FROM BROOKES NEWS

The Democrats, social security and the equity premium puzzle The Bush administration's proposal for social security accounts invested in the share market has been unjustly attacked by Democrats
Lefty journo slimes humanitarian Lib candidate The Herald-Sun's Luke McIlveen's slimy attack on NSW Liberal Senate candidate and bush poet Michael Darby not only showed McIlveen to be out of his depth but also bereft of journalistic ethics
Myths of the Asian economic crisis still dominate Without a doubt, the depth and suddenness of the economic crisis that swept through the Asian economies took most economists and investment advisers by complete surprise
Do payroll taxes kill jobs? There is a view among some of Australia's free-market economists that payroll taxes are not part of labour's gross wage and are therefore not a labor cost
Dan Rather and 60 Minutes conclusively prove that the Bush memos are not forgeries In this exclusive, Dan Rather of 60 Minutes fame provided Brookes' with irrefutable evidence that his forged memos are genuine

Details here

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I WAS WRONG

I note that Keith Burgess-Jackson has a post up explaining why he has reversed his view of President Bush and why he no longer advocates liberalism in general. Heaps of conservative thinkers have at one time been Left-leaning (including Ronald Reagan and Winston Churchill) so all of them must have had to do a lot of explaining at some stage. I am pleased that I have never had to do that but I am also pleased to say that I have been wrong in the past on some matters nonetheless. I am pleased to find that I was wrong because it shows that I have learned something.

The mistake I made which I most regret was to underestimate the good nature and tolerance of my fellow Australians. In an article I wrote in 1972, I expressed the view that admitting large numbers of ethnic Chinese immigrants to Australia could well cause racial strife -- as indeed it actually did in the Australia of 100 years ago or more. In the last 30 years, however, Australia has admitted large numbers of ethnic Chinese immigrants so that they are now probably around 10% of the population -- but there seems to have been no friction between them and other Australians whatever. Note however that it was my fellow Anglo-Australians that I doubted. I have never doubted the civilized qualities of the Chinese.

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ELSEWHERE

There is an interesting post here (slow-loading site) describing in detail the various American public opinion polls. There seems to be considerable quality variations between them, with Zogby the trashiest. From my point of view as a long-time academic survey researcher, the whole lot of them seem very careless. The fact that every last one of them is a telephone poll seems amazing -- after the famous Truman/Dewey debacle. But telephone ownership would be more widespread now than it was in Truman's day so perhaps that source of inaccuracy pales into insignificance compared with other biases -- such as the tiny proportion of people called who actually co-operate. I was also amazed that only one poll takes precautions against the "curbstone" problem -- which is when the interviewers just make the results up. Checks against that should be routine. They certainly were in my practice. But the fact that the results are adjusted to make them representative demographically is probably what saves the day. Sacks of salt needed, though.

And if American public opinion polls are primitive, American voting seems to be even worse. I have never been able to understand how American voter registration is so slapdash and open to fraud. With people like Rush Limbaugh tackling the issue something might get done about it sometime maybe but it was Al Capone back in the 1930s who said "Vote early and vote often" so it is not exactly a new problem.

Amusing: Some old-line journalists are REALLY getting peeved at bloggers. But all they can come up with is a lot of self-righteous huffing and puffing. Long live pajamas!

The megalomaniac George Soros is stepping up his preaching against GWB. I wonder why he thinks that ordinary American voters are going to want to support his views? I think many would be more likely to resent him trying to tell them what to do. Amusing to see him wasting his money advertising on conservative blogs, though.

Columnist Molly Ivins wrote: "Defining "terrorist" or any "other" as an absolute, irrational evil gives us a spurious and intoxicating sense of self-righteousness. We become the Simon-pure contrast, thus missing any chance to consider if correcting or just changing our own conduct would be effective." There is a good reply to that here or here. Excerpt: "If you are unable to distinguish between the purposeful targeting of innocents, especially children, and the accidental killing thereof, then you are viewing the world through the prism of moral equivalence. One is pure evil whatever your motivation, the other is a tragic accident."

I have just put up here a touching story about one of the private deeds of President Bush. The story is verifiable though I am not in a position to verify it. It is however consistent with everything we know about the character of the man. It reminds me of the fact that many people who wrote to Ronald Reagan when he was President got replies from him in his own hand: What a gentleman!

There is a good New Zealand site here that gives both the Left and the Greens a pretty good going over from a liberty-oriented perspective. Lots to read.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its usual conspectus of the blogosphere.

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

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and big egos who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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AUSTRALIA MATTERS

An interesting email from one of my American readers:

"Perusing your postings, it occurred to me that your readers might not realize just how important your forthcoming elections are. Not just for your country, but for the course of the entire free world.

Mr. Howard has shown a sort of political courage depressingly rare in our times. His unwavering commitment to the battle against Islamofascism and his support of the war in Iraq truly mark him as a "Profile in Courage" - not that the Kennedy Center will be giving him any such award in the near future. History, though, will mark him as a great and important man.

Like Winston Churchill a half-century before him, though, Howard faces the prospect (though I note with pleasure, an apparently less-likely prospect than it was weeks ago) of being cast aside by his countrymen at the ballot box as a prophet without honor in his own time.

I believe I am not overstating the case when I say this could have calamitous consequences for global polity and the future of Western Civilization. If Howard were to lose, it is rumored that his successor will immediately announce the withdrawal of Australian troops from Iraq. Given the degree to which John Kerry's sister appears to be meddling Down Under, and what we know of the Kerry clan, I don't doubt that this is true.

If it should occur, the Kerry campaign will immediately seize upon this as evidence that the policies of the Bush administration are so hideously misguided that even our staunchest friends are abandoning us. Our media will then proceed to trumpet this beyond all reason as cause for alarm and consternation. It will be presented as the beginning of a great unraveling of what John Kerry disgracefully calls "The Coalition of the Bribed and Coerced."

While things look good for Bush right now, this is the sort of thing, coming as it would less than a month before our American election, that might provide significant momentum for the Kerry campaign.

I am naive enough to believe that somehow, some way, right will triumph. But I am realistic enough to know that it doesn't happen by accident. George Bush was elected President in 2000 by 700 votes in Florida. John Howard could well be elected Australia's Prime Minister by the 70 - or 7 - votes it takes to elect his party's candidate to a single Australian Parliament district. That alone is cause enough for concern in normal times. That it might well tip the U.S. election to forces that would preemptively surrender to an enemy that knows no victory but worldwide Islamic government is cause for alarm in our own.

May fate be kind to John Howard. History doubtless will be."

