ISRAEL
I have just posted up here some of the "Middle Eastern Studies" that you will NOT hear about in most universities that claim to teach such a subject.
Readers of this blog will be well-aware that I am very pro-Israel, that I quote many Jewish writers, that I am derisive of antisemitism and that I do not link to antisemitic sites. People might assume from that that I am another one of the many Jewish bloggers. I am not. My background is Presbyterian and my ancestry is wholly from the British Isles. I am as WASPish as you can get and make no apologies for it. And I am not pro-Israel because I am pro-Jewish. I am pro-Jewish because I am pro-Israel. I think Israel is a wonder and a great triumph of the human spirit.
Arafat has been a war criminal for a long time: An excerpt from an article here: "When Yasser Arafat's Black September terrorist stormed the Saudi Embassy in Khartoum in March of 1973 and took US Ambassador Cleo Noel, Charge d'Affaires George Curtis Moore, and others hostage, Sirhan's release was one of their main demands. On March 2, 1973, after Nixon rejected that demand, Arafat was overheard and recorded by Israeli intelligence and the U.S. National Security Agency giving the code words for the execution of Noel, Moore, and Belgian diplomat Guy Eid, who were shot to death"
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Wednesday, June 09, 2004
ELSEWHERE
I am pleased to see that it will be an Anglosphere line-up at the Gipper's State funeral: "Former President George H.W. Bush, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney are scheduled to join President Bush in eulogizing Ronald Reagan at his state funeral service Friday"
This site notes that although the Tienanmen square massacre was a defeat for those who wanted immediate democracy in China, it sowed the seeds for great change nonetheless. Note this rather amazing comment: "China is rapidly changing on many fronts. China has increasingly allowed economic liberalization and privatization to proceed, effectively addressing some of the protesters original complaints. And today, even the Chinese edition of the free-market economist F. A. Hayek's book, The Road to Serfdom, has become a best-seller."
"Reflecting on the way in which the law has been changed in America, the well-known Harvard Law Professor, Mary Ann Glendon, referred recently to "the flagrant disregard shown by judges and local officials for the rights of citizens to have a say in setting the conditions under which we live, work and raise our children. Many Americans - however they feel about same-sex marriage - are rightly alarmed that local officials are defying state law, and that four judges in one state took it upon themselves to make the kind of decision that our Constitution says belongs to us, the people, and to our elected representatives ... "Whether one is for, against or undecided about same-sex marriage, a decision this important ought to be made in the ordinary democratic way - through full public deliberation in the light of day, not by four people behind closed doors.""
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
The Left cannot face the fact that the American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq is fundamentally humanitarian. The most effective response to the 9/11 events and the one in America's own best interests would have been a retaliatory strike using nukes to take the whole of Afghanistan off the map -- followed by a threat that Mecca would go sky high if there were any further Islamic attacks on the USA or its allies. That would have made Islam a religion of peace overnight. But GWB rightly rejected that easy road because it would have involved the death of millions of innocents. He chose instead to go after just the bad guys -- an extremely difficult task. And its difficulty is causing continuing American deaths in Iraq to this day. But Americans have always given their blood in order to be humane. They did it in two world wars and in Vietnam and they are doing it now in the Middle East. The only alternative strategy that the Left have is to do nothing -- thus inviting more and more attacks.
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.
********************************
I am pleased to see that it will be an Anglosphere line-up at the Gipper's State funeral: "Former President George H.W. Bush, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney are scheduled to join President Bush in eulogizing Ronald Reagan at his state funeral service Friday"
This site notes that although the Tienanmen square massacre was a defeat for those who wanted immediate democracy in China, it sowed the seeds for great change nonetheless. Note this rather amazing comment: "China is rapidly changing on many fronts. China has increasingly allowed economic liberalization and privatization to proceed, effectively addressing some of the protesters original complaints. And today, even the Chinese edition of the free-market economist F. A. Hayek's book, The Road to Serfdom, has become a best-seller."
"Reflecting on the way in which the law has been changed in America, the well-known Harvard Law Professor, Mary Ann Glendon, referred recently to "the flagrant disregard shown by judges and local officials for the rights of citizens to have a say in setting the conditions under which we live, work and raise our children. Many Americans - however they feel about same-sex marriage - are rightly alarmed that local officials are defying state law, and that four judges in one state took it upon themselves to make the kind of decision that our Constitution says belongs to us, the people, and to our elected representatives ... "Whether one is for, against or undecided about same-sex marriage, a decision this important ought to be made in the ordinary democratic way - through full public deliberation in the light of day, not by four people behind closed doors.""
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
The Left cannot face the fact that the American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq is fundamentally humanitarian. The most effective response to the 9/11 events and the one in America's own best interests would have been a retaliatory strike using nukes to take the whole of Afghanistan off the map -- followed by a threat that Mecca would go sky high if there were any further Islamic attacks on the USA or its allies. That would have made Islam a religion of peace overnight. But GWB rightly rejected that easy road because it would have involved the death of millions of innocents. He chose instead to go after just the bad guys -- an extremely difficult task. And its difficulty is causing continuing American deaths in Iraq to this day. But Americans have always given their blood in order to be humane. They did it in two world wars and in Vietnam and they are doing it now in the Middle East. The only alternative strategy that the Left have is to do nothing -- thus inviting more and more attacks.
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.
********************************
Tuesday, June 08, 2004
My "farewell" picture for Ronald Reagan is not accessible at the moment. Too many people must have logged on and exceeded the download limit. I have now posted it here as well.
RONALD REAGAN
By the time of his death, there seems to have developed an overwhelmingly positive view of Ronald Reagan among that part of the American people who take an interest in politics. Even many former foes and critics grew to praise him. Only the hard Left resisted a recognition of his greatness as a President. So guess who is in the the camp of that small, narrow, extreme and embittered minority? The New York Times, of course. See here. Their progression from the newspaper of record to a narrow-minded and far-Left propaganda rag is now complete. And who more than Ronald Reagan deserved that traditional courtesy: De mortuis nihil nisi bonum? It was not a courtesy extended by the New York Times. One of my readers made the following comparison: "When conservative "pundits" were commenting on D-day, there was just no such thing coming from their direction - they praised Roosevelt for winning the war, but remained silent about Roosevelt's inept management of economics in the 1930s."
The Leftist hatred of Reagan has its amusing side though. I noted these two headings on one Leftist site: "Killer, Coward, Conman - Good Riddance, Ronnie Reagan" followed shortly thereafter by: "The Real Plague on Society is Bigotry". Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! Intolerant preachers of tolerance are nothing new on the Left, however.
Of the many tributes to Ronald Reagan, one I liked particularly was from someone who knew him well from the early days -- Jack Wheeler: "There was a depth of character to his charisma that seemed bottomless. There was a solidity of integrity and humanity behind the dazzling charm that was matchless. You loved Ronald Reagan for his ideals and his complete fearlessness in advocating them - and you loved Ronald Reagan for the man, the human being, he was. Ronald Reagan was the single greatest American - American, not just American president - of the 20th century"
I have posted here a picture which is I believe an evocative farewell to the great man.
*********************************
ELSEWHERE
Reality creates another conservative: "The afternoon of the day I was attacked, I drove into the nearest town and bought a gun. In the report I had already filed with the police, I described the stranger who broke into the house while I was taking a shower. 'Go away,' I screamed. He told me to shut up. After a kicking, howling struggle, which took us from the bedroom to the living room, he ran off. He was gone, but I felt panicky and powerless. I had seen into the heart of reality and been permanently changed. What kind of fool would be nonviolent in a violent world? I laughed at my old liberalism, my empty prating about the evils of violence and the value of human life. The man who attacked me didn't have those scruples, and I had lost mine in a heartbeat. If I hadn't fought back violently, I believe I would have been raped, and I might have been killed."
A good D-Day meditation: "But, in a world where the only alternative is the moral posturing of arthritic international organisations such as the EU or the UN, the transatlantic partnership is the only force that can still offer freedom to distant lands. Then, as now, the Atlantic alliance in arms is an awesome thing".
No Pasaran notes that there was not one American flag on display in Paris during GWB's recent visit there in connection with the D-Day celebrations. French gratitude. Chirac said all the right things in his D-Day speech, of course, but sometimes deeds speak louder than words.
I think Mark Steyn is right about Saudi Arabia: "What exactly is 'realist' about continuing to back the Frankensaud monster? The present policy is all but certain to wind up delivering the peninsula and its oil into the hands of Osama's buddies... Given the inevitability of disaster if we stick to a failed containment strategy, how could things be any worse if we went in for some creative disruption? At the very minimum, Washington needs to have solid, detailed contingency plans for securing the oil fields, and making sure the Hashemites are on stand-by to return to Mecca and Medina. Saudi Arabia can't be saved, and the more we postpone reaching that conclusion and acting on it, the messier it's going to be. Whoever you're backing in November, the quiet life isn't on the ballot".
Martin Luther where are you? "Croatian monks have been ordered to sell off their BMWs and Mercedes and drive something cheaper to show solidarity with other parishioners. The new rule by the order of Franciscan monks in Croatia comes into effect from this weekend. It bans monks from owning any luxury brand of cars like the Audi, BMW or Mercedes and demands they drive cars that are cheaper and not likely to alienate them from parishioners."
Good news about the new government of India: "Kalam promised the government would maintain 7 percent to 8 percent economic growth, encourage foreign investment and increase employment... The government has promised to sell off state enterprises that lose money, but not profit-making ones". I think that means they will sell ALL of them off!
What passes for humour on the Left: "The truth, hard as it is to accept, is that Bush is an Iranian agent."
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
The Left cannot face the fact that the American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq is fundamentally humanitarian. The most effective response to the 9/11 events and the one in America's own best interests would have been a retaliatory strike using nukes to take the whole of Afghanistan off the map -- followed by a threat that Mecca would go sky high if there were any further Islamic attacks on the USA or its allies. That would have made Islam a religion of peace overnight. But GWB rightly rejected that easy road because it would have involved the death of millions of innocents. He chose instead to go after just the bad guys -- an extremely difficult task. And its difficulty is causing continuing American deaths in Iraq to this day. But Americans have always given their blood in order to be humane. They did it in two world wars and in Vietnam and they are doing it now in the Middle East. The only alternative strategy that the Left have is to do nothing -- thus inviting more and more attacks.
Comments? Email me 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.
********************************
By the time of his death, there seems to have developed an overwhelmingly positive view of Ronald Reagan among that part of the American people who take an interest in politics. Even many former foes and critics grew to praise him. Only the hard Left resisted a recognition of his greatness as a President. So guess who is in the the camp of that small, narrow, extreme and embittered minority? The New York Times, of course. See here. Their progression from the newspaper of record to a narrow-minded and far-Left propaganda rag is now complete. And who more than Ronald Reagan deserved that traditional courtesy: De mortuis nihil nisi bonum? It was not a courtesy extended by the New York Times. One of my readers made the following comparison: "When conservative "pundits" were commenting on D-day, there was just no such thing coming from their direction - they praised Roosevelt for winning the war, but remained silent about Roosevelt's inept management of economics in the 1930s."
The Leftist hatred of Reagan has its amusing side though. I noted these two headings on one Leftist site: "Killer, Coward, Conman - Good Riddance, Ronnie Reagan" followed shortly thereafter by: "The Real Plague on Society is Bigotry". Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! Intolerant preachers of tolerance are nothing new on the Left, however.
Of the many tributes to Ronald Reagan, one I liked particularly was from someone who knew him well from the early days -- Jack Wheeler: "There was a depth of character to his charisma that seemed bottomless. There was a solidity of integrity and humanity behind the dazzling charm that was matchless. You loved Ronald Reagan for his ideals and his complete fearlessness in advocating them - and you loved Ronald Reagan for the man, the human being, he was. Ronald Reagan was the single greatest American - American, not just American president - of the 20th century"
I have posted here a picture which is I believe an evocative farewell to the great man.
*********************************
ELSEWHERE
Reality creates another conservative: "The afternoon of the day I was attacked, I drove into the nearest town and bought a gun. In the report I had already filed with the police, I described the stranger who broke into the house while I was taking a shower. 'Go away,' I screamed. He told me to shut up. After a kicking, howling struggle, which took us from the bedroom to the living room, he ran off. He was gone, but I felt panicky and powerless. I had seen into the heart of reality and been permanently changed. What kind of fool would be nonviolent in a violent world? I laughed at my old liberalism, my empty prating about the evils of violence and the value of human life. The man who attacked me didn't have those scruples, and I had lost mine in a heartbeat. If I hadn't fought back violently, I believe I would have been raped, and I might have been killed."
A good D-Day meditation: "But, in a world where the only alternative is the moral posturing of arthritic international organisations such as the EU or the UN, the transatlantic partnership is the only force that can still offer freedom to distant lands. Then, as now, the Atlantic alliance in arms is an awesome thing".
No Pasaran notes that there was not one American flag on display in Paris during GWB's recent visit there in connection with the D-Day celebrations. French gratitude. Chirac said all the right things in his D-Day speech, of course, but sometimes deeds speak louder than words.
I think Mark Steyn is right about Saudi Arabia: "What exactly is 'realist' about continuing to back the Frankensaud monster? The present policy is all but certain to wind up delivering the peninsula and its oil into the hands of Osama's buddies... Given the inevitability of disaster if we stick to a failed containment strategy, how could things be any worse if we went in for some creative disruption? At the very minimum, Washington needs to have solid, detailed contingency plans for securing the oil fields, and making sure the Hashemites are on stand-by to return to Mecca and Medina. Saudi Arabia can't be saved, and the more we postpone reaching that conclusion and acting on it, the messier it's going to be. Whoever you're backing in November, the quiet life isn't on the ballot".
Martin Luther where are you? "Croatian monks have been ordered to sell off their BMWs and Mercedes and drive something cheaper to show solidarity with other parishioners. The new rule by the order of Franciscan monks in Croatia comes into effect from this weekend. It bans monks from owning any luxury brand of cars like the Audi, BMW or Mercedes and demands they drive cars that are cheaper and not likely to alienate them from parishioners."
Good news about the new government of India: "Kalam promised the government would maintain 7 percent to 8 percent economic growth, encourage foreign investment and increase employment... The government has promised to sell off state enterprises that lose money, but not profit-making ones". I think that means they will sell ALL of them off!
What passes for humour on the Left: "The truth, hard as it is to accept, is that Bush is an Iranian agent."
