THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

Leftist priests who are not even Christian, let alone Catholic: "Then there are those progressive priests who "renovated" churches by demolishing well-loved marble monuments and removing icons and statues in scenes reminiscent of Cromwell's purges during the Reformation. There is a famous photograph of the then dean of one Catholic cathedral actually at the controls of a bulldozer doing a Lazlo Toth on the High Altar. What about those who have refused communion to worshippers choosing to kneel to receive Holy Communion or, worse, bishops calling in the police to evict them as happened in Quebec?"

Deceitful attacks on an orthodox Catholic archbishop: "George Pell was once again making headlines last week. A priest in his Sydney diocese, John Crothers, published a highly critical essay in the e-magazine Online Catholics.... What neither Anne nor Crothers is entitled to is righteous indignation when they can't have their own way or delusions of grandeur about their place in the church's scheme of things. The Catholic Church is not and never can be a democracy. It has always been run according to its own rules, confidently patriarchal and hierarchical. The clergy and laity have rights and privileges, of course, but the church alone defines them and can suspend them. Even bishops are constrained by higher authority.... Perhaps Pell's distinctiveness, and his great offence, lies in representing what's left of mainstream Catholicism as unmistakably as John Howard represents the political mainstream"

A more impressive Frenchman than today's lot: "At the heart of all of Lacordaire's endeavors was a concerted effort to correct the flawed assumptions concerning the Catholic Church held by revolutionaries. Radical individualism had so possessed the masses that they deemed threatening any body of authority, including the church. "So long as this spirit exists," Lacordaire argued the year of his death, "liberalism will be vanquished by an oppressive democracy or by unbridled autocracy, and this is why the union of liberty and Christianity is the sole possible salvation of the future. Christianity alone can give liberty its real nature, and liberty alone can give Christianity the means of influence necessary to it." Thus, the state must also cease its control of education, the press, and labor in order to allow Christianity to effectively flourish in those arenas".

New Agers are trying to take over one of Christianity's oldest pilgrimages -- the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain.

There is a thorough demolition of "The Da Vinci Code" here for anyone who is inclined to suspect that there is any truth in it

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ELSEWHERE

Final proof that Leftists live in a mental world of their own comes in this comment from the Boston Globe: "Part of the problem was the candidate. Kerry rarely opened up about Vietnam". He's never shut up about it since he got back!

Hmmmm... George Will claims that the great popularity of Arnold Schwarzenegger at the recent Republican convention signifies a return to "Goldwater Conservatism" -- non-religious conservatism. I think he exaggerates greatly. The religious Right has always been only one current in conservatism and Reagan himself had thoroughly libertarian views -- though his undoubted personal faith and love of his "fellow Americans" (as he always called them) tended to blur that. He was, after all, a divorced man. And even among Bible-believing Christians there is great diversity of views. One can perfectly well be a devout Christian conservative without being "born again" and without wanting to use the law to force your values down the neck of others. The most fundamentalist Christians in fact want no part of "the world" and may even refuse to vote at all (as with Jehovah's Witnesses). And they have perfectly good scriptural authority for that (John 18:36; Mark 12:17). But Schwarzenegger certainly does provide a clear signal that you do not have to be religious to be an effective conservative -- a point I make at some length elsewhere.

The inevitability of centrism: "Gingrich... told the gathered [Republicans] that it would be "impossible to create a right only majority in America" and that a party that didn't invite someone as popular as Governor Schwarzenegger to speak "wasn't fit to win." With a nod to some of the journalists in the room, Newt declared, "There is a narrow-minded, bigoted party in America. It's called the Democratic Party." (See also here).

Europe gets a turn: "A coalition of Rastafarian groups in Jamaica said yesterday that it wanted to go to the UN to persuade Europe to pay billions of dollars to the followers of the faith in reparation for slavery. The Rastafarian Nation in Jamaica said European countries once involved in the slave trade, especially Britain, should pay $129bn (œ72.5bn) to resettle 500,000 Jamaican Rastafarians in Africa".

Australia's leading Leftist talks sense: "Mark Latham yesterday clashed with Australia's leading welfare body over his tax package, accusing it of believing that providing people with a life of welfare was doing them a long-term favour. Mr Latham said he had a different view. "The best life is not a life of welfare - it's a life of work," he said".

Leftists in the media and elsewhere commonly pillory GWB for his Christian faith. Kengor, however, shows that Clinton in fact mentioned God more often and spoke in churches more often. So why no condemnation of Clinton? I guess everybody realizes that GWB means what he says while Clinton is a fake. (Via Peg Kaplan)

Tom Barrett: "John Kerry is a patrician snob. He looks down his nose at the very people he is supposed to serve. George Bush is a regular guy. If you sat down with him at a barbeque, as some of my friends have done, you wouldn't know he was the most powerful man in the world. And he LOVES the American people, every one of us."

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its usual survey of blogospheric wisdom.

EDUCATION WATCH has an excerpt from a rather fun article which argues that it is good for creationism to be taught in schools even though it may not be right.

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


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The vast hatred of President Bush coming from the Left seems to focus almost entirely on his Iraq policy and a claim that it is "stupid" or dishonest. Yet the world's most successful and influential Leftist intellectual -- the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -- is a vigorous supporter of that policy. It shows that everything said to justify the Leftist hatred of Bush is mere camouflage. What they really hate is someone non-Leftist wielding great power. The hatred is purely emotional and envious -- with only the slightest pretense to reasoning tacked on. As usual, principles have nothing to do with it.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

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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THOSE PEACEFUL MUSLIMS

Training women for jihad: "Our main mission: push our children to the battlefield, like Al-Khansaa," declares a newly-launched online magazine teaching women how to contribute to jihad, or holy war. The monthly, published by the "Women's Information Office in the Arabian Peninsula", champions the ideology of Al-Qaeda terror chief Osama bin Laden: "Drive infidels from the Arabian Peninsula," or Saudi Arabia, which hosts Islam's holiest sites in Mecca and Medina."

There is an interesting article here saying that Iran considers itself "encircled" by U.S. forces and allies. Wayne Lusvardi thinks they're right: "Sure, Democracy may never come to Iraq given its autocratic culture. But focusing on that has diverted our attention away from what is the classic encirclement strategy using "silent alliances" with neighboring states rather than those with the U.N. The Afghanistan-Iraq Wars have encircled Iran and Syria on two sides. But, of course, the mainstream media has been focusing on the dubious achievements in Iraq and missing the bigger strategic picture. This has led to the selective misperception that the Iraq War is "phony." This begs the question, what is the Bush administration supposed to do? - announce to Iran, Pakistan, and Syria that "we've got you surrounded now!" No can do. All they can do is keep focusing everyone's attention on WMDs etc while they quietly get on with their real aims. Iraq is a preliminary, a staging ground for what is likely coming (probably after the U.S. elections)".

