ELSEWHERE
Instapundit has a good post on the ISPP (International Society for Political Psychology). I was a member once. And I have had quite a few articles published in their journal. It is in many ways a fairly typical academic association but they have moved further and further to the Left over the years -- making their journal so boring that I discontinued my subscription a couple of year ago. I am still on their mailing list, however, and did get the email Instapundit refers to but it was so normal for them that I did not think to remark it. Clearly, there will be no advance in understanding of political psychology coming from that bunch of fanatics. And don’t forget that it is mostly taxpayer dollars keeping the fanatics concerned in jobs. I have done exposes of some of the rubbish ISPP members churn out here and here and here and here.
An interesting site here. Some people are making a film to “deconstruct” all Michael Moore’s lies about America.
Milton Friedman is one of the founders of modern conservative economics. There is a good summary of how he his ideas have won out over the years here
"Where have all the men gone? No, not males, but honest-to-God, red-blooded men. Males are everywhere, but the concept of manhood may someday find itself on the endangered species list"
Do you wonder that even the EU wants to stop these morons (Iranians) from getting their hands on nuclear weapons?
There is a thorough demolition here of the claim that Australians suffered from a “cultural cringe” until the 1970s when the Leftists got into power for a while and put us all right.
Michael Darby has popped up again with a big range of posts -- mostly about Africa.
The Wicked one has a lot of lawyer jokes and talks about nuking the Pakistanis.
In my post on PC Watch yesterday, I pointed out some parallels between political correctness and the Spanish Inquisition. Daily Ablution has a related post with some good points.
In the latest upload of a chapter from my book (See here or Chapter 12 here) I argue that racial self-segregation is not racist and should be defended.
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Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
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Thursday, November 13, 2003
Wednesday, November 12, 2003
POVERTY IS MOSTLY MENTAL THESE DAYS
An email from a reader in response to my post of October 24th:
“I just had to write and say thanks for telling it like it is. I wrote federal grant applications (U.S.) for the local public housing authority for four years. I also managed the programs funded by the grants. In the course of managing the grants I interacted with our clients daily, often in their own households.
We had 700 units of housing; about 300 units were dedicated to seniors and disabled folks living on fixed government incomes; the rest were devoted to "families," or, non-euphemistically, single mothers with lots of children.
Like you, I grew up in a working-class household. My mother was a waitress, and my father sold furnace cleanings. We had very little money, but both my parents knew how to live on a shoestring, and we lived pretty well considering there were few frills.
I was totally shocked when I started working for the housing authority. Single mothers with three or more children, with a household income of less than $600/month (remember, the housing was pretty much free), would spend scads of money on video games, expensive shoes--not just for the kids, but for themselves--and home entertainment systems. Marijuana, which is now way more expensive than it was in my own mildly misspent youth, was always around. And the drug and alcohol usage was just as you reported among your own tenants.
Worst of all were the men these women always hooked up with -- convicted felons, with histories of violence, drug manufacturing, even child abuse. Because of their records, Violent Felon Boyfriends never qualified to be on the lease (the housing authority actually had minimum regulations), so the women would let them stay there illegally, an offense that would get the whole family kicked out of housing if discovered.
And guess who would inevitably turn in women with illegal "houseguests"? Other women in housing who wanted Violent Felon Boyfriend for themselves! After Woman #1 and Children were off the scene, VFB would just move into Woman #2's housing. The pattern was so predictable that we had jokes about these parasites, who were legally barred from housing but managed to stay longer than the low-income women who qualified.
I left when I finally realized that no amount of grant-funded counseling or grant-funded community college vouchers or grant-funded child care was going to change these women's lives. At every decision-making crossroads, they always, always, always picked the worst possible path.
I have come to think that having multiple children out of wedlock does not cause bad judgment, but rather is a symptom of judgment that is atrocious to begin with. I grew up in the same sexually permissive society that these women did, had teenage bouts with transgressive behavior, but always made sure I didn't get pregnant. That these women do so--repeatedly!--is not the fault of "society." It's just one of many, many foolish decisions they make.
By the way, the seniors and disabled folks did pretty well. They rarely complained, kept neat households and looked out for one another. I never felt we were wasting our time with them.”
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An email from a reader in response to my post of October 24th:
“I just had to write and say thanks for telling it like it is. I wrote federal grant applications (U.S.) for the local public housing authority for four years. I also managed the programs funded by the grants. In the course of managing the grants I interacted with our clients daily, often in their own households.
We had 700 units of housing; about 300 units were dedicated to seniors and disabled folks living on fixed government incomes; the rest were devoted to "families," or, non-euphemistically, single mothers with lots of children.
Like you, I grew up in a working-class household. My mother was a waitress, and my father sold furnace cleanings. We had very little money, but both my parents knew how to live on a shoestring, and we lived pretty well considering there were few frills.
I was totally shocked when I started working for the housing authority. Single mothers with three or more children, with a household income of less than $600/month (remember, the housing was pretty much free), would spend scads of money on video games, expensive shoes--not just for the kids, but for themselves--and home entertainment systems. Marijuana, which is now way more expensive than it was in my own mildly misspent youth, was always around. And the drug and alcohol usage was just as you reported among your own tenants.
Worst of all were the men these women always hooked up with -- convicted felons, with histories of violence, drug manufacturing, even child abuse. Because of their records, Violent Felon Boyfriends never qualified to be on the lease (the housing authority actually had minimum regulations), so the women would let them stay there illegally, an offense that would get the whole family kicked out of housing if discovered.
And guess who would inevitably turn in women with illegal "houseguests"? Other women in housing who wanted Violent Felon Boyfriend for themselves! After Woman #1 and Children were off the scene, VFB would just move into Woman #2's housing. The pattern was so predictable that we had jokes about these parasites, who were legally barred from housing but managed to stay longer than the low-income women who qualified.
I left when I finally realized that no amount of grant-funded counseling or grant-funded community college vouchers or grant-funded child care was going to change these women's lives. At every decision-making crossroads, they always, always, always picked the worst possible path.
I have come to think that having multiple children out of wedlock does not cause bad judgment, but rather is a symptom of judgment that is atrocious to begin with. I grew up in the same sexually permissive society that these women did, had teenage bouts with transgressive behavior, but always made sure I didn't get pregnant. That these women do so--repeatedly!--is not the fault of "society." It's just one of many, many foolish decisions they make.
By the way, the seniors and disabled folks did pretty well. They rarely complained, kept neat households and looked out for one another. I never felt we were wasting our time with them.”
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PUBLIC FUNDING OF POLITICIANS
USA Today says that public financing of political campaigns has not created the level playing field intended. An Australian reader thinks that the Pauline Hanson affair gives a similar lesson:
"An interesting aspect of the whole Hanson affair that has not been highlighted is what it says about public funding of election campaigns. When this 'reform' was mooted in the late 70s and 80s, it was heavily pushed as a way to create a "level playing field" between the big parties and smaller players. The reality, as the Hanson case has shown, is that it has created a legal minefield upon which small players need to tread with caution. The tacticians of the big parties are more than willing to use the necessary funding rules to harass and bring down competitors. Another great leftist reform has been shown to be a joke."
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USA Today says that public financing of political campaigns has not created the level playing field intended. An Australian reader thinks that the Pauline Hanson affair gives a similar lesson:
"An interesting aspect of the whole Hanson affair that has not been highlighted is what it says about public funding of election campaigns. When this 'reform' was mooted in the late 70s and 80s, it was heavily pushed as a way to create a "level playing field" between the big parties and smaller players. The reality, as the Hanson case has shown, is that it has created a legal minefield upon which small players need to tread with caution. The tacticians of the big parties are more than willing to use the necessary funding rules to harass and bring down competitors. Another great leftist reform has been shown to be a joke."
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ELSEWHERE
The assault by George Soros on the Bush Presidency is typical of the arrogance that shapes the Left. He thinks that he could run US foreign policy better but his ideas about how to do so are tired old relics of yesterday. He actually thinks the U.N. is the solution to all the world’s problems! Someone should tell him that the 1930s version of the U.N. (The League of Nations) did not stop the rise of Hitler. Sometimes you have to fight. Soros is like all the Leftist intellectuals: He knows he is smart so he thinks he must know it all. Nobody does. Each field requires its own expertise and in politics there are no simple solutions.
The Times of London has just carried some reasonably favourable comments about the importance of international differences in IQ. The Statesman of India has covered the story too.
I think a lot of Christians and people who know history are becoming fed up with the false and ridiculous “religion of peace” mantra that GWB keeps spouting about Islam. Here is one Christian who pulls no punches on the matter.
