ELSEWHERE
I mentioned yesterday the new findings tracing the genetic basis for high Jewish IQ. There have been many summaries of the work in the media so I thought some people may wish to go past the summaries and look at the original report. It is here (PDF). Interesting that it is only the Ashkenazim (Western Jews) that show the high IQ and also interesting that persecution of Jews seems not to have been important. The article is also a useful short introduction to the academic IQ literature for those unfamiliar with it.
Logical Meme has got a roundup of several recent findings about genetic differences between races. Reality is SO incorrect!
Good comment on the Gitmo "Gulag" from the Locker Room: "With all of the attention generated by Amnesty International's recent report on Guantanamo, an important question needs to be asked. Did Amnesty International also visit Castro's prisons? In his book, Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant, Humberto Fontova states, "Given Cuba's population, Castro incarcerates at a higher rate than Stalin," which leads one to believe that there are a lot of prisons on that island that needed a visit while Amnesty was in the area. According to Fontova, Castro's prisons are true Gulags! Through his interviews with the survivors of Castro's Gulags, Fontova's presents a clear picture of the horrific conditions and treatment of prisoners in Cuba's prisons. From Castro's practice of draining and selling the blood of prisoners to the severe torture endured by prisoners, these are the true Gulags on the island of Cuba, not Guantanamo. Fontova also notes that Castro's prisons are 80% black because like many true Communists, Castro is a racist. When Fontova speaks in Raleigh on June 14, I'm sure he can tell us what Cuban prisons Amnesty International should have observed"
Malkin on the facts about Gitmo: "The mainstream media and international human rights organizations have relentlessly portrayed the Guantanamo Bay detention facility as a depraved torture chamber operated by sadistic American military officials defiling Islam at every turn. It's the "gulag of our time," wails Amnesty International.... Erik Saar, who served as an army sergeant at Gitmo for six months and co-authored a negative, tell-all book about his experience titled Inside the Wire, inadvertently provides us more firsthand details showing just how restrained, and sensitive to Islam -- to a fault, I believe -- the officials at the detention facility have been. Each detainee's cell has a sink installed low to the ground, "to make it easier for the detainees to wash their feet" before Muslim prayer, Saar reports. Detainees get "two hot halal, or religiously correct, meals" a day in addition to an MRE (meal ready to eat). Loudspeakers broadcast the Muslims' call to prayer five times a day. Every detainee gets a prayer mat, cap and Koran. Every cell has a stenciled arrow pointing toward Mecca."
Buchanan on "Throat": "And so the great mystery, "Who was Deep Throat?" reaches its anticlimax. He turns out to be a toady who oversaw black bag jobs for J. Edgar, violated his oath and, out of malice and spite, leaked the fruits of an honest FBI investigation to the nest of Nixon-haters over on 15th Street, then lied about it for 30 years. Why did Felt lie? Because Felt knew he had disgraced himself and dishonored everything an FBI agent should stand for. He didn't want his old comrades to know what a snake he had been.... Not one miscreancy committed by Nixon's men did not have its antecedent in the White Houses of JFK or LBJ. But they got away with it, including the distribution to the press of dirt on Dr. King, picked up by secret FBI photo and wiretap. What Segretti dirty trick remotely approaches that one, which the liberal press covered up?"
Institutionalized Leftism: "The BBC's world is one in which America is always wrong, George W. Bush is a knuckle-dragging simpleton, people of faith are frightening ignoramuses, and capitalism is a rot on the fabric of social justice. Through this prism, the United Nations is the world's supreme moral authority, multiculturalism is always a force for good, war is never warranted, and U.S. Republicans sprinkle Third World children over their Cheerios for breakfast."
A good article here on anti-Christian attitudes in the Canadian media. The article concludes: "In the meantime, how exactly the Globe would have the Conservative Party meet this ominous "Christian" peril, it did not say. Will candidates for nomination be formally questioned under oath: "Are you now, or have you ever been, a Christian?" Canada is not there yet, of course. But we're progressing."
A great Milton Friedman saying: "A private firm that makes a serious blunder may go out of business. A government agency is likely to get a bigger budget."
I am sorry to see that Australian blogger A.E. Brain is having a lot of health problems. Let's hope the medicos get to the bottom of the problems and give him an easier life.
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
Sunday, June 05, 2005
Saturday, June 04, 2005
EUROPE
What incomprehensibly arrogant European logic! Only governments can kill the EU constitution, the voters don't matter: "Britain is leading moves to shelve the European constitution until EU leaders agree a way forward after the emphatic "no" vote in France and the Netherlands. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, is expected to tell MPs on Monday that legislation paving the way for a British referendum will be suspended until there is "clarity" from EU leaders. Officials in Brussels fear that suspending the ratification process is tantamount to killing it, and European leaders have demanded that the process continue despite the defeats."
David Brooks on learning from the EU: "Forgive me for making a blunt and obvious point, but events in Western Europe are slowly discrediting large swaths of American liberalism. Most of the policy ideas advocated by American liberals have already been enacted in Europe: generous welfare measures, ample labor protections, highly progressive tax rates, single-payer health care systems, zoning restrictions to limit big retailers, and cradle-to-grave middle-class subsidies supporting everything from child care to pension security. And yet far from thriving, continental Europe has endured a lost decade of relative decline. Western Europeans seem to be suffering a crisis of confidence. Election results, whether in North Rhine-Westphalia or across France and the Netherlands, reveal electorates who have lost faith in their leaders, who are anxious about declining quality of life, who feel extraordinarily vulnerable to foreign competition - from the Chinese, the Americans, the Turks, even the Polish plumbers."
Amusing comment from Thomas Friedman: "It is interesting because French voters are trying to preserve a 35-hour work week in a world where Indian engineers are ready to work a 35-hour day. Good luck."
I am still laughing about this desperate post from Rockwell: "There is a more recent indebtedness to France that most Americans lack the decency to acknowledge: the refusal of Chirac's regime to join forces with George W. Bush's unprovoked aggression against Iraq, the first step in a neocon-inspired effort to get the world to prostrate itself at the feet of American emperors. By refusing to join with such lap dogs as Tony Blair -- eager to roll over in exchange for any morsel of recognition from the grand imperator -- the French became a symbol to other nations of the importance of pursuing a course of principled integrity in dealing with others."
*****************************
What incomprehensibly arrogant European logic! Only governments can kill the EU constitution, the voters don't matter: "Britain is leading moves to shelve the European constitution until EU leaders agree a way forward after the emphatic "no" vote in France and the Netherlands. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, is expected to tell MPs on Monday that legislation paving the way for a British referendum will be suspended until there is "clarity" from EU leaders. Officials in Brussels fear that suspending the ratification process is tantamount to killing it, and European leaders have demanded that the process continue despite the defeats."
David Brooks on learning from the EU: "Forgive me for making a blunt and obvious point, but events in Western Europe are slowly discrediting large swaths of American liberalism. Most of the policy ideas advocated by American liberals have already been enacted in Europe: generous welfare measures, ample labor protections, highly progressive tax rates, single-payer health care systems, zoning restrictions to limit big retailers, and cradle-to-grave middle-class subsidies supporting everything from child care to pension security. And yet far from thriving, continental Europe has endured a lost decade of relative decline. Western Europeans seem to be suffering a crisis of confidence. Election results, whether in North Rhine-Westphalia or across France and the Netherlands, reveal electorates who have lost faith in their leaders, who are anxious about declining quality of life, who feel extraordinarily vulnerable to foreign competition - from the Chinese, the Americans, the Turks, even the Polish plumbers."
Amusing comment from Thomas Friedman: "It is interesting because French voters are trying to preserve a 35-hour work week in a world where Indian engineers are ready to work a 35-hour day. Good luck."
I am still laughing about this desperate post from Rockwell: "There is a more recent indebtedness to France that most Americans lack the decency to acknowledge: the refusal of Chirac's regime to join forces with George W. Bush's unprovoked aggression against Iraq, the first step in a neocon-inspired effort to get the world to prostrate itself at the feet of American emperors. By refusing to join with such lap dogs as Tony Blair -- eager to roll over in exchange for any morsel of recognition from the grand imperator -- the French became a symbol to other nations of the importance of pursuing a course of principled integrity in dealing with others."
*****************************
ELSEWHERE
Surprise, Surprise: ""U.N. satellite imagery experts have determined that material that could be used to make biological or chemical weapons and banned long-range missiles has been removed from 109 sites in Iraq, U.N. weapons inspectors said in a report obtained Thursday. U.N. inspectors have been blocked from returning to Iraq since the U.S.-led war in 2003 so they have been using satellite photos to see what happened to the sites that were subject to U.N. monitoring because their equipment had both civilian and military uses."
There is an amusing review here of a book on "God's politics" by Jim Wallis, the Leftist "Evangelical" whose congregation consists of about 40 people.
Publius Pundit has more on the absurdly biased Amnesty International and its allies in the media.
And this pathetic old fool is a "moderate" Muslim: "Mahathir Mohamad, modern Malaysia's founding father and moderate Islam's self-styled champion, denounced the Bush administration yesterday as a "rogue regime" bent on terrorising innocent civilians. He also said he was disappointed that Tony Blair, whom he called a "proven liar", had won re-election after joining the US invasion of Iraq. ... Asked whether he regretted his statement that "Jews rule the world by proxy", which caused an international furore in 2003, Mr Mahathir said he took nothing back."
Why Jews are brainier: "The idea that some ethnic groups may, on average, be more intelligent than others is one of those hypotheses that dare not speak its name. But Gregory Cochran, a noted scientific iconoclast, is prepared to say it anyway. He is that rare bird, a scientist who works independently of any institution.... Together with Jason Hardy and Henry Harpending, of the University of Utah, he is publishing, in a forthcoming edition of the Journal of Biosocial Science, a paper which not only suggests that one group of humanity is more intelligent than the others, but explains the process that has brought this about. The group in question are Ashkenazi Jews. The process is natural selection."
Fathers rights victory: "A determined father in Massachusetts has delivered an early Father's Day gift to non-custodial parents, the overwhelming majority of whom are dads. Dr. Henry M. Fassler has successfully contested a 1998 Massachusetts law that requires a non-custodial parent to have court certification as a non-batterer on a yearly basis before he (or she) is allowed access to their children's school records. The school system currently views all non-custodial parents as guilty of battery until proven innocent. But all that is going to change."
Sad story: "The forced removal of the Bushmen was the culmination of what the Botswana government said was years of effort to bring development to southern Africa's most traditional people. The Bushmen have resisted at every turn, defying hunting restrictions, refusing to abandon their villages and battling the government in a court challenge they hope will reverse policies that, they say, have pushed them to the edge of extinction."
Private sector is key to African development: "The United Nations and the Commission for Africa, a British government group headed by the Prime Minister Tony Blair, have recently called for massive increases in foreign aid to Africa. But past aid to African governments achieved little. Economic growth in Africa, as in the rest of the world, depends on a vibrant private sector. African entrepreneurs, however, face daunting constraints. They are prevented from creating wealth by predatory political elites who control the state. African political elites divert private sector savings to finance their own consumption and to strengthen the repressive apparatus of the state. Unfortunately, Western aid continues to flow to the source of Africa's problems -- the African governments."
Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its usual big range of select reading.
On LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS today I have a dissection of a really crazy bit of Leftism that calls GWB "The Spoiled Man-Child"!
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
Surprise, Surprise: ""U.N. satellite imagery experts have determined that material that could be used to make biological or chemical weapons and banned long-range missiles has been removed from 109 sites in Iraq, U.N. weapons inspectors said in a report obtained Thursday. U.N. inspectors have been blocked from returning to Iraq since the U.S.-led war in 2003 so they have been using satellite photos to see what happened to the sites that were subject to U.N. monitoring because their equipment had both civilian and military uses."
There is an amusing review here of a book on "God's politics" by Jim Wallis, the Leftist "Evangelical" whose congregation consists of about 40 people.
Publius Pundit has more on the absurdly biased Amnesty International and its allies in the media.
And this pathetic old fool is a "moderate" Muslim: "Mahathir Mohamad, modern Malaysia's founding father and moderate Islam's self-styled champion, denounced the Bush administration yesterday as a "rogue regime" bent on terrorising innocent civilians. He also said he was disappointed that Tony Blair, whom he called a "proven liar", had won re-election after joining the US invasion of Iraq. ... Asked whether he regretted his statement that "Jews rule the world by proxy", which caused an international furore in 2003, Mr Mahathir said he took nothing back."
Why Jews are brainier: "The idea that some ethnic groups may, on average, be more intelligent than others is one of those hypotheses that dare not speak its name. But Gregory Cochran, a noted scientific iconoclast, is prepared to say it anyway. He is that rare bird, a scientist who works independently of any institution.... Together with Jason Hardy and Henry Harpending, of the University of Utah, he is publishing, in a forthcoming edition of the Journal of Biosocial Science, a paper which not only suggests that one group of humanity is more intelligent than the others, but explains the process that has brought this about. The group in question are Ashkenazi Jews. The process is natural selection."
