NEW BLOG

A lot of the postings I have put up recently concern Greenie issues so I have decided to give such postings a blog of their own. You can find it here. Greens and Leftists have a lot in common in that they both want to use the power of the state for pervasive and irrational interference with other people's lives. Neither gives a damn for individual liberty. But their motivations differ. Where the Leftist ideologue's main aim is to make himself look warm and wise and wonderful (in the absence of any real claims in that direction) Greenie ideologues are frank misanthropists. They hate and despise people and are not slow to say so. The Leftist by contrast at least keeps up a pretence about caring for other people. As the old summary of Leftist thought says: "I love humanity. It's just people I can't stand". So the two types of would-be tyrant do deserve separate consideration.



SOME "FORGOTTEN" HISTORY

Amusing: Richard Wolin's book, The Seduction of Unreason appears to be a good critique of postmodernist irrationality but he makes his book politically correct by noting -- correctly -- that in the 1930s what we now call postmodernism was primarily a Fascist doctrine. So he says that postmodernism is "Rightist" too, you see: It is not only a mental confusion of the Left. The fact that Fascism was a development of Marxism and that Hitler was a socialist seem to be "forgotten" by Wolin. It would indeed be surprising if a Rightist philosophy suddenly became the guiding light of the Left but no such thing has happened. "Postmodern" thinking has ALWAYS been a Leftist escape-hatch from reality. Although both Marxism and Fascism may be long dead in most people's minds, both are variants of socialism and both still flourish among Leftist intellectuals -- not that they are honest about it, of course.

There is an interesting article on the "forgotten" George Schuyler in Policy Review. Schuyler was an astringent black conservative writer and satirist who ridiculed the claim that black art was distinctive: "Schuyler argued that black artists in America were equally as diverse as white artists, and that to expect a uniform style or subject matter was as insulting as the stereotypes that were being rejected." He was also a conservative within the NAACP who fought that organisation's socialist ways from within". Called one of the great anti-communist writers of the 20th century, he has now largely been airbrushed from the historical record for not conforming to black victimhood.

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ELSEWHERE

Wow! The New York Times has really goofed again. Have they got a second Jayson Blair? In this story about Australia's tough stance against illegal immigration their fact-checking seems to be non-existent. They say that Australia "turned away a leaking refugee boat called the Tampa". What a laugh! The Tampa was a well-found Norwegian container ship. And only the NYT thinks it was leaking! They also say of Australia's policy: "many Australians say the price has been too high and the damage to Australia's image incalculable". So how many is "many"? I guess 20 people out of Australia's 20 million would be "many" to some. The Australian electorate certainly gave its conservative government a crashing election win over the policy. And as far as other countries are concerned, from what I have seen, almost anybody who has heard of it envies Australia's tough policy. And the "prominent Sydney lawyer" they quote is of course a well-known Leftist advocate for the illegal immigrants concerned. The whole article is sheer propaganda that would do Dr. Goebbels proud.

Capitalism has been good to China From 1978 to 2002, the average annual per-person income rose from $190 to $960. It's probably now above $1,000. (The U.S. figure: about $36,000.) Life expectancy increased from 61.7 years in 1970 to 71 in 2002. Adult illiteracy fell from 37 percent in 1978 to less than 17 percent in 1999. Infant mortality dropped from 41 per 1,000 live births in 1978 to 30 in 1999 (the U.S. rate: about seven).

I mentioned a couple of books about China on 4th. Samizdata has an extended review of another distressing book about China under Communism: Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine. The details of the three year famine unleashed by Mao's "Great Leap Forward" are truly horrifying. Mao undoubtedly has the distinction of being history's biggest mass-murderer. But it was all for "the people", of course.

The wicked one has some amusing stories about technophobes.

I have just posted here the latest observations from Chris Brand about the apparent dawning of sanity about immigration in Britain.

My recipe for today is for Dhansak -- the classical dish of the Parsees (India's most affluent minority). It definitely is high-class food in every way. This recipe is for the real thing -- not the undistinguished curry that is trotted out under that name in some Indian restaurants. 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

Both Biddle in The American Spectator and Peter Brimelow comment on the big split within the ranks of the Greenie "Sierra Club". It is the "Old Guard" -- essentially old socialists just looking for another way of pushing people around -- versus deep-green environmentalists. The big divide between them is over immigration. The deep-green environmentalists oppose immigration on their usual anti-people grounds while the old guard see immigrants as potential victims for them to "support". Australian "Green" politicians seem to be like the Sierra "Old Guard". They get involved with a lot more than the environment. They are at least as anti-American and anti-capitalist as pro-environment. The Australian Greens, for example, opposed the Australian government's moves to halt illegal immigration whilst embracing multiculturalism and a holy war against all forms of racism real and imagined. How on earth they imagine they could run any kind of population policy with open borders is a mystery. Of course when you realise that they are more interested in social control and increasing state power than actually improving environmental quality, the paradox disappears.

This article by the courageous Michael Fumento reminds us all how bad the AIDS scare was for many years. Millions of American heterosexual deaths were predicted. It is obvious to all who know anything at all about it now that widespread AIDS among heterosexuals just did not happen, but Fumento said the scare was a hoax in 1987! -- based simply on looking at the basic science of the matter. The parallels with the scare over global warming are extensive and instructive -- particularly the way both the media and the scientists directly involved profit from such scares.

Here's another report from Fumento: The Peruvian government had a huge silver, lead and zinc mine that was injecting huge amounts of dangerous pollutants into the environment (just like similar operations in the old Soviet bloc). Things got so bad that Peruvian government gave up and sold the mine to a private mining American company -- who promptly reduced the pollution enormously. So who are the Greenies now harassing over the mine's pollution? I don't need to tell you.

Biodiversity: The decline of British butterflies does not put us on the brink of a man-made mass extinction: "Thomas also told me that there had been much debate between the nine authors of the paper about the interpretation of their findings... In its concern about preserving the 'natural' world, the biodiversity agenda stigmatises human activity. The natural is valued indiscriminately, almost religiously... The diversity of species has never been richer than during the relatively brief period that humans have been around".

