ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY

Stephen Karlson has been writing a lot about the absurdities of academic life lately and Anthropology & Economics has taken up his question about why people do "useless" social science and humanities courses at universities -- and why they do Ph.D.s in particular. I actually think that most (say 95%) of the social science and humanities Ph.D. candidates have no choice. They are psychologically unfit for the real world or a real academic discipline and their "studies" are just a sort of sheltered workshop for them -- which is why they often take a long time to get the degrees concerned and which is why they rely a lot on post-doc programs after that. And it sure beats driving a cab. As I myself have done both (driven a cab and gotten a social science Ph.D.) I guess I know a little about it all. I myself did well in both academe and in business but that seems to be extremely rare. Most social science and humanities academics would not last 5 minutes in business.

And I notice that Marginal Revolution takes seriously the claim by Anthropology & Economics to the effect that anthropology and economics are just two different ways of looking at human values. I taught for 12 years in a university Department of Sociology & Anthropology and I have also taught economics so maybe I know a bit about that too. From my observations, both Sociology and Anthropology are 95% Marxist claptrap -- in no way comparable with economics. Margaret Mead, the lying Leftist propagandist, was not so much an exception in Anthropology as the rule. It has also recently come to light that modern anthropology actually started out on the basis of deliberately fraudulent work designed to prop up Leftist beliefs. Franz Boas was the fraudster concerned. See also here

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ELSEWHERE

Why is it OK to bomb and remove from office one brutal Fascist dictator (Milosevic) but not OK to bomb and remove from office another brutal Fascist dictator (Saddam)? These three prominent Democrats don't seem to be able to tell us but there is no doubt that they do see the bombing of the Christian Serbs as OK but not the bombing of Muslim Iraqis. Not really surprising, given the well-known Democrat hatred of Christians.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them some concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion. Voters, unfortunately, often believe the compassion is genuine

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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INFO ABOUT THIS BLOG

I go to some lengths to make this blog as easy to read as possible. I usually post only once a day (around 9am my time) and I use part of the rest of the time to ensure that I have expressed everything that I want to say as simply and clearly and accurately as possible. I also use no graphics so that the site always loads as quickly as blogspot will allow. There are quite a few blogs that I don't visit because they are so slow to load -- so I do my best to avoid that folly. On the odd occasion that I do want to use a graphic I post it elsewhere and refer to it with a link.

I have never however worked out what font is best to use. A big font makes it hard for readers to scan a page quickly and a small font may be difficult to read for those without 20/20 vision. I do wonder whether the font I am using here may be too small. If it is a bit small, there is an alternative. Because it still has over 70 links going to it from other blogs, I have resumed posting on my old site as well as continuing to post on my current site. And I use a somewhat larger font on my old site. The only other difference between my current site and my old site is that I post everything about half a day later on my old site. So choose your font!

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ELSEWHERE

Norm Weatherby has been having a discussion with the Sodakmonk. The monk seems to think that the main danger from militant Islam is spiritual. Norm disagrees emphatically.

David Kaspar notes some unusual sense from an Iraqi leader: "Amin has some advice for Arab sovereigns: they should follow George W. Bush's example and apologize for the crimes they've committed. "Washington is showing us how a democracy deals with criminal behavior," Amin says. "We should learn from this, not only here in Iraq, but throughout the Arab world."

America: the most polite nation in history? "American athletes have been warned not to wave the U.S. flag during their medal celebrations at this summer's Olympic Games in Athens, for fear of provoking crowd hostility and harming the country's already-battered public image. The spectacle of victorious athletes grabbing a national flag and parading it around the stadium is a familiar part of international sporting competition, but U.S. Olympic officials have ordered their 550-strong team to exercise restraint and avoid any jingoistic behavior. The plan is part of a charm offensive aimed at repairing the country's international reputation after the deepening crisis in Iraq"

Iraq's missing refugees: "the United States and the international community were very well-prepared for one crisis that never occurred: a massive outflow of refugees from Iraq to other countries. Refugees had streamed out of Iraq during the first Gulf War, and it was assumed the same thing would happen in the second" I think that's called voting with your feet.

Good to see: "Conservative political action committee RightMarch.com successfully recruited former Republican Utah state senator Matt Throckmorton to run against incumbent U.S. Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UT) in the upcoming primary to serve as 'a wake-up call' to all liberal Republican legislators who run as Republicans but subsequently abandon their conservative principles once they are elected into office. RightMarch.com claims credit for persuading Utah's GOP state convention delegates to 'put Chris Cannon last' by not electing him to another term. In just three days of fundraising, RightMarch.com claims it has been able to generate $7,500 in online donations ... calling this a 'victory cry for true conservative Republicans and a wake-up call to RINOs [Republicans In Name Only] ...'"

The slow suicide: "The government employee's perverted frame of reference ... becomes antithetical to the principles of freedom, liberty and limited government that are enshrined in the American Constitution and the Republican Party platform. And yet, the Republican Party leadership ... has been steadily increasing the population of those most likely to be hostile to the party's stated goals. When George Delano took office in 2001, government employees at federal, state and local levels consisted of 18.9 percent of the national labor force. Three years later, in 2004, that percentage has increased to 20.1 percent, an increase of 670,000 government workers in a time when total employment has dropped by almost 3 million."

Compulsion does not work: "In 1953, right before the decision in Brown v. Board of Education, Atlanta Public Schools consisted of 600 schools serving 18,664 students. Black and white students were kept apart by the government. Fifty years after Brown, APS consists of 96 much larger schools serving 55,812 students of all races, and more than three quarters of them are still in schools where one race has a 90 percent majority. Atlanta's private schools today draw students from the same basic geographic area as APS, yet they are significantly less segregated than are the public schools. How can this be?"

More brainless education spending: "Initiative 884 calls for a 15.4 percent sales tax increase to raise one billion dollars a year in additional funding for our state's education system. Backers of the measure promise taxpayers the expenditures would be targeted, accountable and efficient. Unfortunately, they are wrong. Even if they could guarantee the money would be used for the programs proponents advertise, the programs themselves have shown little or no promise of increased academic achievement, which is the point of the initiative."

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them some concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion. Voters, unfortunately, often believe the compassion is genuine

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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CONSERVATISM

Hayek, like Burke, came to the profoundly conservative conclusion that human society is too complex to be modelled by anyone or be well described by any theory: "Hayek initially thought the dividing line between possible and impossible positivism lay in the distinction between natural sciences and social sciences, but by the 1950s he had come to understand that the issue was really one of complexity. A positivist, predictive science is possible only for phenomena, whether human or natural, that are relatively simple- particle physics, for example. One can never fully model and predict complex phenomena such as the spontaneous orders produced by the interactions of simpler agents. These orders include the human brain, whose higher functions cannot possibly be inferred from its physical substratum, as well as ecosystems and, of course, markets, cultures, and other human institutions."

