DEMOCRAT RACISM IS OK?

We read here that Republican US Senators are not allowed to say anything anti-black but Democrat US Senators are. That is too confusing for a mere foreigner like me to understand.

***********************

BOOK-BURNING

The National Socialist German Worker�s Party of the 1930s was famous for burning Jewish books. Modern day British Leftists go one better: They won�t even publish them in the first place!

*******************

GREENIE LIES

Sometimes Greenie lies get too much even for Greenies: "No, Greenpeace has harmed the environmental case." So said Paul Crutzen, Nobel Prize winner for his work on the ozone layer, who cancelled his Greenpeace membership in protest at their distortions. See here for more.

****************

PROBLEMS R US

Marc Miyake (post of 12th) has got the measure of Left activists:

�Many aktivists don't really want to solve problems. They enjoy feeling superior and would miss that ego boost if the world complied with their whims. Besides, who'd give them donations if their cause was no more? So they moan on for money in the name of morality.

**********************

IQ IN HAWAII

Marc also wrestles with explanations for the poor economic and educational standards of Hawaii and wonders how the Japanese-descended elite who run the place have got it into such a mess. He points out that East Asians are by all accounts highly intelligent so dismisses any role for intelligence. I think however that the success of a society may be more a function of its AVERAGE intelligence and I suspect that the considerable numbers of native Hawaiians do drag the average down. Previous studies of international IQ differences have always been of the inferred national average so Hawaii should presumably be treated in the same way. Why would a low Hawaiian average matter? Because, in a democracy, there is a strong tendency for politicians to cater to the lowest common denominator.

**********************

THE ESSENCE OF CONSERVATISM

That old warrior of American conservatism, W.F. Buckey says: �The conservative instinctively rejects collectivization�. A pretty useful short definition.

Many conservatives think Buckley has now gone soft, however. For an extreme version of such a view see here.

The extreme view of Buckley overlooks the need for compromise if policy change is to be achieved. A lot of Americans are taken in by the �compassionate� pretensions of the Left -- dishonest, shallow-brained and irresponsible though those pretences might be -- and that does create a problem that conservatives have to deal with in a democracy.

Update: Hmmm... The anti-Buckley article seems to have been taken down. Does NewsMax self-censor too? All I could get out of the Google cache was the following:

William F. Buckley Jr. and the John Birch Society - A Book Review
Miguel A. Faria Jr., M.D.
Friday, Dec. 13, 2002
This book should be read by all Americans who have wondered, as I have, why - no matter which political party wins - we continue our steady march toward less personal freedom, more government and more foreign entanglements.

Update 2 I have now obtained a copy of the suppressed article and have posted it here.


*************************

GREENIE FRAUD

An awful lot of Greenie claims are essentially frauds. The prophecies of imminent calamity in Paul Ehrlich�s 1968 book, �The population bomb� are hilarious these days and global warming seems to be on the cusp now too. Tim Gillin has just pointed me to an amusing story showing that such frauds go back a long way.

Tim�s comment on the story: I think we can call those urban Westerners in love with their own mythology of what wilderness and tribal society is supposed to be like: 'Grey Owl's children'.

Another idea: We all know the story of the �cargo cult� tribes in New Guinea that were impressed by Western material achievments but not really understanding how they came about -- so they developed their own superstitions about runways, airfields, John Frum etc etc. In fact this ultra-materialist cult is something of an obstacle to those trying to modernise NG who may have some idea of how the West did it.

In the West we see the the same thing from our post-Columbus contact and conflict with the tribal and pre-agrarian world generally. Our reverse cargo cult has from Rousseau to Greenpeace portrayed the tribal world in similarly superstitious and superficial terms to the way that the Cargo cults portray ours.

************************

HYPOCRISY

Hmmm... This article by Sipos has got me thinking. I have always been derisive of the constant hypocrisy I see among Greens and the Left but it took Sipos to point out to me that an accusation of hypocrisy is a species of ad hominem argument -- something I deplore. I THINK that �inconsistency� is mostly what I have meant when I have spoken of �hypocrisy� in the past but I will certainly have to be more careful in the future.

*************************

SERVANTS IN CHINA

China hand has just put up a rather astounding account of the use of servants in China. Important officials under Communism used to have lots of servants but under the new more capitalist system they no longer do! Capitalism has even done away with servants!

***********************

Comments? Email me: jonjayray@hotmail.com.
If there are no recent posts here, check my HomePage for a new blog address.

***********************