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31 July, 2004

THE MAN OF THE MOMENT

And hopefully for not too much longer than that

Email from Wayne Lusvardi: "From the just released excerpts of John Kerry's acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention in Boston on July 29, 2004: "I defended this country as a young man and I will defend it as President. Let there be no mistake: I will never hesitate to use force when it is required. Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response. I will never give any nation or international institution a veto over our national security. And I will build a stronger American military." From the above can be deduced what might be called The Kerry Doctrine: Once the U.S. is clobbered, he will figure out a way to strike back. Call this the Kerry's Klobbered Policy. Contrast this with the Bush Doctrine: Pre-emptive actions to prevent further attacks. The Bush Doctrine is not some reckless policy of a wild cowboy. It is the reluctant intervention after decades of provoking attacks on U.S. embassies, military barracks, navy ships, diplomats, tourists, FBI agents, and civilian aircraft. Which one would you choose? Which one do you believe the U.S. public is going to vote for?"

A rather nauseating story here. Apparently John Kerry took a portable movie camera with him to Vietnam and kept filming himself there to generate proof of how heoic he was.

Sowell lands some heavy hits: "Much of what is being said and done at the Democratic convention in Boston is so 1960s. The old favorite songs of the left, the old rhetoric, the old gestures, the delegates swaying together, all take you back to a time 40 years ago when the liberal vision seized the imagination of so many who were young then -- and who are now old enough to know better. After all, we now know with hindsight what the heady ideas of the 1960s actually led to in practice -- declining test scores and rising rates of teenage pregnancy and venereal disease, while rates of crime in general and murder in particular skyrocketed, along with unprecedented waves of riots that devastated city after city across the country, while families began a disintegration from which they may never fully recover in our lifetime".

When Lee Harvey Oswald shot John Kennedy, where was Oswald's Russian wife living? You won't believe it -- At John Forbes Kerry's place. What a happy little Leftist family!

"The Democrats have traditionally relied on a simple technique: appeal to the values of American individualism, while actually selling the American people the virtues of the all-powerful collective. That is the theme that emerges from the first three nights of speeches at the Democratic convention. Note the pattern of this bait-and-switch philosophy... The man who made this technique most explicit was Ted Kennedy. Speaking Tuesday night, he freely invoked Boston's Revolutionary War heritage. But what, in his view, is that heritage? "Ideals like freedom and equality and opportunity and fairness and common decency for all-ideals that all Americans yearn to reclaim." .. Equality" had a specific meaning to the Founders: equality of rights. It meant that no class of aristocrats possessed special rights at the expense of other citizens. They never endorsed egalitarianism. But you wouldn't know that by listening to Ted Kennedy... In fact, the Constitution exists to protect our rights and to limit the power of government. But Kennedy believes it exists to "bind us together" to collect our "common wealth" for the "common good." This is not an appeal to American values, but a total inversion of them".

Outspoken Left frustrated: "So far, the Democratic National Convention has been a gathering to drive the ideologues to distraction. Since Howard Dean's candidacy collapsed, the Democrats' angry left wing has contented itself with the notion that Dean had breathed fire into a moribund party. And that he had proved that what was important was not courting swing voters but rather energizing the party's base. (No matter that, as consultant Bill Carrick quips, any more energy and the left might well have a collective heart attack.)"

The media know what side they are on: "During live coverage of tonight's speech by Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards, Dan Rather referred to Vice President Dick Cheney as "a hitman for their side." Here's the full quote: "Question, Bob Schieffer. We know after considerable consideration, the Bush-Cheney campaign decided to send Vice President Cheney out this week as a kind of hitman for their side, believing it was time to frontally assault the Kerry-Edwards ticket."

And you would never know it from John Kerry's advertisements but only 2 out of 23 of his fellow Swift boat commanders from Vietnam support his candidacy. See here for the details.

Dick McDonald has blanket coverage of Kerry's failings.

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Further to my post yesterday about the Leftist origins of Fascism, a reader has pointed me to another excellent essay that probably makes the point better than I do. It is called "American Fascism" and is originally from "The Laissez Faire City Times", whatever that may be. It starts out well: "But the issue of who is a Fascist can't be addressed by any measure from the modern philosophical left because their fundamental tenet is the lie. For them, that's the first principle of the art of war. They use it, they excuse it, and they in fact worship at its feet".

David Boxenhorn has also taken up the discussion of what Fascism is with a note that Arab regimes generally are very similar to historic Fascist regimes -- though they don't seem to have the same strong welfarist orientation or the rhetoric of looking after the worker in particular.

Good to see Christopher Hitchens taking on Australia's chief Leftist ratbag -- Philip Adams. ("ratbag" is Australian slang for a person obsessed with improbable ideas). Adams doubts all the evidence that Saddam was a mass murderer. He has joined the ranks of the holocaust deniers. He will be saying that Ausschwitz, Buchenwald and Treblinka are a fairy-tale next. If it became widely realized that Hitler was a Leftist, he would no doubt argue just that. Leftists have never had much interest in the facts. They have conclusions that they want to reach and only see evidence that supports those conclusions. They argue backwards from their conclusions, not forward from a full consideration of the facts. They are impenetrable to reason. That's why I personally rarely talk to them at all. I talk only to people who are interested in the facts -- people who can handle how complex and surprising the facts often are.

Multicultural England: "A festival to celebrate a city's multiculturalism ended with rival ethnic groups involved in running street battles. The East of England Anand Mela festival was organised by the Indian community in Peterborough to demonstrate its culture, music and food. But about 90 Pakistani and Iraqi youths exchanged blows and hurled chairs on Saturday night." Coppersblog has some amusing background to it.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Puzzle: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. 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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30 July, 2004

MORE LEFTIST MISREPRESENTATION OF HISTORY

A reader has pointed out to me that this Leftist version of what Fascism is/was has been much reproduced on the net. It now seems to be widely accepted as gospel among Leftists. Needless to say it is a totally bigoted coverup. The author mentions 14 characteristics of Fascism without including any mention of the fact that it was both socialist and an offshoot of Marxism! What frauds Leftists are. In a way I understand them, though. They desperately need to deny that Fascism was Leftist. It would do them enormous harm if everybody came to realize that ALL the great totalitarian regimes of the 20th century were Leftist!

The article also claims (surprise, surprise!) that the USA is Fascist and I have just posted here a detailed reply to that.

As one way of countering the misrepresentations, I have reposted both the latest lot of misrepresentations and a similar set of misrepresentations from another author on one of my sites -- only the version I have posted has a redirection in red to point people to a truthful history of the matter. I am hoping that anybody with a website reading this will link to my "revised" versions of the sites concerned and thus push them high enough up the Google rankings for people to see my revised site as well as the originals when they google "fascism". My "revised" sites are here and here.

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Jimmy Carter the "projectionist" : "He ends on the biggest whopper of the evening: "Elsewhere, North Korea's nuclear menace, a threat far more real and immediate than any posed by Saddam Hussein, has been allowed to advance unheeded." Does anyone remember who brokered the 1994 deal in which the Clinton administration agreed to provided food and oil to North Korea, in exchange for its promise not to develop nuclear weapons-a promise the North Koreans promptly broke, allowing them to threaten us with a nuclear bomb today? That's right: it was Jimmy Carter. This is the same psychological projection Carter employed in 1979. Back then, he suffered a crisis of confidence that left him paralyzed before the fateful challenges of the day-yet he projected his malaise onto the America people."

Leftist "projection": A quote from the 1976 book, "The Russians," by former New York Times Moscow correspondent Hedrick Smith. Smith interviewed Valentin Turchin, a dissident scientist and close friend of Andrei Sakharov. Turchin said, "Homo Sovieticus is like the prostitute who believes that all women are whores because she is. Soviet man believes that the whole world is divided into parties and that every man is a member of one party or another, and there is no real honesty. No one stands for the truth. And if anyone says he is above Party and is trying to speak the truth alone, he is lying. People can travel to the West and hear Western radio broadcasts and it makes no difference, as long as there is this pervasive cynicism that it is just the other side speaking."

Sowell on ignoring the obvious: "A record-breaking new class-action lawsuit against Wal-Mart claims the retail chain discriminates against women, for which of course vast millions of dollars are demanded. The New York Times aptly summarized the case: 'about 65 percent of the company's hourly paid workers are women, but only 33 percent of its managers are.' The grand fallacy of our times is [that] various groups would be equally represented in institutions and occupations if it were not for discrimination. This preconception has undermined, if not destroyed, the crucial centuries-old legal principle that the burden of proof is on the accuser. ... In many ... situations, women have avoided jobs that demand such long hours of work, or so much travel, that it would caring for their children virtually impossible. The biggest difference in income is between married women and everyone else. Women who never married have long held their own economically."

Morgan Spurlock brought his 'Super Size Me' sideshow to Capitol Hill yesterday. Sharing the stage was the animal rights-supported Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a controversial group which, despite its name, has very few medical doctor members. It does, however, have close ties to radical groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PeTA), and militants from Animal Liberation Front and Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty. So what's missing from Mr. Spurlock's sideshow? Facts."

Cultural anti-Americanism: "Riots, vandalism, raucous protests -- we're all familiar with hard-edged displays of anti-Americanism abroad these days. But this pernicious envy also takes other forms. Not all of them involve demonstrators screaming slogans or throwing stones, nor do they all take place in the street. This 'soft' anti-Americanism rarely makes the headlines. Let's take a look at one such case. An alliance of about 60 governments called the International Network on Cultural Policy will meet in Shanghai, China, in October to denounce freer trade in cultural products, such as films, books, and television programs."

Good step in the U.K.: "New powers to tackle animal rights extremists by clamping down on protests outside people's homes and providing further protection for companies against harassment are to be announced later this week by David Blunkett, the home secretary. He is expected to introduce a specific criminal offence of protesting outside someone's home in an intimidating way and to make it an arrestable offence to return to someone's home after being found guilty of aggressive behaviour." Animal-rights terrorists should be targeted as heavily as any other terrorists.

A brief article here on George Washington as a slave-owner. Australia has managed quite well without ANY "founding fathers" so has been spared such embarrassments.

Although I admire America as the most moral and most generous country the world has ever known, there are a few ways in which I do feel sorry for Americans. One is that they will never understand "Royal fever"! More here. Subjects of traditional monarchies (and I am one) don't need "founding fathers". They have continuity and tradition instead. What Americans took two bloody civil wars to arrive at (independence and central government dominance) Australia arrived at without shedding a drop of blood. Australia started out as a military dictatorship and two of my own ancestors came to this country chained up as cargo in the holds of sailing ships but Australia arrived at roughly where America is simply by patience, moderation and civility -- things which characterize Australians to this day. Not being founded by communistic religious fanatics was clearly a considerable advantage for us. More here.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Puzzle: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. 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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29 July 2004

SOME ECONOMICS

GWB's tax cuts: "Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said yesterday that Bush's three rounds of tax cuts helped ensure the 2001 recession was mild and brief and have provided critical stimulus to keep the economy on track. In other words, the Bush tax cuts are the engine that have powered today's recovery."

How outsourcing creates jobs for Americans: "Though the pace of U.S. job creation has quickened recently, some 'Benedict Arnold' companies are still being criticized for outsourcing work from the United States to other countries. U.S. manufacturers have outsourced operations to countries such as China to lower wage costs and escape from high taxes, burdensome government regulations and intransigent unions at home. For similar reasons, service jobs in information technology (IT) are outsourced to India. Less well known, though, is that increased economic globalization has caused jobs to move to the United States as well as away from it."

Ten recurring economic fallacies: "As an American historian who knows something of economic law, having learned from the Austrians, I became intrigued with how the United States had remained prosperous, its economy still so dynamic and productive, given the serious and recurring economic fallacies to which our top leaders (political, corporate, academic) have subscribed and from which they cannot seem to free themselves -- and alas, keep passing down to the younger generation."

Good explanation! "Special interest politics is a simple game. A hundred people sit in a circle, each with his pocket full of pennies. A politician walks around the outside of the circle, taking a penny from each person. No one minds; who cares about a penny? When he has gotten all the way around the circle, the politician throws fifty cents down in front of one person, who is overjoyed at the unexpected windfall. That process is repeated, ending with a different person. After a hundred rounds everyone is a hundred cents poorer, fifty cents richer, and happy."

A flying pig!: "Australian farmers are on the cusp of a $70 billion trade victory as negotiators edge close to an agreement to abolish farm subsidies across the US and Europe.... "What they are looking at is the possible abolition of all subsidies for agriculture," Cattle Council president Keith Adams said. "It's really been the last 24 hours that have seen the ground shift."

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Can you beat this for a dumb headline on Yahoo news: "Edwards to slam GOP in convention speech". What the hell did they THINK he was going to do?

What a laugh! The haters speak. Leftist "projection" again: "Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards called on Americans on Wednesday to reject what he denounced as the Republicans' "hateful, negative politics" and embrace John Kerry and his "politics of hope.""

In case you have not seen it yet, here is a link to the "censored" Ann Coulter column about the Democrat convention -- together with final proof that Leftists are humour-impaired. It must be a miserable life being a Leftist -- nothing satisfies; all is complaint.

Far-out Dems: "Democrats filling the hotels, sidewalks, cafes, bars and restaurants of Boston and swarming through the FleetCenter this week have a message they desperately want the rest of America to hear. We are not liberal... Unfortunately for them, the Boston Globe published a poll of delegates to the convention. What they found was a group of individuals whose beliefs on a wide range of issues differ greatly from those held by most Americans: 62 percent support gay marriage, and 83 percent support civil unions. At the time the Iraq War began, 80 percent opposed it. Today, 95 percent do. 86 percent think the United States is not winning the War on Terror. 89 percent support laws to restrict the availability of firearms. These are not mainstream American views, which is why the Democratic Party has gone to great lengths to control the message and the messengers."

Animal Lib loon: "An 18-year-old man has admitted to setting fire to an animal science facility on the Brigham Young University campus on behalf of a militant animal-rights organization, according to court documents made public Monday. Harrison David Burrows appeared Monday afternoon in U.S. District Court.... Combined, the charges carry a minimum 35-year prison sentence and a maximum 50-year term. BYU Police Chief Larry Stott on Monday praised the prosecution against Burrows, saying he hoped it would stop the attacks on the farm. Stott said the farm houses llamas, goats and rabbits used in "basic feed experiments" that do not harm the animals. "It really does not make a lot of sense to attack that area," he said. "Animals are not being mistreated there."

House nigger? "Q. What do you call a black conservative who works for the Bush Administration? A. A house nigger! Ha-ha-ha! Now pass the cornpipe, paw. Where would you expect to find such a joke? Why, in the Washington Post, of course."

Black sheep: "As a black American who's adopted conservatism, I'm fully aware that this particular commentary is going to spark more than its share of controversy. But I've grown exasperated with the incessant outpouring of half-truths, toxic rhetoric, and outright lies told to black Americans and especially about black conservatives by the NAACP."

Indeed: "Wealthy nations and international organizations, including the World Bank, spend more than $55 billion annually to better the lot of the world's 2.7 billion poor people. Yet they have scant evidence that the myriad projects they finance have made any real difference, many economists say."

A good satirical comment here about an American cyclist winning the Tour de France. I suspect that a certain cycling philosopher might approve.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again. Take no notice of the wacky categories Jeff Doolittle has provided.

Eugene Rants has up a tribute to Australia's most admirable security guard.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Puzzle: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. 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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28 July, 2004

FROM BROOKES NEWS

President Bush: deficits and interest rates The Democrats and their media supporters screamed that deficits would raise interest rates and dampen the economy. They were wrong.
Berger's contempt for US national security Berger, Bill Clinton's longtime National Security Advisor, stuffed highly classified secret documents into his pants and socks. Now why would he do that?
Republicans' record on blacks beats the Democrats hands down Republicans' record on civil rights for blacks is far superior to the Democrats' record. Only in our Orwellian world could the Republicans be successfully painted by the Party of Jefferson Davis as the party of Jim Crow.
The Dems rich supporters and the stench of fascism Steven Kirsch gave the Gore war machine $250,000 so that it could disenfranchise 25,000 absentee residents of Seminole and Martin Counties. This is what rich Democrats mean by democracy.
The Democrats want to exterminate the Republican Party Democratic Party - meaning its intolerant activist core - is not democratic, except in the Leninist sense of the word.

Details here

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Neurobiology says we need our mothers "Science now tells us without shadow of a doubt that mothers in constant contact with their babies are actually forming the baby's brain, particularly in the right hemispheric orbitofrontal cortex ... those cortico-limbic lobes and intricate connections which will determine his or her emotional well-being and sense of self for the remainder of his or her life."... The second discovery - and this is alarming for mothers who rely on child-care centres - is that this brain growth cannot be achieved by part-time carers. These carers can attend well to physical needs, but not to early brain growth. Science has also established that if this stimulation is not given and the cortico-limbic lobes are not developed, the individual will grow up seriously deficient in all those areas of self that make him or her respond to others in appropriate ways.

A powerful article by Ralph Peters on Front Page. Just one excerpt: "The silence of the Left in the face of uncomfortable truths is a hallowed tradition, of course, dating back to the earliest crimes of the Soviet Union. When the reality confronting the Left contradicts the theory, the theory must be preserved at any cost. And there's no sign of improvement, not a glimmer of the least scrap of conscience or integrity on the Left. It's all about revenge against a democratic system that gives a blue-collar worker a vote equal to that of a university professor's ballot, about hatred for the free market for providing better lives for the great majority while Marxism drowned in the bile of its victims. There's no one the new American Left so despises as the working man or woman who continues to believe in the United States. And it's about power. Had Bill Clinton invaded Iraq and deposed Saddam, the Left would have cheered their throats raw, praising him as one of history's greatest liberators. The rhetoric about Iraq isn't about justice, or the Iraqi people, or even about the horrors of war.... The great, unforgivable insult to the Left is that conservatives took the idea of liberation seriously and acted, while the Liberal-Arts faculty merely chattered about it"

A good comment on Leftist egotism from the inimitable Dalrymple: "Youthful egotism becomes the beginning and end of political wisdom. This attitude may mark the fundamental difference between the modern conservative and the modern radical: the conservative thinks he is a drop in a stream; the radical thinks he is, or ought to be, the stream itself."

French court upholds democracy: "The first gay couple to be married in France vowed Tuesday to fight a court decision that annulled their union and said any redefinition of marriage should be taken up by lawmakers"

Kerry soft on Iran: "The administration has two Iran policies, and the result has been a mix of good and bad. Kerry, by contrast, boasts a single, coherent, and-- to judge by the description of Teheran's activities in yesterday's report-- utterly delusional Iran policy".

UN Fenced out: "Given the institution's palpable bad faith, it is no surprise that Israel did not consent to be judged by the International Court of Justice. This U.N.-sanctioned court condemned Israel in absentia, ruling its construction of a security fence in what the ICJ refers to as 'the Occupied Palestinian Territory' contrary to international law. If 'international law' as interpreted by the United Nations means that a nation may not forestall mass murder, then this law is worse than an ass -- it is a monstrous absurdity rightly ignored."

Victory for Kerry good? Interesting point: "Even though he's a big-government man all the way -- could paradoxically be the most likely hope for curbing excessive government growth in the next four years. Why? The party stereotypes don't always hold up, and a Democratic president and a Congress led by Republicans creates a kind of institutional impasse that actually slows the momentum of government." [registration required, or use login "newsdigests/newsdigests"]

One of the great pleasures of the blogosphere is its diversity (No. Unlike the U.S. Supreme Court I do not mean by that its blackness). I have just come across a blog that is primarily devoted to classical literature -- the literature of ancient Greek and Rome. He posts lots of stuff in both Latin and English so I enjoy seeing how far my limited knowledge of Latin gets me.

Interesting post about the possibility of Russian troops for Iraq at The Baby Seal Club

Randall Parker has lots of posts up about immigration. He is a careful reasoner and makes a pretty good case that the optimists have got it wrong about the present Hispanic influx into the USA.

Amusing: I note that a Green/Left blogger has just linked to my "Greenie Watch" blog. He seems pretty sensible for a Greenie but most of his blog is in Dutch so it is hard to be sure. His name is Roel Groeneveld so maybe he is only a Greenie because of his name. His surname translates as "Greenfield".

