ELSEWHERE
Yes. I know it's Bastille day. The real birthday of Communism. The French revolution gave us the first Communist regime of modern times and then Napoleon gave us the first Fascist regime. How cultured the French are! And what high principles they follow! And if you need any proof of the moral corruption and cowardice of modern-day France, read this report of their everyday indifference to gross antisemitism.
If you have not yet read the talk by Haim Harari on the Islamic problem, you really must. It is here, among other places. It is the most realistic and level-headed account I have read. Harari is an eminent Israeli scientist. Just one tiny excerpt on suicide bombers: "The actual murderer is called "the military wing", the one who pays him, equips him and sends him is now called "the political wing" and the head of the operation is called the "spiritual leader". There are numerous other examples of such Orwellian nomenclature, used every day not only by terror chiefs but also by Western media."
The pervert church again: "Two leading officials at a Catholic seminary in Austria have been identified in an investigation into alleged sexual abuse of student priests and the possession of pornographic and pedophile material. The worldwide scandal involving allegations of sexual abuse aimed at practicing priests within the Catholic Church has surfaced in Austria after pictures of senior church officials caressing and kissing student priests at a seminary were published in an Austrian magazine."
While others are pulling out: "Australia is to send more troops to Iraq. Defence Minister Robert Hill said an extra 30 troops and six armoured vehicles would be sent to boost protection of forces already in Iraq."
Osama bin Laden's sister-in-law has given a rare insight into the notorious terror leader, his extensive family in Saudi Arabia and life inside the secretive Middle East state. In an interview on the eve of a visit to the US to promote the book, to be published next Wednesday, she describes bin Laden as a man so driven by his beliefs that he would deny a water bottle to his infant son in the heat of the Saudi desert, insisting his wife use a spoon. "It's certainly possible that Osama retains ties to the royal family, too," she said. "The bin Ladens and the princes work together, very closely. They are secretive and they are united. They have been inextricably linked for many decades through close friendships and business ventures."
This kindly pastor is doing all he can to keep the fires of black anger burning: "These Black people are often misled, thinking African-Americans are free. But the perceived freedom is not real, says Todd. "You're free to eat at hotels you can't buy. You're free to eat at restaurants you can't buy. You're free to elect politicians who don't represent you. You're free to put your money into banks that won't give you loans. There's something about us. We like counterfeits. We like fakes.""
Look who's talking: "It is amusing to hear Washington liberals lament that all civility in political discourse is lost upon hearing vice-president Cheney tell the Senate's most notorious partisan, Vermont Senator Pat Leahy, Democrat, to 'F*** yourself' during the annual Senate photography session. Lost in scandalous thought over this, the media tsk-tsk's the raging flames of incendiary hate set in every medium by raving segments of the Democratic Party while it decries the minor flair-up in the oft-times cynical United States Senate."
Egyptian Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, "spiritual leader" of Egypt's bloodstained "Muslim Brotherhood" and a defender of Palestinian suicide bombers, is rather pathetically portrayed as a "moderate" by The Guardian . The London-based Iranian Communists give a very different view of him. See here. Genuine Islamic moderates do exist, but Qaradawi is not one of them.
Michael Darby has just come out of hibernation to put up a big post on the latest developments in the Iraqi weapons saga -- with particular reference to the implications for Australia.
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth
"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.
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, July 14, 2004
Tuesday, July 13, 2004
STRAUSS REVISITED
An interesting paper on Leo Strauss just out from Claremont. It argues that Strauss was more in tune with traditional American isolationism than the neocons are. The argument centres on whether America's foreign policy should be solely centred on self-preservation (Strauss) or whether it should also be evangelical for democracy (Kristol and the neocons). Much of the rhetoric coming from the White House does give the impression that a neocon agenda is being followed but I am sure that GWB would have done nothing in Afghanistan and Iraq except as a way of protecting America from further terrorist depredations. So the neocons are just a sort of Greek chorus on the sidelines.
But arguing about theories of isolationism versus interventionism is to me a bit too reminiscent of Leftist devotion to oversimplified theories. I prefer traditional conservative skepticism about generalizations and an emphasis on each case being judged on its individual merits. Note that the conservative government of my country appears to be untouched by either Straussianism or neoconservatism and yet behaves in a similar way to the USA. It has twice recently intervened militarily in the affairs of neighbouring countries and done so with great humanitarian success by most standards. Neither country was any threat to Australia so the intervention was almost wholly altruistic. It sprang from conservative decency, not any grand theory. I am sure that both Australia and the USA will continue to be motivated by a mix of self-interest and altruism that will defy any theory to predict or describe it.
***********************************
An interesting paper on Leo Strauss just out from Claremont. It argues that Strauss was more in tune with traditional American isolationism than the neocons are. The argument centres on whether America's foreign policy should be solely centred on self-preservation (Strauss) or whether it should also be evangelical for democracy (Kristol and the neocons). Much of the rhetoric coming from the White House does give the impression that a neocon agenda is being followed but I am sure that GWB would have done nothing in Afghanistan and Iraq except as a way of protecting America from further terrorist depredations. So the neocons are just a sort of Greek chorus on the sidelines.
But arguing about theories of isolationism versus interventionism is to me a bit too reminiscent of Leftist devotion to oversimplified theories. I prefer traditional conservative skepticism about generalizations and an emphasis on each case being judged on its individual merits. Note that the conservative government of my country appears to be untouched by either Straussianism or neoconservatism and yet behaves in a similar way to the USA. It has twice recently intervened militarily in the affairs of neighbouring countries and done so with great humanitarian success by most standards. Neither country was any threat to Australia so the intervention was almost wholly altruistic. It sprang from conservative decency, not any grand theory. I am sure that both Australia and the USA will continue to be motivated by a mix of self-interest and altruism that will defy any theory to predict or describe it.
***********************************
ELSEWHERE
Christopher Pearson has an interesting summary of recent developments in Australia's "History wars" (surprisingly reminiscent of the Historikerstreit in Germany or the American "reparations" movement -- with Leftists determined to promote inherited guilt from one's forefathers and conservatives rejecting that). He notes that a Leftist historian has now come out and admitted that the usual accounts of brutality by early white settlers against Australia's native blacks are basically fraudulent but says that Australians need to build their image of themselves on such a lie! How Leftist! Leftists themselves cannot handle reality and think that everyone else is the same. I personally have no difficulty handing my convict ancestry and know of no living Australian who does. And if I can handle convict ancestry, I think other Australians might just be able to handle comfortably the thought that their ancestors were conquerors.
Orson Scott Card has a brilliant account of how Leftist bias works in the mainsteam American media. His conclusion: "What makes the liberal bias in the mainstream media so pernicious is that they deny that they're biased and insist that their twisted version of events is "reality," and anyone who disagrees with them is either mentally or morally suspect. In other words, they're fanatics. And, like all good fanatics, they're utterly convinced that they're in sole possession of virtue and truth."
There is an interesting catalogue here showing that many of America's patriotic songs and poems were in the past written by "progressive" authors. It shows how sadly the American Left has degenerated in recent years. They hate America and all it stands for these days. The shift rightwards in American politics initiated by Reagan and sealed by the downfall of the Leftists' beloved Soviet Union has totally embittered them. Where once they had some shadow of an alternative to capitalism to put forward, now all they have left is the hatred that drove such stupid ideas.
Why the poor are richer than they seem: "The most glaring inaccuracy is that benefits from in-kind welfare programs go uncounted, so they aren't included in evaluating the poor's income. Since many such programs reduce benefits as incomes rise (e.g., the 30 cent reduction in food-stamp benefits for each $1 of net income), they undermine recipients' incentives to work. Many therefore earn less, so those transfers actually make recipients appear poorer. This is a large and growing error. Of the roughly $400 billion given annually in total government means-tested assistance, the proportion given in-kind has dramatically increased, now comprising about three-quarters of the total... Measures of consumption by various groups are far better indicators of relative well-being than the statistics invoked by Kerry and Edwards. They show dramatically smaller inequalities. Political support for a plethora of redistribution policies has long been maintained by skillful abuse of the data concerning inequality in America."
Read this: "How does the young elite see the future? In a book published yesterday, Imagining Australia, four Australian graduates of Harvard University outline ways to reignite a passion for reform." And guess what the suggested reforms are: More tired old government interventionism? You'd be wrong. The reforms suggested are all free-trade and free-enterprise oriented. Worth a read. See here. Good to see young people standing up for individual liberty despite all the Leftist indoctrination they get from the educational system -- even from such a Leftist hotbed as Harvard!
Amusing: "In the 1960s, nearly half of the US population smoked cigarettes. That number is down to about 22%, a group that Yale University researcher Tony George calls "hard-core" smokers. Among the mentally ill, however, the proportion of smokers is much higher: up to 90% of schizophrenics, 70% of those with bipolar disorder and more than 50% of depressed individuals smoke. Some studies estimate that a third of those who smoke have at one time battled a mental illness. "Smoking is a marker for psychopathology"" The article concerned is an interesting one. It suggests that smoking may be a successful self-medication for various brain disorders. The article is however very pesky to get into so, for convenience, I have reposted it here.
LOL: Philosophers are famous for never completely agreeing with one-another and I disagree with this post by Keith Burgess-Jackson: "I think some people who read my blog (AnalPhilosopher) like my conservatism. These people tend to be meat-eaters, and many of them don't like being reminded that meat-eating is wrong." I think Keith got a bit carried away there. Meat eating is certainly wrong according to the way he defines wrongness but there are many conceptions of wrongness. Mine is here and Protestant Christians of course find their source of right and wrong in the Bible -- and meat eating is accepted in the Bible, not forbidden. So for Christians, meat-eating is NOT wrong. For the record, I personally have bacon and egg breakfasts quite often and eat enough sausages to make me a good German. But my favourite sausage is Merguez -- of North African origin. If you have never had good Merguez, you haven't lived!
"Vanity of vanities. All is vanity" (Ecclesiastes 1:2). In my well-spent youth, I was on one occasion interviewed by a women's magazine about my lifestyle. Although I find it a bit embarrassing now, I have decided to put the interview on the net. See here. Note that the report is not totally accurate. I was NOT, for instance, divorced at the time. It is broadly representative of how I felt 30 years ago, however, so I am putting it on the net for the record's sake
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth
"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.
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.
********************************
Christopher Pearson has an interesting summary of recent developments in Australia's "History wars" (surprisingly reminiscent of the Historikerstreit in Germany or the American "reparations" movement -- with Leftists determined to promote inherited guilt from one's forefathers and conservatives rejecting that). He notes that a Leftist historian has now come out and admitted that the usual accounts of brutality by early white settlers against Australia's native blacks are basically fraudulent but says that Australians need to build their image of themselves on such a lie! How Leftist! Leftists themselves cannot handle reality and think that everyone else is the same. I personally have no difficulty handing my convict ancestry and know of no living Australian who does. And if I can handle convict ancestry, I think other Australians might just be able to handle comfortably the thought that their ancestors were conquerors.
Orson Scott Card has a brilliant account of how Leftist bias works in the mainsteam American media. His conclusion: "What makes the liberal bias in the mainstream media so pernicious is that they deny that they're biased and insist that their twisted version of events is "reality," and anyone who disagrees with them is either mentally or morally suspect. In other words, they're fanatics. And, like all good fanatics, they're utterly convinced that they're in sole possession of virtue and truth."
There is an interesting catalogue here showing that many of America's patriotic songs and poems were in the past written by "progressive" authors. It shows how sadly the American Left has degenerated in recent years. They hate America and all it stands for these days. The shift rightwards in American politics initiated by Reagan and sealed by the downfall of the Leftists' beloved Soviet Union has totally embittered them. Where once they had some shadow of an alternative to capitalism to put forward, now all they have left is the hatred that drove such stupid ideas.
Why the poor are richer than they seem: "The most glaring inaccuracy is that benefits from in-kind welfare programs go uncounted, so they aren't included in evaluating the poor's income. Since many such programs reduce benefits as incomes rise (e.g., the 30 cent reduction in food-stamp benefits for each $1 of net income), they undermine recipients' incentives to work. Many therefore earn less, so those transfers actually make recipients appear poorer. This is a large and growing error. Of the roughly $400 billion given annually in total government means-tested assistance, the proportion given in-kind has dramatically increased, now comprising about three-quarters of the total... Measures of consumption by various groups are far better indicators of relative well-being than the statistics invoked by Kerry and Edwards. They show dramatically smaller inequalities. Political support for a plethora of redistribution policies has long been maintained by skillful abuse of the data concerning inequality in America."
Read this: "How does the young elite see the future? In a book published yesterday, Imagining Australia, four Australian graduates of Harvard University outline ways to reignite a passion for reform." And guess what the suggested reforms are: More tired old government interventionism? You'd be wrong. The reforms suggested are all free-trade and free-enterprise oriented. Worth a read. See here. Good to see young people standing up for individual liberty despite all the Leftist indoctrination they get from the educational system -- even from such a Leftist hotbed as Harvard!
Amusing: "In the 1960s, nearly half of the US population smoked cigarettes. That number is down to about 22%, a group that Yale University researcher Tony George calls "hard-core" smokers. Among the mentally ill, however, the proportion of smokers is much higher: up to 90% of schizophrenics, 70% of those with bipolar disorder and more than 50% of depressed individuals smoke. Some studies estimate that a third of those who smoke have at one time battled a mental illness. "Smoking is a marker for psychopathology"" The article concerned is an interesting one. It suggests that smoking may be a successful self-medication for various brain disorders. The article is however very pesky to get into so, for convenience, I have reposted it here.
