 |
DISSECTING LEFTISM MIRROR
Leftists just KNOW what is good for us. Conservatives need evidence..
Why are Leftists always talking about hate? Because it fills their own hearts As President, Trump will be as transformative as Reagan; He has blown the political consensus out of the water |
The original of this mirror site is HERE. My Blogroll; Archives here or here; My Home Page. My Recipes. My alternative Wikipedia.
For a list of blog backups see here or here.
Email me (John Ray) here. NOTE: The short comments that I have in the side column of the primary site for this blog are now given at the foot of this site.
****************************************************************************************
31 August, 2017
Terror can be conquered ONLY with greater terror
I think ALEXANDER MARKOVSKY is right below but whether soft Western politicians will ever do what he advises is doubtful. As a former Soviet citizen he is tougher than most
It is exceedingly obvious that the West continues projecting weakness and strategic incoherence. The Western Democracies are incapable of rejecting postmodern liberal thinking that Islam is peaceful and acknowledge that we are in the age-old struggle between freedom and tyranny.
Radical Islam poses both internal and external threats to Western civilization on the scale of Nazism and Imperial Japan in terms of the potential mass death and destruction. Islam is conducting a war against the Western democracies with religious zeal and fanatical determination, using all resources available-from engaging in open warfare to spreading terrorism across the globe; from sponsoring radical ideology within Muslim communities to indoctrinating schoolchildren to hate Western values. In this war America and the Western world are facing a type of peril they have never faced before.
The West fails to recognize as an immutable fact that radical Islam is not just a religion; it is also a political totalitarian movement, just like communism and fascism. The movement embraces a fanatical agenda that includes religious supremacy and a Marxist-type utopian/egalitarian standard of virtue. However, unlike communism and fascism, which were adopted by countries that could be defeated militarily, radical Islam is not a country. It is a mass movement sustained by an ideology embodied in unlimited human resources around the globe.
Moreover, many Muslims residing in the West evince a favorable attitude toward radicalism. They form a silent but effective network of support that allows terrorists to avoid security forces, survive, plan, recruit new members, and provide training. Hence, diplomatic solutions cannot be found, nor is it possible to defeat it in strictly military terms. Therefore, the war on terror is not just a military confrontation; it is also an ideological and a political affair.
First and foremost, this monster has to be defeated ideologically by superior principles advanced by Islam itself. Indeed, across the Atlantic in Egypt, a new and different version of Islam is emerging. Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has assertively lead his country out of the Arab Spring. He has denounced Islamic terrorism and challenged religious clerics and scholars to "revolutionize the religion" and bring it in line with Western morality. The president of Egypt is a leader who exhibits moral clarity, courage, and charisma. With the enhanced stature of the restorer of stability, he is in a position to use his authority to isolate radicals ideologically.
Second, we must learn from past experience. Vladimir Lenin, the father of modern terrorism, who was also on the receiving end of it, summarized his experience with Bolshevik brevity: "Terror can be conquered ONLY with greater terror."
Whether this nation is prepared to conquer terrorists with greater terror is an open question. In the past, civilized society had little hesitation to use all its might to protect and defend its ideals. Bombing Dresden in 1945 was, in contemporary terms, a clear act of terrorism aimed at German civilians in order to break the Germans' resolve. Dropping two nuclear bombs on Japan was hardly a humanitarian act either. What is not in question is the imperative for survival of our civilization. Our contemporary American challenge is not the military aspect of killing a lot of people; it is the moral issue, regardless of reasoning and justification. This imperative shall be reconciled vis-à-vis Western thinking, which embraces the humanitarian principles that separate us from the barbarians, and the necessity of survival. Henry Kissinger addressed this dilemma when he wrote, "While we should never give up our principles, we must also realize that we cannot maintain our principles unless we survive."
Assuming that the United States possesses the psychological stamina to do what needs to be done to survive, we shall stop shaping our foreign policy by personal animosities and professed moral superiority, and start forming alliances based on National Interests. We should embrace President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and form a new alliance founded on common interests between the United States, Russia, Egypt and Jordan to eradicate radical Islam. El-Sisi's led ideological offensive augmented by the well-equipped and well trained Egypt and Jordan military supported by the infinite firepower of the United States and Russia will deliver the ultimate wish to those who claim to love death more than life quickly and decisively.
Political posturing will not instill the fear of God in the Islamists, but el-Sisi will-if he lives long enough. Courageous leaders in this part of the world before him did not, so time is of the essence.
SOURCE
*******************************
Today as in the 1930s, real fascism comes from the Left
Norman Tebbit [Prominent British Conservative politician]
Over recent days I have become more and more irritated by the skill of those on the Left in labelling any event of unreason or violence as being the work of "the far Right", and the foolishness of us on the Right for letting them get away with it.
James Bloodworth wrote recently in the New Statesman that Ukip's Anne Marie Waters had "started out on the political left , but like Oswald Mosely before her has since veered dramatically to the right."
We have been fortunate in this kingdom in that we have had only one prominent fascist, Oswald Mosley, who never held office in government at Westminster. I often see or hear references his political journey to the "far Right" from the wilfully ignorant. The facts are otherwise.
Mosley's journey started from his Conservative roots and his election as a Conservative Member of Parliament in 1918. He then defected to Labour, losing his seat in 1924, but returning as Labour Member for Smethwick in 1926 and taking office in the Labour Government of Ramsay MacDonald as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in 1929. His advocacy of nationalisation of industry and a huge programme of public works (and who does that remind you of these days?) was rejected by the Labour government, and he resigned.
Mosley then became impressed by the collectivist ideas of Mussolini's Fascist Party and Hitler's National Socialist German Workers' Party, before founding the British Union of Fascists, which opposed war with Hitler's Germany. He was interned in 1940 by Churchill's wartime government.
After the war his National Party of Europe campaigned for "Europe a Nation", a proposed European super-state to have been run according to principles of "European Socialism". Mosley died in 1980, still committed to the anti-Semitism he shared with the German National Socialists and Russian Communists, having never swung back to the Conservative roots he had torn up in 1923..
With the Labour Party of today committed to far Left policies akin to those rejected by Ramsay MacDonald 85 years ago, and the Lib Dems united only by their belief that the United Kingdom should not be a self-governing state, the political market is wide open for a party which could unite around the Thatcherite Conservative policies which saved the country in the 1980s.
It would be nice too if we could get away from the sheer nastiness which has of late been used in an effort to close down a good deal of entirely legitimate debate on public affairs. The believers in climate change came out to attack the BBC for allowing Lord Lawson air time to express some scepticism about the wilder claims of imminent climatological disaster. One describing himself as a physicist tweeted that "there should be no debate anymore about climate change."
Perhaps the very nature of the so-called "social media" on which so much of this nastiness is expressed – often by frustrated attention-seekers who have no other platform – has a role in the general degradation of comment and conduct over a much wider field than politics today.
SOURCE
****************************
5 BIG Companies Just Stabbed Trump In Back With SICK Announcement About Who They’re Working With
There has practically never been a better time to be in business than right now with President Donald Trump in the White House. He’s done more for workers and companies in his first few months than his predecessor did in two presidential terms. The economy is booming because of this incredible businessman.
Now, five major companies have just decided to stab him in the back at once with a disgusting announcement. Apparently, they don’t care that their businesses are better under Trump since their disdain for him seems to supersede all else.
The fallout began with the most unsuspecting retailers who is about as synonymous with the U.S. as any store can get. Walmart profits heavily from their reputation of patriotic values and being the picture of success from capitalism, hard work, and the fruits of pursuing the American dream, despite using cheap overseas labor to produce a glutenous amount products.
The retail giant’s CEO, Doug McMillon, came forward last week to stab President Trump in the back with an announcement after what he saw happen in Charlottesville, Virginia. He had the option to pick a side or remain neutral and he chose to blame the president for the racist violence in which had no part in promoting.
Strangely, McMillion didn’t take the same stance on Barack Obama when he was in offices at the time a member of his beloved Black Lives Matter group shot and killed multiple Dallas cops in the name of the racist cause.
“In a statement posted on the retail giant’s website, McMillon wrote that Trump ‘missed a critical opportunity to help bring our country together by unequivocally rejecting the appalling actions of white supremacists’,” the Washington Examiner reported of CEO’s statements.
Now, four other companies, including another major retailer have come out against Trump after Charlottesville. However, of the five companies, three made it much worse with who they have been secretly doing business with behind his back.
Amid the flood of CEOs rushing to distance themselves from Trump who committed a sin in their eyes by calling out both the White Supremacists and the Antifa crowd was Marcus Lemonis, who is the CEO of one of NASCAR’s biggest sponsors.
Representing the major outdoor retailer, Camping World, Lemonis appeared on CNBC’s “Power Lunch,” where he seemed to suggest he wouldn’t be shattered if people who supported Trump’s comments decided to shop elsewhere. So basically he told all of us NASCAR fans to shop elsewhere.
Publicly announcing that Trump supporters are not welcome at your business is not good for profits. However, all business sense has gone out the window with common sense in the aftermath of Charlottesville. Three other companies who jumped aboard the blame train don’t really care about American money in coming out against Trump this week since they’re getting it from our enemies.
The Washington Free Beacon explains:
Several prominent U.S. companies that have distanced themselves from the Trump administration over its response to the recent violence in Charlottesville, Va., continue to do business with the extremist Iranian regime, sparking accusations of hypocrisy from a leading advocacy group that works to expose Iran’s global atrocities.
Major U.S. companies such as airplane manufacturer Boeing, General Electric, and industrial company Caterpillar all issued public statements distancing themselves from President Donald Trump over what they viewed as his failure to adequately condemn the recent riots in Charlottesville, where far-right white nationalists and neo-Nazis clashed with leftist counter-protestors.
While each company was quick to distance itself from the Trump administration and condemn the open racism and bigotry on display in Charlottesville, all three of the corporations continue to do business with Iran, an openly anti-Semitic regime that threatens to murder Jewish people and endorses leading racists such as David Duke.
