Blogger.com have been in a hell of a mess for the last 24 hours or more. I was able to post nothing yesterday. Yet another reason to remind readers that my mirror sites are there for just such occasions.
Saturday, April 09, 2005
ARLENE PECK IS SKEPTICAL ABOUT CHANGES IN THE ARAB WORLD:
We are deluding ourselves with our mistaken belief that "the vote" is going to change the Middle East and that we're going to be liked by any one of the twenty-two Arab lands, which we largely support. That old expression holds true - you just can't buy love. The American government keeps sending those checks, and the Arab cartel keeps voting against us at every chance.
How do we rationalize with a twelfth century mentality? The Arab culture has been stuck in the Middle Ages for, what, a thousand years? Can any of you out there name me anything positive that they have done since the fourteenth century? And don't mention how they have invented algebra. All they have taught in their schools for decades is hate and how to kill. When they 'play dead' in the school yard the classmates cheer the dead 'martyrs'.
Do we actually think that a culture of 1.3 billion people, many of whom still routinely mutilate the genitals of their women and are prone to treat their farm animals a bit better, are really going to grasp the real meaning of democracy? They have never been able to excel in medicine, but they have mastered the art of surgically removing the clitoris. Gawd, what does a trip to the polls mean to them? Their entire culture is based on submission. They live for death, but possibly in a hundred years they might be ready for board meetings.
In the meanwhile, we have to contend with the wild savages that our televisions are showing us nightly, who kill everything in sight and for whom sawing off a head is a good night's work. This is not the fodder for democracy as we know it. But it is the basis for theirs.
More here
********************************
ELSEWHERE
More Leftist intolerance: "Someone threw a pie at conservative commentator David Horowitz during a lecture at Butler University in Indianapolis Wednesday night. It's the second time in a week a conservative has been hit by a pie at an Indiana school".
Fair unions coming? "A pro-business group whose leader is closely connected to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is funding the signature-gathering effort to make it tougher for public employee unions to spend their members' dues money on political campaigns. The Small Business Action Committee has contributed $375,000 to the Coalition for Employee Rights, which is trying to get the "employee consent" measure on a possible special election ballot this November. The committee is headed by Joel Fox, the former president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association who worked as senior policy consultant to Schwarzenegger during the 2003 recall. A Schwarzenegger spokesman said that at the moment, the administration has "no intention or interest" in participating in what is shaping up as a volatile fight between unions that view the initiative as an attack on their political viability and proponents who say they are only protecting the political choices of public employees."
The British election campaign: "In Nick Herbert, Conservatives in Arundel could not have found a better prospective MP to replace Howard Flight. In choosing a radical thinker who successfully led the all-party "no" campaign against the euro, and who then created a think-tank that makes a forceful case for lowering taxes, the constituency has backed a serious candidate. The fact that he is also gay makes the constituency's choice a loud and clear statement that the Conservative Party hosts a diverse range of candidates and views. It would be ludicrous to confine political discourse to wrangling over whether public spending should be 42 per cent or more (it was 37.4 per cent in 1999-2000). Mr Herbert has eloquently made the case that this is a staggering proportion, and that the money is inevitably used less efficiently in the public sector.... It is a vital part of the Tory creed to aspire to lower public spending, and never more so than when taxes, both patent and stealth, keep rising. With almost one worker in four employed by the State, Britain is hardly the Wild West of leftist imagination, plundered by capitalist rednecks. Far from being the beachhead for a government-free economy railed against by President Chirac, Britain is burdened with government at every turn. Businesses struggle under a growing mountain of misguided, often poorly drafted, overweening regulation that attempts to determine everything from door widths to inflexible flexitime."
Corrupt Canada. A big summary of Canadian government corruption here. A small excerpt: "Captain's Quarters exemplifies the best of what blog reporting can be in its recent handling of the Canadian AdsScam case. To add context, the following analysis details more than a decade of potential corruption and media suppression by Canada's Liberal Party that likely set the foundation for such egregious abuse of power by the Canadian Government. Beginning with the election of Prime Minister Jean Chr‚tien in 1993, which crushed the Progressive Conservative opposition, Canada's liberal Party has known over a decade of scandal coupled with a suppressive attitude toward the press unimaginable within the United States. The first issue to arise went mostly unnoticed in 1994 and involved Chretien's minister of the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) when it was discovered the minister had lobbied the commission he headed in support of a radio license for a supporter. The next and perhaps most appalling scandal for Canada's Liberal Party - one never widely reported within in the United States, involves the Krever Inquiry. Some may recall it as having been launched in the wake of the disastrous public blood supply issue that damaged the health of tens of thousands of Canadians by infecting them with Hepatitis C and HIV".
The media rarely mention this: "UN peacekeepers were sent to the Congo to relieve the significant humanitarian crisis faced in the region. However, they have only worsened the situation of these people since their arrival. During their stay, they have raped women and girls as young as twelve, taken hundreds of pornographic and sexually humiliating photographs and videotapes of children, coerced women into prostitution for food and money, impregnated several women, and spread the AIDS virus to many women, who afterwards spread the virus to their partners and offspring. Many of these events have been documented in film and the UN has acknowledged its members' involvement in these despicable crimes. In response to this, Kofi Annan has instituted a "zero tolerance" policy against sexual abuse and has condemned fraternization between these "peacekeepers" and local women. As is to be expected, this rhetoric has made no difference and the crimes continue".
Some revealing pictures of present-day Cuba here. Some remarkable scenes of decay.
We all remember the huge fuss the media made about the wicked capitalists at Enron. But it appears that the government sponsored Fannie Mae organization is in similar trouble but on a bigger scale. How odd that the media are not rushing to condemn a corrupt government body!
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
**************************
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"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
We are deluding ourselves with our mistaken belief that "the vote" is going to change the Middle East and that we're going to be liked by any one of the twenty-two Arab lands, which we largely support. That old expression holds true - you just can't buy love. The American government keeps sending those checks, and the Arab cartel keeps voting against us at every chance.
How do we rationalize with a twelfth century mentality? The Arab culture has been stuck in the Middle Ages for, what, a thousand years? Can any of you out there name me anything positive that they have done since the fourteenth century? And don't mention how they have invented algebra. All they have taught in their schools for decades is hate and how to kill. When they 'play dead' in the school yard the classmates cheer the dead 'martyrs'.
Do we actually think that a culture of 1.3 billion people, many of whom still routinely mutilate the genitals of their women and are prone to treat their farm animals a bit better, are really going to grasp the real meaning of democracy? They have never been able to excel in medicine, but they have mastered the art of surgically removing the clitoris. Gawd, what does a trip to the polls mean to them? Their entire culture is based on submission. They live for death, but possibly in a hundred years they might be ready for board meetings.
In the meanwhile, we have to contend with the wild savages that our televisions are showing us nightly, who kill everything in sight and for whom sawing off a head is a good night's work. This is not the fodder for democracy as we know it. But it is the basis for theirs.
More here
********************************
ELSEWHERE
More Leftist intolerance: "Someone threw a pie at conservative commentator David Horowitz during a lecture at Butler University in Indianapolis Wednesday night. It's the second time in a week a conservative has been hit by a pie at an Indiana school".
Fair unions coming? "A pro-business group whose leader is closely connected to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is funding the signature-gathering effort to make it tougher for public employee unions to spend their members' dues money on political campaigns. The Small Business Action Committee has contributed $375,000 to the Coalition for Employee Rights, which is trying to get the "employee consent" measure on a possible special election ballot this November. The committee is headed by Joel Fox, the former president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association who worked as senior policy consultant to Schwarzenegger during the 2003 recall. A Schwarzenegger spokesman said that at the moment, the administration has "no intention or interest" in participating in what is shaping up as a volatile fight between unions that view the initiative as an attack on their political viability and proponents who say they are only protecting the political choices of public employees."
The British election campaign: "In Nick Herbert, Conservatives in Arundel could not have found a better prospective MP to replace Howard Flight. In choosing a radical thinker who successfully led the all-party "no" campaign against the euro, and who then created a think-tank that makes a forceful case for lowering taxes, the constituency has backed a serious candidate. The fact that he is also gay makes the constituency's choice a loud and clear statement that the Conservative Party hosts a diverse range of candidates and views. It would be ludicrous to confine political discourse to wrangling over whether public spending should be 42 per cent or more (it was 37.4 per cent in 1999-2000). Mr Herbert has eloquently made the case that this is a staggering proportion, and that the money is inevitably used less efficiently in the public sector.... It is a vital part of the Tory creed to aspire to lower public spending, and never more so than when taxes, both patent and stealth, keep rising. With almost one worker in four employed by the State, Britain is hardly the Wild West of leftist imagination, plundered by capitalist rednecks. Far from being the beachhead for a government-free economy railed against by President Chirac, Britain is burdened with government at every turn. Businesses struggle under a growing mountain of misguided, often poorly drafted, overweening regulation that attempts to determine everything from door widths to inflexible flexitime."
Corrupt Canada. A big summary of Canadian government corruption here. A small excerpt: "Captain's Quarters exemplifies the best of what blog reporting can be in its recent handling of the Canadian AdsScam case. To add context, the following analysis details more than a decade of potential corruption and media suppression by Canada's Liberal Party that likely set the foundation for such egregious abuse of power by the Canadian Government. Beginning with the election of Prime Minister Jean Chr‚tien in 1993, which crushed the Progressive Conservative opposition, Canada's liberal Party has known over a decade of scandal coupled with a suppressive attitude toward the press unimaginable within the United States. The first issue to arise went mostly unnoticed in 1994 and involved Chretien's minister of the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) when it was discovered the minister had lobbied the commission he headed in support of a radio license for a supporter. The next and perhaps most appalling scandal for Canada's Liberal Party - one never widely reported within in the United States, involves the Krever Inquiry. Some may recall it as having been launched in the wake of the disastrous public blood supply issue that damaged the health of tens of thousands of Canadians by infecting them with Hepatitis C and HIV".