Dick McDonald has an amusing letter up from a senior citizen who is supporting John Kerry.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Puzzle 1: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

Puzzle 2: Why do "postmodern" Leftists make the strange claim that everything ever written has to be interpreted in terms of how it serves power? Easy: Because everything THEY say is directed towards getting themselves power

Comments? Email me or here. 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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27 July, 2004

FROM THE VATICAN

Some hope for Islam? "One country in sub-Saharan Africa is a living contradiction of the skeptics. Islam has been present there for almost a thousand years; 82 percent of its inhabitants are Muslim. They belong to the Sunni tradition, with a contingent that follows Wahhabi rigorism. They are extremely poor, with an average annual per capita income of 230 dollars, and poverty and freedom almost never go together. They belong to various tribes, which in many African countries is the root of incurable conflicts. And yet, democracy flourishes there. The country is Mali, between the Niger river and the Sahara desert"

Vatican backs GM crops to feed the poor: "a substantially pro-GMO position has already been taken up inside the Vatican. Such a position has been understood from coverage of the Nov. 2003 conference, particularly as seen in the March 20 2004 issue of "La Civilta Cattolica". "La Civilta Cattolica" coverage of the conference gave much space to explicating pro-GMO arguments rather than those opposed to them. We read in the magazine that The Holy See firmly hopes that "GMOs can be an opportunity to produce good things and foster social development for the poorest nations on earth which, based on Jesus Christ's example, the Church holds especially dear."

A dotty Catholic bishop in Sudan does at least know Muslims well so may have a good insight here: "The greatest punishment Arabs can inflict is oppression, a sense of falsity. If they can fool you, they do it with will all their might. They are proud of their ability to trick you, to behave like liars and compliment you. Al Turabi will take Bush for a ride, wherever and whenever he wants. And he could do much worse things. I, rather than being tricked and playing the fool, prefer being slapped in the face. Muslims fill you with fear, they keep you in a permanent state of uncertainty. It's a continuous psychological affliction, worse than torture."

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Another triumph of socialized medicine: British "National Health" hospitals are full of superbug bacteria (MRSA) that drugs cannot kill -- making such hospitals very dangerous places to go to if you are ill. But: "one is vastly safer in a private hospital. The danger of getting MRSA is, above all, a risk affecting patients of the NHS".

Blair talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk: "Tony Blair has often spoken of the need to overthrow, or at least recast, the "liberal consensus" which has dominated the politics and institutions of Great Britain since the 1960s. He was at it again last Monday, criticising the "1960s revolution" for not putting enough emphasis on the responsibilities which ought to be inseparable from rights".

A woman to be proud of: "Bleeding and bruised after being bashed and robbed, a security guard struggled to her feet and, in a lethal response, shot her attacker dead".

A typically arrogant Leftist mourns the fact that the pesky working people of Kansas are not voting for "their" party. George Will points out the elitist assumptions involved. See also here. That lots of pesky working class people insist on voting conservative has irked the Left for a long time. I did some academic research on the phenomenon over over 30 years ago -- in which I showed that working class conservatives had more normal attitudes than working-class Leftists.

Jeff Jacoby on Leftist haters: "A popular conceit of the left is that political hatred is a sickness of the right, one to which liberals are largely immune. "Just who are these Clinton haters," asked Time magazine in April 1994, "and why do they loathe Bill and Hillary with such passion?" It answered, in effect: That's just the way conservatives are. The article quoted historian Alan Brinkley: "Liberals tend to value tolerance highly, so there's a greater reluctance to destroy enemies than among the right." That was a whopper even in 1994, a year when Republican leader Newt Gingrich was routinely vilified as a McCarthyite and a racist. Ten years later, with a storm of Bush hatred raging among liberal Democrats, the notion that the left is too high-minded to savage its opponents is about as plausible as the claim that the moon landings were staged in Hollywood."

Enron caused the California blackouts! Yes. The Left are still trying to pass the buck for the bungling of their Democrat establishment. The real story of what happened is here

There is a stunning list here of Israel's scientific and technological achievements -- despite the unremitting attacks on them by one of the world's most parasitic people.

Bureaucrats are not your friend: "Eldred had barely driven his white-and-red camper into the parking lot of the Walden Pond Reservation and tacked up a handwritten sign reading 'Free Walden' when a state park ranger asked him to leave. Eldred said he was told he needed a permit to hand out copies of the book, free or not, and would be arrested if he continued."

Leftists are still either ignoring or apologizing for the horrors of Communist North Korea. Just as they did for Stalin's Russia. If anything could outrage anybody, North Korea would do it. The fact that the Left show zero outrage about North Korea shows that what outrage they do claim to feel is fake.

Comment from a reader on Orwell's article about different types of nationalism: "The American Left I see are nationalistic in their own ways. For instance they continously call the Right "fascists" and refer them to the "Christian Taliban". They call anyone who opposes their view as "inferior" and hate anyone who criticizes people like the Clintons or the Kennedys. So in some ways the American Left as well as the International Left are nationalists. Nationalism would also explain the anti-Americanism on the International Left as well as the American Left. If you would to ask a member of the International Left on what they view America, they would say they hate America, but always say their nation is better than America"

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Puzzle 1: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

Puzzle 2: Why do "postmodern" Leftists make the strange claim that everything ever written has to be interpreted in terms of how it serves power? Easy: Because everything THEY say is directed towards getting themselves power

Comments? Email me or here. 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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26 July, 2004

EU WOES

Despair from a French patriot: "I am convinced that the fate of France is sealed, because "My house is their house" (Mitterand), inside "Europe whose roots are as much Muslim as Christian" (Chirac), because the situation is moving irreversibly towards the final swing in 2050 which will see French stock amounting to only half the population of the country, the remainder comprising Africans, Moors and Asians of all sorts from the inexhaustible reserve of the Third World, predominantly Islamic, understood to be fundamentalist Jihadists, this dance is only the beginning."

The new EU constitution: "Taken to its logical conclusion, the EU's 'anti-discrimination' policy as reflected in the Charter means that a Christian school could be forced to employ atheist teachers, or a Muslim organisation to appoint Christian managers. The perverse effect of this will be to emphasise differences between sections of society and give power to self-appointed activists... The European Union favours divisive 'group' rights over individual freedom. In this connection, we note that most countries in the EU are in practice much less tolerant of racial or religious minorities than Britain"

EU voting unfair "The European Constitution is unscientific, will not achieve the objective of "one person one vote", and will give Germany undue influence, according to a new analysis".

EU regulations hurt women: "He said maternity laws that gave women six months of paid leave and the option of another six months unpaid leave, had resulted in women losing jobs and employment. Many businesses only employed women over 40 .... If you're a small business, you'd be a lunatic to hire a woman of child bearing age"

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ELSEWHERE

There is a HUGE and heavily featured attack on Michael Moore in Brisbane's "Sunday Mail" of July 25th. The article is subheaded: "Take the lies, distortions and propaganda from Michael Moore's film and what do you have? Absolutely nothing". I wonder if there will ever be anything comparable in any American mainstream newspaper -- which is where such an attack is needed. You can read the text of the article concerned here or here. The graphic given to the right of the article covered a full page in the "Sunday Mail". Both the "Sunday Mail" and the Melbourne paper in which the article originally appeared are Murdoch publications, of course. No wonder the Democrats are frantic to prevent Murdoch from owning any significant American newspapers. Imagine what it would be like if there were newspaper versions of Fox News in most major American cities.

And how's this for fun: "The Democratic Party apparently doesn't want Michael Moore. The famed filmmaker who delivered a major assault on the Bush administration in his blockbuster film "Fahrenheit 9/11" was declined credentials to the Democratic National Convention in Boston next week"

Fred Barnes chronicles the steady drift of the Democrats towards the loony Left. And William Bennett has a similar message.

I see that Jim Miller has done a post on the nutty politics of Linda Ronstadt. He expects brains from a rock singer? Nice voice but ....

American legal theorist Lawrence Lessig attacks regulation: "Lessig has become a champion of the public domain, the collective term for those creative works - including books, films, music, and TV programmes - whose use is unregulated, leaving the public free to do whatever it likes with them, whenever it likes. Lessig believes that the public domain is currently under siege from excessive and wrongheaded regulation. 'As a matter of the history of ideas, the public domain was a very central concept that we have forgotten. The presumption today is control, but the presumption before was freedom.'"

Conservatives happier: "One of the things that always differentiated right-wing student groups I was acquainted with from other university political activists was a sense of humor. These ragtag bands of young Tories, evangelical Christians and supply-side business students not only rejoiced in ruthlessly skewering PC niceties, but they also joyfully poked fun at stereotypes of themselves. If this sounds insignificant, try to imagine campus feminist, environmentalist or gay-rights groups doing the same."

I rarely disagree with Iain Murray but his latest article about mad cow disease -- he implies that humans do NOT catch it -- seems to be leaning on a weak reed to me. He bases his views on an article from some French researchers that is in turn based on a "model" (i.e. a series of guesses) of mad cow infection in France. I actually agree that the connection between mad cow disease and similar diseases in humans is far from proven and on balance unlikely but I don't see that the French guesswork adds anything substantial to the debate. As Iain himself points out, models can very easily be totally wrong -- and often are. I think we need evidence, not models.

Real capitalism needed: "For all the talk about the triumph of capitalism, it seems that the free market- the real thing and not someone's imagined conception of it- has very few friends in politics or the world of ideas. Thus do the writings Murray Rothbard, the leading defender of the market economy of his generation, still have the power to shock and clarify the essential ideological and political battles of our time."

"Perpetual War Portfolio": This anti-war site has imaginatively tried to link the performance of key US defence stocks and rate them by the extent of (a) the firm's political connections to the administration and (b) it's lobbying and political contributions. You have to give them credit for exposing their ideas to empirical test. In principle this share portfolio should be a solid gold winner if the more insidious accounts of the military industrial complex, as seen in Michael Moore movies, were actually true. Unfortunately for anyone silly enough to invest the PWP way, their portfolio would have only earned 2% since 12 Feb 2002 compared to 12% for the Dow and 25% for the Nasdaq in the same period. Losers! My portfolio is up 25% over that period.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Puzzle 1: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

Puzzle 2: Why do "postmodern" Leftists make the strange claim that everything ever written has to be interpreted in terms of how it serves power? Easy: Because everything THEY say is directed towards getting themselves power

Comments? Email me or here. 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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25 July, 2004

NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY

I see that Keith Burgess-Jackson has a post on the notion of national sovereignty and says most of what needs to be said about it. The people who have been raising the issue in recent years have been Leftists -- using the doctrine that national sovereignty must be respected regardless of "internal" matters in a pathetic attempt to defend Saddam Hussein and criticize GWB. There is a doctrine of that sort in international law but its origin is amusing:

It originated in 1648 after Europe became exhausted by Catholic vs. Protestant wars as the "Peace of Westphalia" and was a (partially successful) way of preventing more wars by accepting the status quo as final -- i.e. accepting as final those boundaries between kingdoms that existed at that time regardless of the religion of the ruler (which it was accepted his subjects were obliged to follow). Napoleon however eventually came along and thoroughly upset the status quo so the whole thing had to be done all over again by the Congress of Vienna in 1815. And the Congress of Vienna was chaired and run by the representative of the Austrian Kaiser, the highly-reactionary Prince Metternich (who was himself a Westphalian, curiously enough). So the Congress of Vienna must be one of history's best examples of a concerted and successful attempt to defend and preserve a major and long-lasting status quo. And the doctrine underlying THOSE arrangements is what Leftists now proclaim as sacred! It shows how easily their "principles" can go into reverse-gear (as they also did over eugenics).

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FROM BROOKES NEWS

Theresa Heinz Kerry: You pay taxes, I don't Theresa Heinz Kerry likes taxes so much she thinks the little people should pay more
Joe Wilson tried to set up President Bush Joe Wilson used his Niger-uranium assignment to try and damage the President Bush
Taiwan - why China will not invade Some American commentators have been warning of a Chinese attack on Taiwan. Why they are wrong
The ALP, intelligence and hypocrisy The ALP cannot be trusted with the defence of Australia and the management of our relationships with our allies

Details here

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ELSEWHERE

Freeh of the FBI sums it up: "while changes and improvements are always in order, the blame for the 9/11 attack rests solely on the terrorists who did it. This central truth has often been ignored by the endless talking heads and sound-bite analysis with which we have been saturated in the last two years."

Another comment on Michael Moore: "But what to make of this latest two-hour tantrum, which doesn't merely ooze innuendo and misrepresentation, but is long, boring and puerile too?.. F9/11, alas, is a recrudescence of the lamest '60s paranoia. You thought, perhaps, that the war on terror had something to do with Islamism? Neo-conservatism? Israel? The UN? The Kurds? Think again: it's the military-industrial complex, I tells ya. Most of the film's more febrile assertions disintegrate on any contact with evidence".

There is to be a big Muslim rally in London today in which Islamists declare that theirs is the one true religion and seek converts. See here. A few quotes from their announcement: "The speakers will also set out to present Islam as the only real future for Britain and indeed the World... As for the Sikhs, acknowledge, that as a man-made system your belief is really just a hotpot of different religions and opinions "jumbled together".... The Hindu tradition of worshipping idols was (and still is) seen as a major act of ignorance". Not much tolerance or compromise there. There is another version of the announcement here in which the Islamists attack homosexuality. Apparently British homosexuals have at last decided that they really should oppose people who want to stone them to death. Not before time.

There is another good collection of quotes here from Democrats who proclaimed the danger from Iraq before the US intervention there -- quotes ranging from Bill Clinton to John Kerry and including Sandy Berger. Snopes has verified that the quotes are accurate but says they are "out of context". Snopes does normally grasp at any straw to find fault with anything favourable to conservatives. They will end up discrediting themselves that way.

Citizenship rationality: "A proposed anti-illegal immigration measure not only leads overwhelmingly in a new statewide poll, but Arizonans across party lines and demographic groups favor it. Seventy-four percent of the 387 registered voters interviewed last week, said they would support the measure, Protect Arizona Now. Only 16 percent opposed it and 10 percent were undecided. The initiative, likely to make the Nov. 2 ballot, would affect many Arizona citizens in addition to undocumented immigrants. It would require proof of citizenship for anyone registering to vote and identification for those who vote in person. When registering to vote, Arizonans currently fill out forms affirming that they are U.S. citizens and Arizona residents."

Frank Devine has an interesting insider's story of the rise and fall of "Readers Digest"

My post on the Libertarian party got a fair bit of response. Here is a cartoon I was directed to that that sums up a lot.

Australia's national daily newspaper has just published a big selection of its past political cartoons. I reproduce the two that I like best here or here.

The Policeman's blog is a very amusing site. At least one British cop has a sense of humour. His North Korean tiepin had me laughing. But it is British humour so I am not sure how much of it Americans would get.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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

Puzzle 1: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

Puzzle 2: Why do "postmodern" Leftists make the strange claim that everything ever written has to be interpreted in terms of how it serves power? Easy: Because everything THEY say is directed towards getting themselves power

Comments? Email me or here. 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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24 July, 2004

THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY AS AN OBSTACLE TO LIBERTY

Most readers of this blog will be unsurprised to hear that my political sympathies are thoroughly libertarian. I don't care what homosexuals do among themselves (though I'd rather not think about it), I think pornography is in the eye of the beholder, that prostitution is just another form of private enterprise (very private at that), that there is not much difference between taxation and theft and that government is just about the worst way of doing almost anything. But I nonetheless find a lot of the libertarian literature I see -- particularly stuff emanating from supporters of the Libertarian Party -- to be just as crazy as the stuff coming from the Left. I am not alone in that. A couple of other libertarian bloggers have said much the same recently. See here and here.

What I think has happened is that libertarian ideas have gradually had a pervasive influence throughout politics. Perhaps the most striking instance of that is the recent introduction of a "congestion charge" by London mayor "Red Ken" Livingstone as a (very successful) way of solving inner-London's traffic problems. Livingstone is on the far-Left of the British Labor Party but himself admits that he got the idea from Milton Friedman. And that the Democrat's most adored President saw fit to proclaim (falsely) that the era of big government is over is another telling symptom. And who said this over a quarter of a century ago? "If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism". It was Ronald Reagan -- in an interview in which he also revealed himself to be a student of Bastiat, von Mises, Hayek and Hazlitt. And don't forget that Reagan's degree was in economics so it is not surprising that he should know such writers. So the huge American economic success that Reagan launched was not just some folksy accident but a deliberate application of sophisticated libertarian thinking. To see Reagan as merely folksy is to mistake the sales pitch for the product.

So it seems to me that libertarian ideas are now generally respectable and that the challenge is how to implement them in a context where most people are used to turning to government as a solution to all their problems.

And that is where the Libertarian Party fails. They have not got a blind clue about how to win the mass support that they need in order to achieve anything. Their only proposal for winning the influence that they need is the "Free State" project -- the idea that all libertarians should migrate to some small State such as New Hampshire and thus muster enough votes to take over (and presumably abolish) the State government! Hell will freeze over first.

So all the mentally well-balanced libertarians have by now joined one of the major parties where they might do some good (as Reagan did) -- leaving the fruitcakes in the LP.

And there is certainly nothing hypocritical about joining the GOP. Most libertarian-inclined people I know are minimal-statists rather than anarcho-capitalists -- i.e. they do see SOME (very limited) role for governement. And waging defensive war is certainly one of those roles. And how you defend yourself militarily is not something that can be judged according to any set of abstract principles. Reality is too complex and ever-changing for that. And it is a truism that offence can sometimes be the best and safest form of defence -- which is why I and many others support the efforts of GWB in the Middle East.

And one would think that even an anarcho-capitalist (and I was once one myself) could see that half a loaf is better than no loaf at all. So surely even an anarcho-capitalist could work within the GOP on such badly-needed projects as the defence of free-trade. Given the amazing worldwide influence of rural gamblers (farmers) we may never get completely free trade but even some freeing up of trade would be beneficial to everybody. Anarcho-capitalists who cannot see that are just fanatics as far as I can see.

So the damage done by the LP is twofold: 1). The Florida debacle in the last election shows that the tiny number of votes that the LP gets just COULD siphon off enough GOP votes to put the old-Left John Kerry in the White House, and; 2). It deprives the major parties of libertarian ideas, influence and input from among their own ranks. If all the LP supporters came down to earth long enough to join one of the major parties, we might see a little more economic rationality and interest in freedom in the parties concerned. And that is all that I ever plan to say about the LP.

My personal credo as a libertarian conservative: I think all attempts to reform your fellow-citizens or tell them how to live their lives are arrogant and tyrannical. THAT'S why I oppose Leftism. I want people to be free to manage their own lives. "Reform" is just authoritarianism. People are not playthings for anybody's theories or obsessions.

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ELSEWHERE

Further to my recent post about the Moore that we need less of, there a couple of other catalogues of the deceit in his "9/11" film here and here. And the WSJ sees the film as an exercise in reinforcing Leftist elitism.

Dick McDonald summarizes the Sandy Berger coverup with admirable brevity. You won't hear about it on CBS, though. And the Kerry campaign seem to be in coverup mode about it too.

Amusing: John Kerry thinks he knows Catholic doctrine on the death penalty better than the Catholic theologians do!

A comment from one of my medical correspondents: "Where are the "feminazis" when it comes to John Edwards? Edwards and his kind have caused the physical mutilation of more women in the US than any other group - by creating such hysteria against malpractice that the number of unnecessary Caesarians has skyrocketed - not only greatly increasing the cost, but at the price of a sliced belly and all the pain and complications that result. These "liberated women" are anything but - they are slaves to the trial lawyers - and they tend to vote Democratic"

A good one from Taranto: "Everyone agrees that black holes suck, but "after 29 years of thinking about it, Stephen Hawking says he was wrong" about them... Can we conclude that HAWKING LIED!!!!, or is this just an intelligence failure on a cosmic scale? One thing we're sure of: The U.N. should have sent more inspectors to black holes.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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

Puzzle 1: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

Puzzle 2: Why do "postmodern" Leftists make the strange claim that everything ever written has to be interpreted in terms of how it serves power? Easy: Because everything THEY say is directed towards getting themselves power

Comments? Email me or here. 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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23 July, 2004

FREE TRADE

I am afraid this is true: "Over the past three years, President Bush has positioned himself as one of the more hostile opponents of free trade. Last week the Bush administration announced it was levying antidumping duties on shrimp imported from China and Vietnam, with more countries perhaps to be added soon. Last year, a tariff on catfish from Vietnam was enacted. These, in addition to antidumping duties on bras and wooden furniture, the now-infamous steel tariffs, and a heavy dose of agricultural subsidies, expose a President who is as openly hostile to free trade as any in modern history."