LOL: Philosophers are famous for never completely agreeing with one-another and I disagree with this post by Keith Burgess-Jackson: "I think some people who read my blog (AnalPhilosopher) like my conservatism. These people tend to be meat-eaters, and many of them don't like being reminded that meat-eating is wrong." I think Keith got a bit carried away there. Meat eating is certainly wrong according to the way he defines wrongness but there are many conceptions of wrongness. Mine is here and Protestant Christians of course find their source of right and wrong in the Bible -- and meat eating is accepted in the Bible, not forbidden. So for Christians, meat-eating is NOT wrong. For the record, I personally have bacon and egg breakfasts quite often and eat enough sausages to make me a good German. But my favourite sausage is Merguez -- of North African origin. If you have never had good Merguez, you haven't lived!
"Vanity of vanities. All is vanity" (Ecclesiastes 1:2). In my well-spent youth, I was on one occasion interviewed by a women's magazine about my lifestyle. Although I find it a bit embarrassing now, I have decided to put the interview on the net. See here. Note that the report is not totally accurate. I was NOT, for instance, divorced at the time. It is broadly representative of how I felt 30 years ago, however, so I am putting it on the net for the record's sake
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth
"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.
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, July 12, 2004
SOME OLDIES BUT GOLDIES
A great Orwell essay. He says Leftists are a type of nationalist: "By "patriotism" I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.... Nationalism, in the extended sense in which I am using the word, includes such movments and tendencies as Communism, political Catholicism, Zionism, Antisemitism, Trotskyism and Pacifism. It does not necessarily mean loyalty to a government or a country, still less to one's own country, and it is not even strictly necessary that the units in which it deals should actually exist. To name a few obvious examples, Jewry, Islam, Christendom, the Proletariat and the White Race are all of them objects of passionate nationalistic feeling: but their existence can be seriously questioned, and there is no definition of any one of them that would be universally accepted". (Via the Bunyip).
There is a great column by Thomas Sowell from a few years back of which I have to say what I rarely say: "Read the whole thing". Excerpt: "Over the years, the phrase "unintended consequences" has come up with increasing frequency, as more and more wonderful-sounding ideas have led to disastrous results. By now, you might think that people with wonderful-sounding ideas would start to question what the consequences would turn out to be -- and would devote as much time to discovering those consequences as to getting their ideas accepted and turned into laws and policies. But that seldom, if ever, happens. Why doesn't it? Because a lot depends on what it is you are trying to accomplish. If your purpose is to achieve the heady feeling of being one of the moral elite, then that can be accomplished without the long and tedious work of following up on results."
A great quote from a distinguished conservative: "Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm -- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves." -- T.S. Eliot, in his play "The cocktail party" (1950).
**************************************
A great Orwell essay. He says Leftists are a type of nationalist: "By "patriotism" I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.... Nationalism, in the extended sense in which I am using the word, includes such movments and tendencies as Communism, political Catholicism, Zionism, Antisemitism, Trotskyism and Pacifism. It does not necessarily mean loyalty to a government or a country, still less to one's own country, and it is not even strictly necessary that the units in which it deals should actually exist. To name a few obvious examples, Jewry, Islam, Christendom, the Proletariat and the White Race are all of them objects of passionate nationalistic feeling: but their existence can be seriously questioned, and there is no definition of any one of them that would be universally accepted". (Via the Bunyip).
There is a great column by Thomas Sowell from a few years back of which I have to say what I rarely say: "Read the whole thing". Excerpt: "Over the years, the phrase "unintended consequences" has come up with increasing frequency, as more and more wonderful-sounding ideas have led to disastrous results. By now, you might think that people with wonderful-sounding ideas would start to question what the consequences would turn out to be -- and would devote as much time to discovering those consequences as to getting their ideas accepted and turned into laws and policies. But that seldom, if ever, happens. Why doesn't it? Because a lot depends on what it is you are trying to accomplish. If your purpose is to achieve the heady feeling of being one of the moral elite, then that can be accomplished without the long and tedious work of following up on results."
A great quote from a distinguished conservative: "Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm -- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves." -- T.S. Eliot, in his play "The cocktail party" (1950).
**************************************
ELSEWHERE
LOL: I mentioned yesterday a Leftist/feminist blogger who changed her tune when she had a baby. She ended one of her posts on the subject with "I'd rather be sharing this with someone I love than doing it alone". I therefore commented about her: "She even wishes she was married!" -- which seemed a fair comment on what she said. Marriage can of course be de facto as well as de jure and I drew no inferences about which she preferred. She now refers to my comment as a "baldfaced lie". So judge for yourself who the liar is. She may have moderated her feminism but she is obviously still a Leftist.
Leftists, of course, call anything "lies". They are such liars themselves, they need to accuse others of it to cover up for themselves. The pathetic attempt to pin the "lie" accusation on President Bush seems to have depended mainly on his report of what the British government had been told about uranium purchases from Niger. That the information the British spooks obtained was contradicted by other sources got a lot of press a while back. Now, it seems, the British spooks got it right. No apologies for calling Bush a liar on such flimsy grounds can be expected of course. A loud silence from the former accusers in the Left-leaning American mainstream media is very much in evidence. I guess that's the Leftist version of journalistic ethics. (Don't laugh! There IS supposed to be such a thing as journalistic ethics!).
A Leftist not taking his pills: "Al Qaeda is not linked to Saddam but is in fact a creation of the CIA" (Via William Webb)
A good comment on the "International Court" ruling against Israel: "How ironic that the judge who read the ruling declaring Israel's security barrier illegal comes from China - the country that ate Tibet whole and has a human rights record somewhere South of Attila".
Subhuman Muslims: "Suspected Muslim guerillas sliced off the nose, ears and tongue of a 14-year-old girl in Indian Kashmir today, believing her to be an informer for the Indian army, police said."
Does abortion undermine the Democrat voter base? Tabarrok is perfectly correct that you cannot calculate the effect easily but given that Democrats favour abortion a lot more than Republicans do, it would be most surprising if Republicans used it as much as Democrats do. And that should give SOME tendency for Republicans to have more children. And children do tend to follow their parents' politics -- not uniformly of course, but largely so. Conservatism is in fact strongly hereditary. So, overall, easy abortion availability should in the long run increase the proportion of conservatives in the population.
A good libertarian comment: "The problem with personal injury lawsuits is not the core principle, which a true libertarian would be hard-pressed to deny. Rather, liability for injuries has been extended beyond any reasonable definition of causation. People who stupidly bring on harm to themselves have nevertheless been allowed to blame others with deep pockets. The tort system has been corrupted by the infusion of a welfarist, redistributionist, soak-the-rich ethic".
I almost never check such things but in an idle moment last night I looked at where this blog ranks in the NZ Bear ecosystem and was rather pleased to see that I have made it into the fourth highest category ("large mammal"). Being 305th out of 3 million blogs seems pretty good to me. I don't understand this search, though. It says there are nearly 10,000 links to this blog on the internet. I suspect a bug somewhere. The NZ Bear system has a big bug too: It counts self references. Even the erratic Technorati.com does not do that.
Maybe I shouldn't laugh but one of the other blogs that links to this one is a Japanese blog called Shitfit! Truth is stranger than fiction.
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth
"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.
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.
********************************
LOL: I mentioned yesterday a Leftist/feminist blogger who changed her tune when she had a baby. She ended one of her posts on the subject with "I'd rather be sharing this with someone I love than doing it alone". I therefore commented about her: "She even wishes she was married!" -- which seemed a fair comment on what she said. Marriage can of course be de facto as well as de jure and I drew no inferences about which she preferred. She now refers to my comment as a "baldfaced lie". So judge for yourself who the liar is. She may have moderated her feminism but she is obviously still a Leftist.
Leftists, of course, call anything "lies". They are such liars themselves, they need to accuse others of it to cover up for themselves. The pathetic attempt to pin the "lie" accusation on President Bush seems to have depended mainly on his report of what the British government had been told about uranium purchases from Niger. That the information the British spooks obtained was contradicted by other sources got a lot of press a while back. Now, it seems, the British spooks got it right. No apologies for calling Bush a liar on such flimsy grounds can be expected of course. A loud silence from the former accusers in the Left-leaning American mainstream media is very much in evidence. I guess that's the Leftist version of journalistic ethics. (Don't laugh! There IS supposed to be such a thing as journalistic ethics!).
A Leftist not taking his pills: "Al Qaeda is not linked to Saddam but is in fact a creation of the CIA" (Via William Webb)
A good comment on the "International Court" ruling against Israel: "How ironic that the judge who read the ruling declaring Israel's security barrier illegal comes from China - the country that ate Tibet whole and has a human rights record somewhere South of Attila".
Subhuman Muslims: "Suspected Muslim guerillas sliced off the nose, ears and tongue of a 14-year-old girl in Indian Kashmir today, believing her to be an informer for the Indian army, police said."
Does abortion undermine the Democrat voter base? Tabarrok is perfectly correct that you cannot calculate the effect easily but given that Democrats favour abortion a lot more than Republicans do, it would be most surprising if Republicans used it as much as Democrats do. And that should give SOME tendency for Republicans to have more children. And children do tend to follow their parents' politics -- not uniformly of course, but largely so. Conservatism is in fact strongly hereditary. So, overall, easy abortion availability should in the long run increase the proportion of conservatives in the population.
A good libertarian comment: "The problem with personal injury lawsuits is not the core principle, which a true libertarian would be hard-pressed to deny. Rather, liability for injuries has been extended beyond any reasonable definition of causation. People who stupidly bring on harm to themselves have nevertheless been allowed to blame others with deep pockets. The tort system has been corrupted by the infusion of a welfarist, redistributionist, soak-the-rich ethic".
I almost never check such things but in an idle moment last night I looked at where this blog ranks in the NZ Bear ecosystem and was rather pleased to see that I have made it into the fourth highest category ("large mammal"). Being 305th out of 3 million blogs seems pretty good to me. I don't understand this search, though. It says there are nearly 10,000 links to this blog on the internet. I suspect a bug somewhere. The NZ Bear system has a big bug too: It counts self references. Even the erratic Technorati.com does not do that.
Maybe I shouldn't laugh but one of the other blogs that links to this one is a Japanese blog called Shitfit! Truth is stranger than fiction.
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth
"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.
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, July 11, 2004
SICK EDUCATION
Soviet history lives! In Australia. Australian academic historians want to make it an offence to "publicly question the integrity or competence of their colleagues". No free-speech, no academic freedom, no open debate -- just a licence for Leftists to lie. No wonder they mourn the downfall of the Soviet Union. You can see what they liked about it.
Bureaucracy versus education: "When it takes an average of six years to build a new public school in California, what industrialist David L. Brennan did eight years ago in Cleveland borders on the miraculous in the slow-moving world of public education. When Brennan discovered, two weeks before school started, that some 360 initial voucher applicants could not find places in the city's private schools, he created two new HOPE Academies in just 15 days."
Teachers versus education: "Some say high-stakes testing is to blame for cheating in the classroom. But in this case, it's not the students getting caught -- it's the teachers. A recent study shows as many as 200 teachers in California were caught cheating to help their students perform better on rigorous new standardized tests, which are part of the President Bush's 'No Child Left Behind' education plan, which calls for greater accountability among teachers. Since the law was implemented, more teachers have been caught helping students cheat in about a dozen states around the country."
From a reader: "It occurred to me that perhaps there is more than meets the eye in Leftist support for more and more access to higher education. At the risk of sounding 'conspiratorial', do you suppose that they so strongly support easy, cheap, and open access to higher education so that they, since they so thoroughly control higher education, will have the opportunity to indoctrinate more and more people to their way of thinking?"
****************************
Soviet history lives! In Australia. Australian academic historians want to make it an offence to "publicly question the integrity or competence of their colleagues". No free-speech, no academic freedom, no open debate -- just a licence for Leftists to lie. No wonder they mourn the downfall of the Soviet Union. You can see what they liked about it.
Bureaucracy versus education: "When it takes an average of six years to build a new public school in California, what industrialist David L. Brennan did eight years ago in Cleveland borders on the miraculous in the slow-moving world of public education. When Brennan discovered, two weeks before school started, that some 360 initial voucher applicants could not find places in the city's private schools, he created two new HOPE Academies in just 15 days."
Teachers versus education: "Some say high-stakes testing is to blame for cheating in the classroom. But in this case, it's not the students getting caught -- it's the teachers. A recent study shows as many as 200 teachers in California were caught cheating to help their students perform better on rigorous new standardized tests, which are part of the President Bush's 'No Child Left Behind' education plan, which calls for greater accountability among teachers. Since the law was implemented, more teachers have been caught helping students cheat in about a dozen states around the country."
From a reader: "It occurred to me that perhaps there is more than meets the eye in Leftist support for more and more access to higher education. At the risk of sounding 'conspiratorial', do you suppose that they so strongly support easy, cheap, and open access to higher education so that they, since they so thoroughly control higher education, will have the opportunity to indoctrinate more and more people to their way of thinking?"
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KUDOS
Keith Burgess Jackson has a recent post on misuse of the word "kudos". I posted on that too -- on Oct 3, 2003. I said: ""kudos" is only a borrowing in English. It is the ancient Greek word for "fame". Interesting factoid: According to my Abbott-Smith Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament, "kudos" does not occur in the Greek New Testament. Early Christians obviously did not think much of the Greek obsession with fame and renown."