Considering the incredibly disgusting double standard of coming out against Trump for not condemning White Supremacists and quickly as they thought, it seems that these three companies are more about grandstanding the president than what they are actually saying.
What makes it even worse, is that “all of these corporations also have refused to sign on to pledges to refrain from doing business with Iran due to the regime’s pursuit of nuclear arms and continued sponsorship of terrorism, including operations targeting U.S. forces,” according to the Free Beacon.
This is an interesting stance, to say the least, considering that Boeing is contracted with the government to build the next Air Force One. “This activity has sparked concerns from lawmakers and U.S. officials that Iran will use any new Boeing planes to boost these operations,” the report noted.
It’s a big slap in the face for these companies to come out and makes statements like, “There is no room for hatred, racism or intolerance” as Caterpillar recently said while increasing relationships with one of the most hateful, anti-American countries in the world.
SOURCE
********************************
A high level Leftist commentator at work
Straitjacket time for Olby?
*****************************
For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
***************************
30 August, 2017
Concerns About McMaster
My initial impression of General McMaster as a Trump adviser was very favourable. His military record seemed highly competent. There have however been a lot of recent rumblings about him from conservative commentators. America's re-involvement in Afghanistan, against Trump's election promises, has been attributed to him.
Most troubling of all, however, is that he seems to be antagonistic to Israel. The Zionist Organizatuion of America has taken particular note of that and publicized their concerns. One hoped that ZOA was wrong but the response to ZOA has not been impressive. ZOA re-iterates their concerns below. I am afraid that I am now hoping that Trump will lose patience with McMaster as he has with so many other people he has looked to for advice. If Bannon can go, so can McMaster
The Zionist Organization of America’s August 2017 report detailed US National Security Chief General H.R. McMaster’s troubling record regarding Iran, Israel and radical Islamist terrorism. McMaster’s statements and actions appear to be diametrically opposed to President Donald Trump’s support for Israel, opposition to the Iran nuclear deal and determination to name and combat radical Islamist terrorism.
Critics of ZOA’s report have failed to show that ZOA’s report was wrong in any substantive respect. The criticisms have amounted to name-calling against ZOA, and McMaster’s friends vouching for his character — which is irrelevant to the vital policy issues addressed in ZOA’s report.
McMaster reportedly wrongly refers to the existence of a Palestinian state before 1947 — when no Palestinian state ever existed, and maligns Israel as an “illegitimate,” “occupying power.” In fact, Israel’s re-establishment in 1948 and her self-defensive capture of Judea/Samaria (West Bank) in 1967 were both legal under binding international law, and deprived no country of its sovereign territory.
McMaster wrongly claimed that President Trump would recognize “Palestinian self determination” during his visit to Israel; reportedly opposed President Trump’s visit to Jerusalem’s Western Wall, refused to state that the Western Wall is in Israel, and insisted that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could not accompany President Trump to the Western Wall.
And alarmingly, when Israel installed metal detectors at Jerusalem’s Temple Mount after Palestinian terrorists smuggled in firearms and murdered two Israeli policemen, McMaster, according to a senior defense official, described this as “just another excuse by the Israelis to repress the Arabs.”
In his short tenure at the National Security Council (NSC), General McMaster has fired or removed from the NSC six staunchly pro-Israel/anti-Iran officials: Steve Bannon; K.T. McFarland; Adam Lovinger; Rich Higgins, Derek Harvey and Ezra Cohen-Watnick.
McMaster quickly removed Bannon, architect of much of President Trump’s pro-Israel, anti-Islamist terrorism agenda, from the Principals Committee of the NSC. McMaster also promptly removed K.T. McFarland, a key member of the team of Iran deal opponents originally assembled by President Trump, and a veteran pro-Israel national security professional in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations. She was shunted off to be ambassador to Singapore. Lovinger, a pro-Israel national security strategist from the Pentagon, was returned to the Pentagon with his security clearance revoked.
McMaster also sacked Iran “hawk” Rich Higgins, the NSC’s director of strategic planning, after Higgins wrote a memo about personnel opposed to President Trump’s foreign policy agenda. McMaster removed Derek Harvey, senior director for the Middle East, who has been described by former Army Vice Chief of Staff General Jack Keane as “hands down the very best intelligence analyst that the United States government has on Iraq,” after Harvey prepared a list of NSC Obama-era holdovers. McMaster should have removed the personnel on Harvey’s list — but instead fired Harvey. And McMaster also fired Cohen-Watnick, a staunch opponent of the Iran deal, who sought to intensify efforts to counter Iran in in the Middle East and rein in officials opposed to the president’s policies.
McMaster’s replacements and appointees are on the wrong side of the issues of concern. McMaster appointed Colonel Kris Bauman, who has blamed Israel for Palestinian terror and urged Israel to negotiate with Hamas, to work on the Israel-Palestinian desk. Bauman is working to revive General Jim Allen’s defective and dangerous Obama-era plan for Palestinian statehood. McMaster also replaced K.T. McFarland with Dina Habib-Powell — a defender of Huma Abedin and friend of pro-Iran-deal Obama era figures such as Valerie Jarett.
As PJ Media New York editor David Steinberg wrote: “One is hard-pressed to identify a member of the NSC brought in by McMaster with a history of aligning with President Trump on Iran or with his Mideast policy in general.”
A White House official estimated that well over fifty percent of the NSC staff are Obama holdovers.
McMaster has also promoted certifying that Iran is in compliance with the Iran deal — even though Iran: banned International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors from its Parchin nuclear facility; refused to allow IAEA investigators to interview Iran’s nuclear scientists; and has repeatedly tested intercontinental ballistic missiles in violation of UN Security Council resolutions; and despite German intelligence reports that Iran is cheating on the deal.
And when pressed about Iran’s violations, McMaster inaccurately and misleadingly stated that Iran is merely violating the Iran deal’s “spirit.” This flies the face of President Trump’s promise to tear up or rigorously enforce the Iran deal and punish violations.
Mirroring the Obama administration’s practices, McMaster opposes using the term “radical Islamic terrorism” or other indicia of terrorists’ jihadist ideology.
It’s notable that those who have castigated ZOA’s detailed critique of McMaster have failed to refute a single ZOA concern. They merely condemned ZOA as wrong and scurrilous. The most that any of ZOA’s critics could offer was the “opinion” of anonymous Israeli officials that McMaster is a “friend” and that there is “no need to agree with every position McMaster has taken.”
Another issue that’s been ignored is why has a bevy of anti-Trump, anti-Israel activists and groups — including CNN’s Van Jones, Media Matters, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) — leapt to Trump appointee McMaster’s defense. Yet they never leapt to defend the pro-Israel David Friedman’s appointment as ambassador to Israel when he was criticized. Meanwhile, many strong supporters of Israel have supported ZOA’s critique of McMaster’s actions.
All of ZOA’s critics have two things in common. They use ugly, nonsensical, vacuous name-calling ?to? defend McMaster and they ?fail to ?refute a single issue of concern ZOA raised. The critics’? inability to address ZOA’s? numerous concerns only strengthens ZOA’s? case about McMaster’s hostility to Israel and ?failure to take strong action against Iran and radical Islami?st? terrorism.
SOURCE (See the original for links)
There is another dubious McMaster action reported here
******************************
The politicization of Big Business
MARTIN HUTCHINSON
The collapse of President Trump’s business advisory councils had little to do with Trump’s policies, or even his presentation. After all the business leaders had joined the councils after he became President, so knew what they were getting into. Traditionally, businesses have been careful to maintain a political neutrality, so their opposition to President Trump appears surprising. Yet in reality, 22 years of funny money have corrupted businesses as they have economic life in general, and in an age of crony capitalism, the media friendly activist left is where you can expect to find CEOs.
I once commiserated with the aide to a Chilean-Croatian tycoon, whom I believed, given his free-market economic views, to have been subjected to defeats in two elections in a week, in both his native and adopted countries. She responded to me coldly: “No, you don’t understand. Mr. Big is a Governmentalist. He supports whichever government is in power in any country at any time, and contributes to their campaigns. He finds it easier to do business that way.” Governmentalism, it seemed, had become a way of life for U.S. business also.
Not any longer. The mass resignations from President Trump’s business advisory councils demonstrate that virtue signaling to the left is now more important to U.S. business than coziness with the administration in office. Donations by big business to such entities as Planned Parenthood and the Southern Poverty Law Center show the same thing; those are not politically neutral charities, they are organs of the hard left, deeply offensive to a large percentage of their fellow citizens. The censorship of “alt-right” entities by Google and other Internet titans also shows that political neutrality is thought no longer to be good business. Even minor gestures, like Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein tweeting that Trump was “casting a shadow over the country” during an eclipse shows a willful disregard for the views of half the country’s consumers that is surprising in a major corporation that wants to do business with everybody, if they are rich enough.
It is not clear why this is happening. The example of the [pre-war] Liberty League should demonstrate that Big Business’s hope of swinging the next election against a candidate they apparently dislike is almost certainly futile, and in the interim alienating the President and his supporters surely cannot help their hopes for goodies from the Federal government.
You might also suppose that swinging politically against the more free-market, small government party was not the interests of Big Business, until you looked at the actual incentives in place. After 20 years of ultra-sloppy monetary policy and negative real interest rates, businesses are leveraged to the hilt, but at the same time enjoy record earnings as a percentage of GDP, especially when the reduced share count from buybacks is taken into account. Consequently executives, who these days are rewarded mostly by stock options, enjoyed fat pickings in the Obama years, even when few others did.
Certainly, the traditional Republican remedies of sound money, lower government spending and lower tax rates partly financed by eliminating loopholes do not look attractive to today’s top executives. Add to these disincentives the possibility of Trump undertaking protectionist policies that reduce the profitability of the global sourcing networks to which they have committed themselves, and the further possibility of Trump reducing the flow of cheap labor on which many of them have depended in their businesses and almost all of them have depended for their maids and gardeners. Thus, the overall Trump package, however good it might be for the economy and for ordinary working people, is very unattractive for Fortune 500 CEOs. A world of lower stock prices, higher interest rates, higher U.S. wages and fewer tax loopholes is to them a dystopia not a utopia.
