Equality not needed for happiness

James Taranto forwarded an article by Arthur C. Brooks of Syracuse University's Maxwell School. Professor Brooks makes several good arguments against the left's misguided obsession with income equality. In his research, Professor Brooks has found that inequality does not make poor people miserable and that:

"...the evidence reveals that it is not economic inequality that frustrates Americans. Rather, it is a perceived lack of opportunity. To focus our policies on inequality, instead of opportunity, is to make a serious error..."

Professor Brooks notes that some left wing academics hold that the wealthy should be taxed so that they will not work. The proponents of this theory believe that the only significance of high incomes is high earners' ability to make whoopee and spend money. This, of course, fails to grasp that high earners create consumer surplus, so that discouraging the productive wealthy from working would devastate national welfare.

Think of it this way. Let's say Albert Sabin and Jonas Salk had become wealthy as scientists. The left would argue that because they had made money in prior work, they should have been discouraged from doing further work because their high incomes might have been irritating to low-income Americans. However, the low-income Americans who would otherwise have suffered from polio might have been more irritated at the economists than at Sabin's and Salk's high incomes. Advocacy of broad policies based on narrow findings about reactions to income inequality puts academics making such generalizations into the quack category.

Brooks adds that the general level of happiness has not changed since 1972 and that economic mobility rather than equality creates happiness among Americans:

"An accurate and constructive vision of America sees a land of both inequality and opportunity, in which hard work and perseverance are the keys to jumping from the ranks of the have-nots to those of the haves. This vision promotes policies focused not on wiping out economic inequality, but rather on enhancing economic mobility."

Source

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AN APOLOGY

I normally reply to any email that seems to require a reply. Even abusive emails from Leftists normally get a sarcastic reply. But I get a vast amount of spam so some legitimate messages undoubtedly get trashed by the spam filter. Most spam messages I never see but those that do survive as far as the "Junk mail" folder do at least get a glance at the subject line and sender. And among those I often find legitimate messages. So goodness knows what the spam filter throws out. So if you think I have ignored some message from you, I probably have just not seen it and you should try resending it with an informative subject line. I do however see all comments in the comment box here -- though the spam prevention features make it a bit pesky to use. The old Tongue Tied site had limited spam prevention features in its commenting facility so I was deleting over 500 spam comments there every day!

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Brookes News Update

Why do billionaires fund the Democrats' fascist economic policies?: The further away a businessman is from the actual production of physical things the greater is the possibility of him voting for leftist policies. I do not know of a single Democrat billionaire who is directly involved in manufacturing. But I can name those who are perfectly willing to give financial support to the Dems' fascist economic policies
General David Petraeus visits Baqubah: Michael Yon, an independent blogger who embedded himself with the troops, reports that the situation in Iraq looks promising.One should add that the mainstream media is still refusing to report the Hamari village massacre that al Qaeda carried out. This the same media that publishes lies about Coalition troops
Iraq War: Phantom Thunder Update: The media has made it clear that the way the public can find discover the truth about the Iraq War is by reading the reports of independent bloggers like Bill Roggio who have imbedded themselves with the troops. I think that in the course of time the public will eventually find out the extent to which the mainstream media willingly gave aid and comfort to terrorists
Islam's Global War against Christianity: Not a single Christian or Jew lives in peace in the Muslim world, and if it is truly our nation's foreign policy to spread democracy around the world, this issue is the perfect topic for us to press. Back at home, raising Islam's global war on Christianity should be the immediate response to the seemingly endless media grievance machine of radical Islam's Western apologists
More evidence that Marxism is a power cult: Communism on the march in Latin America: Sao Paulo Forum is the headquarters of Latin-American communism. Founded in 1990 by Lula and Fidel Castro under the promise of 'winning back in Latin America all that was lost in Eastern Europe.' It has more than 180 affiliated organizations, both legal parties and criminal gangs, following a common blueprint and marching fast to conquer the absolute power over the continent
President Roosevelt gave the US economy its worse economic recovery, not President Bush: As malicious as ever, democrats claimed that US economy was the worst since the Hoover administration. Now they are arguing that the economic recovery is the worst in US history. Both claims are outrageous lies

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ELSEWHERE



Eye in the Iraqi sky: "Insurgents firing rockets at a British base in southern Iraq were spotted and tracked by an Australian unmanned spyplane, then obliterated with a guided bomb from a US fighter jet. In a stunning demonstration of the capabilities of the new ScanEagle unmanned aerial vehicle, the Australian operators tracked the insurgents for half an hour as they fired one rocket then drove to a different location to fire another. They were not aware they had been spotted until a 227kg JDAM guided bomb exploded in their midst. Television images of the May 1 attack have now been released to media visiting the Australian overwatch battle group base at Tallil, outside the city of Nasariyah in Iraq's southern Dhi Qar province. Under Britain's re-alignment of forces in Basra, it now runs just two major bases. Both are attacked regularly by insurgents who fire mortars and rockets as often as three or four times a day. Australian troops have used the Boeing-operated ScanEagle in Iraq since late last year. Each remote-controlled aircraft has a wingspan of 3m, can stay aloft for up to 15 hours and is equipped with day and night cameras. Video images are transmitted back to base on a secure datalink."

British journalists back down over Israel: "The National Union of Journalists will take "no further action" on implementing the controversial resolution by its members to boycott Israeli goods and services. The NUJ's national executive council (NEC) took the decision and called for members to unite instead behind the union's "key workplace priorities". It unanimously backed a motion that recognised the NUJ would take no further action on the call for an Israeli boycott because the Trades Union Congress has rejected it. The motion was tabled by the NUJ general secretary, Jeremy Dear, and seconded by the union president, Michelle Stanistreet, at a NEC meeting on Friday. It recognised the concerns expressed by some members, chapels and branches about the proposed boycott and said that it had met the terms of the original delegate vote in favour of the boycott at its annual meeting earlier this year by informing the TUC of the conference vote."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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PSYCHOPATHS: THE U.S. ARMY OR U.S. LEFTIST POLITICIANS?

There are a couple of blog posts here and here which give details of a recent Leftist attempt -- mainly on Daily Kos -- to smear the U.S. Army as psychopathic killers.

The article concerned relies entirely on anecdote and therefore has no scholarly worth whatever. It picks out a set of criminals and says: SEE! All these served in the army. So the army creates criminals. You can of course prove anything that way. One could equally pick out a set of former army men who undertook charity work and say: SEE! All these served in the army. So the army creates angels.

The one substantial point the article has is that the incidence of soldiers who actually fire their weapons in battle has improved over the years. The author says that this is because the army has found ways to make men into machines. Military people would be rather surprised by that. The problem is a well known one and it was long ago noted that the problem was largely one of aiming. Men who were using automatic weapons fired much more frequently -- as such weapons can be effective even without much aiming. So one response has been to make available to the men more weapons capable of automatic fire. But more training in use of weapons is of course also effective. Many of the non-firers of the two world wars were conscripts with very little training. Additionally, the rate of fire will depend on the battlefield situation and the use of men as cannonfodder has declined over the last century. Men are now more likely to be put in situations where they can be individually effective.

