PERSONAL INDEPENDENCE DAY

Personal Independence Day seems to be the blogosphere's very own conservative anthropologist. As you may have guessed, most anthropologists are very Leftist. I have even heard some of them still defending Margaret Mead -- on the grounds that what she said SHOULD have been right!

As my older readers may recollect, a great favourite of the Left in the 1970s was the "Tasaday" -- a "lost" primitive tribe in the Philippines that was found to be very gentle and unwarlike. They were supposed to have all sorts of lessons for us wicked warlike Westerners. In case you are wondering why you have not heard of the Tasaday lately, it is because the whole thing was another total hoax. Personal Independence Day has the link. The whole "lost tribe" story was a pretty transparent lie from the beginning -- they lived only 3 hours walk from a regular Philippino village, for instance -- but the Left are past-masters at believing only what they want to believe and Leftists LOVE the "noble savage" myth. The fact of the matter is that the kindest, gentlest society that has ever existed on the earth is modern Western society -- but any Leftist intellectual worth his salt would rather die than admit that.

Personal Independence Day has much more on how primitive tribes in fact exploit credulous Western romanticists.

Personal Independence Day can't spell "galah", though. For U.S. readers, the galah is a colourful Australian parrot that has become a byword for stupidity because of its suicidal behaviour on some occasions. So "galah" is a popular Australian term of abuse for foolish or credulous people. Particularly cynical Australians have been known to mispronounce “a gala occasion” as “a galah occasion”. The real galahs exist in huge flocks in Australia's inland and are regarded by many country people as a great pest because of the way they damage crops. But bird-fanciers in the USA and Europe pay $1,000 or more for just one galah. The reason for such a stupid situation is "environmental protection". Need I say more? The Greenies are galahs too.

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