The leftward turn of the country’s CEOs is thus not surprising. Obama-era policies were good to them, and a continuation of those policies would continue to widen the wealth disparities in U.S. society in their favor. They have in any case never known a true free market economy, since the United States during their adult lifetime has been a big-government Keynesian-meddling compromise, continually eating the economic seed corn and piling up massive obligations for future generations. When Big Business CEOs are both economically somewhat ignorant and beset by economically counterproductive incentives, it is not surprising that they act in their own short-term interests rather than in the long-term interests of the country and the world.
The CEO virtue signaling of Big Business giving money to leftist scams and cutting off Internet service for those with whom they disagree is however truly nauseating – and in the long term yet another danger to the freedom and prosperity of the rest of us.
SOURCE
*******************************
Harvey: History Repeats? The Leftmedia hope to replay their successful undermining efforts with Bush and Katrina
More HERE
********************************
For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
***************************
29 August, 2017
Italians: Sheriff Joe and Silvio Berlusconi
I want to put in a broader context the current outpouring of media hate against hero sheriff Joe Arpaio. Joe's parents originated from Lacedonia, an ancient town in Southern Italy and I want to suggest that there is much about him that is Italian.
I grew up among Italians and have the warmest feelings towards them. I see them as cheerful, hard-working, family-oriented, warm people who have an instictive irreverence for authority. Italians are notorious scofflaws. Just about everyone in Italy regards the law as an obstacle to be gotten around. They have their own personal and family-oriented values and have a healthy disrespect for the edicts thrown down at them by government. It would not be too far from the truth to say that most Italians regard even the Ten Commandments as the Ten Suggestions.
So you see where I am going there. Italy may be the most libertarian society on earth. Their "black" economy is certainly huge. It was their inability to raise much tax revenue that caused successive Italian governments to inflate the currency. The Lira was constantly being devalued. Now that they have the Euro, they borrow at an unsustainable rate instead. The Germans have propped that up so far but awareness of that puts the average German into a rage so who knows how and when that bubble will pop?
And a set of rules that are constantly being forced down all our throats are the onerous and inconsistent idiocies of political correctness. So it should be no surprise that most Italians don't take to political correctness at all.
A minor example of that was when the EU handed down an edict that government schools could not have religious imagery in them. But virtually no Italian could imagine a school without aids to contemplation such as a picture of the Blessed Virgin or the Sacred Heart of Jesus. That was just not done. I forget how it was gotten around but I gather that Italian schools still feature their holy pictures and statuary. And you can be in no doubt that NYC Italians will fiercely defend their statues of Cristoforo Colombo.
And the king of political correctness is without a doubt, Silvio Berlusconi, by far the most popular and successful Italian politican of the postwar era. Because of their individuality, Italians constantly depose their political leadership. Nobody impresses them for long. For a long time the average life of a Prime Ministership in Italy was one year or thereabouts. Then along came Silvio. He smiles a lot, is a little short guy, a media mogul and a billionaire. He was also once a cruise ship crooner. He would have been (and has been) laughed to scorn in countries with colder climates but to Italians he was a real Italian and many loved him for just that. So he had amazingly long runs in office as Prime Minister. He was Prime Minister for nine years in total, making him the longest-serving post-war Prime Minister of Italy.
And his political incorrectness was legendary. He was constantly being accused by outsiders of "gaffes", some of which were jokes, some of which were simple truths and all of which were him speaking his mind at the time, political correctness regardless. Time magazine did a collection of some of them a few years ago.
His repeated expressions of admiration for the "suntans" of Africans would forever condemn him to the outer darkness of American politics but to Italians they were just humor. And there was also worldwide horror when he said to a female Italian doctor doing earthquake relief work that, "I wouldn't mind being resuscitated by you". But the lady, being Italian, quipped back and insisted that he was just being gallant.
And so we come back to sheriff Joe. He did not at all like people strolling into his country uninvited and had no time for the politically correct view that they were simply "undocumented". And even under great pressure from the politically correct Obama administration he stuck by his values. He is a great Italian as well as a great American. And as for the media, how about a bit of cross-cultural sensitivity? Cultural sensitivity is their bag, is it not?
****************************
That double standard again
The media and the Left generally have roundly condemned the pardon given to Sheriff Joe because his offence was to disobey an order from a judge while being a government officer. Strange that the events in 2015 described below elicited no outcry from the same people. Only conservatives have to obey judges, it seems:
In another midnight filing last week in the immigration lawsuit filed by 26 states against the Obama administration in the Southern District of Texas, the U.S. Justice Department admitted that the Department of Homeland Security had violated federal Judge Andrew Hanen’s Feb. 16 injunction against President Obama’s immigration amnesty plan.
This was not the first such admission by the government. It had previously filed an “Advisory” on March 3 informing Judge Hanen that between Nov. 20, 2014, when the president announced his immigration plan, and Feb. 16 when the injunction was issued, the Department of Homeland Security had begun implementing part of the president’s plan by issuing three-year deferrals to over 100,000 illegal aliens.
In other words, despite having told Judge Hanen both in court and in written pleadings that no part of the president’s plan was being implemented until late February at the earliest, government officials were doing exactly the opposite.
On April 7, Judge Hanen issued an order with a scathing analysis of the Justice Department’s misbehavior, finding that “attorneys for the government misrepresented the facts” to the court. He told the Justice Department that he expected all of the parties in the case, including the government, “to act in a forthright manner and not hide behind deceptive representations and half-truths.”
Hanen also gave the Justice Department lawyers a hard time over not having informed him immediately upon their discovery of this misrepresentation, saying that their claim that they took prompt, remedial action was “belied by the facts” – namely, that they waited over two weeks to tell the judge.
In a separate, supplemental three-page order issued on May 8, Judge Hanen cites additional evidence to support his finding that the states have standing to challenge Obama’s immigration plan. In his Feb. 16 injunction order, Hanen referenced statements by Obama that there would be consequences for any Homeland Security employee who did not follow the requirements of the Nov. 20 amnesty plan. The Justice Department had tried to downplay the president’s statements.
However, Judge Hanen notes that while testifying on April 14 – after the injunction was issued – before the House Judiciary Committee, Sarah Saldana, the director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “reiterated that any officer or agent who did not follow the dictates of the 2014 DHS Directive would face the entire gamut of possible employee sanctions, including termination.”
Hanen said that “the President’s statements have now been reaffirmed under oath by the very person in charge of immigration enforcement.”
Thus, according to Hanen, the government “has announced, and has now confirmed under oath, that it is pursuing a policy of mandatory non-compliance (with the [Immigration and Nationality Act], and that any agent who seeks to enforce the duly-enacted immigration laws will face sanctions – which could include the loss of his or her job.”
It is this “clear abdication of the law by the Government – a law that is only enforceable by the Government and outside the province of the states” that gives the states standing to bring suit.
SOURCE
******************************
The growing political power of silicon valley
For decades now, all of America’s major institutions – have been broadly, unquestionably Leftist, and rigidly opposed to any deviance from the entrenched doctrine. Colleges and universities, Hollywood and entertainment, the Sciences and the News Media – all deeply in Leftism’s thrall.
And then there is the Silicon Valley – now the biggest, baddest, broadest institution of them all. Because of their dominance of the Internet – they have their hands in all of the legacy institutions.
The Silicon Valley has had for more than a decade a license to print money. And they bestow tens of millions of dollars of it in endowments to Leftist colleges – including tons of coin in directed “science” like global warming…oops, I mean climate change.
The Valley is out Hollywood-ing Hollywood – self-producing a great and growing number of movies and television shows.
And then…there’s the News Media. As we have documented, the News Media cartel’s nexus has shifted from the New York City-Washington, D.C. corridor- to the heart of the Valley. Because with every passing day subscriptions matter less and less – and clicks, Tweets and Shares matter more and more.
And since the Silicon Valley controls clicks, Tweets and Shares – they are more and more controlling the news. Which is…really bad news for those of us who like less government.
Because in case you haven’t noticed – the Valley is decidedly, overwhelmingly Leftist. As Leftist as the News Media NYC-DC cabal is – the Valley, is decidedly, overwhelmingly worse.
The Valley elects people…like Democrat Leader Nancy Pelosi – whom 95+% of Americans find bizarrely, perversely out-of-touch with any semblance of Reality.
The Valley has given hundreds of millions of dollars to all sorts of unbelievably Leftist politicians, people and organizations. Heck, why not cut out the middlemen – Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is considering a run for President.
The Silicon Valley is increasingly the gatekeeper to all things News. More and more people get their news via stories shared on Valley platforms – Facebook and Twitter to name but two giants.
And if you want to search for a news story, Google dominates. Three years ago, Google – all by its onesies – was the search engine used on 67% of computers and 83% of mobile devices.
Which is yet another reason why the Google Memo debacle – is such a debacle. Google scientist James Damore wrote an internal document that, amongst other things, decried Google’s uniform Leftism. It became an external document – and Google made Damore an ex-Google scientist. Reinforcing Damore’s point about Google’s uniform Leftism.
Google Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Sundar Pichai immediately thereafter asserted: “Over the past two days, I have had the chance to meet with so many people here, and I have read each of your emails carefully. The vast majority of you are very supportive of our decision.”
But a poll of Googlers – begs to differ: “When Blind asked its users if they thought Google should have fired Damore, over 4,000 from different companies weighed in. Perhaps most pertinently, 441 Google employees responded. Of them, more than half – 56% to be precise – said they didn’t think it was right for the company to fire Damore.”
Which means the average Googler – is afraid to deviate from the Google political line when interacting with the boss. Further still reinforcing Damore’s point.
And again, Google controls the search results for about 3/4 of Americans. Which, again, is really bad news if you like less government.
In 2012, when someone searched Google for “completely wrong” – Google returned a page of images of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Google favorably “personalized” searches for Romney’s incumbent opponent – Democrat Barack Obama – but not for Romney.
And small wonder – Google and the Valley were chiefly responsible for Obama being president in the first place.
