THAT MOVIE

Like many others, I have been puzzled by the fuss over THAT movie. The Pope has approved it, evangelical Christians are lining up to buy tickets to it and all it does is re-tell the basic Christian story -- now nearly 2000 years old. Jeff Jacoby makes the best job of explaining the fuss as far as I can see but I still think the claim that it will stir up antisemitism among Christians is do-gooder nonsense.

I do however like the point in the NYT that the film might make the "modern" (read "social") Christians sit up and think a bit.

Now they're threatening Mel Gibson. Never mind [that] 'The Passion of the Christ' will likely prove a hit, Mel is taking a hit from Hollywood types. One tells the New York Daily News he's all but a marked man. Directors will avoid him. And one goes so far as to say audiences will move on from him. No more 'Lethal Weapon' sequels. No more 'Signs.' Says who? Says some Hollywood honcho irked by the 'Passion' or Mel's passion to make it? I just wonder whether those in Hollywood would be jawboning as much if Mel had taken on a different movie project ... Let's say, 'The Passion of Global Warming' or 'The Passion of Migrant Workers.' No, Hollywood selects what passions are appropriate."

What Mel Gibson's foes forget: "These days, the most consistently pro-Israel group of Americans, oddly enough, are evangelical Christians. A sane and rational person might assume that fact would be appreciated and applauded by us. By and large, however, that isn't the case. Many of my fellow Jews don't like or trust devout Christians. When I ask them why, they suddenly become history professors. To listen to them, you'd think the Inquisition had ended earlier this year. Frankly, when I hear them dredging up ancient animosities, I'm surprised they haven't taken a page out of the Al Sharpton playbook and demanded reparations from Spain!"

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ELSEWHERE

Keith Burgess-Jackson and many other conservatives have been appalled at Andrew Sullivan's extreme, irrational and hysterical reaction to GWB's opposition to homosexual marriage. From the way Sullivan speaks, you would think GWB was out to murder homosexuals. Sullivan is of course himself a homosexual so I was not myself surprised by his reaction. Homosexuals themselves now normally claim that they are genetically different and it is certainly my observation that over-emotionality is very prevalent among them -- wicked of me though it no doubt is to say so. And it is not the first time Sullivan has been noticeably irrational. His expression of contempt for British culture (he is himself British-born) is hard to see as anything other than an emotional outburst (See here and here).

Marriage: "It's really nothing more than a private contract between two individuals, consecrated by their notion of God. At least that is how it started. It was a completely non-governmental arrangement -- until the Socialists weaseled into the deal with promises of 'official certification' by the State. The recognition of this fine institution of human companionship by an artificial entity (government) proved to be the camel's nose under the tent, with the hump of regulation over the private affairs of individuals soon to follow."

An appalling tale in "Spiked" of an influential medical researcher determined to condemn the Measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccine as a cause of autism -- without any scientific foundation and for his own personal gain. How many kids have become seriously ill for no good reason because of this greedy crook's lies and distortions? I know what I would like to do to him. This anus of a so-called doctor is particularly despicable to me because, as a libertarian, I cannot support compulsory vaccinations. Yet I hate to see kids suffer and and be permanently damaged needlessly. So the alternative is to persuade the parents that vaccination is a good thing to do -- and putting needless scares into parents about vaccination seems to me in the circumstances to verge on the criminal. As the "Spiked" article says: "One speculative paper, now utterly discredited, has had the effect of reducing the uptake of MMR far below that required to maintain community resistance to measles, mumps and rubella." For the record, my own son has had every vaccination going.

Conservatives have been saying this for a long time: "Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, stepping into the politically charged debate over Social Security, said Wednesday the country can't afford the benefits currently promised to the baby boom generation. He urged Congress to trim those benefits"

Probably more just than the official response: "An air traffic controller who ordered a passenger plane into the path of another aircraft over Germany - a crash that killed dozens of Russian children - was stabbed to death Wednesday"

Naderism's dark underbelly "Yes, the same man who rails against corporate welfare - because it coercively takes money from taxpayers and funnels it to corporations - has set up a rather ingenious, if underhanded and manipulative, way of coercively taking money from college kids - and funneling it to Ralph Nader".

Amusing: The Socialist International has just had a meeting in China and the Australian Labor party sent along a representative. His comment to his hosts was rather acid: "China's opening up policy is quite successful. If one looks at China's TV programs and reads the youngsters' state of mind, one has this to say that if China's march toward the world is compared to a film, then the film is one just started."

Martha Stewart's surreal ordeal: "This statement highlights what this trial is about -- not insider trading, but the right to declare one's innocence, even when the government later agrees with the declaration. Surely if others attempted a similar defense in the face of a Kafka-esque judicial machine, the bullying Justice Department would be seen for what it is, forcing it to assume a lower profile and move somewhere behind the front line of the government's funding trough."

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its condensation of the blogosphere.

A humorous test to discover if you're a conservative, liberal, libertarian, or a communist here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

Two more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin

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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HOMOSEXUALITY RAMPANT

From one of my correspondents: "Homosexual men already have equal marriage rights -- the right to marry a woman".

P.P. McGuinness on homosexual marriage: "Why should homosexuals when they have had all obstacles removed to making any arrangement of their affairs between themselves that they want to, insist on going through a form of marriage, and on calling it marriage? Clearly, they assign a greater significance to marriage than considering it just a civil contract, as do most heterosexuals. In principle, it seems they want the community to give them the kind of social approval which goes with marriage. The difficulty with this is that the social approval that goes with marriage has traditionally been related to a whole complex of beliefs about the desirability of stable and loving heterosexual union, usually intended to result in children produced by the natural methods."

Public schools are promoting homosexuality to kids: "Teachers and kids can't talk about Jesus Christ, Moses or Biblical ethics - at least not in a positive, plausible sense - in the classroom. But they can talk about Timmy and Tommy the Testicle Twins? About Daddy's male roommate? About anal sex and oral sex between teenagers of the same sex? Parents - the innocence you work your butt off trying to provide for your kids at home is being eroded, undermined or at least under-valued within the New Public School.

Keith Burgess-Jackson has lots of scholarly stuff on the homosexual marriage issue.

