NYT MORE ANTI-ISRAEL THAN AL JAZEERA!

First some hypocrisy from the usual suspects that should surprise no-one:

Here are two stories about the Middle East conflict: Rights organizations accuse Israel of war crimes: "Amnesty International Wednesday published findings that point to an Israeli policy of deliberate destruction of Lebanese civilian infrastructure, which included war crimes, during the recent conflict".

and:

Annan deeply concerned about Israeli violations of ceasefire: "United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan was in touch with top Israeli and Lebanese officials Saturday following an Israeli raid in eastern Lebanon which he warned endangers the fragile calm that has generally held in the region since Monday".

Neither story shows that the United Nations or Amnesty International concerned about the use of civilians as shields by the Hezbollah to rocket Israeli civilians. Or the murder of opponents of Hezbollah--or the refusal of Hezbollah to give it its weapons, as per the UN agreement. Again, more reason to believe that Annan and company are really fronting for the terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah--why pay any attention to these apologists for murders. World War II had Quisling, the War on Terrorism has Kofi Annan.

Via Steven Frank

But note the comment below from Taranto

The anti-Israel group Amnesty International has issued a report accusing the Jewish state of "war crimes." Blogger David Bernstein does a good job taking apart the report, noting, for example, that Amnesty International faults Israel for hitting military targets, such as bridges, roads, seaports and Beirut's international airport. This news report offers another important counterbalance:

"During the four week war Hezbollah fired 3,900 rockets at Israeli towns and cities with the aim of inflicting maximum civilian casualties. The Israeli government says that 44 Israeli civilians were killed in the bombardments and 1,400 wounded. AI has not issued a report accusing Hezbollah of war crimes.

The New York Times account, by contrast, quotes an Israeli official as rejecting the Amnesty International allegations, but it makes no mention of Hezbollah's unquestioned war crimes. In this sense, at least, the Times is more anti-Israel than the organization that produced the other news report-- which, by the way, is al-Jazeera.

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FORGET THE WAR: THE U.S. LEFT IS NOW CAMPAIGNING AGAINST WAL-MART!



Leftist hatred of success completely overwhelms their thinking: ""Imagine a private group that pays billions in taxes, creates millions of jobs and sells things at ultra-low prices. Too good to be true? It's called Wal-Mart-and Democrats, for some reason, want to kill it off... This is all part of a recent trend among Democratic politicians using Wal-Mart as a foil to ingratiate themselves with middle-class voters. This may be good politics. We don't know. But those who participate in such Wal-Mart-bashing reveal themselves to be economic illiterates of the most dangerous sort... A study by economic consultant Global Insight found that, from 1985 to 2004, Wal-Mart slashed food-at-home prices by 9.1%, goods prices by 4.2% and overall consumer prices by 3.1%. If those cuts don't sound huge, consider that, all told, they saved mostly poor and middle-class consumers $263 billion-or $895 per person and $2,329 per household. By now, of course, it's become obvious that Democrats aren't so much anti-Wal-Mart as they are pro-organized labor... Yet despite unions' widely disseminated claims, the wages that Wal-Mart pays its employees are competitive. In 2004, Global Insight found that the average wage nationwide for jobs equivalent to Wal-Mart's was $8.46 an hour. Wal-Mart paid $9.17. Put bluntly, the war against Wal-Mart Stores is a war against the poor, and it's shocking to watch a major political party carry it out... A Zogby Poll...found that 85% of frequent Wal-Mart shoppers pulled the lever for President Bush in 2004, and that 88% of people who never shop there voted for John Kerry. Maybe the split in this country isn't so much red state versus blue, but Wal-Mart vs. non-Wal-Mart. And since 20% of Americans are Wal-Mart shoppers, Democrats might think twice before alienating them any more than they have so far."

Another reason why the Left hate a store that is good for the poor: "What is behind all the furor, and what exactly are Democratic candidates hoping to gain by jumping on the anti-Wal-Mart bandwagon? It's about unions, or the lack thereof, in Wal-Mart's employee ranks. A review of the major anti-Wal-Mart organizations campaigning against the company reveals that they are all union-funded".

Even the L.A. Times thinks it is absurd to campaign against Wal-Mart: "The gusto with which even moderate Democrats are bashing Wal-Mart is bound to backfire. Not only does it take the party back to the pre-Clinton era, when Democrats were perceived as reflexively anti-business, it manages to make Democrats seem like out-of-touch elitists to the millions of Americans who work and shop at Wal-Mart. One reason the Democrats may have a tin ear on this subject is demographic. Certainly most of the party's urban liberal activists are far removed from the Wal-Mart phenomenon. The retailer has thrived mainly in small towns and exurbs, which is one reason a Zogby poll found that three-quarters of weekly Wal-Mart shoppers voted for President Bush in 2004, and why 8 out of 10 people who have never shopped at Wal-Mart voted for John Kerry. Denouncing the retailer may make sense if the goal is to woo primary activists, but it's a disastrous way to reach out to the general electorate. Or to govern, for that matter."

