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There is a new blog here written by a New Zealander in Sweden. So you get a combination of Swedish and New Zealand news -- both of which are pretty weird. You may need a strong stomach to read about Sweden's "abortion jewellery" though.

Thank goodness for a country where people get together to help the elderly beat an arrogant bureaucracy: "Braving frigid temperatures outside the Rockingham County Courthouse on Tuesday, protesters accused Hampton town officials of "breaking up a family" by suing two residents for converting their home into a use forbidden by law.... Burbank was scheduled to appear in court Tuesday in response to the town’s claim that she and her 95-year-old aunt, Myrtle Woodward, were in violation of a zoning rule prohibiting two-family residences for having converted their garage into an apartment for Burbank’s daughter, Kim Burbank."

Max Boot has a good summary of the popular but fact-free Leftist journalist Seymour Hersh.

Anti-Catholic propaganda: "On Jan. 9, 2005 the New York Times published a prominent article entitled "Saving Jewish Children, But At What Cost?" in which it accuses the Vatican and Pope Pius XII of having given instructions not to allow Jewish children who had been sheltered by Catholics during the war to return to their own families. As we shall demonstrate, the article published by the New York Times was unfair, misleading and did not undergo the most rudimentary fact checking. Furthermore, it is grossly defamatory. As a result both its authors Elaine Sciolino and Jason Horowitz as well as the Times' Executive Editor Bill Keller should be fired. In fact, in its article the New York Times was echoing similar accusations based on the same document made by Alberto Melloni in the Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera on December 28, 2004. Melloni's sensationalism, repeated by the New York Times, has already been exposed by two of Italy's top Pius XII experts, Andrea Tornielli and Prof. Matteo L. Napolitano (co-authors of the book, Il Papa che salvo gli Ebrei)" [The book title translates as: "The Pope who saved the Hebrews"]

Wicked Thoughts has just put up some amusing news items

My least visited blog is probably "Leftists as Elitists". But I do get some remarkable stuff for it at times. This post is absolutely full of hate for ordinary Americans and a reader rightly comments on it: "This thinking sets up the Leftist to conclude that since Americans are not likeable people, that they are defiantly mean and craven, that they are just as loathsome as the evil exploiters, then mass murder, "re-education" camps and general oppression are the morally right and even necessary response to this situation. It's only a matter of time.."

My latest posting on MarxWords shows The lofty contempt Engels had for democracy. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at COLOSSIANS 2:9 -- "For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily" (KJ)

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

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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.

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ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA KEEPS ORDINARY MUSLIMS FOOLED

The suicide bomber who blew himself up in a U.S. mess hall in Mosul, Iraq, on Dec. 21 was Saudi Arabian, according to the Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat. Ahmed Said Ahmed al-Ghamdi killed 22 people. His profile upsets the conventional - and faulty - perception of terrorists as uneducated, poor and desperate individuals. Al-Ghamdi was well-educated - a medical student. And he came from a wealthy and well-connected Saudi Arabian family. His father is a Saudi ambassador....

Why would young men like the al-Ghamdis answer the call of jihad to kill Americans? An answer can be found in an article published three days before the Mosul bombing in the Saudi government daily Al-Watan. In it, reporter Fakriya Ahmad charges that American military forces in Iraq are savagely harvesting the organs of Iraqi insurgents to sell in the United States. Medical teams following the troops allegedly offer "$40 for every usable kidney and $25 for an eye," according to translations by the Middle East Media Research Institute. Some are taken from wounded fighters who are still alive, and then they're put to death, their mutilated bodies burned to conceal the crime.

Fantastic conspiracy theories are commonplace in the Middle Eastern media. Zionist plots abound, such as the threat to emasculate the men of Khartoum, Sudan, using "laser controlled, surgical robots" disguised as combs. That 2003 story, too, came from Al-Watan. Such myths, while serving to remind people of the ever-present danger posed by the devious Jews, are subordinate to a more important theme. The paramount message is that every hardship and catastrophic event, whether man-made or seemingly an act of God, is in reality the result of the evil forces of Western imperialism, with the United States and Israel as its vanguard.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

What an insult! "On a day where the 1,5 million victims of the Nazi terror in the Auschwitz concentration camp are remembered, some German left-wing media stress the connection to - Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, where on November 9, 2003, former employees of Saddam Hussein had the misfortunes of being mistreated by a few U.S. guards.... How things have changed. In the post-war past in Germany, the Right wanted to minimize the atrocities committed in the concentration camps in the name of Germany. Now the Left - in their never ending desire to smear the current U.S. administration - minimizes the image of the holocaust by comparing the years-long gassing of millions of jews in Nazi Germany to the mistreatment of a limited number of Iraqis on just one day or on a couple of days. And this comparison (1, 2) has already become something of a tradition in the German media".

The Australian influence on Britain seems to be ever-growing. Not only do Brits now drink as much Australian wine as French but London's The Times is even using Australian slang ("Pommy sheila") in its headlines. One day Britain's Michael Howard (Tory leader) might even learn from Australia's John Howard.

Anti-Christian fanatics: "If the activists are trembling, the pundits are exploding. For example, professor David Domke is fond of counting the number of times Bush has invoked God in his speeches, and is now worried that the president sees himself as `a prophetic spokesman for God.' Similarly, Ellis Henican of Newsday believes `The Party of God is now fully in charge,' contending that Bush `considers himself as God's own prophet.' Boston University professor Stephen Prothero is hyperventilating over his hunch that we now have `a Jesus lover in the Oval Office.' Professor William Cook at the University of La Verne says Bush's supporters believe they have a `divinely anointed Emperor' in charge. And author Abid Ullah Jan goes one better, saying that Bush `has assumed the role of the first in the new line of corrupt popes.'

Dutch kooks: "A bank robber has been allowed to claim the cost of a pistol used in a hold-up as a legitimate business expense. A Dutch court has permitted the 46-year-old man to set the 2000 Euro ($3400) cost of the gun against his gross proceeds of 6750 Euros, gained during his raid on a bank in the southern town of Chaam. The judge at Breda Criminal Court duly reduced his fine by the same amount, while sentencing him to four years in jail."

TV biased against religion: "Today the Parents Television Council (PTC), the nation's most influential advocacy organization protecting children against sex, violence and profanity in entertainment, in conjunction with the National Religious Broadcasters, released the results of a new study entitled Faith in a Box: Entertainment Television and Religion. The study found that television's treatment of religion has become increasingly negative and doesn't reflect the viewpoints of a majority of Americans. The study also found that NBC by far leads the other major networks in terms of the number of negative depictions of faith".