And the idea that the U.S. army wants its men to be killer robots is truly laughable. It would be more accurate to say that the onerous ROE under which U.S. soldiers now operate make them the most restrained and cautious soldiers in all of military history. The army takes great pains to ensure that their soldiers DON'T fire unless absolutely necessary.

So the article is the sort of ignorance of the military that one expects from today's Left. But another sort of ignorance it displays is ignorance about psychopathy. As someone who has contributed a couple of research papers on psychopathy to the academic journals (See here and here), I may be in a better position than most to offer a quick summary of what is involved. The basic point is that psychopaths are born not made. The condition is highly hereditary and emerges from early childhood on. Any attempt to MAKE a person a psychopath is more likely to traumatize them deeply than anything else.

And one place where true psychopaths are likely to be found is in Leftist politics -- from Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pol on. They are the ones who have no compunction about slaughtering other people en masse. And the basic underlying feature of psychopathy -- lack of any moral anchors -- is in fact glorified by Leftists as "postmodernism". Where have you heard "There is no such thing as right and wrong" before? And amoral men are very successful even in democratic Leftist politics -- with Bill Clinton being the standout example. But John Kerry and Barack Obama also have clear psychopathic characteristics. I go into the diagnosis of all three men in some detail here

THE BBC IS JUST ONE FACE OF THE LOCKSTEP LEFTIST MEDIA

The mass media age may have increased our freedom of speech but our mass-mediated perception of reality has arguably stifled our freedom of thought. In times past people may have known only what was going on in their own neck of the woods but at least they knew it intimately, which perhaps provided some reality check. Also one community was relatively free from the influence of another. Not anymore. Now, thanks to the likes of the BBC you know so much more - and have an opinion on so much more.

Now you know that some brutal murders merit grief on a national scale whilst others deserve barely a passing mention. You know that jumping up and down at rock concerts will help to save the world from poverty. You know that man made global warming is threatening to destroy the planet and it's all the fault of capitalism. Just like you know that capitalism was virtually brought down on the stroke of midnight in 2000 by something called the Millenium Bug. Older people know that the world was very nearly overwhelmed in the 1970's by The Next Ice Age. You know that if you have ever stood next to someone smoking a cigarette it might one day kill you. Best of all you know what the most important thing going on in the world at any one time is because it is the thing that headlines the news. Thus has the mass media deluged people's consciousness with trashy certainties at huge cost to their freedom of spirit. Killing off The Age of Reason and replacing it with the Age of Feeling.

It is not even that the BBC and its like are deliberately trying to present a distorted perspective on current affairs or anything else. It is worse than that; the distortion is so embedded in media culture that it collectively fails to comprehend that there are other perspectives. The BBC and its hinterland of favoured contributors teems with champagne lefties, celebrity poseurs and assorted other have-your-cake-and-eat-it fellow travellers of the liberal establishment elite.

And it is a veritable honey pot for the not so big wide world of the arts and academia. The joke is that they all think of themselves as radicals and guardians of freedom. Funny business radicalism; the word suggests boldness, independent mindedness, freethinking. The reality is the opposite. It is a me- too mentality of fitting in with the prevailing ethos, often first absorbed during student days. I remember when I was at university in the 1970's, one or two lonely guys in tweeds and sports jackets flitting furtively across the psychedelic bead strewn quadrangle clutching their briefcases. I remember thinking those guys are the real radicals here. The thoroughly predictable `radical' offerings from the BBC in-crowd are invariably dripping with media establishment mythology and the depressing fact that the BBC is often hailed as a great bastion of intellectual independence merely demonstrates the overwhelming brainwashing power that the little box in the corner now has on our intellectual horizons.

The last half-century was so dominated by the spectre of the totalitarian state that no one foresaw what was really coming down the line. George Orwell partly saw the future that we now inhabit - but with one crucial difference. In his nightmare 1984, a political elite controlled the television in the corner of the room and used it to brainwash the citizenry. Whereas in the real post 1984 nightmare, a pervasive mass media - a cancerous organism out of the control of anyone, even its own media elite - brainwashes everyone, politicians included. It is not that anyone is actively trying to brainwash you; it is more that a powerful tendency to group-think is the very nature of mass broadcasting.

But the most insidious brainwashing happens at a more subtle level than this. The most insidious brainwashing lies in the power of storytelling. It is at this subliminal level that the great soft-left crusades - moral relativism and the cult of victimhood have been won. More than anywhere it is in radio and television film, drama and soap opera.

Try these tests next time you are watching your favourite BBC drama or Hollywood movie: If the characters happen to include - say - a white middle class guy and a non-white working class guy, who is going to turn out to have surprising hidden qualities and who is going to turn out to have a surprising hidden dark side? Or compare the proportion homosexual characters on your tv screen with that in your own real life. Try and find the drama where the `right wing' character turns out to be full of compassion and the `left wing' character full of bile or where the successful business executive turns out to be rather a nice chap. This sort of myth making has underpinned so much of Western story telling for at least fifty years now and has been more corrosive of freedom than any political regime.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Romney hits out at Dems: "Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney took aim at Democratic rivals on Sunday, calling them all unprepared to lead the country and comparing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's economic plan to that of Socialist Karl Marx. "It would be helpful to have a person leading the country who understands how the economy works and has actually managed something," the former Massachusetts governor told reporters after a Republican fundraiser. "In the case of the three Democratic front-runners, not one of them has managed even a corner store, let alone a state or a city." Romney targeted a recent economic policy speech by Clinton for special criticism. Clinton said "we have been an on-your-own society. She said it's time to get rid of that and replace that with shared responsibility and we're-in-it-together society. That's out with Adam Smith and in with Karl Marx."

Brand new Airbus fails: "The Jetstar plane whose engine failed and forced an emergency landing at Bali was just three weeks old, Jetstar has revealed. The plane was forced to make an emergency landing at Bali after an apparent engine failure after leaving Bangkok bound for Melbourne. It was diverted to Denpasar Airport at Bali. Jetstar spokesman Simon Westaway said the left-hand engine was shut down during the flight. ''It's a brand new plane, it's three weeks old off the production line at Airbus in Toulouse, France. ''We're, obviously, working on some contingencies for those passengers and and aircraft as we speak.'' Passengers onboard the flight have been told 'engine failure' was behind the forced landing. It's believed they're still on board the jet, because there's no one at the airport to help them disembark"

French told to be doers rather than pundits: "France is the country that produced the Enlightenment, Descartes' one-liner "I think, therefore I am" and the solemn pontifications of Jean-Paul Sartre and other celebrity philosophers. But, in the Government of Nicolas Sarkozy, thinking has lost its cachet. Proposing a tax-cut law last week, the Minister for Finance, Christine Lagarde, advised the French people to abandon their "old national habit". "France is a country that thinks," she told the National Assembly. "There is hardly an ideology that we haven't turned into a theory . This is why I would like to tell you: enough thinking, already. Roll up your sleeves." Citing Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, she said the French should work harder, earn more and be rewarded with lower taxes if they get rich"