And that is no coincidence. Christ saw this life primarily as a preparation for the afterlife -- the "kingdom of heaven", as he so often put it (e.g. Matthew 5:20). Greeks however mostly saw this life as all there was and so their purpose was to gain immortality in the form of "kudos" -- having people notice and remember them admiringly. That is one reason why I sometimes refer to leftists as pursuing kudos -- because being looked up to and cheered is what they hunger for and aim for above all. Strictly speaking, however, it is an insult to the Greeks to describe what Leftists seek as "kudos". The Greeks wanted lasting renown -- not the eternal present that Leftists like John Kerry live in. If something will get him a cheer today Kerry will say it -- then say more or less the opposite tomorrow to a different audience in order to get a cheer from them too. Leftists are in general amoral and have only temporary postures that they adopt for convenience. There is no lasting renown in that. But for irreligious people -- which Leftists usually are -- I suppose that even a bastardized form of kudos makes some sense as your goal in life. I see other goals as healthier, however -- such as raising a happy family.
***************************
Keith Burgess Jackson has a recent post on misuse of the word "kudos". I posted on that too -- on Oct 3, 2003. I said: ""kudos" is only a borrowing in English. It is the ancient Greek word for "fame". Interesting factoid: According to my Abbott-Smith Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament, "kudos" does not occur in the Greek New Testament. Early Christians obviously did not think much of the Greek obsession with fame and renown."
And that is no coincidence. Christ saw this life primarily as a preparation for the afterlife -- the "kingdom of heaven", as he so often put it (e.g. Matthew 5:20). Greeks however mostly saw this life as all there was and so their purpose was to gain immortality in the form of "kudos" -- having people notice and remember them admiringly. That is one reason why I sometimes refer to leftists as pursuing kudos -- because being looked up to and cheered is what they hunger for and aim for above all. Strictly speaking, however, it is an insult to the Greeks to describe what Leftists seek as "kudos". The Greeks wanted lasting renown -- not the eternal present that Leftists like John Kerry live in. If something will get him a cheer today Kerry will say it -- then say more or less the opposite tomorrow to a different audience in order to get a cheer from them too. Leftists are in general amoral and have only temporary postures that they adopt for convenience. There is no lasting renown in that. But for irreligious people -- which Leftists usually are -- I suppose that even a bastardized form of kudos makes some sense as your goal in life. I see other goals as healthier, however -- such as raising a happy family.
***************************
ELSEWHERE
The religion of peace again: "A young woman and her baby have been attacked in a suburban train near Paris by unidentified men who drew swastikas on the mother's stomach. Police today said it was an anti-Semitic assault. The six attackers who were armed with knives clipped the 23-year-old woman's hair, and cut her tee-shirt and trousers before drawing three swastikas on her body. The men of North African origin also overturned the pram holding her baby, aged 13 months."
Amusing: A fiercely feminist and Leftist blogger has just had an unplanned baby at age 33 and suddenly discovers that she loves being a stay-at-home mother and regrets she wasted so many years doing the usual feminist man-aping stuff! She even wishes she was married! What a come-down for a feminist. Leftism always is good in theory only. She'll even end up voting conservative one day. (Via Oz Conservative).
Lies about jobs: "Sen. John Kerry and his fellow Democrats seem to believe that by attacking President Bush for 'inadequate' job creation the Republicans will be too inept to remind the American people that it was the Clinton economic policies that gave us the recession and the job losses. With polls showing Kerry ahead on economic issues, the Democrats chutzpah is succeeding. Kerry and his allies say they will bring back the 'Clintonomics' that gave us 'great prosperity.' It requires no great skill to take over a growing economy with a falling unemployment and leave it in a recession, which is precisely what Bill Clinton did. Democratic propagandists have also led many Americans to believe Clinton's economic performance was vastly superior to Ronald Reagan's, but the real facts show quite the reverse."
There is a BIG posting up at Gene Expression about the latest scientific findings on IQ. Like all other research on the topic, it shows IQ to differ greatly between individuals, to be highly heritable and to be strongly related to measures of brain function. But they have now got more precise about the brain functions involved and seem to be zeroing in on the specific genes behind it. So it's pretty technical.
Good to see: Britain's Radio 4 actually had a serious discussion of withdrawal from the European Union!
Dick McDonald has just got himself into a lot of hot water for saying that all the illegal immigrants around the place in Califonia are not such a bad thing. The discussion he has up about it all does expose the dilemmas involved.
Wicked Thoughts has a rare story of a doctor getting his own back against a lawyer.
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth
"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.
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.
********************************
The religion of peace again: "A young woman and her baby have been attacked in a suburban train near Paris by unidentified men who drew swastikas on the mother's stomach. Police today said it was an anti-Semitic assault. The six attackers who were armed with knives clipped the 23-year-old woman's hair, and cut her tee-shirt and trousers before drawing three swastikas on her body. The men of North African origin also overturned the pram holding her baby, aged 13 months."
Amusing: A fiercely feminist and Leftist blogger has just had an unplanned baby at age 33 and suddenly discovers that she loves being a stay-at-home mother and regrets she wasted so many years doing the usual feminist man-aping stuff! She even wishes she was married! What a come-down for a feminist. Leftism always is good in theory only. She'll even end up voting conservative one day. (Via Oz Conservative).
Lies about jobs: "Sen. John Kerry and his fellow Democrats seem to believe that by attacking President Bush for 'inadequate' job creation the Republicans will be too inept to remind the American people that it was the Clinton economic policies that gave us the recession and the job losses. With polls showing Kerry ahead on economic issues, the Democrats chutzpah is succeeding. Kerry and his allies say they will bring back the 'Clintonomics' that gave us 'great prosperity.' It requires no great skill to take over a growing economy with a falling unemployment and leave it in a recession, which is precisely what Bill Clinton did. Democratic propagandists have also led many Americans to believe Clinton's economic performance was vastly superior to Ronald Reagan's, but the real facts show quite the reverse."
There is a BIG posting up at Gene Expression about the latest scientific findings on IQ. Like all other research on the topic, it shows IQ to differ greatly between individuals, to be highly heritable and to be strongly related to measures of brain function. But they have now got more precise about the brain functions involved and seem to be zeroing in on the specific genes behind it. So it's pretty technical.
Good to see: Britain's Radio 4 actually had a serious discussion of withdrawal from the European Union!
Dick McDonald has just got himself into a lot of hot water for saying that all the illegal immigrants around the place in Califonia are not such a bad thing. The discussion he has up about it all does expose the dilemmas involved.
Wicked Thoughts has a rare story of a doctor getting his own back against a lawyer.
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth
"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.
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, July 10, 2004
SOME ECONOMICS
Should be more of it: "Meet Tennessee's shadow governor. As a state senator, Marsha Blackburn made it politically impossible to enact a state income tax by sounding the alarm at the state Capitol. Phil Bredesen then had to run against a state income tax for his first term just to get elected. Blackburn was the first to propose how to cut the growth in the state budget. She recommended cutting 5% across the board for each department. When Bredesen got into office, he cut all departments 9% across the board." ar American myth -- repeated with increasing frequency in this election year -- that 'The Rich' (whoever 'they' are) don't pay their fair share of taxes. A corollary to this is the assertion that The Rich received the biggest benefit of the so-called 'Bush' tax cuts, the political catch-phrase for the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003. Neither position is supported by hard data taken from income tax returns. In fact, in both cases, the opposite is true. In other words: The Rich not only pay a disproportionate share of taxes, this share has been increasing since 1990."
Austria and Iceland are undermining the high tax rates of the EU -- showing by example how beneficial tax cuts are.
Wal-Mart serves humanity: "The New York Times recently ran an interesting article on everyone's favorite global retailing behemoth, Wal-Mart.... two stunning examples of economic illiteracy, one misrepresentation of a very heroic deed, and a lovely comparison of Sam Walton to Chairman Mao."
Free trade under fire: "According to Douglas Irwin, free trade is under fire because some groups believe that they do not participate in the accumulation of wealth that trade brings. Others oppose it because they believe that trade agreements subvert national sovereignty and threaten to harm workers and the environment. Irwin, professor of economics at Dartmouth and long-time advocate of free trade, intends with this book to show the benefits of free trade and evaluate the arguments against it."
Cafe Hayek asks: "Why not return to the open-borders regime that prevailed in the United States from its independence until the end of the 19th century? I here put aside concerns with national security and deal exclusively with an economic objection to increased immigration.... The American economy is today far more able than in the past economically to "absorb immigrants.""
Irving Kristol thinks Reagan was a neocon: "A tax policy that energizes the economy, government regulations that are not too destructive, and moderate restraints on spending would have the effect of shrinking the bloated welfare state relative to the size of the economy. The welfare state itself could not be wished away. By now Reaganomics has become the semiofficial philosophy of the Republican party. As a consequence, this party is now seen as having a plausible and legitimate claim to be the governing party... In sum, Ronald Reagan made the Republican party proactive in economic policy as in foreign policy". I think Kristol fails to distinguish between what Reagan wanted and what he could get through Congress.
A U.S. productivity triumph: "In the first 13 quarters of the Bush Administration, the basic determinant of our standard of living increased by almost as much as during the entire 32 quarters of the Clinton Administration... But it would spoil the narrative of the Bush Administration as bumbling and Hoover-esque to point out that the most fundamental measure of our economic strength is shooting through the roof."
*******************************
Should be more of it: "Meet Tennessee's shadow governor. As a state senator, Marsha Blackburn made it politically impossible to enact a state income tax by sounding the alarm at the state Capitol. Phil Bredesen then had to run against a state income tax for his first term just to get elected. Blackburn was the first to propose how to cut the growth in the state budget. She recommended cutting 5% across the board for each department. When Bredesen got into office, he cut all departments 9% across the board." ar American myth -- repeated with increasing frequency in this election year -- that 'The Rich' (whoever 'they' are) don't pay their fair share of taxes. A corollary to this is the assertion that The Rich received the biggest benefit of the so-called 'Bush' tax cuts, the political catch-phrase for the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003. Neither position is supported by hard data taken from income tax returns. In fact, in both cases, the opposite is true. In other words: The Rich not only pay a disproportionate share of taxes, this share has been increasing since 1990."
Austria and Iceland are undermining the high tax rates of the EU -- showing by example how beneficial tax cuts are.
Wal-Mart serves humanity: "The New York Times recently ran an interesting article on everyone's favorite global retailing behemoth, Wal-Mart.... two stunning examples of economic illiteracy, one misrepresentation of a very heroic deed, and a lovely comparison of Sam Walton to Chairman Mao."
Free trade under fire: "According to Douglas Irwin, free trade is under fire because some groups believe that they do not participate in the accumulation of wealth that trade brings. Others oppose it because they believe that trade agreements subvert national sovereignty and threaten to harm workers and the environment. Irwin, professor of economics at Dartmouth and long-time advocate of free trade, intends with this book to show the benefits of free trade and evaluate the arguments against it."
Cafe Hayek asks: "Why not return to the open-borders regime that prevailed in the United States from its independence until the end of the 19th century? I here put aside concerns with national security and deal exclusively with an economic objection to increased immigration.... The American economy is today far more able than in the past economically to "absorb immigrants.""
Irving Kristol thinks Reagan was a neocon: "A tax policy that energizes the economy, government regulations that are not too destructive, and moderate restraints on spending would have the effect of shrinking the bloated welfare state relative to the size of the economy. The welfare state itself could not be wished away. By now Reaganomics has become the semiofficial philosophy of the Republican party. As a consequence, this party is now seen as having a plausible and legitimate claim to be the governing party... In sum, Ronald Reagan made the Republican party proactive in economic policy as in foreign policy". I think Kristol fails to distinguish between what Reagan wanted and what he could get through Congress.
A U.S. productivity triumph: "In the first 13 quarters of the Bush Administration, the basic determinant of our standard of living increased by almost as much as during the entire 32 quarters of the Clinton Administration... But it would spoil the narrative of the Bush Administration as bumbling and Hoover-esque to point out that the most fundamental measure of our economic strength is shooting through the roof."
*******************************
ELSEWHERE
Hilarious! I have somehow got myself onto the mailing list of the Iranian Communist Party! (headquartered in London, of course). Some of their stuff on Islamic madness is rather good so I have just put an interview with their founder up here. They are one Leftist group who have no illusions about appeasing or negotiating with the mullahs. The mullahs have killed too many of them. American Leftists who love both Communists and the Islamists would be put into a BIG dilemma if they heard what real Communists say about the Islamists!
Leftist backpedalling? "The war in Iraq has always been a war against fascism, a liberation war for democratic freedom -- even a left-wing war. Or so I have always thought. All over the world there are people who consider themselves liberals or left-wingers who think the same and who have backed the war in one fashion or another, even while criticizing President Bush's way of conducting it."
Evan Sayet has a rather impassioned account of why he has just changed from Democrat to Republican. He makes the point that many have noticed: The Democrats are now not remotely the party of J.F. Kennedy and his predecessors. Ever since LBJ it has been careering ever further to the Left. Would you believe that it was a Democrat President who said this? ""The lessons of paternalism ought to be unlearned and the better lesson taught that while the people should patriotically and cheerfully support their Government, its functions do not include the support of the people."
Trade sanction stupidity. The Left love sanctions but: "Using trade as a weapon of foreign policy has harmed America's economic interests in the world without advancing national security. The proliferation of trade sanctions in the 1990s has been accompanied by their declining effectiveness. From Cuba to Iran to Burma, sanctions have failed to achieve the goal of changing the behavior or the nature of target regimes. Sanctions have managed only to deprive American companies of investment opportunities and market share and to punish domestic consumers, while hurting the poor and most vulnerable in the target countries." Maybe the failure of the long embargo against Cuba to topple Castro should have told the Clinton administration that continuing the sanctions against Saddam's Iraq for almost a decade would not topple him either.
