ELSEWHERE
I noted on April 28th. the recent big academic study showing that lower income for black males is mainly (76%) due to lower black IQ. There is an excellent summary of the same study here which notes a point in the study that I had overlooked previously: That black females actually do slightly BETTER than their IQ would lead one to expect -- showing that ability deficit is the main problem for black females and that affirmative action does help them. With black males, however, there are attitudinal problems in addition to the IQ problems so affirmative action does not get them earning at even the low level their abilities would indicate. There are several possible reasons why black women do better than black men and I have mentioned what some of the black male problems are previously in connection with another study that reported similar findings.
Most racial "hate crimes" are now fake: "But hypersensitivity, far from dissolving racial barriers, acts to reinforce them. Racial prejudice will never entirely disappear from college campuses, any more than sloth, lust, greed, envy or any other human vice will ever be eradicated. But when phony hate crimes become more of a problem than real ones, it's time to obsess about something else".
More on British academic antisemites: "British academic moonbats recently decided to declare "academic boycotts" against two Israeli universities... The "boycotters" are motivated by hatred for Israel and Jews, not any desire for peace. They are the pseudo-academic equivalents of pogromchiki. The Moonbrits claim they are simply using the same tactic that was employed effectively against the apartheid regime in South Africa to bring it down. And that is why they are now using it against the only state in the Middle East that is not an apartheid country, against the only country in the Middle East in which academic freedom exists. Professor Mina Telcher, a leading mathematician, was denied the opportunity to put the Israelis' side of the story before the AUT ("the trade union and professional association for over 48,700 UK higher education professionals") ahead of the vote. A bit of pre-boycott boycotting.... Not since 1930s Germany have Jews been the targets of an official boycott in a civilized country.... But no doubt, the most incredible aspect of the affair is the unambiguous condemnation of the boycotters of Israeli universities by... (drumroll) ...a pro-terror Palestinian university! Yes, Al-Quds University in Israeli-liberated eastern Jerusalem has come out against the British academic boycott of Israel.
More Leftist hate-speech against Christians: "Understanding and answering the "religious far right" that propelled President Bush's re-election is key to preventing a "theocracy" from governing the nation, speakers argued at a weekend conference. "The religious right now has an unprecedented influence on American politics and policy," said Ralph White, co-founder of the Open Center, a New York City institution focused on holistic learning.... The United States is "not yet a theocracy," Joan Bokaer, founder of TheocracyWatch.org, said Friday night... She compared the Federal Communications Commission's threatened crackdown on indecency on television with the Taliban, the repressive Islamic rulers of Afghanistan who harbored Osama bin Laden's terrorist network until toppled by a U.S.-led invasion". [Do these fruitcakes think they are going to get the Christian votes they need this way? They are so hate-filled that they are shooting themselves in the foot. Do they think Christians can't read all these hateful things they say? Maybe they do -- their opinion of Christians is so low]
"The poor" are in fact overfed: "The poor are most likely to be fat, but the more affluent are closing the gap. Obesity is growing fastest among Americans who make more than $60,000 a year, researchers reported Monday. 'This is a very surprising finding,' said Dr. Jennifer Robinson of the University of Iowa, whose study was presented at a meeting of the American Heart Association. But it 'underlines the whole complexity' of the obesity epidemic, she said. For years doctors have known that the people most likely to be overweight have the lowest incomes."
There is a big article by David Pryce-Jones (PDF) called "Jews, Arabs and French Diplomacy" detailing the long history of official French antisemitism. (See second article listed).
Britain's IEA has now put online the famous Reader's Digest condensed version (PDF) of Hayek's Road to Serfdom
Jack Wheeler has two novel ways of solving the Social Security problem: Sell some of the huge amount of land that the U.S. government owns and work out a way to use American oil sands to produce oil.
One of my readers has written his own interesting analysis of Leftist motivations. See here
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 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.
Leftist ideologues 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 and can con "the masses" into giving them power.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
FOUR GOOD BOOK REVIEWS
Review of Chomsky book: "The Anti-Chomsky Reader is a polemical broadside intended to slam Chomsky into oblivion.... Collier and Horowitz understand well the manufactured reality of political fame, and to dismantle it requires not contrary vitriol or clever rejoinders but direct, fact-based assertions that undermine the authenticity of the image. To that end, the contributors follow a simple procedure: Quote actual statements by Chomsky and test them for evidence and logic. The best contributions to the volume add the effective and timely tactic of citing Chomsky's progressive virtues and revealing how smoothly he abandons them..... Nichols points out that Chomsky's footnotes are red herrings, his numbers exaggerated, and his facts tendentious. For instance, a footnote in Chomsky's World Orders Old and New that purports to demonstrate a point in fact leads only to an earlier Chomsky title, and in that text the relevant passage footnotes still an earlier Chomsky title. But his most damning discovery is broader: that Chomsky lacks a historian's openness to fresh evidence. All historians know that understanding history is an unfolding enterprise, ever subject to revision. And yet not one revelation of the last 20 years has led to a moment's reassessment by Chomsky. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the opening of KGB archives, testimony by dissidents and ex-Communists-nothing alters his outlook."
Keith Windschuttle has a good review of Jim Bennett's book: The Anglosphere Challenge: Why the English-Speaking Nations Will Lead the Way in the Twenty-First Century. Excerpt: "Whatever the outcome, The Anglosphere Challenge is one of the important books of our time. It establishes the centrality of British culture to the economic, technological, and political prospects of the world. The ancient traditions of the British - individual rights and responsibilities, minimal government, and a strong civil society - constitute the most reliable formula for a future that works. Even if that future turns out to be less confined to countries of British descent than Bennett predicts, it is highly likely still to be dominated by their cultural values and traditions."
There is a book review here showing that the envious French hatred of America goes back a long way. Excerpt: "During the German occupation, when French anti-Semitic collaborators had no reason to disguise the real roots of their hatred, it had seemed that a ne plus ultra of crazed invective had been reached: it was then that America's addiction to jazz was explained by "the Negro character inherent in the Jewish race". It would be funny, except that similar obscenities continue to our day. Some are casual, such as a recent film review in Le Monde that, commenting on the ambition of the American film industry to dominate the planet with its images, concluded: "Goebbels said the same thing about German images in his day." And some are sick, like the huge sales of the French book alleging that the Americans had blown up the Twin Towers themselves. Sicker still was the admission by the philosopher Jean Baudrillard after 9/11 of "the prodigious jubilation in seeing this global superpower destroyed... Ultimately they [Muslims] were the ones who did it, but we were the ones who wanted it.""
Jared Diamond's book Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years tries to explain history in terms of environmentalism but it twists the facts: "Another instance of forcing the facts to fit the theory is Diamond's "law of history" asserting that agricultural societies will inevitably come to dominate their non-agricultural neighbors. He ignores the multitude of instances where settled farmers were conquered by nomadic horsemen: the Hittite conquest of the ancient Middle East, (possibly) the invasion of Greece by the Dorians, the successive movements of the Celtic and Germanic people across Europe, the Aryan migration into India, the Turkish conquest of much of the Moslem world that began in the 11th century, and the vast Mongolian conquests of the 13th and 14th centuries. In fact, such examples led both the political theorist Albert Jay Nock and the economist Murray Rothbard to suggest a typical pattern in history nearly the opposite of Diamond's. They hypothesized that states arise when some nomadic people, who have been repeatedly raiding a nearby society of relatively peaceful farmers over an extended period, come to realize that it is more profitable to settle right in the farming community as rulers"
*********************************
Review of Chomsky book: "The Anti-Chomsky Reader is a polemical broadside intended to slam Chomsky into oblivion.... Collier and Horowitz understand well the manufactured reality of political fame, and to dismantle it requires not contrary vitriol or clever rejoinders but direct, fact-based assertions that undermine the authenticity of the image. To that end, the contributors follow a simple procedure: Quote actual statements by Chomsky and test them for evidence and logic. The best contributions to the volume add the effective and timely tactic of citing Chomsky's progressive virtues and revealing how smoothly he abandons them..... Nichols points out that Chomsky's footnotes are red herrings, his numbers exaggerated, and his facts tendentious. For instance, a footnote in Chomsky's World Orders Old and New that purports to demonstrate a point in fact leads only to an earlier Chomsky title, and in that text the relevant passage footnotes still an earlier Chomsky title. But his most damning discovery is broader: that Chomsky lacks a historian's openness to fresh evidence. All historians know that understanding history is an unfolding enterprise, ever subject to revision. And yet not one revelation of the last 20 years has led to a moment's reassessment by Chomsky. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the opening of KGB archives, testimony by dissidents and ex-Communists-nothing alters his outlook."
Keith Windschuttle has a good review of Jim Bennett's book: The Anglosphere Challenge: Why the English-Speaking Nations Will Lead the Way in the Twenty-First Century. Excerpt: "Whatever the outcome, The Anglosphere Challenge is one of the important books of our time. It establishes the centrality of British culture to the economic, technological, and political prospects of the world. The ancient traditions of the British - individual rights and responsibilities, minimal government, and a strong civil society - constitute the most reliable formula for a future that works. Even if that future turns out to be less confined to countries of British descent than Bennett predicts, it is highly likely still to be dominated by their cultural values and traditions."
There is a book review here showing that the envious French hatred of America goes back a long way. Excerpt: "During the German occupation, when French anti-Semitic collaborators had no reason to disguise the real roots of their hatred, it had seemed that a ne plus ultra of crazed invective had been reached: it was then that America's addiction to jazz was explained by "the Negro character inherent in the Jewish race". It would be funny, except that similar obscenities continue to our day. Some are casual, such as a recent film review in Le Monde that, commenting on the ambition of the American film industry to dominate the planet with its images, concluded: "Goebbels said the same thing about German images in his day." And some are sick, like the huge sales of the French book alleging that the Americans had blown up the Twin Towers themselves. Sicker still was the admission by the philosopher Jean Baudrillard after 9/11 of "the prodigious jubilation in seeing this global superpower destroyed... Ultimately they [Muslims] were the ones who did it, but we were the ones who wanted it.""
Jared Diamond's book Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years tries to explain history in terms of environmentalism but it twists the facts: "Another instance of forcing the facts to fit the theory is Diamond's "law of history" asserting that agricultural societies will inevitably come to dominate their non-agricultural neighbors. He ignores the multitude of instances where settled farmers were conquered by nomadic horsemen: the Hittite conquest of the ancient Middle East, (possibly) the invasion of Greece by the Dorians, the successive movements of the Celtic and Germanic people across Europe, the Aryan migration into India, the Turkish conquest of much of the Moslem world that began in the 11th century, and the vast Mongolian conquests of the 13th and 14th centuries. In fact, such examples led both the political theorist Albert Jay Nock and the economist Murray Rothbard to suggest a typical pattern in history nearly the opposite of Diamond's. They hypothesized that states arise when some nomadic people, who have been repeatedly raiding a nearby society of relatively peaceful farmers over an extended period, come to realize that it is more profitable to settle right in the farming community as rulers"
*********************************
ELSEWHERE
"Liberals" still like Communists: "Molly Ivins' current argument against John Bolton is that the North Koreans don't like him. To recap: the North Koreans are what we call "Communists," or, "the enemy." Great sentience is not required to grasp that point-unless of course you happen to have served in the Clinton White House.... The election is over, but apparently the affection for Communism hasn't quite subsided. At least that's what Molly Ivins seems to indicate. "After dealing with Bolton," she writes, "the North Korean government called him `human scum' and `a bloodsucker,' and declined to recognize him as an official of the United States." And if any group can judge character, it's the government of axis-of-evil nation North Korea!.... I think it would be useful to figure out where liberals draw the line when it comes to supporting the enemy. We see from Ivins' column that some people think it's okay to let our sworn enemies help formulate our foreign policy. Fine. But what about terrorists? If Osama didn't like Bolton, what would Molly Ivins say? When will liberals map out exactly which enemies they like, and which they oppose? It's not incidental to my point that just as Ms. Ivins was writing her column, North Korea was publicly asserting its nuclear prowess. Liberals get huffy when some guy in Montana buys a pistol for the shooting range, but a Communist nation expanding its nuke arsenal doesn't faze them".
Davids Medienkritik has a big coverage of the moronic propaganda coming from the German Left at the moment. Their chief villain? Global capitalism! Ironic in view of the fact that Germany is one of the chief beneficiaries of global capitalism.
The rubbish that some so-called "scientists" talk! Note this: "The new data, released by the government two weeks ago, confirm that obesity can kill, even if the numbers are squishy, said Dr. David Katz, a Yale University obesity researcher. "Clearly it isn't a license to gorge yourself." The same figures show that only GROSS obesity reduces lifespan. Moderately overweight people live LONGER than slim people!
Readers may note that I rarely say anything about the Social Security debate. One reason is that we already have in Australia roughly what GWB is proposing and it is a non-issue here but the main reason is that Dick McDonald does such a good job of covering all the bases from a U.S. point of view. If you are at all interested in the subject, you should be logging onto Dick's site regularly. He is an accountant by trade so knows what he is talking about.
Right Wing News has the results of a poll to see who the favourite columnists of right-wing bloggers are. My no. 1 pick (Sowell) was way down the list. I guess economists can be a bit specialized but I was once a High School economics teacher so I speak the lingo, as it were.
