Samizdata

LIBERTY 2002: The European Conference of the Libertarian International and the Libertarian Alliance. This event will take place Saturday/Sunday November 9th/10th 2002 – 10.00am-6.00pm, at the National Liberal Club, Whitehall Place, London SW1A 2HE, England.

It costs £75 for the entire weekend, and if you’ve got that sort of cash to spare and you want to meet a throng of like-minded people including a truly excellent slate of speakers, face-to-face (remember that idea), then it’s a bargain.

It is especially attractive when you consider that the event is taking place in one of London’s most splendid buildings. And it’s our building, for it dates back to the time when liberal meant liberal. We can’t permanently reclaim it, but we can at least occupy it for one weekend. The staircase alone is worth the entrance money.

Follow the link above for booking and payment details, and to see the excellent list of speakers, and to find further links to their websites.

There was special guest appearance today at the Labour Party Annual Conference in Blackpool in the shape of former US President Bill Clinton.

At least we were spared Hilary. Bill’s sidekick and trusty companion for the day was film-actor Kevin Spacey who managed to muscle his way into every photo-op like Zelig.

Clinton was on top form, pressing flesh and distributing his effortless charm. One could have been forgiven for forgetting which of the two men was the movie-star. And, boy, were the BBC impressed. The commentators could barely contain their hormonal surges as Clinton glided through the throng. I’ve heard of politicians making love to the camera before but never have I seen the cameras making love to a politician.

He made a speech to the Conference. A long speech. The text of it may be available somewhere out there in cyberspace but if I was you I wouldn’t waste valuable time hunting it down because a) it was dull and b) it’s of limited significance. However, perchance you are interested, here is the gist:

“Mah friends, I am so pleased to be here with you today because we all share a common vision; one of peace, one of hope, one of children. Children, children, children, children. That’s what we’re about: children. And that’s what the Third Way is all about; it’s about you, me, us all joining together to strive for a better world for children. Children anywhere, children everywhere. Not like those knuckle-dragging right-wing loons who don’t care about children. In fact, they eat children. We must not be like them. But we must also help them. We must help them to find a better way; the Third Way. So stay focussed and strong because I know that if we all work together and believe in ourselves we can make socialism work. Oh yeah, and Saddam is a real bad guy and he has to go. Thankyou. I love you lots.”

He got a standing ovation

My speaker at my fast approaching last-Friday-of-the-month discussion evening for this May (the 31st) will be Gerald Hartup (who has just started something called Liberty and Law – no website as yet – which sounds interesting). The subject, a tricky one, will be “How to Talk About Race, Culture, Immigration, Asylum, etc.”. I don’t want the evening to degenerate into a nitpick about the current British government’s current asylum policies, from the point of the view of the current British government, and with the assumptions that underpin the current British debate about these matters. What I want us to think about is: What should those assumptions be? I want us to think about meta-context, to coin a phrase. We’ve had plenty of discussion along such lines here, as you may have noticed.

I think I already know one of the rules for such discussion, which is that you should always talk about these matters with the mind-fix in place that maybe there’s an actual, honest-to-God asylum seeker listening to what you’re saying. This is one of the big facts behind Political Correctness. “Now we have to worry about the feelings of Afghans and Somalis and Slovaks.” Damn right we do, and a good thing too. Part of the `right wing’ thing is that you don’t have to do this and shouldn’t have to do this. But you do now. One of the things I most like about writing for something like Samizdata is that, what with all these hundreds of hits we have every day, this mind-fix isn’t entirely artificial. Such people really might be reading in, such is the potential reach of the blogosphere. And someone might definitely be reading in on this who falls into the category of those who can say in all honesty: “Some of my best friends are asylum seekers.” I really like that.

Example. Another speaker I’ve already fixed is the estimable David Carr, who’ll be doing September of this year (the 27th), giving us an update on what’s happening in the Middle East. One of the reasons I fixed this event with such enthusiasm was that David’s talk last year on the same subject was good in particular in the exact way I’ve just referred to.

David’s sympathy – his “bias” you could say – is with the Israelis, but there is bias and there is bias. There’s the kind which causes you to be blind to facts or to conceal facts or even to just make up non-facts, and to be blind to the feelings of anyone except your own folks. And then there’s the kind of bias which consists of admitting that yes, this is where your “bias” is, but nevertheless managing to describe things accurately and fairly. I recall with particular pleasure that present at that meeting which David addressed was another British guy who had spent quite some time in the West Bank, among the Arabs there. His “bias” was a very different thing to David’s. Yet when it came to the facts of the matter – who did what when, what all the biases of the various actors in the drama were, and so on – this Arab-friendly man and David were in complete accord. I can’t say we managed to actually solve anything Middle-East-wise that night, but that particular degree of agreement I found very pleasing.

If this coming Friday is as good, I’ll have no complaints. Email us if you are interested in learning more about these meetings. The London SWPosh area has just had a mysterious power cut lasting a quarter of a second (a phenomenon I’ve never experienced before). I’m all okay, but Perry’s phone connection has temporarily collapsed, so send emails to me at if you want to be sure of getting through.