ELSEWHERE

There is a huge review here of books that try to explain anti-Americanism. The Leftist explanations are hilarious in their selectivity about America's faults. It all boils down to envy of course but I found this bit interesting: "Because as they struggle to learn and speak English and to find a comfortable meeting place between America's culture and their own, these foreigners are acutely aware that Americans don't have to make a comparable effort. English is our language; American culture, our culture. It is our exemption from this otherwise global burden of adaptation, Purdy suggests, that makes us seem "imperial."". I had never thought of that -- probably because Australians generally feel perfectly at home in America without making any effort at all. Old guys like me even appreciate the fact that America still has proper measurements -- like feet and inches and miles and pounds instead of the kilometers and kilograms that now prevail almost everywhere else. Australia went metric in 1970 -- at enormous cost and for no good reason. With metric you have only got to misplace a decimal point and you are history. You can't make that sort of mistake with feet and inches.

A powerful article here: ""When a white person kills a black person, we all go out in the street to protest," said Reverend Floyd Flake. "But our children are being educationally killed every day in public schools and nobody says a thing.".... The Democratic Party's two evil co-conspirators in this systematic destruction of black childrens' minds, dreams and futures are a labor union, the National Education Association (NEA), and what used to be regarded as a civil rights organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). All three groups in this unholy trinity exploit children - as surely as did 19th Century plantation slave owners or Dickensian industrial factory owners - destroying millions of young African-American lives for their own selfish gain.... today, by cynically working together the NAACP, NEA and Democratic Party have created for themselves a symbiotic iron triangle of wealth and power that would fall apart if any one of the three departed from their symbiotic, self-aggrandizing behavior. Their wealth and power are being paid for with the enslavement and wrecked futures of millions of black children and the betrayal of African-American parents."

America's anti-American cult: "Now most people, when they hear about something called anti-racism, do not want to criticize it. After all, we would all agree that racism-acts and speech aimed at harming people of a particular race because of their race-is a morally bad thing. In the real world, however, anti-racism means something far more than the condemnation of discrete and morally objectionable acts and statements. It means the indictment of America as America, and of white people as white people. The anti-racist movement has advanced itself most prominently through the schools"

The latest attack on people's liberties: "Children who watch more than two hours of television a night seem to be at higher risk of becoming smokers or being fat, out of shape or having high cholesterol as adults, according to a new study." Who doubts that being inactive makes you fat and unfit? But if people are not entitled to decide what they want to do with their own bodies, what liberties do they have?

How the Canadians hate anybody getting good health care! "Ontario is striking back at the creeping privatization of health care by preparing to buy out seven private clinics and bring them into the public sector, The Canadian Press has learned."

A great victory over the feminist man haters: "On June 30, a California man being forced to pay child support for a child he had not fathered got his day in court when the Second District Court of Appeal of California overturned a paternity judgment against him. Los Angeles County, which had imposed the judgment, knew that Manuel Navarro was not the father of the child in question because DNA testing had proved so. Yet under both federal and state child-support laws, the county was still able to demand Navarro pay child support. The court's landmark decision in Navarro's favor may well become the controlling authority for contested paternity in California and a legal precedent nationwide."

The British Labour Party is now pushing "Britishness". Why? "They fear an English parliament - or, more to the point, English issues being voted on solely by English MPs - because it would soon mean that Labour would never rule in England again". The reference is to the fact that Labour usually has to depend on Scottish voters to win power.

Chris Brand has a new post about the BBC tripping itself up while trying to discredit the anti-immigration British National Party. More on the story here. I am told that this link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsa/n5ctrl/tvseq/newsnight/newsnight.ram shows the actual interview concerned, though you may need broadband and RealPlayer to view it.

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

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Puzzle 1: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

Puzzle 2: Why do "postmodern" Leftists make the strange claim that everything ever written has to be interpreted in terms of how it serves power? Easy: Because everything THEY say is directed towards getting themselves power

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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ARE ALL LEFTISTS UNPRINCIPLED?

Leftist intellectuals certainly are. "There is no such thing as right and wrong" seems to be one of their central doctrines. But normal decent working people who vote for Leftist political parties at election time are most unlikely to be so amoral. In between, however, there do seem to be some Leftists who take an intelligent interest in politics and who also also reject the amorality of the Leftist intellectuals. This writer would appear to be one of them:

"Several kids of my friends are amazed that: A) I could support the war in Iraq and, B) have a sympathetic view of Israel and blame the Palestinian leadership and Arab leadership for the plight of the Palestinians. In other words, their teachers have not even attempted to point out that their might be another side to the argument. In fact, the bias against Israel in schools, in Universities, in human rights organisations such as Amnesty International, and in the supposedly quality media (including or especially the BBC) has reached poisonous levels. This is more serious than bias on talkback radio etc which is not taken as seriously. Israel, it seems, is in the wrong when it takes action after suicide bombers have destroyed the lives of its citizens and after numerous others attempting similar destruction have been stopped. The fact that since the second war the Palestinian leadership and Arab countries have on several occasions rejected the offer of a continuous Palestinian state and have sought to destroy the Jews instead is blithely ignored. In fact, they are ignored to such an extent that I am no longer, in many cases, prepared to put it down to ignorance but rather down to anti-Semitism. From a left perspective, the anti-Semitism of many academics, intellectuals and social activists combined with their past ideological allegiances (to Marxism, etc) has made it far too easy for the right to claim the moral and intellectual high ground."

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ELSEWHERE

Well, I've learned that I am not the oldest guy in the blogosphere. Dick McDonald tells me he is nearly 70. And he started blogging only this year. And he's still got plenty of fire in him too. I hope I do as well.

Dick has just put up a new article by Evan Sayet -- taking pretty-boy John Edwards apart.

A comment from a reader about my musical tastes: "Somehow I can't see Philip Glass along with your otherwise impeccable (by my opinion,) tastes in music. Attached please find a cartoon about Glass with which I agree fully. I sent the cartoon to a Chicago area Classical Music radio host who had interviewed Glass among his many fascinating interviews of classical musicians. He said Glass described one of his early concerts where a woman came walking down the aisle during one number and started pounding on the floor with her umbrella next to the piano yelling, "Please stop, I can't stand it any more!"." Philip Glass is of course sometimes called the "cracked-record" composer for his mesmeric use of repetition. I have posted the cartoon here or here

"If intelligence mistakes are inevitable, is it better to worry too much about potential threats or to worry too little? Worrying too much -- if that's what happened -- resulted in the toppling of one of the planet's most murderous tyrants. Worrying too little resulted in 9/11." -- Jeff Jacoby

Windschuttle has just put up a lot of links to the latest expose of lying Australian Leftist historians.

