AN AMUSING "LEFTIST EVANGELICAL"

There is an interview with Jim Wallis the editor of Sojourners in the Leftist Mother Jones magazine in which Wallis tries to explain why Christians should be Leftists. Being a scripture blogger, I would have to write a very long article to point out all the dubious theology in the interview but I thought I might point out a couple of points that amused me. Some excerpts first:

"The Right is comfortable with the language of religion, values, God talk. So much so that they sometimes claim to own that territory. Or own God. But then they narrow everything down to one or two issues: abortion and gay marriage. I am an evangelical Christian, and I can't ignore thousands of verses in the Bible on [another] subject, which is poverty.... Jesus didn't speak at all about homosexuality. There are about 12 verses in the Bible that touch on that question. Most of them are very contextual. There are thousands of verses on poverty. I don't hear a lot of that conversation"

Notice how he just changes the subject on abortion. He says he can't ignore thousands of verses about poverty but he can apparently ignore verses relevant to abortion. And how about this verse? How does this fit in with the Leftist crusade to eliminate poverty? "For ye have the poor always with you" (Matthew 26:11). I guess that one can be ignored too. And how is the context going to change the meaning of Romans 1:26-32 or 1 Corinthians 6:9? Both scriptures make perfectly clear that homosexuality bars one from entering Heaven so it would take a real priest of the Devil to advise people to ignore such scriptures, would it not? If you can only be a Leftist by ignoring half of the Bible I think that speaks for itself. I also have a couple of posts on my scripture blog relevant to the Wallis misrepresentations. See here and here.

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ELSEWHERE

There is an article here, by disgraced Australian Leftist Richard Butler, that is apparently very popular in Leftist circles at the moment. He argues with remarkable logic that America and Israel should "[keep] their side of the bargain" as promised in the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Since Israel was never in the treaty, it is a great mystery to figure out what bargain Butler is referring to. The treaty is however a cold war relic so should probably be re-negotiated if time permitted. The Iran problem is an imminent one however. And only someone as strange as Richard Butler (or perhaps Jimmy Carter) would suggest that America could stop Iran from developing nukes by itself demolishing its nukes. America has shown its responsibility and restraint with nukes by not using them for 60 years. Anybody who sees signs of responsibility and restraint in the Islamists is living in cloud-cuckoo land.

Wonders will never cease! The BBC has just broadcast a TV program that tells it like it is about Britain's immigration problems and it looks like the Dutch have gone off the whole EU idea.

Leftist persuasion methods have not changed much since Stalin: "Police say Michelle Fernandez, 35, was chased for miles Tuesday by an irate 31-year-old Tampa man who cursed at her as he held up an anti-Bush sign and tried to run her off the road. His sign, about the size of a business letter, read: Never Forget Bush's Illegal Oil War Murdered Thousands in Iraq. "I guess this was a disgruntled Democrat," Tampa Police spokesman Joe Durkin said. "Maybe he has that sign with him so he's prepared any time he comes up against a Republican." Police arrested Nathan Alan Winkler at his home on N Cleveland Street near Hyde Park within an hour of the incident...."I was just almost run off the road by a man," she told the dispatcher.... "He told our officers that he just got mad at her, so he went after her," Durkin said.... "This could have been tragic, for her and her children and for other people on the road as this was going on," Durkin said. ..... Records show Winkler has been registered as a Democrat since 1996 .... Michelle Fernandez said Wednesday night, her nerves still frayed. "But here he is protesting the war and lost lives, and he is going to put me and my children in danger?"

U.N. still the terrorists' friend: "The United Nations must recognize Hezbollah as a force to be reckoned with in implementing the U.N. resolution calling for the withdrawal of all Syrian forces from Lebanon and the disarmament of the country's militias, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Tuesday.... Annan said the world needs to accept that in every society different groups may hold different views.... "But even the Hezbollah - if I read the message on the placards they are using - they are talking about non-interference by outsiders ... which is not entirely at odds with the Security Council resolution, that there should be withdrawal of Syrian troops," Annan told reporters".

Paradox of Illinois Laws: "No kids, stop playing video games!! You should be having sex and getting abortions! Yes, that's right. In Illinois if you are under 18 you can't get your ears pierced, take medicine in school, open a bank account, get a job, or for the most part go to the bathroom without your parents permission. Now you can't buy video games (and this is NOT a defense of those games), but you can get an abortion. You can't be trusted with Grand Theft Auto but you can be trusted to make life or death decisions without a parent. This is the logic of a blue state".

The Alamo: Something Leftists will never understand: "It is that time of year for me to remind my readers about the magnificent stand by the defenders of The Alamo back in 1836. The Alamo fell on March 6 of that year. For more than 13 days, 186 brave and determined patriots withstood Santa Anna's seasoned army of over 5,000 troops. To a man, the defenders of that mission fort knew they would never leave those ramparts alive. They had several opportunities to leave and live, yet they chose to fight and die. How foolish they must look to this generation of spoiled Americans! It is difficult to recall that stouthearted men such as Davy Crockett, Will Travis and Jim Bowie really existed. ... There was something different about them, however. They possessed a commitment to liberty that transcended personal safety and comfort."

Bigoted NAACP: "Doesn't anyone wonder why the NAACP does not have events celebrating the first black woman secretary of state? Why does an organization whose mission is to advance the lot of blacks not celebrate Clarence Thomas, our black Supreme Court justice?"

The poor old Leftists! Still answering arguments with abuse: "a large part of the conservative blogosphere is nothing more than old style slime artists with a shiny new medium to abuse, while another large part either wittingly or unwittingly passes along their swill as a supposed groundswell of grass roots outrage. Peek underneath the rock and it's not a pretty sight".

My latest posting on MarxWords notes that Marx lived high on his father's money. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" has some comments and challenges from a Christadelphian.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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 NAZI AMERICAN CHRISTIANS AGAIN

My brief derisive comment of a couple of days ago about a post on Daily Kos comparing American Christians to Nazis was taken up by Salon's Daou Report so got a few Leftist readers. It evidently hit a nerve as I got quite a few emails from Leftists about it. So although I would not normally dignify such febrile accusations with a serious attempt at reply, I feel I should mention the points raised in the emails and say why they are wrong.

The most common claim was that just because Hitler called himself a socialist does not mean that he really was one. I have no knowledge of any party calling itself socialist that is/was not in fact socialist but the essential point is that Hitler was a socialist as judged by his deeds too. He put all German industry under tight government and party control. There was a Nazi party commissar in every factory to make sure that the State's will was done. If that is not socialism what would be? For fuller details of just how socialist the Nazis were see here.

