EUROPEAN DREAMS
A Jeremy Rifkin has just written a rather hilarious book called "The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream". It is amusingly demolished here.
And also here. Excerpt: "Professional worrier Jeremy Rifkin's pronouncements always remind me of the characterization by one-time Speaker of the House of Representatives Thomas B. Reed of his political opponents, 'They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.' Rifkin's assertion that Americans' consumption of beef causes domestic violence were absurd. So were his claims that biotechnology threatens 'a form of annihilation every bit as deadly as nuclear holocaust,' and that a small-scale field trial of a gene-spliced soil bacterium could change weather patterns and disrupt air-traffic control. He's at it again in a completely different realm in a new book, 'The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream' ..."
There is an article here by that learned dunce, Niall Ferguson (He thinks America should become an empire!) which argues that recent Anglo/American co-operation (e.g. Reagan/Thatcher and Blair/Bush) is somehow an aberration that must soon end. He says that Britain has more in common with Europe. He notes that, like Europeans, Brits are much less religious than Americans are -- but that seems to be his only substantial point. Really important facts, like the abhorrence most Britons have of the EU, he overlooks. And on the cultural affinities that will continue to bind Britons and Americans, I can do no better than to refer readers to the Anglosphere Primer. There is a more extensive demolition of Ferguson's surprisingly ill-informed article here and other criticisms by Mark Steyn here.
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Saturday, October 02, 2004
ELSEWHERE
Tom Galvin puts lots of good political pictures up on his blog -- though he is mainly concerned with the Presidential debate at the moment (like most political bloggers). He has two good pictures of union goons harassing little 3-year old Sophia Parlock. Leftists will use any violence they think they can get away with. I mention that in today's postings on EDUCATION WATCH too. Stalin and Pol Pot were no aberrations. They were just normal Leftists who managed to get unrestrained power. "By their fruits shall ye know them" (Matthew 7:20) and their deeds constantly reveal how much hate there is in Leftists.
There is a whole series here of photographs taken at various Leftist "protests" (really exhibitions) in the San Francisco area in recent times. My favourite is this series, which is prefaced by the remark: "People not from the San Francisco Bay Area often think that, when locals say such-and-such person or group is "Communist," they're being metaphorical, or McCarthyites. Far from it. Overt Communists and Marxists are commonplace around the Bay Area, especially at rallies like this". And this series probably shows best how exhibitionism is the underlying theme of Leftist demonstrating. "Look at me" is what it is all about.
Bush to support lifetime savings accounts: "President George W. Bush is expected to push for new tax-free savings accounts during the upcoming presidential race by promoting a bill by a fellow Texas Republican, Representative Sam Johnson. Under the Lifetime Savings Accounts Act of 2004, H.R. 4078, Americans would be able to contribute up to $5,000 a year to two types of savings accounts and withdraw money at any time without penalty."
Lights out on regulators: "If there's any lesson that policy makers should have learned from the electricity blackouts throughout California in 2002 and then on the East Coast earlier this year, it is that the wrong sort of electric power deregulation can cause soaring prices and leave consumers literally in the dark. In California, homeowners and businesses had to ration their electricity use, dim the lights, and turn off their air conditioners. A basic service we as Americans take for granted -- cheap and uninterrupted access to electric power for light, heat, running computers, poweringhair dryers and dishwashers, and accessing the internet -- was suddenly scarce."
Jefferson would be disappointed: "Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction." --Thomas Jefferson
The Leftist's anti-motto: "Remember that if the opportunities for great deeds should never come, the opportunities for good deeds are renewed day by day. The thing for us to long for is the goodness, not the glory." --F.W. Faber
Australia's most Leftist State government, led by Steve Bracks, wants phone-tapping powers (surprise!). Max Teichman comments: "Bracks is determined to give his Ombudsman such sweeping powers. I have little doubt George Brouwer is a man of integrity, but he could be replaced tomorrow and another government could use such powers as it saw fit. But as to this government's fitness; quite seriously, who would wish to entrust them with such powers? Amazingly, our civil libertarians who dined out on the evils of phone tapping for years, maintain a total, complicit silence. Like our feminists when the Afghan girl led her team in the Olympic parade. The first one ever. Not interested. Having screeched with the best of them about the US body bags certain to come out of Afghanistan, our feminists seem to have lost all interest when they didn't appear. Sod Afghanistan.
New search engine: The little-known United States company is taking aim at Google and other industry leaders such as Yahoo! with a new search engine called Clusty.com, due to begin this week after four years of fine-tuning. The search engine's name refers to the clustering technology that Vivisimo has refined to sort search results into different categories related to the initial search request. The technology aims to simplify online search by breaking down results into related categories instead of bunching them in a single listing that can span tens of thousands of links scattered across hundreds of Web pages... Vivisimo, a Pittsburgh company, has already has attracted a cult following". I tried it using the search-term "johnray". I liked the Google results best.
I have just put up on SOCIALIZED MEDICINE an article by a medical specialist reader who explains that the high costs of medical treatment in the USA are to a significant extent non-medical. A large part of what you pay goes to comply with purely bureaucratic requirements of the government and to line the pockets of trial lawyers.
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here
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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.
The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and big egos who will say anything to win applause
Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Tom Galvin puts lots of good political pictures up on his blog -- though he is mainly concerned with the Presidential debate at the moment (like most political bloggers). He has two good pictures of union goons harassing little 3-year old Sophia Parlock. Leftists will use any violence they think they can get away with. I mention that in today's postings on EDUCATION WATCH too. Stalin and Pol Pot were no aberrations. They were just normal Leftists who managed to get unrestrained power. "By their fruits shall ye know them" (Matthew 7:20) and their deeds constantly reveal how much hate there is in Leftists.
There is a whole series here of photographs taken at various Leftist "protests" (really exhibitions) in the San Francisco area in recent times. My favourite is this series, which is prefaced by the remark: "People not from the San Francisco Bay Area often think that, when locals say such-and-such person or group is "Communist," they're being metaphorical, or McCarthyites. Far from it. Overt Communists and Marxists are commonplace around the Bay Area, especially at rallies like this". And this series probably shows best how exhibitionism is the underlying theme of Leftist demonstrating. "Look at me" is what it is all about.
Bush to support lifetime savings accounts: "President George W. Bush is expected to push for new tax-free savings accounts during the upcoming presidential race by promoting a bill by a fellow Texas Republican, Representative Sam Johnson. Under the Lifetime Savings Accounts Act of 2004, H.R. 4078, Americans would be able to contribute up to $5,000 a year to two types of savings accounts and withdraw money at any time without penalty."
Lights out on regulators: "If there's any lesson that policy makers should have learned from the electricity blackouts throughout California in 2002 and then on the East Coast earlier this year, it is that the wrong sort of electric power deregulation can cause soaring prices and leave consumers literally in the dark. In California, homeowners and businesses had to ration their electricity use, dim the lights, and turn off their air conditioners. A basic service we as Americans take for granted -- cheap and uninterrupted access to electric power for light, heat, running computers, poweringhair dryers and dishwashers, and accessing the internet -- was suddenly scarce."
Jefferson would be disappointed: "Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction." --Thomas Jefferson
The Leftist's anti-motto: "Remember that if the opportunities for great deeds should never come, the opportunities for good deeds are renewed day by day. The thing for us to long for is the goodness, not the glory." --F.W. Faber
Australia's most Leftist State government, led by Steve Bracks, wants phone-tapping powers (surprise!). Max Teichman comments: "Bracks is determined to give his Ombudsman such sweeping powers. I have little doubt George Brouwer is a man of integrity, but he could be replaced tomorrow and another government could use such powers as it saw fit. But as to this government's fitness; quite seriously, who would wish to entrust them with such powers? Amazingly, our civil libertarians who dined out on the evils of phone tapping for years, maintain a total, complicit silence. Like our feminists when the Afghan girl led her team in the Olympic parade. The first one ever. Not interested. Having screeched with the best of them about the US body bags certain to come out of Afghanistan, our feminists seem to have lost all interest when they didn't appear. Sod Afghanistan.
