HANDING OUT OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY MAKES YOU VIRTUOUS??

A little while ago I reproduced an email from a lady who worked for some years in the administration of a US public housing authority -- providing welfare housing for "the poor". See here. She noted how self-destructive most of her "clients" were. She has now emailed me again with a comment on the government agency she worked for:

"In your post about private solutions you wrote: "Seventy-four percent of our government welfare dollars go to the middle class social workers who administer these programs."

Indeed. I had a number of epiphanies while working at the public housing authority, but one of the hardest was seeing how well its employees were doing and yet how bitterly they militated against the management. They got to relish a sense of moral superiority in three ways: They were superior to people who didn't work to "help the poor." They were superior to the poor on whose behalf they worked (boy, every word in that sentence could be put in scare quotes). And they got to complain about being exploited and oppressed by their bosses, who merely ensured full employment (it's true--no one was ever laid off) and a benefits program that beat most private employers".

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ELSEWHERE

I think GWB should withdraw his representatives to the U.N.: "Daily incidents of anti-Semitic violence around the globe are reported in the media. Yet while leaders of the Free World condemn synagogue bombings in Turkey, firebombings of Jewish schools in France, and the hate speech of Malaysia's president who now heads the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the U.N. moves in the opposite direction, encouraging the proliferation of this centuries-old hatred"

Arlene Peck has some choice words to say about Jimmy Carter and all those who criticize Israel’s security fence.

Australia’s public broadcaster has taken up the cause of a clergyman who has been banned from visiting one of the jails where illegal immigrants to Australia are held. He admits taking part in violent protest riots outside the jail concerned earlier this year but still thinks the view of him as a security risk is “unfair�. Clearly, however, if he had stuck to religion instead of trying to defy the government, he would have had no problems. Some good advice for him: "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God's" (Mark 12:17)

The American economy is destroying jobs, and that's a good thing. It is in destroying jobs that the economy improves and makes it possible for the standard of living of all Americans to increase

The economy is performing like gangbusters. In November manufacturing had its best month in 20 years, construction activity rose to its highest level on record and last week the unemployment rate fell below 6 percent. Disposable income increased almost 6 percent last year... There is no doubt that the primary impetus for this growth is the Bush tax rate reductions,

Dennis Prager notes how the American mainstream press still sees Communism as being perfectly OK, despite all its mass slaughters. The Soviet Press is not dead. It lives on in America.

So what’s another lie to a Leftist? "Howard Dean underscores what has become a longstanding central theme of his campaign. He writes: 'We cut taxes by 30 percent over the lifetime of my administration.' ... On the campaign's website, Dean is even more specific, saying that his two cuts reduced the state's top income tax rate from 13.5 percent to 9.5 percent. But an examination of Dean's record as Vermont's governor has found that the bigger tax cut was in fact signed into law by his Republican predecessor, Richard Snelling."

More freedom in Mexico than in the politically correct USA: "In fiesta season, which just ended, everybody and his grand aunt Chuleta puts up a taco stand or booze stall on the plaza. Yes: In front of God and everybody. These do not have permits. They are just there. If you want a cuba libre, you give the nice lady twenty pesos and she hands it to you. Tha's all. There is in this a simplicity that the North American instantly recognizes as dangerous. Where are the controls? Where are the rules? Why isn't somebody watching these people? Heaven knows what might happen. They could be terrorists."

There is a good article here by Victor Davis Hanson that says that the USA is fighting "the worst Fascists since Hitler" in Iraq and that using kid-glove methods with Arabs is pissing into the wind.

Pro-War Leftism: "The argument, depending on who's making it and to whom they're making it, can be back-stopped with unimpeachable socialist historical precedent. Didn't Marx and Engels support the British Empire, with all its brutalities in India and stupidities in the Crimea, against Tsarist Russia? Didn't they wholeheartedly back the United States -- with all its hesitations, hypocrisies, faults and evils -- against the Southern slave-holders' rebellion? Didn't almost the entire left -- not just the liberals and Social Democrats and (Stalinist) Communists, but in their own inimitably contorted way most Trotskyists and even some anarchists -- fundamentally, and however critically, support the world war waged by the imperialist democracies and Stalinist Russia against German fascism?"

The latest upload of one of my previously published articles is another chapter from my book -- about decentralization. Part of the general Greenie hatred of the modern world is a dislike of big cities -- though few Greenies actually move out of them for some unknown reason! One solution to this “problem� is to get people to move out of big cities and move to smaller cities (an idea that the average New Yorker would see as abandoning civilization). For a time, however, a short-lived Australian Leftist government was actually spending taxpayer dollars to get people out of the big cities and my article was an attempt to point out what a nonsense government-induced decentralization is. Details here or in chapter 6 here.

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DON'T FLY AIR NEW ZEALAND!

Since Xmas is coming up and people are making travel plans, I am repeating verbatim below a warning I gave at this time last year. I know that memories are short. Both Australia and Britain have long ago privatized their former national airlines but the Kiwis still cling on to theirs -- no doubt in an accurate realization that it would not last 6 months in the commercial marketplace. The cost to the Kiwi taxpayer has, however, been huge. And for what? Air services to New Zealand would at least not be altered by its demise -- and would probably be improved!

When Air New Zealand (a government-owned airline) crashed one of its planes into Mt Erebus in Antarctica some years ago, there was evidence of negligence in setting up the plane's navigational system. But pinning the blame on any one person or procedure was difficult. Top people all over New Zealand were involved in various ways with the airline and they all appeared to be covering up for one-another. The New Zealand government of the day was so despairing of getting to the bottom of the matter that it imported a judge from Australia to head the official enquiry. No New Zealand judge could be found who could be trusted. Even so, when the enquiry was over, the judge reported that he had been confronted by "an orchestrated litany of lies" in the course of his enquiry and it remained dubious whether enough changes had been made to prevent further such disasters.

