WHY I AM A LIBERTARIAN CONSERVATIVE

I normally mention my own political outlook only in passing. I am more interested in understanding what is happening in the world about me than I am in proposing my own grand theories. And in that respect I think I am a mainstream conservative. Conservatives don't like grand theories. I do however find libertarian ideas a very useful framework for thinking about problems. I think that most of society's problems are caused by governments usurping choices that could better be made by individuals and that government is just about the worst way of doing almost anything. So libertarians normally have a good answer to most social problems -- allow more freedom for individual choice. Libertarians have ideas and concrete proposals with a clear rationale and persuasive precedents. And that is a great contrast with the dismal Leftist reflex of solving everything via ever more pervasive coercion. And libertarian proposals in most spheres are normally congenial to conservatives too.

Where libertarians normally part company with conservatives is over moral issues. Conservatives want less regulation than Leftists but they do want some regulation. Exposing part of a black woman's breast at a major sporting event upsets some conservatives dreadfully, for instance. I am afraid that I remain a total libertarian on such issues. What people do with their own bodies seems to me to be supremely their business. And all arguments that some idea or claim should not be uttered or made known simply suggest to me that the idea or claim concerned is a powerful one that cannot easily be opposed. I would not go so far as to say that any censored idea or claim is automatically correct but I think there is a strong presumption in that direction. So the argument that sexual restraint should be fostered by censorship of sexual expression suggests to me that the arguments in favour of sexual restraint are weak.

Where I part company with many libertarians is that I find them too doctrinaire. I DON'T believe that there is one simple recipe that solves all problems. That to me is a Leftist outlook. As conservatives generally do, I see the world as infinitely complex and as not reducible to any simple rule. And in fact many libertarians agree with that. The extreme form of libertarianism is anarcho-capitalism -- the idea that NO government is needed for any purpose. I know all the arguments in favour of that view but see them as contrary to all human experience. Man is a social animal who has always throughout history felt at least some need for a government to perform certain tasks and I am perfectly confident that that will always be so. So as far as I can tell, most libertarians are not anarcho-capitalists. They are Minimal Statists. They believe that there are certain functions (such as defence) for which a government is needed. I am one of those.

So the distinction between Minimal Statists and Conservatives is one of degree. Conservatives have always wanted to limit the size and power of the State (I document 1500 years of history to that effect here) but they still want a much bigger State than Minimal Statists do. And I am a pretty minimal Minimal Statist. I think the USA could abolish its whole alphabet soup of government agencies (FDA, EPA, DEA etc) to great net advantage (for instance).

Where I appear to be in a minority among libertarians, however, is over the issue of immigration control. I am in favour of control. I am far from totally alone in that view among libertarians but I think it is pretty clear that a majority of libertarians believe in open borders. I think that is naive. Not all people are equally compatible with one-another and if a householder has a right to say whom he will welcome into his house then I think nations have an equal right to say whom they will welcome into their nation. Fortunately, I live in one of the few advanced countries in the world (Australia) that does effectively control its immigration. And my views on that matter make me very much a mainstream Australian. A huge majority of Australians agree with our government's policy of control.

Another way in which I depart from most libertarians but am very much in harmony with conservative traditions is that I do believe us all to be limited in various ways by human nature. Libertarians have no obvious place in their thought for the concept. They know it is a factor but see it as simply one of the many mysterious factors that determine people's preferences. For them only the preferences matter. What determines those preferences is for them unimportant. But conservatives think human nature is VERY important. They think it greatly limits what we do and can do and use it to explain WHY collective action is to be avoided where possible. They give reasons for preferring liberty, instead of simply asserting the desirability of liberty, as libertarians usually do.

That is not to say that libertarians have the same view of human nature that Leftists do. Leftists normally insist that human nature does not exist and that therefore any human being can in theory become anything he wants to be or can be "educated" into being. Libertarians, by contrast, are simply uninterested in whether that is true or not. Leftists think little boys can be "educated" into preferring dolls to trucks as playthings whereas conservatives think they cannot. A libertarian, by contrast, simply says that little boys should be given a choice of what to play with and who cares what they choose. Unfortunately, however, a lot of people do care so the conservative argument does have to be made. I personally agree with the libertarian policy in the matter but I think that policy does normally have to be backed up with conservative arguments about human nature to get it implemented.

Conservatives also have to make more of an issue of individual differences than libertarians do. That people are different and should be allowed to make different choices is axiomatic to libertarians but they normally take that as given rather than arguing for it. With their perennial "all men are equal" doctine, however, Leftists are always trying to deny or minimize individual differences. Conservatives believe that doctrine to be disastrously wrong and argue vigorously against it. Conservatives believe, for instance, that some people work harder and smarter and therefore rightly get more money for what they do. Leftists however think (or claim to think) that all men are equal so unequal rewards must be unfair and the work of a flawed system. So whether or not individual differences are important is a major Left/Right issue -- but libertarians simply assume it away without debate. I spent most of my academic career researching individual differences so I am obviously in the conservative camp there.

And one way in which I differ from almost everybody these days is that I say out loud that there are some differences between the major races and nations of mankind and that some (but only some) of those differences are important. Up until the middle of the 20th century just about everybody believed that but the fact that Hitler used arguments of that general sort in justifying his deeds has made such arguments generally unmentionable in the modern world. I am however a psychometrician by trade. My expertise is in measuring psychological differences between people. I have had over 200 papers published in the academic journals reporting research in that connection. And perhaps the most solidly proven and replicated finding in psychometrics -- a finding that has always emerged in around a century of research -- is that people of African ultimate origin do have much lower average scores on general problem-solving ability (IQ) than do people of European ancestry and that variations in IQ are largely genetic. So, knowing what I know from my own field of expertise, I HAVE to say that the Leftist approach of treating blacks and whites as intellectually equal is doomed to failure. Somebody has got to say that the emperor has no clothes and I am prepared to be that person when required. Most people seem to think that makes me a "Right-wing extremist" or a "white supremacist". I think it simply makes me an honest scientist.

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ELSEWHERE

A good comment from a reader about "Bishop" Robinson's claim (see yesterday) that Jesus was a homosexual: "Either Robinson is utterly ignorant of the Jewish culture of 2000 years ago or hopes that a lot of his parishioners and supporters are. It's not hard to imagine how a poor itinerant would have a bit of trouble coming up with the bride price of that day, no matter how little it might have been. And, since the security situation back then was probably a bit dicey, Pax Romana notwithstanding, it would have better to travel in the company of other men in order to ward off trouble. If I recall my Bible stories correctly, didn't Peter take the ear off a Roman soldier in Gethsemane?"

There is a good article here about Jim Wallis, the "Leftist evangelical" (really a pacifist who loves dictators). Leftists are hanging on his every word these days but he is pastor to only "a few dozen" people. What a great evangelist! He sure knows how to inspire people with Christ's message! Still, a lot of Anglican priests preach to only about half a dozen old ladies on Sunday so I suppose he does well as Leftist preachers go.

