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

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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.

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