Dissecting Leftism -- Large font site 
It's the shared hatred of the rest of us that unites Islamists and the Left...

Leftism consists of frauds deceiving the uninformed. ..
 
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John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) writing from Brisbane, Australia







Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.


My (Gentile) opinion of antisemitism: The Jews are the best we've got so killing them is killing us.


If I were not an atheist, I would believe that God had a sense of humour. He gave his chosen people (the Jews) enormous advantages -- high intelligence and high drive -- but to keep it fair he deprived them of something hugely important too: Political sense. So Jews to this day tend very strongly to be Leftist -- even though the chief source of antisemitism for roughly the last 200 years has been the political Left!


"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here. For roughly two centuries now, antisemitism has, throughout the Western world, been principally associated with Leftism (including the socialist Hitler) -- as it is to this day. See here.


Leftists call their hatred of Israel "Anti-Zionism" but Zionists are only a small minority in Israel


Some of the Leftist hatred of Israel is motivated by old-fashioned antisemitism (beliefs in Jewish "control" etc.) but most of it is just the regular Leftist hatred of success in others. And because the societies they inhabit do not give them the vast amount of recognition that their large but weak egos need, some of the most virulent haters of Israel and America live in those countries. So the hatred is the product of pathologically high self-esteem.


Who said this in 1968? "I am not, and never have been, a man of the right. My position was on the Left and is now in the centre of politics". It was Sir Oswald Mosley, founder and leader of the British Union of Fascists


The term "Fascism" is mostly used by the Left as a brainless term of abuse. But when they do make a serious attempt to define it, they produce very complex and elaborate defintions -- e.g. here and here. In fact, Fascism is simply extreme socialism plus nationalism. But great gyrations are needed to avoid mentioning the first part of that recipe, of course.


Leftists hate the world around them and want to change it. Conservatives just want to be left alone.


The Leftist hunger for change leads to a hunger for control over other people. And they will do and say anything to get that control: "Power at any price". They are mostly self-aggrandizing crooks who gain power by deceiving the uninformed with snake-oil promises -- power which they invariably use to destroy. Destruction is all that they are good at. Destruction is what haters do.


Socialism makes the individual the slave of the state – capitalism frees them.


Because of their need to be different from the mainstream, Leftists are very good at pretending that sow's ears are silk purses


The large number of rich Leftists shows that it is not material envy that drives them but rather HATRED of society's existing arrangements


Leftists don't have principles. How can they when "there is no such thing as right and wrong"? All they have is postures, pretend-principles that can be changed as easily as one changes one's shirt


The naive scholar who searches for a consistent Leftist program will not find it. What there is consists only in the negation of the present.


The book, The authoritarian personality, authored by T.W. Adorno et al. in 1950, has been massively popular among psychologists. It claims that a set of ideas that were popular in the "Progressive"-dominated America of the prewar era were "authoritarian". Leftist regimes always are authoritarian so that claim was not a big problem. What was quite amazing however is that Adorno et al. identified such ideas as "conservative". They were in fact simply popular ideas of the day but ones that had been most heavily promoted by the Left right up until the then-recent WWII. See here for details of prewar "Progressive" thinking.


Why are Leftists always talking about hate? Because it fills their own hearts


Among well-informed people, Leftism is a character defect. Leftists hate success in others -- which is why notably successful societies such as the USA and Israel are hated and failures such as the Palestinians can do no wrong.


A Leftist's beliefs are all designed to pander to his ego. So when you have an argument with a Leftist, you are not really discussing the facts. You are threatening his self esteem. Which is why the normal Leftist response to challenge is mere abuse.


Because of the fragility of a Leftist's ego, anything that threatens it is intolerable and provokes rage. So most Leftist blogs can be summarized in one sentence: "How DARE anybody question what I believe!". Rage and abuse substitute for an appeal to facts and reason.


Their threatened egos sometimes drive Leftists into quite desperate flights from reality. For instance, they often call Israel an "Apartheid state" -- when it is in fact the Arab states that practice Apartheid -- witness the severe restrictions on Christians in Saudi Arabia. There are no such restrictions in Israel.


Because their beliefs serve their ego rather than reality, Leftists just KNOW what is good for us. Conservatives need evidence.


"Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him" (Proverbs 26: 12). I think that sums up Leftists pretty well.


Politics is the only thing Leftists know about. They know nothing of economics, history or business. Their only expertise is in promoting feelings of grievance


The basic aim of all bureaucrats is to maximize their funding and minimize their workload


A lesson in Australian: When an Australian calls someone a "big-noter", he is saying that the person is a chronic and rather pathetic seeker of admiration -- as in someone who often pulls out "big notes" (e.g. $100.00 bills) to pay for things, thus endeavouring to create the impression that he is rich. The term describes the mentality rather than the actual behavior with money and it aptly describes many Leftists. When they purport to show "compassion" by advocating things that cost themselves nothing (e.g. advocating more taxes on "the rich" to help "the poor"), an Australian might say that the Leftist is "big-noting himself". There is an example of the usage here. The term conveys contempt. There is a wise description of Australians generally here


Some ancient wisdom for Leftists: "Be not righteous overmuch; neither make thyself over wise: Why shouldest thou die before thy time?" -- Ecclesiastes 7:16


Regular readers will have noticed that what I say about Leftists sometimes sounds reminiscent of what Leftists say about conservatives. There is an excellent reason for that. Leftists are great "projectors" (people who see their own faults in others). So a good first step in finding out what is true of Leftists is to look at what they say about conservatives! They even accuse conservatives of projection (of course).


The research shows clearly that one's Left/Right stance is strongly genetically inherited but nobody knows just what specifically is inherited. What is inherited that makes people Leftist or Rightist? There is any amount of evidence that personality traits are strongly genetically inherited so my proposal would be that hard-core Leftists are people who tend to let their emotions run away with them and who are much more in need of praise from others -- two attributes that are probably related to one another. Such Leftists may be an evolutionary leftover from a more primitive past.


People who mention differences in black vs. white IQ are these days almost universally howled down and subjected to the most extreme abuse. I am a psychometrician, however, so I feel obliged to defend the scientific truth of the matter: The average black adult has about the same IQ as an average white 11-year-old. The American Psychological Association is generally Left-leaning but it is the world's most prestigious body of academic psychologists. And even they have had to concede that sort of gap (one SD) in black vs. white average IQ. 11-year olds can do a lot of things but they also have their limits and there are times when such limits need to be allowed for.


Jesse Jackson: "There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery -- then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved." There ARE important racial differences.


Some Jimmy Carter wisdom: "I think it's inevitable that there will be a lower standard of living than what everybody had always anticipated," he told advisers in 1979. "there's going to be a downward turning."




R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason




The "steamroller" above who got steamrollered by his own hubris. Spitzer is a warning of how self-destructive a vast ego can be -- and also of how destructive of others it can be.


Leftists seem to believe that if someone like Al Gore says it, it must be right. They obviously have a strong need for an authority figure. The fact that the two most authoritarian regimes of the 20th century (Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia) were socialist is thus no surprise. Leftists often accuse conservatives of being "authoritarian" but that is just part of their usual "projective" strategy -- seeing in others what is really true of themselves.


Many people hunger and thirst after righteousness. Some find it in the hatreds of the Left. Others find it in the love of Christ. I don't hunger and thirst after righteousness at all. I hunger and thirst after truth. How old-fashioned can you get?


I completed the work for my Ph.D. at the end of 1970 but the degree was not awarded until 1974 -- due to some academic nastiness from Seymour Martin Lipset and Fred Emery. A conservative or libertarian who makes it through the academic maze has to be at least twice as good as the average conformist Leftist. Fortunately, I am a born academic.


As well as being an academic, I am an army man and I am pleased and proud to say that I have worn my country's uniform. Although my service in the Australian army was chiefly noted for its un-notability, I DID join voluntarily in the Vietnam era, I DID reach the rank of Sergeant, and I DID volunteer for a posting in Vietnam. So I think I may be forgiven for saying something that most army men think but which most don't say because they think it is too obvious: The profession of arms is the noblest profession of all because it is the only profession where you offer to lay down your life in performing your duties. Our men fought so that people could say and think what they like but I myself always treat military men with great respect -- respect which in my view is simply their due.


Two lines below of a famous hymn that would be incomprehensible to Leftists today ("honor"? "right"? "freedom?" Freedom to agree with them is the only freedom they believe in)

First to fight for right and freedom,
And to keep our honor clean

It is of course the hymn of the USMC -- still today the relentless warriors that they always were.


I imagine that few of my readers will understand it, but I am an unabashed monarchist. And, as someone who was born and bred in a monarchy and who still lives there (i.e. Australia), that gives me no conflicts at all. In theory, one's respect for the monarchy does not depend on who wears the crown but the impeccable behaviour of the present Queen does of course help perpetuate that respect. Aside from my huge respect for the Queen, however, my favourite member of the Royal family is the redheaded Prince Harry. The Royal family is of course a military family and Prince Harry is a great example of that. As one of the world's most privileged people, he could well be an idle layabout but instead he loves his life in the army. When his girlfriend Chelsea ditched him because he was so often away, Prince Harry said: "I love Chelsea but the army comes first". A perfect military man! I doubt that many women would understand or approve of his attitude but perhaps my own small army background powers my approval of that attitude.


The kneejerk response of the Green/Left to people who challenge them is to say that the challenger is in the pay of "Big Oil", "Big Business", "Big Pharma", "Exxon-Mobil", "The Pioneer Fund" or some other entity that they see, in their childish way, as a boogeyman. So I think it might be useful for me to point out that I have NEVER received one cent from anybody by way of support for what I write. As a retired person, I live entirely on my own investments. I do not work for anybody and I am not beholden to anybody. And I have NO investments in oil companies, mining companies or "Big Pharma"

UPDATE: Despite my (statistical) aversion to mining stocks, I have recently bought a few shares in BHP -- the world's biggest miner, I gather. I run the grave risk of becoming a speaker of famous last words for saying this but I suspect that BHP is now so big as to be largely immune from the risks that plague most mining companies. I also know of no issue affecting BHP where my writings would have any relevance. The Left seem to have a visceral hatred of miners. I have never quite figured out why.


Although I have been an atheist for all my adult life, I have no hesitation in saying that the single book which has influenced me most is the New Testament. And my Scripture blog will show that I know whereof I speak. Some might conclude that I must therefore be a very confused sort of atheist but I can assure everyone that I do not feel the least bit confused. The New Testament is a lighthouse that has illumined the thinking of all sorts of men and women and I am deeply grateful that it has shone on me.


I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age. Conservatism is in touch with reality. Leftism is not.

I imagine that the RD are still sending mailouts to my 1950s address


Most teenagers have sporting and movie posters on their bedroom walls. At age 14 I had a map of Taiwan on my wall.


"Remind me never to get this guy mad at me" -- Instapundit


I have used many sites to post my writings over the years and many have gone bad on me for various reasons. So if you click on a link here to my other writings you may get a "page not found" response if the link was put up some time before the present. All is not lost, however. All my writings have been reposted elsewhere. If you do strike a failed link, just take the filename (the last part of the link) and add it to the address of any of my current home pages and -- Voila! -- you should find the article concerned.


It seems to be a common view that you cannot talk informatively about a country unless you have been there. I completely reject that view but it is nonetheless likely that some Leftist dimbulb will at some stage aver that any comments I make about politics and events in the USA should not be heeded because I am an Australian who has lived almost all his life in Australia. I am reluctant to pander to such ignorance in the era of the "global village" but for the sake of the argument I might mention that I have visited the USA 3 times -- spending enough time in Los Angeles and NYC to get to know a fair bit about those places at least. I did however get outside those places enough to realize that they are NOT America.


If any of the short observations above about Leftism seem wrong, note that they do not stand alone. The evidence for them is set out at great length in my MONOGRAPH on Leftism.


COMMENTS: I have gradually added comments facilities to all my blogs. The comments I get are interesting. They are mostly from Leftists and most consist either of abuse or mere assertions. Reasoned arguments backed up by references to supporting evidence are almost unheard of from Leftists. Needless to say, I just delete such useless comments.


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Tuesday, February 18, 2003

 

GOOD NEWS FROM NEW HAMPSHIRE

A reader emails me:

I live in Central New Hampshire, a State with no income, sales, or capital gains tax. This is a unique situation, and the people who live here are proud of this, and naturally suspicious of taxes, or government growth.

I'm active in the State Republican Party; and almost 80% of all elected officials are Republican. That said, we have problems with liberals moving up from Massachusetts, and other places, but it's still a small State, 1.2 million people; so we get our message out.

What I have come to see over the past several years, and what you elegantly expose every day on your blog, is the psychosis of liberal thought today. The profoundly disturbed, and personal psychopathology the left tries to pass off as thought. I constantly attack the left up here on this basis, and it works. What a lot of my conservative colleagues are starting to understand is that we are not, by and large, dealing with decent, rational people on the left; but very disturbed individuals. The Simpsons cartoon show on FOX Networks once uttered a truism I use all the time. On a show they did spoofing the Democratic Convention a sign holder in the crowd held up his poster that said this: " Liberals hate life, and they hate themselves". Perhaps a little overdone, but it rings true.

We have our own local radio show in the area, a conservative weekly paper; and a local population that gets it ! At least seems to get it more so than other places. When I go on the weekly radio show, or write letters to the editor I often slip in that our local, and national Democratic Party may be dealing with issues that could best be dealt with in a more personal setting, like a psychologists office; well, I'm not that blunt, but the public needs to understand that the left is far more destructive, and off the wall, than the press lets on. I long for a 1950's style of debate when the liberals in this Nation were more sane, and were not infected with self-loathing. Until then, we go on, and up here, we are kicking ass.....


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posted by JR 2/18/2003 08:38:00 PM

 

FASCISM AS A UNIFIER

Something that seems generally to be overlooked is that the three countries with the most notable Fascist movements in the early 20th century (Germany, Italy and Spain) were all in countries with fragile national unity. Germany and Italy had become unified countries only in the late 19th century and Spain, of course, is only nominally unified to this day -- with semi-autonomous governments in Catalonia and the Basque country. Right up until the end of the Prussian hegemony in 1918, Germans saw themselves primarily as Saxons, Bavarians, Prussians etc rather than as Germans and the contempt for Southern Italians anong Northern Italians is of course legendary.

So the fierce nationalism of the Fascists (though Franco held himself above the Spanish Falange to some extent) appears to have been at least in part the zeal of the convert. Nationalism was something new and exciting and was a gratification to be explored vigorously. And the Fascists/Nazis undoubtedly exploited it to the hilt. The romance of the new nation was an important asset for them.

So if we regard the creation of large nation states as a good thing (a fairly dubious proposition) the small silver lining that we can see in the dark cloud of Fascism is that they do seem to have had some success in creating a sense of nationhood. A German identity, in particular, would seem to be the creation of Hitler. There was certainly not much of the sort before him.

There are of course differences between the three countries but in all three an acceptance of their nation-state now seems to be well-entrenched. This acceptance seems to be strongest in Germany -- probably in part because modern Germany is a Federal Republic with substantial power devolved to the old regions (Laender) so that local loyalties are also acknowledged. Spain has moved only partly in the direction of federalism and there is of course a strong political movement in Northern Italy for reform in that direction also.

It is perhaps worth noting that it took a ferocious war (the civil war) to create an American sense of nationhood too.

**********************************

posted by JR 2/18/2003 08:37:00 PM

 
ELSEWHERE

Wow! Even The Guardian is ganging up on the antiwar Left! Saying: The Stop the War coalition is the greatest threat to any hope for a democratic Iraq. Some loyalty to their own claimed principles may be breaking out on the Left.

�Spiked� has a charitable interpretation of the motives behind those in the recent �Peace� marches. I see them as just Leftist exhibitionists but ....

The Infidel has a link to the horror that the �peace� marchers are really supporting.

Andrew Ian Dodge has an amusing bit of �future history� about what could shortly happen to Tony Blair if the Left of his UK Labour party get too stroppy.

You would never know it from the Australian newspapers but apparently there is an Americas cup yacht race going on in New Zealand at the moment. And the Kiwis are being beaten by a SWISS boat! Switzerland is a long way from the sea! NZ Pundit is following it.

Richard Webster has another appalling story about the gross injustice that characterizes official paedophile enquiries in Britain. The way innocent people are penalized over there does make the term �British justice� quite a mockery. British carelessness about justice would be more like it.

Say Uncle has some rather amusing comments on what bloggers do to get traffic to their site.

Chris Brand has a sophisticated coverage of the nature/nurture debate

Michael Darby has a great essay about how the USA is seen as �evil� no matter what it does.

The Wicked one is having shots at Catholics and the French.

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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my "First Draft" site instead or check my HomePage for a new blog address.

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posted by JR 2/18/2003 08:37:00 PM



Monday, February 17, 2003

 
THE PRUSSIAN ROLE IN GERMANY

I have just posted here a short screed on Prussia -- the Northeastern part of Germany that came to dominate most of Germany in the late 19th century and which some see as the precursor to Nazi Germany. It should ideally be read in conjunction with my posting of 10th below about Nazi Germany. Summary:

1). Germany has historically been notable for its decentralization of power and is still relatively decentralized today.

2). The Prussian hegemony of Germany and the Nazi domination of Germany were both relatively short-lived (48 and 12 years respectively) by comparison with a history of Germany that stretches back for over 2000 years so cannot by themselves be the basis for much in the way of generalizations about Germans. We might as well argue from the despotism of Henry VIII (38 years) or the Cromwellian Protectorate (6 years) that Englishmen do (or did not) not value their liberties.

3). Although both Prussia and Nazi Germany undoubtedly had strong autocratic features, that is far from the whole story. Both kings and parliaments of Prussia were in fact for much of the time remarkably liberal (in the original 19th century sense of that term) by the standards of their day and Nazi Germany also was remarkably policentric in its power structure. So even these �worst case� regimes still retained much of the ancient German diffused power structure that the Anglo-Saxons brought with them to what became England

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AUSTRALIA NOW HAS AN AAA CREDIT RATING

Australia has been returned to the top ranks of the world's most creditworthy nations for the first time since the "banana republic" warnings of the mid-1980s, in a report which praises the federal government's strong fiscal performance. Announcing the results of its annual review, ratings agency Standard & Poor's raised Australia's foreign currency rating to AAA from AA+, ranking it alongside the United States and Britain and ahead of Japan.