The second point raised was that Hitler did in his speeches from time to time claim to be a Christian. So therefore all Christians are Nazis? To say so is of course a gross logical fallacy -- rather like saying that all Chihuahuas are dogs therefore all dogs are Chihuahuas. But again the essential point is that Hitler should be judged by his deeds. He did nothing pro-Christian that I am aware of and sent to the camps heaps of people who WERE faithful Christians. He also promoted Nazism as an alternative to Christianity with ceremonies and beliefs that went back to pre-Christian paganism. He was as much a fake Christian as he was a real socialist. Like Leftists today, he had no time for real Christianity, only Christianity that parroted the Party line.

A third point made by one writer was that the Serbs are 20th century Christians who carried out mass murder. Again we have the Chihuahua fallacy of course but aside from that the point is that the Serbs themselves referred to what they were doing as ETHNIC cleansing. It was an ethnic war, not a religious war. To outsiders all Yugoslavs look much the same but that means nothing. To outsiders Canadians and Americans look and sound the same too but try telling almost any Canadian that he is just the same as an American and see what reply you get! So ethnic or other differences do not have to be great to be deeply felt. And comparing American Christians to the Serb butchers is as inaccurate and as grossly offensive as comparing them to the Nazis of course. What the Serbs WERE is socialists. Their leader, Milosevic, was in fact one of their previous bosses under Communism.

A point I have not mentioned so far is that the Daily Kos post I initially commented on is part of a constant round of claims on Leftist sites about how Fascist America in general has become under Republican rule (e.g. here). The old Laurence Britt 14-point definition of Fascism -- which conspicuously omits Fascism's socialist characteristics -- seems to be enjoying a new round of popularity, and a sermon incorporating it by Davidson Loehr has been reproduced on Leftist blogs ad nauseam. I have had a couple of shots at that sort of nonsense already recently (see here and here) so will not go over old ground again but I do want to draw attention to a pretty good deflation of the idea from a Leftist source: See Frameshop. There is also an impassioned reply to the original Britt article here. And for a comprehensive account of what historical Fascism actually was see here. And for an account of the time when America DID go close to Fascist rule see here.

(An earlier version of this post appeared on Blogger News)

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ELSEWHERE

Ethics: Keith Burgess Jackson has just put up a simplified taxonomy of metaethical positions which divides them into either consequentialist or deontological ones. Since I regard ethical statements as being usually translatable into ordinary empirical statements, I suppose it is no surprise that I do not feel comfortable with that classification. I think that most "is right", "is good" or "ought" statement boil down to "leads to generally desired long-term consequences" statements so, while I am clearly a consequentialist in that regard, I also think such statements have truth value -- they can be tested -- so that makes me a sort of deontologist too, I think. So I utterly reject moral relativism -- because it denies that moral statements can be tested or have truth value. I think, for instance, that "honesty is right" is not only true but testably true (i.e. one can at least in theory test whether or not honesty does usually lead to generally desired long-term consequences) and that anybody who denies that such a statement can be evaluated or compared in any way is not being serious. I am happy to concede however that people can use moral language in ways other than what I have just described and I say more about that here.

China pisses into the wind: "Chinese officials have recently demanded that the Australian government "review" its 50-year-old treaty with the United States. Australia "needs to be careful," Beijing Foreign Ministry official He Yafei reportedly warned, lest it wind up in a confrontation with China as part of its treaty obligations to the United States"

I have just put up here an article by a disillusioned black Democrat who details the very long history of oppression of blacks by Democrats. A very curious thing about this article is that it has been taken down from everywhere where it originally appeared -- perhaps because it uses the "n" word -- as blacks are wont to do. The High Court of Australia has recently ruled that the "n" word is not offensive in Australia so I will re-post the article on an Australian site if need be.

Scott Hogenson has some choice comments about the hypocritical silence from the Left about an inexperinced blogger being given access to White House press briefings -- after they howled blue murder about an inexperienced conservative journalist being given access.

Zacht Ei has the background on the dummo Italian journalist who was kidnapped in Iraq and then came under U.S. fire. She was sure that the Islamists would welcome Communists!

My latest posting on MarxWords notes that Marx was hopeless with money. No wonder he was such a naive economist! My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at the Ascension.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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FROM BROOKES NEWS

War, destruction and Keynesian madness Keynesians are making the insane argument that wholesale destruction leads to greater and more advanced investments and thus raises living standards
Syrian Intellectuals call on Syria's President Al-Assad to withdraw from Lebanon Syrian Intellectuals call on Syria's President Al-Assad to withdraw from Lebanon
Bastiat's "Unwanted Goods" Bastiat was a fairly dry-witted writer, but his criticisms of 19th century France's policies are integral to today's world
Do not believe any of the news about Israel that's fit to print Folks, it pains me as a newspaper columnist to say this, but, you really should not believe anything you read in those lying newspapers
Castro proves embargo foes wrong Free-market wizards' theorems and equations don't allow for variables like "Castroism". So they keep plugging in China, Vietnam, Poland, etc

Details here

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ELSEWHERE

Kos is once again trying to tip things on their ear. He seems to agree with GWB over his attempts to cut out government pork for cotton farmers (put in place by Democrats -- including "Great Society" LBJ) but at the same time seems to think the whole thing discredits Republicans! Go figure! I would have thought it shows GWB's political courage and sincerity about cutting out waste.

Poor old Liberal Avenger is still smarting about the time I pointed out his hypocrisy. Though he has nothing other than abuse to offer: No reference to the facts at issue or rational argument of any kind. He has obviously learnt from Engels. And he still can't spell either. Maybe someone should tell him what those wiggly lines in his word processor are for.

Britain's Independent (One of the world's most misnamed papers) has joined the "Was Bush right?" chorus: "But however circumscribed, the first phase of Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon is another sign of change across the Middle East.... It is barely six weeks since the US President delivered his second inaugural address, a paean to liberty and democracy that espoused the goal of "ending tyranny in our world". Reactions around the world ranged from alarm to amused scorn, from fears of a new round of "regime changes" imposed by an all-powerful American military, to suspicions in the salons of Europe that this time Mr Bush, never celebrated for his grasp of world affairs, had finally lost it. No one imagined that events would so soon cause the President's opponents around the world to question whether he had got it right" And Publius Pundit details some pro-democracy demonstrations in Kuwait and other places we don't normally hear much about. There are even signs of hope in Vietnam. Daniel Pipes is right to be cautious about it all but GWB does seem to have made absolute monkeys out of his critics now. Those of us who have supported him throughout are certainly laughing.

Fake rally: "The giant Hezbollah rally that drew nearly half a million purported supporters of Syria's occupation of Lebanon actually was a staged hoax with non-Lebanese citizens, Syrian workers, students and municipal employees coerced into joining the protest, former Lebanese Prime Minister Michel Aoun told WorldNetDaily in an exclusive interview this morning".

