MORE ON ANTI-CONSERVATIVE BIAS IN ACADEME
Easily Distracted doesn't know how to spell "supersede" but nonetheless seems to think he knows all about anti-conservative bias at Swarthmore and universities and colleges generally. I don't suppose we should be surprised that it is mostly pretty ivory-tower stuff, however -- about how he perceives his colleagues and how things should be rather than how they are. Facts (such as what conservative students constantly report) are very thin on the ground. For instance, he says in point 10 of his post of 16th that being a registered Democrat doesn't tell you everything about a Professor's views or actions -- which is obviously true -- but he then seems to move on to the conclusion that it tells you almost nothing about a Professor's views and actions -- which is highly questionable to say the least. And add in the fact that almost all of the Professor's colleagues will be Democrats too and the whole claim about the irrelevance of party affiliation becomes absurd. Pervasive Leftism is not reflected in what is taught? Only Pollyanna would believe it.
He is right about some things, though: "In most of the humanities there's a default assumption that everyone around the table more or less broadly can be classed as a liberal, and a certain stunned incredulity when someone departs from that assumption". That in fact is how I got my first and only full time university teaching job. It was in a Sociology Department and it never occurred to anyone to make any enquiries of anyone about my politics. They just assumed I was a fellow Leftist and appointed me with immediate tenure. When I resigned 12 years later and sought teaching jobs at other universities, however, my politics had become widely known (my 1974 book ensured that) and I not once even got interviewed -- even though I had by then what would normally be considered the enormously attractive record of over 200 articles published in the academic journals. Fortunately, I didn't need the money by then but I would have liked to have done some more teaching.
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Saturday, February 21, 2004
ELSEWHERE
One of the most pervasive Leftist doctrines is what they call moral relativism -- which they use to attack any and all standards for behaviour. "There is no such thing as right and wrong", they say. The doctrine is a corrupt form of what philosophers would call "ethical naturalism" and I too am an ethical naturalist. I have therefore put up a very brief essay setting out my version of ethical naturalism and showing that ethical naturalism does NOT lead to the abandonment of standards that Leftists pretend it does.
Speaking of ethics, who do these professional "ethicists" think they are? What authority do they have for the rules that they apply? The only authority they seem to work on that I can see is whether or not something fits in with Leftist prejudices. A case in point: A noteworthy recent example of what most would see as unethical behavior comes from a professional ethicist at the University of Melbourne's Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics -- dealing with the half-baked plagiarism smear launched against frontier historian Keith Windschuttle. Without having actually read Windschuttle's book, merely a precis prepared by a hostile Leftist critic, this ethics teacher gave his "thumbs up" to the smear. At least he apologised a few days later. However the apology, unlike the original attack, was buried on newspaper back pages.
John Ralston Saul has pompously and at great length declared globalization to be "dead". A pity about the constant expansion of world trade! This is the sort of statement he makes: "Then came the explosions of September 11, 2001. In the following days, the world economy began plummeting into a depression. Corporate leaders hunkered down to their businesses, forgot about world leadership and, with a classic desire to reduce risk, slashed their investment programs, thus accelerating society's economic plunge". What total ignoring of the facts! A day or two after 9/11 my highly diversified share portfolio had lost one eighth of it value only and in six months it was back to where it had previously been. And it is now much higher than it has ever been. Some depression!
That Leftist hunger for publicity again: "The American feminist Naomi Wolf has accused a noted Yale University professor of sexually harassing her while she was an undergraduate, and alleged a long history of such events at Yale. Camille Paglia accused Wolf of staging a witch-hunt similar to those that swept New England in the 17th century and, in distinctly unfeminist fashion, of exploiting her looks to advance her career. Paglia said it was "indecent" of Wolf to wait for 20 years "to bring all of this down on an elderly man who has health problems, to drag him into a 'he said/she said' scenario so late in the game"."
Another feminist myth bites the dust: "Yet there's no evidence that most older men recoil from women of their own age. On the contrary, older men who remarry generally pick a woman from their own age-group — a trend that appears to be strengthening."
The charade of American education: "The advent of high-stakes testing is revealing more than just information on what American high school students know and are capable of doing; it is also revealing a significant shortfall between that assessment of actual skills and what schools have been telling students about their achievement and ability. For some students, the failure to pass a high school exit exam is the first warning signal they may be sorely unprepared for the demands of college."
Democrat Zell Miller's tribute to GWB has been reprinted all over the place so if you have not read it by now maybe you should. It is a portrait of a genuine, humble and decent man.
Amazing! Some lies about pre-invasion WMD intelligence originally put out in the Australian media have been taken up by the German press. David's Medienkritik nails the lies concerned. If it's anti-Bush, the German media will even go all the way to Australia for their distortions.
Krauthammer is very good on the amazingly hypocritical Democrat complaints about the Republicans engaging in "negative" advertising -- when the Democrats themselves have been nothing but negative in their comments about GWB.
My fellow psychometrician Kimberly Swygert has a powerful post on the follies of affirmative action in college admissions.
Wayne Lusvardi has put together two most revealing lists about how Democrats and Republicans are approaching the upcoming Presidential campaign -- emotionalism and abuse versus rational discourse.
The Wicked one has just put up some more jokes.
********************************
The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.
Another example of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries!
Comments? Email me here 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.
********************************
One of the most pervasive Leftist doctrines is what they call moral relativism -- which they use to attack any and all standards for behaviour. "There is no such thing as right and wrong", they say. The doctrine is a corrupt form of what philosophers would call "ethical naturalism" and I too am an ethical naturalist. I have therefore put up a very brief essay setting out my version of ethical naturalism and showing that ethical naturalism does NOT lead to the abandonment of standards that Leftists pretend it does.
Speaking of ethics, who do these professional "ethicists" think they are? What authority do they have for the rules that they apply? The only authority they seem to work on that I can see is whether or not something fits in with Leftist prejudices. A case in point: A noteworthy recent example of what most would see as unethical behavior comes from a professional ethicist at the University of Melbourne's Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics -- dealing with the half-baked plagiarism smear launched against frontier historian Keith Windschuttle. Without having actually read Windschuttle's book, merely a precis prepared by a hostile Leftist critic, this ethics teacher gave his "thumbs up" to the smear. At least he apologised a few days later. However the apology, unlike the original attack, was buried on newspaper back pages.
John Ralston Saul has pompously and at great length declared globalization to be "dead". A pity about the constant expansion of world trade! This is the sort of statement he makes: "Then came the explosions of September 11, 2001. In the following days, the world economy began plummeting into a depression. Corporate leaders hunkered down to their businesses, forgot about world leadership and, with a classic desire to reduce risk, slashed their investment programs, thus accelerating society's economic plunge". What total ignoring of the facts! A day or two after 9/11 my highly diversified share portfolio had lost one eighth of it value only and in six months it was back to where it had previously been. And it is now much higher than it has ever been. Some depression!
That Leftist hunger for publicity again: "The American feminist Naomi Wolf has accused a noted Yale University professor of sexually harassing her while she was an undergraduate, and alleged a long history of such events at Yale. Camille Paglia accused Wolf of staging a witch-hunt similar to those that swept New England in the 17th century and, in distinctly unfeminist fashion, of exploiting her looks to advance her career. Paglia said it was "indecent" of Wolf to wait for 20 years "to bring all of this down on an elderly man who has health problems, to drag him into a 'he said/she said' scenario so late in the game"."
Another feminist myth bites the dust: "Yet there's no evidence that most older men recoil from women of their own age. On the contrary, older men who remarry generally pick a woman from their own age-group — a trend that appears to be strengthening."
The charade of American education: "The advent of high-stakes testing is revealing more than just information on what American high school students know and are capable of doing; it is also revealing a significant shortfall between that assessment of actual skills and what schools have been telling students about their achievement and ability. For some students, the failure to pass a high school exit exam is the first warning signal they may be sorely unprepared for the demands of college."
Democrat Zell Miller's tribute to GWB has been reprinted all over the place so if you have not read it by now maybe you should. It is a portrait of a genuine, humble and decent man.
Amazing! Some lies about pre-invasion WMD intelligence originally put out in the Australian media have been taken up by the German press. David's Medienkritik nails the lies concerned. If it's anti-Bush, the German media will even go all the way to Australia for their distortions.
