ELSEWHERE

Ben Stein has the best comment yet on "Deep Throat" and Richard Nixon. Ben was a Nixon speechwriter so he knows it all.

Austin Bay has a good comment on the recent destruction by Amnesty International of its own credibility. I was a member myself once but withdrew after some one-sided criticisms of Israel from them.

Feser on "legislating morality:" It's not just a Christian thing "For as we've seen, liberals and libertarians themselves appeal to certain moral principles in defending their favored policies. So how can they consistently criticize conservatives for doing the same? Isn't the liberal trying to 'legislate morality' when he advocates redistributing wealth in the name of fairness? Isn't he thereby 'imposing his moral views' on the wealthy? Aren't libertarians also 'imposing their moral views' on liberals by trying to stop such redistribution? If libertarians who think that redistributive taxation amounts to theft could enact a law forbidding it, wouldn't this too amount to 'legislating morality?'"

Who do these hysterics think they are persuading? "On April 29 and 30, liberal activists gathered in New York City for a weekend conference on "Examining the Real Agenda of the Religious Far Right." ... The conference was sponsored by People for the American Way, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and the National Council of Churches (NCC), along with the left-wing periodicals The Nation and The Village Voice... The tone of the speakers was often quite shrill. "Jim Jones [the 1970s cult leader who led followers in a mass suicide] has gone mainstream!" cried journalist Katherine Yurica. "Today we are living in a nation governed by an unholy cult!" Yurica maintained that the Republican Party had gained power through "Hitlerian tactics." She insisted that evangelical leaders from Billy Graham to Jerry Falwell "had to have read Hitler's Mein Kampf." She explained, "I say this confidently because anyone who has learned to quack like a duck has studied ducks!""

This article in Harpers about "America's most powerful megachurch" seems to have got a lot of attention. It is very informative but the author never misses a chance to sneer.

Jimmy Carter: "It was Carter's pacifism that allowed the fall of the shah in Iran, giving fundamentalist Islam a nation-state to control. Subsequently, it was Carter's pacifism that encouraged the Soviets to invade Afghanistan, creating a rallying point for mujahadeen and, as Hayward notes, reviving the idea of jihad. Taken in concert, these two events are the catalysts that have forced the war on terrorism to its present stage. Carter's pacifism, be it de facto or de jure, shaped the modern Middle East and helped Islamic fascism survive its infancy. This is a much more dire legacy than the simple corruption of Democratic ideology."

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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