Amusing: The NY Review of Books is making a new attempt to explain last November's Republican victory. All that they have come up with, however, is the old George Lakoff nonsense that Bush portrayed himself as "masculine" and Kerry as "feminine". Since there are more female voters than male ones that should have been a LOSING strategy but our Leftists wiseheads don't seem to have thought of that! Nor do they explain how GWB split the male/female vote roughly 50/50. If his appeal was just masculine, shouldn't a preponderance of men have voted for him? They don't even consider that.

Good news from California: "Three more Newcastle residents have been arrested in connection with the attempted firebombing of a Lincoln residential construction site in a plot the FBI says was hatched at a Christmas Eve party.... The three are accused, along with Ryan Daniel Lewis, 21, of conspiring to plant firebombs at two home construction sites on Flores Court at the Twelve Bridges development, one of a string of incidents the FBI believes is the work of the radical Earth Liberation Front".

Dutch flight: "Some 49,000 people emigrated from the Netherlands last year, the highest figure since 1954, Statistics Netherlands said on Monday..... But besides the sluggish Dutch economy, immigration and integration concerns are reportedly contributing to pessimism about the future of the Netherlands. This is in turn reportedly leading to a white Middle Class flight away from the Lowlands. And despite the fact that, emigrants rarely cited a fear of militant Islam as their main reason for packing their bags, the killing of filmmaker Theo van Gogh, a fierce critic of fundamentalist Islam, last November seems to have been a catalyst, The New York Times reported last month. The number of visitors to the website www.emigratie.nl jumped sharply after the assassination. Canadian, Australian and New Zealand diplomats in the Netherlands told The New York Times that while immigration papers were processed in their home capitals, embassy officials in The Hague had been swamped by inquiries in recent months".

Wow! The times sure are a-changing a lot faster than Bob Dylan ever envisaged: The first blogger has now been admitted to a White House news briefing.

Arnie is doing well at fundraising for his 2006 run to be returned as California Governor. A lot of his contributions are coming from the East Coast even. A very popular man -- surely a shoo-in for 2006.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with lots to read.

My latest posting on MarxWords notes that Engels was looking forward to a time of revenge. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at whether Jesus existed or not.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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SO MUCH FOR AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

Another of the Left's routine policy failures

A batch of new studies suggesting that black males in the United States are falling ever further behind other groups in health, education and employment has ignited a debate within the black community about who is to blame and what can be done. "There's a major discussion within the community about what we need to do about black males," said Peter Groff, a Colorado state senator and director of the Center for African American Policy at the University of Denver.

Traditionally, many black leaders have blamed the legacy of slavery, institutional racism and poverty for the problems faced by blacks in general and men in particular. But comedian Bill Cosby rejected that approach in two provocative speeches last summer, in which he called on fellow blacks to stop blaming society for their troubles and start looking at themselves. Attacking urban "hip hop" culture and the collapse of the two-parent family, Cosby challenged those within the black community who opposed "washing their dirty laundry in public." "Your dirty laundry gets out of school at 2:30 every day, it's cursing and calling each other nigger as they're walking up and down the street. They think they're hip. They can't read; they can't write. They're laughing and giggling, and they're going nowhere," Cosby said.....

Whatever the causes, the latest figures paint a bleak picture. For example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in December that 51 percent of all HIV diagnoses were among blacks, who make up less than 13 percent of the population..... Black men live an average of 7.1 years less than other racial groups and experience disproportionately higher mortality in every single leading causes of death..... Over the past decade, the high school graduation rate for black men has fallen to 43 percent, while that of black women has risen to 56 percent..... A report in June for the Alternative Schools Network found that in 2002 one in every four black men in the United States was permanently unemployed, a rate double that of white men and 70 percent higher than among Asian and Hispanic men.... In its most recent report on the nation's prison population, the Department of Justice found that at the end of 2003, over 9 percent of all black males aged 26 to 29 were incarcerated, compared to 2.6 percent of Hispanics and 1.1 percent of whites.

And nobody mentions that welfare might be part of the problem. See here

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LEFTIST REALITY DENIAL AGAIN

There is a popular post on Daily Kos at the moment by a descendant of a Jewish survivor of the Nazi concentration camps. His conclusion about what gave rise to those camps?

"Now when I see the hate and bigotry that comes out of those that call them "Christians" or "Moral People", I know that this is how it began seven decades ago in Europe. It was too late, when people finally woke up, millions had been carted away in cattle cars to their deaths. I don't want to see that here or anywhere else. I do not want there to be cattle cars filled with people that these hate mongers scream out against. I do not want to see gays, liberals, Mexicans, hippies, Hollywood Actors or anyone else have to be tattooed with a number".

So the Christians were responsible for Hitler and the current group most similar to the Nazis are Christians. The fact that Hitler was a socialist and that he persecuted Christians is not admitted. The fact that Leftists from Marx & Engels onwards have been filled with hate for vast sections of the human race is not admitted. The fact that Christians had NOTHING to do with any of the vast genocides of the 20th century is not admitted. The fact that no Christian group has sent or tried to send any gays, liberals, Mexicans, hippies or Hollywood actors to concentration camps is not admitted. That's quite a delusional system he's got there but reality is so pesky for Leftists that they need such delusions.

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ELSEWHERE

A great victory for jobs: "The Senate defeated dueling proposals Monday to raise the $5.15-an-hour minimum wage one backed by organized labor, the other salted with pro-business provisions in a day of skirmishing that reflected Republican gains in last fall's elections. Both plans fell well short of the 60 votes needed to advance"

Syria's friend: "Responding to three weeks of anti-Syria demonstrations, a massive, Hezbollah-organized rally filled a central Beirut square Tuesday to show support for Syria and reject a U.N. resolution that calls for complete and immediate withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon".

V.D. Hanson: "The invasion of Iraq was not to loot its oil treasure, but more likely to cease the recycling of its petrodollars that went to terrorists and weapons procurement..... Those who scream ``no blood for oil'' would do better to chant ``no oil money for bloody terrorists and dictators.''

Leftist false prophets: "While liberals clung to the peculiar notion that Arabs don't mind being oppressed, so long as they are being oppressed by dictators who hate the United States, Bush believed Muslims would embrace liberty and democracy if the tyrants' boots were removed from their necks. He then proceeded to remove those boots in Afghanistan and Iraq. And now the "Arab street" has spoken in a manner liberals never expected.... Liberals underestimate what can be accomplished by courage and resolve because these are not qualities they possess."

There is a very touching story here from the son of a survivor of the Armenian genocide who found refuge in America.

