TUESDAY ROUNDUP

What I think are the best posts on my various blogs for this week:

Dissecting Leftism explains why Libertarians should support the GOP

Political Correctness Watch shows that the ACLU is really anti-liberty

Greenie Watch says that buying the cheapest is environmentally friendly

Education Watch says that Americans are diploma-mad

Socialized Medicine says that doctors are being driven to labor union-like tactics by the high costs of litigation

Leftists as Elitists shows that Leftist elitism leads to Leftist hate

Gun Watch shows how horrible was history's most successful attempt at a complete ban on guns.

MarxWords shows that Hitler and Karl Marx agreed about the Jews

But the post that generated most emails was my fun Greenie Watch post on steam cars (scroll down)! That really brought the technophiles out of the woodwork! They all had better ideas of course. But nobody mentioned orbital engines. Shame!

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

ELSEWHERE

I got an interesting email yesterday. Someone in Iran plans to translate some of my writings into Farsi -- presumably for circulation in Iran. The young people over there are a feisty lot. The Iranians now appears to be the most pro-Western population in the Middle East (Israel excepted, of course). They have had a gutful of the Ayatollahs. Note: "The grandson of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini has condemned his country's clerical regime and suggested military intervention by the United States as a possible path to liberation".

I understand that some of my writings have also been translated into Russian -- for the benefit of Russian-origin Israelis -- who are generally a conservative lot. They KNOW what real socialism is like.

Abortion: Kudos to Australian Catholics. I have been advocating this sort of thing for years and GWB advocated it in the Presidential debates too: "One of the last announcements Cardinal George Pell made before taking his annual leave this week was to introduce a program, new to Australia and only the third of its kind in the world, to provide support to pregnant women who are contemplating abortion. "We want to respond to the needs of women facing an unexpected or difficult pregnancy by providing them with life-affirming options," he said. "Through the program, expectant mothers and, if required, their families, will be provided with social, emotional and practical support to enable them to continue with their pregnancy to full term. Women need real alternatives to abortion, and this new program is targeted to meet the specific needs of women contemplating abortion."

If there is anybody who is by now not totally fed up with the U.N., this post about the "Toyota Taliban" should settle the matter. It might even put one or two Leftists off the U.N.

How much will reach the victims? "The United Nations has received a record $US1.5 billion ($1.93 billion) in one week in donations after the devastating tidal waves in the Indian Ocean, a UN official said".

It looks like Al Capone's dictum of "vote early and vote often" is the reason the Democrat finally got over the line in the Washington State Governor's race.

There have been a fair few comments recently about the death of Susan Sontag. I have said nothing so far because I think the stupid old bitch's own words about the white race being "the cancer of human history" condemn her more effectively than anything I could say. No doubt she also said that races don't exist.

Betsy Newmark has been doing well. She deserves the kudos. I like her choice of template too, though the colours could be improved. The Newmarks are a whole family of bloggers, of course. Betsy has an excellent post here about how the media ignore successful conservative blacks while constantly pushing Leftist ones.

Wayne Lusvardi looks at the Leftist claim that the war in Iraq is "unconstitutional".

The Policeman is still one of the funniest blogs on the net. You have to "get" dry British humour, though.

The latest posting on my MarxWords blog shows that Engels despised both liberty and democracy.

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

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

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.

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

ROCKWELL'S "RED-STATE FASCISM"

The libertarian blog Liberty and Power is at the moment in the throes of debating (generally sympathetically) an article by Lew Rockwell which calls for libertarians to cosy up to the Left because American conservatives have become "Fascist". In a way Rockwell is correct. ALL modern Western governments have more in common with Mussolini's Fascist state than they do with (say) Lord Salisbury's British government of around 100 years ago. Governments in all the Anglosphere countries are far more intrusive and dominant today than they once were. And the dictatorial "political correctness" movement seems mainly to emanate from government-funded institutions too, particularly the judiciary and the universities. So there is every reason for libertarians to be dissatisfied with that. Lots of conservatives are dissatisfied with it too.

But the amusing thing is that the libertarians on L&P and elsewhere seem to think that have found a way of doing something about it. Rockwell and his ilk think that the Left would notice if the libertarians were to "ally" themselves more with the Left. But why should the Left care? They already have Chomsky and Michael Moore to feed them all the catnip they want. Why would they take more than passing notice of a handful of irascible libertarians? The sad truth about libertarianism is that NOBODY WANTS IT. It is not an accident that the U.S. Libertarian party gets only about 1% in national elections. Human beings are tribal and tribes always have some sort of government. And handing over responsibility for lots of things to somebody else is NOT stupid. It is in fact just one aspect of that great human trick of division of labour. Division of labour means that you specialize in just one thing and somebody else has to do all the rest. Only some lower animals do everything for themselves. So people don't WANT to make all their own decisions. They want somebody else to look after everything outside their own sphere of activity -- and an elected government is readily handed all those unwanted responsibilities. As a libertarian myself, I wish all that were not true but it is.

So what is a libertarian to do? It depends on your priorities. Libertarians have always opposed conservatives on issues of sexual morality and Leftists on issues of economic regulation so libertarians have always had to make a choice if they wish to do more than spend all their time talking to one-another. As I see it, however, the battle against restrictive sexual morality has been won long ago. Many good Christian people still advocate it but the percentage of the population who still practice (say) pre-marital chastity would have to be tiny. And among young Republicans in particular sexual freedom is simply modern -- not something particularly Rightist or Leftist. So issues of sexual morality ought not to decide anybody's allegiances these days.

Which leaves issues of economic management and foreign policy. Hard-line libertarians like Rockwell are furiously anti-war on ideological grounds -- because they believe that only governments can make war and they are against governments. What individuals by themselves could do about it if the Islamic nutjobs were to get hold of a few nukes and detonate them in America's big cities they do not say. GWB's strategy may not be perfect but knocking over a couple of Islamic regimes that were pillars of support for Islamic terrorism certainly seems better to me than sitting at home and hoping for the best. The Left are advocating that but Leftist interest in reality has always been small. For them too ideology is all that matters. So it seems to me that any libertarians living in the real world would be doing what they can to help the GOP -- and one way of doing that effectively would be to get inside the GOP and nudge it more and more in the direction of the free-market thinking that has long been its greatest strength. The two major political parties that characterize the Anglosphere are always of necessity centrist parties so NOBODY -- not even libertarians -- can hope to have more than marginal influence on actual policy. But GWB's various tariffs on steel, shrimp etc show that there is still plenty of need in the GOP for free-market advocacy. And it is free market prosperity that makes so much else possible.

