ELSEWHERE

More illiteracy in The Times: "an international criteria". The singular is of course "criterion". British education exposed for what it is again.

Texafornian is pretty miffed that the Left are comparing the "red" States to the old slave States of Confederacy days. A good quote: "“History reveals that every piece of racist legislation that was ever passed and every racist terrorist attack that was ever inflicted on African Americans, was initiated by the members of the Democratic Party. From the formation of the Democratic Party in 1792 to the Civil Rights movement of 1960's, Congressional records show the Democrat Party passed no specific laws to help Blacks, every law that they introduced into Congress was designed to hurt blacks. The chronicles of history shows that during the past 160 years the Democratic Party legislated Jim Crow laws, Black Codes and a multitude of other laws at the state and federal level to deny African Americans their rights as citizens. History reveals that the Republican Party was formed in 1854 to abolish slavery and challenge other racist legislative acts initiated by the Democratic Party".

Evil social workers again: "Like any new father, Marco Zepeda was nervous changing his newborn's diaper for the first time. His hands shook. He fumbled with the sticky seals and sealed one side more snugly than the other. But he never imagined that would propel child protection officials to consider taking custody of his baby. ... Zepeda and his wife are blind, and they believe that's why they were targeted by employees of Sequoia Hospital in Redwood City and San Mateo County social workers. Officials from the hospital didn't return calls, and county officials declined to comment on the specifics of the couple's situation but said the process the couple went through was common. That's not so, say activists for the blind. 'This day and age, we only see cases like this in remote parts of the country,' said Chris Gray, president of the American Council of the Blind." (See also here)

V.D. Hanson refreshes our memories of what the Left said about the impossibility of confronting the Islamic evildoers immediately after 9/11 and shows that much progress has in fact been made since then despite all the prophecies of doom.

Lawless California: 120,000 inmates freed early: "Nearly 120,000 convicted offenders have been released from jail over the past 2 years without serving their full sentences, Los Angeles County sheriff's officials said. ... When sheriff's officials began releasing inmates early to save money in June 2002, they screened prisoners to decide how much time they should serve. Since last year, they have released all but the most serious offenders after they served less than 10 percent of their sentences, officials said."

Carnival of the Vanities is up again and seems particularly good this week

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

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

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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MORE ON DALRYMPLE

My recent skeptical comments (see post of 6th below) about the claims of "Theodore Dalrymple" elicited the following email from Father Mike Walsh of the Maryknolls.

I must express some disagreement with your post on Theodore Dalrymple's latest. Specifically: I doubt intelligence has much to do with it. All the intelligence in the world won't inoculate you against bad ideas. I have known a great many simple virtuous people, and many quite intelligent people who have messed up their lives. As to why more in Britain have not done so, or, to put it another way, why Britain (or any modern place) isn't much worse, may be described, metaphorically, in terms of physics and economics. That is, people are being carried along by sheer momentum, but a momentum that is decaying. They are spending moral and intellectual capital without replacing it. I believe the respect for authority you observed among your renters of years ago, for example, was residual. The main difference that intelligence makes is that intelligent people are better able to cover their mistakes. Your own rise --owing no doubt in large measure to talent and intelligence-- must surely have depended also on habits and virtues in which you were raised, and which are now in decreasing supply in the society at large. Whether or not the trends can be reversed is another matter, about which, I must agree, it's hard to be optimistic.

First, a minor quibble: The respect I got from my tenants was only three years ago, not in the distant past.

The argument that secular society remains relatively civilized only because it has a residue of Christian culture is a popular one but does not withstand a moment's inspection. The most civil, law-abiding and orderly society on earth is undoubtedly Japan, where there are very few Christians and where the main religion (Shinto) is about as primitive as you can get -- a combination of nature worship and ancestor worship. So Christian culture or even any sophisticated religion is not necessary for civility. And the opposite case is persuasive too. Many Africans in both Africa and elsewhere are intensely Christian and in many places African culture is overwhelmingly Christian but .... need I say more?

So once again I have to point to genetic inheritance as being far more important than culture. The twin studies bear that out too. Such studies enable apportionment of the causes of any characteristic into what is genetically caused and what is traceable to family environment. In almost all cases so far studied, the influence of family environment on what the mature person becomes is minimal.

I have some extended comments on the influence of Christianity on society here.

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AN INTERESTING EMAIL

"I thought you may be interested to know that since yesterday I have had a raging fight with John Quiggin. Quiggin had the audacity to call Windschuttle a racist because of a book he is about to publish (or has published) on the White Australia policy. Quiggin hasn't read the book but is prepared to malign Windschuttle as a racist. I find this horrid. Although I haven't read Windschuttle's works I have noticed that leftoids accuse him of horrible things but I have not read anything anywhere directly refuting his work on Tasmanian aboriginals. In other words leftoids call him names etc. and think that is enough rather than attacking his work in a scholarly way. I took to Quiggin repeatedly, asking him how could he attack Windschuttle without reading his book. He then accused me of being a racist as well. I let him have it. I called him a Nazi and a second rate mind. He has now threatened me with legal action. I have never feared a thug like Quiggin so I encouraged him to go right ahead as I would be happy to see him in court. The man throws names and accusations around like they were balls. Honestly, I don't understand how someone like that could teach kids. This is a serious accusation to make against someone. I dare Quiggin to sue me and let the courts see how many people this animal has maligned in the past. I know of three already".

.

It seems that Quiggin can dish out the insults but can't take it in return: Very Leftist. Being an academic, Quiggin is careful with words and he denies that he called Windschuttle a racist. What he actually called Windschuttle was: "a consistent apologist for racism, happy to use racist arguments in support of his cause". But isn't an apologist for racism who uses racist arguments a racist? In common usage it certainly is. Given Windschuttle's many years of committment to Leftist causes, I am sure he has some antiracist past so I think Quiggin is on very shaky ground should Windschuttle sue him. It's typical of the Left, however, that they can only abuse Windschuttle, not refute his facts and arguments.

And it will come as no surprise that Quiggin shows very little grip on what he is talking about. Take this sentence: "I'll also be happy to publish comments from anyone seeking to use quibbles about the definition of "racism" to claim that a policy that openly defined itself in terms of skin colour was, in some sense, not racist." The policy concerned was in fact mainly designed to keep out the Chinese, whose skin colour falls within the range of Caucasian skin colour, so Quiggin's claim that it "openly defined itself in terms of skin colour" is sheer nonsense. All Quiggin seems to know is the popular name ("White Australia") for the policy.

And the slightest knowledge of Australian history would also have told Quiggin that it is perfectly easy to defend the policy on non-racist grounds. A major bastion of support for the policy was in fact the union movement and unionists supported it because it helped keep out cheap labour. Quiggin is a Professor of Economics. He should stick to what he knows.

