POLITICS INHERITED TOO

Well, well, well! I have been pointing out for years what the geneticists have been pointing out since at least 1986: That political orientation is largely genetically inherited. But it seems that the message has finally got through to that august body, the American Political Science Association. Under the title: "Are Political Orientations Genetically Transmitted?" authors John Alford, Carolyn Funk, and John R. Hibbing have an article (PDF) in the May 2005 issue of the American Political Science Review (Vol. 99, No. 2). The abstract of the article follows:

"We test the possibility that political attitudes and behaviors are the result of both environmental and genetic factors. Employing standard methodological approaches in behavioral genetics -specifically, comparisons of the differential correlations of the attitudes of monozygotic twins and dizygotic twins -we analyze data drawn from a large sample of twins in the United States, supplemented with findings from twins in Australia. The results indicate that genetics plays an important role in shaping political attitudes and ideologies but a more modest role in forming party identification; as such, they call for finer distinctions in theorizing about the sources of political attitudes. We conclude by urging political scientists to incorporate genetic influences, specifically interactions between genetic heritability and social environment, into models of political attitude formation".

Seeing that political scientists are overwhelmingly Leftist and seeing that Leftists hate all ideas of heritability (except in the case of homosexuality), how did the authors get their article published in the word's most prestigious political science journal? Simple: They made their conclusions palatable by dredging up all the usual Leftist claims about the psychology of Left and Right and said that genetics must influence politics by making some people inherently more flexible than others -- with Leftists being more flexible of course. And if flexibility means having no principles at all, there could be something in that. Psychopaths are very flexible. (Hat Tip to Nebraskan Liberation)

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ELSEWHERE

European leaders may scorn America but Europe's best and brightest are still flocking to the USA: "Since the 1970s, America has created some 57 million new jobs, compared to just 4 million in Europe (with most of those in government). For the last quarter century, the United States has enjoyed consistently higher rates of economic growth and productivity than European countries, and the gap has been widening. The United States is now at the forefront in many critical global industries, particularly finance, technology, and entertainment.... Under such circumstances, the United States remains a tremendous lure for many Europeans, especially younger, educated individuals. This is particularly true in technological fields, where Europe's best brains are leaving in droves. Some 400,000 E.U. science and technology graduates currently reside in the United States, and barely one in seven, according to a recent European Commission poll, intend to return. "The U.S. is a sponge that's happy to soak up talent from across the globe," observes one Irish scientist".

Daniel Pipes draws our attention to a rather amazing speech by Pakistan's General Musharraf. I had thought Indonesia's Gus Dur was the only pro-Israel Muslim leader -- but not so: "He began with the important observation that Jews and Muslims "have many similarities and few divergences in their faith and culture," then listed three specifics: belief in the oneness of God, shared ways of greeting, and a common phrase in the Talmud and Koran. And Moses, he pointed out, is the prophet most often referred to in the Koran. Mr. Musharraf noted how "our experiences and histories intertwine" and then elaborated on what he called the two communities' "rich and very long" history of interaction. He mentioned the "shining examples" of Cordova, Baghdad, Istanbul, and Bukhara, the golden period of Muslim Spain, and the joint experience of the Spanish Inquisition. Generalizing from the inquisition, he correctly asserted that Jews and Muslims "have not only lived together and shared prosperity, but also suffered together."

Straight talk: "When one of Britain's wealthiest men and a former US president join forces to announce a new plan to tackle poverty in Africa, beware. Any recovery strategy for the continent described as "ambitious and bold" - ie, expensive and experimental - should be treated with caution. And if the architects of such a plan appear to share the view of Tony Blair and his Africa Commission that more money is the answer to the continent's crisis - one would be well-advised to give them, and their plan, a very wide berth indeed.... Yet with the confidence that comes of having piles of money, and with not a little condescension, Scottish multi-millionaire Sir Tom Hunter announced last week that he and former US President Bill Clinton had teamed up to "construct a new model of poverty intervention".

How absurd: The FBI is joining the Bush administration's War on Porn. And it's looking for a few good agents. Early last month, the bureau's Washington Field Office began recruiting for a new anti-obscenity squad.... The new squad will divert eight agents, a supervisor and assorted support staff to gather evidence against "manufacturers and purveyors" of pornography -- not the kind exploiting children, but the kind that depicts, and is marketed to, consenting adults. "I guess this means we've won the war on terror," said one exasperated FBI agent"

Good comment on the German political stalemate: "The German economy can probably survive a period of little or no active government. One of the great boom periods of the Italian economy in the 1980s was when it had no government for nine months".

From Dick McDonald: "Our relentless attacks on the LA Times and their leftist LDOs together the many of us who voted by closing our checkbook to that rag, may have delivered dividends. Today we were shocked to learn that (1) they fired Michael Kinsley, the delusional propagandist for the Democrat Party and (2) endorsed John Roberts for Chief Justice of the United States. Wow, hopefully that is a shot heard round the world, especially in the offices of the ACLU. But I will believe it when they do a detailed investigative report on a Democrat blunder. Until then, they can try to convince me they have changed."

The ways of Google sure are hard to follow at times. Dick McDonald's site has been up for about a year and he has lots of links from other blogs but Google do not appear to scan his site. Enter a string of text from his site and Google will not be able to find it. Why? Nobody knows. And finding a way of contacting Google to ask them is a work of near-genius too. I am using clusty.com a lot more these days. They can often find stuff that Google does not.

Canadian law enforcement is just unbelievable sometimes, as the latest posting on Strange Justice shows.

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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