ELSEWHERE

Professor Bunyip has an hilarious but sensible article on the folly of making recreational drugs illegal here.

Hello Bloggy is not mincing words about makes a "good" school -- it is a school with as few black pupils as possible -- and he notes that the NAACP agrees.

A reader sent me his version of why we should leave the young guys at home and send old guys to fight Saddam. See here. (Original version apparently by Jeff Ackerman)

Dean Esmay has a great collection of the "Day by Day" cartoons plus an interview with the writer/drawer of the cartoons.

And this is what is being taught in US high schools as history these days: Anti-semitism here during World War II was essentially an American Holocaust. From The Lone Dissenter. Only a Leftist would think that you could have a holocaust in which no-one died!

Michael Darby thinks that Jimmy Carter should stick to growing peanuts.

Chris Brand reviews what we know about neuroticism.

Today's academic paper from my past is here. I examine a paper by two Leftist psychologists who purport to show a relationship between conservatism and racism. I show that they ignore or misunderstand much of the literature on the subject and that their own research is flawed as well.

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Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my home page here or here to get a new blog address.

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CENSORING VIOLENCE ON TV

Calpundit has a post on the hoary old contention that kids who watch violence on TV grow up to be violent adults. As he points out, after about 40 or more years of research on the subject, the conclusions are still tentative. Note however that when psychologists (who are almost all Left-leaning) report on the effects of pornography on those who view it they almost always say "no effect". But when they report on the effects of viewing violence, they usually conclude "there was an effect". Could it be that Leftists are not bothered by pornography but do like to deplore violence? Could it be that the conclusions of Leftist researchers are dictated by their ideology? It certainly could. That researchers tend to find what they expect to find has a name, in fact. It is called the "Rosenthal effect".

Note also that there is an old Freudian theory of "catharsis" -- which in the present case would indicate that watching violence "gets it out of your system" and so helps you to avoid actually doing any violence yourself.

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ANTI-COMMUNIST ASSASSINATED

Serbia's prime minister _ who spearheaded the revolt that toppled former President Slobodan Milosevic in October 2000 _ was assassinated Wednesday by gunmen who ambushed him outside government headquarters. More here

Leftists certainly do not like people who topple their dictators -- though they seem to be trying to blame the deed on "criminal gangs" at the moment.

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BEING "WRONG" ON RACE CAN SEND YOU TO PRISON

"It is my understanding that Americans are currently being softened up for the introduction of so-called "hate laws" - legislation similar to that existing in Canada and most Western European countries, which makes it illegal to say, write, publish or distribute anything which could be construed as stirring up "racial hatred" against an ethnic group. I have actually served a term of imprisonment in Britain under such a law, and Americans may find my experiences instructive.

The judge at our trial exhibited the typical do-gooder liberal attitudes in this respect. He could not possibly gainsay, and therefore condemn someone for saying, that blacks perform intellectually at a lower level than whites. At the same time his emotions could not bear the thought that this state of affairs was unchangeable and not capable of remedy by education and social engineering. The first thought was just about acceptable to him; the second was not. It is essential to the liberal's faith in his ability to guide people forward that he have the capacity to lift up the low by civic action, whatever their depressed condition. Offend that faith, and you make the liberal very angry!"

More detail here

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NEW BLOG

Peter Cuthbertson thought that a blog devoted solely to documenting the many idiocies of political correctness (which generally means Leftist correctness) might be an entertaining site for people to bookmark. So he and I have started up http://pcwatch.blogspot.com. Have a look and see what you think. And do draw my attention to any examples of political correctness that you think I should note on the blog.

Some readers have reported problems in getting the blog to come up -- presumably because the blogspot servers were overloaded -- so you may have to try more than once to view it.

The best comment I have got from a reader about it so far is: "Do we laugh or cry?"

Another reader was so depressed at the nonsense he read about on PC Watch that he wrote to me as follows:

When I retire in a few years, I think that I will move to Wyoming, Montana or even to upstate Idaho. PC is unimportant there and you are what you are and can say what you please. As long as you know how to use your "shooter".

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“LA BELLE FRANCE”

There is a HUGE Anti-French diatribe here. It IS very hard to see anything excusable in current French policy. They just hate us Anglo-Saxons and that is it. They are now getting it back too. Not clever of them.

A good reply to Mr Chirac: "Apart from securing American independence, ending slavery, and defeating Nazism and Communism, war has never solved anything". (Via Conservative Commentary)

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ELSEWHERE

Chris Brand has a post on political nakedness and speculates that Tony Blair is about to take over the British Tories.

Michael Darby has an excerpt from V.D. Hanson showing that dealing with Iraq, Afghanistan and Al Qaeda are all parts of one war.

The Wicked one has some fun posts about assorted stupidity.

Today's academic paper from my past is here. I examine a paper by a Leftist psychologist who tries to find evidence that racists are maladjusted. I point out that he fails to do so and also point out that there is plenty of evidence in the psychological literature to show that racism is in fact normal.

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Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my home page here or here to get a new blog address.

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The latest “Carnival of the Vanities” is now up at The Daily Rant.

DENYING STALIN

I am still having a bit of a chuckle about my Leftist correspondent here (post of 6th March) who denies that Stalin was a Leftist. I wonder how long it will take before that becomes a common Leftist claim? Given the Leftist talent for denial and dishonesty, I doubt that it will take them long. “Since he was such a nasty man, he CANNOT have been a Leftist” will be the drift of it.

There is however some truth in my correspobndent’s claim that Stalin was in fact a Fascist. I pointed that out myself in “Front Page” of 22 October 2002. The twist though is that Fascism was founded by Mussolini -- who was both a Marxist and an intimate of Lenin! Fascism is simply the most nationalist version of extreme Leftism and Stalin did became strongly nationalistic during World War II. So even making Stalin a Fascist still leaves him as a Leftist! No matter how much the Leftists twist and turn, history is MOST inconvenient to them.

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CULTURES OF CONSENSUS

Inappropriate Response has a long discussion of whether the USA has a culture of argument -- compared with an Asian culture of consensus. I think the idea to be largely true but would very much challenge the notion that Europe is in the Asian camp. One example given was of a Dutchman seeking consensus but all the Dutchmen I know are are a blunt, individualistic and unbending lot -- a world away from the Japanese. And I think that Americans are very keen not to ruffle feathers too. Australians are MUCH blunter and more forthright than Americans. So much so that American politeness is often seen as rather dishonest here in Australia.

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MODERN TABOOS

In the past, many of the the strongest taboos regarded sexual matters. One can read almost the entire body of Victorian literature without seeing any explicit mention of that activity which enables the human race to reproduce itself, and which is a major preoccupation of the majority of human beings. Today, one can freely discuss most sexual topics in public.

A major taboo in today's world concerns any mention of genetic differences between the races, even when it is made plain that the differences are statistical rather than universal. The politically correct view is that the only physical difference between Negros and Caucasians lies in the color of their skin. There are, of course, many other statistical differences between the physical attributes of blacks and whites. (For example: eye color, hair color, amount of body hair, age at menarche, and frequency of fraternal twins.) But the most serious taboo regards any suggestion that the well-known racial difference in average IQs is even partly due to genetic factors.