Conservative economic management pays off! More here.

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DEADANYWAY

Deadanyway is a self described �outspoken vixen�. This is the beginning of her latest post:

Without exception the anti-war protesters fall into two categories: monsters and fools, Nearly all the American opposition to war against Iraq are really just opponents of Bush, left-wing cranks who are willing to risk the safety of other Americans in order to gain some kind of political capital for the Democratic Party by likening him to, say, Hitler. These are the fools.


And there�s more ....

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ELSEWHERE

Great win for the USA and a pratfall for France at NATO.

Moderation and compromise from the Greeks over Cyprus! There is hope for everybody at that rate.

Disgraceful! The murderous Leftists of the Symbionese Liberation Army got prison sentences of only 6 to 8 years! California loves its Leftists!

There is now a conservative cartoon site! Worth a visit.

There were a lot of laughs in Arlene Peck�s latest article. I liked this: Today, the Jewish men seem to prefer Asian women. They think they are unlike the Jewish women and will be subservient. Yeah, right! To them, meeting an older Jewish woman is the wife they left. The article seems to be only an email so far so I have temporarily put it up here.

There is a new issue of Free Life Commentary out. I thought Sean Gabb�s article on �Is there a Right in Ireland?� was particularly interesting.

Some Leftist nut who claims that he is �working for change� thinks Americans are no better of than Iraquis under Saddam or Russians under Stalin! The Razor�s Edge (Post of 11th) gives him a good slashing.

Ghost of a Flea thinks Canada is the Axis of Waffle!

Big Mouth feels proud that the U.S. armed forces who will be fighting in Iraq include people born in many different parts of the world. Even if were only the US military going to war, it would still be like a mini-United Nations going to war.

No Left Turns has an interesting discussion about Biblical support for individual liberty.

Feminist lies about domestic violence are exposed here

Now they are going to TEACH the need for reparations for slavery in the Schools! Yuk! See No 2 Pencil (post of 12th)

The Wicked one says that French antisemitism is behind French anti-Americanism.

Michael Darby has a digest of an excellent article by V.D. Hanson arguing that history suggests only minor difficulties for the USA in invading Iraq.

Chris Brand looks at ways of describing human personality in terms of just a few dimensions.

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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my "First Draft" site instead or check my HomePage for a new blog address.

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posted by JR 2/17/2003 07:32:00 PM



Sunday, February 16, 2003

 

HUMAN RIGHTS FOR IRAQ

An email from Dean Esmay:

I've arranged with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies to release a special button in support of democracy and human rights in Iraq!

We don't have a lot of time what with the protests beginning this weekend, but we've got the official blessing of the foundation to release the graphic and point people to their pro-Iraqi, anti-Saddam site.

I'm also unofficially (for now) collecting the web site names and URLs of sites that are participating. Please go here to nab the graphics and information.

Also please post about this to anyone who you know runs a web site and get them to use the button--and hopefully add their names to the list in the comments. I recently ran across something on Metafilter about 100 web sites putting themselves in black this week to protest the war. Think we can outdo these pro-Saddam fools? I think we can.

Help spread the word ASAP!


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�PEACE� DEMONSTRATIONS

Useful Fools has a lot of fun photos of his local "Peace" demonstration -- plus pictures of the pro-war anti-demonstrators.

WogBlog is clearly bothered by the big crowds at �antiwar� demonstrations in London and elsewhere. He should set his mind at rest. Leftism is all about drawing attention to yourself and trying to look virtuous so this whole Iraq issue is like manna from heaven for these narcissists. The fact that they are demonstrating for Saddan Hussein shows that they would demonstrate for anything. It would be crazy to take them seriously.

Conservative Commentary has some nasty questions for pacifists

It is pretty well-known now that the Vietnam war was a failure of will on the part of a Democrat administration rather than a military defeat. This article spells it out. LBJ let the demonstrators bluff him. I doubt that GWB will.

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posted by JR 2/16/2003 07:35:00 PM

 

MORE FEEDBACK ON LEFTY SEX

An email just received:

My observation on the sexual habits of women tend to renforce what one of your readers wrote: That non-political women may be more inclined.

I would go on to say that young women, like young men, from 18 to 25 are very active regardless of politics. If anything, lefty women tend to be extremely intolerant of other points of view. So, conservative men should keep their politics private if they want to get some where with a lefty girl. Most girls, after marriage, become more conservative, as the voting of the 2002 Presidential election showed.


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EDUCATION

Teachers do make a difference. "The vocabulary of the average American 14-year-old has dropped from 25,000 words to 10,000"

World history textbooks in U.S. classrooms sanitize the problems of Islam when compared to how they often treat Western civilization More here.

Jeff Jacoby has some horror stories of how Leftists destroy high-school education in Massachusetts -- all in the name of "equality" of course. Like the Soviets, they achieve equality not by lifting everyone up but by keeping everyone down.

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posted by JR 2/16/2003 07:34:00 PM

 

ELSEWHERE

Samizdata agrees with me that libertarianism is a broad church (See my posting of 14th).

Inn of the Last Home has some forgiving words about the French.

Big Mouth has a big swipe at Belgium. He begins: �I've avoided talking about Belgium, well... because it's a pissant, unimportant speck of a country� and it goes on from there.

A �liberal� wishes 20 million people dead. So what else is new? �On behalf of the country, it would be better without Limbaugh and his 20 million listeners." The words of Eric Alterman. Stalinism lives!

The Wicked one has some good jokes about kids.

Chris Brand looks at the current fashion in psychology of saying that everything we do is the product of the situations in which we find ourselves. He points out that the sort of person we are is at least as important in determining what we will do on any given occasion.

Michael Darby reproduced a speech given in Australia's House of Representatives (Federal parliament) giving support for war with Iraq.

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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my "First Draft" site instead or check my HomePage for a new blog address.

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posted by JR 2/16/2003 07:33:00 PM



Saturday, February 15, 2003

 

AXIS ECONOMICS

Economics writer Martin Hutchinson has two interesting articles here and here on the economics of the "Axis of Weasels" (Germany and France). He concludes:

The important Axis objectives are thus to slow down as far as possible the rapid pace of change in the world economy, to keep the U.S. unpopular in the Third World, so that it is seen as a global bully, and not as a free market economy worthy of emulation, and thereby to preserve against the forces of adverse demographics and economic change both the illusion of Axis political and economic power and the reality of high Axis living standards.


His basic point it that Germany and France are suffering economically from their high level of government spending and government regulation of their economies and want to drag everyone else down with them.

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LEFTIST DARWINISM?

Peter Singer is definitely his own man. His relentless following of certain ethical axioms to their logical conclusions makes him friends and enemies on both the Left and the Right -- though he is mainly in favour with the Left. His latest idea is to reclaim Darwin for the Left. His version of evolution is that we have evolved to be co-operative and he thinks the Left should buy that. If there is any way we can get Leftists to accept anything about human nature and its origins we have at least got the chance of a sensible debate with them so I wish him luck.

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posted by JR 2/15/2003 07:40:00 PM

 
LEFTY SEX AGAIN

I reported recently several observations from my fellow bloggers to the effect that Leftist women are more sexually willing. Gweilo has a comment on that:

Women who don't give a whit about politics are generally a lot more fun than are those of either political persuasion. The strength of a girl's political opinions is inversely proportional to the amount of fun she's likely to be in the sack.

***********************************

IS �PEACE� ALL THERE IS?

A good summary of the Iraq question by Sine Qua Non:

I continue to be struck by the fact that every single article from Europe, or about Europe's perspective, refuses to examine the current state of affairs in anything other than the false dichotomy of peace and war. Can someone "over there" please try and understand that freedom is more important to us than peace? Would Western Europe have preferred the "peace" of Soviet communism if the US had not established NATO and spent our money acting as a deterrent for their freedom?


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posted by JR 2/15/2003 07:40:00 PM

 

SOME GOOD QUESTIONS ABOUT CUBA

Since life is so good in that bastion of freedom and prosperity known as Cuba, I can't for the life of me figure out why four Cuban coast guardsmen would defect to the evil old USA. What would Danny Glover and Jimmy Carter have to say
about this?

The thing that really disturbs me is how these men pulled their boat right up to the dock of a Key West resort at 4:00am, walked into town fully armed and surrendered to police. Where was our Coast Guard and Navy?


More here.

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REPUBLICAN RACISM?

Right Thinking has a good fisking of another celebridiot who badmouths GWB. Sample:

Like most celebrity morons Glover has waited until speaking to the foreign press overseas before running his mouth.

"YES, HE'S RACIST," Glover said in response to a question from a reporter from the Brazlian magazine "Isto E", according to our source's translation.

Strange that a racist would choose two blacks for arguably his two most important cabinet positions.


Along similar lines, 11 Day Empire says that bigmouth celebridiots really are ignorant limousine liberals who do not practice what they preach.

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posted by JR 2/15/2003 07:39:00 PM

 
ELSEWHERE

The BBC here takes the role of organizer of the London antiwar March. It gives a new meaning to �Public Service Broadcaster�. �Service to Leftists Broadcaster� would be more accurate. But ALL owners of TV sets in the UK are forced by law to pay for it!

The Wicked one is harrying the French again -- this time using history.

Michael Darby reports that New South Wales farmers are about to sue their Labor government over its failure to follow elementary bushfire prevention measures.

Chris Brand writes on the bases of intelligence.

China Hand has come back to life again after his recent trip to Vietnam and compares Chinese and Vietnamese approaches to economic development. He concludes that the Viets have still got some nettles to grasp, as it were.

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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my "First Draft" site instead or check my HomePage for a new blog address.

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posted by JR 2/15/2003 07:38:00 PM

 
CHINA CRACKDOWN AGAIN -- HOTMAIL TOO

I noted on 10th that Matthew Cowie was in China and unable to access Blogspot. China Hand has now confirmed that Blogspot is indeed blocked again in China. Worse, Hotmail has been blocked too so I have been able to communicate with him only via MSN Messenger. The Hotmail block seems to be more local however as he can access it from some sites.

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posted by JR 2/15/2003 04:54:00 PM



Friday, February 14, 2003

 

LIBERTARIANISM IS A BROAD CHURCH

In some of his recent postings on Philosoblog, Jim Ryan seems to treat values and rules as interchangeable. I think this is a mistake. Libertarianism can for instance be either a value or a rule. In the first case liberty just feels good so I like it and value it. In the second, we try to maximize liberty because it leads to other things that we like for themselves -- such as security and prosperity. Conservatives like Jim do often seem to overlook the fact that libertarianism is a broad church in general -- ranging from anarcho-capitalists at one extreme to many varieties of minimal Statists. And all but the anarcho-capitalists do allow what Jim says that they do not -- they allow that there are some cases when liberty has to be subjugated to other values -- such as security. A good instance of such subjugation is the fact that most U.S. libertarians do seem to support action by the U.S. government against Saddam.

Where a surname like Ryan is concerned (though I seem to remember that Jim�s mother was Jewish), I would always suspect at least a vestigial attachment to the old Roman Catholic doctrine of moral absolutes -- something which makes it difficult for adherents to see that others do not organize their values in such a rigid way. The Catholic church does seem to be the main holdout of moral absolutes. People of all political persuasions are moral relativists these days. In 1981, I reported a study of Introductory Sociology students at an Australian university in which they were asked to respond to the statement: �There is no such thing as an absolute right and wrong�. 77 agreed and only 28 disagreed. I have no doubt what the direction of change would have been since then.

I don�t much like hitting people over the head with my academic research results on this blog but seeing that I have just done it once, I might as well do it again: I also did a general population survey of Californians (Ray, 1982) in which I looked at whether libertarian and conservative attitudes were statistically separable. They were not. Virtually all the libertarians were conservatives too. Despite the usual contentions to the contrary, there really is just one dimension of political attitudes out there in the big wide world of the English-speaking countries -- a Left/Right dimension with conservatives and libertarians at one end and socialists and lovers of big government at the other.

References:
Ray, J.J. (1981) The morals of attitudes. Journal of Social Psychology 115, 227-235.
Ray, J.J. (1982) Authoritarianism/libertarianism as the second dimension of social attitudes. Journal of Social Psychology, 117, 33-44.

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posted by JR 2/14/2003 07:33:00 PM

 

LEFTISM AS A CLAIM OF SUPERIORITY

Parapundit has an excellent post on Leftist motivation that echoes much of what I have put forward on the same subject. Some excerpts:

For the British academics (and some American academics as well) Israel provides a group that is enough like them that they can point at the Israelis, draw a distinction, and say "see, we are better than those folks". Their protest is motivated by a desire for more status

For a lot of young men in college and afterward involvement in environmental and other politically correct protest activities is a great way to meet young women and impress the women with their principled compassion.

One reason academics do not boycott Syria and other countries with worse human rights efforts is they expect more from the Jews than from the Arabs. Why? Because they really believe that the Arabs are not capable of better behavior but that the Jews are. So this boycott is a compliment to the Jews

He also quotes Steve Sailer as saying:

And this is typical, in my experience: whites who proclaim their anti-white feelings don't really care much about blacks or other minorities, pro or con. What they care about is achieving social superiority over other whites by demonstrating their exquisite racial sensitivity and their aristocratic insouciance about any competitive threats posed by racial preferences.

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�THE TRIUMPH OF THE WILL�

An incredible picture here -- Leni Riefenstahl at her birthday party -- aged 101. She should be a great heroine to feminists, Leftists and all moviemakers but she is not. She triumphed in a man�s world and made movies that are still shown 60 or more years later. And she did it all for a socialist dictator! Given the antisemitism of modern-day Leftists, they might rediscover her yet. The picture is from a German Leftist website.

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posted by JR 2/14/2003 07:32:00 PM

 

ELSEWHERE

Liquid Courage does not like religion very much but still thinks that living in a basically Christian country is the best deal there is.

Rabbi Lerner, an antiwar Jew, was banned from speaking at a �peace� rally because he is a Jew. As he says: �there is support on the left for self-determination for every group in the world except the Jewish people.� The Left has returned to its traditional antisemitism with a vengeance.

This link spoofs descriptions of psychiatric illness by showing that Leftism could be described in similar terms.

This IS a funny picture. Not really one for cat-lovers.

Chris Brand reviews a �safe� book on IQ testing.

Michael Darby has a post that points out how events in Zimbabwe affect the whole of Africa.

The Wicked one has a post that compares Abraham Lincoln with certain antidemocratic figures from German history.

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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my "First Draft" site instead or check my HomePage for a new blog address.

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posted by JR 2/14/2003 07:32:00 PM



Thursday, February 13, 2003

 

BLOGGER.COM PROBLEMS

Blogger.com is seriously wonky at the moment so let me put at the head of this page my usual advice:

If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my "First Draft" site instead or check my HomePage for a new blog address.

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LIBERTARIANS VERSUS CONSERVATIVES?

Writing in the WSJ, Susan Lee makes out there is more of a conflict between conservatism and libertarianism than there really is. As I have pointed out at some length elsewhere, concern for individual liberty and a distrust of big government is historically basic to conservatism. Where libertarians and conservatives differ is that conservatives add on a few extra bits and pieces (such as Sunday observance and sexual restrictiveness) that libertarians do not -- that is all. And the add-ons vary from one conservative to another. And most of the add-ons seem to be fading away rapidly everywhere except among the religious Right.

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posted by JR 2/13/2003 07:46:00 PM

 

LEFTIST LOSS OF REALITY CONTACT

The No. 1 Chief �liberal� speaks: �The American people don't want this war. Our global allies don't want this war. So why is President Bush stampeding down the warpath, and not working toward a real solution to disarm Saddam?"

Ted Kennedy has not noticed that U.S. opinion polls support the effort to remove Saddam. Ted Kennedy has not noticed that the U.S. has many European allies in the effort to remove Saddam. Ted Kennedy thinks that taking 18 months to make sure that no other solution is possible is a �stampede�. Ted Kennedy has not noticed that Saddam will not disarm unless we make him. It sounds like brain decay except that the brain concerned seems to have been born that way.

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THERE ARE NONE SO BLIND ....

There is a good article here by Robert Conquest that gives numerous hilarious tales of what serious �liberal� intellectuals deluded themselves into believing during the Soviet era. It shows how Leftists can be utterly blinded to reality by their own wishful thinking. Just one example:

�Liberals� condemned the West as dominated by �greed� yet .............

Corruption of every possible type has flourished in all the communist countries. It is not only that the USSR, for example, became a vast kleptocracy but also that even the supposedly pristine early revolutionaries were anything but immune. In fact, with few exceptions the victorious Bolsheviks lived comfortably through the deprivations of the postrevolutionary period. Milovan Djilas, then a Yugoslav communist leader, was shocked at how his victorious partisans, on entering Belgrade, seized villas, cars, women, and so on. The same was noted of the Sandinistas when they entered Managua.


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posted by JR 2/13/2003 07:36:00 PM

 

THE AIRPORT GESTAPO

U.S. Airport security CAN be made to eat humble pie! About time! This does however seem to be another case of favouritism for well-known people. You can carry a loaded gun onto an aircraft in the U.S. and get only a warning if you happen to be connected with a TV talk-show host, for instance.

The average citzen gets shafted by these goons time and time and time again. And the goons would never catch terrorists anyway. As Jeff Jacoby writes, they are only good at catching the ones that got away.

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posted by JR 2/13/2003 07:34:00 PM

 

ELSEWHERE

There are now TWO Anti-French blogs. The satirical one proposes that France should be banned from invading Iraq!. The other one is here.

The anti-war movement is intellectually bereft. Its leaders lie continuously Read more here.

Conservative Commentary has a new heading on his blog -- a quotation supporting the peace movement! But you might guess from whom the quotation comes.

This gave me a laugh: The French are to diplomacy what the British are to cooking. From Useful Fools. Having been brought up on British cookery, I know what he means.

The Latin Americans still regard Simon Bolivar as a great liberator but he had some pretty authoritarian ideas. No wonder liberty is still struggling in Latin America.

Calpundit agrees that India should replace France on the U.N. Security Council. I agree. It is absurd the way 1 billion people and the world's largest democracy is currently being forgotten by almost everyone.