No Speed Bumps is a new conservative blog with lots of interesting posts.
My latest quote on MARXWORDS is a final summing up of what made Marx tick by Gary North.
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 Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 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.
Leftist ideologues 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 and can con "the masses" into giving them power.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
"Liberals" still like Communists: "Molly Ivins' current argument against John Bolton is that the North Koreans don't like him. To recap: the North Koreans are what we call "Communists," or, "the enemy." Great sentience is not required to grasp that point-unless of course you happen to have served in the Clinton White House.... The election is over, but apparently the affection for Communism hasn't quite subsided. At least that's what Molly Ivins seems to indicate. "After dealing with Bolton," she writes, "the North Korean government called him `human scum' and `a bloodsucker,' and declined to recognize him as an official of the United States." And if any group can judge character, it's the government of axis-of-evil nation North Korea!.... I think it would be useful to figure out where liberals draw the line when it comes to supporting the enemy. We see from Ivins' column that some people think it's okay to let our sworn enemies help formulate our foreign policy. Fine. But what about terrorists? If Osama didn't like Bolton, what would Molly Ivins say? When will liberals map out exactly which enemies they like, and which they oppose? It's not incidental to my point that just as Ms. Ivins was writing her column, North Korea was publicly asserting its nuclear prowess. Liberals get huffy when some guy in Montana buys a pistol for the shooting range, but a Communist nation expanding its nuke arsenal doesn't faze them".
Davids Medienkritik has a big coverage of the moronic propaganda coming from the German Left at the moment. Their chief villain? Global capitalism! Ironic in view of the fact that Germany is one of the chief beneficiaries of global capitalism.
The rubbish that some so-called "scientists" talk! Note this: "The new data, released by the government two weeks ago, confirm that obesity can kill, even if the numbers are squishy, said Dr. David Katz, a Yale University obesity researcher. "Clearly it isn't a license to gorge yourself." The same figures show that only GROSS obesity reduces lifespan. Moderately overweight people live LONGER than slim people!
Readers may note that I rarely say anything about the Social Security debate. One reason is that we already have in Australia roughly what GWB is proposing and it is a non-issue here but the main reason is that Dick McDonald does such a good job of covering all the bases from a U.S. point of view. If you are at all interested in the subject, you should be logging onto Dick's site regularly. He is an accountant by trade so knows what he is talking about.
Right Wing News has the results of a poll to see who the favourite columnists of right-wing bloggers are. My no. 1 pick (Sowell) was way down the list. I guess economists can be a bit specialized but I was once a High School economics teacher so I speak the lingo, as it were.
No Speed Bumps is a new conservative blog with lots of interesting posts.
My latest quote on MARXWORDS is a final summing up of what made Marx tick by Gary North.
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 Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 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.
Leftist ideologues 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 and can con "the masses" into giving them power.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Monday, May 02, 2005
LOTS OF ECONOMICS TODAY
Imports? Never! "Late in 2001 and early in 2002, America's economic mercantilists (who tend to ascribe domestic economic difficulties to all things foreign) were complaining about cheap foreign steel in the U.S. economy. No sooner had the Bush administration slapped higher tariffs on foreign steel than the mercantilists started spinning sky-is-falling tales about Asians selling computer software and medical technology to Americans at bargain basement prices. The latter spawned a media cottage industry around the term, "outsourcing." So what's the mercantilists' 2005 cause celebre? Believe it or not, it's high-priced imports! Oil imports to be specific. Not low-priced imported oil, mind you, but high-priced oil. Apparently, low import prices and high import prices both pack a damaging economic punch, at least for the mercantilists. An economic contradiction? Yes. One of the scenarios has to be wrong.
A powerful case for free trade: "Protective tariffs are as much applications of force as are blockading squadrons, and their object is the same-to prevent trade. The difference between the two is that blockading squadrons are a means whereby nations seek to prevent their enemies from trading; protective tariffs are a means whereby nations attempt to prevent their own people from trading. What protection teaches us, is to do to ourselves in time of peace what enemies seek to do to us in time of war. Can there be any greater misuse of language than to apply to commerce terms suggesting strife, and to talk of one nation invading, deluging, overwhelming or inundating another with goods? Goods! What are they but good things-things we are all glad to get?"
The British decline: "After years in which the UK actually managed to restrict the growth of government, a period not coincidentally that created the conditions for the best economic performance in a couple of generations, the tax take is set to rise sharply. Within three years, taxes will account for more than 40 per cent of gross domestic product, the highest level in 25 years, and beginning to close the gap again with the levels in sclerotic Western European countries. It will get worse. The Government now backs a more or less open-ended commitment to pouring ever more resources into the demonstrably inefficient bureaucracy of the NHS. Pensions, welfare benefits and education will devour tens of billions more even than current projections suggest."
An excellent response to the customary Leftist ignoring of the facts about poverty here. Excerpt: "Official statistics rely on income data that are misleading. Some low-income households earn money "off the books" either through illegality or because reporting it would cost them taxes or giveaways. Other households go through income droughts, perhaps due to layoffs or college attendance, and tide themselves over with savings or gifts from family. Finally, income data do not count the value of non-cash government benefits, such as Medicaid, public housing, or food stamps. Far more useful are data on consumption, which is one's standard of living. Research has shown that for the households in question, average consumption is as much as 40 percent higher than reported income".
Chinese currency issue is a red herring: "How determined is Congress to make China inflate its currency? Earlier this month the Senate, by a margin of 67 to 33, voted to consider a proposal to impose a 27.5 percent tariff on all imports from China unless it does. While the tariff proposal is not law -- yet -- its consideration bodes ill for U.S. trade policy. Misconceptions have spawned misgivings about trade in the Congress, where too many policy makers view it as an adversarial, zero sum game. The country either wins or loses, and the trade balance determines the score. According to this view, our growing trade deficit (search) means that we are losing, and our record bilateral deficit with China is proof that our toughest opponent is cheating. But this obsession is a fool's errand."
The mouse and the market: "Our society holds up invention as the spearhead of progress. Those who first discover an idea are the ones who receive the Nobel Prizes and earn their places in the history books. But in Man, Economy and State, Rothbard shockingly argues that technological invention is relatively unimportant in the progress of civilization. Instead, capital is the far more important, and limiting factor. In fact, he claims, 'there is always an unused shelf of technological projects available and idle.' Why idle? '. . . in order for the new invention to be used, more capital must be invested.'"
*********************************
Imports? Never! "Late in 2001 and early in 2002, America's economic mercantilists (who tend to ascribe domestic economic difficulties to all things foreign) were complaining about cheap foreign steel in the U.S. economy. No sooner had the Bush administration slapped higher tariffs on foreign steel than the mercantilists started spinning sky-is-falling tales about Asians selling computer software and medical technology to Americans at bargain basement prices. The latter spawned a media cottage industry around the term, "outsourcing." So what's the mercantilists' 2005 cause celebre? Believe it or not, it's high-priced imports! Oil imports to be specific. Not low-priced imported oil, mind you, but high-priced oil. Apparently, low import prices and high import prices both pack a damaging economic punch, at least for the mercantilists. An economic contradiction? Yes. One of the scenarios has to be wrong.
A powerful case for free trade: "Protective tariffs are as much applications of force as are blockading squadrons, and their object is the same-to prevent trade. The difference between the two is that blockading squadrons are a means whereby nations seek to prevent their enemies from trading; protective tariffs are a means whereby nations attempt to prevent their own people from trading. What protection teaches us, is to do to ourselves in time of peace what enemies seek to do to us in time of war. Can there be any greater misuse of language than to apply to commerce terms suggesting strife, and to talk of one nation invading, deluging, overwhelming or inundating another with goods? Goods! What are they but good things-things we are all glad to get?"
The British decline: "After years in which the UK actually managed to restrict the growth of government, a period not coincidentally that created the conditions for the best economic performance in a couple of generations, the tax take is set to rise sharply. Within three years, taxes will account for more than 40 per cent of gross domestic product, the highest level in 25 years, and beginning to close the gap again with the levels in sclerotic Western European countries. It will get worse. The Government now backs a more or less open-ended commitment to pouring ever more resources into the demonstrably inefficient bureaucracy of the NHS. Pensions, welfare benefits and education will devour tens of billions more even than current projections suggest."
An excellent response to the customary Leftist ignoring of the facts about poverty here. Excerpt: "Official statistics rely on income data that are misleading. Some low-income households earn money "off the books" either through illegality or because reporting it would cost them taxes or giveaways. Other households go through income droughts, perhaps due to layoffs or college attendance, and tide themselves over with savings or gifts from family. Finally, income data do not count the value of non-cash government benefits, such as Medicaid, public housing, or food stamps. Far more useful are data on consumption, which is one's standard of living. Research has shown that for the households in question, average consumption is as much as 40 percent higher than reported income".
Chinese currency issue is a red herring: "How determined is Congress to make China inflate its currency? Earlier this month the Senate, by a margin of 67 to 33, voted to consider a proposal to impose a 27.5 percent tariff on all imports from China unless it does. While the tariff proposal is not law -- yet -- its consideration bodes ill for U.S. trade policy. Misconceptions have spawned misgivings about trade in the Congress, where too many policy makers view it as an adversarial, zero sum game. The country either wins or loses, and the trade balance determines the score. According to this view, our growing trade deficit (search) means that we are losing, and our record bilateral deficit with China is proof that our toughest opponent is cheating. But this obsession is a fool's errand."
The mouse and the market: "Our society holds up invention as the spearhead of progress. Those who first discover an idea are the ones who receive the Nobel Prizes and earn their places in the history books. But in Man, Economy and State, Rothbard shockingly argues that technological invention is relatively unimportant in the progress of civilization. Instead, capital is the far more important, and limiting factor. In fact, he claims, 'there is always an unused shelf of technological projects available and idle.' Why idle? '. . . in order for the new invention to be used, more capital must be invested.'"
*********************************
ELSEWHERE
There is a NYT article here about the Constitution in Exile movement -- which is working to get America's constitution taken seriously, instead of it being it "interpreted" into non-existence by Left-leaning Supreme Court judges. If you can ignore the Leftist slant to the article, there is a lot of detailed information there.
Leftists distort the views of those who want the constitution back: "Professor Rosen makes it appear that the Constitution in Exile folks are dogged absolutists about the US Constitution, whereas in fact they aren't or, more aptly put, need not be. They can insist that certain fundamental principles are stable and lasting (enough) and need only small modification and adjustment as human understanding grows (e.g., about human nature, how children should be understood, the facts of homosexuality or when human existence comes into being during pregnancy). The dogmatism or absolutism charge is, thus, quite unfair. What is objectionable from their viewpoint is to think of the Constitution as entirely malleable, not so much living (which is always guided by principles of the life in question) but cancerous (living out of control)."
Half of practicing Jews voted Bush in '04: "Mellman's study found that Americans of all stripes who attended religious services regularly tended to vote Republican far more often than they voted Democratic. His findings among Jewish voters was not as lopsided as that among Christian voters but still the Jewish vote was split down the middle between GOP and Democrat voters. That split is still an amazing new trend in the Jewish community. In fact, George Bush made advances in every Jewish voter category to one degree or another. Of course, many in the chattering classes on the left have been yelping about the evil "religious right" dominating the Republican Party for a decade now. But they must have been taken aback by this rise in GOP voters among the left's favorite and most reliable voting block, the US Jewish population.... religious Americans are increasingly finding themselves uncomfortable and unwelcome among the lunatic fringe in the Democratic Party"
A ex-Marxist gets one thing right about Britain: "The belief in people having the capacity to come together and change the big things was once a principle on the left. But the right also had a sense of destiny and a belief that history was worth fighting for. Politics was centred on the figure of the active human subject. Now it views us more as passive objects to whom things happen. There are no longer any political parties or movements with roots in society, that could give people a sense of greater things being possible. This is often seen as a shift from the collective to the individual. But it is more than that. The decline of the old collective institutions has not been matched by the rise of any robust self-assured individualism. Instead, the typical citizen of our age is seen as an overwhelmingly vulnerable individual, insecure and in need of ever-greater protection from all manner of supposed threats, a victim waiting to happen".
My latest quote on MARXWORDS is from a contemporary of Marx -- the anarchist Bakunin -- who correctly foresaw the evil that Marx's thinking would lead to.
More amazing government malpractice in my home State of Queensland revealed on SOCIALIZED MEDICINE today.
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 Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 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.
Leftist ideologues 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 and can con "the masses" into giving them power.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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There is a NYT article here about the Constitution in Exile movement -- which is working to get America's constitution taken seriously, instead of it being it "interpreted" into non-existence by Left-leaning Supreme Court judges. If you can ignore the Leftist slant to the article, there is a lot of detailed information there.
Leftists distort the views of those who want the constitution back: "Professor Rosen makes it appear that the Constitution in Exile folks are dogged absolutists about the US Constitution, whereas in fact they aren't or, more aptly put, need not be. They can insist that certain fundamental principles are stable and lasting (enough) and need only small modification and adjustment as human understanding grows (e.g., about human nature, how children should be understood, the facts of homosexuality or when human existence comes into being during pregnancy). The dogmatism or absolutism charge is, thus, quite unfair. What is objectionable from their viewpoint is to think of the Constitution as entirely malleable, not so much living (which is always guided by principles of the life in question) but cancerous (living out of control)."
