GOVERNMENT SERVICES WORK BETTER IN AUSTRALIA

An interesting email from a very pro-American Australian who knows both Australia and the USA well

As a rule I have found all Government-run services in Australia to be far, far superior to anything you would find in the USA. Aussies simply know how to run Government services better than in the US. I think I know why. The reason is that all levels of governments in the USA treat government employment as a minority outreach program and, as you would know, this produces horrendous results. Going to get a driver's license or getting a green card is as experience you will never forget. In other words dealing with any Government entity is awful. Truly it is an experience no Aussie could fathom. That's the reason why Americans as a whole would not want to go anywhere near a Government-run health system -- because they fear they would be dead on arrival. To be frank, the problem is that they have many minorities running these places who should not be there. You can blame the Dems for this mess.

So the Dems have shot themselves in the foot. By putting legions of underqualified minorities behind government desks they have helped give Americans a horror of government -- which is exactly what the Dems want NOT to do! Fortunately, Australia's biggest ethnic minority is Asians -- who mostly scorn government jobs as giving too few opportunities -- so Australia's government jobs are mostly filled by Anglo-Celtic people who have to qualify on merit.

********************************************************

ELSEWHERE

A reader had a rather interesting comment on my post yesterday about morality. I noted that when ordinary people debate whether an action is ethically right or not, the critierion "If everyone did that .... " is very popular. My reader commented that Leftists would not be able to accept that criterion because it would make homosexuality wrong. But as Leftists themselves often tell us, they think there is no such thing as right and wrong anyway (except when convenient) so there is really no problem for them. I might mention that there is an big post on Gene Expression that also looks at morality as a product of evolutionary biology. It is very slow-loading, however, so it must be stored offline. Scroll down to Nov. 8th.

An unusual Muslim: "Prof. Khaleel Mohammed is not a beloved figure among Muslim students in the United States. His visits to campuses to lecture are almost always accompanied by demonstrations of protesters condemning his opinions and his views. He has also felt hostile looks at the mosque where he used to worship in the city where he lives, San Diego, and therefore he rarely goes there. And indeed Mohammed's views are very unusual in the Arab world. His main thesis is that the Holy Land (according to most commentators, this refers to the area of Israel-Palestine) was given to the Jews. He takes this from the Koran itself, the divine book that is sanctified by Muslims, and is prepared to do battle with anyone who disagrees with him."

Poor old Maureen Dowd. Feminism has failed: "Tonight on NBC, one tall and handsome white male anchor with bespoke clothes will replace another tall and handsome white male anchor with bespoke clothes.... The networks don't even give lip service to looking for women and blacks for anchor jobs - they just put pretty-boy clones in the pipeline.... Even if I felt like raising a ruckus about Boys Nation, who would care? Feminism lasted for a nanosecond, but the backlash has lasted 30 years.... I checked around for feminist outrage, but couldn't find any... But my pal admits that she watched Mr. Brokaw partly because he was "eye candy," and declares women at fault in this matter: "Women like to read books about men and go to movies about men. But men don't like to read books about women or go to movies about women. The only way this is going to change is if women refuse to watch men. And the problem is, women like watching men." (Link via Dick McDonald).

The Coulter is having fun: "In light of their reaction to the nomination of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state, I gather liberals have gotten over their enthusiasm for multiculturalist milestones. It's interesting that they dropped their celebrations of the "first woman!" "first black!" "first Asian!" designations at the precise moment that we are about to get our first black female secretary of state. When Madeline Albright was appointed the FIRST WOMAN secretary of state, the media was euphoric... But Bush nominates a brilliant geopolitical thinker who happens to be black and female and all of a sudden she's Butterfly McQueen, who don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' no Middle Eastern democracies.... "

Pentagon, analysts hit anti-U.S. bias at Red Cross: "The International Committee of the Red Cross is breaking with tradition by publicly criticizing the United States for the way it handles terror suspects, say Pentagon officials and outside experts. On at least two occasions in recent months, the ICRC overtly criticized the Bush administration for detaining suspected Taliban and al Qaeda fighters without giving them access to judicial proceedings. The administration has deemed them 'enemy combatants' and not members of a formal military organization that would give them the rights of prisoners of war." [The Red Cross are antisemitic too. Never give them a cent]

Comment of a Leftist who DID move to Canada: "Part of what's irksome about Canadian anti-Americanism and the obsession with the United States is that it seems so corrosive to Canada. Any country that defines itself through a negative ("Canada: We're not the United States") is doomed to an endless and repetitive cycle of hand-wringing and angst. For example, Canadians often point to their system of universal health care as the best example of what it means to be Canadian (because the United States doesn't provide it), but this means that any effort to adjust or reform that system (which is not perfect) precipitates a national identity crisis: To wit, instituting co-payments or private MRI clinics will make Canada too much like the United States. The rush to make comparisons sometimes prevents meaningful examination of the very real problems that Canada faces..... Many Canadians have American relatives or travel frequently to the United States, but a large number are pretty naive about their neighbors to the south. A university student confidently told me that there had been "no dissent" in the United States during the run-up to the Iraq war.... In "officially multicultural Canada," hostility toward Americans is the last socially acceptable expression of bigotry and xenophobia. It would be impossible to say the things about any other nationality that Canadians routinely say -- both publicly and privately -- about Americans".

There is an interesting essay from a year ago here which argues that American culture has lost much of its masculinity and that that is endangering the effectiveness of America's armed forces.

Wayne Lusvardi is defending Dennis Prager from an attack posted on the Lew Rockwell site. When libertarians fall out ....

Michael Darby is online again with articles about Ukraine, the partial ban on Christmas in Sydney and the anniversary of Australia's Eureka revolt.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

**************************

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

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.

********************************

MOST MORALITY IS INSTINCTIVE

Although moral philosophy is a field in which I have made some very minor academic contributions, I have never taken it very seriously. So although my own account of the nature of morality is in my view at once factually correct, useful and not dependant on religious assumptions, I have been content merely to outline it rather than defend it in every detail. And I believe that to be a very conservative thing to do. And in making that claim I am also saying that there is a substantial opposition between what philosophers generally do and what conservatives generally do. And I should make clear that in talking about philosophers, I am talking about real students of the world and of discourse about the world -- not the psychiatric cases and comedians (Derrida etc.) who pass as philosophers in Europe.

There are two things behind what I have just expressed: 1). My belief that morality is largely inborn and, 2). A thoroughly conservative distrust of theory carried to extremes. That really constitutes the whole of what I want to say on the matter but let me spell it out a bit more anyway.

