IN DEFENCE OF THE REPUBLICAN "LEFTWARD DRIFT"
Gary Bezowsky writes:
"I don't think it's entirely correct to assign a leftward drift to the Republican efforts during the Bush term. Sure, we have carping from the right wing against the Bush policies on immigration reform, the deficit and prescription drugs. However, I would defend immigration reform and prescription drugs on conservative grounds and the deficit on economic grounds. Bush ran on a platform that included support for prescription drugs. It should be no surprise that he championed this bill in his first term.
It should be noted this bill includes features with a decided market oriented twist. It allows certain Medicare eligible beneficiaries the right to use private insurers. Additionally, it allows for the first time everyone to establish tax friendly private insurance accounts to cover major medical expenses and pay for minor medical expenses out of pocket.
Immigration reform is the first real effort to offer any policy changes in this area. It brings these people out of the shadows, provides background checks and forces the illegals to pay fines but does not offer automatic citizenship. The illegal are not going away. Americans are not going to chase after the illegals employers. Bush has recognized the Mexican voting block will only grow in the future and is determined to bring this naturally conservative constituency into the Republican's fold.
The anger over the deficit is misplaced. It's appropriate to run deficits during periods of slow growth and it will go away as spending slows and the economy grows from the proper fiscal policy prescriptions of lowering marginal tax rates. Deficits are now running at 4% plus of GDP. At this level, they are not a problem.
I think Bush is taking a page out of the left's playbook. Get a little bit of what you really want each year. A single bill is never the cumulation of the effort. It's just the first step of a long journey. I'm ok with the strategy.
Look for making the tax cuts permanent, privatizing social security and more Medicare reform with more market oriented elements in the second term. Just watch the economy boom with this brew. I think the efforts on the war on terror will increase in the second term. Although I don't have a prediction about the direction.
I'm more upset with the steel tariffs (since rescinded) and a lackluster effort to get a better free trade agreement with Australia. These suffer from domestic politics"
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Saturday, March 06, 2004
ELSEWHERE
As a libertarian who sees no need for government in regulating marriage anyhow, I have no dog in the current fight over homosexual marriage. I think that marriage should simply be a personal and private contract that can be enforced like any other contract. As Tibor Machan says here: "Sure, the Massachusetts Supreme Court affirmed the right of gays to get married. Did that shove anything down anyone's throat? Not by a long shot, no more so than a court's affirming the right to be free of enslavement or some other government imposed restriction shoves anything down anyone's throat." But, unlike Machan, I DO find objectionable that unelected judges can legalize homosexual marriage just because they feel like it. They have now "liberated" themselves from all constraints. Judges have always made law. The Common Law consists of nothing else. But the Common Law evolved over hundreds of years as the judicial expression of what the community as a whole saw as just. But note how things have changed: "The Defense of Marriage Act, which became law eight years ago, was enacted overwhelmingly by Congress, with margins of 342-67 in the House and 85-14 in the Senate. Public opinion polls show similarly high support among Americans for defending marriage." Judges who try to usurp democracy by making the law up as they go along clearly are one of America's biggest problems. The homosexual marriage issue is only a sideshow to that more basic problem. I think the constitutional amendment that GWB should be concentrating on is one that would allow the people to vote any judge out of office. People might eventually take to shooting them otherwise. They are pure power without responsibility at the moment. That cannot go on forever.
NYT gets real about poverty: "Now many scholars from across the political spectrum agree that money alone will not significantly improve the lives of poor families. "Not only does behavior matter," Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution wrote in The Public Interest last year, "it matters more than it used to. Growing gaps between the rich and poor in recent decades have been exacerbated by a divergence in the behavior of the two groups." If you graduate from high school, wait until marriage to have kids and work full time (at whatever job), it is almost certain that you will not remain poor. Sawhill's research indicates that we could double the amount we spend on welfare programs, and we would not make an important dent in poverty."
Hugh Hewitt says that current Leftist beliefs are simply silly: "John Kerry... stated bluntly that George W. Bush heads the "most inept, reckless, and ideological foreign policy in the history of this country." No matter how one evaluates recent events in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya--and they look pretty good to me--they cannot seriously be compared negatively with losing a war in Vietnam, watching Iran slide into virulent Islamism, or allowing Osama bin Laden to nest and metastasize in Kabul and its precincts. Still, millions of Americans will believe Kerry's outlandish excess not because of evidence that he has presented, but because they want to." For those who do not know their history, the last three disasters Hewitt lists happened under Democrat Presidents (LBJ, Carter and Clinton).
Communist Vietnam has a new friend: Germany, of course. Communists are MUCH easier to get on with than that "Hitler" George Bush.
Carnival of the Vanities is a little late this week but as good as ever.
I have just posted here the latest observations from Chris Brand. He is enjoying the divisions among feminists over the publicity-hungry Naomi Wolf.
The wicked one has just put up some light-hearted comments about Israel, improbable though that may seem.
I have just posted up what seems to be just about the last of my published academic journal articles. See here or here. It shows that criminals have very anti-authority attitudes -- which should be no surprise -- but psychologists generally seem to believe the opposite! I do have one other article in print but no lonnger have a copy of it so cannot post it up. It is: "Acquiescent response bias as a recurrent psychometric disease: Conservatism in Japan, the U.S.A. and New Zealand" It is in a German journal that no library in Brisbane seems to hold: Psychologische Beitraege of 1985 (pages 113-119) so if anyone can dig a copy out of THEIR university library and either scan it in or mail me a xerox of it, that would be appreciated.
********************************
The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.
Three more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
As a libertarian who sees no need for government in regulating marriage anyhow, I have no dog in the current fight over homosexual marriage. I think that marriage should simply be a personal and private contract that can be enforced like any other contract. As Tibor Machan says here: "Sure, the Massachusetts Supreme Court affirmed the right of gays to get married. Did that shove anything down anyone's throat? Not by a long shot, no more so than a court's affirming the right to be free of enslavement or some other government imposed restriction shoves anything down anyone's throat." But, unlike Machan, I DO find objectionable that unelected judges can legalize homosexual marriage just because they feel like it. They have now "liberated" themselves from all constraints. Judges have always made law. The Common Law consists of nothing else. But the Common Law evolved over hundreds of years as the judicial expression of what the community as a whole saw as just. But note how things have changed: "The Defense of Marriage Act, which became law eight years ago, was enacted overwhelmingly by Congress, with margins of 342-67 in the House and 85-14 in the Senate. Public opinion polls show similarly high support among Americans for defending marriage." Judges who try to usurp democracy by making the law up as they go along clearly are one of America's biggest problems. The homosexual marriage issue is only a sideshow to that more basic problem. I think the constitutional amendment that GWB should be concentrating on is one that would allow the people to vote any judge out of office. People might eventually take to shooting them otherwise. They are pure power without responsibility at the moment. That cannot go on forever.
NYT gets real about poverty: "Now many scholars from across the political spectrum agree that money alone will not significantly improve the lives of poor families. "Not only does behavior matter," Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution wrote in The Public Interest last year, "it matters more than it used to. Growing gaps between the rich and poor in recent decades have been exacerbated by a divergence in the behavior of the two groups." If you graduate from high school, wait until marriage to have kids and work full time (at whatever job), it is almost certain that you will not remain poor. Sawhill's research indicates that we could double the amount we spend on welfare programs, and we would not make an important dent in poverty."
Hugh Hewitt says that current Leftist beliefs are simply silly: "John Kerry... stated bluntly that George W. Bush heads the "most inept, reckless, and ideological foreign policy in the history of this country." No matter how one evaluates recent events in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya--and they look pretty good to me--they cannot seriously be compared negatively with losing a war in Vietnam, watching Iran slide into virulent Islamism, or allowing Osama bin Laden to nest and metastasize in Kabul and its precincts. Still, millions of Americans will believe Kerry's outlandish excess not because of evidence that he has presented, but because they want to." For those who do not know their history, the last three disasters Hewitt lists happened under Democrat Presidents (LBJ, Carter and Clinton).
Communist Vietnam has a new friend: Germany, of course. Communists are MUCH easier to get on with than that "Hitler" George Bush.
Carnival of the Vanities is a little late this week but as good as ever.
I have just posted here the latest observations from Chris Brand. He is enjoying the divisions among feminists over the publicity-hungry Naomi Wolf.
The wicked one has just put up some light-hearted comments about Israel, improbable though that may seem.
I have just posted up what seems to be just about the last of my published academic journal articles. See here or here. It shows that criminals have very anti-authority attitudes -- which should be no surprise -- but psychologists generally seem to believe the opposite! I do have one other article in print but no lonnger have a copy of it so cannot post it up. It is: "Acquiescent response bias as a recurrent psychometric disease: Conservatism in Japan, the U.S.A. and New Zealand" It is in a German journal that no library in Brisbane seems to hold: Psychologische Beitraege of 1985 (pages 113-119) so if anyone can dig a copy out of THEIR university library and either scan it in or mail me a xerox of it, that would be appreciated.
********************************
The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.
Three more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Friday, March 05, 2004
THAT MOVIE AGAIN
Ann Coulter has a very acid comparison between the Leftist reaction to the Gibson movie and their reaction to Islam.
I myself am pleased that (Australian) Mel Gibson's film about the crucifixion is helping the Christian faith of many and may even bring some people into the Christian fold. Even some conservatives, however, are concerned about the film on the grounds that it will inflame antisemitism. Monica Charen, for instance says: "It grieves me to object to Mel Gibson's movie because I know that millions of Christians in this country and around the world will be moved and possibly even transformed by it -- and that is a welcome thing. As a Jew, I can unhesitatingly declare that the world would be a better place if it contained more believing Christians. And yet Gibson has seeded his film with images of Jewish guilt and perfidy that will fall on fertile anti-Semitic soil around the world." Dick McDonald has sent me an email that begs to differ:
I am sure someone will accuse Dick of antisemitism for mentioning Jewish differences -- particularly that Jews "stick together" -- but they should note that various studies sponsored by the Anti-defamation League of B'nai B'rith (e.g. Quinley & Glock, 1979) came to conclusions similar to Dick's. Here is a quote from Quinley & Glock: ""Another common stereotype of Jews is that they are clannish... The perception of Jews as clannish has some basis in fact and can thus be accepted without necessarily being a symptom of prejudice." There is a long (and unsympathetic) catalogue here of Jews acknowledging Jewish differences and Jewish tribalism. My own sympathetic account of Jewish differences and tribalism is here.
Reference:
Quinley, H.E. & Glock, C.Y. (1979) Anti-semitism in America. N.Y.: Free Press.
***********************************
Ann Coulter has a very acid comparison between the Leftist reaction to the Gibson movie and their reaction to Islam.
I myself am pleased that (Australian) Mel Gibson's film about the crucifixion is helping the Christian faith of many and may even bring some people into the Christian fold. Even some conservatives, however, are concerned about the film on the grounds that it will inflame antisemitism. Monica Charen, for instance says: "It grieves me to object to Mel Gibson's movie because I know that millions of Christians in this country and around the world will be moved and possibly even transformed by it -- and that is a welcome thing. As a Jew, I can unhesitatingly declare that the world would be a better place if it contained more believing Christians. And yet Gibson has seeded his film with images of Jewish guilt and perfidy that will fall on fertile anti-Semitic soil around the world." Dick McDonald has sent me an email that begs to differ:
"Monica Charen criticizes Mel Gibson's "Passion" as an antisemitic hate piece because it will ignite those feelings in many people around the world who hate the Jews for killing Jesus. Oh, were the case that simple! Having been reared in a Christian minority among a Jewish majority in the Fairfax district of West Hollywood, I have some insight into why they are hated, the least of which is that they killed Jesus.
The first indictment about Jews I've known is they are smarter than any other oppressed minority on the face of the Earth. In general, they are smarter than any majority. Whether we like it or not, envy is the blight on intelligence.
Secondly, they compete for money and power, with the ferocity and guile reserved to those who have been chased from almost every land on Earth. As a whole they are immensely successful, knowing their time might soon come to leave. Their business success everywhere has bred the brutal side of envy.
Thirdly, they stick together. Whenever possible they do business with each other to the exclusion of others. I was chided that we gentiles had only produced Jack Kemp during my time in school, whereas they (the Jews) had hundreds of millionaires. They honor the old tradition of exclusion of other sects thus creating animosity and envy.
Now, there are many other areas we could talk about but just these three traits and the scorn they precipitate have got them in more trouble than their scriptured complicity in Christ's death. I went through my minority as a minority among Jews and can't recall or remember ever discussing their alleged complicity with Christ's death. The "Passion" is a convenient excuse to deflect from the real problem Jews have: SUCCESS. Unfortunately, everyone takes potshots at the guys on the top."
