Thursday, June 30, 2005

 
SCRUSHY ACQUITTED!

Pretty amazing news: "A federal jury in Birmingham, Ala., stunned observers Tuesday when it acquitted Richard Scrushy, the former HealthSouth CEO, of all criminal charges stemming from a $2.7 billion accounting fraud at the company he founded. And so the executive whose imperial lifestyle and dictatorial workplace demeanor once earned him the nickname King Richard has been spared the life prison sentence that has threatened him since his ouster from HealthSouth and subsequent indictment two years ago".

This is fabulous news. Federal prosecutions like this are a travesty of justice -- with plea bargains being used as straight-out subornation of witnesses. Who wouldn't testify the way the government wanted with the alternative being a long prison sentence? Fortunately, the jury saw it that way too. This article from last February tells in detail how unjust is the Federal prosecution system that Scrushy had to beat. With the acquittal of Arthur Anderson and Scrushy and the recent defeat of Spitzer in New York, business might be heartened to fight the government standover men in future instead of giving hundreds of millions of shareholders' money to parasites who have done nothing to create those assets.

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Brookes News Update

US productivity and investment: some truths and fallacies : Those who argued that all the US economy needed was the Net never thought about what it really takes just to supply it with cables and electricity let alone those little things called chips
The Society of St Vincent de Paul's Marxist claptrap and its attack on the free market: The Society of St Vincent de Paul recently released a study on inequality that was unadulterated Marxist claptrap
Technology, investment, risk and the state: Interventionists seem incapable of grasping the fact that savings fuel an economy and entrepreneurship drives it. Cripple both or only one of these factors and you cripple growth
China and its generals: The texts of Marx and Engels are the worst evils the West ever visited on an Asian country
The ownerships society: the animating principle of the 21st Century: The 20th Century's energizing dynamic was totalitarian socialism. Leading the parade were dictators like Stalin, Hitler and Chairman Mao

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I pointed out yesterday how economically illiterate are the fears of Chinese economic success. So I guess I should reply to the rumbles over the attempted Chinese purchase of an American oil company. There are two excellent articles for putting that scare to rest here and here but I particularly like this one.

Interesting quote from Hobsbawm -- Britain's famous Communist historian -- about prewar Germany: "If I'd been German and not a Jew, I could see I might have become a Nazi, a German nationalist. I could see how they'd become passionate about saving the nation. It was a time when you didn't believe there was a future unless the world was fundamentally transformed." That is of course a implicit acknowledgment of how close psychologically Nazism and Communism were. Hobsbawm also says that he saw the basis of his Communism as a sense of "mass ecstasy"; "pity for the exploited"; the "aesthetic appeal of a perfect and comprehensive intellectual system - dialectical materialism"; a "Blakean vision of the new Jerusalem"; and "intellectual anti-philistinism". So again we see that the main appeal of Communism was the psychological satisfactions it gave him. Whether it was right or benevolent was incidental.

Jeff Jacoby has a good comment on the constant Leftist claims that Bush and the GOP are "like Hitler": "But all they really accomplish is a kind of Holocaust-denial. After all, if congressional Republicans are ��worse than Hitler,�� then Hitler must have been no worse than congressional Republicans. Which means that the tyrant who drenched Europe in blood, created a hellish network of concentration camps, and sent more than a million Jewish children to their deaths is roughly equal to � maybe even better than � a political party that calls for tax cuts and welfare reform. Anyone who can say (or imply) such a thing is guilty of trivializing the Nazis� crimes and of cheapening the agony of their victims".

The un-American death tax, the bell tolls for thee: "'The Congress needs to make sure that the Death Tax is gone forever ...' So declared President Bush last week, effectively launching one of the most important debates that will come before the nation this year. Indeed, upcoming deliberations in the Senate over permanently repealing the Death Tax will explore one of the fundamental questions of our time: Do Americans work for the U.S. Government or does the U.S. Government work for us? Do we own the fruits of our labor or are they just on loan from Uncle Sam while we are alive?" [All such taxes were abolished in Australia years ago so why not emigrate when you retire?]

Death tax diagnosis: "Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid's designation of Sen. Charles Schumer [D-NY] to be his chief negotiator on the Death Tax issue is extraordinarily revealing. The Democrats are scared to death of the issue which provided the margin of defeat for Tom Daschle and has become a powerful issue in other states, as well. The marching orders to Schumer, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chief, are to defuse the issue before it takes down other small red-state Democrats up for re-election in 2006. Apparently Reid and company have been reviewing the polls that portend disasters in certain states for votes to keep the death tax. Recently, Frank Luntz polled in Maine, North and South Dakota, Indiana, Colorado and Arkansas and found 85 percent support for killing the death tax outright or significantly reducing it."

Individual rights a Christian idea: "The modern roots of our individual rights and freedoms in the Western world are found in Christianity. The recognition by law of the intrinsic value of each human being did not exist in ancient times. Among the Romans, law protected social institutions such as the patriarchal family, but it did not safeguard the basic rights of the individual, such as personal security, freedom of conscience, of speech, of assembly, of association, and so forth. For them, the individual was of value "only if he was a part of the political fabric and able to contribute to its uses as though it were the end of his being to aggrandise the state". According to Benjamin Constant, a great French political philosopher, it is wrong to believe that people enjoyed individual rights prior to Christianity. In fact, as Fustel de Coulanges put it, the ancients had not even the idea of what such rights meant".

Stupidity rules! For now: "Bursting into tears, eighth-grader Anurag Kashyap of California became the U.S. spelling champ Thursday. Tied for second place were 11-year-old Samir Patel, who is home-schooled in Colleyville, Texas, and Aliya Deri, 13, a Pleasanton, California, student." Indian kids have won first place in five of the last seven years". Might be there's a pattern here? Nah. A friend in California has an Asian wife (which both he and I recommend), and so is among the few whites plugged into the state's Asian community. He reports that the Asians are contemptuous of whites. ("Lazy, not very smart.") The evidence supports them. They also believe that the chief aim of schooling in America is to coddle blacks and Latinos, which baffles them. Me too, but it isn't my problem: "Top twelve students on the USA Math Olympiad 2003: Boris Alexeev, Jae Bae, Daniel Kane, Anders Kaseorg (home-schooled), Mark Lipson, Tiankai Liu, Po-Ru Loh, Po-Ling Loh, Aaron Pixton, Kwokfung Tang, Tony Zhang, Yan Zhang." Take out Asians and Jews out of measures of high intellectual performance in America, and you aren't left with much. The foregoing doesn't look much different from staffing lists I have encountered for such things as research teams at Bell Labs. A friend, writing a book on Harvard, calculates that Asians and Jews make up about forty-five percent of the school. The Asians know this, of course. They figure the future is theirs. So do I".

I have just put up a new post on my Scripture blog -- saying why I like the book of Ecclesiastes so much -- for rather the wrong reasons from a Christian viewpoint.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

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"

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 Page is here or here.

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posted by JR 6/30/2005 07:33:00 PM

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

 
SOME ECONOMICS: CHINA

The latest red herring that the Dems are trying to drag across the consciousness of the American people is fear of China. Take the trade deficit: What it means is that China sends lots of goodies (industrial products) to America and for most of that all they get in return is bits of paper (U.S. dollars). THAT should worry Americans? It seems like a sweet racket that Americans should be rejoicing about to me!

And because the panic is so silly, the Dems have to get really shrill in an attempt to disguise their silliness. As economic journalist Martin Hutchinson comments: "The late unlamented Senator Reed Smoot (R.-UT) was spiritually in full flow at the New America Foundation's Forum on America's Economic Future Wednesday, as Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rendell, ex-Senator Tom Daschle (D.-SD) and Senators Richard Durbin (D.-IL) and Byron Dorgan (D.-ND) competed as to who could say the nastiest things about China. Presumably trade policy is not covered by the "hate speech" laws these gentlemen favor, but any luckless Chinese exporter present must have felt like an African American from the old South who'd wandered into a Ku Klux Klan convention".

And Kristof of the NYT is at it too. He is getting hysterical about America's foreign debt. He is particularly concerned that the Chinese have been buying lots of U.S. bonds as a way of putting their trade surplus into a piggy bank. He says: "The biggest risk we Americans face to our way of life and our place in the world probably doesn't come from Al Qaeda or the Iraq war. Rather, the biggest risk may come from this administration's fiscal recklessness and the way this is putting us in hock to China.... Another issue is that three-fourths of our new debt is now being purchased by foreigners, with China the biggest buyer of all. That gives China leverage over us, and it undermines our national security"

It undermines American national security that China has lots of pretty bits of paper issued by the U.S. government? I'd like to know how! It's the other way around if anything. If real problems with China did develop, the U.S. government could cancel all those bits of paper and thus give China nothing in return for them. So the fact that China is putting its savings into U.S. paper SHOWS that China has no intention of permitting any serious future conflict between itself and the USA! It's the best peace treaty with China that the USA could have.

The above explanation is of course a bit simplified but it gives the essence of the story.

(I have also put this post up on Blogger News)

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I don't know if this study by Darius Maestipieri, a primate expert at the University of Chicago, is really worth commenting on. It purports to show that child abusers get that way not by genetic inheritance (e.g. by being born stupid, uncontrolled or aggressive) but by being abused themselves as children. The research concerned, however, was based on a small group of Macaque monkeys and I cannot see how the results can be statistically significant, let alone meaningful in any other way. And this finding would seem to contradict their conclusion anyway: "almost half of those raised by abusive mothers did not become abusers themselves." That seems to indicate genes at work to me. And I won't ask questions about measures taken to preclude observer bias. No good beating a dead horse.

Oh Boy! I have always thought that Leftists are humour-deprived. Now I have proof. The London chief of Fox news said this recently: "Even we at Fox News manage to get some lefties on the air occasionally, and often let them finish their sentences before we club them to death and feed the scraps to Karl Rove and Bill O'Reilly." And the Left are all taking it seriously! See e.g. here. What a sad lot the Left are! That he was just mocking their accusations of bias seems not to have occurred to them.

What a moron! The Bundeskanzler has obviously not noted that Ronald Reagan initiated America's long boom by CUTTING the top rate of income tax. "Germany's embattled chancellor, Gerhard Schr�der, yesterday unveiled his latest plan to win back disaffected voters by announcing an extra 3% tax on the rich. In the first of a series of manifesto commitments before September's election, Mr Schr�der said that he would impose the tax on anyone earning 250,000 euros a year - or 500,000 if they were married. Germany's top rate of tax would go up from 42% to 45%, Mr Schr�der said, adding that the extra revenue raised would be spent on research and development.

What fun! If you ever doubted that Leftists hate one another at least as much as they hate conservatives, you should read this or this -- where the previous leader of the Australian Labor party absolutely savages both the present leader and the party as a whole. Even I think he goes too far. I see the present leader as a decent man, if a bit dull. He is, for instance, a committed Christian and an opponent of abortion. The Australian Labor party is a lot more moderate than the U.S. Democrats.

Even in Sweden conservatives are happiest: One in four Swedes professes to be "very happy", according to a new survey. The happiest people in Sweden have high incomes, are in good health, and pray to God. The survey, carried out by researchers at Gothenburg University, showed that people who voted for the Christian Democrat or Moderate parties were more likely to think of themselves as happy. This despite seventy years of almost unbroken Social Democratic rule in Sweden. Happy people were also most likely to be young and be living with a partner or be married. Sixty-two percent of rich, healthy people said they were happy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, being poor and unhealthy is not so much fun. Only 7 percent of people in this category said they were happy. The researchers from the Society Opinion and Media (SOM) Institute at Gothenburg University, spoke to 3,000 randomly chosen people between the ages of 15 and 85.

Court: No Ten Commandments in Courthouses: "In a narrowly drawn ruling, the Supreme Court struck down Ten Commandments displays in courthouses Monday, holding that two exhibits in Kentucky crossed the line between separation of church and state because they promoted a religious message..... In his dissent, Scalia blasted the majority for ignoring the rule of law to push their own personal policy preferences. "What distinguishes the rule of law from the dictatorship of a shifting Supreme Court majority is the absolutely indispensable requirement that judicial opinions be grounded in consistently applied principle," Scalia wrote.... The cases marked the first time since 1980 the high court tackled the emotional issue, in a courtroom boasting a wall carving of Moses holding the sacred tablets.... Ten Commandments displays are supported by a majority of Americans, according to an AP-Ipsos poll. The poll taken in late February found that 76 percent support it and 23 percent oppose it."

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

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"

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 Page is here or here.

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posted by JR 6/29/2005 05:42:00 PM

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

 
TUESDAY ROUNDUP

Once again I list what I think were the best posts on my various blogs in the preceding week.

On Dissecting Leftism I look at the links between abortion, crime and race

On Political Correctness Watch I report on anti-Americanism in Australia

On Greenie Watch I note that the Vice president of the IPCC (U.N. body) has dismissed human-caused global warming

On Education Watch I note statistics showing that college is a bad investment: Spending taxpayer money on education REDUCES the income of the population

On Socialized Medicine I note that Australia shows how corrupt and money-mad a GOVERNMENT health system can be

On Leftists as Elitists I have an explanation of why British intellectuals still love Karl marx

On Majority Rights I report on tolerance and respect for the individual in Tudor England.

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A good post: "First, we understand that Leftism is Hate. It is aggression. It is the desire to devour valuable institutions under color of social justice, and to understand that one of the devouring methods is to erase our History. The Hate in America is not coming from racism, it is coming from those who won�t let racism die a natural death of old age. The Hate in America is not coming from inequality, but from coerced compliance with plans that will never work, and become resentful to everyone. The Hate in America is not coming from violent crime but from a refusal to allow the righteous resistance to it... The Ku Klux Klan was the terrorist arm of the Democrats at its peak. At the pinnacle of its raw terrorist power of mob psychology, hangings, shootings, beating and code of silence, the KKK was filled with Democrats, not right wingos, so that whatever some may say today in defense of former Klansmen, it was a Democrat movement for decades and never a Republican movement".

Muslims Have Desecrated Bibles and Churches. So what is all the mob angst over the Koran?: "The images of Muslims rampaging over rumors and unproven allegations of "Koran abuse" are troubling - but not because of the behavior of the mobs. What else should we expect from fanatics whose religion justifies a toxic combination of arrogant superiority, spiritual entitlement, and corrosive resentment over history's repudiation of their inflated estimation of their world-historical role? Their minds addled by this brew, they find it perfectly reasonable to believe gratifying fantasies in which 9/11 was the handiwork of Zionist agents, the United States has spent lives and treasure liberating Iraqi Muslims in a scheme to acquire oil, and Jews are the masterminds of a sinister plot to oppress Allah's darlings. No, what should trouble us is our own response. For the past week high-ranking officials of the United States government have been falling all over themselves assuring the rioters that we really, really do respect their "holy Koran" and would never, never sanction such disrespect. We like their religion, we really do; we respect and honor it and its marvelous contributions to civilization. And what have we received in exchange for all these protestations of respect and esteem? More riots and more contempt"

Government programs cause unemployment: "Martin Feldstein of Harvard University explains how social insurance programs undermine economic growth by subsidizing unemployment. The left instinctively defends these programs, but they often redistribute away from the poor and hurt the people they were created to help.... Noneconomists who write about social insurance programs often implicitly assume that social insurance programs do not affect the behavior of beneficiaries or the overall performance of the economy. Evidence shows that the opposite is true. Social insurance programs have important and sometimes harmful effects on the economy that are not fully recognized by the public, the Congress, or the politically responsible officials. A substantial volume of work during the past quarter century has shown the various ways in which social insurance programs do affect individual behavior and the overall economy. These effects include reducing national saving, inducing early retirement, raising the unemployment rate, pushing up the cost of health care, and crowding out private health insurance. ...

Aid wasted on Africa: "Africa's leaders cannot wait for the G8 leaders - hectored by Bob and Live 8 into bracelet-wearing submission - to double aid and forgive the continent's debts. They know that such acts of generosity will finance their future purchases of very swish, customised Mercedes-Benz cars, while 315 million poor Africans stay without shoes and Western taxpayers get by with Hondas. This is the way it goes with the WaBenzi, a Swahili term for the Big Men of Africa. The legacy of colonialism is a continent carved up by arbitrary frontiers into 50-odd states. But the WaBenzi are a transcontinental tribe who have been committing grand theft auto on the dusty, potholed roads of Africa ever since they hijacked freedom in the 1960s. After joyriding their way through six Marshall Plans' worth of aid Africa is poorer today than 25 years ago; and now the WaBenzi want more".

Abortion harms women: "Instead of arguing along traditional "pro-life" arguments that reference the fetus as a human being, an argument that Bachiochi claims "intellectually honest" pro-choice advocates have already conceded, Bachiochi disputed traditional "pro-choice" arguments, namely that abortion does not advance the rights of women. "[I want to] challenge the sacred dogma of mainstream feminism that abortion is an untrammeled good for women, that it is necessary to women's equality and women's well-being," asserted Bachiochi. "Many good-willed people have bought this idea - hook, line and sinker - but medical evidence, sociological data and the lived experience of many women has revealed a very different reality: abortion has harmed women, physically, psychologically, relationally and culturally."

Chris Brand has put up a lot of interesting posts lately. I have transferred them here for convenience. Chris has started to branch out to Blogger News as well.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

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"

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 Page is here or here.

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posted by JR 6/28/2005 05:38:00 PM

Monday, June 27, 2005

 
THE LEFT IS NOW REACTIONARY

"If you look hard at what unites the left across Europe and the US, it is decidedly reactionary. In continental Europe, emboldened by the French vote, the Left proudly proclaims a bold objective: Back to the Future. The French Left, and its allies in the rest of Europe, stands not for some progressive dream of international solidarity for the dispossessed, but four-square behind the protection of the continent's own illusory privileges. The Left's new rallying cry is to build a protective system that would impoverish Bulgarians, Romanians, Turks, Indians and Chinese and would, of course, as do all attempts to retreat from the realities of the global market, ill serve its own workers. And it is not just the European Left. In America, too, anti-globalisation is the turf that many Democrats are eager to defend. As Governor Schwarzenegger has discovered - and as Europeans have long known - the Left is also reactionary in defending the interests of public-sector trade unions against genuine reform and progress.

Besides anti-globalisation, the other main current in the current stream of leftish theory and practice is visceral anti-Americanism, again on both aides of the Atlantic. Nothing new there, of course. Except that what really rouses the animus today is not America's supposed global mission to exploit the downtrodden worker, but its ambitious objective of spreading democracy. In the Middle East the left finds it much easier to side with the mullahs and the jihadists, the persecutors of women and the torturers of dissidents. America's flaws at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib are viewed by the Left's political and intellectual leaders as morally indistinguishable from (or perhaps worse than) anything the Islamists and Arab despots have got up to.

To be fair, not all on the Left have taken their stand on the side of reaction. But the trends in political debate in the West are strikingly clear. We are well on the way to an inversion of the classic Left-Right divide. These days if you're in favour of policies designed to promote global economic integration, policies that have led hundreds of millions in Asia, Latin America, and Africa out of the misery of grinding poverty, and have significantly lifted the standard of living of workers in the West too; if you support change to topple tyrannical regimes and give some hope to people who have suffered in fledgling democracies, you're now more likely to be considered a conservative. What, exactly, is Left?"

Excerpt from The Times

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ELSEWHERE

A Party Without Ideas: "What has happened to the Democrats over the past few decades is best captured by the phrase (coined by Kevin Phillips) "reactionary liberalism." Spent of new ideas, they have but one remaining idea: to hang on to the status quo at all costs. This is true across the board. On Social Security, which is facing an impending demographic and fiscal crisis, they have put absolutely nothing on the table. On presidential appointments -- first, judges and now ambassador to the United Nations -- they resort to the classic weapon of southern obstructionism: the filibuster. And on foreign policy, they have nothing to say on the war on terrorism, the war in Iraq or the burgeoning Arab Spring (except the refrain: "Guantanamo")... Take trade and Central America. The status quo there is widespread poverty. The Bush administration has proposed doing something about it -- a free-trade agreement encompassing five Central American countries plus the Dominican Republic.... You would think, therefore, that Democrats would be for CAFTA. Not so. CAFTA is in great jeopardy because Democrats have turned against it".

Greenspan warns against China tariffs "Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned Congress on Thursday not to rush to impose punitive tariffs on imports from China, saying they would harm U.S. consumers and protect 'few if any American jobs.' It marked Greenspan's most blunt assessment to date that currency-related legislation that has attracted support from two-thirds of the Senate would harm the U.S. economy by driving up prices for the Chinese products Americans crave."

Geldof lies too: "one comment recently made by Geldof stands out more than any other. On Friday Night With Jonathan Ross on BBC 1 on 10 June, he told a hushed studio audience, and millions of viewers, about an island off Italy where 'thousands' of dead Africans - men, women and children fleeing poverty in makeshift boats - have washed up on the beaches.... But how accurate was Geldof's description? Not accurate at all, according to the mayor of Lampedusa. A spokesman for the mayor describes as 'absolute nonsense' the claim that Lampedusa is so packed with dead immigrants that it has no room left to bury anymore. 'There are 15 immigrants buried in the Christian graveyard in Lampedusa', he says. He also denies that dead bodies wash up on the shores of Lampedusa 'daily'."