I am always pointing out how sloppy is the attitude research conducted by Left-leaning academics. This article shows that attitude research done by private left-leaning organizations makes the academic stuff look like a model of probity. The article dissects a popular book that goes to great lengths to show how different Canadians and Americans are. Even after all the Leftist massaging, however, the data in fact show the exact opposite. Anybody who has been reading my posts about Left-leaning research (see yesterday, for example) will know why I am not remotely surprised by that. Leftists are so crooked they could not even lie straight in bed.
In my latest academic upload (see here or here) I endeavour to persuade sociologists that their customary ignorance of statistics is inexcusable!
********************************
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
The assault by George Soros on the Bush Presidency is typical of the arrogance that shapes the Left. He thinks that he could run US foreign policy better but his ideas about how to do so are tired old relics of yesterday. He actually thinks the U.N. is the solution to all the world’s problems! Someone should tell him that the 1930s version of the U.N. (The League of Nations) did not stop the rise of Hitler. Sometimes you have to fight. Soros is like all the Leftist intellectuals: He knows he is smart so he thinks he must know it all. Nobody does. Each field requires its own expertise and in politics there are no simple solutions.
The Times of London has just carried some reasonably favourable comments about the importance of international differences in IQ. The Statesman of India has covered the story too.
I think a lot of Christians and people who know history are becoming fed up with the false and ridiculous “religion of peace” mantra that GWB keeps spouting about Islam. Here is one Christian who pulls no punches on the matter.
I am always pointing out how sloppy is the attitude research conducted by Left-leaning academics. This article shows that attitude research done by private left-leaning organizations makes the academic stuff look like a model of probity. The article dissects a popular book that goes to great lengths to show how different Canadians and Americans are. Even after all the Leftist massaging, however, the data in fact show the exact opposite. Anybody who has been reading my posts about Left-leaning research (see yesterday, for example) will know why I am not remotely surprised by that. Leftists are so crooked they could not even lie straight in bed.
In my latest academic upload (see here or here) I endeavour to persuade sociologists that their customary ignorance of statistics is inexcusable!
********************************
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Tuesday, November 11, 2003
ACADEMIC FUN AND GAMES
Yesterday was a rather fun day for me academically. A copy of the journal containing my first academic article (Ray, 2003) to be published in 5 years arrived in the mail. My most recent one before that came out in 1998. That I can still get them published probably means that senile dementia has not got me yet! For copyright reasons I cannot put the new article online but an early version of it is already online here. The early version is probably more readable anyway. What it shows is that older women (but not older men) tend to lie more about how good they are. Apologies to the sisterhood!
Also appearing in the same issue of the journal was yet another article (Van Hiel & Mervielde, 2003) on "Need for closure" (a terrible affliction that we conservatives are said to suffer from) by that Belgian dynamo, Alain Van Hiel. I had just started to get my head around the considerable complexities of the article when I noticed that his results were not statistically significant! In other words, you could have found similar results in a table of random numbers! I am amazed that such stuff is getting published these days. The Leftist discomfort with reality is showing up more and more in academe, I guess. And one of Van Hiel's key measures was the absurd Bieri scale of cognitive complexity. Van Hiel obviously overlooked my "deconstruction" of that particular piece of nonsense. Had he paid more attention to the way he measured things, he might have got more significant results.
Reading on further in my copy of the journal I noticed another article that was rather reverential about some prior work by McHoskey. That stirred a dim recollection that I too had once looked at the selfsame McHoskey article. So I dug deep in the archives and found a paper I had written which never got published. In the unpublished paper I pointed out that McHoskey's work showed that at least one type of conservatism was --- wait for it! --- MORE COMPASSIONATE! No wonder THAT paper never got published! Anyway, I have now uploaded the previously unpublished article here and here.
The really amusing thing about the McHoskey finding is that the conservatism scale he used (the RWA scale) was originally designed to measure a particularly UN-caring kind of conservatism. How frustrating that it gave the opposite result! I have pointed out long ago however that the designer of the RWA scale (Altemeyer) did not have a blind clue about what he was doing.
But the fun is not over yet! The author (Wilson, 2003) who was so impressed by the McHoskey work himself produced some vastly overinterpreted findings using the wacky "Social Dominance Orientation" (SDO) scale. About half the items in the SDO scale express a strong belief in equality between people. And so what was our intrepid author's main finding when you cut through all the flim-flam? That low scorers on the SDO scale (equalitarians) were idealistic! Big surprise! Yet another example of an “artifactual” (built-in, true-by-definition) finding. Will Leftist psychologists ever knuckle down and do some real research instead of constantly trying to load the dice in advance? Don't hold your breath.
References
Ray, J.J. & Lovejoy, F.H. (2003) "Age-related social desirability responding among Australian women". Journal of Social Psychology, 143 (5), 669-671.
Van Hiel, A. & Mervielde, I. (2003) "The need for closure and the spontaneous use of complex and simple cognitive structures". Journal of Social Psychology, 143 (5), 559-568.
Wilson, M.S. (2003) "Social dominance and ethical ideology: The end justifies the means?". J. Social Psychology, 143 (5), 549-558.
********************************
Yesterday was a rather fun day for me academically. A copy of the journal containing my first academic article (Ray, 2003) to be published in 5 years arrived in the mail. My most recent one before that came out in 1998. That I can still get them published probably means that senile dementia has not got me yet! For copyright reasons I cannot put the new article online but an early version of it is already online here. The early version is probably more readable anyway. What it shows is that older women (but not older men) tend to lie more about how good they are. Apologies to the sisterhood!
Also appearing in the same issue of the journal was yet another article (Van Hiel & Mervielde, 2003) on "Need for closure" (a terrible affliction that we conservatives are said to suffer from) by that Belgian dynamo, Alain Van Hiel. I had just started to get my head around the considerable complexities of the article when I noticed that his results were not statistically significant! In other words, you could have found similar results in a table of random numbers! I am amazed that such stuff is getting published these days. The Leftist discomfort with reality is showing up more and more in academe, I guess. And one of Van Hiel's key measures was the absurd Bieri scale of cognitive complexity. Van Hiel obviously overlooked my "deconstruction" of that particular piece of nonsense. Had he paid more attention to the way he measured things, he might have got more significant results.
Reading on further in my copy of the journal I noticed another article that was rather reverential about some prior work by McHoskey. That stirred a dim recollection that I too had once looked at the selfsame McHoskey article. So I dug deep in the archives and found a paper I had written which never got published. In the unpublished paper I pointed out that McHoskey's work showed that at least one type of conservatism was --- wait for it! --- MORE COMPASSIONATE! No wonder THAT paper never got published! Anyway, I have now uploaded the previously unpublished article here and here.
The really amusing thing about the McHoskey finding is that the conservatism scale he used (the RWA scale) was originally designed to measure a particularly UN-caring kind of conservatism. How frustrating that it gave the opposite result! I have pointed out long ago however that the designer of the RWA scale (Altemeyer) did not have a blind clue about what he was doing.
But the fun is not over yet! The author (Wilson, 2003) who was so impressed by the McHoskey work himself produced some vastly overinterpreted findings using the wacky "Social Dominance Orientation" (SDO) scale. About half the items in the SDO scale express a strong belief in equality between people. And so what was our intrepid author's main finding when you cut through all the flim-flam? That low scorers on the SDO scale (equalitarians) were idealistic! Big surprise! Yet another example of an “artifactual” (built-in, true-by-definition) finding. Will Leftist psychologists ever knuckle down and do some real research instead of constantly trying to load the dice in advance? Don't hold your breath.
References
Ray, J.J. & Lovejoy, F.H. (2003) "Age-related social desirability responding among Australian women". Journal of Social Psychology, 143 (5), 669-671.
Van Hiel, A. & Mervielde, I. (2003) "The need for closure and the spontaneous use of complex and simple cognitive structures". Journal of Social Psychology, 143 (5), 559-568.
Wilson, M.S. (2003) "Social dominance and ethical ideology: The end justifies the means?". J. Social Psychology, 143 (5), 549-558.
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LEFTIST "COMPASSION" AND "TOLERANCE"
Speaking of conservatives being more compassionate, I received the following email from someone who is moderately well-known in the blogosphere but whom I will not of course name. He is obviously dyslectic and reports how Leftists and Rightists respond to that. He wrote in response to my post yesterday about conservative racism being historically quite benign compared to Leftist racism. I quote him using his spelling (“could” = “called” etc.): "I have never been could "stupid" by any Conservative for my spelling/grammar shortcomings and they are more likely to point it out to help and not degrade. But there has been plenty of leftist who enjoy belittling people. It mite not be racism to liftist but like all bigots its the easy target they pursue."
Silflay Hraka too has a ferocious post about Democrat inhumanity. I think he rightly detects that their mask is slipping these days.
