MODERN-DAY VIETNAM

I don't know how the socialists among us would react to a country with a Communist government that has no social welfare and operates as a free market, but that's Vietnam.

From Angela Bell who has just come back from there.

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ESTONIA SHOWS THE WAY

This post by an Estonian which describes his country�s rapid ascent out of Communist poverty by way of free market policies summarizes in a few sentences the essential truths that will always be ignored by the Left.

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LABOR YOUTH OR HITLER JUGEND?

The heading above is the one given to this story by Norwegian blogger, Fredrick Norman. The Hitler Jugend was of course the Nazi youth organization.

One of the "new political talents" in the Labor Party of Norway's oil capital, Stavanger, and third-highest ranked candidate to the City Council for the same party, Torstein Tvedt Solberg, recently put on a highly unusual show for the city's children, many of whom were only seven and eight years of age, according to the local paper.

Solberg and his cohorts encouraged the children to learn literally "how to throw rocks as the Palestinians do it". The kids then proceeded to throw big rocks at a photograph of the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, and the older members of the Labor Youth organization cheered them on.

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NASTY GREEN GIANT

Revealed Truth thinks that Greenies are more dangerous than the Islamic Fascists. I am inclined to agree.

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BLACK EDUCATIONAL FAILURE

Wow! Razib (who appears to be a dark-skinned American whose parents came from the Indian subcontinent) pulls no punches about the reasons why even those African-American students who come from middle-class homes are not doing well at school.

I think that he overlooks the most obvious reason for the failure, though: �regression to the mean�. As a statistical phenomenon that is rather beyond full explication on a blog but hopefully it will suffice to say that middle class blacks would be way above the black average on (for instance) IQ and ANY parent who is way above the average on any characteristic can expect to have children closer to the group average on that characteristic. Middle class whites, on the other hand, are probably only a little above their group mean on IQ so regression effects among their children are much smaller.

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RAWLS REVISITED

Not speaking ill of the dead is an ancient pagan idea but not one that I see as having much relevance today. But it seems to be alive and well in the blogosphere when it comes to mentioning the recent death of Leftist philosopher, John Rawls. I did not honour the custom nor did The Brothers Judd (post of Nov. 29th) and I particularly liked this comment put up on the Judd blog by Lou Gots:

I spent an interesting semester at Penn disecting A Theory of Justice in a course taught by Bruce Ackerman (!!!) A central part of Rawls' theory (and Ackerman's exegesis thereof) is the notion the the goods of the earth are "manna"--they just drop out of the sky. Thus social justice concerns itself only with distribution and not with production, because when you get up in the morning the manna will be there. Thus Rawls and his disciples make as much sense as a Melanesian cargo cult. We know from human esperience that irrational systems fail because they are unproductive. Thanks to Rawls, many of our intellectuals start with the premise that productivity does not matter. As to the "veil of ignorance," it is Rawls' way of getting around this. Since no one is supposed to know that he will not be in the "worst-off class," the just society will always favor the worst-off. This is a sick notion, as such a society will tend ever downward, becoming less and less productive, until all are "worst off." On the contrary, I Would say that the poor in a free society (tempered by charity) are better off than they would be in an unfree. Rawls wrote that envy should not be a factor in these decisions, so relative deprivation should be irrelevant. Furthermore, I would hold that even if the veil of ignorance were more than just more cargo cult nonsense, a rational person would desire freedom because even if he were to be born to the "worst-off class" his wealth and his opportunities to improve his lot would be maximized. De mortuiis, etc., eternal rest and perpetual light, but the works are still meaningless socialist blather.


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PREJUDICE AND STEREOTYPING

Walter Williams shows us why prejudice and discrimination are not necessarily a bad thing.

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