ELSEWHERE

"Gun control has not worked in Canada. Since the new gun registration program started in 1998, the U.S. homicide rate has fallen, but the Canadian rate has increased. The net cost of Canada's gun registry has surged beyond $1-billion -- more than 500 times the amount originally estimated. Despite this, the Canadian government recently admitted it could not identify a single violent crime that had been solved through registration. Public confidence in the government's ability to fight crime has also eroded, with one recent survey showing only 17% of voters support the registration program."

Welfare state unfair: "Two academics - Dr Alan Tapper of Perth's Edith Cowan University and Dr David Thomson of New Zealand's Massey University - have confirmed that, across much of the Western world, the 60-year-old welfare state is in crisis. The welfare state has come to be not so much a straight-out redistribution from the haves to the have-nots, as was originally intended. Rather it has been, in Tapper's words, "one generation imposing costs on its successor".... Dr David Thomson's study, Selfish Generations? How Welfare States Grow Old (Cambridge: The White Horse Press, 1996), has produced evidence from Britain, Europe and the USA, that the welfare state is increasingly unable to satisfy the conflicting demands for "intergenerational justice". Australia's young generation is burdened, not only by heavy taxation and reduced welfare entitlements, but also soaring property prices and poor job prospects... The plight of Generation X caused the ANZ's chief economist Saul Eslake recently to exclaim that he could not understand why the young were not rising up".

Peg Kaplan is appalled at the half-hearted reaction of the Leftist media to the recent beheading in Saudi Arabia. The Abu Ghraib harassment can be shown endlessly but not the terminal brutality of Muslims.

Reagan and the "homeless" "In 1987, Reagan signed into law the Stewart B. McKinney act, a collection of programs that provided health care, shelter and transitional housing for homeless people, and saved many lives"

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth

"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights

Comments? Email me 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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ARNOLD KLING ON THE DANGEROUS NEW TACTICS OF THE LEFT

The Left's tactical weapons: "The last 25 years have seen an intellectual victory by the Right over the Left on the topic of central planning. ... Thus, conservatives might be lulled into thinking that we have beaten back the argument for big government. However, the Left has not gone away. It has mutated, and as Sebastian Mallaby suggests, those of us who advocate small government may very well be losing...

The left uses the Corruption weapon to attack the legitimacy of business enterprises, conservatives, and Republicans... Faced with the Corruption charge, the Right faces a dilemma. Nobody wants to defend mistakes or adverse results. However, if the Right caves in to every demand, then the corporate profits that do not disappear under a mountain of regulation will be extracted via shakedowns (called "settlements"). If business and war had to be conducted perfectly to be conducted at all, then we would have not have any private enterprise in our economy and we would not have won a single war in our history.... In order to reduce the abuse of the Corruption weapon, we need to make a habit of always pointing out cases where it is used to attack rather than to strengthen our society. Our goal should be to help sensitize the public to the difference between constructive criticism on the one hand and efforts to undermine our economy and our foreign policy on the other... We also need to emphasize to the public the large costs of Nader-esque crusades. Hasty legislation, such as Sarbanes-Oxley, tends to penalize decent, well-run corporations a great deal, for very little benefit in constraining the future behavior of unscrupulous individuals.

The other banner under which the Left marches is Compassion. If you favor more market-oriented approaches to health care, education, or Social Security, you will be accused of a lack of compassion -- of throwing grandma out of her wheelchair.... Instead of trying to placate the Left on Compassion, I believe that we ought to emphasize the ways in which government compassion is an oxymoron. In particular: The taxes to fund government compassion create new groups of needy people. For example, many of the young families without health insurance pay thousands of dollars a year in Social Security taxes.... Government compassion does not target the needy, but instead leads to state control of everyone's education, health care, and retirement security. In Thomas Sowell's phrase, "The left uses the poor as human shields".. For reducing the population of the needy, economic growth works better than government aid. As Robert Lucas (Nobel, 1995) put it recently, "of the vast increase in the well-being of hundreds of millions of people that has occurred in the 200-year course of the industrial revolution to date, virtually none of it can be attributed to the direct redistribution of resources from rich to poor. The potential for improving the lives of poor people by finding different ways of distributing current production is nothing compared to the apparently limitless potential of increasing production."

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A touching memoir by Father John, a former Anglican who grew so disgusted with the secularism of his church that he left it and joined the Eastern Orthodox Church. "Our decision to leave was difficult, and not made easily. But, by the mercy of God, we had found the Orthodox Church, and faith, and way of life; and what had started as a way of fleeing from the coming apostasy of ECUSA became an increasingly powerful desire to embrace the faith of the Church that has existed since the day of Pentecost, her continuity unbroken, her faith unchanged. We started out as refugees; and found ourselves coming home. There are not words, nor time enough, to adequately say "thank you" to God for His mercy and favor in bringing us home. If any Anglicans happen to stray across this page, let me say again to you that the faith you desire is safe, and secure, and found today where it has always resided: in the Orthodox Church."

BRAVO for Michelle Malkin!: I thought that what the WSJ says about immigration -- it champions open borders -- was pretty strange but Michelle really gives it to them.

Job-stealers almost all American: "Quite often we see headlines about U.S. jobs being "lost" overseas or even "stolen" abroad. Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Labor issued a report that said that just a small fraction of U.S. jobs lost were lost to overseas workers. "Of the 239,361 private sector nonfarm workers who were separated from their jobs for at least 31 days in the first quarter of 2004, the separations of 4,633 workers were associated with the movement of work outside of the country""

But what about the farm vote! "Eliminating global trade tariffs and other protective barriers would lift at least 500 million people out of poverty over 15 years, according to a new study released on Thursday.... In the study, titled "Trade Policy and Global Poverty," Cline also argues that lifting trade barriers would enable rich industrial nations to convey about twice as much gain to developing countries as they currently provide through foreign aid -- at a benefit rather than cost to their own consumers"

I guess it is worth something that "Britain fought a successful rearguard battle to preserve national vetoes on key policy areas such as taxation, social security, foreign and defense policy and criminal law" in the EU constitution negotiations.

