Why the Palin Baby Story Matters

What it means to evangelical voters

At 6:30 Monday morning, at a hotel here in St. Paul, a team of senior McCain staffers got word from even more senior staffers that there was news about vice-presidential pick Sarah Palin.... a story would be breaking on the wires in a few hours reporting that Palin's daughter, Bristol, is, in fact, pregnant now. The father is Bristol's boyfriend, the staffers were told, and she intends to marry him.

The McCain aides' assignment was to call a list of about 40 top evangelical and other cultural conservative leaders. Each one would get a personal explanation of the story, and each was asked for his or her reaction. The McCain people reached nearly everyone before the story broke, and the verdict was unanimous - all the leaders supported Palin and her place on the McCain ticket.

When the day's business was over, I drifted around the Colorado and Ohio delegations - two critical swing states - to get a feel for the delegates' reaction. In the Colorado section, I ran into Sue Sharkey, from Windsor. When I asked what she thought, her reaction was not about Palin but herself:

"For me personally, it hit my heart this morning," Sharkey told me, "because I was a 17 year-old girl, just like Sarah Palin's daughter, and I had - I was in those shoes. And my son is with me, who will be 35 years old next week, and so I know what a difficult road there is for her." "I chose to have my son, and from that point I realized that I was a very strong right-to-life advocate," Sharkey continued, her voice wavering ever so slightly. Roe v. Wade had been passed just the year before, and I already knew girls who were going through abortions. It wasn't a choice for me; it wasn't in my heart to do that. So when I heard the news this morning, it struck close to home for me."

A few feet away, members of the Ohio delegation were finishing up business, and I asked Patricia Murray, a delegate from Cincinnati, what she thought. "I don't even think this is an issue," she told me. "It's a family issue. It's a personal issue. The only reason it was made public was because of her mother." Nearby, Ben Rose, a delegate from Lima, said that, "In every case where I heard delegates talk about this, the first thought was to the human nature of it."

Earlier in the day, just after I heard the news, I called Marlys Popma, the well-known Iowa evangelical leader who is now the head of evangelical outreach for the McCain campaign. Like Sue Sharkey from Colorado, Popma had a story to tell. It turns out she had had a child out of wedlock nearly 30 years ago, and it changed her life. "It was my crisis pregnancy that brought me into the movement," Popma told me. "My reaction is that this shows that the governor's family is just like so many families. That's how my first child came into the world, and I'm just thrilled that [Bristol Palin] is choosing to give this child life."

I asked Popma what she thought the larger reaction among evangelicals will be. "Their reaction is going to be exactly as mine," she told me. "There hasn't been one evangelical family that hasn't gone through some sort of situation. Many of us are in this movement because of something that has happened in our lives."

As for now, at least, evangelicals seem to be completely on Palin's side. And McCain's. This is a group that has been skeptical of McCain in the past. Now, it's probably fair to say that he has never been more popular among evangelicals than he is at this moment. Whether that will last, or whether Palin will cost McCain support among other voters, is not yet clear. But within the confines of the Republican Convention, McCain's surprising choice of Palin - and the equally surprising news about her family - is paying off.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Palin consistency: "Sarah Palin has handed down her pro-life beliefs to her young daughter, Bristol who, at the age of 17 and unmarried, has decided to give her unborn child the gift of life. In their official statement on the matter, the Palins seemed far from the "rigid" label attributed to Sarah Palin by liberal critics, but instead assured their young daughter that she had their "unconditional love and support."

A good comment on the Palin family support for their daughter: "Quite a contrast with Barack Obama, who in March said he wouldn't want his daughters "punished with a baby." Congratulations to Bristol, her fiance and the grandparents-to-be."

A fun comment: "I think we can all agree that Palin's pick of an experienced statesman like John McCain to head her ticket shows that she is much better prepared to be VP than Biden who is trying to thrust an unqualified youngster who was a do-nothing state legislator before being elected to the Senate where he put in a few months of attendance before going AWOL to run for president."

'Stop! Or We'll Say Stop Again!': "With apologies to comedian Robin Williams, that's the line that comes to mind when weighing the European Union's declaration Monday on Russia's continued occupation of Georgia. At a special meeting in Brussels, EU national leaders told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to abide by the terms of a French-brokered cease-fire, including a pullback of Russian troops to their preconflict positions. If he doesn't do so, they warned they will hold another meeting."

British Government Chooses Hitler-Loving Abortion Movement Pioneer for Stamps: "Marie Stopes, the notorious early 20th century contraception campaigner, eugenicist and anti-Semite, did for Britain what Margaret Sanger did for the US: preached the doctrines of eugenics and promoted contraception and sterilisation to achieve "racial hygiene." So successful was she at altering British society in favour of her eugenics doctrines, the British government has chosen her to be included in a "Women of Distinction" line of stamps. The Royal Mail announced this weekend that the face of Marie Stopes, who advocated the sterilisation of poor women to promote the "welfare of the race", will feature on the 50p stamp. The stamps will be available beginning 14 October 2008."

Obamanut Predicts Race War If McCain Wins: "Fatimah Ali, who is described as "a regular contributor" to the Philadelphia Daily News, writes today that, "if McCain wins, look for a full-fledged race and class war, fueled by a deflated and depressed country, soaring crime, homelessness - and hopelessness!" I would like to see this column distributed widely, since I believe it would impel many voters to support McCain just to deflate such pompous offensiveness."

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

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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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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Apologies for the absence of substance

Regular readers may have noted that I have not put anything up here today so far.

I have had a cable outage for over 24 hours now so the few bits I put up yesterday and today have been posted from an internet cafe.

I will try to put up a bit more but a lot depends on how soon my cable service provider -- the arrogant semi-monopolist Telstra/Bigpond -- get their cable service working again in my area.

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Interview with Charles Murray

by Bernard Chapin

My father always said that anyone who lived through John F. Kennedy's assassination remembers what they were doing at the precise moment the president was shot. This may well be true, but we also lucidly recall the circumstances of far lesser events such as the controversy surrounding the publication of The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray. The furor its conclusions caused is forever ingrained in my memory.

At the time I was a psychology graduate student and found that most of my associates were familiar with the work but deemed it a book to be burned rather than read. I, however, bought it anyway, and like to think that my purchase foreshadowed my eventual defection from the Democratic Party. While the mainstream media may deem Dr. Charles Murray a pariah, he has been a hero of mine for fourteen years. His fame preceded the 1990s, however. Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980 is a work that permanently altered public perceptions regarding the welfare state. Therefore, it was an honor to have him answer a few questions about his latest publication, Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality. Currently, he is the W. H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

BC: Congratulations on the publication of your new book, Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality, why does the future of this nation depend on the education of the gifted? Personally, I find your assumption non-remarkable, but why are so many of our elites offended by the notion that we should assist the strong?

Dr. Charles Murray: The academically gifted run the country. That's not what should be, that's what is. It can be demonstrated empirically that the overwhelming majority of people in positions of economic, cultural, and political influence is drawn from among those in the top ten percent of academic ability. That being the case, they need to arrive at those positions possessing an education-a classic, rigorous, liberal education-that gives them the best possible chance of being wise as well as technically well-trained. The resistance of the elites to this idea? It makes them feel'elitist. And above all else, we mustn't think anything that makes us feel bad about ourselves.

BC: Along these lines, is our nation's devotion to the education of the handicapped-as discernable in the billions spent on special education since 1975-at the expense of higher functioning students-an example of compassion gone mad? In your view, for what reason do we preference the disabled over the abled?

