"THE POOR" IN ACTION AGAIN

Most readers of this blog will know the amazing accounts of degraded British working class life given by British prison doctor, “Theodore Dalrymple” -- many of which are to be found in City Journal. I recently put up a post saying that the “poor” are not much different here in Australia and one of my American readers wrote in to say that the “poor” are pretty similar in her neck of the woods too. The basic message is that it is foolish and self-destructive behaviour that is responsible for most poverty and degradation in modern Western societies.

Yet another American reader -- a medical practitioner -- has now written in to give an example of how many of “the poor” in his experience behave. He writes of a foolish woman who has, wonderfully, had a wiser child:

“My sister in law adopted a daughter many years ago after having her own son naturally. Over the years, the adopted daughter, unfortunately, developed almost every problem imaginable -- rebellious behavior, sex, etc; she even turned her father in to the police when he gave her a well-deserved spanking. She has been on and off of welfare for years She chain smokes, drinks, etc...

Her first husband was a loser -- an on again off again construction worker -- but they had a daughter (who has now just graduated high school and is truly a beautiful child in spite of having losers for parents). She then divorced this guy, and proceeded to marry a convicted sex offender (yes - I am not lying). Had a son with him.

When the daughter was young, she accused the baby sitter of "inappropriate touching". I am always suspicious of such claims -- especially knowing the unhealthy environment she was raised in. Most recently, the daughter was placed in foster care. Her mother was in jail for physical violence, and she accused her stepfather of sexually molesting her.

My wife has always had a liking for this unfortunate little girl. She is a good student, and has begun college. My wife went to her high school graduation -- she invited her mother, but apparently she didn't show.

This woman has shown all the characteristics of "the poor" and she started out middle class so "poverty" didn't make her that way. She has just had a lifetime of bad choices. There is just no reason that any amount of government money or "counseling" will change this. I would be surprised if she lives to be 50”

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THE MODERN ORIGINS OF ANTISEMITISM

A reader has been looking at the history of Wilhelm Marr -- the man who proudly coined the term “antisemitism” (Antisemitismus in German) when in 1879 he published a very influential antisemitic booklet called "Der Sieg des Judenthums ueber das Germanenthum" (“The victory of Jewry over the Germanic realm”). He notes that Marr was an active socialist but this is rarely mentioned (for some reason!) in potted biographies of Marr. This German source does however give details of that. My reader writes:

“Even the term "antisemitism" was first coined in latter half of 19th Century Germany by a group of socialists who formed the first self-named "Anti-semitic League". These guys were consiously joining the older anti-Jewish prejudices with the newer more 'scientific' theories of 19th Century “racial science”. History has shown this to have been a particularly explosive and nasty combination. At its worst the older pre-'anti-semite' anti-Jewish prejudice "only" lead to discrimination and localised pogroms, like the various campaigns against witches, gypsies, heretics etc. These were usually manipulated by local opportunist political leaders, sometimes with support from national kings and bishops, Catholic and Protestant, sometimes without.

It took the combination of science, socialism and social Darwinism to escalate mass murder (mega-murder really) into an multi-national industry. It is significant that this socialist group was there at the critical juncture. Many modern liberals and socialists try to ascribe Hitlerism wholly to the longer older anti-Jewish thread in the West, so it becomes just another part of their 'progressive' campaign against western traditions. This old anti-Jewish tradition deserves condemnation, but it is a ingenuous to leave out the critical and significant role of socialism and "the scientific planners" in "upping the ante".”

Tyler Cowen has lots more on the connection between socialism and antisemitism in the 19th century.

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ELSEWHERE

I have just put up on PC Watch a comment about This report that racism can be detected by probes into your brain. Blogger.com seems to be having one of its periodic bouts of indigestion at the moment, however, so I have also posted my comment here

I helped philosopher Keith Burgess-Jackson fix up his template yesterday (which is why his blog now looks like mine) and I feel that my input was well worth it when I read him writing things like this: “Liberals, for all their vaunted talk about freedom of expression, don't want a robust debate on issues such as privacy, affirmative action, and redistributive taxation. They are true believers-- dogmatists-- who view opposition to their views and values as malice, ignorance, or stupidity rather than as a reflection of honest and respectable disagreement. In short, liberals have become totalitarians.” As an ex-liberal himself, he speaks from some knowledge.

Another Affirmative Action bake sale: "What started out as a bake sale now has the [William & Mary] College community up in arms in a new debate on the ever-current issue of cultural diversity on campus. The controversy stems from the new student organization, the Sons of Liberty, and their anti-affirmative action bake sale that occurred last Saturday and sold cookies and brownies to students at different prices based on race.