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
The Left cannot face the fact that the American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq is fundamentally humanitarian. The most effective response to the 9/11 events and the one in America's own best interests would have been a retaliatory strike using nukes to take the whole of Afghanistan off the map -- followed by a threat that Mecca would go sky high if there were any further Islamic attacks on the USA or its allies. That would have made Islam a religion of peace overnight. But GWB rightly rejected that easy road because it would have involved the death of millions of innocents. He chose instead to go after just the bad guys -- an extremely difficult task. And its difficulty is causing continuing American deaths in Iraq to this day. But Americans have always given their blood in order to be humane. They did it in two world wars and in Vietnam and they are doing it now in the Middle East. The only alternative strategy that the Left have is to do nothing -- thus inviting more and more attacks.
Comments? Email me here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Monday, June 07, 2004
THOSE NASTY GENETICS AGAIN
I linked to Chris Brand's report of this study in Child Development on 18th. last month. The media have now got hold of it. As it says here: "Love and genes can overcome even the most abject poverty, according to a study into the effects of environmental factors on child development. The study of 1,116 mothers and their five-year-old same-sex twins in poor households in England and Wales found that poverty did not have to be a life sentence and the right combination of parental care and genetics could triumph over adversity. "Children in our study experienced more than just poverty as measured by family income level, Julia Kim-Cohen of the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College in London wrote in the May issue of the journal Child Development. "Living in the poorest neighbourhoods, their homes were rated as being overcrowded, damp or in disrepair," she added... It showed that genetic makeup does play a role in the ability of children to rise above their poverty and not suffer behavioural or cognitive setbacks, but it was not the whole answer". Leftists of course mostly seem to believe that poverty is SOLELY caused by environmental factors. That genes play a major role in whether you stay in poverty or rise out of it is abhorrent to them. It means that there are some big things that social engineering cannot change. It does also tend to show how right a certain wise man from the past was -- Matthew 26:11.
"Tiny genetic changes add up to huge differences when human DNA is compared to that of chimpanzees, researchers said on Wednesday in a report that explains how people and apes can be so close, yet so far apart. Genetically, chimpanzees are 98.5 percent identical to humans. But the differences between the species are clearly profound and geneticists have been laboring to find out how such subtle variations in DNA can be so important. "Clearly, the genomic differences between humans and chimps are much more complicated than conventional wisdom has portrayed," Asao Fujiyama of the RIKEN Genomic Sciences Center in Yokohama, Japan, and colleagues in Japan, Taiwan and China wrote in their report, published in this week's issue of the journal Nature". Leftists claim that the almost complete genetic similarity between blacks and whites means that there cannot be any inherited race differences. By the same logic there are no inborn differences between humans and chimps. In fact, a difference in JUST ONE gene can make a huge difference to how somebody turns out.
********************************
I linked to Chris Brand's report of this study in Child Development on 18th. last month. The media have now got hold of it. As it says here: "Love and genes can overcome even the most abject poverty, according to a study into the effects of environmental factors on child development. The study of 1,116 mothers and their five-year-old same-sex twins in poor households in England and Wales found that poverty did not have to be a life sentence and the right combination of parental care and genetics could triumph over adversity. "Children in our study experienced more than just poverty as measured by family income level, Julia Kim-Cohen of the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College in London wrote in the May issue of the journal Child Development. "Living in the poorest neighbourhoods, their homes were rated as being overcrowded, damp or in disrepair," she added... It showed that genetic makeup does play a role in the ability of children to rise above their poverty and not suffer behavioural or cognitive setbacks, but it was not the whole answer". Leftists of course mostly seem to believe that poverty is SOLELY caused by environmental factors. That genes play a major role in whether you stay in poverty or rise out of it is abhorrent to them. It means that there are some big things that social engineering cannot change. It does also tend to show how right a certain wise man from the past was -- Matthew 26:11.
"Tiny genetic changes add up to huge differences when human DNA is compared to that of chimpanzees, researchers said on Wednesday in a report that explains how people and apes can be so close, yet so far apart. Genetically, chimpanzees are 98.5 percent identical to humans. But the differences between the species are clearly profound and geneticists have been laboring to find out how such subtle variations in DNA can be so important. "Clearly, the genomic differences between humans and chimps are much more complicated than conventional wisdom has portrayed," Asao Fujiyama of the RIKEN Genomic Sciences Center in Yokohama, Japan, and colleagues in Japan, Taiwan and China wrote in their report, published in this week's issue of the journal Nature". Leftists claim that the almost complete genetic similarity between blacks and whites means that there cannot be any inherited race differences. By the same logic there are no inborn differences between humans and chimps. In fact, a difference in JUST ONE gene can make a huge difference to how somebody turns out.
********************************
ELSEWHERE
There have of course been a huge number of well-deserved tributes to Ronald Reagan since his death. But for me the most poignant memory of him is when I saw him on TV giving this speech at the time of the first space-shuttle disaster. It still moves me to tears just to read it. And to have seen that good and dignified man himself giving it..... He was a genuinely kind and caring man. He really was what Leftists only pretend to be.
And here is the text of his farewell address to the nation after his eight years as president, delivered in the Oval Office on January 11, 1989. I have also put up here a memoir of Reagan from one of my readers -- with particular comments on the Leftist claim that he was an intellectual lightweight.
As readers of this blog will be aware, I do get a bit sarcastic at times so you may not be surprised that this piece of sarcasm made me laugh out loud: Oliver Kamm quotes a politician from Britain's wishy-washy Left (the Lib-Dems) as follows: "Peace in the Middle East is next on the agenda. [Hughes] pledges to visit the mayors of Jerusalem and Ramallah to see if he can sort things out. As a Christian who supports Israel and a lifelong campaigner for a Palestinian state, he says, he can be a good mediator. "The position of Jerusalem is central to a resolution," he says. "I don't believe there aren't ways of moving that forward."" Kamm then comments: "Yes, that's it! The reason the Arab-Israeli conflict persists is obviously that there aren't enough foreign politicians meddling in it. How visionary, yet at the same time eminently pragmatic. I'm impressed".
More Roman Catholic decline: "The priesthood in the 21st century will be perceived as a "predominantly gay profession," says Rev. Donald Cozzens, an American priest who wrote a book on the topic" If they habitually betray their oath of celibacy, is there any faith or trustworthiness in them? (Via Norm Weatherby, who has lots more on the subject)
Norm Weatherby summarizes the huge and ubiquitous corruption of the United Nations.
Based on his own admissions to U.S. interrogators, Jose Padilla seems to deserve the "enemy combatant" handle. The American citizen's path to al-Qaeda membership is detailed in a gripping investigative summary prepared by Justice Department officials.
Headline from the NY Sun of June 4th.: "Obesity Could Be More Widespread Than Thought". Sub-editors do have fun.
Same-sex marriage in Australia: "George Orwell once remarked, "There are some ideas so preposterous that only an intellectual could believe them". The move to redefine the nature of marriage may be a case in point. When the Prime Minister recently suggested that our marriage laws should be strengthened, the reaction was as swift as it was hostile. A number of commentators labelled this proposal "radical". What a curious thing to say. There is nothing radical about reaffirming what most cultures throughout human history have always affirmed"
I wonder too: "Police are relying on donations for basic equipment including computers, televisions and furniture. The Queensland Police Union says budget cuts over recent years have forced officers to go cap in hand to the public to buy "necessities". In one case, a Lions club had to buy maps for the officer in charge of search-and-rescue operations in a huge area of northwestern Queensland... Police at Petrie, just north of Brisbane, were able to create a comfortable room for child victims and witnesses only after community groups lent a hand last year. The local Lions club donated $1000 worth of equipment, including a television and sofas. President Len Woodward said "one of the lasses from the police station" approached the club seeking help. "The longer you work in organisations like I am, the more you wonder where all of your taxes go," he said"
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
The Left cannot face the fact that the American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq is fundamentally humanitarian. The most effective response to the 9/11 events and the one in America's own best interests would have been a retaliatory strike using nukes to take the whole of Afghanistan off the map -- followed by a threat that Mecca would go sky high if there were any further Islamic attacks on the USA or its allies. That would have made Islam a religion of peace overnight. But GWB rightly rejected that easy road because it would have involved the death of millions of innocents. He chose instead to go after just the bad guys -- an extremely difficult task. And its difficulty is causing continuing American deaths in Iraq to this day. But Americans have always given their blood in order to be humane. They did it in two world wars and in Vietnam and they are doing it now in the Middle East. The only alternative strategy that the Left have is to do nothing -- thus inviting more and more attacks.
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.
********************************
There have of course been a huge number of well-deserved tributes to Ronald Reagan since his death. But for me the most poignant memory of him is when I saw him on TV giving this speech at the time of the first space-shuttle disaster. It still moves me to tears just to read it. And to have seen that good and dignified man himself giving it..... He was a genuinely kind and caring man. He really was what Leftists only pretend to be.
And here is the text of his farewell address to the nation after his eight years as president, delivered in the Oval Office on January 11, 1989. I have also put up here a memoir of Reagan from one of my readers -- with particular comments on the Leftist claim that he was an intellectual lightweight.
As readers of this blog will be aware, I do get a bit sarcastic at times so you may not be surprised that this piece of sarcasm made me laugh out loud: Oliver Kamm quotes a politician from Britain's wishy-washy Left (the Lib-Dems) as follows: "Peace in the Middle East is next on the agenda. [Hughes] pledges to visit the mayors of Jerusalem and Ramallah to see if he can sort things out. As a Christian who supports Israel and a lifelong campaigner for a Palestinian state, he says, he can be a good mediator. "The position of Jerusalem is central to a resolution," he says. "I don't believe there aren't ways of moving that forward."" Kamm then comments: "Yes, that's it! The reason the Arab-Israeli conflict persists is obviously that there aren't enough foreign politicians meddling in it. How visionary, yet at the same time eminently pragmatic. I'm impressed".
More Roman Catholic decline: "The priesthood in the 21st century will be perceived as a "predominantly gay profession," says Rev. Donald Cozzens, an American priest who wrote a book on the topic" If they habitually betray their oath of celibacy, is there any faith or trustworthiness in them? (Via Norm Weatherby, who has lots more on the subject)
Norm Weatherby summarizes the huge and ubiquitous corruption of the United Nations.
Based on his own admissions to U.S. interrogators, Jose Padilla seems to deserve the "enemy combatant" handle. The American citizen's path to al-Qaeda membership is detailed in a gripping investigative summary prepared by Justice Department officials.
Headline from the NY Sun of June 4th.: "Obesity Could Be More Widespread Than Thought". Sub-editors do have fun.
Same-sex marriage in Australia: "George Orwell once remarked, "There are some ideas so preposterous that only an intellectual could believe them". The move to redefine the nature of marriage may be a case in point. When the Prime Minister recently suggested that our marriage laws should be strengthened, the reaction was as swift as it was hostile. A number of commentators labelled this proposal "radical". What a curious thing to say. There is nothing radical about reaffirming what most cultures throughout human history have always affirmed"
I wonder too: "Police are relying on donations for basic equipment including computers, televisions and furniture. The Queensland Police Union says budget cuts over recent years have forced officers to go cap in hand to the public to buy "necessities". In one case, a Lions club had to buy maps for the officer in charge of search-and-rescue operations in a huge area of northwestern Queensland... Police at Petrie, just north of Brisbane, were able to create a comfortable room for child victims and witnesses only after community groups lent a hand last year. The local Lions club donated $1000 worth of equipment, including a television and sofas. President Len Woodward said "one of the lasses from the police station" approached the club seeking help. "The longer you work in organisations like I am, the more you wonder where all of your taxes go," he said"
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
The Left cannot face the fact that the American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq is fundamentally humanitarian. The most effective response to the 9/11 events and the one in America's own best interests would have been a retaliatory strike using nukes to take the whole of Afghanistan off the map -- followed by a threat that Mecca would go sky high if there were any further Islamic attacks on the USA or its allies. That would have made Islam a religion of peace overnight. But GWB rightly rejected that easy road because it would have involved the death of millions of innocents. He chose instead to go after just the bad guys -- an extremely difficult task. And its difficulty is causing continuing American deaths in Iraq to this day. But Americans have always given their blood in order to be humane. They did it in two world wars and in Vietnam and they are doing it now in the Middle East. The only alternative strategy that the Left have is to do nothing -- thus inviting more and more attacks.
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.
********************************
Sunday, June 06, 2004
I am in mourning: Ronald Reagan, my only hero, has passed away. I loved that man. He was such a great gentleman. For my money he is the greatest President the USA has ever had. He won his war without a shot being fired. I will never forget him.
ANOTHER CHRISTIAN CONSERVATIVE
C.S. Lewis is mainly considered an able Christian apologist, which he was, but he was also an incisive conservative political critic and an opponent of the planned state which, like Hayek, he saw as ending in tyranny. Unlike Hayek, Lewis was no free market economist and approached social issues from a very different perspective. That he reached the same conclusions about planned states as Hayek from a different route only reinforces the argument.
Some quotes: "The modern state exists not to protect our rights but to do us good or make us good--anyway, to do something to us or to make us do something... We are less their subjects than their wards, pupils, or domestic animals. There is nothing left of which we can say to them, 'Mind your own business.' Our whole lives are their business.... I believe a man is happier, and happy in a richer way, if he has 'the freeborn mind.' But I doubt whether he can have this without economic independence, which the new society is abolishing. For economic independence allows an education not controlled by the Government; and in adult life it is the man who needs, and asks, nothing of the Government who can criticize its acts and snap his fingers at its ideology".
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ANOTHER CHRISTIAN CONSERVATIVE
C.S. Lewis is mainly considered an able Christian apologist, which he was, but he was also an incisive conservative political critic and an opponent of the planned state which, like Hayek, he saw as ending in tyranny. Unlike Hayek, Lewis was no free market economist and approached social issues from a very different perspective. That he reached the same conclusions about planned states as Hayek from a different route only reinforces the argument.
Some quotes: "The modern state exists not to protect our rights but to do us good or make us good--anyway, to do something to us or to make us do something... We are less their subjects than their wards, pupils, or domestic animals. There is nothing left of which we can say to them, 'Mind your own business.' Our whole lives are their business.... I believe a man is happier, and happy in a richer way, if he has 'the freeborn mind.' But I doubt whether he can have this without economic independence, which the new society is abolishing. For economic independence allows an education not controlled by the Government; and in adult life it is the man who needs, and asks, nothing of the Government who can criticize its acts and snap his fingers at its ideology".
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JOHN KERRY
A New York reader has sent me a brief but penetrating analysis of the elitist and socialist thinking behind John Kerry's recent pamphlet A Call to service. Read it here.
More on John Kerry's dishonest attempts to exploit his fleeting presence in Vietnam here: "Larry L. Rose said: "If John Kerry allows this commercial to run, it will show the kind of person John Kerry is. That he allows his campaign team to lift Hispanic faces from a Caller-Times book, to violate copyright, and to violate the individual rights of those Hispanic veterans, is appalling."