What complete and utter ignorance of the American founders! "At the first inauguration of a president, in 1789, George Washington wanted to wear a suit covered in gold leaf with a special cape, and ride to the ceremony on a white horse escorted by an honour guard on white horses. Like a coronation". Prof. Bunyip pisses all over the ignoramus who wrote it.

Jonathan Gurwitz asks where are the Leftist "human shields" now that Iraqi polling places face bombings from the Islamofascists? Could it be that they really know that the Islamofascists are ruthless butchers?

This story of how some of the world's most famous organizations cannot get their software to work even after spending hundreds of millions on it should in a fair world engender a lot of respect for Microsoft. There are some similar awful examples from Australia, too -- including the software that was supposed to work our new submarines.

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

Nathan Tabor argues that there should be more promotion of adoption as an alternative to abortion.

My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx despised Jews but still sought money from them. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at John 1:3 "Without him was not anything made that was made".

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

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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.

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CONDI IS A COMMO!

The latest flight of the Leftist imagination:

"Testifying before Congress last week, Condoleezza Rice gave little indication that she grasps the central challenge of the next four years: restoring American credibility in the war of ideas against totalitarian Islam with a new era of candor, acknowledgment of past errors, and clear signs of having learned from them....But then, on the second day of the hearings, Biden managed to elicit an unexpected and revealing response from Rice, when he said that the U.S. government has to both "level with the American people" and "be honest with the world." "Otherwise," Biden added, "we'll do terrible damage beyond what we've already done to our credibility." Rice then offered the following retort:

I said yesterday, Senator, we've made a lot of decisions in this period of time. Some of them have been very good. Some of them have not been very good. Some of them have been bad decisions, I'm sure. I know enough about history to stand back and to recognize that you judge decisions not at the moment but in how it all adds up. And that's just strongly the way I feel about big historical changes. I'm being as straightforward with you as I possibly can. [emphasis added]

The idea that a decision cannot be judged at the moment but only retrospectively opens a slippery slope of justification. The future Secretary of State was indulging an understanding of politics favored by advocates of a Hegelian view of history--most of whom have, in the last century, been communists. In his lectures on the philosophy of history delivered in the early nineteenth century, the German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel argued that history was a slaughter bench on which the happiness of individuals was sacrificed.... The achievement of freedom, or in the case of the communists, the classless society, justified the sacrifices on the path to its perfection--as if such perfection could not, in the end, have come about without those sacrifices.... The capacity of history to absolve political actors is a cynical and immoral doctrine. No one can know for sure how political decisions will turn out".

So Condi makes the perfectly simple and commonsense point that it is the sum of the decisions that matters -- nobody gets it right all the time -- and that is somehow twisted into a claim that the end justifies the means! Pathetic

If Condi had been a REAL Commo she would have denied that the government ever made any mistakes. My own recollection of the Communist mind is amusing: When I was teaching sociology at the University of New South Wales about 25 years ago, we were privileged to receive an official visitor from the Soviet Union -- the very unglamorous head of some Soviet Women's organization. The reception she received from the sociologists was rapturous until some naive person asked her how homosexuals were treated in the USSR. She replied with great aplomb: "We don't have any. That was before the revolution." I could have died laughing at the visible mental indigestion that remark caused! I can still remember the looks on some of the faces!

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FAR LEFT SHOW THEIR TRUE COLOURS

Hatred of America trumps all else for them

"The murder of a prominent trade unionist in Iraq has provoked a split in the anti-war movement in Britain over whether he should be seen as a hero or a collaborator with the American-led occupation. The torture and killing of Hadi Saleh in Baghdad on 4 January has become a litmus test of whether campaigners who opposed the Iraq war should "move on" and embrace moves towards democracy in the country. The more moderate voices in the anti-war camp have accused hardliners of failing to condemn the murder and implying it was a justified act by insurgents.

Mr Saleh, the international officer of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, spent five years in jail during Saddam Hussein's regime. He returned from exile abroad after Saddam's fall to try to establish trade unions in the new Iraq. Allies say he was tied, blindfolded, severely tortured and strangled by an electric cord as part of a campaign by the "Iraqi resistance" to eradicate democrats.

His killing has been condemned by trade union bodies around the world, including the TUC, and many critics of the war. But the Stop the War Coalition has been accused of remaining virtually silent - a charge it dismisses as a smear by opponents. Gary Kent, director of Labour Friends of Iraq (LIFQ), said yesterday: "This horrible murder has galvanised the decent left who mostly opposed the war but cannot stomach ambiguities or worse on the so-called resistance. It illustrates there is a large faultline on the left about post-war Iraq. Some armchair revolutionaries are happy to fight to the last drop of someone else's blood. But the elementary notion of solidarity with Iraqi trade unions is fast winning the day, and about time too.""

More here

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There is a nostalgic article in the moderate-Leftist American Prospect praising Truman and other Democrats of his era and wishing that the modern Left were as anti-Communist. The article assures us however that Truman would not have invaded Iraq. He would only have done tough talk. What a crock! We know how Truman beat the Japanese: He nuked them! It is GWB who is the moderate today.

Schroeder nearly gets it right: "German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has used a commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz 60 years ago to declare that ordinary Germans were responsible for the Holocaust. Speaking to an audience including several Auschwitz survivors, Mr Schroeder said the horrors of the concentration camp could not be explained by merely blaming the "demon Hitler". "The evil of the Nazi ideology did not come out of nowhere. The brutalisation of thought and the lack of moral inhibitions had a history," he said. "One thing is clear: the Nazi ideology was willed by people and carried out by people."" [And who are the people who say there is no such thing as right and wrong?]

Yesterday was the anniversary of white settlers first arriving in Australia: "Shortly after dawn in Sydney, George Street was echoing with the inevitable chants of "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie. Oi! Oi! Oi!" By midday, parks, pools and harbour foreshores were filled with people not just waving, but wearing flags. They had all come together for fireworks and ferry races, barbecues and beach cricket, drinking and debate.... Whatever Australians think of their day, visitors are impressed. Fiona Edwards, 26, from York in England, spent the day working at Doyle's fish restaurant. "It's really nice to see how proud everyone is of being Australian," she said. "We have St George's Day but most people don't even know when it is, and it's not a day off work or anything ... So many people have turned out, everyone's got the flags, they've got special T-shirts. It's just really nice to see everyone in a good mood." [I celebrated the day at a BBQ with relatives]

My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx despised the workers as "donkeys". My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at JOHN 1: 29-34 ("The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and said, "Behold the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world")

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

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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.

