ELSEWHERE
Google seems to be having problems lately. Quite a few times lately I have been unable to log onto them and have had to use clusty.com for my searches instead. And I have been unable to access my Gmail mailbox for about 48 hours. So if anybody has sent anything urgent to me via Gmail, they should resend it to my hotmail address: jonjayray@hotmail.com. Update Ha! I have just found that deleting all cookies restored my access to Gmail. That was the solution to the last bug at blogger.com too.
Another good comment on a worthless public opinion poll: "The poll of 1,003 adults, taken June 6-8, found that 59 percent of those surveyed think the United States should withdraw all or some of its troops from Iraq and only 36 percent think current troop strength ought to be maintained or increased..... Anyone with a functioning brain and a heart wants to see this nation's young men and women home safe and sound. Anyone who has ever witnessed one of those homecomings at an airport and watched as strangers applauded this person in uniform knows how very deeply those feelings run. Yes, we all want them home as soon as reasonably possible. And isn't that the key - reasonably possible? That's what polls never ask. They never ask if the choice is bringing the troops home now and abandoning a newly democratic nation to terrorists and thugs, should we bring them home now? They never ask if the choice is bringing the troops home now and leaving Iraq to once again become a threat to the region and to our own safety and security, should we bring them home now?"
This African (from Africa) author thinks that there are African solutions to Africa's problems but that they have to emerge from Africa's own traditions. But the traditions he is talking about sound a lot like democracy to me and that has definitely not caught on in Africa.
Some great quotes from Judge Janice Rogers Brown here. No wonder the socialists hate her.
More Leftist lunacy from Amnesty: "The human rights group Amnesty International - which accuses America of running a "gulag" at Guantanamo Bay - apparently aided in the escape of a key al-Qaida member who's suspected of helping plan the 9/11 attacks. Just two months after the World Trade Center was destroyed, Amnesty issued one of its "URGENT ACTION" reports on behalf of Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, who was then being detained by Jordanian security forces in connection with a planning session for the 9/11 attacks.... "Pressure from Amnesty and Saddam Hussein worked," the Journal said. "Mr. Shakir was released and hasn't been seen since.""
Arnie acts for real: "Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday called a special election for November to try to change the way California spends money, picks its politicians and hires its teachers. He said the election would continue momentum from the historic 2003 recall that brought him to power, saying he was elected to put 'California's financial house in order and reform a government that no longer listened to the people.'"
Free speech under attack in Italy: "These are dangerous times for writers or artists who tread into the always sensitive territory of religion.... it is disheartening to see representatives of democratic government take the side of those who believe respect for religion justifies censorship. That's what happened when an Italian judge, citing a law forbidding "outrages against religion," ordered the journalist and writer Oriana Fallaci to stand trial over a book that includes provocative assertions about Islam. Fallaci had already drawn considerable ire from Muslims, and many others, over "The Rage and the Pride," an angry book written in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks in which she questioned the ability of Islam and Western society to be reconciled, and excoriated Europeans for failing to defend their culture.... Far from everyone will agree with Fallaci or with the way she expresses her opinions. But the right to make unpopular or intemperate statements is a hallmark of a free society.... Even in these volatile times, Western judges and politicians must do all they can to make it clear that freedom of expression is nonnegotiable."
Good to see that NY AG Eliot Spitzer looks like coming another cropper.
The current Leftist hysteria about U.S. income inequality: "The Trunk and I got our start in pundrity rebutting liberal critiques of the economy of the 1980s. The Democrats, frustrated by the fact that the Reagan administration's policies had restored American economic dominance by slashing inflation and unemployment rates, resorted to income inequality as the basis of their critisism. The data in our article "The Truth About Income Inequality" need to be updated, but the concepts are all there, and what we wrote ten years ago is equally applicable today. Once again, the Democrats are unable to criticize the economy on the usual grounds, and therefore must fall back on inequality, as Paul Krugman did in the column that appeared in the New York TImes on Friday. As usual, Krugman is hysterical. He writes, "The middle-class society I grew up in no longer exists" .... Underlying the invective, of course, one would usually expect to find some facts. Normally if one were to proclaim the extinction of the middle class--a surprise to the 80% or more of Americans who inhabit it--one would look for some solid data to back up the claim. But Krugman has no such data. His column is almost fact free."
I have posted here a VERY interesting account by an Iranian exile about the large-scale defiance of their Islamic rulers by the people of Iran.
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
Thursday, June 16, 2005
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
TUESDAY ROUNDUP
Tuesday in the USA and Wednesday in Oz. Once again I list what I think were the best posts on my various blogs in the preceding week.
On Dissecting Leftism I put up a graphic of an original Nazi document proclaiming Hitler's socialism
On Political Correctness Watch I note a comeback for God in Britain
On Greenie Watch I note that astronomers say that global warming is a sign of a coming ice-age!
On Education Watch I note that campus conservatism is growing in Australia
On Gun Watch I note statistics showing that crime actually DROPPED afer the assault-weapon ban lapsed
On Socialized Medicine I record another horror about urgent health-care being denied in Canada
On Leftists as Elitists I note the elitism of Mao Tse Tung
On Majority Rights I summarize health and social welfare provisions in Victorian England and their lessons for today
********************************
Tuesday in the USA and Wednesday in Oz. Once again I list what I think were the best posts on my various blogs in the preceding week.
On Dissecting Leftism I put up a graphic of an original Nazi document proclaiming Hitler's socialism
On Political Correctness Watch I note a comeback for God in Britain
On Greenie Watch I note that astronomers say that global warming is a sign of a coming ice-age!
On Education Watch I note that campus conservatism is growing in Australia
On Gun Watch I note statistics showing that crime actually DROPPED afer the assault-weapon ban lapsed
On Socialized Medicine I record another horror about urgent health-care being denied in Canada
On Leftists as Elitists I note the elitism of Mao Tse Tung
On Majority Rights I summarize health and social welfare provisions in Victorian England and their lessons for today
********************************
Why I am sometimes a token nigger
As those who read my "Tuesday Roundup" will know, I post not only on my own blogs but also on a group blog called Majority Rights -- a blog which is often called "racist" -- though since George W. Bush is called a Nazi by the Left that could be seen as sort of complimentary. Nonetheless it is true that most of the people who post and comment there do believe that the Anglo-Saxon people have distinct virtues that should be preserved and that countries which are at present predominantly Anglo-Saxon should stay that way. There are also some people there who believe that the Jews are the root of all evil -- but that simply makes them respectable in Leftist circles these days, of course.
By and large, however, they are pissing into the wind and I tell them so. All the Anglo-Saxon countries are taking in large numbers of non-Anglo immigrants so the time is foreseeable when there will be no countries with an Anglo-Saxon majority. And there seems to be no political will anywhere to stop that process. It would seem that most Anglo-Saxons do not see it as important to retain an Anglo-Saxon majority in their respective countries.
I however am a "token nigger" on Majority Rights: I am the only one posting there who does not think that an ethnically homogeneous society is worth pursuing. I am of course most comfortable with people like myself but I am clearly less disturbed by non-Anglo immigration than anybody else there. Yet I am at the same time as pleased as Punch about my English, Scottish and Irish ancestry and am also proud of the country that my forebears have created here in Australia. And I also think it is incontestable that Protestantism has been an overwhelming influence in creating the modern world. And as I was brought up as a Presbyterian and trace all my ancestry to the British Isles, all that is easy for me to say.
And I do understand very well the motivation of the person who set up Majority Rights. He loves his English people and English traditions and I understand every bit of that. What disturbs him, as well it might, is the woes that the English now suffer as a result of past and present unselective immigration. I am in company with the vast majority of Australians in saying that only SELECTIVE immigration makes sense. And, unlike the U.S.A. and the U.K., Australia puts that into practice too. The flow of illegals into Australia has been stopped.
But I also think that the egg is thoroughly scrambled now. I can see NO way in which the "internationalization" of the U.K. and U.S. populations is going to stop. Nor will it stop in Australia. Australia's immigration selection criteria do not include race and, as a result, we are said to have a greater percentage of our population foreign-born than any other country except Israel. There is however a huge difference in the COMPOSITION of the Australian population. Where the U.K. and U.S. have large numbers of people with African ancestry, we have people of East Asian ancestry. The difference that makes is considerable, to put it mildly. I think Australia is very lucky indeed to have a large minority of hard-working, intelligent, enterprising, law-abiding family-oriented East Asians.
And that is where we part company. The others bloggers on Majority Rights and I agree that the present flow of illegal immigration into the U.S. and U.K. should be stopped but they would like to stop most legal immigration too. They would like to restrict immigration to people of Anglo and NorthWestern European ancestry whereas I -- like most Australians -- think that only individual criteria are important. I think that you can have desirable immigrants of any race.
What appears to bug the other bloggers on Majority Rights is loss of continuity and community. They feel that what they are is being lost or will be lost in the future. I do not see that at all. And South America shows why. After around 15 generations of living among a sea of blacks and Indians, there are still lots of pink-skinned people in South America. And they mostly run the place too. Although there is always a certain amount of interracial marriage, such marriages are very much the exception rather than the rule and it seems that a people who REALLY ARE genetically similar (such as people of broadly NorthWestern European ancestry) will intermarry readily among themselves while always remaining distinct from the other populations around them -- be those other populations large or small. So the loss of continuity is a paper tiger. Whatever is good in Anglo genes will survive because distinctively Anglo people will survive too. They just have to get into bed with one-another to ensure it and they clearly have a considerable propensity for doing that.
What about the loss of community? Wouldn't it be nice to live in a sort of large village where everybody is distantly related or at least very similar to one-another? Yes and No. I must admit what a relief it is when I can go into an Australian shop or cafe and speak relaxed broad Australian with the staff there instead of having to struggle to communicate with people who know little English. But as someone who actually grew up in a large village (the Australian country town of Innisfail) I know there is a downside to a village environment too. There are huge pressures towards conformity in a village and a lot of back-biting and gossip. Everyone knows everybody else's business so privacy is very restricted. And I shudder to think of the inconvenient opening hours and limited range of services (such as restaurants) that we would have without the ethnics.
So I don't think much of mono-ethnic or village-style life at all. And in a modern society we create our own communities anyway. By and large we associate with whomever we choose and if we are comfortable only with people of a similar ethnic background, then people of that background will become our community. We are no longer restricted to the community that we live geographically next-door to. We create our own communities to suit ourselves. So we in fact get the best of both worlds these days: We live in a virtual community without the limitations of an old-fashioned geographical community.
So regardless of whether the U.K. or the U.S. ever come to their senses about illegal immigration, loss of community and continuity will not occur.
And as far as crime is concerned, Giuliani showed the solution to that in NYC. It just needs good policing to control crime -- not a mono-ethnic society.
FOOTNOTES:
Someone will of course want to mock my use of South America as an example of anything. They will point to what an economic mess the place is. They are right about the mess. But that is not an outcome of non-European genes predominating there. Argentinians are almost wholly European genetically (mostly Spanish and Italian) and Argentina is as big a mess as any Latin-American country. In my view, the South American mess is not the outcome of genes but an outcome of ideology -- Roman Catholicism and Bolivarism in particular -- both of which are historically authoritarian. The abiding hero of Latin America is Simon Bolivar, the great liberator. But the ideas about government put forward by Bolivar were very authoritarian -- ideas about how the masses need to be "educated" and generally dominated by a self-chosen elite -- ideas that put Bolivar in the company of men like Mussolini and Lenin. So with Bolivarism and Catholicism dominating the culture it is no surprise that South America has for so long been ruled in Fascist style -- with all the economic failure which characterizes Fascist regimes.
And in saying what I have about Catholicism, I am primarily commenting about what the church was when it formed Latin-American culture. At Vatican II the church reformed itself along largely Protestant lines and it is my personal view (atheist though I am) that committed Christians or Jews of any denomination -- be it Catholic, Evangelical or Lubavitcher -- are deserving of every respect.
**************************
As those who read my "Tuesday Roundup" will know, I post not only on my own blogs but also on a group blog called Majority Rights -- a blog which is often called "racist" -- though since George W. Bush is called a Nazi by the Left that could be seen as sort of complimentary. Nonetheless it is true that most of the people who post and comment there do believe that the Anglo-Saxon people have distinct virtues that should be preserved and that countries which are at present predominantly Anglo-Saxon should stay that way. There are also some people there who believe that the Jews are the root of all evil -- but that simply makes them respectable in Leftist circles these days, of course.
By and large, however, they are pissing into the wind and I tell them so. All the Anglo-Saxon countries are taking in large numbers of non-Anglo immigrants so the time is foreseeable when there will be no countries with an Anglo-Saxon majority. And there seems to be no political will anywhere to stop that process. It would seem that most Anglo-Saxons do not see it as important to retain an Anglo-Saxon majority in their respective countries.
I however am a "token nigger" on Majority Rights: I am the only one posting there who does not think that an ethnically homogeneous society is worth pursuing. I am of course most comfortable with people like myself but I am clearly less disturbed by non-Anglo immigration than anybody else there. Yet I am at the same time as pleased as Punch about my English, Scottish and Irish ancestry and am also proud of the country that my forebears have created here in Australia. And I also think it is incontestable that Protestantism has been an overwhelming influence in creating the modern world. And as I was brought up as a Presbyterian and trace all my ancestry to the British Isles, all that is easy for me to say.
And I do understand very well the motivation of the person who set up Majority Rights. He loves his English people and English traditions and I understand every bit of that. What disturbs him, as well it might, is the woes that the English now suffer as a result of past and present unselective immigration. I am in company with the vast majority of Australians in saying that only SELECTIVE immigration makes sense. And, unlike the U.S.A. and the U.K., Australia puts that into practice too. The flow of illegals into Australia has been stopped.
But I also think that the egg is thoroughly scrambled now. I can see NO way in which the "internationalization" of the U.K. and U.S. populations is going to stop. Nor will it stop in Australia. Australia's immigration selection criteria do not include race and, as a result, we are said to have a greater percentage of our population foreign-born than any other country except Israel. There is however a huge difference in the COMPOSITION of the Australian population. Where the U.K. and U.S. have large numbers of people with African ancestry, we have people of East Asian ancestry. The difference that makes is considerable, to put it mildly. I think Australia is very lucky indeed to have a large minority of hard-working, intelligent, enterprising, law-abiding family-oriented East Asians.