The Iranian bomb: The London Arabic daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat published an op-ed by its former editor, Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, claiming that Israel is merely used as a pretext for Iran's nuclear build-up, and that in fact this build-up principally endangers the neighboring Arab countries.

The Funding for Peace Coalition (FPC) has released a new report detailing the diversion of unprecedented sums of financial aid from the Palestinian people towards corruption and violence. The FPC report is called "Managing European Taxpayers' Money: Supporting The Palestinian Arabs - A Study In Transparency". It publishes evidence, which substantiates a compelling connection between European funding and ongoing Palestinian corruption and terrorism. It also highlights the utter failure of European organisations to monitor where these funds have been directed.

Arlene Peck: "The Arabs are bombing, murdering, mutilating, raping and causing havoc all over the Judeo /Christian world. Israel has nothing to do with it.nothing! The front page of my L.A. Times today headlined, (besides the Israelis who were savagely bombed in Beersheba) that that these same sub-human savage "militants" who had killed twelve Nepalese workers want more! More concessions and more blood! ...... On a personal level , I believe a plan should be implemented where announcements are made that anyone who even tries to bomb anyone in the Jewish state will be shot by bullets soaked in pig blood. Then they will be returned to their families who raise these homicide bombers wrapped in pig skin for burial".

Brink Lindzey has an insightful article showing the common origins and common features of Communism, Fascism and Islamofascism. He points out that WE (modern Western industrial civilization) are the revolutionaries by historical standards and the totalitarians are an attempt to return to the past that we have overturned. I made a similar point in the last third of a 1988 article here but was more pessimistic about the outcome of the conflict than now seems required.

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ELSEWHERE

The Anti-Chomskyite has a powerful and moving account of how he moved from being a fanatical Leftist in his youth to a much more conservative stance now. It might actually convert some Leftists if you could get them to read it. The self-contradictions and intolerance of Leftism were what finally got to him. Just a few quotes: "Ultimately it was the idea of universalism.... that disturbed me the most. The demand for an absolute uniformity of thought and opinion... My family life was deeply troubled, I was unhappy, I had blamed society. It was as simple and as cliched as all that..... It is not mere armchair psychology to see radical politics, in fact all politics which sees the world as inherently flawed and in need of overturning, as, in truth, the cry of unhappy and angry people; people for whom politics has become a desperate attempt to satiate a pain which is, in fact, deeply personal". I have put up a good excerpt on LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS too. (Via Peg Kaplan).

A great anti-Chomsky article by Windschuttle points out that even Chomsky's original claim to fame in linguistics is hollow. Linguistics professor Marc Miyake would emphatically agree.

Mike Jericho has a good sense of humour. In response to the recent multiplication of my blogs, he describes me as: "the man who is to conservative bloggers what Moses was to the Israelites". And The Yobbo gave me a good laugh with this comment: "When John Ray was 17, Thomas Aquinas was still on the bestseller list." Aquinas died in 1274 so I am not quite that old! Keith Burgess-Jackson has just put something up on Aquinas, as it happens. And The Usurer puts in a plug for Aristotle -- very Straussian!

Amusing that the Germans are finally getting around to humanizing Hitler. Even anti-Nazi prewar writers such as Roberts and Heiden conceded that he was the most popular man in Germany at the time so he was human all right. The ploy of saying that he was insane or inhuman is just a means of distracting attention from what he really embodied -- the Leftist form of nationalism. Giving ANY Leftist unlimited power is catastrophic.

Like myself, Bjorn Staerk is an atheist but with a Christian background. But I don't think I entirely agree with his view that atheists have no business interpreting the texts of a given religion. It seems to me that the teachings of Christ are what all Christians bow before and I can read those teachings in the Gospels as well as anybody else. And I still find great wisdom in them -- as my not infrequent quotations from scripture attest. And I certainly reserve the right to disparage those who claim to follow the teachings of Christ when they clearly do not. Atheists in mitres particularly offend me.

I think Maverick Philosopher is a bit hard on Nietzsche. One of the few wise things that old Fred said was: "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies". Maverick takes that a bit too literally. I unpack the statement as saying that convictions can be such a barrier to the recognition of truth that they send you off in the wrong direction more often than lies do -- which I take to be what generally happens with Leftists, in fact.

GREENIE WATCH has the Greenie answer to the recent Muslim barbarism in Russia: Stuffed Koalas!

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

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

The vast hatred of President Bush coming from the Left seems to focus almost entirely on his Iraq policy and a claim that it is "stupid" or dishonest. Yet the world's most successful and influential Leftist intellectual -- the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -- is a vigorous supporter of that policy. It shows that everything said to justify the Leftist hatred of Bush is mere camouflage. What they really hate is someone non-Leftist wielding great power. The hatred is purely emotional and envious -- with only the slightest pretense to reasoning tacked on. As usual, principles have nothing to do with it.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

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

It looks like Associated Press are now outdoing Reuters for bias: AP actually lies: "A widely circulated Associated Press article says, "The wealthiest 20 percent of households in 1973 accounted for 44 percent of total U.S. income, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Their share jumped to 50 percent in 2002.".... By using the word "jumped," the AP story clearly implies the income share of the top 20 percent "jumped to 50 percent in 2002." In fact, the share fell to 49.7 percent in 2002 from 50.1 percent in 2001. To describe a falling number as a "jump" seems remarkably shameless, even in an election year...... And although the story claims the share at the top "has steadily increased," it actually rose from 46.9 percent in 1992 to 49.8 percent in 2000 (when Bill Clinton was president), but has not risen at all since then". For the most notorious AP lie, see here.

Rich poor people: "Much is made of the fact that the US has a higher poverty rate (and in something called 'shameful,' child poverty rate) than all of the other OECD countries. It does indeed sound terribly bad doesn't it? Yet the fact that poverty rates are relative within a country, not either absolute or relative across countries is not mentioned. All that has actually been noted with such poverty rates is that the US has a wider distribution of income, not something that we didn't already know." And as Blithering Bunny notes: "Nearly half the statistically defined 'poor' have air conditioning, more than half owned cars, and more than 20,000 'poor' households have their own heated swimming pools or Jacuzzis".

Benefits of the Bush tax cut for dividends: "The new rates have made a difference since becoming law in May 2003. The tax cut not only reduced the burden on individuals, it also reduced the cost of capital to corporations. The economic benefits of the lower dividend tax rates will increase over time, and they will be even greater if Congress makes the rate cuts permanent -- and greater still, if the taxation of dividends is completely eliminated."

