BLOGS RIGHT AND LEFT

Fun! Thanks to Arthur Chrenkoff, I have just learned that some loony Leftist has put up a site called "Dissecting Rightism". It is a deliberate spoof of this site. As Arthur said to me: Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. The author has even gone to the trouble of copying my template -- which must have been a little bit of work. The "View Source" command gets you only so far and I don't think Pyra now circulate the original template on which mine was based. Anyhow, his work has just got him a link from me, though I doubt that any of my readers will log on more than once. The author of the site calls himself "Noel Chrotsky", which seems to be a reference to two very nasty Leftist hate-merchants -- Noam Chomsky and Leon Trotsky. I suspect that the author must be Australian. My site is a prominent one by Australian standards but is very small beer in any international comparison. I think an American Leftist would have spoofed (say) Powerline or LGF -- though I see that LGF does already have a Watch site.

This little episode has caused me to reflect a little on why Leftist blogs seem to have far more hits and far more commenters than conservative blogs do. Kos, for instance, gets around 400,000 hits per day compared to Instapundit's 200,000. I think the main reason is an obvious one: Leftist beliefs need a lot more propping up than do conservative ones. A conservative finds his views -- such as the belief that you have to be careful whom you will trust -- confirmed all around him every day, whereas a Leftist finds that his views -- such as the belief that no-one (except "Rednecks") is really evil -- constantly contradicted by events. So the Leftist needs all the help he can get to generate a distorted and selective view of reality that will keep him going. So he is far more active in seeking out supportive sites than conservatives generally are. And Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore have made a bundle out of catering to that need for confirmation of Leftist beliefs too, of course. The fragility of Leftist beliefs is also attested to by how abusive they become when questioned and the Stalinist way they do their best to keep all conservative thinking out of their university enclaves. Reality has to be kept at a distance by hook or by crook.

Generating a counter-factual view of reality takes some talent, however, so that also explains why right-leaning blogs seem to outnumber Leftist blogs by about 2 to 1. You have to be ingenious to defend Leftism whereas a conservative just has to point out the facts.

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ELSEWHERE

Lawrence Auster made the following brief comment on my post yesterday about his writings: "I thank Mr. Ray for his sympathetic and thoughtful overview of my writings. However, regarding his main criticism of me, I don't think I ever said that the belief in individual liberty was not part of the American conservative tradition. The difference is between those who understand liberty as being within a moral and constitutional order, and those who see liberty, or rather freedom, as essentially free of any constraints". Mark Richardson is another writer who often makes that sort of point. I find such a view incomprehensible. I know of NO conservative who denies that "rights connote duties" and I know of NO conservative who denies that we are in at least some ways constrained in what we do by "human nature". So the claim that there are conservatives who believe in some sort of absolute liberty is a total straw man.

Leftists still like the status quo: "No issue quite highlighted the left's reactionary impulse than when, during the campaign, Bush proposed redeploying American troops from their Cold War outposts around the world. Liberals immediately reacted negatively, making the argument, basically, that the troops should stay where they are, because they've been there for 40 years, and everyone is comfortable with it. It is in foreign policy that the new liberal orientation has been most stark. Liberals once believed in global change based on the advance of human rights. This was an admirable idea (if sometimes poorly implemented). Now it's been abandoned because Bush has picked it up, and liberals believe in little else in foreign policy except that whatever we attempt will fail".

For Australian readers, there is a great article here about cricket in Israel. Once again, it is the Indian influence. You can't separate Indians from their cricket. Because of India, cricket has a FAR bigger following than baseball. Cricket is the world's premier bat-and-ball sport, in fact. Some of the Indian allusions in the article may be a bit obscure so perhaps I should note that Maharashtra is the Indian State where the great commercial centre of Bombay (now Mumbai) is located. And Thane is a sort of outer suburb of Bombay. They make a very good beer there called "London" beer, in fact. And Maharastrans don't normally speak Hindi. They speak Marathi. But because of immigration there are now also lots of native Hindi and Gujurati speakers (among others) in Bombay.

New report highlights continued growth of privatization: "A new report from the Los Angeles-based Reason Foundation shows 2004 has been a banner year for privatization at the state level. A slowing economy and fewer new revenues opened the doors to more privatization as governors and legislatures across the country either expanded current initiatives or created new ones. The Council of State Governments (CSG) conducted a national survey of state government officials to identify recent privatization trends. That survey showed a continued increase in and reliance on privatization."

The greatest gift for all: "All Americans have a huge stake in Christianity. Whether or not we are individually believers in Christ, we are beneficiaries of the moral doctrine that has curbed power and protected the weak. Power is the horse ridden by evil. In the 20th century the horse was ridden hard. One hundred million people were exterminated by National Socialists in Germany and by Soviet and Chinese communists simply because they were members of a race or class that had been demonized by intellectuals and political authority. Power that is secularized and cut free of civilizing traditions is not limited by moral and religious scruples. V.I. Lenin made this clear when he defined the meaning of his dictatorship as 'unlimited power, resting directly on force, not limited by anything.'"

A good email from a reader: "The point you make about targets that the left choose for their outrage being arbitrary and inconsistent strikes a chord. A great example of this was the Anti Iraq War marches of 2003. Watching the news broadcasts of it, one of the most prominent banners was from CND. This struck me as odd indeed. At the time, the thrust of debate on the war was not that Saddam did not have WMD, but whether he was a threat to us. No one seemed to bat an eyelid that an organisation set up with the aim of riding the world of WMDs, was protesting against a war to force a country to disarm itself of WMDs! But of course CND was only about disarming the West of its WMDs. If CND were really about disarming the world of nuclear weapons, I would not expect them to exactly cheer leaders like George Bush, but they could at least have shown some ambivalence about the war -- instead of being part of the founding 'Stop the War' committee."

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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