Google was no better in 2016. They were caught rigging searches to favor Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Google issued a mea culpa – and then was caught STILL rigging searches to favor Clinton.
Yet again: For 3/4 of Americans, these horrendously skewed Google results – are what they’re getting when they search for news.
Facebook is no better. They launched a “news feed” – that overwhelmingly featured Leftist “news.” It was blatantly biased – so much so that it was quickly scrapped.
We are still left to wonder how Facebook’s regular feed algorithm determines which of our Friends’ stories we get to see – and not see.
And now the ultimate irony. After spending the last decade-plus skewing the News – Google, Facebook and their Valley brethren are now charging themselves…with battling “fake news.” Physicians – heal thyselves.
SOURCE
********************************
For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
***************************
28 August, 2017
Here Are Some Key Ways the Mainstream Media Distorts the Truth
Dennis Prager
“Our leading media” are characterized by “indefensibly corrupt manipulations of language repeated incessantly.” -- Patrick Lawrence in The Nation, Aug. 9, on the media’s reporting of the alleged collusion between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia.
To understand America’s crises today, one must first understand what has happened to two institutions: the university and the news media. They do not regard their mission as educating and informing but indoctrinating.
In this column, I will focus on the media. I will dissect one issue that I know extremely well: the national and local coverage of the invitation extended to me to guest conduct the Santa Monica Symphony Orchestra at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. The concert took place last week.
I am well aware that this event is far less significant than many other issues. But every aspect of the reporting of this issue applies to virtually every issue the media cover.
Therefore, understanding how The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and NPR covered my story leads to an almost perfect understanding of how the media cover every story where the left has a vested interest.
When it comes to straight news stories—say, an earthquake in Central America—the news media often do their job responsibly. But when a story has a left-wing interest, the media abandon straight news reporting and take on the role of advocates.
As I explained in detail in a previous column, the board of directors of the Santa Monica Symphony Orchestra and its conductor, Guido Lamell, invited me to guest conduct a Haydn symphony at the Walt Disney Concert Hall.
I have conducted regional orchestras in Southern California over the last 20 years.
Sometime thereafter, four members of the orchestra published a letter asking their fellow musicians not to perform, claiming, “Dennis Prager is a right-wing radio host who promotes horribly bigoted positions.”
They were joined by former Santa Monica Mayor Kevin McKeown, who announced, “I personally will most certainly not be attending a concert featuring a bigoted hate-monger,” among others.
Then, The New York Times decided to write a piece on the controversy.
The first question is why? Why would the Times write about a controversy begun by a few members of a community orchestra in California?
I am quite certain that one reason was to protect the left. My original column on the issue, titled “Can a Conservative Conduct an Orchestra?“, went viral. And it made the left look bad.
Not only was the left trying to prevent conservatives from speaking; it was now trying to prevent a conservative from not speaking—from just making music.
Therefore, it was necessary to show that the left in Santa Monica had legitimate reasons to try to prevent me from conducting. And the only way to do that was to reaffirm that I am a hater and a bigot.
The Times writer wasted no time in portraying me that way. He wrote, “a number of them are refusing to play the fund-raiser, saying that allowing the orchestra to be conducted by Mr. Prager, who has suggested that same-sex marriage would lead to polygamy and incest, among other contentious statements, would be tantamount to endorsing and normalizing bigotry.”
Lesson No. 1: When the mainstream media write or say that a conservative “suggested” something that sounds outrageous, it usually means the conservative never actually said it.
After all, why write “suggested” and not “said” or “wrote”? Be suspicious whenever anything attributed to a conservative has no quotation marks and no source.
Seven paragraphs later—long after having mischaracterized my words to prime the readers’ perception—the Times writer did quote me on the subject.
He said, “Mr. Prager suggested that if same-sex marriage were legalized, then ‘there is no plausible argument for denying polygamous relationships, or brothers and sisters, or parents and adult children, the right to marry.'”
Though no context was given, the words quoted are accurate and a source was given. It was a 2014 column I wrote about judges having hubris for overturning voters in state after state who voted to keep marriage defined as the union of a man and a woman.
I was responding to then-District Judge Vaughn Walker, who ruled that California’s Proposition 8, which amended the state’s constitution to define marriage as “the union of a man and woman,” was unconstitutional.
One of Walker’s arguments was that “Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis.”
I wrote in the column, “If American society has a ‘constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis,’ then there is no plausible argument for denying polygamous relationships, or brothers and sisters, or parents and adult children, the right to marry.”
Had The New York Times author been intellectually honest, he would have written the context and the entire quote.
Or, if he had wanted to merely paraphrase me, he could have written, “Prager suggested that if same-sex marriage were legalized, there were no arguments against legalizing polygamy and adult incest.”
But that would have sounded a lot less awful than saying I suggested same-sex marriage will lead to polygamy and incest.
So, for as long as human beings and the internet exist, people who wish to dismiss me or my views on same-sex marriage will quote The New York Times mischaracterization. Readers will not know that the quote about same-sex marriage and incest is not mine but that of a New York Times writer.
Lesson No. 2: When used by the mainstream media, the words “divisive” or “contentious” simply mean “leftists disagree with.”
Both words were used in The New York Times piece. The writer wrote that my “political views are divisive” and that I’ve made “other contentious statements.”
But the only reason my views are “divisive” and “contentious” is The New York Times differs with them.
During the eight-year presidency of Barack Obama, did The New York Times once describe anything he did or said as “divisive” or “contentious” (including his pre-2012 opposition to the legalization of same-sex marriage)?
Lesson No. 3: Contrary evidence is omitted.
Despite all the Santa Monica musicians who supported my conducting; despite the musicians from other orchestras—including the Los Angeles Philharmonic—who asked to play when I conducted; and despite the orchestra’s conductor and board members who have followed my work for decades, not one quote in the entire article described me in a positive light.
Rather, the article is filled with quotes describing me in the worst possible way.
Two of the four musicians who wrote the original letter against me are quoted extensively (calling me “horribly bigoted” and saying I help “normalize bigotry”); a gay member of the orchestra is quoted accusing me of writing “some pretty awful things about gay people, women, and minorities” (for the record, I have never written an awful word about gay people, women, or minorities); and the former mayor’s attack on me was quoted.
Lesson No. 4: Subjects are covered in line with left-wing ideology.
The subject of the article could have easily (and more truthfully) been covered in a positive way, as something unifying and uplifting.
“Despite coming from different political worlds, a leading conservative and a very liberal city unite to make music together”—why wasn’t this the angle of the story?
Similarly, instead of its headline, “Santa Monica Symphony Roiled by Conservative Guest Conductor,” the Times could have used a headline and reported the very opposite: “Santa Monica Symphony Stands by Conservative Guest Conductor.”
That also would have conveyed more truth than the actual headline. But the difference between “roiled by” and “stands by” is the difference between a left-wing agenda and truth.
And even with the headline as it appeared in the Times, shouldn’t the story have offered quotes from supportive musicians to balance the negativity? One was left wondering why the invitation to guest conduct was offered to such a person to begin with.
Now let’s go to the Los Angeles Times, which was as negative as The New York Times, though at least its two negative columns were opinion columns—unlike The New York Times, they were not news stories, strictly speaking.
On Aug. 8, Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik, a Pulitzer Prize winner, wrote a column headlined “How right-winger Dennis Prager politicized his own symphony gig—and declared himself the victim.”
The mendacity of the title is quite something. Never in all the years I have conducted orchestras have I used the opportunity to say a political word. My sole purpose has been to conduct orchestras, raise funds for those community orchestras, and bring new people to classical music.
The only people to ever politicize my conducting appearances are a few left-wing musicians and politicians in Santa Monica.
Those people made my conducting a political issue. Yet Hiltzik writes that I am the one who did. “It’s Prager himself who pumped up the political component of the controversy,” he says.
This is a fine example of “the indefensibly corrupt manipulations of language repeated incessantly in our leading media.”
It is also worth noting that every mainstream news source, like the Los Angeles Times, identified me as either “right-wing” or “conservative.”
Commentators and talk show hosts on the left, however, are virtually never identified as “left-wing” or “liberal.” This is because in the closed world of the left, the left is the norm and the right is the aberration.
Hiltzik also wrote that “many in the orchestra find Prager’s views noxious.” That was after writing, “So far, seven musicians have said they won’t perform … leaving 70 still on the roster.”
Apparently, about one out of 10 is “many.” (Hiltzik also didn’t mention the equal number of musicians from other orchestras who asked to play when I conducted.)
Then there was the column by the Los Angeles Times classical music critic, Mark Swed.
He wrote: “Can a divisive public conservative amateur musician conduct an orchestra? That’s asking for trouble.”
Note again the word “divisive”—only conservatives divide because, again, in the mind of the left, left is normative. And in case you missed it the first time, Swed later wrote about my “militant polarizing of issues.”
As a conservative, I am not only divisive. I am a militant polarizer.
Does Swed provide an example of my militant polarizing? Yes, just one: my “calling liberalism a cancer.”
Like The New York Times article, Swed did not place the words he attributed to me in quotation marks, and for good reason.
I have never in my life written or said that “liberalism is a cancer.” What I did write recently is that “leftism is a terminal cancer in the American bloodstream.”
But I always distinguish between leftism and liberalism because the two have almost nothing in common. Leftism is as anti-liberal as it is anti-conservative. But Swed knows that writing “liberalism is a cancer” renders me far more extreme-sounding than writing “leftism is a cancer.”
However, what is most disturbing about Swed is not that he wrote a column against the Santa Monica Symphony inviting me to conduct. Hiltzik wrote a similar piece, after all.
But as irresponsible as Hiltizk’s piece was, Hiltzik is a political columnist. Swed is not. He is a classical music critic.
What he did was one of the reasons I wrote that leftism is a cancer in the American bloodstream: The left damages virtually everything it touches—the arts, education, religion, the economy, the news media, and the military, among other areas of life.
When I was a young man living in New York City, I read every column the legendary New York Times classical music critic Harold C. Schonberg wrote. I do not recall him ever writing a political column.