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ELSEWHERE

Saddam DID have WMDs. "For seven years, before he was tortured and sentenced to death, Rashid (not his real name) worked at the top of Iraq's scientific establishment. He says he regularly met Saddam Hussein and his cousin and strongman deputy prime minister Abdul Tawab Huweish. After the Gulf War he was put in charge of a taskforce code named "Al Babel" to develop stealth technology to make aircraft and missiles undetectable on radar. Rashid, who now lives in Melbourne, also claims to have had access as a trusted insider to secret underground bunkers where chemical weapons were stored."

Poverty is in the eye of the deceiver: "Last month the Senate released the report of its inquiry into poverty in Australia. It is the most dishonest document of its kind I have ever seen in Australia... the only way they could pretend poverty is booming is to define it as inequality. From this flawed start the report descends into farce. Some of its more outrageous errors are documented in a paper from the Centre for Independent Studies called Lies, Damned Lies and the Senate Poverty Inquiry Report" For the CIS Media release on the matter see here.

I never thought I'd feel sorry for Ralph Nader but the arrogant treatment he got on Air America really was a disgrace. Yet another example of the Stalinist fear of free speech that typifies American "liberals", of course.

A former terrorist speaks : "The "Palestinian refugee" problem, [Walid] Shoebat said, results from international hypocrisy. Fifty-six years after the first Arab-Israeli war, Arabs continue to live in deplorable squalor in camps maintained by UNWRA, he said. Past Israeli governments often proposed replacing the camps with apartment buildings, he said. But Palestinian and Arab UN general assembly members vociferously rejected each such plan as "provocative." Meanwhile, Shoebat said, Middle Eastern Arab and Muslim governments expelled more than 900,000 Jews after Israel's 1948 war of Independence-and confiscated their homes, bank accounts, even their clothing- without recompense. Israel resettled Jewish refugees, he said. They became productive citizens. Arab League member states, by contrast, refused to help their brothers in Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Instead they exploited the "refugee" camps as a propaganda tool that even today perpetuates the international jihad with a myth of Arab and Muslim victimhood, he said. "

Hitler made Germany Judenrein ("Jew-free") by killing all Jews he could find. Arab countries did the same after the establishment of Israel by expelling all Jews they could find. Jewish families have been able to claim off Germany for at least their financial losses and at long last there is some prospect that similar claims against Arab countries may get somewhere.

Britain's own terrorists "Eight young Muslims, all British-born citizens of Pakistani descent, have been detained and half a ton of ammonium nitrate fertiliser, a basic ingredient of home-made bombs, was discovered in the west London suburb of Hanwell. .. Something like the horror inflicted on holidaymakers in Bali may have been narrowly averted; ...instead of teaching a bland, rights-focused multiculturalism ... our educators should think hard about their failure to inculcate our values, be they religious or secular or a combination of the two, in the minds of Britain's very own generation of terrorists"

Bill Keezer points to the sheer dogmatism of academic Leftist arguments against the Iraq war. How amusing that the academic Left try to tar conservatives with dogmatism! See also today's posting on PC Watch.

The wicked one has a Jewish joke up (Risky!) and a thought-provoking comment on the complete pervasiveness of globalization.

Today's recipe is for Korean spring rolls. Very different from any other spring rolls you know and very more-ish. 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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CHINA

Fighting China's silicon curtain Numerous efforts are under way in the West to help Chinese web users get around China's censorship of the internet

China does have some conservative traditions: "Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu advised political rulers to rule with the lightest touch: Administer the empire by engaging in no activity. The more taboos and prohibitions there are in the world, The poorer the people will be. The more laws and orders are made prominent, The more thieves and robbers there will be. Therefore the sage [ruler] says: I take no action and the people of themselves are transformed. I engage in no activity and the people of themselves become prosperous."

Christopher Lingle's review of "EAST AND WEST: China, Power, and the Future of Asia", by Christopher Patten: "Patten exposes the proponents of "Asian values" as apologists for authoritarian rule. He stresses that it is inappropriate to attach regional adjectives when discussing essentially universal human values and human (individual) rights. Such references only reinforce racial divisiveness and do little to enhance our understanding of how Asia's economies have developed"

Autocratic Ghosts and Chinese Hunger" by Bryan Caplan: "Only twelve years into his thirty-year reign, Mao Zedong surpassed Joseph Stalin as history's leading mass murderer, according to evidence released recently by the People's Republic of China."

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ELSEWHERE

SPAM: Those sad and jealous souls who hate Microsoft are not going to want to face this but Microsoft do a brilliant job of blocking spam. I have two main email boxes that I use -- with Yahoo and Hotmail. But the address that I use all the time and which has for years been plastered up in many places on the internet (I have around 500 files online) is the Hotmail one. So which one gets the most spam? The Yahoo one by far. Both Yahoo and Hotmail let very little junk though to my main inbox (less than ten emails a day in both cases) but I get at least 100 emails a day in my Yahoo junk-mail inbox. I just empty the box without looking at them. In my Hotmail junk-mail inbox, by contrast, I get around a dozen emails in one day -- few enough for me to at least scan the subject line before I delete the lot. And I have rescued quite a few genuine emails by being able to scan them first. So the number of junk emails that Microsoft block without my seeing them at all must be enormous. They are obviously very confident in and very successful with their spam-blocking algorithms and procedures these days. So I think the cure for spam has already arrived: Get a Microsoft Hotmail box. May Google-mail be as good.

The New York Times agrees with President Bush!: "The Arab world's need to defy Washington and revile Israel is not a valid excuse to perpetuate medieval autocracies and repressive dictatorships. The claim that the Middle East is somehow immune to democracy, whether through tradition, history or religion, is equally spurious. Striking evidence of this was provided by a gathering of Arab intellectuals and nongovernmental organizations at the Alexandria Library in Egypt in mid-March. The statement they issued is a ringing proclamation of universal democratic values and the urgent need to spread them through the Arab world."

