SOME MORE PHILOSOPHICAL OBSERVATIONS

Amusing: My critique yesterday of an article by big-time Princeton philosopher Gilbert Harman produced a very rapid backdown. Prof. Harman emailed me a brief reply, the key sentence of which was "My article was intended only to point to certain developments in social psychology" -- a much more modest claim than he in fact originally made. For instance, he originally said "Character based virtue ethics may offer a reasonable account of ordinary moral views. But to that extent, these ordinary views rest on error". A climbdown from "error" to "certain developments" is quite a plummet. Given the way he had ignored half the evidence on his topic, a backdown was of course all that was available to him.

Being an old guy, I have long ago decided (and got into print) what my views are on most of the major questions of analytical philosophy. Keith Burgess-Jackson's various posts on philosophical questions have however reminded me what fun philosopical questions can be so my interest in thinking about them has revived somewhat. Keith and I do not however agree on many of our conclusions. I suspect, in fact that there are NO two philosophers who agree with one-another on all philosophical questions. So I am sure that Keith will not take it amiss if I make a few comments (in my usual "take no prisoners" way) about his theories. He will probably just give my theories a hard time in reply.

In particular, Keith has a theory of "rightness" that is deontological. A deontologist believes that at least some actions have little bits of rightness or wrongness attached to them in some mysterious, mystical and unobservable way. Keith's own version of deontology seems to be peculiar to him: He thinks that uncontracted actions (contracted actions being actions done or refrained from pursuant to some sort of contract) can only have wrongness attached to them, not rightness. That oddity aside, however, he seems (in his major paper on the subject) to give NO reason why he believes that some actions have moral attachments nor does he say how we find out what those attachments are or resolve disputes about what they are.

That really puzzles me. I could understand such a view in a religious believer -- as religious believers believe in lots of mysterious, mystical and unobservable stuff -- but Keith is an atheist! I am forced back onto the view espoused by John Maze that Keith and those like him are simply making a mistake about how uncontracted actions come to have rightness or wrongness. Maze (See: Maze, J. (1973) "The concept of attitude". Inquiry, 16, 168-205) says that because moral properties are sometimes spoken about in the same way as physical properties (the statement "X is right" is of the same form as "X is pink"), some people mistakenly conclude that moral properties must have a separate and distinct existence of their own similar to physical properties. They don't, however. As most people readily see, "X is right" is an entirely different sort of statement from "X is pink". They see that "X is is right" is a value judgment whereas "X is pink" is a statement of fact. It is easy to detect, measure and agree on pinkness. None of that is true of rightness.

That "rightness" is a value judgment does not however mean that it is unimportant. As I think almost all psychologists would agree, values are very important indeed. I spent most of my research career studying them.

I also made a very brief comment yesterday about how I believe rights (as distinct from rightness) come about. Keith asked in reply whether or not I think that babies have rights. The ancient Greeks certainly thought that newborn babies had no rights at all. A father had the right (up to a certain age) to say whether a baby lived or died. So it seems to me that we GIVE babies rights. They are not BORN with rights. If babies are born with rights that are independent of any human law or custom, where do we find those rights? -- under the baby's fingernails? If not there, where? Or do we merely assert them without proof or evidence? And how come the Greeks could not find them?

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ELSEWHERE

There is a very interesting article in "Spiked" which blames terrorism on the risk-aversion that the politically-correct brigade have engendered in Western society. We look so chicken-livered to the rest of the world that they think they can easily intimidate us into doing what they want. And the lack of cojones among the Spanish has reinforced that impression. Thank goodness for the resolve of GWB in Afghanistan and Iraq!

The NYT has used the occasion of declaring the famously polluted "Love Canal" clean to revive all the Greenie myths about it. Wayne Lusvardi writes: "Times reporter Brian De Palma is incorrect that in 1978 "hundreds of families were evacuated from the working-class Love Canal section of Niagara Falls, N.Y., after deadly chemicals started oozing through the ground into basements and a school, burning children and pets and causing birth defects and miscarriages." The truth is that after decades of research, there is no scientifically substantiated incident of harm, not even so much as catching a cold, that ever occurred to humans at Love Canal due to exposure to so-called toxic chemicals, as documented in the book by Aaron Wildavsky: But Is It True? A Citizen's Guide to Environmental Health and Safety Issues -Harvard University Press, 1995.

Western Australia has decriminalized cannabis. Prohibition of alcohol did not work either. As Queen Elizabeth I of England asked King Philip II of Spain centuries ago: "Why cannot Your Majesty let your subjects go to the Devil in their own way?"

"An opinion poll suggests most Iraqis feel their lives have improved since the war in Iraq began about a year ago. The survey, carried out for the BBC and other broadcasters, also suggests many are optimistic about the next 12 months and opposed to violence."

Michael Darby has just put up a new lot of postings. Some of his headings:
THE PRIME MINISTER IS RIGHT (about Australia's risk from terrorism)
Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen (Influential former conservative Premier of the State of Queensland)
Chipangali Wildlife Orphanage
Education Debate: Good work by Hon Brendan Nelson MP
Adoption of children by homosexual couples
Food Scares

David Yeagley compares the so-called "Christians" of the Left to the Pharisees.

Peg Kaplan has the Jug Man ("Krug" means jug" in German) summed up.

The wicked one has put up an alaming scenario of how difficult it soon might be to order a pizza.

My recipe for today is for that old Greek favourite -- Moussaka. It's not a quick recipe to make but the result is worth it. See 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.

