Mr Jonathan Pearce, of Samizdata fame, has spotted an excellent article, full of Uncle Murray quotes, by Chris Sciabarra:
=> A Crisis of Political Economy
As Mr Pearce says, it's well worth a read if you have time for a nice cup of tea.
However, the accompanying discussion on Samizdata does seem to be typical of the problem we have with libertarianism in Britain, in that most people over here would rather argue the toss over the numbers of angels on the head of a pin, rather than ever agree with each other about anything.
I sometimes feel that if all of the libertarians in Britain, including myself alas, had been on the Titanic, we would still have been arguing about the concept of lifeboat homesteading rights, as the waves started lapping around our necks, rather than actually trying to get inside a lifeboat.
Perhaps this endless 'over-intellectualising' we seem prone to, here in England, is why America is still the beating heart of intellectual freedom, despite its dreadful political fall into the abyss of tyrannical socialism?
This intellectual cat-fighting also makes me wonder if a relic of empire is that we Brits are still suffering from a mass delusion that the rest of the world is actually listening to our endless thrashing and nit-picking over minutiae. Is this why a cloistered room of just twenty five fractured British libertarians will often give rise to over six hundred and twenty seven different shattered opinions?
Perhaps it is the same everywhere else? But it does sometimes depress me when such obviously intelligent people seem to spend their entire time going around in such ever decreasing circles, constantly trying to get one over on each other, about who is the smartest Châteauneuf-du-Pape in the room.
Maybe we should all try to give it up for Lent?
(And yes, mea culpa, I am fully aware that I am as guilty of this as anyone else. That's why I swore an oath to stop trolling on Samizdata, which is an oath I usually have to re-swear every six months! :-)
3 comments:
The Samizdata crowd are more conserative than libertarian, most of them seem to dislike Uncle Murray because of his critisim of the warfare state.
Regars Kevin s
I think a lot of old fashioned British conservatives (school of Thatcher) now call themselves libertarians to separate themselves from the Cameron clowns, hence the general confusion about what libertarianism is.
Regards Kevin S
There are a lot of very intelligent and very deep thinkers on the Samizdatista roll call.
But it is a terrible shame that most of them supported the US/UK invasion of Iraq, despite its having been fabricated on a tissue of whoppers.
I wonder if the 1 million dead in Iraq, plus the millions of displaced people, have altered any of their opinions?
Uncle Murray always used to say that nobody ever changes their mind or resigns their position, due to a simple thing like being completely wrong about something.
Though as I rarely stray over to Samizdata these days, to avoid breaking my oath, I don't really know where they are these days - though Mr Pearce and Sir Thaddeus make up for any faults the other neocon war mongers might have...
Oh no, I'm doing it again! I'm trolling Samizdata and I'm not even on their web site.
I shall say three 'Hail Bloody Marys' on my way to the Gin & Tonic fridge, this evening.
Dear God, Perry, please forgive me! :-)
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