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ELSEWHERE

Nader: One of my medical correspondents writes: "Around 1970, there was a hysterical reaction to "microshock" in hospitals. New electrical equipment made people cautious about leakage currents around central venous catheters, pacemakers, etc.. Under the right circumstances, very small shocks could cause cardiac arrest. The claim that "5000 people die from microshocks" caused a hysteria like never before - this was the typical liberal "zero risk" knee jerk - to prevent "microshock" billions of dollars were spent making every ICU bed like an operating room - isolation transformers, special isolated floors - added about $50, 000 to each bed. Of course, architects and electrical contractors were overjoyed. And Nader was one of the crusaders to "save lives from microshock." One of the staff at our hospital was a recognized expert in electrical safety. He searched for the source of such information and discovered - There was no source - the numbers were "made up" somewhere along the way and people rode with it. Some common sense eventually prevailed. The logical conclusion was that these "microshocks" were unusual, and deaths rare. So a more conventional approach - to use a good grounding system and be careful - was effective. Again, this "zero risk" mentality was typical of Greens - like Nader - who are not concerned at all with costs." So good old Ralph helped make medical care more expensive for everyone. Well done! No wonder the people-hating Greenies like him!

Dick McDonald of the California Republicans has sent me a detailed email about the peacenik votes of John Kerry in the Senate which I have just posted here. It shows that if Kerry's votes in the Senate had carried the day, the U.S. armed forces would now have hardly any of the weapons that now make them so effective. See also Joshua Muravchik for a broader coverage of Kerry's pacifist record.

There is a most detailed site here refuting the "Bush was a draft-dodger" lie. It appears that, like myself, Bush DID actually volunteer for service in Vietnam but was not accepted.

I think that the homosexual marriage issue is a Godsend to GWB. How many normal Americans are going to want their own marriages cheapened by calling anything a marriage? I think Bush could win because of his stand on just that issue.

On the "dumbness" of George W Bush -- Another view from Australia: "But most simply, media claims of stupidity have more to do with a sneering kind of elitism and faux intellectualism typical of many commentators rather than being based in fact. One remembers the famous "60 Minutes" interview with Pauline Hanson when she admitted to not knowing what "xenophobic" means. While this was taken up with much glee by the commentariat at the time as proof of Hanson's unsuitability for politics, for many supporters this was in fact seen as proof of her common touch - a much more valuable trait in the political process. No doubt in a presidential election year, some media commentators.. will take great delight in labelling President Bush and other candidates "dumb". And yet the lack of intellectual rigour involved in such analysis suggests that some media commentators, looking for an easy angle to their coverage are perhaps not so bright themselves.

I like it: "Education Secretary Rod Paige called the nation's largest teachers union a 'terrorist organization' Monday, taking on the 2.7-million-member National Education Association early in the presidential election year. Paige's comments, made to the nation's governors at a private White House meeting, were denounced by union president Reg Weaver as well as prominent Democrats."

Review of Peter Brimelow's The Worm in the Apple: How the Teacher Unions Are Destroying American Education: "The point here is not to debate the dubious merits of Mr. Bush's plan to improve accountability in the nation's failing schools. As Brimelow proves, the perverse incentives in this socialized system don't allow for much latitude. The thing to observe, however, is how masterful the educrats are at mounting a noisy, well-masked offensive at the slightest threat to their Soviet-style status quo."

"A northern Islamic state in Nigeria that is at the heart of a spreading African polio outbreak declared Sunday it would not relent on its boycott of a mass vaccination program which it called a U.S. plot to spread AIDS and infertility among Muslims". With great difficulty, I will refrain from comment.

A very interesting letter here from a reformed peacenik who now supports the U.S. presence in Iraq. Apparently 9/11 provided the needed dose of reality. Via Bunker Mulligan.

Amusing: Conservative bloggers were recently asked to nominate the dinner guest from Hell. Michael Moore was the "winner" by a long chalk. I voted for Noam Chomsky.

David's Medienkritik has a lot of posts on Michael Moore at the moment. Apparently they can't get enough of him in Germany. He is viewed as "educational" there. Apparently he has sold more books in Germany than in the USA.

The Wicked one has some wise words about speeding and parking tickets.

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

Two more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin

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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ECONOMIC ISSUES

Virgina Postrel says official figures make unemployment look a lot worse than it is because the U.S. government's bean-counters miss out on whole categories of small business that have grown rapidly over the last few years.

Learn from Colorado: "Colorado is often cited as the state with the most stringent tax and expenditure limit (TEL) in the country. State elected officials nationwide can learn from how Colorado got its TEL and how it is attempting to cope with recent challenges. One of the most important changes in Colorado tax policy was the adoption in 1987 of a flat income tax set at 5 percent, replacing the graduated income tax."

Take, for instance, the case of Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers. Mankiw has been castigated of late for his pronouncement about the loss of service sector jobs, saying that 'outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade.' Political opposites as different as John Kerry and Dennis Hastert roundly condemned Mankiw, accusing him of economic heresy. But while the lawmakers are right about the importance of jobs, their criticism of Mankiw is off-target. The economist may need some coaching in the art of phrasing his comments, but he is right that job shifting naturally occurs in a global economy."

A good article here about how globalization and outsourcing are changing large numbers of lives in India for the better.

"Argentina's flouting the rule of law explains the poverty of nations. Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations' explained how a non-governmental 'invisible hand' in free markets fuels national prosperity. In contrast, as the Argentine example corroborates, national penury is explained by the 'black hands' of government leaders who torch the rule of law and private property rights for political benefit. A succession of Argentine presidents since 1999 have ruined the nation's fortunes by making the laws and contractual promises akin to a restricted railroad ticket, good for this day and train only."

Official U.S. government data on who pays most tax here. Excerpt: "The top one percent of tax filers paid 36.18 percent of federal personal income taxes in 1999, the latest year for which data are available... The 4.00 percent share paid by the bottom half of taxpayers was virtually unchanged during this period, as was the 96.00 percent share borne by the top half". In other words almost all tax in America is paid by "the rich". "The poor" pay nothing.

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ELSEWHERE

I had a good laugh over Keith Burgess-Jackson's post about voting for Nader. I said yesterday that lots of idiots will vote for Nader but Keith says he will vote for Nader. So clearly some non-idiots will also vote for Nader. I think there is a rather overlooked possibility that some conservatives might vote for Nader as a way of registering their disgust at the big-spending ways of GWB. But I still think Nader is an idiot. Why? Because he is more of a danger to his friends than his enemies. Keith explains in detail why he votes for Nader here. I think Keith should think more about his reasons for rejecting the view that Nader is ego-driven, however. At least as far back as St Bernard of Clairvaux in the Middle Ages and Simeon the Stylite in Byzantium, material poverty and strong principles have been perfectly compatible with the pursuit and attainment of great fame and influence -- and fame and influence are the the egotist's chief desires. One of my readers commented about Nader's "Meet the Press" appearance: "He was just too funny. Nothing he said made any sense at all - and he offered NO SPECIFICS: Just blind rage against Reps and Dems and corporations and government. No amount of government oversight of corporations was ever enough for Nader."

