GREENIE WATCH

The Greens push a policy called the “precautionary principle” -- which basically says that if anything MIGHT be harmful it should not be allowed. Had that principle been around for very long most of the things that we now take for granted -- such as alcohol and motor cars -- would never have been allowed -- because practically EVERYTHING has its downside. Even common salt can kill you if you eat too much of it. Gross nonsense though it is, however, the Greens push on with their attempts to impose this ridiculous “principle” and they have had a disturbing amount of success with it. The EU, for instance, seems to be implementing it in a number of fields -- fields such as “chemicals”. All “chemicals” are now suspect. The fact that such things as the humble potato are full of all sorts of complex “chemicals” doesn’t seem to faze them a bit. Some people are however mounting a bit of a fightback by proposing an opposite principle -- a “technological imperative” that we should follow -- and putting up some pretty good philosophical arguments in favour of it.

Liquefied Natural Gas is widely seen as the "the only near-term, cost-competitive alternative to filthy coal production capable of providing cleaner, reliable base-load supply (i.e., supply that can run 24 hours a day, as opposed to renewables, which only generate electricity when the sun shines or the wind blows)." Yet many environmentalists opposed to ALL fossil fuels seem keen to hold up this useful alternative. So presumably they would prefer continuity of pollution from older, less efficient coal fired plants?? But who expects logic from them?

Even radical economists can make a lot of sense (as long as they are not Krugman): "Henwood is resolutely optimistic about new technology. More than that, he shows where the critics are wrong, exposing the anti-human ideas of the deep ecology movement and their ambition to reduce the population. Drawing out the unlovely consequences of the arguments made by greens such as David Korten and Kirkpatrick Sale, Henwood concludes 'this is snobbery, elitism and despair, masquerading as radical critique' .... The chapter on globalisation is the best, with its clear explanation of the mysteries of trade and its willingness to go against the grain of accepted ideas on the left"

The Greenies have not managed to destroy nuclear power totally. New nuclear power plants are being built in Finland, Japan and other Asian countries. So the fact that we now have a new and inherently safe reactor design that is also cleaner, smaller and more affordable is good news for all reasonable people -- not that anything will ever make a Greenie happy, of course.

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ELSEWHERE

The Arab press is gloating about the reception in Israel of Italian Deputy Prime Minister Gianfranco Fini -- because Fini has in the past expressed approval of some things about former Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi has made similar remarks. That Mussolini’s Italy was one of the few countries in Europe from which no Jews were deported to Hitler’s concentration camps is of course overlooked.

Fittingly, David Corn has written another corny book: Claiming that GWB is a liar. Ho hum! But Mike Tremoglie goes into the details of Corn's claims and shows who the real liar is.

Andrew Bolt has a good answer to the overseas critics and the local Leftists who call Australia a “racist” country.

Only 3% of immigrants report Australia as racist. The Australian Left of course knows better than to ask immigrants. They need to throw racist labels around as a political weapon. They don't have any actual arguments.

Londoner Ann Leslie watched the anti-Bush demonstrations there and notes just how blind is the blind hatred of the Left towards him -- and she points out the great similarities between Bush and Reagan. And Suzanne Fields gives a few more details of the pathetic antics of the same Leftist “protestors” (“exhibitionists” would be a better word) and sees echoes of Winston Churchill in what Bush is doing.

Wow! Is Buckley good at a polite put-down! Read his complete demolition of JFK.

Mike Pechar of Interested Participant has a story about efforts being made to convert high school students into Leftist activists and comments: "It's particularly sad that the Ten Commandments are forbidden in school while the students are being force-fed Marxist ideals". Mike has also blogrolled my "deconstruction" of wacky Leftist linguist George Lakoff -- who thinks that conservatives are Daddies and Leftists are Mommies! But conservatives are very naughty Daddies, of course! Mike commented to me in an email: "I'm working on putting together a post specifically on Lakoff, but haven't done enough research yet. I'll say one thing though, if he's a linguist, mumbo-jumbo is a language".

Arlene Peck finds the attention being given to Jacko pretty disproportionate: “The anti-Semitism in Europe is chilling but where are the cries from our country and others about the pre-Nazi Germany situation that is brewing now? Jewish day schools are being burned, the same for synagogues... The situation is scary and getting worse while we are fed a daily diet of Michael Jackson and the movie star of the week”

The latest upload of one of my published articles is a brief review of a book about equality, co-authored by Keith Joseph -- one of the intellectual mentors of Margaret Thatcher. It is an astonishingly good book and makes the case that equality is obnoxious on MORAL grounds. I have put my review up in full on PC Watch and it is also available here.

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POLITICS SHOULD BE LIKE FLYING AN AIRCRAFT

One of my Australian readers writes:

"I refer to the following extract from your post of 23 Nov: "Burke was emphatic that change was necessary but just wanted it to be done carefully.....".

