HAPPINESS

I see that the excellent Arnold Kling had a good jab a little while ago at the "happiness" critics. We have known since at least the times of ancient Lydia and King Croesus that money does not necessarily make you happy. And Hollywood has been proof of it for years. St. Paul too was pretty scathing about money in 1 Timothy 6:10. But Left-leaning economists and psychologists seem to have realized all that only in the last few years. "So if we take your money away it won't hurt" is their conclusion. Odd that people do seem to get really peeved if you rob or defraud them, though! And ask anybody if they would rather spend their own money or have someone else spend it instead and there is not much doubt about what the answer will be. And that's the point: What people want matters. If some arrogant git claims that he can spend my money better than I can, he deserves to be treated like the con-man he is. The fact that overall level of happiness is mainly a personality disposition or trait which remains fairly stable across a wide range of circumstances (e.g. some people are almost always happy and others are almost always mournful) does NOT mean that people are uninterested in improving those circumstances or getting the occasional "high". But Leftists don't care what people want, of course. "We know what's best for you" is their lying mantra.

Marginal Revolution has lots of interesting links on the subject too.

From my point of view as a psychometrician, however, the whole field of happiness measurement is pretty suspect. I spent 20 years measuring psychological traits and have had many papers published on that subject but I have always regarded the measurement of psychological states as too difficult for me. Why? Because what people say about their states seems to be almost the same as what they say about their traits. The best-known example of an attempt to measure both states and traits in the same field is almost certainly Spielberger's work on state/trait measurement of anxiety and I have myself worked with Spielberger's questionnaires. But I found that the questions used to index the two gave generally interchangeable results: People who described themselves as anxious "at the moment" were also highly likely to describe themselves as anxious "in general". And that is not necessarily just a measurement problem, either. It surely stands to reason that people who are anxious "in general" are also more likely to be anxious on any given occasion. That implies to me that very short-term changes in states may be detectable (e.g. the "high" someone gets on being told they have won a lottery) but the sort of medium term change economists are looking for probably is not.

Yet given that traits are by definition both stable and general behaviour tendencies and given that they are almost always shown to be highly genetically inheritable, any consideration of traits as an economic variable is surely beside the point. Economists are looking for the results of something, i.e. a change of some sort, and something that is inherently not very susceptible to change is surely a strange place to look for change. So it seems to me that any study of happiness as an economic variable must specifically look at states or "moods" -- and that does not generally seem even to be attempted. And the tradition of mood research in psychology exemplified by Joe Forgas and others usually seems to treat moods as short-lived rather than as being the sort of long-lasting change that economists have been looking for.

And a cross-cultural note might not go astray here either. There have for many years been international surveys done which purport to find out which countries have the happiest people. But the big difficulty that the researchers found was that happiness is not always an adequately translatable concept. Perhaps the most surprising case of that is that even a language as closely related to English as German does not have any real equivalent to our word "happiness" (nor do they have a good equivalent for our word "pink" and nor do we have anything like an adequate translation of their word "Reich"). The commonest German translation is "gluecklich" but that really means "lucky", and I well remember an old German Jewish man with whom I was discussing that many years ago. He told me: "gluecklich I am but happy I am not". He meant that he was lucky to have escaped Hitler but still missed much of his old life. So can we really have as a key economic variable something that is not even translatable into German?

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ELSEWHERE

I wonder if this ever happens in the USA? Australia's governing conservative party has selected an open lesbian as one of its parliamentary candidates in the forthcoming Federal election. As far as I know there are to be no open homosexuals representing Australia's major Leftist party -- though the leader of the Greens (Bob Brown) is homosexual. The lesbian woman concerned, Ingrid Tall, is a good candidate -- photogenic, intelligent, well-spoken and well-known on TV. How strange that those "homophobic" conservatives recognize merit when they see it! It may be noted that the same "racist" Australian conservatives put the first black (Neville Bonner) into Australia's Federal parliament. Note that BOTH major Australian political parties oppose homosexual marriage so the claim that opposition to homosexual marriage is "homophobic" does not stack up.

Jeff Jacoby has a great summary of John Kerry's "jokes"

Wayne Lusvardi gives another elaboration of his "Straussian" interpretation of why the USA is at war in Iraq. He sees the U.S. presence there as a warning to neighbouring Muslim states.

LOL: "Obviously pandering for votes, candidate John Kerry announced that he would immediately ban the dumping of Canadian garbage in Michigan if elected president." I guess he figures that they have already had enough garbage from him.

Leftist "compassion" vanishes when most needed: "Vagrants in Key West and many homeless have taken up residence in "safe zone sleeping areas" built earlier this year. The city offers showers, laundry facilities, and other amenities... a real problem the city is faced with today is what to do with the homeless population when the entire population of the city has been told to evacuate due to Hurricane Ivan. Well, it appears that some have piled into aging vehicles and left, but those remaining are apparently expected to fend for themselves when Hurricane Ivan hits the island".

Further to my post yesterday about FDR, there is a good note on PID about how FDR's "New Deal" harmed the poor.

There are some new postings up on SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and EDUCATION WATCH. Mirror sites here, here, here and here

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Anti-Americanism is in epidemic proportions in France and Germany but most people don't realize that it is in epidemic proportions in South Korea too. And what do those three countries have in common? They were liberated by America. And what is probably the most pro-American country in the world? Poland. They liberated themselves. Ego defeats rationality all the time.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and big egos who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me 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.

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CONSERVATIVES DON'T NEED TO EMBRACE LEFTIST PRESIDENTS

I have written on this before (see here and here) but American "liberals" seem to have conservatives so thoroughly conned on this that I feel I will still be saying it on my deathbed.

In domestic (internal) politics, it is clear to all that a Democrat President speaks at most only for those who elected him. But this somehow seems to get lost sight of in external (international) politics. The world usually sees what a Democrat President does as representing America, the American Left agrees with that and for some reason most conservatives buy into it. It does not happen with recent Presidents very much. Many American conservatives, for instance, would not be happy with Clinton bombing Christian Serbs who were giving Muslims a taste of their own oppressive medicine. But farther back in history things get blurred. I want to deal today with the case of F.D. Roosevelt, whose war with Japan is now almost universally approved of:

That conservatives ever "own" anything that America's first socialist president did is truly amazing. Lots of people still buy into the lie that FDR "cured" the great depression by his "New Deal" policies but the plain fact of the matter is that at the end of FDR's first two terms in office, the depression was just about as bad as ever (though under the financial management of the conservative Neville Chamberlain Britain had substantially recovered). It was only the war that got America moving again. And a large part of the reason for that was that around that time FDR started co-operating with business instead of attacking it. How he ever thought that attacking business would cure unemployment remains an utter mystery. It is business that creates jobs so if you want more jobs created you have to encourage business, not make circumstances more difficult for it. And it was in fact FDR's policies that transformed a normal cyclic depression into the Great Depression. In previous depressions governments had largely just sat tight. FDR was the first one to try big government interventions to cure it -- with the predictable result of making it worse.

