Wednesday, January 31, 2007

 
INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM VERSUS GROUP FREEDOM

Rather unusually for him, Francis Fukuyama makes some reasonable points in the excerpts below

Modern identity politics springs from a hole in the political theory underlying liberal democracy. That hole is liberalism's silence about the place and significance of groups. The line of modern political theory that begins with Machiavelli and continues through Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and the American founding fathers understands the issue of political freedom as one that pits the state against individuals rather than groups. Hobbes and Locke, for example, argue that human beings possess natural rights as individuals in the state of nature - rights that can be secured only through a social contract that prevents one individual's pursuit of self-interest from harming others.

Modern liberalism arose in good measure in reaction to the wars of religion that raged in Europe after the Reformation. Liberalism established the principle of religious tolerance: the idea that religious goals could not be pursued in the public sphere in a way that restricted the religious freedom of other sects or churches. (The actual separation of church and state was never fully achieved in many modern European democracies.) But while modern liberalism clearly established the principle that state power should not be used to impose religious belief on individuals, it left unanswered the question of whether individual freedom could conflict with the rights of people to uphold a certain religious tradition.

Freedom, understood not as the freedom of individuals but of cultural or religious or ethnic groups to protect their group identities, was not seen as a central issue by the American founders, perhaps because the new settlers were relatively homogeneous. In the words of John Jay (in the second Federalist Paper): "A people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles."

Multiculturalism - not just as tolerance of cultural diversity but as the demand for legal recognition of the rights of racial, religious or cultural groups - has now become established in virtually all modern liberal democracies. Politics over the past generation has been consumed with controversies over affirmative action for African Americans, bilingualism and gay marriage, driven by formerly marginalised groups that demand recognition not just of their rights as individuals but also of their rights as members of groups. And the United States' Lockean tradition of individual rights has meant that these efforts to assert group rights have been tremendously controversial - more so than in modern Europe.

Modern liberal societies in Europe and North America tend to have weak identities; many celebrate their own pluralism and multiculturalism, arguing in effect that their identity is to have no identity. Yet the fact is that national identity still exists in all contemporary liberal democracies.

In Europe after the second world war there was a strong commitment to creating a "post-national" European identity. But despite the progress that has been made in forging a strong European Union, the continent's identity remains something that comes from the head rather than the heart.

But many Europeans also feel ambivalent about national identity. The formative experience for modern European political consciousness is the two world wars, which Europeans tend to blame on nationalism. Yet Europe's old national identities continue to linger. People still have a strong sense of what it means to be British or French or Dutch or Italian, even if it is not politically correct to affirm these identities too strongly. And national identities in Europe, compared with those in the Americas, remain more ethnically based. So while all European countries have the same commitment to formal political citizenship equality as America, it is harder to turn that into felt equality of citizenship because of the continuing force of ethnic allegiance.

The old multicultural model has not been a big success in countries such as the Netherlands and Britain and needs to be replaced by more energetic efforts to integrate non-western populations into a common liberal culture. The old multicultural model was based on group recognition and group rights. Out of a misplaced sense of respect for cultural differences - and imperial guilt - it ceded too much authority to cultural communities to define rules of behaviour for their own members.

Liberalism cannot be based on group rights because not all groups uphold liberal values. The civilisation of the European enlightenment, of which contemporary liberal democracy is the heir, cannot be culturally neutral since liberal societies have their own values regarding the equal worth and dignity of individuals.

Cultures that do not accept these premises do not deserve equal protection in a liberal democracy. Members of immigrant communities and their offspring deserve to be treated equally as individuals, not as members of cultural communities. There is no reason for a Muslim girl to be treated differently under the law from a Christian or Jewish one, whatever the feelings of her relatives.

Multiculturalism, as it was originally conceived in Canada, America and Europe, was in some sense a "game at the end of history". That is, cultural diversity was seen as a kind of ornament to liberal pluralism that would provide ethnic food, colourful dress and traces of distinctive historical traditions to societies often seen as numbingly conformist and homogeneous. Cultural diversity was something to be practised largely in the private sphere, where it would not lead to any serious violations of individual rights or otherwise challenge the essentially liberal social order.

By contrast, some contemporary Muslim communities (and those of other religions) are making demands for group rights that simply cannot be squared with liberal principles of individual equality. These demands include special exemptions from the family law that applies to everyone else in the society, the right to exclude non-Muslims from certain types of public events, or the right to challenge free speech in the name of religious offence (as with the Danish cartoons incident).

In some more extreme cases Muslim communities have expressed ambitions to challenge the secular character of the political order as a whole. This clearly intrudes on the rights of other individuals in the society and pushes cultural autonomy well beyond the private sphere.

Asking Muslims (and other religions) to give up group rights is much more difficult in Europe than in the United States, however, because many European countries have corporatist traditions that continue to respect communal rights and fail to separate church and state. The existence of state-funded Christian and Jewish schools in many European countries makes it hard to argue in principle against state-supported religious education for Muslims.

In Germany the state collects taxes on behalf of Protestant and Catholic churches and distributes revenues to church-related schools. Even France, with its strong republican tradition, has not been consistent on this issue. After the French revolution's anti-clerical campaign, Napoleon restored the role of religion in education and used a corporatist approach to manage church-state relations.

These islands of corporatism where European states continue to recognise communal rights were not controversial prior to the arrival of large Muslim communities. Most European societies had become thoroughly secular so these religious holdovers seemed quite harmless. But they are obstacles to the maintenance of a wall of separation between religion and state. If Europe is to establish the liberal principle of a pluralism based on individuals rather than groups, then it must address these corporatist institutions inherited from the past.

Source

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Best-seller: "The holy scripture of Islam - the Quran - has become the top selling book in Denmark one year after the blasphemous caricature crisis shook up the Danish society and the Muslim world, the Munich-based Focus news magazine reported Monday. The Quran was ranked second during the important Christmas book sales period. Buyers of the Quran include many young Muslims who grew up in Denmark but do not speak Arabic".

Australia. Muslim leader advocates war with non-Muslims: "A speaker at a conference in Sydney's south-west says a revolution or a civil war may be necessary in order to create an Islamic state, or caliphate. The meeting has been organised by the controversial Muslim group Hizb ut-Tahrir, which is banned in several countries overseas. A number of politicians have called for the group to be banned here. One of today's speakers, Ashraf Doureihi, told the audience action needs to be taken to ensure an Islamic state is created. "It is important... [to move] collectively in the Muslim world to demand this change from such influential people in our lands, even if it means spilling onto the streets to create a revolution or staging a military coup," he said. Hizb ut-Tahrir spokesman Wassim Doureihi has told the audience a number of speakers will address the meeting today and discuss ways of establishing an Islamic super-state. "As we were here today, what is at stake is not just the destiny of the Muslim world but indeed the whole of mankind," he said.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

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posted by JR 1/31/2007 12:07:00 AM

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

 
OBAMA: A DELIBERATE AND SYSTEMATIC LIAR

His book is a tissue of lies -- a fairytale masquerading as truth. But truth never has mattered to the Left, of course

It is a classic story of the American dream made real: an impoverished Kenyan goatherd rising to become a brilliant Harvard-educated economist. On the way he fights racial prejudice at home and corruption at work, survives the heartbreak of a broken relationship and, despite it all, leads the fight to rid Africa of its colonial legacy. This extraordinary story is told by US Presidential hopeful Barack Obama as he recalls the life of the man who inspired him to political success - his father.....

Yet an investigation by The Mail on Sunday has revealed that, for all Mr Obama's reputation for straight talking and the compelling narrative of his recollections, they are largely myth. We have discovered that his father was not just a deeply flawed individual but an abusive bigamist and an egomaniac, whose life was ruined not by racism or corruption but his own weaknesses. And, devastatingly, the testimony has come from Mr Obama's own relatives and family friends....

Barack Obama Snr started life with the advantage of being able to read and write, but he also felt a profound sense of injustice. His father was a cook for British settlers in Kenya, who demeaningly called him their 'personal boy'. Grandfather Obama sent his son to a missionary school but after completing his education, the youth could find little work except goatherding in his remote village of Nyangoma Kogela, in the roadless hills of Western Kenya. At 18, he married a girl called Kezia. But Obama Snr was more interested in politics and economics than his family and his political leanings had been brought to the notice of leaders of the Kenyan Independence movement. He was put forward for an American-sponsored scholarship in economics, with the idea being that he would eventually use his Western-honed skills in the new Kenya. At the age of 23 he headed for university in Hawaii, leaving behind the pregnant Kezia and their baby son.

Relatives say he was already a slick womaniser and, once in Honolulu, he promptly persuaded a fellow student called Ann - a naive 18-year-old white girl - to marry him. Barack Jnr was born in August, 1961. Two years later, Obama Snr was on the move again. He was accepted at Harvard, and left his little boy and wife behind when he moved to the exclusive east coast university....

Mr Obama Jnr claims that racism on both sides of the family destroyed the marriage between his mother and father... In fact Ann divorced her husband after she discovered his bigamous double life. She remarried and moved to Indonesia with young Barack and her new husband, an oil company manager.

Obama Snr was forced to return to Kenya, where he fathered two more children by Kezia. He was eventually hired as a top civil servant in the fledgling government of Jomo Kenyatta - and married yet again. Now prosperous with a flashy car and good salary, his third wife was an American-born teacher called Ruth, whom he had met at Harvard while still legally married to both Kezia and Ann, and who followed him to Africa...

It is alleged that Ruth finally left him after he repeatedly flew into whisky-fuelled rages, beating her brutally. Friends say drinking blighted his life - he lost both his legs while driving under the influence and also lost his job. However, this was no bar to his womanising: he sired a son, his eighth child, by yet another woman and continued to come home drunk. He was about to marry her when he finally died in yet another drunken crash when Obama was 21....

In his book, he attempts to put the best face on it. His father, he writes, lost his civil service job after campaigning against corrupt African politicians who had 'taken the place of the white colonials'. One of Obama Snr's former drinking partners, Kenyan writer Philip Ochieng Ochieng says, however, that his friend's downfall was his weak character. "Although charming, generous and extraordinarily clever, Obama Snr was also imperious, cruel and given to boasting about his brain and his wealth," he said. "He was excessively fond of Scotch. He had fallen into the habit of going home drunk every night. His boasting proved his undoing and left him without a job, plunged him into prolonged poverty and dangerously wounded his ego."

Much more here.

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I have just put up on my Marx blog a new collection of quotes from Marx and his early followers. They openly avow terrorism and mass murder. What the Soviets and other Communists did was exactly what they said they would do. We ignore warnings -- such as those now coming from many Muslim leaders -- at our peril. And note that the many professors who to this day like Marxism could not be unaware of how hate-filled Marx was. It would appear to be precisely that which they like.

Mad Methodist Democrat: "A bid by a Nebraska lawmaker to expand underage drinking restrictions to include alcohol consumed in church has drawn criticism from Catholics who say it will infringe on religious rights. Democratic State Sen. Lowen Kruse has introduced a bill that would eliminate two provisions to Nebraska's underage drinking law which allow minors to drink alcohol in their own homes or at places of worship during religious ceremonies."

A small start: "The Quebec village of Herouxville, 1300 inhabitants, has formally banned this week the stoning of women, face veils, female genital mutilation, or throwing acid at unveiled women's faces, reports Montreal daily La Presse.... The nature of the Herouxville bans suggests however that local politicians had Quebec Muslims in mind, though not a single Muslim or member of any religious or ethnic minority calls Herouxville home. But referring to Quebec's policy of encouraging immigrants to settle outside Montreal, Drouin says it was important to inform potential immigrants of the villages cultural norms: "We must ensure that people who come here want to live as we do", he told La Presse, "The Muslims who wanted to impose Sharia, had they known that we do not stone women here, maybe they would not have come". Along with the bans, the Herouxville document states that Christmas trees are a Quebec tradition, that swimming pools are mixed, and that pork meat and beef are displayed on the same shelves. Asked whether he fears being labeled a racist, Drouin answers: "We are not racists, we are explaining our culture".

Some economic history: "Sustained economic growth of even 1% per year was not a reality until the 19th century, and sustained economic growth of 2-3% was not a reality until the last 50 years. Putting it in historical perspective, it makes the recent obsession with "income inequality" kind of inconsequential. It could be a lot worse, and was a lot worse throughout human history, for the average person. And complaining about income inequality in a country like the US where per capita GDP is about $42,000, must seem very strange to those in the rest of the world where per capita GDP is only $7500. Kind of like members of an exclusive, private country club complaining about differences in income between the "rich" and "super-rich" member of that club?"

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

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posted by JR 1/30/2007 12:09:00 AM

Monday, January 29, 2007

 
What are the best novels about politics?

Post below lifted from Tyler Cowen. I think I would have put The Last Hurrah and All the King's Men somewhere on the list. Tyler is obviously a classical fiend. I am too but I think the modern world also has its wisdom. I think the two novels I have listed tell you more about American politics than all the sociologists and political scientists put together

Queried here, I will simplify and make it books, period, but restrict it to fiction, not counting philosophy.  My list of five:

1. Shakespeare's Henriad, a no-brainer at #1, if you count it as more than one book it still should take up as many slots as it needs.  Psychology is primary and stands above politics, and libertinism is by no means unrelated to power.

2. Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels, vanity, pride, and self-deception are the keys to understanding political behavior, plus Swift shows an understanding of "the rules of the game."

3. Montesquieu, Persian Letters, yikes, have you ever seen that Monty Python skit "Summarize Proust"?

4. Sophocles, Antigone, the claims of the family vs. the claims of the state continue to plague Iraq and many other places.

5. Homer's Odyssey and Iliad, the former is not just a good tale but also a profound comparative study of regimes, the latter is the brutal truths of war.

Interestingly none of these are proper novels.  I read Kafka's The Trial as more about theology than worldly affairs.  As for politics as a profession, the source from The Economist recommends "Primary Colors", C.P. Snow's "The Corridors of Power", and "All the King's Men".

It is less fruitful and less fun to guess at the best novels about business and economics, perhaps because the relevant truths seem banal in a fictional context.

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Credibility: "According to the New York Times, President Bush and Vice President Cheney “have done grievous harm to the credibility of the Oval Office and the country.” Perhaps so, but by being so blatantly partisan in its political coverage, the Times has done grievous harm to its own credibility and to the profession of journalism. Does the Times not see this?"

Media hostility: "President George W. Bush's father accused the news media of "personal animosity" toward his son and said he found the criticism so unrelenting he sometimes talked back to his television set. "It's one thing to have an adversarial ... relationship -- hard-hitting journalism -- it's another when the journalists' rhetoric goes beyond skepticism and goes over the line into overt, unrelenting hostility and personal animosity," former President George Bush said. The elder Bush, the 41st U.S. president, had a relatively collegial relationship with the press but things turned sour during his losing 1992 re-election campaign. He got so fed up with media coverage that supporters at the time circulated hats with the slogan "Annoy the Media -- Re-Elect Bush."

Air America Can't Even Pull Listeners In Santa Cruz: "Pretty telling when liberal radio can't even pull listeners in one of the most liberal cities in America. Al Franken, Randi Rhodes and Sam Seeder - articulate liberal pundits - don't sell well, even in Santa Cruz. The trio are part of the nationally syndicated Air America, which was dropped from Santa Cruz radio station KOMY 1340 AM on Thursday and replaced with music from the 1950s, `60s and `70s. The left-leaning radio network, aimed at taking on Rush Limbaugh and other conservative talk shows, debuted on Central Coast airwaves in July 2005, but local advertisers never bought in, station owner Michael Zwerling said. "We didn't sell a single ad in a year and a half," Zwerling said Thursday. "I thought liberal radio would work as a viable advertising business in the most liberal town in America. I was wrong" Santa Cruz isn't the only place Air America has problems. The network is struggling nationwide and filed for bankruptcy four months ago."

IRS can't even collect taxes from government employees: "Internal Revenue Service documents show that the government is still trying to recover nearly $2.8 billion in back taxes from over 450,000 active and retired federal government employees who failed to file tax returns or pay taxes, or some 3.3 percent of the federal bureaucracy. Spreadsheets obtained by Washington, D.C., radio station WTOP under the Freedom of Information Act show that hundreds of thousands of government employees failed to file a tax return for the 2005 tax year.... The United States Postal Service was the agency with the highest level of noncompliance, while the Treasury Department had the lowest level. IRS agents can be fired if they fail to pay taxes. But, an IRS spokesman told WTOP, it's no easier to collect from the bureaucrats as it is from the rest of us. Indeed, the IRS can hardly get a handle around the tax noncompliance issue, and has been reduced to prosecuting high-profile people who they allege have failed to pay taxes owed, such as Wesley Snipes."

Immigration Benefit 'Equivalent to a Mars bar a Month': "New figures out today reveal that, on the Government's own figures, the benefit to each member of the native population of the UK from immigration is worth about 4p a week - or less than the equivalent of a small Mars bar a month. In an analysis of a series of reports on the economic impact of immigration on the UK think-tank Migrationwatch has found that overall the much vaunted contribution of immigrants to the economy is very slight indeed - a finding that coincides with the results of major studies around the world."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

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posted by JR 1/29/2007 12:03:00 AM

Sunday, January 28, 2007

 
Obama: Just another "No Ideas" Leftist

Like most Leftists, he is so short of ideas that he just recycles old ideas that have repeatedly failed elsewhere. He wants to downgrade American healthcare to the appalling level of Britain's NHS. But no Leftist cares how destructive their ideas are -- as long as it sounds good at the time. They exploit the low level of knowledge of the average voter -- a low level of knowledge that they have themselves created by their white-anting of public education

Every American should have health care coverage within six years, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama said Thursday as he set an ambitious goal soon after jumping into the 2008 presidential race. "The time has come for universal health care in America," Obama said at a conference of Families USA, a health care advocacy group. "I am absolutely determined that by the end of the first term of the next president, we should have universal health care in this country," the Illinois senator said.

Obama was previewing what is shaping up to be a theme of the 2008 Democratic primary. His chief rivals, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Edwards, also are strong proponents of universal health care and have promised to offer their plans.

Obama said while plans are offered in every campaign season with "much fanfare and promise," they collapse under the weight of Washington politics, leaving citizens to struggle with the skyrocketing costs. He said it's wrong that 46 million in this country are uninsured when the country spends more than any one else on health care. He said Americans pay $15 billion in taxes to help care for the uninsured. "We can't afford another disappointing charade in 2008, 2009 and 2010," Obama said. "It's not only tiresome, it's wrong."

Obama's call was an echo of a speech he made last April when he said Democrats "need to cling to the core values that make us Democrats, the belief in universal health care, the belief in universal education, and then we should be agnostic in terms of how to achieve those values." His argument Thursday not only will be considered through the prism of the presidential campaign, but weighed against rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's ill-fated plan to overhaul the health care insurance system when she was first lady. Even after leading that calamitous attempt in 1993, Clinton remains in favor of universal health care and has made it a central theme of her presidential bid....

More here

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DEMOCRATS' SILENCE ON THE GLOBAL JIHAD

For McCain, a Republican presidential hopeful, the struggle against the Islamists is the paramount issue of the day. His campaign website, while spare, highlights a recent speech in which McCain called stopping radical Islam "our most important moral obligation." He described the jihadists as "moral monsters but . . . also a disciplined, dedicated movement driven by an apocalyptic religious zeal, which celebrates martyrdom and murder." We are in a battle with "those who would shackle humanity, especially women, in a feudal theocracy," McCain said. "We cannot afford to take a holiday from history."

Sounding nearly as resolute is former governor Mitt Romney, whose campaign website puts "Defeating the Jihadists" first in its list of key campaign issues. "The jihadists are waging a global war against the United States and its allies," Romney is quoted as saying, "with the ambition of replacing legitimate governments with a caliphate -- a theocracy." Speaking in Israel yesterday, Romney asserted that "a central purpose of NATO should be to defeat radical Islam," through means both military and ideological.

The Democratic candidates, by contrast, are virtually silent on the subject. Barack Obama launched his exploratory committee with an online video that mentioned the economy, healthcare, vanishing pensions, college costs, and the fractiousness of partisan politics. His only nod to national security was a passing reference to the war in Iraq, which he opposes. But 9/11 and its aftermath? The worldwide jihad? The global conflict between democratic freedom and Taliban-style repression? Not a word.

Hillary Clinton's highly praised kickoff video likewise included nothing about the overriding threat of our time. Her website does contain a speech she gave at the Council on Foreign Relations last October, but it is filled with windy rhetoric about diplomacy and international conferences and how we must address the "troubled conditions terrorists seek out." New Yorkers don't need to be told "that we are in a war against terrorists who seek to do us harm," Clinton says. But if she recognizes that the future of the civilized world depends on winning that war, she shows little sign of it.

More here

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A peace scam: "The Israeli-Palestinian peace process was a "scam" during the 1990s and because of that Washington should not be pushing Israel to make a "land for peace deal" now, a former head of the CIA said here.... Bush is the first U.S. leader to publicly back the idea of a "two-state solution" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But former CIA director James Woolsey said this week the U.S. should learn from past experience. Until something changes in the P.A. there would not be an Israeli-Palestinian deal, he said.... "I don't know how you realistically expect a friend and ally to negotiate a land-for-peace deal with an entity that in effect still wants to destroy it," he added."

Winston Churchill had observed Muslims close up. He said: : ""How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world".