Perhaps I shouldn't be amazed but I have discovered that "The Wall Street Journal's" chief editorial writer and I both think that old cars are a good thing. The car I drive at the moment was recently valued at $1,500! (Yes, $1,500, not $15,000). It works perfectly as far as I am concerned. Sheesh! Am I becoming a Ralph Nader?

Between a rock and a hard place: According to a study by the National Taxpayers Union, all the Democrat candidates for president propose spending tens, and in some cases, hundreds of billions of dollars more than Mr. Bush. The sad fact is at the moment the voters are left with a choice between bad and truly awful."

"It is a sad irony that the world's freest Muslims -- those who live in liberty in the West -- are so unwilling to publicly condemn the world's worst Muslims -- the militant Islamist fascists who believe in violent jihad, intolerant theocracy, subjugated women, and hatred of Jews and Americans...."

The Iraqi "resistance" seem more like Mafia crooks than traditional resistance movements: "Who's behind the suicide bombings, roadside attacks and prison breakouts in postwar Iraq? Whoever you want it to be, by the look of things. No Iraqi or Islamic group has claimed responsibility for the sporadic attacks, but there is no shortage of Western commentators, coalition officials and anti-war activists claiming responsibility on behalf of various groups and interests"

Sounds reasonable: "Britain will throw open its doors to workers from the former communist countries joining the European Union on May 1, but those that refuse to get a job will be denied benefits and thrown out, the government has pledged."

The Spectator has some good articles in their issue of 21st -- on what the British Tories need to do to regain power, on the "epidemic" of obesity and on Turkey's acceptance into the EU -- but they do not make it possible for anyone to link directly to their articles these days. You first have to register with them and even then you cannot get to the articles except via their table of contents. Registration is however very tricky and defeated me. I suggest you don't bother with it. I finally got to their articles by logging in as info@rationalreview.com with the password: rationalreview.

Melanie Phillips in The Guardian: "Anti-Semitism is on the increase and its roots are not in the Right but in the Sharon-hating Left"

There are a lot of short and to-the-point posts over at Texas Conservative

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

Two more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin

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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GREENIE CORNER

Robert Bidinotto, of ecoNOT.com, recently posted a commentary on the ongoing campaign by a well-heeled green group, Oceana, to intimidate the Google search engine company. Oceana is attempting to use harassment and other tactics to pressure Google to carry attack ads against the Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines. After Oceana was notified about Bidinotto's commentary, one of the group's staff wrote a reply. In it, he attempted to rationalize Oceana's flagrant thuggery -- which includes publishing on its Web site the private contact information of Google and Royal Caribbean officers, and encouraging its members to subject those individuals to further harassment and intimidation. Bidinotto has now published a new response to Oceana. And "since turnabout is fair play," the letter includes the e-mail addresses of Oceana's relevant officers and staff members.

Patrick Moore, Greenpeace founder, now green apostate, versus his former co-religionists: "Compromise and co-operation among environmentalists, government, industry and academia are essential for sustainability. Not all my former colleagues saw things that way, however. Many environmentalists rejected consensus politics and sustainable development in favour of continued confrontation, ever-increasing extremism, and left-wing politics. At the beginning of the modern environmental movement, Ayn Rand published Return of the Primitive, which contained an essay by Peter Schwartz The Anti-Industrial Revolution. In it, he warned that the new movement's agenda was anti-science, anti-technology, and anti-human.... They have alienated themselves from scientists, intellectuals and internationalists. It seems inevitable that the media and the public will, in time, see the insanity of their position".

Green religion: "David Brower is, by wide agreement, the most influential environmentalist of the past 50 years. In the 1950s and 1960s he pioneered many of the tactics later used by environmentalists to stop the construction of dams, roads, shopping centers, and all manner of projects all over the United States. He was the executive director of the Sierra Club for seventeen years, and later founded another environmental organization, Friends of the Earth. Brower was also a leading figure in a book by one of the most observant chroniclers of our time, John McPhee. In Encounters with the Archdruid, McPhee wrote in 1971 that "Brower, who talks to groups all over the country about conservation, refers to what he says as The Sermon." McPhee found that, "to put it mildly, there is something evangelical about Brower".

"Sustainable development" in the Third world: "WORLDwrite believes that there is a danger of these policies sustaining poverty, rather than alleviating it."

"The [UK] government is to go ahead with genetically modified crops despite what it acknowledges is considerable public resistance, cabinet committee papers passed to the Guardian reveal. The minutes of the discussion -- which was held eight days ago and involved senior cabinet ministers including the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, and the environment secretary, Margaret Beckett -- disclose the government's final decision to give the green light to the first crop of GM maize in Britain."

The Greenies have nobbled our water heaters!. Hot water systems are all now routinely set at a temperature too low to kill bugs. But you can turn yours up and you will then live in a house that is a lot healthier to be in.

Dodging Greenie oppression: "A few years ago, my wife and I began seeing refrigerators and air conditioners lining the ditches on roads outside of Tulsa. It was strange; in the middle of the night people would come along and push old air conditioners off trucks into the ditches and fields. ... But what made us wonder was the sheer number of them and the ones that kept being added once we became aware of the problem. Why were so many people littering the outskirts of our lovely town?"

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ELSEWHERE

Whoopee! The idiot Nader is running for Prez. And lots of idiots will vote for him. GWB should give him a medal!

Lots of good historical quotes in this article. For example: "I will be voting to give the president of the United States the authority to use force -- if necessary -- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security." -- John Kerry, Oct. 9, 2002

I have posted a few items pointing out that the outsourcing of service jobs to India is beneficial to the people at large in both countries. One of the big complaints is the outsourcing of computer programming jobs to India. As a programmer myself, I have always thought that the possibilities there have been much exaggerated. Typically, writing a program involves a constant interaction between the programmer and the person who wants it written and you basically have to be in the same room together for that to work well -- not continents apart. One of my readers who is a much more experienced programmer than I am agrees.