Half of practicing Jews voted Bush in '04: "Mellman's study found that Americans of all stripes who attended religious services regularly tended to vote Republican far more often than they voted Democratic. His findings among Jewish voters was not as lopsided as that among Christian voters but still the Jewish vote was split down the middle between GOP and Democrat voters. That split is still an amazing new trend in the Jewish community. In fact, George Bush made advances in every Jewish voter category to one degree or another. Of course, many in the chattering classes on the left have been yelping about the evil "religious right" dominating the Republican Party for a decade now. But they must have been taken aback by this rise in GOP voters among the left's favorite and most reliable voting block, the US Jewish population.... religious Americans are increasingly finding themselves uncomfortable and unwelcome among the lunatic fringe in the Democratic Party"
A ex-Marxist gets one thing right about Britain: "The belief in people having the capacity to come together and change the big things was once a principle on the left. But the right also had a sense of destiny and a belief that history was worth fighting for. Politics was centred on the figure of the active human subject. Now it views us more as passive objects to whom things happen. There are no longer any political parties or movements with roots in society, that could give people a sense of greater things being possible. This is often seen as a shift from the collective to the individual. But it is more than that. The decline of the old collective institutions has not been matched by the rise of any robust self-assured individualism. Instead, the typical citizen of our age is seen as an overwhelmingly vulnerable individual, insecure and in need of ever-greater protection from all manner of supposed threats, a victim waiting to happen".
My latest quote on MARXWORDS is from a contemporary of Marx -- the anarchist Bakunin -- who correctly foresaw the evil that Marx's thinking would lead to.
More amazing government malpractice in my home State of Queensland revealed on SOCIALIZED MEDICINE today.
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 Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 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.
Leftist ideologues 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 and can con "the masses" into giving them power.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Sunday, May 01, 2005
THE LEFT WERE ONCE MORE CONSERVATIVE
I pointed out at some length a week ago that the further back you go in history the more "Rightist" Leftists appear to have been. Below are some excerpts from a recent essay on the history of the British Labour Party that bear that out. Leftists will use for their own aggrandisement whatever attitudes they see as popular at the time -- from revolution for an angry and much put-upon Russian working class in 1917 to mere sound-good crisis management for the calm and practical British -- though both may be against the long-term best interests of the people concerned. If you think long-term, you are a conservative.
(I have corrected the author's spelling of "Attlee" above. She gave it as "Atlee")
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I pointed out at some length a week ago that the further back you go in history the more "Rightist" Leftists appear to have been. Below are some excerpts from a recent essay on the history of the British Labour Party that bear that out. Leftists will use for their own aggrandisement whatever attitudes they see as popular at the time -- from revolution for an angry and much put-upon Russian working class in 1917 to mere sound-good crisis management for the calm and practical British -- though both may be against the long-term best interests of the people concerned. If you think long-term, you are a conservative.
"Patrick Diamond, editor of the recent book New Labour's Old Roots, argues that the germ of New Labour existed from the start. There has been a strong pragmatic streak in the Labour Party, with a succession of modernisers who, like Blair, freely adapted their politics to the needs of the times. The Labour Party was never a hotbed of theoretical analysis, preferring instead those British values of practical application and common sense.
There weren't many hotheaded radicals among Labour's old leadership, most of whom preferred a go-slow, God-fearing version of 'socialism'. 'Socialism.is an excellently conceived and resolute effort to Christianise government and society', judged Labour leader Ramsay MacDonald, during the party's radical, formative years in the early twentieth century
Even Clement Attlee's 1945-51 reputedly Labourist 'golden age' was pretty prosaic at heart, playing the primary role of restoring profitability in the British economy. Attlee maintained rations, introduced wage restraint in 1948, sent troops to break strikes and imprison militants, and devalued the pound in 1949. ....
When it came to foreign policy, Labour ministers were at least as gung-ho in defending British interests as were the Tories. The recent speeches made by Labour members in parliament about the party's long-standing anti-war tradition have little basis in fact. Attlee was in power in 1945 when Britain's ally America dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima, and he ordered the development of the British bomb without consulting the cabinet, never mind parliament....
(I have corrected the author's spelling of "Attlee" above. She gave it as "Atlee")
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ELSEWHERE
Surprise, Surprise! I said from the beginning that the "Hobbits" were just pygmies: "Indonesian scientists have found a community of Pygmy people on the eastern island of Flores, near a village where Australian scientists discovered a dwarf-sized skeleton last year and declared it a new human species, a newspaper says. The latest discovery will likely raise more controversy over the finding of homo floresiensis, claimed by Australian scientists Mike Morwood and Peter Brown in September last year. They dubbed the new species "hobbits". Kompas Daily reported yesterday that the Pygmy community had been found during an April expedition in the village of Rampapasa, about 1km from the village of Liang Bua where the "hobbits" were found. The newspaper quoted Koeshardjono, a biologist who discovered the Pygmy village, as saying that 77 families had been found living in the village. Eighty per cent of the Rampapasa villagers were of small stature, with most male adults under 145cm and female adults about 135cm". (A few more details here)
There is a type of deadpan Jewish humour that I really love and Arlene Peck is a very Jewish lady so I enjoyed this snippet from the unexpurgated version of her latest column (which I have just posted here): "Today, we are lazy and without a clue about the subjects that make a real difference. I remember when I lived in Israel and the men there, unlike most of the ones I meet here who are gay, married or dead… sometimes all three, were sexual beings. If they woke up at three in the morning, it was to make love. Today, they’ll get up at 3:00 A.M. to watch a Lakers game". The thought of someone being at once gay, married and dead really cracked me up.
Methodists consult everything but the Bible: "A Methodist court Friday reinstated a gay minister who had been defrocked for declaring to her congregation that she was in a relationship with another woman. The United Methodist Church appeals panel voted 8 to 1 to set aside the December decision by another church court to oust Irene "Beth" Stroud for violating the denomination's ban on "self-avowed, practicing homosexual" clergy. The panel said the ban was "null and void" because the church procedures were not followed when it was adopted."
Franklin Delano Mussolini "So, taking a few pages from Mussolini's fascist reforms in Italy, Roosevelt began to group American industries into cartels. These cartels, called Code Authorities, operated under government supervision and had immense authority. They could set quality, prices, and output quantities for the industry. Lower-priced competition was effectively outlawed. This program's failings are too many to elaborate on here, but John Flynn's book The Roosevelt Myth would be a good start for someone wanting more on this topic. In brief, the cartelization scheme was economic nonsense. ... "Mercifully, this program (run as the National Recovery Administration) was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1935.... What Roosevelt had created, Mr. Flynn brilliantly foresaw in 1948, was "that kind of state-supported economic system that will continue to devour a little at a time the private system until it disappears altogether." In a word: fascism (an economic term the appropriateness of which is in no way refuted by the absence of goose-steeping storm troopers in the streets)"
The socialist who admitted he was wrong: "Robert Heilbroner, the bestselling writer of economics, died early this month at the age of 85. He and John Kenneth Galbraith may well have sold more economics books than all other economists combined. Alas, their talents lay more in the writing than the economics. Heilbroner was an outspoken socialist... He was not entirely impervious to new evidence, however. In 1989, he famously wrote in The New Yorker: "Less than 75 years after it officially began, the contest between capitalism and socialism is over: capitalism has won... Capitalism organizes the material affairs of humankind more satisfactorily than socialism." .... Alas, in that same article he went on to say that while socialism might not in fact produce the goods, we would still need to reject capitalism on the grounds of...let's see...I've got it-environmental degradation..... On the big issue of capitalism vs. socialism, though, he did continue his rueful acknowledgment of error. In 1992, he explained the facts of life to Dissent readers: "Capitalism has been as unmistakable a success as socialism has been a failure.... He also noted then that "democratic liberties have not yet appeared, except fleetingly, in any nation that has declared itself to be fundamentally anticapitalist."
There is an unusual retrospective on the Vietnam war Here that points out important gains for the USA from the Vietnam war. The second biggest lot of criminals (after the Communists) in that war was the U.S. "peace" movement that harried the U.S. Congress into cutting off all support for the South -- thus ensuring a Communist victory. Hundreds of thousands who had fought bravely for their liberty lost their lives as a result.
There is a rather awful story up on Strange Justice at the moment about government child abuse in New York City.
In my latest quote on MARXWORDS I note that even Karl Marx's kindly father thought Karl was a bad egg.
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 Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 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.
Leftist ideologues 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 and can con "the masses" into giving them power.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
Surprise, Surprise! I said from the beginning that the "Hobbits" were just pygmies: "Indonesian scientists have found a community of Pygmy people on the eastern island of Flores, near a village where Australian scientists discovered a dwarf-sized skeleton last year and declared it a new human species, a newspaper says. The latest discovery will likely raise more controversy over the finding of homo floresiensis, claimed by Australian scientists Mike Morwood and Peter Brown in September last year. They dubbed the new species "hobbits". Kompas Daily reported yesterday that the Pygmy community had been found during an April expedition in the village of Rampapasa, about 1km from the village of Liang Bua where the "hobbits" were found. The newspaper quoted Koeshardjono, a biologist who discovered the Pygmy village, as saying that 77 families had been found living in the village. Eighty per cent of the Rampapasa villagers were of small stature, with most male adults under 145cm and female adults about 135cm". (A few more details here)
There is a type of deadpan Jewish humour that I really love and Arlene Peck is a very Jewish lady so I enjoyed this snippet from the unexpurgated version of her latest column (which I have just posted here): "Today, we are lazy and without a clue about the subjects that make a real difference. I remember when I lived in Israel and the men there, unlike most of the ones I meet here who are gay, married or dead… sometimes all three, were sexual beings. If they woke up at three in the morning, it was to make love. Today, they’ll get up at 3:00 A.M. to watch a Lakers game". The thought of someone being at once gay, married and dead really cracked me up.
Methodists consult everything but the Bible: "A Methodist court Friday reinstated a gay minister who had been defrocked for declaring to her congregation that she was in a relationship with another woman. The United Methodist Church appeals panel voted 8 to 1 to set aside the December decision by another church court to oust Irene "Beth" Stroud for violating the denomination's ban on "self-avowed, practicing homosexual" clergy. The panel said the ban was "null and void" because the church procedures were not followed when it was adopted."
Franklin Delano Mussolini "So, taking a few pages from Mussolini's fascist reforms in Italy, Roosevelt began to group American industries into cartels. These cartels, called Code Authorities, operated under government supervision and had immense authority. They could set quality, prices, and output quantities for the industry. Lower-priced competition was effectively outlawed. This program's failings are too many to elaborate on here, but John Flynn's book The Roosevelt Myth would be a good start for someone wanting more on this topic. In brief, the cartelization scheme was economic nonsense. ... "Mercifully, this program (run as the National Recovery Administration) was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1935.... What Roosevelt had created, Mr. Flynn brilliantly foresaw in 1948, was "that kind of state-supported economic system that will continue to devour a little at a time the private system until it disappears altogether." In a word: fascism (an economic term the appropriateness of which is in no way refuted by the absence of goose-steeping storm troopers in the streets)"
The socialist who admitted he was wrong: "Robert Heilbroner, the bestselling writer of economics, died early this month at the age of 85. He and John Kenneth Galbraith may well have sold more economics books than all other economists combined. Alas, their talents lay more in the writing than the economics. Heilbroner was an outspoken socialist... He was not entirely impervious to new evidence, however. In 1989, he famously wrote in The New Yorker: "Less than 75 years after it officially began, the contest between capitalism and socialism is over: capitalism has won... Capitalism organizes the material affairs of humankind more satisfactorily than socialism." .... Alas, in that same article he went on to say that while socialism might not in fact produce the goods, we would still need to reject capitalism on the grounds of...let's see...I've got it-environmental degradation..... On the big issue of capitalism vs. socialism, though, he did continue his rueful acknowledgment of error. In 1992, he explained the facts of life to Dissent readers: "Capitalism has been as unmistakable a success as socialism has been a failure.... He also noted then that "democratic liberties have not yet appeared, except fleetingly, in any nation that has declared itself to be fundamentally anticapitalist."
There is an unusual retrospective on the Vietnam war Here that points out important gains for the USA from the Vietnam war. The second biggest lot of criminals (after the Communists) in that war was the U.S. "peace" movement that harried the U.S. Congress into cutting off all support for the South -- thus ensuring a Communist victory. Hundreds of thousands who had fought bravely for their liberty lost their lives as a result.
There is a rather awful story up on Strange Justice at the moment about government child abuse in New York City.
In my latest quote on MARXWORDS I note that even Karl Marx's kindly father thought Karl was a bad egg.
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 Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 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.
