HITLER AGAIN: MYTHS VERSUS FACT

Nazism was a popular, working-class movement but it was Green/Left, not "Rightist"

The fact that the recent Minnesota school massacre was done by a young admirer of Hitler will of course have the Leftist bloggers frothing at the mouth and trying to prove that conservatives are to blame -- because Hitler was "Rightist", you see. The fact that Hitler's most unrelenting opponent was the arch-Conservative Winston Churchill and the fact that Hitler started out his war in alliance with the Communist Stalin will not be mentioned of course. Leftists have no trouble ignoring even the most basic facts of history. And it has always been a mystery how Leftists can call "conservative" a man who imposed such vast changes on Germany -- considering that Leftists define conservatism as "opposition to change"!

What the media is notably ignoring is that, although he was no conservative, Hitler WAS a Greenie -- and the Hitler-admiring groups that the shooter was linked to were environmental extremists.

That Hitler was far closer to Communism than conservatism and that he shared almost all of his ideas with Marx & Engels is also rarely acknowledged. When Henry Ford said that "history is bunk" he could well have been describing history as it is generally taught in the schools today. But little bits of information do leak out to the public occasionally. The latest comes in the form of a book recently released in Germany. Excerpt from a review of it:

"A well-respected German historian has a radical new theory to explain a nagging question: Why did average Germans so heartily support the Nazis and Third Reich? Hitler, says Goetz Aly, was a "feel good dictator," a leader who not only made Germans feel important, but also made sure they were well cared-for by the state. To do so, he gave them huge tax breaks and introduced social benefits that even today anchor the society. He also ensured that even in the last days of the war not a single German went hungry. Despite near-constant warfare, never once during his 12 years in power did Hitler raise taxes for working class people. He also -- in great contrast to World War I -- particularly pampered soldiers and their families, offering them more than double the salaries and benefits that American and British families received. As such, most Germans saw Nazism as a "warm-hearted" protector, says Aly, author of the new book "Hitler's People's State: Robbery, Racial War and National Socialism" and currently a guest lecturer at the University of Frankfurt"

In saying "most Germans saw Nazism as a "warm-hearted" protector", the author in fact tells only half the story. As anybody who has read much of Mein Kampf should be aware, the whole book is essentially a love-song to the German people. Hitler loved his German nation and was deeply troubled by the big political divisions among them -- until he "discovered" that the divisions were not the fault of Germans themselves but rather the fault of Jewish agitators who were misleading many of them. Since many of the Communist agitators in Hitler's Vienna immediately after World War I do in fact appear to have been Jewish, his explanation had some plausibility. So Hitler told the German people that they were wonderful (a Herrenvolk or "master people"), that he would fight their enemies (the Jews), and that he would look after them in the usual paternalistic socialist way. So the German people loved him back and fought to the death for him. Simple, isn't it? There is nothing conservative about it, though. Collectivism and treating people primarily as members of groups is Leftist. Conservatives stand for individualism.

The last desperate scream of the Leftist history teachers in trying to portray Nazism as "rightist" is their accusation that Nazism was not working-class but rather "bourgeois" (middle class). I have always found this claim amusing. As Heiden (1939) and others point out at length, Hitler was a hobo until 1914 so how does a hobo get to lead a middle-class movement? And both Roberts (1938) and Heiden (1939) -- prewar anti-Nazi writers -- portray Hitler as widely revered and popular among the Germans of their day. As Heiden (1939, p. 98) put it: "The great masses of the people did not merely put up with National Socialism. They welcomed it". And Madden (1987) presents modern-day scholarly evidence derived from archival research to show that Nazis came from all social classes in large numbers. Perhaps most useful is the work of Fischer (1978), who looked at the class composition of the most active and committed Nazi group -- the members of the Sturm Abteilung (S.A., Stormtroopers, Brownshirts). He found that "the workers are over-represented in the S.A." (p. 140). In fact, in the 1933-1934 period, 69.9% of the S.A. were working class compared to 53.2% in the overall German population of that time. The Marxist claim is, then, utter nonsense and, as usual, the opposite of the truth. Mussolini, too, found supporters and adversaries in all social classes (De Felice, 1977, p. 176). And particularly in the early years of Fascism, Mussolini often attacked the bourgeoisie in his speeches!

And as Von Mises wrote in 1940:

"Unless we are utterly oblivious to the facts, we must realize that the German workers are the most reliable supporters of the Hitler regime. Nazism has won them over completely by eliminating unemployment and by reducing the entrepreneurs to the status of shop managers (Betriebsfuehrer). Big business, shopkeepers, and peasants are disappointed. Labor is well satisfied and will stand by Hitler, unless the war takes a turn which would destroy their hope for a better life after the peace treaty. Only military reverses can deprive Hitler of the backing of the German workers.

The fact that the capitalists and entrepreneurs, faced with the alternative of Communism or Nazism, chose the latter, does not require any further explanation. They preferred to live as shop managers under Hitler than to be "liquidated" as "bourgeois" by Stalin. Capitalists don't like to be killed any more than other people do"

It is in fact Communist movements that always have bourgeois leaders and mostly bourgeois supporters. The workers usually vote for more moderate Leftists. So once again we see Leftists projecting onto others things that are really true of themselves.

References:
De Felice, R. (1977) Interpretations of Fascism Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U.P.
Fischer, C.J. (1978) The occupational background of the S.A.'s rank and file membership during the depression years, 1929 to mid-1934. In: Stachura, P. The shaping of the Nazi state. London: Croom Helm.
Heiden, K. (1939) One man against Europe Harmondsworth, Mddx.: Penguin
Madden, P. (1987) The social class origins of Nazi party members as determined by occupations, 1919-1933. Social Science Quarterly 68, 263-280.
Roberts, S.H. (1938) The house that Hitler built N.Y.: Harper.

(I put up an earlier version of this post on Blogger News)

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ELSEWHERE

A disgraceful story: "A Southern Illinois woman was arrested last week after trying to intervene on behalf of her 14-year old daughter's effort to have an abortion. The girl was allegedly taken to an abortion clinic by the mother of the man allegedly to have impregnated the 14-year old".

Hey! I have just found out what the word "Soros" means (as in Leftist billionaire George Soros). It is ancient Greek for "coffin". Rather fitting when you think of the way socialism killed millions in the 20th century.