The usual Leftist exhibitionists: "Prince Charles rebuffed bare-breasted protesters, ignored abusive anti-monarchists and battled a cold blast on a whirlwind visit to Wellington yesterday. Two women were arrested after a topless display before the prince in Civic Square as they protested against colonisation and for the right to breast cancer screening.... Protesters Hanah Plante, 22, and Holly Emma Goldman were arrested after exposing their breasts. Plante had "Get your colonisation shame off my breasts" written across her chest and later said she was protesting against colonialism, which meant women could no longer go bare-breasted."

There is an interesting email on Gun Watch about the various weapons being used in Iraq.

My latest posting on MarxWords notes that Engels advocated abuse a method of argument. Leftists have certainly learnt THAT lesson! My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks again at why Jesus was not recognized after his resurrection.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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TUESDAY ROUNDUP

Once again I pick out what I think are my best posts for the week:

On Dissecting Leftism I have some comments about fake compassion and its motives

On Political Correctness Watch I note an intolerant and uncompassionate peacenik church

On Greenie Watch I note a huge Greenie blunder over depleted uranium munitions

On Education Watch I note the lockstep Leftists at UNC Chapel Hill

On Gun Watch I have the story of a Texas hero

On Socialized Medicine I note evidence that American medicine is better for you than British medicine

On A Scripture blog I ask why Jesus was generally not recognized after his resurrection

On Leftists as Elitists I note how the media elite are hiding good news from Iraq

On MarxWords I note that Marx mocked ideals of freedom, justice and equality

On Majority Rights I note the decay of the British police force.

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ELSEWHERE

It's all coming out now about the Communist Italian journalist who was released by the terrorists and then shot up by U.S. forces. The car WAS speeding and Italy DID pay a huge ransom, thus encouraging more kidnapping.

Australia deports its illegals: "Seventy-four illegal migrant workers have been deported on a charter flight after a series of raids in regional Victoria. Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said the 57 Malaysians and 17 Thais had been found over the past three weeks, most of them working on farms in the Goulburn Valley. The 48 men and 26 women were flown out on a charter flight to Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok yesterday. Senator Vanstone defended the use of a charter flight as the most cost-effective option given the size of the group. "The success of operations such as this, completed yesterday, should send a strong message that the government does not tolerate people living and working illegally in this country," she said."

The usual Leftist attack on jobs: "Asking Democrats if they favor an increase in the minimum wage is like asking Martha Stewart if she'd mind sharing some decorating ideas. There are few things they'd rather do, and Sen. Ted Kennedy thinks it is high time. The Massachusetts Democrat is offering a measure that would boost the wage floor from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour over the next two years. .... Although you can force employers to pay their workers more, you can't force them to employ people. If you raise the tax on cigarettes by $2.10 a pack, people will smoke fewer cigarettes. The minimum wage functions as a tax on hiring low-wage workers, which means companies will look for ways to do without them. Economists have always taken this effect as an unfortunate reality. But a few years ago, ardent proponents of wishful thinking hailed a study that seemed to confirm their hopes. Princeton economists David Card and Alan Krueger looked at what happened in New Jersey when it raised its minimum wage and neighboring Pennsylvania didn't. Far from losing jobs, they reported, New Jersey enjoyed a boom in hiring compared to its neighbor.... As it happens, the study fared poorly under scrutiny. Economists David Neumark of Michigan State University and William Wascher of the Federal Reserve Board got more comprehensive data and found that actually, New Jersey didn't gain jobs compared to Pennsylvania--it lost them".

Bush gets it right again: "The economy is on a tear. You might not know this from coverage in the mainstream media, which may have a built-in bias against George W. Bush. Sure, some big outlets like the New York Times have come around at least somewhat on the president's freedom-and-democracy revolution in the Middle East. But they're not about to concede on the economic power of lower marginal tax-rate incentives. Too bad, because the evidence is overwhelming that the supply-side tax cuts enacted in the spring of 2003 have triggered an economic boom. Yes, I will call it the Bush boom..... Since May 2003 - which not coincidentally was the debut period for Bush's tax cuts on personal income, dividends, and capital gains - the economy has generated 3 million new jobs. Using the Labor Department's household survey, 2.6 million more people have been employed since the tax cuts. The unemployment rate has dropped to 5.4 percent from 6.3 percent. Weekly unemployment claims have fallen to 300,700 - the lowest since late 2000". See also PoliPundit.

Moscow Moved Weapons to Syria and Lebanon : "According to a former top Bush administration official, Russian special forces teams moved weapons of mass destruction out of Iraq to Syria. "I am absolutely sure that Russian Spetsnatz units moved WMD out of Iraq before the war," stated John Shaw, the former deputy undersecretary for international technology security. According to Shaw, Russian units hid Saddam's arsenal inside Syria and in Lebanon's Bekka valley. "While in Iraq I uncovered detailed information that Spetsnatz units shredded records and moved all WMD and specified advanced munitions out of Iraq to Syria and Lebanon," stated Shaw during an exclusive interview. "I received information from several sources naming the exact Russian units, what they took and where they took both WMD materials and conventional explosives"."

There is a good debunking here of the many nutty conspiracy theories about 9/11.

My latest posting on MarxWords notes that Marx saw people as "debris". My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at predestination and the 39 Articles of the Church of England.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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DO-GOODER PATERNALISM DISASTROUS FOR AUSTRALIAN BLACKS

The Centre for Independent Studies has just issued a seminal paper. It's called A New Deal for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders in Remote Communities. It makes out a compelling case that the existing deal is a disaster and that the main beneficiaries of the present arrangements are a parasitic and incompetent class of whites in the so-called caring professions..... In the process, they provide the basis for a long-overdue revaluation of the policies of H.C. (Nugget) Coombs.

Coombs, a former governor of the Reserve Bank, was the principal author of a paper called A Certain Heritage, published in 1983. Hughes and Warin call it "a blueprint" for "a socialist experiment - advocating communal land ownership, supported by substantial welfare transfers". Its aim was "to create an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander hunter-gatherer utopia that would culminate in a nation independent from the rest of Australia". Put as baldly as that, the whole notion sounds ridiculous. Part of the authors' point is that it always was ridiculous. The tragedy, as they see it, is that too few of the sensible people on the Left or the sceptics on the Right have had the courage to speak freely about dreadful social policy that has had such dire consequences for an already vulnerable underclass.....

As Hughes and Warin put it: "Nowhere in the world has communal land ownership ever led to economic development. Attempting to replicate hunter-gatherer groups in fixed locations created remote, fragmented communities that cannot support jobs and incomes." As a result, education, health, life expectancy, housing and related gaps between remote community dwellers and other Australians have widened. Alcoholism, substance abuse and crime have escalated. They conclude that "any group, regardless of ethnic origin, subjected to this experiment, with all energies deflected from economic to cultural activities, would have been condemned to the same fate". .....