And that is where we part company. The others bloggers on Majority Rights and I agree that the present flow of illegal immigration into the U.S. and U.K. should be stopped but they would like to stop most legal immigration too. They would like to restrict immigration to people of Anglo and NorthWestern European ancestry whereas I -- like most Australians -- think that only individual criteria are important. I think that you can have desirable immigrants of any race.
What appears to bug the other bloggers on Majority Rights is loss of continuity and community. They feel that what they are is being lost or will be lost in the future. I do not see that at all. And South America shows why. After around 15 generations of living among a sea of blacks and Indians, there are still lots of pink-skinned people in South America. And they mostly run the place too. Although there is always a certain amount of interracial marriage, such marriages are very much the exception rather than the rule and it seems that a people who REALLY ARE genetically similar (such as people of broadly NorthWestern European ancestry) will intermarry readily among themselves while always remaining distinct from the other populations around them -- be those other populations large or small. So the loss of continuity is a paper tiger. Whatever is good in Anglo genes will survive because distinctively Anglo people will survive too. They just have to get into bed with one-another to ensure it and they clearly have a considerable propensity for doing that.
What about the loss of community? Wouldn't it be nice to live in a sort of large village where everybody is distantly related or at least very similar to one-another? Yes and No. I must admit what a relief it is when I can go into an Australian shop or cafe and speak relaxed broad Australian with the staff there instead of having to struggle to communicate with people who know little English. But as someone who actually grew up in a large village (the Australian country town of Innisfail) I know there is a downside to a village environment too. There are huge pressures towards conformity in a village and a lot of back-biting and gossip. Everyone knows everybody else's business so privacy is very restricted. And I shudder to think of the inconvenient opening hours and limited range of services (such as restaurants) that we would have without the ethnics.
So I don't think much of mono-ethnic or village-style life at all. And in a modern society we create our own communities anyway. By and large we associate with whomever we choose and if we are comfortable only with people of a similar ethnic background, then people of that background will become our community. We are no longer restricted to the community that we live geographically next-door to. We create our own communities to suit ourselves. So we in fact get the best of both worlds these days: We live in a virtual community without the limitations of an old-fashioned geographical community.
So regardless of whether the U.K. or the U.S. ever come to their senses about illegal immigration, loss of community and continuity will not occur.
And as far as crime is concerned, Giuliani showed the solution to that in NYC. It just needs good policing to control crime -- not a mono-ethnic society.
FOOTNOTES:
Someone will of course want to mock my use of South America as an example of anything. They will point to what an economic mess the place is. They are right about the mess. But that is not an outcome of non-European genes predominating there. Argentinians are almost wholly European genetically (mostly Spanish and Italian) and Argentina is as big a mess as any Latin-American country. In my view, the South American mess is not the outcome of genes but an outcome of ideology -- Roman Catholicism and Bolivarism in particular -- both of which are historically authoritarian. The abiding hero of Latin America is Simon Bolivar, the great liberator. But the ideas about government put forward by Bolivar were very authoritarian -- ideas about how the masses need to be "educated" and generally dominated by a self-chosen elite -- ideas that put Bolivar in the company of men like Mussolini and Lenin. So with Bolivarism and Catholicism dominating the culture it is no surprise that South America has for so long been ruled in Fascist style -- with all the economic failure which characterizes Fascist regimes.
And in saying what I have about Catholicism, I am primarily commenting about what the church was when it formed Latin-American culture. At Vatican II the church reformed itself along largely Protestant lines and it is my personal view (atheist though I am) that committed Christians or Jews of any denomination -- be it Catholic, Evangelical or Lubavitcher -- are deserving of every respect.
**************************
ELSEWHERE
Greenspan pontificates outside his field: "The income gap between the rich and the rest of the US population has become so wide, and is growing so fast, that it might eventually threaten the stability of democratic capitalism itself. Is that a liberal's talking point? Sure. But it's also a line from the recent public testimony of a champion of the free market". [Greenspan may know a lot about economic statistics but he doesn't know much about how the people see it]
Good man! Tony Blair is attacking the absurd subsidies that the French pay their farmers out of EU funds: "The future financing and reforms of Europe must mean fundamental changes, in particular in respect of the Common Agricultural Policy and the amount of the budget that it takes up each year."
Strange Justice has an amazing tale of crooked "scientific" evidence in Houston, Texas. And the crooks are getting away with it!
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
Greenspan pontificates outside his field: "The income gap between the rich and the rest of the US population has become so wide, and is growing so fast, that it might eventually threaten the stability of democratic capitalism itself. Is that a liberal's talking point? Sure. But it's also a line from the recent public testimony of a champion of the free market". [Greenspan may know a lot about economic statistics but he doesn't know much about how the people see it]
Good man! Tony Blair is attacking the absurd subsidies that the French pay their farmers out of EU funds: "The future financing and reforms of Europe must mean fundamental changes, in particular in respect of the Common Agricultural Policy and the amount of the budget that it takes up each year."
Strange Justice has an amazing tale of crooked "scientific" evidence in Houston, Texas. And the crooks are getting away with it!
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
MONEY BUYS BABIES
In my comments on abortion prevention, I have long advocated lump-sum payments for mothers. Australia is actually doing it, though the payments are in my view still to low. Even so, the policy seems to be having some effect:
"The Federal Government's $3000 baby bonus has helped to reverse the nation's declining birth rate, with new statistics revealing an increase for the first time in a decade. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show the number of babies per woman rose to 1.77 last year, breaking a forty year decline, it was reported. The birth rate is the highest it has reached in seven years and is the first time it has increased significantly since 1961 when it peaked at 3.55. The Howard Government's $3000 baby bonus for every baby born in 2004 played a significant role in halting the nation's declining fertility rate, the Australian National University's head of demography, professor Peter McDonald said. Prof McDonald predicted the fertility rate would rise to 1.8 in 2005 as the baby bonus starts having an effect. The bonus will increase to $4000 from July 1 this year".
Source
********************************
In my comments on abortion prevention, I have long advocated lump-sum payments for mothers. Australia is actually doing it, though the payments are in my view still to low. Even so, the policy seems to be having some effect:
"The Federal Government's $3000 baby bonus has helped to reverse the nation's declining birth rate, with new statistics revealing an increase for the first time in a decade. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show the number of babies per woman rose to 1.77 last year, breaking a forty year decline, it was reported. The birth rate is the highest it has reached in seven years and is the first time it has increased significantly since 1961 when it peaked at 3.55. The Howard Government's $3000 baby bonus for every baby born in 2004 played a significant role in halting the nation's declining fertility rate, the Australian National University's head of demography, professor Peter McDonald said. Prof McDonald predicted the fertility rate would rise to 1.8 in 2005 as the baby bonus starts having an effect. The bonus will increase to $4000 from July 1 this year".
Source
********************************
ELSEWHERE
I think the jury decided rightly in the Michael Jackson case. There was such as stench of corruption surrounding many of his accusers that his guilt of anything could never have been seen as beyond reasonable doubt. It's not yet a crime to be weird.
Good news from China: "A pitched battle erupted that soggy morning between enraged farmers and badly outnumbered police. By the end of the day, high-ranking officials had fled in their black sedans and hundreds of policemen had scattered in panic while farmers destroyed their vehicles. It was a rare triumph for the peasants, rising up against the all-powerful Communist Party government. The confrontation was also a glimpse of a gathering force that could help shape the future of China: the power of spontaneous mass protest"
Steyn on China: "I said a while back that China was a better bet for the future than Russia or the European Union. Which is damning with faint praise: trapped in a demographic death spiral, Russia and Europe have no future at all. But that doesn't mean China will bestride the scene as a geopolitical colossus. When European analysts coo about a "Chinese century", all they mean is "Oh, God, please, anything other than a second American century". But wishing won't make it so. China won't advance to the First World with its present borders intact. In a billion-strong state with an 80 per cent rural population cut off from the coastal boom and prevented from participating in it, "One country, two systems" will lead to two or three countries, three or four systems. The 21st century will be an Anglosphere century, with America, India and Australia leading the way. Anti-Americans betting on Beijing will find the China shop is in the end mostly a lot of bull."
Some VERY interesting history from one who was there: "Before Senator Joe McCarthy launched his anti-communist crusade in February 1950, he had not been particularly associated with the right wing of the Republican Party; on the contrary, his record was liberal and centrist, statist rather than libertarian. Furthermore, Red-baiting and anti-communist witch hunting were originally launched by liberals, and even after McCarthy the liberals were the most effective at this game. It was, after all, the liberal Roosevelt Administration which passed the Smith Act, first used against Trotskyites and isolationists during World War II and then against communists after the war; it was the liberal Truman Administration that instituted loyalty checks; it was the eminently liberal Hubert Humphrey who was a sponsor of the clause in the McCarran Act of 1950 threatening concentration camps for "subversives.""
Liberty before democracy?: "Concentrating on liberty involves a shift of rhetoric and a change of emphasis in practice. The focus of both, particularly in the wider Middle East, should be on the array of diplomatic and developmental means at our disposal to expand the range of individual rights, particularly liberty of thought and discussion; extending the rule of law; fostering religious toleration; and insuring equality of opportunity for women in politics and in the market place. Proponents of democracy promotion should not be disappointed or alarmed. One advantage to putting the spread of liberty abroad first in the here-and-now is the long-term gains it promises in promoting democracy around the globe".
A nation of assimilated immigrants: "To say America is a nation of immigrants is like saying the sky is blue. It's both true and irrelevant. Every nation is a nation of immigrants; people have been migrating across the globe ever since we left Africa. Nor did the thirteen largely English colonies mean to establish a nation of immigrants. Many did not welcome America's first large Catholic influx in the 1840s, and Emma Lazarus's poem ('Give me your tired ...') did not grace Lady Liberty until 1903. More importantly, to say we are a nation of immigrants is an incomplete truth. A fuller truth is that we are a nation of immigrants who assimilated -- who learned English, did not rely (through most of our history) on government safety nets, and sought to 'become Americans' (a once-popular phrase)."
Sowell on social class immobility: "If this is a class-ridden society denying "access" to upward mobility to those at the bottom, how can immigrants come here at the bottom and rise to the top? One obvious reason is many poor immigrants come here with very different ambitions and values from poor Americans born into our welfare state and imbued with notions and attitudes of dependency and resentment of the success of others. The fundamental reason many do not rise is not class barriers but failure to develop the skills, values and attitudes that cause people to rise. The liberal welfare state means they don't have to, and liberal multiculturalism says they don't need to change their values because one culture is as good as another. Liberalism is not part of the solution but part of the problem. Racism is supposed to put insuperable barriers in the path of nonwhites anyway, so why knock yourself out trying? This is another deadly message, especially for the young. But if immigrants from Korea or India, Vietnamese refugees, and others can come here and move right up the ladder, despite not being white, why are black and white Americans at the bottom more likely to stay there?
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
I think the jury decided rightly in the Michael Jackson case. There was such as stench of corruption surrounding many of his accusers that his guilt of anything could never have been seen as beyond reasonable doubt. It's not yet a crime to be weird.
Good news from China: "A pitched battle erupted that soggy morning between enraged farmers and badly outnumbered police. By the end of the day, high-ranking officials had fled in their black sedans and hundreds of policemen had scattered in panic while farmers destroyed their vehicles. It was a rare triumph for the peasants, rising up against the all-powerful Communist Party government. The confrontation was also a glimpse of a gathering force that could help shape the future of China: the power of spontaneous mass protest"
Steyn on China: "I said a while back that China was a better bet for the future than Russia or the European Union. Which is damning with faint praise: trapped in a demographic death spiral, Russia and Europe have no future at all. But that doesn't mean China will bestride the scene as a geopolitical colossus. When European analysts coo about a "Chinese century", all they mean is "Oh, God, please, anything other than a second American century". But wishing won't make it so. China won't advance to the First World with its present borders intact. In a billion-strong state with an 80 per cent rural population cut off from the coastal boom and prevented from participating in it, "One country, two systems" will lead to two or three countries, three or four systems. The 21st century will be an Anglosphere century, with America, India and Australia leading the way. Anti-Americans betting on Beijing will find the China shop is in the end mostly a lot of bull."
Some VERY interesting history from one who was there: "Before Senator Joe McCarthy launched his anti-communist crusade in February 1950, he had not been particularly associated with the right wing of the Republican Party; on the contrary, his record was liberal and centrist, statist rather than libertarian. Furthermore, Red-baiting and anti-communist witch hunting were originally launched by liberals, and even after McCarthy the liberals were the most effective at this game. It was, after all, the liberal Roosevelt Administration which passed the Smith Act, first used against Trotskyites and isolationists during World War II and then against communists after the war; it was the liberal Truman Administration that instituted loyalty checks; it was the eminently liberal Hubert Humphrey who was a sponsor of the clause in the McCarran Act of 1950 threatening concentration camps for "subversives.""
Liberty before democracy?: "Concentrating on liberty involves a shift of rhetoric and a change of emphasis in practice. The focus of both, particularly in the wider Middle East, should be on the array of diplomatic and developmental means at our disposal to expand the range of individual rights, particularly liberty of thought and discussion; extending the rule of law; fostering religious toleration; and insuring equality of opportunity for women in politics and in the market place. Proponents of democracy promotion should not be disappointed or alarmed. One advantage to putting the spread of liberty abroad first in the here-and-now is the long-term gains it promises in promoting democracy around the globe".
A nation of assimilated immigrants: "To say America is a nation of immigrants is like saying the sky is blue. It's both true and irrelevant. Every nation is a nation of immigrants; people have been migrating across the globe ever since we left Africa. Nor did the thirteen largely English colonies mean to establish a nation of immigrants. Many did not welcome America's first large Catholic influx in the 1840s, and Emma Lazarus's poem ('Give me your tired ...') did not grace Lady Liberty until 1903. More importantly, to say we are a nation of immigrants is an incomplete truth. A fuller truth is that we are a nation of immigrants who assimilated -- who learned English, did not rely (through most of our history) on government safety nets, and sought to 'become Americans' (a once-popular phrase)."
Sowell on social class immobility: "If this is a class-ridden society denying "access" to upward mobility to those at the bottom, how can immigrants come here at the bottom and rise to the top? One obvious reason is many poor immigrants come here with very different ambitions and values from poor Americans born into our welfare state and imbued with notions and attitudes of dependency and resentment of the success of others. The fundamental reason many do not rise is not class barriers but failure to develop the skills, values and attitudes that cause people to rise. The liberal welfare state means they don't have to, and liberal multiculturalism says they don't need to change their values because one culture is as good as another. Liberalism is not part of the solution but part of the problem. Racism is supposed to put insuperable barriers in the path of nonwhites anyway, so why knock yourself out trying? This is another deadly message, especially for the young. But if immigrants from Korea or India, Vietnamese refugees, and others can come here and move right up the ladder, despite not being white, why are black and white Americans at the bottom more likely to stay there?
