WHY THE LEFTIST INTELLIGENTSIA HATE SUCCESS
Thomas Sowell says: “It used to be said that nothing succeeds like success. Today, nothing draws fire like success.... A whole vocabulary has grown up among the intelligentsia to downplay or dismiss the achievements that create our standard of living and the longevity that allows us to enjoy it more fully. Where some achieve more than others, that is not seen as a special contribution to society that should be appreciated but as a grievance to be resented by others, in the name of equality.
Achievements are called "advantages" or "privileges."... Why is it that achievements -- whether in medicine, business, literature or wherever -- draw such negative reactions? Eric Hoffer may have put his finger on it when he said: "Nothing so offends the doctrinaire intellectual as our ability to achieve the momentous in a matter-of-fact way, unblessed by words." There is little or no role left for these self-important word-mongers when pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Mart, cops, and others do the things that make our lives better. The talkers and writers resent being left on the sidelines by the doers.
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Saturday, October 18, 2003
ELSEWHERE
Another misleading headline: “Largest ever study finds GM crops 'harm wildlife'“ If you read the details all they found was that some insects were less common around some crops. And it was the weeds around the crops that made the difference, not the crops themselves. Big deal! A more accurate headline would have been “Weeds are a good thing” -- but that would have just produced laughter.
Wow! Here’s an angle on the Staten Island ferry accident I didn’t know about. New Yorker Fresh Bilge writes: “It appears that the operators hired an older man of dubious merit, placed him in command too soon, and lacked enough responsible personnel to deal with the moment of crisis. I would like to know more about the management of the Staten Island ferry system. This sounds like an affirmative action accident to me.”
A good summary here of the “briefing note” put out to journalists by some moronic White House staffer in connection with the forthcoming visit to Australia of GWB. Many Americans must be embarrassed at the obviously low intellectual level of their bureaucracy. Giving the Guardian good cause to laugh at you is not exactly clever. It’s all a pretty good comment on the shambles that is American education. No doubt the klutz who wrote the crap had a degree of some kind.
Bloody wars between rival Muslim groups have come to Australia. New South Wales Premier Bob Carr spoke for many Australians when he commented on it: “My message is simple: obey the law in Australia or ship out of Australia ... "We're not going to see, step by step, our civilisation dragged back to medieval standards of revenge cycles. Simple as that." Personal Independence Day has more on the subject under his heading “Pot calls kettle black” -- where he looks at the hypocrisy in the predictable calls for gun control that have arisen out of the matter.
In another post Personal Independence Day is just a little scathing about Noam Chomsky -- comparing our Noam unfavourably with a chimpanzee etc. He is still not as scathing about Noam as linguist Marc Miyake, however. Marc has the advantage over Noam of actually knowing a lot of languages and points out that Noam’s linguistic ideas are about as well-founded and as coherent as his political ideas. How surprising that a Leftist professor should actually not know much about his own subject! Who needs facts when you have got theories?
It looks like the schism in the U.S. Episcopal church is underway. No prizes for guessing which of the two new branches will attract the big congregations.
A pungent Ann Coulter comment: "The reason any conservative's failing is always major news is that it allows liberals to engage in their very favorite taunt: Hypocrisy! Hypocrisy is the only sin that really inflames them. Inasmuch as liberals have no morals, they can sit back and criticize other people for failing to meet the standards that liberals simply renounce. It's an intriguing strategy. By openly admitting to being philanderers, draft dodgers, liars, weasels and cowards, liberals avoid ever being hypocrites."
The Wicked one has a post on love that will give you the best laugh you have had all day -- money-back guarantee.
Another misleading headline: “Largest ever study finds GM crops 'harm wildlife'“ If you read the details all they found was that some insects were less common around some crops. And it was the weeds around the crops that made the difference, not the crops themselves. Big deal! A more accurate headline would have been “Weeds are a good thing” -- but that would have just produced laughter.
Wow! Here’s an angle on the Staten Island ferry accident I didn’t know about. New Yorker Fresh Bilge writes: “It appears that the operators hired an older man of dubious merit, placed him in command too soon, and lacked enough responsible personnel to deal with the moment of crisis. I would like to know more about the management of the Staten Island ferry system. This sounds like an affirmative action accident to me.”
A good summary here of the “briefing note” put out to journalists by some moronic White House staffer in connection with the forthcoming visit to Australia of GWB. Many Americans must be embarrassed at the obviously low intellectual level of their bureaucracy. Giving the Guardian good cause to laugh at you is not exactly clever. It’s all a pretty good comment on the shambles that is American education. No doubt the klutz who wrote the crap had a degree of some kind.
Bloody wars between rival Muslim groups have come to Australia. New South Wales Premier Bob Carr spoke for many Australians when he commented on it: “My message is simple: obey the law in Australia or ship out of Australia ... "We're not going to see, step by step, our civilisation dragged back to medieval standards of revenge cycles. Simple as that." Personal Independence Day has more on the subject under his heading “Pot calls kettle black” -- where he looks at the hypocrisy in the predictable calls for gun control that have arisen out of the matter.
In another post Personal Independence Day is just a little scathing about Noam Chomsky -- comparing our Noam unfavourably with a chimpanzee etc. He is still not as scathing about Noam as linguist Marc Miyake, however. Marc has the advantage over Noam of actually knowing a lot of languages and points out that Noam’s linguistic ideas are about as well-founded and as coherent as his political ideas. How surprising that a Leftist professor should actually not know much about his own subject! Who needs facts when you have got theories?
It looks like the schism in the U.S. Episcopal church is underway. No prizes for guessing which of the two new branches will attract the big congregations.
A pungent Ann Coulter comment: "The reason any conservative's failing is always major news is that it allows liberals to engage in their very favorite taunt: Hypocrisy! Hypocrisy is the only sin that really inflames them. Inasmuch as liberals have no morals, they can sit back and criticize other people for failing to meet the standards that liberals simply renounce. It's an intriguing strategy. By openly admitting to being philanderers, draft dodgers, liars, weasels and cowards, liberals avoid ever being hypocrites."
The Wicked one has a post on love that will give you the best laugh you have had all day -- money-back guarantee.
Further to my post yesterday pointing out that Mussolini was philosemitic for many years until his alliance with Hitler forced him to change course, I thought I might also mention that Musso was not the only Fascist with such views. Most people have probably forgotten that prewar Britain had a large Fascist movement too -- under the socially prominent Sir Oswald Mosley (the King came to his wedding!). And Sir Oswald initially used to EXPEL from the British Union of Fascists anybody who made antisemitic utterances! When his meetings came under constant attack from Jewish Leftists, however, he had something of a rethink. So, far from proving the association between nationalism and racism that Leftists love to assert, even Fascism itself shows that there is no such necessary association. For their times, most of the major Fascist leaders were actually fairly enlightened about the Jews.
As readers of this blog will by now be well aware, psychologists have been studying conservatism for many years in a hook-or-by-crook effort to show that conservatism is a sign of psychological deficiency of some sort. Their efforts are however regularly undermined by their own Leftist arrogance. They are so sure that they KNOW what is the case that the “proofs” they offer for their contentions are of the most careless kind. They are “proofs” which lack the most elementary scientific precautions. A case in point is one of the indexes of conservatism that they regularly use -- the Wilson C-scale. I have just uploaded another of my articles on this scale -- see here or here -- in which I point out yet again that this scale does, on a minority of occasions, seriously malfunction. Any real scientist who is shown evidence that his chief measuring instument is prone to give false readings on some occasions would either abandon it or test it for accuracy on every occasion that he used it. To test the C-scale in such a way whenever it was used would be easy but I have yet to read an article in the political psychology literature that does so. You are expected to take the accuracy of their findings on faith! What clowns!