Unbelievable stupidity: "They're called living wages. But they are the wages of death -- economic death. Santa Fe is the latest villain here, abetted by local union activists. The city government recently passed a minimum wage of $8.50 per hour, scheduled to take effect in 2004. Another hike kicks in by 2008, boosting the minimum to $10.50. The big jump in labor costs means that many businesses in Santa Fe will close down, or move to another town. And it means that employees in Santa Fe who were worth hiring at $5 or $6 an hour, but not worth hiring at $8.50, will be out of a job."

The "worker's paradise" of North Korea "Well known in Japan from TV and tabloid coverage, Kim Jong Il's "Entourage of Delight" is just that-a group of entertainers devoted to providing Kim Jong Il with delight and gaiety. The women of this entourage were frequently summoned to the "Number 8 Banquet Hall" in Pyongyang to perform elegant dances... During a banquet one night a group of five dancers in the entertainment entourage were performing a disco dance. Suddenly Kim Jong Il ordered, "Take off your clothes!" The girls took off their clothes, but then Kim told them to take it all off. They seemed surprised and could not hide their bewilderment, but they could not object to their Dear Leader's orders. In awkward embarrassment they stripped down and continued their performance in the nude. After a while he turned to his cabinet staff members and instructed them, "You guys dance with them too." And soon enough I, too, was ordered to dance. However, he cautioned us, "You'll dance, but you won't touch. If you touch, you're thieves.""

Dave Huber is a U.S. Middle School teacher and has a big post saying that behaviour problems in his classes are as enormous as those I recently noted in British schools.

The most succinct comment yet on John Kerry's alleged affair with an intern. Anyone smell a coverup?

The Wicked one says blondes are smarter, not dumber.

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

Another example of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries!

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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REPARATIONS

Is this the most sanctimonious site on the internet? "We, an organization of white Americans, express our deep remorse for the ongoing wrongs committed by our people against Black men, women and children in the U.S. and throughout the Diaspora who are descendants of enslaved Africans. We see the United States of America as immoral from its very foundation .... We support and advocate reparations proposals put forward by Black leaders, recognizing that white Americans have no part in deciding what is required to repair and restore the descendants of enslaved Africans individually and collectively, and that these decisions belong to Black people alone" How warm and wonderful they must feel!

Thomas Sowell says claims for restitution for slavery or colonization undermine human brotherhood. Look at the example of the Germans and Czechs: "Relations between today's Germany and today's Czech Republic - both consisting mostly of people who were not even born when any of these events happened - are strained because of unresolved problems growing out of attempts to right the wrongs of the 17th century."

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ELSEWHERE

I think this article proves that mathematicians should not try to inject politics into their work. Popular mathematician Keith Devlin has decided in his wisdom to call some types of mathematical proof Right-wing and other types Left-wing. And no prizes for guessing which type of proof is derided. He says: "What is a proof? The question has two answers. The right wing ("right-or-wrong", "rule-of-law") definition is that a proof is a logically correct argument that establishes the truth of a given statement. The left wing answer (fuzzy, democratic, and human centered) is that a proof is an argument that convinces a typical mathematician of the truth of a given statement." I would have thought that any knowledge of political history would have shown him that both his sets of labels in fact describe conservatives. Conservatives do believe in the rule of law and that there is a difference between right and wrong but they are also fuzzy, democratic and human-centred. It is Leftists who have strict and simplistic formulas and moulds that they most want to fit us all into by force of law or by just plain force. How "fuzzy" and "human-centred" is that? Whereas from Edmund Burke on it is always conservatives who have stood up for democracy and humanity against Leftist revolutions and tyranny. At a time when the indisputably Leftist French revolution was -- in its "human centred" way -- guillotining people wholesale it was Burke who said that nothing in politics is simple and insisted on the wisdom of fuzzy, evolutionary democracy versus the bloodthirsty oversimplifiers and tyrants of the French revolution. And Stalin sure was a "human centred" guy too, wasn't he? And what a democrat he was! And it was really "fuzzy" the way he threw people into his Gulag at the drop of a hat wasn't it? And you've got to admire the guy for the way he rejected that boring old rule of law and made his own whim the only authority in Russia!

Seablogger is most naughtily cynical about the recurrent Greenie claim that Australia's coral reefs are dying and that ratifying the nonsensical Kyoto "global warming" treaty would fix it.

Australia's beloved "Middle-Easteners" again: "Up to seven shots were fired into a car yesterday morning during a dramatic road-rage incident in Sydney's southern suburbs. Several shots were fired, with three bullets lodging in the driver's side of the Honda. Police described the shooter as a male of Middle Eastern appearance". Great that Australia's strict gun-control laws keep guns out of their hands!

An outbreak of common-sense: "A study released last week by market research firm Heartbeat Trends concludes modern women no longer have a problem making it to the top of the corporate ladder if they want, but most opt to put more time and energy into their family instead". How the radical feminists must be fuming!

Martha McCarthyism: "Stewart is being tried not for her crimes (though crimes there may have been) but for who she is - rich, famous, and abusive to the help."

Is Europe becoming irrelevant? "Europe has lost its leverage in all the places that matter. The EU's star is faint in America, Russia and the Middle East" And Germany's major news-magazine thinks Germany has become a laughing stock too -- and asks: "Are we a nation of failures, not fit for the future, governed by bungling amateurs?" Need I say more? As a lover of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart etc., I am an instinctive Germanophile but from Hitler to Schroeder, socialism has been a recurrent disaster for Germany.

An American military strategist points out that GWB's pre-emptive strike against Saddam Hussein was not only good conservative caution but something that has good precedent in American military history: "Times have changed. The events of September 11, 2001 were a mere appetizer for the potential buffet of almost unimaginable violence that could befall the United States from enemies not bound by conventional restraints... In response, the President of the United States has proclaimed the Bush Doctrine.... The Bush Doctrine defines the enemy threat as a horrible combination of radicalism and technology that is not vulnerable to Cold War concepts of deterrence and containment. That is, terrorist groups and rogue states, who are unrestrained by the prospect of mutually assured destruction, create a new threat that demands an unprecedented response. To wait until they attack, as we might have historically preferred, is a far greater risk then can be justified. As President Bush warned at West Point, "If we wait for threats to materialize, we will have waited too long"."

Daniel Pearl's widow says the "Wall Street Journal" has done nothing to see that his muderers are punished. They haven't even hired lawyers in Pakistan. What does it take? Are their reporters expendable?