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
Monday, June 13, 2005
THE LEFTIST CLASS WAR
Leftist stupidity: "Sometimes it seems as if liberals have a genius for producing an unending stream of ideas that are counterproductive for the poor, whom they claim to be helping. Few of these notions are more counterproductive than the idea of "menial work" or "dead-end jobs." Think about it: Why do employers pay people to do "menial" work? Because the work has to be done. What useful purpose is served by stigmatizing work that someone is going to have to do anyway? Is emptying bed pans in a hospital menial work? What would happen if bed pans didn't get emptied? Let people stop emptying bed pans for a month and there would be bigger problems than if sociologists stopped working for a year."
Socialist Democrats : "What is it with people that they don't understand that collectivism, in all its forms (socialism, communism, Nazism, etc.) just doesn't work? Even today, after the famous failure of communism (a form of socialism) worldwide do we see such an organization as Social Democrats USA, still promoting socialism as if it were a working system. There are many factors that doom socialism, but the main one is a complete lack of incentive. Under a complete socialist society, we are 'taken care of from cradle to grave.' Thus, there is no reason for any of us to work because we will make the same, regardless. If there is no incentive to work, most of us won't."
The inequality myth: "It doesn't come as much of a surprise that inequality is an issue that plays for Democrats. Bashing the rich is in their blood and no Democrat is happier than when he is engaging in class warfare. Consequently, it is in the Democrats' interest to play up inequality and any sign that the rich are getting richer, especially if they can show that it is coming at the expense of the poor and middle class. There is an unlimited supply of liberal economists at the University of Texas , the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and elsewhere who are eager to manipulate the data to “prove” that inequality is getting worse. The problem is that average people don't believe it. What really matters, both economically and politically, is what they see with their own eyes in their own lives. On this basis, the evidence of rising inequality is very weak indeed."
********************************
Leftist stupidity: "Sometimes it seems as if liberals have a genius for producing an unending stream of ideas that are counterproductive for the poor, whom they claim to be helping. Few of these notions are more counterproductive than the idea of "menial work" or "dead-end jobs." Think about it: Why do employers pay people to do "menial" work? Because the work has to be done. What useful purpose is served by stigmatizing work that someone is going to have to do anyway? Is emptying bed pans in a hospital menial work? What would happen if bed pans didn't get emptied? Let people stop emptying bed pans for a month and there would be bigger problems than if sociologists stopped working for a year."
Socialist Democrats : "What is it with people that they don't understand that collectivism, in all its forms (socialism, communism, Nazism, etc.) just doesn't work? Even today, after the famous failure of communism (a form of socialism) worldwide do we see such an organization as Social Democrats USA, still promoting socialism as if it were a working system. There are many factors that doom socialism, but the main one is a complete lack of incentive. Under a complete socialist society, we are 'taken care of from cradle to grave.' Thus, there is no reason for any of us to work because we will make the same, regardless. If there is no incentive to work, most of us won't."
The inequality myth: "It doesn't come as much of a surprise that inequality is an issue that plays for Democrats. Bashing the rich is in their blood and no Democrat is happier than when he is engaging in class warfare. Consequently, it is in the Democrats' interest to play up inequality and any sign that the rich are getting richer, especially if they can show that it is coming at the expense of the poor and middle class. There is an unlimited supply of liberal economists at the University of Texas , the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and elsewhere who are eager to manipulate the data to “prove” that inequality is getting worse. The problem is that average people don't believe it. What really matters, both economically and politically, is what they see with their own eyes in their own lives. On this basis, the evidence of rising inequality is very weak indeed."
********************************
ELSEWHERE
Iraq is flypaper for the nutjobs: "According to the SITE Institute, a respected counter-terrorism organization, only 9 percent of suicide bombings sponsored in Iraq by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi are conducted by native Iraqis. Analyzing data from a "martyrs" list posted on a Zarqawi Web site, SITE found that 42 percent of the killers hailed from Saudi Arabia, 12 percent from Syria, 11 percent from Kuwait, with the rest from an assortment of Asian and European nations. Why does it matter? Because it gives lie to the suggestion, often heard on the left, that the struggle in Iraq is a distraction from the war on terror. The antiwar crowd insists that American soldiers are now engaged in a guerilla war with militant Iraqis - Michael Moore has compared them to the Minutemen of our own Revolutionary War. Except now it turns out that fully 91 percent of suicide bombers are foreigners crossing into Iraq with the purpose of killing civilians. In short, terrorists. American soldiers are not fighting an Iraqi insurgency. They're fighting a terrorist insurgency. If not for jihadi nutcases pouring across its borders, Iraq would be well on its way to a stable and peaceful democracy".
Spitzer on the take?: "Spitzer insists that the standards he sets for himself are every bit as tough as those he sets for his targets. Yet an intriguing analysis in The New York Sun Friday of Spitzer's campaign fundraising suggests otherwise. The Sun noted that, even as Spitzer has cast his eye over an increasing number of industries, he has taken more and more donations from executives and lawyers in those areas. The Sun argues that Spitzer has received money from: mutual-fund executives; lawyers for Goldman-Sachs (whom the AG's office has investigated); law firms representing Spitzer's targets, such AIG, and others. The Sun deserves credit for highlighting this. Spitzer's office claims his campaign accepts no money from anyone with business before him. But if Spitzer is going to go after alleged wrongdoers in nearly every field, perhaps he needs to go further — banning even more contributions".
What really drives Democrat protests against Iraq: "Why did the Democrats support Clinton's multiple wars in the Balkans where so little was at stake and nothing to be gained, and why do they continue to employ every conceivable lie they can muster to obstruct the liberation of the Iraqi people and the spread of democracy throughout the Middle East? The answer can be found in the Democratic Party itself - dominated, as it has been for the last several decades by "multiculturalists" who believe that democracy is in no way superior to any other form of government, including fascist dictatorships. Multiculturalists believe that all people, cultures, religions and forms of government are equally good and equally right. This is why Democrats so adore the United Nations, where genocidal dictatorships and free-and-open democracies are offered equal prestige and equal power, and why we are admonished to "celebrate diversity" as if all differences - genocide and tolerance for example - are equally worthy of celebration".
Steven Plaut has an amusing list of the rules for debating with Leftists. Rule 1.: "Leftists should be free to call everyone else nasty names, because they are so moral, but no one should be permitted to call leftists nasty names"
The living poem to capitalism : "The Gazette, a business journal for the counties of Maryland surrounding Washington, D.C. reported recently that Maryland's wealthy suburbanites are driving 25, sometimes 30 miles to go, of all places, to the grocery store. They motor past what would likely be a dozen Giants and Safeways, past quirky grocers like Trader Joe's, and several other higher-end stores like Whole Foods and Harris Teeter, all the way out to Sterling, Virginia. They're going to Wegmans, a grocery store based in Rochester, New York, that's slowly spilling down the Atlantic Seaboard. In D.C., Wegmanites will battle notorious D.C. traffic, late nights (the store's open -- and typically busy -- until 1am), and lost time (a premium for Beltway types) to get there. So what is it about Wegmans that's so appealing?"
More Leftist exhibitionism: "Hundreds of naked cyclists staged demonstrations today in London and Madrid in protest against the West's dependence on gas-guzzling cars - and to push for more use of bicycles. The organisers of World Naked Bike Ride 2005 said protests were expected in a number of countries, including Australia, Canada, the United States, Ireland, Italy, Latvia and Israel. In London, crowds gathered to watch as about 100 cyclists left Hyde Park Corner on a journey that took them past some of the capital's most famous landmarks. Most of the riders had stripped naked for the 10 kilometre ride past Piccadilly Circus, Big Ben, Covent Garden, Oxford Street and the US Embassy. Some bikes carried banners reading "Oil is not a bare necessity but a crude obsession" and "Support the trade justice movement"." [In their hunger for attention to THEMSELVES -- not to any ostensible cause -- Leftists do this sort of thing often. I have recorded a few of the previous episodes here or here]
The Great CHILI debate continues with a new posting on my RECIPE BLOG
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
Iraq is flypaper for the nutjobs: "According to the SITE Institute, a respected counter-terrorism organization, only 9 percent of suicide bombings sponsored in Iraq by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi are conducted by native Iraqis. Analyzing data from a "martyrs" list posted on a Zarqawi Web site, SITE found that 42 percent of the killers hailed from Saudi Arabia, 12 percent from Syria, 11 percent from Kuwait, with the rest from an assortment of Asian and European nations. Why does it matter? Because it gives lie to the suggestion, often heard on the left, that the struggle in Iraq is a distraction from the war on terror. The antiwar crowd insists that American soldiers are now engaged in a guerilla war with militant Iraqis - Michael Moore has compared them to the Minutemen of our own Revolutionary War. Except now it turns out that fully 91 percent of suicide bombers are foreigners crossing into Iraq with the purpose of killing civilians. In short, terrorists. American soldiers are not fighting an Iraqi insurgency. They're fighting a terrorist insurgency. If not for jihadi nutcases pouring across its borders, Iraq would be well on its way to a stable and peaceful democracy".
Spitzer on the take?: "Spitzer insists that the standards he sets for himself are every bit as tough as those he sets for his targets. Yet an intriguing analysis in The New York Sun Friday of Spitzer's campaign fundraising suggests otherwise. The Sun noted that, even as Spitzer has cast his eye over an increasing number of industries, he has taken more and more donations from executives and lawyers in those areas. The Sun argues that Spitzer has received money from: mutual-fund executives; lawyers for Goldman-Sachs (whom the AG's office has investigated); law firms representing Spitzer's targets, such AIG, and others. The Sun deserves credit for highlighting this. Spitzer's office claims his campaign accepts no money from anyone with business before him. But if Spitzer is going to go after alleged wrongdoers in nearly every field, perhaps he needs to go further — banning even more contributions".
What really drives Democrat protests against Iraq: "Why did the Democrats support Clinton's multiple wars in the Balkans where so little was at stake and nothing to be gained, and why do they continue to employ every conceivable lie they can muster to obstruct the liberation of the Iraqi people and the spread of democracy throughout the Middle East? The answer can be found in the Democratic Party itself - dominated, as it has been for the last several decades by "multiculturalists" who believe that democracy is in no way superior to any other form of government, including fascist dictatorships. Multiculturalists believe that all people, cultures, religions and forms of government are equally good and equally right. This is why Democrats so adore the United Nations, where genocidal dictatorships and free-and-open democracies are offered equal prestige and equal power, and why we are admonished to "celebrate diversity" as if all differences - genocide and tolerance for example - are equally worthy of celebration".
Steven Plaut has an amusing list of the rules for debating with Leftists. Rule 1.: "Leftists should be free to call everyone else nasty names, because they are so moral, but no one should be permitted to call leftists nasty names"
The living poem to capitalism : "The Gazette, a business journal for the counties of Maryland surrounding Washington, D.C. reported recently that Maryland's wealthy suburbanites are driving 25, sometimes 30 miles to go, of all places, to the grocery store. They motor past what would likely be a dozen Giants and Safeways, past quirky grocers like Trader Joe's, and several other higher-end stores like Whole Foods and Harris Teeter, all the way out to Sterling, Virginia. They're going to Wegmans, a grocery store based in Rochester, New York, that's slowly spilling down the Atlantic Seaboard. In D.C., Wegmanites will battle notorious D.C. traffic, late nights (the store's open -- and typically busy -- until 1am), and lost time (a premium for Beltway types) to get there. So what is it about Wegmans that's so appealing?"
More Leftist exhibitionism: "Hundreds of naked cyclists staged demonstrations today in London and Madrid in protest against the West's dependence on gas-guzzling cars - and to push for more use of bicycles. The organisers of World Naked Bike Ride 2005 said protests were expected in a number of countries, including Australia, Canada, the United States, Ireland, Italy, Latvia and Israel. In London, crowds gathered to watch as about 100 cyclists left Hyde Park Corner on a journey that took them past some of the capital's most famous landmarks. Most of the riders had stripped naked for the 10 kilometre ride past Piccadilly Circus, Big Ben, Covent Garden, Oxford Street and the US Embassy. Some bikes carried banners reading "Oil is not a bare necessity but a crude obsession" and "Support the trade justice movement"." [In their hunger for attention to THEMSELVES -- not to any ostensible cause -- Leftists do this sort of thing often. I have recorded a few of the previous episodes here or here]
The Great CHILI debate continues with a new posting on my RECIPE BLOG
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
Sunday, June 12, 2005
SOME MORE ECONOMICS
Envy unleashed at the New York Times: "In a front page editorial (Sunday June 5), thinly disguised as its lead news story, The New York Times has unknowingly provided a case study in envy and ignorance. The 'article' is titled 'Richest Are Leaving Even the Rich Far Behind,' subtitled 'Tax Laws Help to Widen Gap at Very Top.'.... an attentive reader, willing to go to the trouble of doing some simple addition based on numbers supplied along with the graphics, is able to see that the bottom 80 percent of all taxpayers in 2001 paid only 29.5 percent of all federal taxes, while the top 20 percent of taxpayers paid the remaining 70.5 percent of all federal taxes and that the top one-tenth of one percent of taxpayers paid 12 percent of all federal taxes. The Times is upset because under the Bush tax cuts, in the year 2015 the top one-tenth of one percent of taxpayers is forecast to pay only 10.8 percent of all federal taxes"
Corporations and governments "The idea that big corporations are untamed beasts that wreak havoc upon civilized society is immensely popular throughout the academy everywhere in the world, including the United States of America. Most professors in the humanities and social sciences, a great many writers, journalists, artist, and entertainers -- centered mainly in New York City and Hollywood -- cling firmly to their view that corporations are a threat to the well being of nearly everyone in society and that those who do not share this belief are deluded, period. It is not only Ralph Nader who embraces this idea and the only reason Nader hasn?t reached national political office is that he is viewed as a naive idealist who wants to take on forces that must be appeased, not fought."
French soul-searching: "But there's one area in which France would love to emulate that place across the Atlantic -- the ability to foster small businesses and turn them into big ones. It's not exactly haute culture , but these days this is a vital topic here in France, where the unemployment rate has been stuck between 9 and 10 percent for a quarter of a century and where not a single enterprise founded here in the past 40 years has managed to break into the ranks of the 25 biggest French companies. By comparison, 19 of today's 25 largest U.S. companies didn't exist four decades ago. That's why France is looking to the United States for lessons.... It's no small thing for a country like France to admit its weaknesses, yet many opinion leaders here now concede that France has the rhetoric of a world power without the economic means of one".