Because the standard psychological measures of moral attitudes (e.g. Kohlberg's) are profoundly contaminated by the Leftist assumptions of their authors, I have not even tried to look up inheritance data about morality in the behaviour genetics literature. So suffice it to say that most important human characteristics seem to show very substantial genetic inheritance (See e.g. here and here and here). If morality were an exception that would be most surprising. And from the viewpoint of evolutionary biology, it would be even more surprising. Man is both a social animal and an animal that falls very readily into conflict with his fellow humans. So ways of regulating behaviour to enable co-operation and forestall conflict must necessarily be of foremost importance. And that is largely what moral and ethical rules are all about. To forestall conflict there HAVE to be rules against murder, stealing, coveting your neighbour's wife etc. And that is why there are considerable similarities between the laws of Moses (ten commandments etc) and the much earlier Babylonian code of Hammurabi. The details of moral and legal rules are of course responsive to time, place and circumstances, but there are some basics that will almost always be there. And given the importance of those basic rules for social co-operation, it should be no surprise that such rules became internalized (instinctive) very early on in human evolution. So many if not most of our social instincts are in fact moral or ethical instincts. Ethics are the rules we need for co-operative existence.

Obviously, however, the rules are not so well entrenched as to produce automatic responses. We have broad tendencies towards ethical behaviour but that is all. This is probably due to their relatively recent evolutionary origin. Most of what we are originates far back in our evolutionary past whereas the social rules that we use became needed only with the evolution of the primates.

Additionally, we are the animal that relies least on instinct. So all our instincts can be both modified and defended by our reasoning processes. Just because a thing is instinctive to us it does not mean that the behaviour concerned is emitted in any automatic way. We think about why we do what our instincts tell us and generally conclude that our instincts are thoroughly commendable! And we do generally explain our rules of behaviour in a thoroughly empirical and functional way -- generally starting with: "If everyone did that .... ". And moral philosophers are of course people who specialize in such talk. But the talk is largely epiphenomenal (an afterthought). It is predominantly their set of inherited dispositions that make people behave ethically, not any abstract rationalizations.

And that realization does explain why philosophers so often back themselves into absurd corners. You might guess what is coming next at that point: Peter Singer. Peter Singer is undoubtedly a very able and influential philosopher and in good philosophical style he starts out with a few simple and hard-to-dispute general rules from which he logically deduces all sorts of conclusions that are greeted with horror by normal people -- his view that babies and young children may be killed more or less at will, for example. As a theoretical deduction, his views are defensible but seen in the light of the biological basis of morality, they are counterproductive. A society that killed off its young more or less at will would not last long.

So we come back in the end to the good Burkean principle that theories are to be distrusted and and continually tested against whether or not they lead to generally desired outcomes. Philosophers judge an argument on its consistency, elegance and comprehensivesness. Conservatives judge it on its practical outcomes. And Leftists judge it on whether they can use it to make themselves look good.

**************************

ELSEWHERE

This excellent article by Anne Applebaum under the heading "The left now sees evil behind pro-democracy campaigns" has already been linked to by Instapundit and many others but I think it makes such an important point about the utter moral decay of the modern Left that I want to draw attention to it as well.

Speaking of Instapundit, I was pleased by his reference to me yesterday as: "Remind me never to get this guy mad at me", so I have followed blogospheric tradition and put the description towards the top of my index column to the Left.

Windschuttle blows the whistle again: "Controversial historian Keith Windschuttle has opened a new front in Australia's history wars by challenging the view that the White Australia Policy, which severely restricted non-European migration to Australia for more than half a century, was a deep stain on the country's conscience. Instead, he has defended it as a "rational and, in a number of ways, progressive, product of its times".... Besides taking colleagues to task, the book launches a new assault on multiculturalism"

There is an article here that is headed, "Bush backs extreme view on sex". Wow! Polygamy? Sodomy? Incest? Discipline? No: Abstinence! What an odd world where what was once almost universal can now be called "extreme"! But anything will do as fodder for Leftist propaganda and misrepresentation, I guess.

There is a very moving letter from a Ukrainian girl at the end of this article.

There is a new website here called "Help Christmas". Its aim is to help people to tell Target and other national retail stores to bring back Salvation Army bell ringers to their properties. Target (America's second largest retailer) has just this year changed its company policy to exclude Salvation Army bell ringers from its stores. This could cause the Salvation Army to lose as much as $9M in anticipated donations.

Methodism not dead yet: "A very divided jury of United Methodist church clergy has voted to defrock an open lesbian minister whom they'd earlier convicted of violating church law."

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

**************************

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

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

********************************

LEFTIST LOGIC

An email from a reader

Regarding "that good old Leftist inconsistency and opportunism" that you mentioned in your post on Darwin [November 29th.], another great example is their inconsistent stance on the "Race doesn't exist" issue. I learned this the hard way in my personal life, and it wasn't pretty.

I'm sure you're aware of the leftist claim that racial categories are nothing but social constructs with no basis in fact. Well, over a year ago I posted an essay at work that argued that race *does* exist ("Race Is a Myth?"). The next day I came to work and found that the essay had been literally torn off the wall. The minute my butt hit the seat, my boss, who is ultra-leftist, walked over to my cube and said in a quavering voice, "You want to step into my office for a minute?" He then proceeded to tell me that he'd taken down my essay because it was *racist* and violated company policy prohibiting "racial harassment"! I pointed out that merely arguing that race exists is not racist.

He countered: "Yes, but it's the first step to arguing racial superiority. First you claim that people are different and put them in separate categories. From there it's just a short step to saying this category is better or smarter than this other one, and so on..." He also claimed that the source of the essay, a Web site called *American Renaissance*, was registered as a "hate" Web site and edited by an admitted white supremacist.

I said, "But without race, how can you have 'diversity' and multiculturalism and all the other goals cherished by the left that actually *require* the existence of racial differences?" To my astonishment, he said, "Well, it's obviously situational." Situational! He continued: "For example, in the case of the California proposition that would ban recording racial information on government job applications, which we would want to oppose, clearly we would not want to say that race doesn't exist. But in other cases..." In other words, he was trying to take his *logical inconsistency* and turn it into a virtue. Basically he was saying, "When it suits our ends, we argue that race doesn't exist. Otherwise, we admit that race exists." Usually leftists are more crafty about blowing hot and cold, but in this case my boss apparently was feeling no shame. Needless to say, that was the last time I ever posted an essay at my workplace.

Another example of leftist opportunism: States' rights. If the state government is doing something they don't like, such as banning sodomy in Texas, they want the federal government to step in and declare it unconstitutional. No surprise there -- leftists love centralized control in the federal government. But if the Feds want to interfere with a state program the leftists *like* -- such as a recent environmental program in California -- look out! Suddenly the leftists are crying out in favor of "states' rights," talking like some hotblooded Southern Confederate warrior from 1861.

BTW, their overall entire ethical philosophy is built this kind of opportunistic inconsistency. They believe that morality is "relative," that there are no objective standards by which to criticize other cultures, that ethical views are matters of personal preference that cannot be decided by reasoned debate. And yet they are quick to tell you that capitalism is "evil" -- and anyone who disagrees is stupid, irrational, and backward!