Private education even helps Alzheimers: "A year ago, Alzheimer's disease was so advanced in her that she could hardly recognize a pencil. Now, after having an increasingly popular treatment in Japan called "Learning Therapy," her once blank expression is punctuated with smiles.... But thanks to methods developed by Professor Ryuta Kawashima of Tohoku University in Sendai and backed up by an army of volunteers and textbooks from Kumon Institute of Education Co. - Japan's largest private education company - she has regained an ability to communicate and interact with people".

OK to eat bacon but not OK to put a pig in a car? "A Florida woman who offered up a Yorkshire pig as bait to entice an escaped tiger back home will face charges of animal cruelty, local newspapers reported on Thursday... Meredith said that the trunk of her Cadillac was air conditioned and that she had planned to eat the pig anyway once it had grown up".

In another scathing review of the Michael Moore distortions, Paul Sheehan points out that even Moore's account of himself is a distortion.

Enron: "Is Enron what happens when markets are unsupervised and regulators are asleep at the switch? No, ... California's restructured electricity market was, in fact, the furthest thing from a capitalist jungle imaginable. The government forced electric utilities to sell-off most of their power plants and discouraged them from buying electricity outside of a complicated state-managed spot market. Furthermore, the electric utilities were forced to open their power lines to anyone who wanted to use them - like Enron - under tightly regulated terms and conditions. The day-to-day management of the grid was likewise taken from the utilities and given to state regulators. While wholesale electricity prices were deregulated, retail prices remained tightly controlled - a combustionable combination. In sum, the state was more heavily involved in the restructured market than it was in the old system we all grew up with."

Gun realism in India: "Bangalore City's spiralling crime rate has had one major spin-off. Instead of looking up to the guardians of law for security, why not arm oneself? This seems to be the one of the motives behind the gradual but steady rise in the number of gun licences among Bangaloreans. Going by statistics with the police department, there has been a two-fold increase in demand for gun licences during 2003 as compared to previous years. While in 2001, there were 145 applicants for gun licences, the figures have shot up to 399 in 2003. In 2004, as on June 24, there are 141 applicants. This includes the sixty licences that are yet to be issued. According to Deputy Commissioner of Police (Administration) N Shivkumar, people arming themselves is a healthy trend. 'Guns give people confidence. It is not always possible for the police to be there at the spot every time a person is attacked. Self defence is the next best alternative,' he says."

"It might as well have been Michael Moore - or the New York Times. It is hard to react any other way to "Pakistan for Bush. July Surprise?" That was the kooky story trumpeted late last week by the usually more responsible "progressives" at The New Republic. Putting down their "Bush is an imbecile" playbook momentarily to draw from their "Bush is a diabolical genius" script, the fellas at TNR (the ordinarily reasonable John Judis, joined by Spencer Ackerman and Massoud Ansari) contend that the imperious president has ordered Pakistan to capture Osama bin Laden - not to promote national security, not to smash al Qaeda, but to interrupt the four-day infomercial otherwise known as the Democratic National Convention."

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

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Puzzle 1: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

Puzzle 2: Why do "postmodern" Leftists make the strange claim that everything ever written has to be interpreted in terms of how it serves power? Easy: Because everything THEY say is directed towards getting themselves power

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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I TURN 61 TODAY

I've got the key of the door.
Never been 61 before...
or something....




SOME RECENT BUT FORGOTTEN HISTORY

From a reader: "Leftists seem to have very selective memories about the Clinton Administration. The truth is that it was more of a Republican Administration after the 1994 Congressional elections. The 1994 elections did two things. They placed Clinton on notice that he would be trounced in 1996 if he continued along the same path and it unshered in a Republican Congress that was truly revolutionary in its desire to make changes for the better. The State of the Union address in January 1995 when Clinton announced that the "era of big Government to be over"was forced on him even if he didn't really mean it. Prior to the elections Clinton did a few things that really got the electorate angry with him. He raised taxes after he said he wasn't going to. He tried to usher in the Hillary health care reform that was despised by the American people and he introduced some silly changes in the military brought forward by the feminist lobby.

Up until 1994 Clinton was talked about as a one term president because his tax increases had again belted the economy around and growth was pretty enemic. Similarly bond rates had also gone up and the stock market was depressed. It was the Republican Congress which ushered in a welfare reform and introduced spending cuts and host of other things. Clinton took credit for these reforms and while the economy was turning around managed to triangulate these issue for himself. Jobs grew during the Clinton tenure because the Congress introduced sweeping welfare reforms, cut spending and stopped Leftist policies in their tracks. Up until 1995 the economy was sluggish, described as a jobless expansion. If Leftists like the growth rates of the 90's, someone needs to ask them what part of the Republican 10-point "contract with America" do they like?"

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CALVINISM

I must admit to being a bit surprised at this post. A blogger is boasting of being a Calvinist. Although a born-and-bred Presbyterian myself, I thought that nobody these days identified as a Calvinist. The fact that Calvin burnt the brilliant scientist Servetus at the stake would make most people hesitant about mentioning Calvin these days, I would think. The Calvinists actually denounced Servetus to the Spanish Inquisition but when he escaped the Spaniards, the Calvinists burnt him themselves. Amazing. He was arrested while attending church in Geneva, convicted of heresy and blasphemy against Christianity, and burned at the stake on October 27, 1553.

And what was Servetus's great sin? He reported the circulation of the blood in 1553, among other things -- long before William Harvey reported it in 1628. Servetus's biggest blunder, however, was to point to what a lot of gobbledegook that great theological compromise known as the doctrine of the Trinity is. Although the doctrine originated as a solution to battles among the Christian fanatics of old Byzantium around the year 300 A.D., Calvinists still believe it (or try to) to this day. I did a post on the most distinctive doctrine of Calvinism on June 11th.

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ELSEWHERE

Keith Burgess-Jackson has recently told his readers what sort of music he likes so maybe (seeing it's my birthday) I should do that too. Pretty simple really: Bach and Mozart at the top of the tree with other strong contenders being Haendel, Vivaldi, Albinoni, Monteverdi, Beethoven, Elgar, Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky ... and Philip Glass. Boffin-stuff, I know. But they really do great things for me. Bach transports me into another world.