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ELSEWHERE

If you have not yet seen Paul Berman's article on Che Guevara and the recent film which makes a hero of him, you should read it. Excerpt: "The cult of Ernesto Che Guevara is an episode in the moral callousness of our time. Che was a totalitarian. He achieved nothing but disaster.... Che was a mainstay of the hardline pro-Soviet faction, and his faction won. Che presided over the Cuban Revolution's first firing squads. He founded Cuba's "labor camp" system - the system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims. To get himself killed, and to get a lot of other people killed, was central to Che's imagination"

Lester Dent has a good article on the counterfactual nature of most Leftist beliefs. He wonders why they ignore so much. But in the end he gets it pretty right by concluding that they implicitly say: ''Don't confuse me with facts, my mind is made up.'' He does not go on to the next step, however, of asking what function their mental fixations serve. They serve ego needs. They make the Leftist feel grand and wise and that is more important than the facts, pathetic though that is.

There is a thoroughly conservative article here that takes up the burden of finding a balance between liberty and paternalism. Conservatives have always thought it obvious that either extreme is fit for simple minds only. Simplistic formulas such as "The community comes first" (Leftists) or "No government at all is needed" (extreme libertarians) just don't fit the complexity of the real world. So conservatives give themselves the difficult task of finding a balance. That's why the article concerned is a long one.

The American Voice is an interesting site -- with lots of politically-relevant facts and figures. Facts can be misleading out of context (Noam Chomsky is proof of that) but there are a lot of interesting starting points in what he lists.

Don't knock the drug companies: "In general, the benefits of new drugs outweigh the costs by a substantial margin."

Amusing: One of the people behind Clinton's successful political strategy was a Straussian -- a dreaded "neocon". Pity he wasn't a Jew as well. That would REALLY have got the Leftist conspiracy theorists frothing at the mouth.

There is a new counter-Michael Moore movie out. The trailer for the movie is excellent, particularly regarding the Left's "liking a dictator" if "free health care is provided."

Amusing: Some libertarians are trying to get into the Australian Senate in the forthcoming Federal election on Oct., 9th. Buckley's, of course.

Mark Steyn's site seemed to have been taken down last couple of times that I tried to log on. Leftist vandalism?

Every now and again I get an email from a fellow-conservative blogger asking irately why they are not on my blogroll. I am happy to concede their right to be on my blogroll and always add them but I do get a bit of a laugh out of anybody assuming a "right" to be there. Since I must have about 300 links on my blogroll by now, I doubt that having one more or less does anybody much good anyway. Sending me details of a post that I might link to would do other bloggers a lot more good.

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

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and big egos who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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ECONOMICS

EU wants to criminalize work: "EU states will find it harder to opt out of the Union's 48 hour maximum working week under new proposals. The European Commission says it wants to tighten loopholes in its Working Time Directive in order to limit the time employees spend at work. The changes would mean workers would be able to work more than 48 hours a week only if employers and unions reached a collective agreement. The government has vowed to fight the plans when they come up for approval. Any changes will need to be voted on by the European Parliament before they come into force. UK business leaders have argued that the proposals will increase bureaucracy while unions said the proposed changes did not go far enough".

Lower female average earnings are fair: "An Aug. 26 report from the U.S. Census Bureau stated that the median female full-time wage for women was 75.5 cents for every dollar similarly earned by men; that's down .6 percent from 2002. Gender feminists quickly cried "discrimination is increasing!" ...BUT... "women have fewer years of work experience, work fewer hours per year, are less likely to work a full-time schedule, and leave the labor force for longer periods of time than men.".... Indeed, when you factor out variables like having children, the wage gap virtually disappears. In their book "Women's Figures" (1999), economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth and Christine Stolba meticulously compared data on the earnings of childless men and women aged 27 to 33. They found that the wage gap shrank to 98 cents"

The economics of happy feet: "Even in the poorest countries, shoes are available everywhere and at rock bottom prices. One of the great miseries of living in the third world used to be the aches and pains associated with poor quality footwear (if you could find it at all). But no more. American capitalist "excess" that led entrepreneurs to pay workers in China and Indonesia to make shoes for American consumers has yielded surpluses that spread affordable shoes to all corners of the globe. Today a peasant in the fields of a Guatemalan village wears shoes that medieval lords would have traded for their own models made of wood and leather."

"The real outsourcers are to be found among regulators, trial lawyers, and environmental groups whose cumulative actions have devastated once-flourishing industries and the communities in which they were located. Their deeds have consigned hundreds of thousands of Americans to the ranks of the unemployed. Meanwhile, the jobs these people once had have been gleefully picked up by foreign workers..... In the last decade alone, over 900 mills, pulp and paper plants, and other forest products facilities have closed in the U.S., with a loss of over 130,000 jobs... These are real job losses, courtesy of real outsourcers."

A reader who is a teacher points to another cause of outsourcing: American workers are too poorly educated to make good employees on many occasions these days. "The left has outsourced education. Their insistence that disruptive children be kept in the classroom as part of their rights, their insistence that memorization and skills are tools of oppression, their convictions that kids need to have self-esteem without earning it, their insistence that testing is just a way of putting kids down -- all these stupid ideas and more have made sure that a kid in India who sits through the good old British education system can add better, write better, and think more clearly than their American counterpart"

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ELSEWHERE

Some progress: "A "white list" of 10 nations from which asylum applications will be presumed to be false by all European Union countries is to go ahead, despite warnings of human rights violations. The list of "safe countries" covers seven African states, including Benin, Botswana, Ghana, Mali and Senegal, as well as Chile, Costa Rica and Uruguay. The European list is modelled on the British system, which presumes asylum claims from designated "safe" countries are unfounded and applicants fast-tracked for removal. The system has operated since 1993. The EU list will form a cornerstone of the new common European asylum policy"

Immigration elitism: "Huntington's discussion of mindless immigrationism is one of the reasons for the hostile reception to his book. He points to the now commonplace distinction between the "elites" and the general public and the clear differences in their attitudes to immigration. It is easy enough to dismiss the reservations of the electorate as a product of ignorance, xenophobia, fear of the unknown, unfounded fears of competition for their own jobs or whatever. Denigration of the attitudes of ordinary people is routine for the elites. But not all these concerns are totally unfounded.."

I have already had online for some time (See here) a review of some of the evidence leading to the view that Bill Clinton is a sub-clinical psychopath. I have just put up some extra evidence here. Note the total lack of any sense of guilt or remorse for anything he did and the wild theories put forward to explain the attacks on him. It's his "enemies" who harmed him, not his own lack of any morality or responsibility. Psychopaths all think that they can do no wrong and very commonly explain their difficulties by saying that people are just out to "get" them.