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ELSEWHERE

Mark Steyn on Iraq: "To begin something and be unable to stick with it to the finish is far more damaging to your reputation than if you'd never begun it in the first place. Nitwit Democrats think anything that can be passed off as a failure in Iraq will somehow diminish only Bush and the neocons. In reality -- a concept with which Democrats seem only dimly acquainted -- it would diminish the nation, and all but certainly end the American moment."

Profiling: "The fact remains that young Middle Eastern males have committed a disproportionate amount of violent terror attacks in recent years. Accordingly, it is simply a waste of resources to subject all airline passengers, from grandmothers to toddlers, to equal scrutiny, while refusing to spend more time investigating passengers who come from the group from which most terrorists spring nowadays."

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

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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Where E. J. Dionne went wrong

I am reproducing this excellent post from Betsy Newmark in full below as I would be hard-pressed to put it better

E.J. Dionne just doesn't get it. He has a column today trying to explain why being a liberal today is now considered an insult - so insulting that liberals don't want to be called liberals, but progressives. You can sense the puzzlement in his cri de coeur: how can liberals be so much better than conservatives and the masses (those idiots!) not recognize their inherent moral superiority? He searches for the moment when liberals went from being the noble crusaders fighting for commendable goals to having to hide their ideology behind euphemisms. He first congratulates himself and other liberals on just being better.

At its best, liberalism is about the defense of the underdog, of minority rights, of social justice, of active but restrained government, of civil liberties, of openness and tolerance.

In their own defense, those who still admit to being liberals would argue that the very fact that they have stood up for minority rights -- including, heroically, for civil rights in the 1960s -- made them unpopular, sometimes with a majority of the country.

They also argue, correctly, that the demonization of their creed goes all the way back to those who opposed Franklin D. Roosevelt's program of reform at home and internationalism abroad. The reaction to FDR bred McCarthyism and the libelous charge that liberals were, at best, "squishy soft" on communism.

But liberalism has also become associated with elitism, arrogance and disdain for the values of average Americans. Think of the consumer preferences tossed at liberals from the right as epithets: brie, chablis (now updated to merlot), Volvos, lattes, vacations on Martha's Vineyard. Never mind that it's conservatives who want to eliminate inheritance taxes on those Vineyard mansions.

Gee, E.J., maybe it is all that self-satisfied superiority that did y'all in? See, the liberals are good and it's just those despicable conservatives who made them feel guilty. But they really, really are the better people. Why can't everyone realize that?

Dionne thinks he's figured out where it all went wrong. He traces it back to historians of the 1950s and 1960s like Richard Hofstadter who began examining groups like the Populists in psychological terms.

Many progressives and reformers, he argued, represented an old Anglo-Saxon middle class who suffered from "status anxiety" in reaction to the rise of a vulgar new business elite. Hofstadter analyzed the right wing of the 1950s and early 1960s in similar terms. Psychological disorientation and social displacement became more important than ideas or interests.

Now, Hofstadter was exciting precisely because he brilliantly revised accepted and sometimes pious views of what the populists and progressives were about. But there was something dismissive about Hofstadter's analysis that blinded liberals to the legitimate grievances of the populists, the progressives and, yes, the right wing.

The late Christopher Lasch, one of Hofstadter's students and an admiring critic, noted that by conducting "political criticism in psychiatric categories," Hofstadter and his intellectual allies excused themselves "from the difficult work of judgment and argumentation."

Lasch added archly: "Instead of arguing with opponents, they simply dismissed them on psychiatric grounds."

This was, I believe, a wrong turn for liberalism. It was a mistake to tear liberalism from its populist roots and to emphasize the irrational element of popular movements almost to the exclusion of their own self-understanding. FDR, whom Hofstadter admired, always understood the need to marry the urban (and urbane) forms of liberalism to the traditions of reform and popular protest.

So, according to Dionne's thesis, liberals lost the ability to argue because they were too dismissive of those with whom they disagreed as people with psychiatric problems. I suppose he's thinking of Hofstadter's famous essay about The Paranoid Style in American Politics. Here's the opening paragraph.

American politics has often been an arena for angry minds. In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated in the Goldwater movement how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority. But behind this I believe there is a style of mind that is far from new and that is not necessarily right-wind. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind. In using the expression "paranoid style" I am not speaking in a clinical sense, but borrowing a clinical term for other purposes. I have neither the competence nor the desire to classify any figures of the past or present as certifiable lunatics., In fact, the idea of the paranoid style as a force in politics would have little contemporary relevance or historical value if it were applied only to men with profoundly disturbed minds. It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant.

Hofstadter traces a strain in American history of groups from the anti-Masons, anti-Catholics, Populists, the anti-Communists of the 1950s, to the Goldwater supporters of his day of people who demonized their enemy. If you've never read Hofstadter's famous essay, it is eye-opening today, because his description is so apt of some people today, but not the conservatives whom Hofstadter was aiming at. Whom does this description of what Hofstadter says the paranoids believe of those whom they fear remind you of today?