Democrat hypocrisy is well summed up in a list on Front Page Magazine. Excerpt: "Clinton spends $77 billion on war in Serbia - good... Bush spends $87 billion in Iraq - bad. Clinton awards Halliburton no-bid contract in Yugoslavia - good... Bush awards Halliburton no-bid contract in Iraq - bad. Clinton allows UN weapons inspectors to be kicked out of Iraq - good... Bush does not allow UN weapons inspectors to search Iraq for eternity - bad. Clinton imposes regime change in Serbia - good... Bush imposes regime change in Iraq - bad."

The pot calling the kettle black: "Three countries -- India, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey -- voted to refer the Israeli security fence to the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion, even though they had themselves built barriers in areas contested by their neighbors, write David Makovsky and Ben Thein of the Washington Institute. * India is just completing a 460-mile barrier in contested Kashmir to halt infiltrations supported by Pakistan. * Within the last two years, Saudi Arabia built a 60-mile barrier along an undefined border zone with Yemen to halt smuggling of weaponry. * Turkey built a barrier in an area that Syria claims as its own."

The NEA: "Of course, the NEA's focus isn't on children's success. It's on money for itself and its members. After all, it's a labor union. And as Albert Shanker, the former president of the NEA's main rival, the American Federation of Teachers, once said, 'I'll start representing kids when kids start paying union dues.'"

The weirdness of Nader: "On June 28 in Washington, D.C., Candidate/Citizen Ralph Nader gave a speech under the auspices of Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Nader skips blithely over the murderous events of September 11. Not a word does he devote to the nineteen Muslim jihadists who captured American civilian airliners and piloted them into the Trade Towers in New York City, the Pentagon in Arlington, VA, a bloody field in Pennsylvania. But, he has room for this: We should remember the crusades. We should remember over 200 years between 1095 and the following 200 years. Armies from Christendom moved in to Asia Minor, slaughtering as they went. In one conflict, the Christian generals took out 2500 Muslim prisoners and beheaded them--just one conflict."

Saudi Arabian socialized medicine no good either: "Huda Baghaffer had suffered a heart attack on the beach and relatives found no medical staff at the North Obhur clinic.. In a complaint filed with the Ministry of Health, the victim's sister, Hind Baghaffar, describes what happened. "We were all at the beach when my sister fell unconscious, which we later discovered was a result of a heart attack. We rushed her to the nearest medical facility, which was the North Obhur clinic. When we arrived, there weren't any doctors or nurses in the emergency room except for three Bangladeshi workers who refused to let us in," she said. "They said the nurses had left ten minutes earlier and that the doctor was at the supermarket".

Cowardly British cops: "Neighbours want to know why two women were left to bleed to death while police with machine guns carried out a 'risk assessment' from four miles away." All British cops know these days is political correctness. The real police are long gone.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with a big range of reading -- interspersed with a lot of stuff about rock music.

Chris Brand has a new lot of his exceedingly incorrect postings up.

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

I have a new rubric below.

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Puzzle 1: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

Puzzle 2: Why do "postmodern" Leftists make the strange claim that everything ever written has to be interpreted in terms of how it serves power? Easy: Because everything THEY say is directed towards getting themselves power

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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NICK O'TEEN

My post yesterday about the sometimes benign effects of nicotine drew a few responses. Here are the two most interesting:

"Nicotine blocks re-uptake of dopamine in the brainstem. It is also a powerful respiratory stimulant and bronco-dialtor. If you were'nt inhaling a mess of other junk along with it, it might be helpful for asthma and emphysema. I have a friend who treats only Parkinsons Disease. He maintains that cigar smokers delay the onset of parkinsonism until they've died of something else. He himself smokes three Churchills a day."

Blocking dopamine re-uptake is how some antidepressants work, of course. High levels of dopamine make you feel cheerful.

"Prof. Rodu (see here and here) reports the low risks of smokeless tobacco products: "The results of our analysis reveal that the average remaining life expectancy of a 35 year old nonuser of tobacco is 45.96 years, which is 0.04 year more than that of an smokeless tobacco user. The reduction in life expectancy of a smokeless user amounts to 15 days and is in sharp contrast to a reduction of 7.8 years experienced by the smoker. Thus, the 35 year old tobacco abstainer and smokeless tobacco user will both live on average to be 80.9 years of age compared with 73.1 years of age for the smoker. Only 67% of smokers will be alive at age 70 compared with over 87% of smokeless tobacco users and nonusers of tobacco.""

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FROM BROOKES NEWS

Whoopi Goldberg: obscenities, Chevy Chase, Hollywood and moral stupidity The pathological behaviour of Hollywood celebrities, particularly Whoopi Goldberg, at Radio City Music Hall was like an Orwellian hate session
John Edwards - will the real one please stand up What the partisan media is not telling the public about John Edwards
Iraq War: The New York Times slimes President Bush The New York Times' Maureen Dowd maliciously lied about President Bush and the Iraq war
Rupert Murdoch: the Bush Presidency & a leftist myth One leftwing myth has it that Rupert Murdoch is in the pocket of President Bush. The alleged evidence for this is the way 'Fox' reports the news

Details here

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ELSEWHERE

Yes. I know it's Bastille day. The real birthday of Communism. The French revolution gave us the first Communist regime of modern times and then Napoleon gave us the first Fascist regime. How cultured the French are! And what high principles they follow! And if you need any proof of the moral corruption and cowardice of modern-day France, read this report of their everyday indifference to gross antisemitism.

If you have not yet read the talk by Haim Harari on the Islamic problem, you really must. It is here, among other places. It is the most realistic and level-headed account I have read. Harari is an eminent Israeli scientist. Just one tiny excerpt on suicide bombers: "The actual murderer is called "the military wing", the one who pays him, equips him and sends him is now called "the political wing" and the head of the operation is called the "spiritual leader". There are numerous other examples of such Orwellian nomenclature, used every day not only by terror chiefs but also by Western media."

The pervert church again: "Two leading officials at a Catholic seminary in Austria have been identified in an investigation into alleged sexual abuse of student priests and the possession of pornographic and pedophile material. The worldwide scandal involving allegations of sexual abuse aimed at practicing priests within the Catholic Church has surfaced in Austria after pictures of senior church officials caressing and kissing student priests at a seminary were published in an Austrian magazine."

While others are pulling out: "Australia is to send more troops to Iraq. Defence Minister Robert Hill said an extra 30 troops and six armoured vehicles would be sent to boost protection of forces already in Iraq."

Osama bin Laden's sister-in-law has given a rare insight into the notorious terror leader, his extensive family in Saudi Arabia and life inside the secretive Middle East state. In an interview on the eve of a visit to the US to promote the book, to be published next Wednesday, she describes bin Laden as a man so driven by his beliefs that he would deny a water bottle to his infant son in the heat of the Saudi desert, insisting his wife use a spoon. "It's certainly possible that Osama retains ties to the royal family, too," she said. "The bin Ladens and the princes work together, very closely. They are secretive and they are united. They have been inextricably linked for many decades through close friendships and business ventures."