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

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posted by JR 1/28/2007 12:05:00 AM

Saturday, January 27, 2007

 
Brookes News Update

US economy: production and jobs: The Austrian explanation for the so-called business cycle easily explains the patter of employment in the finals stages of the boom
Economic growth, interventionism and the state: One only has to look at the rapid developments in the computer industry in particular and electronics in general to see that the notion of under-investment in technology is completely at variance with the facts
Can non-banks create money?: It is monetary injections by the central bank that destabilise the economy and not the response of people to these injections, which are manifested by the speeding up of the creation of credit
Castro's terrorist network: Since he turned Cuba into a socialist dictatorship Castro has nurtured international terrorism. Curiously enough our intrepid media has made a point of ignoring Castro's roles in training and funding terrorist thugs. Well, that's par for the course when the dictator is a socialist
Leftwing Congressional Democrats condemn US reinforcements for Iraq - veterans respond: Why are some congressional Democrats plotting to stab US troops in the back? Is it because their 'loyalty' is to a party and not their country?
Resurging Islam and the revival of slavery: Islam has a stranglehold on its slaves and will neither let them go, nor do the Muslims seem to have the insight or the will to leave it in large numbers. But hope, as slim as it is, keeps me sounding the alarm before the fire of Islam engulfs us all
The American economy and taxes: the Democrats don't get it and neither does Larry Kudlow and the GOP: Republicans haven't even peeped about a tax cut in years. They are desperately trying to keep the Democrats from letting Bush's tax cuts expire; a fact that the in-house media omitt from their Democrat propaganda

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Congratulations to the UAW and complacent managers: "Ford Motor Co warned today that its troubles were far from over after it reported a staggering $US12.7 billion loss in 2006, the worst in its 103-year history. The struggling US automaker conceded that it would probably lose the No.2 spot in its home market to Japanese rival Toyota this year as it drastically shrinks its production and sees its market share drop to 14 or 15 per cent from 16 per cent in 2006. Much of that loss would come from decreased reliance on fleet sales (primarily to rental car companies) which were significantly less profitable than the retail market, Ford chief executive Alan Mulally said. Sales were also expected to continue to fall as overall demand declined in 2007 and that was expected to put further pressure on automotive pricing, he said. Huge charges associated with Ford's plan to shut 16 plants in North America and eliminate up to 44,000 jobs accounted for much of its 2006 losses"

Some decent feelings in India: "Two men accused of killing at least 21 children in the New Delhi House of Horrors case have been severely beaten during a court appearance, with one of them knocked unconscious by lawyers and members of the public gallery. Accused millionaire businessman Moninder Singh Pandher, 55, who is known as "Goldy", was last night receiving medical treatment after losing consciouness during the beating in a court at Ghaziabad, near the Indian capital. According to the Press Trust of India, Pandher and his co-accused, his servant Surendra Kohli, were set upon by outraged lawyers and members of the public when they were being taken from the courtroom to the lock-up by the CBI, India's investigation agency. "As both Pandher and Kohli were being taken to the lock-up from the courtroom, a group of lawyers caught hold of them and beat them black and blue," PTI reported. Television footage showed the mob lashing out at the accused and hitting them as police tried to protect them. Mr Pandher was shown lying on the ground."

Islamic germ warfare? "Britain's laboratories have been ordered to strengthen security on stocks of more than 100 deadly viruses and bacteria after an MI5 warning that Islamic terrorists are training in germ warfare. The biological agents include polio, rabies, tuberculosis and bird flu. Food-poisoning bacteria such as E.coli and the sources for a number of rare tropical and Middle Eastern illnesses are also included. Scientists and lab staff in universities, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies who deal with agents will have to be vetted by police, and their laboratories will be checked by government safety inspectors. Stock will have to be accounted for and regularly audited. The crackdown comes after MI5 privately warned the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that al-Qa'ida was actively recruiting scientists."

Reasonable decision ignites British hysteria: "A British judge freed a convicted "pedophile" today after citing a government warning about prison overcrowding, instantly igniting a law-and-order furore that could damage Prime Minister Tony Blair's government. Mr Blair's Home Secretary John Reid had already drawn fire from opposition Conservative critics and mass-circulation newspapers for writing to judges to warn of prison overcrowding and urge that prison places not be wasted on non-violent offenders. But a senior judge's decision to free a man who downloaded sexual images of children suddenly catapulted the story to the top of news reports, the latest in a series of scandals to hit the Home Office law-and-order ministry over the past year. The BBC reported from North Wales that Judge John Rogers cited Mr Reid's remarks while handing a suspended jail sentence to Derek Williams, 46, who downloaded child pornography... Britain is scrambling to find new places for prisoners after a sharp upsurge in the prison population, with the Government suggesting it could house offenders in disused military barracks, police jail cells and on ships.... On Tuesday, Mr Reid told a conference of regional newspaper journalists that courts should not be "squandering taxpayers' money to monitor non-dangerous and less serious offenders". "Prisons are an expensive resource that should be used to protect the public," he said, according to the BBC." [My paper on penological policy is here]

A despicable award from a despicable regime: "I missed this the other day... The French government, the same people who gave aid and comfort the the instigators of the Rwanda genocide, and have done everything they could to thwart the arrests of mass murderous Serbian war criminals in Bosnia, have decided to 'honour' one of their own. They have awarded the Legion D'Honneur, France's highest award, to Harold Pinter, that well know playwright, man of letters, literary colossus and apologist for mass murdering national socialist Slobodan Milosevic and mass murdering national socialist Saddam Hussain. Vermin, one and all.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

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posted by JR 1/27/2007 12:21:00 AM

Friday, January 26, 2007

 
The Psychology of the Self-Hating Liberal

The good news is that, after a whole century of heading in the wrong direction, a moral and intellectual challenge to the bleeding-heart version of liberalism is finally welling up in the West. This is in no small part thanks to the liberating force of the Internet that has made freedom of expression possible again after decades of suffocating mass media orthodoxy.

There is however a tendency to focus only on the effects of the West's philosophical malaise. The rampant spread of our parasitic victim-culture and our impotence in the face of Islamic terrorism - these are both symptoms. The root cause lies in the psychology of sublimated self-hate that has come to be the prevalent psychic condition middle class liberals and especially those in media and academic circles. The truth is that virtually the entire `social justice' project of the last century - driven by middle class liberals on behalf of `the oppressed' - was motivated not by something noble but by something weak and creepy.

Its roots are a self-hating neurosis that, in different forms has afflicted the European intelligentsia since the time of Rousseau. I first became aware of the strange mind games of the self-hating middle class liberal at university in the 1970's. It is a mindset that did then (and still does) dominate academic life. Students and their tutors alike - mostly the beneficiaries of upward striving family backgrounds - were consumed with a phoney and entirely self- absorbed infatuation with something they called `the working class struggle'.

Through its disproportionate hold on academic and media culture this mindset has now become mainstream. As it has spread through our culture it has been diluted and sublimated, Paradoxically this has made it even more poisonous by making it more difficult to apprehend. It has become a gossamer web of vaguely held attitudes. Here are some of them:

Being middle class is something to be slightly ashamed of. Being working class on the other hand - or better still affecting to be working class - makes you seem more heroic......As long as you are `left wing' you are not only a nicer person but you are also `radical' and therefore not boring. If on the other hand you are `right wing', well that means you are `reactionary' and mean......Business enterprise is essentially disreputable whereas getting a living off the public purse or in the arts and media is highly civilised. Being an engineer or a scientist is OK too, up to a point - for boring people anyway.....And of course all the problems of people in the rest of the world are the fault, not of those people themselves but of the prosperous West. More specifically, the blame lies with `the capitalist system'; not you personally of course. You show how much you care by going to Live Aid concerts and that makes you feel much better about yourself.

In the obsessive struggle to subvert the perceived social hierarchy, a new politically correct hierarchy is rammed down your throat. At its apex would be someone like a Red Indian lesbian; at the bottom of the heap would be a middle class, Southern English male. In the latter half of the last century this mentality spread through all professions and institutions and so has become self-perpetuating. By the time the influence filters down to the population at large it is so diluted as to be just a vague lack of confidence in Western civilisation and a linguistic fog of moral relativism which disorientates people and makes them doubt their own common sense instincts about right and wrong.

Of all institutions the most powerful in this respect is the mass media, on account of its insidious ability to drip-drip its influence on every aspect of the way you perceive the world beyond your own direct experience. Everything you know - or think you know - about, Iraq or `global warming' or `the latest social research' on this or that subject, you probably got via the media. The great media conjuring trick is the illusion that it is merely a transparent window whereas in reality it is a window, richly decorated with mythology. It breathes into your ear things like this:-

All people in the Third World are shouldering with dignity a burden imposed upon them by the West in general and America in particular....All businesses are probably trying to screw you....You as a consumer have plenty to whinge about....Politicians should do something about each and every one of the problems you encounter in life....And if you are making a mess of your life its because someone else should have given you more information or more help.

The trouble with all this apparent social conscience is that what really drives it is not some profound humanism but the desire of a highly privileged elite to feel better about themselves and stave off the unconscious and sublimated self-loathing which was drip fed to them at university.

Virtually everyone in the Western world today will have had his or her perception distorted to some extent by this fake but highly seductive fashion-accessory kind of social conscience. By subverting a perfectly valid hierarchy of values in judging human behavior, this fake social conscience has had a hugely corrosive effect on what was best in our civilization. Take, for example, the near universal acceptance now of the notion that to discriminate is wrong.

Wrong. It is bigotry that is wrong. The capacity to discriminate - far from being wrong - is actually vital to civilized society; the more of it the better.

The psychology of middle class self-hate of is complex and multi-layered. It is, in part a mindset of frozen adolescence whereby people never entirely move beyond the inchoate parent-anger of their youth. Even sophisticated professionals can still carry their adolescent baggage, now displaced into a vague resentment against their own middle class roots or against America as the parent figure of the Western world. In part it is Rousseau and D. H. Lawrence: the cerebral intellectual's Romantic infatuation with the primitive. And in part it is perhaps a stray fragment of the shattered star of Christianity - the first shall be last etc. This fragment, detached now from its overall religious context, floats meaninglessly in the post-Christian philosophical ether.

The consequences of this confused and self-indulgent philosophy are full of paradox. First: when do you ever hear any credit given to the wicked American enterprise culture for the microchip, the personal computer, the Internet, Google, and all the rest of the apparatus that every lefty-liberal anti-globalisation warrior or anti-Western terrorist now blithely uses in pursuit of her agenda? In a staggering act of biting the hand that feeds, the liberal intelligentsia sneers at the kind of souls without whom there would have been no Western civilisation in the first place. Meanwhile South East Asia is turning out science graduates in the millions.

Second: the spread of attention-seeking, wilful victimhood in our culture - the whingeing, blaming and litigating -has tragically been assisted by the very scruples of self reliant, non-drama-queen type people preferring to just keep their own counsel and say nothing.

Third: Whilst we may not exactly have 1984, we do have plenty of Orwellian Doublethink. Being a `radical' means thinking just like everyone else in your peer group. Caring about the catastrophic failure of mankind in large parts of the planet means going to rock concerts.

In challenging this malaise, it is not enough to attack the crazy social policies and the political correctness it has spawned. It is also necessary to challenge the century long myth that a left-wing type of `social conscience' is good-hearted even if it is naive. This is one huge fallacy. The truth is that it is more usually self-centred, self-deceiving and ultimately self-serving.

Source

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ELSEWHERE

Blacks Say Bush Blows Opportunity to Fight for Judges: "President George W. Bush mentioned the importance of filling vacancies in our judicial system with qualified nominees, but he failed to use his State of the Union Address to discuss the problem of liberal obstructionism of these nominees in the Senate. Project 21 Chairman Mychal Massie says President Bush should have used the high-profile speech to make his case to both the Senate and the public about the severity of the problem. "So many of the things President Bush spent ample time covering in his State of the Union Address - the War on Terror, health care reform, quality education for our children and even our energy policy - will ultimately be shaped by our courts. The President failed to use last night's address to chastise liberal senators who are obstructing the judicial confirmation process and endangering his ability to name judges," said Project 21 Chairman Mychal Massie.

Unpopular Palis: "Palestinians living in Iraq have been warned they will be killed by Shi'ite militias unless they leave the country immediately. Iraqi police say the immigrants, who are mostly Sunni Muslims, are the target of a backlash by hard-line Shi'ites, including members of the Mahdi Army led by Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.... More than 600 Palestinians are believed to have died at the hands of Shi'ite militias since the war began in 2003, including at least 300 from the Baladiat area of Baghdad. Many were tortured with electric drills before they died. Now the Shi'ite militias are stepping up their campaign to drive out Iraq's 15,000 remaining Palestinians -- less than half the estimated 40,000 living in the country at the start of the war, all of whom were welcomed by Saddam Hussein and provided with housing, money and free education. Sheik Mahmoud al-Hassani, a spokesman for the Mahdi Army, said the Palestinians had brought their suffering on themselves. He said Shi'ites believed the Palestinians were in league with Sunni extremists and al Qaeda".

Another failure of Britain's leftist government: "The police rounded on the Home Secretary yesterday, accusing him of letting down officers by failing to provide enough prison places for the criminals they are catching. Leaders of junior and middle-ranking officers in England and Wales expressed dismay that John Reid was appealing to courts to jail fewer people. They said that he and other Labour ministers had "let down" officers who worked hard to catch crooks. Chief constables privately backed the public criticism of the Government's failure to provide enough jail cells, which has resulted in severe overcrowding. The police criticism of Mr Reid and ministers is deeply embarrassing for the Government and its credentials on law and order. The attack on the Home Secretary came as the Prison Service was forced to start putting remand prisoners in cells in a wing at Norwich jail, parts of which has been condemmed as "unfit for human habitation". It also emerged that cells at the Old Bailey in Central London were on standby to receive prisoners as the jails ran out of cell spaces in London and the South East. Prison numbers rose again overnight, taking the total population yesterday to 80,070, including an estimated 400 in police cells around England and Wales. Eleven prisoners were forced to spend Tuesday night in cells at Inner London Crown Court."

Pathetic British authorities still cannot handle even light snow: "Each year it comes as inevitably as, well, winter, but yesterday the first snow of the year caught the transport system on the hop. Again. A tentative sprinkling was all it took to bring chaos as commuters suffered long waits on freezing platforms and tailbacks on the roads. One woman, 49, died when she stopped at Haresfield in Gloucestershire to help a 17-year-old driver after his car overturned on an icy road. Another vehicle then skidded into her. The M23 from Surry heading into London was closed for two hours after a coach collided with two cars. Hundreds of trains were delayed and dozens cancelled as the rail network was blighted by frozen points. Network Rail said that the disruption was mainly due to the failure of the heating systems that are supposed to prevent freezing. Points failure struck at some of the network's major hubs, including, in London, Clapham Junction, Waterloo and Wimbledon. Other trains were left stranded after ice on the tracks caused power surges".

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

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posted by JR 1/26/2007 12:37:00 AM

Thursday, January 25, 2007

 
LEFTIST POPULISTS MAKE EVERYBODY EQUALLY POOR

With the Democrats back in power in Congress and with the 2008 election campaign already upon us, you'll be hearing much more about "income inequality." This is a major issue for "progressives" (when you hear that word, think "socialists") like Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Populism is back in fashion.

By populism, I mean the exploitation of the uninformed, angry impulses and unfiltered passions of the masses. That anger and resentment has historically been directed at the usual villains and cardboard stereotypes: bankers, insurance companies, "big pharma" (that means drug companies), agri-business, "the military-industrial complex," free trade, free markets and, of course, "the rich." This mentality feeds on conspiracy theories and simplistic fantasies about the way the world works. It seeks to impale the minority of "haves" on the pitchforks of the more numerous "have nots." When you do the political calculus, it can seem like a seductive winning formula for many politicians.

Complaints of income inequality are nothing new. Will Durant traces its history to ancient Rome. He observes that: "The concentration of wealth is a natural and inevitable result of the concentration of abilities in a minority of men and regularly recurs in history . . . Despotism may for a time retard the concentration; democracy, allowing the most liberty, accelerates it." ....

To be sure, there are some very rich people in America who earn and possess hundreds or thousands of times what poorer people earn or possess. But the poor in this country are only relatively poor. We have no abject poverty. On the contrary, America's "poor" have cars, TVs, appliances, computers, $200 basketball shoes and own their own homes. Their lifestyle would be the envy of most of the world's population.

As long as there's relative wealth, there will always be relative poverty. The only alternative is an impossible one: absolute income and wealth equality. In a market economy like ours, the state of the economy will be never be good enough for some and never bad enough for others. In a dynamic economy, there will always be relative winners and losers. Some industries will be ascendant and others will be in decline. For the vast majority of Americans, today's income disparities are mostly related to differing levels of education and skills of marketable value.

Be wary of misleading economic statistics glibly tossed around by populist politicians. A flood of low-skilled immigrants, many illegal, has had a downward influence on average wages. Increases in nonwage compensation - like employer-provided health insurance or deferred compensation in the form of generous defined-benefit pension plans for government employees - are frequently ignored in the wage data. Then there's the discrepancy between reported incomes and consumption, with consumption data - a much better measure of living standards - showing far less inequality.

Politicians and the U.S. government have long been in the business of redistributing income through progressive taxation (the top 2 percent of Americans pay two-thirds of all income taxes; the bottom 50 percent pay only 3 percent) on the one hand, and transfer payments to the poor and middle class on the other. Remarkably, the official income-distribution figures don't subtract income taxes paid by heavily-burdened net taxpayers. Compounding the distortion, cash transfers and the cornucopia of government services and subsidies obtained by net tax receivers are also ignored. Even though we spend hundreds of billions on this, it's like those benefits don't exist.

Individual incomes are determined objectively in the marketplace. When politicians or labor unions don't like the results, they meddle in people's lives and businesses in pursuit of power while invoking the name of "social justice," today's name for egalitarianism. Excessive concentration of income and wealth can destroy a society politically. We're nowhere near that point. Excessive redistribution of income and wealth - without regard for talent and productivity - can destroy a society economically. That's the more tangible danger.

More here

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ELSEWHERE



I have just posted here a review of "America alone" by Mark Steyn. There have been plenty of admiring reviews of the book from conservatives so I thought I would try it out on "Ken", my middle-of-the-road reviewer. I am pleased to see that he thought highly of the book too.

Many readers may have seen the story about a firm called "Discount Floor Mats" refusing to send their product to troops in Iraq. Bloggers kicked up a storm about it (e.g. here) and the offending firm received heaps of condemnatory emails. The employee responsible for the refusal has now apparently been sacked. See here.

There is an appalling story here about the limits placed on the love lives of medical and healthcare personnel in Washington State. You can commit a crime by doing perfectly innocent and normal things.

Black Activists Outraged Over Liberal Merger of Abortion and Civil Rights: "Inclusion of Planned Parenthood in a self-described civil rights coalition has outraged members of the black leadership network Project 21, as Planned Parenthood advocates and provides abortions - particularly in the black community. "How can a civil rights group that claims to support underprivileged blacks embrace an organization created expressly to hasten the demise of black people?" asked Project 21 Chairman Mychal Massie. "People of conscience should be appalled and outraged by this alignment." The Planned Parenthood Federation of America recently became a member of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), a political coalition of almost 200 groups representing liberal racial, gender, age, disability and religious special interests as well as labor unions. The LCCR is most often known in recent years for its opposition to judicial nominees who adhere to an orginalist interpretation of the Constitution."

CAFE standards lead to lighter, less safe vehicles: "In his State of the Union address, President Bush said: "At the same time, we need to reform and modernize fuel economy [CAFE] standards for cars the way we did for light trucks - and conserve up to eight and a half billion more gallons of gasoline by 2017." "CAFE standards kill," said Amy Ridenour, president of the National Center for Public Policy Research. "In our view, the best way to 'reform and modernize' fuel economy standards is to eliminate them. It is hypocritical, and to some, lethal, for a government that forbids drilling in ANWR to, in the name of energy independence, force families into vehicles that are less safe than they otherwise would be." "In a choice between saving gallons of gas or the lives of some of our fellow Americans," said Ridenour, "we should choose their lives."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************
posted by JR 1/25/2007 12:06:00 AM

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

 
Kling Klanger

I greatly admire the writings on economics by Arnold Kling. His recent comment on IQ is deficient, however. He falls into the trap of regarding mental abilities as specific when the whole thrust of a century of research into IQ shows that they are general. Everybody has things that they are best at but in general a person who is good at solving one sort of problem will be good at solving many sorts of problems. IQ represents in fact precisely that general ability which Kling concedes is badly needed in today's world. IQ is therefore a useful sorting method for determining in advance who can handle college education. And the SAT that is much used for that purpose in the USA is in fact little more than an IQ test.

To be fair, Kling seeems to be talking about top talent rather than normal ability. He is correct that extreme ability in any field is poorly predicted by IQ tests. Once you get into the genius range (say the top 2%) IQ tests can no longer sort out who will be the highest achievers among that population.

But Kling seems to conclude from that that IQ tests are not GENERALLY useful -- which is false. There may of course be a few rare cases where a person of genius ability in some particular field cannot make it into the top 20% of IQ scorers and who might therefore in a strict system be barred from higher education. But making provision for exceptional cases is part of any form of administration. Teachers do it all the time already when they award marks. So that poses no great difficulty.

Footnote:

Perhaps an example of ability generalizing might be in order -- to show what I mean:

My own greatest ability is getting papers published in academic journals. I am exceptionally good at that -- which is why I have had hundreds published. Papers which I have taken only a day to write generally get accepted for publication whereas some of my unfortunate colleagues labour for a year over a paper and then get it knocked back.

So I am hopeless at other things, right? Yes. I am a total washout at sport for instance. But I am also reasonably good at many apparently unrelated things. I am good at fixing old locks, for instance, and I have been quite successful in business.

But I am no billionaire and any locksmith is better at fixing locks than I am. I have just the one special ability but, associated with that, I also have a range of lesser abilities in which I am no world-beater but in which I do better than most. And that is pretty much how abilities generally are related to one another.

Jesus put it rather bluntly: "To him that hath, more will be given him. And to him that hath not, what little he hath will be taken away".

