I would like to add my congratulations to those of the many who will be congratulating His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, on his recently-announced forthcoming marriage.




CULTURAL RELATIVISM

Leftists claim that there is no such thing as right and wrong because what is right in one culture may be wrong in another. And to Leftists all cultures are equal, of course. It is true that values do differ to some degree between cultures but there do also appear to be some inborn moral instincts. Blogger Turin pursues that point. Excerpt below:

The claims of cultural relativism rests upon two assumptions. The first assumption is that there no common human nature shared by all human beings. By human nature is meant a substantive constitution of mind and body that is uniform in all humans across racial, ethnic, cultural, and political groupings. If human nature were to exist, some values would arise out of it, as humans operationalized their human nature in living in diverse conditions; and these values would the same for all humans. This notion is denied by the principle of cultural relativism. The concept of human nature lies behind the opposition of the anthropologist, Clyde Kluckhohn, to cultural relativity, as expressed in this quotation:

"Contrary to the statements of ... exponents of extreme cultural relativity, standards and values are not completely relative to the cultures from which they derive. Some values are as much givens in human life as the fact that bodies of certain densities fall under specified conditions. These are founded, in part, upon the fundamental biological similarities of all human beings. They arise also out of the circumstance that human existence is invariably a social existence. No society has ever approved suffering as a a good thing in itself. As a means to an end (purification or self-discipline), yes; as punishment--as a means to the ends of society, yes. But for itself--no. No culture fails to put a negative valuation upon killing, indiscriminate lying, and stealing within the in-group. There are important variations, to be sure, in the conception of the extent of the in-group and in the limits of toleration of lying and stealing under certain conditions. But in the core notion of the desirable and nondesirable is constant across all cultures. Nor need we dispute the universality of the conception that rape or any achievement of sexuality by violent means is disapproved. This is a fact of observation as much as the fact that different materials have different specific gravities."

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ELSEWHERE

Aha! We now have an independent report of what CNN Chief Eason Jordan said at Davos. He DID make a scurrilous accusation against American troops but immediately started to backpedal when what he said came under scrutiny. Should anyone trust a "news" organization headed by such a sleaze? I think that question answers itself.

It has always been a common Leftist tactic to take some single thing out of context and draw amazing conclusions from it that ignore all the other facts relevant to the matter. And The Guardian really does us proud with this example of such totally dishonest and deceptive argument -- written by Neil Clark, who is said to be "a writer and broadcaster specialising in east European affairs". I am sure he is just that, regrettably. Tim Worstall goes to the trouble of demolishing the sorry tripe concerned.

Offensive peacenik feels the heat: "Some Sacramento residents are reacting with outrage over a homeowner's controversial war protest in Land Park. When they saw the American soldier display, they decided to do something about it.... What got people so upset? A fake U.S. soldier in uniform hung by the neck with a noose, with a sign on it that says "your tax dollars at work." .... This young man, who would not identify himself, was just walking down the street when he decided he had seen enough. He climbed onto the house and tore down part of the display..... Another man was riding his motorcycle when he decided to stop and do something about the rest of the display, the soldier's hanging pants. So he took them down, and grabbed the torso and took off."

A small but welcome step towards immigration control: "Hoping to keep drivers licenses out of the hands of terrorists, the House voted Thursday to make states verify that applicants are U.S. citizens or legal immigrants. Republicans pushed the measure through on a 261-161 vote despite protests from governors and state motor vehicle departments that it would be too costly and would require them to take on the role of immigration officers. The bill also would make it easier for judges to deport immigrants seeking political asylum if they think they might be terrorists."

They got the America-hating bitch: "veteran civil rights lawyer was convicted Thursday of crossing the line by smuggling messages of violence from one of her jailed clients - a radical Egyptian sheik - to his terrorist disciples on the outside. The jury deliberated 13 days over the past month before convicting Lynne Stewart, 65, a firebrand, left-wing activist known for representing radicals and revolutionaries in her 30 years on the New York legal scene.

Leftists: Masters of empty rhetoric: "The Virginia Senate yesterday approved a constitutional amendment that defines traditional marriage as the union of a man and a woman. The Senate voted 30-10 to pass the amendment after an emotional 30-minute debate during which several Democrats likened the measure to the Holocaust" [normal marriage = mass-murder?]

Corrupt Russia (so what else is new?) "Russia's political class has amassed as much wealth as power under President Vladimir Putin, according to a new 'rich list' published yesterday. In revelations which will outrage many pensioners, who have recently campaigned against welfare cuts, Finance magazine reported that three regional presidents, 20 MPs, 11 senators, a regional governor and a deputy regional governor were among the country's 468 wealthiest individuals."

There is an amazing document by a psychologist here that "examines 155 scholarly investigations: 126 empirical studies and 29 reviews and/or analyses, which demonstrate that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners. The aggregate sample size in the reviewed studies exceeds 116,000". So much for the automatic "blame the man" one hears.

My latest posting on MarxWords notes again Marx's contempt for democracy. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at the NT conception of "hades".

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. 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 2004 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.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"

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