Fathers rights victory: "A determined father in Massachusetts has delivered an early Father's Day gift to non-custodial parents, the overwhelming majority of whom are dads. Dr. Henry M. Fassler has successfully contested a 1998 Massachusetts law that requires a non-custodial parent to have court certification as a non-batterer on a yearly basis before he (or she) is allowed access to their children's school records. The school system currently views all non-custodial parents as guilty of battery until proven innocent. But all that is going to change."
Sad story: "The forced removal of the Bushmen was the culmination of what the Botswana government said was years of effort to bring development to southern Africa's most traditional people. The Bushmen have resisted at every turn, defying hunting restrictions, refusing to abandon their villages and battling the government in a court challenge they hope will reverse policies that, they say, have pushed them to the edge of extinction."
Private sector is key to African development: "The United Nations and the Commission for Africa, a British government group headed by the Prime Minister Tony Blair, have recently called for massive increases in foreign aid to Africa. But past aid to African governments achieved little. Economic growth in Africa, as in the rest of the world, depends on a vibrant private sector. African entrepreneurs, however, face daunting constraints. They are prevented from creating wealth by predatory political elites who control the state. African political elites divert private sector savings to finance their own consumption and to strengthen the repressive apparatus of the state. Unfortunately, Western aid continues to flow to the source of Africa's problems -- the African governments."
Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its usual big range of select reading.
On LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS today I have a dissection of a really crazy bit of Leftism that calls GWB "The Spoiled Man-Child"!
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
Friday, June 03, 2005
"LIBERALS" HAVEN'T CHANGED
Why are Americans who advocate broadly the reverse of what 19th century English liberals advocated still called liberals? The answer given to that is usually in terms of a steady Leftward drift and that explanation has its merits in isolation. But consider another much less well-known but even more striking phenomenon: What American "progressives" believed in the early 20th century. I have already documented what that was at some length elsewhere so I will just summarize here: The Left of American politics from the beginning of the 20th century up to FDR and the "New Deal" were essentially Fascist. They believed in eugenics, in nationalism, in national uniformity, in war as a purifying force, in the inferiority of Jews and blacks etc. Nowadays the American Left rejects all that with apparent horror (though the antisemitism does seem to have roared back with a vengeance recently). So how did THAT huge change in doctrine come about? I think there is a single explanation for both changes. And that explanation is a psychological one. Psychological explanations for conservatism (e.g. Norton & Aughey, 1981; Gilmour, 1978; Feiling, 1953; Kirk, 1993, Scruton, 2002, Standish, 1990) are routine (though Leftist accounts of conservative psychology are amazingly counter-factual) but I think Leftism also has to be explained psychologically.
As I have set out at great length elsewhere, the primary motive for most Leftist activists and intellectuals (though not for most Leftist followers) is to get acclaim for themselves. That is a perfectly normal human motivation but one that is pursued by Leftists more or less to the exclusion of all else. But how do you get acclaim? The surest way by far is to adopt as one's own whatever it is that the population already acclaims and become a great champion of that. If people generally think it is unquestionable that blacks and Jews are inferior and need to be kept down then a Leftist will become a vigorous advocate of keeping blacks and Jews down. And Leftists did just that in the early 20th century. Up until World War II Harvard had an excellent relationship with the Hitler regime, for instance and Hitler in turn took American eugenic policies as a model for his own. But if certain world horrors take place (WWII) which cause people to change their views and see tolerance is a virtue above all else then Leftists will immediately become great preachers of tolerance. And that too has now happened.
And something similar happened in the 19th century. England was at that time enormously influential and powerful so whatever was characteristically English came in for great scrutiny, not the least in England itself. What was it that made England great? And as I have set out at great length elsewhere, the English themselves had for centuries seen their liberties as a great national treasure. English liberty was a byword and its virtue was unquestionable. So again Leftists did the sort of thing that they always do. They became great champions of liberty. They supported laissez faire in business and writers such as J.S. Mill pushed ideas of liberty to just about their logical extreme. Conservatives, of course stuck with the ideas of extensive but not unlimited liberty that had been normal up until that time. That the "liberals" of that time really were just Leftists can perhaps most clearly be seen in the case of Mill himself. As I have set out briefly here and here the actual policies Mill advocated in parliament were often quite socialist and interventionist. If he could get acclaim for himself by advocating various government interventions in people's lives, all his pro-liberty principles suddenly vanished, just as eugenics suddenly vanished from the Leftist vocabulary after Hitler.
So conservatives just plod along with their boring quest for balance and realism (including, as always, liberty up to a point and tolerance up to a point) while Leftists push what are usually good ideas to extremes. Leftists once masqueraded as extremely pro-liberty. They now masquerade as extremely pro-tolerance. But they believe in neither. Their behaviour always gives them away as believing in nothing but their own entitlement to power. Leftists who get virtually unlimited power (Stalin, Mao etc) soon show how much liberty and tolerance they believe in.
References:
Feiling, K. (1953) Principles of conservatism. Political Quarterly, 24, 129-133.
Gilmour, I.H.J.L. (1978) Inside right. London: Quartet.
Kirk, R. (1993) Ten conservative principles. Russell Kirk Center.
Norton, P. & Aughey, A. (1981) Conservatives and conservatism. London: Temple Smith
Scruton, R. (2002) A question of temperament. Opinion Journal, Dec. 10th.
Standish, J.F. (1990) Whither conservatism? Contemporary Review 256, 299-301.
***********************************
Why are Americans who advocate broadly the reverse of what 19th century English liberals advocated still called liberals? The answer given to that is usually in terms of a steady Leftward drift and that explanation has its merits in isolation. But consider another much less well-known but even more striking phenomenon: What American "progressives" believed in the early 20th century. I have already documented what that was at some length elsewhere so I will just summarize here: The Left of American politics from the beginning of the 20th century up to FDR and the "New Deal" were essentially Fascist. They believed in eugenics, in nationalism, in national uniformity, in war as a purifying force, in the inferiority of Jews and blacks etc. Nowadays the American Left rejects all that with apparent horror (though the antisemitism does seem to have roared back with a vengeance recently). So how did THAT huge change in doctrine come about? I think there is a single explanation for both changes. And that explanation is a psychological one. Psychological explanations for conservatism (e.g. Norton & Aughey, 1981; Gilmour, 1978; Feiling, 1953; Kirk, 1993, Scruton, 2002, Standish, 1990) are routine (though Leftist accounts of conservative psychology are amazingly counter-factual) but I think Leftism also has to be explained psychologically.
As I have set out at great length elsewhere, the primary motive for most Leftist activists and intellectuals (though not for most Leftist followers) is to get acclaim for themselves. That is a perfectly normal human motivation but one that is pursued by Leftists more or less to the exclusion of all else. But how do you get acclaim? The surest way by far is to adopt as one's own whatever it is that the population already acclaims and become a great champion of that. If people generally think it is unquestionable that blacks and Jews are inferior and need to be kept down then a Leftist will become a vigorous advocate of keeping blacks and Jews down. And Leftists did just that in the early 20th century. Up until World War II Harvard had an excellent relationship with the Hitler regime, for instance and Hitler in turn took American eugenic policies as a model for his own. But if certain world horrors take place (WWII) which cause people to change their views and see tolerance is a virtue above all else then Leftists will immediately become great preachers of tolerance. And that too has now happened.
And something similar happened in the 19th century. England was at that time enormously influential and powerful so whatever was characteristically English came in for great scrutiny, not the least in England itself. What was it that made England great? And as I have set out at great length elsewhere, the English themselves had for centuries seen their liberties as a great national treasure. English liberty was a byword and its virtue was unquestionable. So again Leftists did the sort of thing that they always do. They became great champions of liberty. They supported laissez faire in business and writers such as J.S. Mill pushed ideas of liberty to just about their logical extreme. Conservatives, of course stuck with the ideas of extensive but not unlimited liberty that had been normal up until that time. That the "liberals" of that time really were just Leftists can perhaps most clearly be seen in the case of Mill himself. As I have set out briefly here and here the actual policies Mill advocated in parliament were often quite socialist and interventionist. If he could get acclaim for himself by advocating various government interventions in people's lives, all his pro-liberty principles suddenly vanished, just as eugenics suddenly vanished from the Leftist vocabulary after Hitler.
So conservatives just plod along with their boring quest for balance and realism (including, as always, liberty up to a point and tolerance up to a point) while Leftists push what are usually good ideas to extremes. Leftists once masqueraded as extremely pro-liberty. They now masquerade as extremely pro-tolerance. But they believe in neither. Their behaviour always gives them away as believing in nothing but their own entitlement to power. Leftists who get virtually unlimited power (Stalin, Mao etc) soon show how much liberty and tolerance they believe in.
References:
Feiling, K. (1953) Principles of conservatism. Political Quarterly, 24, 129-133.
Gilmour, I.H.J.L. (1978) Inside right. London: Quartet.
Kirk, R. (1993) Ten conservative principles. Russell Kirk Center.
Norton, P. & Aughey, A. (1981) Conservatives and conservatism. London: Temple Smith
Scruton, R. (2002) A question of temperament. Opinion Journal, Dec. 10th.
Standish, J.F. (1990) Whither conservatism? Contemporary Review 256, 299-301.
***********************************
ELSEWHERE
Ben Stein has the best comment yet on "Deep Throat" and Richard Nixon. Ben was a Nixon speechwriter so he knows it all.
Austin Bay has a good comment on the recent destruction by Amnesty International of its own credibility. I was a member myself once but withdrew after some one-sided criticisms of Israel from them.
Feser on "legislating morality:" It's not just a Christian thing "For as we've seen, liberals and libertarians themselves appeal to certain moral principles in defending their favored policies. So how can they consistently criticize conservatives for doing the same? Isn't the liberal trying to 'legislate morality' when he advocates redistributing wealth in the name of fairness? Isn't he thereby 'imposing his moral views' on the wealthy? Aren't libertarians also 'imposing their moral views' on liberals by trying to stop such redistribution? If libertarians who think that redistributive taxation amounts to theft could enact a law forbidding it, wouldn't this too amount to 'legislating morality?'"
Who do these hysterics think they are persuading? "On April 29 and 30, liberal activists gathered in New York City for a weekend conference on "Examining the Real Agenda of the Religious Far Right." ... The conference was sponsored by People for the American Way, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and the National Council of Churches (NCC), along with the left-wing periodicals The Nation and The Village Voice... The tone of the speakers was often quite shrill. "Jim Jones [the 1970s cult leader who led followers in a mass suicide] has gone mainstream!" cried journalist Katherine Yurica. "Today we are living in a nation governed by an unholy cult!" Yurica maintained that the Republican Party had gained power through "Hitlerian tactics." She insisted that evangelical leaders from Billy Graham to Jerry Falwell "had to have read Hitler's Mein Kampf." She explained, "I say this confidently because anyone who has learned to quack like a duck has studied ducks!""
This article in Harpers about "America's most powerful megachurch" seems to have got a lot of attention. It is very informative but the author never misses a chance to sneer.
Jimmy Carter: "It was Carter's pacifism that allowed the fall of the shah in Iran, giving fundamentalist Islam a nation-state to control. Subsequently, it was Carter's pacifism that encouraged the Soviets to invade Afghanistan, creating a rallying point for mujahadeen and, as Hayward notes, reviving the idea of jihad. Taken in concert, these two events are the catalysts that have forced the war on terrorism to its present stage. Carter's pacifism, be it de facto or de jure, shaped the modern Middle East and helped Islamic fascism survive its infancy. This is a much more dire legacy than the simple corruption of Democratic ideology."
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
Ben Stein has the best comment yet on "Deep Throat" and Richard Nixon. Ben was a Nixon speechwriter so he knows it all.
Austin Bay has a good comment on the recent destruction by Amnesty International of its own credibility. I was a member myself once but withdrew after some one-sided criticisms of Israel from them.
Feser on "legislating morality:" It's not just a Christian thing "For as we've seen, liberals and libertarians themselves appeal to certain moral principles in defending their favored policies. So how can they consistently criticize conservatives for doing the same? Isn't the liberal trying to 'legislate morality' when he advocates redistributing wealth in the name of fairness? Isn't he thereby 'imposing his moral views' on the wealthy? Aren't libertarians also 'imposing their moral views' on liberals by trying to stop such redistribution? If libertarians who think that redistributive taxation amounts to theft could enact a law forbidding it, wouldn't this too amount to 'legislating morality?'"