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

ELSEWHERE

A good comment from a reader: "If the rainfall on Los Angeles these past few days had landed on a third world country, thousands would have died and hundreds of thousands would have been homeless - and the same rains ten years later would have had the same results. A government that does not advance its people is unworthy of respect. Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach him to fish and he depletes your fisheries. Teach him to be a capitalist and he will sell you the fish".

Another interesting email just in: "A radio station in Sydney took the initiative and recruited celebrities to bolster support for the appeal to people to open up their wallets for the tsunami disaster. The "host" was Johnny Young, formerly of the "Young Talent Time" program. To everyone's surprise, he started raving and ranting about America and Iraq -- stating that all the money spent by America in arming itself in Iraq should be spent on the disaster. If America had started the war, you could understand some ill will. But that rich Arabs and some Leftoid psychopaths in other governments, supply billions of dollars to fund terrorists and arm them to the teeth to kill Israelis and Americans for the sake of killing was not mentioned. There was no suggestion that the Muslims ought to disband their idea and donate THEIR money to the appeal. Mr Young and his ilk obviously support genocide and not the people trying to end it."

Tim Blair notes disgusting United Nations claims to be doing relief work in Indonesia that is actually being done by American and Australian organizations. More on the Australian effort here

Nasty ideologues: "The political and ideological exploitation of perhaps the worst natural disaster in all our lifetimes is almost beyond belief - were it not for the fact that nothing these days is beyond belief. Even as tears spring into the most hard-hearted person's eyes at both the unimaginable scope of the tragedy and at the wrenching individual stories of loss, opinion leaders just can't help themselves. They are using this cataclysm as little more than cheap debate fodder about the nature and character of the United States, its president and its citizens..... Secretary of State Colin Powell found himself in the position of having to remind the world that over the past four years the United States has provided more such aid than all other nations on the planet combined. It is appalling that he had to mention this, and that President Bush was compelled to cite the same information on Wednesday, because you're not supposed to brag about how charitable you are. But once a United Nations official decried the American aid pledge as "stingy," the administration had little choice." And Tim Blair points out the sheer lies being told by the Left about the huge American aid going to the tsunami victims.

La Shawn Barber seems pleased that there is now a Leftist "hate" site devoted to her. She points out that Ann Coulter has hate sites aimed at her too and welcomes "her" hate site. I linked to La Shawn not long after she started her blog so I agree that Leftists should be bothered by her but it had not occurred to me that an "anti" site is a sort of a backhanded compliment. It shows that you are bothering them. Since some Leftist nerd put up a spoof site of "Dissecting Leftism" a little while ago, I guess that I am now in distinguished company too.

The latest posting on my new MarxWords blog shows that Marx loathed the Jews but was willing to use them to undermine Christianity.

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

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

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.

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

AFRICA TAKES ANOTHER LURCH DOWNHILL

"Namibia has begun expropriating white-owned farms, the New York Times reported this weekend. The story brought me back to a 2003 flight from Johannesburg to Atlanta, at the end of a trip in South Africa. A white passenger was acting as the worst bigots do: It wasn't enough that he didn't like black people -- "those people," as he put it -- he had to broadcast his scorn loudly so that the other passengers would be in complicit agreement with him unless they took the uncomfortable step of challenging him. I did. He then told the story of how he was losing his farm in Zimbabwe, slowly slaughtering livestock he would not replace and laying off workers. He had to grab work with airlines on other continents to earn a living, then return home to fight to hold onto property he was losing bit by bit.....

Zimbabwe, on the other hand, is a land of despair and retribution. Its economy has eroded. Life expectancy at birth in Zimbabwe was less than 34 years in 2000. It was 40 years in 1990, according to U.N. statistics. Between one third and one half of Zimbabwe's population goes hungry, according to the New York Times. The Mugabe government has discouraged commerce and driven outsiders away. To tighten his political control, Mugabe told the World Food Program to cease most emergency deliveries of grain. His government won't sell corn to families that don't belong to his party. The very policies that embittered the white farmer I met on the plane have brought starvation to a country once known for its farms.

Nonetheless, Zimbabwe has a copycat -- Namibia now also has begun to seize white-owned farms, under the pretence of expropriating from whites who are perceived to have fired workers wrongfully. "If you aren't already a racist, they make you a racist," Andreas Wiese, a fourth-generation white farmer, told the New York Times. He reminds me of my fellow traveler from Africa. Wiese's mother says of the family farm that once exported 100,000 flowers a year, and employed many Namibians, "Everything will be destroyed. Just give them two years, and everything will be gone." The Weise family's pain is the least of it. Redistribution is supposed to share the wealth, but in Zimbabwe it spread starvation and poverty -- and no small measure of hate".

More here

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

ELSEWHERE

There is a very well-balanced article here which says that the "death" of God in many people's minds has caused many of the same people to seek secular authorities to blame for things like the Tsunami. And when you are looking around for someone to blame who is the first candidate? America, of course! Logic is not needed. And they call religion illogical!

For those who take an interest in such things, I have recently put up on Majority rights my explanation of why the Chinese score above our average on IQ and the Indians score below.

IQ and liberal hypocrisy "A Yankee leftist acquaintance of mine sent me an email shortly after the election telling me that before I gloat about Bush's victory (I replied that my candidate, the Libertarian, lost too), I might find the attached chart of interest--he attached that chart showing IQ by red and blue state. The chart is pretty striking in that the average IQ of almost every red state is below that of the blue states. No doubt this is intended to show that Democrats are smarter than Republicans.... What is hypocritical about this chart is that it is circulated by the same people who bristled at Charles Murray's comments about race and IQ in "The Bell Curve". [The list of State IQs is of course a hoax]

There is an article here that points out that the vast U.S. defence bureaucracy is no better than any other vast bureaucracy. It wastes money prodigiously on things that don't make Americans any safer: "The defense budget is rife with weapon systems that are unneeded, perform poorly, or were designed to fight the now defunct Soviet Union. A few examples follow. After the dramatic decline of the only potent adversarial submarine threat, the U.S. Navy has designed and is producing a new generation of Virginia-class attack submarines. The Marines have sunk billions into developing the accident-prone V-22 tiltrotor transport aircraft, which is designed to take off and land like a helicopter but fly like a plane. Despite all of the billions slathered on the program, the aircraft's design may be fatally flawed. The Air Force's stealth F-22 fighter, originally designed to counter advanced Soviet fighters that were never built, has only a few remaining enemies to fight -- a limited number of porkbusting congressional representatives."