Air New Zealand planes are just falling apart as they fly through the sky. It has now happened four times in the last four months. Maintenance is still obviously a low priority for this bureacratized monstrosity of an airline. When they owned Australia's Ansett Airlines, Ansett also had major maintenance problems -- leading to its eventual bankruptcy.

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ELSEWHERE

Mass support for more immigration control: According to the study, released this month by the Pew Research Center for The People & The Press, "About eight-in-ten Republicans (82%) and somewhat fewer independents and Democrats (76% each) agree with the statement 'We should restrict and control people coming into our country to live more than we do now.'"

"The European Union postponed again a decision on lifting a four-year ban on bio-engineered crops" I can't say I blame them. With their huge socialistic price supports for their farmers, greater productivity from their farms would be a budgetary nightmare for them.

Hooray! "European Union foreign ministers admitted defeat Monday in their efforts to find a constitutional compromise between countries seeking greater integration and those who fear a European superstate"

I can't believe this: Her Majesty the Queen sends text messages on her cellphone! What a laugh! No reason why she shouldn't, of course.

When GWB is called a "cowboy" it seems generally to be meant with contempt. Someone who knows what real cowboys are like thinks the term is a badge of honour

When Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Robert Mugabe recently said that Australians were an inferior race because of the convicts in their ancestry (I have two convicts in my ancestry but only about 3% of Australians in fact have any convict ancestry) I didn't hear a single Leftist scream of outrage at such "racism" I wonder why? Maybe it shows that they secretly think you have to expect that sort of thing from "the lesser races". In case you are interested there is a link to a video of Mugabe making his remarks here. There is also a post here about the disgusting homosexual rapist who was anointed as Zimbabwe's President by a British government -- in its zeal to overcome "racism".

Danegerus has an excellent quote about pacifists from George Orwell which is still true today around 50 years after Orwell wrote it. It points out that pacifists only want the West to stop defending itself. Violence by others is not even mentioned.

PID has a big post on how the Left have always tried to stigmatize conservatives as insane or stupid or evil in order to avoid any real debate about policies and reality generally. When you have got no arguments, abuse is all you have left. I do the opposite. I start from the facts and show that Leftist policies could not be motivated by any interest in reality.

A new Australian Leftist blog has sprung up called Australian UnSpinner which says that it is "Desperate to remove the spin from Oz politics -- to provide a clear and rational approach to it all". I think he might be sincere about it too. His comments on global warming and forestry are generally reasonable and pretty unusual for a Leftist. I suspect he will end up a conservative one day.

When I wrote an article for Front Page Magazine last year in which I pointed out that modern Leftism is essentially the same as the Italian Fascism of Benito Mussolini in the 1930s, I was of course merely drawing to wider attention facts that were well-known to most historians of the period. Amazon has some informative reviews here of a book by Veith that sets the similarities out in much greater detail. Well worth reading.

My latest academic upload is my major attempt to pin down whether or not there is such a thing as a working class ideology. I found that there is a weak tendency for working class people to be conservative on some social issues but that it varies from country to country. Details here or here

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MEXIFORNIA

A reader has picked out a rather fun passage from V.D. Hanson's recent book: 'Mexifornia: A State of Becoming':

"So there has indeed been complicity on the part of Mexico in the great migration north. And there has been a shameful and unforgivable absence of honesty on the part of our own political and academic establishment in legitimizing Mexico's venality. The Mexican government looks on the exportation of its poorest Indians as an economic issue: remittances from illegal aliens reach the billions of dollars and so prop up the Mexican government and help feed the starving who otherwise would look in vain to a nonexistent safety net at home.

There is also an element of racism involved_one oddly ignored in the face-charged debates in contemporary America. For the most part it is not light-skinned Mexicans of Spanish heritage who are coming to the United States, but rather the poorest and brownest, largely Indian_and this apparently suits an elite in Mexico City that does not wish to explain why the whiter people of Mexico are better off than those who are browner. Indeed, if one were studiously to watch any of the Spanish-language television stations_whether owned and operated by Mexican nationals or by Mexican-Americans_one would surmise that surely the Ku Klux Klan had a hand in the programming. Most are either white or coated with white pancake makeup; nearly every prominent woman is dyed blonde; every privileged host and hostess is about as Anglo-looking as can be. Yet all thee characters who are subservient_taxi drivers, maids, gardeners, "the help"_resemble the hundreds of thousands of darker-skinned people who risk their lives to enter the United States illegally.

I have met wealthy elites, academics and journalist from Mexico City who privately laugh that they are exporting their Indians and Mestizos, their unwanted, into the United States. Their smile disappears when I reply that we instead figure that they suppose to be riffraff are the real cream of Mexican society: frontiersmen and women whose endurance and courage; are good prerequisites for Americanization, and who in fact are superior people to those who oppress them at home. So while the powers in Mexico City regard departure as good politics_a valve of sorts that releases dangerous pressures rather than allow explosions of the type that occurred in the country's earlier checkered history_in an odd way the joke ultimately is on them. Within twenty years the poor, brown Indian alien could enjoy a material existence in America superior to that of the upper-class white Mexican in Mexico City."

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ELSEWHERE

It looks like The Guardian is so far grimly resisting the urge to antisemitism that seems to be overtaking the Left everywhere. I like this comment by Julie Burchill: "Make no mistake, the Jews are not hated because of Israel; they are hated for their very modernity, mobility, lust for life and love of knowledge. Their most basic toast, "L'chaim!" (To Life!), is a red rag to those who fetishise death because they have failed to take any joy from their life on earth." I think there is no doubt that the Left are indeed a joyless lot.