There is a report here (PDF) showing that "Women's Studies" programs at universities are as empty of students as they are of real content. They are just a "Jobs for the Girls" racket and serve no real academic purpose. It looks like very few students are foolish enough to waste an education on learning hopelessly biased propaganda.

The party of the rich in the 2004 election was ....... ? ... "Pointing to the left's success in using tax-exempt organizations to raise funds, Mr. York puts paid to the meme that Republicans are the party bankrolled by the rich. Mr. York records that 92% of contributions of $1 million or more went to Democrats. Pro-Democratic 527s, meanwhile, spent more than twice as much as their GOP counterparts".

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

My latest quote on MARXWORDS shows again that Engels regarded the Slavs as an inferior race who deserve to be oppressed. How ironic that it was a Slavic nation (Russia) that first put Marxist ideas into practice!

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

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 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.

Leftist ideologues 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 and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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ABORTION

There is an interesting article here pointing out that in Britain the abortion issue is not politically polarized: Members of all political parties are allowed a conscience vote on the matter. There are many anti-abortion Leftists in good standing, for instance. The author argues that the U.S. Democratic party too should adopt a neutral stance on the matter and sponsor a constitutional amendment to short-circuit the Supreme Court and return to the State legislatures the decision on what abortions are legal or not. He says that to do so would detach a lot of Christian votes from the Republicans. He concludes:

"Of course, there's a very big "if" here. The pro-choice activists in the Democratic Party have to be willing to give up their court-enforced privileged position, trading their elite judicial bastion for the give-and-take of (small "d") democratic politics. They will lose ground in some states. But wouldn't that be a small price to pay for heading off "the theocrats" at the national level and for the opportunity of taming them at the state level?

Or is the fanaticism of the pro-choice wing of the Democratic Party just as much an obstacle to "grown-up" British-style politics as are the views of those deluded souls in Kansas who don't know what their real interests are?"

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ELSEWHERE

Was Jesus homosexual? "Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly homosexual bishop of his denomination, has angered traditionalist Anglicans by suggesting that Jesus Christ might have been homosexual. Robinson, who left his wife - and mother of his two daughters - to cohabit with his male lover, Mark, made his inflammatory remarks during an address titled, "Homosexuality and the Body of Christ: Is There a New Way?" at Christ Church of Hamilton and Wenham, Massachusetts. The bishop was asked by a congregant how Christians could both accept homosexuality and the Bible's emphasis on redemption for sins. "Interestingly enough, in this day of traditional family values," answered Robinson, "this man that we follow was single, as far as we know, traveled with a bunch of men, had a disciple who was known as 'the one whom Jesus loved' and said my family is not my mother and father, my family is those who do the will of God".

The real opponents of change: "On almost every significant area of public policy the Democrats are atrophied, rusty, and calcified. They're dependent upon old (condescending) notions about blacks, the patronage of teacher's unions which care very little for the facts, and feminists who define liberation almost exclusively as the freedom to abort pregnancies despite all of the new, inconvenient facts science is bringing to bear. Liberals are not the 'reality-based community, they are the status-quo based community. They wish to stand athwart history yelling 'Stop' -- in some rare cases, even when history is advancing liberalism in tyrannical lands. The Buckleyite formulation of standing athwart history yelling 'Stop' was aimed at a world where the rise of Communism abroad and soft-liberalism at home were seen as linked trends. Today, liberals yell "Stop' almost entirely because they don't enjoy being in the backseat. If they cannot drive, no one can."

Jane Galt has put up the best version of the conservative argument against homosexual marriage that I have seen. It is in fact an excellent argument for caution about change in general. I have in fact done an excerpt of what she says about reasons for caution in social policy generally and posted it here.

More U.N. corruption: "Freedom House today released its annual list of the world's most repressive regimes at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. Six are members of the UN body, charged with monitoring and condemning human rights violations."

Sometimes, there oughta NOT be a law: "To see the national trend toward 'overcriminalization' in action, consider New Mexico. In his 2005 State of the State address, Gov. Bill Richardson labeled 2004 'the year of the legislature.' And it looks as if some Santa Fe lawmakers have no intention of relinquishing that title -- or the accompanying breadth of jurisdiction -- in 2005. Exhibit A: The Recycling and Illegal Dumping Act, introduced on Jan. 21 by Sen. Dede Feldman and recently passed by the State Senate. This bill makes it a criminal offense to use, store, transport or dump scrap tires or tire-derived products. ... Possession of old Firestones could get you three years in the slammer. You also might find yourself doing time over a conviction based on guilt by association. Under the bill, knowingly saying nothing about 'any substantive information [regarding tire derived products]' is a fourth-degree felony, punishable by up to 18 months in prison."

Centrist Democrats get the message: "The Democrats' postelection war about what they should stand for is heating up again, with centrists challenging liberals to 'real fights' within the party about staking out a tougher position against terrorism. In an attack on the party's dominant left wing, anti-war base, and a warning for new Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean 'to do no harm,' the centrist-leaning Democratic Leadership Council said it is 'a delusion to think that if we just turned out our voters, we could win national elections.' Instead, the DLC called on the party to dramatically change its message to 'recapture the muscular progressive internationalism of Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy and convince voters that national security is our first priority.'"

The age of judicial activism must end: "With the looming departure of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist from a heavily divided United States Supreme Court, the stakes are high for President Bush. What sort of Justice will replace Rehnquist? Will he or she be a judicial activist or stick to the original intent of the Constitution? Since the days of Marbury v. Madison, the meaning of judicial review has been a complicated issue in American public life. Over the years, several Justices have used their positions of power to become legislators--overstepping their bounds and creating law in the process."

British voting system fraud-prone too: "A judge investigating vote-rigging in Birmingham's local elections has ruled there was widespread fraud and has ordered new elections. Election Commissioner Richard Mawrey QC upheld allegations of postal fraud relating to six seats won by Labour in the ballot of 10 June last year. The results have been declared void and the polls in two wards must be rerun. Judge Mawrey said evidence of "massive, systematic and organised fraud" in the campaign had made a mockery of the election and ruled that not less than 1,500 votes had been cast fraudulently in the city. The deputy high court judge said the system was "hopelessly insecure" and expressed regret that recent warnings about the failings had been dismissed by the government as "scaremongering". Speaking outside court, a spokesman for the People's Justice Party called for postal voting to be outlawed at the general election.... Mr Mawrey ordered that none of the six councillors be allowed to stand for the vacant seats at the next election".

My latest quote on MARXWORDS shows again that Marx believed in superior and inferior races.

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

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 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.