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FROM BROOKES NEWS

Associated Press put terrorist collaborators on its payroll We now have evidence that Associated Press has been collaborating with terrorists in Iraq
Alberto Gonzales, terrorists and lying journalists When it comes to dishonesty, selective outrage and fake humanitarianism our media are second to none - Marian Wilkinson is no exception
Journalist smears Iraq's coming election If you want to know why Coalition troops have started to call journalists "roaches" then look no further than the likes of Paul McGeough
Problems with markets? Free market advocates place great store on moral frameworks and sound social institutions. Never forget that Adam Smith was first and foremost a moral philosopher
Saving and wealth creation Why savings fuel economic growth
Clinton's taxes did not cause America's recession There are two common explanations for America's recession. Both are wrong

Details here

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ELSEWHERE

Great! The Conservative Philosopher blog is now up and running. An amusing thing is that one of the commenters identifies himself as "JR" -- which is an ID that I often use -- but it isn't me! He sounds a lot like me too. (Yes. I know that in Latinate grammar I should have said: "It isn't I").

Amazing! Socialist Worker (Trotskyites, I think) says GWB is NOT A Fascist! "Certainly, during his first term, George W. Bush got away with more reactionary attacks than anyone had expected.... But this isn't the proof of fascism--because all of these assaults have been carried out in one form or another by governments in the U.S. and elsewhere that are considered democratic, and often enough when the ruling party was the "liberal" alternative.... As appalling as the Bush administration's attacks have been, the situation today doesn't approach the violence of a fascist regime. What's more, if you define fascism to mean increased police powers and gutted civil liberties, then you have to consider the Democrats to be fascists, too." [Trotsky was a murderous bastard but he was right in saying that Lenin was just as Fascist as Hitler. So some realism in his followers is to be expected]

Arnold Kling has some excellent comments on Jim Bennett's book The Anglosphere Challenge -- a book which celebrates the traditions and values of the English and their derivative societies. Kling makes the point that I often do -- that traditional English values are essentially conservative rather than Leftist.

Bill Gates shows up the U.N.: "The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is doubling its contribution to increase access to basic childhood vaccinations in the world's poorest nations, bringing its total commitment to $1.5 billion. Over the next decade, the foundation will donate $750 million more to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations, a partnership of private donors, companies and multilateral organizations, known as G.A.V.I. Melinda Gates said that the foundation was doubling the $750 million donation it made in 1999 to establish the alliance because that donation was "the best investment we've made." She said that more than 42 million children had been vaccinated against hepatitis B, that more than 670,000 premature deaths had been prevented from 2001 through 2003"

GWB is realistic: "Despite the skeptics, all historical evidence suggests that democracy can indeed spread further, that America can serve as an agent of its advancement, as it has done all over the world, and that democracy's spread will make the world safer".

Europe waking up? "The more aggressive approach toward Sheik Omar is part of an increasing effort to monitor and restrict militant imams in Britain and across Europe. Authorities have stepped up surveillance of militant mosques in several countries, including Germany and France. French officials deported an imam this month after officials said he was inspiring men to join the jihad."

Wow! Richard Perle delivers some very good put-downs to European whimpering about Iraq here

The wages of corruption: "It is official: the French are a nation of depressed pessimists, wracked with self-doubt and unable to see a positive future. This gloomy portrait of the current state of Gallic morale - or rather the lack of it - was made public yesterday in a damning report by France's prefects, the country's top administrators. "The French no longer believe in anything," the report said. "That is the reason that the situation is relatively calm, for they believe that it is not even worthwhile expressing their opinions or trying to be heard any more." The country's 100 prefects went on to use the words "lifelessness", "resignation", "anxiety" and "pessimism" to describe the attitudes they believe prevail in France today".

Believers in democracy at work: "The sons of a first-term congresswoman and Milwaukee's former acting mayor were among five Democratic activists charged Monday with slashing the tires of vans rented by Republicans to drive voters and monitors to the polls on Election Day. Sowande Omokunde, son of Rep. Gwen Moore, [D-WI] and Michael Pratt, the son of former Milwaukee acting mayor Marvin Pratt, were among those charged with criminal damage to property, a felony that carries a maximum punishment of 3 1/2 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. The activists are accused of flattening the tires on 25 vehicles rented by the state Republican Party to get out the vote and deliver poll watchers Nov. 2. The GOP rented more than 100 vehicles that were parked in a lot adjacent to a Bush campaign office. The party planned to drive poll watchers to polling places by 7 a.m. and deliver any voters who didn't have a ride."

I have received the following rather amusing email: "The Culinary Institute of America notes your mention of our college in your comments from Friday, Jan. 21. Please be aware the so-called quote from The Culinary Insitute of America was made up by the author of an article that appeared in the Weekly Standard. A close review of this article notes a future dateline of Feb. 13, 2005, with a later comment that the scenario is "undoubtedly just around the corner." Would you please clarify for your readers that the quote was a figment of the author's imagination, and the "spokesperson" quoted -- Ray Facino -- does not exist. Our college is disturbed by the inappropriate and inaccurate use of our name and has requested The Weekly Standard print a retraction and/or clarification".

My latest posting on MarxWords shows where Hegel got at least some of his ideas. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at ROMANS 9:5 -- "Christ came who is over all, God blessed forever"

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

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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.

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TUESDAY ROUNDUP

Once again I pick out what I think are my best posts for the week:

On Dissecting Leftism I argue that homophobia is a myth.

On Political Correctness Watch I note a case where a false accusation of rape that could have landed a man in jail for 40 years got only a 30 day sentence.

On Greenie Watch I suggest that global dimming theory looks like upsetting global warming theory.

On Education Watch I point out that the U.S. government cannot tell the difference between real university degrees and diploma mill degrees.

On Socialized Medicine I point out that what U.S. hospitals charge patients is whatever they think they can get away with.

On Gun Watch I note where having a gun emboldened a 79 year-old to confront a maniac.

On Leftists as Elitists I point out that Leftists fear the majority.

On Marx Words I tell you all you need to know about Hegel in one easy lesson.

On A Scripture Blog I say that it was mainly the common people who originally worshipped Christ.

On Majority Rights I point out that Engels supported American exceptionalism -- sort of.

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ELSEWHERE

Keith Burgess Jackson is starting up a group blog to be written by conservatives with philosophy degrees. I am delighted to see that Jim Ryan is going to take part. Jim and I had some good debates when he ran Philosoblog. Keith needs more members to make it a goer yet, though, so if you know any conservative philosophers (a pretty rare breed) tell them about it.

Eleanor Spreitzer writes: "Do you enjoy watching Charlie Chaplin on TV - you know those old movies - "The Little Tramp" etc. What joy he brought to the whole world - Queen Elizabeth knighted him - the English were so proud of Charlie. Guess what - all things being equal - today - the Loony Left would have fined him, thrown him in jail etc., - why? - because how politically incorrect can you be????? The little TRAMP???? How dare anyone use such a harsh word as "TRAMP". He might have gotten away with the "Little Homeless Person". But probably not. (And beside that, the Public just wouldn't have embraced "The Little Homeless Person" with the same sense of endearment as "The Little Tramp" - would it?). The whole idea and creation of "The Little Tramp" would have been scrapped - what a loss".