Capitalism makes you happier than socialism does: "Lottery winners, trust-fund babies and others who get their money without working for it do not get as much satisfaction from their cash as those who earn it, a study of the pleasure centre in people's brains suggests. Emory University researchers measured brain activity in the striatum - the part of the brain associated with reward processing and pleasure.... "When you have to do things for your reward, it's clearly more important to the brain," said Greg Berns, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioural science."

Job discrimination: "A recent headline about opposition to a new Louisiana state job application presents the perfect basis on which to explain the ridiculousness of the concept of 'employment discrimination,' ... the burdens that such a policy imposes on market participants, the inherently aggressive nature of addressing the issue through public policy, and how anti-discrimination legislation promotes slavery.... Demonizing 'preference,' a key characteristic of all human action, by identifying it as an intrinsic evil and labeling it 'discrimination,' is absurd on numerous grounds..... Such policies indeed violently rob individuals, under a threat of force, of their right to their property and mutually beneficial exchanges of that property."

Vouchers spur public schools to compete: "Competition is, in some circles, a much-derided word. Psychologists worry about the effects competition has on the mental and emotional health of children. Others become concerned when a parent takes competition too far, and fights break out at hockey or soccer games. Yet competition is, as Cicero observed, not about crushing one's opponent."

A true Christian conservative: "I attended the Memorial Service of Rev. Joseph Sheley yesterday. As I listened to speaker after speaker talk about Joe, it was clear that he was one of those who went to be with his Lord owning that most precious of possessions - a good name. Joe was not a flashy man. He was not one to push himself forward or to try to gain attention for himself. And he didn't have much in terms of this world's wealth. But he was a very rich man. He was rich in family who treasured him... Joe's children, grand-children, and great grand-children loved him, and with good reason. He loved them with all his heart, and taught them important life lessons that will stand them in good stead for as long as they walk the earth... He was rich in the esteem in which others held him. That was evident in the faces of the many who came to honor him at his memorial service... He accomplished many things for the Lord about which he could have boasted. I never heard him do so".

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ELSEWHERE

Jeff Jacoby: "This is the week that same-sex marriage comes to Massachusetts, and thus to the United States. The fundamental building block of civilization is about to undergo a radical change -- a change not only unsupported by a clear consensus, but opposed by a majority of American adults.... Chief Justice Margaret Marshall and three of her colleagues ruled in the Goodridge case last November that limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples infringes the freedom and equality protected by the Massachusetts Constitution. The job of the judiciary is to interpret the law, but this was no mere interpretation. It was a wholesale rewriting of the law to make it say and mean things it had never said or meant before. In effect, Goodridge was a constitutional amendment dictated from the bench. It was something the Massachusetts Constitution expressly forbids: an exercise by the judiciary of legislative and executive power"

Does Hollywood unfairly "stereotype" Arabs? "Unsurprisingly, screenwriters focus on realities well known to their audience, and there is simply no escaping the fact that the Middle East abounds in terrorist groups. That is why the action in, for example, GI Jane (1997), takes place in Libya, rather than Costa Rica. That is why the terrorists in True Lies are Middle Eastern, rather than Scandinavian."

I have just put up Chris Brand's latests postings here. He notes a recent strong academic finding showing that anti-social behaviour (which generally means criminality) is 70% inherited! It is yet another bit of scientific evidence showing that criminals are born, not made -- which is the exact opposite of what Leftists preach. See also here.

Ally Eskin has revised her template so her blog is a lot easier to read now. And it's worth reading! Dick McDonald continues to post lots of trenchant comments on current events too. I don't comment a lot on day-to-day politics but Dick certainly does. And he generally gets it pretty right in my opinion.

Thanks to some constructive comments from one of my readers, I have just put up a further big upgrade to my article on why elites tend to be Leftist. I don't foresee any further revisions to the article so I have also now put up a copy of it that is viewable in China.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them some concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion. Voters, unfortunately, often believe the compassion is genuine

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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THE WEDDING

Many Americans may be unaware that the Crown Prince of Denmark has just married an Australian girl. The event got big coverage in much of Europe (and, of course, in Australia) and was even well-covered in China, but I believe that American coverage was minimal. I guess Americans are not too keen on Royalty. Was there a revolution or something? Australia is a monarchy, however, and I have always been a strong monarchist so I found it interesting and pleasing that the wedding got a lot of coverage around the world. Who says that monarchy is an anachronistic irrelevance? If it is, how come so many people watched a wedding in an ancient European monarchy? It was a beautiful show too, of course. Lots of Australian women in particular were absolutely glued to their TVs while it was all happening. So much nicer than watching anything to do with Iraq.

And, if I have any readers in Scotland, I would be pleased to hear whether I guess right in thinking that the wedding would have got blanket coverage in Scotland too. Why? Well, quite apart from normal Scottish sentimentality, the father of the bride is a Scotsman with a Scottish accent who wore the kilt for the occasion! There would have been not a dry eye in many Scottish homes, I think. I felt a bit teary myself, given my Scottish heritage.

And the wedding is another example of how pervasive the Australian diaspora is in the world. I think most people are aware of the big Australian presence in Hollywood these days and people who take an interest in business will be aware that Australians run both Coca Cola and McDonald's, but having an Australian as the future Queen of Denmark does rather set the seal on what a large and successful diaspora it is. And, unlike most diasporas, Australians are not driven abroad by poverty, warfare, persecution etc. They are just adventurous.

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ELSEWHERE

The Left of politics are of course doing everything within their power to blame the Bush administration for the prisoner abuse affair. There is a typical example here -- which says that the Guantanamo Bay detentions created an "atmosphere of lawlessness" in the U.S. Army and that led to the prisoner abuses. What utter rot! The U.S. armed forces have been amazingly disciplined in obeying their extremely strict "rules of engagement". If people dance in the street when you are attacked, do you fire on them? Most armies would. Most people would. But the U.S. army never has. The prisoner abuse affair is a very small lapse in that context. Most armies in history could be accused of far worse.