Leftist ideologues 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 and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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TUESDAY ROUNDUP

Once again I pick out what I think are my best posts for the week:

On Dissecting Leftism I look at Black/White income disparities

On Political Correctness Watch I have some news about Britain's gypsy problem

On Greenie Watch I look at the latest Greenie scare about us "running out" of things

On Education Watch I note an argument in favour of "spare the rod and spoil the child"

On Socialized Medicine I note that with 1.4 million employees to serve 60 million people, Britain's NHS still cannot provide adequate medical care

On Gun Watch I say that the latest school shootings show that gun banning has plainly failed

On MarxWords I show that Engels thought Aryans were superior

On Leftists as Elitists I note a seemingly endless parade of unproven assertions by an elitist who thinks he knows what's best but who cannot even spell

On Majority Rights I say that Winston Churchill WAS a neocon

On Blogger News I note that homosexual conservatives are being persecuted by the Left

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WAS THE POPE A CONSERVATIVE?

Lawrence Auster has a heap of posts and comments up at the moment about the late Holy Father. Auster is derisive of the view that John Paul II was a conservative. But that depends on what you mean by conservative and Auster has an unusual view of that. It is certainly clear that JPII was a political centrist but I think one could say much the same of GWB. So is GWB a conservative? NO! I can hear some people shouting. But no real-life politician wins universal approval even from his own side of politics so I think we have to say that in the ordinary meaning of the term GWB IS a conservative.

From my own libertarian conservative viewpoint both GWB and JPII are/were not nearly conservative enough but I think that real-world conservative politics at least from Disraeli on have almost always consisted of finding a safe balance between competing political claims rather than pursuing some hard-line ideology. Hard-line ideologies are for Leftists. So I think Auster's view of the matter misses the point that JPII was of necessity a real-world politician -- so compromises were to be expected of him. Even my great hero, Ronald Reagan, signed into law some pieces of legislation I would rather not think about.

What I think Auster also misses is that political centrism is thoroughly Papal. The attitudes of JPII were simply modern adaptations of traditional Papal thinking. I go into that at slightly greater length here. Papal thinking is in fact the ancestor of the Blairite "third way". The syndicalism that was recommended in the famous 1891 encyclical De rerum novarum of Pope Leo XIII also tried to strike a balance between capitalism and socialism.

Update: I guess I should mention explicitly something I initially thought was too well-known to require comment: That there was one respect in which His Holiness was NOT a centrist -- his stand in favour of individual rights versus the power of the Communist State. So in that respect he was very much a conservative, and a great one.

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ELSEWHERE

George Watson's latest article on the great similarites between Nazism and Communism is now online. The similarities are even greater than is commonly known and Watson sets out well their common origins in the ideas of Marx & Engels. Excerpt: "Racialism was already widely accepted as the mark of the Left in many countries, including England. There the Fabians led. In 1900, in Fabianism and the Empire, they announced in imperial vein that "the state which obstructs international civilisation will have to go, be it big or little". Two years later H.G. Wells, another Fabian, wrote Anticipations, where in its last pages he called for the extermination or all non-white races to build a universal socialist utopia; and in August 1913, in the New Statesman, Sidney and Beatrice Webb called for the endless domination of the world by the white races"

Interesting excerpt from a review of Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas?: "And yet Frank's portrait of Kansas conservatives is often brilliant. One of the high points of the book is his interview of Tim Golba, the organizer of Kansans for Life. Frank is impressed that this man of power is a mere line worker in a soda-pop plant. Frank visits him in his little house, unscreened by trees, baking in the prairie sun, far from the leafy neighborhoods of the bourgeoisie. Apparently Golba is not conducting his crusade out of an economic interest. "Ignoring one's economic self-interest may seem like a suicidal move to you and me, but viewed in a different way it is an act of noble self-denial," Frank writes. "This is a man who has turned his back on the comforts of our civilization - who defies the men in great palaces. He smites their candidates; he wastes their money; he ends their careers." [So it is conservatism that offers the little guy a share in power]

My latest quote on MARXWORDS shows that Marx believed in superior and inferior races. And guess whom he thought to be superior? (Hint: Adolf agreed).

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

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 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.

Leftist ideologues 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 and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"

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

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SOME ECONOMICS

Amtrak: "If the federal government had supplied stagecoach service in the 19th century, we would still have stagecoaches in operation. Luckily, Washington was wise enough to stay out of that business. It was not wise enough to stay out of the passenger rail business, which is why we still have Amtrak. President Bush finds it hard to overhaul Social Security, which may not be surprising: It's a huge program that plays a large role in the life of virtually every American. But he may find it equally frustrating to shift federal policy on Amtrak, even though it's a small program that affects hardly anyone. This is one of those programs that demonstrates eternal life is not just a religious hope for the next world but a fact in this one. It was launched in 1971 with the hope that, in the words of President Nixon's transportation secretary, it 'could be profitable within perhaps three years.' That forecast proved, well, premature."

U.S. foreign debt too LOW: "Here's another reason to be bullish: everyone is worried sick that America is overindebted, but it's not. This country could profitably take on more loans from abroad and invest the money in productive assets. We're underindebted. The debt worriers have been with us for a long time, and they've always been wrong. Their economic prescriptions are born of a moral philosophy that says debt is bad and more debt is worse. They don't like to see the U.S. importing capital from abroad at the rate of $600 billion a year. What the worriers fail to contemplate is the uses to which that capital is put. What is the right debt level for society to carry? The answer is: that level where our marginal borrowing costs approach our marginal return on assets. This is, in fact, the same formula that a corporation would use. If you can borrow at 6% to build a factory that will yield a return of 12%, you should borrow. The U.S. is nowhere near there"

Bye Bye German jobs: "Volkswagen is traditionally thought of as a German manufacturer yet four of its six passenger cars are produced outside of Germany. Volkswagen spokesman Matthew Wiesner says there is a mix of reasons behind the trend. "It's the same with so many of the various producers around the world. It is a mix of where the plants are positioned around the world, currency rates and the fact that Europe is becoming very expensive to produce things," he says".

Coyote Blog has some excellent case studies on the effects of raising the minimum wage. He lists from his own real-life experience four effects: 1. The jobs just go away; 2. The jobs get outsourced to contractors; 3. The jobs get automated away; 4. Prices go up to customers. That brief summary is only a start, however. This is definitely a case of "Read the whole thing".

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ELSEWHERE

Don't blame the religious Right: "The speed with which issues that excite the passions of people of faith have arrived at the center of American politics is not surprising given the forced march that the courts have put those issues on. It was not the "religious right" that pushed gay marriage to the center of the public debate; it was courts in Hawaii, Vermont, and Massachusetts. It wasn't the "religious right" that ordered Terri Schiavo's feeding tube removed; it was a Florida Supreme Court that struck down a law passed by the Florida legislature and signed by Governor Jeb Bush which would have allowed Terri Schiavo to live. And it isn't the "religious right" that forced the United States Supreme Court to repeatedly issue rulings on areas of law that would have been better left to legislatures".

