THE LATEST U.S. IMMIGRATION STATISTICS

Between January 2000 and March 2005, 7.9 million new immigrants (legal and illegal) settled in the country, making it the highest five-year period of immigration in American history. Nearly half of post-2000 arrivals (3.7 million) are estimated to be illegal aliens. Immigrants account for 12.1 percent of the total population, the highest percentage in 8 decades. If current trends continue, within a decade it will surpass the high of 14.7 percent reached in 1910.

Of adult immigrants, 31 percent have not completed high school, three-and-a-half times the rate for natives. Since 1990, immigration has increased the number of such low-skilled workers by 25 percent, while increasing the supply of all other workers by only 6 percent. Immigrants were once significantly more likely to have a college degree, but the new data show that natives are now as likely as immigrants to have a bachelor's or graduate degree.

The proportion of immigrant-headed households using at least one major welfare program is 29 percent, compared to 18 percent for native households. The poverty rate of immigrants and their U.S.-born children (under 18) is 18.4 percent, 57 percent higher than the 11.7 percent for natives and their children. Immigrants and their children account for almost one in four persons in poverty. Immigrants make significant economic progress the longer they live in the United States, but even immigrants who have lived here for 15 years still have dramatically higher rates of poverty, lack of health insurance, and welfare use than natives.

The low educational level of many immigrants, and resulting low wages, are the primary reasons so many live in poverty, use welfare programs, or lack insurance - not their legal status or an unwillingness to work.

Immigration accounts for virtually all of the national increase in public school enrollment over the last two decades. In 2005, there were 10.3 million school-age children from immigrant families in the United States.

Recent immigration has had no significant impact on the nation's age structure. Without the 7.9 million post-2000 immigrants, the average age in America would be virtually unchanged at 36 years.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Major Leftist German newsmagazine Spiegel is condemning America for the execution of the murderous Tookie Williams. The Left have always liked murderers. No mention of Tookie's victims, of course.

The stupid Left again: Spiegel has another an article on "THE EMPIRE OF SHADOW - The worldwide operations of the U.S. Secret Intelligence Service", and the picture on the cover shows ... members of the Canadian military!" Reminds one of the recent case when the American Left mistook British soldiers for Americans, despite the different uniforms

Government Intervention Makes Houses More Expensive: "Escalating prices that have made houses unaffordable for many people in Washington are mostly the result of homeowners using political and regulatory means to block construction of new housing, economic studies show. . . . Economists increasingly are concluding that the shortage of affordable housing in Washington and other major U.S. cities on the East and West coasts is a result more of man-made restrictions on development than high construction costs or other market forces."

Hooray! 20 years for Muslim animal: "A Muslim father was sent to jail for at least 20 years yesterday for ordering his sons to kill a teenager who was going out with his daughter in defiance of his wishes. Chomir Ali, 44, recruited his sons to murder Arash Ghorbani-Zarin, 19, after discovering that his only daughter, Manna Begum, also 19, was pregnant by him. Mr Ghorbani-Zarin, an Iranian Muslim who was studying at Oxford Brookes University, was found in November last year with his body tied to the driver's seat of his car. He had been stabbed 46 times. Mujibar Rahman, 19, and his brother, Mamnoor, 16, were given minimum terms of 16 and 14 years respectively. Ali, a waiter from Bangladesh who settled in Oxford, and his sons were found guilty of murder at Oxford Crown Court last month. Mr Justice Gross, who passed sentence yesterday at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, said: "Far from vindicating your family's honour, you have permanently dishonoured your family with the stain of murder."

Another reason for the Left to hate Wal-Mart: "The U.S. economy entered its fifth year of expansion in November, with non-farm payroll employment, a broad economic indicator, having expanded by 4.5 million jobs (3.4 percent) since bottoming in May 2003. Wal-Mart, meanwhile, the nation's largest private employer, has been creating new jobs at a much higher rate. Data obtained from Wal-Mart show the retail giant expanding employment by 15 percent in the same two-and-a-half-year period. That's only part of the incredible success story being told by the Arkansas-based retailer. The Wal-Mart employment effect, rarely examined by economists, is so strong that it is counter-cyclical. In other words, the retailer has created new jobs in every recession since it went public in 1971... this point is clear: A corporation that adds new jobs in periods of recession, while many others are laying off workers, is good for the U.S. economy.

Australia buys Boeing: "QANTAS says it will acquire 115 Boeing 787 aircraft as part of its fleet renewal program in a deal worth up to $24 billion. Qantas will take delivery of acquire of the first 65 aircraft from 2008 at a list price of $13 billion. "Obviously with the 115 aircraft it gets up to about $23 to $24 billion," chief executive Geoff Dixon said".

Spengler has some scathing comments on irrelevance to mainstream America of the latest films out of Hollywood -- including comments about Spielberg's film on the massacre of Israeli athletes by Arabs at the Munich Olympic games. He points out that the script for the Spielberg film was written by "the world's worst playwright" -- homosexual Marxist Tony Kushner. Kushner was not even fazed by the downfall of the Soviets, whom he supported until their downfall. Reliapundit has an extended reply to Kushner's raving.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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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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MORE ON "PATHOLOGICAL" RACISM

Taranto has a good comment on the latest psychiatric proposal. Excerpt:

The Washington Post reports that some psychiatrists are urging the creation of a new diagnosis that would cover people who display "extreme forms of racism, homophobia and other prejudice":

"They are delusional," said Alvin F. Poussaint, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who has long advocated such a diagnosis. "They imagine people are going to do all kinds of bad things and hurt them, and feel they have to do something to protect themselves.

What about black people who entertain paranoid conspiracy theories about white people? The Post doesn't address this question, so we have to turn to an NBC report, in which our old friend Alvin Poussaint shows up singing a somewhat different tune:

Dyan French, also known as "Mama D," is a New Orleans Citizen and Community Leader. She testified before the House Select Committee on Hurricane Katrina on Tuesday. "I was on my front porch. I have witnesses that they bombed the walls of the levee, boom, boom!" Mama D said, holding her head. "Mister, I'll never forget it."

"Certainly appears to me to be an act of genocide and of ethnic cleansing," Leah Hodges, another New Orleans citizen, told the committee. . . .

Harvard's Alvin Pouissant [sic] says such conspiracy theories are fueled by years of government neglect and discrimination against blacks: slavery, segregation and the Tuskegee experiments, during which poor blacks were used to test the effects of syphilis. "If you're angry and you've been discriminated against," Pouissant says, "then your mind is open to many ideas about persecution, abandonment, feelings of rejection.