This kindly pastor is doing all he can to keep the fires of black anger burning: "These Black people are often misled, thinking African-Americans are free. But the perceived freedom is not real, says Todd. "You're free to eat at hotels you can't buy. You're free to eat at restaurants you can't buy. You're free to elect politicians who don't represent you. You're free to put your money into banks that won't give you loans. There's something about us. We like counterfeits. We like fakes.""

Look who's talking: "It is amusing to hear Washington liberals lament that all civility in political discourse is lost upon hearing vice-president Cheney tell the Senate's most notorious partisan, Vermont Senator Pat Leahy, Democrat, to 'F*** yourself' during the annual Senate photography session. Lost in scandalous thought over this, the media tsk-tsk's the raging flames of incendiary hate set in every medium by raving segments of the Democratic Party while it decries the minor flair-up in the oft-times cynical United States Senate."

Egyptian Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, "spiritual leader" of Egypt's bloodstained "Muslim Brotherhood" and a defender of Palestinian suicide bombers, is rather pathetically portrayed as a "moderate" by The Guardian . The London-based Iranian Communists give a very different view of him. See here. Genuine Islamic moderates do exist, but Qaradawi is not one of them.

Michael Darby has just come out of hibernation to put up a big post on the latest developments in the Iraqi weapons saga -- with particular reference to the implications for Australia.

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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STRAUSS REVISITED

An interesting paper on Leo Strauss just out from Claremont. It argues that Strauss was more in tune with traditional American isolationism than the neocons are. The argument centres on whether America's foreign policy should be solely centred on self-preservation (Strauss) or whether it should also be evangelical for democracy (Kristol and the neocons). Much of the rhetoric coming from the White House does give the impression that a neocon agenda is being followed but I am sure that GWB would have done nothing in Afghanistan and Iraq except as a way of protecting America from further terrorist depredations. So the neocons are just a sort of Greek chorus on the sidelines.

But arguing about theories of isolationism versus interventionism is to me a bit too reminiscent of Leftist devotion to oversimplified theories. I prefer traditional conservative skepticism about generalizations and an emphasis on each case being judged on its individual merits. Note that the conservative government of my country appears to be untouched by either Straussianism or neoconservatism and yet behaves in a similar way to the USA. It has twice recently intervened militarily in the affairs of neighbouring countries and done so with great humanitarian success by most standards. Neither country was any threat to Australia so the intervention was almost wholly altruistic. It sprang from conservative decency, not any grand theory. I am sure that both Australia and the USA will continue to be motivated by a mix of self-interest and altruism that will defy any theory to predict or describe it.

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ELSEWHERE

Christopher Pearson has an interesting summary of recent developments in Australia's "History wars" (surprisingly reminiscent of the Historikerstreit in Germany or the American "reparations" movement -- with Leftists determined to promote inherited guilt from one's forefathers and conservatives rejecting that). He notes that a Leftist historian has now come out and admitted that the usual accounts of brutality by early white settlers against Australia's native blacks are basically fraudulent but says that Australians need to build their image of themselves on such a lie! How Leftist! Leftists themselves cannot handle reality and think that everyone else is the same. I personally have no difficulty handing my convict ancestry and know of no living Australian who does. And if I can handle convict ancestry, I think other Australians might just be able to handle comfortably the thought that their ancestors were conquerors.

Orson Scott Card has a brilliant account of how Leftist bias works in the mainsteam American media. His conclusion: "What makes the liberal bias in the mainstream media so pernicious is that they deny that they're biased and insist that their twisted version of events is "reality," and anyone who disagrees with them is either mentally or morally suspect. In other words, they're fanatics. And, like all good fanatics, they're utterly convinced that they're in sole possession of virtue and truth."

There is an interesting catalogue here showing that many of America's patriotic songs and poems were in the past written by "progressive" authors. It shows how sadly the American Left has degenerated in recent years. They hate America and all it stands for these days. The shift rightwards in American politics initiated by Reagan and sealed by the downfall of the Leftists' beloved Soviet Union has totally embittered them. Where once they had some shadow of an alternative to capitalism to put forward, now all they have left is the hatred that drove such stupid ideas.

Why the poor are richer than they seem: "The most glaring inaccuracy is that benefits from in-kind welfare programs go uncounted, so they aren't included in evaluating the poor's income. Since many such programs reduce benefits as incomes rise (e.g., the 30 cent reduction in food-stamp benefits for each $1 of net income), they undermine recipients' incentives to work. Many therefore earn less, so those transfers actually make recipients appear poorer. This is a large and growing error. Of the roughly $400 billion given annually in total government means-tested assistance, the proportion given in-kind has dramatically increased, now comprising about three-quarters of the total... Measures of consumption by various groups are far better indicators of relative well-being than the statistics invoked by Kerry and Edwards. They show dramatically smaller inequalities. Political support for a plethora of redistribution policies has long been maintained by skillful abuse of the data concerning inequality in America."

Read this: "How does the young elite see the future? In a book published yesterday, Imagining Australia, four Australian graduates of Harvard University outline ways to reignite a passion for reform." And guess what the suggested reforms are: More tired old government interventionism? You'd be wrong. The reforms suggested are all free-trade and free-enterprise oriented. Worth a read. See here. Good to see young people standing up for individual liberty despite all the Leftist indoctrination they get from the educational system -- even from such a Leftist hotbed as Harvard!

Amusing: "In the 1960s, nearly half of the US population smoked cigarettes. That number is down to about 22%, a group that Yale University researcher Tony George calls "hard-core" smokers. Among the mentally ill, however, the proportion of smokers is much higher: up to 90% of schizophrenics, 70% of those with bipolar disorder and more than 50% of depressed individuals smoke. Some studies estimate that a third of those who smoke have at one time battled a mental illness. "Smoking is a marker for psychopathology"" The article concerned is an interesting one. It suggests that smoking may be a successful self-medication for various brain disorders. The article is however very pesky to get into so, for convenience, I have reposted it here.