I am sure someone will accuse Dick of antisemitism for mentioning Jewish differences -- particularly that Jews "stick together" -- but they should note that various studies sponsored by the Anti-defamation League of B'nai B'rith (e.g. Quinley & Glock, 1979) came to conclusions similar to Dick's. Here is a quote from Quinley & Glock: ""Another common stereotype of Jews is that they are clannish... The perception of Jews as clannish has some basis in fact and can thus be accepted without necessarily being a symptom of prejudice." There is a long (and unsympathetic) catalogue here of Jews acknowledging Jewish differences and Jewish tribalism. My own sympathetic account of Jewish differences and tribalism is here.
Reference:
Quinley, H.E. & Glock, C.Y. (1979) Anti-semitism in America. N.Y.: Free Press.
***********************************
ELSEWHERE
No double standards for Israel: "Look who's preaching to Israel: Last Wednesday, the U.S. State Department released its annual report on the state of human rights around the world. ... A country that is holding 660 Afghan detainees at Guantanamo without trial and depriving them of basic rights is in no position to criticize administrative detentions carried out by other countries. A country that is holding members of the Iraqi political leadership in detention without trial, far from view, is in no position to complain about the conditions of detention in the prisons of other countries. And a country that is maintaining a tough military occupation regime in Iraq doesn't have the right to fulminate against a different occupation regime, however cruel it may be, in the Palestinian territories."
"An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" no more? "Israeli police said on Thursday they had arrested an ultra-nationalist Jew who had confessed to a three-year bombing campaign against Arabs and to plotting the assassination of Israeli Arab lawmakers". The troubles there would probably be over now if there were more like him.
Once again, they're praising Hitler with impunity in Germany
A general Leftward drift: "For some decades now, it has been axiomatic to say that the two American political parties have become increasingly polarized along ideological lines - the Republicans becoming more conservative and the Democrats more liberal.... What seems to be happening in 2004 is the Democrats are whirling around more liberal than ever, while the Republicans are abandoning their conservative principles on a daily basis...The Democrats, having flirted for months with nominating the extreme liberal Howard Dean, have abandoned him in favor of John Kerry, who is in fact more liberal than Dean. Kerry is.. more liberal than anyone the Democrats have ever nominated for President. He is also more liberal than any of the other candidates in this year's field, if you will allow me to dispense with the burden of classifying Al Sharpton... And what of the Republicans? Have they, in mirror image, moved rightward in 2004? Heck, no. The biggest complaint about George W. Bush is that he has abandoned the conservatives in his party, on immigration reform, the prescription drug program, deficit spending and other issues".
Jeff Jacoby has an appalling story about those wonderful humanitarian Canadians. How they hate anti-Communists!
A former member of the U.S. army in Vietnam ridicules the observations about U.S. Army misbehaviour that John Kerry claims to have made from his Navy boat.
Texas Conservative delivers a fisking of John Kerry's recent UCLA speech on terrorism.
The wicked one has just put up some facetious diet advice that could make us all vegetarians.
********************************
The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.
Three more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
No double standards for Israel: "Look who's preaching to Israel: Last Wednesday, the U.S. State Department released its annual report on the state of human rights around the world. ... A country that is holding 660 Afghan detainees at Guantanamo without trial and depriving them of basic rights is in no position to criticize administrative detentions carried out by other countries. A country that is holding members of the Iraqi political leadership in detention without trial, far from view, is in no position to complain about the conditions of detention in the prisons of other countries. And a country that is maintaining a tough military occupation regime in Iraq doesn't have the right to fulminate against a different occupation regime, however cruel it may be, in the Palestinian territories."
"An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" no more? "Israeli police said on Thursday they had arrested an ultra-nationalist Jew who had confessed to a three-year bombing campaign against Arabs and to plotting the assassination of Israeli Arab lawmakers". The troubles there would probably be over now if there were more like him.
Once again, they're praising Hitler with impunity in Germany
A general Leftward drift: "For some decades now, it has been axiomatic to say that the two American political parties have become increasingly polarized along ideological lines - the Republicans becoming more conservative and the Democrats more liberal.... What seems to be happening in 2004 is the Democrats are whirling around more liberal than ever, while the Republicans are abandoning their conservative principles on a daily basis...The Democrats, having flirted for months with nominating the extreme liberal Howard Dean, have abandoned him in favor of John Kerry, who is in fact more liberal than Dean. Kerry is.. more liberal than anyone the Democrats have ever nominated for President. He is also more liberal than any of the other candidates in this year's field, if you will allow me to dispense with the burden of classifying Al Sharpton... And what of the Republicans? Have they, in mirror image, moved rightward in 2004? Heck, no. The biggest complaint about George W. Bush is that he has abandoned the conservatives in his party, on immigration reform, the prescription drug program, deficit spending and other issues".
Jeff Jacoby has an appalling story about those wonderful humanitarian Canadians. How they hate anti-Communists!
A former member of the U.S. army in Vietnam ridicules the observations about U.S. Army misbehaviour that John Kerry claims to have made from his Navy boat.
Texas Conservative delivers a fisking of John Kerry's recent UCLA speech on terrorism.
The wicked one has just put up some facetious diet advice that could make us all vegetarians.
********************************
The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.
Three more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Thursday, March 04, 2004
BLOG BACKGROUND
I thought I might say a few things about this blog in case anybody is curious about it. I think any blogger will tell you how time-consuming blogging is and in my case I would spend an average of about 8 hours a day or more preparing posts for this blog. As a retired man I can easily afford to do that. I usually put up my posts only once a day at around 9am Queensland time (equivalent to 3pm the previous day in California time). Most of the time I spend is spent reading links sent to me by readers. I do very little reading of my own accord. Even blogs that I like to keep up with -- such as England's Sword and the Bunyip -- I log onto only occasionally. The only blog I read nearly every day is the analytical philosopher -- perhaps because he is a professional analytical philosopher while I am only an amateur one!
One reader in particular sends me so many links that he is in effect a silent partner in this blog. Because he wishes to remain anonymous (though he does have an irregular blog of his own) I get the credit for his broad reading. Around half the links I put up are in fact from him. I wish I could thank him by name here but I thank him anyway.
While I am mentioning personal things, I might also mention that my 16-year-old son Joe has just started an advanced placement course in mathematics at the University of Queensland. He is in his final year at a large private Catholic high school but is allowed to do one subject at university level. The University of Queensland is one of Australia's oldest and largest universities and is where I got my first degree. Joe actually has classes in exactly the same big old sandstone building where I first had classes exactly 40 years ago. I am pretty pleased about it all -- particularly as he is the only one in his school doing advanced placement. And he arranged it all for himself, too. I had no hand in it.
*****************************
I thought I might say a few things about this blog in case anybody is curious about it. I think any blogger will tell you how time-consuming blogging is and in my case I would spend an average of about 8 hours a day or more preparing posts for this blog. As a retired man I can easily afford to do that. I usually put up my posts only once a day at around 9am Queensland time (equivalent to 3pm the previous day in California time). Most of the time I spend is spent reading links sent to me by readers. I do very little reading of my own accord. Even blogs that I like to keep up with -- such as England's Sword and the Bunyip -- I log onto only occasionally. The only blog I read nearly every day is the analytical philosopher -- perhaps because he is a professional analytical philosopher while I am only an amateur one!
One reader in particular sends me so many links that he is in effect a silent partner in this blog. Because he wishes to remain anonymous (though he does have an irregular blog of his own) I get the credit for his broad reading. Around half the links I put up are in fact from him. I wish I could thank him by name here but I thank him anyway.
While I am mentioning personal things, I might also mention that my 16-year-old son Joe has just started an advanced placement course in mathematics at the University of Queensland. He is in his final year at a large private Catholic high school but is allowed to do one subject at university level. The University of Queensland is one of Australia's oldest and largest universities and is where I got my first degree. Joe actually has classes in exactly the same big old sandstone building where I first had classes exactly 40 years ago. I am pretty pleased about it all -- particularly as he is the only one in his school doing advanced placement. And he arranged it all for himself, too. I had no hand in it.
*****************************
ELSEWHERE
Christian libertarian Vox Day has some cogent arguments for getting the government out of marriage altogether: "There is a significant difference between marriage - the religious commitment between a man and one or more women - as it has been known in every historical society for at least 6,000 years, and the modern concept of state-granted civil marriage. Self-styled conservative "defenders of marriage" justify their support for state involvement, mostly in the form of tax breaks and social security benefits, in much the same way that left-liberal justify everything - it's all for the children. As usual, however, this mistaken notion has worked out about as well as every other government intrusion into the economy and culture. The number of children being produced in the United States has dropped to its lowest level since 1909...."
Christopher Hitchens: "One good thing about gay nuptials: It'd drive the mullahs mad."
It seems that George Soros too has that vast ego that motivates so many Leftists and leads them to hate those who already are in the positions of power and influence that they covet. Soros is almost a caricature of an egomaniac in fact. No wonder he hates George Bush.
Europe would vote for Kerry if it could. And they're rooting for him. Another bunch all twisted up by envy. They know America would be weak under Kerry.
Jeff Jacoby: "John Kerry is going to be the Democratic Party's presidential nominee. And that means that President Bush is one step closer to reelection."
Two good quotes via The Federalist: "I have seen gross intolerance shown in support of tolerance." and: "It is completely legitimate for President Bush's campaign to cite Mr. Kerry's voting record and public words in an attempt to prove that the senator's military and foreign policy judgments of the last 30 years have been unwise and unrealistic". The quote about tolerance is from Coleridge (1772-1834) -- a famous poet and one of the many who moved from radicalism to conservatism as he went through life. He could have been writing today.
Rubbery French principles: "France said on Wednesday it was ready to review advertising restrictions on wine producers to encourage the French to drink the industry out of a sales slump."
What fun! "COCA-Cola's new 'designer water" is not the real thing at all and its ingredients are not so special that they are a well-kept secret. For the drink is nothing more than tap water".
Government does something useful: "Citing an array of financial abuses at charitable foundations, federal officials and the Massachusetts attorney general's office plan to push new legislation and tougher regulations designed to curtail excessive salaries, lavish spending, and conflicts of interest by some foundation directors. US Senator Charles E. Grassley [R-IA], chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, called the improprieties at foundations detailed in a recent Globe series 'wrong and outrageous,' and said new laws and more stringent rules are needed to ensure that the billions of dollars in foundation assets are used for charitable purposes and not to enrich insiders."
Lula's Leftist authoritarianism is showing: "Thirty thousand people took part in a march in Sao Paulo to protest a decision by Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to close down bingo halls and ban slot machines nationwide. The march was led by the Fuerza Sindical union, whose leader Paulo Pereira da Silva says the ban will bump 100,000 people out of work just in Sao Paulo and possibly more than three times that number in all of Brazil. Lula ordered the closing down of bingo halls after corruption allegations surfaced in February concerning a former adviser to the government."
I have just posted here some more observations from Chris Brand -- noting some increases in realism about race.
The wicked one has just put up another big collection of funnies. I liked the one about diarrhoea.
In the last two days I have put up critiques of work in psychology by Adorno disciples. Criticism is no substitute for doing better, however, so I have today put up one of my published academic articles that provides better data for testing the Adorno theories. See here or here.
********************************
The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.
Three more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Christian libertarian Vox Day has some cogent arguments for getting the government out of marriage altogether: "There is a significant difference between marriage - the religious commitment between a man and one or more women - as it has been known in every historical society for at least 6,000 years, and the modern concept of state-granted civil marriage. Self-styled conservative "defenders of marriage" justify their support for state involvement, mostly in the form of tax breaks and social security benefits, in much the same way that left-liberal justify everything - it's all for the children. As usual, however, this mistaken notion has worked out about as well as every other government intrusion into the economy and culture. The number of children being produced in the United States has dropped to its lowest level since 1909...."
Christopher Hitchens: "One good thing about gay nuptials: It'd drive the mullahs mad."
It seems that George Soros too has that vast ego that motivates so many Leftists and leads them to hate those who already are in the positions of power and influence that they covet. Soros is almost a caricature of an egomaniac in fact. No wonder he hates George Bush.
Europe would vote for Kerry if it could. And they're rooting for him. Another bunch all twisted up by envy. They know America would be weak under Kerry.
Jeff Jacoby: "John Kerry is going to be the Democratic Party's presidential nominee. And that means that President Bush is one step closer to reelection."
Two good quotes via The Federalist: "I have seen gross intolerance shown in support of tolerance." and: "It is completely legitimate for President Bush's campaign to cite Mr. Kerry's voting record and public words in an attempt to prove that the senator's military and foreign policy judgments of the last 30 years have been unwise and unrealistic". The quote about tolerance is from Coleridge (1772-1834) -- a famous poet and one of the many who moved from radicalism to conservatism as he went through life. He could have been writing today.