New search engine: The little-known United States company is taking aim at Google and other industry leaders such as Yahoo! with a new search engine called Clusty.com, due to begin this week after four years of fine-tuning. The search engine's name refers to the clustering technology that Vivisimo has refined to sort search results into different categories related to the initial search request. The technology aims to simplify online search by breaking down results into related categories instead of bunching them in a single listing that can span tens of thousands of links scattered across hundreds of Web pages... Vivisimo, a Pittsburgh company, has already has attracted a cult following". I tried it using the search-term "johnray". I liked the Google results best.
I have just put up on SOCIALIZED MEDICINE an article by a medical specialist reader who explains that the high costs of medical treatment in the USA are to a significant extent non-medical. A large part of what you pay goes to comply with purely bureaucratic requirements of the government and to line the pockets of trial lawyers.
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here
**************************
That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.
The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and big egos who will say anything to win applause
Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Friday, October 01, 2004
A NEAR-FISKING
I rarely bother to fisk Leftist rubbish but there is an article here that tempts me. An evidently Leftist economist asks why the USA is more conservative (which he seems to equate -- rather narrowly -- with less welfarist) than most other countries. He says it is because the U.S. constitution makes change difficult and limits the power of the central government. He also says that Americans are less willing to spend on welfare because so many of the poor are racially different and most voters therefore have difficulty identifying with them.
The second point is undoubtedly true -- there has been research to support it -- but the rest of the article is lamebrain stuff. For a start, the author identifies the much greater Christian committment of Americans as part of their conservatism but nowhere explains how the constitution or the presence of minorities brings that about. Perhaps the great influx of Muslims into France and the Netherlands in the last 50 years has made those countries more Christian? There is no evidence of it.
And if the constitution limits the power of the central government, no-one told Abraham Lincoln. Nothing restrained him from actually making war on other Americans. And the claim that the U.S. Supreme Court tends to support conservatism would draw a horse-laugh from almost all conservatives. How many conservatives agree with the court's decisions permitting racial discrimination in favour of minorities on the specious grounds of "diversity", for instance?
The subheading of the article also proclaims that: "Europe is in the 21st century, but we remain locked in the 18th". I would have said that Europe has returned to the feudalism of the 12th century -- in that Europeans now as then are dependant on their political masters for most things -- rather than being as free to provide for themselves as Americans are.
I rarely bother to fisk Leftist rubbish but there is an article here that tempts me. An evidently Leftist economist asks why the USA is more conservative (which he seems to equate -- rather narrowly -- with less welfarist) than most other countries. He says it is because the U.S. constitution makes change difficult and limits the power of the central government. He also says that Americans are less willing to spend on welfare because so many of the poor are racially different and most voters therefore have difficulty identifying with them.
The second point is undoubtedly true -- there has been research to support it -- but the rest of the article is lamebrain stuff. For a start, the author identifies the much greater Christian committment of Americans as part of their conservatism but nowhere explains how the constitution or the presence of minorities brings that about. Perhaps the great influx of Muslims into France and the Netherlands in the last 50 years has made those countries more Christian? There is no evidence of it.
And if the constitution limits the power of the central government, no-one told Abraham Lincoln. Nothing restrained him from actually making war on other Americans. And the claim that the U.S. Supreme Court tends to support conservatism would draw a horse-laugh from almost all conservatives. How many conservatives agree with the court's decisions permitting racial discrimination in favour of minorities on the specious grounds of "diversity", for instance?
The subheading of the article also proclaims that: "Europe is in the 21st century, but we remain locked in the 18th". I would have said that Europe has returned to the feudalism of the 12th century -- in that Europeans now as then are dependant on their political masters for most things -- rather than being as free to provide for themselves as Americans are.
STRAUSS AND THE NEOCONS AGAIN
I said most of what I want to say about Straussians and the neocons on 21st. but I cannot help noting again that the "neocons" generally and Straussians in particular are everybody's favourite villain at the moment. We see here (in an article by De Lorenzo) how an attack on the Straussians by a Leftist professor is being welcomed by libertarians!
It's just scapegoating of course -- something Jews are all too familiar with. Instead of blaming a huge segment of the American people for supporting the policies of President Bush, moral cowards pick on a small group of history freaks instead. Hitler did the same. Instead of blaming the German people because so many of them went "Red" after WW1, he blamed the Jews for "manipulating" them. It's all in Mein Kampf.
One of the bones of contention between libertarians and Straussians centres around the contempt which many libertarians feel for Abraham Lincoln. I share the libertarian view. A man who brought about the death of half a million Americans in order to "free the slaves" -- when every other country in the world freed the slaves without a drop of blood being spilt -- is an utter monster in my view. Straussians however take the conventional view of Lincoln as a hero. De Lorenzo is of course one of the chief proponents of the libertarian view. There is a counterblast at him over that from a Straussian here.
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I said most of what I want to say about Straussians and the neocons on 21st. but I cannot help noting again that the "neocons" generally and Straussians in particular are everybody's favourite villain at the moment. We see here (in an article by De Lorenzo) how an attack on the Straussians by a Leftist professor is being welcomed by libertarians!
It's just scapegoating of course -- something Jews are all too familiar with. Instead of blaming a huge segment of the American people for supporting the policies of President Bush, moral cowards pick on a small group of history freaks instead. Hitler did the same. Instead of blaming the German people because so many of them went "Red" after WW1, he blamed the Jews for "manipulating" them. It's all in Mein Kampf.
One of the bones of contention between libertarians and Straussians centres around the contempt which many libertarians feel for Abraham Lincoln. I share the libertarian view. A man who brought about the death of half a million Americans in order to "free the slaves" -- when every other country in the world freed the slaves without a drop of blood being spilt -- is an utter monster in my view. Straussians however take the conventional view of Lincoln as a hero. De Lorenzo is of course one of the chief proponents of the libertarian view. There is a counterblast at him over that from a Straussian here.
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ELSEWHERE
The New Deal debunked (again): "Macroeconomic model builders have finally realized what Henry Hazlitt and John T. Flynn (among others) knew in the 1930s: FDR's New Deal made the Great Depression longer and deeper. It is a myth that Franklin D. Roosevelt 'got us out of the Depression' and 'saved capitalism from itself,' as generations of Americans have been taught by the state's educational establishment."
There is also a great cartoon here on how FDR's New Deal "helped" black Americans. A reader comments: "It reminds me of an old Al Capp "L'il Abner" cartoon strip. Abner's hero -- bumbling cop "Fearless Fosdick" -- meets some do-gooder liberals. They figure Fosdick is earning less than the minimum wage and promptly storm the police chief's office demanding an end to this illegality. The chief chews his cigar and looks Fearless up and down and says "Fosdick: scram, you're fired!". The liberals run off cheering and patting themselves on the back. Another injustice eliminated". There was a similar post on POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH yesterday, noting how feminist policies had "helped" women in Sweden.
Islamic democracy not so impossible after all? "Only six years after casting off the shackles of deeply-entrenched authoritarianism, Indonesians have gone to the polls three times in six months and elected themselves both a parliament and, for the first time in their history, a president.
Great stuff! Lawyers made to bear all the costs of a foolish lawsuit that they hoped to profit from: "Lawyers for a policeman who lost a court case in which he sought "hurt on duty" benefits were ordered not to charge their client yesterday, after the state's highest court called his appeal futile."
A defeat for the drug nuts: "The hemp food industry declared victory Monday in its three-year battle over the federal government's effort to ban sales and consumption of bread, protein powders and other food products made from the psychoactively benign botanical cousin of marijuana. Federal officials declined to appeal a February ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejecting the Drug Enforcement Administration's attempts to block sales and consumption of hemp foods.
"Children at the Australian International School in Jakarta are at risk from terrorists and the school will be forced to close unless Canberra boosts its security, according to the school's principal. School principal Penny Robertson has written to Prime Minister John Howard urgently calling for more funding for security at the school, which has been singled out for attacks in the past.... The school has been closed until after the Australian elections for fear it may be targeted by terrorists."
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here
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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.
