Saturday, December 29, 2012



Extraordinary defences of Ivy League racism

After the huge body of evidence marshalled by Ron Unz to show discrimination against Asians at the Ivies, here is one of the "replies" published by the NYT in response:

"Some allege specifically that affirmative action harms Asian applicants, capping the Asian population at elite universities. In reality, there is no evidence that this is the case."

The lamebrain concerned appears to think, obviously correctly, that mere denial of the Unz evidence will suffice for the NYT.  She dismisses it with a wave of her hand without addressing it at all.  Any rubbish will do for the NYT as long as the conclusions suit the NYT, it seems.  This is below the quality of supermarket tabloids, which do at least pretend to look at evidence for their claims.

Another reply which at least admits the Unz evidence simply reiterates the nasty stereotype of Asians as bespectacled nerds with no opinions of their own.

Given the huge preference now given by the Ivies to Jewish applicants,  I suppose I could be equally racist in reverse and say that Asians are simply more polite than loud-mouthed NYC Jews.   It just shows what a slippery slope racism can be and is thoroughly obnoxious for all the reasons that Leftists never tire of telling us about.  Steve Sailer gives it a thorough fisking.

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Liberalism’s Petty Agenda

By David Bozeman

The idea that the American left would delight in the political demise of conservative white males certainly comes as a shock to no one.  That theme has animated talk radio since the election.  And let’s give the Democrats their due — they have, with the assistance of media and entertainment, mastered political warfare and left the GOP flailing, unsure and uninspired.

But New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd recently laid bare the cynical, shallow, juvenile mindset that secured President Obama a second term.  In a recent piece “The Lost Civilization,’ she writes that the world did, indeed, end on December 21 — for “arrogant, uptight, entitled, bossy, retrogressive white guys.”

Citing demographic trends not typically favorable to conservatives and Republicans, she surmises that someday a National Geographic special will profile this “lost tribe” and feature such relics as film footage of Clint Eastwood and the empty chair and recorded ramblings of “a tall, stiff man, his name long forgotten, gnashing his teeth about the 47 percent moochers.”

And she prattles on, with no vision or intellectual engagement — these are tauntings more believable in a Mean Girls sequel. Conservatives and libertarians predicate their movements on ideas, always pondering what America will look like twenty years hence.  Maureen Dowd, who, sadly, speaks for millions, doesn’t even feign interest in the implications of policy — she’s one of the cool cats shooting barbs at “Whitey” and she wants you to know it.

We are now seeing the Balkanization of America at its most sophomoric, and the realization of why our founders fought to safeguard future generations from the dictates of unlimited, group-against-group majority rule.  Dowd is correct in that white conservative guys are no longer deemed important electorally, while Hispanics and others are now flexing their political muscles and can expect to be wooed with sickening excesses before 2016.

We on the right are not consumed with group identity.  We share the vision of our founders of individual autonomy and limited central power to promote the general welfare.

Only a liberal is granted such wide latitude in snidely dismissing entire population blocs.  But the greater truth is that conservatives, in all their pasty, white-maleness, are not the American anomaly (bear in mind, Obama won roughly 50 percent of the vote this time, down from 2008).  Liberal elites such as Maureen Dowd are.  They can champion the benevolence of the progressive agenda, knowing that they, in their posh New York townhouses and Malibu estates, will remain largely untouched by the excesses and uniformity sure to follow.

Obamacare will one day affect every individual American, but most liberal elites harbor no vision beyond their next MSNBC appearance.  In the meantime, they live in secure communities, their children attend private schools and they need never feel guilty about coast-to-coast air travel provided they purchase carbon offsets.

As Mark Steyn has so brilliantly observed, warnings of societal decline fall on deaf ears — after all, New York still boasts Broadway, Lincoln Center, fine dining, Greenwich Village, etc. So what if the rest of the country is run like Detroit?  And besides, we haven’t formally discarded America’s defining values and traditions, and only European nations ever really face bankruptcy.

Truth is, the left seldom engages those concerned with financial and social collapse, they simply demonize them and finally discard them as irrelevant.  Dowd doesn’t even earn points for originality — whole cottage industries have been predicting the demise of conservative thought for at least fifty years.

Some say that demography is destiny.  I believe that character is, both for individuals and nations.  Let us hope that America’s character is never defined by the likes of Maureen Dowd.

SOURCE

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The untroubled arrogance of the Left

It must be so wonderful to know it all

While CNN’s Piers Morgan is a well known critic of America’s Second Amendment, he has now ventured into a new campaign to reform another document critical in the development of western civilization; the Bible.