PETA hypocrites: "While PETA lectures Americans about the "evils" of eating meat, wearing wool, taking children to the circus, and using lab rats to help cure cancer, the group puts to death most of the actual flesh-and-blood animals entrusted to it by the public.... As we're finding out from the North Carolina case, PETA picks up dogs, cats, puppies and kittens from shelters and veterinarians, often with assurances that new homes will be found for them. But in 2003 PETA killed over 85 percent of the animals it took in... If anyone else were responsible for these animals' deaths, PETA would hold a press conference to condemn them.... PETA has acknowledged killing over 10,000 animals between 1998 and 2003; recent reporting suggests PETA added 2,200 more to its body count in 2004. All while presiding over a gargantuan fundraising operation that brought in nearly $29 million last year. With that kind of money, PETA could afford to care for every single one of the animals it picks up -- if it weren't so hell-bent on spending millions turning children into vegetarians, demonizing people who don't have an all-polyester wardrobe, and misleading Americans about the medical breakthroughs that have only come about through the use of research animals... It's time for Americans who want to help animals to stop sending money to PETA, and start supporting their local animal shelters instead" See also Nathan Tabor on the same subject.

Mark Steyn has a hard-hitting article about the disgraceful aftermath to the tsunami disaster and what it shows about the hopelessness of international organizations. One excerpt: "The tsunami may have been unprecedented, but what followed was business as usual - the sloth and corruption of government, the feebleness of the brand-name NGOs, the compassion-exhibitionism of the transnational jet set. If we lived in a world where `it's what you do that defines you', we'd be heaping praise on the US and Australian militaries who in the immediate hours after the tsunami struck dispatched their forces to save lives, distribute food, restore water and power and communications".

Foreign aid bad for freedom: "Our regressions give some indication that aid decreases economic freedom... Our findings clearly can cast serious doubt on the proposition that aid increases freedom in poor countries. Given the World Bank's mission of promoting economic growth in poor countries and the strong empirical literature on the importance of economic freedom for growth, our paper indicates that since aid cannot be shown to have a positive influence on freedom, aid is unlikely to lead to development in poor countries."

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

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"

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 Page is here or here.

********************************
posted by JR 6/27/2005 05:53:00 PM

Sunday, June 26, 2005

 
ABORTION AND CRIME: ANOTHER INVISIBLE ELEPHANT IN THE BEDROOM

Warning: Very incorrect post coming up. It's all truth and logic, though

Steven Levitt's well-known finding that legalized abortion reduced crime in the USA is well summarized here. The summary does not mention Steve Sailer's challenge but that may be because Levitt himself has answered that challenge quite convincingly. The interesting part of the article comes at the very end however:

"I asked Don Weatherburn, director of the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, about Levitt's hypothesis. He says it's plausible, but there are other plausible hypotheses too. (Some can be found in the book The Crime Drop in America, edited by Alfred Blumstein and Joel Wallman.)

So what about Australia, which Levitt suggests has had a similar experience to America? Abortion was legalised here at about the same time as in the US, but Weatherburn says that most crime increased in Australia during the 1990s. He wonders if Australia's more generous welfare provisions meant that legalised abortion had a different impact here. Whatever the reason, our criminal class has remained free of the (unintended) eugenics Levitt says occurred in the US"

The unmentioned elephant is that Australia has very few negroes. And in America it is negroes who are both heavy users of abortion and a hugely disproportionate source of crime. So what the Australian result shows is that the effect is a negro effect, not an underclass or poverty effect generally. I guess I can understand that nobody wanted to confront that obvious inference but it does show that crime-reduction cannot be used as a GENERAL justification for abortion. It only works with negroes.

NOTE: Even though I am Australian blogging from Australia and the High Court of Australia has recently ruled that even the word "nigger" is not offensive in Australia, I do realize that the word "negro" is pretty unmentionable in polite American circles today. If I had however said that Australia has few people of African origin here I would be lying. We have a lot of them -- white refugees from Zimbabwe, South Africa and East Africa.

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ELSEWHERE

My best wishes to a great pastor: "The Rev. Billy Graham, hobbled by age and illness, opened his final American revival Friday, greeted with a standing ovation as he used a walker to reach the pulpit. Graham, 86, was supported while he moved onstage by his son and successor, the Rev. Franklin Graham, who then sat nearby, ready to step in if his father was unable to finish".

More Leftist hate: "American students are quitting Queensland universities in the face of hate attacks by Australians angry at US President George W. Bush and the war in Iraq. One university has launched an investigation into claims an American student returned to the US after suffering six months of abuse at a residential college in Brisbane. American students have told The Sunday Mail the verbal attacks are unbearable and threatening to escalate into physical violence. Griffith University student Ian Wanner, 19, from Oregon, said abusive Australian students had repeatedly called him a "sepo" � short for septic tank. "It is so disrespectful. It's not exactly the most welcoming atmosphere here," he said. The Queensland Anti-Discrimination Commission has described the abuse as "horrible" and says it could be classed as racial vilification".

The sick British welfare system: "The second revelation, by the economist Professor Bob Rowthorn, was the absolutely staggering size of the financial incentive for parents to separate. A couple on average earnings are taxed to the tune of 7,600 pounds per year; but if the same couple live apart, they receive 400 pounds in benefits. That's an astounding 8,000 pound incentive for parents to split up - and yet the disintegration of the family, with the number of lone parents tripling over the past thirty years, is the single most important factor behind our culture of incivility, disorder and crime"

In case you have not seen the excellent Karl Rove speech that has sent the Democrats into a fit, the relevant bits are here. Truth hurts. Reliapundit has proof that Rove was right.

Muslim hate-preaching in Australia: "Books sold at the store attached to the Brunswick mosque tell Muslims they should "hate and take as enemies" non-Muslims, reject Jews and Christians, and learn to hate in order to properly love Allah. The texts say Muslims should learn military tactics and suggest that if a person speaks ill of Islam it is acceptable to kill them. They urge Muslims to strike back against "the barbaric onslaught from their enemies -- the Jews, Christians, atheists, secularists and others". Pages are devoted to legitimising episodes of violence against Jews who insult Islam. "A Jewish woman used to abuse the Prophet and disparage him. A man strangled her till she died. The Apostle of Allah declared that no recompense was payable for her blood," one book recounts. A similar example is given of a man killing the mother of his two children because she "disparaged the Prophet"; he also was declared clear of any crime". As LGF says: "In the same Australian state where two Christians have been convicted of �religious vilification� thoughtcrimes for criticizing Islam, the so-called �mainstream� Brunswick Mosque is preaching Islamic supremacism and Dark Ages hatred of infidels and Jews"

James Z.Smith has an excellent comment on vegetarianism. I think he has got the vegetarians nailed on consistency grounds. But like Leftism, I suspect vegetarianism is not so much logical as a claim to virtue. I wonder if there are many Christian vegetarians? Genesis 1: 29,30 seems to indicate that vegetarianism was what the creator intended. Having "dominion" over the animals is a long way from eating them.

There is an excellent site here that has pictures from Iraq that you are most unlikely to see in the mainstream media.

I have just put up here some outspoken comments about the present situation in Zimbabwe extracted from Michael Darby's most recent report. Michael has had the honour a couple of years ago of being kicked out of Zimbabwe but he still has very good contacts there.

There is a sad and disgraceful story on SOCIALIZED MEDICINE today.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

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"

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 Page is here or here.

********************************
posted by JR 6/26/2005 06:43:00 PM

Saturday, June 25, 2005

 
SOME MORE ECONOMICS

Debt relief is largely bank relief: "Make no mistake. This not a bailout of Africa's poor or Latin American peasants. This is a bailout of the IMF, the World Bank and the African Development Bank. They will get the money to replace their lost loans. As in a Monopoly game where the rules are thrown out, they will be handed new money to play with. Bush and Blair are bailing out failed global institutions run by the highest-paid bureaucrats on earth."

The 250th anniversary of the discovery of economics: "There are those who have claimed Ludwig von Mises to be the greatest economist of the 20th century, particularly the first half of the century. Others have claimed that Murray Rothbard is the greatest economist or social scientist of the second half of the 20th century. I agree with both of these claims. These men were great in many different respects. However, the title of the best economist in history, I would give to Richard Cantillon.... But first, who was Richard Cantillon? Cantillon was a man of mystery. His biographer Antoin Murphy can only date his birth sometime between 1680 and 1690. He was born into an Irish Catholic family that had been dispossessed of its lands by Cromwell's forces. Ironically, his first job was as a clerk for the British Paymaster General during the War of Spanish Succession (1701-13).... Rothbard loves Cantillon stating that he "was the first theorist to demarcate an independent area of investigation -- economics -- and to write a general treatise on all its aspects."

Poverty that defies aid : "Tony Blair arrived recently in Washington to ask President George Bush to increase substantially U.S. aid to Africa. His visit came a few months after Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs unveiled his own plan to end extreme poverty around the world by 2025. 'In The End of Poverty,' Mr. Sachs argues rich countries should commit themselves to transferring some $1.5 trillion over the next decade to the poorest nations -- primarily in Africa. But, in truth, foreign aid is unlikely to succeed, because most of Africa's problems are internal."

This could be a description of government buses almost anywhere: "Metrobus, which carries 500,000 passengers a day across the region, is a dilapidated system that suffers from weak supervision, old equipment and buses that travel in bunches, wrecking schedules and service, a panel of bus experts told Metro directors yesterday.... Some mechanical breakdowns could be avoided if drivers properly inspected the buses before they begin their routes, as required by federal law, Scanlon said. "It will help you before you get a piece of equipment out on the road that then becomes a road call," he told Metro officials. "Your own audits and our observations show your operators are not doing it." Metro managers said they have begun to require operators to perform the inspections and about 70 percent are complying. The panel also found that bus service could run more smoothly with better supervision. Metrobus routes are plagued by "bunching," in which several buses on a route travel in a pack, Scanlon said. Bunching often occurs if traffic or some other problem causes the first bus to slow down and the following buses to catch up"

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

ELSEWHERE

There is a new article out in the American Political Science Review by John R. Alford, Carolyn L. Funk, and John R. Hibbing under the heading "Are Political Orientations Genetically Transmitted?". The article is not online but there is a summary of it in the NYT. Excerpt: "As found in previous studies, attitudes about issues like school prayer, property taxes and the draft were among the most influenced by inheritance, the researchers found. Others like modern art and divorce were less so. And in the twins' overall score, derived from 28 questions, genes accounted for 53 percent of the differences.... Although the two broad genetic types, more conservative and more progressive, may find some common ground on specific issues, they represent fundamental differences that go deeper than many people assume, the new research suggests." The finding is of course old hat among geneticists. I have summarized some of the previous evidence here

Amazing: "By yesterday morning, Mr Blair had become the toast of Europe. The British may have become cynical about his Honest Tony oratory and big-tent politics, but on the unsuspecting mainland, they still worked their magic. Just as Mr Blair is most enfeebled at home, across the EU he is being hailed as the natural leader of the continent: the only man who can save Europe from itself.... Most worryingly for President Chirac and Herr Schr�der is that their own countries� newspapers fell under Mr Blair�s spell".

That those great seekers of acclaim -- Leftists -- should have infiltrated and taken over organizations with real claims to righteousness -- such as Amnesty and many of the churches -- should be no surprise. But by their inherent lack of concern for truth and balance, the Leftists concerned soon destroy the credibility of what they have taken over. The one-eyed condemnation of Israel by the United Methodist Church that I mentioned yesterday and the equating of Gitmo with the Soviet Gulag by the most senior representatives of Amnesty are recent examples. If anybody needs a refresher course in just how divorced from reality the Gitmo=Gulag accusation is, see here

Another loon: "Yes, my friends, it is now obvious to me how Adolph Hitler seized power in Germany, because the same principles that Hitler used in the 1930's are being used by America's leaders today."

GWB the inspirer: "A reader living in Moscow," writes National Review's Jay Nordlinger, "sent me a photo from a rally in Azerbaijan, which showed a youth holding up a poster of President Bush with the words, 'We Want Freedom.' The reader commented, 'It's good to remember whom people turn to when they're desperate -- and it ain't Kofi Annan."' Indeed. It is fashionable in some circles to invoke the United Nations as the touchstone of moral authority, but realists know better. They look to the United States, not the UN, as the great moral engine in world affairs. Like the Lebanese who waved a US flag during the demonstrations in Beirut earlier this year, like the "Goddess of Liberty" in Tiananmen Square in 1989, the young Azerbaijani with his poster is a reminder that America and its message of freedom and individual dignity have an almost limitless capacity to inspire those who are denied them".

Good to see that Taranto is having a go at the puffed-up and hysterical Andrew Sullivan. Lots of little-known bloggers such as myself have long pointed to Sullivan's dubious standards (my earliest comment on him was here) but Sullivan routinely ignores such challenges. He could not ignore someone as widely read as Taranto, however.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

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"

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 Page is here or here.

********************************
posted by JR 6/25/2005 06:56:00 PM

Friday, June 24, 2005

 
LEFTIST EGOTISM

I recently pointed out that Leftist anti-Americanism makes most sense if it is understood as mainly serving a feelgood purpose for the Leftist. A reader has reminded me of an August 2002 article by Lee Harris which makes a similar point about the Vietnam activism of the 60's. I remember noting the article at the time it came out but it is well worth revisiting. A short excerpt:

"My first encounter with this particular kind of fantasy occurred when I was in college in the late sixties. A friend of mine and I got into a heated argument. Although we were both opposed to the Vietnam War, we discovered that we differed considerably on what counted as permissible forms of anti-war protest. To me the point of such protest was simple - to turn people against the war. Hence anything that was counterproductive to this purpose was politically irresponsible and should be severely censured. My friend thought otherwise; in fact, he was planning to join what by all accounts was to be a massively disruptive demonstration in Washington, and which in fact became one.

My friend did not disagree with me as to the likely counterproductive effects of such a demonstration. Instead, he argued that this simply did not matter. His answer was that even if it was counterproductive, even if it turned people against war protesters, indeed even if it made them more likely to support the continuation of the war, he would still participate in the demonstration and he would do so for one simple reason - because it was, in his words, good for his soul.

What I saw as a political act was not, for my friend, any such thing. It was not aimed at altering the minds of other people or persuading them to act differently. Its whole point was what it did for him.

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

ELSEWHERE

Methodist disgrace: "While the United Methodist Church has been quick to condemn Israel for alleged human-rights abuses, the denomination's General Conference has refused to consider resolutions on human-rights violations in China, North Korea, Iran, Vietnam, Pakistan, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Syria, and Egypt. The religious Left is so concerned about Israeli human-rights violations, real or perceived, but has nothing to say about Arab human-rights violations -- even when those violations include persecution of Christian minorities"

Yippee!: "The Anglican Church moved closer to schism yesterday when members of its central administrative council formally asked the Churches of Canada and the US to go. Unconvinced by the justifications offered by both Churches on Tuesday for their actions in ordaining an openly homosexual bishop and authorising same-sex blessings, members of the Anglican Consultative Council meeting in Nottingham asked them to leave the council and its central finance and standing committees."

Pretty good stuff from Mr Brown: "Gordon Brown called on the European Union last night to end its integrationist ambitions and make the radical economic reforms needed to turn it from a trade bloc into a force able to compete in the world. The Chancellor urged a "pro-European realism" whereby the Union rose to international challenges while accepting that identities remained rooted in the nation-state. Mr Brown outlined in his annual Mansion House speech how he and the Prime Minister would make economic reform the centrepiece of Britain's six-month presidency of the EU. Mr Brown went on the offensive over the European budget and called for sheltered markets to be opened up, "starting with agriculture". Tony Blair will repeat that message when he addresses the European Parliament today, seeking to dispel the "caricature" advanced at the recent EU summit of Britain being a Dickensian economy.""

Dems blame the messenger: "What's infuriating is that whenever a Democrat luminary goes before the cameras to initiate damage control he ends up sounding hopelessly immature. [Democrat Chairman Howard] Dean blamed the controversy over his uncouth remarks on the Republicans, because its 'exactly what [they] want.' Democrat Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, responding to Mr. Durbin's unfortunate analogy, said, 'The noise machine from the far right never stops. ... This is all a distraction by the White House.' For his part, Mr. Durbin has also blamed the 'right-wing media.' So, the Republicans and the White House are supposedly to blame for what Democrats say. No doubt it's all part of some insidious Karl Rove plot. As for the 'right-wing media,' Democrats apparently think it's incredibly unfair that reporters actually report what a politician has said. Here's some free advice to Democrats: Stop saying stupid things."

Hateful Leftist abuse of the 9/11 atrocity: "Less than four years after America was sucker-punched by terrorists, we are again under a vicious attack. Only this time, those who would destroy our way of life are working from within. Here, at the spot known as Ground Zero - where Michael Diehl was killed, along with nearly 2,800 human beings - planners are busy developing an "International Freedom Center." ... Planners entrusted with developing the Ground Zero memorial have determined that this city needs some sort of "cultural" - their word - component to the site. The idea is to build an educational center - more like an indoctrination center, it seems to me - with exhibits examining unrelated outrages of the past, many of them committed by Americans. Slavery and the treatment of American Indians, just to name two.... It seems the advisory committee for the Freedom Center is peppered with folks who brandish leftist political agendas. These include a Columbia professor who said, three weeks after 9/11, that he didn't know what was scarier - the terror attacks or the White House's response to them."

George Neumayr on Democrat non-standards: "If Terri Schiavo had been dehydrated to death at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, Dick Durbin would be reading her autopsy report from the Senate floor. ... Instead, Democrats -- even as they spent part of the week crassly celebrating, with news of Schiavo's autopsy report in hand, the human rights abuse of euthanasia against the disabled -- are in a moral lather over the paucity of air conditioning terrorists receive at Guantanamo Bay."

Ovi Magazine issue 5 is online from Finland. "The team has worked hard to produce nearly forty articles on a wide range of subjects, including graduation, disability, Michael Jackson, the E.U., handshakes, homemade cards, backgammon and so much more".

Libertarian Eddie thinks a lot of libertarians are being suckered by pseudo-moderate Leftist sites like tompaine.com

Strange Justice has an amazing story from Illinois. They framed an innocent guy and sent him to death row for murder. Fortunately he has now been exonerated. But they still have not got around to prosecuting the heavy criminal who actually confessed to the murder! Do they only prosecute innocent people?

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

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"

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 Page is here or here.

********************************
posted by JR 6/24/2005 07:51:00 PM

Thursday, June 23, 2005

 
BOOK REVIEW: THE END OF TIME BY DAVID HOROWITZ

Published by Encounter Books, San Francisco, 2005

David very kindly sent me an autographed copy of this book. I get lots of books for one reason or another but rarely read much of them. I have read so many books in my 61 years on this earth (when I was aged 8 I was already reading three books a week) that I mostly just read articles now. So when I picked up David's book, I expected just do do a quick scan. Instead I sat down and read it right through. The book crams an immense amount of thought into 155 pages but it is all expressed with such simplicity and clarity that it is for all that not the slightest labour to read. I have always said that obscure writing betrays confused thinking and that clear thinking yields clear expression. David's book is an excellent example of the latter.

The book is basically a reflection on life in general and David's own life in particular. As such it is not a directly political book but, given David's life in politics, there are many penetrating reflections about politics in it. So I think I will here mainly share a few quotes that I particularly liked as accurate summaries of the world:

"If you look long and hard enough, you will find that a lie is at the root of most human wrong"

"The desire for more than is possible is the cause of greater human misery than any other"

"How can utopians dream of changing the world when it is so difficult to lose an inch off one's waistline?"

"My father's prophet was Karl Marx, who was himself descended from a long line of Rabbis"

"What Mohammed Atta and my father wanted was an escape from this life"

"My father was a decent man who was not prepared to harm others ... But along with millions of decent progressive souls, my father abetted those who did just that. Progressives looked the other way and then endorsed murder of untold innocents for the same reason that Mohammed Atta and the Islamic martyrs did: to make the new world possible"

"This very envy and the cruel desire for revenge that accompanied it were Joseph Stalin's most human traits"

"To the devoted [Leftist] the source of human misery cannot be located in a deficiency of self [i.e. a deficiency in himself], let alone the wish to escape it [i.e. escape his own deficiencies]"

"Self-loathing is the secret revolutionary passion"

"Social redeemers ... cannot live with themselves or the fault in creation, and therefore are at war with both. Because they are miserable themselves, they cannot abide the happiness of others"

"The Devil they [Leftists] hate is in themselves"

"The personal dream of every revolutionary is to be at the center of creation and the renewal of the world"

"Here is why you cannot change the world: Because we -- all 6 billion of us -- create it"

"The lack of respect for immovable differences is the cause of endless human grief, and is why my father's dreams have failed"

Because the book is largely autobiographical, we read a lot about the type of person David is and the type of person his father was. And the thing that stands out starkly is what an unhappy soul David's Marxist father was and what a gluecklich (lucky, happy) person David comes across as being. This of course fits in perfectly with what heaps of survey evidence shows -- that conservatives are happier people than Leftists (see e.g. here). And how happy you are is a fairly stable part of what you are -- almost regardless of your objective circumstances -- as this shows. Where David ended up ideologically, then, was predictable from his personality. And ditto for his father. Nature certainly triumphed over nurture in David's case.