According to this British school teacher, British schools are so preoccupied with getting students to behave -- now that most disciplinary measures have been outlawed -- that learning anything at all comes a distant second.

I have just put up some more lively postings from Chris Brand -- including the good news that Britain seems to be about to recognize different abilities in different students in its schools.

There is a VERY funny act of revenge on a Nigerian scamster here. Note that, unlike a blog, it is NOT in last-date-first format. Via Agitprop

Blogarama is a useful site. They must be: They have got this blog listed at the top of their Right-wing politics section.

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

Another example of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries!

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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MORE ON ANTI-CONSERVATIVE BIAS IN ACADEME

Easily Distracted doesn't know how to spell "supersede" but nonetheless seems to think he knows all about anti-conservative bias at Swarthmore and universities and colleges generally. I don't suppose we should be surprised that it is mostly pretty ivory-tower stuff, however -- about how he perceives his colleagues and how things should be rather than how they are. Facts (such as what conservative students constantly report) are very thin on the ground. For instance, he says in point 10 of his post of 16th that being a registered Democrat doesn't tell you everything about a Professor's views or actions -- which is obviously true -- but he then seems to move on to the conclusion that it tells you almost nothing about a Professor's views and actions -- which is highly questionable to say the least. And add in the fact that almost all of the Professor's colleagues will be Democrats too and the whole claim about the irrelevance of party affiliation becomes absurd. Pervasive Leftism is not reflected in what is taught? Only Pollyanna would believe it.

He is right about some things, though: "In most of the humanities there's a default assumption that everyone around the table more or less broadly can be classed as a liberal, and a certain stunned incredulity when someone departs from that assumption". That in fact is how I got my first and only full time university teaching job. It was in a Sociology Department and it never occurred to anyone to make any enquiries of anyone about my politics. They just assumed I was a fellow Leftist and appointed me with immediate tenure. When I resigned 12 years later and sought teaching jobs at other universities, however, my politics had become widely known (my 1974 book ensured that) and I not once even got interviewed -- even though I had by then what would normally be considered the enormously attractive record of over 200 articles published in the academic journals. Fortunately, I didn't need the money by then but I would have liked to have done some more teaching.

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One of the most pervasive Leftist doctrines is what they call moral relativism -- which they use to attack any and all standards for behaviour. "There is no such thing as right and wrong", they say. The doctrine is a corrupt form of what philosophers would call "ethical naturalism" and I too am an ethical naturalist. I have therefore put up a very brief essay setting out my version of ethical naturalism and showing that ethical naturalism does NOT lead to the abandonment of standards that Leftists pretend it does.

Speaking of ethics, who do these professional "ethicists" think they are? What authority do they have for the rules that they apply? The only authority they seem to work on that I can see is whether or not something fits in with Leftist prejudices. A case in point: A noteworthy recent example of what most would see as unethical behavior comes from a professional ethicist at the University of Melbourne's Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics -- dealing with the half-baked plagiarism smear launched against frontier historian Keith Windschuttle. Without having actually read Windschuttle's book, merely a precis prepared by a hostile Leftist critic, this ethics teacher gave his "thumbs up" to the smear. At least he apologised a few days later. However the apology, unlike the original attack, was buried on newspaper back pages.

John Ralston Saul has pompously and at great length declared globalization to be "dead". A pity about the constant expansion of world trade! This is the sort of statement he makes: "Then came the explosions of September 11, 2001. In the following days, the world economy began plummeting into a depression. Corporate leaders hunkered down to their businesses, forgot about world leadership and, with a classic desire to reduce risk, slashed their investment programs, thus accelerating society's economic plunge". What total ignoring of the facts! A day or two after 9/11 my highly diversified share portfolio had lost one eighth of it value only and in six months it was back to where it had previously been. And it is now much higher than it has ever been. Some depression!

That Leftist hunger for publicity again: "The American feminist Naomi Wolf has accused a noted Yale University professor of sexually harassing her while she was an undergraduate, and alleged a long history of such events at Yale. Camille Paglia accused Wolf of staging a witch-hunt similar to those that swept New England in the 17th century and, in distinctly unfeminist fashion, of exploiting her looks to advance her career. Paglia said it was "indecent" of Wolf to wait for 20 years "to bring all of this down on an elderly man who has health problems, to drag him into a 'he said/she said' scenario so late in the game"."

Another feminist myth bites the dust: "Yet there's no evidence that most older men recoil from women of their own age. On the contrary, older men who remarry generally pick a woman from their own age-group — a trend that appears to be strengthening."

The charade of American education: "The advent of high-stakes testing is revealing more than just information on what American high school students know and are capable of doing; it is also revealing a significant shortfall between that assessment of actual skills and what schools have been telling students about their achievement and ability. For some students, the failure to pass a high school exit exam is the first warning signal they may be sorely unprepared for the demands of college."

Democrat Zell Miller's tribute to GWB has been reprinted all over the place so if you have not read it by now maybe you should. It is a portrait of a genuine, humble and decent man.

Amazing! Some lies about pre-invasion WMD intelligence originally put out in the Australian media have been taken up by the German press. David's Medienkritik nails the lies concerned. If it's anti-Bush, the German media will even go all the way to Australia for their distortions.

Krauthammer is very good on the amazingly hypocritical Democrat complaints about the Republicans engaging in "negative" advertising -- when the Democrats themselves have been nothing but negative in their comments about GWB.

My fellow psychometrician Kimberly Swygert has a powerful post on the follies of affirmative action in college admissions.

Wayne Lusvardi has put together two most revealing lists about how Democrats and Republicans are approaching the upcoming Presidential campaign -- emotionalism and abuse versus rational discourse.

The Wicked one has just put up some more jokes.

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

Another example of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries!