V.D. Hanson puts a good case to say that America's influence in the Middle East has been vastly strengthened by the intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan. No Islamic State wants to be next on the list.

No wonder the Dutch are having big problems with their minorities! A big academic research program reported in 2001 shows that there is a huge IQ gap between the Dutch and the immigrants: "the mean IQ of third world immigrants in the Netherlands is lower than the Dutch mean by approximately one standard deviation for Surinamese and Antilleans, and by approximately one and a half standard deviations for Turks and Moroccans. Since IQ tests provide the best prediction of success in school and organizations, it could be that the immigrants' lower mean IQ is an important factor in their low status on the Dutch labour market"

It must be all that sophistication: "Europe has the world's highest suicide rate and cases are rising among young people, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Dr Gudjon Magnusson, WHO director for Europe in charge of mental health, told SocietyGuardian.co.uk that Europe needed to lose its shameful record of 17.5 suicides per 100,000 population. Of around 30 countries which gave data to the WHO, Lithuania had the worst rate at 44 suicides per 100,000, the UK nearly seven per 100,000 (higher than Italy and Malta) and the lowest number was in Azerbaijan at 1.41 per 100,000".

There is a rare translation from the Afrikaner press of South Africa here which suggests that big upheavals are to be expected there soon. Anti-white attitudes appear to be hardening among members of the government.

A very good brief explanation here of how the U.S. presence in Iraq is an application of the high ideals of the American founding. Leftists really are disgraceful for the way they have from the beginning completely closed their eyes to what the Saddam Hussein regime was like. But they ignored the realities of Soviet Russia for around 40 years so it's no surprise. Reality is just not their scene.

New Sisyphus has some excellent comments on the hatred of Fox News: "The rise of Fox News has riled the MSM and all good-thinking liberals everywhere. Especially risible to opponents of Fox is its motto of bringing "Fair and Balanced" reporting to American television. As everyone knows, Fox is most un-fair and definitely un-balanced in that it makes an attempt to understand the views, values and concerns of the roughly 50% of the American public that tends to be conservative and vote Republican. These people, being morons, have no place in public discourse, let alone in real journalism, as any New York Times or BBC reporter would be happy to explain to you".

My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Engels mourned good harvests! My latest posting on "A scripture blog" has an extended look at the meaning of "Logos" in John 1:1

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. 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.

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SOME ECONOMICS

A socialist economist who finally learnt: "Capitalism has been as unmistakable a success as socialism has been a failure. Here is the part that's hard to swallow. It has been the Friedmans, Hayeks, and von Miseses who have maintained that capitalism would flourish and that socialism would develop incurable ailments. All three have regarded capitalism as the 'natural' system of free men; all have maintained that left to its own devices capitalism would achieve material growth more successfully than any other system. From [my samplings] I draw the following discomforting generalization: The farther to the right one looks, the more prescient has been the historical foresight; the farther to the left, the less so".

There is a big article here which says that Communism has made a pretty big comeback in Latin America. There is certainly a strong Leftist influence there but there is some economic sanity there too so it remains to be seen how it will all end up. Stupid and brutish governments seem to be a tradition in Latin America, however, so whatever happens is unlikely to be much of a surprise. Only Chile is flourishing economically, thanks to Pinochet and the "Chicago" economists that he gave the economic reins to: "The Chilean economy after all, has posted growth rates above 7% per year for many years now"

Administration stupidity: "Less than two weeks after a 40-foot wave flattened massive swaths of Southeast Asia, the United States slapped a tariff on millions of dollars worth of seafood imports from India and Thailand. As the federal government promised $350 million, and private citizens pledged even more, the message to surviving shrimp farmers was clear: Have our marines, our pity, and our cash, but for the love of God, do not send us your cheap shrimp."

Another good debunking of the Wal-Mart bashers here. They are so keen to bash Wal-Mart that they are even praising Henry Ford! Ford was of course once the great heartless capitalist bugaboo of the Left who turned men into machines and "alienated" them. Consistency is not a Leftist virtue. Like Leftists generally, the Wal-Mart bashers find one little fact they like and then proceed to ignore all the other relevant facts.

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ELSEWHERE

Have a look at this picture of Russian Communists today. Note the semi-Nazi salute and the way the old Soviet flag has been remodeled Nazi-style with a black motif in a white circle on a red background. A visible sign of Nazi/Communist fusion. If they are Putin's opposition, Putin looks better all the time. For those who don't remember, the old Soviet flag was a yellow motif on a simple red background.

IQ rules again: "The risk of suicide is two to three times higher among men with low intelligence, and poorly performing offspring of well-educated parents are at the greatest risk. Low intelligence could lessen the "ability to solve problems while going through an acute life crisis", says a study in the British Medical Journal that analysed data from almost 1 million Swedish men.... The researchers looked at the military service records of 987,308 Swedish men born between 1950 and 1976. All the men had complete sets of intelligence test results at the commencement of their military service. Better performance in the tests was associated with reduced risk of suicide".

Leftist hypocrisy about IQ again: Leftists normally deny that there really is such a thing as IQ. All men are equal, aren't they? As we know, that was suddenly forgotten when someone cooked up a spurious table showing that "red" States had low IQs on average. Spurious IQ data was as popular as real IQ data is not. As this writer points out Leftists also rediscover IQ when it suits their "soft on crime" agenda. They constantly claim that low IQ murderers should not be executed, for instance.

There is a detailed story here that tends to show that America's most relentless enemy in Iraq is the American mainstream media.

Not all libertarians are peaceniks: "As attempts to stereotype Libertarians have proven, generalizations are futile. It's no more reasonable to say members of the Libertarian Party are politically far right than it is to say they're far left -- although party members are frequently hit with both labels. And you can't safely say Libertarians are anti-military -- assuming the military is being used properly for national defense. In fact, there are hundreds of military personnel in the party's membership -- many of whom were recently asked to consider telling their stories for LP News, the monthly Libertarian Party newspaper....."

What a faker! "On the eve of the presidential inauguration, US Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton embraced an issue some pundits say helped seal a second term for George W. Bush: acceptance of the role of faith in addressing social ills. In a speech at a fund-raising dinner for a Boston-based organization that promotes faith-based solutions to social problems, Clinton said there has been a 'false division' between faith-based approaches to social problems and respect for the separation of church of state. 'There is no contradiction between support for faith-based initiatives and upholding our constitutional principles,' said Clinton ... [who] invoked God more than half a dozen times, at one point declaring, 'I've always been a praying person.'"

