THE UNABOMBER GOT IT WRONG ABOUT LEFTISTS

From time to time people claim that my account of Leftist psychology is similar to that put forward by the well-known "Unabomber". I generally ignore such comments as they result from a pervasive confusion in modern psychology about the nature and benefits of self-esteem -- which for a time was almost idolized. As I say elsewhere:

"The self-esteem gurus would no doubt argue that Hitler had to have LOW self-esteem to perpetrate his anti-social evils. If, however, the self-proclaimed "leader" (Fuehrer) of the "master-race" (Herrenvolk) was short of self-esteem, what meaning could the concept have? If Hitler had low self-esteem, how would we ever recognize high self-esteem? We would need some pretty circular definitions, I suspect.

This does however highlight the seeming paradox that many of those who seem to have very high self-regard also often seem to a have high need for that self-regard to be reinforced. The person with excess ego also seems to have a high ego-need. This is hardly surprising, however. There is much in the world and in life that tells each of us about our inadequacies, failures and mistakes so any person who has a high level of self-love has a lot of attacks on that self-love to fend off, counteract and defend against. The higher one's self-love, the more there is to attack and the more one will have a need to get it justified in some way. Humility would make life a lot simpler and realism a lot easier. It is no wonder that the inflated ego of the Leftist makes him/her an habitual denier of reality.

My account of Leftist psychology concedes that Leftism can arise from a number of causes but highlights the above "big ego" syndrome as dominant among Leftist intellectuals and ideologues. So my claim is that Leftists have BIG egos -- i.e. they think extraordinarily well of themselves. They think they are beneath any requirements of proof for what they say etc. But I also point out that this will ordinarily be a large disjunction from reality so the Leftist will need a lot of propping up for his ego. Nasty things like evidence contradicting his theories will lead to irrational denial and abuse of anybody mentioning the inconvenient facts.

The Unabomber, by contrast claimed that Leftists have LOW self-esteem. I quote:

"The two psychological tendencies that underlie modern leftism we call "feelings of inferiority" and "oversocialization." Feelings of inferiority are characteristic of modern leftism as a whole, while oversocialization is characteristic only of a certain segment of modern leftism; but this segment is highly influential.

By "feelings of inferiority" we mean not only inferiority feelings in the strict sense but a whole spectrum of related traits: low self-esteem, feelings of powerlessness, depressive tendencies, defeatism, guilt, self-hatred, etc. We argue that modern leftists tend to have some such feelings (possibly more or less repressed) and that these feelings are decisive in determining the direction of modern leftism. When someone interprets as derogatory almost anything that is said about him (or about groups with whom he identifies) we conclude that he has inferiority feelings or low self-esteem. This tendency is pronounced among minority rights advocates"

So as far as I can see, the Unabomber theory is exactly the reverse of the truth!

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ELSEWHERE

An Australian senator has just given a speech in parliament in which he lists innumerable examples of bias on the part of our major public broadcaster -- with biased treatment of stories about Israel and Iraq being the most prominent of course. America's PBS has to some extent been reined in recently but the Australian equivalent is still a Leftist propaganda machine. Give the Senator some feedback. He needs it, and he appreciates it. His email address is senator.santoro@aph.gov.au

A GOP President doesn't veto GOP legislation: How surprising!: "Like pardons and executive orders, vetoes are among the cherished privileges of the Oval Office. Ike liked them. So did presidents Truman and Cleveland - and both Roosevelts. But apparently not George W. Bush. In fact, well into the fifth year of his presidency, he has yet to issue a single veto. It's a streak unmatched in modern American history"

A very unfree country: "On Monday, May 9, a man named Mike Fisher, from the town of Newmarket, New Hampshire, performed an act for which he will pay dearly under penalty of law. He engaged in a consensual commercial transaction with another willing individual. He performed a manicure. Mike Fisher, outlaw, enemy of the realm, planted himself outside the state Board of Cosmetology, invited his customer to join him, and committed the unpardonable sin of performing a manicure without a license granted by the very agents who work inside... He had already been "spoken to" by state Attorney General Kelley Ayotte the week before. When Ms. Ayotte asked him not to perform his "stunt," Mike nicely said he fully intended to provide the service to anyone who was interested in hiring him. When he kept his word, he was promptly arrested by the Concord, New Hampshire, police. Mike spent the night in jail, because he was unwilling to pay for either the license or the mandatory "training" required to get it. Instead, he studied and trained himself, advertised to others that he was going to offer his services at a low price, and willingly accepted a customer, under the watchful eyes of agents of the Granite State".

Mentally deficient TSA screeners: "Infants have been stopped from boarding planes at airports throughout the U.S. because their names are the same as or similar to those of possible terrorists on the government's 'no-fly list.' It sounds like a joke, but it's not funny to parents who miss flights while scrambling to have babies' passports and other documents faxed. Ingrid Sanden's 1-year-old daughter was stopped in Phoenix before boarding a flight home to Washington at Thanksgiving."

"Anti-ACLU" fights for religion in public life: "For years, the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups have fought to remove any trace of religion from government and public life, and for years they've won. Now the ACLU is facing a challenge from groups such as the Alliance Defense Fund, one of several Christian law firms formed in the 1990s. From its base in Phoenix, the ADF says its goal is to defend religious liberty, the sanctity of human life and the traditional family against any person or group who attacks those principles."

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

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" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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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TOLERANCE IS A TWO-WAY STREET

There are editorials and opinion pieces like the one below popping up all over the world lately. The one below is by Des Houghton and appeared in the Brisbane "Courier Mail" on Saturday August 13, 2005

I'm getting a little tired of do-gooders preaching the virtues of multiculturalism. would like to see them espouse the virtues of integration with similar vigour. I'm not saying multiculturalism is a dirty word. But there is a risk that by over-stressing its benefits we may encourage some minorities to think their extreme beliefs are superior to the values of this country's majority.

More than 90 per cent of us still proclain a Christian heritage. We have welcomed no fewer than six million migrants since World War II, and more are arriving every day. The peaceful integration of migrants into Australian society is one of our enduring national achievements. I have friends whose parents were born in Italy, Greece, Lebanon, Italy and China, who retain many of the values of their parents' homeland while embracing the values of this grand land.

Most of us now have friends and colleagues from other cultures who have enriched our lives. We welcome newcomers, provided they come through our front door. And we need not apologise to any one for our record on immigration. This country's tolerance of different religious beliefs, social mores and political views is at the heart of what it means to be Australian and no one understands this more than migrants who have sworn allegiance under the Southern Cross.

For years, however, any politician wishing to court public approval - especially in metropolitan regions - has nailed his colours to the mast of multiculturalism. Terrified of appearing "racist", our dripping wet liberal commentators, ignorant schoolteachers and simpering politicians have bent over backwards to appease minorities.

Prove to me that this kind of "multiculturalism" has not encouraged branch stacking by political parties and electoral pork-barrelling that verges on corruption.

