SOME HISTORY

There has of course been a lot of discussion in recent years about the differences between Europe -- particularly France -- and the English-speaking countries. The way France and Germany were propping up the disgusting Saddam Hussein while the USA, Britain and Australia sent troops to overthrow him certainly showed a large gap in principles between the two sides. And it has also widely been noted how dictatorial and intrusive into the lives of its citizens the EU is -- with even the amount of bend in bananas now being regulated in the EU! Readers may therefore be interested to hear that the English Channel has for centuries separated two different ideas about the role of government. Read here what distinguished legal historian A.V. Dicey said in 1889 about English principles versus European lack of them.

Coleridge a precursor of GWB: "Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) is famous as the English poet who wrote Kubla Khan and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, but today is almost forgotten as one of the greatest political thinkers of his time. He was the first conservative to advocate social and political reforms as a means of maintaining a stable and cohesive society. He warned against the dangers of unchecked industrialisation, criticised the then prevailing ideology of the unfettered free-market, and called for far-reaching reforms to give the poor a greater stake in the economy.... Coleridge's thought had a seminal influence on the social-welfare Toryism of Disraeli"

Dinesh D'Souza: "The idea that America and the West grew rich through oppression and exploitation is strongly held among many intellectuals and activists...Did the West enrich itself at the expense of minorities and the Third World through its distinctive crimes of slavery and colonialism? This thesis is hard to sustain, because there is nothing distinctively Western about slavery or colonialism. The West had its empires, but so did the Persians, the Mongols, the Chinese, and the Turks. And if colonialism is a universal institution, so is slavery. Slavery has existed in every known civilization, from China to India to Africa to pre-Columbian America. What is uniquely Western is not slavery but the movement to abolish slavery."

An interesting historical article here about the white settlement of Australia points out that its legal basis was NOT the recent doctrine of terra nullius -- as Leftists assert. If anything, it was simply: "beat the French". Excerpt: "Let historians argue about the past - it is necessary and interesting and vastly important - but keep them out of the law courts. Reconciliation is the affair of modern Australians dealing with modern conditions."

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ELSEWHERE

Dennis Prager has a good article on why many Leftist citizens of both Israel and America hate their own country. In Israel the hatred is so extreme that Israeli Leftists are actually aiding the Palestinian terrorists. I think Prager overlooks the main reason, though. Both America and Israel are powerful and Leftists want to tear down all power that they themselves do not control or identify with. With Democrat control of Congress and the Presidency, mainstream Leftists would be reasonably happy with their country because they could identify with Democrat politicians. But really virulent Leftists (of whom there are many -- particularly in academe), such as we read on "Counterpunch", cannot identify with the moderate Leftism of the Democrats so hate America regardless of the regime. The very name "Counterpunch" is revealing. It expresses a desire for violence. They are seething with hate and just want to punch people. Leftism is the politics of hate -- and I suspect that only part of it is envy driven. Many Leftists seem to be just fundamentally hostile people regardless -- hiding, of course, behind a mask of "concern". But what they all hate most is undoubtedly power in the hands of others than themselves. Conservatives, by contrast, just want to keep out of other people's power.

Abdurrahman Wahid is an amazing man. A revered Indonesian Muslim religious leader and former President of Indonesia, he is a friend of Israel! There are about 200 million Indonesian Muslims just to the North of Australia so having him around is a great comfort.

A Turkish Muslim who supports America's Middle-East interventions because of his own experiences there, brands Michael Moore a "hatriot"

Our friends, the Saudis: "Saudi Arabia's intelligence agencies are so infiltrated by al-Qa'ida sympathisers that the kingdom's counter-terrorist campaign is failing and militant operations are spreading into neighbouring states, senior Arab and Western officials have warned. The main Saudi intelligence organisation responsible for combating al-Qa'ida at the Interior Ministry is riddled with agents linked to the militants, the officials say. "Their staff is 80 per cent sympathetic to al-Qa'ida," one senior Arab source said."

Wow! A sociology professor with his eyes open: "Put simply, religious terrorists live in another world. Unlike, say, the Weathermen of '60s fame, they have no political platform for change. The agenda is purely theocratic and absolute, with not a scintilla of concern for the lives of nonbelievers. In such a situation negotiation is useless, for there is nothing to negotiate about. As Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, spiritual mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombings, asserted unequivocally, "There is no truce in jihad against the enemies of Allah." ... When it come to religiously-based terror, we must reluctantly recognize that there are only two real choices here - protect ourselves and eliminate the terrorists or turn the world over to them".

Amazing: "The Iraqi Communist Party is strongly represented in the new interim government in Baghdad and is getting U.S. taxpayer support thanks to a U.S. group led by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright"

Despite the current difficulties with blogger.com, Dick McDonald has got lots of good posts up recently. This one from an Iraq veteran points out how much better GWB has done in Iraq than Democrat Presidents have done in their many wars.

Keith Burgess Jackson is a lawyer as well as a philosopher and he uses a bit of legal Latin -- res ipsa loquitur ("the thing speaks for itself") -- to exceptionally good effect here

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

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Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth

"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.

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