A NEW FRENCH ENLIGHTENMENT DAWNING?

An interesting post from Chris Brand:

WATCH OUT WEASELS! France saw the rise and rise of beautiful neo-rightist, political science student Sabine Herold, 21. Fed up with union domination of France and the paralyzing strikes of June, Sabine, a real babe (long eyelashes, light blue mascara), aimed to roll back the state, rein in the unions, cut welfare dependency and to claim the freedom to work as well the freedom to homosexualize, take drugs and work in the prostitution industry. Altogether her bag sounded rather like that of the late neoliberal Pim Fortuyn (see above) in Holland, and, hinting at her attitude to mass dullard immigration, she certainly supported the Anglo-American Crusade against towelhead fanatics and Madman Insane in Iraq. Of rightist Monsieur Le Pen, she had bravely denied that he was a “fascist” -- “Ca ne sert à rien de gueuler que Le Pen est un fasciste. Il ne l'est pas. C’est son programme liberticide qui est dangereux”. Miss Herold had been nicknamed “the Joan d'Arc of the liberals” by “Le Figaro” and, by the London Times “Mademoiselle Thatcher”. She was “Rédactrice en chef” of the Paris-based free-market association “Liberté j'écris ton nom”. On June 15 she addressed a crowd of 200,000 fans in Paris. She favoured Edmund Burke, Friedrich Hayek and classic English liberalism. She was attending the prestigious Institut des Sciences Politiques in Paris and had links to the liberal organization, Centre for a New Europe.

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ELSEWHERE

Australia’s token antigun laws. A .38 sixgun is still legal! “The states will ban a range of small handguns, handguns with a calibre above .38 and those with a magazine capacity exceeding 10 rounds.”

We all know that there are some morons in the world but how did this guy get to be an air-traffic controller? Frightening. “A Swiss air traffic controller jokingly put an "al-Qaeda" label on a French helicopter that strayed into restricted air space during the Group of Eight summit, nearly leading to a shooting down of it by the French air force.”

There is a good article in the WSJ about the implications of the recent U. Mich. affirmative action decision by the U.S. Supreme court. It says that American institutions know that blacks can never be equal in achievement so also know that they need racial preferences to look good. It also explains anti-Americanism as a “holier than thou” attitude.

I think they are pretty right about this: “The Dept. of Defense ... just announced the launch of a new advertising campaign that links military values with success in life. The military believes the values soldiers learn through military service to be a key to success in civilian life as well. The primary goal of the ads? To encourage adults to to advocate military service to the young people in their lives."

Disturbing: "Even without a prescription drug benefit, the cost of Medicare will double as a percentage of GDP by 2040. The program's unfounded liabilities are more than $13.3 trillion, dwarfing even Social Security's massive debt. ... a more courageous or sensible Congress might have tried to reform this deeply troubled program and bring some restraint to its escalating costs. Instead, Congress decided that what Medicare really needed was a brand new entitlement estimated to cost at least $400 billion over the next 10 years ..."

The Wicked one has an email from a U.S. medical specialist about the incredible red-tape being generated by subsidized prescription drugs.

My latest academic posting: “AUTHORITARIANISM AND ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION IN INDIA” can be found here or here. I find that the Indians are a submissive but ambitious lot.

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LEFTIST FEAR OF FOOD

The attention-seeking never stops: "Hundreds of protesters descended on [Sacramento's] streets Sunday as agriculture officials from around the world prepared for a meeting where U.S. officials will pitch advances in genetically engineered agriculture. Chanting, banging drums and carrying signs that read 'We Don't Want to Eat Their Corporate Creations,' protesters swarmed the streets around the state Capitol and nearby conference center."

'Feed the needy, not the greedy!' read one placard hoisted near where agricultural ministers from hundreds of countries are meeting to consider the benefits of genetically enhanced crops. 'Beat Back the Corporate Attack!' demonstrators chanted. 'Entire populations are being put at risk simply for corporate economic benefit,' one protestor told the San Francisco Chronicle. Lost in the haze of anti-corporate hysteria is what the Sacramento conferees are actually doing."

Big food is the nouveau public health epidemic that has been targeted with phasers set on demonize. It began with the fast-food lawsuits. Fat people claimed the food was too cheap so they bought too much. And that restaurant operators should be made to pay for this manipulation."

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GREENIE SCARES BECOME UNGLUED

A big Greenie scare from a while back said that sperm-counts were dropping all over the world because of pesticide use. It turns out that sperm-counts are NOT dropping and that normal pesticide use does not influence sperm-count anyway.

Wow! New Scientist doesn’t seem to be able to work out whether global temperatures are rising or falling but they are sure it is our fault anyway.

The sun needs to sign “Kyoto” too: “Recently, Professor Richard Wilson published a peer-reviewed article in the journal Geophysical Research Letters where he reported the results of his studies on the amount of solar energy that our sun has been producing over the last 24 years. During this time period, the amount of energy the sun is producing has increased by 0.05% every 10 years."

The old fluoride scare: "If you thought that a loony obsession with malevolent forces spiking our drinking water was limited to fictional characters from 'Dr. Strangelove' ... think again. Such characters are very real, and they belong to the extreme environmentalist movement. National Review reports that the same crowd who brought you the entirely unfounded hysteria over Alar on apples and falsely accused biotech corn of mass- murdering monarch butterflies is now warning of a deadly substance that nameless, faceless government officials are purposely putting in your tap water: fluoride."

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ELSEWHERE

There is a good article here on what a dangerous fraud the “diversity” idea is. The version of it made into law by the U.S. Supreme Court doesn’t mean what an unsuspecting person might think it does.

We believe in freedom of association -- it's implicit in the First Amendment, in fact -- but that freedom entails not only the right to associate with those willing to associate with us but the right not to associate -- the right to discriminate, on any ground, good or bad, or no ground at all".

Contrary to first world middle class leftist dogma, the people of the third world are big fans of globalisation. Now why would that be? Simple. Because they know from experience that it makes them better off, not worse off -- contrary to what the lying Leftists of the West say.

Great news: Spam just doesn't sell. I must say I could throttle anybody who buys something advertised in spam. If people stop buying it will go away.

Not very libertarian but I sympathize: "France may pass a new law to ban Muslim veils and other religious symbols in public schools and buildings”

Good show: Officials last week agreed to pay $1.35 million to settle a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of some 700 women illegally strip- searched after their arrest. .... It didn't matter if the women had been arrested for a major felony or for a minor offense. A murder suspect was searched, as were women arrested for underage drinking or shoplifting."

Tom Wolfe wrote an essay at the turn of the century three years ago about the triumph of America and the failure of its Leftist intellectuals that makes interesting reading. He concludes that American intellectuals do not actually want change. They just want to talk about it.

The Wicked one has some more of those exceptionally funny courtroom transcripts.

In my academic posting here (and here) I report evidence which demolishes a stupid Leftist claim that Leftists are “life-loving” and conservatives are “death loving”.

China Hand has some pictures of the graceful new buildings that have just gone up in his part of China.

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LOTS OF GOOD STUFF

Great! Australia’s Foreign Minister has pissed all over the United Nations (metaphorically). He said that the U.N. was "ineffective and unfocused" and that Australia’s foreign policy will increasingly rely on "coalitions of the willing" like the one that waged war in Iraq.

