TRUMAN

Some readers think that I was unfair to the late President Truman in what I said yesterday -- quoting his aid to Greece to fight the communist insurrection, NATO, the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Airlift, etc. They are of course perfectly correct in saying that many Democrats up to and including LBJ were anti-Communist Leftists who did good things in that cause which deserve some respect. My point is only that the A-bombings showed the Leftist callousness that was also lurking in such people and that anti-communism is no excuse for showing the same sort of callousness that Communists themselves have always displayed. In good Leftist fashion, Truman was also noted for the way he greatly expanded his own Presidential power at the expense of Congress -- just one example of which being his unconstitutional use of U.S. troops in Korea without prior congressional consent, unlike GWB in Iraq.

Some readers have also repeated the conventional excuse that the A-bombing saved many American lives by obviating the need for America to invade Japan. But there was never any need for America to invade Japan. Japan was almost totally collapsed already. It was already no danger to anyone. It was neutered. Conquest would have served machismo, nothing else. Simple maintenance of the blockade and occasional bombing of any remaining industrial or militarily-relevant targets was all that was required. If Japan had chosen to go back to primitive Tokugawa-style isolation for a time, so what? Readers also seem to overlook the importance of loss of face in the ruling Japanese Bushido code. Getting the the Imperial palace flattened would have been a great disgrace probably requiring seppuku (suicide) of the Japanese leaders concerned.

I should also note that callousness does not necessarily imply grit. It was ultimately lack of grit by Truman in Korea and LBJ in Vietnam that caused them to bungle those wars and leave Communist regimes in place there. So again conservatives have nothing to apologize for there. GWB has so far shown some grit in Iraq. There is therefore some hope that the long-term outcome there will be better than what Democrats achieved in Korea and Vietnam.

Again I could go on but alternative history is not a great interest of mine and the relevance of Truman to present-days issues is slight.

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ELSEWHERE

"The New York Times ... has myriad and dubious financial and political ties to John Kerry's presidential campaign.... According to major news outlets, including the Times, the fact that a major Republican donor has contributed money to the group known as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth calls into question the impartiality of that group and ties it to the Republicans. If that is indeed the case - that an exchange of funds between an entity and a partisan contributor dispositively links the entity to a partisan cause - then, by their own logic, the Times is unquestionably linked to Kerry's campaign and other far-left groups".

Further to my recent post on John Kerry as a psychopath, Dennis Mangan has some good points

An instructive anniversary: We have just had the anniversary of the signing by the USA of the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact in Paris -- a pact outlawing war and providing for the peaceful settlement of international disputes. It achieved precisely nothing, of course. But Kerry and the Left still claim today that similar "international" solutions (via the U.N., the 'world court', the ICC etc) are a good idea. They rely on the fact that the Left-dominated schools no longer teach history to any meaningful degree.

One Hundred Percenter has lots of pictures up of the Leftist demonstrators in NYC at the moment -- all of course trying their utmost to get the attention their egos so desperately need.

More glories of socialized medicine: "Almost 2000 New South Wales patients had died or "could not be contacted" by the time they reached the top of the elective surgery waiting list, a new report reveals. The figure is contained in the latest Australian Hospital Statistics 2002-2003 report. Released by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the report provides a breakdown of waiting list statistics across states and territories. Of the 214,298 additions to the list in NSW, more than half were admitted within the year" [meaning that half weren't!]

Oil under the bed: "Some left-wing commentators have interpreted the motive behind Washington's newfound concern for Darfur - as well as the British and Australian governments' volunteering of troops for a phantom UN intervention force - as an effort by Washington to justify an Iraq-style invasion of Sudan to achieve "regime change" and seize control of its potentially massive oil reserves".

American conservatives eat your heart out: What sort of political party leader would say this? "[Our] commitment is surplus budgeting for every year of the next parliament and we will do everything we can to have downward pressure on interest rates. That is our budgetary commitment, that's important for families and the future of the economy. We believe in surplus budgets and we will have that in place through the next parliamentary term." How does that compare with GWB's big-spending ways? The quote is from the leader of Australia's major LEFTIST party, who also has an honours degree in economics from one of Australia's most prestigious universities. And his sidekicks have economics qualifications too. And both major Australian parties DO run economically responsible budgets. It is not just hot air. More here

A nasty one for the feminists: "Women tend to get lower pay than men because they generally work shorter hours, research in a new book reveals. In a blow to feminists claiming gender bias in the workplace, the book says males often work longer full-time hours than females in the same or similar jobs."

The current crop of Islamic crackpots are far from being simple Muslim traditionalists. The Islamic hate merchants in fact learnt most of their hatreds from the Western Left, including Western Fascists. As Nial Ferguson says in this book review: "in Occidentalism, Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit have gone a step further. They argue that the most radical critics of the West today – including Osama bin Laden and other "Islamist" extremists – are not the upholders of pure, untainted Eastern values. Their extreme anti-Western ideologies are, paradoxically, in large measure Western in origin". There is more to that effect here

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

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The vast hatred of President Bush coming from the Left seems to focus almost entirely on his Iraq policy and a claim that it is "stupid" or dishonest. Yet the world's most successful and influential Leftist intellectual -- the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -- is a vigorous supporter of that policy. It shows that everything said to justify the Leftist hatred of Bush is mere camouflage. What they really hate is someone non-Leftist wielding great power. The hatred is purely emotional and envious -- with only the slightest pretense to reasoning tacked on. As usual, principles have nothing to do with it.

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

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