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THE ISLAMIC “GOLDEN AGE”

Apologists for Islam often speak of a “Golden Age” in mediaeval times when the Islamic world was allegedly more civilized than the Christian world. But that is mostly hype. The Muslim Arabs got most of their civilization when they took over Zoroastrian Persia and most of their ancient Greek texts direct from the Greeks themselves.

Yes. The Greeks did not fade away after the death of Alexander the Great. They continued on in the Eastern Mediterranean just as before. And when they were conquered by Rome, Rome simply took over their culture. The teachers for educated Roman youth were generally Greek. Far from suppressing Greek learning. Rome admired and promoted it. And anybody who knows his Bible knows how strong Greek culture still was in the time of St Paul. St Paul spoke Greek and wrote his letters in Greek to congregations in Greek cities such as Ephesus, Corinth etc.

And St Paul did not labour in vain. Christianity flourished in Greek lands. So 300 years later when the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire was set up it was both Greek and Christian from the beginning. Its headquarters was what we now call Turkey but it extended far and wide at various times. It was founded as a Christian empire by Constantine the Great and continued on as a fervently Christian empire for nearly 1000 years. But its culture was Greek and all the old Greek learning was preserved there. Although the Byzantines called themselves Romans, they spoke Greek -- mainly because they were Greek. And Byzantium coexisted with Islam for 500 years -- plenty of time for Greek culture to percolate across the borders -- which it did.

So the idea that the Muslims preserved ancient Greek learning is a laugh. The Greeks themselves preserved Greek learning and had a great Christian Greek civilization flourishing right alongside the Arab world for 500 years. The Christians taught the Arabs, not vice versa.

So the acclaimed civilization of Moorish (Islamic) Spain in the middle ages was little more than a projection of Byzantine culture and that was theological rather than philosophical and certainly not liberal in any sense. So Islam has not regressed. It has stood still. It was never innovative and is now just about as good or bad as ever it was. If you want to see what it was in the past look at what it is now.

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THE ABSURDITY OF FEARING AMERICA

Between the Leftist peaceniks and the Conservative isolationists in the U.S. electorate, the idea that any American President could do anything remotely imperialistic is laughable. Americans want to keep their boys at home and need a hell of a lot of persuading to do otherwise.

One Good Turn also has a succinct post on the European idea that American power needs “counterbalancing”.

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R.I.P. NATO

Ranting Screeds thinks that the NATO alliance is dead now that France and Germany have blocked moves to have NATO defend member-country Turkey. I think he is right. I think that this refusal should cause GWB to announce at some time of his own choosing that he now regards NATO as dead and start up negotiations for a new alliance of freedom-loving nations -- which would probably include most of the rest of Europe and could well be based in Poland.

The amusing thing is that the present alliance of France and Germany will probably prove to be very temporary. The average Frenchman hates Germans.

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ELSEWHERE

What a beauty! It took Tim Blair to come up with this one: NASA actually sent up an Arab on the space shuttle long before they sent up an Israeli! No nation tries harder to be fair than the USA.

Arlene Peck says that the Muslim Arabs have cost us an incalculable amount in their quest to force their religion on the rest of the world and that we should seize their oil to pay the cost of that. The USA easily could, but will it?

Ombudsgod reports that Leftist book banning is still going on in American universities. I think a lot of the universities should be renamed as “Madrassas” -- after the Islamic version.

Bigmouth has a fun idea about another rogue nuclear power: South Africa gave up its nuclear weapons. It's time that France did too. We cannot tolerate a power hungry regime in Paris that has nuclear weapons.

There is an interesting article here that compares the globalizing world of today with the globalizing world at the beginning of the 20th century. War and nationalism disrupted the peaceful globalization of 100 years ago so it is well to be cautious that the same factors do not derail it again. If globalization were stopped it would be as impoverishing as it was last time. (Article needs registration)

Detainees in Australian detention centres are the target of religious hatred. From Muslims

Chris Brand thinks Michael Jackson is not so bad.

Michael Darby has an interesting article on Shaka Zulu and what we could learn from him today.

The Wicked one does not like the French very much. Disliking the French is an old British tradition that Americans are taking over with gusto these days

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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my "First Draft" site instead or check my HomePage for a new blog address.

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SCOTLAND, LIBERTY AND THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD

My sole focus in discussing the historic Germanic and Protestant contribution on this blog so far has been on individual liberty. I believe that the individualism of our Anglo-Saxon (Germanic) forebears has given us the liberties we have today.

There are however other ways in which Germanic and Protestant civilization is often alleged to have played a leading role in shaping the modern world. In particular, the German reformation is seen as enabling a freedom of thought that eventually brought about the English industrial revolution and hence modern civilization as we know it. And as part of that process the scientific, technical and engineering innovations that enabled the modern world do almost all seem to have flowed from Germanic countries -- principally Germany itself and Britain. From the printing press to the steam engine the creation of technological civilization seems to have flowed almost entirely from the Germanic peoples of Northwestern Europe.

I think that there is a large element of truth in this account but do not place any great reliance on it. It seems to me that the account overlooks very substantial contributions from France and Italy for a start (e.g. Marconi, Pasteur etc.) -- though it could also be argued that both the Northern French and the Northern Italians have substantial German elements (e.g. the Franks and the Lombards) in their ancestry.

Another objection is the role of the Scots. In his book How the Scots Invented the Modern World, Arthur Herman points to the very substantial contribution made by Scots to the the development of modern Western thinking and the invention by Scots of much in modern Western technology. So how does that square with the contention that the modern world was essentially a Germanic invention? Surely the Scots are Celts rather than Germanic!

I doubt however that the Scottish case constitutes a crucial objection. Some reasons why:

* To my knowledge both the Chinese and the Russians make similar claims to have produced many great inventions. Most things seem to have had more than one "inventor"

* There is an awful lot that the Scots did NOT invent -- from the printing press onwards.

* The Scottish lowlands (where most Scots live) were thoroughly colonized by the Anglo-Saxons so most Scots have substantial Germanic ancestry.

* The Celtic Scots got at least Germanic culture via Protestantism and the English hegemony generally.

The reviews in the Amazon site linked above are well worth a read.

On the political front however, the Scots show very clearly the Germanic difference. Scotland has long been heavily socialist, returning very few Tory members to the Westminster parliament. When English voters swung very heavily towards Margaret Thatcher in 1979, Scotland actually swung away from the Tories! So the greater Celtic element in the Scots ancestry does seem to make a marked difference in politics. Where the Germanic English favour individualism and conservatism, the Celtic Scots favour collectivism and socialism.