Another follow-up to my KGB wristwatch story. A reader writes: "the Dad of a friend fled the USSR in the 60's but keeps a small metal bust of Lenin in his freezer. Whenever he gets drunk, he pulls the bust out and sets it in the middle of the dinner table and as it starts to defrost, cackles, "Who's sweating now you sonofabitch?!'"

Jeff Jacoby reports that Senator Joe Lieberman has now given up on his support for the importance of the Judeo-Christian tradition. A big backflip that now makes him just another Democrat.

A good comment from an ex-Marxist philosopher on the folly of Christian churches becoming merely "trendy": "The whole strength of the Church is that it is faithful to its tradition - otherwise, what is the Church for? If the Church is going to become a political party which merely adapts its beliefs to changing opinions, it can be safely dismissed altogether, because there are political parties doing such things... The Church is strong because it has a traditional teaching, a spiritual kernel, which it considers its immutable essence. It cannot just yield to any pressure from people who think that whatever is in fashion at the present moment should immediately be adopted by the Church as its own teaching"

"The contrasts are dramatically in favor of private solutions ... help for the poor, for example: Seventy-four percent of our government welfare dollars go to the middle class social workers who administer these programs. On the other hand, 75% of each privately donated dollar goes to the needy! How can such a dramatic difference be unknown to or ignored by so many people? Part of the reason is that most people can't even imagine that government can be as wasteful as it is. Another reason is that government programs spend a lot of time and money on self-promotion, and politicians responsible for them certainly can't admit how wasteful they are."

Ben Shapiro says it is conservatives who support Israel and is therefore contemptuous of Jews who vote Democrat -- saying that: "If liberal Jews want the right to start screaming anti-Semitism, they need to start acting in concert with authentic Jewish values first."

Prof. Bunyip notes a rather amazing piece of feminist sexism from the new Chief Justice of the State of Victoria. If you replaced the word "women" in what she said with "men", she would have been booted out of the job.

Gary Aldrich spent a lot of time seeing Bill and Hillary Clinton close-up and he concludes: "They are hard-hearted, Hard-Left and very hateful people."

I have just put up a new range of posts from Chris Brand here. Posts on psychoanalyst Jung, Stephen Pinker of Blank Slate fame, black racism and university student buffoonery.

The Wicked one has a new and improved version of marriage vows.

The latest upload of one of my published articles is another chapter from my book written 30 years ago. It shows how little the Left has changed. An Australian Leftist government was as opposed to freedom of speech then as the Politically Correct brigade are today. They mostly cannot afford to have the full facts on any issue widely known. Details here or Chapter 11 here.

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A FUN EMAIL

The main reward I get from doing this blog is the emails I receive. I rather enjoyed this one:

“This note is a shot in the dark that has no bearing on the trouble the NYT has caused the Al Ray family in Baghdad, altho I did complain to the “Newspaper of Record” regarding their unfeeling arrogance. The lofty indifference towards real human suffering of the sort of people for whom having to hail a cab in Manhattan
in the rain, or getting a bad table at Elaine's, is a major life crisis has always amazed me, but all that is beside the point.

Josh Chafetz of Oxblog is surely a man whose name is not unknown to you. Josh has recently proposed a project that I would like to help him with. He has learned that the US embassy in Amman publishes founding documents of democracy, such as The Federalist, in Arabic. He thinks it would be useful to seek funding for a project to distribute free copies of The Federalist to people in Iraq. Me too, but before I embark on a new career as a do-good busybody I would value some input from a person who knows both worlds.

Do you think it would be OK for me to approach Ghayda Al Ali, strictly as one private citizen to another? The last thing I want to do is to intrude on the privacy of someone in her position, but her opinion would carry a lot of weight. Can you put me in touch with her? No pressure. NO is a perfectly acceptable answer.”

I copied his email to the family concerned

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MORE READER COMMENTS

My mention yesterday of the "Red" wristwatch got me a few emails. I particularly liked this one: "I read your item about the KGB wristwatch today. I must confess that I purchased a Red Army paratrooper wristwatch from the same firm last year. I like wind up watches and the design of the Red Paratrooper watch was such that you could wind it up whilst wearing thick gloves. As a mad snow sports fan, that was a big selling point for me. Unfortunately after about three weeks I dropped the watch from my bedside table and it hasn't worked since. If Red Army paratroops were equipped with watches that could not withstand a two foot fall, no wonder they lost the Cold War!"

A comment from another reader on the same subject: "The guy with the KGB watch reminds me of Jay Nordlinger's column in NRO - about the Russiahn immigrant who had a hammer and sickle and a red star displayed in his living room. When asked why he embraced symbols of oppression, he said these symbols reminded him that he was FREE OF THAT OPPRESSION"

And a reader thinks that African Christians are good conservatives: “The current traditionalist versus modernist split being played out in the Anglican Church sees the African and Asian branches of the Church firmly in the traditionalist camp. To Western modernists this is simply an indicator of the backwardness and bigotry of their rustic co-religionists. But as this article shows, the reason for the traditionalism of the African Church has more to do with lack of trust in secular authorities who are often tyrannical, corrupt, Islamist or all three. To African Christians, the idea of cooperating with the secular state, something western Christians have no qualms about, makes as much sense as proposing a reformist partnership with the mafia. The see the authority of the Church and the Bible as providing a counter-point to the undemocratic state that dominates them. This example may help explain the broader nature of conservatism versus liberalism. The conservative distrusts the state and sees the world as containing threats requiring a disciplined response; the liberal sees the world and political authority as essentially benign with conflicts being abnormal, mainly the result of misunderstanding.

