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

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