The enemy is clearly delineated: he is a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman-sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, luxury-loving. Unlike the rest of us, the enemy is not caught in the toils of the vast mechanism of history, himself a victim of his past, his desires, his limitations. He wills, indeed he manufactures, the mechanism of history, or tries to deflect the normal course of history in an evil way. He makes crises, starts runs on banks, causes depressions, manufactures disasters, and then enjoys and profits from the misery he has produced. The paranoid's interpretation of history is distinctly personal: decisive events are not taken as part of the stream of history, but as the consequences of someone's will. Very often the enemy is held to possess some especially effective source of power: he controls the press; he has unlimited funds; he has a new secret for influencing the mind (brainwashing); he has a special technique for seduction (the Catholic confessional).

Who are the groups out there today who think that their enemy is all powerful manipulating all events to further his malign aims? Have you ever read the rantings on Daily Kos? They're the ones with the paranoid style today as they attribute everything from Saddam's capture to the British terrorism plot as some Rovian conspiracy designed to take attention away from Republican attempts to destroy all liberty and amass more power and money for Haliburton.

So, Mr. Dionne, I find two problems with your thesis. First, it's not that liberals lost the power to argue about their superior qualities. It's that so much of the liberal proposed solutions had been tried and had been shown to have failed. Suddenly, liberals had to face arguments that weren't based on theory, but actual analysis of what had happened when liberal solutions had been put into practice. Actual data was available and it didn't favor liberal solutions to helping the poor, fighting crime, or improving education. So, all liberals were left with were their superior motives: they were just the better people and recognition of their desire to do well should be enough.

The second problem is that so many liberals have become the paranoids themselves. They've convinced themselves that they are the only ones who actually want to improve the world and thus, anyone who opposes them is not just wrong, but evil. So, for example, a conservative who opposes the liberals' command and control solutions to improving the environment doesn't simply have a different approach for the same goal, but actually opposes cleaner air and water. It's as if they think that conservatives don't breathe and so don't care about clean air. Or, if conservatives have a different approach for improving education, it must be because they oppose public education and somehow want poor kids to remain uneducated. As Thomas Sowell argued in The Vision of the Anointed, it never becomes a question of which policy is better, but whose motivation is more pure. And such arguments, while perhaps personally satisfying, are not all that persuasive especially when confronted with the evidence of the actual consequences of their own proposals.

Perhaps Dionne is so blinded by his sense of moral superiority that he can't see such weaknesses.

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

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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Our Covert Enemies

In our war against Islamo-fascist terrorism, we face enemies both overt and covert. The overt enemies are, of course, the terrorists themselves. Their motives are clear: They hate our society because of its freedoms and liberties, and want to make us all submit to their totalitarian form of Islam. They are busy trying to wreak harm on us in any way they can....

Our covert enemies are harder to identify, for they live in large numbers within our midst. And in terms of intentions, they are not enemies in the sense that they consciously wish to destroy our society. On the contrary, they enjoy our freedoms and often call for their expansion. But they have also been working, over many years, to undermine faith in our society and confidence in its goodness. These covert enemies are those among our elites who have promoted the ideas labeled as multiculturalism, moral relativism and (the term is Professor Samuel Huntington's) transnationalism.

At the center of their thinking is a notion of moral relativism. No idea is morally superior to another. Hitler had his way, we have ours -- who's to say who is right? No ideas should be "privileged," especially those that have been the guiding forces in the development and improvement of Western civilization. Rich white men have imposed their ideas because of their wealth and through the use of force. Rich white nations imposed their rule on benighted people of color around the world. For this sin of imperialism they must forever be regarded as morally stained and presumptively wrong. Our covert enemies go quickly from the notion that all societies are morally equal to the notion that all societies are morally equal except ours, which is worse.

These are the ideas that have been transmitted over a long generation by the elites who run our universities and our schools, and who dominate our mainstream media. They teach an American history with the good parts left out and the bad parts emphasized... the default assumption of our covert enemies is that in any conflict between the West and the Rest, the West is wrong.... In World War II, our elites understood that we were the forces of good and that victory was essential. Today, many of our elites subject our military and intelligence actions to fine-tooth-comb analysis and find that they are morally repugnant.

We have always had our covert enemies, but their numbers were few until the 1960s. But then the elite young men who declined to serve in the military during the Vietnam War set out to write a narrative in which they, rather than those who obeyed the call to duty, were the heroes. They have propagated their ideas through the universities, the schools and mainstream media to the point that they are the default assumptions of millions. Our covert enemies don't want the Islamo-fascists to win. But in some corner of their hearts, they would like us to lose.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Is an academic father entitled to be pleased that he has an academic son? Well, I am. The recent doc below pleases me greatly therefore.



Fewer legal jobs (and more jobs for illegals) coming in California: ""More than 1 million Californians who earn the minimum wage will get a nearly 20% pay increase over the next year and a half, thanks to an agreement announced Monday between Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic leaders in the Legislature. The hike, the first since early 2004, will lift the state minimum wage to $8 an hour from $6.75. Workers will get a 75-cent increase Jan. 1 and an additional 50 cents on Jan. 1, 2008."