The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and big egos who will say anything to win applause
Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
The New Deal debunked (again): "Macroeconomic model builders have finally realized what Henry Hazlitt and John T. Flynn (among others) knew in the 1930s: FDR's New Deal made the Great Depression longer and deeper. It is a myth that Franklin D. Roosevelt 'got us out of the Depression' and 'saved capitalism from itself,' as generations of Americans have been taught by the state's educational establishment."
There is also a great cartoon here on how FDR's New Deal "helped" black Americans. A reader comments: "It reminds me of an old Al Capp "L'il Abner" cartoon strip. Abner's hero -- bumbling cop "Fearless Fosdick" -- meets some do-gooder liberals. They figure Fosdick is earning less than the minimum wage and promptly storm the police chief's office demanding an end to this illegality. The chief chews his cigar and looks Fearless up and down and says "Fosdick: scram, you're fired!". The liberals run off cheering and patting themselves on the back. Another injustice eliminated". There was a similar post on POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH yesterday, noting how feminist policies had "helped" women in Sweden.
Islamic democracy not so impossible after all? "Only six years after casting off the shackles of deeply-entrenched authoritarianism, Indonesians have gone to the polls three times in six months and elected themselves both a parliament and, for the first time in their history, a president.
Great stuff! Lawyers made to bear all the costs of a foolish lawsuit that they hoped to profit from: "Lawyers for a policeman who lost a court case in which he sought "hurt on duty" benefits were ordered not to charge their client yesterday, after the state's highest court called his appeal futile."
A defeat for the drug nuts: "The hemp food industry declared victory Monday in its three-year battle over the federal government's effort to ban sales and consumption of bread, protein powders and other food products made from the psychoactively benign botanical cousin of marijuana. Federal officials declined to appeal a February ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejecting the Drug Enforcement Administration's attempts to block sales and consumption of hemp foods.
"Children at the Australian International School in Jakarta are at risk from terrorists and the school will be forced to close unless Canberra boosts its security, according to the school's principal. School principal Penny Robertson has written to Prime Minister John Howard urgently calling for more funding for security at the school, which has been singled out for attacks in the past.... The school has been closed until after the Australian elections for fear it may be targeted by terrorists."
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here
**************************
That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.
The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and big egos who will say anything to win applause
Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Thursday, September 30, 2004
FROM BROOKES NEWS
The Democrats, social security and the equity premium puzzle The Bush administration's proposal for social security accounts invested in the share market has been unjustly attacked by Democrats
Lefty journo slimes humanitarian Lib candidate The Herald-Sun's Luke McIlveen's slimy attack on NSW Liberal Senate candidate and bush poet Michael Darby not only showed McIlveen to be out of his depth but also bereft of journalistic ethics
Myths of the Asian economic crisis still dominate Without a doubt, the depth and suddenness of the economic crisis that swept through the Asian economies took most economists and investment advisers by complete surprise
Do payroll taxes kill jobs? There is a view among some of Australia's free-market economists that payroll taxes are not part of labour's gross wage and are therefore not a labor cost
Dan Rather and 60 Minutes conclusively prove that the Bush memos are not forgeries In this exclusive, Dan Rather of 60 Minutes fame provided Brookes' with irrefutable evidence that his forged memos are genuine
Details here
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The Democrats, social security and the equity premium puzzle The Bush administration's proposal for social security accounts invested in the share market has been unjustly attacked by Democrats
Lefty journo slimes humanitarian Lib candidate The Herald-Sun's Luke McIlveen's slimy attack on NSW Liberal Senate candidate and bush poet Michael Darby not only showed McIlveen to be out of his depth but also bereft of journalistic ethics
Myths of the Asian economic crisis still dominate Without a doubt, the depth and suddenness of the economic crisis that swept through the Asian economies took most economists and investment advisers by complete surprise
Do payroll taxes kill jobs? There is a view among some of Australia's free-market economists that payroll taxes are not part of labour's gross wage and are therefore not a labor cost
Dan Rather and 60 Minutes conclusively prove that the Bush memos are not forgeries In this exclusive, Dan Rather of 60 Minutes fame provided Brookes' with irrefutable evidence that his forged memos are genuine
Details here
****************************
I WAS WRONG
I note that Keith Burgess-Jackson has a post up explaining why he has reversed his view of President Bush and why he no longer advocates liberalism in general. Heaps of conservative thinkers have at one time been Left-leaning (including Ronald Reagan and Winston Churchill) so all of them must have had to do a lot of explaining at some stage. I am pleased that I have never had to do that but I am also pleased to say that I have been wrong in the past on some matters nonetheless. I am pleased to find that I was wrong because it shows that I have learned something.
The mistake I made which I most regret was to underestimate the good nature and tolerance of my fellow Australians. In an article I wrote in 1972, I expressed the view that admitting large numbers of ethnic Chinese immigrants to Australia could well cause racial strife -- as indeed it actually did in the Australia of 100 years ago or more. In the last 30 years, however, Australia has admitted large numbers of ethnic Chinese immigrants so that they are now probably around 10% of the population -- but there seems to have been no friction between them and other Australians whatever. Note however that it was my fellow Anglo-Australians that I doubted. I have never doubted the civilized qualities of the Chinese.
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I note that Keith Burgess-Jackson has a post up explaining why he has reversed his view of President Bush and why he no longer advocates liberalism in general. Heaps of conservative thinkers have at one time been Left-leaning (including Ronald Reagan and Winston Churchill) so all of them must have had to do a lot of explaining at some stage. I am pleased that I have never had to do that but I am also pleased to say that I have been wrong in the past on some matters nonetheless. I am pleased to find that I was wrong because it shows that I have learned something.
The mistake I made which I most regret was to underestimate the good nature and tolerance of my fellow Australians. In an article I wrote in 1972, I expressed the view that admitting large numbers of ethnic Chinese immigrants to Australia could well cause racial strife -- as indeed it actually did in the Australia of 100 years ago or more. In the last 30 years, however, Australia has admitted large numbers of ethnic Chinese immigrants so that they are now probably around 10% of the population -- but there seems to have been no friction between them and other Australians whatever. Note however that it was my fellow Anglo-Australians that I doubted. I have never doubted the civilized qualities of the Chinese.
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ELSEWHERE
There is an interesting post here (slow-loading site) describing in detail the various American public opinion polls. There seems to be considerable quality variations between them, with Zogby the trashiest. From my point of view as a long-time academic survey researcher, the whole lot of them seem very careless. The fact that every last one of them is a telephone poll seems amazing -- after the famous Truman/Dewey debacle. But telephone ownership would be more widespread now than it was in Truman's day so perhaps that source of inaccuracy pales into insignificance compared with other biases -- such as the tiny proportion of people called who actually co-operate. I was also amazed that only one poll takes precautions against the "curbstone" problem -- which is when the interviewers just make the results up. Checks against that should be routine. They certainly were in my practice. But the fact that the results are adjusted to make them representative demographically is probably what saves the day. Sacks of salt needed, though.
And if American public opinion polls are primitive, American voting seems to be even worse. I have never been able to understand how American voter registration is so slapdash and open to fraud. With people like Rush Limbaugh tackling the issue something might get done about it sometime maybe but it was Al Capone back in the 1930s who said "Vote early and vote often" so it is not exactly a new problem.
Amusing: Some old-line journalists are REALLY getting peeved at bloggers. But all they can come up with is a lot of self-righteous huffing and puffing. Long live pajamas!
The megalomaniac George Soros is stepping up his preaching against GWB. I wonder why he thinks that ordinary American voters are going to want to support his views? I think many would be more likely to resent him trying to tell them what to do. Amusing to see him wasting his money advertising on conservative blogs, though.
Columnist Molly Ivins wrote: "Defining "terrorist" or any "other" as an absolute, irrational evil gives us a spurious and intoxicating sense of self-righteousness. We become the Simon-pure contrast, thus missing any chance to consider if correcting or just changing our own conduct would be effective." There is a good reply to that here or here. Excerpt: "If you are unable to distinguish between the purposeful targeting of innocents, especially children, and the accidental killing thereof, then you are viewing the world through the prism of moral equivalence. One is pure evil whatever your motivation, the other is a tragic accident."