Anti-Southerner bigotry: "This is 2003, we are supposed to be a more tolerant nation. We are supposed to be celebrating our differences and our diversity. We are supposed to be concerned with making sure no one or no group is excluded. Yes we are supposed to be a sensitive people, seeking never to prejudge anyone. So why are certain groups still being attacked and demonized in America? Why is it that Southerners, at least those who choose to honor our Confederate heritage, are a very easy target for those who usually are preaching tolerance? And certainly recent history has shown that while the political left talks the talk of sensitivity and inclusion, they at the same time walk the walk of bigotry."
“History is a laboratory and the lessons of history are clear. We need not guess what brings peace, prosperity and safety. We only need to demand for the wretched of this world the same values that we have in our own societies. That means judging the values of different cultures. It means abandoning the myth of moral symmetry in the only culture that has ever accepted this myth: the Judeo-Christian West. The lie of moral symmetry dooms billions of human beings to lives filled with envy and anger. The lie of moral symmetry dooms these billions to live lives without hope. If some selfish people in the West wish to pretend that excusing the nightmares of failed civilizations is somehow kindness, they are kidding themselves and the victims of their cowardice”
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Speaking of conservatives being more compassionate, I received the following email from someone who is moderately well-known in the blogosphere but whom I will not of course name. He is obviously dyslectic and reports how Leftists and Rightists respond to that. He wrote in response to my post yesterday about conservative racism being historically quite benign compared to Leftist racism. I quote him using his spelling (“could” = “called” etc.): "I have never been could "stupid" by any Conservative for my spelling/grammar shortcomings and they are more likely to point it out to help and not degrade. But there has been plenty of leftist who enjoy belittling people. It mite not be racism to liftist but like all bigots its the easy target they pursue."
Silflay Hraka too has a ferocious post about Democrat inhumanity. I think he rightly detects that their mask is slipping these days.
Anti-Southerner bigotry: "This is 2003, we are supposed to be a more tolerant nation. We are supposed to be celebrating our differences and our diversity. We are supposed to be concerned with making sure no one or no group is excluded. Yes we are supposed to be a sensitive people, seeking never to prejudge anyone. So why are certain groups still being attacked and demonized in America? Why is it that Southerners, at least those who choose to honor our Confederate heritage, are a very easy target for those who usually are preaching tolerance? And certainly recent history has shown that while the political left talks the talk of sensitivity and inclusion, they at the same time walk the walk of bigotry."
“History is a laboratory and the lessons of history are clear. We need not guess what brings peace, prosperity and safety. We only need to demand for the wretched of this world the same values that we have in our own societies. That means judging the values of different cultures. It means abandoning the myth of moral symmetry in the only culture that has ever accepted this myth: the Judeo-Christian West. The lie of moral symmetry dooms billions of human beings to lives filled with envy and anger. The lie of moral symmetry dooms these billions to live lives without hope. If some selfish people in the West wish to pretend that excusing the nightmares of failed civilizations is somehow kindness, they are kidding themselves and the victims of their cowardice”
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VETERANS’ DAY TODAY
(Australia is in a time zone that is nearly a day ahead of the USA)
I like Tom Barrett’s article on the significance of the day -- and his observations about how politically incorrect it is. In Australia we still generally call it Armistice Day and it is widely marked. As it should be. It marked the end of unbelievable slaughter and degradation. In Australia, however, our main day for remembering our lost but heroic young men of all wars is Anzac Day (April 25th). The losses have touched my family too. The loss of my uncle Freddy Ray in the closing weeks of World War II is still deeply mourned by those who knew him.
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Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
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(Australia is in a time zone that is nearly a day ahead of the USA)
I like Tom Barrett’s article on the significance of the day -- and his observations about how politically incorrect it is. In Australia we still generally call it Armistice Day and it is widely marked. As it should be. It marked the end of unbelievable slaughter and degradation. In Australia, however, our main day for remembering our lost but heroic young men of all wars is Anzac Day (April 25th). The losses have touched my family too. The loss of my uncle Freddy Ray in the closing weeks of World War II is still deeply mourned by those who knew him.
********************************
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Monday, November 10, 2003
CONSERVATIVE RACISM
I noted recently that all racism is not the same. Racism of some kind is just about universal but some forms are much more malign than others. I compared the racism of the socialist Hitler with the racism of the British Conservative party in the 19th century who made a Jew (Disraeli) their Prime Minister. Two rather different form of racism, don’t you think? And the contrast continues. Britain today is full of antisemitism -- so who have the "racist" British Conservatives just appointed as their new leader? Another Jew -- Michael Howard. And note the environment in which they have done so. As Melanie Phillips (via Last Night's BBC News) describes it:
So who are the racists now? Let us look at deeds, not words. As far as Disraeli was concerned, his greater ability was what mattered when the Conservatives chose him and exactly that has happened again with Howard.
And that’s the sort of racist I am. I am realistic about group differences and have always refused to be silent about them but I am nonetheless happy to recognize merit in anyone of any background when I see it. And in the “deeds not words” category, perhaps I should mention that I DO have two Asians and one very brown person living in my own house with me. How many Leftists could say the same?
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I noted recently that all racism is not the same. Racism of some kind is just about universal but some forms are much more malign than others. I compared the racism of the socialist Hitler with the racism of the British Conservative party in the 19th century who made a Jew (Disraeli) their Prime Minister. Two rather different form of racism, don’t you think? And the contrast continues. Britain today is full of antisemitism -- so who have the "racist" British Conservatives just appointed as their new leader? Another Jew -- Michael Howard. And note the environment in which they have done so. As Melanie Phillips (via Last Night's BBC News) describes it:
For Britain is where the veteran Labour MP Tam Dalyell claimed a 'cabal' of Jews was controlling Tony Blair and George Bush - and was then promptly excused as a lovable eccentric. Where the following day, the BBC TV current affairs show Newsnight concluded that Dalyell had a case, and a 'tightly-knit' group of Jews really did control US foreign policy.
Where Israel is repeatedly dehumanised and delegitimised as an apartheid or Nazi state. Where almost two thirds of the public believe it is the biggest threat to world peace. Where attacks on Jews have increased
So who are the racists now? Let us look at deeds, not words. As far as Disraeli was concerned, his greater ability was what mattered when the Conservatives chose him and exactly that has happened again with Howard.
And that’s the sort of racist I am. I am realistic about group differences and have always refused to be silent about them but I am nonetheless happy to recognize merit in anyone of any background when I see it. And in the “deeds not words” category, perhaps I should mention that I DO have two Asians and one very brown person living in my own house with me. How many Leftists could say the same?
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IMMIGRATION
PID has a pretty comprehensive post on Pauline Hanson -- who was Australia’s first politician in recent times to advocate more rather than less immigration restriction. PID compares her to a famous Australian of the past -- the outlaw Ned Kelly -- and seems to think that the way she upsets the political establishment of both the Right and the Left is good anti-authoritarianism. It should be noted however that one of her strongest supporters whilst she was in jail was a leading politician from our mainstream conservative political party -- Bronwyn Bishop.
And Australia’s mainstream conservatives have learnt from Pauline. Note this from today’s news: “The Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, claimed another success in combating people smuggling yesterday, after 14 Turkish asylum seekers who arrived in Australian waters last week were forced into international waters by the Australian Navy and have landed on an Indonesian island.”
And Paul Sheehan predicts greater electoral success than ever for Pauline after her wrongful imprisonment.
And Mark Steyn points out that the huge and virtually unrestricted Islamic immigration into Western Europe is a major factor in European antisemitism. Pauline Hanson’s concerns about failure of immigrants to assimilate to Western culture look mild there. In Europe it is the Europeans who have assimilated to Islamic culture!
There is an academic study here that points out some of the economic effects of high levels of immigration. It shows that high levels of immigration put severe upward pressure on real-estate prices. More people competing for a fixed amount of land within easy access to the big city centres must push up the price of that land. So if you had to pay an arm and a leg for your new house last time you moved, you can probably blame high levels of immigration (legal and illegal) for it costing you so much. A reader comments: "I have heard anti-immigrationists refer to pro-immigrationists as 'the Cheap Labour lobby'. Maybe they should also be called 'the Expensive House lobby'.
And there is growing disquiet in Ireland about the immigration that prosperity has brought them. This site takes a look at the issue of immigration into Ireland. Both sides of the argument are represented but it takes the view that immigration and multiculturalism are not always for the good.
********************************
PID has a pretty comprehensive post on Pauline Hanson -- who was Australia’s first politician in recent times to advocate more rather than less immigration restriction. PID compares her to a famous Australian of the past -- the outlaw Ned Kelly -- and seems to think that the way she upsets the political establishment of both the Right and the Left is good anti-authoritarianism. It should be noted however that one of her strongest supporters whilst she was in jail was a leading politician from our mainstream conservative political party -- Bronwyn Bishop.
And Australia’s mainstream conservatives have learnt from Pauline. Note this from today’s news: “The Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, claimed another success in combating people smuggling yesterday, after 14 Turkish asylum seekers who arrived in Australian waters last week were forced into international waters by the Australian Navy and have landed on an Indonesian island.”