During a discussion on CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight” on Monday — Christmas Eve — with Saddleback Church Pastor Rick Warren, Morgan argued that there needs to be an “amendment to the Bible” for same-sex marriage, because like the Constitution, the Bible is “inherently flawed.”

“Both the Bible and the Constitution were well intentioned but they are basically, inherently flawed. Hence, the need to amend it,” Morgan told Warren during a conversation where Morgan emphasized the need for America to separate Church and State.

“My point to you about gay rights, for example, it’s time for an amendment to the Bible.”

“Uh, no,” replied Warren, in a conversation that remained civil between both parties. “Not a chance. What I believe is flawed is human opinion, because it constantly changes.”

Morgan has attracted more media attention than usual over the last few weeks as he has increased his always vocal cries for increased gun control laws in America following the Newtown elementary school shooting earlier this month.  Morgan’s campaign has infuriated Second Amendment enthusiasts, leading to a petition to the White House signed by over 75,000 calling for the CNN host’s deportation back to Britain. This development led to a counter protest in the UK “Stop Piers Morgan from being deported back to the UK from America.”

SOURCE

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Socialism v. Charity

With the fiscal cliff looming, Washington is looking under every rock for new forms of “revenue.”

Nothing is sacred, not even the mortgage and charitable deductions, which some are recasting as “loopholes.” Ending the mortgage deduction when the housing market is finally showing signs of recovery would be like giving a cancer patient strychnine to make him feel better.

Even worse would be ending the charitable deduction, for the simple reason that this deduction encourages private sector benevolence, which the federal government under Barack Obama treats as pesky competition.

As government grows, the private sector wanes, a situation created by the decline of strong families and abetted by progressive programs designed to make families irrelevant.

When it comes to serving the needy, there are two basic approaches. The first, inspired by Jesus Christ and required in the Old Testament, is sacrificial giving of oneself. This has been the cornerstone of American charity since the nation’s founding, and it remains the most effective way to assist the poor.

The diametrically opposite approach is socialism, in which income is forcibly seized and then redistributed to groups and individuals favored by government officials. Socialism is rooted in the formula from Karl Marx—“from each according to his abilities to each according to his needs.”

That’s a fine arrangement when voluntary, such as in families, churches and private charities. However, when imposed by force—and socialism is always accompanied by force since it violates human nature—it is soft tyranny masquerading as charity.

Since the 1930s, with the advent of the New Deal, the federal government, along with local and state governments, has taken on more and more functions that were handled by families and faith-based charities. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society sent this into overdrive, and Barack Obama is intent on nailing America to a third-stage rocket into socialism.

Social Security, the largest government income transfer program, was originally aimed at assisting intact families and widows. Now, it’s an ever-growing tax on employees and employers that has driven a wedge between the generations. How? Because in the past, parents had more children partly to insure that someone would provide for them in their old age.

Social Security removed the advantage of having children, since it guarantees income based solely on age (and previous employment). Someone who has no children gets the same amount as someone who had six children who grew up to pay into the system, thus supporting the childless retiree. Children are very expensive, as any parent can tell you. Social Security makes having them less advantageous. Of course, Social Security has allowed millions of older Americans to live in at least minimally comfortable circumstances. Political talk of privatizing any aspect of Social Security is hazardous, and any hint of ending Social Security as we know it is political suicide. Americans have come to count on Social Security, so the challenge is how to sustain it without bankrupting the next generation.

The same can be said of Medicare, Medicaid and many other enormous federal programs. The advantages are obvious, but the downsides are not so obvious – except for America’s $16 trillion-and-growing debt. To pay for all this, the average American family’s tax burden has risen from a mere 2% of income in 1948 to something approaching 40 percent when all taxes are accounted for.

This has forced many mothers into the workplace who would, all things being equal, rather spend the time raising their children. It’s also created a huge market for paid childcare, with the government subsidizing it. Families pay taxes to create a system that offers incentives for them to spend less time with their own children.

On April 21, 2009, President Obama signed a bill, the “Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act,” tripling the size of the federal government’s paid “volunteer” programs, including AmeriCorps. The plan will spend $5.7 billion over the next five years and $10 billion over the next 10 years, and put 250,000 paid “volunteers” on the government payroll.