Washington DC surprises no-one: "The report card, required by the No Child Left Behind Act, indicates that most of the District's schools have fallen way short of national standards in math and reading in the 2002-03 school year. In fact, 83 of 151 schools tested failed to make adequate progress on last year's standardized tests"

Dumbed down teachers: "Despite the exalted rank implied by the term 'National Board Certified,' the content knowledge required of K-12 teachers who want to earn such a title through the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) is only that of an advanced high school class, according to a recent commentary published in the Teacher College Record under the title, 'National Board Certification of Teachers: A Billion Dollar Hoax.'"

A good comment from a reader on the large Muslim presence in Europe: "These "kind and gentle Europeans" who just can't deal with violence because "peace" is morally superior - have let Muslims take the place of the Jews that were expelled or killed -- not a good trade, considering the declining economics of Muslim communities as compared to the thriving economies of Jewish "Ghettos" both before and after the Holocaust. I don't believe "God did it", but if I did, I would believe that God replaced the expelled Jews with Muslims to punish the Europeans for their ancestors' sins".

Don't believe this hype about OPEC oil cartel being good for the economy by 'stabilising prices'. It in fact is a major reason why the price of motor fuel fluctuates so much.

Weaselteeth has a good human interest story about a very large man.

Some excellent quotes about the old Soviet system. One example: "Stalin famously said: "Death solves all problems. No man, no problem.""

Doctors flee Illinois: "In key Illinois counties -- including Madison, which has become infamous as perhaps the most plaintiff-friendly venue in the United States -- doctors, hospitals, and some local elected officials are warning of a medical system collapse. They are taking their warning and a plea for tort reform to the most powerful voters in the state: the elderly, who are also the biggest health care consumers."

We don't hear much about one of the Arab world's largest countries -- Egypt -- a country that receives billions in American aid and would probably starve otherwise. So are they appreciative of America? Anything but. If you want to read the most obscene anti-American propaganda, read this summary of what appears in the Egyptian media. Americans just make fools of themselves by supporting these poisonous loonies.

The Atlantic has just heard about Edmund Burke: "Edmund Burke understood before anyone else that revolutions devour their young -- and turn into their opposites"

There is just no need for government financed sport stadiums "privately financed sports stadiums pay for themselves"

My recipe today is for Keema -- curried mince (ground beef). 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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Dick McDonald of the California Republicans should really do his own blog but in the meanwhile I have posted his three most recent emails here. If you like his stuff, tell him so. His email is: RAMcDonald@aol.com

GREENIE CORNER

"The Kyoto Protocol has become a well-known political slogan. President Bush has called it "fundamentally flawed," while some environmentalists in America and Europe have said it is essential for saving the Earth's climate and the future of humanity itself. Many on the right have called it economic madness, while for many on the left it is an ecological article of faith.... But the facts have always made it clear that Kyoto would be outrageously costly and completely ineffective -- as designed, it would not even noticeably influence the climate. And more importantly, in light of recent developments, the treaty is essentially defunct". In other words, it is the Greenie version of a hair shirt -- an exercise in self-punishment and nothing more. Its motivation is religious, not scientific.

"Commissioner Margot Wallstrom insists that the Kyoto Protocol is 'the only existing effective international framework for combating global warming.' This questionable argument -- Kyoto neither exists yet, nor has any scientist claimed it would yield a detectable climatic impact"

The whole global warming scare is based on work by a group of scientists headed by Dr. Michael Mann, of the University of Virginia. Climate scientist David Legates examines Mann's claim that the climate record of the last 1000 years is shaped like a hockey stick (i.e. flat until recently) and shows that the claim is based on fudged data. It is a publicity-grabbing fraud, in other words: "Our analysis, as well as independent research by Canadian scientists Mr. Steven McIntyre and Dr. Ross McKitrick, highlights many statistical flaws present in Mann's `hockey stick' reconstruction, which is why it is being challenged on scientific grounds by a number of serious scientists. We must take a closer look at the science of the "hockey stick" and, in this case, ask the question, "How much of the warming of the 20th Century was `man-induced' and how much of it is `Mann-induced'?".

What have been the real-life consequences since the world adopted the basic ideas of environmentalism? How about millions of documented human deaths? Incredible? Read this before you decide.

The imaginary Greenie paradise: "Free trade and civilization may contribute to disease transmission, but these activities also create the economic growth that grants access to the essentials of healthy living: food, pesticides, sanitation, and water disinfectants. Those suffering the most from disease epidemics need more trade and economic growth to escape from -- not return to -- the life of the primitive."

"The message from the environmental groups grew more shrill and hostile. As the environment actually improved, predictions turned more dire. Environmentalists first taught us how greedy, evil corporations were destroying the planet, and then taught us how we were all responsible for destroying the planet. Fortunately, the extreme environmentalists had a solution in mind. This solution is in accord with that of today's Muslim fundamentalist terrorists: both clubs want you and your miserable capitalistic existence exterminated. Except the environmentalists are worse--they would just as soon see all of humanity exterminated, not only the capitalists. You are the enemy. (I suppose the environmentalists somehow see themselves as a better class of humans, otherwise they'd help the cause by killing themselves first.).... The environmentalists screamed about the falling sky and the population explosion more than 30 years ago. There was no way we would be able to feed all the billions of extra hungry mouths come the turn of the century.... We did solve world hunger! We can now feed vast amounts of people on far less land with far less waste through modern agriculture.... And I was wrong about the intentions of the environmentalists. Damn the hungry, they only wanted less people; they wanted millions of starving, fly-plagued third world peasants to stop breeding and die."