The recent Australian triumph over union coercion: "All workers had a win on Thursday. The High Court ruled that unions cannot compel people who are not members to pay them a fee if they receive union-negotiated pay rises. And it barred unions from taking industrial action over anything except wages and conditions in any enterprise. Union leaders are already denouncing the decision. They say non-members are bludgers, but ignore the obvious fact that sustainable pay rises are based on productivity, rather than union intervention. Senior official John Maitland says unions should be able to "talk about" anything they like, from childcare to the environment. And so they should, but stating a case does not include taking industrial action in pursuit of activist agendas".

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ELSEWHERE

Great if it happens: "Israel and Russia today signed an agreement to fight terrorism and agreed to explore every possible means to step up intelligence gathering to root out the "global scourge.""

I think Jeff Jacoby has a point in saying that, of all the speeches at the GOP convention, "no speech evoked the Gipper's legacy more truly than Schwarzenegger's"

Another fake Christian: "How sad for Christians that their bishops whisper religion, but shout politics. I say this because Melbourne's Archbishop Peter Watson has preached to the Anglican Synod on "How the nation of Australia stands at this time". In his address, Watson ticked all the Left's boxes. Tampa, bad. Border protection, inhuman. Election, a time to "talk about truth in politics". Iraq, a "mistake". Medicare, broken. University fees, too high. Global warming, deadly. Logging, evil. And so on..... Why would it have been more Christian to have done nothing as Saddam Hussein kept murdering Iraqis, mutilating critics, paying terrorists and devising terrible weapons? Why is it more Christian to believe in the myth that we can halt global warming, if such warming is indeed occurring? And surely it's not Christian to support the modern cult of tree worship, and so break the second commandment? Silent on saving babies, but loud on saving trees. Welcome to the post-Christian church".

The New York Times has been highly critical of the GOP seeking votes among Bible Christians but thinks it is great for Democrats to seek votes among "modern" Christians. No double standards there of course.

But "modern" Christians are not really modern at all, of course. As Rothbard points out, Communistic Christians go back to before the time of Luther. America was partly founded by one branch of them in fact. They abandoned communism only under the pressure of starvation.

A rather gripping parable about why America is at war in Iraq here

There are some facts and figures here about the higher birthrate among conservatives. Leftists are doomed by their own self-preoccupation.

Hard for women to have both careers and kids: "In a recent speech that was largely ignored by the news media, the United Nation's chief demographer declared that the very existence of some nations has now been endangered by fertility decline, and the international community's insistent call for "gender equality" is making the problem even worse".

There are reports that the Niger uranium story, (a story hysterically seized on by antiwar commentators as a "lie") may have had its origin in France, that it may in fact have been a set-up by the notorious French intelligence service.

I noted yesterday that the local tentacle of the Murdoch media in my home town of Brisbane gives both conservative and Leftist views a fair run. But what would a really conservative media outlet be like? The Happy Carpenter has some interesting scenarios.

I have just put up a book review here that has a bit of a laugh at the difficulties the Left have in explaining why the USA and its allies invaded Iraq.

I have just put up on LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS an article about the problem of elite influence in the Australian Labor Party.

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

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

The vast hatred of President Bush coming from the Left seems to focus almost entirely on his Iraq policy and a claim that it is "stupid" or dishonest. Yet the world's most successful and influential Leftist intellectual -- the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -- is a vigorous supporter of that policy. It shows that everything said to justify the Leftist hatred of Bush is mere camouflage. What they really hate is someone non-Leftist wielding great power. The hatred is purely emotional and envious -- with only the slightest pretense to reasoning tacked on. As usual, principles have nothing to do with it.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

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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THANK YOU RUPERT MURDOCH

My local Brisbane Sunday newspaper is "The Sunday Mail" -- a Murdoch title. It gives a degree of coverage to views congenial to conservatives that would, I think, make most conservative buyers of American newspapers pretty envious. In this day of the internet, one could do worse than simply log on to the Brisbane paper and not buy the local rag at all. A sampling of the stories in the most recent issue:

Home truths for feminists: "The bar desperately needs more women barristers," Mr Meagher said while still a Court of Appeal judge in 2002. "There are so many bad ones people may say women can't be good barristers and are hopeless by nature - but that is not so. It's a pity the able people don't come."

Germaine Greer: 147 school students were surveyed and not one knew who she was.

The religion of peace: "I started surfing the Islamic media. Take Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the controversial Egyptian imam who was recently fawned over by the Mayor of London even though he promotes the execution of homosexuals, the right of men to indulge in domestic violence, and the murder of innocent Jews. During the brouhaha it went unnoticed that he also wants to conquer Europe. Don't take my word for it, just listen to him on his popular al-Jazeera TV show, Sharia and Life."

Establishment church perversion: "Deep down, I guess, the Senate's "Forgotten Australians" report came as no great surprise. The extent and depths of the cruelty and depravity revealed were shocking but, somehow, the mere fact that children in institutional care had been mistreated was something of a given.... However, I don't know that we even began to suspect that abuse existed in places such as orphanages and children's homes that we fondly believed were kind and charitable. But now we know that up to 500,000 kids were in care over the past 100 years and a disgraceful number were brutalised and abused... How did this happen? More mystifying, how did those who purported to serve God or to be obedient servants of the state come to be instruments of sadism and sexual exploitation?"

Andrew Bolt's column, on how far Left and antisemitic the Greens are, also appeared but the link is to a sister newspaper in Melbourne. I have excerpted the article on GREENIE WATCH

There was also another article called "What happened to willpower?" that I could not find online so I have reproduced it here

Even "The Simpsons" cartoon was good but I don't know how to find that online. It takes such a good swipe at the decay of the schools, however, that I have put up the three central panels of it here

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PERSONAL

Unlike most bloggers, I don't say much about myself but any guy weird enough to have five regular blogs should presumably say something. So: 1). My 17 year old son told me yesterday that his bedtime reading at the moment is "Critique of pure reason" by Immanuel Kant. I didn't even know he had heard of Kant. But I was reading St Thomas Aquinas and Augustine of Hippo at his age so I understand his interest. His main enthusiasm is mathematics, however, and he is thinking of becoming an actuary. I myself taught statistics at university for many years so I understand that too. 2). I live in a 10 bedroom house but my Presbyterian upbringing makes me not like seeing things "go to waste" -- including accomodation. So I share my house with others. The others have always comprised an ethnic mix and they at the moment include an Indian, a Bangladeshi, a Chinese, a Korean and a Filipino. So I guess that must make me the world's weirdest "white supremacist" -- which is what Captain Clueless once accused me of being (because I oppose affirmative action and made fun of his support for it).