Leftist ideologues 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 and can con "the masses" into giving them power.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Saturday, April 30, 2005
MORE FUN WITH THE ANGRY LEFT:
I noted yesterday on LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS how Liberal Avenger has put up another of his fact-free streams of abuse -- this time in response to a critical article by Debbie Schlussel about Marla Ruzicka, the Leftist "martyr" recently killed by the Islamic nutjobs in Iraq. The avenging one has also added a link to the bottom of his post recommending an article by Raimondo which he recommends as a good "fisking" of the Schlussel article. Here are some choice comments from early on in the Raimondo article:
"Yeah, Debbie, Marla was a real blonde – unlike your haggish self. And she was young – again, unlike yourself, in spite of the few pounds of makeup you slosh on your tired old forty-if-you're-a-day face. But recognizing the roots (if you'll pardon the expression) of Schlussel's schadenfreude would require a "reality check" on Debbie Dye-job's part, which is not about to happen. Apart from outright envy, however, what exactly is Schlussel's beef?".
With irrelevant ad hominem garbage like that masquerading as an argument I certainly felt no need to read any further at that point. Coming from someone as messed-up as Raimondo, however, the hate-speech did not at all surprise me.
I have not myself taken any interest in the life and times of Ms Ruzicka but from the extensive and detailed information provided by Debbie Schlussel, I suspect that, far from being a martyr, she was just another self-promoting bigmouth hiding behind a front of "compassion" in the usual Leftist way. There is a picture of her on Raimondo's site which could almost have been designed to portray a self-promoting bigmouth.
Update
The Avenger wrote to me in response to the above and asked how I could condemn what he and Raimondo said when I also came to derogatory conclusions about Ruzicka and Raimondo -- which is a fair question. I replied: "I have no difficulties at all with derisive judgments about people. I make them about Leftists all the time. It is abuse AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR facts and argument that leaves me cold -- and which I deride. In the case of both Raimondo and Ruzicka, I linked to fact-filled articles to give the sources of information on which I based my conclusions."
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I noted yesterday on LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS how Liberal Avenger has put up another of his fact-free streams of abuse -- this time in response to a critical article by Debbie Schlussel about Marla Ruzicka, the Leftist "martyr" recently killed by the Islamic nutjobs in Iraq. The avenging one has also added a link to the bottom of his post recommending an article by Raimondo which he recommends as a good "fisking" of the Schlussel article. Here are some choice comments from early on in the Raimondo article:
"Yeah, Debbie, Marla was a real blonde – unlike your haggish self. And she was young – again, unlike yourself, in spite of the few pounds of makeup you slosh on your tired old forty-if-you're-a-day face. But recognizing the roots (if you'll pardon the expression) of Schlussel's schadenfreude would require a "reality check" on Debbie Dye-job's part, which is not about to happen. Apart from outright envy, however, what exactly is Schlussel's beef?".
With irrelevant ad hominem garbage like that masquerading as an argument I certainly felt no need to read any further at that point. Coming from someone as messed-up as Raimondo, however, the hate-speech did not at all surprise me.
I have not myself taken any interest in the life and times of Ms Ruzicka but from the extensive and detailed information provided by Debbie Schlussel, I suspect that, far from being a martyr, she was just another self-promoting bigmouth hiding behind a front of "compassion" in the usual Leftist way. There is a picture of her on Raimondo's site which could almost have been designed to portray a self-promoting bigmouth.
Update
The Avenger wrote to me in response to the above and asked how I could condemn what he and Raimondo said when I also came to derogatory conclusions about Ruzicka and Raimondo -- which is a fair question. I replied: "I have no difficulties at all with derisive judgments about people. I make them about Leftists all the time. It is abuse AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR facts and argument that leaves me cold -- and which I deride. In the case of both Raimondo and Ruzicka, I linked to fact-filled articles to give the sources of information on which I based my conclusions."
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"BLACK CULTURE" REVISITED
On Wednesday I posted a brief critique of Thomas Sowell's theory about black culture being responsible for black under-achievement. Yesterday I put up two further comments on the subject by Steve Sailer and Star Parker. A reader has however reminded me of what is probably the most important factor:
In fact, that comment reminded me of an earlier post harking back to something that most Americans have probably now forgotten: That characteristic black behaviour in America was up until around 50 years ago roughly the opposite of what it is now. See here. So where was the "African" and "cracker" culture then? Did it have opposite results then to what it has now? My correspondent is clearly right: Objective circumstances (to use a Marxist term!) matter most and current self-destructive African behaviour is not the result of ANY long-standing culture but rather the result of the perverse incentives that American Leftists have created with indiscriminate welfare policies, affirmative action, anti-American education, racial quotas on policing and the promotion of a "victim" mentality among minorities generally. And I think it is clear that even the influence of genetics pales into insignificance compared with the effect of the positive and negative incentive systems that society sets up for people.
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On Wednesday I posted a brief critique of Thomas Sowell's theory about black culture being responsible for black under-achievement. Yesterday I put up two further comments on the subject by Steve Sailer and Star Parker. A reader has however reminded me of what is probably the most important factor:
"Sailer's comment that today's behavior is "an African thing" is just as much of a "stretch" as Sowell's saying it was a "Redneck thing". Neither has had serious influence for over 200 years. Blacks were long past the "Redneck thing" and the "African Thing" at the time our "welfare state" began. Their behavior is an "American thing", brought on by welfare state".
In fact, that comment reminded me of an earlier post harking back to something that most Americans have probably now forgotten: That characteristic black behaviour in America was up until around 50 years ago roughly the opposite of what it is now. See here. So where was the "African" and "cracker" culture then? Did it have opposite results then to what it has now? My correspondent is clearly right: Objective circumstances (to use a Marxist term!) matter most and current self-destructive African behaviour is not the result of ANY long-standing culture but rather the result of the perverse incentives that American Leftists have created with indiscriminate welfare policies, affirmative action, anti-American education, racial quotas on policing and the promotion of a "victim" mentality among minorities generally. And I think it is clear that even the influence of genetics pales into insignificance compared with the effect of the positive and negative incentive systems that society sets up for people.
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ELSEWHERE
Unbelievable self-deception and reality-denial. Just listen to what Elizabeth Edwards, wife of the recent Democrat vice-Presidential nominee, has to say about free speech and compare it with the constant attacks on anything conservative that occur almost daily on Left-dominated American university and college campuses: "Democrats are simply good and decent people. And good and decent people want everyone to do well -- those who agree with them and those who do not. We fight for the right of voices with which we disagree to speak out, for the right of people to say things we don't believe to be true, even for the right to be malicious and mean-spirited." Just look at today's post on EDUCATION WATCH for starters.
Dennis Prager has compiled a list of "liberal" opinions of the sort that commonly appear in America's mainstream newspapers and suggests that few Americans would agree with most of them. They are pretty absurd when spelt out and I think he is right that they are very much minority views. I wouldn't mind designing a survey to test out properly how popular they really are if anybody living in the USA feels like helping me with that. I live just a bit too far away to do it all myself. People willing to go doorknocking or able to pay others to do so would be what I would need.
Canadian ignoramuses: The CBC has recently broadcast a programme comparing neo-conservative philosopher Leo Strauss with the Islamic fundamentalist Sayyid Qutb -- a very stretched comparison indeed. They could make a much better case for saying that Islam and Judaism have a lot in common but that would have no propaganda value, of course.
Islamic "scholar" convicted of urging holy war on US: "An Islamic scholar who prosecutors said enjoyed 'rock star' status among a group of young Muslim men in Virginia was convicted Tuesday of exhorting his followers in the days after Sept. 11 to join the Taliban and fight U.S. troops. The convictions against Ali al-Timimi, 41, carry a mandatory minimum sentence of life in prison without parole. But the judge left open the possibility that she will toss out some of the counts. The jury reached its verdict after seven days of deliberations and convicted al-Timimi of all 10 counts."
Leftist antisemitism in Britain: "Although egalitarian, cosmopolitan, and internationalist principles are common to all variants of socialist doctrine, these have not immunised the Left from antisemitism.... The shift from the politics of class to the politics of identity has meant that the Left's main imperative has been to express solidarity and seek out alliances with those groups opposed to the dominance of the United States. In this worldview, America is regarded as the main foe. Any concerns about the political ideas and affiliations of such groups have been subordinated to the larger goal of anti-Americanism. A wide range of organisations have, therefore, been branded as worthy of support, from Latin American populists like the Frente Sandinista (FSLN) in Nicaragua to Arab nationalists, of both conservative and radical hues, in Syria, Iraq, Libya and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). In recent years, this comradeship has been extended by large sections of the Left to the Islamist movements and their followers in Europe. As the old Arab proverb would have it, 'My Enemy's Enemy is My Friend.' The contemporary alliance between the western Left and nationalist and religious radicals in the Middle East is of special concern here. Arab and Muslim radicals have always denied that Israel, uniquely among the states in the international system, has the right to exist. That position is shared by a large proportion of western Leftists."
Jonah Goldberg takes a good swipe at the "Iraq as Vietnam" kneejerk that is so common on the Left.
There is a very pointed article here by a professor of criminology showing the extensive similarities between Leftists and juvenile delinquents.
In my latest quote on MARXWORDS we see that Engels advocated war between Germany and France.
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 Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 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.
Leftist ideologues 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 and can con "the masses" into giving them power.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
Unbelievable self-deception and reality-denial. Just listen to what Elizabeth Edwards, wife of the recent Democrat vice-Presidential nominee, has to say about free speech and compare it with the constant attacks on anything conservative that occur almost daily on Left-dominated American university and college campuses: "Democrats are simply good and decent people. And good and decent people want everyone to do well -- those who agree with them and those who do not. We fight for the right of voices with which we disagree to speak out, for the right of people to say things we don't believe to be true, even for the right to be malicious and mean-spirited." Just look at today's post on EDUCATION WATCH for starters.
Dennis Prager has compiled a list of "liberal" opinions of the sort that commonly appear in America's mainstream newspapers and suggests that few Americans would agree with most of them. They are pretty absurd when spelt out and I think he is right that they are very much minority views. I wouldn't mind designing a survey to test out properly how popular they really are if anybody living in the USA feels like helping me with that. I live just a bit too far away to do it all myself. People willing to go doorknocking or able to pay others to do so would be what I would need.
Canadian ignoramuses: The CBC has recently broadcast a programme comparing neo-conservative philosopher Leo Strauss with the Islamic fundamentalist Sayyid Qutb -- a very stretched comparison indeed. They could make a much better case for saying that Islam and Judaism have a lot in common but that would have no propaganda value, of course.
Islamic "scholar" convicted of urging holy war on US: "An Islamic scholar who prosecutors said enjoyed 'rock star' status among a group of young Muslim men in Virginia was convicted Tuesday of exhorting his followers in the days after Sept. 11 to join the Taliban and fight U.S. troops. The convictions against Ali al-Timimi, 41, carry a mandatory minimum sentence of life in prison without parole. But the judge left open the possibility that she will toss out some of the counts. The jury reached its verdict after seven days of deliberations and convicted al-Timimi of all 10 counts."
Leftist antisemitism in Britain: "Although egalitarian, cosmopolitan, and internationalist principles are common to all variants of socialist doctrine, these have not immunised the Left from antisemitism.... The shift from the politics of class to the politics of identity has meant that the Left's main imperative has been to express solidarity and seek out alliances with those groups opposed to the dominance of the United States. In this worldview, America is regarded as the main foe. Any concerns about the political ideas and affiliations of such groups have been subordinated to the larger goal of anti-Americanism. A wide range of organisations have, therefore, been branded as worthy of support, from Latin American populists like the Frente Sandinista (FSLN) in Nicaragua to Arab nationalists, of both conservative and radical hues, in Syria, Iraq, Libya and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). In recent years, this comradeship has been extended by large sections of the Left to the Islamist movements and their followers in Europe. As the old Arab proverb would have it, 'My Enemy's Enemy is My Friend.' The contemporary alliance between the western Left and nationalist and religious radicals in the Middle East is of special concern here. Arab and Muslim radicals have always denied that Israel, uniquely among the states in the international system, has the right to exist. That position is shared by a large proportion of western Leftists."
Jonah Goldberg takes a good swipe at the "Iraq as Vietnam" kneejerk that is so common on the Left.
There is a very pointed article here by a professor of criminology showing the extensive similarities between Leftists and juvenile delinquents.
In my latest quote on MARXWORDS we see that Engels advocated war between Germany and France.
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 Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 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.
Leftist ideologues 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 and can con "the masses" into giving them power.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Friday, April 29, 2005
ANTISEMITIC BRITISH LEFTISTS
In the universities, of course
Below is a letter sent on Thursday to Sally Hunt, the secretary general of the AUT, the UK teachers' union, by Dr Emanuele Ottolenghi, The Middle East Centre, St Antony's College, Oxford University (emanuele.ottolenghi@sant.ox.ac.uk):
********************************
In the universities, of course
Below is a letter sent on Thursday to Sally Hunt, the secretary general of the AUT, the UK teachers' union, by Dr Emanuele Ottolenghi, The Middle East Centre, St Antony's College, Oxford University (emanuele.ottolenghi@sant.ox.ac.uk):
"Regarding the AUT recent decision to boycott Haifa University and Bar Ilan University in Israel, I am shocked to learn that, in addition to a call for boycott, the AUT is ready to offer a waiver to scholars on condition that they publicly state their willingness to conform to the political orthodoxy espoused by the academics who sponsored your motion.