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ELSEWHERE

It looks like Canadian conservatives are finally growing up -- with the merger of their two parties now approved. Australia has had two co-operating conservative parties for years (presently in power) and we all know what a broad tent the GOP is.

One understands that scaremongering sells newspapers and attracts TV viewers but it can nonetheless cause great harm and distress. And the autism scare over the Measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccine is a case in point. A doctor explains why he will not be staying quiet about a British TV channel’s 'scientifically dishonest and emotionally manipulative' program on the subject. PC types all around the world are trying to ban all mention of Christmas where they can in case it “upsets” somebody. Where are they when something really upsetting is going on? Silent, of course. In reality their only concern is making themselves look big, not actually doing any good.

Government regulations to "protect farmland" from development make no sense. All it does is drive up the cost of land for housing and thus militate against affordable housing

Denis Dutton has a good article on how the deregulation of the New Zealand economy worked wonders.

Owen Harries makes the point that a globalized economy will not remotely lead to the decline of the nation state. I think he's right but I also doubt that it matters much one way or the other. Any change will obviously be evolutionary and voluntary so there is not much to be feared in that.

Sam Francis on the nonsense of the racism detector test which I commented on some time ago here.

Anti-white racism, the last acceptable prejudice?

It looks like the Catholic Church has finally decided to speak out about Islamic barbarity and intolerance.

A “childless by choice” lady has some bitter comments about the 50s. I think her view of how the police treated women in those days is a caricature but it is true that life has got better in some ways and worse in others since then. For most people life is slowly getting better all the time in my view -- despite the efforts of the Left to destroy people’s happiness wherever they can.

I imagine that most readers of this blog also read PC Watch but, if not, I have put up a fair bit of good stuff on politically correct idiocy there lately.

The latest upload from a chapter in my book written 30 years ago concerns something that is very topical today: Zimbabwe (or Rhodesia as it then was). I predicted that handing the country over to Mugabe and his cronies would be a disaster. And that disaster has certainly arrived now. See Chapter 10 here or here.

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Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
Spam advice: Like most people, I have had a huge upsurge in spam lately and the measures I have had to take to deal with that may occasionally have resulted in my missing legitimate emails. So if I appear to have ignored an email from anyone, please resend the message to BOTH my email addresses above with nothing in the subject line. Thanks.

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CORROBORATION OF THE NYT IN BAGHDAD STORY

One of my regular readers writes:

As I write this I am amazed how big yet how small the Blog world is. I am writing in reference to your link "Surprise Surprise The NYT uses Gestapo tactics" The women who wrote the original email and the letters to the NYT is Ghayda Al Ali. As I write this email she is sitting in the next room. Ghayda is my fiancée and I am her host during her visit to the States. We are surprised and heartened by the way her difficultly with the NY times has been noticed by blogs around the world and from the offers of help and concern she has received.

The situation between her family and the NY Times is continuing to unfold. Yesterday her brother Ali had a meeting with the NYT Baghdad bureau chief that was less than completely satisfactory. The NYT understands Ali cannot be denied access to his property and they are anxious to put the incident behind them. But nothing more was mentioned other than recognition Ali will not be barred from his property. There are clearly some loose ends that need taken care of here. As the NY Times seems to think the issue has been resolved with nothing left to be done, Ali will be taking additional action elsewhere. I apologize for being deliberately vague but there are some things going on in the background that are not yet appropriate for public discussion.

The Al Ali family needs full access to their property including access for potential customers to the attached store fronts. Interestingly, this property was taken from the Al Ali family by Saddam twenty five years ago. After the recent war, the family regained title to the property only to be denied it's residential and commercial use by an American newspaper. It must be said the Ali family has acknowledged at every turn of this situation that the NY Times has legitimate concerns for the security of their staff yet these concerns do not justify unlawful acts on the part of their private security force or their agents.


Ghayda and her brother are determined to see this to its conclusion. There is more at stake here than family finances.

Rebuilding Iraqi will be a huge task. The mechanical aspects such as oil, water, sewage, banking, electricity and the like are immense yet in some sense straight forward. Even more important is the establishment of the rule of law, an understanding among all Iraqi citizens that laws apply equally to all. Those with power, money, or a AK-47, are not exempt. Nor does a powerful American corporate entity have the right to act as an power unto themselves. These things seem obvious to those of us born into freedom. They are by no means obvious to the Iraqi people as a whole.


Remember for a generation, even a mild complaint against those in power could bring death to you and your family. Ghayda tells a story of a boy in her junior high school who in a fit of anger tore a newspaper photo of Saddam in pieces. He was reported and a few days later he and his family disappeared. In this context it is unfortunately understandable why the Al-Karada police and judge are willing to look the other way when the actions of a powerful American newspaper are called into question.

Many Iraqis are frustrated. They wonder if Americans really care at all about them. Do we as Americans really believe in the universal rights we so easily banter about? Do they belong to all or only to those with power and the influence?

It is not sufficient to dispose of Saddam and his followers and leave the rest to hasty elections. Democracy and the rights and responsibilities of freedom must be learned. America as the provisional authority needs to teach by example. A proper resolution of conflict between the New York Times and the Al Ali family would be a small but important step in the right direction.

Today Ghayda received email from an American print journalist currently in Baghdad. This journalist will be looking into this incident and there is some reason to think it may appear in the mainstream American media in the not too distant future. Of course the hope is a little public exposure will help bring this incident to an acceptable resolution.

