ELSEWHERE

Conservative fusionism lives: "Down somewhere in the deepest understanding of what America is for-somewhere in the profound awareness of what it will take to reverse the nation's long drift into social defeatism-there are reasons that one might link the rejection of abortion and the demand for an active and moral foreign policy.... The opponents of abortion and euthanasia insist there are truths about human life and dignity that must not be compromised in domestic politics. The opponents of Islamofascism and rule by terror insist there are truths about human life and dignity that must not be compromised in international politics. Why shouldn't they grow toward each other? The desire to find intellectual and moral seriousness in one realm can breed the desire to find intellectual and moral seriousness in another.... In the new fusionism, social conservatives and neoconservatives are not in any immediate contradiction. The wish to restore American patriotism, the struggle against abortion, annoyance at the dated elitism of an overweening judiciary, and the war in Iraq-these all seem to have become curiously interdependent issues... The goal in either case is to restore confidence in-well, what, exactly? Not our own infallible rightness, surely. But neither can we live any longer with the notion of our own infallible wrongness." [The author here seems to overlook one of the greatest commonalities between Protestant/Christian and conservative/libertarian views: Respect for the individual and the rights and liberties of the individual].

Straight talk: "Attacking US government policies on taxes, immigration and Internet access, Intel Corp chief executive Craig Barrett warned that the United States could be left behind when technology companies decide where to make their next big capital investments. With less than two weeks left as CEO of the world's largest chip maker, the outspoken proponent of free trade and low corporate taxes said in an interview that Intel could save as much as $1 billion in taxes over 10 years by building its next factory outside of the United States, in a country such as Malaysia.... Heaping scorn on policies that keep green cards out of the hands of foreign graduates of US universities and make truly high-speed Internet access a rare luxury, Barrett minced few words about his distaste for the federal bureaucracy. Turning away educated people who want to immigrate to the United States "has to be the dumbest thing in the world," he said. "We allow people in the United States who are either here illegally and at the lower level of the value-add or work-force chain - the weak, the sick, the infirm," he added. "We allow everybody in but the value-add people who have educational capabilities and the ability to contribute to the economy." "If we haven't got it bass-ackward I don't know what we're doing," he said."

Another switch: "Lawrence Davis, a former state Democratic Party chairman from Raleigh, has switched his registration to the Republican Party. Davis said he decided to switch parties because his personal beliefs on issues such as abortion, same-sex marriages and the lottery differed from the positions of the Democratic Party. "Basically, it's an effort to bring some coherence between my beliefs and my actions," Davis said. "I felt my [former] party was on the wrong side of right-wrong issues." Davis, a devout Christian, said the Democratic Party has been on the right side of such issues as civil rights. "But I see the Republican Party making some pretty good strides in that area," he said. "President Bush, whatever one thinks of him, has placed some African-Americans in pretty good positions. In the Senate leadership, we see a marked shift from Trent Lott to Bill Frist.""

A Democrat free-marketeer: "Today competition reigns in the U.S. in a way undreamed of 20 years ago--competition for markets, for labor, for capital, for time and, yes, for attention (just ask the newspaper industry). A lot of people have enriched themselves in the process, but no one feels safe from a new competitor sailing into view and sending shots across the bow, 24/7. You could argue that this free-for-all--even more than sound money and lower tax rates--is responsible for the stunning recent outperformance of the U.S. relative to other developed economies, with their more-regulated and rigid business ways. And that is basically what Paul A. London does in "The Competition Solution." But Mr. London is not, as one might suspect, another Republican acolyte. He is, according to his publisher, an "ardent Democrat," an economist who served in the Clinton administration from 1993 to 1997. His faith in markets reminds us why America's economy over the past 20 years, far from stalling when Democrats controlled Congress or the presidency, kept growing and even at times accelerated its pace".

Strange Justice has just put up an amazing account of crooked justice in Canada. Canadians will no longer be able to point the finger of scorn at Southern U.S. jurisdictions for "railroading" blacks. The Canadians will railroad anyone.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"

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