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LEFTY SEX

I have had some correspondence from my fellow bloggers (who must of course remain nameless) confirming Andrew Ian Dodge’s view that Leftist women are a lot better as bed prospects. Despite views not much different from mine, one even attends peace rallies for pickup purposes! And another said that he finds ladies of the night more skilled, however. He also points out that they are the REAL capitalists!

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ELSEWHERE

American Kaiser notes German anti-Americanism and thinks America should relocate its military bases from Germany to Eastern Europe. The Eastern Europeans are generally pro-American (sometimes wildly so) and could use the dollars the bases would bring. It might just happen. V.D. Hanson has a similar idea.

Robert Musil shoots down the latest bit of economic nonsense from Paul Krugman -- but only for those with some literacy in economics.

An influential German newspaper (Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) has recently suggested that the present isolation of Germany and France over Iraq (most of the rest of Europe supports the USA) may herald the breakup of the EU. As an Anglospherist and a libertarian, I look forward with glee to the end of that bureaucratic monster. Britain in particular would be far better off signing a free-trade agreement with the USA. More here.

There is a good essay here on why Leftist antisemitism is based not on a hatred of Jews per se but rather on a hatred of success and traditional values.

Orrin Judd has a good summary of the disastrous '70s. Having lived through that time myself, I see much truth in what he says. He is certainly right that to leave Saddam in place would be to repeat the follies of that time.

Prof. Bunyip has a devastating exposure of the barefaced lies being told by Leftist commentator Phillip Adams. He gives the Melbourne Age a pretty effective serve for dishonesty too.

Chris Brand has some further observations on how the Nazi phenomenon still corrupts modern thinking.

The Wicked one has some dubious advice for travellers to Britain

Michael Darby posts on the contentious subject of water rights.

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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my "First Draft" site instead or check my HomePage for a new blog address.

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JACKO IS NOT SO BAD

Watched by some 15 million UK viewers, pop idol Michael Jackson (who in 1993 bought off a paedophilia accusation, paying UKP11M) revealed his obsession with children and said youngsters of 12 sometimes shared his bed and/or bedroom at his 'Neverland' adventure complex - one such boy, a former cancer case, was presented, smiling and tightly clutching Jackson's hand. Said Jackson: "Why can't you share your bed? That's the most loving thing to do, to share your bed with someone." At one point he whispered "I am a Peter Pan at heart" - though apparently meaning simply 'lover of children', not an abuser.

The ITV programme (by ITV's Martin Bashir, who once famously interviewed Princess Diana sympathetically about her failing marriage) linked Jackson's love of children to his piteous claims of having been abused as a child - his father beating him (his siblings agree) with anything that came to hand, and his older brothers making love to girls while he was in the same room and had to pretend to be asleep.

Jackson said he would kill himself if he woke up one morning to find the world empty of children for him to love, but he denied any sexual element to his involvements. Although he was already raising three children (supposedly his own biological offspring) apart from their mothers, he said he was thinking of adopting more children, perhaps two from each continent.

{With these revelations, the popular Jackson seemed on course to re-brand the world's image of 'paedophilia'; or alternatively - in view of likely renewed police scrutiny and outrage from paedohysterics -- he might become the world's richest jailbird. In either case, any open-minded person would agree he had done more good for children than many hundreds of Haringey 'social workers' put together.}

Subsequently, columns in the Daily Mail and Sun condemned Jackson as evil, sick and dangerous; the Independent said he was weird but not wicked; the Guardian actually ran a column titled "Why Jacko is a great dad_but only if you want your child to be a tortured genius" (G2, 5 ii 03, p. 14); and the Times said nothing.

At ITV's phone-in, comments were 80% in favour of Jackson. Sales of Jackson's record 'Thriller' shot up by 500% compared with the previous week's performance and his Greatest Hits package 'HIStory' rocketed by 1,000% at British retail chain HMV. Jackson himself understandably condemned Bashir's treacherous interviewing and reportage as "deceptive" and "tawdry"; but it was quite possible Jackson would have the last laugh if there were no complaints from the many children he had entertained at Neverland. {American Nobelist Carleton Gajdusek managed to adopt and help about 50 children before one of them was lured by police to make a complaint.}

Jackson found considerable support at the ITV website and several parents came forward to say they would be sending their children to his Neverland playground.

Americans were not as supportive and Brits and Europeans, but polls showed that even 51% of US adults thought Jackson "misunderstood." In California's Santa Barbara County, where Jackson's Neverland ranch is located, District Attorney Thomas W. Sneddon, Jr., condemned the ``media circus'' around the documentary and called Jackson's admission that he has slept in the same bed as children ``much ado about nothing.'' ``Sleeping in bed with a kid is not a crime that I know of,'' Sneddon told the Santa Barbara News-Press.

In the Observer (9 ii), two articles defended Jackson as surely a better-than-average father - certainly better than some parents seen in supermarkets, and also better than quite a lot of Hollywood parents. Apparently Jackson's older children are nice, bright, unaffected etc. Altogether, it looked as if there was some chance that Michael Jackson could succeed in abating paedohysteria.

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Comments? Email Chris Brand.
Some history.

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BLOGSPOT BLOCKED AGAIN?

Matthew Cowie is in China at the moment and thinks that the Chinese have blocked Blogspot again. As before, he can post but not see his postings.

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MORE SURPRISING HISTORY

Most of what most people think they know about Nazi Germany is wrong. For instance: It was mainly Britain and America that defeated Hitler. Right? Wrong! 80% of German military casualties were on the Eastern front (i.e. fighting Russia). The Western allies were a sideshow. And I have often pointed to the historical evidence showing that Hitler was a Leftist rather than a Rightist. But wait! There's more:

The idea that Hitler's Germany was a nation of bureaucratized automatons under a single iron rule exists only in the popular imagination. Any comprehensive history of das dritte Reich (e.g. Shirer, 1964; Bullock, 1964) will tell you that power was if anything excessively decentralized and unfocused under Hitler. Hitler's immense popularity and respect in the country gave him ultimate authority but he exercised it only in a desultory and general way -- leaving most decisions and all administration to his subordinates. And he deliberately gave his subordinates overlapping jurisdictions so that they continually had to compete with one-another for power. Power in Nazi Germany was policentric, not centralized.

And nor were his subordinates rigid automations. Contrary to the Hollywood
stereotype, the Nazi armies were far from being filled with rigid bunglers. Their remarkable initial successes against overwhelming odds (Dupuy, 1986) should alone suggest that but see also Singer & Wooton (1976) and Hughes (1986). Both on the home front and in the field Hitler's Germany can be shown to be flexible and improvisational rather than rigid and formal.