Things are getting better in the USA: "Several social ills that loomed large in recent decades and seemed intractable have also turned around abruptly. Crime is way down: In Fort Apache, the Bronx, the subject of a popular 1981 film, the number of murders per year in the 1970s was about 130; in 2001, the figure was 12. During roughly the same period the number of traffic deaths per year in America fell about 10,000 or roughly 20 percent-even though the number of drivers has increased, the number of miles we drive has grown enormously, and we own more cars, almost one per adult. And despite all that driving, air quality is everywhere improved, as are all other forms of pollution, except for emission of greenhouse gases. Our progress is about a decade ahead of Europe 's, the usual rants in international forums notwithstanding. Our national mood is not disastrous either: The U.S. suicide rate is one-half of France's" Yet despite that, not everyone is happy. Why? See here and here and here and here. There is also a short article on the subject here

A major applied psychology organization says that how happy you are is 50% genetically inherited. Those naughty genetics again! Every Leftist will tell you that we just need to abolish things like inequality, racism and patriarchy for us all to be happy.

Fraudulent beggars:. I saw [the beggar] eyeing me up, but he didn't recognise me. So, as he approached, I asked him for $5 for my train fare. Stunned, he said no.... A doe-eyed plea for spare change for something to eat ended with fierce obscenities being yelled at me when I offered to buy her a hamburger instead of hand over my money."

"Yesterday the Humane Society of the United States, the nation's richest animal rights organization, named long-time vice president Wayne Pacelle as its new chief executive. Pacelle will have virtually unfettered control over the group's $96 million bank account. If you think this change amounts to a different leader's rubber-stamp on efforts to help puppies and kittens, think again. HSUS doesn't operate a single animal shelter, and it is completely unrelated to the local 'Humane Society' in your home town. In reality, it's a gigantic animal-rights lobbying group, focusing more and more on the food we eat. Wayne Pacelle is a strict, near-religious vegan, whose goal is to create 'a National Rifle Association of the animal rights movement.'"

A war on everything: "For all practical purposes, every time the State touches something, it makes war on it, even if it means to make things better. The 'war' on discrimination through affirmative action? It has instead set black against white, women against men, gay against straight, as each tries to use the political process to obtain power over the others. The road to Hell, obviously, is paved with good intentions. When the personal becomes the political, you can be sure war is to follow."

The Left like to portray the Bush administration as a coven of Christian fundamentalists but the Bush administration's has shown "Clintonian" tolerance of its own homosexual diplomats in Roumania.

PID has some more comments on the Zimbardo experiment and the Iraqi prisoner mistreatment affair.

The Policeman's blog continues to put up dreadful stories of the bureaucratic quagmire that is British policing today. Not much policing gets done.

A very pleased-looking Peter Cuthbertson has a photo of himself here with one of the two greatest visionaries of the 20th century.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them some concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion. Voters, unfortunately, often believe the compassion is genuine

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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IRAQ

I mentioned on 11th. the relevance of the famous Zimbardo experiment to an understanding of the Iraqi prisoner mistreatment affair. There is a more extensive account of the lessons to be learned from it here

Instant solutions in Iraq unrealistic "There were many Americans who earnestly believed after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that World War II was practically over. Now that the massive economic power of the United States was being directed against the Axis, the war could be won in just a few months. The rest was, in Churchill's later words, "merely the proper application of overwhelming force."

Iraq's new ruler? "As Mr. Saleh took command on April 30, the stocky general with a Saddam-style mustache wore his Saddam-era uniform, complete with maroon beret. In a scene broadcast across Iraq, he shook hands with Marine commanders and had the old Iraqi flag raised, to the cheers of onlookers. He set the tone immediately by declaring an intent to impose security and stability in Fallujah "without the need for the American army, which the people of Fallujah reject."

Victory is seldom pretty: "Watching the amazing ugliness and incoherence of the Iraqi battlefront of the war on terror, it is easy to understand Otto Von Bismark's comment that a special providence watches out for drunks, fools and the United States of America. Why? Because America is winning the war on terror. How? By slowly but surely making the Middle East safe for democracy. Indeed, it is even possible to argue that the American stumbling in Iraq is providing a cover under which reform can be presented as an alternative, even a rebuke, to American military power. In other words, the U.S. is winning the way it has often won, ugly."

"The Oil for Food scandal is already undermining the U.N.'s ability to contribute usefully to the reconstruction of a liberated Iraq. Thanks to the scandal, Iraqi citizens are reported to be very skeptical of the U.N. -- and rightfully so, as it is now clear that Oil for Food money which was supposed to be feeding them was instead employed for bribes and pay-offs with billions going to Saddam, himself, and other enemies of peace, possibly even including Al Qaeda."

The British role: "The view of this newspaper is that Britain's place is in the wider community of free, English-speaking peoples - the "Anglosphere".... The case for the Atlantic alliance is simple. More often than not, our interests and the Americans' coincide. Like them, we have an interest in stability and free trade among nations. This makes us especially hostile to local bullies and ready, if necessary, to deploy proportionate force against them. The Americans have invaded Iraq twice on these grounds; we have intervened no fewer than seven times."

The BBC: "Over the past few days, the BBC’s virulent bias over Iraq, America and Israel has gone into an utterly astounding overdrive. The scandal over the ill-treatment of Iraqi prisoners has clearly destroyed the last vestiges of any attempt at fairness as hysteria has descended on our public disservice broadcaster."

Toby Harnden talks to an anti-war journalist who wants to see more Iraqis die - so that Bush will be thrown out in November.

V.D. Hanson: "The 20th century should have taught the citizens of liberal democracies the catastrophic consequences of placating tyrants... What eventually contained Stalinism was the Truman Doctrine, NATO and nuclear deterrence--not the United Nations-- and what destroyed its legacy was Ronald Reagan's assertiveness, not Jimmy Carter's accommodation or Richard Nixon's detente."

Dick McDonald has some good posts on Iraq up at the moment.

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ELSEWHERE

It seems that the American Catholic bishops are so pro-Democrat that they are about to fold even on the homosexual marriage issue. See here for the latest.

Sam Francis: "Big Business and its bottomless appetite for cheap labor are by no means the only pillars of the Open Borders Lobby that has helped flood the country with Third World immigrants. There are also the churches, themselves ever hungry for new members as their own religious liberalism drives away their old members."

An American Benedictine monk has some excellent comments on Leftist self-righteousness: "In my personal experience, people of strong character are quick to admit their own faults. People who constantly need to praise themselves are insecure or emotionally needy. Emotionally needy people often interpret any disagreement with them as "hate speech". And this leads to a very, very unhealthy escalation of overheated rhetoric in public debates"

Hilarious! Given their pervasive Leftism, Canadians LOVE indigenous people and HATE private health care. So what happens when indigenous people want to set up private health care? You guessed it: That love is soon shown for the sham it it. "YOU MUST CONFORM" is what Leftists really believe in. Natalie Solent has some good comments.

Keith Burgess-Jackson is an animal lover but he says: "With friends like PETA, animals don’t need enemies."

