Sunday, January 21, 2007

DEEDS SHOW UP THE "COMPASSION" OF THE LEFT

Their deeds have been doing that since the gory French and Russian revolutions

People who lay claim to the compassion of others merrily advocate pulling out of Iraq the better to let the Sunnis and Shi'ites butcher one another, as though that conflict was rooted in the people's desires and not propelled from the top down. What are they to us, after all? Just more surly brown people.

The same people who lay claim to having an abundance of compassion have no problem, it seems, with igniting a bloodbath. Because they can point their fingers and say it was someone else who started it. They wash their hands of it, and do not notice that they are washing them in blood.They have no problem saying they believe in human freedom but also cheerfully advocate closing off free trade. Even though there is ample evidence that free trade policies do more to lift the world's poor out of misery than do all the handouts and debt-relief measures they advance as solutions. Those ideas serve only to reward poor governance. But they wash their hands again, this time in the blood of the starving poor they don't really notice. They advocate endless negotiations with tyrannical regimes despite the fact that those negotiations in the past have never solved anything. And they wash their hands in yet more rivers of blood in the aftermath when the negotiated "solution" fails.

Because the realpolitik is easier than morality. Pushing the problems off to future generations is easier than dealing with the situations today. Pressing the next war onto other's sons and daughters or grandchildren is easier than dealing with hard facts. For these are not the people who volunteer to defend or fight for their country. These are the people who look to others to do that when their ideas and policies are found wanting. But they will screech and point fingers at their defenders when the time comes and ignore the other players in the war and their depredations. Indulging in feel good policies at home is easier - oh, so much easier - than making lasting change in the rest of the world. Scolding has always been easier than doing. Screeching has always been easier than actually solving problems.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Conservatives most compassionate: "It's tempting to say that Arthur Brooks, in his definitive new book on American charitable giving, has shown that there is nothing oxymoronic about the term "compassionate conservative." That, at least, is the conclusion that critics have drawn from Brooks's demonstration that conservatives, despite the myth that they lack compassion, give significantly more to charity than liberals do. But in fact Brooks has shown something even more significant: that "compassionate conservative" is not only overly defensive, but actually redundant. When it comes to charitable donations, volunteer activity, and even donating blood, it's liberals, not conservatives, who should feel compelled to prove their compassion.... So perhaps the times are, again, a-changing. We will only know that they have truly changed, however, when liberals stop using "compassion" as a synonym for expanded government, and when conservatives--the most charitable Americans--no longer feel forced to defend their virtue against those who lack it.

Obama 'was educated in madrassa': "Barack Obama was given a rude awakening to the cut-throat world of presidential politics yesterday after being accused of hiding four years in which he was educated at a madrassa when a teenager. The claim, made in the conservative Insight magazine, also revealed the Machiavellian scheming of political activists in a presidential race still nearly two years away. It was aimed at tarnishing Mr Obama’s image in the week he announced himself as a White House contender. But the article also claimed that the madrassa allegations came from aides to Hillary Clinton, Mr Obama’s main opponent for the Democratic nomination... the Insight allegations represent an exquisite double shot at the Democrats’ two leading White House contenders: it implies that Mr Obama, whose middle name is Hussein, is a closet Islamic extremist, and that Mrs Clinton is so rattled by his candidacy she is using underhand tactics to weaken him... Mr Obama’s mother was a white woman from Kansas; his father, a black Kenyan Muslim."

Blacks benefit from crackdown on illegal immigrants: "Stark evidence now exists that a crackdown on illegal immigration greatly benefits poor blacks. We have a teachable moment in the immigration debate, if only the movement to protect our borders has the wit to capitalize on it, and add a vital and potent constituency. It is one thing for theorists like me point out the basic economics, but it is quite another to have real people in a real town demonstrating that economic laws really work.... Today, a Wall Street Journal article describes the effects of a crackdown on illegal immigrants and how it affected one company in particular. "After a wave of raids by federal immigration agents on Labor Day weekend, a local [Stillmore, GA] chicken-processing company called Crider Inc. lost 75% of its mostly Hispanic 900-member work force. The crackdown threatened to cripple the economic anchor of this fading rural town. But for local African-Americans, the dramatic appearance of federal agents presented an unexpected opportunity. Crider suddenly raised pay at the plant.... For the first time in years, local officials say, Crider aggressively sought workers from the area's state-funded employment office -- a key avenue for low-skilled workers to find jobs. Of 400 candidates sent to Crider -- most of them black -- the plant hired about 200."

European Airbus in trouble: "Long delays to the A380 Superjumbo will send Airbus spiralling into the red this year, parent group EADS said today. The aerospace company said that compensation payments, writedowns and a string of "unforeseen" charges at the aircraft maker will be booked into the 2006 accounts. But shares in EADS fell 4 per cent in Paris, as figures confirmed that Airbus lost the annual battle for aircraft orders to fierce rival Boeing last year for the first time since 2000. Despite record deliveries, Airbus received only 790 net orders compared with 1,044 at Boeing."



Israeli military saves endangered species: "An idea inspired by the biblical tale of Noah's Ark to give elderly zoo animals a dignified but useful end to their lives, has led to an unlikely boost in numbers for several endangered species. They are contentedly grazing on the scrubland surrounding bases of the Israel Defence Force's northern command, keeping down vegetation where bushfires are a constant threat to ammunition and explosive stores. Eland, Africa's largest species of antelope, as well as the rare desert oryx and Atlas mountain goats are among the species to have benefited from the brainwave of Major Ofer Cohen, 20 years ago... Major Cohen persuaded his seniors to give a home to eight greying eland, which were about to be withdrawn from Tel Aviv zoo, and set them free within the heavily patrolled perimeter fences of a military exercise area. "Eland were just perfect - they are very selective eaters and we found that they eat exactly the right amount of vegetation," Major Cohen told The Times. Now the Eland are thriving, their numbers have risen to 400 and they have been joined by oryx and the goats from North Africa."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

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