Update:

Some comments by Prof. Quiggin on this post are to be found here

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ELSEWHERE

Reliapundit says that the Left's refusal to say a word of criticism about any of America's enemies is due to their postmodernist amorality. It's not. Postmodernism is just a tool for Leftists. The thing they want for themselves above all is power and they hate American power most of all both because it is the greatest power and because they do not control it. And because of the separation of powers in the U.S. constitution and because of the love of liberty of the American people (meaning that even Democrats have to campaign on conservative platforms -- remember the amusing spectacle of John Kerry pretending he was a gun-lover?), they never will control it. So they LOVE anything that harms America.

An Australian education beats an American one (not hard, though): "Australian school students are among the best in the world at reading, maths and science... An international survey of 15-year-olds in 41 countries showed Australia was fourth in reading... In science, Australia ranked sixth" whereas: "The U.S. students were behind most other countries in overall math literacy and in every specific area tested in 2003, from geometry and algebra to statistics and computation". And: "student wealth or poverty "was not so strong a determinant of mathematical literacy" in Australia than it was in countries such as the US, Germany and Belgium"

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

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

Comments? Email me here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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THE AMERICAN ROOTS OF FASCISM

The American "Progressives" were the first Fascists of the 20th century

"Fascism" is a term that was originally coined by the Italian dictator Mussolini to describe his adaptation of Marxism to the conditions of Italy after World War I. Lenin in Russia made somewhat different adaptations of Marxism to the conditions in Russia during the same period and his adaptations came to be called Marxism/Leninism. Mussolini stayed closer to Marx in that he felt that Italy had to go through a capitalist stage before it could reach socialism whereas Lenin attempted to push Russia straight from feudalism into socialism. Mussolini's principal modification of Marxism was his rejection of the notion of class war, something that put him decisively at odds with Lenin's "Reds".

If the term "Fascism" means anything of itself it means "Groupism" -- as the fasci of Italy at the time were simply groups of political activists. The fasces of ancient Roman times were of course the bundles of rods carried by the lictors to symbolize the great strength of the organized Roman people. The idea again was that people were stronger in groups than as individuals.

Mussolini's ideas and system were very influential and he had many imitators -- not the least of which was Adolf Hitler -- and some even survived World War II -- such as Peron and Chiang Kai Shek. I have set out at length elsewhere what Mussolini's Italian Fascism was all about so I will simply summarize here by saying that Fascism was a nationalist form of extreme socialism whereas Trotskyism was/is a internationalist form of extreme socialism and Leninism was somewhere in between.

So was Mussolini a totally original thinker? Not at all. Students of ancient history see Sparta as the first Fascist State and students of Marx identify Fascism with Bonapartism -- the type of regime devised by Napoleon Bonaparte and revived by his nephew Napoleon III. But Mussolini was quite intellectual and his thinking was in fact much more up-to-date than that would suggest. He was certainly influenced by Marx and the ancient world but he had a whole range of ideas that extended beyond that. And where did he turn for up-to-date ideas? To America, of course! And the American ideas that influenced him were in fact hard to miss. They were the ideas of the American "Progressives". And who was the best known Progressive in the world at that time? None other than the President of the United States -- Woodrow Wilson -- the man who was most responsible for the postwar order in Europe. So Mussolini had to do little more than read his newspapers to hear at least some things about the ideas of the American Progressives.

And what those ideas were is pretty amazing. "Progressive" was the label favoured by the American Left of the day -- as it still is -- and yet they believed in such things as war being a purifying force, the subjugation of democracy to elite leadership, book-burning, stiff-arm salutes, loyalty oaths, flag ceremonies, the inferiority of blacks and Jews and, of course eugenics. And who said this: "Conformity will be the only virtue and any man who refuses to conform will have to pay the penalty." It could easily have been Mussolini or Hitler but it was in fact Woodrow Wilson.

So 20th century Fascism was in fact an American invention, or more precisely an invention of the American Left. Like many American ideas to this day, however, it proved immensely popular in Europe and it was only in Europe that it was put fully into practice. As it does today, American conservatism kept the American Left in some check in the first half of the 20th century so it was only in Europe that their ideas could come into full bloom. For documentation of the many surprising statements I have just made, see an expanded version of this post here (extra copies here and here) and for deep background on the Progressives see this essay on Croly, one of the leading lights of Progressivism. Note the agony caused to Croly by the need to keep within democracy.

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ELSEWHERE

There is a good summary here of Australian attitudes to their alliance with America. Formal alliances in the form of treaties and other bits of paper have a history of worthlessness. It is alliances that spring from the heart that matter.

Groan! Is nothing sacred? I have just found a spelling mistake in the Times of London. In this story, they say "complementary" when they mean "complimentary". Both are proper words so a spellchecker could not have caught the mistake. It certainly confirms the decline of British education.

There is an interesting post here that suggests a "third way" between the present futile "war on drugs" and complete drug legalization: He suggests that a big research effort be put into finding and selling non-addictive and non-harmful alternatives to the current "pleasure drugs". Maybe it is indeed time to look at that again -- despite the fact that heroin originated in exactly that way: It was originally devised and promoted as a non-addictive alternative to morphine!

Dick McDonald has an extremely good point about the way the new Democrat leader in the Senate has denigrated Justice Thomas. If any Republican had said the same there would be banner headlines calling for his resignation on every newspaper in the country.

Capitalism strikes a blow against media bias: "Clear Channel Communications Inc., the nation's largest radio station operator, has selected Fox News Radio to provide national news for most of its news and talk stations in deal expected to nearly double Fox's radio presence. No terms of the five-year cash deal were disclosed Monday. But Fox, a unit of News Corp., says if all options in the agreement are exercised, its radio service could have more than 500 affiliates by the middle of next year".

Anti-Bush demonstrators observed: "What we see ... is an almost pure fanaticism -- that radical spirit of alienation that ultimately motivates the Jihadis, too. This nihilism is the splinter in the heart of our modernity; it rejects everything; it proposes, finally, nothing in its place. It is the devil himself speaking out of his void.... To understand it, we must look into the very faces contorted with rage, and the mouths uttering the vilest obscenities. The evil is not coming from outside them: it is instead welling from the void within. And yet the tragedy of these people -- whose fanaticism puts them beyond the pale of give-and-take in party politics, and whose views, should they spread, would take the whole democratic order down with them -- is that they know even less about themselves than they know about the world they condemn. They are angry, but finally they don't know why. They don't believe in evil, as a category; yet it haunts them externally on every side: "Bush" being only the straw man of the moment.... They see evil everywhere. They rail, and they rail."