LOL: Philosophers are famous for never completely agreeing with one-another and I disagree with this post by Keith Burgess-Jackson: "I think some people who read my blog (AnalPhilosopher) like my conservatism. These people tend to be meat-eaters, and many of them don't like being reminded that meat-eating is wrong." I think Keith got a bit carried away there. Meat eating is certainly wrong according to the way he defines wrongness but there are many conceptions of wrongness. Mine is here and Protestant Christians of course find their source of right and wrong in the Bible -- and meat eating is accepted in the Bible, not forbidden. So for Christians, meat-eating is NOT wrong. For the record, I personally have bacon and egg breakfasts quite often and eat enough sausages to make me a good German. But my favourite sausage is Merguez -- of North African origin. If you have never had good Merguez, you haven't lived!

"Vanity of vanities. All is vanity" (Ecclesiastes 1:2). In my well-spent youth, I was on one occasion interviewed by a women's magazine about my lifestyle. Although I find it a bit embarrassing now, I have decided to put the interview on the net. See here. Note that the report is not totally accurate. I was NOT, for instance, divorced at the time. It is broadly representative of how I felt 30 years ago, however, so I am putting it on the net for the record's sake

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 OLDIES BUT GOLDIES

A great Orwell essay. He says Leftists are a type of nationalist: "By "patriotism" I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.... Nationalism, in the extended sense in which I am using the word, includes such movments and tendencies as Communism, political Catholicism, Zionism, Antisemitism, Trotskyism and Pacifism. It does not necessarily mean loyalty to a government or a country, still less to one's own country, and it is not even strictly necessary that the units in which it deals should actually exist. To name a few obvious examples, Jewry, Islam, Christendom, the Proletariat and the White Race are all of them objects of passionate nationalistic feeling: but their existence can be seriously questioned, and there is no definition of any one of them that would be universally accepted". (Via the Bunyip).

There is a great column by Thomas Sowell from a few years back of which I have to say what I rarely say: "Read the whole thing". Excerpt: "Over the years, the phrase "unintended consequences" has come up with increasing frequency, as more and more wonderful-sounding ideas have led to disastrous results. By now, you might think that people with wonderful-sounding ideas would start to question what the consequences would turn out to be -- and would devote as much time to discovering those consequences as to getting their ideas accepted and turned into laws and policies. But that seldom, if ever, happens. Why doesn't it? Because a lot depends on what it is you are trying to accomplish. If your purpose is to achieve the heady feeling of being one of the moral elite, then that can be accomplished without the long and tedious work of following up on results."

A great quote from a distinguished conservative: "Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm -- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves." -- T.S. Eliot, in his play "The cocktail party" (1950).

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ELSEWHERE

LOL: I mentioned yesterday a Leftist/feminist blogger who changed her tune when she had a baby. She ended one of her posts on the subject with "I'd rather be sharing this with someone I love than doing it alone". I therefore commented about her: "She even wishes she was married!" -- which seemed a fair comment on what she said. Marriage can of course be de facto as well as de jure and I drew no inferences about which she preferred. She now refers to my comment as a "baldfaced lie". So judge for yourself who the liar is. She may have moderated her feminism but she is obviously still a Leftist.

Leftists, of course, call anything "lies". They are such liars themselves, they need to accuse others of it to cover up for themselves. The pathetic attempt to pin the "lie" accusation on President Bush seems to have depended mainly on his report of what the British government had been told about uranium purchases from Niger. That the information the British spooks obtained was contradicted by other sources got a lot of press a while back. Now, it seems, the British spooks got it right. No apologies for calling Bush a liar on such flimsy grounds can be expected of course. A loud silence from the former accusers in the Left-leaning American mainstream media is very much in evidence. I guess that's the Leftist version of journalistic ethics. (Don't laugh! There IS supposed to be such a thing as journalistic ethics!).

A Leftist not taking his pills: "Al Qaeda is not linked to Saddam but is in fact a creation of the CIA" (Via William Webb)

A good comment on the "International Court" ruling against Israel: "How ironic that the judge who read the ruling declaring Israel's security barrier illegal comes from China - the country that ate Tibet whole and has a human rights record somewhere South of Attila".

Subhuman Muslims: "Suspected Muslim guerillas sliced off the nose, ears and tongue of a 14-year-old girl in Indian Kashmir today, believing her to be an informer for the Indian army, police said."

Does abortion undermine the Democrat voter base? Tabarrok is perfectly correct that you cannot calculate the effect easily but given that Democrats favour abortion a lot more than Republicans do, it would be most surprising if Republicans used it as much as Democrats do. And that should give SOME tendency for Republicans to have more children. And children do tend to follow their parents' politics -- not uniformly of course, but largely so. Conservatism is in fact strongly hereditary. So, overall, easy abortion availability should in the long run increase the proportion of conservatives in the population.

A good libertarian comment: "The problem with personal injury lawsuits is not the core principle, which a true libertarian would be hard-pressed to deny. Rather, liability for injuries has been extended beyond any reasonable definition of causation. People who stupidly bring on harm to themselves have nevertheless been allowed to blame others with deep pockets. The tort system has been corrupted by the infusion of a welfarist, redistributionist, soak-the-rich ethic".

I almost never check such things but in an idle moment last night I looked at where this blog ranks in the NZ Bear ecosystem and was rather pleased to see that I have made it into the fourth highest category ("large mammal"). Being 305th out of 3 million blogs seems pretty good to me. I don't understand this search, though. It says there are nearly 10,000 links to this blog on the internet. I suspect a bug somewhere. The NZ Bear system has a big bug too: It counts self references. Even the erratic Technorati.com does not do that.

Maybe I shouldn't laugh but one of the other blogs that links to this one is a Japanese blog called Shitfit! Truth is stranger than fiction.

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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SICK EDUCATION

Soviet history lives! In Australia. Australian academic historians want to make it an offence to "publicly question the integrity or competence of their colleagues". No free-speech, no academic freedom, no open debate -- just a licence for Leftists to lie. No wonder they mourn the downfall of the Soviet Union. You can see what they liked about it.

Bureaucracy versus education: "When it takes an average of six years to build a new public school in California, what industrialist David L. Brennan did eight years ago in Cleveland borders on the miraculous in the slow-moving world of public education. When Brennan discovered, two weeks before school started, that some 360 initial voucher applicants could not find places in the city's private schools, he created two new HOPE Academies in just 15 days."

Teachers versus education: "Some say high-stakes testing is to blame for cheating in the classroom. But in this case, it's not the students getting caught -- it's the teachers. A recent study shows as many as 200 teachers in California were caught cheating to help their students perform better on rigorous new standardized tests, which are part of the President Bush's 'No Child Left Behind' education plan, which calls for greater accountability among teachers. Since the law was implemented, more teachers have been caught helping students cheat in about a dozen states around the country."