Iraqis turning against Al Qaeda: "Fed up with being part of a group that cuts off a person's face with piano wire to teach others a lesson, dozens of low-level members of al-Qaeda in Iraq are daring to become informants for the US military in a hostile Baghdad neighbourhood. The ground-breaking move in Doura is part of a wider trend that has started in other al-Qaeda hotspots across the country and in which Sunni insurgent groups and tribal sheikhs have stood together with the coalition against the extremist movement. "They are turning. We are talking to people who we believe have worked for al-Qaeda in Iraq and want to reconcile and have peace," said Colonel Ricky Gibbs, commander of the 4th Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, which oversees the area"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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More straight talk from Bolton

When John Bolton left the United Nations, some of the fun went out of the multi-storey talking shop. No longer was the walrus-moustached rightwinger there to cast barbs at the silver-tongued bureaucrats who took pride in peddling compromises, turned a blind eye to corrupt practices and humoured dictators - the very essence of diplomacy, some might say.

Happily, Gordon Brown's elevation of Mark Malloch Brown to be his minister for Africa, Asia and the UN, a lofty perch from which the newly minted peer will attend cabinet meetings and play the "wise eminence" to young David Miliband at the Foreign Office, has revived one of the most entertaining transatlantic grudge matches of recent years. If the hawkish former US ambassador to the UN is from Mars, the flexible former UN deputy secretary-general is from Venus....

Malloch Brown, Bolton points out, was "simply saying the sort of thing he used to say lurking behind closed doors in the United Nations", where diplomats have perfected the art of "speaking with four or five faces". It is important, he suggests, for the United States to "know exactly where the Brown government is going instead of skulking around the hallways".

"If the Brown government wants to be more European than Atlanticist, let's hear it. If they would rather not have a special relationship, let's hear it." And then comes the zinger: "If they want to be a part of Europe in the same way as Belgium and Luxembourg, let's hear it." Bolton believes Britain must face the question: "Do you want to be an independent country or a county in a big Europe?" The way he tells it is guaranteed to offend our national pride, but you can't say he hasn't warned us. "If Britain wants to be subsumed into the European soup, the United States will have to react accordingly - and we will, make no mistake." ....

Officials on both sides of the Atlantic believe that Iran presents the greatest threat of disagreement between Brown's Britain and America - not Iraq, where plans for a drawdown of British troops were agreed long ago with Tony Blair. Although the balance of power between Dick Cheney, the bellicose vice-president, and the dovish Pentagon and State Department is more volatile than it used to be, some senior officials are convinced that Bush is determined to strike Iran's nuclear facilities before he leaves office. "I hope so," says Bolton, unabashed. "I don't regard the use of military force as attractive, but if the choice is a nuclear-armed Iran, there is no question that you have to come down on the side of force."

Bolton believes the "blind persistence" of diplomacy through the EU3 nations of Britain, France and Germany has merely strengthened Iran's hand. "What will it take to convince Europe the policy has failed? If we wait till they get a bomb, it will be too late."

More here

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MORE LEFTIST LIES

Post excerpted from Gates of Vienna. See the original for links

The New Republic is being either naive or cynical. This one is a tough call if you want to believe the best about a person, or group of people - in this case a magazine that's been around since the First World War.

By now you've probably read about what Sgt. Mom calls "the latest milblog kerfuffle-du-jour."

The dust-up concerns a series of essays The New Republic has published by a supposed soldier in Iraq who describes anecdotes about his fellow soldiers that are (a) horrific and disgusting, and (b) inaccurate in their details. Of course, (b) simply means another "fake-but-accurate" strand in the MSM tapestry of careless lies and half-truths woven to serve their purposes. With the MSM, f-b-a is a standard sufficient to allow them to print what the rest of us consider slanderous, but which gives them license to put their agenda into the public sphere for consumption by the willing or the unwary.

OPFOR blog and The Weekly Standard magazine both question the veracity of the pseudonymous Scott Thomas' stories about his service in Iraq, and then ask their readers to pass judgment based on their own experience of military life.

The commenters on both sites take the stories apart; they do so on the basis of small, telling details. For example, it's not called a "chow hall" in Iraq, and the things on soldiers' heads are no longer "helmets." Nor do enlisted men ever operate as free of the oversight of their NCO's as TNR's "correspondent" would have you believe. In real life, any sergeant or junior officer would take these fellows down based on the ghoulish, sick stories this writer tells. Not to mention what their peers might do to them for such depraved behavior.

Since its inception in 1914 TNR has had a decidedly liberal bent. Its first issue included an essay by Rebecca West which complained about British conservatism. Its current editor says that TNR coined the word " liberalism". I believe him, for his magazine is solidly in the liberals' camp.

In march of this year CanWest, a media conglomerate based in Canada, acquired a majority interest in TNR. Interestingly, when you go to the Canwest site there is no mention of their ownership, though CBC.ca has the details.

...TNR's soldier storyteller is in another category of tale-telling... His brutal, sadistic "recollections" have been created not to entertain but to titillate, and to discredit the American soldier in Iraq. It is obvious that the author has a very tightly focused agenda. It is also obvious that TNR shares his view of our military. If this were not the case then TNR would have published an opposing point of view. At the very least they would have said up front that they had not checked his story.

TNR joins the ranks of those publications which have given in to the temptation to put out material which supports their philosophy whether or not the essays are true. What counts is what the readership is hungering for.

Dean Barnett and Democracy Project and Gateway Pundit are among many who have more details and comments on the above. Note that TNR has published journalistic fakes before.

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ELSEWHERE

Arabs and the U.N. -- what a lovely mix: "The United Nations says it is investigating allegations of widespread sexual abuse by a unit of peacekeepers in Ivory Coast and confined the soldiers in question to base. A UN statement did not say which country the soldiers were from or how many were under investigation. But a UN official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the investigation involved Moroccan soldiers having sex with underage girls."

Force protection in the court room : "Conservative Christians and military veterans are part an emerging group of Americans who say they are upset by the recent prosecutions of soldiers and marines based in Iraq on war crimes charges, and are coming to their defense with words, Web sites and money. In the past year, more than a dozen Web sites have been developed to solicit donations to hire private lawyers for service members who have been charged with violent crimes for actions taken in the confusion of combat or counterinsurgency operations. They have raised more than $600,000, organizers say, from grandparents, business executives and college students, among others. The average donation is for $25 to $50."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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Leftists are fearful and cowardly

The real issue is simple: If Liberals admit there is a problem, they could be called upon to act. Liberals are blinded by the fear of action. They rest their hope upon the "reason" and "benevolence" of an enemy, an enemy who would slit their collective throats. Truly if they could understand, this adversary finds their existence useful but abhorrent---useful in that this enemy will support liberals' quest for power through their propagandist efforts; abhorrent in that liberals only seem weak and cowardly, which is detestable in these parts.