How many divisions has the Pope? "Stalin famously asked, "How many divisions has the Pope?" The tyrants successors of the Evil Empire found out when the Pole Karol Wojtyla became Pope. Steve Hayward considers (from segments of his work-in-progress, The Age of Reagan: Lion at the Gate, 1980-1989) what the Karol Wojtyla meant when he proclaimed "Be not afraid!" when he was selected Pope. The Polish Pope brought a transformation of consciousness among Poles that had massive consequences for the whole world. Poland was the first country he visited after becoming Pope, and Hayward recounts how that went, what the Soviets thought, how they were out-thought and out-gunned by the Pope. He broke the sorcerer's spell. The rest you know"

Go India!: "With the news from Iraq relegated to the back pages recently, last Friday's State Department briefing -- especially since it was not devoted to Condoleezza Rice's latest fashion statements -- attracted little attention. The subject: the evolving strategic partnership between the United States and India. The news? It is the 'goal' of the Bush administration 'to help India become a major world power in the 21st century.' This is indeed a monumental and welcome development; it's the clearest sign to date that the Bush Doctrine has a genuine strategic logic, that it's more than a justification for the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan."

How embarrassing! Air France is buying Boeing. See here and here.

More California justice: "A 43-year-old Vacaville man who was out on bail on a child molestation charge has been arrested in a new molestation case, police said. Mark Woolums was taken into custody Friday on 10 felony charges, including rape and child molestation. Police Sgt. Charlie Spruill said Woolums apparently met the girl through a day-care program being run out of his home. Woolums was arrested on child molestation charges in a separate case last September but was released after posting $133,334 bail. This time bail was set at $500,000".

Mother sues cops for failing to protect kids: "Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on Town of Castle Rock, Colorado v. Gonzales. At issue is whether Jessica Gonzales can sue her local police department in federal court for violating her Constitutional rights when they did not enforce a restraining order. The decision, expected in June, could revolutionize the way police departments across America handle such orders. Hopefully, it will spark discussion of how they are issued as well."

A small step forward: "The Los Angeles Police Department is tightening its policy on handling illegal immigrants to allow officers to check the status of suspected felons. If approved, the new rules would be a shift from a 1979 policy that prevents officers from inquiring about a person's immigration status to encourage illegal immigrants who had witnessed or been victims of crimes to cooperate with police without fear of deportation. Assistant Police Chief George Gascon said the proposal would direct officers to report suspected felons in the United States illegally to their supervisors, who would then consult with immigration officials. Officers would be able to arrest felons if it's determined they are illegal immigrants, Gascon said. Several months ago, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department changed its policy and began checking the immigration status of foreign-born inmates and turning illegal immigrants over to federal authorities"

My latest post on MARXWORDS shows that Engels despised the Russians.

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

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 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.

Leftist ideologues 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 and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"

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

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I PAY MY RESPECTS TO A GREAT POPE




There is a fitting tribute to him here

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WINSTON CHURCHILL WAS A NEOCON

I am sometimes amazed by how little history even my fellow conservatives seem to know. Lawrence Auster is of course well-known for the way he joins Leftists in his paranoia about the "neocons" so I guess that helps us understand his latest lapse. He has put up a post consisting mainly of a letter from an historian claiming that Winston Churchill was NOT a neocon. In the narrow sense that Churchill was not Jewish and that the term "neocon" is only a recent invention, that does, of course, have to be true.

In the broader sense -- a neocon being a former Leftist who favours foreign military intervention in favour of democracy -- however, to say that Churchill was not a neocon betrays no knowledge of history whatever. He joined the British LIBERAL party in 1904 and served as Colonial Under-Secretary under Campbell-Bannerman and as president of the Board of Trade and Home Secretary under Asquith. So he was in his early years a promininent Leftist in terms of British politics at the time. But, like the neocons, he later (1925) changed his tune and became a prominent Conservative.

And as for foreign interventions in favour of democracy, who was Secretary of War under Lloyd George when Britain sent troops to join the "white" Russians in fighting the Bolsheviks in 1919? It was Winston Churchill! And there is no doubt that Churchill did not repent doing so. One thing he never changed was his fierce opposition to Communism -- an opposition that is also characteristic of the neocons.

And though Churchill was not Jewish, he was at least philosemitic. As Auster notes, Churchill once said: "Where the Jew goes there is oasis. Where the Arab goes there is desert."

So on the four primary neocon identifiers -- Jewishness, anticommunism, Leftist early life and support for military intervention in the cause of promoting democracy -- Churchill scores 3 out of 4 -- and on the Jewishness angle he might be said to have done his best! I gather that not all neocons are Jewish anyway -- particularly if you include the Straussians in what is after all a pretty loose classification to begin with. Some people also say Churchill was a neocon because he was an unabashed defender of the British Empire but for that to be relevant we have to accept that the neocons want an American empire -- which is in my view a brain-dead claim. The idea of America as an empire is antithetical to all American values and traditions and the neocons are far too smart to be unaware of something as basic as that.

Auster does not link to it but the article which started the recent discussion about Churchill as a neocon is here

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ELSEWHERE

British kids can't be conned: "Children as young as 13 are displaying signs of Islamophobia and are voicing their support for the British National Party, researchers have found. Young teenagers are increasingly saying they have negative views towards Muslims and do not want Islamic culture expressed in the classroom. The study of 1,500 students aged 13 to 24 was presented at the annual conference of the British Psychological Society in Manchester yesterday. Researchers asked students from 14 secondary schools and one further education college in York for their views on Islam since 11 September 2001. Three of the schools were from the independent sector and the others came from a wide geographical and socio-economic area".

Al Qa'eda members learnt their hatred of the West in the West: "Strikingly, 70 per cent joined the jihad while away from home. Sageman describes them as the `elite of their country' sent abroad to study because the schools in Germany, France, England and the US are better. Egyptian-born Mohammed Atta, who crashed the jet into the North Tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11, became a violent-minded extremist while studying architecture in Hamburg. Ahmed Omar Sheikh, the Briton convicted of murdering American journalist Daniel Pearl, attended the London School of Economics. Al-Qa'eda's `breeding ground', it seems, is as much in fragmented cities in the West as in hotbeds of Islamism in the East". [How unsurprising that they learnt hatred of the West in Western universities!]

Strom Thurmond, famous Southern segregationist, had a black ex-nuptial daughter. Some things she recently said about him: "However, in his personal life, he was doing many things to help black people - things many people didn't know about. Since I came out, so many black people have called and told me about the many good things that he did for them.... I didn't want people to know he was my father. But he later did other things that I am proud of. He helped pass the bill recognizing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, and he was the first senator to hire a black administrative aide.... I didn't warm up to him at first; it took time for me to grow to like him. All we did was shake hands when we saw each other. After a while, he would hug me and kiss me on the cheek. And we became close after that... he visited me when I lived in New York. And he suggested that I attend South Carolina State, a black college. And he visited me when I was there and helped me financially. He also helped me with my children. He helped my son get into medical school and the Navy, and he helped my daughter with her business endeavors".