My latest academic upload (see here or here) is of a study I did of white South Africans at the height of the Apartheid era. Conventional Leftist theory would say that they must have had dictatorial (“Fascist”) personalities. I show that their personalities were perfectly normal.

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A PHILOSOPHICAL EXCURSION

I made the pleasant discovery recently that there is now a blog concentrating on analytical philosophy run by Keith Burgess-Jackson. I am pleased that there are still a few analytical philosophers about. I had the impression that most university philosophy departments had been taken over by devotees of Marx, Freud and assorted other quacks and charlatans. There are all sorts of "philosophy" around but analytical philosophy is the only sort that I bother with. It is the most academic sort and is more of a tool than an answer to life's big questions. It looks at what discourse implies so a background in it helps you to clarify your thinking on any everyday topic that you might tackle. Keith surprised me at one point, though, when he described "murder is wrong" as a necessary truth. I thought for a moment that he might be a moral absolutist (or more precisely, an ethical non-naturalist) rather than a moral relativist but I am pretty sure that the point he was really making is that murder is DEFINED as wrongful killing. So the statement is a tautology (repetition), not information of any kind.

I think his view of what economists do is largely mistaken, however. He says that economists should not engage in evaluative debate about public policy and would be wiser to confine themselves to statements about causes and effects among economic phenomena. But that is precisely what economists generally do. Mainly they just inform. They tell the politicians and the political campaigners what the consequences of a given policy will be and then ask: "Do you really want that?". For instance, a politician may advocate rent-control to help the poor but an economist will then point out that rent control will tend to dry up the provision of all rental accomodation -- thus hurting many of the poor who will then be able to find no accomodation at all. That SOUNDS like taking sides in a policy debate but it really is as scientific as any other application of rules. SOME economists do, however, take sides in a most disreputable way. Why does the name "Krugman" spring immediately to my mind?

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ELSEWHERE

It looks like there WERE important links between Saddam and Osama.

Muslim fundamentalists really ARE today's Nazis: "Near-simultaneous car bombs exploded outside two Istanbul synagogues filled with worshippers Saturday"

Miranda Devine cites research to show that: "childhood suffering is caused by a lack of spiritual meaning, an absence of expectations and limits and a breakdown in authority structures"

Patrick West points out that at least some Church of England clergy see science as a superior authority to the Bible in deciding the proper attitude to homosexuality. I do too but I don't wear a pectoral cross and pretend to believe in the Church of England's 39 "Articles of Religion". Note Article 6: "Holy scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation." And note what Holy scripture containeth regarding homosexuality: "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination" (Leviticus 20:13). And 1 Timothy 1:10 makes clear that it is against God's law for Christians as well as for Jews. But expecting a Chuch of England bishop to care about God's law IS a bit quaint, I guess.

And Jenny Bristow asks what's behind society's rampant homophilia? Why is homosexuality suddenly "in"? One quote: "By trying to make its faith relevant and tolerant, the Anglican church is further exposed as irrelevant, faithless and incoherent."

Good to see that Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski has just won a million dollar prize for his work: "He began his career as a philosophy professor as a Marxist, but became disillusioned and was eventually expelled from the Communist Party, lost his post at Warsaw University and went into exile in 1968. He then wrote his best-known work, the three-volume "Main Currents of Marxism: Its Rise, Growth and Dissolution," describing Marxism as "the greatest fantasy of our century."" He also sees Marxism as akin to the old utopian religions.

An amusing article in The Spectator on the British Labour government's effort to ban hunting with dogs. It is not only the nobility who would be affected.

PID points out that Britain's Tony Blair and his "New Labour" party learnt much of their trade from the moderate Australian Left -- and thinks that the national identity card now proposed for Britain will fail to get up just as a similar idea failed under an Australian Labor Party government. There is another comment on the British ID card here

The Usurer adds some Randian observations to what I said yesterday about the Leftist fear of envy. He sees Leftist intellectuals as acting goody-goody because they fear the masses. If I had the contempt for ordinary people that they do I might try to mask it too, I guess.

"Before they send their children onto a college campus in North America, parents should read two new reports. What passes for education at many universities is not merely an intellectual embarrassment; it is also tremendously expensive. The good news: A spotlight is now shining on these problems, and students in the near future may receive the quality education for which their parents having been paying through tuition and taxes."

China Hand has a fun comparison between Hong Kong newspapers and "Black Playboy" (National Geographic).