**********************************

ELSEWHERE

There is a strange article by "Spengler" that chronicles the history of American Protestantism. He makes the interesting point that the descendants of the original Puritans very rapidly lapsed into secularism -- giving of course the very secular (irreligious) "Blue staters" of the North-East today. He points out that most American evangelical Protestants got that way through conversion rather than through family or community tradition. The only common cause he can find for such evangelical upwellings is the power of the Biblical story itself. With that I agree. I think that New testament Christianity is an immensely powerful and persuasive system of thought that has always burst through whatever shackles are placed upon it. It is a system of thought that has produced people who willingly suffer and die for their faith in every age. But instead of seeing American Christianity as a tribute to Biblical thought, the author arrives at the totally absurd conclusion that American Christianity is "religionless Christianity". How he leaps to that strange conclusion totally escapes me, I am afraid. I don't even know what he means by such strange language.

The real story of Nazi's Harvard visit: "At a conference on the Holocaust at Boston University last Sunday, Stephen H. Norwood, a historian at the University of Oklahoma, claimed that Harvard University was 'complicit in enhancing the prestige of the Nazi regime' and cited the 'welcome' given to the Nazi publicist Ernst Hanfstaengl when he attended his 25th reunion in 1934. But a close examination of the Hanfstaengl affair reveals that the university and its president, James Bryant Conant, rejected Hanfstaengl's advances; it was Harvard students and alumni who embraced him. The real story is more shocking than Norwood's flawed reconstruction in revealing the common anti-Semitism of the time. ... On the charge of coddling Nazis, Harvard University has nothing to apologize for. The blindness of many of its students and alumni to the Nazi threat unfortunately reflected general American attitudes."

Father's rights making some progress: "Bolstered by their recent ballot-initiative victory, Holstein and others are filing a bill next week in the State House calling on judges to begin with the presumption of shared custody. ''I walked into court believing we were a society that had worked hard toward gender equality," Holstein said, recalling his divorce proceedings. ''Then I began to see all these attitudes running counter to that.""

Charles Kupchan was member of the National Security Council under the Clinton administration. He says: "one side's terrorist is another side's freedom fighter, and it's difficult in reality to distinguish one type of event from another, because one has sympathy for the causes" [Sympathy for people who behead welfare workers? Sympathy for people who blow up children attending a Bar Mitzvah? Is there no end to Leftist moral corruption?]

Interesting that Fox TV accepted a pro-homosexual advertisement but CBS and NBC would not. So who is "homophobic" now?

Nathan Tabor has written an article advocating that English should be declared the sole official language of the USA.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

**************************

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

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.

********************************

FROM BROOKES NEWS

The yuan and the US economy There are strident calls for the US to do something about the yuan. The situation is more complex than they realise
Productivity, wages and labor markets Labor reform per se cannot bring about a continuous increase in productivity: only a continuously expanding capital structure can achieve that
Anti-American Ba'th activities in Paris Proof that the French [Vichy] Government is giving support to the thugs who are waging a terror campaign in Iraq. There seems to be no bottom to the depravity of the French Government
Wages and labor markets According to Keith Hancock free labor markets produced "sweated labour, long working hours, unsafe and unhealthy factories . . ."
Like banging my head against the wall Israel is not in an intifada - the entire world is in a war. A war with a savage subculture that is out to kill everyone who is not part of it - a war against Islamic-Nazi crazies
George W. Bush and His "Stupid" Kool-Aid Drinkin' Buddies Why will the left lie, cheat and smear to give a conservative the boot? And what is it that socialist elitists hate so much about the structure of America?

Details here

****************************************

ELSEWHERE

The Leftist idea of themselves as an elite can get pretty amusing. Take this sentence from the top Leftist blog: "The conservative bigotted position is untennable. It has no basis in fact or reason. Arguments against gay marriage are predicated entirely, 100 percent, on emotion. And the vehicle for those emotional appeals are the word "marriage". A mere semantic." If the writer of that is a truly elite person, how come he has the English language skills of a dribbling idiot? "Bigoted" has one t. "Untenable" has one n. And the singular subject "vehicle" should be followed by the singular verb "is". And what he means by calling marriage "A mere semantic". I have no idea at all. And Leftists lap up such illiteracy at the rate of hundreds of thousands of hits every day! His wisdom must be profound. Too profound for me, certainly. If I were as prone to spelling and grammar mistakes as Kos is, I would at least use a spellchecker and grammar checker. But to do that I guess you have to be humble enough to admit your limitations. And humble is just what Leftists are not.

Oh dear! A Leftist has woken up to what bad advice George Lakoff gives: "Overall, I have a deep fear that if liberals are taking this stuff too seriously we could be about to drive ourselves off a cliff."

The United Methodist Church is promoting a far-Left "anti-corporate" petition that wants just about everything put under socialist control. That is of course about what we have come to expect of the declining older Protestant churches. Their new faith is more in Leftism than in the Gospel of Christ. It is therefore also no surprise that three scriptural passages that they quote in alleged support for their views say pretty much the opposite of what the church advocates: "Ecclesiastes 3:22 "So I saw that there is nothing better than that all should enjoy their work for that is their lot," Luke 10:7 and 1 st Timothy 5:18 "the laborer deserves to be paid", Matthew 20:8 "Call the laborers and give them their pay." As far as I can see, those scriptures envisage that you work for your living -- not get it in a socialist handout!

Still some backbone among some Methodists? "Nineteen months ago, the Rev. Irene Elizabeth Stroud gave a sermon that began and ended with Jesus saying, 'Peace be with you.' In the middle, she told her congregants that she was living in a 'covenant relationship' with another woman. Stroud's disclosure was no surprise to her flock at the First United Methodist Church of Germantown, a 210-year-old Philadelphia parish that welcomes gay men and lesbians. ... But Stroud's sermon was a challenge to the national church's rule against self-avowed gay men and women in the ministry, and it set in motion an investigation and charges that will culminate Wednesday in a church trial before a jury of fellow ministers."

Cafe Hayek pulls apart the nonsensical statement that “half the country can't afford health care.” It might be of some interest to look at the cost of health insurance though. I have a very high level of insurance that covers me for the best private hospital treatment there is here in Australia. And Australian private medicine is so good that we even have Japanese coming in for transplant surgery right here in my home town of Brisbane. My health insurance premiums are $212 per month. Lots of smokers would spend $300 per month on their habit. So how's that for affordability? Since lots of poor people smoke, I think it has to be seen as totally affordable.

The poor are very few: "As it is, less than three percent of the American work force earns the minimum wage or less, and more than half of them are under 25".

Soviet Canada: Trotsky's triumph: "In Canada, the people sheepishly accept all this crap, and we never even had a Stalin to terrorise us into submission. But then you don't have to train sheep to be sheep. People here like the 'nanny state,' as it saves them from having to think for themselves. A highly educated friend of mine (in response to my contention that a truly free market in insurance would result in lower rates than government mandated and controlled insurance) had this to say, 'But I don't want to have to investigate and compare companies; it's way easier for me just to pay the government.'"

