"SENSITIVE" LEFTISTS: A MINOR DISAGREEMENT WITH DENNIS PRAGER

I am a great fan of Dennis Prager. Prague has suffered a great loss in losing him and his family. But I have two minor quarrels with him about this article -- headed: "Blue America, the land of the easily offended".

My first quarrel with him is about his use of the term "Blue America" as a synonym for American Left-wingers. The "blue" (Kerry-voting) counties in the last Presidential election were almost entirely the big cities, with their heavy concentration of minorities and welfare clients. And their vote was "bought" with the usual Democrat promises of more handouts etc. Subtract the "bought" vote and the Democrats would almost certainly have been as heavily outnumbered in the "blue" counties as they were in the "red" ones. And given that minorities often have very conservative views on social issues, there is every reason to subtract them. There is therefore no reason to believe that Leftist true-believers are dominant ANYWHERE in America. So there IS a "blue" (Democrat-voting) America but that does NOT mean that there is a Left-leaning America. The two terms are far from synonymous. The idea that there is a Left-leaning America is actually a Leftist security blanket -- so let us snatch it away from them when we can! They need to grow up.

My second quarrel is with Prager's description of the Left as "easily offended". I suspect that the description is in fact rather tongue-in-cheek but there is a point to it nonetheless. What I would like to suggest is that most of the offence that the Left takes on behalf of other people is totally phony. They say they are afraid that Christmas might offend Jews not because they care about Jews (which they certainly don't, given their hatred of Israel) but because it will upset Christians. The Left are true descendants of Cromwell's Puritans and their attitude to bear-baiting. But that Leftists get mightily miffed at insults to themselves there can be no doubt whatever. Their seething rage at the rejection of their candidate in the last Presidential election is proof enough of that.

Finally, I just loved this last paragraph of Prager's article: "Liberal American Indian spokesmen and other liberals regularly tell us how offensive Indian names of sports teams are. The latest polls show that most Indians have no problem with such names, but liberals are still offended on their behalf. To make the point of how offensive the name "Indians" is for the Cleveland baseball team, one liberal caller once asked me, "How would you feel if a team were named 'Jews'?" I told him that it would be a great day in Jewish history -- for 3,000 years, Jews have been looking for fans."

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FROM BROOKES NEWS

Holland to implement neo-Nazi euthanasia program for babies The Dutch government is set to implement the Groningen Protocol, a policy similar to the Nazi program of killing defectives
Immigration, wages and other myths, part I There are a great many myths both in the US and Australia regarding the economic and social consequences of immigration
Post Arafat: Now what? The Palestinians don't want peace. What they want is the extermination of Israel and every Jew that lives there
Media, politicians and the religious right The outcome of the American and Australian elections provoked our lefty journalists into making sanctimonious noises about the rise (or is it resurrection?) of the religious right
leftist history confronts economic theory - and loses An example of how leftist thinking distorts students views about capitalism and the industrial revolution

Details here

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ELSEWHERE

More illiteracy in The Times: "an international criteria". The singular is of course "criterion". British education exposed for what it is again.

Texafornian is pretty miffed that the Left are comparing the "red" States to the old slave States of Confederacy days. A good quote: ""History reveals that every piece of racist legislation that was ever passed and every racist terrorist attack that was ever inflicted on African Americans, was initiated by the members of the Democratic Party. From the formation of the Democratic Party in 1792 to the Civil Rights movement of 1960's, Congressional records show the Democrat Party passed no specific laws to help Blacks, every law that they introduced into Congress was designed to hurt blacks. The chronicles of history shows that during the past 160 years the Democratic Party legislated Jim Crow laws, Black Codes and a multitude of other laws at the state and federal level to deny African Americans their rights as citizens. History reveals that the Republican Party was formed in 1854 to abolish slavery and challenge other racist legislative acts initiated by the Democratic Party".

Evil social workers again: "Like any new father, Marco Zepeda was nervous changing his newborn's diaper for the first time. His hands shook. He fumbled with the sticky seals and sealed one side more snugly than the other. But he never imagined that would propel child protection officials to consider taking custody of his baby. ... Zepeda and his wife are blind, and they believe that's why they were targeted by employees of Sequoia Hospital in Redwood City and San Mateo County social workers. Officials from the hospital didn't return calls, and county officials declined to comment on the specifics of the couple's situation but said the process the couple went through was common. That's not so, say activists for the blind. 'This day and age, we only see cases like this in remote parts of the country,' said Chris Gray, president of the American Council of the Blind." (See also here)

V.D. Hanson refreshes our memories of what the Left said about the impossibility of confronting the Islamic evildoers immediately after 9/11 and shows that much progress has in fact been made since then despite all the prophecies of doom.

Lawless California: 120,000 inmates freed early: "Nearly 120,000 convicted offenders have been released from jail over the past 2 years without serving their full sentences, Los Angeles County sheriff's officials said. ... When sheriff's officials began releasing inmates early to save money in June 2002, they screened prisoners to decide how much time they should serve. Since last year, they have released all but the most serious offenders after they served less than 10 percent of their sentences, officials said."

Carnival of the Vanities is up again and seems particularly good this week

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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