Now, maybe there's some subtlety here that doesn't come across in the two quotes, but it certainly sounds as though Poussaint is saying behavior that is normal in blacks is a sign of mental illness in whites..

I should perhaps note here that psychologists have been trying at least since 1950 to pathologize racism but the evidence for its pervasiveness is such that, as even the Washington Post noted, most psychologists and psychiatrists these days regard some form of negative feeling towards minorities as normal and natural.

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ELSEWHERE

I have just put online an article written in 1980 by Herb London, a conservative professor. It gives an account of his experiences in the 1960s and 1970s with student radicals. The brownshirts he describes are of course now the professors. See here or here

The mask of the British Left has now slipped right off: "Before you go to a left-wing meeting, brace yourself for the likelihood that everyone you meet in the hall will be standing on their head. Do not be surprised to see communists supporting fascism, feminists throwing their arms around misogynists and liberals volunteering to be advocates for tyranny. It's been like this since 9/11.... Anyone who now believes CND [Committee for Nuclear Disarmament] is as much against proliferation [of nuclear weapons] as for unilateral disarmament would have been surprised by this autumn's annual conference. Among the guests was the startling figure of Dr Seyed Mohammad Hossein Adeli, the then Iranian ambassador. Iran is building the nuclear power stations CND once protested against - an odd project for a country with one of the largest reserves of oil in the world. Not only the US government but the United Nations and the European Union suspect the Islamic Republic wants the bomb. The obvious course for those sincere about nuclear disarmament is to oppose Tehran as vigorously as they oppose a replacement for Trident [U.S. nuclear missile submarine]. But there's the rub. Standing by its principles would, if only for a moment, have put CND on the same side as George W Bush and Tony Blair, and that would never do.... Members of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran exiled in London gazed with astonishment on CND's dalliance with a "fascistic" state. The invitation to the ambassador was an "outrage", the party said. CND was insulting "the people of Iran who are struggling to get rid of this brutal regime", and the countless thousands who have died in the attempt.

Keith Burgess Jackson on Leftist projection: "Once again, we see the stereotype of the dumb (or at least the intellectually uncurious) conservative. Liberals are smart; conservatives are dumb. Liberals think; conservatives emote. Liberals debate one another in search of truth and justice; conservatives flock together. In fact, the success of conservatism as a political movement lies precisely in its willingness to debate, discuss, and think. It's liberals who emote (their hearts bleed even for murderers); it's liberals who act like herd animals (John Kekes calls their unexamined assumptions "the liberal faith"); and it's liberals who are too dumb to figure out how to win elections. How smart can you be if you keep nominating northeastern elitists-people whose patriotism is suspect, who believe in a Nanny State that punishes the productive and rewards the unproductive, who are hostile or indifferent to religion, and who think the United States is the world's problem rather than the solution to the world's problems?"

Good riddance to Tookie: "With the execution of former gang leader and convicted murderer Stanley "Tookie" Williams virtually assured to occur tonight, members of the black leadership network Project 21 are calling on the public to remain calm as justice is administered. They are also critical of those who seek to elevate Williams to hero status despite his conviction and his history steeped in violence. "There can be no clemency for someone directly responsible for the murders of four innocent people and indirectly responsible for the deaths of possibly thousands more"

Wow! Hits on my Australian Politics blog have quadrupled over the last couple of days. My coverage of the fightback against Muslim aggression by young Australians is no doubt responsible. There is such a lot of garbage being spouted in the media about it that my habit of calling a spade a spade must be a welcome change for people who are trying to figure out what is really going on.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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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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WHY LEFTIST JOURNALISTS DESPISE ISRAEL

Some excerpts from a talk by Andrew Bolt

Disdain for wealth: The neo Marxist theory that wealth is never created, it is expropriated. Therefore if there is a wealthy country next to a poor, then the wealthy must have exploited the poor. Poverty is always someone else's "fault". Thus here, if Israel is rich and the Palestinians are poor it must be Israel which is to blame.

Disdain for personal achievement: Anti Capitalism. Israeli kibbutzim no longer reflect socialist ideology. They are actually a hub of capitalism at work. Because in capitalism, individuals are respected with their individual motivations, the "grand plan" intellectuals mentioned above find this problematic.

Disdain for Christianity: Anti Christianity. Maurice Samuel wrote in 1941 that any attack on the Jews is a proxy attack on Christianity. He maintained that Hitler actually hated Christians for the same reasons that he hated Jews. Christianity is against "grand schemes" which subordinate ordinary people in favour of the big cause. In Christianity even the most humble person is supervised by G-d and it is the same with Judaism. Judaism and Christianity stand in the way of the great totalitarian movements. There is no such thing as an individual somehow "falling below G-d's radar". The anti Christian tendencies among journalists in the feral organistions play against Israel.

Revival of paganism and tribalism: This means the rise of the Greens. Israel is fighting the noble savage - people who are tribal and brown. The closer to the land the more noble. The more industrialized a nation, the more sinister. It is an unfortunate obervation that in a dispute between a person of a whiter skin, and a person of darker skin favour will be shown by the journalist to the darker skin. The darker the skin the more sympathy, the more the anti racism racism.

Hidden admiration of violence: The Left has a perverse respect for violence. They preach peaceful negotiation at one level, but simultaneously favour violent overthrow by some vanguard of perceptive people, ie they like their militarism. Journalists don't see fit to condemn this. For example the writers festival invited Tariq Ali who supports violent overthrow.

Contempt for democracy: Totalitarianism has a perverse appeal to the far left. Thus the imposition of democracy on others is too often disparaged, unappreciated or simply ignored.

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ELSEWHERE

Another diagnosis of Leftism. Excerpt: "According to author Phillip K. Dick, reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. Using this benchmark to judge the sanity of the Left, it becomes apparent that they have, indeed, lost their cats-eyes and pearly whites. The modern Liberal is madder than a haberdasher at a Lewis Carroll tea party. How did this happen? ... To understand why the radical fringe is so at odds with reality, it is necessary to understand the philosophical underpinnings of what they believe. There are numerous intellectual influences at the core of the modern Left, and each of these contribute to the final architecture of the asylum that is Liberalism. We need to look at a few of them to get the general idea. 1. Man Is Inherently Good: Rousseau is the primary originator of the modern version of this belief. This concept is at odds with the Christian worldview, which holds that Man has a fallen nature, and will sink to the level of barbarism if his appetites are not constrained. This particular view of man as originally perfect has a number of consequences; the Anti-Americanism often displayed by the left stems from the belief that our system is corrupting to the individual, and must be destroyed to free Man to realize his potential. Remember the students chanting "Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Western Civ has gotta go!"? The idea here is that our civilization is at the root of suffering and evil, and by ridding ourselves of it we will be free to be righteous. Radical Environmentalism is another consequence of this particular concept. Many Environmentalists believe that a return to a state of nature will be a return to paradise

"Experts" more wrong than right "People who make prediction their business-people who appear as experts on television, get quoted in newspaper articles, advise governments and businesses, and participate in punditry roundtables-are no better than the rest of us. When they're wrong, they're rarely held accountable, and they rarely admit it, either.... the better known and more frequently quoted they are, the less reliable their guesses about the future are likely to be. The accuracy of an expert's predictions actually has an inverse relationship to his or her self-confidence, renown, and, beyond a certain point, depth of knowledge. People who follow current events by reading the papers and newsmagazines regularly can guess what is likely to happen about as accurately as the specialists whom the papers quote. Our system of expertise is completely inside out: it rewards bad judgments over good ones".