And the idea that FDR was on the side of the poor is typical Leftist deception. His New Deal in fact harmed millions of poor people. Note this comment: "For defenders of the New Deal, perhaps the most embarrassing revelation about New Deal spending programs is they channeled money AWAY from the South, the poorest region in the United States. The largest share of New Deal spending and loan programs went to political 'swing' states in the West and East - where incomes were at least 60% higher than in the South. As an incumbent, FDR didn't see any point giving much money to the South where voters were already overwhelmingly on his side."

But that is just a preamble. It is the war with Japan that was most tragic. But before I go onto that, another small preamble is needed: The essence of conservatism (as I set out at great length here) is "You leave me alone and I will leave you alone" and in international politics that translates to isolationism -- which is of course a great tradition among American conservatives and among Americans generally. The great majority of Americans want the rest of the world to solve its own problems. Leftists such as FDR, on the other hand, believe that they know what's best not only for America but also for the rest of the world. They are coercive interventionists. They want to do the solving of other people's problems and are prepared to use force to impose their solutions if necessary.

So when world events were in turmoil in the 1930s, Roosevelt wanted to intervene and impose his solutions to the various conflicts around. In particular, he wanted to intervene against Japan in the war between China and Japan -- despite the fact that the Chinese themselves were nowhere near being defeated by the attacking Japanese at that stage. He also wanted to intervene in the war between Germany and Britain despite the fact that Britain had at that stage already won the Battle of Britain. FDR's big problem, however, was the isolationism of the ordinary American. They did not want a bar of his grand international schemes. So he had to bring about the one circumstance wherein even conservative Americans will willingly go to war with other countries -- when America is attacked. And FDR brought that about by virtually forcing the Japanese to attack. He cut off their oil supply, which Japan mainly got from California at that stage. He did it of course in the form of an ultimatum to withdraw from China or else -- knowing of course that the bushido code of the Japanese miltary would never allow them to accept such dictation from outside. They would rather commit suicide than give in -- which is precisely what they proceeded to do in slow motion, beginning with their futile attack on Pearl Harbour. So all the loss of American and Japanese lives in the Pacific lies at FDR's door, not at the door of the Japanese.

FDR was very nearly as big a war-monger as Hitler. Since both were socialists and hence lovers of coercion, that is not surprising. FDR did after all at one stage refer to Mussolini as "that admirable Italian gentleman" and got some of his authoritarian economic ideas from Mussolini (who also impoverished his country). So please don't defend FDR's great war of destruction against the brilliant Japanese. The only benefit to China was to give them Mao Tse Tung!

As a postscript, it might also be noted that FDR undoubtedly knew in advance of the Pearl Harbour attack. British and American cryptographers had been decoding Japanese diplomatic and naval messages for some time at that stage. But FDR warned no-one at Pearl Harbour. It suited him for Americans to die there.

And it might be noted that the wartime internment of Japanese Americans that Leftist historians now routinely condemn America for was in fact the doing of FDR, a fellow Leftist. It was NOT the doing of Americans generally and it was certainly not the doing of American conservatives.

I am not in general a Buchanan-ite but Buchanan does know his history so I cannot resist closing with this comment from Buchanan: "As for FDR, he was the greatest politician of the 20th century. But why call a president great whose government was honeycombed with spies and traitors, and whose war diplomacy lead to the loss of 10 Christian countries of Eastern Europe to a Muscovite despot whose terrorist regime was the greatest enemy of human freedom in modern history?". And if you don't like Buchanan, J.F. Kennedy had similar views. See here.

It is a revealing commentary on Leftist mentality that the 9/11 attacks which precipitated America into its present foreign wars are seen by many on the Left as a put-up job too. They are so dishonest themselves that they cannot tell fake from reality.

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For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and EDUCATION WATCH. Mirror sites here, here, here and here

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Anti-Americanism is in epidemic proportions in France and Germany but most people don't realize that it is in epidemic proportions in South Korea too. And what do those three countries have in common? They were liberated by America. And what is probably the most pro-American country in the world? Poland. They liberated themselves. Ego defeats rationality all the time.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and big egos who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me 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.

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YET MORE ECONOMICS

Veto needed: "The White House yesterday warned of a presidential veto of a $142.5 billion spending bill if Democrats pushed through an amendment that would block new Labor Department rules on overtime pay. House Democrats contend that millions of workers could lose their overtime pay under the rules. Lawmakers said they had enough Republican support to approve the amendment, leading the GOP leadership to put off a vote yesterday."

From poverty to prosperity: "Workers are no longer concerned merely with wages and salaries; they are increasingly interested in saving and investing -- in the process of wealth creation. One can't get rich on wages; the only way to get rich is to earn, save and invest. I cringe when I hear the rhetoric of class warfare, which seems to have become the raison d'etre of the Democratic Party, whether they are ranting about 'the people versus the powerful' or increasing taxes on the 'top 2 percent.' They just don't get it."

Engagement is working: "Protectionists in the United States who point to large and growing trade deficits with China and to increased U.S. investment in China should not be allowed to block trade liberalization by injudicious use of national security and human rights arguments. Further liberalization of U.S.-China trade is a win-win strategy and can play an important role in promoting peace and prosperity. Containment would do the opposite."

Farm subsidies should be plowed under: "I discovered that many people in my small town are receiving tens of thousands of dollars in farm subsidies. I recognized most of the names on the list, some farmers and some not. The nonfarmers included a doctor, a banker, and a former elected representative! This made me wonder: If I know so many farmers and nonfarmers who receive sizeable incomes from subsidies in my own small community, how much money is doled out throughout the United States?"

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ELSEWHERE

Your government will protect you: "The Food and Drug Administration has repeatedly urged antidepressant manufacturers not to disclose to physicians and the public that some clinical trials of the medications in children found the drugs were no better than sugar pills, according to documents and testimony released at a congressional hearing yesterday. Regulators suppressed the negative information on the grounds that it might scare families and physicians away from the drugs, according to testimony by drug company executives. For at least three medications, they said, the FDA blocked the companies' plans to reveal the negative studies in drug labels, and in one case the agency reversed a manufacturer's decision to amend its drug label to say that the drug was associated in studies with increased hostility and suicidal thinking among children.

Church takes on the regulation goons: "A Nashville judge yesterday found a pastor and his Antioch church in contempt of court for refusing to stop providing daily child care temporarily as ordered. The decision follows a months-long refusal by the Priest Lake Community Baptist Church to register as a daily child-care service with the state. Anyone caring for five or more unrelated children is required to be licensed by the state, but state officials found on several occasions that 13 children were being cared for at the church. Church officials could not be reached for comment yesterday. Church members maintain that it is only operating a daily 'Bible camp' and should be immune from state regulation. Church officials said they don't want the state dictating its curriculum and are concerned that the state could affect its religious teachings. They pledged a long fight of defiance."

A libertarian hawk: "I find it sad that so many otherwise bright libertarians seem so unreflective about war. Some of my favorite freedom-loving publications have steered their editorial styles into the hashish den of protest music and anti-Bush priggishness. Some of my favorite think tanks issue press releases almost daily, calling for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq, calling for the US to extend Constitutional privileges to enemy combatants, and claiming that it will be impossible to bring democracy and the Rule of Law to the Middle East.... My guess is that there are others who would like to see less of this accretion of libertarians around the Dove. I am one of those who doesn't fancy the idea of staring down the point of a chemical warhead before I decide to act. (Even if such warheads turn out to be a chimera today, they won't likely be tomorrow.) In the nuclear age, when the degree of certainty that you will be attacked is at fifty percent, you are as good as done for in terms of your ability to protect yourself. Thus, preventive action in a world of uncertainty is, unfortunately, the only reasonable course".