In my latest academic upload (see here or here) I address the simplistic notion prevalent among psychologists to the effect that domineering behaviour must spring from pro-authority attitudes. I show that it is in fact more likely to be a product of ambition.

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NOT ALL MINORITIES ARE EQUAL

Shelby Steele has an interesting explanation of why identity politics excludes straight, middle class, non-Hispanic American white males -- who are undisputably one of America’s many minorities -- and who are a much smaller group than (say) American women. Everybody else can celebrate their “identity” and campaign hard for extra privileges for their group but just THAT particular group may not campaign for and pursue its own particular interests.

I think Steele is right to say that the exclusion of that group occurs because they are perceived as already ruling the roost -- but that perception is utter garbage. I doubt that most of the members of that group even rule their own households (not that I am saying that they ought to). And the relatively comfortable material circumstances that members of the group enjoy are almost invariably the result of hard work and saving. So hard work and saving should be grounds to exclude and discriminate against people? It’s a diseased view of how the world works that says so.

Steele and many other conservative commentators say that the problem is identity politics itself and that we should all try to abandon our tribal loyalties -- but I know too much of the psychological research on how easily group identities are formed to think that group identity will ever fade out of significance. And Nazi Germany showed us how VERY important group identity can become under some circumstances. So group identity has to be MANAGED somehow. It cannot be suppressed. And surely the Nazi experience shows us that in general the best way to manage it is to MINIMIZE it where possible --- via government policies that treat each case on its individual merits and which treat all people as equal before the law. “Equality” is a fantasy but “equal treatment” is a powerful public policy tool for dealing with group rivalries and antagonisms. And it is exactly that tool that the Left have abandoned by their PROMOTION of identity politics. No good can come of it.

American identity and civil peace were from the beginning founded on an equal treatment principle (“created” equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but should be treated that way) and it is exactly that principle that Leftists are now destroying in their egotistical and irresponsible pursuit of the feel-good slogan.

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LEFTIST “GUILT”

“Read the whole thing” is advice bloggers often give to their readers. I seldom do. I try hard to summarize instead. But This article by Jack Wheeler is so good that this time I feel I have to give that hackneyed advice. It explains both the apparent self-hatred of white American middle class Leftists and the very real hatred of Islamic fundamentalists towards America. The article actually adds up to a very short summary of a very large book: Envy: A theory of social behaviour by Helmut Schoeck -- one of the few books that have made a big impact on my understanding of the world. I am not at all envious myself so until I read that book I had no idea that envy was such a fire inside so many people.

The basic thesis of both Wheeler and Schoeck is that envy is an enormous and destructive force in all human societies (and this suggests why that is so). So avoiding being envied is an important thing to do. And a good way to deflect envy is to denigrate oneself or any successful group that one belongs to. Hence the “guilt” of so many “limousine liberals” and the Anti-Americanism of so many Hollywood stars. They don’t really feel guilty at all. They think they are brilliant in fact. They are just trying to deflect envy and sound virtuous by criticizing their own society -- the very America that has made them so rich.

And why is it the Left in particular who are so fearful of being envied? Because they themselves are burnt up by it so know from inside how potentially destructive it can be. To a Leftist no acclaim or success is ever enough. So even when such good socialists as Stalin and Saddam Hussein got complete power over their own countries, even that was not enough. They then went on to fill their country with statues and portraits of themselves. When you have an ego as hungry as that, you will always be envious of what others have no matter how much you have yourself.

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ELSEWHERE

Discriminations has a good point about two hoary and arguably undemocratic American institutions -- the electoral college and the filibuster. The Dems want to scrap the electoral college because it enabled minority rule -- it gave GWB the top job despite his getting fewer votes overall than Gore -- but the filibuster, which is also a form of minority rule, is sacrosanct? -- and despite its history of support for racism at that? But since when were Leftists consistent? They think that they are a “majority” (of all the people that matter) no matter what. Discriminations highlights a lot of other Leftist illogic (e.g. here) too. He will never be short of material to blog about at that rate.

The Wicked one too has a post on the “elasticity” of Leftist principles.

Amid the doubts about whether Iraqi democracy is attainable, Jeff Jacoby reminds us of what the Gipper achieved in Nicaragua and how hard he had to fight to achieve it. Then as now, the most dangerous opponents of freedom were the American Left.

Sounds a good start: "The Senate voted for broad new economic and trade sanctions against Syria on Tuesday, citing a long history of sheltering terrorists and a recent failure to muzzle forces hostile to U.S. actions in Syria's neighbor, Iraq. The Senate measure, passed 89-4, mirrors legislation the House passed last month by 398-4."