From a reader: "It occurred to me that perhaps there is more than meets the eye in Leftist support for more and more access to higher education. At the risk of sounding 'conspiratorial', do you suppose that they so strongly support easy, cheap, and open access to higher education so that they, since they so thoroughly control higher education, will have the opportunity to indoctrinate more and more people to their way of thinking?"

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KUDOS

Keith Burgess Jackson has a recent post on misuse of the word "kudos". I posted on that too -- on Oct 3, 2003. I said: ""kudos" is only a borrowing in English. It is the ancient Greek word for "fame". Interesting factoid: According to my Abbott-Smith Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament, "kudos" does not occur in the Greek New Testament. Early Christians obviously did not think much of the Greek obsession with fame and renown."

And that is no coincidence. Christ saw this life primarily as a preparation for the afterlife -- the "kingdom of heaven", as he so often put it (e.g. Matthew 5:20). Greeks however mostly saw this life as all there was and so their purpose was to gain immortality in the form of "kudos" -- having people notice and remember them admiringly. That is one reason why I sometimes refer to leftists as pursuing kudos -- because being looked up to and cheered is what they hunger for and aim for above all. Strictly speaking, however, it is an insult to the Greeks to describe what Leftists seek as "kudos". The Greeks wanted lasting renown -- not the eternal present that Leftists like John Kerry live in. If something will get him a cheer today Kerry will say it -- then say more or less the opposite tomorrow to a different audience in order to get a cheer from them too. Leftists are in general amoral and have only temporary postures that they adopt for convenience. There is no lasting renown in that. But for irreligious people -- which Leftists usually are -- I suppose that even a bastardized form of kudos makes some sense as your goal in life. I see other goals as healthier, however -- such as raising a happy family.

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ELSEWHERE

The religion of peace again: "A young woman and her baby have been attacked in a suburban train near Paris by unidentified men who drew swastikas on the mother's stomach. Police today said it was an anti-Semitic assault. The six attackers who were armed with knives clipped the 23-year-old woman's hair, and cut her tee-shirt and trousers before drawing three swastikas on her body. The men of North African origin also overturned the pram holding her baby, aged 13 months."

Amusing: A fiercely feminist and Leftist blogger has just had an unplanned baby at age 33 and suddenly discovers that she loves being a stay-at-home mother and regrets she wasted so many years doing the usual feminist man-aping stuff! She even wishes she was married! What a come-down for a feminist. Leftism always is good in theory only. She'll even end up voting conservative one day. (Via Oz Conservative).

Lies about jobs: "Sen. John Kerry and his fellow Democrats seem to believe that by attacking President Bush for 'inadequate' job creation the Republicans will be too inept to remind the American people that it was the Clinton economic policies that gave us the recession and the job losses. With polls showing Kerry ahead on economic issues, the Democrats chutzpah is succeeding. Kerry and his allies say they will bring back the 'Clintonomics' that gave us 'great prosperity.' It requires no great skill to take over a growing economy with a falling unemployment and leave it in a recession, which is precisely what Bill Clinton did. Democratic propagandists have also led many Americans to believe Clinton's economic performance was vastly superior to Ronald Reagan's, but the real facts show quite the reverse."

There is a BIG posting up at Gene Expression about the latest scientific findings on IQ. Like all other research on the topic, it shows IQ to differ greatly between individuals, to be highly heritable and to be strongly related to measures of brain function. But they have now got more precise about the brain functions involved and seem to be zeroing in on the specific genes behind it. So it's pretty technical.

Good to see: Britain's Radio 4 actually had a serious discussion of withdrawal from the European Union!

Dick McDonald has just got himself into a lot of hot water for saying that all the illegal immigrants around the place in Califonia are not such a bad thing. The discussion he has up about it all does expose the dilemmas involved.

Wicked Thoughts has a rare story of a doctor getting his own back against a lawyer.

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 ECONOMICS

Should be more of it: "Meet Tennessee's shadow governor. As a state senator, Marsha Blackburn made it politically impossible to enact a state income tax by sounding the alarm at the state Capitol. Phil Bredesen then had to run against a state income tax for his first term just to get elected. Blackburn was the first to propose how to cut the growth in the state budget. She recommended cutting 5% across the board for each department. When Bredesen got into office, he cut all departments 9% across the board." ar American myth -- repeated with increasing frequency in this election year -- that 'The Rich' (whoever 'they' are) don't pay their fair share of taxes. A corollary to this is the assertion that The Rich received the biggest benefit of the so-called 'Bush' tax cuts, the political catch-phrase for the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003. Neither position is supported by hard data taken from income tax returns. In fact, in both cases, the opposite is true. In other words: The Rich not only pay a disproportionate share of taxes, this share has been increasing since 1990."

Austria and Iceland are undermining the high tax rates of the EU -- showing by example how beneficial tax cuts are.

Wal-Mart serves humanity: "The New York Times recently ran an interesting article on everyone's favorite global retailing behemoth, Wal-Mart.... two stunning examples of economic illiteracy, one misrepresentation of a very heroic deed, and a lovely comparison of Sam Walton to Chairman Mao."

Free trade under fire: "According to Douglas Irwin, free trade is under fire because some groups believe that they do not participate in the accumulation of wealth that trade brings. Others oppose it because they believe that trade agreements subvert national sovereignty and threaten to harm workers and the environment. Irwin, professor of economics at Dartmouth and long-time advocate of free trade, intends with this book to show the benefits of free trade and evaluate the arguments against it."

Cafe Hayek asks: "Why not return to the open-borders regime that prevailed in the United States from its independence until the end of the 19th century? I here put aside concerns with national security and deal exclusively with an economic objection to increased immigration.... The American economy is today far more able than in the past economically to "absorb immigrants.""

Irving Kristol thinks Reagan was a neocon: "A tax policy that energizes the economy, government regulations that are not too destructive, and moderate restraints on spending would have the effect of shrinking the bloated welfare state relative to the size of the economy. The welfare state itself could not be wished away. By now Reaganomics has become the semiofficial philosophy of the Republican party. As a consequence, this party is now seen as having a plausible and legitimate claim to be the governing party... In sum, Ronald Reagan made the Republican party proactive in economic policy as in foreign policy". I think Kristol fails to distinguish between what Reagan wanted and what he could get through Congress.

A U.S. productivity triumph: "In the first 13 quarters of the Bush Administration, the basic determinant of our standard of living increased by almost as much as during the entire 32 quarters of the Clinton Administration... But it would spoil the narrative of the Bush Administration as bumbling and Hoover-esque to point out that the most fundamental measure of our economic strength is shooting through the roof."

