RIGHTIST BLOGGERS AND LEFTIST JOURNALISTS

Almost all the blogs I read are written by fellow conservatives. Leftist blogs are far too careless about the facts to have any interest for me. One blog I enjoy is however written by a political centrist -- my fellow-Australian Ken Parish. He certainly seems very much interested in the full facts of matters that he discusses.

One of his themes lately has been an attempt to figure out why the great majority of Australian bloggers tend to be right-wing. He has explored various possible answers to that question but has overlooked what seems to me the obvious explanation: That the mainstream media both in Australia and the US is overwhelmingly Leftist so Rightists feel the need to redress the balance somehow and write blogs in an attempt to do that. Leftists don't need to read or write blogs. Just picking up their local newspaper or tuning in their TV will give them a good blast of reinforcement for their attitudes.

I therefore dashed off a two-line email to Ken pointing this out. I forgot, however, that I was writing to a centrist and that therefore, from his centrist point of view, the media are not biased but balanced. He was therefore understandably dismissive of my explanation.

Since they seem to be impervious to evidence, I don't waste my time trying to persuade Leftists of anything but I do think that centrists can sometimes have their attitudes moved a bit by facts so I then quickly put on my now rather dusty social scientist�s hat and sent Ken a much longer email giving references to published research reports in the academic journals that demonstrate clearly that Australian journalists are overwhelmingly to the Left of the Australian general population in their attitudes.

I thought Ken might make some reference to this advance in the argument on his blog but his interest in the topic does not seem to have survived my rejoinder. I suspect that I may have won that round by default. So I reproduce the reference citations below for what interest they may have to others.


Henningham, J.P.
(1998) "Ideological differences between Australian journalists and their
public", Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, 3 (1): 92-101.

(1996) "Australian journalists' professional and ethical values", Journalism
& Mass Communication Quarterly, 73: 206-218

(1995) "Political journalists' political and professional values",
Australian Journal of Political Science, 30 (2), 321-334

The author of the studies cited above has recently retired from the Chair of Journalism at the University of Queensland and is Australia's specialist in such matters.

In a way, though, it hardly needs an academic study to show how Leftist Australian journalists, academics and media commentators are. In Australia�s recent Federal election, the conservative coalition government was returned to power on the back of Prime Minister Howard�s strong and effective opposition to illegal immigration from the Middle East. So strong was popular support in the Australian general population for this stance that even the nominally Leftist opposition party (the Australian Labor Party) dared not oppose it publicly for fear of being totally routed at the polls. Yet the media are still absolutely brimming with denunciations of the Prime Minister and his Minister for Immigration as �heartless�, �Fascist� etc. because of their immigration policy. It is of course these media figures who are the real Fascists -- opposing as they do a policy that has been given the overwhelming support of Australian voters. What the Australian people want seems to be of absolutely of no interest to these anti-democratic Leftist �commentators�. Only if the government were completetely undemocratic and defied the popular will would they be happy.

And British journalists seem to be no better. Speaking at the recent meeting of British Trade Unions, Jeremy Dear, General Secretary of the National Union of Journalists said of the war on terrorism �If justice was the motive we would be considering sending troops in now to end Israel�s occupation of Palestinian territory� Source

It is a tribute to the good sense of ordinary people that the constant Leftist slant that they get through the mass media has not convinced everyone.

LEFTIST IDEALISM

In this blog I have always endeavoured to stick the knife into what I believe is characteristic Leftist hypocrisy and dishonesty. As I have also repeatedly made clear however, I believe that there are many reasons for Leftism and not all Leftists are attention-seeking and power-mad Machiavellians. Some are honest -- true idealists who simply know no better. It is perhaps fitting therefore that Michael Jacobs, the current head (or �General Secretary�. Stalin was also a �General Secretary�) of that historic fountainhead of Leftism -- Britain�s Fabian Society, seems to be one of the dreamy Leftists.

In his recent article called �Reason to believe� in �Prospect� magazine datelined simply as �October, 2002� (though I was able to read it in September!) Jacobs bewails the loss of idealism in the British Labour Party. He sees the motivating force of his brand of politics as:

�the feeling that many people must surely have when looking at the world: that too much in the present order is morally wrong. A billion people living in absolute poverty, species and habitats being wiped out, many groups subject to systematic violence and discrimination, some people consuming vast amounts while others starve�

And one can hardly argue with that concern. The world is indeed far from an ideal place and is much in need of improvement. The only problem is how you go about doing the improvements. Conservatives want to gradually improve the world as a whole whereas Leftists want to immediately rip the goodies off those who already have them and give them to someone else who did not earn or create them. They are uninterested in doing any realistic policy analysis and want their ideal world yesterday, not in 20 or 50 years time. The now easily confirmable fact that the sort of rush into action that they preach will achieve the opposite of what they allegedly intend seems somehow not to bother them a bit.

And the article by Jacobs reveals one reason why realistic policy analysis is so alien to the Left. He frankly admits that to him Leftism is a religion, and a very dreamy religion at that. Let him speak for himself in the following excerpts from his article:


�Socialism was not merely the end-point towards which those on the left believed themselves to be working. For large numbers of activists and politicians, it was an animating force in their lives. People were socialists in the way that others (sometimes the same people) were Catholics or Jews: it was part of their identity. "Socialist" did not just describe a set of views you had. It was something you were.

This was true of the moderates as much as the revolutionaries. It is easy to forget this now, so accustomed are we to politicians who aim for nothing more than their pragmatic policy positions. Prior to the mid-1980s, the most mainstream Labour politicians talked often and without embarrassment about socialism. Here is Tony Crosland, Labour's principal revisionist of the 1950s and 1960s, writing about the central socialist value of equality in a 1975 Fabian pamphlet:

"By equality we mean more than a meritocratic society of equal opportunities... we also mean more than a simple redistribution of income. We want a wider social equality embracing the distribution of property, the educational system, social class relationships, power and privilege in industry."