Rubbery French principles: "France said on Wednesday it was ready to review advertising restrictions on wine producers to encourage the French to drink the industry out of a sales slump."
What fun! "COCA-Cola's new 'designer water" is not the real thing at all and its ingredients are not so special that they are a well-kept secret. For the drink is nothing more than tap water".
Government does something useful: "Citing an array of financial abuses at charitable foundations, federal officials and the Massachusetts attorney general's office plan to push new legislation and tougher regulations designed to curtail excessive salaries, lavish spending, and conflicts of interest by some foundation directors. US Senator Charles E. Grassley [R-IA], chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, called the improprieties at foundations detailed in a recent Globe series 'wrong and outrageous,' and said new laws and more stringent rules are needed to ensure that the billions of dollars in foundation assets are used for charitable purposes and not to enrich insiders."
Lula's Leftist authoritarianism is showing: "Thirty thousand people took part in a march in Sao Paulo to protest a decision by Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to close down bingo halls and ban slot machines nationwide. The march was led by the Fuerza Sindical union, whose leader Paulo Pereira da Silva says the ban will bump 100,000 people out of work just in Sao Paulo and possibly more than three times that number in all of Brazil. Lula ordered the closing down of bingo halls after corruption allegations surfaced in February concerning a former adviser to the government."
I have just posted here some more observations from Chris Brand -- noting some increases in realism about race.
The wicked one has just put up another big collection of funnies. I liked the one about diarrhoea.
In the last two days I have put up critiques of work in psychology by Adorno disciples. Criticism is no substitute for doing better, however, so I have today put up one of my published academic articles that provides better data for testing the Adorno theories. See here or here.
********************************
The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.
Three more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Wednesday, March 03, 2004
ON WELFARE AND ECONOMICS
An American tragedy: "One out of 17 white homeowners owns a luxury home, but only one out of 33 minority homeowners has such a costly house". And one out of 33 million Bangladeshis has such a house.
Welfare destroys community: "Cohesion develops from the bottom-up. It emerges when families, workmates and neighbours come together to share common interests and to solve common problems. But people come together only when they have a reason to do so. The more the welfare state takes care of our needs, the less remains for us to do for ourselves. The result is that the bonds between us begin to fray... crime rates plummeted during the 1990s at precisely the same time as the government cut back on welfare spending and income inequality increased significantly". All of which is the opposite of Leftist orthodoxy.
Sowell on the "Big Lie of the Year": "It may be too early in this election year to determine which will be the biggest of the Big Lies in this political campaign. However, my feeling is that it may be 'the working poor.' While there are working people who are poor, most poor people are not working full time, not working very long, or not working at all... By focussing on those who work hard all their lives and still remain poor - no more than 3 percent of the population - and telling their personal stories endlessly, liberals can present the Big Lie with a human face. There is an even bigger lie behind all this. That lie is the implication that the purpose of all this hand-wringing is to help the poor. But the poor are just the bait in a political bait-and-switch game. ....The fraud becomes apparent the moment anyone suggests that there be means tests, so that the taxpayers' money will be spent only on the poor. Those who pose as the biggest champions of the poor are almost invariably the biggest opponents of means tests. They want bigger government and the poor are just a means to that end. "
The Left-leaning "Atlantic" to its credit highlighted the same economic mythology that Sowell refers to last year: "lack of money was more an effect of poor people's other, more-fundamental problems than a cause in its own right; and so handing out more cash would be of little help. Other research similarly pointed away from money and toward the importance of two-parent families, education, and work". And Peter Hitchens compares the welfare state to heroin addiction.
On business 'down sizing': The facts show it's mainly restructuring and "..about half of all downsizing firms end up with at least as many laborers within a few years' time... Manufacturing is fifteen percent of the U.S. labor force and thus only a small part of the downsizing story. Retailing and services have been upsizing considerably for many years."
There is an amusing article here about Lou Dobbs, the financial expert who knows nothing about economics -- or pretends not to in his hunger for popularity. The article suggests that he is actually quite a good investment guide -- if you do the opposite of what he recommends.
Should the whole US Senate be investigated for insider trading? "US senators' personal stock portfolios outperformed the market by an average of 12 per cent a year in the five years to 1998, according to a new study. "The results clearly support the notion that members of the Senate trade with a substantial informational advantage over ordinary investors," says the author of the report, Professor Alan Ziobrowski of the Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University."
Good news for Israel: "Mr. Netanyahu has tackled economic reform with the zeal and single-mindedness that has marked his career, drawing comparisons to New Zealand's Roger Douglas, the finance minister who liberated his own nation's economy in the 1980s. Mr. Netanyahu's emergency economic plan spared no holy cows: It included cuts in government expenditures, welfare entitlements and public-sector jobs. It also sought to lower taxes and jump-start a stalled privatization program"
*****************************
An American tragedy: "One out of 17 white homeowners owns a luxury home, but only one out of 33 minority homeowners has such a costly house". And one out of 33 million Bangladeshis has such a house.
Welfare destroys community: "Cohesion develops from the bottom-up. It emerges when families, workmates and neighbours come together to share common interests and to solve common problems. But people come together only when they have a reason to do so. The more the welfare state takes care of our needs, the less remains for us to do for ourselves. The result is that the bonds between us begin to fray... crime rates plummeted during the 1990s at precisely the same time as the government cut back on welfare spending and income inequality increased significantly". All of which is the opposite of Leftist orthodoxy.
Sowell on the "Big Lie of the Year": "It may be too early in this election year to determine which will be the biggest of the Big Lies in this political campaign. However, my feeling is that it may be 'the working poor.' While there are working people who are poor, most poor people are not working full time, not working very long, or not working at all... By focussing on those who work hard all their lives and still remain poor - no more than 3 percent of the population - and telling their personal stories endlessly, liberals can present the Big Lie with a human face. There is an even bigger lie behind all this. That lie is the implication that the purpose of all this hand-wringing is to help the poor. But the poor are just the bait in a political bait-and-switch game. ....The fraud becomes apparent the moment anyone suggests that there be means tests, so that the taxpayers' money will be spent only on the poor. Those who pose as the biggest champions of the poor are almost invariably the biggest opponents of means tests. They want bigger government and the poor are just a means to that end. "
The Left-leaning "Atlantic" to its credit highlighted the same economic mythology that Sowell refers to last year: "lack of money was more an effect of poor people's other, more-fundamental problems than a cause in its own right; and so handing out more cash would be of little help. Other research similarly pointed away from money and toward the importance of two-parent families, education, and work". And Peter Hitchens compares the welfare state to heroin addiction.
On business 'down sizing': The facts show it's mainly restructuring and "..about half of all downsizing firms end up with at least as many laborers within a few years' time... Manufacturing is fifteen percent of the U.S. labor force and thus only a small part of the downsizing story. Retailing and services have been upsizing considerably for many years."
There is an amusing article here about Lou Dobbs, the financial expert who knows nothing about economics -- or pretends not to in his hunger for popularity. The article suggests that he is actually quite a good investment guide -- if you do the opposite of what he recommends.
Should the whole US Senate be investigated for insider trading? "US senators' personal stock portfolios outperformed the market by an average of 12 per cent a year in the five years to 1998, according to a new study. "The results clearly support the notion that members of the Senate trade with a substantial informational advantage over ordinary investors," says the author of the report, Professor Alan Ziobrowski of the Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University."
Good news for Israel: "Mr. Netanyahu has tackled economic reform with the zeal and single-mindedness that has marked his career, drawing comparisons to New Zealand's Roger Douglas, the finance minister who liberated his own nation's economy in the 1980s. Mr. Netanyahu's emergency economic plan spared no holy cows: It included cuts in government expenditures, welfare entitlements and public-sector jobs. It also sought to lower taxes and jump-start a stalled privatization program"
*****************************
ELSEWHERE
John Kerry's Senate votes put him farther Left than Ted Kennedy
Here is another generally conservative writer who doesn't give a hoot whether homosexuals "marry" or not. What they do only matters if you think they are important.
OK. I'll call a spade a spade: Israel's "disengagement" plan is apartheid. Except that Israel has no other peaceful choice left. Keeping the Jews and the Arabs apart is the the best way to protect the security of the Jews. But it will leave the Arabs free to do what they like in their part of Israel so it is nothing like the South African apartheid of yore.
Hostility is bad for your heart and can kill you. I showed something similar 20 years ago. Being an angry type of person is clearly not good for your cardiac health. I wonder if Leftists have more heart attacks? I must try to look that up one day.
I'd flog them too! "Thousands of Indian Muslims flogged themselves as they marched peacefully through the communally sensitive western Gujarat state to mark the Shi'ite Muslim mourning day of Ashura"
Most of the usual Leftist slurs against GWB ("Hitler", "moron" etc) are demolished here.
Adam Smith, neuroscience pioneer? Smith said "The ability to appreciate other people's agony is achieved by the same parts of the brain that we use to experience pain for ourselves" and it appears that he was right.
I have just posted here some more observations from Chris Brand -- including a comment about genetics and eugenics. My own view of eugenics is here.
I mentioned the Marxist theoretician Adorno yesterday and noted that I had just posted to the net one of my published articles demolishing the work of one of his disciples in psychology. I have just put up another article demolishing the work of yet another of his disciples. See here or here.
********************************
The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.
Three more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
John Kerry's Senate votes put him farther Left than Ted Kennedy
Here is another generally conservative writer who doesn't give a hoot whether homosexuals "marry" or not. What they do only matters if you think they are important.
OK. I'll call a spade a spade: Israel's "disengagement" plan is apartheid. Except that Israel has no other peaceful choice left. Keeping the Jews and the Arabs apart is the the best way to protect the security of the Jews. But it will leave the Arabs free to do what they like in their part of Israel so it is nothing like the South African apartheid of yore.
Hostility is bad for your heart and can kill you. I showed something similar 20 years ago. Being an angry type of person is clearly not good for your cardiac health. I wonder if Leftists have more heart attacks? I must try to look that up one day.
I'd flog them too! "Thousands of Indian Muslims flogged themselves as they marched peacefully through the communally sensitive western Gujarat state to mark the Shi'ite Muslim mourning day of Ashura"
Most of the usual Leftist slurs against GWB ("Hitler", "moron" etc) are demolished here.
Adam Smith, neuroscience pioneer? Smith said "The ability to appreciate other people's agony is achieved by the same parts of the brain that we use to experience pain for ourselves" and it appears that he was right.
I have just posted here some more observations from Chris Brand -- including a comment about genetics and eugenics. My own view of eugenics is here.
I mentioned the Marxist theoretician Adorno yesterday and noted that I had just posted to the net one of my published articles demolishing the work of one of his disciples in psychology. I have just put up another article demolishing the work of yet another of his disciples. See here or here.
********************************
The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.
Three more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
FROM THE MIDDLE-EAST
Iraq mass graves: "Since the Saddam Hussein regime was overthrown in May, 270 mass graves have been reported. In November 2003 the remains of 400,000 people had been discovered. "If these numbers prove accurate, they represent a crime against humanity surpassed only by the Rwandan genocide of 1994, Pol Pot's Cambodian killing fields in the 1970s, and the Nazi Holocaust of World War II.":
Watch points out that the UN report about Israel's security fence "does not describe a single terrorist act against Israelis". How can you report on something without looking at the cause of it? The U.N. can!
What's new in the Palestinian press? "Despite continuing United States and Western European support for Palestinian political aspirations, the tightly-controlled official Palestinian Authority (PA) media relentlessly incites hatred and violence against the US and the West... President Bush, in this global war context, is depicted not merely as a leader of the "enemy United States", but is the enemy of all civilization, the "Fuhrer of the globalization era," a greater danger than Hitler, leading the world to destruction" Sounds rather like U.S. Leftists.
A former go-between for Iraq's Saddam Hussein says: "I don't think there was any Arab in the seventies who did not want Saddam Hussein to have an atomic weapon. They wanted him to have military parity. Israel had atomic weapons. The Arabs wanted an Arab country to have atomic weapons. Iraq was the head of the pack and therefore all Arabs supported Saddam Hussein."
Arlene Peck thinks that Israel should treat the world like women treat men. Arlene has obviously been a handful in her time.
************************************
Iraq mass graves: "Since the Saddam Hussein regime was overthrown in May, 270 mass graves have been reported. In November 2003 the remains of 400,000 people had been discovered. "If these numbers prove accurate, they represent a crime against humanity surpassed only by the Rwandan genocide of 1994, Pol Pot's Cambodian killing fields in the 1970s, and the Nazi Holocaust of World War II.":
Watch points out that the UN report about Israel's security fence "does not describe a single terrorist act against Israelis". How can you report on something without looking at the cause of it? The U.N. can!