Recent ecoNOT postings:
* The radical new "Manifesto for Earth": an inhuman rejection of human nature
* Environmentalists are waging war against our nation's military
* The Yellowstone controversy: is it only about snowmobiles or something far more serious?
* Citigroup sacrifices the Third World poor to kowtow to the greens

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ELSEWHERE

Hitler's Brownshirts are not dead: "The group is called "National People's Action."... A more accurate description is left-wing goon squad.. what distinguishes NPA from other liberal advocacy groups is its tactics. The group engages in what it calls "direct action" -- publicizing the home addresses of business and government leaders it wants to shake down and then busing in protesters and schoolchildren (using public school buses) to invade the private property of their victims and intimidate their families... After meeting in Washington for its annual convention this weekend, NPA members descended on the Washington, D.C., homes of Labor Secretary Elaine Chao and White House adviser Karl Rove... after chanting and knocking on Rove's door, the "crowd then grew more aggressive, fanning around the three accessible sides of Rove's house, tracking him through the many windows, waving signs that read 'Say Yes to DREAM' and pounding on the glass.""

The Happy Carpenter is a small businessman and he thinks he knows why fewer American jobs are being created at the moment than the economic upturn would lead one to expect. He thinks that many small businessmen (the major creaters of jobs) have hit a tipping point. He says that the incredible labyrinth of government regulations that the "liberals" have created has now got so bad that many small businessmen are too fearful to hire anybody -- in case they inadvertently fall foul of some regulation and it ends up sending them broke. So that, even if they are doing well, they will not expand their business if it means taking the risk of hiring someone. It's safer to stay small. For many small businessmen, in other words, the "liberals" have largely killed off the American Dream of making it big. No doubt gamblers, optimists and the legally savvy will continue to hire but limiting job creation to them means a lot of people will stay unemployed.

Michael Darby is back online with a big lot of postings: Some headings:
East Timor: Poverty and Hunger
Osama & Friends
U.S. Institute of Peace Stumbles
We are Finishing the War
Iraq is free at last
Terror and tolerance
Depths of a Depraved Culture
Iraqis Say "War Was the ANSWER"
The Threat to the Flag

Today's recipe is for my pick of Japanese cuisine -- Ton Katsu (Don Kats to the Koreans). Actually, the Japanese say they got this off the Germans but it must have been a long time ago. 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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THE ATTACK ON FATHERHOOD

On Disposable Fatherhood: "Men are now being scolded for failing to shoulder the collective responsibility of a declining birthrate. But why should men be interested in fathering children? Confronted with the very strong societal message that children do fine without fathers, is it so surprising that some men decide the risks of having children are just too high? Every week we see pregnant celebrities flaunting their decision to bear children on their own. There are howls of outrage when governments try to confine access to IVF services to families with fathers."

One of the reasons that so many women can't find a husband is that millions of men have declared a Marriage Strike. Men believe that family courts have become so unfair that in case of divorce, they will lose custody of their children and their ex will take them for all they're worth.

American injustice: "A parent pulled into divorce court against his will also must submit to questioning about his private life, questioning that Abraham has characterized as an "interrogation." He can be forced to surrender personal diaries, correspondence, financial records, and other documents normally protected by the Fourth Amendment. His personal habits, movements, conversations, writings, and purchases are subject to inquiry by the court. His home can be entered by government agents. His visits with his children can be monitored and restricted to a "supervised visitation center." Anything he says to his spouse or children as well as to family counselors and personal therapists can be used against him in court, and his children can be used to inform on his compliance. Fathers are asked intimate questions about how they "feel" about their children, what they do with them, where they take them, how they kiss them, how they feed and bathe them, what they buy for them, and what they discuss with them. According to Abraham, fathers against whom no evidence of wrongdoing is presented are ordered to submit to "plethysmographs," a physical-response test in which an electronic sheath is placed over the penis while the father is forced to watch pornographic films of children... A parent who refuses to cooperate can be summarily incarcerated or ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.... In family court, it is not unusual for a father earning $35,000 a year to amass $150,000 in attorney's fees... One of the most astonishing practices of family courts is ordering fathers to pay the fees of attorneys, psychotherapists, and other officials they have not hired and summarily jailing them for not complying."

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ELSEWHERE

What has gone right in Iraq: "Here is a detail you might have missed: A few weeks ago, the United Nations shut down the Ashrafi refugee camp in southwestern Iran. For years Ashrafi had been the largest facility in the world housing displaced Iraqis, tens of thousands of whom had been driven from their homes by Saddam Hussein's brutality. But with Saddam behind bars and his Baathist dictatorship crushed, Iraqi exiles have been flocking home. By mid-February the camp had literally emptied out. Now, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees reports, "nothing remains of Ashrafi but rubble and a few stones." Refugees surging *to* Iraq? That isn't what the antiwar legions told us would happen if George Bush made good on his vow to end Saddam's reign of terror. Over and over they warned that a US invasion would trigger a humanitarian cataclysm, including a flood of refugees *from* Iraq.

Barbara Amiel points out that the Democrats and their media allies would never have allowed ANY President to act decisively against Islamic terrorism before 9/11: "What administration could, before 9/11, have sent in American boys to fight a regime in Afghanistan because it was implementing the ideas of an old man with a long white beard, sitting crossed-legged in the mountains talking about Satan America? Had I been in Congress before 9/11, knowing everything that was knowable about the Islamists, I still doubt if I would have voted to send troops to the Hindu Kush to topple the Taliban. Eardrums would have exploded all over Capital Hill from outcries of racism and imperialism if there had been serious efforts, pre-9/11, to round up suspected Muslim militants in the United States and tighten security on Muslims entering the country."

Another example of the bare-faced dishonesty of the Left: A Leftist blogger read this by Keith Burgess-Jackson: "'Conservatism is committed to a presumption in favor of tradition. Presumptions by their nature are rebuttable" and commented: "So BJ calls on us to follow tradition dogmatically" -- which is the opposite of what Keith actually said. If you regard a presumption as rebuttable, you are NOT following it dogmatically! Perhaps the Lefty blogger is such a lamebrain that he does not know what "rebuttable" means. Just to confuse him further, I might note that the claims about conservative psychology that he also refers to are rebutted here. And if he wants to get straight about dogmatism, he could look here.