The Koran: A New Mein Kampf? "Last week in New York Oriana Fallaci said that "the Koran is the Mein Kampf of this movement. The Koran demands the annihilation or subjugation of the other, and wants to substitute totalitarianism for democracy..You will find that all the evil that the sons of Allah commit against themselves and against others is in it." This statement has caused considerable controversy. Some maintained: "There are moderate Moslems.Tarring the whole religion is counterproductive.If there are no moderate muslims, as Fallaci says, then we are doomed." But of course, Fallaci did not say that there were no moderate Muslims; she said that there was no moderate Islam. As Ibn Warraq has said, "There may be moderate Muslims, but Islam itself is not moderate." .... Any cursory glance at the statements of jihadists shows them to be filled with Koran quotes and appeals to other Muslims that they represent "pure Islam." Nor are these jihadists misrepresenting what the Koran says. They take the book's many martial verses at face value. Over 100 Koranic verses exhort believers to wage jihad against unbelievers. "When you meet the unbelievers in the battlefield, strike off their heads and, when you have laid them low, bind your captives firmly" (Koran 47:4). This is emphasized repeatedly. Jews and Christians are among those to be fought"

Death penalty is Biblical: "No passage in the Bible -- Old *or* New Testament -- disapproves of the death penalty, which is why the bishops do not cite one. The Sixth Commandment (in Catholic reckoning, the Fifth) is clearly no bar to capital punishment. The penalty for those who violate "You shall not murder" (Exodus 20:13) is made explicit just a few lines later: "Whoever strikes a man and kills him shall surely be put to death" (Exodus 21:12). The text goes on to specify that this applies only to deliberate murder, not unintentional killing. Accidents are not capital crimes. But for a willful killer, there can be no sanctuary: "Take him even from My altar and put him death" (Exodus 21:14)."

The Left never stop their old evidence-disregarding chant of "no connection" between Saddam and terrorism. Just some of the evidence for a connection is summarized here

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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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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Psychiatrists Debate Pathologizing Racism, Depathologizing Pedophilia

(Post lifted from Majority Rights)

Psychiatry Ponders Whether Extreme Bias Can Be an Illness

Mental health practitioners say they regularly confront extreme forms of racism, homophobia and other prejudice in the course of therapy, and that some patients are disabled by these beliefs. As doctors increasingly weigh the effects of race and culture on mental illness, some are asking whether pathological bias ought to be an official psychiatric diagnosis.

Psychiatric Association Debates Reclassifying Pedophilia

In a step critics charge could result in decriminalizing sexual contact between adults and children, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) recently sponsored a symposium in which participants discussed the removal of pedophilia from an upcoming edition of the psychiatric manual of mental disorders.

This reminds me of the time the "psychiatrists" decided, within a few year span during the early 1970s, to take homosexuality off of their list of pathologies and then pathologize "homophobia". In that few year span leading "psychiatrists" managed to declare their recently-former-selves to have been suffering from a "psychiatric" disorder.

But never mind -- there is work to be done here right? Having marched forward and transcended minor setbacks to progresss in psychiatric treatment, like lobotomy we're now poised for far more precise treatment of "phobias" using Oxytocin.

Let the cranial injections begin!

And I don't suppose we are allowed to mention the use of psychiatry as a tool of state repression in the old Soviet Union!

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ELSEWHERE

Leftists are so keen to project their own hate-filled attitudes onto conservatives that it is very annoying for them that there are in fact practically no hate crimes committed by identifiable conservatives. But, no problemo! The Left just invent such crimes. Michelle Malkin has a good coverage of the latest such fraud, the Mirecki case.

Right-to-Organize or right to force others to join unions?: "With the nation's labor unions divided and shrinking, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. has organized 100 demonstrations nationwide this week to assert that the right of American workers to form unions is being systematically violated. Eleven Nobel Peace Prize winners, including the Dalai Lama and Lech Walesa, are backing the protest against violations of the right to unionize in the United States and other nations."

Germany and Russia cosy up: "It's all about gas: former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder will lead the shareholders committee for a German- Russian gas-pipeline project to pump gas under the Baltic Sea, OAO Gazprom Chief Executive Alexei Miller said today. On September 8, 2005, Schroeder - then still German chancellor - attended the signing of the contract for the pipeline, together with Putin. The pipeline had a clear political background - the contract needed the approval of the German as well as the Russian government. The deal increased Germany's already dangerous reliance on Russian gas deliveries. I guess the two chaps used the opportunity to also discuss Schroeder's future role at Gazprom. This is a conflict of interest if there ever was one".

Why the Islamofascists are so bloodthirsty: "Why do these rebels revel in killing civilians? I think they are exploiting a cultural obsession with death that has its origins very much in the West. Indeed, they seem to define themselves in direct opposition to what they perceive as a cowardly Coalition. The Coalition tries to avoid risky operations; the insurgents take outrageous risks. The Coalition promises to avoid taking casualties; the insurgents kill as many as they can. The Coalition suppresses images of the dead; the insurgents kill their victims for the cameras. This insurgency is best understood, not as a band of freedom fighters or evil incarnate, but as a movement with an intuitive grasp of the West's fearful psychology. Insurgents who pay attention to our debates about the war will notice one thing: We are terrified by death. The authors of the war promised this would be a "clean" invasion in which few would die, while their anti-war opponents obsess over numbers of dead and images of the dead. Both sides have helped to turn death into the defining issue, so it is not surprising that the insurgents should focus on that same issue".