One ironic component of this situation is Ghayda is putting the final touches on her Ph.D. dissertation in English Translation. She is looking at the ideological and informational shifts that occur as English language news headlines are translated into Arabic for the Arab press. It is one thing to see ideological acrobatics in an academic context, and another to see them unfold as family news.

So on Ghayda's behalf I thank you for the link. If you would like to correspond with Ghayda directly, let me know and I will put her in touch with you.

SOME READER COMMENTS:

A reader thinks both Leftists and Catholics are basically wishful thinkers: "Back in Catholic school, one good sister told us about a saint that could fly. She said that we, too, could fly if we believed and prayed long and hard enough. Likewise, all liberal thought arises from good intentions - tax the rich and there will be more money for "the poor" (not so if you look at facts - when "the rich" (business owners) are taxed to death, they arrange their own finances do they can pay more taxes and still maintain their after-tax income, and cut where they can - like in hiring, raises, benefits to their employees"

Another reader writes: "A leftist teacher friend of mine found herself painted into a corner recently when she tried to explain 50s social values to a class of modern teens. Despite her best effort to sell the advantages of feminism, diversity and libertine culture, most of the kids quickly saw the more stable and predictable values of the 50s as offering more protection to the weakest and most vulnerable members of society, children"

Steven Hamori is upset at a firm that sells Soviet "memorabilia" such as a KGB wristwatch. He recently wrote to them: "I'm not a hyper-sensitive person who gets offended over silly things but why are you selling a watch with the KGB shield on it? Are you aware that the USSR murdered over 40 million of their own civilians and around 10 million of their own soldiers .. If you're going to sell this stuff, what's next? A Nazi SS watch? If you think it is a silly example it only means you don't know any Soviet history... they (the Soviets) murdered more innocent people than the Nazis... "

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ELSEWHERE

I think this “Townhall” writer is correct in saying that Russia’s experiment with democracy is just about over. It was too big a change for them. I would say that Russia is now a Fascist State remarkably like Mussolini’s Italy of the 1930s --- complete with strong nationalism, a hankering for socialism, a strong and very popular leader, a controlled media and oligarchic capitalism. But while capitalism thrives there -- which it mostly does -- there is hope that a more prosperous Russia will emerge and cause Fascism to do what it always eventually does -- evolve into democracy. As a Burkean conservative, I do believe that change needs to be evolutionary rather than sudden for the best outcome to emerge.

Bureaucratic idiocy: "Stricter federal rules on patient privacy are stopping a young Kenosha girl from delivering hundreds of toys to chronically-ill children in the hospital. Thirteen-year-old Robin Krawchuk has collected more than 400 toys. Each year since 1996 Robin has delivered toy donations to young patients to celebrate her own remission from leukemia. Until this year she's been able to deliver the toys to kids at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin where she too had been a patient. Children's Hospital spokesperson Jackie Gauger says new policies prevent anyone under 16 from visiting unless they're a relative."

New Deal or Bad Deal? "Good intentions are over-rated. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal, for instance, has been hailed for its lofty goals of reforming the American economy and helping the under-privileged. Yet mounting evidence, developed by dozens of economists across the country, shows that the New Deal prolonged joblessness for millions, and black people were especially hard hit."

The high costs of busybodies: "With more than 80,000 people on waiting lists for various organs, and many dying while waiting, why prevent such transactions? One reason is that third parties would be offended. You know the words and the music: How terrible that the rich can buy other people's body parts -- and that the poor are so desperate as to sell. If you think that you have a right to forbid other people from making such voluntary transactions, then you are saying that your delicate sensibilities are more important than the poverty or even the deaths of other people."

This Mexican intellectual has found that elites in the USA all like illegal Mexican immigration. It is only poor old Joe Citizen who does not.

Such a worry: "San Diego parent Lonecia Landry has sent her daughter to Nubia Leadership Academy, a charter school, for five years. She's aware the school leases its facilities from Bayview Baptist Church, and that many of the staff and students attend services there. For Ms. Landry, the urgent need was to keep her daughter out of traditional public schools -- the same schools that employ her as a teacher. Landry says she feels comfortable about having her daughter attend Nubia Academy, even though they're not affiliated with the church. ... Experts worry, however, that in parents' eagerness to escape traditional public schools, some may be overlooking religious or other ideological messages seeping into their children's lessons."

Keith Burgess-Jackson has an interesting but sketchy post on atheist Christians. I don't think that I am an atheist Christian in his sense but ever since my teens I have been inspired by Christ's social teachings and still consider Christian morality to be the wisest in general. Clearly, one can follow Christ's teaching on how to live without accepting any of his teachings about the hereafter. And I think there is some case for calling such people Christians.

Personal Independence Day liked my posting about JFK yesterday. He has further information and comment on JFK and the civil rights movement here and here

Mark Pierce is having a bit of a laugh at Democrat hand-wringing over talk-radio.

James of Conservative Voice has just posted his explanation of why such a thing as the Left exists. Some good insights.

My academic upload yesterday debunking the Leftist theory of "authoritarianism" actually got a reply from a defender of the theory. I reply to the reply fairly bitingly here or here

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FROM BROOKES NEWS

US recession and the fallacy of technological overhang. When every so-called technological breakthrough and invention immediately attracts investment, think of the South Sea Bubble. John Stuart Mill sadly remarked that these booms left many businessmen and eager investors "to repent at leisure." And that was written about 172 years ago.
Australian newspaper bashes Bush. Graham Barrett's Why Bush is still the man to beat is another sickening example of the left's mendacity and its hatred of President Bush.
Circle of Poison: another vicious example of green propaganda. Circle of Poison is the title of a malicious book co-authored by David Weir and Mark Schapiro. It was sponsored and published in 1981 by the left-wing Institute of Food Development Policy (IFDP) which is linking to the notorious Marxist-Leninist IPS.
US manufacturing, wages and the lessons of history. In the US in 1929 the Committee on Recent Economic Changes wisely observed: "Each generation believes itself to be on the verge of a new economic era, an era of fundamental change". Seventy-four years later and I very much doubt if the lesson has been learnt.