There is good coverage here of the lies and hypocrisy that went into securing the moderately favourable verdict for the University of Michigan in the recent affirmative action case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

There is a short dialogue here with a rather wise correspondent who DEFENDS affirmative action as cheap pacification.

About time: “Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister’s press chief, yesterday accused the BBC of pursuing a secret agenda against the government and demanded an apology for its "biased" Iraq coverage.”

There is a good article in Brookes News about why the unemployed deserve better treatment from the Government -- i.e. the unemployed deserved to be compensated by the rest because the market is rigged against them. Conservatives could use that argument to really confuse the Leftists!

Philip Adams, child murderers and paedophilia. “Paedophilia is a nasty activity that means the sexual abuse of children. This is something that every ordinary person understands and, with the exception of child molesters, vigorously condemns. But it takes a rancid socialist like Philip Adams to accuse companies who produce goods and advertising that target the youth market of "corporate paedophilia"

There is a good short summary here of the Radical feminist worldview and their notion that there is a "Gender War" going on which women must win against men. It is pretty fevered stuff. Totally devoid of realism or rationality.

Paul Johnson says that the USA is an empire but he makes clear that his usage of that word is not the usual one today. He gives an interesting coverage of how the meaning of the word has changed over time.

Why do Jews rarely become farmers? According to Slate's economics writer it's because they are generally well-educated and so know better. I myself always describe farmers as "rural gamblers".

I am getting a strange new respect for USA Today. Note for instance this straight talk: "The financial problems racking many state governments this year have less to do with the weak national economy than with the ability of governors and legislators to manage money wisely. That is the key finding of a USA TODAY analysis of how the 50 states spend, tax and balance their budgets -- or don't. The National Governors Association says states are suffering their worst economic crisis since World War II. But for many states, the analysis shows, the fault is largely their own."

A good joke from Chris Tame of the Libertarian Alliance: "Q: What do you get if you cross a mafioso with a deconstructionist post- modernist philosopher? A: A man who makes you an offer you can't understand."

There is a good short book review here of a book by an expert on Italian Fascism. He shows that Fascism and Nazism modelled their methods on Lenin and Stalin and that the Fascist idea of adding nationalism to socialism was later taken up by Stalin and Mao -- so that in the end Fascism and Communism were two very similar Leftist sects -- something that I have also argued. The idea that Nazism was Rightist is thus an old Soviet lie that Left-leaning intellectuals in the West have perpetuated in flagrant denial of historical reality.

Environmental Colonialism: "Saving" Africa from Africans: "Under the banner of saving the African environment, Africans in the last half century have been subjected to colonialism from an overlooked source: the conservation movement. Local populations have been displaced and impoverished in order to create national parks and to serve other conservation objectives"

Powerful help for Israel: "Fundamentalist Christians have launched a nationwide billboard and bumper sticker campaign, opposing President Bush's plan for peace in the Middle East that calls for a Palestinian state with permanent borders by 2005. Some 100 billboards in major American cities, including five in Memphis [TN] alone, cite Genesis 35:11-12: 'And the Lord said to Jacob "Unto thy offspring will I give this land!"' Beneath the Bible verse, the billboards say, 'Pray that President Bush Honors God's Covenant with Israel.'"

Chris Brand has a big excerpt from the confession of a lesbian gone straight which concludes: “There’s a quiet ex-lesbian minority of ‘hasbians’ out there, having a gay old time with men after years of sapphistry”. It sounds like lesbians are pretty nasty to one-another.

The Wicked one has a sad story about a very small business being persecuted by local bureaucrats.

My academic posting here (or here) looks at possible effects of climate on political attitudes. It was hypothesized that people from the warmer climate of the Australian State of Queensland would be more conservative than people from the cooler climate of New South Wales. It was found that Queenslanders WERE more conservative on social and moral issues but were not more conservative on economic issues. An expanded treatment of the same subject can be found here.

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INDEPENDENT SCHOOL FUNDING

The Australian alternative to vouchers is already well-established: "Federal funding of non-government schools is on a runaway trajectory but the Howard Government has no plans to rein in the cost, estimated to hit $5.4 billion by 2006. With enrolments in non-government schools growing - and a new religious school opening every six weeks in NSW - federal budget estimates of the funding have blown out by $150 million. "We have no intention of putting some sort of a cap on it," the Minister for Education, Brendan Nelson, said. "This is a society that values and believes in supporting parents in their choice of education." This year, the scheme will pay $4.37 billion to 2650 schools - more than federal spending on universities - while two years ago the budget put the bill at $4.22 billion."

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ELSEWHERE

As a courageous black woman says: "By vigorously defending racial preferences in the name of diversity and refusing to challenge racial double standards, our national and state leaders have fostered hostilities among and between different racial and ethnic groups.... How long can a nation as diverse as America sustain racial and ethnic preferences without fueling increased racial and ethnic conflict? How long can the American people be satisfied with public policies that give advantages to the offspring of new immigrants over the needs of Americans with deep roots in this nation?"

Another story here about the disgusting “humanitarians” of the United Nations -- this time they are pretending that North Korean refugees don’t exist. The whole sorry lot of them should be kicked out of New York at least.

A good comment from one of my U.S. readers: "The GOP "tax breaks" and "prescription drug" plans are nothing short of something to take away ALL liberal issues from the Democrats - and essentially castrate them. The only problem is who is paying the bills."

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its usual conspectus of the blogosphere.

Realism at last: “Israel is too strong to defeat and the Palestinians have no choice but to live with the Jewish state in peace, a senior Hamas official said in an extraordinary departure from the militant group's implacable enmity towards Israel.”

Wayne Lusvardi has a review here of a crap anti-democratic book that a surprising range of people seem to agree with. Wayne writes: “The author of the book is getting quite a bit of attention in the U.S. in TV and print media. Even many libertarian websites (i.e., LewRockwell.com, vonMisesInstitute.com) have been duped by the book. I'm a sociologist by training and can spot a Neo-Marxist quickly. Globalization is a very contentious issue and the political Left is very aggressive in selling their socialist solution by calling it something other than it is.”

Hey! I really like this: “The US House of Representatives has voted to award British Prime Minister Tony Blair the Congressional Gold Medal, the country's highest civilian honour, for his steadfast support of the US-led invasion of Iraq. Mr Blair becomes the second British leader to receive the award, following in the footsteps of wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill”

Clever! Beats sending troops: “The United States has offered Zimbabwe "generous assistance" in exchange for its ruling ZANU-PF party ousting President Robert Mugabe and agreeing to hold free elections.”

About time: “THE United States and the European Union today agreed to start landmark talks this year on liberalising the trans-Atlantic air market. The "open skies" talks, which have been held up for several years, could radically change relations between European and American airlines.”

ANIMAL activists have threatened to do their utmost to stop shooters culling 6,500 kangaroos at the Puckapunyal army base in central Victoria. There are untold millions of the b***s in Australia and they are a tremendous pest to graziers (ranchers) because they eat what the sheep and cattle also eat. There are so many kangaroos in Australia that you even see them hopping around the suburbs of Brisbane at times -- and Brisbane is a city of 1 million people.

A recent posting from Chris Brand: “RACE IS KEY VARIABLE IN CRIME: Engaging Human BioDiversity President Steve Sailer pulled together US Department of Justice figures showing that Blacks are 9.1 times as likely to commit crimes as are Whites. Apparently, race has now overtaken even sex as a predictor of criminality (and that’s without allowing for the fact that much female criminality consists of civil and unpunishable cheating on men).”

