ELSEWHERE

The courageous Edward Feser looks at why academics are overwhelmingly Left-leaning. He lists a number of explanations which do undoubtedly play a part but he omits what I think is the major factor: From my observations, Leftist academics are basically second-rate thinkers. Originality is the Holy Grail of academe but most academics in fact have nothing new to say at all -- so they say silly things just in order to appear different. They use perversity to create a false impression of profundity. It was precisely because I DID have something different to say that I got so many articles published in the academic journals. Even though my articles generally undermined Leftist views, their having that all-important originality got them published. And how my fellow academics hated me for it! In most years I got more articles published than the rest of my university department put together. That I could do easily what they found so hard to do was real heartburn for them.

Fun! The philosophy professor who said conservatives are stupid has now backed down!

Inequality -- the statistics: "The main reasons some families earn more than others are not as shocking as politicians would have you believe. Consider these horribly shocking Census Bureau facts about inequality: -- Families with two people have incomes at least three times larger than families in which nobody works. .... Mature, experienced employees earn at least three times as they did when they were young apprentices and trainees. Average family income was $16,014 among families in which the household head was younger than 24, but $45,978 when the household head was 45 to 54.... College grads earn at least three times as much as middle-school dropouts. For family heads with a bachelor's degree, median income was $78,518; for those with less than a ninth-grade education, median income was $25,077. If all this rampant inequality strikes you as grossly unfair, you should indeed consider electing politicians promising to do something about it. But they can't really do much unless they promise to take money from two-earner families and give it to no-earner families, to take money from those who go to college and give it to those who didn't bother attending a free high school... "

The National Center for Public Policy Research answers the ignorant Leftist nonsense about how bad it is for jobs to move overseas. It seems commonsense at first to think job loss is bad -- and Leftists of course play on that -- but it only takes a few minutes of thinking to see that getting rid of old jobs and replacing them with better ones is actually how we got to be so much better off now than we once were. You can't have economic progress and stand still at the same time. But what Leftist wants economic progress? Economic destruction is more their specialty.

George Will gives examples to show what any economist knows: Protecting jobs in one industry just leads to job losses in other industries. GWB's determination to "protect" America from half-price Australian sugar, for instance, just drives American candy-manufacturing jobs to Mexico and Canada. Clever!

"As for George Bush's military service, he served honorably and we submit that flying F-102s is dangerous business regardless of what hard-deck you're over. McAuliffe, Cleland and his opportunistic Leftist cadre should take note that every time they denigrate the service of Guardsmen and Reservists, they spit in the faces of hundreds of thousands of citizen-soldiers -- and their families -- who make enormous sacrifices whether serving on the front lines in Iraq or the home front."

Amusing. The NYT says that French cultural hero Albert Camus (not Irving Kristol et al.) was the first "neocon". Even though once a member of the French Communist Party, "Camus found himself ever more repulsed by Communism, which he called "the modern madness." He saw Communism as a desperate attempt to create meaning and certainty. He wrote, "Those who pretend to know everything and settle everything finish by killing everything."". This led to him being dumped by the Left.

In case you missed it, here is the direct link to the confession of Leftist bias on America's ABC TV news network. There is also a summary here which notes that the same has been shown to be true of CBS.

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

Another example of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries!

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