Dissecting Leftism

Thursday, October 10, 2024

Arab nations are quietly backing Israel. Why can’t the West do the same?

There’s an open secret among the governments of the Middle East that’s driving their respective approaches to the war between Israel and Iran: they all welcome a weakened Iran and the dismantling of its terrorist proxies almost as much as Israel does.

This is why Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is conducting a campaign across the region to convince the Saudis and others to join him against Israel.

But whatever the regional views of Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Araghchi’s mission is doomed to fail.

The main reason for this, of course, is that these terrorist groups are also a threat to countries across the region and help expand Iranian power at the expense of their own. Iran and its proxies, including Hamas, Hezebollah and the Houthis, are destabilising the region. And, what’s more, they would do so whether there was a war with Israel or not.

The Gulf states and regional powers such as Turkey and Egypt have watched for decades as Tehran manufactured political instability among its regional neighbours while cultivating and arming violent proxies within destabilised border areas.

This is the story of Iran in Iraq and the Popular Mobilisation Forces that the Iranian Republican Guard Corps groomed and still supports. It’s also the story of Iranian-backed pro-Assad militias in Syria, which have joined Hezbollah in attacking Israel since October 7 last year.

This is also the case in Yemen, where Iran-backed Houthis defeated the Saudi and United Arab Emirates-supported Yemeni government in a civil war.

Where Iran arms and trains armed groups inside the borders of other countries, it accelerates institutional weaknesses and feeds chaos, dysfunction and economic stagnation. Syria and Lebanon are two of the classic case studies. You also can extend this chaos-sowing influence to Iran’s supply of missiles and drones to Vladimir Putin in his war against Ukraine.

Turkey welcomes Iranian weakness and Israel’s systematic dismantling of Hezbollah’s leadership because this lessens Iranian influence on Syria and Lebanon. This in turn can reduce the flow of Syrian refugees into Turkey.

The Saudis, moreover, welcome a weakened Iran for the potential leverage it gives over Tehran’s support to the Yemeni Houthis and for the reduced military threat Iran poses to the region. Almost every Arab nation supports Israel’s attack on Iran’s decades-long strategic cultivation of armed proxies. They just won’t say so publicly.

But it’s striking that none of these states has reduced its relations with Israel as the war unfolds. Even the Saudis have signalled that the normalisation of relations with Israel, deliberately disrupted by Yahya Sinwar’s organised atrocities on October 7 last year, can proceed when ceasefires are reached in the war.

While Sinwar had hoped Hezbollah and Iran would join Hamas in its attack on Israel on October 7, he would’ve had no hope of the Arab states surrounding Israel. He knew that despite statements of political solidarity with Palestinians, no regional government really wants to carry the burden of the Palestinians more than they already do.

Sky News host Peta Credlin says bipartisan support between the two major parties has “broken down” when it comes to Israel.
Egypt’s insistence on keeping its border to Gaza shut to fleeing Palestinians is a good measure of things because it highlights the dominance of interests over emotions.

From Jordan to the UAE, from Saudi Arabia to Egypt, Middle Eastern states have clamped down on pro-Palestinian protests since the Hamas attack, largely because they see them as threatening the domestic stability of their own states. The Palestinian issue is seen by them as a “gateway to dissent”.

Another measure of regional thinking is the stalled detente between Iran and Saudi Arabia, trumpeted as a diplomatic breakthrough brokered by China in March last year.

Since the beginning of the war its implementation has been stuck on low-level items because Iran is refusing to reduce its support of dangerous armed groups in the region, with the Houthis being highest on Riyadh’s list.

Iran continues to pretend that it’s not the key backer of the Houthis. Tehran is also clearly doubling down on Hezbollah to stop its most powerful terrorist proxy from being irreparably damaged by Israel and losing the group’s powerful role within Lebanese politics.

Many Israelis are critical of the Netanyahu government. While they’re clear about the existential threat that Hezbollah, Hamas and Tehran pose – even with the recent bounce in support for Netanyahu – many Israelis want a new government that can build on the country’s resurrected military deterrent power once this phase of the war is over.

Many Israelis support the current fighting to damage Hezbollah and remove a much larger threat to northern Israel than Hamas ever posed from Gaza. Like the Saudis, Israelis understand the strategic problem Iran poses to Israel and to the broader region.

None of this is new. Israel is fighting a regional war against Iran and its proxies and the results of this could be a less dangerous Middle East with more open space for regional nations to craft diplomatic solutions and assist weakened states once Iran’s toxic reach is reduced.

It’s time for policymakers in places such as Australia and Europe to not just grapple with the larger regional picture – which provides the context for the war – but also to communicate some of it back to their populations and use it to shape their policies.

That would make a healthy change from the increasingly empty calls for unilateral ceasefires and tepid condemnation of the terrorism that Iran is now so obviously cultivating and enabling across this intricate and essential region of the world.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/arab-nations-are-quietly-backing-israel-why-cant-the-west-do-the-same/news-story/d3ab3379ee8ca4fb062802162ce06331

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"White Guilt": Absolution & Narcissism

A couple of nights ago I had a brief conversation with Allen West—who is currently serving as chairman of the Republican Party of Texas—about the subject of “White Guilty.” He expressed the opinion that affluent white women are being terribly manipulated by ruthless actors who harp on their feelings of guilt about the injustices suffered by black people in the past.

I replied that these women are not suffering from a genuinely guilty conscience, but enjoy congratulating themselves for the sense of moral superiority they obtain by ruminating on and discussing their “guilt.”

This feeling is akin to the genuine sense of relief and liberation we achieve when we confess and make amends for our true transgressions against others. Only, in the case of affluent white women indulging in feelings of “white guilt,” they get to enjoy this gratification not for their own sins, but for the sins of other, less enlightened souls. Thus, the emotional exercise is not a form of humility, but of self-aggrandizement.

Oscar Wilde characterized this kind of self-indulgent emotion as sentimentality.

A sentimentalist is simply one who wants to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it. We think we can have our emotions for nothing. We cannot. Even the finest and most self-sacrificing emotions have to be paid for. Strangely enough, that is what makes them fine.

In the 2001 film Storytelling, a dark satire directed by Todd Solondz, a young white female—a literary major at a prestigious university—puts herself in a life threatening situation with a literature professor (who happens to be black) in order to absolve herself of her white guilt. For her, the professor’s moral trait lies not in his character—which is obviously predatory and exploitative—but in his dark skin color. By yielding to his predatory conduct, she not only corrupts herself, but also contributes to the further moral corruption of her professor.

Every privileged man or woman who has a heart will experience negative emotions at the spectacle of a poor person who is struggling. I experience such emotions every time I walk into an airport public restroom and see some poor fellow cleaning the toilettes. Once, on a flight to Europe, I saw an old black man engaged in this dirty and thankless work. Arriving at the Vienna airport, I saw an old white women (who appeared to be Bosnian) doing the same. At such moments, the structure of human existence seems horribly unfair.

Thinking about such emotions reminds me of Robert Frost’s poem, “Acquainted with the Night.”

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet

When far away an interrupted cry

Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;

And further still at an unearthly height,

One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.

I have been one acquainted with the night.

The poet’s feelings are inconsolable, and no form of absolution seems possible for him. I don’t know exactly what Frost was trying to tell us with this poem, but I suspect it has something to do with his yearning for a God who seems to be absent.

The poem seems to express a quandary that Kierkegaard presented in his 1849 work “The sickness unto Death” in which he describes the desperation we are naturally inclined to feel when we perceive that God is absent.

We know that our lives our finite and that we are fallible, and we are often uncertain about how we stand in relation to infinity. This may create enormous anxiety and yearning for absolution. But what, precisely, is the sin for which we seek absolution?

Humans, it seems, are inherently religious creatures, and are constantly casting about looking for something akin to God. Hence, in recent years we’ve seen the rise of what may be properly called secular religions—that is, the Vaccine Cult, Scientism, Wokeism, and perhaps even the Ukraine Cult, whose fervent votaries favor the mortal sacrifice of Ukrainians instead of helping them to negotiate a settlement with Russia.

https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/white-guilt-absolution-and-narcissism

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

https://westpsychol.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH -- new site)

https://john-ray.blogspot.com/ (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC -- revived)

https://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Wednesday, October 09, 2024

Kamala Harris’s 60 Minutes interview was Prince Andrew-like in its awfulness

Somebody give Bill Whitaker a prize. In his 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, which aired last night, the CBS correspondent did what no other journalist has successfully done since the Vice President was thrust to the top of the Democratic ticket: journalism. He asked Harris challenging questions about the matters voter care about most. He was civil, unaggressive, but professional enough to press her for clear answers. And Harris just couldn’t cope. Her performance was Prince Andrew-like in its awfulness.

That caused the Harris-bot to malfunction

On immigration, for instance, Whitaker asked Harris why the Biden-Harris administration had only just started tackling the issue, after almost four years and an unprecedented surge in illegal border crossings. Harris robotically blamed Congress and Donald Trump, ‘who wants to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem so he told his buddies in Congress “kill the bill, don’t let it move forward”.’

Whitaker was not deterred. ‘But there was an historic flood of undocumented immigrants coming across the border the first three years of your administration,’ he continued. ‘As a matter of fact, arrivals quadrupled from the last year of President Trump. Was it a mistake to loosen immigration policies as much you do did?’

That caused the Harris-bot to malfunction. ‘It’s a long standing problem,’ she warbled. ‘And solutions are at hand and from day one, literally, we have been offering solutions…’

So Whitaker interrupted: ‘What I was asking was, was it a mistake kind of allow that flood to happen in the first place?’

‘I think the policies that we have been promoting have been about fixing a problem not promoting a problem,’ she added.

‘But the numbers did quadruple under your watch?’ Harris ruffled, returned to square one: ‘And the numbers today…because of what we have done, we have cut the flow of illegal immigration, we have cut the flow of fentanyl, but we need Congress to act.’

Oh dear. That’s Harris’s overwhelming weakness as a political candidate. She can talk in soundbites and managerial slogans about ‘solutions not problems’ but on issues of substance she can’t actually offer any solutions, which is a problem.

On the war in the Middle East, Harris was asked if the US has ‘no sway’ over Israel’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who has accepted billions of dollars of US aid but seems to be ignoring America’s calls for a ceasefire.

‘The work that we do diplomatically with the leadership of Israel is an ongoing pursuit around making clear our principles,’ said Harris, gnomically.

Again, Whitaker pressed: ‘But it seems that Prime Minister Netanyahu isn’t listening?’

‘We’re not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.’

Moving awkwardly on, Whitaker turned to the economy, and again Harris offered only platitudes. ‘My plan is about saying that when you invest in small businesses you invest in the middle class and you strengthen America’s economy,’ she said. ‘Small businesses are part of the backbone of America’s economy,” she restated. Pressed on how she would pay for her trillion-dollar spending plans, she said she make the rich ‘pay their fair share.’

When confronted by a serious journalist asking serious questions, she melts

‘We’re dealing with the real world here,’ said Whitaker. ‘How (are) you going to get this through Congress?’ Harris replied that she ‘cannot afford to be myopic…I am (a) public servant, I am also a capitalist’ – as if that clarified things.

Perhaps the most revealing moment was when Whitaker asked why voters say they don’t know what she stands for. ‘It’s an election Bill,’ she said, with a dead smile. Whitaker then mentioned that her flip-flops on issues such as fracking, immigration, and Medicare.

‘In the last year fours I have been vice-president of the United States and I have been travelling our country and I have been listening to folks and seeking what is possible in terms of common ground,’ she replied. ‘I believe in building consensus. We are a diverse people. Geographically, regionally, in terms of where we are in our backgrounds and what the American do want is that we have leaders who can build consensus, where we can compromise and understand it’s not a bad thing as long as you don’t compromise to find common sense solutions. And that has been my approach.’

Harris’s campaign recognises that a majority of Americans don’t feel they can trust Harris. That’s why she is now on what her team is calling a media ‘blitz’. But the clarity never comes. On MSNBC last week, she used the word ‘holistic’ three times to describe her housing policy. At the weekend, she did the ‘Call Her Daddy’ podcast at the weekend with Alex Cooper, who asked how it feels to be attacked for being childless and why men get to decide what women do with their bodies. Harris was more comfortable spluttering bromides in response. When confronted by a serious journalist asking serious questions, however, she melts.