Congress looking at illegal immigration: "The House next week will likely pass a big border security measure that's not nearly stringent enough for some conservative lawmakers. Instead, buoyed by grass-roots sentiment, these lawmakers are pushing plans that would radically alter the government's relations with illegal immigrants. The proposals range from not counting noncitizens in the census to denying U.S. citizenship to illegal immigrants' American-born children. "Now is the time for bold steps, not incrementalism," Arizona Republican J.D. Hayworth said. Legislatively, the odds are against the most dramatic proposals actually becoming law, especially because of opposition in the Senate."

I have just put up here my view of the recent Miss World competition results. Blondes appear to be "out". Even the Russian and Icelandic entries had dark hair!

On Australian Politics I am tracking the revolt against Muslim arrogance and aggression on Sydney's beaches.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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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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EXISTENTIALISM

Excerpt from a novel about Africa

Mma Ramotswe had listened to a World Service broadcast on her radio one day which had simply taken her breath away. It was about philosophers who called themselves existentialists and who, as far as Mma Ramotswe could ascertain, lived in France. These French people said that you should live in a way which made you feel real, and that the real thing to do was the right thing too. Mma Ramotswe had listened in astonishment. You did not have to go to France to meet existentialists, she reflected; there were many existentialists right here in Botswana. Note Mokoti, for example. She had been married to an existentialist herself, without even knowing it. Note, that selfish man who never once put himself out for another - not even for his wife - would have approved of existentialists, and they of him. It was very existentialist, perhaps, to go out to bars every night while your pregnant wife stayed at home, and even more existentialist to go off with girls - young existentialist girls - you met in bars. It was a good life being an existentialist, although not too good for all the other, non-existentialist people around one.

From p.76 of "Morality for beautiful girls" by Zimbabwe-born Scotsman, Prof. Alexander McCall Smith

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ELSEWHERE

Fun! A conservative New Zealand blogger started up a fake-Leftist site called Progressive Essays. The amusing part was that the content on the blog in fact consisted of recycled speeches by Hitler and various other Nazis and Fascists of history. Apparently no one spotted the difference. It was routinely linked as just another Leftist blog!

Bible OK after all: "A federal appeals court reinstated a California man's death sentence, ruling Thursday that jurors did not invalidate their deliberations by considering biblical arguments in favor of vengeance. The Los Angeles jurors in the 1979 case of Stevie Lamar Fields unanimously agreed that death was the appropriate punishment after their foreman circulated biblical and other religious passages - "an eye for an eye," for example - that seemed to require it.... A federal trial judge in Los Angeles reversed Fields' sentence five years ago, citing jury misconduct. The decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reinstate it appears to be the first of its kind and could make Fields, now 49, a candidate for execution in the near future".

Holocaust denial at Reuters: "Yesterday we noted that a Reuters dispatch, titled "Iran's President Questions Holocaust," included this sentence: "Historians say six million Jews were killed in the Nazi Holocaust." A later version of the dispatch, however, deleted the words "Historians say" and presented the Holocaust as fact: "The Nazis killed some 6 million Jews during their 1933-1945 rule." But today, Reuters has a new formulation: "Historians say six million Jews were killed in the Nazi Holocaust. Regarding this widely-accepted view, Ahmadinejad was quoted by the official Iranian news agency IRNA . . .". Reuters, of course, famously forbade its "reporters" from referring to the Sept. 11 attacks as an act of terrorism. "We're trying to treat everyone on a level playing field," said Stephen Jukes, the "global news editor," in September 2001. Apparently Reuters thinks Holocaust deniers are entitled to a "level playing field," even if that means downgrading a historical fact to a "widely accepted view."

European-born Muslims the most dangerous: "There was a real difference between those Muslims who had moved to Europe and those who were born there. Those who had moved here would say to me: "Things are much worse where I came from. Here I can sit and talk to you without worrying about the police." By contrast, the people born in Europe did not take that view -- they were much more likely to say: "Europe has made all these promises to us and hasn't kept them." They were much angrier, and scored much higher in all the alienation tests I used."

An acidic but accurate comment from Michael Graham : ""Americans have never been against sin in and of itself. Rather, we've always believed in sinning the right way. Racism, for example, is utterly evil, unless it involves denying slots at Ivy League schools to people who've made the tragic lifestyle decision of being white, Asian or Jewish-in which case, racism becomes the Lord's work."

Another French absurdity: "The notion of a notoriously bureaucratic French government stage-managing innovations in the high-tech sector -- typically known for fierce competition and a libertarian ethos -- seems paradoxical. But in France, business remains a risk-averse activity in which industry looks to the government for succor. Proponents say this is precisely what makes the initiative necessary: France has proven skilled at research but weak at transforming ideas into money -- a step requiring government orchestration"

California is another country: "Diplomats gathered in Montreal for the largest discussion of climate change since the Kyoto Protocol was signed eight years ago. The U.S. pulled out of Kyoto, but the state of California sent a delegation to Montreal to make its own deals".

A has-been on an ego trip: "Former US president Bill Clinton took to the podium at the UN climate talks Friday here to ram home a grim message about global warming and demand the United States move quickly away from the fossil fuels causing the problem. In a show-stealing appearance rumoured to have ired the US delegation, Clinton defended the UN's Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gases that was ditched by his successor, President George W. Bush, and said the switch to cleaner energy would create millions of jobs for the American economy".



A sentimental loss: "Britain's capital bid a fond farewell yesterday to the Routemaster double-decker bus that for half a century has been as synonymous with London as Big Ben. Other more recent double-deckers will continue to run, but the revered red Routemasters are in a league of their own. Loved by tourists and locals alike, the distinctive vehicles have run since 1956. But they are seen as expensive antiques and have been gradually retired since the 1980s. The last Routemaster - the number 159 - travelled from Oxford St to Brixton bus garage in south London last night, ringing in the end of an era.... The buses will not completely disappear. A few will continue on two London heritage routes".

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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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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POSTMODERNISM DECONSTRUCTED

I rarely read philosophy these days. I went into the basic philosophical questions in my student days and shortly thereafter had published my conclusions about the nature of mind, the nature of ethics, the nature of cause and the nature of self. I have never seen any reason to alter my views about any of the questions concerned in the many years since but I have at times elaborated a little more fully my views about moral philosophy.

And for me any philosophy that fails to give an account of mind, ethics, cause and self is quite simply failed philosophy. And a philosophy that denies that any of those things are real is therefore fit only to be ignored. As it happens, however, there are lots of failed philosophers about and they have somehow conned the taxpayers into paying them a lot of money. They call themselves "postmoderninsts" and, as far as one can make any sense at all of what they say, their essential credo seems to be "nothing is real". When I come across such garbage I tend to be overcome by the wish that I could hit the so-called philosophers over the head with a baseball bat and then say to them: "Don't worry. Nothing is real so I didn't really hit you over the head with a baseball bat. Just carry on as before while I get ready to hit you again". I think reality would be rapidly rediscovered under those circumstances.