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

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

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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THEODORE DALRYMPLE: SOME SKEPTICAL THOUGHTS

I am sure that there can be few readers of this blog who have not enjoyed at least some of the columns by British prison doctor Anthony Daniels (a.k.a. "Theodore Dalrymple"). I myself read right through every one I encounter. His latest column, however, reveals that he is retiring from his job and suggests that he is looking for a different perspective on life. What he has mainly documented so far is the disastrous state of the British underclass. From his experiences as a prison doctor, he pictures an entire social milieu that is basically feral, devoid of hope and devoid of most of the best things in life. Read his latest column and you will know what I mean.

He attributes the sad state of the people among whom he has been working to two things: The welfare State that deprives people of any sense of individual responsibility and the politically correct Leftist doctrines that have told people that anything goes and that any misfortunes that they suffer are the fault of others. His proposed remedy, therefore, appears to be a winding back of the welfare state and a restoration of traditional, conservative values. With the first remedy I wholeheartedly agree but with the second I think he is pissing into the wind. There is no way that anybody can revive social values that have been replaced by values that come more easily to people. Only the influence of religion can go some way towards doing that for certain individual people and there will always be many who are deaf to the appeals of religion -- particularly in traditionally irreligious Britain.

What I think Dalrymple overlooks is that the vast majority of people in Britain continue to live decent and productive lives despite the politically correct amorality and denial of standards that is constantly being preached at them by their government and by their elites generally. How come, then, that not everybody is equally affected by the collapse of the moral and social standards that make a civilization possible? To answer that, I am afraid I am going to have to mention the elephant in the bedroom: Intelligence. The self-destructive behaviour that Dalrymple documents is in most cases quite simply foolish and if not obviously foolish shows at least a severe lack of forethought -- which is itself a sign of low intelligence. The women whom Dalrymple describes exemplify what I mean. He describes women who apparently get their legs up at the drop of a hat -- with no forethought about what that might lead to. And as a result they have multiple children to multiple partners and receive abuse rather than support from the fathers concerned. But how many intelligent women behave like that? Not many or at least not often. To this day most women are very selective about their sexual partners or at least make sure that casual sexual encounters have no lasting consequences. And does any bourgeois woman decide to bear the children of a man without great confidence in his longterm committment to her? Very few. So it seems to me that Dalrymple is blaming on culture what is really the outcome of lack of intelligence.

So until some new Einstein discovers a way of boosting intelligence in those who lack it, it seems to me that most of what Dalrymple describes will continue no matter what happens in the society at large.

I might add that I myself am of thoroughly working class origins and that I have also had plenty of experience with the stratum of society that Dalrymple describes. I was for a couple of years proprietor of a large boarding house in a very unprestigious suburb (Ipswich) where a substantial part of my customers came to me straight out of prison or via referrals from welfare agencies. And I certainly saw the drunken fights, the thievery and the abuse of women that Dalrymple describes. Perhaps because of my own working class origins, however, I knew how to deal with my customers and got on perfectly well with almost everyone -- even receiving civility from them when I was kicking them out for getting behind with their rent. Even though I physically bundled people out the door on a number of occasions, nobody ever laid a finger on me. So there is in fact a quite powerful culture at work even among the lowest of the low -- if you know how to work it and use its shibboleths.

And I must say that my own rise from a poor background to a state of affluence was virtually effortless. Intelligence is a key that unlocks almost every door and without it almost all doors might as well remain shut -- as the fate of most lottery winners attests.

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ELSEWHERE

The death of the Left: "The hysterical reaction of the Western Left to the reelection of President George W. Bush is not just a primal scream from politicians and intellectuals deprived of political power. The violent language, numerous acts of violence, and demonization of Bush and his electorate - the same as that directed against Tony Blair in Britain, Jose Maria Aznar in Spain, and Silvio Berlusconi in Italy - portend a more fundamental event: the death rattle of the traditional Left, both as a dominant political force and as an intellectual vision. For the most part, the Left only wins elections nowadays when their candidates run on their opponents' platform (Clinton and Blair) or when panic overwhelms the political process (Zapatero and Schroeder).... There is no more dramatic proof of the death of the Left than the passage of its central vision - global democratic revolution - into the hands of those who call themselves conservatives"

More tolerance the way forward for Democrats: "If Democrats want to get back in the "values" game and change the perception of their party as being full of secularists intent on removing any reference to G-d from culture and even the history of America, they can start in the government schools. That's where reverent or favorable mentions of G-d are often prohibited, but using His name as a curse word is protected by the same First Amendment that supposedly prohibits the favorable mention of His name. Democrats have an ideal case that they could make their own in the San Francisco suburb of Cupertino, where a fifth-grade public school teacher has filed a discrimination lawsuit against his school. The teacher, Steven Williams, says he has been prohibited by the school principal, Patricia Vidmar, from teaching the Declaration of Independence and other founding documents of the United States because they often refer to G-d . Democrats could make political hay for their party and do a good deed for public school students by opposing the extension of political correctness to history books and historical documents. Attempts to expunge references to G-d , past or present, are not limited to one California school. In Maryland, there is a dispute concerning what may and may not be properly taught in that state's public schools. The Washington Times carried a Capital News Service (CNS) story Nov. 23 that reported that when teachers instruct about the 17th-century origins of Thanksgiving, they can only say the Pilgrims thanked the Indians and cannot say they also thanked G-d for their safe journey and for the bounty set before them."

Supernatural selection "Look, I'm not saying we should turn the average biology class into a lesson on theology. It doesn't need to become a class about religion. There's plenty enough to learn about religion that it deserves a class all its own. The neat thing about intelligent design is it merely suggests something often thought to be the opposite of what's taught in the science classroom; then it attempts to back it up through scientific fact. I think that's pretty cool. If we're going to teach about the origins of life in public school -- indeed, if we're going to have such a thing as public school to begin with -- we ought to be teaching every kind of theory. All of 'em. Simple and intricate alike. And if we have to name names, let's name names. The truth will sort itself out."

Ed Mick is back online with a theory about why the Left have made such a big fuss over the "values" voting in the recent Presidential election.

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

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

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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GOVERNMENT SERVICES WORK BETTER IN AUSTRALIA

An interesting email from a very pro-American Australian who knows both Australia and the USA well

As a rule I have found all Government-run services in Australia to be far, far superior to anything you would find in the USA. Aussies simply know how to run Government services better than in the US. I think I know why. The reason is that all levels of governments in the USA treat government employment as a minority outreach program and, as you would know, this produces horrendous results. Going to get a driver's license or getting a green card is as experience you will never forget. In other words dealing with any Government entity is awful. Truly it is an experience no Aussie could fathom. That's the reason why Americans as a whole would not want to go anywhere near a Government-run health system -- because they fear they would be dead on arrival. To be frank, the problem is that they have many minorities running these places who should not be there. You can blame the Dems for this mess.

So the Dems have shot themselves in the foot. By putting legions of underqualified minorities behind government desks they have helped give Americans a horror of government -- which is exactly what the Dems want NOT to do! Fortunately, Australia's biggest ethnic minority is Asians -- who mostly scorn government jobs as giving too few opportunities -- so Australia's government jobs are mostly filled by Anglo-Celtic people who have to qualify on merit.