Arnie cracks down on cheats: "To the outrage of advocates for the elderly and disabled, the Schwarzenegger administration is trying to declare an emergency so the state can immediately start collecting more of the assets of Medi-Cal recipients after they die. Federal law requires the state to recoup the cost of Medi-Cal benefits provided to the low-income elderly who die leaving assets, but courts have said California's collection policies are inconsistent. In proposed emergency regulations filed last week, officials in the Department of Health Services said they wanted to start seeking repayment from the heirs of Medi-Cal recipients who shelter their homes in life estates. Life estates allow people to transfer ownership of their houses while they are still alive. Administration officials also said they would start demanding that heirs of Medi-Cal recipients repay the state for the cost of home-care services. The administration also wants to charge heirs 7 percent interest on the amount owed to the state if they are unable to pay off the entire bill at once"

Christina Hoff Sommers documents what a band of bigoted feminist viragos are the accusers of President Larry Summers at Harvard.

The truth will out: "The Minister for Economic Reform, Michael Costa, has triggered alarm for the Carr Government by stating up to 20 per cent of the state's 340,000 public servants might be surplus to requirements.... Late yesterday, a spokesman for Mr Costa strongly denied the minister had made any such observation, but half an hour later said the minister now did not wish to make any comment on private discussions about the fate of displaced workers "as a matter of principle". However, three separate accounts have been obtained by the Herald from people who attended the meeting. They say Mr Costa became inflamed when energy union officials pressed the Government to find jobs for the handful of Pacific Power workers who had yet to find new positions after the utility was dissolved two years ago. One witness said: "In the middle of the meeting, Costa just let fly that he had 340,000 workers in NSW and that maybe 20 per cent were surplus to requirement and it would be him who would do something about it.""

Carnival of the Vanities is up again. A bumper issue this time.

My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at what Paul means when he talks of a spiritual "body".

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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SHOCK, HORROR! THE NYT MENTIONS RACE AND INTELLIGENCE IN THE SAME ARTICLE

But only obliquely. It refers to IQ as "test scores". Tests of how high you can jump, perhaps? Tests of what a good shot you are? Tests of how good you are at picking stockmarket winners? They don't say. They obviously think you would KNOW which test scores are being referred to

Roland G. Fryer Jr. is 27 years old and he is an assistant professor of economics at Harvard and he is black....

When he presents a paper, Fryer is earnest and genial and excitable, sometimes carrying on like a Southern preacher. While he denies that his work is united by a grand thesis -- he is a scientist, he explains, devoted to squeezing truths from the data, wherever that may lead -- he does admit to having a mission: ''I basically want to figure out where blacks went wrong. One could rattle off all the statistics about blacks not doing so well. You can look at the black-white differential in out-of-wedlock births or infant mortality or life expectancy. Blacks are the worst-performing ethnic group on SAT's. Blacks earn less than whites. They are still just not doing well, period.''

To Fryer, the language of economics, a field proud of its coldblooded rationalism, is ideally suited for otherwise volatile conversations. ''I want to have an honest discussion about race in a time and a place where I don't think we can,'' he says. ''Blacks and whites are both to blame. As soon as you say something like, 'Well, could the black-white test-score gap be genetics?' everybody gets tensed up. But why shouldn't that be on the table?'' ....

Glaeser and Fryer, along with David M. Cutler, another Harvard economist, are the authors of a paper that traffics in one form of genetic theorizing. It addresses the six-year disparity in life expectancy for blacks versus whites, arguing that much of the gap is due to a single factor: a higher rate of salt sensitivity among African-Americans, which leads to higher rates of cardiovascular disease, stroke and kidney disease....

So here is Fryer's final anomaly: he is a man who revels in his blackness and yet also says he believes, as DuBois believed, that black underachievement cannot entirely be laid at the feet of discrimination. Fryer has a huge appetite for advocacy but a far larger appetite for science, and as a scientist he won't exclude any possibilities, including black behaviors, from the menu of factors that contribute to the black condition.

(Excerpts only above. More here)

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ELSEWHERE

An interesting finding about blog readership here: "The top states are nearly if not all Blue States - the bottom clearly Red with a few exceptions". So it looks like Leftists read blogs a lot more than conservatives do. As I pointed out some time ago, Leftist beliefs are so at variance with reality that Leftists are constantly looking for something to prop their beliefs up -- so they turn to the internet in droves for the reinforcement they need. For conservatives, however, it the opposite: Everything about everyday life confirms their beliefs so they don't need to do anything much to reassure themselves of the rightness of their beliefs. I go into all that a bit more here.

German obtuseness: "In a sputtering economy, Niles Werke shows how to get the German locomotive running again. The century-old machine-tool company is at the top of its field. Sales are expected to rise by 10 percent this year. "We expect 2005 to be another good year," says Frank Reichel, director of its Berlin plant. Defying a lagging economy, Germany's flagship engineering sector is booming. But despite plants that hum at capacity, companies like Niles aren't hiring. Its failure to create jobs is miring Germany in a political and economic crisis, making the country ground zero in a growing debate over Europe's economy..... "What we need is flexibility," says Reichel. "Our main problem is the job protection laws and regulation. Sooner or later, business will slow down again and when that happens we can't have too many people on the payroll." The problem, say analysts, is that the government, which is closely allied with labor unions, is unwilling to deregulate the labor market to the extent that economists say is necessary to boost investment and job growth..... German labor laws make it difficult for companies to reduce staff during weak business periods...."

There is a good satire here on the EU and "The Single European Tank". I suspect it's not far from the truth, in fact.

Australian Leftist historians revere Ward Churchill! "In Australia, Churchill is being presented as a scholarly authority on the Aborigines. In the newly released anthology Genocide and Settler Society, editor Dirk Moses of the University of Sydney's history department quotes Churchill's 1997 book A Little Matter of Genocide as one of his main sources on the Tasmanian Aborigines. Churchill compares the fate of the Tasmanians with that of the Jews at the hands of the Nazis..." (Via the Blithering one)

Shifts in Muslim opinion: "In Its final report, the 9/11 commission said that the United States must prevail over a 'radical ideological movement in the Islamic world.' Recent news from Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, shows that this can indeed happen. A poll commissioned by the nonprofit Terror Free Tomorrow found the first substantial shift of public opinion in the Muslim world since the beginning of the war on terrorism. More people in Indonesia now favor American efforts against terrorism than oppose them. In a dramatic turnaround, support for Osama bin Laden and terrorism have dropped significantly, while favorable opinion of the US has increased. The poll, conducted by a leading Indonesian pollster, showed that the reason for this positive change was the American response to the tsunami. Its implications are both broad and profound."

Sex-education classes attract parental opposition: "More than 200 people took part yesterday in an intense, three-hour meeting about teenage sexuality in Montgomery County public schools. The town hall meeting was sponsored by Citizens for Responsible Curriculum, a parent-run group opposed to new sex-education classes in the schools because of what they call 'moral and scientific gaps' in the curriculum. Among the concerns is a video on using a condom and elements of the curriculum that, group members say, portray homosexuality as the moral equal to heterosexuality, and fails to present alternative moral perspectives or full discussions on the health risks posed by homosexuality. 'I am shocked and appalled at what I have seen here today,' said Tonya Wilkerson, mother of a 16-year-old boy. She also said the video's failure to 'at least give equal billing to abstinence' was 'abhorrent.'"