Fairness is in the eye of the beholder: "I don't recall that I've ever heard any rational man or woman seriously suggest that people or groups be treated unfairly by other people or groups. Meanwhile, I've heard a whole lot of people demand their fair share of fair treatment. This strikes me as eminently reasonable and, well, fair. The problem that's been blatantly brought home to me lately, however, is that those demanding fair treatment are somehow deeply offended and even angered when that same fair treatment is given to others."

Psychologist Kagan rediscovers heredity: "The ancient Greeks were right, Kagan believes. There is such a thing as temperament - although his discussion of innate personality traits relies on EEG probes and brain-stem activity, not any musings on the four humors. The book centers on studies that Kagan and Snidman began in 1986 with 500 infants. Roughly 20 percent of the babies who screamed at toys and other unfamiliar stimuli grew into 11-year-olds who were shy with interviewers and who showed biological signs of alarm in stressful situations. By contrast, 33 percent of the calm, cool tykes grew into composed, sociable preteens"

Anti-Americanism nothing to do with America: "In this post-ideological age, anti-Americanism fills the void left by defunct belief systems. It has become a powerful trend in international politics today-and perhaps the most dangerous. U.S. hegemony has its problems, but a world that reacts instinctively against the United States will be less peaceful, less cooperative, less prosperous, less open, and less stable.... But an equally important force propelling anti-Americanism around the world is an ideological vacuum. Political scientist Francis Fukuyama was right when he noted that the collapse of the Soviet Union also meant the collapse of the great ideological debate on how to organize economic and political life.... Capitalism's victory left the world without an ideology of discontent, a systematic set of ideas that are critical of the world as it exists. There is always a market for an ideology of discontent --it allows those outside the mainstream to relate to the world...."

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and EDUCATION WATCH. Mirror sites here, here, here and here

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Anti-Americanism is in epidemic proportions in France and Germany but most people don't realize that it is in epidemic proportions in South Korea too. And what do those three countries have in common? They were liberated by America. And what is probably the most pro-American country in the world? Poland. They liberated themselves. Ego defeats rationality all the time.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and big egos who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me 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.

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IN MEMORIAM

I think David's Medienkritik says it all for me.

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ECONOMICS

An unholy coalition against cheap goods for all Americans: "With jobs and trade both hot-button election issues, a coalition of business and union groups Thursday pushed the Bush administration to punish China for alleged unfair trade practices... The coalition of steelmakers, textile companies and organized labor — the AFL-CIO and unions representing steelworkers and autoworkers — argues that the currency peg amounts to manipulation by Beijing. By keeping the value of its currency artificially low, China enables its goods to undercut prices of rival products by as much as 40%, U.S. manufacturers say."

Unions leaders support mass immigration and betray their members "Immigration hurts salaried and wage-earning Americans because an increase in the supply of anything [such as labor] reduces its price -- in this case, compensation for labor. The more people who compete for the same job, the less in wages and benefits employers need to offer. .... labor union leaders .. espouse mass immigration, including even illegal immigration and amnesty for illegal aliens. AFL-CIO spokeswoman Kathy Roeder let the cat out of the bag by admitting the reason: "We're always looking for opportunities for people to join unions. That's our number one reason for working with immigrants"". And PID says that the love-affair of the Australian Left with multiculturalism and immigration is also making them traitors to the class they claim to represent.

Ignorant Leftist labour policy: "David Bacon, "a labor journalist and photographer," lives in the fantasy land where supply and demand have no necessary relationship. He writes of efforts to ease the rivalry between blacks and illegal immigrants over jobs. His solution: legislation legalizing those who have broken immigration laws for five years or more, combined with even more anti-discrimination enforcement, including mandatory "outreach" employees for hotels. Umm, Dave, I hate to break it to you, but increasing supply tends to drive down prices. People with few skills are inherently in competition with one another. Legalization of illegal aliens who cross the border and stay will lead to increased illegal immigration, and drive down wages further". But coercion is all the Left knows or understands.

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ELSEWHERE

Conservative black American bloggers seem to be getting a lot of (well-deserved) links these days and I think black Australian blogger "Revenge of the Hamster" will soon be in that league. Her site motto is: "I tried to see life from a lefty point of view, but couldn't get my head that far up my rectum". I like that! This post about Leftist claims that Australia is racist really puts the record straight. What she says could equally well be said of America. A small excerpt: "Australians are good, honest and decent people who try their hardest to welcome all... Australia has given my family a life they could never have dreamed of back in their country of origin. My father faced a life of manual drudgery. In Australia, he has enjoyed a life of endless possibilities and enjoyed rich rewards". She might also have mentioned that is was the LEFT of Australian politics that were for many years the main opponents of non-white immigration into Australia and that the racial restrictions were abolished by the conservative government of Harold Holt.

Memogate: "After being largely confined to the internet and talk radio yesterday, coverage of CBS's apparent usage of forged documents has exploded into more traditional media outlets... Typographical experts, legacy office equipment collectors, and even the family of the man who supposedly wrote the documents have all called into question CBS's "scoop." The fact that a bunch of people working independently on the internet could so readily debunk an obvious forgery tells a very disturbing story about the journalistic practices of a news organization that has allowed one man's grudge against the Bush family to set its remaining shreds of credibility aflame"

Jeff Jacoby: "They are still burying the victims of the latest atrocity committed by evildoers professing Islam -- the slaughter of hundreds of children, teachers, and parents in an elementary school in Beslan, Russia. And from Muslims the world over, as usual, has come mostly silence. There have been no public demonstrations by Muslims anxious to make it clear how outraged and sickened they are that anyone could commit such unspeakable deeds as an act of Islamic faith. There has been no anguished outcry by Islam's leading imams and sheiks...."

Leftist "compassion": "The German left-wing daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung reports as a success of the "European-Iranian human rights dialog" that a 16-year-old girl will not be stoned to death, but rather hanged. Her "crime": pre-marital sex."

Good stuff: "The United States and Russia clashed yesterday over a way to end the conflict in the breakaway republic of Chechnya, with Washington calling for a political solution and Moscow vowing to crush the separatist movement. Days after a school siege in the Northern Ossetia region that claimed at least 350 lives, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the West -- and the United States in particular -- of having a double standard when dealing with terrorism. 'Why don't you meet Osama bin Laden, invite him to Brussels or to the White House and engage in talks, ask him what he wants and give it to him so he leaves you in peace?' Putin told foreign reporters in Moscow late Monday."