I asked Hughes to expand on the paradox of a man of palpably good intentions being the source of so much misery. She explains it largely in terms of the millennial fantasies about noble savages that were such a pronounced feature of the times. "Coombs's compassion is very understandable," Hughes says. "It is not, however, understandable how a professional economist could formulate a utopian dream of hunter-gatherers living in remote communities, far away from the centres to which Aboriginal people were being attracted by access to education, health and improved housing.....

More here

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ELSEWHERE

"Liberals" still love Commos: "Why has John Kerry sponsored a Senate resolution honoring a Stalinist who championed racial separatism? The Soviet Union awarded W.E.B. Du Bois the Lenin Peace Prize. Maoist China staged a national holiday in his honor in 1959. Now, for reasons unexplained, the Democratic Party's 2004 presidential nominee seeks to honor Du Bois too. Kerry's efforts to honor Du Bois have been joined by fellow Bay State Democrat Ed Markey, who, along with more than three-dozen colleagues, has advanced a similar resolution in the House of Representatives."

Childish Europeans: "One reason that Europe understands so well the braggadocio and sense of inferiority of the impotent Muslim world is that it suffers precisely from some of these same maladies in its own problematic relationship with the United States. A Muslim in Europe who puts a picture of bin Laden on his wall is the equivalent of a European chanting that Bush is Hitler"

Theodore Dalrymple on bureaucratic Britain: "I think we are less free than we used to be. The weight of the state is making itself everywhere felt. In my former professional life as a doctor, for example, I was obliged more and more to obey the dictates of ministers, rather than those of my medical beliefs. Whereas when I started out on my career all that was necessary to continue in practice was that I should be qualified and that I should refrain from behaving in an egregious or outrageous manner, by the time I retired this year I had to fulfil all sorts of requirements, all of which (in this age of evidence-based medicine) were quite without evidence of use or efficacy. But that is not the real point of such requirements: they are not there to improve the quality of medical practice; they are there to let us all know who is boss. And even if they were effective, which is intrinsically very difficult to prove, they would still represent a loss of liberty. The fact is that the requirements laid down by ministers and their bureaucrats now take up fully half the time of senior doctors, when they could be doing clinical work, and this at a time of shortage of medical manpower."

The Leftist aim is destruction: "The atheistic socialist intellectual elites have been trying to destroy Western Civilization since they fomented the Counter-Culture Revolution in the 1960's; (I know: I was part of it!). They have the same aim now, only now they're trying to use the courts to accomplish what they could not by popular revolution. The Left's basic anti-Western attitude is why they've had such a hard time joining in with Bush and attacking the neojihadists; in the neojihadists the Left saw a powerful ally in their long-standing effort to destroy America, and with America the West and Western traditions. It's also why they would rather align themselves with Third World dictators like Fidel and Chavez and Mugabe.... The Left knows that they could never get any Amercian legislature to ban religious symbols and references to the Creator from all government auspices, events, objects, etc. That's why they've taken the issue to the courts: this is the Left's last chance at inflicting their atheistic anti-traditional program on to all Americans"

More evidence that the "Hobbits" were just pygmies: "The 18,000 year old human skeleton unearthed in Indonesia last year is in the spotlight once again. In the latest report published in the online edition of Science, researcher paleoneurologist Dean Falk said the skull has advanced features more like those of modern humans. Earlier he had expected to see a chimpanzee skull".

Wal-Mart: A big business with a backbone: "Hi, my name is Andrew and I'm a Wal-Martaholic. That may sound silly, but to many of my friends, shopping at Wal-Mart is something to be ashamed of, a personal weakness like alcoholism or lecherousness. It needn't be so. Wal-Mart's only 'crime' is doing its job -- selling goods to consumers -- so well that it has come to dominate the retail market. It did that by outmaneuvering and underselling its competitors for decades, thereby earning its station as the top global retailer."

I have just put online a set of notes I prepared whilst I was teaching survey research methods at the University of New South Wales many moons ago. They form an introductory course in how to use surveys to assess people's attitudes. See here. They do form the core of a university course, however, so are not for the everyday reader. Some of the matters I cover even seem to be beyond the grasp of a lot of my academic colleagues.

My latest posting on MarxWords notes how Marx advocated bloodshed. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at the post-resurrection Jesus.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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FROM BROOKES NEWS

What is causing the falling dollar? Once the gold standard was abandoned and Keynesianism took hold it was guaranteed that the world would be subjected to volatile exchange rates, depreciating currencies and recurring international financial crises
Social security: why private accounts will work Why private accounts are superior to the present social security system
Social security: what the Democrats won't tell you If the Democrats win on social security Americans can kiss their `assets and incomes' goodbye
Edward D. Wood Jr, the threat of climate change, and left-wing credulity The greens' climate change arguments have more in common with the films of Edward D. Wood Jr than anything to do with science
No such thing as a no-strings-attached welfare state The Irish State has been taking pensions off old folk who were in public nursing homes, since 1970.
Green economic illiteracy, money-grubbing CEOs and windmills Victoria's Labor Government is wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on windmill farms. These economic and scientific illiterates have been conned into this insanity by a bunch of fanatical greens and money-grubbing CEOs
US economy, free trade and jobs Some commentators are still echoing Paul Craig Roberts' concerns about the effects of free trade policies on the US economy

Details here

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ELSEWHERE

Hooray! The taxpayer wins for a change: "A World Trade Organization decision yesterday saying the U.S. illegally subsidizes its cotton farmers could threaten millions of dollars paid to wheat growers in Washington, and possibly affect other farm subsidies here as well. The case, brought by Brazil, is the first successful challenge to U.S. domestic farm aid under WTO and is likely to spur challenges to support for other crops, analysts said."

LOL: "Atheism as a theoretical position is in decline worldwide," Munich theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg said in an interview. His Oxford colleague Alister McGrath agrees. Atheism's "future seems increasingly to lie in the private beliefs of individuals rather than in the great public domain it once regarded as its habitat," Mr. McGrath wrote in the U.S. magazine, Christianity Today."

There is a good account here of the massive and useless bureaucratic mess that is the CIA. Largely because of Clinton, its only achievement is in being "diverse".

A place for race in medicine? "Ever since the fall of the Nazis, the world has tried to keep the biology of racial disparity under wraps. It has been acceptable to link racial differences to social and cultural factors. One race might underperform another because of upbringing or poverty. But suggesting biology as the cause for those differences -- like 'The Bell Curve' did a decade ago when it looked at academic achievement -- was strictly taboo. Now, a new and unexpected force -- medicine -- is pulling back the covers. By taking a close look at minute differences in people's genetic codes, researchers and drug companies are beginning to create racially based drugs and treatments. Given the prospect of targeting treatment, some scientists argue that the subject at least ought not to be taboo."