The media rarely mention this: "UN peacekeepers were sent to the Congo to relieve the significant humanitarian crisis faced in the region. However, they have only worsened the situation of these people since their arrival. During their stay, they have raped women and girls as young as twelve, taken hundreds of pornographic and sexually humiliating photographs and videotapes of children, coerced women into prostitution for food and money, impregnated several women, and spread the AIDS virus to many women, who afterwards spread the virus to their partners and offspring. Many of these events have been documented in film and the UN has acknowledged its members' involvement in these despicable crimes. In response to this, Kofi Annan has instituted a "zero tolerance" policy against sexual abuse and has condemned fraternization between these "peacekeepers" and local women. As is to be expected, this rhetoric has made no difference and the crimes continue".
Some revealing pictures of present-day Cuba here. Some remarkable scenes of decay.
We all remember the huge fuss the media made about the wicked capitalists at Enron. But it appears that the government sponsored Fannie Mae organization is in similar trouble but on a bigger scale. How odd that the media are not rushing to condemn a corrupt government body!
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
**************************
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"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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, April 08, 2005
SOME ECONOMICS
Candle-makers, blacksmiths ... and the Post Office: "Candle-makers were none too happy with the invention of the light bulb, for obvious reasons. Ditto blacksmiths with the invention of the automobile. So you can imagine how the post office must feel today about cheap long distance rates, faxes and email. While candle-makers and blacksmiths still roam among us today, like the buffalo their numbers have greatly diminished since the country's founding years. I assume they fought the tide of progress tooth-and-nail, but in the end their fate was inevitable. So, too, is the fate of the once great United States Postal Service (USPS). Its demise is a foregone conclusion. The only question is when and how the USPS as we know it today will be put out to pasture for good."
Realism comes to Germany: "A website that gets unemployed Germans bidding against each other to work for the lowest wages is set to spark fresh controversy with plans for an August launch in Britain. Trade unions have accused jobdumping.de of promoting "slave labour" with reverse auctions that see workers compete against each other in a downward bidding spiral for odd tasks and short-term contracts.... Jobdumping.de invites employers with openings for waiters or construction yard workers to offer a maximum fee and wait for a crush of eager workers to knock down the price. It's a nightmare come true for defenders of Europe's cosseted social model, already consumed by angst over a "race to the bottom" with low-wage economies in eastern Europe and Asia".
California shame. What happens when you spend all your money on bureaucracy: "When it comes time for the state to send monthly paychecks to more than 200,000 employees, someone in the controller's office in downtown Sacramento downloads the data from a mainframe computer onto a tape the size of an eight-track and walks it over to the room that houses the printers. The information-transfer process takes so long that the controller's staff has to start it before the end of the pay period to get the checks mailed out on time. And if anything goes wrong, only the old-timers on the controller's staff know how to fix it. The payroll program was written about 30 years ago in a computer language so ancient that to recent computer-science graduates, it looks like hieroglyphics. Decades after the birth of the computer industry, much of it right here in California, the state's massive information technology systems are disorganized, outdated and deficient".
Invisible foreign aid -- America subsidizes new drugs for the world: "Health care is expensive, but inadequate treatment is even more expensive. This is a lesson the German government has yet to learn. For years much of the world has been a free rider on U.S. medical R&D. Most industrialized states rely on a mix of price and volume controls to limit pharmaceutical spending. These governments expect American drug makers to keep supplying their products, almost irrespective of price. As a result, U.S. citizens are bearing a steadily increasing medical burden: Since 1999 America has accounted for 71% of the sales of new chemical entities, up from 62%. Japan and Germany, the next two largest pharmaceutical markets, account for just 4% each. Washington is under increasing pressure to end this sweet deal for other nations. In fact, the U.S. has started to raise the issue in trade negotiations. The real solution, however, is for other nations to pay a fair price for what they use."
Another jealous attack on business success: "Maryland lawmakers yesterday approved legislation that would effectively require Wal-Mart to boost spending on health care, a direct legislative thrust against a corporate giant that is already on the defensive on many fronts nationwide".
*********************************
ELSEWHERE
Another win for blogs: "An American blogger has suddenly emerged as a force in Canadian politics. Edward Morrissey, a 42-year-old Minneapolis area call-center manager who runs a Web log, or blog, called Captain's Quarters as a hobby, last Saturday began posting allegations of corruption that reached the highest levels of the Canadian Liberal Party. The postings violate a publication ban instituted a few days earlier by a federal judge, Justice John Gomery, who is leading an investigation into accusations of money laundering and kickbacks in a government program from the 1990's that was aimed at undermining Quebec separatists. The scandal, which involves government payments of up to $85 million to a handful of Montreal advertising firms for little or no work, has dominated national politics for a year and led to the Liberals losing their majority in the House of Commons last June.... According to Mr. Morrissey's blog, recent testimony for the first time links people who have been close to Prime Minister Paul Martin to the scandal.... While the Canadian news media have not reported explicitly what Mr. Morrissey is posting, their newspaper articles and television features about his work have led Canadians to visit Captain's Quarters (www.captainsquartersblog.com) to read the latest scandalous details. Mr. Morrissey said his blog had been flooded since Canadian CTV television first reported on its existence and contents Sunday night, and that he was now getting 400,000 hits a day."
Jeff Jacoby has a touching article about the late Pope's lifelong opposition to antisemitism -- which is all the more remarkable considering how antisemitic Poland has always been. There is another similar story of this truly righteous man here. That Leftists refer to a man of such great integrity as a "conservative" is a great compliment to conservatives. But Leftists would not know integrity if they fell over it, of course.
Frank talk about Muslims a crime in Britain: "The leader of the anti-immigration British National Party was charged yesterday with inciting racial hatred last year at a party gathering, in a development likely to shift the focus of Britain's general election campaign increasingly to immigration. Nick Griffin, who was expected to appear overnight with BNP founder John Tyndall at Leeds Magistrates Court, is standing as a candidate in next month's election in the seat of Keighley, where race is seen as a flashpoint issue and where the party won two seats in last year's council elections. Mr Griffin faces four counts of using language likely to stir up racial hatred, while Mr Tyndall is charged on two similar counts.... Mr Griffin said he welcomed the martyrdom that the race-crime charges represented. He said they were the result of speaking the truth and would lead to electoral success for the BNP."
If you have not seen it yet, have a look at the stereotyped view of America that a major German newsmagazine has just presented to its readers. How they hate America for being what they would like to be!
There is a big article here about Britain's huge numbers of NEETs (dole-bludging dropouts, mostly single mothers or criminals). Welfare payments that enable people to live adequately without working are of course the cause of the problem but nobody seems to be mentioning that.
My latest quote on MARXWORDS shows that Engels despised Greeks too. Germans and Hungarians (Magyars) seem to be about the only peoples he liked.
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
**************************
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"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
Candle-makers, blacksmiths ... and the Post Office: "Candle-makers were none too happy with the invention of the light bulb, for obvious reasons. Ditto blacksmiths with the invention of the automobile. So you can imagine how the post office must feel today about cheap long distance rates, faxes and email. While candle-makers and blacksmiths still roam among us today, like the buffalo their numbers have greatly diminished since the country's founding years. I assume they fought the tide of progress tooth-and-nail, but in the end their fate was inevitable. So, too, is the fate of the once great United States Postal Service (USPS). Its demise is a foregone conclusion. The only question is when and how the USPS as we know it today will be put out to pasture for good."
Realism comes to Germany: "A website that gets unemployed Germans bidding against each other to work for the lowest wages is set to spark fresh controversy with plans for an August launch in Britain. Trade unions have accused jobdumping.de of promoting "slave labour" with reverse auctions that see workers compete against each other in a downward bidding spiral for odd tasks and short-term contracts.... Jobdumping.de invites employers with openings for waiters or construction yard workers to offer a maximum fee and wait for a crush of eager workers to knock down the price. It's a nightmare come true for defenders of Europe's cosseted social model, already consumed by angst over a "race to the bottom" with low-wage economies in eastern Europe and Asia".
California shame. What happens when you spend all your money on bureaucracy: "When it comes time for the state to send monthly paychecks to more than 200,000 employees, someone in the controller's office in downtown Sacramento downloads the data from a mainframe computer onto a tape the size of an eight-track and walks it over to the room that houses the printers. The information-transfer process takes so long that the controller's staff has to start it before the end of the pay period to get the checks mailed out on time. And if anything goes wrong, only the old-timers on the controller's staff know how to fix it. The payroll program was written about 30 years ago in a computer language so ancient that to recent computer-science graduates, it looks like hieroglyphics. Decades after the birth of the computer industry, much of it right here in California, the state's massive information technology systems are disorganized, outdated and deficient".
Invisible foreign aid -- America subsidizes new drugs for the world: "Health care is expensive, but inadequate treatment is even more expensive. This is a lesson the German government has yet to learn. For years much of the world has been a free rider on U.S. medical R&D. Most industrialized states rely on a mix of price and volume controls to limit pharmaceutical spending. These governments expect American drug makers to keep supplying their products, almost irrespective of price. As a result, U.S. citizens are bearing a steadily increasing medical burden: Since 1999 America has accounted for 71% of the sales of new chemical entities, up from 62%. Japan and Germany, the next two largest pharmaceutical markets, account for just 4% each. Washington is under increasing pressure to end this sweet deal for other nations. In fact, the U.S. has started to raise the issue in trade negotiations. The real solution, however, is for other nations to pay a fair price for what they use."
Another jealous attack on business success: "Maryland lawmakers yesterday approved legislation that would effectively require Wal-Mart to boost spending on health care, a direct legislative thrust against a corporate giant that is already on the defensive on many fronts nationwide".