Amtrak: On time for yesterday: "On-time performance has long been Amtrak's principal strength ... not the trains, but the financial crises. Little seems more predictable than Amtrak's periodic budget crises and calls for more money from those na‹ve enough to believe that nostalgia should be publicly financed, like defense or welfare. The latest chapter is a new U.S. Department of Transportation Inspector General report indicating Amtrak is experiencing unsustainably large losses and is deferring needed investment."

TSA -- bullies at the airport : "If you traveled by air last week for the Thanksgiving holiday, you undoubtedly witnessed Transportation Security Administration agents conducting aggressive searches of some passengers. A new TSA policy begun in September calls for invasive and humiliating searches of random passengers; in some instances crude pat-downs have taken place in full public view. Some female travelers quite understandably have burst into tears upon being groped, and one can only imagine the lawsuits if TSA were a private company. But TSA is not private, TSA is a federal agency -- and therefore totally unaccountable to the American people."

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its usual big range of select reading.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

**************************

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

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.

********************************

FAMILY SIZE AND CONSERVATISM

Steve Sailer has an article up at the moment which is getting a lot of attention. He shows an extraordinarily high correlation between birth-rate and voting for GWB. States with high birth-rates were almost all "red" and states with low birthrates were almost all "blue".

I am afraid that I have to issue a warning about what statisticians call "ecological" correlations, however -- and that's nothing to do with Greenies, surprisingly. Ecological correlations are correlations based on grouped data and grouping people only on the basis of the state they live in is very coarse grouping indeed. Such correlations are not comparable to correlations between individuals, allow no direct inferences about correlations among individuals and are commonly higher than correlations betweeen individuals. I say a bit more about them in the course of one of my academic articles here. So the correlations are a little less startling than Steve seems to think.

With all that statistician's caution out of the way, however, my best guess is that the results reflect failure to have children at all rather than family size per se. I think average birthrate is low in the blue states not necessarily because families are smaller there but because families with children are fewer. Lots of intellectual ladies never have children at all. I should know. I married two such women. My son comes from a third marriage to an intelligent but non-intellectual woman. And the low birthrate among highly educated people has long been a subject of much comment and heartburn anyway.

Why highly educated people tend Left is a subject I cover at some length here.

****************************************

ELSEWHERE

A quite hilarious but very popular post among Leftists at the moment is this one. Now that I have had time to stop laughing, I will tell you what it says. It says that George Bush is like an abusive husband towards all those poor 56 million who voted against him! I kid you not. I don't think even Einstein could work out how George Bush stands in anything like a husband relationship to the gang of special interest groups who tried to oust him but apparently the analogy makes lots of sense to lots of Leftists. I could go on but what's the point....

David Boxenhorn thinks he has discovered a conservative streak in Paul Krugman. I think he is wrong. Krugman is a plainly off his head when it comes to politics, but as far as economics goes, he is mainstream -- which SOUNDS conservative only because it is mainly conservatives who take much notice of economic rationality. Leftists tend to believe in all sorts of economically irrational things such as price controls, punitive taxation, protectionism etc. David also thinks Krugman's criticism of complex explanations is conservative. I think the reverse is the truth. Leftists are simplistic thinkers. Can you get any more simplistic than the core Leftist doctrine of "All men are equal"? So Krugman's rejection of complexity is perfectly Leftist. Where David might have a point is that Krugman does appear to criticize innovation for innovation's sake and says that older explanations are the best. I think that this is specifically a criticism of the economic modellers, however. And I don't think you have to be a conservative to be aware that mathematical models are mostly just a pretentious form of guessing.

Well, there seems to be one Democrat columnist who thinks that George Lakoff (See my post of November 24th) is the goods. She thinks that the donks should abandon moves towards the middle ground and just assert their own values. I hope they take her advice. It would be interesting to see how low the donk vote could go.

First class economic growth continues: "The US economy - helped out by more brisk consumer and business spending - grew at an annual rate of 3.9 per cent in the third quarter, a performance that was stronger than previously thought."

Reliapundit says that Leftists attack conservative blacks so furiously because Leftists explain everything by what group a person belongs to. So people who don't fit the group that they are in upset the Left's entire explanatory scheme.

Bob Hayes makes the undeniable point that all political parties are supported by particular interest groups. He says however that the Democrats have far more interest groups to please than the GOP does. So you have to accept an awful lot of strange stuff to support the donks. He says the GOP is much less demanding and more tolerant -- making support for the GOP a lot easier. I think there is a lot in what he says. Conservatives certainly seem a lot more laid back and less fanatical than the Left are.

"Lawyers Against the War": "This group claims to be "a Canada-based committee of jurists and others with members in thirteen countries" and is demanding that the government of Canada refuse George Bush admission to this country on the basis of his being accused of crimes against humanity. There is no mention of who actually filed the charges against Bush or where. hey write, "The evidence of President Bush's past and ongoing criminality is overwhelming. A recent editorial in the Washington Post commented on some of the now well known facts..." According to these two brilliant jurists, if the Washington Post or any of the other liberal media write that someone is guilty of war crimes, then it must be true. As such ban Bush from Canada. End of Story. Oh and let's lock up anyone who supports him, as well.... Prof. Mandel's letter is indicative to what lengths left wingnuts will go in efforts to get their way. They will threaten the Prime Minister with the possibility of jail. They will threaten the press with the possibility of jail. They will do anything necessary by whatever means to achieve their goals.

Drug companies are a favourite Leftist whipping-boy. The Leftist alternative to drug companies is truly moronic, though. They argue that we would be all better off if pharmaceutical research and development were taken over by the government, or if we at least put in national price controls to keep prices down. I wonder if they know how many new drugs countries with price controls like Canada put on the market each year. The answer is none. Price controls or nationalization of the industry would be equivalent to morphing the current energetic, innovative, productive private-sector drug industry (think FedEx) into the Rx equivalent of the U.S. Post Office."

Did the homosexual "marriage" issue help Bush? "In states that voted on the gay-marriage ban, Bush increased his vote share from 53.33% in the 2000 election to 54.17% in the election just past. That's an increase of 0.84%. In states where gay-marriage bans were not on the ballot, Bush increased his vote share from 48.82% to 50.78%. That's an increase of 1.96%. Bush's vote share rose more than twice as much in states where voters didn't have a chance to ban gay marriages. The evidence suggested that the gay marriage measures actually hurt Bush -- and hurt him substantially. And this makes a lot of sense, if you think about it."

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

**************************

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

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.

