TUESDAY ROUNDUP

I am doing a shorter form of my "roundup" today:

On Dissecting Leftism I explain why the Left of yesteryear seem so much more rightist than they do today.

On Political Correctness Watch I note that human protandry -- where girls spontaneously turn into boys at puberty -- is a comprehensive disproof of the feminist claim that sex-roles are "socially constructed"

On Education Watch I note a report showing that seating students in rows works best for learning

On Socialized Medicine I report the "Dr Death" horror in an Australian public hospital

On Leftists as Elitists I note a union organizer who deplores the haughtiness of the modern Left

On MarxWords I note that Engels equated "niggers" with animals

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SOME EXCELLENT CONSERVATIVE THOUGHTS FROM THE POPE

As a libertarian and an atheist, there is much that I disagree with in the Pope's teachings but I like the thoughts excerpted below:

"The state is not the whole of human existence and does not embrace the whole of human hope. Men and women and their hopes extend beyond the thing that is the state and beyond the sphere of political activity. This does not only apply to a state that is Babylon but to any and every state. The state is not the totality: that takes the load off the politician's shoulders and at the same time opens up for him or her the path of rational politics. The Roman state was false and anti-Christian precisely because it wanted to be the totality of human capacity. In that way it claimed what it could not achieve; and in that way it distorted and diminished men and women. Through the totalitarian lie it became demonic and tyrannical. Getting rid of the totality of the state has demythologized the state and thereby liberated men and women as well as politicians and politics.

But when Christian faith, faith in man's greater hope, decays and falls away, then the myth of the divine state rises up once again.... The mythical hope of a do-it-yourself paradise can only drive people into fear from which there is no escape; fear of the collapse of their promises and of the greater void lurks behind it; fear of their own power and its cruelty. So the first service that Christian faith performs for politics is that it liberates men and women from the irrationality of the political myths that are the real threat of our time.

It is of course always difficult to adopt the sober approach that does what is possible and does not cry enthusiastically after the impossible; the voice of reason is not as loud as the cry of unreason. The cry for the large-scale has the whiff of morality; in contrast limiting oneself to what is possible seems to be renouncing the passion of morality and adopting the pragmatism of the faint-hearted. But in truth political morality consists precisely of resisting the seductive temptation of the big words by which humanity and its opportunities are gambled away. It is not the adventurous moralism that wants itself to do God's work that is moral, but the honesty that accepts the standards of man and in them does the work of man. It is not refusal to compromise but compromise that in political things is the true morality".

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Domestic terrorism is overwhelmingly Leftist: "Immediately after Timothy McVeigh was arrested for blowing up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on a beautiful April morning 10 years ago, the media were atwitter with the talk of "right-wing militias" and the threat they posed to the republic. McVeigh, unapologetic, defiant, and awash in hatred for the government, was presented as the poster boy of the government-hating, gun-loving, right-wing nuts. And we were told ad nauseam that McVeigh was the product of conservative talk radio and irresponsible Republican politicians who talked about revolution. It was all the fault of Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich. (Rarely mentioned was the real motivator of McVeigh's actions: Janet Reno's attack on the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. But I digress.)... In the decade since the Oklahoma City bombing, the media have remained interested in the right-wing crazies, but have almost entirely ignored the left-wing ones -- those committing most of the terrorist acts inside the United States. Left-wing terrorist groups have been responsible for almost all of the recent domestic terrorism. The National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism maintains a terrorism database. According to its files, as the Baltimore Sun reported on Sunday, fully 22 of the 25 terrorist attacks inside the United States since 2003 are believed to have been the work of environmental extremists. This is not a recent development. Left-wing terrorists have always been the major terrorist threat in the United States"

Mississippi throws down the gauntlet: "A new Mississippi law allows displays of the Ten Commandments, "In God We Trust" and Jesus' Sermon on the Mount in public buildings. Governor Haley Barbour, who already has a Ten Commandments display in his Capitol office, signed the bill without a public ceremony. The Mississippi American Civil Liberties Union is awaiting a U-S Supreme Court ruling on the constitutionality of displaying the Ten Commandments on public property before deciding whether to challenge the state law. In 2001, Mississippi passed a law that required "In God We Trust" to be posted in every public classroom, cafeteria and gym. Last fall, Mississippi approved a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage".

The usual bad consequences of government regulation: "A new European Union regulation is forcing airlines to pay passengers if a flight is delayed. Just delayed. Not as a matter of agreement between customer and vendor but as a matter of law. A single flight delay can now cost an airline hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now, delays usually have causes, including safety-related causes. So this regulation punishes airlines for safeguarding passengers. You can predict what the consequences will be. Recently a British Airways plane was in the news after its pilot decided to fly across the Atlantic with a busted engine. Otherwise the airline would have had to pay over the $280,000 to compensate the passengers."

What "liberals" want in the constitution: "The left makes no secret of its intentions where the Constitution is concerned. It wants to change it, in ways that have nothing to do with what the document actually says. It wants the Constitution to enshrine its own policy preferences--thus freeing it from the tiresome necessity of winning elections. And how will the Constitution be changed? Through a constitutional convention, or a vote of two-thirds of the state legislatures? Of course not. The whole problem, from the liberal perspective, is that they can't get democratically elected bodies to enact their agenda. As one of the Yale conference participants said: "We don't have much choice other than to believe deeply in the courts--where else do we turn?" The new, improved Constitution will come about through judicial re-interpretation."

Leftist backpedalling: "American idealism, backed with force and conviction - not soft power, multilateralism, Europeans, or the U.N. - ended the rule of the Taliban, and of Saddam Hussein. The often-lonely vision of George W. Bush ushered in elected governments in their places, and inspired the disenfranchised elsewhere to begin agitating for change. Those in Lebanon know that it was an American president, not Kofi Annan or Gerhard Schroeder, who both shares their aspirations and is willing to stand up to their oppressors. Among the critics of the first George W. Bush administration - and especially among the architects of the feeble U.S. response to terrorism in the 1990s - the present reality must be either denied or spun. The former is impossible when Arab radicals themselves credit Bush with being a catalyst for reform. That leaves the latter alternative of spin as the only recourse: Bush erred by going alone and is now changing to our point of view and thus basking in the world's appreciation."

PETA loses: "A leading animal-rights group has lost its court fight to pull the California milk industry's popular "Happy Cows" television spots over accusations of false advertising. The California Supreme Court refused Wednesday to review an appeal brought by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which sued to stop the national advertising campaign featuring the talking, laid-back cows and their tag line, "Great Cheese Comes From Happy Cows. Happy Cows Come From California." ..... The "Happy Cows" ads, part of a five-year-old, $33 million campaign, became a huge hit in California and helped push the state's cheese industry to first in the nation, said Nancy Fletcher, spokeswoman for the California Milk Advisory Board. "This appears to be another loss for PETA in their campaign against the California milk industry," Ms. Fletcher said. "The highest priority of our dairy farmers is the health and comfort of their cows. They take great pride in how well they treat their cows."

Drunkablog (who seems to blog from Denver) thinks that Australian bloggers do a particularly good job. I completely agree!

Melbourne blogger Matter of Opinion has quite a bit up about Anzac day.

In my latest quote on MARXWORDS a war against Russia is said to be good for Germany. I always wondered where Hitler got that idea!

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"

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