In welcoming migrants we also have opened the door to a few extremists who use our democracy to espouse an abhorrent political order which preaches violence and subjugates women. In Dubai recently I went to the mosque and took an introductory course in the six pillars of Islam. It was fascinating. To its true believers, Islam means peace. We must not fear Muslims; only a very small number of them are hellhounds bent on destroying the West.

When John Howard meets Muslim leaders next week he must remind them that while we value their cultural traditions, they must also respect ours. He must also make it clear that migrants of all faiths are welcome, but that our national unity and stability demands a high level of integration, not segregation. This can be achieved with tolerance. Tolerance is the core of civilisation, and it is a two-way street.

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ELSEWHERE

McDonald's bombing mastermind jailed for life: "An Indonesian court today sentenced the alleged mastermind of 2002 bombing of a McDonald's restaurant to life in prison, saying the Islamic militant planned the attack that came just weeks after the Bali nightclub attacks. Agung Abdul Hamid, 38, was found guilty of being the "field co-ordinator and financier" of the early evening bombing that killed three people in the South Sulawesi provincial capital of Makassar. The dead and injured were all Indonesians."

Arlene Peck thinks that Australians are less tolerant of the Islamists than people in the U.S. and U.K. are.

More hate-speech from San Francisco's Mark Morford: "I have never been to a big creepy megachurch. This is my first confession. I have never been to, say, Lakewood Church in Houston, the biggest glossiest megachurch of all, which just dumped a staggering $75 million to renovate the former stadium for the Houston Rockets and turn it into a massive pulsing swaying arm-raisin' eye-glazed weirdly repressed House o' Jesus. ... I mention all this because megachurches are the latest phenomenon, the hottest trend in the Christian godfearin' biz, arena-scaled piety polished up and bloated out and aimed like a giant homophobic cannon straight at the gloomy face of a new and improved God ... But you really don't need to attend one of these surreal spectacles to realize that most of us should kneel down right now in heartfelt gratitude that we have never been forced to endure, say, the all-paunchy-married-male revue of a Promise Keepers rally, or the bizarre pious cheerleading of a Harvest Crusade in L.A."

Nutty Swedes: "In the last four years, 50% of those who have been refused asylum in Sweden have gone underground and have simply vanished from the Board of Migration's statistics. And of the half who have actually been sent home, a full 20% have come straight back to Sweden to try their luck again. That is in accordance with the rules of the Geneva Convention, which states that asylum seekers who have been deported to their homeland have the right to return and have their case tried again. Each time they return must be treated as a new case..... In 2004, a total of 2,026 supervised deportations cost 148.3 million kronor, up 34% on the year before. The rise is blamed on the increasing demands for more staff to help take people out of the country. One deportation requires at least two people, said Tina Hendriksson, a finance inspector at the Prison Service's transport office. "Lately more people have been needed. That's because those who are deported are in poor psychological or physical condition, or simply don't want to be expelled," she told Dagens Nyheter. "We have also been forced to charter whole planes to a greater extent than earlier," added G"ran Stenbeck, head of the transport office. In fact, the transport office chartered 92 planes in 2004 - sometimes for just one person - at a total cost of 12.5 million kronor".

Clueless Norwegians: "New figures from Norway's immigration authority (Utlendingsdirektoratet, UDI) indicate that nearly 7,000 would-be refugees disappeared from asylum centers in 2003 alone. Another 1,136 have disappeared so far this year, reports newspaper Stavanger Aftenblad. Around 60 percent of those who left the asylum centers, which aren't run as locked institutions, are between 18 and 34 years of age. Around 20 percent are younger than 18. No one can say what has happened to those who applied for asylum but left with no forwarding address while their cases were being processed".

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

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" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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

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TUESDAY ROUNDUP

Once again I list what I think were the best posts on my various blogs in the preceding week.

On Dissecting Leftism I offer an historically-based definition of conservatism

On Majority Rights I note a surprising victory in Britain -- where race-relations law was applied to protect whites from discrimination too.

On Greenie Watch I cast a skeptical eye on the story about Siberia heating up

On Blogger News I look at the controversy over whether the earth's atmosphere in getting warmer -- as measured by satellites and weather balloons.

On Political Correctness Watch I note that it is now officially incorrect in Britain to portray Osama bin Laden as a bad guy!

On Education Watch I look at whether American High School students really are poorly educated or whether they are just lazy.

On Socialized Medicine I note a striking example of how bureaucrats cover up the failures of public medicine

On Gun Watch I have a post called "All the news that's fit to slant" which notes how even FALLING deaths from gun use can be reported as bad news in the media.

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ELSEWHERE

Offensive British class-consciousness: "British Airways faced a fresh row last night over flying with empty seats while refusing to take passengers still stranded at Heathrow airport by last week's wildcat strike... Around 600 frustrated travellers were still waiting for their flights last night and BA admitted that the backlog would take until tomorrow to clear. However, the airline refused to say how many flights had departed with empty seats in first and business class because of its refusal to offer an upgrade to marooned economy-class customers.

How the pathetic British police "get tough": "Police have expressed regret for the treatment of a great-grandmother who was woken by officers at 4am, arrested and kept in custody for 13 hours. Eileen Kearsey, 79, says she was treated like a suspected terrorist when police followed up a complaint made two months earlier by her neighbour. She was eventually released without charge at 5pm the next day, after being questioned, fingerprinted and having a DNA sample taken."

Virginia: Court sustains loyalty oath in schools : "A federal appeals court yesterday upheld a Virginia law requiring public schools to lead a daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance Edward Myers of Sterling, a father of three, claimed the reference to 'one nation under God' in the Pledge was an unconstitutional promotion of religion. A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, ruling that the Pledge is a patriotic exercise, not an affirmation of religion similar to a prayer. 'Undoubtedly, the pledge contains a religious phrase, and it is demeaning to persons of any faith to assert that the words 'under God' contain no religious significance,' Judge Karen Williams wrote. 'The inclusion of those two words, however, does not alter the nature of the pledge as a patriotic activity.' Myers and his attorney, David Remes, said they have not discussed whether to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court."

Leftist blogger Balletshootz has an interesting essay about political leadership in which he traces Democrat failure to their namby-pamby and vacillating ways. I think he has a point, though the constant comparisons of GWB to a chimp are pretty juvenile. The Left never seem to have enough of making that comparison, which doesn't say much for the depth of their ideas. I liked this quote: "Along the far left, the rhetoric is too shrill in tone and anti-authoritarian in attitude to signal fitness for any kind of leadership. These are the howls of the malcontented, the powerless, the wounded animals flailing for attention."