Oaths of political loyalty do not belong to academia. They belong to illiberal minds and repressive regimes.
Based on this, the AUT's definition of academic freedom is the freedom to agree with its views only.
Given the circumstances, I wish to express in no uncertain terms my unconditional and undivided solidarity with both universities and their faculties. I know many people, both at Haifa University and at Bar Ilan University, of different political persuasion and from different walks of life. The diversity of those faculties reflects the authentic spirit of academia. The AUT invitation to boycott them betrays that spirit because it advocates a uniformity of views, under pain of boycott.
In solidarity with my colleagues and as a symbolic gesture to defend the spirit of a free academia, I wish to be added to the boycott blacklist. Please include me. I hope that other colleagues of all political persuasions will join me."
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FROM BROOKES NEWS
US economy, deficits, taxes and Democrats: The truth about Clinton's tax hike, interest rates and deficits
The anti-Catholic Professor Quiggin gets blasted for sliming Pope Benedict XVI: Leftwing Professor John Quiggin, who called Pope Benedict XVI an "arsehole", is taken to task for his anti-Catholicism. We can be sure of one thing when it comes to Quiggin - he'll never call the sadistic Castro an "arsehole"
"Bay of Pigs, 40 years After" conference, Fidel Castro and the lying media : Forty years after the Bay of Pigs mainstream journalists are still shamelessly lying for the murderous Fidel Castro
Social security: Dreaming the impossible dream: Is Tom Friedman so selfish that he wants to retain 30 cents out of every dollar at the expense of the "world peace" Republicans are working for?
US economy, tax cuts and Paul Krugman's Keynesian ideology: That Krugman is unable to comprehend the consequences if his own economic nostrums doesn't say much for his critical faculties, though he is never short of criticism when it comes to Republicans
************************************
US economy, deficits, taxes and Democrats: The truth about Clinton's tax hike, interest rates and deficits
The anti-Catholic Professor Quiggin gets blasted for sliming Pope Benedict XVI: Leftwing Professor John Quiggin, who called Pope Benedict XVI an "arsehole", is taken to task for his anti-Catholicism. We can be sure of one thing when it comes to Quiggin - he'll never call the sadistic Castro an "arsehole"
"Bay of Pigs, 40 years After" conference, Fidel Castro and the lying media : Forty years after the Bay of Pigs mainstream journalists are still shamelessly lying for the murderous Fidel Castro
Social security: Dreaming the impossible dream: Is Tom Friedman so selfish that he wants to retain 30 cents out of every dollar at the expense of the "world peace" Republicans are working for?
US economy, tax cuts and Paul Krugman's Keynesian ideology: That Krugman is unable to comprehend the consequences if his own economic nostrums doesn't say much for his critical faculties, though he is never short of criticism when it comes to Republicans
************************************
ELSEWHERE
Steve Sailer too has some skeptical comments about Sowell's view that black culture is "redneck": "Yet, when we talk of "redneck culture" today, such as country music and Nashville, we are largely talking of Scotch-Irish culture. And the Scotch-Irish generally stayed away from the blacks. They went to the Appalachian and Ozark highlands where disease was less of a problem for Europeans than in the lowland South. Moreover, the Scotch-Irish disliked having to compete with slave labor and tobacco and cotton slave plantations were uneconomical in the highlands. Today, the state with the least educated whites is the prototypical hillbilly state of West Virginia, which had so few slaveowners that it seceded from Virginia and joined the Union during the Civil War. Other Scotch-Irish redneck states like Tennessee and Oklahoma have limited black populations, too..... Of course, the least-discussed cultural influence on African-Americans is also the most obvious: Africa.... Perhaps the biggest social problem of African-Americans, as reflected in the very high illegitimacy rate, is that the culture they brought with them from Africa is one of low paternal investment. America's dominant culture had largely succeeded in inculcating monogamy and bring-home-the-bacon norms in blacks by about 1960, when it suddenly lost its self-confidence and began funding, via AFDC, the traditional African tendency toward mothers supporting their children without much support from their fathers....."
Star Parker on black disadvantage: "The National Urban League recently released its "State of Black America" report for 2005.... Few will be surprised to learn that blacks earn less, own less, are unemployed more, live shorter lives, attend worse schools and are more likely to be convicted of a crime and be sent to prison. How, according to the League, should blacks handle this deficit in equality they continue to experience? .... The report lists 10 "prescriptions" for change. Eight of them are government programs. Of the other two, one suggests blacks should tithe and volunteer more, and the other admonishes blacks to "focus on savings, investing and estate planning." .... There is barely a hint in the League report that black problems might have anything to do with things other than politics. Here are some gaps between white and black America that the study does not see relevant to report: 48 percent of black families vs. 82 percent of white families are headed by married couples; 43 percent of black families vs. 13 percent of white families are headed by a woman with no spouse; Black women are three times more likely than white women to have an abortion; 70 percent of black babies vs. 23 percent of white babies are born to unwed mothers; Whereas blacks represent 13 percent of the U.S. population, they account for more than 50 percent of new AIDS cases. The gaps that the National Urban League reports are gaps in symptoms and results. These gaps show the causes"
Sowell on judges: "The future of the legal and political system of this country may be on the line when two judicial nominees that the Democrats refused to let the Senate vote on in the last Congress are being again submitted for a vote.... This is not about two people being nominated to be federal judges. It is about the whole role of judges in a self-governing republic. The voters' votes mean less and less as time goes by, when judges take more and more decisions out of the hands of elected officials and substitute their own policy preferences, all under the guise of "interpreting" laws. Judges who decide cases on the basis of the plain meaning of the words in the laws -- like Justices Brown and Owen -- may be what most of the public want but such judges are anathema to liberals. The courts are the last hope for enacting the liberal agenda because liberals cannot get enough votes to control Congress or most state legislatures. Unelected judges can cut the voters out of the loop and decree liberal dogma as the law of the land.... An independent judiciary does not mean judges independent of the law. Nor is the rule of judges the same as the rule of law. Too often it is the rule of lawlessness from the bench."
The furious cries of the American Left about perfectly legal and routine conservative appointments to the Supreme Court ring very hollow when one rembembers that the great hero of the American Left -- FDR -- tried to do far worse: "FDR's revolutionary New Deal plan encountered two big problems: The Constitution and the U.S. Supreme Court. When cases challenging the NIRA and the AAA reached the Supreme Court, it held both laws in violation of the Constitution. During Roosevelt's first term, the Court ruled that other parts of his radical economic scheme were unconstitutional as well. Elected by a landslide in 1936, Roosevelt did not intend to let those "nine old men" on the Supreme Court interfere with his transformation of American life.... he came up with a shortcut plan designed to circumvent the constitutional-amendment process and the Supreme Court decisions against his New Deal.... FDR's plan requested Congress to permit the president to appoint an additional Supreme Court justice for every justice over 70 years of age, thereby expanding the size of the Court. By enabling him to appoint new justices who were committed to his economic philosophy, Roosevelt figured that the newly aligned Court would start voting in his favor. Despite his enormous popularity, the American people, to their everlasting credit, rose up in arms against Roosevelt's "court-packing scheme" and, as a result, the Congress failed to enact it. Americans didn't like their president tampering with their constitutional order."
And as Reliapundit says: "Powerline has done a great job of exposing a major MSM flip-flop about the utility/advisability of the FILIBUSTER. Viking pundit adds a link to another NYT whopper. And Powerline gets a Senator. Michelle Malkin has a list of other folks who conveniently change their values when it suits their narrow partisan aims. Bottom-line: Filibusters are NOT protected by - or even mentioned in the Constitution, and they were once scorned by the Left. The Left cannot get away with lying about this."
Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its usual big range of select reading.
In my latest quote on MARXWORDS we see that Engels welcomed world war.
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 Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 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.
Leftist ideologues 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 and can con "the masses" into giving them power.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
Steve Sailer too has some skeptical comments about Sowell's view that black culture is "redneck": "Yet, when we talk of "redneck culture" today, such as country music and Nashville, we are largely talking of Scotch-Irish culture. And the Scotch-Irish generally stayed away from the blacks. They went to the Appalachian and Ozark highlands where disease was less of a problem for Europeans than in the lowland South. Moreover, the Scotch-Irish disliked having to compete with slave labor and tobacco and cotton slave plantations were uneconomical in the highlands. Today, the state with the least educated whites is the prototypical hillbilly state of West Virginia, which had so few slaveowners that it seceded from Virginia and joined the Union during the Civil War. Other Scotch-Irish redneck states like Tennessee and Oklahoma have limited black populations, too..... Of course, the least-discussed cultural influence on African-Americans is also the most obvious: Africa.... Perhaps the biggest social problem of African-Americans, as reflected in the very high illegitimacy rate, is that the culture they brought with them from Africa is one of low paternal investment. America's dominant culture had largely succeeded in inculcating monogamy and bring-home-the-bacon norms in blacks by about 1960, when it suddenly lost its self-confidence and began funding, via AFDC, the traditional African tendency toward mothers supporting their children without much support from their fathers....."
Star Parker on black disadvantage: "The National Urban League recently released its "State of Black America" report for 2005.... Few will be surprised to learn that blacks earn less, own less, are unemployed more, live shorter lives, attend worse schools and are more likely to be convicted of a crime and be sent to prison. How, according to the League, should blacks handle this deficit in equality they continue to experience? .... The report lists 10 "prescriptions" for change. Eight of them are government programs. Of the other two, one suggests blacks should tithe and volunteer more, and the other admonishes blacks to "focus on savings, investing and estate planning." .... There is barely a hint in the League report that black problems might have anything to do with things other than politics. Here are some gaps between white and black America that the study does not see relevant to report: 48 percent of black families vs. 82 percent of white families are headed by married couples; 43 percent of black families vs. 13 percent of white families are headed by a woman with no spouse; Black women are three times more likely than white women to have an abortion; 70 percent of black babies vs. 23 percent of white babies are born to unwed mothers; Whereas blacks represent 13 percent of the U.S. population, they account for more than 50 percent of new AIDS cases. The gaps that the National Urban League reports are gaps in symptoms and results. These gaps show the causes"
Sowell on judges: "The future of the legal and political system of this country may be on the line when two judicial nominees that the Democrats refused to let the Senate vote on in the last Congress are being again submitted for a vote.... This is not about two people being nominated to be federal judges. It is about the whole role of judges in a self-governing republic. The voters' votes mean less and less as time goes by, when judges take more and more decisions out of the hands of elected officials and substitute their own policy preferences, all under the guise of "interpreting" laws. Judges who decide cases on the basis of the plain meaning of the words in the laws -- like Justices Brown and Owen -- may be what most of the public want but such judges are anathema to liberals. The courts are the last hope for enacting the liberal agenda because liberals cannot get enough votes to control Congress or most state legislatures. Unelected judges can cut the voters out of the loop and decree liberal dogma as the law of the land.... An independent judiciary does not mean judges independent of the law. Nor is the rule of judges the same as the rule of law. Too often it is the rule of lawlessness from the bench."
The furious cries of the American Left about perfectly legal and routine conservative appointments to the Supreme Court ring very hollow when one rembembers that the great hero of the American Left -- FDR -- tried to do far worse: "FDR's revolutionary New Deal plan encountered two big problems: The Constitution and the U.S. Supreme Court. When cases challenging the NIRA and the AAA reached the Supreme Court, it held both laws in violation of the Constitution. During Roosevelt's first term, the Court ruled that other parts of his radical economic scheme were unconstitutional as well. Elected by a landslide in 1936, Roosevelt did not intend to let those "nine old men" on the Supreme Court interfere with his transformation of American life.... he came up with a shortcut plan designed to circumvent the constitutional-amendment process and the Supreme Court decisions against his New Deal.... FDR's plan requested Congress to permit the president to appoint an additional Supreme Court justice for every justice over 70 years of age, thereby expanding the size of the Court. By enabling him to appoint new justices who were committed to his economic philosophy, Roosevelt figured that the newly aligned Court would start voting in his favor. Despite his enormous popularity, the American people, to their everlasting credit, rose up in arms against Roosevelt's "court-packing scheme" and, as a result, the Congress failed to enact it. Americans didn't like their president tampering with their constitutional order."
And as Reliapundit says: "Powerline has done a great job of exposing a major MSM flip-flop about the utility/advisability of the FILIBUSTER. Viking pundit adds a link to another NYT whopper. And Powerline gets a Senator. Michelle Malkin has a list of other folks who conveniently change their values when it suits their narrow partisan aims. Bottom-line: Filibusters are NOT protected by - or even mentioned in the Constitution, and they were once scorned by the Left. The Left cannot get away with lying about this."
Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its usual big range of select reading.
In my latest quote on MARXWORDS we see that Engels welcomed world war.
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 Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 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.
Leftist ideologues 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 and can con "the masses" into giving them power.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Thursday, April 28, 2005
RACIAL DIFFERENCES IN INTELLIGENCE REVIEWED IN A MAINSTREAM PSYCHOLOGY JOURNAL
Academic news report below from Chris Brand:
The articles Chris summarizes above are not notable for being published in an academic journal. Almost all of the research in this field has been first published in academic journals. It is however of some note to find such articles in a journal of the American Psychological Association. The APA is distinctly Left-leaning and their journals are the most prestigious and authoritative ones ones in psychology. Logical Meme has a bit more on the Rushton & Jensen paper. He also has a short roundup of the medical research that has found race differences.