Krauthammer is very good on the amazingly hypocritical Democrat complaints about the Republicans engaging in "negative" advertising -- when the Democrats themselves have been nothing but negative in their comments about GWB.
My fellow psychometrician Kimberly Swygert has a powerful post on the follies of affirmative action in college admissions.
Wayne Lusvardi has put together two most revealing lists about how Democrats and Republicans are approaching the upcoming Presidential campaign -- emotionalism and abuse versus rational discourse.
The Wicked one has just put up some more jokes.
********************************
The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.
Another example of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries!
Comments? Email me here 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.
********************************
Friday, February 20, 2004
FROM BROOKES NEWS
More myths about Clinton's boom & bust economy The '90s boom owed absolutely nothing to Clinton's policies and neither did the recession. In short, he had nothing to do with either. The responsibility for these events lies entirely with the Federal Reserve.
Hollywood sickoes want hatchet murderer freed What kind of sickness has infected those Hollywood celebrities who defend mass murderers and sadists? A number of them have now demanded the release of Kevin Cooper, a homicidal thug who used a hatchet to massacre a family as they slept.
Why the Bush victory still worries China's militarists I have but one question for my American readers. Would you really vote for a group of politicians for whom China's generals are rooting? If so, perhaps Euripides was right after all: 'Whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.'
America has changed the world for the better Dr. Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari, former dean of the Faculty of Islamic Law at the University of Qatar has publicly endorsed President Bush's actions in Iraq.
Dr. Caldicott's Soviet connection CBC has financed a documentary about Helen Caldicott. What it does not contain is a report on her pro-Soviet activities and support for Leonid Brezhnev, the thug who ordered the invasion of Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan.
Taiwan 'free'; China 'not free': Freedom House technical study Taiwan is a free country - according to a technical analysis published recently by Freedom House - but not China.
Bush's deficit: fact and fiction The increasing ratio of spending and taxation to GDP has given many politicians the impression that the US economy can accommodate significant and permanent increases in government spending without impairing economic growth. This is a dangerous delusion.
Details here
***********************************
More myths about Clinton's boom & bust economy The '90s boom owed absolutely nothing to Clinton's policies and neither did the recession. In short, he had nothing to do with either. The responsibility for these events lies entirely with the Federal Reserve.
Hollywood sickoes want hatchet murderer freed What kind of sickness has infected those Hollywood celebrities who defend mass murderers and sadists? A number of them have now demanded the release of Kevin Cooper, a homicidal thug who used a hatchet to massacre a family as they slept.
Why the Bush victory still worries China's militarists I have but one question for my American readers. Would you really vote for a group of politicians for whom China's generals are rooting? If so, perhaps Euripides was right after all: 'Whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.'
America has changed the world for the better Dr. Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari, former dean of the Faculty of Islamic Law at the University of Qatar has publicly endorsed President Bush's actions in Iraq.
Dr. Caldicott's Soviet connection CBC has financed a documentary about Helen Caldicott. What it does not contain is a report on her pro-Soviet activities and support for Leonid Brezhnev, the thug who ordered the invasion of Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan.
Taiwan 'free'; China 'not free': Freedom House technical study Taiwan is a free country - according to a technical analysis published recently by Freedom House - but not China.
Bush's deficit: fact and fiction The increasing ratio of spending and taxation to GDP has given many politicians the impression that the US economy can accommodate significant and permanent increases in government spending without impairing economic growth. This is a dangerous delusion.
Details here
***********************************
ELSEWHERE
"Feminist" defends rapist -- and it wasn't even in a Muslim country: "Last July, a 20-year-old thug named Stewart Pearson soaked a rag in toilet bowl cleanser and Ajax and used it to smother 17-year-old Tina Phan while she was sleeping in her Terra Linda, Calif., home... Pearson raped and brutalized her. According to Phan, Pearson told her he had committed the same crime before and planned to do it again. Enter Rep. Woolsey. As first reported by the Marin Independent Journal, the outspoken feminist and anti-violence-preaching Democrat attempted to intervene in the case. She used her official stationery to send a letter to the local presiding judge in support of the convicted rapist"
Americans in France are now regularly abused: "While the number of Americans who visited France dropped in 2003, a great part of those who live in, or pass through France complain of a genuine harassment. "We've had it," they say." Americans should stop going there altogether. The howls from the huge French tourist industry would be really amusing.
Cambridge's religion researcher Phillip Jenkins notes that traditional Christianity is growing fast in Africa and South America while it is waning in Europe and much of North America. It is no longer a mainly European religion and the wishy-washy "modern" Christians are sidelining themselves. On another issue: Jenkins makes the interesting claim that the incidence of pedophilia seems to be no higher in Catholic priests than in other occupational groups -- and note that Jenkins is not himself a Catholic. He seems to miss the point that it is the habitual CONDONING of pedophilia by the Church hierarchy that is the towering offence. It is the bishops and Cardinals who allowed it to go on who should be in jail.
A brain-dead theologian:: "A. Roy Eckardt, emeritus professor at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, suggested that Christians ought to abandon the resurrection of Jesus, since it "remains a primordial and unceasing source of the Christian world's anti-Judaism."" He may be a theologian but he is no Christian. For 2000 years, the resurrection of Christ has been the central tenet of Christianity.
Outsourcing (ie U.S. firms locating some part of their production process out of the U.S.) is an emerging election theme in the U.S. Yet "Insourcing" (i.e. foreign firms outposting some of their jobs into the US) also is big -- roughly as big as the outsourcing. If you were stupid enough to stop the one you might lose the other -- and so gain nothing but disruption and impoverishment for all your meddling. But Leftists would like that, of course. Destruction is their only talent. Reason certainly isn't.
Computer programming jobs going to India: "Now I do not doubt that there are many computer programmers in the West who will, in the short run and maybe if they can find nothing else to do in the longer run as well, suffer severely. But it is also true that the availability to the West of much cheaper Indian programming power will create massive new economic opportunities in the West, and everywhere else."
Some links on Australia's mini-race riot recently here and here and here -- including a very conservative response from the leader of Australia's major Leftist party. Clearly, police behaviour in the matter was just the reverse of the usual old Leftist accusations made about them.
A bit of optimism from the NYT: "One major criticism of the Iraq war is that by invading Iraq, the U.S. actually created more enemies in the Arab-Muslim world. I don't happen to believe that, but maybe it's true. What the critics miss, though, is that the U.S. ouster of Saddam Hussein has also triggered the first real "conversation" about political reform in the Arab world in a long, long time. It's still mostly in private, but more is now erupting in public."
The Mufti of Australia has denied calling for a jihad in Lebanon this week and said that "he didn't support suicide bombing . . . in no circumstances".
Even the solidly democrat "Washington Post" seems to have become fed up with John Kerry's rubbery "policies" -- if you can call them that: "John Kerry has become the favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination without a detailed or clarifying debate on many issues.... Now, with the nomination seemingly within his reach, the Massachusetts senator must begin to more fully explain where he stands on the major challenges facing the country. That task is particularly important for Mr. Kerry because of his fuzziness on issues ranging from Iraq to gay marriage"
********************************
The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.
Another example of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries!
Comments? Email me here 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.
********************************
"Feminist" defends rapist -- and it wasn't even in a Muslim country: "Last July, a 20-year-old thug named Stewart Pearson soaked a rag in toilet bowl cleanser and Ajax and used it to smother 17-year-old Tina Phan while she was sleeping in her Terra Linda, Calif., home... Pearson raped and brutalized her. According to Phan, Pearson told her he had committed the same crime before and planned to do it again. Enter Rep. Woolsey. As first reported by the Marin Independent Journal, the outspoken feminist and anti-violence-preaching Democrat attempted to intervene in the case. She used her official stationery to send a letter to the local presiding judge in support of the convicted rapist"
Americans in France are now regularly abused: "While the number of Americans who visited France dropped in 2003, a great part of those who live in, or pass through France complain of a genuine harassment. "We've had it," they say." Americans should stop going there altogether. The howls from the huge French tourist industry would be really amusing.