Details here

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THE FORGOTTEN JFK

"Having criticized FDR's people for handing Eastern Europe to Stalin at Yalta in 1945, he joined Republicans in blasting the Truman administration and the State Department for their culpability in China's collapse before the Communists four years later. Speaking from the House floor, he said, "The responsibility for [this] failure...rests squarely with the White House and the Department of State."

Kennedy also confronted communist subversion at home. As a House labor committee member, he helped convict a communist union official. While in the Senate, he backed Senator Joseph McCarthy's investigations. In January 1955, after McCarthy had fallen from power, JFK walked out on a banquet speech by McCarthy-hating journalist Edward R. Murrow.

As with totalitarianism, so, too, with tax cuts. Midway through his presidential term, JFK proposed a sweeping across-the-board tax cut, dismaying liberal Democrats, who preferred wasteful spending binges to "stimulate" the economy.

Today's liberal historians equate JFK's tax cut proposals with a demand-side stimulus, but that's not what JFK said while arguing for them. Here's what he said: "The present rates ranging up to 91% not only check consumption but discourage investment and encourage...the avoidance of taxes [rather] than the production of goods." He went on: "Our present tax system...reduces the financial incentives for personal effort, investment, and risk-taking."

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Who said this? "I am in favour of upward mobility through hard work," It was the new leader of Australia’s major Left-leaning political party. Sounds good.

Surprise, Surprise! The New York Times uses Gestapo tactics in Iraq.

GWB’s “No Child Left Behind” Act is working -- by making lazy teachers work. And the improvement in results for students is dramatic. See here.

There is an interview with a leading Muslim intellectual reported in a Pakistani newspaper. Note the following Q and A: “You reckon that there are so many contradictions between the West and the Muslim world, is there any chance of reconciliation and dialogue between the two civilizations?" .. "There is none. The basic concepts of both civilizations are in total contrast with each other. When I say this I do not address Western civilization as Christianity. I speak of a man-made system completely devoid of divine guidance” Pretty plain. Islam can only be defeated by force. Trying to placate them is as foolish as appeasing Hitler was.

USA now more Marxist than Russia: "After arriving in the United States with a diploma from Leningrad University..., I realized that I had the extremely unmarketable skills of a Marxist-Leninist philosophy professor.... Eventually, I ... enrolled at San Francisco State University. I majored in creative writing. I couldn't believe what I found. Imagine the utter amazement of a refugee from a Communist country, where Marxism was forced on all students, now having to sink in a puddle of socialist propaganda again -- but this time in the middle of an American university! Imagine the astonishment of a person who, after fighting the KGB and being a refusenik, finally comes so close to her dream of receiving a real education instead of indoctrination, only to find herself, once again, in the middle of a socialist brainwashing machine -- but this time in San Francisco...

Many a true word .... "It is well-known that the American political system requires a successful presidential candidate to adopt three very different personas. During the primaries he must run to the left or right, depending on his party, in order to attract the support of the Democratic or Republican faithful. During the general election he must run to the center, in order to attract the support of people who find the Democratic and Republican faithful kind of creepy. And, once elected, he must run past the center, and adopt his opponent's platform."

The Spectator (UK) has a good send-up of anti-Americanism.

The Wicked one is defending homebody extraordinaire Martha Stewart.

I have noticed that a lot of bloggers and a lot of academics seem to have up on the net fairly extensive autobiographies and self-descriptions. To date all I have had up is a couple of paragraphs at the top of my academic home page. I have now, however, put up a more extensive story for anyone who is interested. See here or here.

My latest academic upload is another attack on the Leftist myth that conservatives are "authoritarian". Only this one I had published in an Accountancy journal! Details here or here

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TAX, WELFARE AND WILLINGNESS TO WORK

There is a useful review by Jeff Madrick in the New York Review of Books of the broadly conservative book Transformation of the Welfare State: The Silent Surrender of Public Responsibility by Neil Gilbert. A bias alert is needed however. Despite the apparently reasoned tone of the article, you can see where Madrick is coming from when you note that he blames America’s “low” level of welfare expenditure for the fact that “a huge proportion of African-American men are now in prison”! I wonder what proof he has for THAT connection! It would be great if it were that simple. Even I would favour Danegeld if it would end black crime. The orientation of the article might also be suggested by the fact that it is accompanied by a graphic which appears to show GWB with a large Pinocchio nose! Madrick also finds “refreshing” the suggestion that because people sometimes invest their retirement savings unwisely the government should take over the savings concerned and use them to build roads etc! Socialism lives among U.S. intellectuals!

The article really requires a response from an academic economist and economics is not my specialty but one of his central points did nonetheless seem pretty silly to me from a psychological point of view. He notes some evidence that economic growth does not always closely track tax levels and argues that tax levels therefore have no effect on economic growth. There are of course many things that affect economic growth but a key one would have to be the work-motivation of the population. And expecting work-motivation to track tax policy closely shows no understanding of human nature -- to be expected from a Leftist, of course. People do not change their values and habits overnight (though no doubt Leftists wish they would) and ALL economic changes take a while to show their effects. In the case of willingness to work, we may even be looking at a generational phenomenon: willingness to work may for many older workers reflect values acquired in their youth rather being immediately responsive to the current situation. In that case, a more informative approach would be to plot levels of growth against level of tax over a period more like a century than anything shorter.