The wicked one has some more doggy wisdom for us.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them some concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion. Voters, unfortunately, often believe the compassion is genuine

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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AN ANNIVERSARY TO BE MOURNED

When government of the people, by the people perished in the USA

"May 17 is the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court decision that used federal force to integrate public schools in the US... Many on the liberal-left and in black civil rights circles have soured on Brown and regard the decision as contributing little to the "black freedom struggle" and even as a disservice to blacks.... Derrick Bell, a former NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorney, has written that Brown was based on unwarranted faith in integrationist ideals and has harmed black education....

Brown still matters to the left, Garrow writes, because the power the Court seized in its Brown ruling can be used to mandate homosexual marriage. The Massachusetts court has taken the lead, and on May 17 homosexuals will be able to obtain state marriage licenses. This, Garrow writes, is a fitting tribute to Brown's constitutional vision on its 50th anniversary. Whether one looks with favor or disfavor on homosexual marriage, Garrow is correct. Brown gave the judiciary the power to impose its morality on society, regardless of legislation or societal values....

Brown did something else. It ushered in kritarchy - government by judges - as Supreme Court Justice Stanley Reed recognized. Kritarchy is fundamentally at odds with the separation of powers and the character of the American political system. Now that judges rule, the fight over Court appointments has become a life and death matter for the two political parties.

Even worse, in place of good will and persuasion Brown substituted coercion as the basis for reform. May 17, 1954, is a day of infamy, because it is the day Marxism triumphed over liberalism in America.

Americans have forgotten that Brown was based in sociology, not in law. This was widely recognized at the time. "A sociological Decision: Court Founded Its Segregation Ruling On Hearts and Minds Rather Than Laws," read a New York Times headline on May 18, 1954. James Reston commented that "the Court's opinion reads more like an expert paper on sociology." Columbia Law professor Herbert Wechsler, a consultant to the NAACP in the case, said that Brown would have to be "accepted on faith" as there was no constitutional principle that justifies the ruling.

That's because the Brown decision was based on Swedish socialist Gunnar Myrdal's argument that all Americans (even Northeast Liberals) are so racist that democracy would forever uphold segregation. To get rid of the great evil, an elite would have to seize power and rescue America from immorality."

More of the above article here

It is also amusing to read the rather desperate piece of propaganda here which starts out trumpeting the success of school integration in mainly white Topeka, Kansas but which ends up admitting that the supposed aim -- better black educational achievement -- has not been attained and that there have been disadvantages as well as advantages in integration.

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ELSEWHERE

My post of 8th. on why elites tend to be Leftist was advertised on the most recent "Carnival of the Vanities" and seems to have evoked a lot of interest -- judging by the hundreds of extra hits I got on Thursday. I have therefore posted a much expanded version of the post here -- in which I point to the important role of the educational system in producing Leftist elites.

Sounds accurate to me: "KISS bass player Gene Simmons has caused an uproar among Australia's Muslim community by launching an attack on Islamic culture while in Melbourne. The lizard-tongued rock god who is touring Australia with the world's most enduring glam rock band launched an attack on Muslim extremists during an interview on Melbourne's 3AW radio - including comments which were labelled inaccurate. "Extremism believes that it's okay to strap bombs on to your children and send them to paradise and whatever else and to behead people," he said yesterday. The Israeli-born US musician went on to say Islam was a "vile culture" that treated women worse than dogs."

Open Stalinism still thrives among U.S. elites: "If you believe the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) - an organization that extols the virtues of communism and detests capitalism - North Korea is nearly a paradise. A nation where a peace-loving president governs a land of contented people, living a happy existence, with sustenance not even a tertiary concern. On September 29th, 2003, a self-appointed group of representatives of the United States of America traveled to North Korea to build a bridge between the two nations. The group consisted of four NLG lawyers... The NLG repeatedly claims there is no starvation in the DPRK."

Norm Weatherby outlines a much tougher approach to the war on Islamic terrorism than the approach the U.S. is presently taking. I myself think that, like the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima, a tougher approach would save a lot more lives in the end.

Good news from Qom: ""Either officials change their methods and give freedom to the people, and stop interfering in elections, or the people will rise up with another revolution," Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri told me"

Keith Burgess-Jackson is obviously very cheerful and positive. He even has a post that praises the U.S. Postal Service! Brave man. He is happy that a letter posted on Monday arrives on Thursday. In Australia, it would USUALLY arrive on Tuesday. He also praises highly this article about bringing up boys. Maybe boys are different in Australia and in America but I would have thought that MOST boys are not like the two extreme types described there. They seem like two variants of the underclass to me. But, aside from that, Keith has helped two fine women to start blogging recently -- Ally Eskin and Peg Kaplan. Go visit!

The wicked one has the 2004 Darwin "awards" up.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them some concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion. Voters, unfortunately, often believe the compassion is genuine

Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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Update from a reader in Denmark -- in response to my post about today's Royal wedding and the award of the "Order of the Elephant" to the Princess-to-be:

"This is the highest order Denmark can dish out, she will join a small brotherhood of other mainly slim recipients, like Nicolae Ceausescu... NB: Breaking news on three channels, Mary dropped her hat!!!!! I can't wait for the endless repeats..."

FROM BROOKES NEWS

Beijing makes its move in Latin America Beijing has been using Cuba's Fidel Castro as a means to subvert South America and Central America while President Bush has been waging war against terrorism.
Former diplomat savages Howard and Bush over the liberation of Iraq Richard Woolcott, a retired Australian diplomat, savaged Howard and Bush for liberating the Iraqi people from the sadistic Saddam Hussein. This brilliant diplomat now argues that only the UN can save the Iraqi people from "catastrophe".
Kerry's Vietnam mates claim he is unfit to be President 189 of Kerry's fellow veterans supported an open letter stating that he was not fit to be president. As expected, the mainstream media gave it a miss.
US trade deficits and foreign debt: problems or symptoms? The size of the U.S. deficit is causing alarm among some commentators who are using it to draw attention to America's foreign debt. But are trade deficits and foreign debt real problems or is something else at work?
Austrian economics and privatisation Socialists cannot grasp the benefits of privatization because they don't understand the nature of markets. It's not enough to empirically show that privatization has generated benefits. One must explain why free markets produce these results: this is where Austrian economics has been exceptionally successful.
Costs don't determine telecommunication prices It is what consumers pay for the final product that determines the prices of inputs. Therefore the view that prices must reflect costs is utterly fallacious.

Details here

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Amusing: Australian Mary Donaldson is about to become a Princess of Denmark. In honour of the occasion, the Danes have just awarded her the "Order of the Elephant". A dubious honour? I thought she was quite slim myself.