Lost Tooth Society has a good article on the psychological connections between Leftists and Greenies.

My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at a Leftist claim that Republicans oppose what Christ stood for.

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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TUESDAY ROUNDUP

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

On Dissecting Leftism I look at what is conservatism

On Political Correctness Watch I note the Ladies Against Feminism organization

On Greenie Watch I note that where the Greenies have not banned DDT, the socialists have misused it.

On Education Watch I note that Doctorates of education are not what they seem

On Socialized Medicine I note a British hospital so bad that an elderly patient suicided rather than go back there

On Gun Watch I note that the great majority of American airline pilots are still unarmed

On Leftists as Elitists I note the ignorance of the Leftist elite

On Marx Words I give evidence of very similar thinking in Karl Marx, Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler and Franklin Delano Roosevelt

On A Scripture Blog I note two stories of creation in Genesis

On Majority Rights I note that the British elite protect Gypsies despite great opposition from ordinary English people

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Confused "thinkers": Some young Democrats have tried to come up with the "principles" of Leftism. This is one of their efforts: "It is the shared responsibility of a nation to ensure each citizen's freedom, security and equality". That is of course an echo of the French Revolution and is equally vicious: How can you have freedom and equality at the same time? Equality can only be enforced by tyranny. People are NOT equal and never will be -- any more than the Left will ever have genuine principles.

And here's an example of REAL Leftist "principles" at work. The principle? Leftists are always right: "Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg demonstrates the twisted logic of the left in her article, "Dying in Iraq Is Not a Job Opportunity." The double standard of the left is evidenced as she describes events at the City College of New York's (CCNY) Job Fair last week, at which a group of about twenty students stood in front of the National Guard table and began chanting anti-war slogans. She writes, "The situation became aggressive when the security officers came in. They looked like they were ready for action.".... Defending the protestors, Weill-Greenberg writes, "They did nothing wrong and the faculty union has demanded that all charges be dropped." ... What hyphen-woman conveniently forgets to mention is that the students were instructed to demonstrate outside the building after they told the administration of their plans. "They were not peacefully protesting," CCNY President Gregory H. Williams said in a telephone interview. "They assaulted two police officers." CCNY's public relations director Ellis Simon said that one security officer went to the hospital after being "beaten up fairly badly." Hyphen-woman. just doesn't seem to understand that recruiters also have rights. The recruiters were there legally and with the permission of CCNY. The students weren't.""

Dems lack not only principles but even ideas: "You can almost see the gleeful anticipation in the eyes of Democrats these days. After being outmaneuvered by Republicans on tax cuts and failing to reach a consensus on Iraq, they now sense a win on Social Security.... Still, over the longer term, they run a risk in challenging Bush without ideas of their own. Social Security requires a fix. It's not the largest or most imminent budgetary crisis the nation faces. That's Medicare. But it's impossible to deny that Social Security will be in a bind as baby boomers retire and live longer than previous generations.... Without a plan, Democrats risk looking unconcerned about future retirees. What's more, they risk ceding to the GOP an issue that they've dominated for 75 years. Democrats need to counter the perception that they are a party without ideas.... But a set of ideas and principles would allow them to put forward a good-faith effort to be part of a solution.... For now, the Democrats' "just say no" strategy reflects poorly on the party".

The frantic distortions of the Leftist MSM about the Schiavo case are ably demolished here. The L.A. Times is Soviet-style in its selective reporting of the facts. And more lies exposed here.

Good! Leftist liars get the chop: "The BBC today announced plans to cut 3,780 jobs to save hundreds of millions of dollars, as the world's biggest public broadcaster undergoes a major shake-up. The BBC said today it would slash 2,050 posts after 1,730 job losses confirmed earlier this month, making a total of 3,780 positions or one in seven jobs. The cuts would bring cost savings of $860 million a year to reinvest in programs -- $85 million more than first targetted by the BBC in December. Among the redundancies announced today would be 420 posts in news, 66 in sport, 150 in drama, entertainment and children's programs, 735 in the regions, 58 in new media and 424 in factual and learning".

A real escape from Islam: "Jesus saves and if you're an illegal immigrant in detention in Australia, he may save you from being sent back to where you came from. The Government's confirmed that it's reviewing the cases of 30 detainees from Iran, who've converted from Islam to Christianity. They argue that if they're forced to return to Iran they'll be persecuted, with some refugee advocates saying they could even face the death penalty".

My latest posting on "A scripture blog" takes a look at paternalistic Leftist Christians.

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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CLINTON AT DAVOS

The event at the recent World Economic Forum at Davos that most of us have heard about is the lying anti-American propaganda spewed out by Eason Jordan, head of CNN News -- propaganda that eventually led to his downfall. There were however other disgraceful events there too. Below is an account of one of them:

"The big American kahuna, of course, is not Graham Allison, and not even Sharon Stone, but Bill Clinton. He sits on a panel dealing with aid to Africa, along with Blair, Bono (the rock star), Bill Gates (Microsoft), and the presidents of South Africa and Nigeria: Mbeki and Obasanjo. The moderator of the session, French anchorwoman Christine Ockrent, wheels on Clinton, demanding to know why America is so stingy when it comes to foreign aid (did you know we were?). He answers, "Because no one will ever get beat running for Congress or president" by failing to espouse such aid. I have complimented Clinton's Davos performances before - in general, he's pretty good abroad - but he is a bit shameful here. Then it gets worse.

Clinton says, "The White House has just announced another $80 billion for the war in Iraq, and we could take half of that" and solve all of Africa's problems. The crowd whoops and cheers. This is a cheap political technique: to say, "Instead of spending money on X, we ought to spend it on Y." If Clinton thinks we should spend more on foreign aid, he should say so. And if he opposes our efforts in Iraq, he should say so. But to spite the war while calling for more aid to Africa - cheap....

But Clinton isn't through yet: He says that anyone who complains about corruption in African governments - who expresses caution about handing over money to these governments - "should be put in a closet, so no one has to listen to [him]." That, too, elicits whoops and cheers. And it is an odd thing for a democrat to say. Some of us believe that Carter is our worst ex-president ever (the opposite of the conventional wisdom). But the Arkansan is nipping at his heels".