It is always impressive how much personality -- what you basically are -- is central in the end. David and I have very similar views politically but we could not have had more different life-histories. I am a lifelong conservative from parents whose main attitude to politics was skepticism, for instance. But I too see myself as having had a full and blessed life and that obviously underlies my views. Happy people have no axe to grind and they have no need to deny reality.

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

ELSEWHERE

Wow! The Terri Schiavo controversy is not over yet. Sherry Eros M.D. critiques the autopsy report and comes to some pretty savage conclusions.

I received a number of interesting email comments in response to my post yesterday about conservative blogs falling behind. I have posted three of the comments here

I have also received some interesting comments in response to my post about the motivations of Jewish Leftists. I reproduce two of them here.

The latest Leftist hysteria: "Gays are the new Jews". What an insult to Jews! Jews really are under attack in much of the world today (not least from Leftists) -- while homosexuals are mostly pandered to these days.

There is an interesting outline here of what Arnie's special election in California is all about. It should certainly stop some Democrat abuses if the voters support it.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

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"

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 Page is here or here.

********************************
posted by JR 6/23/2005 09:51:00 PM

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

 
CONSERVATIVE BLOGS FALLING BEHIND?

There has been a bit of discussion (e.g. here) of this article, which notes that the Leftist blogosphere now gets lots more hits than does the Conservative/libertarian blogosphere. The article says that the reason for the difference is that there are few conservative group-blogs and that few of the top conservative bloggers allow comments. There may be something in that. It certainly seems to be broadly true that group blogs attract more hits -- presumably because of a greater variety of material on them. And comments are very popular too. And I do myself contribute voluminously to a group blog that has very active comments and gets a lot of hits -- Majority Rights.

I doubt that different formats are the principal explanation for the recent upsurge of hits on Leftist blogs, though. I think that the recent conservative advance in the Anglosphere -- decisive election wins by GWB, John Howard and Tony Blair in America, Australia and Britain -- is the reason. Leftists are getting demoralized and are looking more and more for talk that will help prop up their views. They NEED blogs more than conservatives do. And I wouldn't mind betting that as GWB gets more and more of his judicial nominees through the Senate, more and more Leftists will be turning to the Left blogosphere for comfort. [Yes. I know that Tony Blair is more a centrist than a conservative but the Left hate him nonetheless].

Let me take this opportunity, however, to say that I would welcome co-bloggers for GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS if anybody of libertarian-conservative views is interested. The first three of those get respectively about 250, 350 and 100 hits a day at the moment. I don't have counters on the others. Their current ranking according to the Bear are respectively 2884, 1967 and 5369 -- which is certainly humble -- but all three are still ahead of around 8 million other blogs so they are a hell of a lot better than starting from nowhere.

Who knows? You could be another Chrenkoff and go from nowhere to 2 million hits in your first year! And Chrenkoff lives in the same quiet little backwater that I do -- only about 15 minutes drive away, in fact. Chrenkoff has got some fabulous pictures up at the moment, by the way.

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

ELSEWHERE

There is a rather fun article here that interprets America as a country driven by hypomania -- the sub-clinical version of manic-depressive psychosis. It's not a bad theory in isolation but rather falls down when you look at other nations. The Chinese, for instance, are even more hard-driving and entrepreneurial than Americans. Are they utter fruit-loops? And Australia has a similar history to America but is also one of the world's most laid-back countries.

The Dems are blocking the appointment of Bolton as U.N. ambassador once again. Serve them right if GWB left the position unfilled. That WOULD be fun. It would mean a virtual withdrawal of the USA from the UN. Yippee!

Blair tries to force rationality on the French: "Britain is trying to turn the tables on President Chirac by drawing up plans to trade in its rebate from Brussels in return for guaranteed cuts in farm subsidies. Tony Blair, who takes over the EU presidency in ten days, is confident that he can win enough allies to force the French President, his main adversary at last week's Brussels summit, to accept fundamental reforms of Europe's farming budget.... Under the British plan the Government would agree to scale back its �3 billion-a-year rebate in return for a fundamental review of EU spending in 2008, leading two years later to substantial cuts in the annual 50 billion Euro (34 billion pound) Common Agricultural Policy."

The hero of British intellectuals hasn't changed: "His influence may have waned on the global political stage, but Karl Marx seems certain to be voted the world's greatest philosopher in a new poll. He is racing ahead of rivals two weeks before voting ends in the poll of listeners to the BBC Radio 4 discussion programme In Our Time".

Marx the false prophet: "All of Marx's major predictions have turned out to be wrong. He said that societies based on a market economy would suffer spiraling class polarization and the disappearance of the middle class. Every society lucky enough to enjoy the fruits of a market economy shows that Marx was wrong about that. He predicted the growing immiseration and impoverishment of the working class in capitalist societies. (Actually, he didn't merely predict that it would happen, he predicted that it would happen necessarily and inevitably-thanks, Hegel!) The opposite has happened. Indeed, as Kolakowski notes, "in the second edition of Capital Marx updated various statistics and figures, but not those relating to workers' wages; those figures, if updated, would have contradicted his theory." Marx further predicted the inevitable revolution of the proletariat. This is the very motor of Marxism. Take away the proletarian revolution and you neuter the theory. But there have been no proletarian revolutions. The Bolshevik revolution, as Kolakowski points out, "had nothing to do with Marxian prophesies. Its driving force was not a conflict between the industrial working class and capital, but rather was carried out under slogans that had no socialist, let alone Marxist, content"

Jihadist shatters Leftist myths: "Note how in this one Washington Post story how almost every one of our Western myths promulgated by the antiwar Left is shattered by a candid jihadist himself. First, there was always radical Islamic anti-American hatred that preceded Iraq. Indeed, celebrations were spontaneous immediately after September 11 on the mere news of slaughtered Americans.

Lost Tooth Society is rightly aggrieved that he has for so long been deceived by Leftist propaganda into believing that the death penalty is not a deterrent to murder. He summarizes a few of the studies which show that it is a BIG deterrent to murder.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

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"

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 Page is here or here.

********************************
posted by JR 6/22/2005 07:04:00 PM

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

 
TUESDAY ROUNDUP

Once again I list what I think were the best posts on my various blogs in the preceding week.

On Dissecting Leftism I explain that Leftist America-hatred can only be understood psychologically, not logically.

On Greenie Watch I note why solar power will remain a fantasy

On Political Correctness Warch I note that an aggressive black Muslim was hired to give "sensitivity training"!

On Education Watch I note that Britain's equivalent of charter schools are making a big difference

On Socialized Medicine I note that Canada is sending some pregnant women to the USA for medical care

On Gun Watch I tell of a guy who tried to rob a ladies' beauty college but who got a lot more than he bargained for

On Leftists as Elitists I note the amazing arrogance of the French elite

On Majority Rights I tell three inspiring stories about how civil three English-speakling countries have been

On Blogger News I say why I am a monarchist

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ELSEWHERE

The Dutch talk tough: "Immigration and Integration Minister Rita Verdonk has ordered three imams accused of being a threat to public order and national security to get out of the Netherlands. The trio have been accused of preaching a militant anti-western message at Al Fourkaan mosque in Eindhoven and allowing young people to be recruited for Jihad. They will be expelled if they do not leave the country voluntarily, Verdonk has vowed. She has given them a month in which they can challenge her order but they cannot stay in the Netherlands pending the outcome of any appeal.... The Dutch intelligence service AIVD indicated that the imams "contribute to the radicalisation of Muslims in the Netherlands", the Justice Ministry said earlier this year. The ministry claimed the imams tried to recruit, or tolerated the recruiting, of Muslims for Jihad, or holy war. They are also accused of using their sermons to urge Muslims to "isolate" themselves from the rest of Dutch society".

Republican Dan has a big post on what a disaster the recruitment of women into the U.S. military has been. Just one excerpt: "At Annapolis, a female midshipmen was allowed to graduate and receive her commission despite having refused to complete the mandatory 34-foot jump into water, simulating abandon ship, because of her fear of heights. As Stephanie Gutmann wrote in The Kinder, Gentler Military (2000) women in Army basic training often begin to cry when they have to descend from a rappelling tower, and some women are so panic-stricken that they cannot rappel at all. In perhaps the most reckless display of feminism, women are allowed to serve on shipboard even though a 1981 Navy study showed that they are not capable of handling heavy fire equipment, carrying stretchers, or advancing hose lines. Needless to say, such incompetence puts the lives of men and the safety of the ship at risk. It is an immoral thing to allow. Integration was billed as a tremendous success while men behind the scenes worked overtime to prevent its failure from coming to light".

Protests about homosexual "marriage" in Spain: "Hundreds of thousands of people led by 20 Catholic bishops and conservative opposition leaders clogged downtown Madrid yesterday to demonstrate against the Socialist government's Bill to legalise gay marriage and let gay couples adopt children. About 500,000 people chanted in favour of the family and children's rights in a march called by a lay Catholic group the Spanish Forum for the Family. Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega accused protesters of discrimination and of wanting to deny to others they rights they enjoyed. The new law "does not oblige anyone to do anything they don't want to do", Ms Fernandez de la Vega she said. The gay marriage Bill is expected to be law in a matter of weeks. It has been passed by the lower chamber of Parliament and will be voted on next week by the Senate".

Freedom requires responsibility: "During a talk with Simon Bilo, former Mises Institute fellow and one of the organizers of the conference, I was informed that the Communist Party in the Czech Republic got more than 20% of the total votes in the last political elections. It is now the second largest party in the country. I knew that Communist Parties in Eastern Europe remain a strong power and enjoy some measure of popular support. Still, it is strange. It cries out for explanation. Why do some wish for slavery? Why do people still support Communist Parties?.... When democratic or communist institutions have been established for several decades, the way back to liberty is very difficult. People become used to safety nets and responsibility shifting... But Eastern European countries have experienced in recent years the transition from irresponsible societies (under communist regimes) to partially responsible ones (under democratic regimes). From these transitions, we've learned that people cannot learn to be responsible overnight. The more a society loses touch with mechanisms of cause and effect, the more there is going to be a demand for shifting blame. This demand might take the form of votes to Communist Parties. Freedom is not easy to cope with once people have become accustomed to slavery".

Michael Darby is online again with another series of posts about Zimbabwe, global warming, Gitmo, alternative fuel nonsense and much more (PDF).

Strange Justice has an appalling story of politically correct injustice in Britain.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

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"

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 Page is here or here.

********************************
posted by JR 6/21/2005 09:49:00 PM

Monday, June 20, 2005

 
SAYET RIGHT

Evan Sayet is doing a great job of showing up the follies and inconsistencies in Leftism. His analyses of Leftist thinking are in many ways spot-on. And I encourage people to have a read of his blog right now. You will note that he freely admits, however, that some things about "liberals" are just incomprehensible to him. He is not alone in that. Leftists are incomprehensible to a lot of people. And the reason they are incomprehensible is that we treat Leftists with more courtesy than they deserve. We take seriously statements they make that are not at all serious. We assume that Leftism is a set of ideas or even a philosophy when it is neither of those things. Leftism is a posture, not a set of ideas. And as such it can only be understood psychologically rather than logically. The Leftist is not at all bothered by his inconsistencies or failures to recognize reality. So to discover inconsistencies and unreality in his utterances is both easy and irrelevant. A Leftist utterance is not aimed at any sort of serious explanation of the world at all. It is aimed simply at making the Leftist feel good -- and hopefully of persuading others that he is a good guy too.

So the Leftist can quite cheerfully say that there are no genetic influences on human behaviour when discussing IQ and then go on immediately to say that homosexuality is genetically inherited ("the gay gene"). To conservatives that sounds like inconsistency and it is certainly logically inconsistent. But the Leftist isn't really bothered about logic. What he says is psychologically consistent. In both cases he is casting himself in the heroic role of the defender of the underdog.

In the case of homosexuals, the disgust that most normal people feel about homosexuality means that they will always to some extent be underdogs so the Leftist aims to show how much kinder and wiser he is by defending them. And if "they can't help it" ("the gay gene" theory) seems to be the best defence of them he will say that. But in the case of IQ the idea that there is an inborn disposition to be good or bad at solving most problems implies that people who prosper may be prosperous for a good and just reason. And that conflicts with the Leftist's desire to feel and look kind and wise by championing the poor. So in this case he has to DENY that the poor "can't help it". It sounds a lot better to say that poverty is the result of wicked and unkind people conspiring to keep poor people down. And saying that shows the Leftist as "caring" about the poor and as being so wise as to see causes of poverty that others cannot. So he denies that there is any such thing as IQ, let alone an inherited IQ. He claims that poverty is the result of "oppression" and "injustice", not of lesser ability to make good decisions in life. A century of evidence about the reality, importance and heritability of IQ does not bother him because evidence is not what he is concerned about. So let us apply that understanding to two of the things that puzzle Evan.

1). He cannot understand how his New York liberal relatives are so reflexively anti-American: But he tries foolishly to apply logic to their statements when there is no logic there. Their anti-Americanism is a CLAIM on their own behalf, not a rational proposition. It is a claim to being superior. They are in effect saying: "We are good and smart and wise -- not like all those other dumb Americans around the place". They knock Americans as a way of feeling better about themselves -- just as Europeans do. And, like Europeans, such knocking shows that they secretly fear that they may in reality be inferior. If they really were demonstrably superior they would not feel any need to put other people down.

2). He cannot understand why American Jews are so Left-leaning when the Left is so antisemitic. But again what we see there is a claim: "We are superior -- We are not like all those ignorant Goyim who infest the place". So again their anti-Americanism takes precedence over everything else. Their egos are more important to them than gratitude for the safety that only those dumb Americans give them. One should really feel sorry for people whose egos are so weak as to need propping up in that way. But I guess that thousands of years of persecution should be expected to engender some defensiveness.

Just to be totally clear, I should stress that I am above talking about Left-leaning Jews, not Jews in general.

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ELSEWHERE

Stephen Eric Bronner is Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University. He is also the modern-day equivalent of a Soviet apparatchik. Take this bald assertion, for which not a shred of evidence is offered: "Leaders of all the "great powers" who built the postwar compact were complicit, some perhaps more and others perhaps less than their predecessors and successors, in shaping the nightmare of poverty and instability that still hovers over the once colonized world.". When Britain gave independence to its former African colonies, it handed over well-organized, stable and generally peaceful countries. Since then all of the countries concerned have descended into repeated orgies of bloodshed and violence -- with the poverty that must result from that. That was the doing of the British? And in Singapore and Malaysia, the British followed much the same policies. And those countries have prospered mightily since independence. So if it is British policies that stuffed up Africa, how come the same policies did not stuff up Singapore and Malaysia? And how come Hong Kong prospered so mightily under British rule? Bronner is a perfect illustration of how Leftists ignore any facts that don't suit them.

Are libertarians more highly evolved? "Are libertarians higher evolved politically? One California professor thinks so. In 'The People's Romance: Why People Love Government,' Daniel Klein says that humans have an instinct for big government. Klein, an Associate Professor of Economics at Santa Clara University, argues that humans have a communal urge that is an evolutionary vestige which should be discarded in favor of individual freedom. In his 50-page paper in The Independent Review, Prof. Klein quotes Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations, 1776 & Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759) and Karl Marx to explain his thesis. Prof. Klein argues that people have a 'yearning for encompassing sentiment coordination.' This means that people have a primal instinct to be part of One Great Clan; we naturally want a common experience of shared values and we need 'focal points' for this togetherness, and government is a natural focal point."

An excellent article here on how the Bush tax cuts have led to a big INCREASE in government revenue. It's a plain fact but don't expect any Leftist to acknowledge it.

Some group of loopy Leftist do-gooders have just published a pie-in-the-sky "Manifesto of Wellbeing". There is a satirical look at it here.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

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"

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 Page is here or here.

********************************
posted by JR 6/20/2005 06:56:00 PM

Sunday, June 19, 2005

 
SOME ECONOMICS

"Unfair" dismissals help the unemployed: "First, less employment protection will mean more hiring and more firing and, hence, more job churning. For those with jobs, this may not sound like a particularly enticing prospect. But for the unemployed, it matters a lot. The flip side of greater certainty that those with jobs will remain employed is greater certainty that the unemployed will remain unemployed. With decreased hiring, those without work are likely to remain jobless for longer. Indeed, cross-country evidence shows a robust relationship between employment protection and higher long-term unemployment. Making hiring and firing easier will help spread the burden of unemployment across the workforce. Since we know that the worst results of unemployment come from the de-skilling and depressing effect of prolonged joblessness, this provides a powerful equity argument for reform. Moreover, this also yields an important efficiency argument: if adverse macroeconomic shocks cause long-term unemployment to rise, it can take decades for the economy to recover.... Research by Olivier Blanchard and Justin Wolfers finds that countries with less strict firing laws recover more robustly following adverse economic shocks. Those who benefit most from a rapid recovery are the most disadvantaged in Australian society".

Economics at work on births: "Tough child support laws may dissuade men from becoming unwed fathers, a new study shows. Researchers at the University of Washington and Columbia University found that states with the most stringent child support laws and strict enforcement have up to 20 percent fewer unwed births. Child support laws' power to prevent single parenthood is an unintended consequence of a policy designed to help children and cut public welfare costs, the researchers said Friday. "Often the unintended effects are bad, so it's refreshing to see that," said lead study author Robert Plotnick, University of Washington professor of public affairs. "Women living in states that do a better job of enforcing child support are less likely to become an unwed mother."

The names of Smoot and Hawley will live in infamy: "Only a few economic historians are likely to notice June 17 marks the 75th anniversary of the signing of the Hawley-Smoot tariff bill.... the same kind of thinking that led to the Hawley-Smoot tariffs is still alive and well -- and in full youthful vigor -- in the media and in politics today. At the heart of past and present arguments for restricting imports that compete with American-made products is the notion these imports cost American jobs.... If 9 percent unemployment was troublesome in 1930, when the Hawley-Smoot tariff was passed, it was nothing compared to the 16 percent unemployment the next year and the 25 percent unemployment two years after that. The annual U.S. unemployment rate never got back down to 9 percent again during the entire decade of the 1930s. American industry as a whole operated at a loss for two consecutive years. Farmers, who had strongly supported the Hawley-Smoot tariffs, saw their own exports cut by two-thirds as other countries retaliated against U.S. tariffs by restricting imports of American industrial and agricultural products. The economists' appeal had warned of "retaliatory tariffs" setting off a wave of international trade restrictions that would hurt all countries economically. After everything these economists had warned of came to pass, tariffs began to be reduced. But throughout the 1930s they remained above the pre-Hawley-Smoot levels -- and so did unemployment".

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ELSEWHERE

That pesky IQ again: "People with bigger brains are smarter than their smaller-brained counterparts, according to a study conducted by a Virginia Commonwealth University researcher published in the journal "Intelligence." The study, published on line June 16, could settle a long-standing scientific debate about the relationship between brain size and intelligence. Ever since German anatomist and physiologist Frederick Tiedmann wrote in 1836 that there exists "an indisputable connection between the size of the brain and the mental energy displayed by the individual man," scientists have been searching for biological evidence to prove his claim. "For all age and sex groups, it is now very clear that brain volume and intelligence are related," said lead researcher Michael A. McDaniel, Ph.D., an industrial and organizational psychologist who specializes in the study of intelligence and other predictors of job performance".

EU falling apart: "The EU summit to agree a budget collapsed last night amid some of the most bitter recriminations ever seen between European leaders, with Jacques Chirac denouncing the British position as pathetic and tragic, and Tony Blair describing the French defence of agricultural subsidies as bizarre."

The sick man is Europe: "That Europe as an entity is sick and the European Union as an institution is in disorder cannot be denied. But no remedies currently being discussed can possibly remedy matters. What ought to depress partisans of European unity in the aftermath of the rejection of its proposed constitution by France and the Netherlands is not so much the foundering of this ridiculous document as the response of the leadership to the crisis, especially in France and Germany. Jacques Chirac reacted by appointing as prime minister Dominque de Villepin, a frivolous playboy who has never been elected to anything and is best known for his view that Napoleon should have won the Battle of Waterloo and continued to rule Europe.... Europe, which grew rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s, before the EU got going, has slowly lost pace since Brussels took over its direction and imposed convergence. It is now stagnant".

Gitmo: "The general leading the force to free the captive enemy from the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, and inflict a humiliating defeat on the United States is so-called "civil rights" and "Constitutional" attorney Michael Ratner. It was Ratner who led the way in recruiting elite lawyers to defend the enemy combatants being interrogated at Gitmo. But Ratner is a long-time leader of two pro-Communist and anti-American organizations who have for decades have lent aid and comfort to America's enemies in the Cold War and beyond. Michael Ratner is a lawyer who began his legal career in the late 1960s at the National Lawyers Guild, a Soviet created front group which still embraces its Communist heritage"

Race card out, class card in! "Mr. Cosby is black, so charging him with the vice of racism would not work too well. It could carry no punch with which to silence what he suggested, namely, that black parents can and ought to straighten up their parental acts. Had his words been spoken by some prominent white commentator, that ploy would still have been appealing to the modern liberal establishment. Call the messenger a racist and thus squash the truth about what parents can and should do for their kids. But what to do now, when a prominent black figure delivers this piece of sensible insight? How can it be squelched, neutralized so we can keep going to government to answers? Come to the rescue The New York Times .... The problem with Bill Cosby isn't that he is white -- no, it's that he belongs to the upper black classes. The class card, thus, takes the place of the race card."