Oz Conservative has an interesting link to an article which questions the old feminist gospel that men should be more like women "for their own good". Women were supposed to be mentally healthier. I showed what a lot of nonsense that was years ago in one of the academic journals. A much-overlooked set of findings, needless to say.
Sounds hopeful: "The battle lines for the future of [U.K.] state education are now clear. Under Labour, whose blueprint is published today, there will be a revolution with a whole swath of state-financed schools throughout the country being handed over to private sponsors to run. By the end of the decade, the bankers, the churches, the millionaire philanthropists and leaders of the country's private schools will be in charge, in the name of more choice for parents. The Government is planning a big expansion in its city academies programme -- creating up to 200 by the end of the decade -- as one of a series of radical measures aimed at raising school standards."
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth
"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.
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.
********************************
Hilarious! I have somehow got myself onto the mailing list of the Iranian Communist Party! (headquartered in London, of course). Some of their stuff on Islamic madness is rather good so I have just put an interview with their founder up here. They are one Leftist group who have no illusions about appeasing or negotiating with the mullahs. The mullahs have killed too many of them. American Leftists who love both Communists and the Islamists would be put into a BIG dilemma if they heard what real Communists say about the Islamists!
Leftist backpedalling? "The war in Iraq has always been a war against fascism, a liberation war for democratic freedom -- even a left-wing war. Or so I have always thought. All over the world there are people who consider themselves liberals or left-wingers who think the same and who have backed the war in one fashion or another, even while criticizing President Bush's way of conducting it."
Evan Sayet has a rather impassioned account of why he has just changed from Democrat to Republican. He makes the point that many have noticed: The Democrats are now not remotely the party of J.F. Kennedy and his predecessors. Ever since LBJ it has been careering ever further to the Left. Would you believe that it was a Democrat President who said this? ""The lessons of paternalism ought to be unlearned and the better lesson taught that while the people should patriotically and cheerfully support their Government, its functions do not include the support of the people."
Trade sanction stupidity. The Left love sanctions but: "Using trade as a weapon of foreign policy has harmed America's economic interests in the world without advancing national security. The proliferation of trade sanctions in the 1990s has been accompanied by their declining effectiveness. From Cuba to Iran to Burma, sanctions have failed to achieve the goal of changing the behavior or the nature of target regimes. Sanctions have managed only to deprive American companies of investment opportunities and market share and to punish domestic consumers, while hurting the poor and most vulnerable in the target countries." Maybe the failure of the long embargo against Cuba to topple Castro should have told the Clinton administration that continuing the sanctions against Saddam's Iraq for almost a decade would not topple him either.
Oz Conservative has an interesting link to an article which questions the old feminist gospel that men should be more like women "for their own good". Women were supposed to be mentally healthier. I showed what a lot of nonsense that was years ago in one of the academic journals. A much-overlooked set of findings, needless to say.
Sounds hopeful: "The battle lines for the future of [U.K.] state education are now clear. Under Labour, whose blueprint is published today, there will be a revolution with a whole swath of state-financed schools throughout the country being handed over to private sponsors to run. By the end of the decade, the bankers, the churches, the millionaire philanthropists and leaders of the country's private schools will be in charge, in the name of more choice for parents. The Government is planning a big expansion in its city academies programme -- creating up to 200 by the end of the decade -- as one of a series of radical measures aimed at raising school standards."
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth
"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.
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, July 09, 2004
FROM BROOKES NEWS
China's militarists humiliated by President Bush's resolve In response to Beijing's mounting threats against Taiwan President Bush ordered seven Carrier Strike Groups into the region
The Party of Lincoln vs the Democrats' hate machine What is truly depressing about the Democrats is not their relentless partisanship; after all, partisanship is integral to politics. No, it is their simmering hatred and total absence of common decency
Helen Caldicott and the Soviet connection Helen Caldicott refuses to fade away. Last Thursday 'SBS' broadcast a documentary about this old Sovietphile called Helen's War: Portrait of a Dissident
Why oil prices won't spark massive inflation Some people are being panicked by investment advisers warning them that current oil prices are a harbinger of massive inflation. They're wrong
Is Mark Latham fit to be Prime Minister? Mark Latham and his press handlers are pretty busy at the moment trying to put a favourable spin the story that Latham sucker-punched at a much older man
Monica Lewinsky slimed by Bill Clinton - with a little help from the media Monica Lewinsky's shock at discovering that Bill Clinton thinks she is "disgusting" seems to have had a sobering though somewhat belated effect on her
Details here
*************************************
China's militarists humiliated by President Bush's resolve In response to Beijing's mounting threats against Taiwan President Bush ordered seven Carrier Strike Groups into the region
The Party of Lincoln vs the Democrats' hate machine What is truly depressing about the Democrats is not their relentless partisanship; after all, partisanship is integral to politics. No, it is their simmering hatred and total absence of common decency
Helen Caldicott and the Soviet connection Helen Caldicott refuses to fade away. Last Thursday 'SBS' broadcast a documentary about this old Sovietphile called Helen's War: Portrait of a Dissident
Why oil prices won't spark massive inflation Some people are being panicked by investment advisers warning them that current oil prices are a harbinger of massive inflation. They're wrong
Is Mark Latham fit to be Prime Minister? Mark Latham and his press handlers are pretty busy at the moment trying to put a favourable spin the story that Latham sucker-punched at a much older man
Monica Lewinsky slimed by Bill Clinton - with a little help from the media Monica Lewinsky's shock at discovering that Bill Clinton thinks she is "disgusting" seems to have had a sobering though somewhat belated effect on her
Details here
*************************************
ELSEWHERE
Carnival of the Vanities is up again with a big range of reading
The junk-science candidate: "As newly announced vice-presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards' record is scrutinized, political critics are re-examining claims the former trial lawyer amassed much of the personal fortune that financed his political career by winning legal cases based on "junk science." CNSNews.com first reported in January how Edwards won record jury verdicts and settlements in cases alleging that the botched treatment of women in labor and their deliveries caused infants to develop the brain disorder cerebral palsy. But the cause of cerebral palsy long has been debated, and two new studies in 2003 further undermined the scientific premise of Edwards' cases... "There are some cases where the brain damage did occur at the time of delivery. But it's really unusual. It's really quite unusual," Dr. Murray Goldstein, a neurologist and the medical director of the United Cerebral Palsy Research and Educational Foundation, told the news agency.... From judgments or settlements related to medical malpractice, Edwards built a personal fortune estimated at between $12.8 and $60 million."
Islamic lies . "Following the recent beheadings of Americans and other foreigners in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, the U.S. press turned to various experts to identify a precedent in the Quran or Islamic history for this kind of gory murder. "Beheadings are not mentioned in the Koran at all," Imam Muhammad Adam El-Sheikh, co-founder and chief cleric at the Dar Al Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Va., told USA Today... Yet it says in the Koran: "God revealed His will to the angels, saying: "I shall be with you. Give courage to the believers. I shall cast terror into the hearts of the infidels. Strike off their heads, strike off the very tips of their fingers." (Sura 8, Verse 12) and "When you meet the unbelievers in the battlefield strike off their heads." (Sura 47, Verse 4)"
Sudan ironies: Newsday's James Pinkerton reports growing pressure for the US to "do something" about the ongoing massacre of black Sudanese Muslims by Arab Sudanese Muslims What is interesting is that one of the voices leading the pro-intervention chorus is Donald Payne, Democrat, "liberal" and leader of the black caucus in Congress. Payne voted against intervention in Iraq and Kosovo. But isn't his position similar to that of Jewish Americans who advocate pro-Israel intervention in the Middle East? Will it be subject to equal criticism from the Left? Will Payne be seen as part of a black "cabal"? I wonder when a caucus becomes a "cabal"? And where were the voices for intervention when the North Sudanese Arab Muslims were massacring South Sudanese black Christians? That civil war has been going on for 16 years now.
Who is this guy? "Throughout the Vietnam War, he traveled numerous times to France and to North and South Vietnam, meeting with Communist officials and advising them on how best they could defeat the United States. He also organized aid shipments to the Communists, called upon fellow leftists to wage war against American imperialism, and backed the Communist cause around the world." Answer: One of America's most acclaimed academic historians -- Gabriel Kolko. More here. Only academics would take him seriously, though.
Randall Parker has an interesting post on the effects of Muslim polygamy. He says it is a major cause of angry young men and tyrannical governments in Islamic societies. The rich guys get all the women and leave lots of young men angry, frustrated, full of fight and ready to do crazy things -- like become suicide bombers.
Black blogger La Shawn Barber has an acid comment on the Leftist explanation for underperforming blacks: "As for "past injustices", I'd like to hear from black, middle class American-born-and-bred college-bound 18 year-olds who've suffered from the effects of slavery or Jim Crow. Please, feel free to comment on this blog." She is commenting on the better performance of overseas blacks which I mentioned here.
What a laugh! There is a puff-piece in the L.A. Times saying how wonderful modern-day South Africa is: "South Africa has been quite successful in the first phase, the political transformation". I wonder why every single white person I met when I was there a few years ago wanted to get out of the place if they could? That South Africa now has crime rates normal for Africa and that whites are heavily discriminated against in employment and everything else might have something to do with it I guess.
I followed a link from Marc Miyake to start reading some of the columns of the "War Nerd". He really is an amazingly talented writer -- totally amoral realism told humorously! Have a look at this column about Kosovo, Yugoslavia and all that benighted part of the world. I think he clarifies lots of things even if you don't agree with all his judgements.
One of the articles I read recently when I was trying to figure out what Straussianism was all about was this informative summary by Karl Jahn. Jahn also has a very thoughtful blog -- short on graphics but big on intellectual content. He is an ex-Lefty turned American nationalist. He out-Buchanans Buchanan. He is no racist, though.
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth
"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.
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.
********************************
Carnival of the Vanities is up again with a big range of reading
The junk-science candidate: "As newly announced vice-presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards' record is scrutinized, political critics are re-examining claims the former trial lawyer amassed much of the personal fortune that financed his political career by winning legal cases based on "junk science." CNSNews.com first reported in January how Edwards won record jury verdicts and settlements in cases alleging that the botched treatment of women in labor and their deliveries caused infants to develop the brain disorder cerebral palsy. But the cause of cerebral palsy long has been debated, and two new studies in 2003 further undermined the scientific premise of Edwards' cases... "There are some cases where the brain damage did occur at the time of delivery. But it's really unusual. It's really quite unusual," Dr. Murray Goldstein, a neurologist and the medical director of the United Cerebral Palsy Research and Educational Foundation, told the news agency.... From judgments or settlements related to medical malpractice, Edwards built a personal fortune estimated at between $12.8 and $60 million."
Islamic lies . "Following the recent beheadings of Americans and other foreigners in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, the U.S. press turned to various experts to identify a precedent in the Quran or Islamic history for this kind of gory murder. "Beheadings are not mentioned in the Koran at all," Imam Muhammad Adam El-Sheikh, co-founder and chief cleric at the Dar Al Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Va., told USA Today... Yet it says in the Koran: "God revealed His will to the angels, saying: "I shall be with you. Give courage to the believers. I shall cast terror into the hearts of the infidels. Strike off their heads, strike off the very tips of their fingers." (Sura 8, Verse 12) and "When you meet the unbelievers in the battlefield strike off their heads." (Sura 47, Verse 4)"
Sudan ironies: Newsday's James Pinkerton reports growing pressure for the US to "do something" about the ongoing massacre of black Sudanese Muslims by Arab Sudanese Muslims What is interesting is that one of the voices leading the pro-intervention chorus is Donald Payne, Democrat, "liberal" and leader of the black caucus in Congress. Payne voted against intervention in Iraq and Kosovo. But isn't his position similar to that of Jewish Americans who advocate pro-Israel intervention in the Middle East? Will it be subject to equal criticism from the Left? Will Payne be seen as part of a black "cabal"? I wonder when a caucus becomes a "cabal"? And where were the voices for intervention when the North Sudanese Arab Muslims were massacring South Sudanese black Christians? That civil war has been going on for 16 years now.
Who is this guy? "Throughout the Vietnam War, he traveled numerous times to France and to North and South Vietnam, meeting with Communist officials and advising them on how best they could defeat the United States. He also organized aid shipments to the Communists, called upon fellow leftists to wage war against American imperialism, and backed the Communist cause around the world." Answer: One of America's most acclaimed academic historians -- Gabriel Kolko. More here. Only academics would take him seriously, though.
Randall Parker has an interesting post on the effects of Muslim polygamy. He says it is a major cause of angry young men and tyrannical governments in Islamic societies. The rich guys get all the women and leave lots of young men angry, frustrated, full of fight and ready to do crazy things -- like become suicide bombers.
Black blogger La Shawn Barber has an acid comment on the Leftist explanation for underperforming blacks: "As for "past injustices", I'd like to hear from black, middle class American-born-and-bred college-bound 18 year-olds who've suffered from the effects of slavery or Jim Crow. Please, feel free to comment on this blog." She is commenting on the better performance of overseas blacks which I mentioned here.