I was triggered off into this little tirade by a book I have just been having a look at. It is called Explaining postmodernism and is by Prof. Stephen R.C. Hicks, who undertakes the heroic task of trying to make some sense of postmodernism and trace its historical roots. As irrationality has always figured largely in human experience, it is no surprise that he finds the sources of postmodernism to be many and varied and to go back a long way. He traces postmodernism back to Kant but he could have gone back much further if he had wished to look at lesser-known writers.

His conclusions are in general also mine, though he is more polite than I would be. In my view postmodernism is simply a juvenile tantrum about how unco-operative reality is with socialist thought. Socialism has of course long had big appeal to intellectuals because it offers the simplifications that intellectuals tend to seek. The only trouble is that the simplifications don't work. From the French revolution on through Stalin and Hitler to Pol Pot we all now know of the horrors that it regularly leads to. So having had their childish simplifications taken away from them by reality, Leftist intellectuals stamp their foot and say that it is reality which is at fault. By denying reality they are in some insane way able to hang on to their faith in socialism.

My only quarrel with Prof. Hicks is that he uses the term "Right" in a peculiar way -- no doubt through political expediency. He seems to think you can be of the political Right and also be a socialist! That enables him to avoid upsetting the applecart with regard to Hitler. He admits that Hitler was a socialist who differed only in detail from the Communists but still calls Hitler a Rightist! Calling Hitler a Leftist would in academe cause Prof. Hicks to be consigned to outer darkness, of course. The only sense I can make of Prof Hick's usage is that he is using "Right" to be synonymous with "Nationalist" but that is pretty sloppy when one considers that, at least from Napoleon on, there have been plenty of Leftist nationalists. Perhaps he just has not read Friedrich Engels, who was as fervid a German nationalist and racial supremacist as Hitler was. (See, for instance, here and here and here and here). And, yes, the Engels I am talking about is the co-worker of Karl Marx. Or were Marx & Engels not Leftists? I think in this matter I have to say that Prof. Hicks gets himself into absurdities as big as those he ennumerates among the postmodernists. Or perhaps he just does not know his political history. He reads this blog, however, so I suspect that he knows it better than he can afford to admit, which is a bit sad. But he has to survive in academe after all and he is only a young man yet.

In most normal usage, Rightism would be identified with conservatism and if anybody wants to know what history shows about the nature of conservatism, I have just updated my account of the matter here.

Academic books and papers very commonly end with the conclusion: "More research is needed" and Prof Hicks is no exception. He feels that postmodernists have been allowed to flourish by the fact that realist and empiricist philosophers have not given final and uncontrovertible answers to the puzzles that they consider. He seems to think that if realists and empiricists had done a better job then postmodernists would not have flourished. I think however that such a conclusion runs counter to his own observation that postmodernism fulfils a psychological need rather than having any real intellectual function. I cannot see that a completed program of realist philosophy would have stopped the absurd tantrums of the postmodernists. And the day that there cease to be questions in philosophy, it will no longer be philosophy.

There is another review of the book here which claims that Hicks does not describe the thought of the philosophers he covers in enough depth. My own view of that is that Hicks is a hero to have waded as deeply as he did into such dog's vomit. My own essay on postmodernism is here

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ELSEWHERE

Marxist pilgrims from China can't wait to get to the capitalist shops: Thousands of Chinese tourists are exploiting their new freedom to make pilgrimages to the German birthplace of Karl Marx - and squeeze in some shopping as well. This year more than 30,000 people from across China will have visited Trier, near the border with Luxembourg - an invasion jokingly attributed to the "Marx Factor".... The Chinese, who have been allowed to travel to Germany freely only in the past two years, are now the second biggest group of visitors after the Dutch. After a visit to the museum, most go shopping, spending an average of 135 pounds a day on items such as non-stick saucepans, steel cutlery, chocolate, designer suits and Swiss army knives".

The psychopathic John Kerry recently claimed that American soldiers go "into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children". Rush Limbaugh has lot of pictures of how the American military do that.

Jeff Jacoby says all that needs to be said about the Left's current infatuation with unrepentant and murderous Los Angeles gang-boss Stanley "Tookie" Williams. I personally would like to see done to Tookie just some of the things he has done to others.

Posts just up on Australian Politics include Australia's recent pro-Israel vote in the U.N. and Muslims trying to take control of Sydney beaches.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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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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BrookesNews Update

US economy and Pollyanna analysts: Against signs of US tightening labour markets some analysts have adopted the Pollyanna approach to economics, arguing that greater competition and improving technology will fuel productivity growth
Labour market reform, the US experience and the productivity myth: It appears that proponents of labour market reform have sold the Liberal Government the myth that a free labour market would raise productivity
Labour market reform and the capital-productivity fallacy: Australia's self-appointed guardians of free market thought are not the only ones to preach fallacious ideas about labour markets and productivity. Kenneth Davidson is just as bad
Australian Marxist-Leninist David Bradbury slimes US Army: Lying comes naturally to leftists like Bradbury as does their support for sadistic leftwing thugs. In 1984 he produced 'Nicaragua: No Pasaran' a film dedicated to the Marxist-Leninist Sandinistas who had taken over Nicaragua
Workplace reform, Hugh Morgan's arrogance and executive pay: Hugh Morgan has neither the knowledge nor the intellectual capacity to argue the free market case. That he believes otherwise comes from a character defect that allows him to confuse the size of his ego with the size of his intellect
The media are "enemy" within: The ongoing American tragedy is the ability of Democrat-controlled media to hide truth from the American people
The sexy Jihad -- or how to get a bang out of your love life: Before the Arabs solve their problems with their governments or before their governments solve their problems with terrorism, they must first solve their problem with the other sex
Supply and demand fallacies: The orthodox supply and demand framework provides the rationale for government and central bank interference with businesses

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ELSEWHERE

Who pays for farm subsidies? "The general public in rich countries bears much of the cost of agricultural protectionism. First, the public subsidizes the farming community through higher taxes. Second, the public pays food prices that are higher than they would be under a liberalized trade regime. In 2004, for example, agricultural support in the countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) came to about $280 billion. The EU's agricultural support amounted to about $133 billion, Japan's to $49 billion, America's to $47 billion, South Korea's to $20 billion and Canada's and Switzerland's to $6 billion each. Moreover, in 2003, the British think-tank Policy Exchange found that EU consumers 'pay 42 percent more for agricultural products than they would if the system were dismantled. Americans pay 10 percent extra, Japanese more than twice as much. For less well-off families, for whom food takes up a large proportion of household income, freer trade would mean a noticeably higher standard of living.'"