Rather Biased has comprehensive comments on the refusal by CBS News and other mainstream media to broadcast pictures of Islamic barbarism (Berg's beheading) even though they featured pictures of American military police treating terrorist prisoners roughly. As one commenter said: "One of the few similarities between this war and Viet Nam is the consistently anti-American coverage the public is being fed by the media". Jeff Jacoby's latest column sums it up well too.

I am indebted to Brian Micklethwait (post of 6th) for pointing out that the British Left (the Whigs) of Napoleon's days so admired Napoleon that they had a lifelong hatred of the man who defeated him -- The Duke of Wellington of Waterloo fame. The Leftist love for its country's enemies goes back a long way. They are enemies of their country themselves so it is not really surprising.

For some reason the BBC recently got the idiosyncratic conservative Peter Hitchens to make a TV program critical of Nelson Mandela. Perhaps they thought it would discredit conservatism to see a conservative criticizing a saint. What they got from Hitchens included some pretty silly stuff (saying Mandela was "too Thatcherite" and blaming him for not stopping AIDS!) but the BBC has still felt the need to present a more leftist view of Mandela here. It is amusing that the BBC says that Left-liberal pressure was the reason for the abandonment of apartheid whereas Hitchens says the reason was an excess of foreign debt. There is really only one reason for the end of Apartheid -- the courage and decency of President F.W. de Klerk, the head of the apartheid regime, who voluntarily gave up power. The foreign debt issue is a red-herring. South Africa could easily have repudiated its debt. South American countries do it all the time with no adverse consequences to themselves.

Most readers have probably heard by now about how the Christians of GWB's home town (Midland, Texas) are helping to bring peace between Muslims and Christians in Sudan. Here is an extended account of it.

An interesting article here on the one Anglican diocese in the Western world that has overflowing congregations. The Sydney diocese rejects both High Church traditionalism and modern "anything-goes" Anglicanism. Yet in their strong and forthright evangelical Protestantism their beliefs are very much like those expressed in the Church of England's own "39 Articles" of 1571. New Testament Christianity still has the great power it has always had -- something far beyond the ken of the wafflers and play-actors in "modern" churches.

How 'well meaning multiculturalism' frustrates Australians of immigrant origin: "From playground confusion to strangers' interrogation, not having blonde hair and blue eyes has proven to be a difficult reality. It's not that I ever complained. My siblings and I never got sunburnt at school swimming carnivals. We always had the largest number of friends and family attending annual award ceremonies and we always had the most interesting packed lunch.

The Kerry-Kennedy court: "Thus, in November, the voters will determine far more than who lives in the White House. They will determine, indirectly, who sits in the nine seats on bench of the highest court in the land. It's a choice between judicial restraint and judicial activism. It's a choice between what is actually written in the Constitution and what an unelected judge believes should be written there."

Carnival of the Vanities is still going strong with the latest edition here.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them some concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion. Voters, unfortunately, often believe the compassion is genuine

Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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SOME POLITICAL HISTORY

There is a long and wide-ranging essay here which looks at the major influences in modern American conservatism. I am certainly inclined to agree with this: "From the 1950s to the present, libertarianism has been an important and influential - arguably the most influential - stream of thought on the Right, informing both Republican policy making and conservative ideology more generally". He faults libertarianism, however, for not coming to terms with the fact that lots of people seem to WANT big government and says that it is only the neoconservatives who are realistic about that fact. He presents the neoconservatives as being the practical, pragmatic dealers in political reality. He does definitely have a point but I would argue that no libertarian is unaware of how difficult it is to implement any part of a libertarian agenda and that ALL conservatives compromise with the possible. The difference is that the libertarians have the clearest vision of the direction in which they want to head -- and the best evidence that their ideas work for the general betterment.

There is another good review out of In Denial by Haynes & Klehr: Glenn Garvin opens his rather amusing comments on the ineptitude and dishonesty of America's many pro-Communist historians and other academics as follows: "In 1983 the Indiana University historian Robert F. Byrnes collected essays from 35 experts on the Soviet Union -- the cream of American academia -- in a book titled After Brezhnev. Their conclusion: Any U.S. thought of winning the Cold War was a pipe dream. "The Soviet Union is going to remain a stable state, with a very stable, conservative, immobile government," Byrnes said in an interview, summing up the book. "We don't see any collapse or weakening of the Soviet system." Barely six years later, the Soviet empire began falling apart."

To be Australian is to believe in the `fair go', even if it is not always clear what this means in practice.... examples suggest that the `fair go' in 19th century Australia was largely associated with a set of ethical principles which today we would recognise as `meritocratic'. The belief was not that everybody should end up with the same shares (egalitarianism), but was rather that everybody should get the opportunity to compete and thereby to improve themselves.... In August 2003, AC Nielsen carried out a survey of public opinion ... there was very strong (85%) public support for a meritocratic definition of fairness"

"One of the great goals of education is to initiate the young into the conversation of their ancestors -- to enable them to understand the language of that conversation, in all its subtlety, and maybe even, in their maturity, to add to it some wisdom of their own. The modern American educational system no longer teaches us the political language of our ancestors. In fact our schooling helps widen the gulf of time between our ancestors and ourselves, because much of what we are taught in the name of civics, political science or American history is really modern liberal propaganda.

Sowell: "Nowhere have whole peoples seen their situation reversed more visibly or more painfully than the peoples of the Islamic world... Why do they hate us? Maybe it is because the alternative to hating us is to hate themselves".

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Government by judges: "As an American in remission, I have a romantic fondness for the notion of constitutional government, which of course doesn't exist and never will again in the United States if it ever did. Face it: The constitution is deader than a doorknob. I mean a doorknob with melanoma and clogged arteries.... Courts run the country these days. The will of the people is irrelevant. When did you last hear of anything of lasting import being done by Congress? I can't either. But almost every week you read about some federal judge, or that ratpack of pompous drones on the Supreme Court, who have... defunded the Boy Scouts, or invented a constitutional right to abortion, or imposed integration, or outlawed the public expression of Christianity, or made it impossible to stop immigration. They tell you who you can hire, who you can sell your house to, what your children will be taught. They serve to impose what could never be legislatively enacted. The judges are out of control. They're at it again. Marriage doesn't mean what it has always meant. It means what some over-promoted nonentity wants it to mean. And the country will obey. Roll over. Bark. Fetch".

A million ... er, 2,000 march against guns: "About 2,000 people celebrated Mother's Day yesterday by attending a Million Mom March rally at the Capitol to demonstrate support for extending the nation's ban on assault weapons." Interested Participant uses the occasion to comment on the way the media usually accept Leftist overestimates of numbers.