What a laugh! There is a puff-piece in the L.A. Times saying how wonderful modern-day South Africa is: "South Africa has been quite successful in the first phase, the political transformation". I wonder why every single white person I met when I was there a few years ago wanted to get out of the place if they could? That South Africa now has crime rates normal for Africa and that whites are heavily discriminated against in employment and everything else might have something to do with it I guess.
I followed a link from Marc Miyake to start reading some of the columns of the "War Nerd". He really is an amazingly talented writer -- totally amoral realism told humorously! Have a look at this column about Kosovo, Yugoslavia and all that benighted part of the world. I think he clarifies lots of things even if you don't agree with all his judgements.
One of the articles I read recently when I was trying to figure out what Straussianism was all about was this informative summary by Karl Jahn. Jahn also has a very thoughtful blog -- short on graphics but big on intellectual content. He is an ex-Lefty turned American nationalist. He out-Buchanans Buchanan. He is no racist, though.
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth
"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.
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, July 08, 2004
SOME HISTORY
There has of course been a lot of discussion in recent years about the differences between Europe -- particularly France -- and the English-speaking countries. The way France and Germany were propping up the disgusting Saddam Hussein while the USA, Britain and Australia sent troops to overthrow him certainly showed a large gap in principles between the two sides. And it has also widely been noted how dictatorial and intrusive into the lives of its citizens the EU is -- with even the amount of bend in bananas now being regulated in the EU! Readers may therefore be interested to hear that the English Channel has for centuries separated two different ideas about the role of government. Read here what distinguished legal historian A.V. Dicey said in 1889 about English principles versus European lack of them.
Coleridge a precursor of GWB: "Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) is famous as the English poet who wrote Kubla Khan and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, but today is almost forgotten as one of the greatest political thinkers of his time. He was the first conservative to advocate social and political reforms as a means of maintaining a stable and cohesive society. He warned against the dangers of unchecked industrialisation, criticised the then prevailing ideology of the unfettered free-market, and called for far-reaching reforms to give the poor a greater stake in the economy.... Coleridge's thought had a seminal influence on the social-welfare Toryism of Disraeli"
Dinesh D'Souza: "The idea that America and the West grew rich through oppression and exploitation is strongly held among many intellectuals and activists...Did the West enrich itself at the expense of minorities and the Third World through its distinctive crimes of slavery and colonialism? This thesis is hard to sustain, because there is nothing distinctively Western about slavery or colonialism. The West had its empires, but so did the Persians, the Mongols, the Chinese, and the Turks. And if colonialism is a universal institution, so is slavery. Slavery has existed in every known civilization, from China to India to Africa to pre-Columbian America. What is uniquely Western is not slavery but the movement to abolish slavery."
An interesting historical article here about the white settlement of Australia points out that its legal basis was NOT the recent doctrine of terra nullius -- as Leftists assert. If anything, it was simply: "beat the French". Excerpt: "Let historians argue about the past - it is necessary and interesting and vastly important - but keep them out of the law courts. Reconciliation is the affair of modern Australians dealing with modern conditions."
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There has of course been a lot of discussion in recent years about the differences between Europe -- particularly France -- and the English-speaking countries. The way France and Germany were propping up the disgusting Saddam Hussein while the USA, Britain and Australia sent troops to overthrow him certainly showed a large gap in principles between the two sides. And it has also widely been noted how dictatorial and intrusive into the lives of its citizens the EU is -- with even the amount of bend in bananas now being regulated in the EU! Readers may therefore be interested to hear that the English Channel has for centuries separated two different ideas about the role of government. Read here what distinguished legal historian A.V. Dicey said in 1889 about English principles versus European lack of them.
Coleridge a precursor of GWB: "Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) is famous as the English poet who wrote Kubla Khan and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, but today is almost forgotten as one of the greatest political thinkers of his time. He was the first conservative to advocate social and political reforms as a means of maintaining a stable and cohesive society. He warned against the dangers of unchecked industrialisation, criticised the then prevailing ideology of the unfettered free-market, and called for far-reaching reforms to give the poor a greater stake in the economy.... Coleridge's thought had a seminal influence on the social-welfare Toryism of Disraeli"
Dinesh D'Souza: "The idea that America and the West grew rich through oppression and exploitation is strongly held among many intellectuals and activists...Did the West enrich itself at the expense of minorities and the Third World through its distinctive crimes of slavery and colonialism? This thesis is hard to sustain, because there is nothing distinctively Western about slavery or colonialism. The West had its empires, but so did the Persians, the Mongols, the Chinese, and the Turks. And if colonialism is a universal institution, so is slavery. Slavery has existed in every known civilization, from China to India to Africa to pre-Columbian America. What is uniquely Western is not slavery but the movement to abolish slavery."
An interesting historical article here about the white settlement of Australia points out that its legal basis was NOT the recent doctrine of terra nullius -- as Leftists assert. If anything, it was simply: "beat the French". Excerpt: "Let historians argue about the past - it is necessary and interesting and vastly important - but keep them out of the law courts. Reconciliation is the affair of modern Australians dealing with modern conditions."
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ELSEWHERE
Dennis Prager has a good article on why many Leftist citizens of both Israel and America hate their own country. In Israel the hatred is so extreme that Israeli Leftists are actually aiding the Palestinian terrorists. I think Prager overlooks the main reason, though. Both America and Israel are powerful and Leftists want to tear down all power that they themselves do not control or identify with. With Democrat control of Congress and the Presidency, mainstream Leftists would be reasonably happy with their country because they could identify with Democrat politicians. But really virulent Leftists (of whom there are many -- particularly in academe), such as we read on "Counterpunch", cannot identify with the moderate Leftism of the Democrats so hate America regardless of the regime. The very name "Counterpunch" is revealing. It expresses a desire for violence. They are seething with hate and just want to punch people. Leftism is the politics of hate -- and I suspect that only part of it is envy driven. Many Leftists seem to be just fundamentally hostile people regardless -- hiding, of course, behind a mask of "concern". But what they all hate most is undoubtedly power in the hands of others than themselves. Conservatives, by contrast, just want to keep out of other people's power.
Abdurrahman Wahid is an amazing man. A revered Indonesian Muslim religious leader and former President of Indonesia, he is a friend of Israel! There are about 200 million Indonesian Muslims just to the North of Australia so having him around is a great comfort.
A Turkish Muslim who supports America's Middle-East interventions because of his own experiences there, brands Michael Moore a "hatriot"
Our friends, the Saudis: "Saudi Arabia's intelligence agencies are so infiltrated by al-Qa'ida sympathisers that the kingdom's counter-terrorist campaign is failing and militant operations are spreading into neighbouring states, senior Arab and Western officials have warned. The main Saudi intelligence organisation responsible for combating al-Qa'ida at the Interior Ministry is riddled with agents linked to the militants, the officials say. "Their staff is 80 per cent sympathetic to al-Qa'ida," one senior Arab source said."
Wow! A sociology professor with his eyes open: "Put simply, religious terrorists live in another world. Unlike, say, the Weathermen of '60s fame, they have no political platform for change. The agenda is purely theocratic and absolute, with not a scintilla of concern for the lives of nonbelievers. In such a situation negotiation is useless, for there is nothing to negotiate about. As Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, spiritual mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombings, asserted unequivocally, "There is no truce in jihad against the enemies of Allah." ... When it come to religiously-based terror, we must reluctantly recognize that there are only two real choices here - protect ourselves and eliminate the terrorists or turn the world over to them".
Amazing: "The Iraqi Communist Party is strongly represented in the new interim government in Baghdad and is getting U.S. taxpayer support thanks to a U.S. group led by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright"
Despite the current difficulties with blogger.com, Dick McDonald has got lots of good posts up recently. This one from an Iraq veteran points out how much better GWB has done in Iraq than Democrat Presidents have done in their many wars.
Keith Burgess Jackson is a lawyer as well as a philosopher and he uses a bit of legal Latin -- res ipsa loquitur ("the thing speaks for itself") -- to exceptionally good effect here
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth
"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.
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.
********************************
Dennis Prager has a good article on why many Leftist citizens of both Israel and America hate their own country. In Israel the hatred is so extreme that Israeli Leftists are actually aiding the Palestinian terrorists. I think Prager overlooks the main reason, though. Both America and Israel are powerful and Leftists want to tear down all power that they themselves do not control or identify with. With Democrat control of Congress and the Presidency, mainstream Leftists would be reasonably happy with their country because they could identify with Democrat politicians. But really virulent Leftists (of whom there are many -- particularly in academe), such as we read on "Counterpunch", cannot identify with the moderate Leftism of the Democrats so hate America regardless of the regime. The very name "Counterpunch" is revealing. It expresses a desire for violence. They are seething with hate and just want to punch people. Leftism is the politics of hate -- and I suspect that only part of it is envy driven. Many Leftists seem to be just fundamentally hostile people regardless -- hiding, of course, behind a mask of "concern". But what they all hate most is undoubtedly power in the hands of others than themselves. Conservatives, by contrast, just want to keep out of other people's power.
Abdurrahman Wahid is an amazing man. A revered Indonesian Muslim religious leader and former President of Indonesia, he is a friend of Israel! There are about 200 million Indonesian Muslims just to the North of Australia so having him around is a great comfort.
A Turkish Muslim who supports America's Middle-East interventions because of his own experiences there, brands Michael Moore a "hatriot"
Our friends, the Saudis: "Saudi Arabia's intelligence agencies are so infiltrated by al-Qa'ida sympathisers that the kingdom's counter-terrorist campaign is failing and militant operations are spreading into neighbouring states, senior Arab and Western officials have warned. The main Saudi intelligence organisation responsible for combating al-Qa'ida at the Interior Ministry is riddled with agents linked to the militants, the officials say. "Their staff is 80 per cent sympathetic to al-Qa'ida," one senior Arab source said."
Wow! A sociology professor with his eyes open: "Put simply, religious terrorists live in another world. Unlike, say, the Weathermen of '60s fame, they have no political platform for change. The agenda is purely theocratic and absolute, with not a scintilla of concern for the lives of nonbelievers. In such a situation negotiation is useless, for there is nothing to negotiate about. As Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, spiritual mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombings, asserted unequivocally, "There is no truce in jihad against the enemies of Allah." ... When it come to religiously-based terror, we must reluctantly recognize that there are only two real choices here - protect ourselves and eliminate the terrorists or turn the world over to them".
Amazing: "The Iraqi Communist Party is strongly represented in the new interim government in Baghdad and is getting U.S. taxpayer support thanks to a U.S. group led by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright"
Despite the current difficulties with blogger.com, Dick McDonald has got lots of good posts up recently. This one from an Iraq veteran points out how much better GWB has done in Iraq than Democrat Presidents have done in their many wars.
Keith Burgess Jackson is a lawyer as well as a philosopher and he uses a bit of legal Latin -- res ipsa loquitur ("the thing speaks for itself") -- to exceptionally good effect here
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth
"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.
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.
********************************
Wednesday, July 07, 2004
THE SHAMBLES THAT IS AMERICAN EDUCATION: EPISODE 6,314
Whatever Leftists touch, they degrade or destroy.
Florida Education: "I've been writing about the problems with public education since 1993. The business of imparting to children what I believed to be empty self-esteem became, through the years, a recurring theme in my articles, along with such issues as the dumbing down of curriculum, grade inflation and social promotion. The responses I got from teachers on the editorial page and in person were usually defensive. I was often accused of hating all things having to do with public education. Apparently, it is impossible to criticize public education without hating it. I don't hate public education. I want it to be better than it is. And so, here we are today, and educators and Democrats are using the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test as their whipping boy as if the fact that this remedy was deemed necessary comes as a total shock to them; as if there were no red flags, no warning bells, nothing whatsoever to alert them to the fact that our kids have, for a long time now, been in serious academic trouble and that the policies of government schools have, for a very long time, been the agency of this trouble".
Kansas education: "Those of us who teach college English classes are always overwhelmed by the astonishing deficits in our students' ability to get their facts straight, to think clearly and logically, and to express their ideas in language that actually makes sense and that follows the most basic rules of grammar. Even our best students write incoherent essays and make grammar and usage errors that would have failed a third grader in the 1950s... When even our brightest, most "competent" college students cannot write as well or as quickly as most third graders could in my elementary school in 1958, that means something has gone very wrong with their instruction in writing." (Via Newmark's door).
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Whatever Leftists touch, they degrade or destroy.
Florida Education: "I've been writing about the problems with public education since 1993. The business of imparting to children what I believed to be empty self-esteem became, through the years, a recurring theme in my articles, along with such issues as the dumbing down of curriculum, grade inflation and social promotion. The responses I got from teachers on the editorial page and in person were usually defensive. I was often accused of hating all things having to do with public education. Apparently, it is impossible to criticize public education without hating it. I don't hate public education. I want it to be better than it is. And so, here we are today, and educators and Democrats are using the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test as their whipping boy as if the fact that this remedy was deemed necessary comes as a total shock to them; as if there were no red flags, no warning bells, nothing whatsoever to alert them to the fact that our kids have, for a long time now, been in serious academic trouble and that the policies of government schools have, for a very long time, been the agency of this trouble".
Kansas education: "Those of us who teach college English classes are always overwhelmed by the astonishing deficits in our students' ability to get their facts straight, to think clearly and logically, and to express their ideas in language that actually makes sense and that follows the most basic rules of grammar. Even our best students write incoherent essays and make grammar and usage errors that would have failed a third grader in the 1950s... When even our brightest, most "competent" college students cannot write as well or as quickly as most third graders could in my elementary school in 1958, that means something has gone very wrong with their instruction in writing." (Via Newmark's door).
