After writing the previous posting here, about how BMNB dot com is now being wound down, from a daily to an occasional blog, I was determined that my next piece of bloggage would be for Samizdata, and it was. It’s a piece about this book by Stephen Davies. It took me a week to get my posting about this from two thirds first drafted to finished, but that just proves how limited my energy is just now, and how right I was to stop doing something here every day. Even that had become about all I could manage, and that was not what I now want to be managing.
But, as this posting demonstrates, there will be occasional bits here, still, even if only because I have been urged to link from here to all future Samizdata pieces that I manage to do.
It matters a lot to me that in this latest Samizdata piece, I make no mention at all of my medical disappointments. Writing pieces like this is, for me, now, the difference between still being alive, and just existing from one day to the next, in a state of slow but detectably steady, undignified and demoralising physical disintegration.
That and communicating with my nearest and dearest. To all those n+ds and other friends who have taken the trouble to visit me for chats, my deepest thanks. But, if I wasn’t still attempting to say stuff a bit more publicly than that, even those chats would mean a lot less. I blog therefore I am. It wasn’t always so, but it feels like that now.
To all those who commented on the previous posting, thanks for all the kind words. It felt a bit like I was hearing some of the eulogies at my own funeral.
Brian, just read and enjoyed your Samizdata piece. As is usually the case with your writing it was considered, nuanced, reflective and insightful. Please do however continue to advertise any future such pieces here since the comments below your posting reminded me why I’ve not read Samizdata regularly for years. Too many ranting, angry idealogues for my taste.
I confess that I tired of the Samizdata commentariat a long time ago.
I don’t read Samizdata enough to comment in general but I felt that the comments (well, the ones I have had time to read) on Brian’s article were not too ranty. Then again, perhaps I only found them tolerable because I agreed with many of their outlooks.
I just discovered your samizdata post (March 21?) on Chris Tame. A very fair appraisal. Chris was much underrated I think (I thought so in the Late 80s/early-mid 90s when I first ‘knew’ Chris and think so even more strongly today). You are also much underrated Brian – and I would still love to see your current thoughts about your – what was for me anyhow very important – essay in the Seldon edited New Right Enlightenment (I still smile over your comment about how you one day hoped to buy a 15000 pound machine that could copy one page of a typed LA pamphlet onto a new page and also add two things to two other things while simultaneously zapping green Space invaders from the beyond) and your early 90s Cambridge talk on why you were a ‘free market anarchist’ (a far more accurate and euphonious label than the three piece suited anarcho-capitalism one). Best regards.
A good bit of blogging it is, too. Samizdata needs more of that sort of thing!