THE ARMY AND THE JAPANESE

I am still feeling pretty disgusted about the treatment of young Japanese women in Paris that I mentioned yesterday. Because I offer cheap accomodation and prefer Asians as tenants, I have met more than a few of the young treasures of Japan over the years and there is no way they deserve to be driven into hospital by foul treatment. Partly because I am a former Army man myself, I have met and talked to many "old Diggers" (Australian Army veterans) from WWII over the years and I share their disgust about what "the Nips" did to prisoners and others in that war. To this day, many of them would not consider buying a Japanese car. But because of their experiences, if nothing else, those men are true gentlemen and I can guarantee you that not one of them would be rude to a young woman just because she was Japanese. But ethics have always been something of an afterthought to the French from what I can see.

While I am thinking of the Army, I also want to record my disgust at the way Leftists commonly disparage the armed forces. To me the profession of arms is the noblest profession there is. Who else volunteers to lay down his life for his fellow-citizens?

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HISTORY CORNER

There is a rather silly article here which compares GWB to Teddy Roosevelt on the grounds that both Presidents have sent U.S. armed forces to intervene in foreign countries. Although TR was a Republican President, neither the Republicans nor the Democrats were clearly Leftist or Rightist in TR's days and TR was a notable supporter of the "Progressive" (Leftist) wing of the GOP. He even left the GOP at one stage and set up his own "Progressive" party. And his actions abroad were thoroughly imperialistic -- under a very thin cloak of righteousness. They were certainly not driven by defence needs. GWB, by contrast, is simply responding as best he can to the war on America declared by the Islamic extremists. And the difference between a defensive war and a war of expansion is surely of considerable importance. As is shown here American wars abroad are normally the work of the American Left. It is only the needs of defence that have got GWB into such wars. (Thanks to PID for the links).

There is a site here which points to the remnants of America's Christian heritage still engraved on major American public buildings despite all that the ACLU has so far done to stop that. There is however another site here which points out that the various depictions of the Ten Commandments are mostly blank so could in fact represent other things -- such as the Bill of Rights. On occasions where Moses is shown holding the tablets of stone, however, that is a pretty feeble criticism.

There is an article here giving background to the recent 150th anniversary of Australia's "Eureka Stockade" uprising. The Left always seem to think it vindicates them in some mysterious way. How a revolt against a tax by self-employed people does that, however, has always been a mystery to me. There should be more tax revolts in my opinion. If people started rebelling against most of their taxes being spent to feed millions of bureaucrats and paper-shufflers, we might get some real sanity in public life.

Von Mises in 1940 knew that Fascists and Communists were all socialists: "Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini constantly proclaim that they are chosen by destiny to bring salvation to this world. They claim they are the leaders of the creative youth who fight against their outlived elders. They bring from the East the new culture which is to replace the dying Western civilization. They want to give the coup de grace to liberalism and capitalism; they want to overcome immoral egoism by altruism; they plan to replace the anarchic democracy by order and organization, the society of "classes" by the total state, the market economy by socialism."

An interesting email from a reader: "I thought you would find this interesting as we share the belief that presenting the Nazis as 'conservative' is one of the biggest leftist lies of the 20th century. I am reading Iris Chang's book 'The Rape of Nanking' and in one chapter she talks about John Rabe, a high-ranking Nazi official living in Nanking who selflessly saved and protected many people. While trying to reconcile how a devoted Nazi official could be so kind and helpful, known as the 'living Buddha of Nanking', his granddaughter explained that Rabe saw the Nazi Party primarily as a socialist organization and did not support the persecution of Jews and other ethnic groups in Germany. It also says that Rabe repeatedly summed up his Nazi philosophy in socialist terms: "We are soldiers of work, we are a government of workers, we are friends to the worker, we will never leave the worker's side in times of crisis." (p109-100)

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ELSEWHERE

Love it! "A former Claremont McKenna College psychology professor convicted of falsely reporting her car was vandalized and spray-painted with racist and anti-Semitic slurs was sentenced Wednesday to a year in state prison."

Sean Gabb has an interesting article on why he thinks that drink driving (DUI) should not be a crime. He says however that causing harm while drink driving should be severely punished.

Joe Cambria has replied to Prof. Quiggin's accusations about him. See here.

Amazing: Some Iranians are trying to convert to Judaism both as an expression of distaste for the Islam of the Ayatollahs and as a way of getting out of a decaying Iran.

Peggy Noonan has an amusing column up in which she tells the Democrats that they could win back a lot of supporters if they came out and supported Christmas and displays of faith in public life. She's right and I am sure they know she is right but the haters who are their main supporters won't allow it, of course. What a bind for them!

GWB just gave the perfect reply to the outsourcing worriers: "Bush told reporters the trade deficit was "easy to resolve. People can buy more United States products if they're worried about the trade deficit."" Exactly. If the Democrats are so worried about us buying things from abroad, let THEM pay more to buy their products instead of trying to force that on all of us. The whole speech was pretty amusing. He also said "The policy of my government is a strong-dollar policy" Seeing that the "weak" dollar is good for American business and bad for European business, one wonders how he kept a straight face while saying that.

Amusing: European gloom about their stagnant economy and problematical future means that individual Europeans save rather than spend -- thus depressing their economy even further.

Conservative scholarship is under attack at Princeton's Department of Near Eastern Studies -- which mainly studies Islam.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

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