To this day, I have no idea whether Schonberg was a liberal, a leftist, a conservative, or a Buddhist. He knew his role was to write about music. Swed, a man of the left, does not.
Finally, we come to NPR. It published a piece on Aug. 13 titled “Santa Monica Symphony Orchestra Confronts Controversy Over Right-Wing Guest Conductor.”
Putting the title aside—again, it communicates a negative story when a positive take would have been just as valid—the piece was considerably more balanced than those of the Los Angeles Times or that of The New York Times.
But it had the usual media defect: It gave away its political bent. The second paragraph read:
Dennis Prager’s day job, however, has members of the orchestra up in arms—and laying down their instruments. He is a conservative talk show host who often targets multiculturalism, Muslims and LGBTQ people.
The writer gave an example in each case.
For multiculturalism, she cited a column I wrote titled “1,400 Girls Raped by Multiculturalism.” In it I described the kidnapping and sexual enslavement of over 1,400 English girls by young Muslim men over the course of more than a decade—while the police and the media conspired never to divulge that the rapists were Muslim.
The reason, as British authorities later admitted, was their commitment to multiculturalism.
But for a writer at NPR—even one who did not go out of her way to portray me as a mean-spirited bigot, as The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times did—the mere fact that I wrote a column against multiculturalism explains why members of the orchestra were “up in arms.”
As for “targeting” Muslims, she cited my column titled “Yes, Muslims Should Be Asked to Condemn Islamic Terror.”
In NPR’s moral universe, asking Muslims to condemn Islamic terror is equivalent to “targeting” Muslims. When the left demands that our white president condemn white supremacist violence, is it targeting whites?
And the example she supplied for my “targeting” LGBTQ people is my 2014 critique of judges who, I argued, overreached their authority when they overturned popular votes to keep marriage defined as the union of a man and a woman.
The whole article was a critique of judges, not LGBTQ people. But on the left, merely disagreeing with judges about an LGBTQ issue is “targeting” LGBTQ people.
In summary, all mainstream media coverage of this one story was tainted, biased, often false, and predicated solely on left-wing presumptions.
Magnify what they did to me a thousandfold and you will begin to understand media behavior over the last two generations, and especially behavior today, when hysteria and advocacy have completely replaced news reporting.
The media pay little or no price among those who still believe them.
But I will pay a price. The New York Times lied when it wrote that I “suggested that same-sex marriage would lead to polygamy and incest.” Yet that will be cited forever as if it were true.
It’s already begun. On the night of the concert, the Fox TV station in Los Angeles reported:
"A left-wing attempt to boycott a performance of the Santa Monica Symphony due to a guest appearance by conservative radio host Dennis Prager backfired on Wednesday night; the event was a sellout. … Prager has made controversial comments in the past, saying that he believes gay marriage would lead to incest."
SOURCE
********************************
For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
***************************
27 August, 2017
You've got to love him: Trump has just pardoned America's most favorite sheriff
Trump might get his words mixed up at times and the congressional GOP is too timid to follow him but he delivers on many important things. Here he has delivered long-overdue justice to a great man who had been hounded by nasty Obama bureaucrats. They said his sweeps to nab illegals were "discriminatory". And it's great to see Sheriff Joe looking so fit at his age
President Trump granted a pardon to Joe Arpaio, the former sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz., on Friday.
Arpaio, 85, was recently found guilty of criminal contempt for defying a judge's order to stop traffic patrols that allegedly targeted immigrants.
He had been charged with misdemeanor contempt of court for allegedly willfully defying a judge’s order in 2011 and prolonging his patrols for another 17 months.
Arpaio acknowledged extending the patrols, but insisted it wasn't intentional, blaming one of his former attorneys for not properly explaining the importance of the court order and brushing off the conviction as a "petty crime."
He was expected to be sentenced on Oct. 5 and faced up to six months in jail if convicted.
"Sheriff Joe Arpaio is now 85 years old, and after more than 50 years of admirable service to our Nation, he is worthy candidate for a Presidential pardon," the White House said in a statement.
"I am pleased to inform you that I have just granted a full Pardon to 85 year old American patriot Sheriff Joe Arpaio," the president tweeted on Friday night. "He kept Arizona safe!"
SOURCE
******************************
We Are Finally Moving Towards Actually Free Global Trade
I am a retired musician. I play three instruments – but I sang, is what I mainly did. My first band in high school was big into three-part vocal harmonies. We covered a bunch of songs – and wrote a few – that featured this rousing sound.
One thing you immediately learn (if you didn’t already know it) is that when three or more voices are simultaneous and in harmony – they create a resonance that is louder than the voices operating individually. It is beautiful music – more powerful in coordinated conjunction.
So it is with global trade. Now-President Donald Trump – is introducing proper music education to Washington, D.C.
DC for decades has been perfectly happy with – and accommodating of – the world’s many nations performing from sheet music far different than the pages we have.
The phony “free trade” in which we have long engaged – has had us lowering tariffs and government impediments to the globe’s goods and services entering our market.
While nigh every other nation on the planet has taxed and regulated the living daylight out of nigh everything we send them. While subsidizing the daylight into their domestic products.
Imagine the lead singer in the key of “G” – and every other nation crooning in “C#dim7.” So it now is with global trade. The rest of the planet is in harmonious sync – all working from the same anti-free trade songbook. We’re the lead singer – and our go-it-alone less government trade approach is dissonantly clashing.
These many nations have used our decades of stupidity against us – and have drained hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth out of here and into there. Very many of them have had year after year, decade after decade of ridiculously huge Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth – at our exorbitant expense, as ours continued towards flatline.
Trump has finally pointed out the obvious – that the global trade market is the Emperor with No Tone. That the Singing Emperor – is naked, and off-key. That it’s high time that EVERY nation – join us on the free trade song sheet.
Most of DC – still doesn’t get it. They confuse things like Trump threatening to impose a massive tariff on all things China or tariffs on imported steel – with Trump actually imposing them.
What Trump’s doing – is using the threat of tariffs as a can opener to pry open the world’s closed markets.
And piece by trade piece, Trump is moving us – and the world – in the free trade direction. We’re getting less government impediments to trade – all over the place.
An Ag Subsidy Dream for Buenos Aires: “WTO members this week also wrapped up a session of agriculture talks where they discussed a deluge of six new proposals on farm subsidies….
“On the top of the pile was a proposal led by the European Union and Brazil that aims to limit trade-distortive support by setting a percentage threshold on the amount of support a country can provide as it relates to the total value of its agricultural production. The EU at the meeting said the proposal “provides a new architecture which would put all WTO members on the same basis and encourage reform efforts,” according to a Geneva trade official.”
US Beef is Back on Market in China: “(W)henever changes make foreign sales easier, they are welcome. In that regard, a new trade pact with China is an especially positive development. The door to U.S. beef exports to the world’s most populous nation has been re-opened after being closed for 14 years.
“According to the USDA, the return of U.S. beef and beef products is a part of the U.S.-China 100-Day Action Plan that was announced by the Trump administration on May 11.”
U.S., Mexico Clear Way for NAFTA with New Deal on Sugar Trade: “‘The Mexican side has agreed to nearly every request by the U.S. industry to address flaws in the current system and to ensure fair treatment of American sugar growers,’ Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said at a news conference Tuesday.”
That’s a whole lot less government – all over the world. A shocking novelty in DC trade. And portending a whole lot more less government going forward.
Not everyone doesn’t get it.
Five Good Reasons Trump’s Agenda Is a Win for America: “Trump’s priorities are more than defensible; they are essential to the future of our country….1) Resetting the scales with our trading partners to ensure U.S. workers are treated fairly….5) Letting the world know that the U.S. will stand up for its citizens”
Those are two massively important principles for which to stand. They will vastly improve America’s prospects in innumerable ways.
It is way past time to level the international trade playing field. It has for far too long been tilted sharply against us.
And harmonizing global trade policy – will harmonize a great many other things.
There’s a whole lot less acrimony and mistrust – when everyone knows everyone is getting a good deal.
SOURCE
*******************************
Canada: 10,000 words to describe the rise and fall of Ezra Levant
Except that he hasn’t fallen, and his critics offer no reason whatever why he should. Levant is Canada's most outspoken free speech advocate. There was a fuss recently when one of his reporters gave a hearing to the wrong side in the Charlottesville fracas
Ted Byfield
I had a singular experience last week. I read the longest newspaper story I’ve ever seen. No, it did not concern the assassination of the American president, nor a nuclear attack by North Korea, nor the catastrophic fiscal collapse of the Ottawa government. None of the above.
The astonishing fact is that what filled nearly the whole front page, plus five full inside pages of the National Post newspaper and ran to something like 10,000 words was an account of the rise and fall of a Canadian journalist. Except that he hasn’t quite fallen, and now with this avalanche of free publicity to sustain him, he isn’t likely to. Nor did this gargantuan tome provide any valid reason why he should fall. It was, in other words, as badly reported as it was overwritten,
The man’s name is Ezra Levant, a graduate lawyer from Calgary who opted to go into both the media and politics instead of law. He wrote columns for our magazine, Alberta Report, until it folded, and my son Link and I wrote columns for Ezra’s magazine, the Western Standard, until it folded. Then Ezra moved to Toronto as a commentator on the Sun newspapers’ television channel until it folded as well. (So, alas, it goes with Canada’s conservative media.) But that’s when Ezra came into his own.
He established, some say in his basement, what he called TheRebel Media, an online television news and commentary show that lives up to its name in every possible way. But its audience zoomed upward and with good reason. It covered all the news that the “respectable” media tended to avoid.
This proved fortunate for our province of Alberta. A socialist government took over in 2015 because the conservative ranks had split into two parties. In the circumstance, neither at first provided an effective opposition. This role was effectively filled by the Rebel Media, which the government unsuccessfully tried to ban from the press gallery.
A crisis arose this month, however, when in the uproar over the coverage of the Charlottesville affair led to TheRebel and Levant (himself a Jew) being labelled anti-Semitic. Two key on-air reporters wound up being fired or quitting and at least one major financial backer withdrew his support.