********************************

SOME ECONOMIC ISSUES

Massachusetts: State eyes tougher welfare rules: "About 10,000 additional Massachusetts welfare recipients, including many people with disabilities, would have to work, and thousands who already have jobs would have to labor for longer hours under new rules recommended yesterday by a special state panel. The proposed changes, which would have to be implemented by October of next year to put Massachusetts in compliance with federal welfare rules, would force as many as 5,600 disabled people to meet work requirements and compel some recipients to work for as many as 34 hours a week, up from the current maximum of 30 hours. Overall, the recommendations would increase the number of Massachusetts welfare recipients who have to work from roughly 12,700 to about 22,000. A total of 49,000 families are currently on the state's welfare rolls."

Why Personal Retirement Accounts? "There is little risk in personal retirement accounts. A recent study done by the CATO Institute has shown that there has been no 20 year period where that has been a loss in the market. In fact, the 3.36% rate of return on investments in the period between 1929-1948 is still much greater than the rate of return retirees receive currently on Social Security. And with future retirees facing a negative rate of return, the current Social Security system is much riskier than market investments. Besides, money will not simply disappear from the Social Security Trust Fund during the transition to private accounts."

Globalization takes off: "We're in the 11th month of the most prosperous year in human history. Last week, the World Bank released a report showing that global growth "accelerated sharply" this year to a rate of about 4 percent. Best of all, the poorer nations are leading the way. Some rich countries, like the U.S. and Japan, are doing well, but the developing world is leading this economic surge. Developing countries are seeing their economies expand by 6.1 percent this year - an unprecedented rate - and, even if you take China, India and Russia out of the equation, developing world growth is still around 5 percent... This is having a wonderful effect on world poverty, because when regions grow, that growth is shared up and down the income ladder. In its report, the World Bank notes that economic growth is producing a "spectacular" decline in poverty in East and South Asia..... What explains all this good news? The short answer is this thing we call globalization. Over the past decades, many nations have undertaken structural reforms to lower trade barriers, shore up property rights and free economic activity. International trade is surging.

Really free enterprise: "Slugging is a term used to describe a unique form of commuting found in the Washington, DC area sometimes referred to as "Instant Carpooling" or "Casual Carpooling". It's unique because people commuting into the city stop to pickup other passengers even though they are total strangers! However, slugging is a very organized system with its own set of rules, proper etiquette, and specific pickup and drop-off locations. It has thousands of vehicles at its disposal, moves thousands of commuters daily, and the best part, it's FREE! Not only is it free, but it gets people to and from work faster than the typical bus, metro, or train. I think you'll find that it is the most efficient, cost-effective form of commuting in the nation"

*********************************

ELSEWHERE

Why Bush is misrepresented as a religious fanatic: "Fleischer says that the critics "believe their policies are so correct that no reasonable person could see things differently - unless people like President Bush are blinded by an extreme faith that prevents them from seeing the facts." To him, this is the same narrow-mindedness that critics claim to find in conservative Christians".

Britain to deny young women private sector jobs (As has already happened in Sweden): "Mothers will win the right to a year's paid leave after having a baby as part of a massive overhaul of childcare" [What employer in his right mind would hire a young woman under those circumstances?].

Amusing: The one thing that Leftists will normally allow as genetically-inherited is homosexuality. Yet it is also one characteristic for which the evidence of genetic inheritance is quite equivocal. On my reading of the matter, homosexuality can be caused by several things -- one of which could be in utero damage. Ruling out environmental causes (which Leftists do) is certainly sheer dogmatism.

Primitive party animals: "Since the 1976 presidential election, the Democrats have not received more than 50 percent of the popular vote. Most organisms, except for very primitive ones, usually modify their behavior after repeated failure in order to survive. Much has been written about why the Democrats continue to fail in the polls. But as an economist, I have been particularly struck by how they have failed to learn sound economics, despite all the empirical economic and political evidence of what works and what doesn't. Let's start with taxes. There is overwhelming evidence our present maximum tax rates on both labor and capital are so high they reduce economic growth, job creation and the general level of wellbeing for Americans. Despite this, Democrat candidates from Walter Mondale to John Kerry keep proposing higher marginal tax rates on labor and capital. ... Higher tax rates are not only an economic loser but are also a political loser."

Is it the government's business if you lose money gambling? "As legalized gambling spreads across the states, a branch of the federal government that deals with drug and alcohol addicts is studying ways to help compulsive gamers -- and looking to Louisiana, especially, for inspiration....Louisiana Association on Compulsive Gambling Executive Director Reece Middleton, who took part in a meeting this summer with representatives from other state programs, says the federal government may be close to taking action. "You've got a proliferation of legalized gambling across the country, and you've got an increase, I believe, of people getting in trouble," he said. "I just think it's gotten to the point where all of a sudden it's real hard for the federal government to ignore the question anymore." .... "It's absolutely urgent that a national initiative for gambling treatment be forthcoming, and that it be forthcoming from a federal government," Middleton said".

Nazis were normal Leftists -- not insane: "Now the book the Florida State University professor fine-tuned - "The Nuremberg Interviews" - is being heralded for giving the world new insights into the chilling thoughts of Nazi leaders responsible for the Holocaust, the systematic extermination of more than 6 million Jews during World War II.... "There is this kind of inner logic behind the outer madness," Gellately said of the book's 33 interviews. "That's the horror of the thing." That's because, Gellately said, for the most part, these Nazi rulers were as normal as next-door neighbors. "I think we all have an idea about what makes the Nazis tick. Some of us think they were demonic or crazy ... Really, two people in the book are like that, but they are not the interesting ones," Gellately said. "Most of the other ones are like you and me. They are well-educated, rational, sensible." They pour out their thoughts to Dr. Leon Goldensohn, a U.S. Army psychiatrist, who kept detailed notes of his interviews with the war criminals and witnesses awaiting trial in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1946..... "They had a sense of duty, perverted, but they were rational, kind of cold, calculating killers," he said, "not this emotional, go-out-and-shoot-their-friend-in-the-woods kind of thing. You can't prove these were guys that actually hated the Jews or actually ever hit anyone".

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

**************************

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

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.

********************************

LEFTISTS: PRO-DARWIN OR ANTI-DARWIN?

Whichever suits at the time, of course

The recent success of Christians in getting school textbooks to point out that evolution is merely a scientific theory -- not something totally grounded in replicable fact -- has enraged Leftists no end. As far as I can gather, the tiny success that has provoked all the rage is an arrangement whereby some school textbooks in Georgia have not been changed but have just had a sticker inserted in them pointing out the status of the evolution theory. So now there is a very popular site on the web from which Leftists can download "alternative" stickers designed to ridicule the Christian ones. So in the question of how mankind got here in the first place, Leftists are proud "Darwinists" and ridicule anyone who questions evolutionary explanations.