The Fabian tradition is often thought of as the moderate end of socialism, but Fabian pamphlets from the Webbs through to the 1980s were full of statements such as this. This was how all Labour people thought.
..............

[Tony Blair�s] third way is not an ideology. It provides neither a guide to policy-making, nor a vision of the society towards which social democrats aim. New Labour is left with no more than piecemeal social reform.

Electorally, of course, this has been very successful. But within the Labour party it has had a devastating effect. This has gone largely unnoticed by those outside. But inside the party it is visible and widespread. It is not that the government's policies are too moderate --party members are used to this. Some of the policies in fact command widespread support, particularly now that they come with higher spending and taxation
..........

One of the reasons that socialist ideology flourished in the past was that it fitted the tribalism of a class society. Ideologies which came as whole packages of belief attached themselves easily to fixed, collective identities�




So no wonder reasoning with Leftists is so unproductive. It is an attempt to use reason to break down a religion: Never a promising task.

SVERIGE (Sweden)

Some little time ago, there was a bit of a flurry on the conservative blogs about a study which showed Sweden in a bad light. It was pointed out that the average Swede was less wealthy than even poor Americans. Even an average citizen of a poor American State like Mississippi was better off than the average Swede. This was taken as some indication that �heartless� American capitalism was in fact kinder to the poor than was the Swedish welfare State.

This was of course a bit of a red rag to those who admire the Swedish welfare State and various refutations of the claim were produced -- even causing Instapundit to waver over the matter:

One of the chief debunkers of the claim was Prof. Mark Kleiman, from the UCLA School of Public Policy and Social Research:
Kleiman�s claims had a number of apparent peculiarities in them, however, so I emailed him about some of them. It turns out that he concedes that Gross Domestic product (GDP) per capita is considerably higher in the USA than in Sweden but disputes that GDP is a good measure of average welfare.

This might seem surprising considering the very widespread use of GDP as a measure of national economic performance but is in fact an old point in economics. GDP is essentially an accounting measure that just adds up all the money that people earn and spend in a given year. Kleiman rightly points out that GDP is not the whole picture. A classical point is that GDP ignores the very valuable work done by housewives because it is not paid for publicly.

As soon as you start �correcting� GDP to make it a better measure of welfare, however, you rush headlong into political judgments. For instance, Leftists might argue that a country with a highly multicultural population is a lot better for you in various ways so a country with such a population should get an extra mark for that. Conservatives, on the other hand, would probably argue that multiculturalism is a pain and would mark a country down for that.

So Kleiman is perfectly right to say that welfare is a matter of opinion but it still remains that on the most objective and most widely used measure of national economic performance, socialized Sweden shows up as considerably poorer than the more capitalistic USA.

I did explore with Kleiman the idea that either one of us should put up on our respective blogs our full correspondence about the matter but he declined. I was going to let the matter rest at that but, on looking into the matter, I was a little concerned that others seem to have felt that he and his ilk had �won� the debate concerned. I have therefore departed from my usual posting practices to put up the above summary.


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The Curmudgeon and I seem to be getting on well lately so I thought it is about time I put up a link to him.
He has got lots of good graphics to soften the blow of his hard-hitting text.
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(Under the heading: �ANTI-RACIST HYPOCRISY�)

And are feminists conservative? Hardly. And feminists are hardly a new phenomenon either. In the person of Margaret Sanger and others, they were very active in the USA in first half of the 20th century, advocating (for instance) abortion. And Margaret Sanger was warmly praised by Hitler for her energetic championship of eugenics. And the American eugenicists were very racist. They shared Hitler�s view that Jews were genetically inferior and opposed moves to allow into the USA Jews fleeing from Hitler (Richmond, 1998). So if Hitler�s eugenics and racial theories were loathsome, it should be acknowledged that his vigorous supporters in the matter at that time were Leftists and feminists, rather than conservatives.


Reference:
Richmond, M. (1998) Margaret Sanger�s eugenics. "Life advocate". January.
http://lifeadvocate.com/1_98/feature.htm


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(Under the heading: �WHY EQUALITY?�)

One might argue that if blacks, women, gays etc. are entitled to advocate more rights for their respective groups, it is equally proper that (for instance) whites should vigorously advocate more rights for their group, but, being moderate as they are and because they are NOT strongly group-conscious, conservatives very rarely argue that. They are quite happy with equal opportunity.

(Under the heading: �ANTI-RACIST HYPOCRISY�)

And we all know how evil Nazi eugenics were, don't we? How crazy were their efforts to build up the "master race" through selective breeding of SS men with the best of German women -- the �Lebensborn� project? Good Leftists recoil in horror from all that of course. But who were the great supporters of eugenics in Hitler's day? In the USA, the great eugenicists of the first half of the 20th century were the "Progressives". And who were the Progressives? Here is one summary of them:

"Originally, progressive reformers sought to regulate irresponsible corporate monopoly, safeguarding consumers and labor from the excesses of the profit motive. Furthermore, they desired to correct the evils and inequities created by rapid and uncontrolled urbanization. Progressivism ..... asserted that the social order could and must be improved..... Some historians, like Richard Hofstadter and George Mowry, have argued that the progressive movement attempted to return America to an older, more simple, agrarian lifestyle. For a few progressives, this certainly was true. But for most, a humanitarian doctrine of social progress motivated the reforming spirit".

Sound familiar? The Red/Green alliance of today is obviously not new. So Hitler's eugenics were yet another part of Hitler's LEFTISM! He got his eugenic theories from the Leftists of his day. He was simply being a good Leftist intellectual in subscribing to such theories.