Leftists hate the truth: "I think it was Barbara Walters who unwittingly gave away the leftist media's secret the other night while supposedly heaping high praise on the newly dead Peter Jennings. Between gushes of admiration and sighs of sorrow not seen since the apostles lost their Lord, Walters waxed poetic about this Canadian-born socialist whose mother had raised him to hate America. On and on she went until, near the end, she offered the highest praise a leftist could fathom: "What made Peter great was that he knew there was no such thing as the truth." If there is no such thing as the truth then what was Jennings using as the basis for his reporting? Republicans know. He made it up".

A thought-provoking article from Paul Sheehan: "It's time someone praised and defended reckless teenage girls and young women who behave badly, dress provocatively, engage in risky sex, and get pregnant. They are the normal ones. The rest of us are the deviants. They are behaving in the most natural way. The rest of us are mutants.... Children are the most important asset in our culture, so society should be structured around this central reality. Instead, we are structuring society around consumerism - a treadmill of bigger homes, more possessions, more holidays, more glamour - for which we run the risk of becoming impoverished. When the pattern of peak reproduction at peak fertility is broken, as it is now, women are forced by economic circumstances or social pressure to postpone pregnancy. Collective fertility inevitably falls, usually below replacement level. Societies such as Australia's and most in Western Europe now depend on imported fertility. Immigrants".

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

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" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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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ASIANS -- SOME COMMENTS FOR WHITE NATIONALISTS:

I have lived my entire life in a highly multicultural society so I am acutely aware of racial and ethnic differences. I grew up in an Australian country-town (Innisfail) that was only half Anglo. The rest were Italians, Spaniards, Greeks, Maltese, Yuogoslavs, Chinese, Sikhs, TIs (Melanesians) and Aborigines (blacks). And when with that perspective I look at my fellow Anglo-Australians I see people of admirable restraint, fortitude, good humour and moderation in all things. But that is only the majority. There is also a minority who are shitheads and morons.

Now I could sound like an uncomprehending elitist in saying that. Maybe I am just wiping off working class people and glorifying middle class people like myself. It is however if anything the reverse. If anything I find something like three times as much good sense in the workers as I do in the bourgeoisie. But there are shitheads in both camps. And I find that even the difficult cases among the workers are not much of a problem to me personally. Because I was born into an Australian working class family, working class thinking and conventional wisdom is an open book to me. I know all the key words and key phrases and I defer to no-one in my knowledge and enjoyment of the brilliant Australian slanguage. And I certainly did put all that to the test when I spent a couple of years as a boarding house proprietor in a "depressed" area (Ipswich) of Brisbane. I was really dealing with the hard cases there. A significant number of them in fact came to me directly from "the big house" (jail). Yet such is the power of a shared culture that I was in all cases able to handle to my satisfaction the people concerned. I always knew the right words to use. The people concerned were a considerable problem to others (and to themselves) but they were well within my capacity to handle -- though the time I threw a druggie through a closed door was approaching my limits. Words are wasted on druggies. So there is no doubt that I am as much an insider to basic Anglo-Australian culture as anyone ever will be. I am of my culture and I appreciate it and enjoy it.

But much as I am at home among my own people, I am still delighted at the sterling qualities I find in Asians. I find scarcely any shitheads among them. And I put my money where my mouth is. I actually share my large house with Asians -- mostly South Asians. None of them are of course flawless human beings but when I think of their relaxed good humour, their intelligence and their unfailing politeness and restraint I cannot see that they are inferior to anyone or that they are anything but an asset to any environment they inhabit.

Now somebody will want to tell me that it is different in England. And it certainly is different superficially. The way just about EVERY small business in London is run by South Asians is pretty amazing (though the way English shop-assistants treat their customers makes it a lot less amazing). And when I am in England and I walk into one of those Asian shops I am greeted with the wariness and reserve that experience has taught the proprietors concerned. But I only have to exchange half a dozen words with the people concerned before all that changes. Because I genuinely like and admire Indians, that message gets through almost as fast as a bullet and it is soon smiles all round. I remember once when I was in an Indian shop in London and some old English prick was telling the Indian proprietor how great the English were and how the world owed them a living. As I walked out, I "accidentally" shouldered him hard enough to knock him over. I felt embarrassed that a fine Sikh gentleman had to put up with such crassness from the prick concerned.

And nor am I talking about immigrant Indians only. I have also lived in Bombay and I can only admire the cheerfulness, enterprise and good humour of the street-people there.

I certainly don't think that all races are equal any more than I think all people are equal but I also think it is absurd to say that there is something special about someone just because his skin is pink. Each case must be judged on its individual merits but it seems to me that on any non-racial scale of values the Asians average out well ahead. And we live in a century that will see that proven. Ironically, the poison that has held the Asians back so far is of Western origin -- socialism. If any people are instinctive capitalists it is the Indians and Chinese.

And the claim that Asian cultures are tribal is a grave misconception. Asian culture is a culture of reciprocity. So if you treat them well or do them a good turn you generate enormous feelings of obligation in return. So when I walk into an Indian shop where I am known and buy three samoosas for my lunch I will occasionally get a fourth one popped into the bag as a gesture of goodwill. What is problematical about a culture like that?

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ELSEWHERE

Sanity creeping in to the TSA at long last: "The federal agency in charge of aviation security is considering major changes in how it screens airline passengers, including proposals that an official said would lift the ban on carrying razorblades and small knives as well as limit patdown searches. The Transportation Security Administration will meet later this month to discuss the plan, which is designed to reduce checkpoint hassles for the nation's 2 million passengers. It comes after TSA's new head, Edmund S. "Kip" Hawley, called for a broad review in hopes of making airline screening more passenger-friendly. An initial set of staff recommendations drafted Aug. 5 also proposes that passengers no longer have to routinely remove their shoes during security checks. Instead, only passengers who set off metal detectors, are flagged by a computer screening system or look "reasonably suspicious" would be asked to do so, a TSA official said Saturday. Any of the changes proposed by the staff, which also would allow scissors, ice picks and bows and arrows on flights, would require Hawley's approval, this official said, requesting anonymity because there has been no final decision".

Arizona: Challenge to law on illegals dismissed: "A lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Proposition 200 in Arizona, which prohibits illegal aliens from receiving some public benefits, has been dismissed by a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The suit, brought by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and Friendly House, a Phoenix-based nonprofit social service agency, was dismissed by U.S. Appeals Court Judges Alfred T. Goodwin, Johnnie B. Rawlinson and Thomas M. Reavley, sitting as a visiting judge. The panel said the plaintiffs had not shown they had been injured by implementation of the new law. 'The appeal is dismissed for want of jurisdiction. The district court record reveals that there was no case or controversy between plaintiffs and the state of Arizona when pleadings were before the district court,' the panel said."

An interesting argument here in favour of splitting Germany up into East and West again. The still socialistic East keeps Leftist politicians in power in the country as a whole. Rather like the way the socialistic North keeps Labour politicians in power in Britain as a whole.