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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.
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As readers of this blog will by now be well aware, psychologists have been studying conservatism for many years in a hook-or-by-crook effort to show that conservatism is a sign of psychological deficiency of some sort. Their efforts are however regularly undermined by their own Leftist arrogance. They are so sure that they KNOW what is the case that the “proofs” they offer for their contentions are of the most careless kind. They are “proofs” which lack the most elementary scientific precautions. A case in point is one of the indexes of conservatism that they regularly use -- the Wilson C-scale. I have just uploaded another of my articles on this scale -- see here or here -- in which I point out yet again that this scale does, on a minority of occasions, seriously malfunction. Any real scientist who is shown evidence that his chief measuring instument is prone to give false readings on some occasions would either abandon it or test it for accuracy on every occasion that he used it. To test the C-scale in such a way whenever it was used would be easy but I have yet to read an article in the political psychology literature that does so. You are expected to take the accuracy of their findings on faith! What clowns!
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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.
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Friday, October 17, 2003
FASCISM AND THE JEWS
In their usual simplistic way, Leftists almost invariably equate Hitler’s German Nazism with Mussolini’s Italian Fascism. The facts are however very different and I have just posted some large extracts from a Jewish academic journal that show how different historically Fascism and Nazism were. Both Hitler and Mussolini combined Leftism with nationalism but there the similarities end. Far from being antisemitic, for instance, Mussolini repeatedly made effusively philo-Semitic speeches and finally reversed course only out of a desire to curry favour with Hitler. Even after he had finally passed antisemitic laws, however, Italy remained one of the safest places in Europe for Jews to be. All these facts are well-known to historians of the period but Leftist rhetoric regularly ignores such facts. Strictly speaking, a Fascist is actually someone who favours Jews! But you would never guess that from hearing any modern-day Leftist speak. For all their pompous talk about the subject, Leftist “intellectuals” generally know as much about racism as they do about Fascism ... which is very little indeed. I have been reading the textbooks and journal articles of academic psychology (which is overwhelmingly Leftist) for 40 years and have yet to find Fascism associated with anything but ANTIsemitism! Such total ignorance of history among those who are supposedly THE experts on racism! Read what the psychologists do not know here
Further references:
Herzer, I. (1989) The Italian refuge: Rescue of Jews during the holocaust. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press
Steinberg, J. (1990) All or nothing: The Axis and the holocaust London: Routledge.
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In their usual simplistic way, Leftists almost invariably equate Hitler’s German Nazism with Mussolini’s Italian Fascism. The facts are however very different and I have just posted some large extracts from a Jewish academic journal that show how different historically Fascism and Nazism were. Both Hitler and Mussolini combined Leftism with nationalism but there the similarities end. Far from being antisemitic, for instance, Mussolini repeatedly made effusively philo-Semitic speeches and finally reversed course only out of a desire to curry favour with Hitler. Even after he had finally passed antisemitic laws, however, Italy remained one of the safest places in Europe for Jews to be. All these facts are well-known to historians of the period but Leftist rhetoric regularly ignores such facts. Strictly speaking, a Fascist is actually someone who favours Jews! But you would never guess that from hearing any modern-day Leftist speak. For all their pompous talk about the subject, Leftist “intellectuals” generally know as much about racism as they do about Fascism ... which is very little indeed. I have been reading the textbooks and journal articles of academic psychology (which is overwhelmingly Leftist) for 40 years and have yet to find Fascism associated with anything but ANTIsemitism! Such total ignorance of history among those who are supposedly THE experts on racism! Read what the psychologists do not know here
Further references:
Herzer, I. (1989) The Italian refuge: Rescue of Jews during the holocaust. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press
Steinberg, J. (1990) All or nothing: The Axis and the holocaust London: Routledge.
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ELSEWHERE
"Two things...have staggered me....The first has been the dangers that have so swiftly come upon us in a few years, and have been transforming our position and the whole outlook of the world. Secondly, I have been staggered by the failure of the House of Commons to react effectively against those dangers." --Winston Churchill, 1936 ++ "All is over. Silent, mournful, abandoned, broken, Czechoslovakia recedes into darkness....We have sustained a defeat without a war." --Winston Churchill, 1938. The first sentence could of course have been about the USA today. Fortunately, Bush and Blair have heeded the warning of the past and have not just sat around “negotiating” the way the British and French of the 1930s did. (Via The Federalist.
Miranda Devine points out that it is bad roads which are the major cause of traffic accidents and that speed cameras do nothing to improve safety -- despite government claims to the contrary.
There is a huge collection of Democrat quotes about Iraq dating from the Clinton years here. When GWB says something it is “lies”. When Democrats say the same thing it is cause for cheering!
Chicago as Little Mexico. For mile after mile nobody speaks English.
Thomas Sowell spells out the real political reasons why Democrats oppose vouchers. Hint: It has nothing to do with “compassion” for blacks or any other poorly schooled kids.
The small business regulatory swamp: "Perhaps the most destructive result of regulation is the effect on the poorest of our citizens. In our inner city, there is no shortage of needs ... no shortage of business opportunities to provide needed services and products ... but the complexity of starting a small business can be completely overwhelming ... so difficult, even with a great idea, that it makes a poor job or welfare look like the only reasonable choices."
This link summarises some of the work of "Austrian" economist Bill Hutt. He is particularly good on the destructive effects of labor unions.
Mike Tremoglie has been really listening to what the advocates of socialized medicine for America say: “It would be a grievous error to believe that the current proponents of a single payer healthcare system are concerned with anything other than ideology. I reached this conclusion after attending the annual National Managed Healthcare Congress conference in Washington D.C. in April 1993....”
The things you learn! Libertarian though I am, I did NOT know that Ayn Rand was born Alisa Rosenbaum!. (Via Marc Miyake)
Amusing: A very arty blogger has got both myself and The Wicked one on her blogroll under the heading: “evil lynx to monitor for safety's sake”. I like it!
Michelle Malkin has a good comment on the racial preoccupations of the New York Times. A thinly disguised dislike of smart Indians is included, it seems.
"Two things...have staggered me....The first has been the dangers that have so swiftly come upon us in a few years, and have been transforming our position and the whole outlook of the world. Secondly, I have been staggered by the failure of the House of Commons to react effectively against those dangers." --Winston Churchill, 1936 ++ "All is over. Silent, mournful, abandoned, broken, Czechoslovakia recedes into darkness....We have sustained a defeat without a war." --Winston Churchill, 1938. The first sentence could of course have been about the USA today. Fortunately, Bush and Blair have heeded the warning of the past and have not just sat around “negotiating” the way the British and French of the 1930s did. (Via The Federalist.
Miranda Devine points out that it is bad roads which are the major cause of traffic accidents and that speed cameras do nothing to improve safety -- despite government claims to the contrary.
There is a huge collection of Democrat quotes about Iraq dating from the Clinton years here. When GWB says something it is “lies”. When Democrats say the same thing it is cause for cheering!