Criminals are just misunderstood, of course: "A convicted murderer, who escaped the death penalty, was given a life sentence, and then was released on parole, is going back to prison on another life sentence - this time for the rape last fall of a 9-year-old girl near a Bryan elementary school. This is the second time that Donald James Sallows, Jr., 54, who was involved in the kidnapping and strangulation of a South Toledo man in 1977, has violated his parole by having sexual contact with children. In 1998, after being out of prison for slightly more than three years, he was sent back to prison for unlawful sexual contact with a 4-year-old. Less than five years later, he was out on parole again"

I have just put up an email from a reader on the subject of homosexual life expectancy here

My latest posting on MarxWords tells you all you need to know about Hegel in one easy lesson. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at what Jesus means when he says "my" Father rather than "our" Father.

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

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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.

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THE "NEOCONSERVATIVE" BOGEYMAN

V.D. Hanson debunks the nonsense you hear. Excerpt:

"Neo- is a prefix that derives from the Greek adjective neos - "new" or "fresh" - and in theory it is used inexactly for those conservatives who once were not - or for those who have reinterpreted conservatism .. But the accepted definition has given way in practice to refer to the more particular proponents of the use of military action to remove threatening governments, and to replace them with democratic systems - hence the occasional sobriquets of "neo-Wilsonian." But for a number of detractors, "neoconservative" is also little more than generic disparagement, and (off-the-record) it is synonymous with American Jews who seek to alter American foreign policy to the wishes of the right-wing Likud party of Israel.

Yet note the misinformation about its meaning and usage. The five most prominent makers of American foreign policy at the moment - George Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and Donald Rumsfeld - are (1) not Jewish, (2) hard-headed and not easily bamboozled by any supposed cabal, and (3) were mostly in the past identified with the "realist" school and especially skeptical of using the military frequently for anything resembling Clintonian peace-keeping.

So, for example, while Secretary Rumsfeld signed the now-infamous 1998 letter to President Clinton calling for the de-facto preemptive removal of Saddam Hussein, George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice did not. Yet Richard Armitage - considered a stalwart in the Colin Powell camp - was a signatory."

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ELSEWHERE

I take close to zero interest in homosexual issues so I am indebted to Chris Vinall for drawing my attention to a controversy about homosexual life-expectancy. I referred to a figure of around 40 taken from Omega in my post of two days ago. Chris draws my attention to this article in "Slate" and infers that Omega used dubious data too. Note however this quote from the article in "Slate": "The actual average age of AIDS patients at death has been about 40". No-one is claiming that all homosexuals get AIDS but many do and that is all that is required for my argument. I have in fact myself had two homosexual friends die young because of AIDS. I might mention in passing that I quoted a statistic from Omega because it is a mainstream academic journal in the field of death studies. I have had a couple of articles in it myself so know something of it.

Interesting tribute from a prominent Leftist: "I have known President Bush for 40 years - ever since we attended Yale College together in the 1960s. I'm a Democrat (and I was a Democrat then), but I liked him and I still like him, as a sincere and kind man and a good friend.... One of my most vivid memories is this: A few of us were in the common room one night. It was 1965, I believe - my junior year, his sophomore. We were making our usual sarcastic commentaries on those who walked by us. A little nasty perhaps, but always with a touch of humor. On this occasion, however, someone we all believed to be gay walked by, although the word we used in those days was "queer." Someone, I'm sorry to say, snidely used that word as he walked by. George heard it and, most uncharacteristically, snapped: "Shut up." Then he said, in words I can remember almost verbatim: "Why don't you try walking in his shoes for a while and see how it feels before you make a comment like that?"" (Via Commonsense & Wonder).

Sick university honours sick professor: "Villanova University on Thursday will dedicate a new section of its library to a star professor and student favorite who committed suicide in August 2003 while in jail. Mine Ener was behind bars after admitting she had killed her 6-month old, Down Syndrome-afflicted daughter by slashing the baby's throat... Giordano suggested that the school was giving special consideration to Ener because she was a scholar in the field of Islamic studies."

Story about U.N. parasites here: "It has been three weeks since my ship, the USS Abraham Lincoln, arrived off the Sumatran coast to aid the hundreds of thousands of victims of the Dec. 26 tsunami that ravaged their coastline. I'd like to say that this has been a rewarding experience for us, but it has not: Instead, it has been a frustrating and needlessly dangerous exercise made even more difficult by the Indonesian government and a traveling circus of so-called aid workers who have invaded our spaces.... As a result of having to host these people, our severely over-tasked SH-60 Seahawk helos, which were carrying tons of food and water every day to the most inaccessible places in and around Banda Aceh, are now used in great part to ferry these "relief workers" from place to place every day and bring them back to their guest bedrooms on the Lincoln at night."

What's the greatest tragedy of the last century? ......Hitler's Third Reich, Stalin's Great Purge, Mao's collectivization, Michael Jackson's latest Kids' Day? Wrong.... it was the banning of the pesticide DDT: "Since the ban, two million people a year have died unnecessarily from malaria, mostly children. The ban has caused more than fifty million needless deaths. Banning DDT killed more people than Hitler."... DDT was not a carcinogen, scientists knew it wasn't a carcinogen, and that its replacement, Parathion, was the real toxin, causing the death of hundreds of farm workers. What's the point of this revelation? That public hysteria for fear-driven, emotional, and unscientific quick "fixes" can lead to unintended consequences that are much worse than any perceived crisis"

Blithering Bunny reports that the University of Sydney (who once awarded me a rather large and fancy document) are sponsoring an incomprehensible conference: "This conference brings together two key figures in the contemporary reconsideration of the concept of origin. Radical theorist and activist, Antonio Negri has introduced a materialist perspective on the concept of origin through his investigations of constituent power and multitudes. Italian feminist philosopher, Adriana Cavarero has been engaged in reconceiving origin through the thought of sexual difference, an ethics of embodiment and more recently, the politics of vocal expression.... Antonio Negri was an architect of the infamous Red Brigades, a Marxist-Leninist terrorist group. In 1979, he was arrested and charged with "armed insurrection against the state" and seventeen murders, including the murder of the Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro"

EU crumbling: "The CIA has predicted that the European Union will break-up within 15 years unless it radically reforms its ailing welfare systems. The report by the intelligence agency, which forecasts how the world will look in 2020, warns that Europe could be dragged into economic decline by its ageing population. It also predicts the end of Nato and post-1945 military alliances. In a devastating indictment of EU economic prospects, the report warns: "The current EU welfare state is unsustainable and the lack of any economic revitalisation could lead to the splintering or, at worst, disintegration of the EU"

My latest posting on MarxWords notes that Marx treated the illness of a relative as great news. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at Acts 20:28 -- "... the church of the Lord which he obtained with his own blood".