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ELSEWHERE

Email from a reader: "Some Christian fundamentalists have come to the belief that the Anti-Christ was Muhammad himself. According to this thought, the Devil was beside himself after Jesus' sacrifice and while the spread of Christianity was proceeding unimpeded throughout Europe, North Africa and the Middle East and into Asia. So he got an Arab merchant (a pederast to boot), lured him to the desert and gave him a book that taught the opposite of what Jesus said; instead of loving your enemy is hate your enemy, cut off his head and spite him and his family, and if you are not yet strong enough lie and deceive until you can (all in the Koran). As far as theological models go, I think that this thesis is actually inherently logical. One could even consider all the oil under Arab lands as the "devil's gift". On a more somber tone, but still on the same subject, I can only describe the children's massacre in Russia as nothing else but Satanic".

A normally Leftist newspaper, the "Pasadena Weekly" has just put up three pro-Bush letters. They must have got a lot of similar letters to do that. One letter aptly refers to Michael Moore's 9/11 film as the Leftist "New Testament". See here or here. The Stalinist iconography of the paper's front page is amusing too.

There is an article here that strongly reinforces Randall Parker's point about the oppressive effects of polygamy. Similar rules in the West produce similar results to what happens in Muslim lands -- fanatical and punitive puritanism.

This article says that gambling on scientific truths would help keep scientists honest. Something is needed, for sure.

An amusing example of the dilemmas that the theorists at PETA get themselves into.

I have just put up on SOCIALIZED MEDICINE some comments and quotes from Theodore Dalrymple about an alarming trend in British medicine.

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

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

The vast hatred of President Bush coming from the Left seems to focus almost entirely on his Iraq policy and a claim that it is "stupid" or dishonest. Yet the world's most successful and influential Leftist intellectual -- the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -- is a vigorous supporter of that policy. It shows that everything said to justify the Leftist hatred of Bush is mere camouflage. What they really hate is someone non-Leftist wielding great power. The hatred is purely emotional and envious -- with only the slightest pretense to reasoning tacked on. As usual, principles have nothing to do with it.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

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.

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

NEW BLOG!

OK. I am insane. Mike Jericho recently described me as "the most prolific blogger in the freakin' world (not an exaggeration)", but, despite that, I have decided to start yet another daily blog called EDUCATION WATCH. I already post an average of around one item a day on education -- sometimes on "Dissecting Leftism" and sometimes on "Political Correctness Watch" -- so I am not actually envisaging any increase in my blogging. I just hope to make news and information on the education disaster easier to find. With that in mind, I have also reposted on the new blog a lot of my older stuff. But I have just put up two brand-new posts as well: One rather surprising and one very unsurprising. So look there every day or two if education is one of your concerns.

As it happens, I have also just put up some new postings on my two irregular blogs: SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. I seem to have become a one-man blogging industry! I used to write heaps when I was an academic too. And I kept that up for 20 years.

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FROM BROOKES NEWS

John Kerry adviser accuses Vietnam veterans of war crimes John Kerry's spokesman on veterans issues, John Hurley declared that John Kerry was right when he accused US troops of committing atrocities against civilians 'on a day-to-day basis'
Vietnam veterans to John Kerry: We won't be censored While John Kerry supporters Max Cleland and Jim Rassman were staging a shabby media stunt in Texas to embarrass President Bush other Vietnam veterans were throwing down the gauntlet to Kerry
Al Qaeda, China, and President Bush By striking hard and swiftly against terrorists, by imposing on them and their paymasters a terrible price, Bush only sent a vitally important message to other terrorists and their potential supporters but also to China
Immigration, economic growth and jobs Although immigration does not raise unemployment it can cut living standards
John Kerry media jackals go after swift boat veterans Deeply worried that the swift boat veterans' ads are damaging John Kerry his media pals intensified their smear campaign to destroy the credibility of these veterans

Details here

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THAT DEMOCRAT SOPHISTICATION:

Former senator John Glenn (D-Ohio) has just compared Republicans to Nazis: "You've just got to separate out fact from fiction. . . . Too often, too often, in this country, if you hear something repeated, it's the old Hitler business -- if you hear something repeated, repeated, repeated, repeated, you start to believe it," he said." The ignorant Senator is in fact referring to a famous dictum from Goebbels rather than from Hitler so let us see what else Goebbels said:

The bourgeois is about to leave the historical stage. In its place will come the class of productive workers, the working class, that has been up until today oppressed. It is beginning to fulfill its political mission. It is involved in a hard and bitter struggle for political power as it seeks to become part of the national organism. The battle began in the economic realm; it will finish in the political. It is not merely a matter of pay, not only a matter of the number of hours worked in a day-though we may never forget that these are an essential, perhaps even the most significant part of the socialist platform -- but it is much more a matter of incorporating a powerful and responsible class in the state, perhaps even to make it the dominant force in the future politics of the Fatherland

Sounds more like Kerry and Edwards to me.

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ELSEWHERE

A couple of days ago I put up a heading "President Schwarzenegger, 2008?". It's actually rather an old idea now but some people wondered what I meant by it -- given the constitutional prohibition on a non-native-born President. I think the idea is enormous fun. The rules were changed to allow FDR to serve more than the then customary (now legal) two terms, so why not change the rules for Arnie? Eligibility has been widened before -- e.g. the 19th Amendment. Think of the dilemma for the Democrats! Opposing it in Congress would contradict their all-men-are-equal, multicultural, anti-discrimination gospel. And that gospel is their main selling point. I of course give them full credit for hypocrisy and self-contradiction so it would probably have to go to a contested referendum (say, in conjunction with the mid-term elections) and that would stir up a real hornet's nest! And if it did all get through, Arnie would probably get the same sort of big majority he got in California -- so there is no doubt that the Democrats would hate the whole idea. Some already do, in fact. They would be beside themselves! There is an extended discussion of the whole issue here. And there is more on Arnie's politics here.