About 30 years ago when Labor was doing its best to tear Australia apart, a fellow RAAF officer and pilot was invited to give the Anzac Day address at Cooma NSW.

His address was set around a word/action sequence taught to cadet pilots learning to fly on instruments - "change, check, hold, adjust, trim". In full, the advice was change the attitude of the aircraft, check the change, hold the new attitude and observe the result, adjust the attitude to give the exact required result, trim the aircraft to the new attitude.

Nick Leray Meyer's perception, and his description of just how political change should take place have remained with me ever since."

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MEDICAL MAYHEM

I have said this before myself but when Milton Friedman says it, it is worth repeating: "We are deeply concerned about proposed legislation to remove pharmaceutical companies' ability to control the importation of their products. The goal of this legislation will be to reduce prices in the American market by imposing other nations' price controls on us. If this attempt succeeds, American consumers would get the short-term windfall of lower prices, but they would end up unnecessarily suffering and living shorter lives -- because promising new therapies would be delayed or not even developed. Even the threat of price controls reduces the incentive to develop new drugs."

And more on the same theme: "The problem here is politicians face terrible incentives when regulating the prescription drug market. Many of you will know that politicians have had negative consequences on the rest of the American health care system, and now they’ve set their eyes on prescription drugs and threaten to screw that up, too."

In Canada even dogs get better health care: "Still lusting after socialized medicine? Consider the story of a man in Canada (a country well-known for socialized medicine) who needed a cat-scan but had to wait several months to see a physician. In his desperation, he booked an appointment for himself at a local veterinary clinic that had the imaging equipment he needed. He registered himself under the name 'Fido' to assure that he would get in."

The poor old Poms! ("Poms" is Australian slang for the English). The only thing their government can think of to improve their dreadful hospital system is to rip more and more money out of the taxpayer to spend on their existing system of socialized medicine -- the infamous "National Health". Yet, just North of England is Scotland -- where their National Health system already gets 20% more funding than the English equivalent. And by practically every criterion, the Scottish system delivers much WORSE results! But that extra funding does buy LOTS of extra bureaucracy! I sometimes think socialists must be pretty close to brain dead. Some part of their brain is not working.

Newt Gingrich [urges] conservatives to support the proposed Medicare reform bill. He argues Republicans should sign onto the $400 billion Medicare prescription drug bill because it includes a provision for Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). But before Americans take the bait, they first should consider how previous health reform proposals and laws have failed to lower costs and increase access to health care."

Beware of government "solutions": "Just over a month ago we 'celebrated' the 10th anniversary of Bill Clinton’s speech to a joint session of Congress in which he called for a government takeover of the health care industry. Fortunately for America and the quality of our health care system, the massive one-size-fits-all Clintoncare plan went down to defeat. ... Ten years later, the healthcare debate rages on."

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ELSEWHERE

The Bible-oriented Anglican Archdiocese of Sydney has seen an 11% rise in its congregations in recent years -- while over the same period the “liberal” Anglican Archdiocese of Perth saw a 9% fall in its congregations. How surprising! One diocese offers faith. The other offers politics.

"Hate Crime" nonsense: "Opponents of hate crime legislation believe additional laws are unnecessary; criminals are prosecuted for breaking laws, regardless of their motivation. Hate crime laws raise numerous issues. For starters, these laws punish beliefs and speech. While prejudice and bigotry are appalling and wrong, regulation of any type of thought is constitutionally perilous and sets a precedent in which we could all become criminals. In addition, victims of crimes who do not belong to specified groups have a legitimate claim that their perpetrators are subject to lesser punishment

History and the $87billion "Marshall Plan" for Iraq: Like all government spending it will do little good and probably much harm. Protecting the emergence of private markets and free enterprise would be far more beneficial.

Bleeding Brain has a big post on why homosexual “marriage” makes no sense.

I have just posted some more of Chris Brand's observations on current events here. Apparently IQ expert Richard Lynn is getting a bit of exposure in the British media these days.

The Wicked one has a post about fire and brimstone.

In my latest upload of a published academic journal article I pull apart some claims by John Duckitt -- another Leftist psychologist who was sure he had shown what a bad lot conservatives are. Details here or here.

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REVISITING EDMUND BURKE

What conservatism means: Owen Harries (a fellow Australian and a former colleague of mine at the University of New South Wales) offers a useful review of the thought of Edmund Burke, long one of conservatism’s most influential writers and also, of course, a friend of the American revolutionaries. I liked several points: That Burke wrote BEFORE the French revolution degenerated into tryanny so was wise indeed to predict that tyranny; that he was an experienced practical politician rather than a theorist when he wrote so knew how people seeking privilege and influence really operate; that Burke was emphatic that change was necessary but just wanted it to be done carefully; that he consistently opposed abuse of power, no matter from where the abuse came.