There is around a century of test data to show that men on average are much better than women at mathematics, despite what the feminist opponents of Larry Summers at Harvard say. The latest is this set of statistics from recent SAT results: "But the score distributions show that among the test takers in the higest score range (750-800), males made up 50.5% of that group on the verbal reasoning portion of the test and 68.7% of that group on the math reasoning portion of the test. In fact, males are disproportionately represented in the score ranges on the math section for all score ranges above 600. Looking at the most extreme tail of the distribution, the coveted 800, males were 49.3% of the population achieving that score on the verbal portion, and 72% of the population achieving that score on the math portion". (From Discriminations via Peg Kaplan)

Stupid Belgians: "Belgium's interior minister was left red-faced yesterday after it emerged that photos comparing US President George W Bush to a chimpanzee had been used in a police training manual..... The pictures in question - reprinted by the newspaper - showed a series of the US leader's facial expressions next to shots of a chimpanzee making apparently similar faces. They were intended to help trainee police officers in the western city of Bruges to recognise the importance of body language in dealing with the public. Bush is shown in poses ranging from pensive to finger-waving debating mode". [Lots of Leftists have been calling GWB "chimpy" but now that many are admitting that they were wrong and GWB was right to say that the Muslim "street" wants democracy, what does that mean? That they were dumber than a chimpanzee? I think it does!]

My latest post on MARXWORDS shows that Marx & Engels believed that human races emerged naturally but that eugenics could and should alter that.

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

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 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.

Leftist ideologues 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 and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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BLOGGER.COM BLUES

Blogger.com have been very erratic this week. One day it took me four hours before I could get this blog up. And others have had worse experiences. Hopefully blogger.com have now got on top of whatever problem they had but I guess this is a good time to remind readers to bookmark one of my mirror sites (here and here) for times when this blog does not seem to have been updated at the usual time. I update it each and every morning my time -- which translates to some time in the afternoon of the "next" day for American readers (Brisbane time is 18 hours ahead of California time). At the foot of each day's postings I also give links to mirrors for five of my other blogs as well. It only takes me a couple of minutes per day to put up a mirror site but there is no point in my doing it unless people use it occasionally. So if there have been no recent updates here, the fault lies with blogger.com, not with me and the mirror sites should always be up to date.

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LIBERALISM WITHOUT COMPASSION

This morning President Bush offered his condolences to the family of Terri Schiavo:

The essence of civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak. In cases where there are serious doubts and questions, the presumption should be in the favor of life.

"The strong have a duty to protect the weak": Didn't that use to be a liberal sentiment? To be sure, some prominent left-liberals--Jesse Jackson, Ralph Nader, Sen. Tom Harkin--joined the effort to save Mrs. Schiavo, and 47 House Democrats out of 100 voted in favor of the law that would have done so had the courts not defied it. But it seems clear that liberalism is not as compassionate as it once was.....

In a fascinating essay for The Weekly Standard, Eric Cohen argues that what went wrong in the Schiavo case was that "procedural liberalism"--the respect for Mrs. Schiavo's right to make her own decisions--gave way to "ideological liberalism"--the presumption that because she was unable to make such decisions, her life was worthless:

Treating autonomy as an absolute makes a person's dignity turn entirely on his or her capacity to act autonomously. It leads to the view that only those with the ability to express their will possess any dignity at all--everyone else is "life unworthy of life."

This is what ideological liberalism now seems to believe--whether in regard to early human embryos, or late-stage dementia patients, or fetuses with Down's syndrome. And in the end, the Schiavo case is just one more act in modern liberalism's betrayal of the vulnerable people it once claimed to speak for.

Opinion on the Schiavo case did not split along traditional left-right lines, of course; libertarian-leaning conservatives tended to side with those who wished to pull her feeding tube. Autonomy and compassion are both important values, and there are dangers in overvaluing either at the expense of the other.

It does seem, though, that the "religious right," for better or worse, has supplanted the liberal left as the political faction that most strongly and consistently advocates compassion in social policy.

(Above post excerpted from Taranto. The Leftist claim to compassion always was a con job. Look at the millions killed by Communism -- and back in the USA look at the thousands killed as a result of Leftist support for eugenics prior to 1945)

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ELSEWHERE

There is a good short summary of the truth about Michael Moore here

Amusing: The "pro-Palestinian" French Left have been awoken from their dreams. The Muslim immigrants in France have begun to attack the French Left too.

Kristol makes it clear: "A pie in the face didn't silence conservative pundit William Kristol during a speech at Earlham College. A man who later was identified as a student at the private Quaker college jumped onto the stage and splattered Kristol with the pie Tuesday night about 30 minutes into a speech about U.S. foreign policy. Members of the audience jeered the student as he walked off the stage, then applauded as Kristol wiped the goo off his face with a paper towel and said, "Just let me finish this point," the Palladium-Item reported".

From Nathan Tabor: "What do the Statue of Liberty, Independence Hall, and Monticello have in common? The average American with a smattering of historical knowledge might say that those historic sites are all symbolic of America's unique heritage of freedom..... What about the Great Smoky Mountains, Yellowstone Park, and the Grand Canyon? Well, these priceless natural resources are all managed by the U.S. National Parks Service. They are among the most frequently visited natural recreation areas in America, where millions of American families vacation every year. Would it surprise you to learn that every one of these unique American landmarks is also controlled by the United Nations? It's amazing but true.... For example, in 1995, Bill Clinton got the UN to declare Yellowstone Park a "World Heritage Site in Danger." That gave him the "international obligation" to close down a coal mine on private property three miles away - despite the fact that coal had been mined in the area for 150 years before Yellowstone Park was created, and the Crown Butte Mines had won an award for excellence in 1992".

Academic study confirms Leftist bias: "Nearly three-quarters of faculty members at U.S. colleges and universities describe themselves as liberals, and at elite schools, the proportion is 87 percent, a survey has found. What's more, half say they are Democrats and 51 percent indicate they seldom or never attend church, according to the survey, published in the March issue of the online political journal Forum. 'You would expect the majority of English literature and sociology professors to be liberals, but our survey found that 66 percent of those in physics and 64 percent of those in chemistry are liberals,' said S. Robert Lichter, a communications professor at George Mason University and an author of the study."

French finally admit that water flows downhill: "After seven years of rising unemployment, economic stagnation, and general malaise, French socialists' war against self-determinism ended in defeat last week when France's parliament rescinded a law that made it a crime to work more than 35 hours a week. Essentially a lunatic scheme to create wealth sans labor, the law instituted a de facto lowest-common-denominator egalitarian society by shackling anyone with motivation to a sinking raft of bureaucrats and the lazy. In a sort of fiscal policy version of the Maginot Line, French socialists had argued that legally limiting the number of work hours would force companies to create millions of new jobs."

I am also Canadian has an amusing post arguing that killing seals reduces global warming. How awful for the Greenies!

My latest post on MARXWORDS shows that Engels thought that race made a big difference to historical development.

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

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 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.

