"DON'T TRUST THE BA****DS"

I have just put up the above heading as a motto in the green area at the top of this site. I intend to leave it there for some time. I am moving towards the idea that such a motto is indeed the best short summary of a conservative attitude. I think the psychological basis of conservatism is wariness and skepticism. And it is a wariness that is reinforced by experience as we go through life. Which is presumably why conservatism increases markedly with age. Aging tends to move people from Left to Right far more often than in the opposite direction. Ronald Reagan and Winston Churchill are probably the two best known examples of such a movement in thinking.

But a conservative does not of course distrust everybody always. He is mainly distrustful of Leftists, reformers, planners, intellectuals and "experts" of all kinds -- as the historian Feiling, and many others have been pointing out for many years. But even in everyday life the conservative probably practices to some degree what Ronald Reagan so memorably said: "Trust but verify". How trusting of others conservatives are in everyday life is probably a matter of individual personality but, for all that, I think few conservatives would dispute that trust has to be earned rather than being assumed.

Leftists will no doubt say that my words above prove that conservatives are "misanthropic" (people-haters). I have however written a longish and carefully researched academic journal article on just that claim so further reading should clarify why that is not so.

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Phew! Read Steve Sailer on the contrast between the severe flooding in Bombay recently and the severe flooding in New Orleans! The Indians pulled together and there was NO reported crime! But India is of course an ancient civilization. I have four quite dark Indians living in my own large house with me precisely because of their highly civilized ways.

India and the Anglo-Saxons: "The United States has struck a historic deal with India under which India will be permitted to acquire civilian nuclear technology internationally while retaining its nuclear arms. According to the Indian Express, the US is offering India high-tech defence and space cooperation in terms of satellites and launch vehicles, Patriot and Arrow missiles and a greater role in global institutions. When Condoleezza Rice visited India in March, she said: "This is my first stop as Secretary of State in Asia. The President has personally put a lot of time and energy into the relationship. The US has determined that this is going to be a very important relationship going forward and we are going to put whatever time we need into it." The aim was to take US-India ties "to another level". According to her, the Bush Administration was sworn to assisting "India become a major world power in the 21st century". It is rare in the past 100 years that a US president has sent a signal of this dimension. It means that the US will help India realise the global aspiration that its size, geography and its post-1991 economic reform agenda have made into a national obsession. While Bill Clinton's 2000 visit to India symbolised a new outlook, the conceptual change has come under Bush. The core judgement is that a strong, democratic and influential India is an asset for the US in the region and the world... The Prime Minister's media aide Sanjya Baru has said, "India is an ancient civilisation and has a mind of its own on each issue. But our views are moving in parallel with the US and Anglo-Saxon world."

Dr. Jack Wheeler writes: "INFANTILIZOMANIA" Yes, I invented this term. You won't find it in Webster's, the OED, or Google. At least not now. Hopefully soon you will, as it becomes the accepted term for the neurosis with which all those on the Left are afflicted. Just as a pyromaniac is driven by a compulsion to set fires, a kleptomaniac by a compulsion to steal, and - everyone's favorite example - a nymphomaniac by a compulsion to have sex, an infantilizomaniac is driven by a compulsion to treat adult human beings as children. The compulsion to infantilize people is the neurotic compulsion of liberals. Liberals of course do not call it infantilizomania. They call it compassion. We can see the results of liberal compassion in the wake of Katrina: hundreds of thousands of New Orleans inner city blacks helpless to take responsibility for themselves. Liberal compassion is the modern form of the White Man's Burden, and has destroyed, just obliterated, three to four generations of inner city poor in America. How many more generations of inner city blacks have to be wiped out until liberals admit their compassion is a fraud of epically tragic proportions? It is a blatantly phony compassion. Compassion for the plight of others in difficult and desperate circumstances is a noble emotion. But it becomes fraudulent when you demand that your compassion be paid for with other people's money....."

Britain: An old girl with guts: "A retired social worker was jailed yesterday for seven days for refusing to pay a 53.71 pound increase in her council tax. Sylvia Hardy, a 73-year-old spinster, had refused all offers of help from well-wishers. She was making a stand in the hope of forcing the Government to reconsider an unjust tax, she said.... Her imprisonment will cost taxpayers five times more than her council tax arrears. She will serve only 3.5 days because all prisoners sentenced to twelve months or less are automatically released at the halfway stage. By that time it will have cost the state a total of 336 pounds, compared with council tax arrears of 53.71 pounds.... Hardy made her stand because her council tax had risen by six times the increase in her pension. She receives an occupational pension from her former employer, Devon County Council, and the state pension which, combined, give her a weekly income of 270 pounds. Over the past four years the council tax charge on her 130,000 pound flat [apartment] has increased by 38 per cent to 708.26 pounds, compared with a rise of only 6.8 per cent in her pension.... She continued: "Throughout history, people have fought to change laws which are unjust, and often the only way to do this is to break the law or ignore it and to accept the punishment. That is why I am appearing here today to accept my punishment for desperately trying to salvage my ever-reducing quality of life.

Full details here about how Chilean Marxist leader Salvador Allende was shot by his Cuban minders to prevent him surrendering to Pinochet's forces.

Indepundit has an amusing account (with photos) of a San Diego "Peace" rally.

I have just put up here an email from someone who thinks that most people never get out of mental childhood. It would certainly help explain a lot of Leftist thinking (if you can call it thinking).

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

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" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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