The waiting game "It is always instructive to look at how the government controls what we do in our leisure time. Almost everyone now accepts the notion that government should control business, since almost everyone seems to believe that people are basically rotten and will lie, exploit and manipulate others if given half a chance. The idea of a man or woman in business who thinks that honesty and integrity might be a means to success now seems to be utterly foreign to our way of thinking. Therefore, government -- which people conveniently forget is run by other people, but people who somehow are far more perfect than the rest of us will ever be and not subject to the foibles which plague all non-governmental humans -- must regulate business for 'the public good.'"
Foreign aid counterproductive: "Over the past 50 years, foreign aid has largely been counterproductive: it has crowded out private sector investments, undermined democracy, and enabled despots to continue with oppressive policies, perpetuating poverty, says the International Policy Network (IPN). The reason countries are poor is not that they lack infrastructure -- be it roads, railways, dams, pylons, schools or health clinics. Rather, it is because they lack the institutions of a free society: property rights, the rule of law, free markets and limited government"
**************************************
Envy unleashed at the New York Times: "In a front page editorial (Sunday June 5), thinly disguised as its lead news story, The New York Times has unknowingly provided a case study in envy and ignorance. The 'article' is titled 'Richest Are Leaving Even the Rich Far Behind,' subtitled 'Tax Laws Help to Widen Gap at Very Top.'.... an attentive reader, willing to go to the trouble of doing some simple addition based on numbers supplied along with the graphics, is able to see that the bottom 80 percent of all taxpayers in 2001 paid only 29.5 percent of all federal taxes, while the top 20 percent of taxpayers paid the remaining 70.5 percent of all federal taxes and that the top one-tenth of one percent of taxpayers paid 12 percent of all federal taxes. The Times is upset because under the Bush tax cuts, in the year 2015 the top one-tenth of one percent of taxpayers is forecast to pay only 10.8 percent of all federal taxes"
Corporations and governments "The idea that big corporations are untamed beasts that wreak havoc upon civilized society is immensely popular throughout the academy everywhere in the world, including the United States of America. Most professors in the humanities and social sciences, a great many writers, journalists, artist, and entertainers -- centered mainly in New York City and Hollywood -- cling firmly to their view that corporations are a threat to the well being of nearly everyone in society and that those who do not share this belief are deluded, period. It is not only Ralph Nader who embraces this idea and the only reason Nader hasn?t reached national political office is that he is viewed as a naive idealist who wants to take on forces that must be appeased, not fought."
French soul-searching: "But there's one area in which France would love to emulate that place across the Atlantic -- the ability to foster small businesses and turn them into big ones. It's not exactly haute culture , but these days this is a vital topic here in France, where the unemployment rate has been stuck between 9 and 10 percent for a quarter of a century and where not a single enterprise founded here in the past 40 years has managed to break into the ranks of the 25 biggest French companies. By comparison, 19 of today's 25 largest U.S. companies didn't exist four decades ago. That's why France is looking to the United States for lessons.... It's no small thing for a country like France to admit its weaknesses, yet many opinion leaders here now concede that France has the rhetoric of a world power without the economic means of one".
The waiting game "It is always instructive to look at how the government controls what we do in our leisure time. Almost everyone now accepts the notion that government should control business, since almost everyone seems to believe that people are basically rotten and will lie, exploit and manipulate others if given half a chance. The idea of a man or woman in business who thinks that honesty and integrity might be a means to success now seems to be utterly foreign to our way of thinking. Therefore, government -- which people conveniently forget is run by other people, but people who somehow are far more perfect than the rest of us will ever be and not subject to the foibles which plague all non-governmental humans -- must regulate business for 'the public good.'"
Foreign aid counterproductive: "Over the past 50 years, foreign aid has largely been counterproductive: it has crowded out private sector investments, undermined democracy, and enabled despots to continue with oppressive policies, perpetuating poverty, says the International Policy Network (IPN). The reason countries are poor is not that they lack infrastructure -- be it roads, railways, dams, pylons, schools or health clinics. Rather, it is because they lack the institutions of a free society: property rights, the rule of law, free markets and limited government"
**************************************
ELSEWHERE (Some great stuff today!)
The world's wealthiest nations have just decided to help Africa's dictators to buy more golden bedsteads and arms from China.
Hube's Cube has a comment on "reparations" for slavery that will knock your socks off.
A superb comment on the way the American military torture people here
The Australian Left has hardly any workers in it: ""Today there are less than 8000 ALP members in this state who work for a living. There are 3,240,000 people in the NSW workforce. Only one-quarter of 1 per cent have joined the Labor Party. Members of affiliated unions who are themselves members of the ALP [number] around 3000. That is less than 1 per cent of the 393,000 trade union members affiliated to the party through their trade union. "In turn, understand that the NSW ALP's trade union affiliates represent just 12 per cent of the NSW workforce and the figure is declining. The party of the workers has hardly any workers as members".
Hooray! House committee votes to slash UN budget: "American taxpayers pay a whopping 22 percent of the U.N.'s more than $2 billion annual operating budget -- and that figure does not include the hundreds of millions of dollars we pay each year for the world body?s peacekeeping, education and development programs. What have we gotten for our money? Frankly, to say the U.N. is an unaccountable, corrupt and out-of-control bureaucracy that consistently fails to advance its stated mission of promoting international peace would be too kind."
V.D. Hanson on the EU: "The French and Dutch rebuffs of the European Union constitution will soon be followed by other rejections. Millions of proud, educated Europeans are tired of being told by unelected grandees that the mess they see is really abstract art. The E.U. constitution - and its promise of a new Europe - supposedly offered a corrective to the Anglo-American strain of Western civilization. More government, higher taxes, richer entitlements, pacifism, statism and atheism would make a more humane and powerful new continent of over 400 million to outpace a retrograde United States.... In fact, 2005 is a culmination of dying ideas. Despite the boasts and threats, almost every political alternative to Western liberalism over the last quarter-century is crashing or already in flames.... Global communications now reveal hourly to people abroad how much better life is in Europe than in the Middle East and Asia - and how in America, Australia and Britain the standard of living is even better than in most of Europe."
Now for the important things: The CHILI CON CARNE debate! Long-time readers of this blog will remember that I also have a recipe blog -- though I post to it very rarely now. A conoisseur of Chili con carne has however just emailed me with what looks like scrumptious recipe for it so have a look!
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
The world's wealthiest nations have just decided to help Africa's dictators to buy more golden bedsteads and arms from China.
Hube's Cube has a comment on "reparations" for slavery that will knock your socks off.
A superb comment on the way the American military torture people here
The Australian Left has hardly any workers in it: ""Today there are less than 8000 ALP members in this state who work for a living. There are 3,240,000 people in the NSW workforce. Only one-quarter of 1 per cent have joined the Labor Party. Members of affiliated unions who are themselves members of the ALP [number] around 3000. That is less than 1 per cent of the 393,000 trade union members affiliated to the party through their trade union. "In turn, understand that the NSW ALP's trade union affiliates represent just 12 per cent of the NSW workforce and the figure is declining. The party of the workers has hardly any workers as members".
Hooray! House committee votes to slash UN budget: "American taxpayers pay a whopping 22 percent of the U.N.'s more than $2 billion annual operating budget -- and that figure does not include the hundreds of millions of dollars we pay each year for the world body?s peacekeeping, education and development programs. What have we gotten for our money? Frankly, to say the U.N. is an unaccountable, corrupt and out-of-control bureaucracy that consistently fails to advance its stated mission of promoting international peace would be too kind."
V.D. Hanson on the EU: "The French and Dutch rebuffs of the European Union constitution will soon be followed by other rejections. Millions of proud, educated Europeans are tired of being told by unelected grandees that the mess they see is really abstract art. The E.U. constitution - and its promise of a new Europe - supposedly offered a corrective to the Anglo-American strain of Western civilization. More government, higher taxes, richer entitlements, pacifism, statism and atheism would make a more humane and powerful new continent of over 400 million to outpace a retrograde United States.... In fact, 2005 is a culmination of dying ideas. Despite the boasts and threats, almost every political alternative to Western liberalism over the last quarter-century is crashing or already in flames.... Global communications now reveal hourly to people abroad how much better life is in Europe than in the Middle East and Asia - and how in America, Australia and Britain the standard of living is even better than in most of Europe."
Now for the important things: The CHILI CON CARNE debate! Long-time readers of this blog will remember that I also have a recipe blog -- though I post to it very rarely now. A conoisseur of Chili con carne has however just emailed me with what looks like scrumptious recipe for it so have a look!
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
Saturday, June 11, 2005
A CERTAIN JUSTICE
"Few would recognise Abbas Abdi, 49, as the leader of the students who stormed the American Embassy in Tehran in October 1979. High on the hope of a new Iran after the Shah's deposition, the students from the capital's Amir Kabir university caused an international crisis by holding US staff at the embassy hostage for 444 days. But most revolutions destroy their own vanguard, and Iran's was little different. Mr Abdi was released from jail a month ago. It was his second term in the capital's Evin prison, where he served 2« years, much of it in solitary confinement. His freedom is at the whim of the regime, so his caution comes as little surprise. "I'm free only so long as they don't send me back," Mr Abdi said....
Mohsen Mirdamadi, 50, was one of Mr Abdi's comrades in the embassy seizure, an ad hoc operation designed to prevent a US-backed counter-revolution. He went on to serve as a Revolutionary Guard for two years during the war with Iraq. "We thought we had established a democratic system with freedom of speech," he said. "No one felt that we would move towards a new dictatorship. But now our freedom is sacrificed. Many of those students are still my closest friends and think like me. The hardliners of today weren't even at the forefront as we were."
So what have the revolution's expectations translated into, 26 years on? A country with the second-largest natural gas reserves outside Russia and 7 per cent of the world's oil, Iran suffers chronic unemployment, economic malaise and corruption. While the Iranian regime's dictatorship is in no way comparable with that of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, civil liberties and human rights suffer at the whim of the leadership's small, entrenched cartel....
The situation is typified by Akbar Ganji, another former Revolutionary Guard turned reformist journalist, who was jailed in 2000 after naming dissidents allegedly murdered during the presidency of Hojatoleslam Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the present favourite election candidate. Mr Ganji was temporarily released from jail last week but has disappeared."
From The Times
*****************************
"Few would recognise Abbas Abdi, 49, as the leader of the students who stormed the American Embassy in Tehran in October 1979. High on the hope of a new Iran after the Shah's deposition, the students from the capital's Amir Kabir university caused an international crisis by holding US staff at the embassy hostage for 444 days. But most revolutions destroy their own vanguard, and Iran's was little different. Mr Abdi was released from jail a month ago. It was his second term in the capital's Evin prison, where he served 2« years, much of it in solitary confinement. His freedom is at the whim of the regime, so his caution comes as little surprise. "I'm free only so long as they don't send me back," Mr Abdi said....
Mohsen Mirdamadi, 50, was one of Mr Abdi's comrades in the embassy seizure, an ad hoc operation designed to prevent a US-backed counter-revolution. He went on to serve as a Revolutionary Guard for two years during the war with Iraq. "We thought we had established a democratic system with freedom of speech," he said. "No one felt that we would move towards a new dictatorship. But now our freedom is sacrificed. Many of those students are still my closest friends and think like me. The hardliners of today weren't even at the forefront as we were."
So what have the revolution's expectations translated into, 26 years on? A country with the second-largest natural gas reserves outside Russia and 7 per cent of the world's oil, Iran suffers chronic unemployment, economic malaise and corruption. While the Iranian regime's dictatorship is in no way comparable with that of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, civil liberties and human rights suffer at the whim of the leadership's small, entrenched cartel....
The situation is typified by Akbar Ganji, another former Revolutionary Guard turned reformist journalist, who was jailed in 2000 after naming dissidents allegedly murdered during the presidency of Hojatoleslam Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the present favourite election candidate. Mr Ganji was temporarily released from jail last week but has disappeared."
From The Times
*****************************
ELSEWHERE
It looks like Congress is considering the introduction of hate-crimes legislation again. Christians will be the main targets of course. They have been in both Australia and Canada under such laws. Details of the latest proposal here.
An article on TCS completely blows out of the water the moronic Leftist claim that the late Pope is the cause of African AIDS. Just one excerpt: "Superimposing maps of prevalence of AIDS on prevalence of Catholicism is enough to sink the link between the Catholic Church and AIDS. In the hospice which is Swaziland nowadays, only about 5 per cent of the population is Catholic. In Botswana, where 37 per cent of the adult population is HIV infected, only 4 per cent of the population is Catholic. In South Africa, 22 per cent of the population is HIV infected, and only 6 per cent is Catholic. But in Uganda, with 43 per cent of the population Catholic, the proportion of HIV infected adults is 4 per cent"
Bias to lose Federal funding: "A House subcommittee voted yesterday to sharply reduce the federal government's financial support for public broadcasting... In addition, the subcommittee acted to eliminate within two years all federal money for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting -- which passes federal funds to public broadcasters -- starting with a 25 percent reduction in CPB's budget for next year, from $400 million to $300 million".
MSM praise for killer of Americans: "If you wanted to see the perfect example of the ethical and moral collapse of the Mainstream Media, you could not do better than a long article in the New Yorker of May 23, 2005. The article is entitled, "The Spy Who Loved Us." Written by a teacher at the University of Albany, named Thomas Bass, it's about a man named Pham Xuan An. Now very old, An was -- among many other things -- a correspondent in Saigon during the Vietnam War for Time magazine.... He was also a Communist spy, working for the North Vietnamese, informing them of what he knew about American military plans, troop movements, political agendas. He even helped the Communists win large battles by directing Vietcong and North Vietnamese troops against American and South Vietnamese forces. He helped plan the Tet Offensive of 1968, including helping the man who planned the attack on the U.S. Embassy. This was the offensive where thousands of innocent civilians were massacred by the Communists..... the whole article is about how cute and smart and clever and brave a guy An is. A lovable, brilliant, brave man who sent Americans and innocent civilians to their deaths.... In this article, which I would guess to be about 8,000 words or more, there is not one hint, not one whisper, of sympathy for the American soldiers who fought and died or were maimed in Vietnam."