Norm Weatherby points out that we COULD stop terrorist kidnappings and beheadings in their tracks if we really wanted to.

Bureaucracy at work: The Minnesota Commerce Department, believing that discount gasoline is worse for consumers than ridiculously inflated gasoline prices, hit Arkansas-based Murphy Oil with a $70,000 fine, and Kwik Trip Inc. with a $5,000 fine, for not making sufficient profit on their gasoline, i.e., for charging too little for their gasoline.

Reagan the racist: "So, how did blacks fare under Ronald Reagan? From the end of 1982 to 1989, black unemployment dropped 9 percentage points (from 20.4 percent to 11.4 percent), while white unemployment dropped by only 4 percentage points. Black household income went up 84 percent from 1980 to 1990, versus a white household income increase of 68 percent. The number of black-owned businesses increased from 308,000 in 1982 to 424,000 in 1987, a 38 percent rise versus a 14 percent increase in the total number of firms in the United States"

Gipper? A reader explains: "George Gipp was a famous and very successful football player. Reagan played him in "Knute Rockne, All American". Rockne was the coach at Notre Dame college, played in this case by Pat O'Brein, a pro Irishman. When Gipp, known as the Gipper, was dying from pneumonia and a strep infection he is supposed to have said as encouragement to Notre Dame against Army - "win one for the Gipper." This is a high note in the movie, of course.

Another communist absurdity: Mongolians lost their surnames under Communism and are only now getting them back

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth

"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights

Comments? Email me 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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REALISM IN SOCIOLOGY!

Highly respected sociologist Peter Berger notes a big upsurge of Protestantism in Latin America and says it will lead to a big increase in democracy and capitalist prosperity there: "our research has estimated that there may be between forty and fifty million Protestants south of the United States border. And something like eighty percent of them are first-generation Protestants, so we are dealing with a massive phenomenon- most of them, by the way, again somewhere around eighty percent, are Pentecostal, so it's a very particular kind of Protestantism that is exploding.

I would say there are a number of consequences one can already see. If you talk about social institutions, we have here an incredible replication of some of the values and habits that Max Weber was describing in terms of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe and North America, the Protestant ethic.... Economically, again one can say the same thing, it's creating a group of people with very strong entrepreneurial interest.... They tend to favor democracy, because it's very much a people's movement. ... . The Protestant ethic-hard work, saving, discipline, basically not enjoying life very much and saving for the next generation- these kinds of values and behavior patterns are very conducive to success. ...

Socialism is no longer just an idea, it's a form of economic and political organization that has been tried in many countries, not just in the Soviet Union. It has unfailingly produced economic disaster, and in most cases, pretty odious political tyrannies. So the idea that socialism is the way to personal liberation is, empirically speaking, a horrendous mistake"

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Amusing: "A new book by a prominent Washington psychoanalyst says President George W. Bush is a "paranoid meglomaniac" as well as a sadist and "untreated alcoholic.... Dr. Frank has been a psychiatrist for 35 years and is director of psychiatry at George Washington University. A Democrat, he once headed the Washington Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility". So a Leftist shrink thinks GWB is nuts. I am sure the feeling is mutual. Leftist psychiatrists said much the same thing about Ronnie. Yet all the psychiatrists in the world put together would be lucky to have one millionth of the popularity of Ronald Reagan. If psychiatrists can mistake one of history's greatest human beings for a nut, it shows who the real nuts are. Being despised by Leftist psychiatrists puts GWB in very good company indeed.

"Self-impressed protesters who wanted to 'shut down' the BIO 2004 conference in San Francisco last week could take a lesson in morality and courage from Emeryville's Chiron Corp. The protesters engaged in their cheap stunts knowing there would be no real consequences for their actions -- not in San Francisco. Chiron employees, on the other hand, endured personal abuse and vicious harassment for months because they believe their work to develop new medicines and therapies is too important to abandon. The harassment began in 2003, when animal-rights activists began targeting Chiron because it had contracted with the animal-research firm, Huntingdon Life Sciences. The campaign -- which included yelling obscenities in front of workers' homes, following workers' children and jamming employees' home phone lines -- is the handiwork of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, an animal-rights group dedicated to shutting down Huntingdon for using animals in research."

Interesting that France still has influential Fascists who seem to have been lifted straight out of the 1930s. Variously called "villieristes" and "sovereignists", they are socialists who are also strong nationalists -- just like Hitler and Mussolini. They have at least one representative in the EU parliament -- best known for proposing that France give nuclear weapons to the Arabs to "even things up" between them and the Jews. Hitler would have loved it. See here for more.

Churchill once advocated using gas on rebellious Iraqi tribesmen, but what gas was he talking about? Another Leftie lie exposed.

Tribal morality: "Why do nice people do evil acts? In the old South, White folks who were polite to their families and neighborhoods would gang up to hang innocent Blacks. Germans who listened to classical music and were kind to their children would turn around and send Jewish children to death camps. Why? It is because human beings compartmentalize their thinking. We mentally divide the world into categories with different standards. There is a human propensity to put our own tribe into the human category, to be treated with politeness and respect, and to put an enemy or a perceived inferior group or those who do disapproved acts into a separate category, 'them.'"

"human beings discriminate every day. You do it, and I do it. And it doesn't mean we're close-minded. It means we care about the situations we put ourselves into. We choose our friends carefully, for example. For whatever reason -- be it the way they're dressed, the way they smell, the way they walk, or whatever -- we choose not to befriend a large majority of the people we meet. That's discrimination. Maybe they should sue?"