This article compares the present difficulties in Iraq with the problems previous Presidents (such as Lincoln and FDR) have faced in their wars and concludes that GWB is doing pretty well by comparison: "Reading the depressing headlines, one is tempted to ask: Has any president in U.S. history ever botched a war or its aftermath so badly? Actually, yes. Most wartime presidents have made catastrophic blunders, from James Madison losing his capital to the British in 1814 to Harry Truman getting embroiled with China in 1950"

Good news from Afghanistan: "But the political skill demonstrated by Karzai since July, and the popularity he clearly possesses, are reason for optimism. Afghans themselves are optimistic. The country has passed its major political challenges reasonably well since the fall of the Taliban in 2001 - forming a transitional cabinet, drafting and approving a constitution, maintaining a steady civilian government in Kabul. The next milestone, Afghanistan's first free presidential election in over a decade, also looks to be a qualified success. For now, that's quite an achievement".

Another foul priest: "A district attorney said Monday that he would not prosecute Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Dupre on child rape charges because the statute of limitations has expired in the case."

There is a good new post up on Leftists as Elitists.

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

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and big egos who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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FRANK FUREDI'S JOURNEY FROM LEFT TO RIGHT

Frank is an Australian psychologist and ex-Marxist who has now long been a British resident

"Furedi found himself feeling 'ever-more estranged' from the conventional left. He recalls three incidents in particular that suggested the left was moving in a troublesome direction. 'The first time I felt it was when there were all these demands for "No Platform" for fascists, that fascists should be censored. I have always been, and continue to be, vehemently anti-fascist, but I felt that was just a cop-out, a very anti-democratic way of avoiding debate. I argued that rather than saying "No Platform" we should take up the fascists' views and undermine them, instead of opting for this very authoritarian, censorious approach.'

The second event was the miners' strike of 1984. A key issue in the strike was whether there should be a national ballot, which would allow all miners to vote on whether the strike should continue. In places like Yorkshire miners were striking hard, while other miners, in particular in Nottinghamshire, refused to strike on the grounds that there had not been a national ballot. The RCP campaigned for a ballot; just about everybody else on the left disagreed and the ballot was vetoed by Arthur Scargill, head of the National Union of Miners. 'I fully supported the strike', says Furedi. 'But I also called for a ballot, with a rank-and-file campaign to win the vote, for a strike that could be supported by everybody.' Thatcher supported a national ballot because she thought it would break the strike; the RCP supported a campaign for a ballot as a way of strengthening the miners. 'But others on the left wanted to prevent a ballot in case the vote went the wrong way. I thought this qualified approach to democracy on the left was a very big problem.'

The third event that further estranged Furedi from the left was the Cleveland child abuse scandal of 1987, when a number of families in the industrial region in the north-east of England were falsely accused of abusing their kids - often by health and social workers who considered themselves part of the left. 'I felt very uncomfortable, very uncomfortable indeed', says Furedi. 'People who I had known on the left were going around saying that loads of working-class men are child abusers. This very negative view of human beings took me aback. The kind of panic about working-class behaviour that would traditionally have been triggered by the right was starting to become a fixture of the left.'"

More here.

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ELSEWHERE

What pathetic little sulkers the Germans have become! They cancelled their participation in an American Army display because one of the Americans present had once criticized Germany. How dare he! Germans can say anything they like about the USA -- even call the American President a Nazi -- but Americans cannot return the criticism. They can dish criticism out but can't take it in reply. Pathetic. What a waste it was for America to defend such mush for so long. Most of the Germans with guts must have died in Hitler's wars -- leaving mainly shirkers behind. (Via Davids Medienkritik).

Good man: "The British Prime Minister has appealed to Britons to back his stance against "terror and chaos" in Iraq and compared the situation in the country to the darkest days of World War II".

Prominent peacenik Senator Mark Hatfield is voting for Bush! "My support is based on the fact that our world changed on Sept. 11, 2001, a day on which we lost more American lives than we did in the attack on Pearl Harbor. I know from my service in the Senate that Saddam Hussein was an active supporter of terrorism. He used weapons of mass destruction on innocent people and left no doubt that he would do so again. It was crucial to the cause of world peace that he be removed from power".

I am glad that I have no need to use Paypal or any similar service. They have just cut off service from longtime blogger Bill Quick because they find his site objectionable for some unspecified reason. Some bloggers are closing their PayPal accounts in retaliation so I hope lots of bloggers do so. PayPal seem to be a real Leftist outfit. One of Bill's commenters reported: "I complained to Paypal when the two "soldiers" who went AWOL to Canada set up accounts with Paypal to receive donations. I pointed out that Paypal was facilitating criminal activity, as these men would be arrested should they return to the States. The people I spoke to on the telephone were indifferent to hostile, and Paypal refused to shut down the donation link. Says a lot about Paypal, I think" and another reported: "My guess is PayPal objects to the Cheaper Than Dirt Ammo ad at the top of your page. I have read that they are extremely anti-gun and have cut off businesses that sell ammunition and gun accessories".

John Kerry has been caught in another psychopathic (stupid and pointless) lie -- saying he was in Iraq when he was not.

Child abusing "justice". There is a dreadful story here of how fanatical do-gooders pressured kids into making accusations of sexual abuse against innocent men. It not only got the men falsely convicted and jailed but it also had a devastating impact on the children concerned.

Hollywood whitewashes a disgusting pervert: "A forthcoming Hollywood biopic of Alfred Kinsey, the "father of the sexual revolution", has been denounced as a whitewash by pro-family campaigners who are calling on the public to boycott the film".

Hmmm... Tim Lambert is accusing others of not having the full background on the "Leftist bookstore" issue in the USA when he does not seem to have the full background himself. He seems to think that only Glenn Reynolds and some troll think that U.S. bookstores have a Leftist bias. He needs to read this. And the whole thing is NOT an example of market failure. The only failure is in the brains of the Leftist proprietors and employees who are sending so much of what could be their own business to Amazon.

Chris Brand has just had a big burst of new posts so I have tranferred them here for convenience. Interesting that a very prominent South African black has now proclaimed that Africa was better off under the colonialists. Certainly by any objective standard (crime-rate, average income etc.) that is true.

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

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and big egos who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD)

In Germany, the NPD (National Democratic Party) is widely regarded as the barely-legal successor-party to Hitler's National Socialist party. Given its recent victories in the German elections, an interview with the chairman of the party must be of some interest. A few excerpts follow:

"This [young Leftist] subculture possesses an anti-capitalist view of the world, and views the NPD as an instrument of Capitalism. Such a view of the NPD is fundamentally wrong, and disregards the fact that the Movement will eliminate Capitalism which is so contemptuous of humanity....

The NPD is a Movement of the People which will implement its programme of building a Third Power beyond Capitalism and Communism, thereby giving self-determination to the people.

At the centre of our struggle is mankind and Nature. Thanks to our life-giving view of the world, we stand against foreign rule and domination, against foreign penetration, exploitation and oppression. We stand for German freedom, for the freedom of peoples, for a New Social Order in both Germany and Europe.

During this phase, we must use capable intellectuals from all levels in society so as to build our ideology of a New Order beyond Capitalism and Communism.... The global threat to our nations by multi-national banks and companies working in harness with the ruling class is having a destructive effect on our peoples.

