especially for parents. This is where smacking in a consensual form may come in. Rather than throw the child out the parent could offer a compromise in the form of a consensual punishment. Of course, it doesn’t have to be smacking or even physical but the point is that in a libertarian world smacking could exit.
This is not, by the way, what the anti-smacking brigade want. They do not want parents to have the power of eviction. They are quite happy to force parents to house, clothe and feed little hooligans. Indeed, it may well be the intention.
Patrick Crozier (London)
Libertarian Alliance press release: Telegraph says ‘f+ck off’ to criticisms of ‘Free Country’ campaign
Responding to criticisms of his media group’s “Free Country”campaign, a Telegraph journalist has told Sean Gabb of the Libertarian Alliance to “f+ck off”.
The Libertarian Alliance, which is Britain’s most radical civil liberties and free market policy institute, has criticised The Daily Telegraph’s “Free Country” campaign on the following grounds:
· That it lacks focus
· That it consists of short, unconnected articles unlikely to shift pubic opinion
· That it lacks the passion and commitment of campaigns run by the leftist media
· That, despite talk of “building alliances”, no effort has been made to recruit allies
for the campaign from outside the Conservative shadow cabinet and a few “well-connected mediocrities”
Dr. Gabb, a Libertarian Alliance Executive Committee member, made these criticisms in an article sent out on the Internet on Monday the 6th May 2002. He sent copies with a covering letter to various journalists working for the Telegraph group. His covering letter reads:
Dear Sir,
I send herewith an account of a debate between me and your Editor. Though the debate was cut to pieces before being broadcast, the account has been posted all over the Internet.
Yours ever,
Sean Gabb, London, 6th may 2002
Posting at 8:15am, Patrick Barclay, who is football correspondent for The Sunday Telegraph, e-mailed as follows to Dr Gabb
Dear Mr Gabb,
Would you please f+ck off?
Yours very sincerely,
Patrick Barclay
Commenting on the e-mail, Dr Gabb said:
“This is a surprising communication from a media group that claims to uphold certain standards of civility in journalism. I have no doubt, however, that it is the only response I shall get. I also believe it accurately reflects the general attitude of the Telegraph group to criticism from its readers”
Also commenting, Dr Chris R. Tame, Executive Director of the Libertarian Alliance, said:
“While we have no objection to even robust media treatment, this sort of foul-mouthed response to a very polite e-mail is unacceptable from a media group that is always willing to denounce others for impoliteness. The message was sent from an official Telegraph e-mail address (patrick.barclay@telegraph.co.uk), and must be taken as an official Telegraph response to our criticisms. We call on Mr Barclay’s manager for an explanation and apology.”
Tony Millard strikes again with a Pythian observation.
The following words were captured directly from a radio broadcast – it’s an excerpt from an interview with Fortuyn a couple of weeks ago, in which he was complaining about his security arrangements, that is, total absence thereof:
…when I am killed or wounded then you (prime minister) are responsible because you give me no protection and you make the atmosphere in this country so poisonous that people want to hurt me…Pim Fortuyn, 2002
Tony Millard (Tuscany, Italy)
Tony Millard seems to agree with the old saying that two is a party and three is a crowd.
I am always baffled by those (presumably the same heavily bearded Oxfam worker types) who seek to promote more immigration on the grounds that any decline in the UK population would lead to massive infrastructure and social problems – New Zealand seems to manage all right with less than 4 million for a similar area.
I can’t think of anything better than sharing our small crowded island with 40 million less people…
Tony Millard (Tuscany, Italy)
Tony Millard has a unique Chianti fuelled view of how to revitalise rural economies
Whilst I agree with the general premise that our welfare/benefit system is responsible for many of society’s ills, I am more concerned at the undermining effect of fossil fuels on the “working classes” (for want of a better word – meant in its historical sense, i.e. those with more forearm than forehead).
The artificially low cost per watt of diesel, particularly the untaxed, “farm” or “red” sort, has a hidden crippling effect on those parts of society whose principal selling point to employers is “grunt”. By providing an artificially low alternative to the working classes’ human energy, we radically reduce their earning power and status, with all the miserable consequences that that entails. Taxing fuel at a level to raise pump prices to say six times their current level, with a commensurate (i.e. total tax-take) reduction in income tax would have a number of benefits
1. augmentation in the status of the musclebound
2. re-focusing of local economies on local production
3. reinforcement of the rural economy by increased teleworking, local spending, and farm jobs
Basic manufacturing is already in terminal decline – the West can never again realistically be expected to compete with the likes of the Chinese in this area – and the service industry is less fuel price sensitive, and as such I am not yet convinced of the arguments that suggest a huge rise in imported products.