In the latest upload of a chapter from my book (See here or Chapter 33 here) I think I do a pretty good demolition job on the idea that “The Arts” should be taxpayer-funded. And the arty brigade (who seem to be universally Leftist) would have a hard job of calling me a “Philistine” too. Since “Philistine” and “Palestinian” are basically just two versions of the same word, I am rather looking forward to the fun I would have if ever anybody DID call me a “Philistine”!

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RACE, RATIONAL DEBATE AND LEFTISM

Ne Quid Nimis has a pretty firm grip on reality as far as race and racism is concerned (though I think he underestimates the importance of racial differences in intelligence). He might be pleased to hear that his views on stereotyping correspond pretty well exactly to what the psychological research on the subject shows. He is fighting a losing battle if he thinks we can ever get Leftists to talk or even think rationally about race, however. That is not their game. Any mention of race will always be "racist" to them. So I don't fight no-win battles. I accept that I will always be a "racist" in Leftist terms and am content to show that EVERYBODY is a racist in Leftist terms. Loose usage of terms cuts both ways. And my strategy does work. I have actually received emails from Leftists complaining that I use the term "racism" too loosely. THEY should talk!

Richard Rahn says the "Think Tank envy" of the Left is understandable but their own inability to move beyond archaic and clearly failed ideas is the reason why Leftist think tanks have nothing new to say and hence no influence. If Leftists really dared to think they would end up conservative.

I would add that all causes are just a means to an end for most Leftists. They have fixations from time to time but few have any deepseated beliefs. Power and personal glorification is their only real end so they really have no time for complex ideas. Simplistic slogans are about all they stretch to. And anti-racism is a perfect example of that. It has never been a historic Leftist cause (even Marx was an antisemite) and was in fact adopted by Leftists only after World War II, simply as a means of gaining kudos. Hitler's enormous racist excesses had made any suggestion of racism obnoxious -- and Leftists simply jumped on that bandwaggon. Leftism is about populist slogans, not ideas.

Walter Williams attacks the minimum wage laws that are so beloved of the Left as being racist in effect. He is absolutely right that such laws hurt minorities. Practically the only work Australian Aborigines once had was as stockmen (cowboys) but the vast majority of those were thrown out of work by the introduction of a minimum wage law in 1966. Many of them have not worked since. See here. But what Leftist really cares whether or not his policies hurt anybody? The feel-good slogan is all that counts.

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ELSEWHERE

R.J.Stove (Australian author of "Unsleeping Eye" -- a history of secret police -- and son of leading Sydney University philosopher David Stove) has written about Australian immigration-skeptic Pauline Hanson for a US audience. He argues that modern liberal elites are alienated from the general population, thus creating fertile ground for anti-immigrationists to sprout everywhere: "All over the Western world, elites are suppressing popular resistance to nation-breaking immigration. The story of Pauline Hanson will be repeated again and again"

Nice that I got a link from Instapundit yesterday. It was near the top of the page for most of the day too.

" We have reached the point where those who wish to faithfully apply the Constitution as written and accept its limitations on federal power are considered "outside the mainstream of constitutional law," and that those who agree with the Framers' beliefs about the role of government are summarily disqualified from federal judgeships"

A good parable here to illustrate why government-provided "entitlements" are a very bad idea.

A rather amusing comment in the Globophobia column of The Spectator about Indian call centres and British weather.

Big cost for little value: "Amidst all the woeful tales of college students over-burdened with tuition and college loans, the real college cost story -- that it's taxpayers who are truly suffering -- has been ignored. Here's reality. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, more than half of public universities' revenues -- $79 billion -- were extracted directly from federal, state, and local taxpayers, while only 18.5 percent came from student fees and tuition. ... Of course, tuition, too, is covered largely by taxpayers."

I don't suppose it is going to happen soon but Larry Kudlow has looked at the economic stagnation in "Old Europe" compared with the solid growth in the Anglo-Saxon countries and in the former Soviet-dominated countries and thinks that a new free trade zone incorporating the Anglo-Saxon countries and Eastern Europe would make a lot more sense than the EU. As an Anglophile who would like to see Britain OUT of the bureaucratized monstrosity that is the EU, I heartily agree.

It looks like Leftists are getting a bit embarrassed about the virulence with which some Leftists express their hatred of GWB. If they are not careful we might get the impression that Leftists are HATE-FILLED, mightn't we? We might guess what is behind the "compassionate" mask! Can't have that! So Eric Alterman has written a defence that says that conservatives hated Clinton even more. Hippercitical blows that one apart, though.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again.