Chris Brand has just done some new posts with lots of news about the increasing media acceptance of IQ

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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

Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

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" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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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THE MOST MORONIC ARM OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT

Or the most visibly moronic anyway

The obnoxious TSA again: "No, I haven't got some great alternative but do I need to in order to notice that there's something amiss with the way the matter is dealt with? Here a coat must come off, there it doesn't matter; here you should remove your glasses, there it's unnecessary. Here the wrist watch needs to be put into that little tray, there it can stay on your wrist. And it goes on like that, from one airport to the next. And if you assume you have a clue what the next one will demand of you, you are in for a surprise. And for threatening looks, even words, should you make mention of the fact. Yes, words. Several times, after I make polite mention of the inconsistency of their procedures, a gruff TSA official has told me to 'shut up.' Other times I have been told that if I say another word, I will be arrested. And I do not mean a word like, 'I am about to carry some bombs on this plane,' but, rather, 'Why is there no consistency in how this procedure is being administered?'"

Does the TSA take the prize for bureaucratic stupidity? "Pretend you work for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). You're a high muckety-muck at Houston Hobby Airport, and you've learned that a flight with 136 passengers and 5 crew will make an emergency landing there. It seems some passengers discovered a note in their seat pocket claiming a bomb was on board. You're responsible for getting these 141 souls off the plane before they're blown to kingdom come. Do you: 1. prepare to evacuate them ASAP when the plane touches down; or 2. find your airport's most isolated runway, order the plane to land there, and then leave everyone aboard for an excruciating hour. We can all guess which option the TSA brainiacs chose when Southwest Airlines Flight 21 was diverted to Houston Hobby last Friday."

Still no precautions against another Lockerbie: "Nearly four years after 9/11, Americans flying on passenger planes remain vulnerable to another terrorist attack in the air because of lax screening of the millions of tons of cargo loaded into the belly of aircraft, a three-month CNN investigation shows. While screening of passengers and their luggage has been shored up dramatically since hijackers commandeered four planes and crashed them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, little has changed regarding the security of cargo, according to an FAA inspector and the vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission."

DHS might let air passengers keep shoes on: "The Department of Homeland Security is seeking new security screening technology that would allow air travelers to board flights without removing their shoes. The department also is testing a privacy-sensitive version of an X-ray machine that has drawn complaints because although it is able to detect weapons beneath clothes, the initial version also provided a nude image of travelers. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is asking companies to develop a machine that can examine shoes while still on passengers' feet. Agency officials hope to begin testing this winter. The agency also is testing a version of the contentious backscatter X-ray machines that will outline the human form while screening for weapons, unlike the current design that shows a realistic image of naked bodies."

More like perverts than security people: "Consider if one is looking for a needle in haystacks, and haystacks are passing through one's presence on an hourly basis. Would anyone grab a random handful of each haystack that passed by and expect to find said needle by examining in minute detail each piece of hay in that handful? Of course not. Yet most air travelers think an invasive search of a 45-year-old man traveling with his wife and kids, or running a rod down the skin-tight top between the breasts of a pretty 16-year-old blond girl with a tan and painted nails (all 20 of them -- I counted) makes them safer. I might join the march in the streets protesting this idiocy, but of course I'd be the only one on parade. My fellow citizens might even be provoked by my lack of support for our nation's hardworking security people."

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ELSEWHERE

Big victory for Arnie (and California): "In a victory for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, California's Supreme Court overturned two lower courts on Friday and put back on the ballot a voter initiative that will determine who draws up California's state legislative districts. If voters approve Proposition 77 in November, it would take the responsibility for drawing the state's political map out of the hands of California's Democratic-controlled legislature and give it to a panel of retired judges. Schwarzenegger hopes the idea will enable more moderate politicians to win legislative districts that in the past have been carefully divided into Democratic and Republican strongholds. A legal battle erupted long before the election because its sponsors changed the language of the petition voters signed in 17 places before submitting it to state officials. Two lower courts ruled that the changes tainted the process but California's top court disagreed in a 4-2 decision, saying the changes were unlikely to have misled those who signed the petition.... The ruling ordered election officials to proceed with putting Proposition 77 on the November ballot."

A Leftist repents: "What he and a large part of the mainstream liberal-left don't and won't confront is that they have become the fellow travellers of the psychopathic far-right.... If you start by refusing to look Baathism or Islamism in the face, the logic of blaming everything on Tony Blair and George W Bush pushes you into making ever more excuses for the extreme right.... good motives of tolerance and respect for other cultures have had the unintended consequence of leading a large part of post-modern liberal opinion into the position of 19th-century imperialists. It is presumptuous and oppressive to suggest that other cultures want the liberties we take for granted, their argument runs. So it may be, but believe that and the upshot is that democracy, feminism and human rights become good for whites but not for browns and brown-skinned people who contradict you are the tools of the neo-conservatives. On the other hand when confronted with a movement of contemporary imperialism - Islamism wants an empire from the Philippines to Gibraltar - and which is tyrannical, homophobic, misogynist, racist and homicidal to boot, they feel it is valid because it is against Western culture. It expresses its feelings in a regrettably brutal manner perhaps, but that can't hide its authenticity.

Immigration and the welfare state: "More and more of my constituents are asking me when Congress will address the problem of illegal immigration. The public correctly perceives that neither political party has the courage to do what is necessary to prevent further erosion of both our border security and our national identity. As a result, immigration may be the sleeper issue that decides the 2008 presidential election. The problem ... will not be solved easily, but we can start by recognizing that the overwhelming majority of Americans -- including immigrants -- want immigration reduced, not expanded. Amnesty for illegal immigrants is not the answer. ... We must end welfare state subsidies for illegal immigrants. ... Without a welfare state, we would know that everyone coming to America wanted to work hard and support himself."

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

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" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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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A DEFINITION OF CONSERVATISM

Leftists talk a lot of nonsense about conservatism being opposition to all change, when every conservative I know would like to see a HEAP of things about the world changed. So what IS the basic core of conservatism? Below is how Keith Feiling, an eminent historian of the British Conservative party, defined what he saw as the lasting core of British conservatism over a couple of hundred years:

"It is a scepticism, amounting to disbelief in any purely intellectual process as a means to explain rights and duties or to justify political obligation. They distrust general notions such as "the community" and would argue that the despotism of reason may cloak as much sinister self-interest and self-deception as any other tyranny. Burke made eloquent how he hated 'the very sound' of abstract rights, insisting that men do not act on metaphysical speculations. And even more. His teaching was that the rules of politics are but morality enlarged, and that all moral questions are mixed questions; not to be resolved by pushing some one abstract principle to its extremity which must end in force, open or concealed, but always by reference to relation and circumstance and moral effect......