Pride and sense of purpose is an excellent societal glue – let’s re-value honest toil.
Tony Millard (Tuscany, Italy)
Paul Staines points to a party which actually has some commitment to liberty.
I don’t vote, well the last time I voted was when Thatcher was leading the Tories. If you can remember those days, it was then that a political party that wanted to lower taxes, promote competition, roll back the state, maintain a fierce fiscal policy, privatise and deregulate got my vote.
What is more it wasn’t a fringe no-representative libertarian party, but a governing party. Well there is such a party once more – in Ireland.
The Progressive Democrats have done more for Ireland in the last five years than the other parties did in over 80 years. They brought into politics a party that wasn’t genuflecting to the Church nor tracing its lineage back to gun-runners.
As the Tories tack to the centre, my vote remains reluctantly lost to them, but the PDs, the only Thatcherite governing party in Europe, get my vote in principle if not practise.
The Irish election is coming up, see the Progressive Democrats manifesto.
Paul Staines
Frank Sensenbrenner wants David Blunkett to understand that liberty does indeed mean the freedom to do what you want, rather than the freedom to do what he wants people to do
John Stuart Mill asserted that “The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good, in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.” Yet David Blunkett, the British home secretary, seems to have skipped that chapter. In a recent Daily Telegraph conference, Blunkett submitted that “we cannot have a society in which liberty means the freedom to do whatever one wants when it affects no one”, or something to that effect. Why not? At the very heart of a libertarian philosophy is the acceptance of personal responsibility for one’s actions. After all, social impulses govern more efficiently than diktat. Who is harmed by individuals performing acts affecting only themselves? It is up to Mr Blunkett to suggest an alternative definition of liberty to replace the current ‘airy-fairy’ meaning.
Perhaps Blunkett has attended one too many Council of Europe meetings, and has adopted the Continentalist view that personal liberties derive from the State’s ability to grant them, and all powers not expressly granted in a social contract remain with the State. Anglospherists, on the other hand, believe that the only reason for an authority’s legitimacy is the consent of the governed. Europeans lean on an antediluvian notion of “divine right” to defend their views. Promulgated by Jean-Jacques Colbert, the concept of the “divine right of kings” was used to defend Louis XIV against accusations of gross mismanagement of his subjects, and has survived today as a crutch for governments in similar situations. Currently, this reflects an ‘intellectual’ elitism worthy of Plato’s Republic, on the level of both the nation-state and of the EU. Monnet always maintained of the need for European integration to be controlled by an elite, while referenda are either manipulated or ignored.
Blunkett’s final defence is that liberty is elitist, and insignificant to individuals in dire economic straits. If the 1990 domino fall of Communism proved anything, it was the esteem of liberty as the pinnacle of social values, even among people who were materially disadvantaged. While it may not be material, freedom is essential to the quality of life enjoyed in Western, and especially Anglospherist, nations.
Frank Sensenbrenner
Tony Millard serves up a tasty critique of politics.
I was listening to Radio 4, my only live link with the Anglosphere, the other day and heard a short trailer for Sunday morning’s news and comment slot, Broadcasting House. The journalist listed out five reasonable-sounding but right wing policies and then sought our amazement by saying they were taken from Le Pen’s manifesto. I got thinking about this whilst doing something pointless with a tractor and it occurred to me that the body politic is in many ways like the human body.
Left wing policies – radicchio and polenta, right wing policies – carpaccio of beef and wild boar sausage. No healthy human body can be properly and efficiently nourished with only one or the other, and it’s the same with nations. Some of Mr Le Pen’s view I am sure are reasonable and meritorious but are rejected wholesale by the left because of some of his less palatable concepts. Unfortunately, our politicians believe in a mostly herbivorous diet and lack conviction when it comes to richer flavours. Perhaps someone should gently remind them of our omnivorous tendencies and introduce them to a Fiorentina (T-Bone steak, Tuscan style) every now and then.
Tony Millard (Tuscany, Italy)
Hungarian economist Daniel Antal has read various anti-EU articles on the Samizdata and wonders how differently the EU looks depending on where you look at it from
We Europeans keep on asking from each other time to time a question, always and always again, and we find no answer. A Greek lawyer has asked me this question again about two hours ago: Why the hell are the British still in the European Union? Why can’t they quit? They seem to hate it, we seem to like it, they always block its evolution, we always complain on their obstruction… David Carr, can you explain to me, why won’t the British quit? Wouldn’t it benefit both sides?