Dr. Charles Murray: I am an impassioned advocate for the proposition that none of us deserves the academic ability we possess, whether it be high or low. So I am happy to see money spent on the academically handicapped, as long as the money actually accomplishes something. Most of it doesn't, and meanwhile we have neglected the kind of education that might really make a difference in their lives (e.g., teaching them ways of making a living despite their handicaps). But neglecting the gifted is just as morally bankrupt as neglecting the handicapped. We don't consider deliberately withholding special training from the athletically or musically gifted-we would think it unfair (even spiteful) to the child to do so. The same logic applies to the academically gifted.

BC: The major group tests given to college applicants-such as the SAT and the ACT-assess academic skills, is it your position that new evaluation measures should be normed and implemented that incorporate cognitive capacity as well (due to it better identifying, for employers, students who will excel in a vocational setting)?

Dr. Charles Murray: The SAT and ACT are actually pretty good measures of cognitive ability. But I'm in favor of moving toward certification tests that are specific to a vocation (the CPA exam is the archetype), and that measure what a job applicant knows, not where he learned it or how long it took or, for that matter, what his cognitive ability is. If I'm hiring a carpenter, I want to know if he's a good carpenter. The same principle should apply if I'm hiring management trainees, physicians, or even, God help us, public policy analysts.

BC: For those of us who have been to college, the correlation between a Bachelor of Arts degree and future vocational achievement is not readily evident. What brought about the state wherein the four-year degree is a prerequisite for white collar employment? It seems that what many students learn at college is completely superfluous to the tasks they must perform after graduation.

Dr. Charles Murray: Except for a few technical majors such as engineering, a bachelor's degree does not signal professional competence, but is a no-cost (to the employer) screen for perseverance and a certain degree of intelligence. As the number of BAs grew from the 1950s onward, it has made more and more sense for employers to use it as a screen (as more people get BAs, the fewer good job prospects the employer is missing by requiring a BA). The problem is: It's a very coarse, low-information screen. Certification tests would give the employer more information by orders of magnitude.

BC: In your opinion, how politically corrupted are the liberal arts colleges within our universities? One always hears leftists say that the radicals in the news-as profiled in books like David Horowitz's The Professors-are not indicative of the whole.

Dr. Charles Murray: One of my daughters finished at Middlebury a year ago, got an excellent liberal education (in the classic sense of that phrase), and experienced little political correctness among her professors. Another of my daughters told me matter-of-factly that of course she had to incorporate the right feminist perspective in her senior thesis, because otherwise her thesis supervisor wouldn't accept it-and that was at Harvard. So I don't have a good answer to your question. It all depends. I'm sure my Middlebury daughter could have found courses that were corrupt and that many Harvard thesis advisors would be appalled at the idea of letting politics contaminate scholarship.

BC: How likely is any educational reform with the teacher's unions as strong as they are?

Dr. Charles Murray: In my experience, the teachers' unions are mostly a problem in the big-city systems. My younger two children went to the public schools in a small town. The teachers are unionized, but I can't see how it created any serious problems. I'm one of those who thinks that teachers are getting too much blame. The real problem with public education (again, except for the big-city systems) is the awful curriculum that the teachers have to work with.

BC: Even for higher functioning children-males in particular-given the exorbitant cost of a college education would not a career in the trades be a more prudent choice?

Dr. Charles Murray: Have you checked out the going rate for master stonemasons these days? Forget the ridiculous costs of a college education. Just take a close look at the real and large rewards, monetary and intrinsic, of becoming a master craftsman in almost any trade.

BC: I know a great many educators and the vast of majority of them wholeheartedly believe that educational deficiencies in urban settings are due to a lack of funding. Of course this is totally fallacious. Washington D.C. has some of the worst schools in the country and they are third on the list in terms of per pupil spending while Chicago is well above the national average. In your estimation, what's the best way to refute the horrendous argument that in education cash equals quality?

Dr. Charles Murray: It's been done. The technical literature has documented the unimportance of differences in per-pupil funding for more than 40 years, going back to the massive Coleman Report. So how do you get newspaper editorial writers and politicians to become technically literate? Beats the hell out of me. Maybe we should pass a No Journalist or Politician Left Behind Act.

BC: Thanks so much for your time, Dr. Murray.

Source

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ELSEWHERE

Carpooling: Green, cheap and illegal in Canada: ""There's an online free global ride-sharing service called PickupPal that has been gaining traction with Internet users lately, most notably by partnering with concert promoters and other event planners to spread the word about their service. PickupPal matches up drivers and passengers who are headed to the same destination, tracks and publishes their reputations eBay-style and allows them to work out mutual arrangements for splitting the gas money and other costs of the trip. ... It is hard to see how such a thing could be anything less than a nifty social benefit of the Internet, but in Ontario, it is considered illegal. The province's Public Vehicles Act states, 'No person shall arrange or offer to arrange transportation of passengers by means of a public vehicle operated by another person unless that other person is the holder of an operating licence authorizing that other person to perform the transportation.'"

TSA = "Totally Senile Assholes"?: "With the news that hit the mainstream media on Wednesday, but has been part of the blogosphere for a day prior, Taking Scissors Away has morphed from a frightening tyrannical agency to a clear and present danger to the traveling public. Not content with turning airports into poorly run copies of East Germany, not content with stealing passenger's water, making mothers drink their own breast milk, harassing and/or torturing the handicapped, wand-raping pretty women, stealing medication, trying to steal a medal of honor from the NRA president, depriving travelers of their constitutional rights and imprisoning those who object, Totally Senile Assholes have crossed the line from seeing terrorists where none exist to manufacturing their own terror attacks."

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

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

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

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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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The "death's door" argument

An email from a reader:

The Democrats' main line of attack against Palin is this: McCain is at death's door; he could go any minute; we don't want someone with limited experience having to step in. (Let's ignore the fact that the Democrats want to put someone with limited experience in the Oval Office right away).

Of course, this argument fails if one assumes (as everyone who plans to vote for McCain does) that McCain will not only serve out his first term but perhaps a second as well. In the meantime, Palin obviously grows in experience with every passing month and year.

Now then, what about the Democrat side of the coin? Everyone says: "Well, if something should happen to Obama, we've got good ol' Joe Biden waiting in the wings." (Let's ignore the fact that virtually no one wants Biden as President -- after all, he was utterly and overwhelmingly rejected by the Democrats themselves during the primaries).

But wait a minute. Biden is old, too: he will be 66 in November. And he has a history of life-threatening brain aneurysms. For all we know, he's more likely to keel over than McCain is!

And if that happens . . . then guess who becomes President? Nancy Pelosi. Yes, the facelifted but brain-dead Nancy Pelosi. So, if we're going to play the "death's door" game, the Democrats lose.

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MCCAIN'S MAVERICK PICK

Comment by Jeff Jacoby



If it did nothing else, John McCain's choice of Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate instantly changed the subject from Barack Obama's dramatic acceptance speech in Denver the night before. But that wasn't all it accomplished. With one stroke, McCain defied convention, galvanized Republicans, and gave Hillary Clinton's legions another reason to consider crossing party lines in November: It is McCain, not Obama, who will be sharing a national ticket with a gutsy and accomplished woman. The Palin pick is a vivid illustration of why the label "maverick" is so often applied to McCain.

Those who have observed the 44-year-old governor up close speak highly of her political skills and personal appeal. She took on her own party's ethically challenged leadership and beat it handily, and has gone on to earn stratospherically high approval ratings for her own performance in office. Unlike Alaska's better-known politicians, she is a spending hawk and a committed porkbuster; notably, she pulled the plug on her state's notorious $400 million "bridge to nowhere."