*********************************
ELSEWHERE
Another win for blogs: "An American blogger has suddenly emerged as a force in Canadian politics. Edward Morrissey, a 42-year-old Minneapolis area call-center manager who runs a Web log, or blog, called Captain's Quarters as a hobby, last Saturday began posting allegations of corruption that reached the highest levels of the Canadian Liberal Party. The postings violate a publication ban instituted a few days earlier by a federal judge, Justice John Gomery, who is leading an investigation into accusations of money laundering and kickbacks in a government program from the 1990's that was aimed at undermining Quebec separatists. The scandal, which involves government payments of up to $85 million to a handful of Montreal advertising firms for little or no work, has dominated national politics for a year and led to the Liberals losing their majority in the House of Commons last June.... According to Mr. Morrissey's blog, recent testimony for the first time links people who have been close to Prime Minister Paul Martin to the scandal.... While the Canadian news media have not reported explicitly what Mr. Morrissey is posting, their newspaper articles and television features about his work have led Canadians to visit Captain's Quarters (www.captainsquartersblog.com) to read the latest scandalous details. Mr. Morrissey said his blog had been flooded since Canadian CTV television first reported on its existence and contents Sunday night, and that he was now getting 400,000 hits a day."
Jeff Jacoby has a touching article about the late Pope's lifelong opposition to antisemitism -- which is all the more remarkable considering how antisemitic Poland has always been. There is another similar story of this truly righteous man here. That Leftists refer to a man of such great integrity as a "conservative" is a great compliment to conservatives. But Leftists would not know integrity if they fell over it, of course.
Frank talk about Muslims a crime in Britain: "The leader of the anti-immigration British National Party was charged yesterday with inciting racial hatred last year at a party gathering, in a development likely to shift the focus of Britain's general election campaign increasingly to immigration. Nick Griffin, who was expected to appear overnight with BNP founder John Tyndall at Leeds Magistrates Court, is standing as a candidate in next month's election in the seat of Keighley, where race is seen as a flashpoint issue and where the party won two seats in last year's council elections. Mr Griffin faces four counts of using language likely to stir up racial hatred, while Mr Tyndall is charged on two similar counts.... Mr Griffin said he welcomed the martyrdom that the race-crime charges represented. He said they were the result of speaking the truth and would lead to electoral success for the BNP."
If you have not seen it yet, have a look at the stereotyped view of America that a major German newsmagazine has just presented to its readers. How they hate America for being what they would like to be!
There is a big article here about Britain's huge numbers of NEETs (dole-bludging dropouts, mostly single mothers or criminals). Welfare payments that enable people to live adequately without working are of course the cause of the problem but nobody seems to be mentioning that.
My latest quote on MARXWORDS shows that Engels despised Greeks too. Germans and Hungarians (Magyars) seem to be about the only peoples he liked.
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
**************************
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"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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, April 07, 2005
WHY I AM A LIBERTARIAN CONSERVATIVE
I normally mention my own political outlook only in passing. I am more interested in understanding what is happening in the world about me than I am in proposing my own grand theories. And in that respect I think I am a mainstream conservative. Conservatives don't like grand theories. I do however find libertarian ideas a very useful framework for thinking about problems. I think that most of society's problems are caused by governments usurping choices that could better be made by individuals and that government is just about the worst way of doing almost anything. So libertarians normally have a good answer to most social problems -- allow more freedom for individual choice. Libertarians have ideas and concrete proposals with a clear rationale and persuasive precedents. And that is a great contrast with the dismal Leftist reflex of solving everything via ever more pervasive coercion. And libertarian proposals in most spheres are normally congenial to conservatives too.
Where libertarians normally part company with conservatives is over moral issues. Conservatives want less regulation than Leftists but they do want some regulation. Exposing part of a black woman's breast at a major sporting event upsets some conservatives dreadfully, for instance. I am afraid that I remain a total libertarian on such issues. What people do with their own bodies seems to me to be supremely their business. And all arguments that some idea or claim should not be uttered or made known simply suggest to me that the idea or claim concerned is a powerful one that cannot easily be opposed. I would not go so far as to say that any censored idea or claim is automatically correct but I think there is a strong presumption in that direction. So the argument that sexual restraint should be fostered by censorship of sexual expression suggests to me that the arguments in favour of sexual restraint are weak.
Where I part company with many libertarians is that I find them too doctrinaire. I DON'T believe that there is one simple recipe that solves all problems. That to me is a Leftist outlook. As conservatives generally do, I see the world as infinitely complex and as not reducible to any simple rule. And in fact many libertarians agree with that. The extreme form of libertarianism is anarcho-capitalism -- the idea that NO government is needed for any purpose. I know all the arguments in favour of that view but see them as contrary to all human experience. Man is a social animal who has always throughout history felt at least some need for a government to perform certain tasks and I am perfectly confident that that will always be so. So as far as I can tell, most libertarians are not anarcho-capitalists. They are Minimal Statists. They believe that there are certain functions (such as defence) for which a government is needed. I am one of those.
So the distinction between Minimal Statists and Conservatives is one of degree. Conservatives have always wanted to limit the size and power of the State (I document 1500 years of history to that effect here) but they still want a much bigger State than Minimal Statists do. And I am a pretty minimal Minimal Statist. I think the USA could abolish its whole alphabet soup of government agencies (FDA, EPA, DEA etc) to great net advantage (for instance).
Where I appear to be in a minority among libertarians, however, is over the issue of immigration control. I am in favour of control. I am far from totally alone in that view among libertarians but I think it is pretty clear that a majority of libertarians believe in open borders. I think that is naive. Not all people are equally compatible with one-another and if a householder has a right to say whom he will welcome into his house then I think nations have an equal right to say whom they will welcome into their nation. Fortunately, I live in one of the few advanced countries in the world (Australia) that does effectively control its immigration. And my views on that matter make me very much a mainstream Australian. A huge majority of Australians agree with our government's policy of control.
Another way in which I depart from most libertarians but am very much in harmony with conservative traditions is that I do believe us all to be limited in various ways by human nature. Libertarians have no obvious place in their thought for the concept. They know it is a factor but see it as simply one of the many mysterious factors that determine people's preferences. For them only the preferences matter. What determines those preferences is for them unimportant. But conservatives think human nature is VERY important. They think it greatly limits what we do and can do and use it to explain WHY collective action is to be avoided where possible. They give reasons for preferring liberty, instead of simply asserting the desirability of liberty, as libertarians usually do.
That is not to say that libertarians have the same view of human nature that Leftists do. Leftists normally insist that human nature does not exist and that therefore any human being can in theory become anything he wants to be or can be "educated" into being. Libertarians, by contrast, are simply uninterested in whether that is true or not. Leftists think little boys can be "educated" into preferring dolls to trucks as playthings whereas conservatives think they cannot. A libertarian, by contrast, simply says that little boys should be given a choice of what to play with and who cares what they choose. Unfortunately, however, a lot of people do care so the conservative argument does have to be made. I personally agree with the libertarian policy in the matter but I think that policy does normally have to be backed up with conservative arguments about human nature to get it implemented.
Conservatives also have to make more of an issue of individual differences than libertarians do. That people are different and should be allowed to make different choices is axiomatic to libertarians but they normally take that as given rather than arguing for it. With their perennial "all men are equal" doctine, however, Leftists are always trying to deny or minimize individual differences. Conservatives believe that doctrine to be disastrously wrong and argue vigorously against it. Conservatives believe, for instance, that some people work harder and smarter and therefore rightly get more money for what they do. Leftists however think (or claim to think) that all men are equal so unequal rewards must be unfair and the work of a flawed system. So whether or not individual differences are important is a major Left/Right issue -- but libertarians simply assume it away without debate. I spent most of my academic career researching individual differences so I am obviously in the conservative camp there.
And one way in which I differ from almost everybody these days is that I say out loud that there are some differences between the major races and nations of mankind and that some (but only some) of those differences are important. Up until the middle of the 20th century just about everybody believed that but the fact that Hitler used arguments of that general sort in justifying his deeds has made such arguments generally unmentionable in the modern world. I am however a psychometrician by trade. My expertise is in measuring psychological differences between people. I have had over 200 papers published in the academic journals reporting research in that connection. And perhaps the most solidly proven and replicated finding in psychometrics -- a finding that has always emerged in around a century of research -- is that people of African ultimate origin do have much lower average scores on general problem-solving ability (IQ) than do people of European ancestry and that variations in IQ are largely genetic. So, knowing what I know from my own field of expertise, I HAVE to say that the Leftist approach of treating blacks and whites as intellectually equal is doomed to failure. Somebody has got to say that the emperor has no clothes and I am prepared to be that person when required. Most people seem to think that makes me a "Right-wing extremist" or a "white supremacist". I think it simply makes me an honest scientist.
*****************************
I normally mention my own political outlook only in passing. I am more interested in understanding what is happening in the world about me than I am in proposing my own grand theories. And in that respect I think I am a mainstream conservative. Conservatives don't like grand theories. I do however find libertarian ideas a very useful framework for thinking about problems. I think that most of society's problems are caused by governments usurping choices that could better be made by individuals and that government is just about the worst way of doing almost anything. So libertarians normally have a good answer to most social problems -- allow more freedom for individual choice. Libertarians have ideas and concrete proposals with a clear rationale and persuasive precedents. And that is a great contrast with the dismal Leftist reflex of solving everything via ever more pervasive coercion. And libertarian proposals in most spheres are normally congenial to conservatives too.
Where libertarians normally part company with conservatives is over moral issues. Conservatives want less regulation than Leftists but they do want some regulation. Exposing part of a black woman's breast at a major sporting event upsets some conservatives dreadfully, for instance. I am afraid that I remain a total libertarian on such issues. What people do with their own bodies seems to me to be supremely their business. And all arguments that some idea or claim should not be uttered or made known simply suggest to me that the idea or claim concerned is a powerful one that cannot easily be opposed. I would not go so far as to say that any censored idea or claim is automatically correct but I think there is a strong presumption in that direction. So the argument that sexual restraint should be fostered by censorship of sexual expression suggests to me that the arguments in favour of sexual restraint are weak.