The "dumping" excuse: "Do you like shrimp but wish it cost more? Need bedroom furniture but hate getting a good deal on it? If so, you're very different from most Americans. You are, however, one of the few who can rejoice in our national trade policies. Politicians know U.S. consumers are more than happy to buy foreign goods if the quality is sufficient and the price is right. They also know explicit efforts to shut out imports are usually political fool's gold, more likely to bring defeat than victory at the polls. So how can our leaders cater to corporate executives and workers who resent competition, without looking like hidebound protectionists? Simple: They don't attack trade -- they attack 'dumping.' When it comes to trade, many Americans cherish the notion we are victims of our innocent good-heartedness. In this picture, we're always being cynically exploited by underhanded foreigners while our own companies play by the rules."

Free trade always beneficial: "Free trade intertwines international voluntary exchanges to such an extent that war is unthinkable to the participants; it is a doctrine of international peace in which the frontiers of nations are immaterial to their citizens. Any voluntary exchange benefits both participants. No fact about trade is more superficial than the particular pieces of geography concerned, so a single nation pursuing free trade unilaterally still gains."

Ten truths about trade: "Is globalization sending the best American jobs overseas? If you get your news from CNN's Lou Dobbs, the answer is 'of course' and the only real issue is how many trade restrictions should be applied to stem the bleeding. But the recent scare about 'offshoring' is just the latest twist on an inaccurate, decades-old complaint that global trade is stealing jobs and causing a 'race to the bottom' in which corporations relentlessly scour the world for the lowest wages and most squalid working conditions."

Icelandic blogger Ice & Fire takes a big interest in the Left/Right basics. One quote: "When jobs are competed for on an international scale, low-skilled manufacturing jobs often move to poorer countries, thereby decreasing the power of local unions often controlled by the Left. All other reasons for the Left to fight free trade worldwide are derived from this reason".

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ELSEWHERE

More hilarious Leftist nonsense: "It's a rarely stated truth that global terrorism is a monster of the West's own making". I guess Mohammed had nothing to do with it.

Riots! Good news for Britain. Similar riots in Australia caused "refugees" to stop coming: "Hundreds of asylum-seekers were being held in prison and police cells last night after a riot at an immigration centre. Inmates seized control of the Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre in west London for several hours in a protest that threw a harsh light on the handling of failed asylum-seekers."

Marxists and Islamists unite: "When the US-led coalition invaded Iraq in March 2003, few would have imagined that the move might lead to the formation of an alliance between the radical Left and hard-line Islamists in Western Europe. But this is precisely what happened. In Britain, the new Marxist-Islamist alliance is the offspring of the so-called anti-war coalition set up two years ago to prevent the liberation of Iraq. The coalition has a steering committee of 33 members. Of these, 18 come from various hard Left groups: communists, Trotskyites, Maoists, and Castroists. Three others belong to the radical wing of the Labor party. There are also eight radical Islamists. The remaining four are leftist ecologists"

Non-Advancing Blacks: "Last week, for the fourth year in a row, President Bush declined the NAACP's invitation to speak at its annual convention. Predictably, NAACP President Kweisi Mfume railed that the Bush administration failed to recognize the nation's oldest and largest civil rights group as being significant or important in any way. The sad thing is, the Bush administration's attitude toward the group is justified. The NAACP is stuck in a mind-set that worked 30 years ago but makes little sense today.

Mark Steyn has some interesting stuff up on crime in Britain -- pointing out that it is gun-controlled Britain that has high rates of crime rather than America. If you took out black-on-black crime the difference would be even more stark. I was intrepid enough to point out years ago that the percentage of blacks in a community was overwhelmingly the strongest of all predictors of crime in the USA.

That unending TV "news" bias: "With the scandal surrounding former Clinton national security adviser Sandy Berger deepening in the rest of the media, Dan Rather and his colleagues decided to ignore the story, proving once again that while any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, any sufficiently biased journalism is indistinguishable from official propaganda. .... Back when the Wilson/Plame story broke, CBS cast the disclosure in severe terms.... Now that a Democrat was accused of committing a felony, however, CBS has changed its tune.... After jumping all over the Plame disclosure story, none of CBS's news shows ran anything on the Berger story Wednesday."

A comment from a Sydney reader on multiculturalism and "diversity": "Strange that the multicultis are also anti-American. Having a McDonalds in your suburban shopping strip is a sign of cultural invasion but the half dozen or more Thai or Indian restaurants on the other corners are not. Where I live in the Eastern suburbs, the Thais outnumber the McDonalds by maybe 20 to 1 !!"

Gutless Filipinos: "How many more people will lose their lives because the Filipino government has no balls? Do you think if we kidnapped and threatened to behead a Filipino in New Zealand they might send their troops back to Iraq? There is one thing that is worse than evil and that is cowardice in the face of it. How do Filipino politicians sleep at night?"

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Puzzle 1: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

Puzzle 2: Why do "postmodern" Leftists make the strange claim that everything ever written has to be interpreted in terms of how it serves power? Easy: Because everything THEY say is directed towards getting themselves power

Comments? Email me or here. 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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22 July, 2004

MOORE IS LESS

Michael Moore and the consecration of victimhood: "...the film, and in fact Moore's entire oeuvre, revolves around the consecration of victimhood. After all, this is a man who hides behind the crippled, the bereaved, and the deceased whenever he tries to make a point. In Bowling for Columbine, he swaggers into Wal-Mart's head office pushing a wheelchair-bound, bullet-ridden teenager, and demands that the supermarket chain stop selling bullets... The assumption that underlies Moore's work is that victims have greater moral authority than anyone else, simply by virtue of their victimhood. This approach does a disservice to those disenfranchised individuals it purports to help, because it casts their predicament in crude emotional terms and thus precludes arriving at a rational understanding of it. Such an approach may appear compassionate, but it is actually about the egotistical display of Moore's own emotional credentials."

"The cinema is fast becoming a pulpit. And Michael Moore is not the only preacher in town. Showing in Europe are two companion pieces to Fahrenheit 9/11, both by acolytes of the American controversialist.... American power seems to loom so large in the Left imagination that the rest of the world is occluded from view. One rarely hears any discussion of the real global crisis: poverty.... An interesting configuration seems to be taking place. The Left is angsting about the US - the latest edition of Courrier International, titled Made in Bush, is entirely dedicated to American ugliness - while the US is beginning to talk about the world.... If your politics are fed by popular culture, particularly by the new trend in cinematic pamphleteering, you probably have the impression that only one thing really matters: the US. But this is easy politics - too easy. It is being fed by an alliance between film culture and Left politics; unfortunately, however, it represents shallow culture and narrow politics".

"Moore isn't just antiwar and anti-Bush; he is also virulently anti-American. That's a label some right-wing pundits tend to slap on anyone critical of the war and of President Bush. In Moore's case, however, the label fits."

Australian Treasurer Peter Costello has an accurate description of Moore after Moore said that both the Australian Prime Minister and GWB were idiots: "Mike Moore is entitled to his opinion but that's the quintessential ugly American, sitting down attacking the Australian prime minister,"

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ELSEWHERE

An amusing article by a Leftist here -- accusing the GOP of an unprincipled desperation that will make it do anything to hang on to power. Classic Leftist projection! Seeing your own motivations in others! The Left themselves are so desperate to gain power that they have put up a man whose proclaimed policies are almost identical to those of the despised Bush! Given that same man's far-left congressional voting record, who is the desperate and unprincipled one?

LOL: Another self-revelatory article by a Leftist here: He goes out and interviews ordinary non-intellectual GOP voters and finds that, like most ordinary people, they don't have much grasp of political minutiae. He finds that they vote for GWB simply because they see him as a man of good character. Our Leftist does not understand that at all. Character? What is that? The best explanation he can come up with is that it is some kind of religion! The Leftist's poster-boy is the psychopathic Clinton -- a man of no character at all but who can talk the feelgood talk. So Leftists love him. The warm inner glow of feeling superior is all that matters to them.

A good quip: "Now that obesity is a disease, we don't have to work. All we have to do is call in fat!"

Theodore Dalrymple on multiculturalism in Britain "if we are to avoid violently disaffected and resentful ethnic enclaves in our midst, we need to teach immigrants that the freedom, prosperity, and tolerance that they enjoy result from a long spiritual and cultural development, not to be taken for granted, and that they have a magnificence and grandeur. In the modern multicultural climate, though, there is no quick way of doing this.

Peaceful Muslims ignored: " President Bush likes to talk about nurturing democracy within the Muslim world, but he's doing little for the pro-Western Muslims of the Western Sahara whose future rests in his hands... They have been languishing in refugee camps in western Algeria for nearly 30 years and will remain there until the United States stops playing chief enabler to a Moroccan government that invaded and seized their country when it was freed from colonial rule by Spain in the '70s."

Leftist racism OK? "Because of the racially-insensitive content of a recent cartoon, members of the African-American leadership network Project 21 are asking Universal Press Syndicate to cease the distribution of comics drawn by Ted Rall. Project 21 also is challenging several other civil rights-oriented groups to join in the demand. A July 1 comic by Rall suggests "appropriate punishments for deposed Bushists" that parodies alleged treatment of Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison. The panel featuring Bush Administration national security advisor Condoleezza Rice has her saying "I was Bush's beard! His house nigga. His..." She is interrupted by a character wearing a shirt reading "You're not white, stupid" who says, "Now hand over your hair straightener.".. "Is it OK for Ted Rall to use such vile language because he's using it against a black conservative?" asks Project 21 member Michael King. "I'm beside myself with anger over this comic."

Hitler idealized youth too: "For liberals, obsession with the support of 'the youth' is power worship too, but it's something as well. Liberals believe that youth has a moral authority independent of the substance of its arguments. Youth politics is a variant of identity politics which imbues in young people an authority they did not purchase with work or with insight -- just as liberalism does with gender, race, infirmity, etc"

Prof. Bunyip is good at mockery. On seducing his students: "True, one must listen to all sorts of late-teenage emptiness en route to boudoir or the floor of one's office, but that's really par for the course, as a willingness to nod and agree with vigourously asserted vacuities is the prime prerequisite for building and preserving a relationship with any woman. When they're young, it's all about sympathising with observations about illegal aliens and how we must do something to ease their plight, and how -- my word, isn't that a coincidence! -- it is indeed really, really special when a young woman comes across an older gentlemen who genuinely digs unicorns, too"

Which German to choose? "German law bars any trade using Hitler portraits, swastikas or National Socialist symbols." But communist symbols are perfectly acceptable; Germany even produces Karl Marx vodka."

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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

Puzzle 1: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

Puzzle 2: Why do "postmodern" Leftists make the strange claim that everything ever written has to be interpreted in terms of how it serves power? Easy: Because everything THEY say is directed towards getting themselves power

Comments? Email me or here. 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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21 July, 2004

MORE ON IMMIGRATION

Defenders of recent American immigration practices like to defend them in terms of 'multi-culturalism' and 'diversity'. But as Samuel Huntington points out, the diversity argument backfires. "...the new immigration intake is much less diverse than the immigrants in earlier periods. In brief, one half of new legal immigrants come from Latin America-- and 25 percent of them from a single national source, namely Mexico."

The Australian electorate was once somewhat welcoming of immigration, something polls show has hardened up in recent years. Just compare the 1951 results listed here to these 1996 results here. 48% wanted to reduce immigration in 1951 but this had risen to 65% in 1996. Nothing to do with the welfare price-tag now attached to each newcomer courtesy of the multiculturalism industry, of course. Migrants were once left to sink or swim so it was clear to all that they deserved their success and were not leeches on the taxpayer.

Hispanic kids NOT assimilating: "Before immigration optimists issue another rosy prognosis for America's multicultural future, they might visit Belmont High School in Los Angeles's overwhelmingly Hispanic, gang-ridden Rampart district. "Upward and onward" is not a phrase that comes to mind when speaking to the first- and second-generation immigrant teens milling around the school this January. "Most of the people I used to hang out with when I first came to the school have dropped out," observes Jackie, a vivacious illegal alien from Guatemala. "Others got kicked out or got into drugs. Five graduated, and four home girls got pregnant." Certainly, none of the older teens I met outside Belmont was on track to graduate.... Debate has recently heated up over whether Mexican immigration-unique in its scale and in other important ways-will defeat the American tradition of assimilation. The rise of underclass behavior among the progeny of Mexicans and other Central Americans must be part of that debate. There may be assimilation going on, but a significant portion of it is assimilation downward to the worst elements of American life."

Surprise, surprise! "More than nine out of 10 white Britons have no or hardly any ethnic minority friends, according to a poll that reveals the continuing gulf between races and religions more than 40 years after the UK became a multicultural society."

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That pesky IQ again. Yet again a team of researchers have found what Terman & Oden reported over 50 years ago -- that high IQ kids grow up to be healthier adults. The latest findings are by Martin, Fitzmaurice, Kindlon & Buka in The Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health of 2004, vol. 58, pp. 674-679. The full report is here (PDF) and a summary is here. The reason for such findings would be obvious if it were not for politics: High IQ signifies good brain function but the brain is part of the body so good brain function tends to go with good body functioning generally. People who pooh-pooh the importance and centrality of IQ have got a lot of explaining away to do.

And another study tracking down the brain-basis of IQ: "General human intelligence appears to be based on the volume of gray matter tissue in certain regions of the brain, UC Irvine College of Medicine researchers have found in the most comprehensive structural brain-scan study of intelligence to date." Leftists long tried to deny that IQ scores corresponded to real differences between brains -- "all men are equal", of course. But modern neuroscience is constantly proving them wrong -- unsurprisingly. Not that facts interest them. Simplistic theories are their forte.

There is a wonderful story about Ronald Reagan here. Leftists despise ordinary people. Ronald Reagan loved them.

Childish Islamic hatred explained: "The Islamic world is a society dominated by "shame." Pride is an overwhelming value, where an obsession on dishonor means tremendous weakness. This is the underlying reason why America and Israel are hated with such passion. The incredible successes of our religious societies coupled with overwhelming military power gives "envy" a new meaning."

Sowell: "In today's climate, too many teachers think they are doing black students a favor by feeding them grievances from the past and telling them how they are oppressed in the present - and how their future is blocked by white racism. These are the kinds of friends who do more damage than enemies. Why endure all the hard work, self-discipline and self-denial that a first-rate education requires if The Man is going to stop you from getting anywhere anyway? People who have been pushing this line for years are now suddenly surprised and dismayed to discover that many black students across the country regard academic striving as "acting white."

Hope for American education? "Sol Stern argues that President George W. Bush's much-maligned education reforms represent real progress. Stern says the president's No Child Left Behind act, though flawed, is expanding education choices for poor parents and prodding school districts to rely on scientific standards instead of ideology in selecting reading programs-essential to closing the reading gap that underlies the black-white education gap. What's more, a new Bush-promoted voucher program for Washington, D.C. may point the way toward further education reform in a second Bush term.

The usual Leftist stupidity: "As the election looms, Labor's industrial relations policy will attract attention not just as a focus of business alarm but because it is a threat to the growth economy that Mark Latham champions. The recent report by Access Economics on the ALP's industrial platform, commissioned by the Business Council of Australia, finds a conflict between Labor's economic rhetoric and its policies..... Access Economics begins its report by listing Labor's main goals - maximising economic growth, a high wage and high-skilled workforce, an unemployment rate below 5 per cent and equity for all. The issue, of course, is how to achieve these goals - and Access forms the lethal conclusion that Labor's industrial platform actually undermines them. Access says the ALP platform's "emphasis on greater centralisation and regulation of labour markets contrasts with the direction of reforms over the past decade and more [and] it also contrasts with the thrust towards greater decentralisation of regulation in other Australian markets".... Its core argument is that Labor's policies will undermine the productivity gains that are the key to higher wages and sustainable lifts in living standards".

There is a Belgian site here devoted to recording Leftist street violence. The descriptions are all in Flemish but the pictures are good. Strange that there is no collection of conservative street violence! As soon as the Berlin wall came down, there was some anti-immigrant violence from unemployed East German youth but they were all the product of a good Communist education!

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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

Puzzle 1: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

Puzzle 2: Why do "postmodern" Leftists make the strange claim that everything ever written has to be interpreted in terms of how it serves power? Easy: Because everything THEY say is directed towards getting themselves power

Comments? Email me or here. 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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20 July, 2004

SOME IMMIGRATION FACTS

Germans more "xenophobic". Does nothing change? "46 percent of Americans said immigration was a bad influence and 42 percent a good influence; 57 percent of Germans rated immigration bad and 39 percent good in Germany"

Australians will laugh about this one: "As of June 20, 2002, there were 414,000 New Zealanders living in Australia; the migration of New Zealanders to Australia is the highest rate of migration between industrial countries". But the socialist N.Z. government won't be laughing. How come people never vote with their feet TOWARDS that comfy socialism? (Don't tell me. I know. Socialism = poverty).

"Apprehensions of Mexicans just inside the US border totaled 1.1 million in FY03, and are on track to top 1.2 million in FY04"

About 10 percent of the 115 million persons born in Mexico have migrated to the US, and Mexicans continue to settle in the US at the rate of about 500,000 a year. Mexicans are coming from most areas of Mexico"

"On July 1, 2003, the US had 39.9 million Hispanics, up from 35.6 million in April 2000; there were 38.7 million Blacks and 237.7 million non-Hispanic whites. The number of Asian-Americans was 13.5 million, up from 12 million in 2000.... Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in June 2004 said he opposed giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. .... The "Protect Arizona Now" (PAN) Initiative appears to have qualified for the November 2, 2004 ballot. If approved by voters, it would deny state-funded services to the estimated 350,000 unauthorized foreigners in the state, require people registering to vote in Arizona to prove they are U.S. citizens and to show an ID when voting, and make it a misdemeanor punishable by a $750 fine and up to four months in jail for any state employee to fail to report illegal immigrants applying for services".

Canadian nonsense: "Almost two-thirds of the professionals arriving in Canada under the point system are engineers, but many cannot get licenses to work as engineers... Canada has an estimated 600,000 Muslims, and critics say the government does not do enough to prevent the immigration and naturalization of terrorists. Algerian-born Ahmed Ressam was arrested in December 1999 trying to enter the United States from Canada in a car packed with explosives. Ressam ignored a Canadian deportation order and managed to obtain a Canadian passport.... Some 880 foreign women received work permits to be nude dancers in Canada in 2003. Two-thirds were Romanians with one-year work permits. Exotic dancers are considered a shortage occupation by Canada's Labor Department".

Even the Dutch are learning: "The Dutch, who took over presidency of the expanded EU on July 1, 2004, called for tough new EU-wide immigration laws that would speed the expulsion of unsuccessful asylum seekers and unauthorized foreigners. The Dutch Parliament recently adopted a bill that should result in deportation of 26,000 failed asylum seekers, many of whom have been in the country for years."

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters, a Maori who opposes higher immigration levels, charged that New Zealand was being turned into an "Asian colony"

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ELSEWHERE

USA Today really sinks the boot into the mainstream media over their "hiding" the news that GWB did NOT lie or twist the truth over Iraqi attempts to buy uranium: "But now that the Wilson case has been debunked, it is interesting to note that the news media, so eager to build him up, and tear Bush down, now seem reluctant to tell the rest of the story, or at least the next chapter. Wilson, who had been a fixture on television, now seems to have disappeared. Democrats are silent. Why were the media so willing to believe Wilson when he was an obvious Democratic partisan?" They don't want to mention that it is Democrat operative Wilson who was the "liar". Safire In the NYT does however do his bit to set the record straight. And Michael Barone also takes apart the "Bush Lied" lie.

An excellent essay in the WSJ about Americans being called "cowboys": "When foreigners see us as cowboys, they are not mistaken. As a people, we still exhibit a high degree of courage, independence, aggressiveness, competence, and spirit. Diplomatic Europeans have responded to tyranny over the latest century mostly with accommodation... Cowboy Americans, on the other hand, have hungered to confront and defeat tyrants, in real life as in legend". The whole essay is an excellent evocation of the American spirit.

Sign of the times: There is a big article on Iraq in the WSJ by an Australian blogger! They had another article up by Australia's Foreign Minister a few days before. Bloggers in the same company as top government officials? The WSJ even has Prime Ministers writing for it at times.

A recent Australian government white paper seems to pour cold water on the Leftist claim that Al Qaeda terrorism is linked with the Palestine/Israel conflict. "It ...challenges the furphy of a link between al-Qaeda and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As the scholar of political Islam Olivier Roy has pointed out, the new generation of radicals did not flock to Palestine to fight, they went to Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia and more recently to New York and Madrid. Peace between Israel and the Palestinians may starve the fire of some fuel, but it won't put it out."