Burke has been the thinker most quoted by conservatives for around 200 years but according to the usual Leftist view, the fact that Burke favoured change would make him not a conservative! It shows their gross ignorance of conservative thought. But of course they just KNOW what is the case -- no need for any reading.

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ELSEWHERE

Would you believe it? The Michael Jackson arrest is the fault of “white racism”? “The star's mother, Catherine Jackson, told the online version of Germany's Bunte magazine Friday that there were two interpretations of the law in the United States -- "one for whites and one for blacks."“

My post yesterday about the Dutch prompted the following email from a reader: “That confirms my experience over three years in England. I was in a tourism office one afternoon browsing some brochures when a couple of real tourists walked in. They noticed that the brochures were in Spanish, French, German and Italian; but there was no Dutch language. When they asked the clerk at the window why that was the case, she replied that all the Dutch speak English. I also knew a few people from the Royal Netherlands Air Force. They didn't just speak English, they spoke very good English; so did one of the local merchants who had emigrated from the Netherlands several years before and had become a British citizen. One of the Brits I knew was a bit peeved that this Dutchman cum Englishman had so completely adopted English customs. The Brit used to tell me: "He's Dutch, you know." And there is a guy I know here in Brisbane who I thought for years was a cockney (working-class Londoner) but who is in fact from “Nederland” (the country we English-speakers call “Holland” -- and for more on THAT see “Follies of the English language”).

In good Leftist media fashion, this article implies that all Brits and Europeans hate GWB and notes this comment: “"A great anti-Bush psychosis has taken hold in England". Such a mystery, isn’t it? Why do SOME Europeans hate GWB? It’s not the slightest mystery at all, of course. It’s just envy. The world once rotated around Western Europe. It now rotates around America. And GWB has refused to play that down. He has shown the power that the USA has and he has shown that he will use it if pushed far enough. And no wonder the Left above all hate him more than anyone else they can think of either in history or in the world today. Envy has always been a central part of their emotional motor so envy will affect them most of all. And the US Left hate him because it is not they who have their hands on the levers of that power. Envy, envy, envy! What an immensely destructive force it is in so many childish people!

I agree with Cal Thomas that jails should be reserved mainly for perpetrators of violent crimes. They cost too much to be used for much else. Having druggies there is absurd. I argued the case for that at some length long ago (PDF).

Johan Norberg's blog (from Sweden) has led me to this excellent commentary by Tyler Cowen on a much overlooked subject -- Remittances from guest workers -- which are arguably the most important form of foreign aid: "There is altogether too much talk about the United States being ungenerous with foreign aid. We show up as 21st in the rankings, in per capita terms, according to one estimate. These figures neglect remittances, where the U.S. is a very clear first with $28.4 billion a year sent to other countries. The bottom line: when it comes to other nations, the United States is the most generous country in the world.

Antagonizing China is a smart idea? "The Bush administration announced Tuesday that it is prepared to impose quotas, or safeguards, on three categories of textile imports from China. The long-awaited decision marks a major victory for the embattled U.S. textile industry, which has watched imports from China soar in the past two years as American plants have closed and workers have lost their jobs. ... [The American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition] says the quotas are needed because imports have dramatically disrupted the textile industry. ... Others said the quotas would not help the textile industry be more competitive or save jobs, but rather it would cause prices to rise for American consumers."

Is there anything the “do-gooders” won’t oppose? "The inventors of a magic-bullet pill which is said to eliminate most heart attacks and strokes have opened negotiations with the Government on producing the treatment, which would be given to everyone over 55. .... The polypill would be a combination of six medicines to be taken once a day which, evidence suggests, would prevent 80 per cent of heart attacks and strokes. ... But the proposal has divided doctors. Some specialists say it could undermine the need for lifestyle changes."

I have just posted Chris Brand’s notes here about the reviews of IQ and the Wealth of Nations -- a book that shows how important national differences in IQ are.

The Wicked one has posts on both prayer and G-strings!

In 1983 I collaborated with an Indian psychologist to get a book published in India about that favourite topic of Leftist psychologists -- authoritarianism. Leftists rely on one particular and very problematic measure of authoritarianiasm for most of their conclusions about the matter. In the chapter from my Indian book just uploaded (See Chapter 6 here or the latest post here), I show that using any other measure of psychological authoritarianism produces results opposite to what Leftist psychologists believe to be true.

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SOME STEREOTYPE-BUSTING

This writer has just attended a large international conference of business leaders. So what were these businessmen like? Were they greedy, power-hungry control freaks and crooks, as they are often portrayed? No. "The focus of the conference was value creation. Specifically, the attendees discussed how to be not merely profitable, but how to add economic value to their companies for the benefit of shareholders, employees, suppliers, customers and society. As an observer, I can testify that the comments made by these powerful and successful people were in flat contradiction to the caricature.