In his article on the weird anti-Americanism in SOUTH Korea at the moment, E. Nough comes up with a good definition: It's this substitution of feelings and warm fuzzies for cold, rational, and sometimes unpleasant thoughts that defines idiotarianism

The Wicked one has some dubious medical advice.

Michael Darby has an unusual reason for opposing capital punishment and is pleased that the England team will not now play cricket in Zimbabwe

Chris Brand has a roundup of recent moves on race and immigration in Britain.

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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my "First Draft" site instead or check my HomePage for a new blog address.

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posted by JR 2/13/2003 07:33:00 PM



Wednesday, February 12, 2003

 
CARNIVAL OF THE VANITIES #21


I am pleased to be the Carnival host this week. A lot of work but interesting. Bigwig can put me down for another turn any time he likes.

So here goes (in order of receipt):

Photomatt has some great hints on how to do your blogroll.

Clubbeaux (No. 1) asks: "Who's a better friend to America, NATO "ally" Greece or Turkey?"

Clubbeaux (No. 2) asks: "What exactly is "tolerance?""

Clubbeaux (No. 3) asks: "When did the postwar world change?"

Revealed Truth has a spoof debate between the contenders for the upcoming Democrat Presidential nomination.

Observations of a Misfit has some coffee secrets.

Dean's World has some thoughts on Christian bashing in the media and elsewhere.

A Small Victory has a great Winter photo essay.

Occam's Toothbrush has found out why "oleaginous" is a good word for the French. (It means "oily"! -- oil, oil, get it?)

The People's Republic of Seabrook is quoting Ronald Reagan! -- and giving us some great pictures from the Johnson Space Center.

The People's Republic of Seabrook (No. 2) has a tribute to astronaut Willie McCool

Amish Tech Support has some hints on how to stop a cameraman filming you.

Useful Fools has a spoof US reply to the North Korean threat.

Useful Fools (No. 2) says that there can be no draft dodgers in the war on terror.

IMAO has a spoof terrorist FAQ

Solonor's Inkwell thinks the war on terror is stripping Americans of their individual liberties.

Ravenwood has a list of celebrities whom he thinks should stick to what they are good at and otherwise shut up.

Ravenwood (No. 2) points out the importance of running credit checks on anyone you plan to employ.

Ravenwood (No. 3) enlightens us about the nonsense surrounding ballistic fingerprinting.

The Declarer thinks we should settle Antarctica before we explore Mars.

The Talking Dog does not like restrictions on the holding of demonstrations. He thinks he might become a protestor himself.

Blogatron describes the Povich talk show as a "particular brand of naked, soulless, grasping evil"

Cognocentric muses about the future direction of the space program

Pete wishes some woman would stalk him.

Pete (No. 2) has a meditation on the space shuttle disaster.

Eleven Day Empire thinks the shuttle enquiry is getting a bit childish.

Eleven Day Empire (No. 2) attacks Lefty economist Krugman as a Luddite for questioning the space program.

Eleven Day Empire (No. 3) attacks other critics of the space progam.

Everything Must Go roadtests a $2 bottle of wine!

Silent Running has some scenarios of what Saddam MIGHT do before we dispose of him.

Kalyr has a post about when certain Rock bands Jumped the shark

Alisa in Wonderland says that the French are brainwashed but they still hate the Arabs more than the Jews.

Viking Pundit explains why celebrities tend to lean Left politically (Post of 10th -- his permalinks are not working)

Tim Dunlop summarizes this entry as Just to think that it all began on an uneventful morn.... (I don't get it so maybe I don't understand Lefty bloggers or maybe his permalinks are playing up)

You Bigmouth mourns the death of a cat.

MTPolitics has a sheep joke.

MTPolitics (No. 2) tears some more chunks out of liberal columnist Morford.

Northwest Notes has a bicycle story.

Acidman is trying to cope with turning 51

Foolsblog has a laugh at a big media writer who still does not realize that the Bin Laden letter is a fake.

Ipse Dixit wants help with a Google bomb.

The Heretic thinks it is OK for celebrities to talk about the war. Freedom of nutty speech you might call it.

Floyd County Fragments has a post for dog-lovers.

Jimspot has some comments on the crazy San Francisco marijuana trial where jurors were told only half the story.

Jimspot (No. 2) is also irate at education authorities in hanging-chad country who will not allow students to fail exams.

Wylie is not very pleased by news about Baptist homosexuals.


The Raving Atheist questions the interjection of religion into the Columbia space shuttle tragedy.

The Shark has a laugh at the way liberals have flip-flopped over foreign intervention by the USA since the days of the Yugoslav intervention.

The Truth Laid Bear opens a new cross-blog Iraq debate (For the pro-war side)

And Stand Down is co-ordininating the anti-war side of the debate.

Nostradumbass is saying something about Viggo Mortensen but I have no idea what or why. Esoteric humour, I think.

The Rant says that the obstructionism of France, Germany and Russia has resulted in a great deal of speculation, but all of it misses the point. This is not about oil or morality or French insecurities. This is the return of Realpolitik.

Little Tiny Lies has some "Coffee pornography"

Little Tiny Lies (no. 2) also sent his own scam letter TO Nigeria.

Hello Bloggy believes that the strong homosexual influence in Hollywood results in its films being largely anti-family.

Silflay Hraka believes that alcohol is the cause of and the solution to all of life's problems. He likes English Real Ale so he may have a point.

Views on the News points out what a tiny minorrity the nudists for peace are. (Permalink a bit erratic. You may have to scroll down).

I have no idea what This is about. I think it is a shaggy dog story.

NEXT WEEK the Carnival will be at The People's Republic of Seabrook. His Email address.

And THANKS to Bigwig for devising and administering the Carnival.

FINALLY: A note from a Carnival participant:

A thought to take or leave as you see fit: When Silflay Hraka introduced the Carnival, he asked people to submit one piece, saying that (if I remember right) if they sent more than one, he would narrow it down to one on his own. Lately I've noticed more and more people submitting two or three pieces.


END OF CARNIVAL # 21


posted by JR 2/12/2003 07:34:00 PM

 
THE ISLAMIC �GOLDEN AGE�

Apologists for Islam often speak of a �Golden Age� in mediaeval times when the Islamic world was allegedly more civilized than the Christian world. But that is mostly hype. The Muslim Arabs got most of their civilization when they took over Zoroastrian Persia and most of their ancient Greek texts direct from the Greeks themselves.

Yes. The Greeks did not fade away after the death of Alexander the Great. They continued on in the Eastern Mediterranean just as before. And when they were conquered by Rome, Rome simply took over their culture. The teachers for educated Roman youth were generally Greek. Far from suppressing Greek learning. Rome admired and promoted it. And anybody who knows his Bible knows how strong Greek culture still was in the time of St Paul. St Paul spoke Greek and wrote his letters in Greek to congregations in Greek cities such as Ephesus, Corinth etc.

And St Paul did not labour in vain. Christianity flourished in Greek lands. So 300 years later when the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire was set up it was both Greek and Christian from the beginning. Its headquarters was what we now call Turkey but it extended far and wide at various times. It was founded as a Christian empire by Constantine the Great and continued on as a fervently Christian empire for nearly 1000 years. But its culture was Greek and all the old Greek learning was preserved there. Although the Byzantines called themselves Romans, they spoke Greek -- mainly because they were Greek. And Byzantium coexisted with Islam for 500 years -- plenty of time for Greek culture to percolate across the borders -- which it did.

So the idea that the Muslims preserved ancient Greek learning is a laugh. The Greeks themselves preserved Greek learning and had a great Christian Greek civilization flourishing right alongside the Arab world for 500 years. The Christians taught the Arabs, not vice versa.

So the acclaimed civilization of Moorish (Islamic) Spain in the middle ages was little more than a projection of Byzantine culture and that was theological rather than philosophical and certainly not liberal in any sense. So Islam has not regressed. It has stood still. It was never innovative and is now just about as good or bad as ever it was. If you want to see what it was in the past look at what it is now.

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posted by JR 2/12/2003 07:34:00 PM

 

THE ABSURDITY OF FEARING AMERICA

Between the Leftist peaceniks and the Conservative isolationists in the U.S. electorate, the idea that any American President could do anything remotely imperialistic is laughable. Americans want to keep their boys at home and need a hell of a lot of persuading to do otherwise.

One Good Turn also has a succinct post on the European idea that American power needs �counterbalancing�. (Permalinks erratic. See his post of 10th.)

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posted by JR 2/12/2003 07:33:00 PM

 

R.I.P. NATO

Ranting Screeds thinks that the NATO alliance is dead now that France and Germany have blocked moves to have NATO defend member-country Turkey. I think he is right. I think that this refusal should cause GWB to announce at some time of his own choosing that he now regards NATO as dead and start up negotiations for a new alliance of freedom-loving nations -- which would probably include most of the rest of Europe and could well be based in Poland.

The amusing thing is that the present alliance of France and Germany will probably prove to be very temporary. The average Frenchman hates Germans.

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posted by JR 2/12/2003 07:33:00 PM

 

ELSEWHERE

What a beauty! It took Tim Blair to come up with this one: NASA actually sent up an Arab on the space shuttle long before they sent up an Israeli! No nation tries harder to be fair than the USA.

Arlene Peck says that the Muslim Arabs have cost us an incalculable amount in their quest to force their religion on the rest of the world and that we should seize their oil to pay the cost of that. The USA easily could, but will it?

Ombudsgod reports that Leftist book banning is still going on in American universities. I think a lot of the universities should be renamed as �Madrassas� -- after the Islamic version.

Bigmouth has a fun idea about another rogue nuclear power: South Africa gave up its nuclear weapons. It's time that France did too. We cannot tolerate a power hungry regime in Paris that has nuclear weapons.

There is an interesting article here that compares the globalizing world of today with the globalizing world at the beginning of the 20th century. War and nationalism disrupted the peaceful globalization of 100 years ago so it is well to be cautious that the same factors do not derail it again. If globalization were stopped it would be as impoverishing as it was last time. (Article needs registration)

Detainees in Australian detention centres are the target of religious hatred. From Muslims

Chris Brand thinks Michael Jackson is not so bad.

Michael Darby has an interesting article on Shaka Zulu and what we could learn from him today.

The Wicked one does not like the French very much. Disliking the French is an old British tradition that Americans are taking over with gusto these days

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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my "First Draft" site instead or check my HomePage for a new blog address.

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posted by JR 2/12/2003 07:32:00 PM



Tuesday, February 11, 2003

 

SCOTLAND, LIBERTY AND THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD

My sole focus in discussing the historic Germanic and Protestant contribution on this blog so far has been on individual liberty. I believe that the individualism of our Anglo-Saxon (Germanic) forebears has given us the liberties we have today.

There are however other ways in which Germanic and Protestant civilization is often alleged to have played a leading role in shaping the modern world. In particular, the German reformation is seen as enabling a freedom of thought that eventually brought about the English industrial revolution and hence modern civilization as we know it. And as part of that process the scientific, technical and engineering innovations that enabled the modern world do almost all seem to have flowed from Germanic countries -- principally Germany itself and Britain. From the printing press to the steam engine the creation of technological civilization seems to have flowed almost entirely from the Germanic peoples of Northwestern Europe.

I think that there is a large element of truth in this account but do not place any great reliance on it. It seems to me that the account overlooks very substantial contributions from France and Italy for a start (e.g. Marconi, Pasteur etc.) -- though it could also be argued that both the Northern French and the Northern Italians have substantial German elements (e.g. the Franks and the Lombards) in their ancestry.

Another objection is the role of the Scots. In his book How the Scots Invented the Modern World, Arthur Herman points to the very substantial contribution made by Scots to the the development of modern Western thinking and the invention by Scots of much in modern Western technology. So how does that square with the contention that the modern world was essentially a Germanic invention? Surely the Scots are Celts rather than Germanic!

I doubt however that the Scottish case constitutes a crucial objection. Some reasons why:

* To my knowledge both the Chinese and the Russians make similar claims to have produced many great inventions. Most things seem to have had more than one "inventor"

* There is an awful lot that the Scots did NOT invent -- from the printing press onwards.

* The Scottish lowlands (where most Scots live) were thoroughly colonized by the Anglo-Saxons so most Scots have substantial Germanic ancestry.

* The Celtic Scots got at least Germanic culture via Protestantism and the English hegemony generally.

The reviews in the Amazon site linked above are well worth a read.

On the political front however, the Scots show very clearly the Germanic difference. Scotland has long been heavily socialist, returning very few Tory members to the Westminster parliament. When English voters swung very heavily towards Margaret Thatcher in 1979, Scotland actually swung away from the Tories! So the greater Celtic element in the Scots ancestry does seem to make a marked difference in politics. Where the Germanic English favour individualism and conservatism, the Celtic Scots favour collectivism and socialism.

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LEFTY SEX

I have had some correspondence from my fellow bloggers (who must of course remain nameless) confirming Andrew Ian Dodge�s view that Leftist women are a lot better as bed prospects. Despite views not much different from mine, one even attends peace rallies for pickup purposes! And another said that he finds ladies of the night more skilled, however. He also points out that they are the REAL capitalists!

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ELSEWHERE

American Kaiser notes German anti-Americanism and thinks America should relocate its military bases from Germany to Eastern Europe. The Eastern Europeans are generally pro-American (sometimes wildly so) and could use the dollars the bases would bring. It might just happen. V.D. Hanson has a similar idea.

Robert Musil shoots down the latest bit of economic nonsense from Paul Krugman -- but only for those with some literacy in economics.

An influential German newspaper (Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) has recently suggested that the present isolation of Germany and France over Iraq (most of the rest of Europe supports the USA) may herald the breakup of the EU. As an Anglospherist and a libertarian, I look forward with glee to the end of that bureaucratic monster. Britain in particular would be far better off signing a free-trade agreement with the USA. More here.

There is a good essay here on why Leftist antisemitism is based not on a hatred of Jews per se but rather on a hatred of success and traditional values.

Orrin Judd has a good summary of the disastrous '70s. Having lived through that time myself, I see much truth in what he says. He is certainly right that to leave Saddam in place would be to repeat the follies of that time.

Prof. Bunyip has a devastating exposure of the barefaced lies being told by Leftist commentator Phillip Adams. He gives the Melbourne Age a pretty effective serve for dishonesty too.

Chris Brand has some further observations on how the Nazi phenomenon still corrupts modern thinking.

The Wicked one has some dubious advice for travellers to Britain

Michael Darby posts on the contentious subject of water rights.

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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my "First Draft" site instead or check my HomePage for a new blog address.

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posted by JR 2/11/2003 08:12:00 PM



Monday, February 10, 2003

 
BLOGSPOT BLOCKED AGAIN?

Matthew Cowie is in China at the moment and thinks that the Chinese have blocked Blogspot again. As before, he can post but not see his postings.

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posted by JR 2/10/2003 07:34:00 PM

 

MORE SURPRISING HISTORY

Most of what most people think they know about Nazi Germany is wrong. For instance: It was mainly Britain and America that defeated Hitler. Right? Wrong! 80% of German military casualties were on the Eastern front (i.e. fighting Russia). The Western allies were a sideshow. And I have often pointed to the historical evidence showing that Hitler was a Leftist rather than a Rightist. But wait! There's more:

The idea that Hitler's Germany was a nation of bureaucratized automatons under a single iron rule exists only in the popular imagination. Any comprehensive history of das dritte Reich (e.g. Shirer, 1964; Bullock, 1964) will tell you that power was if anything excessively decentralized and unfocused under Hitler. Hitler's immense popularity and respect in the country gave him ultimate authority but he exercised it only in a desultory and general way -- leaving most decisions and all administration to his subordinates. And he deliberately gave his subordinates overlapping jurisdictions so that they continually had to compete with one-another for power. Power in Nazi Germany was policentric, not centralized.

And nor were his subordinates rigid automations. Contrary to the Hollywood
stereotype, the Nazi armies were far from being filled with rigid bunglers. Their remarkable initial successes against overwhelming odds (Dupuy, 1986) should alone suggest that but see also Singer & Wooton (1976) and Hughes (1986). Both on the home front and in the field Hitler's Germany can be shown to be flexible and improvisational rather than rigid and formal.

Hitler's closest friend and the person he spent most time with was Albert Speer yet when allied bombers destroyed a building containing most of the records of his armaments ministry, Speer rejoiced at the loss. He welcomed the opportunity to make a new start. He was innovative rather than rigid (Singer & Wooton, 1976). And that was also true of Hitler's generals. It was only their flexibility and creative thinking that enabled them to achieve so much against numerically much superior odds. The example of Rommel is of course well known but a better example is in fact Manstein -- architect of the Blitzkrieg on France. At the outset of the French campaign, Manstein faced heavily entrenched French and allied forces that were in no way inferior to the German forces but his bold and innovative Panzer-led strike through the Ardennes outflanked the French forces and routed them completely. And later in Russia, Manstein destroyed two Russian armies even AFTER Stalingrad. So even Hitler's Germany was very much a nation that allowed much scope for creative individualism -- as long as you did not threaten the overall power structure, of course.

The innovative nature of Nazi Germany can also of course be seen in the large number of previously unknown weapons systems that it deployed -- cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, radar and jet aircraft. The Focke company also produced the first workable helicopter -- though it was not used militarily.

So Hitler's Germany was in fact much more individualistic and decentralized than is generally realized.

References:
Bullock, A. (1964) Hitler: A study in tyranny N.Y.: Harper
Dupuy, T.N. (1986) Mythos or verity? The quantified judgment model and German combat effectiveness. Military Affairs 50(4), 204-210.
Hughes, D.J. (1986) Abuses of German military history. Military Review, 66(12), 67-76.
Shirer, W.L. (1964) The rise and fall of the Third Reich London: Pan
Singer, E.A. & Wooton, L.M. (1976) The triumph and failure of Albert Speer's administrative genius: Implications for current management theory and practice. Journal of Applied Behavioral Research, 12, 79-103.

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posted by JR 2/10/2003 07:34:00 PM

 

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

I like this from Betsy's Page:

Thomas Sowell has another of his tirades against Affirmative Action. His logic is overwhelming and you get the sense that he's very tired of having had to say the same thing for a quarter century. I like his opening.