There is another academic report here (PDF) of similar interest. One of the authors in this case is a Nobel prizewinner! Working from a very comprehensive body of data, the authors found that average racial differences in adult income are almost entirely predictable from childhood differences in IQ. They also found that, from early childhood on, black males have other disadvantages (less self-control, less tendency to plan ahead etc) and that those differences also influence income in later life. The third finding is that although blacks and Hispanics share similar environmental disadvantages in childhood, Hispanics tend to rise above that whereas blacks do not -- showing again that the source of black disadvantage is not environmental. There are fuller discussions of the report concerned here and here
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Academic news report below from Chris Brand:
"Licensed scholarly warfare broke out in the APA journal Psychology, Public Policy and Law (vi 05), (full articles here) over whether psychological race differences (especially in intelligence) are substantially heritable. Race realists Arthur Jensen, Phil Rushton and Linda Gottfredson fought their corner excellently, conveniently reviewing the literature (cf. the Cambridge debate (i 97) and adding some useful points (e.g. that skin lightness is linked to IQ among South Africa's Blacks - which it is not among America's Blacks, where lighter skins often came about from historical Black female matings with White farmhands during the days of slavery). The hereditarians were opposed by such as Robert Sternberg (sometimes said by me to believe in 666 types of intelligence - Behav.Res.&Therapy, 1992) and Richard E. Nisbett (reviewed by me in Heredity, 2003) who claimed among other things medium-term boosts on non-IQ tests from Headstart-type programmes involving 8 hours intervention daily! Overall, the race realists had a coherent message with copious evidence and the environmentalists had the scraps - they remained respectively the `stompers' and `stompees' as amusingly caricatured by Professor Earl `Buzz' Hunt (Brand, Person.&Indiv.Diffs, 1999). Occidental Quarterly reckoned the 60-page Rushton & Jensen article might prove as much of a landmark as Jensen's classic 1969 Harvard Educational Review article, `How much can we boost IQ and educational attainment.' The race-realist argument was summarized in News-Medical Net, 26 iv."
The articles Chris summarizes above are not notable for being published in an academic journal. Almost all of the research in this field has been first published in academic journals. It is however of some note to find such articles in a journal of the American Psychological Association. The APA is distinctly Left-leaning and their journals are the most prestigious and authoritative ones ones in psychology. Logical Meme has a bit more on the Rushton & Jensen paper. He also has a short roundup of the medical research that has found race differences.
There is another academic report here (PDF) of similar interest. One of the authors in this case is a Nobel prizewinner! Working from a very comprehensive body of data, the authors found that average racial differences in adult income are almost entirely predictable from childhood differences in IQ. They also found that, from early childhood on, black males have other disadvantages (less self-control, less tendency to plan ahead etc) and that those differences also influence income in later life. The third finding is that although blacks and Hispanics share similar environmental disadvantages in childhood, Hispanics tend to rise above that whereas blacks do not -- showing again that the source of black disadvantage is not environmental. There are fuller discussions of the report concerned here and here
******************************
ELSEWHERE
There is a short comment here on "Downfall", the recent German film about Hitler, that is more realistic than most and which rightly points to the way the German people followed Hitler as the thing in most need of explanation. The writer, like most modern writers about Nazism, seems to see the whole thing as a great mystery. Yet if you read Mein Kampf, it is not the slightest mystery at all. Mein Kampf is essentially a love-song to the German people. Hitler was the ultimate practitioner of that great Leftist deception -- the claim that he "cared" for his people. And his nationalism -- his propaganda about how great Germans were -- powerfully reinforced that. So Germans followed Hitler because they loved him and because they thought he was right. And they loved him because they thought he loved them. It could hardly be simpler but nobody dares mention love in conjunction with Nazism, of course, so everybody pretends that there is some great mystery about it all. See here for more details.
USA Today publishes an attack on Democrat filibustering: "While minority rights are a significant Senate tradition, the Constitution itself, through the "advice and consent" clause, clearly mandates confirmation of judges by simple majority once every voice has been heard. The filibuster is not enshrined among the Constitution's system of checks and balances. Judicial filibusters of majority-supported nominees have never been part of the Senate's tradition. In the past two decades, even with the stakes at their highest, Democrats did not filibuster Supreme Court nominees Robert Bork or Clarence Thomas. Yet in the 108th Congress, Democrats filibustered 10 of 34 appellate court nominees."
Crazy rules finally defied "A federal air marshal sued Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and other officials to block government rules that prevent him from speaking out about possible security lapses. The federal complaint, filed Thursday in Riverside by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, claims the rules infringe on Frank Terreri's free speech rights. Terreri, 38, wants to blow the whistle on policies he believes threaten aviation security, lawyers said. Among his concerns are visible flight check-in procedures and a formal dress code that could compromise marshals' undercover status, and news stories approved by federal administrators about training and tactics..... The discipline came after strong criticism about agency policies by the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, whose air marshal unit is headed by Terreri. The organization, whose members include about 1,400 marshals, has called for the resignation of air marshal service director Thomas Quinn."
Libertarians, Leftists and paleocons are all fond of asserting that the 9/11 events were caused by American "interventionism" abroad. Clifford May has an astringent comment on that: "That's an astonishing conclusion. The atrocities of 9/11 were orchestrated by Mohammed Atta, an Egyptian. How, before 9/11, did Washington intervene in Egypt's affairs -- except to give Egypt billions of dollars, re-supply its military, and turn a blind eye to President Hosni Mubarak's repression of dissidents? Atta followed orders from Osama bin Laden, a Saudi. For more than fifty years, American "interventionism" in Saudi Arabia consisted of paying the kingdom astronomical sums in oil revenue, granting Saudis unprecedented privileges (for example, empowering Wahhabis to vet Muslim chaplains for our military and our prisons) and, in 1990, sending American soldiers, at the request of the Saudis, to protect them from being invaded by Saddam Hussein. Or maybe Buchanan was thinking about our intervention in Somalia - the only goal of which was to feed starving people. Or our intervention in Afghanistan to support guerrillas fighting the Soviet invader. We also intervened in Bosnia and Kosovo - to save Muslims from further devastation at the hands of their Christian neighbors".
Dutch to put mutts in iron containers: "Government and opposition MPs are teaming up in a joint plan to house anti-social tenants in special iron huts to reduce city disputes and prevent people from being forced onto the street. The plan from the Christian Democrat CDA, Liberal VVD and opposition Labour PvdA is focused at troublesome tenants who have long been a nuisance factor. Instead of being evicted, they will be given a 'last chance residence', newspaper 'De Telegraaf' reported on Monday. Christian Democrat MP Mirjam Sterk wants to prevent tenants who disturb their neighbourhood ending up on the street.... The party will submit a legislative proposal to Parliament allowing the relocation of anti-social neighbours to container homes in a specifically designated and remote area of a city. It is considered likely the extra strong homes will be specially built -- probably out of metal or shipping containers -- to withstand vandalism".
There is a good article here about "Joh", a great Queensland conservative.
Jennifer Marohasy has a very good demolition of Leftist Australian blogger John Quiggin. I have had words with Quiggin myself in the past. See here and here
In my latest quote on MARXWORDS shows that Marx saw Germany's future wars as race-based. Funny that Hitler had the same idea!
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 Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 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.
Leftist ideologues 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 and can con "the masses" into giving them power.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
There is a short comment here on "Downfall", the recent German film about Hitler, that is more realistic than most and which rightly points to the way the German people followed Hitler as the thing in most need of explanation. The writer, like most modern writers about Nazism, seems to see the whole thing as a great mystery. Yet if you read Mein Kampf, it is not the slightest mystery at all. Mein Kampf is essentially a love-song to the German people. Hitler was the ultimate practitioner of that great Leftist deception -- the claim that he "cared" for his people. And his nationalism -- his propaganda about how great Germans were -- powerfully reinforced that. So Germans followed Hitler because they loved him and because they thought he was right. And they loved him because they thought he loved them. It could hardly be simpler but nobody dares mention love in conjunction with Nazism, of course, so everybody pretends that there is some great mystery about it all. See here for more details.
USA Today publishes an attack on Democrat filibustering: "While minority rights are a significant Senate tradition, the Constitution itself, through the "advice and consent" clause, clearly mandates confirmation of judges by simple majority once every voice has been heard. The filibuster is not enshrined among the Constitution's system of checks and balances. Judicial filibusters of majority-supported nominees have never been part of the Senate's tradition. In the past two decades, even with the stakes at their highest, Democrats did not filibuster Supreme Court nominees Robert Bork or Clarence Thomas. Yet in the 108th Congress, Democrats filibustered 10 of 34 appellate court nominees."
Crazy rules finally defied "A federal air marshal sued Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and other officials to block government rules that prevent him from speaking out about possible security lapses. The federal complaint, filed Thursday in Riverside by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, claims the rules infringe on Frank Terreri's free speech rights. Terreri, 38, wants to blow the whistle on policies he believes threaten aviation security, lawyers said. Among his concerns are visible flight check-in procedures and a formal dress code that could compromise marshals' undercover status, and news stories approved by federal administrators about training and tactics..... The discipline came after strong criticism about agency policies by the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, whose air marshal unit is headed by Terreri. The organization, whose members include about 1,400 marshals, has called for the resignation of air marshal service director Thomas Quinn."
Libertarians, Leftists and paleocons are all fond of asserting that the 9/11 events were caused by American "interventionism" abroad. Clifford May has an astringent comment on that: "That's an astonishing conclusion. The atrocities of 9/11 were orchestrated by Mohammed Atta, an Egyptian. How, before 9/11, did Washington intervene in Egypt's affairs -- except to give Egypt billions of dollars, re-supply its military, and turn a blind eye to President Hosni Mubarak's repression of dissidents? Atta followed orders from Osama bin Laden, a Saudi. For more than fifty years, American "interventionism" in Saudi Arabia consisted of paying the kingdom astronomical sums in oil revenue, granting Saudis unprecedented privileges (for example, empowering Wahhabis to vet Muslim chaplains for our military and our prisons) and, in 1990, sending American soldiers, at the request of the Saudis, to protect them from being invaded by Saddam Hussein. Or maybe Buchanan was thinking about our intervention in Somalia - the only goal of which was to feed starving people. Or our intervention in Afghanistan to support guerrillas fighting the Soviet invader. We also intervened in Bosnia and Kosovo - to save Muslims from further devastation at the hands of their Christian neighbors".
Dutch to put mutts in iron containers: "Government and opposition MPs are teaming up in a joint plan to house anti-social tenants in special iron huts to reduce city disputes and prevent people from being forced onto the street. The plan from the Christian Democrat CDA, Liberal VVD and opposition Labour PvdA is focused at troublesome tenants who have long been a nuisance factor. Instead of being evicted, they will be given a 'last chance residence', newspaper 'De Telegraaf' reported on Monday. Christian Democrat MP Mirjam Sterk wants to prevent tenants who disturb their neighbourhood ending up on the street.... The party will submit a legislative proposal to Parliament allowing the relocation of anti-social neighbours to container homes in a specifically designated and remote area of a city. It is considered likely the extra strong homes will be specially built -- probably out of metal or shipping containers -- to withstand vandalism".
There is a good article here about "Joh", a great Queensland conservative.
Jennifer Marohasy has a very good demolition of Leftist Australian blogger John Quiggin. I have had words with Quiggin myself in the past. See here and here
In my latest quote on MARXWORDS shows that Marx saw Germany's future wars as race-based. Funny that Hitler had the same idea!
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 Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 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.
Leftist ideologues 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 and can con "the masses" into giving them power.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
SOUTHERN CULTURE AND BLACK UNDER-ACHIEVEMENT
The person whose writings I quote most often on this blog is Thomas Sowell. I think he is spot-on most of the time. His theory of black under-achievement is however one with which I must respectfully disagree. He says that blacks do poorly because they have absorbed "cracker" culture and that holds them back. Why? Because "cracker" culture is bombastic and anti-intellectual. His thesis would seem to require that White Southerners in general do as poorly as black Southerners on IQ tests and other achievement criteria but he offers no evidence for that dubious proposition. There are certainly SOME poor whites who do as poorly as blacks on educational and other criteria but that proves nothing. It is averages across whole groups that we have to look at if we are to explain group phenomena. See also here.
There are other reasons why Sowell's thesis does not stand up. An obvious one is that, as Sowell himself notes, "cracker" culture originates from the rural parts of British Isles, particularly from the Scotch-Irish population (see here and here). But who were the Scotch-Irish? They were Scots (mostly farmers) who had moved to Northern Ireland under the encouragement of Protestant English rulers. They were given Irish land by the English because of English dislike for native Irish rebelliousness. And their descendants still form a majority in Northern Ireland to this day. But, like all the Irish, many of them became dissatisfied with life in Ireland and moved to the United States, where they mostly ended up in the rural South, where their rural skills could be gainfully employed. So they were a Scottish people of a particularly enterprising sort -- they had first emigrated to Ireland and then again to America. And they took their fundamentalist Protestant religion with them.