A good email from Father Mike Walsh: "Good posts on the Catholic Church yesterday. The church has been dominated in the last few decades (notably during my seminary days in the 1980's) by what I call, after the French, 'les soixante-huitards' ('68-ers' --en anglaise) that is, people whose formative experiences occurred in the heady days immediately after Vatican II, for which they had inordinate hopes on behalf of their own agenda. They are distinguished chiefly by a craven need for validation by the secular left and by a titanic self-regard --an attribute I once mocked, during a particularly tedious meeting with my fellow clerics, by standing up and praying that God might "strike me DEAD if I ever attempt to blame the Holy Spirit for my opinions." Hopefully they are, as a class, dying off. One reason I think they might be is their generally low opinion of new seminarians, and by the simple fact that they are incapable of passing on a faith they no longer have. I am quite fond of Bishop Pell, by the way, and know some of the young people he brought to Canada a couple of years ago. They are in good hands."

I have just posted three more chapters from my 1974 book Conservatism as heresy. They deal with the destructive effects of price-control, the idiotic idea that governments can decide what the "needs" of society are and the fact that union activity does NOT get a bigger share of the national income for "the workers".

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and EDUCATION WATCH. Mirror sites here, here, here and here

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Anti-Americanism is in epidemic proportions in France and Germany but most people don't realize that it is in epidemic proportions in South Korea too. And what do those three countries have in common? They were liberated by America. And what is probably the most pro-American country in the world? Poland. They liberated themselves. Ego defeats rationality all the time.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and big egos who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me 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.

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SOME ECONOMICS

The high cost of cheap labour: "This study is one of the first to estimate the total impact of illegal immigration on the federal budget. Most previous studies have focused on the state and local level and have examined only costs or tax payments, but not both. Based on Census Bureau data, this study finds that, when all taxes paid (direct and indirect) and all costs are considered, illegal households created a net fiscal deficit at the federal level of more than $10 billion in 2002. We also estimate that, if there was an amnesty for illegal aliens, the net fiscal deficit would grow to nearly $29 billion".

Dumb European politicians: "Of 384 studied members of the European Parliament, only 12 appear to favor free trade for Europe on a consistent basis. The Swedish representatives appear to be the most free market, the French appear to be the most protectionist".

The Wal-Martization of America: "We are witnessing the in-your-wallet effect of globalization, the impact of the Wal-Martization of several key product areas, and the final joining of the Internet with traditional stores--the merger of clicks and bricks. The effect of globalization on the supply chain is now widely understood. Retailers shop the world for bargains in everything from sneakers to t-shirts to high-end jewelry, and are forced by competition to pass along the savings to consumers.... And Wal-Mart is now a major player in food retailing. Food sales now account for over 25 percent of the chain's almost $300 billion in sales, up from 14 percent in 1997. To consumers' cheers, many supermarkets have had to reduce costs and prices in order to remain competitive."

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ELSEWHERE

Soviet Britain: "Mental health campaigners today condemned government proposals to detain people with untreatable mental disorders for care which would not alleviate their symptoms. A revised draft mental health bill, published today, would enable psychiatrists to force people with severe personality disorders to undergo "clinically appropriate" care which would not need to improve their mental condition".

An article here explains why many humble people vote Democrat by saying that Leftists are like pimps who deceive prostitutes into believing that they care.

The crime wave that wasn't: "Last year, the governor of Alabama proposed and then overwhelmingly lost a bitter referendum to increase taxes and boost revenue.... The governor and his cronies often warned that failure to pass his tax increase would lead to the early release of many criminals. Voters were told that a cost of rejection would be a crime wave of unprecedented proportions.... And the prison system did give early parole to many of its convicts. But that often mentioned crime wave never happened.... That the promised crime wave turned out to be illusory underscores the fact that many who were incarcerated posed little danger to society in the first place".

The new EU police: "Under Article 8 of the Treaty of Amsterdam, members of the new federal 'Europol' are "immune from legal process of any kind for acts performed... in the exercise of their official functions." Thus, no Europol officer can be charged or brought to trial for false imprisonment, violence against a suspect, the destruction or seizure of private property , or harassment of any individual. Europol has been given powers to operate anywhere within the Eurozone, including Britain, with complete impunity. They have the power of summary arrest and extradition, in spite of existing British laws, which specifically prohibit such action. Under the power of international treaty, British law is superseded."

A good comment from a Muslim: "We cannot redeem our extremist youths, who commit all these heinous crimes, without confronting the Sheikhs who thought it ennobling to re-invent themselves as revolutionary ideologues, sending other people's sons and daughters to certain death, while sending their own children to European and American schools and colleges".

Conservative movies! "Fed up with what they say is the radical left's domination of Hollywood, a group of conservative filmmakers will debut their newest films in a festival this weekend in Dallas. The film festival, scheduled Sept. 10-12, is the brainchild of Jim Hubbard, a law school graduate who felt conservatives have sat on the sidelines too long while liberals dominate moviemaking."

There is a good site here that enables you to read most of the famous documents of conservatism online.

The world now has its first billionaire blogger. He made his money in IT but his knowledge and understanding of politics and economics needs work. Oh well! Nobody can be good at everything. The commenters on his blog seem to be doing a reasonable job of filling him in on what he misses.

The Usurer has a part-time job doing doorknocking for a survey research firm and remarks that ordinary people in his experience are not at all the "sheeple" that Leftists seem to imagine. He finds that ordinary people do think things out with some care and come to fairly reasonable conclusions from the information they have. I agree. Unlike other academics, I have always done a lot of my own doorknocking rather than thinking I was too grand for that so I have a far better idea than most about what actually goes on out there.

Amusing. I have just found that Captain Clueless has given up blogging. Here is his reason: "But nearly every article I write draws anywhere from 5 to 50 letters containing corrections, disagreements, comments about things I "left out" because "I didn't know", or other forms of kibitzing." I am not surprised. I myself noticed lots of things he was overlooking on the rare occasions that I read his posts. My own experience of blogging is very different. I gets lots of "Thank you" emails (all of which I appreciate) but very little criticism. I think my most persistent critic is a certain Straussian who nonetheless often circulates to others particular posts of mine that he considers particularly good. With enemies like that, who needs friends? (just joking).

North Western Winds notes my comments on the often un-Christian behaviour of Christians and says that such behaviour does not reflect on Christianity. I wonder would he argue that the vicious behaviour of Communists does not reflect on Communism? But I in any case agree that the teachings of Christ are in no way damaged by those who do not follow them. I think Communists ARE following their teachings -- particularly if Lenin is taken as the teacher.

Two new postings just up on SOCIALIZED MEDICINE

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and EDUCATION WATCH. Mirror sites here, here, here and here

New rubric below.

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Anti-Americanism is in epidemic proportions in France and Germany but most people don't realize that it is in epidemic proportions in South Korea too. And what do those three countries have in common? They were liberated by America. And what is probably the most pro-American country in the world? Poland. They liberated themselves. Ego defeats rationality all the time.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and big egos who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me 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.

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THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

Leftist priests who are not even Christian, let alone Catholic: "Then there are those progressive priests who "renovated" churches by demolishing well-loved marble monuments and removing icons and statues in scenes reminiscent of Cromwell's purges during the Reformation. There is a famous photograph of the then dean of one Catholic cathedral actually at the controls of a bulldozer doing a Lazlo Toth on the High Altar. What about those who have refused communion to worshippers choosing to kneel to receive Holy Communion or, worse, bishops calling in the police to evict them as happened in Quebec?"