Chicago as Little Mexico. For mile after mile nobody speaks English.
Thomas Sowell spells out the real political reasons why Democrats oppose vouchers. Hint: It has nothing to do with “compassion” for blacks or any other poorly schooled kids.
The small business regulatory swamp: "Perhaps the most destructive result of regulation is the effect on the poorest of our citizens. In our inner city, there is no shortage of needs ... no shortage of business opportunities to provide needed services and products ... but the complexity of starting a small business can be completely overwhelming ... so difficult, even with a great idea, that it makes a poor job or welfare look like the only reasonable choices."
This link summarises some of the work of "Austrian" economist Bill Hutt. He is particularly good on the destructive effects of labor unions.
Mike Tremoglie has been really listening to what the advocates of socialized medicine for America say: “It would be a grievous error to believe that the current proponents of a single payer healthcare system are concerned with anything other than ideology. I reached this conclusion after attending the annual National Managed Healthcare Congress conference in Washington D.C. in April 1993....”
The things you learn! Libertarian though I am, I did NOT know that Ayn Rand was born Alisa Rosenbaum!. (Via Marc Miyake)
Amusing: A very arty blogger has got both myself and The Wicked one on her blogroll under the heading: “evil lynx to monitor for safety's sake”. I like it!
Michelle Malkin has a good comment on the racial preoccupations of the New York Times. A thinly disguised dislike of smart Indians is included, it seems.
The Oct 8th post on the blog of the National Association of Scholars has a good comment about the incoherence and irresponsibility of mainstream modern psychology. I like one of their earlier posts so much that I have it up permanently here.
I uploaded yesterday a brief report of one aspect of my “anthropological” study of neo-Nazis. I have uploaded today the main report. See here or here. The article may seem a little long but, like most anthropological studies, it is the product of many years of observation (seven years in this case) so there is much to report. Readers may be struck by the many similarities between the neo-Nazis of the 60s and early 70s that I describe and the Green-Left of today. I do make frequent references to Nazism in my writings, but I think that this report shows that I do so from a background of more extensive and intensive study of the phenomenon than any other writer in the social sciences. After reading my article you may understand my derision of the typical Leftist “research” into the causes of Nazism -- which consists of handing out a bunch of questionnaires to whatever group of university students that happens to be around at the time (!).
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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.
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I uploaded yesterday a brief report of one aspect of my “anthropological” study of neo-Nazis. I have uploaded today the main report. See here or here. The article may seem a little long but, like most anthropological studies, it is the product of many years of observation (seven years in this case) so there is much to report. Readers may be struck by the many similarities between the neo-Nazis of the 60s and early 70s that I describe and the Green-Left of today. I do make frequent references to Nazism in my writings, but I think that this report shows that I do so from a background of more extensive and intensive study of the phenomenon than any other writer in the social sciences. After reading my article you may understand my derision of the typical Leftist “research” into the causes of Nazism -- which consists of handing out a bunch of questionnaires to whatever group of university students that happens to be around at the time (!).
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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.
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Thursday, October 16, 2003
THE "DEATH" OF BRITISH CONSERVATISM
An Anglocentric diagnosis of why the British Conservatives are so hopeless:
There are some interesting points in the above diagnosis but what it overlooks is that conservatism is alive and well elsewhere -- in the USA and Australia. The British Tories just have to adopt similar policies to those of American Republicans (e.g. tough on crime) and Australia's John Howard (e.g. tough on illegal immigrants) and they too could do well again. They just have to find a non-jellyfish to lead them.
As Chris Brand noted recently:
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An Anglocentric diagnosis of why the British Conservatives are so hopeless:
"The Tories claimed to be the party of one nation, representing the interests of all social groups; in the twentieth century, they accused Labour of being 'narrow' and 'sectional'. More often than not, British voters believed them. The Tories were in government, either alone or in coalition, for around 70 years of the twentieth century.... Today's Conservative Party is caught between outmoded traditions and an uncertain future.... When the Tories try pragmatically to adopt the methods and vocabulary of New Labour, though, this often has an even worse effect. For a start, they risk alienating the core upon which they depend. And to everyone else, this approach seems fake and empty.... But while Thatcherism played a role, the collapse of the Tory Party was one part of the story of the collapse of left v right politics - an event that occurred the world over. It was the international defeat of the left, capped by the break-up of the Soviet Union, that revealed the malaise of the right. The right had principally defined itself in terms of what it was against (hence Thatcher's war against the 'enemy within'), rather than what it was for. Once it lost its enemy, the right was left without a mission or direction.... The Tory Party, the most rooted political institution in British history, is now the most rootless. The leadership leaps on to any passing bandwagon, opportunistically trying to score points.
There are some interesting points in the above diagnosis but what it overlooks is that conservatism is alive and well elsewhere -- in the USA and Australia. The British Tories just have to adopt similar policies to those of American Republicans (e.g. tough on crime) and Australia's John Howard (e.g. tough on illegal immigrants) and they too could do well again. They just have to find a non-jellyfish to lead them.
As Chris Brand noted recently:
"On the eve of the UK 'Conservative' Party's annual conference, a nationwide (Populus) poll told them how to win back voters (Times, 4 x 03). Asked what would make them vote Conservative, 46% of Brits said "proposing much tougher sentencing for convicted criminals" and 43% said "presenting a clear plan to reduce the number of asylum-seekers entering Britain." By contrast, only 9% of voters said they would be impressed by "radical policies to restructure the National Health Service" and only 22% were interested in "measures to support marriage and the traditional family.""
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ELSEWHERE
Mike Tremoglie lists some of the lies the Left tell in their efforts to discredit Columbus Day.
An excellent post on the WSJ about the connection between education and vote. It seems that far more Californian college graduates voted for Arnie than for anyone else! Only those with higher degrees tended overall to be Democrat but even there the split on recall was not far off 50/50. The WSJ calls the postgrad Democrats “overeducated”. I would call them “out of this world”.
Where have I heard something like this before? “President Hu Jintao, who was at the launch base for the liftoff, called it "the glory of our great motherland," ... "The party and the people will never forget those who have set up the outstanding merit in the space industry for the motherland, the people and the nation," Hu said”. If you replace “motherland” with “Fatherland” ....
Some interesting recent articles on Think Israel. Examples: “WHY THE PEACE PROCESS CAN'T WORK AND SHOULD BE ABANDONED" by Robert Locke; "THERE IS ONLY A MILITARY SOLUTION" by Ariel Natan Pasko.
Traditional Episcopalian Bill Murchison comments: “With a certain kind of Anglican, anything goes -- except, perhaps, orthodox Christianity. If you're Anglican, you're expected to claim the right to theological speculation, whether or not you run afoul of the creeds and the Scriptures.”
Interested Participant has a good post about frivolous lawsuits and an idea about how to stop the egotists wasting people’s time.
Carnival of the Vanities is up again with lots of good reading.
Mike Tremoglie lists some of the lies the Left tell in their efforts to discredit Columbus Day.
An excellent post on the WSJ about the connection between education and vote. It seems that far more Californian college graduates voted for Arnie than for anyone else! Only those with higher degrees tended overall to be Democrat but even there the split on recall was not far off 50/50. The WSJ calls the postgrad Democrats “overeducated”. I would call them “out of this world”.