The conference participants condemned practices such as short-term thinking for quick financial gain, misstating financial results, unethical behavior, using shareholder money to acquire businesses that added no value to the shareholder, and treating employees like commodities.

They spoke of the absolute necessity of strong ethics not merely as a means to an end but as a way of honoring everyone with whom their business deals. Topics such as transparency, honesty, hard work, and solid decision-making came up frequently.

Perhaps most surprising -- given recent controversies about executive salaries and bonuses -- this group called for executive compensation to be pegged not merely to profit and loss statements, which can be manipulated by a variety of means. Instead, they promoted the idea that as the total value of the company goes up or down, so should the compensation of the executive. To a person, they advocated the need to peg the salaries and bonuses of employees to the value added or value lost so that the employee has a stake in the corporation's future."

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ELSEWHERE

The most recent Carnival of the Vanities is up at the elegant Peak Talk site. I notice that there is a sub-blog about the Netherlands there too. It even explains the collapse of the Dutch “pillars” -- which is less tragic than it sounds. I agree with his view that the Dutch have more in common with the Anglo-Saxons than other Europeans do. Dutch even has just about the same vowel sounds as British English, which is very unusual (though Dutch gutturals are another thing altogether). But the Anglo-Saxons who conquered Britain 1500 years age mostly set off from what is now the Netherlands so the affinities are less surprising than they might seem. There is even some DNA research (Weale et al., ‘Y Chromosome Evidence for Anglo-Saxon Mass Migration’, Molecular Biology and Evolution, 2002, vol. 19, pp.1008-21) showing that the Frisians (one part of the Netherlands) are genetically just about the same as the English. I tend to get on well with the Dutch (though from an easygoing Australian viewpoint they are infuriating sticklers for rules at times) and a Dutchman once told me I would make a good Dutchman -- which I took as a great compliment.

What is the best out-of-print book there is? I nominate Why Race Matters: Race Differences and What They Mean (Human Evolution, Behaviour and Intelligence) by philosopher Michael Levin. Amazon has some excellent and informative reviews of it that DO make one wonder WHY the book is out of print. Chris Brand's book on a related subject was pulped after an outcry from Leftists. Nazi-style book-burning is still with us. Marc Miyake has found a copy of Levin’s book in the library of the obscure college where he is at present interned, however, so keep an eye out for it next time you are in a college library.

A great Mark Steyn comment on antisemitism: "That's the great thing about the International Jewish Conspiracy: no Jews need be involved. One day, there will be only one Jew left on the whole planet. He'll be a Dean supporter who mangled his chad and accidentally voted for Pat Buchanan. But he'll still be controlling the Bush Administration. He'll be a non-observant, self-loathing Jew who doesn't find Jackie Mason funny. He'll be the principal fundraiser for Islamic Jihad. But everything will still be his fault"

Various Third-World countries are trying to put the internet under the control of the United Nations! That needs to be resisted mightily! Cyberspace is about the only really free place there is in the world today. And the prospect of taxes on the internet is discussed here

Mike Tremoglie has some telling examples of Leftist bias in the US mainstream media.

This article suggests that the nature of American society makes America ill-equipped to win the sort of intelligence war that they need to win if they are to defeat Islamic terrorism by police methods. I agree. I think that massive retailation against the communities that support terrorism is the only way America can defeat terrorism and America is still a long way from embracing that idea.

John Moore has a pretty worrying post about the nuclear threat from Iran.

The strange way they refer to terrorists in Iraq has convinced Arlene Peck that the Los Angeles Times is not only anti-Jewish but also anti-American.

Keith Burgess-Jackson has a good post on why intellectuals tend to be Left-leaning (I refuse to call them “liberals” -- because they are anything BUT liberty-oriented).

The Blog Quebecois is a good one despite its unpropitious location. He has an interesting rule: “On all great moral questions, I first consult Barbra Streisand's website. If she's fer somethin', I'm agin it; and vice versa. I have followed this regime faithfully for many years now, and I am today a happy man”

Commiewatch is a good site for keeping track of the still-alive Communist influence on various “peace” and “protest” demonstrations. Such things are almost invariably highly organized rather than spontaneous and it is the lunar Left that does the organizing.

In my latest academic upload (see here or here) I review a book that is useful for debunking most of the research that has been done on psychological authoritarianism.

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THE “INARTICULATE” GWB: AN AUGURY

If I have any Leftist readers, this post should make them froth at the mouth

There is a great letter here from someone in Britain who watched GWB’s interview there on TV. It highlights the contradictory views many of GWB’s detractors have of him and the arrogance behind such views.