Three 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! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!

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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SOME DUBIOUS PHILOSOPHICAL PSYCHOLOGY

I have just been reading a much-linked article on moral philosophy by Prof. Gilbert Harman of the Philosophy Dept. at Princeton -- titled "Moral Philosophy Meets Social Psychology". Judging by his publication list, Harman is one of the eminences of American moral philosophy so I am sorry to say that in my view his article is straight out of cloud-cuckoo land (with apologies to Aristophanes). I have no idea of Harman's general political orientation but his argument on this subject is classic Leftist stuff. To oversimplify a little, he claims that there is no such thing as a stable personality trait in anybody and that "It's all situational". It is only people's environment that dictates how they behave. So there is no barrier to creating a "new Soviet man", for instance. He claims, in other words, that there is no such thing as a "kind" man, a "dominant" man a "selfish" man etc. etc. His reasoning seems to be the completely fallacious: "Because nobody is kind all the time, therefore nobody is kind most of the time".

His article is deceptive from the outset. He claims that his view is "widespread" among social psychologists. If one psychologist in half a dozen countries around the world held such a view, I suppose the view could indeed be described as "widespread" but that would not at all mean that it is a majority view. And to my knowledge it is in fact the view of only a small minority of psychologists. Such a view had some vogue in response to a paper by Mischel (Mischel, W. (1977) "On the future of personality measurement" American Psychologist 32, 246-254) but the vast majority of psychologists continued to talk of traits nonetheless.

Where Harman appears to have gone wrong is in his narrow view of social psychology. There are two strands of social psychology -- the experimental and the correlational. The typical method of the first is to tell lies to your students and see what happens next while the typical method of the second is simply to ask people what they think about a variety of topics. Almost all my papers are in the latter tradition. And the reason why I and many others do the sort of psychology we do is that we find the totally unknowable generalizability of the experimental work to be deeply unsatisfactory. Neither people nor situations are normally sampled in any way in such work so any attempt to draw general conclusions from its results is faith, not science. And it is the "faith-based" work that Harman relies on.

The more soundly-based correlational work, on the other hand, almost automatically has the means of examining the sort of assertion made by Harman. It has the data to tell (via factor analysis etc.) whether there is any trait-like consistency in what people report about themselves. And there is. People do report considerable consistency in how they behave from situation to situation. And not only that, but the consistency can usually be readily summarized by normal trait adjectives, and OTHER PEOPLE agree that the self-described consistencies of behaviour do exist in the individual concerned (e.g. here). Harman has simply not attempted to look at the evidence most relevant to his assertion. But unconcern about the evidence is of course hardly new among Leftists. I would even describe it as one of their "traits"!

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ANIMAL RIGHTS

Why animal rights don't exist: "My point was, in essence, that rights are just not the sort of things animals other than people could have. Could animals have guilt, be blamed, feel regret and remorse, or apologize or anything on that order? No, and why so, that was the gist of my thesis: They are not moral agents like us, not even the great apes." I must say that I cannot see any way that rights can arise except through some sort of contract (implicit or explicit) or law so the idea of inborn animal rights seems mere emotionalism to me. Though I imagine that Keith Burgess Jackson might have something to say about that.

PETA's latest: Constitutional rights for fish! "Sorry, crustaceans and reptiles. You didn't make People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals' list of animals that deserve protection under their proposed constitutional amendment, which declares 'all mammals, birds, and fish will, henceforth, be defined as 'persons' in the eyes of the law.' Of course, PETA's idea of protecting animals would strip us of everything from our leather shoes to the milk in our breakfast cereal (not to mention bacon and eggs). PETA president Ingrid Newkirk has called human beings the 'biggest blight on the face of the earth.'"

Get ready to see the real PETA, warts and all . ... Showtime will air the program at 10pm (all time zones) on April 1. ... This might be the only kind of publicity PETA's self-styled 'total press sluts' would prefer to avoid. The group's radical zealots may wish this were just an April Fool's joke, but it's not."

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ELSEWHERE

Andrew Bolt gives details of how Australia's universities and public broadcasters acclaim the views of Far-Leftists who believe that Israeli children and other innocents deserve to die.

Leftist antisemitism: "Anti-semitism is a virus and it mutates. To claim Jews cause their own suffering by failing to denounce Israeli policy is a revival of an old hatred"

Those delightful Arabs again: "More than 100 women have been raped in a single attack carried out by Arab militias in Darfur in western Sudan. ... "It is more than just a conflict. It is an organised attempt to do away with a group of people," he said...Arab militias, backed by the government, have driven hundreds of thousands from their homes"

It comes as no surprise to learn that John Kerry, who hates to take one position on an issue when he can take two or three, has come down strongly in favor -- and strongly against -- US policy in Cuba.

The Lolita story was first created by a Nazi. Makes sense: Nazis were Leftists and Leftists have no moral restraints.

Seeing Easter is coming up, I have put up on my recipe site a recipe that could be useful for family reunions -- a recipe for Greek Easter Lamb. The Greeks really know how to do lamb. See 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.

Three 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! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!

