TWO SPEECHES

American Realpolitik juxtaposes the good speech about the shuttle disaster given by GWB with the great speech given about the earlier shuttle disaster 17 years ago by President Reagan. Only the Gipper can still bring tears to my eyes. That man was magic: A once-in-a-lifetime President. I will never see his like again.

I note that even The Moderate Left agrees with me about the Reagan speech.

And I understand how one blogger found comfort in saying the Latin invocation: Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis (“Give them eternal rest O Lord and may the perpetual light shine upon them”)

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

YOUTH AND LEFTISM AGAIN

Scott Wickstein and one or two others have called into question the basic assumption underlying my long post of two days ago about why young people tend to lean to the Left politically. They argue that young people do NOT tend to lean to the Left.

I guess I did not spell it out properly in my post yesterday but the academic paper I cited DID show a strong correlation between age and ideology. The research was based on random general population sampling and would not have got into an academic journal unless it was pretty rigorous. So Leftism DOES tend to be a folly of youth. Like Scott, I have always been conservative and there are many like us but we all also know of many examples of age moving people to the Right -- from David Horowitz in the USA to Paddy McGuinness in Australia. So there IS something there that needs explaining.

Tim Gillin (post of Feb. 2nd.) mentioned another point that I should obviously have added to my 4-point list: Young people are often Leftist because they have just been through or are just going through an educational system (both schools and universities) that vigorously indoctrinates them with Leftist ideas. Tim's words on the subject:

How much of this is due to 'wet behind the ears' idealism and how much is due to political indoctrination through the school system, or their greater exposure to the media? Idealism doesn't neccessarily have to be leftist. Youth generally are more peer oriented and the arts/intellectual/media world has a definite left/'progressive' slant. So indoctrinating them is easier. It's interesting that young "computer geeks' and Sci Fi fans are generally less leftist, they tap into a different media network.

An interesting 6th cause of youthful Leftism was added by Eddie Thomas -- who points out on his blog that families tend to be communistic. In a family we give to each according to his/her need. So it takes a while to adjust to an outside world that is not communistic and until that adjustment is made young people tend to believe that the outside world should be like what they have been used to at home.

And the old Leftist mantra "All men are brothers" reflects that. It is an attempt to model society on the family -- but ignores the fact that family ties are a very special case of human relationships.

Tim Dunlop’s suggestion was that I should add “parental indoctrination” to my list of causes. That would obviously be true in some cases, though youthful rebellion probably makes it ineffective pretty often. At any event, it does not explain the preponderance of young people among Leftists.

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

IRAQ

According to Strawman Baghdad real estate prices prove that Iraquis are looking forward to being liberated by the Americans. I don't blame them.

Matthew Cowie has a good point: This seems too obvious to even say, but I've watched so many talking heads ( mostly leftists) say that Saddam Hussein does not pose an imminent threat to the United States. It is important to remind them that at 8:00AM on September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda did not pose an imminent threat to the United States.

Jeff Jacoby on attacking Saddam: As slogans, "rush to war" and "unilateralism" are catchy. But they are also false. If anything, Bush has been inching his way to war. And Jeff Jacoby also says we should have Syria in our sights after Iraq.

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

ELSEWHERE

Bob Whaley thinks that the public response to the second shuttle loss shows that America has matured as a nation.

Hello Bloggy has a good rant: What I can never understand in the reasoning of the Left is: What have the poor done to deserve the fruits of redistribution? What is it about being poor that entitles people to handouts at the expense of taxpayers? ..... More here

Another good one from the Professor: Mrs Bunyip once took it into her head that lavatory water should be blue, which didn't worry the Professor one way or the other but certainly did the dog no good.

Michael Darby reproduces an important address (not apparently otherwise online) by Sir Harry Gibbs (a former Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia) in which Sir Harry defends the court from affirmative action demands.

The Wicked one has found a funny photo he likes and reprints a great old poem.

Chris Brand points out the uncomfortable truth that Hitler's genocide was far from unusual even in modern history.

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

Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here, check my HomePage for a new blog address or visit my "First Draft" site here.

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