And it is not hard to see how that caution flows through to distrusting government, distrusting theory-based "reforms" and advocating individual liberty etc. (if my link to Feiling's article gets overloaded, you can also find it here and here)

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Anti-democratic "liberals" (so what else is new?): "Liberals have been beating their collective breast in recent years over the Bush administration's post-9/11 assault on civil liberties. But Michigan Democrats--from Gov. Jennifer Granholm to the State Board of Canvassers--have joined ranks with a radical, 1960s-style Trotskyite group to deny state residents the most basic of all rights: the right to vote. The group, which lives in a Malcolm X-inspired fantasy world and calls itself By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), has been engaged in a long guerilla campaign to prevent the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI) from getting on the state ballot. This initiative, backed by Ward Connerly, the California businessman who successfully spearheaded a similar effort in his home state, seeks to end, once and for all, racial preferences in public universities and state government. Polls have repeatedly shown that over 60% of Michigan voters oppose preferences"

Big labor destroys American jobs: "It is truly an amazing thing that the MSM (main stream media) has covered the breakup of big labor so much over the last week without mention of how anti-American labor always has been.... A union seeks to reverse economic progress out of economic ignorance and Democratic exploitation. Instead of getting a higher wage by being worth a higher wage to a free employer, the union seeks to get it through extortion: "give it to me or I'll go on strike, and with my Democratic friends in Washington I'll make it illegal for you to fire me while I'm on strike." This has nothing whatsoever to do with economic progress. It is one part economic ignorance and one part the Democratic exploitation of labor for their money and votes. It is shameful, disgusting, and anti American.... While the Democrats have legalized this domestic extortion, they have not been able, despite their best efforts, to prevent Americans from raising their standard of living by buying cheaper and better goods from overseas. This means that unionized American companies must close down and eliminate the union labor that made the higher priced, lower quality domestic goods. Unions therefore have destroyed major American industries, caused huge unemployment, not raised the general wage level, stolen from the poor, and deposited workers in the unemployment lines without a sense of how to contribute in a free country".

Far-Left lawyers: "the ABA opposes even laws that prohibit adult incest -- a position that would disgust the vast majority of Americans. The ABA also advocates not just abortion on demand but federal and state funding of it -- a position far outside the mainstream. And even in this time of war, the ABA opposes the federal law that requires universities accepting federal funding to allow the armed services to recruit on campus. ...the ABA's "Special Committee on Gun Violence," ...advances the view (according to its Web site) that "the perception that the Second Amendment is somehow an obstacle to Congress and state and local legislative bodies fashioning laws to regulate firearms remains a pervasive myth." This is a stunningly extreme (not to mention misinformed) statement. ...Within the ABA there is some hushed concern about its stagnating membership and creeping irrelevance to the practice of law. But precious few insiders are willing to recognize that the ABA is reaping what it has sown for decades: Its increasingly vocal advocacy of an increasingly extremist agenda appeals only to a minority of the profession."

A great post from an American expatriate in Tokyo. One excerpt: "Night or day, the Ginza district of Tokyo is impressive (actually Ginza is just one urban marvel in greater Tokyo), a cacophony of lights and pristine shop windows containing some of the most creative contemporary commercial art I've seen a longtime -- far better in design and aesthetic impact then some of the crap (to use Morgan Spurlock's word) that the non-commercial art elite tells us to digest (occasionally financed with tax dollars). The architecture and general design scheme around me was something I'd call postmodern sci-fi. The future had finally arrived and capitalism's mark was something that would have made Ayn Rand proud. I couldn't help but contrast the beauty, life, and dynamism around me with the stale and oppressive conformity and drab ugliness of an anti-capitalist ambience ("art" by bureau decree). The free people who walked around me were not obedient clones to an ideology "for a better world," they were manifestations of a better world - bourgeois materialism taken to its limits".

What a narrow escape America had from getting another psychopath (after Clinton) as President! There is still more coming out about the defamatory lies John Kerry told about Vietnam. Without the media covering up for him he would never have got past first base. Note this article: "Vietnam veteran Steve Pitkin claims that John Kerry pressured him to lie in 1971 when he claimed U.S. soldiers engaged in atrocities during the Vietnam War. Pitkin had been a key participant in John Kerry's infamous "Winter Soldier" hearings of the same year, which concluded that the U.S. military was allegedly engaging in war crimes against the Vietnamese..... Pitkin discloses that his lack of candor in the 1971 film clip actually reflected his efforts to avoid giving Kerry what he so desperately wanted: war stories about how American troops in Vietnam were daily committing war crimes in a last-ditch attempt to turn the tide in that 10-year conflict. In the end, Pitkin said, he gave in to Kerry's pressure and made up allegations of war crimes."

Realism about nukes: "Yet the notion that the nuclear genie can be willed out of existence through the efforts of right-thinking people is as absurd as it is wrongheaded. Just as guns and knives will be with us forever, so too will the bomb. We need bunker busters because North Korea and Iran are using underground facilities to build weapons that threaten us, and we must be able credibly to threaten in return. We need to have nuclear tests because the reliability of our principal warhead, the W-76, has been seriously called into question, and China must not be enticed to compete with us as a nuclear power. In neither case does the U.S. set a 'bad example.' Rather, it demonstrates the same capacity for moral self-confidence that carried America through World War II and must now carry us through the war on terror. Looking back after 60 years, who cannot be grateful that it was Truman who had the bomb, and not Hitler or Tojo or Stalin? And looking forward, who can seriously doubt the need for might always to remain in the hands of right? That is the enduring lesson of Hiroshima, and it is one we ignore at our peril"

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

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" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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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Brookes News Update

Is the world suffering from a glut of global savings? Explains why the idea that there is a glut of global savings is nonsense
Liberalism breeds terrorism Being a rational thinker, it is often impossible to understand how Democrats can be so stupid
Why should Israel retreat from Gaza? Will the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza be a victory for Muslim terrorism
Islamic fundamentalism? It just snuck up. Thanks to Muslim terrorists Britain's 'Bobbies' no longer just carry a nightstick as they have for generations but are touting submachine guns through London's theatre district
The ACLU: abortion right, death penalty for serial killers wrong? The Left are hypocritical in their arguments. They want to protect the guilty while saying it's OK to kill those helpless victims who can't defend themselves
Sewer Art Has Become "The Art of Law" California Attorney General Democrat Bill Lockyer used taxpayers' money to fund anti-American 'art'
Environmentalists Demonize CAFTA Objections leveled against the proposed Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) by the environmental establishment organizations are exaggerated

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ELSEWHERE

I have to laugh a bit at the pomposity of Leftist blogger Neiwert. Apparently the Califonia chapter of the Minutemen has gained some Nazi hangers-on and one of them unfurled a Swastika flag at a recent rally. Neiwert is of course condemnatory. If it had been a hammer and sickle banner, however, it would no doubt have been seen as quite chic. Being myself a libertarian, the evil twins of Communism and Nazism are abhorrent to me and in my view anything associated with mass-murder should be abhorrent to all decent people. But that puts Neiwert's type outside the realm of decent people as they are only too quick to at least excuse, if not admire, such mass-murdering creeps as Guevara, Castro, Lenin, Trotsky etc.