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 WATCH

The Democratic Leadership Council released on March 18 a commentary, Carbon Flip, Mercury Flop. The screed begins: "When it comes to environmental issues, the Bush administration seems determined to destroy its own limited credibility." For a point by point refutation, see here

Some current posts on ecoNOT:
* Much a-doo: Greens advise moms not to use diapers!
* Misanthropic quotation of the week: from "animal rights" philosopher Tom Regan
* "Alternative energy" -- but not in environmentalists' back yards
* A new primer on the Mother of All Eco-Crises

If the scientists don't understand climate change, how can anyone be so sure of what to do about it? "As scientists have studied the climate record trapped in glacial ice from Antarctica and Greenland, and in mud samples extracted from beneath the ocean floor, their respect for the speed of change has grown. In the mid-1950s, a change of roughly 3 degrees C over more than 1,000 years was deemed abrupt. In 1999, a team led by Jeffrey Severinghaus at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., determined that the last ice age ended with a temperature burst that raised the thermostat at Greenland by some 9 degrees C over a mere decade.... "We still don't understand the causes" behind the increase, he says. .... But here, too, the picture grows murky. At a meeting last fall at the WHOI, researchers from the US and Canada looked at the problem and raised more questions than answers."

More elitist trash from the Green/Left: "In Growth Fetish, Hamilton admits that, in the past times of scarcity, growth was beneficial - but he argues that in today's era of superabundance development no longer leads to subjective wellbeing. To support his argument, he quotes opinion polls showing that people in prosperous societies are often unhappy with their lives... There is a nauseating undertone of elitism in Hamilton's work. In his view, the marketing industry, including advertising, plays a key role in shaping individual desires. He refers to 'gullible consumers' and goes on to argue that 'today's average consumer may be an everyday victim of foolishness and feeble-mindedness in their consumption behaviour' .... Whatever people's subjective sense of wellbeing, there remains a huge amount to be done to raise living standards, even in the more developed countries. For instance, we are constantly being told that there is a demographic problem that means that the elderly cannot expect a reasonable standard of living. But with greater economic growth it will become possible for the elderly and others not able to work to have higher living standards." I wonder how many working people today share the judgment that we are living in a world of "superabundance"? Only a "limousine liberal" would think so.

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OUTSOURCING AND INTERFERENCE WITH FREE TRADE

Who's outsourcing whom? "Airwaves and newspapers are abuzz of late with talk about the loss of manufacturing jobs, the offshoring of tech jobs, immigration, and general alarmism about the 'outsourcing' of the American worker. We hear lots of talk about exactly why (and if) this is happening, but rarely do pundits and commentators look at the relationship between companies moving plants overseas, and the kinds of tax and regulatory policies employed by the states they're moving away from. As it turns out, states with business-friendly public policies attract and retain jobs. States with policies hostile to business tend to lose them."

Outsourcing creates AMERICAN jobs: "When Americans hear the word 'outsourcing,' they typically imagine the movement of U.S. jobs overseas. But globalization has created many forms of outsourcing. Consider the world's appetite for American popular culture. America annually exports $90 billion worth of movies, TV shows, sound recordings and other products created by U.S. 'copyright industries.'"

South Africa's Leftist leaders have been successful in their vow to stop SA becoming the West's African "sweat shop". Pity about their 40% unemployed.

For years we have been hearing about a water shortage in the western states... What specifically is a shortage? It is a situation where you are willing to pay the price but simply cannot find as much as you want.... a shortage is a sign that somebody is keeping the price artificially lower than it would be if supply and demand were allowed to operate freely. That is precisely why there is a water shortage in the western states.... Even in California's dry Central Valley, less than 10 percent of the water available from federal water projects is used by cities and industries. The vast majority of it is used by farmers, who pay a fraction of what urban users pay, thanks to federal price fixing.The long-term contracts under which this ridiculous arrangement goes on expire this year, so theoretically these contracts could be renegotiated so that everyone who uses water supplied by federal water projects has to pay his own way and cover the costs of the operation. Alas, this is an election year, so you can bet the rent money that no such thing is going to happen.

Western protectionists to India. Don't do as I say. "I read about one Indian who said something like the following: "Hey, you lectured us for decades during the Cold War and Indian socialism. Aren't we now doing exactly what you told us to?"

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ELSEWHERE

Jeff Jacoby says: "Once upon time it was racists who insisted that "nonwhite" was a synonym for "intellectually deficient." Today that attitude is promoted most emphatically by the defenders of affirmative action, a system rooted in the belief that blacks and certain other minorities can't hope to win if they have to compete on a level playing field."

Even the tolerant Dutch cannot stand Muslims: "Dutch parents are abandoning the state-run school system in droves, and sending their children to private schools with high education standards, which just coincidently happen to be almost exclusively native Dutch. The private schools are referred to as 'white' schools, and the remaining high-ethnic state schools are referred to as 'black' schools, and the phenomena is being called 'white flight'."

Spanish "socialism": "Here are some of the economic promises on which Zapatero's Socialist Workers Party campaigned: lowering the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 30 percent, cutting income taxes, and reducing the value-added tax. Oh, and they're going to balance the budget and control inflation."

I have just put up a recipe for Korean fried meatballs. I am betting that they are the best meatballs you have ever tasted. See here. Food names change a lot from country to country. I can translate some Australian food names into more widely understood ones but I will no doubt miss some. For instance, in yesterday's recipe I mentioned "zucchini". They are "courgettes" in England and "Italian squash" in the USA.

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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.

Three 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! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!

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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IMMIGRATION

Samuel Huntington has made a strong case against policies that would increase the rate of Hispanic immigration into the US -- largely on the grounds that the "melting pot" is no longer "melting". There is however some evidence that Hispanic immigrants have in fact been assimilating steadily into American society.