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

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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.

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WHO WAS THE FASCIST B****** WHO SAID THIS?

A selective account of American history used to justify actions elsewhere:

"Just a word about "universal fraternal union of peoples" and the drawing of "boundaries established by the sovereign will of the peoples themselves on the basis of their national characteristics". The United States and Mexico are two republics, in both of which the people is sovereign.

How did it happen that over Texas a war broke out between these two republics, which, according to the moral theory, ought to have been "fraternally united" and "federated", and that, owing to "geographical, commercial and strategical necessities", the "sovereign will" of the American people, supported by the bravery of the American volunteers, shifted the boundaries drawn by nature some hundreds of miles further south? And will B. accuse the Americans of a "war of conquest", which, although it deals with a severe blow to his theory based on "justice and humanity", was nevertheless waged wholly and solely in the interest of civilization? Or is it perhaps unfortunate that splendid California has been taken away from the lazy Mexicans, who could not do anything with it? That the energetic Yankees by rapid exploitation of the California gold mines will increase the means of circulation, in a few years will concentrate a dense population and extensive trade at the most suitable places on the coast of the Pacific Ocean, create large cities, open up communications by steamship, construct a railway from New York to San Francisco, for the first time really open the Pacific Ocean to civilization, and for the third time in history give the world trade a new direction? The "independence" of a few Spanish Californians and Texans may suffer because of it, in someplaces "justice" and other moral principles may be violated; but what does that matter to such facts of world-historic significance?"

So who was it who rejected morality and believed that the superiority of one people over another gave the stronger one the right to seize the territory of the weaker one? Was it Hitler justifying his invasion of Poland? No. It was clearly written before that and it was written by Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx's co-author. See here.

So what does that show? It shows that Mussolini's Fascism, Hitler's Nazism and Lenin's Communism were all Marxist. We are always told how "Rightist" ideas such as the above are but in the days of Hitler and Mussolini such ideas were LEFTIST. Practically everybody in the 19th century believed that some races and nations were superior to others but it was the Leftists who wanted to use such ideas to justify merciless oppression of one race or nation by another. The British, by contrast, saw their suzerainty over India as the white man's BURDEN (in Kipling's famous phrase). They did not see it as a licence to kill. When one erring General (Dyer) committed the Amritsar massacre in India, there was great public outrage in Britain and he was cashiered over it. By contrast, read a little further in the article by Engels just quoted and see what he wanted to do to the Czechs:

"And for this cowardly, base betrayal of the revolution we shall at some time take a bloody revenge against the Slavs".

So what had the Czech Slavs done to have such bloodlust aimed at them? They were not revolutionary enough! The Czech Leftists had made peace with their government. THAT was their terrible crime! So we see where both Lenin and Hitler were coming from.

The same thing applied to eugenics. The idea was invented by the conservative Galton but it was the Leftists who wanted to use it as an excuse for the merciless and forcible control of people's lives. As it says here:

"Galton's proposals were benign compared with those of famous contemporaries who rallied to his cause. H. G. Wells, for instance, declared, "It is in the sterilisation of failures, and not in the selection of successes for breeding, that the possibility of an improvement of the human stock lies." Although Galton was a conservative, his creed caught on with progressive figures like Harold Laski, John Maynard Keynes, George Bernard Shaw, and Sidney and Beatrice Webb. In the United States, New York disciples founded the Galton Society, which met regularly at the American Museum of Natural History, and popularizers helped the rest of the country become eugenics-minded. "How long are we Americans to be so careful for the pedigree of our pigs and chickens and cattle-and then leave the ancestry of our children to chance or to `blind' sentiment?" asked a placard at an exposition in Philadelphia. Four years before Galton's death, the Indiana legislature passed the first state sterilization law, "to prevent the procreation of confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles, and rapists." Most of the other states soon followed. In all, there were some sixty thousand court-ordered sterilizations of Americans who were judged to be eugenically unfit".

So Hitler's eugenics simply made him a good Leftist of his time. It did NOT make him a Rightist. More on what Marx and Engels actually preached at MarxWords. So although Germany is rightly blamed for much evil, it is in a sense the wrong German who gets blamed. It should be Engels, not Hitler. Hitler just implemented what Engels preached. But in all the big commemorations of the war they will be having in Germany soon, how often do you think that will be mentioned?

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ELSEWHERE

A good comment from an Australian reader on my leading post yesterday: ""Spiked" recently had an interesting article on the politically correct use of 'homophobia'. Your link on gay domestic violence may even indicate that homophilic violence (not always 'domestic') is a bigger threat to gays than homophobic violence. Of course it is political correctness types, not necessarily gays themselves, who push this homophobia barrow. Basically as part of their bigger agenda to curtail personal liberty for all people gay or not, presumably to socially engineer their utopian fantasy. I think most people, including most minority members, would rather have strong broad-based legal protections for all and a non-intrusive state and put up with the ratbag and bigoted views of some of their neighbours, than risk our personal freedoms in a futile crusade for universal tolerance".

The "protests" at GWB's inauguration have inspired one blogger to say that America has become "Berkelified". He then goes on the explain the "reasoning" behind the protests. "Look at me" about sums up the real motivation of the protestors. In case you DO want to see all the weird shapes and sizes that egotism comes in, One Hundred Percenter has some photos.

And here is a sample of the vast intellect behind the protests: "In cold, snowy Washington, about a hundred protesters gathered outside the "Black Tie and Boots" inaugural ball on Wednesday night, comparing President George W. Bush to Adolph Hitler because Bush is "exterminating the Muslim race." "It is no different in that Hitler killed so many Jews, and George Bush, you know, is exterminating the Muslim race and others," said a man who identified himself only as Don from Florida. Don held up a sign with the words "Vote Republican" written over a Nazi swastika. "It's just a form of fascism -- the Patriot Act and everything -- they stole the vote".

Taranto: "UC Berkeley recently completed what a press release describes as "the first attempt to compare measures of mental health and general well-being among California's general population on a county-level basis." The study (link in PDF) finds that the two counties with the lowest "mental health scores" are Alameda, which includes Berkeley, and San Francisco, which is coterminous with the city. (See page 30 of the PDF document, which is page 21 of the printed report.). What else do these counties have in common? They are the California counties where John Kerry did best: 83% of the vote in San Francisco and 75% in Alameda. You don't have to be crazy to oppose President Bush, but it doesn't hurt".