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

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"

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 Page is here or here.

********************************
posted by JR 6/19/2005 10:33:00 PM

Saturday, June 18, 2005

 
AN EXCELLENT COMMENT ON DEMOCRAT HATE-POLITICS

"When Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean said the other day that the Republicans were pretty much a "white, Christian party," I must admit I felt a guilty sense of self-recognition. He had nailed me cold, dead to rights. I looked in the mirror and confessed, "Yes, I am a white Christian, and I am a Republican."...

... and here's where Dean has overlooked something important - we were white Christians, but we were not Republicans. Republicans were mostly Protestant, wealthy and members of country clubs. We were Catholic, middle-class and Democrats. For most of my adult life, I considered myself a Democrat and voted for Democrats for president - from John F. Kennedy in 1960 to Bill Clinton in 1992. I began voting for Republican presidential candidates, and thinking of myself as Republican, only after it became abundantly clear that people with my views on abortion, prayer in school and other moral issues were no longer considered welcome in the Democratic Party. A whole lot of us crossed over, taking our whiteness and our Christian beliefs into the party of the country-club set. We didn't feel so much that we had abandoned the Democratic Party as it had abandoned us. Borrowing the spirit of the "No Irish Need Apply" mentality of my grandparents' time, the Democrats posted a "no pro-lifers need apply" sign on their party doors....

So if the Republican Party has become the "white, Christian party," as Dean charges, it's partly so because the Democratic Party has made white Christians feel so uncomfortable in its ranks. The Democrats have bent over backwards to please minority groups - blacks, gays, angry feminists and atheists - at the expense of us old white guys (and gals - yes, we're not afraid to call our wives that) who grew up not feeling guilty about being white or Christian.

Of course, Dean is also overlooking an important fact, and that is the only successful Democratic presidential candidates in recent times were two white Christian guys - Jimmy Carter and Clinton, both red-state good ole boys with Southern accents and some familiarity with Scripture. So when Dean vaguely implies that "white Christian" is a pejorative term, he's playing to a Democratic base that's growing narrower and narrower - non-white, non-Christian, non-Southern and non-winning.

As a crossover Republican, I applaud Dean's take-no-prisoners approach to distilling his party into its purest essence. Displaying barely concealed contempt for white Christians is Dean's formula for ethnic and theological purity in the party, and I say, "Pour it on, Howard!" Keep it up and the Democratic Party will be confined to a few zip codes in Manhattan, Hollywood and San Francisco".

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Strict ethics un-German: "A German court has upheld the right of Wal-Mart staff in Germany to flirt at work, a spokesman said overnight, showing that Germany's restrictive labor laws also have their permissive aspects. The court rejected parts of Wal-Mart's code of conduct relating to employees' love lives, alcohol and drug use and a requirement for staff to report code violations via a so-called ethics hotline, the spokesman said. He could not immediately confirm the grounds on which the Wuppertal employment court had ordered the clauses to be removed for German staff, saying the judge's opinion was still in the process of being written. The Financial Times Deutschland said the court had found the clauses, including one banning "any kind of communication that could be interpreted as sexual," contradicted German labour law, in its ruling on the case brought by Wal-Mart's works council"

NYC liberals NYC's worst enemy: "Do you miss the good old days of rising crime in New York City? If so, don't worry: they're coming back - courtesy, once again, of liberal judges and limousine politicians. The mostly liberal New York media have deliberately underplayed the news that a federal judge ruled last week that city cops had violated the "constitutional rights" of "peaceful panhandlers." You know "peaceful panhandlers," don't you? All they want is to exercise their First Amendment freedom to speak and stare at you, so long as they don't actually assault you. Nothing wrong with that, right? And so justice was done, right? That's what The New York Times thinks. Its Friday headline read, "Police Charged Panhandlers Under Unconstitutional Law." So in The Times' view of the world, which is the view from the back seat of a limousine, this court ruling is a victory for the Constitution, pure and simple. And what of the commonsense right of people to walk the streets unmolested? The lead plaintiff-panhandler, for example, is currently facing felony raps for crack cocaine. So best get a limo"

Leftist-supported American eugenics outlasted Hitler: "Beneath the surface of this Southern town, with its lush evergreens and winding riverbanks, is a largely forgotten legacy of pain, secrecy and human indignity. "My heart still bleeds, and it will forever bleed, because of what had happened to me," local resident Elaine Riddick said. Riddick was one of thousands of people secretly sterilized by the state between 1929 and 1974. From the early 1900s to the 1970s, some 65,000 men and women were sterilized in this country, many without their knowledge, as part of a government eugenics program to keep so-called undesirables from reproducing. "The procedures that were done here were done to poor folks," said Steven Selden, professor at the University of Maryland. "They were thought to be poor because they had bad genes or bad inheritance, if you will. And so they would be the focus of the sterilization."... Riddick went on to earn a college degree and raise the son she had at 14. He now is an engineering consultant." [Background here]

The Leftist media don't REALLY care about blacks: "Western media generally do not cover the ongoing war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo... What the world media are missing is one of the deadliest conflicts since World War II: 3.8 million people have died in the Congo since 1998, dwarfing not only the biggest of natural catastrophes, such as December's South Asia tsunami, but also other manmade horrors, such as Darfur. With so many dying and so much at stake, it is simply astounding that Congo isn't in the newspapers and on nightly news regularly. Even a nonlethal car bombing in Iraq or a kidnapping in Afghanistan gets more Western media coverage in a day than Congo gets in a typical month of 30,000 dead. So much for the old TV news editors' saw, "If it bleeds, it leads." News editors have long assumed "no one is interested in Africa," supposing their audience sees only hopeless African problems eternally defying solution and thus not worth attention".

The latest news from the California health-nut front: Potato chips give you cancer! Is there anything that doesn't?

How embarrassing. Only an American aircraft has the range needed: "Air France has launched a second daily flight between Paris and Beijing. The new flight is operated with Boeing B777-300 aircraft, with a seating capacity of 310 and is equipped with the new Air France Travel Concept".

Amusing: My Leftist imitator seems to have lost his juju. He has not posted for nearly two weeks now. And he never did figure out how to put his archive links onto a separate page, as I do. Hint: It's really easy!

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

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"

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 Page is here or here.

********************************
posted by JR 6/18/2005 08:11:00 PM

Friday, June 17, 2005

 
AN UNUSUAL CLAIM FROM THE LEFT: DEATH PENALTY ETHICALLY COMPELLING

Excerpt: "noted liberal scholar Cass Sunstein, recently wrote a paper based on the findings of a research group at Emory University. The study found "a direct association between the reauthorization of the death penalty, in 1977, and reduced homicide rates," but also that "the 'conservative estimate' was that on average, every execution deters eighteen murders." Sunstein and his co-author concluded, "this calculus makes the death penalty not just morally licit but morally required." It can be expected that this report will never see the light of day in the European, or even the U.S. press for that matter."

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ELSEWHERE

A Brit with his head firmly stuck up his anus: "Sir Gus, the present Permanent Secretary at the Treasury, said that he passionately believed that what he described as "our excellent, professional and impartial Civil Service" was an asset to the country." [One wonders how often he has had to deal with British bureaucrats as a member of the public]

Whoopee! "Jacques Chirac suffered a double blow as the EU summit opened last night when he was forced to admit defeat over the European constitution, and Tony Blair won powerful allies for his campaign to cut French agricultural subsidies. Mr Blair feared isolation in his battle over Britain�s �3 billion rebate unless there was a thorough overhaul of EU farm spending as well. But Dutch and Swedish leaders backed the Prime Minister�s call for the �600 billion budget to be reduced, and Mr Blair received a surprise incentive to stall in negotiations when the conservative politician expected to be Germany�s next leader told France to cut back its agricultural subsidies".

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day: "France opened a third front with Britain on the eve of today's European Union summit by publicly voicing grave reservations about Turkey's impending membership. The statement yesterday by Dominique de Villepin, the new French Prime Minister, increased the tension surrounding a summit that is already engulfed in bitter disputes over the EU budget and constitution. Britain has insisted enlargement will be a priority during its EU presidency, which begins next month, and will proceed on schedule.... Earlier, M de Villepin told the French parliament that the results of its referendum on the EU constitution had shown the speed of enlargement had shaken EU citizens. "We must take it into account," he said. Bulgaria and Romania should be admitted in 2007, but "beyond that we must certainly open a discussion with our partners on the mode of future enlargements". He did not mention Turkey by name but was clearly refering to the poor, predominantly Muslim country which is due to start membership talks with the EU on October 3."

Go for him! "The defence lawyer who won Michael Jackson his freedom is believed to be considering suing the Santa Barbara District Attorney for "malicious prosecution". Thomas Mesereau Jr is also said to be demanding that the defeated prosecutor, Tom "Mad Dog" Sneddon, give back the photographs taken of Mr Jackson's genitals during a 1993 investigation into abuse claims. Mr Jackson said the photographs, taken by detectives, were one of the most humiliating experiences of his life. His legal team are believed to fear that Mr Sneddon may leak the images to the public in revenge for losing the case". [The whole case was an evidence-free publicity stunt which must have been extremely distressing for a mess like Jackson]

Leftist bishop hates free speech: "The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has criticised the new web-based media for "paranoid fantasy, self-indulgent nonsense and dangerous bigotry". He described the atmosphere on the world wide web as a free-for-all that was "close to that of unpoliced conversation". In a lecture to media professionals, politicians and church leaders at Lambeth Palace in London last night, Dr Williams wondered whether a balance could be struck between the professionalism of the classical media and the relative disorder of online communication. ["professionalism"!! Is that a new word for Leftist sycophancy?]

Truth hurts: "Goodness gracious, she [Judge Brown] dared say it and the New York Times - the voice of collectivism in the U.S. - and all its Marxist allies are aghast. An appointee to the federal judiciary, no less, dared to describe the New Deal for what it was: a socialist revolution. For this egregious offense she must be pilloried and cast into the outer darkness inhabited by those who offend the mighty Times, whose omniscience must never be questioned and before whom all right-thinking Americans must cower in humble obeisance."

The super-rich outlook: "On Wall Street, veterans speak of "f***-you money": the nice round figure a guy needs to set himself up for life, buy (and decorate) multiple residences, create trust funds for kids, and still have enough cash to buy expensive toys and pursue new business ventures. At a certain point-somewhere north of $10 million-wealth may become "f*** you and f*** you, Republicans" money. This is the kind of cash that George Soros, Warren Buffett, Peter Lewis, and the 200 business leaders who endorsed Kerry possess. People with such sums don't need to worry about how income or capital gains taxes affect their daily lives. Raise 'em, lower 'em, who cares? They're still going to be disgustingly rich. And so they are free to devote their attention-and resources-to other areas: the environment, education, foreign policy, the Supreme Court, social issues, stem-cell research, the war on drugs, whatever. And it seems that for many of the truly wealthy, focusing on those other issues leads them to favor Kerry over Bush."

Even the pollsters haven't been able to distort this one: "Nearly six in 10 Americans think global warming likely is under way and as many accept that human activities play a significant role. But - like the Bush administration - most part company with scientists' calls for prompt government action. That lack of urgency stems from perceptions of the hazard: While a vast majority, nearly eight in 10, believe global warming will pose a serious threat to future generations, far fewer - just one-third - think it will affect their own lives. The majority who see the risk as a distant one overwhelmingly prefer more study to immediate action. The majority view aligns in this respect with the Bush administration, which has focused on uncertainties in climate science, urged further study and supported only voluntary steps"

There is a good summary of the almost incomprehensibly stupid Swedish welfare system here. Just one excerpt: "Today 62 percent of the employees in Sweden believe that it might be OK to take a sick leave even though illness doesn't stop you from working. This attitude is probably simply an adjusting of ethics to the Swedish system. What can you expect in a country where 9 out of 10 females who are living off sick leave would have less money in their pockets if they went back to their jobs?"

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

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"

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 Page is here or here.

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posted by JR 6/17/2005 07:07:00 PM

Thursday, June 16, 2005

 
Brookes News Update

The price rule will drive the US economy into recession : No economy, including the US economy, can build up masses of malinvestments without having to pay a heavy price
Free trade versus 'new trade' theory : Ernest Rodeck v free trade. It clearly escaped this man's intelligence that trade takes place because of differences in prices and costs and not despite them
How the media lies for Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, part I: The Age is once again whitewashing Fidel Castro's sadistic regime. This time it was Roslyn Guy who licked this tyrant's bloodstained boots
Murdoch journalist slimes President Bush: Stephen Ellis is a lying Bush-hating Murdoch journalist who sports a permanent anti-Republican sneer.
Summit Touts Castro as Business Partner: Exposes the stupidity of business who think they can deal honestly with Fidel Castro, a thief, a liar and a mass murderer
Child molesters running rampant in America: What should be done about child molesters?

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ELSEWHERE

Google seems to be having problems lately. Quite a few times lately I have been unable to log onto them and have had to use clusty.com for my searches instead. And I have been unable to access my Gmail mailbox for about 48 hours. So if anybody has sent anything urgent to me via Gmail, they should resend it to my hotmail address: jonjayray@hotmail.com. Update Ha! I have just found that deleting all cookies restored my access to Gmail. That was the solution to the last bug at blogger.com too.

Another good comment on a worthless public opinion poll: "The poll of 1,003 adults, taken June 6-8, found that 59 percent of those surveyed think the United States should withdraw all or some of its troops from Iraq and only 36 percent think current troop strength ought to be maintained or increased..... Anyone with a functioning brain and a heart wants to see this nation's young men and women home safe and sound. Anyone who has ever witnessed one of those homecomings at an airport and watched as strangers applauded this person in uniform knows how very deeply those feelings run. Yes, we all want them home as soon as reasonably possible. And isn't that the key - reasonably possible? That's what polls never ask. They never ask if the choice is bringing the troops home now and abandoning a newly democratic nation to terrorists and thugs, should we bring them home now? They never ask if the choice is bringing the troops home now and leaving Iraq to once again become a threat to the region and to our own safety and security, should we bring them home now?"

This African (from Africa) author thinks that there are African solutions to Africa's problems but that they have to emerge from Africa's own traditions. But the traditions he is talking about sound a lot like democracy to me and that has definitely not caught on in Africa.

Some great quotes from Judge Janice Rogers Brown here. No wonder the socialists hate her.

More Leftist lunacy from Amnesty: "The human rights group Amnesty International - which accuses America of running a "gulag" at Guantanamo Bay - apparently aided in the escape of a key al-Qaida member who's suspected of helping plan the 9/11 attacks. Just two months after the World Trade Center was destroyed, Amnesty issued one of its "URGENT ACTION" reports on behalf of Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, who was then being detained by Jordanian security forces in connection with a planning session for the 9/11 attacks.... "Pressure from Amnesty and Saddam Hussein worked," the Journal said. "Mr. Shakir was released and hasn't been seen since.""

Arnie acts for real: "Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday called a special election for November to try to change the way California spends money, picks its politicians and hires its teachers. He said the election would continue momentum from the historic 2003 recall that brought him to power, saying he was elected to put 'California's financial house in order and reform a government that no longer listened to the people.'"

Free speech under attack in Italy: "These are dangerous times for writers or artists who tread into the always sensitive territory of religion.... it is disheartening to see representatives of democratic government take the side of those who believe respect for religion justifies censorship. That's what happened when an Italian judge, citing a law forbidding "outrages against religion," ordered the journalist and writer Oriana Fallaci to stand trial over a book that includes provocative assertions about Islam. Fallaci had already drawn considerable ire from Muslims, and many others, over "The Rage and the Pride," an angry book written in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks in which she questioned the ability of Islam and Western society to be reconciled, and excoriated Europeans for failing to defend their culture.... Far from everyone will agree with Fallaci or with the way she expresses her opinions. But the right to make unpopular or intemperate statements is a hallmark of a free society.... Even in these volatile times, Western judges and politicians must do all they can to make it clear that freedom of expression is nonnegotiable."

Good to see that NY AG Eliot Spitzer looks like coming another cropper.

The current Leftist hysteria about U.S. income inequality: "The Trunk and I got our start in pundrity rebutting liberal critiques of the economy of the 1980s. The Democrats, frustrated by the fact that the Reagan administration's policies had restored American economic dominance by slashing inflation and unemployment rates, resorted to income inequality as the basis of their critisism. The data in our article "The Truth About Income Inequality" need to be updated, but the concepts are all there, and what we wrote ten years ago is equally applicable today. Once again, the Democrats are unable to criticize the economy on the usual grounds, and therefore must fall back on inequality, as Paul Krugman did in the column that appeared in the New York TImes on Friday. As usual, Krugman is hysterical. He writes, "The middle-class society I grew up in no longer exists" .... Underlying the invective, of course, one would usually expect to find some facts. Normally if one were to proclaim the extinction of the middle class--a surprise to the 80% or more of Americans who inhabit it--one would look for some solid data to back up the claim. But Krugman has no such data. His column is almost fact free."

I have posted here a VERY interesting account by an Iranian exile about the large-scale defiance of their Islamic rulers by the people of Iran.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

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"

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 Page is here or here.

********************************
posted by JR 6/16/2005 09:57:00 PM

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

 
TUESDAY ROUNDUP

Tuesday in the USA and Wednesday in Oz. Once again I list what I think were the best posts on my various blogs in the preceding week.

On Dissecting Leftism I put up a graphic of an original Nazi document proclaiming Hitler's socialism

On Political Correctness Watch I note a comeback for God in Britain

On Greenie Watch I note that astronomers say that global warming is a sign of a coming ice-age!

On Education Watch I note that campus conservatism is growing in Australia

On Gun Watch I note statistics showing that crime actually DROPPED afer the assault-weapon ban lapsed

On Socialized Medicine I record another horror about urgent health-care being denied in Canada

On Leftists as Elitists I note the elitism of Mao Tse Tung

On Majority Rights I summarize health and social welfare provisions in Victorian England and their lessons for today

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Why I am sometimes a token nigger

As those who read my "Tuesday Roundup" will know, I post not only on my own blogs but also on a group blog called Majority Rights -- a blog which is often called "racist" -- though since George W. Bush is called a Nazi by the Left that could be seen as sort of complimentary. Nonetheless it is true that most of the people who post and comment there do believe that the Anglo-Saxon people have distinct virtues that should be preserved and that countries which are at present predominantly Anglo-Saxon should stay that way. There are also some people there who believe that the Jews are the root of all evil -- but that simply makes them respectable in Leftist circles these days, of course.

By and large, however, they are pissing into the wind and I tell them so. All the Anglo-Saxon countries are taking in large numbers of non-Anglo immigrants so the time is foreseeable when there will be no countries with an Anglo-Saxon majority. And there seems to be no political will anywhere to stop that process. It would seem that most Anglo-Saxons do not see it as important to retain an Anglo-Saxon majority in their respective countries.

I however am a "token nigger" on Majority Rights: I am the only one posting there who does not think that an ethnically homogeneous society is worth pursuing. I am of course most comfortable with people like myself but I am clearly less disturbed by non-Anglo immigration than anybody else there. Yet I am at the same time as pleased as Punch about my English, Scottish and Irish ancestry and am also proud of the country that my forebears have created here in Australia. And I also think it is incontestable that Protestantism has been an overwhelming influence in creating the modern world. And as I was brought up as a Presbyterian and trace all my ancestry to the British Isles, all that is easy for me to say.

And I do understand very well the motivation of the person who set up Majority Rights. He loves his English people and English traditions and I understand every bit of that. What disturbs him, as well it might, is the woes that the English now suffer as a result of past and present unselective immigration. I am in company with the vast majority of Australians in saying that only SELECTIVE immigration makes sense. And, unlike the U.S.A. and the U.K., Australia puts that into practice too. The flow of illegals into Australia has been stopped.

But I also think that the egg is thoroughly scrambled now. I can see NO way in which the "internationalization" of the U.K. and U.S. populations is going to stop. Nor will it stop in Australia. Australia's immigration selection criteria do not include race and, as a result, we are said to have a greater percentage of our population foreign-born than any other country except Israel. There is however a huge difference in the COMPOSITION of the Australian population. Where the U.K. and U.S. have large numbers of people with African ancestry, we have people of East Asian ancestry. The difference that makes is considerable, to put it mildly. I think Australia is very lucky indeed to have a large minority of hard-working, intelligent, enterprising, law-abiding family-oriented East Asians.

And that is where we part company. The others bloggers on Majority Rights and I agree that the present flow of illegal immigration into the U.S. and U.K. should be stopped but they would like to stop most legal immigration too. They would like to restrict immigration to people of Anglo and NorthWestern European ancestry whereas I -- like most Australians -- think that only individual criteria are important. I think that you can have desirable immigrants of any race.

What appears to bug the other bloggers on Majority Rights is loss of continuity and community. They feel that what they are is being lost or will be lost in the future. I do not see that at all. And South America shows why. After around 15 generations of living among a sea of blacks and Indians, there are still lots of pink-skinned people in South America. And they mostly run the place too. Although there is always a certain amount of interracial marriage, such marriages are very much the exception rather than the rule and it seems that a people who REALLY ARE genetically similar (such as people of broadly NorthWestern European ancestry) will intermarry readily among themselves while always remaining distinct from the other populations around them -- be those other populations large or small. So the loss of continuity is a paper tiger. Whatever is good in Anglo genes will survive because distinctively Anglo people will survive too. They just have to get into bed with one-another to ensure it and they clearly have a considerable propensity for doing that.