There is an appalling story here about the stormtroopers at the EPA. The whole agency needs to be shut down and environmental protection left to the States. That way there might be some States offering refuge from environmental crazies.
KBJ sums it up "He is implying that it is contradictory to be both pro-life on the issue of abortion and in favor of the death penalty. It's not contradictory, of course, as anyone with any sense knows. The relevant principle is that innocent human life must not be destroyed. We Texans execute convicted murderers because, and only because, we value innocent human life. Have liberals lost the concept of the innocent, or are they just stupid?"
Rightist "racism" "There was one occasion when a worker had refused to eat at the same table as aboriginal workers. Joh told his sister to get the man a tray and then told him to eat outside! And, much to Joh's sister Neta's amusement, the man did. Word of this - in an era when normally a white man would be inside and aborigines outside - spread through the district like a bushfire. But that was Joh. He did what he knew to be right. Joh's favourite singer, Kamahl, sang the Lord's Prayer at his funeral and still wears a set of cuff links his old friend once gave him. [Joh was the "Far-Right" Premier of my home State of Queensland. Kamahl is a very dark Sri Lankan]
Jeff Jacoby has a good article on the way businesses are being shaken down in the name of "reparations" for slavery -- slavery that the businesses had nothing to do with.
Good to see that New York's biggest standover man -- Eliot Spitzer -- has met his Waterloo. Now that he has been shown up as a paper tiger, businesses should be a lot more resistant to his shakedown attempts.
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
It looks like Congress is considering the introduction of hate-crimes legislation again. Christians will be the main targets of course. They have been in both Australia and Canada under such laws. Details of the latest proposal here.
An article on TCS completely blows out of the water the moronic Leftist claim that the late Pope is the cause of African AIDS. Just one excerpt: "Superimposing maps of prevalence of AIDS on prevalence of Catholicism is enough to sink the link between the Catholic Church and AIDS. In the hospice which is Swaziland nowadays, only about 5 per cent of the population is Catholic. In Botswana, where 37 per cent of the adult population is HIV infected, only 4 per cent of the population is Catholic. In South Africa, 22 per cent of the population is HIV infected, and only 6 per cent is Catholic. But in Uganda, with 43 per cent of the population Catholic, the proportion of HIV infected adults is 4 per cent"
Bias to lose Federal funding: "A House subcommittee voted yesterday to sharply reduce the federal government's financial support for public broadcasting... In addition, the subcommittee acted to eliminate within two years all federal money for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting -- which passes federal funds to public broadcasters -- starting with a 25 percent reduction in CPB's budget for next year, from $400 million to $300 million".
MSM praise for killer of Americans: "If you wanted to see the perfect example of the ethical and moral collapse of the Mainstream Media, you could not do better than a long article in the New Yorker of May 23, 2005. The article is entitled, "The Spy Who Loved Us." Written by a teacher at the University of Albany, named Thomas Bass, it's about a man named Pham Xuan An. Now very old, An was -- among many other things -- a correspondent in Saigon during the Vietnam War for Time magazine.... He was also a Communist spy, working for the North Vietnamese, informing them of what he knew about American military plans, troop movements, political agendas. He even helped the Communists win large battles by directing Vietcong and North Vietnamese troops against American and South Vietnamese forces. He helped plan the Tet Offensive of 1968, including helping the man who planned the attack on the U.S. Embassy. This was the offensive where thousands of innocent civilians were massacred by the Communists..... the whole article is about how cute and smart and clever and brave a guy An is. A lovable, brilliant, brave man who sent Americans and innocent civilians to their deaths.... In this article, which I would guess to be about 8,000 words or more, there is not one hint, not one whisper, of sympathy for the American soldiers who fought and died or were maimed in Vietnam."
There is an appalling story here about the stormtroopers at the EPA. The whole agency needs to be shut down and environmental protection left to the States. That way there might be some States offering refuge from environmental crazies.
KBJ sums it up "He is implying that it is contradictory to be both pro-life on the issue of abortion and in favor of the death penalty. It's not contradictory, of course, as anyone with any sense knows. The relevant principle is that innocent human life must not be destroyed. We Texans execute convicted murderers because, and only because, we value innocent human life. Have liberals lost the concept of the innocent, or are they just stupid?"
Rightist "racism" "There was one occasion when a worker had refused to eat at the same table as aboriginal workers. Joh told his sister to get the man a tray and then told him to eat outside! And, much to Joh's sister Neta's amusement, the man did. Word of this - in an era when normally a white man would be inside and aborigines outside - spread through the district like a bushfire. But that was Joh. He did what he knew to be right. Joh's favourite singer, Kamahl, sang the Lord's Prayer at his funeral and still wears a set of cuff links his old friend once gave him. [Joh was the "Far-Right" Premier of my home State of Queensland. Kamahl is a very dark Sri Lankan]
Jeff Jacoby has a good article on the way businesses are being shaken down in the name of "reparations" for slavery -- slavery that the businesses had nothing to do with.
Good to see that New York's biggest standover man -- Eliot Spitzer -- has met his Waterloo. Now that he has been shown up as a paper tiger, businesses should be a lot more resistant to his shakedown attempts.
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
Friday, June 10, 2005
SOME ECONOMICS
Stop the mercantilists: "Mercantilism was an insidious economic theory that held Europe in its thrall in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. The mercantilists decreed that a nation's economic success could be measured by its stockpile of gold and that the way to make the pile higher was to encourage exports and restrict imports. Adam Smith routed the mercantilists in Book IV of the Wealth of Nations (1776). His lesson was clear: Open markets and trade are 'goods,' not 'bads.' The war, alas, is not over. Mercantilism is back. Its adherents use new lingo and make slightly different arguments -- they hoard jobs, not gold -- but their poisonous creed is in essence the same. It is that a nation can enrich itself by boosting exports and chasing imports away. Mercantilism is behind the campaign to make the Chinese revalue their currency upward. The preposterous notion here is that America would be enriched if Chinese apparel cost a little more."
Bob Herbert, cluelessly class-conscious: "Bob Herbert is still mired in the Marxist mentality which says that what the physical laborers do constitutes the whole of any productive output -- and that anything paid to the entrepreneurs and businessmen who somehow happen along and get their mitts involved in the productive process is merely 'surplus,' i.e., stolen goods, grabbed from the laborers. But if mega-successful entrepreneurs, businessmen, capitalists in fact contribute nothing worthy of their exorbitant compensation, then companies consisting only of laboring workers would enjoy a competitive edge over those companies allegedly dubiously benefiting from the too-pricey guidance of the productive individuals who create and drive a successful company."
In defense of employment-at-will: "Over the past few decades the traditional prerogative of an employer to fire an employee 'at-will' (that is, for any reason whatsoever) has come under legal assault in the United States. Judges in nearly all fifty states have ruled in favor of employees claiming 'unjust' dismissal, forcing companies to rehire the employee or pay damages. Yet despite the emotional appeal of preventing employer 'abuses,' there are compelling reasons to fully restore the so-called 'employment-at-will' doctrine."
Fascinating article here (PDF) on the greater effectivness of private law-enforcement versus public police. Bail bondsmen are a lot better at preventing and grabbing bail-jumpers than the police are.
*****************************
Stop the mercantilists: "Mercantilism was an insidious economic theory that held Europe in its thrall in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. The mercantilists decreed that a nation's economic success could be measured by its stockpile of gold and that the way to make the pile higher was to encourage exports and restrict imports. Adam Smith routed the mercantilists in Book IV of the Wealth of Nations (1776). His lesson was clear: Open markets and trade are 'goods,' not 'bads.' The war, alas, is not over. Mercantilism is back. Its adherents use new lingo and make slightly different arguments -- they hoard jobs, not gold -- but their poisonous creed is in essence the same. It is that a nation can enrich itself by boosting exports and chasing imports away. Mercantilism is behind the campaign to make the Chinese revalue their currency upward. The preposterous notion here is that America would be enriched if Chinese apparel cost a little more."
Bob Herbert, cluelessly class-conscious: "Bob Herbert is still mired in the Marxist mentality which says that what the physical laborers do constitutes the whole of any productive output -- and that anything paid to the entrepreneurs and businessmen who somehow happen along and get their mitts involved in the productive process is merely 'surplus,' i.e., stolen goods, grabbed from the laborers. But if mega-successful entrepreneurs, businessmen, capitalists in fact contribute nothing worthy of their exorbitant compensation, then companies consisting only of laboring workers would enjoy a competitive edge over those companies allegedly dubiously benefiting from the too-pricey guidance of the productive individuals who create and drive a successful company."
In defense of employment-at-will: "Over the past few decades the traditional prerogative of an employer to fire an employee 'at-will' (that is, for any reason whatsoever) has come under legal assault in the United States. Judges in nearly all fifty states have ruled in favor of employees claiming 'unjust' dismissal, forcing companies to rehire the employee or pay damages. Yet despite the emotional appeal of preventing employer 'abuses,' there are compelling reasons to fully restore the so-called 'employment-at-will' doctrine."
Fascinating article here (PDF) on the greater effectivness of private law-enforcement versus public police. Bail bondsmen are a lot better at preventing and grabbing bail-jumpers than the police are.
*****************************
ELSEWHERE
Good gal: "Janice Rogers Brown, the African-American daughter of Alabama sharecroppers who was confirmed Wednesday to the federal appeals court here, often invokes slavery in describing what she sees as the perils of liberalism. "In the heyday of liberal democracy, all roads lead to slavery," she has warned in speeches. Society and the courts have turned away from the founders' emphasis on personal responsibility, she has argued, toward a culture of government regulation and dependency that threatens fundamental freedoms. "We no longer find slavery abhorrent," she told the conservative Federalist Society a few years ago. "We embrace it.""
I have just heard that Kevin Lamb was fired from his day job as Managing Director for the conservative Human Events magazine purely because of phone-calls from the Leftist Southern Poverty Law Centre accusing him of insufficient political correctness. He edits in his own time the online magazine Occidental Quarterly -- one of the few magazines game to mention the word "race" without going into paroxysms of condemnation about "racism". Apparently American 'conservatives' and 'liberals' are BOTH now spineless against 'anti-racist' fanatics. Details here. I don't agree with everything in the OQ but it is no nuttier than the New York Times (faint praise, I know).
The American dream lives: "A strong global economy gave 600,000 people an entree last year into a highly envied group: the world's millionaires. The annual World Wealth Report, released Thursday by Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. and the Capgemini Group consulting firm, found that there were 8.3 million people worldwide with $1 million or more in financial assets at the end of 2004, up from 7.7 million a year earlier... Not surprisingly, the expansion of the millionaire class was especially strong in North America because of the solid economic growth last year in both the United States and Canada. "Significantly, North America surpassed Europe both in total high net worth individuals population and wealth for the first time since 2001... According to the latest figures, the number of high net worth individuals included 2.7 million in North America"
The Latino vote: "While Cuban Americans have historically voted Republican by wide margins, primarily because of the GOP's strong anti-communist credentials, Americans of Mexican, Central American and South American descent have been equally ardent supporters of the Democratic Party and its candidates. But that Democratic advantage is quickly becoming a thing of the past. Over the last three presidential election cycles, Latino American support for Democrats has steadily declined, from the 72% that voted for Bill Clinton in 1996 to the 53% that John Kerry received last year. Although these percentages are based on exit polling and the precise numbers are still being debated, the overall trend is beyond dispute, and a party that loses nearly a quarter of a core constituency in less than a decade is a party with cause for distress".
Another reason to control your own retirement savings: "By any standard, the pension default by United and other U.S. companies is simply outrageous. Pension funds are supposed to be set aside by companies in separate accounts so they will be there when employees retire. Instead, dishonest company officials have been commingling pension funds with other company revenues, and using them to fund current expenses, pay executive perks, and to fund corporate expansion. The PBGC reports that during the past six years, many large companies have put nothing into their pension accounts. ... The massive corporate default on pensions is fraud any way you look at it, and the corporate officials responsible should have their personal assets attached to pay off their obligations to employees, and then be put behind bars, like any other thief. Instead, courts have quietly OKed United's default on their pension guarantees."
Prager on the corruption of Amnesty: "Sometime in the 1970s, I sent a donation to Amnesty International. As soon as I heard that a group had been formed to combat torture, I knew I had to support it. Unfortunately, like almost all international and most domestic groups, the Left took over Amnesty International, and it devolved into another predictably anti-American, morally destructive organization. That devolution was most apparent years ago when Amnesty International listed the United States as a major violator of human rights because it executed murderers. The organization's inability to morally distinguish between executing murderers and executing innocent people means that Amnesty International is worse than ineffectual; the good it has done notwithstanding, it is becoming harmful to the cause of human rights".
Windschuttle has a delightful fisking of Robert Fisk. Fisk really is an amazing liar.
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
Good gal: "Janice Rogers Brown, the African-American daughter of Alabama sharecroppers who was confirmed Wednesday to the federal appeals court here, often invokes slavery in describing what she sees as the perils of liberalism. "In the heyday of liberal democracy, all roads lead to slavery," she has warned in speeches. Society and the courts have turned away from the founders' emphasis on personal responsibility, she has argued, toward a culture of government regulation and dependency that threatens fundamental freedoms. "We no longer find slavery abhorrent," she told the conservative Federalist Society a few years ago. "We embrace it.""
I have just heard that Kevin Lamb was fired from his day job as Managing Director for the conservative Human Events magazine purely because of phone-calls from the Leftist Southern Poverty Law Centre accusing him of insufficient political correctness. He edits in his own time the online magazine Occidental Quarterly -- one of the few magazines game to mention the word "race" without going into paroxysms of condemnation about "racism". Apparently American 'conservatives' and 'liberals' are BOTH now spineless against 'anti-racist' fanatics. Details here. I don't agree with everything in the OQ but it is no nuttier than the New York Times (faint praise, I know).
The American dream lives: "A strong global economy gave 600,000 people an entree last year into a highly envied group: the world's millionaires. The annual World Wealth Report, released Thursday by Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. and the Capgemini Group consulting firm, found that there were 8.3 million people worldwide with $1 million or more in financial assets at the end of 2004, up from 7.7 million a year earlier... Not surprisingly, the expansion of the millionaire class was especially strong in North America because of the solid economic growth last year in both the United States and Canada. "Significantly, North America surpassed Europe both in total high net worth individuals population and wealth for the first time since 2001... According to the latest figures, the number of high net worth individuals included 2.7 million in North America"
The Latino vote: "While Cuban Americans have historically voted Republican by wide margins, primarily because of the GOP's strong anti-communist credentials, Americans of Mexican, Central American and South American descent have been equally ardent supporters of the Democratic Party and its candidates. But that Democratic advantage is quickly becoming a thing of the past. Over the last three presidential election cycles, Latino American support for Democrats has steadily declined, from the 72% that voted for Bill Clinton in 1996 to the 53% that John Kerry received last year. Although these percentages are based on exit polling and the precise numbers are still being debated, the overall trend is beyond dispute, and a party that loses nearly a quarter of a core constituency in less than a decade is a party with cause for distress".