Loony British welfare: "A think-tank claims that married couples are being rewarded for splitting up. The tax and benefits system subsidises marriage break-up and rewards lone parents with handouts at the expense of married couples, a report says. The average couple-family, where one partner has a job, is 1 pound a week better off than the average workless one-parent family because lone parents get so much extra support from the state"

My latest posting on MarxWords notes that Marx despised peaceful political movements. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at John 1:1 as a concession to popular Christolatry.

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

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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.

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"HOMOPHOBIA"

I no more believe in persecuting homosexuals than I believe in kicking sick dogs but I am quite fed up with the way the Left keep banging on about "homophobia". Now that Leftists mostly admit that they hate Jews and don't send their kids to schools in black neighbourhoods, the poor old queers seem to be about all that the Left have still got to patronize. And calling homosexuals "gay" is the biggest laugh of all. They are not too gay in the final stages of AIDS and the incidence of domestic violence among homosexual couples seems to be enormous. For instance: "One study found 79% of gay victims had suffered some physical injury".

And the whole "homophobia" chant is about a myth anyway. "Phobia" comes from the Greek word "phobos", meaning "fear" and I have yet to meet ANYONE who fears homosexuals. In my observation, the thought of homosexual behaviour disgusts normal people (as we would expect it to on evolutionary grounds) but disgust is a long way from fear and even further from hate.

Homosexual behaviour is using sexual organs in an abnormal way so it seems to me simply accurate to call it perverted or deviant or queer but if people don't have a right to do what they want with their own bodies then the state of liberty is very bad indeed. So I see no reason whatever why their private behaviour should earn homosexuals any kind of punishment or hurt or bad treatment. And as far as I can see, that is overwhelmingly both the normal view and the normal practice throughout the Western world today. I do however have the perfectly mainstream belief that homosexual advocacy should be kept away from children. As far as I can see, some homosexual behaviour is innate and some is learned. So some kids could go either way. And all parents want the happiest life possible for their children so do not want them lured into a lifestyle associated with much unhappiness and loss -- including early death. The average life expectancy of homosexuals is around 40 years. And "gay men were six times more likely to suffer adult sexual abuse or rape"

And in their never-ending efforts to draw attention to themselves it is precisely that solitary taboo -- on exposing children to homosexuality -- that Leftists devote much effort to breaking. Who they think they are benefiting by it I do not know. But benefiting anybody has never been the real Leftist aim. They are such haters that upsetting normal people leading everyday happy lives is their real kick.

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ELSEWHERE

Desperate Leftist attempt to find "war crimes": "The Culinary Institute of America yesterday denounced participation of military nutritionists in torture of Guantanamo detainees. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, nutritionists on the Cuban naval base assisted in the preparation of Halal meals for detainees, which were sometimes served after stressful interrogation sessions. "A deep-fried falafel burger, when a detainee's blood pressure is elevated, may be the difference between a mere violation of the Geneva Conventions and a war crime"". [But when Saddam put people through a shredding machine that was no problem of course]

The full text of Condi Rice's excellent confirmation speech is here. A good excerpt: "In the Middle East, President Bush has broken with six decades of excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the hope of purchasing stability at the price of liberty. The stakes could not be higher". President Bush's inaugural speech is here. Note how in his closing words he violated the "separation of church and State" that only Leftists can find in the constitution: "May God bless you, and may He watch over the United States of America"

The Soviets were really teddy-bears? "The revisionist depiction of the Cold War, offered throughout the academy, is founded on fantasy. The scholarship of left-wing historians is focused on what might have been rather than what actually was. Clearly sympathetic to the ultimate aim of communism-a classless society-leftist historians like Leslie Adler and Thomas Patterson write that Soviet communism "was a system proclaiming a humanistic ideology" that had only "fail[ed] to live up to its ideal." But in truth the Bolsheviks failed to deliver in every way. They promised bread but produced chronic food storages and rationing.... Communists were mass murderers on a scale never before seen in history. In the Soviet Union, the mass killing included the wholesale murder of several hundred thousand Don Cossacks in 1919, the starving to death of as many as seven million Ukrainian peasants in 1932-1933, the execution of nearly one million party members in the purges of 1937-1938, and the burial of millions of Trotskyites and other political prisoners in the Gulag starting in the 1930s and continuing into the 1950s".

Garbologists get it right: "A German museum is offering art appreciation lessons to Frankfurt's sanitation workers, after garbage collectors lugged away a public art sculpture recently and sent it to the incinerator. Peter Postleb, head of the city's Clean Frankfurt initiative, claimed responsibility Monday for the case of mistaken identity, after garbage collectors picked up and disposed of what they thought to be construction rubbish. Though indeed made from yellow plastic sheeting used to encase cement, the item was actually a sculpture by Berlin artist Michael Beutler. It was part of a series of 10 sculptures commissioned by the municipal art society and exhibited around the city".

South African boondoggle: "One of government's flagship poverty-relief measures is in crisis, sounding warning bells ahead of local government elections later this year. Government's policy of providing free basic electricity for the poor has been lauded as one of the successes of the fight against poverty, but it has now been shown to be poorly run and failing dismally to reach those it is intended for... Ompi Aphane, chief director in the minerals and energy department, said yesterday that only 12% of the poor had received the free electricity benefit in the 18 months since its launch, while expenditure on the initiative had ballooned to about R750m 2,4 times more than budgeted.... This meant, said Aphane, that 1,7-million consumers or 88% of all municipal customers, most of whom who did not qualify for it were getting free basic electricity."

Rafe Champion has put up on the Quiggin site a brief version of some arguments why labor union activity does not benefit workers as a whole.

John Hawkins from Right Wing News has just posted the results of his poll of right-of-center bloggers on whom they consider "The Most & Least Desired 2008 Republican Nominee".

My latest posting on MarxWords notes that Marx wanted democracy to "rot away". My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at John 2: 19-22, where some say Jesus promised to resurrect himself!

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

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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.

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IS CONSERVATISM NO MORE THAN BELIEF IN A FIXED HUMAN NATURE?

Mark Richardson is an Australian conservative who has a definition of conservatism that excludes most people who would normally be called conservatives. He has a blog here and one of his recent articles is here. There has always been a tendency on the extreme Right to see almost the whole world as against them and even I seem to be an extreme Leftist to such people! Mark is however not part of the fruitcake brigade. He has a well-articulated position which amounts to saying that all advocacy of freedom is Leftist (or "liberal" as he calls it) and what makes a conservative is belief in certain hereditary givens -- such as belief in the selfishness of human nature, the tribalism of man and the instinctive and ineluctible rightness of the traditional family. As a rough summary, we might say that Mark believes conservatism to consist of a belief in strong genetic limits on what we can do and become.