More here

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A reasonable proposition: "May God Bless Jessica Lunsford's soul, and sooth the grief of her family with the faith and knowledge that Jessica is in a better world than ours now. Which leads us to this question: HOW DO WE MAKE OUR WORLD BETTER? I KNOW HOW: By locking up convicted child molesters for life. Punishment and prisons supposedly exist to PROTECT society. If the current laws allow our most precious and beautiful citizens - OUR CHILDREN - to be at continued risk of further harm then the laws are inadequate and must be changed!"

More Islamic democracy coming? "Protests over Kyrgyzstan's disputed parliamentary polls have turned violent, with four people reported killed in a police assault on an occupied government building in the former Soviet republic. Angered at what they saw as votes rigged to elect supporters of President Askar Akayev, protestors stormed administration buildings in several southern cities in the Central Asian state following the March 13 elections".

Minimum wage fraud: "In the United States, federal and state politicians are eager to raise the minimum legal wage -- again. They have raised the minimum legal wage a dozen times before, but they complain that it is never enough. The prices of food, clothing, and shelter keep going up faster than wages. So politicians offer to solve this problem with a new law to raise wages. Don't fall for it. Politicians are the cause of the problem, not the solution."

Corrupt Arabs: "The Palestinian Authority's decision to purchase more than 100 new vehicles for all members of the Palestinian Legislative Council and the new cabinet has drawn sharp criticism from some Palestinians. The PA's 24 ministers will each receive a German Audi A-6 car, which costs $76,000. The 86 lawmakers will be given the cheaper version of Audi, the A-4, which costs an estimated $45,000. Palestinian columnist Yahya Rabah on Thursday attacked the decision to buy the expensive vehicles at a time when the PA is cutting expenditure in many fields, and can't pay police salaries."

Far-Left ACLU: "The American Civil Liberties Union has long trumpeted itself as the protector of America's freedoms. But in a bizarre tactical decision, it has decided to abdicate that self-appointed role in exchange for membership in the shrill chorus of Bush administration opponents. The decision to file suit against Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in connection with the alleged abuse of foreign detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan places the ACLU outside of its stated mission. It also places the group firmly in opposition to an organization -- the US military -- that is actually working for what the ACLU purports to be about -- the protection of American freedoms".

Black racism OK? "At Tolliver's, a South Central barbershop where the political debate flies as fast as the haircutters' scissors, Eddie Ford bitterly denounces "Mexicans" and says he won't vote for Antonio Villaraigosa for mayor. Seated across from the 82-year-old barber, customer Tony Wafford argues for Villaraigosa over Mayor James Hahn in the May 17 runoff election. "Antonio will help bridge the gap and help break down some of this foolishness of blacks against Latinos and Latinos against blacks," the 48-year-old community activist said. From the debates in the city's barbershop to the gang warfare in the streets, friction between these two groups has been part of life in South Central since immigration transformed this predominantly African American community into one dominated by Latinos nearly two decades ago".

They are even saying it in the Sacramento Bee: "The success of January's elections in Iraq, new flashes of democracy in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and massive rallies in Lebanon are causing some critics of the Iraq war to reconsider their skepticism of President Bush's Middle East strategy. A few are pondering a question they once would have found unthinkable: Could Bush have been right about the war?"

A nice story here about one German who still feels gratitude to America. He paid a bundle to put a big American flag in the middle of a Left-wing newspaper.

My latest posting on MarxWords marks the end of the material I have to put up there. So I summarize what I see as the underlying theme in Marx's writing. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" takes a Christian look at the Greens.

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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THE U.N. MAFIA FIRES AN HONEST MAN

"A former United Nations monitor of the organization's oil-for-food program in Iraq told a congressional committee Thursday that the program had 'gaping holes' and that large amounts of aid never reached the Iraqi people. Rehan Mullick testified that by his estimate more than 20 percent of the shipments to Iraq, worth $1 billion a year, were not distributed properly, with many goods pilfered by the Iraqi military. 'A fourth or fifth of the supplies were not distributed,' he said."

Mullick worked for two years in Iraq as a data analyst for the program designed to permit Iraq, while under international economic sanctions stemming from its invasion of Kuwait in 1990, to export a limited amount of its crude oil reserves and import food, medicine and supplies screened by the United Nations. "Soon after I started my job, it became amply evident that there were gaping holes in U.N.'s efforts to meet [its] objectives," Mullick told the committee... The United Nations would routinely send contract information for approved imports to Baghdad, and U.N. staff in Iraq were expected to ensure the goods reached their destination. But Mullick said "Saddam loyalists" with jobs at the U.N. mission corrupted the program's data. "A lot of items that were held back or redirected by the government of Iraq were never observed," Mullick's statement said.

Mullick told the subcommittee that he repeatedly alerted U.N. officials of problems he observed but was rebuffed. "Each suggestion resulted in my supervisors reducing my job responsibilities," Mullick said. "This continued to occur until my only job was to run the slide projector at staff meetings." Mullick said he eventually submitted a 10-page report to U.N. headquarters in 2002 reporting that 22 percent of supplies imported under the program never reached Iraq's 27 million people. "I heard nothing," Mullick said. "Finally I was contacted and told my contract was not being renewed."

Mullick described the United Nations as having "old mafia-style management." He added in his statement, "Had the U.N. chosen to listen to and offer protection to those who blow the whistle on bureaucratic injustice and corruption, a program like oil for food would have worked more in the interest of the impoverished Iraqi people rather than their detractors."

More details here. There is a site here devoted to getting America to withdraw from the U.N.

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An email from one of my medical correspondents about Terri Schiavo: "The court record for Terrri Schiavo says she has "no cortical function" -this means that her brain waves show a flat electroencephalogram (EEG). A neurologist - a very trustworthy man - told me that this means that she has no cognitive function or awareness; The "following the balloon" test is meaningless - it can't be reliably reproduced; and even patients with only lower brain (brainstem) function do it sometimes. And such patients also show some reaction to sounds and touch. If this is true, there just isn't much to save. And Terri is NOT awake. And she is NOT going to "get better", as her parents have said. Terri's condition is NOT the same as the lady who "woke up" and "talked" after being in a coma for 20 years. The neurologist described this as a "locked in" syndrome. This is often the result of damage to the brainstem without "cortical" damage - this is caused by mechanical injury or stroke or bleeding. Terri, in contrsast, suffered "ischemic" damage - lack of flow of blood and oxygen to the brain - the cortex (thinking, consciousness, pain) is the first to be damaged - the most sensitive part of the brain to oxygen lack. The "locked in" patients may have normal brain function and be alert, as noted by EEG studies - which may demonstrate changes with stimulation and sleep patterns etc.. To the untrained eye, these two may look similar. Terri's condition is NOT the same as those who report "waking up" after years in a "coma". I believe a lot of well meaning people are sorely misinformed about Terri's condition".