Predictable bias: "Covering President Bush's Thursday acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, Dan Rather and his colleagues Bob Schieffer and John Roberts provided a textbook example of liberal bias. After praising Democratic candidate John Kerry's "excellent delivery" and managing to say only one negative thing about his speech, Rather & Co. treated Bush's address with far more skepticism critiquing him on numerous points, both political and oratorical"

I suppose it's predictable that this was my favourite quote from GWB's acceptance speech. Speaking of John Kerry, he said: "My opponent takes a different approach. In the midst of war, he has called American allies, quote, a "coalition of the coerced and the bribed." That would be nations like Great Britain, Poland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark, El Salvador, Australia, and others--allies that deserve the respect of all Americans, not the scorn of a politician. I respect every soldier, from every country, who serves beside us in the hard work of history. America is grateful, and America will not forget". And I am also of course pleased to hear that it got huge applause. And how refreshing to hear an American being justly proud of his country: "Now we go forward --grateful for our freedom, faithful to our cause, and confident in the future of the greatest nation on earth"

Great to hear this too: "Ronald Reagan's elder son said yesterday that his father believed 'freedom is never more than one generation from extinction' as he delivered the four-day convention's only official tribute to one of the party's most powerful forces. 'My father believed that God had a plan for his life, for every life, and for the life of our nation,' Michael Reagan said in a five-minute speech interrupted repeatedly by thunderous applause. 'He wasn't just a great communicator, he communicated great ideas.

The Left are getting desperate. They are now telling utterly foolish lies. Once again, "psychopathic" is the only reasonable way of describing a lie that can so easily be found out.

Another derisive comment on John Kerry's incredible lie about his dog. And things must be bad when even a Boston newspaper is turning on him.

Email from a reader: "Today on the leftist National Public Radio (NPR), I heard a report about the whole Russian siege ordeal. The NPR reporters described the Islamofascists as "Gunmen", "Chechnean Rebels" and "Guerillas". The word "terrorist" was only only mentioned at the end, and not by the NPR reporter ("Russians accuse the terrorists of..."). The word "Islamic" was not mentioned once".

Taranto has another shot at the absurd Andrew Sullivan: "we had just learned, by reading the ever-astute Andrew Sullivan, that Miller, a person of pallor, is a "Dixiecrat"--i.e., a segregationist. What was a white segregationist doing on stage with a black man?"

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

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The vast hatred of President Bush coming from the Left seems to focus almost entirely on his Iraq policy and a claim that it is "stupid" or dishonest. Yet the world's most successful and influential Leftist intellectual -- the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -- is a vigorous supporter of that policy. It shows that everything said to justify the Leftist hatred of Bush is mere camouflage. What they really hate is someone non-Leftist wielding great power. The hatred is purely emotional and envious -- with only the slightest pretense to reasoning tacked on. As usual, principles have nothing to do with it.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

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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THE DEVIL'S RELIGION

Lucky I am an atheist or that is what I would think of it

There is a good article here on how the sexual frustration brought on by the primitive nature of Islam and Islamic societies is a major force behind Muslim hatred of the much more liberated West. And Randall Parker points out that the Islamic practice of polygamy is a big boost to sexual frustration. And this report says that the Unabomber, an American home-grown terrorist, was also driven by sexual frustration.

There is a remarkable site here run by ex-Muslims that pulls no punches about the evil inherent in Islam.

A paranoid culture: "Anyone who follows the developments in the Arab Islamic world will be struck by the complete absence of self-knowledge and introspection that characterizes these vexed cultures. Almost every problem is attributed to hostile external forces. The poverty and underdevelopment that plague most of the Arab world are the result of malicious machinations of Americans and Jews... Satan, devils and spirits are not just symbols. They are actual living phenomena in Islam. The notion of conspiracy is an essential aspect of modern Muslim religious philosophy and of Islamic world history".

The Netherlands have a black female and former Muslim as a member of Parliament who is not afraid to tell the truth about Islam: "Low-level fatwas - or death edicts - have been raining down since she attacked Islam as a medieval, misogynist cult incapable of self-criticism and blind to modern science."

But there is hope: "Today, Ahmad Al-Jarallah, editor of the Kuwaiti Daily Al-Siyassa and the Arab Times wrote an article in support of President Bush. The following is the article: "We are with President Bush who has said, 'I am the man who makes history.' Who, other than President Bush, can launch a war against terrorism? Who else will come to the rescue of people suppressed by dictators? Who else was there to build and develop nations? And above all who made democracy the new international system for all the people in this world?....""

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ELSEWHERE

Taranto skewered Andrew Sullivan with surgical precision yesterday -- noting that Sullivan condemned Zell Miller as a "Dixiecrat" for his recent speech at the Republican convention but noting that Sullivan seemed to be quite happy with Miller when he delivered a speech in support of Clinton at the 1992 Democrat convention. Sullivan's apparent desire to "marry" his homosexual partner seems to have sent him way to the Left in general -- complete with all the hypocrisy that entails. But Sullivan has always been an unhappy soul. Note this stupid comment by him from two years ago: "What rubes and provincials the British often are". The British could be pardoned for saying the same about Americans but both comments would be equally vacant. Let me put it this way: "What arrogant pretenders to sophistication homosexuals often are".

Jeff Jacoby looks at the GOP convention delegates in NYC and finds real diversity and tolerance -- unlike anything among the Democrats.

The main points of GWB's acceptance speech at the Republican convention are given here.

Proof at TCS that the Leftist media write their stereotyped and biased stories even before the events concerned happen. They KNOW the truth. Don't bother them with facts.

David's Medienkritik has some very good sarcasm about the tragic Russian siege and Leftist reaction to it.

No Pasaran is having great fun with the hypocritical French reaction to the kidnapping of French journalists by Muslims.

A protest marcher from the 60s doesn't think much of the modern lot: "But the biggest difference between then and now, of course, is that we marched against our government when it supported dictators, not when it removed them".

Australia's Leftist labor unions have just suffered a tremendous defeat in the High Court of Australia. They have been barred from taking strike action in support of political, social and environmental causes. And the leader of Australia's major Leftist party appears to SUPPORT the ruling!

Open borders, closed debate: "Perhaps more than any other issue, immigration drives a wedge between the [Republican] party's establishment and its grass roots. Bush's business friends need the cheap labor. Bush's political advisors tell him he needs Mateo. Conservative activists and voters throughout the country see mass border-crossing and lax enforcement of immigration laws as threats to safety, security, neighborhoods, culture, and job availability."

EU to imitate Australia? "The rate at which asylum seekers are entering Europe for economic reasons has created 'a time-bomb', the incoming European Commissioner for justice and home affairs has said.... He repeated his calls for transit countries around Europe's borders to set up holding camps for prospective immigrants. "The camps would take in immigrants... to offer them humanitarian aid and information about job possibilities in Europe," he said. "But they would also investigate, identify and send back those who don't meet the criteria or who would not be able to integrate."

Carnival of the Vanities is up again: Your one-stop shop for blogospheric wisdom.