Where have I heard something like this before? “President Hu Jintao, who was at the launch base for the liftoff, called it "the glory of our great motherland," ... "The party and the people will never forget those who have set up the outstanding merit in the space industry for the motherland, the people and the nation," Hu said”. If you replace “motherland” with “Fatherland” ....
Some interesting recent articles on Think Israel. Examples: “WHY THE PEACE PROCESS CAN'T WORK AND SHOULD BE ABANDONED" by Robert Locke; "THERE IS ONLY A MILITARY SOLUTION" by Ariel Natan Pasko.
Traditional Episcopalian Bill Murchison comments: “With a certain kind of Anglican, anything goes -- except, perhaps, orthodox Christianity. If you're Anglican, you're expected to claim the right to theological speculation, whether or not you run afoul of the creeds and the Scriptures.”
Interested Participant has a good post about frivolous lawsuits and an idea about how to stop the egotists wasting people’s time.
Carnival of the Vanities is up again with lots of good reading.
Because of a communication breakdown, I posted yesterday (post now deleted) some of James Lindgren’s notes on the psychology of conservatism. I thought that I should publish them anonymously but in fact it was not his wish that they be published anonymously. A revised version of his notes is now here. I understand that we have even more of his excellent work on this topic to look forward to in the future.
One of Lindgren’s points is that it is Leftists who are superstitious, not conservatives (contrary to what the “Berkeley Study” claimed). Yesterday’s WSJ has some more poll data in confirmation of that: “Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say they believe in reincarnation (by 14 percentage points), in astrology (by 14 points), in ghosts (by eight points) and UFOs (by five points)”
One of Lindgren’s points is that it is Leftists who are superstitious, not conservatives (contrary to what the “Berkeley Study” claimed). Yesterday’s WSJ has some more poll data in confirmation of that: “Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say they believe in reincarnation (by 14 percentage points), in astrology (by 14 points), in ghosts (by eight points) and UFOs (by five points)”
I have always been interested in the full range of the social sciences (which is how at one time I came to be teaching both psychology and economics) and anthropology has always been part of that interest. In my student days, therefore, I thought I would make good use of the anthropologist’s most usual research method (participant observation) to study the topic I have always been interested in most -- politics. Anthropologists have the view that you can never understand a group “from the outside” -- You have to join the group and become accepted into it before you will ever have any chance of understanding it. I took this to heart and promptly joined a great range of political groups from the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society on one hand (Communist Front) to the local neo-Nazi group on the other. It was only the neo-Nazis, however, that I found much original to say about so I wrote up a total of three papers about them for publication in three Jewish social science journals. Today’s academic upload is one of the papers concerned. See here or here. In it, I address the usual Leftist theory that both conservatives and racists are prone to oversimplified thinking. I point out that, to the contrary, neo-Nazis are prone to very complex thinking -- since their view of the world is contradicted on every hand.
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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.
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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.
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Wednesday, October 15, 2003
FROM BROOKES NEWS
The late Jim Cairns was no friend of liberty. Jim Cairns is dead. Nevertheless, the man who supported every rotten communist regime you can think of is being painted by his political mates and leftwing media admirers as a friend of liberty.
Did the Wilsons setup Bush? The media frenzy over the alleged outing of Valerie Plame, a CIA employee, could be taking a new turn. Circumstantial evidence now suggests that Plame and her hubby, Joe Wilson, are not only using the incident to embarrass the Bush administration but they planned to embarrass it some time ago.
Schwarznegger and the hypocrisy of the Australian press. The scorn that the Australian media poured on Schwarznegger and the speed at which they repeated every accusation and vicious piece of gossip that would blacken his name has had the salutary effect of revealing just how hypocritical, prejudiced, dishonest and morally bankrupt many of our journalists are.
Green lies and nuclear energy. Greens are lying about the so-called dangers of nuclear energy.
Supermarkets are still super: defending supermarkets. Since the 1920s the size of firms has caused much confusion in neo-classical economics, giving birth to the myth that competition means plenty of firms selling the same product in the same market.
Details here
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The late Jim Cairns was no friend of liberty. Jim Cairns is dead. Nevertheless, the man who supported every rotten communist regime you can think of is being painted by his political mates and leftwing media admirers as a friend of liberty.
Did the Wilsons setup Bush? The media frenzy over the alleged outing of Valerie Plame, a CIA employee, could be taking a new turn. Circumstantial evidence now suggests that Plame and her hubby, Joe Wilson, are not only using the incident to embarrass the Bush administration but they planned to embarrass it some time ago.
Schwarznegger and the hypocrisy of the Australian press. The scorn that the Australian media poured on Schwarznegger and the speed at which they repeated every accusation and vicious piece of gossip that would blacken his name has had the salutary effect of revealing just how hypocritical, prejudiced, dishonest and morally bankrupt many of our journalists are.
Green lies and nuclear energy. Greens are lying about the so-called dangers of nuclear energy.
Supermarkets are still super: defending supermarkets. Since the 1920s the size of firms has caused much confusion in neo-classical economics, giving birth to the myth that competition means plenty of firms selling the same product in the same market.
Details here
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LEFTIST HISTORICAL REVISIONISM
“Historical revisionism” is a term usually applied to attempts to portray Hitler as a broadly normal German leader and to question the extent of his crimes. Leftists try to gain kudos for themselves by frothing at the mouth over such attempts. But they in fact are the biggest revisionists of all -- as Peter Hitchens notes. He is rightly horrified that the true history of Britain is not now being taught in British schools:
"A schools video produced last year on the Forties barely gives a walk-on part to Winston Churchill, a man who is being steadily written out of modern history because he does not fit the fashionable myth that the Tories sympathised with the Nazis and the Left were the only people who opposed Hitler....
LABOUR'S role in the rise of Hitler was to consistently vote against the rearmament measures which narrowly saved this country from slavery in 1940. Stalin's insane orders to the German Communist Party, to refuse to co-operate with the Social Democrats, virtually ensured the Nazis would come to power in 1933.
This would be mirrored, six years later, in the joint victory parade staged by Nazi and Red Army troops in the then-Polish city of Brest, and the efficient supply of Soviet oil to Germany which fuelled the Nazi Blitzkrieg and the bombers which tore the heart out of London.
But millions of supposedly educated people know nothing of this, and are unaware that the one country which behaved with honour and courage when the fate of the world was being decided was Britain."
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“Historical revisionism” is a term usually applied to attempts to portray Hitler as a broadly normal German leader and to question the extent of his crimes. Leftists try to gain kudos for themselves by frothing at the mouth over such attempts. But they in fact are the biggest revisionists of all -- as Peter Hitchens notes. He is rightly horrified that the true history of Britain is not now being taught in British schools:
"A schools video produced last year on the Forties barely gives a walk-on part to Winston Churchill, a man who is being steadily written out of modern history because he does not fit the fashionable myth that the Tories sympathised with the Nazis and the Left were the only people who opposed Hitler....
LABOUR'S role in the rise of Hitler was to consistently vote against the rearmament measures which narrowly saved this country from slavery in 1940. Stalin's insane orders to the German Communist Party, to refuse to co-operate with the Social Democrats, virtually ensured the Nazis would come to power in 1933.
This would be mirrored, six years later, in the joint victory parade staged by Nazi and Red Army troops in the then-Polish city of Brest, and the efficient supply of Soviet oil to Germany which fuelled the Nazi Blitzkrieg and the bombers which tore the heart out of London.