"Windfall" taxes bad for energy supply: "More fundamentally, all targeted tax hikes on energy-company profits are energy taxes no matter how they're labeled. As every policymaker should know from Economics 101, when government taxes something, the economy produces less of it, and when supply falls relative to demand, consumer prices go up. Thus, 'windfall profits' taxes or their accounting-gimmick equivalents are bound to make energy less affordable. Yet the leading proponents claim to be 'consumer advocates.' Are proponents confused, or is consumer protection a rhetorical cover for other agendas?"

Congress subsidises supporters of illegal immigration: "Thanks to a congressional earmark, an open-borders advocacy group that pushes for driver's licenses, free in-state tuition and healthcare for illegal aliens and bilingual requirements for state agencies and ballots is slated to get $4 million in new taxpayer money to add to the more than $30 million it has received from various federal agencies since 1996. The National Council of La Raza (NCLR), Spanish for "the race," will get its latest grant through an appropriations bill passed by Congress on November 18.

There is a very good article here spelling out how much the prewar KKK had in common with the "Progressives" of that era. Many of the things that the Left today brand as "Rightist" (including overt racism) were "progressive" in the first half of the 20th century. Excerpt: "In fact, the 1924 election indicates the extent to which the Klan was entangled with the progressives. For that was the year of the Democrats' infamous "klanbake" convention, when Klansmen participated heavily as delegates and blocked a platform plank that would have condemned their order. They also entered the presidential race ... they endorsed the Californian William McAdoo, son-in-law to the late President Wilson...... What were the man's most notable accomplishments? He had been one of the architects of Wilson's war collectivism, helping create the Council of National Defense and serving as head of the Railroad Administration. And as secretary of the treasury, he had been instrumental in creating one of the Progressive Era's most substantial new interventions in the economy: the Federal Reserve system".

Supreme Court considers recruitment case: "The Supreme Court appeared ready Tuesday to rule that Congress can withhold money from colleges that protest the Pentagon's ban on gay men and lesbians by denying military recruiters access to campuses. Most of the nine justices seemed skeptical of claims by a group of 30 law schools that said their First Amendment rights to speak out against discrimination are violated by a law that could allow the U.S. government to withhold billions of dollars from colleges that inhibit military recruiters."

Gift from Canada?: "Why does President Bush hope Christmas comes a little late this year? Because on Jan. 23, Canada may elect the most pro-American leader in the Western world. Free-market economist Stephen Harper, leader of the opposition Conservative Party, is pro-free trade, pro-Iraq war, anti-Kyoto, and socially conservative. Move over Tony Blair: If elected, Mr. Harper will quickly become Mr. Bush's new best friend internationally and the poster boy for his ideal foreign leader. Both north and south of the U.S.-Canada border, this vote matters."

Basic economics: "Economic ignorance, misconceptions and superstition drive us toward totalitarianism because they make us more willing to hand over greater control of our lives to politicians. That results in a diminution of our liberties. Think back to the gasoline price controls during the 1970s. The price controls caused shortages. To deal with the shortages, restrictions were imposed on purchases. Then national highway speed limits were enacted. Then there were more calls for smaller and less crashworthy cars. With the recent gasoline supply shocks, we didn't experience the shortages, long lines and closed gas stations seen during the 1970s. Why? Prices were allowed to perform their allocative function -- get people to use less gas and get suppliers to supply more."

Congratulations to all the Australian bloggers who got linked by the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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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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THE SPITEFUL LEFT

Taranto yesterday led off with some comments about the dubious motivations of the antiwar Left. Keith Burgess Jackson has taken that thinking one step further as follows (excerpt):

"James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal refers to the Left as "The Angry Left." I'm prone to calling it "The Hateful Left." But perhaps we're both wrong. I'm starting to think the best label is "The Spiteful Left." A spiteful person, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, 2d ed., is one who is "Full of, possessed or animated by, spite; malicious; malevolent." "Spite," in turn, is defined as "A strong feeling of contempt, hatred or ill-will; intense grudge or desire to injure; rancorous or envious malice."

Spite, along with envy, jealousy, and spleen, is one of the green emotions. A spiteful person is so bent on harming another that he or she is willing to pay a personal price to do it; hence the expression, "cutting off your nose to spite your face." Lawyers talk about "spite fences," which are fences built solely to prevent one's neighbor from seeing what's on the other side. Even the lowly expression "in spite of" incorporates this meaning. If I say that I like you in spite of your many defects, I'm saying that my liking for you has a personal cost to me, or that I like you grudgingly.

Having listened to leftists for the past five years, I'm convinced that many of the positions they take have less to do with the merits of those positions than with the fact that taking those positions harms President Bush....."

Keith also has another go at the contemptible Brian Leiter. Keith concludes: "The man is twisted. I am honored to be called "odd" by such a cretin. Now I know what Jules Coleman meant when he told me, in correspondence, that Leiter is "complicated." It's a polite (and plausibly deniable) way of saying he's nuts".

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Report: Last Five Years Highest Immigration in U.S. History

And Illegal Aliens Are Almost Half of New Arrivals

As the nation considers immigration proposals from Congress and the President, a Center for Immigration Studies analysis of new Census Bureau data shows that the immigrant population (legal and illegal) reached a new high in 2005. The data, which the Bureau has not yet analyzed, also show that 2000-2005 is the highest five-year period of new immigration (legal and illegal) in American history. Almost half of new arrivals are estimated to be illegal aliens.

The new report provides a detailed picture of the socio-economic status of immigrants, including estimates for illegal aliens. States with the largest increase in immigrants are California, Texas Georgia, New Jersey, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Washington, Virginia, Arizona, Tennessee, Minnesota, and Nevada. Embargoed copies of the report, ''Immigrants at Mid-Decade: A Snapshot of American's Foreign-Born Population in 2005,'' are available to the media. The study will be posted to the Center's site at http://www.cis.org on December 12.

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ELSEWHERE



What Britain's new Conservative Party leader stands for is listed succinctly here. Like John Kerry he apears to want to be everything to everybody. It may even win him an election but whether it will do Britain much good is doubtful. I think Britain has a long hard road ahead.

Bruce Bartlett points out that cutting the top income-tax rate has always INCREASED the share of total tax paid by the rich. Yet the envy-driven Left still avocate HIGHER taxes on the rich -- just the opposite of what they need to do in order to get the rich to make a bigger contribution. Bartlett concludes: "At some point, those on the left must decide what really matters to them -- the appearance of soaking the rich by imposing high statutory tax rates that may cause actual tax payments by the wealthy to fall, or lower rates that may bring in more revenue that can pay for government programs to aid the poor? Sadly, the left nearly always votes for appearances over reality, favoring high rates that bring in little revenue even when lower rates would bring in more".

