WHY I BLOG

Keith Burgess Jackson has suggested that I explain to all and sundry my motives for being such a dedicated blogger. I post daily to six blogs of my own and also contribute frequently to three other group blogs. So I suppose that is indeed in some need of explanation.

Unlike most bloggers I rarely make comments on my blogs about events in my life but, for some reason that is rather opaque even to me, I do put up a few reports of my personal doings on Majority Rights. It is a high-traffic blog but I don't think that has anything to do with it. I think I do it because that blog is mainly concerned with something that has a high emotional component -- immigration. And as someone who thinks that most (but not all) immigration, is OK I qualify there as the extreme Leftist in the group! (My views on that subject are however mainstream in Australia). So many of my posts are designed to move my co-bloggers and readers of the blog generally towards a greater acceptance of some types of immigration -- legal and selective immigration in particular. And I feel that personal anecdotes are more persuasive in that sphere than are rational arguments.

But that brings me to what I think is Keith's central enquiry: Do I think my blogging makes any difference? And I can answer that very easily. I know it does because my readers often tell me so. I doubt that I have ever converted a single Leftist from his Leftism but a lot of people of conservative views email me to tell me how my blogs are a sort of emotional and intellectual lifeline for them in the sea of liberalism that surrounds them. I am seen as one of the few voices who will invariably speak the plain truth, no matter how unpopular and politically incorrect it may be. Rarely does a day go by when someone does not email me with a grateful message of that kind. And I in turn greatly appreciate and am encouraged by such feedback.

But there is also a certain sense in which I blog for posterity. As an atheist, I have no hope of immortality of any kind so the ancient Greek idea that the only immortality you can have is in men's minds has some resonance with me. And some Greeks even achieved it. Will Socrates or Leonidas and his 300 Spartans at Thermopylae ever be forgotten? And over the period of my lifetime I have already seen many of the views that I have held move from being absurdities to realities. So I think I already have some basis for feeling that, in the future, I will be recognized as someone who got it right when most others did not. I repeatedly find that my theories and assumptions about the world work out in practice (even on the stockmarket!) and I think that, as time goes by, my way of thinking will become more influential precisely because it does yield good predictions. So I actually hope for more influence in the future than I have in the present. So, like many scientists, my goal is to further human knowledge and understanding but my views on most things are so out of the mainstream among intellectuals now that only the future holds any promise of my achieving that. And since many scientists were ridiculed in their lifetime for putting forward what are now accepted truths, I don't think I am being totally unrealistic in that. In particular, I hope that my dissection of the motivations behind Leftism will one day win broad acceptance and thus reduce the evils that Leftists are forever trying to inflict upon us.

And how do I manage to write so much? One reason is that as a retired man I have the time for it. I spend about 12 hours a day in front of my computer screen. Another is that I am a born academic: Writing is what I have always done. And a third reason is that I find the world of ideas far more exciting than any other so I have few other interests in life. And there always seem to be women in my life who put up with that, rather surprisingly. Women are such fine creatures that I will never understand homosexuals.

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ELSEWHERE

Japan post office now to be privatized: "Japan's prime minister has scored a huge political victory after three decades of calling for reform of Japan's cash-rich postal system, which has long been a source of wasteful government spending. Friday's passage of postal reform legislation may now allow Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to focus on pressing domestic and diplomatic issues that have been pushed to the sidelines. Japan's upper house of parliament, which rejected the postal privatization bills two months ago triggering national elections, did an about-face on Friday. Upper House president Chikage Ogi announcing that the package of bills has passed by a vote of 134 to 100". [If the Japanese can do it, why can't everybody else?]

Over a week ago I pointed out the nonsense inherent in the claim by "humanist" dinosaur expert Gregory Paul that religion is bad for you. It is good to see that fellow unbeliever Theodore Dalrymple has just had a hefty swing at Mr Paul also.

Useless Australian "social work" bureaucracy kills kids: "Children as young as two weeks old are dying because the NSW Department of Community Services is failing to adequately protect children at risk. In a damning report tabled in state parliament yesterday, NSW Ombudsman Bruce Barbour slammed the performance of DOCS, saying children were dying unnecessarily. He found an under-resourced DOCS closed files of children at high risk and did not respond adequately to concerns about unborn children. In a number of cases, DOCS had failed to take steps to protect children after they were born, even though concerns were raised during pregnancy that the mother had a history of mental illness, drug abuse or other serious problems. "Children as young as two weeks, four weeks or six weeks of age are dying in circumstances which seem to be preventable," Mr Barbour said. The report came ahead of today's funeral of six-year-old Rose Villanueva-Austin, who died last month from a methadone overdose. DOCS officials admitted they had been told about Rose's circumstances but denied reports the department had been notified about problems in her family on up to 200 occasions".

Free markets, social welfare and migration: "Austrian utility and welfare theory observes that all transactions in a free market economy take place only when both parties believe they will be happier as a result of an exchange. People act in ways that maximize their personal well being, subjectively understood. In contrast, in centralized economies the only way the state can enforce its economic decisions is through the threat of force for noncompliance, or fear. We might say that capitalism is a happiness-based system where as communism (and all forms of interventionism) are fear-based systems."

Spaceships and small governments: "During its long life on syndication -- following a short-lived network run -- the original Star Trek became a massive cult phenomenon that used science fiction as a means to spread a multicultural, anti-capitalist, progressive gospel. With its post-money, post-war Earth and its valiant, UN-like Federation of Planets, it reflected the liberal passions of the 1960s. Now, nearly four decades later, another short-lived TV show, Joss Whedon's Firefly, has inspired similar cult adoration and made the leap to the big screen -- only this time the politics are reversed. The result is Serenity, a scrappy, energetic science fiction/western hybrid that is as libertarian as Star Trek was liberal, reminding viewers why even well-intentioned government intervention is more a problem than a solution."

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with lots to read.

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

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

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" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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