Cambridge's religion researcher Phillip Jenkins notes that traditional Christianity is growing fast in Africa and South America while it is waning in Europe and much of North America. It is no longer a mainly European religion and the wishy-washy "modern" Christians are sidelining themselves. On another issue: Jenkins makes the interesting claim that the incidence of pedophilia seems to be no higher in Catholic priests than in other occupational groups -- and note that Jenkins is not himself a Catholic. He seems to miss the point that it is the habitual CONDONING of pedophilia by the Church hierarchy that is the towering offence. It is the bishops and Cardinals who allowed it to go on who should be in jail.
A brain-dead theologian:: "A. Roy Eckardt, emeritus professor at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, suggested that Christians ought to abandon the resurrection of Jesus, since it "remains a primordial and unceasing source of the Christian world's anti-Judaism."" He may be a theologian but he is no Christian. For 2000 years, the resurrection of Christ has been the central tenet of Christianity.
Outsourcing (ie U.S. firms locating some part of their production process out of the U.S.) is an emerging election theme in the U.S. Yet "Insourcing" (i.e. foreign firms outposting some of their jobs into the US) also is big -- roughly as big as the outsourcing. If you were stupid enough to stop the one you might lose the other -- and so gain nothing but disruption and impoverishment for all your meddling. But Leftists would like that, of course. Destruction is their only talent. Reason certainly isn't.
Computer programming jobs going to India: "Now I do not doubt that there are many computer programmers in the West who will, in the short run and maybe if they can find nothing else to do in the longer run as well, suffer severely. But it is also true that the availability to the West of much cheaper Indian programming power will create massive new economic opportunities in the West, and everywhere else."
Some links on Australia's mini-race riot recently here and here and here -- including a very conservative response from the leader of Australia's major Leftist party. Clearly, police behaviour in the matter was just the reverse of the usual old Leftist accusations made about them.
A bit of optimism from the NYT: "One major criticism of the Iraq war is that by invading Iraq, the U.S. actually created more enemies in the Arab-Muslim world. I don't happen to believe that, but maybe it's true. What the critics miss, though, is that the U.S. ouster of Saddam Hussein has also triggered the first real "conversation" about political reform in the Arab world in a long, long time. It's still mostly in private, but more is now erupting in public."
The Mufti of Australia has denied calling for a jihad in Lebanon this week and said that "he didn't support suicide bombing . . . in no circumstances".
Even the solidly democrat "Washington Post" seems to have become fed up with John Kerry's rubbery "policies" -- if you can call them that: "John Kerry has become the favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination without a detailed or clarifying debate on many issues.... Now, with the nomination seemingly within his reach, the Massachusetts senator must begin to more fully explain where he stands on the major challenges facing the country. That task is particularly important for Mr. Kerry because of his fuzziness on issues ranging from Iraq to gay marriage"
********************************
The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.
Another example of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries!
Comments? Email me here 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.
********************************
Thursday, February 19, 2004
WE WILL MAKE YOU HAPPY!
I have lost track of where I got this quote about happiness from and Google doesn't know it so maybe it is behind a subscription wall somewhere. I have commented on this subject previously myself here and here:
"In a recent New York Times op-ed touting his book, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, psychology professor Barry Schwartz criticized political reforms aimed at expanding choice. He argued that "for many people, increased choice can lead to a decrease in satisfaction. Too many options can result in paralysis, not liberation."... There is much to be said against this thesis. First, if choice makes us unhappy, why do so many of us stop patronizing mom-and-pop stores and rush to Wal-Mart the moment we get the chance?... Choice in the marketplace grows out of individual freedom. I want shoes. Many people are free to sell me shoes. That presents me with choices, requiring me to pay attention and to discriminate. What's the alternative? Government control aimed at limiting choice. Where's the evidence that that makes people happy?... Schwartz is a professor. If someone were to suggest that too many books, journals, and magazines crowd the shelves, that all this choice makes people unhappy, and that government could serve us better by restricting the number of choices, Schwartz and his ilk would scream like banshees".
There is a more reasonable article on what makes us happy here.
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I have lost track of where I got this quote about happiness from and Google doesn't know it so maybe it is behind a subscription wall somewhere. I have commented on this subject previously myself here and here:
"In a recent New York Times op-ed touting his book, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, psychology professor Barry Schwartz criticized political reforms aimed at expanding choice. He argued that "for many people, increased choice can lead to a decrease in satisfaction. Too many options can result in paralysis, not liberation."... There is much to be said against this thesis. First, if choice makes us unhappy, why do so many of us stop patronizing mom-and-pop stores and rush to Wal-Mart the moment we get the chance?... Choice in the marketplace grows out of individual freedom. I want shoes. Many people are free to sell me shoes. That presents me with choices, requiring me to pay attention and to discriminate. What's the alternative? Government control aimed at limiting choice. Where's the evidence that that makes people happy?... Schwartz is a professor. If someone were to suggest that too many books, journals, and magazines crowd the shelves, that all this choice makes people unhappy, and that government could serve us better by restricting the number of choices, Schwartz and his ilk would scream like banshees".
There is a more reasonable article on what makes us happy here.
*******************************
ELSEWHERE
Leftists have always hated free speech. The facts are deadly to them: "If reaction to Daniel Pipes' lecture on Tuesday (2/10) was any indication, fascism is alive and well at UC Berkeley. Pipes was invited by the Israel Action Committee and Berkeley Hillel to speak at the college campus known for its leftist politics. But ironically, the home of ''free speech'' and ''tolerance'' has shown itself to be distinctly intolerant to those who express political views other than their own. And Daniel Pipes happens to fit that description.... All of these combined make Daniel Pipes public enemy number one according to UC Berkeley leftists and especially radical Muslim students. Indeed, the Muslim Student Association (MSA) was out in full force on Tuesday, acting like the thugs and bullies they routinely accuse Pipes of supporting. There were about 50-70 of them, amidst a crowd of 700, and after failing to prevent Pipes from speaking, they did their best to try and disrupt the lecture and intimidate the audience.... The fact is, radical Muslim students and their leftist counterparts are the most domineering, destructive, and dangerous forces in higher education today. If we're to win the War on Terrorism, we may have to start with our own college campuses." {Pipes's own account of the matter is here}
Redoubtable economist Arnold Kling has another explanation of why so many academics are Leftist: "If your temperament favors freedom without responsibility, then there are certain occupations that are a good fit. Academic life is one of them.. The trick to having freedom without responsibility is to get paid without having to worry about where the money comes from. Most professors do not worry about fundraising or attracting tuition-paying students... Thus, we should not be surprised that their ideological bent is toward modern liberalism, which translates this personal preference into a political platform".
Red Cross criticizes Israel. How unusual! Antisemitism is nothing new to them. But the Red Cross is a European organization and antisemitism is of course very European -- even today
An unbelievable verdict. Australia has insane judges too.
The light begins to dawn: Dutch plans to expel up to 26,000 failed asylum seekers have sparked protests across Europe and led to threats of hunger strikes by those denied refugee status. The moves came as Britain finalised emergency measures to tighten welfare eligibility for immigrant workers before May 1, when the European Union admits 10 new countries.
Front Page has some extracts from speeches by made the Mufti of Australia (Sheikh Al-Hilali) in Lebanon which reveal him as being very anti-Israel. No surprises there. In Australia, however, he is viewed as a strong force for peace between Muslims and other Australians -- as this speech shows. We are probably lucky to have him. There is more on the matter here. My guess is that he is like any politician -- he says different things to different audiences. What he says to Australian Muslims is probably as good as we can hope for, however.
This article is presented as a commentary on just one American university. But most of it seems to be true of America's Left-dominated education system as a whole. Note that even Harvard needs to give around 20% of its "Freshers" remedial instruction in English. .
Peter Hitchens, a historian of crime amongst other things, sees Britain's new "FBI" as ending up more like a KGB: "Britain doesn't need an FBI abseiling all over the place, smashing down doors, clad in armour, waving Glock automatics and yelling 'Freeze!' It needs large, veteran coppers plodding the streets, radiating reassurance to the good and scaring the bad... since MPs were overtaken by collective madness after September 11, these PC police forces can now arrest and detain people in ways we used to think only happened abroad. Mr Blair, who does not care a damn for English liberty, keenly seeks to get convictions on 'lower standards of proof' while Mr Blunkett works away to get rid of jury trial".