It has been said that, when Ronald Reagan was governor of California, someone told him that admitting students to the University of California on individual performance alone could mean that all the students at Berkeley might be Asian Americans.

"So what?" was the Gipper's response.

And Jonathan Chait asks why politicians are so afraid to stop affirmative action even though it is hugely unpopular with the voters.

And Mixed Asian says that affirmative action has not really ended in Malaysia.

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posted by JR 2/10/2003 07:33:00 PM

 

ELSEWHERE

Big backdown �Germany offered missiles to defend Turkey, and France refused to rule out an attack on Iraq� More here.

Poor and Stupid defends GWB�s budget against an attack by Andrew Sullivan -- on the grounds that compassionate conservatism costs money.

Chris Brand sums up his argument that liberalism needs rescuing from the ghost of Nazism.

Michael Darby has posts on the Nazi-like behaviour of certain vegetarian and pro-animal groups.

The Wicked one has posts about noise and anti-Americanism.

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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my "First Draft" site instead or check my HomePage for a new blog address.

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posted by JR 2/10/2003 07:32:00 PM



Sunday, February 09, 2003

 

ISRAEL AN AMERICAN STATE?

In a world where the EU has just been significantly enlarged and the USA has (though NAFTA) integrated the whole of North America into a single economic unit, some unusual thoughts are becoming more and more plausible. As this observation on Israel�s problems by Orrin Judd shows:

...and you have to wonder if the eventual, fate of Israel might not be to become an American state. Such a state would lose its distinctly Jewish identity and become more like a Utah, but would be preserved as a world enclave of Judaism. That would be better than many of the more likely alternatives.

And, one might add, if the USA can accomodate the Amish, it could probably also accomodate the Haredim.




ABOLISH THE U.N.?

Mark Steyn thinks that the U.N. has become an irrelevance and that we should abolish it. I heartily agree. If the U.N. endeavours to obstruct the attempt by the USA to dismantle Saddam and his dangerous weapons program, they will in effect abolish themselves of course. It is seldom stated overtly, but President Bush would probably withdraw his representatives to the U.N. if that happened. And then the U.N. really would be nothing but an irrelevant talking shop. The USA kept out of the League of Nations in the 1930s so there is no reason why it could not absent itself from the U.N.

And it is certainly worth noting that U.N. resolutions have not done Israel much good.

(Crossposted on Israpundit)

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posted by JR 2/09/2003 07:36:00 PM

 

THE MALE-FEMALE DIFFERENCE

Goldberg says that men are naturally dominant because of their different hormones etc. Here is a summary of his book. His critics have found him hard to argue with. See here.

Why are there so few women who are top achievers (famous composers etc.) in so many fields? Denis Dutton has made a study of genius and says that females stick closer to the middle in ability. There are fewer very dumb women but also fewer very bright ones

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LEFTIST GUILT

There is a good review here of Allan Levite's book about Leftist guilt. Allan Levite proposes that affluent Leftists are primarily motivated by guilt about their own affluence.

I have my doubts about Levite's theory -- as you will see about half-way through my article here.

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posted by JR 2/09/2003 07:35:00 PM

 

MORE GREENIE EXCESSES

This gave me a good laugh: Greenpeace now wants to ban peanuts! It certainly shows them up for the crazies they are.

Also: �The envirowackos have won again... birds encroaching on a temporary dry lake have been granted property rights!. Read the whole sorry story here

There is a good short summary of why environmentalism is a religion for many people here.

Razib notes that Green is not only the colour of the Environmentalists but also the colour of Islam. And of course it is also the colour of the Irish. So what is it that causes green to be associated with so much irrationality? (I can get away with calling the Irish irrational given my own substantial Irish ancestry).

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ELSEWHERE

The Curmudgeon gave me a laugh: Another thing. I always thought that if you jumped up off your feet in an airplane, you'd be slammed into the rear bulkhead. After my friends laughed at me, I know it can't be true, but whenever I start to try it - like on the way to the lavatory, I'm too embarrassed to jump up, so I don't really know. I guess it�s all relative!

Only Australians will understand this but Happy 80th birthday to Vegemite!

Can a megalomaniac get bored by his own propaganda? It seems that He can!

Bridgeblogger Floyd McWilliams has picked up my post about the Germanic origins of the English yesterday and highlights some puzzles in it.

The Wicked one has a sexy-sounding link and more on French corruption.

Chris Brand has more on Hitler as a betrayer.

Michael Darby has posts on subsidies to the arts, free trade and Zimbabwean savagery,

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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my "First Draft" site instead or check my HomePage for a new blog address.

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posted by JR 2/09/2003 07:35:00 PM

 
Trepidation

Blogger.com seems to have been having trouble with its template servers lately and I am about to be so foolish as to add a new link to my template so if that gums up the works permanently, take heed to my standard warning about Blogger.com:

If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my "First Draft" site instead or check my HomePage for a new blog address.

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posted by JR 2/09/2003 09:44:00 AM



Saturday, February 08, 2003

 
THE GERMANIC ORIGINS OF THE ENGLISH

A picture is said to be better than 1,000 words so this link to a BBC educational site should help fix in all our minds the fact that the English are historically the Western branch of the Germanic people -- and that the basics of what is German should also therefore be the basics of what is English. Though 1500 years of history can create a lot of differences, of course. The words in the yellow text-box are particularly relevant to my constant stress on the historical importance of political decentralization among the Germanic peoples.

Thanks to Matthew Cowie for the link.

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posted by JR 2/08/2003 07:35:00 PM

 


SEX AND LEFTIST YOUTH

Andrew Ian Dodge is one of several people who have put to me that young men are attracted to Leftism because Leftist women are more sexually accessible. And certainly in my own youth the Leftist ladies did seem to be less attached to their pants than others. But that brings us to the next question: Why? I think the answer is pretty straightforward:

Leftism is intrinsically rebellious
Young people are instrinsically rebellious
Female sexual promiscuity is intrinsically rebellious.

So the three go together.

I have just posted Andrew�s email here (Post of 7th.). It is worth a read. I think he even outdoes me for forthrightness!

Mainstream politicians are not unaware of the issue. It arose in South Carolina in 2001. Addressing the young men of "Boys State", the Democratic chairman, Dick Hartpootlian, declared that the Democrats were the party of "beer and girls". Not to be outdone, the Republican chairman, Henry McMaster, countered that the Republicans were the party of "cold beer and hot girls". You can imagine how the feminazi hens clucked over that one!

On a much darker note, read here how a former Leftist is horrified by the hatred that drove him during his Leftist youth.

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posted by JR 2/08/2003 07:35:00 PM

 
OVERGENERALIZING ABOUT GERMANY AND FRANCE

Andrew Sullivan�s recent article in the Sunday Times seems very superficial to me. Equating Germany and France because of their present alliance is ludicrous. You would not want to tell the average Frenchman that he had anything in common with the Germans!

And saying that neither country has the social and organizational diversity (pluralism) of the English-speaking countries is ridiculous too. I am sure that there are just as many sporting clubs, special interest organizations, and school/parent associations in France and Germany as anywhere else.

And we must not confuse Germany's present government with Germany. Germany and Australia both normally have pretty conservative governments but with occasional lapses into Leftist craziness. Australia's last such crazy-Leftist government (under Whitlam) was in the 70s. It lasted only 4 years. I don't see Germany�s Schroeder lasting much longer either. The recent Land elections (German State elections) gave huge majorities to the German conservative parties so that should give Chancellor Schroeder a hard time in the Bundesrat (German Senate) if I understand German politics rightly.

But if I think Sullivan is wrong on the points above, I think he was absolutely right in his judgement of my hero: Ronald Reagan. Contrary to all the Leftist mockery, Sullivan said some time ago of the Gipper: �He was one of the most intellectual presidents in history. If you doubt it, you need to read Sullivan�s article.

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ELSEWHERE

Libertarians will like this link. It shows how the internet is enabling small companies and individuals to do the sort of basic and applied scientific research that could once only be done by big organizations -- generally government-funded ones.

Bob Park has a good laugh at the �Freedom Car� -- GWB�s sop to the Greenies -- but agrees that it is a cheap sop at least.

Nice to see a prominent Canadian attacking anti-Americanism.

There's a big strike at affirmative action on Clubbeaux

If the opposite of pro is con then the opposite of progress must be congress. As a libertarian, I LIKE that! From Commonsense & Wonder

It is hard to believe that this I love Saddam article could be published in any Western newspaper. It is eerily reminiscent of the sort of �happy worker� stuff pro-Stalin Western Leftists used to write years ago. Yet it appeared a few days ago in the Washington Post. Via Commonsense & Wonder

Michael Darby has a speech by a conservative politician with an academic background which makes the good conservative point that academic theories often do not work in practice and says that politicians should therefore be more critical of such theories.

Chris Brand asks why we can accept black athletic superiority but not white intellectual superiority.

The Wicked one says what a great racket deathbed repentance is.


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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my "First Draft" site instead or check my HomePage for a new blog address.

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posted by JR 2/08/2003 07:34:00 PM



Friday, February 07, 2003

 

LEFTIST INFLUENCES ON YOUTH

Ed Mick has a great follow-up to my initial post on why it is that young people tend to be more Leftist than their seniors. Ed sees youthful Leftism as being mainly the outcome of the institutional influences that young people are exposed to. He sees these as:

1) Immediate family
2) Education establishment
3) Mass media
4) Church

And points out that the last 3 of these are very often Leftist these days. So young people learn Leftism just as they learn any other lesson. Ed spells it all out in detail. Well worth a read.

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THE CURRENT GERMAN SPINELESSNESS

Wunderkinder notes:

[German Foreign Minister Joschka] Fischer said that although Iraq has constantly violated U.N. resolutions and Saddam's regime is "terrible for the Iraqi people," the inspections must go on.


And comments:

Apparently in Gerhard Shroeder's political philosophy, constant violations and a terrible regime aren't enough for UN action. If Iraq flew a chemical weapon-carrying drone plane into the Bundestag, German politicians would apologize for leaving it in such an inconvenient spot.


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posted by JR 2/07/2003 07:40:00 PM

 
THE LEFTIST MIND .... CONTINUED

"Democrats will trample over a thousand poor people to throw a rock at a rich man." --Tom Adkins of "The Common Conservative," on the Bush tax-cut plan. Via The Federalist

Whacking day has a good summary of the strange and totally dishonest minds of Leftists. That Leftists NEED to criticize and be different is the most obvious explanation of such strange behaviour.

Tim Gillin (post of Feb. 2nd.): Concern for the poor is admirable and charity is a virtue, but the recent advances in China shows that Adam Smith did more for the world's poor than all socialists put end to end.

Cold Fury has found some remarkable honesty and good sense about Iraq from two Leftists. It shows that there is a small minority of Leftists who really are humanitarian.

It is often vaguely asserted that the peaceniks and do-gooders who urge that Saddam should be dealt with by "negotiation" are following the same strategy as the foolish peaceniks of the 1930s who tried to appease Hitler. Someone who remembers the 1930s very well writes here that the parallels are in fact enormous. The peaceniks of today are saying almost exactly what the peaceniks of the 30s said. They are just not serious. They aim only to sound good.

But sometimes the dishonesty of Leftist peaceniks becomes just TOO gross. It becomes so transparent that they harm their own cause. The recent interview of Saddam by Tony Benn certainly seems to have made the British public more pro-war.

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ELSEWHERE

The Federalist has some good quotes from the speech of President Bush, given at the memorial service for the astronauts of the Columbia at the Johnson Space Center a few days ago.

The administration has assured North Korea it has no intention of invading [but] it has left open the possibility of a pre-emptive air attack on North Korean nuclear plants. THAT'S what I like to hear! More at the Judd blog.

Delightful news! Tony Blair blocked a decision to award a French company a �3 billion contract to build the Royal Navy's two new aircraft carriers because of anger at President Jacques Chirac's behaviour over Iraq and Zimbabwe. (Via Right Wing News).

So there IS responsible thinking in Scandinavia (sometimes): Norwegian television has sacked a left-wing journalist for his outspoken views on the impending Iraq War after he compared President Bush to Adolf Hitler. (Via The Politburo)

There is a rather nice flag idea for Anglospherists at Samizdata

Chris Brand has some critical thoughts about the Michael Jackson interview.

Michael Darby has some mail about the monarchy and some advice from mother Teresa.

The Wicked one is not very happy with either Vegans or Mrs Arafat.

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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my "First Draft" site instead or check my HomePage for a new blog address.

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posted by JR 2/07/2003 07:33:00 PM



Thursday, February 06, 2003

 
PITY OUR CONSERVATIVE COLLEGE STUDENTS

David Horowitz has for some time been running a campaign to get some political balance onto US college and university campuses. But he has a long way to go. I have just received an email from a US college student that details the tripe he has to endure as part of his studies. The bias and inconsistency is so bad that it is actually painful for him. Students should not have to endure propaganda in lieu of scholarship. I have just put his email up here. It has its funny side.

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VIN FERRARI

Vin Ferrari also has a good summary up about the oppression of a conservative student by a �liberal� academe. He has lots of pithy summaries up in fact. Like this one:

2 GREAT LIBERAL CONTRADICTIONS

Saddam Hussein doesn't have any weapons of mass destruction. We definitely shouldn't go in there because if we do he might use them.

Saddam Hussein has no connection to Al Qaeda, etc., because Saddam Hussein is hated by Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc. If we attack him, they will retaliate against us around the world.


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posted by JR 2/06/2003 07:34:00 PM

 

GERMANIC LIBERTIES AND PRUSSIA

Razib has posted an excellent but necessarily long post on whether our Anglospheric respect for individual liberties is of Christian or Germanic origin. He and I agree that Germanic origin maps respect for the individual a lot better than the prevalence of Christianity does.

Razib gives a rather more wide-ranging history lesson in support of his views than I have so far done (see the second half of my article here) but he seems to have more difficulty with the Prussian phenomenon than I do. Roughly, Prussia is the Northeastern part of Germany which, over the course of the 19th century, gradually came to dominate the whole of Germany. And the Prussian army had a famous tradition of requiring that its troops be Kadaver gehorsam (corpselike obedient) so how that squares with a Germanic respect for individual liberty does at first seem very difficult to explain indeed.

The point is, however, that, like many other groups, Germans encompass a wide variety of people within their ranks and Prussia is only one part of Germany (and in fact for most of its history it was only partly German -- including large numbers of Poles, Silesians and other non-Germans). Furthermore, the Prussian ascendancy was both very recent and very short-lived. It dates essentially from the French surrender at Sedan in 1870 and ended with the flight of the Kaiser to Holland in 1918 -- to be succeeeded by the very un-Prussian Weimar Republic. Those 48 years are undoubtedly of enormous significance to the world but all that they show essentially is that Prussian militarism had some initial success but ended up destroying itself.

Prior to Sedan, Germany was a disunited and decentralized agglomeration that generations of Prussians, French and others tried unsuccessfully to subdue. And after Sedan, unity of a sort was achieved and maintained only by the diplomatic genius of Bismarck. And after the remarkable restraint provided by Bismarck was dispensed with by the new Kaiser, the German Empire very quickly self-destructed -- in World War I. And Hitler�s attempt to revive it went the same way. So now Germany is back to something much more like what it always was -- a nation with a strongly decentralized power structure in the form of the various Land (State) governments. And that is of course exactly the same structure that certain other countries of mainly Germanic origin (the USA, Canada and Australia) have adopted too. And �devolution� is rapidly leading to a similar state of affairs in Britain as well.

In short, from a historical perspective, the Prussian ascendancy was no more than a short and atypical blip in the more than 2000 years of decentralized power in Germany so cannot possibly be the major source of any generalizations about Germany that we might wish to make.

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posted by JR 2/06/2003 07:34:00 PM

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Today is Ronald Reagan�s birthday. I wish him as happy a birthday as is possible in his present reduced state. After what he did for his country and the world, no-one is more entitled to have his birthday honoured. There is a great photo of him in his prime here. One of his typical sayings:

"One legislator accused me of having a 19th century attitude on law and order. That is a totally false charge. I have an 18th century attitude. That is when the Founding Fathers made it clear that the safety of law abiding citizens should be one of government's primary concerns."


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MAJOR CENSORSHIP IN THE LEFTIST MEDIA

�Media bias� is not the right word for it. Jim Miller shows that what people get from the major U.S. newspapers is straight-out, old-fashioned censorship that would do a wartime censor proud. As Jim shows at length, if you had relied totally on such newspapers for your information about the world, you WOULD NEVER KNOW that the leaders of major European nations such as Britain, Poland, Spain and Italy had all signed a letter supporting the U.S. policy on Iraq. Infinitely less important and less newsworthy stories were run instead.

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ELSEWHERE

Michael Darby is keeping up his campaign of awareness about Zimbabwe with another firsthand report.

Chris Brand stresses the extent to which Hitler was a deceiver

Under the heading: Are Catholics ethically primitive?, the Wicked one has put up a major rant that seeks to explain the spinelessness of the French over Iraq as an outcome of their Catholicism. His concluding sentence: Chirac is an amoral, corrupt sleazeball.

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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my "First Draft" site instead or check my HomePage for a new blog address.

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posted by JR 2/06/2003 07:33:00 PM



Wednesday, February 05, 2003

 
CARNIVAL

This week's Carnival is open for business. See here for a smorgasbord of reading.

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posted by JR 2/05/2003 11:54:00 PM

 
"DADDY FIX" AND YOUTHFUL LEFTISM

A reader who had a very close-up look at the famous Leftist youth of the 60�s has another idea why Leftism often appeals to youth. The whole email is fascinating so I have just posted it in full elsewhere but I give an excerpt below:

I think I have another reason the Left attracts the young: Kids are protected.

When things are wrong, grownups are supposed to fix them. When we have a war, it's bad. Somebody is supposed to fix it. Failure to fix (when the grownup is supposedly omnipotent) demonstrates that the grownup likes the war. Otherwise, the grownup would fix it. The Kids demand it. But he doesn't. Thus, it's the grownup's fault. Government is the grownup.