For more, see Donald Pickens "Eugenics and the Progressives" (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1968). The summary of Progressivism above is from a paper by T.L. De Corte �Menace of Undesirables: The Eugenics Movement During the Progressive Era�, University of Nevada, Las Vegas (1978). Against all his own evidence, De Corte also claims that the Progressives were �conservative�! More Leftist whitewash!

I am at the monent working on a new paper about Leftist racism. Below is an excerpt hot off my wordprocessor:

It would seem to follow from the view of racism as being innate and universal that both Left-leaning and Right-leaning people in the general population would be equally likely to be characterized by support for racial discrimination. And survey research conducted among the general population in Australia, Britain and the USA does indeed show that the correlations between overall ideology and racist attitudes are negligible (Ray, 1984; Ray & Furnham, 1984; Ray & Lovejoy, 1986; Raden, 1989, Table 2). Most research on the question has however been conducted among college students (e.g. Adorno et al, 1950; Duckitt, 1993) and, among students, those with racist views are highly likely to be conservative.

A paper by Sniderman, Brody & Kuklinski (1984) is therefore interesting and unusual in that it relied on U.S. general population sampling and separated people out in terms of educational level. These authors did indeed find some overall association between racist and conservative attitudes but found it only among well-educated respondents. Among those with only a basic education there was no association between ideology and racism to be found at all. Racists were equally likely to be of the Left or the Right. This is consistent with the view that any association between the two variable is produced in the educational system by teachers (both secondary and tertiary) who tend to be both liberal and anti-racist. People who acculturate best to the educational system will therefore show both liberal and anti-racist views and this will produce an overall association between the variables.

24 September, 2002
(Under the heading: �LEFTIST INFILTRATION OF PROTESTANT CHURCHES�)

The churches also provide Leftists with a �bully pulpit� (to use Theodore Roosevelt�s famous phrase). As part of their wish to aggrandize themselves, Leftists love to preach to people and urge on them the error of their ways. The churches are of course ready-made for that and also have some prestige and some reputation for good intentions that is useful to the Leftist in getting his/her message listened to. So Leftists have every reason to infiltrate and use the churches.



(Under the heading: �LEFTIST RACISM�)

A good reply to the Leftist arguments for �affirmative action� might be some very famous words: �I have a dream that my children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today�. To their shame it is the Leftists today who favour people on the basis of the colour of their skin rather than on the content of their character. The chief obstacles to the realization of Martin Luther King�s dream today are America�s so-called �liberals�.

(Under the heading: �ANTI-RACIST HYPOCRISY�)

The idea that Nazism was motivated primarily by a typically Leftist hunger for change and excitement is reinforced by the now famous account of life in Nazi Germany given by a young �Aryan� who lived through it. Originally written before World War II, Haffner�s (2002) account of why Hitler rose to power stresses the boring nature of ordinary German life and observes that the appeal of the Nazis lay in their offering of relief from that: "The great danger of life in Germany has always been emptiness and boredom ... The menace of monotony hangs, as it has always hung, over the great plains of northern and eastern Germany, with their colorless towns and their all too industrious, efficient, and conscientious business and organizations. With it comes a horror vacui and the yearning for 'salvation': through alcohol, through superstition, or, best of all, through a vast, overpowering, cheap mass intoxication." So he too saw the primary appeal of Nazism as its offering of change, novelty and excitement.

(Under the heading: �ANTI-RACIST HYPOCRISY�)

Modern day Leftists of course hate it when you point out to them that Hitler was one of them. They deny it furiously -- even though in Hitler�s own day the orthodox Leftists who represented the German labor unions (the SPD) often voted WITH the Nazis in the Reichstag (German Parliament).

As part of that denial, an essay by Steve Kangas is much reproduced on the internet. Entering the search phrase �Hitler was a Leftist� will bring up multiple copies of it. Kangas however reveals where he is coming from in his very first sentence: �Many conservatives accuse Hitler of being a leftist, on the grounds that his party was named "National Socialist." But socialism requires worker ownership and control of the means of production�. It does? Only to Marxists. So Kangas is saying only that Hitler was less Leftist than the Communists -- and that would not be hard. Surely a �democratic� Leftist should see that as faintly to Hitler�s credit, in fact.

Some other points made by Kangas are highly misleading. He says for instance that Hitler favoured �competition over co-operation�. Hitler in fact rejected Marxist notions of class struggle and had as his great slogan: �Ein Reich, ein Volk, ein Fuehrer� (One State, one people, one leader). He ultimately wanted Germans to be a single, unified, co-operating whole under him, with all notions of social class or other divisions forgotten. Other claims made by Kangas are simply laughable: He says that Hitler cannot have been a Leftist because he favoured: �politics and militarism over pacifism, dictatorship over democracy�. Phew! So Stalin was not political, not a militarist and not a dictator? Enough said.

I have written a great deal about the fact that Nazism was simply a racist form of extreme Leftism. See the paper about Hitler on my main website and also http://jonjayray1.blogspot.com. One piece of evidence for the Leftist orientation of Hitler is only partly true however. A quote occasionally found on pro-gun websites and attributed to Adolf Hitler goes as follows: "This year will go down in history! For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!"

The quote is a fake (or at least nobody has ever been able to find it in any German source) but it is nonetheless true that Weimar (pre-Hitler) Germany did have restrictions on gun-ownership and that the Nazis introduced further restrictions when they came to power. The Nazi Weapons Law (or �Waffengesetz�), which restricted the possession of militarily useful weapons and forbade trade in weapons without a government-issued license, was passed on March 18, 1938. See here.

So, surprising though it may be to many, Hilter was NOT a �gun-nut�. He was in fact rather against private ownership of guns. Once again he was surprisingly �modern�.