Palin is about as far from a "Washington insider" as anyone in US politics can be -- a striking contrast to Obama's running mate, six-term Senator Joseph Biden. Her family story is thoroughly all-American, authentic, and charming: The former beauty contestant and self-described "hockey mom" is married to her high school sweetheart, with whom she has five kids, ranging from the 18-year-old in the Army to the infant with Down syndrome. And it certainly upends familiar stereotypes to have a national GOP candidate whose spouse belongs to the Steelworkers Union and races snowmobiles for fun. Nothing "community organizer" about this candidate.

Of course McCain is taking a big gamble. Palin has been governor for less than two years, has no foreign-policy or national-security experience, and has never been through the gauntlet of a national campaign. Whether she can hold her own on the stump and under the withering glare of the national media, we will all know soon enough. Many voters will understandably read McCain's choice as cynical, in part because he has made such an issue of Obama's limited record. But surely Palin's lack of expertise on defense and international issues makes *Obama's* inexperience all the more conspicuous. The Democratic nominee is as green and untested as McCain's new running mate. (Arguably even more so, since Obama has never been an executive.) There is, however, one key difference between them: She's not running for president....

For all the ink and bandwidth devoted to the Veepstakes, it is almost always the candidate at the top who seals the deal with the electorate -- or doesn't. Palin and Biden will enliven the nine weeks remaining until Nov. 4, but barring some extraordinary development or colossal blunder, they won't change the outcome. The race isn't about them. It is about Obama and McCain. It is between the uplifting but insubstantial charisma of the former and the battle-tested experience and judgment of the latter.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Bureaucratic parasites: "Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) has been checking up on the attendance records of federal employees. And he doesn't like what he's found. Civil servants have been away from their jobs without permission much too often in recent years, Coburn says in a new report. Records from 17 federal agencies and the U.S. Postal Service show that workers were absent without leave for 19.6 million hours between 2001 and 2007, the study found. That's the equivalent of 2.5 million missed days of work, or 316 employees skipping out for entire 30-year careers, says Coburn, the ranking Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee on federal financial management."

The Timing of Hurricane Gustav 'Just Demonstrates That God's on [the Democrats'] Side?: "We all say things we regret, and many of us speak in public places - like, say, an airplane coming back from the Democratic convention - without thinking how they would look captured on YouTube. Having said that, former DNC Chair Don Fowler would be wise to apologize for his giggling comments suggesting that the timing of Hurricane Gustav making landfall, and the potential it could hit New Orleans, "just demonstrates that God's on our side."

Crazy Prediction: "Picture this scenario... One month from now, the Palin pick has proven a bonanza for the McCain campaign. A large chunk of Hillary's 18 million voters have been won over. Conservatives are unified and energized, and the previously-undiscovered "Maxim magazine vote" is suddenly giving McCain large margins among young males. Joe Biden will disappear from the campaign trail, and we will later learn it was to see a doctor. A previously-undiscovered, vaguely ominous health issue will be discovered, and Biden will sadly announce that he cannot continue as Obama's running mate. With a sudden need for a new one, Obama will turn... to Hillary Clinton"

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

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

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

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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Palin



It's tempting but I am not going to add anything to the uproar over Sarah Palin today. My fellow bloggers over at STACLU are doing a fine job shooting down the frantic Leftist and media criticisms of her. It's amusing how most of the things that Leftists criticize in her apply even more to Wonderboy (e.g. lack of foreign policy experience; insufficient administrative experience). They're really desperate. They say that running Alaska is "not enough" experience. As far as I am aware, Wonderboy has never even run a raffle.

I will say this, however: I predict that she will one day be President of the United States.

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A summary of Olavo de Carvalho on the Leftist mind

Olavo de Carvalho is a Brazilian philosopher so his views principally reflect Lefism as it exists in Latin America -- but most of what he says is recognizable in the Anglosphere too

The Left (which he calls the "revolution") is not a unified ideology or agenda at all, but rather a way of seeing the world, and specifically it is an inversion of what normal people call common sense. And this inversion is the sole unifying factor, the one common thread running through the revolution since the 13th and 14th centuries

According to de Carvalho, revolutionary thought as we know it did not exist before about the 13th century; nor is it a function of chronological age. The myth that the young tend to be revolutionaries arises from the Left itself and serves the purpose of making the Revolution appear to be a natural phenomenon. Instead, this revolutionary inversion has its origins in an early Christian heresy (arrogating to itself the role of Christ the avenger) and has at least three aspects:

1-Inversion of the perception of time.

Normal individuals, based on common sense, see the past as something immutable and the future as something that can be changed (it is contingent, as de Carvalho puts it). Not so the leftist revolutionary, who sees the utopian future as a goal that eventually will be reached no matter what and the past as something that can be changed, through reinterpretation (what we call "rewriting history"), to accommodate it.

One example the author gives of this is how Soviet propagandists reinterpreted Dostoevsky, an anti-revolutionary of the first order. In his novel "Crime and Punishment," young revolutionary Raskolnikov kills his wealthy elderly landlady as an act of solidarity with the poor class, in keeping with his world view that ownership of private property is immoral and that the revolutionary is entitled to take possession of it by any means at his disposal. But Raskolnikov is caught and goes to jail where the only book available to the prisoners is a Bible, which he reads, and is converted to Christianity, abandoning his revolutionary ideology, which he now understands as immoral.

While fully aware of Dostoevsky's anti-revolutionary mindset, the early communists liked his novels and considered them too thoroughly Russian to ban, so they simply reinterpreted him posthumously and declared that his novels were written to highlight the need for more social justice. Thus the Left reached back into time and manipulated the thoughts of a man who would have been their adversary, making him posthumously a fellow communist.

2-The inversion of morality

De Carvalho points out that because the revolutionary (leftist) believes implicitly in a future utopia where there will be no evil, this same revolutionary believes that no holds should be barred in achieving that utopia. Thus, his own criminal activities in achieving that goal are above reproach. The author cites Che Guevara, who said that the revolutionary is the "highest rank of mankind." Thus, armed with such moral superiority, Che was able to cold-bloodedly murder his political enemies wholesale.

Another example cited in the lecture is Karl Marx, who had an illicit liaison with his maid and then, to keep bourgeois appearances, made his son, the offspring of that liaison, live in the basement of his home, never even introducing the boy to his brothers in wedlock. The boy was never mentioned in the family and went into historical oblivion. De Carvalho compares this despicable behavior with the more noble conduct of Brazilian landowners who had illegitimate children but made them heirs, yet made no claims of moral superiority!

To the revolutionary mind, it is normal that the revolutionary should pay no mind to the bourgeois morality, because after all, nothing he does can be construed as immoral, since the sum total of his actions hasten the revolution when justice will prevail. This is why conservatives frequently refer to the Left's hypocrisy (for example, environmental champion Al Gore's 20-fold electricity consumption compared to yours and mine).

By contrast, the author shows that by the Left's own definition of "revolution," the American revolution is not a revolution at all because our founders were men who held themselves (not just others) to high moral standards, and in no way tried to usher in a novel experimental utopian system, basing their actions and policies on older English traditions and common law, and modeling our Republic on these tried and true common-sense precepts.

3-Inversion of subject and object

When revolutionaries like Che, and Hitler's operatives, for example, killed innocent people, they would blame the people they killed for "making" them do it by refusing to go along with their revolutionary notions. This is one example the author gives of the inversion of subject and object.

De Carvalho also points out a number of other inversions and makes many fascinating points, but my purpose here is simply to clarify what the Left really is, to stimulate thought and to predispose the reader to buy his book when it comes out. You will be a better American for having read the writings of - a great American.

Source

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Democrats oppose secret ballots

The better to intimidate people

Democrats narrowly avoided a major embarrassment before holding their abbreviated roll call of the states here on Wednesday night.