The outstanding achievements of the German social system are being more and more replaced by minimal standards."

Note the five leftist elements of NPD thinking mentioned above. He rejects the Leftist claim that the NPD is capitalist and says it is anti-capitalist [1]. He says the NPD will build a "Third Power" (Third Way [2]) between capitalism and Communism. He puts "nature" (environmentalism [3]) at the centre of his thinking. He is against "multinational banks and companies" (globalization [4]). And he regards the German social system (welfare state [5]) as an outstanding achievement. Clearly, this party does indeed reflect all of Hitler's themes and clearly it is of the Left in modern terms. And its championship of a "Third Way" makes it in fact a completely modern Leftist party, akin in that respect to the present-day British Labour party. Hitler was a modern Leftist by the standards of his day too, as his championship of eugenics showed. Awkward stuff, that history. In the postwar era, the internationalist version of Leftism has become very dominant but that was not always so. From Napoleon to Hitler there were also plenty of nationalist versions of Leftism. That was part of what was behind the various diatribes of Marx and Lenin against "Bonapartism". And Trotsky even saw both the Soviet State and Fascism as different types of "Bonapartism"! So the NPD simply shows that the nationalist version of Leftism still lives.

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THAT WHICH WAS LOST

Mike Jericho no longer seems to have the heart to continue with his idea for a "Man Blog" now that some Leftist punk has destroyed the site. If anybody ever takes one of my blogs down, it will be back up again in 5 minutes, I can assure you. I save everything to disk -- including templates. Anyway, so that the Leftist triumph is not total, I have re-posted here what I had up on "The Man Blog" before it was taken down.

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ELSEWHERE

A "liberal" would rather choke on his latte than condemn Castro: "Director Oliver Stone ripped President Bush while praising Cuban dictator Fidel Castro before the premiere of his movie "Looking for Fidel," at the 52nd San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain. Stone charged that Bush stole the election with the help of anti-Castro Cuban-Americans in Florida, according to a report in Cuba's Granma newspaper.... "George Bush will go down in history as one of the great baddies".... On the other hand, Stone had nothing but praise for Castro, who has clung to authoritarian power with no elections in Cuba for half a century"

Sheesh! Wotta lotta nonsense! "Ten-year olds who spend more time engaging in activities typically associated with their gender tend to have more stereotypical academic interests, skills and characteristics two years later, new research reports... These findings show that what children spend time on at age 10 can have a strong influence on their later years [according to] lead author Dr. Susan M. McHale of Penn State University" Girls who prefer girly games at age 10 are more girly later on too! What a discovery!

The Left are scraping the bottom of the barrel now: "George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany. The UK's Guardian newspaper has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism".

The French Betrayal of America seems to be a very well-researched book, giving a detailed account of just how amoral and hostile to any kind of decency France is.

A Frenchman disses the French: "The thirst for truth is not a French passion. In everything, what appears is more relished than what is, the outside than the inside, the style than the stuff, the glittering than the useful, opinion than conscience. . . "

Congratulations to Rafe Champion on the second birthday of his "Rathouse" site.

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

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and big egos who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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ANOTHER HUGE GOVERNMENT BUNGLE

"Australia's Child Support Agency is grossly mismanaged and driving dads onto the dole queue, according to a new report.

The PIR Independent Research group report found many dads were opting out of the workforce because they faced the prospect of losing up to 62 per cent of their after-tax wages in child support payments. As a result, the CSA system had driven up the unemployment rate for separated fathers to more than six times the national average, it said.

More than 70 per cent (221,375) of all unemployed men aged over 20 in Australia now pay child support. With more separated dads on welfare, children now received less money than before the CSA was set up in 1988 - just over $48 a week then to about $36 a week now. "PIR Independent Research has reached the conclusion that the child support scheme is the primary driver of unemployment in Australia," it said. "On top of high income tax rates cutting in at low levels, separated fathers can be left with less than 20 cents in the dollar".

More here.

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ELSEWHERE

Krauthammer summarizes well the treacherous attitude of the Kerry campaign towards one of America's real allies -- Australia. Despite the efforts of the Kerry campaign, however, Australia is not likely to desert the USA in Iraq. We have heard the same bleats from our own Left ad nauseam.

A good summary here of possible Kerry campaign involvement with the forged "Rathergate" memos.

Laura Ingraham: "Intellectuals around the globe -- lost and adrift for years after the failure of socialism -- have largely settled on anti-Americanism as their new ideological vehicle of choice."

And a good saying from Winston Churchill: "'All men are created equal' says the American Declaration of Independence. 'All men shall be kept equal' say the Socialists."

The Czech farmer's goatsmilk cheese. Be glad you are not in the EU. EU officials are trying to prevent willing customers from eating the cheese.

Further to my post yesterday about Turkey joining the EU, it looks like it is not going to happen. This statement seems to typify the French attitude: ""We do not think accession negotiations should be opened with Turkey ... because to bring Turkey into the European Union is not consistent with our concept of the European project and it is not good for Europe," he told a news conference. Toubon called for a special partnership with Turkey rather than offering it EU membership" The French have already had a gutful of Muslims from North Africa so want no more of them.

Abortion. Typical Leftist inconsistency. Pro-Life Democrats get a hard time now: "The Democratic party is the party that should be pro-life," Day says. "We should be the ones to speak out for those vulnerable in our society --those who don't have a voice." Marginalized by their own party, overlooked by campaign donors, attacked by pro-choice groups and targeted by Republicans seeking to win their seats, many pro-life Democrats live out Hobbes's dictum that life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short..... "It is really tough for a pro-life Democrat," Day says. "There is so much pressure on members to change.".... In the 95th Congress (1977-78), the Democrats had a 292-seat majority that included 125 pro-life Democrats. In 1976, then-candidate Jimmy Carter opposed public funding for abortions. Emerging leaders like Dick Gephardt, Al Gore, and Jesse Jackson Sr. were all originally pro-life.

A good point from a reader: It is perfectly consistent for Christians to be opposed to both abortion and euthanasia. Both stances are pro-life. But how come Leftists are generally ANTI-euthanasia while being PRO-abortion? How come a mother is empowered to kill her baby but a sick person is not empowered to kill himself?

Looming retirement realities: "In his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, President Bush revived several initiatives from his first presidential campaign. Not the least was a pledge to 'fix' Social Security by letting younger workers invest some of their payroll taxes in personal retirement accounts. Opponents of modernizing the Depression-era system quickly jumped on the proposal as too costly. But such criticisms are penny-wise and pound-foolish. Trying to keep the ailing system going another generation will wind up costing taxpayers far, far more than making reforms today. Demographic realities -- the increasing longevity of Americans and the mass, looming Baby Boomer retirements -- make it impossible to maintain the current system indefinitely."