What about the loss of community? Wouldn't it be nice to live in a sort of large village where everybody is distantly related or at least very similar to one-another? Yes and No. I must admit what a relief it is when I can go into an Australian shop or cafe and speak relaxed broad Australian with the staff there instead of having to struggle to communicate with people who know little English. But as someone who actually grew up in a large village (the Australian country town of Innisfail) I know there is a downside to a village environment too. There are huge pressures towards conformity in a village and a lot of back-biting and gossip. Everyone knows everybody else's business so privacy is very restricted. And I shudder to think of the inconvenient opening hours and limited range of services (such as restaurants) that we would have without the ethnics.

So I don't think much of mono-ethnic or village-style life at all. And in a modern society we create our own communities anyway. By and large we associate with whomever we choose and if we are comfortable only with people of a similar ethnic background, then people of that background will become our community. We are no longer restricted to the community that we live geographically next-door to. We create our own communities to suit ourselves. So we in fact get the best of both worlds these days: We live in a virtual community without the limitations of an old-fashioned geographical community.

So regardless of whether the U.K. or the U.S. ever come to their senses about illegal immigration, loss of community and continuity will not occur.

And as far as crime is concerned, Giuliani showed the solution to that in NYC. It just needs good policing to control crime -- not a mono-ethnic society.

FOOTNOTES:

Someone will of course want to mock my use of South America as an example of anything. They will point to what an economic mess the place is. They are right about the mess. But that is not an outcome of non-European genes predominating there. Argentinians are almost wholly European genetically (mostly Spanish and Italian) and Argentina is as big a mess as any Latin-American country. In my view, the South American mess is not the outcome of genes but an outcome of ideology -- Roman Catholicism and Bolivarism in particular -- both of which are historically authoritarian. The abiding hero of Latin America is Simon Bolivar, the great liberator. But the ideas about government put forward by Bolivar were very authoritarian -- ideas about how the masses need to be "educated" and generally dominated by a self-chosen elite -- ideas that put Bolivar in the company of men like Mussolini and Lenin. So with Bolivarism and Catholicism dominating the culture it is no surprise that South America has for so long been ruled in Fascist style -- with all the economic failure which characterizes Fascist regimes.

And in saying what I have about Catholicism, I am primarily commenting about what the church was when it formed Latin-American culture. At Vatican II the church reformed itself along largely Protestant lines and it is my personal view (atheist though I am) that committed Christians or Jews of any denomination -- be it Catholic, Evangelical or Lubavitcher -- are deserving of every respect.

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ELSEWHERE

Greenspan pontificates outside his field: "The income gap between the rich and the rest of the US population has become so wide, and is growing so fast, that it might eventually threaten the stability of democratic capitalism itself. Is that a liberal's talking point? Sure. But it's also a line from the recent public testimony of a champion of the free market". [Greenspan may know a lot about economic statistics but he doesn't know much about how the people see it]

Good man! Tony Blair is attacking the absurd subsidies that the French pay their farmers out of EU funds: "The future financing and reforms of Europe must mean fundamental changes, in particular in respect of the Common Agricultural Policy and the amount of the budget that it takes up each year."

Strange Justice has an amazing tale of crooked "scientific" evidence in Houston, Texas. And the crooks are getting away with it!

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

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"

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 Page is here or here.

********************************
posted by JR 6/15/2005 08:15:00 PM

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

 
MONEY BUYS BABIES

In my comments on abortion prevention, I have long advocated lump-sum payments for mothers. Australia is actually doing it, though the payments are in my view still to low. Even so, the policy seems to be having some effect:

"The Federal Government's $3000 baby bonus has helped to reverse the nation's declining birth rate, with new statistics revealing an increase for the first time in a decade. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show the number of babies per woman rose to 1.77 last year, breaking a forty year decline, it was reported. The birth rate is the highest it has reached in seven years and is the first time it has increased significantly since 1961 when it peaked at 3.55. The Howard Government's $3000 baby bonus for every baby born in 2004 played a significant role in halting the nation's declining fertility rate, the Australian National University's head of demography, professor Peter McDonald said. Prof McDonald predicted the fertility rate would rise to 1.8 in 2005 as the baby bonus starts having an effect. The bonus will increase to $4000 from July 1 this year".

Source

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ELSEWHERE

I think the jury decided rightly in the Michael Jackson case. There was such as stench of corruption surrounding many of his accusers that his guilt of anything could never have been seen as beyond reasonable doubt. It's not yet a crime to be weird.

Good news from China: "A pitched battle erupted that soggy morning between enraged farmers and badly outnumbered police. By the end of the day, high-ranking officials had fled in their black sedans and hundreds of policemen had scattered in panic while farmers destroyed their vehicles. It was a rare triumph for the peasants, rising up against the all-powerful Communist Party government. The confrontation was also a glimpse of a gathering force that could help shape the future of China: the power of spontaneous mass protest"

Steyn on China: "I said a while back that China was a better bet for the future than Russia or the European Union. Which is damning with faint praise: trapped in a demographic death spiral, Russia and Europe have no future at all. But that doesn't mean China will bestride the scene as a geopolitical colossus. When European analysts coo about a "Chinese century", all they mean is "Oh, God, please, anything other than a second American century". But wishing won't make it so. China won't advance to the First World with its present borders intact. In a billion-strong state with an 80 per cent rural population cut off from the coastal boom and prevented from participating in it, "One country, two systems" will lead to two or three countries, three or four systems. The 21st century will be an Anglosphere century, with America, India and Australia leading the way. Anti-Americans betting on Beijing will find the China shop is in the end mostly a lot of bull."

Some VERY interesting history from one who was there: "Before Senator Joe McCarthy launched his anti-communist crusade in February 1950, he had not been particularly associated with the right wing of the Republican Party; on the contrary, his record was liberal and centrist, statist rather than libertarian. Furthermore, Red-baiting and anti-communist witch hunting were originally launched by liberals, and even after McCarthy the liberals were the most effective at this game. It was, after all, the liberal Roosevelt Administration which passed the Smith Act, first used against Trotskyites and isolationists during World War II and then against communists after the war; it was the liberal Truman Administration that instituted loyalty checks; it was the eminently liberal Hubert Humphrey who was a sponsor of the clause in the McCarran Act of 1950 threatening concentration camps for "subversives.""

Liberty before democracy?: "Concentrating on liberty involves a shift of rhetoric and a change of emphasis in practice. The focus of both, particularly in the wider Middle East, should be on the array of diplomatic and developmental means at our disposal to expand the range of individual rights, particularly liberty of thought and discussion; extending the rule of law; fostering religious toleration; and insuring equality of opportunity for women in politics and in the market place. Proponents of democracy promotion should not be disappointed or alarmed. One advantage to putting the spread of liberty abroad first in the here-and-now is the long-term gains it promises in promoting democracy around the globe".

A nation of assimilated immigrants: "To say America is a nation of immigrants is like saying the sky is blue. It's both true and irrelevant. Every nation is a nation of immigrants; people have been migrating across the globe ever since we left Africa. Nor did the thirteen largely English colonies mean to establish a nation of immigrants. Many did not welcome America's first large Catholic influx in the 1840s, and Emma Lazarus's poem ('Give me your tired ...') did not grace Lady Liberty until 1903. More importantly, to say we are a nation of immigrants is an incomplete truth. A fuller truth is that we are a nation of immigrants who assimilated -- who learned English, did not rely (through most of our history) on government safety nets, and sought to 'become Americans' (a once-popular phrase)."

Sowell on social class immobility: "If this is a class-ridden society denying "access" to upward mobility to those at the bottom, how can immigrants come here at the bottom and rise to the top? One obvious reason is many poor immigrants come here with very different ambitions and values from poor Americans born into our welfare state and imbued with notions and attitudes of dependency and resentment of the success of others. The fundamental reason many do not rise is not class barriers but failure to develop the skills, values and attitudes that cause people to rise. The liberal welfare state means they don't have to, and liberal multiculturalism says they don't need to change their values because one culture is as good as another. Liberalism is not part of the solution but part of the problem. Racism is supposed to put insuperable barriers in the path of nonwhites anyway, so why knock yourself out trying? This is another deadly message, especially for the young. But if immigrants from Korea or India, Vietnamese refugees, and others can come here and move right up the ladder, despite not being white, why are black and white Americans at the bottom more likely to stay there?

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

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"

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 Page is here or here.

********************************
posted by JR 6/14/2005 08:21:00 PM

Monday, June 13, 2005

 
THE LEFTIST CLASS WAR

Leftist stupidity: "Sometimes it seems as if liberals have a genius for producing an unending stream of ideas that are counterproductive for the poor, whom they claim to be helping. Few of these notions are more counterproductive than the idea of "menial work" or "dead-end jobs." Think about it: Why do employers pay people to do "menial" work? Because the work has to be done. What useful purpose is served by stigmatizing work that someone is going to have to do anyway? Is emptying bed pans in a hospital menial work? What would happen if bed pans didn't get emptied? Let people stop emptying bed pans for a month and there would be bigger problems than if sociologists stopped working for a year."

Socialist Democrats : "What is it with people that they don't understand that collectivism, in all its forms (socialism, communism, Nazism, etc.) just doesn't work? Even today, after the famous failure of communism (a form of socialism) worldwide do we see such an organization as Social Democrats USA, still promoting socialism as if it were a working system. There are many factors that doom socialism, but the main one is a complete lack of incentive. Under a complete socialist society, we are 'taken care of from cradle to grave.' Thus, there is no reason for any of us to work because we will make the same, regardless. If there is no incentive to work, most of us won't."

The inequality myth: "It doesn't come as much of a surprise that inequality is an issue that plays for Democrats. Bashing the rich is in their blood and no Democrat is happier than when he is engaging in class warfare. Consequently, it is in the Democrats' interest to play up inequality and any sign that the rich are getting richer, especially if they can show that it is coming at the expense of the poor and middle class. There is an unlimited supply of liberal economists at the University of Texas , the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and elsewhere who are eager to manipulate the data to �prove� that inequality is getting worse. The problem is that average people don't believe it. What really matters, both economically and politically, is what they see with their own eyes in their own lives. On this basis, the evidence of rising inequality is very weak indeed."

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ELSEWHERE

Iraq is flypaper for the nutjobs: "According to the SITE Institute, a respected counter-terrorism organization, only 9 percent of suicide bombings sponsored in Iraq by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi are conducted by native Iraqis. Analyzing data from a "martyrs" list posted on a Zarqawi Web site, SITE found that 42 percent of the killers hailed from Saudi Arabia, 12 percent from Syria, 11 percent from Kuwait, with the rest from an assortment of Asian and European nations. Why does it matter? Because it gives lie to the suggestion, often heard on the left, that the struggle in Iraq is a distraction from the war on terror. The antiwar crowd insists that American soldiers are now engaged in a guerilla war with militant Iraqis - Michael Moore has compared them to the Minutemen of our own Revolutionary War. Except now it turns out that fully 91 percent of suicide bombers are foreigners crossing into Iraq with the purpose of killing civilians. In short, terrorists. American soldiers are not fighting an Iraqi insurgency. They're fighting a terrorist insurgency. If not for jihadi nutcases pouring across its borders, Iraq would be well on its way to a stable and peaceful democracy".

Spitzer on the take?: "Spitzer insists that the standards he sets for himself are every bit as tough as those he sets for his targets. Yet an intriguing analysis in The New York Sun Friday of Spitzer's campaign fundraising suggests otherwise. The Sun noted that, even as Spitzer has cast his eye over an increasing number of industries, he has taken more and more donations from executives and lawyers in those areas. The Sun argues that Spitzer has received money from: mutual-fund executives; lawyers for Goldman-Sachs (whom the AG's office has investigated); law firms representing Spitzer's targets, such AIG, and others. The Sun deserves credit for highlighting this. Spitzer's office claims his campaign accepts no money from anyone with business before him. But if Spitzer is going to go after alleged wrongdoers in nearly every field, perhaps he needs to go further � banning even more contributions".

What really drives Democrat protests against Iraq: "Why did the Democrats support Clinton's multiple wars in the Balkans where so little was at stake and nothing to be gained, and why do they continue to employ every conceivable lie they can muster to obstruct the liberation of the Iraqi people and the spread of democracy throughout the Middle East? The answer can be found in the Democratic Party itself - dominated, as it has been for the last several decades by "multiculturalists" who believe that democracy is in no way superior to any other form of government, including fascist dictatorships. Multiculturalists believe that all people, cultures, religions and forms of government are equally good and equally right. This is why Democrats so adore the United Nations, where genocidal dictatorships and free-and-open democracies are offered equal prestige and equal power, and why we are admonished to "celebrate diversity" as if all differences - genocide and tolerance for example - are equally worthy of celebration".

Steven Plaut has an amusing list of the rules for debating with Leftists. Rule 1.: "Leftists should be free to call everyone else nasty names, because they are so moral, but no one should be permitted to call leftists nasty names"

The living poem to capitalism : "The Gazette, a business journal for the counties of Maryland surrounding Washington, D.C. reported recently that Maryland's wealthy suburbanites are driving 25, sometimes 30 miles to go, of all places, to the grocery store. They motor past what would likely be a dozen Giants and Safeways, past quirky grocers like Trader Joe's, and several other higher-end stores like Whole Foods and Harris Teeter, all the way out to Sterling, Virginia. They're going to Wegmans, a grocery store based in Rochester, New York, that's slowly spilling down the Atlantic Seaboard. In D.C., Wegmanites will battle notorious D.C. traffic, late nights (the store's open -- and typically busy -- until 1am), and lost time (a premium for Beltway types) to get there. So what is it about Wegmans that's so appealing?"

More Leftist exhibitionism: "Hundreds of naked cyclists staged demonstrations today in London and Madrid in protest against the West's dependence on gas-guzzling cars - and to push for more use of bicycles. The organisers of World Naked Bike Ride 2005 said protests were expected in a number of countries, including Australia, Canada, the United States, Ireland, Italy, Latvia and Israel. In London, crowds gathered to watch as about 100 cyclists left Hyde Park Corner on a journey that took them past some of the capital's most famous landmarks. Most of the riders had stripped naked for the 10 kilometre ride past Piccadilly Circus, Big Ben, Covent Garden, Oxford Street and the US Embassy. Some bikes carried banners reading "Oil is not a bare necessity but a crude obsession" and "Support the trade justice movement"." [In their hunger for attention to THEMSELVES -- not to any ostensible cause -- Leftists do this sort of thing often. I have recorded a few of the previous episodes here or here]

The Great CHILI debate continues with a new posting on my RECIPE BLOG

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

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"

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 Page is here or here.

********************************
posted by JR 6/13/2005 09:44:00 PM

Sunday, June 12, 2005

 
SOME MORE ECONOMICS

Envy unleashed at the New York Times: "In a front page editorial (Sunday June 5), thinly disguised as its lead news story, The New York Times has unknowingly provided a case study in envy and ignorance. The 'article' is titled 'Richest Are Leaving Even the Rich Far Behind,' subtitled 'Tax Laws Help to Widen Gap at Very Top.'.... an attentive reader, willing to go to the trouble of doing some simple addition based on numbers supplied along with the graphics, is able to see that the bottom 80 percent of all taxpayers in 2001 paid only 29.5 percent of all federal taxes, while the top 20 percent of taxpayers paid the remaining 70.5 percent of all federal taxes and that the top one-tenth of one percent of taxpayers paid 12 percent of all federal taxes. The Times is upset because under the Bush tax cuts, in the year 2015 the top one-tenth of one percent of taxpayers is forecast to pay only 10.8 percent of all federal taxes"

Corporations and governments "The idea that big corporations are untamed beasts that wreak havoc upon civilized society is immensely popular throughout the academy everywhere in the world, including the United States of America. Most professors in the humanities and social sciences, a great many writers, journalists, artist, and entertainers -- centered mainly in New York City and Hollywood -- cling firmly to their view that corporations are a threat to the well being of nearly everyone in society and that those who do not share this belief are deluded, period. It is not only Ralph Nader who embraces this idea and the only reason Nader hasn?t reached national political office is that he is viewed as a naive idealist who wants to take on forces that must be appeased, not fought."

French soul-searching: "But there's one area in which France would love to emulate that place across the Atlantic -- the ability to foster small businesses and turn them into big ones. It's not exactly haute culture , but these days this is a vital topic here in France, where the unemployment rate has been stuck between 9 and 10 percent for a quarter of a century and where not a single enterprise founded here in the past 40 years has managed to break into the ranks of the 25 biggest French companies. By comparison, 19 of today's 25 largest U.S. companies didn't exist four decades ago. That's why France is looking to the United States for lessons.... It's no small thing for a country like France to admit its weaknesses, yet many opinion leaders here now concede that France has the rhetoric of a world power without the economic means of one".

The waiting game "It is always instructive to look at how the government controls what we do in our leisure time. Almost everyone now accepts the notion that government should control business, since almost everyone seems to believe that people are basically rotten and will lie, exploit and manipulate others if given half a chance. The idea of a man or woman in business who thinks that honesty and integrity might be a means to success now seems to be utterly foreign to our way of thinking. Therefore, government -- which people conveniently forget is run by other people, but people who somehow are far more perfect than the rest of us will ever be and not subject to the foibles which plague all non-governmental humans -- must regulate business for 'the public good.'"

Foreign aid counterproductive: "Over the past 50 years, foreign aid has largely been counterproductive: it has crowded out private sector investments, undermined democracy, and enabled despots to continue with oppressive policies, perpetuating poverty, says the International Policy Network (IPN). The reason countries are poor is not that they lack infrastructure -- be it roads, railways, dams, pylons, schools or health clinics. Rather, it is because they lack the institutions of a free society: property rights, the rule of law, free markets and limited government"

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ELSEWHERE (Some great stuff today!)

The world's wealthiest nations have just decided to help Africa's dictators to buy more golden bedsteads and arms from China.

Hube's Cube has a comment on "reparations" for slavery that will knock your socks off.

A superb comment on the way the American military torture people here

The Australian Left has hardly any workers in it: ""Today there are less than 8000 ALP members in this state who work for a living. There are 3,240,000 people in the NSW workforce. Only one-quarter of 1 per cent have joined the Labor Party. Members of affiliated unions who are themselves members of the ALP [number] around 3000. That is less than 1 per cent of the 393,000 trade union members affiliated to the party through their trade union. "In turn, understand that the NSW ALP's trade union affiliates represent just 12 per cent of the NSW workforce and the figure is declining. The party of the workers has hardly any workers as members".

Hooray! House committee votes to slash UN budget: "American taxpayers pay a whopping 22 percent of the U.N.'s more than $2 billion annual operating budget -- and that figure does not include the hundreds of millions of dollars we pay each year for the world body?s peacekeeping, education and development programs. What have we gotten for our money? Frankly, to say the U.N. is an unaccountable, corrupt and out-of-control bureaucracy that consistently fails to advance its stated mission of promoting international peace would be too kind."

V.D. Hanson on the EU: "The French and Dutch rebuffs of the European Union constitution will soon be followed by other rejections. Millions of proud, educated Europeans are tired of being told by unelected grandees that the mess they see is really abstract art. The E.U. constitution - and its promise of a new Europe - supposedly offered a corrective to the Anglo-American strain of Western civilization. More government, higher taxes, richer entitlements, pacifism, statism and atheism would make a more humane and powerful new continent of over 400 million to outpace a retrograde United States.... In fact, 2005 is a culmination of dying ideas. Despite the boasts and threats, almost every political alternative to Western liberalism over the last quarter-century is crashing or already in flames.... Global communications now reveal hourly to people abroad how much better life is in Europe than in the Middle East and Asia - and how in America, Australia and Britain the standard of living is even better than in most of Europe."

Now for the important things: The CHILI CON CARNE debate! Long-time readers of this blog will remember that I also have a recipe blog -- though I post to it very rarely now. A conoisseur of Chili con carne has however just emailed me with what looks like scrumptious recipe for it so have a look!

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

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"

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 Page is here or here.

********************************
posted by JR 6/12/2005 07:14:00 PM

Saturday, June 11, 2005

 
A CERTAIN JUSTICE

"Few would recognise Abbas Abdi, 49, as the leader of the students who stormed the American Embassy in Tehran in October 1979. High on the hope of a new Iran after the Shah's deposition, the students from the capital's Amir Kabir university caused an international crisis by holding US staff at the embassy hostage for 444 days. But most revolutions destroy their own vanguard, and Iran's was little different. Mr Abdi was released from jail a month ago. It was his second term in the capital's Evin prison, where he served 2� years, much of it in solitary confinement. His freedom is at the whim of the regime, so his caution comes as little surprise. "I'm free only so long as they don't send me back," Mr Abdi said....

Mohsen Mirdamadi, 50, was one of Mr Abdi's comrades in the embassy seizure, an ad hoc operation designed to prevent a US-backed counter-revolution. He went on to serve as a Revolutionary Guard for two years during the war with Iraq. "We thought we had established a democratic system with freedom of speech," he said. "No one felt that we would move towards a new dictatorship. But now our freedom is sacrificed. Many of those students are still my closest friends and think like me. The hardliners of today weren't even at the forefront as we were."

