CHINA DENOUNCES MARXISM

In case you did not see it in today's papers

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CHARITY -- PUBLIC VS. PRIVATE

Orrin Judd put up some time ago an excellent review of De Tocqueville which shows just how prescient the old-timer was. His arguments sound right and relevant to this day: Excerpt:

"Individual alms-giving established valuable ties between the rich and the poor. The deed itself involves the giver in the fate of the one whose poverty he has undertaken to alleviate. The latter, supported by aid which he had no right to demand and which he had no hope to getting, feels inspired by gratitude. A moral tie is established between those two classes whose interests and passions so often conspire to separate them from each other, and although divided by circumstance they are willingly reconciled.

This is not the case with legal charity. The latter allows the alms to persist but removes its morality. The law strips the man of wealth of a part of his surplus without consulting him, and he sees the poor man only as a greedy stranger invited by the legislator to share his wealth. The poor man, on the other hand, feels no gratitude for a benefit that no one can refuse him and that could not satisfy him in any case. Public alms guarantee life but do not make it happier or more comfortable than individual alms-giving; legal charity does not thereby eliminate wealth or poverty in society. One class still views the world with fear and loathing while the other regards its misfortune with despair and envy. Far from uniting these two rival nations, who have existed since the beginning of the world and who are called the rich and poor, into a single people, it breaks the only link which could be established between them. It ranges each one under a banner, tallies them, and, bringing them face to face, prepares them for combat.

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HOMER SIMPSON -- CONSERVATIVE

There is rather a good wrap on The Simpsons
here. Excerpt:

"Conservatives and libertarians should appreciate The Simpsons for regularly showcasing much that they hold dear.

"There's no ideological requirement to work here," executive producer Al Jean says by phone. Though free marketeers and liberals write the show, Jean says they agree on this: "We mistrust authorities and people who try to hold people down. We believe more in individuals and families."

The Simpsons are a nuclear family led by an atomic power-plant engineer and a stay-at-home mom. They regularly attend church and occasionally seek spiritual advice from their minister, Reverend Timothy Lovejoy. Marge Simpson even homeschools Bart when he is expelled for misbehavior."

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FASCIST UNIVERSITIES

Come to the good old US of A for a Fascist education! No, not in the 1930s -- right now. Jeff Jacoby sets it all out in detail.

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UNIVERSITY ANTISEMITISM

Who would have thought that US universities would one day become hotbeds of antisemitism? Once they would have rejected antisemitism outright and condemned it as racism. Yet thoroughly antisemitic they are today -- as Arlene Peck sets out at some length.

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CORNISH

I have always thought that it was something of a pity that the Cornish language died out but recent "success" in reviving it seems to me a rather big waste of time. I did however like this bit:

The collection of clergymen and antiquarians who reconstructed the language were helped in their efforts by John Davey, a schoolmaster in Zennor, the last person with sufficient knowledge of the old tongue to speak it. Davey, who died in 1891, is said to have kept his ability alive by speaking Cornish to his cat.

(From The Telegraph of 17th.)

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KIND SASHA

Sasha Castel says lots of nice things about her fellow bloggers but I still rather like this blog being listed under the heading "Wunderbar" (German for "wonderful").

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CHINESE LANGUAGE

China hand has just tried to explain to us the varieties of Chinese writing but I am afraid that it is still all Greek to me! At least English is uniform in its craziness.

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