Antiwar movement runs out of puff: "MoveOn.org, the Berkeley-birthed online hub that fueled anti-Bush sentiment before the invasion and now boasts 3 million members, has moved on. Critics on the left complain that it is spending too much energy on such issues as Social Security reform and Bush's judicial appointments, and not enough on opposing the occupation. MoveOn.org Executive Director Eli Pariser told liberal-leaning media critic Norman Solomon recently that the group "is seeing a broad difference of opinion among our members on how quickly the U.S. should get out of Iraq. As a grassroots-directed organization, we won't be taking any opinion which a large portion of our members disagree with."

Still some opposition to homosexuality: "Warning of divine retribution and possible violent protest, evangelical Christians and rabbis from the United States have joined forces with ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel to fight plans to hold an international gay festival in Jerusalem this summer. The WorldPride Parade, last held in Rome in 2000, is a 10-day event including street parties, workshops and a gay film festival. Jerusalem's ultra-Orthodox Jewish mayor, Uri Lupolianski, says he is powerless to interfere, as public events are licensed by the police, not City Hall. At a news conference Wednesday, California pastor Leo Giovinetti said hosting the 10-day World Pride event could bring divine retribution upon Jerusalem, citing the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorra as a precedent."

Muslims kick out Christians: ""Christian groups and some other private relief agencies are being asked to halt their work in the tsunami-ravaged Indonesian province of Aceh and leave the area by March 26, Indonesia's defense minister said yesterday. The decision likely will target Western and smaller church groups as the government moves to tighten control over reconstruction work in Aceh, the home of a decades-old separatist insurgency. 'We want each of the relief agencies to be transparent in their programs: Some of them are not clear about their mandates,' said Juwono Sudarsono during an interview in a Washington hotel. 'Aceh is mostly Muslim, and some church groups from Australia and the United States are too eager to be there and do their part,' he said. Sudarsono said his government had set March 26 some weeks ago as a target date for moving from the disaster-relief phase of post-tsunami operations to the reconstruction phase."

Israel does its part: "Israel handed control over security in this quiet desert town back to the Palestinians yesterday after weeks of haggling, highlighting the improving relations between the two sides but also the lingering suspicions after more than four years of fighting. The Israeli army dismantled the westernmost of three checkpoints surrounding Jericho and eased travel restrictions in and out of the West Bank town, but kept troops poised along a main highway nearby. ... A number of Palestinian checkpoints were erected following the Israeli moves. The handover, complete with a small signing ceremony and the lowering of an Israeli flag at the checkpoint west of Jericho, marked one of the first practical steps toward restoring Palestinian security control over the West Bank since Mahmoud Abbas was elected Palestinian president two months ago."

Well, it is clear now that Saddam DID have WMDs. Even the NYT admits it. GWB vindicated yet again. But as Christopher Hitchens asks: "This Was Not Looting. How did Saddam's best weapons plants get plundered?"

Wicked Thoughts now has a second blog -- called "Strange Justice" -- which records some of the more appalling miscarriages of justice that are happening. Very disquieting reading.

My latest posting on MarxWords notes again Engels showing his contempt for Russians. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" deals with the Bible view of the death penalty.

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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"MASS TRANSIT" -- ANOTHER STUPID ANTI-INDIVIDUAL IDEA

Boring, inconvenient, slow old buses and trains are still boring, inconvenient, slow old buses and trains no matter what you call them. And the "liberals" who advocate them ride around in SUV's, funnily enough. At least they mostly seem to have given up calling it "Rapid Transit", as rapid is exactly what it wasn't most of the time

"The new transportation bill, currently working its way through Congress, will provide more than $52 billion for mass transit.... There are just two problems with mass transit. Nobody uses it, and it costs like hell. Only 4% of Americans take public transportation to work. Even in cities they don't do it. Less than 25% of commuters in the New York metropolitan area use public transportation. Elsewhere it's far less--9.5% in San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, 1.8% in Dallas-Fort Worth. As for total travel in urban parts of America--all the comings and goings for work, school, shopping, etc.--1.7 % of those trips are made on mass transit.

Then there is the cost, which is--obviously--$52 billion. Less obviously, there's all the money spent locally keeping local mass transit systems operating. The Heritage Foundation says, "There isn't a single light rail transit system in America in which fares paid by the passengers cover the cost of their own rides." Heritage cites the Minneapolis "Hiawatha" light rail line, soon to be completed with $107 million from the transportation bill. Heritage estimates that the total expense for each ride on the Hiawatha will be $19. Commuting to work will cost $8,550 a year. If the commuter is earning minimum wage, this leaves about $1,000 a year for food, shelter and clothing. Or, if the city picks up the tab, it could have leased a BMW X-5 SUV for the commuter at about the same price".

More here:

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A good article here showing that capitalism in fact ended slavery rather than being founded on it. Excerpt: "I pointed out that slavery had been an ever-present institution throughout human history until just about 200 years ago. Why didn't slaveholders of 2,000 years ago in Europe or 500 years ago in Asia accumulate wealth that triggered economic growth comparable to ours? Why is Latin America so much poorer today than the United States, given that the Spaniards and Portuguese who settled that part of the world were enthusiastic slavers? Indeed, the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery was Brazil -- in 1888, a quarter-century after U.S. abolition. By American and western European standards, Brazil remains impoverished. And why, having abolished slavery decades before their Southern neighbors, were Northern U.S. states wealthier than Southern states before the Civil War? .... The fact is that slavery disappeared only as industrial capitalism emerged. And it disappeared first where industrial capitalism appeared first: Great Britain. This was no coincidence. Slavery was destroyed by capitalism".

"The poor" -- in what sense? "Wealthier is healthier -- and more educated, more equal for women, more electrified, automotive, and computer-literate. So the conventional wisdom in development economics has long been that to boost the prospects of the world's poor, one needs to boost their incomes. This is still true, but as World Bank economist Charles Kenny points out in a provocative article titled 'Why Are We Worried About Income? Nearly Everything that Matters is Converging,' income growth does not tell the full story. Even though some of the world's poorest people are not earning much more than they were two generations ago, they're still living much better than they were. In fact, many quality of life indicators are converging toward levels found in the richer countries."