More here

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LOOKING AT THE EVIDENCE ON RACE

Black Intelligence in White Society is a clear-eyed, methodical account of what the presence of large numbers of blacks means for the United States. The author, writing under the pseudonym of Stanley Burnham, explains how employment, education, law enforcement, and welfare programs have all been strained nearly to the breaking point to accommodate a group that cannot, on average, meet the cognitive standards that European civilization requires.

Those accommodations have been made in awkward, often destructive ways because our country refuses to face the fact that racial differences in achievement are due largely to heredity rather than to environment. The first part of this book is therefore an overview of the evidence for a genetic explanation of racial differences.

More here

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ADAMS LIKES AMERICA!

Amazing! Australia’s best-known Left-wing pundit, Phillip Adams has just said that he is not anti-American. And he gives a long list of the things he likes about America. He says he is just anti-Bush -- which as a Leftist he would have to be. I never thought I would find Phillip refreshing but I quite liked what he said about the US. When there is so much real anti-Americanism about, it is rather heartening to find that even one of Australia’s most one-eyed Leftists does actually like America.

Many Leftists really ARE anti-American.

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ELSEWHERE

This heading gave me a laugh: BLIX HIDES SMOKING GUN

Chris Brand looks at the explanation for black backwardness given by a black sociologist and notes how all the explanations fall flat if we note that the problems of blacks in the USA are very similar to the problems of blacks in Africa.

Michael Darby has a letter from East Timor reporting progress there.

Today's academic paper from my past is here. I examine the work of a very Leftist psychologist who tries to find evidence that Leftism is better for you psychologically, fails to do so and then draws that conclusion anyhow! Leftists don’t let evidence or the lack of it hold them up! Such a nonsensical paper would never get published in a truly scientific journal but psychology is so heavily dominated by Leftism that science flies out the window whenever Leftist beliefs come under scrutiny.

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Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my home page here or here to get a new blog address.

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AUSTRALIA IN THE THICK OF THE WAR

A lot of the world seems not to have got the point that the US/UK moves against Iraq are defensive and preventive -- designed to prevent horror weapons from finding their way into the hands of anti-Western terrorists. President Bush and Prime Minister Blair have repeatedly done their best to get that message across but -- for whatever reason -- many people do not seem to get the point.

It is therefore heartening that Australian Prime Minister John Howard is also adding his voice to the debate in trying to get the message across. As it says in today’s papers: John Howard has laid out an effective blueprint for war in Iraq, arguing the world must unite now to disarm Saddam Hussein or face the proliferation of global terrorism.

We also read: Australian troops are almost certain to march into war against Iraq without United Nations backing. Prime Minister John Howard warned of "very serious consequences with or without UN Security Council backing" if Iraq failed to fully disarm.

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THE U.N.

"More than half a century of experience shows that the UN is a theater of hypocrisy, a sink of corruption, a street market of sordid bargains and a seminary of cynicism." --Paul Johnson

Via The Federalist

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LIBERTARIANISM AND TERRORISM

Useful Fools has written an interesting article on the implications of international terrorism for individual liberty. Extreme libertarians (anarcho-capitalists) will disagree violently with his view that international terrorism and weapons of mass destruction make government action and reduced privacy rights necessary for the survival of a good society but I think that minimal Statists and most conservatives will agree with him.

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FRENCH NAZIS

The amazing things you read when you take an interest in history:

The defenders of the last Nazi perimeter in Berlin, around the ruined chancellery and Hitler's bunker, were Frenchmen. They were survivors from the Waffen-SS Charlemagne Division, a handful of battle-hardened French Fascists who now took on the full strength of two converging tank armies in a blatantly hopeless struggle. With them, in the remnants of the Nordland Division - also Waffen-SS - were young Danes and Norwegians, still with a few heavy tanks. Hitler and Goebbels were dead, and most remaining German troops had wisely melted away, but the Frenchmen fought on in the wreckage of Gestapo headquarters.

More here

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CHINESE INTERNET CENSORSHIP SLOWS ACCESS

China’s internet users are suffering sharp slowdowns in access because of the communist government's heightened efforts to police online content, industry experts say. Beijing has essentially built an online barrier around China, requiring traffic in and out to pass through just eight gateways.

More here

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MOTHERS SAY NO TO EQUALITY

Most working mothers are happy for their husbands to be the main breadwinner and do not want an "egalitarian" relationship, Australia's largest survey of work-family patterns has found. The paper's author, leading US work-family researcher Robert Drago, found a substantial gap between the preferred working hours of men and women with children aged 16 or younger. Professor Drago's figures were drawn from the federal Government's House hold Income and Labour Dynamics survey, which aims to track the choices of 7682 households over the course of their lives. His findings appear to support Prime Minister John Howard's recent stance that the best way to help women is to help them find part-time work.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Michael Darby has an article setting out the stupidity of trying to protect local industries from overseas competition.

Today's academic paper from my past is here. It looks at a theory by a Leftist psychologist which asserts that racism is the cause of authoritarianism. I demolish that theory on a number of grounds. For instance, Leftists claim not to be racist but they certainly can be authoritarian (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc.)

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Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my home page here or here to get a new blog address.

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A DEVELOPING ANGLOSPHERE

British Spin quotes this statement approvingly:

The British government's longtime political and military support for U.S. foreign policy has granted it an international standing disproportionate to its real political clout -- or military prowess

I agree that what is described is rather clever on the part of the Brits but I don’t think that that is at all the main point of it. We can see what is at work better if we look at the Australian case. Australia is an older ally of the USA than Britain is. We joined the USA in Vietnam where Britain did not. And we did not do so to give ourselves any delusions of power. Australians do control one of the world’s largest bits of real estate but we are still a numerically tiny community by world standards (20 million). So we can never aspire to great influence.

What we have long seen is a natural and trustworthy ally in the USA and a great community of values between the two nations. I think the Brits see that too. A recent opinion poll in Britain reported that 80% of Brits liked Americans personally. Maybe it makes me sound like a dinosaur but I think in the end it all comes down to the old saying: “Blood is thicker than water”. Common origins do make a big difference. If the Canadians can ever again get a Prime Minister who is not a Frenchman, they might join the party too.

In the meantime, the changing alliances of the post-Soviet world do seem to be bringing old friends back together again. I think the time is very close when Americans, Brits and Australians will all tend to see themselves as part of a larger and reasonably united “Anglosphere” in addition to their own national identities. And such an Anglosphere is a formidable phenomenon from any point of view.

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MORE LEFTIST TYRANNY AT COLLEGE

Well, you’ve got to hand it to them for consistency: The Leftist attitude to freedom of speech never varies. Note this report. Excerpt:

Kahn had required students, to achieve full credit, to write letters to President George W. Bush "demanding" that he not go to war with Iraq. Several students requested that they be allowed to complete the assignment by expressing their own opinions, which would mean, in some cases, writing letters in support of President Bush’s foreign policy. Kahn told the students that letters supporting the president would not be acceptable and would not receive credit. Several students refused to turn in the assignment and were penalized.

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DOING HARM VERSUS ALLOWING HARM

Jim Ryan (post of March 3rd) and Eddie Thomas have been having a discussion about the difference between doing harm and allowing harm. Leftists sometimes argue, with their usual illogic, that it is OK for them to do harm with their addled programmes of action because conservatives ALLOW great harm to go on in the world -- such as starving children in Africa.