Liberals seek to destroy any institution of intrinsic value: God, country, family, honor, valor, courage, VIRTUE..Why? Because if such things exist, then they must be defended, which brings them back to their fear of action.

If foundations of a society capture the essence of a State---patriotism, faith--- they must be honored and defended, but this not a raison d'etre for a Liberal. That is why movies like "The Da Vinci Code" are so important to them, and the "Passion of the Christ" was so threatening..Why believe or fight for this thing called Christianity if it is based upon lies and deceit? If it is, then it does not need to be defended. Christianity becomes a target for them to be destroyed and in its place can be created a completely secular state, with no faith to hold dear to ones' heart. Legislation that permits the desecration of the American flag serves the same purpose, to destroy a symbol which, if honored, requires defense.

No, do not expect Liberals to analyze Islam and Mohammed. That requires action, which leads to fear, which leads to inaction. So do not ever expect the media to confront Islam and the problems of radical Islamic Fascism, theocracies/autocracies, and terrorism. It is far easier for Liberals to denounce our Judeo-Christian faith than to confront the truth that faces us all: that Islam is a religion of subjugation, submission and intimidation, whose teachings defend terrorism.

It is far simpler and easier for Liberals to say that Christians are terrorists, President Bush is a Nazi, Jesus Christ does not exist, and the defenders of their rights are "murderers". That way, they can hide behind free speech, a right provided by those who embody the very character traits and virtues which Liberals seek to destroy.

This concept is both puzzling and intriguing. Liberals hate those who defend them because they are afraid to be them. In doing so, they turn a blind eye to, and even celebrate, those who would destroy them because Liberals are afraid to confront them. In the long term, who really has the most to lose in this War on Terror? Liberals do, because we who defend them will never hate them. We will only pity them, while the Islamic fascist, theocrat/autocrat, and terrorist will slaughter them and take away any of the "rights" they have enjoyed.

More here

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Dems lose Iraq vote: "Predictions of a Republican revolt against the White House on the Iraq war have proved wide of the mark as Democrats failed to win enough votes yesterday for a timetable to withdraw troops from the country. In what critics called a blatant media stunt to drum up more coverage of Democrats opposition to the war, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called an all-night debate on a troop withdrawal bill that had bleary eyed presidential candidates such as Republican John McCain and Democrat Hillary Clinton addressing a mostly empty Senate chamber in the early hours of the morning. But given President George W.Bush's adamant refusal to consider any change in strategy ahead of advice from military commanders, and certainly not one dictated by the US Congress, a predictable 24 hours of debate in Congress ensued in which just four Republicans crossed the floor to vote with Democrats. The 52-47 vote to set a timetable for withdrawal fell far short of the 60 needed to advance the legislation and stop a so-called "filibuster" from Republicans, in which they have the right to continue to debate the legislation."

Mere rage did not work: "This week, Reid launched a major offensive in the form of an all-nighter, designed to force the hand of wavering GOP senators. Here's Reid, compliments of the Washington Post: "Will the all-night session change any votes? I hope so." It did. It forced several of them right back into the Bush camp. Here are a couple of the wavering senators, compliments of the New York Times: "You wonder if they are more interested in politics than dealing with the substance of this," said Senator George V. Voinovich, Republican of Ohio. Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire, labeled the Democratic plan calling for a troop pullout to begin within 120 days vague and unenforceable. "If it did pass, it would lead to chaos in Iraq and a dramatic increase in casualties," said Mr. Gregg, who is backing an alternative plan that incorporates the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group."

Republicans smarter in the Senate: "A remarkable thing happened in the United States Senate earlier this evening, and it occurred over a rather unremarkable piece of legislation that was being debated. Conservatives, frustrated at the lack of a genuine leader of their party, may have finally found one in Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell. After Democratic leader Harry Reid's MoveOn.org all-night session Tuesday night, a move that resulted only in helping unify the weak-kneed Republicans who were peeling away from continued support of the Petraeus surge in Iraq, McConnell, the Republican leader, served notice to anyone watching C-SPAN that he now runs the Senate..."

Turkey on the slide: "Turkish citizens go to the polls on Sunday for an important election. Will the vote reverse the course of Islamization or move it further down the road of becoming a more Islamic, socially conservative society and a foreign policy more attuned to Iran and Syria than to the United States? Barry Rubin, who is covering the elections for PJM, isn't optimistic"

Israeli oppression of the poor Palis? "One of the 256 terrorists slated for release Friday as part of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's "good will" gesture to the Palestinian Authority has said "Thanks, but no thanks" to the offer. The prisoner chose to remain in an Israeli prison, according to Pardons Department director Emmy Palmor, because he prefers to continue receiving free medication for arthritis"

The left lifts the veil on hatred of the military : "The decline of the leftwing netroots into one great, venomous snarl is far advanced, well-known, and much remarked upon by political observers from across the spectrum. But even given its deserved reputation for poisonous invective, the assault mounted against General David Petraeus surprises. General Petraeus made the unforgivable mistake in their eyes of appearing on my radio program and answering questions.... Both because he agreed to be interviewed by a journalist favorable to victory and supportive of President Bush and because his answers suggest progress is being made in Iraq, Petraeus has been savaged by leftist bloggers big and little.... Analysis of what the general actually said was in short supply among the critics. Even before he had read the transcript, Andrew Sullivan launched into one of his trademarks explosions of hysteria and slander"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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Even Leftist assertions show that Bush is NOT like Hitler

From Don Surber -- a whimsical response to the latest Bush=Hitler claim by Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison

1. Hitler was an articulate and dynamic speaker. Lefties mock the way Bush says "nuclear."
2. Hitler was a decorated combat veteran. Lefties call Bush a chickenhawk.
3. Hitler's people set fire to the Reichstag to seize power. Lefties pretend Bush had something to do with 9/11.
4. Leni Riefenstahl paid tribute to Hitler in the film, "Triumph of the Will." Michael Moore mocked Bush in "Farenheit 911."
5. Hitler was a best-selling author who wrote, "Mein Kampf." Bush was mocked for reading, "The Pet Goat."
6. Hitler was an accomplished painter. Bush might have painted a barn once.
7. Nazi art featured realistic nudes. Lefties say Republicans are too uptight about sex.
8. Hitler's job approval rating? 90%. Bush? 30%.
9. Hitler built autobahns. Lefties say Bush sat on his hands while the levee broke in New Orleans.
10. Hitler was able to slaughter 12 million of his own people in concentration camps, including 6 million Jews without anyone complaining. Bush cannot even keep at Gitmo a battalion of terrorists who want to destroy America without the ACLU getting on his case.