In the latest upload of a chapter from my book (See here or Chapter 52 here) I look at one of the favourite concepts of Leftist intellectuals: Alienation. Contrary to assumptions going all the way back to Marx, I show rigorously that working class people are NOT particularly alienated. Unsurprisingly, however, alienated people do tend to be Leftist and anti-authority. So the Leftist attempt to project onto the workers their own feelings of bitterness towards the existing society is a fraud.

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MORE ON “THE POOR”

A reader comments on the email I posted yesterday from someone experienced in welfare housing:

“I suppose most of this stuff everyone knows from day to day life ...but public discussion of it has become verboten. The much maligned "bourgeois values" of hard work, respect for education and personal responsibility do not provide an instant escape from poverty ...but they seem to have a better track record than the alternatives. Any kind of sexual practice is now broadcast on television but our society maintains a "Victorian" silence on the issue of personal responsibility among the poor.

The silence comes from an allegedly compassionate desire to protect or cosset the poor, rather than treating them like responsible adults. This probably does more damage in the long run. The trouble is that the silence suits the interests of a multibillion dollar public welfare industry”

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WORLD POVERTY

Swedish free trader Johan Norberg says protectionism is killing poor countries and their people: "According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, EU protectionism deprives developing countries of nearly $700 billion in export income a year. That's almost 14 times more than poor countries receive in foreign aid..." and..."The rich countries' protectionism costs their citizens almost $1 billion every day. At that rate, you could fly all the cows in the OECD, 60 million of them, around the world every year in business class. In addition, the cows could be given almost $3,000 each in pocket money to spend in tax-free shops during their stopovers. "

More protectionist madness: "Taxpayer-subsidized water is just the beginning. U.S. cotton farmers also receive crop-specific payments that encourage them to grow more than they could sell if, like most business people, they had to recoup their production costs. According to a 2002 report from Oxfam International, these subsidies amount to nearly $4 billion year, or $230 an acre. By comparison, the market value of America's cotton crop in 2001 was about $3 billion. ... Even with all this help, U.S. cotton farmers insist they cannot make a go of it unless the government also pays companies to buy their crop."

And globalization is the solution

Economist Surjit S. Bhalla: "World poverty fell from 44 percent of the global population in 1980 to 13 percent in 2000, its fastest decline in history. Global income inequality has dropped over this period and is at its lowest level since at least 1910. Poor countries have grown about twice as fast as rich countries (3.1 percent annually versus 1.6 percent) during the era of globalization in 1980-2000, reversing the pattern of the prior two decades. The poor in poor countries have grown even faster; each 10 percent increase in incomes of the nonpoor has been associated with an 18 percent increase in incomes of the poor. There has been strong convergence in world incomes over the entire postwar period and the developing countries' share of the world's middle class has risen from 20 percent in 1960 to 70 percent in 2000. Some discussion of Bhalla's book and his critical stand against how 'The World Bank' defines poverty here

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ELSEWHERE

Instapundit has a good post on the ISPP (International Society for Political Psychology). I was a member once. And I have had quite a few articles published in their journal. It is in many ways a fairly typical academic association but they have moved further and further to the Left over the years -- making their journal so boring that I discontinued my subscription a couple of year ago. I am still on their mailing list, however, and did get the email Instapundit refers to but it was so normal for them that I did not think to remark it. Clearly, there will be no advance in understanding of political psychology coming from that bunch of fanatics. And don’t forget that it is mostly taxpayer dollars keeping the fanatics concerned in jobs. I have done exposes of some of the rubbish ISPP members churn out here and here and here and here.

An interesting site here. Some people are making a film to “deconstruct” all Michael Moore’s lies about America.

Milton Friedman is one of the founders of modern conservative economics. There is a good summary of how he his ideas have won out over the years here

"Where have all the men gone? No, not males, but honest-to-God, red-blooded men. Males are everywhere, but the concept of manhood may someday find itself on the endangered species list"

Do you wonder that even the EU wants to stop these morons (Iranians) from getting their hands on nuclear weapons?

There is a thorough demolition here of the claim that Australians suffered from a “cultural cringe” until the 1970s when the Leftists got into power for a while and put us all right.

Michael Darby has popped up again with a big range of posts -- mostly about Africa.

The Wicked one has a lot of lawyer jokes and talks about nuking the Pakistanis.

In my post on PC Watch yesterday, I pointed out some parallels between political correctness and the Spanish Inquisition. Daily Ablution has a related post with some good points.