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WHY THEY HATE AMERICA

Environmentalism, free trade and globalization don't bring people or nations together. Neither do feminism, human rights, cures for disease or the myriad of other common causes, all vying for our attention. There is only one cause that unites people and nations, today, like no other. That cause is anti-Americanism. The dislike or hatred of America and Americans is an obsession that unifies most people on the planet. That hatred crosses race, religious, gender and age barriers. It is an activity that produces almost sexual like pleasures among those that engage in it. They are in a word, obsessed. America is the root all evils- past, present and future.

It is hard for those who have such great hatred for America to opine on which gave them greater pleasure- the people who jumped to their deaths from the World Trade Center, or those who burned to death. That is not hyperbole or exaggeration. Ward Churchill has become a respected and sought after speaker to a certain segment of the population, justifying the deaths of all those `little Eichmanns'- to cheering audiences. Those who blame George Bush for the all the ills of the world make no apologies for their decit or despicable behavior. As Dr Sanity points out,

The chant, "Bush Lied, People Died" would be revised to, "3000 People Died on 9/11 before Bush Said Anything" . The former has the advantage of rhyming, but the latter is closer to truth in advertising. And, that is exactly why the people chanting the former cutesy phrase are so indignant and scream ragefully like stuck pigs about "cynical manipulation" when images of 9/11 are shown; or even when that horrible day is mentioned. They know all about it. The "cynical manipulation" they are referring to is entirely a product of their own minds.

Pesky truths! Of course, virulent anti Americanism is not just home grown (dysfunctional hate is rarely a confined and local phenomena). With great irony, the French and Germans feel compelled to lecture America on militarism, despite their own spectacular and bloody legacies. When you consider that US military intervention has been for the most part at the request of and as a result of European military and adventurism of all other varieties, their charges are laughable and accepted only as fact by the `useful idiots.'

Over the years, anti-Americanism has evolved from the minor religion of has-been Marxists, professional victims, radical Islamists and Third World tin pot dictators playing to the cameras, into what can best be described as new found religious status, elevated to unimaginable heights. Hugo Chavez, and other recently minted Latin American dictators-in-training are a few of the latest new apostles and saints of the left (Look for Castro to be canonized immediately upon death). Along with with Che Gueverra, Mao, Ho Chi Minh and every Middle Eastern dysfunctional despot, to name a few, are now the angels sitting on the shoulders of the leftists, all blessed and ordained by Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky and the religious orders of MoveOn, TruthOut and CounterPunch.

Of course, every religion needs demons and sin. The objective of the new religion is to put the US into the worst possible light, defined as evil and whose every motive is suspect and deadly. Equally as important is ignore those things that the US does well, or redefine those things into evil. For example, the MSM had virtually nothing to say when US soldiers were brutally murdered along with Iraqi children, as the soldiers were passing out gifts. In fact, the story was ignored and almost immediately forgotten. The pretend Quran desecration story, went on for weeks.

America is the hell and Mr Bush is the devil in this new religion. Of course, there can be no heaven or God- anti American ideology of the left precludes the need for a deity (If you are an anti-American, Jew hating radical Islamist, you can impose your beliefs at will with the cheers and encouragement of the `we feel your pain, for the most part' crowd. FGM is just `cultural expression.' Don't you know that?).

What the anti American religion pretends to offer it's millions, if not billions, of adherents, is the same as any other faith-meaning. Of course it is really no more than an illusion, a mirage, to mitigate an otherwise useless existence (When anti-Americanism is the focus of your life, that life is indeed meaningless). A life predicated on hate and rage is not real meaning at all. A life predicated on positive actions and efforts is a life with real meaning.

To be a successful adherent to this new faith requires a lot of mental gymnastics and leaps of faith. The High Priests of the anti-American religion would have you believe is that no matter how hypocritical, backward, bigoted, ignorant, corrupt, evil, murderous or cruel you or the regime you pledge allegiance to, you are better than the disgusting Americans.

The new religion of the left, anti-Americanism, was founded for one reason and one reason only: to counter the incoming high tide of truth. Revolutions today aren't about marxist or socialist agendas. Today's revolutionaries cannot hide the truth any longer. Today's revolutions are about power. Today's revolutionaries need to upend free societies, capitalism and market economies. That is what people want, from Africa to South America to Eastern Europe because those are the ideas that have liberated and empowered billions of people. The war of ideas is over and the socialist agenda has been soundly defeated on every front. The high tides of freedoms and the aspirations of free men can no more held be back than the high tides of the oceans. Todays' leaders of `the revolution' will be forgotten. Their proved excesses in death, destruction and the curtailing of human rights have guaranteed their legacy- and the legacy of their supporters....

Are there liberal voices today, demanding freedom for oppressed peoples? Of course not. The despots and totalitarian regimes found all over the world are reflective of what passes for liberal ideology. The failed economies, failed education systems and entrenched failed human and civil rights disasters all scar and identify these nations....

The religion of the left is as bereft of ideas as it is of political integrity. The sloganeering of `No to Terror! No to War!` is as relevant as saying `No to Cancer! No to Radiation!` Terror cannot be addressed with conversation any more than cancer can be cured by focusing on crystals and eating root of rutabaga. Terror and cancer must be addressed head on and aggressively. To believe otherwise is to delude oneself. The simple fact is, we cannot all just get `along.'...

For today's leftist, it is about `the color of one's skin' and not the `content of character. It is about image and not substance. The deliberate obfuscation continues and the blurring of reality continues. As the left indicts America as self absorbed and drunk with materialistic inclinations, they ignore yet another truth. In fact, the most self absorbed and materialistic regimes are the leaders of the most tyrannical regimes in Africa and the Arab world, where greed, corruption, excess and deceit are the defining adjectives of those regimes. Those levels of greed, excess, corruption and self serving attitudes rival the most fanatical religious extremists in their tenacious expressions by citizens of all strata in those countries- and these are the leaders the left reveres. For the left the truth is as toxic as is the sun to a vampire.

More here

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

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posted by JR 1/24/2007 12:03:00 AM

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

 
The Grinning Peanut: Morally vicious, totally dishonest

It was Jimmy Carter who wrote speeches for Yasir Arafat, so that he could make a better impression (see Douglas Brinkley's biography of Carter). It was Jimmy Carter who hectored and bullied the Israelis incessantly at Camp David, and caused them to finally sign that terrible (from the point of view of Israel) agreement. By that agreement, in three tranches over a very short period, the entire Sinai, with its oil and critical airfields and infrastructure all put in by the Israelis, was handed over to Egypt.

And in return nothing tangible at all was given -- mere promises to discourage hostility toward Israel and to encourage a "peaceful" attitude. The antisemitism of Egyptian television and its press, that is so reminiscent of Der Stuermer in its depiction of Jews lying in wait to snatch a child in order to use his blood for some ritual, has not exactly been an example of what the Israelis had in mind, and what, under the Camp David Accords, was the only thing that they had a right to expect. Even that was denied them.

Shall we go into Carter's credulous acceptance of the "Palestinian people"? What about Carter knowing -- the documents have now been released, and it is clear that the American government knew all along, but was hiding it in order to protect Arafat -- that Arafat himself signed the order for the seizure and killing of two American diplomats in Khartoum by Black September? How could Carter, knowing that, proceed not merely to protect Arafat by not making this information public, but increase his efforts to help Arafat improve his image and polish his sinister message? ...

He's a guide to nothing. And an obvious antisemite. Not only in his indifference and cruelty toward Israel, demonstrated on so many occasions. No, that antisemitism is also demonstrated in the sympathy he gave to a self-serving letter from the daughter of a Nazi concentration camp guard and murderer, who had been found out and was in the process of being expelled. Carter found the daughter's letter convincing, and wrote that it was worthy of sympathetic consideration, and then had it sent on to the O.I.S. How often, by the way, does any President ever read any of the mail sent to him? And of the few letters that he actually reads, how often does he feel compelled to write a handwritten note urging that the letter's contents be favorably considered? And how often does that letter's contents, about a Nazi murderer who is being expelled by the Office of Special Investigations after a thorough and meticulous study, become the object of such remarkable presidential solicitude?

More here



The Grinning Peanut is shameless: "Former President Jimmy Carter said Saturday that the storm of criticism he has faced for his recent book has not weakened his resolve for fair treatment of Israelis and Palestinians. "I have been called a liar," Carter said at a town hall meeting on the second day of a three-day symposium on his presidency at the University of Georgia. "I have been called an anti-Semite," he said. "I have been called a bigot. I have been called a plagiarist. I have been called a coward. Those kind of accusations, they concern me, but they don't detract from the fact the book is accurate and is needed." [Or is he just insane?] "Carter said he was pleased the book has stimulated discussion of an issue that has been "omitted from the public consciousness" for at least the last six years" [Israel and the Palis have been "omitted from the public consciousness"????. See here for how "accurate" the Peanut's book is]

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So, is a volatile economy good for America?: "Economic populism is one of the more striking features of our politics today. Wal-Mart is excoriated by liberal intellectuals and labor unions. Sen. Jim Webb recently argued that in "the age of globalization and outsourcing, and with a vast underground labor pool from illegal immigration, the average American worker is seeing a different life and a troubling future." CNN's Lou Dobbs characterizes this troubling future as a result of a "War on the Middle Class." ... A disquiet with our turbulent economic times is at the root of the political concern over economic security. And it has yielded an economic dialogue shrouded in pessimism and unease. But is it entirely warranted? To answer that, it helps to know if the overall economic turbulence is beneficial or not. The authors of the new book, "Economic Turbulence: Is a Volatile Economy Good for America?" are not ideological gun-slingers. Clair Brown, John Haltiwanger and Julia Lane have studied the overall impact of America's dynamic economy on jobs, workers and firms by examining in depth five major economic sectors -- semiconductors, software, retail food, trucking and financial services. They are careful not to overstate or inflate claims. And what they find, given the current climate of opinion about American economic change, is surprising: "The analysis of literally millions of worker histories and hundreds of career paths for workers and job ladders for firms leads to the reassuring finding that although turbulence imposes short run costs, in the long-run job change leads to improved jobs for most workers."

2006 U.S. warming strengthened the economy: "While we keep hearing from environmentalists about alleged negative effects from global warming, it seems that it can have positive effects. As is explained here,warmer weather might be the main reason for the stronger than expected U.S. economy. This is because warmer weather means that activities supressed by winter weather will take place after all. Moreover -and this is not mentioned in the story- the warmer weather is a key reason for why oil prices have fallen so much, as less heating is needed. Lower oil prices have been a key factor in boosting the purchasing power of U.S. consumers."

Electricity failing badly in black-run South Africa: "South Africa's major banks have signalled that they can no longer rely on parastatal provider Eskom for electricity after countrywide blackouts this week, and will be implementing measures to guarantee uninterrupted power. One of SA's largest retail banks, First National Bank (FNB), will spend R50m this year alone to buy backup generators and uninterrupted power supply (UPS) units to guard against the adverse effects of power outages similar to those that hit most of the country this week. The emergency power suppliers would be installed in all FNB branches across the country.... Branches in the Western Cape made of more than half of the recipients due to the province's intermittent power outages... Maroga said Eskom was experiencing unplanned outages of 4600MW due to technical generating plant problems..... An investigation by the energy regulator last year into the six major power outages in Cape Town found negligence, inadequate maintenance and the failure to adhere to licence conditions as the "root causes" of the rolling blackouts. "There was also a trend that indicated ill-discipline in certain areas and non-conformance to procedures"

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

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posted by JR 1/23/2007 12:10:00 AM

Monday, January 22, 2007

 
Illegal Alien Sex Offenders

There are approximately 240,000 illegal immigrant sex offenders in the United States. This staggering statistic, rarely mentioned by the media, was revealed in a study by Deborah Schurman-Kauflin of the Violent Crimes Institute in Atlanta, Georgia. "It is clear," she says, "that the U.S. public faces a dangerous threat from sex predators who cross the U.S. borders illegally." What's more, she adds, "Then they gradually commit worse crimes and are continually released back into society or deported. Those who were deported simply returned illegally again." If ever there was an argument for building a border fence, this is it. But other than two stories on WorldNetDaily, generated by an appearance on CNN, we haven't found any coverage of these extraordinary statistics.

Yet, as reported by Wes Vernon in a new AIM Report, the Bush Administration is embarked on a controversial and secretive plan to effectively erase U.S. borders and establish a North American Union to facilitate the flow of people and goods from Mexico into the U.S.

The study investigated 1,500 cases of "serial rapes, serial murders, sexual homicides, and child molestations committed by illegal immigrants" between January, 1999 and April, 2006. Of the 1,500 cases examined, illegal immigrant offenders were located in 36 states with the highest number of sexual offenders in California, Texas, Arizona, New Jersey, New York, and Florida.

Schurman-Kauflin reports that according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) records, sex offenders comprise two percent of illegals apprehended. Using the statistics by ICE and the conservative estimate of 12 million illegal immigrants in this country, Schurman-Kauflin estimates there are approximately 240,000 illegal immigrant sex offenders currently residing in the United States. Also using the two-percent figure, this means that 93 sex offenders and 12 serial sex offenders are illegally crossing the border into the U.S. every day.

Of the 1,500 sex offenders examined in this study, each sex offender averaged four victims for a total of approximately 6,000 victims over the 88-month period. Using these statistics, Schurman-Kauflin estimated that there were 960,000 sex crimes committed by illegal immigrants between January, 1999 and April, 2006. Particularly disturbing was that 22% of the victims of sex crimes committed by illegal immigrants had physical or mental handicaps, and all disabled victims were under the age of 18.

Of the 1,500 cases examined, 35% were child molestations, 24% were rapes, and 41% were sexual homicides and serial murders; 617 cases. Of the child molestations, 47% of the victims were Hispanic and 36% were Caucasian. In 82% of the cases, the victims were known to their attackers, and 18% were molested by strangers. Of those victims molested by strangers, Schurman-Kauflin reports that "the illegal immigrants typically gained access to the victims after having worked as a day laborer at or near the victims' homes. Victims ranged in age from one-year-old to 13-years-old, with the average age being six." Although nearly 30% of the victims of sex crimes by illegal immigrants were illegal immigrants themselves, 70% of the victims were Americans.

In the 358 rape cases investigated, the women were often brutally attacked, and over 70% of the time the rape victims were beaten by their attackers. In addition, in .007% of the cases, the victims were gang-raped by two or more illegal immigrant sex offenders. The study also found that although serial rapists only accounted for three percent of all illegal immigrant rapists, serial rapists averaged five victims, and two of serial rapists examined in this study were confirmed HIV positive. In six percent of the cases of sexual homicide and serial murder, the bodies of the victims were mutilated. Caucasians were the most likely victims of sexual homicide by illegal immigrants. The average age of all victims of sexual homicide by illegal immigrants was 42, but the victims varied in ages from 16 to 81.

Although the illegal immigrant sex offenders came from various countries around the world, the highest number came from Mexico; El Salvador was the country of origin for the next highest number of illegal immigrant sex offenders. In another testament to how poor security remains along the U.S.-Mexico border, the report found that nearly 63% of the illegal immigrant sex offenders had been deported at least once before prior to committing a sex crime in the U.S. The illegal immigrants who commit sex crimes here in the U.S. typically have committed more crimes than simply entering this country illegally. "Only two percent of the offenders in this study have no history of criminal behavior, beyond crossing the border illegally."

More here

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Iran wavering?: "Iran's supreme leader is considering a change of policy on the country's nuclear programme in an effort to defuse growing tension with the West, according to senior sources in Tehran. Alarmed by mounting US pressure and United Nations sanctions, officials close to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei favour the appointment of a more moderate team for international negotiations on the supervision of its nuclear facilities. The move would be a snub to the bellicose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose threats to destroy Israel have left Iran increasingly isolated and facing a serious economic downturn".

Special health care for Muslims? "Muslims should be provided with faith-based services - including male circumcision - on the NHS, says one healthcare expert. Professor Aziz Sheikh is also calling for women patients to see same-sex medics, better access to prayer facilities in hospitals and more information so Muslims can avoid alcohol and pig-derived drugs. Writing in the British Medical Journal, the University of Edinburgh professor also claims Muslims should be given health advice on attempting the Hajj pilgrimage-to Mecca which he insisted was a 'religious obligation and not a holiday'. The BMJ contrasts his opinions with those of Professor Aneez Esmail, of Manchester University, who says in another article that it would not be practical to meet everyone's demands for special services based on religious identity. He warned some faith groups might support practices which may be unacceptable to the majority - such as female circumcision and the refusal to accept blood transfusions."

MA: Job program for welfare recipients falls flat: "A central piece of the state's sweeping welfare reform, which sought to enlist Massachusetts companies to hire and train welfare recipients, has failed to attract employers and is virtually defunct, records show. The program began with fanfare a decade ago, with the expectation that thousands of private employers would be lured through wage subsidies and tax breaks to actively recruit and hire welfare recipients. But statistics show that business participation in the state's Full Employment Program has fallen dramatically from its peak of 500 employers in 1998 to only 32 businesses today, and the state has stopped enrolling new companies. Now, with the number of people on the welfare rolls up since 2001, state officials are pledging to find ways to revamp the program and address concerns of employers."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

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posted by JR 1/22/2007 12:08:00 AM

Sunday, January 21, 2007

 
DEEDS SHOW UP THE "COMPASSION" OF THE LEFT

Their deeds have been doing that since the gory French and Russian revolutions

People who lay claim to the compassion of others merrily advocate pulling out of Iraq the better to let the Sunnis and Shi'ites butcher one another, as though that conflict was rooted in the people's desires and not propelled from the top down. What are they to us, after all? Just more surly brown people.

The same people who lay claim to having an abundance of compassion have no problem, it seems, with igniting a bloodbath. Because they can point their fingers and say it was someone else who started it. They wash their hands of it, and do not notice that they are washing them in blood.They have no problem saying they believe in human freedom but also cheerfully advocate closing off free trade. Even though there is ample evidence that free trade policies do more to lift the world's poor out of misery than do all the handouts and debt-relief measures they advance as solutions. Those ideas serve only to reward poor governance. But they wash their hands again, this time in the blood of the starving poor they don't really notice. They advocate endless negotiations with tyrannical regimes despite the fact that those negotiations in the past have never solved anything. And they wash their hands in yet more rivers of blood in the aftermath when the negotiated "solution" fails.

Because the realpolitik is easier than morality. Pushing the problems off to future generations is easier than dealing with the situations today. Pressing the next war onto other's sons and daughters or grandchildren is easier than dealing with hard facts. For these are not the people who volunteer to defend or fight for their country. These are the people who look to others to do that when their ideas and policies are found wanting. But they will screech and point fingers at their defenders when the time comes and ignore the other players in the war and their depredations. Indulging in feel good policies at home is easier - oh, so much easier - than making lasting change in the rest of the world. Scolding has always been easier than doing. Screeching has always been easier than actually solving problems.

More here

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Conservatives most compassionate: "It's tempting to say that Arthur Brooks, in his definitive new book on American charitable giving, has shown that there is nothing oxymoronic about the term "compassionate conservative." That, at least, is the conclusion that critics have drawn from Brooks's demonstration that conservatives, despite the myth that they lack compassion, give significantly more to charity than liberals do. But in fact Brooks has shown something even more significant: that "compassionate conservative" is not only overly defensive, but actually redundant. When it comes to charitable donations, volunteer activity, and even donating blood, it's liberals, not conservatives, who should feel compelled to prove their compassion.... So perhaps the times are, again, a-changing. We will only know that they have truly changed, however, when liberals stop using "compassion" as a synonym for expanded government, and when conservatives--the most charitable Americans--no longer feel forced to defend their virtue against those who lack it.

Obama 'was educated in madrassa': "Barack Obama was given a rude awakening to the cut-throat world of presidential politics yesterday after being accused of hiding four years in which he was educated at a madrassa when a teenager. The claim, made in the conservative Insight magazine, also revealed the Machiavellian scheming of political activists in a presidential race still nearly two years away. It was aimed at tarnishing Mr Obama’s image in the week he announced himself as a White House contender. But the article also claimed that the madrassa allegations came from aides to Hillary Clinton, Mr Obama’s main opponent for the Democratic nomination... the Insight allegations represent an exquisite double shot at the Democrats’ two leading White House contenders: it implies that Mr Obama, whose middle name is Hussein, is a closet Islamic extremist, and that Mrs Clinton is so rattled by his candidacy she is using underhand tactics to weaken him... Mr Obama’s mother was a white woman from Kansas; his father, a black Kenyan Muslim."

Blacks benefit from crackdown on illegal immigrants: "Stark evidence now exists that a crackdown on illegal immigration greatly benefits poor blacks. We have a teachable moment in the immigration debate, if only the movement to protect our borders has the wit to capitalize on it, and add a vital and potent constituency. It is one thing for theorists like me point out the basic economics, but it is quite another to have real people in a real town demonstrating that economic laws really work.... Today, a Wall Street Journal article describes the effects of a crackdown on illegal immigrants and how it affected one company in particular. "After a wave of raids by federal immigration agents on Labor Day weekend, a local [Stillmore, GA] chicken-processing company called Crider Inc. lost 75% of its mostly Hispanic 900-member work force. The crackdown threatened to cripple the economic anchor of this fading rural town. But for local African-Americans, the dramatic appearance of federal agents presented an unexpected opportunity. Crider suddenly raised pay at the plant.... For the first time in years, local officials say, Crider aggressively sought workers from the area's state-funded employment office -- a key avenue for low-skilled workers to find jobs. Of 400 candidates sent to Crider -- most of them black -- the plant hired about 200."

European Airbus in trouble: "Long delays to the A380 Superjumbo will send Airbus spiralling into the red this year, parent group EADS said today. The aerospace company said that compensation payments, writedowns and a string of "unforeseen" charges at the aircraft maker will be booked into the 2006 accounts. But shares in EADS fell 4 per cent in Paris, as figures confirmed that Airbus lost the annual battle for aircraft orders to fierce rival Boeing last year for the first time since 2000. Despite record deliveries, Airbus received only 790 net orders compared with 1,044 at Boeing."