Hitler's closest friend and the person he spent most time with was Albert Speer yet when allied bombers destroyed a building containing most of the records of his armaments ministry, Speer rejoiced at the loss. He welcomed the opportunity to make a new start. He was innovative rather than rigid (Singer & Wooton, 1976). And that was also true of Hitler's generals. It was only their flexibility and creative thinking that enabled them to achieve so much against numerically much superior odds. The example of Rommel is of course well known but a better example is in fact Manstein -- architect of the Blitzkrieg on France. At the outset of the French campaign, Manstein faced heavily entrenched French and allied forces that were in no way inferior to the German forces but his bold and innovative Panzer-led strike through the Ardennes outflanked the French forces and routed them completely. And later in Russia, Manstein destroyed two Russian armies even AFTER Stalingrad. So even Hitler's Germany was very much a nation that allowed much scope for creative individualism -- as long as you did not threaten the overall power structure, of course.

The innovative nature of Nazi Germany can also of course be seen in the large number of previously unknown weapons systems that it deployed -- cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, radar and jet aircraft. The Focke company also produced the first workable helicopter -- though it was not used militarily.

So Hitler's Germany was in fact much more individualistic and decentralized than is generally realized.

References:
Bullock, A. (1964) Hitler: A study in tyranny N.Y.: Harper
Dupuy, T.N. (1986) Mythos or verity? The quantified judgment model and German combat effectiveness. Military Affairs 50(4), 204-210.
Hughes, D.J. (1986) Abuses of German military history. Military Review, 66(12), 67-76.
Shirer, W.L. (1964) The rise and fall of the Third Reich London: Pan
Singer, E.A. & Wooton, L.M. (1976) The triumph and failure of Albert Speer's administrative genius: Implications for current management theory and practice. Journal of Applied Behavioral Research, 12, 79-103.

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AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

I like this from Betsy's Page:

Thomas Sowell has another of his tirades against Affirmative Action. His logic is overwhelming and you get the sense that he's very tired of having had to say the same thing for a quarter century. I like his opening.

It has been said that, when Ronald Reagan was governor of California, someone told him that admitting students to the University of California on individual performance alone could mean that all the students at Berkeley might be Asian Americans.

"So what?" was the Gipper's response.

And Jonathan Chait asks why politicians are so afraid to stop affirmative action even though it is hugely unpopular with the voters.

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ELSEWHERE

Big backdown “Germany offered missiles to defend Turkey, and France refused to rule out an attack on Iraq” More here.

Poor and Stupid defends GWB’s budget against an attack by Andrew Sullivan -- on the grounds that compassionate conservatism costs money.

Mixed Asian says that affirmative action has not really ended in Malaysia.

Chris Brand sums up his argument that liberalism needs rescuing from the ghost of Nazism.

Michael Darby has posts on the Nazi-like behaviour of certain vegetarian and pro-animal groups.

The Wicked one has posts about noise and anti-Americanism.

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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my "First Draft" site instead or check my HomePage for a new blog address.

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ISRAEL AN AMERICAN STATE?

In a world where the EU has just been significantly enlarged and the USA has (though NAFTA) integrated the whole of North America into a single economic unit, some unusual thoughts are becoming more and more plausible. As this observation on Israel’s problems by Orrin Judd shows: ...and you have to wonder if the eventual, fate of Israel might not be to become an American state. Such a state would lose its distinctly Jewish identity and become more like a Utah, but would be preserved as a world enclave of Judaism. That would be better than many of the more likely alternatives. And, one might add, if the USA can accomodate the Amish, it could probably also accomodate the Haredim.




ABOLISH THE U.N.?

Mark Steyn thinks that the U.N. has become an irrelevance and that we should abolish it. I heartily agree. If the U.N. endeavours to obstruct the attempt by the USA to dismantle Saddam and his dangerous weapons program, they will in effect abolish themselves of course. It is seldom stated overtly, but President Bush would probably withdraw his representatives to the U.N. if that happened. And then the U.N. really would be nothing but an irrelevant talking shop. The USA kept out of the League of Nations in the 1930s so there is no reason why it could not absent itself from the U.N.

And it is certainly worth noting that U.N. resolutions have not done Israel much good.

(Crossposted on Israpundit)

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THE MALE-FEMALE DIFFERENCE

Goldberg says that men are naturally dominant because of their different hormones etc. Here is a summary of his book. His critics have found him hard to argue with. See here.

Why are there so few women who are top achievers (famous composers etc.) in so many fields? Denis Dutton has made a study of genius and says that females stick closer to the middle in ability. There are fewer very dumb women but also fewer very bright ones

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LEFTIST GUILT

There is a good review here of Allan Levite's book about Leftist guilt. Allan Levite proposes that affluent Leftists are primarily motivated by guilt about their own affluence.

I have my doubts about Levite's theory -- as you will see about half-way through my article here.

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MORE GREENIE EXCESSES

This gave me a good laugh: Greenpeace now wants to ban peanuts! It certainly shows them up for the crazies they are.

“The envirowackos have won again... birds encroaching on a temporary dry lake have been granted property rights!. Read the whole sorry story here

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ELSEWHERE

The Curmudgeon gave me a laugh: Another thing. I always thought that if you jumped up off your feet in an airplane, you'd be slammed into the rear bulkhead. After my friends laughed at me, I know it can't be true, but whenever I start to try it - like on the way to the lavatory, I'm too embarrassed to jump up, so I don't really know. I guess it’s all relative!

This gave me a laugh too: The French are to diplomacy what the British are to cooking. From Useful Fools. Having been brought up on British cookery, I know what he means.

Only Australians will understand this but Happy 80th birthday to Vegemite!

Can a megalomaniac get bored by his own propaganda? It seems that He can!

Bridgeblogger Floyd McWilliams has picked up my post about the Germanic origins of the English yesterday and highlights some puzzles in it.

Conservative Commentary has a new heading on his blog -- a quotation supporting the peace movement! But you might guess from whom the quotation comes.

The Wicked one has a sexy-sounding link and more on French corruption.

Chris Brand has more on Hitler as a betrayer.

Michael Darby has posts on subsidies to the arts, free trade and Zimbabwean savagery,

THE GERMANIC ORIGINS OF THE ENGLISH

A picture is said to be better than 1,000 words so this link to a BBC educational site should help fix in all our minds the fact that the English are historically the Western branch of the Germanic people -- and that the basics of what is German should also therefore be the basics of what is English. Though 1500 years of history can create a lot of differences, of course. The words in the yellow text-box are particularly relevant to my constant stress on the historical importance of political decentralization among the Germanic peoples.