(Under the new heading: �LEFTIST INFILTRATION OF THE MAINSTREAM CHURCHES�)

In fact, there seems to have developed in the �Western� world in recent decades the curious phenomenon of the post-religious church. This is most marked in the case of the Church of England and its related Anglican churches worldwide.

There was once a time hundreds of years ago when followers of the Church of England were passionate believers in its blend of Protestant doctrines and episcopal organization. And assent to the 39 �Articles of Religion� is to this day supposed to be the mark of the Anglican. These articles say things such as: �Holy scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.� (Article 6). And: �They are to be had accursed that presume to say , That every man shall be saved by the Law or Sect which he professeth, so that he be diligent to frame his life according to that Law and the light of Nature.� (Article 18). No doctrinal flexibility or universal salvation there! And no vagueness about what is authoritative!

How much this uncompromising language contrasts with the wishy-washy social gospel that is usually to be heard in Anglican churches today. When the Anglican flock go to church these days what they hear from their clergy tends to be a wishy-washy mish-mash of every trendy �liberal� belief under the sun. God and the Bible are lucky to get a mention. The outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury (Carey) is so �Green� that not even Greenpeace could have found fault with him and the incoming Archbishop (Williams) clearly has no respect whatever for Bible teachings about homosexuality. It is not even certain that a majority of the Anglican episcopate believe in God in any meaningful sense. Some of them clearly do not.

So in modern times nothing seems to be forbidden in the Anglican churches and nothing seems to be required for membership other than a modicum of politeness and a patience with rambling sermons. And it is not so much belief that is required as good taste! How has this come about?

It would seem to reflect a decay of faith in the general population. About the only religious belief that still wins widespread assent in the modern Western world is belief in God. But this is now accompanied by widespread skepticism about whether the churches know any more about God than anybody else. Certainly, the idea that one particular church has the truth while others do not is now widely seen as ridiculous.

This means that many mainstream churches are essentially now hollow shells. They offer a facility for worship and fellowship but have no authority in matters of morals, doctrine or anything else. They have become social facilities rather than religious institutions. Rather than delivering salvation, all that is now asked of them is that they occasionally make you feel good. So this lack of moral, ethical or doctrinal anchors leaves the door open wide for what is popularly believed in the secular world to prevail in the churches as well. So if Leftist, Greenie, Feminist or �Gay-lib� beliefs are vocally expressed in the community at large, such beliefs will be expressed with similar energy from the pulpit. The acclaimed Marxist theorist Gramsci foresaw many years ago a �long march through the institutions� for Leftism -- and the post-religious churches have offered no resistance to that march at all. Their clergy now preach salvation through the nostrums of Leftism and Environmentalism rather than through the worship of Christ.

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A WORD OF EXPLANATION:
This is a blog solely of original comment and theory. Unlike most political blogs, it is not devoted to commenting on or circulating the news of the day.
My passion is for rationality and, while irrationality is very common, the chief home of irrationality in politics seems to be the Left. So this blog is devoted to pulling Leftism apart at every level and showing what it is that makes Leftists so irrational. And every time I make a further explanatory entry on this blog, I also blend the same entry into a continuously expanding comprehensive paper on the psychology and sociology of Leftism.
There are however many excellent blogs which comment on the news of the day from a conservative or libertarian perspective. See for example:


Tim Blair (Australia)
Scott Wickstein (Australia)
Dr Bunyip (Australia)
Brain Graze (Australia)
Debunking Greenhouse (Australia)
A New Yorker in Australia
An Englishman in the USA
Oxblog -- Americans at Oxford Univ.
A conservative Labour-voting Brit!
UK Conservative
Samizdata -- UK Libertarian
http://reason.com -- USA Libertarian
�Courageous� about race -- USA
The top NeoConservative site -- USA
Rightwing news -- USA
Judd Brothers -- USA
The King of the Blogs -- USA
Science for conservatives -- USA
The Politburo -- USA
Steven Chapman -- UK
Jim Miller - USA
Dr Weevil -- A US Latin teacher
Rottweiler - USA
Sabertooth -- USA
Volokhs -- USA
Good on French Lunacy


And:
My Home page:
Email: jonjayray@hotmail.com.

More sites:

Ring of Conservative Sites JOIN! [ Prev | Skip Prev | Prev 5 | List | Rand | Next 5 | Skip Next | Next ]

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(Under the heading: �ANTI-RACIST HYPOCRISY�)

Hitler was in fact even more clearly a Leftist than he was a nationalist or a racist. Although in his speeches he undoubtedly appealed to the nationalism of the German people, Locke (2001) makes a strong case that Hitler was not in fact a very good nationalist in that he always emphasized that his primary loyalty was to what he called the Aryan race -- and Germany was only one part of that race. Locke then goes on to point out that Hitler was not even a very consistent racist in that the Dutch, the Danes etc. were clearly Aryan even by Hitler�s own eccentric definition yet he attacked them whilst at the same time allying himself with the very non-Aryan Japanese. And the Russians and the Poles (whom Hitler also attacked) are rather more frequently blonde and blue-eyed (Hitler�s ideal) than the Germans themselves are! So what DID Hitler believe in? Locke suggests that Hitler�s actions are best explained by saying that he simply had a love of war but offers no explanation of WHY Hitler would love war. Hitler�s extreme Leftism does explain this however. As the quotations already given show, Hitler shared with other Leftists a love of constant change and excitement --- and what could offer more of that than war?