Enter the National Post with what it plainly saw as the opportune moment to write, with ill-disguised satisfaction, the downfall of Ezra and an obituary for TheRebel. In the pursuit of which, the thesis is submitted that what really killed Ezra was his unremitting opposition to Islamic immigration. In the course of this we are introduced to a new term (new to me, anyway) “counter-jihadism.” What it actually means, we are not ever quite told. All we are given to know is that it’s a very bad thing, and being good liberals, that’s all we need to know.
When this sprawling story, first introduced me to this term, I was relieved to see it. At last, I thought, somebody is going to tell us why opposing jihadism is wrong. Wikipedia lists 20,998 deaths and 52,032 wounded in terror attacks, beginning with 9/11. Nearly all are declared to be done in the service of Allah whose teaching is destined to govern the world. That is almost always the given reason for the attacks.
Why is it wrong to try to prevent this? It is the clear responsibility of the writer to fully answer that question. Yet not a single sentence or even phrase in the entire 10,000 words offers to do this. Counter-jihadism is a terrible thing, but we’re nowhere told why.
Perhaps fittingly, the very day before this appeared, the Post had another story, this one from Barcelona, Spain. A van raced down a street crowded with pedestrians. Swerving from side to side to hit as many people as possible, it killed 13 and injured nearly 100. Some were children. The Islamic State “took credit” for the attack. As an acknowledged counter-jihadist, Ezra thinks we should be doing a lot more than we’re doing to stop this stuff. What the National Post thinks we don’t know, and we’ll never find out from this effusion of verbiage.
SOURCE
********************************
For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
***************************
25 August, 2017
A free-speech rally, minus the free speech
Jeff Jacoby
IF ONE LINE captured the essence of Saturday's Boston Common rally and counter-protest, it was a quote halfway through Mark Arsenault's Page 1 story in the Boston Globe:
"'Excuse me,' one man in the counter-protest innocently asked a Globe reporter. 'Where are the white supremacists?'"
That was the day in a nutshell. Participants in the "Boston Free Speech Rally" had been demonized as a troupe of neo-Nazis prepared to reprise the horror that had erupted in Charlottesville. They turned out to be a couple dozen courteous people linked by little more than a commitment to — surprise! — free speech.
The small group on the Parkman Bandstand threatened no one. One of the rally's organizers, a 23-year-old libertarian named John Medlar, had insisted vigorously that its purpose was not to endorse white supremacy. "The rally I'm helping to organize is about promoting Free Speech as a COUNTER to political violence," he had posted on Facebook. "There are NO WHITE SUPREMACISTS speaking at this rally."
Indeed, nothing about the tiny rally, whose organizers had a permit, seemed in any way connected with bigotry or hatred. One of the speakers was Shiva Ayyadurai, an immigrant from India who is seeking the Republican nomination in next year's US Senate race. As Ayyadurai spoke, his supporters held signs proclaiming "Black Lives Do Matter."
But he and the others who gathered at the Parkman Bandstand had never stood a chance of competing with the rumor that neo-Nazis were coming to Boston. That toxic claim was irresponsibly fueled by Mayor Marty Walsh, who denounced the planned rally — "Boston does not want you here" — even though organizers were at pains to stress that they had no connection to Charlottesville's racial agenda and intended to focus on the importance of free speech.
What happened on Saturday was both impressive and distressing.
A massive counter-protest, 40,000 strong, showed up to denounce a nonexistent cohort of racists. Boston deployed hundreds of police officers, who did an admirable job of maintaining order. Some of the counter-protesters screamed, cursed, or acted like thugs — at one point the Boston Police Department warned protesters "to refrain from throwing urine, bottles, and other harmful projectiles" — but most behaved appropriately. Though a few dozen punks were arrested, nobody was seriously hurt.
But free speech took a beating.
The speakers on the Common bandstand were kept from being heard. They were blocked off with a 225-foot buffer zone, and segregated beyond earshot. Police barred anyone from approaching to hear what the rally speakers had to say. Reporters were excluded, too.
Result: The free-speech rally took place in a virtual cone of silence. Its participants "spoke essentially to themselves for about 50 minutes," the Globe reported. "If any of them said anything provocative, the massive crowd did not hear it."
Even some of the rally's own would-be attendees were kept from the bandstand. But when Police Commissioner Bill Evans was asked at a press conference Saturday afternoon whether it was right to treat them that way, he was unapologetic.
"You know what," he said, "if they didn't get in, that's a good thing, because their message isn't what we want to hear."
No, Commissioner Evans. It was not a "good thing" that people with a right to speak were effectively silenced by the operations of the police. The ralliers did nothing wrong. They followed the city's rules. They did what police asked of them. They absorbed the slanders flung at them by the mayor and others. They didn't try to shut their critics down, and they weren't the ones hurling "urine, bottles, and other harmful projectiles."
All they were guilty of was attempting to defend the importance of free speech. For that, they were unjustly smeared as Nazis and their own freedom of speech was mauled.
Boston was kept safe on Saturday, for which city authorities deserve great credit. But in the course of preventing a riot, those authorities rode roughshod over the free-speech rights of a small, disfavored minority. That is never a good thing, whatever the police commissioner may think.
SOURCE
*****************************
The hysteria over Russia is hurting democracy
When it comes to Russia, Trump is often more rational than his critics
President Donald Trump signed a Senate bill last week designed to enforce sanctions on Iran, North Korea and, most significantly, Russia. Unusually, the bill also specifically limits any executive measures the president could take to get around the sanctions, requiring him to go first to Congress. The sanctions’ impact on Russia may be fairly limited, but what’s important is what they symbolise; namely, Congress’s determination to stop Trump from softening relations between Russia and the US. Which is why American and Russian pundits claimed that, as a result of the bill, any possible Russia-US détente had just been thrown into the deepest part of the ocean.
However, the sanctions bill is not just about Russia, or indeed Iran and North Korea. The real story here is the crisis within the US. It is going through a process not entirely dissimilar to the Soviet Union in the 1980s, when the entire political elite was in meltdown, and had lost contact with its own citizens. Yuri Andropov is purported to have said to the 1983 Soviet Communist Party plenum that the Soviet ruling elite no longer knew its own society. The same can be said of America’s ruling elite today. It bears repeating that a collapsing American establishment has even chosen the extraordinary path of arguing that its own democratic system has been taken over by a foreign power in preference to engaging with its estrangement from vast swathes of the public.
The level of hysteria in the US over Russia is incredible and it has ominous consequences for free speech. For instance, the long-established think tank, the German Marshal Fund of the United States, has just set up a project to ‘track Russian influence’ in the US. As an article in the Nation noted, it looks as if any outlet critical of anything in America can be classified as Russian propaganda, including not just the Moscow-backed Russia Today or Sputnik, but The Atlantic and Fox News. Remember, this is not the work of Trump and his supposed ‘fascist’ administration, but the so-called Resistance. As the old saying goes, with friends like these, American democracy has no need of enemies.
The Russian political establishment, given its statements and actions, is well aware of the internal American crisis. Hence Russian retaliation to the new sanctions has been low key, affecting mainly locally hired Russians, rather than Americans. The Kremlin has also said that despite the sanctions, it is still open to dialogue with the White House.
This latest White House-Kremlin drama obscures other changes in US relations with Russia and the rest of the world. Look at the EU’s criticism of the sanctions, for instance. This is because the bill gives the president the ability to impose sanctions on any company (including European) that contributes to the development or operation of energy export pipelines not just in Russia, but in Europe, too, or involves itself in oil ventures with Russian companies – a power that certainly affects the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany.
The EU has said that the US is acting in accordance with its own economic interests, and promised retaliation against the US if necessary. We’re a long way from a trade war, but the EU’s stance towards the US is more aggressive than it has been for decades.
Meanwhile, in other spheres, Russia and the US are actually cooperating – in Syria, for example. Until recently, Syria had been a site of major potential conflict between Russia and the US. Contrary to some commentary, this was not because American and Russian airforces were in the same airspace. That there was never an incident between the two suggests very effective military-to-military communication since Russia entered the war at Assad’s invitation in 2015.
Rather, the point of potential conflict was the extent to which the US, under the Obama administration, was pushing for regime change in Syria. Russia has explicitly said that it would not permit another Iraq to unfold in Syria. As a result, it did appear that the US, in conjunction with the UAE and others, was preparing for war with Russia in Syria.
It seems, however, that the current US administration really is going to follow through on Trump’s original promise to disengage from Syria. Despite the Trump administration’s decision to bomb a Syrian airfield in April, after last month’s Trump-Putin meeting, it was announced that several ‘de-escalation zones’ had been agreed.
It is notable that unlike the US-Russia announcements of various ceasefires and deals that took place in 2016, this deal was worked out behind closed doors rather than conducted in public. These agreements seem to be working and ISIS is now being rolled back in both Syria and Iraq. Trump has also announced the end of the CIA programme of funding of Syrian anti-Assad Islamists.
While some pundits ludicrously called this a sop to Moscow (as if arming radical Islamist jihadists was not in any way problematic), this particular CIA programme was actually losing support under Obama. As one observer pointed out, Trump’s decision was partially motivated by a video of fighters from one of the West-backed anti-Assad groups, the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement, beheading a little boy. This should be mandatory viewing for pro-interventionists.
On the flipside, NATO-Russian relations are at their worst since the end of the Cold War. We are seeing a remilitarisation of the Baltics and Poland and supposedly neutral countries such as Sweden. Several American newspapers have reported that the Pentagon has just made public a proposal to arm Ukraine with anti-tank missiles, a plan drawn up under, but rejected by, the Obama administration, although the Pentagon has been training Ukrainian soldiers since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. There is no information yet as to whether the White House will consider the plan.
However, within NATO there are backstage dramas, too. Turkey for example may still be a NATO member in principle, but whether it is in fact is another question. Disagreements over funding ISIS (Turkey, along with the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, has been a key funder and supporter of ISIS in Syria), and claims that the US was behind the attempted coup in Turkey in 2016, and a recent Turkish purchase of billions of dollars’ worth of military hardware from Russia, suggest that all is not well in the NATO family.