Another attack on the military: "A group of more than 50 House members filed a bill yesterday that would reverse the 12-year-old 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy and allow gays and lesbians to serve openly in uniform, arguing that the ban against them undermines national security at a time when the military is struggling to recruit soldiers. The bill represents the first major congressional effort to repeal the policy since it went into effect in 1993, under a compromise brokered by President Clinton. It also reflects an attempt by Democrats and gay-rights advocates to reframe the debate over the rights of gays and lesbians, in an era when Republicans have used the controversial same-sex marriage issue as a political club against Democrats. The measure's sponsors argue that national security demands that gay and lesbian soldiers be allowed to serve."

Further paradoxes of full equality: "What would be needed to make everyone equally well/badly off? A police state, that's what. The late Harvard political philosopher Robert Nozick made this point a crucial element of his classic Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Basic Books, 1974). He postulated the aggressive public policy of equalization, combined with the measure of liberty no one can reasonably consider giving up, namely, people spending their left over income -- after the Draconian taxation such equalization would require -- as they choose. So, millions of them would spend a bit on seeing Kobe Bryan play basketball -- or Clint Eastwood direct a movie or Britney Spears perform on stage -- which would immediately create enormous inequalities. To remedy this, what is needed? Nothing less than a massive police operation that removes the unequal wealth from these favorites and redistributes it all on a daily basis."

Saudi terrorism: "The predominance of Saudis in Iraqi terrorism also goes a long way toward explaining the other fact that Western media and government have been reluctant to admit: the role of Wahhabism as an inciter of violence against Shias. Wahhabis hate Shias even more than Christians and Jews, because, as Saudi schools (including those like the Islamic Saudi Academy in the United States) teach, Christians and Jews have their own religions that are openly opposed to Islam, but Shias want to "change Islam," which the Wahhabis consider the personal property of the Saudi rulers. Few in the West seemed to notice earlier this week when 2,000 people assembled in Hilla, near Baghdad, to protest a car bombing that killed at least 125. The demonstrators chanted "No to terrorism! No to Baathism and Wahhabism!"

Leftist lamebrain. Has he noted that Osama is a billionaire? "In the opening address of a University conference on world hunger, former Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern urged U.S. officials on Thursday to fight the war on terrorism by feeding the starving people of the world. Speaking to an audience of scholars and students in Dodds Auditorium, McGovern said humanitarianism constitutes a counterterrorism strategy because it eases discontent in developing nations. "Instead of going to war in Iraq and smashing that country," McGovern asked, "would we have done better . . . if we had spent that money on reducing hunger?""

My latest posting on MarxWords notes again what an idealist Marx wasn't. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks again at whether Christ died on a cross.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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

Kudlow on the booming U.S. economy: "Private-sector domestic output -- what Economics 101 students might remember as consumption plus investment (or C+I) -- came in at an outsized 5.5 percent growth. So what did the New York Times do with this upbeat economic story? It buried it. Rather than place the news on the front page of the business section, the Times editors shoved it on page B4. Instead of carrying a senior reporter's byline, the copy came from Reuters News Service.... The Bush-bashing New York Times just won't get honest about America's economic health and the merits of the Bush policies that have led to such strong economic performance. Even more, the Paul Krugman-influenced Times refuses to concede the economic growth power of lower marginal tax-rate incentives. These have got to be angst-filled days over at the Times. It's turning out that Bush has been just as right on the economy as he has been on the spread of freedom and democracy in the Middle East."

Truth trumps outsourcing hysteria: "'Show us the jobs!' chanted union workers at an AFL-CIO rally protesting outsourcing. They were angry that 'their' jobs were going overseas. So let's go look for the jobs that have disappeared. My colleagues at ABC News asked the AFL-CIO for its best examples of workers who lost jobs because of outsourcing. The first people they told us to talk to were Shirley and Ronnie Bernard. The Bernards used to work at a Levi's factory in Knoxville, TN. But then, Levi's sent jobs to Mexico and closed that plant. It 'tore a lot of people up because some people have been here since they were 16 years of age, and they've been here like 20-something-odd years,' one woman told the local ABC affiliate. People 'were in tears,' said a man. ... But it's restricting outsourcing that would be un-American and stupid. Outsourcing benefitsthe middle class by bringing lower prices."

A British outsourcing success: "Mr Dyson ... caused something of a stink a couple of years ago when he announced that he was moving production of his cleaners from Wiltshire, not to euroland but to Malaysia. The move cost 865 jobs, and was seen (by the union officials in particular) as another nail in the coffin of British manufacturing. Well, better that than the business failing altogether, is the obvious riposte. But look what's happened since. Manufacturing costs have come rattling down, with the concomitant impact on profits. Those profits have allowed Dyson to employ 100 extra people in Britain, not simply screwing his machines together, but doing the altogether more rewarding and valuable work of developing new products. In addition to employing 1,200 people in Malmesbury, the lower production costs mean the company pays more corporation tax for our dear Chancellor to squander on more hospital administrators (or whatever)".

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ELSEWHERE

Keith Burgess Jackson is still pretty steamed about anonymous bloggers and commenters. I myself am not bothered by that at all and I cannot really see why he is, even after reading his comments and links on the matter. As a conservative I expect human nature to be "fallen" and I go along with the Christian view that faults such as cowardice are more to be forgiven than excoriated. And I think that needing to know the author of an argument is only a whisker away from the ad hominem fallacy, in fact. And if anonymity enables someone to blog who might otherwise (say) lose his job by expressing his views publicly, is that not a plus? Jobs are not easy to come by and if you have a mortgage and a family to support, you cannot afford to take many risks. Iain Murray lost his job because of his blogging so it does happen. Good to see that Iain is blogging again too. He describes himself as a combination of a classical liberal with a Burkean conservative -- which is pretty close to what I am.

A good comment: "The real disgrace in the Lawrence Summers affair is that few biologists or biologically trained social scientists have come to his defense. There is ample evidence that male and female brains differ and that these differences manifest themselves in various ways, including choice of occupation. See here. (If you get a blue screen, click "Refresh.") Also, see here and here. Leftists love to criticize the scientific illiteracy of religious people. When can we expect to hear them criticize the scientific illiteracy of feminists? It's a disgraceful double standard: criticize those you dislike; remain silent about those you like."

Hugh Hewitt notes the almost incredible fact that the L.A. Times is trying to whitewash North Korea: "Have the editors no conscience and no shame? Promoting the left at home is one thing, and an aggravating thing at that, but pimping for a ruthless killer regime that exports nuclear technology and murders hundreds of thousands?" The article that Hugh is commenting on is here. And Powerline has an update.