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ELSEWHERE

A reader had a rather interesting comment on my post yesterday about morality. I noted that when ordinary people debate whether an action is ethically right or not, the critierion "If everyone did that .... " is very popular. My reader commented that Leftists would not be able to accept that criterion because it would make homosexuality wrong. But as Leftists themselves often tell us, they think there is no such thing as right and wrong anyway (except when convenient) so there is really no problem for them. I might mention that there is an big post on Gene Expression that also looks at morality as a product of evolutionary biology. It is very slow-loading, however, so it must be stored offline. Scroll down to Nov. 8th.

An unusual Muslim: "Prof. Khaleel Mohammed is not a beloved figure among Muslim students in the United States. His visits to campuses to lecture are almost always accompanied by demonstrations of protesters condemning his opinions and his views. He has also felt hostile looks at the mosque where he used to worship in the city where he lives, San Diego, and therefore he rarely goes there. And indeed Mohammed's views are very unusual in the Arab world. His main thesis is that the Holy Land (according to most commentators, this refers to the area of Israel-Palestine) was given to the Jews. He takes this from the Koran itself, the divine book that is sanctified by Muslims, and is prepared to do battle with anyone who disagrees with him."

Poor old Maureen Dowd. Feminism has failed: "Tonight on NBC, one tall and handsome white male anchor with bespoke clothes will replace another tall and handsome white male anchor with bespoke clothes.... The networks don't even give lip service to looking for women and blacks for anchor jobs - they just put pretty-boy clones in the pipeline.... Even if I felt like raising a ruckus about Boys Nation, who would care? Feminism lasted for a nanosecond, but the backlash has lasted 30 years.... I checked around for feminist outrage, but couldn't find any... But my pal admits that she watched Mr. Brokaw partly because he was "eye candy," and declares women at fault in this matter: "Women like to read books about men and go to movies about men. But men don't like to read books about women or go to movies about women. The only way this is going to change is if women refuse to watch men. And the problem is, women like watching men." (Link via Dick McDonald).

The Coulter is having fun: "In light of their reaction to the nomination of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state, I gather liberals have gotten over their enthusiasm for multiculturalist milestones. It's interesting that they dropped their celebrations of the "first woman!" "first black!" "first Asian!" designations at the precise moment that we are about to get our first black female secretary of state. When Madeline Albright was appointed the FIRST WOMAN secretary of state, the media was euphoric... But Bush nominates a brilliant geopolitical thinker who happens to be black and female and all of a sudden she's Butterfly McQueen, who don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' no Middle Eastern democracies.... "

Pentagon, analysts hit anti-U.S. bias at Red Cross: "The International Committee of the Red Cross is breaking with tradition by publicly criticizing the United States for the way it handles terror suspects, say Pentagon officials and outside experts. On at least two occasions in recent months, the ICRC overtly criticized the Bush administration for detaining suspected Taliban and al Qaeda fighters without giving them access to judicial proceedings. The administration has deemed them 'enemy combatants' and not members of a formal military organization that would give them the rights of prisoners of war." [The Red Cross are antisemitic too. Never give them a cent]

Comment of a Leftist who DID move to Canada: "Part of what's irksome about Canadian anti-Americanism and the obsession with the United States is that it seems so corrosive to Canada. Any country that defines itself through a negative ("Canada: We're not the United States") is doomed to an endless and repetitive cycle of hand-wringing and angst. For example, Canadians often point to their system of universal health care as the best example of what it means to be Canadian (because the United States doesn't provide it), but this means that any effort to adjust or reform that system (which is not perfect) precipitates a national identity crisis: To wit, instituting co-payments or private MRI clinics will make Canada too much like the United States. The rush to make comparisons sometimes prevents meaningful examination of the very real problems that Canada faces..... Many Canadians have American relatives or travel frequently to the United States, but a large number are pretty naive about their neighbors to the south. A university student confidently told me that there had been "no dissent" in the United States during the run-up to the Iraq war.... In "officially multicultural Canada," hostility toward Americans is the last socially acceptable expression of bigotry and xenophobia. It would be impossible to say the things about any other nationality that Canadians routinely say -- both publicly and privately -- about Americans".

There is an interesting essay from a year ago here which argues that American culture has lost much of its masculinity and that that is endangering the effectiveness of America's armed forces.

Wayne Lusvardi is defending Dennis Prager from an attack posted on the Lew Rockwell site. When libertarians fall out ....

Michael Darby is online again with articles about Ukraine, the partial ban on Christmas in Sydney and the anniversary of Australia's Eureka revolt.

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

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

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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MOST MORALITY IS INSTINCTIVE

Although moral philosophy is a field in which I have made some very minor academic contributions, I have never taken it very seriously. So although my own account of the nature of morality is in my view at once factually correct, useful and not dependant on religious assumptions, I have been content merely to outline it rather than defend it in every detail. And I believe that to be a very conservative thing to do. And in making that claim I am also saying that there is a substantial opposition between what philosophers generally do and what conservatives generally do. And I should make clear that in talking about philosophers, I am talking about real students of the world and of discourse about the world -- not the psychiatric cases and comedians (Derrida etc.) who pass as philosophers in Europe.

There are two things behind what I have just expressed: 1). My belief that morality is largely inborn and, 2). A thoroughly conservative distrust of theory carried to extremes. That really constitutes the whole of what I want to say on the matter but let me spell it out a bit more anyway.

Because the standard psychological measures of moral attitudes (e.g. Kohlberg's) are profoundly contaminated by the Leftist assumptions of their authors, I have not even tried to look up inheritance data about morality in the behaviour genetics literature. So suffice it to say that most important human characteristics seem to show very substantial genetic inheritance (See e.g. here and here and here). If morality were an exception that would be most surprising. And from the viewpoint of evolutionary biology, it would be even more surprising. Man is both a social animal and an animal that falls very readily into conflict with his fellow humans. So ways of regulating behaviour to enable co-operation and forestall conflict must necessarily be of foremost importance. And that is largely what moral and ethical rules are all about. To forestall conflict there HAVE to be rules against murder, stealing, coveting your neighbour's wife etc. And that is why there are considerable similarities between the laws of Moses (ten commandments etc) and the much earlier Babylonian code of Hammurabi. The details of moral and legal rules are of course responsive to time, place and circumstances, but there are some basics that will almost always be there. And given the importance of those basic rules for social co-operation, it should be no surprise that such rules became internalized (instinctive) very early on in human evolution. So many if not most of our social instincts are in fact moral or ethical instincts. Ethics are the rules we need for co-operative existence.