China Hand replies to allegations about China’s “sweatshops”. As an experienced industrial engineer who has toured many Chinese factories he is in an ideal position to do so. He says that many Chinese factories are in fact better than some Western ones he remembers.

The Wicked one has a set of hilarious quotations that should be enough to make a libertarian out of anyone.

My academic posting here (or here) looks at psychopathic tendencies in the normal population and concludes that psychopaths may have got a bad rap.

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ENGLAND IS NOT RULED BY THE ENGLISH

Very few people outside the UK are probably aware of the anomaly that Prime Minister Blair and most of his senior ministers are in fact Scotsmen or Welshmen. So England is not being ruled by the English. A second anomaly is that Scotland and Wales have parliaments of their own in addition to their representatives in the UK parliament but England does not. So Scotsmen and Welshmen control England plus their own countries while Englishmen have no say over Wales, Scotland OR England! And to add insult to injury, the present UK government is even proposing constitutional changes that would almost certainly be rejected by the English if they were given the chance to vote on it all via a referendum. So a lot of the long-suffering English are getting pretty fed-up with all that. I reproduce here an email from one of them that gives more detail of how anomalous the situation has become.

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CONTROVERSIAL GENES

Paul Gottfried makes the interesting aside in his book MULTICULTURALISM AND THE POLITICS OF GUILT that the scientific case for racially based differences in intelligence is much stronger than the case that homosexuality is genetic. Yet the first hypothesis is controversial and hotly disputed, but the much weaker hypothesis is paraded as fact and treated as an 'article of faith' by a large section of society and virtually all the media.

The gay gene theory (criticised here) does now seem to be widely accepted as THE explanation for homosexual behaviour. I don't have a dog in that fight but must note that NONE of the research in fact finds that there is a one-to-one relationship between genetic makeup and homosexuality. I have no doubt that there is a genetic predisposition to it in some cases but in ALL cases there need to be other infuences as well for homosexual behaviour to result.

This article notes how widespread homosexuality is in the RC priesthood and also notes some of the other influences that give rise to homosexuality.

A less controversial gene: Scientists say some people are born shy. Not only that, researchers from Harvard Medical School say most people don't outgrow their natural inhibitions. 'Now we're suggesting that same link continues through life,' says Carl Schwartz, an assistant professor of psychiatry. In a study published in the journal, 'Science', Dr. Schwartz and his colleague, Jerome Kagan, say MRI brain scans show shy adults react to new faces differently than their less inhibited peers.

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IQ RESEARCH

A recent post from Chris Brand:

"Any hopes that the June 1-published Pergamon Festschrift (PDF!) for Arthur Jensen would make waves were dashed as the publisher failed to establish any significant presence for the book on the Internet, let alone anywhere else. This failure had been predicted by some in view of Pergamon's owner, Elsevier, having moved in 2002 to close down Praeger -- the only house to have been publishing London School mat‚riel since 1996. Better cheer came from the University of Missouri-Columbia, where postgraduate Alexander Beaujean had set up a nice website with pictures of Galton, Spearman, Burt, Eysenck and Jensen and gave plenty of news of his own work and reviews on topics such as mental speed (which he reports from meta-analysis to have a heritability of around .40 -- quite high given the unreliability of many mental speed tasks as conventionally administered by researchers)."

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ELSEWHERE

A rare victory for free speech in these politically correct times: "The city violated the First Amendment rights of two firefighters and a police officer when it fired them for riding on a parade float in blackface in 1998, a judge ruled Tuesday. U.S. District Judge John E. Sprizzo said the government "may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because a segment of society finds it offensive."

The poor dears: “There's no guarantee of safety for Canadian soldiers who start patrolling the troubled streets of Kabul next month”

A U.S. Marine on leave in Australia after the Iraq war saved a life: “A US Marine who intervened in a vicious brawl outside a northern Sydney nightclub may have saved a man's life, police said today”

Surprise, surprise: Germany’s socialist government sure has made a mess of the German economy.

A critical report on Australia's peak Aboriginal body (ATSIC) has called it a "corrupt shambles" that would not be tolerated if it were run by whites. Is not the continued tolerance of this an example of Leftist racism? The poor blacks are too childlike to live up to adult white standards?

China Hand notes a mature and tolerant response to "insult" from the People's Daily in Beijing which is a refreshing change from the paranoia and hysteria of the past.

The Wicked one has a good example of why democracy is a good thing.

In my academic posting here (or here) I show that the main things psychologists are interested in are personal adjustment, personal ambition and cynicism. One wonders what those interests reflect about psychologists themselves. Certainly it my impression that they are in general ambitious, cynical and prone to presenting childish games as "research".

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U. MICH. AND THE U.S. SUPREME COURT

Since everyone else will be blogging on this I won’t say much but I find this reasoning pretty incredible:

Justice O'Connor declared that the Constitution "does not prohibit the law school's narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body." ... "Effective participation by members of all racial and ethnic groups in the civic life of our nation is essential if the dream of one nation, indivisible, is to be realized,"

WHAT educational benefit flows from having a racially diverse student body? No-one has ever shown any net benefit to my knowledge -- though there is plenty of evidence that it leads to dumbing down.

OF COURSE all racial groups should participate in the life of the nation but who said that blacks need favouritism before they can participate? Sounds like old-fashioned racism to me.

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THE LIBYAN RETHINK

It was notable how quiet Libya’s Gaddafi went after Ronald Reagan had him bombed: A modern equivalent of the old “whiff of grapeshot” effect. The man who once hosted Arafat has now not only agreed to pay compensation to the Lockerbie victims his terrorist underlings attacked but after Iraq he now does not want even to be known as an Arab!

“Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan 'Supreme Guide', plans to announce his withdrawal from the Arab League sometime in August. The Libyan 'Popular Assembly' has just passed a bill to drop the word 'Arab' from the country's official name. After next September, Libya will describe itself as 'The African Republic of Libya'.”

What Reagan started, GWB has finished. Destroying two aggressive Islamic regimes (in Afghanistan and Iraq) has had the intended effect of putting big psychological pressure on other Islamic regimes that have a history of supporting terrorism.

And guess what? Now that Israel seems to be getting pretty good at blowing up their leaders, even the ultra-intransigent Hamas suddenly seems very interested in a cease-fire. Funny that!

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THAT GOOD OL' GENEROUS U.S. CONGRESS

There is a stereotype-busting article here about the new prescription drug plan for the elderly that looks like being enacted in the U.S.A. soon. The scheme will benefit ALL older peoople -- not just the impoverished elderly and the article points out that the elderly have far more assets than the working families who will be paying for the program via their taxes. So the whole scheme is grossly unjust.

"It is wrong to increase refundable child tax credits to families with no income tax liability. It's not a question of being stingy; many are genuinely concerned about the growth of a nontaxpaying class that potentially can vote subsidies for itself under the guise of tax reduction." But this article shows that such credits were a GOP idea in the first place.

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ELSEWHERE

Thought-provoking: One of my English correspondents has recently spent a couple of months in Indonesia and mentioned with approval the dusky maidens there. I commented that dusky Islamic maidens were probably pretty dangerous. His reply was: “Indonesia seems as much Islamic as the UK is Christian. There are more Islamic nutters in the UK than there seem to be there!”