Why would anyone think that government involvement would improve volunteerism? On the Senate floor, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) warned:  "…Our history shows us when Government gets involved, it tends to take something that is working and make it not work nearly as well. Civil society works because it is everything Government is not. It is small, it is personal, it is responsive, it is accountable.”

In 2009, Harvard economics Prof. Martin Feldstein warned that Obama’s plan to target charities could severely hurt nonprofits:  “President Obama’s proposal to limit the tax deductibility of charitable contributions would effectively transfer more than $7 billion a year from the nation’s charitable institutions to the federal government.”

Taken together, a massive increase in government aid to paid “volunteers” and reducing incentives for charitable giving are a double-barreled shotgun aimed at the private sector.

SOURCE

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Why Arabs Hate And Kill Palestinians

by Khaled Abu Toameh

More than 800 Palestinians have been killed and hundreds others injured since the beginning of the crisis in Syria nearly two years ago.

In the past two weeks, thousands of Palestinians were forced to flee the Yarmouk refugee camp near Damascus after Syrian jets bombed their homes, killing dozens of people.

More than 3000 refugees have fled to neighboring Lebanon, where some politicians and cabinet ministers are already calling for closing the border to stop the influx of Palestinians into their country.

The Arab world, meanwhile, has done nothing to help the Palestinians in Syria.

The Arab League did not hold an emergency meeting to discuss what Palestinians described as "massacres" against the refugees in Yarmouk, home to some 50,000 people.

This is not the first time that Palestinians living in Arab countries find themselves caught in conflicts between rival parties. Those who meddle in the internal affairs of Arab countries should not be surprised when bombs start falling on their homes.

The Palestinians have a long history of involving themselves in the internal affairs of Arab countries and later complaining when they fall victim to violence. They complain they are being killed but not saying why they keep getting into trouble.

Palestinians are not always innocent victims. They bring tragedy on themselves and then want to blame everyone else but themselves.

In Syria, a Palestinian terrorist group called Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command, which is headed by Ahmed Jibril, had been helping the Syrian regime in its attempts to suppress the opposition. Jibril's terrorists are reported to have kidnapped, tortured and murdered hundreds of anti-regime Syrians over the past two years.

The last time an Arab army bombed a Palestinian refugee camp was in Lebanon. In 2007, the Lebanese army destroyed most of the Nahr al-Bared camp after another terrorist group, Fatah al-Islam set up bases there and attacked army checkpoints, killing several soldiers.

In the 70s and 80s, Palestinians played a major role in the Lebanon civil war, which claimed the lives of more than 150,000 people.

The Palestinians also payed a price for meddling in the internal affairs of Iraq. After the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, thousands of Palestinians were forced out of Iraq for helping the dictator oppress his people for many years.

After the liberation of Kuwait more than 20 years ago, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled from the tiny emirate and other Gulf countries. Their crime was that they had supported Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait -- a country that for many years had provided the PLO with billions of dollars in aid.

Jordan was the first Arab country to punish the Palestinians for meddling in its internal affairs. In 1970, the late King Hussein ordered his army to crush armed Palestinian organizations that had severely undermined his monarchy. The violence resulted in the deaths of thousands of Palestinians and ended with the expulsion of the PLO to Lebanon.

What happened in the Yarmouk refugee camp in the past few days shows that the Palestinians have not learned from their previous mistakes and are continuing to meddle in the internal affairs of Arab countries. That is perhaps why the Arabs are reluctant to help the Palestinians overcome their financial hardships.

Arab League foreign ministers recently promised to provide the Palestinian Authority with $100m. per month to solve its financial crisis. But the Palestinians have not yet seen one dollar from the promised aid. And if they continue to meddle in the internal affairs of their Arab brothers, the only thing they will see is more bombs falling on their homes and thousands of people forced out of their refugee camps.

SOURCE

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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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a war criminal. Both British and American codebreakers had cracked the Japanese naval code so FDR know what was coming at Pearl Harbor.  But for his own political reasons he warned no-one there.  So responsibility for the civilian and military deaths at Pearl Harbor lies with FDR as well as with the Japanese.  The huge firepower available at Pearl Harbor, both aboard ship and on land, could have largely  neutered the attack.  Can you imagine 8 battleships and various lesser craft firing their AA batteries as the Japanese came in?

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've read that it had to do with not letting the Japs & Krauts know that the code had been broken.
It would have been impossible to break it again if they had refined it.

Anonymous said...

Where may one find the documented evidence that FDR was aware of the upcoming attack on Pearl Harbor?

JR said...

The undenied fact that the Jap naval code had been broken should be sufficient