Obviously, however, the rules are not so well entrenched as to produce automatic responses. We have broad tendencies towards ethical behaviour but that is all. This is probably due to their relatively recent evolutionary origin. Most of what we are originates far back in our evolutionary past whereas the social rules that we use became needed only with the evolution of the primates.

Additionally, we are the animal that relies least on instinct. So all our instincts can be both modified and defended by our reasoning processes. Just because a thing is instinctive to us it does not mean that the behaviour concerned is emitted in any automatic way. We think about why we do what our instincts tell us and generally conclude that our instincts are thoroughly commendable! And we do generally explain our rules of behaviour in a thoroughly empirical and functional way -- generally starting with: "If everyone did that .... ". And moral philosophers are of course people who specialize in such talk. But the talk is largely epiphenomenal (an afterthought). It is predominantly their set of inherited dispositions that make people behave ethically, not any abstract rationalizations.

And that realization does explain why philosophers so often back themselves into absurd corners. You might guess what is coming next at that point: Peter Singer. Peter Singer is undoubtedly a very able and influential philosopher and in good philosophical style he starts out with a few simple and hard-to-dispute general rules from which he logically deduces all sorts of conclusions that are greeted with horror by normal people -- his view that babies and young children may be killed more or less at will, for example. As a theoretical deduction, his views are defensible but seen in the light of the biological basis of morality, they are counterproductive. A society that killed off its young more or less at will would not last long.

So we come back in the end to the good Burkean principle that theories are to be distrusted and and continually tested against whether or not they lead to generally desired outcomes. Philosophers judge an argument on its consistency, elegance and comprehensivesness. Conservatives judge it on its practical outcomes. And Leftists judge it on whether they can use it to make themselves look good.

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ELSEWHERE

This excellent article by Anne Applebaum under the heading "The left now sees evil behind pro-democracy campaigns" has already been linked to by Instapundit and many others but I think it makes such an important point about the utter moral decay of the modern Left that I want to draw attention to it as well.

Speaking of Instapundit, I was pleased by his reference to me yesterday as: "Remind me never to get this guy mad at me", so I have followed blogospheric tradition and put the description towards the top of my index column to the Left.

Windschuttle blows the whistle again: "Controversial historian Keith Windschuttle has opened a new front in Australia's history wars by challenging the view that the White Australia Policy, which severely restricted non-European migration to Australia for more than half a century, was a deep stain on the country's conscience. Instead, he has defended it as a "rational and, in a number of ways, progressive, product of its times".... Besides taking colleagues to task, the book launches a new assault on multiculturalism"

There is an article here that is headed, "Bush backs extreme view on sex". Wow! Polygamy? Sodomy? Incest? Discipline? No: Abstinence! What an odd world where what was once almost universal can now be called "extreme"! But anything will do as fodder for Leftist propaganda and misrepresentation, I guess.

There is a very moving letter from a Ukrainian girl at the end of this article.

There is a new website here called "Help Christmas". Its aim is to help people to tell Target and other national retail stores to bring back Salvation Army bell ringers to their properties. Target (America's second largest retailer) has just this year changed its company policy to exclude Salvation Army bell ringers from its stores. This could cause the Salvation Army to lose as much as $9M in anticipated donations.

Methodism not dead yet: "A very divided jury of United Methodist church clergy has voted to defrock an open lesbian minister whom they'd earlier convicted of violating church law."

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

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

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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LEFTIST LOGIC

An email from a reader

Regarding "that good old Leftist inconsistency and opportunism" that you mentioned in your post on Darwin [November 29th.], another great example is their inconsistent stance on the "Race doesn't exist" issue. I learned this the hard way in my personal life, and it wasn't pretty.

I'm sure you're aware of the leftist claim that racial categories are nothing but social constructs with no basis in fact. Well, over a year ago I posted an essay at work that argued that race *does* exist ("Race Is a Myth?"). The next day I came to work and found that the essay had been literally torn off the wall. The minute my butt hit the seat, my boss, who is ultra-leftist, walked over to my cube and said in a quavering voice, "You want to step into my office for a minute?" He then proceeded to tell me that he'd taken down my essay because it was *racist* and violated company policy prohibiting "racial harassment"! I pointed out that merely arguing that race exists is not racist.

He countered: "Yes, but it's the first step to arguing racial superiority. First you claim that people are different and put them in separate categories. From there it's just a short step to saying this category is better or smarter than this other one, and so on..." He also claimed that the source of the essay, a Web site called *American Renaissance*, was registered as a "hate" Web site and edited by an admitted white supremacist.

I said, "But without race, how can you have 'diversity' and multiculturalism and all the other goals cherished by the left that actually *require* the existence of racial differences?" To my astonishment, he said, "Well, it's obviously situational." Situational! He continued: "For example, in the case of the California proposition that would ban recording racial information on government job applications, which we would want to oppose, clearly we would not want to say that race doesn't exist. But in other cases..." In other words, he was trying to take his *logical inconsistency* and turn it into a virtue. Basically he was saying, "When it suits our ends, we argue that race doesn't exist. Otherwise, we admit that race exists." Usually leftists are more crafty about blowing hot and cold, but in this case my boss apparently was feeling no shame. Needless to say, that was the last time I ever posted an essay at my workplace.

Another example of leftist opportunism: States' rights. If the state government is doing something they don't like, such as banning sodomy in Texas, they want the federal government to step in and declare it unconstitutional. No surprise there -- leftists love centralized control in the federal government. But if the Feds want to interfere with a state program the leftists *like* -- such as a recent environmental program in California -- look out! Suddenly the leftists are crying out in favor of "states' rights," talking like some hotblooded Southern Confederate warrior from 1861.

BTW, their overall entire ethical philosophy is built this kind of opportunistic inconsistency. They believe that morality is "relative," that there are no objective standards by which to criticize other cultures, that ethical views are matters of personal preference that cannot be decided by reasoned debate. And yet they are quick to tell you that capitalism is "evil" -- and anyone who disagrees is stupid, irrational, and backward!

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ELSEWHERE

There is a strange article by "Spengler" that chronicles the history of American Protestantism. He makes the interesting point that the descendants of the original Puritans very rapidly lapsed into secularism -- giving of course the very secular (irreligious) "Blue staters" of the North-East today. He points out that most American evangelical Protestants got that way through conversion rather than through family or community tradition. The only common cause he can find for such evangelical upwellings is the power of the Biblical story itself. With that I agree. I think that New testament Christianity is an immensely powerful and persuasive system of thought that has always burst through whatever shackles are placed upon it. It is a system of thought that has produced people who willingly suffer and die for their faith in every age. But instead of seeing American Christianity as a tribute to Biblical thought, the author arrives at the totally absurd conclusion that American Christianity is "religionless Christianity". How he leaps to that strange conclusion totally escapes me, I am afraid. I don't even know what he means by such strange language.