Confirmation of my analysis of Leftism from an unlikely source. The following (dated August 11) appeared on a site called "Revolutionary Left": "In my attempts to research the contribution of the Hippocratic school to psychiatry I came across [Dissecting Leftism]. Not sure how it came up in a search, but anyway; I just thought I'd share this piece of sheer idiocy with everyone. I mean, this guy equates "leftism" with Nazism... rrright- and he has a PhD? Look at the list of his other websites- "PC watch," "Greenie Watch" and "Education watch." Why does education need to be "watched?" .... He's right on about me though, I'm a leftie because I want attention"

There is an hilarious story from Germany's major newsmagazine here saying that America is collapsing in the face of economic growth in China: "China's steep climb has left America in a collective state of shock. The era of American dominance is heading towards its end, the century of Asia - with China as its central point - has begun. . For most experts, it is only a question of time until the Chinese economy surpasses the American. .nearly everyday the Americans experience a feeling that was earlier unknown to them: They are being trumped. .Two unequal competitors are facing off in this struggle: There are the Chinese bursting with self-confidence . and there is the USA, economically and militarily number one by a long distance, but weary and increasingly plagued by self-doubts". The fact that America is in fact surging ahead economically because it can give all the shit jobs to impoverished Chinese to do somehow gets ignored. Leftists never can see the obvious.

Amazing media hypocrisy: "Nothing heroic done by American troops in Iraq is likely to make headlines in the New York Times or be featured on the big three broadcast network news programs. That fact has now been belatedly recognized in a New York Times opinion piece, but with a strange twist. After briefly mentioning a few acts of bravery in Iraq -- including a Marine who smothered an enemy grenade with his own body, saving the lives of his fellow Marines at the cost of his own -- the Times' writer said, "the military, the White House and the culture at large have not publicized their actions with the zeal that was lavished on the heroes of World War I and World War II." Think about that spin: The reason we don't hear about such things is because of the Pentagon, Bush and "the culture at large."

Black racism: Leftist, of course: "Conservative African Americans Tuesday slammed liberal black activist Dick Gregory for referring to a Cybercast News Service reporter as a "white boy" during a nationally televised cable news program Monday night. Gregory later apologized for the remark. The exchange took place during the "Hannity & Colmes" program on the Fox News Channel. Gregory and Cybercast News Service Senior Staff Writer Marc Morano discussed comments Gregory made during an Aug. 6 march in Atlanta commemorating the 40th anniversary of the signing of the Voting Rights Act. Reading from Morano's article, co-host Sean Hannity asked Gregory to confirm whether he had made a number of controversial remarks during the event. The activist readily acknowledged that he had referred to Republicans as "white racist thugs" and called the United States "the most dishonest, ungodly, unspiritual nation that ever existed in the history of the planet." But, when Gregory hesitated in his responses, Hannity turned to Morano for confirmation. "You don't have to confirm what I said," Gregory charged. "I've already said it. So I don't need no white boy to come on and say yes, he said it."

Good comment from Medved: "Media stories about the London bombing suspects suggest they became radicalized because of the 'oppression of Muslims around the world.' While it's true that hundreds of millions of Muslims live in miserable circumstances, who's actually responsible for that oppression? Fifty nations boast Muslim majorities and not one of them boasts economic prosperity and a functioning democracy. ... The true oppressor of Muslims is Islam itself, with teachings that destroy any chance of progress, peace or freedom."

Carnival of the Vanities is up again and quite well-done this time. Too often you get desperate attempts to be funny that just make the whole thing hard to follow.

There is also a big new lot of posts up from Chris Brand, with his usual total disregard for political correctness.

And Wicked Thoughts put up quite a range of funny-but-serious posts yesterday.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

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" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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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A PSYCHOANALYTIC VIEW OF LEFTISM

This was written back in the 50s but there is still much truth in it. Some excerpts:

Strictly speaking, although he calls himself one, the modern liberal is not a liberal at all, but a collectivist. He is strongly defended by a dogma and when this is attacked he becomes contemptuous, derisive, and replies with verbal formulas and sarcasm. He has an unshakable, unrealistic conviction of his own infallibility and intellectual superiority.... Although modern liberals are actually few in number compared to true liberals or environmental liberals, their influence is felt out of proportion to their number because their anxiety presses them to force acceptance of their needs and since, by nature, they are clever, vociferous, and exceptionally articulate. They are the policymakers behind the scenes in government or the writers of articles of opinion in intellectual magazines and other media of communicatio

Characterologically this liberalism represents a misfired solution to the problem of guilt and anxiety: the anxiety gets bound up in political attitudes and ties, fixed to a specific and characteristic ideology. These "self-evident" truths the modern liberal sees as unshakable and unarguable, since any attempt to challenge them shakes the very core of his defenses and stirs up intolerable anxiety. The modern liberal ... is further from genital primacy [than the true liberal] and less capable of rational functioning. He expounds all the ideas of the true liberal, not any longer for their own sake, but because they give him the feeling of righteousness and purpose. His humanitarianism is largely rationalization. His concern for others is not at all sincere, as in reality he is quite venomous, and his sympathy for the underdog is merely a reaction formation. The modern liberal lives almost entirely in his intellect.

the [modern] liberal uses intellectual contempt, arrogance, and clever verbal castration. His wit is barbed, amusing at the expense of others. He is void of kind or gentle feelings, except superficially in his causes, and that of course stops all argument, since anyone who "feels so deeply" about the injustices of the world must be above reproach. This intellectualism is his chief defense against feeling, especially his guilt and anxiety which color and pervade all his attitudes. His anxiety makes immediate fulfillment of his needs imperative, so he tends to favor revolutionary rather than evolutionary tactics. Since his real problem lies elsewhere, he is never satisfied, but needs to advocate constant change and expediency rather than long-range goals

He can allow himself to be aggressive only in causes and abstractions. Any other aggression fills him with intense anxiety and leads him to pacify, compromise, appease. For this reason he is unable to assume responsible leadership whether it be in government or in raising a child. Privilege he wants as a right and not something that must be earned competitively. The liberal's intellectualism, guilt, and fear of the father leads directly to his egalitarianism. He feels guilt at his own success or advantages and is thus opposed to differences in social structure. Basically he needs to feel that all people are the same. They are brothers and should fraternize freely.

Many injustices are committed on the altar of social consciousness.... I do not mean to imply that a sense of social justice is pathological. One has to look at the source. In the [modern] liberal the express motives are not the real motives. There is a great difference between a stock altruism based on hidden guilt and a genuine feeling for the golden rule, reality based. This stock altruism is not open to argument, because the [modern] liberal does not argue rationally, rather he uses sarcasm to imply that any intelligent and reasonable person would think as he does. He supports his premise by rhetoric rather than logic. He mentions reason often in his arguments-and even enthrones it as a panacea but seldom is he open to it.