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ELSEWHERE

Hilarious! I have somehow got myself onto the mailing list of the Iranian Communist Party! (headquartered in London, of course). Some of their stuff on Islamic madness is rather good so I have just put an interview with their founder up here. They are one Leftist group who have no illusions about appeasing or negotiating with the mullahs. The mullahs have killed too many of them. American Leftists who love both Communists and the Islamists would be put into a BIG dilemma if they heard what real Communists say about the Islamists!

Leftist backpedalling? "The war in Iraq has always been a war against fascism, a liberation war for democratic freedom -- even a left-wing war. Or so I have always thought. All over the world there are people who consider themselves liberals or left-wingers who think the same and who have backed the war in one fashion or another, even while criticizing President Bush's way of conducting it."

Evan Sayet has a rather impassioned account of why he has just changed from Democrat to Republican. He makes the point that many have noticed: The Democrats are now not remotely the party of J.F. Kennedy and his predecessors. Ever since LBJ it has been careering ever further to the Left. Would you believe that it was a Democrat President who said this? ""The lessons of paternalism ought to be unlearned and the better lesson taught that while the people should patriotically and cheerfully support their Government, its functions do not include the support of the people."

Trade sanction stupidity. The Left love sanctions but: "Using trade as a weapon of foreign policy has harmed America's economic interests in the world without advancing national security. The proliferation of trade sanctions in the 1990s has been accompanied by their declining effectiveness. From Cuba to Iran to Burma, sanctions have failed to achieve the goal of changing the behavior or the nature of target regimes. Sanctions have managed only to deprive American companies of investment opportunities and market share and to punish domestic consumers, while hurting the poor and most vulnerable in the target countries." Maybe the failure of the long embargo against Cuba to topple Castro should have told the Clinton administration that continuing the sanctions against Saddam's Iraq for almost a decade would not topple him either.

Oz Conservative has an interesting link to an article which questions the old feminist gospel that men should be more like women "for their own good". Women were supposed to be mentally healthier. I showed what a lot of nonsense that was years ago in one of the academic journals. A much-overlooked set of findings, needless to say.

Sounds hopeful: "The battle lines for the future of [U.K.] state education are now clear. Under Labour, whose blueprint is published today, there will be a revolution with a whole swath of state-financed schools throughout the country being handed over to private sponsors to run. By the end of the decade, the bankers, the churches, the millionaire philanthropists and leaders of the country's private schools will be in charge, in the name of more choice for parents. The Government is planning a big expansion in its city academies programme -- creating up to 200 by the end of the decade -- as one of a series of radical measures aimed at raising school standards."

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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FROM BROOKES NEWS

China's militarists humiliated by President Bush's resolve In response to Beijing's mounting threats against Taiwan President Bush ordered seven Carrier Strike Groups into the region
The Party of Lincoln vs the Democrats' hate machine What is truly depressing about the Democrats is not their relentless partisanship; after all, partisanship is integral to politics. No, it is their simmering hatred and total absence of common decency
Helen Caldicott and the Soviet connection Helen Caldicott refuses to fade away. Last Thursday 'SBS' broadcast a documentary about this old Sovietphile called Helen's War: Portrait of a Dissident
Why oil prices won't spark massive inflation Some people are being panicked by investment advisers warning them that current oil prices are a harbinger of massive inflation. They're wrong
Is Mark Latham fit to be Prime Minister? Mark Latham and his press handlers are pretty busy at the moment trying to put a favourable spin the story that Latham sucker-punched at a much older man
Monica Lewinsky slimed by Bill Clinton - with a little help from the media Monica Lewinsky's shock at discovering that Bill Clinton thinks she is "disgusting" seems to have had a sobering though somewhat belated effect on her

Details here

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ELSEWHERE

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with a big range of reading

The junk-science candidate: "As newly announced vice-presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards' record is scrutinized, political critics are re-examining claims the former trial lawyer amassed much of the personal fortune that financed his political career by winning legal cases based on "junk science." CNSNews.com first reported in January how Edwards won record jury verdicts and settlements in cases alleging that the botched treatment of women in labor and their deliveries caused infants to develop the brain disorder cerebral palsy. But the cause of cerebral palsy long has been debated, and two new studies in 2003 further undermined the scientific premise of Edwards' cases... "There are some cases where the brain damage did occur at the time of delivery. But it's really unusual. It's really quite unusual," Dr. Murray Goldstein, a neurologist and the medical director of the United Cerebral Palsy Research and Educational Foundation, told the news agency.... From judgments or settlements related to medical malpractice, Edwards built a personal fortune estimated at between $12.8 and $60 million."

Islamic lies . "Following the recent beheadings of Americans and other foreigners in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, the U.S. press turned to various experts to identify a precedent in the Quran or Islamic history for this kind of gory murder. "Beheadings are not mentioned in the Koran at all," Imam Muhammad Adam El-Sheikh, co-founder and chief cleric at the Dar Al Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Va., told USA Today... Yet it says in the Koran: "God revealed His will to the angels, saying: "I shall be with you. Give courage to the believers. I shall cast terror into the hearts of the infidels. Strike off their heads, strike off the very tips of their fingers." (Sura 8, Verse 12) and "When you meet the unbelievers in the battlefield strike off their heads." (Sura 47, Verse 4)"

Sudan ironies: Newsday's James Pinkerton reports growing pressure for the US to "do something" about the ongoing massacre of black Sudanese Muslims by Arab Sudanese Muslims What is interesting is that one of the voices leading the pro-intervention chorus is Donald Payne, Democrat, "liberal" and leader of the black caucus in Congress. Payne voted against intervention in Iraq and Kosovo. But isn't his position similar to that of Jewish Americans who advocate pro-Israel intervention in the Middle East? Will it be subject to equal criticism from the Left? Will Payne be seen as part of a black "cabal"? I wonder when a caucus becomes a "cabal"? And where were the voices for intervention when the North Sudanese Arab Muslims were massacring South Sudanese black Christians? That civil war has been going on for 16 years now.

Who is this guy? "Throughout the Vietnam War, he traveled numerous times to France and to North and South Vietnam, meeting with Communist officials and advising them on how best they could defeat the United States. He also organized aid shipments to the Communists, called upon fellow leftists to wage war against American imperialism, and backed the Communist cause around the world." Answer: One of America's most acclaimed academic historians -- Gabriel Kolko. More here. Only academics would take him seriously, though.

Randall Parker has an interesting post on the effects of Muslim polygamy. He says it is a major cause of angry young men and tyrannical governments in Islamic societies. The rich guys get all the women and leave lots of young men angry, frustrated, full of fight and ready to do crazy things -- like become suicide bombers.