Get government out of science: The big myth about scientific research is that government must fund it. The argument is that private companies will not fund science, especially pure science, for fear that their competitors will "capture" the fruits of that investment. Yet, in practice, companies fund pure science very generously, and government funding displaces private research money..... Zvi Griliches of Harvard University, in a study of 911 large American companies, discovered that the companies that engaged in basic research consistently outperformed those that neglected it... "Current Contents" magazine recently reviewed the institutions that produced the largest number of cited papers in biology, and two of the top seven were private companies.

Acidman very kindly recommended this blog yesterday but I was a bit amused at his comment: "Some people write really well, in spite of public schools". I did indeed go to a public school but that was 45 years ago and I actually learnt Latin grammar there: Hard to imagine in most of today's public schools. But, if it did happen today, it would still work to help people write clearly and logically.

I occasionally get grumbled at for not having a "comments" section on this blog. One reason why I do not is that there seems to be a great preponderance of low-quality comments on other people's blogs -- though Gene Expression is a notable exception to that. I am always pleased to get emails, though. Most of the links that I put up are in fact ones that readers have kindly mailed in to me.

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

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and big egos who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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SOME ECONOMICS AGAIN

The excellent Arnold Kling takles a look at a whiny Leftist article in "The Washington Post" which claims that it is now harder for Americans to stay in the middle-earning income range than it once was. The article is right -- but not for the reason it implies. There are fewer middle-income people now because the number of people in the upper income brackets (adjusted for inflation) has roughly doubled in the last 35 years! The only "problem" is that more people are getting rich. I guess Leftists would see that as a big problem!

Jobs and snow jobs: "Our current unemployment rate -- 5.4 percent -- is one of the lowest in the world and one of the lowest in our own history. Why then the hysteria about jobs? Because this is an election year and Senator Kerry is desperate for some issue that will rescue his faltering campaign. According to the Kerry campaign, President Bush has "lost" over a million jobs since taking office. This of course assumes that jobs are Presidents' to win or lose..... Few things have been more grossly distorted than tax cuts. Liberals in politics and the media seem to think that what matters is what happens to the money. In reality, what matters is how the cut in tax rates affects people's behavior. Time and again, lower tax rates have led to higher tax revenues. That is because lower tax rates make it profitable to take money out of tax shelters like municipal bonds and put it into something that is more productive, now that taxes are no longer taking such a big bite. When more money is invested in more productive economic activities, more output results -- and more jobs are created while generating that increased output. That is the whole point.... Jobs hysteria is only the latest in a series of evasions and distractions"

Sarcasm alert! Unions versus wages: "Somehow, over the last 50 years, while unions have become a less important force in the labor market, workers have managed to raise their wages and do better. This is one of the great mysteries of life. How can it be possible? It is not unrelated to the question as to how workers manage to earn so much more than the minimum wage. What protects workers from greedy employers? The simple answer is that there's more than one place we can work. Without unions, without minimum wages, workers thrive because of the competition of employers for our skills"

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Dennis Prager: "Second, whereas they cannot change God's laws, those on the Left can and do make many of society's laws. In fact, the Left is intoxicated with law-making. It gives them the power to mold society just as Judeo-Christian values did in the past. Unless one understands that leftist ideals function as a religion, one cannot understand the Left. Laws are the Left's vehicles to earthly salvation. Virtually all human problems have a legal solution.... In fact, since it lacks the self-control apparatus that is a major part of religion, the Left passes more and more laws to control people. That is why there is a direct link between the decline in Judeo-Christian religion and the increase in governmental laws controlling human behavior. Of course, the more laws that are passed, the less liberty society enjoys. But to the Left, which elevates any number of values above liberty -- e.g., compassion, equality, fairness -- this presents little problem. All this helps to explain the Left's preoccupation with controlling courts; passing laws; producing, enriching and empowering lawyers; filing lawsuits; and naming judges. Laws and the makers of laws will produce heaven on earth".

Profound Leftist irrationality: "Homosexuals face terrible persecution under the Palestinian Authority and yet, there are actually groups like "Queers for Palestine" that go to anti-Israel demonstrations to shout slogans in support of Palestinians and then they get roughed up and shouted down by the Muslims at the demonstration. There is something very mind-boggling here, and it is connected to the radical feminist who shows up almost nude at an anti-war demonstration taking the side of militant Islam, when the fact is that if she even showed her face under some of the regimes she supports she would be mutilated or raped or killed or burned alive." It looks like their burning hatred of their own society blinds them to all else.

The Nobel Peace and Literature prizes are so notoriously political that it is a wonder they get any respect at all these days. This story is one instance of how biased in favour of the Left they are. Even the economics prize is far from impartial. Apparently Hayek's Nobel in 1977 was another political fix. Hayek certainly deserved one but his co-winner was Gunnar Myrdal, whose merit was much more dubious. The terms of the Nobel prize in economics (actually the Bank of Sweden award for economics) prevented a Swede from getting the award until 7 years had passed from the time of initiation of the economics prize. Myrdal, a socialist, was a board member of the Bank of Sweden and in order to balance the ticket they gave Hayek the prize in a shared win. Myrdal was surprised he had to share with anyone. Hayek was surprised he got one at all.

Cut the military bureaucracy: "With commitments in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, no one disputes that the Army has a lot on its plate. But the consensus collapses when it comes to easing the military's charge. The disagreement has turned political -- John Kerry says the Army needs two more divisions, while President Bush argues such an expansion would be unnecessary. To meet its commitments, the Army has had to delay soldiers' retirement from the service and has temporarily expanded its ranks by 33,000 men. But when it comes to more permanent solutions, the Defense Department and some military experts say that much can be accomplished by improving efficiencies within the service."

NYT perpetuates a myth: "In your Sept. 13 edition, a "New York Times" analysis of President Bush's and John Kerry's respective approaches to dealing with the war in Iraq contained this error: "Richard M. Nixon declared in 1968 that he had a 'secret plan.'". I not only worked on the 1968 campaign as a full-time researcher but also collaborated as a writer/ researcher with Mr. Nixon on his memoirs. From its beginning in 1968, we have tried to correct the "secret plan" myth"

Michael Totten thinks that Israel has just about won its war against terrorists and says America will win in Iraq too if it sticks with it. Jewish World Review has an article saying that the Intifada is just about over too.

There is a new site up called Modern liberalism which uses graphics to give an explanation of what modern liberalism is.

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

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and big egos who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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PRIMITIVE LEFTIST MALICE

First, the propaganda: "Life, liberals believe, is meant to be pleasurable, God is forgiving if He exists at all, and it's important to think about others' feelings and motivations as well as your own. You might not like the idea of abortion, but it is important to allow people who believe differently to make their own choice.... Liberals are mannered, sensitive, armed with intellectual cynicism, self-critical, eager to learn from other cultures, wanting there to be no pain in the world"

I really loved those mannered, sensitive "liberals" demonstrating outside the GOP convention and elsewhere! And only SOME choices seem to be allowed: There's a definite Leftist NO to school choice! And since when did Leftists show concern for the feelings of the conservative students they regularly give a hard time to on America's campuses?