Thanks to Matthew Cowie for the link.

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SEX AND LEFTIST YOUTH

Andrew Ian Dodge is one of several people who have put to me that young men are attracted to Leftism because Leftist women are more sexually accessible. And certainly in my own youth the Leftist ladies did seem to be less attached to their pants than others. But that brings us to the next question: Why? I think the answer is pretty straightforward:

Leftism is intrinsically rebellious
Young people are instrinsically rebellious
Female sexual promiscuity is intrinsically rebellious.

So the three go together.

I have just posted Andrew’s email here (Post of 7th.). It is worth a read. I think he even outdoes me for forthrightness!

Mainstream politicians are not unaware of the issue. It arose in South Carolina in 2001. Addressing the young men of "Boys State", the Democratic chairman, Dick Hartpootlian, declared that the Democrats were the party of "beer and girls". Not to be outdone, the Republican chairman, Henry McMaster, countered that the Republicans were the party of "cold beer and hot girls". You can imagine how the feminazi hens clucked over that one!

On a much darker note, read here how a former Leftist is horrified by the hatred that drove him during his Leftist youth.

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OVERGENERALIZING ABOUT GERMANY AND FRANCE

Andrew Sullivan’s recent article in the Sunday Times seems very superficial to me. Equating Germany and France because of their present alliance is ludicrous. You would not want to tell the average Frenchman that he had anything in common with the Germans!

And saying that neither country has the social and organizational diversity (pluralism) of the English-speaking countries is ridiculous too. I am sure that there are just as many sporting clubs, special interest organizations, and school/parent associations in France and Germany as anywhere else.

And we must not confuse Germany's present government with Germany. Germany and Australia both normally have pretty conservative governments but with occasional lapses into Leftist craziness. Australia's last such crazy-Leftist government (under Whitlam) was in the 70s. It lasted only 4 years. I don't see Germany’s Schroeder lasting much longer either. The recent Land elections (German State elections) gave huge majorities to the German conservative parties so that should give Chancellor Schroeder a hard time in the Bundesrat (German Senate) if I understand German politics rightly.

But if I think Sullivan is wrong on the points above, I think he was absolutely right in his judgement of my hero: Ronald Reagan. Contrary to all the Leftist mockery, Sullivan said some time ago of the Gipper: “He was one of the most intellectual presidents in history. If you doubt it, you need to read Sullivan’s article.

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ELSEWHERE

Libertarians will like this link. It shows how the internet is enabling small companies and individuals to do the sort of basic and applied scientific research that could once only be done by big organizations -- generally government-funded ones.

Bob Park has a good laugh at the “Freedom Car” -- GWB’s sop to the Greenies -- but agrees that it is a cheap sop at least.

Nice to see a prominent Canadian attacking anti-Americanism.

There's a big strike at affirmative action on Clubbeaux

If the opposite of pro is con then the opposite of progress must be congress. As a libertarian, I LIKE that! From Commonsense & Wonder

It is hard to believe that this I love Saddam article could be published in any Western newspaper. It is eerily reminiscent of the sort of “happy worker” stuff pro-Stalin Western Leftists used to write years ago. Yet it appeared a few days ago in the Washington Post. Via Commonsense & Wonder


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LEFTIST INFLUENCES ON YOUTH

Ed Mick has a great follow-up to my initial post on why it is that young people tend to be more Leftist than their seniors. Ed sees youthful Leftism as being mainly the outcome of the institutional influences that young people are exposed to. He sees these as:

1) Immediate family
2) Education establishment
3) Mass media
4) Church

And points out that the last 3 of these are very often Leftist these days. So young people learn Leftism just as they learn any other lesson. Ed spells it all out in detail. Well worth a read.

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THE CURRENT GERMAN SPINELESSNESS

Wunderkinder notes:

[German Foreign Minister Joschka] Fischer said that although Iraq has constantly violated U.N. resolutions and Saddam's regime is "terrible for the Iraqi people," the inspections must go on.

And comments:

Apparently in Gerhard Shroeder's political philosophy, constant violations and a terrible regime aren't enough for UN action. If Iraq flew a chemical weapon-carrying drone plane into the Bundestag, German politicians would apologize for leaving it in such an inconvenient spot.

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THE LEFTIST MIND .... CONTINUED

"Democrats will trample over a thousand poor people to throw a rock at a rich man." --Tom Adkins of "The Common Conservative," on the Bush tax-cut plan. Via The Federalist

Whacking day has a good summary of the strange and totally dishonest minds of Leftists. That Leftists NEED to criticize and be different is the most obvious explanation of such strange behaviour.

Tim Gillin (post of Feb. 2nd.): Concern for the poor is admirable and charity is a virtue, but the recent advances in China shows that Adam Smith did more for the world's poor than all socialists put end to end.

Cold Fury has found some remarkable honesty and good sense about Iraq from two Leftists. It shows that there is a small minority of Leftists who really are humanitarian.

It is often vaguely asserted that the peaceniks and do-gooders who urge that Saddam should be dealt with by "negotiation" are following the same strategy as the foolish peaceniks of the 1930s who tried to appease Hitler. Someone who remembers the 1930s very well writes here that the parallels are in fact enormous. The peaceniks of today are saying almost exactly what the peaceniks of the 30s said. They never learn.

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ELSEWHERE

Nice to see a prominent Canadian attacking anti-Americanism.

There's a big strike at affirmative action on Clubbeaux

The Federalist has some good quotes from the speech of President Bush, given at the memorial service for the astronauts of the Columbia at the Johnson Space Center a few days ago.

The administration has assured North Korea it has no intention of invading [but] it has left open the possibility of a pre-emptive air attack on North Korean nuclear plants. THAT'S what I like to hear! More at the Judd blog.

Delightful news! Tony Blair blocked a decision to award a French company a £3 billion contract to build the Royal Navy's two new aircraft carriers because of anger at President Jacques Chirac's behaviour over Iraq and Zimbabwe. (Via Right Wing News).

So there IS responsible thinking in Scandinavia (sometimes): Norwegian television has sacked a left-wing journalist for his outspoken views on the impending Iraq War after he compared President Bush to Adolf Hitler. (Via The Politburo)

There is a rather nice flag idea for Anglospherists at Samizdata

Chris Brand has more on Hitler as a betrayer.

Michael Darby has some mail about the monarchy and some advice from mother Teresa.

The Wicked one is not very happy with either Vegans or Mrs Arafat.