About time! White House to impose sanctions on Syria: "President Bush will order economic sanctions against Syria this week for supporting terrorism and not doing enough to prevent militant fighters from entering neighboring Iraq, congressional and administration sources said Monday. The sanctions, which the White House will impose as early as Tuesday, are being ordered because the administration believes Syria has aggravated tensions in the Middle East by supporting militant groups."

There is another excellent letter from a U.S. soldier in Iraq here which tells the news from Iraq in a way that you will never hear from the mass media. And there is a very recent letter from Iraq here too.

Arlene Peck reproduces an email she received from a Palestinian girl who was publicly raped by her FATHER as punishment for criticizing the Hamas terrorists.

Metal Yarmulke is blogging again. He is a bit upset by "lookism" in the blogosphere. He has a point. Being fat is death to the acceptability of women in our culture but in China and the Middle East it is admired, from what I know.

Bill Keezer has a stab at explaining chaos theory to us all. I always DID suspect that butterflies could not cause hurricanes!

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them some concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion. Voters, unfortunately, often believe the compassion is genuine

Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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MEDICAL MAYHEM

Lies, Lies Lies: "Obesity is fast becoming one of the world's leading reasons why people die" See here for the real story.

Hating the life-savers: Perhaps no one is more consistently demonized for doing more good today in the United States than the pharmaceutical companies. The Food and Drug Administration recently approved the new drug Avastin, which shrinks tumors. The medicine helps patients with advanced bowel cancer. Yet in the view of many Americans - not to mention politicians like Kerry - the pharmaceutical companies are the enemy.... Even the Vatican seems to have joined in know-nothing drug industry bashing. The firms demonstrated a "lack of social conscience" by making massive profits on AIDS drugs, charged Rev. Angelo D'Agostino, a Jesuit. But AIDS medicines exist only because of profit-making companies that conduct drug research. In the early 1980s, the disease was a death sentence, taking some 28 million people to their graves. Today, AIDS patients survive and even thrive because private companies have developed scores of medicines.

Drug fanaticism: "Here's a bit of legal information that may interest Rush Limbaugh: Under Florida law, illegally obtaining more than 28 grams of painkillers containing the narcotic oxycodone -- a threshold exceeded by a single 60-pill Percocet prescription -- automatically makes you the worst sort of drug trafficker, even if you never sold a single pill. Even if, like Richard Paey, you were using the drugs to relieve severe chronic pain. Although prosecutors admitted Paey was not a drug trafficker, on April 16 he received a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years for drug trafficking."

Sowell on socialized medicine: "Britain, which has had government-run medical care for more than half a century, has to import doctors from the Third World, where medical school standards are lower.... Only the patients will find out, the hard way, what declining quality means. I saw a vivid example of what bureaucratic medical care meant back in 1959, when I had a summer job at the headquarters of the U.S. Public Health Service in Washington. Around 5 o'clock one afternoon, a man had a heart attack on the street near our office. He was taken to the nurse's room and asked if he was a federal employee. If he was, he could be sent to the large, modern medical facility there in the Public Health Service headquarters. But he was not a government employee, so an ambulance was summoned from a local hospital. By the time this ambulance made its way through miles of downtown Washington rush-hour traffic, the man was dead. He died waiting for a doctor, in a building full of doctors. That is what bureaucracy means".

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I have a motto at the top of my blog and a rubric at the bottom of each day's posts which makes the point that Leftists owe much of their success with voters to their claim that they are "compassionate" -- a claim which the history of Leftist deeds shows to be a fraud. Whenever they get complete power (e.g. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot), Leftists are in fact ruthless murderers and have no concern for anybody but themselves. But few people know much history (and Leftist teachers do their best to keep it that way) so the Big Lie about Leftist compassion is often believed. A recent letter from a reader that Keith Burgess-Jackson posted on his blog is in my view an example of that effect. The writer is obviously a very good and kind man who votes Democrat because he thinks that they are more like him than conservatives are. Random Observations has however pointed out another important failure in the letter-writer's thinking. He points out that the letter-writer has committed a variant of what logicians call the ad hominem fallacy -- judging the truth of a statement by the person who utters it. The letter writer sees Leftists as kind people and conservatives as unkind people and infers therefore that conservative POLICIES must be unkind in their effects too. Adam Smith, of course, pointed out centuruies ago that selfish deeds by selfish people can and do have BENEFICIAL effects. So the letter-writer really IS a Leftist in one important respect -- he thinks very simplistically. It is the actual effect of the policies that matters, not who proposed the policies.

How un-Islamic! "A University of Illinois research team is working on turning pig manure into a form of crude oil that could be refined to heat homes or generate electricity."

Michael Moore doesn't understand the First Amendment works both ways. Disney doesn't have to publish his stuff if they don't want to

There is another mention here of the seeming paradox that one of the world's most pro-American places is Iran.

Halliburton: Odd profiteers. "But here's the funny thing. So far, the Iraq war hasn't proved much of a boon for Halliburton's shareholders. Because of incompetence, the chaos of working in the war zone, and a contract that limits profits, KBR's margins on its hazardous work are pretty marginal".

As a keen Chaucerian, I have got to give econoblogger The Man Without Qualities a plug. In his postings of May 3rd, he actually managed to find some wisdom about Iraq in Chaucer!

Dick McDonald has some good posts on the prisoner-abuse panic.

Che is Gay is an amusing site. I liked this comment: "It is ironic that the 'pro tree' element is usually 'anti Bush'. Work that one out!"

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them some concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion. Voters, unfortunately, often believe the compassion is genuine

Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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THE BLOGGER.COM "IMPROVEMENTS"

Hooray! The "improvements" at blogger.com (Pyra) seem not to have caused any crashes or prolonged service outages this time -- though the new software does not like the bit of Java I use to protect my Gmail address from spammers. My code worked fine on the old software but I did expect the "improvements" to be anything but. They no longer let you use the two-window "classic" interface either. Ho hum. Definitely a bureaucratic version of "improvement".

I emailed Pyra's Jason Shellen with an advance copy of the above comment. He replied: "Awfully pessimistic given the bevy of improvements like: this. There is even a way to preview your post on the page, if you do miss the 'classic' interface. See here".

My qualified relief was shortlived, however. As I originally expected, I had a lot of trouble getting this post up.

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SOME MORE ECONOMICS

Rent control as urban warfare. Economist Walter Williams rightly says: "Short of aerial bombardment, the best way to destroy a city is through rent control."