And Paul Sheehan predicts greater electoral success than ever for Pauline after her wrongful imprisonment.
And Mark Steyn points out that the huge and virtually unrestricted Islamic immigration into Western Europe is a major factor in European antisemitism. Pauline Hanson’s concerns about failure of immigrants to assimilate to Western culture look mild there. In Europe it is the Europeans who have assimilated to Islamic culture!
There is an academic study here that points out some of the economic effects of high levels of immigration. It shows that high levels of immigration put severe upward pressure on real-estate prices. More people competing for a fixed amount of land within easy access to the big city centres must push up the price of that land. So if you had to pay an arm and a leg for your new house last time you moved, you can probably blame high levels of immigration (legal and illegal) for it costing you so much. A reader comments: "I have heard anti-immigrationists refer to pro-immigrationists as 'the Cheap Labour lobby'. Maybe they should also be called 'the Expensive House lobby'.
And there is growing disquiet in Ireland about the immigration that prosperity has brought them. This site takes a look at the issue of immigration into Ireland. Both sides of the argument are represented but it takes the view that immigration and multiculturalism are not always for the good.
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ELSEWHERE
I get a lot of email as a result of posts on this blog and most people are very kind in their comments -- something I appreciate greatly. I got a couple of really hate-filled emails from Leftists yesterday though. You would just have to read them to understand immediately what made Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc. tick. How sad to have such a fountain of venom welling up inside you all the time! I got a mention recently on a Leftist Australian blog that displays a graphic of a Molotov cocktail at the head of its page so I am not at all surprised at the response. The personality types that lay behind the many destruction-loving and murder-loving “revolutionaries” of the 20th century have not gone away.
Jeff Jacoby asks why the Democrats do not disown the most public of America’s virulent racists -- Sharpton.
Leftists have long got themselves into a fever about American "Imperialism" but a lot of conservatives too are now talking of America as a new empire. I frankly think that is silly talk. America is nothing like any empire of the past and never will be -- and the plain fact is that average Americans don't WANT an empire. They just want to be left alone -- which is a thoroughly conservative sentiment that I heartily applaud.
John Moore has a very sarcastic post about the logic behind the global warming scare.
The latest upload of a chapter from my book (See here or Chapter 43 here) is in fact the first paper I wrote about the theory that working class people are more conservative on social (non-economic) issues. My findings on the issue were mixed but I interpreted them as favouring the theory. In the light of later evidence on the same question, however, I would point to the weakness of the relationships found.
********************************
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
I get a lot of email as a result of posts on this blog and most people are very kind in their comments -- something I appreciate greatly. I got a couple of really hate-filled emails from Leftists yesterday though. You would just have to read them to understand immediately what made Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc. tick. How sad to have such a fountain of venom welling up inside you all the time! I got a mention recently on a Leftist Australian blog that displays a graphic of a Molotov cocktail at the head of its page so I am not at all surprised at the response. The personality types that lay behind the many destruction-loving and murder-loving “revolutionaries” of the 20th century have not gone away.
Jeff Jacoby asks why the Democrats do not disown the most public of America’s virulent racists -- Sharpton.
Leftists have long got themselves into a fever about American "Imperialism" but a lot of conservatives too are now talking of America as a new empire. I frankly think that is silly talk. America is nothing like any empire of the past and never will be -- and the plain fact is that average Americans don't WANT an empire. They just want to be left alone -- which is a thoroughly conservative sentiment that I heartily applaud.
John Moore has a very sarcastic post about the logic behind the global warming scare.
The latest upload of a chapter from my book (See here or Chapter 43 here) is in fact the first paper I wrote about the theory that working class people are more conservative on social (non-economic) issues. My findings on the issue were mixed but I interpreted them as favouring the theory. In the light of later evidence on the same question, however, I would point to the weakness of the relationships found.
********************************
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Sunday, November 09, 2003
MORE ON THE “HANSON AFFAIR”
I mentioned the collapsed conviction of Pauline Hanson for electoral fraud yesterday. Hanson was a broadly conservative political leader who is still widely popular among ordinary Australians. There is still a huge hue and cry in Australia over the fact that Pauline was jailed for something that the Queensland Court of Appeal has now judged should never even have been the subject of a prosecution. As Pauline represented a big challenge to Leftist causes (e.g. in her rejection of racial favouritism towards blacks), the obvious inference is that the Leftist Queensland establishment was out to “get” her. The Leftist Queensland government claims non-involvement, of course, saying that it was the Director of Public Prosecutions, Leanne Clare, who took the decision to launch the prosecution. But, as the Editorial in The Australian newspaper of 8th points out, both the judge (Wolfe) and the prosecutor (Clare) in the case were political appointees of the very same government: ”Some of the top members of the legal system in Queensland were appointed as part of a gender-based affirmative action program by then attorney-general Matt Foley... Appointees included DPP Leanne Clare and Patsy Wolfe” -- and also, it might be added, Supreme Court judge Roslyn Atkinson, who started the onlslaught on Pauline Hanson with her 1999 judgement that Hanson’s party had been fraudulently registered. That these three “affirmative action” appointees might have been politically motivated seems hardly worth disputing, I would think.
I would also like to mention that the branding of Hanson as “racist” is just another example of the way Leftists automatically reach for that word as a sort of all-puropose firearm to use against their political opponents. Wanting to abolish a whole Federal bureaucracy and instead give blacks just the same welfare benefits as white Australians is ANTI-racist -- and conservative too, I might add. What conservative would not like to abolish a whole heap of useless Leftist bureaucracies?
And Hanson repeatedly made clear that her call to slow down the rate of Asian immigration into Australia was NOT racially denominated. It was CULTURALLY motivated. She wanted to stop immigrants of a different CULTURE arriving in numbers too large for them to be readily assimilated into the existing Australian culture. Saying that modern Western culture should be treasured and preserved is of course anathema to the multicultis but regardless of the rights and wrongs of that, culture is NOT race.
And the view that too much Asian immigration would threaten stability and cultural cohesion is a traditional one in Australia -- one that was for many years supported rather more strongly on the Left than on the Right of politics. I voiced some fears of that kind myself 30 years ago and our Prime Minister voiced such fears even more recently. As it happens, however, the very high quality of the Asians themselves has convinced me and many others (including our Prime Minister) that such fears were groundless.
***********************************
I mentioned the collapsed conviction of Pauline Hanson for electoral fraud yesterday. Hanson was a broadly conservative political leader who is still widely popular among ordinary Australians. There is still a huge hue and cry in Australia over the fact that Pauline was jailed for something that the Queensland Court of Appeal has now judged should never even have been the subject of a prosecution. As Pauline represented a big challenge to Leftist causes (e.g. in her rejection of racial favouritism towards blacks), the obvious inference is that the Leftist Queensland establishment was out to “get” her. The Leftist Queensland government claims non-involvement, of course, saying that it was the Director of Public Prosecutions, Leanne Clare, who took the decision to launch the prosecution. But, as the Editorial in The Australian newspaper of 8th points out, both the judge (Wolfe) and the prosecutor (Clare) in the case were political appointees of the very same government: ”Some of the top members of the legal system in Queensland were appointed as part of a gender-based affirmative action program by then attorney-general Matt Foley... Appointees included DPP Leanne Clare and Patsy Wolfe” -- and also, it might be added, Supreme Court judge Roslyn Atkinson, who started the onlslaught on Pauline Hanson with her 1999 judgement that Hanson’s party had been fraudulently registered. That these three “affirmative action” appointees might have been politically motivated seems hardly worth disputing, I would think.
I would also like to mention that the branding of Hanson as “racist” is just another example of the way Leftists automatically reach for that word as a sort of all-puropose firearm to use against their political opponents. Wanting to abolish a whole Federal bureaucracy and instead give blacks just the same welfare benefits as white Australians is ANTI-racist -- and conservative too, I might add. What conservative would not like to abolish a whole heap of useless Leftist bureaucracies?
And Hanson repeatedly made clear that her call to slow down the rate of Asian immigration into Australia was NOT racially denominated. It was CULTURALLY motivated. She wanted to stop immigrants of a different CULTURE arriving in numbers too large for them to be readily assimilated into the existing Australian culture. Saying that modern Western culture should be treasured and preserved is of course anathema to the multicultis but regardless of the rights and wrongs of that, culture is NOT race.
And the view that too much Asian immigration would threaten stability and cultural cohesion is a traditional one in Australia -- one that was for many years supported rather more strongly on the Left than on the Right of politics. I voiced some fears of that kind myself 30 years ago and our Prime Minister voiced such fears even more recently. As it happens, however, the very high quality of the Asians themselves has convinced me and many others (including our Prime Minister) that such fears were groundless.