What's new in the Palestinian press? "Despite continuing United States and Western European support for Palestinian political aspirations, the tightly-controlled official Palestinian Authority (PA) media relentlessly incites hatred and violence against the US and the West... President Bush, in this global war context, is depicted not merely as a leader of the "enemy United States", but is the enemy of all civilization, the "Fuhrer of the globalization era," a greater danger than Hitler, leading the world to destruction" Sounds rather like U.S. Leftists.
A former go-between for Iraq's Saddam Hussein says: "I don't think there was any Arab in the seventies who did not want Saddam Hussein to have an atomic weapon. They wanted him to have military parity. Israel had atomic weapons. The Arabs wanted an Arab country to have atomic weapons. Iraq was the head of the pack and therefore all Arabs supported Saddam Hussein."
Arlene Peck thinks that Israel should treat the world like women treat men. Arlene has obviously been a handful in her time.
************************************
ELSEWHERE
That old Marxist fraud, Theodor Adorno, still gets lots of respect in Leftist cultural circles so Denis Dutton's review of Adorno's book about astrology is a welcome corrective: "Karl Popper's famous critique of pseudoscience lumps Freud, astrology, and Marxism together. The difficulty with these theories, Popper said, is not that they don't explain enough, but rather that they explain too much. There is no imaginable human event which they cannot seize upon and place neatly in their theoretical scheme; they are unfalsifiable by experience. Despite my deep sympathy with Adorno's contempt for the occult, there is something similar going on here. If Adorno doesn't like something, no matter how inane or innocuous, it isn't long before he begins to detect in it the seeds of fascism." An amusing story: Theodor's original surname was "Wiesengrund" -- after his father -- but he obviously disliked such an obviously Ashkenazi name and adopted his dancer mother's Spanish stagename as his surname. So, translated into English, he went from being Theodor Meadowland to being Theodor Ornament: About as nutty as his theories. Adorno still has his disciples in psychology too. I have just put up (here or here) one of my published articles demolishing one such disciple.
This article says that public language has become full of waffle and obscurity these days. It's true. But you will find all straight talk on this blog. Even in my academic journal articles I always tried my best to put things simply and plainly and other academics often used to say to me things along the lines of: "We mightn't agree with you but at least we understand what you are saying".
French antisemitism: "During demonstrations in May 2002 organized by France's mainstream antiracist organizations, protesters shouted anti-Semitic slogans and tried to attack a couple of passers-by whom they believed to be Jewish... Since then, the Chirac government has made the crackdown on anti-Semitism a top priority. It has taken a series of emergency steps, from tighter policing of Jewish sites to quicker investigation and prosecution of hate crimes to proposing a heightened focus on the Holocaust in the public school curriculum." It should be noted thyat the Chirac government is a conservative one in French terms and that it was the preceding socialist government that did nothing about antisemitism.
France being such a hotbed of antisemitism, I can see their point on this one: "French cinema chains are refusing to distribute or screen Mel Gibson's controversial film The Passion of the Christ because of fears that it may spark a new outbreak of anti-Semitism."
No freedom of religion on the Left coast: "A Roman Catholic charitable organization must include birth control coverage in its health care plan for workers even though it is morally opposed to contraception, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday."
A statistical fluke if ever there was one: "Research from the University of Chicago's Centre on Ageing shows that daughters born to fathers in their late 40s or older live, on average, three years less than other women, yet their brothers are not affected."
Sending call-centre jobs to India: "It is inevitable in a networked world that our economy is going to shed certain low-wage, low-prestige jobs. To the extent that they go to places like India or Pakistan -- where they are viewed as high-wage, high-prestige jobs -- we make not only a more prosperous world, but a safer world for our own 20-year-olds."
Homosexual "marriage": "How about government simply getting out of the marriage-license-granting business? (Ditto for government licenses necessary to cut hair, drive a taxi, open a business or enter a profession.) Leave marriage to non-governmental institutions, like churches, synagogues, mosques, and other houses of worship or private institutions. Adultery, although legal, remains a sin subject to societal condemnation. It's tough to legislate away condemnation or legislate in approval. Those who view same-sex marriage as sinful will continue to do so, no matter what the government, the courts or their neighbors say."
VD Hanson: "Preemption is a concept as old as the Greeks. It perhaps was first articulated in the fourth book of Thucydides's history... What is new is the absolutist, blanket condemnation of the strategy altogether. In short, preemption is now a politicized, debased word. It is part of the anti-Bush lexicon and has lost any real meaning for the foreseeable future of its usage. The same may be true of "multilateralism" and "unilateralism... The Left's problem is not our embrace of the concept of "unilateralism" per se - or it would have attacked Clinton's U.N.-be-damned use of force in Iraq, Kosovo, and Haiti. No, the rub is something altogether different. A Christian, southern-accented, conservative Republican president, coming off a disputed election, has chosen to preempt. "
********************************
The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.
Three more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
That old Marxist fraud, Theodor Adorno, still gets lots of respect in Leftist cultural circles so Denis Dutton's review of Adorno's book about astrology is a welcome corrective: "Karl Popper's famous critique of pseudoscience lumps Freud, astrology, and Marxism together. The difficulty with these theories, Popper said, is not that they don't explain enough, but rather that they explain too much. There is no imaginable human event which they cannot seize upon and place neatly in their theoretical scheme; they are unfalsifiable by experience. Despite my deep sympathy with Adorno's contempt for the occult, there is something similar going on here. If Adorno doesn't like something, no matter how inane or innocuous, it isn't long before he begins to detect in it the seeds of fascism." An amusing story: Theodor's original surname was "Wiesengrund" -- after his father -- but he obviously disliked such an obviously Ashkenazi name and adopted his dancer mother's Spanish stagename as his surname. So, translated into English, he went from being Theodor Meadowland to being Theodor Ornament: About as nutty as his theories. Adorno still has his disciples in psychology too. I have just put up (here or here) one of my published articles demolishing one such disciple.
This article says that public language has become full of waffle and obscurity these days. It's true. But you will find all straight talk on this blog. Even in my academic journal articles I always tried my best to put things simply and plainly and other academics often used to say to me things along the lines of: "We mightn't agree with you but at least we understand what you are saying".
French antisemitism: "During demonstrations in May 2002 organized by France's mainstream antiracist organizations, protesters shouted anti-Semitic slogans and tried to attack a couple of passers-by whom they believed to be Jewish... Since then, the Chirac government has made the crackdown on anti-Semitism a top priority. It has taken a series of emergency steps, from tighter policing of Jewish sites to quicker investigation and prosecution of hate crimes to proposing a heightened focus on the Holocaust in the public school curriculum." It should be noted thyat the Chirac government is a conservative one in French terms and that it was the preceding socialist government that did nothing about antisemitism.
France being such a hotbed of antisemitism, I can see their point on this one: "French cinema chains are refusing to distribute or screen Mel Gibson's controversial film The Passion of the Christ because of fears that it may spark a new outbreak of anti-Semitism."
No freedom of religion on the Left coast: "A Roman Catholic charitable organization must include birth control coverage in its health care plan for workers even though it is morally opposed to contraception, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday."
A statistical fluke if ever there was one: "Research from the University of Chicago's Centre on Ageing shows that daughters born to fathers in their late 40s or older live, on average, three years less than other women, yet their brothers are not affected."
Sending call-centre jobs to India: "It is inevitable in a networked world that our economy is going to shed certain low-wage, low-prestige jobs. To the extent that they go to places like India or Pakistan -- where they are viewed as high-wage, high-prestige jobs -- we make not only a more prosperous world, but a safer world for our own 20-year-olds."
Homosexual "marriage": "How about government simply getting out of the marriage-license-granting business? (Ditto for government licenses necessary to cut hair, drive a taxi, open a business or enter a profession.) Leave marriage to non-governmental institutions, like churches, synagogues, mosques, and other houses of worship or private institutions. Adultery, although legal, remains a sin subject to societal condemnation. It's tough to legislate away condemnation or legislate in approval. Those who view same-sex marriage as sinful will continue to do so, no matter what the government, the courts or their neighbors say."
VD Hanson: "Preemption is a concept as old as the Greeks. It perhaps was first articulated in the fourth book of Thucydides's history... What is new is the absolutist, blanket condemnation of the strategy altogether. In short, preemption is now a politicized, debased word. It is part of the anti-Bush lexicon and has lost any real meaning for the foreseeable future of its usage. The same may be true of "multilateralism" and "unilateralism... The Left's problem is not our embrace of the concept of "unilateralism" per se - or it would have attacked Clinton's U.N.-be-damned use of force in Iraq, Kosovo, and Haiti. No, the rub is something altogether different. A Christian, southern-accented, conservative Republican president, coming off a disputed election, has chosen to preempt. "
********************************
The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.
Three more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Monday, March 01, 2004
GREENIE CORNER
The Greenies will love this one: "Prolonged exposure to low-level magnetic fields, similar to those emitted by such common household devices as blow dryers, electric blankets and razors , can damage brain cell DNA, according to researchers in the University of Washington's Department of Bioengineering. The scientists further found that the damage from brief exposures appears to build up over time." Is there anything that is NOT bad for us? Odd that people are living longer all the time, though.
Climate science or science fiction? "Proponents of policies to control human-induced global warming cite science as the basis for their claims and proposals. There is only one problem -- as much as they claim otherwise, there is no scientific consensus for their theories. Here's a quick refresher. Science pursues knowledge through testing, observation and the systematization of facts, principles and methods. Progress is made when a hypothesis is proposed to explain or understand certain phenomena, and which is then tested against reality. A particular hypothesis is considered superior to others when, through testing, it is shown to have more explanatory power than competing theories and when other scientists can reproduce the results. The theory humans are causing global warming does not work this way, however."
Science in the service of power: "I am not convinced, actually, that ecology is much of a science apart from offering some explanations of how the globe's living systems behave. But just as most of the natural sciences cannot give us any direction as to how we should conduct ourselves, what we should aim for in our lives, but only tell us about certain limits and possibilities, so with ecology. This is especially so when it comes to the constant finger-wagging environmentalists engage in with the supposed backing of ecologists."
It's just another Greenie hoax: "When a 'scandalous' story breaks in the United States, makes no waves, resurfaces a few weeks later in the left-wing British press, and only then do liberal activists start haranguing people about it, it is safe to say that the story should be treated with a little suspicion. That is certainly the case with the environmental cri du jour, that the Pentagon is alarmed by the national-security aspects of global warming and recommends immediate action."
****************************************
The Greenies will love this one: "Prolonged exposure to low-level magnetic fields, similar to those emitted by such common household devices as blow dryers, electric blankets and razors , can damage brain cell DNA, according to researchers in the University of Washington's Department of Bioengineering. The scientists further found that the damage from brief exposures appears to build up over time." Is there anything that is NOT bad for us? Odd that people are living longer all the time, though.
Climate science or science fiction? "Proponents of policies to control human-induced global warming cite science as the basis for their claims and proposals. There is only one problem -- as much as they claim otherwise, there is no scientific consensus for their theories. Here's a quick refresher. Science pursues knowledge through testing, observation and the systematization of facts, principles and methods. Progress is made when a hypothesis is proposed to explain or understand certain phenomena, and which is then tested against reality. A particular hypothesis is considered superior to others when, through testing, it is shown to have more explanatory power than competing theories and when other scientists can reproduce the results. The theory humans are causing global warming does not work this way, however."
Science in the service of power: "I am not convinced, actually, that ecology is much of a science apart from offering some explanations of how the globe's living systems behave. But just as most of the natural sciences cannot give us any direction as to how we should conduct ourselves, what we should aim for in our lives, but only tell us about certain limits and possibilities, so with ecology. This is especially so when it comes to the constant finger-wagging environmentalists engage in with the supposed backing of ecologists."
It's just another Greenie hoax: "When a 'scandalous' story breaks in the United States, makes no waves, resurfaces a few weeks later in the left-wing British press, and only then do liberal activists start haranguing people about it, it is safe to say that the story should be treated with a little suspicion. That is certainly the case with the environmental cri du jour, that the Pentagon is alarmed by the national-security aspects of global warming and recommends immediate action."
****************************************
ELSEWHERE
Christopher Nelson says that he too is an academic and he therefore knows why Keith Burgess-Jackson criticizes Andrew Sullivan a lot: Keith is envious of Sullivan's big readership. I think that shows that Nelson is a very young academic indeed. Academics traditionally care little about getting a wide public audience. It is their fellow academics they want to address. They want a high-level audience, not a mass audience. We academics are probably incapable of addressing a mass audience effectively anway. You have to be a politician or a film-maker for that. And among academics I would warrant that Keith already has a much bigger audience than Sullivan -- simply because Keith writes at a consistently academic standard. I myself have never found Sullivan very original and so never now read his blog unless someone points me to something on it but Keith is obviously optimistic enough to think he can talk sense into Sullivan where he needs it. The readership of this blog is small too when compared with Sullivan's readership but I know from the many emails I get that it is a thinking and intelligent audience and that certainly suits me.