That it takes a long time for work habits to change is in fact shown by the Scandinavian experience. When high taxes to fund very generous welfare programs were introduced after World War II, most Scandinavians continued to work as before -- even though they would generally have been roughly as well-off to stop working and go on welfare. But a generation or more later, that has now changed so much that all the Scandinavian countries are now trying to change their welfare systems in a way that will re-create an incentive to work.

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AN OLD LIE

The Leftists sure do love their lies and distortions. They just CANNOT give them up. An Australian Leftist blog is a good example of it. The blogger concerned speaks of former Queensland Premier “Joh Bjelke-Peterson, who, despite not knowing English, managed to rig and gerrymander his way into an unbelievably long term”. Apparently getting 59% of the popular vote for your government is still not enough to make you legitimate in Leftist eyes.

What the Australian Left have always tried to ignore is that the Queensland government concerned was a coalition of two conservative parties that generally did not run against one-another in elections. So each party stood for election in only about half of the electorates. So neither one of those parties ever got anything like a majority of the vote individually, but they DID get big majorities combined. The Left however look only at the vote for ONE of the parties and say that, because it did not get a majority by itself, it is illegitimate having that party in government! Only a Leftist could be so deliberately stupid.

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ELSEWHERE

There’s no let-up to that Leftist arrogance and elitism. Read how Hillary Clinton treated U.S. troops on her vist to Afghanistan.

This Leftist political pundit describes the States that voted predominantly for Gore in the last U.S. Presidential election as characterized by “tolerant values” -- tolerant of guns? tolerant of Christians? tolerant of conservatives? tolerant of GWB? tolerant of the Iraq intervention? What a laugh! Leftists really are up themselves.

Vox Day tells what nonsense conservative university students have to put up with these days: "Like most who have graduated from college, I have endured many pious and pedantic secular sermons from various members of the self- appointed moral elite. From the day I set foot on campus, I was lectured on my proclivity to rape women who might or might not be saying no, the need to be tolerant of the idiosyncratic behavior of others, and, above all, to know that I, as a campus conservative, was a crypto-Nazi slavering for the chance to commit violence on others."

I wonder what the Greenies will think of this? "solar power from the Moon could provide everyone clean, affordable, and sustainable electric power?" I can see "Save the Moon" as a future Greenie slogan.

“Alternative” medicine bites the dust again. How sad: “Echinacea does nothing to treat children's colds, according to a US study of more than 500 children.”

Amusing: The newly elected leader of the Australian Labor Party will not be getting his ex-wife’s vote.

Jean-Francois Revel sets out the incredible caricature of the USA that is widely believed in Europe. He then comments drily: "Strangely, it is always America that is described as degenerate and "fascist," while it is solely in Europe that actual dictatorships and totalitarian regimes spring up"

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with a huge range of offerings.

My latest academic upload here or here is a reply to some dreamy criticisms of my article on social class measurement.

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YOU READ IT HERE FIRST

On 30th I linked to a story by Blogger Brian O'Connell in which he caught out a Leftist "investigative journalist" for not investigating -- and thus getting wrong even the basics of GWB's recent trip to Iraq.

The story has just been picked up by both Opinion Journal and Mark Steyn in the UK Telegraph. Brian has of course had a big surge of hits on his blog as a result and seems to think that my link was instrumental in getting the story out. I have noticed that quite a few things I link to do subsequently appear on Opinion Journal. Probably just a coincidence but maybe someone there does read this blog.

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HOMOSEXUAL “MARRIAGE”

Opinion Journal notes that the newly discovered "right" to homosexual marriage is now being used as an argument to say polygamy should be legal too and commments: "It's hard to imagine the courts accepting Bucher's argument and establishing a constitutional right to polygamy, but that is because polygamists have not gained anything like the level of social acceptance that homosexuals have over the past couple of decades. Where the courts draw the line, in other words, seems to be driven more by fashion than by principle. It's perfectly appropriate for moral fashions to determine public policy--but they should do so by way of the democratic process, not judicial fiat"

The Wicked one has a good Ann Coulter quote about the homosexual “right to marriage” ruling in Taxachusetts.

Peter Hitchens is pretty upset at what he sees as the "death" of marriage in Britain -- as a result of the push for homosexual marriage there.

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ELSEWHERE

Hooray! Russia says it will not ratify the stupid Kyoto “Greenhouse” protocol. That means it is DEAD!

Amazing! Afghan warlords handing over their weapons. There may be hope for the Afghans yet.

The Spanish have got guts: “Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar has ruled out withdrawing Spanish forces from Iraq, only hours after a state funeral for seven Spanish intelligence agents killed in an ambush south of Baghdad”.

Further to my post yesterday about GWB being a real conservative despite his big spending, there is now a whole website dedicated to explaining that idea.

This article also argues that the GOP and the Dems are now equal as big spenders. A reader comments: "I think it was Milton Friedman who argued that recent US experience is that the most successful fiscal conservative option for voters was having Congress under one party and the White House under the other, then the natural partisan antagonism between them acts as brake on vote buying by either group. Essentially this is an Adam Smith solution, exploit politicians' competitive nature and self interest rather than rely on them to do what in principle is the right thing!"

Thomas Sowell has a great story about being one of Friedman's students here

The Australian Labor Party, Australia's major Leftist party has just got a new leader. And is the bourgeois Left upset! The new leader is not a very likable figure in my view but he seems to be a great realist with a good grasp of economics -- anathema to the feel-good dreamers of the Left. Australia is very fortunate in having a lot of conservatism in both its major political parties.