Who do these hysterics think they are persuading? "On April 29 and 30, liberal activists gathered in New York City for a weekend conference on "Examining the Real Agenda of the Religious Far Right." ... The conference was sponsored by People for the American Way, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and the National Council of Churches (NCC), along with the left-wing periodicals The Nation and The Village Voice... The tone of the speakers was often quite shrill. "Jim Jones [the 1970s cult leader who led followers in a mass suicide] has gone mainstream!" cried journalist Katherine Yurica. "Today we are living in a nation governed by an unholy cult!" Yurica maintained that the Republican Party had gained power through "Hitlerian tactics." She insisted that evangelical leaders from Billy Graham to Jerry Falwell "had to have read Hitler's Mein Kampf." She explained, "I say this confidently because anyone who has learned to quack like a duck has studied ducks!""
This article in Harpers about "America's most powerful megachurch" seems to have got a lot of attention. It is very informative but the author never misses a chance to sneer.
Jimmy Carter: "It was Carter's pacifism that allowed the fall of the shah in Iran, giving fundamentalist Islam a nation-state to control. Subsequently, it was Carter's pacifism that encouraged the Soviets to invade Afghanistan, creating a rallying point for mujahadeen and, as Hayward notes, reviving the idea of jihad. Taken in concert, these two events are the catalysts that have forced the war on terrorism to its present stage. Carter's pacifism, be it de facto or de jure, shaped the modern Middle East and helped Islamic fascism survive its infancy. This is a much more dire legacy than the simple corruption of Democratic ideology."
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
Thursday, June 02, 2005
THE AMAZING LIES OF AUSTRALIA'S LEFT-LEANING ACADEMIC HISTORIANS
Keith Windschuttle has a long and detailed article on Australia's history derived from the original documents. Below I grab just a few excerpts
Unless they have taken a course in history in recent decades, most Australians would be surprised to learn they inhabit one of the world's most shamefully racist countries. The historical consensus today is that the White Australia Policy -- a series of restrictions on non-white immigrants dating from the gold rushes of the 1850s, culminating in the Commonwealth's Immigration Restriction Bill of 1901 -- made this country the moral equivalent of South Africa under apartheid. Some historians even label Australia at Federation one of the 'herrenvolk democracies'. 'Herrenvolk' is the German term for 'master race', so those historians who use it are making a direct comparison between Australian attitudes and the racial nationalism of Nazi Germany.
Apart from two incidents on the goldfields in 1857 and 1861, there was no serious mob violence in Australia perpetrated by whites against non-whites. In both of the goldfields cases, colonial governments defended the Chinese victims, compensated them for their losses and took action against the white perpetrators.
The greatest enthusiasts for White Australia, and the genuine racists of the time, were the members of the late nineteenth century republican Left, especially its writers, artists and other intellectuals. Their strongest opponents were traditional liberals, the purported reactionaries of their era who supported free enterprise against the growing power of the state.
Social Darwinism, rather than being a widely-accepted theory as claimed by historians, was something few Australians at the time had even heard of. Its adherents were a small group of intellectuals at the extremes of opinion. In the 1880s, they were the followers of the theories of political economy of Herbert Spencer. In the 1910s and 1920s, the theory was most strongly advocated by members of the Victorian Socialist Party.
I found one of the biggest single inventions in all Australian historiography. It was made by Henry Reynolds in his book The Other Side of the Frontier. He claimed that, before Federation in 1901, a total of 10,000 Aborigines had been killed by white settlers in Queensland. The source he provided as evidence of this was an article of his own called 'The Unrecorded Battlefields of Queensland', which he wrote in 1978. But if you look up the article you find something very strange. It is not about Aboriginal deaths at all. It is a tally of the number of whites killed by Aborigines. Nowhere does it mention an Aboriginal death toll of 10,000. Reynolds invented this figure and then gave a false citation to disguise what he had done.
Lyndall Ryan says the so-called 'Black War' of Tasmania began in the winter of 1824 with the Big River tribe launching patriotic attacks on the invaders. However, the assaults on whites that winter were made by a small gang of detribalized blacks led by a man named Musquito, who was not defending his tribal lands. He was an Aborigine originally from Sydney who had worked in Hobart for ten years before becoming a bushranger. He had no Tasmanian tribal lands to defend
Lyndall Ryan cites the Hobart Town Courier as a source for several stories about atrocities against Aborigines in 1826. However, that newspaper did not begin publication until October 1827 and the other two newspapers of the day made no mention of these alleged killings.
Lloyd Robson claims the settler James Hobbs in 1815 witnessed Aborigines killing 300 sheep at Oyster Bay and the next day the 48th Regiment killed 22 Aborigines in retribution. It would have been difficult for Hobbs to have witnessed this in 1815 because at the time he was living in India. Moreover, the first sheep did not arrive at Oyster Bay until 1821
**********************************
Keith Windschuttle has a long and detailed article on Australia's history derived from the original documents. Below I grab just a few excerpts
Unless they have taken a course in history in recent decades, most Australians would be surprised to learn they inhabit one of the world's most shamefully racist countries. The historical consensus today is that the White Australia Policy -- a series of restrictions on non-white immigrants dating from the gold rushes of the 1850s, culminating in the Commonwealth's Immigration Restriction Bill of 1901 -- made this country the moral equivalent of South Africa under apartheid. Some historians even label Australia at Federation one of the 'herrenvolk democracies'. 'Herrenvolk' is the German term for 'master race', so those historians who use it are making a direct comparison between Australian attitudes and the racial nationalism of Nazi Germany.
Apart from two incidents on the goldfields in 1857 and 1861, there was no serious mob violence in Australia perpetrated by whites against non-whites. In both of the goldfields cases, colonial governments defended the Chinese victims, compensated them for their losses and took action against the white perpetrators.
The greatest enthusiasts for White Australia, and the genuine racists of the time, were the members of the late nineteenth century republican Left, especially its writers, artists and other intellectuals. Their strongest opponents were traditional liberals, the purported reactionaries of their era who supported free enterprise against the growing power of the state.
Social Darwinism, rather than being a widely-accepted theory as claimed by historians, was something few Australians at the time had even heard of. Its adherents were a small group of intellectuals at the extremes of opinion. In the 1880s, they were the followers of the theories of political economy of Herbert Spencer. In the 1910s and 1920s, the theory was most strongly advocated by members of the Victorian Socialist Party.
I found one of the biggest single inventions in all Australian historiography. It was made by Henry Reynolds in his book The Other Side of the Frontier. He claimed that, before Federation in 1901, a total of 10,000 Aborigines had been killed by white settlers in Queensland. The source he provided as evidence of this was an article of his own called 'The Unrecorded Battlefields of Queensland', which he wrote in 1978. But if you look up the article you find something very strange. It is not about Aboriginal deaths at all. It is a tally of the number of whites killed by Aborigines. Nowhere does it mention an Aboriginal death toll of 10,000. Reynolds invented this figure and then gave a false citation to disguise what he had done.
Lyndall Ryan says the so-called 'Black War' of Tasmania began in the winter of 1824 with the Big River tribe launching patriotic attacks on the invaders. However, the assaults on whites that winter were made by a small gang of detribalized blacks led by a man named Musquito, who was not defending his tribal lands. He was an Aborigine originally from Sydney who had worked in Hobart for ten years before becoming a bushranger. He had no Tasmanian tribal lands to defend
Lyndall Ryan cites the Hobart Town Courier as a source for several stories about atrocities against Aborigines in 1826. However, that newspaper did not begin publication until October 1827 and the other two newspapers of the day made no mention of these alleged killings.
Lloyd Robson claims the settler James Hobbs in 1815 witnessed Aborigines killing 300 sheep at Oyster Bay and the next day the 48th Regiment killed 22 Aborigines in retribution. It would have been difficult for Hobbs to have witnessed this in 1815 because at the time he was living in India. Moreover, the first sheep did not arrive at Oyster Bay until 1821
**********************************
ELSEWHERE
LOL: Some Leftist site must have linked to me recently as I have had an upsurge of hate mail. All abuse, of course. Not a shred of rational argument. Here is my favourite so far (from perryloganclone@yahoo.com of http://www.perrylogan.org) -- Leftist elitism at its arrogant and self-defeating best: "A conservative trying to understand a liberal is like a dog trying to understand its master. Your website betrays the usual right-wing thought disorder of believing you can read minds. Every other phrase is "they don't care" or "they hate" or other confident assurances about what the left feels & thinks. Your site is a collection of bigoted slams against the left--all based on your remarkable ability to read our minds. I promise you, you cannot read the minds of people more intelligent than yourself, no matter how much you may hate them. Unless you can tell me what number I'm thinking, I'll have to conclude you're just another loony."
GWB's Iraq policy is normal for America: "In fact, as John Lewis Gaddis points out in his elegant essay on American foreign policy, Surprise, Security, and the American Experience, the national-security policy of President Bush is in fact the traditional American response to external threats. If, in John Quincy Adams’s famous phrase, America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy, America nonetheless has never hesitated to send bayonets against monsters that might someday pose a threat".
There is a rather amazing article here about French pandering to Muslim bigotry. The article is in German but what it says is that in French schools, Muslim pupils and their parents have demanded and got separate toilets and dining tables because they do not want to mix with the "unclean" other children. Muslim pupils also refuse to go into churches (on sightseeing tours with other pupils), and have even refused to have lessons about the mediaeval age when the big cathedrals where built. They refuse to dance, sing or make music in school. They reject the theory of evolution in favor of creationism, and (get this) refuse to draw anything that looks even remotely like a Christian cross in the math class. And of course, there is rabid antisemitism. As the report states, Jewish children who can only avoid harassment when they hide their Jewish identity. The article is based on an official French government report under the aegis of Jean-Pierre Obin, General Inspector of the Education Ministry. Unlike other official reports, however, the French have not put this one up on their Education Ministry website. More here (in German). There is an English comment on the report here.
The empty-headedness of cultural relativism: "Too often, cultural relativists cannot get beyond drawing this one conclusion, which they use as ammunition against traditionalists: "The traditions you think of as having an absolute claim on the human race are merely those that happened to have come down to us, and which we have blindly accepted." While this objection does follow logically from the cultural relativists' premise, so too - and just as logically - does this conclusion: If we cannot use our traditional ethos to attack another's, it is equally illegitimate for him to use his to attack ours. If our cultural relativists must forgive those who sacrifice their infants to Moloch, they must also forgive members of their own society who wish to abide by their own traditions. The cultural relativist's position, practiced consistently, collapses into reactionary obscurantism: All cultures, including his own, are incommensurable, so it is impossible to judge any of them by higher standards than those offered by the cultures themselves. The appeal to enlightened reason rings hollow, for if enlightened reason can guide us to condemn characteristics of our own culture by offering us a higher standard by which to judge them, the same standard may also be used to judge other cultures as well. The cultural relativist must make up his mind: Either there is a higher standard or there isn't. If there isn't, it is impossible to judge among competing traditions, as the cultural relativist argues; if there is, it is possible to judge tradition A to be superior to tradition B, provided A meets the higher standard and B does not."
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
LOL: Some Leftist site must have linked to me recently as I have had an upsurge of hate mail. All abuse, of course. Not a shred of rational argument. Here is my favourite so far (from perryloganclone@yahoo.com of http://www.perrylogan.org) -- Leftist elitism at its arrogant and self-defeating best: "A conservative trying to understand a liberal is like a dog trying to understand its master. Your website betrays the usual right-wing thought disorder of believing you can read minds. Every other phrase is "they don't care" or "they hate" or other confident assurances about what the left feels & thinks. Your site is a collection of bigoted slams against the left--all based on your remarkable ability to read our minds. I promise you, you cannot read the minds of people more intelligent than yourself, no matter how much you may hate them. Unless you can tell me what number I'm thinking, I'll have to conclude you're just another loony."
GWB's Iraq policy is normal for America: "In fact, as John Lewis Gaddis points out in his elegant essay on American foreign policy, Surprise, Security, and the American Experience, the national-security policy of President Bush is in fact the traditional American response to external threats. If, in John Quincy Adams’s famous phrase, America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy, America nonetheless has never hesitated to send bayonets against monsters that might someday pose a threat".
There is a rather amazing article here about French pandering to Muslim bigotry. The article is in German but what it says is that in French schools, Muslim pupils and their parents have demanded and got separate toilets and dining tables because they do not want to mix with the "unclean" other children. Muslim pupils also refuse to go into churches (on sightseeing tours with other pupils), and have even refused to have lessons about the mediaeval age when the big cathedrals where built. They refuse to dance, sing or make music in school. They reject the theory of evolution in favor of creationism, and (get this) refuse to draw anything that looks even remotely like a Christian cross in the math class. And of course, there is rabid antisemitism. As the report states, Jewish children who can only avoid harassment when they hide their Jewish identity. The article is based on an official French government report under the aegis of Jean-Pierre Obin, General Inspector of the Education Ministry. Unlike other official reports, however, the French have not put this one up on their Education Ministry website. More here (in German). There is an English comment on the report here.