Keith has a good comment on Leftist objections to THAT film: "And isn't it odd to see liberals, who usually defend the most obnoxious speech and art, come down so hard on a film?"
One of the great triumphs of the Australian Left has been to convict white Australians of the "stolen generation" crime -- the alleged forcible removal of 100,000 black children from their families so they could be brought up by white foster-parents instead. There has even been a film made about the subject -- Rabbit-proof fence -- which claims to be a documentary. The whole story is however just another Leftist lie -- as Andrew Bolt sets out at length here. The slender basis of fact that the story relies on is that some 1930s official do-gooders -- predecessors of the modern LEFT -- did place a few mixed-race children in white foster homes to give them a better chance in life -- but the placement was always made with written parental consent. There was NO forced removal. Nobody and nothing was "stolen". And that's not just Andrew Bolt's opinion. It is the finding of a year-long $10 million Australian court case about the claim. Officialdom acted only when the parents either did not want the children or felt that they could not care for them adequately.
Keith Windschuttle is again upsetting the Leftists and their view of Australian blacks: "Remote Aboriginal communities are a "failure" and their inhabitants should be moved to mainstream towns for their own good, historian Keith Windschuttle has claimed. Windschuttle told a conference in Perth yesterday the indigenous communities were the legacy of a 100-year-old policy of segregation that was continuing to fail Aboriginal people. He said Aborigines would be better off in urban centres where they could have access to jobs and social services. "On every measure of human wellbeing - employment, health and education - remote communities are a failure," he said". As Windschuttle also points out at length here, the do-gooders have always wanted to keep Australia's indigenous blacks in a sort of permanent anthropological zoo rather than treating them as real people.
RALPH NADER INC: "U.S. traffic fatalities per 100 million miles traveled had fallen rapidly throughout the century, from 24 in 1921 to 5.3 in 1965". All without Ralph Nader's help -- despite what his supporters claim. See also here: Ralph's ties with anti-import textile magnates and plaintiff lawyers, ...the best-paid lawyers in America..., undermine his claim to champion the 'little guy'
What "liberalism" has wrought: "In the wake of a fatal shooting, the security for a D.C. high school was officially turned over to the city's police department last week. Armed officers will patrol the halls. This is one more indication of the severe problems haunting the public school system: violence, illegal drugs, the mandating of medication such as Ritalin, low academic achievement, controversial curricula, perceived prejudice against boys."
"Cato the Elder" links to an article by Ion Mihai Pacepa (former Soviet bloc spymaster) saying that the absurd accusations made by John Kerry about the U.S. army in Vietnam look like being lifted directly from KGB propaganda of the time.
David's Medienkritik has excellent excerpts from two speeches by former V.P. Spiro Agnew showing that Leftist bias in the media was already pervasive in the 1960s.
********************************
The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.
Three more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Christopher Nelson says that he too is an academic and he therefore knows why Keith Burgess-Jackson criticizes Andrew Sullivan a lot: Keith is envious of Sullivan's big readership. I think that shows that Nelson is a very young academic indeed. Academics traditionally care little about getting a wide public audience. It is their fellow academics they want to address. They want a high-level audience, not a mass audience. We academics are probably incapable of addressing a mass audience effectively anway. You have to be a politician or a film-maker for that. And among academics I would warrant that Keith already has a much bigger audience than Sullivan -- simply because Keith writes at a consistently academic standard. I myself have never found Sullivan very original and so never now read his blog unless someone points me to something on it but Keith is obviously optimistic enough to think he can talk sense into Sullivan where he needs it. The readership of this blog is small too when compared with Sullivan's readership but I know from the many emails I get that it is a thinking and intelligent audience and that certainly suits me.
Keith has a good comment on Leftist objections to THAT film: "And isn't it odd to see liberals, who usually defend the most obnoxious speech and art, come down so hard on a film?"
One of the great triumphs of the Australian Left has been to convict white Australians of the "stolen generation" crime -- the alleged forcible removal of 100,000 black children from their families so they could be brought up by white foster-parents instead. There has even been a film made about the subject -- Rabbit-proof fence -- which claims to be a documentary. The whole story is however just another Leftist lie -- as Andrew Bolt sets out at length here. The slender basis of fact that the story relies on is that some 1930s official do-gooders -- predecessors of the modern LEFT -- did place a few mixed-race children in white foster homes to give them a better chance in life -- but the placement was always made with written parental consent. There was NO forced removal. Nobody and nothing was "stolen". And that's not just Andrew Bolt's opinion. It is the finding of a year-long $10 million Australian court case about the claim. Officialdom acted only when the parents either did not want the children or felt that they could not care for them adequately.
Keith Windschuttle is again upsetting the Leftists and their view of Australian blacks: "Remote Aboriginal communities are a "failure" and their inhabitants should be moved to mainstream towns for their own good, historian Keith Windschuttle has claimed. Windschuttle told a conference in Perth yesterday the indigenous communities were the legacy of a 100-year-old policy of segregation that was continuing to fail Aboriginal people. He said Aborigines would be better off in urban centres where they could have access to jobs and social services. "On every measure of human wellbeing - employment, health and education - remote communities are a failure," he said". As Windschuttle also points out at length here, the do-gooders have always wanted to keep Australia's indigenous blacks in a sort of permanent anthropological zoo rather than treating them as real people.
RALPH NADER INC: "U.S. traffic fatalities per 100 million miles traveled had fallen rapidly throughout the century, from 24 in 1921 to 5.3 in 1965". All without Ralph Nader's help -- despite what his supporters claim. See also here: Ralph's ties with anti-import textile magnates and plaintiff lawyers, ...the best-paid lawyers in America..., undermine his claim to champion the 'little guy'
What "liberalism" has wrought: "In the wake of a fatal shooting, the security for a D.C. high school was officially turned over to the city's police department last week. Armed officers will patrol the halls. This is one more indication of the severe problems haunting the public school system: violence, illegal drugs, the mandating of medication such as Ritalin, low academic achievement, controversial curricula, perceived prejudice against boys."
"Cato the Elder" links to an article by Ion Mihai Pacepa (former Soviet bloc spymaster) saying that the absurd accusations made by John Kerry about the U.S. army in Vietnam look like being lifted directly from KGB propaganda of the time.
David's Medienkritik has excellent excerpts from two speeches by former V.P. Spiro Agnew showing that Leftist bias in the media was already pervasive in the 1960s.
********************************
The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.
Three more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Sunday, February 29, 2004
HUNTINGTON
Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilisations" has still got the Left on the hop: "In our time, few formulations have sparked more controversy than Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilizations" thesis. In the Harvard political scientist's view, laid out in a 1993 Foreign Affairs essay and expanded into a book three years later, the conflicts of the post-Cold War era will arise not from ideological or economic differences but from cultural divisions. To his admirers, Huntington is a prophet who foresaw the current confrontation with radical Islam... Last weekend, prominent thinkers gathered at a Skidmore College conference ... Participating was a virtual Who's Who of left-liberal academics and public intellectuals ... the panelists were nearly unanimous in their outright rejection of a "clash of civilizations....More than a reconsideration of Huntington, the event doubled as a high-powered bull session on the preoccupations of contemporary liberalism: What are America's obligations to the world? Can there be such a thing as a just war? How is democracy best promoted abroad? How can the secular be reconciled to the sacred? How do universal rights mesh with indigenous traditions?"
Huntington on Mexican immigration to the US and the rise of Spanglish: "Continuation of this large immigration (without improved assimilation) could divide the United States into a country of two languages and two cultures. A few stable, prosperous democracies-such as Canada and Belgium-fit this pattern... The transformation of the United States into a country like these would not necessarily be the end of the world; it would, however, be the end of the America we have known for more than three centuries. Americans should not let that change happen unless they are convinced that this new nation would be a better one. Such a transformation would not only revolutionize the United States, but it would also have serious consequences for Hispanics, who will be in the United States but not of it. Sosa ends his book, The Americano Dream, with encouragement for aspiring Hispanic entrepreneurs. "The Americano dream?" he asks. "It exists, it is realistic, and it is there for all of us to share." Sosa is wrong. There is no Americano dream. There is only the American dream created by an Anglo-Protestant society. Mexican Americans will share in that dream and in that society only if they dream in English. "
Conservative columnist David Brooks argues against Huntington here. Brooks says that Latinos ARE integrating over time. It seems that a retreat from political correctness on this issue is allowing serious immigration debate to occur without a barrage of ad hominem attacks.
I myself think that Huntington is courageously accurate in his stress on the key role in America of Anglo-Protestant culture. Britain today comprises roughly one percent of the earth's population and I doubt that the proportion has varied much in the last few hundred years. Yet the influence of that one percent on practically everything has been immense. To take just one example that is almost never mentioned: Sport. Sport is a major human activity, yet the three sports that the whole world plays were all invented in Britain: Soccer, Golf and Tennis. And boxing is as far as I know still mostly done according to British (Queensbury) rules too. And there is the little matter of cricket. It's not played by all the world but a sport with around a billion followers (mostly in the Indian sub-continent) sure dwarfs most other "local" sports. And the vast British influence on sport is despite the fact that the British themselves are appalling at sports! A sporting win by a British person or team is a rare event.
*********************************
Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilisations" has still got the Left on the hop: "In our time, few formulations have sparked more controversy than Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilizations" thesis. In the Harvard political scientist's view, laid out in a 1993 Foreign Affairs essay and expanded into a book three years later, the conflicts of the post-Cold War era will arise not from ideological or economic differences but from cultural divisions. To his admirers, Huntington is a prophet who foresaw the current confrontation with radical Islam... Last weekend, prominent thinkers gathered at a Skidmore College conference ... Participating was a virtual Who's Who of left-liberal academics and public intellectuals ... the panelists were nearly unanimous in their outright rejection of a "clash of civilizations....More than a reconsideration of Huntington, the event doubled as a high-powered bull session on the preoccupations of contemporary liberalism: What are America's obligations to the world? Can there be such a thing as a just war? How is democracy best promoted abroad? How can the secular be reconciled to the sacred? How do universal rights mesh with indigenous traditions?"
Huntington on Mexican immigration to the US and the rise of Spanglish: "Continuation of this large immigration (without improved assimilation) could divide the United States into a country of two languages and two cultures. A few stable, prosperous democracies-such as Canada and Belgium-fit this pattern... The transformation of the United States into a country like these would not necessarily be the end of the world; it would, however, be the end of the America we have known for more than three centuries. Americans should not let that change happen unless they are convinced that this new nation would be a better one. Such a transformation would not only revolutionize the United States, but it would also have serious consequences for Hispanics, who will be in the United States but not of it. Sosa ends his book, The Americano Dream, with encouragement for aspiring Hispanic entrepreneurs. "The Americano dream?" he asks. "It exists, it is realistic, and it is there for all of us to share." Sosa is wrong. There is no Americano dream. There is only the American dream created by an Anglo-Protestant society. Mexican Americans will share in that dream and in that society only if they dream in English. "
Conservative columnist David Brooks argues against Huntington here. Brooks says that Latinos ARE integrating over time. It seems that a retreat from political correctness on this issue is allowing serious immigration debate to occur without a barrage of ad hominem attacks.
I myself think that Huntington is courageously accurate in his stress on the key role in America of Anglo-Protestant culture. Britain today comprises roughly one percent of the earth's population and I doubt that the proportion has varied much in the last few hundred years. Yet the influence of that one percent on practically everything has been immense. To take just one example that is almost never mentioned: Sport. Sport is a major human activity, yet the three sports that the whole world plays were all invented in Britain: Soccer, Golf and Tennis. And boxing is as far as I know still mostly done according to British (Queensbury) rules too. And there is the little matter of cricket. It's not played by all the world but a sport with around a billion followers (mostly in the Indian sub-continent) sure dwarfs most other "local" sports. And the vast British influence on sport is despite the fact that the British themselves are appalling at sports! A sporting win by a British person or team is a rare event.
*********************************
ELSEWHERE
Another interesting commonality between the Marxists and the Nazis: They both rejected objective reasoning in favour of the claim that an argument was right or wrong because of who it was that put the argument forward. Marxists rejected logical arguments that did not suit them because they were "bourgeois" and Nazis rejected arguments that did not suit them because they were "Jewish". For centuries the argument that the utterer influences the truth of an argument has been known among logicians as the ad hominem fallacy. The fallacious nature of such arguments is obvious to most people in examples such as the following: "Hitler loved dogs and Hitler was evil so loving dogs must be evil" but Marxists seriously believe such propositions. Another example of Leftist irrationality.