Israeli military saves endangered species: "An idea inspired by the biblical tale of Noah's Ark to give elderly zoo animals a dignified but useful end to their lives, has led to an unlikely boost in numbers for several endangered species. They are contentedly grazing on the scrubland surrounding bases of the Israel Defence Force's northern command, keeping down vegetation where bushfires are a constant threat to ammunition and explosive stores. Eland, Africa's largest species of antelope, as well as the rare desert oryx and Atlas mountain goats are among the species to have benefited from the brainwave of Major Ofer Cohen, 20 years ago... Major Cohen persuaded his seniors to give a home to eight greying eland, which were about to be withdrawn from Tel Aviv zoo, and set them free within the heavily patrolled perimeter fences of a military exercise area. "Eland were just perfect - they are very selective eaters and we found that they eat exactly the right amount of vegetation," Major Cohen told The Times. Now the Eland are thriving, their numbers have risen to 400 and they have been joined by oryx and the goats from North Africa."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

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posted by JR 1/21/2007 12:05:00 AM

Saturday, January 20, 2007

 
BREATHTAKING LEFTIST HYPOCRISY

ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), a national organization of low- and moderate-income persons, has been around since the early 1970s. The organization claims about 175,000 member families in 80 cities and advocates left-wing populist approaches to a variety of issues including public housing, jobs, wages, taxes, and voter registration. ACORN has been calling for "living wages," which would raise wages for low-skilled workers and boost union membership by wiping out the price advantage non-union jobs have over union jobs.

While advocating living wages, though, ACORN has opposed paying even minimum wages to its own workers. This was made apparent back in 1995, when ACORN sued the state of California to be exempted from paying its own workers the minimum wage. According to the December 21, 1995 ruling of the California Court of Appeal, First Appellate District: "ACORN contends that California's minimum wage laws ... are unconstitutional as applied to ACORN because they restrict ACORN's ability to engage in political advocacy. According to ACORN, this adverse impact will be manifested in two ways: first, ACORN will be forced to hire fewer workers; second, its workers, if paid the minimum wage, will be less empathetic with ACORN's low and moderate income constituency and will therefore be less effective advocates.

"Leaving aside the latter argument's absurdity (minimum wage workers are ipso facto low-income workers) as well as irony (an advocate for the poor seeking to justify starvation wages), we find ACORN to be laboring under a fundamental misconception of the constitutional law." A 2003 study of ACORN by the Employment Policies Institute noted, "ACORN pays a wage of $5.67 per hour, less than half the level demanded by many proposed 'living wage' ordinances that ACORN supports."

Despite ACORN's demands that all workers be allowed to organize, ACORN has tried to prevent its own workers from joining unions. In March 2003, after firing workers who had tried to organize, ACORN lost its final appeal of a National Labor Relations Board ruling, which found ACORN had violated the rights of its employees to unionize.

More here

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In case you thought tinfoil hats were a joke: There's a whole community of people who really think they help.

What a "fascist"! "He was a man of faith who didn't hesitate to mix religion with politics. He headed an assertive political organization with the word "Christian" in its name. He believed his moral values should be reflected in US law and legally imposed on those who resisted them. He invoked "God Almighty" in his speeches and compared himself to Moses, the prophet Amos, and other biblical heroes. He condemned public policies he opposed in overtly religious terms -- as "a blatant denial of the unity which we all have in Christ," for example. He shrugged off those who called him an extremist. "Was not Jesus an extremist?" he asked. He wasn't one to fetishize church-state separation. "I want it to be known . . . throughout this nation that we are Christian people," he declared. "We believe in the Christian religion. We believe in the teachings of Jesus." He was what some today might call a religious fanatic, a theocrat, or (as a US senator said of the president last year) a "moral aytollah." He was, in many circles, decidedly unpopular. He was also a Nobel laureate for peace and a champion of human dignity. He was an American hero. He was Martin Luther King Jr.



Strange partners: "Segolene Royal, the French Socialist candidate in this spring's presidential elections, has been thrown on the defensive over her personal taxes, a public spat with her partner and worries in the party that her unconventional campaign is running out of steam after the muscular one launched on Sunday by Nicolas Sarkozy, the centre-right candidate. Fran‡ois Hollande, 52, Ms Royal's partner and the father of her four children, is her party leader but the pair disagreed last week when he promised stiff tax rises for the middle classes. He had not consulted Ms Royal, 53, who slapped him down in public and called him "bloody stupid" in private. Yesterday pressure from opponents forced the couple to disclose that they paid the annual wealth tax, which is levied on households with total assets worth more than 750,000 Euros. The image of wealth does not help Ms Royal's stance as champion of the poor."

Jimmy Carter Interceded on Behalf of Nazi SS Guard: "A former U.S. Justice Department official disclosed to Arutz-7 that former U.S. President Jimmy Carter's advocacy extended beyond the Palestinians, when he interceded on behalf of a Nazi SS man. Neil Sher, a veteran of the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Special Investigation, described a letter he received from Carter in 1987 in an interview with Israel National Radio's Tovia Singer. The letter, written and signed by Carter, asked that Sher show "special consideration" for a man proven to have murdered Jews in the Mauthausen death camp in Austria".

L.A. Hispanics don't like blacks: "Prudhomme was murdered because he identified himself as black (he was in fact mixed-race) in a neighborhood occupied by one of the many Latino street gangs in Los Angeles County. Incredibly, even though these gangs are fundamentally criminal enterprises interested mainly in money, gang experts inside and outside the government say that they are now engaged in a campaign of "ethnic cleansing" -- racial terror that is directed solely at African Americans. "The way I hear these knuckleheads tell it, they don't want their neighborhoods infested with blacks, as if it's an infestation," says respected Los Angeles gang expert Tony Rafael"

"Roundness standards"? Insane bureaucracy: "The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Wednesday exempted the succulent but misshapen UglyRipe tomato from roundness standards that had prevented its sale outside Florida"

Wal-Mart haters lose: "Maryland's first-in-the-nation law to compel Wal-Mart to spend more on employee health care suffered another setback yesterday, providing fresh incentive for legislative leaders in Annapolis to explore ways to boost insurance coverage that do not involve the retailing giant. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit upheld a lower court finding that struck down Maryland's legislation. A divided three-judge panel ruled that the state's Fair Share Health Care Act was incompatible with federal rules that promote uniform treatment of employees."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************
posted by JR 1/20/2007 12:04:00 AM

Friday, January 19, 2007

 
ANOTHER MISLEADING ANALYSIS OF CONSERVATISM BY LEFTIST PSYCHOLOGISTS

Psychology Today has just put out a big article on the psychology of politics. It purports to explain why people hew to the Left or the Right.

It bases its conclusions, however, on research that has no scholarly worth whatsoever. The two main pieces of research it relies on to support the differentiations it proposes are by Jost et al and Block et al. Both pieces of research are within my area of academic specialization so the gaping flaws in both are more evident to me than they might be to others. I have previously pointed out how intellectually discreditable both studies are. See here and here. I was actually one of the authors whose research the Jost et al. article purported to summarize!

Jost et al. showed vividly the usual Leftist talent for ignoring large bodies of evidence that did not suit their preconceptions. Their article must in fact rate as one of the most dishonest meta-analyses ever reported. They were very clearly guilty of "motivated cognition" -- exactly what they accused conservatives of. Leftist projection and leftist denial do usually go hand in hand.

Michelle Malkin and Jim Lindgren note the absurd "sampling" in the Block study. It seems unlikely that there were any actual conservatives among the individuals studied! That is not the first time Leftist psychologists have perpetrated such an absurdity in their mendacious claims to "explain" conservatism, however. See, for instance, here.

Given the very dubious basis of the generalizations offered in the Psychology Today article, the generalizations offered by the article should detain no-one. Whether any of the statements made are true is simply unknown.

Sadly, many in the blogosphere have assumed that there is some respectable evidential basis for the article. Cinnamon Stillwell and Fausta sum up some of the blogospheric reactions.

For an account of the psychology of conservatism based on the actual history of conservatism, see here

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LEFTIST ANTISEMITE DENIES THAT ANTISEMITISM IS A PROBLEM

The good old Leftist "Denial" tactic. And he does his denial in a Jewish-owned newspaper -- but the NYT is Leftist long before it is Jewish. And self-hating Jews are a familiar phenomenon. Excerpt from Soccer Dad below

James Traub profiled Abe Foxman in this week's NY Times magazine in piece titled Does Abe Foxman Have an Anti-Anti-Semite Problem?.

Assuming a mocking and dismissive tone toward his subject, Traub paints Foxman as a petty autocrat who's looking for antisemites under every bed. If one sentence sums up Traub's opinion of Foxman it's:

The A.D.L., for all its myriad activities, is a one-man Sanhedrin doling out opprobrium or absolution for those who speak ill of Israel or the Jews.

In contrast, Foxman's critics and opponents are described in complimentary terms. Tony Judt is "highly regarded"; J. J. Goldberg, is the editor of a "leading" American Jewish weekly; Mearsheimer and Walt are "distinguished figures."

Aside from the snide tone pervading the article, it's filled with mistakes and omissions. One of Traub's themes is that antisemitism is no longer problem. The need for the ADL is therefore diminished if not gone therefore:

The A.D.L.'s world became increasingly binary - "good for the Jews," "bad for the Jews."

with Foxman becoming sole arbiter and - shock of shocks - moving to the right.

To dispove the notion that antisemitism is a problem Traub writes:

And yet a Pew Global Attitudes Poll in 2004 found that anti-Semitism had declined in much of the West and was lowest in the United States. A Pew poll last year found American support for Israel as strong now as at any time in the last 13 years.

According to the FBI's uniform crimes statistics for 2005 there were 900 hate crimes classified as anti-Jewish and 3200 hate crimes classified as anti-Black. Given that there are roughly 7 times as many Blacks as Jews, that means that Jews suffer hate crimes at nearly twice the rate as Blacks in the United States according to the most recent statistics.

And while anti-semitism has clearly not disappeared in the United States, it is mild compared to the rest of the world. Three years ago a survey in Europe chose Israel as the biggest threat to world peace. And let's not forget the Durban conference on racism. There is plenty of antisemitism still around and citing two Pew polls doesn't refute that.

Traub like any good liberal finds fault with Foxman for making common cause with evangelical Christians while being cool to Black leaders and ignoring the great alliance between Jews and Blacks. While it is true that at one point Foxman did foster evangelical support for Israel, that seemed to come to an end in 2005. And as far as the black-Jewish alliance it's folly to blame it on Foxman for moving right and away from civil rights. In recent years, the civil rights movement has made common cause with the likes of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan. All have shown varying degrees of antipathy to Jews.....

Though Foxman is not above criticism, the viciousness with which Traub goes after Foxman is astounding. Given the sloppiness of his reporting, it's fair to ask whether it is Traub who has a problem. With semites.

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ELSEWHERE

No connection? "Unemployment [in Britain] has fallen to the lowest level since last spring but wage increases have remained muted, official figures showed today."

Britain resists EU attack on democracy: "Britain is aiming to scupper German plans to revive the European constitution in a direct assault on the main project of the EU presidency of Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor. Such a campaign, if successful, would free Tony Blair's successor from his promise to hold a referendum on the document... The British Government is keen to avoid holding a referendum on the constitution, despite Mr Blair's pledge three years ago to do so. Under the German timetable a referendum would coincide with the next general election and cause problems for Mr Blair's successor. .. A senior British official told The Times that the Government will argue that the EU is working well within its existing treaties and does not need a constitution nor a fresh round of referendums... The British position is at loggerheads with Mrs Merkel's dream of restoring the bulk of the rejected document, including sections that would create a European foreign minister and end the British veto in home affairs and justice policy."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************
posted by JR 1/19/2007 12:07:00 AM

Thursday, January 18, 2007

 
HOW DESPERATE CAN THE LEFT GET?

Post about MSM columnist James Carroll excerpted from NewsBusters

Carroll was just clearing his throat with his obligatory Vietnam riff. The heart of his column is a condemnation of capitalism. According to Carroll, since the days of [Martin Luther] King: "economic justice . . . if anything, is even further from fulfillment."

Really? In the America of 4.5% unemployment? Where colleges fight for the privilege of awarding scholarships to minority high school students with decent grades? Where the biggest food-related problem for our poor is not hunger but obesity?

Carroll goes so far as to predict the end of capitalism:

"If the 20th century seemed a time of capitalism's ascendancy, the new century seems an era of its certain self-destruction."

Can I get another "really" on that? Capitalism certain to self-destruct? That same capitalism that is exploding in India and China, literally lifting billions out of poverty? What does Carroll posit as an alternative to capitalism? You guessed it: "socialism, compared with the possible anarchy, is benign."

But why the false choice between socialism and anarchy? Why not the real choice: between the grinding hopelessness of socialism and the freedom and opportunity of free markets?

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BBC ISRAEL-HATRED

One of the biggest stories in the Middle East is the civil disorder in Gaza. Last week on his website, the journalist Stephen Pollard reproduced an internal memo from the BBC's Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, to his colleagues. It contained a passage in which Bowen explains "the way that Palestinian society, which used to draw strength from resistance to the occupation, is now fragmenting.

"The reason is the death of hope, caused by a cocktail of Israel's military activities, land expropriation and settlement building - and the financial sanctions imposed on the Hamas-led Government which are destroying Palestinian institutions that were anyway flawed and fragile."

Now this is certainly one explanation of the reason why members of Fatah and Hamas are killing each other. No one can object that this argument is put before the BBC's audience. But for the BBC's Middle East editor to believe that it constitutes the sole explanation and to offer it up alone to his colleagues? Now that's a different matter.

Here are a few alternatives to Bowen's offering. Some of us argue that instead of the tough Israeli security measures causing Hamas and Fatah militants to kill people and each other, the killing of people by Hamas and Fatah militants causes the tough security measures. Hamas in particular is a dangerous, intolerant, murderous organisation that threatens the lives of innocent people and needs to be resisted.

And what about this? Fatah and Hamas are engaged in a power struggle and an ideological dispute. Fatah claims that its rivals have been plotting to assassinate President Mahmoud Abbas because the President supports the so-called Prisoners' Document. This document proposes a unified resistance to Israel, but Hamas is suspicious of the terms of such unity and believes that its vague language could mean recognition of Israel.

Or this? In a superb column last week in the Financial Times, Christopher Caldwell pointed out that are there are 67 countries in the world where 15 to 29-year-olds make up more than 30 per cent of the population and 60 of them are undergoing some sort of civil war or mass killing. Gaza has just such a youth bulge. Perhaps the violence has no political cause; it is just, well, boys being boys.

I know, I know. You may regard these alternatives as absurd, even offensive. I don't, but that's not my point. If you want to report the Middle East in an unbiased fashion, then these arguments must be put before the BBC audience. And how can they be if the Middle East editor doesn't even acknowledge them?

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Was antisemitism the catalyst for the Great Depression? There is a post here suggesting that it was the trigger, though not the total cause.



The above is of course a reference to Speaker Pelosi and the usual leftist claim to be innovators.

Reply to the pessimists: "Last week was not a good one for America's detractors. The price of oil fell to US$56 a barrel. The same financial markets that swooned in July while Israel fought Hezbollah have forgotten the meaning of risk. The question the world should ask George W Bush is, "If you so dumb, how come you ain't poor"? The US economy and US markets are looking more buoyant than ever. As I wrote last week, the whole Iraq debacle might disappear from the public's radar screen in time for America's next presidential election.... There has been an inordinate amount of nonsense written about US decline, complete with Russian and Chinese designs to benefit from America's embarrassment in Iraq. The reality could not be more different. Neither Moscow nor Beijing has the remotest desire to see the US withdraw from the region or lose power, for two reasons. The first is that America's presence in the region ensures that little wars will remain little. The second is economic. America's economy and particularly the appetite of American consumers for imports remains the locomotive of the world economy, most emphatically of China's. China's trading relationship with the United States is an irreplaceable pillar of national prosperity, and the means to generate the national savings China requires to establish what President Hu Jintao calls "the harmonious society".

Damned if you do, damned if you don't: "For years, liberals have hectored President Bush for not committing enough troops to Iraq. Now, peanut-gallery liberals pivot 180 degrees and browbeat him for proposing precisely that. Appearing May 30, 2004 on NBC's 'Meet the Press,' for instance, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi flatly and repeatedly told Tim Russert that 'we need more troops on the ground.' In fact, Speaker Pelosi suggested that we commit 300,000 troops (President Bush's current proposal would raise the level to merely 160,000)."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************
posted by JR 1/18/2007 12:33:00 AM

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

 
G*OGLE DANGERS

I am very careful not to post any language on any of my sites that could fall foul of G*ogle's "wipe-off" rules. Certain content on a site causes them to erase that site from their database. And it's not just political sites that suffer. The technical site Javalobby was wiped by G*ogle recently because spammers had posted huge amounts of pornographic links in their Comments facility. When I read it, I felt rather thankful that I do not allow comments on this site. And on other sites where I do allow comments, I have maximum precautions against comment spammers.

I suspect that G*ogle don't even like criticism of themselves, so I use a strategic asterisk in their name -- hoping that might stymie the search for their own name that they undoubtedly do.

Another problem: G*ogle fosters antisemitism. If students ever use G*ogle to search for "Zionism" for a school or university project they will find that the top articles are anti-Zionist, and indeed antisemitic. Web guru Andre Oboler has tackled the problem in: Expert Search to combat antisemitism and racism. People can use this tool if they need to undertake research.

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The left's intellectual disintegration.

There used to be a time when the left proudly carried the banner of reason and science; and disdainfully viewed religion as a superstition or at best an antiquated myth. In the name of science they advanced an agenda on several fronts. In economics, central planning was described as a rational systematic alternative to the chaotic free-for-all of the market. In human relations, what was previously viewed as a moral failing was now a condition amenable to social engineering. Social science, we were assured there was such a thing, would provide the guidance and justification for the socialistic regulations required for a better world. To maintain this stance, left-wing intellectuals felt compelled to provide substantiation, evidence, and rational arguments. That time has long since past.

The facade of science is gone - reality stubbornly refused to go along. Socialism was a glaring failure that brought poverty, misery, and wholesale death. Yet, despite this, the dream remains. The left seems strangely indifferent to evidence that undermines their worldview. Communism was responsible for over 100 million deaths and the enslavement of over 1 billion more. But on the left, this hasn't hurt the popularity of communism's remaining standard-bearer: Fidel Castro.

Rational debate no longer exists among the vanguard of today's left. Exposing a flawed argument engenders few signs of discomfort. Contradictions curiously fail to perturb in the slightest the left's steadfast adherence to fixed doctrine. For example, America and Britain are singularly condemned for the sins of slavery as if it were unique to our history or a particularly egregious example. However, it was Anglo-American tradition of individual liberty which is exceptional in history, not the remnants of slavery which existed everywhere and through out history. Islam, which invented the race-based slave trade centuries before America's discovery, condemned people to slavery from Africa, India, and Europe, exceeding the British slave trade by orders of magnitude. And it was the West that led the abolitionist movement worldwide. But the left shrugs. All of this is deemed irrelevant since in absolute terms the West's history remains blemished.

Not only is evidence summarily dismissed, but what spews forth often has little relation to the subject matter. By being barraged by "rhetorical spam" the listener is overwhelmed with dubious claims in the hope that something will stick. No shame accompanies wrong, arbitrary, or ridiculous statements. This technique was ubiquitous in response to recent military actions in Iraq. For example, every major intelligence agency, including France, Germany and Russia, incorrectly believed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Yet, leftists continually repeated the mantra that Bush is a liar. On top of that, they yammer about Rumsfeld meeting with Saddam, Iraqis getting bio-agents from "us", and nefarious neocon Zionist conspiracies. It becomes impossible to have an intelligent discussion under these circumstances.

Not surprisingly, civil and reasonable discussions are now the exceptions. The far left is reduced to chanting: racist imperialist war-mongering America. No they won't say they hate America - they realize you can't say that yet. But are we to believe that imperialist, racist, and war-mongering describe a country one could love? Of course not, but apparently most imagine a confession is required before you can point to the obvious conclusion.

Much more here

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ELSEWHERE

Second thoughts in Iran: "Amid the chaos of confused global weather fronts, uncommonly cold temperatures have gripped Tehran in recent weeks. This freeze provides a suitable metaphor for the rapidly cooling feelings many Iranians have towards President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Just as the Iranian capital has been shivering in the winter freeze Ahmadinejad has started to feel the unmistakable chill of public disaffection. Having become accustomed to the warmth of mass acclaim at a series of nationwide open-air rallies, the Islamist firebrand is now discovering the limits of his popularity.... voters have started to turn against a man whose political strength lay in his populist appeal. Last month, rising discontent over his government's failing economic policies led to a drubbing at the polls. In nationwide council elections, candidates supporting the president gained just 20% of the vote. Only two Ahmadinejad loyalists - including his sister Parvin - won seats on the 15-member Tehran city council, often seen as a key indicator of political trends across the country. The results coincided with a political comeback for Hashemi Rafsanjani, Ahmadinejad's most powerful rival and his defeated opponent in the 2005 presidential election. Rafsanjani, a sharp critic of the president's strident anti-Western rhetoric, topped the poll in elections to the experts' assembly, a clerical body empowered to supervise and appoint Iran's supreme leader."

When will they ever learn? "The 2006 midterm elections confirmed once again a truism of American politics: American Jews remain overwhelmingly devoted to the Democratic party. According to exit polling, the tilt this year was, if anything, even more pronounced than it has been in the past. Some 88 percent of Jewish votes went to Democratic candidates, while a mere 12 percent went to the GOP. Along with this lopsided outcome, a historical extreme, comes the news that the number of Jewish representatives in Congress has itself reached an all-time high. Although Jews represent a marginal sliver-a mere 2 percent-of the U.S. population, they now hold 13 seats in the U.S. Senate, all but two of them-Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Norm Coleman of Minnesota-Democratic. (Bernard Sanders of Vermont, elected as an independent, has pledged to vote with the Democratic caucus.) In the House of Representatives, Jews, all but one of them Democrats, now occupy 30 seats."