"John Kerry's campaign strategists and top Democratic officials say their party is more unified than ever for the 2004 presidential election. Don't believe it, of course. Apparent desertions by Democrats backing independent candidate Ralph Nader are mounting, along with bitter grumblings from black and Hispanic leaders who say Mr. Kerry has taken them for granted. His troubles with an often-contentious political base do not end there."
John Kerry opposes medical research: "If Kerry's plan were implemented and America tried to piggyback on Canada's price controls, it would create an unprecedented health care disaster not just in Canada, but in the U.S. as well. American companies spend an average of $800 million to develop a new drug. They must be able to recoup that investment, which is why the price of a drug is so much higher than the simple cost of manufacturing a pill."
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A New York reader has sent me a brief but penetrating analysis of the elitist and socialist thinking behind John Kerry's recent pamphlet A Call to service. Read it here.
More on John Kerry's dishonest attempts to exploit his fleeting presence in Vietnam here: "Larry L. Rose said: "If John Kerry allows this commercial to run, it will show the kind of person John Kerry is. That he allows his campaign team to lift Hispanic faces from a Caller-Times book, to violate copyright, and to violate the individual rights of those Hispanic veterans, is appalling."
"John Kerry's campaign strategists and top Democratic officials say their party is more unified than ever for the 2004 presidential election. Don't believe it, of course. Apparent desertions by Democrats backing independent candidate Ralph Nader are mounting, along with bitter grumblings from black and Hispanic leaders who say Mr. Kerry has taken them for granted. His troubles with an often-contentious political base do not end there."
John Kerry opposes medical research: "If Kerry's plan were implemented and America tried to piggyback on Canada's price controls, it would create an unprecedented health care disaster not just in Canada, but in the U.S. as well. American companies spend an average of $800 million to develop a new drug. They must be able to recoup that investment, which is why the price of a drug is so much higher than the simple cost of manufacturing a pill."
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ELSEWHERE
Leftist elitism again: Dick McDonald reproduces an excerpt from a WSJ article in which the head of Fox News replies to an attack on Fox: "John S. Carroll, the editor of the Los Angeles Times, recently gave a speech at the University of Oregon, in which he attacked Bill O'Reilly, Fox News Channel and me, the chairman of Fox News. However, Mr. Carroll obviously did not feel particularly restricted by facts, truth or sources.... In fact, the Fox News Channel today has 53% of the audience share of cable news. CNN and MSNBC divide up the rest. According to Mr. Carroll, that proves most Americans are therefore stupid and gullible. It's that elite, arrogant, condescending, self-serving, self-righteous, biased and wrong-headed view of Americans that causes viewers and readers to distrust media people like John Carroll."
Australian blogger Evil Pundit has reproduced an email he received from an American reader which powerfully evokes the sheer foaming rage that many American Leftists feel towards GWB. The successes of someone so different from them are just unbearable to these jealousy-consumed haters. And THEY are the ones who claim to admire "diversity"! There is also a quote here from American novelist John Updike about the New York literary scene in the Reagan era. He says it "seethed with barely suppressed anger and was audibly impatient with any utterance other than a straightforward condemnation of the Reagan administration". So the present cross-eyed rage is really nothing to do with GWB in particular. It is just their normal psychological state when they are not getting their own way.
There is an excellent short essay on The Belmont club about why Leftists are such murderous miseries. It echoes much that I have been saying and anybody who likes this blog should read it. One quote: "The naive scholar who searches for a consistent Leftist program will not find it. What there is consists only in the negation of the present"
I kind of like this unfortunate guy: It is a wonder that there are so few such protests against bureaucracy: "Heemeyer on Friday plowed the armor-plated bulldozer into the town and within two hours had knocked down or damaged nine buildings before the machine ground to a halt in the wreckage of a warehouse. City officials said he was angry over a zoning dispute and fines for city code violations at his business in the town about 50 miles west of Denver".
Agitprop is a good Canadian blog -- from the big frogpond of Montreal. I loved his post about the modern Canadian version of the ant & grasshopper tale.
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
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The Left cannot face the fact that the American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq is fundamentally humanitarian. The most effective response to the 9/11 events and the one in America's own best interests would have been a retaliatory strike using nukes to take the whole of Afghanistan off the map -- followed by a threat that Mecca would go sky high if there were any further Islamic attacks on the USA or its allies. That would have made Islam a religion of peace overnight. But GWB rightly rejected that easy road because it would have involved the death of millions of innocents. He chose instead to go after just the bad guys -- an extremely difficult task. And its difficulty is causing continuing American deaths in Iraq to this day. But Americans have always given their blood in order to be humane. They did it in two world wars and in Vietnam and they are doing it now in the Middle East. The only alternative strategy that the Left have is to do nothing -- thus inviting more and more attacks.
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.
********************************
Leftist elitism again: Dick McDonald reproduces an excerpt from a WSJ article in which the head of Fox News replies to an attack on Fox: "John S. Carroll, the editor of the Los Angeles Times, recently gave a speech at the University of Oregon, in which he attacked Bill O'Reilly, Fox News Channel and me, the chairman of Fox News. However, Mr. Carroll obviously did not feel particularly restricted by facts, truth or sources.... In fact, the Fox News Channel today has 53% of the audience share of cable news. CNN and MSNBC divide up the rest. According to Mr. Carroll, that proves most Americans are therefore stupid and gullible. It's that elite, arrogant, condescending, self-serving, self-righteous, biased and wrong-headed view of Americans that causes viewers and readers to distrust media people like John Carroll."
Australian blogger Evil Pundit has reproduced an email he received from an American reader which powerfully evokes the sheer foaming rage that many American Leftists feel towards GWB. The successes of someone so different from them are just unbearable to these jealousy-consumed haters. And THEY are the ones who claim to admire "diversity"! There is also a quote here from American novelist John Updike about the New York literary scene in the Reagan era. He says it "seethed with barely suppressed anger and was audibly impatient with any utterance other than a straightforward condemnation of the Reagan administration". So the present cross-eyed rage is really nothing to do with GWB in particular. It is just their normal psychological state when they are not getting their own way.
There is an excellent short essay on The Belmont club about why Leftists are such murderous miseries. It echoes much that I have been saying and anybody who likes this blog should read it. One quote: "The naive scholar who searches for a consistent Leftist program will not find it. What there is consists only in the negation of the present"
I kind of like this unfortunate guy: It is a wonder that there are so few such protests against bureaucracy: "Heemeyer on Friday plowed the armor-plated bulldozer into the town and within two hours had knocked down or damaged nine buildings before the machine ground to a halt in the wreckage of a warehouse. City officials said he was angry over a zoning dispute and fines for city code violations at his business in the town about 50 miles west of Denver".
Agitprop is a good Canadian blog -- from the big frogpond of Montreal. I loved his post about the modern Canadian version of the ant & grasshopper tale.
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
The Left cannot face the fact that the American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq is fundamentally humanitarian. The most effective response to the 9/11 events and the one in America's own best interests would have been a retaliatory strike using nukes to take the whole of Afghanistan off the map -- followed by a threat that Mecca would go sky high if there were any further Islamic attacks on the USA or its allies. That would have made Islam a religion of peace overnight. But GWB rightly rejected that easy road because it would have involved the death of millions of innocents. He chose instead to go after just the bad guys -- an extremely difficult task. And its difficulty is causing continuing American deaths in Iraq to this day. But Americans have always given their blood in order to be humane. They did it in two world wars and in Vietnam and they are doing it now in the Middle East. The only alternative strategy that the Left have is to do nothing -- thus inviting more and more attacks.
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.
********************************
Saturday, June 05, 2004
BLACK ANGER
I received recently an email from one of my U.S. readers that helped me understand why most Americans seem to hate even hearing the word "race":
I can see no reason at the moment why that anger will ever abate. Blacks do very poorly compared with whites and it takes a big man to blame himself for the fact that he and his kind are not doing well. "Blame others" is always a much more preferable thing to do than blaming oneself. And when a whole half of national politics is telling you that your failure to reach the heights is because you have been discriminated against, it would be remarkable indeed if you did not believe it. So-called "liberals" breed that anger. They need it and thrive on it. Without the black vote they would sink like a stone.
So is there a solution to the anger? Giving blacks equality that they have not earned (affirmative action) has some superficial attractiveness. The trouble is that that has now been tried on a large scale and the anger still seethes. The gap is probably too big and too basic to be closed by anything short of totalitarian measures. So one hopes that one day the only real alternative will be turned to: A strictly colour-blind and merit-based system that will persuade at least most people that whatever anybody has, has been earned by themselves or their parents. Instead of encouraging race-consciousness (affirmative action) Americans should have put all their efforts into eradicating it. Making sure of equality of opportunity for all would be a far better way of getting the social system to be seen as fair.
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I received recently an email from one of my U.S. readers that helped me understand why most Americans seem to hate even hearing the word "race":
"I had an argument with my neighbor Dwayne this afternoon after my jog. He's a black man, a few years younger than I am. He keeps a nice house and yard and drives a fancy car. We've always gotten along well. Today, however, the discussion turned to Bill Cosby's recent criticism of black parents for not raising their children properly. My neighbor jumped all over Cosby, saying he had no right to tell poor blacks how to live. I didn't challenge any of this, because I wanted to stay on good terms. I mainly let him talk. Then he brought up President Bush, saying he was a racist. I asked for evidence. He had none. When I pressed him as to why he thinks Bush is a racist, he said he just knows. I told him that a few years ago, Bush and his wife drove Alphonso Jackson and his wife (a black couple) to ritzy Highland Park to look at homes. He wanted Jackson as his neighbor. Does that sound like a racist? And who has a black National Security Adviser and Secretary of State? Since Dwayne couldn't cite any evidence for his belief that Bush is a racist, I asked whether all whites are racist. He said no.
At one point I said, half jokingly, that that was the stupidest thing Dwayne had ever said. This changed the tone. He told me to go and not stop by to talk to him any more. He told me to keep my dogs off his grass. It was tense. I pleaded for a moment, then walked away. This man is angry. Until today, I didn't know it. He said at one point that only two presidents cared about blacks: John F. Kennedy ("and they shot him for it") and Bill Clinton. He loves Clinton, as surveys show almost all blacks do. He hates Bush, as surveys show almost all blacks do. Republicans may as well give up on blacks; they're convinced, without evidence, that Republicans are out to get them. They're seething with resentment and anger."
I can see no reason at the moment why that anger will ever abate. Blacks do very poorly compared with whites and it takes a big man to blame himself for the fact that he and his kind are not doing well. "Blame others" is always a much more preferable thing to do than blaming oneself. And when a whole half of national politics is telling you that your failure to reach the heights is because you have been discriminated against, it would be remarkable indeed if you did not believe it. So-called "liberals" breed that anger. They need it and thrive on it. Without the black vote they would sink like a stone.
So is there a solution to the anger? Giving blacks equality that they have not earned (affirmative action) has some superficial attractiveness. The trouble is that that has now been tried on a large scale and the anger still seethes. The gap is probably too big and too basic to be closed by anything short of totalitarian measures. So one hopes that one day the only real alternative will be turned to: A strictly colour-blind and merit-based system that will persuade at least most people that whatever anybody has, has been earned by themselves or their parents. Instead of encouraging race-consciousness (affirmative action) Americans should have put all their efforts into eradicating it. Making sure of equality of opportunity for all would be a far better way of getting the social system to be seen as fair.
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THE UNRAVELLING MYTH OF LEFTIST "PRINCIPLES"
Jeff Jacoby points out that GWB's "idealism" in striving to make the Middle East more democratic is also practical. Trying to bring about an Iraqi government that is both stable and democratic is undoubtedly a difficult challenge but past American policy that satisfied itself with stability only led to the events of 9/11. John Kerry, by contrast, is stuck in the failed past of American isolationism. So who said that it is conservatives who resist change? They only resist half-baked Leftist proposals for change. At the moment it is the Democrats who are refusing to change from a policy that has obviously failed. Leftists have of course always promoted themselves as idealistic and "principled" but the fact that their idealism and principles have vanished in a puff of smoke now that they see electoral advantage in having no principles should surprise no-one. That the people who supported Stalin and the Soviet system throughout the Cold war were "idealistic" was always a joke.
Wavering British Leftist Roger Simon also notes how the behaviour of most of the Left over Iraq contradicts all that they once claimed to stand for: "Who really is "progressive" anyway, those who have been backing democracy in Iraq or those opposing 'unilateral' intervention in totalitarian states?"
And this site records something that BBC journalists were saying before the Iraq invasion but which BBC managers would not let them put into writing: "The far left was becoming the far right. It had gone as close to supporting Ba'athist fascism as it dared". Again something that would surprise only those deluded souls who thought that the Left had principles.
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Jeff Jacoby points out that GWB's "idealism" in striving to make the Middle East more democratic is also practical. Trying to bring about an Iraqi government that is both stable and democratic is undoubtedly a difficult challenge but past American policy that satisfied itself with stability only led to the events of 9/11. John Kerry, by contrast, is stuck in the failed past of American isolationism. So who said that it is conservatives who resist change? They only resist half-baked Leftist proposals for change. At the moment it is the Democrats who are refusing to change from a policy that has obviously failed. Leftists have of course always promoted themselves as idealistic and "principled" but the fact that their idealism and principles have vanished in a puff of smoke now that they see electoral advantage in having no principles should surprise no-one. That the people who supported Stalin and the Soviet system throughout the Cold war were "idealistic" was always a joke.
Wavering British Leftist Roger Simon also notes how the behaviour of most of the Left over Iraq contradicts all that they once claimed to stand for: "Who really is "progressive" anyway, those who have been backing democracy in Iraq or those opposing 'unilateral' intervention in totalitarian states?"
And this site records something that BBC journalists were saying before the Iraq invasion but which BBC managers would not let them put into writing: "The far left was becoming the far right. It had gone as close to supporting Ba'athist fascism as it dared". Again something that would surprise only those deluded souls who thought that the Left had principles.
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ELSEWHERE
In connection with my comment yesterday about a post on the blog of Leftist law professor Brian Leiter, it has been drawn to my attention that there is another way one can interpret Leiter's Delphic words. He is probably in fact arguing that because Americans have moved to the Right in recent years (itself a proposition in need of proof) THEREFORE the universities cannot have been preaching Leftism. The unstated but highly amusing premise in that being that all preaching must be influential! That other influences (9/11 anyone?) might more than cancel out any influence from Leftist preaching is just not allowed for in that particular parody of logic! I had not considered that he might be putting forward an argument quite as ridiculous as that but he is a Leftist after all.
More bad news for the "outsourcing" warriors: "U.S. employers hired almost a quarter-million new workers in May, swelling payrolls by nearly 1.2 million for the year so far in a jobs market steadily gaining steam ahead of November's presidential election." Outsourcing is a sign of an efficient and healthy economy.