The point the letter makes about GWB’s relative inarticulateness reminds me of a similar phenomenon here in my home State of Queensland. Queensland was run for nearly 20 years by the very conservative Sir Johannes Bjelke-Petersen. I was one of his party members. “Sir Joh”, as he was known, was universally condemned by the intelligentsia for his inarticulateness. He spoke like the ill-educated farmer he was. The media regularly said he made no sense at all. But he made plenty of sense to the ordinary Queenslanders who voted for him and in one State election (1974) his government actually got 59% of the popular vote -- a majority so large as to be almost unheard of in a Westminster democracy.

The big political battle in Australia in the mid-70s was in fact between the immensely erudite and silver-tongued Leftist Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, and the stumble-tongued but very canny Queensland Premier. And when the 1975 Federal election came around Sir Joh did Whitlam like a dinner. The Leftists won only one out of 18 Queensland seats -- which lost them power in Australia as a whole.

So I think that is a pretty good augury for GWB next time he faces the voters. I suspect that his “inarticulateness” is an asset to him with his voters too. And if GWB does as much good for the USA in his second term as Sir Joh did for Queensland he will be doing very well indeed.

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FROM BROOKES NEWS

It looks like Brookes News has declared war on the “Sydney Morning Herald” this week. Analogies with the “New York Times” do spring to mind

Thoughts on Marx, Keynes and the US recession. The upturn in the US economy has certainly disinterred some economic verities. It also got me thinking about economic absurdities.
Is the Sydney Morning Herald's Alan Ramsey anti-Semitic? Alan Ramsey of the Sydney Morning Herald accuses the Jews of starting Middle East terrorism. Naturally, it follows that they are only getting what they deserve. I guess that also includes the kids.
Daschle: callous bigoted and dangerous. Like it or not, Tom Daschle has lot in common with the late Salvador Allende, the former Marxist president of Chile who tried to turn his country into another Cuban dungeon. Like Allende Daschle also holds his country's constitution and traditions in contempt.
A howl of anguish from a Bush and Howard hater. Jane Doulman's anti-Howard, anti-Bush article in Web Diary, Sydney Morning Herald, said it all about the left. Its callousness, hypocrisy, contempt for the truth and indifference to the suffering of others.
The Hollywood Syndrome and the left. A look at how the left control Hollywood.
The latest Palestinian textbook calls for holy war and martyrdom. The following exposes the hate and bigotry that motivates Islamo-fascists. It also refutes the vicious anti-Semitic claim of Alan Ramsey of the Sydney Morning Herald that the Jews are responsible for Palestinian terrorism.

Details here

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ELSEWHERE

Jeff Jacoby points out some of the faulty reasoning in the Taxachusetts decision on homosexual marriage. And here is an article that in my view badly misstates the libertarian position on marriage generally. I have always thought it clear that the libertarian position is that marriage should never be anything other than a private contract between the parties concerned.

The Left never ceases to show its true colours. In this story we hear of Australian union leader Doug Cameron being bashed by other unionists because he is not Leftist enough. Ironically Cameron is a knee-jerk Leftist like the Scotsman he is -- but even that is not Leftist enough, apparently. So “compassionate”!

This was a good open letter to GWB from an Englishman that sums the Left up very succinctly: “You will find yourself assailed on every hand by some pretty pretentious characters collectively known as the British left. They traditionally believe they have a monopoly on morality and that your recent actions preclude you from the club. You opposed and destroyed the world's most blood-encrusted dictator. This is quite unforgivable. I beg you to take no notice. The British left intermittently erupts like a pustule upon the buttock of a rather good country. Seventy years ago it opposed mobilisation against Adolf Hitler and worshipped the other genocide, Josef Stalin. It has marched for Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Andropov. It has slobbered over Ceausescu and Mugabe. It has demonstrated against everything and everyone American for a century. Broadly speaking, it hates your country first, mine second” Via the WSJ

Conservative Truth has a couple of amusing pictures to accompany its comment on “Neanderthal” Ted Kennedy.

I have just posted some more of Chris Brand’s thoughts here. He notes “Islamic Awareness” fallacies and attacks on moral relativism.

Leftist psychologists are obsessed with the fact that conservatives are more acceptant of the power and authority arrangements in our present society than they are. They think it shows that conservatives are literally out of their minds. I have therefore written a lot in the academic journals about psychological authoritarianism -- showing the Leftist view to be wrong on just about every count (See here). I was however for most of my academic career employed in a university Sociology Department so I did on one occasion look at the sociology instead of the psychology of authoritarianism. I compared the degree of authoritarianism in British, American and Australian society. I found that Britain was a much more army-like (or ant-like) place than either Australia or the USA. Details here or here

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MORE ON J.S. MILL

Keith Burgess-Jackson has a short follow-up to my post on J.S. Mill, in which I noted Mill’s anti-liberty deeds. Keith explains that Mill never was anything like a libertarian philosophically either.