In the latest upload of a chapter from my book (See here or Chapter 12 here) I argue that racial self-segregation is not racist and should be defended.

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POVERTY IS MOSTLY MENTAL THESE DAYS

An email from a reader in response to my post of October 24th:

“I just had to write and say thanks for telling it like it is. I wrote federal grant applications (U.S.) for the local public housing authority for four years. I also managed the programs funded by the grants. In the course of managing the grants I interacted with our clients daily, often in their own households.

We had 700 units of housing; about 300 units were dedicated to seniors and disabled folks living on fixed government incomes; the rest were devoted to "families," or, non-euphemistically, single mothers with lots of children.

Like you, I grew up in a working-class household. My mother was a waitress, and my father sold furnace cleanings. We had very little money, but both my parents knew how to live on a shoestring, and we lived pretty well considering there were few frills.

I was totally shocked when I started working for the housing authority. Single mothers with three or more children, with a household income of less than $600/month (remember, the housing was pretty much free), would spend scads of money on video games, expensive shoes--not just for the kids, but for themselves--and home entertainment systems. Marijuana, which is now way more expensive than it was in my own mildly misspent youth, was always around. And the drug and alcohol usage was just as you reported among your own tenants.

Worst of all were the men these women always hooked up with -- convicted felons, with histories of violence, drug manufacturing, even child abuse. Because of their records, Violent Felon Boyfriends never qualified to be on the lease (the housing authority actually had minimum regulations), so the women would let them stay there illegally, an offense that would get the whole family kicked out of housing if discovered.

And guess who would inevitably turn in women with illegal "houseguests"? Other women in housing who wanted Violent Felon Boyfriend for themselves! After Woman #1 and Children were off the scene, VFB would just move into Woman #2's housing. The pattern was so predictable that we had jokes about these parasites, who were legally barred from housing but managed to stay longer than the low-income women who qualified.

I left when I finally realized that no amount of grant-funded counseling or grant-funded community college vouchers or grant-funded child care was going to change these women's lives. At every decision-making crossroads, they always, always, always picked the worst possible path.

I have come to think that having multiple children out of wedlock does not cause bad judgment, but rather is a symptom of judgment that is atrocious to begin with. I grew up in the same sexually permissive society that these women did, had teenage bouts with transgressive behavior, but always made sure I didn't get pregnant. That these women do so--repeatedly!--is not the fault of "society." It's just one of many, many foolish decisions they make.

By the way, the seniors and disabled folks did pretty well. They rarely complained, kept neat households and looked out for one another. I never felt we were wasting our time with them.”

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PUBLIC FUNDING OF POLITICIANS

USA Today says that public financing of political campaigns has not created the level playing field intended. An Australian reader thinks that the Pauline Hanson affair gives a similar lesson:

"An interesting aspect of the whole Hanson affair that has not been highlighted is what it says about public funding of election campaigns. When this 'reform' was mooted in the late 70s and 80s, it was heavily pushed as a way to create a "level playing field" between the big parties and smaller players. The reality, as the Hanson case has shown, is that it has created a legal minefield upon which small players need to tread with caution. The tacticians of the big parties are more than willing to use the necessary funding rules to harass and bring down competitors. Another great leftist reform has been shown to be a joke."

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ELSEWHERE

The assault by George Soros on the Bush Presidency is typical of the arrogance that shapes the Left. He thinks that he could run US foreign policy better but his ideas about how to do so are tired old relics of yesterday. He actually thinks the U.N. is the solution to all the world’s problems! Someone should tell him that the 1930s version of the U.N. (The League of Nations) did not stop the rise of Hitler. Sometimes you have to fight. Soros is like all the Leftist intellectuals: He knows he is smart so he thinks he must know it all. Nobody does. Each field requires its own expertise and in politics there are no simple solutions.

The Times of London has just carried some reasonably favourable comments about the importance of international differences in IQ. The Statesman of India has covered the story too.

I think a lot of Christians and people who know history are becoming fed up with the false and ridiculous “religion of peace” mantra that GWB keeps spouting about Islam. Here is one Christian who pulls no punches on the matter.

I am always pointing out how sloppy is the attitude research conducted by Left-leaning academics. This article shows that attitude research done by private left-leaning organizations makes the academic stuff look like a model of probity. The article dissects a popular book that goes to great lengths to show how different Canadians and Americans are. Even after all the Leftist massaging, however, the data in fact show the exact opposite. Anybody who has been reading my posts about Left-leaning research (see yesterday, for example) will know why I am not remotely surprised by that. Leftists are so crooked they could not even lie straight in bed.