The real story of Nazi's Harvard visit: "At a conference on the Holocaust at Boston University last Sunday, Stephen H. Norwood, a historian at the University of Oklahoma, claimed that Harvard University was 'complicit in enhancing the prestige of the Nazi regime' and cited the 'welcome' given to the Nazi publicist Ernst Hanfstaengl when he attended his 25th reunion in 1934. But a close examination of the Hanfstaengl affair reveals that the university and its president, James Bryant Conant, rejected Hanfstaengl's advances; it was Harvard students and alumni who embraced him. The real story is more shocking than Norwood's flawed reconstruction in revealing the common anti-Semitism of the time. ... On the charge of coddling Nazis, Harvard University has nothing to apologize for. The blindness of many of its students and alumni to the Nazi threat unfortunately reflected general American attitudes."

Father's rights making some progress: "Bolstered by their recent ballot-initiative victory, Holstein and others are filing a bill next week in the State House calling on judges to begin with the presumption of shared custody. ''I walked into court believing we were a society that had worked hard toward gender equality," Holstein said, recalling his divorce proceedings. ''Then I began to see all these attitudes running counter to that.""

Charles Kupchan was member of the National Security Council under the Clinton administration. He says: "one side's terrorist is another side's freedom fighter, and it's difficult in reality to distinguish one type of event from another, because one has sympathy for the causes" [Sympathy for people who behead welfare workers? Sympathy for people who blow up children attending a Bar Mitzvah? Is there no end to Leftist moral corruption?]

Interesting that Fox TV accepted a pro-homosexual advertisement but CBS and NBC would not. So who is "homophobic" now?

Nathan Tabor has written an article advocating that English should be declared the sole official language of the USA.

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

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

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

The yuan and the US economy There are strident calls for the US to do something about the yuan. The situation is more complex than they realise
Productivity, wages and labor markets Labor reform per se cannot bring about a continuous increase in productivity: only a continuously expanding capital structure can achieve that
Anti-American Ba'th activities in Paris Proof that the French [Vichy] Government is giving support to the thugs who are waging a terror campaign in Iraq. There seems to be no bottom to the depravity of the French Government
Wages and labor markets According to Keith Hancock free labor markets produced "sweated labour, long working hours, unsafe and unhealthy factories . . ."
Like banging my head against the wall Israel is not in an intifada - the entire world is in a war. A war with a savage subculture that is out to kill everyone who is not part of it - a war against Islamic-Nazi crazies
George W. Bush and His "Stupid" Kool-Aid Drinkin' Buddies Why will the left lie, cheat and smear to give a conservative the boot? And what is it that socialist elitists hate so much about the structure of America?

Details here

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ELSEWHERE

The Leftist idea of themselves as an elite can get pretty amusing. Take this sentence from the top Leftist blog: "The conservative bigotted position is untennable. It has no basis in fact or reason. Arguments against gay marriage are predicated entirely, 100 percent, on emotion. And the vehicle for those emotional appeals are the word "marriage". A mere semantic." If the writer of that is a truly elite person, how come he has the English language skills of a dribbling idiot? "Bigoted" has one t. "Untenable" has one n. And the singular subject "vehicle" should be followed by the singular verb "is". And what he means by calling marriage "A mere semantic". I have no idea at all. And Leftists lap up such illiteracy at the rate of hundreds of thousands of hits every day! His wisdom must be profound. Too profound for me, certainly. If I were as prone to spelling and grammar mistakes as Kos is, I would at least use a spellchecker and grammar checker. But to do that I guess you have to be humble enough to admit your limitations. And humble is just what Leftists are not.

Oh dear! A Leftist has woken up to what bad advice George Lakoff gives: "Overall, I have a deep fear that if liberals are taking this stuff too seriously we could be about to drive ourselves off a cliff."

The United Methodist Church is promoting a far-Left "anti-corporate" petition that wants just about everything put under socialist control. That is of course about what we have come to expect of the declining older Protestant churches. Their new faith is more in Leftism than in the Gospel of Christ. It is therefore also no surprise that three scriptural passages that they quote in alleged support for their views say pretty much the opposite of what the church advocates: "Ecclesiastes 3:22 "So I saw that there is nothing better than that all should enjoy their work for that is their lot," Luke 10:7 and 1 st Timothy 5:18 "the laborer deserves to be paid", Matthew 20:8 "Call the laborers and give them their pay." As far as I can see, those scriptures envisage that you work for your living -- not get it in a socialist handout!

Still some backbone among some Methodists? "Nineteen months ago, the Rev. Irene Elizabeth Stroud gave a sermon that began and ended with Jesus saying, 'Peace be with you.' In the middle, she told her congregants that she was living in a 'covenant relationship' with another woman. Stroud's disclosure was no surprise to her flock at the First United Methodist Church of Germantown, a 210-year-old Philadelphia parish that welcomes gay men and lesbians. ... But Stroud's sermon was a challenge to the national church's rule against self-avowed gay men and women in the ministry, and it set in motion an investigation and charges that will culminate Wednesday in a church trial before a jury of fellow ministers."

Cafe Hayek pulls apart the nonsensical statement that “half the country can't afford health care.” It might be of some interest to look at the cost of health insurance though. I have a very high level of insurance that covers me for the best private hospital treatment there is here in Australia. And Australian private medicine is so good that we even have Japanese coming in for transplant surgery right here in my home town of Brisbane. My health insurance premiums are $212 per month. Lots of smokers would spend $300 per month on their habit. So how's that for affordability? Since lots of poor people smoke, I think it has to be seen as totally affordable.

The poor are very few: "As it is, less than three percent of the American work force earns the minimum wage or less, and more than half of them are under 25".

Soviet Canada: Trotsky's triumph: "In Canada, the people sheepishly accept all this crap, and we never even had a Stalin to terrorise us into submission. But then you don't have to train sheep to be sheep. People here like the 'nanny state,' as it saves them from having to think for themselves. A highly educated friend of mine (in response to my contention that a truly free market in insurance would result in lower rates than government mandated and controlled insurance) had this to say, 'But I don't want to have to investigate and compare companies; it's way easier for me just to pay the government.'"

Amtrak: On time for yesterday: "On-time performance has long been Amtrak's principal strength ... not the trains, but the financial crises. Little seems more predictable than Amtrak's periodic budget crises and calls for more money from those na‹ve enough to believe that nostalgia should be publicly financed, like defense or welfare. The latest chapter is a new U.S. Department of Transportation Inspector General report indicating Amtrak is experiencing unsustainably large losses and is deferring needed investment."

TSA -- bullies at the airport : "If you traveled by air last week for the Thanksgiving holiday, you undoubtedly witnessed Transportation Security Administration agents conducting aggressive searches of some passengers. A new TSA policy begun in September calls for invasive and humiliating searches of random passengers; in some instances crude pat-downs have taken place in full public view. Some female travelers quite understandably have burst into tears upon being groped, and one can only imagine the lawsuits if TSA were a private company. But TSA is not private, TSA is a federal agency -- and therefore totally unaccountable to the American people."