America's economic secret: A willingness to allow dying industries to die in peace. "A country with no declining industries is a country that doesn't have many better new ideas."

"Michael Barone, America's foremost political analyst, wonders why America produces so many incompetent 18-year-olds but remarkably competent 30-year-olds.... One answer to Barone's question is: schools. In 1900 only 10 percent of high school-age Americans went to high school. Subsequently, schooling became universal and then schools became emblematic of Soft America, suffused with ``progressive'' values -- banning dodge ball and other games deemed too competitive, attempting personality adjustment, promoting self-esteem and almost anyone with a pulse. In contrast, Barone says, ``Hard America plays for keeps: The private sector fires people when profits fall and the military trains under live fire.'' Soft America depends on the productivity, creativity and competence of Hard America, which protects the country and pays its bills."
Jobs: "Coming on top of the 337,000 new jobs created in March (revised up from 308,000), the economy has now created 625,000 jobs in just two months. This is a very impressive performance"

Protectionism via tax favouritism: "It started as an effort to eliminate a $5 billion tax break for exporters that irked the European Union. Since then, a tax bill has blossomed into a $170 billion cornucopia of special breaks for the cruise ship industry, former Oldsmobile dealers, NASCAR and makers of bows and arrows. Typically, critics say, it is during that dark of night that lawmakers slip such benefits into bills like the one now before the Senate."

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Readers may note that I have a new motto at the top of my page. The only problem with it is that I myself feel a lot more goatish than sheepish! But you know what the man means. He preferred sheep. Not sure why. Woollier, I guess.

John Moore has reminded me of the famous experiment devised by Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo -- noting that it explains the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by American military guards. The Zimbardo experiment showed that putting almost ANYONE into the role of a prison guard will make them oppressive, sadistic etc. So the fact that there has been so little harm done to Iraqi prisoners shows in fact how restrained American military guards have been.

I believe the Colonel: "German troops serving with an international peacekeeping contingent in Kosovo have been accused of hiding in barracks "like frightened rabbits" during the inter-ethnic rioting that erupted in the province in March. A German police report sent to the government last week criticises the troops for cowardice and for their failure to quell the rioting, in which 19 people died and about 900 others were injured... The head of the contingent, Colonel Dieter Hintelmann, insisted that his men had simply obeyed rules of engagement" American rules of engagement are hobbling enough. What must EU ones be like? They're probably allowed to fire at Americans only.

Amusing: Brazil's President Lula is indignant at being portrayed as a "boozehound". Although I am 99% teetotal myself, I see drinking alcohol as a normal human recreation and he would surely be a pretty odd Brazilian if he did not like a drink or three.

Fascinating that the Iranian people (unlike their Ayatollahs) are very pro-American. Turkey is pro-Western too. It looks like the Islamic problem is mainly an Arab problem.

The Blowhards have an interesting short survey of conservatism in the blogosphere. The comments are good too. I liked this one: "The fundamental American stance - leave me alone, just leave me alone to live my life as I see fit, don't tread on me - is conservative"

Dick McDonald traces the humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by American troops to the poor education the troops got from America's Left-dominated educational system.

There is an interesting new blog here. I think it is supposed to be called "Wide Open" but her professional web designer seems to have been too arty to make that obvious. Anyway, her post "Ladies, we did it to ourselves" is a good poke in the eye for the radical feminists.

The wicked one tells you all you need to know about dogs.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them some concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion. Voters, unfortunately, often believe the compassion is genuine

Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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SOME ECONOMICS

Globalization saves the day in New Zealand: " It's Saturday morning and you've just noticed that the data projector is missing a fairly important element, known as a power cord. The conference starts in 30 minutes. What does one do? There is no electronics shop open. But there is a Warehouse. Now the Warehouse does not have any power cords for sale, but it does have an electric jug selling for only $10, which uses the same sort of cord. The cost of the jug with cord is much the same as buying just the cord elsewhere, so one purchase is quickly made. Thank God for free trade and cheap China-made electric jugs". [Just by way of explanation, The Warehouse is a New Zealand version of Wal Mart and both Australians and New Zealanders mostly boil water in electric jugs rather than in electric kettles].

The roar of good economic news is getting louder. Our economy expanded 4.2 percent in the first quarter of the year. That follows 4.1 percent growth in the fourth quarter, and 8.2 percent growth in the quarter before that. Over the last three months alone, our economy created more than a half-million jobs. Business investment grew 11.4 percent. Wages and salaries jumped 4.8 percent... Surprised? There's no reason to be. In the second quarter of 2003, President Bush signed legislation that lowered tax rates on the money entrepreneurs invest in the economy -- and those rate cuts took effect immediately.

How much do economists agree among themselves? "The authors survey 1000 economists from the AEA roster; the data cover both 1990 and 2000. Here is one result: ...there was strong agreement with the propositions that restraints on free trade reduce welfare...and that market-determined exchange rates are effective...There was also strong disagreement with the propositions that increasing globalization threatens national sovereignty "

Facts about Sweden No new net jobs have been produced in the Swedish private sector since 1950. None of top 50 companies on the Stockholm stock exchange has been started since 1970. ...well over 1 million people out of a work force of around four million did not work in 2003 but lived on various kinds of public welfare programs, such as, pre-pension schemes, unemployment benefits, sick-leave programs, etc. Sweden has dropped from fourth to 14th place in 2002 among the OECD countries (i.e., affluent industrialized countries) in terms of GDP per capita since 1970.

An all-investor nation? "Imagine if every worker in the United States had the opportunity to become an investor. Well, that dream has a shot at reality. In his 2004 State of the Union address, President Bush suggested workers be allowed to redirect part of their payroll taxes into individual retirement accounts. That was a big statement. It means there's now a legitimate chance to transform Social Security from a financially bankrupt system into a source of real ownership and prosperity for all Americans. ... Since the Reagan presidency, the U.S. has made great strides toward democratizing capitalism by reducing marginal tax rates, deregulating the financial-services industry and creating savings vehicles like IRAs and 401(k)s. Mr. Bush's latest proposal for Lifetime Savings Accounts is another step in the right direction."

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An email I posted yesterday tended to give the impression that U.S. forces in the Vietnam war condoned prisoner abuse by allied South Vietnamese forces. Another reader who was there rejects that. He says: "I served as an advisor to a Vietnamese Infantry Battalion in the Mekong Delta. Concerning the claim that ARVN routinely cut off the VC's gonads: I NEVER heard of such a thing! We were trying to win the hearts and minds, etc. We actually punished our soldiers when they committed some crime (usually theft of something from a villager's hut). We didn't abuse, there were no rapes and no torture! I have seen my boss threaten to pull his advisory team when we thought that the ARVN were picking up too many villagers for questioning! Without an advisory team, the ARVN unit would not have been protected by American air support! I have seen an ARVN 1st Sgt beat the crap out of one of his soldiers for stealing from a villager in a village that was way out in VC controlled territory!" And, speaking of prisoner abuse, we won't mention Palestinian prisons and torture will we?