“The appointment of a gay bishop does not violate the Church of England's current teaching”, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said Monday. Well, I guess we all knew that the C of E long ago ceased teaching the New Testament.

He! He! “Belgium is to amend war crimes laws used to target George Bush and the commander of American forces in Iraq, General Tommy Franks” Those pissant Belgians soon folded under a bit of pressure.

Although IVF conception was invented in Britain, it seems that there are incredible and rather offensive bureaucratic requirements before you are allowed assisted reproduction in Britain today. In Australia, if you can afford it, you have it.

How ridiculous that people have to go to these lengths to have a child: "Eight more British families are to sidestep U.K. law by following the example of a couple who travelled to America to use selective embryo screening to create a so-called 'designer baby' to help save the life of their first child."

The younger brother of the Battleship Potemkin (post of 19th) has found a small round in his aging revolutionary magazine and fired it off with great jollity. He notes with satisfaction that the Left sometimes oppose some taxes (only if they are put forward by conservatives, of course) while taking no account of the fact that they still do their best to increase taxation overall.

Eleanor Spreitzer says that if our kids are eating unhealthy food it is not the fault of McDonalds but the fault of high taxes that force mothers to go out to work and so to be unable to prepare proper home-cooked meals.

The Wicked one has a most instructive fable about modern-day Canada.

My academic post here (or here) reports on the popular notion that love of animals goes with love of people. Survey evidence showed no relationship.

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MORE ON THE HISTORY OF IMMIGRATION POLICY

A reader writes:

Reciprocity and immigration: A possible basis for a bold new "non-discriminatory" immigration policy?? This VDARE article takes a half satirical swipe at immigration thinking based on wonderful big ideas. What could be more 'fair' and 'natural' than the great principle of 'reciprocity'? Do unto others as they do unto you.

The article also makes some points about Japanese immigration policies in the 1930s. Historians still ascribe Japan's path to war in 1942 as being "propelled" by the restrictive immigration policies of countries like the US and Australia. Sure.

It reminds me of a comment by historian Geoffrey Blainey in his SHORTER HISTORY OF AUSTRALIA talking about the adoption of the "White Australia Policy" in the late 19th century. "The White Australia Policy was far from unique. Canada, the United States and New Zealand - three other democratic nations which faced an inrush of Chinese - had built there own walls against Asian immigration by the 1880s. China and Japan usually gave no welcome to foreigners; and it was much safer to be a Chinese living in Australia than an Australian in China. Late in the century six Australian missionaries, young women and men of compassion, were murdered in various episodes in China. When the Emperor of China sent commissioners to other lands in 1887 to see whether Chinese residents were ill-treated, he was informed that Chinese living in Java and the Philippines were treated rather worse than those living in Australia."

The old White Australia policy (ended by conservative governments in the 1960s) stupidly denied Australia the benefit of hard working non-European immigrants. It was short sighted and harmed our economic interests, a bit like our 1960s tariff wall. In it's day it was seen as protecting what were internationally advanced working conditions. The trade unions believed the coolie labour system, common across the Empire could get a toehold here. It had the support of the "social progressives" too. They used the White Australia policy to end an indentured black labour system then operating in North Queensland: Racism and reform in one package, neither wholly right or wholly wrong, it was certainly nothing later generations need apologise for. The article also has some fun pointing out features of Mexico's immigration policies here.

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ELSEWHERE

Who said that conservatives can't have fun? Though I must admit that British Conservative politicians do seem to like having their fun in unusual ways.

I have just posted here an article about Saudi Arabia that gives a vivid picture of what a disgusting place it is. Excerpt about their religious police: "Last year, when a girls' school caught fire, they stopped the fire brigade entering the blazing building in case the girls were not fully covered. As a result, 15 burned to death."

I have just posted here part of a report about the "peace" activist who makes a practice of invading U.S. airbases and damaging aircraft. His own mother cannot not understand why he does what he does but it is not hard to work out if you look at the results of his actions. Does he do anything to prevent war? No. Does he get heaps of personal publicity? Yes. So he is just another attention seeker -- and has been since he was in High School, it appears. Typical Leftist motivations, in other words. In our present terrorist age, however, he probably does the U.S. Airforce a great favour by making clear to them in a relatively harmless way how laughable their security is.

A good summary of the state of affairs in Zimbabwe here. You would think Tony Blair could spare a few troops to get rid of the obscene Mugabe, but Mugabe IS black, I suppose. Blacks can do anything without being pulled into line, of course. But even the French send in their troops to sort out their ex-colonies.

And elsewhere in Africa apes are disappearing and it's not global warming or industrialism that is doing it. Old fashioned hunting by Africans is to blame. How odd that the Greenies are not condemning Africans as the chief threat to an endangered species!

There is some good in everyone, they say: The French not only allow genetically modified crops to be grown but jail those who attack them.

There has just been a big conference in Boston which was 'intended to encourage and support litigation against the food industry'. The usual suspects -- lawyers and activists who use junk-science in an attempt to erode consumer freedom and turn food companies into their newest cash cow -- were on hand."

So it can happen: The Philippine government welcomed a public rejection of terrorism by Muslim rebels, saying it could lead to a resumption of peace talks.

Smallpox vaccination has been going on since 1796 (Yes. 1796, not 1976) and yet we get this self-important nonsense: "The next phase of the smallpox vaccination program should be put on hold while health authorities investigate possible severe side effects, a CDC advisory panel recommended Thursday."

"'If you keep a gun in your home,' a University of Pennsylvania press release said last week, 'you dramatically increase the odds that you will die of a gunshot wound, according to research published in the June issue of the Annals of Emergency Medicine.' ... Frightening results for people who own guns, or who are thinking of buying them. Frightening but, it turns out, meaningless -- another example of how unsound social science is being used in public-policy debates."

The Wicked one explains why a "young man" got shot in the head in South Africa.

In my academic posting here (or here) I point out that not to have a death penalty for serious crime is undemocratic.

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STOPPING THE LITIGATION MANIA

And so she should: "A gun distributor wants the widow of a slain middle school teacher to pay its defense costs from last year's five-week trial. The Valor Corp.says it is entitled to recover legal costs, including attorneys' fees, because Pam Grunow lost her lawsuit accusing the Broward County company of being responsible for her husband's death. Valor sold the .25-caliber handgun that Lake Worth Middle School student Nathaniel Brazill used to kill Barry Grunow on the last day of school in 2000." And Brazill stole the gun, let it be noted. How was the gunmaker responsible for that? If these evil lawsuits that blame everyone but the wrongdoer are to be stopped, the people bringing such suits have to be made to bear the costs of their actions.

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SOME OF THE LATEST FROM Brookes News

Clinton in treason's shadow. Seeing as Hillary Clinton's book has decided to mock history in an attempt to clear a path to the White House, I think it behoves us to once again draw attention to the enormous damage her husband wilfully did to America's national security.
President Lula and the "untouchability" of communist Cuba. How nice, Brazil's President Lula and the rest of his charming socialists gang up with Castro against his victims and those who demand liberty for Cuba.
Bush and America’s political civil war. The ruckus over the 2000 election at least had the beneficial effect of revealing the enormous ideological rift that has been developing for more than thirty years in America.
Philip Adams' socialist hypocrisy. By keeping Adams shocking record on communist aggression and tyranny in mind when reading his current diatribes against Bush and his sneering references to WMDs one can see where he is coming from. Not only that, one can also see why he never refers to Saddam's crimes, the mass torture, the mass graves, even one filled with children..