The empty-headedness of cultural relativism: "Too often, cultural relativists cannot get beyond drawing this one conclusion, which they use as ammunition against traditionalists: "The traditions you think of as having an absolute claim on the human race are merely those that happened to have come down to us, and which we have blindly accepted." While this objection does follow logically from the cultural relativists' premise, so too - and just as logically - does this conclusion: If we cannot use our traditional ethos to attack another's, it is equally illegitimate for him to use his to attack ours. If our cultural relativists must forgive those who sacrifice their infants to Moloch, they must also forgive members of their own society who wish to abide by their own traditions. The cultural relativist's position, practiced consistently, collapses into reactionary obscurantism: All cultures, including his own, are incommensurable, so it is impossible to judge any of them by higher standards than those offered by the cultures themselves. The appeal to enlightened reason rings hollow, for if enlightened reason can guide us to condemn characteristics of our own culture by offering us a higher standard by which to judge them, the same standard may also be used to judge other cultures as well. The cultural relativist must make up his mind: Either there is a higher standard or there isn't. If there isn't, it is impossible to judge among competing traditions, as the cultural relativist argues; if there is, it is possible to judge tradition A to be superior to tradition B, provided A meets the higher standard and B does not."
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
WEALTH AND POVERTY
Comment from a Jesuit in Zimbabwe: "Even if there was more fairness in the trade between the southern and northern hemisphere, debts were largely cancelled and aid was flowing in, as long as bad governance and corruption are tolerated poverty will prevail. What is the point of cancelling debts if that merely frees funds to buy fighter planes in China? What good do better terms of trade make if we destroy our economic base for ideological reasons which makes staying in power priority number one to which all other interests are sacrificed? What good is "more and better aid" if it falls into the long fingers of bureaucratic embezzlers who refuse to be accountable as a matter of "national sovereignty"?.... Too many want a slice of the cake without asking where the cake is coming from. If production is not the focus of all our efforts, the existing wealth produced by others will disappear quickly as it is being shared with "cronies". As long as holding on to power is priority number one, overriding all other interests, the economy will continue to be raided for goodies with which to buy the support of this or that particular group of influential people. Those without influence - the sick, the poor, widows and orphans, the homeless and aliens - will continue to go without medication and treatment, starve and die.... "
Greed: "To leftists, greed is when someone else makes more money than they do. The problem with that word is that it's impossible to objectively define. Is a cab driver that chooses to work 60 hours a week instead of 40 greedy? According to whom? Suppose he wants the extra income to send his children to college? Suppose he wants to blow it in Las Vegas? A market economy doesn't ask these questions. They're irrelevant to public policy. Regardless of his motivations, a farmer who produces twice as much as his neighbor has added that much more to the nation's product. He should be suitably rewarded. The tax collector will relieve him of quite enough of the fruits of his labor. What he does with the rest is his business... Leftists have little regard for the creation of wealth. They take that for granted. Their fun comes in redistributing income and wealth. It may be difficult to define greed, but it's easy to define covetousness. That's the greed of leftists for governmental power to confiscate the property of others".
Start frugally to end up rich: "About to graduate from college? If you've been reading much, you could be forgiven for thinking you should cower under your Star Wars comforter at Mom and Dad's house after collecting your diploma. The media buzz: Becoming a financially independent adult is as tough for today's grads as Hercules' labors (which you can now safely forget) were for him.....; But here's a secret you won't hear in the rush to blame young people's woes on everyone except themselves: Society hasn't lost its ladder to financial stability. Young people have just lost interest in starting out poor. Too many 22-year-olds expect to start their adult lives at their parents' level of material satisfaction, without the 30 years of labor it took them to get there. Our world of easy credit and mysteriously glamorous TV apartments says you can have it all now. But live like you're entitled to your parents' finances, and you'll be back living with them soon enough. Live within your means, though, and you'll achieve financial independence before the naysayers say it's possible".
Thoughts on poverty: "One reads much about the poor in America, their piteous lives, their blighted hopes, and the unrelieved downtreading of them by various social ogres such as oppressive corporations who sell them greasy hamburgers. (Why does my wretched spell-checker object to 'downtreading'? You can't be downtrodden unless someone downtreads you. How obvious is that?) This I submit is goober-brained nonsense. America has precious little poverty, if by poverty you mean lack of something to eat, clothing adequate to keep you warm and cover your private parts, and a dry and comfortable place to sleep. In the 'inner cities' or, as we used to call them, slums, there is horrendous cultural emptiness, yes, and the products of the suburban high schools are catching up fast. But poverty? The kind you see in the backs streets of Port au Prince? It barely exists in the United States."
******************************
Comment from a Jesuit in Zimbabwe: "Even if there was more fairness in the trade between the southern and northern hemisphere, debts were largely cancelled and aid was flowing in, as long as bad governance and corruption are tolerated poverty will prevail. What is the point of cancelling debts if that merely frees funds to buy fighter planes in China? What good do better terms of trade make if we destroy our economic base for ideological reasons which makes staying in power priority number one to which all other interests are sacrificed? What good is "more and better aid" if it falls into the long fingers of bureaucratic embezzlers who refuse to be accountable as a matter of "national sovereignty"?.... Too many want a slice of the cake without asking where the cake is coming from. If production is not the focus of all our efforts, the existing wealth produced by others will disappear quickly as it is being shared with "cronies". As long as holding on to power is priority number one, overriding all other interests, the economy will continue to be raided for goodies with which to buy the support of this or that particular group of influential people. Those without influence - the sick, the poor, widows and orphans, the homeless and aliens - will continue to go without medication and treatment, starve and die.... "
Greed: "To leftists, greed is when someone else makes more money than they do. The problem with that word is that it's impossible to objectively define. Is a cab driver that chooses to work 60 hours a week instead of 40 greedy? According to whom? Suppose he wants the extra income to send his children to college? Suppose he wants to blow it in Las Vegas? A market economy doesn't ask these questions. They're irrelevant to public policy. Regardless of his motivations, a farmer who produces twice as much as his neighbor has added that much more to the nation's product. He should be suitably rewarded. The tax collector will relieve him of quite enough of the fruits of his labor. What he does with the rest is his business... Leftists have little regard for the creation of wealth. They take that for granted. Their fun comes in redistributing income and wealth. It may be difficult to define greed, but it's easy to define covetousness. That's the greed of leftists for governmental power to confiscate the property of others".
Start frugally to end up rich: "About to graduate from college? If you've been reading much, you could be forgiven for thinking you should cower under your Star Wars comforter at Mom and Dad's house after collecting your diploma. The media buzz: Becoming a financially independent adult is as tough for today's grads as Hercules' labors (which you can now safely forget) were for him.....; But here's a secret you won't hear in the rush to blame young people's woes on everyone except themselves: Society hasn't lost its ladder to financial stability. Young people have just lost interest in starting out poor. Too many 22-year-olds expect to start their adult lives at their parents' level of material satisfaction, without the 30 years of labor it took them to get there. Our world of easy credit and mysteriously glamorous TV apartments says you can have it all now. But live like you're entitled to your parents' finances, and you'll be back living with them soon enough. Live within your means, though, and you'll achieve financial independence before the naysayers say it's possible".
Thoughts on poverty: "One reads much about the poor in America, their piteous lives, their blighted hopes, and the unrelieved downtreading of them by various social ogres such as oppressive corporations who sell them greasy hamburgers. (Why does my wretched spell-checker object to 'downtreading'? You can't be downtrodden unless someone downtreads you. How obvious is that?) This I submit is goober-brained nonsense. America has precious little poverty, if by poverty you mean lack of something to eat, clothing adequate to keep you warm and cover your private parts, and a dry and comfortable place to sleep. In the 'inner cities' or, as we used to call them, slums, there is horrendous cultural emptiness, yes, and the products of the suburban high schools are catching up fast. But poverty? The kind you see in the backs streets of Port au Prince? It barely exists in the United States."
******************************
ELSEWHERE
Why can't Anglo-Saxons run passenger trains? The British invented them after all. No American should need me to tell them about Amtrak and residents of Australia's largest city (Sydney) are almost beyond frustration with their dangerous and unpunctual trains too. Now we hear that in Britain, a lot of trains ran faster in the age of steam!. One could blame government. The American and Australian passenger railways are government run. The railways of the 19th century were of course private and the present British railways have only recently been privatized and run under a burden of regulations. But when one looks at the fast and punctual Japanese railways one wonders.
China is doing more to help low-income Americans than all the bureaucrats put together: "China on Monday threatened to take the United States to a dispute proceeding at the World Trade Organization if the Bush administration persists in restricting imports of Chinese-made textiles. China also rescinded tariffs on its own textile exports, asserting that it will do nothing to limit its shipments as it offered to do last week so long as the United States and Europe impose their own restrictions."
Airbus problems: "Delivery of Qantas's new flagship double-decker super-jumbo will be delayed by at least six months because of problems at European manufacturer Airbus, triggering penalty payments and damaging the national carrier's plans to secure its pre-eminence on the lucrative Pacific route. The shock news comes less than two months after the Europeans trumpeted the successful maiden flight of the plane and two weeks before they go to battle with rival Boeing at the Paris airshow. Airbus representatives delivered the bad news to Qantas chief executive Geoff Dixon during the International Air Transport Associations annual general meeting in Tokyo this week. The Australian understands delays apply to all aircraft in the A380 program"
Barriers to publishing conservative books come down: "There was "a tremendous amount of marketplace and institutional resistance" to publishing conservative books, said Adam Bellow, an editor at Doubleday. The New York publishing world was a liberal preserve. How things have changed. Over the last 18 months, three superpower publishers have launched conservative imprints: Random House (Crown Forum), Penguin (Sentinel) and, most recently, Simon & Schuster (Threshold, headed by former Bush aide Mary Matalin). Nor is that all. ReganBooks and the Christian publisher Thomas Nelson are putting out mass market right-of-center books, while mid-list conservative titles pour forth from Peter Collier's 5-year-old Encounter Books and several smaller imprints. There's never been a better time to be a conservative author. What's behind the shift? Crown Forum chief Steve Ross thinks Sept. 11 made the industry less reflexively liberal. There's doubtless some truth to that. But what really turned the big New York publishers was the steady stream of bestsellers that Washington-based Regnery was producing.... Right-of-center authors can now reach millions of potential readers without being reviewed by such traditional gatekeepers as the New York Times Book Review or the New York Review of Books, which rarely deigned to review conservative books". (This story originally appeared in the L.A. Times but now appears to be offline. There is a similar article here).
Strange Justice has just put up another amazing story about Canadian justice -- or the lack thereof.
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
Why can't Anglo-Saxons run passenger trains? The British invented them after all. No American should need me to tell them about Amtrak and residents of Australia's largest city (Sydney) are almost beyond frustration with their dangerous and unpunctual trains too. Now we hear that in Britain, a lot of trains ran faster in the age of steam!. One could blame government. The American and Australian passenger railways are government run. The railways of the 19th century were of course private and the present British railways have only recently been privatized and run under a burden of regulations. But when one looks at the fast and punctual Japanese railways one wonders.
China is doing more to help low-income Americans than all the bureaucrats put together: "China on Monday threatened to take the United States to a dispute proceeding at the World Trade Organization if the Bush administration persists in restricting imports of Chinese-made textiles. China also rescinded tariffs on its own textile exports, asserting that it will do nothing to limit its shipments as it offered to do last week so long as the United States and Europe impose their own restrictions."
Airbus problems: "Delivery of Qantas's new flagship double-decker super-jumbo will be delayed by at least six months because of problems at European manufacturer Airbus, triggering penalty payments and damaging the national carrier's plans to secure its pre-eminence on the lucrative Pacific route. The shock news comes less than two months after the Europeans trumpeted the successful maiden flight of the plane and two weeks before they go to battle with rival Boeing at the Paris airshow. Airbus representatives delivered the bad news to Qantas chief executive Geoff Dixon during the International Air Transport Associations annual general meeting in Tokyo this week. The Australian understands delays apply to all aircraft in the A380 program"
Barriers to publishing conservative books come down: "There was "a tremendous amount of marketplace and institutional resistance" to publishing conservative books, said Adam Bellow, an editor at Doubleday. The New York publishing world was a liberal preserve. How things have changed. Over the last 18 months, three superpower publishers have launched conservative imprints: Random House (Crown Forum), Penguin (Sentinel) and, most recently, Simon & Schuster (Threshold, headed by former Bush aide Mary Matalin). Nor is that all. ReganBooks and the Christian publisher Thomas Nelson are putting out mass market right-of-center books, while mid-list conservative titles pour forth from Peter Collier's 5-year-old Encounter Books and several smaller imprints. There's never been a better time to be a conservative author. What's behind the shift? Crown Forum chief Steve Ross thinks Sept. 11 made the industry less reflexively liberal. There's doubtless some truth to that. But what really turned the big New York publishers was the steady stream of bestsellers that Washington-based Regnery was producing.... Right-of-center authors can now reach millions of potential readers without being reviewed by such traditional gatekeepers as the New York Times Book Review or the New York Review of Books, which rarely deigned to review conservative books". (This story originally appeared in the L.A. Times but now appears to be offline. There is a similar article here).