There are various possible answers to that “argument” -- the best of which is probably a reductio ad absurdem -- but the one Jim has chosen and that Eddie is dubious about is that actively doing harm is much worse than allowing harm to go on. As Eddie, says, however, that surely depends a lot on the circumstances of the particular case.

I myself would identify the essential point in any answer as being that the amount of harm and suffering in the world is essentially infinite -- the world is full of harm going on all the time. So we HAVE TO allow most of it. Our own positive actions are different however. We have lots of choice about them. And if we do harm through them we should rightly be held culpable. We cannot solve all the world’s problems but we can at least do our best to do no harm ourselves. As I recollect, that is part of the Hippocratic oath: “First do no harm”.

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THE “DEEP SOUTH” IN AUSTRALIA

Today's academic paper from my past is here. It looks at Australia’s “Deep North” -- the warmer part of Australia and so analogous to the American “Deep South”. Australia’s “Deep North” (the State of Queensland) was once often compared to the U.S. “Deep South” not only because of its climate but also because of its perceived greater racism, conservatism and lower levels of education. When Australians hear that I am a Queenslander born and bred they tend to nod wisely! My research showed that this stereotype once had some truth but is now no longer true. Stereotypes of the American “Deep South” could therefore be equally outdated.

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ELSEWHERE

Hooray! Useless university liberal Arts courses degraded by decades of Leftism are getting the recognition they deserve in Britain at least: A degree in an arts subject reduces average earnings to below those of someone who leaves school with just A-levels, a study shows. Via Cronaca

I note that there is a new Australian Leftist site here -- for those who are interested in such things. He sounds like it might be possible to argue with him.

Michael Darby has a very authoritative article which looks at whether the Queen or the Governor General is Australia’s head of State. Anti-monarchists argue that Australia should have an Australian as head of State. In fact, we already have one.

Chris Brand looks at the work of Swiss child psychologist Jean Piaget. Piaget is known for identifying the stages children go through as they mature. Although some think otherwise, Chris points out that there is nothing in Piaget’s work which disturbs the notion that intelligence is primarily inherited.

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Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my home page here or here for a new blog address.

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STALIN NOT DEAD

I thought I knew all about Stalin but I still think that Jonathan Hari has written a remarkable article on him. He points out: Not only are there Stalinists in power today; there are apologists for them here in Britain. And read why Stalin's wife committed suicide. And Castro (surprise, surprise) recently said that Stalin "showed great wisdom". And read what the punishment for switching your radio off is in North Korea. And who said: The disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life"? Yes. It was one of the group of "anti-war" Labour party M.P.s in Britain that Tony Blair has to put up with.

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THE REDS WHO WERE UNDER THE BED

Leftists are still covering up for Robert Oppenheimer and saying that he did not pass U.S. atom bomb secrets to the Soviets despite his being a member of a clandestine Communist organization! KGB documents released after the fall of the Soviet Union showing that he WAS a spy from the early 1940s onward are ignored.

A reader comments:

There certainly were plenty of real Soviet agents within the U.S. nuclear weapons projects in the early days as has been made clear by the release of the Venona decrypts a few years back. See here and here

Although the Soviets certainly built their own indigenous nuclear weapons program and had plenty of scientific and engineering talent, their first bomb was very much based on material supplied by their agents. At least according to the author of the "Brotherhood of the Bomb" when interviewed on radio -- who said that the first Soviet A-bomb was a copy of the US bomb.

All this would seem to me to indicate that maybe Oppenheimer got a rather mild rap over the knuckles: He had his security clearance withdrawn... and went on to head up the elite Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton (where he got to be the boss of notables like Einstein, Freeman Dyson and Godel). It's hardly Siberia.

The usual story of this period of American history is one of unbridled McCarthyist paranoia, yet there really were reds under some pretty important beds. This doesn't let "Tailgunner Joe" McCarthy off the hook of course, but the anti-anti-communist myth that it was all unwarranted paranoid delusion, still promoted today... is itself a delusion.

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REPUBLICANS RACIST?

In response to my post of 7th on Democrat racism, a feisty U.S. reader writes:

If it is we conservatives who are racist why is it that the Leftist news media here in the United States asked the question, "Is the United States prepared to have a Korean First Lady in the White House?" when Senator Phil Gramm ran for president in 1992? Fact is Mrs. Phil Gramm is a Hawaiian born NATIVE AMERICAN of Korean ANCESTRY.

Several years ago when a NEGRO liberal at my work accussed me of being racist, I had him called into the company President's office and in front of the his and my supervisor dressed him down with this rebuttal. "I'm of Italian, Scottish, Welsh, Norwegian AND American Indian ancestry and one hundred percent native American Redneck. My wife is Oriental of Spanish and Chineese ancestry AND a "naturalized" American AND her son has been treated as if he were my own blood. You have two choices, three days suspension without pay or a law suit for slander." He took the suspension

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GREENPEACE AS DRAMA QUEENS

"Spiked" has Greenpeace pretty well summed up. Why is disrupting business at Esso gas stations such a big priority for them? Why not focus on -- say -- pollution?? That their real agenda is self-display and good old Leftist business-bashing is obvious.

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BRITISH PUBLIC OPINION ON WAR

Iain Murray has a very good article looking at the public opinion polls in more depth than the media generally do. He notes that a majority of the British publio would support war on Iraq as long as it had MAJORITY U.N. support -- regartdless of vetoes by a few malcontent nations such as France.

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ELSEWHERE

Paddy McGuinness has a long article pointing out what liars Leftist historians are.

The Wicked one has a pretty scathing post on the Pope and his inaction over paedophilic priests.

Michael Darby reproduces a defence of free trade from a Catholic perspective.

Chris Brand looks at how important IQ is.

My latest academic paper from my past is posted here. It looks at some pretty basic issues about Leftist attitudes to authority. Most of it should be pretty comprehensible to non-specialist readers. That Leftists deny their real motives is found to be needed if we are to explain the facts.

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Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit here instead or check my HomePage for a new blog address.

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BRITISH ANTI-AMERICANISM

There appears to be widespead disapproval in Britain for GWB’s plans to neutralize Iraq. And this would appear to be motivated in part by anti-Americanism.

I think that people worldwide (including 95% in Turkey) do not understand that the US action over Iraq is precautionary -- designed to prevent further terrorist attacks of the 9/11 kind (or worse). A war on someone not obviously connected to terrorism (Saddam) seems an incomprehensible action to most people -- including many in the US. Only conservatives are much into precautions and most of the population is not clearly Left OR Right. Only the US public generally understand GWB's priorities -- which reflects the fact that it is they who were attacked. So British public opinion on Iraq simply shows that they were not the ones attacked.

And of course the English are anti-American! They are anti-French, anti-German, anti-Scots, anti-Irish, anti-Australian etc etc too. And there is no shadow of doubt about whom the Scots and the Irish hate most -- the English! And have you ever heard a Yorkshireman talk about a Lancastrian (both of whom are English)? Contempt is the only word for it!

EVERYBODY likes their own group best. In practical terms, however, most Brits would give hardly a negative thought to marrying an Australian but would have BIG reservations about marrying a Frog. That's why millions of Australians and Brits DO intermarry whereas French/English unions are comparatively rare. So being "anti" anybody is a matter of degree and it needs more sophisticated polling than we usually get to draw that out.