France fears being left with Muslim dregs: "France has denounced a call by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to French Jews to emigrate to Israel because of the level of anti-Semitism in the country. "We immediately made contact with the Israeli authorities to ask them to explain these unacceptable comments," a foreign office statement said. Earlier, Sharon told a meeting of an American Jewish association in Jerusalem: "Altogether I have to advocate to our brothers in France: move to Israel as early as possible. That's what I say to Jews all around the world, but there (France) I think it's a must. They have to move immediately.""

Pathetic: "It's probaby not the most pressing issue of the day, but it's typical nanny state activism. A consortium of fire safety groups wants a federal ban on consumer fireworks."

I have revised slightly the photos on my home page. So there are now two photos of me in ethnic dress! See here or here

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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

Puzzle 1: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

Puzzle 2: Why do "postmodern" Leftists make the strange claim that everything ever written has to be interpreted in terms of how it serves power? Easy: Because everything THEY say is directed towards getting themselves power

Comments? Email me or here. 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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19 July, 2004

KEILLOR: A SELF-RIGHTEOUS FOOL

This review of a book by the righteous Garrison Keillor is amusing. After hearing a torrent of mindless abuse directed at conservatives in the usual Leftist style, we learn that in his youth Keillor "joined the campus radio station, unwittingly broadcasting the news for six months to nobody because the transmitter had burned out". Definitely a man of good judgment and realism, wouldn't you say? Sounds like typical Leftist lack of reality-checking to me. Like all Leftists, Keillor asserts that anyone who does not share his simplistic approach to welfare therefore opposes all welfare -- completely ignoring the fact that the three greatest welfare innovators in history -- Disraeli, Bismarck and TR -- were all conservatives! See here. Did you ever wonder why the U.S. Social Security Administration has a picture of this Prussian militarist up on their site? It's not only because of his great hat.

From Keillor, you would never guess that twenty-seven out of thirty-three Republican senators supported the famous 1964 civil rights bill or that twenty-one Democrat senators voted against it. And the Garrison that Garrison Keillor was named after was presumably the great anti-slavery activist, William Lloyd Garrison, who "remained an active Republican until his death in 1879". Leftists are good at propaganda but only because they ignore the facts. (Link to the review via What If).

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About the occupation of conquered Germany just after World War 2: "John Dos Passos, a communist, wrote in Life magazine in January 1946, "Americans Are Losing the Victory.. Never has American prestige in Europe been lower," a phrase oft repeated by former Vice President Al Gore when speaking about Iraq."

German TV loved Michael Moore and the Abu Ghraib abuses but not a single station has agreed to broadcast a more balanced account of U.S. troops in Iraq. Childish envy of America's dynamism and power is what they display.

Another group of "social" Christians shows what they are: "By an overwhelming vote of its general assembly, the Presbyterian Church USA, boasting 3 million members, is siding with Palestinian Arabs and against Israel, choosing to divest from the Jewish state as it did only with apartheid South Africa.

Iran and El Qaeda : "A senior U.S. official told TIME that the Commission has uncovered evidence suggesting that between eight and ten of the 14 "muscle" hijackers-that is, those involved in gaining control of the four 9/11 aircraft and subduing the crew and passengers-passed through Iran in the period from October 2000 to February 2001. Sources also tell TIME that Commission investigators found that Iran had a history of allowing al-Qaeda members to enter and exit Iran across the Afghan border". See also here.

Sometimes in war you need to kill people to win: "Faced with implacable enemies who would kill every man, woman, and child in our country and call the killing good (the ultimate war of attrition), we must be willing to use that power wisely, but remorselessly. We are, militarily and nationally, in a transition phase. Even after 9/11, we do not fully appreciate the cruelty and determination of our enemies. We will learn our lesson, painfully, because the terrorists will not quit. The only solution is to kill them and keep on killing them: a war of attrition. But a war of attrition fought on our terms, not theirs".

Rap music: "For some people this music is a religion.... It's a body language, it's a way of speaking. It's a creed. It's literally a religion." It's a religion that McWhorter finds deeply repellent. In his interpretation, rap preaches "recreational outrage" to the black community, encouraging "oppositionalism" for the sake of it. McWhorter's main gripe is with gangsta rap, which originated in Los Angeles in the mid-1980s and represented, for a time at least, the music's most popular genre.... "The point is the thug attitude is what anchors rap and what sells most," he says. "No matter how much consciousness rap brings, no matter how many cuts there are that are constructive, what really drives it is that thug pose.

One bishop who does not waffle: "Denver's Catholic Archbishop Charles Chaput was interviewed on Colorado Public Radio about his position in the debate over giving communion for Catholic public officials who support abortion. He wrote a column, one of a continuing series, in which he said that Catholics' who support abortion are not really Catholics, but "a very different kind of creature."" (Via Mark Shea)

"Homophobia"? "The idea that opposition to homosexual activity and its public sanction is equivalent to or leads to hatred of individual homosexuals is a "big lie" created to demonize, intimidate, and silence opponents of the "gay rights" agenda. And the data confirms the "big lie." Every crime of violence against another human being is reprehensible, but according to the latest FBI Hate Crimes statistics, it is estimated that less than 0.0001 of homosexuals were victims of violent assaults; not exactly an epidemic of homophobic rage spreading across America"

Wayne Lusvardi has a rather Straussian account of why the USA invaded Iraq here. I myself think it was simpler than that. Saddam was the most dangerous and defiant anti-American in the Middle East so was the logical next target after Afghanistan. The invasion was a lesson that America WILL strike back when attacked.

Marc Miyake and David Boxenhorn are having an amusing debate about "existence". They seem to think that believing in existence is an act of faith! I would like to know what a non-faith belief was like in that case!

Australian illustrator Kilmeny Niland, one of the two artistic daughters of famous Australian author D'Arcy Niland has just put up a most impressive gallery of her art. How do I know that? Australian philosopher Rafe Champion tells me so. I believe he has a personal interest in the matter.

Wicked Thoughts is recommending an essay by Tom Wolfe and has a link to a hilarious story about the Nigerian scammers.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Puzzle 1: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

Puzzle 2: Why do "postmodern" Leftists make the strange claim that everything ever written has to be interpreted in terms of how it serves power? Easy: Because everything THEY say is directed towards getting themselves power

Comments? Email me or here. 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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18 July, 2004

THE INSANITY OF DRUG PROHIBITION

"Drug prohibition is an incredibly important policy in the United States, and it affects millions of lives every day. We lock up hundreds of thousands of people. We arrest approximately one-and-a-half million a year on drug-related charges. We spend tens of billions of dollars, and forego billions of dollars in tax revenue that could be collected if drugs were legal instead of being prohibited....

a very simple observation, which may seem trivial-prohibition doesn't eliminate the supply or demand for drugs. It seems really obvious, but it's important to emphasize, because policy makers, advocates of prohibition, sometimes act as though, gee, if we prohibit drugs, there won't be drugs. The problem will go away. That's patently untrue....

for the past 20 to 25 years in the United States, the attempts to enforce drug prohibition have escalated enormously. We're arresting way more people. We're incarcerating four or five times more people than we were 25 years ago. We're spending four times as much money for the Drug Czar's office and things like that. Yet drug prices have fallen by a factor of about 80 percent. If prohibition is an effective policy, if it's useful for raising the cost of supplying drugs, that's exactly the opposite of what one would expect to see. In fact, the decline in drug prices has been dramatic...

The prohibition itself creates violence, because the participants in a black market cannot resolve their disputes using lawyers, and arbitration systems, and judges. They have to resort to guns, or knives, and other forms of violence, because they don't have access to the non-violent legal dispute resolution system... If prohibition raises drug prices, then there is more incentive for people who use drugs, low-income persons who use drugs, to commit theft, robbery other income generating crime, to be able to afford their drug habits. A second reason prohibition might generate crime more generally, is that prohibition diverts the police from trying to deter standard crimes such as murder, robbery, rape, arson, etc., because they're off-the police are busy, preoccupied, trying to deter a drug crime". More here.

And as it says here: "We just passed the halfway point of 2004 and it is time for an update on the "war on drugs." Sad to say, it is still going strong. According to the website www.drugsense.org, we have spent more than $20 billion so far this year on this "war," putting us on a pace to surpass last's year's expenditure of $39 billion."

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ELSEWHERE

Wow! Clinton has just cut the legs off Kerry: "Bill Clinton says that no government could have failed to act against Iraq after the 11 September 2001 attacks in view of intelligence provided". Lots of people have been saying that the Clintons don't want Kerry to win. Dick McDonald has some stuff up to that effect.

But Kerry has quickly jumped on the bandwagon: "Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry said Friday he would be willing to launch a pre-emptive strike against terrorists if he had adequate intelligence of a threat. Kerry offered some support for one of the most controversial aspects of President Bush's national security policy" (Though how he jumped on a bandwagon without legs is a mystery!)

Tim Berners-Lee has just been knighted by the Queen for inventing the Worldwide Web. Al Gore must be jealous.

Blogger.com's recent changes have traps for the unwary. There are now two ways of inputting text. If you choose "Compose", you get more things that you can do but you lose all your breaks between paragraphs! The "Edit html" option is the one you need if you don't want to re-do all your paragraphing manually.

An interesting article on 19th century Russian "Liberals". They were remarkably like American "liberals" today. And 19th century Russian "liberals" ended up producing the Russian revolution: "We might wonder, then, if the liberal worldview would survive a successful ascent to political power. Or would most of it be shed along the way in favor of, say, opportunistic morality and lack of concern for human suffering? We do know that when the originally liberal and humanitarian Russian intelligentsia finally took power in 1917, the results were catastrophic in those precise directions."

Interesting book by a Russian writer: He says that Russians feel a need for a strong father figure as their ruler. It would explain the rather amazing popularity of President Putin -- particularly when you contrast it with the chaos that preceded him.

Even the UN disses Arafat : "After more than 20 years of championing the Palestinian cause, the U.N.'s Middle East peace envoy lashed out at Yasser Arafat and received a stinging rebuke. Expressing frustration as he winds up his Mideast mission, Terje Roed-Larsen blamed Arafat for lack of progress toward vital reforms and peace moves backed by the world body. He was speaking Tuesday before the U.N. Security Council.

The affirmative action myth: "The Supreme Court decided one year ago that racial preferences at public universities are legal, as long as they aren't too mechanically applied. But this has proved cold comfort to affirmative action supporters besieged by evidence that preferences can't deliver the results desired. ... Just what is affirmative action supposed to do? Educators trumpet the virtues of 'diverse' campuses, but their enthusiasm dates suspiciously to a 1972 court decision suggesting diversity as a legal justification for preferences. Ordinary Americans are more practical. Those sympathetic to affirmative action assume that it offers concrete benefits to disadvantaged students. They hope that preferences will narrow our nation's painful racial divide along such metrics as income, literacy, home ownership and health. But affirmative action in this sense is a myth."

"UK home secretary David Blunkett is having another go at banning the incitement of religious hatred.... Laws against religious hatred will grossly infringe on our right to free speech and our ability to criticise religions however we please.... the whole point about free speech is that it is free - and that it's not up to Blunkett or anybody else to decide whether your opinion is reasonable or not. Unless we are able to be wrong, rude and offensive, about Allah, Jesus or even the home secretary, then the right to free speech exists only in theory rather than in practice"

There is a pretty insightful article in Quadrant -- Australia's best-know conservative publication (apparently once financed by the CIA!) about the homosexual marriage issue. I rather liked this report of a typically pungent comment from Australia's most recent Leftist Prime-minister: "Very many heterosexual people will be inclined to remark, as former Prime Minister Keating is reputed to have done in cabinet, "I don't care what you say - two blokes and a cocker spaniel don't make a family.""

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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

Puzzle 1: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

Puzzle 2: Why do "postmodern" Leftists make the strange claim that everything ever written has to be interpreted in terms of how it serves power? Easy: Because everything THEY say is directed towards getting themselves power

Comments? Email me or here. 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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17 July, 2004

LEFTIST HISTORY AND FASCISM

Being a Leftist historian must be a depressing job: So much of history upsets Leftist preconceptions. The only way out for them is to lie -- as Keith Windschuttle has repeatedly shown. The Australian historians criticized by Windschuttle are minor offenders compared with some of their colleagues in the USA and the UK, however. I have twice previously mentioned (here and here) the utter trash put out by Robert Paxton in his alleged history of Fascism. He's the guy who said Hitler was an "antisocialist" when the very name "Nazi" is a German abbreviation of "National Socialist"! The whole point to the twists and turns of Leftist historians is of course to deny that Fascism was a Leftist sect and to deny that Fascist ideas still live among modern Leftists -- things that I point out at length here. Even the Marxist Terry Eagleton admits the latter point.

I was rather amused therefore to note a good point made by Orrin Judd in his review of Paxton's book. Orrin notes that in his desperation to deny what Fascism really was, Paxton ends up defining Fascism as modern, scientific and anti-Christian. Which is of course very much how modern-day Leftists see themselves. So no matter where he turns, Paxton cannot escape the fact that the modern-day Left is in most respects the lineal descendant of Fascism. The modern Left is even becoming pretty antisemitic these days. And, as Orwell points out, modern Leftists even have their own version of nationalism. The group-minded politics of the modern American Left would not have surprised Orwell one bit. It is only conservatives who stand up for the individual.

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ELSEWHERE

There is a huge review here of books that try to explain anti-Americanism. The Leftist explanations are hilarious in their selectivity about America's faults. It all boils down to envy of course but I found this bit interesting: "Because as they struggle to learn and speak English and to find a comfortable meeting place between America's culture and their own, these foreigners are acutely aware that Americans don't have to make a comparable effort. English is our language; American culture, our culture. It is our exemption from this otherwise global burden of adaptation, Purdy suggests, that makes us seem "imperial."". I had never thought of that -- probably because Australians generally feel perfectly at home in America without making any effort at all. Old guys like me even appreciate the fact that America still has proper measurements -- like feet and inches and miles and pounds instead of the kilometers and kilograms that now prevail almost everywhere else. Australia went metric in 1970 -- at enormous cost and for no good reason. With metric you have only got to misplace a decimal point and you are history. You can't make that sort of mistake with feet and inches.

A powerful article here: ""When a white person kills a black person, we all go out in the street to protest," said Reverend Floyd Flake. "But our children are being educationally killed every day in public schools and nobody says a thing.".... The Democratic Party's two evil co-conspirators in this systematic destruction of black childrens' minds, dreams and futures are a labor union, the National Education Association (NEA), and what used to be regarded as a civil rights organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). All three groups in this unholy trinity exploit children - as surely as did 19th Century plantation slave owners or Dickensian industrial factory owners - destroying millions of young African-American lives for their own selfish gain.... today, by cynically working together the NAACP, NEA and Democratic Party have created for themselves a symbiotic iron triangle of wealth and power that would fall apart if any one of the three departed from their symbiotic, self-aggrandizing behavior. Their wealth and power are being paid for with the enslavement and wrecked futures of millions of black children and the betrayal of African-American parents."

America's anti-American cult: "Now most people, when they hear about something called anti-racism, do not want to criticize it. After all, we would all agree that racism-acts and speech aimed at harming people of a particular race because of their race-is a morally bad thing. In the real world, however, anti-racism means something far more than the condemnation of discrete and morally objectionable acts and statements. It means the indictment of America as America, and of white people as white people. The anti-racist movement has advanced itself most prominently through the schools"

The latest attack on people's liberties: "Children who watch more than two hours of television a night seem to be at higher risk of becoming smokers or being fat, out of shape or having high cholesterol as adults, according to a new study." Who doubts that being inactive makes you fat and unfit? But if people are not entitled to decide what they want to do with their own bodies, what liberties do they have?

How the Canadians hate anybody getting good health care! "Ontario is striking back at the creeping privatization of health care by preparing to buy out seven private clinics and bring them into the public sector, The Canadian Press has learned."

A great victory over the feminist man haters: "On June 30, a California man being forced to pay child support for a child he had not fathered got his day in court when the Second District Court of Appeal of California overturned a paternity judgment against him. Los Angeles County, which had imposed the judgment, knew that Manuel Navarro was not the father of the child in question because DNA testing had proved so. Yet under both federal and state child-support laws, the county was still able to demand Navarro pay child support. The court's landmark decision in Navarro's favor may well become the controlling authority for contested paternity in California and a legal precedent nationwide."

The British Labour Party is now pushing "Britishness". Why? "They fear an English parliament - or, more to the point, English issues being voted on solely by English MPs - because it would soon mean that Labour would never rule in England again". The reference is to the fact that Labour usually has to depend on Scottish voters to win power.

Chris Brand has a new post about the BBC tripping itself up while trying to discredit the anti-immigration British National Party. More on the story here. I am told that this link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsa/n5ctrl/tvseq/newsnight/newsnight.ram shows the actual interview concerned, though you may need broadband and RealPlayer to view it.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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

Puzzle 1: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

Puzzle 2: Why do "postmodern" Leftists make the strange claim that everything ever written has to be interpreted in terms of how it serves power? Easy: Because everything THEY say is directed towards getting themselves power

Comments? Email me or here. 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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16 July, 2004

ARE ALL LEFTISTS UNPRINCIPLED?

Leftist intellectuals certainly are. "There is no such thing as right and wrong" seems to be one of their central doctrines. But normal decent working people who vote for Leftist political parties at election time are most unlikely to be so amoral. In between, however, there do seem to be some Leftists who take an intelligent interest in politics and who also also reject the amorality of the Leftist intellectuals. This writer would appear to be one of them:

"Several kids of my friends are amazed that: A) I could support the war in Iraq and, B) have a sympathetic view of Israel and blame the Palestinian leadership and Arab leadership for the plight of the Palestinians. In other words, their teachers have not even attempted to point out that their might be another side to the argument. In fact, the bias against Israel in schools, in Universities, in human rights organisations such as Amnesty International, and in the supposedly quality media (including or especially the BBC) has reached poisonous levels. This is more serious than bias on talkback radio etc which is not taken as seriously. Israel, it seems, is in the wrong when it takes action after suicide bombers have destroyed the lives of its citizens and after numerous others attempting similar destruction have been stopped. The fact that since the second war the Palestinian leadership and Arab countries have on several occasions rejected the offer of a continuous Palestinian state and have sought to destroy the Jews instead is blithely ignored. In fact, they are ignored to such an extent that I am no longer, in many cases, prepared to put it down to ignorance but rather down to anti-Semitism. From a left perspective, the anti-Semitism of many academics, intellectuals and social activists combined with their past ideological allegiances (to Marxism, etc) has made it far too easy for the right to claim the moral and intellectual high ground."

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ELSEWHERE

Well, I've learned that I am not the oldest guy in the blogosphere. Dick McDonald tells me he is nearly 70. And he started blogging only this year. And he's still got plenty of fire in him too. I hope I do as well.

Dick has just put up a new article by Evan Sayet -- taking pretty-boy John Edwards apart.

A comment from a reader about my musical tastes: "Somehow I can't see Philip Glass along with your otherwise impeccable (by my opinion,) tastes in music. Attached please find a cartoon about Glass with which I agree fully. I sent the cartoon to a Chicago area Classical Music radio host who had interviewed Glass among his many fascinating interviews of classical musicians. He said Glass described one of his early concerts where a woman came walking down the aisle during one number and started pounding on the floor with her umbrella next to the piano yelling, "Please stop, I can't stand it any more!"." Philip Glass is of course sometimes called the "cracked-record" composer for his mesmeric use of repetition. I have posted the cartoon here or here

"If intelligence mistakes are inevitable, is it better to worry too much about potential threats or to worry too little? Worrying too much -- if that's what happened -- resulted in the toppling of one of the planet's most murderous tyrants. Worrying too little resulted in 9/11." -- Jeff Jacoby

Windschuttle has just put up a lot of links to the latest expose of lying Australian Leftist historians.

Private education even helps Alzheimers: "A year ago, Alzheimer's disease was so advanced in her that she could hardly recognize a pencil. Now, after having an increasingly popular treatment in Japan called "Learning Therapy," her once blank expression is punctuated with smiles.... But thanks to methods developed by Professor Ryuta Kawashima of Tohoku University in Sendai and backed up by an army of volunteers and textbooks from Kumon Institute of Education Co. - Japan's largest private education company - she has regained an ability to communicate and interact with people".

OK to eat bacon but not OK to put a pig in a car? "A Florida woman who offered up a Yorkshire pig as bait to entice an escaped tiger back home will face charges of animal cruelty, local newspapers reported on Thursday... Meredith said that the trunk of her Cadillac was air conditioned and that she had planned to eat the pig anyway once it had grown up".