Strange Justice has just put up another amazing story about Canadian justice -- or the lack thereof.
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
TUESDAY ROUNDUP
Once again I list what I think were the best posts on my various blogs in the preceding week.
On Dissecting Leftism I ask are immigrants necessary
On Political Correctness Watch I note that police brutality depends on the colour of the policeman
On Greenie Watch I link to the latest Russian research into climate -- skeptical of course
On Education Watch I note the current attack on academic standards at the University of Oregon
On Socialized Medicine I report that thousands are dying needlessly in Australian public hospitals every year
On Leftists as Elitists I note elitist contempt for religion
On Blogger News I have a post titled "Abortion: Only conservatives care"
On Majority Rights I have a post titled "Immigration: The individual matters most"
***************************
MEDIA BIAS IN FAVOUR OF THE DISGUSTING PROF. WARD CHURCHILL
Read this: "Asked to nominate their favorite professor, students at the University of Colorado at Boulder overwhelmingly picked Ward Churchill. Yet the controversial figure's award is being withheld, in part, due to his tendency to "antagonize and create enemies," the head of the CU alumni association said."
So the students love him? We learn from another article about the same event that in fact only 54 students voted for him out of a student body of 29,258. Beat that for media bias! (Tip off from Ward Churchill's nemesis)
*****************************
Once again I list what I think were the best posts on my various blogs in the preceding week.
On Dissecting Leftism I ask are immigrants necessary
On Political Correctness Watch I note that police brutality depends on the colour of the policeman
On Greenie Watch I link to the latest Russian research into climate -- skeptical of course
On Education Watch I note the current attack on academic standards at the University of Oregon
On Socialized Medicine I report that thousands are dying needlessly in Australian public hospitals every year
On Leftists as Elitists I note elitist contempt for religion
On Blogger News I have a post titled "Abortion: Only conservatives care"
On Majority Rights I have a post titled "Immigration: The individual matters most"
***************************
MEDIA BIAS IN FAVOUR OF THE DISGUSTING PROF. WARD CHURCHILL
Read this: "Asked to nominate their favorite professor, students at the University of Colorado at Boulder overwhelmingly picked Ward Churchill. Yet the controversial figure's award is being withheld, in part, due to his tendency to "antagonize and create enemies," the head of the CU alumni association said."
So the students love him? We learn from another article about the same event that in fact only 54 students voted for him out of a student body of 29,258. Beat that for media bias! (Tip off from Ward Churchill's nemesis)
*****************************
ELSEWHERE
Michelle Malkin has a roundup covering the far-Leftist attacks on a Minuteman meeting in Orange County, California.
Dennis Prager has an article that will surprise people who don't know their Old Testament well. He points out that before the Jews came along, most relgions had few sexual restrictions and that much religion was in fact sex-worship. Homosexuality was fine. So it was primarily Judaism that channelled sex into safer (marital) forms of expression. The OT prophets had a constant battle to keep the Israelites away from the pagan sex gods (Baals). So the prohibition of homosexuality is part of making sex safer and more constructive.
There is an amusing satire here on the response of the French bureaucrats to the defeat of their EU referendum by the French voters.
Missouri shows the way: "From fewer patients on Medicaid to less regulation of your electricity bill, Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt is making good on his promise of a government that does less. In the legislative session that just ended, social services and mental health programs shrank, economic development funding was cut and higher-education spending dropped. Many programs, including education programs at three prisons and management of motor vehicle offices, will be taken over by private contractors or volunteers - or eliminated entirely. Power companies will be able to pass their fuel costs to customers without seeking approval from state regulators. And insurance companies will no longer have to worry that complaints about their underwriting practices or refusal to pay claims will be available to the public".
Here is the other side of story to the constant Leftist moan about the treatment of captured terrorists at Guantanamo Bay.
Child support idiocy: "If the Pennsylvania Supreme Court finds the sperm-donor to be liable for child support, then many forms of infertility treatment in most states could become less available and more expensive. Those donors who step forward will want to be compensated for their increased legal risk. The courts have pitted a child's 'best interests' against the rights of biological parents to contract with each other on the terms of reproduction. They may have also opened a Pandora's box of complications involving a child's claim on a sperm donor's data and wealth. But the worst consequence may be the denial of life itself to children who are desperately wanted by infertile couples. The law should not obstruct their chances of conceiving."
There is a post on Catallarchy by a Billee Miller which gives quite a good explanation of the thinking behind socialism. Billee may not know it but what he/she describes is very much Hegelian thinking. Hegel was of course the major inspiration for Marx, Engels and Hitler.
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
Michelle Malkin has a roundup covering the far-Leftist attacks on a Minuteman meeting in Orange County, California.
Dennis Prager has an article that will surprise people who don't know their Old Testament well. He points out that before the Jews came along, most relgions had few sexual restrictions and that much religion was in fact sex-worship. Homosexuality was fine. So it was primarily Judaism that channelled sex into safer (marital) forms of expression. The OT prophets had a constant battle to keep the Israelites away from the pagan sex gods (Baals). So the prohibition of homosexuality is part of making sex safer and more constructive.
There is an amusing satire here on the response of the French bureaucrats to the defeat of their EU referendum by the French voters.
Missouri shows the way: "From fewer patients on Medicaid to less regulation of your electricity bill, Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt is making good on his promise of a government that does less. In the legislative session that just ended, social services and mental health programs shrank, economic development funding was cut and higher-education spending dropped. Many programs, including education programs at three prisons and management of motor vehicle offices, will be taken over by private contractors or volunteers - or eliminated entirely. Power companies will be able to pass their fuel costs to customers without seeking approval from state regulators. And insurance companies will no longer have to worry that complaints about their underwriting practices or refusal to pay claims will be available to the public".
Here is the other side of story to the constant Leftist moan about the treatment of captured terrorists at Guantanamo Bay.
Child support idiocy: "If the Pennsylvania Supreme Court finds the sperm-donor to be liable for child support, then many forms of infertility treatment in most states could become less available and more expensive. Those donors who step forward will want to be compensated for their increased legal risk. The courts have pitted a child's 'best interests' against the rights of biological parents to contract with each other on the terms of reproduction. They may have also opened a Pandora's box of complications involving a child's claim on a sperm donor's data and wealth. But the worst consequence may be the denial of life itself to children who are desperately wanted by infertile couples. The law should not obstruct their chances of conceiving."
There is a post on Catallarchy by a Billee Miller which gives quite a good explanation of the thinking behind socialism. Billee may not know it but what he/she describes is very much Hegelian thinking. Hegel was of course the major inspiration for Marx, Engels and Hitler.
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
Monday, May 30, 2005
LEFTIST LIES
"The latest example of a lie embedding itself in the media's collective consciousness came last year when Glen Harold Stassen, an ethics professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, published an on-its-face incoherent/incomplete/inaccurate article that insisted that the number of abortions had increased under President George W. Bush. A few days later, Kerry picked up the mantra in an appearance of Meet the Press. Kerry told host Tim Russert, "And do you know that in fact abortion has gone up in these last few years with the draconian policies that Republicans have...[etc.]." ... But that was nothing compared to the comments of Democratic Committee National Chairman Howard Dean on Meet the Press last weekend: "You know that abortions have gone up 25 percent since George Bush was President?"
And then help came from a highly unlikely source, one with a vested interest in protecting the "right" to abortion. The Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI) is a "special research affiliate" of Planned Parenthood. .... The abortion rate, which AGI measures as the number of abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44 as of July 1 of each year, also dropped from 21.3 to 20.9 in that same period of time. Likewise, according to AGI, the abortion ratio (the number of abortions per 100 pregnancies ending in abortion or live birth) dropped from 24.5 in 2000 to 24.2 in 2002, the lowest abortion ratio Guttmacher has reported since 1974. Whoa! AGI was not the only source outside the pro-life community to debunk Prof. Stassen's analysis. There is the recent analysis done by the Annenberg Political Fact Check, which runs the site www.factcheck.org. Factcheck has a well-deserved reputation for cutting through the fog to reveal the truth. If you go here you will find a piece titled. "Abortions rising under Bush? Not true. How that false claim came to be --and lives on." (More here)
Why Democrats lie: "From its most recent standard bearer to the newly-minted head of the DNC, to its leading voices in "civil rights" issues, to its top foreign policy advisors, to its House and Senate leadership and beyond, lying has become the party's defining trait.... So why do Democrats lie?
Well, for one thing, they have to. Democrats recognize that the vast majority of the American people reject their basic philosophy - as they did resoundingly in the last presidential and congressional elections - which says that all domestic problems can be solved with forced confiscation and redistribution of income, all social issues can be resolved by more and more government control over the citizenry, and all international questions can be answered by ceding American sovereignty to corrupt foreign powers like France and corrupt organizations like the United Nations. Further they have to lie because their track record is one of utter failure.... Leftists are also liars for philosophical reasons and because, I believe, of psychological aberrations. In the words of former feminist leader Tammy Bruce, leftwing Democrats are "malignant narcissists." In their arrogance, modern liberals believe in nothing greater than themselves and that whatever they say - anything that advances their agenda - must be "the truth.""
[And let's not forget Lewis Lapham, the really representative voice of the Democrats]
******************************
"The latest example of a lie embedding itself in the media's collective consciousness came last year when Glen Harold Stassen, an ethics professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, published an on-its-face incoherent/incomplete/inaccurate article that insisted that the number of abortions had increased under President George W. Bush. A few days later, Kerry picked up the mantra in an appearance of Meet the Press. Kerry told host Tim Russert, "And do you know that in fact abortion has gone up in these last few years with the draconian policies that Republicans have...[etc.]." ... But that was nothing compared to the comments of Democratic Committee National Chairman Howard Dean on Meet the Press last weekend: "You know that abortions have gone up 25 percent since George Bush was President?"
And then help came from a highly unlikely source, one with a vested interest in protecting the "right" to abortion. The Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI) is a "special research affiliate" of Planned Parenthood. .... The abortion rate, which AGI measures as the number of abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44 as of July 1 of each year, also dropped from 21.3 to 20.9 in that same period of time. Likewise, according to AGI, the abortion ratio (the number of abortions per 100 pregnancies ending in abortion or live birth) dropped from 24.5 in 2000 to 24.2 in 2002, the lowest abortion ratio Guttmacher has reported since 1974. Whoa! AGI was not the only source outside the pro-life community to debunk Prof. Stassen's analysis. There is the recent analysis done by the Annenberg Political Fact Check, which runs the site www.factcheck.org. Factcheck has a well-deserved reputation for cutting through the fog to reveal the truth. If you go here you will find a piece titled. "Abortions rising under Bush? Not true. How that false claim came to be --and lives on." (More here)
Why Democrats lie: "From its most recent standard bearer to the newly-minted head of the DNC, to its leading voices in "civil rights" issues, to its top foreign policy advisors, to its House and Senate leadership and beyond, lying has become the party's defining trait.... So why do Democrats lie?
Well, for one thing, they have to. Democrats recognize that the vast majority of the American people reject their basic philosophy - as they did resoundingly in the last presidential and congressional elections - which says that all domestic problems can be solved with forced confiscation and redistribution of income, all social issues can be resolved by more and more government control over the citizenry, and all international questions can be answered by ceding American sovereignty to corrupt foreign powers like France and corrupt organizations like the United Nations. Further they have to lie because their track record is one of utter failure.... Leftists are also liars for philosophical reasons and because, I believe, of psychological aberrations. In the words of former feminist leader Tammy Bruce, leftwing Democrats are "malignant narcissists." In their arrogance, modern liberals believe in nothing greater than themselves and that whatever they say - anything that advances their agenda - must be "the truth.""
[And let's not forget Lewis Lapham, the really representative voice of the Democrats]
******************************
ELSEWHERE
Polipundit has also now weighed in on how the public opinion polls are being "cooked" to make GWB look less popular than he is. Again it is mainly being done by including more Democrats in the sample. I mentioned that caper previously on 24th.