Immigration Bill Carries Big Price Tag: "The Senate's embattled immigration bill would raise government spending by as much as $126 billion over the next decade, as the government begins paying out federal benefits to millions of new legal workers and cracks down on the border, a new Congressional Budget Office analysis concludes."

Odd bans: "Britain's main airport operator, BAA, has banned all cosmetics and liquids from passengers' hand luggage at the country's biggest airports, unless the items were bought at duty-free shops in the departure lounge. Under the new Department of Transport restrictions imposed at Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and four other major airports from yesterday, all make-up - including items previously exempted such as lipstick, eyeliner and mascara - will be confiscated at security control. Travellers bound for the US will not be allowed to take liquids or cosmetics on board, regardless of where they were purchased. However, there remains concern that airport employees are able to evade this security and may be able to get contraband goods on to planes, which could include the types of raw materials required for the alleged bomb plot foiled by the August 10 arrests in Britain. One of the 23 people arrested, Amin Asmin Tariq, is an airline employee who has a 24-hour, all-areas pass at Heathrow airport".

Huge increase in migration to Britain: "More than a million foreigners have been given the right to settle in Britain since Labour came to power, after a sudden surge in numbers last year, according to figures published yesterday. Foreign settlement is three times the rate it was when Tony Blair entered Downing Street, and the number soared by almost 30 per cent last year... The number of migrants given settlement last year increased by 40,000 to a record figure of 179,120, compared with 58,700 in 1997. The figures do not include arrivals from the EU. More than 70 per cent of those given settlement rights were from Africa, Asia and the Indian sub-continent, with a further 20 per cent from North and South America and European states outside the European Economic Area. Sudden increases of people being granted settlement were recorded from a number of areas, including a rise of almost 100 per cent in citizens of Asian countries outside the Indian sub-continent, a 37 per cent rise in nationals from African countries and a 20 per cent increase in nationals from the Indian sub-continent. In contrast, there was a decline of 22 per cent in settlement by citizens from European countries and a 2 per cent drop in those from North and South America."

Walmart outperforms world bank in reducing world poverty: "Between 1990 and 2002 more than 174 million people escaped poverty in China, about 1.2 million per month. With an estimated $23 billion in Chinese exports in 2005 (out of a total of $713 billion in manufacturing exports), Wal-Mart might well be single-handedly responsible for bringing about 38,000 people out of poverty in China each month, about 460,000 per year. There are estimates that 70 percent of Wal-Mart's products are made in China. One writer vividly suggests that "One way to think of Wal-Mart is as a vast pipeline that gives non-U.S. companies direct access to the American market." Even without considering the $263 billion in consumer savings that Wal-Mart provides for low-income Americans, or the millions lifted out of poverty by Wal-Mart in other developing nations, it is unlikely that there is any single organization on the planet that alleviates poverty so effectively for so many people. Moreover, insofar as China's rapid manufacturing growth has been associated with a decline in its status as a global arms dealer, Wal-Mart has also done more than its share in contributing to global peace."

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

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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Technology-Enhanced Terrorism.

Post lifted from Security Watchtower

Janes Defence Weekly recently filed this report entitled Iran answers Hizbullah call for SAM systems. In addition to Russian-produced SAMs, they noted:

that Iran is also understood to have agreed to deliver its own version of the Chinese QW-1 man-portable low- to very-low-altitude SAM system - the Mithaq-1- developed by the Iranian Defence Ministry's Shahid Kazemi Industrial Complex in Tehran.

Matt Schroeder wrote a interesting piece for the Strategic Security Blog (a project of the Federation of American Scientists) entitled MANPADS for Hezbollah?

The (Janes Defence)article cites unnamed western diplomats, who also claim that Iran agreed to provide, "at a later date," several different types of Russian missiles, including the sophisticated SA-16. Assuming the information is accurate, the missile transfers are significant for several reasons. First, the missiles are a potential threat not only to Israeli military aircraft but also commercial airliners worldwide. Secondly, the transfers violate a nascent but critically important international norm against the transfer of MANPADS to non-state actors.

He goes on to note that Iran is not a member of any of the non-proliferation forums and therefore is not bound by their agreements. For a comprehensive report on this, don't miss the link at the bottom of the page and for a first-hand account of the lethality of these types of anti-aircraft weapons see this report filed by Ron Ben-Yeshai who was embedded with Israeli paratroopers in Lebanon.

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THE SELF-CONGRATULATORY BUT VERY DANGEROUS LEFTIST LIE

When I was a young man, the most powerful people in America tended to tell themselves a lie: Our great and increasing power was an unequivocal blessing for the world. Now, I observe that Ned Lamont types tell themselves a lie that is simply an inversion of the old lie: Our even greater and still increasing power is an unmitigated source of evil in the world.

There is a big difference between Henry Luce (a great propagandist of the old lie) and George Soros (a financer of the propaganda machine of the new lie), but on one score they are very similar. Both pay themselves the compliment of thinking that the country in which they exercise the most power holds the magical key to good and evil.