Tony Blair keeps on lying about it all the time, because he could never sell the European federation to the public. Last time he returned from the summit with the lie that Europe is getting a new shape after Britain. He keeps on saying that Britain will never give up sovereignty, although she already has. In the meantime, the Convention has gathered to finish the European constitution…
I come from a country where the case law of the European Court of Justice, a source of the new constitution, is hopelessly liberal for my fellow citizens. I come from a country which could never dream of such a liberal legal order like the European Community law, and which would never get such a liberal constitution as the European one will be. Human rights groups and civil liberty groups are counting back the days when we’ll be members of the Union, by that time the European Bill of Rights, the new declaration on European human rights will be legally binding.
For many European countries European jurisdiction means liberalism. And there are many countries which would love to join in. I think many countries would love to be members instead of the British. So, why not?
Daniel Antal (London/Budapest)
[Editor replies: Daniel asks some interesting questions which I think demonstrate the profound difference between the Anglosphere and much (though not all) of continental Europe.
The EU’s “liberal” order is nothing of the sort (unless you use the word in its debased sense as code for ‘socialist’ which I suspect Daniel is not doing). For Hungary, with its recent communist past still a vivid memory, perhaps it might look that way but the truth is rather different. The EU offers the political classes of eastern Europe their best chance of clinging to a vestige of power by preventing the change and prosperity that a less statist capitalist order would bring… and as some eastern European societies are still wracked with the corrupting legacy of communism, the EU might seem vastly preferable.
Yet I suspect Daniel says much when he says “and there are many countries which would love to join in”… yes, but I am not a country Daniel and neither are you. People need to understand that the interests of a ‘country’ usually means the interests of the political class of a state, not the people within that country. The EU has nothing to offer except mediocrity and well funded structural unemployment.]
Tony Millard writes in from Tuscany with an excellent perspective on the ‘war’ on drugs.
It was refreshing to hear on Radio 4 last night that Mo Mowlam taps my e-mails to Libertarian Samizdata as I had written this on Saturday (she has called for drug legalisation). Perhaps Samizdata should invite her to submit a webwaffle blog of her own.
Raising the tax burden is about the redistribution of wealth – making drugs illegal has been about the redistribution of misery as a Bristol police report on crack cocaine crime-wave demonstrates. The process of criminalisation has not reduced demand but merely shifted the social cost from the addicts (in illness and premature deaths) to the law-abiding masses whose assets are appropriated, often violently and in public, by such users to pay for the inflated cost of their cravings. Such inflation of cost is directly proportional to the efforts of state law enforcement agencies. Freeing and legalising all drugs would shift the bulk of the misery burden back to its ‘beneficiaries’ and originators – the drug users.
Also, imposing a tax on the ‘product’ according to the true cost of the care of addicts would have two benefits – it would bring the distribution and quality control in from the shadows and deal a death blow to the underground drug economy with the terrorism and horror it fuels. (Guess what paid for the funding of September 11th!). Legalisation would be tempered with strictly enforced (and enforceable) rules relating to where the products can be taken and where they cannot. Whether we like it or not, this is informally already the case in England, Lambeth in South London being a case in point. Such measures would provide a relief for the majority, a safer, harassment-free environment for the minority, and a sweeping reduction in crime generally just in time for Mr Blair’s self-imposed September deadline. Over to you Tony.
Tony Millard (Tuscany, Italy)
Marian Tupy of St Andrews Liberty Club has some observation about the reality of just who are Jean-Marie Le Pen’s supporters in France
Hitler used to say that Communists make the best Nazis. This was true in Nazi Germany where many Nazis including Hitler, flirted with Communism when they were young. There is a little known photo of Hitler in the procession carrying the coffin of a deceased Communist leader and wearing Communist insignia. Similarly, Ribbentrop reported from Moscow where he signed the pact of Russo-German non-aggression (known as the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact) that he felt very much at home. Same is true of a little French town of Douai, close to Lille, where the Communists have been traditionally in charge and where Le Pen did spectacularly well.
The town has been a subject to the recent Channel 4 report, were the reporter wondered why was it that the same people who elected Communists could also elect Le Pen. To this journalist, the two were polar opposites. Clearly, he has not read his Mein Kampf and knows little of philosophy and history. Communism and Fascism/Nazism appeal to the same mind set, which believes that the state is there to provide all the answers to life’s problems – especially job security. This was exemplified by the answers, which many of the questioned Le Pen supporters provided. “Foreigners are taking our jobs” was the most usual of responses. “If Le Pen had power for 6 months, France would change beyond recognition” said others. Clearly, if one believes that the state can provide a good life, then it does not matter whether it is the Communists or the Fascists who are in charge. What matters is who promises more and who seems more plausible to deliver the results.
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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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