Australia has had a national sales tax for years and the sky has not fallen in: "I've spent the past few years supporting the concept of a national sales tax. Now, though, I'm beginning to have some second thoughts. ... Among my concerns about the national sales tax is the mechanism created to facilitate collection. ... It seems more encompassing, widespread and easier to manipulate. Think about the ease with which the government could easily 'tweak' the tax rate by a hundredth of a percent here and there when it needs more money? Think about the power of a government that has the ability to tax everything we consume, every service we utilize. But even more important to this debate, the national sales tax does nothing to fix the real problem with our tax system: TOO MUCH TAX."


Michael Darby has just put up a big collection of posts under the following headings: Huge Rally of Vietnamese Australians;
Celebrate Capitalism Day Sunday 6 December;
Dear American Soldier in Iraq;
Why They Lost The Referendum;
Liberal Party State Council Official Voting Results;
Nile MLC backs Prime Minister Howard on Drugs;
Cathy Buckle on Zimflation;
Anti-Democracy Agitators;
Evidence of an Iraq … Al-Qaida connection;
Jihad for Allah's Sake;
NZ Labour's Ideological Sop;
Trade: free, fair and forgotten;
Why They Hate W.

My latest upload of one of my published academic articles is here or here. It is about how you assess what social class a person belongs in. It is a highly technical article but the finding in plain language was that the thing that makes the biggest difference is a person's own view of what class he is in -- and the second biggest influence is whether he is a manual or a non-manual worker.

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IS GWB A GOOD CONSERVATIVE AFTER ALL?

Libertarians and libertarian conservatives such as myself have been totally appalled at the way the present Bush administration has expanded the size of the U.S. government -- first with post 9/11 security measures and now with the prescription drug benefit for seniors. Where has the Reagan cutback mentality that launched America's long economic boom gone?

A controversial NYT article by Fred Barnes has got me thinking, however. We must not forget that conservatism is NOT libertarianism. From Edmund Burke onwards, conservatives have always seen SOME role for government. And protecting the country from outside enemies is absolutely one of those proper roles of government. Outside the anarcho-capitalist camp, even most libertarians would agree with that one. So GWB's post 9/11 security buildup is a very proper conservative thing to do, even if -- as one expects from a government activity -- its excecution is hamfisted.

And the Afghanistan/Iraq interventions are equally well within conservative traditions. Whatever else one may say about conservatives they have always been strongly motivated by caution -- most notably by caution about sweeping change to society's existing arrangements -- but caution above all. And given the terrible disasters that Islamic terrorists are now known to be capable of inflicting on America, it is surely the height of caution to go to the breeding ground of the terrorists and try to root out both the terrorists and those who aid and abet them.

And, as Fred Barnes pointed out, the prescription drug benefit is well targeted too. Older people are one of the major conservative groupings in society. Age and experience has taught them caution. So if a political party leaves it to its opposition to woo away its own support base, it is moronic indeed. That they are the realists is another historic claim of conservatives and the political reality is that if the GOP had not supported the prescription drug push, it would have just have sent a big slice of elderly GOP voters off to vote for the Dems instead. It may be worth noting that Australia's conservative government is in the midst of expanding it's Medicare expenditures too.

So, much as we may regret the Bush-era expansion of government, it may be the price we have to pay for GWB's more active and realistic approach to protecting American security against the Islamic threat. If Al Gore had been in charge, the U.S. would probably still have got the prescription drug benefit but with United Nations resolutions being the only measures taken to counter the Islamic threat.

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ELSEWHERE

Hmmm.. I don't know if I agree with this. Libertarians disagreeing with conservatives is nothing new: "Ask a roomful of well-read conservatives to identify the political theorists who most influenced them, and some of the following names are likely to come up: Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Richard Weaver, F.A. Hayek, Russell Kirk, and Milton Friedman. That it would seem so natural for men from disparate philosophical traditions to appear together on such a list is a testimony to the success of the postwar American Right in forging a coherent national conservative movement out of traditionalist and libertarian elements. This makes the emerging signs that this conservative-libertarian consensus is starting to unravel all the more problematic for the Right."

How to make the world a better place: "Thousands of French diplomats from Rome to Riyadh staged an unprecedented strike Monday over budget cuts"

"When it comes to Abraham Lincoln, some of the people are fooled all of the time": Apparently Abe Lincoln never said one of his most famous quotes: "You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time."

Jonah Goldberg has a good article on the huge improvements in quality of life that have happened over recent decades -- contrary to all the doom and gloom from the Green/Left.

NYT columnist Thomas Friedman is (of course) generally left-leaning but he is pretty explicit here about how pathetic, negative, stupid and insensitive were the "anti-war" demonstrations that greeted GWB in London.

A good article here on how Ronald Reagan changed the entire political scene -- by doing things that were unthinkable to the Left of his day.

Keith Burgess-Jackson has an hilarious collection of dumb newspaper headlines.

Should be more of it: "Clinton Baller never paid much attention to local politics, never even voted in a city election, until local ordinances got in the way of his plans to add on to his house. Unhappy with Birmingham's restrictive building code, and even more unhappy with the way city officials handled his concerns, Baller launched the Birmingham Buzz, a Web site. ... 'We were brash, we were angry, we didn't care who we (expletive) off -- and we made a difference in this city,' Baller said. On Nov. 4, the four candidates endorsed by the Buzz swept the city elections and ousted three longtime city commissioners."

The Wicked one has just put up a feminist joke!

I spend a lot of time on this blog and in my other writings talking about the psychology of the Left. I rarely say much about the psychology of the Right. In the Introduction to my book Conservatism as heresy, however, I did discuss that topic. Just uploaded here or here.

I have also just uploaded a substantial extract from an article by another psychologist who is critical of the Leftist bias in academic psychogy. See here or here.

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