Coddling killers: "Will Victoria Jo Stinnett ever celebrate a happy birthday? I very much doubt it. As soon as she is old enough to understand, she'll be haunted by the trauma of her birth -- ripped from her dead mother's womb by alleged killer Lisa Montgomery. Yet monster though she undoubtedly is, Montgomery is already reaping the benefits of the insidious root-causes racket. Root causes are the rationalizations liberals give -- usually after the fact -- for their immoral actions or for the immoral actions of others. The paradox at the heart of the root-causes fraud is that causal theoretical explanations are invoked only after bad deeds have been committed. Good deeds have no need of mitigating circumstances."

The Spectator has a very sarcastic article here about the recent arrest of Britain's Nick Griffin -- a leading anti-immigration politician. The grounds for the arrest were about as flimsy as those the old Soviet KGB might have used -- making it apparent that the British police are now a political police.

The film "Team America: World Police" has just opened in Australia. Miranda Devine has a good review of how it skewers the Left.

If British readers think that the British Conservatives are hopeless these days, it might perhaps be a small consolation to note that the Canadian conservatives are just as gutless.

Cheat-seeking Missiles has a big summary of the blogospheric response to the Tsunami.

For half a century, Leftist psychologists have been preaching the gospel that conservatives are "authoritarian". We learn on my new MarxWords blog, however, that Engels thought the opposite -- that revolutionaries are authoritarian.

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

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

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.

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

A HAPPY AND CAPITALISTIC NEW YEAR TO ALL MY READERS




ANOTHER BLOG!

This one about Marx and Engels

I am sure that I will get the nickname of the "insane blogger" soon. Yes. I have just started ANOTHER blog. How better to start the New Year? This one is intended to have only a limited lifespan, however. Its purpose is to put on display all the quotes from Marx and Engels that Marxists hope you never find out about. It is truly astonishing what those guys really believed. They had more in common with Hitler than with anyone else. The most recent post shows that Marx and Hitler agreed about the Jews. See here. I will post to the blog only as interesting material for it becomes available to me but Dirk's file gives me plenty to start with. I hope to add new quotes every day for quite a while.

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

SCOTS VERSUS THE ENGLISH AGAIN

Another email from a reader:

As a Yorkshire born Aussie, the question of Scottish antipathy to the English has vexed me often. How come this isn't labeled racism on the part of the Scots (and Irish and Welsh)? Friends and colleagues from Scotland have freely related to me their father's or grandfather's generation as being the biggest crankiest bigots they've ever known. This contrasts starkly with my own upbringing - I cannot remember, ever, any bad words about the other inhabitants of the British Isles from my parents or their parents. No such "analytical" discourses with racist overtones ever took place in our families. So while the issue is about economic envy and blame shifting, of which you write, and which I am enjoying reading, essentially it's far more a case of good old politically incorrect, unreconstructed racism. Like Eurabians and Lefties in general with their persistant America bashing - they just cannot help it . .

Sorry, but reading how if the Scots hear a certain accent and assume it's English, they freeze, but if it's an Aussie, Och then that's alright, isn't it . . . - just makes my skin crawl. In fact it changes my opinion of them greatly. Why are the Scots such a sacred cow as a "race" (note, even this is not true) that they shouldn't be justifiably castigated at every opportunity for this racism, rather than "reasons" being given by pundits to excuse and perpetuate it? As far as I can see, it's really more about regional dialects than nationality. "Scot detects English accent, goes coldly polite, gets told it's an Aussie, breaks out the whisky" - what's changed? - nothing - it's still the same person, possibly originally of English or Scottish or, gasp!, both extraction. How silly can people get? We have to change the way we speak for racist Scots to get their hospitality?? Shall we all start speaking in atrocious false accents for their benefit? Better yet, why don't all the English just drop dead for their convenience?

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

ELSEWHERE

Accuracy in Media have released their list of the top 20 under-reported stories of 2004. For instance: How liberals tried to use federal agencies to delay or censor Sinclair Broadcasting's airing of Stolen Honor, showing how John Kerry's anti-war testimony led to the torture of our Vietnam POWs.; How the Senate Intelligence Committee report and the Lord Butler Report in England discredited Joe Wilson's charges against the Bush administration regarding Iraq seeking uranium from Africa; How and why MIT's Dr. Richard Lindzen, perhaps the country's leading climatologist, doesn't accept the man-made global warming theory; How Senator John Edwards used "junk science" in some of the cerebral palsy lawsuits that made him rich; John Kerry's failure to release all of his military and medical records.

Most Britons fear walking alone in the dark near home: "Two thirds of people in England and Wales feel unsafe walking alone in their neighbourhood at night, according to a Home Office study published yesterday. Less than one third of people felt very safe when out alone after dark on the streets around their homes. Over the past two years, growing numbers of householders no longer feel safe when out after dark and fewer people say that they definitely enjoy living in their neighbourhood." [I wonder why? Could it be that Britain now has lots of the same sort of people who cause stratospherically high crime-rates in places like Detroit and Johannesburg?]

Persecution of Christians is OK: "The cradle of Christianity is the Middle East, but in recent times Christians have been departing in record numbers from the Arab-Muslim world to escape organized bigotry and violence of Muslim fanatics and terrorists. The August bombings of four churches and a monastery in Iraq barely lifted the veil on the subject -- the precarious situation of Christians and other minorities in Muslim-majority countries. Iraq has been home to one of the oldest Christian communities in the region, the Assyrians, who still speak a form of Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke. The Christians in Iraq, belonging to various denominations, were estimated to be around 800,000 or 3% of the population. But this population is dwindling as Christians flee in increasing numbers.... The situation of Christians elsewhere in the region -- Pakistan, Palestine, Iran, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt -- is about the same as discrimination increases and periodic violence encourages them to depart. Earlier this month, an outrage in Egypt gripped its Coptic Christian community in fear and anger, but it barely got reported in the mainstream North American media".

Battle over recess appointments: "In the looming battle over President Bush's judicial nominations, much has been said about using the so-called nuclear option to by-pass Democratic filibusters. But the president has an alternative weapon, one that empowers him to place conservative nominees on the bench immediately, regardless of efforts by Senate opponents. Mr. Bush could simply use his authority to make recess appointments to fill judicial vacancies -- including, if necessary, at the US Supreme Court. It's a tactic that some legal analysts say is appropriate when a minority of senators attempts to use a filibuster to block an up or down Senate vote on a nominee. Others say the move amounts to an unconstitutional power grab by the White House by circumventing the Senate's 'advice and consent' role in judicial nominations."