Value for money: "Britain has paid 100 BILLION pounds to Brussels over 18 years, MPs revealed last night. A staggering 37 billion pounds of that was paid to other EU states or swallowed up by European Commission bureaucracy or projects. Eurocrats returned 63 billion pounds to the UK between 1986 and 2003 through costly schemes - many of them "corrupt, flawed or wasteful". Billions were given to UK farmers through the Common Agricultural Policy. Shadow Europe Minister Graham Brady said: "A great deal of this money could have been spent better by Britain. We want to see powers brought back from Brussels and the EU's bureaucracy slimmed down. British taxpayers have been subsidising Spain, Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Belgium - which all receive more from Brussels coffers than they pay in. Meanwhile, the National Audit Office has rapped Brussels after the European Court of Auditors failed to give EU accounts a clean bill of health for the tenth year running.""

Biased BBC: "The BBC's reputation for fair and balanced reporting was at risk last night after top broadcaster James Naughtie blurted out his pro-Labour sympathies. In a live chat with ex-Treasury chief Ed Balls - weeks before the May 5 election - he asked: "If WE win the election, does Gordon Brown remain Chancellor. He struggled to recover, saying: "If YOU win the election." The blunder came on Radio 4's flagship Today programme. Mr Naughtie has frequently given Conservatives a rough ride in interviews while apparently giving Labour frontmen an easy time.... The slip-up is particularly embarrassing after the Beeb found its newsmen had swallowed pro-EU propaganda without finding out the facts about Europe. The Tories are already at war with the Beeb over its allegedly one-sided coverage of the 1980s miners' strike in last week's BBC1 film Faith. And it follows Lord Hutton's bombshell report last year criticising the BBC's Iraq war coverage."

My latest posting on MarxWords notes what an idealist Marx wasn't. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" discusses whether or not there are bodies in Heaven.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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WE ARE LIVING IN A REVOLUTIONARY AGE

But the revolutions are not the Leftist type, fortunately

"We are living in a revolutionary age, that started more than a quarter century ago in Spain after the death of Generalissimo Francisco Franco. At that time, hardly anyone believed it possible to go from dictatorship to democracy without great violence, and most Spaniards feared that the terrible civil war of the 1930s - which ended when Franco seized power and installed a military dictatorship - would begin anew. Instead, thanks to a remarkable generation of political leaders, some savvy priests, and the grossly underrated King Juan Carlos, Spain passed smoothly and gracefully into democracy.

It was the beginning of the Age of the Second Democratic Revolution. Spain inspired Portugal, and the second Iberian dictatorship gave way to democracy. Spain and Portugal inspired all of Latin America, and by the time Ronald Reagan left office there were only two unelected governments south of the Rio Grande: Cuba and Surinam. These successful revolutions inspired the Soviet satellites, and then the Soviet Union itself, and the global democratic revolution reached into Africa and Asia, even threatening the tyrants in Beijing.

The United States played a largely positive role in almost all these revolutions, thanks to a visionary president - Ronald Reagan - and a generation of other revolutionary leaders in the West: Walesa, Havel, Thatcher, John Paul II, Bukovsky, Sharansky, among others.

During the Reagan years, the revolution began on the periphery of the major conflict, in Iberia. Following 9/11, the revolution was brought violently to the periphery of the Middle East, in Afghanistan. It swept through Iraq, taking time to liberate Ukraine (against whose independence Bush the Elder spoke so shamefully), and now threatens Syrian hegemony over Lebanon, if not the Syrian regime itself, and has forced the Egyptian and Saudi regimes to at least a pretense of democratic change....

Our most lethal weapon against the tyrants is freedom, and it is now spreading on the wings of democratic revolution. It would be tragic if we backed off now, when revolution is gathering momentum for a glorious victory. We must be unyielding in our demand that the peoples of the Middle East design their own polities, and elect their own leaders. The first step, as it has been in both Afghanistan and Iraq, is a national referendum to choose the form of government. In Iran, the people should be asked if they want an Islamic republic. In Syria, if they want a Baathist state. In Egypt and Saudi Arabia and Libya, if they want more of the same. We should not be deterred by the cynics who warn that freedom will make things worse, because the ignorant masses will opt for the fantasmagorical caliphate of the increasingly irrelevant Osama bin Laden. Mubarak and Qadaffi and Assad and Khamenei are arresting democrats, not Islamists, and the women of Saudi Arabia are not likely to demand to remain shrouded for the rest of their lives.

Faster, please. The self-proclaimed experts have been wrong for generations. This is a revolutionary moment. Go for it".

More here

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ELSEWHERE

The recent multiple signs of democratic change in the Middle East and the emphatically pro-American revolution in Ukraine have now got a lot of Leftists really on edge. They are having to face the possibility that the man they call "Chimpy" may in fact be one of the great American Presidents. As someone who has never wavered on the rightness of the Iraq intervention and as one who cheered GWB's re-election, I think I am entitled to membership of the "I told you so" brigade. Here is a small excerpt from a grudging admission in The Guardian: "This leaves opponents of the Iraq war in a tricky position, even if the PM is not about to rub our faces in the fact. Not only did we set our face against a military adventure which seems, even if indirectly, to have triggered a series of potentially welcome side effects; we also stood against the wider world-view that George Bush represented. What should we say now? First, we ought to admit that the dark cloud of the Iraq war may have carried a silver lining.... But we should be big enough to concede that it could yet have at least one good outcome. Second, we have to say that the call for freedom throughout the Arab and Muslim world is a sound and just one - even if it is a Bush slogan"

Thousands Cheer Guard Unit's Return Home : "As Staff Sgt. Nicholas Rose cradled his 3-month-old son against a late-winter chill Tuesday, his thoughts drifted back to the sometimes deadly missions his unit endured during a year in the deserts of Iraq. "It's great to be back. I just wish everybody was back with us," the 26-year-old said after the Army National Guard unit received a hero's welcome that drew about 5,000 people to this small southeastern Illinois city near the Indiana border.... Delivering supplies and mail around Baghdad, the 160-member unit drew more than 100 mortar attacks and came under enemy fire 60 times, sustaining injuries that earned 32 Purple Hearts, said company commander Brandon Tackett. Crowds stood up to 10-deep along flag-lined streets as three charter buses dropped off soldiers for the long-awaited homecoming. In desert camouflage, guardsmen paraded past pole-mounted signs bearing their names as people cheered and cameras clicked. Two fire department ladder trucks draped a massive flag across Main Street. "They told us to expect a crowd, but I didn't expect anything like this," said Lt. John Harvey, 26. "It's overwhelming."

Constitution killers: "The Supreme Court's judicial activists are cutting off the branch on which they sit. By rejecting the law and putting their personal opinions in its place, the justices invite the people to imitate them and disregard their decrees with the same willfulness they disregard the Constitution. If Anthony Kennedy isn't bound by the framers' words, why are the people bound by his? The authority of Supreme Court justices derives from the authority of the Constitution: once they deny its authority, they deny their own. The Roper v. Simmons decision is a stunningly stark illustration of this despotism that masquerades as jurisprudence."