The death penalty saves lives: This is old news to economists. Papers of similar import have been coming out since the 70s. Excerpt: "The most dramatic finding comes from Joanna Shepherd and a team at Emory University in Atlanta. They have taken advantage of the fact that some parts of the US don't execute murderers, and only a handful of states execute them consistently. (One of those states, Texas, accounts for more than one-third of the executions in the US since the Supreme Court lifted the ban on capital punishment in 1976.) After taking account of other regional variations thought likely to influence murder rates - among them the mix of races and the resources devoted to policing - they found that executions explained most of what was left. As they starkly report their central finding: each execution results in an average of 18 fewer murders. Or, to present the finding in an even more unsettling way: any state that refuses to impose the death penalty for murder is condemning 18 or so innocent people to death."

Lottery wins show that money doesn't solve the problems of the poor: "Mack and Virginia, if press accounts are to be believed, were textbook cases of how dysfunctional values cause problems of people. It is often believe that people like Mack and Virginia have problems because they are poor. This is the premise of the redistributive state. If money is taken from those who 'have too much' and given to those 'less fortunate' the increased wealth of the poor will eradicate the problems in living that they experience. The Left assumes that such problems are the result of poverty. But what if these problems did not result from poverty? What if poverty and these problems both were the result of the values they had embraced?"

Robert Hayes has just done a fisking of Barbara Streisand. She really is mind-bogglingly dumb.

The Carnival of Vanities is up again with much to read.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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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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BISMARCK AND DISRAELI: A SMALL REFLECTION

I take a great interest in 19th century history. I think you have to know at least the late 19th century to understand all that has happened since. It was after all the era that produced Karl Marx, the most influential misanthrope of all times. But Marx was such an intellectual midget and such a depicable character (even his own father, the kindly Heinrich Marx, thought that Karl was not much of a human being) that it is no wonder his legacy has been so malign and, in the end, irrelevant.



By contrast, the two greatest political figures of the late 19th century, Disraeli and Bismarck, achieved an enormous amount for humanity, peace and civility. Bismarck is normally pictured wearing his Prussian Pikelhaube (spiked helmet) -- though he was only in the reserves of the Prussian military in his glory years -- and that does tend to mislead people into thinking of him as a brutal militarist -- but that is the sort of ignorance you have to expect of people who have been fed the highly selective pap that passes for history lessons these days. In fact, Bismarck gave Europe a long era of peace and rapidly increasing prosperity.

After his great victory over Napoleon III at Sedan in 1870, one might have expected Bismarck to go on to a Bonapartesque quest to dominate all Europe, but he did nothing of the sort. The entire military campaign had not in fact been aimed at conquest at all. Bismarck simply used the war to unite Germany under the Prussian crown. So when the war was over, all but a small (but controversial) slice of formerly French territory was evacuated and Bismarck concentrated on creating the German empire -- not by force but by diplomacy -- albeit by diplomacy of a rather dubious sort at times. And a united Germany of course soon became the economic powerhouse that it has been ever since. But note this: from 1871 on, Europe had no major wars until 1914 -- a 43 year period of peace -- pretty unusual for Europe up until that time. And that long peace was largely Bismarck's doing. The united Germany's formidable military was a much a hindrance as a help because it made the rest of the world fearful and could well have encouraged a grand alliance against Germany. But by a series of ever-shifting and totally Byzantine series of diplomatic manoeuvres, alliances and treaties, Bismarck kept everybody off-balance and both Germany and the rest of Europe were left free to prosper peacefully and to develop the full fruits of the industrial revolution -- which they did mightily.

Bismarck was not as successful at heading off unrest at home, however. As in most of Europe, the newly-created industrial working class was in a fairly ongoing ferment -- a ferment in which Marx played a small part. So there were some serious rebellions, uprisings and disturbances. As in foreign affairs, however, Bismarck's ever-shifting policies and alliances managed to keep the peace overall. Regrettably, however, it was a fragile peace and violent socialism still lurked just beneath the surface. So after Bismarck was gone it broke out again -- as the powerful Communist and Nazi movements of the post-1918 period.



Bismarck's great English contemporary, Benjamin Disraeli, was far more successful at containing domestic unrest. Like Bismarck he saw the need for worker-welfare legislation as a means of buying social peace and both men were notable welfare innovators -- THE welfare innovators, it might be said. So what was the secret of Disraeli's success? Fundamentally, it was sentimentality. Although he was always vocal about his own Jewishness, Disraeli had a sort of love-affair with the English people that was only surpassed in more recent times by the love-affair that Ronald Reagan had with the American people. And the results Disraeli got were arguably as transformative as the results Reagan got. Disraeli had a great love and respect for English traditions and preached the virtues of Englishness incessantly. And he included in his embrace the ordinary English working people -- whom he saw as "angels in marble" -- people with great and good potential. He actually trusted the working-class -- an almost unheard-of idea among all the governing classes in Europe at that time. So he sponsored legislation that gave the workers the vote on a greatly increased scale. And they rewarded his trust by being far less susceptible to the political and social agitation that plagued their contemporaries in Europe. They developed a lasting trust in their national institutions that did far more for lasting peace and civility than anything else could have done.

At one of the great international political conferences of the time, Germany was represented by Bismarck and Britain by Disraeli. To Britain's considerable benefit, Disraeli ran rings around all of them -- causing Bismarck to make his famous admiring remark: "Der alte Jude. Das is der Mann" ("The old Jew. THAT is the man"). Coming from Bismarck, that was a compliment indeed. Disraeli himself attributed the greater social peace of 19th century England to Englishness but to a considerable extent it was in fact his own personal achievement.

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ELSEWHERE



Minutewomen: "Across the rickety barbed-wire fence, about a metre high, is Mexico, dotted with walking trails along which tens of thousands of Mexicans, many of them dirt-poor and illiterate peasant farmers, have trekked on their way to America and a better life. This 50-kilometre stretch of the Mexico-US border - about 60 kilometres from Tucson, where President George Bush delivered a speech on illegal immigration last week - is a key unofficial entry point. It is along this forbidding stretch of country that Connie Foust and Carmen Mercer, known locally as the Granny Brigade, have spent many of their nights these past eight months patrolling the border. They are part of the Minutemen movement.... Ms Mercer favours a .45 Colt pistol holstered on a wide brown belt studded with bullets. Ms Foust prefers a more discreet Ladysmith .38, which she wears high up on her waist. Both women insist that Minutemen are sworn not to use their guns "except to shoot snakes or stuff like that" .. There are an estimated 13 million illegals in America and they arrive at the rate of about a million a year."