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COMPARING NAZISM AND COMMUNISM

I gave a link yesterday to an article by Martin Malia which looked at the question of whether Communism was to be preferred to Nazism. Malia basically concluded that the history we have of the Soviet period is so full of lies that it is still too early to make a fully-informed judgment. The link I gave, however, leads only to an extract of the article and I have not been able to find a better link so I have posted what appears to be the main body of the article (sent to me by a reader) here until someone tells me the proper way to access it.

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THOSE NAUGHTY GENES

Leftists all hate the idea that what we are is largely determined by our genes. There is a good article here which endeavours to show just what is and what is not genetically determined in us.

Richard Dawkins explains how genetic modification of food works and points out that it is a lot like computer programming.

Why Read This notes that genetically-modified crops are going great guns in China. If GM food ends up feeding one billion Chinese, the Leftist and Greenie objections to it are going to look pretty lame.

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GO GREEN!

In Global Warming And Other Eco-Myths, some of the most respected researchers in the USA explode the myths behind much of the doom and gloom of today's environmental movement. See here for more details.

In GWB's recent SOTU address he did of course try to include something for everyone -- even the Greenies. There is an article here which knocks the hydrogen car idea which formed part of the address.

An SUV-friendly article here

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REALISM ON THE LEFT

Black racism is every bit as bad as white racism. Conservatives have been saying that for a long time but this time it is Britain's Left-wing Independent newspaper saying it.

Chris Brand has more news about Britain's race and immigration problems and relays some surprising news about the Archbishop of Canterbury�s views on asylum-seekers.

The philosophical cowboy has a look at a couple of the more realistic voices on the Left and finds large holes even in their arguments.

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ELSEWHERE

Why Israelis are not intimidated by the present �intifada�. I guess that most Jews have seen this inspirational affirmation by now but many Gentiles may not have.

Animal lovers will like this story but Muslims may not: The revenge of the goat!

More multicultural craziness: Muslim women in Florida can get their driving licence picture taken with their faces covered! More here

Our good old reliable media! CNN reported that the shuttle was travelling at 18 times the speed of light when it disintegrated. Einstein would be amazed. (Via Jerry Lerman)

China Hand has blogged recently (Jan. 21st) on what a powerful and destructive force envy is in China. This story from "Forbes" about a murdered capitalist in China certainly confirms it.

Michael Darby has coverage of the "treason" trial presently underway against Mugabe's democratic opponents in Zimbabwe.

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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my "First Draft" site instead or check my HomePage for a new blog address.

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posted by JR 2/05/2003 07:33:00 PM



Tuesday, February 04, 2003

 


COMMUNISM BETTER THAN FASCISM?

There has been a vigorous debate on Oxblog recently over whether Communism was in some sense more commendable than Fascism. At the heart of the argument appears to be the old claim that Communism was "well-intentioned".

Both protagonists, however, seemed to be handicapped by a cardboard-cutout view of Fascism. Neither seem to realize that Mussolini (the founder of Fascism) was in fact a Marxist and that Fascism was very Leftist and differed from Communism mainly in being more nationalistic. And Hitler too called himself a socialist and campaigned as a great friend of the worker. BOTH Fascists and Communists claimed good intentions and both tried to lift up "the worker" -- and both failed.

So could it be the nationalism of Fascism and Nazism that makes it particularly bad? Hardly. Nationalism has been around for a very long time and may in fact be universal but it does not normally lead to mass murder of political opponents (or imaginary political opponents). It is not even clear that extreme nationalism is particularly murderous. Mussolini�s Fascism was undoubtedly extreme in its nationalism but -- despite his occasional brutalities -- Mussolini was no mass-murderer. In fact the normal punishment for political opponents in Fascist Italy was simply a forced dose of castor oil! Give me Mussolini�s Italy rather than Stalin�s Russia any day!

What IS clear is that extreme socialism is thoroughly murderous. And James Donald explains very simply why. All four great mass-murderers of the 20th century (Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot) were extreme socialists. The Southern European Fascists were much less thoroughgoing in their socialism (degree of government control over everyday life) so were less murderous. And socialists in a democracy of course lack the power to be mass murderers.

A historically sophisticated comparison of Nazism and Communism can be found in Martin Malia's article "Judging Nazism and Communism". You can access it via this link but you will first have to register for a free subscription here. A few excerpts can also be found here

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IMMIGRATION

Tim Gillin writes:

People say Australia's John Howard runs a tough policy on immigration: Not compared to the Ancient Athenians.

And the Swiss seem to be toughening up on immigration too ... and negotiating return deals with asylum-seeker exporting nations


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THE LEFT STILL LOVE THEIR DICTATORS

Amazing! The murderous Iraqui regime actually thanking the New York Times for being pro-Iraq. What a Left-wing rag! Looks like Saddam is the new Stalin -- to be defended by Leftists at all costs.

And some appalling antisemitism from a major British Left-wing newspaper here (scroll up). Nazi propaganda also lives on among the Left!

Frank Ellis points out: What we call "political correctness" actually dates back to the Soviet Union of the 1920s (politicheskaya pravil'nost' in Russian), and was the extension of political control to education, psychiatry, ethics, and behavior

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ELSEWHERE

There is a good article here showing that Prime Minister Sharon�s victory in the recent Israeli elections was also a resounding victory for conservatism.

And the recent conservative victories in the German State elections seem likely to give Chancellor Schroeder and his Leftist Federal government some big headaches too.

Robert Musil takes on New York! He points out at some length that Freudian psychoanalysis is essentially quackery -- a "medical" procedure that does no good at all. Most psychologists would agree with him.

A rather persuasive argument at Chloe & Pete to the effect that a nation's foreign policy is ALWAYS dictated solely by self-interest -- with morality being no more than an afterthought.

Donald Luskin does a good job of exposing Paul Krugman's latest bout of dishonesty with statistics.

Chris Brand says Hitler betrayed just about everyone and that a lack of checks and balances in the German political system was a major factor in enabling him to do that.

Cronaca notes more strangeness emanating from Britain: Charles Clarke, the British government's education honcho, said education for its own sake was "a bit dodgy"

Michael Darby has a story by a farmer who wishes all the global warming talk was really true.

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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my "First Draft" site instead or check my HomePage for a new blog address.

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posted by JR 2/04/2003 08:29:00 PM

 
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posted by JR 2/04/2003 01:07:00 AM



Monday, February 03, 2003

 

TWO SPEECHES

American Realpolitik juxtaposes the good speech about the shuttle disaster given by GWB with the great speech given about the earlier shuttle disaster 17 years ago by President Reagan. Only the Gipper can still bring tears to my eyes. That man was magic: A once-in-a-lifetime President. I will never see his like again.

I note that even The Moderate Left agrees with me about the Reagan speech.

And I understand how one blogger found comfort in saying the Latin invocation: Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis (�Give them eternal rest O Lord and may the perpetual light shine upon them�)

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YOUTH AND LEFTISM AGAIN

Scott Wickstein and one or two others have called into question the basic assumption underlying my long post of two days ago about why young people tend to lean to the Left politically. They argue that young people do NOT tend to lean to the Left.

I guess I did not spell it out properly in my post yesterday but the academic paper I cited DID show a strong correlation between age and ideology. The research was based on random general population sampling and would not have got into an academic journal unless it was pretty rigorous. So Leftism DOES tend to be a folly of youth. Like Scott, I have always been conservative and there are many like us but we all also know of many examples of age moving people to the Right -- from David Horowitz in the USA to Paddy McGuinness in Australia. So there IS something there that needs explaining.

Tim Gillin (post of Feb. 2nd.) mentioned another point that I should obviously have added to my 4-point list: Young people are often Leftist because they have just been through or are just going through an educational system (both schools and universities) that vigorously indoctrinates them with Leftist ideas. Tim's words on the subject:

How much of this is due to 'wet behind the ears' idealism and how much is due to political indoctrination through the school system, or their greater exposure to the media? Idealism doesn't neccessarily have to be leftist. Youth generally are more peer oriented and the arts/intellectual/media world has a definite left/'progressive' slant. So indoctrinating them is easier. It's interesting that young "computer geeks' and Sci Fi fans are generally less leftist, they tap into a different media network.


An interesting 6th cause of youthful Leftism was added by Eddie Thomas -- who points out on his blog that families tend to be communistic. In a family we give to each according to his/her need. So it takes a while to adjust to an outside world that is not communistic and until that adjustment is made young people tend to believe that the outside world should be like what they have been used to at home.

And the old Leftist mantra "All men are brothers" reflects that. It is an attempt to model society on the family -- but ignores the fact that family ties are a very special case of human relationships.

Tim Dunlop�s suggestion was that I should add �parental indoctrination� to my list of causes. That would obviously be true in some cases, though youthful rebellion probably makes it ineffective pretty often. At any event, it does not explain the preponderance of young people among Leftists.

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IRAQ

According to Strawman Baghdad real estate prices prove that Iraquis are looking forward to being liberated by the Americans. I don't blame them.

Matthew Cowie has a good point: This seems too obvious to even say, but I've watched so many talking heads ( mostly leftists) say that Saddam Hussein does not pose an imminent threat to the United States. It is important to remind them that at 8:00AM on September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda did not pose an imminent threat to the United States.

Jeff Jacoby on attacking Saddam: As slogans, "rush to war" and "unilateralism" are catchy. But they are also false. If anything, Bush has been inching his way to war. And Jeff Jacoby also says we should have Syria in our sights after Iraq.

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ELSEWHERE

Bob Whaley thinks that the public response to the second shuttle loss shows that America has matured as a nation.

Hello Bloggy has a good rant: What I can never understand in the reasoning of the Left is: What have the poor done to deserve the fruits of redistribution? What is it about being poor that entitles people to handouts at the expense of taxpayers? ..... More here

Another good one from the Professor: Mrs Bunyip once took it into her head that lavatory water should be blue, which didn't worry the Professor one way or the other but certainly did the dog no good.

Michael Darby reproduces an important address (not apparently otherwise online) by Sir Harry Gibbs (a former Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia) in which Sir Harry defends the court from affirmative action demands.

The Wicked one has found a funny photo he likes and reprints a great old poem.

Chris Brand points out the uncomfortable truth that Hitler's genocide was far from unusual even in modern history.

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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here, check my HomePage for a new blog address or visit my "First Draft" site here.

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posted by JR 2/03/2003 07:33:00 PM



Sunday, February 02, 2003

 
BRAVE DEEDS

Dreadful news that our brave American brothers have lost a second space shuttle. It took Americans to attempt something as bold as reusable space technology and then entrust their lives to it. I remember vividly seeing on TV President Reagan�s address to America after the first loss. He struck just the right note (as always): A combination of dignified sorrow and a determination not to be daunted by the immense challenges of space

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LEFTISTS HAVE NO FORESIGHT

From the Leftists of the 1930s who thought Hitler and Mussolini were good guys to the Leftists of today, Leftists never seem to be able to learn. When the USA finally goes in to Iraq and topples Saddam, there is absolutely no doubt that what they will find in Iraq is a tale of horror and suffering of a thoroughly Hitlerian sort. A mini-holocaust will be revealed. Saddam himself has said that he thought Hitler was "too mild". So, once the bestiality of Saddam's Ba'ath socialist regime can be thrust graphically in front of everyone's faces, what will Leftists say to the charge: "You supported this!" There will be nothing they can say. They could always say that their support for the vicious Stalin happened because they were "misled" by Stalin's claims of idealism. But the only people Saddam is misleading are the UN weapons inspectors. There is no idealism about him. Leftists must be brain-dead not to foresee how absurd the near future is going to make them look.

It would seem in fact that Leftists cannot deal with foresight at all. After the 9/11 attack on Americans and the Bali attack on Australians, the Leftists were all up in arms asking why did not the US and Australian governments foresee the coming attacks and do something to prevent them. Yet now that the US and Australian givernments DO foresee a grave danger from the weapons being developed by Saddam and are doing something to prevent him using them, the Leftists are opposing that: Damned if you do, damned if you don't. There really must be something missing in the brains of Leftists.

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ONE FOR THE FEMINIST EXTREMISTS TO PONDER

As the only girl among 12 brothers, you could be forgiven for thinking that Cerys Hughes would turn out to be a bit of a tomboy. But the pretty two-year-old is living proof that nature is stronger than nurture. "You really couldn't find a more girly girl," says her mother.


More here.

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BUREAUCRATS LOOK AFTER THEIR OWN

A U.S. Postal Service manager was forced to disrobe and walk naked in front of about a dozen employees yesterday morning by a colleague who threatened to kill her unless she complied. Lonnie Wilson, 60, who planned to retire on Friday, is in Summit County Jail, charged with kidnapping, aggravated menacing and gross sexual imposition.

OK. Normal nutcase stuff. But here's the punchline: What did the Postal Service do about it? It placed him "on administrative leave"! What does a government employee have to do to get sacked? More details at Sine Qua Non

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ELSEWHERE

Richard Webster has another dreadful report about false allegations of paedophilia in Britain. How anybody can be thrown out of his job before the matter goes to trial and how the police can prosecute a case so flimsy that the judge throws it out without even waiting to hear the defence I really do not know. �British justice� is beginning to sound like a mocking term.

Random Jottings says: �In A Credibility Problem (01/28/03) Paul Krugman unwittingly demonstrates with remarkable clarity that the real problem for U.S. liberals is reality itself. They are no longer in touch with it ......�

Ed Mick says: �Hooray for Oregon! Despite an orchestrated campaign warning of gloom and doom, Oregon voted down an income tax increase. This despite a heavy campaign by labor unions and almost no organized campaign on the other side.� If only we ever got that sort of choice in Australia.

The Wicked one feels sorry for our politicians!

The Greenies don�t get much more disgusting than this. They want you to do your ski-ing on artificial snow made from human waste!

Chris Brand says how foolish it is to let Hitler�s interest in eugenics put us off looking at an important idea.

Michael Darby canvasses some proposals for a peaceful solution of the terrible problems in Zimbabwe and looks at the improper Chinese acquisition of American military knowhow under Clinton.

Scott Wickstein says a Greenie is just a Leftie with social pretensions. There�s something in that.

Right Thinking picked up my recent post about the stupidity and crassness of German anti-Americanism. But if you think that I was abusive about it .........

Shiny Happy Gulag has some rather vehement comments about �diversity� that make my recent comments on that subject look meek and mild too.

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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here, check my HomePage for a new blog address or visit my "First Draft" site here.

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posted by JR 2/02/2003 07:33:00 PM

 
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posted by JR 2/02/2003 08:09:00 AM



Saturday, February 01, 2003

 

HEART VERSUS HEAD: YOUNG PEOPLE AND LEFTISM

There is a well-known and much misattributed saying: "If a man is not a socialist by the time he is 20, he has no heart. If he is not a conservative by the time he is 40, he has no brain." It might be interesting to note that the earliest version of this saying is by mid-nineteenth century historian and politician Francois Guizot, who said: "Not to be a republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head". He was referring to the controversy over whether France should be a republic or a monarchy. France did of course have various experiments with monarchy even after the decapitation of Louis XVI. So foolish young people want Presidents and wiser old people want Kings? Perhaps.

Nonethless, it IS true that people who are Leftist in their youth often become more conservative as they get older. In one of my research reports, I found in fact that most older people are quite astoundingly Right-wing (Ray, 1985). So how come?

I think that there are in fact four (sometimes interrelated) main reasons why the Left is more attractive to youth:

1). Simplicity:
The young do not know much so try sweeping generalizations in order to help them understand the world. Leftists supply such oversimplified generalizations ("All men are equal" etc.). So when one is young, the drastically simple "solutions" and mantras proffered by the Left simply seem reasonable. Leftism has the appeal of simplicity. When many a young idealistic person sees a problem and realises that he or she cannot fix it, the natural response is simple: �The government should do something�. Given what they are constantly bombarded with through the media and the educational system this is an understandable response to the problems of the world. It is however based on the fairly amazing idea that we can create a Utopia through the actions of governments.

As Aaron Oakley once put it to me: The problem is that the arguments for individual liberty, free markets, limited government etc are complicated but correct. The Left have it easy. Their philosophies are simple but wrong. The public grasp simple ideas much more easily than complicated ones.

So some of the young are attracted to simple solutions to the world�s problems. Most of the young do not bother, however. They are interested mainly in the opposite sex so just want politics not to bother them -- a thoroughly conservative response. Those who do adopt the Leftist simplifications do often eventually find through experience that the world really is a complex place so tend to give up the simplifications and Leftism along with that.

2). Idealism:
Some people in general, but particularly the young, are idealists -- and, as such, they find the imperfect state of the real world unsatisfying. That there is some genuine idealism even among extreme Leftists is shown by the exoduses from Communist Parties in the economically successful "Western" democracies that followed the violent Soviet suppression of the East German, Hungarian and Czechoslovak uprisings against Communist rule in 1953, 1956 and 1968. Once the real nature of Communist regimes became too clear to be denied, honest decent people whose wishful thinking had led them to believe Communist protestations of benevolence and good intentions saw the light and abandoned Communism. In the USA (in New York particularly), some liberal intellectuals even saw enough in the Soviet actions of those times to cause them to abandon "liberalism" and found neo-conservatism. Similarly in Australia of the 1950s and '60s, the Andersonian libertarians of Sydney were also intellectuals who might otherwise have been Leftists but who were united by realism about Soviet brutality.

3). Impatience:
Just as dangerous to society as the idealist is the �practical� reformer. Some people in general, but again particularly the young, are genuinely outraged by things that they do not understand and are unwise enough to want to change those things willy nilly rather than endeavour to understand what is going on. They are impatient with what they see as �obviously� wrong. In particular, they may be genuinely grieved by the unhappy experiences of others and want to fix that ASAP without being wise enough to seek for means of fixing it that have some prospect of working or that are not self-defeating. They might, for instance, be disturbed by the impact of rising rents on the poor and propose rent-control as a quick-fix solution -- though a few minutes of thought or the most elementary inquiry should tell them that rent control will after a time also have the effect of degrading and shrinking the existing stock of rental accommodation and drying up the supply of new rental accommodation, both of which make the poor much worse off in the long run.

4). Ambition:
The young are ambitious, want to have it all NOW and want to get the top -- so see "The Establishment" as an obstacle to that. So the more unscrupulous and vicious ones use any tool to attack it: Radicalism as a path to power -- a very familiar theme in history. Leftists are intrinsically power-mad

Reference:
Ray, J.J. (1985) What old people believe: Age, sex and conservatism. Political Psychology 6, 525-528.