In another scathing review of the Michael Moore distortions, Paul Sheehan points out that even Moore's account of himself is a distortion.

Enron: "Is Enron what happens when markets are unsupervised and regulators are asleep at the switch? No, ... California's restructured electricity market was, in fact, the furthest thing from a capitalist jungle imaginable. The government forced electric utilities to sell-off most of their power plants and discouraged them from buying electricity outside of a complicated state-managed spot market. Furthermore, the electric utilities were forced to open their power lines to anyone who wanted to use them - like Enron - under tightly regulated terms and conditions. The day-to-day management of the grid was likewise taken from the utilities and given to state regulators. While wholesale electricity prices were deregulated, retail prices remained tightly controlled - a combustionable combination. In sum, the state was more heavily involved in the restructured market than it was in the old system we all grew up with."

Gun realism in India: "Bangalore City's spiralling crime rate has had one major spin-off. Instead of looking up to the guardians of law for security, why not arm oneself? This seems to be the one of the motives behind the gradual but steady rise in the number of gun licences among Bangaloreans. Going by statistics with the police department, there has been a two-fold increase in demand for gun licences during 2003 as compared to previous years. While in 2001, there were 145 applicants for gun licences, the figures have shot up to 399 in 2003. In 2004, as on June 24, there are 141 applicants. This includes the sixty licences that are yet to be issued. According to Deputy Commissioner of Police (Administration) N Shivkumar, people arming themselves is a healthy trend. 'Guns give people confidence. It is not always possible for the police to be there at the spot every time a person is attacked. Self defence is the next best alternative,' he says."

"It might as well have been Michael Moore - or the New York Times. It is hard to react any other way to "Pakistan for Bush. July Surprise?" That was the kooky story trumpeted late last week by the usually more responsible "progressives" at The New Republic. Putting down their "Bush is an imbecile" playbook momentarily to draw from their "Bush is a diabolical genius" script, the fellas at TNR (the ordinarily reasonable John Judis, joined by Spencer Ackerman and Massoud Ansari) contend that the imperious president has ordered Pakistan to capture Osama bin Laden - not to promote national security, not to smash al Qaeda, but to interrupt the four-day infomercial otherwise known as the Democratic National Convention."

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Puzzle 1: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

Puzzle 2: Why do "postmodern" Leftists make the strange claim that everything ever written has to be interpreted in terms of how it serves power? Easy: Because everything THEY say is directed towards getting themselves power

Comments? Email me or here. 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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15 July, 2004

I TURN 61 TODAY

I've got the key of the door.
Never been 61 before...
or something....


SOME RECENT BUT FORGOTTEN HISTORY

From a reader: "Leftists seem to have very selective memories about the Clinton Administration. The truth is that it was more of a Republican Administration after the 1994 Congressional elections. The 1994 elections did two things. They placed Clinton on notice that he would be trounced in 1996 if he continued along the same path and it unshered in a Republican Congress that was truly revolutionary in its desire to make changes for the better. The State of the Union address in January 1995 when Clinton announced that the "era of big Government to be over"was forced on him even if he didn't really mean it. Prior to the elections Clinton did a few things that really got the electorate angry with him. He raised taxes after he said he wasn't going to. He tried to usher in the Hillary health care reform that was despised by the American people and he introduced some silly changes in the military brought forward by the feminist lobby.

Up until 1994 Clinton was talked about as a one term president because his tax increases had again belted the economy around and growth was pretty enemic. Similarly bond rates had also gone up and the stock market was depressed. It was the Republican Congress which ushered in a welfare reform and introduced spending cuts and host of other things. Clinton took credit for these reforms and while the economy was turning around managed to triangulate these issue for himself. Jobs grew during the Clinton tenure because the Congress introduced sweeping welfare reforms, cut spending and stopped Leftist policies in their tracks. Up until 1995 the economy was sluggish, described as a jobless expansion. If Leftists like the growth rates of the 90's, someone needs to ask them what part of the Republican 10-point "contract with America" do they like?"

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CALVINISM

I must admit to being a bit surprised at this post. A blogger is boasting of being a Calvinist. Although a born-and-bred Presbyterian myself, I thought that nobody these days identified as a Calvinist. The fact that Calvin burnt the brilliant scientist Servetus at the stake would make most people hesitant about mentioning Calvin these days, I would think. The Calvinists actually denounced Servetus to the Spanish Inquisition but when he escaped the Spaniards, the Calvinists burnt him themselves. Amazing. He was arrested while attending church in Geneva, convicted of heresy and blasphemy against Christianity, and burned at the stake on October 27, 1553.

And what was Servetus's great sin? He reported the circulation of the blood in 1553, among other things -- long before William Harvey reported it in 1628. Servetus's biggest blunder, however, was to point to what a lot of gobbledegook that great theological compromise known as the doctrine of the Trinity is. Although the doctrine originated as a solution to battles among the Christian fanatics of old Byzantium around the year 300 A.D., Calvinists still believe it (or try to) to this day. I did a post on the most distinctive doctrine of Calvinism on June 11th.

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ELSEWHERE

Keith Burgess-Jackson has recently told his readers what sort of music he likes so maybe (seeing it's my birthday) I should do that too. Pretty simple really: Bach and Mozart at the top of the tree with other strong contenders being Haendel, Vivaldi, Albinoni, Monteverdi, Beethoven, Elgar, Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky ... and Philip Glass. Boffin-stuff, I know. But they really do great things for me. Bach transports me into another world.

Democrat hypocrisy is well summed up in a list on Front Page Magazine. Excerpt: "Clinton spends $77 billion on war in Serbia - good... Bush spends $87 billion in Iraq - bad. Clinton awards Halliburton no-bid contract in Yugoslavia - good... Bush awards Halliburton no-bid contract in Iraq - bad. Clinton allows UN weapons inspectors to be kicked out of Iraq - good... Bush does not allow UN weapons inspectors to search Iraq for eternity - bad. Clinton imposes regime change in Serbia - good... Bush imposes regime change in Iraq - bad."

The pot calling the kettle black: "Three countries -- India, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey -- voted to refer the Israeli security fence to the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion, even though they had themselves built barriers in areas contested by their neighbors, write David Makovsky and Ben Thein of the Washington Institute. * India is just completing a 460-mile barrier in contested Kashmir to halt infiltrations supported by Pakistan. * Within the last two years, Saudi Arabia built a 60-mile barrier along an undefined border zone with Yemen to halt smuggling of weaponry. * Turkey built a barrier in an area that Syria claims as its own."

The NEA: "Of course, the NEA's focus isn't on children's success. It's on money for itself and its members. After all, it's a labor union. And as Albert Shanker, the former president of the NEA's main rival, the American Federation of Teachers, once said, 'I'll start representing kids when kids start paying union dues.'"

The weirdness of Nader: "On June 28 in Washington, D.C., Candidate/Citizen Ralph Nader gave a speech under the auspices of Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Nader skips blithely over the murderous events of September 11. Not a word does he devote to the nineteen Muslim jihadists who captured American civilian airliners and piloted them into the Trade Towers in New York City, the Pentagon in Arlington, VA, a bloody field in Pennsylvania. But, he has room for this: We should remember the crusades. We should remember over 200 years between 1095 and the following 200 years. Armies from Christendom moved in to Asia Minor, slaughtering as they went. In one conflict, the Christian generals took out 2500 Muslim prisoners and beheaded them--just one conflict."

Saudi Arabian socialized medicine no good either: "Huda Baghaffer had suffered a heart attack on the beach and relatives found no medical staff at the North Obhur clinic.. In a complaint filed with the Ministry of Health, the victim's sister, Hind Baghaffar, describes what happened. "We were all at the beach when my sister fell unconscious, which we later discovered was a result of a heart attack. We rushed her to the nearest medical facility, which was the North Obhur clinic. When we arrived, there weren't any doctors or nurses in the emergency room except for three Bangladeshi workers who refused to let us in," she said. "They said the nurses had left ten minutes earlier and that the doctor was at the supermarket".

Cowardly British cops: "Neighbours want to know why two women were left to bleed to death while police with machine guns carried out a 'risk assessment' from four miles away." All British cops know these days is political correctness. The real police are long gone.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with a big range of reading -- interspersed with a lot of stuff about rock music.

Chris Brand has a new lot of his exceedingly incorrect postings up.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

I have a new rubric below.

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Puzzle 1: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

Puzzle 2: Why do "postmodern" Leftists make the strange claim that everything ever written has to be interpreted in terms of how it serves power? Easy: Because everything THEY say is directed towards getting themselves power

Comments? Email me or here. 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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14 July, 2004

NICK O'TEEN

My post yesterday about the sometimes benign effects of nicotine drew a few responses. Here are the two most interesting:

"Nicotine blocks re-uptake of dopamine in the brainstem. It is also a powerful respiratory stimulant and bronco-dialtor. If you were'nt inhaling a mess of other junk along with it, it might be helpful for asthma and emphysema. I have a friend who treats only Parkinsons Disease. He maintains that cigar smokers delay the onset of parkinsonism until they've died of something else. He himself smokes three Churchills a day."

Blocking dopamine re-uptake is how some antidepressants work, of course. High levels of dopamine make you feel cheerful.

"Prof. Rodu (see here and here) reports the low risks of smokeless tobacco products: "The results of our analysis reveal that the average remaining life expectancy of a 35 year old nonuser of tobacco is 45.96 years, which is 0.04 year more than that of an smokeless tobacco user. The reduction in life expectancy of a smokeless user amounts to 15 days and is in sharp contrast to a reduction of 7.8 years experienced by the smoker. Thus, the 35 year old tobacco abstainer and smokeless tobacco user will both live on average to be 80.9 years of age compared with 73.1 years of age for the smoker. Only 67% of smokers will be alive at age 70 compared with over 87% of smokeless tobacco users and nonusers of tobacco.""

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FROM BROOKES NEWS

Whoopi Goldberg: obscenities, Chevy Chase, Hollywood and moral stupidity The pathological behaviour of Hollywood celebrities, particularly Whoopi Goldberg, at Radio City Music Hall was like an Orwellian hate session
John Edwards - will the real one please stand up What the partisan media is not telling the public about John Edwards
Iraq War: The New York Times slimes President Bush The New York Times' Maureen Dowd maliciously lied about President Bush and the Iraq war
Rupert Murdoch: the Bush Presidency & a leftist myth One leftwing myth has it that Rupert Murdoch is in the pocket of President Bush. The alleged evidence for this is the way 'Fox' reports the news

Details here

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ELSEWHERE

Yes. I know it's Bastille day. The real birthday of Communism. The French revolution gave us the first Communist regime of modern times and then Napoleon gave us the first Fascist regime. How cultured the French are! And what high principles they follow! And if you need any proof of the moral corruption and cowardice of modern-day France, read this report of their everyday indifference to gross antisemitism.

If you have not yet read the talk by Haim Harari on the Islamic problem, you really must. It is here, among other places. It is the most realistic and level-headed account I have read. Harari is an eminent Israeli scientist. Just one tiny excerpt on suicide bombers: "The actual murderer is called "the military wing", the one who pays him, equips him and sends him is now called "the political wing" and the head of the operation is called the "spiritual leader". There are numerous other examples of such Orwellian nomenclature, used every day not only by terror chiefs but also by Western media."

The pervert church again: "Two leading officials at a Catholic seminary in Austria have been identified in an investigation into alleged sexual abuse of student priests and the possession of pornographic and pedophile material. The worldwide scandal involving allegations of sexual abuse aimed at practicing priests within the Catholic Church has surfaced in Austria after pictures of senior church officials caressing and kissing student priests at a seminary were published in an Austrian magazine."

While others are pulling out: "Australia is to send more troops to Iraq. Defence Minister Robert Hill said an extra 30 troops and six armoured vehicles would be sent to boost protection of forces already in Iraq."

Osama bin Laden's sister-in-law has given a rare insight into the notorious terror leader, his extensive family in Saudi Arabia and life inside the secretive Middle East state. In an interview on the eve of a visit to the US to promote the book, to be published next Wednesday, she describes bin Laden as a man so driven by his beliefs that he would deny a water bottle to his infant son in the heat of the Saudi desert, insisting his wife use a spoon. "It's certainly possible that Osama retains ties to the royal family, too," she said. "The bin Ladens and the princes work together, very closely. They are secretive and they are united. They have been inextricably linked for many decades through close friendships and business ventures."

This kindly pastor is doing all he can to keep the fires of black anger burning: "These Black people are often misled, thinking African-Americans are free. But the perceived freedom is not real, says Todd. "You're free to eat at hotels you can't buy. You're free to eat at restaurants you can't buy. You're free to elect politicians who don't represent you. You're free to put your money into banks that won't give you loans. There's something about us. We like counterfeits. We like fakes.""

Look who's talking: "It is amusing to hear Washington liberals lament that all civility in political discourse is lost upon hearing vice-president Cheney tell the Senate's most notorious partisan, Vermont Senator Pat Leahy, Democrat, to 'F*** yourself' during the annual Senate photography session. Lost in scandalous thought over this, the media tsk-tsk's the raging flames of incendiary hate set in every medium by raving segments of the Democratic Party while it decries the minor flair-up in the oft-times cynical United States Senate."

Egyptian Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, "spiritual leader" of Egypt's bloodstained "Muslim Brotherhood" and a defender of Palestinian suicide bombers, is rather pathetically portrayed as a "moderate" by The Guardian . The London-based Iranian Communists give a very different view of him. See here. Genuine Islamic moderates do exist, but Qaradawi is not one of them.

Michael Darby has just come out of hibernation to put up a big post on the latest developments in the Iraqi weapons saga -- with particular reference to the implications for Australia.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth

"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.

Comments? Email me or here. 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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13 July, 2004

STRAUSS REVISITED

An interesting paper on Leo Strauss just out from Claremont. It argues that Strauss was more in tune with traditional American isolationism than the neocons are. The argument centres on whether America's foreign policy should be solely centred on self-preservation (Strauss) or whether it should also be evangelical for democracy (Kristol and the neocons). Much of the rhetoric coming from the White House does give the impression that a neocon agenda is being followed but I am sure that GWB would have done nothing in Afghanistan and Iraq except as a way of protecting America from further terrorist depredations. So the neocons are just a sort of Greek chorus on the sidelines.

But arguing about theories of isolationism versus interventionism is to me a bit too reminiscent of Leftist devotion to oversimplified theories. I prefer traditional conservative skepticism about generalizations and an emphasis on each case being judged on its individual merits. Note that the conservative government of my country appears to be untouched by either Straussianism or neoconservatism and yet behaves in a similar way to the USA. It has twice recently intervened militarily in the affairs of neighbouring countries and done so with great humanitarian success by most standards. Neither country was any threat to Australia so the intervention was almost wholly altruistic. It sprang from conservative decency, not any grand theory. I am sure that both Australia and the USA will continue to be motivated by a mix of self-interest and altruism that will defy any theory to predict or describe it.

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ELSEWHERE

Christopher Pearson has an interesting summary of recent developments in Australia's "History wars" (surprisingly reminiscent of the Historikerstreit in Germany or the American "reparations" movement -- with Leftists determined to promote inherited guilt from one's forefathers and conservatives rejecting that). He notes that a Leftist historian has now come out and admitted that the usual accounts of brutality by early white settlers against Australia's native blacks are basically fraudulent but says that Australians need to build their image of themselves on such a lie! How Leftist! Leftists themselves cannot handle reality and think that everyone else is the same. I personally have no difficulty handing my convict ancestry and know of no living Australian who does. And if I can handle convict ancestry, I think other Australians might just be able to handle comfortably the thought that their ancestors were conquerors.

Orson Scott Card has a brilliant account of how Leftist bias works in the mainsteam American media. His conclusion: "What makes the liberal bias in the mainstream media so pernicious is that they deny that they're biased and insist that their twisted version of events is "reality," and anyone who disagrees with them is either mentally or morally suspect. In other words, they're fanatics. And, like all good fanatics, they're utterly convinced that they're in sole possession of virtue and truth."

There is an interesting catalogue here showing that many of America's patriotic songs and poems were in the past written by "progressive" authors. It shows how sadly the American Left has degenerated in recent years. They hate America and all it stands for these days. The shift rightwards in American politics initiated by Reagan and sealed by the downfall of the Leftists' beloved Soviet Union has totally embittered them. Where once they had some shadow of an alternative to capitalism to put forward, now all they have left is the hatred that drove such stupid ideas.

Why the poor are richer than they seem: "The most glaring inaccuracy is that benefits from in-kind welfare programs go uncounted, so they aren't included in evaluating the poor's income. Since many such programs reduce benefits as incomes rise (e.g., the 30 cent reduction in food-stamp benefits for each $1 of net income), they undermine recipients' incentives to work. Many therefore earn less, so those transfers actually make recipients appear poorer. This is a large and growing error. Of the roughly $400 billion given annually in total government means-tested assistance, the proportion given in-kind has dramatically increased, now comprising about three-quarters of the total... Measures of consumption by various groups are far better indicators of relative well-being than the statistics invoked by Kerry and Edwards. They show dramatically smaller inequalities. Political support for a plethora of redistribution policies has long been maintained by skillful abuse of the data concerning inequality in America."

Read this: "How does the young elite see the future? In a book published yesterday, Imagining Australia, four Australian graduates of Harvard University outline ways to reignite a passion for reform." And guess what the suggested reforms are: More tired old government interventionism? You'd be wrong. The reforms suggested are all free-trade and free-enterprise oriented. Worth a read. See here. Good to see young people standing up for individual liberty despite all the Leftist indoctrination they get from the educational system -- even from such a Leftist hotbed as Harvard!

Amusing: "In the 1960s, nearly half of the US population smoked cigarettes. That number is down to about 22%, a group that Yale University researcher Tony George calls "hard-core" smokers. Among the mentally ill, however, the proportion of smokers is much higher: up to 90% of schizophrenics, 70% of those with bipolar disorder and more than 50% of depressed individuals smoke. Some studies estimate that a third of those who smoke have at one time battled a mental illness. "Smoking is a marker for psychopathology"" The article concerned is an interesting one. It suggests that smoking may be a successful self-medication for various brain disorders. The article is however very pesky to get into so, for convenience, I have reposted it here.

LOL: Philosophers are famous for never completely agreeing with one-another and I disagree with this post by Keith Burgess-Jackson: "I think some people who read my blog (AnalPhilosopher) like my conservatism. These people tend to be meat-eaters, and many of them don't like being reminded that meat-eating is wrong." I think Keith got a bit carried away there. Meat eating is certainly wrong according to the way he defines wrongness but there are many conceptions of wrongness. Mine is here and Protestant Christians of course find their source of right and wrong in the Bible -- and meat eating is accepted in the Bible, not forbidden. So for Christians, meat-eating is NOT wrong. For the record, I personally have bacon and egg breakfasts quite often and eat enough sausages to make me a good German. But my favourite sausage is Merguez -- of North African origin. If you have never had good Merguez, you haven't lived!

"Vanity of vanities. All is vanity" (Ecclesiastes 1:2). In my well-spent youth, I was on one occasion interviewed by a women's magazine about my lifestyle. Although I find it a bit embarrassing now, I have decided to put the interview on the net. See here. Note that the report is not totally accurate. I was NOT, for instance, divorced at the time. It is broadly representative of how I felt 30 years ago, however, so I am putting it on the net for the record's sake

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth

"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.

Comments? Email me or here. 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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12 July, 2004

SOME OLDIES BUT GOLDIES

A great Orwell essay. He says Leftists are a type of nationalist: "By "patriotism" I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.... Nationalism, in the extended sense in which I am using the word, includes such movments and tendencies as Communism, political Catholicism, Zionism, Antisemitism, Trotskyism and Pacifism. It does not necessarily mean loyalty to a government or a country, still less to one's own country, and it is not even strictly necessary that the units in which it deals should actually exist. To name a few obvious examples, Jewry, Islam, Christendom, the Proletariat and the White Race are all of them objects of passionate nationalistic feeling: but their existence can be seriously questioned, and there is no definition of any one of them that would be universally accepted". (Via the Bunyip).

There is a great column by Thomas Sowell from a few years back of which I have to say what I rarely say: "Read the whole thing". Excerpt: "Over the years, the phrase "unintended consequences" has come up with increasing frequency, as more and more wonderful-sounding ideas have led to disastrous results. By now, you might think that people with wonderful-sounding ideas would start to question what the consequences would turn out to be -- and would devote as much time to discovering those consequences as to getting their ideas accepted and turned into laws and policies. But that seldom, if ever, happens. Why doesn't it? Because a lot depends on what it is you are trying to accomplish. If your purpose is to achieve the heady feeling of being one of the moral elite, then that can be accomplished without the long and tedious work of following up on results."