Oliver Kamm had a recent post that made me laugh. This is the whole of it: "On my way home last night I noticed that my local cinema is showing a film entitled "The Prince and Me". I have no idea what it's about, but me am incredulous and appalled." He is obviously more of a stickler for Latin grammar than I am. For those who take an interest in British politics, Kamm seems to be the scourge of Britain's most wishy-washy political party -- the Lib-Dems. We have a similar political party in Australia -- the Australian Democrats -- so I sympathize.

The new N-word among the Democrats: "Just the mention of defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, attorney general John Ashcroft or vice-president Dick Cheney will set diatribes in motion. But if you really want to see them in a rage wait until the Bushwhacking stops and someone admits that they voted for Ralph Nader, the anti-corporate crusader, in the 2000 presidential elections. The N-word should not be spoken in polite liberal company. Once his name has been uttered all camaraderie and bonhomie evaporate as readily as if the miscreant had confessed to relieving himself in the host's sink. There is a ready-made vocabulary Democrats use to describe how they feel about George Bush. When it comes to Nader, and by association those who voted for him, words fail them."

Shaun Bourke has posted the following comment on Catallaxy: "Over many years I have found that,in relation to homosexuality,women can be found in basically two camps. Those that are happily married and those that are not or are divorced. It is in the latter group that you will find the most profound approval of homosexuality" He would like to know if anybody else has noticed that.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth

"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights

Comments? Email me 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 INCONVENIENT HISTORY

Was it conservatives or progressives who were responsible for the Tuskegee experiment? "The Tuskegee syphilis study ranks almost with slavery and lynching as a symbol of America's racist past. There is probably not one black American adult who does not know-or thinks he knows-about an experiment from the 1930s in which government health authorities deliberately withheld treatment from 400 black syphilitics just to see what would happen to them.... Anthropologist Richard Shweder of the University of Chicago has just published a detailed analysis of the Tuskegee study in which he shows that virtually every popular assumption about it is false. (Tuskegee re-examined, January 8, 2004) The study was undertaken by "progressives" who wanted to fight a disease that afflicted many blacks, it had the full support of black medical authorities to the end, and- most important- it probably caused no harm to the 140 men (not 400) who took part.

Windschuttle has posted a recent summary of the history wars. He gives many examples of blatant and deliberate lies by Leftist Australian historians who try their hardest to foster white guilt. Just two excerpts: "Lyndall Ryan cites the Hobart Town Courier as a source for several stories about atrocities against Aborigines in 1826. However, that newspaper did not begin publication until October 1827 and the other two newspapers of the day made no mention of these alleged killings" and "Lloyd Robson claims the settler James Hobbs in 1815 witnessed Aborigines killing 300 sheep at Oyster Bay and the next day the 48th Regiment killed 22 Aborigines in retribution. However, it would have been difficult for Hobbs to have witnessed this in 1815 because at the time he was living in India. Moreover, the first sheep did not arrive at Oyster Bay until 1821" What total crooks Leftist historians are!

Any Leftist will tell you that the Nazis were really bad guys compared to those lovable well-intentioned Soviets. The truth however appears to be very different. Read this account of how the Nazis surrendered to the wives of imprisoned Jews in Berlin itself. A public demonstration against Nazi policy actually caused the top Nazi leadership to release Jews who had been destined for the concentration camps! Sad though it is, Nazism was actually popular in Germany -- as any number of pre-war writers (such as Roberts and Heiden) attest -- and the Nazis were keen not to jeopardize that. Any idea that Stalin cared for public opinion in Russia is merely laughable. Unlike Stalin, Hitler came to power by democratic means (details here) rather than revolution and so started out as a rather extreme democratic Leftist rather than a Marxist. Once he escaped democratic restraints, however, he, like Stalin, showed what all Leftists are really made of.

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ELSEWHERE

Money can buy happiness: "Two studies released yesterday shed new light on the importance of economic circumstances, and undermine earlier findings that poor people are just as happy as the rich. Money doesn't buy Happiness - or Does It? by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, at Melbourne University, shows that when wealth - not just income - is measured, the rich are indeed happier than the poor. Earlier research that focused only on income found very little difference in the reported happiness of high-income and low-income people. Mark Wooden, the study's co-author, said: "This has led some people to say money is not that important, relative to other things." However, when people's assets were taken into account - the value of their houses, cars, art works, even stamp collection - a different picture emerged."

Good stuff! "I have long written about how adherence to the Modern Liberal philosophy requires a childish mentality. The grown up mind, forged in the real world, quickly dismisses the infantile "tooth fairy" mentality of the left where riches are bestowed to one, without labor or merit, in their sleep. Those who mature soon grow out of the Democrats' disdain for personal responsibility, seeing it as more befitting an angry teenager looking for someone to blame than grown men and women seeking to make a better life and a better world.... Anyone who has raised a teenager recognizes the ridiculous hyperbole that has become the standard fare in stump speeches and personal appearances by today's Democratic Party "leaders... Today's Democrats, like small children, see only their own immediate gratification and the chance to advance their short-term personal wants." (Via Dick McDonald)

I have just done an extensive revision of my big monograph on the motivations of Leftists. I have greatly expanded my coverage of the claim that Leftist intellectuals suffer from a milder form of a psychiatric condition known as psychopathy. The best bit is here.

Appeals court reinstates petition drive against affirmative action: "Giving a boost to the beleaguered campaign to end the use of race in government hiring and university admissions decisions, the state Court of Appeals has reinstated a petition drive aimed at placing the issue before Michigan voters. A unanimous three-judge appeals panel, in a seven-page opinion dated June 11 and obtained Saturday by the Free Press, overturned a March ruling in Ingham County Circuit Court that the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative was improperly worded and likely to confuse voters."