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PACIFIST CLERGY

Janet Albrechtsen has some very good thoughts about our pacifist clergy. Opposition to war is thoroughly scriptural (Matthew 5:39) but throughout history Christians have seen the need for war nonetheless. But many of our clergy still do not seem to have found out why. Some clearly do not want to find out. The Anglican Primate of Australia (Bishop Peter Carnley) is obviously a total moral bankrupt and Leftist stooge with his refusal to condemn Saddam and his grossly insulting claim that you cannot be a Christian and a conservative too. No wonder many Anglicans worldwide are looking for more traditional leadership than they usually get at the moment.

Albrechtsen�s point that many churchmen now seem to think that the United Nations is God does help to explain why �modern� ideas are being rejected by many Anglican congregations.

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ELSEWHERE

Chris Brand points out the many absurdities that have been perpetrated in the name of distancing ourselves from a certain charismatic, vegetarian, non-smoking, teetotal lover of children and animals.

Michael Darby notes French hatreds and reports a speech by the leader of the Zimbabwean opposition.

In Britain you can get into more trouble with the law for having normal consenting heterosexual intercourse than for being a burglar. Don�t believe me? Read it! California used to be the world headquarters of crazy law. Britain now beats California by a country mile.

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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here, check my HomePage for a new blog address or visit my "First Draft" site here.

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posted by JR 2/01/2003 07:32:00 PM



Friday, January 31, 2003

 

THE RETURN OF THE ARCHIVES

All those who have had a close encounter with Blogspot's archiving system and lived to tell the tale know how erratic and mysterious in its workings it is. In the case of this blog, I seem to have done something that offended it mightily as it stopped offering access to most of my archives altogether.

Being the cautious academic type, I keep backups of whatever I write (Yes. And offsite backups too), so I did not suffer the grief that the good Gareth Parker and others have sometimes displayed over such losses, but it was still mildly annoying. Worst of all was that everything I have posted on this blog still seemed actually to be there somewhere, lurking in the depths of the Blogspot servers.

With the help of some canny advice from the good Michael Jennings, however, I have prevailed! I have managed to "republish" my archives. I have induced Blogspot to give them back. Just click on "Archives" (top left of this page) and you will now be able to access the full extent of my blogwisdom. Trawling through the archives of past blog entries is undoubtedly a rare and strange pursuit so I doubt that anybody ever noticed their absence but I feel rather pleased to have them back anyway.

Before Michael's sage intervention, my response was simply to re-post everything written on this blog prior to November 1, 2002 on a separate site: here. I guess I should now take all that down but I will leave it there just in case. I put it there mainly to make sure that Google do not lose it but if anybody wants to go there and mull over my earlier words of wisdom, who am I to object? I have a permanent link to it in the column over on the left of this page.

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THE GENETICS OF IQ

There is a report of some recent genetic research at Gene Expression which seems to me to be overinterpreted. Unless I am missing something, all it seems to show is that memory and IQ have different genetic determinants. Anybody who knows about idiot savants will not be surprised by that.

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ELSEWHERE

Even President Bush seems to think that "diversity" is a good thing. Why? It escapes me. I would much prefer excellence. It seems to me that diversity is what you seek when you don't know what you want. If you don't eat steak, you need a menu, as it were. But this book apparently says that the whole idea is confused anyway. Via Critical Mass

It really is strange that we now have Leftists calling for military conscription. As Dean's World says, have Left and Right switched sides when we were not looking recently? What on earth would the 60s peaceniks make of it?

Jennie T notes signs of reason about Iraq emanating from Canadian Prime Minster Chretien, no less.

Unlikely though it seems, The Spectator believes that Tony Blair's principled stand is on the verge of making Britain a great power once again. One of the Chicago boys goes even further -- saying Britain is still as great as it ever was (pity he can�t spell �cricket�, though).

As the Wall St Journal says: The "antiwar" Left seems to stand only for the proposition that the enemy of my country is my friend

This clinical description of "pathological Narcissism" sounds a lot like Leftist behaviour to me.

Gareth Parker points out some wisdom about Iraq from a political centrist.

Self-defence is now illegal in New Zealand. You are supposed to let yourself get killed. Don�t believe me? Read for yourself. I think most sane New Zealanders have emigrated to Australia by now.

As Razib says in his post of 27th: The mildly genocidal Milosevic is hauled before the War Crimes Tribunal, while the maniacal Mugabe is invited by the government of France to come to a conference. Ah, but he is black....

Iraq to chair Conference on Disarmament. Coming on top of this: "Libya Elected to Chair U.N. Human Rights Body" I have to say that only a Leftist could take the UN seriously.

"Envy used to be just a human failing, but today it is a major industry. Politicians, journalists and academics are all part of that industry, which some call 'social justice'." --Thomas Sowell. Via The Federalist

Chris Brand notes some progress towards realism over asylum-seekers in Britain.

The Wicked one is being facetious at the moment.

Michael Darby blogs about the benefits of genetically modified food and the latest Libyan idiocy at the UN.

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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here, check my HomePage for a new blog address or visit my "First Draft" site here.

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posted by JR 1/31/2003 07:33:00 PM



Thursday, January 30, 2003

 
ANTI-AMERICAN IGNORAMUSES

The German government�s anti-American rhetoric is begining to hurt German exports to the United States. Hooray! About time. Why people think they can be insulting to Americans without Americans getting annoyed I do not know. Americans are very forgiving but nobody is infinitely so. And the critics think THEY are good-mannered. They could learn a lot about courtesy from the very Americans that they knock as being �cowboys�.

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PREDESTINATION: CULTURE VERSUS PULPIT

The doctrine of predestination is associated with Protestant pioneer John Calvin of Geneva. Luther throught that your salvation depended on your faith. Calvin thought that your salvation depended on your being chosen by God. In Britain, the Scottish Presbyterians were the main enthusiasts for Calvinism but the doctrine was widely influential among early Protestants and even the 39 �Articles of Religion� of the Church of England (issued in 1571) include a version of it. Article 17 says:

Predestination to life is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) he hath constantly decreed by his counsel secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind ......

But it would seem that the doctrine has now not been heard from the pulpits of ANY mainstream church for many years.

Interestingly, however, I was brought up in a family with Presbyterian loyalties (though with no great religious committment) and throughout my family predestination was constantly invoked during my childhood. I can vividly recall my Aunt Maude and others saying things like: �It was all planned out before we were born, John� and �It was meant to be�. And I have noted similar sentiments coming from others I know with a similar background.

So what it all shows is the persistence of culture. With absolutely no support from the pulpit, old docrines and beliefs live on not as dogmas but as customary beliefs and family traditions. So to dismiss the importance of culture and tradition is to miss a large part of what goes on in the lives of people.

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CHRISTIANITY = OPPRESSION?

I posted yesterday an email from a reader that claimed that Christianity was oppressive rather than being a fountain of individual liberties. One of my Christian readers has now responded with a spirited defence of the Christian contribution to liberty. See the latest post here.

**********************************

FLAG-BURNING

I have Tim Gillin to thank for this fun story:

Apparently, flag burning in the UK is a "hate crime" if "directed against minorities". Americans are a minority in the UK and some Leftists seem to have forgotten this -- and have spent time in prison for defacing the American flag! How cruel to take the Leftists� favourite pastime away! How will they express themselves now?

See here.

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ELSEWHERE

Always Right does a good appreciation of the State of the Union Address.

Michael Darby posts on the implications for Australia of the State of the Union address.

I have been thinking about Bill Whittle. Just a few posts seem to have made him the blogosphere�s favourite conservative. Why? I think it is because Bill really is the decent and caring person that Leftists only pretend to be.

Orrin Judd rightly gloats: Life holds no more beautiful prospect than that of Germany and France isolated from the rest of the West and stuck with only each other. And just that is happening!

It seems that you have to be married to a lawyer to get justice in Britain. Disgraceful cases of government incompetence like this are the one thing that makes me opposed to the death penalty.

Chris Brand thinks that directionlessness is a central problem for modern-day liberalism.

Famous Lefty philosopher and advocate of equality John Rawls has a son who is a libertarian!. (Via Stew)

Postcards from Prison is a fun site.

The Wicked one points out that, unlike politicians, the Queen will not cost the taxpayer a cent in superannuation payments.

Babette Francis points out that Leftist discrimination against men can end up hurting the women it is supposed to help.

Prof. Bunyip describes this site as �Rapist�s wife�. It made me ill anyway.

The Australian Libertarian Society seems to be Canberra-based. A bit ironical seeing that the main industry of Canberra is government! Maybe the nearer you get to government the more you can see its flaws.

You Big Mouth You has lots of good stuff -- from Feminazis to Greenpeace to the Norwegian airforce.

Right-Thinking looks at a tragedy and has some good sarcasm about the uselessness of gun-control laws.

Astounding! A Boston schoolteacher got her students to read books rather than watch TV so the Principal of the school insisted that they MUST watch the TV! (Via Country Store). Bring on vouchers!

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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here, check my HomePage for a new blog address or visit my "First Draft" site here.

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posted by JR 1/30/2003 07:32:00 PM



Wednesday, January 29, 2003

 
THE SILENT MAJORITY IS STILL THERE

Northern California ranked second to Nashville in the Marine Corps' national recruiting last year. Looks like the weirdos of San Francisco are just vocal, not representative.

It reminds me of Spiro Agnew�s �silent majority� in the Nixon years.

And is similar to this:

After a local "anti-war" demonstation that was said to have brought out 20,000 people, a poll by KATU of Portland, Oregon residents showed the following breakdown on military action in Iraq:

For: 57%
Against: 34%
Not sure: 9%


*******************************

IS CHRISTIANITY ILLIBERAL?

I wrote recently on this blog: "American Christians think that Christianity is the main source of the high level of respect for individual liberties "

A US reader wrote to me in reply:

What? Individual freedom and Christianity don't even deserve to be in the same sentence together! Christians are all about oppression .... in every way. There are so many examples ... a book could be written on that topic!


It�s not my fight. Would any of my Christian readers care to reply?

**********************************

ABOUT TIME!

Britain may have to pull out of the European convention on human rights if the Government's latest measures fail to stem the flow of asylum seekers, Tony Blair indicated yesterday.

In a significant about-turn, he conceded that it might be necessary to look again at Britain's international obligations to take in refugees. He said the present situation - with alleged terrorists entering the country as asylum seekers and a former Taliban fighter seeking refuge despite having fought against American and British forces - could not be allowed to continue. The Government had to reduce the number of people seeking asylum. "The present situation is unacceptable and we have to deal with it," he said. "I am under no doubt about that at all."

The Government has been forced on the defensive by claims that Britain has become a soft touch for asylum seekers, with 100,000 arriving every year. Many disappear after their application to stay has been rejected.


Source


Note that a Left-wing British economist has also made a comprehensive argument against mass immigration into Britain.

There now seems to be huge popular support for a crackdown on �asylum seekers� in Britain. Australia, of course, stopped the nonsense some time ago so it can be done.

******************************

ELSEWHERE

The Seventh Ohio District Court of Appeals in Youngstown, Ohio, has
ruled that it is legal for police to hide cameras in public toilets!

Economics editor of The Australian, Alan Wood, has attacked playwright David Williamson for not sticking to the facts about global warming. It looks like playwrights can be nearly as big a pain as movie stars -- first Pinter and now Williamson. Pinter is demolished by Capt. Clueless here.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again -- at Ipse Dixit

Under the heading, �The arrogance of liberals�, George Will describes Leftist arguments as �synthetic hysteria�

The Wicked one posts on when it is that you need lawyers -- when you are dealing with bone-headed police.

Michael Darby posts on the futility of attempts at world climate control.

Chris Brand writes on how the concept of liberty has been abused by the Left.

More on the shambles that is American airport anti-terrorist screening at Greeblie Blog. Osama would have a big laugh at these guys.

Jeff Jacoby also writes of the continuing absurdity of �security� precautions at American airports.

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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here, check my HomePage for a new blog address or visit my "First Draft" site here.

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posted by JR 1/29/2003 07:32:00 PM



Tuesday, January 28, 2003

 

AUSTRALIA'S PAST: CAUSE FOR PRIDE

Jonathan King had an excellent article in yesterday's Australian about the Leftist nonsense that tries to portray the British settlement of Australia as a cause of shame.

He had many good points but I liked this:

The arrival of the First Fleet of convicts in Sydney Cove in 1788 [under Capt. Arthur Phillip] led to the British settlement of all six colonies and to our Federation in 1901. The hazardous voyage of 11 tall ships battling largely uncharted seas for eight months from Portsmouth was an achievement taught proudly to earlier generations of Australian students.

Phillip's safe arrival was a much greater achievement than the highly promoted six-week trans-Atlantic Mayflower voyage of pilgrims who settled America in 1620. Even though the pilgrims travelled one-tenth the distance, they still lost one of two ships and half their settlers in the first winter. By contrast, Phillip lost no ships and delivered 1350 people with few casualties. Today it would be like colonising Mars.

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CONSERVATISM IS MORE NORMAL

Matthew Cowie emailed me with an extended version of a recent post on his blog:

I noticed your item on how Chapman believes that Bloggers are more conservative because they are older. I agree with widely held view that the internet is conservative because it is an alternative to the mainstream media's leftist bent. However, two other factors could be that conservatism is more a grass roots movement than leftism, which is more of an elitist movement. That the New York Times bestseller lists are overwhelmingly dominated by even nominal conservative writers is evidence of this. As Ann Coulter stated, "Liberals don't read books - they don't read anything," she said. "That's why they're liberals. They watch TV, absorb the propaganda, and vote on the basis of urges.

The second factor could be that the youth are generally more conservative/libertarian and the users of the internet tend to be younger than the general population. School choice and Social Security privatization are heavily favored by Americans aged 18-25, for instance. More polling data is in This article from the Washington Times.


Mathew also has an interesting quiz:

Q: Why don't Liberals read books?

A: They're too busy coloring them.

************************************

NICE RADIATION

Does "nice radiation" sound like a joke? It isn't. Radiation CAN be good for you. It's called "hormesis". I blogged on it last November (27th.) and Aaron Oakley has quite a few posts on it at the moment too. And if you are CERTAIN that radiation has to be bad for you, have a think about this:

Should we evacuate Denver?

Denver, in the Rockies, has a higher radiation level than most of the country. Should we evacuate Denver? The answer is that the death rates and cancers are lower in the high radiation areas than in the low radiation areas. Denver has a higher radiation level and lower death rate than most of the country.

****************************

ELSEWHERE

I had to laugh! Given the latest Blix report, we seem to be about to go to war with Iraq -- so what is the leader of the Australian Left talking about? BABY FORMULA! What a galoot!

Andrew Bolt has some home-truths that will upset the feminists

The Wicked one has a go at teachers and class sizes.

China Hand thinks Hong Kong needs a sales tax.

There is an articulate defence of SUVs here. I guess you like them or you don't. I would not want to drive a vehicle that made me despised, however.

One of Washington's most senior "news" reporters has just said of the USA under GWB: "We have chosen to promote democracy with bombs instead of largess". An utter fruitcake! The real world is for her a planet far, far away.

Michael Darby is compiling an anthology of poetry.

Chris Brand has some interesting quotes about the Nazi era.

Shishir Yerramilli has added his observations on the role of Christianity and primitivism in the origin of our liberties.

Angela Bell has a link to a rare blast of sanity from the Islamic world.

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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here, check my HomePage for a new blog address or visit my "First Draft" site here.

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posted by JR 1/28/2003 07:33:00 PM

 
PATRIOTISM UNCONSTITUTIONAL?

I see that a former chairman of the Australian Republican movement is having a predictable shot at the Governor General for expressing support of Australia�s troops. For a pro-Republic activist to find fault with the representative of the monarchy is meat and drink, of course. And what he says is nonsense. The GG is perfectly entitled to express support for the nation, its troops and its military involvements. The previous GG (Deane) was widely praised for speaking up on behalf of Aborigines (which would widely be seen as a �Leftist� cause) so this GG can speak up on behalf of our military committments (if some see that as a �conservative� cause).

The only thing that precedent requires is an expectation of widespread general support for whatever is expressed and Dr. Hollingworth can undoubtedly rely on wide support for his views about the nastiness of Saddam Hussein. One wonders more about those who do NOT see anything reprehensible in the Arab Fascist dictator. Prince Charles, it may be remembered, launched a swingeing but no doubt �controversial� attack on modern architecture -- to much public acclaim. The monarchy and its representatives have to be careful about matters of public interest but do not have to be hollow shells devoid of values.


posted by JR 1/28/2003 05:25:00 PM



Monday, January 27, 2003

 
THE SINGLE-PARENT FAMILY DISADVANTAGE

Iain Murray has recently commented on a large Swedish study that shows clear psychological disadvantage among chilren from single-parent families. Iain and everybody else seem to be interpreting this as showing that single-parent families are a bad thing.

Such families may well be a bad thing. I believe they are. But the study cannot be used to prove that. We have to be careful about the direction of causation. An amazingly high proportion of what we are is genetically determined (even ideology -- See Martin & Jardine, 1986 and Eaves et al., 1999) so I would say that a more likely interpretation of these results is that those with enough psychological deficiencies to prevent them from forming good relationships tend to pass such deficiencies on to their children. In short, the source of the disadvantage observed in the children is genetic, not social at all. Sad news for interventionists but they will not listen anyway.

References:
Eaves, L.J., Martin, N.G., Meyer, J.M. & Corey, L.A. (1999) Biological and cultural inheritance of stature and attitudes. In: Cloninger, C.R., Personality and psychopathology. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Press.
Martin, N. & Jardine, R. (1986) Eysenck's contribution to behaviour genetics. In: S & C. Modgil (Eds.) Hans Eysenck: Consensus and controversy. Lewes, E. Sussex: Falmer

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THE GERMANIC SOURCE OF OUR LIBERTIES

I have written on several occasions now that I trace our modern Anglo-Saxon respect for liberty and democracy to our pagan Germanic ancestors. But I have not given much proof of what the pre-Christian Germans were like. So let me quote a man who knew them well, the ancient Roman Consul and historian Tacitus. Excerpts:

They choose their kings by birth, their generals for merit. These kings have not unlimited or arbitrary power, and the generals do more by example than by authority.