In my latest academic upload (see here or here) I endeavour to persuade sociologists that their customary ignorance of statistics is inexcusable!

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ACADEMIC FUN AND GAMES

Yesterday was a rather fun day for me academically. A copy of the journal containing my first academic article (Ray, 2003) to be published in 5 years arrived in the mail. My most recent one before that came out in 1998. That I can still get them published probably means that senile dementia has not got me yet! For copyright reasons I cannot put the new article online but an early version of it is already online here. The early version is probably more readable anyway. What it shows is that older women (but not older men) tend to lie more about how good they are. Apologies to the sisterhood!

Also appearing in the same issue of the journal was yet another article (Van Hiel & Mervielde, 2003) on "Need for closure" (a terrible affliction that we conservatives are said to suffer from) by that Belgian dynamo, Alain Van Hiel. I had just started to get my head around the considerable complexities of the article when I noticed that his results were not statistically significant! In other words, you could have found similar results in a table of random numbers! I am amazed that such stuff is getting published these days. The Leftist discomfort with reality is showing up more and more in academe, I guess. And one of Van Hiel's key measures was the absurd Bieri scale of cognitive complexity. Van Hiel obviously overlooked my "deconstruction" of that particular piece of nonsense. Had he paid more attention to the way he measured things, he might have got more significant results.

Reading on further in my copy of the journal I noticed another article that was rather reverential about some prior work by McHoskey. That stirred a dim recollection that I too had once looked at the selfsame McHoskey article. So I dug deep in the archives and found a paper I had written which never got published. In the unpublished paper I pointed out that McHoskey's work showed that at least one type of conservatism was --- wait for it! --- MORE COMPASSIONATE! No wonder THAT paper never got published! Anyway, I have now uploaded the previously unpublished article here and here.

The really amusing thing about the McHoskey finding is that the conservatism scale he used (the RWA scale) was originally designed to measure a particularly UN-caring kind of conservatism. How frustrating that it gave the opposite result! I have pointed out long ago however that the designer of the RWA scale (Altemeyer) did not have a blind clue about what he was doing.

But the fun is not over yet! The author (Wilson, 2003) who was so impressed by the McHoskey work himself produced some vastly overinterpreted findings using the wacky "Social Dominance Orientation" (SDO) scale. About half the items in the SDO scale express a strong belief in equality between people. And so what was our intrepid author's main finding when you cut through all the flim-flam? That low scorers on the SDO scale (equalitarians) were idealistic! Big surprise! Yet another example of an “artifactual” (built-in, true-by-definition) finding. Will Leftist psychologists ever knuckle down and do some real research instead of constantly trying to load the dice in advance? Don't hold your breath.

References
Ray, J.J. & Lovejoy, F.H. (2003) "Age-related social desirability responding among Australian women". Journal of Social Psychology, 143 (5), 669-671.
Van Hiel, A. & Mervielde, I. (2003) "The need for closure and the spontaneous use of complex and simple cognitive structures". Journal of Social Psychology, 143 (5), 559-568.
Wilson, M.S. (2003) "Social dominance and ethical ideology: The end justifies the means?". J. Social Psychology, 143 (5), 549-558.

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LEFTIST "COMPASSION" AND "TOLERANCE"

Speaking of conservatives being more compassionate, I received the following email from someone who is moderately well-known in the blogosphere but whom I will not of course name. He is obviously dyslectic and reports how Leftists and Rightists respond to that. He wrote in response to my post yesterday about conservative racism being historically quite benign compared to Leftist racism. I quote him using his spelling (“could” = “called” etc.): "I have never been could "stupid" by any Conservative for my spelling/grammar shortcomings and they are more likely to point it out to help and not degrade. But there has been plenty of leftist who enjoy belittling people. It mite not be racism to liftist but like all bigots its the easy target they pursue."

Silflay Hraka too has a ferocious post about Democrat inhumanity. I think he rightly detects that their mask is slipping these days.

Anti-Southerner bigotry: "This is 2003, we are supposed to be a more tolerant nation. We are supposed to be celebrating our differences and our diversity. We are supposed to be concerned with making sure no one or no group is excluded. Yes we are supposed to be a sensitive people, seeking never to prejudge anyone. So why are certain groups still being attacked and demonized in America? Why is it that Southerners, at least those who choose to honor our Confederate heritage, are a very easy target for those who usually are preaching tolerance? And certainly recent history has shown that while the political left talks the talk of sensitivity and inclusion, they at the same time walk the walk of bigotry."