In the hours before the 60 Minutes interview aired, the betting markets spiked in Donald Trump’s favour. Clearly, gamblers understand that the more voters see of Harris, the less they hear, and that’s an issue that is only going to get worse in the last three weeks of her campaign.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/10/kamala-harriss-60-minutes-interview-was-prince-andrew-like-in-its-awfulness/

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Gulf Dividing Ruling Elites, Average Americans Is Wide and Deep, Poll Finds

American elites really have become a toxic, ideological class apart—even if they don’t want to admit it.

A recent survey by Scott Rasmussen called “Elite 1%,” which was conducted by RMG Research for the Napolitan News Service, reveals that there’s a stark divide between the viewpoints of ruling elites and the rest of the American people on a wide range of questions.

The report, released Friday, not only found wide differences in opinion between the American people and the elites, it also concluded that the gap in ideology and power between the groups may be leading to America’s fraught political situation.

The research categorized Americans into several groups, but focused on the gap between a small subset of elites and the rest of the country, which it defined as “Main Street Americans” who represent “70-75% of the U.S. population” and have none of the attributes of those categorized into the “elite” groups.

“They do NOT have postgraduate degrees, do NOT live in densely populated urban areas, and earn LESS than $150,000 annually” is how the survey defined so-called Main Street Americans.

The findings on the differences between the elites and the rest of America clearly represent an unmistakable political split between institutional insiders versus outsiders.

According to the report, “members of the Elite 1% have very favorable opinions of university professors, lawyers, union leaders, journalists, and members of Congress.”

While the elites leaned strongly toward the Democratic Party, those who were Republicans tended to be much more similar to their partisan counterparts rather than to Main Street Americans.

The elite insiders are typically more socially liberal, less likely to trust citizens to govern themselves, and—perhaps unsurprisingly—tend to be far more trusting in institutions to make the right decisions for the country (without much or any input from people outside their class).

They are also far more comfortable with censorship and regulating the lives of ordinary people.

On social issues, the poll found that there’s an enormous gap between most Americans and the elite on the issue of transgenderism and whether biological males should be allowed to participate in female sports.

“If a biological male identifies as a woman, just 17% of Main Street voters believe that person should be allowed to compete in women’s sports,” the research found. “Among the Elite 1%, 29% believe such athletes should be allowed to compete in women’s sports.”

It’s not just women’s sports on which there’s such a wide gap in opinion on the transgender issue.

“Only 9% of voters favor a regulation being developed by the Biden administration that would make misgendering a co-worker a fireable offense,” the study found. “Seventy-five percent (75%) of voters are opposed.”

The elites are also far more likely to announce their pronouns when introducing themselves.

“Only 10% of voters have introduced themselves by expressing their preferred pronouns,” the polling found. “Among the Elite 1%, more than 4 out of 10 have done so. Among the Politically Active Elites, 61% have introduced themselves by expressing their preferred pronouns.”

The elites are suspicious of the Second Amendment and even the First Amendment. Those amendments to the Bill of Rights protect the right to bear arms and the freedom of speech and assembly, respectively.

The polling divide between elites and average Americans on speech is stark:

Voters, by a 59% to 34% margin, believe that letting the government decide what counts as misinformation is more dangerous than the disinformation itself. Among the Elite 1%, the numbers are reversed: by a 57% to 39% margin, they see letting the government decide as the lesser problem.

The elites don’t just want to censor speech, they want to disarm Americans, according to the polling data.

“Seventy-two percent (72%) of the Elite 1% would prefer to live in communities where guns are outlawed,” the report found. “Most voters (51%) take the opposite view and would prefer to live in communities where guns are allowed.”

The research found that 77% of the elites polled want to ban the private ownership of firearms.

On the concept of self-government, elites were far more likely to not only make arbitrary decisions for society, but also to be OK with rigging the system to ensure they stay in power.

“If their campaign team thought they could get away with cheating to win, 7% of voters would want their team to cheat,” the polling found. “Among the Elite 1%, the support for cheating rose to 35%. And, among the Politically Active Elites, 69% would want their team to cheat, rather than accept voters’ decisions.”

Perhaps most surprisingly, the polls found that most elites had no idea that their ideas were so different from those of the mainstream.

The report found that “two-thirds (65%) of the Elite 1%—and 82% of Politically Active Elites—think most voters agree with them on important issues. As has been documented throughout this report, that is far from an accurate assessment.”

The creators of the project noted that while there is nothing wrong with there being large gaps in opinions on serious questions in a society, the Elite 1% “hold tremendous institutional and media power that amplifies their voices at the expense of the American people.”

This power is enhanced, they wrote, by the alliance between the elites “and the unelected managers of the federal government.”

They concluded that the views and overwhelming influence of out-of-touch elites “may be the root cause of the political toxicity in our nation today” and that their “underlying attitudes reflect an implicit rejection of the founding ideal that governments derive their only just authority from the consent of the governed.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/10/08/ruling-elites-vs-main-street-poll-reveals-wide-ideological-cultural-divides/

Tuesday, October 08, 2024

On Anniversary of Oct. 7, College Students Celebrate Rape, Kidnapping, and Slaughter of Jews

As the civilized world mourns the first anniversary of the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust—and prays for the release of the more the 100 hostages, including four Americans, still being held by Palestinian jihadists in terrorism tunnels—American college campuses are rife with celebrations of Hamas’ atrocities.

On Oct. 7, 2023, Iran-backed Hamas militants flooded into Israel, engaging in an orgy of violence and mayhem, killing about 1,200 people, including 38 children, in their homes and at a youth music festival.

They raped women, shot children in front of their parents, and kidnapped more than 250 people, including 30 children. They even filmed and bragged about their atrocities.

But to many students on American college campuses, the Hamas militants who died while perpetrating these atrocities are not monsters to be condemned, but “martyrs” to be celebrated.

Just days after the Oct. 7 massacre, the Students for Justice in Palestine chapters nationwide called for a “Day of Resistance” on posters featuring paragliders like those the Hamas terrorists who had flown over the Israeli security barrier to rape and kill civilians used.

The Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at George Washington University projected the words “Glory to Our Martyrs” on the side of the university’s library.

Even among anti-Israel groups, Students for Justice in Palestine is particularly radical. Several chapters have openly endorsed the five-point “Thawabet” (demands on which there can be no compromise) principles, including that Arabs should “reject all normalization” with Israel, that “armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine,” and that “Palestine is Arab from the river to the sea, with Al-Quds [Jerusalem] as its capital.”

In other words, they call for genocidal violence against the world’s only Jewish state—home to about half the world’s Jews—until it is destroyed and replaced with another Arab state. Unsurprisingly, the infamous chant that is a common feature at Students for Justice in Palestine rallies—“There is only one solution: intifada revolution”—was inspired by the Nazis’ “Final Solution.”

On the anniversary of the Oct. 7 massacre, Students for Justice in Palestine chapters nationwide are calling for a “week of rage,” celebrating “one year of resistance” and hosting vigils for the supposed “martyrs.”

The timing makes clear that they are celebrating the Oct. 7 atrocities as “resistance” and glorifying its perpetrators as “martyrs.” At Columbia University on Monday, hundreds of students marched, chanting “intifada” and “resistance is justified.” One protester held a sign reading “Long Live The Al-Aqsa Flood” (the jihadist name for the Hamas massacre) featuring Hamas terrorists, including a paraglider.

Students for Justice in Palestine chapters and their pro-terrorist protests are not confined to Ivy League or far-left campuses like Berkeley and Oberlin. They’re even popping up at private and state universities in red states. At Rice University in Texas, the group’s chapter is hosting a “Day of Rage” on the anniversary of the Oct. 7 massacre, featuring a speech from a professor at Rice as well as a vigil to “honor our martyrs.”

At Duke University in North Carolina, the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter is hosting a “Vigil for Palestine” Monday, claiming that it “has been one year since Israel began its relentless genocide against the people of Gaza,” even though there is no genocide in Gaza, and Israel didn’t even send troops into Gaza to fight Hamas and attempt to rescue its captive citizens for more than a week after Hamas launched the war.

Students for Justice in Palestine chapters are also hosting a “Week of Rage” or “Week of Resistance” beginning on Oct. 7 at the University of Texas at Arlington, UNC Chapel Hill, and dozens of other universities. Likewise, the Muslim Students Association at the University of North Florida is hosting a “Gaza Week” starting Oct. 7.

Too often, the pro-terrorist rallies have the explicit support of university faculty and staff—which should be no surprise, given how many former campus radicals find employment on campus.

At Oklahoma State University, the psychology department’s diversity committee emailed students encouraging their participation in the “Week of Rage,” which includes a bake sale and the requisite vigil for “martyrs,” and will be capped off with a movie night.

Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters condemned the university for supporting the event, stating that “No school, at any level, should ever celebrate the slaughter and destruction of Israel.” Walters called on the public to demand that “OSU end this culture of hate for Israel on their campus.”

It should be no surprise that the email came from a “diversity committee” at the university. College diversity, equity, and inclusion offices have been hotbeds of antisemitism.

As former university dean and professor Stanley Goldfarb observed in City Journal, DEI “has given [antisemites] a pseudointellectual and seemingly moral framework through which to spew their hatred.”

At the heart of DEI is a simple binary: The world is divided between oppressors and the oppressed. Proponents of DEI cast white people as oppressors and black people as the oppressed.

While they apply this frame primarily to America, they often apply it to Israel, too. Apparently, Israel is a bastion of Jewish whiteness, with a racist commitment to shattering the lives of nonwhite Palestinians.

In fact, a colleague of mine—a former collegiate DEI director, no less—was told that Jews are “white oppressors” and that it was her job to “decenter whiteness.”

Hence, why the campus groups most associated with DEI are now leading the [antisemitic] charge. A good example is White Coats for Black Lives, which I encountered at Penn’s medical school. The group, which serves effectively as the medical-student offshoot of Black Lives Matter, has as its mission to “dismantle racism and accompanying systems of oppression.”

Apparently, that means supporting terrorists who beheaded Jewish babies and raped Jewish women on [Oct. 7]. In the wake of those atrocities, White Coats for Black Lives proudly declared that it “has long supported Palestine’s struggle for liberation.”

Students have the right to speak out and support any cause they wish, including hateful ones. But they don’t have a right to taxpayer dollars.

Student groups like Students for Justice in Palestine typically get access to university funds. At public universities, that means taxpayer funding. And even at private universities, students are often subsidized though government loans and tax credits, in addition to the numerous government grants universities receive directly.

Paying for young people to be indoctrinated as hate-filled radicals is more than taxpayers should be expected to bear.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/10/07/oct-7-college-students-celebrate-rape-kidnapping-slaughter-jews/

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Untapped Relief: FEMA Is Sitting on Billions of Unused Disaster Funds

Although the Federal Emergency Management Agency told Congress last month that it had $4 billion in its Disaster Relief Fund, officials also warned that the fund could have a shortfall of $6 billion by year’s end, a situation FEMA says could deteriorate in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

While FEMA is expected to ask Congress for new money, budget experts note a surprising fact: FEMA is currently sitting on untapped reserves appropriated for past disasters stretching back decades.

An August report from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General noted that in 2022, FEMA “estimated that 847 disaster declarations with approximately $73 billion in unliquidated funds remained open.”

Drilling down on that data, the OIG found that $8.3 billion of that total was for disasters declared in 2012 or earlier.

Such developments are part of a larger pattern in which FEMA failed to close out specific grant programs “within a certain timeframe, known as the period of performance (POP),” according to the IG report. Those projects now represent “billions in unliquidated appropriations that could potentially be returned to the [Disaster Relief Fund].”

These “unliquidated obligations” reflect the complex federal budgeting processes. Safeguards are important so that FEMA funding doesn’t become a slush fund that the agency can spend however it chooses, budget experts said, but the inability to tap unspent appropriations from long-ago crises complicates the agency’s ability to respond to immediate disasters.

‘Age-Old Game’

“This is an age-old game that happens and it doesn’t matter what administration is in,” said Brian Cavanaugh, who served as an appropriations manager at FEMA in the Trump administration. “It’s unfortunate how complex disaster relief has become, but it’s skyrocketing costs.”

Cavanaugh said neither action from Congress nor an executive order from the White House would be required to tap those funds because FEMA is operating on the sort of continuing resolutions Congress routinely authorizes. If the money is part of “immediate needs funding,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas could draw from the billions in untapped money to help the victims of Helene and then inform lawmakers he was compelled to do so, leaving elected officials facing charges they sought to pinch pennies when Americans were desperate.

FEMA did not respond to a request for comment about whether it could access the earmarked funds.