So what have the revolution's expectations translated into, 26 years on? A country with the second-largest natural gas reserves outside Russia and 7 per cent of the world's oil, Iran suffers chronic unemployment, economic malaise and corruption. While the Iranian regime's dictatorship is in no way comparable with that of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, civil liberties and human rights suffer at the whim of the leadership's small, entrenched cartel....

The situation is typified by Akbar Ganji, another former Revolutionary Guard turned reformist journalist, who was jailed in 2000 after naming dissidents allegedly murdered during the presidency of Hojatoleslam Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the present favourite election candidate. Mr Ganji was temporarily released from jail last week but has disappeared."

From The Times

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ELSEWHERE

It looks like Congress is considering the introduction of hate-crimes legislation again. Christians will be the main targets of course. They have been in both Australia and Canada under such laws. Details of the latest proposal here.

An article on TCS completely blows out of the water the moronic Leftist claim that the late Pope is the cause of African AIDS. Just one excerpt: "Superimposing maps of prevalence of AIDS on prevalence of Catholicism is enough to sink the link between the Catholic Church and AIDS. In the hospice which is Swaziland nowadays, only about 5 per cent of the population is Catholic. In Botswana, where 37 per cent of the adult population is HIV infected, only 4 per cent of the population is Catholic. In South Africa, 22 per cent of the population is HIV infected, and only 6 per cent is Catholic. But in Uganda, with 43 per cent of the population Catholic, the proportion of HIV infected adults is 4 per cent"

Bias to lose Federal funding: "A House subcommittee voted yesterday to sharply reduce the federal government's financial support for public broadcasting... In addition, the subcommittee acted to eliminate within two years all federal money for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting -- which passes federal funds to public broadcasters -- starting with a 25 percent reduction in CPB's budget for next year, from $400 million to $300 million".

MSM praise for killer of Americans: "If you wanted to see the perfect example of the ethical and moral collapse of the Mainstream Media, you could not do better than a long article in the New Yorker of May 23, 2005. The article is entitled, "The Spy Who Loved Us." Written by a teacher at the University of Albany, named Thomas Bass, it's about a man named Pham Xuan An. Now very old, An was -- among many other things -- a correspondent in Saigon during the Vietnam War for Time magazine.... He was also a Communist spy, working for the North Vietnamese, informing them of what he knew about American military plans, troop movements, political agendas. He even helped the Communists win large battles by directing Vietcong and North Vietnamese troops against American and South Vietnamese forces. He helped plan the Tet Offensive of 1968, including helping the man who planned the attack on the U.S. Embassy. This was the offensive where thousands of innocent civilians were massacred by the Communists..... the whole article is about how cute and smart and clever and brave a guy An is. A lovable, brilliant, brave man who sent Americans and innocent civilians to their deaths.... In this article, which I would guess to be about 8,000 words or more, there is not one hint, not one whisper, of sympathy for the American soldiers who fought and died or were maimed in Vietnam."

There is an appalling story here about the stormtroopers at the EPA. The whole agency needs to be shut down and environmental protection left to the States. That way there might be some States offering refuge from environmental crazies.

KBJ sums it up "He is implying that it is contradictory to be both pro-life on the issue of abortion and in favor of the death penalty. It's not contradictory, of course, as anyone with any sense knows. The relevant principle is that innocent human life must not be destroyed. We Texans execute convicted murderers because, and only because, we value innocent human life. Have liberals lost the concept of the innocent, or are they just stupid?"

Rightist "racism" "There was one occasion when a worker had refused to eat at the same table as aboriginal workers. Joh told his sister to get the man a tray and then told him to eat outside! And, much to Joh's sister Neta's amusement, the man did. Word of this - in an era when normally a white man would be inside and aborigines outside - spread through the district like a bushfire. But that was Joh. He did what he knew to be right. Joh's favourite singer, Kamahl, sang the Lord's Prayer at his funeral and still wears a set of cuff links his old friend once gave him. [Joh was the "Far-Right" Premier of my home State of Queensland. Kamahl is a very dark Sri Lankan]

Jeff Jacoby has a good article on the way businesses are being shaken down in the name of "reparations" for slavery -- slavery that the businesses had nothing to do with.

Good to see that New York's biggest standover man -- Eliot Spitzer -- has met his Waterloo. Now that he has been shown up as a paper tiger, businesses should be a lot more resistant to his shakedown attempts.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

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"

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 Page is here or here.

********************************
posted by JR 6/11/2005 06:55:00 PM

Friday, June 10, 2005

 
SOME ECONOMICS

Stop the mercantilists: "Mercantilism was an insidious economic theory that held Europe in its thrall in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. The mercantilists decreed that a nation's economic success could be measured by its stockpile of gold and that the way to make the pile higher was to encourage exports and restrict imports. Adam Smith routed the mercantilists in Book IV of the Wealth of Nations (1776). His lesson was clear: Open markets and trade are 'goods,' not 'bads.' The war, alas, is not over. Mercantilism is back. Its adherents use new lingo and make slightly different arguments -- they hoard jobs, not gold -- but their poisonous creed is in essence the same. It is that a nation can enrich itself by boosting exports and chasing imports away. Mercantilism is behind the campaign to make the Chinese revalue their currency upward. The preposterous notion here is that America would be enriched if Chinese apparel cost a little more."

Bob Herbert, cluelessly class-conscious: "Bob Herbert is still mired in the Marxist mentality which says that what the physical laborers do constitutes the whole of any productive output -- and that anything paid to the entrepreneurs and businessmen who somehow happen along and get their mitts involved in the productive process is merely 'surplus,' i.e., stolen goods, grabbed from the laborers. But if mega-successful entrepreneurs, businessmen, capitalists in fact contribute nothing worthy of their exorbitant compensation, then companies consisting only of laboring workers would enjoy a competitive edge over those companies allegedly dubiously benefiting from the too-pricey guidance of the productive individuals who create and drive a successful company."

In defense of employment-at-will: "Over the past few decades the traditional prerogative of an employer to fire an employee 'at-will' (that is, for any reason whatsoever) has come under legal assault in the United States. Judges in nearly all fifty states have ruled in favor of employees claiming 'unjust' dismissal, forcing companies to rehire the employee or pay damages. Yet despite the emotional appeal of preventing employer 'abuses,' there are compelling reasons to fully restore the so-called 'employment-at-will' doctrine."

Fascinating article here (PDF) on the greater effectivness of private law-enforcement versus public police. Bail bondsmen are a lot better at preventing and grabbing bail-jumpers than the police are.

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

ELSEWHERE

Good gal: "Janice Rogers Brown, the African-American daughter of Alabama sharecroppers who was confirmed Wednesday to the federal appeals court here, often invokes slavery in describing what she sees as the perils of liberalism. "In the heyday of liberal democracy, all roads lead to slavery," she has warned in speeches. Society and the courts have turned away from the founders' emphasis on personal responsibility, she has argued, toward a culture of government regulation and dependency that threatens fundamental freedoms. "We no longer find slavery abhorrent," she told the conservative Federalist Society a few years ago. "We embrace it.""

I have just heard that Kevin Lamb was fired from his day job as Managing Director for the conservative Human Events magazine purely because of phone-calls from the Leftist Southern Poverty Law Centre accusing him of insufficient political correctness. He edits in his own time the online magazine Occidental Quarterly -- one of the few magazines game to mention the word "race" without going into paroxysms of condemnation about "racism". Apparently American 'conservatives' and 'liberals' are BOTH now spineless against 'anti-racist' fanatics. Details here. I don't agree with everything in the OQ but it is no nuttier than the New York Times (faint praise, I know).

The American dream lives: "A strong global economy gave 600,000 people an entree last year into a highly envied group: the world's millionaires. The annual World Wealth Report, released Thursday by Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. and the Capgemini Group consulting firm, found that there were 8.3 million people worldwide with $1 million or more in financial assets at the end of 2004, up from 7.7 million a year earlier... Not surprisingly, the expansion of the millionaire class was especially strong in North America because of the solid economic growth last year in both the United States and Canada. "Significantly, North America surpassed Europe both in total high net worth individuals population and wealth for the first time since 2001... According to the latest figures, the number of high net worth individuals included 2.7 million in North America"

The Latino vote: "While Cuban Americans have historically voted Republican by wide margins, primarily because of the GOP's strong anti-communist credentials, Americans of Mexican, Central American and South American descent have been equally ardent supporters of the Democratic Party and its candidates. But that Democratic advantage is quickly becoming a thing of the past. Over the last three presidential election cycles, Latino American support for Democrats has steadily declined, from the 72% that voted for Bill Clinton in 1996 to the 53% that John Kerry received last year. Although these percentages are based on exit polling and the precise numbers are still being debated, the overall trend is beyond dispute, and a party that loses nearly a quarter of a core constituency in less than a decade is a party with cause for distress".

Another reason to control your own retirement savings: "By any standard, the pension default by United and other U.S. companies is simply outrageous. Pension funds are supposed to be set aside by companies in separate accounts so they will be there when employees retire. Instead, dishonest company officials have been commingling pension funds with other company revenues, and using them to fund current expenses, pay executive perks, and to fund corporate expansion. The PBGC reports that during the past six years, many large companies have put nothing into their pension accounts. ... The massive corporate default on pensions is fraud any way you look at it, and the corporate officials responsible should have their personal assets attached to pay off their obligations to employees, and then be put behind bars, like any other thief. Instead, courts have quietly OKed United's default on their pension guarantees."

Prager on the corruption of Amnesty: "Sometime in the 1970s, I sent a donation to Amnesty International. As soon as I heard that a group had been formed to combat torture, I knew I had to support it. Unfortunately, like almost all international and most domestic groups, the Left took over Amnesty International, and it devolved into another predictably anti-American, morally destructive organization. That devolution was most apparent years ago when Amnesty International listed the United States as a major violator of human rights because it executed murderers. The organization's inability to morally distinguish between executing murderers and executing innocent people means that Amnesty International is worse than ineffectual; the good it has done notwithstanding, it is becoming harmful to the cause of human rights".

Windschuttle has a delightful fisking of Robert Fisk. Fisk really is an amazing liar.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

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"

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 Page is here or here.

********************************
posted by JR 6/10/2005 07:37:00 PM

Thursday, June 09, 2005

 
A NAZI GRAPHIC

I rarely put up graphics on this blog both because I like the page to load fast and because I don't have much bandwidth. But the graphic below is too interesting to miss. Although Leftists furiously dispute it, readers of this blog will be aware that there is any amount of evidence to show that Hitler was exactly what he said he was -- a national socialist. For those who want to check it, I have presented a small selection of the evidence of his socialism here.

Aside from the nationalism, it is amazing how much Mein Kampf sounds like modern Leftism in fact. Even Hitler's antisemitism would pass unremarked among modern Leftists. And Hitler's nationalism was in fact one way in which he was smarter than modern Leftists. Have a look at the 1939 Nazi propaganda placard below (a Wochenspruch for the Gau Weser/Ems). The placard promotes one of Hitler's sayings. The saying is, "Es gibt keinen Sozialismus, der nicht aufgeht im eigenen Volk" -- which I translate as "There is no socialism except what arises within its own people". Hitler spoke a very colloquial German so translating that one was not easy but I think that is about as close to it as you can get.



(If the image does not come up, click here)

As some modern context for that saying, note that there have now been various psychological studies (e.g. here) showing that people are more willing to share with others whom they see as like themselves. That leads to the view that socialism will find its strongest support among an ethnically homogeneous population -- which the Scandinavian countries notably were until recently. And ethnic diversity therefore will undermine support for socialism (as in the U.S.A.). And from my studies of them, I have noted that the Scots are a very brotherly lot. There is even a line in a famous Harry Lauder song that says: "Where brother Scots foregather ...". And of course the Scots are enormously socialistic. When Margaret Thatcher came to power on a huge swing towards the Conservatives in England, Scotland actually swung away from the conservatives.

So the "diversity at all costs" orientation and open borders policies of the modern Left are actually very inimical to the socialistic aims of the Left. The modern day Left do not see that their promoting of infinite diversity will undermine support for socialism. Hitler did.

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FROM BROOKES NEWS

When did the US economy begin to crack? Like the 1929s boom the Clinton boom was replete with lessons for the US economy. Unfortunately the lessons have been completely ignored by the Fed and the economic commentariat
An economic illiterate at Crikey smears the H. R. Nicholls Society on labour market reform Crikey might be noted for many things but certainly not its economic commentary. It recently published an attack on H. R. Nicholls Society by an economic illiterate
Does China determine US interest rates? China's exchange rate policy has very little effect if at all on changes in the demand for US dollars and the level of US interest rates
The media covers for the murderous Fidel Castro and does his dirty work The sickening hypocrisy of The Age is unbelievable. Now it is parroting the sadistic Castro's demands
Outing the "Liberal Democrats" at NPR I had the idea of researching what the other side is doing, so I decided to search Google.com for the words "Liberal Democrat." I found some very interesting things

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ELSEWHERE

Journalists have high standards?? Is this guy joking?: ""By responding to bloggers, we are giving them credibility that they don't deserve," says Bob Furnad, a former executive vice president at CNN who now teaches at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia. "I wouldn't respond to them until they are held to the same standard that we are."" (HT Security Watchtower).

Did you know that New Zealand is sending special forces to help out in Afghanistan? Not all Kiwis are happy about it, of course -- particularly those who supported the SOVIET intervention in Afghanistan!

Pathetic Canadians: "The CBC's television news coverage of the United States is consistently marked by emotional criticism, rather than a rational consideration of US policy based on Canadian national interests, according to The Canadian "Garrison Mentality" and Anti-Americanism at the CBC, released today by The Fraser Institute."

Brown achievers: "For any American contestants, the most uncommon words at last week's national spelling bee were not appoggiatura and onychophagy, but the names of the top four finishers: Anurag Kashyap, Aliya Deri, Samir Patel and Rajiv Tarigopula. All were of Indian ancestry. In recent years, descendants of Indian immigrants - less than 1 percent of the population - have dominated this contest, snatching first place in five of the past seven years, and making up more than 30 of the 273 contestants this year."

The dying church of England: "More than half of the Church's 16,000 parish churches have fewer than 50 members. Average weekly attendance in 2003 was 1,187,000 compared with a figure in 1968 of 1.6 million. [The British population is 60 million]

Reliapundit wants mandatory logic classes in schools to combat Leftism! It could help to balance things up a bit.

A Democrat Watergate is OK: "It was a political scandal of unprecedented proportions: the deliberate, systematic, and illegal misuse of the FBI and the CIA by the White House in a presidential campaign. The massive black-bag operations, bordering on the unconstitutional and therefore calling for impeachment, were personally approved by the president. They included planting a CIA spy in his opponent's campaign committee, wiretaps on his opponent's top political aides, illegal FBI checks, and the bugging of his opponent's campaign airplane. The president? Lyndon B. Johnson. The target? Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, the 1964 Republican presidential candidate".

I am very sorry to hear that blogger Bunker Mulligan has passed away. It was always good to receive the occasional email from him. My condolences to his family.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

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"

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 Page is here or here.

********************************
posted by JR 6/09/2005 07:09:00 PM

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

 
LEFTIST EGO EXPLAINS THEIR HATRED OF CHRISTIANS

Tim at Random Observations has been mulling over the short essay on Leftism that I put up a couple of days ago and he has come up with one thought that I particularly like. He has an explanation for the huge upsurge of hatred against Christians among Leftists in recent times. Like most people, I had seen the phenomenon as a response to the tendency of evangelical Christians to vote GOP but there seems to be a passion in the hatred directed towards Bible-believing Christians which borders on insanity at times. It seems much more than dislike of someone you disagree with.

Tim explains the fervid hatred by saying that many people (particularly Leftists) need to feel superior to someone else in order to boost their own ego but Leftists are not supposed to feel superior to almost anybody these days (homosexuals, blacks, poor people etc) so Christians and conservatives (and those two overlap a lot) are about all that is left as permissible scapegoats. So all their hatred is poured out through the narrow openings that their beliefs allow. So Christians are one of the few permissible targets. Though that old standby -- the Jews -- also seems to be making a comeback.

In my monograph on Leftism I go to some length in my discussion of ego need as basic to Leftist psychology. In summary, what I say is that Leftists are people who have a huge need to think highly of themselves. But such a belief is hard to maintain and is hence vulnerable to disconfirmation in various ways. A big ego is a weak ego. Someone who sees himself as just an average guy (or a Christian who sees himself as just a sinner) will find confirmation of that belief all about him most days of his life. But someone who thinks he is out of the box will be constantly scrabbling for support of that belief. So Leftists are always looking for the praise, for the attention and for the power that they need and that they think they deserve. And they will do anything to get it. They will do anything to bolster their big but fragile egos. Their ego need is far more important to them than any scruple. They will say anything at all that they think will get them esteem, influence or power.

But they have an awkward limit to what they can do or say. Being "superior" can only be relative. Superior to whom? So the Leftist always needs to feel superior to someone or some group in particular. There has to be some group that they don't need to pander to and which they are free to put down and hate. And, at the moment, that is where Christians come in. So the fervour of hatred towards Christians that the Leftists currently pour out reflects both how narrow their opportunities for preening themselves now are and how badly in need of propping up their egos are after their many defeats from the fall of the Soviet Union on.

Anyone who doubts that Leftists do see themselves as superior beings should trawl through the achives of my LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS blog for a while. That will set any doubts completely at rest.

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

ELSEWHERE

Journalists think they're God: "There is an unspoken but real impulse in today's media to see themselves as "independent" of America, even above America, not so much because they are superior to America but because America is so egregiously flawed. It is their role to shed light on America's failings. They're not keen at being seen as Americans. They choke at the idea of wearing flag pins. ABC boss David Westin tried so hard to be above America that he wanted to stay neutral on the question of whether our Pentagon is a legitimate target for terrorists..... So disdainful have they become that they are silent when fellow journalists claim -- without a shred of evidence -- that American soldiers are engaging in targeting and assassinating journalists hostile to America's foreign policy aims. When CNN Vice President Eason Jordan "exploded" earlier this year at a conference at Davos, Switzerland and, in objection to liberal Congressman Barney Frank calling the death of journalists "collateral damage" in Iraq, there were no glaring mainstream-media spotlights on Jordan's remarks. When Jordan resigned, there was a tiny blip on the Feb. 12 Saturday "Today" show on NBC, a tiny blip on the Saturday night "CBS Evening News," and no mention on ABC until it was mentioned in passing on a March 8 "Nightline"

A rare victory for decency: "A French court last week found three writers for Le Monde, as well as the newspaper's publisher, guilty of "racist defamation" against Israel and the Jewish people. In a groundbreaking decision, the Versailles court of appeal ruled that a comment piece published in Le Monde in 2002, "Israel-Palestine: The Cancer," had whipped up anti-Semitic opinion.... "Israel-Palestine: The Cancer" was a nasty piece of work, replete with lies, slanders and myths about "the chosen people," "the Jenin massacre," describing the Jews as "a contemptuous people taking satisfaction in humiliating others," "imposing their unmerciful rule," and so on. Yet it was no worse than thousands of other news reports, editorials, commentaries, letters, cartoons and headlines published throughout Europe in recent years, in the guise of legitimate and reasoned discussion of Israeli policies.... Grotesque and utterly false comparisons such as these should have no place in reporting or commenting on the Middle East. Yet although the French court ruling -- the first of its kind in Europe -- is a major landmark, no one in France seems to care. The country's most distinguished newspaper, the paper of record, has been found guilty of anti-Semitism. One would have thought that such a verdict would prompt wide-ranging coverage and lead to extensive soul-searching and public debate. Instead, there has been almost complete silence, and virtually no coverage in the French press".

Democrats? "One-quarter of all Americans met the criteria for having a mental illness within the past year, and fully a quarter of those had a "serious" disorder that significantly disrupted their ability to function day to day, according to the largest and most detailed survey of the nation's mental health, published yesterday."

Black GOPers: "African-Americans who are Republicans take it on the chin a whole lot," said Smothers, a 35-year-old educational psychologist. "Some feel safer voting Republican and keeping it to themselves." So to let people know black Republicanism is no oxymoron, Smothers and Wolaridge have helped form Black Republicans in the County of Kern. BRICK, a 1-year-old chapter of a statewide organization, wants to promote the GOP agenda, find qualified blacks to run for local office and through education, reverse some of the ills plaguing the black community. The group reminds people a Republican president freed the slaves, Republican congressmen voted for civil rights legislation and a Republican -- from Bakersfield, no less -- was chief justice when the U.S. Supreme Court desegregated public schools in its 1954 Brown vs. the Board of Education decision. And it tries to dispel the notion the Democratic Party is the party of poor people. Actually, BRICK members argue, Democrats have created an "underclass" of people too reliant on government."

Strange Justice has a disturbing post on the strange state of Florida justice at the moment.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

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"

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 Page is here or here.

********************************
posted by JR 6/08/2005 07:23:00 PM

Tuesday, June 07, 2005

 
TUESDAY ROUNDUP

Once again I list what I think were the best posts on my various blogs in the preceding week.

On Dissecting Leftism I note the amazing lies of Australia's Left-leaning academic historians

On Political Correctness Watch I note that radical feminists treat men like the "niggers" of the old South

On Greenie Watch I note that in California the Greenies are trying to save flies!