Jeff Jacoby favours term limits on judges: "Alexander Hamilton described the judiciary as the ''least dangerous branch," since it had no authority to appropriate funds and no way to enforce its decisions. But federal courts today exercise powers the Framers never gave them. They overturn laws passed by legislators, constitutionalize rights not enumerated in the Constitution, even determine the outcome of a presidential election. And if that doesn't make them potent enough, federal judges hold their jobs for life. They are unelected, unaccountable -- and enormously influential. Is it any wonder that judicial appointments are fought over so fiercely? So much is riding on the outcome. Ultimately, the only way to reduce the acrimony is to make the judges less powerful. That could be accomplished by eliminating judicial review or enacting limits on the courts' jurisdiction. But there is an easier and more realistic approach: Do away with lifetime tenure".
The truth about the Crusades: "The real beginning came in the century following the death of Muhammad in 632. During that incredible hundred years, Muslims spread their religion by force throughout Arabia, and into the modern Middle East, including Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria, as well as into Egypt, north Africa, and Spain... It is easily forgotten that some of these territories had been heavily Christian when the Muslims took them over. No one today thinks of Syria and Egypt as Christian centers, but in the seventh century they certainly were. The ancient city of Antioch had been home to a school of Christian thought second only to that of Alexandria, and Egypt had been the birthplace of Christian monasticism.... When the Seljuk Turks conquered Palestine in the early eleventh century they at first carried out atrocities against Christians, destroying churches and killing some of the faithful. Although this approach was soon abandoned, the internal divisions of the Seljuk Turks translated into instability in the Holy Land, where Christian pilgrimages to the city's holy places became perilous. Thus the crusade called by Urban would try to ease some of the pressure from the troubled Byzantines, but also set its sights on liberating the once-Christian Holy Land from the hands of the Muslims. At no time did the crusaders come anywhere near Arabia, the heart of Islam"
Signs of a swing towards conservatism among German youth: "Politically at least, Germany does indeed appear to be in the midst of a shift back to the right, although there are plenty who argue that it is not so much the conservative Christian Democrats who are rising in popularity as the left-of-center Social Democrats who have fallen out of favor. But this generation of young Germans has a decided lack of interest in the political issues of their society, and are much more interested in themselves than anything else".
Cuba: "Faced with crippling power outages and a grumbling public, Cuba's President Fidel Castro has made an urgent televised appeal for energy thrift, even demonstrating the relative merits of Chinese-made pressure cookers. "Exceptional measures are being taken" to cope with the crisis, Castro, 78, said in an hours-long appearance on state television late Thursday, as the crunch has begun to yield more blackouts, and longer ones, as Cuba heads into the hottest summer months".
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
Polipundit has also now weighed in on how the public opinion polls are being "cooked" to make GWB look less popular than he is. Again it is mainly being done by including more Democrats in the sample. I mentioned that caper previously on 24th.
Jeff Jacoby favours term limits on judges: "Alexander Hamilton described the judiciary as the ''least dangerous branch," since it had no authority to appropriate funds and no way to enforce its decisions. But federal courts today exercise powers the Framers never gave them. They overturn laws passed by legislators, constitutionalize rights not enumerated in the Constitution, even determine the outcome of a presidential election. And if that doesn't make them potent enough, federal judges hold their jobs for life. They are unelected, unaccountable -- and enormously influential. Is it any wonder that judicial appointments are fought over so fiercely? So much is riding on the outcome. Ultimately, the only way to reduce the acrimony is to make the judges less powerful. That could be accomplished by eliminating judicial review or enacting limits on the courts' jurisdiction. But there is an easier and more realistic approach: Do away with lifetime tenure".
The truth about the Crusades: "The real beginning came in the century following the death of Muhammad in 632. During that incredible hundred years, Muslims spread their religion by force throughout Arabia, and into the modern Middle East, including Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria, as well as into Egypt, north Africa, and Spain... It is easily forgotten that some of these territories had been heavily Christian when the Muslims took them over. No one today thinks of Syria and Egypt as Christian centers, but in the seventh century they certainly were. The ancient city of Antioch had been home to a school of Christian thought second only to that of Alexandria, and Egypt had been the birthplace of Christian monasticism.... When the Seljuk Turks conquered Palestine in the early eleventh century they at first carried out atrocities against Christians, destroying churches and killing some of the faithful. Although this approach was soon abandoned, the internal divisions of the Seljuk Turks translated into instability in the Holy Land, where Christian pilgrimages to the city's holy places became perilous. Thus the crusade called by Urban would try to ease some of the pressure from the troubled Byzantines, but also set its sights on liberating the once-Christian Holy Land from the hands of the Muslims. At no time did the crusaders come anywhere near Arabia, the heart of Islam"
Signs of a swing towards conservatism among German youth: "Politically at least, Germany does indeed appear to be in the midst of a shift back to the right, although there are plenty who argue that it is not so much the conservative Christian Democrats who are rising in popularity as the left-of-center Social Democrats who have fallen out of favor. But this generation of young Germans has a decided lack of interest in the political issues of their society, and are much more interested in themselves than anything else".
Cuba: "Faced with crippling power outages and a grumbling public, Cuba's President Fidel Castro has made an urgent televised appeal for energy thrift, even demonstrating the relative merits of Chinese-made pressure cookers. "Exceptional measures are being taken" to cope with the crisis, Castro, 78, said in an hours-long appearance on state television late Thursday, as the crunch has begun to yield more blackouts, and longer ones, as Cuba heads into the hottest summer months".
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
Sunday, May 29, 2005
Ayaan Hirsi Ali on the "Left" and "Multiculturalism"
(I like the post below so much that I have lifted it bodily from Transatlantic Intelligencer)
"The Somali-born Dutch parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali has long been the object of death threats from Dutch Islamists. Since the murder last November 8 of Theo Van Gogh, she is under 24 hour police protection. Hirsi Ali describes herself as an "apostate" from Islam. In an interview published in last week's issue of the French weekly L'Express [link in French] she says: "Since the September 11 attacks, I no longer believe in God. In the eyes of the fundamentalists who threaten me, that justifies my being put to death. They accuse me of 'insulting' the Prophet, of saying that Islam oppresses women, of 'collaborating with the enemy', that's to say, with non-Muslims."
Hirsi Ali's break with Islam has been widely publicized. Perhaps less known is her break with the "left". Originally, a member of the Dutch Labor Party, Hirsi Ali left the latter to join the classical liberal (I think this term will now be understood by Trans-Int regulars. In case of doubt, see discussion here.) VVD. L'Express asked her why. Here is her response:
***********************************
(I like the post below so much that I have lifted it bodily from Transatlantic Intelligencer)
"The Somali-born Dutch parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali has long been the object of death threats from Dutch Islamists. Since the murder last November 8 of Theo Van Gogh, she is under 24 hour police protection. Hirsi Ali describes herself as an "apostate" from Islam. In an interview published in last week's issue of the French weekly L'Express [link in French] she says: "Since the September 11 attacks, I no longer believe in God. In the eyes of the fundamentalists who threaten me, that justifies my being put to death. They accuse me of 'insulting' the Prophet, of saying that Islam oppresses women, of 'collaborating with the enemy', that's to say, with non-Muslims."
Hirsi Ali's break with Islam has been widely publicized. Perhaps less known is her break with the "left". Originally, a member of the Dutch Labor Party, Hirsi Ali left the latter to join the classical liberal (I think this term will now be understood by Trans-Int regulars. In case of doubt, see discussion here.) VVD. L'Express asked her why. Here is her response:
"Because the left is exactly like the Muslims! I wanted to give priority to the defense of immigrant women who are victims of domestic violence. They said to me: "No, that's not a priority! The problem will take care of itself when the immigrants have jobs and are integrated." It is exactly what the Imams say who demand that we accept oppression and slavery today because tomorrow, in Heaven, God will give us dates and raisins.. I think we need first to defend the individual. The left is afraid of everything. But fear of giving offense leads to injustice and suffering. The sexual revolution, the affirmation of individual rights, improving the living conditions of immigrants - these were once the great causes of the Dutch left. In their eyes, the simple fact of belong to a minority gives one the right to do anything. This multiculturalism is a disaster. All one has to do is scream "discrimination" and all doors are open to you! Scream 'racism' and your opponents shut up! But multiculturalism is an inconsistent theory. If one wants to let communities preserve their traditions, what happens when these traditions work to the detriment of women or homosexuals? The logic of multiculturalism amounts to accepting the subordination of women. Nonetheless, the defenders of multiculturalism do not want to admit it.""
***********************************
ELSEWHERE
Amazing! Someone at Google reads this humble little blog. I feel honoured. I mentioned yesterday that a whole blog that I had deleted over a year ago was still held in the Google cache and that its contents were still being listed in response to searches. Suddenly it has vanished! Google seem to have flushed at least those files out of their cache. Maybe if anyone else wants old stuff of theirs cleared from Google's records they should get me onto the job! The results of Google searches are pretty changeable from day to day, however, so another search tomorrow might turn the old stuff up again. Che sara, sara.
Persecution of Mormons. Odd that Muslim polygamists are not targeted!: "The seizure of financial records Tuesday at Colorado City Unified School District signals another turn of the legal vice being used to squeeze religious leaders out of a community of polygamists along Arizona's border with Utah. School district papers and computers were confiscated using a search warrant issued under seal by a court. Attorney General Terry Goddard confirmed that the maneuver is part of 'a strategy to apply pressure in any legitimate way we can' against prophets within the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or FLDS, a breakaway sect of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. ... The sect and its estimated 6,000 members are not affiliated with mainstream Mormonism. Through elections and a religious trust, they control the school district, municipal government and most property in the isolated towns of Colorado City, AZ, and Hildale, UT."
Is this the most pointless law they have ever passed in Sacramento? A lot of California High School graduates can't read ANY books! "The California Assembly is betting that kids learn more with small books. Lawmakers voted Thursday to ban school districts from purchasing textbooks longer than 200 pages. The bill, believed to be the first of its kind nationwide, was hailed by supporters as a way to revolutionize education. Critics lambasted Assembly Bill 756 as silly. "This bill is really the epitome of micromanagement," said Assemblyman Keith Richman, R-Northridge. "(It's) absolutely ridiculous." "With all due respect," said Assemblyman Ray Haynes, R-Murrieta, "this Legislature worries more about the rules than they do about whether children learn."
California rehabilitation: "A 16-year-old boy serving time for second-degree murder was charged Friday with raping his 13-year-old cellmate at Alameda County Juvenile Hall, authorities said. The older boy, whose name was withheld because of his age, was in custody at the San Leandro facility for an Oakland homicide when the alleged assault took place over the night of May 12 and the morning of May 13."
Schools outside the law??? "A Hispanic advocacy group on Wednesday sued the U.S. Border Patrol, Albuquerque Public Schools and police, alleging they violated three Hispanic students' rights to an education. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund alleged in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court that the constitutional rights of the students -- all illegal immigrants -- were violated when they were arrested on immigration charges at Del Norte High School last year. The lawsuit contends campuses are safe havens for students. 'The case itself has broader implications,' said David Urias, MALDEF's lead attorney on the case. 'It's with Latino and Hispanic students in school in general. We don't want federal and local law enforcement to single out Hispanic students and interrogate and seize them without cause while they're on school grounds.'"
American optimism at work: "President Bush praised Palestinian leader Mohmoud Abbas' steps toward democracy today and predicted that Palestinians will reject candidates of the militant group Hamas in upcoming elections there. Bush, with Abbas at his side in the Rose Garden, said it was his hope that 'more and more people will reject the notion' of violence. Bush also announced that United States will direct $50 million in housing aid to the Palestinian Authority for Palestinians in Gaza."
Overdue changes to voting laws afoot: "Long lines, challenged ballots and two of the closest presidential elections in the country's history have touched off a landslide of proposed voting law changes across the United States. Some are hailed as much-needed upgrades that will assure everyone of a vote with no fraud; others are alarming civil libertarians who fear new restrictions could disenfranchise the poor and others at society's margins. The National Council of State Legislatures, which tracks law-making developments, has compiled a list of sometimes competing proposals that have surfaced this year in 26 states, covering 21 pages of fine print."
I have just posted here a letter from a reader which asks: "Is the Pope Catholic?". Although I am an atheist, I am rather on the side of the Holy Father. Ulster's Rev. Ian Paisley may still think that Catholicism is the religion of the Devil but if I were a Christian I think I would see either Islam or Leftism as much better candidates for that role. They are both relentlessly murderous if they can get away with it.
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
Amazing! Someone at Google reads this humble little blog. I feel honoured. I mentioned yesterday that a whole blog that I had deleted over a year ago was still held in the Google cache and that its contents were still being listed in response to searches. Suddenly it has vanished! Google seem to have flushed at least those files out of their cache. Maybe if anyone else wants old stuff of theirs cleared from Google's records they should get me onto the job! The results of Google searches are pretty changeable from day to day, however, so another search tomorrow might turn the old stuff up again. Che sara, sara.