Tom Heard lists what is necessary to defeat the Islamic terrorists.

Northwestern Winds has a go at fisking the Daily Kos recipe for Democrat success in 2008 that I had a laugh about two days ago (on 30th). He too quickly grinds to a halt after finding the load of nonsense in it too much to bother with.

PID has a good review of Keith Windschuttle's book on the "White Australia Policy" -- the Leftist policy that is now used to abuse conservatives -- even though it was a conservative government (under Harold Holt) that abolished 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

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

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.

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

AN EMAIL FROM NORTHERN SCOTLAND:

Blogger Dave Terron is a distinguished British soldier and I felt honoured to receive the following email from him about the Scottish/English rivalry that I noted in my Christmas-day post. And, given the Scottish passion for celebrating the new year, it feels very right to start off with a link to Scotland on New Year's Eve.

"Na diobair caraid's a charraid (Forsake not a friend in the fray).

The population of Scotland overall has some 20% English or of English extraction. Nearly one in five are English and they are the biggest 'minority' in Scotland. There are MSPs such as Mark (Muppet) Ballard of the Green (Muppets) Party who are English and most of the main government posts in the executive and Holyrood are held by English people. In fact were you to come to the Highlands you would find that the population of people in Moray is 17,6% English which does NOT include the two big RAF airbases. Why? Because many of the English come here on posting and love the quality of life so much that they stay once they finish with the RAF or other government jobs. They are fully integrated and intermarried with some very interesting results in terms of local accent I can tell you! A mix of Yorkshire Aberdeen Lancashire Cockney and Scouse I think....

The problem with the so called 'coldness' towards the English is (a) more to do with the dependency culture here in Scotland or rather in the Central Belt where 1 in 5 are on sickness benefits or welfare of some sort despite there being thousands of jobs remaining to be filled. The increase in immigration is aimed at filling those posts that the Scots will not fill...and (b) the stupidity of Scottish politicians who persist in telling the Scottish people that when things go wrong it is not the Scots parliament's fault it is Westminster. Indeed whenever there is a hint of a problem the Holyrood mob send the problem to Westminster and then claim that their hands are tied....see here for details or on my blog.

Scotland's 'native' population is falling because most of the bright young things are seeing that the Central Belt idle fat voters are being cuddled and given money to get fatter so long as they waddle down to the voting station when required to vote for a continuance in the Labour welfare state and their beer money. In the Highlands we see no investment, fewer jobs and everything is aimed at the Central Belt fat idle etc.

Were you to come to Inverness you would get a much warmer welcome than in downtown Falkirk if you were English. Australians? We canna understand 'em and we don't have a decent Rugby team either. But our cricket team did take part in the World Cup a few years back!

In summary: Yes. Anti English feelings do exist in Scotland but tend to be from fat idle etc in central belt and self serving scum (oops I meant politicians) who are trying to divert attention away from their failures -- e.g. we had a Liberal Democrat minister in the Scottish Parliament who called the Chairman of the Confederation of British Industry an English twit to distract from his own failure to sort out Scottish industry. One grovelling apology later and that minister now looks after fish.

I served 23 years with a Scottish Highland regiment and not once did any of the Jocks slag me off for being English. Not once. But when I served with a Lowland regiment for a year (I was drafted in to sort them out as their discipline had collapsed) boy, did I get the mutterings behind the old back. It was more of a blame the English because we will not admit we are at fault for having such an inferiority complex type thing. I was glad to get home to my Highlanders!

I think anti-English chat is rare and only gets prominence because some people want to distract from the bigger picture; Scotland is becoming less Scottish as the cultural things such as the music, dress and the regiments are slowly whittled away. Its an EU plot damm their eyes!"

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

SWEDEN AND THE TSUNAMI

There were a lot of Swedish tourists in the fleshpots of Thailand when the Tsunami hit so the following is an interesting email received yesterday from one of my correspondents in Sweden:

"The Swedish government has made a total a*** of itself. Within a day of the size of the problem becoming known, the travel agents here organised something like 6 extra aircraft to begin shuttling stranded tourists and the less badly hurt home to Sweden/Scandinavia. The government, in contrast, took until today to begin organising an airlift of the significant number of seriously wounded citizens who can't be transported on the regular aircraft. They also did not/have not yet asked for help from such countries as Australia (we did get the obligatory shot of an Australian airforce Hercules transport in Indonesia). So, private companies acting with no profit motive have quickly responded to a major catastrophe on the other side of the world while the government of the people sits on its hands and does nothing. Hmmm, how do these burks get voted in again? I suspect the deeper problem is that the government *can't* quickly respond to such incidents despite their claims. Sweden is busy laying off its armed forces, where I guess quickly activated medical teams and aircraft are traditionally located, so they have been caught with their pants down. As for why they didn't ask for help from Australia or the US? That is a curly one, a cynic would suggest pride in not asking the dreaded Anglo-aggressors for help. There really is no other reason I can imagine. Granted, Australia may be stretched already and the US -- well, we get no information about that -- although I know at least one naval group is in the area to help. The point I think was that the Swedes didn't even ask"

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

ELSEWHERE

PID summarizes about all you can reasonably say about the tsunami. Beyond Wallacia seems to be keeping up with the Australian and Indonesian news about the aftermath.

European hatred of Microsoft: "Yesterday?s antitrust ruling against Microsoft by a European Union court sends a troubling message about the future of competition and innovation in Europe and around the world. The penalties imposed on the company threaten to chill investment in new technologies and impose billion of dollars of costs on European consumers and independent software developers. In addition to a fine of $665 million, Microsoft will be forced to separate its Windows Media Player from its operating system and disclose parts of its internal software code for server applications to other companies. While these changes in the company's software and intellectual property protections will impose huge costs on the IT industry and its customers, the alleged benefits of the ruling is far from clear."

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with holiday reading for all.

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

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

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.

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

A LEFTIST GAME-PLAN FOR 2008

It is pleasing to see a post on Daily Kos that shows a considerable grip on reality. Some of his attempts to deal with the reality concerned are a bit amusing, though. The point of the post is to tell Democrats how to change their message so that they win in 2008. The whole post is actually worth fisking but I will content myself with a few notes:

He says: "The Left is the true home of moral values, once you understand that morality is more than sex." Really? How can it be the home of ANY morality when they keep telling us that there is no such thing as right and wrong?