A column here by David Brooks points out that America's highly educated elite is divided between the professions and the business managers, with the former usually Democrat and the latter usually Republican. He omits to say that both are graduates of roughly the same universities. So how come the first lot have stayed true to what they learnt at university and the business-people have not? Easy. It's a lot harder life in business -- dog eat dog -- so illusions don't last long. It's yet another example of how experience teaches conservatism.

Even the NYT has never managed to muster much enthusiasm for John Kerry. But they do have some good advice for him here: "For months, Senator John Kerry has been among the loudest in the chorus criticizing President Bush for not persuading our allies to shoulder more of the Iraq burden. But now it is time for Mr. Kerry to start admonishing the allies.... One way to persuade voters that he is presidential is for Mr. Kerry to put the country's interests ahead of his own, narrowly construed. Turning his considerable critical attention, however briefly, onto the failings of others (besides President Bush's) would be a great place to start."

After last week's debacle (which I did not think worth linking to) Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its usual convenient range of good posts all in one place.

Wicked Thoughts has a post suggesting that Ronald Reagan was a gambler.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth

"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights

Comments? Email me 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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AFRICA

Amazing! "Amid chronic fuel, food and currency shortages and a contracting economy, Zimbabwe has secretly placed a 200m order for fighter jets and military vehicles from China". While millions of Zimbabweans are going hungry at the same time, of course. Obviously a Leftist government! And how will they pay for it? Maybe with all the farms they have just "nationalized" somehow?

There is a graphic description here of the disaster that is socialism in Ethiopia today. It was a totally foreseeable disaster and is a perfect example of the fact that Leftists are not even interested in thinking ahead -- something also seen in the Muslim-appeasers of today's "antiwar" American Left. Only the instant gratification of appearing praiseworthy in the present matters to them. A small excerpt: "Abraham Tekelgne's family couldn't have been happier when a socialist government swept to power, seized the country's private farmland and allotted it to rural peasants... Today the family often gets by on one meal of toasted corn a day. Too poor to buy fertilizer and with few trees left to cut, they're not sure how they will make it another year... The stakes are highest in Ethiopia, where the number of people dependent on international food aid is growing by 2 million a year"

William Shawcross on the current Darfur holocaust: "Since early last year, this vicious campaign has claimed an estimated 30,000 civilian lives; international aid agencies say that over 1.2m people have been displaced within Sudan and at least 120,000 have fled to neighbouring Chad, making Khartoum's conduct a grave threat to regional as well as internal stability. USAID estimates that another 350,000 could die due to the desperate situation in Darfur. In short, the government of Sudan is conducting a scorched-earth, near-genocidal war against its own citizens. Again... But the time for the international community to stand by and hope is long past. The government-supported atrocities in Darfur are too horrific and widespread to ignore. The roaring silence from the Arab League and the Muslim world over Darfur is inexcusable. Both the Arab aggressors and the black African victims are Muslims. So one might have expected to hear something from those quarters, at least a call from the former for Arab brethren to show restraint, if not condemnation from the latter of the massacre of Muslims. The European Union has not fared much better, offering weak words at best"

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USING RACE TO DESTROY EDUCATION

Dave Huber has another post up about thedesperate twists and turns of the education authorities in Delaware. They do and say ANYTHING rather than admit that blacks do less well at school because blacks are different. To admit to any differences would take away one of their favourite propaganda tools -- the claim that all men are equal. The tragic thing is that blacks COULD do well at school if given the high-discipline environment that the Left are determined to deny them. But if you understand that hatred of other people's success is the real Leftist motive, what they do makes perfect sense. When they forcibly "integrate" blacks into low-discipline classes of white students, they destroy the education of BOTH blacks AND whites. Bravo! Well done!

In a rational system, both high and low discipline schools would be readily available and students would end up in one or the other according to which helped them most. And if it were mostly blacks who ended up in the high discipline schools, so what? Leftists once advocated that official policy should be colour-blind. Now they advocate the opposite. Which shows again what sort of principles and guiding philosophy they have: None. As long as they can use a policy to create havoc, they will.

There is a full exposition here of how Leftists use government to create and perpetuate racial discrimination, disharmony and disadvantage.

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ELSEWHERE

Another pack of lies in the "New York Times": This time about Australia. Australia is in the process of abolishing its major Aboriginal (black) organization (ATSIC) and the NYT explains that, predictably, as racism on the part Australia's conservastive Federal government. Why Australia's major party of the Left (the ALP) also supports abolition was not explained. The single word that explains it all was not even mentioned in the NYT: "corruption". ATSIC stank to high heaven of it -- to the point where it could not be ignored any longer. Government funding that went to ATSIC was routinely diverted into the private pockets of those running it and nothing seemed able to stop that. Abolition was the only option. What an utter rag the NYT has become. It's the Soviet propaganda machine of the 21st century.

More glories of socialized medicine: "A shocking 50 per cent of overseas trained doctors admit they need training in life support and clinical judgment. More than 1761 foreign-trained doctors were working in NSW last year and many of them have never passed the Australian Medical Council Exam to prove they meet Australian standards. The frightening admission has prompted the nation's GP training body to set up a special training program for them. There has been a massive 74 per cent increase in overseas trained doctors working in the state since 2000 as governments try to make up for a shortage of locally trained graduates".

But beat this: 23-year-old Joe Quinone of Colorado Springs, Colorado, has been walking around for 2 1/2 months without the right side of his skull. It was removed during emergency surgery and cannot be put back on until the two state agencies arguing over which should pay for the procedure work it out. In the meantime he's been walking around wearing a helmet, unable to drive and unable to work.

Boo hoo! for the Dimocrats: "U.S. companies are gearing up to create jobs at rates not seen since the height of the 1990s boom, a survey released on Tuesday showed"

Muslim terrorism was fairly easily halted in a less politically correct age. See here for how General Pershing did it in the Philippines. He took their 72 virgins away!