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

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

The vast hatred of President Bush coming from the Left seems to focus almost entirely on his Iraq policy and a claim that it is "stupid" or dishonest. Yet the world's most successful and influential Leftist intellectual -- the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -- is a vigorous supporter of that policy. It shows that everything said to justify the Leftist hatred of Bush is mere camouflage. What they really hate is someone non-Leftist wielding great power. The hatred is purely emotional and envious -- with only the slightest pretense to reasoning tacked on. As usual, principles have nothing to do with it.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

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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THE EDUCATION SHAMBLES

Dangerous deficits: "If we continue to let kids get high school diplomas when they're functionally illiterate, and if colleges continue to pump out grads that can't communicate well or properly (to be fair, colleges are having a heck of a time giving remedial English classes to incoming freshman who are nowhere near high school graduate level), we're all going to lose something important. After all, it's the ability to communicate clearly that keeps us all informed of things large and small, from office parties to our medical care, and from funny stories to urgent warnings."

Even the elite of students produced by America's Left-dominated High Schools are clueless: "Since this is Emory, there are no re-enactments of "The Blackboard Jungle," and most in the class strive for an A, in their fashion. But the ignorance, laziness, sense of entitlement and lack of basic rhetorical skills are stunning. One student thinks that "books" and "novels" are the same. Another identifies the Granite State as "New Hamster." Few are familiar with the rules of language, many spell poorly and all are confused by tenses and apostrophes and complain bitterly when Prof. Allitt marks them down for grammatical errors."

And it's no wonder how ignorant the students are when you see how dumb the "educators" are: "The town of Hempstead, NY, has a message for Gwinnett County school administrators: Before you target a student wearing a Hempstead shirt, look at a map. Terrell Jones, a student in Gwinnett County's [GA] Grayson High School, was weeded out of a classroom by a school administrator because he wore a shirt that read: 'Hempstead, NY 516,' a reference to the Long Island town and its telephone area code. According to Jones' family, which moved from Hempstead to the Atlanta suburb, the school thought the shirt referred to marijuana. Jones wasn't allowed to return to class until he persuaded school officials to search the Internet for the town name. The town's Web site says the area may have been named for Hemel-Hempstead, England. Another theory cites the Dutch city of Heemstede, because settlers had come years earlier from the Netherlands."

Education has been dumbed down in England too: "Nearly 20 years ago I studied A-levels in English literature/language, history and sociology at a local FE college in the West Midlands. In recent years I've been teaching both A-level sociology, and government and politics, at a variety of inner London FE colleges. I'm also an A2 government and politics examiner for the examination board Edexcel. David Miliband blithely suggests it's 'a myth' that A-levels are getting easier, but from my experience it's the unavoidable and uncomfortable truth".

And it happens in Australia too: "Analyst and author Kevin Donnelly says Queensland has led Australia in dumbing down the curriculum for state schools. And he says students are being indoctrinated with left-wing ideology. "Queensland wrote the Study of Society and the Environment national curriculum and it was re-written at national level because people could not believe the new-age loony stuff in it," Dr Donnelly said. "Unfortunately, it's still used in Queensland." Dr Donnelly said: "I felt that Australia's approach to the curriculum, particularly in Queensland, was fundamentally flawed and obsolete and the result is that students have been put at risk because the curriculum has been dumbed down.".... Queensland's approach to the curriculum was "very politically correct", he said. "The SOSE curriculum promotes a left-wing view of things like multiculturalism . . . and peace studies. It's all about indoctrination...."

High School teacher Dave Huber has some very sarcastic comments on the latest "resolutions" of the NEA. "Illegality is good" seems to be part of their story. A great way to educate kids! How about if a few people "illegally" shot some NEA members? Would that be good too? Or should we encourage respect for the law after all? Lamebrains! If people only have to obey the laws they agree with, I foresee a lot of dead Leftist fanatics. They rely on other people being more decent and responsible than they are.

Amtrak? "A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad." -Theodore Roosevelt, Twenty-sixth US president (1858-1919)

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ELSEWHERE

Clayton Cramer has a very understated comment on the laugh of the day: A group of American "professional historians" criticizing Michelle Malkin's latest book for lack of "objectivity and fairness". They would not know objectivity and fairness if they fell over it! They are trying to shut the lovely Filipina up because she is defending America's reputation for honour and decency! Australian Leftist historians would dearly love to silence Windschuttle for much the same reason. He defends the honour and decency of the British colonizers of Australia.

That amusing Leftist "projection" again: A DEMOCRAT is talking about "fake moderation"? "As the image-conscious Republicans gaveled open their national convention Monday morning -- kicking off a four-day festival of faux moderation -- the conservative activists who helped shape the party platform were nowhere to be seen at Madison Square Garden...."

V.D. Hanson: "The Swift-boat vets were probably willing to grimace and bite their teeth throughout the present campaign, but not when Kerry paraded his service, saluted the Democratic delegates ("reporting for duty"), and posed as a time-honored proud warrior of the American military. And so now we have the present mess that will go on for weeks and can only hurt Kerry. He is earning a reputation for once welcoming third-party hit ads, then (now) whining about them; for parading his service, then whining about scrutiny of it; for spouting braggadocio, then whining about hurtful speech. As the Greeks remind us, pride can lead to hubris and then to Nemesis - on its tragic and ultimate rendezvous with ruin."

President Schwarzenegger, 2008? "Arnold Schwarzenegger is a Republican of the big tent variety.... He does things his own way, this governor. And that way has been mostly bipartisan: Schwarzenegger has made friends and foes in both parties in California. His approval ratings among voters of all affiliations have lately hit the heights of those of his hero, Ronald Reagan." The transcript of Arnie's great convention speech is here

The era of the blogs is here all right. The Australian Federal election is for October 9th and two major Australian Leftist newspapers (The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age) have started a blog to facilitate their comments on it! At least it puts their biases out in the open. No comments facility.

I rather like irony (sarcasm even!) so I got a good laugh out of the last line of the last paragraph of Taranto yesterday.

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

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

The vast hatred of President Bush coming from the Left seems to focus almost entirely on his Iraq policy and a claim that it is "stupid" or dishonest. Yet the world's most successful and influential Leftist intellectual -- the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -- is a vigorous supporter of that policy. It shows that everything said to justify the Leftist hatred of Bush is mere camouflage. What they really hate is someone non-Leftist wielding great power. The hatred is purely emotional and envious -- with only the slightest pretense to reasoning tacked on. As usual, principles have nothing to do with it.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

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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DAS DRITTE REICH -- AND FRIENDS

There is rather a good short summary of Hitler's thinking here by Koenigsberg -- showing that Hitler was devoted to Germany, that he saw Germany as a living organism that was severely threatened and that he saw the 'alien' Jews as incompatible with German life. Koenigsberg also shows how anti-individual Nazism was: "Hitler stated that Volksgemeinschaft ["people's community"] meant "overcoming bourgeois privatism, unconditionally equating the individual fate and the fate of the nation." Every single German was obligated to unite with the community, to embrace and share the common faith."