He says: "The Republicans have become the party of Christianity, globalization, and capitalism -- three victorious historical forces. If we can't reclaim those forces for the Left, we lose. The question is how". That's the question, all right!

He says: "For those liberals who don't read the Bible -- that's part of the problem, by the way -- I'll explain". That is a very LARGE problem if you want Christians onside.

He says: "Christianity belongs to us". When they are constantly doing all in their power to suppress public expressions of Christianity?

He says: "When he's not talking about sex, the Pope is actually a flaming liberal". There's a lot of truth in that but Catholics only obey the Holy Father when it suits them these days.

He says: "Globalization belongs to us". When they are constantly demonstrating against it and condemning it as "outsourcing"?

He says: "Capitalism belongs to us. This is a long-term project that probably won't be ready for 2008, but we need to keep working on it.... Could there be a left-wing capitalism that harnesses the efficiency of market forces to the values of liberal society? William Greider says yes. He doesn't have it all worked out yet ..." I'll have to agree that that one won't be ready for 2008 -- or ever!

He says: "The Right may have mastered the art of winning elections, but it lacks a fundamental understanding and appreciation of democracy. A healthy democracy is not a herd of sheep that legitimizes its shepherd by taking a vote. In the long term, democracy requires an active, informed, responsible citizenry that participates in shaping and running its public institutions." Is that why the Left BUY most of their vote off ill-informed minorities by handing out the welfare dollars?

I could go on but I think that is enough laughs for today. The poor sod DOES have a pretty good idea of how the Democrats need to change but they seem to be paddling furiously in the opposite direction to that at the moment. His big problem is that you cannot win elections anywhere in the Anglosphere (except Canada) unless you at least pretend to be conservative and appear to mean it. You have to proclaim things like, "The era of big government is over". And Leftism only goes down well in Canada because it is not American.

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

AMERICA CREDULOUS?

A good comment from a reader about some of the amazingly stupid things outsiders say about America -- nearly as stupid as the things that American Leftists like Michael Moore say about America:

"I followed your link to The Times column by Gerard Baker, enticed by the quote you selected. Wow, I thought, a column by a European who actually "gets" America and our optimism, self-confidence, idealism and lack of cynicism. But while it is true that he does actually see that aspect of America, it seems though that he really views it from the perspective of our sophisticated, condescending, European betters as little more than a quaint, simplistic characteristic that he finds cute maybe once a year, as this quote from the end of the column reveals:

"At other times, I can't quite take all this American idealism and sentimentality. It is just a bit too much at odds with a complex world. As the country's critics never tire of observing, it can lead to a little too much certainty and self-belief and a deficit of doubt and acknowledgement of error."

It seems quite clear to me that far from being "too much at odds with a complex world," that our idealism, optimism and self-confidence along with the political, legal and financial institutions inspired by them have proven over the past 2 centuries to be far more successful in dealing with a "complex world" than any other in the history of civilization. We have been steadily expanding the perimeter of freedom here at home while weathering the many perfect storms of totalitarian ideologies enthusiastically generated by the quite prolific European political imagination.

It is astonishing that a man like Baker, who apparently lives in the US, could say that we suffer from a "deficit of doubt and acknowledgement of error." This seriously calls into question his powers of observation. Since 9/11 we have had an incredibly rich and dynamic debate about everything from just about every political perspective in newspapers, magazines, journals, think tanks, blogs, films, in the streets, in Congress and in our homes. It seems that yet again the Left is projecting its own flawed characteristics onto the United States. I think that if there is a "deficit of doubt and acknowledgement of error" anywhere it can be found in Brussels, Berlin and Paris where the massive failure that is the European welfare state goes merrily along producing stagnant growth and 9% unemployment. It just boggles the mind."

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

HISPANIC IMMIGRATION AND IQ

American conservatives and libertarians are greatly divided about the mostly illegal Hispanic influx into the USA. I contribute regularly to a blog that is concerned with minority/majority issues and I have just put up a post there on the issue of Hispanic IQ. For those who are interested see here. For convenience, I have also combined my latest post with my previous posts on immigration to make a single article. See here or here.

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

ELSEWHERE

The American Left still love Castro: "Leave it up to a liberal university to pony up big bucks - some of it taxpayers' - to give to a cruel dictator. So it is that the University of California at Davis is gleefully helping Castro's dollar-strapped Cuban economy by paying more than $100,000 to his government for allowing 10 Cal-Davis students to study in Cuba".

Michael Darby has up the latest report from his source in Zimbabwe. Pretty grim!

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

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

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.

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

MY CHRISTMAS REVISITED

Two interesting emails from two different readers provoked by my Christmas-day postings:

"I enjoyed the account of your Christmas Day and wanted to contribute to the Scots/English debate, I am half-and-half with a with a Jewish great-grandfather. My grandparents came to London from Glasgow a hundred years ago and they were keen, lifelong Conservatives, in fact my Grandmother worked at the Party headquarters. My grandparents belonged to some society for Scots in London where my grandfather played the piano for Scottish songs and dances, there was a party at Halloween for the grandchildren and New Year's Eve was celebrated in the usual way. However, apart from my grandmother sighing over us grandchildren as "Sassenachs" because we ate our porridge with sugar and my granfather telling me about the Auld Alliance with France and pointing out the French origin of some Scots words "a silver tassie" for a silver cup for example, I don't remember any expressions of Scottish nationalism.

The bad thing about Scotland was the lack of economic opportunity and it was for work that my grandfather came to live in London.

I would say that my family felt they had certain advantages over the English because we are by nature more intelligent, more industrious and have better values! Having married a half Franch-Canadian and lived in Quebec before the "Silent Revolution"I would say my family's sense of being separate from the English was quite different from the French Canadian "distinct society" identity.

Incidentally, I often pretend to be a "kiwi" here in eastern Canada, as my "cut-glass" English accent is resented and Canadians don't have a good enough ear to hear the dufference. An actor friend tutored me in "Canadian English" but although I made some changes in my pronunciation and vocabulary I was always found out!"

The misspelling of "dufference" above will be understood by anybody who has ever heard New Zealanders speak. They are the only significant European nation to have lost a whole vowel in recent times. Regarding Scotland, readers might also find some relevance in the latest series of jokes up on Wicked Thoughts. Anyway, the second email:

"As a UK resident I found the Queen's Christmas speech quite depressing. I have never been a fan of her Xmas speeches and this was the first I had heard for several years. It sounded as though it might have been written by Cherie Blair or a BBC journalist. Bland, full of phoney re-assurance and pointless.