Britain's "Saddam-gate": "Money illicitly siphoned from the UN oil-for-food programme by Saddam Hussein was used to finance anti-sanctions campaigns run by British politicians, according to documents that have surfaced in Baghdad. Undercover cash from oil deals went to three businessmen who in turn supported pressure groups involving the ex-Labour MP George Galloway, Labour MP Tam Dalyell, and the former Irish premier Albert Reynolds"
Carnival of the Vanities is up again -- though in a rather compressed form.
********************************
The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.
Another example of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries!
Comments? Email me here 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.
********************************
Leftists have always hated free speech. The facts are deadly to them: "If reaction to Daniel Pipes' lecture on Tuesday (2/10) was any indication, fascism is alive and well at UC Berkeley. Pipes was invited by the Israel Action Committee and Berkeley Hillel to speak at the college campus known for its leftist politics. But ironically, the home of ''free speech'' and ''tolerance'' has shown itself to be distinctly intolerant to those who express political views other than their own. And Daniel Pipes happens to fit that description.... All of these combined make Daniel Pipes public enemy number one according to UC Berkeley leftists and especially radical Muslim students. Indeed, the Muslim Student Association (MSA) was out in full force on Tuesday, acting like the thugs and bullies they routinely accuse Pipes of supporting. There were about 50-70 of them, amidst a crowd of 700, and after failing to prevent Pipes from speaking, they did their best to try and disrupt the lecture and intimidate the audience.... The fact is, radical Muslim students and their leftist counterparts are the most domineering, destructive, and dangerous forces in higher education today. If we're to win the War on Terrorism, we may have to start with our own college campuses." {Pipes's own account of the matter is here}
Redoubtable economist Arnold Kling has another explanation of why so many academics are Leftist: "If your temperament favors freedom without responsibility, then there are certain occupations that are a good fit. Academic life is one of them.. The trick to having freedom without responsibility is to get paid without having to worry about where the money comes from. Most professors do not worry about fundraising or attracting tuition-paying students... Thus, we should not be surprised that their ideological bent is toward modern liberalism, which translates this personal preference into a political platform".
Red Cross criticizes Israel. How unusual! Antisemitism is nothing new to them. But the Red Cross is a European organization and antisemitism is of course very European -- even today
An unbelievable verdict. Australia has insane judges too.
The light begins to dawn: Dutch plans to expel up to 26,000 failed asylum seekers have sparked protests across Europe and led to threats of hunger strikes by those denied refugee status. The moves came as Britain finalised emergency measures to tighten welfare eligibility for immigrant workers before May 1, when the European Union admits 10 new countries.
Front Page has some extracts from speeches by made the Mufti of Australia (Sheikh Al-Hilali) in Lebanon which reveal him as being very anti-Israel. No surprises there. In Australia, however, he is viewed as a strong force for peace between Muslims and other Australians -- as this speech shows. We are probably lucky to have him. There is more on the matter here. My guess is that he is like any politician -- he says different things to different audiences. What he says to Australian Muslims is probably as good as we can hope for, however.
This article is presented as a commentary on just one American university. But most of it seems to be true of America's Left-dominated education system as a whole. Note that even Harvard needs to give around 20% of its "Freshers" remedial instruction in English. .
Peter Hitchens, a historian of crime amongst other things, sees Britain's new "FBI" as ending up more like a KGB: "Britain doesn't need an FBI abseiling all over the place, smashing down doors, clad in armour, waving Glock automatics and yelling 'Freeze!' It needs large, veteran coppers plodding the streets, radiating reassurance to the good and scaring the bad... since MPs were overtaken by collective madness after September 11, these PC police forces can now arrest and detain people in ways we used to think only happened abroad. Mr Blair, who does not care a damn for English liberty, keenly seeks to get convictions on 'lower standards of proof' while Mr Blunkett works away to get rid of jury trial".
Britain's "Saddam-gate": "Money illicitly siphoned from the UN oil-for-food programme by Saddam Hussein was used to finance anti-sanctions campaigns run by British politicians, according to documents that have surfaced in Baghdad. Undercover cash from oil deals went to three businessmen who in turn supported pressure groups involving the ex-Labour MP George Galloway, Labour MP Tam Dalyell, and the former Irish premier Albert Reynolds"
Carnival of the Vanities is up again -- though in a rather compressed form.
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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.
Another example of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries!
Comments? Email me here 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.
********************************
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
ISRAEL'S RIGHT TO BE JEWISH
A good imaginary conversation with a Leftist over at Crusader War College:
Arlene Peck has a good column about Walid Shoebat, the former Palestinian terrorist who became a Zionist when he found out what lies he had been fed as a child. Another report about him is here
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A good imaginary conversation with a Leftist over at Crusader War College:
Leftist: "Israel should accept the One State solution demanded by the Palestinians!"
Me: "Israel doesn't want the Palestinians as citizens".
Leftist: "That's terrible, cruel, and unjust of Israel! Where could they go?"
Me: "The territories used to belong to Egypt and Jordan. They could become Egyptian and Jordanian citizens again, like they used to before the 6 Day War".
Leftist: "But Egypt and Jordan doesn't want them!"
Me: "So when Egypt and Jordan says they don't want the Palestinians as citizens, you accept THAT with nary a murmur, complaint, or suggestion that THEY are terrible, cruel, and unjust. BUT, when Israel says the same thing, you scream, holler, and jump up and down in "righteous" indignation, despite the fact that, since these people either used to be Egyptian or Jordanian Citizens, or born to former Egyptian or Jordanian citizens, makes the obligation fall upon Egypt and Jordan more than Israel! Or does Egypt and Jordan, in your eyes, have rights that YOU DENY ISRAEL?"
Leftist changes subject
Arlene Peck has a good column about Walid Shoebat, the former Palestinian terrorist who became a Zionist when he found out what lies he had been fed as a child. Another report about him is here
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ELSEWHERE
Edward Feser gives part 2 of his explanation of why so many academics are Leftist. He says that FEAR of Christianity and morality is a major motivator for such people. Problem: I share the philosophical views that Feser says are Leftist (atheism and moral naturalism) but am nonetheless generally conservative. So how come? Because I respect Christianity rather than fear it. So why don't I fear it? Because I am completely CONFIDENT in my atheism and moral naturalism -- which is probably a rarity. It should be stressed that Feser is talking about academics rather than the general public. In Australia, for instance, there is little overall association between religion and politics but among Australian academics in the social sciences and humanities, both Leftism and religious skepticism are overwhelmingly the norm.
There is another take on what makes Leftist intellectuals tick in Paul Hollander's book "Political Pilgrims: Western Intellectuals in Search of the Good Society". To quote one Amazon reviewer: "Political Pilgrims is the amazing story of how Western intellectuals embraced Marxist tyrants at the very moment their colleagues were rotting in prison cells, and the common people everyone claimed to be concerned for, were starving. The book relates how cultural and religious leaders from the West, including familiar names, visited the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and other communist countries, and told the most appalling lies"
And even at the local government level the Soviet mentality never dies. This was the Leftist mayor of Brisbane (my home city of about 1 million people) yesterday: "Population targets were needed to guide where people lived in southeast Queensland, Brisbane Lord Mayor Tim Quinn said yesterday. Cr Quinn said population targets should be developed across the region as part of a comprehensive regional plan, aimed at housing new arrivals in the right areas".
And some of the most barefaced Leftist liars are the teachers' unions. See here: Australian teachers' unions are publishing advertisements crying that government schools do not get as much money from the Federal government as private schools do -- completely ignoring the fact that most taxpayer funding for Australian government schools comes via the State governments not via the Federal government. The private schools, by contrast, get almost all their taxpayer funding via the Federal government. When you count in the State government money that the unions deliberately ignore, the situation is exactly the reverse of what the unions would have you believe. Can you imagine what a great education the lying low characters responsible for these advertisements are giving to the kids entrusted to their care? "How to deceive in ten easy lessons" would be an obvious curriculum item. No wonder a third of Australians send their kids to private schools.
Eleanor French Spreitzer has a good post about why America's Leftist elites send their kids to private schools while hypocritically telling everyone else about what a good thing public schools are.