Deceitful attacks on an orthodox Catholic archbishop: "George Pell was once again making headlines last week. A priest in his Sydney diocese, John Crothers, published a highly critical essay in the e-magazine Online Catholics.... What neither Anne nor Crothers is entitled to is righteous indignation when they can't have their own way or delusions of grandeur about their place in the church's scheme of things. The Catholic Church is not and never can be a democracy. It has always been run according to its own rules, confidently patriarchal and hierarchical. The clergy and laity have rights and privileges, of course, but the church alone defines them and can suspend them. Even bishops are constrained by higher authority.... Perhaps Pell's distinctiveness, and his great offence, lies in representing what's left of mainstream Catholicism as unmistakably as John Howard represents the political mainstream"

A more impressive Frenchman than today's lot: "At the heart of all of Lacordaire's endeavors was a concerted effort to correct the flawed assumptions concerning the Catholic Church held by revolutionaries. Radical individualism had so possessed the masses that they deemed threatening any body of authority, including the church. "So long as this spirit exists," Lacordaire argued the year of his death, "liberalism will be vanquished by an oppressive democracy or by unbridled autocracy, and this is why the union of liberty and Christianity is the sole possible salvation of the future. Christianity alone can give liberty its real nature, and liberty alone can give Christianity the means of influence necessary to it." Thus, the state must also cease its control of education, the press, and labor in order to allow Christianity to effectively flourish in those arenas".

New Agers are trying to take over one of Christianity's oldest pilgrimages -- the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain.

There is a thorough demolition of "The Da Vinci Code" here for anyone who is inclined to suspect that there is any truth in it

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ELSEWHERE

Final proof that Leftists live in a mental world of their own comes in this comment from the Boston Globe: "Part of the problem was the candidate. Kerry rarely opened up about Vietnam". He's never shut up about it since he got back!

Hmmmm... George Will claims that the great popularity of Arnold Schwarzenegger at the recent Republican convention signifies a return to "Goldwater Conservatism" -- non-religious conservatism. I think he exaggerates greatly. The religious Right has always been only one current in conservatism and Reagan himself had thoroughly libertarian views -- though his undoubted personal faith and love of his "fellow Americans" (as he always called them) tended to blur that. He was, after all, a divorced man. And even among Bible-believing Christians there is great diversity of views. One can perfectly well be a devout Christian conservative without being "born again" and without wanting to use the law to force your values down the neck of others. The most fundamentalist Christians in fact want no part of "the world" and may even refuse to vote at all (as with Jehovah's Witnesses). And they have perfectly good scriptural authority for that (John 18:36; Mark 12:17). But Schwarzenegger certainly does provide a clear signal that you do not have to be religious to be an effective conservative -- a point I make at some length elsewhere.

The inevitability of centrism: "Gingrich... told the gathered [Republicans] that it would be "impossible to create a right only majority in America" and that a party that didn't invite someone as popular as Governor Schwarzenegger to speak "wasn't fit to win." With a nod to some of the journalists in the room, Newt declared, "There is a narrow-minded, bigoted party in America. It's called the Democratic Party." (See also here).

Europe gets a turn: "A coalition of Rastafarian groups in Jamaica said yesterday that it wanted to go to the UN to persuade Europe to pay billions of dollars to the followers of the faith in reparation for slavery. The Rastafarian Nation in Jamaica said European countries once involved in the slave trade, especially Britain, should pay $129bn (œ72.5bn) to resettle 500,000 Jamaican Rastafarians in Africa".

Australia's leading Leftist talks sense: "Mark Latham yesterday clashed with Australia's leading welfare body over his tax package, accusing it of believing that providing people with a life of welfare was doing them a long-term favour. Mr Latham said he had a different view. "The best life is not a life of welfare - it's a life of work," he said".

Leftists in the media and elsewhere commonly pillory GWB for his Christian faith. Kengor, however, shows that Clinton in fact mentioned God more often and spoke in churches more often. So why no condemnation of Clinton? I guess everybody realizes that GWB means what he says while Clinton is a fake. (Via Peg Kaplan)

Tom Barrett: "John Kerry is a patrician snob. He looks down his nose at the very people he is supposed to serve. George Bush is a regular guy. If you sat down with him at a barbeque, as some of my friends have done, you wouldn't know he was the most powerful man in the world. And he LOVES the American people, every one of us."

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its usual survey of blogospheric wisdom.

EDUCATION WATCH has an excerpt from a rather fun article which argues that it is good for creationism to be taught in schools even though it may not be right.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and EDUCATION WATCH. Mirror sites here, here, here and here


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The vast hatred of President Bush coming from the Left seems to focus almost entirely on his Iraq policy and a claim that it is "stupid" or dishonest. Yet the world's most successful and influential Leftist intellectual -- the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -- is a vigorous supporter of that policy. It shows that everything said to justify the Leftist hatred of Bush is mere camouflage. What they really hate is someone non-Leftist wielding great power. The hatred is purely emotional and envious -- with only the slightest pretense to reasoning tacked on. As usual, principles have nothing to do with it.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me 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.

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THOSE PEACEFUL MUSLIMS

Training women for jihad: "Our main mission: push our children to the battlefield, like Al-Khansaa," declares a newly-launched online magazine teaching women how to contribute to jihad, or holy war. The monthly, published by the "Women's Information Office in the Arabian Peninsula", champions the ideology of Al-Qaeda terror chief Osama bin Laden: "Drive infidels from the Arabian Peninsula," or Saudi Arabia, which hosts Islam's holiest sites in Mecca and Medina."

There is an interesting article here saying that Iran considers itself "encircled" by U.S. forces and allies. Wayne Lusvardi thinks they're right: "Sure, Democracy may never come to Iraq given its autocratic culture. But focusing on that has diverted our attention away from what is the classic encirclement strategy using "silent alliances" with neighboring states rather than those with the U.N. The Afghanistan-Iraq Wars have encircled Iran and Syria on two sides. But, of course, the mainstream media has been focusing on the dubious achievements in Iraq and missing the bigger strategic picture. This has led to the selective misperception that the Iraq War is "phony." This begs the question, what is the Bush administration supposed to do? - announce to Iran, Pakistan, and Syria that "we've got you surrounded now!" No can do. All they can do is keep focusing everyone's attention on WMDs etc while they quietly get on with their real aims. Iraq is a preliminary, a staging ground for what is likely coming (probably after the U.S. elections)".

The Iranian bomb: The London Arabic daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat published an op-ed by its former editor, Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, claiming that Israel is merely used as a pretext for Iran's nuclear build-up, and that in fact this build-up principally endangers the neighboring Arab countries.

The Funding for Peace Coalition (FPC) has released a new report detailing the diversion of unprecedented sums of financial aid from the Palestinian people towards corruption and violence. The FPC report is called "Managing European Taxpayers' Money: Supporting The Palestinian Arabs - A Study In Transparency". It publishes evidence, which substantiates a compelling connection between European funding and ongoing Palestinian corruption and terrorism. It also highlights the utter failure of European organisations to monitor where these funds have been directed.