Another reason to control your own retirement savings: "By any standard, the pension default by United and other U.S. companies is simply outrageous. Pension funds are supposed to be set aside by companies in separate accounts so they will be there when employees retire. Instead, dishonest company officials have been commingling pension funds with other company revenues, and using them to fund current expenses, pay executive perks, and to fund corporate expansion. The PBGC reports that during the past six years, many large companies have put nothing into their pension accounts. ... The massive corporate default on pensions is fraud any way you look at it, and the corporate officials responsible should have their personal assets attached to pay off their obligations to employees, and then be put behind bars, like any other thief. Instead, courts have quietly OKed United's default on their pension guarantees."
Prager on the corruption of Amnesty: "Sometime in the 1970s, I sent a donation to Amnesty International. As soon as I heard that a group had been formed to combat torture, I knew I had to support it. Unfortunately, like almost all international and most domestic groups, the Left took over Amnesty International, and it devolved into another predictably anti-American, morally destructive organization. That devolution was most apparent years ago when Amnesty International listed the United States as a major violator of human rights because it executed murderers. The organization's inability to morally distinguish between executing murderers and executing innocent people means that Amnesty International is worse than ineffectual; the good it has done notwithstanding, it is becoming harmful to the cause of human rights".
Windschuttle has a delightful fisking of Robert Fisk. Fisk really is an amazing liar.
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
Thursday, June 09, 2005
ELSEWHERE
Journalists have high standards?? Is this guy joking?: ""By responding to bloggers, we are giving them credibility that they don't deserve," says Bob Furnad, a former executive vice president at CNN who now teaches at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia. "I wouldn't respond to them until they are held to the same standard that we are."" (HT Security Watchtower).
Did you know that New Zealand is sending special forces to help out in Afghanistan? Not all Kiwis are happy about it, of course -- particularly those who supported the SOVIET intervention in Afghanistan!
Pathetic Canadians: "The CBC's television news coverage of the United States is consistently marked by emotional criticism, rather than a rational consideration of US policy based on Canadian national interests, according to The Canadian "Garrison Mentality" and Anti-Americanism at the CBC, released today by The Fraser Institute."
Brown achievers: "For any American contestants, the most uncommon words at last week's national spelling bee were not appoggiatura and onychophagy, but the names of the top four finishers: Anurag Kashyap, Aliya Deri, Samir Patel and Rajiv Tarigopula. All were of Indian ancestry. In recent years, descendants of Indian immigrants - less than 1 percent of the population - have dominated this contest, snatching first place in five of the past seven years, and making up more than 30 of the 273 contestants this year."
The dying church of England: "More than half of the Church's 16,000 parish churches have fewer than 50 members. Average weekly attendance in 2003 was 1,187,000 compared with a figure in 1968 of 1.6 million. [The British population is 60 million]
Reliapundit wants mandatory logic classes in schools to combat Leftism! It could help to balance things up a bit.
A Democrat Watergate is OK: "It was a political scandal of unprecedented proportions: the deliberate, systematic, and illegal misuse of the FBI and the CIA by the White House in a presidential campaign. The massive black-bag operations, bordering on the unconstitutional and therefore calling for impeachment, were personally approved by the president. They included planting a CIA spy in his opponent's campaign committee, wiretaps on his opponent's top political aides, illegal FBI checks, and the bugging of his opponent's campaign airplane. The president? Lyndon B. Johnson. The target? Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, the 1964 Republican presidential candidate".
I am very sorry to hear that blogger Bunker Mulligan has passed away. It was always good to receive the occasional email from him. My condolences to his family.
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
Journalists have high standards?? Is this guy joking?: ""By responding to bloggers, we are giving them credibility that they don't deserve," says Bob Furnad, a former executive vice president at CNN who now teaches at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia. "I wouldn't respond to them until they are held to the same standard that we are."" (HT Security Watchtower).
Did you know that New Zealand is sending special forces to help out in Afghanistan? Not all Kiwis are happy about it, of course -- particularly those who supported the SOVIET intervention in Afghanistan!
Pathetic Canadians: "The CBC's television news coverage of the United States is consistently marked by emotional criticism, rather than a rational consideration of US policy based on Canadian national interests, according to The Canadian "Garrison Mentality" and Anti-Americanism at the CBC, released today by The Fraser Institute."
Brown achievers: "For any American contestants, the most uncommon words at last week's national spelling bee were not appoggiatura and onychophagy, but the names of the top four finishers: Anurag Kashyap, Aliya Deri, Samir Patel and Rajiv Tarigopula. All were of Indian ancestry. In recent years, descendants of Indian immigrants - less than 1 percent of the population - have dominated this contest, snatching first place in five of the past seven years, and making up more than 30 of the 273 contestants this year."
The dying church of England: "More than half of the Church's 16,000 parish churches have fewer than 50 members. Average weekly attendance in 2003 was 1,187,000 compared with a figure in 1968 of 1.6 million. [The British population is 60 million]
Reliapundit wants mandatory logic classes in schools to combat Leftism! It could help to balance things up a bit.
A Democrat Watergate is OK: "It was a political scandal of unprecedented proportions: the deliberate, systematic, and illegal misuse of the FBI and the CIA by the White House in a presidential campaign. The massive black-bag operations, bordering on the unconstitutional and therefore calling for impeachment, were personally approved by the president. They included planting a CIA spy in his opponent's campaign committee, wiretaps on his opponent's top political aides, illegal FBI checks, and the bugging of his opponent's campaign airplane. The president? Lyndon B. Johnson. The target? Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, the 1964 Republican presidential candidate".
I am very sorry to hear that blogger Bunker Mulligan has passed away. It was always good to receive the occasional email from him. My condolences to his family.
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
LEFTIST EGO EXPLAINS THEIR HATRED OF CHRISTIANS
Tim at Random Observations has been mulling over the short essay on Leftism that I put up a couple of days ago and he has come up with one thought that I particularly like. He has an explanation for the huge upsurge of hatred against Christians among Leftists in recent times. Like most people, I had seen the phenomenon as a response to the tendency of evangelical Christians to vote GOP but there seems to be a passion in the hatred directed towards Bible-believing Christians which borders on insanity at times. It seems much more than dislike of someone you disagree with.
Tim explains the fervid hatred by saying that many people (particularly Leftists) need to feel superior to someone else in order to boost their own ego but Leftists are not supposed to feel superior to almost anybody these days (homosexuals, blacks, poor people etc) so Christians and conservatives (and those two overlap a lot) are about all that is left as permissible scapegoats. So all their hatred is poured out through the narrow openings that their beliefs allow. So Christians are one of the few permissible targets. Though that old standby -- the Jews -- also seems to be making a comeback.
In my monograph on Leftism I go to some length in my discussion of ego need as basic to Leftist psychology. In summary, what I say is that Leftists are people who have a huge need to think highly of themselves. But such a belief is hard to maintain and is hence vulnerable to disconfirmation in various ways. A big ego is a weak ego. Someone who sees himself as just an average guy (or a Christian who sees himself as just a sinner) will find confirmation of that belief all about him most days of his life. But someone who thinks he is out of the box will be constantly scrabbling for support of that belief. So Leftists are always looking for the praise, for the attention and for the power that they need and that they think they deserve. And they will do anything to get it. They will do anything to bolster their big but fragile egos. Their ego need is far more important to them than any scruple. They will say anything at all that they think will get them esteem, influence or power.
But they have an awkward limit to what they can do or say. Being "superior" can only be relative. Superior to whom? So the Leftist always needs to feel superior to someone or some group in particular. There has to be some group that they don't need to pander to and which they are free to put down and hate. And, at the moment, that is where Christians come in. So the fervour of hatred towards Christians that the Leftists currently pour out reflects both how narrow their opportunities for preening themselves now are and how badly in need of propping up their egos are after their many defeats from the fall of the Soviet Union on.
Anyone who doubts that Leftists do see themselves as superior beings should trawl through the achives of my LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS blog for a while. That will set any doubts completely at rest.
*******************************
Tim at Random Observations has been mulling over the short essay on Leftism that I put up a couple of days ago and he has come up with one thought that I particularly like. He has an explanation for the huge upsurge of hatred against Christians among Leftists in recent times. Like most people, I had seen the phenomenon as a response to the tendency of evangelical Christians to vote GOP but there seems to be a passion in the hatred directed towards Bible-believing Christians which borders on insanity at times. It seems much more than dislike of someone you disagree with.
Tim explains the fervid hatred by saying that many people (particularly Leftists) need to feel superior to someone else in order to boost their own ego but Leftists are not supposed to feel superior to almost anybody these days (homosexuals, blacks, poor people etc) so Christians and conservatives (and those two overlap a lot) are about all that is left as permissible scapegoats. So all their hatred is poured out through the narrow openings that their beliefs allow. So Christians are one of the few permissible targets. Though that old standby -- the Jews -- also seems to be making a comeback.
In my monograph on Leftism I go to some length in my discussion of ego need as basic to Leftist psychology. In summary, what I say is that Leftists are people who have a huge need to think highly of themselves. But such a belief is hard to maintain and is hence vulnerable to disconfirmation in various ways. A big ego is a weak ego. Someone who sees himself as just an average guy (or a Christian who sees himself as just a sinner) will find confirmation of that belief all about him most days of his life. But someone who thinks he is out of the box will be constantly scrabbling for support of that belief. So Leftists are always looking for the praise, for the attention and for the power that they need and that they think they deserve. And they will do anything to get it. They will do anything to bolster their big but fragile egos. Their ego need is far more important to them than any scruple. They will say anything at all that they think will get them esteem, influence or power.
But they have an awkward limit to what they can do or say. Being "superior" can only be relative. Superior to whom? So the Leftist always needs to feel superior to someone or some group in particular. There has to be some group that they don't need to pander to and which they are free to put down and hate. And, at the moment, that is where Christians come in. So the fervour of hatred towards Christians that the Leftists currently pour out reflects both how narrow their opportunities for preening themselves now are and how badly in need of propping up their egos are after their many defeats from the fall of the Soviet Union on.
Anyone who doubts that Leftists do see themselves as superior beings should trawl through the achives of my LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS blog for a while. That will set any doubts completely at rest.
*******************************
ELSEWHERE
Journalists think they're God: "There is an unspoken but real impulse in today's media to see themselves as "independent" of America, even above America, not so much because they are superior to America but because America is so egregiously flawed. It is their role to shed light on America's failings. They're not keen at being seen as Americans. They choke at the idea of wearing flag pins. ABC boss David Westin tried so hard to be above America that he wanted to stay neutral on the question of whether our Pentagon is a legitimate target for terrorists..... So disdainful have they become that they are silent when fellow journalists claim -- without a shred of evidence -- that American soldiers are engaging in targeting and assassinating journalists hostile to America's foreign policy aims. When CNN Vice President Eason Jordan "exploded" earlier this year at a conference at Davos, Switzerland and, in objection to liberal Congressman Barney Frank calling the death of journalists "collateral damage" in Iraq, there were no glaring mainstream-media spotlights on Jordan's remarks. When Jordan resigned, there was a tiny blip on the Feb. 12 Saturday "Today" show on NBC, a tiny blip on the Saturday night "CBS Evening News," and no mention on ABC until it was mentioned in passing on a March 8 "Nightline"
A rare victory for decency: "A French court last week found three writers for Le Monde, as well as the newspaper's publisher, guilty of "racist defamation" against Israel and the Jewish people. In a groundbreaking decision, the Versailles court of appeal ruled that a comment piece published in Le Monde in 2002, "Israel-Palestine: The Cancer," had whipped up anti-Semitic opinion.... "Israel-Palestine: The Cancer" was a nasty piece of work, replete with lies, slanders and myths about "the chosen people," "the Jenin massacre," describing the Jews as "a contemptuous people taking satisfaction in humiliating others," "imposing their unmerciful rule," and so on. Yet it was no worse than thousands of other news reports, editorials, commentaries, letters, cartoons and headlines published throughout Europe in recent years, in the guise of legitimate and reasoned discussion of Israeli policies.... Grotesque and utterly false comparisons such as these should have no place in reporting or commenting on the Middle East. Yet although the French court ruling -- the first of its kind in Europe -- is a major landmark, no one in France seems to care. The country's most distinguished newspaper, the paper of record, has been found guilty of anti-Semitism. One would have thought that such a verdict would prompt wide-ranging coverage and lead to extensive soul-searching and public debate. Instead, there has been almost complete silence, and virtually no coverage in the French press".
Democrats? "One-quarter of all Americans met the criteria for having a mental illness within the past year, and fully a quarter of those had a "serious" disorder that significantly disrupted their ability to function day to day, according to the largest and most detailed survey of the nation's mental health, published yesterday."
Black GOPers: "African-Americans who are Republicans take it on the chin a whole lot," said Smothers, a 35-year-old educational psychologist. "Some feel safer voting Republican and keeping it to themselves." So to let people know black Republicanism is no oxymoron, Smothers and Wolaridge have helped form Black Republicans in the County of Kern. BRICK, a 1-year-old chapter of a statewide organization, wants to promote the GOP agenda, find qualified blacks to run for local office and through education, reverse some of the ills plaguing the black community. The group reminds people a Republican president freed the slaves, Republican congressmen voted for civil rights legislation and a Republican -- from Bakersfield, no less -- was chief justice when the U.S. Supreme Court desegregated public schools in its 1954 Brown vs. the Board of Education decision. And it tries to dispel the notion the Democratic Party is the party of poor people. Actually, BRICK members argue, Democrats have created an "underclass" of people too reliant on government."
Strange Justice has a disturbing post on the strange state of Florida justice at the moment.