Michael Ross has some background on the recent race riot in a predominantly black area of Sydney (Australia). One quote: "I know an Aborigine ... And he used to brag about how he would do pretty well whatever he wanted at school knowing the teacher could not do anything because he was an Aborigine". See also here
I have just put up on PC Watch a news release about BBC censorship that does not seem to have made it into the mainstream media. Blacks are apparently allowed to accuse whites of racism but whites are not allowed to question that.
"When [we] decided to send John 'Sue the Bastards' Banzhaf a box of chocolates for Valentine's Day, we ran into an obvious problem: How to avoid being sued by Banzhaf for contributing to his obesity? Here's a guy whose signature law school course is nicknamed 'suing for credit' and whose license plate reads 'SUE-BAST.' His crusade to cash in on our nation's love handles has reached such outlandish proportions that he has threatened to sue milk companies, pork farmers, school boards, fast food restaurants and perhaps even mom with her apple pie. Luckily, a solution presented itself. Before sending Banzhaf the chocolates, we asked him to sign a 'Valentine's Day Chocolates Liability and Indemnification Agreement.'" More here
The Wicked one has a whole lot of new funnies up -- mostly about getting old.
********************************
The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.
Another example of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries!
Comments? Email me here 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.
********************************
Edward Feser gives part 2 of his explanation of why so many academics are Leftist. He says that FEAR of Christianity and morality is a major motivator for such people. Problem: I share the philosophical views that Feser says are Leftist (atheism and moral naturalism) but am nonetheless generally conservative. So how come? Because I respect Christianity rather than fear it. So why don't I fear it? Because I am completely CONFIDENT in my atheism and moral naturalism -- which is probably a rarity. It should be stressed that Feser is talking about academics rather than the general public. In Australia, for instance, there is little overall association between religion and politics but among Australian academics in the social sciences and humanities, both Leftism and religious skepticism are overwhelmingly the norm.
There is another take on what makes Leftist intellectuals tick in Paul Hollander's book "Political Pilgrims: Western Intellectuals in Search of the Good Society". To quote one Amazon reviewer: "Political Pilgrims is the amazing story of how Western intellectuals embraced Marxist tyrants at the very moment their colleagues were rotting in prison cells, and the common people everyone claimed to be concerned for, were starving. The book relates how cultural and religious leaders from the West, including familiar names, visited the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and other communist countries, and told the most appalling lies"
And even at the local government level the Soviet mentality never dies. This was the Leftist mayor of Brisbane (my home city of about 1 million people) yesterday: "Population targets were needed to guide where people lived in southeast Queensland, Brisbane Lord Mayor Tim Quinn said yesterday. Cr Quinn said population targets should be developed across the region as part of a comprehensive regional plan, aimed at housing new arrivals in the right areas".
And some of the most barefaced Leftist liars are the teachers' unions. See here: Australian teachers' unions are publishing advertisements crying that government schools do not get as much money from the Federal government as private schools do -- completely ignoring the fact that most taxpayer funding for Australian government schools comes via the State governments not via the Federal government. The private schools, by contrast, get almost all their taxpayer funding via the Federal government. When you count in the State government money that the unions deliberately ignore, the situation is exactly the reverse of what the unions would have you believe. Can you imagine what a great education the lying low characters responsible for these advertisements are giving to the kids entrusted to their care? "How to deceive in ten easy lessons" would be an obvious curriculum item. No wonder a third of Australians send their kids to private schools.
Eleanor French Spreitzer has a good post about why America's Leftist elites send their kids to private schools while hypocritically telling everyone else about what a good thing public schools are.
Michael Ross has some background on the recent race riot in a predominantly black area of Sydney (Australia). One quote: "I know an Aborigine ... And he used to brag about how he would do pretty well whatever he wanted at school knowing the teacher could not do anything because he was an Aborigine". See also here
I have just put up on PC Watch a news release about BBC censorship that does not seem to have made it into the mainstream media. Blacks are apparently allowed to accuse whites of racism but whites are not allowed to question that.
"When [we] decided to send John 'Sue the Bastards' Banzhaf a box of chocolates for Valentine's Day, we ran into an obvious problem: How to avoid being sued by Banzhaf for contributing to his obesity? Here's a guy whose signature law school course is nicknamed 'suing for credit' and whose license plate reads 'SUE-BAST.' His crusade to cash in on our nation's love handles has reached such outlandish proportions that he has threatened to sue milk companies, pork farmers, school boards, fast food restaurants and perhaps even mom with her apple pie. Luckily, a solution presented itself. Before sending Banzhaf the chocolates, we asked him to sign a 'Valentine's Day Chocolates Liability and Indemnification Agreement.'" More here
The Wicked one has a whole lot of new funnies up -- mostly about getting old.
********************************
The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.
Another example of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries!
Comments? Email me here 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.
********************************
Tuesday, February 17, 2004
FREE TRADE HAS ENEMIES EVERYWHERE -- ALL SHORT-SIGHTED
GWB not excepted: He protected U.S. steel makers and thereby shafted U.S. steel users; He protected U.S. sugar producers and thereby sent U.S. candy manufacturing jobs off to Canada and Mexico
But it mainly seems to be Leftists who are trying to make a big deal out of the fact that lots of jobs are done overseas these days. In Australia, it is the Australian Labor Party and in the USA it is the Democrat Presidential hopefuls. The Italian Fascist dictator Mussolini did the same 80 years ago too. He tried to make Italy self-sufficient ("autarky") -- which greatly increased Italian poverty. John Kerry, however, is the last one who should be bringing up the subject: "The Kerry family business, H.J. Heinz Co. of Pittsburgh, operates 22 factories in the United States and 57 in foreign countries. I don't think that Kerry should shut down The Heinz 57, but he might drop the rhetoric and talk about trade responsibly. He should support, not trade's contraction, but its expansion, like George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and every president since Herbert Hoover."
There is, however, a difference between 'good politics' and 'good economics'. One of Bush's economic advisors, Gregory Mankiw (Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers) has got a lot of flak for noting the basic economic truth that 'outsourcing' (moving manufacturing and service jobs offshore) is ultimately good for Americans' job prospects. Why? Because the lower costs mean there is a bigger surplus to reinvest (and you need investment to create jobs) and the lower costs also mean that the American companies who move their operations to where it is cheapest are more likely to withstand international competition. This good economics seems regrettably to be bad politics -- as the argument has always been too complicated for many voters to understand. That the whiners are all trying to force everyone to pay more for all the goods and services that they buy might help some people to realize what is at issue, however. The basic reality is that jobs come and go all the time and trying to change that is like trying to hold back the tide.
Very often, of course, industry moves elsewhere because of excessive red tape and bureaucratic controls, something 'liberals' usually add to -- but you won't hear them mentioning that!
Free trade has done wonders for electic guitars. Most of them are now made in Korea and are both better and cheaper.
And many classes of jobs are a dodo everywhere: "A strange idea has taken hold that if jobs are lost in one place, then some other place must have gained them. Somebody somewhere must have gained the millions of farm jobs we have lost, for example. Lou Dobbs of CNN appears as obsessed with this bizarre notion as he once was with space.com. Even stranger, those afflicted with Dobbsian trade phobia assume the places that gained jobs must be other countries, not other counties. Yet manufacturing jobs could not possibly have moved to another country, since every industrial country lost manufacturing jobs since 1995 -- particularly China, Japan and South Korea. And the United States has a huge surplus in business services with every region in the world -- that is, the United States sells much more 'outsourcing' to other countries than it buys from them."
****************************************
GWB not excepted: He protected U.S. steel makers and thereby shafted U.S. steel users; He protected U.S. sugar producers and thereby sent U.S. candy manufacturing jobs off to Canada and Mexico
But it mainly seems to be Leftists who are trying to make a big deal out of the fact that lots of jobs are done overseas these days. In Australia, it is the Australian Labor Party and in the USA it is the Democrat Presidential hopefuls. The Italian Fascist dictator Mussolini did the same 80 years ago too. He tried to make Italy self-sufficient ("autarky") -- which greatly increased Italian poverty. John Kerry, however, is the last one who should be bringing up the subject: "The Kerry family business, H.J. Heinz Co. of Pittsburgh, operates 22 factories in the United States and 57 in foreign countries. I don't think that Kerry should shut down The Heinz 57, but he might drop the rhetoric and talk about trade responsibly. He should support, not trade's contraction, but its expansion, like George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and every president since Herbert Hoover."