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ELSEWHERE
Another Leftist "naked" protest here Leftists will do anything to draw attention to themselves. They did the same last year. See here or here.
The wisdom of ordinary people beats the elites: "James Surowiecki is fascinated by prediction markets. In his opinion, they demonstrate that crowds are often wise. He rejects the widespread view that groups of ordinary people are usually wrong--and that we do better to ignore them and follow experts instead. Even when individuals blunder, he believes, groups can excel: "Under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them." This is so even when "most of the people within the group are not especially well-informed or rational."" Conservatives from Burke through Disraeli and Hayek to Reagan have of course always trusted the people as a whole to come up with better decisions than elites do. Burke looked to the wisdom of the people of both the past and present combined; Disraeli saw the ordinary people of England as "angels in marble" and Hayek saw the information available to the population as a whole as infinitely superior to any other information source. And trust in the wisdom and goodness of the ordinary people as a whole is something Reagan was famous for. He constantly said that the great achievements of his era were not his but those of the American people as a whole. And libertarians have of course always looked to the aggregation of individual decisions in markets as the premier fount of wisdom.
The House of Lords once again proves its value as a guardian of traditional British liberties: "Proposals for a ban on smacking children as a disciplinary measure failed to pass the upper house of the British parliament yesterday. During a debate on amendments to the Children Bill, the House of Lords adopted by a vote of 226-91 a motion to allow "moderate" smacking that leaves no cuts, bruises or psychological harm. The proposal would also make it an offence to hit a child with an instrument, such as a belt or a cane. But the House of Lords defeated, by 250-75, a more draconian proposal that would have made it a crime in Britain to smack a youngster to any degree whatsoever."
Tom Barrett: "As I watched a defiant Saddam Hussein bluster his way through his first court appearance for war crimes in Iraq, I was struck with the fact that on at least one important point he and John Kerry are in agreement. Saddam stated that he shouldn’t be on trial, that Bush and the United States were the real war criminals".
"A generation ago, American satirist Walter Kelly amended Commodore Perry's 1813 dispatch 'We have met the enemy and he is ours' to read, 'We have met the enemy and he is us.' By the same token, one might say to the peoples of Mesopotamia: 'You have met the enemy, and he is you.' Sunni, Shi'ite and Kurd have one thing in common: they all eschew the American 'melting pot' model of democracy. They are determined to pursue their own tragic destinies instead.... I believe that there is among the Kurds, enough people who love freedom for itself and who will struggle for it obstinately until the Kurds enjoy self-rule."
Political boundaries should not be sacred: "One of the ballasts that our current political balloons carry is that of the sanctity of existing boundaries; the belief that all existing states are to be preserved in their current shape and size. This is, in numerous cases, an irrational position for which the global community and interstate peace currently pays and will in the future continue to pay, an excessive price."
Island of justice in the Middle East: "Question: Where in the Middle East did the following occur? Arab villagers file a petition to their High Court, claiming their human rights are being violated by the state. The villagers prevail. The Kingdom of Jordan, perhaps? Syria? Lebanon? Did a High Court of Justice there intervene on behalf of the Little Lebanese Guy against his Syrian overlords? ... When polled, Europeans said that this country, whose supreme court ruled against the state for violating a standard designed to 'strike a balance between security and human rights,' was the greatest threat to world peace."
The Leftists won't like this: There is now a Muslim free-market institute!
Now that the "Kyoto" global warming bandwagon seems to have ground to a halt, the Church of England has decided to give it a push. Though don't ask me what that has to do with saving souls and preparing for the afterlife -- which is what Jesus was on about. Anyway, the C of E has what seems a new twist: They want poor people to pollute MORE! All men should be equal polluters, apparently. As I pointed out some time ago, the old established churches are mostly just Leftist fronts these days -- dedicated to getting attention by stirring up mindless dissension and trouble rather than anything else. M4 Monologue has got a pretty good take on that sort of "Christian" too.
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth
"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.
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.
********************************
Another Leftist "naked" protest here Leftists will do anything to draw attention to themselves. They did the same last year. See here or here.
The wisdom of ordinary people beats the elites: "James Surowiecki is fascinated by prediction markets. In his opinion, they demonstrate that crowds are often wise. He rejects the widespread view that groups of ordinary people are usually wrong--and that we do better to ignore them and follow experts instead. Even when individuals blunder, he believes, groups can excel: "Under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them." This is so even when "most of the people within the group are not especially well-informed or rational."" Conservatives from Burke through Disraeli and Hayek to Reagan have of course always trusted the people as a whole to come up with better decisions than elites do. Burke looked to the wisdom of the people of both the past and present combined; Disraeli saw the ordinary people of England as "angels in marble" and Hayek saw the information available to the population as a whole as infinitely superior to any other information source. And trust in the wisdom and goodness of the ordinary people as a whole is something Reagan was famous for. He constantly said that the great achievements of his era were not his but those of the American people as a whole. And libertarians have of course always looked to the aggregation of individual decisions in markets as the premier fount of wisdom.
The House of Lords once again proves its value as a guardian of traditional British liberties: "Proposals for a ban on smacking children as a disciplinary measure failed to pass the upper house of the British parliament yesterday. During a debate on amendments to the Children Bill, the House of Lords adopted by a vote of 226-91 a motion to allow "moderate" smacking that leaves no cuts, bruises or psychological harm. The proposal would also make it an offence to hit a child with an instrument, such as a belt or a cane. But the House of Lords defeated, by 250-75, a more draconian proposal that would have made it a crime in Britain to smack a youngster to any degree whatsoever."
Tom Barrett: "As I watched a defiant Saddam Hussein bluster his way through his first court appearance for war crimes in Iraq, I was struck with the fact that on at least one important point he and John Kerry are in agreement. Saddam stated that he shouldn’t be on trial, that Bush and the United States were the real war criminals".
"A generation ago, American satirist Walter Kelly amended Commodore Perry's 1813 dispatch 'We have met the enemy and he is ours' to read, 'We have met the enemy and he is us.' By the same token, one might say to the peoples of Mesopotamia: 'You have met the enemy, and he is you.' Sunni, Shi'ite and Kurd have one thing in common: they all eschew the American 'melting pot' model of democracy. They are determined to pursue their own tragic destinies instead.... I believe that there is among the Kurds, enough people who love freedom for itself and who will struggle for it obstinately until the Kurds enjoy self-rule."
Political boundaries should not be sacred: "One of the ballasts that our current political balloons carry is that of the sanctity of existing boundaries; the belief that all existing states are to be preserved in their current shape and size. This is, in numerous cases, an irrational position for which the global community and interstate peace currently pays and will in the future continue to pay, an excessive price."
Island of justice in the Middle East: "Question: Where in the Middle East did the following occur? Arab villagers file a petition to their High Court, claiming their human rights are being violated by the state. The villagers prevail. The Kingdom of Jordan, perhaps? Syria? Lebanon? Did a High Court of Justice there intervene on behalf of the Little Lebanese Guy against his Syrian overlords? ... When polled, Europeans said that this country, whose supreme court ruled against the state for violating a standard designed to 'strike a balance between security and human rights,' was the greatest threat to world peace."
The Leftists won't like this: There is now a Muslim free-market institute!
Now that the "Kyoto" global warming bandwagon seems to have ground to a halt, the Church of England has decided to give it a push. Though don't ask me what that has to do with saving souls and preparing for the afterlife -- which is what Jesus was on about. Anyway, the C of E has what seems a new twist: They want poor people to pollute MORE! All men should be equal polluters, apparently. As I pointed out some time ago, the old established churches are mostly just Leftist fronts these days -- dedicated to getting attention by stirring up mindless dissension and trouble rather than anything else. M4 Monologue has got a pretty good take on that sort of "Christian" too.
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth
"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.
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.
********************************
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
HOLLYWOOD
Hollywood's betrayal of America: "How many Americans are aware that the most sophisticated tools of modern communication are being used on a daily basis in a vast program of disinformation about this country and its people that is beamed into almost every country on Earth? Every time I travel abroad I see this at work and witness its results. 'I am so grateful for this opportunity to get to know you and your family,' a Muslim Indian woman told me in 2000. 'We thought that Americans have no values, that they are materialistic, and care only about themselves. We thought there is no commitment to children and families, that everyone lives in immorality. It is so wonderful to see that these things are not true!' Where does this image of America come from? If someone had set out to create a powerful propaganda strategy to completely discredit America, they could not have come up with anything more effective than the Hollywood product shown daily to billions of people."
Hollywood ideology: "Once upon a time, there were people in Hollywood who loved America. And when America came under attack from enemies abroad, these actors, producers, screenwriters, and directors put aside their partisan differences and created movies that-unlike Michael Moore's new shlockumentary, Fahrenheit 9/11 -made all moviegoers proud to be Americans.... The movies depicted good and evil in stark terms. And there was no politically correct revisionism about who our enemies were. By contrast, even tough-guy Arnold Schwarzenegger failed to stand up to Hollywood mushes who were afraid to depict Arab terrorists in his post-Sept. 11 movie, Collateral Damage. Instead of encouraging Americans to confront the true face and nature of the Islamist threat, Schwarzenegger and his producers turned the Arab terrorists into Colombian terrorists so no one would complain about "racial profiling." Similarly, Steven Spielberg's new movie about an asylum seeker, The Terminal, indulges in weak-willed liberal escapism by demonizing Department of Homeland Security officials just trying to do their jobs.
**********************************
ELSEWHERE
The Happy Carpenter has just put up an impassioned response to the antiwar Left. It's a must-read. Worthy of Bill Whittle. Excerpt: "It was mentioned a few times at the beginning of the war and its 14 month rush-to-war that NAZI = BAATH. They are both acronyms for National Socialism.... It is no coincidence that they both involved mass murder, attempted genocide on Jews, multiple invasions of neighbors, and stubborn blind violence after nominal defeat. What seems absolutely unique to me, a very casual student of history, is the lazy acceptance of traitors in our midst. The new American Left wants us to fail. They want just enough American soldiers and Marines to die so they can whip the public into demanding another Vietnam style retreat. They make no bones about this among themselves, although they viciously insist that we patriots recognize their "protest" as the highest form of patriotism. It is not. We must not be afraid of their name-calling. Just as the insult of `bigot' and `racist' has worn thin and no longer stings like it once did, we must counter the left's lies. When they say "How dare you question my patriotism!" we must say "I question your patriotism because you are a traitor. You want America to fail. You want Americans to die. And you want this because you are a socialist who believes America is the greatest evil in the world. I denounce you. I spit on you. You are a traitor.""
Kerry betrays America ... again: "How is America supposed to win in Iraq, and how are the Iraqi people supposed to reclaim their country, when so many Washington leaders seem to be rooting for failure in Baghdad? ... Now top Democrats are talking down a war that has cost 800- plus Americans their lives -- with little regard to how their sniping might affect the war effort. You would think that Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., never heard of the word "morale," by the way he is badmouthing a war that he himself had voted to authorize. Consider that while Iraqis have resented America's military presence, even in Iraq citizens were more upbeat than Kerry about the transfer of power. A Baghdad newspaper, New Morning, wrote a story headlined, "America Keeps Its Promise," for its next edition, according to NBC news. Yet in America, Kerry, who voted for the war, looked as if he had lost a bet. ..... The issue is this: If Kerry votes for a war, he owes it to the troops to root for victory. ...Instead, he has spent months undermining the coalition in order to bolster his own career."
How bad news from Iraq gets "created". "Iraq veterans often say they are confused by American news coverage, because their experience differs so greatly from what journalists report. Soldiers and Marines point to the slow, steady progress in almost all areas of Iraqi life and wonder why they don't get much notice - or in many cases, any notice at all. Part of the explanation is Rajiv Chandrasekaran, the Baghdad bureau chief for the Washington Post.... While its national clout lags behind the New York Times, many reporters look to the Post for cues on how to approach a story. The Post interprets events, and the herd of independent minds bleat their approval and start tapping on their keyboards with their hooves. Chandrasekaran's crew generates a relentlessly negative stream of articles from Iraq - and if there are no events to report, they resort to man-on-the-street interviews and cobble together a story from that." (Via Mark Shea).
The latest threat from Iran: "Iranians are frantically increasing their efforts to drive Coalition forces out of Iraq, to wreck the Iraqi economy - and especially to inflate oil prices, which the mullahs hope will bring down the Bush presidency - and to destabilize the fragile Karzai government in Afghanistan. They, and their Syrian and Saudi allies, are doing this because the liberation of Iraq is indeed threatening the authority of the remaining terror masters in Tehran, Damascus, and Riadh. The entire region is bubbling from the heat of democratic revolution"
Further to my recent posts about homosexuality and Fascism, I have just posted here an extract from the 1938 edition of 'Inside Europe' by John Gunther which says that Hitler himself was completely asexual.
Oil can be a curse: "It is not coincidental that the only Moslem country with a working democracy is Turkey, which has no oil. Malaysia is also semi-democratic and "suffers" from not being mineral-rich. .."
The Australian Left are quiet about the Howard government's achievements in black education: "...the proportion of indigenous children staying on to year 12 has increased from 29 per cent to 39 per cent since 1996. The number of indigenous students undertaking bachelor or higher degree courses has risen by 36 per cent at the same time. This financial year, the Howard Government will spend 39 per cent more in real terms than the Keating government did in its last year. .."
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth
"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.
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.