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never outgrown the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth

Comments? Email me 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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BLACK ANGER AGAIN

I put up here on 5th an anecdote about the irrational hatred of the GOP by blacks. There is a similar story on Crispus. I gather that the author of it is black. Excerpt:

"On Saturday I had a very heated debate with a close friend and her husband. My friend claimed that the 1980s were "the worst decade for black folks ever!" She then went into a tirade about Reagan and linked it to the current Bush, saying they were the worst presidents ever for black folks....

I brought up Thomas Jefferson's "I hate slavery but I still own and rape my slaves" stance as a key example of hypocrisy which trumps modern presidents. I brought up how liberal social programs have harmed black communities, and that we must return to our old-school personal responsibility ethic. My friend then proceeded to shout me down (can liberals ever have a civil discussion, I asked her?), called me "classist" and then abruptly ended the conversation saying that we should never discuss politics again. It got so heated that she pulled rank when I calmly disputed her points, saying "This is my house and I won't tolerate such crazy comments in it (she did apologize yesterday).

I put stuff in context and surely being free and middle-class (which is most black Americans) beats being enslaved and poor. I thought conservatives were over the top when they said that liberal thought is totalitarian when it comes to other viewpoints, but more and more I'm seeing it. Mind you, I have mixed opinions about Ronald Reagan (which I'll outline later) but liberals just can't allow common sense to overcome their hatred".

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FROM BROOKES NEWS

The American economy recovers - as predicted August last year I predicted that America's employment rate would start picking up within six months or so. I also stated thatthe productivity surge indicated recovery. The results are in: President Bush is on a winner
Patriotism and the Abu Ghraib paintings Colwell deliberately painted American troops as a bunch of sadistic Nazis. His paintings were not an anti-war statement but a cowardly attack on the US and its military
Why oil taxes are no solution to oil imports The Iraq war, troubles in Saudi Arabia and rising oil prices has led some folks to conclude that the road to energy independence can be found through state-sponsored higher energy price
The UN sex for food scandal and Abu Ghraib UN 'peacekeeping forces' in the Congo have been raping and impregnating girls as young as thirteen years old in exchange for food
Rudyard Kipling's stirring reply to the left's loathing of the US military Rudyard Kipling's answer to the leftists who hate and despise the military
Hunger in Israel: Never Thought I'd See the Day Israel's growing poverty is, in part, also due to the constant attempts by Western countries to place boycotts on Israeli products
A Marxist economist screws up on wages and living standards Frank Stilwell, a socialist professor of economics at the University of Sydney, is another graphic example of the left's total inability to learn from history, particularly economic history

Details here

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Reuters can't do arithmetic: With reference to the poor showing of Tony Blair's Labour Party in the EU elections, Reuters says: "Voters punished the prime minister for waging war in Iraq". They also report that Labour got 23% of the vote, Conservatives got 27% and the Independence Party got 16%. But ALL THREE of those parties are in favour of the Iraq war. So 66% of Britons voted for pro-war parties! Very different from the lies peddled by Reuters! But it is what we have come to expect of Reuters, of course.

I am still steaming a little about the Leftist claim (summarized recently by Oliver Kamm) that Reagan's antinuclear stance made him a Leftist. At least in part, that denial springs from the conceit that only the Left are "antiwar" or "antinuclear". So if Reagan was antinuclear he must have been a Leftist. That is a total misrepresentation of conservatism and really is the most offensive arrogance. No person in his right mind, Left or Right, wants war, particularly a nuclear war. The only difference between Leftists and Rightists over the issue was the means adopted to avoid war. Conservatives had the guts to believe that there was some alternative to surrendering to tyranny and undertook the arduous task of deterring war through strength -- which in the end brought about the marvellous achievement for all humanity of both destroying the threat of nuclear war and destroying the world's most threatening tyranny as well. The only idea that Leftists had in the matter was surrender -- or "unilateral disarmament", as they called it. They probably rather fancied themselves as Soviet Commissars in a Communist State anyway. I have put up a fuller account of the defects in the Leftist claim here

A former deputy Prime Minister of Sweden says that European anti-Americanism and ant-Zionism are just the modern versions of old-fashioned Jew hatred. See here

Pammy Anderson backs PETA: "Pam went on the attack today with nothing in her corner but words -- and the letterhead of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. 'When you take a multimillion-dollar endorsement from a company,' she wrote Earnhardt (in a letter released to the media), 'you must also take some responsibility for the company's practices.' We could make the same point -- and a few others -- about Pammy's relationship with PETA. Anderson's Hollywood handlers might want to advise her that hooking up with a group that funds violent extremists, consistently opposes life-saving medical research, and cavalierly traumatizes millions of children might not be as good a career move as she thinks."

No free speech in Britain! "A 71 year old man has been banned from driving for warning other motorists of a speed trap up the road -- even though he wasn't in his car at the time! He was also ordered to pay 364 pounds in costs. Stuart Harding stood on the A325 near Farnborough [UK] with a sign saying 'Speed Trap -- 300 yards ahead.' He had stood there on previous occasions warning motorists to slow down because of a car boot sale up the road which generated a lot of pedestrian traffic. Police however took exception when Harding warned of their speed trap."

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never outgrown the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth

Comments? Email me 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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INTELLECTUALS AT WORK

Andrew Bolt points to the deplorable record of siding with tyranny that intellectuals have. It wouldn't have anything to do with intellectuals themselves wanting to be tyrants, would it? Excerpt: "We are reminded of the three wars America and its friends have fought in the past 60 years against totalitarianism -- the fascism of the Nazis, the communism of the Soviet Union, and the Islamic fascism sponsored by regimes such as Iran's. And, each time, which class of people in the West tended to side with these enemies of humanity, in thought, deed or omission? Who? The intellectuals of the Left -- the folk who contrast the messy world of free people with the disciplined perfection of steel dreams and paper plans, and find freedom ugly. Before World War II, many sophisticates in Britain and France urged against confronting Hitler. It would just goad him, they said. And didn't he have reasonable claims?"