Arlene Peck: "The Arabs are bombing, murdering, mutilating, raping and causing havoc all over the Judeo /Christian world. Israel has nothing to do with it.nothing! The front page of my L.A. Times today headlined, (besides the Israelis who were savagely bombed in Beersheba) that that these same sub-human savage "militants" who had killed twelve Nepalese workers want more! More concessions and more blood! ...... On a personal level , I believe a plan should be implemented where announcements are made that anyone who even tries to bomb anyone in the Jewish state will be shot by bullets soaked in pig blood. Then they will be returned to their families who raise these homicide bombers wrapped in pig skin for burial".

Brink Lindzey has an insightful article showing the common origins and common features of Communism, Fascism and Islamofascism. He points out that WE (modern Western industrial civilization) are the revolutionaries by historical standards and the totalitarians are an attempt to return to the past that we have overturned. I made a similar point in the last third of a 1988 article here but was more pessimistic about the outcome of the conflict than now seems required.

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ELSEWHERE

The Anti-Chomskyite has a powerful and moving account of how he moved from being a fanatical Leftist in his youth to a much more conservative stance now. It might actually convert some Leftists if you could get them to read it. The self-contradictions and intolerance of Leftism were what finally got to him. Just a few quotes: "Ultimately it was the idea of universalism.... that disturbed me the most. The demand for an absolute uniformity of thought and opinion... My family life was deeply troubled, I was unhappy, I had blamed society. It was as simple and as cliched as all that..... It is not mere armchair psychology to see radical politics, in fact all politics which sees the world as inherently flawed and in need of overturning, as, in truth, the cry of unhappy and angry people; people for whom politics has become a desperate attempt to satiate a pain which is, in fact, deeply personal". I have put up a good excerpt on LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS too. (Via Peg Kaplan).

A great anti-Chomsky article by Windschuttle points out that even Chomsky's original claim to fame in linguistics is hollow. Linguistics professor Marc Miyake would emphatically agree.

Mike Jericho has a good sense of humour. In response to the recent multiplication of my blogs, he describes me as: "the man who is to conservative bloggers what Moses was to the Israelites". And The Yobbo gave me a good laugh with this comment: "When John Ray was 17, Thomas Aquinas was still on the bestseller list." Aquinas died in 1274 so I am not quite that old! Keith Burgess-Jackson has just put something up on Aquinas, as it happens. And The Usurer puts in a plug for Aristotle -- very Straussian!

Amusing that the Germans are finally getting around to humanizing Hitler. Even anti-Nazi prewar writers such as Roberts and Heiden conceded that he was the most popular man in Germany at the time so he was human all right. The ploy of saying that he was insane or inhuman is just a means of distracting attention from what he really embodied -- the Leftist form of nationalism. Giving ANY Leftist unlimited power is catastrophic.

Like myself, Bjorn Staerk is an atheist but with a Christian background. But I don't think I entirely agree with his view that atheists have no business interpreting the texts of a given religion. It seems to me that the teachings of Christ are what all Christians bow before and I can read those teachings in the Gospels as well as anybody else. And I still find great wisdom in them -- as my not infrequent quotations from scripture attest. And I certainly reserve the right to disparage those who claim to follow the teachings of Christ when they clearly do not. Atheists in mitres particularly offend me.

I think Maverick Philosopher is a bit hard on Nietzsche. One of the few wise things that old Fred said was: "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies". Maverick takes that a bit too literally. I unpack the statement as saying that convictions can be such a barrier to the recognition of truth that they send you off in the wrong direction more often than lies do -- which I take to be what generally happens with Leftists, in fact.

GREENIE WATCH has the Greenie answer to the recent Muslim barbarism in Russia: Stuffed Koalas!

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and EDUCATION WATCH. Mirror sites here, here and here

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

The vast hatred of President Bush coming from the Left seems to focus almost entirely on his Iraq policy and a claim that it is "stupid" or dishonest. Yet the world's most successful and influential Leftist intellectual -- the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -- is a vigorous supporter of that policy. It shows that everything said to justify the Leftist hatred of Bush is mere camouflage. What they really hate is someone non-Leftist wielding great power. The hatred is purely emotional and envious -- with only the slightest pretense to reasoning tacked on. As usual, principles have nothing to do with it.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me 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.

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SOME ECONOMICS

It looks like Associated Press are now outdoing Reuters for bias: AP actually lies: "A widely circulated Associated Press article says, "The wealthiest 20 percent of households in 1973 accounted for 44 percent of total U.S. income, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Their share jumped to 50 percent in 2002.".... By using the word "jumped," the AP story clearly implies the income share of the top 20 percent "jumped to 50 percent in 2002." In fact, the share fell to 49.7 percent in 2002 from 50.1 percent in 2001. To describe a falling number as a "jump" seems remarkably shameless, even in an election year...... And although the story claims the share at the top "has steadily increased," it actually rose from 46.9 percent in 1992 to 49.8 percent in 2000 (when Bill Clinton was president), but has not risen at all since then". For the most notorious AP lie, see here.

Rich poor people: "Much is made of the fact that the US has a higher poverty rate (and in something called 'shameful,' child poverty rate) than all of the other OECD countries. It does indeed sound terribly bad doesn't it? Yet the fact that poverty rates are relative within a country, not either absolute or relative across countries is not mentioned. All that has actually been noted with such poverty rates is that the US has a wider distribution of income, not something that we didn't already know." And as Blithering Bunny notes: "Nearly half the statistically defined 'poor' have air conditioning, more than half owned cars, and more than 20,000 'poor' households have their own heated swimming pools or Jacuzzis".

Benefits of the Bush tax cut for dividends: "The new rates have made a difference since becoming law in May 2003. The tax cut not only reduced the burden on individuals, it also reduced the cost of capital to corporations. The economic benefits of the lower dividend tax rates will increase over time, and they will be even greater if Congress makes the rate cuts permanent -- and greater still, if the taxation of dividends is completely eliminated."

The recent Australian triumph over union coercion: "All workers had a win on Thursday. The High Court ruled that unions cannot compel people who are not members to pay them a fee if they receive union-negotiated pay rises. And it barred unions from taking industrial action over anything except wages and conditions in any enterprise. Union leaders are already denouncing the decision. They say non-members are bludgers, but ignore the obvious fact that sustainable pay rises are based on productivity, rather than union intervention. Senior official John Maitland says unions should be able to "talk about" anything they like, from childcare to the environment. And so they should, but stating a case does not include taking industrial action in pursuit of activist agendas".

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ELSEWHERE

Great if it happens: "Israel and Russia today signed an agreement to fight terrorism and agreed to explore every possible means to step up intelligence gathering to root out the "global scourge.""

