I will be keeping my loose change in my pocket where it belongs this festive season. I have not lost a single night of sleep over Africa and I never will. In fact, I could even cash in on my conscience by starting a record label called 'Truth in Music'. My first single release will be called 'I Don't Give a Hoot About The Starving'. All profits go to me. It may not be the stuff that dreams are made on but, by George, it will have integrity.
It isn't unusual for posts and comments at Samizdata to become rather nasty, but this one from David Carr reaches a new low. As far as I can tell through the bile, he doesn't want government aid to Africa, but he doesn't want private aid either.
The comments claim of course it is all intended in Swiftian mode, but the genereally bilious nature of most of Carr's postings say otherwise. Increasingly of late many of those who post at Samizdata seem to be keen to tell the rest of us how to live our lives, with special venom directed at anyone who might suggest that perhaps they don't have the exclusive rights to the 'answer' . It is this obsessive belief which betrays them. They have the same utopian fervour as those on the far left, like the SWP or the religious fundamentalists waiting to be swept up in the Rapture. Utopian idealism is one thing, but to actually believe you will achieve it suggests something rather less than rationality.
This is all a great shame - the more considered pamphlets of the Libertarian Alliance show how much more there is to libertarianism than the bile and venom which has begun to substitute for debate on Samizdata.