Of course the ethnic communities shown would seem respectable rather as red carpets are rolled out for members of the royal family. In recent elections the British National Party received up to a third of the vote in parts of the Black Country and elsewhere. Perhaps these voters see a less sanitised version of developments.

I believe most British people welcome the more cosmopolitan changes in the population in recent decades but not the mass take over of our major cities by Muslim immigrants, which seems demographically inevitable on present trends".

I can certainly understand the final point above

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

ELSEWHERE

Lawrence Auster says that there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim. He is wrong. One of the major religious leaders (and a former Prime Minister) of the world's largest Muslim country is actually pro-Israel. And I'll bet Lawrence does not even know whom I am talking about. That there is no such thing as a moderate ARAB Muslim I might tend to agree with, however. No doubt there are some decent Arabs but they seem to be vastly outnumbered by others whom I can only call disgusting.

There is a good article here pointing out the biased and deceptive reporting of the famous "100,000 war deaths" poll conducted in Iraq and reported in the British medical journal Lancet. Given the blatant bias in the reporting, the whole study has to be suspect.

There is an article here about the situation in the Netherlands which shows that the Dutch have finally realized that their experiment in multicultural tolerance of Muslims has failed. It will be interesting to see what their next move is. They are already getting tougher on the Muslims in small ways. One would hope that the failure of the super-tolerant Dutch will show others that not everything can be mindlessly tolerated.

An article here says that Islam now fills the role in French ghetto suburbs that Communism once did. The author sees that as a hopeful sign for the future, which it may perhaps be, but given the big role that the Communist party had in France up until recently, it is a pretty bleak comment on the present. It does confirm, however, that France has always been a revolting country.

There is an article here from an historian which argues that Bush and Blair may one day be seen as akin to Roosevelt and Churchill

The absurd George McGovern seems to have learnt nothing over the years since he was a failed Democrat Presidential candidate. He now wants America to surrender, not just withdraw from, Iraq. How deep his hatred of America must be! And he's what they call a "progressive" these days! At least the American "Progressives" of 100 years ago were patriotic. The American Left these days really is deeply decayed.

There are some interesting defences of a variety of libertarian ideas here

There is a prayer request here that many of my readers might like to heed.

Jeff Jacoby shows via historical quotes that GWB's military interventions in the Muslim world are very similar to past interventions by esteemed Democrat Presidents like JFK, Truman and FDR. The modern-day American Left has clearly lost its way. Democrats once had principles. Now they are pure psychopathic nihilists who believe only in power for themselves.

Antisemitism denied: One of my readers has sent in a fisking of a Leftist claim (by Tony Judt in The Nation) that antisemitism is not a serious problem in France. See here.

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

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

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.

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

DIVERSITY, GOOD AND BAD

It is amazing how Leftists have perverted the word "diversity". The people who can call a vicious dictatorship "The People's Democratic Republic of .... " have done a similar hit-job on "diversity". American universities pride themselves on their diversity but are in fact one of the least diverse places on the planet (See here). In American university-speak, "diverse" translates fairly directly as meaning "black" and nothing more. Elsewhere, "diversity" has become an excuse for suppressing all traces of majority culture. Anything not characteristic of majority culture is "diverse" to Leftists and is to be praised no matter what. And any element of majority culture is conversely not "diverse" and must therefore be condemned.

In fact, diversity should be a good conservative value. I myself think that real diversity is strength and so does the Queen of England (See her Christmas message). Fascists, by contrast, think unity is strength. The very word "Fascism" is an allusion to the tied-up bundle of rods (the fasces) that the lictors of ancient Rome bore as a visible symbol of the united strength of the Roman people. And Rome was a Fascist State -- with the godlike leader (at least from Caesar onwards), the socialism ("panem et circenses") and the fiercely nationalist belief in Rome's destiny to rule. So it is no wonder that Mussolini named his Fascist movement after the ancient symbol of all that. And Hitler was the same. The most famous Nazi slogan is "Ein Reich, ein Volk, ein Fuehrer" -- which translates as: "ONE State, ONE people, ONE leader". And we all know how much diversity of thought and enterprise there was in the old Soviet Union.

Conservatives, by contrast, don't believe anything is that simple. They see the world as complex and hence diverse. They accept and deal with diversity whereas Leftists, despite their current pretensions, have since the French revolution always tried to suppress it when they have the power to do so. But for Leftists to preach one thing and then do the opposite when they gain power is a very old story. And part of actually accepting and dealing with diversity (instead of just preaching it to others) is to discriminate among types of diversity. Only a Leftist could propose such an absurd rule as saying that all diversity is good. Murderers are pretty diverse from the rest of society, for instance. Is it a good thing to have lots of them? Sane people would say not but Leftists in our society defend criminals. They say criminals are just "misunderstood". Conservatives, by contrast, want to lock the criminals up and thus reduce that element of diversity in their society.

A similar question arises with ethnic diversity. I myself, for instance, think that most forms of ethnic diversity are a good thing. I have a good friend who was born in India, I love Indian food and I am pleased that my country (Australia) now has in its population many of the instinctively civilized people of China. But I don't think that having Muslims in Western populations is a good thing at all. There are of course many decent Muslims (I have one living in my own house) but they are such a troublesome population in general that I would like to see the least assimilated element of them shipped back whence they came.

And let's look at the blogosphere. Two of the bloggers I think most highly of are Razib and "Godless" of Gene Expression. But Razib is a brown-skinned man of Bangladeshi origin and, if my memory serves me rightly, "Godless" is a Jew. Is not that diversity a strength? Are we not benefited by having those two people to exchange ideas with? If Americans had not welcomed the families of both men into their midst, Razib might just be swatting flies in a Bengali village and "Godless" might be marooned in an East-European shtetl. So I am all for real diversity and utterly against the parody of diversity preached by Leftists.

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

TUESDAY ROUNDUP

In recognition of the fact that I post too much for many readers to keep up with, I once again list what I think are the best posts on my various blogs over the last week.

Dissecting Leftism shows that Hitler's German nationalism was foreshadowed by very similar nationalism from Friedrich Engels, one of the founders of Communism.

Political Correctness Watch notes that British schoolteachers are being told by their government to promote homosexual lifestyles

Greenie Watch notes that biotech advances are being held up by huge regulatory costs

Gun Watch has a story of an 84 year-old successfully defending himself

Leftists as Elitists has the story of a Leftist who denies that he is an elitist because ordinary Americans really are low types!