So average Brits may be a bit sniffy about Americans but they despise the Frogs.

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CHILDISH LEFTISTS

John Hudock has a fascinating summary of the ways in which “liberals” remind him of his 5 year old daughter. Excerpts:

She thinks everything in the world exists already and the only problem is distribution. I.E. How more of the stuff can get distributed to her.

She wants the government (me and my lovely wife) to solve all her problems and protect her from all harm but fails to see that this requires that we put severe restrictions on her activities.

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LEFTISTS WANT MORE BUREAUCRACY??

A prize for bureaucratic stupidity goes to the South Gloucestershire council in the UK which had to, with red faces, inform their residents that they cannot open the new $2.5 million library as planned because the council forgot to order any books for the library which actually works out considering they forgot to order the bookshelves too.

UK Telegraph 5-Mar-03

Another bureaucracy prize goes to the Bermuda Department of Tourism which has admitted that their tourism ads show pictures of people having fun in Hawaii, the Seychelles and Florida and not people having fun in Bermuda.

Reuters via Yahoo News 28-Feb-03

Via Jerry Lerman

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WAR “TOO COSTLY”?

Eleanor Spreitzer is in fine form. She wrote to a certain well-known “journalist”:

Dear Helen Thomas:

If you and the other Liberal Elitist Lap Dogs are really interested in failed expensive programs (i.e. potential war with Iraq and the cost thereof) as you and other reporters howled at the news conference today, why have we NEVER heard you rail about the colossal-failed-unbelievably-expense welfare system started by one of your very own -- Lyndon Johnson.

I know why not: Too many of your Liberal Friends get huge salaries and benefits by keeping the welfare system and the people stuck in it -- right where it and they are.
Talk about trickle-down economics from the corporations: The poor and intentionally undereducated in our country are lucky if they even get a trickle-of-a-smell of the trillions of dollars spent on welfare after the Liberal Elitists take their cut.

I thought you retired? What are you doing at the News Conference anyway? You are such a closed-mined Liberal there of course, that there is no way to reach you. So rail on Helen, with your completely wrong points of view. People are actually starting to listen to you and see you for what you are and unfortunately, always have been -- a propaganda machine for the very far left.

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ELSEWHERE

Useful Fools is worried that North Korea might use the attack on Iraq to invade the South

Michael Darby has a poem addressed to the Prime Minister of Malaysia!

Chris Brand reports that he has had a hard disk crash and has lost his address lists. If you want to receive emails from him, maybe you should email him your address.

The Wicked one reports two welcome examples of sanity from the courts.

My latest posting of my past academic papers here deals with one of the favourite ideas of Leftist political psychologists: “authoritarianism”. The article points out that the idea is totally discredited among those who have researched it but still the Leftist psychologists cling on to it. Surprise!

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Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit here instead or check my HomePage for a new blog address.

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TOURIST TERRORS IN OZ

Somebody has had a lot of fun with Invisible Hand. He visited Australia recently and obviously fell victim to the Aussie sense of humour. He was told that Koalas are savage, that Australia has only one casino and that our large bats are dangerous. The truth is that Australia has lots of casinos, that it is routine for tourists to be given a Koala to cuddle (or at least it is only 15 minutes drive from where I live in Australia's third-largest city) and that, although our bats (we call them "flying foxes") are larger than other bats, they are still only about the size of a small cat, eat fruit and are completely harmless. And although there are some stinging flies, they are quite rare.

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RECENT CORRESPONDENCE: HITLER and IQ

I have put up here two emails recently received. One is from a socialist who tries desperately to deny that Hitler was a Leftist. He is so keen to do so that he even says Stalin was not a Leftist but a Fascist! Wow!

The second email is from someone who puts very briefly but very clearly the issues involved in saying that IQ is largely hereditary. All his points are spot-on but he balks at the final hurdle when he points out that lower average negro intelligence COULD be due to black Americans growing up in much less favoured circumstances than American whites. He is right. It could be that. But how come that almost any other group in the US (Chinese, Japanese, Jews) who start out behind soon end up ahead? Odd that blacks are the only exception! Asians in America who cannot even speak English well still do better than blacks who speak it perfectly. If environmental (non-hereditary) factors were the key issue, blacks should do better than Asians but they do not.

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RECENT CORRESPONDENCE: LEFTIST ACADEME and DEMOCRAT RACISM

I have also posted here two other emails recently received. The first is from a student who reports on the pervasive Leftism in what he is being taught at college. He is also courageous (foolish?) enough to be answering back in class against the Leftist nonsense. I do not predict good grades for him but I feel that he deserves our congratulations nonetheless.

The second email is in response to my recent post here about how Leftists constantly use the “big lie” technique in their propaganda. He points out what a big lie it is to say that it is the Republicans who are the racists. I guess Abraham Lincoln must have been a Democrat? And the Jim Crow laws of the old South must have been put in place by Republicans? No need to guess, is there? How do the Leftist liars get away with it? I guess hardly anybody knows their history so that gives the liars free rein.

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OTHER READING

French unilateralism: The French REALLY know how to be unilateral. The whole world (more or less) was against their nuclear tests in the Pacific but they still went ahead. They are the last ones who should be talking about unilateralism. But French arrogance disregards anything that does not suit the French, of course.

Jeff Jacoby says that past US support for Saddam in his war with Iran should not stop us now from correcting that mistake.

Leftists are on the side of the poor, right? We how come so many of those they favour are so rich?

Thjere’s a good lesson here in how to be a “liberal”

As a libertarian and a former economics teacher, I am a strong advocate of free trade so it did not bother me to see that a German firm had won the competition to redesign the World Trade Center. But I was still a bit pleased to see this note:

The head of the architectural firm is an American who works in Berlin right now. He'll move to Manhattan for this project and there'll be plenty of work for everyone. From Bill Quick's site.




Chris Brand looks at the various explanations for how differences in IQ arise.

The Wicked one reproduces a fairly learned email from someone who argues that Abraham Lincoln was concerned only with keeping Americans all under one rule -- with slavery an afterthought.

Michael Darby continues his campaign to keep us informed about what is happening to the unfortunate people of Zimbabwe.

Today's academic paper is here. It looks at the female mid-life crisis and what actually goes on then. This is the longer version of a paper that will be coming out later this year in one of the academic journals in an abridged and revised form.

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Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit here instead or check my HomePage for a new blog address.

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LEFTIST INTELLECTUALS: WHY?

Robert Nozick's explanation of why most intellectuals oppose capitalism in general and the USA in particular is well worth a read. Basically, Nozick's point is that intellectuals think that our society does not reward them to the vast degree that they think they deserve. So in childish petulance they do all they can to denigrate that "unappreciative" society.

My intellectual credentials are as good as anyone's so how did I escape that feeling of grievance? I know that I have always had a strong tendency to be happy with whatever I have got so that would probably explain why I have never felt any urge to denigrate the society in which I live. I am profoundly grateful to it in fact. I could have been born an Iraqui.