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

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

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

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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FAMILY SIZE AND CONSERVATISM

Steve Sailer has an article up at the moment which is getting a lot of attention. He shows an extraordinarily high correlation between birth-rate and voting for GWB. States with high birth-rates were almost all "red" and states with low birthrates were almost all "blue".

I am afraid that I have to issue a warning about what statisticians call "ecological" correlations, however -- and that's nothing to do with Greenies, surprisingly. Ecological correlations are correlations based on grouped data and grouping people only on the basis of the state they live in is very coarse grouping indeed. Such correlations are not comparable to correlations between individuals, allow no direct inferences about correlations among individuals and are commonly higher than correlations betweeen individuals. I say a bit more about them in the course of one of my academic articles here. So the correlations are a little less startling than Steve seems to think.

With all that statistician's caution out of the way, however, my best guess is that the results reflect failure to have children at all rather than family size per se. I think average birthrate is low in the blue states not necessarily because families are smaller there but because families with children are fewer. Lots of intellectual ladies never have children at all. I should know. I married two such women. My son comes from a third marriage to an intelligent but non-intellectual woman. And the low birthrate among highly educated people has long been a subject of much comment and heartburn anyway.

Why highly educated people tend Left is a subject I cover at some length here.

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ELSEWHERE

A quite hilarious but very popular post among Leftists at the moment is this one. Now that I have had time to stop laughing, I will tell you what it says. It says that George Bush is like an abusive husband towards all those poor 56 million who voted against him! I kid you not. I don't think even Einstein could work out how George Bush stands in anything like a husband relationship to the gang of special interest groups who tried to oust him but apparently the analogy makes lots of sense to lots of Leftists. I could go on but what's the point....

David Boxenhorn thinks he has discovered a conservative streak in Paul Krugman. I think he is wrong. Krugman is a plainly off his head when it comes to politics, but as far as economics goes, he is mainstream -- which SOUNDS conservative only because it is mainly conservatives who take much notice of economic rationality. Leftists tend to believe in all sorts of economically irrational things such as price controls, punitive taxation, protectionism etc. David also thinks Krugman's criticism of complex explanations is conservative. I think the reverse is the truth. Leftists are simplistic thinkers. Can you get any more simplistic than the core Leftist doctrine of "All men are equal"? So Krugman's rejection of complexity is perfectly Leftist. Where David might have a point is that Krugman does appear to criticize innovation for innovation's sake and says that older explanations are the best. I think that this is specifically a criticism of the economic modellers, however. And I don't think you have to be a conservative to be aware that mathematical models are mostly just a pretentious form of guessing.

Well, there seems to be one Democrat columnist who thinks that George Lakoff (See my post of November 24th) is the goods. She thinks that the donks should abandon moves towards the middle ground and just assert their own values. I hope they take her advice. It would be interesting to see how low the donk vote could go.

First class economic growth continues: "The US economy - helped out by more brisk consumer and business spending - grew at an annual rate of 3.9 per cent in the third quarter, a performance that was stronger than previously thought."

Reliapundit says that Leftists attack conservative blacks so furiously because Leftists explain everything by what group a person belongs to. So people who don't fit the group that they are in upset the Left's entire explanatory scheme.

Bob Hayes makes the undeniable point that all political parties are supported by particular interest groups. He says however that the Democrats have far more interest groups to please than the GOP does. So you have to accept an awful lot of strange stuff to support the donks. He says the GOP is much less demanding and more tolerant -- making support for the GOP a lot easier. I think there is a lot in what he says. Conservatives certainly seem a lot more laid back and less fanatical than the Left are.

"Lawyers Against the War": "This group claims to be "a Canada-based committee of jurists and others with members in thirteen countries" and is demanding that the government of Canada refuse George Bush admission to this country on the basis of his being accused of crimes against humanity. There is no mention of who actually filed the charges against Bush or where. hey write, "The evidence of President Bush's past and ongoing criminality is overwhelming. A recent editorial in the Washington Post commented on some of the now well known facts..." According to these two brilliant jurists, if the Washington Post or any of the other liberal media write that someone is guilty of war crimes, then it must be true. As such ban Bush from Canada. End of Story. Oh and let's lock up anyone who supports him, as well.... Prof. Mandel's letter is indicative to what lengths left wingnuts will go in efforts to get their way. They will threaten the Prime Minister with the possibility of jail. They will threaten the press with the possibility of jail. They will do anything necessary by whatever means to achieve their goals.

Drug companies are a favourite Leftist whipping-boy. The Leftist alternative to drug companies is truly moronic, though. They argue that we would be all better off if pharmaceutical research and development were taken over by the government, or if we at least put in national price controls to keep prices down. I wonder if they know how many new drugs countries with price controls like Canada put on the market each year. The answer is none. Price controls or nationalization of the industry would be equivalent to morphing the current energetic, innovative, productive private-sector drug industry (think FedEx) into the Rx equivalent of the U.S. Post Office."

Did the homosexual "marriage" issue help Bush? "In states that voted on the gay-marriage ban, Bush increased his vote share from 53.33% in the 2000 election to 54.17% in the election just past. That's an increase of 0.84%. In states where gay-marriage bans were not on the ballot, Bush increased his vote share from 48.82% to 50.78%. That's an increase of 1.96%. Bush's vote share rose more than twice as much in states where voters didn't have a chance to ban gay marriages. The evidence suggested that the gay marriage measures actually hurt Bush -- and hurt him substantially. And this makes a lot of sense, if you think about it."

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

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

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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SOME ECONOMIC ISSUES

Massachusetts: State eyes tougher welfare rules: "About 10,000 additional Massachusetts welfare recipients, including many people with disabilities, would have to work, and thousands who already have jobs would have to labor for longer hours under new rules recommended yesterday by a special state panel. The proposed changes, which would have to be implemented by October of next year to put Massachusetts in compliance with federal welfare rules, would force as many as 5,600 disabled people to meet work requirements and compel some recipients to work for as many as 34 hours a week, up from the current maximum of 30 hours. Overall, the recommendations would increase the number of Massachusetts welfare recipients who have to work from roughly 12,700 to about 22,000. A total of 49,000 families are currently on the state's welfare rolls."

Why Personal Retirement Accounts? "There is little risk in personal retirement accounts. A recent study done by the CATO Institute has shown that there has been no 20 year period where that has been a loss in the market. In fact, the 3.36% rate of return on investments in the period between 1929-1948 is still much greater than the rate of return retirees receive currently on Social Security. And with future retirees facing a negative rate of return, the current Social Security system is much riskier than market investments. Besides, money will not simply disappear from the Social Security Trust Fund during the transition to private accounts."