Politico.com reported that the Obama campaign was seriously considering letting delegates vote by secret ballot, the better to avoid intimidation and fear of reprisal from local party bosses. But the plan -- which was pushed on the Obama camp by supporters of Hillary Clinton -- was suddenly dropped when it was realized that a key plank of the Democratic Party platform backs a so-called "card check" provision being added to the nation's labor laws. Card check would effectively strip workers of the protection of secret ballots in union elections. Business groups and former Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern oppose the measure on the grounds that it exposes workers to harassment and intimidation.

That was precisely the concern of Democratic delegates who wanted to cast a secret ballot vote on the convention floor. The Obama campaign thought seriously about accommodating them until it realized how such a naked contradiction to the party's stance on union balloting might look to voters and the media.

Source

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

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

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

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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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The Moose Hunting "Barracuda"



Everybody and his dog can see that McCain's VP nomination is a brilliant grab for all the disgruntled Hillary supporters. You can almost hear the election ads already: "There's no glass ceiling in the Republican Party". She is much more than just a woman, however -- as Dick McDonald notes below:

Sarah Palin was the point-guard on the state's winning basketball team. The team members nicknamed her "Barracuda". She and her father are big "moose hunters". Her son will be fighting in Iraq soon. She opted to keep her new baby son with "Down's Syndrome" at the same time as the woman was the Governor of Alaska. Her first act as Governor was to sell the Governor's private jet. She won the race promising to clean up the corruption, including destroying Republican Senator Ted Stevens and his "Bridge to Nowhere". Today John McCain has chosen her to be the nominee for Vice-President of the United States.

She must be something special she has five kids and was runner-up in the Miss Alaska contest in 1984. She has the toughest job in America - a mother. She is married to her high school sweetheart and they celebrate their 20th anniversary today. Right at this moment she is speaking for the first time and she is one powerful speaker who will make mincemeat out of many of her detractors. She is a reformer with a record and she has all those attributes men celebrate - and sometime wither under - a phenomenal memory and an ability to make us toe that line we so often want to cross.

I am learning more about her as the minutes pass. My first impression is that we may have found our Margaret Thatcher. Her spirit shines through her face and the visage is much more attractive than Margaret's. The 2008 race has become a lot more interesting just when you thought it couldn't get any more interesting than Obama's love fest at Mile High. She will be the pit bull for McCain and boy she sounds as if she will be effective. As a woman she will be a softening influence on his administration - she was Miss Congeniality in 1984.

She is a hockey mom and the wife of a commercial fisherman, a member of the NRA and a pro-life advocate. Can this election be more different? Her approval rating in Alaska is above 80% which is totally phenomenal in any state. Apparently her reputation with the people is that the countryside is littered with the bodies of those who challenged her. Wow! McCain you did it again. You found an attractive and effective women - I can't wait to for this to all play out. The first call I got on this pick was from one very strong Republican woman who said she was in tears - of joy - after hearing Sarah talk

Source.

John McCain's introduction of her and her acceptance speech are on video here. It is a "Don't miss" video. McCain is not as good as The Gipper but he has The Gipper's straightforward sincerity. Details on how McCain came to pick Palin here

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What Palin Does

1. Steps on the story of Obama's speech (and convention), and possibly the bounce coming from them, and wipes them off the news cycle. The Sunday news shows will be all-Palin, all of the time.

2. Sends Republicans into their convention on a huge head of steam.

3. Wipes out the image of McCain as the crotchety elder and brings back that of the fly-boy and gambler, which is much more appealing, and the genuine person.

4. Revs up the base AND excites independents, which no one else in the party, or perhaps in the world, could have accomplished.

5. Puts youth, change, and history on both of the tickets.

6. May detach some young people, especially women.

7. May attach some women pissed off about Hillary.

8. As a pro-life super-achiever, puts feminists in a tizzy.

9. Revives some of the double-edged nature of the Democratic primary, which featured a black vs. a
female trail-blazer, and put both sides on notice on sensitivity issues. Democrats used to raising charges of racism against Obama's critics may face charges of sexism and/or condescension if they try to diss her.

10. Steps on Obama's claims to have been a reformer, as he reformed nothing (much less the corrupt mare's nest of Chicago arrangements), while she was a dragon-slayer up in Alaska.

11. As a mother of five, one a Down Syndrome baby, helps her side take on the Democrats on abortion extremism and the Born Alive bill.

12. Reignites the deep and unhealed stresses inside the Democrats, some of whom will now wonder more loudly than ever why they didn't pick Hillary.

13. Counters Michelle in a way Cindy couldn't.

14. Counter-intuitively, makes the issue of Obama's light resume more potent than ever. Her lack of experience is no more than his is. And he's--to use a term from Alaska, and the Iditarod--their lead dog.

Source

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ELSEWHERE

Obama: No Mathlete : "In last night's speech Barack Obama claimed that, "we import triple the amount of oil as the day that Senator McCain took office." So what? Senator McCain has been in office for 26 years. That's an average increase of 4.2% per year (with compounding). Second, and more importantly, what does that have to do with anything? John McCain is one senator out of 100. His biography is full of amazing stories of courage, sacrifice and accomplishment. Surely, though, Senator Obama is not saying the John McCain has been single-handedly responsible for US energy policy for the last 25 years. What else can we put on his shoulders? US GDP has increased by 200% since McCain took office. Hamburger sales have skyrocketed. Shark attacks have been almost eliminated since McCain was elected. Maybe he's an oil importing, GDP raising, hamburger eating, shark killing leviathan. If so, he has my vote."

The strange Veep choice: "Joe Biden wasn't even on Barack Obama's short list until August 7, when Russia suddenly invaded the neighboring country of Georgia. That's the word from key Democrats meeting here in Denver who say the Obama campaign's need to shore up its foreign policy bona fides helped push the Delaware senator to the top of the pack. `We didn't pick our nominee. Vladimir Putin did,' is how one Democrat, who professes to be pleased with the Biden choice, put it."

The prophets of doom never give up: "The US economy expanded at a 3.3 per cent rate from April through June, far faster than first thought, but analysts are warning that the outlook for the remainder of the year remains grim. Even as investors celebrated with a rally in the stockmarket, pushing the Dow up more than 200 points, economists cautioned that consumer spending and foreign demand would probably dry up in the months ahead. With layoffs on the rise, corporate profits falling, and the housing slump still in full swing, the report was seen by many analysts as something of a last gasp. "Don't lull yourself into complacency looking in the rearview mirror," Joshua Shapiro, chief US economist at the research firm MFR, said. "The view out of the windshield is a lot scarier."

No good economic news in socialist-run Britain: "Britain's Treasury chief has told a newspaper that the country is suffering its worst economic crisis for 60 years, and more pain is yet to come. The Guardian newspaper has quoted Alistair Darling as saying the slump is ``going to be more profound and long-lasting than people thought''. In an interview for the paper's weekend edition, Darling said the economic conditions faced by Britain and the world ``are arguably the worst they have been in 60 years''. Darling also acknowledged that voters were angry with the governing Labour Party, which has been in power for 11 years."

There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.

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

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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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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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I somehow never quite made it to Denver but a reader has sent me a program from it that makes me feel that I am almost there:

Democratic National Convention Order of Speakers

5:00-6:00 pm - Jimmy Carter. Topic: Lets give Appeasement a Chance (sung to John Lennon tract).

6:00pm-7:00pm - John Edwards. Topic: Standing erect behind my principles

7:00pm -8:00pm - Jesse Jackson. Topic: I am not bitter OK and if you don't believe me I will cut your nut off. (In place of Al Sharpton's Apolcalypse Now speech: "Do you smell that? It's a race riot, son. Nothing else on the world smells like that. I love the smell of a race riot in the morning. Actually I love the smell of a race riot in the afternoon too.Come to think of it...)