But what is the one thing that we know about Scottish culture? What is the legendary preoccupation of the Scots (aside from whisky)? It is of course education. Scots are an education-worshipping people. So the idea that ANY Scottish culture features a dislike of learning and education is absurd. If "crackers" are intellectually backward, it is not because of any anti-intellectual cultural inheritance. Yet it does seem to be true that the intellectual achievements of American "crackers" have always been low. So how come? Easy. It is simply the rural effect. One of the most reliable generalizations in IQ research is that rural residents test out much dumber that their urban counterparts. Perhaps the most striking example of that is the fact that Afrikaners (white South Africans of mainly Dutch ancestry) score poorly on IQ tests. Yet their parent population in the Netherlands performs perfectly creditably. Lynn & Vanhanen have many of the figures on IQ averages worldwide, subsequently much extended in their book.
So how come? How come rural dwellers score poorly on IQ? Do Afrikaners and "crackers" score poorly because they are immigrants? Are they the dregs and rejects of their parent populations? If anything we would expect the reverse. People who have enough vision to look beyond their accustomed local horizons and set off across the seas in search of personal betterment ought surely to be a bit brighter than the norm. So emigration should surely select for slightly HIGHER IQ, not lower IQ. An interesting case in point is Australia. Up until quite recently, the Australian population has always been almost entirely comprised of people whose ancestry is in Europe or the British Isles. Almost all Australians are the descendants of immigrants, including some who came out as convicts and many who came from very poor parts of Europe, such as Ireland, Scotland, Greece and Southern Italy. The Irish component is particularly large. So what is the average Australian IQ? It has always been virtually identical to the average British or white American IQ. So it would seem in the Australian case that there has been a balance achieved between an immigrant effect leading to a slightly higher IQ and an adverse effect on IQ due to many immigrants coming from unpromising original backgrounds. In fact, it is mainly from regional areas of the British Isles that the Australian population originates so Australia might be held to constitute one big "cracker" culture. There is certainly a strong and unashamed celebration of working-class culture and origins among many Australians. Yet the evidence is clear that Australians have no need to view themselves as inferior to anybody -- and they don't.
So if it is not an immigrant effect we see holding rural populations back, why are rural populations generally a bit backward intellectually? It is presumably because of another well-known influence on IQ. IQ is only about two thirds genetic. And a major non-genetic influence is stimulation. A highly stimulating environment in early childhood leads to higher adult IQ. And, delightful though the country can be, it is just not as stimulating as the bustle of the big city. So after one or two generations growing up in the big city, people who were once mainly rural (as in the case of American blacks) should have lost the rural handicap. Yet there is no sign of the black IQ average converging on the white norm in any area where both racial groups can be found. Even where black and white parents are of similar social background, their children tend to diverge markedly in the usual direction -- as Ogbu found.
Similarly, we would expect that Southern whites who move to the North or to large Southern cities should rapidly lose any disadvantage associated with coming from a rural culture and background -- and I don't think I have to point to the many successful white Southerners in America today to show that that does happen. Similarly prominent blacks are however very few and, as Sowell points out, most of them are recent immigrants to America rather than being the descendants of slaves. So while a TEMPORARY disadvantage associated with rural origins is perfectly reasonable, to say that a lasting disadvantage accrues from that source is very tendentious.
This whole topic is a very big one with a huge history of disputation behind it so I make no claim to have covered it fully in this brief post -- and I have not even covered all of Sowell's points fully -- but I think I have outlined some reasons why "cracker" culture is a weak reed to lean on in explaining the vast black/white gap in intellectual achievement. For more background, readers might find this article interesting.
**********************************
The person whose writings I quote most often on this blog is Thomas Sowell. I think he is spot-on most of the time. His theory of black under-achievement is however one with which I must respectfully disagree. He says that blacks do poorly because they have absorbed "cracker" culture and that holds them back. Why? Because "cracker" culture is bombastic and anti-intellectual. His thesis would seem to require that White Southerners in general do as poorly as black Southerners on IQ tests and other achievement criteria but he offers no evidence for that dubious proposition. There are certainly SOME poor whites who do as poorly as blacks on educational and other criteria but that proves nothing. It is averages across whole groups that we have to look at if we are to explain group phenomena. See also here.
There are other reasons why Sowell's thesis does not stand up. An obvious one is that, as Sowell himself notes, "cracker" culture originates from the rural parts of British Isles, particularly from the Scotch-Irish population (see here and here). But who were the Scotch-Irish? They were Scots (mostly farmers) who had moved to Northern Ireland under the encouragement of Protestant English rulers. They were given Irish land by the English because of English dislike for native Irish rebelliousness. And their descendants still form a majority in Northern Ireland to this day. But, like all the Irish, many of them became dissatisfied with life in Ireland and moved to the United States, where they mostly ended up in the rural South, where their rural skills could be gainfully employed. So they were a Scottish people of a particularly enterprising sort -- they had first emigrated to Ireland and then again to America. And they took their fundamentalist Protestant religion with them.
But what is the one thing that we know about Scottish culture? What is the legendary preoccupation of the Scots (aside from whisky)? It is of course education. Scots are an education-worshipping people. So the idea that ANY Scottish culture features a dislike of learning and education is absurd. If "crackers" are intellectually backward, it is not because of any anti-intellectual cultural inheritance. Yet it does seem to be true that the intellectual achievements of American "crackers" have always been low. So how come? Easy. It is simply the rural effect. One of the most reliable generalizations in IQ research is that rural residents test out much dumber that their urban counterparts. Perhaps the most striking example of that is the fact that Afrikaners (white South Africans of mainly Dutch ancestry) score poorly on IQ tests. Yet their parent population in the Netherlands performs perfectly creditably. Lynn & Vanhanen have many of the figures on IQ averages worldwide, subsequently much extended in their book.
So how come? How come rural dwellers score poorly on IQ? Do Afrikaners and "crackers" score poorly because they are immigrants? Are they the dregs and rejects of their parent populations? If anything we would expect the reverse. People who have enough vision to look beyond their accustomed local horizons and set off across the seas in search of personal betterment ought surely to be a bit brighter than the norm. So emigration should surely select for slightly HIGHER IQ, not lower IQ. An interesting case in point is Australia. Up until quite recently, the Australian population has always been almost entirely comprised of people whose ancestry is in Europe or the British Isles. Almost all Australians are the descendants of immigrants, including some who came out as convicts and many who came from very poor parts of Europe, such as Ireland, Scotland, Greece and Southern Italy. The Irish component is particularly large. So what is the average Australian IQ? It has always been virtually identical to the average British or white American IQ. So it would seem in the Australian case that there has been a balance achieved between an immigrant effect leading to a slightly higher IQ and an adverse effect on IQ due to many immigrants coming from unpromising original backgrounds. In fact, it is mainly from regional areas of the British Isles that the Australian population originates so Australia might be held to constitute one big "cracker" culture. There is certainly a strong and unashamed celebration of working-class culture and origins among many Australians. Yet the evidence is clear that Australians have no need to view themselves as inferior to anybody -- and they don't.
So if it is not an immigrant effect we see holding rural populations back, why are rural populations generally a bit backward intellectually? It is presumably because of another well-known influence on IQ. IQ is only about two thirds genetic. And a major non-genetic influence is stimulation. A highly stimulating environment in early childhood leads to higher adult IQ. And, delightful though the country can be, it is just not as stimulating as the bustle of the big city. So after one or two generations growing up in the big city, people who were once mainly rural (as in the case of American blacks) should have lost the rural handicap. Yet there is no sign of the black IQ average converging on the white norm in any area where both racial groups can be found. Even where black and white parents are of similar social background, their children tend to diverge markedly in the usual direction -- as Ogbu found.
Similarly, we would expect that Southern whites who move to the North or to large Southern cities should rapidly lose any disadvantage associated with coming from a rural culture and background -- and I don't think I have to point to the many successful white Southerners in America today to show that that does happen. Similarly prominent blacks are however very few and, as Sowell points out, most of them are recent immigrants to America rather than being the descendants of slaves. So while a TEMPORARY disadvantage associated with rural origins is perfectly reasonable, to say that a lasting disadvantage accrues from that source is very tendentious.
This whole topic is a very big one with a huge history of disputation behind it so I make no claim to have covered it fully in this brief post -- and I have not even covered all of Sowell's points fully -- but I think I have outlined some reasons why "cracker" culture is a weak reed to lean on in explaining the vast black/white gap in intellectual achievement. For more background, readers might find this article interesting.
**********************************
ELSEWHERE
Harvard grows up: "In a showdown of the sexes on Friday, Johnstone Professor of Psychology Steven Pinker and Professor of Psychology Elizabeth Spelke debated whether innate differences lead to the underrepresentation of tenured women in math and the sciences. In front of a packed Science Center B crowd, they analyzed the data behind University President Lawrence H. Summers' controversial January comments on women in science. Pinker, whom Summers recruited to Harvard last year, cited evidence arguing that male superiority in skills like mental object rotation and problem solving provides a biological basis for the argument that men are more talented at math and science. Spelke countered, acknowledging the existence of differences between men and women, but arguing that the reason "women are as scarce as hen's teeth" in academia is due to discrimination".
I have just transferred Chris Brand's latest thoughts to here He has some interesting data about males and females being psychologically different right from birth.
MJ paranoia at work?: "The pro-marijuana lobby and much of the media have been silent about the fact that the killer student in Red Lake, Minnesota, Jeff Weise, was a pothead, and that scientific studies link marijuana to mental illness"
Marathon Pundit has a petition that you can sign in support of Prof. Klocek, who dared to speak the truth about Islam at De Paul university.
I have just added an update to my post of a few days ago about Thomas Friedman, Matt Taibbi and Leftist rage.
In my latest quote on MARXWORDS shows that Marx thought that the French deserved a thrashing from the Germans. And again, of course, Hitler carried it out.
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 Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 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.
Leftist ideologues 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 and can con "the masses" into giving them power.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
Harvard grows up: "In a showdown of the sexes on Friday, Johnstone Professor of Psychology Steven Pinker and Professor of Psychology Elizabeth Spelke debated whether innate differences lead to the underrepresentation of tenured women in math and the sciences. In front of a packed Science Center B crowd, they analyzed the data behind University President Lawrence H. Summers' controversial January comments on women in science. Pinker, whom Summers recruited to Harvard last year, cited evidence arguing that male superiority in skills like mental object rotation and problem solving provides a biological basis for the argument that men are more talented at math and science. Spelke countered, acknowledging the existence of differences between men and women, but arguing that the reason "women are as scarce as hen's teeth" in academia is due to discrimination".
I have just transferred Chris Brand's latest thoughts to here He has some interesting data about males and females being psychologically different right from birth.
MJ paranoia at work?: "The pro-marijuana lobby and much of the media have been silent about the fact that the killer student in Red Lake, Minnesota, Jeff Weise, was a pothead, and that scientific studies link marijuana to mental illness"
Marathon Pundit has a petition that you can sign in support of Prof. Klocek, who dared to speak the truth about Islam at De Paul university.
I have just added an update to my post of a few days ago about Thomas Friedman, Matt Taibbi and Leftist rage.
In my latest quote on MARXWORDS shows that Marx thought that the French deserved a thrashing from the Germans. And again, of course, Hitler carried it out.
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 Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 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.
Leftist ideologues 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 and can con "the masses" into giving them power.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
TUESDAY ROUNDUP
I am doing a shorter form of my "roundup" today:
On Dissecting Leftism I explain why the Left of yesteryear seem so much more rightist than they do today.
On Political Correctness Watch I note that human protandry -- where girls spontaneously turn into boys at puberty -- is a comprehensive disproof of the feminist claim that sex-roles are "socially constructed"
On Education Watch I note a report showing that seating students in rows works best for learning
On Socialized Medicine I report the "Dr Death" horror in an Australian public hospital
On Leftists as Elitists I note a union organizer who deplores the haughtiness of the modern Left
On MarxWords I note that Engels equated "niggers" with animals
*****************************
I am doing a shorter form of my "roundup" today:
On Dissecting Leftism I explain why the Left of yesteryear seem so much more rightist than they do today.
On Political Correctness Watch I note that human protandry -- where girls spontaneously turn into boys at puberty -- is a comprehensive disproof of the feminist claim that sex-roles are "socially constructed"
On Education Watch I note a report showing that seating students in rows works best for learning
On Socialized Medicine I report the "Dr Death" horror in an Australian public hospital
On Leftists as Elitists I note a union organizer who deplores the haughtiness of the modern Left
On MarxWords I note that Engels equated "niggers" with animals
*****************************
SOME EXCELLENT CONSERVATIVE THOUGHTS FROM THE POPE
As a libertarian and an atheist, there is much that I disagree with in the Pope's teachings but I like the thoughts excerpted below:
"The state is not the whole of human existence and does not embrace the whole of human hope. Men and women and their hopes extend beyond the thing that is the state and beyond the sphere of political activity. This does not only apply to a state that is Babylon but to any and every state. The state is not the totality: that takes the load off the politician's shoulders and at the same time opens up for him or her the path of rational politics. The Roman state was false and anti-Christian precisely because it wanted to be the totality of human capacity. In that way it claimed what it could not achieve; and in that way it distorted and diminished men and women. Through the totalitarian lie it became demonic and tyrannical. Getting rid of the totality of the state has demythologized the state and thereby liberated men and women as well as politicians and politics.