I have just put up here a touching story about one of the private deeds of President Bush. The story is verifiable though I am not in a position to verify it. It is however consistent with everything we know about the character of the man. It reminds me of the fact that many people who wrote to Ronald Reagan when he was President got replies from him in his own hand: What a gentleman!
There is a good New Zealand site here that gives both the Left and the Greens a pretty good going over from a liberty-oriented perspective. Lots to read.
Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its usual conspectus of the blogosphere.
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here
**************************
That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.
The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and big egos who will say anything to win applause
Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
There is an interesting post here (slow-loading site) describing in detail the various American public opinion polls. There seems to be considerable quality variations between them, with Zogby the trashiest. From my point of view as a long-time academic survey researcher, the whole lot of them seem very careless. The fact that every last one of them is a telephone poll seems amazing -- after the famous Truman/Dewey debacle. But telephone ownership would be more widespread now than it was in Truman's day so perhaps that source of inaccuracy pales into insignificance compared with other biases -- such as the tiny proportion of people called who actually co-operate. I was also amazed that only one poll takes precautions against the "curbstone" problem -- which is when the interviewers just make the results up. Checks against that should be routine. They certainly were in my practice. But the fact that the results are adjusted to make them representative demographically is probably what saves the day. Sacks of salt needed, though.
And if American public opinion polls are primitive, American voting seems to be even worse. I have never been able to understand how American voter registration is so slapdash and open to fraud. With people like Rush Limbaugh tackling the issue something might get done about it sometime maybe but it was Al Capone back in the 1930s who said "Vote early and vote often" so it is not exactly a new problem.
Amusing: Some old-line journalists are REALLY getting peeved at bloggers. But all they can come up with is a lot of self-righteous huffing and puffing. Long live pajamas!
The megalomaniac George Soros is stepping up his preaching against GWB. I wonder why he thinks that ordinary American voters are going to want to support his views? I think many would be more likely to resent him trying to tell them what to do. Amusing to see him wasting his money advertising on conservative blogs, though.
Columnist Molly Ivins wrote: "Defining "terrorist" or any "other" as an absolute, irrational evil gives us a spurious and intoxicating sense of self-righteousness. We become the Simon-pure contrast, thus missing any chance to consider if correcting or just changing our own conduct would be effective." There is a good reply to that here or here. Excerpt: "If you are unable to distinguish between the purposeful targeting of innocents, especially children, and the accidental killing thereof, then you are viewing the world through the prism of moral equivalence. One is pure evil whatever your motivation, the other is a tragic accident."
I have just put up here a touching story about one of the private deeds of President Bush. The story is verifiable though I am not in a position to verify it. It is however consistent with everything we know about the character of the man. It reminds me of the fact that many people who wrote to Ronald Reagan when he was President got replies from him in his own hand: What a gentleman!
There is a good New Zealand site here that gives both the Left and the Greens a pretty good going over from a liberty-oriented perspective. Lots to read.
Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its usual conspectus of the blogosphere.
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here
**************************
That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.
The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and big egos who will say anything to win applause
Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
AUSTRALIA MATTERS
An interesting email from one of my American readers:
"Perusing your postings, it occurred to me that your readers might not realize just how important your forthcoming elections are. Not just for your country, but for the course of the entire free world.
Mr. Howard has shown a sort of political courage depressingly rare in our times. His unwavering commitment to the battle against Islamofascism and his support of the war in Iraq truly mark him as a "Profile in Courage" - not that the Kennedy Center will be giving him any such award in the near future. History, though, will mark him as a great and important man.
Like Winston Churchill a half-century before him, though, Howard faces the prospect (though I note with pleasure, an apparently less-likely prospect than it was weeks ago) of being cast aside by his countrymen at the ballot box as a prophet without honor in his own time.
I believe I am not overstating the case when I say this could have calamitous consequences for global polity and the future of Western Civilization. If Howard were to lose, it is rumored that his successor will immediately announce the withdrawal of Australian troops from Iraq. Given the degree to which John Kerry's sister appears to be meddling Down Under, and what we know of the Kerry clan, I don't doubt that this is true.
If it should occur, the Kerry campaign will immediately seize upon this as evidence that the policies of the Bush administration are so hideously misguided that even our staunchest friends are abandoning us. Our media will then proceed to trumpet this beyond all reason as cause for alarm and consternation. It will be presented as the beginning of a great unraveling of what John Kerry disgracefully calls "The Coalition of the Bribed and Coerced."
While things look good for Bush right now, this is the sort of thing, coming as it would less than a month before our American election, that might provide significant momentum for the Kerry campaign.
I am naive enough to believe that somehow, some way, right will triumph. But I am realistic enough to know that it doesn't happen by accident. George Bush was elected President in 2000 by 700 votes in Florida. John Howard could well be elected Australia's Prime Minister by the 70 - or 7 - votes it takes to elect his party's candidate to a single Australian Parliament district. That alone is cause enough for concern in normal times. That it might well tip the U.S. election to forces that would preemptively surrender to an enemy that knows no victory but worldwide Islamic government is cause for alarm in our own.
May fate be kind to John Howard. History doubtless will be."
*********************************
An interesting email from one of my American readers:
"Perusing your postings, it occurred to me that your readers might not realize just how important your forthcoming elections are. Not just for your country, but for the course of the entire free world.
Mr. Howard has shown a sort of political courage depressingly rare in our times. His unwavering commitment to the battle against Islamofascism and his support of the war in Iraq truly mark him as a "Profile in Courage" - not that the Kennedy Center will be giving him any such award in the near future. History, though, will mark him as a great and important man.
Like Winston Churchill a half-century before him, though, Howard faces the prospect (though I note with pleasure, an apparently less-likely prospect than it was weeks ago) of being cast aside by his countrymen at the ballot box as a prophet without honor in his own time.
I believe I am not overstating the case when I say this could have calamitous consequences for global polity and the future of Western Civilization. If Howard were to lose, it is rumored that his successor will immediately announce the withdrawal of Australian troops from Iraq. Given the degree to which John Kerry's sister appears to be meddling Down Under, and what we know of the Kerry clan, I don't doubt that this is true.
If it should occur, the Kerry campaign will immediately seize upon this as evidence that the policies of the Bush administration are so hideously misguided that even our staunchest friends are abandoning us. Our media will then proceed to trumpet this beyond all reason as cause for alarm and consternation. It will be presented as the beginning of a great unraveling of what John Kerry disgracefully calls "The Coalition of the Bribed and Coerced."
While things look good for Bush right now, this is the sort of thing, coming as it would less than a month before our American election, that might provide significant momentum for the Kerry campaign.
I am naive enough to believe that somehow, some way, right will triumph. But I am realistic enough to know that it doesn't happen by accident. George Bush was elected President in 2000 by 700 votes in Florida. John Howard could well be elected Australia's Prime Minister by the 70 - or 7 - votes it takes to elect his party's candidate to a single Australian Parliament district. That alone is cause enough for concern in normal times. That it might well tip the U.S. election to forces that would preemptively surrender to an enemy that knows no victory but worldwide Islamic government is cause for alarm in our own.
May fate be kind to John Howard. History doubtless will be."
*********************************
ELSEWHERE
If you have not yet seen Paul Berman's article on Che Guevara and the recent film which makes a hero of him, you should read it. Excerpt: "The cult of Ernesto Che Guevara is an episode in the moral callousness of our time. Che was a totalitarian. He achieved nothing but disaster.... Che was a mainstay of the hardline pro-Soviet faction, and his faction won. Che presided over the Cuban Revolution's first firing squads. He founded Cuba's "labor camp" system - the system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims. To get himself killed, and to get a lot of other people killed, was central to Che's imagination"
Lester Dent has a good article on the counterfactual nature of most Leftist beliefs. He wonders why they ignore so much. But in the end he gets it pretty right by concluding that they implicitly say: ''Don't confuse me with facts, my mind is made up.'' He does not go on to the next step, however, of asking what function their mental fixations serve. They serve ego needs. They make the Leftist feel grand and wise and that is more important than the facts, pathetic though that is.