Boring Radio: "If ever a talk show defines hate speech Randi Rhodes' show is it. The woman had difficulty saying two sentences without using the words President Bush and Nazis.... Randi will be one of the hosts of the new Democratic Party radio propaganda network called Air America"

USA Today hits the nail on the head: "Major cause of joblessness lies within U.S. schools". Millions of kids cannot get even the Mickey Mouse diplomas that most U.S. high schools hand out these days. I cannot blame the kids for getting tired of unending lessons in political correctness, though.

Ann Coulter shows from history how past Democrat responses to Islamic terrorism led to the 9/11 attacks. There is a similar posting here which also asks the interesting question: "There are two men, both extremely wealthy. One develops relatively cheap software and gives billions of dollars to charity. The other sponsors terrorism. That being the case, why was it that the Clinton administration spent more money chasing down Bill Gates over the past eight years than Osama bin Laden?"

Dick McDonald says that "mainstream" Islam has no religious reason to denounce terrorism because what the terrorists do is perfectly Islamic.

The wicked one has recent postings on gun control, women soldiers and the spiritual side of capitalism!

Thanks to Colonel Sanders and KFC, just about the whole world has tried Southern fried chicken. So here is something different -- Balinese fried chicken -- featuring some herbs and spices that the good Colonel probably never heard of. See here. Bali is a mainly Hindu island near Australia so is heir to a great cuisine.

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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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RACE RELATIONS

Arguing for immigration restrictions seems to be no longer politically incorrect in most of the West. Was this change a result of fresh thinking or maybe the fact that unemployment is now no longer mainly a blue collar phenomenon? When professors start getting the sack anti-immigration politicians like Australia's Pauline Hanson may become heroes to the intelligentsia.

Booker T. Washington knew the only road to black advancement: "In reading Booker T. Washington's words, I found someone who inspired me with both his actions and his character. His emphasis on rejecting coercion of others, and relying instead on self-improvement and voluntary arrangements is exactly what we, as parents, try teach our children today, regardless of race"

"Acting black", the pop culture celebration of underclass norms, is hurting black children

Steve Sailer says ethological researchers have confirmed that people are more charitable to their own ethnic group. Multiculturalism and the welfare state are on a collision course. This may explain why during the 20th century relatively homogeneous Scandanavia was able to build a welfare state, where melting pot America baulked. British leftist David Goodhart bucked from the leftist establishment when he argued that increasing diversity in Britain was undermining the communal consensus needed for welfare.

R J Stove on the Australian Left's failed fatwa against distinguished conservative historian Geoffrey Blainey: "Debate is once again permitted on the role of immigration in Australia". Some leftist critics of Blainey have accused him of spending so much time studying the 19th century that he has adopted 19th century ideas. Considering the gory mess various forms of leftism made of the 20th century, this is really a back-handed compliment! To sample some of the depth of Blainey's thinking a good place to start is his 2001 Boyer lectures

The Australian Labor Party is moving away from the dream of Aboriginal self government. See here. As Keith Windschuttle has pointed out, the majority of Australian Aborigines have voted with their feet against the separatist agenda pushed by a self interested minority. After 20 years of failure it looks like the lessons are finally being recognised. Of course conservatives have always been skeptical of so-called "self governing agencies" (like the Aboriginal organization) that dispense monies extracted from the general taxpaying public with a minimum of taxpayer control over their distribution. The problems of corruption, incompetence and ineffectiveness they have generated could have been easily predicted by any 18th or 19th century classical economist. And of course Aboriginal welfare bodies and their ilk reverse the old revolutionary and classical liberal idea of "no taxation without representation". Many of these so called "progressive reforms" are really reactionary to the core.

Shakespeare was warning against the evils of racism before there were any post-modernists or liberals. The fact that the greatest figure in English literature fought against prejudice makes a mockery of the view that earlier generations were blinded by prejudice "Anti-Semitism and racial prejudice against black Africans are two of the uglier maladies in the history of the West, but in the work of its greatest dramatist we see that these evils are not integral to its civilization, and that in the West's critical spirit lie the means of its continual reform."

The UK government's immigration policy is so crazy that even some British Indians don't like it: "I think the government has lost it. I am a 2nd generation Bradfordian. The number of new faces I see in Bradford city centre - all eastern Europeans has significantly increased over the past few years. I lose over o600 from my pay packet every month in taxes and when I go to the post office I see queues of eastern European queuing for state handouts without having contributed anything to society. Is there any wonder that there is quiet discontent in the country? -- Tendukar Gill" Of course, if they played cricket it might be a different matter .....

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ELSEWHERE

I have just put up here some excerpts from an anti-individual, pro-Green rant by an Australian professor that nonetheless had this good point in it: "The findings fit those of other studies that have shown people for whom "extrinsic goals" such as fame, fortune and glamour are a priority tend to experience more anxiety and depression and lower overall well-being than people oriented towards "intrinsic goals" of close relationships, self-understanding, acceptance, and contributing to the community. These results are, in turn, consistent with other research that shows materialism - the pursuit of money and possessions - breeds not happiness but dissatisfaction, depression, anxiety, anger, isolation and alienation. In short, the more materialistic we are, the poorer our quality of life." And that is where capitalism comes in. Because it makes us all richer, it enables us to concentrate more on non-material things instead of spending all our time scrabbling for a living. And anyone who thinks that having gold handles on his car door is the highroad to happiness can only be pitied.

The deceptions attempted by Left-leaning historians are sometimes quite breathtaking. Take this: "Fascism was ultimately born out of, and supported by, conservatism" Any reader of history knows that the founder of Fascism, Mussolini, was a firebrand socialist and Marxist ideologue at the time he developed the Fascist variant of his thinking! For more details of the Leftist history and nature of Fascism, see here.

