David Davis

Antoine, when you post, please could you kindly put your name, in blue italc type at or near the top of each post? Then everyone out there (who does not know us, and sadly that is still most people on the planet) will know who you are.

In the LA as we know, Chris Tame always said that a project belongs to him who does most to run it. I am fortunate to have been asked to run the blog, which had beet started before I came to it, and we are now read by an annualised (Peter Marsh’s  (of ABM) words not mine!) 180,000-odd people a year.

I do not care if Milton Friedman videos are 20 years old. I may well have seen these for the first time: how can one know? Anyway, things get old and stick around because they are good. Furthermore, I have not time to make new ones, and he, Friedman, will now find it hard to get to the appointment.

Two-and-a-quarter years ago, I did not know what blogging was. I had to be told by Sean. But soon I looked at a couple of liberal/libertarian/”right wing” blogs. I found that the popular ones were talking outwards to new people who had not really heard either of libertarianism (or even knew what liberalism really meant) or had not really got politicised.

Kelley Hazell (and refs to “bras”) are there on purpose. Can’t think why I didn’t do it before. (Don’t worry, she won’t be able to appear every day…) I want to get this blog’s teeth ibto the trousers of people who may well be supportive of liberal ideas but do not know why. Yep, even “Sun” readers. Of the Dead Tree Press, the Sun still has a circulation approaching 2 million. I don’t know what some libertarian blogs get, but it’s probably less than that. I know Samizdata gets several thousand a day, for which I also aim: Samizdata reads “rougher” than you think, Antoine! That is why it is popular.

If people start to think Kelley Hazell is getting boring, or if she marries a nice sensible plasterer and settles down to have “kids”, I may get someone else. I’ll have to see which one next airs her climate-change views on Sky news or wherever.

For too long, libertarian blogs hgave been talking to themselves and each other, while the Enemy Class strides on and our back is turned. If we don’t alert thousand, and thousands, and millions, of “ordinary” people to the issues soon, we might as well sit in each other’s lounges having meetings about philosophy.

I will have more to say later after I have been to work. Meanwhile, my Youtube research officer will find another old (but good) Friedman video for you all.