There is a thoroughly conservative article here that takes up the burden of finding a balance between liberty and paternalism. Conservatives have always thought it obvious that either extreme is fit for simple minds only. Simplistic formulas such as "The community comes first" (Leftists) or "No government at all is needed" (extreme libertarians) just don't fit the complexity of the real world. So conservatives give themselves the difficult task of finding a balance. That's why the article concerned is a long one.
The American Voice is an interesting site -- with lots of politically-relevant facts and figures. Facts can be misleading out of context (Noam Chomsky is proof of that) but there are a lot of interesting starting points in what he lists.
Don't knock the drug companies: "In general, the benefits of new drugs outweigh the costs by a substantial margin."
Amusing: One of the people behind Clinton's successful political strategy was a Straussian -- a dreaded "neocon". Pity he wasn't a Jew as well. That would REALLY have got the Leftist conspiracy theorists frothing at the mouth.
There is a new counter-Michael Moore movie out. The trailer for the movie is excellent, particularly regarding the Left's "liking a dictator" if "free health care is provided."
Amusing: Some libertarians are trying to get into the Australian Senate in the forthcoming Federal election on Oct., 9th. Buckley's, of course.
Mark Steyn's site seemed to have been taken down last couple of times that I tried to log on. Leftist vandalism?
Every now and again I get an email from a fellow-conservative blogger asking irately why they are not on my blogroll. I am happy to concede their right to be on my blogroll and always add them but I do get a bit of a laugh out of anybody assuming a "right" to be there. Since I must have about 300 links on my blogroll by now, I doubt that having one more or less does anybody much good anyway. Sending me details of a post that I might link to would do other bloggers a lot more good.
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here
**************************
That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.
The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and big egos who will say anything to win applause
Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
If you have not yet seen Paul Berman's article on Che Guevara and the recent film which makes a hero of him, you should read it. Excerpt: "The cult of Ernesto Che Guevara is an episode in the moral callousness of our time. Che was a totalitarian. He achieved nothing but disaster.... Che was a mainstay of the hardline pro-Soviet faction, and his faction won. Che presided over the Cuban Revolution's first firing squads. He founded Cuba's "labor camp" system - the system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims. To get himself killed, and to get a lot of other people killed, was central to Che's imagination"
Lester Dent has a good article on the counterfactual nature of most Leftist beliefs. He wonders why they ignore so much. But in the end he gets it pretty right by concluding that they implicitly say: ''Don't confuse me with facts, my mind is made up.'' He does not go on to the next step, however, of asking what function their mental fixations serve. They serve ego needs. They make the Leftist feel grand and wise and that is more important than the facts, pathetic though that is.
There is a thoroughly conservative article here that takes up the burden of finding a balance between liberty and paternalism. Conservatives have always thought it obvious that either extreme is fit for simple minds only. Simplistic formulas such as "The community comes first" (Leftists) or "No government at all is needed" (extreme libertarians) just don't fit the complexity of the real world. So conservatives give themselves the difficult task of finding a balance. That's why the article concerned is a long one.
The American Voice is an interesting site -- with lots of politically-relevant facts and figures. Facts can be misleading out of context (Noam Chomsky is proof of that) but there are a lot of interesting starting points in what he lists.
Don't knock the drug companies: "In general, the benefits of new drugs outweigh the costs by a substantial margin."
Amusing: One of the people behind Clinton's successful political strategy was a Straussian -- a dreaded "neocon". Pity he wasn't a Jew as well. That would REALLY have got the Leftist conspiracy theorists frothing at the mouth.
There is a new counter-Michael Moore movie out. The trailer for the movie is excellent, particularly regarding the Left's "liking a dictator" if "free health care is provided."
Amusing: Some libertarians are trying to get into the Australian Senate in the forthcoming Federal election on Oct., 9th. Buckley's, of course.
Mark Steyn's site seemed to have been taken down last couple of times that I tried to log on. Leftist vandalism?
Every now and again I get an email from a fellow-conservative blogger asking irately why they are not on my blogroll. I am happy to concede their right to be on my blogroll and always add them but I do get a bit of a laugh out of anybody assuming a "right" to be there. Since I must have about 300 links on my blogroll by now, I doubt that having one more or less does anybody much good anyway. Sending me details of a post that I might link to would do other bloggers a lot more good.
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here
**************************
That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.
The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and big egos who will say anything to win applause
Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
ECONOMICS
EU wants to criminalize work: "EU states will find it harder to opt out of the Union's 48 hour maximum working week under new proposals. The European Commission says it wants to tighten loopholes in its Working Time Directive in order to limit the time employees spend at work. The changes would mean workers would be able to work more than 48 hours a week only if employers and unions reached a collective agreement. The government has vowed to fight the plans when they come up for approval. Any changes will need to be voted on by the European Parliament before they come into force. UK business leaders have argued that the proposals will increase bureaucracy while unions said the proposed changes did not go far enough".
Lower female average earnings are fair: "An Aug. 26 report from the U.S. Census Bureau stated that the median female full-time wage for women was 75.5 cents for every dollar similarly earned by men; that's down .6 percent from 2002. Gender feminists quickly cried "discrimination is increasing!" ...BUT... "women have fewer years of work experience, work fewer hours per year, are less likely to work a full-time schedule, and leave the labor force for longer periods of time than men.".... Indeed, when you factor out variables like having children, the wage gap virtually disappears. In their book "Women's Figures" (1999), economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth and Christine Stolba meticulously compared data on the earnings of childless men and women aged 27 to 33. They found that the wage gap shrank to 98 cents"
The economics of happy feet: "Even in the poorest countries, shoes are available everywhere and at rock bottom prices. One of the great miseries of living in the third world used to be the aches and pains associated with poor quality footwear (if you could find it at all). But no more. American capitalist "excess" that led entrepreneurs to pay workers in China and Indonesia to make shoes for American consumers has yielded surpluses that spread affordable shoes to all corners of the globe. Today a peasant in the fields of a Guatemalan village wears shoes that medieval lords would have traded for their own models made of wood and leather."
"The real outsourcers are to be found among regulators, trial lawyers, and environmental groups whose cumulative actions have devastated once-flourishing industries and the communities in which they were located. Their deeds have consigned hundreds of thousands of Americans to the ranks of the unemployed. Meanwhile, the jobs these people once had have been gleefully picked up by foreign workers..... In the last decade alone, over 900 mills, pulp and paper plants, and other forest products facilities have closed in the U.S., with a loss of over 130,000 jobs... These are real job losses, courtesy of real outsourcers."
A reader who is a teacher points to another cause of outsourcing: American workers are too poorly educated to make good employees on many occasions these days. "The left has outsourced education. Their insistence that disruptive children be kept in the classroom as part of their rights, their insistence that memorization and skills are tools of oppression, their convictions that kids need to have self-esteem without earning it, their insistence that testing is just a way of putting kids down -- all these stupid ideas and more have made sure that a kid in India who sits through the good old British education system can add better, write better, and think more clearly than their American counterpart"
********************************
EU wants to criminalize work: "EU states will find it harder to opt out of the Union's 48 hour maximum working week under new proposals. The European Commission says it wants to tighten loopholes in its Working Time Directive in order to limit the time employees spend at work. The changes would mean workers would be able to work more than 48 hours a week only if employers and unions reached a collective agreement. The government has vowed to fight the plans when they come up for approval. Any changes will need to be voted on by the European Parliament before they come into force. UK business leaders have argued that the proposals will increase bureaucracy while unions said the proposed changes did not go far enough".
Lower female average earnings are fair: "An Aug. 26 report from the U.S. Census Bureau stated that the median female full-time wage for women was 75.5 cents for every dollar similarly earned by men; that's down .6 percent from 2002. Gender feminists quickly cried "discrimination is increasing!" ...BUT... "women have fewer years of work experience, work fewer hours per year, are less likely to work a full-time schedule, and leave the labor force for longer periods of time than men.".... Indeed, when you factor out variables like having children, the wage gap virtually disappears. In their book "Women's Figures" (1999), economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth and Christine Stolba meticulously compared data on the earnings of childless men and women aged 27 to 33. They found that the wage gap shrank to 98 cents"
The economics of happy feet: "Even in the poorest countries, shoes are available everywhere and at rock bottom prices. One of the great miseries of living in the third world used to be the aches and pains associated with poor quality footwear (if you could find it at all). But no more. American capitalist "excess" that led entrepreneurs to pay workers in China and Indonesia to make shoes for American consumers has yielded surpluses that spread affordable shoes to all corners of the globe. Today a peasant in the fields of a Guatemalan village wears shoes that medieval lords would have traded for their own models made of wood and leather."