It's true about male flight attendants: "Most studies of gays stem from a sample of convenience because the universe of the homosexual population is unknown. The flight attendants were chosen for study due to the large population of gay adult men within the profession. Men in the profession of male flight attendants are considered to be members of an underrepresented social-political group and are reported to be stigmatized. Until 1972 when men first entered the profession, flight attendant jobs were traditionally staffed by women. The findings reported in this dissertation research project indicate that the men's job selection of flight attendant reflected a choice to integrate their needs as gay men with work. The job of flight attendant was reported by many of the men as a vehicle for movement into a large group of gay men with some hope of finding companionship, sexual relationships, and in some cases, a long-term partner. The job of flight attendant was also sought as a means of escape from either family, a community, or a job that stifled being gay. Many of the participants reported that both before and after taking the job, the working atmosphere of a flight attendant was perceived as being safe for a gay man"

Consensual sex = abuse? "A bill that seeks to overhaul Missouri's child abuse reporting laws could require teachers, doctors, nurses and others to report sexually active teenagers and children to the state's abuse hot line.... Perhaps the most controversial provision of the bill is one that many say would require educators, medical personnel and other professionals to report "substantial evidence of sexual intercourse by an unmarried minor under the age of consent." Critics say the language would, in essence, require child abuse reports even of cases of consensual sex between two teens. Byrd claims the bill seeks only to target sex by children under the age of 15".

The "Arab street" turns out to be pro-democracy: "Middle Easterners in general have every reason to be inspired by what the so-called "Arab street" can accomplish. Military support from a superpower isn't necessary always and everywhere. It's only really required in countries like Iraq, where a Stalinist political system makes revolution impossible. In weaker "merely" authoritarian countries it's now a demonstrable fact that people-power can work. Right now we're seeing two revolutions at once: a literal revolution by the "Arab street" against a dictatorship, and an intellectual revolution in the West about what "Arab street" means in the first place.... The "Arab street," said the propaganda ministries of these same despicable tyrannies, was supposed to rise up against America, against the West in general, and against any so-called "moderate" pro-Western Middle East governments in particular. What else would you expect them to say? They want nothing more than to channel the rage of their own brutalized subjects toward anyone but themselves. But that's not what happened. Surprise, surprise. The Arab street -- at least in one country -- took its cue not from Osama bin Laden's jihad but from Ukraine's Orange Revolution instead".

Pretty accurate: "Liberals, and the left in general, are parasites on human society. Without the power to compel others to materially support them the members of the left would be compelled either to become rational and productive beings or literally die off".

Astute Blogger has a good post on "ignorance, arrogance and the Left"

My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Engels was paranoid about the Slavs. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" deals with the Greenie influence among evangelicals.

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

Consumer confidence and consumer spending equal twaddle Every day in some paper or other an economics commentator will solemnly write about the state of consumer confidence or spending
Australian economy: how high must interest rates go to stop the boom? The policy of unleashing an avalanche of credit into the economy triggered off an inflationary boom which eventually forced interest rates to rise
Keynesianism and interest rates Still lurking in the Keynesian woodshed is the myth that interest is a monetary phenomenon that is artificially keeping capital scarce
The myth of the neutral interest rate policy It is widely accepted that by means of suitable monetary policies the US central bank can navigate the economy towards a growth path of economic stability and prosperity. This view is false.
Phillip Adams: keeping the red flag flying and other media delights The far left's most embarrassing spruiker, Phillip Adams, is entering a twilight state of advanced, ossified senility

Details here

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Surprise! Leftist intellectuals back Cuba: "About 200 intellectuals, activists and artists from Latin America and elsewhere issued a letter Monday urging the top United Nations human rights watchdog to side with Cuba in an expected battle over the communist country's rights record..... Nobel Peace Prize laureates including Adolfo Perez Esquivel of Argentina and Rigoberta Menchu of Guatemala signed the letter, as did South Africa's Nadine Gordimer and Portugal's Jose Saramago, both recipients of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Among American signatories were actor Danny Glover, author Alice Walker and historian and activist Howard Zinn." [Leftists like Castro because when they meet him he sounds just like them. And he sounds just like them because he IS like them. The only difference is that he is in power]

Non-existent airline security again: "Federal agents arrested 27 illegal immigrants at the Piedmont/Triad International Airport in Greensboro, North Carolina. What were these guys doing when they were arrested? They were working on commercial jet airliners! You know, like the ones that al Qaeda terrorists flew into the Twin Towers on 9-11. This strikes me as a pretty lax approach to national security. These 27 men originally came from a variety of countries, including Sudan, Chile, Peru, Zimbabwe, the Philippines, Venezuela, Mexico, and Laos. But they had one thing in common: they almost all possessed valid North Carolina driver's licenses - as well as other documents including airplane-repair licenses, phony Social Security documents, counterfeit green cards, and even a falsified passport".

Border security bill added to war spending plan: "The House today added a bill aimed at tightening border security to the $81.3 billion war spending package, a politically charged measure that has drawn criticism from Mexico but praise from some lawmakers for thwarting terrorism. By voice vote, the House attached the bill that would require states to verify they aren't giving illegal immigrants drivers licenses, would give judges broader power to deport political asylum seekers whom they suspect may be terrorists and would allow the completion of a fence along the U.S.-Mexican border."

Another female columnist comments on Estrich: "Take Susan Estrich, the fiftysomething American feminist law professor and commentator, and her battle with Michael Kinsley, opinion page editor of the Los Angeles Times.... Entertaining as it is, the now-famous email exchange (at http://www.dcexaminer.com) exposes two things: that Estrich doesn't deserve a column in the Los Angeles Times because she can't write coherently; and that what "popped her cork", to use Kinsley's phrase, was actually a Los Angeles Times opinion piece ... written by a woman. Only it was the wrong sort of woman, a conservative. The catalyst for Estrich's rage was an article, headlined, "Feminist Fatale: Where are the great women thinkers?", which claimed that ideological feminism had "ghettoised and trivialised the subject matter of women's writing" and "tried to systematically shut out - and shout out - dissent". The article was by Charlotte Allen, an elegant writer who edits the inkWell weblog for the Independent Women's Forum, an American pro-woman organisation run by women, established "to combat the women-as-victim, pro-big-government ideology of radical feminism".... Estrich wanted a column in the Los Angeles Times and thought she could bully her way into one. Her brand of feminism is reserved only for women like her, which is probably why it has lost its appeal".

Peace freak: "A member of an evangelical church that preaches non- violence pulled a gun at a weekly service and fatally wounded seven parishioners before killing himself. The man, identified as Terry Ratzmann, 45, shot 11 people as he walked down the aisle through the 80-person congregation of the Living Church of God at a suburban Sheraton hotel on Saturday, then turned the gun on himself.... Neighbours said that Ratzmann was a computer programmer and avid gardener who had built a garage, a greenhouse and a filtration system that collected rainwater for fish tanks, in which he raised trout. One neighbour described him as so gentle that when rabbits got through his fence, he snared them in humane traps and drove miles to release them. "He was the quietest guy in the world, the nicest," he said".