********************************
Hollywood's betrayal of America: "How many Americans are aware that the most sophisticated tools of modern communication are being used on a daily basis in a vast program of disinformation about this country and its people that is beamed into almost every country on Earth? Every time I travel abroad I see this at work and witness its results. 'I am so grateful for this opportunity to get to know you and your family,' a Muslim Indian woman told me in 2000. 'We thought that Americans have no values, that they are materialistic, and care only about themselves. We thought there is no commitment to children and families, that everyone lives in immorality. It is so wonderful to see that these things are not true!' Where does this image of America come from? If someone had set out to create a powerful propaganda strategy to completely discredit America, they could not have come up with anything more effective than the Hollywood product shown daily to billions of people."
Hollywood ideology: "Once upon a time, there were people in Hollywood who loved America. And when America came under attack from enemies abroad, these actors, producers, screenwriters, and directors put aside their partisan differences and created movies that-unlike Michael Moore's new shlockumentary, Fahrenheit 9/11 -made all moviegoers proud to be Americans.... The movies depicted good and evil in stark terms. And there was no politically correct revisionism about who our enemies were. By contrast, even tough-guy Arnold Schwarzenegger failed to stand up to Hollywood mushes who were afraid to depict Arab terrorists in his post-Sept. 11 movie, Collateral Damage. Instead of encouraging Americans to confront the true face and nature of the Islamist threat, Schwarzenegger and his producers turned the Arab terrorists into Colombian terrorists so no one would complain about "racial profiling." Similarly, Steven Spielberg's new movie about an asylum seeker, The Terminal, indulges in weak-willed liberal escapism by demonizing Department of Homeland Security officials just trying to do their jobs.
**********************************
ELSEWHERE
The Happy Carpenter has just put up an impassioned response to the antiwar Left. It's a must-read. Worthy of Bill Whittle. Excerpt: "It was mentioned a few times at the beginning of the war and its 14 month rush-to-war that NAZI = BAATH. They are both acronyms for National Socialism.... It is no coincidence that they both involved mass murder, attempted genocide on Jews, multiple invasions of neighbors, and stubborn blind violence after nominal defeat. What seems absolutely unique to me, a very casual student of history, is the lazy acceptance of traitors in our midst. The new American Left wants us to fail. They want just enough American soldiers and Marines to die so they can whip the public into demanding another Vietnam style retreat. They make no bones about this among themselves, although they viciously insist that we patriots recognize their "protest" as the highest form of patriotism. It is not. We must not be afraid of their name-calling. Just as the insult of `bigot' and `racist' has worn thin and no longer stings like it once did, we must counter the left's lies. When they say "How dare you question my patriotism!" we must say "I question your patriotism because you are a traitor. You want America to fail. You want Americans to die. And you want this because you are a socialist who believes America is the greatest evil in the world. I denounce you. I spit on you. You are a traitor.""
Kerry betrays America ... again: "How is America supposed to win in Iraq, and how are the Iraqi people supposed to reclaim their country, when so many Washington leaders seem to be rooting for failure in Baghdad? ... Now top Democrats are talking down a war that has cost 800- plus Americans their lives -- with little regard to how their sniping might affect the war effort. You would think that Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., never heard of the word "morale," by the way he is badmouthing a war that he himself had voted to authorize. Consider that while Iraqis have resented America's military presence, even in Iraq citizens were more upbeat than Kerry about the transfer of power. A Baghdad newspaper, New Morning, wrote a story headlined, "America Keeps Its Promise," for its next edition, according to NBC news. Yet in America, Kerry, who voted for the war, looked as if he had lost a bet. ..... The issue is this: If Kerry votes for a war, he owes it to the troops to root for victory. ...Instead, he has spent months undermining the coalition in order to bolster his own career."
How bad news from Iraq gets "created". "Iraq veterans often say they are confused by American news coverage, because their experience differs so greatly from what journalists report. Soldiers and Marines point to the slow, steady progress in almost all areas of Iraqi life and wonder why they don't get much notice - or in many cases, any notice at all. Part of the explanation is Rajiv Chandrasekaran, the Baghdad bureau chief for the Washington Post.... While its national clout lags behind the New York Times, many reporters look to the Post for cues on how to approach a story. The Post interprets events, and the herd of independent minds bleat their approval and start tapping on their keyboards with their hooves. Chandrasekaran's crew generates a relentlessly negative stream of articles from Iraq - and if there are no events to report, they resort to man-on-the-street interviews and cobble together a story from that." (Via Mark Shea).
The latest threat from Iran: "Iranians are frantically increasing their efforts to drive Coalition forces out of Iraq, to wreck the Iraqi economy - and especially to inflate oil prices, which the mullahs hope will bring down the Bush presidency - and to destabilize the fragile Karzai government in Afghanistan. They, and their Syrian and Saudi allies, are doing this because the liberation of Iraq is indeed threatening the authority of the remaining terror masters in Tehran, Damascus, and Riadh. The entire region is bubbling from the heat of democratic revolution"
Further to my recent posts about homosexuality and Fascism, I have just posted here an extract from the 1938 edition of 'Inside Europe' by John Gunther which says that Hitler himself was completely asexual.
Oil can be a curse: "It is not coincidental that the only Moslem country with a working democracy is Turkey, which has no oil. Malaysia is also semi-democratic and "suffers" from not being mineral-rich. .."
The Australian Left are quiet about the Howard government's achievements in black education: "...the proportion of indigenous children staying on to year 12 has increased from 29 per cent to 39 per cent since 1996. The number of indigenous students undertaking bachelor or higher degree courses has risen by 36 per cent at the same time. This financial year, the Howard Government will spend 39 per cent more in real terms than the Keating government did in its last year. .."
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth
"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.
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, July 05, 2004
"GODLESS"
"Godless", over at "Gene Expression" is a good chap but he seems to have got bogged in a couple of ways. Being Godless myself, perhaps I can help: He is puzzled by the fact that a black with an IQ of 70 seems to function better socially than a similarly low IQ white. The obvious comment is that psychopaths seem to function well socially in some ways too but they soon drop out into antisocial behaviour. But even conceding the very doubtful premise that low IQ blacks function well socially (are high levels of crime and violence "good" functioning?), it need have nothing to do with faults in the IQ tests. For a white to be so low, he will generally have other deficits as well as the IQ deficit whereas low IQ is normal for blacks so will not usually go with other deficits.
In another post, Godless says that the continued approval for Communism among Leftists is the root cause of a lot of other crazy things that Leftists assert. He says that attacking their love of Communism will bring down their whole house of cards. He is totally mistaken. Their love of Communism is a symptom, not a cause. The crucial fact is that they don't CARE about Communism being brutal. They know the facts about Communism as well as anyone. How could they not know? They LIKE Communism, including its evils. Their love of Communism reflects their psychology, not any consistent philosophy. Leftists actually believe in nothing at all except themselves. They have only postures, not beliefs. They themselves repeatedly tell us that they think there is no such thing as right and wrong or truth and falsehood. So arguing with them is almost always pointless.
Take this comment on Leftist inconsistency by Dick McDonald, for instance: "I have never understood the elite's rant that Middle Easterners are not like us; democracy won't work. The same elites covet the proposition that blacks are just like whites". You just cannot argue with dishonesty as deep as that. As I pointed out years ago, for Leftists what counts as evidence is entirely a function of the conclusions desired. What Dick summarizes is just one Leftist posture in conflict with another and the only thing that makes sense of such posturing lies at the psychological level -- in a need to be contrary (at the minimum) -- not at the level of reasonable argument from the evidence.
********************************
"Godless", over at "Gene Expression" is a good chap but he seems to have got bogged in a couple of ways. Being Godless myself, perhaps I can help: He is puzzled by the fact that a black with an IQ of 70 seems to function better socially than a similarly low IQ white. The obvious comment is that psychopaths seem to function well socially in some ways too but they soon drop out into antisocial behaviour. But even conceding the very doubtful premise that low IQ blacks function well socially (are high levels of crime and violence "good" functioning?), it need have nothing to do with faults in the IQ tests. For a white to be so low, he will generally have other deficits as well as the IQ deficit whereas low IQ is normal for blacks so will not usually go with other deficits.
In another post, Godless says that the continued approval for Communism among Leftists is the root cause of a lot of other crazy things that Leftists assert. He says that attacking their love of Communism will bring down their whole house of cards. He is totally mistaken. Their love of Communism is a symptom, not a cause. The crucial fact is that they don't CARE about Communism being brutal. They know the facts about Communism as well as anyone. How could they not know? They LIKE Communism, including its evils. Their love of Communism reflects their psychology, not any consistent philosophy. Leftists actually believe in nothing at all except themselves. They have only postures, not beliefs. They themselves repeatedly tell us that they think there is no such thing as right and wrong or truth and falsehood. So arguing with them is almost always pointless.
Take this comment on Leftist inconsistency by Dick McDonald, for instance: "I have never understood the elite's rant that Middle Easterners are not like us; democracy won't work. The same elites covet the proposition that blacks are just like whites". You just cannot argue with dishonesty as deep as that. As I pointed out years ago, for Leftists what counts as evidence is entirely a function of the conclusions desired. What Dick summarizes is just one Leftist posture in conflict with another and the only thing that makes sense of such posturing lies at the psychological level -- in a need to be contrary (at the minimum) -- not at the level of reasonable argument from the evidence.
********************************
ELSEWHERE
Dick Mcdonald has reproduced a wonderful 4th of July speech by Ronald Reagan.
V.D. Hanson has a good article up about Iraq. One excerpt: "Iraq now is what the Left all throughout the 1960s and 1970s said America should be doing-and nothing is more saddening than to see earnest and courageous reformers of the new Iraqi government being grilled and pilloried on TV by smug American pundits and reporters.... We are in dangerous times, because beyond the normal Democratic/Republican, Left/Right natural give-and- take, there is now a growing and very crazy New, New Left. It has transcended both the old Marxism of the 1930s and the counterculture of the 1960s, and transmogrified into a strange sort of aristocratic, boutique damnation of Main Street, USA."
One of my readers writes: "Historian William Marina, an anti-Iraq war paleocon has an article that should be of interest even to conservatives who are strong supporters of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. There are two points of interest. Firstly he points out that the US war of independence was a broadly popular revolt. The Left, for reasons of their own, like to make great play of the myth that the American revolution was supported "by only 1/3rd of the population". This myth is a salve to their elitist agenda. They are forever advocating radical social change without popular grassroots support, hence their modern reliance on bureaucratic and judicial activism, not the ballot box, to engineer their reforms. The American 'revolution' was a broadly popular reassertion by the American colonists of "the rights of Englishmen". The very kind of rights the modern left is most opposed to. Secondly he points out that militia forces are by no means ineffective or obsolete. Indeed the US military is running into considerable difficulty with Iraqi militias of different persuasions. So the argument used by the gun controllers that the need for an armed populace for defence purposes has been made obsolete by modern technology is void. Of course an armed populace alone is insufficient for national defence but it still packs a sting, even against well armed opponents."
The just-retired (Leftist) Lord Mayor of my home town of Brisbane (Jim Soorley) had some sensible things to say about education in yesterday's Brisbane Sunday Mail: "In Australia, we have an education system which is considered liberal and affirming of the child. I have long been comfortable with this approach, until I saw the French film To Be and To Have. This confronting documentary turns all that liberal stuff on its head. In a small one-teacher school in rural France, children are made to listen rather than talk, self-expression is kept to a minimum, little ones are encouraged to colour between the lines - no Jackson Pollock-type explosions of art here. And yet it seems to work. The children are polite and respectful, they are fond of their teacher, they gain an understanding of philosophy through their experiences in the classroom. Apparently this is fairly typical of the French education system and effectively prepares students for life after school".
I liked a recent post on Red Line Rants. He has taken to calling all bloggers "digital Brownshirts" -- in mockery of Al Gore's recent Nazi slur against conservatives who use the internet. It reminds me of the phrase "reptiles of the Press". Australian and British journalists often describe themselves quite gleefully as that -- although the person who first uttered the phrase was no doubt trying to be insulting. I wish I knew who DID originate the phrase. Anyway, Red Line Rants has a good point about the recent rise in U.S. job creation. But why he puts grease in his hair beats me.
LOL: I got an indignant email from Tim Lambert in reponse to the surprise I expressed yesterday about his not criticizing my latest excerpt from John Lott Jr. Apparently he has already criticized that article. I might have known. Lott's work does appear to be very uneven and Lambert is his avenging angel, ever ready to pounce on any failings.
Maverick Philosopher has a fun takedown of an email he received from a Leftist nut. Conservative bloggers get illogical emails like that all the time. Leftists rarely even try to be objective.
Wicked Thoughts notes the Leftist claim that it is normal for blacks to smash their kids to death (!).
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth
"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.
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.
********************************
Dick Mcdonald has reproduced a wonderful 4th of July speech by Ronald Reagan.
V.D. Hanson has a good article up about Iraq. One excerpt: "Iraq now is what the Left all throughout the 1960s and 1970s said America should be doing-and nothing is more saddening than to see earnest and courageous reformers of the new Iraqi government being grilled and pilloried on TV by smug American pundits and reporters.... We are in dangerous times, because beyond the normal Democratic/Republican, Left/Right natural give-and- take, there is now a growing and very crazy New, New Left. It has transcended both the old Marxism of the 1930s and the counterculture of the 1960s, and transmogrified into a strange sort of aristocratic, boutique damnation of Main Street, USA."