There is, however, a difference between 'good politics' and 'good economics'. One of Bush's economic advisors, Gregory Mankiw (Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers) has got a lot of flak for noting the basic economic truth that 'outsourcing' (moving manufacturing and service jobs offshore) is ultimately good for Americans' job prospects. Why? Because the lower costs mean there is a bigger surplus to reinvest (and you need investment to create jobs) and the lower costs also mean that the American companies who move their operations to where it is cheapest are more likely to withstand international competition. This good economics seems regrettably to be bad politics -- as the argument has always been too complicated for many voters to understand. That the whiners are all trying to force everyone to pay more for all the goods and services that they buy might help some people to realize what is at issue, however. The basic reality is that jobs come and go all the time and trying to change that is like trying to hold back the tide.
Very often, of course, industry moves elsewhere because of excessive red tape and bureaucratic controls, something 'liberals' usually add to -- but you won't hear them mentioning that!
Free trade has done wonders for electic guitars. Most of them are now made in Korea and are both better and cheaper.
And many classes of jobs are a dodo everywhere: "A strange idea has taken hold that if jobs are lost in one place, then some other place must have gained them. Somebody somewhere must have gained the millions of farm jobs we have lost, for example. Lou Dobbs of CNN appears as obsessed with this bizarre notion as he once was with space.com. Even stranger, those afflicted with Dobbsian trade phobia assume the places that gained jobs must be other countries, not other counties. Yet manufacturing jobs could not possibly have moved to another country, since every industrial country lost manufacturing jobs since 1995 -- particularly China, Japan and South Korea. And the United States has a huge surplus in business services with every region in the world -- that is, the United States sells much more 'outsourcing' to other countries than it buys from them."
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ELSEWHERE
David's Medienkritik has a series of photos that prove that John Kerry is getting younger. We have all heard about the botox but the varying hair-colour is amusing too.
George Will has 28 excellent questions for the rubbery John Kerry. Just two of them: "You say the rich do not pay enough taxes. In 1979 the top 1 percent of earners paid 19.75 percent of income taxes. Today they pay 36.3 percent. How much is enough? You say the federal government is not spending enough on education. President Bush has increased education spending 48 percent. How much is enough?
A coverup uncovered: "The University of Newcastle's two top executives are to be replaced in the wake of a plagiarism scandal that has plagued the institution for more than a year." In my time teaching at a major Australian University, I was appalled at the lack of standards.
Jean-Francois Revel's recent book "Anti-Americanism" has a number of reviews on amazon.com. The last reviewer on the list makes a number of good points: "Revel concludes that the lunatic ravings of hatred for America and the opinionated ill will in much of the European media will only lead to Americans rejecting the idea of consultation. He believes that the USA's mistakes should always be subject to vigilant criticism but that the gross bias currently reigning will only weaken its exponents and encourage American unilateralism. The most important lesson from this book is that anti-Americanism is a disease, not a position. The prognosis is not good - Revel believes that countering this attitude with facts and reason will not work: " ... the disinformation in question is not the result of pardonable, correctable mistakes, but rather of profound psychological need.""
Looks like the Roman Catholic Church is still covering up for pedophile priests. The entire church hierarchy should be taken to court and be charged with the offence of being accessory to a crime. Honesty and decency seem to be beyond them. They've got the consciences of a maggot. You begin to understand the extreme Protestants who have always said it is the Devil's church, not Christ's church.
Australia's version of affirmative action has just given us race riots. When will the do-gooders ever learn? Strict and impartial policing is needed, not handouts for doing nothing.
Against UN influence in schools: In the 1960s, Dr. Robert Muller, U.N. deputy secretary-general, prepared a "World Core Curriculum." Its first goal: "Assisting the child in becoming an integrated individual who can deal with personal experience while seeing himself as a part of 'the greater whole.' In other words, promote growth of the group idea, so that group good, group understanding, group interrelations and group goodwill replace all limited, self-centered objectives, leading to group consciousness." Not much room for the individual there.
********************************
The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.
Another example of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries!
Comments? Email me here 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.
********************************
David's Medienkritik has a series of photos that prove that John Kerry is getting younger. We have all heard about the botox but the varying hair-colour is amusing too.
George Will has 28 excellent questions for the rubbery John Kerry. Just two of them: "You say the rich do not pay enough taxes. In 1979 the top 1 percent of earners paid 19.75 percent of income taxes. Today they pay 36.3 percent. How much is enough? You say the federal government is not spending enough on education. President Bush has increased education spending 48 percent. How much is enough?
A coverup uncovered: "The University of Newcastle's two top executives are to be replaced in the wake of a plagiarism scandal that has plagued the institution for more than a year." In my time teaching at a major Australian University, I was appalled at the lack of standards.
Jean-Francois Revel's recent book "Anti-Americanism" has a number of reviews on amazon.com. The last reviewer on the list makes a number of good points: "Revel concludes that the lunatic ravings of hatred for America and the opinionated ill will in much of the European media will only lead to Americans rejecting the idea of consultation. He believes that the USA's mistakes should always be subject to vigilant criticism but that the gross bias currently reigning will only weaken its exponents and encourage American unilateralism. The most important lesson from this book is that anti-Americanism is a disease, not a position. The prognosis is not good - Revel believes that countering this attitude with facts and reason will not work: " ... the disinformation in question is not the result of pardonable, correctable mistakes, but rather of profound psychological need.""
Looks like the Roman Catholic Church is still covering up for pedophile priests. The entire church hierarchy should be taken to court and be charged with the offence of being accessory to a crime. Honesty and decency seem to be beyond them. They've got the consciences of a maggot. You begin to understand the extreme Protestants who have always said it is the Devil's church, not Christ's church.
Australia's version of affirmative action has just given us race riots. When will the do-gooders ever learn? Strict and impartial policing is needed, not handouts for doing nothing.
Against UN influence in schools: In the 1960s, Dr. Robert Muller, U.N. deputy secretary-general, prepared a "World Core Curriculum." Its first goal: "Assisting the child in becoming an integrated individual who can deal with personal experience while seeing himself as a part of 'the greater whole.' In other words, promote growth of the group idea, so that group good, group understanding, group interrelations and group goodwill replace all limited, self-centered objectives, leading to group consciousness." Not much room for the individual there.
********************************
The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.
Another example of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries!
Comments? Email me here 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.
********************************
Monday, February 16, 2004
GREENIE CORNER
The very idea of climate engineering is a horror to the Greenies. "Don't change anything" is their fearful mantra. The fact that humanity has done NOTHING BUT change the natural environment ever since civilization was invented passes them by. Yet the beloved Greenie "Kyoto" treaty on global warming is just that -- an attempt to change our climate by turning back the clock. Since even its advocates admit that the Kyoto treaty would have virtually zero effect on climate, the real aim of the treaty is probably to turn back the clock rather than do anything about our climate but if the Greenies really are concerned about our climate, they would not be asking IF we should do climate engineering but rather HOW we should do it. And surely any global-warming believer would be looking at alternative ways of engineering our climate. Don't hold your breath, of course. This article looks at why alternative solutions are not being considered:
There is more on iron-seeding of the oceans as a means of soaking up any "excess" carbon dioxide here. The iron-seeding experiments so far HAVE worked but only temporarily -- the problem is to deliver the iron in a form that does not sink to the bottom so quickly. Since nature manages it, however, we should be able to do so eventually as well. Note how the National Geographic takes the same facts and turns them into blatant and emotional Greenie propaganda. Their argument -- if you can call it that -- seems to be that because nature does it one way, there is no other way to do it. Pathetic.
Farmers trump Greenies: "An effort to save two rare fish more than a decade ago could come back to haunt environmentalists after a recent court decision awarded millions of dollars in compensation to farmers who lost water in the process. ... The case stemmed from the government's efforts to protect endangered winter-run chinook salmon and threatened delta smelt between 1992 and 1994 by withholding billions of gallons from farmers in California's Kern and Tulare counties. Court of Federal Claims Senior Judge John Wiese ruled that the government's halting of water constituted a 'taking' or intrusion on the farmers' private property rights. The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits the government from taking private property without fair payment."