8:00pm 9:00pm - Arrival of Al Gore's personal jet followed by speech. Topic: Do as I say not as I do. (Snacks to Follow .... Drinks sponsored by the Kennedys)

Concurrent workshops (8:00-9:00pm)

Workshop A: 150 ways of using the word `change' by the Obama Speech writers collective (Thesaurus not required).
Workshop B: Milking the `Blame-it-on-Bush-Line'. Can we get another four years out of this? Harry Reid/Nancy Pelosi
Workshop C: Why I plan to go to Cuba for my brain surgery? By Michael Moore
Workshop D: George Soros pays tribute to Obama - background song `Puppet on a String' Sandie Shaw
Workshop E: Some deep thoughts on global politics by Maggie Gyllenhaal/Sean Penn and Scarlet Johansson (10 minutes only)

9:00 pm -10:00pm - Hilary Clinton: Reciting I could have been a contender from 'On the Waterfront'.

10:00pm - Barack Obama arrives in a chariot to the lyrics of Jesus Christ Superstar

10:00-11:00pm - Barack Obama's speech. Special Lottery: Guess the number of references to JFK? (Special Note to delegates: Don't mention the 'sucess of the surge' or we'll give you the Joe Lieberman treatment)

11:00 pm - 'God', one of the few outstanding celebrities, officially endorses Obama (pending an ACLU objection). Apparently it was Oprah who swung him over.

Convention clears. Exit Strategies initialized.

Source

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ELSEWHERE

Judge orders release of Rosenberg trial evidence: "A U.S. federal judge on Tuesday ordered the release of a further eight grand jury transcripts from the 1951 espionage prosecution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a lawyer for the National Security Archives said. The Rosenbergs were convicted in 1951 of passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union and executed in 1953. Rosenberg supporters describe the case as a frame-up amid anti-communist McCarthyism hysteria and Cold War fear. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein allows the release of secret testimony from some key prosecution witnesses and offers historians an almost complete record of the secret testimony, lawyer David Vladeck said."

"Recession" over: "Wall Street shares muscled higher today after a stronger-than-expected revision to US second-quarter growth helped ease fears of a prolonged economic malaise. The Dow Jones Industrial Average vaulted 202.98 points (1.76 per cent) to 11,705.49 at the closing bell. Revised official data showed exports helped US gross domestic product (GDP) growth accelerate to a 3.3 percent annualised pace in the second quarter, up from an earlier estimate of 1.9 percent and a strong rebound from the 0.9 per cent increase in the first quarter. Analysts said that the report showed better-than-expected economic momentum even if some of the growth came from exports helped by a weak dollar and consumer spending fueled by one-time tax rebates. "This was a surprisingly strong report that should end the discussion about a recession, at least for now," said Joel Naroff at Naroff Economic Advisors". [How awful for the Donks!]

US marine acquitted of war crimes in ground-breaking trial: "A former US Marine accused of killing unarmed Iraqi prisoners has been acquitted after a ground-breaking trial in which a civilian jury determined whether he was guilty of war crimes. The Californian jury took six hours to find Jose Luis Nazario Jr. not guilty of fatally shooting or causing others to shoot dead four Iraqi detainees during fierce fighting in Fallujah, Iraq, on November 9, 2004. The case marked the first time a former member of the US military accused of a combat crime had his case tried in a civilian court. Nazario, 28, who could not be prosecuted in a military court because he had left the Marines, sobbed so loudly after his acquittal that the judge called for order. His family and friends also broke down in court. The former Marine Corps sergeant was accused of shooting dead two of the captives himself before ordering two subordinates to kill the others during the 2004 storming of Fallujah, known as Operation Phantom Fury."

Stupid do-gooder learns about reality the hard way: "A British woman has been raped by a gang of asylum seekers in Calais, it has been alleged. The journalism student wanted to highlight the plight of migrants who sleep rough in a squalid camp at the French port before trying to sneak into Britain. She was subjected to a horrific attack by six Afghan men she intended to write about, it was claimed. French riot police rounded up 200 migrants for questioning. Ten remained in custody tonight and police said it was possible all had been involved in the rape, which detectives described as 'extremely brutal'. Police said the 31-year-old victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was a London student who had travelled to France 'to highlight problems surrounding clandestine immigration'... The victim remains in Calais, with police hoping she will be able to identify her attackers. Tonight she was described as 'utterly traumatised and receiving counselling'."

Lucky town. No government: "Only eight months on the job as supervisor of the small town of Ancram, Thomas Dias finds himself faced not with a crisis in government but no government at all. That's because three of the town's five board members abruptly resigned last week, leaving the town with a government unable to hold its scheduled monthly meeting Thursday or take any action, including paying its bill. Dias has asked Gov. David Paterson to appoint at least one councilman so the board has a quorum and can conduct business until replacements are chosen by voters in the fall. Ancram is a rural Hudson Valley town of 1,500 people once known for its lead mines. Located 90 miles north of New York City, it and other Columbia County towns are experiencing gentrification that is causing friction between families who have lived there for generations and Manhattanites buying weekend and vacation homes. Tension was evident in two of the resignation letters. James Bryant, a Democrat, wrote that he hopes "the board will be objective in meeting the needs of both the old and new residents, as this town belongs to everyone that calls Ancram their home." "We're going as quickly as we can and the town is not facing emergency services being cut or anything like that," Paterson spokesman Morgan Hook said."

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

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

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

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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Congressional fumbling should help McCain

By KARL ROVE

Democrats and Republicans have scripted their conventions as tightly as possible. But after delegates return home with buttons, badges and banners, the curtain will rise on a more unruly drama: the fall session of Congress. And it could affect the November election more than the conventions. The House and Senate return to Washington Monday, Sept. 8. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid hope it will be a short session, ending on Sept. 26. That will allow members to go home and campaign, not to return until after Election Day. Good luck.

Congress hasn't yet passed any one of the 12 appropriations bills needed to fund the government when the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1. And Congress isn't likely to pass them through both houses and get them to the president before leaving town. The goal here for Mr. Reid and Mrs. Pelosi is to delay passing a budget until the next president is inaugurated. If the Democrats get their wish and sweep the November elections, Barack Obama's swearing-in ceremony will mark the opening of the spending floodgates.

Before they get there, however, this Congress must first pass stopgap legislation that will pay the federal government's bills for the next few months. Usually, that is done with a "continuing resolution," a bill that simply funds the government at its current level for a short period of time. But a continuing resolution is fraught with political problems for Democrats. Members, desperate for their election-year pork-barrel spending, could band together and threaten to withhold support if their earmarks are not inserted into spending bills. If that happens, say goodbye to Democratic claims of fiscal responsibility.

Another problem is oil. There is a congressional ban on drilling on the outer continental shelf that will expire on Oct. 1, if it isn't first reauthorized. Typically, the ban is reauthorized as part of the Interior Department appropriations bill. But this year the president says he will veto that bill if the House and Senate don't allow an up-or-down vote on drilling there. That sets up a political showdown. Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Reid could try stuffing the ban into the continuing resolution. But that runs the risk of a government shutdown over spending and increasing domestic energy supplies -- a fight that is sure to focus public attention just weeks before the election.

Adding fuel to this fire is Sen. Charles Schumer, the Democrat in charge of increasing his party's majority in the Senate. He said recently that "the drilling issue has peaked," and is therefore less inclined to support a compromise to open the outer continental shelf. Normally politically acute, Mr. Schumer is either bluffing or out of touch with public opinion, which seems to favor Republicans on the issue nearly everywhere. Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Reid could offer a drilling expansion bill that doesn't do much to open new territory, but which would include billions in new spending and would impose a "windfall profits" tax. But voters would sniff out such a phony ploy to do something about $4 gas....