And where did Hitler get the idea of Germany as a biological organism? He was quite explicit that he got his eugenic ideas from American "Progressives" so it is rather unlikely that the ideas of the American President who was so prominent in the events of World War I and its aftermath could have escaped him. And if you look here, you will see that the anti-business Woodrow Wilson too justified his wish to scrap the checks and balances of the American constitution on the grounds that the U.S. government was "not a machine, but a living thing. It falls, not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life... No living thing can have its organs offset against each other, as checks, and live".

Jamie Glazov knows the score: "Leftwing gulag denial shares a profound affinity with neo-nazi holocaust denial. This is no surprise, since nazism and socialism are closely related. Nazism wasn't termed "National Socialism" without reason. Aside from both ideologies supporting state control of the economy, nazism and socialism also emphasize struggle and revolution for the sake of bringing about an apocalyptic end to the present phase of world history. Rejecting the world they live in, socialists envision class utopia, while nazis dream of racial utopia. This explains why both systems subordinate the individual to the state and rely upon an elite party, organized in military style, to achieve their objectives. In the end, the socialist and nazi visions demonize - necessarily - a certain portion of the human race. Mass genocide is the logical outcome of both ideologies, since humans must be sacrificed in the name of a transcendent humanism.... Socialists must wipe out the historical memory of the gulag, because that way another gulag becomes possible"

Those conservative Nazis! "Going down into the Chancellery bunker near the end of WWII, Joseph Goebbels took a look around at the burning wreckage of Berlin and exulted to his diary: "These flames are consuming the last of 19th-century bourgeois civilization!""

There is a good essay here that uses extensive quotes to show that Socialism, Communism, Nazism and Fascism are all essentially the same and that America and other Western countries today are far closer to historical Fascism than is at all comfortable. I draw similar conclusions myself here and here

September 1st (today in the USA at the time of writing) is the 65th anniversary of the German invasion of Poland. To mark the occasion, Sean Gabb has drawn our attention to his defence of the great appeaser! It is not as silly as it sounds and is worth a read. Though in the end I think Churchill was right.

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ELSEWHERE

Rather Biased is good on the way the mainstream media have "sanitized" the anti-Republican demonstrators in New York.

Clayton Cramer reports a typical example of Leftist attention-seeking at the Republican convention and is puzzled by it. He does not seem to realize that attention-seeking is what motivates Leftists in general. Leftism makes sense only as a psychological condition, not as as a serious analysis of anything. More on that here.

Taranto has some good excerpts from the convention speech by the last real Republican mayor of NYC.

LOL. Leftist self-delusion: "In the end, there was no need for a big rally in Central Park. No need for a string of angry speakers standing at some podium bashing President Bush and the Republicans. In the end, the torrent of people and placards that choked the streets of Manhattan yesterday was more powerful than any speech."

Former NYC Mayor Ed Koch "identifies himself with pride as a lifelong Democrat.... No surprise, then, that Koch disagrees with George W. Bush on just about every domestic issue, from taxes to marriage to prescription drugs. But he's voting for him in November. "I've never before supported a Republican for president," Koch told me last week. "But I'm doing so this time because of the one issue that trumps everything else: international terrorism. In my judgment, the Democratic Party just doesn't have the stomach to stand up to the terrorists. But Bush is a fighter."

Look at the facts, not conspiracy theories: "If we move beyond the conspiracy mode of thinking, we can begin to judge the total contribution of the Bush presidency and see that we are far better off than we were at the end of the Clinton administration. The president has ably led us through the uncertain days following the worst attack on our country in modern times. Funding of terror cells has been disrupted; Al Qaeda operations have been crippled. A brilliant military victory in Afghanistan has eliminated bases for training camps that were turning out fanatical anti-American terrorists, and this victory and the one in Iraq have made the Middle East and the world a safer place on the whole.... The jobs that John Kerry has complained about for months are beginning to come through in substantial numbers. The largest tax cut in American history has returned the people's money to them".

Second-term hopes?: "Bush-bashers enjoy saying President Bush is far, far to the right. But as virtually any conservative will tell you, the president has been a me-too liberal on many of the issues that matter most -- spending like crazy, expanding the bureaucracy, subsidizing farmers, caving in to free-speech curbs and recklessly enlarging an entitlement program. That list is just for starters. The question is whether he and his supporters can make a convincing case before the end of the Republican National Convention that he will rectify his errors -- get right with the right -- while moving boldly with particularized, innovative policies on some major problems mostly ignored in the first term."

David Brooks says there is not a lot of public support for cuts to big government so conservatives have to get used to that. He points to historical precedents for GWB's alternative strategy of using big government in a way that liberates and empowers the individual rather than taking his choices away and forcing him into a straitjacket of uniformity.

Dick McDonald has had problems with an unreadably wide page lately but I fixed it for him last night. He has a very good short post here about how the Bush tax-cuts on investment income have kept the economy surging ahead despite oil shocks and other pressures.

Marybeth has been having fun comparing Google with other search engines. Her comment on Cambodia gave me a laugh.

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

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The vast hatred of President Bush coming from the Left seems to focus almost entirely on his Iraq policy and a claim that it is "stupid" or dishonest. Yet the world's most successful and influential Leftist intellectual -- the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -- is a vigorous supporter of that policy. It shows that everything said to justify the Leftist hatred of Bush is mere camouflage. What they really hate is someone non-Leftist wielding great power. The hatred is purely emotional and envious -- with only the slightest pretense to reasoning tacked on. As usual, principles have nothing to do with it.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

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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IS LEFT AND RIGHT ALL THERE IS IN POLITICS?

I am afraid I have to get a bit academic here:

The idea that political orientation needs to be described in terms of two dimensions instead of a single Left-Right dimension is an old one -- going at least as far back as the factor-analytic work of Ferguson in the 1940s. It also seems to be something of an article of faith for most libertarians -- though the usual 1% of the vote gained by the U.S. Libertarian Party in national elections tends to show how far the theory is from reality. The latest attempt at a two-dimensional description is some work by Lightfoot. I took the Lightfoot quiz myself and you can see my results here. Note that according to Lightfoot, Stalin was a Rightist! Black might as well be white.

I have no idea of Lightfoot's political orientation but it does rather look like the attempt made by Leftist psychologists to claim that all political baddies are conservatives. They have falsely claimed for years that the socialist Hitler was a Rightist, so why not Stalin too? For a quick treatment of why two-dimensional descriptions of politics don't work, see here. My own statistical research into the dimensionality question goes back over 30 years and my reply to the claim that Communists are conservatives is here.