"The real outsourcers are to be found among regulators, trial lawyers, and environmental groups whose cumulative actions have devastated once-flourishing industries and the communities in which they were located. Their deeds have consigned hundreds of thousands of Americans to the ranks of the unemployed. Meanwhile, the jobs these people once had have been gleefully picked up by foreign workers..... In the last decade alone, over 900 mills, pulp and paper plants, and other forest products facilities have closed in the U.S., with a loss of over 130,000 jobs... These are real job losses, courtesy of real outsourcers."
A reader who is a teacher points to another cause of outsourcing: American workers are too poorly educated to make good employees on many occasions these days. "The left has outsourced education. Their insistence that disruptive children be kept in the classroom as part of their rights, their insistence that memorization and skills are tools of oppression, their convictions that kids need to have self-esteem without earning it, their insistence that testing is just a way of putting kids down -- all these stupid ideas and more have made sure that a kid in India who sits through the good old British education system can add better, write better, and think more clearly than their American counterpart"
********************************
ELSEWHERE
Some progress: "A "white list" of 10 nations from which asylum applications will be presumed to be false by all European Union countries is to go ahead, despite warnings of human rights violations. The list of "safe countries" covers seven African states, including Benin, Botswana, Ghana, Mali and Senegal, as well as Chile, Costa Rica and Uruguay. The European list is modelled on the British system, which presumes asylum claims from designated "safe" countries are unfounded and applicants fast-tracked for removal. The system has operated since 1993. The EU list will form a cornerstone of the new common European asylum policy"
Immigration elitism: "Huntington's discussion of mindless immigrationism is one of the reasons for the hostile reception to his book. He points to the now commonplace distinction between the "elites" and the general public and the clear differences in their attitudes to immigration. It is easy enough to dismiss the reservations of the electorate as a product of ignorance, xenophobia, fear of the unknown, unfounded fears of competition for their own jobs or whatever. Denigration of the attitudes of ordinary people is routine for the elites. But not all these concerns are totally unfounded.."
I have already had online for some time (See here) a review of some of the evidence leading to the view that Bill Clinton is a sub-clinical psychopath. I have just put up some extra evidence here. Note the total lack of any sense of guilt or remorse for anything he did and the wild theories put forward to explain the attacks on him. It's his "enemies" who harmed him, not his own lack of any morality or responsibility. Psychopaths all think that they can do no wrong and very commonly explain their difficulties by saying that people are just out to "get" them.
This article compares the present difficulties in Iraq with the problems previous Presidents (such as Lincoln and FDR) have faced in their wars and concludes that GWB is doing pretty well by comparison: "Reading the depressing headlines, one is tempted to ask: Has any president in U.S. history ever botched a war or its aftermath so badly? Actually, yes. Most wartime presidents have made catastrophic blunders, from James Madison losing his capital to the British in 1814 to Harry Truman getting embroiled with China in 1950"
Good news from Afghanistan: "But the political skill demonstrated by Karzai since July, and the popularity he clearly possesses, are reason for optimism. Afghans themselves are optimistic. The country has passed its major political challenges reasonably well since the fall of the Taliban in 2001 - forming a transitional cabinet, drafting and approving a constitution, maintaining a steady civilian government in Kabul. The next milestone, Afghanistan's first free presidential election in over a decade, also looks to be a qualified success. For now, that's quite an achievement".
Another foul priest: "A district attorney said Monday that he would not prosecute Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Dupre on child rape charges because the statute of limitations has expired in the case."
There is a good new post up on Leftists as Elitists.
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here
**************************
That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.
The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and big egos who will say anything to win applause
Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Some progress: "A "white list" of 10 nations from which asylum applications will be presumed to be false by all European Union countries is to go ahead, despite warnings of human rights violations. The list of "safe countries" covers seven African states, including Benin, Botswana, Ghana, Mali and Senegal, as well as Chile, Costa Rica and Uruguay. The European list is modelled on the British system, which presumes asylum claims from designated "safe" countries are unfounded and applicants fast-tracked for removal. The system has operated since 1993. The EU list will form a cornerstone of the new common European asylum policy"
Immigration elitism: "Huntington's discussion of mindless immigrationism is one of the reasons for the hostile reception to his book. He points to the now commonplace distinction between the "elites" and the general public and the clear differences in their attitudes to immigration. It is easy enough to dismiss the reservations of the electorate as a product of ignorance, xenophobia, fear of the unknown, unfounded fears of competition for their own jobs or whatever. Denigration of the attitudes of ordinary people is routine for the elites. But not all these concerns are totally unfounded.."
I have already had online for some time (See here) a review of some of the evidence leading to the view that Bill Clinton is a sub-clinical psychopath. I have just put up some extra evidence here. Note the total lack of any sense of guilt or remorse for anything he did and the wild theories put forward to explain the attacks on him. It's his "enemies" who harmed him, not his own lack of any morality or responsibility. Psychopaths all think that they can do no wrong and very commonly explain their difficulties by saying that people are just out to "get" them.
This article compares the present difficulties in Iraq with the problems previous Presidents (such as Lincoln and FDR) have faced in their wars and concludes that GWB is doing pretty well by comparison: "Reading the depressing headlines, one is tempted to ask: Has any president in U.S. history ever botched a war or its aftermath so badly? Actually, yes. Most wartime presidents have made catastrophic blunders, from James Madison losing his capital to the British in 1814 to Harry Truman getting embroiled with China in 1950"
Good news from Afghanistan: "But the political skill demonstrated by Karzai since July, and the popularity he clearly possesses, are reason for optimism. Afghans themselves are optimistic. The country has passed its major political challenges reasonably well since the fall of the Taliban in 2001 - forming a transitional cabinet, drafting and approving a constitution, maintaining a steady civilian government in Kabul. The next milestone, Afghanistan's first free presidential election in over a decade, also looks to be a qualified success. For now, that's quite an achievement".
Another foul priest: "A district attorney said Monday that he would not prosecute Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Dupre on child rape charges because the statute of limitations has expired in the case."
There is a good new post up on Leftists as Elitists.
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here
**************************
That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.
The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and big egos who will say anything to win applause
Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Monday, September 27, 2004
FRANK FUREDI'S JOURNEY FROM LEFT TO RIGHT
Frank is an Australian psychologist and ex-Marxist who has now long been a British resident
"Furedi found himself feeling 'ever-more estranged' from the conventional left. He recalls three incidents in particular that suggested the left was moving in a troublesome direction. 'The first time I felt it was when there were all these demands for "No Platform" for fascists, that fascists should be censored. I have always been, and continue to be, vehemently anti-fascist, but I felt that was just a cop-out, a very anti-democratic way of avoiding debate. I argued that rather than saying "No Platform" we should take up the fascists' views and undermine them, instead of opting for this very authoritarian, censorious approach.'
The second event was the miners' strike of 1984. A key issue in the strike was whether there should be a national ballot, which would allow all miners to vote on whether the strike should continue. In places like Yorkshire miners were striking hard, while other miners, in particular in Nottinghamshire, refused to strike on the grounds that there had not been a national ballot. The RCP campaigned for a ballot; just about everybody else on the left disagreed and the ballot was vetoed by Arthur Scargill, head of the National Union of Miners. 'I fully supported the strike', says Furedi. 'But I also called for a ballot, with a rank-and-file campaign to win the vote, for a strike that could be supported by everybody.' Thatcher supported a national ballot because she thought it would break the strike; the RCP supported a campaign for a ballot as a way of strengthening the miners. 'But others on the left wanted to prevent a ballot in case the vote went the wrong way. I thought this qualified approach to democracy on the left was a very big problem.'