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"POSTMODERNIST" CULTURAL STUDIES IN THE UNIVERSITIES

"There is no such thing as truth" and "Reality is merely a political construction" seem to be the two most widely promoted views among modern Leftist intellectuals. For people who find facts and reality so embarrassing they WOULD say that, of course. The emptiness of all their high-flown rhetoric on the subject was shown by the "Sokal hoax". See here and here Give me Warren Buffett's view of the matter any day:

"You're neither right nor wrong because people agree with you. You're right because your facts and your reasoning are right. In the end that's all that counts"

Not profound but look at his results!

There is a new site called ObjectiveReality with some good essays up that should be just about the dead opposite of what “postmodernists” believe in. Have a look!

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LEFTIST ACADEMICS SURE DO HATE HISTORY

I've heard it all now: the history department at Harvard University no longer offers a course on the American Revolution. In its place, it now offers a course on the history of midwives and quilting. It sounds like a deliberate plan to devalue university degrees to me. It will succeed. The only talent Leftists have is for destruction.

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AND GENETICS IS JUST SO EMBARRASSING!

There is a BIG essay on Gene Expression that looks at the writings of prominent psychologist Jerome Kagan. It shows in great detail how Kagan's Leftist and anti-heredity ideology makes him ignore and contradict his OWN published research findings -- which show big hereditary influences.

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GREAT MOMENTS IN SOCIALIZED MEDICINE

One of Britain's biggest hospitals, University Hospital of Wales, had to postpone a heart operation because the surgeon couldn't find a parking space thanks to the "improvements" they made in parking arrangements meant to increase the number of spaces available for patients and visitors.

"By the time I arrived I felt so stressed I was in no state to perform the surgery," says heart surgeon Ulrich Von Oppell who spent an hour finding a parking spot. "I am sorry for the patient but I felt this was the right decision to make."

(Via Jerry Lerman -- from the UK Telegraph of March 4th. under “News in Brief” -- Free registration required)

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OTHER READING

Today's academic paper from my past is here. It demolishes a claim by another group of authors that they have called into question my finding that aggressive dominance is the major psychological precursor to coronary heart disease. Pushing other people around can give you a heart attack!

Useful Fools has a good collection of jokes about the French.

Clubbeaux has a big essay on why NATO has now outlived its usefulness.

Hooray! When the Turkish parliament decided not to co-operate with the USA, the Turkish stock market plunged 11 percent and the national currency, the lira, fell four percent.

Michael Darby reports on Leftist disruption of a local council and the drug legalization policy of the Greens

Chris Brand reports on genes for anxiety, AIDS in South Africa, book-pulping etc

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THIS IS NOW MY MAIN SITE



I have abandoned my old site because I was getting constant error messages when loading to it...

PILGER: AN INTERESTING CASE-STUDY

TIM BLAIR in the THE BULLETIN (4 March 2003, p. 18) recently published these two quotes side by side:-

"No one can doubt its cruelty and atrocities, but comparisons with the Third Reich are ridiculous." - John Pilger on the regime of Slobodan Milosevic, Nov 15, 1999

"The current American elite is the Third Reich of our times." - John Pilger on the government of George W. Bush, Jan 29, 2003.

I feel rather sorry for Pilger. He has flashes of sanity and realism at times (as in his film about Pol Pot) but his desperate need for attention causes him to say ever more outrageous and unreasonable things -- to the point where he is basically just laughable. He is a good study in how the Leftist mind works. That juvenile need for attention overrides almost everything else.

There is a very good brief demolition of Pilger's film about Iraq here.

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IRAQ

Daily Rant points out that Clinton was at least as "unilateral" about Iraq as is Bush. In saying that I am recognizing that Leftists now use "unilateral" to mean "without universal approval" -- which is an example of the way Leftists have always loved to play with words rather than face reality. Of course any national leader who waited for universal approval before he did anything would never do anything at all. And having the approval of the corrupt French is certainly no honour either.

“Now please stop this preposterous charade of pretending to need the imprimatur of that exclusive club for mass murderers, thieves, thugs and tyrants (The United Nations) to justify anything whatsoever”. From Samizdata.

What a laugh: Some of the peace activists who went to Iraq to serve as human shields in the event of war returned home, fearing for their safety, a spokesman said Sunday. Via Hoosier Review

The Swedish Nazis are supporting Saddam! That must be comforting to the Lefties! There’s an old saying: “You know a man by the company he keeps”. Via Dean’s World.

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SOME INTERESTING QUOTES

Two good quotes from Peggy Noonan’s letter to the Democrats:

There is another problem. You have become the party of snobs. You have become the party of Americans who think they're better than other Americans.

and

This is the Democratic paradox: You want so much to run America and yet you seem not so fond of Americans.



There is a good analysis of Australia’s anti-Americans here. Excerpt:

Anti-Americanism should be studied as a serious psychological affliction, a pathological condition which paralyses the mind's analytical capacity.



OTHER READING

Gloom! There is an election campaign on in Australia’s most populous State and even the conservatives are promising an indefinite “moratorium” on genetically-modified crops if elected. And the Leftists have weighed in too, of course. Just when Australia has almost entirely got rid of the impoverishing stupidity of socialism from its politics we now have the impoverishing stupidity of the Greenies to contend with. Superstitious fear is all that is behind the GM ban. I guess we are still not far away from our caveman ancestors.

Here is an Arab-American who LIKES airline security checks.

A big international survey has found that: Christian religions are more positively associated with attitudes conducive to economic growth. Orrin Judd will like that one.

Black community leaders don't want their kids going to all-black schools. I can't say I blame them.

Chris Brand turns a cynical eye on claims that relationships between younger teenage girls and older men must always be a bad thing.

Today's academic paper from my past is here. It deals with some technical questions about how best to measure differences in people’s personalities.

Michael Darby documents more bungling in the government-run railway system of Australia’s largest State.

The Wicked one has a laugh at the “black” college degrees produced by Affirmative Action and gives three reasons why talk radio is Rightist.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its usual big range of reading.

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LEFTIST “BIG LIES” AND THE “STOLEN GENERATION”

The CounterRevolutionary has recently argued (with obvious truth) that what influence Leftists have stems from their being better at propaganda rather than from their capacity to deliver desirable results. He argues therefore that conservatives should do more to press their arguments rather than just respond to Leftist claims. He is undoubtedly right but I think that conservatives will never be as good at propaganda because we do not have the Leftist’s carelessness about the truth.

The greatest triumph of the Leftist “big lie” technique in recent times would have to be the way they have persuaded almost everyone that Hitler was a Rightist when he was in fact one of them -- an extreme socialist. He was to the Right of Stalin but that is about all.

But there are many smaller examples of successful Leftist deception and the “stolen generation” story in Australia is one of them. The story is that wicked white racists early in the 20th century tore black children out of their mothers’ arms and farmed them out to cruel white foster parents to be brought up in white ways rather than in black ways.

The truth is that it was white do-gooders and social workers just like the Leftists of today who ran the programme concerned. The children concerned were all half-castes (of partly white ancestry) and the wiseheads of the day felt that “for their own good” such children would have “a better chance” if they were brought up in white families. Like the Leftists of today, the “welfare” workers of that time felt that they knew what was best for other people -- regardless of what the people concerned might want. Disgusting!

But to this day most Australians believe it was all just racism -- with no awareness of the do-gooder motivation for it all.