Where I part company with many libertarians is that I find them too doctrinaire. I DON'T believe that there is one simple recipe that solves all problems. That to me is a Leftist outlook. As conservatives generally do, I see the world as infinitely complex and as not reducible to any simple rule. And in fact many libertarians agree with that. The extreme form of libertarianism is anarcho-capitalism -- the idea that NO government is needed for any purpose. I know all the arguments in favour of that view but see them as contrary to all human experience. Man is a social animal who has always throughout history felt at least some need for a government to perform certain tasks and I am perfectly confident that that will always be so. So as far as I can tell, most libertarians are not anarcho-capitalists. They are Minimal Statists. They believe that there are certain functions (such as defence) for which a government is needed. I am one of those.
So the distinction between Minimal Statists and Conservatives is one of degree. Conservatives have always wanted to limit the size and power of the State (I document 1500 years of history to that effect here) but they still want a much bigger State than Minimal Statists do. And I am a pretty minimal Minimal Statist. I think the USA could abolish its whole alphabet soup of government agencies (FDA, EPA, DEA etc) to great net advantage (for instance).
Where I appear to be in a minority among libertarians, however, is over the issue of immigration control. I am in favour of control. I am far from totally alone in that view among libertarians but I think it is pretty clear that a majority of libertarians believe in open borders. I think that is naive. Not all people are equally compatible with one-another and if a householder has a right to say whom he will welcome into his house then I think nations have an equal right to say whom they will welcome into their nation. Fortunately, I live in one of the few advanced countries in the world (Australia) that does effectively control its immigration. And my views on that matter make me very much a mainstream Australian. A huge majority of Australians agree with our government's policy of control.
Another way in which I depart from most libertarians but am very much in harmony with conservative traditions is that I do believe us all to be limited in various ways by human nature. Libertarians have no obvious place in their thought for the concept. They know it is a factor but see it as simply one of the many mysterious factors that determine people's preferences. For them only the preferences matter. What determines those preferences is for them unimportant. But conservatives think human nature is VERY important. They think it greatly limits what we do and can do and use it to explain WHY collective action is to be avoided where possible. They give reasons for preferring liberty, instead of simply asserting the desirability of liberty, as libertarians usually do.
That is not to say that libertarians have the same view of human nature that Leftists do. Leftists normally insist that human nature does not exist and that therefore any human being can in theory become anything he wants to be or can be "educated" into being. Libertarians, by contrast, are simply uninterested in whether that is true or not. Leftists think little boys can be "educated" into preferring dolls to trucks as playthings whereas conservatives think they cannot. A libertarian, by contrast, simply says that little boys should be given a choice of what to play with and who cares what they choose. Unfortunately, however, a lot of people do care so the conservative argument does have to be made. I personally agree with the libertarian policy in the matter but I think that policy does normally have to be backed up with conservative arguments about human nature to get it implemented.
Conservatives also have to make more of an issue of individual differences than libertarians do. That people are different and should be allowed to make different choices is axiomatic to libertarians but they normally take that as given rather than arguing for it. With their perennial "all men are equal" doctine, however, Leftists are always trying to deny or minimize individual differences. Conservatives believe that doctrine to be disastrously wrong and argue vigorously against it. Conservatives believe, for instance, that some people work harder and smarter and therefore rightly get more money for what they do. Leftists however think (or claim to think) that all men are equal so unequal rewards must be unfair and the work of a flawed system. So whether or not individual differences are important is a major Left/Right issue -- but libertarians simply assume it away without debate. I spent most of my academic career researching individual differences so I am obviously in the conservative camp there.
And one way in which I differ from almost everybody these days is that I say out loud that there are some differences between the major races and nations of mankind and that some (but only some) of those differences are important. Up until the middle of the 20th century just about everybody believed that but the fact that Hitler used arguments of that general sort in justifying his deeds has made such arguments generally unmentionable in the modern world. I am however a psychometrician by trade. My expertise is in measuring psychological differences between people. I have had over 200 papers published in the academic journals reporting research in that connection. And perhaps the most solidly proven and replicated finding in psychometrics -- a finding that has always emerged in around a century of research -- is that people of African ultimate origin do have much lower average scores on general problem-solving ability (IQ) than do people of European ancestry and that variations in IQ are largely genetic. So, knowing what I know from my own field of expertise, I HAVE to say that the Leftist approach of treating blacks and whites as intellectually equal is doomed to failure. Somebody has got to say that the emperor has no clothes and I am prepared to be that person when required. Most people seem to think that makes me a "Right-wing extremist" or a "white supremacist". I think it simply makes me an honest scientist.
*****************************
ELSEWHERE
A good comment from a reader about "Bishop" Robinson's claim (see yesterday) that Jesus was a homosexual: "Either Robinson is utterly ignorant of the Jewish culture of 2000 years ago or hopes that a lot of his parishioners and supporters are. It's not hard to imagine how a poor itinerant would have a bit of trouble coming up with the bride price of that day, no matter how little it might have been. And, since the security situation back then was probably a bit dicey, Pax Romana notwithstanding, it would have better to travel in the company of other men in order to ward off trouble. If I recall my Bible stories correctly, didn't Peter take the ear off a Roman soldier in Gethsemane?"
There is a good article here about Jim Wallis, the "Leftist evangelical" (really a pacifist who loves dictators). Leftists are hanging on his every word these days but he is pastor to only "a few dozen" people. What a great evangelist! He sure knows how to inspire people with Christ's message! Still, a lot of Anglican priests preach to only about half a dozen old ladies on Sunday so I suppose he does well as Leftist preachers go.
There is a report here (PDF) showing that "Women's Studies" programs at universities are as empty of students as they are of real content. They are just a "Jobs for the Girls" racket and serve no real academic purpose. It looks like very few students are foolish enough to waste an education on learning hopelessly biased propaganda.
The party of the rich in the 2004 election was ....... ? ... "Pointing to the left's success in using tax-exempt organizations to raise funds, Mr. York puts paid to the meme that Republicans are the party bankrolled by the rich. Mr. York records that 92% of contributions of $1 million or more went to Democrats. Pro-Democratic 527s, meanwhile, spent more than twice as much as their GOP counterparts".
Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its usual big range of select reading.
My latest quote on MARXWORDS shows again that Engels regarded the Slavs as an inferior race who deserve to be oppressed. How ironic that it was a Slavic nation (Russia) that first put Marxist ideas into practice!
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
**************************
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"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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 good comment from a reader about "Bishop" Robinson's claim (see yesterday) that Jesus was a homosexual: "Either Robinson is utterly ignorant of the Jewish culture of 2000 years ago or hopes that a lot of his parishioners and supporters are. It's not hard to imagine how a poor itinerant would have a bit of trouble coming up with the bride price of that day, no matter how little it might have been. And, since the security situation back then was probably a bit dicey, Pax Romana notwithstanding, it would have better to travel in the company of other men in order to ward off trouble. If I recall my Bible stories correctly, didn't Peter take the ear off a Roman soldier in Gethsemane?"
There is a good article here about Jim Wallis, the "Leftist evangelical" (really a pacifist who loves dictators). Leftists are hanging on his every word these days but he is pastor to only "a few dozen" people. What a great evangelist! He sure knows how to inspire people with Christ's message! Still, a lot of Anglican priests preach to only about half a dozen old ladies on Sunday so I suppose he does well as Leftist preachers go.
There is a report here (PDF) showing that "Women's Studies" programs at universities are as empty of students as they are of real content. They are just a "Jobs for the Girls" racket and serve no real academic purpose. It looks like very few students are foolish enough to waste an education on learning hopelessly biased propaganda.
The party of the rich in the 2004 election was ....... ? ... "Pointing to the left's success in using tax-exempt organizations to raise funds, Mr. York puts paid to the meme that Republicans are the party bankrolled by the rich. Mr. York records that 92% of contributions of $1 million or more went to Democrats. Pro-Democratic 527s, meanwhile, spent more than twice as much as their GOP counterparts".
Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its usual big range of select reading.
My latest quote on MARXWORDS shows again that Engels regarded the Slavs as an inferior race who deserve to be oppressed. How ironic that it was a Slavic nation (Russia) that first put Marxist ideas into practice!
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
**************************
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"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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, April 06, 2005
ABORTION
There is an interesting article here pointing out that in Britain the abortion issue is not politically polarized: Members of all political parties are allowed a conscience vote on the matter. There are many anti-abortion Leftists in good standing, for instance. The author argues that the U.S. Democratic party too should adopt a neutral stance on the matter and sponsor a constitutional amendment to short-circuit the Supreme Court and return to the State legislatures the decision on what abortions are legal or not. He says that to do so would detach a lot of Christian votes from the Republicans. He concludes:
"Of course, there's a very big "if" here. The pro-choice activists in the Democratic Party have to be willing to give up their court-enforced privileged position, trading their elite judicial bastion for the give-and-take of (small "d") democratic politics. They will lose ground in some states. But wouldn't that be a small price to pay for heading off "the theocrats" at the national level and for the opportunity of taming them at the state level?
Or is the fanaticism of the pro-choice wing of the Democratic Party just as much an obstacle to "grown-up" British-style politics as are the views of those deluded souls in Kansas who don't know what their real interests are?"
**********************************
ELSEWHERE
Was Jesus homosexual? "Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly homosexual bishop of his denomination, has angered traditionalist Anglicans by suggesting that Jesus Christ might have been homosexual. Robinson, who left his wife - and mother of his two daughters - to cohabit with his male lover, Mark, made his inflammatory remarks during an address titled, "Homosexuality and the Body of Christ: Is There a New Way?" at Christ Church of Hamilton and Wenham, Massachusetts. The bishop was asked by a congregant how Christians could both accept homosexuality and the Bible's emphasis on redemption for sins. "Interestingly enough, in this day of traditional family values," answered Robinson, "this man that we follow was single, as far as we know, traveled with a bunch of men, had a disciple who was known as 'the one whom Jesus loved' and said my family is not my mother and father, my family is those who do the will of God".