That "diverse" old Philadelphia: "Police and prosecutors concerned with a spate of killings in the city begged the public for more help identifying murderers. District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham vowed that her office will protect witnesses, even if it means sending a moving van to their home to take them to safety the day they come forward. "We cannot only move you out of the city, we can move you out of the state; we can move you across the country," Abraham said. Within the past eight days there have been 21 homicides in Philadelphia, including three in the late-night and early morning hours after the prosecutor made her appeal Monday. The latest deaths brought Philadelphia's 2005 murder total to 78, up from 66 at the same point a year ago, police said. Homicide Capt. Richard Ross said police have had to solve most of the crimes without the public's help."

Abortion: Britain's Conservative leader has come out saying that he wants abortion to be more restricted than it now is (One in four London pregnancies now end in abortion). He has won the endorsement of the Catholic Church over his remarks but whether he will have the guts to campaign on it in the forthcoming election remains to be seen. Details here

Israeli cabinet minister and former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky is very popular in the White House so the Left loathe him. Steven Plaut has the story.

Michael Darby has re-emerged with lots of information about the state of play in disastrous Zimbabwe plus other posts on China, East Timor and slavery. See here (PDF).

The Carnival of the Vanities is up again with a big range of reading.

My latest posting on MarxWords shows Marx's contempt for Disraeli. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" deals with the "missing" resurrection appearances in Mark.

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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On behalf of all my Irish ancestors, a happy Pat's day to all!




WHAT IS CONSERVATISM?

I am always amused at how well Disraeli's propaganda has lasted. Although the idea was not original to him, it is mainly Disraeli whom we have to thank for rebranding the British Tories in the 19th century as the "Conservatives". And the reason Disraeli did that is a very modern one. Under his leadership, the Tories became a great party of reform. It was Disraeli who introduced some of Britain's first worker protection laws and who extended the vote to many working class people who had never had it before. So he named his party according to what it WASN'T in order to confuse his opponents and reassure his allies. Communists do the same thing when they label their governments as "Democratic".

So why did Disraeli lead the Tories so far down the road of reform? Because he saw that the pressure to give the vote to the workers would in the end be irresistible. There had long been agitation for it and that agitation was getting ever more energetic. So what he wanted to do was to avoid another French Revolution. He wanted the transition to majority rule to be peaceful, orderly, non-destructive and non-tyrannical. He succeeded brilliantly. He succeeded in moving the Tories away from being a party of the rich to being a party for all Englishmen and he rightly saw that working class Englishmen could be relied on for patriotism and good sense just as well as more prosperous Englishmen could be. And that is true to this day.

So while it is true that Disraeli wanted to conserve what was best from the past, conserving anything was for him no more than a means to an end. And if that end needed reform to achieve it, that was fine too. So what was he aiming at achieving by his reforms? Unlike Leftists, he was not aiming at equalizing everybody or creating the worker-led tyranny that his contemporary, Karl Marx, was advocating. He was aiming at the opposite of that. He wanted to preserve civility and avoid tyranny. He wanted people to be free to get on with their lives without interference from other people or from the State. He was part of that great tradition in English politics that values individual liberty and suspects the State. And that tradition goes back a long way in England -- right back to the time when Britannia became England about 1500 years ago. The advocates of the individual versus the collectivity have not always been called conservatives but in England they have always been there -- as I set out at length here

Even conservative intellectuals these days still sometimes fall for Disraeli's old propaganda trick (see e.g. here) and assume that the prime aim of conservatives is to conserve -- but in so doing they simply show their ignorance of history. Liberty for the individual is the prime aim of conservatives -- everything else is secondary to that. And present day politics are much like the politics of Disraeli's day. Conservatives don't want to conserve our disastrous educational and social welfare systems, they want to reform them. And they want to reform them by empowering the individual -- just as conservatives have always done.

The most loved and most influential conservative leader of the 20th century knew what conservatism was about, of course. He said: "If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism..... The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom". And if Ronald Reagan did not know what conservatism is, who would?

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Why liberty is necessary for morality: "A sad result of so explaining the merits of a free society is that it begins to look like liberty is the enemy of morality. And it is just this way that a good many people have understood the Western tradition of liberalism. They have come to believe that if you accept the Western idea of a free society, you must not care about morality at all. Indeed, arguably a great many enemies of the West hold such a view. Love the West, reject morality; love morality, reject the West. Yet this is completely wrong. In point of fact precisely the opposite is true. The reason the Western idea of a free society makes a great deal of sense is that unless people make their moral choices and act on them freely, there cannot be anything morally praiseworthy in what they do."

Scientists still prefer to work in America: "As a result, scientists once again are headed to the United States. "If you are talking about the applied sciences, like semiconductors or computing, the employment opportunities are generally considered much better in the United States because there are relatively few companies doing that kind of research work in Europe," Lynch told United Press International. The pay also is better in the United States, agreed experts who talked to UPI. "There are big pay differentials; there are (job) security, tenure-type differentials. If you are talking about pure academics then the big problem in Europe is often that the positions offered to young academics are a year long, no more. And that means, again, they have a real difficulty with having any sort of security of the position," Lynch said. That makes it difficult for young professionals who want to start a family, he added.... The higher pay reflects a more positive American view of science, Lynch said, a part of a larger world of possibilities that attracts skilled scientists and engineers to the United States. "There is a can-do attitude in the U.S. which is very positive and very encouraging to the scientific mindset".

Leftist union backs down: "It's amazing what a lot bad publicity can accomplish in less than 24 hours. On Sunday, the Scribe Journal noted that the Detroit News released a statement from the UAW in reference to Marine Reservists using their parking lot. The UAW banned the Marines if the drove a foreign car, or supported President George W. Bush. That was a very poor choice and must driven the unions' image into the dirt very quickly. Monday night, another statement was released by the UAW reversing the ridiculous policy. It was penned by UAW President Ron Gettelfinger".

Canadian taxes drive out investment: "Canadian direct investment in tax havens and other offshore financial centres has soared eight-fold since 1990 to $88-billion in 2003, says a report that has renewed calls for lower taxes to spur investment in this country.... "From 1990 to 2003, Canadian enterprises invested substantial and growing amounts in countries known as 'Offshore Financial Centres,' many of them in the Caribbean," StatsCan said. "These centres include countries that are often referred to as 'tax havens,' as well as those which have important financial sectors, such as Switzerland, but also Ireland."... John Williamson, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, said yesterday the inclusion of Ireland among the top five should send Ottawa a message. "That is a country that Canada could learn so much from. They pursued a policy of lower taxes to stimulate economic growth and have succeeded to the point that not only is their economy strong, but it is attracting Canadian capital," he said."

My latest posting on MarxWords shows again that Marx, like Hitler, saw war as being beneficial. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" deals with the two stories of creation in Genesis.