Most conservatives would of course agree with Mark about his three conservative themes that I have just mentioned. I myself agree fully only with the first point -- about human nature. I have set out reasons here why I believe that, although it does exist, the tribalism of man is surprisingly weak. And I also see many perfectly healthy, decent and well-functioning people emerging from a variety of family arrangements. I think that there is now overwhelming evidence from the geneticists that what we become is almost entirely a function of our genes rather than of our family environment. Even our political ideology is substantially inherited through our genes. (See e.g. here and here and here). So actual genetic research in fact undermines Mark's belief in the central importance of a given type of family environment.

What I think has happened is that Mark has gone overboard. He is the opposite swing of the pendulum to the Left. The Left believe in NO inborn limits on what human arrangements will work whereas Mark sees limits on every hand. The truth, I think, is to be found in treating what inborn limits we have as an emprical question. Their constant policy failures from the French revolution onwards show that the Leftists are wrong but what is right can only be discovered by trial and error. And that is why conservatives believe that tradition and history are important and useful. They are the laboratory in which we see what works and what doesn't.

And one thing we find in that laboratory is that we do have liberties as well as limitations and the liberties are in fact highly transformative. Giving people liberties of certain sorts -- such as economic liberty -- can be enormously beneficial. And the high value conservatives have always placed on liberty also springs from their belief in the selfishness and untrustworthiness of their fellow man: If you cannot trust your fellow-man to do you good, it is important to be as free of his control over you as possible. So Mark has thrown the baby out with the bathwater. He is right that we do work under some genetic constraints and are hence not totally free but we still can have and do have SOME liberties, and those are enormously beneficial. So it is no wonder that conservatives have long made efforts to conserve and extend liberties -- such as political liberty -- of various sorts, while also rejecting other liberties -- particularly in the moral sphere. Real-life conservatives believe in striking a balance -- which neither Leftists nor Mark do.

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ELSEWHERE

We have just seen what I think is a good end to a very nasty case of anti-white racism. A group of four California policemen were trying to subdue an aggressive and unco-operative black teenager and not having an easy time of it. At one stage one of the white officers punched the teenager. It was later agreed by all concerned that the punch was justified. Black activists made a big fuss over it however and the white policeman was then fired from his job by his black boss, charged with misconduct and put through a series of trials. The trials failed to convict him of anything. He then sued the police department for discrimination -- saying that he had been fired and put on trial only because he was white. He has just won his case and been awarded $1.6 million. A great victory for justice and against racism, it seems to me.

Iran buying bioweapons? "Iran's ambassador to Cuba said his country will increase ties to the Communist dictatorship 90 miles from Florida by extending some 20 million in euro credit. United by anti-Americanism, the two countries have grown closer in recent years - a concern to some in Washington because of Iran's sponsorship of terrorism and desire to develop weapons of mass destruction. Cuba has an extensive biological and chemical weapons development program. Plans for more scientific collaboration were announced by Ahmad Edrian, Iran's ambassador to Cuba. They include plans by Cuba to help build a plant in Iran to produce vaccines and medicines".

EU socialism crushes entrepreneurship: "The EU continues to lag behind the US when it comes to entrepreneurship, a poll published on Monday (17 January) by the European Commission shows. The survey - conducted on both sides of the Atlantic - shows that nearly twice as many Americans are thinking of setting up their own business (28 percent) than their European counterparts (15 percent). Moreover, the gap appears to be widening. The number of people thinking about starting their own firm increased by eight percent since 2003 in the US, but only by two percent in the EU." [With all the bureaucratic barriers they would have to face, Europeans are REALISTIC to write off the idea of starting a business]

Talk about special pleading! "Eliminating global poverty, disease and hunger are "utterly affordable" but need concerted action from rich nations, including a massive increase in funding for scientific research addressing the needs of the world's poor. These are among the findings of a comprehensive report by the UN Millennium Project that was presented to UN secretary-general Kofi Annan yesterday (17 January). The report calls on international donors specifically to support scientific research on health, agriculture, natural resource, energy and climate change". [It is capitalism that ends poverty, not science]

There is an article here arguing that homosexuals should be charged more for their health insurance. Why? Because of the very high medical costs associated with AIDS.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again -- with a very large offering this time

My latest posting on MarxWords notes that Marx blackmailed his own mother! Nice type. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at an Old Testament scripture for a change (Isaiah 43:11). Did Isaiah support the Trinity?

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

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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.

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BOOK REVIEW: A PATRIOT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

By L. Schweikart and M. Allen; Publisher: Penguin, N.Y., 2004

It is refreshing to see a book like this published by a mainstream publisher. It seems that at least one mainstream publisher sees the advantage of having some balance in their list. Penguin is normally a reliable fountain of Left-wing books. Perhaps they even bored themselves in the end. The book is however on a special "Sentinel" list for specifically conservative books. Quarantining conservative books like a dangerous disease is a sort of a compliment to such books, though. It shows how much they threaten the Leftist orthodoxy.

From what I can gather, American history as it is taught in most American schools these days consists mainly of a series of crimes committed against minorities and others by "dead white males". The situation is similar in Australia, where we are routinely told that our white ancestors committed "genocide" against the Tasmanian aborigines -- although the aborigines concerned in fact died out from the effects of white men's diseases rather than white men's bullets.

This book is certainly meant to be an alternative to the Leftist propaganda by Howard Zinn and others that passes for school textbooks these days but it does not insult our intelligence by substituting Rightist propaganda for Leftist propaganda. If it had been conservative propaganda, for instance, we might expect it to stress the central importance of the Pilgrim fathers and their Christian faith in the American founding. And double that if you are aware that Schweikart is a committed Christian. In fact, however, the book glides over this small group of blown-off-course religious renegades as the relatively minor event in the British settlement of North America that it was. The Mayflower Pilgrims get in fact less than two pages out of 928. Even Africans arrived in North America before the Pilgrims! If any of that jars you, you need to read the book.

I will not say any more about the book other than to say that it is a meticulous and balanced coverage of the WHOLE of American history right up to the present day. And it only needs the facts to explode heaps of Leftist myths along the way. Don't even get me started on the New Deal and the Great Depression!

I have previously mentioned the excellent A politically incorrect Guide to American history by Tom Woods, which focuses specifically on debunking Leftist myths. This book by contrast is a "just the facts" approach to the whole of American history. Both for students and as a comprehensive one-volume home reference I know of nothing better. And, given recent scandals, I guess I should mention that neither Penguin nor anyone else are paying me to say that. Being both well-off and too old for any shenanigans, I would not be tempted by bribes anyway.

There is a much more extensive summary of the book and a cut-price offer for buyers here. Nearly 1,000 pages of history for less than 30 bucks seems pretty good to me.

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