It's pretty common these days for all kinds of organisations and lobbies to produce scorecards to help voters from their particular audience to judge better the performance of elected officials. Apparently the US Conference of Catholic Bishops' "scorecard" for rating the performance of various congressmen equates issues of liberal political dogma with conformance to catechism and church doctrine. This raises the question as to whether the USCCB's primary allegiance is to Catholicism or liberalism. See here
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
The Left cannot face the fact that the American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq is fundamentally humanitarian. The most effective response to the 9/11 events and the one in America's own best interests would have been a retaliatory strike using nukes to take the whole of Afghanistan off the map -- followed by a threat that Mecca would go sky high if there were any further Islamic attacks on the USA or its allies. That would have made Islam a religion of peace overnight. But GWB rightly rejected that easy road because it would have involved the death of millions of innocents. He chose instead to go after just the bad guys -- an extremely difficult task. And its difficulty is causing continuing American deaths in Iraq to this day. But Americans have always given their blood in order to be humane. They did it in two world wars and in Vietnam and they are doing it now in the Middle East. The only alternative strategy that the Left have is to do nothing -- thus inviting more and more attacks.
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.
********************************
In connection with my comment yesterday about a post on the blog of Leftist law professor Brian Leiter, it has been drawn to my attention that there is another way one can interpret Leiter's Delphic words. He is probably in fact arguing that because Americans have moved to the Right in recent years (itself a proposition in need of proof) THEREFORE the universities cannot have been preaching Leftism. The unstated but highly amusing premise in that being that all preaching must be influential! That other influences (9/11 anyone?) might more than cancel out any influence from Leftist preaching is just not allowed for in that particular parody of logic! I had not considered that he might be putting forward an argument quite as ridiculous as that but he is a Leftist after all.
More bad news for the "outsourcing" warriors: "U.S. employers hired almost a quarter-million new workers in May, swelling payrolls by nearly 1.2 million for the year so far in a jobs market steadily gaining steam ahead of November's presidential election." Outsourcing is a sign of an efficient and healthy economy.
It's pretty common these days for all kinds of organisations and lobbies to produce scorecards to help voters from their particular audience to judge better the performance of elected officials. Apparently the US Conference of Catholic Bishops' "scorecard" for rating the performance of various congressmen equates issues of liberal political dogma with conformance to catechism and church doctrine. This raises the question as to whether the USCCB's primary allegiance is to Catholicism or liberalism. See here
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
The Left cannot face the fact that the American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq is fundamentally humanitarian. The most effective response to the 9/11 events and the one in America's own best interests would have been a retaliatory strike using nukes to take the whole of Afghanistan off the map -- followed by a threat that Mecca would go sky high if there were any further Islamic attacks on the USA or its allies. That would have made Islam a religion of peace overnight. But GWB rightly rejected that easy road because it would have involved the death of millions of innocents. He chose instead to go after just the bad guys -- an extremely difficult task. And its difficulty is causing continuing American deaths in Iraq to this day. But Americans have always given their blood in order to be humane. They did it in two world wars and in Vietnam and they are doing it now in the Middle East. The only alternative strategy that the Left have is to do nothing -- thus inviting more and more attacks.
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.
********************************
Friday, June 04, 2004
MORE LEFTIST LOGIC
I have just come across another bit of "sophisticated" debate on the blog of a Leftist academic. Get this from Brian Leiter: "Yes, it's true that when you raise the intellectual bar high, as serious universities do, you get fewer right-wing kooks, but that simply doesn't mean there is political indoctrination going on at universities. The fact that the U.S. has moved farther to the right during the same time period when the universities have allegedly moved to the left ought to be taken as empirical confirmation of that point." I guess that as a dumb psychologist I may have missed the point of this clever bit of legal reasoning but he seems to be saying that if more people are conservative and the universities are more leftist, the universities can only have got that way by raising their academic standards. But does not that equate higher intellectual standards with greater Leftism? So is he not assuming what he has to prove?
And it is presumably true by definition that "kooks" will be excluded by a higher intellectual standards but why does a higher intellectual standard exclude right-wing kooks only? Are we again asserting that only rightists are kooks? It appears that we are. Otherwise, why put "right-wing" in front of kooks? In Leiter's case, it would appear that abuse and assertion has taken the place of evidence and reasoning. I feel sorry for the law students he is allegedly teaching at the University of Texas. Or maybe my studies in analytical philosophy have just not equipped me for Leiter's version of logic. Maybe I am just a "kook".
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I have just come across another bit of "sophisticated" debate on the blog of a Leftist academic. Get this from Brian Leiter: "Yes, it's true that when you raise the intellectual bar high, as serious universities do, you get fewer right-wing kooks, but that simply doesn't mean there is political indoctrination going on at universities. The fact that the U.S. has moved farther to the right during the same time period when the universities have allegedly moved to the left ought to be taken as empirical confirmation of that point." I guess that as a dumb psychologist I may have missed the point of this clever bit of legal reasoning but he seems to be saying that if more people are conservative and the universities are more leftist, the universities can only have got that way by raising their academic standards. But does not that equate higher intellectual standards with greater Leftism? So is he not assuming what he has to prove?
And it is presumably true by definition that "kooks" will be excluded by a higher intellectual standards but why does a higher intellectual standard exclude right-wing kooks only? Are we again asserting that only rightists are kooks? It appears that we are. Otherwise, why put "right-wing" in front of kooks? In Leiter's case, it would appear that abuse and assertion has taken the place of evidence and reasoning. I feel sorry for the law students he is allegedly teaching at the University of Texas. Or maybe my studies in analytical philosophy have just not equipped me for Leiter's version of logic. Maybe I am just a "kook".
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WHEN BLACK IS BROWN
The Leftist racists are reeling at Berkeley: "This fall, being black at Berkeley is likely to become even more of an anomaly than it already is. As of late spring, 98 black students had registered for fall enrollment out of an expected freshman class of 3,821... "Virtually every part of the campus is extremely concerned about the low numbers of underrepresented minorities and, in particular, the appallingly low numbers of African-Americans," Strait said. The fall enrollment figures came about six months after John Moores, chairman of UC's governing Board of Regents, issued a report saying Berkeley turned away thousands of students who aced the SAT but accepted hundreds - many of whom were black or Hispanic - with low scores". But there are more Asians than whites in the student body, so not all "minorities" are "underrepresented". But Asians don't make a place "diverse" of course -- don't ask me why!
But most amusing of all, note this quote: ""Don't go there thinking, 'I'm going to be looking around for other black kids,'" says Ward Connerly, a part-black UC regent who led the fight to drop race-based admissions". Apparently, if you oppose racism, you can only be "PART-black"! Funny that I have never heard any of the many coffee-coloured Leftists described that way. What a weird world the Left live in! Ideology even affects their colour-vision.
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The Leftist racists are reeling at Berkeley: "This fall, being black at Berkeley is likely to become even more of an anomaly than it already is. As of late spring, 98 black students had registered for fall enrollment out of an expected freshman class of 3,821... "Virtually every part of the campus is extremely concerned about the low numbers of underrepresented minorities and, in particular, the appallingly low numbers of African-Americans," Strait said. The fall enrollment figures came about six months after John Moores, chairman of UC's governing Board of Regents, issued a report saying Berkeley turned away thousands of students who aced the SAT but accepted hundreds - many of whom were black or Hispanic - with low scores". But there are more Asians than whites in the student body, so not all "minorities" are "underrepresented". But Asians don't make a place "diverse" of course -- don't ask me why!
But most amusing of all, note this quote: ""Don't go there thinking, 'I'm going to be looking around for other black kids,'" says Ward Connerly, a part-black UC regent who led the fight to drop race-based admissions". Apparently, if you oppose racism, you can only be "PART-black"! Funny that I have never heard any of the many coffee-coloured Leftists described that way. What a weird world the Left live in! Ideology even affects their colour-vision.
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ELSEWHERE
Leftists just hate the entire field of IQ research. The very idea that some people are smarter than others offends their "all men are equal" religion and the repeated finding that IQ is mostly genetically inherited means that they cannot blame low IQ on "society". So Leftist psychologists are always ducking and weaving in an effort to find some way of devaluing IQ. They normally do that by inventing "other" intellectual abilities that are independent of IQ. I have mentioned the feeble attempt by Sternberg in that direction previously so I guess I should mention another theory that is very popular among Leftists -- the Howard Gardner theory of "multiple intelligences" -- eight of them, would you believe? There is a very clear and simple demolition of the whole Gardner theory here -- which points out that the Gardner theory not only ignores the data but that its criteria for calling something "an intelligence" are so loose that sense of humour, sense of smell, musical ability, athletic ability etc could all be called "intelligences". By adopting similar rules I could say that all cats, dogs and horses are birds -- but that would still not make them so.
Selwyn Duke, from Mens News Daily says the sexualised abuses at Abu Ghraib are serious, but were they 'torture'? And why have the media had a sudden attack of morals? "...if you were weaned on MTV and Loveline, received constant messages that sex is a game, homosexuality a legitimate lifestyle and that what used to be called behaving like a slut is not degrading but the fruits of liberation, how likely would you be to recognize the gravity of the incidents at Abu Graib? Heck, there are some people - and I suspect you can find an inordinate number of them in the media - to whom that kind of behavior is recreation."
An acerbic comment from Peggy Noonan: "Europe is a post-Christian society on a continent devoted to the material except when it is considering astrology, witchcraft and worshiping rocks."
Roger Sandall is an ex-anthropologist and author of The Culture Cult. Reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement as "brilliant, sardonic, and impassioned", his attack on romantic primitivism (best known from the writings of Rousseau) ranges from discussions of the horrible decline and fall of anthropology, to the intellectual follies of thinkers like Isaiah Berlin and Karl Polanyi, to the baleful triumph of the anthropological meaning of "culture" in the humanities. It is neither polite nor politically correct: but it's a sure antidote to multicultural delusions.
There is a thought-provoking post here that sees concern over animal rights as a capitalist luxury. Without capitalism we would have much more pressing problems than animal rights to deal with.
Dick McDonald has just put up a heap of hard-hitting posts about current American politics. I had missed the news about America's soaring factory output and the way former knockers of it have ignored the turnaround.
Wicked Thoughts now has nine pictures up of the strange things you can encounter if you go shopping overseas.
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
The Left cannot face the fact that the American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq is fundamentally humanitarian. The most effective response to the 9/11 events and the one in America's own best interests would have been a retaliatory strike using nukes to take the whole of Afghanistan off the map -- followed by a threat that Mecca would go sky high if there were any further Islamic attacks on the USA or its allies. That would have made Islam a religion of peace overnight. But GWB rightly rejected that easy road because it would have involved the death of millions of innocents. He chose instead to go after just the bad guys -- an extremely difficult task. And its difficulty is causing continuing American deaths in Iraq to this day. But Americans have always given their blood in order to be humane. They did it in two world wars and in Vietnam and they are doing it now in the Middle East. The only alternative strategy that the Left have is to do nothing -- thus inviting more and more attacks.
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.
********************************
Leftists just hate the entire field of IQ research. The very idea that some people are smarter than others offends their "all men are equal" religion and the repeated finding that IQ is mostly genetically inherited means that they cannot blame low IQ on "society". So Leftist psychologists are always ducking and weaving in an effort to find some way of devaluing IQ. They normally do that by inventing "other" intellectual abilities that are independent of IQ. I have mentioned the feeble attempt by Sternberg in that direction previously so I guess I should mention another theory that is very popular among Leftists -- the Howard Gardner theory of "multiple intelligences" -- eight of them, would you believe? There is a very clear and simple demolition of the whole Gardner theory here -- which points out that the Gardner theory not only ignores the data but that its criteria for calling something "an intelligence" are so loose that sense of humour, sense of smell, musical ability, athletic ability etc could all be called "intelligences". By adopting similar rules I could say that all cats, dogs and horses are birds -- but that would still not make them so.
Selwyn Duke, from Mens News Daily says the sexualised abuses at Abu Ghraib are serious, but were they 'torture'? And why have the media had a sudden attack of morals? "...if you were weaned on MTV and Loveline, received constant messages that sex is a game, homosexuality a legitimate lifestyle and that what used to be called behaving like a slut is not degrading but the fruits of liberation, how likely would you be to recognize the gravity of the incidents at Abu Graib? Heck, there are some people - and I suspect you can find an inordinate number of them in the media - to whom that kind of behavior is recreation."
An acerbic comment from Peggy Noonan: "Europe is a post-Christian society on a continent devoted to the material except when it is considering astrology, witchcraft and worshiping rocks."
Roger Sandall is an ex-anthropologist and author of The Culture Cult. Reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement as "brilliant, sardonic, and impassioned", his attack on romantic primitivism (best known from the writings of Rousseau) ranges from discussions of the horrible decline and fall of anthropology, to the intellectual follies of thinkers like Isaiah Berlin and Karl Polanyi, to the baleful triumph of the anthropological meaning of "culture" in the humanities. It is neither polite nor politically correct: but it's a sure antidote to multicultural delusions.
There is a thought-provoking post here that sees concern over animal rights as a capitalist luxury. Without capitalism we would have much more pressing problems than animal rights to deal with.
Dick McDonald has just put up a heap of hard-hitting posts about current American politics. I had missed the news about America's soaring factory output and the way former knockers of it have ignored the turnaround.
Wicked Thoughts now has nine pictures up of the strange things you can encounter if you go shopping overseas.
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
The Left cannot face the fact that the American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq is fundamentally humanitarian. The most effective response to the 9/11 events and the one in America's own best interests would have been a retaliatory strike using nukes to take the whole of Afghanistan off the map -- followed by a threat that Mecca would go sky high if there were any further Islamic attacks on the USA or its allies. That would have made Islam a religion of peace overnight. But GWB rightly rejected that easy road because it would have involved the death of millions of innocents. He chose instead to go after just the bad guys -- an extremely difficult task. And its difficulty is causing continuing American deaths in Iraq to this day. But Americans have always given their blood in order to be humane. They did it in two world wars and in Vietnam and they are doing it now in the Middle East. The only alternative strategy that the Left have is to do nothing -- thus inviting more and more attacks.
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.
********************************
Thursday, June 03, 2004
SOME RESULTS OF AN AMERICAN UNIVERSITY EDUCATION
Overall, I comment very little on what Leftist bloggers are saying. Cleaning out the Augean stables is not a task for me. But sometimes they get too amusing for me to resist: Open Door is a graduate student of psychology at UTA (with a previous academic background including philosophy), who claims that there is only minimal Leftism in American universities.