There is a hopelessly biased article by Alan Wolfe that goes to torturous lengths to explain why an old Nazi philosopher, Carl Schmitt, is popular on the American Left at the moment. One quote: "Schmitt's admirers on the left have been right to realize that after the collapse of communism, Marxism needed considerable rethinking. Yet in turning to Schmitt rather than to liberalism, they have clung fast to an authoritarian strain in Marxism represented by such 20th-century thinkers as V.I. Lenin and Antonio Gramsci. And it hasn't just been Schmitt. Telos, in particular, developed a fascination with neofascist thinkers and movements in Italy". Anybody who knows the historically socialist nature of Fascism and Nazism would find that no surprise.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its usual wide range of reading all in one place.

I have just put up a gourmet recipe for that good old standby -- Welsh rarebit. 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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THE EDUCATION MESS

Australia's Left falls foul of teachers' unions: "Latham's policy that good teachers in bad schools be paid more is a good idea. It is recognition from the Labor Party that market forces apply in education as they do in all walks of life.... The great myth of education policy in this country is that non-government schools outperform government schools because government schools must teach any student that wishes to attend, while non-government schools have the privilege of choosing who they enrol. In fact, non-government schools achieve higher outcomes because they employ better teachers, and they are largely free from the dictates of state education departments and teachers unions.... the union of teachers in government schools, the Australian Education Union, is implacably opposed to merit pay and differential salaries because such measures require an assessment of the performance of individual teachers and their school... Latham can't have it both ways. He can't reform government schools and satisfy the teachers union."

Educational control freaks: "Although many teachers and principals officially tout the benefits of parental involvement, they become nervous when parents actually do get involved. They fear parents and seek to stop them from making choices about which schools their children will attend, about the curriculum used in their children's instruction, and about the punishments used in the schools."

Home schooling "A newer breed of home schooler is emerging, motivated not by religious belief or countercultural philosophy. Uppermost for such parents are concerns about violence, peer pressure, and poor academic quality in their schools."

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THE ISLAMIC MESS

Those delightful Muslims again: "A young boy, pleased that his dad shot his mum. Brothers who urge their father to shoot their sister. Girls as young as thirteen imprisoned by the state "for their own protection" from family members who want to rape or kill them. This is Jordan today, generally regarded one of the most westernised countries in the Middle East."

Europe likes to pretend that its Muslim problem is a by-product of their nominal alliance with the USA. But that ignores both history and demography: "Today, 15 million Muslims make their home in the European Union." Ultimately, Islam is a bigger problem for Europe than the USA.

Mark Steyn on appeasement: "a defensive war against terrorism will ensure terrorism."

A book review of Onward Muslim Soldiers, by Robert Spencer, points out that what Muslim "extremists" are doing is an integral part of Islam.

Christopher Hitchens says that many of the ideas of Islamic fundamentalism come from Western Fascists and other Leftists: "In many areas of German, Russian and French culture, one finds the same hatred of "decadence," the same cultish worship of the pitiless hero, the same fascination with the infallible "leader," the same fear of a mechanical civilization as opposed to the "organic" society based on tradition and allegiance".

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ELSEWHERE

California kookiness like Wow! "The law allows students and school staff to define their own gender, regardless of their biological sex, to prevent discrimination against transsexuals and others who do not conform to traditional gender roles". I guess Californian schoolgirls are going to love having weird guys turning up in their restrooms! If any of the girls are attacked, the legal fallout could be interesting!

"Sen. John F. Kerry has started talking about health care for the first time since securing his party's nomination for president. Americans should beware: Kerry's platform represents perhaps the greatest threat to health care and patient sovereignty since the Clinton health plan. Though Kerry claims he would reduce costs and expand access to medical care, his two-pronged health plan would have the opposite effects, for it would bring America several steps closer to a system of socialized medicine, with all the increased costs and rationing of care that follow."

An Icelandic blogger has a great collection of quotes (in English) showing how Leftist Nazism was.

A great article on the Indian love of cricket here. "seeing cricket as a way of pursuing diplomacy by other means" refers, of course, to a famous statement by Clausewitz. Cricket as an alternative to war sounds pretty good.

I have mentioned this academic article on IQ before (see here) but I think the abstract (summary) of it is worth reproducing in full: "Virtually all indicators of physical health and mental competence favor persons of higher socioeconomic status (SES). Conventional theories in the social sciences assume that the material disadvantages of lower SES are primarily responsible for these inequalities, either directly or by inducing psychosocial harm. These theories cannot explain, however, why the relation between SES and health outcomes (knowledge, behavior, morbidity, and mortality) is not only remarkably general across time, place, disease, and kind of health system but also so finely graded up the entire SES continuum. Epidemiologists have therefore posited, but not yet identified, a more general "fundamental cause" of health inequalities. This article concatenates various bodies of evidence to demonstrate that differences in general intelligence (g) may be that fundamental cause." (From the very mainstream journal: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2004, Vol. 86, No. 1, 174-199)

The British government is gradually removing all mention of the Crown from its functions. Given Britain's lack of a written constitution, Peter Hitchens sees the move as a loss of important safeguards.

Today's recipe is for that classic Indian dish, Roghan Josh. It feeds 6 so is good for a discerning family or a dinner party. 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

What the Greenies will never tell you: "What the suburbanite doesn't see is that, in the vast stretches of American and Canadian wilderness lands, a quite different process is unfolding: Far more trees are being planted than harvested, a trend that has been going on for decades. America has roughly the same forested area in 2002 as it did 80 years ago. Just two examples of the resurgence: Vermont's woods have expanded from 37 percent of the land in 1850 to cover 77 percent today. The forests in New Hampshire covered 50 percent of the state in 1850 and cover 87 percent today. One reason America has the same area of forestland today as in 1920--despite a 143 percent rise in population--is that, in 1910, about 25 percent of the cropland was devoted to producing feed for horses. As the automobile and farm machinery replaced equines, all that land was freed up for human-food crops. Another reason for the lack of pressure on wooded lands is the huge strides in technology, chemistry, and genetics that have vastly increased farm productivity, allowing far more food to be grown per acre than was ever dreamed possible".