The modern liberal is contemptuous of capitalism. The expressed reason is that capitalism is cruel and heartless: the real reason is that capitalism is cruel to him, because it is a system in which individuals must compete on their own, which he cannot tolerate.[Thus the modern liberal advocates that the government interfere in the constructive work of others]. The expressed motive is to help those unable to succeed; the real motive is to eliminate success, so that he will not have to feel anxious and inferior.

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ELSEWHERE

Lord love us! What has the world come to? In The Guardian, of all places, we find an article reporting that there is such a thing as general mental ability (popularly known as IQ) and that it is highly hereditary! I guess that after around 100 years of scientific evidence to that effect, the truth is getting just too hard to ignore. Excerpt: "Researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry are trying to unravel how much genes, rather than environmental factors, affect a child's academic prowess. By analysing the test results of 6,000 twins, they were able to see clear genetic factors emerging for both numerical skills and reading ability. They compared test results for seven-year-old identical twins, who share the same DNA, with the results from non-identical twins, who only share 50 per cent of their DNA, to assess how much was down to genes. Yulia Kovas, who led the investigation, said: 'Our work shows that there is a substantial genetic overlap between maths and reading, but also between maths and general intelligence. 'It seems that there is a group of "general" genes that govern our achievements at school."

Further to my comments yesterday about Bruce Kovner, a regular reader who was once himself a NYC financial trader writes: "I knew him when I worked at CS in the early 90's. He was/ is everything he is described and even more. He was also fair in his dealings with banks when other hedge fund operators were complete shitheads. We sat down once for a conversation about markets. That conversation taught me a few things about trading which I haven't forgotten".

Blair gets a deserved boot up the backside: "Two of Britain's closest allies in the war on terrorism made scathing criticisms of the Government yesterday for being soft and indecisive in dealing with Muslim extremists at home. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, both countries that co-operate closely with Britain against al-Qaeda, said that Tony Blair's Government had consistently failed to tackle Islamic militancy. In a farewell interview with The Times, Prince Turki al-Faisal, the outgoing Saudi Ambassador to London, said that he had been "going around in circles" during his 2«-year posting in a failed attempt to make Britain understand the danger posed by Saudi dissidents in London linked to al-Qaeda".

U.N. corruption: "A federal prosecutor investigating corruption in the $64 billion oil-for-food program issued the case's first criminal charges against a U.N. official, accusing a former Russian procurement officer of receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from companies doing business with the United Nations. Alexander Yakovlev, 52, pleaded guilty to three counts of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering, said David N. Kelley, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. The charges could carry a penalty of up to 60 years in prison. The case against Yakovlev grew out of the United Nations' own investigation of its marred oil-for-food program, and it came on a day when a U.N.-appointed panel accused Benon V. Sevan, the program's former director, of receiving nearly $150,000 in kickbacks from a company run by relatives of former U.N. secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali"

There is an amazing post up on Strange Justice that shows what a huge problem are wrongful convictions in the USA and why so few get reversed.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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The anti-business policies and practically all economic policies advocated by the Left are impoverishing. They waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so make the country poorer. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

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" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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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EGO AND POLITICS

I often make the point that Leftists have big but weak egos. They think they are wonderful but need constant approval from others to reassure themselves of that. So they advocate anything that sounds good at the time regardless of any adverse long-term consequences that it might have.

The converse of that, of course, is that conservatives have no need of all that hoopla. They just quietly get on with lives that they are broadly satisfied with. Ronald Reagan, of course is an excellent example of conservative humility. As Nancy Reagan said: "I think they broke the mold when they made Ronnie. He had absolutely no ego, and he was very comfortable in his own skin; therefore, he didn't feel he ever had to prove anything to anyone." And as Cal Thomas said: "He was hated for precisely the same reasons he was loved. He had convictions and made those without them look weak. ... He knew who he was before he came to office; he did not need the office to complete him." And Eamonn Butler noted Reagan's lack of egotism too:

"The pompous conceit of the media Establishment is parried by Reagan's own epitaph on his administration, which reveals his own complete lack of both pomposity and conceit, tempering his pride in having changed minds and changed events: "Men and women across America for eight years did the work that brought America back. My friends, we did it. We weren't just marking time. We made a difference. We made the city stronger, we made the city freer, and we left her in good hands. All in all, not bad, not bad at all.""

But Jeff Jacoby sums up Ronald Reagan's humility best. A small excerpt:

"But one trait has gone largely unmentioned: His remarkable humility.... But if no man was his better, neither was he the better of any man. That instinctive sense of the equality of all Americans never left him -- not even when he was the one with fame and power. I don't think I have ever heard a story about Reagan in which he came across as arrogant or supercilious. In a number of reminiscences this week, former staffers have described what it was like to work for the president. Several have recalled how, even when they were at the bottom of the pecking order, he never made them feel small or unworthy of notice. To the contrary: He noticed them, talked to them, made them feel special. Reagan climbed as high as anyone in our age can climb. But it wasn't ego or a craving for honor and status that drove him, and he never lost his empathy for ordinary Americans -- or his connection with them"

But, as great an example as Reagan was, one swallow does not make a summer so I thought readers might be interested in another example of an American conservative with vast influence but who nonetheless needs and seeks no praise or fame -- so much so that most people have never heard of him. I quote a few excerpts from an article about him by a Leftist journalist who, in a typically uncomprehending Leftist way, can only see the self-effacing manner of the man as "nutty"!

"If no one knows anything about Bruce Kovner, it is because he likes it that way. Yet the unassuming manner is camouflage for one of the most powerful people in the country, culturally, financially, and politically. Kovner, 60 years old and divorced, manages the largest hedge fund in the world and every year ratchets higher on the Forbes list of the richest Americans.... He's a neoconservative godfather. He is among the backers of the Manhattan Institute and the fledgling right-wing daily the New York Sun.... Most important, Kovner is chairman of the American Enterprise Institute. The right-wing think tank has supplied the government with the most powerful ideas in foreign policy in a generation... This is perhaps Bruce Kovner's signal (and shared) achievement: to underwrite what had been extreme ideas and bring them into mainstream discourse.... Now and then, Kovner's spending is directly political; last year, he spent a lot to re-elect President Bush. But his main interest has been quietly strategic: the idea factory. "Bruce is an intellectual. He understands the world of ideas," says Norman Podhoretz, the legendary editor of Commentary.... But again there is his outward manner: self-erasing. His press has been mostly limited to financial journals.... A socialite who encounters him at the opera is surprised by his schlumpy dress and regular-guy mien: "You'd never know he's a jillionaire." "One of his distinguishing characteristics is humility," says Thomas Carroll, president of the Foundation for Education Reform and Accountability. "If you meet him on the street, you would never know who he was. There's no fanfare, no pomposity, no effort to get people's attention." .... Kovner, over two decades, has underwritten the infrastructure the neocons have used to achieve their current prominence. On the fifth floor of the AEI building, the Project for the New American Century helped lay the ground for the Iraq war .... He plays visionary and psychiatrist to the AEI board. "He's brilliant," says Perle. "He's intellectually rigorous, balanced, and thoughtful.".... I gained the impression that everyone I had talked to gave me: that of a thoughtful, unpretentious, and highly reserved person, a man with a musical voice and a self-effacing manner"

And one of the comments about Kovner that the journalist records is insightful. It is a comment from another whizz in financial trading:

"Kovner's objectivity made him great. "If you can find somebody who is really open to seeing anything, then you have found the raw ingredient of a good trader-and I saw that in Bruce right away." Weymar told me that one of the most important qualities of a trader is ego strength, the self-confidence that allows a person to acknowledge his mistakes and not fall in love with his ideas. "The biggest risk in trading is hubris."