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ELSEWHERE
An Australian senator recently compared the Australian Green party with the Nazis. And he was quoting history rather than just being rhetorical. Hitler’s Nazis of the 1920s and 30s DID have a strong Green agenda. The historians the Senator quoted have however now said that the Greenies of today are NOT like the Nazis of history in that the modern Greenies do not have a racial agenda. That is of course true but it also misses the point. Of course history never repeats itself exactly. Racism and eugenics were very popular among the Leftists of Hitler’s day. Hitler was being a perfectly orthodox socialist in having those beliefs. Since then, however, the Left have switched sides and now make just as big a play of being anti-racist as they once did of their “racial hygeine” (eugenic) beliefs. And the Greenies follow suit. But they are all still Leftists with the same dictatorial inclinations. And Hitler and Stalin showed where that leads once such people get their way. Racial issues are just a tool for Leftists -- which is why they switched sides so readily. It is dictating to others that motivates them and you only have to listen to a Greenie for five minutes to see that that is what they are on about too and how much the Greens hate people. The Senator was perfectly right to point out the affinites between the Nazis and the Greens.
There is a rather heartwarming story here about ordinary U.S. travellers giving up their airline seats so that troops home on leave from Iraq can get home soonest. Ordinary Americans appreciate what their their soldiers are doing even if the Left do not.
USA Today has some good points about the invalidity of comparing the Iraq involvement with the Vietnam war and the “Tet” offensive.
Sowell on illegal immigration: "Illegal aliens living in California can go to the state universities and pay only the in-state tuition, while native-born American citizens who live in neighboring Oregon or Nevada have to pay much higher out-of-state tuition to attend California's state universities. Apparently Mexico is not out of state."
An interesting debunking of some myths about "the Religious Right" here: "Actually, in 2000, at least 10 million white "evangelical Christians" voted for Gore"
HALLIBURTON! The great Leftist bogeyman of the moment! Some attempts at demystification here and here. Have fun with Leftists. Just say the single word “Halliburton” to them and watch them froth.
I am pleased to see that Bad Money confirms my observations of the poor.
Leftist psychologists are great ones for finding simplistic thinking among conservatives. In the latest upload of a chapter from my book (See here or Chapter 42 here) I show that major Leftist slogans are just as simplistic. How? I took their favourite list of simplistic conservative sayings (the Adorno “authoritarianism” scale) and showed that a list of popular Leftist slogans correlated POSITIVELY with it -- i.e. people in general tended to agree with BOTH sets of statements -- showing that it was politically simplistic thinking rather than their Left/Right polarity that both sets of statements were sensitive to and hence that the Leftists’ own pet slogans were simplistic. So my finding used the Leftists’ own weapon to show that their own favourite beliefs were “authoritarian” (simplistic). What a horror! No wonder no academic journal would publish the finding -- making my book the only way to publicize it!
********************************
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
An Australian senator recently compared the Australian Green party with the Nazis. And he was quoting history rather than just being rhetorical. Hitler’s Nazis of the 1920s and 30s DID have a strong Green agenda. The historians the Senator quoted have however now said that the Greenies of today are NOT like the Nazis of history in that the modern Greenies do not have a racial agenda. That is of course true but it also misses the point. Of course history never repeats itself exactly. Racism and eugenics were very popular among the Leftists of Hitler’s day. Hitler was being a perfectly orthodox socialist in having those beliefs. Since then, however, the Left have switched sides and now make just as big a play of being anti-racist as they once did of their “racial hygeine” (eugenic) beliefs. And the Greenies follow suit. But they are all still Leftists with the same dictatorial inclinations. And Hitler and Stalin showed where that leads once such people get their way. Racial issues are just a tool for Leftists -- which is why they switched sides so readily. It is dictating to others that motivates them and you only have to listen to a Greenie for five minutes to see that that is what they are on about too and how much the Greens hate people. The Senator was perfectly right to point out the affinites between the Nazis and the Greens.
There is a rather heartwarming story here about ordinary U.S. travellers giving up their airline seats so that troops home on leave from Iraq can get home soonest. Ordinary Americans appreciate what their their soldiers are doing even if the Left do not.
USA Today has some good points about the invalidity of comparing the Iraq involvement with the Vietnam war and the “Tet” offensive.
Sowell on illegal immigration: "Illegal aliens living in California can go to the state universities and pay only the in-state tuition, while native-born American citizens who live in neighboring Oregon or Nevada have to pay much higher out-of-state tuition to attend California's state universities. Apparently Mexico is not out of state."
An interesting debunking of some myths about "the Religious Right" here: "Actually, in 2000, at least 10 million white "evangelical Christians" voted for Gore"
HALLIBURTON! The great Leftist bogeyman of the moment! Some attempts at demystification here and here. Have fun with Leftists. Just say the single word “Halliburton” to them and watch them froth.
I am pleased to see that Bad Money confirms my observations of the poor.
Leftist psychologists are great ones for finding simplistic thinking among conservatives. In the latest upload of a chapter from my book (See here or Chapter 42 here) I show that major Leftist slogans are just as simplistic. How? I took their favourite list of simplistic conservative sayings (the Adorno “authoritarianism” scale) and showed that a list of popular Leftist slogans correlated POSITIVELY with it -- i.e. people in general tended to agree with BOTH sets of statements -- showing that it was politically simplistic thinking rather than their Left/Right polarity that both sets of statements were sensitive to and hence that the Leftists’ own pet slogans were simplistic. So my finding used the Leftists’ own weapon to show that their own favourite beliefs were “authoritarian” (simplistic). What a horror! No wonder no academic journal would publish the finding -- making my book the only way to publicize it!
********************************
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Saturday, November 08, 2003
"CRAZY WORLD" STORIES
A reader sends in some of his own Crazy World stories:
"The government runs ads informing us that drugs are not victimless crimes because they may kill someone in an car accident. Homosexuality, which brought us AIDS and Hepatitus, is ok'd by the same government that locked up Typhoid Mary as just another lifestyle. Recently the Anglican church installed an openly "Gay" bishop. If he had just been living with his girl friend he most likely would not have been made a bishop and it would not have even made the local paper, much less the evening news. It is amazing to me that the purveyors of theo-logic can't even understand simple logic. Welcome to crazy-world.
It is a well known fact that the constitution guarantees the freedom of speech. Most, I hope, realize that it was for political protest. Until Larry Flynt came along pornography was not included. It had been previously tested all the way to the supreme court many times and it was always found that pornography as freedom of speech was not part of the original intent of the founders of this country. There are other examples like yelling "Fire" in a crowded theater. Timothy McVegh, before he was executed, was prevented from making a statement as to why he did what he did. I would have liked to hear what he had to say. It was political in nature and yet it was hushed up. Welcome to crazy-world.
Remember the anti-war free-love movement of the late sixties? Somehow the idea got started that all we have to do is dance to the free love tune and oppose war and everything will be ok. This idea is still alive today. I call them the enslavement crowd. I know that sounds like a contradiction, but is it really? Were not most of the crowd enslaved by sex, drugs and rock-n-roll? Were they not allies to the tyranny of communism. You might be inclined to thing that they were just left wing, but in that case they would now be opposed to Sadaam Hussein and be for taking him out. That is simply not the case. The anti war crowd doesn't want to oppose Hussein and he most certainly is not a communist so therefore they are not left wing. They are allies to tyrants both left and right. Many will say that sex is ok but war is not and yet if you count up the bodies even during the last century which had several major wars and millions killed by communists in secret wars you will find that far more died of sexually transmitted diseases. This number doesn't even include the millions of babies killed in abortions. Truly sex is more destructive than war. Welcome to crazy-world."
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A reader sends in some of his own Crazy World stories:
"The government runs ads informing us that drugs are not victimless crimes because they may kill someone in an car accident. Homosexuality, which brought us AIDS and Hepatitus, is ok'd by the same government that locked up Typhoid Mary as just another lifestyle. Recently the Anglican church installed an openly "Gay" bishop. If he had just been living with his girl friend he most likely would not have been made a bishop and it would not have even made the local paper, much less the evening news. It is amazing to me that the purveyors of theo-logic can't even understand simple logic. Welcome to crazy-world.
It is a well known fact that the constitution guarantees the freedom of speech. Most, I hope, realize that it was for political protest. Until Larry Flynt came along pornography was not included. It had been previously tested all the way to the supreme court many times and it was always found that pornography as freedom of speech was not part of the original intent of the founders of this country. There are other examples like yelling "Fire" in a crowded theater. Timothy McVegh, before he was executed, was prevented from making a statement as to why he did what he did. I would have liked to hear what he had to say. It was political in nature and yet it was hushed up. Welcome to crazy-world.