The real opponents of change: "On almost every significant area of public policy the Democrats are atrophied, rusty, and calcified. They're dependent upon old (condescending) notions about blacks, the patronage of teacher's unions which care very little for the facts, and feminists who define liberation almost exclusively as the freedom to abort pregnancies despite all of the new, inconvenient facts science is bringing to bear. Liberals are not the 'reality-based community, they are the status-quo based community. They wish to stand athwart history yelling 'Stop' -- in some rare cases, even when history is advancing liberalism in tyrannical lands. The Buckleyite formulation of standing athwart history yelling 'Stop' was aimed at a world where the rise of Communism abroad and soft-liberalism at home were seen as linked trends. Today, liberals yell "Stop' almost entirely because they don't enjoy being in the backseat. If they cannot drive, no one can."
Jane Galt has put up the best version of the conservative argument against homosexual marriage that I have seen. It is in fact an excellent argument for caution about change in general. I have in fact done an excerpt of what she says about reasons for caution in social policy generally and posted it here.
More U.N. corruption: "Freedom House today released its annual list of the world's most repressive regimes at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. Six are members of the UN body, charged with monitoring and condemning human rights violations."
Sometimes, there oughta NOT be a law: "To see the national trend toward 'overcriminalization' in action, consider New Mexico. In his 2005 State of the State address, Gov. Bill Richardson labeled 2004 'the year of the legislature.' And it looks as if some Santa Fe lawmakers have no intention of relinquishing that title -- or the accompanying breadth of jurisdiction -- in 2005. Exhibit A: The Recycling and Illegal Dumping Act, introduced on Jan. 21 by Sen. Dede Feldman and recently passed by the State Senate. This bill makes it a criminal offense to use, store, transport or dump scrap tires or tire-derived products. ... Possession of old Firestones could get you three years in the slammer. You also might find yourself doing time over a conviction based on guilt by association. Under the bill, knowingly saying nothing about 'any substantive information [regarding tire derived products]' is a fourth-degree felony, punishable by up to 18 months in prison."
Centrist Democrats get the message: "The Democrats' postelection war about what they should stand for is heating up again, with centrists challenging liberals to 'real fights' within the party about staking out a tougher position against terrorism. In an attack on the party's dominant left wing, anti-war base, and a warning for new Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean 'to do no harm,' the centrist-leaning Democratic Leadership Council said it is 'a delusion to think that if we just turned out our voters, we could win national elections.' Instead, the DLC called on the party to dramatically change its message to 'recapture the muscular progressive internationalism of Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy and convince voters that national security is our first priority.'"
The age of judicial activism must end: "With the looming departure of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist from a heavily divided United States Supreme Court, the stakes are high for President Bush. What sort of Justice will replace Rehnquist? Will he or she be a judicial activist or stick to the original intent of the Constitution? Since the days of Marbury v. Madison, the meaning of judicial review has been a complicated issue in American public life. Over the years, several Justices have used their positions of power to become legislators--overstepping their bounds and creating law in the process."
British voting system fraud-prone too: "A judge investigating vote-rigging in Birmingham's local elections has ruled there was widespread fraud and has ordered new elections. Election Commissioner Richard Mawrey QC upheld allegations of postal fraud relating to six seats won by Labour in the ballot of 10 June last year. The results have been declared void and the polls in two wards must be rerun. Judge Mawrey said evidence of "massive, systematic and organised fraud" in the campaign had made a mockery of the election and ruled that not less than 1,500 votes had been cast fraudulently in the city. The deputy high court judge said the system was "hopelessly insecure" and expressed regret that recent warnings about the failings had been dismissed by the government as "scaremongering". Speaking outside court, a spokesman for the People's Justice Party called for postal voting to be outlawed at the general election.... Mr Mawrey ordered that none of the six councillors be allowed to stand for the vacant seats at the next election".
My latest quote on MARXWORDS shows again that Marx believed in superior and inferior races.
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
**************************
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"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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 article here pointing out that in Britain the abortion issue is not politically polarized: Members of all political parties are allowed a conscience vote on the matter. There are many anti-abortion Leftists in good standing, for instance. The author argues that the U.S. Democratic party too should adopt a neutral stance on the matter and sponsor a constitutional amendment to short-circuit the Supreme Court and return to the State legislatures the decision on what abortions are legal or not. He says that to do so would detach a lot of Christian votes from the Republicans. He concludes:
"Of course, there's a very big "if" here. The pro-choice activists in the Democratic Party have to be willing to give up their court-enforced privileged position, trading their elite judicial bastion for the give-and-take of (small "d") democratic politics. They will lose ground in some states. But wouldn't that be a small price to pay for heading off "the theocrats" at the national level and for the opportunity of taming them at the state level?
Or is the fanaticism of the pro-choice wing of the Democratic Party just as much an obstacle to "grown-up" British-style politics as are the views of those deluded souls in Kansas who don't know what their real interests are?"
**********************************
ELSEWHERE
Was Jesus homosexual? "Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly homosexual bishop of his denomination, has angered traditionalist Anglicans by suggesting that Jesus Christ might have been homosexual. Robinson, who left his wife - and mother of his two daughters - to cohabit with his male lover, Mark, made his inflammatory remarks during an address titled, "Homosexuality and the Body of Christ: Is There a New Way?" at Christ Church of Hamilton and Wenham, Massachusetts. The bishop was asked by a congregant how Christians could both accept homosexuality and the Bible's emphasis on redemption for sins. "Interestingly enough, in this day of traditional family values," answered Robinson, "this man that we follow was single, as far as we know, traveled with a bunch of men, had a disciple who was known as 'the one whom Jesus loved' and said my family is not my mother and father, my family is those who do the will of God".
The real opponents of change: "On almost every significant area of public policy the Democrats are atrophied, rusty, and calcified. They're dependent upon old (condescending) notions about blacks, the patronage of teacher's unions which care very little for the facts, and feminists who define liberation almost exclusively as the freedom to abort pregnancies despite all of the new, inconvenient facts science is bringing to bear. Liberals are not the 'reality-based community, they are the status-quo based community. They wish to stand athwart history yelling 'Stop' -- in some rare cases, even when history is advancing liberalism in tyrannical lands. The Buckleyite formulation of standing athwart history yelling 'Stop' was aimed at a world where the rise of Communism abroad and soft-liberalism at home were seen as linked trends. Today, liberals yell "Stop' almost entirely because they don't enjoy being in the backseat. If they cannot drive, no one can."
Jane Galt has put up the best version of the conservative argument against homosexual marriage that I have seen. It is in fact an excellent argument for caution about change in general. I have in fact done an excerpt of what she says about reasons for caution in social policy generally and posted it here.
More U.N. corruption: "Freedom House today released its annual list of the world's most repressive regimes at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. Six are members of the UN body, charged with monitoring and condemning human rights violations."
Sometimes, there oughta NOT be a law: "To see the national trend toward 'overcriminalization' in action, consider New Mexico. In his 2005 State of the State address, Gov. Bill Richardson labeled 2004 'the year of the legislature.' And it looks as if some Santa Fe lawmakers have no intention of relinquishing that title -- or the accompanying breadth of jurisdiction -- in 2005. Exhibit A: The Recycling and Illegal Dumping Act, introduced on Jan. 21 by Sen. Dede Feldman and recently passed by the State Senate. This bill makes it a criminal offense to use, store, transport or dump scrap tires or tire-derived products. ... Possession of old Firestones could get you three years in the slammer. You also might find yourself doing time over a conviction based on guilt by association. Under the bill, knowingly saying nothing about 'any substantive information [regarding tire derived products]' is a fourth-degree felony, punishable by up to 18 months in prison."
Centrist Democrats get the message: "The Democrats' postelection war about what they should stand for is heating up again, with centrists challenging liberals to 'real fights' within the party about staking out a tougher position against terrorism. In an attack on the party's dominant left wing, anti-war base, and a warning for new Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean 'to do no harm,' the centrist-leaning Democratic Leadership Council said it is 'a delusion to think that if we just turned out our voters, we could win national elections.' Instead, the DLC called on the party to dramatically change its message to 'recapture the muscular progressive internationalism of Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy and convince voters that national security is our first priority.'"
The age of judicial activism must end: "With the looming departure of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist from a heavily divided United States Supreme Court, the stakes are high for President Bush. What sort of Justice will replace Rehnquist? Will he or she be a judicial activist or stick to the original intent of the Constitution? Since the days of Marbury v. Madison, the meaning of judicial review has been a complicated issue in American public life. Over the years, several Justices have used their positions of power to become legislators--overstepping their bounds and creating law in the process."
British voting system fraud-prone too: "A judge investigating vote-rigging in Birmingham's local elections has ruled there was widespread fraud and has ordered new elections. Election Commissioner Richard Mawrey QC upheld allegations of postal fraud relating to six seats won by Labour in the ballot of 10 June last year. The results have been declared void and the polls in two wards must be rerun. Judge Mawrey said evidence of "massive, systematic and organised fraud" in the campaign had made a mockery of the election and ruled that not less than 1,500 votes had been cast fraudulently in the city. The deputy high court judge said the system was "hopelessly insecure" and expressed regret that recent warnings about the failings had been dismissed by the government as "scaremongering". Speaking outside court, a spokesman for the People's Justice Party called for postal voting to be outlawed at the general election.... Mr Mawrey ordered that none of the six councillors be allowed to stand for the vacant seats at the next election".
My latest quote on MARXWORDS shows again that Marx believed in superior and inferior races.