A great quote from a distinguished conservative: "Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm -- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves." -- T.S. Eliot, in his play "The cocktail party" (1950).

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ELSEWHERE

LOL: I mentioned yesterday a Leftist/feminist blogger who changed her tune when she had a baby. She ended one of her posts on the subject with "I'd rather be sharing this with someone I love than doing it alone". I therefore commented about her: "She even wishes she was married!" -- which seemed a fair comment on what she said. Marriage can of course be de facto as well as de jure and I drew no inferences about which she preferred. She now refers to my comment as a "baldfaced lie". So judge for yourself who the liar is. She may have moderated her feminism but she is obviously still a Leftist.

Leftists, of course, call anything "lies". They are such liars themselves, they need to accuse others of it to cover up for themselves. The pathetic attempt to pin the "lie" accusation on President Bush seems to have depended mainly on his report of what the British government had been told about uranium purchases from Niger. That the information the British spooks obtained was contradicted by other sources got a lot of press a while back. Now, it seems, the British spooks got it right. No apologies for calling Bush a liar on such flimsy grounds can be expected of course. A loud silence from the former accusers in the Left-leaning American mainstream media is very much in evidence. I guess that's the Leftist version of journalistic ethics. (Don't laugh! There IS supposed to be such a thing as journalistic ethics!).

A Leftist not taking his pills: "Al Qaeda is not linked to Saddam but is in fact a creation of the CIA" (Via William Webb)

A good comment on the "International Court" ruling against Israel: "How ironic that the judge who read the ruling declaring Israel's security barrier illegal comes from China - the country that ate Tibet whole and has a human rights record somewhere South of Attila".

Subhuman Muslims: "Suspected Muslim guerillas sliced off the nose, ears and tongue of a 14-year-old girl in Indian Kashmir today, believing her to be an informer for the Indian army, police said."

Does abortion undermine the Democrat voter base? Tabarrok is perfectly correct that you cannot calculate the effect easily but given that Democrats favour abortion a lot more than Republicans do, it would be most surprising if Republicans used it as much as Democrats do. And that should give SOME tendency for Republicans to have more children. And children do tend to follow their parents' politics -- not uniformly of course, but largely so. Conservatism is in fact strongly hereditary. So, overall, easy abortion availability should in the long run increase the proportion of conservatives in the population.

A good libertarian comment: "The problem with personal injury lawsuits is not the core principle, which a true libertarian would be hard-pressed to deny. Rather, liability for injuries has been extended beyond any reasonable definition of causation. People who stupidly bring on harm to themselves have nevertheless been allowed to blame others with deep pockets. The tort system has been corrupted by the infusion of a welfarist, redistributionist, soak-the-rich ethic".

I almost never check such things but in an idle moment last night I looked at where this blog ranks in the NZ Bear ecosystem and was rather pleased to see that I have made it into the fourth highest category ("large mammal"). Being 305th out of 3 million blogs seems pretty good to me. I don't understand this search, though. It says there are nearly 10,000 links to this blog on the internet. I suspect a bug somewhere. The NZ Bear system has a big bug too: It counts self references. Even the erratic Technorati.com does not do that.

Maybe I shouldn't laugh but one of the other blogs that links to this one is a Japanese blog called Shitfit! Truth is stranger than fiction.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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

Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth

"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.

Comments? Email me or here. 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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11 July, 2004

SICK EDUCATION

Soviet history lives! In Australia. Australian academic historians want to make it an offence to "publicly question the integrity or competence of their colleagues". No free-speech, no academic freedom, no open debate -- just a licence for Leftists to lie. No wonder they mourn the downfall of the Soviet Union. You can see what they liked about it.

Bureaucracy versus education: "When it takes an average of six years to build a new public school in California, what industrialist David L. Brennan did eight years ago in Cleveland borders on the miraculous in the slow-moving world of public education. When Brennan discovered, two weeks before school started, that some 360 initial voucher applicants could not find places in the city's private schools, he created two new HOPE Academies in just 15 days."

Teachers versus education: "Some say high-stakes testing is to blame for cheating in the classroom. But in this case, it's not the students getting caught -- it's the teachers. A recent study shows as many as 200 teachers in California were caught cheating to help their students perform better on rigorous new standardized tests, which are part of the President Bush's 'No Child Left Behind' education plan, which calls for greater accountability among teachers. Since the law was implemented, more teachers have been caught helping students cheat in about a dozen states around the country."

From a reader: "It occurred to me that perhaps there is more than meets the eye in Leftist support for more and more access to higher education. At the risk of sounding 'conspiratorial', do you suppose that they so strongly support easy, cheap, and open access to higher education so that they, since they so thoroughly control higher education, will have the opportunity to indoctrinate more and more people to their way of thinking?"

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KUDOS

Keith Burgess Jackson has a recent post on misuse of the word "kudos". I posted on that too -- on Oct 3, 2003. I said: ""kudos" is only a borrowing in English. It is the ancient Greek word for "fame". Interesting factoid: According to my Abbott-Smith Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament, "kudos" does not occur in the Greek New Testament. Early Christians obviously did not think much of the Greek obsession with fame and renown."

And that is no coincidence. Christ saw this life primarily as a preparation for the afterlife -- the "kingdom of heaven", as he so often put it (e.g. Matthew 5:20). Greeks however mostly saw this life as all there was and so their purpose was to gain immortality in the form of "kudos" -- having people notice and remember them admiringly. That is one reason why I sometimes refer to leftists as pursuing kudos -- because being looked up to and cheered is what they hunger for and aim for above all. Strictly speaking, however, it is an insult to the Greeks to describe what Leftists seek as "kudos". The Greeks wanted lasting renown -- not the eternal present that Leftists like John Kerry live in. If something will get him a cheer today Kerry will say it -- then say more or less the opposite tomorrow to a different audience in order to get a cheer from them too. Leftists are in general amoral and have only temporary postures that they adopt for convenience. There is no lasting renown in that. But for irreligious people -- which Leftists usually are -- I suppose that even a bastardized form of kudos makes some sense as your goal in life. I see other goals as healthier, however -- such as raising a happy family.

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ELSEWHERE

The religion of peace again: "A young woman and her baby have been attacked in a suburban train near Paris by unidentified men who drew swastikas on the mother's stomach. Police today said it was an anti-Semitic assault. The six attackers who were armed with knives clipped the 23-year-old woman's hair, and cut her tee-shirt and trousers before drawing three swastikas on her body. The men of North African origin also overturned the pram holding her baby, aged 13 months."

Amusing: A fiercely feminist and Leftist blogger has just had an unplanned baby at age 33 and suddenly discovers that she loves being a stay-at-home mother and regrets she wasted so many years doing the usual feminist man-aping stuff! She even wishes she was married! What a come-down for a feminist. Leftism always is good in theory only. She'll even end up voting conservative one day. (Via Oz Conservative).

Lies about jobs: "Sen. John Kerry and his fellow Democrats seem to believe that by attacking President Bush for 'inadequate' job creation the Republicans will be too inept to remind the American people that it was the Clinton economic policies that gave us the recession and the job losses. With polls showing Kerry ahead on economic issues, the Democrats chutzpah is succeeding. Kerry and his allies say they will bring back the 'Clintonomics' that gave us 'great prosperity.' It requires no great skill to take over a growing economy with a falling unemployment and leave it in a recession, which is precisely what Bill Clinton did. Democratic propagandists have also led many Americans to believe Clinton's economic performance was vastly superior to Ronald Reagan's, but the real facts show quite the reverse."

There is a BIG posting up at Gene Expression about the latest scientific findings on IQ. Like all other research on the topic, it shows IQ to differ greatly between individuals, to be highly heritable and to be strongly related to measures of brain function. But they have now got more precise about the brain functions involved and seem to be zeroing in on the specific genes behind it. So it's pretty technical.

Good to see: Britain's Radio 4 actually had a serious discussion of withdrawal from the European Union!

Dick McDonald has just got himself into a lot of hot water for saying that all the illegal immigrants around the place in Califonia are not such a bad thing. The discussion he has up about it all does expose the dilemmas involved.

Wicked Thoughts has a rare story of a doctor getting his own back against a lawyer.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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

Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth

"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.

Comments? Email me or here. 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.

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



10 July, 2004

SOME ECONOMICS

Should be more of it: "Meet Tennessee's shadow governor. As a state senator, Marsha Blackburn made it politically impossible to enact a state income tax by sounding the alarm at the state Capitol. Phil Bredesen then had to run against a state income tax for his first term just to get elected. Blackburn was the first to propose how to cut the growth in the state budget. She recommended cutting 5% across the board for each department. When Bredesen got into office, he cut all departments 9% across the board." ar American myth -- repeated with increasing frequency in this election year -- that 'The Rich' (whoever 'they' are) don't pay their fair share of taxes. A corollary to this is the assertion that The Rich received the biggest benefit of the so-called 'Bush' tax cuts, the political catch-phrase for the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003. Neither position is supported by hard data taken from income tax returns. In fact, in both cases, the opposite is true. In other words: The Rich not only pay a disproportionate share of taxes, this share has been increasing since 1990."

Austria and Iceland are undermining the high tax rates of the EU -- showing by example how beneficial tax cuts are.

Wal-Mart serves humanity: "The New York Times recently ran an interesting article on everyone's favorite global retailing behemoth, Wal-Mart.... two stunning examples of economic illiteracy, one misrepresentation of a very heroic deed, and a lovely comparison of Sam Walton to Chairman Mao."

Free trade under fire: "According to Douglas Irwin, free trade is under fire because some groups believe that they do not participate in the accumulation of wealth that trade brings. Others oppose it because they believe that trade agreements subvert national sovereignty and threaten to harm workers and the environment. Irwin, professor of economics at Dartmouth and long-time advocate of free trade, intends with this book to show the benefits of free trade and evaluate the arguments against it."

Cafe Hayek asks: "Why not return to the open-borders regime that prevailed in the United States from its independence until the end of the 19th century? I here put aside concerns with national security and deal exclusively with an economic objection to increased immigration.... The American economy is today far more able than in the past economically to "absorb immigrants.""

Irving Kristol thinks Reagan was a neocon: "A tax policy that energizes the economy, government regulations that are not too destructive, and moderate restraints on spending would have the effect of shrinking the bloated welfare state relative to the size of the economy. The welfare state itself could not be wished away. By now Reaganomics has become the semiofficial philosophy of the Republican party. As a consequence, this party is now seen as having a plausible and legitimate claim to be the governing party... In sum, Ronald Reagan made the Republican party proactive in economic policy as in foreign policy". I think Kristol fails to distinguish between what Reagan wanted and what he could get through Congress.

A U.S. productivity triumph: "In the first 13 quarters of the Bush Administration, the basic determinant of our standard of living increased by almost as much as during the entire 32 quarters of the Clinton Administration... But it would spoil the narrative of the Bush Administration as bumbling and Hoover-esque to point out that the most fundamental measure of our economic strength is shooting through the roof."

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ELSEWHERE

Hilarious! I have somehow got myself onto the mailing list of the Iranian Communist Party! (headquartered in London, of course). Some of their stuff on Islamic madness is rather good so I have just put an interview with their founder up here. They are one Leftist group who have no illusions about appeasing or negotiating with the mullahs. The mullahs have killed too many of them. American Leftists who love both Communists and the Islamists would be put into a BIG dilemma if they heard what real Communists say about the Islamists!

Leftist backpedalling? "The war in Iraq has always been a war against fascism, a liberation war for democratic freedom -- even a left-wing war. Or so I have always thought. All over the world there are people who consider themselves liberals or left-wingers who think the same and who have backed the war in one fashion or another, even while criticizing President Bush's way of conducting it."

Evan Sayet has a rather impassioned account of why he has just changed from Democrat to Republican. He makes the point that many have noticed: The Democrats are now not remotely the party of J.F. Kennedy and his predecessors. Ever since LBJ it has been careering ever further to the Left. Would you believe that it was a Democrat President who said this? ""The lessons of paternalism ought to be unlearned and the better lesson taught that while the people should patriotically and cheerfully support their Government, its functions do not include the support of the people."

Trade sanction stupidity. The Left love sanctions but: "Using trade as a weapon of foreign policy has harmed America's economic interests in the world without advancing national security. The proliferation of trade sanctions in the 1990s has been accompanied by their declining effectiveness. From Cuba to Iran to Burma, sanctions have failed to achieve the goal of changing the behavior or the nature of target regimes. Sanctions have managed only to deprive American companies of investment opportunities and market share and to punish domestic consumers, while hurting the poor and most vulnerable in the target countries." Maybe the failure of the long embargo against Cuba to topple Castro should have told the Clinton administration that continuing the sanctions against Saddam's Iraq for almost a decade would not topple him either.

Oz Conservative has an interesting link to an article which questions the old feminist gospel that men should be more like women "for their own good". Women were supposed to be mentally healthier. I showed what a lot of nonsense that was years ago in one of the academic journals. A much-overlooked set of findings, needless to say.

Sounds hopeful: "The battle lines for the future of [U.K.] state education are now clear. Under Labour, whose blueprint is published today, there will be a revolution with a whole swath of state-financed schools throughout the country being handed over to private sponsors to run. By the end of the decade, the bankers, the churches, the millionaire philanthropists and leaders of the country's private schools will be in charge, in the name of more choice for parents. The Government is planning a big expansion in its city academies programme -- creating up to 200 by the end of the decade -- as one of a series of radical measures aimed at raising school standards."

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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

Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth

"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.

Comments? Email me or here. 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.

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



9 July, 2004

FROM BROOKES NEWS

China's militarists humiliated by President Bush's resolve In response to Beijing's mounting threats against Taiwan President Bush ordered seven Carrier Strike Groups into the region
The Party of Lincoln vs the Democrats' hate machine What is truly depressing about the Democrats is not their relentless partisanship; after all, partisanship is integral to politics. No, it is their simmering hatred and total absence of common decency
Helen Caldicott and the Soviet connection Helen Caldicott refuses to fade away. Last Thursday 'SBS' broadcast a documentary about this old Sovietphile called Helen's War: Portrait of a Dissident
Why oil prices won't spark massive inflation Some people are being panicked by investment advisers warning them that current oil prices are a harbinger of massive inflation. They're wrong
Is Mark Latham fit to be Prime Minister? Mark Latham and his press handlers are pretty busy at the moment trying to put a favourable spin the story that Latham sucker-punched at a much older man
Monica Lewinsky slimed by Bill Clinton - with a little help from the media Monica Lewinsky's shock at discovering that Bill Clinton thinks she is "disgusting" seems to have had a sobering though somewhat belated effect on her

Details here

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ELSEWHERE

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with a big range of reading

The junk-science candidate: "As newly announced vice-presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards' record is scrutinized, political critics are re-examining claims the former trial lawyer amassed much of the personal fortune that financed his political career by winning legal cases based on "junk science." CNSNews.com first reported in January how Edwards won record jury verdicts and settlements in cases alleging that the botched treatment of women in labor and their deliveries caused infants to develop the brain disorder cerebral palsy. But the cause of cerebral palsy long has been debated, and two new studies in 2003 further undermined the scientific premise of Edwards' cases... "There are some cases where the brain damage did occur at the time of delivery. But it's really unusual. It's really quite unusual," Dr. Murray Goldstein, a neurologist and the medical director of the United Cerebral Palsy Research and Educational Foundation, told the news agency.... From judgments or settlements related to medical malpractice, Edwards built a personal fortune estimated at between $12.8 and $60 million."

Islamic lies . "Following the recent beheadings of Americans and other foreigners in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, the U.S. press turned to various experts to identify a precedent in the Quran or Islamic history for this kind of gory murder. "Beheadings are not mentioned in the Koran at all," Imam Muhammad Adam El-Sheikh, co-founder and chief cleric at the Dar Al Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Va., told USA Today... Yet it says in the Koran: "God revealed His will to the angels, saying: "I shall be with you. Give courage to the believers. I shall cast terror into the hearts of the infidels. Strike off their heads, strike off the very tips of their fingers." (Sura 8, Verse 12) and "When you meet the unbelievers in the battlefield strike off their heads." (Sura 47, Verse 4)"

Sudan ironies: Newsday's James Pinkerton reports growing pressure for the US to "do something" about the ongoing massacre of black Sudanese Muslims by Arab Sudanese Muslims What is interesting is that one of the voices leading the pro-intervention chorus is Donald Payne, Democrat, "liberal" and leader of the black caucus in Congress. Payne voted against intervention in Iraq and Kosovo. But isn't his position similar to that of Jewish Americans who advocate pro-Israel intervention in the Middle East? Will it be subject to equal criticism from the Left? Will Payne be seen as part of a black "cabal"? I wonder when a caucus becomes a "cabal"? And where were the voices for intervention when the North Sudanese Arab Muslims were massacring South Sudanese black Christians? That civil war has been going on for 16 years now.

Who is this guy? "Throughout the Vietnam War, he traveled numerous times to France and to North and South Vietnam, meeting with Communist officials and advising them on how best they could defeat the United States. He also organized aid shipments to the Communists, called upon fellow leftists to wage war against American imperialism, and backed the Communist cause around the world." Answer: One of America's most acclaimed academic historians -- Gabriel Kolko. More here. Only academics would take him seriously, though.

Randall Parker has an interesting post on the effects of Muslim polygamy. He says it is a major cause of angry young men and tyrannical governments in Islamic societies. The rich guys get all the women and leave lots of young men angry, frustrated, full of fight and ready to do crazy things -- like become suicide bombers.

Black blogger La Shawn Barber has an acid comment on the Leftist explanation for underperforming blacks: "As for "past injustices", I'd like to hear from black, middle class American-born-and-bred college-bound 18 year-olds who've suffered from the effects of slavery or Jim Crow. Please, feel free to comment on this blog." She is commenting on the better performance of overseas blacks which I mentioned here.

What a laugh! There is a puff-piece in the L.A. Times saying how wonderful modern-day South Africa is: "South Africa has been quite successful in the first phase, the political transformation". I wonder why every single white person I met when I was there a few years ago wanted to get out of the place if they could? That South Africa now has crime rates normal for Africa and that whites are heavily discriminated against in employment and everything else might have something to do with it I guess.

I followed a link from Marc Miyake to start reading some of the columns of the "War Nerd". He really is an amazingly talented writer -- totally amoral realism told humorously! Have a look at this column about Kosovo, Yugoslavia and all that benighted part of the world. I think he clarifies lots of things even if you don't agree with all his judgements.

One of the articles I read recently when I was trying to figure out what Straussianism was all about was this informative summary by Karl Jahn. Jahn also has a very thoughtful blog -- short on graphics but big on intellectual content. He is an ex-Lefty turned American nationalist. He out-Buchanans Buchanan. He is no racist, though.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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

Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth

"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.

Comments? Email me or here. 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.

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



8 July, 2004

SOME HISTORY

There has of course been a lot of discussion in recent years about the differences between Europe -- particularly France -- and the English-speaking countries. The way France and Germany were propping up the disgusting Saddam Hussein while the USA, Britain and Australia sent troops to overthrow him certainly showed a large gap in principles between the two sides. And it has also widely been noted how dictatorial and intrusive into the lives of its citizens the EU is -- with even the amount of bend in bananas now being regulated in the EU! Readers may therefore be interested to hear that the English Channel has for centuries separated two different ideas about the role of government. Read here what distinguished legal historian A.V. Dicey said in 1889 about English principles versus European lack of them.

Coleridge a precursor of GWB: "Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) is famous as the English poet who wrote Kubla Khan and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, but today is almost forgotten as one of the greatest political thinkers of his time. He was the first conservative to advocate social and political reforms as a means of maintaining a stable and cohesive society. He warned against the dangers of unchecked industrialisation, criticised the then prevailing ideology of the unfettered free-market, and called for far-reaching reforms to give the poor a greater stake in the economy.... Coleridge's thought had a seminal influence on the social-welfare Toryism of Disraeli"

Dinesh D'Souza: "The idea that America and the West grew rich through oppression and exploitation is strongly held among many intellectuals and activists...Did the West enrich itself at the expense of minorities and the Third World through its distinctive crimes of slavery and colonialism? This thesis is hard to sustain, because there is nothing distinctively Western about slavery or colonialism. The West had its empires, but so did the Persians, the Mongols, the Chinese, and the Turks. And if colonialism is a universal institution, so is slavery. Slavery has existed in every known civilization, from China to India to Africa to pre-Columbian America. What is uniquely Western is not slavery but the movement to abolish slavery."