New heading: "THE SOCIOLOGY OF LEFTISM"

The appeal of Leftism to the average person is simple: The Leftist offers something for nothing. And that is always hard to resist -- fraudulent though it usually is. If the Leftist offers to redistribute somebody else�s wealth into your pocket, that is one hell of an appealling scam. So before considering what it is that causes a person to be a Leftist it should be well noted that a person who votes for a Leftist party may not necessarily himself be much of a Leftist. He may vote for the Leftist party simply because the Leftists appear to offer him personally a better deal. The Leftist's constant hypocritical preaching of equality does sometimes succeed in creating the impression that the Leftists will manage to give poorer or working class people a bigger slice of the national cake -- and poorer people must obviously find that at least initially appealing. This is of course why labour unions have always had strong affinities with the Left. Leftists appear to want a better deal for union members.

And this is partly why Leftists have recently become such opponents of globalization. Globalization does tend to relocate simpler jobs to poorer countries and the Leftist's union allies tend to oppose the changes to employment that this brings about. Unlike other Leftists, unions generally dislike change. They dislike change because it requires workers to find new jobs and that is understandably distressing to the workers concerned even if at the end of the day the cheaper goods now coming from overseas mean higher living standards for all. The Leftist however feeds on discontent so conveniently turns a blind eye to the longer term benefits of globalization and assists unionists in opposing it. The change-loving Leftist assists change-hating unionists! The corrosive discontent and hatred of existing power centres that motivate the Leftist enables him to ignore the incongruity of this alliance. Leading a protest of any kind is far more important than what the protest is about.

Lipset (1959) pointed out long ago, however, that poorer or working class people may in fact not only be change-haters in matters that affect them directly but also be conservative in other senses -- despite their (self-interested) vote for a Leftist political party. This tendency towards conservatism among working class people has been noted at least since the time of British Prime Minister Disraeli in the 19th century (McKenzie & Silver, 1968) and is so prevalent that it forms a vital electoral support for conservative political parties. How? Because something like a quarter of working class people are in fact so conservative (accepting of inequality etc.) that they resist the blandishments of the Left and vote conservative -- AGAINST what would initially seem to be their class self-interest (McKenzie & Silver, 1968; Ray, 1972c). So the primary concern of the present paper is with "real" Leftists -- people who subscribe to and promote a Leftist ideology rather than those who merely vote Leftist or support the Left solely out of self-interest.

So WHY does an ideological Leftist oppose the existing social, economic and political order? Why are they so keen on advocating change, no matter how irrational or counter-productive it might be? There can in fact be many reasons why and for many Leftists more than one of the reasons listed below will apply.

The simplest reason may simply be that one is BORN into a Leftist outlook. Being born into a Northern English or Scottish working-class environment, for instance, almost guarantees that one will favour a Leftist stance on many issues. Union activity and Leftist advocacy generally has been so strong for so long there that it has radicalized in many ways what might otherwise be a fairly conservative population and caused Leftist views to become simply traditional there. One might say that the explanation for Leftism there is a "sociological" one.

Another example of such a "sociological" cause for Leftism would be the way in which US college students are radicalized by the predominantly liberal academic environment of US humanities and social science schools. To be liberal in such an environment is almost a survival need (Sommers, 2002). And schoolteachers too, often seem to be Leftist. Many of those who lecture and control others in their working hours would seem to want to carry on doing so after work as well.

Also, because of its pretensions to standing up heroically for various difficult causes, Leftism can seem "cool" to many of the unthinking young and not so young. Particularly in the worlds of the media and entertainment (as well as academe), being Leftist means being "in" with the "smart" crowd. Not to be Leftist is to be left out. How awful! Even if such people can see faults in Leftist thinking, they are afraid to come toward the Right for fear of losing the approval of others around them.

(Under the heading: �HUMAN NATURE�)

Although it would seem that Marx himself was equivocal on the matter (Geras, 1983), it has long been a major Leftist doctrine that there is no such thing as an inherited "human nature". This root and branch rejection of heredity was of course what underlay Stalin's support of Lysenko's otherwise thoroughly discredited theory of evolution -- the idea that characteristics acquired in one's lifetime can be passed on to one's offspring.

Leftists reject the importance of heredity in order to justify their frequent claim that "education" can change almost anything in human behaviour. Even Leftists in the �Western� world claimed for many years that �education� could create �a new Soviet man� who would work for the common good rather than for selfish greed. �The new Soviet man� is of course now as dead as the dodo but modern-day Left-dominated American schools still often seem to demonize the normal human tendency to seek out one�s own economic self-interest as �greed� or as being �uncaring� and still foolishly try to "educate� such tendencies out of their students. Students are made to feel ashamed of what are normal motivations.

Since roughly the 1960s the long-standing scientific evidence that intelligence is highly heritable also has come to be bitterly and arbitrarily dismissed by �Western� Leftists -- now that it is well-known that the same evidence also shows lower average scores for favoured Leftist groups such as blacks and people of lower socioeconomic status (Brand, 1996). The evidence of heritability is now simply denied as absurd or the standard of proof required for the evidence to be accepted is raised so high that no evidence would ever be sufficient (Ray, 1972a). The animosity to even the concept of intelligence has become so great that bans on intelligence testing in schools have been introduced in some American States.

So does this Leftist idea that important human psychological characteristics cannot (or must not) be genetically transmitted also flow from a yen for change?

Quite obviously, any idea of human nature or of inherited characteristics says that important things about human beings just CANNOT be changed willy-nilly and that does not suit the change-loving Leftists at all. So Leftists simply reject what does not suit them -- regardless of the enormous evidence in favour of inherited characteristics. The entire discipline of behaviour genetics should not exist from a Leftist point of view.

The conservative (and scientific) rejection of the Leftist idea that human beings are infinitely malleable does of course pose a major threat to the Leftist's assumptions, theories and programmes and it is one that the Leftist cannot really rebut so the usual Leftist response is simply some sort of ad hominem nonsense such as claiming that conservatives are less �compassionate� (As if Leftists in power such as Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were �compassionate�!). Abuse takes the place of argument (Krauthammer, 2002).