Leftist ideologues 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 and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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AMERICA'S IMPERIAL COURTS

A list of just some recent and appalling usurpations of power by the courts -- from Qando.

* A Federal Judge in Missouri ordered Kansas City to raise property taxes in order to pay for his court-ordered remedies. Several state courts are now embroiled in similar controversies over court-ordered tax increases.

* By invoking a non-existent "right" to privacy, the courts have increasingly legislated social outcomes from the bench, including finding a right to abortion in the 14th Amendment, and most recently, a right to homosexual marriage in some jurisdictions such as Hawaii and Massachussets.

* Federal Courts have repeatedly struck down voter referenda, such as Prop 209 in California, that ended affirmative action through race-based classifications, or Prop 187, which would have denied taxpayer benefits to illegal immigrants. Federal courts in Washington overturned a state referendum to ban assisted suicide.

* Federal Courts have ruled that states may not compose their state senate of representatives from geographical districts, but must proportionally represent the state's population. Essentially this says that it is unconstitutional for states to fashion their legislatures in the same manner that the Constitution requires the national legislature to be composed.

What lots of people fail to realize is that these judgments have happened only because Congress has let them happen. Congress can legislate to limit the power of the courts in any way it likes. Article III of the constitution says so. Maybe they will start to use that power now that there is all-round control of the U.S. government by the GOP. The courts are certainly doing all they can to push Congress into doing something.

Qando has much more

And the latest rubbish verdict: The Supreme Court "ruled that workers can sue for age discrimination without proving that the discrimination was intentional". So you can now be sued for something you did not know you were doing!

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ELSEWHERE

I was going through my old files looking for something else the other day when I came across an interesting Table in J. Ethnic Studies of 1982 (10:2), pp. 106ff. It uses NORC data to tabulate the ethnic composition of the U.S. population as of 1980. I am not certain what the precise NORC question was but the survey appears to have asked people what their predominant origins were. Germany was cited by 15.6%, England and Wales 11.9%, Ireland 9.5%, Italy 4.7%, Poland 2.8% and Scotland 2.6% -- giving only 24.7% for the entire British Isles. Blacks were 11.5%. So I think it will surprise many to hear that the U.S. population is more German than English. And if we take 80% of the England & Wales figure to get (VERY roughly) WASPs, we find that WASPSs are a minority of only 9.5%. These days of course all the percentages above would have been trimmed back by the Hispanic influx. But the whole set of results does make very stupid the current American code of referring to blacks and Hispanics as "minorities". WASPs are a minority too -- a smaller minority than blacks in fact. Maybe WASPs should demand affirmative action on their behalf! (For those not up with the jargon, WASPs are White Anglo-Saxon Protestants).

Illegal immigration: "We've reached a very strange moment in the immigration debate. On Wednesday, President Bush condemned a group of good American citizens worried about the breaking of U.S. immigration law. He condemned the organizers of Project Minuteman as 'vigilantes' even though they have broken no law and pledge not to do so. An hour or two later, Mr. Bush welcomed to his Texas ranch a man [Mexican President Vincente Fox] who insults the United States for its immigration policy and leads a government that routinely flouts U.S. immigration law. ... Mr. Bush's description of the Minutemen as vigilantes is a misreading of American history. The vigilantes were a lynch mob. The Minutemen are an expanded version of the Neighborhood Watch programs popular in many American cities. It's sad to see an American president roll out a royal welcome to a foreign dignitary so openly contemptuous of U.S. law, while simultaneously condemning Americans who are trying to help duly constituted authorities enforce the law."

If this guy were white he would be in jail, not still in his job "A federal jury in New Orleans yesterday determined that the city's first black district attorney discriminated against dozens of white employees in January 2003 by summarily replacing them with black employees days after he took office. The jury found that Eddie Jordan acted illegally but did not hold him personally responsible. The plaintiffs were awarded almost $1.8 million in back pay and damages. "What I wanted was a win. Money was not the issue," plaintiff Clemens Herbert told reporters. "He was trying to disguise racial discrimination through politics, and the jury saw through it.""

Moderate Muslims cheer bin Laden rebuke: "The condemnation of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda by the Islamic Commission of Spain on the first anniversary of the train bombings in Madrid that took 200 lives is making waves throughout the Muslim world. The Spanish commission's fatwa, or condemnation, follows other signs of the kind of public theological debate rarely seen in the Muslim world, openly challenging the dominance of Saudi Arabia's wealthy Wahhabi fanatics. One Islamic scholar even calls it a sign of 'a counter-jihad.' In a recent interview with the Qatari daily newspaper Al-Raya, for example, Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari, the former dean of Shariah and law at the University of Qatar, urged his fellow Muslims to purge their heritage of fanaticism and adopt 'new civilized humane thought.'"

Leftists ignore history -- as usual: "Two years ago this week, the American invasion of Iraq was underway. Why had we gone to war? In the months leading up to Operation Iraqi Freedom, President Bush repeatedly gave his reasons. Saddam Hussein, he said on Oct. 7, 2002, "has tried to dominate the Middle East, has invaded and brutally occupied a small neighbor, has struck other nations without warning, and holds an unrelenting hostility toward the United States." ... The president had also made the case for taking action before the UN General Assembly on Sept. 12, 2002. "If we meet our responsibilities," he said, "the people of Iraq can shake off their captivity. They can one day join a democratic Afghanistan and a democratic Palestine, inspiring reforms throughout the Muslim world. ... Isn't it odd that such clear and compelling justifications for the war and where it might lead have been largely forgotten in what passes for debate these days? Instead, the talking point we hear -- over and over -- is that the casus belli for the invasion was simply and exclusively Saddam's possession of stocks of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). That is usually followed by the assertion that since no such caches of WMD have been found, the war was unjustified and, it is customary to add in an outraged tone, based on a bald-faced "lie."

Carnival of the Vanities is up again -- this time in April Fool's mode

My latest post on MARXWORDS shows that Engels thought Aryans were superior.

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

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 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.

Leftist ideologues 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 and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"

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

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BLACK INCOME DISPARITIES

First we read this in USA Today:

Black and Asian women with bachelor's degrees earn slightly more than similarly educated white women, and white men with four-year degrees make more than anyone else.

So how come blacks are tops among women and whites are tops among men? About the women we read that they do well because of:

the tendency of minority women, especially blacks, to more often hold more than one job or work more than 40 hours a week, and the tendency of black professional women who take time off to have a child to return to the work force sooner than others.

So black women do well because they work harder. But for black men we read:

Workplace discrimination and the continuing difficulties of minorities to get into higher-paying management positions could help explain the disparities among men, experts say.

So black women do well because they work harder but black men do badly because of "discrimination". But if discrimination holds black men back, why does it not hold black women back? Is the writer implying that black women sleep their way to the top? I think that's more offensive than anything I would dare to say and I don't think it is true. Could the real explanation for black men lagging be -- horror! -- that black men don't work as hard as black women? Back in Africa the men mostly sit around while the women work. That couldn't happen in America, could it? No! It is wicked white discrimination that must be trotted out like a kneejerk reflex.

