THE MAN OF THE MOMENT

And hopefully for not too much longer than that

Email from Wayne Lusvardi: "From the just released excerpts of John Kerry's acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention in Boston on July 29, 2004: "I defended this country as a young man and I will defend it as President. Let there be no mistake: I will never hesitate to use force when it is required. Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response. I will never give any nation or international institution a veto over our national security. And I will build a stronger American military." From the above can be deduced what might be called The Kerry Doctrine: Once the U.S. is clobbered, he will figure out a way to strike back. Call this the Kerry's Klobbered Policy. Contrast this with the Bush Doctrine: Pre-emptive actions to prevent further attacks. The Bush Doctrine is not some reckless policy of a wild cowboy. It is the reluctant intervention after decades of provoking attacks on U.S. embassies, military barracks, navy ships, diplomats, tourists, FBI agents, and civilian aircraft. Which one would you choose? Which one do you believe the U.S. public is going to vote for?"

A rather nauseating story here. Apparently John Kerry took a portable movie camera with him to Vietnam and kept filming himself there to generate proof of how heoic he was.

Sowell lands some heavy hits: "Much of what is being said and done at the Democratic convention in Boston is so 1960s. The old favorite songs of the left, the old rhetoric, the old gestures, the delegates swaying together, all take you back to a time 40 years ago when the liberal vision seized the imagination of so many who were young then -- and who are now old enough to know better. After all, we now know with hindsight what the heady ideas of the 1960s actually led to in practice -- declining test scores and rising rates of teenage pregnancy and venereal disease, while rates of crime in general and murder in particular skyrocketed, along with unprecedented waves of riots that devastated city after city across the country, while families began a disintegration from which they may never fully recover in our lifetime".

When Lee Harvey Oswald shot John Kennedy, where was Oswald's Russian wife living? You won't believe it -- At John Forbes Kerry's place. What a happy little Leftist family!

"The Democrats have traditionally relied on a simple technique: appeal to the values of American individualism, while actually selling the American people the virtues of the all-powerful collective. That is the theme that emerges from the first three nights of speeches at the Democratic convention. Note the pattern of this bait-and-switch philosophy... The man who made this technique most explicit was Ted Kennedy. Speaking Tuesday night, he freely invoked Boston's Revolutionary War heritage. But what, in his view, is that heritage? "Ideals like freedom and equality and opportunity and fairness and common decency for all-ideals that all Americans yearn to reclaim." .. Equality" had a specific meaning to the Founders: equality of rights. It meant that no class of aristocrats possessed special rights at the expense of other citizens. They never endorsed egalitarianism. But you wouldn't know that by listening to Ted Kennedy... In fact, the Constitution exists to protect our rights and to limit the power of government. But Kennedy believes it exists to "bind us together" to collect our "common wealth" for the "common good." This is not an appeal to American values, but a total inversion of them".

Outspoken Left frustrated: "So far, the Democratic National Convention has been a gathering to drive the ideologues to distraction. Since Howard Dean's candidacy collapsed, the Democrats' angry left wing has contented itself with the notion that Dean had breathed fire into a moribund party. And that he had proved that what was important was not courting swing voters but rather energizing the party's base. (No matter that, as consultant Bill Carrick quips, any more energy and the left might well have a collective heart attack.)"

The media know what side they are on: "During live coverage of tonight's speech by Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards, Dan Rather referred to Vice President Dick Cheney as "a hitman for their side." Here's the full quote: "Question, Bob Schieffer. We know after considerable consideration, the Bush-Cheney campaign decided to send Vice President Cheney out this week as a kind of hitman for their side, believing it was time to frontally assault the Kerry-Edwards ticket."

And you would never know it from John Kerry's advertisements but only 2 out of 23 of his fellow Swift boat commanders from Vietnam support his candidacy. See here for the details.

Dick McDonald has blanket coverage of Kerry's failings.

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ELSEWHERE

Further to my post yesterday about the Leftist origins of Fascism, a reader has pointed me to another excellent essay that probably makes the point better than I do. It is called "American Fascism" and is originally from "The Laissez Faire City Times", whatever that may be. It starts out well: "But the issue of who is a Fascist can't be addressed by any measure from the modern philosophical left because their fundamental tenet is the lie. For them, that's the first principle of the art of war. They use it, they excuse it, and they in fact worship at its feet".

David Boxenhorn has also taken up the discussion of what Fascism is with a note that Arab regimes generally are very similar to historic Fascist regimes -- though they don't seem to have the same strong welfarist orientation or the rhetoric of looking after the worker in particular.

Good to see Christopher Hitchens taking on Australia's chief Leftist ratbag -- Philip Adams. ("ratbag" is Australian slang for a person obsessed with improbable ideas). Adams doubts all the evidence that Saddam was a mass murderer. He has joined the ranks of the holocaust deniers. He will be saying that Ausschwitz, Buchenwald and Treblinka are a fairy-tale next. If it became widely realized that Hitler was a Leftist, he would no doubt argue just that. Leftists have never had much interest in the facts. They have conclusions that they want to reach and only see evidence that supports those conclusions. They argue backwards from their conclusions, not forward from a full consideration of the facts. They are impenetrable to reason. That's why I personally rarely talk to them at all. I talk only to people who are interested in the facts -- people who can handle how complex and surprising the facts often are.

Multicultural England: "A festival to celebrate a city's multiculturalism ended with rival ethnic groups involved in running street battles. The East of England Anand Mela festival was organised by the Indian community in Peterborough to demonstrate its culture, music and food. But about 90 Pakistani and Iraqi youths exchanged blows and hurled chairs on Saturday night." Coppersblog has some amusing background to it.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Puzzle: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

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