Details here

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ELSEWHERE

Russia’s President Putin is about to discover that no-one can do pomp and circumstance like the British. His getting such a grand welcome on his visit to London underscores what an asset to Britain the monarchy is. The disagreements between Putin and Prime Minister Blair are well-known but Russia is still a very important country whose friendship with the West must be fostered. And the monarchy helps with that by giving great honour to Russia despite minor differences at the political level.

The story of this unfortunate woman is as good an example as any of the disgraceful arrogance of government intervention in people’s private lives. We no longer allow government intervention in the private lives of homosexuals. Why do we allow it in the private lives of infertile couples? No child could be more wanted than one conceived through the great difficulties and uncertainties of IVF.

The FDA is up to its usual nonsense -- this time warning people that the long-lasting anti-impotence drug Cialis is “risky”. Yet it has been readily available on prescription in Australia and New Zealand for some time. Are American bodies so much frailer than Australian ones? All the FDA are interested in is protecting their own vast bureaucratic empire.

V.D. Hanson has an interesting review of a recent book about Napoleon that looks at why the murderous Corsican dictator is still widely admired -- even by his chief victims (the French). Excerpt: “Indeed Napoleon's enduring resonance in some parts of contemporary Western society tells us as much about ourselves as it does the self-proclaimed emperor. Johnson's matter-of-fact chronicle of executions, grotesque battle losses, betrayal, and outright lying—stripped of Napoleonic fluff and bluster—reflects deeply-rooted Anglo skepticism about messianic killers, as the principled careers of Englishmen like Edmund Burke, the Duke of Wellington, Winston Churchill, and most recently Tony Blair attest. In contrast, for the insecure, megalomaniac, and duplicitous, Napoleonic power holds an eternal appeal.”

The previous French government to the present one was not too hot either: “French Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin stated that he was "proud" of the presence of communists in his government and shocked by a comparison to the Nazis.”

Thomas Sowell has an excellent short review of the work of Eric Hoffer. Excerpt: “People who are fulfilled in their own lives and careers are not the ones attracted to mass movements: "A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding," Hoffer said. "When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business." “ He also has a good explanation of the “Limousine Liberal” phenomenon.

O to have such small concerns: "A Norwegian family of four is facing eviction for painting their front door green. Tor Ole Eriksen's colour choice has put him at odds with his local homeowners' association in Kristiansand. The Brattbakken homeowners' association allows doors to be painted only blue, red, gold or white."

I have received another email from a reader about the famously anti-Australian Prime Minister of Malaysia, Dr. Mohammad Mahathir -- which I have posted here. The email makes the point that Australia is more respected in Asia if we stick to our own traditions instead of pandering to theirs.

China Hand has some reflections about a modern Chinese film Shower. Excerpt: “The film is full of nostalgia for the old ways put pessimistic about their ability to survive”.

The Wicked one has some pretty appalling examples of perverted justice in California and New York.

In my academic posting here (or here), I look at whether whether there is a distinctive Protestant ethic in Australia today. In five surveys I found no differences between Protestants and Catholics but I did find differences between believers and unbelievers. These days it is the atheists and agnostics who are hard driving and ambitious.

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MALAYSIAN FOLLIES

My slightly sympathetic comment about the outrageous Mohammad Mahathir, Prime Minister of Malaysia, elicited the following response from a rather irate Australian reader:

“Didn't Mahathir appoint as deputy a man he now accuses of sodomy and homosexuality? If an Australian Governor General was forced to resign over an appointment he made in a previous job, surely el Presidente should be held accountable for his decisions in office.

And weren't Malaysia's sodomy laws introduced by the British anyway? And didn't Malaysia once include Singapore, which is home to the notorious transvestite Bugis Street? My understanding is that the Singaporean government, since being expelled from Malaysia for being of the wrong race, has made efforts to 'clean up' Bugis Street. So where were Malaysia's allegedly squeaky clean "Asian values" back then? Apparently the apparently puritanical and precious Malaysians were not offended by Bugis Street when Kuala Lumpur and Mahathir's own ruling UMNO party called the shots?

Do 'Asian values' include torture? Apparently Mahathir's values do! “

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How quickly the tune has changed: “The European Union has embraced a new doctrine of hard-nosed military intervention around the world. EU leaders meeting in Greece on Thursday ditched their strategy of "soft power". Instead, they favoured a more muscular mix, including pre-emptive strikes against dangerous regimes if necessary. "Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is the single most important threat to peace and security among nations," said the text, drafted by Javier Solana, the EU's security chief.”

"The House voted Wednesday to eliminate estate taxes by the end of the decade, keeping the Republicans’ tax cut efforts at the top of the congressional agenda. Republicans, criticizing the levy as a 'death tax,' said it forces families to liquidate small businesses and sell family farms to pay tax bills." See also here. Much the same bill was passed by the House last year but failed to get through the Senate so this is only a tiny step. Wealthy elderly Americans should migrate to Australia where such taxes were abolished years ago..

Jeff Jacoby has some ideas about what the U.S. should be doing to support the pro-democracy demonstrators in Iran.

USA Today can have surprisingly sensible editorial pieces at times. This one about High School students being required to pass a final test before they get a graduation diploma makes a lot of good points. Example: “U.S. Department of Education researchers found that ''A'' students in schools in poor neighborhoods had the same reading scores as ''D'' students in schools in affluent areas.” In other words, without the tests, a lot of diplomas are meaningless. But I guess we really knew that.

As their science comes increasingly into question, the “Greenhouse” advocates just push the panic button harder. They now claim that temperatures COULD rise by 6 degrees next century and that this would wipe out most life on earth! This article in “Spiked” points out the obvious however: “Humans live in a wide diversity of weather conditions already. Even within a single city like New York, people live very successfully with temperature extremes of 50 degrees Celsius or more.” So what’s a puny 6 degrees to that?

If only: Japanese Genetic engineers may soon give us decaf coffee that actually tastes like coffee.

There is already a huge Australian diaspora in Britain and the latest deliberate relaxation of the rules for Australians working in Britain will undoubtedly make Britain a second home for many more Australians. Britain clearly wants hard-working young Australians badly. They already fill many gaps in the British economy.

But government employees in Australia are a different matter. For instance, Australian police are as corrupt as any in the Western world. And public hospitals in Australia may be nearly as bad as British ones (See here , here and
here for the British example)

I have posted here a report that shows anti-abortionists doing something PRACTICAL to save young lives. About time! And didn’t it get the abortionists irate! They obviously put profit before saving lives. I advocated similar abortion-prevention measures myself last year (scroll down).

Eleanor Spreitzer has an amusing new set of ten commandments that Leftists will not like very much here.

There is a redirection notice on Michael Darby’s blog

There is a redirection notice on Chris Brand’s blog

In my academic post here (or here) I help wipe out a whole body of psychological “knowledge” about personal ambition.

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CHANGE IN MALAYSIA

Australians, and their European brethren, are a greedy, war-mongering mob who promote free sex and sodomy, are indifferent to incest and want to conquer the world -- or so said the retiring Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mohammed Mahathir, recently. Australians will be delighted that the world’s most famous anti-Australian is stepping down but I fear that his going might in fact be a disaster. Malaysia is a racial tinderbox with the way its bumbling native Malays hate their large and prosperous Chinese minority and Mahathir’s anti-Western rhetoric was a classic way of distracting attention from that. Will anybody else be able to hold Malaysia together? I am pessimistic.