In typical Leftist style, our Lefty blogger is good on mere abuse -- he calls me "doltish" and "benighted" -- but he is very short on elementary logic. He takes this statement by Keith Burgess-Jackson: "A recurring theme in liberal thought is that wealth and poverty are undeserved" and comments "This is simply false. The recurrent theme in liberal thought is that some wealth, and some poverty, are undeserved". But that is perfectly consistent with what Keith said! Where is the word "ALL" in Keith's statement? Without any qualifiers, Keith's statement simply spoke of wealth and poverty being GENERALLY undeserved. His attack on Keith is not only an attack on a straw man but in fact reinforces what Keith said! There is a lot more than doors open in the brain of that particular Lefty blogger. How he ever passed his introductory logic course is a mystery. I guess it shows that they teach Leftist "logic" in American universities these days. I note in passing also that our Lefty blogger cannot even cut and paste accurately. He quotes Keith as using the word "recurrent" when he in fact used the word "recurring". What a dodo!
As far back as 1972, I was pointing out that Leftists are very prone to the "projection" (i.e. seeing your own faults in others) that they often accuse conservatives as suffering from. So it is rather fun that this Lefty blogger is an example of it too. I pointed out above that his attack on Keith was an attack on a "straw man" (i.e. a misrepresented or fictional opponent). So guess what he was accusing Keith of? You guessed it -- of attacking a straw man.
***********************************
Overall, I comment very little on what Leftist bloggers are saying. Cleaning out the Augean stables is not a task for me. But sometimes they get too amusing for me to resist: Open Door is a graduate student of psychology at UTA (with a previous academic background including philosophy), who claims that there is only minimal Leftism in American universities.
In typical Leftist style, our Lefty blogger is good on mere abuse -- he calls me "doltish" and "benighted" -- but he is very short on elementary logic. He takes this statement by Keith Burgess-Jackson: "A recurring theme in liberal thought is that wealth and poverty are undeserved" and comments "This is simply false. The recurrent theme in liberal thought is that some wealth, and some poverty, are undeserved". But that is perfectly consistent with what Keith said! Where is the word "ALL" in Keith's statement? Without any qualifiers, Keith's statement simply spoke of wealth and poverty being GENERALLY undeserved. His attack on Keith is not only an attack on a straw man but in fact reinforces what Keith said! There is a lot more than doors open in the brain of that particular Lefty blogger. How he ever passed his introductory logic course is a mystery. I guess it shows that they teach Leftist "logic" in American universities these days. I note in passing also that our Lefty blogger cannot even cut and paste accurately. He quotes Keith as using the word "recurrent" when he in fact used the word "recurring". What a dodo!
As far back as 1972, I was pointing out that Leftists are very prone to the "projection" (i.e. seeing your own faults in others) that they often accuse conservatives as suffering from. So it is rather fun that this Lefty blogger is an example of it too. I pointed out above that his attack on Keith was an attack on a "straw man" (i.e. a misrepresented or fictional opponent). So guess what he was accusing Keith of? You guessed it -- of attacking a straw man.
***********************************
ELSEWHERE
Sheer Leftist insanity -- from Canada: "the McGuinty Liberals, whose recent budget forced Ontario families to fork over hundreds of dollars more annually in new healthcare taxes while simultaneously de-listing services like trips to the eye doctor, chiropractic and physiotherapy services from public health insurance, are set to re-list sex change operations! (That wasn't a typo, I really did mean RE-list, not DE-list.) How will he justify this to an average family?" (Post of May 28th, here). How Leftists hate ordinary people!
There is a great article here by Alan Dershowitz setting out the things that the Left never mention about Israel and pointing out when criticism of Israel is antisemitic and when it is not. (Via Peg Kaplan).
The Real Story of Fallujah: "The meticulous planning process undertaken by the Marines at the tactical level for assaulting Fallujah was not augmented with a similarly meticulous process by the Bush administration at the strategic level for counteracting the easily foreseen media fallout from fighting in civilian areas near Muslim religious sites. The public was never made to feel just how much of a military threat the mosques in Fallujah represented, just how far Marines went to avoid damage to them and to civilians, and just how much those same Marine battalions accomplished after departing Fallujah."
Academic standards seem to be extremely rubbery at American universities (even Harvard has to give 20% of its freshman intake remedial instruction in English!) but it seems that British standards are pretty rubbery too. Note this post from Chris Brand: "A British headmaster running a top girls' boarding school in Tamil Nadu, India, revealed to the Sunday Times that his daughter had been rejected by Edinburgh University when she applied as British, but was subsequently accepted when she applied from an Indian address and without mentioning her British citizenship".
Good if it were true: "President Bush's re-election strategists plan to portray the November election as the first since the Reagan era to offer voters a stark choice between liberalism and conservatism. ... 'Conservatives have for a generation yearned for an election in which there would be a very clear choice on the issues and a strong focus on grass roots,' said Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman. 'This election will represent a clear choice, an ideological choice on the issues. And this campaign is totally committed to grass roots.'"
Non-education: "To me, it seems as if the single biggest problem in this country today, after government, is education. No longer are our children required to learn to think, but only to memorize, with the material to be memorized strictly controlled by teachers, school boards, and religious groups. Our children are no longer taught history. Instead they are subjected to socialist propaganda, designed to undermine any attempt to see the failures of socialism in general and to downplay the importance of individualism."
Taiwan: The campaign to keep Taiwan out of international forums is not just a diplomatic issue to do with the legitimacy or otherwise of governments in Taipei and Beijing. It impacts down to earth issues like SARS control too: "If a killer-flu arises, it will be most likely in South China, where animals and humans, especially pigs and poultry, live in close proximity. With the thousands of people travelling daily between Taiwan and China - and between Taiwan and the rest of the world - there is no telling how devastating such an outbreak could be, with the missing Taiwan link. Taiwan needs the concerted efforts of the international community to allow its entry to the WHO - now."
China, Japan and anti-missile defence: Beijing does not want to get caught up in the kind of technological race that finally broke the Soviet empire. Her last hope is a Kerry victory.
Carnival of the Vanities is up again -- in very folksy style this time.
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
The Left cannot face the fact that the American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq is fundamentally humanitarian. The most effective response to the 9/11 events and the one in America's own best interests would have been a retaliatory strike using nukes to take the whole of Afghanistan off the map -- followed by a threat that Mecca would go sky high if there were any further Islamic attacks on the USA or its allies. That would have made Islam a religion of peace overnight. But GWB rightly rejected that easy road because it would have involved the death of millions of innocents. He chose instead to go after just the bad guys -- an extremely difficult task. And its difficulty is causing continuing American deaths in Iraq to this day. But Americans have always given their blood in order to be humane. They did it in two world wars and in Vietnam and they are doing it now in the Middle East. The only alternative strategy that the Left have is to do nothing -- thus inviting more and more attacks.
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.
********************************
Sheer Leftist insanity -- from Canada: "the McGuinty Liberals, whose recent budget forced Ontario families to fork over hundreds of dollars more annually in new healthcare taxes while simultaneously de-listing services like trips to the eye doctor, chiropractic and physiotherapy services from public health insurance, are set to re-list sex change operations! (That wasn't a typo, I really did mean RE-list, not DE-list.) How will he justify this to an average family?" (Post of May 28th, here). How Leftists hate ordinary people!
There is a great article here by Alan Dershowitz setting out the things that the Left never mention about Israel and pointing out when criticism of Israel is antisemitic and when it is not. (Via Peg Kaplan).
The Real Story of Fallujah: "The meticulous planning process undertaken by the Marines at the tactical level for assaulting Fallujah was not augmented with a similarly meticulous process by the Bush administration at the strategic level for counteracting the easily foreseen media fallout from fighting in civilian areas near Muslim religious sites. The public was never made to feel just how much of a military threat the mosques in Fallujah represented, just how far Marines went to avoid damage to them and to civilians, and just how much those same Marine battalions accomplished after departing Fallujah."
Academic standards seem to be extremely rubbery at American universities (even Harvard has to give 20% of its freshman intake remedial instruction in English!) but it seems that British standards are pretty rubbery too. Note this post from Chris Brand: "A British headmaster running a top girls' boarding school in Tamil Nadu, India, revealed to the Sunday Times that his daughter had been rejected by Edinburgh University when she applied as British, but was subsequently accepted when she applied from an Indian address and without mentioning her British citizenship".
Good if it were true: "President Bush's re-election strategists plan to portray the November election as the first since the Reagan era to offer voters a stark choice between liberalism and conservatism. ... 'Conservatives have for a generation yearned for an election in which there would be a very clear choice on the issues and a strong focus on grass roots,' said Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman. 'This election will represent a clear choice, an ideological choice on the issues. And this campaign is totally committed to grass roots.'"
Non-education: "To me, it seems as if the single biggest problem in this country today, after government, is education. No longer are our children required to learn to think, but only to memorize, with the material to be memorized strictly controlled by teachers, school boards, and religious groups. Our children are no longer taught history. Instead they are subjected to socialist propaganda, designed to undermine any attempt to see the failures of socialism in general and to downplay the importance of individualism."
Taiwan: The campaign to keep Taiwan out of international forums is not just a diplomatic issue to do with the legitimacy or otherwise of governments in Taipei and Beijing. It impacts down to earth issues like SARS control too: "If a killer-flu arises, it will be most likely in South China, where animals and humans, especially pigs and poultry, live in close proximity. With the thousands of people travelling daily between Taiwan and China - and between Taiwan and the rest of the world - there is no telling how devastating such an outbreak could be, with the missing Taiwan link. Taiwan needs the concerted efforts of the international community to allow its entry to the WHO - now."
China, Japan and anti-missile defence: Beijing does not want to get caught up in the kind of technological race that finally broke the Soviet empire. Her last hope is a Kerry victory.
Carnival of the Vanities is up again -- in very folksy style this time.
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
The Left cannot face the fact that the American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq is fundamentally humanitarian. The most effective response to the 9/11 events and the one in America's own best interests would have been a retaliatory strike using nukes to take the whole of Afghanistan off the map -- followed by a threat that Mecca would go sky high if there were any further Islamic attacks on the USA or its allies. That would have made Islam a religion of peace overnight. But GWB rightly rejected that easy road because it would have involved the death of millions of innocents. He chose instead to go after just the bad guys -- an extremely difficult task. And its difficulty is causing continuing American deaths in Iraq to this day. But Americans have always given their blood in order to be humane. They did it in two world wars and in Vietnam and they are doing it now in the Middle East. The only alternative strategy that the Left have is to do nothing -- thus inviting more and more attacks.
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.
********************************
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
HISTORIANS STRAIGHT AND CROOKED
V.D. Hanson has an article here putting the recent terrorist attacks on Westerners in Saudi Arabia into perspective. He says a tough response is needed.
Daniel Pipes has a brief survey of Saudi Arabian history which manages to make some sense of the support GWB gives to the Saudi Arabian regime -- saying it is the lesser of two evils.
This article reports a poll of some American academic historians which produced the supremely unsurprising finding that they did not like GWB. One of my readers comments: "You will not be surprised by the overall results of the poll, but even I was startled at the level of sheer acrimonious bombast hurled at this president by historians trained to evenhandedly examine evidence (including the author, Prof. McElvaine). There is, for example, the repeated invocation of special treatment for Halliburton -- i.e. no competitive bidding -- even though the Clinton administration repeatedly awarded contracts to Halliburton in an analogous fashion; similarly, there is complaining about the administration's plan to cut down certain trees in national forests, even though there is ample evidence that old and rotting wood leads to forest fires." I myself was struck by this dotty charge against GWB in the article: He has supposedly "Overseen an economy in which the stock market suffered its worst decline in the first two years of any administration since Hoover's". That may be true. The economy does not change quickly. What went on in the early part of the Bush administration reflects what CLINTON did! And the Australian stockmarket hit an all time high a month or two ago so I imagine the Dow Jones did the same: The ASX tends to track Wall St. So GWB has in fact presided over a big economic recovery. What totally dishonest historians!
More crooked historians: "President Bush's nomination of Allen Weinstein - author of the definitive biography of Alger Hiss, "Perjury" - for the post of national archivist has triggered a furor. "The American people need a better custodian of their history," the Nation magazine editorialized. The Society of American Archivists and the Organization of American Historians are questioning Weinstein's credentials.... Far from being an unsuitable candidate, Weinstein is vastly more qualified for the job than the current archivist ... Weinstein brings a long record of first-rate scholarship ..... Weinstein has become a target for ... those who continue to insist that Hiss was never a spy for the Soviet Union".
"And in the most disgraceful essay of this new century, Susan Sontag, writing in The New York Times Magazine, associated the prisoner-abuse affair with the massacres in Rwanda and the Holocaust. Really? Does Ms. Sontag truly believe that Abu Ghraib equals Auschwitz? Does she know a single American soldier? How simple the world must look from behind her desk"
Muravchik, an honest historian: "On 9/11, however, the terrorists managed to kill us by thousands at a swoop, and what Bush understood was that our policy of passivity, like the West's efforts to appease Hitler in the 1930s, had only invited more audacious attacks. He saw that we had no choice but to go to war against the terrorists and their backers. If we did not destroy them, the terrorists would set their sanguinary sights higher until they succeeded in killing us by the tens or hundreds of thousands."
****************************
V.D. Hanson has an article here putting the recent terrorist attacks on Westerners in Saudi Arabia into perspective. He says a tough response is needed.
Daniel Pipes has a brief survey of Saudi Arabian history which manages to make some sense of the support GWB gives to the Saudi Arabian regime -- saying it is the lesser of two evils.
This article reports a poll of some American academic historians which produced the supremely unsurprising finding that they did not like GWB. One of my readers comments: "You will not be surprised by the overall results of the poll, but even I was startled at the level of sheer acrimonious bombast hurled at this president by historians trained to evenhandedly examine evidence (including the author, Prof. McElvaine). There is, for example, the repeated invocation of special treatment for Halliburton -- i.e. no competitive bidding -- even though the Clinton administration repeatedly awarded contracts to Halliburton in an analogous fashion; similarly, there is complaining about the administration's plan to cut down certain trees in national forests, even though there is ample evidence that old and rotting wood leads to forest fires." I myself was struck by this dotty charge against GWB in the article: He has supposedly "Overseen an economy in which the stock market suffered its worst decline in the first two years of any administration since Hoover's". That may be true. The economy does not change quickly. What went on in the early part of the Bush administration reflects what CLINTON did! And the Australian stockmarket hit an all time high a month or two ago so I imagine the Dow Jones did the same: The ASX tends to track Wall St. So GWB has in fact presided over a big economic recovery. What totally dishonest historians!