The weird Green/Left attack on GWB's "mercury" record is rebutted here

The world leaders in water conservation are the USA and Israel. So why no cheers from the Greens? They are always telling us how wonderful the Germans and Danes are at arguably less relevant forms of conservation

Global warming: The movie: "Coming to a multiplex near you on May 28 is the global warming disaster movie, 'The Day After Tomorrow.' I've only seen the trailer, but my money is on the movie, not global warming, being the disaster. Featuring sensational but implausible weather phenomena ... the movie's unmistakable purpose is to scare us into submitting to the Greens' agenda: domination of society through control of energy resources. This column has addressed Green extremism and global warming many times in the past. ... So suffice it to say that there's no credible evidence humans are altering global climate in any measurable way and, to the extent that global climate is changing -- as it always has and always will -- there's nothing that humans can do about that change except to adapt."

Greenie false prophecy: "Paul Ehrlich had written in The Population Bomb (1968) that it was "a fantasy" that India would "ever" feed itself. By 1974 India was self-sufficient in the production of all cereals. Pakistan progressed from harvesting 3.4 million tons of wheat annually when Borlaug arrived to around 18 million today, India from 11 million tons to 60 million"

More California kookiness: "It would be nice to think that major public policy decisions are based on sound science and rational thinking rather than emotionalism and scare tactics. Of course, the reality is far different, as any aficionado of the political process has noticed. This reality is especially stark when dealing with environmental issues, where emoting replaces thinking, and where the neuroses of activists drives policy more than anything else. It's one thing to spend hundreds of millions of tax dollars to, say, actually clean up some land or a waterway, quite another thing to spend the same amount to accomplish little more than boosting the self-esteem of activists. Yet here in Orange County, residents are doing just that: paying additional fees to fund a costly new program that cleans something that doesn't need to be cleaned as a sop to vocal environmental activists who are impervious to scientific data proving them wrong. It's policy as psychology, yet it's costing taxpayers plenty. The program I refer to goes by the name of "full secondary treatment," and it relates to sewage treatment."

Much recycling is ideological rubbish, a monumental waste of effort. And this is not just the view of free-market economists... Both Valfrid Paulsson, the green guru and former director-general of Sweden's environmental protection agency, and Soren Norrby, the former campaign manager for Keep Sweden Tidy, argue that the whole concept of recycling household rubbish is a mistake.

Ted Lapkin's Quadrant article about the genocidal Greenie ban on DDT is available here

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ELSEWHERE

This is another story about how America's drug enforcement bureaucrats show the brains of fleas in the way they enforce the law -- making criminals out of ethical doctors and making effectve pain relief just a memory for many Americans. Surely it is about time that GWB made the effort to put someone with at least half a brain in charge of the agency concerned. I have never heard of the equivalent Australian authorities being remotely as moronic.

Some rare good sense from a psychologist: "Three problems of working in the disease model have plagued Psychology since it became a mere handmaiden of medicine. First, victimology, a moral problem: We took on a pathological view of human nature such that people were seen as victims of circumstances, and we forgot about venerable concepts like choice, will, character, and responsibility. Second, we misplaced our mission of making normal people happier and worse, genius became a dirty word". Interesting that those remarks (by Martin Seligman) were originally circulated as an email only, however.

Our blacked-robed rulers: "American courts do not use sharia as grounds for their autocratic pronouncements, but they have their own uniquely Western equivalents: fuzzy moral sensibilities, 'international law,' the inviolable principle of tolerance, and even public polling. With these inane justifications and others, they are stealing Americans' birthright of self-rule."

Keith Burgess-Jackson suspects that my focus on the meaning of moral discourse makes me a "descriptivist" in R.M. Hare's terms and that I am therefore a relativist. That really requires a full essay in reply but, fun though that would be, it would also be a rather big sidetrack for a political blog such as this so I will simply say that I doubt that I am a descriptivist but I don't think that Hare's critique of it holds up anyway. For some of the reasons why see here. And I do cheerfully admit to being a relativist. But, unlike Leftists, I do not at all see that the relativism of morality makes it either arbitrary or unimportant. Quite to the contrary, I think that the rightness of an action can be a very important empirical enquiry: Does it lead to long term results that would be generally desired?

My recipe for today is another way of doing pork fillet. Show what a good Muslim you are not! 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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THE STRANGE MENTAL WORLD OF THE LEFT

There is a very clear-sighted article on the Gefen blog about how Leftists abuse talk of human rights. One quote: "One could say that the entire world Left is suffering from a severe case of cognitive dissonance on this issue. They can extoll peace and yet defend Saddam Hussein. They can love human rights and acclaim Arafat. They can decry racism and revel in the basest anti-semitism, sometimes in the same breath. Their desire for an absolutism of justice has resulted in an embrace of righteous murder". The author is wrong to call it "cognitive dissonance" however. "Cognitive dissonance" means you feel uncomfortable about the inconsistencies -- but inconsistencies have never bothered Leftists. They are psychopathic -- they have no moral anchors. Under the guise of "Postmodernism" they often tell us that in fact.

For any of my readers who have any interest in the social sciences, there is a fabulous article here about the "Militant Tendency" Trotskyist group that was very influential in the British Labour Party in the 1980s. The author specializes in the study of cults and shows that "Militant" is a good example of one. The reader who drew my attention to the article commented: "One sees a lot of this same behavior by the Greenies also -- the Messianic sense of mission, the closed frame of reference, and the looming apocalypse that only they can avert." The article is at the moment up on a Marxist site but also appeared in an academic journal. The author advises me that a revised version of the paper is also to be found in his book with Tim Wohlforth - On the Edge: Political Cults Right and Left, ME Sharpe, 2000.