And a reader gives some of the history of how an apparent love of liberty somehow got tangled up with socialism:

“Joseph Stromberg sees Mill's embrace of socialism as a by product of his experiences as an imperial administrator. A lot of the socialistic liberals essentially learned their craft out in the colonies, which were not usually administered according to laissez faire principles stoutly defended at home. He mentions Wakefield, whose schemes played a prominent role in the development of the British colonies of South Australia and New Zealand, both of which were the more 'progressive' or socialistic of the Australasian colonies. There are some parallels on the other side of the Atlantic a generation or so later, where many of the "progressive era" administrators had trial runs in reordering the new colonies like the Philippines and Cuba.

Historically socialists have (following Lenin) criticised "imperialism" as the last or "highest" stage of capitalism, yet on these grounds you could argue that "imperialism" wasn't so much the last stage of capitalism, merely the first stage of socialism!!

There was a paper by Milton Friedman (called, “Is a free society stable?” published in the New Individualist Review, 2(2):3--10, 1962 and reproduced in a compendium edited by Tibor Machan), that speculated about these issues. He said that many of the 19th century liberals, especially the utilitarians and Benthamites -- and JSM would seem to have at least one foot in this camp -- opposed interventionist government in the 18th century, not because they were individualists but because government was so corrupt. After centuries of mercantilism, no self respecting social reformer would dream of using government to implement their utopia, anymore than the Greens today would consider lobbying the mafia to fight global warming.

So the reformers were happy to make a tactical alliance with the individualists. Individualists are always a minority group and rarely have the numbers to "rule" in their own right. In the 18th Century, Britain was considered a relatively lawless land of smugglers, highwaymen with corrupt officials and judges. Yet by the 19th Century, the Brits were renowned for almost painful "Victorian" rectitude and lawfulness. Friedman says it was the laissez faire reforms that took the profit out of politics and encouraged a renewed respect for law. This also made late 19th Century civil service reforms possible. The old spoils system was replaced by professionalism and academic excellence.

These laissez faire era reforms made it possible for the social reformers and utopians to now start to see the State as useful engine for social reform. Hence JSM's shift from liberalism to socialism, and the growth of big government over the last century. Friedman saw a silver lining behind all this. As the state has grown, corruption, black marketeering and influence peddling have proliferated. These forces may act as 'limits to growth' for big government and undermine the political consensus behind it”

Leftists sure do get themselves confused. Probably because they don’t really stand for anything at all. Any policies at all will do -- as long as it makes them sound good and noble.

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ELSEWHERE

For once I agree with the NYT: “For Tony Blair, ousting Saddam Hussein was the right thing to do. Mr. Blair got very little in return for his steadfast support of American policy, but then he never expected he would. Decisively dealing with the threat was enough of a reward — even if doing so meant risking his political future. For Mr. Blair, a man who came to power often derided as a master of spin and as overreliant on polls and focus groups, the Iraq crisis marked him as the conviction politician he is”

"So, let's see --- GOP uses immigration in 1994, and wins. GOP concedes the issue to the Democrats in 1998 and 2002, and is annihilated. GOP uses immigration again in 2003, and wins. Does anyone notice a pattern here?" They should. Immigration-control has been a winner for conservatives in Australia. One can only wonder when US and UK conservatives will wise up.

Opinion Journal expresses the hope that Republican politician Bobby Jindal will become the first Indian-American US Senator. In that context I might note again that under the wicked old “racist” British Empire, two Indians represented English electorates in the House of Commons long ago (Dadadhai Naoroji 1892-1895 and M.M. Bhownagree 1895-1906). Australia elected its first Aboriginal (Australian native black) Senator -- the conservative Neville Bonner -- in 1971 -- representing my allegedly redneck home State of Queensland.

Andrew Bolt has a report from a young Indonesian Muslim which explains why so many Muslims hate us so much. What we have seems like heaven on earth to them but we get it by what they are taught are demonic means. In short, our very existence makes them and their religion look dumb.

Chris Brand is posting up a storm lately. For convenience, I have transferred some of his latest postings here. He mentions a new book on IQ and the heritability of criminal tendencies, among other things.

I am really proud of this story. And they’ve got a photo to prove it! Australia has a Prime Minister at the moment who is a real human being. And he is a conservative, needless to say. I can’t imagine a similar thing happening in many other countries.

My latest academic upload (see here or here) is one of many wherein I have taken on the task of pointing out to fellow psychologists that they have ignored most of the relevant literature on the topic they discuss and hence makes asses of themselves. In this case the psychologists I criticized wrote a reply showing that they had STILL not absorbed or taken account of what others had found on their subject so I was allowed to write a rejoinder pointing that out. See here or here. The whole episode is a vivid illustration of the Leftist influence in psychology. They just KNOW they have got it right and evidence is just a bother.