Chris Brand has just done a new lot of posts on his usual themes of race, IQ and political correctness -- with particular emphasis on the British scene.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************
posted by JR 1/17/2007 12:11:00 AM

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

 
LEADING MUSLIM SAYS LIBERALISM IS THE ENEMY

Excerpt below from Riehl World followed by an extended extract of the speech concerned. The translation is in rather mangled English but you should get the idea:

Reports are surfacing that Hassan Abbasi is one of the Iranians recently arrested in Iraq. See Gateway Pundit, the Jawa Report and American Thinker for links and news.

Hassan Abbasi known by his friends as "The Dr. Kissinger of Islam," is the guru of the Islamic Republic's revolutionary guard corps which puts volunteers and recruits through rigorous training in four camps funded and run by the Revolutionary Guard.

This is said to be a translation of a speech by Abbasi, also available in pdf. It's a must read for Liberals, as Abbasi explains that the real enemy of the jihadists is Western Liberalism. So if you know any Liberals who can read and might actually understand it for those few seconds each day when they aren't hating on President Bush ... pass the link on.

The Speech:

The Anglo-Saxons, the English, the Americans, the Australians and the Canadians have a doctrine. Every nation's proverbs are its doctrine. This doctrine is convulsively dirty. They say if they tried to invade you, and you felt you can not resist, greet it, so that you can enjoy it!!!!

You be surprised, the basis of the knowledge of the international relations in the circle of Anglo-Saxons is this filthy English reportage and sayings!!! They instill this to nations that when you are being invaded, you know you can't resist, so therefore, greet it, so that you can enjoy it. Today the mechanism of invasion and attack on nations and people has four key topics:

The first key topic is: Human rights.
The second key topic is: Liberalism. They have translated it into freedom.
The third key topic is democracy and acceptance of people's vote.
And the fourth key topic is Civil Society.

They invade countries with these four key slogans. You need to pay attention when they(Iraqis) attacked Iran, there was nothing to fool our people to itself. The background of the invasion had no accepting premise, therefore our youths went, stood up, resisted and threw out the enemy. There is not a single span of our homeland in the hand of the enemy now.

But why is the groundwork for the West invasion has been accepted in the Islamic world now? Because many of the Islamic countries' leaders are screaming the same four mottos that are groundwork for invasion. There is no basic difference between the democracy which America talks about and those that our leaders speak of. There is no difference between the civil society that Jacque Chirac talks about than those that the Islamic leaders speak of. There is no difference in liberalism and freedom loving of what they say and what is happening in our homeland.

You guys have the free trade zones in this country. The free trade zone means the base of operations for liberal democracy!!! There is a marked difference between what our leaders say and what they do. You saw our great supreme leader, in the past three days, attacked liberal democracy three times!!! And that shows, no one, has belief in what he is saying!! The free trade zone, the free economic zones, that are being opened one day after another in our country, these are the main bastions of liberalism!!! One who has the smallest economic knowledge has to know that the innate nature of these free zones is liberalism!!! In regard to these free trade zones, it looks like what ever our leaders say, the rest do whatever they please!!! Why acceptance of the enemy's attack plan has become a normalcy? Because our President talks of civil society!!! And civil society is exactly that same excuse that the west has come here for!!! And it says we have come to bring reforms to everyone. Reforms in the Greater Middle-East.

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ELSEWHERE

Why Europe is only good for talk: "Defense budgets in Europe are dropping. The US defense budget is larger than the next 20 largest defense budgets in the world combined. The European solution is to solve problems multilaterally, and not by military means. Why? If a military solution is required, then Europe must follow the American lead and be in America's shadow. This is a dignity issue. If international problems are addressed multilaterally, then Europe has 27 EU nations, and in international forums like the UN, Europe has more than 30 votes, and the US just one."



Saddam Half Brother, Ex-Official Hanged: "Saddam Hussein's half brother [above] and the former head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court were both hanged before dawn Monday, Prosecutor Munqith al-Faroon said, two weeks and two days after the former Iraqi dictator was executed... Barzan Ibrahim, Saddam's half brother and former intelligence chief, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, had been found guilty along with Saddam in the killing of 148 Shiite Muslims after a 1982 assassination attempt on the former leader in the town of Dujail north of Baghdad. "They (the government) called us before dawn and told us to send someone. I sent a judge to witness the execution and it happened," al-Faroon said. The executions reportedly occurred in the same Saddam-era military intelligence headquarters building in north Baghdad where the former leader was hanged two days before the end of 2006"

A Christian Exodus from the Arab World: "Violence, terrorism and the Islamists' growing influence pose a threat to Christianity in the Middle East. In some countries, members of an unpopular Christian minority are already fighting for their survival -- or fleeing for their lives. In New Baghdad, the driver of a minibus, a Shiite named Ali, set out at 7 a.m. on the last Sunday before Christmas. A few hours earlier he had received a call on his mobile phone with instructions to pick up five passengers for a long trip outside the city... The five young men traveling in Ali's red Kia were the last seminary students at the Chaldean Catholic Babel College to leave Baghdad. Four priests have been abducted since mid-August, and two others were murdered. Father Sami, the director of the seminary, was kidnapped in early December. The community managed to raise $75,000 to buy his freedom, but after hesitating for weeks, Emmanuel III, the Chaldean patriarch, decided to withdraw the teaching institutions of his community from Baghdad. He ordered the evacuation of the city's four Catholic churches, the Hurmis monastery and the college in the city's Dura neighborhood, but chose to remain behind in the city as the lonely shepherd of a rapidly shrinking congregation."

A Democrat "Watergate" the MSM mostly ignore: "The more we learn about Sandy Berger's brilliant career as a document thief, the clearer it becomes that there is plenty we still don't know and may never learn. On Tuesday, the House Government Reform Committee released its report on Mr. Berger's pilfering of classified documents from the National Archives. The committee's 60-page report makes it clear that Mr. Berger knew exactly what he was doing and knew that what he was doing was wrong. According to interviews with National Archives staff, Mr. Berger repeatedly arranged to be left alone with highly classified documents by feigning the need to make personal phone calls, and he used those moments alone with the files to stuff them in his pockets and briefcase. One incident is particularly suggestive. By his fourth and final visit to review documents and prepare for testimony before the 9/11 Commission, the Archives staff had grown suspicious of how Mr. Berger was handling the documents, so they numbered each one he was given in pencil on the back of the document. When one of them--No. 217--was apparently removed from the files by Mr. Berger, the staff reprinted a copy and replaced it for his review. According to the report, Mr. Berger then proceeded to slip the second copy "under his portfolio also." In other words, he stole the same document twice."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

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posted by JR 1/16/2007 12:07:00 AM

Monday, January 15, 2007

 
THE ESSENCE OF LEFTISM

Excerpt from Sam Wells

America is in the midst of a giant ideological war between the Left and the Right, and it has been for some time. What is the fundamental nature of that conflict? It is a battle of ideas - very different ideas and strongly opposing ideas. What, then, are the fundamental differences in the main ideas in this war we are in between the "Left" and the "Right" in the United States of America today?

On the most fundamental level and very broadly we say that it is the conflict between collectivism versus individualism -- but that is pretty abstract. What specifically does it mean in terms of differences between overall policy prescriptions and political platforms and actual enacted programs? What is the essence of the agenda of the Left as opposed to that of the Right?

The fundamental essence of political leftism is not merely its snarling antipathy to "big business" or corporations or the idea of a market economy in general, or even its abiding contempt for and resentment against "bourgeois values " (thrift, honesty, work ethic, punctuality, a desire to make a better life for oneself and ones family, etc.). The essence of political leftism is in its opposition to the concept and institution of private ownership of property. To the extent that someone disrespects private property rights - either personally or through the political policies he advocates - to that extent he is a left-winger. Likewise, to the extent that a person consistently upholds and respects the private property rights of others, to that extent he is a "right winger" (in America).

As Ayn Rand reminded us, without property rights, no other rights are possible. Without private property boundaries, both in our persons and in our external possessions and in land, commercial trade or voluntary relationships in general could not function. An advanced culture based on contract and choice -- rather than feudal birth status or socialist top-down commands - could not exist.

Freedom and free markets presuppose and depend on the security of private property rights. Only when property boundaries are clearly defined and property rights are secured from coercive violation, either by criminals or by arbitrary government intervention, can incentives for long-term private planning develop, calculated risks undertaken, opportunities made available, and a sophisticated capitalist economy emerge and flourish....

The Left often postures as being in favor of "tolerance" - but only in such superficial matters as skin color, not in the realm of ideas. The Left's long-time and continuing ideological monopoly in America's universities seethes with anti-conservative and anti-libertarian bigotry and intolerance much uglier and much more unrelenting than the personal prejudice of any stereotyped Southern racist.

Leftists also claim they are for freedom - but it is not the freedom from coercive interference with peaceful adults for which libertarians stand. No. The leftists clamor for freedom from want, freedom from deprivation, freedom from poverty, freedom from being disadvantaged, freedom from discrimination, freedom from having one's feelings hurt, freedom from the real world, and other such bogus "freedoms" which, if they can be achieved at all, come only at the forced expense of productive peaceful adult citizens....

The attack on America, on rational moral values, and on individual freedom comes almost entirely from the Left in this country - from the limousine "liberal" leftists who live in San Francisco and Marin counties to the hard-left socialists who have dominated the Democrat Party since 1972, and the semi-literate America-hating Hollywood leftists who have contempt for even the middle-class audiences they entertain on TV and the silver screen.

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"Left Fascists" are fascists too...

The Fascists of history were ALL Leftists but so deeply ingrained is the opposite myth that stressing the similarity of the modern day Left to the Fascists of history may require a new phrase in order to get much attention. Post below from The American Thinker

J.R. Dunn points out today that leftists cannot be fascists, at least according to leftists. That's nonsense, of course, and it deprives political taxonomy of a perfectly useful term created by the Left itself, i.e., "left fascist". I think the phrase was first applied by Trotskyites for Stalinists, or possibly the other way around. It doesn't matter. The UK Telegraph uses "left fascist" to describe the (racist) British National Party. It also makes a useful retort to bizarros like the New York Times writer who just wrote ,

"Of course there are Christian fascists..."

That sounds a lot weirder to me than Left fascists. I'm not aware, for example, of the last time Christians ran concentration camps, tortured people, and murdered one hundred million of them, as the Left did in the last hundred years. So "Left fascism" fits the bill, all right.

The Left conveniently forgets that real fascists, like the Nazis and Mussolini type, had the same passionate hatred for traditional religion that the Left harbors. Some coincidence!

We should use "left fascist" as an intellectually accurate term, not just another way of shouting "You mother wears combat boots!" "Left fascism" should be a standard part of our vocabulary, because it's so obviously accurate in real life. It was the Left fascists who drove Larry Summers out of the presidency of Harvard University, because he uttered an Incorrect Thought. Thought crimes are typically fascist devices to control human beings.

As George Orwell had it, our first responsibility in a time of lies is to tell the truth. "Left fascist" nails it. We cannot let the Left define the terms, and in this case it's the Left that came up with it! So they can't disown it.

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ELSEWHERE

A good sarcastic comment: "Barbara Boxer's `Freudian Slip' is telling. First, she accused Condaleeza Rice as being a flawed decision maker. Then Ms Boxer insinuated that because she has no children, Condaleeza Rice cannot be as empathetic or sympathetic to those Americans who might lose a loved one. Of course, that would mean Ms Boxer could possibly understand the evil or significance of racism, because she isn't black and thus her positions on race cannot be taken seriously. Ms Boxer can opine on with some credibility on the matter of corruption. Among other things, she funneled $115,000 to Douglas Boxer & Associates, from a PAC for Change, her leadership political action committee. Douglas Boxer calls the Senator, `Mommy.`"

Vietnamizing Iraq: "On Monday I asked, "How many people will the peace movement kill this time?" and pointed out the last time America deserted a a battlefield, millions of Vietnamese and Cambodians died in the wake. It was a victory for tyranny that should bring shame to those senators and congressmen who were responsible. Instead they puff their chests and a few of them want to do the same thing in Iraq."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************
posted by JR 1/15/2007 12:08:00 AM

Sunday, January 14, 2007

 
EUROPEAN ARROGANCE AGAIN

An excerpt from THEODORE DALRYMPLE

Anyone who watched Saddam Hussein being led to the gallows without any knowledge of who he was would have concluded that a dignified, decent, and upright man was being informally executed by a gang of criminals. After all, it was he, not they, who showed his face to the world; he, not they, who refused to disguise himself.

And the revelation that he was taunted by his gaolers immediately before his execution, and not allowed to sleep the previous night, has rendered his execution less than optimal, from the public-relations point of view. Anything he might have suffered as a result of mistreatment was, of course, trivial by comparison with the suffering he inflicted on thousands, perhaps millions, of others; but a sense of proportion in moral outrage has never been among the Middle East's great cultural virtues.

The same, alas, is now true of Europe, or of the European official class and its tame intelligentsia. Everyone was agreed, of course, that Saddam was a very bad thing, a dictator who used every method of political persuasion from torture to a bullet in the neck and poison gas. But very few missed the opportunity to express an unctuous self-righteousness about the death penalty.

The editorial of Le Monde on the day following, for example, was entitled "No to the Death Penalty," and said that while President Bush may have claimed that the execution was a step on the path to democracy, "our," that is to say the French and superior, concept of democracy was different. The British foreign secretary and Irish foreign minister took the opportunity to express British and Irish opposition to the death penalty; the position of the Italian prime minister was even stronger (or weaker, depending on how you look at it); the Vatican also took the opportunity to express its opposition to the death penalty; and the European commissioner for foreign aid, M. Louis Michel, former foreign minister of that land of irreproachable integrity, Belgium, said, "You don't fight barbarism with acts that I deem as barbaric. The death penalty is not compatible with democracy."

In general, Europeans of the official class spoke as if the death penalty had been abolished in Europe in about 479 b.c., when it was abolished in Britain in 1965 and in France in 1981, not exactly historical epochs ago, even in the baby-boomers' truncated historical perspective. Whatever the practical political consequences of the execution of Saddam, which are inherently uncertain, the fact is that the European leaders are so entirely, parochially, and narrow-mindedly enclosed within their own worldview that they are now unable to conceive of any opinion but their own.

The egregious M. Michel seems to be implying that the two largest and most important democracies in the world, the U.S.A. and India, cannot actually be democracies at all because they have the death penalty. He also seems to be saying that New Zealand, Britain, Australia, Canada, and France were not democracies until 1961, 1965, 1973, 1976, and 1981, an odd reading of history, to say the least. Such is the ignorant arrogance of the great ones of Europe, who must have been confirmed in their decision not to allow any kind of democratic intervention in their deliberations by learning that in fact a clear majority of Europeans believed that Saddam ought to have been executed. If that is what people think, they clearly ought to be abolished.

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ELSEWHERE

Democrat America-hatred: "One thing that has become painfully clear in the new Congress' opening hours is that the mainstream of the Democratic Party is desperate for the Iraq war effort to fail. For those who have monitored liberalism's inner demons the past few years, this is no surprise. Every American setback has been gleefully greeted as a portentous sign of imminent disaster. Actually, every event whether a setback or not has been gleefully greeted as a portentous sign of imminent disaster. So, too, has every non-event."

Is Britain run by a deaf man? "Tony Blair has pledged to investigate the care of discharged soldiers after being challenged by a veteran of the Iraq conflict. During a televised exchange last night the Prime Minister apologised to Justin Smith after hearing that he had been left homeless and paying for medical care after two tours in Iraq. Mr Smith was discharged from the Army after suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. In the discussion, broadcast from the Royal Marines Training Centre in Lympstone, Devon, he told Mr Blair: "I have lost my house, my security, my self-belief." He had struggled to find temporary accommodation in Cornwall to be with his wife and had had to pay for some of his medical treatment. Mr Blair initially said that he could not believe that this was typical. But when members of the Royal British Legion insisted that it was, he said he would investigate." [Blair must be the only one who did not know of this problem. "The Times" and other newspapers have been highlighting it for months, if not years]

The minimum wage kills jobs in Samoa only??: "As part of their first 100 hours plan, Democrats are pushing a hike in the minimum wage. It's going to happen, with several Republicans and even President Bush prepared to go along with it. But did you know that American Samoa...a Democrat stronghold...is being exempted from the minimum wage increase?... The average wage for tuna workers in American Samoa is $3.60 an hour. One of the biggest employers there is Starkist Tuna...which is headquartered in San Francisco...Nancy Pelosi land. Anybody care to take a closer look at the campaign contributions of Democrats in the last election? One thing is for sure, the delegate from American Samoa, a Democrat, is loaded down with campaign cash from the tuna industry. So there you have it...a double standard. On the one hand, we're told you can't raise a family on $5.15 an hour and the minimum wage must be raised to $7.25 an hour. But for the right price in campaign contributions, the tuna industry in American Samoa can avoid the minimum wage altogether...they just have to stuff the pockets of the right Democrats. Where is the media on this one?"

More proof that Leftists really believe in nothing -- not even feminism: "Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) is being criticized by members of the black leadership network Project 21 for implying that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice lacks a proper perspective on the War on Terror in Iraq because she does not have children. "Barbara Boxer is a feminist who is attacking the feminist dream," said Project 21 member Kevin Martin. "But Condoleezza Rice's achievements are disqualified because she is a black conservative, and her rise was not blessed by the liberal establishment. Former attorney general Janet Reno was also unmarried and childless, but I don't remember insulting questioning like this regarding her handling of Elian Gonzalez or the deadly raid on the Branch Davidian cult."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************
posted by JR 1/14/2007 12:04:00 AM

Saturday, January 13, 2007

 
THE NON-WATERGATE

Something's a scandal only if the newspapers make it one. On the matter below they have averted their eyes. The NY Sun (excerpt below) is the one paper to have mentioned the matter -- although the blogosphere has known of it for years

That was quite a scoop yesterday by our Josh Gerstein in respect of how the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in its investigations of leaks of our national secrets, has been stonewalled by none other than agencies of America's own government. The disclosures on which Mr. Gerstein reports came in response to litigation Mr. Gerstein filed under the Freedom of Information Act. He obtained FBI documents indicating that our intelligence agencies have been "uncooperative" in investigating leaks. The FBI documents refer to unreturned phone calls, cancelled meetings that weren't rescheduled, and the concern that lawyers from the agency whose information was leaked would "stonewall." And it looks like cases were dropped rather than force government officials and agencies to cooperate with the investigation and produce evidence.....

All this underscores the likelihood that we have had agencies of the American government breaking the law to defeat a military campaign into which the American Congress, by an overwhelming vote, sent our GIs. These implications were sensed immediately by the blogosphere, where Powerlineblog.com lit up on Mr. Gerstein's story at the crack of dawn, and on the airwaves, where Rush Limbaugh devoted part of his broadcast to Mr. Gerstein's story. Said Mr. Limbaugh, "It's become more and more obvious that there is a symbiotic relationship between these agencies - we're talking about State, we're talking about the Pentagon, CIA - there's a symbiotic relationship between these agencies and the drive-by media now, and they're not going to let an election get in their way . They've got their own agendas. . If they have to destroy the policies of a particular administration, they'll do it via leaks, and then when these criminal leaks are investigated, they don't participate."

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IRAN STRIKE COMING?

Excerpt below from a comment by Australian columnist Greg Sheridan

A US military strike against Iran must now be considered formally on the international agenda, following George W. Bush’s sombre, calm, but in substance extraordinarily bold address on Iraq. Bush accused Iran of providing material assistance for attacks on US troops in Iraq. It is hard to imagine a more serious accusation. What’s more, Bush promised to stop such Iranian actions. Whatever you think of Bush, he has a very high level of credibility when it comes to carrying out any threat he makes of military action.

No matter how scornful Bush’s Western critics may be, the powerbrokers in Tehran, and tosome degree in Damascus (forhe also called out Syria), aretoday contemplating the President’s words with sombre apprehension.

In a broader sense, Bush’s speech was aimed at all of America’s enemies and potential enemies in the Middle East and beyond. My presidency may be wounded, he was saying, but it is not dead. Bush will not leave the initiative to the terrorists or to the US’s other enemies. As President, he still wields enormous power and he intends to use it.

This was an unusually calm and direct speech from Bush. It eschewed soaring rhetoric and grand statements. It is likely to be more effective for that. It laid out the consequences of US defeat in Iraq and said that the Bush administration simply refuses to accept defeat. It was a very Ronald Reagan speech in the way it defied every arbiter of conventional wisdom and even public opinion....

The substance of Mr Bush’s speech was encouraging, more for the change in US emphasis than for the sheer increase in troop numbers. It is moving the US much closer to a classic counter-insurgency strategy in Iraq. Such a strategy always gives its top priority to providing security for the civilian population. Amazingly, this is the first time such an objective will be the top priority for the US military in Iraq. The Bush speech represents neither the eclipse nor the triumph of the fabled neo-conservatives. Rather, it represents the liberation of American policy following the departure of former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld....

America’s enemies know that democracies tend to be impatient and certainly, after all the misery of Iraq, the American electorate appears impatient. Yet it is highly unlikely that even the Democrat-controlled Congress will actually cut off funding for US troops in Iraq. It may be too late, it may be too little, but Bush has given US strategy at least a fighting chance of success.