Putting it at its briefest, the Left/Right division is so pervasive because that IS how the great majority of people think. There are of course varieties of conservatism --- with religious conservatives and economic conservatives having least in common -- but they all do have SOME things in common: Principally a respect for the individual. Leftists, by contrast, talk in terms of groups and say that the individual must bow down and conform to some largely mythical "community'. And both the Communists and Hitler were very good at that.

See here for some statistical evidence that economic and religious conservatism do combine in the general population. And that is why (to be very technical) the first eigenvalue is always large relative to subsequent ones.

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ELSEWHERE

Wow! I am beginning to think that Nelson Ascher is the most brilliant blogger around at the moment. He seems to have taken over "Europundits" and last night I just read right through through every word of the current postings there. He is a Brazilian of Hungarian origin but really sticks the knife into anti-American stupidity. His sarcastic comment on Springsteen is a gem. And if you are interested in languages and in poetry (long great interests of mine) this long post is gripping. Thanks to Marc Miyake for introducing me to Ascher.

Speaking of sarcasm, This WSJ piece by Peggy Noonan from last April is very pointed too.

A libertarian case for GWB: "voting for George W. Bush on Nov. 2 may be the best choice for advocates of a free society. In fact, on several issues important to libertarians, Bush has even staked out positions clearly superior to those of his Democratic opponent. Chief among them is Social Security reform. Since he first ran in 2000, Bush has proposed to return a share of Social Security taxes to workers in the form of private pension accounts invested in the market.... Ditto for health care reform. Bush signed legislation establishing health savings accounts, which empower more consumers to decide how their health dollars will be spent..... While Bush has been a big spender, he has not been a big regulator... On gun control, Bush is a consistent defender of the moral and constitutional right to keep and bear arms.... On free trade, Bush has embraced the freedom of Americans to trade and invest in the global economy. His administration won trade promotion authority, launched a new round of negotiations in the World Trade Organization and signed a number of free trade agreements.. On tax reform, Bush shares the Reagan vision of a tax system that encourages economic success. With a GOP Congress, he has cut marginal tax rates across the board and especially on dividends and capital gains."

Good comment from a reader: "I am reading "Unfit for Command" at the moment. WOW! The 30 second sound bites and O'Reilly interviews don't do it justice - there is more here than you possibly can imagine. And it's all internally consistent - how could the authors possibly get so many people to lie consistently? Yet leftists just discard obvious facts and defend Kerry. Kerry's insults to soldiers were never forgotten - most veterans just were happy to get on with their productive lives - unlike Kerry, who never had a real job".

"Unfit for Command" is a Regnery book and might not have got published without them so click here to read a summary of the book and perhaps buy it. And here is a way to get a free(ish) copy of it.

A fun post about Kerry and dogs on the WSJ

The Christian Science Monitor has a rare flash of humour in reporting the lies of the Chinese Fascists about Tibet.

The Happy Carpenter has a big post about how a government bureaucracy that hands out licences to build things is heavily up its own rear-end -- And helping nobody in the process.

Lost Tooth Society is a new conservative blog with a lot of good links.

Wayne Lusvardi has a good short review of a book on the motivations of one of America's home-grown terrorists -- the Unabomber. As with Muslims, it looks like sexual frustration had a lot to do with his destructive behaviour.

In case you have not come across it yet, Communists for Kerry seems to be very popular at the moment.

Another socialist icon bites the dust: The Kibbutzim have gone capitalist.

Wicked Thoughts has put up heaps of good jokes lately

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

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

The vast hatred of President Bush coming from the Left seems to focus almost entirely on his Iraq policy and a claim that it is "stupid" or dishonest. Yet the world's most successful and influential Leftist intellectual -- the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -- is a vigorous supporter of that policy. It shows that everything said to justify the Leftist hatred of Bush is mere camouflage. What they really hate is someone non-Leftist wielding great power. The hatred is purely emotional and envious -- with only the slightest pretense to reasoning tacked on. As usual, principles have nothing to do with it.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

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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PROBLEMS IN THE HEXAGON

"The hexagon" is a common French synonym for France. A map will show you why

French arrogance crumbling? "This week marked the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Paris, but the champagne corks were flying beneath clouds of French despair. As the Government of Jacques Chirac tries to mend chronic flaws in the country's social fabric -- highlighted by a rise in racist and anti-Semitic violence -- the French intelligentsia is lamenting the nation's loss of diplomatic clout and cultural authority.. . The mood of national lamentation is summed up by philosopher Chantal Delsol, who asks: "How is it that such a brilliant nation has become such a mediocre power, so out of breath, so indebted, so closed in its own prejudices ... To be French today is to mourn for what we no longer are." In the past few years many of the nation's delusional bubbles have been pricked one by one... "

And The Guardian reports this summary of the French predicament: "The economy is suffocating. Big industrial groups are investing elsewhere," he said. "The best-off are fleeing, the most talented are leaving. Even the middle classes are demoralised by the taxation levels."

Self-inflicted economic woes: "The latest reports on France's socialistic economy portray a bleak picture of French workers on a treadmill running faster and faster just to stay in place. The French unemployment rate has soared to 9.5 percent, and the economic growth rate over the past year has trudged forward at the turtle-like speed of 1.5 percent (versus about 4.5 percent for the U.S.). If the U.S. had an unemployment rate as high as France, there would be about six million more Americans out of work - the equivalent of putting every worker in the state of Michigan in an unemployment line"

There is a TREMENDOUS demolition job done on French history by Prof. Christie Davies here. Just one excerpt: "Ninety years ago in August 1914 Britain was dragged into a war between France and Germany for which France was largely to blame. It was that French war that fatally undermined British power and thus Britain's ability and willingness to withstand the Nazi and Soviet threats that were the very consequence of the war that France began. Not for the first time France had reduced Europe to ruins with her insane and criminal aggression". He goes on to argue that the French were just as Nazi-inclined as the Germans.

I linked to this article on 12th March but two people have recently sent me copies of it so I guess it is worth another note. It is by a former Francophile and describes the pervasive antisemitism of the French. It shows how pathetic France is and why their moral posturing should be totally ignored. One quote: "This, it seems, is their new Maginot line: the sneer of hatred. Hand in hand with the government and the intellectual classes, the French media are channeling the national dismay over lost grandeur into contempt for America."

Incidentally, has anybody used the new blogger search bar at the head of this blog? I entered the word "Francophile" and it found nothing. My post of 12th March was invisible to it. Pretty useless! I found the entry in my files by using good old Ctrl+F.

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