Education Watch has a story of charter schools helping native Americans.

Socialized Medicine says the FDA does more harm than good.

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

ELSEWHERE

Powerline has an excellent demolition of a whole parade of Leftist distortions in the NYT. That Leftists repeatedly have to rely on misrepresentation in order to support their arguments shows how weak their arguments are.

I have just reposted here two excellent conservative letters that appeared in the usually Leftist "Pasadena Star Weekly". Letters tend not to stay up for long so good ones need reposting.

In case you have not come across it yet, the Anonymous Lawyer blog is excellent dry humour. And here is the non-anonymous blog of the lawyer concerned. It is pretty good too.

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

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

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.

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

CHRISTMAS DAY FOLLOW-UP

My comments about my Christmas day generated a few comments of interest. There was some skepticism about my comment that the Scots "loathe" the English. I guess that was too strong a term. How about "profound suspicion" of the English instead? I first went to Scotland accompanied by a Scottish wife so I saw one side of Scotland that way. I also personally did a randomized doorknock survey in Glasgow for publication in the academic journals -- and several journals did in fact publish the results. So I got another view of Scotland that way: A community-wide view. So I saw Scottish people both intensively and extensively, as it were. So I do have some grounds for saying what I do. But one experience I repeatedly had is one that many Australians report: Scots cannot tell the difference between an educated Australian accent (or to some extent any Australian accent) and a Southeastern English accent. So Scots normally assume that an Australian visitor is English -- I was told on several occasions that I "sounded like the TV". And so they usually give the visitor the frozenly polite treatment that they reserve for the English. It is that treatment which causes the English to come to the remarkably false conclusion that the emotional Scots are "dour". When the Scots learn that you are Australian rather than English, however, they are greatly relieved, the frozen mask drops immediately and you are given a thoroughly Scots sentimental welcome. It is a joy to experience and sad that the English never do experience it.

Some readers also doubted that the Scots see the English as oppressors. The Scots certainly shouldn't and perhaps in their objective moments they don't, but one must not forget that Celtic memories are long and I can assure you that the execution of Mary Queen of Scots by Elizabeth I is still a lively memory in Scotland. So perhaps "oppressors" is a bit strong too but again I think "profound suspicion" does a pretty good job of characterizing the Scots attitude to the English. The Scots certainly see Australians in a much more positive light than that.

One reader also commented that the pervasive Leftism of Scotland is a fairly recent phenomenon. That could well be true, though I have some reason to doubt it, but in any case I did explicitly say that I thought the Leftism concerned was "not genetic" -- which means that it could change with circumstances.

There was also some dissatisfaction that I did not criticize the multicultural emphasis of the Queen's Christmas message. I did not do so because I think the Queen was being perfectly realistic in her approach. The English egg has now been thoroughly scrambled and the dark-skinned population is not going to go away. So what the Queen was very strongly saying was that each group should honour both its own traditions and the traditions of others. And that way the different groups could live together without friction. What the multiculti Leftists want, on the other hand, is for the tolerance to be all one way. At the very least they want Anglo-Saxons to be tolerant while Muslims can be as intolerant as they like and it would be better still for Anglo-Saxons to lose their own traditions, customs and identity altogether. The Queen, by contrast, was saying that EVERYONE should be tolerant and that EVERYONE should honour their own traditions. And I agree in seeing that as the only viable solution for community harmony in modern Britain. No doubt there are more than a few people in Britain who would like to kick all the darkies out but that is not going to happen.

I suppose one could argue that the Queen could have stressed assimilation more but, on the other hand, the ethnic community members she showed did seem, as far as one could tell, to be highly assimilated. Assimilation does not imply uniformity -- just a familiarity with and respect for the ways of the majority community.

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

ORIGINS OF NAZISM

Something that needs to be noted more often: "While most of the media and political class refer to communism and socialism as leftist ideologies and Nazism and fascism as ideologies of the far right, these ideologies are merely different forms of statism. Socialists believe in government ownership of all economic entities and land. Fascists realized that government did not have to own enterprises in order to have total power over them. Thus, fascists tend to be extremely authoritarian and comprehensive regulators. Both ideologies are based on the subjugation of individual liberty and free markets by the agents of the state."

A typical Hitler rant: "True, it is a fixed idea with the French that the Rhine is their property, but to this arrogant demand the only reply worthy of the German nation is Arndt's: "Give back Alsace and Lorraine". For I am of the opinion, perhaps in contrast to many whose standpoint I share in other respects, that the reconquest of the German-speaking left bank of the Rhine is a matter of national honour, and that the Germanisation of a disloyal Holland and of Belgium is a political necessity for us. Shall we let the German nationality be completely suppressed in these countries, while the Slavs are rising ever more powerfully in the East?" But it was not Hitler who said it. It was written in 1841 by Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx's co-author.

The original German of the above quote is: "...Allerdings ist es eine fixe Idee bei den Franzosen, dass der Rhein ihr Eigentum sei, aber die einzige des deutschen Volkes wuerdige Antwort auf diese anmassende Forderung ist das Arndtsche 'Heraus mit dem Elsass und Lothringen!' Denn ich bin - vielleicht im Gegensatz zu vielen, deren Standpunkt ich sonst teile - allerdings der Ansicht, dass die Wiedereroberung der deutschsprechenden linken Rheinseite eine nationale Ehrensache, die Germanisierung des abtruennig gewordenen Hollands und Belgiens eine politische Notwendigkeit fuer uns ist. Sollen wir in jenen Laendern die deutsche Nationalitaet vollends unterdruecken lassen, waehrend im Osten sich das Slawentum immer maechtiger erhebt?" Nazism was Marxist!

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

ELSEWHERE

From this it seems clear that the Associated Press (AP) news organization has now admitted that they are in bed with the Iraqi terrorists. It would seem to make them traitors not only to America and Iraqis but to humanity as a whole. Or is murdering innocent people for an AP camera OK now? Leftists always tell us that, as far as they are concerned, there is no such thing as right and wrong. Let's believe them!

Chris Brand has done some good posts in December so I have transferred them here for easy reading. I was particularly interested to see his report that smoking reduces your IQ. I myself reported a negative correlation between smoking and IQ many years ago.