There is a difference, though. The self-delusions of Henry Luce were defeated by our relative impotence in the face of human evil, ignorance, and love of violence. Some modest things were achieved. Some bad policies did more harm than good. I'm fairly sure that George Bush's overly fine rhetoric of solving our global problems by spreading freedom and democracy will suffer the same mixed fate. Some good may emerge, but without doubt some aspects of our geopolitical strategies will exacerbate rather than solve problems, and we will, in fact, make some enemies. But on the whole, our collective human investment in evil, and not our unique American military, economic, and cultural power, will defeat self-delusion. Most of our enemies will come from the traditional sources: lust for domination, envy, pride, anger, and a perverse romance with the power of death.

But what of self-delusions of the new lie, the notion that our problems-the global problems-are a result of our power and our will to use it? If George Bush tends toward idealistic overreach, the Soros fantasy that we create our own enemies will tend toward pessimistic under-reach. If our power is the source of the problem, then we need to become less powerful. If our readiness to attack aggressors creates enemies, then we get rid of them by being less ready. Or so the new lie reasons.

Therein lies the danger, for it is not just the fantasy that is vulnerable to human reality and the persistence of evil; a society that morally, politically, and culturally disarms risks going down to defeat with its self-delusion. We see this already happening in Europe.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the emergent conservative populism that has redefined national politics. I observed that the ordinary man on the street in Des Moines does not trust East Coast elites to protect and serve the common good. I made that point with reference to our culture and our fabric of civility, self-discipline, and moral standards ever more thinned by contemptuous elite patronage of transgression.

Now I make the point again, but this time with reference to the physical security of that same man on the street. Guys in pickups are not stupid. They can see that if a politician or pundit believes that American power and will to self-defense creates the most virulent forms of global evil, then that same person will advocate reducing American power and weakening our will to self-defense-in order (the same politicians and pundits will argue) to solve global problems and make America safe. The guys in pickups can also see that this is an extremely risky line of reasoning. For if wrong, a paradoxical policy of weakness for the sake of strength will leave the field open to the bad folks who refuse to be romanced by our goodwill, newfound tenderness, and winsome vulnerability. And finally, the same guys in their pickups are smart enough to know that George Soros and Ned Lamont are rich enough and powerful enough to avoid paying the social debt on their bad bet.

Excerpt from R.R. Reno

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ELSEWHERE

Desperate Democrat: "With a month to go before primary voters head to the polls to choose Senate nominees, Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin kicked off yesterday a weeklong effort to highlight his congressional record and vision on health care by making the mother of all campaign promises - to cure cancer. Cardin, a Democrat from Baltimore County, gathered with cancer survivors and doctors in Lutherville to detail his efforts to expand cancer screening and his plans to fight the disease. "We are going to lick cancer by 2015," Cardin told a group of 15 people at the HopeWell Cancer Support Center on Falls Road. The health care push comes as he and other candidates fight to distinguish themselves from the crowd of Democrats and Republicans vying to replace retiring incumbent Paul S. Sarbanes, the state's longest-serving senator. All are hoping to make their views and accomplishments known as voters start to pay more attention to the high-profile race".

Minimum-Markup Laws Gouge Gasoline Buyers: "Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle recently authorized gas stations to sell ethanol below the state's mandated minimum price after a station owner in Monroe defied the law and sold it for a dollar less than the required $3.10 per gallon. Good move, but the minimum-markup law should be repealed.

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

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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Celebrate diversity!

This is such a good post from La Shawn Barber that I am reproducing it in full below

New York City Fire Department (FDNY) has succumbed to the pressure. One of the finest fire departments in the country will lower its hiring standards to attract more black recruits.

This Newsday article begins with an effusive lead about the new “pro-diversity” campaign to attract “minorities,” but the important part is how the fire department intends to do that. As originally conceived, affirmative action would require FDNY to look farther and wider for qualified black candidates. Affirmative action as practiced today means lowering qualifications.

How low will they go? FDNY is dropping the college requirement altogether if applicants have held a full-time job for six months, but this New York Daily News story reveals more of the truth. The department is “considering a change in the way the test is scored.” That story also notes the “surge” in Latino fire fighters. I'd be interested to know how they scored on the employment test as a group.

(I’d guess that criminal records are disqualifying “minorities,” too. By the way, whenever you see that m-word, it means black.)

Although the article mentions only a change in the way the test is scored (residents are given extra points, for instance), test changes usually mean that reading comprehension and mathematical portions are either de-emphasized, removed or “dumbed down.” I’ll bet $1 that’s what the FDNY plans to do if it hasn’t already.

I happen to know a bit about this. Last year the Denver Fire Department intended to dumb down its test to hire more blacks.

Last year I spoke to Denver’s Chief Larry Trujillo, who said a story in the Rocky Mountain News (one I linked to) misquoted him. If I recall correctly, the story left the impression that he favored a watered down test. He was adamantly opposed to this, expressing pride that he, a “minority,” had gone through the same process as other recruits. But he believed “something” needed to be done to bring in more blacks.

Intending to do a story about this, I called CWH Management Solutions, the consulting company hired to create the department's newer and easier-for-blacks test. There I was, a little ole freelance writer and blogger, talking to three people on a conference call. I kept trying to get to the heart of thing: What sort of test ensures that a greater percentage of blacks will pass it?