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REVOLT AGAINST PC IN COUNTRY AUSTRALIA

A reader writes:

"The recent doings in Dubbo show that city/country split may not have been healed by big cash handouts to the bush from governments. Recently in the New South Wales provincial town of Dubbo (pop. 38,000) about 11,000 people have signed a petition for kids who regularly commit crimes to be taken from their parents. The town has a problem with juvenile crime committed mainly by black youth. This is both a race and crime issue. I think the locals support for the proposition, which has zero chance of actually being implemented, was being deliberately provocative. The locals were sort of telling State and Federal politicians by this "..if you don't care about our crime problems, we don't care about your social reform agenda".

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LEFTIST COMPASSION

Jeff Jacoby writes: “As if the mass graves containing the remains of so many Iraqi men and women weren't horrific enough, now comes word of an Iraqi grave filled with children. "This is different from other mass graves discovered since the fall of Saddam," the Kurdish newspaper Taakhi reported this week, "because it contains the remains of 200 child victims of the repression of the Kurdish uprising in 1991." Found among the corpses were dolls; the little girls who owned them must have been clutching them when they died.” But all the world’s “compassionate” Leftists defended the man who did this! It tells you what THEY are. But they defended the murderous Stalin for decades too so they are at least consistent.

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MORE LEFTIST COMPASSION

"We have the legal custody of the children and we will do with them as we see fit. They are minors and they do what we tell them to do." --Susan Etscovitz, of the Massachusetts Department of Social Services, on attempts to take a pair of homeschooled teenagers from their parents. We now hear however that the words of this Nazi “social worker” were “taken out of context”. I don’t think those words need much context for us to know what we think of the system and the mentality which produced them.

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” Three more Iranians set themselves on fire on Thursday in European capitals to protest a crackdown on an exile group in France”. The sad thing about it is that the arrogant French will not give a damn about the poor old self-immolators. “Imbecile” will be the ordinary French response if I know anything about it.

The lucky old British taxpayer: “Citizens of ten Eastern and Southern European countries will be entitled to UK social security benefits, council housing, treatment on the NHS and schooling when their countries join the European Union next year.”

Blogger.com does it again! “Bigwig” writes: “Silflay Hraka has moved to http://silflayhraka.com. Blogger went down for us on Friday night and never came back, so we were more or less forced out, though I'd been toying with the idea for a while.”

If only there were supermajority requirements like this everywhere: "The requirement is especially important this year, as California struggles with massive budget deficit of $38.2 billion_the legacy of an incredible run-up in spending in the late 1990s. The requirement of a 2/3rds supermajority by the California Constitution protects state taxpayers from government's natural instinct to raise taxes instead of cut waste and extravagant spending."

Arlene Peck has been to a Hollywood party and is amazed at the antisemitism of the Jewish Leftists she met there.

China Hand has discovered a Hong Kong equivalent of New York’s famous “Soup Nazi”

Michael Darby has a post which shows that Leftists totally ignore the realities of the Middle East.

Chris Brand has a few reflections about his long-standing advocacy of conservative causes even whilst almost all of his academic colleagues were Leftist.

The Wicked one is pleased at news of two successful fightbacks by ordinary ARMED Americans against criminal intruders.

In my academic post here (or here) I report a new way of measuring how ambitious people are. It works very well but psychologists generally still use older methods that can be shown to work less well. They are much more interested in confirming their prejudices than in finding out anything new.

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LEFT AND RIGHT IN TUDOR TIMES

I have often argued that a Leftist personality underlies the rhetoric of the Leftist ideologue. I think all history shows that Leftists are basically unhappy people with big ego needs -- needs that make them crave attention, praise and -- ultimately -- power. And along with that goes a hatred of any success, happiness or power in others. And the Leftist aims to exercise power by taking away the liberties and regulating the lives of ordinary people. But if such a Leftist personality does exist, it should have been around for a long time -- far longer than we have had the term “Leftist” for it. I believe that evidence of such personalities does abound in history and we see it in fact in one of the great eras of English history -- in the Elizabethan era. Note the following excerpts from a discussion of two of the most powerful politicians in the reign of Elizabeth I -- Sir Walter Ralegh and Elizabeth’s Prime Minister -- Robert Cecil:

Cecil's shrinking heart probably allowed him to receive only the unpleasing news of how much he was in Ralegh's debt. ‘He worked with a cold fervour for the things of this world,' writes C. V. Wedgwood, ‘but he did not love the world at all ... it seemed to him no more than a painful, unrewarding purgatory.'

Ralegh loved the world, and his work in it.

Robert Cecil was Secretary of State as well as Leader of the House of Commons, and made earnest efforts to regulate the private lives of citizens into a neat and tidy pattern. His paternal policy was one that has often since led to disaster. He tried to enforce economy by law; it was ‘most necessary' to insist on coarser bread, and thinner beer, and fewer ale-houses, and ‘opening hours' for them; they must be closed at least one day a week (as in the modern ‘Six Day Licence') and then, so he argued, people would grow more food. Sheep-grazing was also wrong, and must be replaced by crops of hemp and corn; though as he added, ‘in these last few wet years', their deaths might as reasonably be blamed on the weather. Cecil's piety failed to convince some of the M.P.s that men should be ‘compelled by penalties', as one complained, to grow the regulation amounts of wheat and hemp, etc.

Francis Bacon's outstanding intellect came to Cecil's help with heavily embroidered eloquence. This would be a ‘law tending to God's honour'....

By contrast with Bacon's incomprehensible rhetoric, Ralegh's forthright attack on the bill is startling. His pungent rejoinders made short work of the Government's high-flown theories. The practical knowledge he had gained as a child on his father's farm had shown him at first hand how absurd it was to try to legislate for land without experience of it. And there was something at stake more important to him even than the land -- and that was individual liberty. ‘I do not like this constraining of men to manure or use their ground at our wills; let every man use it to that which it is most fit for, and use his own discretion.' Let Parliament set corn and hemp at liberty, ‘and leave every man free, which is the desire of a true Englishman'.

IIe won over the whole House. They shouted ‘Away with the bill!' and persistently rejected it, though the Government pushed it twice to a division.

Ralegh, that 'liberal-minded independent',' also [opposed] the bills to enforce a right religion. There was one against the Sect of Brownists, whom he had agreed gravely were `worthy to be rooted out of any commonwealth'. But just how, demanded the uncompromising realist, were they to set about rooting them out? (`I am sorry for it, I believe there be ten or twelve thousand of them in England.') If by banishment, who was to pay their transport, and to where? And who was to maintain their wives and families? And did the House really know what exactly the Brownists were, even after a Committee had been locked in by Cecil to study a book of their Articles of Belief? They should be judged, Ralegh insisted, only by their acts, not by their opinions. Like his Queen, he would not admit to anyone the right to set up `window to peer into men's souls'.

His loathing of such spiritual tyranny helped to cut out the cruellest measures of repression. It was expressed again, in terms of sheer hard common sense, against the new bill to make church attendance compulsory, and the church-wardens act as informers to the J.P.s. With the brisk logic of mathematics, Ralegh pointed out that if there were only two offenders in each parish, their sum total, together with the church-wardens, would add four hundred and eighty persons to every quartersessions, and `what great multitudes-what quarrelling and danger may happen, besides giving authority to a mean churchwarden'.