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A long war ahead if we continue on our present course

Some excerpts from Shrinkwrapped

Jihadi extremism is a growing ideology. Sunni extremism and Shia extremism are merely different manifestations of an underlying supremacist ideology which has grown in response to the failures of the Muslim world in the face of modernity. Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, al Qaeda in Iraq are all different franchises and brand names. Franchises are successful when there are markets for their products, consumers, and workers to support the enterprise. Financial support, an eager population ready to consume the product, and an army of willing workers are all required for a franchise to thrive. Al Qaeda, the McDonald's of Islamism, and Hezbollah, the Burger King of Islamism, have been growing their franchises for years. It is only post-9/11 that the West has begun to offer alternatives. Unfortunately, the alternatives the West offers are completely incompatible with the cultures in which we are attempting to gain market share. We offer Sushi (democracy backed by the US military) and Tofu burgers (Western "soft" power) and as a result find few takers.

The Muslim world contains a combustible mix that is amenable to Jihad and inimical to modern liberal capitalist democracy. There is an extremely large cohort of young men with very little opportunity to achieve status, huge sums of money that have been generated by their parasitic perch on the primary source of the world's energy supplies, a culture that supports a supremacist ideology, and an information environment that facilitates the spread of Jihad propaganda.....

Complexity and fact have almost no chance in the short and medium term against a simple, convenient narrative. For example, the Nazi narrative was simple and convenient: Jews and other inferior peoples kept the Aryans from achieving their natural dominance. No amount of counter-narrative made much of a dent in it within the native German population. It required unconditionally defeating the Nazis in the kinetic war in order to discredit their ideology. We are facing a similar situation with radical Islam.

It should be clear to anyone who spends time in the blogosphere that reasoned debate based on complexity and fact has very little persuasive power. One of our great blind spots in the West is that we imagine ourselves to be so firmly wedded to our rationality that we do not realize how often we use our rationality to support emotionally charged and irrational ideas. Complexity and nuance are poor allies in the fight against a powerful ideology.

The West has lagged terribly in this aspect of the war. Six years after we realized we are in a war with a determined and amoral enemy we still have not even begun to engage him in the information war. We have no easily understandable counter-narrative to use against the allure of Jihad with its promises of glorious martyrdom and blissful, eternal sex.

Until we can find a way to discredit the Jihadis with a more powerful counter-narrative or find a way to destroy their ability to organize and survive (ie, via the kinetic battle and the financial struggle), the war will continue no matter what we do. Since there appears nowhere on the horizon any evidence that we are ready, willing, and able to mobilize our forces (since our intellectual elites, MSM, Hollywood do not see themselves as being stake holders) for engagement in the information war, the long war seems aptly named.

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ELSEWHERE

Recently, a Leftist reporter identified a Democrat supporter as a "Disgruntled Republican". The blogosphere called her out. Her response? More lies. See here.

Life Imitating South Park again: "Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., told Planned Parenthood Tuesday that sex education for kindergarteners, as long as it is "age-appropriate," is "the right thing to do." The left, at the rate of almost several times per month now, is intent on mimicking South Park's proverbial "theater of the absurd" in real life and real time. The episode? Season 5's "Proper Condom Use," in which the school board decides that condom use has to be taught to progressively younger grades to the point that the kindergarteners are learning about it."

Obama the empty vessel again: "The intelligence report in question said, in essence, that, after the devastating blow we struck against al Qaeda in Afghanistan, the terrorists have regained some strength in their safe haven on Pakistan's Northwest Frontier. It doesn't say that al Qaeda is stronger than ever - although that's what the Dems imply. In 2001, al Qaeda had a country of its own. Today, it survives in isolated compounds. And guess which "veteran warrior" wants to go get them? Sen. Barack Obama. Far too important to ever serve in the military himself, Obama thinks we should invade Pakistan. Go for it, Big Guy. Of course, we'll have to reintroduce the draft to find enough troops. And we'll need to kill, at a minimum, a few hundred thousand tribesmen and their families. We'll need to occupy the miserable place indefinitely. Oh, and Pakistan's a nuclear power already teetering on the edge of chaos. Barack Obama, strategist and military expert. Who knew?"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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People want security and order before democracy

As we also see in Russia these days

The great tragic failure in Iraq has been political failure, not military failure. At the heart of that failure have been two lofty notions - "nation-building" and democracy.

Nations cannot be built. You can transplant institutions from one country to another, but you cannot transplant the history and culture from which the attitudes and traditions evolved that enable those institutions to work. It took centuries for democracy to evolve in the Western world. Yet we tried to create democracy in Iraq before we created the security - the law and order - that is a prerequisite for any form of viable government.

Having made democracy the centerpiece of the reconstruction of postwar Iraq, Americans have been hamstrung by the inadequacies of that government and the fact that our military could not simply ignore the Iraqi government when its politicians got in the way of restoring law and order.

People will support tyranny before they will support anarchy. Both can be avoided by creating an interim government based on competence, rather than on its being an embodiment of democratic ideals.

Neither in Europe nor in Asia did today's democracies begin as democracies. As late as 1950, no one could have called Taiwan or South Korea democracies. Even today, Singapore does not have the kind of freedom that Westerners regard as democratic. But it is a decent and prosperous society, vastly superior in every way to what it was at the end of World War II.

Trying to create democracy in places where it has never existed - and where the prerequisites for democracy may not exist - has been a needless gamble. Among those prerequisites are a toleration of different views, an accommodation of different interests, and a willingness to put the national interest above one's own. The Middle East is the last place to look for such qualities. Such things evolved in the West only after centuries of different religions and peoples trying unsuccessfully to destroy each other.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Author claims anti-war groups gave material support to terrorists: "A New York Times best-selling author says members of the supposed "peace movement" delivered hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and supplies to terrorists engaged in a bloody street battle against United States Marines in Iraq. The latest book by Lt. Col. Robert "Buzz" Patterson (U.S. Air Force-Ret.) is called War Crimes: The Left's Campaign to Destroy Our Military and Lose the War on Terror. In the book, he claims that two anti-war groups -- "United for Peace & Justice" and "CODEPINK: Women for Peace" -- literally gave aid and comfort to terrorists when they delivered $600,000 in cash and supplies they claim was humanitarian aid to civilians. According to Patterson, Congressman Henry Waxman (D-California) facilitated the transaction for CODEPINK by signing a letter allowing them to get the cash and supplies into Fallujah."

According to the media, good news about America is always bad news: "On July 12, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index and the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at record highs. The stock market saw its largest gain in nearly four years. But ABC and CBS placed the emphasis on negative symptoms of the economy, a "slumping" housing market and high gas prices. "There are still some dark clouds looming over this market," said Harris. "The housing market is in a slump, interest rates are rising and gas prices are ticking back up."