Mayorkas, whose department oversees FEMA, stressed the agency is not broke, and both he and other FEMA officials said last week there was enough money in the Disaster Relief Fund to meet the needs of victims of Hurricane Helene, which with a death count of more than 200 stands as the most lethal storm to hit the U.S. since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Most of Helene’s bills will come due in the future, and Mayorkas said FEMA can meet the day-to-day needs of operations right now in afflicted states but might be hard-pressed if another storm like Helene were to hit this year. Hurricane season officially lasts until the end of November, but historically, September and October have been the months in which the occasional monster smites the U.S.

“We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have,” Mayorkas told a press gaggle Oct. 2 on Air Force One. “We are expecting another hurricane hitting. We do not have the funds. FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season and … what is imminent.”

On Oct. 3, FEMA, which handles state and local government relief aid as well as the federal flood insurance plan and individual emergency requests, said it had spent at least $20 million in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida—three of the states that bore the brunt of Helene as it ripped ashore. The figures FEMA provided did not include Georgia, another state hard-hit by Helene, which made landfall in Florida on Sept. 26 as a Category 4 hurricane.

Longtime FEMA critics said the looming shortfall is not surprising, given its main job is to use federal taxpayer dollars to reimburse state and local governments for recovery costs, in addition to more immediate money it provides to victims on an individual basis.

“It doesn’t strike me as too weird,” said Chris Edwards, policy scholar at the conservative Cato Institute. “Right now, $20 million is peanuts, but it’s not necessarily unreasonable to think the upcoming bills will be much, much higher.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/10/07/untapped-relief-fema-is-sitting-on-billions-of-unused-disaster-funds/

Monday, October 07, 2024

JD Vance and the ‘new right’ spark Washington policy war

A decade ago, when Republicans were consumed by cutting spending and repealing Obamacare, JD Vance was a 29-year-old conservative law clerk in Cincinnati who thought they were doing it all wrong.

He sent unsolicited emails to right-leaning editors telling them they needed to focus more on the people in rural America whom globalisation had left behind. He started taking an interest in Catholicism when the party was dominated by evangelicals. At one point, he even pushed his way into an invite-only conference in Middleburg, Virginia, according to people who attended, in which conservative intellectuals were trying to rethink the Ronald Reagan-era, limited-government approach that had dominated the Republican Party for decades.

Now Vance, who is preparing to take the stage at the debate against Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz on Tuesday, has emerged as one of the staunchest defenders and attack dogs for former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee. In Washington, he has become the unexpected figurehead of a new conservative movement that draws on his early fixation with policy to rewrite Republican orthodoxy with a philosophy that champions industrial policy, questions Wall Street and embraces trade protectionism.

While “Project 2025” has garnered attention for its radical prescriptions for a second Trump term, it has overshadowed a high-stakes debate between old-guard conservatives and the pro-Trump policy movement that calls itself the “New Right.”

As the movement has risen to prominence, its acolytes have helped rally Republicans to support some surprising causes including using U.S. government money to redirect the private sector, like a $280 billion law in 2022 to boost the U.S. semiconductor industry. They have moved the idea of expanding the child tax credit from the Republican fringes to a hotly debated issue in the presidential election. And they have at times expressed admiration for Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, whose crackdown on corporate consolidation has led business executives to push for her ouster.

Old-guard conservatives, from billionaire Charles Koch to antitax activist Grover Norquist, are working to hold together the Tea Party-era Republican coalition that remains a potent force in Washington despite Trump’s rise.

Hundreds of their activists and allies gathered at the Watergate Hotel recently for a gala hosted by the largest Koch-backed advocacy group, Americans for Prosperity, where a string quartet played during cocktail hour and guests snagged cigars as party favours. The group’s chief executive, Emily Seidel, told the crowd they would work against “the insurgence of big government policies on both the left and the right.” ” Thomas Jefferson once warned, ‘the natural progress for things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground,’” Seidel said during her speech, adding: “Our message is clear: Not on our watch.” The crowd erupted in applause.

Vance’s allies say the old guard has already lost – the establishment has larger numbers and deeper pockets, but momentum is on the New Right’s side.

“The pre-Trump political alignment in this country is just gone,” said Oren Cass, a longtime friend of Vance’s who founded a think tank in 2020 called American Compass that has become the most influential New Right group on Capitol Hill. “It’s not coming back.” Courting the next generation Over a steak salad at Hawk ‘n’ Dove, a pub a few blocks from the Capitol that became a GOP favourite after it refused to follow lockdown orders during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, Cass said his goal was to recruit the next generation of conservatives to his side.

Grover Norquist is working to hold together the Tea Party-era Republican coalition that remains a potent force. Picture: Bloomberg via Getty Images.
Grover Norquist is working to hold together the Tea Party-era Republican coalition that remains a potent force. Picture: Bloomberg via Getty Images.
A mild-mannered former Bain & Co. consultant and Mitt Romney policy adviser who lives in leafy western Massachusetts, Cass doesn’t share much in common on the surface with Trump – but their interest in conservative populism has placed the two on the same side of an ideological war.

Cass and his allies have gained a reputation for channelling Trump-era populism into Republican policy proposals, making him popular with a handful of senators including Sens. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and Todd Young (R., Ind.), in addition to Vance, who represents Ohio in the Senate. Cass’s American Compass helped fill a void in the conservative ecosystem, Rubio said, which some Republicans long worried had become dominated by stale ideas.

Vance briefly dabbled with becoming a professional policy guy. When he wrote the first draft of his best-selling memoir, he focused on how government policies could help those who had been left behind in rural America, according to people Vance spoke to about his book. Instead, his editor convinced him to turn it into a narrative focused on his hardscrabble upbringing.

Catholics and IVF American Compass’s biggest effort to recruit younger conservatives takes place behind closed doors: An off-the-record, invite-only membership group of around 200 20- and 30-somethings who work in politics, law and business and have access to a weekly rotation of salon dinners, seminars, happy hours and an annual retreat at a Hyatt on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

Many events are designed to include families and children, an effort by the group to promote family life, which often has deeply religious underpinnings. While Cass is Jewish, the movement has attracted a number of devout Catholics, and converting to Catholicism, like Vance did, is popular with members. (One Washington conservative joked that, upon hearing that another friend had converted, his reaction was simply: “We lost another one.”)

Members often debate what the New Right’s policy approach should be. Last spring on the Eastern Shore, a breakout group at the annual retreat largely agreed they wanted to make fertility treatments, a hot topic in conservative circles, needed less often by easing the economic burdens on young people so they could start families younger, according to one participant. But the group was divided over what the solution should be in the meantime: better to ban IVF altogether, or allow it to exist as a patch until the country can convince couples to stop delaying childbirth?

Moderate Washington Republicans snicker about the New Right being faddish and overly focused on increasing birthrates. Old-school conservatives like Norquist have used American Compass’s funders – including the Hewlett Foundation, which largely gives to left-leaning causes – and Cass’s unorthodox ideas, like raising the corporate tax rate, as ammunition to accuse him of being a Republican-in-name-only.

One recent morning, around 75 aides were shuffling into a Capitol Hill meeting room for a briefing from an American Compass aide when they were unexpectedly confronted by emissaries from the Republican old guard: Two aides from Norquist’s group were standing in the hallway doling out flyers titled, “Who Said It, Oren or Warren?” referring to liberal Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. For example: “Have tax cuts been working? No.” Asked about the flyers, Norquist said it was just “some of the interns having fun.” Cass’s influence, Norquist argued, has been exaggerated: “The only time I spend [on him] is talking to reporters.” Tax-code pushback Free-market conservatives still dominate much of Capitol Hill. This month a former aide to Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R., Wyo.) strode into the senator’s office to talk taxes, wearing a cowboy hat and a tie with the Koch-backed group Americans for Prosperity’s logo printed on it.

Lummis didn’t support a bipartisan tax plan earlier this year that American Compass backed. It would have used the tax code as a “social service program,” she told the aide-turned-Americans for Prosperity employee after greeting him warmly.

While the New Right has momentum, its future – and whether it will be dominated by Vance, or someone else – is still in flux.

A Trump loss in November could unleash a renewed campaign by establishment Republicans to wrest back control of the party, potentially scuttling Vance and Cass’s political future.

If Trump wins, many of the stars of the New Right movement could find themselves newly empowered. In addition to Vance, New Right-aligned lawmakers such as Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) and Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) are seen as possible contenders for senior jobs in a second Trump administration.

Yet Trump remains an unpredictable figure with few closely held beliefs. How he would govern, and whether policy issues would take a back seat to the political crises and palace intrigue that dominated Trump’s first term, is uncertain.

Whatever happens in November, change is afoot, Sen. Lummis said after the meeting. “I think there is a subtle transition going on between the more-establishment Republicans and whatever you wanted to call it – the ‘New Right’?”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/the-wall-street-journal/dj-vance-and-the-new-right-spark-washington-policy-war/news-story/272eaee93a2a410574af53df470e4996

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No wonder the legacy media is held in contempt

As readers know, in the US political donations are public information. So if you want you can look to see who gives to which party. That’s how a professor of law at Notre Dame University trolled through five years of data up to 2023 and calculated that US law professors give money to the two main political parties at a ratio of about 36 to 1 Democrats to Republicans. (At least, though, conservatives in the US are trying to do something about this incredible bias by giving money to the Federalist Society – our equivalent is the Samuel Griffith Society – and by pushing state legislatures to disband and fire all DEI employees in their public universities – which is happening in the US, with immediate and positive results, and which is the very first thing any Coalition government should do here in Australia when it turns its mind to our universities.)

Of course, some may say that these sorts of investigations tell us nothing about those who do not donate to a political party. So here’s a question for readers. Do you think that those in the US who do not donate monies to a political party would be disproportionately left-leaning or right-leaning? If it’s the former then the ratio is even worse, even more imbalanced than 36 to 1. If it’s the latter it would be a tad better.

Now there are other ways to try to measure political imbalance and the capture of key institutions by the political left. For instance, you can ask or poll members of these groups. That is what upstate New York’s Syracuse University Newhouse School of Public Communications recently did. (And just so readers are clear, this is not remotely a right-wing outfit.) It polled 1,600 US mainstream journalists in early 2022. What percentage of legacy media journalists, do you think, associate with the Republican party? You get the prize if you answered 3.4 per cent. Yes, under two in fifty were affiliated with Republicans. The rest answered 36 per cent Democrats, 52 per cent independents, and 8 per cent other. And we need to be clear that virtually no journo answering ‘independent’ would ever vote for Donald Trump. In fact, my bet is that a fair few of those who answered ‘Republican’ would be suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, something you can see in Australia in more than a few of our already sparse number of ‘conservative’ legacy journalists. Just pick up any copy of the Australian and see. Meanwhile, if you think this heavy skew to the political left doesn’t affect news coverage, if only by selection bias, then you probably also buy the claim that the total absence of any conservative presenter or producer on ‘our’ ABC TV current affairs shows in no way prevents the national broadcaster from producing wholly balanced, disinterested and even-handed programs. Yeah, and I’m a woman. (Oops, that quip isn’t what it used to be.)

The Syracuse study also noted that this is part of an ever-worsening ‘we are left-wing family’ trend amongst journalists. Over the last five decades the percentage of journalists identifying as Republicans has plummeted. Back in 1971, 26 per cent of journalists identified as Republicans, 35 per cent as Democrats, 32 as independents, and 6 per cent as other. Not surprisingly, this precipitous dwindling of any sort of political balance or even-handedness across the so-called fourth estate has meshed almost perfectly with the fall in trust Americans say they have in the mainstream media. Just 7 per cent of Americans say they have a ‘great deal’ of trust in the news media. And almost none of that meagre seven per cent comes from the right of politics.

Or consider this. Critics have gone back to look and note ‘that 100 per cent of the US’s ABC News coverage of Kamala Harris is positive, whereas something like 93 per cent of their coverage on Trump is negative’. I doubt that North Korea scores 93 per cent negative coverage. Remember, before Harris was the nominee she had strikingly low favourability ratings, probably she was the most disapproved of vice-president since the question has been asked. Since then the legacy media (not counting Fox) has basically gone all in trying to sell her as some transformative candidate while saying virtually nothing about the fact that she and her campaign simply refuse to do any live interviews, and certainly not with anyone who might ask a tough question. Recall that about two-thirds of Americans think the country is on the wrong track. So if the media were remotely balanced – rather than essentially operating as PR agents for the Democrats – the election wouldn’t be close. Key question: what conservative has any reason at all to trust the media? Heck, forget trust. What conservative has any reason to feel anything other than contempt for most all of the legacy media? (And for me this feeling came to fruition during the lockdowns when virtually all of the press abandoned any sort of scepticism and desire to hold the powerful to account and instead became agents of fear-mongering and unthinking government propaganda. Just sayin’, because the evidence that thuggish lockdown governments got near-on everything wrong is now overwhelming – not that the great and the good can ever openly admit their thuggery and panic.)