More crooked historians: "President Bush's nomination of Allen Weinstein - author of the definitive biography of Alger Hiss, "Perjury" - for the post of national archivist has triggered a furor. "The American people need a better custodian of their history," the Nation magazine editorialized. The Society of American Archivists and the Organization of American Historians are questioning Weinstein's credentials.... Far from being an unsuitable candidate, Weinstein is vastly more qualified for the job than the current archivist ... Weinstein brings a long record of first-rate scholarship ..... Weinstein has become a target for ... those who continue to insist that Hiss was never a spy for the Soviet Union".
"And in the most disgraceful essay of this new century, Susan Sontag, writing in The New York Times Magazine, associated the prisoner-abuse affair with the massacres in Rwanda and the Holocaust. Really? Does Ms. Sontag truly believe that Abu Ghraib equals Auschwitz? Does she know a single American soldier? How simple the world must look from behind her desk"
Muravchik, an honest historian: "On 9/11, however, the terrorists managed to kill us by thousands at a swoop, and what Bush understood was that our policy of passivity, like the West's efforts to appease Hitler in the 1930s, had only invited more audacious attacks. He saw that we had no choice but to go to war against the terrorists and their backers. If we did not destroy them, the terrorists would set their sanguinary sights higher until they succeeded in killing us by the tens or hundreds of thousands."
****************************
ELSEWHERE
Jeff Jacoby summarizes the case for school vouchers. Excerpt: "Education policy in the United States treats Americans as too incompetent to provide for their children's schooling. Unlike food or clothing or health care -- where the market generates lots of options and parents are free to choose among them -- education is mostly supplied on the Soviet model: Schooling is "free," but the schools are owned and operated by the state.... Putting power in the hands of parents is the real key to equality -- and the key to excellence, too".
Hal Colebatch comments on the recent big surge in the polls of Australia's conservative government and sees every reason for a big win in the next election -- contrary to what most of the pundits have been saying.
Great news: Students at the University of Wisconsin -- birthplace in the 60s of the very radical SDS -- cheered every mention of GWB despite all the Leftist propaganda that had been poured out at them during their education.
"An article by Jeffrey Gedmin, Director of the Aspen Institute office in Berlin, in "Welt am Sonntag" (the Sunday edition the German daily "Welt") made my whole day. It was a breath of fresh air in contrast to the stale anti-American fare coming from the German media: "The two closely related ideologies, EU-nationalism and anti-Americanism like to keep themselves above mere facts. ... But perhaps you could ask yourself why, after the discovery of the American abuses in Abu Ghraib, a half a million Iraqis didn't march in protest on the streets of Baghdad."
Another stupid judge: "Millionaire Joe Gutnick slammed as "pathetic" yesterday the jail term that could see Jack Roche - the Muslim convert who plotted to assassinate the Jewish businessman - walk free in three years"
Hernando de Soto says: "The choice is simple. To build modern nations, we have to learn how the poor work and then structure law that fits their needs. In the end, Peruvians, Chinese, and Americans want essentially the same things: life, liberty, and property. And to get it, you have to build on a market economy based on the rule of law. Our real enemies are not Marx and others, but are essentially the people who do not believe in the potential of human beings liberated by the rule of law."
Good to see the "Anglosphere" idea getting a bit of press, even if pretty negative. This article in "The Australian" -- Australia's national daily -- gives one account of it. I myself think that the Anglosphere will always be important in an informal way only.
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
The Left cannot face the fact that the American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq is fundamentally humanitarian. The most effective response to the 9/11 events and the one in America's own best interests would have been a retaliatory strike using nukes to take the whole of Afghanistan off the map -- followed by a threat that Mecca would go sky high if there were any further Islamic attacks on the USA or its allies. That would have made Islam a religion of peace overnight. But GWB rightly rejected that easy road because it would have involved the death of millions of innocents. He chose instead to go after just the bad guys -- an extremely difficult task. And its difficulty is causing continuing American deaths in Iraq to this day. But Americans have always given their blood in order to be humane. They did it in two world wars and in Vietnam and they are doing it now in the Middle East. The only alternative strategy that the Left have is to do nothing -- thus inviting more and more attacks.
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.
********************************
Jeff Jacoby summarizes the case for school vouchers. Excerpt: "Education policy in the United States treats Americans as too incompetent to provide for their children's schooling. Unlike food or clothing or health care -- where the market generates lots of options and parents are free to choose among them -- education is mostly supplied on the Soviet model: Schooling is "free," but the schools are owned and operated by the state.... Putting power in the hands of parents is the real key to equality -- and the key to excellence, too".
Hal Colebatch comments on the recent big surge in the polls of Australia's conservative government and sees every reason for a big win in the next election -- contrary to what most of the pundits have been saying.
Great news: Students at the University of Wisconsin -- birthplace in the 60s of the very radical SDS -- cheered every mention of GWB despite all the Leftist propaganda that had been poured out at them during their education.
"An article by Jeffrey Gedmin, Director of the Aspen Institute office in Berlin, in "Welt am Sonntag" (the Sunday edition the German daily "Welt") made my whole day. It was a breath of fresh air in contrast to the stale anti-American fare coming from the German media: "The two closely related ideologies, EU-nationalism and anti-Americanism like to keep themselves above mere facts. ... But perhaps you could ask yourself why, after the discovery of the American abuses in Abu Ghraib, a half a million Iraqis didn't march in protest on the streets of Baghdad."
Another stupid judge: "Millionaire Joe Gutnick slammed as "pathetic" yesterday the jail term that could see Jack Roche - the Muslim convert who plotted to assassinate the Jewish businessman - walk free in three years"
Hernando de Soto says: "The choice is simple. To build modern nations, we have to learn how the poor work and then structure law that fits their needs. In the end, Peruvians, Chinese, and Americans want essentially the same things: life, liberty, and property. And to get it, you have to build on a market economy based on the rule of law. Our real enemies are not Marx and others, but are essentially the people who do not believe in the potential of human beings liberated by the rule of law."
Good to see the "Anglosphere" idea getting a bit of press, even if pretty negative. This article in "The Australian" -- Australia's national daily -- gives one account of it. I myself think that the Anglosphere will always be important in an informal way only.
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
The Left cannot face the fact that the American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq is fundamentally humanitarian. The most effective response to the 9/11 events and the one in America's own best interests would have been a retaliatory strike using nukes to take the whole of Afghanistan off the map -- followed by a threat that Mecca would go sky high if there were any further Islamic attacks on the USA or its allies. That would have made Islam a religion of peace overnight. But GWB rightly rejected that easy road because it would have involved the death of millions of innocents. He chose instead to go after just the bad guys -- an extremely difficult task. And its difficulty is causing continuing American deaths in Iraq to this day. But Americans have always given their blood in order to be humane. They did it in two world wars and in Vietnam and they are doing it now in the Middle East. The only alternative strategy that the Left have is to do nothing -- thus inviting more and more attacks.
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.
********************************
Tuesday, June 01, 2004
RECENT "TOWNHALL" WISDOM
More Democrat antisemitism: "Words can be hurtful. They reveal feelings long held dormant. No where was this more apparent than in a May 7, 2004 column for the State newspaper of Columbia, South Carolina by the 82 year old Senator Ernest Hollings. In this piece Hollings accused President Bush of invading Iraq "to secure Israel" and "to take the Jewish vote from the Democrats." It should also be noted that a secure Iraq may remove one of Israel's many Middle East enemies, but it does not assure her security as any daily reading of newspapers can attest. What Hollings' view reflects is a reflexively anti-Jewish belief so common among anti-Semites. Paranoia is evident along with attributions about Jewish power and behind the scenes influence."
Walter Williams argues that disruptive black students should be expelled from school on a large scale: "Educational triage would acknowledge that there are black youngsters who cannot benefit academically no matter how many educational resources are spent on them. They have little or no family support. Their very presence in school, through disruptive and criminal behavior, makes education impossible for others. Spending resources on these youngsters is the educational equivalent of medical practitioners spending resources on disaster victims who'll die even if treated. These youngsters should be removed and not allowed to take resources from and make education impossible for those who do have a chance for academic achievement."
Compassion? "One of President Bush's most recent "compassionate" initiatives has indirectly led to more horrific deaths along the Arizona-Mexico border. Bush's proposal for a quasi-amnesty for illegal aliens has been interpreted by poor Mexicans as a welcome mat, increasing the rate of attempted border crossings and the tragic deaths that go with them. Sixty-one people have died along the Arizona border since last October, a threefold increase from the rate of the previous year. The bodies are a testament to America's broken immigration system. If we really want to encourage more Mexicans to come here, we should have the decency to help ensure their safe passage. If we don't -- as most politicians, including Bush, would maintain -- then all talk of any sort of amnesty should be dropped, and our seriousness about enforcing immigration laws should be broadcast so clearly that it is understood even in the far reaches of Mexico."
Leftists who have nothing to say -- Endlessly recycled abuse is all they can think of: "He isn't very bright. He's a religious fanatic who sees the world in black and white. He engaged in an "elaborate campaign of disinformation" designed to "mislead his own people" about the war. He's not really running the government; he's a puppet manipulated by a subordinate. And his name is -- Tony Blair. So says author Geoffrey Wheatcroft in June's "The Atlantic Monthly" in a profile of the prime minister of Great Britain. It demonstrates how the left demeans its opposition so uniformly that Wheatcroft managed to hurl the exact same insults at Blair that U.S. lefties have hurled at President Bush for years."
********************************
More Democrat antisemitism: "Words can be hurtful. They reveal feelings long held dormant. No where was this more apparent than in a May 7, 2004 column for the State newspaper of Columbia, South Carolina by the 82 year old Senator Ernest Hollings. In this piece Hollings accused President Bush of invading Iraq "to secure Israel" and "to take the Jewish vote from the Democrats." It should also be noted that a secure Iraq may remove one of Israel's many Middle East enemies, but it does not assure her security as any daily reading of newspapers can attest. What Hollings' view reflects is a reflexively anti-Jewish belief so common among anti-Semites. Paranoia is evident along with attributions about Jewish power and behind the scenes influence."
Walter Williams argues that disruptive black students should be expelled from school on a large scale: "Educational triage would acknowledge that there are black youngsters who cannot benefit academically no matter how many educational resources are spent on them. They have little or no family support. Their very presence in school, through disruptive and criminal behavior, makes education impossible for others. Spending resources on these youngsters is the educational equivalent of medical practitioners spending resources on disaster victims who'll die even if treated. These youngsters should be removed and not allowed to take resources from and make education impossible for those who do have a chance for academic achievement."
Compassion? "One of President Bush's most recent "compassionate" initiatives has indirectly led to more horrific deaths along the Arizona-Mexico border. Bush's proposal for a quasi-amnesty for illegal aliens has been interpreted by poor Mexicans as a welcome mat, increasing the rate of attempted border crossings and the tragic deaths that go with them. Sixty-one people have died along the Arizona border since last October, a threefold increase from the rate of the previous year. The bodies are a testament to America's broken immigration system. If we really want to encourage more Mexicans to come here, we should have the decency to help ensure their safe passage. If we don't -- as most politicians, including Bush, would maintain -- then all talk of any sort of amnesty should be dropped, and our seriousness about enforcing immigration laws should be broadcast so clearly that it is understood even in the far reaches of Mexico."
Leftists who have nothing to say -- Endlessly recycled abuse is all they can think of: "He isn't very bright. He's a religious fanatic who sees the world in black and white. He engaged in an "elaborate campaign of disinformation" designed to "mislead his own people" about the war. He's not really running the government; he's a puppet manipulated by a subordinate. And his name is -- Tony Blair. So says author Geoffrey Wheatcroft in June's "The Atlantic Monthly" in a profile of the prime minister of Great Britain. It demonstrates how the left demeans its opposition so uniformly that Wheatcroft managed to hurl the exact same insults at Blair that U.S. lefties have hurled at President Bush for years."
********************************
ELSEWHERE
Keith Burgess-Jackson has asked what I think of the idea of national character. National character is still a rather suspect topic to most psychologists. The Left, in its usual simplistic way, seems to think that if you allow talk of national differences then you will also have to allow talk of racial differences and that of course is RACISM! On the other hand, there would hardly be an international traveller alive who has not thought that he/she could discern differences between the people of different countries: The Germans are in general seen as particularly efficient, the French are in general seen as particularly arrogant etc. The fact of the matter, of course is that there is absolutely no reason why nations or races should all be the same. People are not all the same so why should groups of them be the same? It is only bone-headed ideology that says otherwise. Two books that do look at psychological differences between nations are: MADARIAGA, S. DE. (1970) Englishmen, Frenchmen, Spaniards: An essay in comparative psychology 2nd ed. London: Pitman; and LYNN, R. (1971) Personality and National Character. Oxford, England: Pergamon. And I probably should resist the temptation to point out the excellent scientific evidence for large and important national differences in average IQ but I have never resisted it before so what the heck! See here.
Pope backs crooked Cardinal: "Pope John Paul II yesterday appointed Cardinal Bernard F. Law to a ceremonial job overseeing one of the four major basilicas of Rome, granting the former archbishop of Boston a prestigious appointment just two days after the Archdiocese of Boston announced that it was closing 65 parishes." The very man who condoned paedophilia by shuffling paedophile priests around rather than do anything to stop them! The Pope has made it clear he approves! What disgusting old farts they both are! No wonder Catholics are deserting the ship. Their church is a blot on the name of Christ.
And Queensland has its own paedophila disgrace too, summed up here. It involves the lesbian-looking Leanne Clair, a political appointee as Queensland's Director of Public Prosecutions -- an appointment made to ensure "balance" between the sexes in Queensland's top government jobs. A prominent sporting coach was committed for trial on child sexual abuse charges by a magistrate but Ms Clair has repeatedly refused (on the flimsiest of grounds) to prosecute the case. She thinks she is judge and jury. She was also one of a troika of Leftist females in high office who sent prominent conservative politician Pauline Hanson to jail on a legal technicality -- a conviction that was totally thrown out by the Court of Appeal only weeks later. These feminazis really think they are God.
But is this the flip before the flop? "Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry called for increasing the U.S. military by 40,000 troops, probably for a decade, in order 'to match its new missions' in the war on terror and homeland security. ... Kerry would pay for the added troops by making cuts elsewhere in the Pentagon budget. He gave no specifics."
More petty bureaucracy from the EU: "Italian officials want new rules on how big a pizza should be and how hot it's cooked, before being allowed to use the name. Department of Agriculture officials say they want to clamp down on so-called 'pizza pirates.' In order to be labelled a pizza, it must be three millimetres thick in the middle,. have a one to two centimetre thick crust and have been cooked at 450 degrees centigrade.The diameter should not exceed 35 centimetres. The ministry says the rule is part of a one million pound PR exercise and say they have signed up inspectors to check kitchens."
I have just put up here an article that shows the jargon used in the schools these days. No wonder teachers can't teach and students don't learn much of the time. Leftist "postmodernist" language is being used to confuse kids now too.