It should be noted, however, that Leftists reject the idea of heredity only because it is inconvenient to them. They reject it when to acknowledge its influence would make nonsense of some change that they propose. In other cases, however, heredity can be speedily resurrected. Current Leftist advocacy of �gay rights�, for instance often seems to centre on a claim that gays �can�t help it�. They are born different (born homosexual) and therefore should not be criticized in any way. And much feminist advocacy too seems to centre on a claim that women are naturally (for instance) more �nurturing� and can even be seen as superior on that basis.

And why is the gross discrimination in favour of blacks that is euphemistically called �affirmative action� seen as necessary? Surely if Leftists saw blacks as genetically equal, all that would be needed would be to ensure that blacks had equal opportunity (equal access to education etc.) to ensure equality of outcomes. Instead, however, Leftists see it as necessary to enforce equal outcomes by the weight of the law. Their deeds reveal that Leftists obviously do NOT really believe that blacks are inherently equal to whites.

This Leftist racism would also seem to show in the current Leftist doctrine that preferential admission of blacks to universities and colleges is needed to ensure �diversity� on US campuses. No testing of the �diversity� of thinking in the relevant candidates for admission is done. Just their blackness seems to suffice as evidence that they will add �diversity�. Their backgrounds could be thoroughly middle class but there is still that unshakable confidence that they will add �diversity�. This implies that blacks think differently from whites just because they are black. That may well be true but acting on such a principle seems to betray precisely that belief in inborn racial differences that Leftists normally condemn vehemently in others.

(Under the new heading: �MONARCHY�)


Nonetheless, many American Christian conservatives are adamant that there would be no survival of morality or civility in the US without the widespread transforming power of the Christian faith. They see their faith as the historical and still real foundation of American values. They believe that, without anchors in Christ, Americans would all succumb to the mindless �all is relative� doctrine of the Leftist and be unable to make any distinction between right and wrong. The restraint of faith is seen as needed to prevent everyone from behaving like mindless, selfish beasts. And certainly, even to a foreign visitor, there does seem to be a marked contrast between the Piranha-like attitudes that are often to be found in big cities such as New York or Los Angeles and the more generous and humane attitudes prevalent in smaller, more faith-based American communities.

Although I was once myself a fervent Christian and still retain enormous respect and admiration for the teachings of the carpenter of Nazareth, I see the view of Christianity as essential to civility as having only some truth, however. I agree wholeheartedly that Christianity is an enormously beneficial influence on ethical behaviour but cannot see that it is essential or unique. And a major reason for my skepticism is the reality of another venerable democracy of the English speaking world: Britain.

England is one of the most Godless places on earth these days. A huge proportion of the population appear to have virtually no religious belief and only about 2% go to church regularly. And when they do go to church what they hear from their Church of England clergy tends to be a wishy-washy mish-mash of every trendy liberal belief under the sun. God and the Bible are lucky to get a mention. The last Archbishop of Canterbury was so �Green� that not even Greenpeace could have found fault with him and the current Archbishop clearly has no respect whatever for Bible teachings about homosexuality. It is not even certain that a majority of the Anglican episcopate believe in God in any meaningful sense. Some of them clearly do not.

So has the United Kingdom collapsed into anarchy or Stalinism? Not at all. Margaret Thatcher was as energetic and as effective a conservative reformer as Ronald Reagan and her influence has arguably been more long-lasting. A prominent member (Peter Mandelson) of the nominally Leftist political party that presently governs Britain recently declared that �we are all Thatcherites now�. And that is the LEFT of British politics. Can we imagine Ted Kennedy saying that �We are all Reaganites now�?

So how does Britain do it? If Britain lacks the cohesive force of Christian faith, what keeps Britain as still one of the world�s more civilized and prosperous places? One answer, I believe, is the influence of the monarchy. I myself am in the happy position of being both a keen monarchist and a citizen of a monarchy (Australia) and I tend to assent to the usual monarchist claim that the House of Windsor, for all its human weaknesses, is infinitely more reliable as a model of worthiness than are certain American Presidents with (for instance) strange uses for cigars. Be that as it may, however, I think the reality is that the claims of monarchy are emotional. To be ruled by a distant, glamorous and prestigious figure with access to a lifestyle unimaginable to the ordinary person is the normal lot of mankind. It is democracy that is the freak. The Roman republic succumbed to Caesar and Augustus and the ancient Greek democracies succumbed to the tyrants of first Sparta and then Macedon. So people seem to have evolved to need a monarch. They need that glorious and distant figure at the centre of power in their community.

And the British genius has been to find a way of having their cake and eating it too. They have a monarchy with all the trappings of greatness and real reserve powers yet are nonetheless governed by one of the world�s oldest, most stable and effective democracies.

And, as it is so often re-iterated, the monarch is the symbol of the nation and of the continuity of national traditions. The popularity and prestige of the Queen is enormous and her powers are no less real for not being exercised. The reality of the reserve powers of the monarchy was vividly seen in Australia in 1974 when the Queen�s representative dismissed a Leftist Federal government that tried to continue governing against constitutional precedent (failure to get its budget through both houses). In short, the monarchy gives the British people a strong sense of security against arbitrary power, a strong sense of their identity, history and nationhood and serves as a model for what is decent and allowable. It is a unifying and cohesive force that transcends differences of class, accent, education, occupation, region etc.

So it may be that the US needs its Christianity to keep it whole but I submit that the monarchy does a similar job for Britain and the other countries where the Queen reigns. And is it coincidence that the other enduring European monarchies (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, The Netherlands and Belgium) are also highly civilized and stable democracies that have never turned to dictatorship and remain among the more peaceful and prosperous places to live?