Want Fries With That?: "French people are not against McDonald's. They are against the Bush administration," Jose Bove, the radical farmer and French presidential candidate, said in an interview. How, HOW do you get to the point where you make something as meaningless as a retail outlet that is a vast sanitary improvement over the cruddy corner "Sandwicherie" an object of "philosophical" discussions, a bit of shorthand for a nation five times as populous that they refuse to understand, and a dagger of the mind? Easy. Have an empty life, nothing to say, and let a unexplainable cancerous well of envy grow inside you that you actively ignore.

More BBC crookedness: "The British Broadcasting Corporation suspended all phone-in and interactive contests on Wednesday after an investigation exposed several incidents in which competition winners were faked. The BBC, which has been battered by revelations about rigged contests and doctored footage, said an internal inquiry had found that "a small number of production staff ... have passed themselves off as viewers and listeners" on radio and TV shows. BBC Director-General Mark Thompson said six new cases had been uncovered in addition to a previously known incident involving the children's TV show "Blue Peter". "We must now swiftly put our house in order," he said. Thompson said phone-in contests on radio and TV would cease from midnight and internet competitions would be taken down as soon as possible. [Leftists destroy anything they touch. Destruction is the real aim behind their "compassionate" facade. They have certainly destroyed the respect in which the BBC was once held]

It's the Left who are dumb: "I think that President Bush has got one thing very much right, which is that Arab-Islamic terrorism is a symptom that something is rotten in the Middle East. If anything, his failures in Iraq and Palestine are due to underestimating the degree of rot. For all the allegations of his lack of intellect, George Bush is a brainiac compared to people who want to see terrorism as a symptom of something rotten in the United States or Israel."

The Saudi menace: "Although Bush administration officials frequently have lashed out at Syria and Iran for helping the insurgents and militias who attack U.S. troops and civilians here, the largest number of foreign fighters and suicide bombers in Iraq come from a third next-door neighbor, Saudi Arabia, according to a senior U.S. military officer and Iraqi lawmakers. The U.S. military believes 45 percent of all foreign militants are Saudi, another 15 percent are from Syria and Lebanon and 10 percent from North Africa, according to official U.S. military figures released to the Los Angeles Times by the officer. Nearly half the 135 foreigners held in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq are Saudi. Saudi fighters are thought to have carried out more suicide bombings than any other nationality, said the senior American military officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the subject's sensitivity for the U.S. government. He added that 50 percent of all Saudi fighters here are suicide bombers. In the last six months, such bombings have killed or injured 4,000 Iraqis."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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"Polyglot babies" nonsense

The article reproduced below shows what a religion Leftism is among social scientists. They found (surprise!) that humans are tribal from infancy on. They found that very young kids can recognize the accents of the tribe they are growing up in. Anybody who has observed how quickly babies become disturbed when they are handed to someone outside their own family will not be the least bit surprised. It is a survival instinct for a baby to recognize danger from outsiders and the baby will turn on his alarm (cry) whenever he detects strangers too close to him.

From all that, the researchers below conclude that babies born into a multilingual household will grow up more tolerant -- a complete non-sequitur full of too many assumptions to name -- though the fact that they did not examine any multilingual households may be mentioned.

Such knotheaded folly is less surprising when we see who is the chief researcher concerned. Elizabeth Spelke has a quite crippling leftward lean. Her grip on reality is so tenuous that she claimed recently that there is "not a shred of evidence" for inborn male/female differences in abilities -- despite around a century of evidence showing that females have better language abilities and males have better mathematical abilities.

Quite obviously, Spelke has a robotlike inability to see, hear or think anything except that which supports her ideology. Like most Leftists, Spelke is incapable of admitting that preference for others who are similar to oneself is not "racism" but is basically human. So when they find out how basically human it is they quickly have to invent circumstances when it would not happen.

A study of newborn babies and preschoolers has revealed that language may be the root of prejudice - and the way to avoid it. US and French researchers have found that the language babies hear spoken in their first six months of life leads to a preference for speakers of that language. The preference is so entrenched that by age five youngsters prefer playmates who not only speak the same language but do so with the same accent.

A key implication ["implication"? A wild extrapolation, more accurately] of the findings - reported in the US publication Proceedings of the National Academy of Science - is that children exposed to different languages grow into more tolerant adults than their monolingual mates. University of Sydney linguist Stephen Crain tended to agree: "I've always thought it would be beneficial to expose our children to more than one language," he said. "If they no longer have a prejudice against people who don't sound the same as they, they may be more accepting of people from different backgrounds who don't sound the same," Professor Crain said.

Cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Spelke of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, conducted a series of experiments with Harvard doctoral student Katherine Kinzler and Emmanuel Dupoux of the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris. They judged the preferences of three groups of children. Five-to six-month-old infants looked at native speakers longer than non-native speakers. Ten-month-olds selected toys most often from native speakers, and most five-year-olds chose native speaking playmates over children with an accent.

According to Professor Spelke, the most surprising result came from the group's experiment with five-year-olds. "The findings suggest that (the preference) has nothing to do with information, the semantics of language, but rather with group identity," she said.

Source

Perhaps I should mention that not all psychologists are as cognitively handicapped as Spelke. Social psychology textbook author Roger Brown (1986) surveyed the large body of extant psychological research on the genesis of group loyalty and group identification and concluded that they are are rooted in "universal ineradicable psychological processes". In other words, group loyalty is not only normal but universal.

Reference:

Brown, R. (1986) Social psychology. (2nd. Ed.) N.Y.: Free Press

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ELSEWHERE

Height: Leftists are still going on about how terrible it is that Americans are not on average the tallest nation on earth. Since some very tall national groups (as in East Africa) are at the bottom of just about every index of wellbeing, that hardly has the significance Leftists claim. It is is just another example of the desperation Leftists have to knock America. I have commented on this twice already (scroll down) so will leave it to Taranto to comment further. Mitchell Langbert also comments.

The negligence of Brazil's Leftist government caused the recent airliner crash there. Despite long delays the runway was still under repair and the grooves to drain water off and prevent skidding had not been installed.

Surprise! Democrats find one government office they want to cut back. It's the one that exposes union corruption: "The new Democratic Congress has finally found a government agency whose budget It wants to cut: an obscure Labor Department office that monitors the compliance of unions with federal law. In the past six years, the Office of Labor Management Standards, or OLMS, has helped secure the convictions of 775 corrupt union officials and court-ordered restitution to union members of over $70 million in dues. The House is set to vote Thursday on a proposal to chop 20% from the OLMS budget. Every other Labor Department enforcement agency is due for a budget increase, and overall the Congress has added $935 million to the Bush administration's budget request for Labor. The only office the Democrats want to cut back is the one engaged in union oversight.