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
The Left cannot face the fact that the American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq is fundamentally humanitarian. The most effective response to the 9/11 events and the one in America's own best interests would have been a retaliatory strike using nukes to take the whole of Afghanistan off the map -- followed by a threat that Mecca would go sky high if there were any further Islamic attacks on the USA or its allies. That would have made Islam a religion of peace overnight. But GWB rightly rejected that easy road because it would have involved the death of millions of innocents. He chose instead to go after just the bad guys -- an extremely difficult task. And its difficulty is causing continuing American deaths in Iraq to this day. But Americans have always given their blood in order to be humane. They did it in two world wars and in Vietnam and they are doing it now in the Middle East. The only alternative strategy that the Left have is to do nothing -- thus inviting more and more attacks.
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.
********************************
Keith Burgess-Jackson has asked what I think of the idea of national character. National character is still a rather suspect topic to most psychologists. The Left, in its usual simplistic way, seems to think that if you allow talk of national differences then you will also have to allow talk of racial differences and that of course is RACISM! On the other hand, there would hardly be an international traveller alive who has not thought that he/she could discern differences between the people of different countries: The Germans are in general seen as particularly efficient, the French are in general seen as particularly arrogant etc. The fact of the matter, of course is that there is absolutely no reason why nations or races should all be the same. People are not all the same so why should groups of them be the same? It is only bone-headed ideology that says otherwise. Two books that do look at psychological differences between nations are: MADARIAGA, S. DE. (1970) Englishmen, Frenchmen, Spaniards: An essay in comparative psychology 2nd ed. London: Pitman; and LYNN, R. (1971) Personality and National Character. Oxford, England: Pergamon. And I probably should resist the temptation to point out the excellent scientific evidence for large and important national differences in average IQ but I have never resisted it before so what the heck! See here.
Pope backs crooked Cardinal: "Pope John Paul II yesterday appointed Cardinal Bernard F. Law to a ceremonial job overseeing one of the four major basilicas of Rome, granting the former archbishop of Boston a prestigious appointment just two days after the Archdiocese of Boston announced that it was closing 65 parishes." The very man who condoned paedophilia by shuffling paedophile priests around rather than do anything to stop them! The Pope has made it clear he approves! What disgusting old farts they both are! No wonder Catholics are deserting the ship. Their church is a blot on the name of Christ.
And Queensland has its own paedophila disgrace too, summed up here. It involves the lesbian-looking Leanne Clair, a political appointee as Queensland's Director of Public Prosecutions -- an appointment made to ensure "balance" between the sexes in Queensland's top government jobs. A prominent sporting coach was committed for trial on child sexual abuse charges by a magistrate but Ms Clair has repeatedly refused (on the flimsiest of grounds) to prosecute the case. She thinks she is judge and jury. She was also one of a troika of Leftist females in high office who sent prominent conservative politician Pauline Hanson to jail on a legal technicality -- a conviction that was totally thrown out by the Court of Appeal only weeks later. These feminazis really think they are God.
But is this the flip before the flop? "Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry called for increasing the U.S. military by 40,000 troops, probably for a decade, in order 'to match its new missions' in the war on terror and homeland security. ... Kerry would pay for the added troops by making cuts elsewhere in the Pentagon budget. He gave no specifics."
More petty bureaucracy from the EU: "Italian officials want new rules on how big a pizza should be and how hot it's cooked, before being allowed to use the name. Department of Agriculture officials say they want to clamp down on so-called 'pizza pirates.' In order to be labelled a pizza, it must be three millimetres thick in the middle,. have a one to two centimetre thick crust and have been cooked at 450 degrees centigrade.The diameter should not exceed 35 centimetres. The ministry says the rule is part of a one million pound PR exercise and say they have signed up inspectors to check kitchens."
I have just put up here an article that shows the jargon used in the schools these days. No wonder teachers can't teach and students don't learn much of the time. Leftist "postmodernist" language is being used to confuse kids now too.
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
The Left cannot face the fact that the American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq is fundamentally humanitarian. The most effective response to the 9/11 events and the one in America's own best interests would have been a retaliatory strike using nukes to take the whole of Afghanistan off the map -- followed by a threat that Mecca would go sky high if there were any further Islamic attacks on the USA or its allies. That would have made Islam a religion of peace overnight. But GWB rightly rejected that easy road because it would have involved the death of millions of innocents. He chose instead to go after just the bad guys -- an extremely difficult task. And its difficulty is causing continuing American deaths in Iraq to this day. But Americans have always given their blood in order to be humane. They did it in two world wars and in Vietnam and they are doing it now in the Middle East. The only alternative strategy that the Left have is to do nothing -- thus inviting more and more attacks.
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.
********************************
Monday, May 31, 2004
LAKOFF REVISITED
I have had a couple of shots on this blog in times past at George Lakoff -- the Leftist linguistics professor who thinks that conservatives all want to be punitive fathers. There is of course a Mt. Everest of nutty Leftist psychological theories around so why have I given Lakoff special attention? Because what he writes does, when you read it, sound very moderate, balanced and reasonable. It sounds good and it persuades many. But it is still nonsense for all that. In the past I have simply pointed out where and why it is nonsensical and contradicted by the evidence but I don't think that is enough to shoot down his theory. Theories tend to be killed off by better theories rather than by evidence. So I have just added a new introduction to my article on Lakoff that reads as follows:
"George Lakoff is a Leftist linguistics professor whose linguistic theories seem now to have fallen out of favour but who seems to think he knows all about the psychology of politics. Lakoff has written a book (reviewed here) which purports to explain the Left/Right polarity of politics as Mother-oriented politics versus Father-oriented politics -- a book called: Moral Politics : How Liberals and Conservatives Think.
His program is an ambitious one. He rightly points out that there are many "contradictions" (I would call them compromises) in any real-life political program (he describes them eloquently here) and says he has a grand theory that explains how all such apparent contradictions arise -- a theory that shows the real consistency underlying the apparent inconsistency. That is undoubtedly a noteworthy and attractive claim.
I too think I can explain the inconsistencies Lakoff mentions but I think I can explain it, not in a book, but in one paragraph. Does that not trump Lakoff? I think it does. So here is the paragraph:
What I would say that is that the contradictions arise because neither side of politics is in fact much INTERESTED in being consistent. Conservatives don't like theories and just go by what seems to have worked well for people in the world to date -- in all the untidy complexity that the real world has. And Leftists are only interested in what sounds good at the time and are perfectly capable of advocating completely contradictory things from occasion to occasion as long as they sound good on each occasion [John Kerry, anyone?]. The example par excellence of Leftist contradiction is their common claim that right and wrong or good and bad is at least totally arbitrary if not meaningless altogether -- which claim can be followed almost immediately with a self-righteoous sermon on the rightness and goodness of (say) "tolerance". Leftists want to make us "better" while at the same time denying that there is any such thing as "better"!!
So Lakoff's program is foredoomed from the start. What he deals with is intrinsically INconsistent. There is no large-scale consistency there for a theory to describe. But a brief look at what he claims does nonetheless seem in order. His claim is an attractive one so deserves examination of its fit to reality...."
*******************************
I have had a couple of shots on this blog in times past at George Lakoff -- the Leftist linguistics professor who thinks that conservatives all want to be punitive fathers. There is of course a Mt. Everest of nutty Leftist psychological theories around so why have I given Lakoff special attention? Because what he writes does, when you read it, sound very moderate, balanced and reasonable. It sounds good and it persuades many. But it is still nonsense for all that. In the past I have simply pointed out where and why it is nonsensical and contradicted by the evidence but I don't think that is enough to shoot down his theory. Theories tend to be killed off by better theories rather than by evidence. So I have just added a new introduction to my article on Lakoff that reads as follows:
"George Lakoff is a Leftist linguistics professor whose linguistic theories seem now to have fallen out of favour but who seems to think he knows all about the psychology of politics. Lakoff has written a book (reviewed here) which purports to explain the Left/Right polarity of politics as Mother-oriented politics versus Father-oriented politics -- a book called: Moral Politics : How Liberals and Conservatives Think.
His program is an ambitious one. He rightly points out that there are many "contradictions" (I would call them compromises) in any real-life political program (he describes them eloquently here) and says he has a grand theory that explains how all such apparent contradictions arise -- a theory that shows the real consistency underlying the apparent inconsistency. That is undoubtedly a noteworthy and attractive claim.
I too think I can explain the inconsistencies Lakoff mentions but I think I can explain it, not in a book, but in one paragraph. Does that not trump Lakoff? I think it does. So here is the paragraph:
What I would say that is that the contradictions arise because neither side of politics is in fact much INTERESTED in being consistent. Conservatives don't like theories and just go by what seems to have worked well for people in the world to date -- in all the untidy complexity that the real world has. And Leftists are only interested in what sounds good at the time and are perfectly capable of advocating completely contradictory things from occasion to occasion as long as they sound good on each occasion [John Kerry, anyone?]. The example par excellence of Leftist contradiction is their common claim that right and wrong or good and bad is at least totally arbitrary if not meaningless altogether -- which claim can be followed almost immediately with a self-righteoous sermon on the rightness and goodness of (say) "tolerance". Leftists want to make us "better" while at the same time denying that there is any such thing as "better"!!
So Lakoff's program is foredoomed from the start. What he deals with is intrinsically INconsistent. There is no large-scale consistency there for a theory to describe. But a brief look at what he claims does nonetheless seem in order. His claim is an attractive one so deserves examination of its fit to reality...."
*******************************
ELSEWHERE
A reader draws attention to this bit of Leftist double standards: "They broke the rules and broke the law. Despite the controversy, some Tigard High School students will still get to participate in graduation. But fellow students are saying, 'Not so fast!' A letter sent to parents a few weeks ago seems to be very black and white, stating that any senior who is involved with drugs or alcohol in the last few weeks of school will not be allowed to take part in commencement ceremonies. But it didn't work. Six seniors were caught intoxicated at prom, but stop the band; they will be allowed to partake in graduation." My reader comments: "Though Tigard, Oregon, is not Seattle, (it's about 200 miles away) it is certainly a soulmate. I laughed out loud thinking about all of silliness regarding zero tolerence in our schools regarding anything that even closely resembles a weapon of any kind. Whether it's a toy gun, a sharp object or dinner utensils, anything brought on campus and discovered by the thought police (teachers) results in automatic suspension. I remember a story about a little boy who was suspended because he used his hand and forefinger like a gun. These students are just lucky nobody had a nail clipper on them. That would have been real trouble".
A reader responded to my post yesterday about Leftists being really interested only in power as follows: "I've got to agree with you on that. I've recently been trying to re-read Atlas Shrugged (not that I am really a libertarian ) because when I tried to read it twenty-five years ago I could not get past the radio speech. It amazes me how much the plot resembles what happened in Chile and what is now happening in Venezuela. Just in case you've never read the book, it describes a leftist government citing compassion in order to create the economic chaos preparatory to a takeover. Does this not resemble Allende's Chile, where the goverment policies drove inflation to over 200% and government policies on business which were ostensibly meant to help actually created more problems, and ended with the confiscation of private businesses and lands? Does this not now resemble Chavez's Venezuela? While Ayn Rand portrays the industrialists as implausibly noble, her portayal of the well-meaning idiots led by the unscrupulous does not seem at all far from the mark. The stories from France about the 15,000 dead in last summer's heat-wave, and the recently built Paris airport terminal falling down, also seem to agree with her plot-line of an increasing sacrifice of competence in leadership for political correctness."
Leftists excuse Stalin and hate Hitler, YET: "From 1929 to 1939, in peace time, Stalin and the Bolsheviks killed about 20 million Soviet citizens, for no predictable reason. Hitler and the National Socialists ruined the businesses and careers of hundreds of thousands of German citizens, but the number of people killed by them before the outbreak of the war was only a few hundred, most of them fellow Nazis and all of them for a predictable reason. Even immediately after the onset of the war, when it became known that the Nazis had begun to engage in mercy killings of the incurably insane (euthanasia), the Catholic bishops, led by Bernhard von Galen, openly protested, and German public opinion compelled the Nazis to halt the program. Bishop (later: Cardinal) von Galen survived the Nazi regime. Under Stalin and the Bolsheviks, any such opposition was impossible and Bishop von Galen would have been quickly disposed of." So what does that tell us? Easy: Stalin was even farther Left than Hitler so he was more murderous. Leftists love humanity -- it's just people they can't stand. It may be worth noting that Israeli historian Aryeh Unger long ago showed that Stalin was much more totalitarian than Hitler.
Bureaucratic idiocy: Butchers can no longer give the dog a bone: "Butchers across the UK are to be banned from giving left-over bones to customers' dogs. Under new EU rules bones are classed as a waste by-product and butchers must pay for them to be incinerated, says The Sun. Britain's 10,000 butchers are being sent letters by local councils warning them they face fines if they pass left-over bones to pet-owners in the traditional way."
Wicked Thoughts has been visiting a Greek Orthodox blog and even found some jokes there!
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
The Left cannot face the fact that the American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq is fundamentally humanitarian. The most effective response to the 9/11 events and the one in America's own best interests would have been a retaliatory strike using nukes to take the whole of Afghanistan off the map -- followed by a threat that Mecca would go sky high if there were any further Islamic attacks on the USA or its allies. That would have made Islam a religion of peace overnight. But GWB rightly rejected that easy road because it would have involved the death of millions of innocents. He chose instead to go after just the bad guys -- an extremely difficult task. And its difficulty is causing continuing American deaths in Iraq to this day. But Americans have always given their blood in order to be humane. They did it in two world wars and in Vietnam and they are doing it now in the Middle East. The only alternative strategy that the Left have is to do nothing -- thus inviting more and more attacks.
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.
********************************
A reader draws attention to this bit of Leftist double standards: "They broke the rules and broke the law. Despite the controversy, some Tigard High School students will still get to participate in graduation. But fellow students are saying, 'Not so fast!' A letter sent to parents a few weeks ago seems to be very black and white, stating that any senior who is involved with drugs or alcohol in the last few weeks of school will not be allowed to take part in commencement ceremonies. But it didn't work. Six seniors were caught intoxicated at prom, but stop the band; they will be allowed to partake in graduation." My reader comments: "Though Tigard, Oregon, is not Seattle, (it's about 200 miles away) it is certainly a soulmate. I laughed out loud thinking about all of silliness regarding zero tolerence in our schools regarding anything that even closely resembles a weapon of any kind. Whether it's a toy gun, a sharp object or dinner utensils, anything brought on campus and discovered by the thought police (teachers) results in automatic suspension. I remember a story about a little boy who was suspended because he used his hand and forefinger like a gun. These students are just lucky nobody had a nail clipper on them. That would have been real trouble".