The third event that further estranged Furedi from the left was the Cleveland child abuse scandal of 1987, when a number of families in the industrial region in the north-east of England were falsely accused of abusing their kids - often by health and social workers who considered themselves part of the left. 'I felt very uncomfortable, very uncomfortable indeed', says Furedi. 'People who I had known on the left were going around saying that loads of working-class men are child abusers. This very negative view of human beings took me aback. The kind of panic about working-class behaviour that would traditionally have been triggered by the right was starting to become a fixture of the left.'"
More here.
**********************************
Frank is an Australian psychologist and ex-Marxist who has now long been a British resident
"Furedi found himself feeling 'ever-more estranged' from the conventional left. He recalls three incidents in particular that suggested the left was moving in a troublesome direction. 'The first time I felt it was when there were all these demands for "No Platform" for fascists, that fascists should be censored. I have always been, and continue to be, vehemently anti-fascist, but I felt that was just a cop-out, a very anti-democratic way of avoiding debate. I argued that rather than saying "No Platform" we should take up the fascists' views and undermine them, instead of opting for this very authoritarian, censorious approach.'
The second event was the miners' strike of 1984. A key issue in the strike was whether there should be a national ballot, which would allow all miners to vote on whether the strike should continue. In places like Yorkshire miners were striking hard, while other miners, in particular in Nottinghamshire, refused to strike on the grounds that there had not been a national ballot. The RCP campaigned for a ballot; just about everybody else on the left disagreed and the ballot was vetoed by Arthur Scargill, head of the National Union of Miners. 'I fully supported the strike', says Furedi. 'But I also called for a ballot, with a rank-and-file campaign to win the vote, for a strike that could be supported by everybody.' Thatcher supported a national ballot because she thought it would break the strike; the RCP supported a campaign for a ballot as a way of strengthening the miners. 'But others on the left wanted to prevent a ballot in case the vote went the wrong way. I thought this qualified approach to democracy on the left was a very big problem.'
The third event that further estranged Furedi from the left was the Cleveland child abuse scandal of 1987, when a number of families in the industrial region in the north-east of England were falsely accused of abusing their kids - often by health and social workers who considered themselves part of the left. 'I felt very uncomfortable, very uncomfortable indeed', says Furedi. 'People who I had known on the left were going around saying that loads of working-class men are child abusers. This very negative view of human beings took me aback. The kind of panic about working-class behaviour that would traditionally have been triggered by the right was starting to become a fixture of the left.'"
More here.
**********************************
ELSEWHERE
What pathetic little sulkers the Germans have become! They cancelled their participation in an American Army display because one of the Americans present had once criticized Germany. How dare he! Germans can say anything they like about the USA -- even call the American President a Nazi -- but Americans cannot return the criticism. They can dish criticism out but can't take it in reply. Pathetic. What a waste it was for America to defend such mush for so long. Most of the Germans with guts must have died in Hitler's wars -- leaving mainly shirkers behind. (Via Davids Medienkritik).
Good man: "The British Prime Minister has appealed to Britons to back his stance against "terror and chaos" in Iraq and compared the situation in the country to the darkest days of World War II".
Prominent peacenik Senator Mark Hatfield is voting for Bush! "My support is based on the fact that our world changed on Sept. 11, 2001, a day on which we lost more American lives than we did in the attack on Pearl Harbor. I know from my service in the Senate that Saddam Hussein was an active supporter of terrorism. He used weapons of mass destruction on innocent people and left no doubt that he would do so again. It was crucial to the cause of world peace that he be removed from power".
I am glad that I have no need to use Paypal or any similar service. They have just cut off service from longtime blogger Bill Quick because they find his site objectionable for some unspecified reason. Some bloggers are closing their PayPal accounts in retaliation so I hope lots of bloggers do so. PayPal seem to be a real Leftist outfit. One of Bill's commenters reported: "I complained to Paypal when the two "soldiers" who went AWOL to Canada set up accounts with Paypal to receive donations. I pointed out that Paypal was facilitating criminal activity, as these men would be arrested should they return to the States. The people I spoke to on the telephone were indifferent to hostile, and Paypal refused to shut down the donation link. Says a lot about Paypal, I think" and another reported: "My guess is PayPal objects to the Cheaper Than Dirt Ammo ad at the top of your page. I have read that they are extremely anti-gun and have cut off businesses that sell ammunition and gun accessories".
John Kerry has been caught in another psychopathic (stupid and pointless) lie -- saying he was in Iraq when he was not.
Child abusing "justice". There is a dreadful story here of how fanatical do-gooders pressured kids into making accusations of sexual abuse against innocent men. It not only got the men falsely convicted and jailed but it also had a devastating impact on the children concerned.
Hollywood whitewashes a disgusting pervert: "A forthcoming Hollywood biopic of Alfred Kinsey, the "father of the sexual revolution", has been denounced as a whitewash by pro-family campaigners who are calling on the public to boycott the film".
Hmmm... Tim Lambert is accusing others of not having the full background on the "Leftist bookstore" issue in the USA when he does not seem to have the full background himself. He seems to think that only Glenn Reynolds and some troll think that U.S. bookstores have a Leftist bias. He needs to read this. And the whole thing is NOT an example of market failure. The only failure is in the brains of the Leftist proprietors and employees who are sending so much of what could be their own business to Amazon.
Chris Brand has just had a big burst of new posts so I have tranferred them here for convenience. Interesting that a very prominent South African black has now proclaimed that Africa was better off under the colonialists. Certainly by any objective standard (crime-rate, average income etc.) that is true.
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here
**************************
That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.
The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and big egos who will say anything to win applause
Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
What pathetic little sulkers the Germans have become! They cancelled their participation in an American Army display because one of the Americans present had once criticized Germany. How dare he! Germans can say anything they like about the USA -- even call the American President a Nazi -- but Americans cannot return the criticism. They can dish criticism out but can't take it in reply. Pathetic. What a waste it was for America to defend such mush for so long. Most of the Germans with guts must have died in Hitler's wars -- leaving mainly shirkers behind. (Via Davids Medienkritik).
Good man: "The British Prime Minister has appealed to Britons to back his stance against "terror and chaos" in Iraq and compared the situation in the country to the darkest days of World War II".
Prominent peacenik Senator Mark Hatfield is voting for Bush! "My support is based on the fact that our world changed on Sept. 11, 2001, a day on which we lost more American lives than we did in the attack on Pearl Harbor. I know from my service in the Senate that Saddam Hussein was an active supporter of terrorism. He used weapons of mass destruction on innocent people and left no doubt that he would do so again. It was crucial to the cause of world peace that he be removed from power".
I am glad that I have no need to use Paypal or any similar service. They have just cut off service from longtime blogger Bill Quick because they find his site objectionable for some unspecified reason. Some bloggers are closing their PayPal accounts in retaliation so I hope lots of bloggers do so. PayPal seem to be a real Leftist outfit. One of Bill's commenters reported: "I complained to Paypal when the two "soldiers" who went AWOL to Canada set up accounts with Paypal to receive donations. I pointed out that Paypal was facilitating criminal activity, as these men would be arrested should they return to the States. The people I spoke to on the telephone were indifferent to hostile, and Paypal refused to shut down the donation link. Says a lot about Paypal, I think" and another reported: "My guess is PayPal objects to the Cheaper Than Dirt Ammo ad at the top of your page. I have read that they are extremely anti-gun and have cut off businesses that sell ammunition and gun accessories".
John Kerry has been caught in another psychopathic (stupid and pointless) lie -- saying he was in Iraq when he was not.
Child abusing "justice". There is a dreadful story here of how fanatical do-gooders pressured kids into making accusations of sexual abuse against innocent men. It not only got the men falsely convicted and jailed but it also had a devastating impact on the children concerned.
Hollywood whitewashes a disgusting pervert: "A forthcoming Hollywood biopic of Alfred Kinsey, the "father of the sexual revolution", has been denounced as a whitewash by pro-family campaigners who are calling on the public to boycott the film".