Remember the anti-war free-love movement of the late sixties? Somehow the idea got started that all we have to do is dance to the free love tune and oppose war and everything will be ok. This idea is still alive today. I call them the enslavement crowd. I know that sounds like a contradiction, but is it really? Were not most of the crowd enslaved by sex, drugs and rock-n-roll? Were they not allies to the tyranny of communism. You might be inclined to thing that they were just left wing, but in that case they would now be opposed to Sadaam Hussein and be for taking him out. That is simply not the case. The anti war crowd doesn't want to oppose Hussein and he most certainly is not a communist so therefore they are not left wing. They are allies to tyrants both left and right. Many will say that sex is ok but war is not and yet if you count up the bodies even during the last century which had several major wars and millions killed by communists in secret wars you will find that far more died of sexually transmitted diseases. This number doesn't even include the millions of babies killed in abortions. Truly sex is more destructive than war. Welcome to crazy-world."
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ELSEWHERE
The release from prison of Pauline Hanson in my home State of Queensland has been covered by the media worldwide -- even as far away as Scotland -- so I have forborne from making any comment on it up until now on the grounds that everything that could be said about the matter has already been said by others. But in fact there are some things that have been glided over by the mainstream media that people might like to know. She has generally been described only as “Far-Right” or “anti-immigrant” on the grounds that she called for a slowdown in the very high rate of immigration from Asia into Australia. She did indeed do that -- but her greatest emphasis was in fact on Australia’s “Aboriginal industry”. She wanted to abolish the vast bureaucracy and system of handouts that has been set up to cater to Australia’s native blacks. In other words, she wanted to ABOLISH Australia’s official racism. She is in fact Australia’s only ANTI-racist politician in my view -- which is why I voted for her twice. Official racism just makes racist attitudes worse in my view. No wonder they put her in jail on grounds that the Queensland Court of Appeal has just said should never even have gone to trial.
Opinion Journal has a good coverage of GWB's speech about the possibility of democracy in the Arab world. I am almost persuaded. The comparison with a Reagan speech is a telling one.
Jeff Jacoby too weighs in on the present aims and difficulties in Iraq. Cakewalks are for wimps. Great aims must be expected to require effort.
An interesting email from one of my Brazilian readers: "Your post about envy made me remember a scene in the film The Sniper (where a Russian shooter disputes with a German one about who is the best in WW2) -- when the Soviet Commissar admits he envies the love of a woman he will never have, saying that the dream of a society without envy is impossible, and offers himself in sacrifice -- bullet in the forehead. I keep watching the scene over and over, it has a beauty I have not seen before, and it is tragic and redempetion follows. I would like your opinion about it." I rarely watch films so other readers might like to comment.
A geophysicist reports that the Sun is more active now than it has been for a millennium. But any global warming is still our doing -- Right?
Sean Gabb has a rather acid comment on the British Conservative party's recent change of leader: "Looking at the actions of the Parliamentary Conservative Party during the past ten days, it is as though a mental defective had stopped twitching in his wheelchair and turned into something like a Bond villain." But he is glad of the change nonetheless. We Anglophiles live in hope.
I got a laugh out of this "shortened version" of the Ten Commandments: "Thou shalt always be honest and faithful to the provider of thy nookie. And, thou shalt try real hard not to kill anyone, unless of course they pray to a different invisible man than you." Attributed to George Carlin. Via Armed Prophet
A thin layer of biodegreadable organic molecules spread over the surface of a water reservoir can cut evaporation so much that it is almost like getting a second reservoir for free. Great stuff? No doubt. But what about the ecology!! "It's natural for water to evaporate", the Greenies will no doubt cry -- and thus stop that huge cost-saver too.
The Wicked one has an unusual list of viruses.
My latest academic upload (see here or here) reviews Hans Eysenck's work on the psychology of politics. I knew him personally. I spent my 1977 sabbatical year in his Department at the Institute of Psychiatry in London. He had a great mind but, sadly, he passed away a few years ago. His work is probably still the best known alternative to the Leftist theory of politics and is based on a view very much like the libertarian account of how politics are structured.
*******************************
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
The release from prison of Pauline Hanson in my home State of Queensland has been covered by the media worldwide -- even as far away as Scotland -- so I have forborne from making any comment on it up until now on the grounds that everything that could be said about the matter has already been said by others. But in fact there are some things that have been glided over by the mainstream media that people might like to know. She has generally been described only as “Far-Right” or “anti-immigrant” on the grounds that she called for a slowdown in the very high rate of immigration from Asia into Australia. She did indeed do that -- but her greatest emphasis was in fact on Australia’s “Aboriginal industry”. She wanted to abolish the vast bureaucracy and system of handouts that has been set up to cater to Australia’s native blacks. In other words, she wanted to ABOLISH Australia’s official racism. She is in fact Australia’s only ANTI-racist politician in my view -- which is why I voted for her twice. Official racism just makes racist attitudes worse in my view. No wonder they put her in jail on grounds that the Queensland Court of Appeal has just said should never even have gone to trial.
Opinion Journal has a good coverage of GWB's speech about the possibility of democracy in the Arab world. I am almost persuaded. The comparison with a Reagan speech is a telling one.
Jeff Jacoby too weighs in on the present aims and difficulties in Iraq. Cakewalks are for wimps. Great aims must be expected to require effort.
An interesting email from one of my Brazilian readers: "Your post about envy made me remember a scene in the film The Sniper (where a Russian shooter disputes with a German one about who is the best in WW2) -- when the Soviet Commissar admits he envies the love of a woman he will never have, saying that the dream of a society without envy is impossible, and offers himself in sacrifice -- bullet in the forehead. I keep watching the scene over and over, it has a beauty I have not seen before, and it is tragic and redempetion follows. I would like your opinion about it." I rarely watch films so other readers might like to comment.
A geophysicist reports that the Sun is more active now than it has been for a millennium. But any global warming is still our doing -- Right?
Sean Gabb has a rather acid comment on the British Conservative party's recent change of leader: "Looking at the actions of the Parliamentary Conservative Party during the past ten days, it is as though a mental defective had stopped twitching in his wheelchair and turned into something like a Bond villain." But he is glad of the change nonetheless. We Anglophiles live in hope.
I got a laugh out of this "shortened version" of the Ten Commandments: "Thou shalt always be honest and faithful to the provider of thy nookie. And, thou shalt try real hard not to kill anyone, unless of course they pray to a different invisible man than you." Attributed to George Carlin. Via Armed Prophet
A thin layer of biodegreadable organic molecules spread over the surface of a water reservoir can cut evaporation so much that it is almost like getting a second reservoir for free. Great stuff? No doubt. But what about the ecology!! "It's natural for water to evaporate", the Greenies will no doubt cry -- and thus stop that huge cost-saver too.
The Wicked one has an unusual list of viruses.
My latest academic upload (see here or here) reviews Hans Eysenck's work on the psychology of politics. I knew him personally. I spent my 1977 sabbatical year in his Department at the Institute of Psychiatry in London. He had a great mind but, sadly, he passed away a few years ago. His work is probably still the best known alternative to the Leftist theory of politics and is based on a view very much like the libertarian account of how politics are structured.
*******************************
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Friday, November 07, 2003
ENVY
I often point out the evidence for a substantial hereditary component in Left/Right political orientation. Some of the latest evolutionary thinking is consistent with that. Note this comment about the Pleistocene origins of envy, one of the major motors of Leftist thought: "we are prone to envy, to feeling dispossessed or cheated by the mere fact that others own what we do not own. We view the very possession of desirable goods and resources on the part of others as somehow unfair or even immoral, and we will look for evidence allowing us to regard the rich as unworthy of their "luck" and possessions." So Leftism goes back in fact to our evolutionary origins in pre-history. That does not make it any less irrational in our day, though.
All that makes this comment even more relevant: "many capitalist thinkers underestimate the force of envy, and in this regard are far more naive than collectivists. Lenin never tired of stressing that his goal was to make class envy flare into revolutionary hatred.... Ludwig von Mises showed 31 years ago in The Anti-capitalistic Mentality that reason, evidence, and humaneness have about as much impact on public policy as an Oral Roberts sermon would have on Nietzsche. As too few contemporary economists do, Mises realized that for libertarian economists to have a practical as well as scholarly impact, they must understand the non-rational factors that breed hostility to capitalism.... " Mises went on to explain Leftism among academics on the basis of envy too.
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I often point out the evidence for a substantial hereditary component in Left/Right political orientation. Some of the latest evolutionary thinking is consistent with that. Note this comment about the Pleistocene origins of envy, one of the major motors of Leftist thought: "we are prone to envy, to feeling dispossessed or cheated by the mere fact that others own what we do not own. We view the very possession of desirable goods and resources on the part of others as somehow unfair or even immoral, and we will look for evidence allowing us to regard the rich as unworthy of their "luck" and possessions." So Leftism goes back in fact to our evolutionary origins in pre-history. That does not make it any less irrational in our day, though.