Like a good interviewer, I'd done preliminary research before calling. I knew that as a group, blacks tended to score lower than whites on standardized tests. I wanted to know why. I found out part of the answer.

The more “g-loaded” a test was, the worse blacks performed on it. General intelligence is represented as g. Most standardized tests are basically IQ tests. Intelligence is what we use to reason abstractly and solve problems. While there are different sets of skills that can be measured, what is generally being tested is our overall level of intelligence, hence, general intelligence. The more of this ability the test measures, the more g-loaded the test.

Whenever you read or hear about some institution or other changing tests like the SAT or civil service exams (No one advocates changing medical board or pilot exams. I wonder why…) so that more people of races other than white can pass it, it means the test’s g-load will be decreased.

Back to CWH. I knew the consulting firm designed tests that reduced the g-load, but I wanted at least one of the three people on the telephone to say it. No matter how many ways I asked the question, I never got a straight answer. I asked if they planned to make the test easier. No. I asked if I could see a sample of the test. No. I asked exactly how they intended to ensure that blacks would do better on their test than on the current one. Just as the web site reads, the “leader” of the three said the new test would measure a “broader range of job related abilities than traditional written tests" in order to identify “well-rounded, motivated, and qualified” applicants.

In other words, the goal was to play down what made blacks look bad — abstract reasoning ability — and play up “interpersonal” skills.

Why is cognitive ability important? In general, cognitive ability predicts life outcomes, and cognitive tests are the best predictors of job performance. The higher the ability, the better recruits are able to learn and develop the skills necessary to be good firemen or policeman, for example. Study after study has shown this to be true.

(When people speak of different “intelligences,” like the faddish emotional and multiple “intelligences,” they don't know what they’re talking about. Intelligence is the ability to think abstractly and solve problems. Period. People who use those terms are not referring to these abilities. )

Bottom-line: To eliminate the “disparate impact” g-loaded tests have on blacks, test-makers eliminate the g-load.

I googled Chief Trujillo to find out whether the Denver Fire Department ever implemented the dumbed down test, and I pulled up this: “Push to hire more in fire department goes nowhere.”

Oh well.

Why do blacks generally have lower cognitive ability than whites? Is it in the genes, the environment, or both? Read, theorize, discuss — when you find the answer, let us know. In the meantime, we’ll keep pretending it has to do with slavery and segregation.

Addendum: Somewhere along the way, proportionality became the measure of non-discrimination. Since blacks are 13 percent of the population, they should represent at least 13 percent of fire department employees, for example. Anyone of average intelligence knows how unsustainable and illogical that is.

If blacks are overrepresented in certain government agencies, that’s OK.

Update (12:22 p.m.): Whenever you think something goes without saying, it’s best to say it anyway.

When I asked why blacks generally have lower cognitive ability than whites, I’m basing the question on the body of research I’ve read about IQ and employment tests. Commenter Frank offers a point of clarification. IQ tests certainly measure something, and cognitive ability correlates with life outcomes and predicts job performance. If you disagree, make the argument and support it with sources, as I’ve done here and here.

If you don’t think IQ tests properly or adequately measure cognitive ability, or that cognitive ability isn’t all that important, make the argument and support it.

Emotional I-refuse-to-believe-blacks-are-dumb type of responses are part of the problem with this dumbed down country. Think and argue.

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

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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How the left has changed -- once a bastion of principle, now a supporter of thugs

The mask has slipped

During these last few weeks of grief and bloodshed in the Middle East, I have read at least five contributions to the Daily Camera that vehemently criticize Israel's response to Hamas' and Hezbollah's cross-border attacks - attacks which not only led to the kidnapping of three and the killing of 10 Israeli soldiers but also to the firing of rockets from Gaza and Lebanon into Israel.

All five writers, well-known local Left activists, justified the Arab attacks as valid responses to Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory; and all five promised us that if only Israel withdrew completely from its occupied territory, peace inevitably would follow. I have become very skeptical, however, of such rosy promises - and especially when offered with glib assurance in the face of much contradictory evidence and by parties who reside in peaceful Boulder rather than Haifa or Beirut.

As for the contradictory evidence, what better place to discover Hamas' and Hezbollah's avowed intentions than their founding documents promulgated only 20 years ago - Hamas' 1988 Covenant, and Hezbollah's 1985 Program. The first thing one notices is that these are not ordinary political programs, like the Republican or Democratic Party platforms - rather, these are passionate religious proclamations written by and for committed Muslim believers. The quasi-religious nature of both documents implies that their provisions will be obeyed without questions or hesitation by their adherents. Consider now some of these provisions. To begin, both documents affirm the inadmissibility of permanently abandoning to infidels any territory that had ever been in Muslim hands - an injunction which applies most particularly to Palestine, home of the third most sacred Muslim site. As the Covenant states:

"The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgment Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up." From this principle, the Covenant draws the following conclusion: "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors. "

Hezbollah's Program takes the identical position: "We vigorously condemn all plans for negotiation with Israel, and regard all negotiators as enemies, for the reason that such negotiation is nothing but the recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist occupation of Palestine." There is clearly only one conclusion to this religiously ordained command - Israel's destruction. Here is Hezbollah's Program: "Therefore our struggle will end only when this (Zionist) entity is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease fire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated."