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PITY OUR CONSERVATIVE COLLEGE STUDENTS

David Horowitz has for some time been running a campaign to get some political balance onto US college and university campuses. But he has a long way to go. I have just received an email from a US college student that details the tripe he has to endure as part of his studies. The bias and inconsistency is so bad that it is actually painful for him. Students should not have to endure propaganda in lieu of scholarship. Read his email here. It has its funny side.

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VIN FERRARI

Vin Ferrari also has a good summary up about the oppression of a conservative student by a “liberal” academe. He has lots of pithy summaries up in fact. Like this one:

2 great liberal contradictions

Saddam Hussein doesn't have any weapons of mass destruction. We definitely shouldn't go in there because if we do he might use them.

Saddam Hussein has no connection to Al Qaeda, etc., because Saddam Hussein is hated by Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc. If we attack him, they will retaliate against us around the world.

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GERMANIC LIBERTIES AND PRUSSIA

Razib has posted an excellent but necessarily long post on whether our Anglospheric respect for individual liberties is of Christian or Germanic origin. He and I agree that Germanic origin maps respect for the individual a lot better than the prevalence of Christianity does.

Razib gives a rather more wide-ranging history lesson in support of his views than I have done (see the second half of my article here) so far but he seems to have more difficulty with the Prussian phenomenon than I do. Roughly, Prussia is the Northeastern part of Germany which, over the course of the 19th century, gradually came to dominate the whole of Germany. And the Prussian army had a famous tradition of requiring that its troops be Kadaver gehorsam (corpselike obedient) so how that squares with a Germanic respect for individual liberty does at first seem very difficult to explain indeed.

The point is, however, that, like many other groups, Germans encompass a wide variety of people within their ranks and Prussia is only one part of Germany (and in fact for most of its history it was only partly German -- including large numbers of Poles, Silesians and other non-Germans). Furthermore, the Prussian ascendancy was both very recent and very short-lived. It dates essentially from the French surrender at Sedan in 1870 and ended with the flight of the Kaiser to Holland in 1918 -- to be succeeeded by the very un-Prussian Weimar Republic. Those 48 years are undoubtedly of enormous significance to the world but all that they show essentially is that Prussian militarism had some initial success but ended up destroying itself.

Prior to Sedan, Germany was a disunited and decentralized agglomeration that generations of Prussians, French and others tried unsuccessfully to subdue. And after Sedan, unity of a sort was achieved and maintained only by the diplomatic genius of Bismarck. And after the remarkable restraint provided by Bismarck was dispensed with by the new Kaiser, the German Empire very quickly self-destructed -- in World War I. And Hitler’s attempt to revive it went the same way. So now Germany is back to something much more like what it always was -- a nation with a strongly decentralized power structure in the form of the various Land (State) governments. And that is of course exactly the same structure that certain other countries of mainly Germanic origin (the USA, Canada and Australia) have adopted too. And “devolution” is rapidly leading to a similar state of affairs in Britain as well.

In short, from a historical perspective, the Prussian ascendancy was no more than a short and atypical blip in the more than 2000 years of decentralized power in Germany so cannot possibly be the major source of any generalizations about Germany that we might wish to make.

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Today is Ronald Reagan’s birthday. I wish him as happy a birthday as is possible in his present reduced state. After what he did for his country and the world, no-one is more entitled to have his birthday honoured. There is a great photo of him here. One of his typical sayings:

"One legislator accused me of having a 19th century attitude on law and order. That is a totally false charge. I have an 18th century attitude. That is when the Founding Fathers made it clear that the safety of law abiding citizens should be one of government's primary concerns."

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MAJOR CENSORSHIP IN THE LEFTIST MEDIA

“Media bias” is not the right word for it. Jim Miller shows that what people get from the major U.S. newspapers is straight-out, old-fashioned censorship that would do a wartime censor proud. As Jim shows at length, if you had relied totally on such newspapers for your information about the world, you WOULD NEVER KNOW that the leaders of major European nations such as Britain, Poland, Spain and Italy had all signed a letter supporting the U.S. policy on Iraq. Infinitely less important and less newsworthy stories were run instead.

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ELSEWHERE

Michael Darby is keeping up his campaign of awareness about Zimbabwe with another firsthand report.

Chris Brand stresses the extent to which Hitler was a deceiver

Under the heading: Are Catholics ethically primitive?, the Wicked one has put up a major rant that seeks to explain the spinelessness of the French over Iraq as an outcome of their Catholicism. His concluding sentence: Chirac is an amoral, corrupt sleazeball.

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JACKO IS NOT SO BAD

Watched by some 15 million UK viewers, pop idol Michael Jackson (who in 1993 bought off a paedophilia accusation, paying UKP11M) revealed his obsession with children and said youngsters of 12 sometimes shared his bed and/or bedroom at his 'Neverland' adventure complex - one such boy, a former cancer case, was presented, smiling and tightly clutching Jackson's hand. Said Jackson: "Why can't you share your bed? That's the most loving thing to do, to share your bed with someone." At one point he whispered "I am a Peter Pan at heart" - though apparently meaning simply 'lover of children', not an abuser.

The ITV programme (by ITV's Martin Bashir, who once famously interviewed Princess Diana sympathetically about her failing marriage) linked Jackson's love of children to his piteous claims of having been abused as a child - his father beating him (his siblings agree) with anything that came to hand, and his older brothers making love to girls while he was in the same room and had to pretend to be asleep.

Jackson said he would kill himself if he woke up one morning to find the world empty of children for him to love, but he denied any sexual element to his involvements. Although he was already raising three children (supposedly his own biological offspring) apart from their mothers, he said he was thinking of adopting more children, perhaps two from each continent.

{With these revelations, the popular Jackson seemed on course to re-brand the world's image of 'paedophilia'; or alternatively - in view of likely renewed police scrutiny and outrage from paedohysterics -- he might become the world's richest jailbird. In either case, any open-minded person would agree he had done more good for children than many hundreds of Haringey 'social workers' put together.}

Subsequently, columns in the Daily Mail and Sun condemned Jackson as evil, sick and dangerous; the Independent said he was weird but not wicked; the Guardian actually ran a column titled "Why Jacko is a great dad_but only if you want your child to be a tortured genius" (G2, 5 ii 03, p. 14); and the Times said nothing.

At ITV's phone-in, comments were 80% in favour of Jackson. Sales of Jackson's record 'Thriller' shot up by 500% compared with the previous week's performance and his Greatest Hits package 'HIStory' rocketed by 1,000% at British retail chain HMV. Jackson himself understandably condemned Bashir's treacherous interviewing and reportage as "deceptive" and "tawdry"; but it was quite possible Jackson would have the last laugh if there were no complaints from the many children he had entertained at Neverland. {American Nobelist Carleton Gajdusek managed to adopt and help about 50 children before one of them was lured by police to make a complaint.}

Jackson found considerable support at the ITV website and several parents came forward to say they would be sending their children to his Neverland playground.