And here is another example of those wonderful Leftist manners: Pro-Kerry goons tearing up a little girl's sign

It is in fact a general tendency of Leftists to feel free to destroy the property of conservatives. I posted on that recently. Another good example is the way Leftists have just attacked and destroyed Mike Jericho's new site -- because he was foolish enough to trust them. Leftists have a primitive "tribal" morality. If you are not "one of us", you are fair game. Sophisticated and "eager to learn" they are not.

No wonder Leftists romanticize the primitive: "There are several things to be said about this worship of the primitive. First, it is absolutely illegitimate to do, as Polanyi does, and infer the history of pre-Western civilization from analysis of existing primitive tribes. Let us never forget that the existing primitive tribes are precisely the ones that didn't progress -- that remained in their primitive state. To infer from observing them that this is the way our ancestors behaved is nonsense -- and apt to be the reverse of the truth, for our ancestors presumably behaved in ways which quickly advanced them beyond the primitive stage thousands of years ago."

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Oliver Kamm and the Anti-Chomskyite have been giving Noam Chomsky a thorough debunking recently. I suppose someone has to do it. I have no taste for cleaning out the Augean stables, myself. The AntiChomskyite's conclusion is spot on. He summarizes part of what makes most Leftist intellectuals tick, in fact: "What is important to Chomsky is not the facts, nor any fealty to moral principles, but his own ferocious rage and desperate belief - and need to believe - in his own moral righteousness. Like all fanatics, it is his faith in his own rectitude and his own purity that not only gives him license to violate basic tenets of truth and logic, but also justifies the extraordinary leaps of moral bankruptcy in which we see him here" (Via Marc Miyake).

The latest barefaced Leftist lie: "College students are receiving alarmist e-mails warning them they may be drafted if President Bush wins re-election"

Radio Islam is an amazing site. It openly circulates and promotes the ideas of Adolf Hitler -- mainly because their own ideas seem to be the same. And it's headquartered in Sweden. Where else?

The Federal leader of Australia's Left says he wants no special deals for unions. Good if it's true: "Mark Latham has rejected any special deal with the trade unions, denies that he will re-regulate the workplace and says that his business critics misunderstand him."

Contrary to current American policy, Steve Sailer says that letting Turkey into the EU would be against everybody's best interests. Randall Parker seems to agree. I normally agree with both gentlemen but I think I am a bit more Machiavellian than they are on this one. I think that, whether Turkey gets in or not, the whole issue will eventually force Europeans off their moral high-horse and make them admit to ethnic and religious differences. For their sakes, I hope they will have enough sense to realize the danger of letting in a horde of 20 million Muslim immigrants before it happens but if they do let them in I will just be laughing at the resultant upheavals. It could even be the death of political correctness about race and multiculturalism. Whoopee!

Mrs Kerry's elitist view of her fellow Americans: "Oh, there is a lot of scumbags everywhere. Not just in politics. In everything. There are a lot of immoral people everywhere."

Australian Christians are getting organized: ""Family First" is a new Christian-based party that - sadly - is scared to admit to being any such thing. But by not mentioning its God, it has whispered out of nowhere to be a chance to share the balance of power in the Senate. We are seeing the birth of a new and canny conservative party, out in the grasslands of a religion represented for too long by big-city clergy who shared the politics of the cultural elite -- far to the Left of the people in their pews..... And this time it's not big-government Catholics, but free enterprise Protestants -- Evangelicals, Pentecostals and charismatics. Christians whose churches are booming with certainty, not sinking in doubt"

Che Guevara is likely to remain a cult figure for the more brainless Left. But, says Daniel Wolf, the man was a thug and a fool, and he helped ruin Cuba.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with a big list of reading.

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

New rubric below.

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and big egos who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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SOME ECONOMICS

The Third Way to happiness: "So-called 'happiness research' has been discussed at length recently with economist and TCS contributing editor Arnold Kling writing and blogging about it, and economist Tyler Cowen responding at his blog. That exchange, and the mention of a new book on the subject piqued my interest and some further research led me to the answer: 60% marginal tax rates, that's what will make society happy."

Some reasons businesses outsource to India: "Thanks to the public education system liberals have defended for the past forty years, many high school graduates are nearly functionally illiterate. Not so in India. Thanks to lobbyists and pro-union immigration laws, foreigners aren't allowed to stay in the country after they finish their Ph.D.s. So they're starting companies overseas instead of here. Thanks to our liberal tax system, employers have to pay extra for American workers to fund Social Security- which no one believes will be solvent in a few decades. Thanks to a legal system that favors the plaintiff, employers in the United States must worry about lawsuits over spilled hot coffee, trumped up sexual harassment charges, and other frivolous cases".

Recalling the 1998 tumble: "What was so terrible about 1998? It seemed a pretty good year to me. It was, after all, the sixth year after recession, so you would expect it to be better than 2003, merely the third year after a recession. As it happens, 1998 was also the fifth year of the Clinton administration. Yet I don't recall any rabid Republicans claiming 1998 was the worst economy in 50 years or the worst since Herbert Hoover."

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There is an excellent response from an Iraqi blogger here about the stupid accusation that the U.S. intervention in Iraq was just a "neocon" plot. A small excerpt: "He, as well as many "anti-war" people, do not understand how the war to topple Saddam and establish democracy in Iraq can be a part of the war on terror. I do believe, however, that the American official are not that stupid to deal so lightly with such a critical issue. Iraq is not an adventure. Toppling Saddam was never the main reason for the war and should never be thought of as this... This is not an adventure and this is not a neo-conservative dream. This is OUR dream". (Via Peg Kaplan).

Further to my post yesterday in which I derided the notion that "neocons" generally or "Straussians" in particular are running American foreign policy, it may be worth noting that Strauss himself did not believe in an imperial or a do-gooding foreign policy. Strauss's thought on the matter is summarized here as: "Thus according to Strauss, the purpose of foreign policy is or ought to be survival and independence, or self-preservation, and nothing else". As a classicist, Strauss could hardly have taught anything else, given the disaster that Alcibiades and the Syracusan expeditions brought upon the Athenians. So any influence from Strauss is in fact towards isolationism, rather than foreign involvements.

Good to see that even USA Today is calling Kerry a flip-flopper and describing his solution to the Iraq problems as "Murky"

Jeff Jacoby has a disturbing article on the rise of mail-in voting and the accompanying rise in electoral fraud.

Wow! Britain is ending its postal monopoly. One hopes it sets an example to others. "Royal Mail should face competition in the delivery of all post from 1 January 2006, regulator Postcomm has said."