Black leader slams do-gooder elitism: "Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson has accused social justice advocate Father Frank Brennan of expecting Aborigines to eschew materialism, even though his own relatives are "successful and high-earning lawyers and professionals". Calling Father Brennan "part of an old Catholic, Labor social-justice ... tradition", Mr Pearson said the Jesuit lawyer was part of a lobby that believed Aborigines should not engage in capitalist society "unless they have found solutions to all of the dilemmas and problems of materialism, individualism and secularism"."

Another disgusting Leftist bishop: "Three months after Ian George was installed as Anglican Archbishop of Adelaide in June 1991, an Adelaide Hills priest was arrested on serious charges of gross indecency towards two boys. The Archbishop personally took charge of the case and spoke several times to the mother of the boys. On one occasion, she claims Dr George told her the priest was "just trying to be one of the boys" BUT, we also read of the bishop: "He was a leading advocate of women joining the priesthood and reconciliation with the Aboriginal community. He was vocal on the plight of asylum seekers. He spoke with intelligence, offering thoughtful and constructive comment on the implications of war with Iraq". In other words, like Leftists generally, he was only interested in "the big picture". Individuals were merely a nuisance.

Arrogant judges: "Since the spate of gang rape trials exposed the fact the courts are treating rape victims like cannon fodder, there has been an outbreak of Brahmanism from within the legal profession - a self-appointed higher caste, with a sense that any robust criticism of the courts or, God forbid, the judiciary, from outside is, by definition, ill-informed and inappropriate.... Again and again in recent months, judges have shown a willingness to throw out trials or grant appeals on grounds that appear suffocatingly narrow or excessively technical. Underpinning all these decisions is a tacit belief that jurors, non-lawyers, are malleable and impressionable...."

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ELSEWHERE

A good reply to Leftist critics of Reagan: "Almost ALL of Reagan's policies were approved by a Democrat-dominated Congress!" A good example of Reagan humour: To some question about contradictions in the administration, he replied, "Yes, sometimes our right hand doesn't know what our far right hand is doing."

Dick McDonald has just put up a substantial excerpt from an article in the WSJ by Milton Friedman. Friedman shows that, while Reagan did not manage to cut the overall size of government, he did bring its growth to a screaming halt. Friedman was of course a friend and fan of the Gipper and concludes: "But few people in human history have contributed more to the achievement of human freedom than Ronald Wilson Reagan"

See here for the latest on the official results of the EU voting. It looks like a major upset in Britain, with the new anti-EU party likely to get more votes than one of the major parties. And the German socialists look like getting a bloody nose too. Background here.

Russia sides with GWB: ""I am deeply convinced that President Bush's political adversaries have no moral right to attack him over Iraq because they did exactly the same," Putin said Thursday at the G8 conference in Georgia. "It suffices to recall Yugoslavia". Now why was THAT not all over the news?

Hardly anybody believes big TV now: "Democrats are more than twice as likely (34 percent) to believe CBS News as Republicans (15 percent).

A recent poll of college students found that only 42 percent backed Kerry, with 30 percent for Bush. After all that brainwashing! And many of them will be voting for Bush anyway, though not willing to admit it. "Where have we failed?", the Leftist professoriate must be asking.

An interesting article in World Tribune: "The UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission briefed the Security Council on new findings that could help trace the whereabouts of Saddam's missile and WMD program". There is now clear evidence that sophisticated missiles were sent out of Iraq before US forces took control so it is also clear that failure to find WMDs in Iraq means nothing.

You've got to laugh. At the recent D-day celebrations "Schroeder thanked "France and its allies" and "Russia" for --in the words of CNN's Christiane Amanpour--"liberating" Germany from the Nazis. No mention of America". The Europeans grow more pathetic by the day.

But it's for the good of "the people" of course: "A North Korean official attending an inter-Korean economic meeting in Pyongyang confirmed that mobile phones were banned from May 25"

Good to see that one of the parents of students killed in the Columbine massacre did not turn into an anti-gun nut: Read his comments here. He blames the anti-Christian elite for the tragedy instead. I myself think that nobody can conclude anything from what two mental-cases did.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never outgrown the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth

Comments? Email me 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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PRAGMATISM

In my recent comment on the Leftist claim that Reagan was a peacenik, I pointed out that his negotiations with Gorbachev over nuclear disarmament were in no way Leftist-inspired but rather an example of good conservative pragmatism -- something Gorbachev himself perceived. It is interesting that Kesler's survey of American conservatism in the 20th century also identifies American conservatives generally as being overwhelmingly and repeatedly pragmatic and little concerned with or unified by broad theoretical systems -- though Kesler, as a believer in natural-law morality, deplores that. Excerpts:

"it is possible to have conservatives without having a unified conservative movement. Indeed, this was the situation in America before the mid-1950s. If it is not quite the plight of conservatives today, it may soon be again... Meyer's fusionism thus missed many of the hard questions about morality and politics.... The overwhelming practical imperative was to resist liberalism at home and defeat Communism abroad, and it would have been wrong to try to insist on other principles or conditions for such a necessary alliance... More and more, conservatism lacks a common message or focus, and the education it offers citizens and politicians is splintered into myriad discussions of specific policies."

The word "pragmatic" however, is a rather broad term and it could be held to imply a total lack of principles. I think that Reagan himself is the best demonstration that that is not so. His was the most principled pragmatism one could imagine. Everything he did was calculated to get the best possible deal for the individual. His goals and principles could not have been clearer or more firmly-founded. And who would deny that getting both the USA and the USSR to scrap all nuclear weapons would have been a tremendous victory for the individual? As a true conservative, Reagan had guiding values but he was very flexible about the means of attaining them. Conservatives go by what works but they go by what works in the service of the individual.