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
Journalists think they're God: "There is an unspoken but real impulse in today's media to see themselves as "independent" of America, even above America, not so much because they are superior to America but because America is so egregiously flawed. It is their role to shed light on America's failings. They're not keen at being seen as Americans. They choke at the idea of wearing flag pins. ABC boss David Westin tried so hard to be above America that he wanted to stay neutral on the question of whether our Pentagon is a legitimate target for terrorists..... So disdainful have they become that they are silent when fellow journalists claim -- without a shred of evidence -- that American soldiers are engaging in targeting and assassinating journalists hostile to America's foreign policy aims. When CNN Vice President Eason Jordan "exploded" earlier this year at a conference at Davos, Switzerland and, in objection to liberal Congressman Barney Frank calling the death of journalists "collateral damage" in Iraq, there were no glaring mainstream-media spotlights on Jordan's remarks. When Jordan resigned, there was a tiny blip on the Feb. 12 Saturday "Today" show on NBC, a tiny blip on the Saturday night "CBS Evening News," and no mention on ABC until it was mentioned in passing on a March 8 "Nightline"
A rare victory for decency: "A French court last week found three writers for Le Monde, as well as the newspaper's publisher, guilty of "racist defamation" against Israel and the Jewish people. In a groundbreaking decision, the Versailles court of appeal ruled that a comment piece published in Le Monde in 2002, "Israel-Palestine: The Cancer," had whipped up anti-Semitic opinion.... "Israel-Palestine: The Cancer" was a nasty piece of work, replete with lies, slanders and myths about "the chosen people," "the Jenin massacre," describing the Jews as "a contemptuous people taking satisfaction in humiliating others," "imposing their unmerciful rule," and so on. Yet it was no worse than thousands of other news reports, editorials, commentaries, letters, cartoons and headlines published throughout Europe in recent years, in the guise of legitimate and reasoned discussion of Israeli policies.... Grotesque and utterly false comparisons such as these should have no place in reporting or commenting on the Middle East. Yet although the French court ruling -- the first of its kind in Europe -- is a major landmark, no one in France seems to care. The country's most distinguished newspaper, the paper of record, has been found guilty of anti-Semitism. One would have thought that such a verdict would prompt wide-ranging coverage and lead to extensive soul-searching and public debate. Instead, there has been almost complete silence, and virtually no coverage in the French press".
Democrats? "One-quarter of all Americans met the criteria for having a mental illness within the past year, and fully a quarter of those had a "serious" disorder that significantly disrupted their ability to function day to day, according to the largest and most detailed survey of the nation's mental health, published yesterday."
Black GOPers: "African-Americans who are Republicans take it on the chin a whole lot," said Smothers, a 35-year-old educational psychologist. "Some feel safer voting Republican and keeping it to themselves." So to let people know black Republicanism is no oxymoron, Smothers and Wolaridge have helped form Black Republicans in the County of Kern. BRICK, a 1-year-old chapter of a statewide organization, wants to promote the GOP agenda, find qualified blacks to run for local office and through education, reverse some of the ills plaguing the black community. The group reminds people a Republican president freed the slaves, Republican congressmen voted for civil rights legislation and a Republican -- from Bakersfield, no less -- was chief justice when the U.S. Supreme Court desegregated public schools in its 1954 Brown vs. the Board of Education decision. And it tries to dispel the notion the Democratic Party is the party of poor people. Actually, BRICK members argue, Democrats have created an "underclass" of people too reliant on government."
Strange Justice has a disturbing post on the strange state of Florida justice at the moment.
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
TUESDAY ROUNDUP
Once again I list what I think were the best posts on my various blogs in the preceding week.
On Dissecting Leftism I note the amazing lies of Australia's Left-leaning academic historians
On Political Correctness Watch I note that radical feminists treat men like the "niggers" of the old South
On Greenie Watch I note that in California the Greenies are trying to save flies!
On Education Watch I ask: are Spanish-only schools coming in California?
On Gun Watch I note that Californian legislators are trying to put serial nos. on bullets!
On Leftists as Elitists I have a report on the antisemitic British elite
On Socialized Medicine I report a bureaucratic health care system that has totally bogged down
On Blogger News I look at political centrism and its implications
On Majority Rights I summarize research into psychological authoritarianism
***************************
FROM BROOKES NEWS
US economy, trade deficit, money supply and growth : No matter what the current crop of Pollyanna's think, the US economy's insatiable demand for imports has nothing to do with a 'demographic gap between the US and other developed countries'
The Australian economy, manufacturing and the exchange rate: There is considerable dispute about whether the Australian economy is running into capacity constraints. So what is really happening?
Australian economy: wages and the fallacy of union bargaining: Tragically for Australia's unemployed, our rightwing economists appear to be doing nothing to educate the public in basic economics or even economic history
Rebuilding the Twin Towers: The Twin Towers had been under attack by terrorists for years because they were such a perfect symbol of a free economy
What is the Best Way to Prevent Abortions?: One sobering statistic reveals that every time a teenage girl has extramarital sex, she has a 47 percent chance of catching the virus that causes cervical cancer
In my opinion what is CNN, O'Reilly and Newsweek?: Newsweek deliberately contributed to the escalation of Muslim hatred towards the US
**********************************
Once again I list what I think were the best posts on my various blogs in the preceding week.
On Dissecting Leftism I note the amazing lies of Australia's Left-leaning academic historians
On Political Correctness Watch I note that radical feminists treat men like the "niggers" of the old South
On Greenie Watch I note that in California the Greenies are trying to save flies!
On Education Watch I ask: are Spanish-only schools coming in California?
On Gun Watch I note that Californian legislators are trying to put serial nos. on bullets!
On Leftists as Elitists I have a report on the antisemitic British elite
On Socialized Medicine I report a bureaucratic health care system that has totally bogged down
On Blogger News I look at political centrism and its implications
On Majority Rights I summarize research into psychological authoritarianism
***************************
FROM BROOKES NEWS
US economy, trade deficit, money supply and growth : No matter what the current crop of Pollyanna's think, the US economy's insatiable demand for imports has nothing to do with a 'demographic gap between the US and other developed countries'
The Australian economy, manufacturing and the exchange rate: There is considerable dispute about whether the Australian economy is running into capacity constraints. So what is really happening?
Australian economy: wages and the fallacy of union bargaining: Tragically for Australia's unemployed, our rightwing economists appear to be doing nothing to educate the public in basic economics or even economic history
Rebuilding the Twin Towers: The Twin Towers had been under attack by terrorists for years because they were such a perfect symbol of a free economy
What is the Best Way to Prevent Abortions?: One sobering statistic reveals that every time a teenage girl has extramarital sex, she has a 47 percent chance of catching the virus that causes cervical cancer
In my opinion what is CNN, O'Reilly and Newsweek?: Newsweek deliberately contributed to the escalation of Muslim hatred towards the US
**********************************
ELSEWHERE
Amnesty backs off "Despite highly publicized charges of U.S. mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo, the head of the Amnesty International USA said on Sunday the group doesn't "know for sure" that the military is running a "gulag."" [The damage is done now, however. Their "humanitarian" cover is blown. Everybody now knows that they are loony Leftists]
German media as mad as in Hitler's day: "Germany's PBS station ARD alleges the Bush family's involvement in the 9/11 WTC attacks. I watched the Sunday night prime time movie in stunned disbelief. The subtext of the plot was the explicitly stated allegation that 9-11 was instigated by the Bush family for oil and power. TV audience for the movie was 7.27 million."
For those who missed the spearing of Krugman by Okrent in the NYT, there is a good reprise here. Sounds like Okrent is one of the diminishing band of decent Democrats.
Students rebel against Leftist propaganda: "Best-selling author Erica Jong was booed and told to "Shut up!" and "Go Home!" during her 40-minute speech yesterday at the College of Staten Island's commencement exercises. As Ms. Jong, best known for her 1973 novel "Fear of Flying," talked about everything from truth in advertising to truth in politics and the shallowness of public relations -- but said precious little about graduation -- some of the thousands in attendance on the great lawn at the college's Willowbrook campus stood up and began to object loudly. A little less than halfway through her speech, some graduates began tossing around an inflatable beach volleyball. Some even got up from their chairs, just yards from her podium, to go chat with friends and family who were seated behind them.... Ms. Jong's remarks were met with some vehement disapproval. "She gave a political speech when she was supposed to be doing a pep talk," said the father of a CSI graduate who declined to give his name. "Some graduates wanted to throw stuff at her. Whoever heard of a commencement speaker talking about body bags?" Dorothy, a 48-year-old mother of a CSI graduate, categorized Ms. Jong's speech as "all-around bashing. "It was disgusting, despicable," said the Fort Wadsworth woman, who would not give her surname. "She called politicians liars, called us all liars. She trashed America.
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
Amnesty backs off "Despite highly publicized charges of U.S. mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo, the head of the Amnesty International USA said on Sunday the group doesn't "know for sure" that the military is running a "gulag."" [The damage is done now, however. Their "humanitarian" cover is blown. Everybody now knows that they are loony Leftists]
German media as mad as in Hitler's day: "Germany's PBS station ARD alleges the Bush family's involvement in the 9/11 WTC attacks. I watched the Sunday night prime time movie in stunned disbelief. The subtext of the plot was the explicitly stated allegation that 9-11 was instigated by the Bush family for oil and power. TV audience for the movie was 7.27 million."
For those who missed the spearing of Krugman by Okrent in the NYT, there is a good reprise here. Sounds like Okrent is one of the diminishing band of decent Democrats.
Students rebel against Leftist propaganda: "Best-selling author Erica Jong was booed and told to "Shut up!" and "Go Home!" during her 40-minute speech yesterday at the College of Staten Island's commencement exercises. As Ms. Jong, best known for her 1973 novel "Fear of Flying," talked about everything from truth in advertising to truth in politics and the shallowness of public relations -- but said precious little about graduation -- some of the thousands in attendance on the great lawn at the college's Willowbrook campus stood up and began to object loudly. A little less than halfway through her speech, some graduates began tossing around an inflatable beach volleyball. Some even got up from their chairs, just yards from her podium, to go chat with friends and family who were seated behind them.... Ms. Jong's remarks were met with some vehement disapproval. "She gave a political speech when she was supposed to be doing a pep talk," said the father of a CSI graduate who declined to give his name. "Some graduates wanted to throw stuff at her. Whoever heard of a commencement speaker talking about body bags?" Dorothy, a 48-year-old mother of a CSI graduate, categorized Ms. Jong's speech as "all-around bashing. "It was disgusting, despicable," said the Fort Wadsworth woman, who would not give her surname. "She called politicians liars, called us all liars. She trashed America.
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
Monday, June 06, 2005
A short essay on Leftism
I don't have any urgent comments on current events to put up today so I thought I might stand back a bit and reflect:
By "Leftist" I mean here someone more extreme than a mere VOTER for a democratic socialist party such as The Australian Labor Party or the U.S. Democratic party -- though Leftists in my sense may well be members and officers of such parties. I mean by "Leftist" someone who is committed to a high degree of control over society and coercion of people in it with the ostensible aim of "levelling" incomes and other privileges among people in the society concerned. In the 20th Century, such people normally had at least some Marxist sympathies.
What I think the facts show is that Leftists are basically angry, hate-filled people who hunger for power over others and enjoy hurting others but who hide their malign and hurtful motivations under a cloak of humanitarian intentions. Their anger at the ordinary people about them leads them to want to control, hurt and change those about them -- by violence and mass-murder if necessary. Their proclaimed humanitarian intentions and concern for "the worker" are, therefore, just deception and camouflage -- perhaps unconscious deception and camouflage in some cases.
There was a poster around the universities a few years back that is rather informative about the Left-wing viewpoint. It said: "I love humanity. It's just people that I can't stand". My own way of putting much the same point would be to say that Leftists (in my sense) say that they "care" for people but will cheerfully murder half of them -- whereas conservatives do not claim to love humanity but they do not want to murder half of them either.
I had a Communist girlfriend some years back -- a schoolteacher by trade, funnily enough. She had talents other than her politics. I noticed at the time how much anger she had in her towards all sorts of people and thought how well that fitted in with her support for Communism. She was basically a gentle nurturing person but anger leads to hatred and hatred leads to murder. It is hard for me to understand how any decent person can ever have supported anything as brutal as Communism but the fact that large numbers of intelligent people often did tends to show where anger and hatred can lead otherwise decent people.
The characteristic Left-wing slogan is: "Smash X" -- where X can be almost anything -- from the current government, to racism, to big business, to some particular law etc etc. They are very big on smashing things -- with revolution being only the most extreme example of that. If some person or group is not doing what the Leftist wants or thinks that they ought to do, the Leftist immediately wants to coerce them (with violence or otherwise) or murder them. Nice people! They want power over other people at any price. Beware anyone who stands in their way!
All the great mass-murders of the 20th Century (under the control of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao Tse Tung) were committed in the name of socialism and "the people". Compared to these crimes, lesser slaughters such as that by the Serbs in Kosovo (who were in any case led by their old Communist boss, Slobodan Milosevic) pale into insignificance. It is hard to think that anything could be worse than Serb troops throwing a 2 year old toddler down a well in front of his mother but "socialists" can do it.
My account of Leftist motivations would seem to explain a lot. It does make sense of a lot of seemingly senseless behaviour -- which is a good test of any scientific theory. For instance, only a fool or a scoundrel would advocate such counterproductive nostrums as State ownership of industry or rent control and I do not accuse those on the Left of being fools. They are too smart for their own good, if anything. They think no-one can teach them anything. Advocating State ownership of industry or rent control is nonsense if you really want to improve the long-term lot of the worker but is, of course, perfectly rational if your real main aim is to concentrate as much power and control as possible in your own hands (or in the hands of your clique).
In my view the reason why psychologists tend to be Leftist is also that psychology (like teaching) seems to offer the prospect of personal power over the minds of others -- the ultimate form of coercion. Leftists want that and are attracted to studying psychology for that reason. Fortunately their own innate dishonesty makes them very bad at it.
As I see it, most real Leftists (advocates of a high degree of State coercion and control -- who in turn are generally intellectuals of some kind) start out with some degree of intellectual orientation but little capacity for intellectual originality. They are, in other words, theologians rather than philosophers. They can debate and rehash an existing body of thought ad nauseam but are barren of new ideas. Anybody who knows the vast lengths to which they go to in debating "what Marx really meant" will see the appositeness of the "theologian" appellation. The excitement over the discovery of Marx's "Grundrisse" was also like the discovery of a new holy book. Nonetheless their intellectual orientation does alert them to the many ways in which the world around us is not ideal and makes them want to propose ways of improving things. Because they are not very good (i.e. unoriginal) intellectuals, however, they can come up with only the crudest of proposals (i.e. make people behave better).