The Kuwait Arab Times just published a call to arms -- not against Israel but Tehran: ""The entire Arab world is in danger, after becoming the epicenter of Iran's policies. Iranian dictator Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's aggressive policies confirm our fears. Many issues which concern only Arabs have now fallen into the hands of Iran. ..." "Currently, Iran is trying to extend its aggressive policies to all the Gulf countries and to Egypt ... . This raises the question: Why are Arab countries not taking any steps or holding a summit to wrest control of these issues, which essentially belong to them? They should tell Tehran to focus on its internal affairs instead of interfering in the affairs of other countries. "We cannot forget the three islands which rightfully belong to the United Arab Emirates; the recent assault on a Kuwaiti diplomat in Tehran; or (those) who made the Palestinians die twice - once at the hands of the Israelis and a second time at the hands of their own brothers"

Black Group Calls Senate Leaders "Hypocrites": "Project 21 members say the liberal Senate leadership, which has embarked on an overnight session to "highlight Republican obstructionism" on consideration to legislation to withdraw troops from Iraq, is hypocritical, as these senators have used the same tactics they now condemn to block the confirmation of President Bush's judicial nominations over the past six-and-a-half years. "The immoral duplicity of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his henchmen once again unambiguously shows there are no depths too low for liberal politicians to plumb," said Project 21 Chairman Mychal Massie. "It is extraordinarily incongruous that, on one hand, Reid would complain about a conservative filibuster against an arbitrary and predetermined withdrawal date in Iraq while he and his gang have stalled on the confirmation of people such as Judge Southwick since the day President Bush announced his judicial first nominees."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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Is the U.S. tax system fair?

Excerpt:

At a recent fund-raiser for Hillary Clinton, the billionaire investor Warren E. Buffett said that rich guys like him weren't paying enough. Mr. Buffett asserted that his taxes last year equaled only 17.7 percent of his taxable income, compared with about 30 percent for his receptionist. Mr. Buffett was echoing a refrain that is popular in some circles. Last year, Robert B. Reich, labor secretary during the Clinton administration, wrote on his blog that "middle-income workers are now paying a larger share of their incomes than people at or near the top."

These claims are enough to get populist juices flowing. The problem with them is that they don't hold up under close examination. The best source for objective data on the distribution of the tax burden is the Congressional Budget Office. The C.B.O. goes beyond anecdotes and bald assertions to provide hard data on who pays taxes. One can argue about the details of its methods, but there is no doubt that it is nonpartisan and that its tax analysts are some of the best in the business.

The C.B.O.'s most recent calculations of federal tax rates show a highly progressive system. (The numbers are based on 2004 data, but the tax code has not changed much since then.) The poorest fifth of the population, with average annual income of $15,400, pays only 4.5 percent of its income in federal taxes. The middle fifth, with income of $56,200, pays 13.9 percent. And the top fifth, with income of $207,200, pays 25.1 percent. At the very top of the income distribution, the C.B.O. reports even higher tax rates. The richest 1 percent has average income of $1,259,700 and forks over 31.1 percent of its income to the federal government.

If your image of the typical rich person is someone who collects interest and dividend checks and spends long afternoons relaxing on his yacht, you are decades out of date. The leisure class has been replaced by the working rich... None of these calculations, however, say whether the rich are paying their fair share. Fairness is not an economic concept. If you want to talk fairness, you have to leave the department of economics and head over to philosophy.

Source

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ELSEWHERE

I have been saying for some time that Russia has evolved into a true modern-day Fascist State. I see that the WSJ has come to the same conclusion. Leftists will love it, of course. The only Fascists they dislike are imaginary Fascists -- like George Bush. Their repeately asserted "opposition" to Fascism in the past was just chest thumping.

The party for minorities: "The Democratic presidential candidates have agreed to another televised debate, this one focusing on issues related to homosexuality. The sponsors are the Human Rights Campaign, a gay activist lobby, and Logo, a gay-themed cable channel, which will broadcast the event live from Los Angeles on Aug. 9. Human Rights Campaign chairman Joe Solmonese will moderate, along with lesbian rocker Melissa Etheridge. They can call it a "debate," but it will undoubtedly be a pander-palooza, with each candidate trying to outdo the others in pledging fealty to the gay-left agenda. These are the same Democrats, of course, who refuse to debate on the Fox News Channel because they object to its political agenda. So be it. But what does it say about their priorities that they gladly court Logo's niche viewers, yet snub the far larger mainstream audience that watches Fox?"

Attack on Iran coming up: "The Guardian's source in Washington explained that as of now, Bush and Cheney do not trust potential successors from either political party to deal with Iran decisively. Any reluctance to strike, however, originates with Israel. "The red line is not in Iran. The red line is in Israel. If Israel is adamant it will attack, the U.S. will have to take decisive action," Cronin adds. "The choices are: tell Israel no, let Israel do the job, or do the job yourself." Israel's Minister of Strategic Affairs said last week he had received approval from the U.S. and Europe for an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. "If we start military operations against Iran alone, then Europe and the U.S. will support us," Avigdor Lieberman said following a meeting with NATO and European Union officials."

Israeli government folly: "A list of wanted militants from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah organization who were granted amnesty this weekend by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert includes almost the entire senior West Bank leadership of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group, WND has learned. The Brigades, Fatah's declared military wing, took responsibility for every suicide bombing in Israel the past three years. Statistically, the Brigades carried out more anti-Israel terror attacks emanating from the West Bank since 2005 than any other group, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad."

Even mainstream Leftists are loony: "America's first Muslim congressman has provoked outrage by apparently comparing President George W Bush to Adolf Hitler and hinting that he might have been responsible for the September 11 attacks. Addressing a gathering of atheists in his home state of Minnesota, Keith Ellison, a Democrat, compared the 9/11 atrocities to the destruction of the Reichstag, the German parliament, in 1933. This was probably burned down by the Nazis in order to justify Hitler's later seizure of emergency powers. "It's almost like the Reichstag fire, kind of reminds me of that," Mr Ellison said. "After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the Communists for it, and it put the leader [Hitler] of that country in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted.""

How lax can the Brits get? "An al-Qaeda fanatic jailed for inciting murder online was caught making a website urging terror attacks - from his cell in Britain's most secure prison. Tariq Al-Daour, 21, used a smuggled mobile phone and modem lead to access the internet on a laptop issued by the Prison Service to help him prepare his court case. The laptop was seized after a violent struggle when prison officers suspected he was misusing it and the hate-filled website called Global Jihad was found. The Home Office has launched an urgent inquiry to discover how the mobile was smuggled into Belmarsh's High Security Unit, which holds the country's most dangerous inmates. They fear Al-Daour may have used it to contact other al-Qaeda terrorists and are scrutinising calls he made. A senior prison source said yesterday: "It is frightening that an al-Qaeda prisoner was able to build an extremist website within Britain's supposedly most secure jail."

No party label for Democrat scandals: "One the most comic aspects of liberal media bias is the well-established pattern of identifying politicians caught up in scandal by party only when they are Republicans. Democrats rarely if ever are identified by party. The past week supplies a good example courtesy of the New York Times and AP, arguably the two organizations which do the most to shape national political coverage. In a Times editorial today on the outrageous abuse of taxpayer funds by Newark's former mayor Democrat Sharpe James, his political affiliation is nowhere mentioned. "Sharpe James, the former mayor of Newark who was indicted this week on corruption charges, has for years exhibited a finger-in-the-eye arrogance. Still, the 33-count indictment against him is stunning, most of all for the list of luxuries he allegedly charged to taxpayers of his impoverished city. Among the standouts: multiple tropical vacations and a trip to Florida to test drive a Rolls-Royce.""