*******************************************
The very idea of climate engineering is a horror to the Greenies. "Don't change anything" is their fearful mantra. The fact that humanity has done NOTHING BUT change the natural environment ever since civilization was invented passes them by. Yet the beloved Greenie "Kyoto" treaty on global warming is just that -- an attempt to change our climate by turning back the clock. Since even its advocates admit that the Kyoto treaty would have virtually zero effect on climate, the real aim of the treaty is probably to turn back the clock rather than do anything about our climate but if the Greenies really are concerned about our climate, they would not be asking IF we should do climate engineering but rather HOW we should do it. And surely any global-warming believer would be looking at alternative ways of engineering our climate. Don't hold your breath, of course. This article looks at why alternative solutions are not being considered:
"Among environmentalists, adaptation is less popular than cutting back. But even less popular is the idea that we should find ways to intervene positively in order to create a better climate... There have been a number of proposals put forward for climate engineering. The simplest idea is to inject dust into the upper atmosphere using artillery shells or aircraft. The dust would then scatter some of the sun's rays back into space, cooling off the Earth. Another proposal is to add iron to the oceans, which would suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere by encouraging algae to grow.... Why have we cooled on the idea of climate engineering? One explanation is that we have become more aware of the difficulties involved. .. But history suggests a more complex reason. The reaction against climate engineering began in the 1970s, at the same time that environmentalism became a widespread outlook. The new environmentalism was not a simple response to scientific facts. Rather it was informed by a particular moral position, which prioritised the natural environment and problematised human intervention... It is an aversion to intervening with nature that explains climate engineering's bad reputation today, more than any practical difficulties. Leading climate scientist Stephen Schneider is strongly suspicious of what he calls 'geoengineering'. Although he cites scientific uncertainty as the reason, it is clear that he sees human consumption as a habit to be stemmed rather than aided.... For the moment, our capacity to intervene on a planetary scale remains relatively puny. Our ability to detect a human effect on climate is testimony to the sensitivity of our instruments and the sophistication of our theories more than the scale of our mastery of nature. Global warming may yet cause us problems, but compared to geological forces such as volcanic eruptions or asteroid impacts, humanity barely registers... However, there is increasingly some truth to the idea that humanity can have an effect on a planetary scale... Our knowledge of climate is not yet sufficiently advanced to undertake real planetary geoengineering. We have neither a precise enough understanding of global warming nor the confidence to understand the effects of intentional interventions. But as research on climate change advances, this is changing. It is entirely sensible to start the experiments with technologies - and the political discussions - needed for global engineering now".
There is more on iron-seeding of the oceans as a means of soaking up any "excess" carbon dioxide here. The iron-seeding experiments so far HAVE worked but only temporarily -- the problem is to deliver the iron in a form that does not sink to the bottom so quickly. Since nature manages it, however, we should be able to do so eventually as well. Note how the National Geographic takes the same facts and turns them into blatant and emotional Greenie propaganda. Their argument -- if you can call it that -- seems to be that because nature does it one way, there is no other way to do it. Pathetic.
Farmers trump Greenies: "An effort to save two rare fish more than a decade ago could come back to haunt environmentalists after a recent court decision awarded millions of dollars in compensation to farmers who lost water in the process. ... The case stemmed from the government's efforts to protect endangered winter-run chinook salmon and threatened delta smelt between 1992 and 1994 by withholding billions of gallons from farmers in California's Kern and Tulare counties. Court of Federal Claims Senior Judge John Wiese ruled that the government's halting of water constituted a 'taking' or intrusion on the farmers' private property rights. The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits the government from taking private property without fair payment."
*******************************************
ELSEWHERE
Chris Lawrence summarizes the discussion so far about the "conservatives are stupid" claim. Most bloggers have rejected the claim on the basis of survey evidence that Republican voters are better educated and have more political knowledge. None of them seem to have picked up my post referring to published evidence of a link between Leftist attitudes and low IQ. I suppose academic journal articles can be a bit daunting.
NewsWeekly has a good summary of why the post-Iraq war controversy is based on fallacies.
Iraq War: "The right mistake to make" says The Atlantic: "A policeman shoots a robber who has killed in the past and who brandishes what seems to be a gun. The gun turns out to be a cellphone. The policeman expects a thorough investigation (and ought to cooperate). In the end, if he is exonerated, it is not because he made no mistake but because his mistake was justified. Reasonable people, facing uncertainty, would have thought they saw a gun.... The war was based on lies. Not Bush's or the CIA's; Saddam Hussein's."
Should be a lot more prosecutions of "alternative" egotists: "A naturopath convicted of the manslaughter an 18-day-old baby who had a critical illness -- which he claimed herb drops had cured - - was today sentenced to five years jail. ... Mitchell was born with critical aortic stenosis, a heart defect which could be treated only by surgery. He died just days before surgery was to be carried out, after his parents -- on advice from Fenn that herbal drops had cured the baby -- cancelled the operation."
Those pesky genetics again: "People with hostile or aggressive personality traits may have genetic tendencies that make them "born to smoke," researchers at the University of California, Irvine, reported Thursday. Brain-imaging studies suggest that the same genetic variations that give people hostile personality traits may also make them more likely to become addicted to nicotine, said Dr. Steven Potkin, a professor of psychiatry and a brain-imaging specialist who led the study".
Unusual good sense from Harvard: "New York's government should also go beyond the tax waivers and credits it now provides and actually reduce the taxes on small businesses. This would ensure that costs of operating in New York do not prevent companies from expanding - and it would also increase the rate of tax collection because fewer businesses would dodge taxes. Finally, the Bloomberg administration should reduce the bureaucracy and red tape that often make running a legitimate enterprise in New York City a logistical nightmare."
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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.
Another example of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries!
Comments? Email me here 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.
********************************
Chris Lawrence summarizes the discussion so far about the "conservatives are stupid" claim. Most bloggers have rejected the claim on the basis of survey evidence that Republican voters are better educated and have more political knowledge. None of them seem to have picked up my post referring to published evidence of a link between Leftist attitudes and low IQ. I suppose academic journal articles can be a bit daunting.
NewsWeekly has a good summary of why the post-Iraq war controversy is based on fallacies.
Iraq War: "The right mistake to make" says The Atlantic: "A policeman shoots a robber who has killed in the past and who brandishes what seems to be a gun. The gun turns out to be a cellphone. The policeman expects a thorough investigation (and ought to cooperate). In the end, if he is exonerated, it is not because he made no mistake but because his mistake was justified. Reasonable people, facing uncertainty, would have thought they saw a gun.... The war was based on lies. Not Bush's or the CIA's; Saddam Hussein's."
Should be a lot more prosecutions of "alternative" egotists: "A naturopath convicted of the manslaughter an 18-day-old baby who had a critical illness -- which he claimed herb drops had cured - - was today sentenced to five years jail. ... Mitchell was born with critical aortic stenosis, a heart defect which could be treated only by surgery. He died just days before surgery was to be carried out, after his parents -- on advice from Fenn that herbal drops had cured the baby -- cancelled the operation."
Those pesky genetics again: "People with hostile or aggressive personality traits may have genetic tendencies that make them "born to smoke," researchers at the University of California, Irvine, reported Thursday. Brain-imaging studies suggest that the same genetic variations that give people hostile personality traits may also make them more likely to become addicted to nicotine, said Dr. Steven Potkin, a professor of psychiatry and a brain-imaging specialist who led the study".
Unusual good sense from Harvard: "New York's government should also go beyond the tax waivers and credits it now provides and actually reduce the taxes on small businesses. This would ensure that costs of operating in New York do not prevent companies from expanding - and it would also increase the rate of tax collection because fewer businesses would dodge taxes. Finally, the Bloomberg administration should reduce the bureaucracy and red tape that often make running a legitimate enterprise in New York City a logistical nightmare."
********************************
The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.
Another example of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries!
Comments? Email me here 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.
********************************
Sunday, February 15, 2004
U.S. "LIBERALS" ARE JUST LEFTISTS SAILING UNDER A FALSE FLAG
Joe Willingham emailed me as follows about my contention (post of 11th.) that all U.S. "liberals" today are in fact Leftists:
I largely agree with that. I think there was once a core of conservative values that almost all Americans shared. But that is all gone now, of course, and optimists like Porphyrogenitus are just living in the past.