Globalization takes off: "We're in the 11th month of the most prosperous year in human history. Last week, the World Bank released a report showing that global growth "accelerated sharply" this year to a rate of about 4 percent. Best of all, the poorer nations are leading the way. Some rich countries, like the U.S. and Japan, are doing well, but the developing world is leading this economic surge. Developing countries are seeing their economies expand by 6.1 percent this year - an unprecedented rate - and, even if you take China, India and Russia out of the equation, developing world growth is still around 5 percent... This is having a wonderful effect on world poverty, because when regions grow, that growth is shared up and down the income ladder. In its report, the World Bank notes that economic growth is producing a "spectacular" decline in poverty in East and South Asia..... What explains all this good news? The short answer is this thing we call globalization. Over the past decades, many nations have undertaken structural reforms to lower trade barriers, shore up property rights and free economic activity. International trade is surging.

Really free enterprise: "Slugging is a term used to describe a unique form of commuting found in the Washington, DC area sometimes referred to as "Instant Carpooling" or "Casual Carpooling". It's unique because people commuting into the city stop to pickup other passengers even though they are total strangers! However, slugging is a very organized system with its own set of rules, proper etiquette, and specific pickup and drop-off locations. It has thousands of vehicles at its disposal, moves thousands of commuters daily, and the best part, it's FREE! Not only is it free, but it gets people to and from work faster than the typical bus, metro, or train. I think you'll find that it is the most efficient, cost-effective form of commuting in the nation"

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ELSEWHERE

Why Bush is misrepresented as a religious fanatic: "Fleischer says that the critics "believe their policies are so correct that no reasonable person could see things differently - unless people like President Bush are blinded by an extreme faith that prevents them from seeing the facts." To him, this is the same narrow-mindedness that critics claim to find in conservative Christians".

Britain to deny young women private sector jobs (As has already happened in Sweden): "Mothers will win the right to a year's paid leave after having a baby as part of a massive overhaul of childcare" [What employer in his right mind would hire a young woman under those circumstances?].

Amusing: The one thing that Leftists will normally allow as genetically-inherited is homosexuality. Yet it is also one characteristic for which the evidence of genetic inheritance is quite equivocal. On my reading of the matter, homosexuality can be caused by several things -- one of which could be in utero damage. Ruling out environmental causes (which Leftists do) is certainly sheer dogmatism.

Primitive party animals: "Since the 1976 presidential election, the Democrats have not received more than 50 percent of the popular vote. Most organisms, except for very primitive ones, usually modify their behavior after repeated failure in order to survive. Much has been written about why the Democrats continue to fail in the polls. But as an economist, I have been particularly struck by how they have failed to learn sound economics, despite all the empirical economic and political evidence of what works and what doesn't. Let's start with taxes. There is overwhelming evidence our present maximum tax rates on both labor and capital are so high they reduce economic growth, job creation and the general level of wellbeing for Americans. Despite this, Democrat candidates from Walter Mondale to John Kerry keep proposing higher marginal tax rates on labor and capital. ... Higher tax rates are not only an economic loser but are also a political loser."

Is it the government's business if you lose money gambling? "As legalized gambling spreads across the states, a branch of the federal government that deals with drug and alcohol addicts is studying ways to help compulsive gamers -- and looking to Louisiana, especially, for inspiration....Louisiana Association on Compulsive Gambling Executive Director Reece Middleton, who took part in a meeting this summer with representatives from other state programs, says the federal government may be close to taking action. "You've got a proliferation of legalized gambling across the country, and you've got an increase, I believe, of people getting in trouble," he said. "I just think it's gotten to the point where all of a sudden it's real hard for the federal government to ignore the question anymore." .... "It's absolutely urgent that a national initiative for gambling treatment be forthcoming, and that it be forthcoming from a federal government," Middleton said".

Nazis were normal Leftists -- not insane: "Now the book the Florida State University professor fine-tuned - "The Nuremberg Interviews" - is being heralded for giving the world new insights into the chilling thoughts of Nazi leaders responsible for the Holocaust, the systematic extermination of more than 6 million Jews during World War II.... "There is this kind of inner logic behind the outer madness," Gellately said of the book's 33 interviews. "That's the horror of the thing." That's because, Gellately said, for the most part, these Nazi rulers were as normal as next-door neighbors. "I think we all have an idea about what makes the Nazis tick. Some of us think they were demonic or crazy ... Really, two people in the book are like that, but they are not the interesting ones," Gellately said. "Most of the other ones are like you and me. They are well-educated, rational, sensible." They pour out their thoughts to Dr. Leon Goldensohn, a U.S. Army psychiatrist, who kept detailed notes of his interviews with the war criminals and witnesses awaiting trial in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1946..... "They had a sense of duty, perverted, but they were rational, kind of cold, calculating killers," he said, "not this emotional, go-out-and-shoot-their-friend-in-the-woods kind of thing. You can't prove these were guys that actually hated the Jews or actually ever hit anyone".

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

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

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LEFTISTS: PRO-DARWIN OR ANTI-DARWIN?

Whichever suits at the time, of course

The recent success of Christians in getting school textbooks to point out that evolution is merely a scientific theory -- not something totally grounded in replicable fact -- has enraged Leftists no end. As far as I can gather, the tiny success that has provoked all the rage is an arrangement whereby some school textbooks in Georgia have not been changed but have just had a sticker inserted in them pointing out the status of the evolution theory. So now there is a very popular site on the web from which Leftists can download "alternative" stickers designed to ridicule the Christian ones. So in the question of how mankind got here in the first place, Leftists are proud "Darwinists" and ridicule anyone who questions evolutionary explanations.

You know what's coming next, don't you? That good old Leftist inconsistency and opportunism. Leftists are fervent ANTI-Darwinists when it comes to explanations of human nature. People (such as sociobiologists) who use concepts of evolutionary biology to explain how mankind is innately tribal, territorial, aggressive, selfish etc. are treated as anathema by Leftists. The most prominent of the sociobiologists is of course Harvard Prof. E.O. Wilson. In good Harvard style he is actually quite Left-leaning and very much a "Greenie" so he seems to have earned some personal forgiveness from the Left in recent years. As he himself summarizes: "My writings on sociobiology in the '70s had the implication that ordinary instinctive human behavior does indeed have a biological basis, which in turn originated through a long period by natural selection. At that time, the academic left included many social scientists who based their social programs and reasoning on the assumption that humans are a blank slate, so I was a prime target of the left. And now, promoting conservation as strongly as I do, I'm sometimes a target of the right".

I could go on to give umpteen quotes showing what a core assertion the blank slate status of human nature is for Leftists and how genetics and biological thinking upset that claim at every turn but I think my readers will already have seen plenty of that. Wilson himself gives a pretty good history of the Leftist attacks on his work. Apparently, to Leftists, evolution affected every organ of the human body except the brain! Pathetic.

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