On Education Watch I ask: are Spanish-only schools coming in California?

On Gun Watch I note that Californian legislators are trying to put serial nos. on bullets!

On Leftists as Elitists I have a report on the antisemitic British elite

On Socialized Medicine I report a bureaucratic health care system that has totally bogged down

On Blogger News I look at political centrism and its implications

On Majority Rights I summarize research into psychological authoritarianism

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FROM BROOKES NEWS

US economy, trade deficit, money supply and growth : No matter what the current crop of Pollyanna's think, the US economy's insatiable demand for imports has nothing to do with a 'demographic gap between the US and other developed countries'
The Australian economy, manufacturing and the exchange rate: There is considerable dispute about whether the Australian economy is running into capacity constraints. So what is really happening?
Australian economy: wages and the fallacy of union bargaining: Tragically for Australia's unemployed, our rightwing economists appear to be doing nothing to educate the public in basic economics or even economic history
Rebuilding the Twin Towers: The Twin Towers had been under attack by terrorists for years because they were such a perfect symbol of a free economy
What is the Best Way to Prevent Abortions?: One sobering statistic reveals that every time a teenage girl has extramarital sex, she has a 47 percent chance of catching the virus that causes cervical cancer
In my opinion what is CNN, O'Reilly and Newsweek?: Newsweek deliberately contributed to the escalation of Muslim hatred towards the US

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

ELSEWHERE

Amnesty backs off "Despite highly publicized charges of U.S. mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo, the head of the Amnesty International USA said on Sunday the group doesn't "know for sure" that the military is running a "gulag."" [The damage is done now, however. Their "humanitarian" cover is blown. Everybody now knows that they are loony Leftists]

German media as mad as in Hitler's day: "Germany's PBS station ARD alleges the Bush family's involvement in the 9/11 WTC attacks. I watched the Sunday night prime time movie in stunned disbelief. The subtext of the plot was the explicitly stated allegation that 9-11 was instigated by the Bush family for oil and power. TV audience for the movie was 7.27 million."

For those who missed the spearing of Krugman by Okrent in the NYT, there is a good reprise here. Sounds like Okrent is one of the diminishing band of decent Democrats.

Students rebel against Leftist propaganda: "Best-selling author Erica Jong was booed and told to "Shut up!" and "Go Home!" during her 40-minute speech yesterday at the College of Staten Island's commencement exercises. As Ms. Jong, best known for her 1973 novel "Fear of Flying," talked about everything from truth in advertising to truth in politics and the shallowness of public relations -- but said precious little about graduation -- some of the thousands in attendance on the great lawn at the college's Willowbrook campus stood up and began to object loudly. A little less than halfway through her speech, some graduates began tossing around an inflatable beach volleyball. Some even got up from their chairs, just yards from her podium, to go chat with friends and family who were seated behind them.... Ms. Jong's remarks were met with some vehement disapproval. "She gave a political speech when she was supposed to be doing a pep talk," said the father of a CSI graduate who declined to give his name. "Some graduates wanted to throw stuff at her. Whoever heard of a commencement speaker talking about body bags?" Dorothy, a 48-year-old mother of a CSI graduate, categorized Ms. Jong's speech as "all-around bashing. "It was disgusting, despicable," said the Fort Wadsworth woman, who would not give her surname. "She called politicians liars, called us all liars. She trashed America.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

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"

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 Page is here or here.

********************************
posted by JR 6/07/2005 09:32:00 PM

Monday, June 06, 2005

 
A short essay on Leftism

I don't have any urgent comments on current events to put up today so I thought I might stand back a bit and reflect:

By "Leftist" I mean here someone more extreme than a mere VOTER for a democratic socialist party such as The Australian Labor Party or the U.S. Democratic party -- though Leftists in my sense may well be members and officers of such parties. I mean by "Leftist" someone who is committed to a high degree of control over society and coercion of people in it with the ostensible aim of "levelling" incomes and other privileges among people in the society concerned. In the 20th Century, such people normally had at least some Marxist sympathies.

What I think the facts show is that Leftists are basically angry, hate-filled people who hunger for power over others and enjoy hurting others but who hide their malign and hurtful motivations under a cloak of humanitarian intentions. Their anger at the ordinary people about them leads them to want to control, hurt and change those about them -- by violence and mass-murder if necessary. Their proclaimed humanitarian intentions and concern for "the worker" are, therefore, just deception and camouflage -- perhaps unconscious deception and camouflage in some cases.

There was a poster around the universities a few years back that is rather informative about the Left-wing viewpoint. It said: "I love humanity. It's just people that I can't stand". My own way of putting much the same point would be to say that Leftists (in my sense) say that they "care" for people but will cheerfully murder half of them -- whereas conservatives do not claim to love humanity but they do not want to murder half of them either.

I had a Communist girlfriend some years back -- a schoolteacher by trade, funnily enough. She had talents other than her politics. I noticed at the time how much anger she had in her towards all sorts of people and thought how well that fitted in with her support for Communism. She was basically a gentle nurturing person but anger leads to hatred and hatred leads to murder. It is hard for me to understand how any decent person can ever have supported anything as brutal as Communism but the fact that large numbers of intelligent people often did tends to show where anger and hatred can lead otherwise decent people.

The characteristic Left-wing slogan is: "Smash X" -- where X can be almost anything -- from the current government, to racism, to big business, to some particular law etc etc. They are very big on smashing things -- with revolution being only the most extreme example of that. If some person or group is not doing what the Leftist wants or thinks that they ought to do, the Leftist immediately wants to coerce them (with violence or otherwise) or murder them. Nice people! They want power over other people at any price. Beware anyone who stands in their way!

All the great mass-murders of the 20th Century (under the control of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao Tse Tung) were committed in the name of socialism and "the people". Compared to these crimes, lesser slaughters such as that by the Serbs in Kosovo (who were in any case led by their old Communist boss, Slobodan Milosevic) pale into insignificance. It is hard to think that anything could be worse than Serb troops throwing a 2 year old toddler down a well in front of his mother but "socialists" can do it.

My account of Leftist motivations would seem to explain a lot. It does make sense of a lot of seemingly senseless behaviour -- which is a good test of any scientific theory. For instance, only a fool or a scoundrel would advocate such counterproductive nostrums as State ownership of industry or rent control and I do not accuse those on the Left of being fools. They are too smart for their own good, if anything. They think no-one can teach them anything. Advocating State ownership of industry or rent control is nonsense if you really want to improve the long-term lot of the worker but is, of course, perfectly rational if your real main aim is to concentrate as much power and control as possible in your own hands (or in the hands of your clique).

In my view the reason why psychologists tend to be Leftist is also that psychology (like teaching) seems to offer the prospect of personal power over the minds of others -- the ultimate form of coercion. Leftists want that and are attracted to studying psychology for that reason. Fortunately their own innate dishonesty makes them very bad at it.

As I see it, most real Leftists (advocates of a high degree of State coercion and control -- who in turn are generally intellectuals of some kind) start out with some degree of intellectual orientation but little capacity for intellectual originality. They are, in other words, theologians rather than philosophers. They can debate and rehash an existing body of thought ad nauseam but are barren of new ideas. Anybody who knows the vast lengths to which they go to in debating "what Marx really meant" will see the appositeness of the "theologian" appellation. The excitement over the discovery of Marx's "Grundrisse" was also like the discovery of a new holy book. Nonetheless their intellectual orientation does alert them to the many ways in which the world around us is not ideal and makes them want to propose ways of improving things. Because they are not very good (i.e. unoriginal) intellectuals, however, they can come up with only the crudest of proposals (i.e. make people behave better).

When life eventually forces them to confront the evidence that their crude methods tend to be inhumane and counterproductive they face being shown up as the inferior intellectuals they are. They face being shown up as wrong and foolish, meaning that their self esteem is threatened. So they either abandon the Left-wing romance with coercion and change their views to more conservative ones or if they are really infatuated with coercion they stay Leftist by using any and every device available to aid that.

And the most insidious device that they can use is intellectual dishonesty. They simply refuse to believe anything adverse to them and will themselves lie to manipulate others ("for their own good"). Thus I remember Leftists of the bad old days in the '50s and 60's who greeted accounts of Stalin's purges and massacres of his own people as "inventions of the capitalist press". How do you persuade such people? You can say that we have a free press rather than a capitalist one but since mass media do tend to be big businesses this can be made to sound implausible too. The truth is that you cannot persuade such people and waste your time by trying. "There are none so blind as those who will not see". All the evidence on almost any question will seldom be available at any one time and place so all or almost all judgments of fact have to be made on a probabilistic basis. So all the intellectually dishonest person has to do is to keep demanding higher and higher probabilities before he will believe. You soon reach the point where that level is unobtainable so he looks like he has had a polemical victory of sorts. He has. Dishonesty has its rewards. It is still despicable and misleading, however. So a Leftist is also someone who uses dishonesty in support of coercion.

It may be argued that on my account of things Leftists should also tend to be policemen etc. Policemen have a lot of interpersonal power. In fact, of course, policemen, the military etc tend to be very Rightist. There are several obvious answers to this. Perhaps the most obvious is that these jobs are not very intellectual and the Leftist does start out as a (second-rate) intellectual. Another answer is that the ratio of gain to risk is high. Policemen and soldiers risk getting shot and only ever gain temporary power over a few individuals. For a power-mad Leftist that is just not a very attractive offer. It is a bad deal. When the Leftist takes up arms he tends to do so as a guerilla (so he can shoot from safety) and for very big stakes (major social change --a "revolution" -- that will make him a big-shot if it succeeds). He does not want power over just one or two individuals. He really wants power over everybody -- for himself or his clique. A really nice guy(!). Teaching or psychology, of course, offer power without much cost or threat.

There is some support for the account I have given in the academic literature. For example, a paper by Winter & Wiecking [Winter, D.G. & Wiecking, F.A. (1971) The new Puritans: Achievement and power motives of New Left intellectuals. Behavioral Science, 16, 523-530] tells a bit about Leftist power motives and the many books and articles by Rothman and Lichter [e.g. Rothman, S. & Lichter, R.S. (1982) Roots of radicalism: Jews, Christians and the New Left Oxford: Univ. Press] tell about Leftists being in love with themselves -- "narcissism" if you are being polite about it, "arrogance" if not. A paper by Himmelfarb gets it pretty right too [Himmelfarb, G. (1989) Victorian values/Jewish values. Commentary, 87(2), 23-31.]

As I said at the beginning, one must distinguish between real Leftists (a small but poisonous clique) and those who vote for them. Real Leftists (Communists, Trotskyists and their usually "intellectual" ilk) have virtually no voter support in moderately well-informed societies (i.e. in the developed world) but they do at times manage to dominate mass political organizations of democratic society (e.g. the British Labour party up until the late 90s). People who vote for such parties can often be (as S.M. Lipset points out in his 1960 book Political man) actually quite conservative. They tend to be working class people who simply vote for those who appear to offer them the best deal. In other words, Leftist lies and pretences of good intentions do sometimes gain votes from those least able to be critical. Even then, the Leftists cannot be too overt. The obvious extremism of the British Labour Party in the '70s and '80s was the main reason for the Conservatives' long term in office. Mrs Thatcher's biggest asset was the British Labour Party. People seldom liked her and her Conservative government much but liked the alternative even less. British Labour was in fact still so hopelessly in cloud-cuckoo land in the early 90s that they could not even beat the wimpish John Major in the midst of a recession!

I remember saying to supporters of the British Labour Party in the 90s, "But your lot are so hopeless that they couldn't even beat John Major". That remark was obviously far from original to me but it always went home. It tended to strike them dumb in fact. With the pain of having to bear remarks like that, no wonder they gave up most of their old policies soon after.

Under Tony Blair they in general became just another bumbling conservative party -- except for a bit of feel-good rhetoric and tokenistic reform (such as further reform of the already emasculated House of Lords and the banning of hunting to hounds). They even started to espouse "family values" -- the old catchcry of the religious Right. The penalty of their pre-Blair Leftist extremism was impotence. They gained power only by abandoning most of their old committments to Leftist causes. That the party of unilateral disarmament became the party of Iraq intervention was truly a seismic shift. Only their love of bureaucracy and big spending survived.

About a third of the people (e.g. in Allende's Chile) can sometimes be persuaded to support the Leftists. Some of those can be sincere. In the long run, however, they will learn. At what a price! Generally after many deaths: Tibet! China's Tienanmen Square and Great Leap Backward under Mao! The Hungary of Imre Nagy and Janos Kadar! The Czechoslovakia of Dubcek! The Cambodia of Pol Pot! The incredible human, economic and environmental disaster of Soviet Russia! What a lovely list of achievements for the so-smart Leftist intellectuals (really arrogant ignoramuses) to contemplate! Not that they care, of course.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

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"

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 Page is here or here.

********************************
posted by JR 6/06/2005 07:17:00 PM

Sunday, June 05, 2005

 
HOLLYWOOD PAST AND PRESENT

Far Leftist Hollywood in the past: "Until now, Hollywood's political history has been dominated by a steady stream of films and memoirs decrying the "nightmare" of the Red Scare. But in Red Star Over Hollywood, Ronald and Allis Radosh show that the real drama of that era lay in the story of the movie stars, directors and especially screenwriters who joined the Communist Party or traveled in its orbit, and made the Party the focus of their political and social lives. The authors also show the Party's attempts at influencing filmmaking; their greatest achievement being the film Mission To Moscow, which justified Stalin's great purge trials.... The Radoshes' most controversial discovery is that during the investigations of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, the Hollywood Reds themselves were beset by doubts and disagreements about their disloyalty to America, and their own treatment by the Communist Party."

Far Leftist Hollywood today: "Long hospitable to the countercultural meme about the evils of capitalism, Hollywood, which ironically is one of the most successful examples of big business in America, has ratcheted up its war against the dreaded profit motive.... Hollywood has a long tradition of producing movies that bash the capitalist system and while it has every right to use film as a medium to criticize the excesses of capitalism, is it truth these artists seek to portray? More likely, it is a complete lack of knowledge and understanding of the virtues of the free-market.... How expansive is this assault on corporate culture? By the age of 18, the average TV viewer has seen businessmen and businesswomen attempt more than 10,000 murders and countless lesser offenses ranging from extortion and bribery to kidnapping and dumping of toxic waste, according to a survey by the Media Institute".

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

ELSEWHERE

I mentioned yesterday the new findings tracing the genetic basis for high Jewish IQ. There have been many summaries of the work in the media so I thought some people may wish to go past the summaries and look at the original report. It is here (PDF). Interesting that it is only the Ashkenazim (Western Jews) that show the high IQ and also interesting that persecution of Jews seems not to have been important. The article is also a useful short introduction to the academic IQ literature for those unfamiliar with it.

Logical Meme has got a roundup of several recent findings about genetic differences between races. Reality is SO incorrect!

Good comment on the Gitmo "Gulag" from the Locker Room: "With all of the attention generated by Amnesty International's recent report on Guantanamo, an important question needs to be asked. Did Amnesty International also visit Castro's prisons? In his book, Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant, Humberto Fontova states, "Given Cuba's population, Castro incarcerates at a higher rate than Stalin," which leads one to believe that there are a lot of prisons on that island that needed a visit while Amnesty was in the area. According to Fontova, Castro's prisons are true Gulags! Through his interviews with the survivors of Castro's Gulags, Fontova's presents a clear picture of the horrific conditions and treatment of prisoners in Cuba's prisons. From Castro's practice of draining and selling the blood of prisoners to the severe torture endured by prisoners, these are the true Gulags on the island of Cuba, not Guantanamo. Fontova also notes that Castro's prisons are 80% black because like many true Communists, Castro is a racist. When Fontova speaks in Raleigh on June 14, I'm sure he can tell us what Cuban prisons Amnesty International should have observed"

Malkin on the facts about Gitmo: "The mainstream media and international human rights organizations have relentlessly portrayed the Guantanamo Bay detention facility as a depraved torture chamber operated by sadistic American military officials defiling Islam at every turn. It's the "gulag of our time," wails Amnesty International.... Erik Saar, who served as an army sergeant at Gitmo for six months and co-authored a negative, tell-all book about his experience titled Inside the Wire, inadvertently provides us more firsthand details showing just how restrained, and sensitive to Islam -- to a fault, I believe -- the officials at the detention facility have been. Each detainee's cell has a sink installed low to the ground, "to make it easier for the detainees to wash their feet" before Muslim prayer, Saar reports. Detainees get "two hot halal, or religiously correct, meals" a day in addition to an MRE (meal ready to eat). Loudspeakers broadcast the Muslims' call to prayer five times a day. Every detainee gets a prayer mat, cap and Koran. Every cell has a stenciled arrow pointing toward Mecca."

Buchanan on "Throat": "And so the great mystery, "Who was Deep Throat?" reaches its anticlimax. He turns out to be a toady who oversaw black bag jobs for J. Edgar, violated his oath and, out of malice and spite, leaked the fruits of an honest FBI investigation to the nest of Nixon-haters over on 15th Street, then lied about it for 30 years. Why did Felt lie? Because Felt knew he had disgraced himself and dishonored everything an FBI agent should stand for. He didn't want his old comrades to know what a snake he had been.... Not one miscreancy committed by Nixon's men did not have its antecedent in the White Houses of JFK or LBJ. But they got away with it, including the distribution to the press of dirt on Dr. King, picked up by secret FBI photo and wiretap. What Segretti dirty trick remotely approaches that one, which the liberal press covered up?"

Institutionalized Leftism: "The BBC's world is one in which America is always wrong, George W. Bush is a knuckle-dragging simpleton, people of faith are frightening ignoramuses, and capitalism is a rot on the fabric of social justice. Through this prism, the United Nations is the world's supreme moral authority, multiculturalism is always a force for good, war is never warranted, and U.S. Republicans sprinkle Third World children over their Cheerios for breakfast."

A good article here on anti-Christian attitudes in the Canadian media. The article concludes: "In the meantime, how exactly the Globe would have the Conservative Party meet this ominous "Christian" peril, it did not say. Will candidates for nomination be formally questioned under oath: "Are you now, or have you ever been, a Christian?" Canada is not there yet, of course. But we're progressing."

A great Milton Friedman saying: "A private firm that makes a serious blunder may go out of business. A government agency is likely to get a bigger budget."

I am sorry to see that Australian blogger A.E. Brain is having a lot of health problems. Let's hope the medicos get to the bottom of the problems and give him an easier life.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

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"

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 Page is here or here.

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posted by JR 6/05/2005 07:11:00 PM

Saturday, June 04, 2005

 
EUROPE

What incomprehensibly arrogant European logic! Only governments can kill the EU constitution, the voters don't matter: "Britain is leading moves to shelve the European constitution until EU leaders agree a way forward after the emphatic "no" vote in France and the Netherlands. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, is expected to tell MPs on Monday that legislation paving the way for a British referendum will be suspended until there is "clarity" from EU leaders. Officials in Brussels fear that suspending the ratification process is tantamount to killing it, and European leaders have demanded that the process continue despite the defeats."

David Brooks on learning from the EU: "Forgive me for making a blunt and obvious point, but events in Western Europe are slowly discrediting large swaths of American liberalism. Most of the policy ideas advocated by American liberals have already been enacted in Europe: generous welfare measures, ample labor protections, highly progressive tax rates, single-payer health care systems, zoning restrictions to limit big retailers, and cradle-to-grave middle-class subsidies supporting everything from child care to pension security. And yet far from thriving, continental Europe has endured a lost decade of relative decline. Western Europeans seem to be suffering a crisis of confidence. Election results, whether in North Rhine-Westphalia or across France and the Netherlands, reveal electorates who have lost faith in their leaders, who are anxious about declining quality of life, who feel extraordinarily vulnerable to foreign competition - from the Chinese, the Americans, the Turks, even the Polish plumbers."

Amusing comment from Thomas Friedman: "It is interesting because French voters are trying to preserve a 35-hour work week in a world where Indian engineers are ready to work a 35-hour day. Good luck."

I am still laughing about this desperate post from Rockwell: "There is a more recent indebtedness to France that most Americans lack the decency to acknowledge: the refusal of Chirac's regime to join forces with George W. Bush's unprovoked aggression against Iraq, the first step in a neocon-inspired effort to get the world to prostrate itself at the feet of American emperors. By refusing to join with such lap dogs as Tony Blair -- eager to roll over in exchange for any morsel of recognition from the grand imperator -- the French became a symbol to other nations of the importance of pursuing a course of principled integrity in dealing with others."

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Surprise, Surprise: ""U.N. satellite imagery experts have determined that material that could be used to make biological or chemical weapons and banned long-range missiles has been removed from 109 sites in Iraq, U.N. weapons inspectors said in a report obtained Thursday. U.N. inspectors have been blocked from returning to Iraq since the U.S.-led war in 2003 so they have been using satellite photos to see what happened to the sites that were subject to U.N. monitoring because their equipment had both civilian and military uses."

There is an amusing review here of a book on "God's politics" by Jim Wallis, the Leftist "Evangelical" whose congregation consists of about 40 people.

Publius Pundit has more on the absurdly biased Amnesty International and its allies in the media.