Pro-immigration: America's melting pot is still bubbling... "Some 1.3 million immigrants, legal and illegal, are arriving each year. One in nine U.S. residents began life in another country; the total foreign-born population now exceeds 33 million - more immigrants than people in all of Canada." The author argues that concerns about assimilation go back a long way but all have been shown as misplaced. But the political and social environment of today is very different from that of the past so past precedents may be a poor guide today.

Anti-immigration: Peter Hitchens tells why New Labour wants to turn Britain into a multicultural nowhereland

More on the British government's underhand attempts to INCREASE the intake of unqualified immigrants here and here

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THE ACADEMIC CESSPIT

I was not originally going to blog on the loony Leftist professor who vandalized her own car to draw attention to "hate", but I realized what a good proof of one of the two mottos at the head of this blog it is. Powerline has a good summary of the story. Note how there is NO outrage from the Left about the "lie" concerned. All their outrage about the "lies" allegedly told by GWB is thus shown for the sham it is. No wonder they keep saying there is no such thing as objective truth. Truth just does not matter to them. They don't have double standards. They have no standards. Only power matters to them. And Stalin showed where that ultimately leads.

Academics ignore the elephant in the bedroom: Sheikh Abd Al-Rahman Al-Sudayyis, the Imam of the most important mosque in Mecca, sermonized that the Jews are "the scum of the human race, the rats of the world, the violators of pacts and agreements, the murderers of the prophets, and the offspring of apes and pigs." The Imam further advised Arabs to abandon all peace initiatives with Jews and asked Allah to annihilate them. But an examination of PsycINFO, a leading online index of psychological studies, shows 458 entries on anti-Semitism since 1940, 99 of which have appeared during the past 10 years. But not a single one deals directly with hatred of Jews by Muslims or Arabs in the contemporary world.

Random Observations enjoyed my mention on 17th of the Sokal hoax and does a good job of explaining how postmodernism came about and why academics in English Departments of universities love it. Perhaps because he is an engineer however, he misses the main philosophical objection to postmodernism -- its solipsism. Because the postmodernist asserts that there is no such thing as objective reality, the only thing he can be sure of is that he himself exists. This "collapse into solipsism" has long been regarded by analytic philosophers as a decisive disproof any theory -- because it implies that the person believing such a theory can make no assertions at all.

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ELSEWHERE

They want us all to get AIDS: "Quebec's largest school board has voted to cancel Hema Quebec's annual blood drive at its Montreal offices and will remain in effect until the blood agency changes its policy of excluding gay male donors."

Following my post on IQ yesterday, a reader alerted me to a recent study at Duke university which found that the learning ability of rats was much enhanced if their mothers were fed extra choline while they were in the womb. The inference is that human IQ could be increased by early nutritional supplementation too. Eysenck did a study about 15 years ago which showed that feeding babies and young children extra amounts of key nutrients could increase IQ by about 5 points -- not dramatic but worthwhile. So I would expect the same from this procedure. Choline is a very common component in foods that most people eat regularly, however, so the benefit might be confined to people with particularly abnormal diets.

In the Vietnam war many so-called "peace" activists really wanted their country to be defeated. Their anything-but-peaceful behaviour showed that. Mike Tremoglie points out that at least some "peace" activists today are similarly motivated. Hate is their motive, not peace.

VD Hanson and some myths of Iraq war, a year on: "It has now been almost a year since the liberation of Iraq, the fury of the antiwar rallies, and the publicized hectoring of Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, Sean Penn, and other assorted conspiracy freaks - and we have enough evidence to lay some of their myths to rest. I just filled up and paid $2.19 a gallon. How can that be, when the war was undertaken to help us get our hands on "cheap" oil? Where is the mythical Afghan pipeline when we need it?"

Mark Steyn on terrorism in Madrid: "In his penultimate public appearance, the late Osama bin Laden, broadcasting from his cave in the early hours of the Afghan campaign, listed among his principal grievances "the tragedy of Andalusia" - that is, the end of Muslim rule in Spain in 1492. That's 512 years ago"

The wicked one has a lot of good stuff up at the moment -- including some wisdom from Charles Schultz -- creator of the "Peanuts" comic strip and Charlie Brown.

My latest recipe is for Frittata -- the ultimate Spanish omelette. See 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.

Three 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! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!

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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BUREAUCRACY

There are some pictures here (or here) showing graphically the sort of bureaucracy that the Left are forever wishing upon us.

There is a classic example of bureaucracy at work near where I live in Brisbane. The local authority (Brisbane City Council) builds boardwalks and the like in seaside areas like Wynnum using ordinary steel bolts to hold the structures together -- completely ignoring the fact that any outdoor structure, let alone one exposed to salty air, is very prone to attack by rust. So the bolts will have rusted out in a few years and all the work will have to be re-done -- doubling the cost. The morons do not even protect the exposed steel with paint -- and something as simple and old-fashioned as using galvanized bolts in the first place is clearly way beyond their ken. Anybody in private enterprise who behaved so stupidly would not last five minutes but in the Left-controlled Brisbane City Council you can be sure that nobody will be held accountable when the structures begin to wobble.

See "When 'Mother' is a Bureaucracy," by Wendy McElroy for more on bureaucratic irresponsibility and negligence -- in this case using little babies in New York as guinea pigs.