About minor matters the chiefs deliberate, about the more important the whole tribe. Yet even when the final decision rests with the people, the affair is always thoroughly discussed by the chiefs. They assemble, except in the case of a sudden emergency, on certain fixed days, either at new or at full moon; for this they consider the most auspicious season for the transaction of business. Instead of reckoning by days as we do, they reckon by nights, and in this manner fix both their ordinary and their legal appointments. Night they regard as bringing on day. Their freedom has this disadvantage, that they do not meet simultaneously or as they are bidden, but two or three days are wasted in the delays of assembling. When the multitude think proper, they sit down armed. Silence is proclaimed by the priests, who have on these occasions the right of keeping order. Then the king or the chief, according to age, birth, distinction in war, or eloquence, is heard, more because he has influence to persuade than because he has power to command. If his sentiments displease them, they reject them with murmurs; if they are satisfied, they brandish their spears.

In truth neither from the Samnites, nor from the Carthaginians, nor from both Spains, nor from all the nations of Gaul, have we received more frequent checks and alarms; nor even from the Parthians: for, more vigorous and invincible is the liberty of the Germans than the monarchy of the Arsacides.


Our modern-day parliamentary procedures are a little more sophisticated but the basic values and principles seem to me not to have changed at all.

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ELSEWHERE

Some recent research by Wiseman shows that �lucky� people create their own luck. It confirms Sam Goldwyn�s famous observation: �The harder I work the luckier I get�.

A British man caught a burglar in his home only to find that the police could not be bothered to prosecute. He took the burglar to court himself and won! Glad I don�t live in Britain.

Here�s a story that will make the day of all animal lovers.

Greenie dimwits who think that the heat output of the Sun is constant and that only human activity could possibly cause climate change need to read this.

In his post of 24th, Bigwig hangs an excellent anti-French rant on the recent �closer ties� agreement between Germany and France but, to be fair, it should be added that the average Frenchman will still always despise Germans -- just as he despises everyone non-French.

The Wicked one has a �we told you so� story about affirmative action and is also having another laugh at Leftist blogger Gary Sauer Thompson

Chris Brand reports that the British press is beginning to think that the paedophilia hysteria over there has gone too far and that people want the government to do more about bogus asylum-seekers.

Michael Darby shows how enormous bureaucratic negligence has made the current Australian bushfires so unprecedently bad. See also Miranda Devine's rather prophetic article

Theodore Dalrymple's article The Starving Criminal once again shows how Leftists prefer theory to facing the facts. I liked his line: "Meals here were solitary, poor, nasty, British, and short."

Great news from China. It looks like the Chinese leadership is slowly backing off from confrontation with Taiwan.

********************************

Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here, check my HomePage for a new blog address or visit my "First Draft" site here.

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posted by JR 1/27/2003 07:32:00 PM



Sunday, January 26, 2003

 

LIBERTY: GERMANIC OR CHRISTIAN?

Orrin Judd and many other American Christians think that Christianity is the main source of the high level of respect for individual liberties that prevails in English-speaking countries.

I respectfully disagree. I have argued that it is our pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon heritage (working largely via Protestantism in recent centuries) that is primarily responsible. The German-speaking, Anglo-Saxon �barbarians� who conquered Britannia and turned it into England 1500 years ago had a form of social organization that was tribal and decentralized rather than centralized and that was consultative rather than despotic -- and those values were never lost.

Razib leans my way in the matter by pointing out that there have been many Christian societies (such as Byzantium) that did not greatly respect individual liberties.

Tim Gillin has been doing some reading on the topic too:

This Christianity versus barbarianism as a source of liberty and prosperity argument is fascinating. My gut feeling is that the barbarians have the stronger case, but of course over hundreds of years these influences will echo off each other too.

Leonard Liggio has an interesting comment about the Christianity and liberty argument, what he doesn't mention here is that the "polycentric" power structure of western europe had German, celtic and "barbarian" roots. Christendom provided a common culture but local rulers competed for power and the loyalty of their subjects, both with each other and the Church.

R&L: What role did Christianity play in the emergence of the components of a free society: free markets, limited government, and the like?

Liggio: I think we have to look at comparative history. Of all the civilizations around the world, why did only the Christian West become both free and prosperous? We are talking about distinctions between civilizations. Asian civilization, for example, did not become free and prosperous, even though it had a lot of cultural creativity. But we must also look at other Christian civilizations, such as the Byzantine, Abyssinian, Georgian, and Armenian Christian empires, all of which lasted for many centuries but did not create the kind of free and prosperous society the Christian West did.

Many scholars have studied this and have come to the conclusion that this is due to the fact that the religious institutions were totally separate from, and often in conflict with, political institutions only in the Christian West. This created the space in which free institutions could emerge. The idea of independent religious institutions is absent even in Eastern Christianity; their religious institutions are part of the bureaucracy of the state. In Western Europe, though, the religious institutions were autonomous among themselves, and totally independent from and often in opposition to state power. The result was the creation of a polycentric system. And whenever this system was threatened by claims of total empire by the political rulers, Christian philosophy was utilized as part of its defense.

So within that space, the economic institutions-often modeled on the religious institutions as autonomous entities-could flourish and survive

Another historian Ralph Raico may be closer too it, and refers to a string of historians working in this field.

" In the past few decades, eminent historians, economic historians, economists, and sociologists have contributed to framing and buttressing this powerful paradigm, our paradigm. It has been presented in works with titles such as How the West Grew Rich and The European Miracle. (In this literature, "Europe" is often a shorthand term for Europe and its outposts, above all the United States.) Scholars of the rank of David Landes, Douglass North, and Jean Baechler have participated in this project.

Although there are, naturally, differences among these scholars, the gist of the view is that Europe developed economically and eventually outstripped the rest of the world largely because it was at once a common civilization - Latin Christendom - but also a radically decentralized mosaic of polities. This created multiple opportunities for economic and also political progress. There was competition among political entities, which came to see that a favorable treatment of property rights retained and attracted productive citizens. On the other hand, when a state behaved as states customarily did and do throughout history - as an "unconstrained predator" - it tended to lose ground to competing states, as Professor Bouckaert has indicated..."


Liggio and Raico, and presumably the other historians mentioned, see "freedom and prosperity" as a by-product of political decentalisation overlaying a wider common culture. The barbarians were generally freedom loving, for example, the Old Icelandic culture, almost 'pure barbarians', there was no pre-existing christian civilization to conquer. They were relatively free but never especially prosperous (although their literary output was remarkable). They developed a decentralised political system that maintained a high level of freedom from overlords for about 350 years.

So a good case can be made that the decentralisation was part of the barbarian heritage. Was this the key ingredient?

Of course Joseph Stromberg points out that the very word "freedom" has a Germanic/Anglo-Saxon origin (Freiheit in modern High German). This might just settle the debate in favour of the barbarians, but then again he points out that "liberty" has Latin roots too!!!! (Liber = �free� in Latin)




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GREENIES SHOOT THEMSELVES IN THE FOOT

This finding will drive the Greenies crazy (Or it should if they are genuine): Fields of sugar beet full of weeds and insects have for the first time challenged the idea that crops genetically-modified to resist weedkillers are bad for wildlife. The experiments suggest that the careful use of GM technology can encourage back the wildlife lost in conventional crop fields - without sacrificing farmers' yields..

Spiked also points out the environmental benefits of GM crops. Saying: When it comes to GM crops, Europe could learn a lot from the developing world

Writing on his �other� blog, China hand joins the throng who cannot understand the Greenie opposition to standard bushfire prevention measures. Do they WANT their precious native species to be all killed in one huge conflagration? It seems so. And it is happening right now. Imbeciliic!

Michael Darby has had a few posts saying that too.

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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here, check my HomePage for a new blog address or visit my "First Draft" site here.

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posted by JR 1/26/2003 07:36:00 PM



Saturday, January 25, 2003

 
THE BIRTHDAY OF A POET

Every year -- year after year -- millions of people around the world gather together to celebrate with great ceremony and merriment the birthday of a poet. And there is only one poet so honoured: Robert Burns. For people with a Scottish heritage it is one of the greatest celebrations of the year. And today is the day.

I do sometimes arrange a traditional Burns night on the 25th. -- getting into full Highland dress (kilt etc.), inviting friends over, having the haggis piped in, making the usual speeches (to the haggis, to the lassies etc) and making sure that there are plenty of tatties and neeps to go with the haggis. But not this year. I will however be dining on a Scotch pie, a Forfar bridie, tattie bread and clootie dumpling to finish.

There is however one essential that I never miss: to read, sing or recite some of the great words of the poet himself. So here is the greatest love poem ever written:

A Red, Red Rose

O, my love is like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June,
O, my love is like the melody,
That's sweetly played in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonny lass,
So deep in love am I,
And I will love thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry.

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun!
And I will love thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare thee well, my only love,
And fare thee well, a while!
And I will come again, my love,
Tho' it were ten thousand mile!


And here is the greatest love lament ever written:

Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon

YE banks and braes o' bonnie Doon,
How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair?
How can ye chant, ye little birds,
And I sae weary fu' o' care?

Thou'll break my heart, thou warbling bird
That wantons through the flowering thorn;
Thou minds me o' departed joys
Departed never to return

Aft hae I roved by bonnie Doon
To see the woodbine twine:
And ilka bird sang o' its Luve,
And fondly sae did I o' mine.

Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose,
Full sweet upon its thorny tree;
And my fause Luver staw the rose
But ah! He left the thorn wi' me.


So if you have any Celt at all in you, listen to some of the great Scottish sentimental songs today and open yourself to them. If you shed a quiet tear or two over them, you have a Scottish heart.

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MONARCHY LIVES IN THE HEART

Tim Gillin writes:

There is some interesting pro-monarchist stuff floating around the web. This young American liberal is a unusual supporter of British style constitutional monarchy. Amongst other things he is keen to preserve monarchic forms for cultural reasons, he wants to tell his kids about princesses and kings. The Diana craze and Lord of the Rings shows that this is still a powerful impulse. If we feel the need to preserve old buildings and endangered species for the benefit of future generations, what's wrong with wanting to preserve a few living monarchies?


Prof. David Flint also writes of the magic we would lose by removing the monarchy in Australia. As an Australian monarchist I heartily agree.

There is more on the Australian monarchy here

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BLOGGERS: WHY CONSERVATIVE?

Steven Chapman thinks most political bloggers are conservative because they are old. I think the answer is simpler than that. I think that only conservatives NEED a new outlet for their views. Leftists have their views constantly presented in the mainstream media so feel no need to blog. For more detail of my thoughts on the subject, see my posts of 2nd October and 30th September, 2002 here. Two of the links I mention there are now out of date. One is now here and the other is here

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MEANWHILE......


Michael Darby has two more poems by Burns.

The Wicked one has some dreadful puns.

More and more British and European students are coming to Australia for a university education. It's not so long ago that Australians felt that they had to go abroad to finish their education.

Overlawyered wisely refers to his Permalinks as "Durable" links. Even that may be overstating it. See here

P R Seabrook is a self-described bleeding heart liberal (Yes, he does call GWB: "Shrub" -- how clever!) but at least he thinks discrimination against whites is just as bad as discrimination against blacks. Perhaps there's hope for sanity on the Left yet.

Chris Brand reports more on the Finsbury Park Mosque in London and the difficulties of expelling Muslims from Britain.

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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here, check my HomePage for a new blog address or visit my "First Draft" site here.

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posted by JR 1/25/2003 07:42:00 PM



Friday, January 24, 2003

 
FROM TOLKIEN TO HAYEK AND BACK

Tim Gillin writes:

The great Peter Jackson movie adaption of J.R.R Tolkien's LORD OF THE RINGS has been doing great guns in cinemas around the world. Tolkien of course was a devout Christian, arch-conservative and opposed to authoritarian and arbitrary power of any sort.

This recent article at the Acton Society site discusses Tolkien's opposition to centralised state power. This theme has been discussed elsewhere in more detail. This article by William Stoddard for example discusses Tolkien view of decentralised power and finds connections with the anarchic society of old Iceland and the "distributivist" ideas of G.K. Chesterton and Belloc. (There is a critique of Distributivism here)

The author is however unaware that Tolkien attended the same school as Hillaire Belloc whose 1912 book THE SERVILE STATE inspired F.A.Hayek to write his classic ROAD TO SERFDOM written during WW2. Hayek of course influenced Milton Friedman, whose son, David Friedman finds some inspiration in old Iceland for his preferred anarcho-capitalism.

Tolkien was of course an expert on Northern languages, including Icelandic, and Anglo-Saxon culture. His work was an attempt to imaginatively "rediscover" the "lost" mythology of Anglo-saxon England prior to 1066 and the imposition of "the Norman Yoke". In a sense he was the first Euro-skeptic!

It is well known that Tolkien converted C.S. Lewis back to Christianity. The core of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is however not politics or economics but "the Christian virtues". When you explore the dates for Frodo's departure from "The Shire" to the climax of the adventure, you discover the story begins on Christmas Day and finishes on Good Friday (although I am sure other Tolkien fans may disagree on this!).

This longish (15 page) biography of Tolkien is one of the best on the web.


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WHO ARE THE BIGGEST THIEVES?

Taken verbatim from the Quick Takes column in the Chicago Sun-Times:

News Item: Securities and Exchange Commission forms Public Company
Accounting Oversight Board to oversee the accounting profession.

News Item: Public Company Accounting Oversight Board members vote
themselves annual salaries of $452,000, with the chairman to receive
$560,000.


From Jerry Lerman, posting of 23rd January.

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ELSEWHERE

Hooray! The Wall St. Journal have put an article by Bjorn Lomborg on their editorial page. That should help stiffen the resolve of the Republicans over Kyoto.

I have posted a bit lately about how the Leftist influence has gutted modern academic psychology of most of its claim to be a science. Roger Sandall does a similar but much more witty expose of modern anthropology

Joanne Jacobs reports: Congressional investigators created a fake school -- Y'Hica Institute for the Visual Arts -- in London, and applied for federal loans for three non-existent students to study abroad. All were approved by the Department of Education.

Razib has a long post on the alleged connection between Christianity and respect for individual liberties. He does not seem to realize it but he makes an excellent case for my claim that our tradition of respect for individual liberties is of Germanic rather than Christian origin. (See about halfway through my article here).

Michael Darby talks about the current Australian bushfires and points to crazy Greenie policies that have made this bushfire season unprecedentedly bad.

The Wicked one has two stories about the amazing stupidity of bureaucracy.

Chris Brand says that we should recognize and rejoice in diversity -- by acknowledging racial differences.

An excellent joke on Samizdata

China Hand says that the Chinese are at least frank about admitting that they use bugging devices to eavesdrop on people.

You can carry a loaded gun onto an aircraft in the U.S. and get only a warning if you happen to be connected with a TV talk-show host.

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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here, check my HomePage for a new blog address or visit my "First Draft" site here.

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posted by JR 1/24/2003 07:32:00 PM

 
AUSTRALIAN TROOPS MOVE

I live in Brisbane and our daily newspaper is the Murdoch-owned �Courier Mail�. Its headline today is �Bravehearts set sail� -- reporting that Australian troops have just left to join U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf readying for war with Iraq. I wonder how the N.Y. Times would have reported the story? �Troops depart amid controversy�, perhaps. The �Courier Mail� also reports that our Prime Minister has said that Australia would join the U.S. regardless of the U.N. It makes me proud to be an Australian.

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posted by JR 1/24/2003 11:14:00 AM

 
FRANCE, GERMANY AND THE U.N.

All this European mumbo-jumbo about the U.N. makes me sick. The U.N. is just a talking shop for tinpot dictators. Why should the US be ruled by the likes of Libya's Gaddafi or Zimbabwe's Mugabe? And why should Tuvalu have the same vote as India? The U.N. is nothing like a world parliament. And the USA in fact already HAS a resolution from the UN supporting war with Iraq. France and Germany are just envious because they are no longer of prime importance. If they had taken a principled stance like Britain�s Tony Blair, they WOULD still be important.

Jeff Jacoby spells it out too.

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posted by JR 1/24/2003 09:00:00 AM



Thursday, January 23, 2003

 

LEFTIST DISHONESTY INFECTS PSYCHOLOGY

As is now well-known, university teachers in the humanities and social sciences are overwhelmingly Leftist. This has a very bad effect on the disciplines concerned. The very low Leftist standards of honesty and concern for truth are disastrous when applied to what should be science. I have given extensive examples of that elsewhere but here is another example by another author:



In the 1920s, researchers in psychology began focusing on the workplace. Their goal was to discover what factors increased worker satisfaction and ultimately productivity. Perhaps the most famous of these workplace studies took place in 1924. This was the year a team of researchers went to the Hawthorne plant of Western Electric, located just outside Chicago. In an attempt to determine the effect of lighting on work, researchers turned the lights up in one room and kept the original lighting in another. Then they did the reverse, dimming the lights in one room and maintaining the normal level of light in another. From lighting, they went to coffee breaks, length of work week, location of work space, and method of payment. The results were astonishing. No matter what the researchers did, productivity rates in both the regular and the test group increased.

What accounted for that increase? According to the researchers, it was the time and attention paid to the subjects taking part in the experiment. In their view, increasing productivity had less to do with working conditions and more to do with a worker's sense of importance. Their interpretation made social science history. As a result, numerous psychology textbooks have dutifully passed on to students the notion that the "Hawthorne effect" was a scientific finding firmly grounded in solid research. Yet, in reality, the Hawthorne effect was based on very shaky evidence.

According to Dr. Lee Ross, a psychology professor at Stanford University, the number of subjects in the Hawthorne experiment was ridiculously small. Only five workers took part in the study, and two were replaced midway for insubordination and low output. So why were the researchers ready to base such wide ranging conclusions on so little evidence? According to Dr. Ross, researchers trained in psychology have an innate bias. They tend to think that subjective factors matter a good deal. Inclined in that direction to begin with, members of the Hawthorne team were quick to jump to the conclusion they were hoping for: The determining factor in productivity was the worker's sense of personal value.