You know what's coming next, don't you? That good old Leftist inconsistency and opportunism. Leftists are fervent ANTI-Darwinists when it comes to explanations of human nature. People (such as sociobiologists) who use concepts of evolutionary biology to explain how mankind is innately tribal, territorial, aggressive, selfish etc. are treated as anathema by Leftists. The most prominent of the sociobiologists is of course Harvard Prof. E.O. Wilson. In good Harvard style he is actually quite Left-leaning and very much a "Greenie" so he seems to have earned some personal forgiveness from the Left in recent years. As he himself summarizes: "My writings on sociobiology in the '70s had the implication that ordinary instinctive human behavior does indeed have a biological basis, which in turn originated through a long period by natural selection. At that time, the academic left included many social scientists who based their social programs and reasoning on the assumption that humans are a blank slate, so I was a prime target of the left. And now, promoting conservation as strongly as I do, I'm sometimes a target of the right".

I could go on to give umpteen quotes showing what a core assertion the blank slate status of human nature is for Leftists and how genetics and biological thinking upset that claim at every turn but I think my readers will already have seen plenty of that. Wilson himself gives a pretty good history of the Leftist attacks on his work. Apparently, to Leftists, evolution affected every organ of the human body except the brain! Pathetic.

*************************

ELSEWHERE

A libertarian message to the defeated Left "When you seek to gain by the use of force, don't be shocked when others turn it around on you. When you look to government and seek the enforcement of your preferences on others, you invite others to respond forcefully in return. When you urge government to implement your "programs", you're granting the use of force against those who don't agree with you. That attitude is now coming back to haunt you.... You self-righteously demanded that your social programs be implemented through government, by force, funded by money stolen from all of us, whether we agreed with those programs of not. In so doing, you granted to government the power, and the ever-increasing funding, to do with us what it would. Now you are faced with the disgusting spectacle of seeing that power turned back against you because your "opponents" may now be in control. You sought to exercise forceful "mob rule" when you were in the majority, but now a different mob is in charge. You eagerly pushed power into the hands of government, blanking out the truth that you were effectively pushing all of us into forceful bondage. By believing that force is moral if the cause is good, you've laid the basis for the use of force for causes that others believe are good. Just as you forced others to support what you thought was good, they will now force you to support what they think is good."

Those racist conservatives again: "The idea that racial civil rights programs were the sole province of liberal Democrats is an urban legend promoted by Democrats to keep African - Americans voting for them. A cursory examination of history will reveal that civil rights legislation was implemented, proposed and/or endorsed by Republicans. It was during the Eisenhower presidency that the 1957 Civil Rights Act was passed. Eisenhower's Attorney General, Herbert Brownell, crafted the legislation in March 1956. Brownell wanted a new division within the federal Justice Department to monitor civil rights abuses. It was because of Brownell that the Kennedy administration was able to intervene on behalf of civil rights activists. Ironically, some Democrats criticized Eisenhower for pandering to the black vote. It was Eisenhower who desegregated public facilities in DC during his first term -Truman did not do it. It was Eisenhower who enforced school the Supreme Court school desegregation order in 1957. Fifty years earlier it was a Republican, Teddy Roosevelt, who invited the African-American leader Booker T. Washington to the White House. Contrast this to the Democrat segregationist President Woodrow Wilson. Republican Senator Jacob Javitz once proposed an amendment to a mental health bill (S.1576) to deny funds to states with segregated mental health facilities. The Democrats denied the amendment. It was Richard Nixon who implemented affirmative action".

Tibor Machan: "Whenever I speak up for liberty, there's bound to be someone who accuses me of favoring the individual as against the community, favoring rights as against responsibility and obligations. But it isn't so at all. Champions of individual liberty often believe even more firmly than critics in doing the right thing, including acting generously, compassionately, and helpfully -- in the spirit of community. What they insist on, however, is that all such responsibilities and obligations be carried out from personal conviction, not from fear of going to jail or being fined."

Judicial arrogance in Australia too: Australia's High Court is the equivalent of the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS). It is however much less prone than SCOTUS to making the law up as it goes along. It does however have some Left-leaning Justices, most particularly the openly homosexual Michael Kirby. Kirby is legally qualified but began his rise to prominence via the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission, a pseudo-court set up to mediate union disputes. He has recently spoken with rather surprising frankness of a need for the High Court to become a sort of political opposition to Australia's now well-entrenched conservative government. An article here sums up pretty well my own response to such outrageous presumption.

Good to hear that President Bush is listening to Sharansky: "Sharansky's ideas are clear: no concessions, funds or legitimacy for the Palestinians unless they adopt democracy, but a modern-day Marshall Plan for the Palestinians if they embrace democratic ways. The same hard line that worked for Ronald Reagan against the Soviet Union, Sharansky argues in his book, would work for Israel against the Palestinians." I couldn't agree more.

Andrew Sullivan, in his usual supercilious way, has voiced his support for the brainless Leftist "Buy nothing" day. Pejman puts him right, however -- pointing out that the only people likely to be hurt by such tactics are the poor, particularly people in poor countries who make so many of the things that we buy.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

**************************

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

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.

********************************

HITLER'S SOCIALIST PREDECESSORS IN AMERICA USED PUBLIC SCHOOLS

No one can measure the monstrous impact of government schools imposing racism and teaching racism as official policy for so long. Government school racism did much more damage than private enterprise could ever have afforded to do.....An eye-popping historic photo of a segregated class chanting the pledge of allegiance is here..... When government began socializing schools in the late 1800's, it expanded government-mandated racism.

The pledge of allegiance was written in 1892 by a bigot who was a self-proclaimed National Socialist. [Again see here].

Francis Bellamy and his cousin and cohort, the author Edward Bellamy, wanted government to take over all schools as a socialist monopoly, end all of the better alternatives, and use government schools to produce an "industrial army" (a Bellamy term) explicitly modeled upon the military in order to nationalize the economy and create a society of totalitarian socialism as described in the book "Looking Backward" by Edward Bellamy. It explains the modern Military-Socialist complex. The Bellamy boys actively promoted what they called "military socialism." Part of the plan was the pledge.

The Bellamys and the pledge influenced the hate-spewing paramilitary societies of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (62 million dead), the People's Republic of China (35 million dead), and the horrid National Socialist German Workers' Party (21 million dead). (Death tolls from Professor R. J. Rummel's book "Death by Government" which is also available).

Most so-called conservatives are ignorant of the pledge's deplorable past, and to the extent they do know, they cover it up. Republican socialists have been duped into robotically chanting the pledge and there are probably socialists in-the-know who laugh silently at the spectacles.

The government forced children to attend segregated schools where they recited the Pledge using it's original straight-arm salute. The practice began three decades before it was adopted by the National Socialist German Workers' Party, and the government school racism continued through WWII and beyond, and the government schools still exist to this day.

More here

***************************

ELSEWHERE

I have recently written two new articles. I submitted both to Tech Central Station but they were too controversial for TCS, I am afraid. One is on called "Understanding Women" (see here or here) and the other is "Down with Education" (see here or here). If anybody wants to recommend them for publication to someone else, please do so. They are pretty heretical.