Americans were not as supportive and Brits and Europeans, but polls showed that even 51% of US adults thought Jackson "misunderstood." In California's Santa Barbara County, where Jackson's Neverland ranch is located, District Attorney Thomas W. Sneddon, Jr., condemned the ``media circus'' around the documentary and called Jackson's admission that he has slept in the same bed as children ``much ado about nothing.'' ``Sleeping in bed with a kid is not a crime that I know of,'' Sneddon told the Santa Barbara News-Press.

In the Observer (9 ii), two articles defended Jackson as surely a better-than-average father - certainly better than some parents seen in supermarkets, and also better than quite a lot of Hollywood parents. Apparently Jackson's older children are nice, bright, unaffected etc. Altogether, it looked as if there was some chance that Michael Jackson could succeed in abating paedohysteria.

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Comments? Email Chris Brand.
Some history.

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SEX AND LEFTIST YOUTH

(I received the following email from Andrew Ian Dodge)

I think you missed the most obvious reason why young men go for lefty causes. Right-of-centre women are colder and less ... um ... “willing” than their left-wing counterparts. The socialist/Democrats have the best parties and that is where all the good looking women are. Sasha is the first right-of-centre woman I have ever been serious with, and she is to be my wife. I know quite a few soft-Labour/Blairites who are that way inclined merely because the Tory group at their university was full
of oiks and was bereft of single women.

I said that in a rather cruder way in the comments section of Iain's blog. Its very simple: you men want to get laid, they go where the loose(r) women are. The left knows this and use it to their advantage as often as possible. The left is very good at using penis-politics, the right would rather not even think of it.

My way of getting volunteers to a campaign? Very easy, get a damn fine looking woman who seems to be unattached (ie no wedding ring). Guys will volunteer to go out in a blizzard if they think they can get into her knickers. It is pathetic but it works like a charm!

I got in a bit of a row with Tory woman over this point. She wanted to get more "young people" involved in the party. I told her how to do it...she was not willing to listen. You need to get people involved via fun and partying, then you introduce the work side. I tried to explain the main motivation for a 19 year old Tory-leaning bloke is not politics most of the time.



(Text posted in “Comments” facilities often seems to get lost so I also reproduce below what Andrew said on Iain’s blog:)



A big reason that young adults (male) are left-wing in sympathy is fairly obvious. The right never like to state it; well barring me. Let's face it in the thinking of a young male it’s pretty simple: socialist women put out, right-of-centre ones don't.

Do you honestly thnk that all the young men who hung around with the hippies in the '60s were in it for the politics or the drugs?

Or as I have been known to put it: "a Conservative is a former socialist who has gotten married and had daughters."


(NB: If this is a bit off the wall...sorry. I am still stuck in Maine at Her Majesty's Immigration Service's pleasure. Think The Shining with no bleeding walls.)

"DADDY FIX" AND YOUTHFUL LEFTISM

A reader writes:

Having been on campus in the Sixties, yet a conservative from the beginning, I think I have another reason the Left attracts the young: Kids are protected.

When things are wrong, grownups are supposed to fix them. When we have a war, it's bad. Somebody is supposed to fix it. Failure to fix (when the grownup is supposedly omnipotent) demonstrates that the grownup likes the war. Otherwise, the grownup would fix it. The Kids demand it. But he doesn't. Thus, it's the grownup's fault. Government is the grownup.

Kids are in artificially extended adolescence, exacerbated by a reduction in the education of how the world has harsh edges (save for those historical issues condemning America) and people just have to cope.

My kids are take-charge, confident, kind, and conservative. One reason, I believe, is that we did not race to protect them from every possible inconvenience. They were encouraged to solve their own problems, which, I suspect, gave them an intuitive grasp of the concept that not all problems can be solved. Not even by Big Daddy.

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COMPARING NAZISM AND COMMUNISM

I gave a link yesterday to an article by Martin Malia which looked at the question of whether Communism was to be preferred to Nazism. Malia basically concluded that the history we have of the Soviet period is so full of lies that it is still too early to make a fully-informed judgment. The link I gave, however, leads only to an extract of the article and I have not been able to find a better link so I have posted what appears to be the main body of the article (sent to me by a reader) here until someone tells me the proper way to access it.

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THOSE NAUGHTY GENES

Leftists all hate the idea that what we are is largely determined by our genes. There is a good article here which endeavours to show just what is and what is not genetically determined in us.

Richard Dawkins explains how genetic modification of food works and points out that it is a lot like computer programming.

Why Read This notes that genetically-modified crops are going great guns in China. If GM food ends up feeding one billion Chinese, the Leftist and Greenie objections to it are going to look pretty lame.

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GO GREEN!

In Global Warming And Other Eco-Myths, some of the most respected researchers in the USA explode the myths behind much of the doom and gloom of today's environmental movement. See here for more details.

In GWB's recent SOTU address he did of course try to include something for everyone -- even the Greenies. There is an article here which knocks the hydrogen car idea which formed part of the address.

An SUV-friendly article here

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REALISM ON THE LEFT

Black racism is every bit as bad as white racism. Conservatives have been saying that for a long time but this time it is Britain's Left-wing Independent newspaper saying it.

Chris Brand has more news about Britain's race and immigration problems and relays some surprising news about the Archbishop of Canterbury’s views on asylum-seekers.

The philosophical cowboy has a look at a couple of the more realistic voices on the Left and finds large holes even in their arguments.

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ELSEWHERE

More multicultural craziness: Muslim women in Florida can get their driving licence picture taken with their faces covered! More here

Our good old reliable media! CNN reported that the shuttle was travelling at 18 times the speed of light when it disintegrated. Einstein would be amazed. (Via Jerry Lerman)

China Hand has blogged recently (Jan. 21st) on what a powerful and destructive force envy is in China. This story from "Forbes" about a murdered capitalist in China certainly confirms it.

Michael Darby has coverage of the "treason" trial presently underway against Mugabe's democratic opponents in Zimbabwe.

COMMUNISM BETTER THAN FASCISM?

There has been a vigorous debate on Oxblog recently over whether Communism was in some sense more commendable than Fascism. At the heart of the argument appears to be the old claim that Communism was "well-intentioned".

Both protagonists, however, seemed to be handicapped by a cardboard-cutout view of Fascism. Neither seem to realize that Mussolini (the founder of Fascism) was in fact a Marxist and that Fascism was very Leftist and differed from Communism mainly in being more nationalistic. And Hitler too called himself a socialist and campaigned as a great friend of the worker. BOTH Fascists and Communists claimed good intentions and both tried to lift up "the worker" -- and both failed.