The book Conspicuous Compassion by Patrick West has attracted a lot of attention -- as well it might. It focuses attention on all the bogus compassion that infests our society. Since "compassion" is the false flag under which Leftists customarily sail, the book may make a few people look more critically at Leftist claims.
Have a look at the neo-Soviet system taxpayers are supporting at San Francisco State University.
Some interesting Haitian proverbs: "The constitution is paper, bayonets are steel." "The goat which has many owners will be left to die in the sun"
Economic ignoramus Greg Easterbrook is complaining that goods are too cheap. He thinks that making them dearer will help the poor. England's Sword puts him to rights.
What If accuses the Democrats of "schizophrenia" about prosperity. That's not a clinical diagnosis but it does capture their addled thinking.
I have just posted here some observations from Chris Brand about the publicity-hungry Naomi Wolf and about a split in the British Left over immigration control.
The anti-Semitism of the intellectuals: "It used to be said that anti-Catholicism was the anti-Semitism of the intellectuals. Today, anti-Semitism is the anti-Semitism of the intellectuals. ... Here the term intellectual is used loosely, to denote not only people who think about ideas -- about thinking -- but also people who think they do. The term anti-Semitism is used precisely, to denote people who dislike Jews. These people include those who say: We do not dislike Jews, we only dislike Zionists -- although to live in Israel is to endorse the Zionist enterprise, and all Jews are implicated, as sympathizers, in the crime that is Israel."
Some of the recent articles now up on the think-israel.org website:
"THE AGENDA OF ISLAM - A WAR BETWEEN CIVILIZATIONS" by Professor Moshe Sharon
"THE ROOT CAUSE" by Boris Celser
"ISRAEL'S SECURITY: The Hard-Learned Lessons" by Yaakov Amidror
"WHY WE SUPPORT ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS" by Daniel Kaganovich and Michael Butler
"WHAT WOULD AMERICA DO?" by Beth Goodtree
"VIOLENCE AND LEFT-WING POLITICS: What's Going On At UCLA'S Hillel?" by Sharon Hes
"IS IT ANTISEMITIC TO CRITICIZE ISRAEL? IS ISRAEL AN APARTHEID STATE? Part 1." by Jared Israel
"ALL THE NEWS THAT'S FIT TO PRINT? The New York Times and Israel" by Tom Gross
"FORD FUNDS THE PALESTINIAN LEFT" by Lee Kaplan
"FORD HAS A BETTER IDEA: One Nation Under Allah" by Alyssa A. Lappen
********************************
The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.
Two more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Another interesting commonality between the Marxists and the Nazis: They both rejected objective reasoning in favour of the claim that an argument was right or wrong because of who it was that put the argument forward. Marxists rejected logical arguments that did not suit them because they were "bourgeois" and Nazis rejected arguments that did not suit them because they were "Jewish". For centuries the argument that the utterer influences the truth of an argument has been known among logicians as the ad hominem fallacy. The fallacious nature of such arguments is obvious to most people in examples such as the following: "Hitler loved dogs and Hitler was evil so loving dogs must be evil" but Marxists seriously believe such propositions. Another example of Leftist irrationality.
The book Conspicuous Compassion by Patrick West has attracted a lot of attention -- as well it might. It focuses attention on all the bogus compassion that infests our society. Since "compassion" is the false flag under which Leftists customarily sail, the book may make a few people look more critically at Leftist claims.
Have a look at the neo-Soviet system taxpayers are supporting at San Francisco State University.
Some interesting Haitian proverbs: "The constitution is paper, bayonets are steel." "The goat which has many owners will be left to die in the sun"
Economic ignoramus Greg Easterbrook is complaining that goods are too cheap. He thinks that making them dearer will help the poor. England's Sword puts him to rights.
What If accuses the Democrats of "schizophrenia" about prosperity. That's not a clinical diagnosis but it does capture their addled thinking.
I have just posted here some observations from Chris Brand about the publicity-hungry Naomi Wolf and about a split in the British Left over immigration control.
The anti-Semitism of the intellectuals: "It used to be said that anti-Catholicism was the anti-Semitism of the intellectuals. Today, anti-Semitism is the anti-Semitism of the intellectuals. ... Here the term intellectual is used loosely, to denote not only people who think about ideas -- about thinking -- but also people who think they do. The term anti-Semitism is used precisely, to denote people who dislike Jews. These people include those who say: We do not dislike Jews, we only dislike Zionists -- although to live in Israel is to endorse the Zionist enterprise, and all Jews are implicated, as sympathizers, in the crime that is Israel."
Some of the recent articles now up on the think-israel.org website:
"THE AGENDA OF ISLAM - A WAR BETWEEN CIVILIZATIONS" by Professor Moshe Sharon
"THE ROOT CAUSE" by Boris Celser
"ISRAEL'S SECURITY: The Hard-Learned Lessons" by Yaakov Amidror
"WHY WE SUPPORT ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS" by Daniel Kaganovich and Michael Butler
"WHAT WOULD AMERICA DO?" by Beth Goodtree
"VIOLENCE AND LEFT-WING POLITICS: What's Going On At UCLA'S Hillel?" by Sharon Hes
"IS IT ANTISEMITIC TO CRITICIZE ISRAEL? IS ISRAEL AN APARTHEID STATE? Part 1." by Jared Israel
"ALL THE NEWS THAT'S FIT TO PRINT? The New York Times and Israel" by Tom Gross
"FORD FUNDS THE PALESTINIAN LEFT" by Lee Kaplan
"FORD HAS A BETTER IDEA: One Nation Under Allah" by Alyssa A. Lappen
********************************
The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.
Two more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Saturday, February 28, 2004
FROM BROOKES NEWS
The recession started under Clinton, not Bush No matter what the Democrats and their media stooges claim, the recession began under Clinton and not Bush - and this article proves it.
The Dems' pet scientists lie about Bush Democrats who are scientists have now joined the Party's smear campaign against Bush by falsely accusing him of attacking science.
A Murdoch reporter joins the Democrats against Bush One of Rupert Murdoch's Bush-hating journalists tries to stick it to Bush on behalf of Kerry and Cleland.
Murderous ban on DDT defended by scientists Scientists who defended the ban on DDT that killed millions get hauled over the coals.
How London's red mayor is driving the poor off the city's roads The higher the tax the more the better off will benefit by having more road space for their driving. Think of it this way: the better off pay a tax which is used as a device to coerce the less well off out of their cars.
A Murdoch reporter reveals his loathing for Bush and Israel In order to show how bad some reporters are, one must occasionally return to the scene, so to speak, of some of their previous crimes. This is certainly the case with Roy Eccleston.
Iraq & President Bush: On behalf of the dead A Brazilian author and philosopher takes to task critics of President Bush who refuse to admit the enormous good he did by overthrowing Saddam.
Details here
*************************************
The recession started under Clinton, not Bush No matter what the Democrats and their media stooges claim, the recession began under Clinton and not Bush - and this article proves it.
The Dems' pet scientists lie about Bush Democrats who are scientists have now joined the Party's smear campaign against Bush by falsely accusing him of attacking science.
A Murdoch reporter joins the Democrats against Bush One of Rupert Murdoch's Bush-hating journalists tries to stick it to Bush on behalf of Kerry and Cleland.
Murderous ban on DDT defended by scientists Scientists who defended the ban on DDT that killed millions get hauled over the coals.
How London's red mayor is driving the poor off the city's roads The higher the tax the more the better off will benefit by having more road space for their driving. Think of it this way: the better off pay a tax which is used as a device to coerce the less well off out of their cars.
A Murdoch reporter reveals his loathing for Bush and Israel In order to show how bad some reporters are, one must occasionally return to the scene, so to speak, of some of their previous crimes. This is certainly the case with Roy Eccleston.
Iraq & President Bush: On behalf of the dead A Brazilian author and philosopher takes to task critics of President Bush who refuse to admit the enormous good he did by overthrowing Saddam.
Details here
*************************************
ELSEWHERE
A broad-ranging article by the editor of The Lancet (Britain's premier medical journal) argues that scientists these days are far from impartial -- that the conclusions they draw depend very much on what is personally gainful for them: "Opinions are rented out to the highest bidder". My only disagreeement with him is over his apparent view that it could be different. Scientists are people and I have been pointing out for decades that self-interested garbage is common in the academic journals of my own field. The sooner everybody realizes that the better. The only defence against scientific deception and misrepresentation has always been replication -- seeing if other researchers (preferably those with different viewpoints) get the same results. And any conclusions that are the subject of widespread disageement among scientists -- such as the "global warming" theory -- should be disregarded until it is totally clear what the data shows.
Our nice "tolerant" Hollywood "liberals" are out to get Mel Gibson over THAT film. "You won't ever work again in this town, buddy" seems to be the message. But I guess, like Liberace, Gibson is crying all the way to the bank.
Fidel Castro opposes even necessary use of mirrors because they are 'bourgeois'. That sure would upset the Hollywood types who think he is a hero!
Britain's biggest labor union -- its union for government employees -- is sponsoring a "Unite against Fascism" movement which calls for "zero tolerance against the "politics of hate" peddled by the British National Party". The BNP is an anti-immigration party that has recently had some electoral success in working-class areas of Britain and our good Leftist unionists obviously want to shut them up. A feisty comment from a British reader: "It is probably significant that "Unite Against Fascism" makes not the slightest attempt to specify quite what it means by fascism and racism. My experience of would-be-progressive groups is that they routinely use those words as sloppy slandering stereotypes against anyone who challenges their own narrow dogmas. Yet if racism is defined as discrimination by skin colour, and fascism is defined as oppressing and suppressing of alternative viewpoints, then these "antiracists"/"antifascists" are as racist/fascist as anyone. What could be more fascist than a union which expels people merely for opposing some highly controversial political policies? The BNP will continue to grow and grow because their opponents, however well-meaning, will continue to rely on cheap name-calling, authoritarian bullying, self-deluded bias, untruthfulness, censorship and hypocrisy. One does have to wonder whether that's because they haven't actually got anything more substantial to offer"
Shouldn't feminists be outraged by this?. A reader emailed me: "Did you see the new US Government construction standards? All new construction requires 2 women's toilets to one for men. They cite "anatomical differences" - so much for "equality"".
Wow! The Salvation Army is a religious organization. Scandal! "Current and former Salvation Army employees sued the organization ... alleging the government-funded group preached religious and sexual intolerance to its staff. ... The charitable organization required employees to pledge to preach the Gospel, to identify their church affiliation and to authorize their religious leaders to reveal private information to the Salvation Army, according to the lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union's New York chapter."
An overview of the scandal of so-called recovered memory syndrome and its associated witch hunts. "Attention to the chimerical task of divining a patient's early traumas is attention subtracted from sensible help in the here and now. The reason why psychotherapists ought to familiarize themselves with actual knowledge about the workings of memory, and why their professional societies should stop waffling and promulgating misinformation about it, is not that good science guarantees good therapy; it is simply that pseudoscience inevitably leads to harm." Unfortunately the authors have failed to explore the obvious connection between this abuse and the emergence on the left of a desire to transform the welfare state into a therapeutic state ...ever in search of new classes of "victims" to "empower". This new political culture provided fertile ground for this abuse to take root. (See Paul Gottfried, Thomas Szasz and "Spiked" on the therapeutic state )
The reality "Government for the people, by the people? What a load of crap. How about government by the government for the benefit of the government. And it's all paid for by the people. We pay through the nose to be persecuted by people we are supposed to trust.
No presumption of innocence under feminist-influenced law: "[W]hen the government accuses you of fathering a child, no matter how flimsy the evidence, you are one month away from having your life wrecked. Federal law gives a man just 30 days to file a written challenge; if he doesn't, he is presumed guilty. And once that steamroller of justice starts rolling, dozens of statutory lubricants help make it extremely difficult, and prohibitively expensive, to stop -- even, in most cases, if there's conclusive DNA proof that the man is not the child's father."
********************************
The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.
Two more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
A broad-ranging article by the editor of The Lancet (Britain's premier medical journal) argues that scientists these days are far from impartial -- that the conclusions they draw depend very much on what is personally gainful for them: "Opinions are rented out to the highest bidder". My only disagreeement with him is over his apparent view that it could be different. Scientists are people and I have been pointing out for decades that self-interested garbage is common in the academic journals of my own field. The sooner everybody realizes that the better. The only defence against scientific deception and misrepresentation has always been replication -- seeing if other researchers (preferably those with different viewpoints) get the same results. And any conclusions that are the subject of widespread disageement among scientists -- such as the "global warming" theory -- should be disregarded until it is totally clear what the data shows.
Our nice "tolerant" Hollywood "liberals" are out to get Mel Gibson over THAT film. "You won't ever work again in this town, buddy" seems to be the message. But I guess, like Liberace, Gibson is crying all the way to the bank.