But millions of supposedly educated people know nothing of this, and are unaware that the one country which behaved with honour and courage when the fate of the world was being decided was Britain."
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.ELSEWHERE
"It's hard work being a left-wing kook these days. On top of anti- globalization demonstrations and anti-war protests, there is always some new issue to organize. This month it is 'Take Back Your Time Day,' scheduled for Oct. 24. Originated by the rabidly left-wing Center for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy at Cornell University, the goal of this effort is to force employers to give workers more paid time off."
Dennis Prager has a good point: “Whatever your politics, you have to be oblivious to reality to deny that America today is torn by ideological divisions as deep as those of the Civil War era. We are, in fact, in the midst of the Second American Civil War.”
Green crooks: “Now comes a study, "Green-Peace, Dirty Money: Tax Violations in the World of non-Profits," from Public Interest Watch demonstrating the importance of scrutinizing non-profits. PIW charges the activist environmental group Greenpeace with misusing tax-exempt donations for political purposes. Greenpeace, it says, is "the most egregious offender we reviewed"“
I am pleased to see that Frank Furedi, one of my fellow-graduates from the University of Sydney Psychology Department, has a new book out. It's a good one too: Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability In An Uncertain Age. There is a review here: "With its criticisms of the 'growth industry' of counselling and the spread of concepts such as 'self-esteem', the book has received strong interest across the political spectrum in the UK, and will be welcomed on both sides of the Atlantic by people disturbed by aspects of our shrink society".
Leftists are so frantically opposed to the existing "system" in society that they have long been fascinated by the fact that conservatives do accept legitimate forms of authority in society. The Leftists are convinced that this must be deeply psychopathological and have been trying for the last 50 years to prove it -- without success. My latest academic upload is about this. I in fact had only a minor role in the paper concerned -- I helped an elderly colleague to write up some data to which he already had access. The sample was a high quality one -- a random sample of a large city -- and the major finding was that neither pro-authority nor anti-authority views showed any correlation with psychopathology that was worth speaking about -- except for one thing: Anti-authority people were much less intelligent! Needless to say, no Leftist to my knowledge has ever acknowledged THAT finding! See 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.
********************************
"It's hard work being a left-wing kook these days. On top of anti- globalization demonstrations and anti-war protests, there is always some new issue to organize. This month it is 'Take Back Your Time Day,' scheduled for Oct. 24. Originated by the rabidly left-wing Center for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy at Cornell University, the goal of this effort is to force employers to give workers more paid time off."
Dennis Prager has a good point: “Whatever your politics, you have to be oblivious to reality to deny that America today is torn by ideological divisions as deep as those of the Civil War era. We are, in fact, in the midst of the Second American Civil War.”
Green crooks: “Now comes a study, "Green-Peace, Dirty Money: Tax Violations in the World of non-Profits," from Public Interest Watch demonstrating the importance of scrutinizing non-profits. PIW charges the activist environmental group Greenpeace with misusing tax-exempt donations for political purposes. Greenpeace, it says, is "the most egregious offender we reviewed"“
I am pleased to see that Frank Furedi, one of my fellow-graduates from the University of Sydney Psychology Department, has a new book out. It's a good one too: Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability In An Uncertain Age. There is a review here: "With its criticisms of the 'growth industry' of counselling and the spread of concepts such as 'self-esteem', the book has received strong interest across the political spectrum in the UK, and will be welcomed on both sides of the Atlantic by people disturbed by aspects of our shrink society".
Leftists are so frantically opposed to the existing "system" in society that they have long been fascinated by the fact that conservatives do accept legitimate forms of authority in society. The Leftists are convinced that this must be deeply psychopathological and have been trying for the last 50 years to prove it -- without success. My latest academic upload is about this. I in fact had only a minor role in the paper concerned -- I helped an elderly colleague to write up some data to which he already had access. The sample was a high quality one -- a random sample of a large city -- and the major finding was that neither pro-authority nor anti-authority views showed any correlation with psychopathology that was worth speaking about -- except for one thing: Anti-authority people were much less intelligent! Needless to say, no Leftist to my knowledge has ever acknowledged THAT finding! See here or here.
*******************************
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.
********************************
Tuesday, October 14, 2003
PERSONAL INDEPENDENCE DAY
Personal Independence Day seems to be the blogosphere's very own conservative anthropologist. As you may have guessed, most anthropologists are very Leftist. I have even heard some of them still defending Margaret Mead -- on the grounds that what she said SHOULD have been right!
As my older readers may recollect, a great favourite of the Left in the 1970s was the "Tasaday" -- a "lost" primitive tribe in the Philippines that was found to be very gentle and unwarlike. They were supposed to have all sorts of lessons for us wicked warlike Westerners. In case you are wondering why you have not heard of the Tasaday lately, it is because the whole thing was another total hoax. Personal Independence Day has the link. The whole "lost tribe" story was a pretty transparent lie from the beginning -- they lived only 3 hours walk from a regular Philippino village, for instance -- but the Left are past-masters at believing only what they want to believe and Leftists LOVE the "noble savage" myth. The fact of the matter is that the kindest, gentlest society that has ever existed on the earth is modern Western society -- but any Leftist intellectual worth his salt would rather die than admit that.
Personal Independence Day has much more on how primitive tribes in fact exploit credulous Western romanticists.
Personal Independence Day can't spell "galah", though. For U.S. readers, the galah is a colourful Australian parrot that has become a byword for stupidity because of its suicidal behaviour on some occasions. So "galah" is a popular Australian term of abuse for foolish or credulous people. Particularly cynical Australians have been known to mispronounce “a gala occasion” as “a galah occasion”. The real galahs exist in huge flocks in Australia's inland and are regarded by many country people as a great pest because of the way they damage crops. But bird-fanciers in the USA and Europe pay $1,000 or more for just one galah. The reason for such a stupid situation is "environmental protection". Need I say more? The Greenies are galahs too.
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Personal Independence Day seems to be the blogosphere's very own conservative anthropologist. As you may have guessed, most anthropologists are very Leftist. I have even heard some of them still defending Margaret Mead -- on the grounds that what she said SHOULD have been right!
As my older readers may recollect, a great favourite of the Left in the 1970s was the "Tasaday" -- a "lost" primitive tribe in the Philippines that was found to be very gentle and unwarlike. They were supposed to have all sorts of lessons for us wicked warlike Westerners. In case you are wondering why you have not heard of the Tasaday lately, it is because the whole thing was another total hoax. Personal Independence Day has the link. The whole "lost tribe" story was a pretty transparent lie from the beginning -- they lived only 3 hours walk from a regular Philippino village, for instance -- but the Left are past-masters at believing only what they want to believe and Leftists LOVE the "noble savage" myth. The fact of the matter is that the kindest, gentlest society that has ever existed on the earth is modern Western society -- but any Leftist intellectual worth his salt would rather die than admit that.
Personal Independence Day has much more on how primitive tribes in fact exploit credulous Western romanticists.
Personal Independence Day can't spell "galah", though. For U.S. readers, the galah is a colourful Australian parrot that has become a byword for stupidity because of its suicidal behaviour on some occasions. So "galah" is a popular Australian term of abuse for foolish or credulous people. Particularly cynical Australians have been known to mispronounce “a gala occasion” as “a galah occasion”. The real galahs exist in huge flocks in Australia's inland and are regarded by many country people as a great pest because of the way they damage crops. But bird-fanciers in the USA and Europe pay $1,000 or more for just one galah. The reason for such a stupid situation is "environmental protection". Need I say more? The Greenies are galahs too.