So could it be the nationalism of Fascism and Nazism that makes it particularly bad? Hardly. Nationalism has been around for a very long time and may in fact be universal but it does not normally lead to mass murder of political opponents (or imaginary political opponents). It is not even clear that extreme nationalism is particularly murderous. Mussolini’s Fascism was undoubtedly extreme in its nationalism but -- despite his occasional brutalities -- Mussolini was no mass-murderer. In fact the normal punishment for political opponents in Fascist Italy was simply a forced dose of castor oil! Give me Mussolini’s Italy rather than Stalin’s Russia any day!

What IS clear is that extreme socialism is thoroughly murderous. And James Donald explains very simply why. All four great mass-murderers of the 20th century (Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot) were extreme socialists. The Southern European Fascists were much less thoroughgoing in their socialism (degree of government control over everyday life) so were less murderous. And socialists in a democracy of course lack the power to be mass murderers.

A historically sophisticated comparison of Nazism and Communism can be found in Martin Malia's article "Judging Nazism and Communism". You can access it via this link but you will first have to register for a free subscription here. A few excerpts can also be found here

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IMMIGRATION

Tim Gillin writes:

People say Australia's John Howard runs a tough policy on immigration: Not compared to the Ancient Athenians.

And the Swiss seem to be toughening up on immigration too ... and negotiating return deals with asylum-seeker exporting nations

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THE LEFT STILL LOVE THEIR DICTATORS

Amazing! The murderous Iraqui regime actually thanking the New York Times for being pro-Iraq. What a Left-wing rag! Looks like Saddam is the new Stalin -- to be defended by Leftists at all costs.

And some appalling antisemitism from a major British Left-wing newspaper here (scroll up). Nazi propaganda lives on among the Left too!

Frank Ellis points out: What we call "political correctness" actually dates back to the Soviet Union of the 1920s (politicheskaya pravil'nost' in Russian), and was the extension of political control to education, psychiatry, ethics, and behavior

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ELSEWHERE

There is a good article here showing that Prime Minister Sharon’s victory in the recent Israeli elections was also a resounding victory for conservatism.

And the recent conservative victories in the German State elections seem likely to give Chancellor Schroeder and his Leftist Federal government some big headaches too.

Robert Musil takes on New York! He points out at some length that Freudian psychoanalysis is essentially quackery -- a "medical" procedure that does no good at all. Most psychologists would agree with him.

A rather persuasive argument at Chloe & Pete to the effect that a nation's foreign policy is ALWAYS dictated solely by self-interest -- with morality being no more than an afterthought.

Donald Luskin does a good job of exposing Paul Krugman's latest bout of dishonesty with statistics.

Chris Brand says Hitler betrayed just about everyone and that a lack of checks and balances in the German political system was a major factor in enabling him to do that.

Cronaca notes more strangeness emanating from Britain: Charles Clarke, the British government's education honcho, said education for its own sake was "a bit dodgy"

Michael Darby has a story by a farmer who wishes all the global warming talk was really true.

TWO SPEECHES

American Realpolitik juxtaposes the good speech about the shuttle disaster given by GWB with the great speech given about the earlier shuttle disaster 17 years ago by President Reagan. Only the Gipper can still bring tears to my eyes. That man was magic: A once-in-a-lifetime President. I will never see his like again.

I note that even The Moderate Left agrees with me about the Reagan speech.

And I understand how one blogger found comfort in saying the Latin invocation: Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis (“Give them eternal rest O Lord and may the perpetual light shine upon them”)

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YOUTH AND LEFTISM AGAIN

Scott Wickstein and one or two others have called into question the basic assumption underlying my long post of two days ago about why young people tend to lean to the Left politically. They argue that young people do NOT tend to lean to the Left.

I guess I did not spell it out properly in my post yesterday but the academic paper I cited DID show a strong correlation between age and ideology. The research was based on random general population sampling and would not have got into an academic journal unless it was pretty rigorous. So Leftism DOES tend to be a folly of youth. Like Scott, I have always been conservative and there are many like us but we all also know of many examples of age moving people to the Right -- from David Horowitz in the USA to Paddy McGuinness in Australia. So there IS something there that needs explaining.

Tim Gillin (post of Feb. 2nd.) mentioned another point that I should obviously have added to my 4-point list: Young people are often Leftist because they have just been through or are just going through an educational system (both schools and universities) that vigorously indoctrinates them with Leftist ideas. Tim's words on the subject:

How much of this is due to 'wet behind the ears' idealism and how much is due to political indoctrination through the school system, or their greater exposure to the media? Idealism doesn't neccessarily have to be leftist. Youth generally are more peer oriented and the arts/intellectual/media world has a definite left/'progressive' slant. So indoctrinating them is easier. It's interesting that young "computer geeks' and Sci Fi fans are generally less leftist, they tap into a different media network.

An interesting 6th cause of youthful Leftism was added by Eddie Thomas -- who points out on his blog that families tend to be communistic. In a family we give to each according to his/her need. So it takes a while to adjust to an outside world that is not communistic and until that adjustment is made young people tend to believe that the outside world should be like what they have been used to at home.

And the old Leftist mantra "All men are brothers" reflects that. It is an attempt to model society on the family -- but ignores the fact that family ties are a very special case of human relationships.

Tim Dunlop’s suggestion was that I should add “parental indoctrination” to my list of causes. That would obviously be true in some cases, though youthful rebellion probably makes it ineffective pretty often. At any event, it does not explain the preponderance of young people among Leftists.

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IRAQ

According to Strawman Baghdad real estate prices prove that Iraquis are looking forward to being liberated by the Americans. I don't blame them.

Matthew Cowie has a good point: This seems too obvious to even say, but I've watched so many talking heads ( mostly leftists) say that Saddam Hussein does not pose an imminent threat to the United States. It is important to remind them that at 8:00AM on September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda did not pose an imminent threat to the United States.

Jeff Jacoby on attacking Saddam: As slogans, "rush to war" and "unilateralism" are catchy. But they are also false. If anything, Bush has been inching his way to war. And Jeff Jacoby also says we should have Syria in our sights after Iraq.

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ELSEWHERE

Bob Whaley thinks that the public response to the second shuttle loss shows that America has matured as a nation.

Hello Bloggy has a good rant: What I can never understand in the reasoning of the Left is: What have the poor done to deserve the fruits of redistribution? What is it about being poor that entitles people to handouts at the expense of taxpayers? ..... More here

Another good one from the Professor: Mrs Bunyip once took it into her head that lavatory water should be blue, which didn't worry the Professor one way or the other but certainly did the dog no good.