One more example. The legacy press has been running hard with the Kamala campaign line that Trump killed off a perfectly good ‘bipartisan border Bill’. This is laughable and every sentient being knows it. This Biden and Harris Bill that had a couple of chamber-of-commerce-type Republicans on board would have funded sanctuary cities, let in about 1.8 million illegals per year, funded lawyers for illegals, half-codified ‘catch and release’, weakened asylum screening, given work permits to illegals, and provided no immediate funds to finish building the wall. This is the so-called ‘border Bill’ that Kamala pretends Trump should have supported. It is obvious why he, and most all other Republicans, were against it and helped kill it off. But the press? Well, they trot out the Kamala line that this is some Bill that those who want an actual border should have supported. Come on! They know this is a lie. But nothing is too much trouble in the Pravda-like service of the Democrats.

I said a few weeks ago that this election boiled down to one question. Can the lefty legacy media drag Kamala over the line? Does the mainstream press have enough remaining support and trust to win this one for her? I said then that I didn’t think they did and that Trump would win. I still think that. Only time will tell but right now I’d even put some money on the Republicans taking the trifecta of the Presidency, Senate and House.

And boy do I hope I’m right.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/10/no-wonder-the-legacy-media-is-held-in-contempt/

Friday, October 04, 2024

No blogging today

Big social events today, including the opening of a bottle of Grange -- for those who know what that is all about

Wednesday, October 02, 2024

Iran opens the door to retaliation

Iran unleashed its second direct military assault against Israel on Tuesday, this time with 181 ballistic missiles. All Israeli civilians were ordered into bomb shelters, and most missiles were intercepted. But this is an act of war against a sovereign state and American ally, and it warrants a response targeting Iran’s military and nuclear assets.

This is Iran’s second missile barrage since April, and no country can let this become a new normal. Israel reported a few civilians injured and one Palestinian may have been killed near Jericho in the attack. A terrorist shooting, possibly co-ordinated, killed six Israelis. The work by the U.S. and Israel to shoot down most of the missiles was spectacular, but it shouldn’t have to be, and next time it may not be.

Rockets fired from southern Lebanon are intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome air defence system over the Upper Galilee region in northern Israel on September 27. Picture: Jalaa Marey/AFP
Rockets fired from southern Lebanon are intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome air defence system over the Upper Galilee region in northern Israel on September 27. Picture: Jalaa Marey/AFP
After April’s attack, the Biden Administration pressured Israel for a token response and President Biden said Israel should “take the win” since there was no great harm to Israel. Israel’s restraint has now yielded this escalation, and it is under no obligation to restrain its retaliation this time.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hinted at a stronger response in a statement to Israelis: “Iran made a big mistake tonight — and it will pay for it. The regime in Iran doesn’t understand our determination to defend ourselves and retaliate against our enemies.” He cited the Hamas and Hezbollah leaders who have been killed since Oct. 7, adding “and there are probably those in Tehran who don’t understand this. They will understand.”

But does Mr. Biden understand? Iran’s act of war is an opening to do considerable damage to the regime’s missile program, drone plants and nuclear sites. This is a test for a President who has been unwilling even to enforce oil sanctions against Iran. It is also a chance to restore at least a measure of U.S. deterrence that has vanished during his Presidency.

Before the attack, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned Iran of “severe consequences.” National security adviser Jake Sullivan reiterated the pledge after the missile barrage. Having issued such a warning, Mr. Biden has an obligation to follow through or further erode U.S. credibility.

If there were ever cause to target Iran’s nuclear facilities, this is it. Iran has shown that it might well use a bomb if it’s acquired, and Tehran would certainly use it as deterrent cover for conventional and terrorist attacks on Israel, Sunni Arab states and perhaps the U.S. Iran is closer than ever to a nuclear weapon and won’t stop itself. The question for American and Israeli leaders is: If not now, when?

Iran’s revolutionary regime has shown itself again to be a regional and global menace. It started this war via Hamas, which it funds, arms and trains to carry out massacres like the one on Oct. 7, and it escalated via Hezbollah, spreading war to Lebanon. Other proxies destabilise Iraq and Yemen, fire on Israeli and U.S. troops and block global shipping. It sends drones and missiles to Russia and rains ballistic missiles on Israel. All while seeking nukes.

Escalating this confrontation now is a gamble for Iran. With Hamas depleted and Hezbollah in disarray, Iran’s proxies can’t defend it the way they usually would. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei may be betting that Mr. Biden will shrink again from defending the civilised world from a dangerous regime. Will he be right?

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/the-wall-street-journal/iran-opens-the-door-to-retaliation/news-story/2af22cba90d0383dc2d4845dd338e2d8

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‘Nervous, glum’: Why Vance walked all over Walz in VP clash

Vice presidential debates typically don’t make much of a difference in presidential elections.

But the race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris is one of the closest in decades, which upped the pressure on their running mates in their only head-to-head contest.

And under the harsh spotlight of prime time TV, Tim Walz struggled to meet the moment.

The Minnesota Governor came from the clouds to join the Democratic ticket based on his folksy charm, his joyful attitude and his viral attack on his opponents as “weird”.

None of that was on show against JD Vance, his Republican rival.

Right from the start, Mr Walz was noticeably nervous. The crisis in the Middle East was the obvious first question, and yet he stumbled through his answer and confused Israel with Iran.

He was often on the defensive and seemed so focused on remembering his lines that he missed opportunities to confront his opponent.

And unlike the Vice President, who was constantly ready with a laugh or a smirk or a shake of the head in response to Mr Trump during their debate, Mr Walz’s expression during Mr Vance’s answers mostly landed somewhere between blank and glum and tired.

That Mr Vance was the more accomplished performer was no surprise. The Yale-educated lawyer regularly confronts tough questions from reporters, while the Democrats have surprisingly steered Mr Walz away from the media in recent weeks, depriving him of practice.

The Republican – who began the night as one of the most unpopular vice presidential picks in history – was also obviously determined to reach out to female voters. By and large, he shied away from his trollish tendencies, instead seeking common ground with Mr Walz while admitting he needed to work harder to convince voters to trust him on issues like abortion.

It made for a far less combative debate than the contest between Ms Harris and Mr Trump, with the pair shaking hands and introducing their wives at the end. But the winner was clear.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/nervous-glum-why-vance-walked-all-over-walz-in-vp-clash/news-story/556b292a1f0489e937734979d753c719

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Donald Trump was right, says, ‘I told you so’ as 151,000 violent convicted criminals released into U.S. as Kamala Harris visits southern border to find out what’s going on

“I say, I told you so.”

That was former President Donald Trump’s reaction at a Michigan rally on Sept. 27 of tens of thousands of violent, convicted criminals being let into the U.S. by the Biden-Harris Department of Homeland Security, according to the latest data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) released on Sept. 25 via Congressional oversight by U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas).

The numbers were breathtaking: 13,376 convicted murderers, 16,120 convicted of sexual assault, 64,579 convicted of assault, 43,546 convicted of burglary, larceny or robbery, 13,876 convicted of weapons offenses, 2,606 convicted of kidnapping and 2,218 convicted of commercialized sexual offenses — all before they ever came to America and were released into the country by the federal government.

According to the House Homeland Security Committee release on Sept. 27, “they had previously been encountered by CBP, turned over to ICE, had their criminal history documented, and then were released into the United States.”

The vast majority of these convicted criminals — 151,851 out of 156,521, or 97 percent — were not currently detained by ICE, with only 4,670 are detention and subject to removal. Of the convicted murderers, the numbers are even worse: only 277 are in detention, or just 2.2 percent.

The rest are apparently just roaming around. But now Harris is promising that when she is in office — apparently heedless that she has already been in office for almost four years — to complete her border visit checkbox photo opportunity, posted on X on Sept. 29, “As president, I will secure our border, disrupt the flow of fentanyl coming into the United States, and work to fix our broken system of immigration.”

But one of the things “broken” is the Biden-Harris administration’s propensity to release convicted criminals into the U.S., simply out of incompetence or worse, on purpose.

The other thing “broken” is public perception that the current Democratic administration even gives a whit about the problem, with Harris upside down on immigration versus Trump, for example, in the latest national Quinnipiac poll taken Sept. 19 to Sept. 22, with 53 percent of likely voters saying Trump would do a better job handling immigration and 45 percent saying Harris. That’s consistent across almost all national polls taken the entire election cycle. If the election comes down to immigration, the border and illegal alien criminals, it might not be close.

Trump found it curious that the numbers were released at all — the letter from ICE as Vice President Kamala Harris made her visit to the U.S. southern border since 2021, stating, “So, these numbers just came out — nobody’s ever seen these numbers for years, nobody’s ever seen them — and probably some patriot in ICE or somebody just did something, they just said the country is going bad, you can’t have a country like that. We have think of it murderers — convicted murderers — imprisoned for life, many get the electric chair or they get whatever their form of death penalty. These are convicted people for life are… now in our country and I can finally look at them and see.”

Here, Trump is reminding voters of his warning in his very first speech as a candidate when he began running for president in June 2015, when he famously stated, “The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems. Thank you. It’s true, and these are the best and the finest. When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

Turns out, Trump was right, yet again. Allowing unrestricted illegal immigration — since Feb. 2021, there have been 8.3 million encounters by the U.S. Border Patrol on the southwest border, the most in recorded U.S. history — will allow a certain percentage of proven criminals, including violent criminals, into the U.S.

So, 156,521 out of 8.3 million, that’s a 1.87 percent violent crime rate, almost 2 out of every 100 let into the country, are convicted, violent criminals. Compare that to the national violent crime rate, which includes murder, manslaughter, rape and robbery, of 0.36 percent, or 363.8 out of every 100,000 — that’s five times the national violent crime rate.

Perhaps Kamala Harris does not need to visit the southern border to find out why this is happening, but by visiting the Oval Office, the Department of Homeland Security and by looking in the mirror.

https://dailytorch.com/2024/09/donald-trump-was-right-says-i-told-you-so-as-151000-violent-convicted-criminals-released-into-u-s-as-kamala-harris-visits-southern-border-to-find-out-whats-going-on/

Tuesday, October 01, 2024

Israel defends itself — and may save Western civilisation

How will we ever repay the debt we owe Israel? What the Jewish state has done in the past year – for its own defence, but in the process and not coincidentally for the security of all of us – will rank among the most important contributions to the defence of Western civilisation in the past three-quarters of a century.

Having been hit with a devastating attack on its people, beyond the fetid imagining of some of the vilest antisemites, Israel has in 12 months done nothing less than redraw the balance of global security, not just in the region, but in the wider world.

It has eliminated thousands of the terrorists whose commitment to a savage theocratic ideology has claimed so many lives across the region and the world for decades. It has, with extraordinary tactical accuracy, dispatched some of the masterminds of the worst evil on the planet, including most recently Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader in Lebanon. It has repelled and then reversed the previously inexorably advancing power of one of the world’s most terrifying autocracies, the Islamic Republic of Iran. It has demonstrated to all the West’s foes, including Iran’s allies in Moscow and Beijing, that our system of free markets and free people, and the voluntary alliance network we have constructed to defend it, generates resources and capabilities of vast technical superiority.

Above all, it has provided an unexpected but crucial reminder to our enemies that there are at least some willing and able to pursue and defeat them whatever the risk to our own lives and resources.

The only appropriate responses to Israel’s gallantry, fortitude and skill from us - its nominal allies, especially in the US – are “thank you” and “how can we help?”

Instead, time and again Israel’s supposed friends, including the administration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, have, while expressing sympathy over the outrage of October 7 and uttering the usual support for “Israel’s right to defend itself,” repeatedly tried to restrain it from doing just that. Their early, valuable support has been steadily diminished by the way they have too often connived with the anti-Israel extremists in their own party.

Before Israel had even buried its dead last October and as Hamas was busy murdering its hostages, there were calls for Israel to ceasefire. For a year we have heard our leaders’ “balanced” condemnations of Hamas and its terror masters on the one hand and the Jewish state on the other, a false equivalence that says more about the moral disorder in our own politics than about Israel’s motives and actions.