Black blogger La Shawn Barber has an acid comment on the Leftist explanation for underperforming blacks: "As for "past injustices", I'd like to hear from black, middle class American-born-and-bred college-bound 18 year-olds who've suffered from the effects of slavery or Jim Crow. Please, feel free to comment on this blog." She is commenting on the better performance of overseas blacks which I mentioned here.

What a laugh! There is a puff-piece in the L.A. Times saying how wonderful modern-day South Africa is: "South Africa has been quite successful in the first phase, the political transformation". I wonder why every single white person I met when I was there a few years ago wanted to get out of the place if they could? That South Africa now has crime rates normal for Africa and that whites are heavily discriminated against in employment and everything else might have something to do with it I guess.

I followed a link from Marc Miyake to start reading some of the columns of the "War Nerd". He really is an amazingly talented writer -- totally amoral realism told humorously! Have a look at this column about Kosovo, Yugoslavia and all that benighted part of the world. I think he clarifies lots of things even if you don't agree with all his judgements.

One of the articles I read recently when I was trying to figure out what Straussianism was all about was this informative summary by Karl Jahn. Jahn also has a very thoughtful blog -- short on graphics but big on intellectual content. He is an ex-Lefty turned American nationalist. He out-Buchanans Buchanan. He is no racist, though.

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 HISTORY

There has of course been a lot of discussion in recent years about the differences between Europe -- particularly France -- and the English-speaking countries. The way France and Germany were propping up the disgusting Saddam Hussein while the USA, Britain and Australia sent troops to overthrow him certainly showed a large gap in principles between the two sides. And it has also widely been noted how dictatorial and intrusive into the lives of its citizens the EU is -- with even the amount of bend in bananas now being regulated in the EU! Readers may therefore be interested to hear that the English Channel has for centuries separated two different ideas about the role of government. Read here what distinguished legal historian A.V. Dicey said in 1889 about English principles versus European lack of them.

Coleridge a precursor of GWB: "Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) is famous as the English poet who wrote Kubla Khan and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, but today is almost forgotten as one of the greatest political thinkers of his time. He was the first conservative to advocate social and political reforms as a means of maintaining a stable and cohesive society. He warned against the dangers of unchecked industrialisation, criticised the then prevailing ideology of the unfettered free-market, and called for far-reaching reforms to give the poor a greater stake in the economy.... Coleridge's thought had a seminal influence on the social-welfare Toryism of Disraeli"

Dinesh D'Souza: "The idea that America and the West grew rich through oppression and exploitation is strongly held among many intellectuals and activists...Did the West enrich itself at the expense of minorities and the Third World through its distinctive crimes of slavery and colonialism? This thesis is hard to sustain, because there is nothing distinctively Western about slavery or colonialism. The West had its empires, but so did the Persians, the Mongols, the Chinese, and the Turks. And if colonialism is a universal institution, so is slavery. Slavery has existed in every known civilization, from China to India to Africa to pre-Columbian America. What is uniquely Western is not slavery but the movement to abolish slavery."

An interesting historical article here about the white settlement of Australia points out that its legal basis was NOT the recent doctrine of terra nullius -- as Leftists assert. If anything, it was simply: "beat the French". Excerpt: "Let historians argue about the past - it is necessary and interesting and vastly important - but keep them out of the law courts. Reconciliation is the affair of modern Australians dealing with modern conditions."

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ELSEWHERE

Dennis Prager has a good article on why many Leftist citizens of both Israel and America hate their own country. In Israel the hatred is so extreme that Israeli Leftists are actually aiding the Palestinian terrorists. I think Prager overlooks the main reason, though. Both America and Israel are powerful and Leftists want to tear down all power that they themselves do not control or identify with. With Democrat control of Congress and the Presidency, mainstream Leftists would be reasonably happy with their country because they could identify with Democrat politicians. But really virulent Leftists (of whom there are many -- particularly in academe), such as we read on "Counterpunch", cannot identify with the moderate Leftism of the Democrats so hate America regardless of the regime. The very name "Counterpunch" is revealing. It expresses a desire for violence. They are seething with hate and just want to punch people. Leftism is the politics of hate -- and I suspect that only part of it is envy driven. Many Leftists seem to be just fundamentally hostile people regardless -- hiding, of course, behind a mask of "concern". But what they all hate most is undoubtedly power in the hands of others than themselves. Conservatives, by contrast, just want to keep out of other people's power.

Abdurrahman Wahid is an amazing man. A revered Indonesian Muslim religious leader and former President of Indonesia, he is a friend of Israel! There are about 200 million Indonesian Muslims just to the North of Australia so having him around is a great comfort.

A Turkish Muslim who supports America's Middle-East interventions because of his own experiences there, brands Michael Moore a "hatriot"

Our friends, the Saudis: "Saudi Arabia's intelligence agencies are so infiltrated by al-Qa'ida sympathisers that the kingdom's counter-terrorist campaign is failing and militant operations are spreading into neighbouring states, senior Arab and Western officials have warned. The main Saudi intelligence organisation responsible for combating al-Qa'ida at the Interior Ministry is riddled with agents linked to the militants, the officials say. "Their staff is 80 per cent sympathetic to al-Qa'ida," one senior Arab source said."

Wow! A sociology professor with his eyes open: "Put simply, religious terrorists live in another world. Unlike, say, the Weathermen of '60s fame, they have no political platform for change. The agenda is purely theocratic and absolute, with not a scintilla of concern for the lives of nonbelievers. In such a situation negotiation is useless, for there is nothing to negotiate about. As Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, spiritual mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombings, asserted unequivocally, "There is no truce in jihad against the enemies of Allah." ... When it come to religiously-based terror, we must reluctantly recognize that there are only two real choices here - protect ourselves and eliminate the terrorists or turn the world over to them".

Amazing: "The Iraqi Communist Party is strongly represented in the new interim government in Baghdad and is getting U.S. taxpayer support thanks to a U.S. group led by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright"

Despite the current difficulties with blogger.com, Dick McDonald has got lots of good posts up recently. This one from an Iraq veteran points out how much better GWB has done in Iraq than Democrat Presidents have done in their many wars.

Keith Burgess Jackson is a lawyer as well as a philosopher and he uses a bit of legal Latin -- res ipsa loquitur ("the thing speaks for itself") -- to exceptionally good effect here

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

********************************

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 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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Blogspot is having indigestion again. You may need to use the mirror site to get the latest postings on "Greenie Watch"