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ELSEWHERE
Oh, Wow! The BBC runs true to form in its alleged series on capitalism. It first asks where capitalism fits into people’s “search for meaning”? What rot! Blind Freddy knows that capitalism is a search for wealth. Then it asks did capitalism triumph over Communism? Only the BBC would doubt it. Finally it asks how we can find relevance for Marx’s ideas now that Communism is dead? So who cares?
Feisty Russian Christians: "The Russian Orthodox Church has demolished a chapel where a priest conducted a 'marriage' ceremony between two men. The Chapel of the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God was torn down apparently after local churchmen decided it had been defiled. The marriage of Denis Gogolyev and Mikhail Morozev in Nizhny Novgorod scandalized the Orthodox Church and created outrage among ordinary Russians." Nigeria’s Anglicans take their faith seriously too. And the Archbishop of Sydney is none to happy with homosexuality in the church either: “Dr Jensen said the holiness of churches in the Anglican communion had been put at risk by developments in Britain, the United States and Canada, and it was "absolutely inevitable that major divisive consequences will follow"
More reasons why the U.S. State Department should be “nuked”. The WSJ thinks the State Department is pretty disgusting too.
Is the myth cracking? "Events at a recent scientific conference in Moscow represent an important and dramatic change in the worldwide debate over global warming. Several distinguished scientists who spoke at the World Climate Change Conference in Moscow last week shattered claims that the science is settled and any consensus that the Kyoto Protocol would serve any useful purpose."
Organ transplants: Jeff Jacoby says that PAYING for organs would save lives.
Michael Darby is back online here with a big range of posts. His article on De Soto and what makes capitalism work is particularly interesting but he also points to the politicization of Oxfam (supposedly a charity) etc. The French get a rocket too. And there is the usual sad news from Zimbabwe.
John Moore has put up a big post on PC Watch showing how American librarians -- those supposed proud enemies of censorship -- in fact heavily censor conservative books. I noted here that the main organization of American librarians is in fact a Leftist anti-Christian group.
Chris Brand notes that racial profiling is routinely practiced in American medicine -- because the races really are different -- despite the current Leftist propaganda to the contrary. He also notes fresh evidence showing once again that low IQ people have poorer health. A healthy brain seems to go with a healthy body, funnily enough!
I have recently expanded my article in which I disembowel the trashy Leftist theory about conservative “Social dominance orientation”. My conclusion to the article: “So, rather amusingly, it seems that psychologists who find fault with conservatives can do so only by ignoring large swathes of the relevant literature”. I have just done a Google search on the term “Social dominance orientation” and my article already comes up tenth so I think that theory will sicken and die from now on.
My latest academic upload is about the idea of social deference as a factor influencing vote. I show that it is normal to look for evidence of ability in political candidates. Many Leftists seem to think that only social class should matter. See 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.
********************************
Oh, Wow! The BBC runs true to form in its alleged series on capitalism. It first asks where capitalism fits into people’s “search for meaning”? What rot! Blind Freddy knows that capitalism is a search for wealth. Then it asks did capitalism triumph over Communism? Only the BBC would doubt it. Finally it asks how we can find relevance for Marx’s ideas now that Communism is dead? So who cares?
Feisty Russian Christians: "The Russian Orthodox Church has demolished a chapel where a priest conducted a 'marriage' ceremony between two men. The Chapel of the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God was torn down apparently after local churchmen decided it had been defiled. The marriage of Denis Gogolyev and Mikhail Morozev in Nizhny Novgorod scandalized the Orthodox Church and created outrage among ordinary Russians." Nigeria’s Anglicans take their faith seriously too. And the Archbishop of Sydney is none to happy with homosexuality in the church either: “Dr Jensen said the holiness of churches in the Anglican communion had been put at risk by developments in Britain, the United States and Canada, and it was "absolutely inevitable that major divisive consequences will follow"
More reasons why the U.S. State Department should be “nuked”. The WSJ thinks the State Department is pretty disgusting too.
Is the myth cracking? "Events at a recent scientific conference in Moscow represent an important and dramatic change in the worldwide debate over global warming. Several distinguished scientists who spoke at the World Climate Change Conference in Moscow last week shattered claims that the science is settled and any consensus that the Kyoto Protocol would serve any useful purpose."
Organ transplants: Jeff Jacoby says that PAYING for organs would save lives.
Michael Darby is back online here with a big range of posts. His article on De Soto and what makes capitalism work is particularly interesting but he also points to the politicization of Oxfam (supposedly a charity) etc. The French get a rocket too. And there is the usual sad news from Zimbabwe.
John Moore has put up a big post on PC Watch showing how American librarians -- those supposed proud enemies of censorship -- in fact heavily censor conservative books. I noted here that the main organization of American librarians is in fact a Leftist anti-Christian group.
Chris Brand notes that racial profiling is routinely practiced in American medicine -- because the races really are different -- despite the current Leftist propaganda to the contrary. He also notes fresh evidence showing once again that low IQ people have poorer health. A healthy brain seems to go with a healthy body, funnily enough!
I have recently expanded my article in which I disembowel the trashy Leftist theory about conservative “Social dominance orientation”. My conclusion to the article: “So, rather amusingly, it seems that psychologists who find fault with conservatives can do so only by ignoring large swathes of the relevant literature”. I have just done a Google search on the term “Social dominance orientation” and my article already comes up tenth so I think that theory will sicken and die from now on.
My latest academic upload is about the idea of social deference as a factor influencing vote. I show that it is normal to look for evidence of ability in political candidates. Many Leftists seem to think that only social class should matter. See here or here.
*******************************
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.
********************************
Monday, October 13, 2003
ACADEME TRIES TO CATCH UP
The launch of a new academic journal on the internet with the awkward name, “Public Library of Science Biology” seems to have made a bit of a splash as an “alternative” source of scientific information. There is no sign of it abandoning the usual academic Leftist orientation, though.
Internet-only academic journals are not at all new, of course, though few of them have much prestige. All academic journals are a bit of a waste of time these days, however. They are only useful for credentialling -- showing that a scientist can write at a standard that is approved by his/her peers. Particularly in the fast moving sciences, most communication is via the internet. Google is the first step for ANYONE researching a topic these days so scientific results and analysis that are up on the net will get 1,000 times more attention than something that exists only in the pages of an academic journal. Until I put my academic papers on the net I had got no enquiries about them for years. Now I find that graduate students email me about them regularly. I did briefly consider submitting to an academic journal my recent demolition of Van Hiel’s misleading work on the psychology of conservatism but that would have meant a 2-year wait until it appeared on the net and even then most journals put their files up in that accursed slow-loading PDF format which most Googlers look at only as a last resort. So instead, I put the article into the fastest-loading format there is (hand-coded html), took ten seconds to post the article in my personal webspace and now anybody googling the name “Alain Van Hiel” will be looking at my critique of his work in very short order. An infinitely better way of circulating information! And it also means that any of my fellow-bloggers who would like to help snooker Leftist misinformation can link to my article and help push it up the Google page-rankings.
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The launch of a new academic journal on the internet with the awkward name, “Public Library of Science Biology” seems to have made a bit of a splash as an “alternative” source of scientific information. There is no sign of it abandoning the usual academic Leftist orientation, though.