"Crooked Timber" is run by a group of Leftist bloggers who fancy themselves as intellectuals. At least one of their members, however, is very shaky on basic philosophical terms. He cannot decide on whether he is discussing "ab hominem" arguments or "ad hominem" arguments. It's not a typo. D and b are not close together on the keyboard. He just doesn't know his Latin. For his information, "ad hominem" means "to the man" while "ab hominem" means "from the man". The latter makes no sense in the given context, however.

Promethean Antagonist proudly informs me that he is a "Red-stater" but he is still a classical music fiend, as I am. He wonders whether the dreadful garbage that constitutes most classical music of the last century or so is the product of the rise of Leftism over that time. I certainly see a destructive attitude behind most of the "music" concerned and destruction is what the Left is all about too. Many of their policies (e.g. punitively high taxes) make sense only if you assume that their chief priority is to impoverish the rich rather than enrich the poor. And innovation at all costs (even if it the results are unpleasant) is another theme common to both the music and the politics.

Reliapundit is trying to analyse why the Left have always accepted a lot of Christian references from other Presidents but go ballistic over GWB's Christianity. He thinks that Islamic fundamentalism terrifies them so they take it out (with typical Leftist logic) on Christian fundamentalists. I myself think that the Left tolerated Christianity in the past because they thought it was in decline. But now that it seems to be gaining influence they are terrified that it may be their own Leftist religion that is going down the plughole! They are fighting like cornered rats. What fun!

Amusing: "Spiked" notes that the "tolerant", multi-culti, postmodernist moral relativists of the left have been hoist on their own petard by the creationists. If all points of view are equally valid, why not creationism? Why not indeed. So apparently creationism is already making something of a comeback in the schools.

The famous "gay-hate" murder of Matthew Shepard in Wyoming that filled Leftists everywhere with such delicious indignation looks like it was not an anti-homosexual crime at all. It was a drug crime and Shepard was picked up only because he looked like he had money. It was still of course a shocking crime but "homophobia" had little or nothing to do with it.

Frank Devine sets out well the strategic reasons why the USA is in Iraq. Having an American Army slap bang in the middle of the Islamic world does tend to make Islamic governments a lot more cautious. David Horowitz spells out the reasons even more.

Interesting thought: "The conservative insight has always been that the destruction of pain is impossible and an attempt to do so will destroy us. The liberal dogma that culminated in this election is that pain is the fundamental human injustice that must be destroyed. America does not believe this false maxim of the left".

I enjoyed Jonathan Chait's acerbic comments on whom the Democrats should nominate as their Presidential candidate for 2008. Excerpt: "Probably the only worse option than Dean or Clinton, short of nominating Paris Hilton, would be to renominate John Kerry, who, reports have suggested, inexplicably harbors ambitions of running again in 2008. In a previous column I compared Kerry's contribution to his own campaign to an anchor's contribution to a boat race. In retrospect, I seem to have given him far too much credit."

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

**************************

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

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.

********************************

SOME FUN WITH A LEFTIST NINNY

I am indebted to the mini-Chomsky himself, the great Brian Leiter, for a recommendation of a long article by Orcinus about the probability of America "going Fascist". Seeing Hitler was a socialist and Mussolini was a Marxist, you might think Orcinus is worried about arrogant trends in the Democratic party but, no, it is the GOP that he thinks is likely to "go Fascist". The Leftist origins of Fascism don't get a mention, in fact, so one knows immediately that the article will be low on scholarship. And its chief scholarly source for the nature of Fascism is in fact R.O. Paxton, the "historian" (much lauded in the N.Y. Times, of course) who said Hitler was an "antisocialist" -- when the very name of Hitler's political party was (translated) "The National Socialist German Worker's Party"! I think I have already at this early stage said enough about the article concerned to dismiss it for the claptrap it is but I cannot resist having a bit more fun with it.

The body of the article is in fact made up of what is actually a rather good proof of the idiocy of its conclusions. Orcinus quotes a long line of sources from the 1930s which offer all sorts of evidence for the claim that America was on the brink of going Fascist then. But it didn't happen! America did get the Mussolini-admiring FDR but thanks to the U.S. constitution and the U.S. Congress there were lots of limits placed on what he was allowed to do. So if America did not go Fascist during the Fascist era despite the many pressures towards it that Orcinus ably documents, how likely is it likely to go Fascist now, when Fascism is thoroughly discredited? The question answers itself, I think.

But let's have a look at a bit more weirdness. Take this Orwellian statement: "This tendency has finally metastacized into a genuinely dangerous situation, one in which the GOP has become host to a Stalinist movement that exhibits so many of the traits of fascism that the resemblance is now unmistakable." Quite aside from the fact that this great intellectual cannot even spell "metastasized", he is asking us to believe that the people who opposed Communism for decades and finally destroyed it utterly are themselves communists! I guess it's not impossible but seeing that the GOP and their Christian allies have always advocated the exact opposite of communism, the writer is clearly in cloud-cuckoo land. If you can say that free-enterprise=Stalinism, you might as well say black=white. I guess that a Leftist "postmodernist" would have no problem in doing exactly that, however.

More fun: Orcinus also looks for the day when "the attack style of politics -- in which the smearing an opponent substitutes for the lack of any substance or accomplishment -- has been relegated to the ashheap of history". Well. He got his wish. I think John Kerry has now been so relegated. Whoops! In true Leftist "projective" style, Orcinus was actually referring to the GOP rather than John Kerry, it seems!

Orcinus also deplores the way that "families, longtime friends, and communities are being torn apart by the divisive politics of resentment and accusation". He must be talking about all those guys documented at length on Leftists as Elitists! You could not conceivably get more resentment and accusation than is documented there.

Orcinus is a real humanitarian by Leftist standards, however. He ends up conceding: "Conservative-movement adherents are still human beings, and seeing them in terms of participating in a kind of fascism should not render them into mere discardable objects". He must have written that for the benefit of those of his colleagues who still admire Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot.

******************************************

ELSEWHERE

Wicked Thoughts has just put an atom bomb under another one of Brian Leiter's arguments. The only possible way Leiter will be able to cope with it will be by ignoring it.

SUVs: "Motorists who buy big four-wheel-drives to be safer on the roads could be doing the wrong thing, according to the latest crash research. A study of more than one million crashes involving vehicles manufactured between 1982 and 2000 has revealed higher injury rates for people in four-wheel-drives. The worst performer was the Toyota Landcruiser"

An interesting editorial in "The Australian" suggesting that the leadership in the three Anglosphere countries of the USA, the UK and Australia are all preaching a future-oriented message of hope rather than delving back into the animosities of the past.

A good commentary here on the absurd "unfair dismissal" laws introduced by Australia's last Leftist government and defended fiercely by them ever since. Now that Australian conservatives have control of our Senate, the laws concerned should soon be repealed.