I think Jeff Jacoby has a point in saying that, of all the speeches at the GOP convention, "no speech evoked the Gipper's legacy more truly than Schwarzenegger's"

Another fake Christian: "How sad for Christians that their bishops whisper religion, but shout politics. I say this because Melbourne's Archbishop Peter Watson has preached to the Anglican Synod on "How the nation of Australia stands at this time". In his address, Watson ticked all the Left's boxes. Tampa, bad. Border protection, inhuman. Election, a time to "talk about truth in politics". Iraq, a "mistake". Medicare, broken. University fees, too high. Global warming, deadly. Logging, evil. And so on..... Why would it have been more Christian to have done nothing as Saddam Hussein kept murdering Iraqis, mutilating critics, paying terrorists and devising terrible weapons? Why is it more Christian to believe in the myth that we can halt global warming, if such warming is indeed occurring? And surely it's not Christian to support the modern cult of tree worship, and so break the second commandment? Silent on saving babies, but loud on saving trees. Welcome to the post-Christian church".

The New York Times has been highly critical of the GOP seeking votes among Bible Christians but thinks it is great for Democrats to seek votes among "modern" Christians. No double standards there of course.

But "modern" Christians are not really modern at all, of course. As Rothbard points out, Communistic Christians go back to before the time of Luther. America was partly founded by one branch of them in fact. They abandoned communism only under the pressure of starvation.

A rather gripping parable about why America is at war in Iraq here

There are some facts and figures here about the higher birthrate among conservatives. Leftists are doomed by their own self-preoccupation.

Hard for women to have both careers and kids: "In a recent speech that was largely ignored by the news media, the United Nation's chief demographer declared that the very existence of some nations has now been endangered by fertility decline, and the international community's insistent call for "gender equality" is making the problem even worse".

There are reports that the Niger uranium story, (a story hysterically seized on by antiwar commentators as a "lie") may have had its origin in France, that it may in fact have been a set-up by the notorious French intelligence service.

I noted yesterday that the local tentacle of the Murdoch media in my home town of Brisbane gives both conservative and Leftist views a fair run. But what would a really conservative media outlet be like? The Happy Carpenter has some interesting scenarios.

I have just put up a book review here that has a bit of a laugh at the difficulties the Left have in explaining why the USA and its allies invaded Iraq.

I have just put up on LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS an article about the problem of elite influence in the Australian Labor Party.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and EDUCATION WATCH. Mirror sites here, here and here

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

The vast hatred of President Bush coming from the Left seems to focus almost entirely on his Iraq policy and a claim that it is "stupid" or dishonest. Yet the world's most successful and influential Leftist intellectual -- the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -- is a vigorous supporter of that policy. It shows that everything said to justify the Leftist hatred of Bush is mere camouflage. What they really hate is someone non-Leftist wielding great power. The hatred is purely emotional and envious -- with only the slightest pretense to reasoning tacked on. As usual, principles have nothing to do with it.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me 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.

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

THANK YOU RUPERT MURDOCH

My local Brisbane Sunday newspaper is "The Sunday Mail" -- a Murdoch title. It gives a degree of coverage to views congenial to conservatives that would, I think, make most conservative buyers of American newspapers pretty envious. In this day of the internet, one could do worse than simply log on to the Brisbane paper and not buy the local rag at all. A sampling of the stories in the most recent issue:

Home truths for feminists: "The bar desperately needs more women barristers," Mr Meagher said while still a Court of Appeal judge in 2002. "There are so many bad ones people may say women can't be good barristers and are hopeless by nature - but that is not so. It's a pity the able people don't come."

Germaine Greer: 147 school students were surveyed and not one knew who she was.

The religion of peace: "I started surfing the Islamic media. Take Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the controversial Egyptian imam who was recently fawned over by the Mayor of London even though he promotes the execution of homosexuals, the right of men to indulge in domestic violence, and the murder of innocent Jews. During the brouhaha it went unnoticed that he also wants to conquer Europe. Don't take my word for it, just listen to him on his popular al-Jazeera TV show, Sharia and Life."

Establishment church perversion: "Deep down, I guess, the Senate's "Forgotten Australians" report came as no great surprise. The extent and depths of the cruelty and depravity revealed were shocking but, somehow, the mere fact that children in institutional care had been mistreated was something of a given.... However, I don't know that we even began to suspect that abuse existed in places such as orphanages and children's homes that we fondly believed were kind and charitable. But now we know that up to 500,000 kids were in care over the past 100 years and a disgraceful number were brutalised and abused... How did this happen? More mystifying, how did those who purported to serve God or to be obedient servants of the state come to be instruments of sadism and sexual exploitation?"

Andrew Bolt's column, on how far Left and antisemitic the Greens are, also appeared but the link is to a sister newspaper in Melbourne. I have excerpted the article on GREENIE WATCH

There was also another article called "What happened to willpower?" that I could not find online so I have reproduced it here

Even "The Simpsons" cartoon was good but I don't know how to find that online. It takes such a good swipe at the decay of the schools, however, that I have put up the three central panels of it here

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PERSONAL

Unlike most bloggers, I don't say much about myself but any guy weird enough to have five regular blogs should presumably say something. So: 1). My 17 year old son told me yesterday that his bedtime reading at the moment is "Critique of pure reason" by Immanuel Kant. I didn't even know he had heard of Kant. But I was reading St Thomas Aquinas and Augustine of Hippo at his age so I understand his interest. His main enthusiasm is mathematics, however, and he is thinking of becoming an actuary. I myself taught statistics at university for many years so I understand that too. 2). I live in a 10 bedroom house but my Presbyterian upbringing makes me not like seeing things "go to waste" -- including accomodation. So I share my house with others. The others have always comprised an ethnic mix and they at the moment include an Indian, a Bangladeshi, a Chinese, a Korean and a Filipino. So I guess that must make me the world's weirdest "white supremacist" -- which is what Captain Clueless once accused me of being (because I oppose affirmative action and made fun of his support for it).

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ELSEWHERE

Email from a reader: "Some Christian fundamentalists have come to the belief that the Anti-Christ was Muhammad himself. According to this thought, the Devil was beside himself after Jesus' sacrifice and while the spread of Christianity was proceeding unimpeded throughout Europe, North Africa and the Middle East and into Asia. So he got an Arab merchant (a pederast to boot), lured him to the desert and gave him a book that taught the opposite of what Jesus said; instead of loving your enemy is hate your enemy, cut off his head and spite him and his family, and if you are not yet strong enough lie and deceive until you can (all in the Koran). As far as theological models go, I think that this thesis is actually inherently logical. One could even consider all the oil under Arab lands as the "devil's gift". On a more somber tone, but still on the same subject, I can only describe the children's massacre in Russia as nothing else but Satanic".

A normally Leftist newspaper, the "Pasadena Weekly" has just put up three pro-Bush letters. They must have got a lot of similar letters to do that. One letter aptly refers to Michael Moore's 9/11 film as the Leftist "New Testament". See here or here. The Stalinist iconography of the paper's front page is amusing too.

There is an article here that strongly reinforces Randall Parker's point about the oppressive effects of polygamy. Similar rules in the West produce similar results to what happens in Muslim lands -- fanatical and punitive puritanism.

This article says that gambling on scientific truths would help keep scientists honest. Something is needed, for sure.

An amusing example of the dilemmas that the theorists at PETA get themselves into.