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Brookes News Update

Kevin Rudd's economic illiteracy and his attack on Hayek: Firmly convinced of his moral and intellectual superiority Kevin Rudd slime free market economics tells us that Friedrich Hayek hated charity and lacked compassion. And this ignorant bigot wants to be Australia's Prime Minister
The audacity of apostasy: Barack Obama's Muslim links: So far the media have avoided drawing attention to Obama's Muslim past. But sooner the later the media will have to deal with this complication. If they don't - Hillary will
Augusto Pinochet: Chile's reluctant dictator: General Pinochet and his administration were possibly the most reluctant authoritarian regime in all of history. Nevertheless, the left and their corrupt supporters in the media wages a relentless campaign of vilification against the regime. These are the same people who refuse to condemn the sadistic Castro's crimes against women and children
Australian Labor Party's welfare fallacies and interventionism: Although Kevin Rudd now leads the ALP the social democratic myths that Mark Latham promoted still underpin Labor's domestic policies - particularly those relating to welfare and economics
President Bush ain't no friend of Israel's. And Olmert: With the total lack of leadership in Israel, the Islamofascist murderers have reason to celebrate. And, they already are. Fatah is now able to use the kidnapping and killings of IDF soldiers as a precedent to achieve the release of all prisoners
Managing the consequences of Iraq: It is becoming increasingly likely that some form of break-up will be the fate of the nation-state of Iraq. Such a break-up will reflect the relationships among Iraq's Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish groups, and the relationships of these groups to the central government, which in turn should have major consequences for the region.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************
posted by JR 1/13/2007 12:03:00 AM

Friday, January 12, 2007

 
LEFTISTS LIVING IN THE PAST

Excerpt from Richard Miniter

By the way, aren't you tired of the whole "you're-a-fascist" line? The Fascists and the Nazis are only on the right if you yourself are communist-and therefore, they are barely to the right of you on the political spectrum. To the rest of us, Fascists, Nazis and communists are different sub-species of the same murderous monster, a blood-drenched beast that believes in the power of the state and seeks to dismember or murder every individual and every group in society that refuses to bend to its will.

Those of us who believe in free speech and, its economic equivalent, free trade, limited government, tolerance, the equal freedom of the artist and the entrepreneur, the separation of church and state, and so on, are the enemies of fascists and, their ill-clothed counterparts, communists. Indeed, capitalism is the opposite of fascism, which favors government control of the every economic decision. Calling us (liberals and conservatives) "fascists" simply reveals the Left's nostaglia for truly evil enemies (like Nazis) and its current reluctance to engage in a battle of ideas. So Bush is a fascist and so is Heinlein.

I was covering a anti-globalization street demonstration in Prague in 2000 for the Wall Street Journal and noticed that the crowd was chanting loudly in Spanish. I asked a demonstrator why this pan-European crowd was reciting Spanish slogans instead of Czech. "Don't you know it?" he asked. "This is one of the great anti-Fascist chants from the Spanish Civil War." In other words, it was from the 1930s.

Even the young communists think like old men, living in a glorious past that has long since passed. This is why they still want to talk about McCarthy, Nixon, Vietnam, "the 1960s," the minimum wage, the draft, the United Nations.

Their solution for the Iraq war and the Iran A-Bomb? Get France, Britain, Russia and China to agree. In other words, get our World War II allies to join us. Hasn't the world changed in 60 years? The French and British have given away their empires and forfeited a role in global affairs. They have one aircraft carrier each. Russia is failing state that could not rescue the crew on one of their own submarines. China could play only a bit part in the tsunami relief effort and is actively involved with two members of the axis of evil (Iran and North Korea). Surely India, Japan and Turkey are more important to us now?

The Left's one relatively new concern is global warming. Yes, they have been threatening an environmental catastrophe since the late 1950s and climate change since the early 1970s, but it, nonetheless, is among their fresher concerns. Still, it is worth pointing out that worrying about the weather is principally a concern of the aged. The rest of us are too busy hurrying to work.

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ELSEWHERE



The above cartoon refers in part to this story about an actual ban on Santa hats.

Sunnis target shitheads in DETROIT: "As they repaired the broken windows of at least a dozen businesses and mosques along Warren Avenue in Detroit, many Iraqi Shi'ite Muslims wondered Monday if the vandalism was retaliation by local supporters of Saddam Hussein who resented that they celebrated the hanging of the Iraqi dictator. Sometime late Saturday night or early Sunday morning, someone vandalized at least nine businesses and three mosques, all but one Shi'ite, according to Ali Zwen, manager of the Kufa Cultural Forum, a mosque at Warren and Archdale that sustained $4,000 in damage."

New book shows U.S. involvement in the Middle East long preceded 'Israel lobby' : "In 1844, a biblical scholar and professor of Hebrew at New York University published a pamphlet urging the establishment of a Jewish state in the place then known as Palestine. The name of this early Zionist who argued for the recreation of Jewish sovereignty over the land of Israel: George Bush. But the astonishing thing about this manifesto is not just that the author was a forebear of two later U.S. presidents of the same name. It was that his advocacy of a theological/political position known as "restorationism" - support for the "restoration" of the Jewish people to their historic homeland - was common in 19th century America."

Moronic "Guardian" writer: "Talking of ignorance, where would we be without Guardian columnists? My old boss, Peter Shore, the late Labour Cabinet minister used to read the Daily Express every morning just to get angry. I prefer The Guardian. Yesterday Zoe Williams informed us that "there is no precedent for a country to be diamond [or petroleum] rich and not spend the rest of its history bogged down in civil and/or external war." I suppose that she has never heard of those two obscure countries, the US and the UK".

Wacky Britain: "`The government's latest wheeze is to raise the legal age for buying cigarettes from 16 to 18. So let me see if I have this straight. You will be able legally to have sex at 16 - or younger, according to senior policemen - but the law won't allow you a postcoital cigarette until two years later. Not even if you are married"

France to cut business taxes? "French president Jacques Chirac has proposed slashing France's corporation tax rate from 33pc to 20pc to relaunch its flagging economy, a move that could leave Britain behind as the high-tax laggard in Europe. ‘We have to take action on corporation tax to save our businesses and help create new ones. The goal should be to reduce it to 20pc in five years,’ he said in his New Year speech, proposing a long-term goal of just 10pc. Mr Chirac also stepped up his attacks on the strong euro policy of the European Central Bank, calling for political intervention to force down the exchange rate. ‘Europe must take its destiny in hand,’ he said. ''It is time that it exercised its economic sovereignty by setting an exchange rate policy and a change in trade policy to take account of globalisation".

Europe wants to tax Britons: "Brussels politicians have drawn up proposals to create a European income tax which would leave Britons shelling out 510 pounds a year to the superstate. The rumbling row over the size of Britain’s rebate from Europe resurfaced as an influential committee of MEPs received recommendations for sweeping reforms to the Union’s current funding system. The Committee On Budgets is facing calls to scale back the current system in favour of a form of direct taxation when Britain’s rebate is re-negotiated in 2008.

Chris Brand has just done a new lot of posts on his usual themes of race, IQ and political correctness -- with particular emphasis on the British scene.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************
posted by JR 1/12/2007 12:05:00 AM

Thursday, January 11, 2007

 
FOOD FADDISM DEMOLISHED FOR ONCE AND FOR ALL

Not that the food faddists will take any notice

Food faddism is important to many people because it gives them both the illusion of control and an ego boost. One of the few things they have absolute control over is what they put into their mouths so they like to think that gives them some larger control over their lives. Food faddism also gives them a feeling of wisdom and righteousness because they attribute some universal truth and validity to their fads. It makes them feel wiser than the poor sods who do not share their "enlightenment". This latter has become particularly pernicious in recent years as the faddists have increasingly been able to force their beliefs on others -- via the demonization of "obesity" -- which they (falsely) claim shortens lifespans.

So it is a timely corrective that one population which has a characteristically "unhealthy" diet has recently been shown also to be one of the longest lived! Details on FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC.

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POLITICAL SUPERSTITIONS

Excerpt from Christopher Chantrill

How do you spell superstition?  The professional atheists have been busy spelling it out lately, especially Richard Dawkins with The God Delusion and Sam Harris with The End of Faith. There is almost certainly no God, according to Dawkins.

The atheists worship a different God.  For Dawkins, it seems to be the power of Darwin's theory of natural selection.  For Sam Harris it seems to be the value of meditation and a rational ethics.  And don't think you can talk them out it.

We can thank the atheists at least for this: They are magnificently applying the principle of  "motivated skepticism" to the human God project.

Motivated skepticism?  That's the concept from the paper "Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs" by Charles S. Taber and Milton Lodge. (Hat tip to TCS Daily Arnold Kling.)

Taber and Lodge observe that we humans have lots of faith in our own ideas and plans but not in other peoples' ideas.

"Physicists do it...Psychologists do it...Even political scientists do it...Research findings confirming a hypothesis are accepted more or less at face value, but when confronted with contrary evidence, we become "motivated skeptics" ... picking apart possible flaws in the study, recoding variables, and only when all the counterarguing fails do we rethink our beliefs[.]"

To understand the power of faith we have only to look at the 100 hour legislative marathon of the newly empowered House Democrats.  They are intent upon passing an increase in the minimum wage.  But the science is in on this, and it has been for over a century.  The minimum wage puts low-skilled people out of work.  Democrats are also intent upon adding new subsidies to college students.  But the science is in on subsidies. And the science is also in on drug price controls.

Why do they do it?  Faith, that's why.  Blind faith in the power of government and their own good intentions.

When a faith has been utterly exploded by science, rational folks like you and me usually call it "superstition."

...

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ELSEWHERE

Iranian brain-drain. I wonder why? "According to the IMF more than a 150,000 of the best young minds in Iran are leaving every year."

China now battling Muslims: "China has revealed the depth of its fear of Islamic-linked violence with police disclosing that they had killed 18 terrorists and captured another 17 after a fierce battle at a secret training camp in a remote northwestern region. It was the first time that China had announced the discovery of such a camp in its territory. Officials said that they had uncovered links between the activists and international terrorist groups, hinting at connections to al-Qa'ida. The clash in the Pamir mountains on Friday was one of the deadliest for years in the restive Xinjiang Uighur autonomous region, where 8.5 million Muslims make up most of the population. One policeman was killed and a second wounded.... Liu Jianchao, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said: "There is a large amount of evidence, including evidence from this raid, that shows the movement is associated with international terrorist forces, and that it planned, organised and carried out a series of violent, terrorist activities in China."

Bungling British spooks: "The Director-General of Britain's security service MI5 told senior MPs there was no imminent terrorist threat to London or the rest of the country less than 24 hours before the July 7, 2005, suicide bombings in London, in which 56 people were killed. Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller gave the assurance at a private meeting of Labour whips at the House of Commons on the morning of July 6. Last month Dame Eliza announced she was to retire in April. That announcement came weeks before details are expected to be made public of an MI5 operation in which two of the July 7 bombers were kept under surveillance but not arrested."

Australia: Huge rise in job openings after recent labour-market deregulation: "Australian total job vacancies in the three months to November rose 5.9 per cent, seasonally adjusted, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Job vacancies rose 21.4 per cent over the year to November. Seasonally adjusted job vacancies totalled 163,700 in the three months to November compared with an upwardly revised 154,600 in the previous quarter.

More Jimmy Carter deceit: "I became embroiled in a controversy with former President Jimmy Carter over the use of two maps in his recent book, "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid." While some criticized what appeared to be the misappropriation of maps I had commissioned for my book, "The Missing Peace," my concern was always different.... In his book, Mr. Carter juxtaposes two maps labeled the "Palestinian Interpretation of Clinton's Proposal 2000" and "Israeli Interpretation of Clinton's Proposal 2000." The problem is that the "Palestinian interpretation" is actually taken from an Israeli map presented during the Camp David summit meeting in July 2000, while the "Israeli interpretation" is an approximation of what President Clinton subsequently proposed in December of that year. Without knowing this, the reader is left to conclude that the Clinton proposals must have been so ambiguous and unfair that Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, was justified in rejecting them. But that is simply untrue."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************
posted by JR 1/11/2007 12:16:00 AM

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

 
SEYMOUR MARTIN LIPSET: A FLAWED FIGURE

There is a neocon eulogy of the recently deceased Prof. Seymour Martin Lipset here. Despite the usual adjuration de mortuis nil nisi bonum, I feel that I should say a few words to set the record straight. Lipset was a very popular sociologist and political scientist but that which is popularly believed often turns out to be wrong in the long run and I believe that the positive view of Lipset's contribution is formed by his Leftist origins rather than by the lasting value of his ideas. He started out as a Trotskyite, as did the neocons.

I should perhaps declare a personal interest before going on. Despite the effusions about Lipset's good character, my own encounter with him was unimpressive, to say the least. He agreed to mark my Ph.D. dissertation and then not only failed to do so after many reminders but also failed to return his copy of the dissertation when requested to do so. This created such delays that my Ph.D. was not awarded until 1974, even though the dissertation was handed in in 1970. And why did he behave so badly? I guess it wouldn't be because the dissertation reported research results which undermined ideas that he was identified with, would it? Rather than use new data to develop his views -- as a real scientist would -- he resorted to the old Leftist strategy of denial, just as other Leftists for decades denied the evils of the Soviet State.

The central findings of the large and international program of resarch that I undertook to test a popular Lipset idea -- that working-class people are "authoritaraian" -- were finally published in Sociology and Social Research in 1983. Lipset had used selected public opinion poll data to test his ideas but I used much more closely targeted psychometric methods. I found that there was some tendency for the workers to be conservative on some social issues but NO evidence of them being "authoritarian". See here

Lipset's idea that America was saved from its "bad side" by great men is a typical example of selective Leftist attention to group differences. Leftists will trumpet how blacks have been damaged by slavery or how homosexuals need to be protected from discrimination but acknowledging that another group -- Americans of British and Northern European origin -- have particular strengths and virtues is absolutely taboo.

One only has to look at one of the "great" men that Lipset believed "saved" America -- Frankin Delano Roosevelt, the Fascist sympathizer who turned a normal cyclic depression into the Great Depression by his attacks on business and then delivered whole nations into the hands of the Soviets at Yalta. For some of the less-publicized facts about FDR see here and here and here. The truth of the matter is that America's prosperity and pre-eminence is the product of many millions of decent and hard-working individuals. To be even more precise, the success of America comes from the respect for the individual and for the rule of law which America's immigrants from Britain and Northern Europe brought with them and which they enshrined in America's way of life and institutions. But it is "racist" to say that, of course.

And Lipset's saying that "The United States is the only Protestant sectarian country in the world" is also absurd. "Sectarian" implies severe intolerance and discrimination towards people holding to other belief systems. In fact, America would have to be one of the countries with greatest freedom of religion. It is even safe to be a real conservative in America -- though not in American universities, of course.

I could go on to say more about Lipset's twisted ideas but I have no taste for cleaning out Augean stables.

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AN INTERESTING DEMOGRAPHIC HYPOTHESIS

Gangland slayings in the Palestinian territories this week have pitted the Islamist gunmen of Hamas against the secular forces of Fatah. The killings defy civilised norms: in December even children were targeted for murder. But the killings also defy political common sense. Ariel Sharon's wall cuts terrorists off from Israeli targets and what happens? The violence - previously justified with the cause of a Palestinian homeland - continues as if nothing had changed, merely finding its outlet in a new set of targets. This makes it appear that Palestinian violence has never really been about a "cause" at all. The violence is, in a strange way, about itself.

Gunnar Heinsohn, a social scientist and genocide researcher at the University of Bremen, has an explanation for why this might be so. Since its publication in 2003, his eccentric and eye-opening Sons and World Power* (not available in English) has become something of a cult book. In Mr Heinsohn's view, when 15 to 29-year-olds make up more than 30 per cent of the population, violence tends to happen; when large percentages are under 15, violence is often imminent. The "causes" in the name of which that violence is committed can be immaterial. There are 67 countries in the world with such "youth bulges" now and 60 of them are undergoing some kind of civil war or mass killing.

Between 1988 and 2002, 900m sons were born to mothers in the developing world and a careful demographer could almost predict the trouble spots. In the decade leading up to 1993, on the eve of the Taliban takeover, the population of Afghanistan grew from 14m to 22m. By the end of this generation, Afghanistan will have as many people under 20 as France and Germany combined. Iraq had 5m people in 1950 but has 25m now, in spite of a quarter-century of wars. Since 1967, the population of the West Bank and Gaza has grown from 450,000 to 3.3m, 47 per cent of which is under 15. If Mr Heinsohn is right, then Palestinian violence of recent months and years is not explained by Israeli occupation (which, after all, existed 30 years ago) or poverty (the most violent parts of the Muslim world are not the poorest) or humiliation. It is just violence.

Mr Heinsohn's point is not that the West is "outnumbered". Nor is it that a Malthusian battle for scarce resources is under way. In El Salvador, for instance, the explosion of political killing in the 1970s and 1980s was preceded by a 27 per cent rise in per capita income. The problem, rather, is that in a youth-bulge society there are not enough positions to provide all these young men with prestige and standing. Envy against older, inheriting brothers is unleashed. So is ambition. Military heroism presents itself as a time-honoured way for a second or third son to wrest a position of respectability from an otherwise indifferent society. Societies with a glut of young men become temperamentally different from "singleton societies" such as Europe's, where the prospect of sending an only child to war is almost unthinkable. Europe's pacifism since 1945, in Mr Heinsohn's view, reflects an inability to wage war, not a disinclination.

Mr Heinsohn's theory accounts for the way "idealistic" wars of national liberation can shift imperceptibly into "pointless" civil wars - as in Ireland 90 years ago or in Africa after decolonisation or in Latin America in the 1980s or in Palestine in recent months. In a broader historical perspective, it explains how a half-dozen fast-growing European countries gradually seized control of almost the entire known world after 1485 and why the fast-growing North American colonies revolted in the 1770s, using as a pretext their "rather silly outrage over taxation without parliamentary representation in London".

If you follow this argument to its logical end point, then the religion of Islam, the focus of so much contemporary strategic discussion, is a great red herring. Islamic countries are certainly growing in importance. They will make up a quarter of the world a decade from now. Of the 27 biggest youth-bulge nations, 13 are Muslim. But if there is a clash between civilisations, it is not a civilisational clash. Religion can be a convenient rationalisation for violent people who do not want to think of themselves as conventional criminals, but this problem is not unique to Islam. In the New World 500 years ago, Mr Heinsohn notes, Spanish conquistadores, too, bowed down and prayed before carrying out slaughters.

In an interview with the Neue Zuercher Zeitung last autumn, Mr Heinsohn noted that if Germany had had the same kind of population growth as Gaza (9 children per woman) over recent decades, it would now have 550m people and 80m young men aged 15 to 30. "Do you think these 80m young Germans would be 10 times as pacifist as the 7m we have today?" he asked. "Or is it not much more likely that they would be throwing bombs in Prague and Gdansk and Wroclaw and - just like the Palestinians - saying: 'This is our land, and it was taken from us for historical reasons that we had nothing to do with'?"

Such a demographic perspective on the global unrest gives us grounds for optimism: In a few decades, the era of youth-bulge wars could be over. It is the meantime that poses problems. Should the west just wait for this wave to burn itself out? When the world is at peace, will it have been better to have kept our nose out of other people's business? Will it have been better to say we at least tried to steer the developing world through this crisis in a humane way? Iraq and Palestine are not the only places where these questions ought to be approached with a good deal of intellectual modesty.

Source

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************
posted by JR 1/10/2007 12:02:00 AM

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

 
Leftist Delusions of "reality"

Not long ago, as I was listening to a BBC reporter describing the latest terrorist outrage in Baghdad-scores killed . deteriorating security situation . Iraqi government helpless . military untrained and disorganized . terrorists operating at will, etc.-it occurred to me that, even if all that the reporter had said were perfectly true it was also exactly what the terrorists would have said if they could have written his script for him. Did this matter? Was it just a coincidence that the "reality" of the Iraq war, endlessly repeated and identified as such by the news media, so closely resembled the terrorist "narrative," as our brainy students of textual deconstruction would put it? Or-the question seemed just worth asking-was reality itself being shaped by the terrorist narrative because of, first, the media's predisposition to believe it and, second, the lack of any persuasive rival narrative from those who continued to claim, in more or less vague terms, that "progress" was being made against the insurgency?

I don't know the answer to this question, but one indication of the importance of asking it came as the media themselves, perhaps emboldened by the success of their preferred party in the recent election, embarked on one of their periodic "reality" jags, proudly boasting of their own intimate relations with that elusive commodity and taking the occasion to pour scorn and contempt upon what they take to be the Bush administration's unfamiliarity with same. For even if we are willing to accept that the media's picture of the Iraq war is largely accurate, we cannot regard as credible the contention that not only the President of the United States but also the entire administration over which he presides and the generals advising it are merely delusional. Nor can I share the easy assumption of the substantial Bush-hating faction in and out of the media that our President is so stupid as to be utterly blind to things obvious and transparent to the likes of Frank Rich of The New York Times or Keith Olbermann of MSNBC's "Countdown."

Here is what the latter said, as transcribed by the Media Research Center, about some remarks President Bush made on his November trip to Vietnam: "It is a shame and it is embarrassing to us all when President Bush travels 8,000 miles only to wind up avoiding reality again . . But most importantly, important beyond measure, his avoidance of reality is going to wind up killing more Americans. And that is indefensible and fatal." Well, killing usually is fatal, though it is not always indefensible. But Mr. Olbermann's obvious passion has distorted more than his English. What had excited his wrath was the President's response to a question about the "lessons" of the Vietnam War in which he said that these, applied to the current war, included the fact that "the task in Iraq is going to take a while" and that "we'll succeed unless we quit." It is not so obvious to me as it apparently is to Keith Olbermann that these supposed lessons are misconstrued, but let's say that they are. How does that tell us anything about the President's grasp of "reality"? Does he really think that President Bush-or any American president in wartime-could have said anything else?