“History is a laboratory and the lessons of history are clear. We need not guess what brings peace, prosperity and safety. We only need to demand for the wretched of this world the same values that we have in our own societies. That means judging the values of different cultures. It means abandoning the myth of moral symmetry in the only culture that has ever accepted this myth: the Judeo-Christian West. The lie of moral symmetry dooms billions of human beings to lives filled with envy and anger. The lie of moral symmetry dooms these billions to live lives without hope. If some selfish people in the West wish to pretend that excusing the nightmares of failed civilizations is somehow kindness, they are kidding themselves and the victims of their cowardice”

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VETERANS’ DAY TODAY

(Australia is in a time zone that is nearly a day ahead of the USA)

I like Tom Barrett’s article on the significance of the day -- and his observations about how politically incorrect it is. In Australia we still generally call it Armistice Day and it is widely marked. As it should be. It marked the end of unbelievable slaughter and degradation. In Australia, however, our main day for remembering our lost but heroic young men of all wars is Anzac Day (April 25th). The losses have touched my family too. The loss of my uncle Freddy Ray in the closing weeks of World War II is still deeply mourned by those who knew him.

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CONSERVATIVE RACISM

I noted recently that all racism is not the same. Racism of some kind is just about universal but some forms are much more malign than others. I compared the racism of the socialist Hitler with the racism of the British Conservative party in the 19th century who made a Jew (Disraeli) their Prime Minister. Two rather different form of racism, don’t you think? And the contrast continues. Britain today is full of antisemitism -- so who have the "racist" British Conservatives just appointed as their new leader? Another Jew -- Michael Howard. And note the environment in which they have done so. As Melanie Phillips (via Last Night's BBC News) describes it:

For Britain is where the veteran Labour MP Tam Dalyell claimed a 'cabal' of Jews was controlling Tony Blair and George Bush - and was then promptly excused as a lovable eccentric. Where the following day, the BBC TV current affairs show Newsnight concluded that Dalyell had a case, and a 'tightly-knit' group of Jews really did control US foreign policy.

Where Israel is repeatedly dehumanised and delegitimised as an apartheid or Nazi state. Where almost two thirds of the public believe it is the biggest threat to world peace. Where attacks on Jews have increased

So who are the racists now? Let us look at deeds, not words. As far as Disraeli was concerned, his greater ability was what mattered when the Conservatives chose him and exactly that has happened again with Howard.

And that’s the sort of racist I am. I am realistic about group differences and have always refused to be silent about them but I am nonetheless happy to recognize merit in anyone of any background when I see it. And in the “deeds not words” category, perhaps I should mention that I DO have two Asians and one very brown person living in my own house with me. How many Leftists could say the same?

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IMMIGRATION

PID has a pretty comprehensive post on Pauline Hanson -- who was Australia’s first politician in recent times to advocate more rather than less immigration restriction. PID compares her to a famous Australian of the past -- the outlaw Ned Kelly -- and seems to think that the way she upsets the political establishment of both the Right and the Left is good anti-authoritarianism. It should be noted however that one of her strongest supporters whilst she was in jail was a leading politician from our mainstream conservative political party -- Bronwyn Bishop.

And Australia’s mainstream conservatives have learnt from Pauline. Note this from today’s news: “The Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, claimed another success in combating people smuggling yesterday, after 14 Turkish asylum seekers who arrived in Australian waters last week were forced into international waters by the Australian Navy and have landed on an Indonesian island.”

And Paul Sheehan predicts greater electoral success than ever for Pauline after her wrongful imprisonment.

And Mark Steyn points out that the huge and virtually unrestricted Islamic immigration into Western Europe is a major factor in European antisemitism. Pauline Hanson’s concerns about failure of immigrants to assimilate to Western culture look mild there. In Europe it is the Europeans who have assimilated to Islamic culture!

There is an academic study here that points out some of the economic effects of high levels of immigration. It shows that high levels of immigration put severe upward pressure on real-estate prices. More people competing for a fixed amount of land within easy access to the big city centres must push up the price of that land. So if you had to pay an arm and a leg for your new house last time you moved, you can probably blame high levels of immigration (legal and illegal) for it costing you so much. A reader comments: "I have heard anti-immigrationists refer to pro-immigrationists as 'the Cheap Labour lobby'. Maybe they should also be called 'the Expensive House lobby'.

And there is growing disquiet in Ireland about the immigration that prosperity has brought them. This site takes a look at the issue of immigration into Ireland. Both sides of the argument are represented but it takes the view that immigration and multiculturalism are not always for the good.

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