There is a good email here about antisemitism in Australia that notes the erosion of Australia's traditional tolerance by Muslims and their Leftist supporters.

Keith Burgess-Jackson has a good post on the sheer mindless evil of America's Left.

Amusing: "The National Women's Law Center has released its annual exercise in Bush-bashing in the guise of a state-by-state report card on women's health. Why, precisely, is the president at fault if women in some states don't eat their veggies?"

Steve Sailer has more on the 'story' doing the rounds on the web that Gore-voting US States have higher average IQs than Bush-voting states. It is a hoax of course but Steve has some REAL data showing that educational achievement does differ from State to State. So what characterizes the high-achieving States? Democrat voting? No. A higher percentage of whites in their population -- unsurprisingly.

Random Observations has a good essay on what conservatism is and why libertarians are wrong about Leftists. He seems however to have overlooked that many libertarians are Minimal Statists (as I am) rather than Anarcho-capitalists -- which is why they get on with conservatives. Both conservatives and Minimal Statists see SOME need for a State but the Minimal Statist wants to cut it back a lot further.

Iceland has libertarians too and this one blogs in English. I always think Icelanders must be pretty smart. They have kept out of other people's wars for around 1,000 years.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them some concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion. Voters, unfortunately, often believe the compassion is genuine

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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ERK! Blogger.com is going to be "down" tomorrow while they install some "improvements". Someone needs to tell them: "If it aint broke, don't fix it". After the last lot of improvements nobody could post for most of two days. So check my mirror sites if I seem suddenly to have fallen strangely silent. My only "consolation" for blogger.com's frequent problems is that the various other sites that I use all seem to have periodic problems too. I think most of the MT enthusiasts have found the same. The only reliable system is a redundant one -- which is why I put up mirror sites.




CONSERVATIVE THINKING

The genius of Edmund Burke: "After two centuries, there remains no better analysis of the first two years of the French Revolution than Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).... Had the English ministry and his fellow Parliamentarians followed his advice in the 1770s, they would never have driven the Americans to revolt and hence lost their most valuable colonies in the world. Had the French, they would have been spared the Terror, total war, and Napoleon".

Russell Kirk : "Scholars who call themselves "Kirkians" or "traditionalist conservatives" tend to have severe reservations not only about the present Republican administration but also about some of the dominant strains in conservative policymaking, whether libertarian or neoconservative.... What Kirk extracted from Burke's thought -- and found embodied in the work of British and American figures as diverse as John Adams, Benjamin Disraeli, and T.S. Eliot -- was a strong sense that tradition and order were the bedrock of any political system able to provide a real measure of freedom... "The individual is foolish," wrote Kirk in The Conservative Mind, "but the species is wise." We have inherited from the past "the instruments which the wisdom of the species employs to safeguard man against his own passions and appetites... "The Kirkian tradition is in the minority within modern conservatism," says Mr. Cheek. "It is skeptical of foreign entanglements. It believes in the minimalist state, but believes that the government does have a role. Kirk had some skepticism about capitalism, which puts him at odds with the libertarians"

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Prisoner abuse: An interesting comment from a reader: "As a Viet Nam Vet of the U.S. Army 25th Infantry Division (Cu Chi, Vietnam 1967), perhaps I can put the war prisoner abuse media events currently swirling around the Bush Administration into perspective. I was a Spec/4 Medic in Vietnam assigned to work with the 25th Medical Battalion psychiatrist. I assisted in medicating and evacuating by helicopter "psychiatric casualties" of the war. This entailed flying into fire fights to pick up the wounded, including wounded enemy NVA soldiers. It was usual for the South Vietnamese ARVN soldiers to strip the enemy soldiers naked and cut their gonads off, then call in U.S. medical personnel to evacuate them as a prisoner. To my knowledge this practice was never covered by the media. To state the obvious: War is brutal. The media scenes the American public are now seeing on TV and the Net pale in comparison to the daily events in Vietnam, let alone what went on in Cambodia after the war with Pol Pot.

I have not so far said anything about the prisoner mistreatment scandal in Iraq but Bleeding Brain sums it up pretty well, I think. And Dick McDonald is irate at the way the media have treated it. And Matthew Cowie is one of many who have noted that one of the humiliated Iraqis still wants to come to America!

And yet the "feminists" stay silent: "Jihadists, like all totalitarians, oppose many kinds of freedom. What makes them unique, however, is their particular hatred of freedom for women. They prize their traditional prerogatives that allow them to keep their women barefoot in the kitchen as illiterate economic and sexual slaves." Most feminist activists don't give a damn about women, in other words. They just use women to excuse their hatred of their own society. Like Greenie activists, they are just another flavour of Leftism. If they really cared about women, they would be backing GWB to the hilt.

Fascinating. It seems that Canada is like Australia in that it is common for very religious people there to be on the Left as well as on the Right: "Devout Liberal MPs are appalled by their party's attempt to demonize the Conservatives as a bunch of extreme religious zealots". I have commented on the relationship between conservatism and Christianity at some length here.

The Leftist hatred of McDonald's is just another example of Leftist jealousy of other people's success. There is a short summary of how unreasonable it is to attack McDonald's here. What nobody seems to mention is that what McDonald's sells is just a minor variation on a standard Western diet of beef, bread, salad and potatoes. If that is bad for you we are all doomed. Funny that average lifespans are always getting longer in the West, though!

From Chris Brand: "According to environmentaloons, the human male's asthetic preference for women having the hourglass shape is due to `conditioning'. But new research published in Proceedings of the Royal Society found that wasp-waisted women were 30% higher in the hormone oestradiol and would thus have double or treble the normal chance of conceiving during any one menstrual cycle" Another blow to the constant Leftist claim that everything about us is the product of our environment rather than of biology. Here or here are links to the academic article Chris mentions.

Some things that governments do you couldn't make up: Germany has passed a law to say that legal brothels must train apprentice whores! No doubt the usual 5 years of training will be necessary before they can do it.

What has the EU got in common with Robert Mugabe? A lot. As the case of Hans-Martin Tillack shows. They are using their police to intimidate an exposer of their corruption.

There is a review here of a new book: How Democracies Lose Small Wars: State, Society, and the Failures of France in Algeria, Israel in Lebanon, and the United States in Vietnam

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them a genuine concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion

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