The Leiter/Burgess-Jackson stoush continues

"Stoush" is an Australian word for a punch-up but it can refer to a physical one or a metaphorical one. I am using it the latter sense

Brian Leiter is an influential Leftist professor, with a presence in both philosophy and law, who is noted for writing a blog which is exceedingly abusive of conservatives. Because of his perceived influence, however, few conservatives say anything in reply to him. They deem it unsafe for their careers.

Keith Burgess-Jackson is the notable exception, however. He is a philosophy professor with a background in law and has an entire blog devoted to exposing the low standard of argumentation used by Leiter. See here.

Until recently, Keith had his anti-Leiter blog on blogspot but the last blogspot meltdown caused him to move his blog to his new site at PowerBlogs. Perhaps a little unwisely, Keith deleted his former blogspot blog in the process.

Another conservative blogger (whom you may recognize) has however just taken over the blogspot address that Keith left unused and has posted there another substantial body of volleys at Leiter. See here. The war may be hotting up!

Because of all Keith's past good work, the new blog is immediately the no. 1 result returned by some searches for the term "Brian Leiter". And if it is not the No. 1 result, it usually at least makes the first page. Google blogsearch has the new version of the blog already -- topmost result when I checked. Handy. I hope anybody with a website reading this will link to both the new and the old sites to help keep the rankings up.

It will be amusing to see if and how Leiter reacts to the new blog. Keith is OK about it. There is also a scorching takedown of Leiter here, including a picture of the great man -- complete with a central European hairline.

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RECENT PAPERS FROM THE CENTER FOR IMMIGRATION STUDIES

''American Dhimmitude: The road from amnesty,''
''Guest-Worker Programs Are a Dead End,''
''Dropping Out: Immigrant Entry and Native Exit From the Labor Market, 2000-2005,''
''Two Sides of the Same Coin: The Connection Between Legal and Illegal Immigration,''
''Guestworker Programs: Do They Make Sense for America?,'' panel discussion transcript
''Legislature Should Act to Ensure Banks Can Verify the Identity of Account Holders,''
''Verification of Employment Authorization: Federal Basic Pilot Program is an Effective and Employer-friendly Tool for Immigration Law Compliance,''

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ELSEWHERE

One of the most respected historians of Italian Fascism, A. James Gregor, has just published a new book under the title: "Mussolini's Intellectuals : Fascist Social and Political Thought". From the blurb: "Fascism has traditionally been characterized as irrational and anti-intellectual, finding expression exclusively as a cluster of myths, emotions, instincts, and hatreds. This intellectual history of Italian Fascism--the product of four decades of work by one of the leading experts on the subject in the English-speaking world--provides an alternative account. A. James Gregor argues that Italian Fascism may have been a flawed system of belief, but it was neither more nor less irrational than other revolutionary ideologies of the twentieth century. Gregor follows Fascist thought from its beginnings in socialist ideology about the time of the First World War--when Mussolini himself was a leader of revolutionary socialism--through its evolution into a separate body of thought... Gregor's account reveals the flaws and tensions that dogged Fascist thought from the beginning, but shows that if we want to come to grips with one of the most important political movements of the twentieth century, we nevertheless need to understand that Fascism had serious intellectual as well as visceral roots".

Today's wars are less about ideas than extreme tribalism: "Western strategists and policymakers should stop talking about a clash of civilizations and focus on the real problem: extreme tribalism. Recent events -- riots in many nations protesting cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, Sunni-Shiite warring in Iraq, the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan -- confirm that the West is not in a clash with Islam. Instead, Islam, which is a civilizing force, has fallen under the sway of Islamists who are a tribalizing force. Unfortunately, the tribalism theme has difficulty gaining traction. After the end of the cold war, many American strategists preferred the optimistic 'end of history' idea that democracy would triumph around the world, advanced by Francis Fukuyama in 1989. A contrary notion -- reversion to tribalism -- made better sense to other strategists, such as France's Jacques Attali in 1992. Indeed, the emergence of ethnic warring in the Balkans and elsewhere confirmed that when societies crumble, people revert to tribal and clan behaviors that repudiate liberal ideals."

This tosser from "The Guardian" criticizes Jihad Watch for saying that Islam is unreformable and then quotes a lot of Saudis who say that Islam cannot be changed. He seems not to have noticed that he has proved Jihad Watch to be right.

In case you missed it, the bourgeois French youth demonstrating for job security were savagely attacked by Muslim youths -- something the media mostly glided over. Since it is the Muslims that would be most disadvantaged if the bourgeois youth got their way, there is some justice in it.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here). I also post several times a week on "Tongue-Tied". There is an archive of my "Tongue-Tied" posts here or here

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

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

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