Another point I explore elsewhere is that the association between love of individual liberty and pragmatism is no accident. The two attitudes are in fact related.

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ELSEWHERE

Margaret Thatcher's eulogy to the Gipper was brief but very much to the point. See here. Excerpt: "Others prophesied the decline of the West; he inspired America and its allies with renewed faith in their mission of freedom. Others saw only limits to growth; he transformed a stagnant economy into an engine of opportunity. Others hoped at best for an uneasy cohabitation with the Soviet Union; he won the Cold War not only without firing a shot, but also by inviting enemies out of their fortress and turning them into friends".

Like Iain Murray, I was pleased that the funeral was an Anglosphere affair -- with two of the four eulogists not being American. And nobody even thought to question it that I know of.

I have just learned that Reagan once said this: "I learned the value of prayer. My mother told me that everything in life happened for a purpose. She said all things were part of God's plan, even the most disheartening setbacks, and in the end, everything worked out for the best". In the circumstances I am rather glad I said what I did about belief in predestination two days ago. (Link via Petrified Truth).

There is a reply here from several black Americans to the scurrilous claim on ABC News to the effect that Reagan was bad for blacks. Reagan was good for Americans of ALL races.

But Leftist fruitcake Jimmy Breslin's comment on Reagan's funeral can only make one laugh. Breslin said: ""His whole weeklong funeral is cheap, utterly distasteful American publicity." Breslin sure knows how to make himself look a fool.

Larry Elder has an amusing recap of the dumb things the Left had to say about Reagan whilst he was President. And they called Reagan dumb! That Reagan had read Bastiat, von Mises, Hayek and Hazlitt when they were still little-known shows that he was a considerable intellectual, in fact -- just not a Leftist one. And the worth of that intellectual background showed in the success of his economic policies. Had Reagan been reading Miliband, Gramsci, Althusser or any of the other Marxist theologians so favoured by Leftist intellectuals, his policies would have been the usual dismal socialist failure.

There is a fabulous gallery of Reagan photographs here. Ignore the anti-Reagan rant someone has also posted on the site.

Michael Totten says that the Peoples Republic of Berkeley has now become the Islamic Republic of Berkeley. No change of principles was needed, of course. Leftists have the same principles that Stalin had: None.

Nader hypocrisy again: "So let's get this straight: While the workers Nader claims to fight for were braving the New York cold to shame Cisco and other jobs-shipping multinationals, Nader was by the fire polishing up a speech calling such firms 'unpatriotic' -- all the while holding up to half a million dollars in Cisco stock."

About time: "Employers are sick and tired of graduates who cannot function in the workplace, and university funding should be linked to ensuring students complete a graduate skills test, Education Minister Brendan Nelson has warned. In an interview with The Australian, Dr Nelson has flagged plans to force universities to publish the results of the tests, revealing how many of their graduates are ready to go to work.

A forthright summary from Peter Hitchens in his very pessimistic commentary on the EU and its "third way" politics: "it is quite possible for capitalism and socialism to coexist, provided you abolish liberty"

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never outgrown the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth

Comments? Email me 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 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE GIPPER

It has been a sad week for me. I loved everything I ever saw or heard of Ronald Reagan and the thought that he is now gone forever is deeply upsetting to me. It must be the sentimental Celtic component in my ancestry but the tears have never been far away in the last few days. When he was in the White House I felt that he was MY President too -- even though I am a 5th generation Australian and live half a world and nearly a whole time zone away from America. So I offer below some brief thoughts about him and what he was -- to coincide roughly with his being laid to rest in his final place in his beloved America

Reagan had the strong, independent psychological makeup that Leftists lack: "I think they broke the mold when they made Ronnie. He had absolutely no ego, and he was very comfortable in his own skin; therefore, he didn't feel he ever had to prove anything to anyone." --Nancy Reagan. And: "He was hated for precisely the same reasons he was loved. He had convictions and made those without them look weak. ... He knew who he was before he came to office; he did not need the office to complete him." --Cal Thomas

And Eamonn Butler (post of 7th) noted Reagan's lack of egotism too: "The pompous conceit of the media Establishment is parried by Reagan's own epitaph on his administration, which reveals his own complete lack of both pomposity and conceit, tempering his pride in having changed minds and changed events: "Men and women across America for eight years did the work that brought America back. My friends, we did it. We weren't just marking time. We made a difference. We made the city stronger, we made the city freer, and we left her in good hands. All in all, not bad, not bad at all.""

But Jeff Jacoby sums up Ronald Reagan's humility best. A small excerpt: "But one trait has gone largely unmentioned: His remarkable humility.... But if no man was his better, neither was he the better of any man. That instinctive sense of the equality of all Americans never left him -- not even when he was the one with fame and power. I don't think I have ever heard a story about Reagan in which he came across as arrogant or supercilious. In a number of reminiscences this week, former staffers have described what it was like to work for the president. Several have recalled how, even when they were at the bottom of the pecking order, he never made them feel small or unworthy of notice. To the contrary: He noticed them, talked to them, made them feel special. Reagan climbed as high as anyone in our age can climb. But it wasn't ego or a craving for honor and status that drove him, and he never lost his empathy for ordinary Americans -- or his connection with them"

A Leftist who grew up speaks (excerpts) : "When I was a young professor at the University of California in the late sixties I despised Governor Reagan, the more fool I... Later I read the Austrian free market economists, and realized two things: one, that they had essentially won the argument with the socialists, both on the theoretical level and on the level of practical results; and two, that Reagan had realized this twenty or thirty years earlier, and it was I, the socialist, who had been the pseudo-intellectual, and not he.... Those who never grow up in our society always blame our own responsible officials when something goes wrong. Reagan taught us to place the blame where it belonged, on the enemy, and to make peace with them as our enemies -- without firing a shot, as Margaret Thatcher put it.... The Europeans and intellectuals thought Reagan was brain dead; but he was Old Possum: he was only playing brain dead... Reaganomics were likewise just a matter of being adult. The child lives in a world of gift.. ..But the eternal children in our society refused, and still refuse, to accept that they will die. Their anguish at the cost of the Iraq war is the great symptom of that refusal, of the inability to grow up. There should be no costs, they feel; when we were children there were no costs, in a socialist society there would be no costs...."