A reader responded to my post yesterday about Leftists being really interested only in power as follows: "I've got to agree with you on that. I've recently been trying to re-read Atlas Shrugged (not that I am really a libertarian ) because when I tried to read it twenty-five years ago I could not get past the radio speech. It amazes me how much the plot resembles what happened in Chile and what is now happening in Venezuela. Just in case you've never read the book, it describes a leftist government citing compassion in order to create the economic chaos preparatory to a takeover. Does this not resemble Allende's Chile, where the goverment policies drove inflation to over 200% and government policies on business which were ostensibly meant to help actually created more problems, and ended with the confiscation of private businesses and lands? Does this not now resemble Chavez's Venezuela? While Ayn Rand portrays the industrialists as implausibly noble, her portayal of the well-meaning idiots led by the unscrupulous does not seem at all far from the mark. The stories from France about the 15,000 dead in last summer's heat-wave, and the recently built Paris airport terminal falling down, also seem to agree with her plot-line of an increasing sacrifice of competence in leadership for political correctness."
Leftists excuse Stalin and hate Hitler, YET: "From 1929 to 1939, in peace time, Stalin and the Bolsheviks killed about 20 million Soviet citizens, for no predictable reason. Hitler and the National Socialists ruined the businesses and careers of hundreds of thousands of German citizens, but the number of people killed by them before the outbreak of the war was only a few hundred, most of them fellow Nazis and all of them for a predictable reason. Even immediately after the onset of the war, when it became known that the Nazis had begun to engage in mercy killings of the incurably insane (euthanasia), the Catholic bishops, led by Bernhard von Galen, openly protested, and German public opinion compelled the Nazis to halt the program. Bishop (later: Cardinal) von Galen survived the Nazi regime. Under Stalin and the Bolsheviks, any such opposition was impossible and Bishop von Galen would have been quickly disposed of." So what does that tell us? Easy: Stalin was even farther Left than Hitler so he was more murderous. Leftists love humanity -- it's just people they can't stand. It may be worth noting that Israeli historian Aryeh Unger long ago showed that Stalin was much more totalitarian than Hitler.
Bureaucratic idiocy: Butchers can no longer give the dog a bone: "Butchers across the UK are to be banned from giving left-over bones to customers' dogs. Under new EU rules bones are classed as a waste by-product and butchers must pay for them to be incinerated, says The Sun. Britain's 10,000 butchers are being sent letters by local councils warning them they face fines if they pass left-over bones to pet-owners in the traditional way."
Wicked Thoughts has been visiting a Greek Orthodox blog and even found some jokes there!
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
The Left cannot face the fact that the American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq is fundamentally humanitarian. The most effective response to the 9/11 events and the one in America's own best interests would have been a retaliatory strike using nukes to take the whole of Afghanistan off the map -- followed by a threat that Mecca would go sky high if there were any further Islamic attacks on the USA or its allies. That would have made Islam a religion of peace overnight. But GWB rightly rejected that easy road because it would have involved the death of millions of innocents. He chose instead to go after just the bad guys -- an extremely difficult task. And its difficulty is causing continuing American deaths in Iraq to this day. But Americans have always given their blood in order to be humane. They did it in two world wars and in Vietnam and they are doing it now in the Middle East. The only alternative strategy that the Left have is to do nothing -- thus inviting more and more attacks.
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.
********************************
Sunday, May 30, 2004
ONLY POWER MATTERS TO THE LEFT
I know I shouldn't be, but I was slightly surprised that my considerable efforts to point out that party politics in modern democracies are essentially centrist were totally lost on the Leftist bloggers (calling themselves "One Good Move") who have been criticizing Keith Burgess Jackson for some fairly ordinary statements he made about the sources of ideology. Who, for goodness sake, disputes that aging makes you more conservative? Practically every conservative intellectual there is (including Keith and including the dreaded Neocons) started out on the Left! I am a considerable rarity in being a lifelong conservative intellectual.
But the fact that a centrist such as GWB is hated with a passion by so-called American "liberals" (really Leftists. Liberty is a very low priority for them) is itself instructive. If you look at the legislation and policies that Clinton and GWB have supported and implemented, it would be a hard task to say which was the more Leftist. With his support for all sorts of expansion of government, I would definitely say that GWB is the more Leftist but the fact that the matter can be reasonably debated shows just how centrist both men are. So why do the Left loathe GWB? I know of nothing directed towards John Kerry by conservatives that remotely approaches the rage and hate that is routinely directed towards GWB by the Left. Contempt for Kerry's dishonesty is common among conservatives but that is about all. So why do American Leftists take their party politics so seriously? Why were the "One Good Move" bloggers so completely incapable of taking on board the simple fact that a vote for the GOP is NOT automatically a vote for conservatism?
A vote for the GOP is SOMETIMES a vote for conservatism but American politics are essentially interest-group politics. Each party has its client groups (mostly minorities in the case of the donkeys and particularly New Testament Christians in the case of the GOP) and it is speaking for them that brings in the great majority of votes -- which is why lots of GOP supporters who deplore GWB's expansion of government will still vote for him in the next election and which is why American blacks who are conservative on lots of social issues almost always vote for the donkeys. It is only small minority of centrist (swinging) voters who decide which candidate will win or lose and that is a major part of the reason why both candidates themselves have to be centrist.
So it all boils down to power. Does your team occupy the top positions or not? Are people you can identify with in charge? And for Leftists, politics is NOTHING BUT power. They have no principles and openly ridicule (particularly via postmodernism) the idea that anything could be right or wrong. Policies that were once popular but which have become unpopular (such as eugenics) are abandoned so completely by Leftists that only historians know that such policies once had large-scale Leftist support. And with the way antisemitism is surging on the Left, the time will come when people will have forgotten that Leftists were for a time anti-racist. So for Leftists it is only party that matters and conservatives such as myself and Keith who take ideas, principles and ideology seriously are simply incomprehensible.
*********************************
I know I shouldn't be, but I was slightly surprised that my considerable efforts to point out that party politics in modern democracies are essentially centrist were totally lost on the Leftist bloggers (calling themselves "One Good Move") who have been criticizing Keith Burgess Jackson for some fairly ordinary statements he made about the sources of ideology. Who, for goodness sake, disputes that aging makes you more conservative? Practically every conservative intellectual there is (including Keith and including the dreaded Neocons) started out on the Left! I am a considerable rarity in being a lifelong conservative intellectual.
But the fact that a centrist such as GWB is hated with a passion by so-called American "liberals" (really Leftists. Liberty is a very low priority for them) is itself instructive. If you look at the legislation and policies that Clinton and GWB have supported and implemented, it would be a hard task to say which was the more Leftist. With his support for all sorts of expansion of government, I would definitely say that GWB is the more Leftist but the fact that the matter can be reasonably debated shows just how centrist both men are. So why do the Left loathe GWB? I know of nothing directed towards John Kerry by conservatives that remotely approaches the rage and hate that is routinely directed towards GWB by the Left. Contempt for Kerry's dishonesty is common among conservatives but that is about all. So why do American Leftists take their party politics so seriously? Why were the "One Good Move" bloggers so completely incapable of taking on board the simple fact that a vote for the GOP is NOT automatically a vote for conservatism?
A vote for the GOP is SOMETIMES a vote for conservatism but American politics are essentially interest-group politics. Each party has its client groups (mostly minorities in the case of the donkeys and particularly New Testament Christians in the case of the GOP) and it is speaking for them that brings in the great majority of votes -- which is why lots of GOP supporters who deplore GWB's expansion of government will still vote for him in the next election and which is why American blacks who are conservative on lots of social issues almost always vote for the donkeys. It is only small minority of centrist (swinging) voters who decide which candidate will win or lose and that is a major part of the reason why both candidates themselves have to be centrist.
So it all boils down to power. Does your team occupy the top positions or not? Are people you can identify with in charge? And for Leftists, politics is NOTHING BUT power. They have no principles and openly ridicule (particularly via postmodernism) the idea that anything could be right or wrong. Policies that were once popular but which have become unpopular (such as eugenics) are abandoned so completely by Leftists that only historians know that such policies once had large-scale Leftist support. And with the way antisemitism is surging on the Left, the time will come when people will have forgotten that Leftists were for a time anti-racist. So for Leftists it is only party that matters and conservatives such as myself and Keith who take ideas, principles and ideology seriously are simply incomprehensible.
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ELSEWHERE
I must say that it does rather surprise me how many bloggers depend on blogging software. I use blogger.com for this blog because of the permanent free blogspot hosting and to save a little bit of time but all my mirror sites are hand-coded. Basic html is very easy. I have never so much as opened a book on html or looked at a FAQ on it. I just see how other people have done things and copy that. So the only blogging software I use for my mirrors is a text editor plus what is in my noggin. I am rather moved to comment on the matter at the moment because of the loud grumbles coming from the MT people over recent price rises there. And some people pay for separate blogrolling software too! It all seems a bit sad to me when learning a tiny bit of html would enable people to do their blogging for free. I decided last night that I should put up some permalinks to the various parts of my online book about Leftism so I now know how to hand-code permalinks too -- dead easy! And hand-coded html loads twice as fast as the mass of junk produced by html editing programs. Here is a useful sample of my new permalinks (or here if that site is overloaded).
"A major poll of 1,388 American Roman Catholic voters shows Catholic presidential candidate John Kerry getting only 20% support among America's 51 million Catholics on issues where he opposes the Church's position -- with his support on some issues dropping as low as 6%."
Melanie Phillips on a "blame America" and "blame Israel" letter to The Guardian by Canon Paul Oestreicher of the Church of England: "This letter illustrates how the toxic combination of vicious prejudice and astonishing ignorance combine to produce an astounding inversion of moral values. These occupations [of Iraq and Palestinian areas] are not illegal. There is no brutal repression of civilian populations, but a defence against terror and mass murder in an attempt to restore order and respect for human life. As for his convoluted last thought, he appeared to be equating the deaths of Nazis during the occupation of France with the deaths of Israelis, Americans and British now, and proposing that Islamist mass murderers are the moral equivalent of the French Resistance."
Your government will protect you: "Australia admitted that its top spy agency ignored repeated attempts by convicted terrorist Jack Roche to warn it of the activities of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terror network two years before the Bali bombing".
Duplicitous translation: A Swedish speaker of Arabic compares mosque sermons to their press coverage: "America rapes Islam," the Imam roars in Arabic from the platform. The interpreter translates as: "We condemn USA's torture of Iraqi prisoners."
Don't laugh: The latest list of FBI Al Qaeda suspects includes a man raised on a goat ranch in Riverside County, Calif. He converted to Islam as a teenager after moving to Garden Grove, Calif. (presumably he was homesick!)
Slattery has picked out a nice selection of quotes from America's Leftist "celebrities". It certainly shows out of their own mouths what a nasty lot the "celebrities" are.
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
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The Left cannot face the fact that the American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq is fundamentally humanitarian. The most effective response to the 9/11 events and the one in America's own best interests would have been a retaliatory strike using nukes to take the whole of Afghanistan off the map -- followed by a threat that Mecca would go sky high if there were any further Islamic attacks on the USA or its allies. That would have made Islam a religion of peace overnight. But GWB rightly rejected that easy road because it would have involved the death of millions of innocents. He chose instead to go after just the bad guys -- an extremely difficult task. And its difficulty is causing continuing American deaths in Iraq to this day. But Americans have always given their blood in order to be humane. They did it in two world wars and in Vietnam and they are doing it now in the Middle East. The only alternative strategy that the Left have is to do nothing -- thus inviting more and more attacks.
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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I must say that it does rather surprise me how many bloggers depend on blogging software. I use blogger.com for this blog because of the permanent free blogspot hosting and to save a little bit of time but all my mirror sites are hand-coded. Basic html is very easy. I have never so much as opened a book on html or looked at a FAQ on it. I just see how other people have done things and copy that. So the only blogging software I use for my mirrors is a text editor plus what is in my noggin. I am rather moved to comment on the matter at the moment because of the loud grumbles coming from the MT people over recent price rises there. And some people pay for separate blogrolling software too! It all seems a bit sad to me when learning a tiny bit of html would enable people to do their blogging for free. I decided last night that I should put up some permalinks to the various parts of my online book about Leftism so I now know how to hand-code permalinks too -- dead easy! And hand-coded html loads twice as fast as the mass of junk produced by html editing programs. Here is a useful sample of my new permalinks (or here if that site is overloaded).
"A major poll of 1,388 American Roman Catholic voters shows Catholic presidential candidate John Kerry getting only 20% support among America's 51 million Catholics on issues where he opposes the Church's position -- with his support on some issues dropping as low as 6%."
Melanie Phillips on a "blame America" and "blame Israel" letter to The Guardian by Canon Paul Oestreicher of the Church of England: "This letter illustrates how the toxic combination of vicious prejudice and astonishing ignorance combine to produce an astounding inversion of moral values. These occupations [of Iraq and Palestinian areas] are not illegal. There is no brutal repression of civilian populations, but a defence against terror and mass murder in an attempt to restore order and respect for human life. As for his convoluted last thought, he appeared to be equating the deaths of Nazis during the occupation of France with the deaths of Israelis, Americans and British now, and proposing that Islamist mass murderers are the moral equivalent of the French Resistance."
Your government will protect you: "Australia admitted that its top spy agency ignored repeated attempts by convicted terrorist Jack Roche to warn it of the activities of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terror network two years before the Bali bombing".
Duplicitous translation: A Swedish speaker of Arabic compares mosque sermons to their press coverage: "America rapes Islam," the Imam roars in Arabic from the platform. The interpreter translates as: "We condemn USA's torture of Iraqi prisoners."
Don't laugh: The latest list of FBI Al Qaeda suspects includes a man raised on a goat ranch in Riverside County, Calif. He converted to Islam as a teenager after moving to Garden Grove, Calif. (presumably he was homesick!)
Slattery has picked out a nice selection of quotes from America's Leftist "celebrities". It certainly shows out of their own mouths what a nasty lot the "celebrities" are.
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
The Left cannot face the fact that the American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq is fundamentally humanitarian. The most effective response to the 9/11 events and the one in America's own best interests would have been a retaliatory strike using nukes to take the whole of Afghanistan off the map -- followed by a threat that Mecca would go sky high if there were any further Islamic attacks on the USA or its allies. That would have made Islam a religion of peace overnight. But GWB rightly rejected that easy road because it would have involved the death of millions of innocents. He chose instead to go after just the bad guys -- an extremely difficult task. And its difficulty is causing continuing American deaths in Iraq to this day. But Americans have always given their blood in order to be humane. They did it in two world wars and in Vietnam and they are doing it now in the Middle East. The only alternative strategy that the Left have is to do nothing -- thus inviting more and more attacks.
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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