Last year, the German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said NATO was playing a provocative and destabilising role in relations with Russia. Several EU countries, including Germany, although not the UK, are understandably hostile to the idea of arming Ukraine on the grounds that it will inevitably lead to more conflict.
The sanctions bill, then, is about more than the US-Russia relationship. It is about what is going on within the US itself. The confusion and collapse of the American political elite is accelerating geopolitical trends that have been developing since the 1990s. The sanctions bill certainly will not help relations between Russia and the US, but for all the claims that it will destroy the relationship for good, the relationship is probably more complex than it has been since the Second World War. Cooperation and conflict now exist in so many different areas and it is changing all the time.
SOURCE
**********************************
Democrat leaders fail to denounce violence in Phoenix
Commentary on the speech itself here
Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today called on leaders in the Democrat Party to denounce the violence on the streets of Phoenix, Ariz. after President Donald Trump’s speech there last night:
“Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren should all denounce the attempt by the violent political wing of the Democrat Party known as Antifa, Black Lives Matter and Resist to shut down a speech by the President to his supporters. The effect of these Democrat Party surrogate groups is to attempt to stifle and intimidate Americans from being able to attend an event featuring the duly elected President of the United States. Democrat Party leaders face a crossroads of whether to embrace violence as a legitimate means of political protest or to denounce it.
“There is no place for the kind of hate displayed on the streets of Phoenix last night in a civilized nation and anything less than a complete shunning by leaders of the violent Antifa, Black Lives Matter and Resist movement’s actions in Phoenix is acceptable, disqualifying them from serving in office. Anyone who fails to condemn political violence in all of its forms is not fit to serve.”
SOURCE
******************************
For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
***************************
24 August, 2017
What is a white supremacist?
In the aftermath of Charlottesville, where a varied group of marchers were set upon and halted by violent Leftist attackers, the media were unanimous in describing the marchers as "white supremacists". When President Trump disagreed with that description, he was mightily abused.
But what is a white supremacist? How do we define that and how do we tell that there were any white supremicists among the Charlottesville marchers? The Left neither define "white supremacist" nor prove that there were any at Charlottesville. We are apparently required to take them at their word and not question any part of it. But what if it was fake news?
Let us then attempt a definition so that we can go on and sanely discuss the matter. Let us say that a white supremacist is someone who believes that whites are supreme in the world. Would the Left like that definition? I suspect that they would. But what student of history could think otherwise? From the industrial revolution of a couple of hundred years or so ago whites have dominated everything. From steam trains to nuclear reactors, practically every innovation has come from whites. And whites have used those innovations to assist their mastery of what was happening in the world. Other races tagged along and imitated whites to various degrees but it is white civilization that has made the running. It has been and still is dominant.
So in mentioning that plain truth am I a white supremacist? I have been called it but what alternative account of the last 200 years could I give? I cannot see that I am doing any more than describing reality. But Leftists never do seem to like reality. So, OK. I have outed myself as a white supremacist.
The only problem is that I don't think I am one. I think that white supremacy is a passing phase. I think that by the end of this century China will be supreme in most ways. I may be wrong but that is what I see as the trend. So I guess that I am a pretty funny white supremacist.
Which brings me to another possible definition of a white supremacist-- someone who thinks that whites SHOULD be supreme. But why would anybody bother to think that? "Should" implies that what should happen has not yet happened. But it has happened. Whites are already supreme.
But I suppose there are some people who think that whites should fight to remain supreme -- attack China maybe. Good luck with that. That would be insanity.
So who or where are these white supremacists that the media talk about? There were about two marchers who carried swastika flags so are they the ones? As it happens, I know a bit about neo-Nazis so maybe I can help there. I did an extensive study of them some years ago, the results of which appeared in Jewish academic journals. See here and here. So I have a very good idea of what modern-day Nazis think.
And they know very well that whites are already supreme. So what they want is to preserve that from attack and undermining. They want it acknowledged and defended. They also don't like Jews of course.
But take away the antisemitism and what you have is actually a form of patriotism. But instead of being supportive of one nation, they are supportive of a group of (white) nations: Rather like what the EU aims at.
So the extent to which they are aggressive, they want to DEFEND traditional white civilization. They don't want to impose it. It exists already. The one door you cannot open is one that is open already.
And as far as I can tell, the Charlottesville marchers were also defensive. They didn't want part of their culture attacked and subjugated to a new "politically correct" ideology. The Left are undisputably on the attack to erase much about existing society that they disapprove of so the perception of having much that they regard as right and good as being under attack was a perfectly realistic one among the marchers.
For most Americans, political correctness only nibbles at the edges of their lives so they feel no need to go out and march against it but we must expect that some people will resent the nibbling and see a need to protest against it. And that is what we saw at Charlottesville as far as I can tell. There were NO white supremacists there. But there were there people who wanted their traditions, customs and beliefs respected and defended -- JR.
***************************
The New York Times Continues Its Tradition of Whitewashing Communism
The New York Times now has actually found a way to create fanciful notions of Soviet-style authoritarianism—and whimsical tales of its influence in America—in a new section dedicated to the “Red Century,” which explores “the history and legacy of communism, 100 years after the Russian Revolution.”
Romanticized Tyranny
While some of the pieces explore the horrors and failures of communist rule, others delve into topics that would seem funny if the subject matter weren’t so horrifying.
For instance, the Times ran what can aptly be described as a “puff piece” on Vladimir Lenin, the man who led the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and is linked to the death and murder of millions of people.
The article, titled “Lenin’s Eco-Warriors,” paints the man as some kind of Siberian John Muir, and incredibly concludes that leaving “landscapes on this planet where humans do not tread” was the Soviet dictator’s “legacy.”
As absurd as that piece was, the Times managed to outdo itself with another article on, no joke, “Why Women Had Better Sex Under Socialism.”
This piece is an idealized account of how life under an absolutist government could be liberating and possibly a better model for the feminist movement.
The author wrote:
"Those comrades’ insistence on government intervention may seem heavy-handed to our postmodern sensibilities, but sometimes necessary social change—which soon comes to be seen as the natural order of things—needs an emancipation proclamation from above."
The absurdly romanticized account of life under tyrannical government explains little of the hopelessness of a system where an individual has no hope and no future.
These examples certainly weren’t the first, or the worst, instances of the Times engaging in communist revisionism. One of the most egregious examples of “fake news” in the mid-20th century was conducted by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Walter Duranty in the 1930s.
Fake News
Duranty, who was the Times’ Moscow bureau chief, wrote a series of glowing pieces about the USSR’s policies under General Secretary Josef Stalin in 1931.
While millions of people were starving in Ukraine, Duranty reported back that things were going swimmingly under the communist regime despite a few bumps in the road.
“Enemies and foreign critics can say what they please,” Duranty wrote. “Weaklings and despondents at home may groan under the burden, but the youth and strength of the Russian people is essentially at one with the Kremlin’s program, believes it worthwhile and supports it, however hard be the sledding.”
He attacked reports that portrayed the Soviet policies in a negative light as “malignant propaganda.”
Though the total number of deaths due to forced starvation in the Holodomor is unknown, estimates are generally around 3 million from 1932 to 1933.
Despite his blatant misreporting, Duranty was never stripped of his Pulitzer and has still been listed on the Times’ honor roll.
It would be good on The New York Times if it ran a piece about Duranty’s egregious reporting and disinformation campaign that gave Americans a distorted picture of communist reality, but, alas, that hasn’t happened amid the various fables about socialist “successes.”
It may seem easy to dismiss The New York Times accounts as eyerolling fantasies of the left trying to defend a broken ideology, but the danger of this historical revisionism is real.
Dangerous Historical Fantasy
A worrying study sponsored by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation found that millennials are generally clueless about communism. “Just 37 percent of millennials had a ‘very unfavorable’ view of communism, compared to 57 percent of Americans overall,” according to a Daily Signal report.
Perhaps even worse, a full third of millennials say they think that more people were killed under former President George W. Bush than under Stalin.
As The New York Times joins with others to peddle a warped image of what communism is really about, generations that have never witnessed its horror may be lulled into buying the clichéd line that “real communism has never been tried.”
As historian Sean McMeekin wrote in his book, “The Russian Revolution,” after communism’s “century of well-catalogued disasters … no one should have the excuse of ignorance.”
Communist revival is growing in Western countries even as it is nearly extinct in places it was tried. This is folly fueled by historical blindness.
“Today’s Western socialists, dreaming of a world where private property and inequality are outlawed, where rational economic development is planned by far-seeing intellectuals, should be careful what they wish for,” McMeekin wrote. “They may just get it.”
SOURCE
**************************
Noxious Leftist hysteria
A sports broadcaster for ESPN was scheduled to call a game played by the University of Virginia’s football team, but he was pulled from the gig because his name is Robert Lee. It was determined by all concerned that in the interests of racial sensitivity, it would be better if Mr. Lee were replaced by someone with a less unfortunate name.
The thing is, this particular Robert Lee is not the scion of a benighted Southern family. He is not even white. He is an Asian — not a British-type “Asian” from Pakistan, but a man of Chinese descent who speaks both Mandarin and English. His surname is sometimes spelled “Li”. It’s very common in China.
SOURCE
*********************************
A thought experiment: Would blowing up Charlotte St. create any problem?
In my burg there is a skyscraper in Charlotte St which houses most of the State government bureaucracy. So what would happen if some Muslim blew the whole thing up, killing all the bureaucrats in it?
There would be much wringing of hands of course but what would change in the lives of my fellow citizens?
The supermarkets would still be open; the trains would still be running; the traffic lights would still work; the farmers would still bring their produce to market; the abbatoirs would still be slaughtering and selling carcases to butchers, bakers would still be baking; dentists would still be fixing teeth; the great turbines in our coal-fired power stations would still be spinning; the police would still be attending crimes about an hour late; and doctors would still be handing out prescriptions.
And so it goes. I cannot see that the inhabitants of the Charlotte St. tower would be missed. Are they any use to us at all? Why not dismiss them all and leave the tower empty? I cannot see anything that we need them for -- JR.