All that makes this comment even more relevant: "many capitalist thinkers underestimate the force of envy, and in this regard are far more naive than collectivists. Lenin never tired of stressing that his goal was to make class envy flare into revolutionary hatred.... Ludwig von Mises showed 31 years ago in The Anti-capitalistic Mentality that reason, evidence, and humaneness have about as much impact on public policy as an Oral Roberts sermon would have on Nietzsche. As too few contemporary economists do, Mises realized that for libertarian economists to have a practical as well as scholarly impact, they must understand the non-rational factors that breed hostility to capitalism.... " Mises went on to explain Leftism among academics on the basis of envy too.
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SAFETY FOR FEMALE DRIVERS
I don't know if this story actually happened but the point is that it COULD have happened
Lauren was 19 yrs old and in college. This story takes place over the Christmas/New Year's holiday break. It was the Saturday before New Year's and it was about 1 PM in the afternoon, and Lauren was driving to visit a friend. An UNMARKED police car pulled up behind her and put his lights on. Lauren's parents have 4 children (high school and college age) and have always told them never to pull over for an unmarked car on the side of the road, but rather wait until they get to a gas station, etc. So Lauren had actually listened to her parents' advice, and promptly called No. 112 on her cell phone to tell the police dispatcher that she would not pull over right away. She proceeded to tell the dispatcher that there was an unmarked police car with a flashing red light on his rooftop behind her. The dispatcher checked to see if there was a police car where she was and there wasn't and he told her to keep driving, remain calm and that he had back-up already on the way. Ten minutes later 4 cop cars surrounded her and the unmarked car behind her. One policeman went to her side and the others surrounded the car behind. They pulled the guy from the car and tackled him to the ground ...... the man was a convicted rapist and wanted for other crimes.
So ... especially for a woman alone in a car, you should not pull over for an unmarked car. Apparently police have to respect your right to keep going to a "safe" place. You obviously need to make some signals that you acknowledge them (i.e., put on your hazard lights) or call No. 112 like Lauren did.
And the 112 number DOES exist .... as it says here. Best of all, it seems to be the international emegency number .. meaning that you can use it anywhere in the world that has GSM mobile phones.
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I don't know if this story actually happened but the point is that it COULD have happened
Lauren was 19 yrs old and in college. This story takes place over the Christmas/New Year's holiday break. It was the Saturday before New Year's and it was about 1 PM in the afternoon, and Lauren was driving to visit a friend. An UNMARKED police car pulled up behind her and put his lights on. Lauren's parents have 4 children (high school and college age) and have always told them never to pull over for an unmarked car on the side of the road, but rather wait until they get to a gas station, etc. So Lauren had actually listened to her parents' advice, and promptly called No. 112 on her cell phone to tell the police dispatcher that she would not pull over right away. She proceeded to tell the dispatcher that there was an unmarked police car with a flashing red light on his rooftop behind her. The dispatcher checked to see if there was a police car where she was and there wasn't and he told her to keep driving, remain calm and that he had back-up already on the way. Ten minutes later 4 cop cars surrounded her and the unmarked car behind her. One policeman went to her side and the others surrounded the car behind. They pulled the guy from the car and tackled him to the ground ...... the man was a convicted rapist and wanted for other crimes.
So ... especially for a woman alone in a car, you should not pull over for an unmarked car. Apparently police have to respect your right to keep going to a "safe" place. You obviously need to make some signals that you acknowledge them (i.e., put on your hazard lights) or call No. 112 like Lauren did.
And the 112 number DOES exist .... as it says here. Best of all, it seems to be the international emegency number .. meaning that you can use it anywhere in the world that has GSM mobile phones.
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ELSEWHERE
Val of Val-e-diction writes in response to my post on multiculturalism and the varieties of racism: "Your good post reminded me of my years working in Trinidad and Tobago. Multicultis believe that only whites can be racists, but I would like them to visit T&T. After their independence from Britain in 1964, the then mostly-black T&T was ruled by the marxist Eric Williams, with the consequent statism that is still rampant today. Over the years years before independence, many Indians were brought in to serve as indentured workers and their descendents later formed an ever growing minority, mostly successful in industry and commerce because they were mostly blocked from government jobs (monopolized by blacks). Today the country is divided approximately 48% blacks and 48% Indians plus several other minorities. The point is that one has to live there to get to know the open and huge racism of blacks towards Indians. And that's not all. Trinidadians dislike and consider Latin Americans somehow inferior -- especially Venezuelans, their closest neighbors on the subcontinent -- because the others just look and talk foreign (maybe also because Trinidadians are islanders and not people from terra firma). In the end it's just a fact that you prefer people whom you think are "like you," whether is by race, ethnicity, pigmentation, appearance, language, ideology, etc.”
I noted recently the Leftist fuss about GWB and Tony Blair praying together. A reader comments: "If sex in private between consenting adults is ok, why isn't prayer?"
A kind reader has translated the French email that I posted recently. Apparently it says that official French secularism is compatible with religious tolerance and that France should therefore not bar Muslim women from wearing their Muslim headgear. I would send them all back to Algeria, headgear and all, myself.
Matthew Cowie has emailed me this link to the Norwegian press (in English). Apparently the Norwegian minister for immigration wants Muslims in Norway to integrate more into Norwegian society. The multicultis worldwide will probably be frothing at the mouth over that! No doubt the good minister will be a "Nazi" in two seconds flat.
My latest academic upload (see here or here) looks at whether or not working class people are more conservative on social issues than others. It is widely asserted that they are. Those who know their old TV series will know of Archie Bunker and Alf Garnet as the stereotypical working-class conservatives. In my data, however, it has always turned out that there is nothing much in the theory. There ARE heaps of workers who are conservative on social issues but there are more or less equally large numbers who are not conservative on social issues. This article did not however examine how the workers stack up on racial issues. One interesting finding, though, was that the workers were more distrustful of expertise as a qualification for being in government. It was people who saw themselves as being more upper-class who agreed with statements like "This country would be best run by men who have had a university education". Given the low quality of most intellectuals, I am pretty glad of the workers' skepticism in that regard.
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Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Val of Val-e-diction writes in response to my post on multiculturalism and the varieties of racism: "Your good post reminded me of my years working in Trinidad and Tobago. Multicultis believe that only whites can be racists, but I would like them to visit T&T. After their independence from Britain in 1964, the then mostly-black T&T was ruled by the marxist Eric Williams, with the consequent statism that is still rampant today. Over the years years before independence, many Indians were brought in to serve as indentured workers and their descendents later formed an ever growing minority, mostly successful in industry and commerce because they were mostly blocked from government jobs (monopolized by blacks). Today the country is divided approximately 48% blacks and 48% Indians plus several other minorities. The point is that one has to live there to get to know the open and huge racism of blacks towards Indians. And that's not all. Trinidadians dislike and consider Latin Americans somehow inferior -- especially Venezuelans, their closest neighbors on the subcontinent -- because the others just look and talk foreign (maybe also because Trinidadians are islanders and not people from terra firma). In the end it's just a fact that you prefer people whom you think are "like you," whether is by race, ethnicity, pigmentation, appearance, language, ideology, etc.”
I noted recently the Leftist fuss about GWB and Tony Blair praying together. A reader comments: "If sex in private between consenting adults is ok, why isn't prayer?"
A kind reader has translated the French email that I posted recently. Apparently it says that official French secularism is compatible with religious tolerance and that France should therefore not bar Muslim women from wearing their Muslim headgear. I would send them all back to Algeria, headgear and all, myself.
Matthew Cowie has emailed me this link to the Norwegian press (in English). Apparently the Norwegian minister for immigration wants Muslims in Norway to integrate more into Norwegian society. The multicultis worldwide will probably be frothing at the mouth over that! No doubt the good minister will be a "Nazi" in two seconds flat.
My latest academic upload (see here or here) looks at whether or not working class people are more conservative on social issues than others. It is widely asserted that they are. Those who know their old TV series will know of Archie Bunker and Alf Garnet as the stereotypical working-class conservatives. In my data, however, it has always turned out that there is nothing much in the theory. There ARE heaps of workers who are conservative on social issues but there are more or less equally large numbers who are not conservative on social issues. This article did not however examine how the workers stack up on racial issues. One interesting finding, though, was that the workers were more distrustful of expertise as a qualification for being in government. It was people who saw themselves as being more upper-class who agreed with statements like "This country would be best run by men who have had a university education". Given the low quality of most intellectuals, I am pretty glad of the workers' skepticism in that regard.
*******************************
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Thursday, November 06, 2003
FROM BROOKES NEWS
A Jew In Baghdad. A US soldier in Iraq paints a grim picture of what the civilised world is really up against.
North Korea's imbroglio requires patience. Japan's move to strengthen its military is giving Beijing a further justification for modernizing her war machine.