And I guess it would be vastly incorrect for me to mention another obvious reason for low average black male achievement: About a third of them either are in prison or have been there. Prison is an excellent college for crime but a very poor college for everything else.

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ELSEWHERE

The Irish show the way: "In 1985, the Irish economy was in a shambles. It was facing excessive budgets deficits and minimal growth. Its GNP p.c. amounted to only 65% of the Belgian level. In addition, Irish unemployment stood at 17% against 10% for Belgium. Until 1985 both countries followed similar Keynesian policies of deficit spending. In 1983 Belgian public spending even exceed-ed 50% of GNP. Excessive spending triggered a vicious circle of continuing rises of the tax burden and public debt. The graphs above show that until 1980 Irish public spending followed the same path as that of Belgium, with similar growth performance. However, in 1985 Ireland made a u-turn. It drastically lowered the tax burden. All wasteful government spending was eliminated. In three years time public spending was reduced by no less then 20%. The result was that Ireland entered a period of explosive GNP growth, averaging 5.6% from 1985 to 2002. This is rough-ly three times the Belgian growth rate. The boom went hand in hand with the creation of new jobs, which was far in excess of that in Belgium. Because of its awe-inspiring rise in prosperity Ireland has now more resources available for all sorts of social, cultural and environmental initiatives than Belgium does".

Stupid Californians try to destroy jobs: "The City Council here is set to consider whether to impose a living-wage policy for all companies that provide services to the city, a move airport officials warn could lead to the loss of millions of dollars in revenue. San Jose was the first major Bay Area city to establish the living-wage policy, which was put in place in 1998. But the mandatory wage increase has yet to be imposed on all companies, including airport rental car agencies, amid concerns that the policy could hinder San Jose's ability to attract and keep businesses..... Representatives of Hertz, Avis and Alamo/National rental car companies oppose the wage increase. "Is it fair to saddle an already unprofitable business with $1.5 million more in costs? No, said Hertz spokesman Rich Broome. "We believe the wages we offer are fair for the work being done.""

Confusing control and security: "Suppose you were a sadist and really hated your fellow men - what type of job would you try to get? Well, you might try to become head of airline security for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), where you could devise a system like the following. You would: * Hire people who are wannabee drill instructors, to order passengers around as if they were new Marine Corps recruits. * Demand passengers show their IDs up to four times before boarding, even though you know IDs are easily forged. ... * Take away relatively harmless personal items, such as tweezers, hat pins, sewing scissors, etc., while leaving people with items that are much more lethal in trained hands. * Harass small children, elderly women, infirm individuals and young attractive women by making them go through difficult body motions and inappropriate touching. ..."

Castro's daughter: "As a 3-year-old, Alina Fernandez didn't know that the Communist revolution that swept Cuba was led by her father. The only thing she could see was what the revolution did to her TV cartoons...... Eventually, the situation in Cuba worsened when the Soviet Union withdrew its support from Cuba in 1989. By 1993, she had to take her daughter out of school because there was no electricity - and no teachers. And by this time, she had already become a dissident. That's when she knew she had to leave, and she was able to smuggle herself out of the country with a little help and a fake passport. She has not seen her homeland or her father ever since."

Muslims find Christ: "Despite unprecedented press coverage of Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Middle East since September 11, 2001, one big story is not being told by mainstream media. Scores of Muslims are converting to evangelical Christianity and will be celebrating their first Easter this year, even amidst widespread persecution and the very real threat of death..... One Arab Christian leader tells me that based on his research with churches and ministries throughout the Islamic world, he now believes more than 1.5 million Muslims worldwide have trusted Christ since 9/11. Such numbers are difficult to verify, but the trend is clear. "More Muslims are becoming followers of Jesus Christ today than at any other time in history," a prominent Arab Christian leader told me recently, on the condition that I not mention his name or organization. "It's not something we talk much about openly, but it is very exciting and very important.""

A good example here of how Leftist pollsters can get any result they want out of a public opinion poll by asking loaded questuions.

I have just come across a Canadian blog that I really like. Dare I say it? Let it bleed is almost a Canadian version of Dissecting Leftism. It's got the same contempt for the Left, anyway.

My latest post on MARXWORDS shows that Engels thought native blacks to be dumber than German 8-year-olds.

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

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 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.

Leftist ideologues 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 and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"

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

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BLACK ASSERTIVENESS -- THEN AND NOW

I received yesterday the following interesting email from a man who might well be the "father" of the blogosphere -- in the sense of being the oldest blogger there is. Dick McDonald is in his 70s and is as lively as a cricket. He is referring to this post of mine from two days ago, called "How important is culture?":

You said something yesterday about blacks that didn't ring true with my personal experience with the black population when I was a kid. Compared to other kids of the era, I believe I had a bird's eye view of their culture and "maybe" their genes. You wrote:

"The overwhelming source of uncivil (to put it mildly) behaviour in the USA is undoubtedly the black population -- who are at least as Christian as the whites -- perhaps more so overall. So the source of destructive and disruptive black behaviour is not in their culture. It is in their genetics. Yes. I know all the Leftist tosh about the legacy of slavery suppressing their self-esteem etc but since all the studies shows that blacks tend to have unusually HIGH self-esteem, I am not going to waste time on that one."

This statement is valid when you look at today's conditions in the USA. But I grew up in a very different world and I can attest to the fact that "black aggressiveness and self-esteem" were the furthest thing from your mind in assessing "colored people" of that day.

We lived in a whites only neighborhood in West Hollywood, California. But I visited the "black" bars and chicken joints of South Central Los Angeles on a regular basis from 1940 through 1946. I accompanied my father who during that period owned and operated the largest record company in the world exclusively devoted to black singers, Giltedge Records. As Dad's singers were comparable in station to the gangster rapper's of today, they couldn't be more dissimilar.

The blacks I knew personally and culturally were painfully passive and their self-esteem on a scale of 1 to 10 was hovering just above 1. They were depicted in movies mostly as servants. When observed the word "massa" came to mind. They always were portrayed in movies as being frightened of their shadow and that is the way they came across in real life. The only violent minority of that time were the Mexican "Cholo's and they were more "Zoot Suit" than dangerous. Then the streets of South Central were calm compared to the war zones they are today.

At the time blacks were barred from participating in professional sports with whites. So I would say that I had a cat bird seat in watching black genes at work in the entertainment joints where among their own their self-esteem was the highest. It just wasn't there. Then they were as polite as the ever-bowing Chinese of the era and would generally run from any confrontation. They were not fighters then. They also were never angry..

Their transformation here in LA was slow. It started with the spectacular success of Jackie Robinson at UCLA and later with the Dodgers; with UCLA's Doctor Ralph Bunche who climbed the ladder to head up the UN.and Sidney Poitier in "Look Who's Coming To Dinner". Somewhere along the line, their attitudes changed, their self esteem soared and they changed to the super-aggressive anger that instructs us today.