Internet-only academic journals are not at all new, of course, though few of them have much prestige. All academic journals are a bit of a waste of time these days, however. They are only useful for credentialling -- showing that a scientist can write at a standard that is approved by his/her peers. Particularly in the fast moving sciences, most communication is via the internet. Google is the first step for ANYONE researching a topic these days so scientific results and analysis that are up on the net will get 1,000 times more attention than something that exists only in the pages of an academic journal. Until I put my academic papers on the net I had got no enquiries about them for years. Now I find that graduate students email me about them regularly. I did briefly consider submitting to an academic journal my recent demolition of Van Hiel’s misleading work on the psychology of conservatism but that would have meant a 2-year wait until it appeared on the net and even then most journals put their files up in that accursed slow-loading PDF format which most Googlers look at only as a last resort. So instead, I put the article into the fastest-loading format there is (hand-coded html), took ten seconds to post the article in my personal webspace and now anybody googling the name “Alain Van Hiel” will be looking at my critique of his work in very short order. An infinitely better way of circulating information! And it also means that any of my fellow-bloggers who would like to help snooker Leftist misinformation can link to my article and help push it up the Google page-rankings.
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AN UNHAPPY VICTORIAN
The one really Leftist government in Australia is the government of the State of Victoria led by Steve Bracks. They seem to have come up with a rather nasty new idea recently. A reader writes:
"Last week Bracks had the new idea of placing speeding cameras on country roads to shake down speeding motorists. Now this is where it gets interesting: It is not the same regular shake-down. Oh no! If you are caught under this new system you will be hit with multiple fines. They are planning to place several cameras along country roads that will help to calculate the average speed. If a person is caught traveling above the average speed they will cop multiple fines and lose several more points. We now have a police force in Victoria that has been unable to solve twenty murders of slugs who belonged to organized crime rackets because the Police Commissioner is more concerned about "diversity" in the force and catching speeding motorists than about serious crimes. "Diversity" is important to her because, as an open lesbian (fat and ugly to normal people), she believes that we need a different type of police force than we had in the past!"
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The one really Leftist government in Australia is the government of the State of Victoria led by Steve Bracks. They seem to have come up with a rather nasty new idea recently. A reader writes:
"Last week Bracks had the new idea of placing speeding cameras on country roads to shake down speeding motorists. Now this is where it gets interesting: It is not the same regular shake-down. Oh no! If you are caught under this new system you will be hit with multiple fines. They are planning to place several cameras along country roads that will help to calculate the average speed. If a person is caught traveling above the average speed they will cop multiple fines and lose several more points. We now have a police force in Victoria that has been unable to solve twenty murders of slugs who belonged to organized crime rackets because the Police Commissioner is more concerned about "diversity" in the force and catching speeding motorists than about serious crimes. "Diversity" is important to her because, as an open lesbian (fat and ugly to normal people), she believes that we need a different type of police force than we had in the past!"
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ELSEWHERE
Thomas Sowell notes that the Democrats are now the party of the rich: “The time is long overdue to get rid of the outdated notion that liberal Democrats represent ordinary people. They represent such special interests as trial lawyers who keep our courts clogged with frivolous lawsuits, busybody environmentalists who think the government should force other people to live the way the greens want them to live, and of course the teachers' unions who think schools exist to provide their members with jobs.”
Schwarzenegger as a rejuvenator of conservative economic policies: “Schwarzenegger's pro-business stance is a startling change -- not only for the Golden State, but for the nation. Politicians in both parties ran from supporting business in the aftermath of the highly publicized corporate scandals. But the essential Schwarzenegger fact is this: He believes that business creates jobs. He also understands that rising incomes from job growth will create a stable revenue base for the state budget”
The "global warming" religion overlooks a lot -- not least the BENEFICIAL effects of increased atmospheric CO2: "Attempts to reduce the rate of rise of the air's CO2 content will seriously impair our ability to feed humanity fifty years from now, while maintaining sufficient land to support what currently remains of earth's natural ecosystems"
Interesting NYT article compares Bush's Iraq aid plan to the Marshall plan.
Islamism, whose proponents favor an Islamic state, appears to be losing ground in Indonesia, not gaining it.
Another Anglican diocese is trying desperately to get rid of the Bible-believing Christians in its congregations: “The Anglican Church in Melbourne has backed the immediate ordination of female bishops.”
Apparently Italy is now sending back planeloads of illegal immigrants to where they came from. It can be done! (link via The Wog).
The Wicked one has another joke about the French
In my latest academic upload here (or here) I attack the usual Leftist arguments for unrestricted immigration. Rather nastily, I use the Leftists’ own moral relativism against them! The paper was written in 1972 and I predicted at the time that a big increase in Asian immigration into Australia would give rise to an anti-Asian backlash. Australia DID allow a large increase in East Asian immigration after I wrote and my prophecy was fulfilled in the emergence in Australia in recent years of an electorally significant political party with an explicit policy of reducing Asian immigration (the “One Nation” party). Probably because East Asians are in general an intrinsically inoffensive people (“more sinned against than sinning”) the backlash has, however, taken no other significant form.
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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.
********************************
Thomas Sowell notes that the Democrats are now the party of the rich: “The time is long overdue to get rid of the outdated notion that liberal Democrats represent ordinary people. They represent such special interests as trial lawyers who keep our courts clogged with frivolous lawsuits, busybody environmentalists who think the government should force other people to live the way the greens want them to live, and of course the teachers' unions who think schools exist to provide their members with jobs.”
Schwarzenegger as a rejuvenator of conservative economic policies: “Schwarzenegger's pro-business stance is a startling change -- not only for the Golden State, but for the nation. Politicians in both parties ran from supporting business in the aftermath of the highly publicized corporate scandals. But the essential Schwarzenegger fact is this: He believes that business creates jobs. He also understands that rising incomes from job growth will create a stable revenue base for the state budget”
The "global warming" religion overlooks a lot -- not least the BENEFICIAL effects of increased atmospheric CO2: "Attempts to reduce the rate of rise of the air's CO2 content will seriously impair our ability to feed humanity fifty years from now, while maintaining sufficient land to support what currently remains of earth's natural ecosystems"
Interesting NYT article compares Bush's Iraq aid plan to the Marshall plan.
Islamism, whose proponents favor an Islamic state, appears to be losing ground in Indonesia, not gaining it.
Another Anglican diocese is trying desperately to get rid of the Bible-believing Christians in its congregations: “The Anglican Church in Melbourne has backed the immediate ordination of female bishops.”
Apparently Italy is now sending back planeloads of illegal immigrants to where they came from. It can be done! (link via The Wog).
The Wicked one has another joke about the French
In my latest academic upload here (or here) I attack the usual Leftist arguments for unrestricted immigration. Rather nastily, I use the Leftists’ own moral relativism against them! The paper was written in 1972 and I predicted at the time that a big increase in Asian immigration into Australia would give rise to an anti-Asian backlash. Australia DID allow a large increase in East Asian immigration after I wrote and my prophecy was fulfilled in the emergence in Australia in recent years of an electorally significant political party with an explicit policy of reducing Asian immigration (the “One Nation” party). Probably because East Asians are in general an intrinsically inoffensive people (“more sinned against than sinning”) the backlash has, however, taken no other significant form.
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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.