I have just put up on SOCIALIZED MEDICINE some comments and quotes from Theodore Dalrymple about an alarming trend in British medicine.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and EDUCATION WATCH. Mirror sites here, here and here

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

The vast hatred of President Bush coming from the Left seems to focus almost entirely on his Iraq policy and a claim that it is "stupid" or dishonest. Yet the world's most successful and influential Leftist intellectual -- the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -- is a vigorous supporter of that policy. It shows that everything said to justify the Leftist hatred of Bush is mere camouflage. What they really hate is someone non-Leftist wielding great power. The hatred is purely emotional and envious -- with only the slightest pretense to reasoning tacked on. As usual, principles have nothing to do with it.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me 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.

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

NEW BLOG!

OK. I am insane. Mike Jericho recently described me as "the most prolific blogger in the freakin' world (not an exaggeration)", but, despite that, I have decided to start yet another daily blog called EDUCATION WATCH. I already post an average of around one item a day on education -- sometimes on "Dissecting Leftism" and sometimes on "Political Correctness Watch" -- so I am not actually envisaging any increase in my blogging. I just hope to make news and information on the education disaster easier to find. With that in mind, I have also reposted on the new blog a lot of my older stuff. But I have just put up two brand-new posts as well: One rather surprising and one very unsurprising. So look there every day or two if education is one of your concerns.

As it happens, I have also just put up some new postings on my two irregular blogs: SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. I seem to have become a one-man blogging industry! I used to write heaps when I was an academic too. And I kept that up for 20 years.

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FROM BROOKES NEWS

John Kerry adviser accuses Vietnam veterans of war crimes John Kerry's spokesman on veterans issues, John Hurley declared that John Kerry was right when he accused US troops of committing atrocities against civilians 'on a day-to-day basis'
Vietnam veterans to John Kerry: We won't be censored While John Kerry supporters Max Cleland and Jim Rassman were staging a shabby media stunt in Texas to embarrass President Bush other Vietnam veterans were throwing down the gauntlet to Kerry
Al Qaeda, China, and President Bush By striking hard and swiftly against terrorists, by imposing on them and their paymasters a terrible price, Bush only sent a vitally important message to other terrorists and their potential supporters but also to China
Immigration, economic growth and jobs Although immigration does not raise unemployment it can cut living standards
John Kerry media jackals go after swift boat veterans Deeply worried that the swift boat veterans' ads are damaging John Kerry his media pals intensified their smear campaign to destroy the credibility of these veterans

Details here

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THAT DEMOCRAT SOPHISTICATION:

Former senator John Glenn (D-Ohio) has just compared Republicans to Nazis: "You've just got to separate out fact from fiction. . . . Too often, too often, in this country, if you hear something repeated, it's the old Hitler business -- if you hear something repeated, repeated, repeated, repeated, you start to believe it," he said." The ignorant Senator is in fact referring to a famous dictum from Goebbels rather than from Hitler so let us see what else Goebbels said:

The bourgeois is about to leave the historical stage. In its place will come the class of productive workers, the working class, that has been up until today oppressed. It is beginning to fulfill its political mission. It is involved in a hard and bitter struggle for political power as it seeks to become part of the national organism. The battle began in the economic realm; it will finish in the political. It is not merely a matter of pay, not only a matter of the number of hours worked in a day-though we may never forget that these are an essential, perhaps even the most significant part of the socialist platform -- but it is much more a matter of incorporating a powerful and responsible class in the state, perhaps even to make it the dominant force in the future politics of the Fatherland

Sounds more like Kerry and Edwards to me.

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ELSEWHERE

A couple of days ago I put up a heading "President Schwarzenegger, 2008?". It's actually rather an old idea now but some people wondered what I meant by it -- given the constitutional prohibition on a non-native-born President. I think the idea is enormous fun. The rules were changed to allow FDR to serve more than the then customary (now legal) two terms, so why not change the rules for Arnie? Eligibility has been widened before -- e.g. the 19th Amendment. Think of the dilemma for the Democrats! Opposing it in Congress would contradict their all-men-are-equal, multicultural, anti-discrimination gospel. And that gospel is their main selling point. I of course give them full credit for hypocrisy and self-contradiction so it would probably have to go to a contested referendum (say, in conjunction with the mid-term elections) and that would stir up a real hornet's nest! And if it did all get through, Arnie would probably get the same sort of big majority he got in California -- so there is no doubt that the Democrats would hate the whole idea. Some already do, in fact. They would be beside themselves! There is an extended discussion of the whole issue here. And there is more on Arnie's politics here.

Predictable bias: "Covering President Bush's Thursday acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, Dan Rather and his colleagues Bob Schieffer and John Roberts provided a textbook example of liberal bias. After praising Democratic candidate John Kerry's "excellent delivery" and managing to say only one negative thing about his speech, Rather & Co. treated Bush's address with far more skepticism critiquing him on numerous points, both political and oratorical"

I suppose it's predictable that this was my favourite quote from GWB's acceptance speech. Speaking of John Kerry, he said: "My opponent takes a different approach. In the midst of war, he has called American allies, quote, a "coalition of the coerced and the bribed." That would be nations like Great Britain, Poland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark, El Salvador, Australia, and others--allies that deserve the respect of all Americans, not the scorn of a politician. I respect every soldier, from every country, who serves beside us in the hard work of history. America is grateful, and America will not forget". And I am also of course pleased to hear that it got huge applause. And how refreshing to hear an American being justly proud of his country: "Now we go forward --grateful for our freedom, faithful to our cause, and confident in the future of the greatest nation on earth"

Great to hear this too: "Ronald Reagan's elder son said yesterday that his father believed 'freedom is never more than one generation from extinction' as he delivered the four-day convention's only official tribute to one of the party's most powerful forces. 'My father believed that God had a plan for his life, for every life, and for the life of our nation,' Michael Reagan said in a five-minute speech interrupted repeatedly by thunderous applause. 'He wasn't just a great communicator, he communicated great ideas.

The Left are getting desperate. They are now telling utterly foolish lies. Once again, "psychopathic" is the only reasonable way of describing a lie that can so easily be found out.

Another derisive comment on John Kerry's incredible lie about his dog. And things must be bad when even a Boston newspaper is turning on him.

Email from a reader: "Today on the leftist National Public Radio (NPR), I heard a report about the whole Russian siege ordeal. The NPR reporters described the Islamofascists as "Gunmen", "Chechnean Rebels" and "Guerillas". The word "terrorist" was only only mentioned at the end, and not by the NPR reporter ("Russians accuse the terrorists of..."). The word "Islamic" was not mentioned once".

Taranto has another shot at the absurd Andrew Sullivan: "we had just learned, by reading the ever-astute Andrew Sullivan, that Miller, a person of pallor, is a "Dixiecrat"--i.e., a segregationist. What was a white segregationist doing on stage with a black man?"

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH and GUN WATCH and EDUCATION WATCH. Mirror sites here, here and here

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The vast hatred of President Bush coming from the Left seems to focus almost entirely on his Iraq policy and a claim that it is "stupid" or dishonest. Yet the world's most successful and influential Leftist intellectual -- the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -- is a vigorous supporter of that policy. It shows that everything said to justify the Leftist hatred of Bush is mere camouflage. What they really hate is someone non-Leftist wielding great power. The hatred is purely emotional and envious -- with only the slightest pretense to reasoning tacked on. As usual, principles have nothing to do with it.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

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