I have to say my university played a big role in the transformation with Bunche, Robinson, Kenny Washington and Rafer Johnson. But the times were passive and so were blacks. The anger had yet to be stoked by the MSM and black opportunist leaders looking for a paycheck or a story. I harken back to Marshall McLuhan's admonition "The media IS the message" or something like that.

You are the expert on genes and culture. I was just an casual untrained observer of the scene. But the "blacks" of my youth are not the blacks of "today". Not by a million miles. If there was such a thing as a dormant gene, it sure got juiced in the last 20 years. It surely was absent or in hiding then.

Dick makes a very good point that is almost never mentioned today: That the oppressive discrimination against blacks that was normal in America up until the 60s did make them very submissive and hence much less threatening to whites. Blacks were afraid, rightly or not, that if they got "uppity", they would end up hanging from a tree. They had learned to "know their place" (at the bottom). So Dick's point about a generally low level of black self-esteem at that time is undoubtedly true. It would be surprising if the oppression which blacks suffered from at that time did not have a severe impact on their self-esteem. American Blacks were very largely a cowed population at that time.

All recent studies (See also here and here and the academic review abstracted at the foot of this post) however show that black self-esteem is now at higher averages than that of whites -- reflecting a recovery to natural levels now that systematic oppression has ended. And with that, of course, the fear of whites has also vanished and something like 80% of violent crime against whites is now inflicted by blacks.

I am not quite as old as Dick and I am also not American so in none of these matters can I speak from personal experience. I can however speak from experience of another very similar situation -- South Africa under apartheid. I was in South Africa in 1979 doing field research into -- would you believe? -- racial attitudes. The resultant research report was published in a widely-circulated academic journal and you can read it here.

While I was there I got to know one of the local libertarians well. He was then and still is someone devoted to using libertarian ideas to improving the lot of blacks. Like most white South Africans at that time, however, he was greatly frustrated by the false and simplistic views foreigners tended to have about South Africa in that era. As part of re-educating me, he took me at one stage for a drive through Soweto -- the big black township just outside Johnannesburg that was already at that time internationally notorious for crime and violence. His first point was to show me that there were no checkpoints or other barriers. You could just get into your car and drive there. And his second point was that it was generally a safe and friendly place for whites to go -- at least during daylight hours. We could get out of the car at will and without fear -- which we did -- and in fact a common response in blacks who saw us driving past was to wave! Which is of course a friendly gesture. I noted the same thing when I took the train from Johannesburg down to Bloemfontein. The train's occupants were almost all white but as it passed various black settlements (with roofs generally held down by rocks!) along the way, the people in the settlements would all come out and wave to us.

Now most South African blacks were then and still are enthusiastic Christians. And Soweto (and South Africa generally) was then and still is a place with enormous levels of black-on-black violence. And in this post-apartheid era you would soon be either dead or very sorry for yourself if you tried to do in any black South African township what Leon and I did in 1979. So the idea that Christianity leads to high levels of pro-social behaviour -- as American Christians often claim -- is as patently falsified among black South Africans as it is among black Americans. That the heavy hand of entrenched white oppression can deflect black aggression away from whites (and perhaps to a degree to suppress it generally) in some eras does nothing to falsify that.

In fact, if it were culture that made the difference, present-day international comparisons would lead us to conclude that Christianity is an antisocial influence. I certainly don't always agree with Kristof but he is right about Africa and religion:

"If on a Sunday you want to attend a lively, jammed full, fervent and life-changing service of Christian worship, you want to be in Nairobi, not in Stockholm," notes Mark Noll, a professor at Wheaton College. He adds, "But if you want to walk home safely late at night, you want to be in Stockholm, not Nairobi."

Nairobi is of course in Africa. But high levels of lawless and violent behaviour are characteristic of African-origin populations worldwide -- no matter what system they live under or what their history is -- so it is in fact clearly black genetics that matter, not their culture.

But if we include in our meaning of "culture" the effective laws and other enforced requirements we operate under, then culture does indeed matter to how we live. In my earlier post, however, I was using the word "culture" to mean the common rules in our environment that we follow (or not) of our own free will.

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Reference: (with abstract)
Twenge, J. M., & Crocker, J. (2002). Race and self-esteem: Meta-analyses comparing Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and American Indians. Psychological Bulletin, 128, 371-408.

Abstract: These meta-analyses examine race differences in self-esteem among 712 datapoints. Blacks scored higher than Whites on self-esteem measures (d = .19), but Whites score higher than other racial minority groups, including Hispanics (d = -.09), Asians (d = -.30), and American Indians (d = -.21). Most of these differences were smallest in childhood and grew larger with age. Blacks' self-esteem increased over time relative to Whites', with the Black advantage not appearing until the 1980s. Black and Hispanic samples scored higher on measures without an academic self-esteem subscale. Relative to Whites, minority males had lower self-esteem than did females, and Black and Hispanic self-esteem was higher in groups with high socioeconomic status. The results are most consistent with a cultural interpretation of racial differences in self-esteem.

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ELSEWHERE

What a laugh! The NYT has discovered that in Australia, as in the USA, slightly less than half of the population have Leftist views. Wow! "As the point person in the Bush administration's campaign to improve America's image in the world, Karen Hughes may face a more difficult challenge than she imagined and discover that she will have to travel far beyond the Middle East. A poll released Monday in Australia, long known for friendly relations with Americans, found that only 58 percent of the population had a positive view of the United States."

MARXWORDS is back! I have dug up another lot of quotations from Marx which show how much he and Hitler were two peas in a pod. So if Hitler was a Rightist so was Marx! But if the poor old Leftists have to claim that Marx was a Rightist they would really be a laughing stock! Clearly, both the great European mass-murderers of the 20th century -- Hitler and Stalin -- were acolytes of Marx and, as such, far to the Left. From Lenin to Milosevich, mass-murder has been Leftist. Even the belief in Aryan superiority was Leftist before the second world war. U.S. Democrat President Woodrow Wilson of course believed in it and, as we shall see in a few days time, so did Engels. So keep checking MARXWORDS!

Most readers of this blog will by now be well aware of the Leftist myth that the early British settlers of Tasmania committed genocide against the native black population there. The myth has of course been painstakingly demolished at huge length by Keith Windschuttle. There was however another article much prior to Windschuttle's work which makes essentially the same argument. It is very brief but even so makes quite horrifying and therefore quite gripping reading. It is by Patricia Cobern and I have just put it online here or here.

Arnold Kling argues that the universities today are a lot like the Catholic Church before Martin Luther came along.

A good post from Norm Geras, a left-leaning blogger and authority on Marx, about the dishonest way many Leftists compare modern Western conservatives to the Nazis. A Leftist who takes the facts seriously is always refreshing.

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

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 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.

Leftist ideologues 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 and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"

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