Amazing: The Saudis have no respect for their own scriptures. They circulate an English-language version of the Koran that adds in heaps of extra anti-Western stuff that was not in the original.

Another ungodly priest: "A priest accused of bulldozing more than 2000 Tutsi villagers to death as they sought sanctuary in his church during Rwanda's 1994 genocide has gone on trial before a United Nations court charged with crimes against humanity. Father Athanase Seromba, 41, is the first Catholic priest to face charges at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda"

GWB needs to intervene to fix this: "According to many of the 27 million veterans who honorably served the nation during World War II and the Korean, Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars, being ordered to storm a beachhead or take the next hill or advance through minefields were not their most difficult assignments. Long after the memories of battle have faded, too many of the nation's veterans have found themselves in a no-win war to obtain benefits they were promised when they put on their country's uniform".

Why work in a socialist country? "In a country plagued by skyrocketing sick-leave costs, a new survey presented Friday found that 40% of Sweden's population believes it is acceptable to skip work because they feel tired or have trouble getting along with colleagues. The survey, by the National Social Insurance Board, also found that 65% of the 1,002 people interviewed think a stressful work situation is also a valid reason for calling in sick and collecting pay under Sweden's liberal social programs".

Should we detain terrorists without trial? "A forthright policy of preventive detention is an idea whose time has come. This is the most important implication of the historic rulings issued by the Supreme Court in the enemy combatant cases of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, Rasul v. Bush, and Rumsfeld v. Padilla. In Hamdi, five justices agreed that the president has the authority to detain terrorists, even when they are not charged under the criminal law and are not held as either POWs or war criminals under international law."

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

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Anti-Americanism is in epidemic proportions in France and Germany but most people don't realize that it is in epidemic proportions in South Korea too. And what do those three countries have in common? They were liberated by America. And what is probably the most pro-American country in the world? Poland. They liberated themselves. Ego defeats rationality all the time.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and big egos who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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THE "NEOCON" MYTH

There is another book here condemning "neocons" generally and "Straussians" in particular. These wicked souls are said to be behind a push to make America some sort of "empire". They LIKE big government and want to expand its influence worldwide.

I have no doubt that there are some "conservative" intellectuals who think like that -- particularly those who have migrated from the Left. But to say that such people are the power behind the throne in the current administration is absurdity of a high order. No doubt some of GWB's advisers do favour broadly "neocon" thinking, though I am sure there are big differences among them over actual policy. The point is, however, that GWB receives a wide range of policy advice from many sources. Practically every newspaper and TV station for a start is keen to give him advice, to say nothing of his many official staff. And it is GWB who decides what advice to take from the menu that is offered to him. And one thing nobody claims is that GWB is a "neocon". He is plainly a Christian conservative and that is of course the major theme of his policies. The idea that a handful of neocons would have more weight with him than would the many millions of Christian conservatives who put him into office is absurd.

The big obsession among the propagators of the "neocon ascendancy" myth is the current military involvement of the USA overseas. That is their "Aha!" factor. Neocons want a more activist foreign policy so the present involvements abroad must be an outcome of that. I suppose the involvement of Wilson in World War I, Truman in Korea, Johnson in Vietnam and Clinton in Serbia were "obviously" the product of a fiendish neocon plot too! The point I want to make, then, is that there are many reasons why America might take up military involvements abroad and "neocon" thinking is only one of them. And to attribute the present involvements to neocon thinking is quite simply perverse. The reason for America's present activist foreign policy is as plain as a pikestaff and is known to everybody. It is the outcome of one event: The fact that America was grievously attacked by Muslim fanatics on 9/11/2001. No country will last long if it ignores attacks on it and America has finally got to the point where it can no longer do so. It now just has to hit back in some way if the attacks are not to escalate. So it has moved to take down two of the world's biggest and most assertive Muslim power centres and bases of support for Islamic aggression. The "neocon" theory for America's actions ignores all that and just shows that those who hold it are as much out of touch with reality as conspiracy theorists always are.

In the circumstances, I was rather amused to see that there is a recent article in The Public Interest (the premier journal of the neoconservatives) which points out at great length that the support-base for GWB and the GOP is overwhelmingly "cultural". In other words, among GOP voters, economics plays second fiddle to concerns about things like abortion, guns and military strength. It shows that it is GWB's voters who want him to hit back at America's attackers. Another proof of the vast neocon conspiracy? Far from it. The article is in fact written by a Left-leaning author and is little more than a parade of exit polls and other voting statistics -- statistics that are publicly available for anyone to check (and I have checked some of them). So it may suit the neocons that GWB's voters want an assertive military response to the 9/11 attacks but it is the voters who matter. And I am sure that intelligent people like the neocons are not stupid enough to think that American public opinion will ever support America becoming any sort of empire -- though some of them can be remarkably naive, as George Will points out.

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There is a long and well-informed article by Sherwin Nuland (a doctor) in the Left-leaning "New Republic" about the history of eugenics. He of course hardly mentions that the support for eugenics in the 1920s and 1930s mainly came from the Left of the day but he does at least note that people like himself would probably have supported eugenics if they had been around in the Hitler era. He also notes that America was well ahead of Germany in introducing eugenic policies such as the forcible sterilization of the "unfit". His conclusion is perverse, however. He compares pre-war eugenics with the possibilities of genetic engineering today and implies that the two are just as dangerous. He concludes: "It all sounds very familiar. Looking backward, we can now see the danger in state-enforced policies of improvement, but too many of us have yet to awaken to the equally dangerous reality of improvement that is self-determined. We are once again standing on the slope, from the top of which the future we may be wreaking is already visible". In other words, he cannot see the difference between something that is voluntary and something that is State-enforced! How Leftist!

I made some disparaging remarks about Harry Truman a little while back designed to show that conservatives accept too uncritically the claims to fame of former Democrat Presidents. There often seems to be a view that the Democrats of yesteryear were really good guys who were not nearly as Leftist as Democrats today. I think there is something in that if we are talking of J.F. Kennedy but certainly not if we are talking about FDR, LBJ or Truman. I liked this summary of Truman's domestic policies by Oliver Kamm: "In the wider context of domestic as well as international policy, there has never been a President as hostile to business as Harry Truman. In November 1947, he proposed an economic programme of extensive price and credit controls, federal direction of capital to business, and rationing of consumer goods. The next year - Congress having refused to go along with the programme - he sent one bill after another to what he termed a "do nothing Congress" proposing price controls, a massive federal housing programme, a law requiring the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates low, and subsidised utilities".

Another indication of how far-Left the BBC is. Note this description of the ghastly North Korea: "North Korea emerged in 1948 amid the chaos following the end of World War II. Its history is dominated by its Great Leader, Kim Il-sung, who shaped political affairs for almost half a century." Note that the regime "emerged" rather than being the product of a Moscow-backed takeover by Communists and that the grisly Kim Il Sung is unapologetically assigned his own claimed title of "Great Leader".