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
**************************
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"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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, April 05, 2005
TUESDAY ROUNDUP
Once again I pick out what I think are my best posts for the week:
On Dissecting Leftism I look at Black/White income disparities
On Political Correctness Watch I have some news about Britain's gypsy problem
On Greenie Watch I look at the latest Greenie scare about us "running out" of things
On Education Watch I note an argument in favour of "spare the rod and spoil the child"
On Socialized Medicine I note that with 1.4 million employees to serve 60 million people, Britain's NHS still cannot provide adequate medical care
On Gun Watch I say that the latest school shootings show that gun banning has plainly failed
On MarxWords I show that Engels thought Aryans were superior
On Leftists as Elitists I note a seemingly endless parade of unproven assertions by an elitist who thinks he knows what's best but who cannot even spell
On Majority Rights I say that Winston Churchill WAS a neocon
On Blogger News I note that homosexual conservatives are being persecuted by the Left
**********************************
Once again I pick out what I think are my best posts for the week:
On Dissecting Leftism I look at Black/White income disparities
On Political Correctness Watch I have some news about Britain's gypsy problem
On Greenie Watch I look at the latest Greenie scare about us "running out" of things
On Education Watch I note an argument in favour of "spare the rod and spoil the child"
On Socialized Medicine I note that with 1.4 million employees to serve 60 million people, Britain's NHS still cannot provide adequate medical care
On Gun Watch I say that the latest school shootings show that gun banning has plainly failed
On MarxWords I show that Engels thought Aryans were superior
On Leftists as Elitists I note a seemingly endless parade of unproven assertions by an elitist who thinks he knows what's best but who cannot even spell
On Majority Rights I say that Winston Churchill WAS a neocon
On Blogger News I note that homosexual conservatives are being persecuted by the Left
**********************************
WAS THE POPE A CONSERVATIVE?
Lawrence Auster has a heap of posts and comments up at the moment about the late Holy Father. Auster is derisive of the view that John Paul II was a conservative. But that depends on what you mean by conservative and Auster has an unusual view of that. It is certainly clear that JPII was a political centrist but I think one could say much the same of GWB. So is GWB a conservative? NO! I can hear some people shouting. But no real-life politician wins universal approval even from his own side of politics so I think we have to say that in the ordinary meaning of the term GWB IS a conservative.
From my own libertarian conservative viewpoint both GWB and JPII are/were not nearly conservative enough but I think that real-world conservative politics at least from Disraeli on have almost always consisted of finding a safe balance between competing political claims rather than pursuing some hard-line ideology. Hard-line ideologies are for Leftists. So I think Auster's view of the matter misses the point that JPII was of necessity a real-world politician -- so compromises were to be expected of him. Even my great hero, Ronald Reagan, signed into law some pieces of legislation I would rather not think about.
What I think Auster also misses is that political centrism is thoroughly Papal. The attitudes of JPII were simply modern adaptations of traditional Papal thinking. I go into that at slightly greater length here. Papal thinking is in fact the ancestor of the Blairite "third way". The syndicalism that was recommended in the famous 1891 encyclical De rerum novarum of Pope Leo XIII also tried to strike a balance between capitalism and socialism.
Update: I guess I should mention explicitly something I initially thought was too well-known to require comment: That there was one respect in which His Holiness was NOT a centrist -- his stand in favour of individual rights versus the power of the Communist State. So in that respect he was very much a conservative, and a great one.
*********************************
Lawrence Auster has a heap of posts and comments up at the moment about the late Holy Father. Auster is derisive of the view that John Paul II was a conservative. But that depends on what you mean by conservative and Auster has an unusual view of that. It is certainly clear that JPII was a political centrist but I think one could say much the same of GWB. So is GWB a conservative? NO! I can hear some people shouting. But no real-life politician wins universal approval even from his own side of politics so I think we have to say that in the ordinary meaning of the term GWB IS a conservative.
From my own libertarian conservative viewpoint both GWB and JPII are/were not nearly conservative enough but I think that real-world conservative politics at least from Disraeli on have almost always consisted of finding a safe balance between competing political claims rather than pursuing some hard-line ideology. Hard-line ideologies are for Leftists. So I think Auster's view of the matter misses the point that JPII was of necessity a real-world politician -- so compromises were to be expected of him. Even my great hero, Ronald Reagan, signed into law some pieces of legislation I would rather not think about.
What I think Auster also misses is that political centrism is thoroughly Papal. The attitudes of JPII were simply modern adaptations of traditional Papal thinking. I go into that at slightly greater length here. Papal thinking is in fact the ancestor of the Blairite "third way". The syndicalism that was recommended in the famous 1891 encyclical De rerum novarum of Pope Leo XIII also tried to strike a balance between capitalism and socialism.
Update: I guess I should mention explicitly something I initially thought was too well-known to require comment: That there was one respect in which His Holiness was NOT a centrist -- his stand in favour of individual rights versus the power of the Communist State. So in that respect he was very much a conservative, and a great one.
*********************************
ELSEWHERE
George Watson's latest article on the great similarites between Nazism and Communism is now online. The similarities are even greater than is commonly known and Watson sets out well their common origins in the ideas of Marx & Engels. Excerpt: "Racialism was already widely accepted as the mark of the Left in many countries, including England. There the Fabians led. In 1900, in Fabianism and the Empire, they announced in imperial vein that "the state which obstructs international civilisation will have to go, be it big or little". Two years later H.G. Wells, another Fabian, wrote Anticipations, where in its last pages he called for the extermination or all non-white races to build a universal socialist utopia; and in August 1913, in the New Statesman, Sidney and Beatrice Webb called for the endless domination of the world by the white races"
Interesting excerpt from a review of Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas?: "And yet Frank's portrait of Kansas conservatives is often brilliant. One of the high points of the book is his interview of Tim Golba, the organizer of Kansans for Life. Frank is impressed that this man of power is a mere line worker in a soda-pop plant. Frank visits him in his little house, unscreened by trees, baking in the prairie sun, far from the leafy neighborhoods of the bourgeoisie. Apparently Golba is not conducting his crusade out of an economic interest. "Ignoring one's economic self-interest may seem like a suicidal move to you and me, but viewed in a different way it is an act of noble self-denial," Frank writes. "This is a man who has turned his back on the comforts of our civilization - who defies the men in great palaces. He smites their candidates; he wastes their money; he ends their careers." [So it is conservatism that offers the little guy a share in power]
My latest quote on MARXWORDS shows that Marx believed in superior and inferior races. And guess whom he thought to be superior? (Hint: Adolf agreed).
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
**************************
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"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
George Watson's latest article on the great similarites between Nazism and Communism is now online. The similarities are even greater than is commonly known and Watson sets out well their common origins in the ideas of Marx & Engels. Excerpt: "Racialism was already widely accepted as the mark of the Left in many countries, including England. There the Fabians led. In 1900, in Fabianism and the Empire, they announced in imperial vein that "the state which obstructs international civilisation will have to go, be it big or little". Two years later H.G. Wells, another Fabian, wrote Anticipations, where in its last pages he called for the extermination or all non-white races to build a universal socialist utopia; and in August 1913, in the New Statesman, Sidney and Beatrice Webb called for the endless domination of the world by the white races"
Interesting excerpt from a review of Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas?: "And yet Frank's portrait of Kansas conservatives is often brilliant. One of the high points of the book is his interview of Tim Golba, the organizer of Kansans for Life. Frank is impressed that this man of power is a mere line worker in a soda-pop plant. Frank visits him in his little house, unscreened by trees, baking in the prairie sun, far from the leafy neighborhoods of the bourgeoisie. Apparently Golba is not conducting his crusade out of an economic interest. "Ignoring one's economic self-interest may seem like a suicidal move to you and me, but viewed in a different way it is an act of noble self-denial," Frank writes. "This is a man who has turned his back on the comforts of our civilization - who defies the men in great palaces. He smites their candidates; he wastes their money; he ends their careers." [So it is conservatism that offers the little guy a share in power]
My latest quote on MARXWORDS shows that Marx believed in superior and inferior races. And guess whom he thought to be superior? (Hint: Adolf agreed).
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
**************************
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"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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, April 04, 2005
SOME ECONOMICS
Amtrak: "If the federal government had supplied stagecoach service in the 19th century, we would still have stagecoaches in operation. Luckily, Washington was wise enough to stay out of that business. It was not wise enough to stay out of the passenger rail business, which is why we still have Amtrak. President Bush finds it hard to overhaul Social Security, which may not be surprising: It's a huge program that plays a large role in the life of virtually every American. But he may find it equally frustrating to shift federal policy on Amtrak, even though it's a small program that affects hardly anyone. This is one of those programs that demonstrates eternal life is not just a religious hope for the next world but a fact in this one. It was launched in 1971 with the hope that, in the words of President Nixon's transportation secretary, it 'could be profitable within perhaps three years.' That forecast proved, well, premature."
U.S. foreign debt too LOW: "Here's another reason to be bullish: everyone is worried sick that America is overindebted, but it's not. This country could profitably take on more loans from abroad and invest the money in productive assets. We're underindebted. The debt worriers have been with us for a long time, and they've always been wrong. Their economic prescriptions are born of a moral philosophy that says debt is bad and more debt is worse. They don't like to see the U.S. importing capital from abroad at the rate of $600 billion a year. What the worriers fail to contemplate is the uses to which that capital is put. What is the right debt level for society to carry? The answer is: that level where our marginal borrowing costs approach our marginal return on assets. This is, in fact, the same formula that a corporation would use. If you can borrow at 6% to build a factory that will yield a return of 12%, you should borrow. The U.S. is nowhere near there"
Bye Bye German jobs: "Volkswagen is traditionally thought of as a German manufacturer yet four of its six passenger cars are produced outside of Germany. Volkswagen spokesman Matthew Wiesner says there is a mix of reasons behind the trend. "It's the same with so many of the various producers around the world. It is a mix of where the plants are positioned around the world, currency rates and the fact that Europe is becoming very expensive to produce things," he says".
Coyote Blog has some excellent case studies on the effects of raising the minimum wage. He lists from his own real-life experience four effects: 1. The jobs just go away; 2. The jobs get outsourced to contractors; 3. The jobs get automated away; 4. Prices go up to customers. That brief summary is only a start, however. This is definitely a case of "Read the whole thing".