One of my readers writes: "Historian William Marina, an anti-Iraq war paleocon has an article that should be of interest even to conservatives who are strong supporters of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. There are two points of interest. Firstly he points out that the US war of independence was a broadly popular revolt. The Left, for reasons of their own, like to make great play of the myth that the American revolution was supported "by only 1/3rd of the population". This myth is a salve to their elitist agenda. They are forever advocating radical social change without popular grassroots support, hence their modern reliance on bureaucratic and judicial activism, not the ballot box, to engineer their reforms. The American 'revolution' was a broadly popular reassertion by the American colonists of "the rights of Englishmen". The very kind of rights the modern left is most opposed to. Secondly he points out that militia forces are by no means ineffective or obsolete. Indeed the US military is running into considerable difficulty with Iraqi militias of different persuasions. So the argument used by the gun controllers that the need for an armed populace for defence purposes has been made obsolete by modern technology is void. Of course an armed populace alone is insufficient for national defence but it still packs a sting, even against well armed opponents."
The just-retired (Leftist) Lord Mayor of my home town of Brisbane (Jim Soorley) had some sensible things to say about education in yesterday's Brisbane Sunday Mail: "In Australia, we have an education system which is considered liberal and affirming of the child. I have long been comfortable with this approach, until I saw the French film To Be and To Have. This confronting documentary turns all that liberal stuff on its head. In a small one-teacher school in rural France, children are made to listen rather than talk, self-expression is kept to a minimum, little ones are encouraged to colour between the lines - no Jackson Pollock-type explosions of art here. And yet it seems to work. The children are polite and respectful, they are fond of their teacher, they gain an understanding of philosophy through their experiences in the classroom. Apparently this is fairly typical of the French education system and effectively prepares students for life after school".
I liked a recent post on Red Line Rants. He has taken to calling all bloggers "digital Brownshirts" -- in mockery of Al Gore's recent Nazi slur against conservatives who use the internet. It reminds me of the phrase "reptiles of the Press". Australian and British journalists often describe themselves quite gleefully as that -- although the person who first uttered the phrase was no doubt trying to be insulting. I wish I knew who DID originate the phrase. Anyway, Red Line Rants has a good point about the recent rise in U.S. job creation. But why he puts grease in his hair beats me.
LOL: I got an indignant email from Tim Lambert in reponse to the surprise I expressed yesterday about his not criticizing my latest excerpt from John Lott Jr. Apparently he has already criticized that article. I might have known. Lott's work does appear to be very uneven and Lambert is his avenging angel, ever ready to pounce on any failings.
Maverick Philosopher has a fun takedown of an email he received from a Leftist nut. Conservative bloggers get illogical emails like that all the time. Leftists rarely even try to be objective.
Wicked Thoughts notes the Leftist claim that it is normal for blacks to smash their kids to death (!).
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
********************************
Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth
"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.
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, July 04, 2004
Blogspot has been very erratic for the last 24 hours so goodness knows when the posts below will show up:
FASCISM AND HOMOSEXUALITY
There is an extended discussion on Evangelical Outpost about the connection between Fascism and homosexuality -- which I mentioned briefly on 2nd. One quote: "We are often blinded by the stereotype of the effeminate gay man to see that homosexuality is at its core a form of self-worship. Rejecting - whether because of genetics or behavior - the natural complementarity of the male/female sexual union, homosexual men develop an idealization of the masculine. The veneration of such masculine traits as power and domination inevitably leads to the development of fantasies in which these characteristics are able to be expressed. It shouldn't surprise us, then, to find these fantasies of sexual mastery being played out, whether in the bedroom as sadomasochistic sex or in the nation-state as fascism".
The contributors are a bit confused about what Fascism is. They point out -- rightly -- that Dutch homosexual nationalist Pim Fortuyn was generally Leftist. So they argue that he was not a Fascist. But ALL the Fascists were Leftists. Fascism is the Leftist form of nationalism, and a very extreme and aggressive form it generally is -- given the typical amorality and psychopathic tendencies of Leftists. The confusion arises because the Left has always been split between the nationalists and the internationalists and the internationalists very much have the upper hand these days. But Leftist nationalists are of course as old as the original Fascist -- Napoleon Bonaparte. For more on Napoleon see here.
Another confusion is over the fact that the Nazis also persecuted homosexuals. Yet that also is typically Leftist. Leftists are chronic haters (see here, here and here) and they are quite prone to hating one-another -- as the ice-pick in the head that Leon Trotsky got courtesy of Joseph Stalin attests. I also think that the much decried Scott Lively has a point. Like everybody else, he notes that homosexuals are divided into the effeminate and the butch types and says that the Nazi persecution of homosexuals was largely the work of butch homosexuals despising the effeminate ones. He says that it was largely the effeminate ones who went to the gas chambers.
************************************
FASCISM AND HOMOSEXUALITY
There is an extended discussion on Evangelical Outpost about the connection between Fascism and homosexuality -- which I mentioned briefly on 2nd. One quote: "We are often blinded by the stereotype of the effeminate gay man to see that homosexuality is at its core a form of self-worship. Rejecting - whether because of genetics or behavior - the natural complementarity of the male/female sexual union, homosexual men develop an idealization of the masculine. The veneration of such masculine traits as power and domination inevitably leads to the development of fantasies in which these characteristics are able to be expressed. It shouldn't surprise us, then, to find these fantasies of sexual mastery being played out, whether in the bedroom as sadomasochistic sex or in the nation-state as fascism".
The contributors are a bit confused about what Fascism is. They point out -- rightly -- that Dutch homosexual nationalist Pim Fortuyn was generally Leftist. So they argue that he was not a Fascist. But ALL the Fascists were Leftists. Fascism is the Leftist form of nationalism, and a very extreme and aggressive form it generally is -- given the typical amorality and psychopathic tendencies of Leftists. The confusion arises because the Left has always been split between the nationalists and the internationalists and the internationalists very much have the upper hand these days. But Leftist nationalists are of course as old as the original Fascist -- Napoleon Bonaparte. For more on Napoleon see here.
Another confusion is over the fact that the Nazis also persecuted homosexuals. Yet that also is typically Leftist. Leftists are chronic haters (see here, here and here) and they are quite prone to hating one-another -- as the ice-pick in the head that Leon Trotsky got courtesy of Joseph Stalin attests. I also think that the much decried Scott Lively has a point. Like everybody else, he notes that homosexuals are divided into the effeminate and the butch types and says that the Nazi persecution of homosexuals was largely the work of butch homosexuals despising the effeminate ones. He says that it was largely the effeminate ones who went to the gas chambers.
************************************
ELSEWHERE
"On the Fourth of July we celebrate our nation's birth, announced to the world some 228 years ago through a remarkable document: the Declaration of Independence. In that document the Founders set forth both the reasons that impelled them to independence and, more important, the moral vision that has inspired us, and millions more around the world, ever since. Individual liberty, secured by limited government: that is its essence. Too often today, however, government is not serving liberty but is at war with it, telling us that it knows best, that it will decide for us."
In response to my recent mention that there were some good guys among the French intellectuals of the past, one of my readers has pointed out something said by A.V. Dicey, the great English legal historian, in The Law Of The Constitution, Third Edition of 1889: "The most celebrated literary works of France were published abroad. Montesquieu's L'Esprit des Lois appeared at Geneva. Voltaire's Henriade was printed in England; the most remarkable of his and of Rousseau's writings were published in London, in Geneva, or in Amsterdam. In 1775 a work entitled Philosophie de la Nature was destroyed by the order of the Parliament of Paris, the author was decreed guilty of treason against God and man, and would have been burnt if he could have been arrested. In 1781, eight years before the meeting of the States General, Raynal was pronounced by the Parliament guilty of blasphemy on account of his Histoire des Indes" (p. 239). So they still needed the English and other Protestants to publish their works. Both before and after their revolution, the French have been great believers in political censorship. If you doubt it, read Dicey.
Socialized medicine: "NSW hospitals are taking critically ill babies despite being overloaded, says a director at a leading Sydney hospital. The Royal Hospital for Women in Randwick has been on code red nearly every day over the past fortnight but the director of newborn care, Kei Lui, said he rarely turned away sick babies".
Wow! The Boston Globe has finally got around to noting the huges rise in the number of antisemitic attacks in Britain and Europe in recent years! But Arabs don't get a mention until the last sentence!
The wisdom of Ralph Nader: ""What has been happening over the years is a predictable routine of foreign visitation from the head of the Israeli government," Nader said. "The Israeli puppeteer travels to Washington. The Israeli puppeteer meets with the puppet in the White House, and then moves down Pennsylvania Avenue, and meets with the puppets in Congress. And then takes back billions of taxpayer dollars. It is time for the Washington puppet show to be replaced by the Washington peace show." So St. Ralph is a good old conspiracy theorist after all. It does not say much for his intellect to see that as the level of his understanding.
Check out these test questions on the New York State school examinations for global history, U.S. history & government, for the years 2000-04. The exams should really be referred to as a test in Leftist distortions of history.
I put up six posts on gun control yesterday and the ever-vigilant Tim Lambert has savaged one of them. I thought he might. He rightly points out that comparisons of crime-rates between countries are almost meaningless because of different reporting standards and categories etc. I myself think that only murder-rates have a reasonable chance of being comparable across jurisdictions. And even then overall rates are pretty meaningless unless we separate out comparable demographic categories. The obvious example of that, of course is the black/white difference in American crime-rates. I was rather staggered that Lambert ignored my quote of something by John Lott Jr., however. Of the first 500 posts on his blog, 399 were about Lott. But Lambert does respect the data. In his post of 18th June, he concluded that Australia' recent big spasm of gun control was a waste of time.
One of my readers has very kindly converted my article on Hitler to a nicely set-out PDF file. I would be happy to email a copy to those who like pdf files. I suppose I could put it on the net but it would be very slow to download compared to the html equivalent that is already up.
Chris Brand has just done some interesting postings here -- including a report about another one of those terrible British cases of false child-abuse accusations. If blogspot is still not showing recent posts when you read this, see at the bottom of Chris's original page here.
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
Some very good news on "Greenie Watch" today.
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Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth
"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.
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.
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"On the Fourth of July we celebrate our nation's birth, announced to the world some 228 years ago through a remarkable document: the Declaration of Independence. In that document the Founders set forth both the reasons that impelled them to independence and, more important, the moral vision that has inspired us, and millions more around the world, ever since. Individual liberty, secured by limited government: that is its essence. Too often today, however, government is not serving liberty but is at war with it, telling us that it knows best, that it will decide for us."
In response to my recent mention that there were some good guys among the French intellectuals of the past, one of my readers has pointed out something said by A.V. Dicey, the great English legal historian, in The Law Of The Constitution, Third Edition of 1889: "The most celebrated literary works of France were published abroad. Montesquieu's L'Esprit des Lois appeared at Geneva. Voltaire's Henriade was printed in England; the most remarkable of his and of Rousseau's writings were published in London, in Geneva, or in Amsterdam. In 1775 a work entitled Philosophie de la Nature was destroyed by the order of the Parliament of Paris, the author was decreed guilty of treason against God and man, and would have been burnt if he could have been arrested. In 1781, eight years before the meeting of the States General, Raynal was pronounced by the Parliament guilty of blasphemy on account of his Histoire des Indes" (p. 239). So they still needed the English and other Protestants to publish their works. Both before and after their revolution, the French have been great believers in political censorship. If you doubt it, read Dicey.
Socialized medicine: "NSW hospitals are taking critically ill babies despite being overloaded, says a director at a leading Sydney hospital. The Royal Hospital for Women in Randwick has been on code red nearly every day over the past fortnight but the director of newborn care, Kei Lui, said he rarely turned away sick babies".
Wow! The Boston Globe has finally got around to noting the huges rise in the number of antisemitic attacks in Britain and Europe in recent years! But Arabs don't get a mention until the last sentence!
The wisdom of Ralph Nader: ""What has been happening over the years is a predictable routine of foreign visitation from the head of the Israeli government," Nader said. "The Israeli puppeteer travels to Washington. The Israeli puppeteer meets with the puppet in the White House, and then moves down Pennsylvania Avenue, and meets with the puppets in Congress. And then takes back billions of taxpayer dollars. It is time for the Washington puppet show to be replaced by the Washington peace show." So St. Ralph is a good old conspiracy theorist after all. It does not say much for his intellect to see that as the level of his understanding.
Check out these test questions on the New York State school examinations for global history, U.S. history & government, for the years 2000-04. The exams should really be referred to as a test in Leftist distortions of history.
I put up six posts on gun control yesterday and the ever-vigilant Tim Lambert has savaged one of them. I thought he might. He rightly points out that comparisons of crime-rates between countries are almost meaningless because of different reporting standards and categories etc. I myself think that only murder-rates have a reasonable chance of being comparable across jurisdictions. And even then overall rates are pretty meaningless unless we separate out comparable demographic categories. The obvious example of that, of course is the black/white difference in American crime-rates. I was rather staggered that Lambert ignored my quote of something by John Lott Jr., however. Of the first 500 posts on his blog, 399 were about Lott. But Lambert does respect the data. In his post of 18th June, he concluded that Australia' recent big spasm of gun control was a waste of time.
One of my readers has very kindly converted my article on Hitler to a nicely set-out PDF file. I would be happy to email a copy to those who like pdf files. I suppose I could put it on the net but it would be very slow to download compared to the html equivalent that is already up.
Chris Brand has just done some interesting postings here -- including a report about another one of those terrible British cases of false child-abuse accusations. If blogspot is still not showing recent posts when you read this, see at the bottom of Chris's original page here.
For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here
Some very good news on "Greenie Watch" today.
********************************
Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth
"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.
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.
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