In Europe, they have gone even further, as usual, rewarding Hamas and Hezbollah by nominally recognising a nonexistent Palestinian state and prosecuting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on bogus war-crimes charges.

Do they not get that in the end we have to make a choice: our ally, on the front lines of defense against barbarism or our enemies, those who literally want to see us all buried?

Fortunately for all of us, it seems Israel is prevailing despite the chorus of hecklers.

Perhaps all this sounds too blithe for skeptical readers; or at least premature given the rising expectation of a much wider conflict to come. And it is true that there has been awful loss of innocent lives in Gaza, Lebanon and elsewhere that undoubtedly fuels the ire of the enemy across the world. What if Mr Netanyahu and his government’s aggressive prosecution proves a Pyrrhic victory?

But that wider conflict was perhaps always inevitable, given Iran’s stated objectives and its consistent efforts to achieve them. We can say two things tentatively about that long-feared wider confrontation. First, the strategic tactical, intelligence and technological genius Israel has demonstrated over the past year might have done so much damage to Iran’s proxy armies and their military and political leaders that they will be ill-prepared and equipped for the bigger struggle to come, and Israel – and, let’s hope, reliable allies – better placed to defeat its enemies. Second, having observed this Israeli superiority over that time and eagerness not to bring the destruction on itself a wide war would surely bring, perhaps Iran will be deterred.

Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few, Winston Churchill said of the men of the Royal Air Force after they had repelled Hitler’s Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain. (Reminder to some recently confused “conservatives”: The former were the good guys; the latter the real villains.)

We should echo those words today as we watch in awe what a country smaller in area than New Jersey, with a population less than North Carolina’s and an economy smaller than that of Washington state, has done for all of us.

As Israelis solemnly mark a year since October 7, we should not only redouble our expressions of sympathy and solidarity. We should show them our gratitude, and if we are willing to be really honest, acknowledge a little of our own shame.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/the-wall-street-journal/israel-defends-itself-and-may-save-western-civilisation/news-story/ed9ac5192e6b961bdcb2ba0cbb3c2c20

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Who are the stupid party now?

David Lammy, British Foreign Secretary under Labour

David Lammy made an appearance on UK television’s Mastermind Celebrity Edition in 2008. For the uninitiated, Mastermind is a highbrow cerebral quiz show that has been broadcast on the BBC for more than fifty years. Those who have sat in its iconic black chair consider it to be the game show equivalent of Everest. The Harvard-educated Lammy, who was Labour’s Minister of State for Higher Education at the time, would surely have no trouble handling a show with such intellectual fortitude. Right?

Among the many absurdities made by the MP for Tottenham were that Marie Antoinette was the recipient of the Nobel prize in physics, that Henry VII acceded to the English throne after the death of Henry VIII, and that the Rose Revolution took place in Yugoslavia in 2003 – seemingly forgetting the fact that the country ceased to exist more than a decade earlier. He is now serving as Foreign Secretary.

My point is that education does not imply intelligence. Even with the most expensive advanced degrees in the world, if you are unable to understand basic facts, you will not make a very effective politician. What does the term over-educated mean? There are a number of definitions. Here’s mine: someone who can calculate a coffee jar’s volume to the closest decimal place, but lacks the strength to open it.

Lammy has always been an outspoken progressive who has a history of making ridiculous statements. These intemperate outbursts, which take the form of self-righteous moralising, can range from the undiplomatic to the idiotic. This was the man who called Donald Trump a ‘racist KKK and Nazi sympathiser’ and equated Brexiteer Conservatives to Nazis. Often framed via the lens of identity politics, he appears to be Labour’s biggest instigator of race baiting. His most well-known gaffe came in 2013, when the papal conclave chose a new pope. ‘Do we really need silly innuendo about the race of the next pope?’ Lammy tweeted in response to the BBC’s rhetorical question about whether the smoke from the Sistine Chapel’s chimney will indicate the election of a new pope – black or white. When colour is all you see, don’t be surprised if your interpretation is somewhat limited.

Tuesday was Lammy’s first significant foreign policy speech, also referred to as the Kew lecture. In his inaugural address, he seemed to suggest that climate change poses a more pervasive and fundamental threat than autocratic regimes or terrorism. The Foreign Office will make tackling the climate ‘central’ to everything it does. I don’t think suicide bombers are concerned with rising sea levels, and Vladimir Putin is probably not going to be deterred from stationing tanks in Kiev because his soldiers might get a little too warm inside a T-55.

Joking aside, it is extremely alarming how ignorant Lammy is of foreign policy matters. Just prior to his speech, he unveiled a brand-new Substack page. The blog, titled Progressive Realism (PR), describes itself as ‘a foreign policy newsletter where you will find an in-depth look at my approach to the UK’s foreign affairs, and how it is shaped by the principle of progressive realism’. Call me cynical, but the moment I see the word ‘progressive’, an alarm bell goes off in my head. My suspicions were confirmed as I continued reading. It would appear that he has tacitly endorsed the ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Central Asia. ‘Azerbaijan has been able to liberate territory it lost in the early 1990s,’ Lammy writes on PR.

The Foreign Secretary seems to approve of Azerbaijan’s capture of Nagorno-Karabakh, a breakaway region of Azerbaijan controlled by Armenia. In flagrant violation of international law, Baku ethnically cleansed approximately 120,000 Christian Armenians last year. Furthermore, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has close ties with Moscow. Endorsing a dictatorship over a fledgling post-Soviet liberal democracy? That doesn’t sound very progressive to me. It’s a shame that Lammy failed to look on a map and find out the location of the Rose Revolution. It was in Georgia, next door to Armenia.

Maybe he didn’t write the post for mitigation purposes? But since it’s a personal blog, surely you should accept full responsibility for anything that is published under your name? Now he is in a bind. He faces backlash from the Azeris if he apologises. You incur the wrath of the other 50 per cent when you take a position on something you barely understand. This is something that should be written in large font and stapled to the door of every cabinet office in the Western world.

To make this solely about David Lammy would be unfair. You will be shocked to hear that Sir Keir Starmer has added more overeducated, equally useless individuals to his cabinet.

Whereas Lammy appears to be a dead cert to win the coveted stupidest MP of the year award, Anneliese Dodds, the Women and Equalities Minister, is his main rival. Although Dodds holds a PhD from the London School of Economics, it appears that she lacks a basic understanding of the biological reality of sex. She has refused to amend the Equality Act in order to make the legal definition of a woman more explicit. According to the legislation, ‘sex’ refers to your gender identity rather than your biological sex. Closing this loophole would stop transgender women from entering women-only spaces, such as changing rooms, as well as prevent them from joining sports teams that are exclusively made up of women.

What’s abundantly clear to me is that this government appoints people with the IQ of a broken refrigerator. It will inevitably backfire if it is overrun with managerial elites who have no regard for or knowledge of the politics of its people. Since Labour won the election, Keir Starmer’s approval rating has dropped by an astounding 45 percentage points. Rishi Sunak is more well-liked than he is. Eventually, the ruling class is replaced – Pareto called this the ‘circulation of elites’. Nonetheless, hatred toward the powerful is typically incremental. The problem is Labour has barely stepped foot in the door. How long before Starmer is turfed out? Place your bets now.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/09/keirs-cabinet-of-curiosities/

Monday, September 30, 2024

This is Israel’s greatest victory since the Six-Day War

There is a satirical Israeli song from the Second Lebanon War, ‘Yalla Ya Nasrallah’, with the chorus: ‘Come on, oh Nasrallah/We will screw you, inshallah/we’ll send you back to Allah/with the rest of Hezbollah’. The lyrics are doggerel, but I mention it for two reasons. One, it’s an absolute banger of a tune and, two, all that it threatened has now been carried out. Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah for 32 years, was killed last night in an IDF strike on the Islamist terror group’s underground command centre beneath a Beirut suburb.

“Yalla ya Nasrallah,
We will f*ck you Inshallah,
We will return you to Allah,
With the entire Hezbollah” pic.twitter.com/bMa6VuQwXH

His death is the latest in a series of targeted killings on the leaders of Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy force armed and funded to strengthen Tehran’s grip on the region. These assassinations have included Ibrahim Aqil, commander of Hezbollah’s Radwan special forces unit, along with its chief of staff Hussein Ahmad Dahraj, chief of operations Hassan Yussef Abad Alssatar, head of training Abu Hussan Samir, and others. It has included Ibrahim Qubaisi, head of the rocket and missile division, and Muhammad Hussein Srour, chief of drones and aerial defences. To give a sense of the speed and efficiency of Israel’s operations, all of these targets were killed in the last seven days. Hezbollah has terrorised Israel for almost 40 years and now Israel has eliminated almost its entire chain of command in a week. This represents years, probably decades, of planning and intelligence gathering against one of the most heavily armed forces in the region. As daring and improbable Israeli military victories go, it is up there with the Six-Day War.

Nasrallah’s death brings to an end the reign of a brutal butcher responsible for the deaths of many more Arabs than Israelis. Under his command, Hezbollah not only sided with Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war but took part in the large-scale killing of opposition fighters and civilians, including in Aleppo, Qusair, and Daraya. There’s a reason Syrians took to the streets last night to celebrate. They won’t be the only ones. Nasrallah’s death will be welcomed by the Druze of Majdal Shams, a town in the Israeli Golan Heights, where 12 Arab children were blown up by a Hezbollah rocket while playing soccer in July. It was one of 9,300 rockets Hezbollah has fired at Israel since 8 October, when it decided to join in the Hamas offensive of the previous day. All across the Middle East, in countries where denouncing the Zionist entity is a national pastime, prime ministers and peasants will privately respond to the news of Nasrallah’s demise with the same sentiment: the bastard had it coming.

Not everyone will see it that way, of course. Naturally, Iran won’t be happy. For the past year, it has watched (read: directed) Hezbollah and its other front group Hamas to launch attacks on Israel, only for Israel to respond with overwhelming force and tactical nous, taking out top commanders left and right. The financial cost to Iran in lost investment and hardware must be eye-watering. That will factor into what comes next. If Iran does not respond dramatically — it needn’t be all that effective, it just has to look good on CNN — then it will be a much weakened force in the region. Yet if it does, it risks a spate of targeted assassinations against its own leadership or, if the situation is allowed to escalate, some kind of direct engagement with Israel. Whatever their more hawkish elements say, neither country wants that. Regardless of what Iran does, it will now have to factor in that Israel is a far stronger, much emboldened enemy.

This is a historic victory for the Jewish state and its scale can be measured in the outrage with which it is greeted and the parties expressing it. Israel will be decried at the United Nations and calumnied by the human rights industry. It will be accused of war crimes by law professors from some of the finest universities in the world and charged with dangerous escalation by journalists who consider Israel’s mere existence an escalation. There will be indignation at the US State Department, the British Foreign Office and the European Commission, all of which will now have to spin this latest setback for Iran as another reason to revive the deadly foolish nuclear deal. Rest assured that all the right people are unhappy right now.

Hassan Nasrallah has plagued the Israeli psyche for so long that his death will come as a relief as much as a sense of triumph. But a triumph it is, another reminder that however long it takes, whatever the cost in blood and treasure, Israel always gets its man in the end. Jerusalem has reasserted this message in the most spectacular way. Yalla ya Nasrallah.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/09/this-is-israels-greatest-victory-since-the-six-day-war/

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The rise of the expertocrats

‘You are in danger!’ This is how the rhetoric starts. ‘But there is no need to not worry, we will fix it!’

There is a sad irony in this message. The government pretends to offer therapeutic words by identifying a problem only it can fix.

The problem is one of Iatrogenesis.

Derived from the Greek iatros, it means harm brought forth by the healer.

The illness is actually a product of the help offered by the government. The pain comes from the source of the cure. The foundation of the grief is derived from those who declare the loudest, ‘We care the most!!!’

It can become wearying for citizens to identify how often this happens in the self-destroying West. Yet, even under these somewhat bleak conditions, hope can be seen.

The Iatrogenic process starts with some form of legislative or ideological creep.

Authors such as Jonathan Haidt and Abigail Shrier have identified the pattern. The slide starts from a seemingly harmless point, usually a pattern of ill-ease of dysfunction within society. This pattern is then given a label.

Labelling is often akin to pouring accelerant on a fire, particularly if done by an expert.