What government is good at: "We often complain about how slow government can be. But there's a teenager in Arizona who can tell you that swift government has its downside. On February 23, the Arizona Republic printed a fascinating story about how Christian Alf set up his own after-school business rat-proofing his neighbors' houses. Two days later that same newspaper printed a follow-up: the state of Arizona had put young Mr. Alf out of business, citing him with two separate violations of state law."

There is no guarantee that capitalists will be intelligent but it is broadly true that the smarter ones will get the gravy. An amusing instance I know of in that connection is the practice in many Australian Real Estate offices of having a meeting for all staff on Tuesday or Wednesday morning. Buyers who ring at that time are told that there are no salespeople available to assist them. I imagine that 90% of buyers do as I do on such occasions -- ring another agent. I can think of at least two occasions where the next agent I rang in fact sold me something. So the wankers who thought that their meeting was more important than selling anything in effect had several thousand dollars offered to them on a plate and knocked it back! Not smart. They'd do well as government employees, though.

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ELSEWHERE

What fun! A huge and very careful study of mental abilities has just come out from Johns Hopkins University under the title: "Disparities in Cognitive Functioning by Race/Ethnicity in the Baltimore Memory Study". I'll spare you the suspense and tell you for starters that blacks had much lower scores than whites across the board. As the study was primarily of memory, the tests used were not all high loaders on 'g' (general intelligence or 'IQ') so the racial difference varied a fair bit from test to test but it was always there. The amusing thing was that the racial difference persisted depite heroic attempts by the researchers to remove it. They even did some things that an Australian would call "shonky" (con-men and frauds are "shonks"). For example, they removed the effect of social class variables such as wealth on their results. In other words, the scores of poorer people were "adjusted" upward. But wealth is a product of IQ! Smarter people get richer! And this particular study was of 50-70 year old people so any effect of intelligence on wealth would have had plenty of time to show up. If the researchers had used parental status indicators only it might have been more defensible. So the fact that the racial difference emerged despite such blatant attempts to mask it is testimony to how strong the difference is.

Good news: Caltech graduate student Bill Cottrell, accused of firebombing and vandalizing sport utility vehicles, was denied bail Wednesday... Cottrell was indicted Tuesday on nine counts, including a count of using a destructive device during a violent crime, which alone carries a minimum sentence of 30 years in federal prison. See also here

Were the Bush tax cuts just for the rich? This article shows that the benefit was spread across the board.

Mel Gibson has broken the 10 commandments, the Hollywood ones that is: "Because "Passion" will be timely to re-issue theatrically at Easter for years to come, it has the potential to wind up as the biggest grossing film in movie history"

Dumb teachers? No problem! "The nation's schools, under deadline to get a top teacher in every core class, have won some wiggle room in areas where the task hasn't survived a collision with local reality. Rural teachers, science teachers and those who teach multiple subjects will get leeway in showing they are highly qualified under federal law, the Education Department said yesterday."

"Anyone who wants to understand why the media are held in such low regard by the public ... should consider the following headline from an Associated Press story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer last week: 'Accused spy is cousin of Bush staffer.' The accused person is Susan Lindauer, charged with working for Saddam's intelligence agency. ... Before she allegedly became an Iraqi agent, Miss Lindauer spent a decade in Washington working for four members of Congress, Peter DeFazio, Ron Wyden, Carol Moseley Braun and Zoe Lofgren. What do these four legislators have in common? Answer: They all have a 'D' after their names. But to The Post-Intelligencer's headline writer the salient fact about Miss Lindauer is not her 10 years of work for the Democratic Party but the amazing revelation she is a second cousin of Bush chief of staff Andrew Card."

Firm breasts are bad for women!. The do-gooders will puzzle over that one. Compulsory breast massages, perhaps?

China Hand's latest posting about one of China's new container ports says that it is world-best -- which obviously warms his Sinophilic heart. Being pretty Sinophilic myself, I am pleased to hear of it too.

Today's recipe gives a very easy way to make fettucine. There's no such thing as an "authentic" fettucine recipe but this one tastes good. You may note a certain politically incorrect instruction in it too. See 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.

Three 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! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!

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 UNDER ATTACK FROM IGNORANCE -- AS ALWAYS

Protectionism is pretty disgusting at any time but this example really smells. Efficient producers of shrimp in a poor country (Vietnam) are being subjected to huge legal costs and the threat of tariffs by inefficient American producers who produce only a small fraction of the shrimp sold anyhow. I'll bet you'll not hear a single Leftist sticking up for the poor country on this one. Leftist "caring" and concern for "the poor" is just a lie.

Unemployment: "It is a constant refrain from Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry and his lackeys these days: 'George W. Bush has the worst job creation record of any president since Herbert Hoover.' They also claim that an economy that has seen significant growth in productivity, the stock market, consumer confidence, housing starts, and overall economic strength, is a 'jobless recovery' because the Bush administration is 'shipping our jobs overseas.' Statements like these make for great campaign rhetoric, but they are far from true. In fact, the unemployment rate today is virtually the same as it was when President Bill Clinton ran for re-election in 1996 touting his strong record on the economy."

"Every political campaign seems to have some buzzword, and this year's buzzword is 'outsourcing.' Since the economic recovery has not yet reached the stage when new jobs are being created to the extent expected and hoped, the idea that American jobs are being sent overseas has political mileage, whether or not it has much economic substance."