Fidel Castro opposes even necessary use of mirrors because they are 'bourgeois'. That sure would upset the Hollywood types who think he is a hero!
Britain's biggest labor union -- its union for government employees -- is sponsoring a "Unite against Fascism" movement which calls for "zero tolerance against the "politics of hate" peddled by the British National Party". The BNP is an anti-immigration party that has recently had some electoral success in working-class areas of Britain and our good Leftist unionists obviously want to shut them up. A feisty comment from a British reader: "It is probably significant that "Unite Against Fascism" makes not the slightest attempt to specify quite what it means by fascism and racism. My experience of would-be-progressive groups is that they routinely use those words as sloppy slandering stereotypes against anyone who challenges their own narrow dogmas. Yet if racism is defined as discrimination by skin colour, and fascism is defined as oppressing and suppressing of alternative viewpoints, then these "antiracists"/"antifascists" are as racist/fascist as anyone. What could be more fascist than a union which expels people merely for opposing some highly controversial political policies? The BNP will continue to grow and grow because their opponents, however well-meaning, will continue to rely on cheap name-calling, authoritarian bullying, self-deluded bias, untruthfulness, censorship and hypocrisy. One does have to wonder whether that's because they haven't actually got anything more substantial to offer"
Shouldn't feminists be outraged by this?. A reader emailed me: "Did you see the new US Government construction standards? All new construction requires 2 women's toilets to one for men. They cite "anatomical differences" - so much for "equality"".
Wow! The Salvation Army is a religious organization. Scandal! "Current and former Salvation Army employees sued the organization ... alleging the government-funded group preached religious and sexual intolerance to its staff. ... The charitable organization required employees to pledge to preach the Gospel, to identify their church affiliation and to authorize their religious leaders to reveal private information to the Salvation Army, according to the lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union's New York chapter."
An overview of the scandal of so-called recovered memory syndrome and its associated witch hunts. "Attention to the chimerical task of divining a patient's early traumas is attention subtracted from sensible help in the here and now. The reason why psychotherapists ought to familiarize themselves with actual knowledge about the workings of memory, and why their professional societies should stop waffling and promulgating misinformation about it, is not that good science guarantees good therapy; it is simply that pseudoscience inevitably leads to harm." Unfortunately the authors have failed to explore the obvious connection between this abuse and the emergence on the left of a desire to transform the welfare state into a therapeutic state ...ever in search of new classes of "victims" to "empower". This new political culture provided fertile ground for this abuse to take root. (See Paul Gottfried, Thomas Szasz and "Spiked" on the therapeutic state )
The reality "Government for the people, by the people? What a load of crap. How about government by the government for the benefit of the government. And it's all paid for by the people. We pay through the nose to be persecuted by people we are supposed to trust.
No presumption of innocence under feminist-influenced law: "[W]hen the government accuses you of fathering a child, no matter how flimsy the evidence, you are one month away from having your life wrecked. Federal law gives a man just 30 days to file a written challenge; if he doesn't, he is presumed guilty. And once that steamroller of justice starts rolling, dozens of statutory lubricants help make it extremely difficult, and prohibitively expensive, to stop -- even, in most cases, if there's conclusive DNA proof that the man is not the child's father."
********************************
The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.
Two more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Friday, February 27, 2004
FOR FREE TRADE
The WSJ really demolishes Senators Kerry and Edwards over their opposition to free trade. The opening salvo: "Trade is a "moral issue," declares Senator John Edwards. The Democratic Presidential candidate is in high dudgeon that "bad trade agreements," by which he means those signed by Bill Clinton, are stealing jobs away from American workers. It should be no surprise by now that his main competitor, Senator John Kerry, has responded by saying, "Me too." Just as Mr. Kerry parroted the rhetoric of Howard Dean on Iraq, the man who voted for NAFTA now claims there is no difference between him and Mr. Edwards on trade."
The real morality involved: "Protectionism is a violation of natural rights because it is a use of governmental coercion to prevent people from peacefully pursuing their own interests in enhancing their lives, exercising their just liberties, and making use of their legitimately-owned property. It is a coerced transfer of income from consumers and foreign businesses to a small, politically active cabal of domestic businesses. It raises the prices consumers must pay for their goods and gives them nothing in return, thereby reducing their standard of living. Even worse, the lack of competition always results in lower quality products as well. By reducing the incomes of our trading partners -- leaving them with less income with which to buy American-made goods -- protectionism harms American exporters as well. Protectionism is legal plunder."
Fruitcake Dobbs: "as long as Lou Dobbs is still kicking at CNN, we'll continue to hear nightly nativist tirades against the loss of manufacturing jobs, the off-shoring of tech jobs, immigration, and general alarmism about the 'outsourcing of America.' The truth, of course, is a bit more complicated than the simplistic picture painted by protectionists."
An extreme example of 'outsourcing' shows that we have nothing to fear from it.
Friedman of the NYT has it right about the desirability of globalization, free trade and "exporting jobs": "I've been in India for only a few days and I am already thinking about reincarnation. In my next life, I want to be a demagogue. Yes, I want to be able to huff and puff about complex issues - like outsourcing of jobs to India - without any reference to reality..... although the U.S. has lost some service jobs to India, total exports from U.S. companies to India have grown from $2.5 billion in 1990 to $4.1 billion in 2002. What goes around comes around, and also benefits Americans".
***************************************
The WSJ really demolishes Senators Kerry and Edwards over their opposition to free trade. The opening salvo: "Trade is a "moral issue," declares Senator John Edwards. The Democratic Presidential candidate is in high dudgeon that "bad trade agreements," by which he means those signed by Bill Clinton, are stealing jobs away from American workers. It should be no surprise by now that his main competitor, Senator John Kerry, has responded by saying, "Me too." Just as Mr. Kerry parroted the rhetoric of Howard Dean on Iraq, the man who voted for NAFTA now claims there is no difference between him and Mr. Edwards on trade."
The real morality involved: "Protectionism is a violation of natural rights because it is a use of governmental coercion to prevent people from peacefully pursuing their own interests in enhancing their lives, exercising their just liberties, and making use of their legitimately-owned property. It is a coerced transfer of income from consumers and foreign businesses to a small, politically active cabal of domestic businesses. It raises the prices consumers must pay for their goods and gives them nothing in return, thereby reducing their standard of living. Even worse, the lack of competition always results in lower quality products as well. By reducing the incomes of our trading partners -- leaving them with less income with which to buy American-made goods -- protectionism harms American exporters as well. Protectionism is legal plunder."
Fruitcake Dobbs: "as long as Lou Dobbs is still kicking at CNN, we'll continue to hear nightly nativist tirades against the loss of manufacturing jobs, the off-shoring of tech jobs, immigration, and general alarmism about the 'outsourcing of America.' The truth, of course, is a bit more complicated than the simplistic picture painted by protectionists."
An extreme example of 'outsourcing' shows that we have nothing to fear from it.
Friedman of the NYT has it right about the desirability of globalization, free trade and "exporting jobs": "I've been in India for only a few days and I am already thinking about reincarnation. In my next life, I want to be a demagogue. Yes, I want to be able to huff and puff about complex issues - like outsourcing of jobs to India - without any reference to reality..... although the U.S. has lost some service jobs to India, total exports from U.S. companies to India have grown from $2.5 billion in 1990 to $4.1 billion in 2002. What goes around comes around, and also benefits Americans".
***************************************
ELSEWHERE
"Culturally enlightened French writers show simplistic Americans what justice is all about" They just LOVED 9/11. Ever since my first encounter with French literature in my teens (over 40 years ago) I have always thought French culture was endemically corrupt and devoid of any morality. A superficial cleverness is about all they rise to -- Camille Saint-Saens excepted, of course.
Wow! David's Medienkritik has hit the jackpot. He noted that much was being made of the fact that the suicide rate of U.S. soldiers in Iraq is 13.5 per 100,000. So he looked up the suicide rates in the German and French armies nestling cosily away in their home countries: 17.00 and 19.25!
Comment from a reader on THAT movie: "A lot of the fuss about THE PASSION actually comes from the "liberal" end of the Christian spectrum. Whatever the faults of the movie (and all movies have faults), I suspect even "liberal" Christians would agree that Gibson's movie is closer to the Gospel tradition (however interpreted) than JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR, GODSPEL, LIFE OF BRIAN or THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST (where he has sex with Barbara Hershey), the last big Hollywood Jesus movie. Gibson is being judged by a much tougher critical standard than that applied to his Jesus movie peers. I can sympathise with critics who focus on the blood and gore portrayed, but this aspect was almost entirely absent from all previous Jesus Christ movies like THE ROBE. Considering the subject matter, this absence has probably been a major flaw of the movies to date. Modern audiences, who demand gritty realism from movies like SAVING PRIVATE RYAN would probably find the classic movie portraits of Christ's death boring and uninteresting. Gibson deserves credit for putting his money where his mouth is, and letting his audience know how confronting the Gospel and the Christian message really is. Like it or not, the Christian message is not saccharine syrup. And you don't have to like it".
Britain copies GWB: "Tens of thousands of Polish, Czech and other eastern Europeans who have been working and living illicitly in Britain, some for many years, are to be given an amnesty in all but name from May 1, the Home Office revealed yesterday. The immigration minister, Beverley Hughes, said that if they ''turn legit' under the new migrant workers' registration scheme, they will not face any retribution. 'They have a right to be here and there is no need for them to carry on working illegally,' she said. The generous attempt to provide tens of thousands of illegal migrants with a route out of Britain's 'hidden economy' comes as new official figures backed up ministers' claims to have drawn the sting out of the asylum crisis."
Illegal aliens are imposing an additional cost amounting to $900 per American child (i.e. child of American-born parents) in the public school system.
Appalling Texas "justice": "Citing misconduct by Texas prosecutors, the Supreme Court Tuesday threw out the sentence of Delma Banks Jr., one of the country's longest-serving death row inmates whose execution was halted last year with minutes to spare. The high court, ruling 7-2, said Bowie County prosecutors allowed two key witnesses to lie to the jury at Banks' 1980 murder trial. They also illegally withheld from defense lawyers the fact that one witness was a paid police informant and the other a two-time felon who cut a deal to testify in exchange for prosecutors dropping an arson charge against him."
"A German drag queen has been given an honorary professorship from the University of Hamburg's faculty for Gender Studies to teach Queer Theory. Oliver Knoebel, better known in Germany as drag queen Olivia Jones, has said he feels honoured to have received the title of professor. ... Queer Theory is primarily concerned with how gender and sexuality bridges social gaps. The subject has developed out of feminist and gay-lesbian research and is mainly taught in the USA."
If he had been studying Queer theory, feminism or environmentalism that would have been fine: "The Supreme Court, in a new rendering on separation of church and state, voted Wednesday to let states withhold scholarships from students studying theology. The court's 7-2 ruling held that the state of Washington was within its rights to deny a taxpayer-funded scholarship to a college student who was studying to be a minister."
De mortuis nihil nisi bonum and all that but John Lennon still seems popular for his peacenik "philosophy". So see here for a dissection of his nonsensical political lyrics -- "Imagine" in particular. Beatle politics are like Hollywood politics: Good for entertainment only.
Michael Darby is back on the net with a big range of posts. Some of his headings:
Caffre the Fairy
Elections in Zimbabwe
Strong, Silent Men Make Good Presidents
Yet another "bank" scam
Don't Worry, Eat Happy
The Mufti of Australia Calls for Jihad
It Takes More Than Spin To Make A Steel Project
Archive of terrorist websites with links
********************************
The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.
Two more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
"Culturally enlightened French writers show simplistic Americans what justice is all about" They just LOVED 9/11. Ever since my first encounter with French literature in my teens (over 40 years ago) I have always thought French culture was endemically corrupt and devoid of any morality. A superficial cleverness is about all they rise to -- Camille Saint-Saens excepted, of course.
Wow! David's Medienkritik has hit the jackpot. He noted that much was being made of the fact that the suicide rate of U.S. soldiers in Iraq is 13.5 per 100,000. So he looked up the suicide rates in the German and French armies nestling cosily away in their home countries: 17.00 and 19.25!
Comment from a reader on THAT movie: "A lot of the fuss about THE PASSION actually comes from the "liberal" end of the Christian spectrum. Whatever the faults of the movie (and all movies have faults), I suspect even "liberal" Christians would agree that Gibson's movie is closer to the Gospel tradition (however interpreted) than JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR, GODSPEL, LIFE OF BRIAN or THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST (where he has sex with Barbara Hershey), the last big Hollywood Jesus movie. Gibson is being judged by a much tougher critical standard than that applied to his Jesus movie peers. I can sympathise with critics who focus on the blood and gore portrayed, but this aspect was almost entirely absent from all previous Jesus Christ movies like THE ROBE. Considering the subject matter, this absence has probably been a major flaw of the movies to date. Modern audiences, who demand gritty realism from movies like SAVING PRIVATE RYAN would probably find the classic movie portraits of Christ's death boring and uninteresting. Gibson deserves credit for putting his money where his mouth is, and letting his audience know how confronting the Gospel and the Christian message really is. Like it or not, the Christian message is not saccharine syrup. And you don't have to like it".