Without this perceived professional help, the expert can quickly become redundant in society. The economics of their livelihood can be in doubt. An expert on gender studies needs confusion about gender or else, why would their advice be sought? What do some experts do? They embrace strategies that raise the value of their information. This is best achieved by creating an expectation that there will be alarming consequences if their advice is not sought or acted upon. And that help is not cheap. I call this system, ‘expertocracy’.

Expertocracy can be found lurking, lounging, and licentiously lingering in the halls of bureaucracy. Some may call this the ‘technocracy’, but I resist that label. Many experts are terrible at the technical aspects of their profession.

Being an expert is a matter of opinion based on influence. It is even possible to remain part of the expertocracy while making matters worse.

Why ‘licentiously lingering’?

There is an inherent sensuality about those in the expertocracy. They tend to be emotivists who promise to make people ‘feel better’.

The current plaything of the expertocracy is environmental alarmism.

When pressured on their Net Zero logic, the response from ministers is often shallow, incoherent, and avoidant. They cannot explain the continuation of the nuclear embargo other than insisting ‘trust us’. They avoid at all costs engaging with the salient dialogue of Bjorn Lomborg, Ian Plimer, and Steven Koonin.

Koonin summarises his technical findings:

‘In short, the science is insufficient to make useful projections about how the climate will change over the coming decades, much less what effect our actions will have on it.’

His advice concludes, ‘A prudent step would be to pursue adaptation strategies more vigorously … so the best strategy is to promote economic development and strong institutions in developing countries in order to improve their ability to adapt.’

How can it be that our economic leaders do not understand that giving taxpayers back their own money in the form of ‘subsidies’ decreases the productive value of that money? Why not allow them to keep it?

‘Here sir, give them this money and they will thank you for saving them. There will be an inflation number that looks good…’

That this number is a facsimile of reality rarely matters to them.

Education and counselling are two other extremely important industries that are currently under the thumb of expertocrats. They preach the loudest about an existential crisis surrounding the mental health of our young.

When a young person is unhappy, they can be described as having increased anxiety disorder or experiencing a state of depression (an example of concept creep).

If these emotionally compromised people see their peers being more successful, they claim it is an example of racism or a lack of equality (two concepts primary to critical race theory). Expertocrats working in this field have decided that ‘helping’ means limiting those who can access training and addressing the language used to explain history and social roles.

Shrier often describes how these unreal approaches to the feelings of young people have led them to learn irresponsibility through moral avoidance in decision-making. In her words:

‘In the last generation, all traces of tough love and rule-bound parenting have been supplanted by a more empathetic style… The approach to bad behaviour is always therapeutic – meaning it is non-judgemental.’

Non-judgemental in this context means failing to hold young people responsible for their part in creating problems for others.

As a young teacher from a Sydney-based university told me, ‘You mean, I am allowed to implement consequences?’

The idea that this requires permission helps explain why our classes are failing in their duty to be places of learning and are instead turning into environments that placate the emotive fickleness of the young.

Non-judgementalism in counselling helps young people perpetuate a scenario where they avoid taking responsibility for their role in the pain they are experiencing. Perhaps they did not study hard enough, and that is why they failed a test. Maybe they made poor choices in friendship groups or activities. These sorts of things. Critical Race Theory reinforces the idea that their pain is created by oppression – either from an individual or the ‘structural oppression’ of society.

The wider this ideology spreads, the more dependent people become on experts and their expertocracy.

They seek answers from experts rather than looking at themselves.

Doug Stokes explained: ‘Virtue no longer consists of what you “do or don’t do”; it consists of having the correct opinions … in short, it is a power-play wrapped in a trauma shield; obey me and do as I tell you, or you will harm the vulnerable groups and I will seek to cast you out.’

Stokes posits that a response against the expertocracy is coming.

‘How long will ordinary people put up with being denigrated, told their country is beyond redemption, and accept forms of elite restructuring of the institutions they hold dear?’

Perhaps the battle over the Misinformation and Disinformation Bill will show us if the reaction against the expertocracy is coming … or not

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/09/the-rise-of-the-expertocrats/

Sunday, September 29, 2024

French women are afraid. But the country’s politicians don’t seem to care

In a country that has become accustomed to atrocities in the last decade, the brutal murder of a 19-year-old student has outraged France. The body of the young woman, named only as Philippine, was discovered last Saturday in the Bois de Boulogne, a famous park in the west of Paris. She had gone missing on Friday afternoon, shortly after eating lunch in her university canteen.

On Tuesday evening, the authorities in Geneva, acting on information provided by French police, arrested a man as he arrived on a train from Annecy. The man in custody is a 22-year-old Moroccan who had entered France from Spain on June 13, 2019 on a tourist visa. He was 17 at the time so a child welfare authority took him under their wing. Three months later he raped a 23-year-old student.

In 2021, he was sentenced to seven years in prison but he was released into a retention centre in June this year and ordered to be deported to Morocco. The problem was he had no formal identification papers; France asked Morocco to send the relevant documentation so the deportation order could be processed. It was many weeks before Morocco responded. In the interim, a court had freed the man even though the judge acknowledged he presented a risk. He was ordered to report daily to the local gendarmerie. He didn’t. He made his way to Paris.

Philippine’s cruel misfortune was to cross paths with her killer in the Bois de Boulogne as she enjoyed the September sunshine last Friday.

My 19-year old daughter is a student in Paris. Her hall of residence is 700 metres from the Bois de Boulogne. She likes to stroll around the neighbourhood. All week my mind has been troubled by what might have been.

The right in France reacted to the news of the arrest with a mix of fury and disbelief. ‘Philippine’s life was stolen from her by a Moroccan migrant under an OQTF,’ posted Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally, on social media. ‘This migrant therefore had no place on our soil, but he was able to reoffend with complete impunity. Our justice system is lax, our state is dysfunctional, our leaders let the French live with human bombs. It is time for this government to act.’

An OQTF is a deportation order (obligation de quitter le territoire français), which are issued to foreign nationals who are not wanted in France.

A Senate report in 2023 estimated that there are 700,000 people in France subject to deportation orders, the vast majority of whom are at liberty as there are only 1,800 places in retention centres.

In an interview in 2019, French president Emmanuel Macron acknowledged that only 12 per cent of these orders were being executed but he promised this would soon change. He mentioned the figure of 100 per cent. In fact, the execution rate has fallen to seven percent; the EU average is 30 per cent.

Justice is lax in France

In October 2022, a 12-year-old Parisian girl, Lola, was raped and murdered, allegedly by an Algerian woman who was subject to a deportation order. In April this year, Lola’s 49-year-old father suffered a fatal heart attack. The family’s lawyer attributed his death to the ‘hell’ he had endured since the murder of his daughter.

In the days after Lola’s death, Macron’s government spokesman, Olivier Veran, acknowledged that ‘we obviously need to do better’ in deporting unwanted foreign nationals. But they haven’t done better. Last year in Lille, a retired nurse was raped and murdered by an Ivorian in the country illegally. The victim’s sister-in-law declared that ‘the French people are in danger and the State is not doing its job’.

There was a similar sentiment from Claire, a Parisian who was raped last year in her home by a man who should have been deported. ‘Every week, we hear stories of women assaulted by people subject to OQTFs,’ said Claire. ‘I want to speak out to warn women that we are no longer safe in France, even in a neighbourhood we think is safe.’

Claire was vilified by some on the far-left and accused of racism.

Minutes after details were released about the man arrested in connection with Philippine’s death Sandrine Rousseau, a MP in the left-wing coalition, tweeted that ‘the far right will try to take advantage of this to spread its racist and xenophobic hatred’.

The anger of many millions in France, not just the ‘far-right’, is directed as much against the state as the perpetrators. They agree with Claire that women are no longer safe. A culture of denial runs parallel with institutional inefficiency, putting women in jeopardy.

On Wednesday morning, the Socialist MP Francois Hollande denied the charge of lax justice, insisting that ‘it is severe’. Hollande was the president of the Republic between 2012 and 2017, a period when the rot set in. His justice minister, Christiane Taubira, cancelled the construction of 24,000 additional prison places and then issued a circular to judges ordering them to issue lighter sentences so as not to overcrowd prisons.

The justice minister in Michel Barnier’s new government is Didier Migaud, another Socialist. On Tuesday morning, hours before news of the arrest in Geneva, he had scoffed at suggestions that soft sentencing was endangering its citizens. ‘I believe there’s no such thing as lax justice,’ he said. ‘We need to convince those who think there is.’

Justice is lax in France. Migaud needs to be convinced of it before another family suffers the agony that Philippine’s is experiencing.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/09/french-women-are-afraid-but-the-countrys-politicians-dont-seem-to-care/

BACKGROUND

Home (Index page)

A simple definiton: Conservatism is all about preserving traditions and resisting sudden change

Deep down: The essence of conservatism is caution. The essence of Leftism is anger

Leftists use the rest of us as a tool to make themselves feel better

The extreme Right are actually the extreme Left

"Social justice" is inherently tyrannical

Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party. And now a "Deplorable"

When it comes to political incorrectness, I hit the trifecta. I talk about race, IQ and social class. I have an academic background in all three subjects but that wins me no forgiveness

Access past and present backups for all my current blogs

Some personal memoirs

Memoir highlights

My annual picture page

Subject index to my academic journal articles

Consolidated list of links to all my writings

The sidebar entries here had become very extensive. I have therefore divided them into two. The first half is below and the second half is here -- including some comments on Jews

References to "Leftists" below are to preachers of Leftism, not the ordinary Leftist voter

As a good academic, I define my terms: A Leftist is a person who is so dissatisfied with the way things naturally are that he/she is prepared to use force to make people behave in ways that they otherwise would not.

So an essential feature of Leftism is that they think they have the right to tell other people what to do. They see things in the world that are not ideal and conclude therefore that they have the right to change those things by force. Conservative explanations of why things are not ideal -- and never can be -- fall on deaf ears

That Left and Right are so hostile to one-another is most unfortunate. Broadly, the world needs Leftists to highlight problems and conservatives to solve them. But the Left get angry with conservatives when conservatives point out that there are no good solutions to some problems

Conservatism is as much a respect for reality as a respect for tradition. But tradition summarizes a lot of reality. So conservative thinking must change as reality changes. There is no unchanging body of doctrine in conservatism. Conservatism is an attitude, a realistic attitude. Leftists, by contrast, believe whatever suits them, reality regardless

Giorgia dal Italia -- my favourite politician

What the Left routinely forgets: As Henry Hazlitt pointed out: “The bad economist sees only what immediately strikes the eye; the good economist also looks beyond. The bad economist sees only the direct consequences of a proposed course; the good economist looks also at the longer and indirect consequences. The bad economist sees only what the effect of a given policy has been or will be on one particular group; the good economist inquires also what the effect of the policy will be on all groups.”

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities,” -- Voltaire.

Social justice is injustice. What is just about taking money off people who have earned it and giving it to people who have not earned it? You can call it many things but justice it is not

But it is the aim of all Leftist governments to take money off people who have earned it and give it to people who have not earned it

Envy was once considered to be one of the seven deadly sins before it became one of the most admired virtues under its new name, 'social justice.’ - Thomas Sowell

At the most basic (psychological) level, conservatives are the contented people and Leftists are the discontented people. Conservatives don't think the world is perfect but they can happily live with it. And both those attitudes are largely dispositional, inborn -- which is why they so rarely change

Revolution is the ultimate desideratum for Leftists

Patriotism is a happy thing. No wonder Leftists have difficulties with it

Leftists' manifest desire is to destroy their country from the inside with division and hatred

The Left Doesn't Like Christmas because Christmas is just too happy for them

Former Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo switched from Democrat to the Republican Party, saying, “A conservative is a liberal who was mugged the night before.”

Who is this Leftist? Take his description of his political program: A "declaration of war against the order of things which exist, against the state of things which exist, in a word, against the structure of the world which presently exists". You could hardly get a more change-oriented or revolutionary programme than that. So whose programme was it? Marx? Lenin? Stalin? Trotsky? Mao? No. It was how Hitler described his programme towards the end of "Mein Kampf". And the Left pretend that Hitler was some sort of conservative! Perhaps it not labouring the point also to ask who it was that described his movement as having a 'revolutionary creative will' which had 'no fixed aim, _ no permanency, only eternal change'. It could very easily have been Trotsky or Mao but it was in fact Hitler (O'Sullivan, 1983. p. 138). Clearly, Nazism was nothing more nor less than a racist form of Leftism (rather extreme Leftism at that) and to label it as "Rightist" or anything else is to deny reality.