Michael Darby reproduces an important address (not apparently otherwise online) by Sir Harry Gibbs (a former Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia) in which Sir Harry defends the court from affirmative action demands.

The Wicked one has found a funny photo he likes and reprints a great old poem.

Chris Brand points out the uncomfortable truth that Hitler's genocide was far from unusual even in modern history.

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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here, check my HomePage for a new blog address or visit my "First Draft" site here.

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The long-awaited report on the death of eight-year-old Black girl Victoria Climbi‚ at the hands of her Black aunt, the aunt's Black boyfriend and the Black and black-magic-worshipping 'social workers' of Haringey drew just a little criticism for multiculturalism in the Spectator (1 ii 03). The girl's Black parents had sent her to Britain so that she and her aunt could live off Britain's welfare state. Victoria's case was dealt by altogether a hundred officials, all of whom agreed to treat her hundreds of cuts and bruises with that deference which peecee Whites feel obliged to show to Black child-rearing practices.

A Black man turned out to be America's biggest-ever child molester. {Hopefully Saint Nelson Mandela (who freely condemns President Bush as a racist who attacks the UN because it has a coloured head (Toffee Banana)) will take up the case.}


The Guardian, championing those who staff Britain's dependency culture, got very upset with the half a million British people who had backed the Sun's campaign against the Government's immigrant-seeking policies.

A teenage girl duo accused of promoting "paedophilic pop" went straight to Number One in the UK charts. Russian chicas Julia Volkova, 16, and Lena Katina, 17 - who call their group Tatu - knocked Fame Academy's David Sneddon off the top spot with their single 'All The Things She Said.' In a raunchy video which accompanied the single, the girls kiss and fondle one another while dressed in school uniforms. High priests of paedohysteria promptly called for the song's withdrawal.

Columnist Melanie Phillips wrote a blistering condemnation of the new test for British citizenship compiled by leftie Professor Bernard Crick (Daily Mail, 3 ii 03). Apparently nothing was to be required of potential immigrants apart from a few English phrases; in particular, no knowledge of British history would be required.

In the soft-left Independent (3 ii), columnist Yasmin Alibhai Brown, condemned Muslim racism as on display recently (calling Christians "pigs" and their women "whores", for example {see above}).

The new Archbishop of Canterbury, usually held to be a liberal, told the Independent that he would find it "perfectly reasonable" to lock up all asylum seekers until it was established that they presented no security risk.

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Comments? Email Chris Brand.
Some history.

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BRAVE DEEDS

Dreadful news that our brave American brothers have lost a second space shuttle. It took Americans to attempt something as bold as reusable space technology and then entrust their lives to it. I remember vividly seeing on TV President Reagan’s address to America after the first loss. He struck just the right note (as always): A combination of dignified sorrow and a determination not to be daunted by the immense challenges of space

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LEFTISTS HAVE NO FORESIGHT

From the Leftists of the 1930s who thought Hitler and Mussolini were good guys to the Leftists of today, Leftists never seem to be able to learn. When the USA finally goes in to Iraq and topples Saddam, there is absolutely no doubt that what they will find in Iraq is a tale of horror and suffering of a thoroughly Hitlerian sort. A mini-holocaust will be revealed. Saddam himself has said that he thought Hitler was "too mild". So, once the bestiality of Saddam's Ba'ath socialist regime can be thrust graphically in front of everyone's faces, what will Leftists say to the charge: "You supported this!" There will be nothing they can say. They could always say that their support for the vicious Stalin happened because they were "misled" by Stalin's claims of idealism. But the only people Saddam is misleading are the UN weapons inspectors. There is no idealism about him. Leftists must be brain-dead not to foresee how absurd the near future is going to make them look.

It would seem in fact that Leftists cannot deal with foresight at all. After the 9/11 attack on Americans and the Bali attack on Australians, the Leftists were all up in arms asking why did not the US and Australian governments foresee the coming attacks and do something to prevent them. Yet now that the US and Australian givernments DO foresee a grave danger from the weapons being developed by Saddam and are doing something to prevent him using them, the Leftists are opposing that: Damned if you do, damned if you don't. There really must be something missing in the brains of Leftists.

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ONE FOR THE FEMINIST EXTREMISTS TO PONDER

As the only girl among 12 brothers, you could be forgiven for thinking that Cerys Hughes would turn out to be a bit of a tomboy. But the pretty two-year-old is living proof that nature is stronger than nurture. "You really couldn't find a more girly girl," says her mother.

More here.

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BUREAUCRATS LOOK AFTER THEIR OWN

A U.S. Postal Service manager was forced to disrobe and walk naked in front of about a dozen employees yesterday morning by a colleague who threatened to kill her unless she complied. Lonnie Wilson, 60, who planned to retire on Friday, is in Summit County Jail, charged with kidnapping, aggravated menacing and gross sexual imposition.

OK. Normal nutcase stuff. But here's the punchline: What did the Postal Service do about it? It placed him "on administrative leave"! What does a government employee have to do to get sacked? More details at Sine Qua Non

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ELSEWHERE

Richard Webster has another dreadful report about false allegations of paedophilia in Britain. How anybody can be thrown out of his job before the matter goes to trial and how the police can prosecute a case so flimsy that the judge throws it out without even waiting to hear the defence I really do not know. “British justice” is beginning to sound like a mocking term.

Random Jottings says: “In A Credibility Problem (01/28/03) Paul Krugman unwittingly demonstrates with remarkable clarity that the real problem for U.S. liberals is reality itself. They are no longer in touch with it ......”

Ed Mick says: “Hooray for Oregon! Despite an orchestrated campaign warning of gloom and doom, Oregon voted down an income tax increase. This despite a heavy campaign by labor unions and almost no organized campaign on the other side.” If only we ever got that sort of choice in Australia.

The Wicked one feels sorry for our politicians!

The Greenies don’t get much more disgusting than this. They want you to do your ski-ing on artificial snow made from human waste!

Chris Brand says how foolish it is to let Hitler’s interest in eugenics put us off looking at an important idea.

Michael Darby canvasses some proposals for a peaceful solution of the terrible problems in Zimbabwe and looks at the improper Chinese acquisition of American military knowhow under Clinton.

Right Thinking picked up my recent post about the stupidity and crassness of German anti-Americanism. But if you think that I was abusive about it .........

Shiny Happy Gulag has some rather vehement comments about “diversity” that make my recent comments on that subject look meek and mild too.

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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here, check my HomePage for a new blog address or visit my "First Draft" site here.

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