In matters more vital it was Ralegh's voice more than any that persistently championed the poor. He attacked with open scorn the meanness of rich men who called it good policy to squeeze the pockets of the poor and oppress their liberties.

He championed the humble housewife as keenly as he did his sovereign lady, and more dangerously for himself. Robert Cecil spoke in patriotic praise of the news that ‘some poor people were selling their pots and pans to pay the subsidy.... Neither pots nor pans, nor dish nor spoon should be spared', he announced unctuously. He was sure it would have an excellent effect on the King of Spain when he heard ‘how willing we are to sell all in defence of God's religion', etc. His listeners applauded this noble sentiment. It has a hollow echo coming from a man who had made a large fortune, as Master of the Wards

His complacent eagerness to sacrifice the household goods of poor folk was backed by Bacon. The poor ought to be taxed as heavily as the rich: because, as he quoted in Latin, it was a right and ‘sweet course to pull together in an equal yoke'.

This smug hypocrisy brought Ralegh to his feet. `Call you this an equal yoke, when a poor man pays as much as a rich? His estate may be no better than he is assessed at, while our estates are entered as £30 or £40 in the Queen's books -- not the hundredth part of our wealth!' His outrageous frankness over this unfair advantage given to his own class, shocked his opponents. His final blow demolished them: ‘It is neither sweet nor equal.'

(Quoted from p. 136 - 138 of That Great Lucifer: A portrait of Sir Walter Ralegh by Margaret Irwin [Bungay, Suffolk: Reprint Society, 1960])

So we see that, even back then, it was the conservative defender of individual liberty (Ralegh) who was -- as conservatives have always claimed -- the true champion and helper of the poor. While the power-mad control freaks such as the scheming Cecil and the intellectual Bacon had no real concern for the poor at all. Nothing has changed.

And in another very modern touch, Queen Elizabeth ended her reign by announcing a big tax cut (by abolishing government-granted monopolies) -- to much popular acclaim (p. 158). Big tax-cutters such as Thatcher and Reagan thus have a most respected and successful predecessor in English history.

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FOOLISH CHANGE IN BRITAIN TODAY

Tony Blair’s sudden announcement that he is going to abolish Britain’s ancient unwritten constitution and replace it with more “modern” arrangements is rightly being decried by most conservatives. A major objective is to make the appointment of judges less politicized, yet, as it points out here, the British judiciary is in fact already much LESS politicized than most. It is certainly less politicized than the US judiciary. So replacing such a successful system seems crazy. One reason that has been suggested for this attack on the British constitution is that Tony Blair and most of his senior ministers are in fact Scotsmen, who have no love for anything English. I think that is a red herring, however. It is almost certainly just another example of the Leftist conviction that they can “improve” anything by ever more legislation. Robert Cecil would understand.

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ELSEWHERE

There’s some amusing stuff in the WSJ today about clinical depression at Guantanamo Bay and the evils of dihydrogen hydroxide.

President Bush said Wednesday that he and other world leaders would not tolerate nuclear weapons in Iran. And after Iraq, that carries weight.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with reading for all.

Chris Brand has a discussion of the connection between white guilt and coloured immigration.

Michael Darby has some thoughts about explaining tax reform better.

The Wicked one points out that George Bush supports big government.

In my academic posting here (or here), I re-do some research originally reported by Marxist psychologists and get results that totally undermine their conclusions.

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FOREBODINGS ABOUT MULTICULTURALISM

A reader writes:

I read your recent posting on multiculturalism with interest. There is something quite arrogant and self contradictory about 'multiculturalism'. On the one hand multiculturalists think it is arrogant and supremacist for western people to rate their own culture higher than other cultures, especially Third World cultures. They say it is xenophobic and racist for Australians to want to give preference in immigration to people with similar cultural traditions.

Yet how do they treat the experience of other nations, especially Third World nations? Look at the track record of multi-ethnic, multi-cultural states. Eritrea split from Ethiopia 1993. Czechoslavakia splits 1993. USSR breaks down into about a dozen ethnically distinct states 1991. Yugoslavia 1991. Lebanon effectively splits into Christian and Muslim regions 1975. Cyprus partitioned 1974. Hindu and Muslim areas of India split into India and Pakistan 1947, with muslim Pakistan and muslim Bangladesh further spliting on ethnic lines in 1971. Malay dominated Malaysia, expels Chinese dominated Singapore in 1965. Sri Lanka. Turkey. Iraq. Iran. Sudan. Chad. Nigeria. Ireland. Ulster. The German speaking South Tyrolians of Italy. Canada and Quebec. Even multi-ethnic Switzerland, which is effectively divided into linguistically homogeneous cantons each with local control over education and cultural affairs, saw the creation of a new Francophone canton of Jura within German Berne following years of terrorist activity.

Isn't it arrogant to ignore the numerous failures of other nations? Doesn't this imply that multiculturalists really believe, ...under their benign leadership, of course, that we are superior to the Ethiopians, Czechs, Slovaks, Russians, Yugoslavs, Lebanese, Cyrpriots, Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Malaysians, Singaporeans, Sri Lankans, Turks, Iraqis, Iranians, Sudanese, Nigerians, Irish, Ulstermen, Italians, Canadians, Quebeckers and Swiss? Isn't their something self contradictory about the multiculturalists' failures to deal honestly with the real world failures of numerous multi-ethnic states? Isn't it a tad arrogrant to believe we can avoid the same fate if only we cast out our doubters?

Multiculturalism is an idealistic political programme. History shows that idealistic programmes don't last more than a generation, sometimes they linger for two, especially if the vested interests dig themselves in. Hopefully it will work and countries like Australia and the US will be spared the ethnic conflicts that litter the world. Just maybe we can show mankind a new, better way to live. But don't bet on it. Unfortunately, like communism, another highly idealistic program, the most likely outcome is that in it's wake it will leave a mess for the realists to sort out.

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ELSEWHERE

Is France now on the side of the mad Ayatollahs of Iran? “Masked and heavily armed police raided the compound of an Iranian opposition group Tuesday, detaining activists on suspicion of plotting terrorist attacks in France and building a support base for operations abroad.”

Language the French might underrstand: Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi told France on Tuesday it should ''shut up'' about his Middle East policy.

Hmmm... It looks like the British Conservatives have rediscovered traditional conservative values and are thus putting the heat on British Labour.

The total disregard for truth and honesty among Leftist academics is breathtaking --as we see here. They complain about the private funding received by conservative think-tanks whilst totally ignoring the vastly greater government expenditure in supporting Leftist institutions such as the Social Science and Humanities faculties of the universities and "public" broadcasters. And they even put such distortions into a "textbook"!

This should at least keep him away from children for a while: “The Roman Catholic bishop of Phoenix has been arrested over a deadly hit-and-run accident after US police said they traced the number plate of his car and found the windscreen caved in.”

Notice from Iain Murray: “A glitch in Blogger has meant that I have to unveil my new web site for The Edge of England's Sword a little earlier than I wanted. The new site is at: http://www.iainmurray.org/MT. The full iainmurray.org site is under development, and will hopefully contain links to all my published articles in weeks to come.”