It should also be noted that neither document mentions "occupation," that word so cherished by our Left activists, nor is there any hint that either movement might ever consider peaceful coexistence with Israel. In fact, the Covenant declares that "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."

Finally, what is the position of Hamas towards Jews as a people? As we discover from the Covenant, Hamas propounds an anti-Semitic creed as virulent as anything ever disseminated by Nazi Germany. Just like its Nazi teachers, Hamas holds international Jewry responsible for all the evil features of this modern age - i.e., for Capitalism, Imperialism and Communism. According to its Covenant, the Jews have been "behind" all significant, presumably unhappy, events of the last 200 years, beginning with the French Revolution and ending with the creation of the United Nations Security Council....

Many years ago, when I was young, the Left was an honorable antifascist movement. It fought racism, anti-Semitism, clerical obscurantism; it supported modernity, science, humanism. Today's Left defends fascist thugs like Saddam Hussein and Islamo-fascist parties like Hamas and Hezbollah - parties that advocate returning to the Seventh century, and preach the most virulent form of anti-Semitism. When I was young, men of the Left fought Fascism in Spanish trenches and on the beaches of Normandy; they would have been ashamed to shake a Nazi killer's hand. Today's Left activists preach Chamberlain's gospel of appeasement, and Left guru Chomsky joins Hezbollah leader Nasrallah on Lebanese TV, shakes his hand and voices approval of his 12,000-rocket arsenal donated to Hezbollah by Iran's mullahs for Israel's destruction. How low the Left has sunk since I was young.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Crazy regulation: "Today, in what was once the freest nation on earth, we are regulated from stem to stern. I'm not just talking about high market-cap corporations coughing up millions just to comply with the latest Byzantine addition to the Federal Register. I'm talking about barbeque sauce. Yes, barbeque sauce."



Passengers do their own profiling: British holidaymakers staged an unprecedented mutiny - refusing to allow their flight to take off until two men they feared were terrorists were forcibly removed. The extraordinary scenes happened after some of the 150 passengers on a Malaga-Manchester flight overheard two men of Asian appearance apparently talking Arabic. Passengers told cabin crew they feared for their safety and demanded police action. Some stormed off the Monarch Airlines Airbus A320 minutes before it was due to leave the Costa del Sol at 3am. Others waiting for Flight ZB 613 in the departure lounge refused to board it. The incident fuels the row over airport security following the arrest of more than 20 people allegedly planning the suicide-bombing of transatlantic jets from the UK to America. It comes amid growing demands for passenger-profiling and selective security checks. It also raised fears that more travellers will take the law into their own hands - effectively conducting their own 'passenger profiles'. The Tories said the Government's failure to reassure travellers had led the Malaga passengers to 'behave irrationally' and 'hand a victory to terrorists'. Websites used by pilots and cabin crew were yesterday reporting further incidents.

The swastika and the scimitar: "The Jews everywhere are "the Muslim's bitter enemies," said a prominent Islamic leader. Throughout history, the "irreconcilable enemy of Islam" has conspired and schemed and "oppressed and persecuted 40 million Muslims," he said. In Palestine, the Jews are establishing "a base from which to extend their power over neighboring Islamic countries." And, he proclaimed, "This war, which was unleashed by the world Jewry," has provided "Muslims the best opportunity to free themselves from these instances of persecution and oppression." Sound like Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah? Or perhaps Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Nope. It was the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Husseini, in 1942. An ardent Nazi supporter, Husseini delivered his speech at the opening of the Islamic Institute in Berlin, one day after the Allies denounced the Nazis for “carrying into effect Hitler’s oft-repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe.” Husseini’s address was approved by Nazi foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Joseph Goebbels was in attendance. The Reich press office widely distributed the comments."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC 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)

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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Britain's cultural cowardice

Britain's loss of nerve is one of the main reasons it has become a global centre of Islamic extremism. For decades, successive British governments have regarded multiculturalism as an article of faith. The idea that Britain should become a joyous melting pot of different cultures and religions living side by side in mutual toleration and respect is a noble vision. But it's not working out that way. Instead, the benefits of immigration are being lost through a failure to control numbers and a reluctance to pursue policies that might promote integration. As a result, Britain has a huge Muslim population, much of which is increasingly alienated from mainstream society. "Londonistan" is no longer just a safe haven for foreign extremists. Today, it nurtures home-grown terrorists, many born in Britain, educated at British schools and attending British universities.

The July 7 bombers were British. So was Richard Reid, the shoe bomber. Zacarias Moussaoui, convicted for his role in the 9/11 attacks, was a student in London. Some of those arrested last week converted to Islam in the past year. That suggests the problem is escalating.... why do young Muslims embrace terrorism rather than democratic politics? How can people born and educated in Britain feel so alienated from its culture and values? The snag is that many never fully engage with British culture and values. Muslims make up the majority in many towns and in most big cities there are large Muslim enclaves. Even if the multiculturalists were to change their minds on the need for integration, it would be too late. Muslim leaders are demanding more separation from mainstream society, not less.