Interested Participant notes some whining about being ignored from the Canadian ambassador. Since Mr Ambassador does not seem to know the difference between imprecations and implications, perhaps his being ignored is inevitable.

I have recently received an interesting email about the nature of Leftism which I have posted here

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with much to read.

My latest posting on MarxWords notes Marx's contempt for democracy. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" discusses the book of Ecclesiastes.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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FAKE COMPASSION AND ITS MOTIVES

Some excerpts from a book review by Roger Sandall

In his 2003 book Conspicuous Compassion Patrick West argues that today's extravagant displays of public grief, concern, and sympathy are "about feeling good, not doing good, and illustrate not how altruistic we have become but how selfish." So it's the insincerity of the emotion displayed at events like Diana's funeral- the outright fraudulence- that deserves to be scathingly denounced. In his view what's going on is moral posturing, theatricalised compassion, public displays of cheap sentiment illustrating Wilde's remark that "a sentimentalist is someone who wants the pleasure of an emotion without paying the price for it." And in the case of conspicuous compassion, the moral kudos that goes with being seen to care......

Compassion is about helping the distressed. Conspicuous compassion is about showing off-not about results, not about feeding the hungry or bandaging those who bleed, but about various forms of moralistic self-display indulged in for their own sentimental enjoyment. In the wake of the tsunami it's important that the distinction be understood, for what Patrick West attacks is the second, not the first. In his introduction to the Australian edition of West's book Paul Comrie-Thomson helpfully contrasts the two, noting that compassion entails a commitment to alleviate a problem, while "sentimentality does not entail a commitment to do anything." Sentimental acts, he says, are accompanied by public announcements that one is `doing good'; but what the sentimentalist is mainly doing is `feeling good'.....

West's book is a useful study of moral pathology. It may well be true that the phenomenon of "recreational grief" he describes is increasingly expressed in much the same spirit as rather more mundane public events. Despite its solemn rubric, Australia's annual National Sorry Day on behalf of the Aborigines is an orchestrated apology that has now turned into a picnic outing where solidarity prevails, camaraderie overflows, and everyone has a jolly good time feeling morally superior to the rest of the world. Amidst a plethora of T-shirts, reconciliation badges, and Sorry Postcards, the masochistic appeasement of white guilt is what it is mainly about: it is most unlikely that Black Australia benefits in any way. In the theatrics of National Sorry Day, white, middle-class, feelgood politics is classically embodied.....

Yet human psychology is complicated, and I suspect that rather more is going on in displays of conspicuous compassion than author Patrick West admits. Our motives are seldom pure. They usually bring a variety of emotions and moral feelings into play. This is obvious enough in the remark of U2's Bono that "As a pop star I have two instincts. I want to have fun. And I want to change the world." And it is even more explicit in Doris Lessing's admission that "few things are more enjoyable than marching, picketing, striking, rioting; to be part of a large crowd high on singing, chanting, slogans. To be, by definition, with the forces of good against evil."

We are given to such displays of empathy because we want to be loved ourselves. Despite being healthier, richer and better-off than in living memory, we are not happier. Rather, we are more depressed than ever. This is because we have become atomised and lonely. Binding institutions such as the Church, marriage, the family and the nation have withered in the postwar era. We have turned into communities of strangers.....

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ELSEWHERE

Opinion Journal has some pretty pungent comments on the latest bit of legislation emanating from the U.S. Supreme Court. That those guys can get away with making the law up as they go along cries out for a remedy. They are only supposed to interpret the law, not dream up new laws out of thin air. This will certainly encourage use of the "nuclear option" (a Senate rule change) if the Dems try to filibuster any of GWB's Supreme Court nominees.

Those wise German socialists again: "More than 5.2 million Germans were out of work in February, new figures show. The figure of 5.216 million people, or 12.6% of the working-age population, is the highest jobless rate in Europe's biggest economy since the 1930s. The news comes as the head of Germany's panel of government economic advisers predicted growth would again stagnate. The growth warning triggered anger even from government supporters, who said the Social Democrat-Green administration of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder had to do more. "We are not going to create more jobs with growth of 1%," Harald Schartau, head of the Social Democrats in the northern state of North Rhine-Westphalia, told ZDF television. The German government insists its efforts to tackle the stubbornly-high levels of joblessness with a range of labour market reforms are only just getting under way. The core is the "Hartz-IV" programme introduced in January to shake up welfare benefits and push people back into work - even if some of the jobs are heavily subsidised" [Maybe they need some "cowboy capitalism"!]

The "Arab street" turned out to want democracy! "The return of politics to Iraq has had many blissful secondary consequences, one of them apparently minor but nonetheless, I think, important. When was the last time you heard some glib pundit employing the phrase 'The Arab Street?' I haven't actually done a Nexis search on this, but my strong impression is that the term has been, without any formal interment, laid to rest. And not a minute too soon, either. In retrospect, it's difficult to decide precisely when this annoying expression began to expire, if only from diminishing returns."

Britain toughening up? "Britain's Counter-Terrorism Minister warned the Muslim community last night that it must face the reality of being targeted by the police because of the threat from an extreme form of Islam..... Ms Blears's comments appear to conflict with the commitment by the police not to target suspects because of their race, a key recommendation of the 1999 inquiry by Sir William Macpherson into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, a black teenager. She said yesterday that Britain's 1.5 million Muslims should accept as a reality that people of Islamic appearance are more likely to be stopped and searched. "At the moment the threat is more likely to come from those associated with a most extreme form of Islam or who are falsely hiding behind Islam," she told MPs. "It means that some of our counter-terrorism powers will be disproportionately experienced by people in the Muslim community. There is no getting away from the fact." ... She said later that because the current threat came from people masquerading as Islamists, police would have that in mind when using stop-and-search powers. "That is the reality. I do not think it should go unsaid."

Moderate Dems switching: "Citing his dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party and its liberalism, Tippah County, Miss., Sheriff Brandon Vance switched parties Tuesday. "Howard Dean taking the chairmanship of the Democratic Party brought home to me that I was no longer comfortable in the Democratic Party. Dean's and the Democratic National Committee's values and beliefs are too far on the fringe for me," Vance said. Vance's decision to join the GOP continues a trend that picked up steam after Mississippi Lt. Gov. Amy Tuck switched parties prior to her successful bid for re-election. State Republican officials said four state senators, five state representatives, Public Service Commissioner Michael Callahan, and several county and municipal officials have followed Tuck since she crossed the aisle in 2003".

My latest posting on MarxWords notes that Engels despised non-Germans. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at Revelation 5 and a lamb with 7 horns and 7 eyes!

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"

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