Davids Medienkritik asks whether Saddam's WMDs were "fake but accurate" too.

New blog! Mike Jericho has just started a new group blog called "The Man Blog". There are lots of established bloggers in the group so there should be new stuff popping up there all the time. Mike asked me to join in so I have put up a few posts there to help get the ball rolling.

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

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Anti-Americanism is in epidemic proportions in France and Germany but most people don't realize that it is in epidemic proportions in South Korea too. And what do those three countries have in common? They were liberated by America. And what is probably the most pro-American country in the world? Poland. They liberated themselves. Ego defeats rationality all the time.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and big egos who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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SOME INTERESTING EMAILS FROM READERS

From an Australian reader: "Since arriving in Melbourne yesterday from bomb-scarred Jakarta, I've had an interesting re-introduction to Australian politics by my first three taxi drivers: (1) From the airport I was told by my (Punjabi-born) driver that the "Russian Jew" who owned his taxi was only interested in money and, in some connection, Israel had manipulated the USA, UK and Australia into invading Iraq; (2) From my apartment to office, my (Turkish-born) driver argued that the secular state had no future . not in Turkey, not in Australia, nowhere!; and (3) Returning from the office, my (Iranian-born) driver criticised John Howard's government for oppressing the poor people in Australia (various reasons) and saw no difference between federal and [ALP] state taxation as all governments are being manipulated by a secret elite. No doubt these views are in no way representative of Melbourne's cabbies but I am sure I've not previously experienced them so forcefully aired in Australia."

From an American reader: "Isn't it strange that the Left only seems to condemn John Ashcroft to be the Attorny General, but they never seem to condemn Reno for obstructing individual rights? What about cases to which the FBI under Reno committed such harsh tactics that resulted in civilian death like those of Ruby Ridge and Waco? Now I know that just because Reno made those tactics happen doesn't make people like Weaver or the cult in Waco a bunch of saints. Perhaps if Reno took a different approach other than using tanks or using FBI snipers, the results might have been different. Reno was also involved in forcibly taking Elian Gonzelez from his home in Florida. Why couldn't his family from America be allowed to adopt the child? The Left has the nerve to claim that Ashcroft is a danger to America and never seem to condemn any of Reno's tactics that were used in these cases. Gee, Ashcroft really sounds like a dangerous Attorney General to me -- Not. Under Ashcroft, none of these types of scenarios have ever happened. All Ashcroft ever did was look into if there were any terror sleeper cells. And all of a sudden the ACLU and other groups like that are pounding on him. Yet they never pounded on Reno for her unlawful tactics. The Left certainly favors fascist tactics, at least when it's one of their own up in a high place in the government."

And an email from a Leftist. I got one of the usual sort of leftist hate-mails from a Kerry fan called Suzee, to which I replied: "Only a hate-filled person would send such an email to someone they did not know. Try Valium" She replied: "Hmmm, valium is used to treat anxiety - not anger. Seems - your website was filled with a lot of hate and anger towards a man you obviously know nothing about. I'm not angry - just surprised at how stupid people can be. And when you create a factless website for anyone, on the Net to view you leave yourself open for criticism. The scary thing is, your probably a registered voter. They really should revoke voting privileges for those who can't pass a competency test or for those who can't answer a multiple choice test, showing they know all the facts about each candidate." Note the elitist dislike of democracy that is so typical of the Left: "They really should revoke voting privileges for those who can't pass a competency test". And someone who doesn't know the difference between "your" and "you're" thinks she is competent? Typical Leftist ignorance, more like it. The worst sort of ignorance, in fact: Ignorance that thinks it is competent. And her assumption that I am a registered voter is amusing too. If she had really looked at my site, she would have soon noticed that I am an Australian! Or perhaps she thinks Australians can vote in U.S. elections! All in all, I think she gives quite a good demonstration of Leftist "competence".

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ELSEWHERE

That good old generous taxpayer again: "Before federal flood insurance became available in 1968, there was little incentive to build on barrier islands since no private insurance companies would take the risk, and no banks would provide mortgages without flood insurance. But once the feds started offering the insurance (for an average $300-per-year premium), real-estate developers found mortgage bankers more than willing to lend them money, setting off a tsunami of new high-risk coastal construction. When Hurricane Frederick struck barrier islands off Alabama in 1979, for example, shattered beach cottages at Gulf Shores were quickly replaced by 14-story fully mortgaged condominiums. Federal flood insurance covers up to $250,000 for property damage to homes and $500,000 for businesses."

Good to see Czech leaders calling Cuba what it is. Note that in this report the BBC puts Havel's description of Cuba as a "dictatorship" in quotes -- indicating that the BBC does not think Cuba is a dictatorship. What the hell does the BBC think it is? A democracy?

The myth of voluntary unions: "But a basic understanding of the elementary economics of unionism, and of the history of unionism, explains why violence against competitors has always been an inherent feature of unionism, even apart from the 'violence' of state-imposed legislative privileges that unions enjoy. Historically, the main 'weapon' that unions have employed to try to push wages above the levels that employees could get by bargaining for themselves on the free market without a union has been the strike."

Trying to have that cake and eat it, too: "One of my colleagues back at SUNY Fredonia in the early 70s had been dabbling in real estate and finally bought a nice historical building in the middle of this little town. He not only liked to earn some income from his thoughtful investments in local buildings but also enjoyed the fact that he was instrumental in preserving a bit of the history of the town as he did so. No sooner had he bought his piece of history, however, my colleague had to face the city bureaucracy that wanted him to both preserve the building intact and to renovate it to conform with all sorts of government regulations."

That's Tinseltown: "There are many Israel-haters on the Left, but none more persistent, or rabid, than far-Left British actress Vanessa Redgrave. The mummified Marxist is a longtime enemy of the Jewish state. In 1977, Redgrave did a "documentary" titled "The Palestinians" that showed her in a PLO training camp, dancing as she waved a rifle over her head... In 1980, Redgrave proclaimed, "The State of Israel must be overthrown, there is no room for such a state.""

Middle-aged Madness does not seem to have permalinks but he has lots of good pictures up. If you scroll down to his post of 15th, you will see some particularly good ones of Mrs Bush and Mrs. Kerry. The pictures persuade me that John Kerry married for money.

The Usurer vigorously dissents from the view of Immanuel Kant being a libertarian. He is probably right. Kant is a pretty confused thinker in my view.

EDUCATION WATCH seems to have become my second most active blog. I always have heaps of stuff to put up there.

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

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Anti-Americanism is in epidemic proportions in France and Germany but most people don't realize that it is in epidemic proportions in South Korea too. And what do those three countries have in common? They were liberated by America. And what is probably the most pro-American country in the world? Poland. They liberated themselves. Ego defeats rationality all the time.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and big egos who will say anything to win applause

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