Persecution of Mormons. Odd that Muslim polygamists are not targeted!: "The seizure of financial records Tuesday at Colorado City Unified School District signals another turn of the legal vice being used to squeeze religious leaders out of a community of polygamists along Arizona's border with Utah. School district papers and computers were confiscated using a search warrant issued under seal by a court. Attorney General Terry Goddard confirmed that the maneuver is part of 'a strategy to apply pressure in any legitimate way we can' against prophets within the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or FLDS, a breakaway sect of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. ... The sect and its estimated 6,000 members are not affiliated with mainstream Mormonism. Through elections and a religious trust, they control the school district, municipal government and most property in the isolated towns of Colorado City, AZ, and Hildale, UT."
Is this the most pointless law they have ever passed in Sacramento? A lot of California High School graduates can't read ANY books! "The California Assembly is betting that kids learn more with small books. Lawmakers voted Thursday to ban school districts from purchasing textbooks longer than 200 pages. The bill, believed to be the first of its kind nationwide, was hailed by supporters as a way to revolutionize education. Critics lambasted Assembly Bill 756 as silly. "This bill is really the epitome of micromanagement," said Assemblyman Keith Richman, R-Northridge. "(It's) absolutely ridiculous." "With all due respect," said Assemblyman Ray Haynes, R-Murrieta, "this Legislature worries more about the rules than they do about whether children learn."
California rehabilitation: "A 16-year-old boy serving time for second-degree murder was charged Friday with raping his 13-year-old cellmate at Alameda County Juvenile Hall, authorities said. The older boy, whose name was withheld because of his age, was in custody at the San Leandro facility for an Oakland homicide when the alleged assault took place over the night of May 12 and the morning of May 13."
Schools outside the law??? "A Hispanic advocacy group on Wednesday sued the U.S. Border Patrol, Albuquerque Public Schools and police, alleging they violated three Hispanic students' rights to an education. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund alleged in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court that the constitutional rights of the students -- all illegal immigrants -- were violated when they were arrested on immigration charges at Del Norte High School last year. The lawsuit contends campuses are safe havens for students. 'The case itself has broader implications,' said David Urias, MALDEF's lead attorney on the case. 'It's with Latino and Hispanic students in school in general. We don't want federal and local law enforcement to single out Hispanic students and interrogate and seize them without cause while they're on school grounds.'"
American optimism at work: "President Bush praised Palestinian leader Mohmoud Abbas' steps toward democracy today and predicted that Palestinians will reject candidates of the militant group Hamas in upcoming elections there. Bush, with Abbas at his side in the Rose Garden, said it was his hope that 'more and more people will reject the notion' of violence. Bush also announced that United States will direct $50 million in housing aid to the Palestinian Authority for Palestinians in Gaza."
Overdue changes to voting laws afoot: "Long lines, challenged ballots and two of the closest presidential elections in the country's history have touched off a landslide of proposed voting law changes across the United States. Some are hailed as much-needed upgrades that will assure everyone of a vote with no fraud; others are alarming civil libertarians who fear new restrictions could disenfranchise the poor and others at society's margins. The National Council of State Legislatures, which tracks law-making developments, has compiled a list of sometimes competing proposals that have surfaced this year in 26 states, covering 21 pages of fine print."
I have just posted here a letter from a reader which asks: "Is the Pope Catholic?". Although I am an atheist, I am rather on the side of the Holy Father. Ulster's Rev. Ian Paisley may still think that Catholicism is the religion of the Devil but if I were a Christian I think I would see either Islam or Leftism as much better candidates for that role. They are both relentlessly murderous if they can get away with it.
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
Saturday, May 28, 2005
EUROPEAN FOLLIES
Hooray! "The leader of France's ruling party has privately admitted that Sunday's referendum on the European constitution will result in a "no" vote, throwing Europe into turmoil. "The thing is lost," Nicolas Sarkozy told French ministers during an ill-tempered meeting. "It will be a little 'no' or a big 'no'," he was quoted as telling Jean-Pierre Raffarin"
Why Europeans are getting disillusioned with the EU: "I have always argued against economic determinism in British or US politics. But that is because the British and American economies have on the whole been performing well since 1992. Europe, meanwhile, has become an economic disaster. The people of France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands may be angry about globalisation or ultra-liberalism or immigration, but this reflects a deeper malaise. Their living standards are falling, their pensions are in danger, their children are jobless and their national pride is turning into embarrassment and even shame. In sum, they feel that their countries, which numbered among the world's richest and most powerful nations as recently as the middle of the last decade, have gone to the dogs under the leadership of the present generation of politicians. And, at least in the economic sense, they are absolutely right".
Europe no model for anyone: "American progressives continue to advocate that the United States should move more toward Western Europe's larger social welfare states and greater job protections.... In the 1990s, the U.S. economy experienced a quantum increase in productivity. European investment in information technology as a percentage of gross domestic product is considerably less than in the United States and is declining. The European Commission estimates that, as of this year, labor productivity per hour in the European Union will have declined from 97 percent of the U.S. level in the mid-1990s to only about 88 percent.... European leaders have a very difficult political path to tread. There appears to be great reluctance by their publics to give up any of the security, protections and benefits of the social model. Yet without higher economic growth, the model is unsustainable. But higher economic growth requires reforming the model."
Dutch democracy?: "Sophie In 't Veld, an MEP for junior coalition party D66, explains in the Algemeen Dagblad that in the case of the EU referendum she even thinks that voting could actually be undemocratic... at least if people are planning to vote 'no'. According to Ms In 't Veld, the problem is that all 25 EU members need to ratify the EU constitution before it can come into force. So if the Netherlands turned out to be the only country voting 'no', then this tiny little blot on the map would single-handedly block the will of the others. And that, Ms In 't Veld argues, would be undemocratic... so in order to be good democrats, people should either stay at home or vote 'yes' as the government wants." (Via No Pasaran).
A market solution to Germany's 12% unemployment: "A young entrepreneur is enjoying success in Germany after developing a website that allows people to bid for work by undercutting others. He is now in talks to set up so-called "job-dumping" sites in other countries. Jobdumping.de, set up by student Fabian Loew, has been flourishing in a country where five million - nearly one in eight workers - are unemployed. The site works much like a traditional online auction site, except in reverse - jobs are advertised, and then the lowest bidder - ie the person willing to do the job for the least amount of money - wins."
Germany invented socialism: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were Germans. The Social Democratic movement that shaped the modern European welfare state also originated in Germany. Although the country profited greatly from its reintegration into the world trading system after World War II, Germany never really came to terms with Anglo-Saxon capitalism and skepticism about it still runs deep.... This new critique of capitalism recently culminated in a series of attacks by the leader of the Social Democratic Party, Franz Muentefering. He accused entrepreneurs who outsource production to low-wage countries of showing excessive greed and lack of social responsibility, and he compared the managers of international equity funds to a plague of locusts that occupy companies, exploit them, and move on after their destructive work is done. These attacks brought Muentefering vast public support... Now unemployment is Germany's biggest problem, standing at a postwar record. This alarms the public and incites anger against capitalists who do not reinvest their profits. Muentefering simply caught the popular mood in developing his theory of locust capitalism. But this useless reaction to the laws of the global market economy hides the fact that Germany's problems are largely a result of an overblown welfare state and extremely aggressive union policies over the last thirty years." [And I don't suppose that we want to draw the parallels with National Socialism do we?]
**************************
Hooray! "The leader of France's ruling party has privately admitted that Sunday's referendum on the European constitution will result in a "no" vote, throwing Europe into turmoil. "The thing is lost," Nicolas Sarkozy told French ministers during an ill-tempered meeting. "It will be a little 'no' or a big 'no'," he was quoted as telling Jean-Pierre Raffarin"
Why Europeans are getting disillusioned with the EU: "I have always argued against economic determinism in British or US politics. But that is because the British and American economies have on the whole been performing well since 1992. Europe, meanwhile, has become an economic disaster. The people of France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands may be angry about globalisation or ultra-liberalism or immigration, but this reflects a deeper malaise. Their living standards are falling, their pensions are in danger, their children are jobless and their national pride is turning into embarrassment and even shame. In sum, they feel that their countries, which numbered among the world's richest and most powerful nations as recently as the middle of the last decade, have gone to the dogs under the leadership of the present generation of politicians. And, at least in the economic sense, they are absolutely right".
Europe no model for anyone: "American progressives continue to advocate that the United States should move more toward Western Europe's larger social welfare states and greater job protections.... In the 1990s, the U.S. economy experienced a quantum increase in productivity. European investment in information technology as a percentage of gross domestic product is considerably less than in the United States and is declining. The European Commission estimates that, as of this year, labor productivity per hour in the European Union will have declined from 97 percent of the U.S. level in the mid-1990s to only about 88 percent.... European leaders have a very difficult political path to tread. There appears to be great reluctance by their publics to give up any of the security, protections and benefits of the social model. Yet without higher economic growth, the model is unsustainable. But higher economic growth requires reforming the model."
Dutch democracy?: "Sophie In 't Veld, an MEP for junior coalition party D66, explains in the Algemeen Dagblad that in the case of the EU referendum she even thinks that voting could actually be undemocratic... at least if people are planning to vote 'no'. According to Ms In 't Veld, the problem is that all 25 EU members need to ratify the EU constitution before it can come into force. So if the Netherlands turned out to be the only country voting 'no', then this tiny little blot on the map would single-handedly block the will of the others. And that, Ms In 't Veld argues, would be undemocratic... so in order to be good democrats, people should either stay at home or vote 'yes' as the government wants." (Via No Pasaran).
A market solution to Germany's 12% unemployment: "A young entrepreneur is enjoying success in Germany after developing a website that allows people to bid for work by undercutting others. He is now in talks to set up so-called "job-dumping" sites in other countries. Jobdumping.de, set up by student Fabian Loew, has been flourishing in a country where five million - nearly one in eight workers - are unemployed. The site works much like a traditional online auction site, except in reverse - jobs are advertised, and then the lowest bidder - ie the person willing to do the job for the least amount of money - wins."
Germany invented socialism: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were Germans. The Social Democratic movement that shaped the modern European welfare state also originated in Germany. Although the country profited greatly from its reintegration into the world trading system after World War II, Germany never really came to terms with Anglo-Saxon capitalism and skepticism about it still runs deep.... This new critique of capitalism recently culminated in a series of attacks by the leader of the Social Democratic Party, Franz Muentefering. He accused entrepreneurs who outsource production to low-wage countries of showing excessive greed and lack of social responsibility, and he compared the managers of international equity funds to a plague of locusts that occupy companies, exploit them, and move on after their destructive work is done. These attacks brought Muentefering vast public support... Now unemployment is Germany's biggest problem, standing at a postwar record. This alarms the public and incites anger against capitalists who do not reinvest their profits. Muentefering simply caught the popular mood in developing his theory of locust capitalism. But this useless reaction to the laws of the global market economy hides the fact that Germany's problems are largely a result of an overblown welfare state and extremely aggressive union policies over the last thirty years." [And I don't suppose that we want to draw the parallels with National Socialism do we?]
**************************
ELSEWHERE
Looks like bloggers have had another victory of a sort -- over Pepsico's egregiously insulting and anti-American "CFO". She has done a big backpedal. Pepsi should give her the sack. Or is she secretly working for Coca-Cola? She might as well be for the effect she will have on Pepsi sales.
I think this is the first time I have ever had anything good to say of Daily Kos but I loved this story of the tiny baby that was NOT aborted.
Just substitute "blacks" for "religious people" and figure out what would have happened: ""Moral retards." That's how a Brooklyn College sociologist described religious people a few years ago. And to some in New York City, that's reason enough why Timothy Shortell should not be allowed to assume the post to which his colleagues just elected him: chairman of the sociology department. Editorials and articles this week in The New York Sun and The New York Daily News have blasted Shortell as intolerant, quoted religious students as saying that they were offended by his writings, and demanded that the college do something... The essay also compared religious people to children".
Godless religion is the big killer: "Ideology comes in three colours: red, brown and green, representing Marxism, fascism and environmental extremism. Judged on sheer evil, the worst crime in history was brown, the Nazi genocide, although the reds slaughtered more people. The death toll (difficult to measure) is roughly, Hitler's holocaust 6 million, Stalin's famine and terror 8 million, and Mao's famine 30 million. But the greens have topped them all. In a single crime they have killed about 50 million people. In purely numerical terms, it was the worst crime of the 20th century. It took place in the USA in 1972. It was the banning of DDT."
Is Prophet Yahweh the most amusing con on the net? He summons up UFOs! Just the picture of him in a turban made me laugh. What is it about turbans and fruitcakes?
Gee, what a surprise! "A Muslim woman is Secretary General of Amnesty International and she introduced the instantaneously notorious report on human rights so biased against the US (calling Guantanamo Bay our American "Gulag") that no less than the Washington Post took exception to its contents and bias in an editorial. Her name is Irene Khan"
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
Looks like bloggers have had another victory of a sort -- over Pepsico's egregiously insulting and anti-American "CFO". She has done a big backpedal. Pepsi should give her the sack. Or is she secretly working for Coca-Cola? She might as well be for the effect she will have on Pepsi sales.