The "exporting jobs" scam: "Politicians are notoriously economically illiterate. And even when they know what would be the right thing, we don't really expect them to do it. But we do expect financial and economic reporters and 'experts' who appear on television to have some grasp of whatever they're discussing. Thus, when these 'experts' join in the chorus of outrage over greedy corporations exporting jobs, it's easy to believe there must be something to the complaint."

"The lack of employment growth continues to be the major political/economic problem facing the country and it likely will remain that way through Election Day. Contributing to the reluctance to hire permanent employees is the rising cost of employment, especially the cost of benefits ..."

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FROM BROOKES NEWS

The Madrid bombing and the election result is a warning to the US Bush's response to America being attacked was to overthrow the Taliban, bring down the murderous Saddam and take out a good slice of al Qaeda. Spain's response was to hold a mass demonstration against terrorists and then promptly surrender.
US productivity and the jobless mystery The contrast between America's unemployment level and the growth in GDP is causing consternation.
A journalist tries to skewer Bush on incomes and inequality A reporter would have us believe that the widening income gap was caused by President Bush. In fact, the gap grew significantly under Clinton. So what we have is another left-wing attempt to rewrite history.
What determines wages? A businessman cannot pay a worker more than the amount added by the work of the employee to the value of the product i.e. what the customers are prepared to pay for the product.
Why the Clinton boom burst Rather than look to economic history and well-tried theory for guidance, commentators, and some economists too, interpreted the boom as a "new era", one that had "abolished the business cycle".

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ELSEWHERE

David's Medienkritik says that, while the initial reaction of Germany's left-wing media to the results of the Spanish election was one of joy and relief, a new mood seems to be building up fast: the feeling of fear. Zapatero's intention to withdraw the Spanish military from Iraq does not meet with unanimous approval of even the most ardent Bush-haters.

Bidinotto has some updates on the money-laundering scandal in the John Kerry campaign -- and on what Rudyard Kipling had to say about appeasing terrorists.

In case you have not seen it yet, here is another story about the personal arrogance of "John the Jerk" Kerry -- this time from an airforce pilot who worked for him. Kerry really "cares" (about Kerry).

A Leftist puts the workers first! How unusual: "Opposition Leader Mark Latham has backed continued clear-felling of Tasmania's old-growth forests until 2010, angering environmentalists who had hoped he would pledge to halt logging earlier."

More scare-based "science": "Antibiotic use increases breast cancer risk, according to a new study. But after scrutinizing the study, I'm leaning toward linking grant-hungry researchers and a publicity hungry medical journal with reprehensible sensationalism. ... Without a plausible biological link between antibiotic use and breast cancer, the researchers relied exclusively on statistical analysis, a potentially useful tool if the data analyzed are of reasonable quality. These study data, however, fall way short."

China Hand's recent postings reveal some interesting contrasts: Most of his students have TWO cellphones; things get CHEAPER almost daily in China but they cannot make good bread in at least his part of China.

Arlene Peck says that the Arab areas within Israel have descended into gang-ruled anarchy.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its usual wide range of select blogospheric reading.

Over the years I have collected a lot of recipes for food that I particularly like. Many of them are for fairly unusual dishes but some are just shortcuts. I thought I might as well share them with anyone who is interested so I have started a separarate site on which I hope gradually to post my whole collection. The site is here. The first recipe I have put up is for what should be a fairly traditional Australian meat pie but which nonetheless seems to be little heard of today: Lamb and bacon pie. Great with a tossed salad and a glass or three of good Australian red wine.

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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.

Three 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! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!

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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LAKOFF AND HIS DEFENDER

"Strange Semantics" is an anonymous "cognitive psychologist" -- apparently a cross between a psychologist and a linguist. His views, though Leftist, are somewhat more reasoned than the usual Leftist torrent of abuse featuring words like "scary" so I thought I might make a brief reply to his post about Leftist linguist George Lakoff. He refers to my article on Lakoff and says that I have misinterpreted what Lakoff says in his book about the Left/Right divide. I may well have done that. I cannot take Lakoff seriously enough to study him in any depth. (His work seems to be a branch of that solipsistic body of Leftist thought known as "postmodernism" and, after the Sokal hoax, I think one must suspect all postmodernism of being essentially contentless -- and hence worthy of yawns only). But I was guided in my interpretation of Lakoff by Lakoff himself in his interview here. I think my article is a fair comment on Lakoff's version of Lakoff. A comment on Lakoff's theories by Bernhardt Varenius at the foot of the "Strange Semantics" post is good too: "The liberal worldview, the indulgent parent model, assumes that the world is nothing but puppy dogs and rainbows and children are born good and only become bad if their parents are conservative...." etc.

A reflection on projection: Over 30 years ago I put into the academic literature the view that the Leftists who were throwing rocks and bombs in the cause of "peace" (a common phenomenon at that time) were a prime example of what psychologists call "projection" -- seeing and hating their own faults in others. The slogan at the top of this blog asking why Leftists are always going on about "hate" ("Hate crimes" etc) also embodies that view of Leftist motivations. I suspect that our academic friend at "Strange Semantics" is another case in point. I asked him why he was clinging to anonymity and asked was he ashamed of his views. He replied: "No, I'm not ashamed of my views. I'm just wary of people on the internet". The idea that people on the internet are particularly dangerous sounds pretty paranoid to me but I will credit him with sanity and look for another reason why he holds that view. Lots of conservative bloggers with views that many would violently disagree with -- such as myself -- put their names and personal particulars on their blogs so why is this Leftist blogger so cowardly? What has he got to fear? I think the aggression against conservatives that is so often unleashed by Leftists in power (such as Stalin or modern-day campus Leftists) gives us the answer. He knows how hate- and rage-filled he and his fellow Leftists are and assumes that conservatives are at least as bad in that respect. So he fears from conservatives the sort of treatment that Leftists themselves dish out. That conservatives are generally happy and law-abiding people just does not enter into his calculations.