More evidence that the Australian Labor Party is much further to the Right than the U.S. Democrats. A recent declaration by a Labor party spokesman: "Labor's future economic policies will be tailored to enrich the affluent as much as the poor"

Surprising realism from San Francisco: "A Latino attorney general? A black woman as secretary of state? Who would have imagined it 50 years ago--or even, more recently, say, during the Clinton administration? Give President Bush credit for breaking barriers that his Democratic predecessor never got around to. Just don't tell that to white liberals thrilled with the idea of minorities doing well--as long as liberals can claim credit. If they can't, or if the minorities happen to be conservative, things can get messy. The American people are about to get a sense of just how messy, now that Bush has nominated Alberto Gonzales to head the Justice Department and Condoleezza Rice to run the State Department".

There is an article here which disputes the claim that prohibiting abortion leads to large numbers of deaths at the hands of "back-yard" abortionists.

The Leftist nonsense about "curing" criminals fails again: "Nonviolent drug offenders diverted to rehabilitation programs under Proposition 36 had higher rates of rearrest than those who remained in the criminal-justice system, a UCLA study released today says. Researchers found that offenders who enrolled in treatment programs created by the 2000 ballot measure were 48 percent more likely to be arrested for a drug offense within a year than those who entered treatment through drug courts or as a term of their probation".

Chris Brand has been having a good chortle over derogatory comments about British education made by Prince Charles. I have transferred Chris's post on the subject here.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

**************************

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

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.

********************************

FROM BROOKES NEWS

US economy: storm clouds ahead What needs to be understood is that the so-called business cycle is a monetary phenomenon that presidents can do nothing about until the economics profession comes to understand that fact
Professor John Quiggin gets it wrong on taxes and jobs The idea that any government cure unemployment by simply putting people on the public payroll should be too absurd to consider
Arafat: A Guerrilla and Statesman? I Want To Gag! Arafat, the godfather of modern terrorism, was barely cold and yet world dignitaries and the media rushed to offer their condolences
The Clinton Legacy: the 2004 Presidential Election Did Americans need a kinder gentler President Bush,to lead our country in the war against terrorism? No. Only Kerry, the Democrats, and the terrorists thought we did

Details here

**********************************

ELSEWHERE

Interesting that there now seem to be several scientists who are contending (as I immediately did) that the "hobbit" bones discovered recently in Indonesia are not of a new species at all but are rather the bones of a race of homo sapiens. See here and here. The initial claims that the bones were of a new species focused on what were claimed to be different facial features but anyone who has seen the pictures of Truganini, the last full-blooded Tasmanian Aborigine, will see very similar features to that of the "hobbit" -- though Truganini did have a much higher forehead -- higher even than most modern-day Westerners. More recent claims, however, focus on the proportionately longer arms of the "hobbit", identifying that as a crucial difference from modern man. As I myself and various of my relatives have unusually long arms, however, I think this is clutching at straws too. I think there can be little doubt that all the characteristics of the "hobbit" can be found in modern man too. Even the very short stature is not all that unusual. I was at a Vietnamese restaurant recently when a Vietnamese family who were also dining there got up and left. I noted that the elderly matriarch of the clan cannot have been much above 4' tall. And Vietnam is quite close geographically to Indonesia. But a country that is even closer to Indonesia is Australia and there are still pygmies in Australia too. See here and here for my previous posts on that matter.

Those pesky genes again: "Genetic factors influence female infidelity and the number of sexual partners women have, British scientists said on Wednesday. They studied the responses of 1,600 pairs of identical and non-identical twins in a confidential survey to look at the impact of genes on behavior. "We found that around 40 percent of the influence on the number of sexual partners and infidelity were due to genetic factors," Professor Tim Spector, director of the Twin Research Unit at St Thomas' Hospital in London, told a news conference".

What happens when the law is an ass: "A mob angry about recent child abductions cornered plainclothes federal agents taking photos of students at a school and burned the officers alive, mistaking the agents for kidnappers in the latest example of vigilante justice in a country beset by high crime."

The Clinton library: "Maybe I haven't visited enough presidential libraries. And, yes, I do know they all inevitably have something worshipful about them; it's in their nature. But I can't recall anything - anything! - so blatantly partisan, so full of just plain bullfeathers, so completely . . . Orwellian in its approach to the truth as one display at the newly opened Clinton Library here in Little Rock...."

A message to Europe about American values: "If these beliefs seem strange to you, they shouldn't. For these are precisely the beliefs that powered Western Europe - you -- from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance, on to the Enlightenment, and forward into the modern world. They are the beliefs that made Europe itself the glory of Western civilization and - not coincidentally - ignited the greatest outpouring of art, literature, music and scientific discovery the world has ever known including Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare, Bach, Issac Newton and Descartes. It is your abandonment of these beliefs that has created the gap between Europe and the United States. You have ceased to be a Judeo-Christian culture, and have become instead a secular culture. And a secular culture quickly goes from being "un-religious" to anti-religious. Indeed, your hostility to the basic concepts of Judaism and Christianity has literally been written into your new European Union constitution, despite the Pope's heroic efforts to the contrary.

Tim Worstall is having a good laugh over the fact that the most successful program yet for dealing with sexual offenders was devised and carried out by a Christian group. One in the eye for the know-all "professionals" who are always talking about curing criminals rather than punishing them but who have yet to find a way of doing so.

Leftist amorality: "Those who cannot stand President Bush don't realize that any philosophy or political vision that lacks the idea of good and evil will not fly with most Americans. Liberals excuse most evil with stories about bad luck, disease and other impersonal forces that make people do bad things. Good deeds, in turn, come about through good luck. There are a few matters about which even liberals moralize - sexism, racism or economic inequality. But assault, battery, robbery, burglary, theft, laziness, recklessness and the like, these are due to sad circumstances. That's why they believe the poor are all deserving, because they deny that poverty is ever the result of irresponsibility. The basic thesis behind the modern liberal mentality is the denial of free will.... Unless they toss their derisive attitude toward the rest of us who think it is perfectly sensible to distinguish between good and evil, right and wrong, the sophisticated ones will be seen for what they are: People essentially lacking a serious understanding of our distinctive human nature."

Why liberals can't compete in the values arena: "Liberals and traditionalists are talking about entirely different things when they address values. Like Big Brother in George Orwell's chilling novel 1984, liberals employ a NewSpeak lexicon in which the word values is unrelated to its historical meaning. Two things explain this gulf. First, liberalism is the American sect of the international religion of socialism. Second, socialism is a secular and materialistic religion. When liberals speak of values they are talking about material goods and services, which are presumed to flow exclusively from collectivized government. Those values fall under the heading of so-called social justice, or redistribution of income and property as equally as possible."

Who's afraid of inequality? "Because inequality springs from diversity, individuality, talent and creativity, it should be celebrated and the institutions that allow it protected. History and theory show that the use of naked government aggression is not a moral or efficacious way of dealing with poverty. Rather, the market economy, the best system for poverty alleviation, is to be strengthened and supported through property rights and the rule of law."

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

**************************

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

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.

********************************