It may be, that is, that Iraq is like Vietnam, at least in being not only a losing struggle but an unwinnable one, but even if the commander-in-chief thought so, he would be mad to say so instead of quietly trying to find a way to extricate American forces-which is in fact what he seems to be doing. If Mr. Olbermann thinks otherwise, then he is the delusional one. The same affliction seems to trouble Frank Rich, who professes to believe that his president "isn't merely in a state of denial but is completely untethered from reality. It's not that he can't handle the truth about Iraq. He doesn't know what the truth is." The blithe insouciance with which Mr. Rich issues such a serious charge is itself evidence of its ridiculously hyperbolical nature. Generally speaking, the rhetorical resort to the popularized language of psychotherapy should be treated as prima facie evidence of a lack of intellectual seriousness, and that applies in spades to any allegation of psychosis against one's political enemies.

If Mr. Rich actually thought that the President was a victim of mental illness, he would have used more sober language and consulted one or two more qualified diagnosticians than himself, rather than simply tossing off the accusation as part of his weekly anti-Bush rant.

Much more here

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ELSEWHERE

Why poverty? "Beginning with Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffet, everyone wants to do something to end poverty in the world. That's supposedly why the World Bank and myriad other expensive international institutions, plus the foreign-aid programs of developed nations, were created. But they've been at this effort for more than 50 years, and judging by the state of the underdeveloped world, there is little evidence of success. Even some of their own experts admit this. Why the poor results? A consideration of the reason for this colossal failure is necessary if we want to help the poor create prosperity. There is no reason why poverty should exist in the world today amid all the modern wonders in technology, agriculture, medicine, and more. Poverty persists because governments in poor countries do stupid things, many of them advised by their well-intentioned charitable donors. Lets point out a few of these obvious but persistent tragic mistakes..... The reasons for the donors' failure is that they allow ideology to prevail over common sense. They invest time, effort, and money trying to alleviate the effects of poverty rather than the obvious causes and thus perpetuate it. If we want to help the poor, let us use our heads more than our hearts.

Crazy "rights" still dangerous: "Over the last couple of years I have explored FDR's Second Bill of Rights because recently some heavy hitters in politics and legal theory (e.g., Cass Sunstein) have made a point of championing these ultimately phony rights. With the Democrats back in power in Washington, it is not unreasonable to suppose that securing and expanding FDR's list of rights-as distinct from those laid out by the American founders in the Declaration of Independence-will once again dominate the federal government's agenda.... FDR's list included some lulus, I must say, but among them what's worth discussion in our day are the so-called economic rights. Take, for example, "The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident and unemployment." Notice immediately that to secure any such alleged right what would be required is for those who supposedly have them to gain the willing or unwilling services of other people. ... The sorts of rights FDR and his followers promote are instruments of more or less Draconian tyranny. Because they are peddled as well intentioned efforts to do us good, resistance to them is difficult to articulate without seeming to be mean. But resistance to them is nonetheless imperative-it is a large measure of the vigilance that's the price of liberty.

Another large Christian country: "President Putin celebrated Orthodox Christmas in a monastery outside the Russian capital as senior figures in his Government attended a service in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in the city, led by the head of the Russian Orthodox Church. National television broadcast footage of Mr Putin crossing himself and lighting a candle at the New Jerusalem monastery, which was turned into a museum after the 1917 Revolution and regained its status only in the 1990s. Despite a career as a KGB officer in the officially atheist Soviet Union, Mr Putin is a publicly devout Orthodox Christian and has cultivated links with the Church's leader, Patriarch Alexy II. In his Christmas message to the country, Mr Putin said: "This holiday brings joy and good expectations in the homes of millions of people, unites everyone on the basis of traditional moral values and strengthens moral principles and accord in society." The Church has enjoyed a significant resurgence since 1991 and says that two thirds of the 144-million strong population are observant."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************
posted by JR 1/09/2007 12:06:00 AM

Monday, January 08, 2007

 
Multiculturalism doesn't make vibrant communities but defensive ones

(Excerpt from an article by Steve Sailer )

"In the presence of [ethnic] diversity, we hunker down. We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it's not just that we don't trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don't trust people who do look like us".

-Harvard professor Robert D. Putnam

It was one of the more irony-laden incidents in the history of celebrity social scientists. While in Sweden to receive a $50,000 academic prize as political science professor of the year, Harvard's Robert D. Putnam, a former Carter administration official who made his reputation writing about the decline of social trust in America in his bestseller Bowling Alone, confessed to Financial Times columnist John Lloyd that his latest research discovery-that ethnic diversity decreases trust and co-operation in communities-was so explosive that for the last half decade he hadn't dared announce it "until he could develop proposals to compensate for the negative effects of diversity, saying it `would have been irresponsible to publish without that.'" In a column headlined "Harvard study paints bleak picture of ethnic diversity," Lloyd summarized the results of the largest study ever of "civic engagement," a survey of 26,200 people in 40 American communities:

When the data were adjusted for class, income and other factors, they showed that the more people of different races lived in the same community, the greater the loss of trust. `They don't trust the local mayor, they don't trust the local paper, they don't trust other people and they don't trust institutions,' said Prof Putnam. `The only thing there's more of is protest marches and TV watching.'

Lloyd noted, "Prof Putnam found trust was lowest in Los Angeles, `the most diverse human habitation in human history.'" As if to prove his own point that diversity creates minefields of mistrust, Putnam later protested to the Harvard Crimson that the Financial Times essay left him feeling betrayed, calling it "by two degrees of magnitude, the worst experience I have ever had with the media." To Putnam's horror, hundreds of "racists and anti-immigrant activists" sent him e-mails congratulating him for finally coming clean about his findings.

Lloyd stoutly stood by his reporting, and Putnam couldn't cite any mistakes of fact, just a failure to accentuate the positive. It was "almost criminal," Putnam grumbled, that Lloyd had not sufficiently emphasized the spin that he had spent five years concocting. Yet considering the quality of Putnam's talking points that Lloyd did pass on, perhaps the journalist was being merciful in not giving the professor more rope with which to hang himself. For example, Putnam's line-"What we shouldn't do is to say that they [immigrants] should be more like us. We should construct a new us"-sounds like a weak parody of Bertolt Brecht's parody of Communist propaganda after the failed 1953 uprising against the East German puppet regime: "Would it not be easier for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?"

Before Putnam hid his study away, his research had appeared on March 1, 2001 in a Los Angeles Times article entitled "Love Thy Neighbor? Not in L.A." Reporter Peter Y. Hong recounted, "Those who live in more homogeneous places, such as New Hampshire, Montana or Lewiston, Maine, do more with friends and are more involved in community affairs or politics than residents of more cosmopolitan areas, the study said."

Update:

The original reports of Putnam's findings are here and here.

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Brookes News Update

The US economy, consumer spending and the GDP fallacy: It has become the received wisdom that increased consumption more than offset the spending decline that the Clinton recession brought about. This is dangerous nonsense and that can only end in another recession
Imports and trade deficits: the good and the bad: The protectionist injunction against "free trade at any cost" is ridiculous. Free trade never takes place "at any cost". Trade only occurs up to that point where the cost of trading exceeds the benefits
Augusto Pinochet: the untold story: Even now the media cannot tell the truth about Allende's efforts to turn Chile into a Stalinist Gulag. As for leftists, history also teaches us that when they get even a small taste of their own medicine, their moaning and whining and sniveling becomes a worldwide cause celebre
US elections reveal a growing discontent: Congress appears to be that problem. They are out of control making promises they can't keep, spending the growth in revenues from a good economy as fast as they can on pork for their financial supporters
Opening the doors of Islam: The neurosis of Islamofascism can only be eradicated from within Islam by Moslems themselves. Ijtihad is how they are going to do it, how they are going to open the doors of Islam after being closed for a thousand years and bring it into the 21st century
Will the US dollar collapse?: The US dollar is having a hard time of it. But why is this so? Why has the dollar been falling? The basic argument is that the trade deficit is unsustainable and is driving down the dollar. But this does not tell us what is driving the deficits

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ELSEWHERE



Israel 'has plans for Iran nuke strike': "Israel has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran's uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons, Britain's Sunday Times newspaper said. Citing what it said were several Israeli military sources, the paper said two Israeli air force squadrons had been training to blow up an enrichment plant in Natanz using low-yield nuclear "bunker busters". Two other sites, a heavy water plant at Arak and a uranium conversion plant at Isfahan, would be targeted with conventional bombs, the Sunday Times said. [STACLU has a lot of discussion about how much credence can be attached to this story]

The right minimum wage: "Democrats consider the minimum-wage increase a signature issue. But the minimum wage should be the same everywhere: $0. Labor is a commodity; governments make messes when they decree commodities' prices. Washington, which has its hands full delivering the mail and defending the shores, should let the market do well what Washington does poorly"

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************
posted by JR 1/08/2007 12:04:00 AM

Sunday, January 07, 2007

 
US Attacked: National Guard Routed

How utterly disgusting. If this was a diversion, as one scenario suggests, we can only hope that something even more dangerous wasn't smuggled in. And if you need a better example of an alleged super power so hobbled by political correctness and weak political leadership that it can hardly protect itself, let alone wage a war - you may be waiting a long time for better than this.

I imagine the National Guard was operating under ROE's [rules] that prevented them from firing back. But, yes, armed men from Mexico entered the US, attacked a National Guard position and the National Guard turned tail and ran, probably their only alternative under President Bush's wonderful border enforcement policy.

Americans should be as outraged as they are sad, because if this precipitates any change, it'll likely be seen as a rationale for taking the Guard off the border, not giving them the ability to fight back. Face it, this administration probably fears gunning down some illegal more than it does allowing them to enter the country at will.

From Riehl World

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The betrayed children of the welfare society

These neglected children are kids like Michael Oher, who turned up recently in The New York Times in Michael Lewis's "Ballad of Big Mike." Of kids like Michael you can too often write:

"that Michael's father had been shot and killed and tossed off a bridge, that his mother was addicted to crack cocaine and that his life experience was so narrow that he might as well have spent his first 16 years inside a closet... Big Mike, as he was called, was essentially homeless and so had made an art of sleeping on whatever floor the ghetto would provide for him. "

Yes, read the whole thing. It's a compelling story, and for you sophisticated ironists there is even irony in it. African American Michael Oher is doing fine now as a stand out left offensive tackle at Ole Miss thanks to a bunch of rich white conservative football fans of a school in the Old South.

But why should we continue spending five percent of GDP every year on government schooling and $200 billion a year on welfare when a nice kid like Michael Oher completely falls through the safety net? What combination of personal and institutional heedlessness does it take to produce a 16-year-old like Michael Oher, utterly unschooled and utterly unsocialized? How many more are there like him? Hundreds of thousands? Millions?

It would be interesting to apply the "Enron Test" to the case of Michael Oher and the other victims of the welfare state. Suppose that Michael Oher had been neglected not by his mother, the local government child services bureaucracy, and the local school bureaucracy but by the late Ken Lay and the evil Enron corporation. What would our Democratic friends say then? For the heedless bureaucrats of the welfare state it's not the money. It's power that frees them from accountability.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Charitable nation: "Americans are better people than Europeans. Hold on, it gets better. Religious Americans are better than non-religious Americans. And religious Americans tend to be politically conservative. This admittedly tendentious rendering of reality is how some on the right are interpreting Who Really Cares? by Arthur Brooks, a professor of public administration at Syracuse University. Brooks doesn't really deal with what makes one person 'better' or 'worse' than any other. But it's fair to say that how much a person gives -- of either his money or time -- is usually considered an important indicator of character. It turns out that by this yardstick alone, my little talk-radio-ready summary is basically correct."

Iran admits its nuke program may be used for weapons: "Iranian top nuclear envoy Ali Larijani said in a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao Friday that Iran is committed to peaceful use of nuclear technology. "We oppose obtaining nuclear weapons and we will peacefully use nuclear technology under the framework of the Nonproliferation Treaty," he said. "But," he warned, "if we are threatened, the situation may change."

People running from over-regulated Leftist New York: "Advocates for more pro-growth policies in New York will get new ammunition today with the release of a report from the U.S. Census Bureau showing that the Empire State was one of only a handful of states that lost population this year, with thousands of people moving away to other parts of America and not being replaced by new residents. The state lost more than 9,500 people between July 2005 and July 2006, putting its total statewide population at 19.3 million, according to the federal statistics. Only states like Michigan, which has been hard-hit by the decline in the domestic auto industry, and hurricane-ravaged Louisiana, which lost 4.9% of its population due to the storm, saw a more dramatic decline, the bureau estimated".

Leftist dishonesty about American wage rates: "Some economists and journalists-I'll call them "the real-wage pessimists"-have claimed that average real wages have fallen during substantial time periods over the last 30 or so years.... Start with the person's hourly wage rate. Many of the real-wage pessimists don't carefully estimate that but, instead, settle for looking at average weekly wages. But comparing average weekly wages over time will give a much more pessimistic view than is justified. Why? Part-time jobs as a percentage of total jobs have increased over time.... there is another reason that average weekly earnings understate the growth in hourly wages: the average work week, even for full-time workers, has fallen steadily... The third factor typically left out by the real-wage pessimists is the growing fraction of compensation paid in the form of benefits. Reynolds points out that between 1973 and 2005, total compensation per hour (including health insurance, retirement, and other benefits as part of compensation), rose by almost 40 percent.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************
posted by JR 1/07/2007 12:03:00 AM

Saturday, January 06, 2007

 
ISLAMIC "BEDROOMS"

"Just recently, the Taliban issued a new set of 30 rules to its fighters. But there is a curious rule that the Western media has typically ignored. Rule No. 19 instructs that Taliban fighters must not take young boys without facial hair into their private quarters....

Aside from the question of what is permitted if a young boy does happen to have facial hair, this new Taliban commandment brings light to a taboo pathology that underlies the structures of militant Islam. And it is crucial to deconstruct the meaning of this rule -- and the horrid reality that it represents -- because it serves as a gateway to understanding the primary causes of Islamic rage and terror.

Rule No. 19 obviously indicates that the sexual abuse of young boys is a prevalent and institutionalized phenomenon among the Taliban and that, for one reason or another, its widespread practice has become a problem.

The fact that Taliban militants' spare time involves sodomizing young boys should by no means be any kind of surprise or eyebrow raiser. That a mass pathology such as this occurs in a culture which demonizes the female and her sexuality -- and puts her out of mind and sight -- is only to be expected. To be sure, it is a simple given that the religious male fanatic who flies into a violent rage even at the thought of an exposed woman's ankle will also be, in some other dysfunctional and dark secret compartment of his fractured life, the person who leads some poor helpless young boy into his private chambers.

The key issue here is that the demented sickness that underlies Rule No. 19 is by no means exclusive to the Taliban; it is a widespread phenomenon throughout Islamic-Arab culture and it lies, among other factors, at the root of that culture's addiction to rage and its lust for violence, terror and suicide.

There is a basic and common sense empirical human reality: wherever humans construct and perpetuate an environment in which females and their sexuality are demonized and are pushed into invisibility, homosexual behaviour among men and the sexual abuse of young boys by older men always increases. Islamic-Arab culture serves as a perfect example of this paradigm, seeing that gender apartheid, fear of female sexuality and a vicious misogyny are the structures on which the whole society functions."

More here. Dr. Sanity has some extended comments on the above.

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ELSEWHERE



False prophets are always with us. In March 2005, Peak oil prophets (including "expert" geologist Colin Campbell) predicted that oil prices would hit $200 per barrel within two years. Currently oil prices are $59 per barrel. Are they expecting prices to treble in the next three months?

Dangerous lack of realism: "Pacifism, self-hatred and complacency are lengthening the war against radical Islam and causing undue casualties. Only after absorbing catastrophic human and property losses will left-leaning Westerners likely overcome this triple affliction and confront the true scope of the threat. The civilized world will likely then prevail, but belatedly and at a higher cost than need have been."

Homosexual marriage challenged in Massachusetts: "Gay marriage in Massachusetts, the only state to recognize same-sex marriage, is moving closer to becoming a ballot issue in the 2008 election. State lawmakers voted Tuesday to advance a proposed constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union between a man and woman. The measure still needs approval of the next legislative session before it can get on the ballot. Supporters and opponents of gay marriage vowed to step up their campaigns in the meantime."

Military surrendering to homosexuals: "The Army general who was Joint Chiefs chairman when the Pentagon adopted its 'don't ask, don't tell' policy on gays says he no longer opposes allowing them to serve openly. John Shalikashvili, who retired in 1997 after four years as the nation's top military officer, had argued that allowing homosexuals to serve openly would hurt troop morale and recruitment and undermine the cohesion of combat units. He said he has changed his mind after meeting with gay servicemen."

British navy being phased out: "Almost half of the British Royal Navy's warships would be mothballed to slash Ministry of Defence costs, the British Daily Telegraph reported today. Prime Minister Tony Blair's Government had admitted that 13 warships were in a state of "reduced readiness" and six further destroyers and frigates were being proposed for cuts, the paper said. The move comes as ministers reportedly try to cut the defence budget by 250 million pounds ($621m) and amid major armed forces commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. "What this means is that we are now no better than a coastal defence force or a fleet of dug-out canoes. "The Dutch now have a better navy than us,'' said an unnamed senior officer. It was likely that the six destroyers and frigates would eventually be sold or scrapped, while there were also fears that two new aircraft carriers promised in 1998 would never be built, the paper said."

Boeing ends best-ever year: "Boeing said overnight it took firm orders for 1044 commercial aircraft in 2006, topping its previous record of 1002 orders for the year before and likely beating European rival Airbus for the first time since 2000. Sales were boosted by strong demand from European, Middle Eastern and Asian airlines, confounding analysts who had expected a slowdown in sales from 2005. Boeing was also helped by the outstanding success of its new lightweight 787 Dreamliner, which is set to enter service next year. Airbus, dogged by production and management problems, has badly lagged Boeing in orders for the past 12 months, notching only 635 orders by the end of November."

Duke lacrosse players go back to college: "Two college "jocks" accused in a sex case that exposed race and class divisions in the US are to be allowed to return to their studies at one of country's top universities. The decision by Duke University to readmit the pair comes as the case, sparked by the claims of a black stripper, unravels amid charges of unethical conduct by the prosecutor... Duke University cancelled its lacrosse team's season after the stripper, known as "Precious", complained that she had been gang-raped during a team party on March 13. Forty-six players submitted to DNA testing. Three - Collin Finnerty, Reade Seligmann and Dave Evans - were charged, even though police found no DNA match with samples taken from the woman.... Questions soon emerged about the story told by the stripper, a 28-year-old who studied at a predominantly black college nearby and worked as an exotic dancer part time. A second stripper called the alleged victim's claims a "crock", and a taxi driver disclosed that one of the accused had been in his cab at the time of the supposed attack."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************
posted by JR 1/06/2007 12:22:00 AM

Friday, January 05, 2007

 
ANTI-DEMOCRATIC LEFTISM

Ever since the 1950 book "The authoritarian personality", Leftist psychologists have been saying that it is conservatives who are anti-democratic -- ignoring great democrats like Joe Stalin and Mao Tse Tung. So the events decribed below by Taranto are another little dose of reality for them -- not that reality has ever mattered much to them, of course.

Massachusetts voters may get to decide on the future of same-sex marriage after all. Yesterday the state Legislature voted 62-134 (only one-fourth of votes are required) to advance a constitutional amendment that would reverse a Supreme Judicial Court ruling imposing such marriages on the state. The measure needs the same approval from the Legislature's next session to get to the 2008 ballot.

Proponents of same-sex marriage had urged the Legislature not to vote on the measure, notwithstanding a ruling by the Supreme Judicial Court that it was obliged to do so. Although the court held that it did not have the authority to enforce its own ruling, "But the court's criticism of the legislature appeared to be enough to make some lawmakers decide to allow a vote . . ., even legislators who support same-sex marriage and hope the amendment will ultimately be defeated":

"Certainly, the court ruling changed the atmosphere this week, in that legislators took a second look at their job description, at their oath of office, at a higher obligation actually, to uphold the constitution," said Kris Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, which sponsored the amendment.

[Gay-rights activist Arline] Isaacson said the court's decision "really tipped the scales against us."

An editorial in yesterday's Boston Globe urged the Legislature not to vote:

There has been much gnashing of teeth over whether the voters will be heard if the Legislature declines to vote on the amendment today. By now, legislators have debated the question in multiple constitutional conventions in 2004, 2005, and 2006. It is hard to say that the matter has not been aired. Last September, legislators took a final vote on a more lenient amendment--which denied marriage but explicitly established civil unions as an alternative--and defeated it, 157 to 39. That cleared the way for today's harsher version of the ban, which needs only 25 percent of the convention to advance.

The voters also have been heard at the polls in two separate statewide elections, where not one of the proponents of gay marriage was defeated and their margin in the Legislature increased. Governor-elect Deval Patrick was the only major-party candidate to steadfastly support gay marriage in the November election, and he won in a landslide.

Patrick also lobbied the Legislature not to vote on the measure.

Now, there is something very odd about this whole episode. The Globe and others seem to be against democracy rather than just for same-sex marriage. Why not urge the Legislature to do its duty and vote, and to vote the amendment down? Or why not welcome the opportunity to persuade voters to approve same-sex marriage by rejecting the amendment?

We wondered if the Globe had ever urged the Legislature to legalize same-sex marriage before the Supreme Judicial Court mandated it. The answer appears to be no, and in fact the Globe's view seems to be that this actually is the purview of the courts rather than the Legislature. In a July 8, 2003, editorial titled "For Gay Marriage," the paper argued that that wasn't the place:

Opponents say the Legislature should decide all issues dealing with marriage licenses. But the court is being asked for its opinion on a constitutional matter of fundamental rights--its proper purview--and it should deliver such an opinion.