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ELSEWHERE

There is an amusing comment here on a far-Left Israeli historian: "In both books Pappe in effect tells his readers: "This is what happened." This is strange, because it directly conflicts with a second major element in his historiographical outlook. Pappe is a proud postmodernist. He believes that there is no such thing as historical truth, only a collection of narratives as numerous as the participants in any given event or process; and each narrative, each perspective, is as valid and legitimate, as true, as the next. Moreover, every narrative is inherently political and, consciously or not, serves political ends. Each historian is justified in shaping his narrative to promote particular political purposes. Shlomo Aronson, an Israeli political scientist, years ago confronted Pappe with the ultimate problem regarding historical relativism: if all narratives are equally legitimate and there is no historical truth, then the narrative of Holocaust deniers is as valid as that of Holocaust affirmers. Pappe did not offer a persuasive answer, beyond asserting lamely that there exists a large body of indisputable oral testimony affirming that the Holocaust took place."

Jeff Jacoby describes the cancerous way antisemitism is spreading in Europe. European tolerance for irrationality is certainly cause for grave concern. Using the Jews as a scapegoat yet again is a disgrace to civilization. But don't look to Leftists for any "compassion" in the matter of course.

There is a reasonable coverage here (link via Keith Burgess Jackson) of the view that high IQ is both diagnostic of good health and a cause of greater wealth -- which leads to richer people being healthier. It would be surprising if it were otherwise. The brain is just another organ of the body and in general a very well-functioning brain should go with a well-functioning body. Similarly, if intelligence does not help you to get rich, what would? But in any case, these ideas have long ago been put to the test. Starting in the 1920s, Terman followed a group of high IQ kids through their growing up and into adulthood. He found that high IQ kids in fact became healthier, happier, wealthier adults. They were even taller if I remember rightly. But to read of people trying to extract policy prescriptions from the matter makes me laugh. Many natural phenomena are just not "curable", nor should they be.

I commented yesterday that Texas sounded like a place that I would like. With good Texan hospitality, Wallace of Big Gold Dog has responded: "Indeed, I think that you would. And I can say that the feeling runs in the reverse. Having had two short stays in Australia some years ago, I can verify that Texans feel very much at home there. When I tell people who have never visited Australia what it's like I simply have to say......"Well it's a lot like Texas" and they know it's a place they should visit. I've had several friends who, over time, have owned cattle ranches [OK cattle stations] at various spots in your fair land. Come on over...... we'll give you office space in our building to conduct your research on why leftists are so obtuse!"

Spanish jellyfish? Comment from a reader: "We are being unfair to the people of Spain. It is a natural reaction common amongst victims of catastrophe to seek out someone or some group to blame and carry out a response that is within their power to make. Being so close to an election made it almost certain that the government would be the object of the people's anger. We should not be too judgemental and cast shame on their nation for what they have done. We will need them as allies again. We should be careful not to alienate them forever."

Writing on his other blog, China Hand has pointed to a farcical effort by an Australian Leftist government to pander to the teacher's union by commissioning research into smaller class sizes. No attempt was made to show that smaller class sizes improved outcomes by any objective measure. The opinion of the teachers and parents involved was treated as "proof".

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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.

Three 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! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!

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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AND THEY CALL THEMSELVES "LIBERALS"!

Liberal with other people's money is about all

America's academic Left still love communism: "In Denial pulls no punches. "Far too much academic writing about communism, anticommunism and espionage is marked by dishonesty, evasion, special pleading and moral squalor. Like Holocaust deniers, some historians of American communism have evaded and avoided facing a preeminent evil"-namely, the Stalinist dictatorship that for decades ruled the Soviet Union, murdered millions of its own citizens, and treated foreign Communist parties as mere minions of Moscow. There's no denying Haynes and Klehr's contention that "a significant number of American academics still have soft spots in their hearts for the CPUSA," the American Communist Party".

The 60s generation: "One of the most striking features in the anti-Vietnam-War movement and standpoint .. was the astonishing tolerance shown towards the Communist countries, and their deeds, that is, what they did or had done to their own people, and to others, and to their attitudes towards basic notions like freedom, human autonomy, and even the possibility of democracy... Elitism without Guilt.. the Sixties' young grabbed it, and have lived off the fantasy ever since. These Believers think that everything worth saying has been said - and is known - by them. Past knowledge and history are bunk. The forever young make the new history, and make sure that no-one with different values is listened to. The similarity of these political fairytales told to our impressionable, upwardly mobile radical young, and those told to young Germans, and Italians and Russians - rather earlier - is striking".