They want bank holidays for Muslim festivals and sharia law courts to rule on family matters. They may well get it. They are helped by the remarkable ambivalence of the liberal Left towards British culture and values: to Christianity, British history, free markets and free trade. Above all, the Left is deeply suspicious of the institutions in which those values are embedded, starting with the family and extending via churches, schools, businesses, clubs, right through to parliament and the monarchy. To the Left, Britain's social institutions are bastions of privilege that must be remodelled or destroyed to make way for multiculturalism. The resulting cultural war has left British society brutalised and infantilised, and wide open to attack. Why should British Muslims respect a culture that has no respect for itself?

More here

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ELSEWHERE

A huge double standard for Israel: "The outrage of so many outraged people outrages me. On the scales of world opinion, some Muslim corpses are light as a feather, and others weigh tons. Two measures, two weights. The daily terrorist attacks on civilians in Baghdad, killing 50 people or more, are checked off in reports under the heading of miscellaneous, while the bomb that took 28 lives in Qana is denounced as a crime against humanity. Only a few intellectuals like Bernard-Henri Levy or Magdi Allam, editor of Corriere della Sera, find this surprising. Why do the 200,000 slaughtered Muslims of Darfur not arouse even half a quarter of the fury caused by 200 times fewer dead in Lebanon? Must we deduce that Muslims killed by other Muslims don't count--whether in the eyes of Muslim authorities or viewed through the bad conscience of the West? This conclusion has its weak spots, because if the Russian Army--Christian, and blessed by its popes--razes the capital of Chechen Muslims (Grozny, with 400,000 residents), killing tens of thousands of children in the process, this doesn't count, either. The U.N. Security Council does not hold meeting after meeting, and the Organization of Islamic States piously averts its eyes. From that, we may conclude that the world is appalled only when a Muslim is killed by Israelis...."

Terrorist attack in Germany: "According to reports circulating throughout the German media today, two suitcase bombs placed by two unidentified men very nearly went off on regional trains in Dortmund and Koblenz at the end of July. A deadly simultaneous bombing was only averted because the bombs were technically defective. Had they detonated, German authorities believe that a mass casualty event similar to the recent attacks in London could have been the result."

Sam Pender has an amusing article up about the Democrat foreign policy. A site linked to the centrist Democratic Leadership Council sets out a policy that is only a slightly reworded version of a well-known neocon policy! There can be no doubt that the Left are utterly bereft of ideas these days. Aside from their antiquated idea that the government should control everything, they have nothing positive to say.

Are capitalists bamboozling the poor?: "For lack of a better term I am dubbing it Woods's Law: whenever the private sector introduces an innovation that makes the poor better off than they would have been without it, or that offers benefits or terms that no one else is prepared to offer them, someone -- in the name of helping the poor -- will call for curbing or abolishing it."

The minimum wage: A denial of freedom and duty: "In an interview conducted by Faithful America, a website affiliated with the National Council of Churches, a man named Dan expresses some of the hardships faced when working for a minimum-wage job. 'A lot of times you don't get to pay your bills,' he says. 'A lot times you just stick them back, you're usually in debt. You usually don't ever get them paid.' This sort of picture of the hard-working but struggling family man is consistently invoked in political debates about the minimum wage."

The no-sense doctrine: "The TSA's more established security system, Screening Passengers by Observation Technique, or SPOT, relies on human intelligence instead of the artificial kind. Teams are trained to scrutinize passengers for more than 30 questionable behaviors, according to the Journal: 'They look for obvious things like someone wearing a heavy coat on a hot day, but also for subtle signs like vocal timbre, gestures and tiny facial movements that indicate someone is trying to disguise an emotion.' This apparently is unacceptable for civil libertarians. 'Our concern is that giving TSA screeners this kind of responsibility and discretion can result in their making decisions not based on solid criteria but on impermissible characteristics such as race,' the ACLU's Gregory T. Nojeim told the Journal. In other words, while our enemies are coming up with ingenious ways to murder Americans, we're coming up with ingenious ways to search for our enemies in the nicest manner possible."

Abolish the TSA, save lives: "The TSA has been a farce from its inception. It exists not to prevent terrorists from bringing down a plane but to prevent passengers from realizing the government can do little to thwart such a catastrophe. Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., was chairman of the Homeland Security Committee in May 2005 when he explained why the TSA squandered $4.5 billion on malfunctioning equipment; he also inadvertently admitted that the agency is merely window-dressing for the Feds: 'After 9/11, we had to show how committed we were by spending hugely greater amounts of money than ever before, as rapidly as possible.' It worked. Forcing folks to remove their shoes and submit to pat-downs convinced many Americans that the TSA is an effective bureaucracy, unlike all others in their experience."

I have just posted here a movie review sent in by a reader, who thought that the movie had considerable libertarian interest. The movie is "King Arthur"

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC 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)

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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