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]

Samizdata quote of the day

They’re like the Tsarist government, happy that they’ve seen off the 1905 Revolution

Tim Newman

Samizdata quote of the day

The cost of “saving the NHS” has been more than twice the annual budget of the actual, you know, NHS.

Daniel Hannan. Writing in the Sunday Telegraph about the monstrous borrowing of the UK state (£: item is behind paywall).

Three very ill-judged tweets from the Biden-Harris campaign

I still fear, but my hopes have risen a little more. In the last 24 hours I have seen three tweets from the official Biden-Harris campaign that might have been designed to help Trump:

Joe Biden:

Dreamers are Americans — and it’s time we make it official.

Tactically, posting this now is insane. Those who support open borders will know his last minute conversion as the pandering it is. Those who do not want open borders will see their fears proven.

Joe Biden:

If I have the honor of being elected president, I will take care of your family like I would my own.

Did they not see the Hunter Biden jokes coming?

Kamala Harris:

There’s a big difference between equality and equity.

The video includes the line “Equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place.”

Samizdata quote of the day

In response to the lockdown Sir Desmond Swayne said his initial reaction was “despair”, adding: “These are difficult decisions but that doesn’t alter the fact that it’s the wrong decision. More people will die in the long run.”

An MP since 1997, and former PPS to David Cameron, Swayne says he’s definitely voting against the lockdown and points to the fact that when he asked Matt Hancock two weeks ago what evidence he had of excess deaths above the long term average in recent weeks, the Health Secretary said there wasn’t any. Swayne says: “Every year thousands of people are carried off as a result of the flu but we don’t run around like headless chickens.”

Another MP who says he’s voting against the new lockdown is the MP for Bolton West Chris Green. Green resigned as a Ministerial Aide in early October over the Coronavirus restrictions, saying at the time that the “attempted cure is worse than the disease”. Since then he hasn’t changed his mind and says a lockdown now “only pushes the problem into the New Year when another similar lockdown will be imposed.”

David Scullion

Samizdata quote of the day

“The Soviet Union (also Mao’s China, North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela) have proved that central planning is impossible. Even something as simple as corn. To grow corn, you just plant seeds in fertile soil, and wait. Yet every country that attempted to centrally plan it, has starved.”

Keith Weiner, who runs a precious metals investments business, based in Scottsdale, Arizona. He’s become a friend, and a fount of good sense on issues such as money and central banking. Check out his blog.

Samizdata quote of the day

When Samuel Paty was decapitated in the street in broad daylight for trying to teach his students a civics lesson, the New York Times ran with the woefully misleading headline “French Police Shoot and Kill Man After a Fatal Knife Attack on the Street”. The attack — in which the assassin who had just cut someone’s head off was shot by gendarmes — was awkwardly framed through the lens of liberal America’s anxieties over police violence, and it didn’t get much better from there.

Liam Duffy

A monument of collective hysteria and folly

When I ventured to criticise them in a BBC interview for acting beyond their powers I received a letter from the Derbyshire police commissioner objecting to my remarks on the ground that in a crisis such things were necessary. The implication was that in a crisis the police were entitled to do whatever they thought fit, without being unduly concerned about their legal powers. That is my definition of a police state.

Lord Sumption

Samizata quote of the day

“If anti-state fanatics have been calling the shots for decades, why is the federal government bigger today than it was 40 years ago?”

Oliver Wiseman, writing a review of a book that alleges that most of our problems today were caused by free market think tanks and intellectuals. Wiseman is, rightly, dismissive of the book’s central claim.

Samizdata quote of the day

The idea that someone’s skin colour should determine their politics stems from a reactionary, patronising attitude towards non-white people. It ends up producing the grim spectacle of white people telling black people what they are allowed to think. Indentitarian activists are all for empowering black people – right up until they disagree with them.

Spiked

Samizdata quote of the day

We have put together I think the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.

Joe Biden, October 24th 2020

Samidata quote of the day

People react to discrediting evidence not by acknowledging reality but by entrenching their beliefs even further. This counter-productive thinking is further exacerbated by ‘cognitive dissonance’, another Festinger theory. When confronted with evidence disproving their beliefs, people will opt for the least painful choice, holding on to their beliefs, no matter how catastrophic these are, rather than admitting they have been wrong. Our political class – the Government – is currently providing a textbook example of this behaviour.

Karen Harradine

Samizdata quote of the day

Yes, yes, of course the World Economic Forum are dingbats. But the point is that if we’re forced to pay for the BBC at gunpoint – yes, try escaping from jail after you’ve not paid the licence fee and it does come down to that in the end – so that they can educate and elucidate for us could we, just possibly, see a bit more of that educating an elucidating? Like, reminding us that the WEF are dingbats?

Tim Worstall