Prof J.E. Haynes explains why Leftists routinely ignore the inconvenient reality of how destructive and inhumane Leftist policies always have turned out to be: "Psychologically, they do not see what you see. They see the present and the past through a special lens. What is overwhelmingly clear to them is an imagined future collectivist utopia where antagonisms of class and race have been eliminated, the economic and social inequalities that have driven people to crime have been removed, poverty does not exist and social justice reigns, world brotherhood has replaced war and international strife, and an economy planned by people like them has produced economic abundance without pollution or waste. Coupled with this vision of the future is loathing of the real present which falls woefully short of these goals and hatred for anyone or anything that stands in the way of their illusion of the radiant future". I would be less charitable than that. Some Leftists may be like that but many if not most are not idealists at all -- just people who are pretending to be -- in order to boost their own ego by appearing "different", "caring", "wise" etc. Their ego matters to them far more than mere facts.

"Harvard scholar Samuel P. Huntington has not even published his new book on the cultural threat of mass Third World immigration, but already the Open Borders onslaught on book and author has begun.... What's interesting about the attacks is not only that they precede the appearance of the actual book but seek more to discredit Mr. Huntington himself- as a nut, a "nativist," a fount of "hate and suspicion"-by name-calling.... The tactics of smear almost always tell us that the smear's target has offered facts and arguments that can't be answered on their merits-and the only way to answer them at all is to attack the person who brings them up in the first place."

The Bell Curve by Murray & Herrnstein was also attacked in a similarly unscholarly way. Murray comments: "I do not know how to explain the extraordinary discrepancy between what The Bell Curve actually says about race and what most commentators have said that the book says, except as the result of some sort of psychological projection onto our text. Other factors are at work as well. Michael Novak (who has written favorably about The Bell Curve) and Thomas Sowell (who has his criticisms of the book) have pointed out in similar terms that the Left has invested everything in a few core beliefs about society as the cause of problems, government as the solution, and the manipulability of the environment for reaching the goal of equality. For the Left, as Novak puts it, The Bell Curve's "message cannot be true, because much more is at stake than a particular set of arguments from psychological science. A this-worldly eschatological hope is at stake. The sin attributed to Herrnstein and Murray is theological: they destroy hope".

Australian academic Leftists don't care about the truth either: "Claims of plagiarism against Keith Windschuttle reveal the desperation of his critics. Windschuttle's book, launched last Monday at the Tattersalls Club, has already had an extraordinary impact in the academic world. It refutes the "black armband" view of Australian history and seeks to overturn the concept of white guilt and black victimhood which have become embedded in the national psyche. It told how Australia's academic historians have "failed their public responsibility to tell the truth", said Claudio Veliz... The book has already forced admissions from three high-profile purveyors of "black armband" history."

In case you have not seen it already Ron Rosenbaum's 2002 article on the moral imbecility of the Left ("Goodbye, All That: How Left Idiocies Drove Me to Flee") is also worth reading.

Slate reports that we know next to nothing about the effects of gay parenting on children. So let's experiment on a generation to find out! No "precautionary principle" there. Under the precautionary principle Green/Left politicians say that the alleged unknowns of genetically modified crops make them too risky to even experiment with, so modifying tried and tested social systems is surely at least as risky. Where's the hysteria? Once again we see that a so-called "principle" is just a tool to cause disruption, not something sincerely believed. It will never be used against disruption of society.

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ELSEWHERE

"Behind closed doors many U.S. technology executives will say something that could get them flayed if repeated in public: Sending computer programming jobs to India and China is good for America".

Internet pioneer Marc Andreesen supports the outsourcing of computer programming jobs as win-win.

The wicked one says the Pledge of Allegiance is Leftist!

My recipe for today is for pumpkin muffins. Very vegetarian! But they taste good 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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THE NATURE OF MORALITY

One of the most common topics of conversation among people is whether or not various things are right or wrong so it is more than a little strange that Leftist intellectuals very often claim that there is no such thing as right or wrong. Clearly, then, the nature of right and wrong is an important topic if only for political reasons. So Keith Burgess-Jackson and I have each in our own way been trying in our recent postings to give a careful account of what morality is and what it can and cannot do.

I think Keith's most recent posting on the matter is a very clear one that very few people could have much argument with but I think it needs to be extended a bit to answer what Leftists say. So I will try to do that. Keith says that only values exist rather than any abstract properties of rightness or wrongness and I agree with that, as would most Leftists. Where do we go from there, however? Leftists draw the to-be-expected inconsistent conclusion that describing anything as "wrong" or "evil" is therefore silly unless it it applies to the actions of George W. Bush or other conservatives.

The conclusion I draw is that people use moral language in a variety of ways but they mostly mean something real and important by it that transcends the personal. They are not merely expressing their own preferences or values. They are conveying propositions that do have truth value. This can most clearly be seen in those cases where we feel that we could substitute the word "advantageous" for "good" or "right" with no loss of meaning or little loss of meaning. I take "advantageous" to mean "leading in the long term to a situation that you would prefer". So the saying "killing babies is wrong" translates not to "there is an immutable property of wrongness about killing babies" but to "Killing babies leads in the long term to a situation that you would not prefer over the alternative."

Now, obviously, many people DO want to say that killing babies has nothing to do with preferences and that it would still be wrong even if everyone in the universe said it was right. That is however a mere assertion or expression of personal opinion that is not testable and so has no truth value. I do not argue with such people. They are entitled to their opinion and to their way of using words. I simply want to point out that for many if not most people "advantageous" is either a large part or 100% of what they mean by "right" and that in such cases the statement is capable of being argued for as being either true or false. I could, for instance, argue against the proposition that "Killing babies leads in the long term to a situation that you would not prefer over the alternative" by saying that the ancient Greeks routinely killed babies and that theirs was the most brilliant society and civilization of its times so killing babies does not have consequences that are automatically or on the whole unpleasant. Many people would fault my argument in that respect (by presenting, for instance, reasons why Greece would have been even more brilliant if they had not killed babies) but the argument would be about what leads to what -- a scientific argument, if you like. It would not be a mere assertion of values.

So it is perfectly reasonable, rational, realistic and coherent to see "is right" statements as having truth value -- and Leftists who deny truth value to such statements are distorting or ignoring what many if not most people mean by such statements.

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