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JOHN STUART MILL: FINE LIBERAL WORDS, LESS LIBERAL DEEDS

J.S. Mill is often seen by libertarians as one of their founding fathers. This passage from his famous essay "On liberty" tells you why:

"The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to some one else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.

Mill did not, however, take his own advice. In his day he was a radical -- advocating all sorts of government intervention in people's lives. Sad. In Parliament, Mill supported such measures as public ownership of natural resources, compulsory education, and birth control. Like Marx, he thought you had to use coercion to get to liberty. Unfortunately, only the coercion ever arrives that way. Liberty never does.

But here is another wise thing he said: ""War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. A man who has nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance at being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

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ELSEWHERE

Logic Monkey has found that Saddam STILL has his admirers among the US media. And Leftist university students still like Saddam too. And Opinion Journal notes that even America’s “liberal” bigwigs are still defending Saddam. It's not much of a hope but I hope it's really a hatred of their own country rather than a liking for the ghastly Saddam.

"It is dumb to suppose that the way to decrease crime is to make sure all potential victims of violent crime are disarmed. It is dumber yet to believe that a criminal will obey a gun-control law. No bank robber or rapist has ever set out and then stopped and said, 'Gosh, I don't have a permit for this weapon, so I guess I'd better not rob that bank or rape that girl.' No serial killer has ever said: 'Gosh, I can't kill this person with an unregistered weapon. That would be against the law.' The dumbest idea is to suppose that an inanimate object can turn a noncriminal into a criminal. To believe that guns cause crime is as stupid as believing that hammers and saws cause houses."

Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson tells it like it is: “The problems of the black community are due to a lack of moral character and not racism.... . Over 90% of black homicides in America are committed by other blacks, but instead of addressing the root causes of black-on-black crime, the NAACP absurdly blames gun manufacturers. The average black public high school graduate has in reality only an eighth-grade education, yet the NAAPC vehemently opposes school choice”

Enemies of freedom: "The city of Miami is bracing this week for 20,000 demonstrators determined to disrupt negotiations on trade among 34 countries.... The protesters object to plans for a Free Trade Area of the Americas, which would create a market encompassing the Western Hemisphere except Cuba”

Moronic US airport security strikes again. Why Americans allow such Stalinism is beyond me.

I have just been linked to by a Tamil blog. Tamils live mostly in South East India and have their own alphabet so I have not the faintest clue what the blog is all about but it does have some nice pictures. I have actually collaborated on psychological research in Tamil Nadu in bygone days so I was a little more pleased than usual to get the link.

Kiwi Pundit has a fabulous example of how the honchos of socialist medicine fix the problem of long waiting lists.

Michael Darby has just posted one of his periodical “Reports” on the net again here. He notes the 70th anniversary of the Soviet genocide against the Ukraine, links to a Daniel Pipes post about “George Bush the Radical” and has much else besides -- including his usual extensive reports from Zimbabwe.

UK blogger Peter Cuthbertson is back in action with a new address for “Conservative Commentary”

The Wicked one has an unusual horoscope that should manage to offend most people.

My latest academic upload (see here or here) offers some evidence to show that what appears on TV and in the media generally does form people’s perception of what is normal. When the survey was conducted 20 years ago, Australian TV had very little representation of any minority group. In both Australia and the USA that has since changed drastically of course. So if what appears on TV does help form impressions of what is normal (as Leftists indeed would seem to hope that it does) people outside America who watch American TV shows these days might well think that American blacks are in general clever, sophisticated and witty.

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LEFTIST PSYCHOLOGY WOES

Amusing: The allegedly academic but in reality far-Left “International Society for Political Psychology” that Instapundit recently outed is falling on hard times. Look at the email they have just sent out. People are cancelling their subscriptions in droves. Who wants to PAY for propaganda?

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GREENIE WATCH

A thorough analysis of how the Greenies caused most of the recent Califonia fire disaster is here

"Light Rail" has been a popular Greenie answer to city transport problems for a generation. In Sydney, Australia, a couple of light rail 'solutions' have been tried but they are hardly ever used. It appears that Sydney's experience is pretty common.

"Does [the Natural Resources Defense Council] care that their information was deceptive? Do they care that they distort the whole environmental issue in the minds of the public? Do they care that they cause a lot of extra work and expense by others to disprove information they KNEW was deceptive? Do they care that they destroy businesses and careers with their lies? Hell ... why should they care ... that's how they got to be so big and wealthy ... by suckering people before the truth could correct their lies."

"Global warming": The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has publicly acknowledged that the National Assessment on Climate Change was NOT "subjected to OSTP's Information Quality Act guidelines." This backdown now appears in the middle of the U. S. Global Change Research Program's web site. For once, what sounds like bureaucratic fluff actually means something. The implications are spelt out here.

And the Greenies now want to hike taxes on air travel. In the name of saving the world, they want to stop people from seeing it. They are certainly not shy about dictating to people. "We know best" is their undoubted creed. A pity they are such ignoramuses.