But when Christian faith, faith in man's greater hope, decays and falls away, then the myth of the divine state rises up once again.... The mythical hope of a do-it-yourself paradise can only drive people into fear from which there is no escape; fear of the collapse of their promises and of the greater void lurks behind it; fear of their own power and its cruelty. So the first service that Christian faith performs for politics is that it liberates men and women from the irrationality of the political myths that are the real threat of our time.
It is of course always difficult to adopt the sober approach that does what is possible and does not cry enthusiastically after the impossible; the voice of reason is not as loud as the cry of unreason. The cry for the large-scale has the whiff of morality; in contrast limiting oneself to what is possible seems to be renouncing the passion of morality and adopting the pragmatism of the faint-hearted. But in truth political morality consists precisely of resisting the seductive temptation of the big words by which humanity and its opportunities are gambled away. It is not the adventurous moralism that wants itself to do God's work that is moral, but the honesty that accepts the standards of man and in them does the work of man. It is not refusal to compromise but compromise that in political things is the true morality".
More here
*************************
As a libertarian and an atheist, there is much that I disagree with in the Pope's teachings but I like the thoughts excerpted below:
"The state is not the whole of human existence and does not embrace the whole of human hope. Men and women and their hopes extend beyond the thing that is the state and beyond the sphere of political activity. This does not only apply to a state that is Babylon but to any and every state. The state is not the totality: that takes the load off the politician's shoulders and at the same time opens up for him or her the path of rational politics. The Roman state was false and anti-Christian precisely because it wanted to be the totality of human capacity. In that way it claimed what it could not achieve; and in that way it distorted and diminished men and women. Through the totalitarian lie it became demonic and tyrannical. Getting rid of the totality of the state has demythologized the state and thereby liberated men and women as well as politicians and politics.
But when Christian faith, faith in man's greater hope, decays and falls away, then the myth of the divine state rises up once again.... The mythical hope of a do-it-yourself paradise can only drive people into fear from which there is no escape; fear of the collapse of their promises and of the greater void lurks behind it; fear of their own power and its cruelty. So the first service that Christian faith performs for politics is that it liberates men and women from the irrationality of the political myths that are the real threat of our time.
It is of course always difficult to adopt the sober approach that does what is possible and does not cry enthusiastically after the impossible; the voice of reason is not as loud as the cry of unreason. The cry for the large-scale has the whiff of morality; in contrast limiting oneself to what is possible seems to be renouncing the passion of morality and adopting the pragmatism of the faint-hearted. But in truth political morality consists precisely of resisting the seductive temptation of the big words by which humanity and its opportunities are gambled away. It is not the adventurous moralism that wants itself to do God's work that is moral, but the honesty that accepts the standards of man and in them does the work of man. It is not refusal to compromise but compromise that in political things is the true morality".
More here
*************************
ELSEWHERE
Domestic terrorism is overwhelmingly Leftist: "Immediately after Timothy McVeigh was arrested for blowing up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on a beautiful April morning 10 years ago, the media were atwitter with the talk of "right-wing militias" and the threat they posed to the republic. McVeigh, unapologetic, defiant, and awash in hatred for the government, was presented as the poster boy of the government-hating, gun-loving, right-wing nuts. And we were told ad nauseam that McVeigh was the product of conservative talk radio and irresponsible Republican politicians who talked about revolution. It was all the fault of Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich. (Rarely mentioned was the real motivator of McVeigh's actions: Janet Reno's attack on the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. But I digress.)... In the decade since the Oklahoma City bombing, the media have remained interested in the right-wing crazies, but have almost entirely ignored the left-wing ones -- those committing most of the terrorist acts inside the United States. Left-wing terrorist groups have been responsible for almost all of the recent domestic terrorism. The National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism maintains a terrorism database. According to its files, as the Baltimore Sun reported on Sunday, fully 22 of the 25 terrorist attacks inside the United States since 2003 are believed to have been the work of environmental extremists. This is not a recent development. Left-wing terrorists have always been the major terrorist threat in the United States"
Mississippi throws down the gauntlet: "A new Mississippi law allows displays of the Ten Commandments, "In God We Trust" and Jesus' Sermon on the Mount in public buildings. Governor Haley Barbour, who already has a Ten Commandments display in his Capitol office, signed the bill without a public ceremony. The Mississippi American Civil Liberties Union is awaiting a U-S Supreme Court ruling on the constitutionality of displaying the Ten Commandments on public property before deciding whether to challenge the state law. In 2001, Mississippi passed a law that required "In God We Trust" to be posted in every public classroom, cafeteria and gym. Last fall, Mississippi approved a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage".
The usual bad consequences of government regulation: "A new European Union regulation is forcing airlines to pay passengers if a flight is delayed. Just delayed. Not as a matter of agreement between customer and vendor but as a matter of law. A single flight delay can now cost an airline hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now, delays usually have causes, including safety-related causes. So this regulation punishes airlines for safeguarding passengers. You can predict what the consequences will be. Recently a British Airways plane was in the news after its pilot decided to fly across the Atlantic with a busted engine. Otherwise the airline would have had to pay over the $280,000 to compensate the passengers."
What "liberals" want in the constitution: "The left makes no secret of its intentions where the Constitution is concerned. It wants to change it, in ways that have nothing to do with what the document actually says. It wants the Constitution to enshrine its own policy preferences--thus freeing it from the tiresome necessity of winning elections. And how will the Constitution be changed? Through a constitutional convention, or a vote of two-thirds of the state legislatures? Of course not. The whole problem, from the liberal perspective, is that they can't get democratically elected bodies to enact their agenda. As one of the Yale conference participants said: "We don't have much choice other than to believe deeply in the courts--where else do we turn?" The new, improved Constitution will come about through judicial re-interpretation."
Leftist backpedalling: "American idealism, backed with force and conviction - not soft power, multilateralism, Europeans, or the U.N. - ended the rule of the Taliban, and of Saddam Hussein. The often-lonely vision of George W. Bush ushered in elected governments in their places, and inspired the disenfranchised elsewhere to begin agitating for change. Those in Lebanon know that it was an American president, not Kofi Annan or Gerhard Schroeder, who both shares their aspirations and is willing to stand up to their oppressors. Among the critics of the first George W. Bush administration - and especially among the architects of the feeble U.S. response to terrorism in the 1990s - the present reality must be either denied or spun. The former is impossible when Arab radicals themselves credit Bush with being a catalyst for reform. That leaves the latter alternative of spin as the only recourse: Bush erred by going alone and is now changing to our point of view and thus basking in the world's appreciation."
PETA loses: "A leading animal-rights group has lost its court fight to pull the California milk industry's popular "Happy Cows" television spots over accusations of false advertising. The California Supreme Court refused Wednesday to review an appeal brought by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which sued to stop the national advertising campaign featuring the talking, laid-back cows and their tag line, "Great Cheese Comes From Happy Cows. Happy Cows Come From California." ..... The "Happy Cows" ads, part of a five-year-old, $33 million campaign, became a huge hit in California and helped push the state's cheese industry to first in the nation, said Nancy Fletcher, spokeswoman for the California Milk Advisory Board. "This appears to be another loss for PETA in their campaign against the California milk industry," Ms. Fletcher said. "The highest priority of our dairy farmers is the health and comfort of their cows. They take great pride in how well they treat their cows."
Drunkablog (who seems to blog from Denver) thinks that Australian bloggers do a particularly good job. I completely agree!
Melbourne blogger Matter of Opinion has quite a bit up about Anzac day.
In my latest quote on MARXWORDS a war against Russia is said to be good for Germany. I always wondered where Hitler got that idea!
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 Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 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.
Leftist ideologues 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 and can con "the masses" into giving them power.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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Domestic terrorism is overwhelmingly Leftist: "Immediately after Timothy McVeigh was arrested for blowing up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on a beautiful April morning 10 years ago, the media were atwitter with the talk of "right-wing militias" and the threat they posed to the republic. McVeigh, unapologetic, defiant, and awash in hatred for the government, was presented as the poster boy of the government-hating, gun-loving, right-wing nuts. And we were told ad nauseam that McVeigh was the product of conservative talk radio and irresponsible Republican politicians who talked about revolution. It was all the fault of Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich. (Rarely mentioned was the real motivator of McVeigh's actions: Janet Reno's attack on the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. But I digress.)... In the decade since the Oklahoma City bombing, the media have remained interested in the right-wing crazies, but have almost entirely ignored the left-wing ones -- those committing most of the terrorist acts inside the United States. Left-wing terrorist groups have been responsible for almost all of the recent domestic terrorism. The National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism maintains a terrorism database. According to its files, as the Baltimore Sun reported on Sunday, fully 22 of the 25 terrorist attacks inside the United States since 2003 are believed to have been the work of environmental extremists. This is not a recent development. Left-wing terrorists have always been the major terrorist threat in the United States"
Mississippi throws down the gauntlet: "A new Mississippi law allows displays of the Ten Commandments, "In God We Trust" and Jesus' Sermon on the Mount in public buildings. Governor Haley Barbour, who already has a Ten Commandments display in his Capitol office, signed the bill without a public ceremony. The Mississippi American Civil Liberties Union is awaiting a U-S Supreme Court ruling on the constitutionality of displaying the Ten Commandments on public property before deciding whether to challenge the state law. In 2001, Mississippi passed a law that required "In God We Trust" to be posted in every public classroom, cafeteria and gym. Last fall, Mississippi approved a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage".
The usual bad consequences of government regulation: "A new European Union regulation is forcing airlines to pay passengers if a flight is delayed. Just delayed. Not as a matter of agreement between customer and vendor but as a matter of law. A single flight delay can now cost an airline hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now, delays usually have causes, including safety-related causes. So this regulation punishes airlines for safeguarding passengers. You can predict what the consequences will be. Recently a British Airways plane was in the news after its pilot decided to fly across the Atlantic with a busted engine. Otherwise the airline would have had to pay over the $280,000 to compensate the passengers."
What "liberals" want in the constitution: "The left makes no secret of its intentions where the Constitution is concerned. It wants to change it, in ways that have nothing to do with what the document actually says. It wants the Constitution to enshrine its own policy preferences--thus freeing it from the tiresome necessity of winning elections. And how will the Constitution be changed? Through a constitutional convention, or a vote of two-thirds of the state legislatures? Of course not. The whole problem, from the liberal perspective, is that they can't get democratically elected bodies to enact their agenda. As one of the Yale conference participants said: "We don't have much choice other than to believe deeply in the courts--where else do we turn?" The new, improved Constitution will come about through judicial re-interpretation."
Leftist backpedalling: "American idealism, backed with force and conviction - not soft power, multilateralism, Europeans, or the U.N. - ended the rule of the Taliban, and of Saddam Hussein. The often-lonely vision of George W. Bush ushered in elected governments in their places, and inspired the disenfranchised elsewhere to begin agitating for change. Those in Lebanon know that it was an American president, not Kofi Annan or Gerhard Schroeder, who both shares their aspirations and is willing to stand up to their oppressors. Among the critics of the first George W. Bush administration - and especially among the architects of the feeble U.S. response to terrorism in the 1990s - the present reality must be either denied or spun. The former is impossible when Arab radicals themselves credit Bush with being a catalyst for reform. That leaves the latter alternative of spin as the only recourse: Bush erred by going alone and is now changing to our point of view and thus basking in the world's appreciation."
PETA loses: "A leading animal-rights group has lost its court fight to pull the California milk industry's popular "Happy Cows" television spots over accusations of false advertising. The California Supreme Court refused Wednesday to review an appeal brought by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which sued to stop the national advertising campaign featuring the talking, laid-back cows and their tag line, "Great Cheese Comes From Happy Cows. Happy Cows Come From California." ..... The "Happy Cows" ads, part of a five-year-old, $33 million campaign, became a huge hit in California and helped push the state's cheese industry to first in the nation, said Nancy Fletcher, spokeswoman for the California Milk Advisory Board. "This appears to be another loss for PETA in their campaign against the California milk industry," Ms. Fletcher said. "The highest priority of our dairy farmers is the health and comfort of their cows. They take great pride in how well they treat their cows."
Drunkablog (who seems to blog from Denver) thinks that Australian bloggers do a particularly good job. I completely agree!
Melbourne blogger Matter of Opinion has quite a bit up about Anzac day.
In my latest quote on MARXWORDS a war against Russia is said to be good for Germany. I always wondered where Hitler got that idea!
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 Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 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.
Leftist ideologues 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 and can con "the masses" into giving them power.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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Monday, April 25, 2005
ANZAC DAY
Today is Anzac Day in Australia -- our only genuine national day -- when we remember with both great sadness and gratefulness all those legions of young Australians who have died in our many wars to keep ourselves and others free.
TWO UPDATES
I have reproduced here one account of the central ceremony of Anzac day -- the Dawn service. It conveys something of the emotional power of the occasion, under even adverse circumstances.
I have put up on my RECIPE BLOG a recipe for Anzac cookies.
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