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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FROM BROOKES NEWS

More myths about Clinton's boom & bust economy The '90s boom owed absolutely nothing to Clinton's policies and neither did the recession. In short, he had nothing to do with either. The responsibility for these events lies entirely with the Federal Reserve.
Hollywood sickoes want hatchet murderer freed What kind of sickness has infected those Hollywood celebrities who defend mass murderers and sadists? A number of them have now demanded the release of Kevin Cooper, a homicidal thug who used a hatchet to massacre a family as they slept.
Why the Bush victory still worries China's militarists I have but one question for my American readers. Would you really vote for a group of politicians for whom China's generals are rooting? If so, perhaps Euripides was right after all: 'Whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.'
America has changed the world for the better Dr. Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari, former dean of the Faculty of Islamic Law at the University of Qatar has publicly endorsed President Bush's actions in Iraq.
Dr. Caldicott's Soviet connection CBC has financed a documentary about Helen Caldicott. What it does not contain is a report on her pro-Soviet activities and support for Leonid Brezhnev, the thug who ordered the invasion of Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan.
Taiwan 'free'; China 'not free': Freedom House technical study Taiwan is a free country - according to a technical analysis published recently by Freedom House - but not China.
Bush's deficit: fact and fiction The increasing ratio of spending and taxation to GDP has given many politicians the impression that the US economy can accommodate significant and permanent increases in government spending without impairing economic growth. This is a dangerous delusion.

Details here

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"Feminist" defends rapist -- and it wasn't even in a Muslim country: "Last July, a 20-year-old thug named Stewart Pearson soaked a rag in toilet bowl cleanser and Ajax and used it to smother 17-year-old Tina Phan while she was sleeping in her Terra Linda, Calif., home... Pearson raped and brutalized her. According to Phan, Pearson told her he had committed the same crime before and planned to do it again. Enter Rep. Woolsey. As first reported by the Marin Independent Journal, the outspoken feminist and anti-violence-preaching Democrat attempted to intervene in the case. She used her official stationery to send a letter to the local presiding judge in support of the convicted rapist"

Americans in France are now regularly abused: "While the number of Americans who visited France dropped in 2003, a great part of those who live in, or pass through France complain of a genuine harassment. "We've had it," they say." Americans should stop going there altogether. The howls from the huge French tourist industry would be really amusing.

Cambridge's religion researcher Phillip Jenkins notes that traditional Christianity is growing fast in Africa and South America while it is waning in Europe and much of North America. It is no longer a mainly European religion and the wishy-washy "modern" Christians are sidelining themselves. On another issue: Jenkins makes the interesting claim that the incidence of pedophilia seems to be no higher in Catholic priests than in other occupational groups -- and note that Jenkins is not himself a Catholic. He seems to miss the point that it is the habitual CONDONING of pedophilia by the Church hierarchy that is the towering offence. It is the bishops and Cardinals who allowed it to go on who should be in jail.

A brain-dead theologian:: "A. Roy Eckardt, emeritus professor at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, suggested that Christians ought to abandon the resurrection of Jesus, since it "remains a primordial and unceasing source of the Christian world's anti-Judaism."" He may be a theologian but he is no Christian. For 2000 years, the resurrection of Christ has been the central tenet of Christianity.

Outsourcing (ie U.S. firms locating some part of their production process out of the U.S.) is an emerging election theme in the U.S. Yet "Insourcing" (i.e. foreign firms outposting some of their jobs into the US) also is big -- roughly as big as the outsourcing. If you were stupid enough to stop the one you might lose the other -- and so gain nothing but disruption and impoverishment for all your meddling. But Leftists would like that, of course. Destruction is their only talent. Reason certainly isn't.

Computer programming jobs going to India: "Now I do not doubt that there are many computer programmers in the West who will, in the short run and maybe if they can find nothing else to do in the longer run as well, suffer severely. But it is also true that the availability to the West of much cheaper Indian programming power will create massive new economic opportunities in the West, and everywhere else."

Some links on Australia's mini-race riot recently here and here and here -- including a very conservative response from the leader of Australia's major Leftist party. Clearly, police behaviour in the matter was just the reverse of the usual old Leftist accusations made about them.

A bit of optimism from the NYT: "One major criticism of the Iraq war is that by invading Iraq, the U.S. actually created more enemies in the Arab-Muslim world. I don't happen to believe that, but maybe it's true. What the critics miss, though, is that the U.S. ouster of Saddam Hussein has also triggered the first real "conversation" about political reform in the Arab world in a long, long time. It's still mostly in private, but more is now erupting in public."

The Mufti of Australia has denied calling for a jihad in Lebanon this week and said that "he didn't support suicide bombing . . . in no circumstances".

Even the solidly democrat "Washington Post" seems to have become fed up with John Kerry's rubbery "policies" -- if you can call them that: "John Kerry has become the favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination without a detailed or clarifying debate on many issues.... Now, with the nomination seemingly within his reach, the Massachusetts senator must begin to more fully explain where he stands on the major challenges facing the country. That task is particularly important for Mr. Kerry because of his fuzziness on issues ranging from Iraq to gay marriage"

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

Another example of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries!

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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WE WILL MAKE YOU HAPPY!

I have lost track of where I got this quote about happiness from and Google doesn't know it so maybe it is behind a subscription wall somewhere. I have commented on this subject previously myself here and here:

"In a recent New York Times op-ed touting his book, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, psychology professor Barry Schwartz criticized political reforms aimed at expanding choice. He argued that "for many people, increased choice can lead to a decrease in satisfaction. Too many options can result in paralysis, not liberation."... There is much to be said against this thesis. First, if choice makes us unhappy, why do so many of us stop patronizing mom-and-pop stores and rush to Wal-Mart the moment we get the chance?... Choice in the marketplace grows out of individual freedom. I want shoes. Many people are free to sell me shoes. That presents me with choices, requiring me to pay attention and to discriminate. What's the alternative? Government control aimed at limiting choice. Where's the evidence that that makes people happy?... Schwartz is a professor. If someone were to suggest that too many books, journals, and magazines crowd the shelves, that all this choice makes people unhappy, and that government could serve us better by restricting the number of choices, Schwartz and his ilk would scream like banshees".

There is a more reasonable article on what makes us happy here.