**********************************
Amtrak: "If the federal government had supplied stagecoach service in the 19th century, we would still have stagecoaches in operation. Luckily, Washington was wise enough to stay out of that business. It was not wise enough to stay out of the passenger rail business, which is why we still have Amtrak. President Bush finds it hard to overhaul Social Security, which may not be surprising: It's a huge program that plays a large role in the life of virtually every American. But he may find it equally frustrating to shift federal policy on Amtrak, even though it's a small program that affects hardly anyone. This is one of those programs that demonstrates eternal life is not just a religious hope for the next world but a fact in this one. It was launched in 1971 with the hope that, in the words of President Nixon's transportation secretary, it 'could be profitable within perhaps three years.' That forecast proved, well, premature."
U.S. foreign debt too LOW: "Here's another reason to be bullish: everyone is worried sick that America is overindebted, but it's not. This country could profitably take on more loans from abroad and invest the money in productive assets. We're underindebted. The debt worriers have been with us for a long time, and they've always been wrong. Their economic prescriptions are born of a moral philosophy that says debt is bad and more debt is worse. They don't like to see the U.S. importing capital from abroad at the rate of $600 billion a year. What the worriers fail to contemplate is the uses to which that capital is put. What is the right debt level for society to carry? The answer is: that level where our marginal borrowing costs approach our marginal return on assets. This is, in fact, the same formula that a corporation would use. If you can borrow at 6% to build a factory that will yield a return of 12%, you should borrow. The U.S. is nowhere near there"
Bye Bye German jobs: "Volkswagen is traditionally thought of as a German manufacturer yet four of its six passenger cars are produced outside of Germany. Volkswagen spokesman Matthew Wiesner says there is a mix of reasons behind the trend. "It's the same with so many of the various producers around the world. It is a mix of where the plants are positioned around the world, currency rates and the fact that Europe is becoming very expensive to produce things," he says".
Coyote Blog has some excellent case studies on the effects of raising the minimum wage. He lists from his own real-life experience four effects: 1. The jobs just go away; 2. The jobs get outsourced to contractors; 3. The jobs get automated away; 4. Prices go up to customers. That brief summary is only a start, however. This is definitely a case of "Read the whole thing".
**********************************
ELSEWHERE
Don't blame the religious Right: "The speed with which issues that excite the passions of people of faith have arrived at the center of American politics is not surprising given the forced march that the courts have put those issues on. It was not the "religious right" that pushed gay marriage to the center of the public debate; it was courts in Hawaii, Vermont, and Massachusetts. It wasn't the "religious right" that ordered Terri Schiavo's feeding tube removed; it was a Florida Supreme Court that struck down a law passed by the Florida legislature and signed by Governor Jeb Bush which would have allowed Terri Schiavo to live. And it isn't the "religious right" that forced the United States Supreme Court to repeatedly issue rulings on areas of law that would have been better left to legislatures".
How many divisions has the Pope? "Stalin famously asked, "How many divisions has the Pope?" The tyrants successors of the Evil Empire found out when the Pole Karol Wojtyla became Pope. Steve Hayward considers (from segments of his work-in-progress, The Age of Reagan: Lion at the Gate, 1980-1989) what the Karol Wojtyla meant when he proclaimed "Be not afraid!" when he was selected Pope. The Polish Pope brought a transformation of consciousness among Poles that had massive consequences for the whole world. Poland was the first country he visited after becoming Pope, and Hayward recounts how that went, what the Soviets thought, how they were out-thought and out-gunned by the Pope. He broke the sorcerer's spell. The rest you know"
Go India!: "With the news from Iraq relegated to the back pages recently, last Friday's State Department briefing -- especially since it was not devoted to Condoleezza Rice's latest fashion statements -- attracted little attention. The subject: the evolving strategic partnership between the United States and India. The news? It is the 'goal' of the Bush administration 'to help India become a major world power in the 21st century.' This is indeed a monumental and welcome development; it's the clearest sign to date that the Bush Doctrine has a genuine strategic logic, that it's more than a justification for the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan."
How embarrassing! Air France is buying Boeing. See here and here.
More California justice: "A 43-year-old Vacaville man who was out on bail on a child molestation charge has been arrested in a new molestation case, police said. Mark Woolums was taken into custody Friday on 10 felony charges, including rape and child molestation. Police Sgt. Charlie Spruill said Woolums apparently met the girl through a day-care program being run out of his home. Woolums was arrested on child molestation charges in a separate case last September but was released after posting $133,334 bail. This time bail was set at $500,000".
Mother sues cops for failing to protect kids: "Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on Town of Castle Rock, Colorado v. Gonzales. At issue is whether Jessica Gonzales can sue her local police department in federal court for violating her Constitutional rights when they did not enforce a restraining order. The decision, expected in June, could revolutionize the way police departments across America handle such orders. Hopefully, it will spark discussion of how they are issued as well."
A small step forward: "The Los Angeles Police Department is tightening its policy on handling illegal immigrants to allow officers to check the status of suspected felons. If approved, the new rules would be a shift from a 1979 policy that prevents officers from inquiring about a person's immigration status to encourage illegal immigrants who had witnessed or been victims of crimes to cooperate with police without fear of deportation. Assistant Police Chief George Gascon said the proposal would direct officers to report suspected felons in the United States illegally to their supervisors, who would then consult with immigration officials. Officers would be able to arrest felons if it's determined they are illegal immigrants, Gascon said. Several months ago, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department changed its policy and began checking the immigration status of foreign-born inmates and turning illegal immigrants over to federal authorities"
My latest post on MARXWORDS shows that Engels despised the Russians.
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
**************************
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"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
Don't blame the religious Right: "The speed with which issues that excite the passions of people of faith have arrived at the center of American politics is not surprising given the forced march that the courts have put those issues on. It was not the "religious right" that pushed gay marriage to the center of the public debate; it was courts in Hawaii, Vermont, and Massachusetts. It wasn't the "religious right" that ordered Terri Schiavo's feeding tube removed; it was a Florida Supreme Court that struck down a law passed by the Florida legislature and signed by Governor Jeb Bush which would have allowed Terri Schiavo to live. And it isn't the "religious right" that forced the United States Supreme Court to repeatedly issue rulings on areas of law that would have been better left to legislatures".
How many divisions has the Pope? "Stalin famously asked, "How many divisions has the Pope?" The tyrants successors of the Evil Empire found out when the Pole Karol Wojtyla became Pope. Steve Hayward considers (from segments of his work-in-progress, The Age of Reagan: Lion at the Gate, 1980-1989) what the Karol Wojtyla meant when he proclaimed "Be not afraid!" when he was selected Pope. The Polish Pope brought a transformation of consciousness among Poles that had massive consequences for the whole world. Poland was the first country he visited after becoming Pope, and Hayward recounts how that went, what the Soviets thought, how they were out-thought and out-gunned by the Pope. He broke the sorcerer's spell. The rest you know"
Go India!: "With the news from Iraq relegated to the back pages recently, last Friday's State Department briefing -- especially since it was not devoted to Condoleezza Rice's latest fashion statements -- attracted little attention. The subject: the evolving strategic partnership between the United States and India. The news? It is the 'goal' of the Bush administration 'to help India become a major world power in the 21st century.' This is indeed a monumental and welcome development; it's the clearest sign to date that the Bush Doctrine has a genuine strategic logic, that it's more than a justification for the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan."
How embarrassing! Air France is buying Boeing. See here and here.
More California justice: "A 43-year-old Vacaville man who was out on bail on a child molestation charge has been arrested in a new molestation case, police said. Mark Woolums was taken into custody Friday on 10 felony charges, including rape and child molestation. Police Sgt. Charlie Spruill said Woolums apparently met the girl through a day-care program being run out of his home. Woolums was arrested on child molestation charges in a separate case last September but was released after posting $133,334 bail. This time bail was set at $500,000".
Mother sues cops for failing to protect kids: "Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on Town of Castle Rock, Colorado v. Gonzales. At issue is whether Jessica Gonzales can sue her local police department in federal court for violating her Constitutional rights when they did not enforce a restraining order. The decision, expected in June, could revolutionize the way police departments across America handle such orders. Hopefully, it will spark discussion of how they are issued as well."
A small step forward: "The Los Angeles Police Department is tightening its policy on handling illegal immigrants to allow officers to check the status of suspected felons. If approved, the new rules would be a shift from a 1979 policy that prevents officers from inquiring about a person's immigration status to encourage illegal immigrants who had witnessed or been victims of crimes to cooperate with police without fear of deportation. Assistant Police Chief George Gascon said the proposal would direct officers to report suspected felons in the United States illegally to their supervisors, who would then consult with immigration officials. Officers would be able to arrest felons if it's determined they are illegal immigrants, Gascon said. Several months ago, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department changed its policy and began checking the immigration status of foreign-born inmates and turning illegal immigrants over to federal authorities"
My latest post on MARXWORDS shows that Engels despised the Russians.
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
**************************
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"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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, April 03, 2005
I PAY MY RESPECTS TO A GREAT POPE
There is a fitting tribute to him here
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There is a fitting tribute to him here
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WINSTON CHURCHILL WAS A NEOCON
I am sometimes amazed by how little history even my fellow conservatives seem to know. Lawrence Auster is of course well-known for the way he joins Leftists in his paranoia about the "neocons" so I guess that helps us understand his latest lapse. He has put up a post consisting mainly of a letter from an historian claiming that Winston Churchill was NOT a neocon. In the narrow sense that Churchill was not Jewish and that the term "neocon" is only a recent invention, that does, of course, have to be true.
In the broader sense -- a neocon being a former Leftist who favours foreign military intervention in favour of democracy -- however, to say that Churchill was not a neocon betrays no knowledge of history whatever. He joined the British LIBERAL party in 1904 and served as Colonial Under-Secretary under Campbell-Bannerman and as president of the Board of Trade and Home Secretary under Asquith. So he was in his early years a promininent Leftist in terms of British politics at the time. But, like the neocons, he later (1925) changed his tune and became a prominent Conservative.
And as for foreign interventions in favour of democracy, who was Secretary of War under Lloyd George when Britain sent troops to join the "white" Russians in fighting the Bolsheviks in 1919? It was Winston Churchill! And there is no doubt that Churchill did not repent doing so. One thing he never changed was his fierce opposition to Communism -- an opposition that is also characteristic of the neocons.