And their ignorance shows very clearly in their opposition to genetically-modified crops. The ecological advantages of GM are discussed here.

Brazil looks like it is converting to GM crops willy-nilly, despite Brazilian government opposition. Latin anarchy can have its advantages.

ELSEWHERE

There is a supposed psychological analysis (with not an atom of proof given for any assertion made) of Rush Limbaugh’s audience here. The bit I liked is the claim that Limbaugh’s audience “are mindlessly agreeing with the powerful economic interests he insidiously represents”. Agreeing with Limbaugh has to be mindless, get it? A person just could not thoughtfully and intelligently agree with Limbaugh. And our supposed analyst accuses Limbaugh of being simplistic and dogmatic! Once again we see a Leftist engaging in “projection” -- seeing his own faults in others. And Limbaugh is “insidious”? How can he be insidious and simplistic at the same time? I would have thought that Limbaugh is as straightforward as you can get. Link via Earthly Passions

Hooray! The Peking People’s Daily has thrown its weight behind the importance of IQ! They see the high average IQ of Chinese as a perfectly reasonable finding! They also think that Chinese have better ethics! I agree. It is largely for that reason that I have two Han Chinese living in my own house.

And the more law abiding nature of East Asians also explains why the governor of Okinawa wants to reduce crime by getting U.S. Marines withdrawn. Black American troops HAVE been responsible for shocking crimes there by Asian standards -- though similar crimes would not make the news in New York. The Okinawans would be happy to see just the blacks go but you cannot mention that, of course.

A delightful post at Samizdata on a totally original approach to taxation from Switzerland. It is too rational to catch on widely, I fear. We would never slip it past our hate- and envy-filled Leftists.

Peter Hitchens thinks the Queen should block Britain’s accession to the new EU constitution. She certainly has that power and her use of it in that way would undoubtedly be popular but I cannot see her breaking with tradition to do it -- much as I hope she would. But the EU constitution would undoubtedly reduce her role and powers so she just might. The Royal powers have been used to good effect in Australia in the not too distant past -- amazing though that must seem to most Americans.

French President Chirac has made a big show of condemning antisemitism but any concrete results from that have yet to be seen. The Dreyfus case in the 19th century showed how antisemitic the French are. As far as I can see, nothing has changed. For the French idea of “action” against antisemitism, see the last part of this article.

Jeff Jacoby puts the argument against homosexual marriage. Personally, I think in ANY marriage it is the relationship that matters, not the bit of paper describing it. But I have been married four times so maybe I am just an old cynic.

An interesting comparison of the American campaign in Iraq with a great imperial campaign of the past here. Via Photon Courier

ABC Watch has a good comment about “concern” in the Australian media over Taliban detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

The latest upload of a chapter from my book (See here or Chapter 21 here) is another shot in the unending war against the perennial folly of protectionism. GWB's steel tariff is the best-known current example of that particular folly.

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"THE POOR" IN ACTION AGAIN

Most readers of this blog will know the amazing accounts of degraded British working class life given by British prison doctor, “Theodore Dalrymple” -- many of which are to be found in City Journal. I recently put up a post saying that the “poor” are not much different here in Australia and one of my American readers wrote in to say that the “poor” are pretty similar in her neck of the woods too. The basic message is that it is foolish and self-destructive behaviour that is responsible for most poverty and degradation in modern Western societies.

Yet another American reader -- a medical practitioner -- has now written in to give an example of how many of “the poor” in his experience behave. He writes of a foolish woman who has, wonderfully, had a wiser child:

“My sister in law adopted a daughter many years ago after having her own son naturally. Over the years, the adopted daughter, unfortunately, developed almost every problem imaginable -- rebellious behavior, sex, etc; she even turned her father in to the police when he gave her a well-deserved spanking. She has been on and off of welfare for years She chain smokes, drinks, etc...

Her first husband was a loser -- an on again off again construction worker -- but they had a daughter (who has now just graduated high school and is truly a beautiful child in spite of having losers for parents). She then divorced this guy, and proceeded to marry a convicted sex offender (yes - I am not lying). Had a son with him.

When the daughter was young, she accused the baby sitter of "inappropriate touching". I am always suspicious of such claims -- especially knowing the unhealthy environment she was raised in. Most recently, the daughter was placed in foster care. Her mother was in jail for physical violence, and she accused her stepfather of sexually molesting her.

My wife has always had a liking for this unfortunate little girl. She is a good student, and has begun college. My wife went to her high school graduation -- she invited her mother, but apparently she didn't show.

This woman has shown all the characteristics of "the poor" and she started out middle class so "poverty" didn't make her that way. She has just had a lifetime of bad choices. There is just no reason that any amount of government money or "counseling" will change this. I would be surprised if she lives to be 50”

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