Fun! "This is a bittersweet holiday for a Chicago activist and his son. Father Michael Pfleger is against the war in Iraq. His adopted son recently joined the Army. Their story is similar to mayor Daley's, whose son, Patrick, enlisted earlier this year. "Shock. We were standing out in front of the church one day. He said, 'I need to tell you something.' He said, 'I enlisted.' And I said, 'You what?'" said Father Michael Pfleger, St. Sabina Church. Father Pfleger is an anti-war activist who calls the invasion of Iraq immoral-- but he's also the loving father of a 30-year-old adopted son, Lamar. Lamar lost a good job with an airline company after 9-11 and decided this year to join the Army. He went through basic training in the fall and reports for active duty in less than month. "I just opened my eyes and realized that this was something I want to do. I see the other troops and what they re doing and I want to be part of that," said Pvt. Lamar Pfleger U.S. Army."

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

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

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.

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

MY CHRISTMAS DAY

Unlike most bloggers, I rarely say anything about my personal life. But I think Christmas is a good occasion to make an exception to that. As I always do, I attended a large family gathering on Christmas morning -- with "family" being very loosely defined. It is however essentially the same gathering I have been attending for many years. And, like most Australian Christmas gatherings, it is totally secular -- with no religious allusions at all. All the people there are however very good-hearted unbelievers. They even laugh at my jokes, so what more can I ask?

A small sadness for me was that, out of the 17 people present, there were only two children and one teenager. What used to be a very child-centered gathering still is a child-centred gathering but most of the "children" have now grown up and are young adults. No doubt the young adults concerned will one day have children of their own but the longer they leave parenthood, the fewer children they will eventually have, of course. So my family occasion did in a very small way encapsulate a problem that the whole of Western civilization is having -- too few children to replace itself.

I was delighted to see that one of the presents received by the small boy present was a pictorial "Encyclopedia of modern military aircraft" -- something that almost any boy would enjoy but which is of course totally politically incorrect. But the boy's father is a former Royal Air Force man so no doubt he too would be incorrect to the unhappy minds of the Left.

We had a "secret Santa" session before the "real" presents were given out and it was a really fun thing to do, with lots of laughs. I ended up with a "crumb sweeper" -- a small ceramic pig made in China that had a tiny electic motor in that turned it into a mini-vacuum-cleaner. I promised to take it with me next time I go to a Chinese restaurant -- to suck up straying grains of rice!

One of my stepdaughters spent a year in the U.K. recently, most of it in Scotland, and I asked her over breakfast what she thought of the Scots. "Loved them. Lovely people", she said. "But they were glad I was Australian". I too have great affection for the Scots. I even married one once. But Australians probably see the Scots in their best light. The Scots still loathe the English and they see Australians as fellow-sufferers from English oppression! Rather mad, really. But there is a definite streak of craziness in the Scots -- not the least of which is their intensely socialist outlook. But Scots outside Scotland seem to be heavily conservative -- as we know from America's Scots-Irish population (See also here). So it doesn't seem to be genetic. I once did some survey research on the Scottish difference which is reported here.

The weather was normal Australian Christmas weather -- hot and humid. So the various Bing Crosby Christmas songs that were being played in the background ("Jingle Bells" etc.) were referring to a different world. It did however show that culture trumps climate. I did of course eat too much but I think I will draw a discreet curtain over that.

In the evening, I watched the Queen's Christmas message on TV, as I usually do. Every Christmas day the Queen broadcasts a short message to Britain and the other Commonwealth countries and it is always a positive message stressing important basics. She started out this time by stressing that Christmas is a Christian holiday so according to the politically correct brigade she was being most offensive to millions of people. In the British sphere of influence, however, what the Queen does and says is proper by definition so she does not have to worry about petty would-be dictators. Her message also stressed the importance of Britain's different ethnic communities living peacefully together and there were lots of shots of her and her family talking to British subjects of Indian origin. I have always liked Indians and got on well with them so I was delighted to see her extending such acceptance to them.

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

ELSEWHERE

Well, it now seems to be definite. Several readers have traced the expression "reptiles of the press" to the same source for me. The consensus is that the expression was taken from the "Dear Bill" letters of the 1980s in Britain's satirical "Private Eye" magazine. There are accounts of the letters concerned here and here.

Lawsuit abuse from Rhode Island to the Hawaiian Islands: "With the cost of torts rising from just over 1% of GDP in 1973 to double that today, one might expect to see a similar increase in causes for such suits, such as doctors making more mistakes or businesses making more dangerous. But this is not the case. Instead, trial lawyers pushing questionable suits and winning exorbitant awards from juries are the driving force behind this cost increase. In one famous example of class action gone awry, a settlement against the Bank of Boston awarded $8.64 to each class member, but then charged each of those members $90 in trial lawyer fees. Similarly, in a case against Blockbuster, the attorneys took home over $9 million in fees. The harmed plaintiffs each got a $1-off coupon for future video rentals. And the list goes on."

That wonderful U.N. again: "Home-made pornographic videos shot by a United Nations logistics expert in the Democratic Republic of Congo have sparked a sex scandal that threatens to become the UN's Abu Ghraib. The expert was a Frenchman who worked at Goma airport as part of the UN's $700 million-a-year effort to rebuild the war-shattered country. When police raided his home they discovered that he had turned his bedroom into a studio for videotaping and photographing sex sessions with young girls.

When Massachusetts politician Elbridge Gerry had the boundaries of his electoral district redrawn, the resulting map of it was a strange shape that looked like a salamander. Hence the name "Gerrymander" now commonly used for such arrangements. A California congresswoman, however, makes Elbridge Gerry look like an amateur. Have a look at this map of her district. Electoral redistricting is never a pretty sight but this one shows no respect for democracy at all.

Your friends, the bureaucrats: "A battle is brewing between Costco and Washington state's government over the price of wine and beer, and the fight is expected to be as long as the legs of a fine wine. The retail giant, based in the Evergreen State, is suing, saying that government involvement in regulation of beer and wine means higher prices, mandatory mark-ups and middlemen. That, says company officials, prevents the retailer from selling beer and wine in bulk at lower prices, which is what the company prides itself on. 'Obviously we want to be able to bring products to market at a lower price, irrespective of what that product is,' said Jim Sinegal, president and CEO of Costco."

Astute blogger makes the good point that American culture is adopted worldwide because it is a people's culture -- not something prescribed by an elite. So ordinary people everywhere like it.

Who said this? "It is high treason to pay taxes. Refusal to pay taxes is the primary duty of the citizen!". It was none other than Karl Marx!.

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

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

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.

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