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ANTISEMITISM AMONG THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT

There is an interesting account here of the prevalence of antisemitic beliefs among members of the US Christian Right. I think it is wise to keep this phenomenon in proportion, however. As the article also points out, the same people are often among the strongest supporters of Israel. In this they differ greatly from the antisemites of the Left who want to destroy Israel.

The Judaic religions (Judaism+Christianity+Islam) all tend to the view that their particular sect is the one and only possessor of the truth. So anybody of the "wrong" sect will tend to be condemned. So while Protestant fundamentalists may condemn Jews for their "wrong" beliefs, they would also condemn (say) Catholics with at least as much fervour -- because Catholic beliefs are "wrong" too.

At least Christian fundamentalists have usually evolved beyond the stage where they physically attack people with the "wrong" beliefs -- unlike Muslim fundamentalists.

And as for the anti-Israel attitudes of the current Pope -- well he IS a Pole. The Poles were generally delighted to help the Nazis round up the Polish Jews during World War II.

(Crossposted on Israpundit)

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MORE GRIEF FOR THE GREENIES

I noted some days ago that young Australians are less Green than their elders and also noted that, from what my 15-year-old son tells me, the kids get so much pro-Green and pro-black propaganda these days that it bores them silly and they react against it. I also see now that Tech Central Station has a name for the the young people concerned: "South Park Republicans"

The Swedish Greens have at last woken up to the fact that most recycling is in fact wasteful of energy and other resources and so are now OPPOSING recycling. (If the article fails to load, Instapundit has a big extract here)

Details here of just how ridiculous and wrong-headed recycling is. Here's just one little excerpt:

We are not running out of trees or forests. America has three-and-one-half times more forest land today than it had in 1920. America is growing 22 million new acres of forest annually while harvesting but 15 million acres, for a net gain of 7 million acres each year.

A classic article by SLATE magazine's economics columnist Steven Landsburg on "Why I am not an environmentalist". And the subtitle is: The Science of Economics Versus the Religion of Ecology. Excerpt:

The naive environmentalism of my daughter's preschool is a force-fed potpourri of myth, superstition, and ritual that has much in common with the least reputable varieties of religious Fundamentalism. The antidote to bad religion is good science. The antidote to astrology is the scientific method, the antidote to naive creationism is evolutionary biology, and the antidote to naive environmentalism is economics.

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OTHER READING

Chris Brand discusses the present state of the nature/nurture debate.

The Wicked one tells is what a vague and wimpish character Abraham Lincoln was and how little respect he had from those who knew him.

Michael Darby has a rather horrifying story about how a white tourist was treated by black Zimbabwean “police”.

Today's academic paper from my past is here. It deals with the rather hilarious claim made by Leftist psychologists to the effect that conservatives are too pro-authority. The paper shows that there is in fact no such thing as a general attitude to authority -- i.e. approving of one type of authority does not mean that you will therefore approve of other types of authority.

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DEMOCRACY NATURAL?

A recent book by Rubin is summarized by a reviewer as arguing that:

Autocratic society violates human nature for most of those who belong to it and therefore is inherently unstable. Rubin also argues, however, that libertarianism is unstable because it entails extremes of individuality that equally violate evolved human tendencies and thus cause social breakdown.

And the conclusion from that is that the compromise represented by modern democracy best suits human nature.

That may be a comforting conclusion but I think one of the assumptions is wrong. The plain historical fact is that human beings have almost always lived under a tyranny of some sort. Ancient Athens emerged from tyranny for about 100 years and then self-destructed and the Roman republic was never more than an oligarchy until it too became an empire. And the supremacy of Parliament in England dates only from 1649. So if autocracy is against human nature we have had an amazing amount of it. Some governments of the past were more consultative than others but there was almost always a king, Pharaoh, emperor or the like running the show.

I think it is much more obvious to argue that autocracy is what in general comes naturally and the love of big government exhibited by Leftists is the modern-day evidence of that inclination.

So modern democracy is in fact a painfully learned lesson in overcoming human nature that only a minority of humankind seem to have learned to this day. Human nature is powerful and I would be the last to underestimate it but it is not a straitjacket. Wearing clothes is not natural but we all do it. Let’s hope that we will all also practice democracy one day.

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A CONFUSED GREENIE

There is an interview with a rather confused "feminist critic" of environmentalism here. She rightly sees people-hating impulses at work among the Greens and says that is Right-wing. Then she endorses the optimistic perspectives of free market anti-Green economist Julian Simon. So Left is Right and Right is Left to her. Maybe she has been converted to conservatism but has not realized it yet.

It was whilst trying to debunk Simon's work that Green heretic Lomborg realised Simon may after all be correct. For more on Simon see here. The story of Simon's influence on Lomborg is here

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MORE GREENIE NEWS

Hooray! Exposing Greenie dishonesty works! After a lot of publicity of their lies, the Greenies in Brazil have given up opposing nuclear power (the safest, cleanest and cheapest form of energy generation there is) and new nuclear power stations are now being built there. Via Aaron Oakley.

Hooray again! It looks like Russia too will refuse to ratify the nutty Kyoto “Greenhouse” treaty. Death knell! Via Country Store

There are two quality articles here and here from the CIS detailing the growing threat of old fashioned trade protectionism disguised as new fashioned environmentalism.

Dioxin has long been one of the great Greenie swear-words. All sorts of health disasters have been blamed on it and anything that produces dioxin is supposed to bring us all a slow and painful death -- and deform our babies too, of course. But it has just been discovered that the peat fires that the Scots and Irish have used for millennia to keep themselves warm in winter also give off lots of dioxin! How awful for those poor Scots and Irish! They must not realize how ill and deformed they are.

And it does look like the poor old Greenies are gradually having global warming chipped away from them too. Note this:

Data compiled from the journals of early Arctic explorers casts doubt on the assumption that recent thinning of Arctic ice is the result of human-induced climate change. Via Cronaca.

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OTHER READING

When the US attacks Iraq, could it spare a few bombs for Riyadh? The way the Saudis torture Westerners to extract false confessions puts them in much the same league as Saddam. A lovely lot, those Arabs.

Revealed Truth thinks that the current Leftist hatred of the Jews may be motivated by a feeling of betrayal. Minorities are supposed to be uniformly Leftist.

Chris Brand notes some encouraging signs of realism among Muslims.

The Wicked one has had a couple of good jokes lately.

Michael Darby has a link to the persecution of Christians by Moslems and another report on the incompetence of a government-run railway

Today's academic paper from my past is here. I show that middle-America tends to be “authoritarian” in the sense used by psychologists but also point out that this essentially means no more than that middle-Americans have old-fashioned values.

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THE NAZIS ARE BACK -- AND STILL ON THE LEFT

This article by David Brooks -- already noted on Israpundit -- must be one of the saddest articles I have read for a long time. An old and cruel folly has roared back into life. Although I am an atheist with not a shred of Jewish ancestry, I have been writing on antisemitism for over 30 years (e.g. Ray, 1972). When I started out, antisemitism was vestigial and no Leftist in the Western world would have a bar of it but now it really is a major phenomenon on the Left worldwide -- including the “liberals” of the USA. The battle with irrationality is unceasing, I am afraid.