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Leftists have always hated free speech. The facts are deadly to them: "If reaction to Daniel Pipes' lecture on Tuesday (2/10) was any indication, fascism is alive and well at UC Berkeley. Pipes was invited by the Israel Action Committee and Berkeley Hillel to speak at the college campus known for its leftist politics. But ironically, the home of ''free speech'' and ''tolerance'' has shown itself to be distinctly intolerant to those who express political views other than their own. And Daniel Pipes happens to fit that description.... All of these combined make Daniel Pipes public enemy number one according to UC Berkeley leftists and especially radical Muslim students. Indeed, the Muslim Student Association (MSA) was out in full force on Tuesday, acting like the thugs and bullies they routinely accuse Pipes of supporting. There were about 50-70 of them, amidst a crowd of 700, and after failing to prevent Pipes from speaking, they did their best to try and disrupt the lecture and intimidate the audience.... The fact is, radical Muslim students and their leftist counterparts are the most domineering, destructive, and dangerous forces in higher education today. If we're to win the War on Terrorism, we may have to start with our own college campuses." {Pipes's own account of the matter is here}

Redoubtable economist Arnold Kling has another explanation of why so many academics are Leftist: "If your temperament favors freedom without responsibility, then there are certain occupations that are a good fit. Academic life is one of them.. The trick to having freedom without responsibility is to get paid without having to worry about where the money comes from. Most professors do not worry about fundraising or attracting tuition-paying students... Thus, we should not be surprised that their ideological bent is toward modern liberalism, which translates this personal preference into a political platform".

Red Cross criticizes Israel. How unusual! Antisemitism is nothing new to them. But the Red Cross is a European organization and antisemitism is of course very European -- even today

An unbelievable verdict. Australia has insane judges too.

The light begins to dawn: Dutch plans to expel up to 26,000 failed asylum seekers have sparked protests across Europe and led to threats of hunger strikes by those denied refugee status. The moves came as Britain finalised emergency measures to tighten welfare eligibility for immigrant workers before May 1, when the European Union admits 10 new countries.

Front Page has some extracts from speeches by made the Mufti of Australia (Sheikh Al-Hilali) in Lebanon which reveal him as being very anti-Israel. No surprises there. In Australia, however, he is viewed as a strong force for peace between Muslims and other Australians -- as this speech shows. We are probably lucky to have him. There is more on the matter here. My guess is that he is like any politician -- he says different things to different audiences. What he says to Australian Muslims is probably as good as we can hope for, however.

This article is presented as a commentary on just one American university. But most of it seems to be true of America's Left-dominated education system as a whole. Note that even Harvard needs to give around 20% of its "Freshers" remedial instruction in English. .

Peter Hitchens, a historian of crime amongst other things, sees Britain's new "FBI" as ending up more like a KGB: "Britain doesn't need an FBI abseiling all over the place, smashing down doors, clad in armour, waving Glock automatics and yelling 'Freeze!' It needs large, veteran coppers plodding the streets, radiating reassurance to the good and scaring the bad... since MPs were overtaken by collective madness after September 11, these PC police forces can now arrest and detain people in ways we used to think only happened abroad. Mr Blair, who does not care a damn for English liberty, keenly seeks to get convictions on 'lower standards of proof' while Mr Blunkett works away to get rid of jury trial".

Britain's "Saddam-gate": "Money illicitly siphoned from the UN oil-for-food programme by Saddam Hussein was used to finance anti-sanctions campaigns run by British politicians, according to documents that have surfaced in Baghdad. Undercover cash from oil deals went to three businessmen who in turn supported pressure groups involving the ex-Labour MP George Galloway, Labour MP Tam Dalyell, and the former Irish premier Albert Reynolds"

Carnival of the Vanities is up again -- though in a rather compressed form.

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

Another example of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries!

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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ISRAEL'S RIGHT TO BE JEWISH

A good imaginary conversation with a Leftist over at Crusader War College:

Leftist: "Israel should accept the One State solution demanded by the Palestinians!"

Me: "Israel doesn't want the Palestinians as citizens".

Leftist: "That's terrible, cruel, and unjust of Israel! Where could they go?"

Me: "The territories used to belong to Egypt and Jordan. They could become Egyptian and Jordanian citizens again, like they used to before the 6 Day War".

Leftist: "But Egypt and Jordan doesn't want them!"

Me: "So when Egypt and Jordan says they don't want the Palestinians as citizens, you accept THAT with nary a murmur, complaint, or suggestion that THEY are terrible, cruel, and unjust. BUT, when Israel says the same thing, you scream, holler, and jump up and down in "righteous" indignation, despite the fact that, since these people either used to be Egyptian or Jordanian Citizens, or born to former Egyptian or Jordanian citizens, makes the obligation fall upon Egypt and Jordan more than Israel! Or does Egypt and Jordan, in your eyes, have rights that YOU DENY ISRAEL?"

Leftist changes subject

Arlene Peck has a good column about Walid Shoebat, the former Palestinian terrorist who became a Zionist when he found out what lies he had been fed as a child. Another report about him is here

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Edward Feser gives part 2 of his explanation of why so many academics are Leftist. He says that FEAR of Christianity and morality is a major motivator for such people. Problem: I share the philosophical views that Feser says are Leftist (atheism and moral naturalism) but am nonetheless generally conservative. So how come? Because I respect Christianity rather than fear it. So why don't I fear it? Because I am completely CONFIDENT in my atheism and moral naturalism -- which is probably a rarity. It should be stressed that Feser is talking about academics rather than the general public. In Australia, for instance, there is little overall association between religion and politics but among Australian academics in the social sciences and humanities, both Leftism and religious skepticism are overwhelmingly the norm.

There is another take on what makes Leftist intellectuals tick in Paul Hollander's book "Political Pilgrims: Western Intellectuals in Search of the Good Society". To quote one Amazon reviewer: "Political Pilgrims is the amazing story of how Western intellectuals embraced Marxist tyrants at the very moment their colleagues were rotting in prison cells, and the common people everyone claimed to be concerned for, were starving. The book relates how cultural and religious leaders from the West, including familiar names, visited the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and other communist countries, and told the most appalling lies"

And even at the local government level the Soviet mentality never dies. This was the Leftist mayor of Brisbane (my home city of about 1 million people) yesterday: "Population targets were needed to guide where people lived in southeast Queensland, Brisbane Lord Mayor Tim Quinn said yesterday. Cr Quinn said population targets should be developed across the region as part of a comprehensive regional plan, aimed at housing new arrivals in the right areas".

And some of the most barefaced Leftist liars are the teachers' unions. See here: Australian teachers' unions are publishing advertisements crying that government schools do not get as much money from the Federal government as private schools do -- completely ignoring the fact that most taxpayer funding for Australian government schools comes via the State governments not via the Federal government. The private schools, by contrast, get almost all their taxpayer funding via the Federal government. When you count in the State government money that the unions deliberately ignore, the situation is exactly the reverse of what the unions would have you believe. Can you imagine what a great education the lying low characters responsible for these advertisements are giving to the kids entrusted to their care? "How to deceive in ten easy lessons" would be an obvious curriculum item. No wonder a third of Australians send their kids to private schools.