And though Churchill was not Jewish, he was at least philosemitic. As Auster notes, Churchill once said: "Where the Jew goes there is oasis. Where the Arab goes there is desert."
So on the four primary neocon identifiers -- Jewishness, anticommunism, Leftist early life and support for military intervention in the cause of promoting democracy -- Churchill scores 3 out of 4 -- and on the Jewishness angle he might be said to have done his best! I gather that not all neocons are Jewish anyway -- particularly if you include the Straussians in what is after all a pretty loose classification to begin with. Some people also say Churchill was a neocon because he was an unabashed defender of the British Empire but for that to be relevant we have to accept that the neocons want an American empire -- which is in my view a brain-dead claim. The idea of America as an empire is antithetical to all American values and traditions and the neocons are far too smart to be unaware of something as basic as that.
Auster does not link to it but the article which started the recent discussion about Churchill as a neocon is here
**************************************
I am sometimes amazed by how little history even my fellow conservatives seem to know. Lawrence Auster is of course well-known for the way he joins Leftists in his paranoia about the "neocons" so I guess that helps us understand his latest lapse. He has put up a post consisting mainly of a letter from an historian claiming that Winston Churchill was NOT a neocon. In the narrow sense that Churchill was not Jewish and that the term "neocon" is only a recent invention, that does, of course, have to be true.
In the broader sense -- a neocon being a former Leftist who favours foreign military intervention in favour of democracy -- however, to say that Churchill was not a neocon betrays no knowledge of history whatever. He joined the British LIBERAL party in 1904 and served as Colonial Under-Secretary under Campbell-Bannerman and as president of the Board of Trade and Home Secretary under Asquith. So he was in his early years a promininent Leftist in terms of British politics at the time. But, like the neocons, he later (1925) changed his tune and became a prominent Conservative.
And as for foreign interventions in favour of democracy, who was Secretary of War under Lloyd George when Britain sent troops to join the "white" Russians in fighting the Bolsheviks in 1919? It was Winston Churchill! And there is no doubt that Churchill did not repent doing so. One thing he never changed was his fierce opposition to Communism -- an opposition that is also characteristic of the neocons.
And though Churchill was not Jewish, he was at least philosemitic. As Auster notes, Churchill once said: "Where the Jew goes there is oasis. Where the Arab goes there is desert."
So on the four primary neocon identifiers -- Jewishness, anticommunism, Leftist early life and support for military intervention in the cause of promoting democracy -- Churchill scores 3 out of 4 -- and on the Jewishness angle he might be said to have done his best! I gather that not all neocons are Jewish anyway -- particularly if you include the Straussians in what is after all a pretty loose classification to begin with. Some people also say Churchill was a neocon because he was an unabashed defender of the British Empire but for that to be relevant we have to accept that the neocons want an American empire -- which is in my view a brain-dead claim. The idea of America as an empire is antithetical to all American values and traditions and the neocons are far too smart to be unaware of something as basic as that.
Auster does not link to it but the article which started the recent discussion about Churchill as a neocon is here
**************************************
ELSEWHERE
British kids can't be conned: "Children as young as 13 are displaying signs of Islamophobia and are voicing their support for the British National Party, researchers have found. Young teenagers are increasingly saying they have negative views towards Muslims and do not want Islamic culture expressed in the classroom. The study of 1,500 students aged 13 to 24 was presented at the annual conference of the British Psychological Society in Manchester yesterday. Researchers asked students from 14 secondary schools and one further education college in York for their views on Islam since 11 September 2001. Three of the schools were from the independent sector and the others came from a wide geographical and socio-economic area".
Al Qa'eda members learnt their hatred of the West in the West: "Strikingly, 70 per cent joined the jihad while away from home. Sageman describes them as the `elite of their country' sent abroad to study because the schools in Germany, France, England and the US are better. Egyptian-born Mohammed Atta, who crashed the jet into the North Tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11, became a violent-minded extremist while studying architecture in Hamburg. Ahmed Omar Sheikh, the Briton convicted of murdering American journalist Daniel Pearl, attended the London School of Economics. Al-Qa'eda's `breeding ground', it seems, is as much in fragmented cities in the West as in hotbeds of Islamism in the East". [How unsurprising that they learnt hatred of the West in Western universities!]
Strom Thurmond, famous Southern segregationist, had a black ex-nuptial daughter. Some things she recently said about him: "However, in his personal life, he was doing many things to help black people - things many people didn't know about. Since I came out, so many black people have called and told me about the many good things that he did for them.... I didn't want people to know he was my father. But he later did other things that I am proud of. He helped pass the bill recognizing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, and he was the first senator to hire a black administrative aide.... I didn't warm up to him at first; it took time for me to grow to like him. All we did was shake hands when we saw each other. After a while, he would hug me and kiss me on the cheek. And we became close after that... he visited me when I lived in New York. And he suggested that I attend South Carolina State, a black college. And he visited me when I was there and helped me financially. He also helped me with my children. He helped my son get into medical school and the Navy, and he helped my daughter with her business endeavors".
There is around a century of test data to show that men on average are much better than women at mathematics, despite what the feminist opponents of Larry Summers at Harvard say. The latest is this set of statistics from recent SAT results: "But the score distributions show that among the test takers in the higest score range (750-800), males made up 50.5% of that group on the verbal reasoning portion of the test and 68.7% of that group on the math reasoning portion of the test. In fact, males are disproportionately represented in the score ranges on the math section for all score ranges above 600. Looking at the most extreme tail of the distribution, the coveted 800, males were 49.3% of the population achieving that score on the verbal portion, and 72% of the population achieving that score on the math portion". (From Discriminations via Peg Kaplan)
Stupid Belgians: "Belgium's interior minister was left red-faced yesterday after it emerged that photos comparing US President George W Bush to a chimpanzee had been used in a police training manual..... The pictures in question - reprinted by the newspaper - showed a series of the US leader's facial expressions next to shots of a chimpanzee making apparently similar faces. They were intended to help trainee police officers in the western city of Bruges to recognise the importance of body language in dealing with the public. Bush is shown in poses ranging from pensive to finger-waving debating mode". [Lots of Leftists have been calling GWB "chimpy" but now that many are admitting that they were wrong and GWB was right to say that the Muslim "street" wants democracy, what does that mean? That they were dumber than a chimpanzee? I think it does!]
My latest post on MARXWORDS shows that Marx & Engels believed that human races emerged naturally but that eugenics could and should alter that.
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
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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"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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British kids can't be conned: "Children as young as 13 are displaying signs of Islamophobia and are voicing their support for the British National Party, researchers have found. Young teenagers are increasingly saying they have negative views towards Muslims and do not want Islamic culture expressed in the classroom. The study of 1,500 students aged 13 to 24 was presented at the annual conference of the British Psychological Society in Manchester yesterday. Researchers asked students from 14 secondary schools and one further education college in York for their views on Islam since 11 September 2001. Three of the schools were from the independent sector and the others came from a wide geographical and socio-economic area".
Al Qa'eda members learnt their hatred of the West in the West: "Strikingly, 70 per cent joined the jihad while away from home. Sageman describes them as the `elite of their country' sent abroad to study because the schools in Germany, France, England and the US are better. Egyptian-born Mohammed Atta, who crashed the jet into the North Tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11, became a violent-minded extremist while studying architecture in Hamburg. Ahmed Omar Sheikh, the Briton convicted of murdering American journalist Daniel Pearl, attended the London School of Economics. Al-Qa'eda's `breeding ground', it seems, is as much in fragmented cities in the West as in hotbeds of Islamism in the East". [How unsurprising that they learnt hatred of the West in Western universities!]
Strom Thurmond, famous Southern segregationist, had a black ex-nuptial daughter. Some things she recently said about him: "However, in his personal life, he was doing many things to help black people - things many people didn't know about. Since I came out, so many black people have called and told me about the many good things that he did for them.... I didn't want people to know he was my father. But he later did other things that I am proud of. He helped pass the bill recognizing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, and he was the first senator to hire a black administrative aide.... I didn't warm up to him at first; it took time for me to grow to like him. All we did was shake hands when we saw each other. After a while, he would hug me and kiss me on the cheek. And we became close after that... he visited me when I lived in New York. And he suggested that I attend South Carolina State, a black college. And he visited me when I was there and helped me financially. He also helped me with my children. He helped my son get into medical school and the Navy, and he helped my daughter with her business endeavors".
There is around a century of test data to show that men on average are much better than women at mathematics, despite what the feminist opponents of Larry Summers at Harvard say. The latest is this set of statistics from recent SAT results: "But the score distributions show that among the test takers in the higest score range (750-800), males made up 50.5% of that group on the verbal reasoning portion of the test and 68.7% of that group on the math reasoning portion of the test. In fact, males are disproportionately represented in the score ranges on the math section for all score ranges above 600. Looking at the most extreme tail of the distribution, the coveted 800, males were 49.3% of the population achieving that score on the verbal portion, and 72% of the population achieving that score on the math portion". (From Discriminations via Peg Kaplan)
Stupid Belgians: "Belgium's interior minister was left red-faced yesterday after it emerged that photos comparing US President George W Bush to a chimpanzee had been used in a police training manual..... The pictures in question - reprinted by the newspaper - showed a series of the US leader's facial expressions next to shots of a chimpanzee making apparently similar faces. They were intended to help trainee police officers in the western city of Bruges to recognise the importance of body language in dealing with the public. Bush is shown in poses ranging from pensive to finger-waving debating mode". [Lots of Leftists have been calling GWB "chimpy" but now that many are admitting that they were wrong and GWB was right to say that the Muslim "street" wants democracy, what does that mean? That they were dumber than a chimpanzee? I think it does!]
My latest post on MARXWORDS shows that Marx & Engels believed that human races emerged naturally but that eugenics could and should alter that.
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
**************************
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"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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