Just listen to this bit of poison from Yale university:

But does the prevalence of Jews in American media, business and politics help explain America's steadfast support for Israel, whose 35-year occupation of Palestinian lands is an affront to human decency? Of course.

It’s Hitler’s “National Socialism” all over again. That a decent person of any religion might support a people trying to defend itself against persecution, outside military attacks and internal terrorism is obviously beyond the ken of the hate-filled writer (Sahm Adrangi).

Reference:
Ray, J.J. (1972) Is antisemitism a cognitive simplification? Some observations on Australian Neo-Nazis. Jewish Journal of Sociology 15, 207-213.

(Crossposted on Israpundit)

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LEFTIST CHILD-HATERS

An appalling quote from a Feminazi professor who objected to her female colleagues taking leave to have babies:

"Having babies is a choice -- already, people who have babies are getting tax breaks, getting hugely discounted insurance (forcing those more reproductively responsible to subsidise them), and often getting to slack off work for some 15 years using children as an excuse to reschedule meetings and avoid heavy committee work. This is NOT a women's issue -- it is a matter concerning a specific group of people taking advantage of the rest of their department."

More here

Who does she think will support here in her old age through their taxes? Those selfsame people who are now babies. If everybody was "reproductively responsible" in her sense, she would die of hunger and disease in her old age -- and justly so.

Speaking of feminism, I am no feminist but I do like and respect women so I would have a strong urge to put a .50 calibre slug through the guy in this picture.

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HUMAN SHIELD MOTIVATION

A good summary of "human shield" motivation below:

Hi, I'm Special Ed and I'm a human shield. I come from a country with many freedoms and opportunities, all of which I take for granted. I suffer from a God complex, low self-esteem, a desperate need to feel better about myself at the expense of others and I crave attention like a three year old. I feel the need to take time out from my job and leave my family so that I may deny you - the Iraqi people - the same freedoms and opportunities I do not appreciate in my own country. I am committed to preserving Saddam Hussein's brutal and oppressive regime. Why? Because I'm a socialist and I know what is best for the Iraqi people.

From The Ville (Post of 26th)

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THE "PEACE" MARCHERS

Spiked argues that the British "peace" marchers are not interested in peace or anything else much. They are simply alienated -- they do not trust government or politicians. The anti-government factor does help explain why there are some antiwar conservatives and libertarians.

But The Tocquevillian thinks that the American peaceniks are just the old Communist-sympathizers revived.

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OTHER READING

There is an article here on the Left's 'unholy alliance' with Islamic extremism

Anti-business bureaucrats have twisted Bill Clinton's medical leave law so that you can now take sick-leave for all sorts of minor ailments and still have your job protected.

Who says there is free speech in America? Not at Michigan State University, there’s not. How can someone in the US get a criminal record for doing something that is protected by the US Constitution? I would really like to know. And particularly since blacks can do exactly the same thing with impunity. America sure is a classically racist society. There is one law for whites and another for blacks. It’s a mockery of justice.

Chris Brand thinks that “paedophile” Roman Polanski has done no harm and that better nutrition can prevent a lot of crime.

Michael Darby has a reflection on socialism being inimical to families.

Today's academic paper from my past is here. In it I again review Altemeyer’s claims about Right-wing authoritarianism -- this time in the context of the overall lack of a scientific orientation among modern academic psychologists.

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ENGLAND OR THE USA?

Over at England's Sword there is quite a good debate going on in the Comments about whether the USA or England is the better place to live. I have spent time in all the English-speaking countries and my first preference is Australia (my country of birth) but after that I choose England. The US is clearly better off in almost every material respect but I just LIKE England better -- mainly because it is a much more relaxed place, I think. Also, I think that the English have by far the best patriotic songs (I am listening to an infinite loop of "Jerusalem" as I write this). On the other hand, I think that the greatest and truest gentleman who has ever lived is an American -- Ronald Reagan.

Some thoughts from others on the countries concerned ....

In the UK, one snowflake is enough to bring the country to a standstill.

There is a good article from Britain on the stupidity of America-bashing here

Gregory Hlatky has an interesting post on how much more Fascist Europe is when compared to the USA.

"Damn Americans. . . . I hate those bastards." The words of a "liberal" Canadian member of Parliament. What is that if it is not left-wing racism? And a particularly stupid form of racism at that. More here.

There is a fun article here which argues that instead of making Britain's House of Lords less hereditary, it should be made WHOLLY hereditary. He makes a good case too.

Interesting impressions of a newcomer to Southern California here. I had similar impressions when I first went there over 25 years ago.

Chomsky's virulent hatred of America has apparently made him insane. He actually says "East Europe under Russian rule was practically a paradise" More here.

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LEFTIST DENIAL OF REALITY

Freelance Radical has some interesting ideas about:

Why people might become ignorant liberal-lefty's:

DENIAL

These are individuals who so deeply desire to never become identified with any form of aggression, that they'll dissociate themselves from its reality and completely deny its existence in an attempt to perceive themselves, others, and the rest of the world, as being tolerant, peace-loving, and rational. It's a really sad and ironic truth, however, that their unwillingness [when confronted with aggression] to assert their own authority, while at the same time curtailing that of others, causes the proliferation of that very same evil aggression they so much abhor.

FEAR

People who spent their childhood with parents who were either violent, psychotic, or both, would be unable to admit to themselves, when young, that they were at the mercy of adults they could not trust. Acknowledging this violence or craziness as being real, could invoke such catastrophic fear in a child, that it might literally be unable to survive. So it blinds itself to what its parent really is. But this blinding terror continues to operate long after such people have become adults, making them unable [or unwilling] to acknowledge similar truths in the real-life world of political matters.

BELONGING

For many people, life is boring and nobody seems to care about anything too much and so they get kinda depressed just getting up in the morning. That is, until they decide to join the anti-war crowd and suddenly they're part of a group, a gang, an organization, and they've got a "home" and others care about where they go and how they'll get there and they're invited to join a bus trip, a flight to another city, a sign-making group, discussion forums, strategy planners.......wow!! life is no longer boring and they don't want this to end - not ever - and so, these liberal-lefty anti-war marchers have zero interest in ever finding out about any political truth that might ruin their new-found sense of belonging!

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UNIVERSITY ANTISEMITISM

There is often a temptation among right-wingers to think, "Why can't this problem of anti-Semitism just go away? It's such a distraction from more vital concerns." But the problem is, as much as you would like it to, the problem of anti-Semitism doesn't go away, and if you ignore it, it just gets worse. Furthermore, as cannot be said often enough, the Jews are the canaries in the coal mine. When a society starts veering into moral nihilism, the first target is almost always the Jews. But they're only the first target.

More here

(Crossposted on Israpundit)

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OTHER READING

Today's academic paper from my past is here. In it I expose the almost bovine stupidity of a famous Leftist psychologist who tries to pin authoritarianism onto conservatives.

Chris Brand has more on C.R.A.C.K. and Britain's ethnic problems.

The Wicked one tries to explain the popularity of Hitler in British schools.

Michael Darby has a retort to John "Third Reich" Pilger.

