BLOGIVERSARY

My first blog post ever was on this day in 2002. I reproduce immediately below an excerpt from the post concerned:

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DENIAL OF REALITY

"The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind." (H.L. Mencken)

There would seem to be some possibility that excess ego can be curbed. The traditional Christian preaching of humility certainly assumes that. It is doubtful, however, that another underpinning of Leftism can be much influenced: Denial of reality.

Denial is perhaps best known through the work of Sigmund Freud as a classical neurotic symptom or coping mechanism. Instead of dealing with uncomfortable truths, the neurotic acts as if those truths simply do not exist. This is, of course, very maladaptive and creates at least as many problems as it solves.

Sadly, however, it would seem that reality denial is far from limited to psychiatric cases. Denial would appear to be in fact much more common even than excess egotism. Human beings generally do not handle reality well. That is why humans are such a drug-using species. Whether it be alcohol, cannabis, opiates, Khat, cocaine, nicotine or merely caffeine, few of us seem able to face life without chemical crutches. Straight reality is generally too much for us.

But WHY are human beings so uncomfortable with reality? Why do they use so many means to "escape" it? Again it probably goes back to more primitive times when reality was very oppressive and dispiriting. Only those who could escape reality in some way had the heart to carry on. So a talent for ignoring unpleasant truths was adaptive. In the modern world, however, reality is much more benign and, as Freud saw, denying it can easily descend into the psychopathological.

So any attack on the reality-denying habits of Leftists would appear doomed to failure. Even such an overwhelming reality as the utter collapse of the world's 70 year experiment with Communism caused them not at all to abandon their equalitarian mania but only to change their focus somewhat.

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IS THIS THE FINAL MELTDOWN OF THE BRITISH CONSERVATIVE PARTY?

They are clearly trying to outflank Blair on the LEFT

David Cameron is to deliver an extraordinary defence of hoodie-wearing yob teenagers, insisting they needed to be loved - not locked up. The Conservative leader attacked the decision by Bluewater Shopping Centre in Kent to exclude youngsters wearing hooded tops. And in a speech tomorrow, he will say: 'The hoodie is a response to a problem, not a problem in itself.'

Mr Cameron will also praise the controversial film Kidulthood, set in his own Notting Hill neighbourhood, which depicts schoolchildren taking drugs, having casual sex and 'happy slapping' - attacking random passers by in the street. He says: 'Kidulthood is not about bad kids. Even the villain is clearly suffering from neglect and the absence of love.'

The comments mark the latest breath-taking Tory U-turn on law and order. Traditionally Conservatives have defined themselves by their tough, uncompromising stance on justice. But there is no mention of punishing the criminal yobs in Mr Cameron's speech. Instead, he stresses the role of 'compassion and kindness'.

And Mr Cameron attacks Tony Blair for supporting the Bluewater hoodie ban. He says: 'The fact is that the hoodie is a response to a problem, not a problem in itself. 'We - the people in suits - often see hoodies as aggressive, the uniform of a rebel army of young gangsters. But hoodies are more "defensive" than "offensive" - they're a way to stay invisible in the street. 'In a dangerous environment the best thing to do is keep your head down; blend in. 'For some, the hoodie represents all that's wrong about youth culture in Britain today. 'For me, adult society's response to the hoodie shows how far we are from finding the long-term answers to put things right.'

Kidulthood, released earlier this year, was criticised for its gritty portrayal of West London teenagers as criminals with no sense of morality.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

The European plane-maker, Airbus, was for a time held up as an example of a government-owned enterprise that was succeeding in business -- though its reliance on big subsidies and soft loans from European governments always made that claim questionable. The excreta has now really hit the turbofan, however, with the company in deep trouble. See here.

The big-bang story of U.S. private business: "Did you know that just over the past 11 quarters, dating back to the June 2003 Bush tax cuts, America has increased the size of its entire economy by 20 percent? In less than three years, the U.S. economic pie has expanded by $2.2 trillion, an output add-on that is roughly the same size as the total Chinese economy, and much larger than the total economic size of nations like India, Mexico, Ireland and Belgium. This is an extraordinary fact, although you may be reading it here first. Most in the mainstream media would rather tout the faults of American capitalism than sing its praises. And of course, the media will almost always discuss supply-side tax cuts in negative terms, such as big budget deficits and static revenue losses. But here's another suppressed fact: Since the 2003 tax cuts, tax-revenue collections from the expanding economy have been surging at double-digit rates, while the deficit is constantly being revised downward. For those who bother to look, the economic power of lower-tax-rate incentives is once again working its magic."

Democrats wising up?: "Democrats in Congress should look outside of the capital, where some of their fellow party members are embracing tax cuts, and even supply-side economics, says the Wall Street Journal. A handful of blue states and Democratic Governors have put tax cuts in motion: Rhode Island, with Democrats holding 70 percent of the state legislature, have allowed residents the choice of a flat tax that cuts the top tax rate on high income earners to 5.5 percent from 9.9 percent. Arizona governor Janet Napolitano agreed to a 10 percent across-the-board cut in income tax rates. Oklahoma governor Brad Henry signed into law a budget that will cut rates by nearly 20 percent, from 6.25 percent to 5.25, percent and abolish the state estate tax. New Mexico governor Bill Richardson has cut the state's top income tax rate to 4.9 percent from 8.2 percent and cut the capital gains tax in half. "This was our way of declaring to the world that New Mexico is open for business," says Richardson. "After all, businesses move to states where taxes are falling, not rising." And contrary to the belief that tax cuts produce budget deficits, New Mexico has grown a half-billion-dollar surplus and seen tax revenues soar by 27 percent this year"

Estonia creates an economic miracle: "Mart Laar was barely 32 years old in 1992, when he became prime minister of Estonia, a small nation on the Baltic Sea that had just emerged from decades of Communist oppression as a satellite state of the Soviet Union. He inherited leadership of a country with 1,000 percent inflation, 30 percent unemployment, and government-owned businesses that were a shambles. Laar's government removed price controls, cut regulations and welfare programs, sold state-owned businesses, introduced a new currency, and instituted a simple, flat-rate income tax that is being emulated in countries across Central and Eastern Europe. The rate has been lowered several times over the years and is now at 20 percent. The result? Inflation in Estonia has dropped below 3 percent, unemployment has plunged below 6 percent, and foreign investment has poured in. Estonia has enjoyed the greatest growth in real per-capita income of any of the former Soviet states. Today the country is a member of NATO, the European Union, and the World Trade Organization."

Bush's border security plan decreases captures: "Unarmed National Guard, hailed as the answer to beef up border security, (surprise!) has resulted in FEWER captures along the border. As noted in the article, and evidenced by increased Minuteman sightings of illegal border crossers since October when the U.S. Senate caused the human tsunami over the border with their irresponsible rhetoric and false promises of amnesty, the flow of traffic over the border has increased, but the captures have decreased."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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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