The end result of all of these messy fights is that a Congress -- which hit a record low 14% approval rating in a July Gallup Poll before its members left on summer vacation -- may become even more unpopular.

Inevitably, John McCain and Barack Obama will be drawn into these fights. And, although both are sitting senators, the advantage may go to Mr. McCain. Democrats control Congress, so they are accountable. Mr. Reid and Mrs. Pelosi are two of the worst advertisements for Congress imaginable. And Mr. McCain has an impressive record of political reform he can invoke, whereas Mr. Obama, who has yet to complete his first term in the Senate, has no accomplishments to point to that demonstrate that he is an agent of change. The 110th Congress is an excellent target for Mr. McCain. He ought to take careful aim at it and commence firing.

More here

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How the Georgian Conflict Really Started

'Anybody who thinks that Moscow didn't plan this invasion, that we in Georgia caused it gratuitously, is severely mistaken," President Mikheil Saakashvili told me during a late night chat in Georgia's presidential palace this weekend. "Our decision to engage was made in the last second as the Russian tanks were rolling -- we had no choice," Mr. Saakashvili explained. "We took the initiative just to buy some time. We knew we were not going to win against the Russian army, but we had to do something to defend ourselves." ....

"I got a call from the minister of defense that Russian tanks, some 200, were massing to enter Tskhinvali from North Ossetia," Mr. Saakashvili told me. "I ignored it at first, but reports kept coming in that they had begun to move forward. In fact, they had mobilized reserves several days ahead of time."

This was precisely the kind of information that the Russians have suppressed and the world press continues to ignore, despite decades of familiarity with Kremlin disinformation methods. "We subsequently found out from pilots we shot down," said Mr. Saakashvili, "that they'd been called up three days before from places like Moscow. We had intelligence coming in ahead of time but we just couldn't believe it. Also, in recent weeks, the separatists had intensified artillery barrages and were shooting our soldiers. I'd kept telling our guys to stay calm. Actually we had most of our troops down near Abkhazia where we expected the real trouble to start. I can tell you that if we'd intended to attack, we'd have withdrawn our best-trained forces from Iraq up front."

According to the Georgian president, the Russians had been planning an invasion of his country for weeks -- even months -- ahead of time: "Some months ago, I was warned by Western leaders in Dubrovnik to expect an attack this summer," he explained. "Mr. Putin had already threatened me in February, saying we would become a protectorate of Russia. When I met Mr. Medvedev in June, he was very friendly. I saw him again in July and he was a changed man, spooked, evasive. He tried to avoid me. He knew something by then....

I put it to Mr. Saakashvili that there was also the question of why now? Why did the Russians not act before or later? It was a matter, he said, of several factors coming together: the useful distractions of the Beijing Olympics and the U.S. elections, the fact that it took Mr. Putin this long to consolidate power, the danger that tanks would bog down in the winter. But two factors above all sealed Georgia's fate this summer, it seems. In April, NATO postponed the decision to admit Georgia into the organization until its next summit in October. Mr. Saakashvili believes Moscow felt it had one last chance to pre-empt Georgia's joining NATO.

More here

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Some interesting history

It is well known that the American Founding Fathers were profoundly influenced by England's "Glorious Revolution" of 1688, which had overthrown a reactionary British monarch in the name of Enlightenment principles, religious liberty and representative institutions. Yet were those truly the ideals of the 1688 Revolution? If not, "the spirit of 1776" was based on a false premise.

Lisa Jardine, a professor at the University of London, pursues this theme in "Going Dutch," a thoroughly researched and provocative revisionist study. She argues that the Glorious Revolution was far from glorious and less a revolution than a blatant invasion. Nor was it a great blow for liberty: 1688, she contends, was a naked power grab by the Statholder of Holland, William of Orange, who sought to oust his father-in-law, King James II, for the sake of his own interests and those of the Dutch Republic; all the talk of liberty and high ideals was just Dutch propaganda.

If Ms. Jardine is right, men like Jefferson, Franklin and Adams were duped, for, as Michael Barone recounted last year in "Our First Revolution," 1776 was a conscious re-run of 1688. Was the U.S. created at least partly out of piety toward a slick Dutch con job?

Ms. Jardine presents a close analysis of the plotting going on in William's court before his fleet of 500 ships and 30,000 men set sail for England on Nov. 1, 1688; months of preparation, she shows, went into creating the right political conditions for the invasion. She persuades us that, in part, a fear that France would invade Holland led William to attempt the attack on James II, hoping to use London to foil Louis XIV's designs. In part, she argues, William sought to exploit England's maritime power on behalf of Holland, or at least to negate British hostility to Dutch global expansionism, especially in the East Indies....

Once William had landed on the south coast of England on Nov. 5, 1688, and found himself cheered in the streets, he marched swiftly on to London, while James II fled, dropping the Great Seal of England into the Thames and burning parliamentary writs, vainly hoping that such efforts might stymie William's legislative legitimacy. English regiments such as the Coldstream Guards were deftly negotiated out of London, and only Dutch troops were allowed to keep order in the capital.

It is a beguiling thesis, but flawed, for the simple reason that William was invited to invade by the English Whig aristocracy and that his "Declaration," far from being "spin," was the only basis on which he was allowed to set foot in England. If the domestic Protestant governing classes had not effectively chosen William over James, the Dutch invasion fleet would have met the fate of the Spanish Armada.

The 1688 revolution was indeed glorious, and also a revolution, because it replaced -- without bloodshed, until James sought to reverse the outcome two years later -- an obscurantist would-be dictator of alien religious views with William III, the savior of English liberties, commercial practices, religious beliefs and world-outlook. That he was Dutch was immaterial ... William of Orange's "Declaration," then, was an honest document, as his benevolent rule -- and that of his wife, Mary -- would prove. Together they passed a Toleration Act and a Bill of Rights, furthering religious and political liberty. They founded the Bank of England, greatly increased trade and stayed out of war with France until Louis XIV rashly recognized James Stuart, James II's son, as England's rightful king. The reign of William and Mary, in short, was a golden age in British history. The Founding Fathers were right to draw inspiration from it.

More here

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

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

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

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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Punitiveness, not compassion, drives the Left

It's all part of their basic hate-motivation and it's why their policies are so regularly destructive

William McGurn, in a brief but splendid article in The Wall Street Journal yesterday, helps us to understand the way that moralism plays out in Obama's policy prescriptions. The key term, McGurn notes, is "fairness," a loaded word that Obama (like many liberals) deploys as a moral bludgeon. Consider the issue of taxes. At Saddleback Church in Southern California the other day, one of the issues Rick Warren asked McCain and Obama about was taxes. "Define rich," he asked. "I mean give me a number. Is it $50,000, $100,000, $200,000? Everybody keeps talking about who we're going to tax. How can you define that?" Some on the Left have pilloried McCain for saying that he considered an income of $5 million a year "rich," but the gravamen of McCain's response, as McGurn points out, came in his elaboration: "I don't want to take any money from the rich. I want everybody to get rich."

How different was Obama's response. What he was looking for, he said, was "a sense of balance, and fairness in our tax code. It is time for folks like me who make more than $250,000 to pay our fair share."

"Our fair share." That is the Obama refrain. "[W]e will save Social Security for future generations by asking the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share." It's a small step from the invocation of "our fair share" to Obama's call for a tax on "the windfall profits of oil companies," a tax increase on capitals gains, elimination of the tax on Social Security tax, etc., etc.

The crucial point here is that what Obama is interested in is not increasing but in promulgating redistributionist policies that make it harder for people to prosper economically. McGurn recalls Obama's response to ABC's Charlie Gibson when Gibson observed that rasing taxes led to decreased revenues: "Well, Charlie," Obama replied, "what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness."