Hmmm... Tim Lambert is accusing others of not having the full background on the "Leftist bookstore" issue in the USA when he does not seem to have the full background himself. He seems to think that only Glenn Reynolds and some troll think that U.S. bookstores have a Leftist bias. He needs to read this. And the whole thing is NOT an example of market failure. The only failure is in the brains of the Leftist proprietors and employees who are sending so much of what could be their own business to Amazon.
Chris Brand has just had a big burst of new posts so I have tranferred them here for convenience. Interesting that a very prominent South African black has now proclaimed that Africa was better off under the colonialists. Certainly by any objective standard (crime-rate, average income etc.) that is true.
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here
**************************
That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.
The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and big egos who will say anything to win applause
Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Sunday, September 26, 2004
Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD)
In Germany, the NPD (National Democratic Party) is widely regarded as the barely-legal successor-party to Hitler's National Socialist party. Given its recent victories in the German elections, an interview with the chairman of the party must be of some interest. A few excerpts follow:
Note the five leftist elements of NPD thinking mentioned above. He rejects the Leftist claim that the NPD is capitalist and says it is anti-capitalist [1]. He says the NPD will build a "Third Power" (Third Way [2]) between capitalism and Communism. He puts "nature" (environmentalism [3]) at the centre of his thinking. He is against "multinational banks and companies" (globalization [4]). And he regards the German social system (welfare state [5]) as an outstanding achievement. Clearly, this party does indeed reflect all of Hitler's themes and clearly it is of the Left in modern terms. And its championship of a "Third Way" makes it in fact a completely modern Leftist party, akin in that respect to the present-day British Labour party. Hitler was a modern Leftist by the standards of his day too, as his championship of eugenics showed. Awkward stuff, that history. In the postwar era, the internationalist version of Leftism has become very dominant but that was not always so. From Napoleon to Hitler there were also plenty of nationalist versions of Leftism. That was part of what was behind the various diatribes of Marx and Lenin against "Bonapartism". And Trotsky even saw both the Soviet State and Fascism as different types of "Bonapartism"! So the NPD simply shows that the nationalist version of Leftism still lives.
***********************
THAT WHICH WAS LOST
Mike Jericho no longer seems to have the heart to continue with his idea for a "Man Blog" now that some Leftist punk has destroyed the site. If anybody ever takes one of my blogs down, it will be back up again in 5 minutes, I can assure you. I save everything to disk -- including templates. Anyway, so that the Leftist triumph is not total, I have re-posted here what I had up on "The Man Blog" before it was taken down.
*************************
In Germany, the NPD (National Democratic Party) is widely regarded as the barely-legal successor-party to Hitler's National Socialist party. Given its recent victories in the German elections, an interview with the chairman of the party must be of some interest. A few excerpts follow:
"This [young Leftist] subculture possesses an anti-capitalist view of the world, and views the NPD as an instrument of Capitalism. Such a view of the NPD is fundamentally wrong, and disregards the fact that the Movement will eliminate Capitalism which is so contemptuous of humanity....
The NPD is a Movement of the People which will implement its programme of building a Third Power beyond Capitalism and Communism, thereby giving self-determination to the people.
At the centre of our struggle is mankind and Nature. Thanks to our life-giving view of the world, we stand against foreign rule and domination, against foreign penetration, exploitation and oppression. We stand for German freedom, for the freedom of peoples, for a New Social Order in both Germany and Europe.
During this phase, we must use capable intellectuals from all levels in society so as to build our ideology of a New Order beyond Capitalism and Communism.... The global threat to our nations by multi-national banks and companies working in harness with the ruling class is having a destructive effect on our peoples.
The outstanding achievements of the German social system are being more and more replaced by minimal standards."
Note the five leftist elements of NPD thinking mentioned above. He rejects the Leftist claim that the NPD is capitalist and says it is anti-capitalist [1]. He says the NPD will build a "Third Power" (Third Way [2]) between capitalism and Communism. He puts "nature" (environmentalism [3]) at the centre of his thinking. He is against "multinational banks and companies" (globalization [4]). And he regards the German social system (welfare state [5]) as an outstanding achievement. Clearly, this party does indeed reflect all of Hitler's themes and clearly it is of the Left in modern terms. And its championship of a "Third Way" makes it in fact a completely modern Leftist party, akin in that respect to the present-day British Labour party. Hitler was a modern Leftist by the standards of his day too, as his championship of eugenics showed. Awkward stuff, that history. In the postwar era, the internationalist version of Leftism has become very dominant but that was not always so. From Napoleon to Hitler there were also plenty of nationalist versions of Leftism. That was part of what was behind the various diatribes of Marx and Lenin against "Bonapartism". And Trotsky even saw both the Soviet State and Fascism as different types of "Bonapartism"! So the NPD simply shows that the nationalist version of Leftism still lives.
***********************
THAT WHICH WAS LOST
Mike Jericho no longer seems to have the heart to continue with his idea for a "Man Blog" now that some Leftist punk has destroyed the site. If anybody ever takes one of my blogs down, it will be back up again in 5 minutes, I can assure you. I save everything to disk -- including templates. Anyway, so that the Leftist triumph is not total, I have re-posted here what I had up on "The Man Blog" before it was taken down.
*************************
ELSEWHERE
A "liberal" would rather choke on his latte than condemn Castro: "Director Oliver Stone ripped President Bush while praising Cuban dictator Fidel Castro before the premiere of his movie "Looking for Fidel," at the 52nd San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain. Stone charged that Bush stole the election with the help of anti-Castro Cuban-Americans in Florida, according to a report in Cuba's Granma newspaper.... "George Bush will go down in history as one of the great baddies".... On the other hand, Stone had nothing but praise for Castro, who has clung to authoritarian power with no elections in Cuba for half a century"
Sheesh! Wotta lotta nonsense! "Ten-year olds who spend more time engaging in activities typically associated with their gender tend to have more stereotypical academic interests, skills and characteristics two years later, new research reports... These findings show that what children spend time on at age 10 can have a strong influence on their later years [according to] lead author Dr. Susan M. McHale of Penn State University" Girls who prefer girly games at age 10 are more girly later on too! What a discovery!
The Left are scraping the bottom of the barrel now: "George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany. The UK's Guardian newspaper has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism".
The French Betrayal of America seems to be a very well-researched book, giving a detailed account of just how amoral and hostile to any kind of decency France is.
A Frenchman disses the French: "The thirst for truth is not a French passion. In everything, what appears is more relished than what is, the outside than the inside, the style than the stuff, the glittering than the useful, opinion than conscience. . . "
Congratulations to Rafe Champion on the second birthday of his "Rathouse" site.
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here
**************************
That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.
The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and big egos who will say anything to win applause
Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
A "liberal" would rather choke on his latte than condemn Castro: "Director Oliver Stone ripped President Bush while praising Cuban dictator Fidel Castro before the premiere of his movie "Looking for Fidel," at the 52nd San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain. Stone charged that Bush stole the election with the help of anti-Castro Cuban-Americans in Florida, according to a report in Cuba's Granma newspaper.... "George Bush will go down in history as one of the great baddies".... On the other hand, Stone had nothing but praise for Castro, who has clung to authoritarian power with no elections in Cuba for half a century"
Sheesh! Wotta lotta nonsense! "Ten-year olds who spend more time engaging in activities typically associated with their gender tend to have more stereotypical academic interests, skills and characteristics two years later, new research reports... These findings show that what children spend time on at age 10 can have a strong influence on their later years [according to] lead author Dr. Susan M. McHale of Penn State University" Girls who prefer girly games at age 10 are more girly later on too! What a discovery!
The Left are scraping the bottom of the barrel now: "George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany. The UK's Guardian newspaper has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism".
The French Betrayal of America seems to be a very well-researched book, giving a detailed account of just how amoral and hostile to any kind of decency France is.
A Frenchman disses the French: "The thirst for truth is not a French passion. In everything, what appears is more relished than what is, the outside than the inside, the style than the stuff, the glittering than the useful, opinion than conscience. . . "
Congratulations to Rafe Champion on the second birthday of his "Rathouse" site.
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here
**************************
That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.
The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and big egos who will say anything to win applause
Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
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