An interesting historical article here about the white settlement of Australia points out that its legal basis was NOT the recent doctrine of terra nullius -- as Leftists assert. If anything, it was simply: "beat the French". Excerpt: "Let historians argue about the past - it is necessary and interesting and vastly important - but keep them out of the law courts. Reconciliation is the affair of modern Australians dealing with modern conditions."

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ELSEWHERE

Dennis Prager has a good article on why many Leftist citizens of both Israel and America hate their own country. In Israel the hatred is so extreme that Israeli Leftists are actually aiding the Palestinian terrorists. I think Prager overlooks the main reason, though. Both America and Israel are powerful and Leftists want to tear down all power that they themselves do not control or identify with. With Democrat control of Congress and the Presidency, mainstream Leftists would be reasonably happy with their country because they could identify with Democrat politicians. But really virulent Leftists (of whom there are many -- particularly in academe), such as we read on "Counterpunch", cannot identify with the moderate Leftism of the Democrats so hate America regardless of the regime. The very name "Counterpunch" is revealing. It expresses a desire for violence. They are seething with hate and just want to punch people. Leftism is the politics of hate -- and I suspect that only part of it is envy driven. Many Leftists seem to be just fundamentally hostile people regardless -- hiding, of course, behind a mask of "concern". But what they all hate most is undoubtedly power in the hands of others than themselves. Conservatives, by contrast, just want to keep out of other people's power.

Abdurrahman Wahid is an amazing man. A revered Indonesian Muslim religious leader and former President of Indonesia, he is a friend of Israel! There are about 200 million Indonesian Muslims just to the North of Australia so having him around is a great comfort.

A Turkish Muslim who supports America's Middle-East interventions because of his own experiences there, brands Michael Moore a "hatriot"

Our friends, the Saudis: "Saudi Arabia's intelligence agencies are so infiltrated by al-Qa'ida sympathisers that the kingdom's counter-terrorist campaign is failing and militant operations are spreading into neighbouring states, senior Arab and Western officials have warned. The main Saudi intelligence organisation responsible for combating al-Qa'ida at the Interior Ministry is riddled with agents linked to the militants, the officials say. "Their staff is 80 per cent sympathetic to al-Qa'ida," one senior Arab source said."

Wow! A sociology professor with his eyes open: "Put simply, religious terrorists live in another world. Unlike, say, the Weathermen of '60s fame, they have no political platform for change. The agenda is purely theocratic and absolute, with not a scintilla of concern for the lives of nonbelievers. In such a situation negotiation is useless, for there is nothing to negotiate about. As Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, spiritual mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombings, asserted unequivocally, "There is no truce in jihad against the enemies of Allah." ... When it come to religiously-based terror, we must reluctantly recognize that there are only two real choices here - protect ourselves and eliminate the terrorists or turn the world over to them".

Amazing: "The Iraqi Communist Party is strongly represented in the new interim government in Baghdad and is getting U.S. taxpayer support thanks to a U.S. group led by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright"

Despite the current difficulties with blogger.com, Dick McDonald has got lots of good posts up recently. This one from an Iraq veteran points out how much better GWB has done in Iraq than Democrat Presidents have done in their many wars.

Keith Burgess Jackson is a lawyer as well as a philosopher and he uses a bit of legal Latin -- res ipsa loquitur ("the thing speaks for itself") -- to exceptionally good effect here

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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

Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth

"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.

Comments? Email me or here. 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.

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



7 July, 2004

THE SHAMBLES THAT IS AMERICAN EDUCATION: EPISODE 6,314

Whatever Leftists touch, they degrade or destroy.

Florida Education: "I've been writing about the problems with public education since 1993. The business of imparting to children what I believed to be empty self-esteem became, through the years, a recurring theme in my articles, along with such issues as the dumbing down of curriculum, grade inflation and social promotion. The responses I got from teachers on the editorial page and in person were usually defensive. I was often accused of hating all things having to do with public education. Apparently, it is impossible to criticize public education without hating it. I don't hate public education. I want it to be better than it is. And so, here we are today, and educators and Democrats are using the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test as their whipping boy as if the fact that this remedy was deemed necessary comes as a total shock to them; as if there were no red flags, no warning bells, nothing whatsoever to alert them to the fact that our kids have, for a long time now, been in serious academic trouble and that the policies of government schools have, for a very long time, been the agency of this trouble".

Kansas education: "Those of us who teach college English classes are always overwhelmed by the astonishing deficits in our students' ability to get their facts straight, to think clearly and logically, and to express their ideas in language that actually makes sense and that follows the most basic rules of grammar. Even our best students write incoherent essays and make grammar and usage errors that would have failed a third grader in the 1950s... When even our brightest, most "competent" college students cannot write as well or as quickly as most third graders could in my elementary school in 1958, that means something has gone very wrong with their instruction in writing." (Via Newmark's door).

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ELSEWHERE

Another Leftist "naked" protest here Leftists will do anything to draw attention to themselves. They did the same last year. See here or here.

The wisdom of ordinary people beats the elites: "James Surowiecki is fascinated by prediction markets. In his opinion, they demonstrate that crowds are often wise. He rejects the widespread view that groups of ordinary people are usually wrong--and that we do better to ignore them and follow experts instead. Even when individuals blunder, he believes, groups can excel: "Under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them." This is so even when "most of the people within the group are not especially well-informed or rational."" Conservatives from Burke through Disraeli and Hayek to Reagan have of course always trusted the people as a whole to come up with better decisions than elites do. Burke looked to the wisdom of the people of both the past and present combined; Disraeli saw the ordinary people of England as "angels in marble" and Hayek saw the information available to the population as a whole as infinitely superior to any other information source. And trust in the wisdom and goodness of the ordinary people as a whole is something Reagan was famous for. He constantly said that the great achievements of his era were not his but those of the American people as a whole. And libertarians have of course always looked to the aggregation of individual decisions in markets as the premier fount of wisdom.

The House of Lords once again proves its value as a guardian of traditional British liberties: "Proposals for a ban on smacking children as a disciplinary measure failed to pass the upper house of the British parliament yesterday. During a debate on amendments to the Children Bill, the House of Lords adopted by a vote of 226-91 a motion to allow "moderate" smacking that leaves no cuts, bruises or psychological harm. The proposal would also make it an offence to hit a child with an instrument, such as a belt or a cane. But the House of Lords defeated, by 250-75, a more draconian proposal that would have made it a crime in Britain to smack a youngster to any degree whatsoever."

Tom Barrett: "As I watched a defiant Saddam Hussein bluster his way through his first court appearance for war crimes in Iraq, I was struck with the fact that on at least one important point he and John Kerry are in agreement. Saddam stated that he shouldn’t be on trial, that Bush and the United States were the real war criminals".

"A generation ago, American satirist Walter Kelly amended Commodore Perry's 1813 dispatch 'We have met the enemy and he is ours' to read, 'We have met the enemy and he is us.' By the same token, one might say to the peoples of Mesopotamia: 'You have met the enemy, and he is you.' Sunni, Shi'ite and Kurd have one thing in common: they all eschew the American 'melting pot' model of democracy. They are determined to pursue their own tragic destinies instead.... I believe that there is among the Kurds, enough people who love freedom for itself and who will struggle for it obstinately until the Kurds enjoy self-rule."

Political boundaries should not be sacred: "One of the ballasts that our current political balloons carry is that of the sanctity of existing boundaries; the belief that all existing states are to be preserved in their current shape and size. This is, in numerous cases, an irrational position for which the global community and interstate peace currently pays and will in the future continue to pay, an excessive price."

Island of justice in the Middle East: "Question: Where in the Middle East did the following occur? Arab villagers file a petition to their High Court, claiming their human rights are being violated by the state. The villagers prevail. The Kingdom of Jordan, perhaps? Syria? Lebanon? Did a High Court of Justice there intervene on behalf of the Little Lebanese Guy against his Syrian overlords? ... When polled, Europeans said that this country, whose supreme court ruled against the state for violating a standard designed to 'strike a balance between security and human rights,' was the greatest threat to world peace."

The Leftists won't like this: There is now a Muslim free-market institute!

Now that the "Kyoto" global warming bandwagon seems to have ground to a halt, the Church of England has decided to give it a push. Though don't ask me what that has to do with saving souls and preparing for the afterlife -- which is what Jesus was on about. Anyway, the C of E has what seems a new twist: They want poor people to pollute MORE! All men should be equal polluters, apparently. As I pointed out some time ago, the old established churches are mostly just Leftist fronts these days -- dedicated to getting attention by stirring up mindless dissension and trouble rather than anything else. M4 Monologue has got a pretty good take on that sort of "Christian" too.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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

Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth

"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.

Comments? Email me or here. 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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6 July, 2004

HOLLYWOOD

Hollywood's betrayal of America: "How many Americans are aware that the most sophisticated tools of modern communication are being used on a daily basis in a vast program of disinformation about this country and its people that is beamed into almost every country on Earth? Every time I travel abroad I see this at work and witness its results. 'I am so grateful for this opportunity to get to know you and your family,' a Muslim Indian woman told me in 2000. 'We thought that Americans have no values, that they are materialistic, and care only about themselves. We thought there is no commitment to children and families, that everyone lives in immorality. It is so wonderful to see that these things are not true!' Where does this image of America come from? If someone had set out to create a powerful propaganda strategy to completely discredit America, they could not have come up with anything more effective than the Hollywood product shown daily to billions of people."

Hollywood ideology: "Once upon a time, there were people in Hollywood who loved America. And when America came under attack from enemies abroad, these actors, producers, screenwriters, and directors put aside their partisan differences and created movies that-unlike Michael Moore's new shlockumentary, Fahrenheit 9/11 -made all moviegoers proud to be Americans.... The movies depicted good and evil in stark terms. And there was no politically correct revisionism about who our enemies were. By contrast, even tough-guy Arnold Schwarzenegger failed to stand up to Hollywood mushes who were afraid to depict Arab terrorists in his post-Sept. 11 movie, Collateral Damage. Instead of encouraging Americans to confront the true face and nature of the Islamist threat, Schwarzenegger and his producers turned the Arab terrorists into Colombian terrorists so no one would complain about "racial profiling." Similarly, Steven Spielberg's new movie about an asylum seeker, The Terminal, indulges in weak-willed liberal escapism by demonizing Department of Homeland Security officials just trying to do their jobs.

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ELSEWHERE

The Happy Carpenter has just put up an impassioned response to the antiwar Left. It's a must-read. Worthy of Bill Whittle. Excerpt: "It was mentioned a few times at the beginning of the war and its 14 month rush-to-war that NAZI = BAATH. They are both acronyms for National Socialism.... It is no coincidence that they both involved mass murder, attempted genocide on Jews, multiple invasions of neighbors, and stubborn blind violence after nominal defeat. What seems absolutely unique to me, a very casual student of history, is the lazy acceptance of traitors in our midst. The new American Left wants us to fail. They want just enough American soldiers and Marines to die so they can whip the public into demanding another Vietnam style retreat. They make no bones about this among themselves, although they viciously insist that we patriots recognize their "protest" as the highest form of patriotism. It is not. We must not be afraid of their name-calling. Just as the insult of `bigot' and `racist' has worn thin and no longer stings like it once did, we must counter the left's lies. When they say "How dare you question my patriotism!" we must say "I question your patriotism because you are a traitor. You want America to fail. You want Americans to die. And you want this because you are a socialist who believes America is the greatest evil in the world. I denounce you. I spit on you. You are a traitor.""

Kerry betrays America ... again: "How is America supposed to win in Iraq, and how are the Iraqi people supposed to reclaim their country, when so many Washington leaders seem to be rooting for failure in Baghdad? ... Now top Democrats are talking down a war that has cost 800- plus Americans their lives -- with little regard to how their sniping might affect the war effort. You would think that Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., never heard of the word "morale," by the way he is badmouthing a war that he himself had voted to authorize. Consider that while Iraqis have resented America's military presence, even in Iraq citizens were more upbeat than Kerry about the transfer of power. A Baghdad newspaper, New Morning, wrote a story headlined, "America Keeps Its Promise," for its next edition, according to NBC news. Yet in America, Kerry, who voted for the war, looked as if he had lost a bet. ..... The issue is this: If Kerry votes for a war, he owes it to the troops to root for victory. ...Instead, he has spent months undermining the coalition in order to bolster his own career."

How bad news from Iraq gets "created". "Iraq veterans often say they are confused by American news coverage, because their experience differs so greatly from what journalists report. Soldiers and Marines point to the slow, steady progress in almost all areas of Iraqi life and wonder why they don't get much notice - or in many cases, any notice at all. Part of the explanation is Rajiv Chandrasekaran, the Baghdad bureau chief for the Washington Post.... While its national clout lags behind the New York Times, many reporters look to the Post for cues on how to approach a story. The Post interprets events, and the herd of independent minds bleat their approval and start tapping on their keyboards with their hooves. Chandrasekaran's crew generates a relentlessly negative stream of articles from Iraq - and if there are no events to report, they resort to man-on-the-street interviews and cobble together a story from that." (Via Mark Shea).

The latest threat from Iran: "Iranians are frantically increasing their efforts to drive Coalition forces out of Iraq, to wreck the Iraqi economy - and especially to inflate oil prices, which the mullahs hope will bring down the Bush presidency - and to destabilize the fragile Karzai government in Afghanistan. They, and their Syrian and Saudi allies, are doing this because the liberation of Iraq is indeed threatening the authority of the remaining terror masters in Tehran, Damascus, and Riadh. The entire region is bubbling from the heat of democratic revolution"

Further to my recent posts about homosexuality and Fascism, I have just posted here an extract from the 1938 edition of 'Inside Europe' by John Gunther which says that Hitler himself was completely asexual.

Oil can be a curse: "It is not coincidental that the only Moslem country with a working democracy is Turkey, which has no oil. Malaysia is also semi-democratic and "suffers" from not being mineral-rich. .."

The Australian Left are quiet about the Howard government's achievements in black education: "...the proportion of indigenous children staying on to year 12 has increased from 29 per cent to 39 per cent since 1996. The number of indigenous students undertaking bachelor or higher degree courses has risen by 36 per cent at the same time. This financial year, the Howard Government will spend 39 per cent more in real terms than the Keating government did in its last year. .."

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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

Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth

"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.

Comments? Email me or here. 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.

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



5 July, 2004

"GODLESS"

"Godless", over at "Gene Expression" is a good chap but he seems to have got bogged in a couple of ways. Being Godless myself, perhaps I can help: He is puzzled by the fact that a black with an IQ of 70 seems to function better socially than a similarly low IQ white. The obvious comment is that psychopaths seem to function well socially in some ways too but they soon drop out into antisocial behaviour. But even conceding the very doubtful premise that low IQ blacks function well socially (are high levels of crime and violence "good" functioning?), it need have nothing to do with faults in the IQ tests. For a white to be so low, he will generally have other deficits as well as the IQ deficit whereas low IQ is normal for blacks so will not usually go with other deficits.

In another post, Godless says that the continued approval for Communism among Leftists is the root cause of a lot of other crazy things that Leftists assert. He says that attacking their love of Communism will bring down their whole house of cards. He is totally mistaken. Their love of Communism is a symptom, not a cause. The crucial fact is that they don't CARE about Communism being brutal. They know the facts about Communism as well as anyone. How could they not know? They LIKE Communism, including its evils. Their love of Communism reflects their psychology, not any consistent philosophy. Leftists actually believe in nothing at all except themselves. They have only postures, not beliefs. They themselves repeatedly tell us that they think there is no such thing as right and wrong or truth and falsehood. So arguing with them is almost always pointless.

Take this comment on Leftist inconsistency by Dick McDonald, for instance: "I have never understood the elite's rant that Middle Easterners are not like us; democracy won't work. The same elites covet the proposition that blacks are just like whites". You just cannot argue with dishonesty as deep as that. As I pointed out years ago, for Leftists what counts as evidence is entirely a function of the conclusions desired. What Dick summarizes is just one Leftist posture in conflict with another and the only thing that makes sense of such posturing lies at the psychological level -- in a need to be contrary (at the minimum) -- not at the level of reasonable argument from the evidence.

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ELSEWHERE

Dick Mcdonald has reproduced a wonderful 4th of July speech by Ronald Reagan.

V.D. Hanson has a good article up about Iraq. One excerpt: "Iraq now is what the Left all throughout the 1960s and 1970s said America should be doing-and nothing is more saddening than to see earnest and courageous reformers of the new Iraqi government being grilled and pilloried on TV by smug American pundits and reporters.... We are in dangerous times, because beyond the normal Democratic/Republican, Left/Right natural give-and- take, there is now a growing and very crazy New, New Left. It has transcended both the old Marxism of the 1930s and the counterculture of the 1960s, and transmogrified into a strange sort of aristocratic, boutique damnation of Main Street, USA."

One of my readers writes: "Historian William Marina, an anti-Iraq war paleocon has an article that should be of interest even to conservatives who are strong supporters of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. There are two points of interest. Firstly he points out that the US war of independence was a broadly popular revolt. The Left, for reasons of their own, like to make great play of the myth that the American revolution was supported "by only 1/3rd of the population". This myth is a salve to their elitist agenda. They are forever advocating radical social change without popular grassroots support, hence their modern reliance on bureaucratic and judicial activism, not the ballot box, to engineer their reforms. The American 'revolution' was a broadly popular reassertion by the American colonists of "the rights of Englishmen". The very kind of rights the modern left is most opposed to. Secondly he points out that militia forces are by no means ineffective or obsolete. Indeed the US military is running into considerable difficulty with Iraqi militias of different persuasions. So the argument used by the gun controllers that the need for an armed populace for defence purposes has been made obsolete by modern technology is void. Of course an armed populace alone is insufficient for national defence but it still packs a sting, even against well armed opponents."

The just-retired (Leftist) Lord Mayor of my home town of Brisbane (Jim Soorley) had some sensible things to say about education in yesterday's Brisbane Sunday Mail: "In Australia, we have an education system which is considered liberal and affirming of the child. I have long been comfortable with this approach, until I saw the French film To Be and To Have. This confronting documentary turns all that liberal stuff on its head. In a small one-teacher school in rural France, children are made to listen rather than talk, self-expression is kept to a minimum, little ones are encouraged to colour between the lines - no Jackson Pollock-type explosions of art here. And yet it seems to work. The children are polite and respectful, they are fond of their teacher, they gain an understanding of philosophy through their experiences in the classroom. Apparently this is fairly typical of the French education system and effectively prepares students for life after school".

I liked a recent post on Red Line Rants. He has taken to calling all bloggers "digital Brownshirts" -- in mockery of Al Gore's recent Nazi slur against conservatives who use the internet. It reminds me of the phrase "reptiles of the Press". Australian and British journalists often describe themselves quite gleefully as that -- although the person who first uttered the phrase was no doubt trying to be insulting. I wish I knew who DID originate the phrase. Anyway, Red Line Rants has a good point about the recent rise in U.S. job creation. But why he puts grease in his hair beats me.

LOL: I got an indignant email from Tim Lambert in reponse to the surprise I expressed yesterday about his not criticizing my latest excerpt from John Lott Jr. Apparently he has already criticized that article. I might have known. Lott's work does appear to be very uneven and Lambert is his avenging angel, ever ready to pounce on any failings.

Maverick Philosopher has a fun takedown of an email he received from a Leftist nut. Conservative bloggers get illogical emails like that all the time. Leftists rarely even try to be objective.

Wicked Thoughts notes the Leftist claim that it is normal for blacks to smash their kids to death (!).

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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

Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth

"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.

Comments? Email me or here. 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.

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



4 July, 2004

Blogspot has been very erratic for the last 24 hours so goodness knows when the posts below will show up:


FASCISM AND HOMOSEXUALITY

There is an extended discussion on Evangelical Outpost about the connection between Fascism and homosexuality -- which I mentioned briefly on 2nd. One quote: "We are often blinded by the stereotype of the effeminate gay man to see that homosexuality is at its core a form of self-worship. Rejecting - whether because of genetics or behavior - the natural complementarity of the male/female sexual union, homosexual men develop an idealization of the masculine. The veneration of such masculine traits as power and domination inevitably leads to the development of fantasies in which these characteristics are able to be expressed. It shouldn't surprise us, then, to find these fantasies of sexual mastery being played out, whether in the bedroom as sadomasochistic sex or in the nation-state as fascism".