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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Security is a basic need too

Excerpt:

I'm not a Democrat or a Republican. I voted for President Clinton twice, President Bush twice, and I've always voted a split ticket when it comes to Congress. Party means little to me anymore as they are becoming indistinguishable. I don't like the war in Iraq, but I accept it, and I support the troops and their efforts.

For me, it doesn't matter if a person goes to a foreign land with the intent of being a missionary bringing hope and a religious option to cannibals or those imprisoned by Islamic Sharia laws. It doesn't matter if someone wants to travel to a 3rd world country and build bridges with the Peace Corps, treat the sick via Doctors Without Borders, or if they want to start a company in destitute land so as to give people jobs. I don't care if someone wants to go overseas to try and broker a peace agreement, or if someone goes to teach at school where there's never been one before. There are lots of things that developing nations need: hope, infrastructure, healthcare, jobs, education, peace. For each of these needs, we readily, eagerly, and enthusiastically support those who travel to far away lands to help people.

Similarly, I think that if a nation has bridges, etc., and what they need most is security from terrorists, then why don't Americans support the efforts of those who individually believe they have traveled to far away lands to bring security? Have we convinced ourselves so fiercely that the Iraq War is "Bush's War" that now we cannot see the good? Have we come to hate the man so much that we now deliberately ignore the good that's being done in Iraq? It is both na‹ve and arrogant to believe that providing security is an evil, immoral, or frivolous effort.

My home is in Northeast Ohio, and we've lost several soldiers, Marines, and airmen in Iraq (particularly in the past few weeks). Those people did not enlist to wait for an enemy on the beaches of Lake Erie, and they didn't enlist to get a check from Halliburton. They were good men who served knowing that they'd go overseas, knowing that they'd go to far away places where security was in dire need, and they intended to do good. I have no doubt of that. To that end, I believe we must not only support the troops, but support their efforts. If that means supporting the war, then I do. I support the war not because it's "Bush's War", or because I want cheaper gasoline. I support the war because as much as Iraq and Afghanistan need doctors, schools, bridges, etc., they need security. So I support the doctors, the teachers, the bridge-builders from Halliburton, and I support all the Americans who deliberately, knowingly go into harm's way to help people whose lives depend on their efforts.

No war is good. No war is necessary. No war unavoidable. That being said, mankind has not outgrown war. Plato knew it thousands of years ago when he said, "Only the dead have seen the end of war."

Source

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ELSEWHERE

British police want to get tougher: "British police chiefs are demanding the power to lock up terrorism suspects indefinitely. Reopening the debate over detention without trial, the Association of Chief Police Officers called for some suspects to be held for "as long as it takes". The call for longer detention periods came as two suspects in last month's failed bomb attacks in London and Glasgow were released without charge, British police said overnight. The suspects, both thought to be trainee doctors aged 24 and 27, were arrested on July 2. Police have also charged a third person over the bombings. Sabeel Ahmed, of Liverpool, was charged on Saturday with withholding information that could prevent an act of terrorism. The former prime minister Tony Blair was defeated in Parliament two years ago when he tried to introduce a 90-day detention period. Instead, MPs backed an increase to just 28 days. But the association's president, Ken Jones, said police were struggling to operate within the 28-day limit, stressing the global scale of terrorism investigations and the need to arrest suspects early. "We are now arguing for judicially supervised detention for as long as it takes," he told The Observer. "We are up against the buffers on the 28-day limit."

Boy who trained as suicide bomber freed: "Calling child suicide bombers a "fearful and terrifying truth," President Hamid Karzai freed a 14-year-old Pakistani boy arrested in eastern Afghanistan the night before he planned to kill a provincial governor. Rafiqullah, who goes by one name, told The Associated Press in an interview over the weekend while attending a madrassa, or religious school, in Pakistan he and two other boys were separated from the rest of the students and trained to drive a car and made to watch videos of suicide bombers carrying out attacks. The teenager said he walked across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border into Khost province, where a man named Abdul Aziz gave him a vest full of explosives. Rafiqullah said he told Aziz he was afraid of carrying out a suicide bombing, and Aziz pointed a gun at him and threatened to kill him if he didn't. Rafiqullah's intended target was the governor of Khost province. "Today we are faced with a fearful and terrifying truth, and that truth is the sending of a Muslim child to carry out a suicide attack," Karzai told reporters at the presidential palace. "(His parents) sent him to study at a madrassa," he said. "The enemy of Islam deceived him and prepared him to carry out a suicide attack to kill himself and other people around him."

Dubious Israeli optimism: "Scores of Fatah militants in the West Bank have signed a pledge renouncing attacks against Israel in return for an Israeli promise to stop pursuing them, a Palestinian security official said Sunday. The deal would grant amnesty to 178 Fatah gunmen who will join the official Palestinian security forces, and Israel will remove them from its lists of wanted militants, the official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to divulge details of the agreement. An official in Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office confirmed the deal would extend to wanted militants who openly renounce terrorism, and was part of a series of measures to bolster Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas."

Dutch cowardice and surrender to Islam: "Unbelievable as it may seem, the Dutch 'Minister voor Wonen, Wijken en Integratie' (Residence, Neighbourhoods and Integration (I'm not making this up)), Ella Vogelaar, today has declared in an interview that The Netherlands will be Islamic at some point in the future. She feels that The Netherlands should adapt to Islam, and subsidise Islamic institutions. What will emerge, according to her, is a "Christian-Jewish-Islamic culture". As if Christianity and Judaism aren't 100% opposite to Islam's teachings. The stupidity of the statement is mind boggling."

Feminist gets catty about Hillary -- but she's got a point: "OK, sisters, how will it feel when the supposed "first feminist," if she does get the nomination, gets it not on her own but on the coattails of her serial-adulterer husband? Bill and Hill is now morphing into Hill and Bill, for obvious reasons. The road show came to New Hampshire yesterday. Bill stared at Hill adoringly, rapt, like Nancy Reagan in drag, for God's sake, except Nancy actually felt it. Does it get more humiliating? Did Elizabeth Dole drag Bob all across America? Did Kerry Healey? Have you ever even seen Attorney General Martha Coakley's husband? "It's a bad commentary on women candidates that she can't stand on her own," says GOP strategist Holly Robichaud. Said a local big-time Democrat (who did not get where she is by dragging her husband everywhere), "But it's the Clinton motto, `anything to win,' even though it's unseemly. I really like him, despite his incredible flaws, a lot more than I like her. And that's what they're trying to play on." [The feminist who wrote the above also thinks Bill has got a huge brain. She's got the wrong part of his anatomy!]

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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