SMH covers up Bush successes in Iraq. The Bush-hating Marian Wilkinson of the Sydney Morning Herald, aka The Saddam Times, is another of those ideologically motivated journalists whose reports on Iraq seem to be written with the sole intention of misleading the public about the true state of affairs in that hapless country.
Australian reporter whitewashes pro-Saddam lefties. Marian Wilkinson of the Sydney Morning Herald is a shameless political bigot and a disgrace to journalism.
Philip Adams' anti-Semitic friends. It seems that the leftwing Philip Adams, a columnist with Murdoch's Australian has decided that Arab Jew-hatred is now is now politically correct. What a charming chap.
How wealthy residents confiscated land in the Mornington Peninsula. Rich adults behaving as though they are caring greenies makes me want to look for a bucket. As anyone with an IQ of 30 could see from a distance, these well-heeled "caring greenies" were attempting an old fashioned land grab.
Behavioural and experimental economics -- what are they all about. Nobel prize winners Daniel Kahneman and Vernon Smith may have unwittingly laid the foundation for a retardation rather than an advancement of the economics discipline.
Details here
****************************
A Jew In Baghdad. A US soldier in Iraq paints a grim picture of what the civilised world is really up against.
North Korea's imbroglio requires patience. Japan's move to strengthen its military is giving Beijing a further justification for modernizing her war machine.
SMH covers up Bush successes in Iraq. The Bush-hating Marian Wilkinson of the Sydney Morning Herald, aka The Saddam Times, is another of those ideologically motivated journalists whose reports on Iraq seem to be written with the sole intention of misleading the public about the true state of affairs in that hapless country.
Australian reporter whitewashes pro-Saddam lefties. Marian Wilkinson of the Sydney Morning Herald is a shameless political bigot and a disgrace to journalism.
Philip Adams' anti-Semitic friends. It seems that the leftwing Philip Adams, a columnist with Murdoch's Australian has decided that Arab Jew-hatred is now is now politically correct. What a charming chap.
How wealthy residents confiscated land in the Mornington Peninsula. Rich adults behaving as though they are caring greenies makes me want to look for a bucket. As anyone with an IQ of 30 could see from a distance, these well-heeled "caring greenies" were attempting an old fashioned land grab.
Behavioural and experimental economics -- what are they all about. Nobel prize winners Daniel Kahneman and Vernon Smith may have unwittingly laid the foundation for a retardation rather than an advancement of the economics discipline.
Details here
****************************
MORE MORONIC "EDUCATION"
A reader writes:
"I have two incidents from my recent graduate education that I thought might interest you.
Several years ago I left an industry job to return to the University to pursue a Ph.D. in electrical engineering. For several reasons including class scheduling conflicts and personal interest I took a minor in STS (Science Technology and Society), basically a liberal arts view of science and technology. I was a bit surprised to find this area of study to be a bit of a fact free zone but there were some tidbits offered as facts.
I was told it was the invention of the steam engine that made it possible for England to ship its convicts to Australia and for England and the other colonial powers to establish empires. I had just read "The Hostile Shore" and knew transportation happen entirely in the age of sail. My elementary school history lessons are enough to know the Spanish, English, Portuguese and Dutch colonial empires were all established at least two hundred years before trans-oceanic steam ships appeared.
I was told here in America the very promising steam engine power automobile was defeated by an outbreak of hoof and mouth disease. In an effort to contain this disease, public watering trough were destroyed removing the water source needed by the owners of steam powered automobiles, most of which did not have condensers and therefore required several liters of water per mile to operate.
No word on why steam engines in steam ships which by definition do not lack for water for cooling fell into disfavor at about the same time."
**********************************
A reader writes:
"I have two incidents from my recent graduate education that I thought might interest you.
Several years ago I left an industry job to return to the University to pursue a Ph.D. in electrical engineering. For several reasons including class scheduling conflicts and personal interest I took a minor in STS (Science Technology and Society), basically a liberal arts view of science and technology. I was a bit surprised to find this area of study to be a bit of a fact free zone but there were some tidbits offered as facts.
I was told it was the invention of the steam engine that made it possible for England to ship its convicts to Australia and for England and the other colonial powers to establish empires. I had just read "The Hostile Shore" and knew transportation happen entirely in the age of sail. My elementary school history lessons are enough to know the Spanish, English, Portuguese and Dutch colonial empires were all established at least two hundred years before trans-oceanic steam ships appeared.
I was told here in America the very promising steam engine power automobile was defeated by an outbreak of hoof and mouth disease. In an effort to contain this disease, public watering trough were destroyed removing the water source needed by the owners of steam powered automobiles, most of which did not have condensers and therefore required several liters of water per mile to operate.
No word on why steam engines in steam ships which by definition do not lack for water for cooling fell into disfavor at about the same time."
**********************************
ELSEWHERE
Bernhardt Varenius of Anti-Socialist Tendencies has asked me to comment on the theories of George Lakoff, the Leftist linguistics professor who seems to think he knows all about the psychology of politics. Lakoff has written a book (reviewed here) which purports to explain the Left/Right polarity of politics as Mother-oriented politics versus Father-oriented politics -- a book called: Moral Politics : How Liberals and Conservatives Think. So I have put up a "deconstruction" of Lakoff's "text" here. If a few other bloggers link to the file, Lakoff will be confronted by a deconstruction of his grotesquely oversimplified theories every time he Googles his own name! Fun!
Check here for the latest example of Leftists saying anything at all to justify their hatreds -- even if it is exactly opposite to what they have always said before. The anti-Globos are now saying that they oppose the World Trade Organization because it will reduce national sovereignty! But national soverignty has always been a conservative cause! For decades Leftists were the great internationalists. And the WTO is just a bunch of quarrelling politicians from all over the world anyway -- any "power" it has is minute. What a total nonsense anti-globalism is!
A Pastor with balls: "The Big Lake pastor who shot and killed two men he caught burglarizing his chapel before dawn on an April morning should never have gone into the church in the first place, said three of the jurors who deliberated on the case. But those same jurors also said that the Rev. Phillip Mielke had a legal right to check on the chapel -- and deserved to be acquitted on criminal charges.
Silflay Hraka has a nicely sarcastic post about the connection between global warming and the activity of the Sun.
Thrift equals liberty? Even libertarians can get pretty muddled at times but this writer deserves some sort of prize. He says "the market economy has to end at some point" !!! and that government spending must go on eating up an ever bigger slice of the national income!!! I think he needs a cold shower and a good rest.
Arlene Peck thinks that the barbarism Americans are experiencing in Iraq at the moment may help more Americans understand what Israel is stuck with.
Carnival of the Vanities is up again.
The Wicked one explains why it is great to be a guy.
My latest academic upload (see here or here) is of interest to psychometricians only -- dealing with response skewness.
*******************************
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Bernhardt Varenius of Anti-Socialist Tendencies has asked me to comment on the theories of George Lakoff, the Leftist linguistics professor who seems to think he knows all about the psychology of politics. Lakoff has written a book (reviewed here) which purports to explain the Left/Right polarity of politics as Mother-oriented politics versus Father-oriented politics -- a book called: Moral Politics : How Liberals and Conservatives Think. So I have put up a "deconstruction" of Lakoff's "text" here. If a few other bloggers link to the file, Lakoff will be confronted by a deconstruction of his grotesquely oversimplified theories every time he Googles his own name! Fun!
Check here for the latest example of Leftists saying anything at all to justify their hatreds -- even if it is exactly opposite to what they have always said before. The anti-Globos are now saying that they oppose the World Trade Organization because it will reduce national sovereignty! But national soverignty has always been a conservative cause! For decades Leftists were the great internationalists. And the WTO is just a bunch of quarrelling politicians from all over the world anyway -- any "power" it has is minute. What a total nonsense anti-globalism is!
A Pastor with balls: "The Big Lake pastor who shot and killed two men he caught burglarizing his chapel before dawn on an April morning should never have gone into the church in the first place, said three of the jurors who deliberated on the case. But those same jurors also said that the Rev. Phillip Mielke had a legal right to check on the chapel -- and deserved to be acquitted on criminal charges.
Silflay Hraka has a nicely sarcastic post about the connection between global warming and the activity of the Sun.
Thrift equals liberty? Even libertarians can get pretty muddled at times but this writer deserves some sort of prize. He says "the market economy has to end at some point" !!! and that government spending must go on eating up an ever bigger slice of the national income!!! I think he needs a cold shower and a good rest.
Arlene Peck thinks that the barbarism Americans are experiencing in Iraq at the moment may help more Americans understand what Israel is stuck with.
Carnival of the Vanities is up again.
The Wicked one explains why it is great to be a guy.
My latest academic upload (see here or here) is of interest to psychometricians only -- dealing with response skewness.
*******************************
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
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