Further to my comment yesterday that ideals are not ideology and that Reagan showed true conservative pragmatism rather than an ideologist's dogmatism, I note that Gorbachev saw that too. He commented in the New York Times: "Reagan was a man of the right. But, while adhering to his convictions, with which one could agree or disagree, he was not dogmatic; he was looking for negotiations and cooperation"

A good Reagan saying: "I have wondered at times what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress." The 1982 speech in which Reagan foresaw the Soviet system ending on the "ash heap of history" is here. And how can I, as a libertarian conservative, go past this Reagan quote: "If you analyze it, I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism."

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REAGAN'S CRITICS

With reference to the politicians and media types who despised Reagan once but who now are speaking well of him, Armavirumque is pretty acerbic. It says that they were either "fools then or dishonest now".

The current mainstream Leftist line about Reagan seems to be that his triumphs were all due either to accident or just his irresistable personal charm. Ann Coulter rebuts that by pointing out how wide, deep and resolute his conservatism was -- both in word and deed -- and noting how much the Left hated him when he was in office.

Another lame put-down that is coming from the Left at the moment (e.g. Yglesias) says that Reagan in fact showed the impossibility of the conservative agenda by failing to cut the overall size of government. What that failure in fact shows, of course is that Reagan couldn't do everything by himself. He had to get what he could from Congress. He got an amazing amount in some ways and very little in others. No matter which party is nominally in control of Congress, it is an essentially corrupt body that thrives on the art of the deal -- and the loser in every deal is the taxpayer. It is only Congress that can cut back the size of government and there is no sign that it will. And, like Reagan, GWB has bigger (foreign) fish to fry rather than wasting time on trying to make Congress do something that is against its fundamental nature. U.S. Congressmen are very good at keeping their jobs and they largely do it by robbing Peter (the taxpayer) to pay Paul (their supporter groups) and that is not going to change any time soon.

I mentioned a couple of Leftist Reagan-hate sites recently. Wallace of "Big Gold Dog" has drawn my attention to the autobiographical details of the people behind one of the sites. Beth Henry - a "contributing editor" to Axis of Logic describes her beliefs thus: "Democracy is a word politicians use as camouflage for any number of nasty power grabs, murderous campaigns abroad, and capitalist swinery and larceny. Patriotism is a ridiculous concept, designed to separate people of different nations and races, and cause them to objectify one another so that they will be more willing to kill and be killed for the ruling class". Sounds like straight Karl Marx to me. Leftists will never learn.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never outgrown the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth

Comments? Email me 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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WAS OUR RON A PEACENIK?

British blogger Oliver Kamm is a moderate Leftist who supports the Iraq war -- much like his Prime Minister. In his postings of 7th he has an interesting survey of the claim that Ronald Reagan turned into a peacenik in the latter part of his Presidency. The claim is not as ridiculous as it seems. Reagan definitely did have the very idealistic aim of de-nuclearizing the world. And he went close to achieving it. He and Gorbachev at Reykjavik actually agreed to scrap all nuclear weapons on both sides. It was only Reagan's refusal to scrap his missile defence program that scuppered the agreement. And it may also be noted that Reagan was no warmonger. The overseas military operations he initiated were tiny compared to what his three successors as President have done and tiny compared to the great but fumbled intervention in Vietnam. Reagan's concentration was on building up American strength at home rather than on intervening abroad.

Like various others in that small subsection of the Left which takes a genuine interest in reality, Kamm takes all this as evidence that Reagan was as much a Leftist as a Rightist. That shows very little understanding of conservatism, however, and of American conservatism in particular. Reagan's "America first" strategy is in fact a good example of the isolationism that ruled among American conservatives right up until Sept. 11, 2001. American conservatives have always wanted to let the rest of the world to go to hell in its own way and it was DEMOCRAT presidents that got America into both world wars, Korea and Vietnam. America has to be under serious threat for American conservatives to take any notice of the rest of the world at all. It was only Saddam's serious threat to oil supplies that got George Bush Senior into the first Gulf war and he pulled out as soon as that threat was removed. It was only when 9/11 showed beyond any shadow of reasonable doubt that America was under serious and lasting threat from implacable Islamic hatred that George Bush II began his interventions in the Islamic world.

And Reagan's refusal at Reyjavik to abandon missile defence is a perfect example of conservatism. Whatever else it may be, conservatism from Burke onwards has been cautious and Reagan's desire to have a defence in case nuclear disarmament did not completely succeed was clearly caution -- and caution that he rigorously insisted on above all else. There was nothing in that of the unilateral disarmament nonsense that the peaceniks of the Left were always preaching at that time. As always, of course, Reagan himself summed it up best in his well-known maxim: "Trust but verify". There was idealism there indeed: Very high ideals. But it was never allowed to overcome good conservative caution.

In the end, however Kamm does arrive at an essential insight: "My own interpretation of this idiosyncratic record is that, having established his anti-Communist credentials, Reagan's 'soft diplomacy' approach worked well at exactly the time it was needed. It was puzzling, but effective, and probably no one else could have done it". In other words, Reagan was no rigid ideologue. Ideals are not ideology. Ideology and grand theories are for Leftists. Conservatives are pragmatic and flexible. Conservatives have ideals but in pursuing those ideals they go by what works. And our Ron showed that flexibility and pragmatism to brilliant effect.

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