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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“The dangerous and sectarian practice of prescriptive racialism is an outgrowth of an insistence that we think of people not as individuals but as representatives of groups — we speak of “the Arab experience” as if it were a uniform phenomenon. In a world in which groups are considered more important than people, it was inevitable that we would forfeit the ability to think in terms of unique human beings, each of whom may fall into several categories, but who are ultimately self-made characters. We should remember that the important features of an individual are what they choose to be and not the identities they happen to have inherited.”
– Mohamed Ali, writing in the excellent platform, Quillette.
The ability of the ‘sensible centre’ to define other people’s labels is rapidly decaying as they are mid-suicide collectively & are unaware their sense of rapture is a lack of oxygen to the brain. A Great Realignment is coming & we’ll see some very strange alliances until the new normal emerges.
– Perry de Havilland
“The irony of Europhiles is that they replace one form of nationalism with another: “country first”, is out, but “Europe first” is in.”
– Nathan Pinkoski. He analyses a recent speech by French president Emmanuel Macron that deserves far more scrutiny than it is getting.
The left-wing intellectuals treat Socialism similarly, defining it by its outcome. If it doesn’t succeed in bringing about the said fairness and harmony with production in the hands of the workers, then it can’t have been Socialism. And out of the window goes the real world, the one we live in. If we were to say that Socialism seeks to achieve these goals, we’d be able to judge if it has ever succeeded to any degree. Because it never has, we’d be entitled to conclude that it doesn’t work. Kristian says it’s like performing a raindance. If it is done as an attempt to bring rain, we’d be able to judge how effective it was in practice. But if a raindance is defined as “a dance that brings rain,” then any dance that didn’t do that was clearly not a raindance.
– Madsen Pirie
Venue: a very noisy Adam Smith Institute gathering at the House of Lord a few days ago.
Her: Putin and Trump are in favour of Brexit, does that make you question your support?
Me: Hitler liked dogs, should that make dog owners question their choice of pets?
Her: Fair point, like me Hitler was a libertarian.
Me: Um… what? Hitler was a… libertarian?
Her: Vegetarian!
Me: Ah. It is rather noisy here.
There should be no such thing as a ‘hate crime’… If someone gets assaulted & hit with a brick, their identity group should not make the crime more or less of a crime. And stating an opinion should never be a crime (such as what gender someone else is).
– Perry de Havilland, discussing this amongst other things.
Unfortunately we are at the stage now where the streets (so to speak) need to go visit their MPs, rather than the other way around. Voting is not the only way to express a political opinion.
– Perry de Havilland, who is just cheerfully channelling the zeitgeist
If socialists really wanted to help people they’d be capitalists.
– Andy Puzder.
Spotted by Stephen Green of Instapundit, to whom thanks.
Generally these days ‘liberal’ means someone who supports profoundly illiberal positions. But as ‘socialist’ means someone who wants to replace social interactions with politically mediated interactions, it seems they are named after what they want to destroy.
– Perry de Havilland
The British political firmament as a whole is hardly blessed with a multitude of bold, original thinkers, and such figures certainly aren’t among the fabulous seven, the daring eleven or whatever number of forgettable non-entities currently comprise The Independent Group.
All of which is a great pity. As this blog has noted over and over and over and over and over and over again, Britain has entered a period of political discontinuity – a time when the existing political settlement, with its narrow range of policy options, are no longer adequate to the challenges at hand. Such periods of discontinuity require politicians to think the previously unthinkable in terms of policy solutions, not to flee their former political parties in an outrage that people are actually starting to do so.
– Samuel Hooper
We don’t need to rewrite the Constitution. They need to reread the Constitution.
– Lynnette Hardaway
For a bit of background, read About Diamond and Silk.
The problem with this article is it fails to note that becoming a Marxist because you’re young and unhappy is no more laudable than becoming a Nazi for the same reason.
– Samizdata Illuminatus
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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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