More potted history of the European monarchies: The Fascist dictator Mussolini came to power only because the Italian King allowed it. Monarchy is weak in Greece and Spain (though the Spanish have recently restored theirs) and both suffered years of military dictatorship. Germany abandoned their monarchy (with good reason) after World War I and got Hitler in exchange. France decapitated Louis 16th only to get the military dictator Napoleon and the incredible loss of life of his wars in exchange. And look what happened to Russia when they deposed the Tsar! I think it is not unreasonable to conclude from all this that, incredible though it might sound to American ears, monarchy has a powerful role to play in maintaining a civil society and is not easily replaced, once lost.

Bonzer! (To use a traditional Australian expression)
David Horowitz has just published my second article on Leftism in his Front Page Magazine!

Since he gets 3 million page hits a month he probably has about half a million readers so to get that sort of exposure in the print media I would have to get it published in the London �Times� or the like. The internet really is beginning to overtake print media in some ways. And internet publication leaves publication in academic journals for DEAD!

The second article originated mainly from the many emails that people sent to me about the first article. I put up the thoughts inspired by such emails on this blog but there was eventually so much material there that I decided to combine much of it into a new article. There is still however plenty of material on my blog that has NOT as yet been published anywhere else.

And I am continuing with my project of integrating all blog entries here into a single comprehensive article on the psychology of leftism.

(Under the new heading: "SELECTIVE GREENIE OUTRAGE")

And if the targets that the Left choose for their outrage seem arbitrary and inconsistent, the selectivity of their �Green� allies is even more amazing. In Australia, for instance, Greenpeace has mounted a sustained campaign to shut down Australia�s only refinery for producing motor fuel from shale. They run around in their beloved rubber boats doing all sorts of obstructive things and intimidate any company that tries to supply motorists using the refinery�s product. Australia�s conservative government has had to introduce special concessionary regulations to keep the refinery company afloat, so severe has been the Greenie pressure on it.

Given the constant Greenie scares about how we are likely to run out of petroleum products in double quick time if we do not mend our evil ways, one might naively expect that they would rejoice at a beginning being made on unlocking the vast reserves of hydrocarbons locked up in shale. Shale is ubiquitous and could potentially supply all our needs for petroleum products for at least hundreds of years. That Greenies do exactly the opposite and attack shale usage makes clear how much they really hate ordinary people. Greenie extremists WANT people to be hurt by resource shortages so they frantically oppose anything that will make more resources available.

They justify their attacks on the shale refinery by claiming that is a heavy polluter -- which it apparently was to some degree in its startup stages -- but now that its pollution levels have been reduced to levels normal for the oil industry the Greenie extremists are in no way mollified. And the pollution produced in Australia by this one refinery is of course absolutely minuscule compared to sources of atmospheric pollution elsewhere in the world. The now well-known �Asian brown cloud�, for instance, is studiously ignored by Greenies -- even though it is a considerable threat to the respiratory health of more than a billion (Yes. Billion, not million) people. This brown haze that constantly lies over India and its neighbours seems mainly to be produced by the Indian practice of using wood fires to cremate their dead and cow dung to fuel cooking fires. It is produced, in fact, by exactly the sort of traditional �sustainable� low-technology village lifestyle that the Greenies are constantly advocating for us all.

The sad fact for Greenies, of course, is that village Indians will only be able to move to less polluting practices as they modernize and move to the more efficient and clean-burning forms of cooking and combustion that are common in the developed world. But spending time advocating that Indians do more to modernize would not at all assuage the hunger for drama and self-advertisement that seems to motivate Greenie activists.

(Under the heading: �THE CHURCH�)

This might also explain how Leftists have come to infiltrate many of the more mainstream churches in recent years. The Presbyterian, Anglican, Methodist and Catholic churches in particular would appear to have suffered considerably from the secularism of the modern world and appear in consequence to have largely lost their way. They have certainly lost much of the power and influence they once had and no longer seem very sure of what they should stand for. So Leftists now see such churches as more of an opportunity than a threat and have in fact in many cases managed to enter such churches and replace the Gospel of Christ with a pseudo-Christian "gospel" that exploits traditional Christian teachings of love and compassion to promote the usual Leftist goals of enforced equality between people.

(Under the new heading: "SELECTIVE OUTRAGE")

The causes that are highlighted by our Left-dominated media and made the target of outraged denunciations and agitation by Leftists generally today are remarkable for their selectivity. There seems at first to be no rhyme or reason in what a Leftist will express outrage about.

For instance, Leftists in most of the developed world constantly agonize about the �harsh� treatment that their governments mete out to illegal immigrants, no matter how lenient such treatment actually is. One gets the impression that only complete abandonment of border controls would satisfy Leftists. The Australian government, for instance, has had great success in deterring illegal immigrants by sending most of them straight to special prisons when they arrive. So Australian Leftists mount huge demonstrations against this policy even though the policy has huge support in the Australian community generally, even though the illegals concerned are treated humanely and even though the illegals are probably better housed and fed in their special prisons than they ever were in their homelands. There is also great agony expressed about the �damage� this policy will do to Australia�s international reputation and �experts� are wheeled out to condemn the conditions under which the illegals are housed.

One would think, therefore, that if humane imprisonment of lawbreakers evokes such outrage, mass murder of innocents would induce utter paroxysms of Leftist agitation. And there are plenty of examples of mass murder going on all the time in the world: The incessant massacres of Muslims in India by Hindu fundamentalists and the constant massacres of Christians in the Sudan by Muslim fundamentalists, for instance. So what do we hear from Leftists about these really grave examples of human suffering? Nothing. Absolutely nothing..