Dr. Richard Nisbett, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, is even more critical of the Hawthorne effect than is Dr. Ross. Dr. Nisbett calls it a "glorified anecdote." From his perspective, the fact that the Hawthorne effect made a good story is one reason why the skimpy evidence supporting it was ignored. In his words, "Once you've got the anecdote, you can throw away the data." Cynical as that sounds, it may be one reason why the Hawthorne effect still makes its way into textbooks even though criticism of its methods has been around for decades. It does, indeed, make a good story.

(Information drawn from Gina Kolata, "Scientific Myths That Are Too Good to Die," The New York Times, December 6, 1998, p. 18)


Excerpt from here

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APOLOGIZE FOR GALLIPOLI?

Some wet academic �historian� now wants Australia to �apologize� to the Turks because Australians and New Zealanders took part in the bungled Gallipoli landing in Turkey in 1915! What is wrong about invading someone you are at war with he does not seem to say. At least the Kiwis have given the idea the raspberry.

And the generalship of Kemal in defeating the Allied forces gave him the prestige to lead Turkey into the modern world anyway. The Turks are as pleased as punch about it. They certainly want no apologies. Leftists just call for apologies, reparations etc. because they think it makes them look big-hearted. Logic does not come into it.

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ELSEWHERE

The Infidel reproduces a long anti-Western dialogue (off a chat room) between two Muslims. It shows what we are up against: IQs of about 60!

There is a mocking view of �reparations� from a Filipino-American here. She calculates that the Hispanics owe her bigtime.

An explanation for the "human shield" nonsense: Lefties have a well-documented overly-grandiose sense of their own self-importance. It is what makes them lefties in the first place. I couldn't agree more. See here.

The Wicked one gives Leftist blogger Gary Sauer Thompson a very hard time and also asks what you get when you cross a Greenie with a bureaucrat.

Chris Brand notes that the hysteria over paedophilia is beginning to be questioned in Britan.

A record here of just some of the horrors that the people of the Baltic countries and other minorities went through under the Soviet empire.

Michael Darby remembers the Ukraine famine.

"Spiked" says: The latest phase in the anti-Lomborg campaign makes pie-throwing and name-calling look like examples of serious, grown-up criticism

Andrew Sullivan rightly says: There is something truly sickening in the sight of people who call themselves liberals finding more fault in America than in the brutal, misogynist, homophobic, anti-Semitic dictatorships who are now pitted against the West.

Milton Friedman says: I never met a tax cut I didn't like, and I like President Bush's a lot.

A US Federal judge has ruled that if you get fat from eating Big Macs, it is your own fault. Apparently there are still SOME things Americans have to take personal responsibility for!

******************************

Comments? Email me: jonjayray@hotmail.com.
If there are no recent posts here, check my HomePage for a new blog address or visit my "First Draft" site here.

*************************

posted by JR 1/23/2003 07:35:00 PM



Wednesday, January 22, 2003

 

THE SUV DEBATE

There does not seem to be much balance in the SUV debate but let me have a try at it anyhow:

The Wall St. Journal has a rather tongue-in-cheek explanation of why some people like to drive large vehicles and why others hate them for it. And, as this article shows, they are indeed hated. Forbes, however, has a more balanced article (free registration required) on the subject than either of the above extremes. My own first comment on the matter was on 9th December last year:

An interesting article on what Australians call 4WDS and what Americans call SUVs. The article quotes research findings to the effect that they are primarily bought for show and statistically debunks the claim that they are safer. Because of their instability, they are far more likely to roll over than other vehicles. So, overall, they are less safe and more likely to kill those in them. They are also more likely to kill other people in smaller vehicles that they collide with. And, as we also often see on the news in Australia, people accidentally back their 4WDS over their own children at a great rate.


A reply to that posting is to be found here

The reply challenges the finding that SUVs roll over more but I would be surprised if vehicles with such a high centre of gravity did NOT roll over more.

I do feel rather sorry for the people who feel the need to drive such needlessly awkward and expensive vehicles but as a libertarian I think they are entitled to whatever turns them on in the matter.

I personally would not own a SUV if only because I know how much scorn it would cause many of my fellow-citizens to feel towards me. I would rather be scorned for more important things.

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GOOD OLD CANADIAN SOCIALIZED MEDICINE

Shiny Happy Gulag reports:

Northern Alberta breast cancer patients whose wait to see a cancer specialist has almost doubled should be sent out of province for treatment, says the president of the Alberta Medical Association. Dr. Steven Chambers goes on to say that eight weeks is an unacceptable waiting period to see an oncologist, and these patients should be flown to the US for radiation therapy.

Eight weeks for patients with life-threatening cancers to wait before they can begin treatment. Welcome to the Gulagland state-monopoly health care system.

Note where the doctors would like to send their patients: To that wicked capitalistic USA!

**************************************

ELSEWHERE

Carnival of the Vanities is up again -- with something for everyone.

Oh Boy! This picture says it all about limousine liberals. Via Clayton Cramer.

Australian Tory reports a study showing that public transport emits more Greenhouse gases than private cars! I wonder how the Greenies will deal with that one? One guess: Ignore it.

More insane political correctness in Britain: Richard Browning was sacked from his teaching job because one of his students photgraphed a toy gun. Via Natalie Solent. If link does not work, try here

China Hand blogs on the terrible destruction wrought by envy in China and notes that Chinese intellectuals are just as parasitic as Western ones.

The Wicked one has what seem to be some totally new thoughts on cloning.

Chris Brand has a lot on the current Muslim situation in Britain.

Our Australian nutjob Leftists are so amazing that even American bloggers sometimes have fun fisking them. See American Realpolitik

Medpundit has some horror stories about lawyers in his post of 19th.: Like the lawyer who slept through his client�s trial and the fact that in many American States you can be sued for complaining to ANYONE about your lawyer! It does seem to leave shooting them as the sole recourse.

This �bra� nonsense certainly confirms what I have often said about Leftists being people who desperately need attention. I guess when they were little and said �Mummy look at me�, Mummy didn�t look.

Dennis Prager (post of January 21st.) says that American Jews vote Democrat because they think that Rightists were responsible for the holocaust. The Leftists have obviously conned them well. Hitler was a socialist.

Michael Darby warns us that Iraq is a North Korea in the making.

Hello Bloggy doesn�t like the French very much.

Lighter moments in science: Man descended from Aardvark. (Under the heading �British News�, of course!).

******************************

Comments? Email me: jonjayray@hotmail.com.
If there are no recent posts here, check my HomePage for a new blog address.

*************************

posted by JR 1/22/2003 07:35:00 PM



Tuesday, January 21, 2003

 


IT REALLY IS ENVY

It has often been said that envy is the mainspring of Leftist politics and I pointed out last year that Leftist impoverishment of the societies in which they live may therefore be not so much stupid as deliberate. I said:

So the economic destruction and general impoverishment typically brought about by Leftists is not as irrational as it at first seems. The Leftist actually wants that. Making others poorer is usually an infinitely higher priority for him than doing anybody any good


We now have interesting experimental evidence that I was right. There is a report here in which some researchers gave people the opportunity of destroying wealth belonging to others as long as they accepted that some of their own wealth would be destroyed in the process too. So how much were people are willing to lose themselves if they could at the same time destroy the wealth of others? Lots! Impoverishing others is demonstrably worth a lot to some people:

Whether or not they are aware of the indirect harm to themselves, a sizeable majority of people in society does indeed want to see the wealth of others burned

Much Leftism really is fuelled by hate. Via Todd LaClair

****************************

CHINESE DEVELOPMENT

The Chinese are erecting an enormous number of factories aiming to produce half the world's manufactured goods within a decade or so. For the most part these goods will be aimed at the mass markets, for clothes, toys, shoes, computers, telecommunications equipment and later motor cars. What makes the Chinese development different to anything we have seen before is that they are combining very low cost labor with the world's latest and best technology.


More here

*************************************************

AUSTRALIA'S �POLITBURO� ON THE WAY OUT

The Australian Democrats have similar policies (if you can call them that) to the U.S. Democrats, but fortunately have only about 5-10% voter support. The party had a big upheaval last year when a backroom body of the party with the intimidatingly Stalinist name of "The National Compliance Committee" tried to discipline the party's Senate representatives for not following the party line. It certainly shows yet again the authoritarian nature of Leftism. Having an outside body dictating to democratically elected Senators has eventually got pretty embarrassing, however, and they are now proposing to abolish it. See here

***********************************

DOES SUNKEN OIL LEAK?

Pineappletown seems to have his knickers in a knot over oil leaking from ships sunk in World War II! He obviously has not read this. Via Stew

*******************************

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS GOES TOTALLY INSANE IN BRITAIN

A family doctor has been summoned to a formal hearing over his refusal to put a 34-year-old MALE patient on the list for screening for cervical cancer.

Hard to believe? Males don't have a cervix, of course. See here or here. Via Cronaca. Cronaca has lots of interesting stuff -- particularly if you are interested in history.

**********************************

ELSEWHERE

As LGF says: Did we need any more evidence that the United Nations is nothing but a hopelessly incompetent, hopelessly corrupt puppet organization for the world's killers and dictators? No? Well, we have some anyway: "Libya Elected to Chair U.N. Human Rights Body". LGF has heaps of unbelievable but true news at the moment.

Government at work: British coastguards have found dozens of phials of anthrax vaccine belonging to the ministry of defence on a beach on the southern English coast.

Cinderella is acerbic about the recent much publicized �Peace� rallies: As expected, various Far Left losers attempted to hijack the peace movement. This sort of protest rally has the same attraction for political extemists that a children�s home has for paedophiles: lots of young, innocent minds ready to be exploited

The Wicked one is now having shots at civil rights, Martin Luther King and fundamentalist Christianity!

Michael Darby points out that hatred for the West is widespread across the Islamic world -- even among our "allies"

Chris Brand asks how it can be criminal just to look at something and rejoices that the University of Edinburgh (which sacked him) is falling down.

Bovination is rather pleased that Australia�s political capital is on fire. He thinks they deserve it.

On 16th, I repeated a story from Jerry Lerman about men being jailed when marijuana was found in a former drug-smuggler�s SUV that they had just bought off the U.S. Customs Service. Jerry has partially corrected that story in his post of 21st. They were jailed in Mexico, not the U.S.

******************************

Comments? Email me: jonjayray@hotmail.com.
If there are no recent posts here, check my HomePage for a new blog address.

*************************


posted by JR 1/21/2003 07:33:00 PM



Monday, January 20, 2003

 


DISASTERS CAUSED BY AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

Rafe Champion has a review essay of Thomas Sowell's book Preferential Policies which highlights the mayhem that can and does result from "well-intended" racism. The bloodshed resulting from such policies in India and Sri Lanka is particularly alarming.

****************************

ANTI-RACIST WITCH-HUNT

And "Amen" to this from Spiked:

The new 'anti-racist' witch-finders have no time for such outdated concepts as empiricism or evidence. There need be no proof of racist acts; the possessed don't even know they harbour racist thoughts, for they are being 'unwittingly racist'. The demon can infect entire organisations too, rendering them 'institutionally racist'.

Even if there is no proof of it existing, like an elusive phantom, it can be 'perceived' (the 'perception' of racist intent in a criminal in English law actually makes it a racist crime). To deny such thinking is only to indict oneself even further. There is only one avenue for redemption: self-denunciation. Surrender to the new 'anti-racist' priestcraft, for only they know what you think.

True non-racists believe that racial discrimination is wrong. They subscribe to the tenets of the Enlightenment, with its belief in the universality of humanity. Today's 'anti-racists' represent the antithesis. They are the intellectual descendants of pseudo-Freudians, Maoist brainwashers and religious fundamentalists.


******************************

MORE SOWELL ON AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

Many of those who promote double standards for blacks seem convinced that blacks cannot achieve what whites have achieved. That is part of the ugly secret behind affirmative action. More here

**************************

UNSCIENTIFIC SOCIAL SCIENCES

I wrote recently about how hopelessly unscientific I had found my colleagues in psychology and sociology to be when I was employed to teach those subjects at university level. This article about the work of anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon shows that political bias and lack of concern for the evidence prevail in anthropology too. See also here

Tim Gillin comments:

This is a great example of scientific persecution today in the social sciences. Chagnon spent many years in Venezuela studying Indian family structures on grants provided by the Hiroshima victims medical foundation that was keen to develop epidemological yardsticks. Chagnon, by adopting a socio-biological explanation for tribal warfare among the Yanomamo, managed to alienate himself from the anthropology mainstream.

At the same time he managed to document that remote Amazon missions were unintentionally spreading disease. Maybe more than they cured. He thus made two powerful enemies at once.

Into this comes 'investigative journalist' Tierney, a writer who previously wrote articles on talking dolphins and on alleged secret human sacrifice cults in South America. Tierney, presumably fed by Chagnon's foes, wrote a pot-boiler story accusing Chagnon and his partner Neel accusing them of deliberately spreading disease among remote Amazon tribes as part of a Dr Strangelove-meets-Dr Mengele "eugenics" experiment on behalf of the US atomic bomb program.

The accusations were broadcast around the world, the retractions and refutations, of course were not.


******************************

ELSEWHERE

Jeff Jacoby points out that the free-trade agreement between Mexico and the USA has done wonders for BOTH countries. Let us hope that the negotions for a free-trade agreement between Australia and the USA bear fruit soon.

Floyd McWilliams has blogged about the strange lengths California men now seem to be legally required to go to during sex.

American Realpolitik notes that conservative America is much happier than Democrat America even when it is less well-off materially.

You knew it, didn't you? It is the fault of British imperialism that Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe is starving his people to death! Layman's logic has the proof.

Michael Darby unveils some truths about Islam.

It's only totalitarian dictators who outlaw their political opponents to keep themselves in power -- right? Wrong! Those wonderful caring moderate Europeans in Belgium are doing just that right now! See here

Natalie Solent explains at length why nursing home staff do admirable work but still get low pay -- and also explain why that is a good thing!

China Hand has the story of what a great occasion Chinese New Year is and points out how handy it is that Chinese can be written either Left-to-Right or Right-to-Left.

Chris Brand thinks it is great that Britain is making university study more expensive for the students.

**************************

Comments? Email me: jonjayray@hotmail.com.
If there are no recent posts here, check my HomePage for a new blog address.

*************************


posted by JR 1/20/2003 07:35:00 PM



Sunday, January 19, 2003

 

THE BACKROOM POLITICS OF �GREENHOUSE�

Tim Gillin writes:

Of course the Greenhouse issue has a lot more to it than "mere" competing scientific views or the debate over real versus exaggerated environmental concerns. Regardless of the various positions in those important debates, Greenhouse also has a lot to do with international politics and business. .

This recent article on the web site of the CEI examines some of the political and diplomatic wrangling behind the scenes of Greenhouse. The quote below is of interest. It shows that "protectionism disguised as environmentalism" may be what it is all about. The EU sees the low tax energy policies of North America and Australia as "unfair competition" and want to create a "level playing field" with a definite european tilt.

As the article says, last year EU Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom revealed the mindset of the European policymakers:

"[Kyoto] is not a simple environmental issue where you can say it is an issue where the scientists are not unanimous," she said. "This is about international relations, this is about economy, about trying to create a level playing field for big businesses throughout the world."

To the EU, Kyoto is about the United States' "unfair tax competition," its government consistently refusing to match the Europeans' zeal for taxing energy use to modify behaviour, particularly repressing automobile use and population.

The more politicized and regulated international trade is the more likely we are to see campaigns of this sort. The US could as easily foster a retaliatory green crusade.

Greenhouse skeptic scientist Fred Singer has recently posted this article detailing his 20 year involvement with the science and some of the politics of Global Warming.It provides a neat history of the atmosphere as a political battlefield.

This article looks at the growing debate on the economic, as distinct from climatological, assumptions behind the IPCC model.


***************************

RELIGION AND ENVIRONMENTALISM

There is an amusing article by Matthew Parris that looks at the misuse of science and the comparison between modern-day environmentalism and mediaeval religion. Excerpt:

For Question Time recently, I was with David Dimbleby's panel in Norwich.
We were asked about floods, global warming and carbon-dioxide emissions. I
said I could offer no more than a hunch: that a change in the pattern of
our weather might be under way, but, if it were, then we probably knew
less than we claimed about its nature or cause. I was unsure, I said, how
important a part mankind played in climate change. I thought the
contribution might be marginal.

The audience's reaction astonished me. 'A sharp intake of breath'
understates. From the whole studio came a sort of low whistling sound - a
sucking-in of air through clenched teeth. It was as though we were back in
the Middle Ages and I had denied the Virgin Birth. The response said more
than 'We disagree.' It said 'You have blasphemed.' Which I had.

**************************

REASON WILL NOT ALWAYS WORK

I remember Rodney King, after the South Central LA riots, saying "Can't we all just get along?" I've thought about that, and have come to a conclusion: No, we can't all get along.

It's great to have the attitude of "love thy neighbor," and believe that war isn't the answer. But when there are people whose sole existence is based on your destruction, the attitude better be one of a strong defense rather than turning the other cheek


From Arlene Peck -- posting of Decmber 30th, 2002.

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ELSEWHERE

Today is National Sanctity of Human Life day in the USA so I have posted both my views on abortion and another view for which I have sympathy here.

Charles Murtaugh reports how hard it is to get Greenies to accept basic scientific principles and procedures.

Michael Darby has postings on Greenie churches and cricket in Zimbabwe.

The Wicked one was previously being heretical about Abraham Lincoln. Now he is being heretical about the wisdom of the American revolution.

Chris Brand re-evaluates Enoch Powell -- prophet of Britain�s present racial problems.

Wow! Leftists REALLY hate SUVs! I wonder why so many Leftists drive them?

AC Douglas is being acerbic as usual -- but his being on the side of bloggers who do not have a �Comments� facility is reassuring.

Occam has a good cartoon about racial �fairness� at the notorious University of Michigan.

Disgrace! Hobbs reports that the infamous dog-killing Tennessee police got only a �reprimand�.

Angela Bell is one of many who are disgusted that so-called feminists are silent about the anti-women outrages of Islam.

**************************

Comments? Email me: jonjayray@hotmail.com.
If there are no recent posts here, check my HomePage for a new blog address.

*************************



posted by JR 1/19/2003 07:34:00 PM





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