Britain copies GWB: "Tens of thousands of Polish, Czech and other eastern Europeans who have been working and living illicitly in Britain, some for many years, are to be given an amnesty in all but name from May 1, the Home Office revealed yesterday. The immigration minister, Beverley Hughes, said that if they ''turn legit' under the new migrant workers' registration scheme, they will not face any retribution. 'They have a right to be here and there is no need for them to carry on working illegally,' she said. The generous attempt to provide tens of thousands of illegal migrants with a route out of Britain's 'hidden economy' comes as new official figures backed up ministers' claims to have drawn the sting out of the asylum crisis."
Illegal aliens are imposing an additional cost amounting to $900 per American child (i.e. child of American-born parents) in the public school system.
Appalling Texas "justice": "Citing misconduct by Texas prosecutors, the Supreme Court Tuesday threw out the sentence of Delma Banks Jr., one of the country's longest-serving death row inmates whose execution was halted last year with minutes to spare. The high court, ruling 7-2, said Bowie County prosecutors allowed two key witnesses to lie to the jury at Banks' 1980 murder trial. They also illegally withheld from defense lawyers the fact that one witness was a paid police informant and the other a two-time felon who cut a deal to testify in exchange for prosecutors dropping an arson charge against him."
"A German drag queen has been given an honorary professorship from the University of Hamburg's faculty for Gender Studies to teach Queer Theory. Oliver Knoebel, better known in Germany as drag queen Olivia Jones, has said he feels honoured to have received the title of professor. ... Queer Theory is primarily concerned with how gender and sexuality bridges social gaps. The subject has developed out of feminist and gay-lesbian research and is mainly taught in the USA."
If he had been studying Queer theory, feminism or environmentalism that would have been fine: "The Supreme Court, in a new rendering on separation of church and state, voted Wednesday to let states withhold scholarships from students studying theology. The court's 7-2 ruling held that the state of Washington was within its rights to deny a taxpayer-funded scholarship to a college student who was studying to be a minister."
De mortuis nihil nisi bonum and all that but John Lennon still seems popular for his peacenik "philosophy". So see here for a dissection of his nonsensical political lyrics -- "Imagine" in particular. Beatle politics are like Hollywood politics: Good for entertainment only.
Michael Darby is back on the net with a big range of posts. Some of his headings:
Caffre the Fairy
Elections in Zimbabwe
Strong, Silent Men Make Good Presidents
Yet another "bank" scam
Don't Worry, Eat Happy
The Mufti of Australia Calls for Jihad
It Takes More Than Spin To Make A Steel Project
Archive of terrorist websites with links
********************************
The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.
Two more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Thursday, February 26, 2004
THAT MOVIE
Like many others, I have been puzzled by the fuss over THAT movie. The Pope has approved it, evangelical Christians are lining up to buy tickets to it and all it does is re-tell the basic Christian story -- now nearly 2000 years old. Jeff Jacoby makes the best job of explaining the fuss as far as I can see but I still think the claim that it will stir up antisemitism among Christians is do-gooder nonsense.
I do however like the point in the NYT that the film might make the "modern" (read "social") Christians sit up and think a bit.
Now they're threatening Mel Gibson. Never mind [that] 'The Passion of the Christ' will likely prove a hit, Mel is taking a hit from Hollywood types. One tells the New York Daily News he's all but a marked man. Directors will avoid him. And one goes so far as to say audiences will move on from him. No more 'Lethal Weapon' sequels. No more 'Signs.' Says who? Says some Hollywood honcho irked by the 'Passion' or Mel's passion to make it? I just wonder whether those in Hollywood would be jawboning as much if Mel had taken on a different movie project ... Let's say, 'The Passion of Global Warming' or 'The Passion of Migrant Workers.' No, Hollywood selects what passions are appropriate."
What Mel Gibson's foes forget: "These days, the most consistently pro-Israel group of Americans, oddly enough, are evangelical Christians. A sane and rational person might assume that fact would be appreciated and applauded by us. By and large, however, that isn't the case. Many of my fellow Jews don't like or trust devout Christians. When I ask them why, they suddenly become history professors. To listen to them, you'd think the Inquisition had ended earlier this year. Frankly, when I hear them dredging up ancient animosities, I'm surprised they haven't taken a page out of the Al Sharpton playbook and demanded reparations from Spain!"
*******************************
Like many others, I have been puzzled by the fuss over THAT movie. The Pope has approved it, evangelical Christians are lining up to buy tickets to it and all it does is re-tell the basic Christian story -- now nearly 2000 years old. Jeff Jacoby makes the best job of explaining the fuss as far as I can see but I still think the claim that it will stir up antisemitism among Christians is do-gooder nonsense.
I do however like the point in the NYT that the film might make the "modern" (read "social") Christians sit up and think a bit.
Now they're threatening Mel Gibson. Never mind [that] 'The Passion of the Christ' will likely prove a hit, Mel is taking a hit from Hollywood types. One tells the New York Daily News he's all but a marked man. Directors will avoid him. And one goes so far as to say audiences will move on from him. No more 'Lethal Weapon' sequels. No more 'Signs.' Says who? Says some Hollywood honcho irked by the 'Passion' or Mel's passion to make it? I just wonder whether those in Hollywood would be jawboning as much if Mel had taken on a different movie project ... Let's say, 'The Passion of Global Warming' or 'The Passion of Migrant Workers.' No, Hollywood selects what passions are appropriate."
What Mel Gibson's foes forget: "These days, the most consistently pro-Israel group of Americans, oddly enough, are evangelical Christians. A sane and rational person might assume that fact would be appreciated and applauded by us. By and large, however, that isn't the case. Many of my fellow Jews don't like or trust devout Christians. When I ask them why, they suddenly become history professors. To listen to them, you'd think the Inquisition had ended earlier this year. Frankly, when I hear them dredging up ancient animosities, I'm surprised they haven't taken a page out of the Al Sharpton playbook and demanded reparations from Spain!"
*******************************
ELSEWHERE
Keith Burgess-Jackson and many other conservatives have been appalled at Andrew Sullivan's extreme, irrational and hysterical reaction to GWB's opposition to homosexual marriage. From the way Sullivan speaks, you would think GWB was out to murder homosexuals. Sullivan is of course himself a homosexual so I was not myself surprised by his reaction. Homosexuals themselves now normally claim that they are genetically different and it is certainly my observation that over-emotionality is very prevalent among them -- wicked of me though it no doubt is to say so. And it is not the first time Sullivan has been noticeably irrational. His expression of contempt for British culture (he is himself British-born) is hard to see as anything other than an emotional outburst (See here and here).
Marriage: "It's really nothing more than a private contract between two individuals, consecrated by their notion of God. At least that is how it started. It was a completely non-governmental arrangement -- until the Socialists weaseled into the deal with promises of 'official certification' by the State. The recognition of this fine institution of human companionship by an artificial entity (government) proved to be the camel's nose under the tent, with the hump of regulation over the private affairs of individuals soon to follow."
An appalling tale in "Spiked" of an influential medical researcher determined to condemn the Measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccine as a cause of autism -- without any scientific foundation and for his own personal gain. How many kids have become seriously ill for no good reason because of this greedy crook's lies and distortions? I know what I would like to do to him. This anus of a so-called doctor is particularly despicable to me because, as a libertarian, I cannot support compulsory vaccinations. Yet I hate to see kids suffer and and be permanently damaged needlessly. So the alternative is to persuade the parents that vaccination is a good thing to do -- and putting needless scares into parents about vaccination seems to me in the circumstances to verge on the criminal. As the "Spiked" article says: "One speculative paper, now utterly discredited, has had the effect of reducing the uptake of MMR far below that required to maintain community resistance to measles, mumps and rubella." For the record, my own son has had every vaccination going.
Conservatives have been saying this for a long time: "Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, stepping into the politically charged debate over Social Security, said Wednesday the country can't afford the benefits currently promised to the baby boom generation. He urged Congress to trim those benefits"
Probably more just than the official response: "An air traffic controller who ordered a passenger plane into the path of another aircraft over Germany - a crash that killed dozens of Russian children - was stabbed to death Wednesday"
Naderism's dark underbelly "Yes, the same man who rails against corporate welfare - because it coercively takes money from taxpayers and funnels it to corporations - has set up a rather ingenious, if underhanded and manipulative, way of coercively taking money from college kids - and funneling it to Ralph Nader".
Amusing: The Socialist International has just had a meeting in China and the Australian Labor party sent along a representative. His comment to his hosts was rather acid: "China's opening up policy is quite successful. If one looks at China's TV programs and reads the youngsters' state of mind, one has this to say that if China's march toward the world is compared to a film, then the film is one just started."
Martha Stewart's surreal ordeal: "This statement highlights what this trial is about -- not insider trading, but the right to declare one's innocence, even when the government later agrees with the declaration. Surely if others attempted a similar defense in the face of a Kafka-esque judicial machine, the bullying Justice Department would be seen for what it is, forcing it to assume a lower profile and move somewhere behind the front line of the government's funding trough."
Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its condensation of the blogosphere.
A humorous test to discover if you're a conservative, liberal, libertarian, or a communist here
********************************
The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.
Two more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Keith Burgess-Jackson and many other conservatives have been appalled at Andrew Sullivan's extreme, irrational and hysterical reaction to GWB's opposition to homosexual marriage. From the way Sullivan speaks, you would think GWB was out to murder homosexuals. Sullivan is of course himself a homosexual so I was not myself surprised by his reaction. Homosexuals themselves now normally claim that they are genetically different and it is certainly my observation that over-emotionality is very prevalent among them -- wicked of me though it no doubt is to say so. And it is not the first time Sullivan has been noticeably irrational. His expression of contempt for British culture (he is himself British-born) is hard to see as anything other than an emotional outburst (See here and here).
Marriage: "It's really nothing more than a private contract between two individuals, consecrated by their notion of God. At least that is how it started. It was a completely non-governmental arrangement -- until the Socialists weaseled into the deal with promises of 'official certification' by the State. The recognition of this fine institution of human companionship by an artificial entity (government) proved to be the camel's nose under the tent, with the hump of regulation over the private affairs of individuals soon to follow."
An appalling tale in "Spiked" of an influential medical researcher determined to condemn the Measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccine as a cause of autism -- without any scientific foundation and for his own personal gain. How many kids have become seriously ill for no good reason because of this greedy crook's lies and distortions? I know what I would like to do to him. This anus of a so-called doctor is particularly despicable to me because, as a libertarian, I cannot support compulsory vaccinations. Yet I hate to see kids suffer and and be permanently damaged needlessly. So the alternative is to persuade the parents that vaccination is a good thing to do -- and putting needless scares into parents about vaccination seems to me in the circumstances to verge on the criminal. As the "Spiked" article says: "One speculative paper, now utterly discredited, has had the effect of reducing the uptake of MMR far below that required to maintain community resistance to measles, mumps and rubella." For the record, my own son has had every vaccination going.
Conservatives have been saying this for a long time: "Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, stepping into the politically charged debate over Social Security, said Wednesday the country can't afford the benefits currently promised to the baby boom generation. He urged Congress to trim those benefits"
Probably more just than the official response: "An air traffic controller who ordered a passenger plane into the path of another aircraft over Germany - a crash that killed dozens of Russian children - was stabbed to death Wednesday"
Naderism's dark underbelly "Yes, the same man who rails against corporate welfare - because it coercively takes money from taxpayers and funnels it to corporations - has set up a rather ingenious, if underhanded and manipulative, way of coercively taking money from college kids - and funneling it to Ralph Nader".
Amusing: The Socialist International has just had a meeting in China and the Australian Labor party sent along a representative. His comment to his hosts was rather acid: "China's opening up policy is quite successful. If one looks at China's TV programs and reads the youngsters' state of mind, one has this to say that if China's march toward the world is compared to a film, then the film is one just started."
Martha Stewart's surreal ordeal: "This statement highlights what this trial is about -- not insider trading, but the right to declare one's innocence, even when the government later agrees with the declaration. Surely if others attempted a similar defense in the face of a Kafka-esque judicial machine, the bullying Justice Department would be seen for what it is, forcing it to assume a lower profile and move somewhere behind the front line of the government's funding trough."
Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its condensation of the blogosphere.
A humorous test to discover if you're a conservative, liberal, libertarian, or a communist here
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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.
Two more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin
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