I think this is the first time I have ever had anything good to say of Daily Kos but I loved this story of the tiny baby that was NOT aborted.
Just substitute "blacks" for "religious people" and figure out what would have happened: ""Moral retards." That's how a Brooklyn College sociologist described religious people a few years ago. And to some in New York City, that's reason enough why Timothy Shortell should not be allowed to assume the post to which his colleagues just elected him: chairman of the sociology department. Editorials and articles this week in The New York Sun and The New York Daily News have blasted Shortell as intolerant, quoted religious students as saying that they were offended by his writings, and demanded that the college do something... The essay also compared religious people to children".
Godless religion is the big killer: "Ideology comes in three colours: red, brown and green, representing Marxism, fascism and environmental extremism. Judged on sheer evil, the worst crime in history was brown, the Nazi genocide, although the reds slaughtered more people. The death toll (difficult to measure) is roughly, Hitler's holocaust 6 million, Stalin's famine and terror 8 million, and Mao's famine 30 million. But the greens have topped them all. In a single crime they have killed about 50 million people. In purely numerical terms, it was the worst crime of the 20th century. It took place in the USA in 1972. It was the banning of DDT."
Is Prophet Yahweh the most amusing con on the net? He summons up UFOs! Just the picture of him in a turban made me laugh. What is it about turbans and fruitcakes?
Gee, what a surprise! "A Muslim woman is Secretary General of Amnesty International and she introduced the instantaneously notorious report on human rights so biased against the US (calling Guantanamo Bay our American "Gulag") that no less than the Washington Post took exception to its contents and bias in an editorial. Her name is Irene Khan"
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
Friday, May 27, 2005
FROM BROOKES NEWS
US economy, supply-side economics and Say's law The problem with the supply-siders is that they do not realise that their crude monetary views are dangerously subversive of free markets and that they bring about recessions for which the market always gets the blame.
Savings and money - what is the relationship? Most economists have no real idea about the nature of savings. That's why they think budget surpluses are savings.
Castro and Al-Jazeera indignant over Cuban-exile 'terrorist' Fidel Castro joins with Islamo-fascists and other terrorists while our media looks the other way
Australian economy, immigration and economic growth A great many misconceptions about immigration and the nature of economic growth abound, particularly in Australia.
The National Jewish Post & Opinion's Thought Police Self-hating Jews at the National Jewish Post & Opinion ban Arlene Peck for speaking out
*********************************
US economy, supply-side economics and Say's law The problem with the supply-siders is that they do not realise that their crude monetary views are dangerously subversive of free markets and that they bring about recessions for which the market always gets the blame.
Savings and money - what is the relationship? Most economists have no real idea about the nature of savings. That's why they think budget surpluses are savings.
Castro and Al-Jazeera indignant over Cuban-exile 'terrorist' Fidel Castro joins with Islamo-fascists and other terrorists while our media looks the other way
Australian economy, immigration and economic growth A great many misconceptions about immigration and the nature of economic growth abound, particularly in Australia.
The National Jewish Post & Opinion's Thought Police Self-hating Jews at the National Jewish Post & Opinion ban Arlene Peck for speaking out
*********************************
ELSEWHERE
Poor old Binning. He sent me quite a handsome apology for his abuse of me so I think he is a pretty decent sort, basically. I forwarded him the link to one of my recent posts on Majority Rights -- in which I outline the enormously unscientific way in which Leftists have "researched" the psychology of conservatism. The research concerned was summarized in 2003 by Jost et al and the summary was as unscientific as what it summarized (they only included findings they agreed with!). Binning, however, is still trying to defend the indefensible and has put up a comment on my post which summarized Jost et al as saying that “the best predictor of political conservatism is fear (death anxiety)”. Since I have done some very high-quality research (using random community sampling and proper psychometric methods) in conjunction with a very Left-leaning sociologist which showed that death anxiety is totally uncorrelated with current political attitudes, however, Binning might have to face the fact that the entire field he works in is one big con. I also sent him this link to ponder over.
More evidence that severe anti-social behaviour is caused by genes, not by "society": "Psychopaths are born anti-social, not corrupted by bad parenting, scientists reveal today. A study of twins showed that anti-social behaviour was strongly inherited in children with psychopathic tendencies. In children without psychopathic traits, being anti-social was chiefly the result of environmental factors. The findings support previous research indicating that children with psychopathic tendencies often remain an anti-social problem. Psychopaths are generally recognised by a lack of empathy and weak conscience. If a psychopath does something that hurts another person, he or she is less likely to feel remorse than other people. These tendencies are a recognised warning sign of anti-social behaviour in young children. To help identify the genetic components of anti-social behaviour, a team of British psychiatrists studied 3,687 pairs of seven-year-old twins.... The chief investigator, Dr Essi Viding, from the Medical Research Council's Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College, London, said: "The discovery that psychopathic tendencies are strongly heritable suggests we need to get help for these youngsters early on." The research is published today in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry."
Education matters little: "One puzzle about the U.S. economy is why it doesn't do worse when there are so many reasons that it should. Our students do fare poorly on international comparisons. In a recent study of math skills of 15-year-olds in 29 countries, done by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Americans ranked 24th. We do depend heavily on immigrants to fill science and engineering jobs. In 2000, immigrants accounted for 17 percent of U.S. scientists and engineers with bachelor's degrees, 29 percent with master's degrees and 38 percent with doctorates. And our savings and investment rates are low. In 2001, the U.S. savings rate ranked 22nd out of 25 OECD countries. The explanation is this: every complex economy is more (or less) than the sum of its parts. What matters is not just how much we save-but how well we invest. The Japanese have squandered much of their higher savings on unproductive investments. Similarly, many work skills are learned on the job... America's economic strengths lie in qualities that are hard to distill into simple statistics or trends. We've maintained beliefs and practices that compensate for our weaknesses, including: ambitiousness; openness to change (even unpleasant change); competition; hard work, and a willingness to take and reward risks. [And most education is little more than propaganda anyway. Read this]
Estate tax: "The tax cut law of 2001 included a slow phase out of the estate tax by 2010, but the tax is supposed to be reinstated in 2011 when the entire 2001 law expires. This strange political compromise on estate taxes presumably will not last, so it is a good time to consider what should be done about this tax. I believe taxes on estates should be permanently abolished since they do little to reduce income or wealth inequality, benefit a vast army of lawyers and accountants whose role is to find ways to cut taxes on the estates of the wealthy, create problems for some families with smaller businesses, and do not raise a lot of tax revenue. In April the House of Representatives rather strongly voted to repeal permanently the tax on estates, so the issue now goes to the Senate"
The therapeutic society: "Sigmund Freud's daughter, Anna, ran nursery schools in London during the Blitz of World War II. Very few of her charges needed psychiatric help. As Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally Satel relate in their new book, One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture is Eroding Self-Reliance (St. Martin's Press), Freud found that even children who remained with their parents and were bombed repeatedly showed "no signs of traumatic shock.little excitement and no undue disturbance." What a long way we've come. Today, grief counselors rush in at the first sign of a "tragedy"-as when they comforted librarians upset over ruined books when the Boston Public Library was flooded in 1998. Sommers and Satel detail this and many other excesses of therapy in their well-researched and provoking book. They even coined a word for these immoderations: "therapism." "
Neville Chamberlain lives! "Officials negotiating Iran's nuclear future left the table in an upbeat mood Wednesday, with Tehran renewing its vow to refrain from developing nuclear weapons and signaling it will pursue talks with Europe toward a final agreement on its atomic program. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and other key European ministers met for three hours with Iranian negotiators under an implied threat that Tehran could be brought before the U.N. Security Council to face possible international sanctions over its suspected nuclear activities."
The Google cache is an amazing phenomenon. If you look here, you will find an entire blog that I deleted over a year ago. It's a bit like everlasting life! That reminds me: I wonder who posted this? The words are mine but I did not put them there.
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
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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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Poor old Binning. He sent me quite a handsome apology for his abuse of me so I think he is a pretty decent sort, basically. I forwarded him the link to one of my recent posts on Majority Rights -- in which I outline the enormously unscientific way in which Leftists have "researched" the psychology of conservatism. The research concerned was summarized in 2003 by Jost et al and the summary was as unscientific as what it summarized (they only included findings they agreed with!). Binning, however, is still trying to defend the indefensible and has put up a comment on my post which summarized Jost et al as saying that “the best predictor of political conservatism is fear (death anxiety)”. Since I have done some very high-quality research (using random community sampling and proper psychometric methods) in conjunction with a very Left-leaning sociologist which showed that death anxiety is totally uncorrelated with current political attitudes, however, Binning might have to face the fact that the entire field he works in is one big con. I also sent him this link to ponder over.
More evidence that severe anti-social behaviour is caused by genes, not by "society": "Psychopaths are born anti-social, not corrupted by bad parenting, scientists reveal today. A study of twins showed that anti-social behaviour was strongly inherited in children with psychopathic tendencies. In children without psychopathic traits, being anti-social was chiefly the result of environmental factors. The findings support previous research indicating that children with psychopathic tendencies often remain an anti-social problem. Psychopaths are generally recognised by a lack of empathy and weak conscience. If a psychopath does something that hurts another person, he or she is less likely to feel remorse than other people. These tendencies are a recognised warning sign of anti-social behaviour in young children. To help identify the genetic components of anti-social behaviour, a team of British psychiatrists studied 3,687 pairs of seven-year-old twins.... The chief investigator, Dr Essi Viding, from the Medical Research Council's Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College, London, said: "The discovery that psychopathic tendencies are strongly heritable suggests we need to get help for these youngsters early on." The research is published today in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry."
Education matters little: "One puzzle about the U.S. economy is why it doesn't do worse when there are so many reasons that it should. Our students do fare poorly on international comparisons. In a recent study of math skills of 15-year-olds in 29 countries, done by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Americans ranked 24th. We do depend heavily on immigrants to fill science and engineering jobs. In 2000, immigrants accounted for 17 percent of U.S. scientists and engineers with bachelor's degrees, 29 percent with master's degrees and 38 percent with doctorates. And our savings and investment rates are low. In 2001, the U.S. savings rate ranked 22nd out of 25 OECD countries. The explanation is this: every complex economy is more (or less) than the sum of its parts. What matters is not just how much we save-but how well we invest. The Japanese have squandered much of their higher savings on unproductive investments. Similarly, many work skills are learned on the job... America's economic strengths lie in qualities that are hard to distill into simple statistics or trends. We've maintained beliefs and practices that compensate for our weaknesses, including: ambitiousness; openness to change (even unpleasant change); competition; hard work, and a willingness to take and reward risks. [And most education is little more than propaganda anyway. Read this]
Estate tax: "The tax cut law of 2001 included a slow phase out of the estate tax by 2010, but the tax is supposed to be reinstated in 2011 when the entire 2001 law expires. This strange political compromise on estate taxes presumably will not last, so it is a good time to consider what should be done about this tax. I believe taxes on estates should be permanently abolished since they do little to reduce income or wealth inequality, benefit a vast army of lawyers and accountants whose role is to find ways to cut taxes on the estates of the wealthy, create problems for some families with smaller businesses, and do not raise a lot of tax revenue. In April the House of Representatives rather strongly voted to repeal permanently the tax on estates, so the issue now goes to the Senate"
The therapeutic society: "Sigmund Freud's daughter, Anna, ran nursery schools in London during the Blitz of World War II. Very few of her charges needed psychiatric help. As Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally Satel relate in their new book, One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture is Eroding Self-Reliance (St. Martin's Press), Freud found that even children who remained with their parents and were bombed repeatedly showed "no signs of traumatic shock.little excitement and no undue disturbance." What a long way we've come. Today, grief counselors rush in at the first sign of a "tragedy"-as when they comforted librarians upset over ruined books when the Boston Public Library was flooded in 1998. Sommers and Satel detail this and many other excesses of therapy in their well-researched and provoking book. They even coined a word for these immoderations: "therapism." "
Neville Chamberlain lives! "Officials negotiating Iran's nuclear future left the table in an upbeat mood Wednesday, with Tehran renewing its vow to refrain from developing nuclear weapons and signaling it will pursue talks with Europe toward a final agreement on its atomic program. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and other key European ministers met for three hours with Iranian negotiators under an implied threat that Tehran could be brought before the U.N. Security Council to face possible international sanctions over its suspected nuclear activities."
The Google cache is an amazing phenomenon. If you look here, you will find an entire blog that I deleted over a year ago. It's a bit like everlasting life! That reminds me: I wonder who posted this? The words are mine but I did not put them there.
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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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