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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THE READER'S DIGEST

I bought my first subscription to the Reader's Digest out of my pocket-money in 1956 when I was 13 so I appreciate the truth of the comments below. The only downside is that I am still getting mail from them!

"Imagine, if you will, someone who read only Reader's Digest between 1950 and 1970, and someone in the same period who read only The Nation or The New Statesman," said the late Susan Sontag in 1982. "Which reader would have been better informed about the realities of Communism? The answer, I think, should give us pause. Can it be that our enemies were right?"

These were surprising words, spoken by a surprising source. Supposedly high-brow intellectuals such as Sontag weren't supposed to credit the supposedly low-brow Reader's Digest with anything - and especially not moral clarity. Indeed, Sontag's remarks ignited a firestorm of controversy on the Left, whose guardians of political correctness usually viewed condemnations of Soviet totalitarianism as provocative and suspicious.

Sontag's remarks were possible because her enemies were right, and Reader's Digest was a bastion of anti-Communism during the Cold War. Friedrich Hayek once credited the popular success of his book The Road to Serfdom to the fact that the Digest had published a condensed version of it.

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ELSEWHERE

Sometimes American conservatives can be utterly ignorant. Jim Kalb insults all conservatives who are not religious: "Can there be a secular conservatism? My answer is no, at least if conservatism is to be more than the view of a few comfortable intellectuals. "Conservatism" can mean many things, but it always involves a sense that in the most basic ways life can't be understood or controlled. At bottom, we have to accept and cooperate with things as they have been given us by God, nature, history or chance". [How then does he explain that Australia is at once one of the world's most irreligious countries and also one of the world's most conservative countries?. More on this issue here]

The New York Times rediscovers race: "Last fall, the prestigious journal Nature Genetics devoted a large supplement to the question of whether human races exist and, if so, what they mean. The journal did this in part because various American health agencies are making race an important part of their policies to best protect the public - often over the protests of scientists. In the supplement, some two dozen geneticists offered their views. Beneath the jargon, cautious phrases and academic courtesies, one thing was clear: the consensus about social constructs was unraveling. Some even argued that, looked at the right way, genetic data show that races clearly do exist. The dominance of the social construct theory can be traced to a 1972 article by Dr. Richard Lewontin, a Harvard geneticist, who wrote that most human genetic variation can be found within any given "race." ... Three decades later, it seems that Dr. Lewontin's facts were correct, and have been abundantly confirmed by ever better techniques of detecting genetic variety. His reasoning, however, was wrong."

Hot climates cause poverty? Groan! Nobody told the Singaporeans or Northern Australians: "Jeffrey Sachs, a prominent US economist and a special adviser to the UN secretary general, argues in a new book that extreme poverty could be eradicated by 2025.... Professor Sachs is the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and the head of the UN's Millennium Project, formulating anti-poverty goals. In an excerpt from his book published in Time magazine, he says there is little evidence that corruption has been the main obstacle to development in Africa, where extreme poverty is concentrated. Rather, he blames the geographical and climatic conditions that have contributed to drought and disease..."

VAWA ignores epidemic of violent women: "In the past few weeks newspapers all over the country have been brimming with accounts of women who engaged in monstrous crimes. To avoid giving offense, I provide only the sketchiest of details here: Dena Schlosser severed off both of her daughter's arms with a knife. Nathshay Ward starved her three children to death. Kim Tran mutilated her boyfriend in a gruesome act of revenge. These women don't exist, and these gruesome crimes never happened. At least that's what the Violence Against Women Act would have us believe."

"DEAth" for disabled pain-sufferers: "Question: What is the greatest barrier to proper healthcare for most people suffering from chronic pain or debilitating injuries? Answer: The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Picture if you will: You were born with some genetic malformations [and] bad hereditary traits. ... Then, from your late teens into your early thirties, you've [had] excruciating headaches and other pains, and have spent your life since mostly searching for some relief for either. [Y]ou finally discover a pain-management specialist truly worthy of the name. ... Enter the DEA: Your doctor can only prescribe so large a dose, [or] be ... investigated for 'drug-trafficking'! ... Moreover, all your prescriptions are tightly controlled ... each two-week/one-month period they may not be refilled until the day after the previous ones run out. If there is any delay in [procuring them] ... you must go without until it (or they) arrive(s)."

The Palestinian pathology: "Terrorism is a Palestinian tradition that must end. But in order to bring about this desperately needed change, not only must the Palestinian people cease to show sympathy with their indigenous terrorist organizations, so too must Westerners, both in Europe and in the United States. Sympathy with the Palestinian people is in order, but not sympathy for the institution that has held them back from all progress toward a genuinely responsible civic polity. For that is what terrorism has become among the Palestinians -- it is their peculiar institution, the way slavery was the peculiar institution of the American South in the nineteenth century. For, like the slave system, terrorism, deployed as a means of achieving political goals, ends by poisoning the society that permits it to flourish in its midst".

Hollywood dummos as heroes: "Arguably, the biggest problem in American culture today is the fact that mere entertainers are its heroes.... Prior to the rise of American popular culture, entertainers could never even dream of being the most important members of a society, engaged as they were in a frivolous past-time that helped the folks escape their solemn responsibilities for a short time. In our time, however, the incredible has happened. The court jester has become the king. Those who play the heroes have become the culture's actual heroes. Those who direct fantasy movies are directing the direction of our youth. And with entertainers as the principal people we look up to, so much of our society has become silly and trivial..... The consequences for the elevation of people who perform inconsequential tasks to the center of national attention are enormous. Even if our Hollywood celebrities were not the most damaged people in our society - drugged up, divorced, with even their kids in rehab - the results would still be tragic. By making fashion models our role models, Hollywood heroines our heroes, and singers into saints, we have created a shallow and vain society, distinguished not by sacrifice, but by indulgence. We have created a culture known not for virtue, but for vanity."

My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx despised even his fellow Germans. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" has more on the day of judgment.

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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TUESDAY ROUNDUP

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

On Dissecting Leftism I take apart the Leftist claim that American Christians are "Nazis".

On Political Correctness Watch I note the self-contradictory nature of the "precautionary principle".

On Greenie Watch I note one example of Greenies losing a round.

On Leftists as Elitists I note that the Leftist academic elite is getting challenged

On Socialized Medicine I note that Britain's public hospitals have big dangers that private hospitals do not

On Education Watch I note that Harvard has in effect joined the USSR

On Gun Watch there are some lessons from the death of a Texas hero

On A Scripture Blog I look at two views of the afterlife

On MarxWords I note that, like Hitler, Marx saw war as a healthy influence.

On Majority Rights I explain neo-Nazi thinking

On Blogger News I point out that the recent slayings in an Atlanta courthouse were the result of political correctness

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