Oddly enough, it is the other way around in Australia. Australia was once much more polarized than it now is. The two major parties in Australia today seem to share a broadly conservative consensus in most of the policies they put forward. Australia's two major parties have just agreed on measures to cut the taxpayer-funded perks of politicians. I may have missed something but I think that in the USA today, a similar proposal would be only a dream.
Mike Tremoglie has a very good sarcastic explanation of why HE is a "liberal".
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Joe Willingham emailed me as follows about my contention (post of 11th.) that all U.S. "liberals" today are in fact Leftists:
"American liberalism is in such a degenerated state today that it is easy to lose sight of some of the complexities of its history. FDR and Harry Truman, for all their faults, were great men who led the nation through World II and the beginning of the Cold War. Their liberalism was about security and a better life for the working man, and it had little in common with the demented "multiculturalist" victimology that passes for liberalism today. Don't forget that in 1948 American liberalism split into pro-Soviet and pro-western camps, and that to their credit the majority of liberals adhered to the latter. With the debacle in Vietnam liberalism fell apart, leaving only the pitiful caricature we see today".
I largely agree with that. I think there was once a core of conservative values that almost all Americans shared. But that is all gone now, of course, and optimists like Porphyrogenitus are just living in the past.
Oddly enough, it is the other way around in Australia. Australia was once much more polarized than it now is. The two major parties in Australia today seem to share a broadly conservative consensus in most of the policies they put forward. Australia's two major parties have just agreed on measures to cut the taxpayer-funded perks of politicians. I may have missed something but I think that in the USA today, a similar proposal would be only a dream.
Mike Tremoglie has a very good sarcastic explanation of why HE is a "liberal".
*********************************
ELSEWHERE
The courageous Edward Feser looks at why academics are overwhelmingly Left-leaning. He lists a number of explanations which do undoubtedly play a part but he omits what I think is the major factor: From my observations, Leftist academics are basically second-rate thinkers. Originality is the Holy Grail of academe but most academics in fact have nothing new to say at all -- so they say silly things just in order to appear different. They use perversity to create a false impression of profundity. It was precisely because I DID have something different to say that I got so many articles published in the academic journals. Even though my articles generally undermined Leftist views, their having that all-important originality got them published. And how my fellow academics hated me for it! In most years I got more articles published than the rest of my university department put together. That I could do easily what they found so hard to do was real heartburn for them.
Fun! The philosophy professor who said conservatives are stupid has now backed down!
Inequality -- the statistics: "The main reasons some families earn more than others are not as shocking as politicians would have you believe. Consider these horribly shocking Census Bureau facts about inequality: -- Families with two people have incomes at least three times larger than families in which nobody works. .... Mature, experienced employees earn at least three times as they did when they were young apprentices and trainees. Average family income was $16,014 among families in which the household head was younger than 24, but $45,978 when the household head was 45 to 54.... College grads earn at least three times as much as middle-school dropouts. For family heads with a bachelor's degree, median income was $78,518; for those with less than a ninth-grade education, median income was $25,077. If all this rampant inequality strikes you as grossly unfair, you should indeed consider electing politicians promising to do something about it. But they can't really do much unless they promise to take money from two-earner families and give it to no-earner families, to take money from those who go to college and give it to those who didn't bother attending a free high school... "
The National Center for Public Policy Research answers the ignorant Leftist nonsense about how bad it is for jobs to move overseas. It seems commonsense at first to think job loss is bad -- and Leftists of course play on that -- but it only takes a few minutes of thinking to see that getting rid of old jobs and replacing them with better ones is actually how we got to be so much better off now than we once were. You can't have economic progress and stand still at the same time. But what Leftist wants economic progress? Economic destruction is more their specialty.
George Will gives examples to show what any economist knows: Protecting jobs in one industry just leads to job losses in other industries. GWB's determination to "protect" America from half-price Australian sugar, for instance, just drives American candy-manufacturing jobs to Mexico and Canada. Clever!
"As for George Bush's military service, he served honorably and we submit that flying F-102s is dangerous business regardless of what hard-deck you're over. McAuliffe, Cleland and his opportunistic Leftist cadre should take note that every time they denigrate the service of Guardsmen and Reservists, they spit in the faces of hundreds of thousands of citizen-soldiers -- and their families -- who make enormous sacrifices whether serving on the front lines in Iraq or the home front."
Amusing. The NYT says that French cultural hero Albert Camus (not Irving Kristol et al.) was the first "neocon". Even though once a member of the French Communist Party, "Camus found himself ever more repulsed by Communism, which he called "the modern madness." He saw Communism as a desperate attempt to create meaning and certainty. He wrote, "Those who pretend to know everything and settle everything finish by killing everything."". This led to him being dumped by the Left.
In case you missed it, here is the direct link to the confession of Leftist bias on America's ABC TV news network. There is also a summary here which notes that the same has been shown to be true of CBS.
********************************
The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.
Another example of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries!
Comments? Email me here 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.
********************************
The courageous Edward Feser looks at why academics are overwhelmingly Left-leaning. He lists a number of explanations which do undoubtedly play a part but he omits what I think is the major factor: From my observations, Leftist academics are basically second-rate thinkers. Originality is the Holy Grail of academe but most academics in fact have nothing new to say at all -- so they say silly things just in order to appear different. They use perversity to create a false impression of profundity. It was precisely because I DID have something different to say that I got so many articles published in the academic journals. Even though my articles generally undermined Leftist views, their having that all-important originality got them published. And how my fellow academics hated me for it! In most years I got more articles published than the rest of my university department put together. That I could do easily what they found so hard to do was real heartburn for them.
Fun! The philosophy professor who said conservatives are stupid has now backed down!
Inequality -- the statistics: "The main reasons some families earn more than others are not as shocking as politicians would have you believe. Consider these horribly shocking Census Bureau facts about inequality: -- Families with two people have incomes at least three times larger than families in which nobody works. .... Mature, experienced employees earn at least three times as they did when they were young apprentices and trainees. Average family income was $16,014 among families in which the household head was younger than 24, but $45,978 when the household head was 45 to 54.... College grads earn at least three times as much as middle-school dropouts. For family heads with a bachelor's degree, median income was $78,518; for those with less than a ninth-grade education, median income was $25,077. If all this rampant inequality strikes you as grossly unfair, you should indeed consider electing politicians promising to do something about it. But they can't really do much unless they promise to take money from two-earner families and give it to no-earner families, to take money from those who go to college and give it to those who didn't bother attending a free high school... "
The National Center for Public Policy Research answers the ignorant Leftist nonsense about how bad it is for jobs to move overseas. It seems commonsense at first to think job loss is bad -- and Leftists of course play on that -- but it only takes a few minutes of thinking to see that getting rid of old jobs and replacing them with better ones is actually how we got to be so much better off now than we once were. You can't have economic progress and stand still at the same time. But what Leftist wants economic progress? Economic destruction is more their specialty.
George Will gives examples to show what any economist knows: Protecting jobs in one industry just leads to job losses in other industries. GWB's determination to "protect" America from half-price Australian sugar, for instance, just drives American candy-manufacturing jobs to Mexico and Canada. Clever!
"As for George Bush's military service, he served honorably and we submit that flying F-102s is dangerous business regardless of what hard-deck you're over. McAuliffe, Cleland and his opportunistic Leftist cadre should take note that every time they denigrate the service of Guardsmen and Reservists, they spit in the faces of hundreds of thousands of citizen-soldiers -- and their families -- who make enormous sacrifices whether serving on the front lines in Iraq or the home front."
Amusing. The NYT says that French cultural hero Albert Camus (not Irving Kristol et al.) was the first "neocon". Even though once a member of the French Communist Party, "Camus found himself ever more repulsed by Communism, which he called "the modern madness." He saw Communism as a desperate attempt to create meaning and certainty. He wrote, "Those who pretend to know everything and settle everything finish by killing everything."". This led to him being dumped by the Left.
In case you missed it, here is the direct link to the confession of Leftist bias on America's ABC TV news network. There is also a summary here which notes that the same has been shown to be true of CBS.
********************************
The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.
Another example of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries!
Comments? Email me here 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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