There is a good post here on the disgraceful pandering of the Chicago Presbyterian church to the terrorist Hezbollah organization.

Chris Brand's latest lot of posts are now up- dealing with immigration, IQ, sex differences etc. See here

Twilight of conservatism: "This year marks the 30th anniversary of [Robert] Nisbet's Twilight of Authority, long considered something of a minor classic, and it is from that book that most of Nisbet's words that follow have been taken. Most interesting are three things: Nisbet's warnings about the ongoing growth in executive power, his prescient critique of American conservatism, and his skepticism and caution about the growth of the warfare state that has long since vanished from establishment conservatism. Nisbet's 1953 classic The Quest for Community argues that for the most part, every major modern political philosopher in the West, from Hobbes to the present, has taken as his starting point the idea of a unitary, all-powerful central state ruling over an undifferentiated aggregate of individuals, and which is legally and temporally prior and superior to all subsidiary associations."

A small apology: I have in the past refrained from putting up many pictures on this blog as graphics greatly slow down loading times for people using dialup connections. Now that broadband has become very widespread, however, I see less need for such restraint

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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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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IVF CHILDREN

As the father of an IVF child, discussions of IVF are a bit emotional for me. My IVF son is now 18 years old, 6' tall, blond, blue-eyed and well-built. He has just finished the first year of a science degree specializing in mathematics at a major Australian university -- where he got maximum marks for all his mathematics subjects. I could spit on the feminists and "ethics" dictators who have condemned IVF. Below is a short excerpt from an article by an IVF mother about a meeting of some IVF parents and children

"As part of her trip to Australia, Linda Reed and her talented daughter agreed to take part in a forum with other IVF and ART (assisted reproductive technologies) children, who talked about how it felt to be among the first generation of children born through the new technology. The children were grateful that persistent efforts to derail IVF (by feminist groups and Treasury bean counters, among others) failed and they took the opportunity to say: "Mum and Dad, thanks for having me."

They put out a statement urging the Government not to place too many restrictions on IVF, even for patients who haven't got much chance of success, because cracking the tough cases will lead to more progress and joy.....

The children at the forum were inspiring for their talents, their wit, their joy at being alive, and the pride they felt in their parents for being medical pioneers and making it so much easier for parents like me, who came a decade or more later".

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ELSEWHERE

Saturday Night Live Joins the Religious Right: "SNL's opening sketch last night derided corporate and public repressions of Christmas. Quick example: "How Ya' Doin'" substitutes for Handel's "Hallelujah!" Selections from the 12/03 episode will appear eventually at this website. When a culturally leftist show mocks the Supreme Court and public and corporate practice, a teaching moment is taking place. Cultural conservatives are generally too heavy-handed to take advantage of the situation"

Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch Turns Tables on Media : "The American media is up in arms over reports that the Pentagon hired a public relations firm to write positive news stories about the Iraq war and get them printed in the Iraqi press. But Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, spokesman for U.S. forces in Baghdad, isn't letting journalists get away with their phony display of outrage. After the New York Times front-paged the "fake news" story Thursday under the headline: "U.S. Is Said to Pay to Plant Articles in Iraq Papers," Gen. Lynch defended the practice. "We don't lie. We don't need to lie," he told reporters in Baghdad. "We do empower our operational commanders with the ability to inform the Iraqi public, but everything we do is based on fact, not based on fiction." Sounds to us like Gen. Lynch was taking a none too subtle jab at the mainstream media's penchant for reporting - not just planted stories - but its own faked news reports. Perhaps the next time he's questioned about "planting" stories, he'll get even more specific, by reminding the military's accusers of their own sorry history".



How a noted Australian Leftist sees us: "In his memoir, Latham is deeply troubled by what he thinks is a loss of community. He says our suburbs have become soulless wastelands utterly devoid of humanity. Our families and communities have become engulfed by apathy and disengagement. We are empty, apathetic and disengaged. We are losing self-esteem, discontented, suffering from stress and depression, broken and empty. We are locked in a gulag of consumerism, insular, artificial, unhappy and voyeuristic..... Latham fell into the trap of believing that the pursuit of something better is a wholly selfish character trait. Australians are an extraordinarily generous people with a long and distinguished record of financial support for those in need, together with an unparalled record of voluntarism. Self-preservation is the natural human order of things, the protection of life, limb, flesh and blood. So is self-advancement and that of those closest to you. These are not selfish notions to be ridiculed and derided as the gross obsessions of the newly moneyed. People are products of their environment, their daily challenges and triumphs, their fears and failings".



An Australian Methodist minister who respects Bible teachings: "The upper house Christian Democrat, the Reverend Gordon Moyes, is often criticised for his beliefs, even within his own church, but yesterday, just before his farewell, he did not hold back. Asked by the Herald what was his greatest failure as superintendent for 27 years of the Uniting Church's largest and richest parish, Wesley Mission, he said it was his inability to convince the hierarchy that homosexuality had no place in the church. "Ministers in particular must live a holy and respectable life. There should be no room within the life of ministers in the church for sex, whether it be heterosexual or homosexual. "I regard that as pretty much a failure but I'll keep working at it. It's not a losing battle because the church must always correct itself and always has over the years."... Dr Moyes said he had made a pact with himself to retire at 65. He will now concentrate on "helping the unemployed, the poor, the homeless, the prisoners, the aged, the sick, the disabled" by taking the fight to Parliament, he said".

The federal anti-cigarette lighter police : "The TSA's internal studies show that carry-on-item screeners spend half of their screening time searching for cigarette lighters, a recently banned item, and that they open 1 out of every 4 bags to remove a pair of scissors, according to sources briefed by the agency .."

Before we point the finger at Singapore, we should look at Australia's body count: "Life is cheap in Australia, for all our talk. While Australians have again indulged in preaching at an Asian neighbour because an Australian heroin-runner was executed on Friday, one might ask what, exactly, is our higher moral ground? Ask the parents of Kurt Smith about our legal system's attitude to the sanctity of human life. Their son was kicked to death by four strangers while walking to a party on New Year's Eve 2002. So light were the sentences that three of these four killers are already out of prison or on the way out and the ringleader will be eligible for parole next year. Kurt was dead at 19, his life treated as worthless by the law. It wasn't even unusual, just towards the grotesque end of the sentencing spectrum". (There is a good comment on the execution by the Singapore High Commissioner in Australia here)

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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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)

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