BLOGGER.COM BLUES

Blogger.com have been very erratic this week. One day it took me four hours before I could get this blog up. And others have had worse experiences. Hopefully blogger.com have now got on top of whatever problem they had but I guess this is a good time to remind readers to bookmark one of my mirror sites (here and here) for times when this blog does not seem to have been updated at the usual time. I update it each and every morning my time -- which translates to some time in the afternoon of the "next" day for American readers (Brisbane time is 18 hours ahead of California time). At the foot of each day's postings I also give links to mirrors for five of my other blogs as well. It only takes me a couple of minutes per day to put up a mirror site but there is no point in my doing it unless people use it occasionally. So if there have been no recent updates here, the fault lies with blogger.com, not with me and the mirror sites should always be up to date.

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LIBERALISM WITHOUT COMPASSION

This morning President Bush offered his condolences to the family of Terri Schiavo:

The essence of civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak. In cases where there are serious doubts and questions, the presumption should be in the favor of life.

"The strong have a duty to protect the weak": Didn't that use to be a liberal sentiment? To be sure, some prominent left-liberals--Jesse Jackson, Ralph Nader, Sen. Tom Harkin--joined the effort to save Mrs. Schiavo, and 47 House Democrats out of 100 voted in favor of the law that would have done so had the courts not defied it. But it seems clear that liberalism is not as compassionate as it once was.....

In a fascinating essay for The Weekly Standard, Eric Cohen argues that what went wrong in the Schiavo case was that "procedural liberalism"--the respect for Mrs. Schiavo's right to make her own decisions--gave way to "ideological liberalism"--the presumption that because she was unable to make such decisions, her life was worthless:

Treating autonomy as an absolute makes a person's dignity turn entirely on his or her capacity to act autonomously. It leads to the view that only those with the ability to express their will possess any dignity at all--everyone else is "life unworthy of life."

This is what ideological liberalism now seems to believe--whether in regard to early human embryos, or late-stage dementia patients, or fetuses with Down's syndrome. And in the end, the Schiavo case is just one more act in modern liberalism's betrayal of the vulnerable people it once claimed to speak for.

Opinion on the Schiavo case did not split along traditional left-right lines, of course; libertarian-leaning conservatives tended to side with those who wished to pull her feeding tube. Autonomy and compassion are both important values, and there are dangers in overvaluing either at the expense of the other.

It does seem, though, that the "religious right," for better or worse, has supplanted the liberal left as the political faction that most strongly and consistently advocates compassion in social policy.

(Above post excerpted from Taranto. The Leftist claim to compassion always was a con job. Look at the millions killed by Communism -- and back in the USA look at the thousands killed as a result of Leftist support for eugenics prior to 1945)

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ELSEWHERE

There is a good short summary of the truth about Michael Moore here

Amusing: The "pro-Palestinian" French Left have been awoken from their dreams. The Muslim immigrants in France have begun to attack the French Left too.

Kristol makes it clear: "A pie in the face didn't silence conservative pundit William Kristol during a speech at Earlham College. A man who later was identified as a student at the private Quaker college jumped onto the stage and splattered Kristol with the pie Tuesday night about 30 minutes into a speech about U.S. foreign policy. Members of the audience jeered the student as he walked off the stage, then applauded as Kristol wiped the goo off his face with a paper towel and said, "Just let me finish this point," the Palladium-Item reported".

From Nathan Tabor: "What do the Statue of Liberty, Independence Hall, and Monticello have in common? The average American with a smattering of historical knowledge might say that those historic sites are all symbolic of America's unique heritage of freedom..... What about the Great Smoky Mountains, Yellowstone Park, and the Grand Canyon? Well, these priceless natural resources are all managed by the U.S. National Parks Service. They are among the most frequently visited natural recreation areas in America, where millions of American families vacation every year. Would it surprise you to learn that every one of these unique American landmarks is also controlled by the United Nations? It's amazing but true.... For example, in 1995, Bill Clinton got the UN to declare Yellowstone Park a "World Heritage Site in Danger." That gave him the "international obligation" to close down a coal mine on private property three miles away - despite the fact that coal had been mined in the area for 150 years before Yellowstone Park was created, and the Crown Butte Mines had won an award for excellence in 1992".

Academic study confirms Leftist bias: "Nearly three-quarters of faculty members at U.S. colleges and universities describe themselves as liberals, and at elite schools, the proportion is 87 percent, a survey has found. What's more, half say they are Democrats and 51 percent indicate they seldom or never attend church, according to the survey, published in the March issue of the online political journal Forum. 'You would expect the majority of English literature and sociology professors to be liberals, but our survey found that 66 percent of those in physics and 64 percent of those in chemistry are liberals,' said S. Robert Lichter, a communications professor at George Mason University and an author of the study."

French finally admit that water flows downhill: "After seven years of rising unemployment, economic stagnation, and general malaise, French socialists' war against self-determinism ended in defeat last week when France's parliament rescinded a law that made it a crime to work more than 35 hours a week. Essentially a lunatic scheme to create wealth sans labor, the law instituted a de facto lowest-common-denominator egalitarian society by shackling anyone with motivation to a sinking raft of bureaucrats and the lazy. In a sort of fiscal policy version of the Maginot Line, French socialists had argued that legally limiting the number of work hours would force companies to create millions of new jobs."

I am also Canadian has an amusing post arguing that killing seals reduces global warming. How awful for the Greenies!

My latest post on MARXWORDS shows that Engels thought that race made a big difference to historical development.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

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"

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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