********************************
Sunday, October 12, 2003
ARROGANT LEFTIST ELITES ARE OK!
The WSJ reports that Leftists not only think that they are smarter (though without any proof of it) but also think that this gives them the right to dictate to the rest of the population -- which is very much what the Leftist eugenicists of the 1920s and 1930s thought. And THAT school of thought gave rise to Adolf Hitler:
The Left no doubt have in mind as proof of their intelligence the large numbers of University Professors who are Leftists (particularly in the Humanities) and the resulting Leftist tendencies of many highly educated people. I know it is very naughty of me to burst bubbles but, last time I looked, the pay of the average Professor was about the same as the pay of the average truck-driver. How smart is that? REALLY smart people go into business!
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The WSJ reports that Leftists not only think that they are smarter (though without any proof of it) but also think that this gives them the right to dictate to the rest of the population -- which is very much what the Leftist eugenicists of the 1920s and 1930s thought. And THAT school of thought gave rise to Adolf Hitler:
“It's been nine years since Charles Murray and the late Richard Herrnstein published "The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life", in which they argued that American society has become stratified along lines of intelligence, so that a "cognitive elite", consisting of people with high IQs, enjoy levels of wealth and power far disproportionate to their numbers.
What's fascinating is that liberals, who denounced Murray and Herrnstein over the racial aspect of their book, seem to view rule by the cognitive elite as the natural order of things. And of course they think that THEY are the cognitive elite. We saw this in Jonathan Chait's Bush-hating cover story last month in The New Republic (which was, but is no longer, available online), in which Chait opined that the "striving, educated elite" views the President, because of his success despite his "dullness," as "an affront to the values of the liberal meritocracy." Yet in 1994 TNR devoted an entire issue to a series of essays on "The Bell Curve"; views ranged from harsh criticism to furious denunciation....
Consider this post from the Angry Left Web site DemocraticUnderground.com: “I would dare to assume that most of us here are in the upper 1%-20% of the population intelligence-wise. We must come to the realization that the majority of the population is in the lower 80% to 99% percent of the bell-curve. WE are not the norm. The Republicans understand that the average American is not very bright. They cater and pander to the masses. The Democratic Party tries to appeal to the population about "issues" that these people just don't understand”.”
The Left no doubt have in mind as proof of their intelligence the large numbers of University Professors who are Leftists (particularly in the Humanities) and the resulting Leftist tendencies of many highly educated people. I know it is very naughty of me to burst bubbles but, last time I looked, the pay of the average Professor was about the same as the pay of the average truck-driver. How smart is that? REALLY smart people go into business!
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ELSEWHERE
Michael Shermer at Scientific American is saying that the old Rousseauian "noble savage" dogma so beloved of the Left has had its day. Anybody who knows anything about anthropology knows how noble many primitive tribes are NOT -- despite the lies of the Leftist Margaret Mead.
How to create unemployment in one easy lesson: "Economic libertarians focus on the fallacy of minimum-wage legislation because the issue serves as a window through which to observe the very soul of a policy world view. It is the pons asinorum of the relationship between economics and politics. If the free market works -- meaning the existence of exchange under private property and contract enforcement -- then there is no need for such laws ..."
The story from someone who infiltrated Al Qaeda "The members of the network emerge as a bunch of inadequates and infantile fanatics, although they are not the less fearsome for that."
Cultural protectionism (the mania for “local content” much heard of almost everywhere outside the USA when TV programming is discussed) will probably get blown away by broadband internet. This basically anti-American idea will be thwarted by a technology that gives people the means to choose for themselves.
John Paulos has an interesting article about the large number of 'Brights' (non-religious people) in the USA: ”It should go without saying, but won't, that there are in this country not only millions of Brights, but millions of religious people who are bright, just as there are very many of both who are not”. He does however think that non-religious people are an under-recognized group.
Nick Queen, webmaster of Patriot Paradox is wanting to start a new feature on his site called Top Ten Most Dangerous Liberals of the Week. He aims to have Conservative bloggers vote for their Top Ten with a qualifying reason. Once they vote, most likely by a post on their blog, the votes will be tallied on Patriot Paradox.
I see that I have got a link from another Portuguese-language blog. This one is all in Portuguese, though -- no English-language quotes at all.
Chris Brand reports similarites between the brains of creative people and schizophrenics.
The Wicked one is having a bit of a laugh at the alternative medicine brigade.
I mentioned yesterday an absurd academic article by Eckhardt that purported to analyze militarism on the basis of responses by a group of Quakers. Eckhardt replied to my article and I have uploaded here (or here) my rejoinder to that. I show that he is deceptive in describing his own data and point out evidence that peaceniks such as himself “project” onto conservatives things that are really true of themselves. So I have been pointing to Freudian “projection” as a feature of Leftist psychology for over 30 years now. Eckhardt also misrepresents my study by saying that I showed only that people who like the Army are well-adjusted to it. I point out that I was in fact studying the adjustment of conscripts generally -- BEFORE they went into the Army.
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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.
********************************
Michael Shermer at Scientific American is saying that the old Rousseauian "noble savage" dogma so beloved of the Left has had its day. Anybody who knows anything about anthropology knows how noble many primitive tribes are NOT -- despite the lies of the Leftist Margaret Mead.
How to create unemployment in one easy lesson: "Economic libertarians focus on the fallacy of minimum-wage legislation because the issue serves as a window through which to observe the very soul of a policy world view. It is the pons asinorum of the relationship between economics and politics. If the free market works -- meaning the existence of exchange under private property and contract enforcement -- then there is no need for such laws ..."
The story from someone who infiltrated Al Qaeda "The members of the network emerge as a bunch of inadequates and infantile fanatics, although they are not the less fearsome for that."
Cultural protectionism (the mania for “local content” much heard of almost everywhere outside the USA when TV programming is discussed) will probably get blown away by broadband internet. This basically anti-American idea will be thwarted by a technology that gives people the means to choose for themselves.
John Paulos has an interesting article about the large number of 'Brights' (non-religious people) in the USA: ”It should go without saying, but won't, that there are in this country not only millions of Brights, but millions of religious people who are bright, just as there are very many of both who are not”. He does however think that non-religious people are an under-recognized group.
Nick Queen, webmaster of Patriot Paradox is wanting to start a new feature on his site called Top Ten Most Dangerous Liberals of the Week. He aims to have Conservative bloggers vote for their Top Ten with a qualifying reason. Once they vote, most likely by a post on their blog, the votes will be tallied on Patriot Paradox.
I see that I have got a link from another Portuguese-language blog. This one is all in Portuguese, though -- no English-language quotes at all.
Chris Brand reports similarites between the brains of creative people and schizophrenics.
The Wicked one is having a bit of a laugh at the alternative medicine brigade.
I mentioned yesterday an absurd academic article by Eckhardt that purported to analyze militarism on the basis of responses by a group of Quakers. Eckhardt replied to my article and I have uploaded here (or here) my rejoinder to that. I show that he is deceptive in describing his own data and point out evidence that peaceniks such as himself “project” onto conservatives things that are really true of themselves. So I have been pointing to Freudian “projection” as a feature of Leftist psychology for over 30 years now. Eckhardt also misrepresents my study by saying that I showed only that people who like the Army are well-adjusted to it. I point out that I was in fact studying the adjustment of conscripts generally -- BEFORE they went into the Army.
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