Gay-rights activists are fond of likening their cause to the civil rights movement. But although civil-rights activists won many of their victories through litigation, perhaps the most important one was a legislative action, the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Voters in dozens of states have passed ballot initiatives designed to prevent same-sex marriage, and antigay bigotry is not the only motivating force. The resistance in Massachusetts to putting same-sex marriage to any sort of democratic test only reinforces the perception that its proponents have contempt for the consent of the governed.

Source

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ELSEWHERE

Leftist gobbledegook from Anthony B. Pinn, Rice University religion professor and atheist -- on black American humanism: "I argue here for the possibility of a humanist theology, a theology that holds community rather than God as the center of life altering questions, accompanied by an understanding of religion and theology as centered on the problem of evil, or theodicy. Christian theology as done within African American communities is premised upon a sense of redemptive suffering as the best response to moral evil in the world. Furthermore, this theological stance is intimately tied to the Christian tradition, complete with a God who is concerned for and working on behalf of the oppressed. It continues to be my belief that, although important in many ways, this theological stance and its narrow perception of religion may not be the best means of achieving the social transformation or liberation sought by the African American community. I conclude that a theological stance on moral evil requires an alternate religious system-African American humanism. This is not meant to dismiss Christian approaches out of hand, rather, to broaden the possibilities, the religious terrain, and to foster conversation concerning liberating ways of addressing the problem of evil. Humanist theology, and humanism as a religion, nonetheless need further explication." [How the Devil does an atheist get to be a professor of religion??]

Transfers to African Governments Triple: "The president has tripled direct humanitarian and development aid to the world's most impoverished continent since taking office and recently vowed to double that increased amount by 2010 -- to nearly $9 billion." [Money down the drain]

Private Police Services Expand: "Private firms with outright police powers have been proliferating in some places -- and trying to expand their terrain. The 'company police agencies,' as businesses such as Capitol Special Police are called here, are lobbying the state legislature to broaden their jurisdiction, currently limited to the private property of those who hire them, to adjacent streets." [Making up for inadequate government services]

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************
posted by JR 1/05/2007 12:06:00 AM

Thursday, January 04, 2007

 
BLOGS+GOOGLE = INFLUENCE

The small readership of most blogs would strongly suggest that no blogs other than the top three or four could possibly have much influence on anything. That however overlooks something: Google and other search engines. Because they are heavily interlinked (well over 1,000 other blogs link to this one) blogs tend to have a high page-ranking in response to any search. That means that what blogs say on any given topic tends to pop up on the first page of any set of search results.

And who are big users of searches? Journalists. Like most people they Google their own name and they also of course Google any topic they are "researching". Googling is a lot easier that getting out of your chair and going to look in person at what you are talking about. So what blogs say tends to get picked up by journalists (and Right-wing radio commentators too) and, in their constant search for something new to report, the blog-origin information or perspective may rapidly find its way into what they write or say. They may not like what the blog says but they like being "scooped" by other journalists even less.

So it is not mainly a matter of blogs and the MSM competing. What has developed is a symbiosis between blogs and the MSM.

I had an amusing example of how blogs affect journalists recently. My Greenie Watch blog usually gets only about 400 hits a day so you might think that it is one of those many blogs that are destined to flower in the desert, forever unnoticed by almost anyone. Yet it is not so. I get all sorts of email from people and organizations I mention in it. The amusing example: On October 4, 2005, I put up there a post that had a good laugh at a delightfully-named British journalist called Andrew Buncombe (pronounced "bunkum"). It mocked the old polar bear scare that he was doing his best to promote in "The Independent", a very "Green" British mainstream newspaper.

Recently, however, the Bush administration threw the Greenies a bone by commissioning a report into whether the bears were "endangered" or not. This was hailed as a great triumph by Greenies, and Buncombe was one of those elated. So what was one of the first things he did when he learnt of the new move? He emailed me suggesting that I now owed him an apology for the bad things I had previously said about him! He had obviously been stewing for over a year in response to my comments and took the first opportunity he had to shoot back at me! Commissioning a report into an allegation was a very small triumph but Buncombe clutched at it like a drowning man to save his self-esteem!

So whether journalists just google their own name or the topic they are writing about, they do read what is on blogs and they do take notice of what they read there. Whether it just generates heartburn in them or leads them to follow up the matter in their own articles depends on their intellectual quality, of course.

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"ZOMBIETIMING": BLOG POWER ON THE RISE

Excerpt from a BBC broadcast below -- talking about what to expect in 2007:

Tim Jackson: I think the biggest trend is going to be something which I call "zombietiming." And it's exceptionally bad news for journalists, because it's a trend in which people out there on the Web will be checking facts of television, radio and newspapers, and hauling people to account when they get them wrong.

Lawrence Pollard: So, we could all be out of a job. Thank you, Tim. We'll hear more from that in a minute.... And so finally, we come to Tim Jackson for our last big trend of 2007. Now, Anna's just been telling us how 2007 will become less cynical, but Tim: you're predicting we're going to grow more skeptical. You've got the best name for a trend: "zombietiming." And now this goes back, I gather, to the enormous amount of argument in blogging sites and on the Internet over the reporting of a rocket attack during the Lebanon War. Basically, um, whether or not a Red Cross ambulance had been hit by an Israeli rocket, and if it had been reported properly by the news agencies and so.... This is a story that just mushroomed and went on and your point is that this is going to go on and grow and it's going to become one of the big things of 2007.

Tim Jackson: Absolutely. We all know that journalists work under tremendous time pressure. Like tennis players or policemen or soldiers, they have to find the right balance between doing the best job they can and getting it done in time, finishing it by the deadline. ... What the newspapers failed to grasp is that something has changed in the world of journalism. It used to be the case that readers decided a newspaper that they trusted, and then relied on the reporter once they picked their newspaper or their television station or their radio station. Now it seems to be the case that story by story, journalists have to expect that if they're making a controversial claim, they've got to back it up with proof. And the reason I call this trend "zombietiming" is because the Web site that brought together all this information is called zombietime.com. ...

Mary Meehan: ... There is just this lack of trust out there. That lack of trust drives bloggers' needs to prove the media wrong and bust the myths and expose the lies -- y'know, be it lies or not -- and they have the power and the platform now to do it. They just don't trust something they can't see through. It's that transparency that they demand and expect. And they're gonna expose it if they can't get at it.

Source

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ELSEWHERE



France still in deep trouble: "A car burns after a huge police operation involving 25,000 officers failed to quell one of the most entrenched new year rituals in France, with vandals - many of them children - setting on fire 313 vehicles throughout the country. The worst-hit region was Alsace, where 106 vehicles were set ablaze, including 28 in Strasbourg. The attacks are seen as a product of tension on the suburban estates that are home to the bulk of France's five-million-strong immigrant community. Most of the cars were burnt in areas with unemployment rates of up to 40 per cent. The national average is 8.7 per cent."

As this review of "Betrayal: France, the Arabs, and the Jews", by David Pryce-Jones shows, French antisemitism did not end with the Dreyfus case in the 19th century. It shows that throughout the 20th century France was relentlessly pro-Arab and anti-Israel. Their reward is of course Arabs setting their suburbs on fire -- so there is some justice after all.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

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posted by JR 1/04/2007 12:12:00 AM

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

 
AMERICANS AS THE NEW JEWS

Implications of a British survey

I have written at some length here about why the Jews have been hated for so long by so many but there is no doubt that, particularly among Leftists, that hatred goes back to the fact that Jews are both distinctive and successful -- in a word: envy. Hatred of success and prominence in others is in fact at the heart of most Leftism so envy is a most important motive, not only in politics but also in everyday life -- as Schoeck pointed out and explained at length long ago. It would be almost true to say that the power of envy can never be underestimated.

And, without a doubt, despite their vast generosity not only with money but even with the blood of their young men, America is the world's most hated nation today. You can murder vast numbers of people -- as Saddam did and as Robert Mugabe is doing right to this day -- and nobody gives a damn. Even genocide in Sudan doesn't seem to be bothering anyone much. But be powerful, successful and demonstrably so much better than the norm and you will be hated.

I am saying nothing original in saying that. It is a common explanation of anti-Americanism. But now I think we have some rather clear proof of it. There was a recent opinion poll reported in Britain that, as expected, put America first as the most hated nation -- with 15% of the population nominating the USA as their prime hate object. Even more people dislike America than dislike the ghastly North Korea.

The interesting thing, however, is which nation was the most admired? It was the country most similar to America -- Australia was chosen by 18% of the respondents. The major difference between America and Australia is power and influence. Politically and culturally, America dominates the world whereas Australia is a bit-player. And it is no good saying that America is also more warlike. Australians have fought alongside Americans in all major wars since World War I -- and Australians have even been in some wars America has not -- such as the Boer war and recently in East Timor.

The power of envy to distort thinking is truly awesome. Fortunately, America, like Israel, is rather good at defending itself whenever it has a mind to -- which just makes it even more hated, of course.

A good quote from V.D. Hanson: "We gave the Palestinian Authority hundreds of millions of dollars for housing, schools, and security and they hate us; Saddam gave them a few thousand dollars as bounty for suicide murderers and they loved him"

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Where The New York Times Is Coming From

Post lifted from George Reisman

Below are the headlines of four obituaries that have run in The New York Times. The first is that of the recent obituary of the Anti-Communist Augusto Pinochet. The next three are those of the obituaries of the Communist mass murderers Mao, Stalin, and Lenin. Please be sure to note how many are described as having ruled by terror.

December 11, 2006, Augusto Pinochet, Dictator Who Ruled by Terror in Chile, Dies at 91

September 10, 1976, Friday, . . . Mao Tse-tung Dies in Peking at 82; Leader of Red China's Revolution

March 6, 1953, Friday, Stalin Rose From Czarist Oppression to Transform Russia Into Mighty Socialist State; RUTHLESS IN MOVING TO GOALS

January 24, 1924, Thursday, ENORMOUS CROWDS VIEW LENIN'S BODY AS IT LIES IN STATE; Wait Hours in Snow and Zero Temperature Outside Moscow Nobles' Club. COFFIN CARRIED FIVE MILES Members of Council of Commissars Stagger Under Load, Refusing Gun Caisson. LENIN CALLED A CHRISTIAN Archbishop Summons Synod to Declare Founder of Bolshevism Member of Church. ENORMOUS CROWDS VIEW LENIN'S BODY

In these headlines we find utter condemnation of a dictator who was relatively mild as dictators go, but who was Anti-Communist; his leading characteristic was allegedly rule by "Terror."

In contrast, in the case of Communist mass murderers we find non-judgmental tolerance in the headlines, along with a studious refusal to mention the incalculably greater terrors they caused. More than that, we find positive esteem and enthusiasm in the headlines for the Communist mass murderers. Thus Mao was the "Leader of Red China's Revolution"; Stalin allegedly transformed "Russia Into Mighty Socialist State"; and Lenin's funeral was described as a phenomenon of near worshipful enthusiasm: ".COFFIN CARRIED FIVE MILES Members of Council of Commissars Stagger Under Load, Refusing Gun Caisson."

It is patterns such as this that lead some people to think that the reporting of The New York Times is colored by its politics and that the color of its politics is red.

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Other grim statistics missed by the Media

Excerpt from a post by Gateway Pundit

The US has sadly lost 3,000 soldiers to date in the 45 months that America has been fighting the War in Iraq.

This grim milestone was presented by the AP and others today- without any historical context, of course.
So for the sake of truth, here are a couple other grim statistics that the media won't be mentioning in their grim milestone reports:

US Military Losses during the Clinton Years and in the Iraq War:

That's right! During the Clinton years, the US military lost an average of 939 soldiers each year. During the War in Iraq the US has lost an average of 800 soldiers each year- down each of the last two years!
These results were taken from Iraq Coalition Casualties, and Murdoc Online - the Official Department of Defense Report.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************
posted by JR 1/03/2007 12:05:00 AM

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

 
Mary, 'Palestinian refugee'

When it comes to the politicization of the Christmas story, I thought I had seen it all. But the London Independent's shameless mischaracterization of Mary, the mother of Jesus, as "a Palestinian refugee" takes the proverbial cake. The story by Johann Hari published Dec. 23 begins: "In two days, a third of humanity will gather to celebrate the birth pains of a Palestinian refugee in Bethlehem - but two millennia later, another mother in another glorified stable in this rubble-strewn, locked down town is trying not to howl."

It goes on to describe a 5-year-old tale of an Arab woman who claims she was stopped from entering Israel to deliver her twins and forced to go 20 minutes in another direction to an Arab hospital.

It's amazing. It's bizarre. It's breathtaking at what passes for Western journalism in the Middle East today. First of all, was Mary "a Palestinian refugee"? No, Mary was a Jew, living in the occupied territory of Israel. She wasn't trying to get to a Roman hospital to have her child. She was traveling with her husband from her home in Nazareth to Bethlehem, where the Roman authorities decreed those from the House of David would pay their taxes.

Who are these anti-Israel activists the Western press dispatches to cover the Middle East? Where do they come from? Where are they trained? Where are they educated? How is it possible that such drivel is actually published? What is it exactly that the so-called Palestinians want? Do they want their own homeland or not? It seems to me they've got it. But now they want to be able to travel into Israel for medical care? What's wrong with their own hospitals? Why is it that they don't decide to buy more medicine and fewer guns?

Don't get me wrong. I don't blame "the modern-day Mary" in this fable for wanting first-class medical care in Israel. And had Bethlehem remained under Israeli governance, that's exactly what the people of Bethlehem would have received. But the so-called Palestinians demanded their own country. Unfortunately for them, that means Palestinian hospitals, too.

Is that context not important for people unfamiliar with the region to understand? Is it not important for reporters covering the region to understand? Let's call this what it is: Deliberate deception. It is the worst form of propaganda. In another time, we labeled it agit-prop. What is the purpose? Is it to stir up more hate and violence?

More here

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THE LATEST POSTINGS ON ICJS

Aunty's anti-Western bias is a dangerous political tool
Death of religious tolerance in Malaysia
Privatising the war of ideas
Addressing the realities of Sderot
I am not a censor, says ABC bias chief
No merit in delusional approach to M.E.
Stewardess banned from carrying Bible
Ari Fleischer criticises Carter
No substitute for knowing your enemy
Public Statement from Melbourne Chareidi community
An open letter to Jimmy Carter
Revisiting The Horrors Of The Holocaust
Appeal by `Catch the Fire' allowed
Preachers claim win
James Baker's terrible Iraq report
Ronaldson supports condemnation of holocaust conference
Call for clarification of Rudd's Foreign Policy re Israel
Islam gets concessions; infidels get conquered
Israel lobby sets its sights on academe
Lecturer fears for tenure
Realism turns a blind eye
Muslim Veil Row
Throw the jew joke down the well
United Nations Human rights council fails Darfur

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ELSEWHERE

Woman turned away by doctor - for being American: "An American woman has been refused treatment by a doctor in Blekinge in southern Sweden because of her nationality. The woman's husband has now reported the incident to the Medical Responsibility Board..... But when the American woman, accompanied by her husband and niece, went to meet the doctor in his treatment room, he declined to examine her. Rather than introduce himself, the doctor waved the patient's papers and shouted "she doesn't have strep throat, she doesn't have strep throat". He then added that he would not treat her. "He said he didn't like Americans," said Johansson. He also disliked hearing English spoken in his treatment room and soon walked out. According to Johansson, the doctor was a Palestinian who objected to American foreign policy in the Middle East." [Israeli doctors treat Palestinians all the time of course].

Read here how the NYT refused to correct a lying story about abortion even after the paper's own ombudsman condemned the story. They are really arrogant and totally dishonest SOBs there. I guess that's Leftism for you.

Another way Britain gets people out of their evil cars: "Train fares will rise above the rate of inflation tomorrow for the fourth consecutive year, with passengers on longdistance services facing the highest increases. Bus passengers in London will find fares rising by more than double the rate of inflation, with the single cash fare up 33 per cent to œ2. Passenger groups said that the increases would encourage people to abandon public transport. Rail fares that are set by the Government, including season tickets and some off-peak tickets, will rise by 4.3 per cent. But the 60 per cent of fares set by private operators will rise by up to 11 per cent."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************
posted by JR 1/02/2007 12:04:00 AM

Monday, January 01, 2007

 
HAPPY NEW YEAR!

To all who come by here.

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Saddam And The Left

Excerpts from Sigmund, Carl & Alfred

Predictably, much of the left is in a frenzy over the trial and execution of Saddam, because for the first time in a very long while, they, like he, have been exposed for who and what they are- enablers and perpetrators of evil.

The hysteria and chest beating over the execution of Saddam is nothing more than narcissistic theater, designed to camouflage the frenzied demise of that fantasy of moral superiority. Like that great narcissist of our time, that former President they worship, many on the left have been exposed as moral impotents.To justify their existence the left need the trappings and phony good intentions of a pseudo-morality rather than substance of real morality- that ability to draw a line in the sand and commit to defend what is right. They need the equivalent of a cigar or other proxy to finish their self serving drama in the hope that no will will notice their diminished capabilities.

The pattern is clear, unmistakable and oft repeated. As the left screams about the execution of Saddam, they only highlight the truth that they don't really give damn about the victims of evil and never have. The Arab world has imposed the death penalty (outside the regularity of extra judicial killings that kill thousands each year) for centuries. Why is it now, with the execution of Saddam, that the left finds Arab capital punishment so abhorrent? Do not the doctrines of multiculturalism and moral relativism apply? Aren't the regional cultures of the Middle East equal to our own? What is it about the execution of one man the left finds so intolerable, even as in excess of 100 million women have been subjected to Female Genital Mutilation, with not a word from the `progressives'?

Much of the left highlight their moral impotence and indifference when it comes to Darfur. There are no voices from the left for the victims of the Janjaweed any more than there were voices from the left that spoke out for the victims of Saddam. There are no voices from the left decrying the Iranian mullahs repressive regime and their support for terror. There are no voices castigating the Saudis and their bigotry and more than there were voices from the left that spoke out about Taliban bestial behavior in Afghanistan. The fear, intimidation and murder that is a hallmark of the Allawite regime of Assad clan is ignored as is the pornographic behavior of the Palestinians, masquerading as a civilized society that is equivalent to the society the Israelis have built.

The true (im) moral center of the left is exposed every time the perpetrators of the evil or genocide are brought to justice. The track record is hard to ignore. The left have become Holocaust deniers. Like `academics' David Duke or David Irving, the mantra of the left has become one of blaming the victims or holding blameless the perpetrator. They will declare that Saddam had nothing to do with the evil and genocide that defined his 30 year tenure as dictator of Iraq, or the evil never really happened, or the Americans or Israelis or all Jews everywhere were really to blame. To the left, the victims, like the truth, matter little.

It is a cultural and moral imperative to fund an Iraq Holocaust Museum, as quickly as possible, because the same kind of morally bankrupt and evil worshipers of evil will deny Saddam's crimes as those who deny Hitler's crimes. Of course, much of the left will oppose that very idea, as they opposed the establishment of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC., much in the same way they desperately want a museum at New York's ground zero to highlight and emphasize America's evil and culpability that lead to the attacks of September 11, 2001....

The self serving pompous liberal ideology that somehow, `justice' for Saddam would be served if he were not executed, is absurd. Saddam was no more a common criminal than was Adolph Hitler. Saddam, like Hitler, was the embodiment of evil. His crimes were not committed out of some self serving need or moment of passion. The evil and genocide were a direct extension of the evil and hate he espoused, promulgated and implemented. Evil isn't a crime and evil isn't self serving. Evil, is by definition the real multicultural truth: the intent and destiny of evil is to destroy all morality and all culture and all society, everywhere. Support or turn a blind eye to evil in one place and the virus will spread....

Cancers of hate must be excised- there is not one single example of evil that has been talked into submission. Time and time again, the cost of doing nothing has been incalculable.

The Arab world that refuses to celebrate the death of Saddam only highlights the truth that they are infected with that virus of evil. The fact that it took outside forces to remove Saddam- something the Arab world itself should have done, long ago, only serves to highlight Arab world moral bankruptcy. That moral bankruptcy is highlighted everyday throughout the region as millions honor Saddam as an `Islamic hero.' What does it say about a culture and region that cannot bring itself to respect a freely elected national unity government in Iraq, preferring instead to lionize a purveyor of genocide and evil? What does it say about the left in this country and the west that deliberately espouse those very same values?...

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ELSEWHERE

As predicted: "Liberals protested the execution of Saddam Hussein today in New York and Boston. The International Action Center, affiliated with former Democratic U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and Saddam Hussein's Defense Attorney, organized the the rally."

An "assassination?: Captain's Quarters has a YouTube video of a TV anchor at WESH, an NBC affiliate in Orlando, who called the hanging of Saddam an "assassination":

How Business Trounced The Trial Lawyers: "By focusing on litigation reform at the state level, business has won key battles. Suddenly, it's a tough time to be a plantiffs' attorney... What has happened in Texas is not unique. In state after state, the tide has turned in one of the most protracted, hard-fought political struggles of the past two decades-the battle over so-called tort reform. Few other business issues have generated more controversy, polemics, and campaign spending than the effort to scale back the types of lawsuits people can file and how much they can recover.... But what Paulson and others have overlooked is that in large areas of the country, that "reform" has taken place, and business has emerged triumphant. The American Lawyer, an influential trade publication, recently declared an end to the era of mass-injury class actions, but the changes are far broader than that. Courthouse doors have slammed shut on a wide variety of claims. Michigan, for example, has virtually wiped out all lawsuits against drugmakers in the state. Six states have passed laws seriously restricting the kinds of asbestos suits that can be filed, and 23 now have statutes saying you can't sue the likes of McDonald's for making you fat. Damage limits in many states have rendered medical malpractice litigation nearly comatose. Both federal and state courts are reinforcing the trend... Even many victories are evanescent. According to a report issued by Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, an Alabama personal-injury firm, the Alabama Supreme Court reversed 27 of 31 plaintiffs' verdicts during its 2004-05 session.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************
posted by JR 1/01/2007 12:09:00 AM