Eleanor French Spreitzer has a good post about why America's Leftist elites send their kids to private schools while hypocritically telling everyone else about what a good thing public schools are.

Michael Ross has some background on the recent race riot in a predominantly black area of Sydney (Australia). One quote: "I know an Aborigine ... And he used to brag about how he would do pretty well whatever he wanted at school knowing the teacher could not do anything because he was an Aborigine". See also here

I have just put up on PC Watch a news release about BBC censorship that does not seem to have made it into the mainstream media. Blacks are apparently allowed to accuse whites of racism but whites are not allowed to question that.

"When [we] decided to send John 'Sue the Bastards' Banzhaf a box of chocolates for Valentine's Day, we ran into an obvious problem: How to avoid being sued by Banzhaf for contributing to his obesity? Here's a guy whose signature law school course is nicknamed 'suing for credit' and whose license plate reads 'SUE-BAST.' His crusade to cash in on our nation's love handles has reached such outlandish proportions that he has threatened to sue milk companies, pork farmers, school boards, fast food restaurants and perhaps even mom with her apple pie. Luckily, a solution presented itself. Before sending Banzhaf the chocolates, we asked him to sign a 'Valentine's Day Chocolates Liability and Indemnification Agreement.'" More here

The Wicked one has a whole lot of new funnies up -- mostly about getting old.

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

Another example of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries!

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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FREE TRADE HAS ENEMIES EVERYWHERE -- ALL SHORT-SIGHTED

GWB not excepted: He protected U.S. steel makers and thereby shafted U.S. steel users; He protected U.S. sugar producers and thereby sent U.S. candy manufacturing jobs off to Canada and Mexico

But it mainly seems to be Leftists who are trying to make a big deal out of the fact that lots of jobs are done overseas these days. In Australia, it is the Australian Labor Party and in the USA it is the Democrat Presidential hopefuls. The Italian Fascist dictator Mussolini did the same 80 years ago too. He tried to make Italy self-sufficient ("autarky") -- which greatly increased Italian poverty. John Kerry, however, is the last one who should be bringing up the subject: "The Kerry family business, H.J. Heinz Co. of Pittsburgh, operates 22 factories in the United States and 57 in foreign countries. I don't think that Kerry should shut down The Heinz 57, but he might drop the rhetoric and talk about trade responsibly. He should support, not trade's contraction, but its expansion, like George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and every president since Herbert Hoover."

There is, however, a difference between 'good politics' and 'good economics'. One of Bush's economic advisors, Gregory Mankiw (Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers) has got a lot of flak for noting the basic economic truth that 'outsourcing' (moving manufacturing and service jobs offshore) is ultimately good for Americans' job prospects. Why? Because the lower costs mean there is a bigger surplus to reinvest (and you need investment to create jobs) and the lower costs also mean that the American companies who move their operations to where it is cheapest are more likely to withstand international competition. This good economics seems regrettably to be bad politics -- as the argument has always been too complicated for many voters to understand. That the whiners are all trying to force everyone to pay more for all the goods and services that they buy might help some people to realize what is at issue, however. The basic reality is that jobs come and go all the time and trying to change that is like trying to hold back the tide.

Very often, of course, industry moves elsewhere because of excessive red tape and bureaucratic controls, something 'liberals' usually add to -- but you won't hear them mentioning that!

Free trade has done wonders for electic guitars. Most of them are now made in Korea and are both better and cheaper.

And many classes of jobs are a dodo everywhere: "A strange idea has taken hold that if jobs are lost in one place, then some other place must have gained them. Somebody somewhere must have gained the millions of farm jobs we have lost, for example. Lou Dobbs of CNN appears as obsessed with this bizarre notion as he once was with space.com. Even stranger, those afflicted with Dobbsian trade phobia assume the places that gained jobs must be other countries, not other counties. Yet manufacturing jobs could not possibly have moved to another country, since every industrial country lost manufacturing jobs since 1995 -- particularly China, Japan and South Korea. And the United States has a huge surplus in business services with every region in the world -- that is, the United States sells much more 'outsourcing' to other countries than it buys from them."

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David's Medienkritik has a series of photos that prove that John Kerry is getting younger. We have all heard about the botox but the varying hair-colour is amusing too.

George Will has 28 excellent questions for the rubbery John Kerry. Just two of them: "You say the rich do not pay enough taxes. In 1979 the top 1 percent of earners paid 19.75 percent of income taxes. Today they pay 36.3 percent. How much is enough? You say the federal government is not spending enough on education. President Bush has increased education spending 48 percent. How much is enough?

A coverup uncovered: "The University of Newcastle's two top executives are to be replaced in the wake of a plagiarism scandal that has plagued the institution for more than a year." In my time teaching at a major Australian University, I was appalled at the lack of standards.

Jean-Francois Revel's recent book "Anti-Americanism" has a number of reviews on amazon.com. The last reviewer on the list makes a number of good points: "Revel concludes that the lunatic ravings of hatred for America and the opinionated ill will in much of the European media will only lead to Americans rejecting the idea of consultation. He believes that the USA's mistakes should always be subject to vigilant criticism but that the gross bias currently reigning will only weaken its exponents and encourage American unilateralism. The most important lesson from this book is that anti-Americanism is a disease, not a position. The prognosis is not good - Revel believes that countering this attitude with facts and reason will not work: " ... the disinformation in question is not the result of pardonable, correctable mistakes, but rather of profound psychological need.""

Looks like the Roman Catholic Church is still covering up for pedophile priests. The entire church hierarchy should be taken to court and be charged with the offence of being accessory to a crime. Honesty and decency seem to be beyond them. They've got the consciences of a maggot. You begin to understand the extreme Protestants who have always said it is the Devil's church, not Christ's church.

Australia's version of affirmative action has just given us race riots. When will the do-gooders ever learn? Strict and impartial policing is needed, not handouts for doing nothing.

Against UN influence in schools: In the 1960s, Dr. Robert Muller, U.N. deputy secretary-general, prepared a "World Core Curriculum." Its first goal: "Assisting the child in becoming an integrated individual who can deal with personal experience while seeing himself as a part of 'the greater whole.' In other words, promote growth of the group idea, so that group good, group understanding, group interrelations and group goodwill replace all limited, self-centered objectives, leading to group consciousness." Not much room for the individual there.

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

Another example of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries!

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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