The contributors are a bit confused about what Fascism is. They point out -- rightly -- that Dutch homosexual nationalist Pim Fortuyn was generally Leftist. So they argue that he was not a Fascist. But ALL the Fascists were Leftists. Fascism is the Leftist form of nationalism, and a very extreme and aggressive form it generally is -- given the typical amorality and psychopathic tendencies of Leftists. The confusion arises because the Left has always been split between the nationalists and the internationalists and the internationalists very much have the upper hand these days. But Leftist nationalists are of course as old as the original Fascist -- Napoleon Bonaparte. For more on Napoleon see here.

Another confusion is over the fact that the Nazis also persecuted homosexuals. Yet that also is typically Leftist. Leftists are chronic haters (see here, here and here) and they are quite prone to hating one-another -- as the ice-pick in the head that Leon Trotsky got courtesy of Joseph Stalin attests. I also think that the much decried Scott Lively has a point. Like everybody else, he notes that homosexuals are divided into the effeminate and the butch types and says that the Nazi persecution of homosexuals was largely the work of butch homosexuals despising the effeminate ones. He says that it was largely the effeminate ones who went to the gas chambers.

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ELSEWHERE

"On the Fourth of July we celebrate our nation's birth, announced to the world some 228 years ago through a remarkable document: the Declaration of Independence. In that document the Founders set forth both the reasons that impelled them to independence and, more important, the moral vision that has inspired us, and millions more around the world, ever since. Individual liberty, secured by limited government: that is its essence. Too often today, however, government is not serving liberty but is at war with it, telling us that it knows best, that it will decide for us."

In response to my recent mention that there were some good guys among the French intellectuals of the past, one of my readers has pointed out something said by A.V. Dicey, the great English legal historian, in The Law Of The Constitution, Third Edition of 1889: "The most celebrated literary works of France were published abroad. Montesquieu's L'Esprit des Lois appeared at Geneva. Voltaire's Henriade was printed in England; the most remarkable of his and of Rousseau's writings were published in London, in Geneva, or in Amsterdam. In 1775 a work entitled Philosophie de la Nature was destroyed by the order of the Parliament of Paris, the author was decreed guilty of treason against God and man, and would have been burnt if he could have been arrested. In 1781, eight years before the meeting of the States General, Raynal was pronounced by the Parliament guilty of blasphemy on account of his Histoire des Indes" (p. 239). So they still needed the English and other Protestants to publish their works. Both before and after their revolution, the French have been great believers in political censorship. If you doubt it, read Dicey.

Socialized medicine: "NSW hospitals are taking critically ill babies despite being overloaded, says a director at a leading Sydney hospital. The Royal Hospital for Women in Randwick has been on code red nearly every day over the past fortnight but the director of newborn care, Kei Lui, said he rarely turned away sick babies".

Wow! The Boston Globe has finally got around to noting the huges rise in the number of antisemitic attacks in Britain and Europe in recent years! But Arabs don't get a mention until the last sentence!

The wisdom of Ralph Nader: ""What has been happening over the years is a predictable routine of foreign visitation from the head of the Israeli government," Nader said. "The Israeli puppeteer travels to Washington. The Israeli puppeteer meets with the puppet in the White House, and then moves down Pennsylvania Avenue, and meets with the puppets in Congress. And then takes back billions of taxpayer dollars. It is time for the Washington puppet show to be replaced by the Washington peace show." So St. Ralph is a good old conspiracy theorist after all. It does not say much for his intellect to see that as the level of his understanding.

Check out these test questions on the New York State school examinations for global history, U.S. history & government, for the years 2000-04. The exams should really be referred to as a test in Leftist distortions of history.

I put up six posts on gun control yesterday and the ever-vigilant Tim Lambert has savaged one of them. I thought he might. He rightly points out that comparisons of crime-rates between countries are almost meaningless because of different reporting standards and categories etc. I myself think that only murder-rates have a reasonable chance of being comparable across jurisdictions. And even then overall rates are pretty meaningless unless we separate out comparable demographic categories. The obvious example of that, of course is the black/white difference in American crime-rates. I was rather staggered that Lambert ignored my quote of something by John Lott Jr., however. Of the first 500 posts on his blog, 399 were about Lott. But Lambert does respect the data. In his post of 18th June, he concluded that Australia' recent big spasm of gun control was a waste of time.

One of my readers has very kindly converted my article on Hitler to a nicely set-out PDF file. I would be happy to email a copy to those who like pdf files. I suppose I could put it on the net but it would be very slow to download compared to the html equivalent that is already up.

Chris Brand has just done some interesting postings here -- including a report about another one of those terrible British cases of false child-abuse accusations. If blogspot is still not showing recent posts when you read this, see at the bottom of Chris's original page here.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

Some very good news on "Greenie Watch" today.

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

Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth

"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.

Comments? Email me or here. 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.

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



3 July, 2004

THOSE WICKED GUNS AGAIN

"The gun-control movement's stock has tanked. Violent crime overall has continued to drop, leaving partisans to fret over the much smaller problem of accidental gun injuries. Most of the holdout states have now passed laws allowing citizens to carry personal-protection firearms -- and civilization as we know it has not ended. The 1994 Clinton ban on semi-automatic rifles is set to expire in September, and even some of its biggest supporters now agree that the law failed to cut crime. Still, gun-control foot soldiers in organized medicine churn out articles for relatively obscure scientific journals. Their message is increasingly devoid of any useful findings; it is mostly an attempt to paint gun owners as sociopaths or Neanderthals."

Crime and gun-control in Australia: "As with Britain, Australia invoked massive gun control following a mass murder, where a mentally ill man used firearms to commit the crime.... As with the UK study, it is important to establish a pre-ban baseline and then compare it to similar research after the ban to determine crime trends.... Here are some key findings about Australian crime trends for the period of 1995 (pre-ban) to 2001 (post-ban): The rate of assault has increased steadily from 563 victims per 100,000 people in 1995 to 779 per 100,000 people in 2001. In 2001 the rate for robbery peaked at 136 per 100,000 people- the highest recorded since 1995. The rate of sexual assault was 86 per 100,000 people, which is higher than any previous year. Here is the comparison in violent crime trends between Australia and the United States for the period of 1995 to 2001... Homicide: AUS down 11%; US down 32%.

Rah for the Pink Pistols! "Initially three, then later, four members of the Central Ohio Pink Pistols, a group promoting the safe handling of firearms in the GLBT community, were threatened by the Executive Director of Stonewall Columbus, who wielded a 2-foot club, and up to 30 volunteer security personnel at the Stonewall Columbus Pride Event on Saturday, June 26. The Pink Pistols were repeatedly ordered to surrender their legally-owned and carried firearms by a steadily-growing army of guards. Knowing the law was on their side, the Pink Pistols refused to surrender their property or knuckle under to illegal threats of violence, search, and seizure by Stonewall Columbus personnel. Police were summoned at Pink Pistols request. No firearms were surrendered or confiscated, and no arrests were made, as no laws were broken."

Indian enterprise: "With a view to provide a cheap and country-made weapon to the common people of the country for their self-defence, he had manufactured the weapon. This fact was revealed after interrogating Mahesh Sav, the person who had sent a pistol and a cartridge to President APJ Abdul Kalam last week in a parcel. Sav was brought to the Capital by a police team. He is likely to be produced before a court. The police said that during the interrogation, it was revealed that Sav has no criminal background. He is a small-time shopkeeper in Mojahidpur village near Patna and the idea to make a pistol struck him all of a sudden. He said he has been working on it for many years. He wanted to make an indigenous, cheap weapon for self-defence of the common people. A senior police official said that he got this idea a few years ago when he saw an advertisement of a country-made pistol in a newspaper."

10th anniversary of concealed weapons in Arizona: "Major civil-rights legislation reaches its tenth anniversary one month from today, and prospects for a vigorous future seem strong, according to industry experts. 'None of the hoplophobic (weapon-fearing) horror stories released ten years ago turned out to be true,' said Alan Korwin, author of The Arizona Gun Owner's Guide. 'Widespread reports about impending shootouts in traffic or in restaurants can now be seen, in 20/20 hindsight, as virtually delusional ...'"

"The gun-control movement is in trouble internationally. From Britain to Australia to Canada, promises of lower crime rates from gun control have turned into historic increases in crime. While the normal knee-jerk solutions are to press for even more controls, once guns are banned the explanation that the laws failed simply because they didn't go far enough becomes almost humorous. All these experiments were adopted under what gun-control advocates would argue were ideal conditions. All three countries adopted laws that applied to the entire country. Australia and Britain are surrounded by water, and thus do not have the easy smuggling problem that Canada claims to exist with regard to the U.S."

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ELSEWHERE

Now wait for the backtrack: "Sen. John Kerry pledged Tuesday in Phoenix that within 100 days of becoming president he would ask Congress for immigration reforms that would put undocumented immigrants on a path toward U.S. citizenship and establish a guest-worker program for temporary labor."

A Leftist comment on St. Ralph: "While Nader continues to campaign against corporate abuse, his own record, according to many of those who have worked closely with him, is characterized by arrogance, underhanded attacks on friends and associates, secrecy, paranoia and mean-spiritedness -- even at the expense of his own causes. If he were a corporate CEO, subject to the laws governing publicly held and federally regulated firms, there can be little doubt he would have been removed long ago by his company's board of directors."

Moore illogic: "Moore totally avoids the question of Israel. ... Here are some questions for Moore: If Bush is so 'in the pocket' of Saudi Arabia, why is he Ariel Sharon's strongest backer? Why, when he had Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah down at the Texas ranch a few years ago, did he flip off the Saudi's peace plan? And most important, why did he invade Iraq -- since Saudi Arabia was strongly opposed to the U.S. invasion of Iraq?"

Some French good guys: "Nowhere does one find such clear and lucid expositions and defenses of human liberty as those found among the French classical liberals of the nineteenth century, a group that included Jean-Baptiste Say, Frederic Bastiat, Charles Dunoyer, Charles Comte, Gustave de Molinari, Paul Leroy Beaulieu, Emile Faguet, and Yves Guyot, to name a few. Benjamin Constant (1767-1830) was one of the brightest stars in this constellation of thinkers."

"Reports circulated last week that the Bush administration will soon be unveiling a major mental health initiative that will recommend screening every citizen for mental illness. This latest manifestation of the nanny state is called, in Orwellian fashion, the New Freedom Initiative (of course).... While the Framers envisioned a limited federal government confined to enumerated powers, we instead have a bloated federal government obsessed with the minute personal details of its citizens' lives"

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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

Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth

"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.

Comments? Email me or here. 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.

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



2 July, 2004

LEFTISTS LIE WHEN THEY SAY "BUSH LIED"

The likelihood is that most people have never heard nor seen the following quotes in the media, but the irony is that they are from a press conference. Below is an excerpt from a verbatim transcript of remarks by the President and British Prime Minister Tony Blair at a White House press conference on January 31, 2003 4:12 P.M. EST.

"THE PRIME MINISTER: Adam.

[Adam Boulton, Sky News (London):] Q One question for you both. Do you believe that there is a link between Saddam Hussein, a direct link, and the men who attacked on September the 11th?

THE PRESIDENT: I can't make that claim.

THE PRIME MINISTER: That answers your question. The one thing I would say, however, is I've absolutely no doubt at all that unless we deal with both of these threats, they will come together in a deadly form. Because, you know, what do we know after September the 11th? We know that these terrorists networks would use any means they can to cause maximum death and destruction. And we know also that they will do whatever they can to acquire the most deadly weaponry they can. And that's why it's important to deal with these issues together."

Goebbels lives! "The media and the Democrats have been using one Big Lie after another to attack Bush. Another example: the Times' White House reporter wrote that Bush claimed the threat from Iraq was imminent. But Bush actually said was the threat wasn't imminent, and then he proceeded to argue that we should act anyway"

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

ELSEWHERE

Fascinating study: Australian Leftist politicians are way to the Left of those who vote for them but conservative politicians are about the same as those who vote for them: "While 89 per cent of Coalition candidates wanted lower taxes and 77 per cent of their supporters agreed, only 11 per cent of Labor candidates wanted tax cuts, compared with 55 per cent of their voters." The Left are the least democratic, in other words. No big surprise there!

Surprising to see a Leftist admit this: "The twisted truth is that gay men have been at the heart of every major fascist movement that ever was - including the gay-gassing, homo-cidal Third Reich. With the exception of Jean-Marie Le Pen, all the most high-profile fascists in Europe in the past thirty years have been gay". I have myself pointed that out. In fact, even in the Australian neo-Nazis that I studied over 30 years ago, there was a distinct homosexual element. And even Mussolini (who was himself a dedicated Italian family man) referred to Hitler as a "pederast" in one of his speeches.

Dave Huber has a fun account of the twists and turns by a far-Left professor as he endeavours to deal with the issue of Leftist bias in the academy. The one thing that shines through his whole performance is his elitist contempt for the students. There is a fun bit at the end where a smart conservative student used post-modernism against him. Since Leftist professors are such great preachers of their beliefs, you would think that they would have to be brain-dead to say that there is no such thing as right and wrong but they do!

Prophecy: The Left are going to agree with what Saddam says at his trial. Such as this: ``This is all a theater by Bush, the criminal.''

The "moral" United Nations: "The Left's dogmatic insistence that the answer to all of America's foreign policy questions lie within the hallowed halls of the United Nations continues to bewilder the clear-thinking. The persistent belief that the UN is somehow the world's 'moral compass' is due more to hopes and dreams than fact and reason. The UN's record of incompetence and corruption is truly mind-boggling, and it seems to grow every day."

An insider's view of the U.N.: "A new book by three experienced United Nations staffers provides an unusual and candid look at the incompetence and corruption that has plagued the organization?s peacekeeping efforts over the last twelve years. ... The powerfully written book chiefly describes their individual journeys from their first days with the U.N. to the present."

Buchanan: "Perusing the Washington Post on Sunday, two stories leapt out that suggest that America may have passed that point beyond which the growth of government can never again be reined in. The balance of forces in this city has turned against fiscal restraint, and deficits ad infinitum may be our future, until we go the way of the great commercial republics of the past: Holland, Spain and Great Britain."

William F. Buckley, Jr. goes libertarian on marijuana: "Conservatives pride themselves on resisting change, which is as it should be. But intelligent deference to tradition and stability can evolve into intellectual sloth and moral fanaticism, as when conservatives simply decline to look up from dogma because the effort to raise their heads and reconsider is too great. ... And although there is a perfectly respectable case against using marijuana, the penalties imposed on those who reject that case, or who give way to weakness of resolution, are very difficult to defend."

You cannot force respect: "As a 23-year U.S. Navy serviceman, Vietnam War veteran, former official in the Reagan Defense Department, and lifelong Republican, I revere the flag and that 'for which it stands.' I still get a lump in my throat when I see the flag raised or lowered. Nonetheless, I unalterably oppose the constitutional amendment prohibiting its desecration that is scheduled to be sent to the Senate floor soon. During my years of military and government service during the Cold War, I believed I was working to uphold democracy against totalitarianism. I did not believe then, nor do I believe now, that I was defending lines on a map; rather, I was defending a way of life. If this amendment becomes part of the Constitution, this way of life will be diminished. America will be less free and more like the former Soviet Union, Iraq under Saddam Hussein, or Afghanistan under the Taliban."

One of my non-religious readers, however, makes a case in defence of flag laws, loyalty oaths and public Christian observances. See here.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth

"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.

Comments? Email me or here. 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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1 July, 2004

FROM BROOKES NEWS

Maureen Dowd slimes President Bush over the liberation of Iraq Dowd's obvious shortage of brain cells has been made painfully evident by her latest attack on President Bush
Sen. Tom Harkin tries to censor the Rush Limbaugh Radio Show Rush Limbaugh was certainly taken aback when he learnt that Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) was using his position as a senator to try and silence him
Does constant money supply lead to economic stability? According to Nobel laureate in economics Milton Friedman and his followers the volatility in the rate of the money supply is the major source of boom-bust cycles. They are wrong
American economy and The Washington Times: wage fallacies and profits The Washington Times recently publish several egregious economic fallacies, among them was the purchasing power theory of wages
Anti-Bush ad overstates case against Halliburton Moveon.org's accusations that Bush gave Halliburton no-bid contracts "on a silver platter" and that the company was "caught" overcharging by tens of millions of dollars are baseless

Details here

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FROM THINK ISRAEL:

"'ARAB' MEANS NEVER HAVING TO SAY YOU'RE SORRY" by Nonie Darwish
"THE PSYCHOANALYTIC ROOTS OF ISLAMIC TERRORISM" by Phyllis Chesler
"WOMEN'S NON-EXISTENCE IN THE ARAB WORLD" by Ariell Choy
"UNDERSTANDING THE UNIQUE BARBARISM OF PALESTINIAN TERRORISM" by Louis Rene Beres
"A CAMPAIGN OF DENIAL TO DISINHERIT THE JEWS" by Nadav Shragai
"WHY THEY HATE US" by Robert Spencer
"ISLAM VERSUS JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY: SOME OBSERVATIONS" by Ariel Natan Pasko

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ELSEWHERE

David Boxenhorn thinks that Europeans are more submissive to State power because they were for centuries tenant farmers whilst Americans were originally independent farmers. There could be something in that. David's view that Leftists advocate what they do because they do not foresee the ill effects of their policies suggests to me that he has been conned, however. Conservatives point out all the follies way in advance but the Left just will not listen. They don't WANT to know about the consequences of their actions. They just want to feel good by sounding big and kind at the time. At best they are irresponsible. At worst, frauds.

New book out: "Michael Moore Is A Big Fat Stupid White Man features expanded, in-depth analysis of Bowling for Columbine, Stupid White Men, and more, but it is also a compilation and extension of more than 15 years worth of research, analysis, and proof that exposes the real truth about Michael Moore"

"I've got another reason why Kerry doesn't have a prayer in November. My reason is neither infallible nor earthshaking, and it's based on one of those "iron laws of history" that have a bad habit of melting away once you notice them. But it has considerable support when one looks at the history of US presidential elections. Call it the Alamo Principle: When troops are in the field, in sufficient enough numbers for the nation to consider itself "at war," the candidate who looks more convincingly hawkish will always win."

A British Muslim says that the British government's "tolerance" of Islam leads to hardship for the children of British Muslims. She says the British government should take the Mullahs on for the sake of the children.

Kerry vs. Kerry : "Presidential candidate John Kerry is his own worst enemy. On the one hand he has pledged to increase jobs by 10 million in four years and reduce the offshoring of jobs. On the other, he proposes a minimum wage increase that will lower employment and encourage shipping jobs overseas. On June 18 Mr. Kerry proposed a 36 percent increase in the federal minimum wage, from the present $5.15 an hour to $7 an hour by 2007.... What he hasn't said is who would lose jobs or not get hired because of a higher minimum wage."

Sowell on 'outsourcing': "When the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect a decade ago, there were dire predictions of "a giant sucking sound" as American jobs were drawn away, to Mexico especially. In reality, the number of jobs in the United States increased by millions after NAFTA went into effect and the unemployment rate fell to low levels not seen in years. Behind the radically wrong predictions was a simple confusion between wage rates and labor costs. Wage rates per unit of time are not the same as labor costs per unit of output. When workers are paid twice as much per hour and produce three times as much per hour, the labor costs per unit of output are lower. That is why high-wage countries have been exporting to low-wage countries for centuries".

People are sometimes surprised that Mahatma Gandhi is a great hero of mine. But why would not a libertarian hail the man who liberated India? And he did it peacefully! He was not perfect of course and his "back-to-the-village" economics would be hilarious if they had not misled so many. It had escaped my attention that would have opposed things like affirmative action, though. Wendy McElroy notes: "Gandhi once said that the means are the ends in process. It is not possible to achieve equality and tolerance by instituting policies of preference and exclusion. The result will only be more preference and more exclusion.

In response to my post yesterday about Michael Moore, Marc Miyake emailed me the good comment that Moore's fans "are not genuinely concerned about America but are more concerned about feeling superior to the masses brainwashed by Bush. A comic book fan mailing list I am on has recently turned into a Mike al-Moor fan club list. I have received literally hundreds of e-mails over the past week praising Full-of-Hate 9/11 to the sky and beyond. What is really disturbing is the *joy* these people feel at watching al-Moor attack America. A true patriot moved by genuine criticism would feel pain and the urge to set things right. But these people are just looking for a "hate high". Mike al-Moor is selling it ... and making a fortune in the process". Yes. The Leftist need to feel superior really is pathetic. It completely dominates their thought processes.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its usual range of selected blogospheric reading.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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

Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth

"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.

Comments? Email me or here. 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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