When life eventually forces them to confront the evidence that their crude methods tend to be inhumane and counterproductive they face being shown up as the inferior intellectuals they are. They face being shown up as wrong and foolish, meaning that their self esteem is threatened. So they either abandon the Left-wing romance with coercion and change their views to more conservative ones or if they are really infatuated with coercion they stay Leftist by using any and every device available to aid that.
And the most insidious device that they can use is intellectual dishonesty. They simply refuse to believe anything adverse to them and will themselves lie to manipulate others ("for their own good"). Thus I remember Leftists of the bad old days in the '50s and 60's who greeted accounts of Stalin's purges and massacres of his own people as "inventions of the capitalist press". How do you persuade such people? You can say that we have a free press rather than a capitalist one but since mass media do tend to be big businesses this can be made to sound implausible too. The truth is that you cannot persuade such people and waste your time by trying. "There are none so blind as those who will not see". All the evidence on almost any question will seldom be available at any one time and place so all or almost all judgments of fact have to be made on a probabilistic basis. So all the intellectually dishonest person has to do is to keep demanding higher and higher probabilities before he will believe. You soon reach the point where that level is unobtainable so he looks like he has had a polemical victory of sorts. He has. Dishonesty has its rewards. It is still despicable and misleading, however. So a Leftist is also someone who uses dishonesty in support of coercion.
It may be argued that on my account of things Leftists should also tend to be policemen etc. Policemen have a lot of interpersonal power. In fact, of course, policemen, the military etc tend to be very Rightist. There are several obvious answers to this. Perhaps the most obvious is that these jobs are not very intellectual and the Leftist does start out as a (second-rate) intellectual. Another answer is that the ratio of gain to risk is high. Policemen and soldiers risk getting shot and only ever gain temporary power over a few individuals. For a power-mad Leftist that is just not a very attractive offer. It is a bad deal. When the Leftist takes up arms he tends to do so as a guerilla (so he can shoot from safety) and for very big stakes (major social change --a "revolution" -- that will make him a big-shot if it succeeds). He does not want power over just one or two individuals. He really wants power over everybody -- for himself or his clique. A really nice guy(!). Teaching or psychology, of course, offer power without much cost or threat.
There is some support for the account I have given in the academic literature. For example, a paper by Winter & Wiecking [Winter, D.G. & Wiecking, F.A. (1971) The new Puritans: Achievement and power motives of New Left intellectuals. Behavioral Science, 16, 523-530] tells a bit about Leftist power motives and the many books and articles by Rothman and Lichter [e.g. Rothman, S. & Lichter, R.S. (1982) Roots of radicalism: Jews, Christians and the New Left Oxford: Univ. Press] tell about Leftists being in love with themselves -- "narcissism" if you are being polite about it, "arrogance" if not. A paper by Himmelfarb gets it pretty right too [Himmelfarb, G. (1989) Victorian values/Jewish values. Commentary, 87(2), 23-31.]
As I said at the beginning, one must distinguish between real Leftists (a small but poisonous clique) and those who vote for them. Real Leftists (Communists, Trotskyists and their usually "intellectual" ilk) have virtually no voter support in moderately well-informed societies (i.e. in the developed world) but they do at times manage to dominate mass political organizations of democratic society (e.g. the British Labour party up until the late 90s). People who vote for such parties can often be (as S.M. Lipset points out in his 1960 book Political man) actually quite conservative. They tend to be working class people who simply vote for those who appear to offer them the best deal. In other words, Leftist lies and pretences of good intentions do sometimes gain votes from those least able to be critical. Even then, the Leftists cannot be too overt. The obvious extremism of the British Labour Party in the '70s and '80s was the main reason for the Conservatives' long term in office. Mrs Thatcher's biggest asset was the British Labour Party. People seldom liked her and her Conservative government much but liked the alternative even less. British Labour was in fact still so hopelessly in cloud-cuckoo land in the early 90s that they could not even beat the wimpish John Major in the midst of a recession!
I remember saying to supporters of the British Labour Party in the 90s, "But your lot are so hopeless that they couldn't even beat John Major". That remark was obviously far from original to me but it always went home. It tended to strike them dumb in fact. With the pain of having to bear remarks like that, no wonder they gave up most of their old policies soon after.
Under Tony Blair they in general became just another bumbling conservative party -- except for a bit of feel-good rhetoric and tokenistic reform (such as further reform of the already emasculated House of Lords and the banning of hunting to hounds). They even started to espouse "family values" -- the old catchcry of the religious Right. The penalty of their pre-Blair Leftist extremism was impotence. They gained power only by abandoning most of their old committments to Leftist causes. That the party of unilateral disarmament became the party of Iraq intervention was truly a seismic shift. Only their love of bureaucracy and big spending survived.
About a third of the people (e.g. in Allende's Chile) can sometimes be persuaded to support the Leftists. Some of those can be sincere. In the long run, however, they will learn. At what a price! Generally after many deaths: Tibet! China's Tienanmen Square and Great Leap Backward under Mao! The Hungary of Imre Nagy and Janos Kadar! The Czechoslovakia of Dubcek! The Cambodia of Pol Pot! The incredible human, economic and environmental disaster of Soviet Russia! What a lovely list of achievements for the so-smart Leftist intellectuals (really arrogant ignoramuses) to contemplate! Not that they care, of course.
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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.
********************************
I don't have any urgent comments on current events to put up today so I thought I might stand back a bit and reflect:
By "Leftist" I mean here someone more extreme than a mere VOTER for a democratic socialist party such as The Australian Labor Party or the U.S. Democratic party -- though Leftists in my sense may well be members and officers of such parties. I mean by "Leftist" someone who is committed to a high degree of control over society and coercion of people in it with the ostensible aim of "levelling" incomes and other privileges among people in the society concerned. In the 20th Century, such people normally had at least some Marxist sympathies.
What I think the facts show is that Leftists are basically angry, hate-filled people who hunger for power over others and enjoy hurting others but who hide their malign and hurtful motivations under a cloak of humanitarian intentions. Their anger at the ordinary people about them leads them to want to control, hurt and change those about them -- by violence and mass-murder if necessary. Their proclaimed humanitarian intentions and concern for "the worker" are, therefore, just deception and camouflage -- perhaps unconscious deception and camouflage in some cases.
There was a poster around the universities a few years back that is rather informative about the Left-wing viewpoint. It said: "I love humanity. It's just people that I can't stand". My own way of putting much the same point would be to say that Leftists (in my sense) say that they "care" for people but will cheerfully murder half of them -- whereas conservatives do not claim to love humanity but they do not want to murder half of them either.
I had a Communist girlfriend some years back -- a schoolteacher by trade, funnily enough. She had talents other than her politics. I noticed at the time how much anger she had in her towards all sorts of people and thought how well that fitted in with her support for Communism. She was basically a gentle nurturing person but anger leads to hatred and hatred leads to murder. It is hard for me to understand how any decent person can ever have supported anything as brutal as Communism but the fact that large numbers of intelligent people often did tends to show where anger and hatred can lead otherwise decent people.
The characteristic Left-wing slogan is: "Smash X" -- where X can be almost anything -- from the current government, to racism, to big business, to some particular law etc etc. They are very big on smashing things -- with revolution being only the most extreme example of that. If some person or group is not doing what the Leftist wants or thinks that they ought to do, the Leftist immediately wants to coerce them (with violence or otherwise) or murder them. Nice people! They want power over other people at any price. Beware anyone who stands in their way!
All the great mass-murders of the 20th Century (under the control of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao Tse Tung) were committed in the name of socialism and "the people". Compared to these crimes, lesser slaughters such as that by the Serbs in Kosovo (who were in any case led by their old Communist boss, Slobodan Milosevic) pale into insignificance. It is hard to think that anything could be worse than Serb troops throwing a 2 year old toddler down a well in front of his mother but "socialists" can do it.
My account of Leftist motivations would seem to explain a lot. It does make sense of a lot of seemingly senseless behaviour -- which is a good test of any scientific theory. For instance, only a fool or a scoundrel would advocate such counterproductive nostrums as State ownership of industry or rent control and I do not accuse those on the Left of being fools. They are too smart for their own good, if anything. They think no-one can teach them anything. Advocating State ownership of industry or rent control is nonsense if you really want to improve the long-term lot of the worker but is, of course, perfectly rational if your real main aim is to concentrate as much power and control as possible in your own hands (or in the hands of your clique).
In my view the reason why psychologists tend to be Leftist is also that psychology (like teaching) seems to offer the prospect of personal power over the minds of others -- the ultimate form of coercion. Leftists want that and are attracted to studying psychology for that reason. Fortunately their own innate dishonesty makes them very bad at it.
As I see it, most real Leftists (advocates of a high degree of State coercion and control -- who in turn are generally intellectuals of some kind) start out with some degree of intellectual orientation but little capacity for intellectual originality. They are, in other words, theologians rather than philosophers. They can debate and rehash an existing body of thought ad nauseam but are barren of new ideas. Anybody who knows the vast lengths to which they go to in debating "what Marx really meant" will see the appositeness of the "theologian" appellation. The excitement over the discovery of Marx's "Grundrisse" was also like the discovery of a new holy book. Nonetheless their intellectual orientation does alert them to the many ways in which the world around us is not ideal and makes them want to propose ways of improving things. Because they are not very good (i.e. unoriginal) intellectuals, however, they can come up with only the crudest of proposals (i.e. make people behave better).
When life eventually forces them to confront the evidence that their crude methods tend to be inhumane and counterproductive they face being shown up as the inferior intellectuals they are. They face being shown up as wrong and foolish, meaning that their self esteem is threatened. So they either abandon the Left-wing romance with coercion and change their views to more conservative ones or if they are really infatuated with coercion they stay Leftist by using any and every device available to aid that.
And the most insidious device that they can use is intellectual dishonesty. They simply refuse to believe anything adverse to them and will themselves lie to manipulate others ("for their own good"). Thus I remember Leftists of the bad old days in the '50s and 60's who greeted accounts of Stalin's purges and massacres of his own people as "inventions of the capitalist press". How do you persuade such people? You can say that we have a free press rather than a capitalist one but since mass media do tend to be big businesses this can be made to sound implausible too. The truth is that you cannot persuade such people and waste your time by trying. "There are none so blind as those who will not see". All the evidence on almost any question will seldom be available at any one time and place so all or almost all judgments of fact have to be made on a probabilistic basis. So all the intellectually dishonest person has to do is to keep demanding higher and higher probabilities before he will believe. You soon reach the point where that level is unobtainable so he looks like he has had a polemical victory of sorts. He has. Dishonesty has its rewards. It is still despicable and misleading, however. So a Leftist is also someone who uses dishonesty in support of coercion.
It may be argued that on my account of things Leftists should also tend to be policemen etc. Policemen have a lot of interpersonal power. In fact, of course, policemen, the military etc tend to be very Rightist. There are several obvious answers to this. Perhaps the most obvious is that these jobs are not very intellectual and the Leftist does start out as a (second-rate) intellectual. Another answer is that the ratio of gain to risk is high. Policemen and soldiers risk getting shot and only ever gain temporary power over a few individuals. For a power-mad Leftist that is just not a very attractive offer. It is a bad deal. When the Leftist takes up arms he tends to do so as a guerilla (so he can shoot from safety) and for very big stakes (major social change --a "revolution" -- that will make him a big-shot if it succeeds). He does not want power over just one or two individuals. He really wants power over everybody -- for himself or his clique. A really nice guy(!). Teaching or psychology, of course, offer power without much cost or threat.
There is some support for the account I have given in the academic literature. For example, a paper by Winter & Wiecking [Winter, D.G. & Wiecking, F.A. (1971) The new Puritans: Achievement and power motives of New Left intellectuals. Behavioral Science, 16, 523-530] tells a bit about Leftist power motives and the many books and articles by Rothman and Lichter [e.g. Rothman, S. & Lichter, R.S. (1982) Roots of radicalism: Jews, Christians and the New Left Oxford: Univ. Press] tell about Leftists being in love with themselves -- "narcissism" if you are being polite about it, "arrogance" if not. A paper by Himmelfarb gets it pretty right too [Himmelfarb, G. (1989) Victorian values/Jewish values. Commentary, 87(2), 23-31.]
As I said at the beginning, one must distinguish between real Leftists (a small but poisonous clique) and those who vote for them. Real Leftists (Communists, Trotskyists and their usually "intellectual" ilk) have virtually no voter support in moderately well-informed societies (i.e. in the developed world) but they do at times manage to dominate mass political organizations of democratic society (e.g. the British Labour party up until the late 90s). People who vote for such parties can often be (as S.M. Lipset points out in his 1960 book Political man) actually quite conservative. They tend to be working class people who simply vote for those who appear to offer them the best deal. In other words, Leftist lies and pretences of good intentions do sometimes gain votes from those least able to be critical. Even then, the Leftists cannot be too overt. The obvious extremism of the British Labour Party in the '70s and '80s was the main reason for the Conservatives' long term in office. Mrs Thatcher's biggest asset was the British Labour Party. People seldom liked her and her Conservative government much but liked the alternative even less. British Labour was in fact still so hopelessly in cloud-cuckoo land in the early 90s that they could not even beat the wimpish John Major in the midst of a recession!
I remember saying to supporters of the British Labour Party in the 90s, "But your lot are so hopeless that they couldn't even beat John Major". That remark was obviously far from original to me but it always went home. It tended to strike them dumb in fact. With the pain of having to bear remarks like that, no wonder they gave up most of their old policies soon after.
Under Tony Blair they in general became just another bumbling conservative party -- except for a bit of feel-good rhetoric and tokenistic reform (such as further reform of the already emasculated House of Lords and the banning of hunting to hounds). They even started to espouse "family values" -- the old catchcry of the religious Right. The penalty of their pre-Blair Leftist extremism was impotence. They gained power only by abandoning most of their old committments to Leftist causes. That the party of unilateral disarmament became the party of Iraq intervention was truly a seismic shift. Only their love of bureaucracy and big spending survived.
About a third of the people (e.g. in Allende's Chile) can sometimes be persuaded to support the Leftists. Some of those can be sincere. In the long run, however, they will learn. At what a price! Generally after many deaths: Tibet! China's Tienanmen Square and Great Leap Backward under Mao! The Hungary of Imre Nagy and Janos Kadar! The Czechoslovakia of Dubcek! The Cambodia of Pol Pot! The incredible human, economic and environmental disaster of Soviet Russia! What a lovely list of achievements for the so-smart Leftist intellectuals (really arrogant ignoramuses) to contemplate! Not that they care, of course.
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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
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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