And this pathetic old fool is a "moderate" Muslim: "Mahathir Mohamad, modern Malaysia's founding father and moderate Islam's self-styled champion, denounced the Bush administration yesterday as a "rogue regime" bent on terrorising innocent civilians. He also said he was disappointed that Tony Blair, whom he called a "proven liar", had won re-election after joining the US invasion of Iraq. ... Asked whether he regretted his statement that "Jews rule the world by proxy", which caused an international furore in 2003, Mr Mahathir said he took nothing back."

Why Jews are brainier: "The idea that some ethnic groups may, on average, be more intelligent than others is one of those hypotheses that dare not speak its name. But Gregory Cochran, a noted scientific iconoclast, is prepared to say it anyway. He is that rare bird, a scientist who works independently of any institution.... Together with Jason Hardy and Henry Harpending, of the University of Utah, he is publishing, in a forthcoming edition of the Journal of Biosocial Science, a paper which not only suggests that one group of humanity is more intelligent than the others, but explains the process that has brought this about. The group in question are Ashkenazi Jews. The process is natural selection."

Fathers rights victory: "A determined father in Massachusetts has delivered an early Father's Day gift to non-custodial parents, the overwhelming majority of whom are dads. Dr. Henry M. Fassler has successfully contested a 1998 Massachusetts law that requires a non-custodial parent to have court certification as a non-batterer on a yearly basis before he (or she) is allowed access to their children's school records. The school system currently views all non-custodial parents as guilty of battery until proven innocent. But all that is going to change."

Sad story: "The forced removal of the Bushmen was the culmination of what the Botswana government said was years of effort to bring development to southern Africa's most traditional people. The Bushmen have resisted at every turn, defying hunting restrictions, refusing to abandon their villages and battling the government in a court challenge they hope will reverse policies that, they say, have pushed them to the edge of extinction."

Private sector is key to African development: "The United Nations and the Commission for Africa, a British government group headed by the Prime Minister Tony Blair, have recently called for massive increases in foreign aid to Africa. But past aid to African governments achieved little. Economic growth in Africa, as in the rest of the world, depends on a vibrant private sector. African entrepreneurs, however, face daunting constraints. They are prevented from creating wealth by predatory political elites who control the state. African political elites divert private sector savings to finance their own consumption and to strengthen the repressive apparatus of the state. Unfortunately, Western aid continues to flow to the source of Africa's problems -- the African governments."

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its usual big range of select reading.

On LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS today I have a dissection of a really crazy bit of Leftism that calls GWB "The Spoiled Man-Child"!

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

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"

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 Page is here or here.

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posted by JR 6/04/2005 05:58:00 PM

Friday, June 03, 2005

 
"LIBERALS" HAVEN'T CHANGED

Why are Americans who advocate broadly the reverse of what 19th century English liberals advocated still called liberals? The answer given to that is usually in terms of a steady Leftward drift and that explanation has its merits in isolation. But consider another much less well-known but even more striking phenomenon: What American "progressives" believed in the early 20th century. I have already documented what that was at some length elsewhere so I will just summarize here: The Left of American politics from the beginning of the 20th century up to FDR and the "New Deal" were essentially Fascist. They believed in eugenics, in nationalism, in national uniformity, in war as a purifying force, in the inferiority of Jews and blacks etc. Nowadays the American Left rejects all that with apparent horror (though the antisemitism does seem to have roared back with a vengeance recently). So how did THAT huge change in doctrine come about? I think there is a single explanation for both changes. And that explanation is a psychological one. Psychological explanations for conservatism (e.g. Norton & Aughey, 1981; Gilmour, 1978; Feiling, 1953; Kirk, 1993, Scruton, 2002, Standish, 1990) are routine (though Leftist accounts of conservative psychology are amazingly counter-factual) but I think Leftism also has to be explained psychologically.

As I have set out at great length elsewhere, the primary motive for most Leftist activists and intellectuals (though not for most Leftist followers) is to get acclaim for themselves. That is a perfectly normal human motivation but one that is pursued by Leftists more or less to the exclusion of all else. But how do you get acclaim? The surest way by far is to adopt as one's own whatever it is that the population already acclaims and become a great champion of that. If people generally think it is unquestionable that blacks and Jews are inferior and need to be kept down then a Leftist will become a vigorous advocate of keeping blacks and Jews down. And Leftists did just that in the early 20th century. Up until World War II Harvard had an excellent relationship with the Hitler regime, for instance and Hitler in turn took American eugenic policies as a model for his own. But if certain world horrors take place (WWII) which cause people to change their views and see tolerance is a virtue above all else then Leftists will immediately become great preachers of tolerance. And that too has now happened.

And something similar happened in the 19th century. England was at that time enormously influential and powerful so whatever was characteristically English came in for great scrutiny, not the least in England itself. What was it that made England great? And as I have set out at great length elsewhere, the English themselves had for centuries seen their liberties as a great national treasure. English liberty was a byword and its virtue was unquestionable. So again Leftists did the sort of thing that they always do. They became great champions of liberty. They supported laissez faire in business and writers such as J.S. Mill pushed ideas of liberty to just about their logical extreme. Conservatives, of course stuck with the ideas of extensive but not unlimited liberty that had been normal up until that time. That the "liberals" of that time really were just Leftists can perhaps most clearly be seen in the case of Mill himself. As I have set out briefly here and here the actual policies Mill advocated in parliament were often quite socialist and interventionist. If he could get acclaim for himself by advocating various government interventions in people's lives, all his pro-liberty principles suddenly vanished, just as eugenics suddenly vanished from the Leftist vocabulary after Hitler.

So conservatives just plod along with their boring quest for balance and realism (including, as always, liberty up to a point and tolerance up to a point) while Leftists push what are usually good ideas to extremes. Leftists once masqueraded as extremely pro-liberty. They now masquerade as extremely pro-tolerance. But they believe in neither. Their behaviour always gives them away as believing in nothing but their own entitlement to power. Leftists who get virtually unlimited power (Stalin, Mao etc) soon show how much liberty and tolerance they believe in.

References:
Feiling, K. (1953) Principles of conservatism. Political Quarterly, 24, 129-133.
Gilmour, I.H.J.L. (1978) Inside right. London: Quartet.
Kirk, R. (1993) Ten conservative principles. Russell Kirk Center.
Norton, P. & Aughey, A. (1981) Conservatives and conservatism. London: Temple Smith
Scruton, R. (2002) A question of temperament. Opinion Journal, Dec. 10th.
Standish, J.F. (1990) Whither conservatism? Contemporary Review 256, 299-301.

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Ben Stein has the best comment yet on "Deep Throat" and Richard Nixon. Ben was a Nixon speechwriter so he knows it all.

Austin Bay has a good comment on the recent destruction by Amnesty International of its own credibility. I was a member myself once but withdrew after some one-sided criticisms of Israel from them.

Feser on "legislating morality:" It's not just a Christian thing "For as we've seen, liberals and libertarians themselves appeal to certain moral principles in defending their favored policies. So how can they consistently criticize conservatives for doing the same? Isn't the liberal trying to 'legislate morality' when he advocates redistributing wealth in the name of fairness? Isn't he thereby 'imposing his moral views' on the wealthy? Aren't libertarians also 'imposing their moral views' on liberals by trying to stop such redistribution? If libertarians who think that redistributive taxation amounts to theft could enact a law forbidding it, wouldn't this too amount to 'legislating morality?'"

Who do these hysterics think they are persuading? "On April 29 and 30, liberal activists gathered in New York City for a weekend conference on "Examining the Real Agenda of the Religious Far Right." ... The conference was sponsored by People for the American Way, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and the National Council of Churches (NCC), along with the left-wing periodicals The Nation and The Village Voice... The tone of the speakers was often quite shrill. "Jim Jones [the 1970s cult leader who led followers in a mass suicide] has gone mainstream!" cried journalist Katherine Yurica. "Today we are living in a nation governed by an unholy cult!" Yurica maintained that the Republican Party had gained power through "Hitlerian tactics." She insisted that evangelical leaders from Billy Graham to Jerry Falwell "had to have read Hitler's Mein Kampf." She explained, "I say this confidently because anyone who has learned to quack like a duck has studied ducks!""

This article in Harpers about "America's most powerful megachurch" seems to have got a lot of attention. It is very informative but the author never misses a chance to sneer.

Jimmy Carter: "It was Carter's pacifism that allowed the fall of the shah in Iran, giving fundamentalist Islam a nation-state to control. Subsequently, it was Carter's pacifism that encouraged the Soviets to invade Afghanistan, creating a rallying point for mujahadeen and, as Hayward notes, reviving the idea of jihad. Taken in concert, these two events are the catalysts that have forced the war on terrorism to its present stage. Carter's pacifism, be it de facto or de jure, shaped the modern Middle East and helped Islamic fascism survive its infancy. This is a much more dire legacy than the simple corruption of Democratic ideology."

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

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"

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 Page is here or here.

********************************
posted by JR 6/03/2005 11:03:00 PM

Thursday, June 02, 2005

 
THE AMAZING LIES OF AUSTRALIA'S LEFT-LEANING ACADEMIC HISTORIANS

Keith Windschuttle has a long and detailed article on Australia's history derived from the original documents. Below I grab just a few excerpts

Unless they have taken a course in history in recent decades, most Australians would be surprised to learn they inhabit one of the world's most shamefully racist countries. The historical consensus today is that the White Australia Policy -- a series of restrictions on non-white immigrants dating from the gold rushes of the 1850s, culminating in the Commonwealth's Immigration Restriction Bill of 1901 -- made this country the moral equivalent of South Africa under apartheid. Some historians even label Australia at Federation one of the 'herrenvolk democracies'. 'Herrenvolk' is the German term for 'master race', so those historians who use it are making a direct comparison between Australian attitudes and the racial nationalism of Nazi Germany.

Apart from two incidents on the goldfields in 1857 and 1861, there was no serious mob violence in Australia perpetrated by whites against non-whites. In both of the goldfields cases, colonial governments defended the Chinese victims, compensated them for their losses and took action against the white perpetrators.

The greatest enthusiasts for White Australia, and the genuine racists of the time, were the members of the late nineteenth century republican Left, especially its writers, artists and other intellectuals. Their strongest opponents were traditional liberals, the purported reactionaries of their era who supported free enterprise against the growing power of the state.

Social Darwinism, rather than being a widely-accepted theory as claimed by historians, was something few Australians at the time had even heard of. Its adherents were a small group of intellectuals at the extremes of opinion. In the 1880s, they were the followers of the theories of political economy of Herbert Spencer. In the 1910s and 1920s, the theory was most strongly advocated by members of the Victorian Socialist Party.

I found one of the biggest single inventions in all Australian historiography. It was made by Henry Reynolds in his book The Other Side of the Frontier. He claimed that, before Federation in 1901, a total of 10,000 Aborigines had been killed by white settlers in Queensland. The source he provided as evidence of this was an article of his own called 'The Unrecorded Battlefields of Queensland', which he wrote in 1978. But if you look up the article you find something very strange. It is not about Aboriginal deaths at all. It is a tally of the number of whites killed by Aborigines. Nowhere does it mention an Aboriginal death toll of 10,000. Reynolds invented this figure and then gave a false citation to disguise what he had done.

Lyndall Ryan says the so-called 'Black War' of Tasmania began in the winter of 1824 with the Big River tribe launching patriotic attacks on the invaders. However, the assaults on whites that winter were made by a small gang of detribalized blacks led by a man named Musquito, who was not defending his tribal lands. He was an Aborigine originally from Sydney who had worked in Hobart for ten years before becoming a bushranger. He had no Tasmanian tribal lands to defend

Lyndall Ryan cites the Hobart Town Courier as a source for several stories about atrocities against Aborigines in 1826. However, that newspaper did not begin publication until October 1827 and the other two newspapers of the day made no mention of these alleged killings.

Lloyd Robson claims the settler James Hobbs in 1815 witnessed Aborigines killing 300 sheep at Oyster Bay and the next day the 48th Regiment killed 22 Aborigines in retribution. It would have been difficult for Hobbs to have witnessed this in 1815 because at the time he was living in India. Moreover, the first sheep did not arrive at Oyster Bay until 1821

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LOL: Some Leftist site must have linked to me recently as I have had an upsurge of hate mail. All abuse, of course. Not a shred of rational argument. Here is my favourite so far (from perryloganclone@yahoo.com of http://www.perrylogan.org) -- Leftist elitism at its arrogant and self-defeating best: "A conservative trying to understand a liberal is like a dog trying to understand its master. Your website betrays the usual right-wing thought disorder of believing you can read minds. Every other phrase is "they don't care" or "they hate" or other confident assurances about what the left feels & thinks. Your site is a collection of bigoted slams against the left--all based on your remarkable ability to read our minds. I promise you, you cannot read the minds of people more intelligent than yourself, no matter how much you may hate them. Unless you can tell me what number I'm thinking, I'll have to conclude you're just another loony."

GWB's Iraq policy is normal for America: "In fact, as John Lewis Gaddis points out in his elegant essay on American foreign policy, Surprise, Security, and the American Experience, the national-security policy of President Bush is in fact the traditional American response to external threats. If, in John Quincy Adams�s famous phrase, America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy, America nonetheless has never hesitated to send bayonets against monsters that might someday pose a threat".

There is a rather amazing article here about French pandering to Muslim bigotry. The article is in German but what it says is that in French schools, Muslim pupils and their parents have demanded and got separate toilets and dining tables because they do not want to mix with the "unclean" other children. Muslim pupils also refuse to go into churches (on sightseeing tours with other pupils), and have even refused to have lessons about the mediaeval age when the big cathedrals where built. They refuse to dance, sing or make music in school. They reject the theory of evolution in favor of creationism, and (get this) refuse to draw anything that looks even remotely like a Christian cross in the math class. And of course, there is rabid antisemitism. As the report states, Jewish children who can only avoid harassment when they hide their Jewish identity. The article is based on an official French government report under the aegis of Jean-Pierre Obin, General Inspector of the Education Ministry. Unlike other official reports, however, the French have not put this one up on their Education Ministry website. More here (in German). There is an English comment on the report here.

The empty-headedness of cultural relativism: "Too often, cultural relativists cannot get beyond drawing this one conclusion, which they use as ammunition against traditionalists: "The traditions you think of as having an absolute claim on the human race are merely those that happened to have come down to us, and which we have blindly accepted." While this objection does follow logically from the cultural relativists' premise, so too - and just as logically - does this conclusion: If we cannot use our traditional ethos to attack another's, it is equally illegitimate for him to use his to attack ours. If our cultural relativists must forgive those who sacrifice their infants to Moloch, they must also forgive members of their own society who wish to abide by their own traditions. The cultural relativist's position, practiced consistently, collapses into reactionary obscurantism: All cultures, including his own, are incommensurable, so it is impossible to judge any of them by higher standards than those offered by the cultures themselves. The appeal to enlightened reason rings hollow, for if enlightened reason can guide us to condemn characteristics of our own culture by offering us a higher standard by which to judge them, the same standard may also be used to judge other cultures as well. The cultural relativist must make up his mind: Either there is a higher standard or there isn't. If there isn't, it is impossible to judge among competing traditions, as the cultural relativist argues; if there is, it is possible to judge tradition A to be superior to tradition B, provided A meets the higher standard and B does not."

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

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"

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 Page is here or here.

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posted by JR 6/02/2005 08:19:00 PM

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

 
WEALTH AND POVERTY

Comment from a Jesuit in Zimbabwe: "Even if there was more fairness in the trade between the southern and northern hemisphere, debts were largely cancelled and aid was flowing in, as long as bad governance and corruption are tolerated poverty will prevail. What is the point of cancelling debts if that merely frees funds to buy fighter planes in China? What good do better terms of trade make if we destroy our economic base for ideological reasons which makes staying in power priority number one to which all other interests are sacrificed? What good is "more and better aid" if it falls into the long fingers of bureaucratic embezzlers who refuse to be accountable as a matter of "national sovereignty"?.... Too many want a slice of the cake without asking where the cake is coming from. If production is not the focus of all our efforts, the existing wealth produced by others will disappear quickly as it is being shared with "cronies". As long as holding on to power is priority number one, overriding all other interests, the economy will continue to be raided for goodies with which to buy the support of this or that particular group of influential people. Those without influence - the sick, the poor, widows and orphans, the homeless and aliens - will continue to go without medication and treatment, starve and die.... "

Greed: "To leftists, greed is when someone else makes more money than they do. The problem with that word is that it's impossible to objectively define. Is a cab driver that chooses to work 60 hours a week instead of 40 greedy? According to whom? Suppose he wants the extra income to send his children to college? Suppose he wants to blow it in Las Vegas? A market economy doesn't ask these questions. They're irrelevant to public policy. Regardless of his motivations, a farmer who produces twice as much as his neighbor has added that much more to the nation's product. He should be suitably rewarded. The tax collector will relieve him of quite enough of the fruits of his labor. What he does with the rest is his business... Leftists have little regard for the creation of wealth. They take that for granted. Their fun comes in redistributing income and wealth. It may be difficult to define greed, but it's easy to define covetousness. That's the greed of leftists for governmental power to confiscate the property of others".

Start frugally to end up rich: "About to graduate from college? If you've been reading much, you could be forgiven for thinking you should cower under your Star Wars comforter at Mom and Dad's house after collecting your diploma. The media buzz: Becoming a financially independent adult is as tough for today's grads as Hercules' labors (which you can now safely forget) were for him.....; But here's a secret you won't hear in the rush to blame young people's woes on everyone except themselves: Society hasn't lost its ladder to financial stability. Young people have just lost interest in starting out poor. Too many 22-year-olds expect to start their adult lives at their parents' level of material satisfaction, without the 30 years of labor it took them to get there. Our world of easy credit and mysteriously glamorous TV apartments says you can have it all now. But live like you're entitled to your parents' finances, and you'll be back living with them soon enough. Live within your means, though, and you'll achieve financial independence before the naysayers say it's possible".

Thoughts on poverty: "One reads much about the poor in America, their piteous lives, their blighted hopes, and the unrelieved downtreading of them by various social ogres such as oppressive corporations who sell them greasy hamburgers. (Why does my wretched spell-checker object to 'downtreading'? You can't be downtrodden unless someone downtreads you. How obvious is that?) This I submit is goober-brained nonsense. America has precious little poverty, if by poverty you mean lack of something to eat, clothing adequate to keep you warm and cover your private parts, and a dry and comfortable place to sleep. In the 'inner cities' or, as we used to call them, slums, there is horrendous cultural emptiness, yes, and the products of the suburban high schools are catching up fast. But poverty? The kind you see in the backs streets of Port au Prince? It barely exists in the United States."

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Why can't Anglo-Saxons run passenger trains? The British invented them after all. No American should need me to tell them about Amtrak and residents of Australia's largest city (Sydney) are almost beyond frustration with their dangerous and unpunctual trains too. Now we hear that in Britain, a lot of trains ran faster in the age of steam!. One could blame government. The American and Australian passenger railways are government run. The railways of the 19th century were of course private and the present British railways have only recently been privatized and run under a burden of regulations. But when one looks at the fast and punctual Japanese railways one wonders.

China is doing more to help low-income Americans than all the bureaucrats put together: "China on Monday threatened to take the United States to a dispute proceeding at the World Trade Organization if the Bush administration persists in restricting imports of Chinese-made textiles. China also rescinded tariffs on its own textile exports, asserting that it will do nothing to limit its shipments as it offered to do last week so long as the United States and Europe impose their own restrictions."

Airbus problems: "Delivery of Qantas's new flagship double-decker super-jumbo will be delayed by at least six months because of problems at European manufacturer Airbus, triggering penalty payments and damaging the national carrier's plans to secure its pre-eminence on the lucrative Pacific route. The shock news comes less than two months after the Europeans trumpeted the successful maiden flight of the plane and two weeks before they go to battle with rival Boeing at the Paris airshow. Airbus representatives delivered the bad news to Qantas chief executive Geoff Dixon during the International Air Transport Associations annual general meeting in Tokyo this week. The Australian understands delays apply to all aircraft in the A380 program"

Barriers to publishing conservative books come down: "There was "a tremendous amount of marketplace and institutional resistance" to publishing conservative books, said Adam Bellow, an editor at Doubleday. The New York publishing world was a liberal preserve. How things have changed. Over the last 18 months, three superpower publishers have launched conservative imprints: Random House (Crown Forum), Penguin (Sentinel) and, most recently, Simon & Schuster (Threshold, headed by former Bush aide Mary Matalin). Nor is that all. ReganBooks and the Christian publisher Thomas Nelson are putting out mass market right-of-center books, while mid-list conservative titles pour forth from Peter Collier's 5-year-old Encounter Books and several smaller imprints. There's never been a better time to be a conservative author. What's behind the shift? Crown Forum chief Steve Ross thinks Sept. 11 made the industry less reflexively liberal. There's doubtless some truth to that. But what really turned the big New York publishers was the steady stream of bestsellers that Washington-based Regnery was producing.... Right-of-center authors can now reach millions of potential readers without being reviewed by such traditional gatekeepers as the New York Times Book Review or the New York Review of Books, which rarely deigned to review conservative books". (This story originally appeared in the L.A. Times but now appears to be offline. There is a similar article here).

Strange Justice has just put up another amazing story about Canadian justice -- or the lack thereof.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

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"

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 Page is here or here.

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posted by JR 6/01/2005 06:14:00 PM