A rarely acknowledged aim of Leftist policy in a democracy is to deliver dismay and disruption into the lives other people -- whom they regard as "complacent" -- and they are good at achieving that.

As usual, however, it is actually they who are complacent, with a conviction of the rightness and virtue of their own beliefs that merges into arrogance. They regard anyone who disagrees with them with contempt.

Leftists are wolves in sheep's clothing

Liberals are people who don't believe in liberty

Leftist principles are as solid as foam rubber. When they say that there is no such thing as right and wrong they really mean it.

Leftists FEAR the future

There is no dealing with the Left. Their word is no good. You cannot make a deal with someone who thinks lying and stealing are mere tactics, which the Marxists actually brag about

Montesquieu knew Leftists well: "There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice."

Because they claim to have all the answers to society's ills, Communists often seem "cool" to young people

German has a word that describes most Leftists well: "Scheinheilig" - A person who appears to be very kind, soft natured, and filled with pure goodness but behind the facade, has a vile nature. He is seemingly holy but is an unscrupulous person on the inside.

The new faith is very oppressive: Leftist orthodoxy is the new dominant religion of the Western world and it is every bit as bigoted and oppressive as Christianity was at its worst

There are two varieties of authoritarian Leftism. Fascists are soft Leftists, preaching one big happy family -- "Better together" in other words. Communists are hard Leftists, preaching class war.

Equality: The nonsensical and incoherent claim that underlies so much Leftist discourse is "all men are equal". And that is the envier's gospel. It makes not a scrap of sense and shows no contact with reality but it is something that enviers resort to as a way of soothing their envious feelings. They deny the very differences that give them so much heartburn. "Denial" was long ago identified by Freud as a maladaptive psychological defence mechanism and "All men are equal" is a prize example of that. Whatever one thinks of his theories, Freud was undoubtedly an acute observer of people and very few psychologists today would doubt the maladaptive nature of denial as described by Freud.

Socialism is the most evil malady ever to afflict the human brain. The death toll in WWII alone tells you that

“Hanlon’s razor”: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

American conservatives have to struggle to hold their country together against Leftist attempts to destroy it. Maduro's Venezuela is a graphic example of how extremely destructive socialism in government can be

The standard response from Marxist apologists for Stalin and other Communist dictators is to say you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. To which Orwell retorted, ‘Where’s the omelette?’

You do still occasionally see some mention of the old idea that Leftist parties represent the worker. In the case of the U.S. Democrats that is long gone. Now they want to REFORM the worker. No wonder most working class Americans these days vote Republican. Democrats are the party of the minorities and the smug

"The tendency of liberals is to create bodies of men and women — of all classes — detached from tradition, alienated from religion, and susceptible to mass suggestion — mob rule. And a mob will be no less a mob if it is well fed, well clothed, well housed, and well disciplined." —T.S. Eliot

We live in a country where the people own the Government and not in a country where the Government owns the people -- Churchill

"Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others" -- Cicero. See here

The Left have a lot in common with tortoises. They have a thick mental shell that protects them from the reality of the world about them

Definition of a Socialist: Someone who wants everything you have...except your job.

A good article on Leftist hate

The real history of social Darwinism

One cheer for Jon Burge

Leftist writers usually seem quite reasonable and persuasive at first glance. The problem is not what they say but what they don't say. Leftist beliefs are so counterfactual ("all men are equal", "all men are brothers" etc.) that to be a Leftist you have to have a talent for blotting out from your mind facts that don't suit you. And that is what you see in Leftist writing: A very selective view of reality. Facts that disrupt a Leftist story are simply ignored. Leftist writing is cherrypicking on a grand scale

So if ever you read something written by a Leftist that sounds totally reasonable, you have an urgent need to find out what other people say on that topic. The Leftist will almost certainly have told only half the story

Leftists commonly have the Cyclops syndrome: to see with only one eye, in only one dimension and only half of reality.

We conservatives have the facts on our side, which is why Leftists never want to debate us and do their best to shut us up. It's very revealing the way they go to great lengths to suppress conservative speech at universities. Universities should be where the best and brightest Leftists are to be found but even they cannot stand the intellectual challenge that conservatism poses for them. It is clearly a great threat to them. If what we say were ridiculous or wrong, they would grab every opportunity to let us know it

A conservative does not hanker after the new; He hankers after the good. Leftists hanker after the untested

Just one thing is sufficient to tell all and sundry what an unamerican lamebrain Obama is. He pronounced an army corps as an army "corpse" Link here. Can you imagine any previous American president doing that? Many were men with significant personal experience in the armed forces in their youth.

'Gay Pride' parades: You know you live in a great country when "oppressed" people have big, colorful parades.

A favorite Leftist saying sums up the whole of Leftism: "To make an omelette, you've got to break eggs". They want to change some state of affairs and don't care who or what they destroy or damage in the process. They think their alleged good intentions are sufficient to absolve them from all blame for even the most evil deeds

In practical politics, the art of Leftism is to sound good while proposing something destructive

Leftists are the "we know best" people, meaning that they are intrinsically arrogant. Matthew chapter 6 would not be for them. And arrogance leads directly into authoritarianism

Leftism is fundamentally authoritarian. Whether by revolution or by legislation, Leftists aim to change what people can and must do. When in 2008 Obama said that he wanted to "fundamentally transform" America, he was not talking about America's geography or topography but rather about American people. He wanted them to stop doing things that they wanted to do and make them do things that they did not want to do. Can you get a better definition of authoritarianism than that?

And note that an American President is elected to administer the law, not make it. That seems to have escaped Mr Obama

That Leftism is intrinsically authoritarian is not a new insight. It was well understood by none other than Friedrich Engels (Yes. THAT Engels). His clever short essay On authority was written as a reproof to the dreamy Anarchist Left of his day. It concludes: "A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means"

Inside Every Liberal is a Totalitarian Screaming to Get Out

Insight: "A man's admiration for absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him." —Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)

Leftists think of themselves as the new nobility

Many people in literary and academic circles today who once supported Stalin and his heirs are generally held blameless and may even still be admired whereas anybody who gave the slightest hint of support for the similarly brutal Hitler regime is an utter polecat and pariah. Why? Because Hitler's enemies were "only" the Jews whereas Stalin's enemies were those the modern day Left still hates -- people who are doing well for themselves materially. Modern day Leftists understand and excuse Stalin and his supporters because Stalin's hates are their hates.

"Those who see hate everywhere think they're looking thru a window when actually they're looking at a mirror"

Hatred has long been a central pillar of leftist ideologies, premised as they are on trampling individual rights for the sake of a collectivist plan. Karl Marx boasted that he was “the greatest hater of the so-called positive.” In 1923, V.I. Lenin chillingly declared to the Soviet Commissars of Education, “We must teach our children to hate. Hatred is the basis of communism.” In his tract “Left-Wing Communism,” Lenin went so far as to assert that hatred was “the basis of every socialist and Communist movement.”

Karl Marx in his own words

If you understand that Leftism is hate, everything falls into place.

The strongest way of influencing people is to convince them that you will do them some good. Leftists and con-men misuse that

Leftists believe only what they want to believe. So presenting evidence contradicting their beliefs simply enrages them. They do not learn from it

Psychological defence mechanisms such as projection play a large part in Leftist thinking and discourse. So their frantic search for evil in the words and deeds of others is easily understandable. The evil is in themselves.

Leftists who think that they can conjure up paradise out of their own limited brains are simply fools -- arrogant and dangerous fools. They essentially know nothing. Conservatives learn from the thousands of years of human brains that have preceded us -- including the Bible, the ancient Greeks and much else. The death of Socrates is, for instance, an amazing prefiguration of the intolerant 21st century. Ask any conservative stranded in academe about his freedom of speech

Thomas Sowell: “There are no solutions, only trade-offs.” Leftists don't understand that -- which is a major factor behind their simplistic thinking. They just never see the trade-offs. But implementing any Leftist idea will hit us all with the trade-offs

Chesteron's fence -- good conservative thinking

"The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley"[go oft astray] is a well known line from a famous poem by the great Scottish poet, Robert Burns. But the next line is even wiser: "And leave us nought but grief and pain for promised joy". Burns was a Leftist of sorts so he knew how often their theories fail badly.

Mostly, luck happens when opportunity meets preparation.

Most Leftist claims are simply propaganda. Those who utter such claims must know that they are not telling the whole story. Hitler described his Marxist adversaries as "lying with a virtuosity that would bend iron beams". At the risk of ad hominem shrieks, I think that image is too good to remain disused.

Conservatives adapt to the world they live in. Leftists want to change the world to suit themselves

ABOUT

Many people hunger and thirst after righteousness. Some find it in the hatreds of the Left. Others find it in the love of Christ. I don't hunger and thirst after righteousness at all. I hunger and thirst after truth. How old-fashioned can you get?

The kneejerk response of the Green/Left to people who challenge them is to say that the challenger is in the pay of "Big Oil", "Big Business", "Big Pharma", "Exxon-Mobil", "The Pioneer Fund" or some other entity that they see, in their childish way, as a boogeyman. So I think it might be useful for me to point out that I have NEVER received one cent from anybody by way of support for what I write. As a retired person, I live entirely on my own investments. I do not work for anybody and I am not beholden to anybody. And I have NO investments in oil companies, mining companies or "Big Pharma"

UPDATE: Despite my (statistical) aversion to mining stocks, I have recently bought a few shares in BHP -- the world's biggest miner, I gather. I run the grave risk of becoming a speaker of famous last words for saying this but I suspect that BHP is now so big as to be largely immune from the risks that plague most mining companies. I also know of no issue affecting BHP where my writings would have any relevance. The Left seem to have a visceral hatred of miners. I have never quite figured out why.

I imagine that few of my readers will understand it, but I am an unabashed monarchist. And, as someone who was born and bred in a monarchy and who still lives there (i.e. Australia), that gives me no conflicts at all. In theory, one's respect for the monarchy does not depend on who wears the crown but the impeccable behaviour of the present Queen does of course help perpetuate that respect.

I imagine that most Americans might find this rather mad -- but I believe that a constitutional Monarchy is the best form of government presently available. Can a libertarian be a Monarchist? I think so -- and prominent British libertarian Sean Gabb seems to think so too! Long live the Queen! (And note that Australia ranks well above the USA on the Index of Economic freedom. Heh!)

The Australian flag with the Union Jack quartered in it

Throughout Europe there is an association between monarchism and conservatism. It is a little sad that American conservatives do not have access to that satisfaction. So even though Australia is much more distant from Europe (geographically) than the USA is, Australia is in some ways more of an outpost of Europe than America is! Mind you: Australia is not very atypical of its region. Australia lies just South of Asia -- and both Japan and Thailand have greatly respected monarchies. And the demise of the Cambodian monarchy was disastrous for Cambodia

Throughout the world today, possession of a U.S. or U.K. passport is greatly valued. I once shared that view. Developments in recent years have however made me profoundly grateful that I am a 5th generation Australian. My Australian passport is a door into a much less oppressive and much less messed-up place than either the USA or Britain

Following the Sotomayor precedent, I would hope that a wise older white man such as myself with the richness of that experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than someone who hasn’t lived that life.

"Remind me never to get this guy mad at me" -- Instapundit

It seems to be a common view that you cannot talk informatively about a country unless you have been there. I completely reject that view but it is nonetheless likely that some Leftist dimbulb will at some stage aver that any comments I make about politics and events in the USA should not be heeded because I am an Australian who has lived almost all his life in Australia. I am reluctant to pander to such ignorance in the era of the "global village" but for the sake of the argument I might mention that I have visited the USA 3 times -- spending enough time in Los Angeles and NYC to get to know a fair bit about those places at least. I did however get outside those places enough to realize that they are NOT America.

"Intellectual" = Leftist dreamer. I have more publications in the academic journals than almost all "public intellectuals" but I am never called an intellectual and nor would I want to be. Call me a scholar or an academic, however, and I will accept either as a just and earned appellation

Some personal background

My full name is Dr. John Joseph RAY. I am a former university teacher aged 80 at the time of writing in 2024. I was born of Australian pioneer stock in 1943 at Innisfail in the State of Queensland in Australia. I trace my ancestry wholly to the British Isles. After an early education at Innisfail State Rural School and Cairns State High School, I taught myself for matriculation. I took my B.A. in Psychology from the University of Queensland in Brisbane. I then moved to Sydney (in New South Wales, Australia) and took my M.A. in psychology from the University of Sydney in 1969 and my Ph.D. from the School of Behavioural Sciences at Macquarie University in 1974. I first tutored in psychology at Macquarie University and then taught sociology at the University of NSW. My doctorate is in psychology but I taught mainly sociology in my 14 years as a university teacher. In High Schools I taught economics. I have taught in both traditional and "progressive" (low discipline) High Schools. Fuller biographical notes here

I completed the work for my Ph.D. at the end of 1970 but the degree was not awarded until 1974 -- due to some academic nastiness from Seymour Martin Lipset and Fred Emery. A conservative or libertarian who makes it through the academic maze has to be at least twice as good as the average conformist Leftist. Fortunately, I am a born academic.