"For purposes of fairness": that means, "for purposes of economic egalitarianism." McGurn comments:

[I]t doesn't really matter whether a tax increase actually brings in more revenue. It's not about robbing from the rich to give to the poor. Robbing from the rich will do, especially if it's done in the name of fairness.

Now there are good reasons Mr. Obama is not likely to pursue the revenue side of the fairness question. As this newspaper noted in a recent editorial, the latest data from the Internal Revenue Service does not show to Mr. Obama's advantage. As we come to the end of the Bush administration, the top 1% of American taxpayers already pay 40% of all income taxes - the highest level in 40 years. The top 10% of income earners pay 71% of the taxes.

The bottom line is that when Obama invokes "fairness," he wants us to feel guilty about economic success. This is the secret of his appeal to to socialistically inclined. It is also the reason why the rest of us are so uneasy about the prospect of an Obama administration.

It has long been recognized that liberalism and feelings of guilt go together as predictably as tea and crumpets. In the title essay of his remarkable book The Chatham House Version, Elie Kedourie criticizes the anti-Western bias of Arnold Toynbee's multi-volume A Study of History. "In my eyes," Toynbee wrote in his concluding volume, "the west is a perpetual aggressor." Kedourie points out that behind Toynbee's impressive erudition ("the far-fetched analogies, the obscure references, the succession of latinate, polysyllabic words") one discerns "the shrill and clamant voice of English radicalism, thrilling with self-accusatory and joyful lamentation. Nostra culpa, nostra maxima culpa: we have invaded, we have conquered, we have dominated, we have exploited."

One finds the same emotional compact among socialistically-inclined liberals in this country: a conviction of superior virtue punctuated by declarations of unappeasable guilt. Whose guilt? Ours-or, to be more precise-yours: all you who have not yet fully acknowledged the miserable condition of Western society, especially the more affluent purlieus of Western society, and above all those parts of affluent Western society that happen to be white, male, and Christian.

This phenomenon, though long recognized, was without a proper name until James Piereson, writing in The Weekly Standard a few years ago, coined the perfect epithet: "punitive liberalism." In this, as in so much else, Obama hearkens back to the radical policies of an earlier era. "From the time of John Kennedy's assassination in 1963 to Jimmy Carter's election in 1976," Piereson writes,

the Democratic party was gradually taken over by a bizarre doctrine that might be called Punitive Liberalism. According to this doctrine, America had been responsible for numerous crimes and misdeeds through its history for which it deserved punishment and chastisement. White Americans had enslaved blacks and committed genocide against Native Americans. They had oppressed women and tyrannized minority groups, such as the Japanese who had been interned in camps during World War II. They had been harsh and unfeeling toward the poor. By our greed, we had despoiled the environment and were consuming a disproportionate share of the world's wealth and resources. We had coddled dictators abroad and violated human rights out of our irrational fear of communism.

Piereson's great insight is to stress the punitive, the chastising side of this orgy of guilt. Liberals like Obama come telling us they are making a better world; they omit to mention that what they mean by "a better world" is a world that is distinctly worse for certain groups, in particular groups that liberals decided had hitherto been unfairly privileged. "The punitive aspects of this doctrine," Piereson writes,

were made especially plain in debates over the liberals' favored policies. If one asked whether it was really fair to impose employment quotas for women and minorities, one often heard the answer, "White men imposed quotas on us, and now we're going to do the same to them!" Was busing of school children really an effective means of improving educational opportunities for blacks? A parallel answer was often given: "Whites bused blacks to enforce segregation, and now they deserve to get a taste of their own medicine!" Do we really strengthen our own security by undercutting allied governments in the name of human rights, particularly when they are replaced by openly hostile regimes (as in Iran and Nicaragua)? "This"-the answer was-"is the price we have to pay for coddling dictators." And so it went. Whenever the arguments were pressed, one discovered a punitive motive behind most of their policies.

It was, as Piereson notes, one of Ronald Reagan's great achievements to overcome, at least temporarily, the emotional mandate of punitive liberalism. Piereson quotes from Reagan's speech at the Republican Convention of 1980: "My fellow citizens," Reagan said, "I utterly reject that view. The American people, the most generous on earth, who created the highest standard of living, are not going to accept the notion that we can only make a better world for others by moving backwards ourselves." What a breath of fresh air, especially after four years of Jimmy "Mr. Malaise" Carter!

The question that confronts us now is what reservoirs of confidence we still can draw upon. Did Reagan really "vanquish" punitive liberalism, or did he merely rebuff it momentarily? The extraordinary, uncritical acclamation accorded to Obama by the Left suggests that "we have scotched the snake, not killed it." But at least now we know what we are fighting. Punitive Liberalism is alive and well in the Democratic Party, at The New York Times, in our courts and universities. It would be nice if another Ronald Reagan were to appear and remind us that we cannot move forward by moving backwards. Perhaps John McCain is that person. Although I do not endorse all of his policies, I admire his forthrightness. In any event, I hope that people will begin calling Obama's "fairness doctrine" by its real name: it's not fairness, but punitive liberalism. The first step towards freedom is calling things by their real names. With the phrase "Punitive Liberalism," we at last have a truthful name for the toxic doctrine that would have us believe success is a form of failure.

Source

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BrookesNews Update

Why Obama's tax 'rebate' plan cannot succeed: The last thing the US economy needs - or any other economy - is an Obama tax and spend policy, which would be better named tax and destroy. However, the real problem is not Obama but economic illiteracy and entrenched Keynesian fallacies
Is deleveraging bad for the US economy?: Those who accuse the US banks of endangering the economy by deleveraging have failed to grasp that saving is real stuff and has nothing to do with money as such the so-called paradox of thrift turns out to be a logical impossibility
For Democrats politics is a war of extermination against their opponents: The battle for Florida is still being waged with Obama and his corrupt media cohorts leading the charge against the Constitution. This battle will continue until either the Democrats have turned the US into a one-party state or until they have been beaten to the point where they will permanently cease to be a threat to American liberties. And that also goes for the their media pals
Carbon taxes and renewable energy: a disaster in the making: With nuclear power and oil shale banned, and plans to tax coal, oil and gas out of existence, man is headed back to the "green" energy sources of the Dark Ages - muscles, horses, firewood and sunshine
Not only is freedom of speech threatened by Muslims, so is freedom of religion: Muslims aided and abetted the Nazis in their extermination of Jews since they shared a belief system that relegated Jews to the category of 'dogs and apes'. Unlike the Nazis Muslims disdain all religions other than Islam. It is not only accepted but prescribed by Islam to destroy the Holy Bible and those who worship the word of God as opposed to the Islamic reverence of Allah
Democratic Platform's hidden Soros slush fund: Obama and his mate the 'democracy-loving' Soros plan to rip millions of dollars out of taxpayers and funnel them into Dem fronts. In short, this pair are going to use taxpayer dollars to fund their campaigns. If this ain't corruption then what the hell is?
Georgia and the left's double standards: Russia invades Georgia, a tiny democracy, and the left - through their silence - condone this atrocity. Georgia's crime is that it is a democracy that aligned itself with the US. So once again the left's corruption, mendacity, treason, duplicity, hypocrisy and politically depravity is on public display. In short, the left are scum

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

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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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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Understanding the modern-day Left

As is so often the case with some of the world's most destructive ideologies, they are born from the honest and high-minded efforts of intellectuals, politicians, and historians to right a perceived societal wrong, often coupled with a desire to redress the purported victimization of a people or a nation. One cannot fathom the power of these revolutionary movements without at least attempting to understand their appeal. Few, if any, successful revolutionary movements were based on the embrace of the dark side of human nature; on the contrary, most were clothed in the shining raiment of goodness and equity. The most violent excesses of the French Revolution were -- at least, originally -- carried out in the firm belief that they were working for the betterment of mankind.