At least this book pulls no punches about the Leftist attitude to free speech: There's No Such Thing As Free Speech: And It's a Good Thing, Too by Stanley Fish. Given my generally cynical view of Leftist motivations, I am inclined to agree with the reviewer who said: "But it seems to me more likely that Fish is simply being meritricious for personal gain: he is using his considerable rhetorical and pedagogical talents to defend nonsense, not because he believes it or wants others to object to him, but in order to make a name for himself as academia's "bad boy"." Fish's arguments are nonetheless conventional Leftist postmodernism and, as such, are taken very seriously by his colleagues on the academic Left -- as we see here

Che Guevara is still worshipped by the young Leftists of Western universities but as a Cuban writes of him: "He did not have any business in Cuba but he went there to kill Cubans. He did not have any business in Africa but he went there to kill Africans. He did not have any business in Bolivia, but he went there to kill Bolivians, where he eventually died on his own sword.... As far as I am concerned, Ernesto Guevara was the Bin Laden of his time.... It will be very insulting for millions of people if, 30 years from now, they were to see in the streets people wearing Bin Laden T-shirts, as it is now for us to see people using Che Guevara's T-shirts."

Actually both Castro and Guevara have more in common with Mussolini (the founder of Fascism) than anyone else -- though that is probably unkind to Mussolini. As it says here: "From 1912 to 1914, Mussolini was the Che Guevara of his day, a living saint of leftism. Handsome, courageous, charismatic, an erudite Marxist, a riveting speaker and writer, a dedicated class warrior to the core, he was the peerless duce of the Italian Left. He looked like the head of any future Italian socialist government, elected or revolutionary...."

Hayek had it right long ago: "Hayek's challenge was to argue that German Nazism was not an aberrant "right-wing" perversion growing out of the "contradictions" of capitalism. Instead, the Nazi movement had developed out of the "enlightened" and "progressive" socialist and collectivist ideas of the pre-World War I era, which many intellectuals in England and the United States had praised and propagandized for in their own countries."

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ELSEWHERE

Keith Burgess Jackson has put up a rather touching tribute to his adopted State of Texas. It sounds like a place I would like. I feel I should say why I still live in my home State of Queensland -- even though I have travelled all over the world. All four of my grandparents were born here so if I cannot praise the place, who could? But in fact I feel that I could be perfectly happy in many places of the world so I am not a good spruiker for any one. The subtropical climate and the laid-back, friendly and conservative attitudes of the people here have a lot to be said for them, however. And our media cover not only our own country but also give extensive coverage to two other related countries: The USA and the UK. I am sorry to say that John Kerry pops up on our TV occasionally too. So it is easy to feel a world-citizen here while in reality being in a peaceful and prosperous place far away from most of it.

Speaking of what we see on TV here, I will never forget sitting in my big and comfortable old classic Queensland house and seeing on TV Ronald Reagan's speech in the immediate aftermath of the first space shuttle loss. It fixed in my mind forever the view of America as the last hero nation that will dare to push forward all of humanity's frontiers despite the risks and costs involved (And see here and here for the latest space achievement). Europeans cosseted away safely in their welfare States look contemptible by comparison. And I think Europeans know what girls they look by comparison. That's why they hate America so much.

It's probably not much consolation but the GOP is not the only conservative party spending public money like a drunken sailor. Australia's conservative government has just spent $2 billion on building a railroad to nowhere -- or almost nowhere. As an Australian businessman who knows the transport industry well summed it up: "They've spent $2 billion building a railway for five trains a week and a few cartons of beer, and I've described the financial returns on that as being smaller than a tick's testicles". And for once I cannot blame some of the Left for having a bit of a field day with it. But guess whom they blame for the whole boondoggle? You wouldn't believe it: Halliburton! I kid you not. Back in the 60s the Left used to see the CIA under every bed. Now that we all know what a comic opera the CIA is, Halliburton is the all-purpose villain. See here.

There is a good article here on what a lot of bunkum psychological "counselling" often is.

Dick McDonald is mounting another attack on the dangerous distortions of the American Leftist media.

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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.

Three 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! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!

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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RELIGION

It's not uncommon for religious and spiritual leaders to deride entrepreneurial capitalism. Robert Sirico reminds them of the parable of the talents: "As a group, entrepreneurs are frequently depicted as greedy, immoral, and cutthroat. This prejudice can be found equally among business and religious leaders, not to mention among cultural elites and individual people. But such criticisms, though justified far too often, fail to acknowledge the implicit spiritual dimension of enterprise..While it is true that entrepreneurs-like any other group of people-have been stained by sin, they must not be judged more severely for their moral failings merely because their profession involves the creation of wealth.......The Parable of the Talents implies a moral obligation to confront uncertainty in an enterprising way. There is no more apt example of such an individual than the entrepreneur"

The recent story about a Catholic charity being ordered by a Californian court to pay for contraception was so manifestly bizarre and unjust that it went all over the world, even popping up on Australian radio news bulletins. As a follow-up to the story, a reader has mentioned an employer he knows of who of his own accord added contraceptive coverage to the health plan for his employees. To fund the change, the firm had to put up the the co-payment premiums and deductibles -- so that the average woman now pays more for the insurance than the cost savings on contraception! So it would be poetic justice if the Catholic charity simply did as the court ordered and saddled the grasping employees behind the original complaint with the resultant costs.

Handicapping religion: "The State of Washington awards handsome college and graduate scholarships to gifted students of modest means through the Promise Scholarship Program. But reminiscent of discrimination against blacks, Jews, or the Irish, a disturbing exception is celebrated. Students pursuing devotional degrees need not apply. ... The purpose is to discourage faith-based professions or vocations, an illicit government objective under the free exercise clause of the First Amendment. Yet a decisive 7-2 majority in the U.S. Supreme Court constitutionally blessed the scholarship exclusion last week in Locke vs. Davey. Religious neutrality -- the customary commandment of the First Amendment -- was cast out of the constitutional heavens."

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