Despite my great sympathy and respect for Christianity, I am the most complete atheist you could find. I don't even believe that the word "God" is meaningful. I am not at all original in that view, of course. Such views are particularly associated with the noted German philosopher Rudolf Carnap. Unlike Carnap, however, none of my wives have committed suicide

In my teenage years, however, I was fortunate to be immersed (literally) in a very fundamentalist Christian religion. And the heavy Bible study I did at that time left me with lessons for life that have stood me in good stead ever since

Very occasionally in my writings I make reference to the greats of analytical philosophy such as Carnap and Wittgenstein. As philosophy is a heavily Leftist discipline however, I have long awaited an attack from some philosopher accusing me of making coat-trailing references not backed by any real philosophical erudition. I suppose it is encouraging that no such attacks have eventuated but I thought that I should perhaps forestall them anyway -- by pointing out that in my younger days I did complete three full-year courses in analytical philosophy (at 3 different universities!) and that I have had papers on mainstream analytical philosophy topics published in academic journals

IQ and ideology: Most academics are Left-leaning. Why? Because very bright people who have balls go into business, while very bright people with no balls go into academe. I did both with considerable success, which makes me a considerable rarity. Although I am a born academic, I have always been good with money too. My share portfolio even survived the GFC in good shape. The academics hate it that bright people with balls make more money than them.

I have no hesitation in saying that the single book which has influenced me most is the New Testament. And my Scripture blog will show that I know whereof I speak. Some might conclude that I must therefore be a very confused sort of atheist but I can assure everyone that I do not feel the least bit confused. The New Testament is a lighthouse that has illumined the thinking of all sorts of men and women and I am deeply grateful that it has shone on me.

I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age. Conservatism is in touch with reality. Leftism is not.

I imagine that the RD are still sending mailouts to my 1950s address

Most teenagers have sporting and movie posters on their bedroom walls. At age 14 I had a map of Taiwan on my wall.

A small personal note: I have always been very self-confident. I inherited it from my mother, along with my skeptical nature. So I don't need to feed my self-esteem by claiming that I am wiser than others -- which is what Leftists do.

As with conservatives generally, it bothers me not a bit to admit to large gaps in my knowledge and understanding. For instance, I don't know if the slight global warming of the 20th century will resume in the 21st, though I suspect not. And I don't know what a "healthy" diet is, if there is one. Constantly-changing official advice on the matter suggests that nobody knows

As well as being an academic, I am an army man and I am pleased and proud to say that I have worn my country's uniform. Although my service in the Australian army was chiefly noted for its un-notability, I DID join voluntarily in the Vietnam era, I DID reach the rank of Sergeant, and I DID volunteer for a posting in Vietnam. So I think I may be forgiven for saying something that most army men think but which most don't say because they think it is too obvious: The profession of arms is the noblest profession of all because it is the only profession where you offer to lay down your life in performing your duties. Our men fought so that people could say and think what they like but I myself always treat military men with great respect -- respect which in my view is simply their due.

It would be very easy for me to say that I am too much of an individual for the army but I did in fact join the army and enjoy it greatly, as most men do. In my observation, ALL army men are individuals. It is just that they accept discipline in order to be militarily efficient -- which is the whole point of the exercise. But that's too complex for simplistic Leftist thinking, of course

A real army story here

It's amusing that my army service gives me honour among conservatives but contempt from Leftists. I don't weep at all about the latter. I am still in touch with some of the fine people I served with over 50 years ago. The army is like that

This is just a bit of romanticism but I do have permanently located by the head of my bed a genuine century-old British army cavalry sword. It is still a real weapon. I was not in the cavalry but I see that sword as a symbol of many things. I want it to be beside my bed when I die

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day and there is JUST ONE saying of Hitler's that I rather like. It may not even be original to him but it is found in chapter 2 of Mein Kampf (published in 1925): "Widerstaende sind nicht da, dass man vor ihnen kapituliert, sondern dass man sie bricht". The equivalent English saying is "Difficulties exist to be overcome" and that traces back at least to the 1920s -- with attributions to Montessori and others. Hitler's metaphor is however one of smashing barriers rather than of politely hopping over them and I am myself certainly more outspoken than polite. Hitler's colloquial Southern German is notoriously difficult to translate but I think I can manage a reasonable translation of that saying: "Resistance is there not for us to capitulate to but for us to break". I am quite sure that I don't have anything like that degree of determination in my own life but it seems to me to be a good attitude in general anyway

And something that was perceptive comes from the same chapter. Hitler said that the doctrines of the interwar Social Democrats (mainstream leftists) of Vienna were "comprised of egotism and hate". Not much has changed

I have used many sites to post my writings over the years and many have gone bad on me for various reasons. So if you click on a link here to my other writings you may get a "page not found" response if the link was put up some time before the present. All is not lost, however. All my writings have been reposted elsewhere. If you do strike a failed link, just take the filename (the last part of the link) and add it to the address of any of my current home pages and -- Voila! -- you should find the article concerned.

COMMENTS: I have gradually added comments facilities to all my blogs. The comments I get are interesting. They are mostly from Leftists and most consist either of abuse or mere assertions. Reasoned arguments backed up by references to supporting evidence are almost unheard of from Leftists. Needless to say, I just delete such useless comments.

You can email me here (Hotmail address). In emailing me, you can address me as "John", "Jon", "Dr. Ray" or "JR" and that will be fine -- but my preference is for "JR" -- and that preference has NOTHING to do with an American soap opera that featured a character who was referred to in that way

SIDEBAR EXTENSION HERE

DETAILS OF REGULARLY UPDATED BLOGS BY JOHN RAY:

"Tongue Tied"
"Dissecting Leftism"
"Australian Politics"
"Education Watch International"
"Political Correctness Watch"
"Greenie Watch"
Western Heart

BLOGS OCCASIONALLY UPDATED:

"Marx & Engels in their own words"
"A scripture blog"
"Recipes"
"Some memoirs"
To be continued ....
Coral reef compendium.
Queensland Police
Australian Police News
Paralipomena (3)
Of Interest
Dagmar Schellenberger
My alternative Wikipedia

BLOGS NO LONGER BEING UPDATED

"Food & Health Skeptic"
"Eye on Britain"
"Immigration Watch International".
"Leftists as Elitists"
Socialized Medicine
OF INTEREST (2)
QANTAS -- A dying octopus
BRIAN LEITER (Ladderman)
Obama Watch
Obama Watch (2)
Dissecting Leftism -- Large font site
Michael Darby
Paralipomena (2)
AGL -- A bumbling monster
Telstra/Bigpond follies
Optus bungling
Vodafrauds (vodafone)
Bank of Queensland blues

There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)

Some more useful links

Alt archives for "Dissecting Leftism" here or here
Longer Academic Papers
Johnray links
Academic home page
Academic Backup Page
General Backup
General Backup 2
Dagmar Schellenberger
My alternative Wikipedia

Selected reading

MONOGRAPH ON LEFTISM

CONSERVATISM AS HERESY

A COMPREHENSIVE SURVEY OF NAZISM

Rightism defined
Leftist Churches
Leftist Racism
Fascism is Leftist
Hitler a socialist
Leftism is authoritarian
James on Leftism
Irbe on Leftism
Beltt on Leftism
Lakoff
Van Hiel
Sidanius
Kruglanski
Pyszczynski et al.

Cautionary blogs about big Australian organizations:

TELSTRA
OPTUS
VODAFONE
AGL
Bank of Queensland
Queensland Police
Australian police news
QANTAS, a dying octopus

INTERESTING BLOGS by others
(My frequent reads are starred)

10 o'clock scholar
Agitator*
AMCGLTD
American Thinker
ASTUTE BLOGGERS
Baby Troll
Bad Eagle
Belmont Club*
Betsy's Page
Bill Keezer
Blackfive
Bleeding Brain
BLOGGER NEWS
Blowhards
Bob McCarty
Booker Rising
Brian Leiter scrutinized
Brothers Judd*
Brussels Journal
Bullied and Badgered, Pressured and Purged
Bureaucrash
Candle in dark
Catallarchy*
Classical Values
Clayton Cramer*
Climate audit
Climate science
Colby Cosh
Cold Fury
Common-sense & Wonder*
Community Pride Childcare
(Clearwater, Florida)
Confront the Left
Conservative Grapevine
Conservative Oasis
Conservative Political Forum
Conservatives Anonymous
Critical Mass
Cronaca*
Daily Caller
Danegerus
Dead Cat Bounce
Dean's World
Dhimmi Watch
Discover the networks
Discriminations
Dodge Blog
Dr Helen
Dr Sanity
Drunkablog
Ed Driscoll
Dyspepsia
Eddy Rants
Electric Venom
Endiana
Enter Stage Right
Eugene Undergound
Evangelical Ecologist
Fighting in the Shade
Find the best gun
Fourth Rail
Free Patriot
Gates of Vienna
Gay and Right
Gene Expression*
Ghost of Flea
Global warming & Climate
Gold Dog
Grumpy Old Sod
Hack Wilson
Hall of Record
Heretical Ideas
Hitler's Leftism
Hugh Hewitt
Hummers & Cigarettes
IMAO
Icecap
Inductivist
Instapunk
Intellectual Conservative
Interested Participant
Jihad Watch
Jim Kalb
Junk Food science
Junk Science
Just One Minute
KBJ
Knowledge is Power
Ladybird Deed
La Shawn
Laudator
Libertyphile
Lone Wacko
Lubos Motl
Luskin
MA firearm safety
Main Street Radical
Mangan
Margaret Thatcher Foundation
Maverick Philosopher
Medicine World
Michelle Malkin
Moderate Voice
Moorewatch
National Center
National Scene
Neo Con Blogger
Never Yet Melted
New Zeal
Northeastern Intelligence Network
Not PC
On the Right Side
Orator
Overlawyered
Parable Man
ParaPundit*
Pedestrian Infidel
Poli Pundit
Prof Bainbridge
Promethean Antagonist
Qando
Qohel
Random Observations
Rand Simberg
Random Jottings
Red State
Rhodey
Rhymes with Right
Right Nation
Right Thinking
Right Wing news
Roadkill
Ron Hebron
Rottweiler
Schansberg
SCSU Scholars*
Sharp Blades
Sharp Knife
Should Know
Shrinkwrapped
Silent Running
Smallest Minority
Squander 2
Steve Sailer
Stop the ACLU
Stuart Buck
Talking Head
Tim Worstall
Truth and consequences
Two-Four Net
Urban Conservative
Urgent Agenda
Vdare blog
View from Right
Viking Pundit
Vodka Pundit
Watt's up with that
Western Standard
Bill Whittle
What If
WICKED THOUGHTS*
Wiki Law
Winds of Change
Wizbang
World of Reason
World Terrorism news

Education Blogs

Early Childhood Education
Education Bug
Eduwonk
Joanne Jacobs*
Marc Miyake*

Economics Blogs

Adam Smith
Arnold Kling
Chicago Boyz
Cafe Hayek
Econopundit
Environmental Economics
Jane Galt
S. Karlson
D. Luskin
Marginal Revolution
Mises Inst.

Australian Blogs

A E Brain
Brookes News
Catallaxy
Fortress Australia
Kev Gillett
Hissink File
ICJS*
Oz Conservative
Slattery
Tim Blair
WESTERN HEART*
Cyclone's Sketchblog

England

Anglo Austrian
Burning our Money
Campaign Against Political Correctness
England Project
Norm Geras
House of Dumb
IQ & PC
Limbic Nutrition
Majority Rights*
NHS Doctor
Policeman
Samizdata
Sean Gabb
Sterling Times
Englishman's Castle

Scotland

Freedom & Whisky
A Place to Stand

ISRAEL

IsraPundit
Steven Plaut
Think Israel

NOTE: The archives provided by blogspot below are rather inconvenient. They break each month up into small bits. If you want to scan whole months at a time, the backup archives will suit better. See here or here