The fervor with which these Great Causes were embraced by so many otherwise 'normal' people did not come from their perception of themselves or The Cause as the virtual incarnation of Evil, but rather as the victory of the Good. Whether we are contemplating Islamism, Fascism, Nazism or Communism, or even the rise of an unmitigated monster such as a Pol Pot or an Osama bin Laden, we cannot comprehend these sweeping political upheavals without first acknowledging their loyal adherents' unquestioned self-perception as the embodiment of justice and righteousness. The road to hell is paved with such well-intentioned movements.

The closest this contentious world has ever come to achieving true social equity has been in those modern nations which have embraced the combined principles of freedom, capitalism, and democracy. They are simply the most judicious and honorable systems yet devised. Unfortunately, this glaring truth does not render these privileged societies impervious to the machinations of those who know better, those who understand history better, and can better interpret its meanings, those who have conceptualized a better vision of the future, embodied in a better system. There is always a 'better system' out there. And as we have seen to our despair, oftentimes those same old ugly lies reappear in the guise of some newer 'better system', and subsequently a whole new generations of believers is born.

Thus we now have our New Left. A New Left which really isn't all that new; and yet, despite its undeniable previous history of abject failure and brutal oppression, it still manages to attract a whole new roster of converts. And once again, this is not because it appeals to the evil hearts and minds of these newest disciples, but rather beckons to their higher selves. They believe that they have a better grasp of historical truth than the rest of us. They believe that they have the answers for the rest of us. And, as with all those other monumental idealistic disasters that have befallen mankind, they will be our ruin unless we can stop them. And we cannot hope to stop them unless and until we understand them.

If I understand it correctly, the argument of the liberal, multicultural, internationalist left goes like this: Over the course of history, the concept of nationhood has been thoroughly discredited: it has wrought nothing but divisiveness and trouble to the world community. The two greatest and most destructive wars in human history were the direct result of the opposing selfish ambitions of several major nation states. Nationalism breeds patriotism; patriotism breeds chauvinism; chauvinism, in turn, breeds ultra-nationalism -- or as it is more commonly known, fascism. Therefore, for the sake of world peace, the idea of individualistic nations with finite borders and selfish agendas must be done away with completely and forever and replaced by the more rational, humanistic concept of internationalism.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the left lost its champion for the worldwide movement of internationalism, which it had hoped would defeat the self-interested powers of nationalism and capitalism. Following the disintegration of the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R., and the abject failure of communism in general, the left had to look for a new paradigm, and for new leaders. Not surprisingly, the new left would find its leaders amongst the liberal intelligentsia, who were, themselves, largely products of the radical protest movements of the Sixties and the "cultural elite". This new social revolution would be led by artists, writers, academics and left-leaning politicians of the world who would unite to create a new internationalist order.

Whereas the goals of the Communist state-based old left were primarily political, the new left's battles are primarily cultural -- political power, as such, is seen only as a means to an end. This internationalist new left is ideologically opposed to any intrinsic national characteristics -- such as, language, monetary systems, customs, etc. -- which would set one nation apart from another. Most particularly, they are opposed to borders -- borders, after all, define nations, which, as has been proven, are a fundamentally disruptive and dangerous concept. Secondly, once the whole construct of nationhood is done away with, then those intransigent problems of racism and immigration (two issues high on the new left's agenda) would disappear.

In the last several decades Europe has already moved (perhaps irreversibly) in this direction, with its creation of the European Union, the introduction of the Euro, the pan-European capitol at Brussels, with its International Court at the Hague and, of course, its "moral" opposition the the "nationalistic" United States. More ominously, Europe's intrinsic cultural identity is in the process of being obliterated by the mass influx of (mostly Muslim) immigrants who, rather than assimilate, more often than not form their own separate enclaves, follow their own cultural leaders and laws, and continue speaking their own languages. Less and less do these new immigrants show any sense of affiliation with, or loyalty toward their new European host countries.* In fact, in many instances, they thoroughly despise these liberal societies which they have infiltrated and actively seek to tear them down from within and replace them with something more "internationalist", like the universal religion of Islam. Unfortunately, far from being some compassionate, all-encompassing, peace-loving world order, this radical form of jihadist Islam -- whose rights the new leftists so passionately defend -- is, in the end, far more tyrannical and fascistic than any of these so-called brutal imperialist nations that they would like to do away with.

These ideological battles with the forces of the multicultural, internationalist new left and their allies at the ACLU, the universities, Hollywood and the media, etc., are being played out daily in our own country with our ongoing and hotly contested debates over border enforcement, immigration legislation, English language issues, illegal alien rights, racial profiling, etc. The new left's Utopian and monumentally ambitious goal is to eventually have an America without borders, either northern or southern, a North American Union, similar in concept to the EU, a thoroughly homogeneous socialist society, minus, of course, any culturally unique Americans, governed by international laws, adjudicated by international courts.

These current societal conflicts are essentially battles of migration, similar to the great Germanic migrations that overwhelmed the increasingly vulnerable Roman Empire of the third, fourth and fifth centuries. They are battles of demographics. And they are battles that, for various reasons, the peoples of the Western Democracies are losing. However violent and bloody they might be, the most serious threats to our democratic societies do not necessarily come from these well-publicized, intermittent terrorist attacks but, rather, from these insidious -- and seemingly unstoppable -- ubiquitous cultural invasions, against which we, in our liberal and open societies seem woefully incapable of defending ourselves.

Source

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ELSEWHERE

I guess I must be a sentimental old fool. I read recently a story in "The Times" which I cannot get out of my head. I have posted it on Paralipomena. It is about a man who was adopted out as a baby but who finally traced his birth mother when he was 41. Such stories are usually emotional but you read such stories often so what was unusual about this story? The striking thing is in the very last sentence -- a sentence that is at once totally crazy and totally right. I am sure that no self-obsessed Leftist would think anything of it but it brings tears to my old eyes. If you choose to read it, do read the whole story first. Peeking at the last sentence first may well deprive it of much of its impact. A recent post on Wicked Thoughts has got some memorable entries in it too.

Two major Left-leaning Australian newspapers cut back: "Fairfax Media Ltd says it will cut five per cent of its workforce under a new business improvement program to save costs. The program will be implemented in the first half of 2008/09 and extend across the group's corporate division, Australian publishing and printing businesses and Fairfax New Zealand. "A wide range of initiatives will result in a head count reduction of approximately 550 employees in Australia and New Zealand, or approximately five per cent of the company's full time workforce," it said in a statement. The program will deliver around $50 million in annualised cost savings. Some $25 million of the savings will flow into the 2008/09 annual result. Fairfax will book a one-off charge of about $50 million for redundancy and associated costs. [The papers mainly affected are the Melbourne "Age" and the "Sydney Morning Herald"]

Economic myths : "By taking a couple of courses in economic theory, we could immunize ourselves from nonsense spouted by politicians and pundits, but in the meantime check out Professor John R. Lott's `Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works.' His first chapter is `Are You Being Ripped Off?' It addresses myths about predation where it's sometimes alleged that corporations will charge below-cost prices to bankrupt their rivals and then charge unconscionable prices. There's little or no evidence that corporations would choose predation as strategy; there are too many pitfalls."

Affirmative-action ban on 2 state ballots: "Backers of a November ballot measure to ban affirmative action will focus on two states - one of them a battleground in the presidential election - after their efforts failed elsewhere. Nebraska on Friday joined Colorado as one of two places where voters will decide whether to end programs that increase minority and female participation in government and education. The measure did not receive enough valid signatures in Arizona, Missouri and Oklahoma."

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

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

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

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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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