On this day (18th June) in 1814 Ann Jane Burnside was born. She grew up to be less than 5' tall and obtained work in Northern Ireland as a child's maid. She was tried in court at Down on 26.3.1840 and convicted of stealing clothes. She was sentenced to transportation to Australia. She arrived on the "Margaret" on 17.8.1840 from Ireland. The convict ship records show that she could read, that her native place was Liverpool and that her religion was Presbyterian. She was my Great-great Grandmother.

I have just put up a new cartoon I like here and two cat and dog pictures here that I think most people will like.

I have a post on PC Watch that compares the big effects of Marshall Plan aid to Europe with the negative effects of aid money given to Africa.

Michael Darby has more on the legal machinations that force our insurance costs up.

Chris Brand points out how little UK academics are concerned about freedom of speech.

The Wicked one has a post about the black war on whites.

In my academic posting here (or here), I report that even back in the ‘70s, the English were not much bothered about Scotland becoming more independent.

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GLOBAL CYNICISM

See here for a translation of the National Academy of Science’s report on global-warming into more honest English. And Nobel prizewinner Kary Mullis explains it REALLY simply: “Environmentalists predict that global warming is coming, and our emissions are to blame. They do that to keep us worried about our role in the whole thing. If we aren't worried and guilty, we might not pay their salaries. It's that simple." There is a review of Mullis’s book here. Mullis recommends the "Public Choice" ideas of James Buchanan, 1986 Nobel prizewinning economist, to anyone trying to find out how publicly funded big science actually works. Interestingly, research in the field is increasingly labelled 'climate change' rather than global warming. A code word for hedged bets?

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ELSEWHERE

There is a facsinating interview with famous but anonymous Baghdad blogger Salam Pax here.

Black racism: “The inclusion of a white contestant in a pan-African version of the reality TV show Big Brother has ignited a heated debate about who can call themselves an African”

Better late than never, I suppose: “The European Union, in a significant shift towards United States thinking, says force might be necessary where diplomacy fails to address threats from weapons of mass destruction”

Most people around the world, including Americans, view US President George Bush unfavourably and think the United States was wrong to invade Iraq. That sounds bad but when we realize that the poll comes from as discredited an organization as the BBC, the “findings” are no surprise. For contrast, look at the professional polling results described by John O’Sullivan.

Andrew Bolt summarizes well the shocking story about how the exposure of systematic lies by Leftist historians caused not one shred of repentance among them. They of course attacked the man (Keith Windschuttle) who exposed them instead. Excerpt: “Windschuttle aims to take the discipline of history back to some golden age when it was all about facts," complained Professor Alan Atkinson. Well, yes, professors. That's his point.”

A victory for home schoolers against the Fascist educational authorities of Massachusetts.

Some U.S. libertarians have voted “Rabbit Proof Fence” as “Best Libertarian film”. I hope they realized that the film is fiction masquerading as fact. If anybody wants the true story see here.

From Brookes News: Plant closures and left-wing fallacies. Tariffs and the state of the textile, clothing and footwear industries should serve to remind us that socialist and statist economic fallacies are a bit like weeds, no matter how much intellectual hoeing we do they constantly return to pester us.
Is India stealing America's high-tech jobs? To cut to the chase, India has been subsidising the US economy. Think of it as foreign aid in reverse, with the benefits of Indian investments in computer science and engineering moving to the US whose highly advanced capital structure could accommodate the flow.

Michael Duffy points out that keeping Australian Aborigines isolated from mainstream Australia by way of “land rights” will leave them forever without hope of achieving white living standards

Arnold Kling sounds like he knows how to minimize the nuisance of spam. I would like spammers to be declared outlaws myself. People would be lining up to shoot them.

The problems of the Japanese economy certainly are an amazing test of whether Keynesian “pump priming” works. By itself it clearly does not. The Japanese experience certainly shows how hopeless and destructive it is to prop up failing or failed busnessses -- particularly banks in the Japanese case.

Hydrogen-powered cars are a Greenie dream but making them practical really is a dream. And if we did all convert to hydrogen powered cars, the effect on the ozone layer would probably be catastrophic! Erk! The Greenies might find that a problem.

Chris Brand thinks there are six dimensions of human personality.

Michael Darby has some suggestions for making public liability insurance cover more affordable.

The Wicked one is appalled at the extent of the battle against drugs in U.S. schools.

In my academic posting here (or here) I note hypocrisy among British Leftists who decry materialistic ambition and ambition generally without being any less ambitious and materialistic themselves.

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MULTICULTURALISM NEED NOT BE NEGATIVE

The usual "alternative" that Leftists offer to racial, ethnic or national consciousness is multiculturalism. Though what is inadequate about awareness of oneself as being simply an individual rather escapes me.

Leftists have undoubtedly given multiculturalism a bad name but I would argue that moderate versions of the idea are perfectly reasonable. There is surely a middle way between rejecting everything that is "foreign" and regarding Western civilization as little better than a criminal conspiracy. Multiculturalism is firmly entrenched in Australian politics as just such a middle way. There is general agreement that other cultures should be generally accepted and that we should all be open to whatever good might be in them.

And I fully accept that. What I do NOT accept is the claim that all cultures are equal or of equal value. I believe it to be pretty obvious that modern Western culture does best at delivering generally desired outcomes to its adherents. And it is also historically undisputable that, from early roots in the Mediterranean area, that culture has mainly been developed by a small group of interrelated peoples with origins on the fringes of North Western Europe. And those of us who are part of one or more of those peoples have every reason to celebrate it. And I am and I do. I am happy with who and what I am.

Critics of multicultural excesses are often portrayed as uneducated redneck yokels by the Left. But are Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr or Harvard's Samuel P. Huntington rednecks? Huntington sums up rather well the excesses that the chronic anger of the Left leads to:

"Historically American national identity has been defined culturally by the heritage of Western civilization and politically by the principles of the American Creed on which Americans overwhelmingly agree: liberty, democracy, individualism, equality before the law, constitutionalism, private property. In the late twentieth century both components of American identity have come under concentrated and sustained onslaught from a small but influential number of intellectuals and publicists. In the name of multiculturalism they have attacked the identification of the United States with Western civilization, denied the existence of a common American culture, and promoted racial, ethnic, and other subnational cultural identities and groupings. They have denounced, in the words of one of their reports, the "systematic bias toward European culture and its derivatives" in education and "the dominance of the European-American monocultural perspective." The multiculturalists are, as Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., said, "very often ethnocentric separatists who see little in the Western heritage other than Western crimes." Their "mood is one of divesting Americans of the sinful European inheritance and seeking redemptive infusions from non-Western cultures."

Clearly, there is absolutely no need for multiculturalism to be so negative. Only the chronic hatred of Leftists for the ordinary people around them can explain such negativity.

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INDIA

John O’Sullivan has been looking at international public opinion poll data and concludes that the big new division in the world may be between the USA and its Anglosphere friends on the one hand and the rest of the world on the other. But it is notable that he includes among the “friends” not only Britain and Australia but also India. The many years of the British “Raj” in India have of course left an enormous legacy there -- in that Indian English the only means many Indians have of communicating with one-another and English culture generally has become deeply integrated into Indian life. So even without common racial origins, common culture can be very important, influential and unifying. And Leftists want to throw that great cultural legacy away! I personally have known Indians since my childhood and very much like them so sharing a culture that unites me with one billion of them strikes me as a very good thing.

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