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CHIRAC IS JUST BEING FRENCH

The French have always hated the way “inferior” British and now American culture has been so influential worldwide. They think that “Gloire” (glory) should always belong primarily to France. So they have always been very prone to lumping together the despised British and Americans as “The Anglo-Saxons” -- even though US/UK co-operation has been far from complete in the past (e.g. in two world wars, the Suez invasion and Vietnam). They even call Kofi Annan an Anglo-Saxon because he speaks English! Now that the co-operation between Britain and America has really become as whole-hearted as the French always pretended it was, that really frustrates them -- hence their present efforts to obstruct the “Anglo-Saxon” attack on Iraq.

My favourite Professor has published a defence of French military prowess. He has to go a long way back to find much to say about victories, however, and his idea that Napoleon was defeated only by superior numbers is way-off. Napoleon was defeated by his misjudgment of Russian resolve and the Russian winter and it was his hesitancy that lost him the battle at Waterloo. Napoleon was his own worst enemy. And he wasn’t French anyhow. His native language was a form of Italian. And William the conqueror may have spoken French but his immediate ancestry was Norse (Viking).

There is a nice anti-French poster here that would look good on a lot of websites

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“FRANKENSTEIN” SCIENCE

This is the sort of thing that would have Greenies frothing at the mouth. How DARE our scientists gaily produce such “unnatural” organisms. Should be a law ....

“I recently heard a presentation on this crazy guy, Peter Schultz, who has engineered bacteria to use para-aminophenylalanine instead of amber codons. The bacteria synthesize para-phenylalanine, have a para-phenylalanine tRNA synthetase, and and insert it with very high fidelity whenever the amber codon is found. The amber codon, which causes the ribosome to stop reading the mRNA when it's found, is apparently quite rare, and because bacterial mRNAs aren't as processed as eukaryotic ones, the bacteria get along quite well. I was thinking it would be really keen to make a series of mutants, each of which incorporated a different D-amino acid instead of the L version. Then, analysis of the structures of the D tRNA synthetases, of the ribosome translating the codon, and of the resulting protein could contribute a little information towards answering why we use all L amino acids.

More here. That a better understanding of all life will come from people doing this sort of thing would not worry a Greenie. They want to take us all back to a primitive past anyway.

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IRAQ

The latest claim that British Prime Minister Tony Blair is losing support for war on Iraq is nicely answered here.

Just a reminder here of what the American military freed the Afghans from. And some good news about what Afghanistan is like now.

There is a good site here that spells out the comparison between Saddam Hussein and Adolf Hitler.

Antiwar protesters are animated by a deep dislike of George Bush. They don’t like his mannerisms, his haircut, his use of the word “evil”. In short, they dislike his style . . . and for this they are willing to march in defense of fascism incarnate, chant infantile rhymes in public, and chain themselves to Iraqi military installations. From Invisible Hand -- who backs up his argument with lots of quotes from what Leftists have been saying. I think he has a point. The Left really can be that infantile.

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OTHER READING

Today’s academic paper from my past is here and deals with the fact that many people who answer questionnaires will say “Yes” to anything. Ways of dealing with this problem are analysed but it is pointed out that many psychologists simply ignore the problem -- making their survey results pretty meaningless.

Lovely! America’s Nation Organization of [Leftist] Women tried to get anti-abortion protesters sent to jail for protesting! Free speech anyone? Not if Leftists have their way! Fortunately the Supreme Court has just knocked that attempt on the head. (Article requires free registration)

The USA seems to be in danger of banning all cloning. Charles Murtaugh bravely battles the vast ignorance so frequently expressed on this subject and makes a good case for allowing at least some forms of scientific research on the subject to proceed.

Orrin Judd reproduces another wonderful speech by Ronald Reagan -- whom Orrin refers to simply as “The man”.

Michael Darby has a review of the situation in Zimbabwe

Chris Brand has an excerpt of a news report about some controversial help being given to drug addicted mothers in the USA.

The Wicked one has some fun with Korean names and New Zealand TV.

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MY ACADEMIC PAST

In my now rather distant past I taught psychology for two years and sociology for 12 years at major Australian universities. During that time I did a lot of research and that research resulted in my getting over 250 papers published in the academic journals. In the age of Google and the internet, however, very few people -- even academics -- now read academic journals. I am therefore in the weeks ahead going to be putting up my old academic papers on Blogspot in the faint hope of introducing them to a wider audience. I have always tried to write even my academic papers in as jargon-free a way as possible so I live in some hope that there may be many outside the universties who can follow what I have written.

The paper I have just put up here asks about the relationship between ambition and anxiety. If you are an axious sort of person does that mean that you are also ambitious or does anxiety make you less ambitious? Or are the two unconnected? (statistician’s jargon for “unconnected” is “orthogonal”). Have fun (I hope)!

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FROGGY MATTERS

The Wicked one point out that the French have despised Americans for at least a century.

This article by Semmens points out that giving the U.N. a power of veto over American war plans for Iraq amounts to giving Jacques Chirac a veto and points out what an unsavoury character he is to be wielding any veto.

Prominent British Conservative politician David Davis thinks that if Scotland and Wales can have a parliament of their own in addition to seats at Westminster then there should be a wholly English parliament too. Logical. If the USA, Germany, India, Australia and Canada can have successful Federal systems, why not England too? Let's leave centralism to the French.

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THOSE NAUGHTY GENES

Another good article by Steve Sailer in reply to the Leftist claim that "science" shows there is no such thing as race. Leftists really are brilliant at ignoring the evidence in front of their eyes.

There is a fairly scandalous story here about the repeated misuse of DNA evidence by government prosecutors. Be afraid!

Eugenics lives! Genetic screening has now all but eliminated an awful hereditary disease. Via Steve Sailer.

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AFFIRMATIVE RACISM

Hello Bloggy takes a swipe at the argument that affirmative action benefits us all.

Chris Brand points to the idiocy and injustice of affirmative action in British universities.

One of my correspondents (a medical specialist) writes to me:

"Of great amusement to me are the leftist doctors that crusade for "better access to care" for "underpriveleged Blacks" - clearly racially profiling - but encourage you not to say "The patient was a 25 year old Black male with a gunshot wound to the chest" etc. because "race isn't relevant" to the discussion of the patient."

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LEFTIST MOTIVATION

A good line from SpicedSass: "Probably why the Whores of Hollywood are so symbiotic with liberalism. They all specialize in creative lying."

Is this the ultimate Leftist distortion of history? "And did you ever think about the socialist revolution in France that was crushed by D-Day because the socialists were fighting off the Nazis single-handedly?" Via Layman's Logic. Again we see Leftists ignoring reality in favour of their dream-world.

A recent documentary about Cuba showed that you can shove facts and reality right down the throats of Leftists and it just makes them angry. They prefer their preconceptions to the truth. Their ego is so bound up with them being right and everybody else wrong that they just do not WANT facts. Via Aaron Oakley.

A famous Heinlein quote: The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. That does just about sum up the Left/Right division these days.

Michael Darby notes all the things that the "peace" demonstrators do NOT demonstrate about. "Compassion not included" seems to be their motto.

This article points out that Leftist guru Robert Fisk realizes that the liberation of Iraq will be welcomed by Iraquis but still hates it because it will be done by Americans. Great hatyers, those Leftists.

Amax gives Leftie columnist Philip Adams a big blast for the dishonesty of his criticisms. Things that are bad in GWB are OK in Saddam, for instance.

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