Why? Why are Leftists so amazingly selective in their outrage? Why the hypocritical concern about minor examples of human suffering while they ignore really major examples of human suffering? The answer is obvious. Leftists are not concerned about human suffering at all. What they seek is to star in a drama where they can play David to someone else�s Goliath. As with globalization, they want to oppose the consensus. They want to demonstrate in favour of unpopular causes, not causes that would be greeted by the population at large as worthy but too routine or distant to bother about. They are only �compasssionate� about causes that will give them the maximum ego-boost, causes that they believe will enable them to promote their fantasy view of themselves as as kinder and wiser and more caring than the population at large.

(Under the heading: �ANTI-RACIST HYPOCRISY�)

Perhaps it not labouring the point also to ask who it was that described his movement as having a �revolutionary creative will� which had �no fixed aim, � no permanency, only eternal change�. It could very easily have been Trotsky or Mao but it was in fact Hitler (O�Sullivan, 1983. p. 138). Clearly, Nazism was nothing more nor less than a racist form of Leftism (rather extreme Leftism at that) and to claim that it was Rightist or anything else is to deny reality.

To reinforce the point that Nazism was in fact Leftist, we might also note: Hitler always campaigned as a socialist and champion of the worker and the full name of Hitler's political party -- generally abbreviated as "Nazi" -- says it all: Die Nazionalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei (�The National Socialist German Worker's Party�). So, as a good socialist does, Hitler justified everything he did in the name of �the people� (Das Volk). The Nazi State was, like the Soviet State, all-powerful, and the Nazi party, in good socialist fashion, supervised German industry minutely. And of course Hitler and Stalin were initially allies. It was only the Nazi-Soviet pact that enabled Hitler�s conquest of Western Europe. The fuel in the tanks of Hitler�s Panzers as they stormed through France was Soviet fuel.

(Under the heading: �LEFTISTS IN ACADEME�)

As the Luntz poll recently and dramatically showed (Horowitz, 2002), there is one area in the USA where Leftists have almost achieved a monopoly of power over at least hiring policies: The humanities and social science schools of the universities and colleges. An overt conservative finds it almost impossible to gain employment in such places and the message to the wider community emanating from such places is almost unfailingly "liberal". So Leftists in power are once again seen to be very jealous of their power, intolerant of diversity, opposed to free speech and oppressive and discriminatory in their employment practices: All things that they would normally try to deny but which in fact simply make them typical Leftists.

Fortunately, the best brains in America have always gone into business first rather than into any form of teaching. And the fact that the US has survived as a thriving and generally healthy society is proof that it does not need its nutty "liberal" professors. They have only a message of hate to purvey anyway -- mostly hatred of America -- and most people are decent so few of them will be long persuaded by such a message.

So this monopolization of academe by Leftists ought perhaps to be of some concern but its main effect is probably that it simply makes our universities boring. The message emanating from them is so predictable that it is hardly worth attending to. And in a pluralistic society there are many alternative sources of information and influences on attitudes. The internet and Right-wing radio commentators such as Rush Limbaugh in the USA and Alan Jones in Australia spring obviously to mind as alternative sources of information and countervailing influences on the public mind.

(Under the heading: �ANTI-RACIST HYPOCRISY�)

And who was it who wrote this? �Not until my fourteenth or fifteenth year did I begin to come across the word 'Jew,' with any frequency, partly in connection with political discussions.... For the Jew was still characterized for me by nothing but his religion, and therefore, on grounds of human tolerance, I maintained my rejection of religious attacks in this case as in others. Consequently, the tone, particularly that of the Viennese anti-Semitic press, seemed to me unworthy of the cultural tradition of a great nation�. Some kindly liberal wrote that, no doubt? Some anti-racist? Some Leftist? The sentiments are certainly ones that anti-racists could only applaud, are they not? But those words are actually the words of Adolf Hitler, writing in �Mein Kampf�. And we all know what he ended up doing!





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WE INTERRUPT THIS PROGRAM TO ANNOUNCE:
The blog entries here are all incorporated into a larger story at the same time as they are put up here. The larger story is a comprehensive article about the psychological roots of Leftism. If you like the individual blog entries, you may like to read the larger whole of which they form part. This larger whole is to be found in two parts (of about 25 pages each) at:
http://jonjayray1.blogspot.com and http://jonjayray2.blogspot.com.

Correspondence on any matter raised herein is very welcome.
Email: jonjayray@hotmail.com.

Some other sites of possible interest:
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~jonjayray (Many earlier papers by John Ray)
http://geocities.com/jonjayray (A picture of John Ray -- not for the fainthearted)
http://englandssword.blogspot.com
http://reason.com
http://www.isteve.com
http://weeklyjames.blogspot.com
http://frontpagemag.com
http://rightwingnews.com
http://www.stephenpollard.net
http://brothersjudd.blogspot.com
http://www.instapundit.com
http://www.techcentralstation.com
http://www.the politburo.com
http://timblair.blogspot.com
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(Under the heading: "ANTI-RACIST HYPOCRISY")

Take this description of a political programme: A �declaration of war against the order of things which exist, against the state of things which exist, in a word, against the structure of the world which presently exists�. You could hardly get a more change-oriented or revolutionary programme than that. So whose programme was it? Marx? Lenin? Stalin? Trotsky? Mao? No. It was how Hitler described his programme towards the end of �Mein Kampf�. And the Left pretend that Hitler was some sort of conservative!

The Left also manage to ignore Hitler�s extreme socialism (income levelling., worker advocacy, heavy government control of industry and everything else) and still call him Rightist. He was a Nationalist (that can be allowed) but he was a racist (not allowed). So people like Adolf Hitler and Pim Fortuyn (the homosexual Dutch political leader assassinated by a Green activist in May, 2002) are Rightist only by arbitrary definition. What they advocated was generally Leftist (The full name of Hitler's political party -- generally abbreviated as "Nazi" -- says it all: The National Socialist German Worker's Party). So Left-wing racism does not exist only because it is DEFINED out of existence