So we see again that a really strong ego leads to humility. It is weak egos who need to boast and cannot admit that they are less than wonderful.

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ELSEWHERE

A reader has pointed out to me an amusing response to the Guardian article I mentioned yesterday. The article said basically that the poor were in desperate need of having more money shovelled at them. More money would reduce their stress and make them happy. But another constant Leftist theme that goes back at least as far as Marx is that money does NOT make you happy (See e.g. here). So which is it? Why bother redistributing such useless stuff? One never expects logic or consistency from the Left, of course.

What a relief! The shuttle got home safely. More from good luck than good management, though. NASA has a lot to answer for.

AFL-CIO splitup ominous: "Despite wide coverage of bickering among Big Labor's top brass, the mainstream media overlooked the real story: The acrimony among several union chiefs amounted to little more than political posturing, blame-shifting, and a wrestling match over control of more than $10 billion in compulsory union dues. These developments only mean that America will face even more union militancy and even more coercive organizing. All the fireworks aside, the power to force more than twelve million workers to pay union dues or be fired - the crown jewel of all Big Labor special privileges - was unaffected by the shake-up. At its core, the controversy was simply a debate over tactics toward achieving the same end: corralling even more workers into union affiliation.... These militant tactics involve attacking companies until they agree to herd their employees into forced unionism without even so much as a workers' vote."

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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The anti-business policies and practically all economic policies advocated by the Left are impoverishing. They waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so make the country poorer. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

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" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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

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TUESDAY ROUNDUP

Once again I list what I think were the best posts on my various blogs in the preceding week.

On Blogger News I look at how to improve majority rights.

On Dissecting Leftism I note that up until the 1990s Sweden was Fascism in slow motion

On Greenie Watch I note that the antarctic is the key to sea-level rise but that the antarctic is COOLING overall

On Political Correctness Watch I report the failure of a religious vilification trial in Australia

On Education Watch I note that homeschooling in Germany is FORBIDDEN! You must obey! Not much has changed since Hitler's day.

On Socialized Medicine I report a case of public hospital waiting times forcing a British boy to go all the way to India for surgery

On Gun Watch a psychiatrist examines the anti-gun mentality

On Leftists as Elitists I note the colossal and unjustified arrogance of the Art world

On Majority Rights I look at ideology and IQ and note that Leftists are in fact DUMBER.

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ELSEWHERE

There is a review in The Guardian of a book (The Impact of Inequality: How to Make Sick Societies Healthier by Richard G Wilkinson) which claims to show that poor people suffer more stress and therefore die younger on average. So shovelling more money at the poor will save their lives! I expect that this will be a staple Leftist argument for a while now. But to say that the problem is money is just a typical Leftist kneejerk reflex. As a former boarding house proprietor in a poor area, I can emphatically confirm that the poor do indeed suffer more stress. But it is not for want of income. Australian welfare benefits are generous. When I was a student many years ago I lived on them myself with no adverse effects. No. The reason that the poor are stressed is because of one-another! The people they associate with tend to be stupid, dishonest and violent. And that leads to no end of stress, believe me! But it is too much to ask that a Leftist make any serious inquiry about WHY people are poor in countries that do so much to help them. To Leftists, it's "the system". In the Middle Ages it would have been "demons". Both explanations are equally empty.

There is a good critique of the incoherence of Marxist and socialist theory here. It's rather amazing that intelligent Leftists still think that way but the hate-filled conclusion they come to matters far more to them than how they got there.

Paul Johnson on antisemitism: "What strikes the historian surveying anti-Semitism worldwide over more than two millennia is its fundamental irrationality. It seems to make no sense, any more than malaria or meningitis makes sense. In the whole of history, it is hard to point to a single occasion when a wave of anti-Semitism was provoked by a real Jewish threat (as opposed to an imaginary one). In Japan, anti-Semitism was and remains common even though there has never been a Jewish community there of any size.... Like many physical diseases, anti-Semitism is highly infectious, and can become endemic in certain localities and societies. Though a disease of the mind, it is by no means confined to weak, feeble, or commonplace intellects; as history sadly records, its carriers have included men and women of otherwise powerful and subtle thoughts. Like all mental diseases, it is damaging to reason, and sometimes fatal".

A good quote from Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan: Historically, Democrats had "rewarded the articulation of moral purpose more than the achievement of practical good."

Democracy demands ousting the incumbent class: "These days, there are fewer and fewer competitive congressional elections. That is a very worrisome trend, because political competition matters a great deal. More candidates for office and the increased turnover of representatives produce better choices for voters. Political competition also heightens voter interest, stimulates the adoption of distinctive policies by candidates and parties, and produces higher voter turnout. This is not the outcome our constitutional framers intended. The House of Representatives was designed to be the legislative body most responsive to public opinion. But the decline in competitiveness makes the House less representative. This is not the outcome our constitutional framers intended."

Don't get into a lather over sweatshops: "San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is pushing the city council to adopt an ordinance that forbids the use of municipal funds to purchase uniforms and other clothing made in 'sweatshops.' Across the country, colleges often adopt similar standards for clothing displaying their school logos. North American unions, such as Unite Here, the apparel and housekeeping workers' union, often lobby to impose working standards for developing countries similar to San Francisco's proposed ordinance. Though these efforts are intended to help poor workers in the third world, they actually hurt them."

Huge savings by cutting out the government middle-man: "Extracting taxes and administering their redistribution is also very expensive and inefficient. Imagine the army of bureaucrats servicing that perpetual round-robin. His first modest proposal is that as much as possible of the money churned out via tax and then back via transfers and services to the self-same individuals should be left in their pockets. About $85 billion is churned in this way every year. If left with taxpayers, it would represent vast tax cuts. If all churning could be stripped out of the system, it would allow personal income tax to be reduced to a flat rate of 10 per cent, with a tax-free threshold of $20,000. That would enable a great many people to self-fund their health and welfare needs, to save, to buy income insurance during their working lives and buy annuities or otherwise provide for retirement".

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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

The anti-business policies and practically all economic policies advocated by the Left are impoverishing. They waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so make the country poorer. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

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" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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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