******************************
For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
***************************
23 August, 2017
Leftist supremacists, not white supremacists, are the big danger
The Master Party would rather destroy America than question its own superiority
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical left and Islamic terrorism.
The Democrats went into the election certain that they were going to win. The New York Times rated Hillary’s chances at 93%. The Huffington Post raised that to 98%. That was still too modest for Obama campaign manager David Plouffe who predicted a 100% likelihood of Hillary winning.
It wasn’t strategy or statistics that made the Dems think that victory was certain. It was ideology.
Obama had spent two terms telling them that they were on the “right side of history”. The more the Dems swung left, the closer to the right side of history they were. Their leftist views were naturally superior. They were based on science while their opponents were superstitious buffoons. They were enlightened while their enemies were bigots. They were smart and conservatives were dumb.
Delusions of superiority had convinced them that Republicans couldn’t win an honest election. When Bush won, it was because his brother and the Supreme Court had rigged the election. The Republican victories that swept much of the country were only due to voter suppression and redistricting.
The Democrats had allowed themselves to believe that they were so innately superior that they couldn’t lose an election except through fraud or dirty tricks. The humiliating defeats of McGovern, Carter, Mondale and Dukakis were all in the past. They had gone so far to the left that they couldn’t lose.
They had confused ideology with electability. The fallacy of fanatics is the conviction that their beliefs explain reality. And that following their beliefs must therefore lead to a successful outcome.
Leftists had convinced themselves that winning elections was an inevitable as the success of ObamaCare and the rejuvenation of the economy. Their media became a propaganda echo chamber filled with their own assurances of inevitable victory. But ObamaCare failed, the economy lingered and Trump won.
Instead of realizing that they had been lying to themselves, they seized on conspiracy theories.
Convinced of their natural superiority, members of the Master Party believed that their subjective contempt for Republicans in general and Trump specifically was an objective truth. It wasn’t that they despised conservatives. No, conservatives were inherently despicable. And Trump was so despicable and so absurd that he just had to lose. It was inconceivable that he couldn’t have lost. So he had lost.
Human beings don’t react well to having their egomaniacal fantasies come apart around them.
After losing World War I, many Germans seized on the Dolchstosslegende or the Stab-in-the-Back theory to explain what happened. The German military didn’t lose the war. It was undermined and stabbed in the back. Otherwise, despite the collapse of its allies and the entry of the United States, it would have won. The Nazis rode the Dolchstosslegende all the way into power. And to an even more devastating defeat in an even more devastating war all while trying to disprove the fact that America, the United Kingdom, France and Russia really could beat them in a war once there were no more Jews in Germany.
You can deny reality, but reality always wins.
Unsurprisingly, the Dolchstosslegende was most popular with German military leaders. Likewise the Democrat Dolchstosslegende arose from the ranks of Hillary’s campaign leaders. It’s those in charge of the losing team who have the most incentive to blame anyone and everyone else. The Nazis blamed a long list of people including the Jews. The Democrats blamed everyone from the FBI to the Russians.
Hillary has become another Hindenburg touting her own Dolchstosslegende. Her latest book, ‘What Happpened’, will put the Dolchstosslegende into print. It will list everyone who lost the election for her. ‘What Happened’ may be an awkward title, but calling it ‘Mein Kampaign’ might have been a bit much.
The Hillary Dolchstosslegende tearing apart our country passes itself off as patriotism. The Nazis claimed that they were patriots too. But Dolchstosslegendes aren’t patriotic. They’re exercises in divisiveness by losers who don’t want to take responsibility for their stupidity, incompetence and hypocrisy.
Hillary went from pressing a reset button with one of Putin’s minions to a posthumous political campaign claiming that Putin had rigged the election. Never mind that even if Russian hackers did leak Podesta’s emails, less than 1% of Americans have any idea who Podesta is or cared about the contents of his chats. But Podesta’s emails embarrassed the future promoters of the Dolchstosslegende.
And that’s why the Dolchstosslegende’s humiliated inventors are obsessed with their own emails.
John Podesta and Robby Mook had formulated the Russian Dolchstosslegende after her defeat. Podesta and Mook, like General Ludendorff and Hindenburg had the most need to assign failure elsewhere. And millions of loyalists were eager to be convinced that they had not truly been defeated.
The Clinton campaign was as big of a disaster as the Hindenburg Program. Both were Socialist projects that substituted technocracy for common sense leading to utter disaster. Rather than admit that their plan didn’t work, Hindenburg and Ludendorff blamed the defeat on the battlefield and misery at home on a conspiracy. The Nazis then tried to prove that a Socialist militarized industry could work once you got rid of all the possible conspirators. After killing six millions Jews, National Socialism still didn’t work.
Meanwhile Clintonworld had been trying to prove that Hillary’s ’08 loss to Obama was a fluke. They proved it by rigging the Dem primaries only to have Hillary lose the general election. And so out came more excuses. Hillary was an unbeatable candidate. The left was unbeatable. It was a conspiracy.
The myths of the undefeated Germany and the undefeated Democrats were rooted in a false conviction of superiority. A populace glutted on an endless diet of propaganda found it inconceivable that they had lost. As a dog returns to its vomit, the Democrats began licking the propaganda out of their media sewer twice as hard. They ate up the lies that they hadn’t lost, the promises that they would soon reclaim what was rightfully theirs and that everyone who had conspired against them would soon be punished.
Then they turned to street violence and attempted coups… because those worked so well in Germany.
At the maddest there are the ravings of Twitter experts who promise that the intelligence community will shortly be rounding up and executing all the traitors. But even the mainstream media, CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times feed their readers a poisonous glut of the Dolchstosslegende.
It’s bad for the Democrats and it’s worse for the democracy.
Instead of learning from their defeat, an entire political party, its elected officials and a sizable portion of its base have convinced themselves once again that a presidential election was illegitimate. They have staked their hopes on a coup, ranging from military intervention to impeachment, to undo it all.
Instead of questioning the superiority of their leftist ideology, they have doubled down on it. Like the National Socialists, the Socialist supporters of the far left have turned to street violence, they fantasize about military coups and media coups, without caring about the damage that they are doing to America.
The Democrats believed that they would win the election because their left-wing politics were absolutely right. Now they are convinced that they will pull off their coup because they are even more fanatically left-wing in 2017 than they were in 2016. This same logic led the Nazis to destroy Germany. And the Democrats have learned absolutely nothing about the dangers of delusional fanaticism.
They were told that they are on the right side of history. And if the right side of history requires wrecking the political process, a coup and a civil war, they are willing to pay it. Just as in the election, they can’t lose because they’re on the right side of history. Wherever they end up must be utopia.
They are willing to destroy everything rather than question their delusions of superiority.
The Soviet Union attributed all its setbacks to sabotage, rather than policy failures. Muslims continue to believe that they lost their last Caliphate, the Ottoman Empire, due to an assortment of conspiracies from the Jews and the Freemasons. The Dolchstosslegende is as ubiquitous as it is destructive. It is seductive because it tells us the lie that we most wish to believe in our darkest hour.
The lie is that we did nothing wrong and do not need to change.
The Democrats’ Dolchstosslegende is the surest way of turning 2020 into a repeat of 2016.
SOURCE
********************************
THE CHARLOTTESVILLE BIG LIE
To my surprise, on Fox News’ “Outnumbered,” the usually thoughtful Kennedy said about President Trump’s reaction to the Charlottesville violence, “If he had said the right words, we wouldn’t be talking about this.” Sorry, Kennedy, but you’re wrong. No matter what Trump would have said, the left, as well as the FNM and establishment sewer rats in the Republican Party, would have found fault with it.
That said, what most people have missed in this ugly story is that while hysteriacs in the FNM scream relentlessly that “there is only one side to this” (i.e., that white supremacists were the only ones resorting to violence in Charlottesville), the actual facts tell a much different story.
Let’s get this out on the table once and for all without fear of ugly backlash: White supremacists are hateful and potentially dangerous, to be sure, but, fortunately, they are relatively few in number. Consider that out of a population of 330 million, the white supremacists in Charlottesville attracted only about 500 like-minded people.
The other major fact that the FNM is totally ignoring is that it’s the Radical Left, not the right, that resorts to violence on a regular basis, as seen in Ferguson, Baltimore, Berkeley, and elsewhere throughout the United States. It’s not surprising then that they were more than happy to engage in battle the right-wing protesters in Charlottesville.
Numerous pundits have pounced on the FNM talking point that putting the Radical Left on the same moral plane as white supremacists is outrageous. In the words of fearless truth-teller David Webb, such a contention is intellectual cowardice at its worst.
The whole thing is an attempt to do what the Radical Left does best — intimidate those people with opposing views into silence. Of course the Radical Left is just as bad as white supremacists. Why are so many people afraid to admit something that is so clearly supported by the raw facts? Doing so doesn’t mean that you support white supremacists, only that you are being honest.
As I have repeatedly stated, violence is the most prominent trademark of the Radical Left, not only in the United States, but throughout the world. The one thing that makes these angry folks worse than white supremacists, if that’s possible, is that they put their hatred on display 365 days a year.
By contrast, white supremacists, despicable as they may be, are so pathetic and so small in numbers that, as much as the FNM would like us to believe otherwise, right-wing violence is, thankfully, exceedingly rare in America.
So I guess you could say that the one good thing that came out of the Charlottesville melee is that it reminded thinking people — repeat, thinking people — that white supremacists are not a serious threat to Americans. If they were, this single event would not have received such over-the-top coverage. It’s precisely because we don’t hear much from this loathsome group of losers that the Charlottesville brawl was such big news.
The truth be known, the Radical Left has been hoping for a showdown like Charlottesville for a long time. The tragic Oklahoma City bombing of a federal building more than two decades ago, as horrific as it was, has grown stale, and the Radical Left has desperately needed a violent event instigated by right-wing extremists.
I should point out here the obvious fact that white supremacist groups do not represent conservative values. True conservatives stand unequivocally against violence, regardless of who perpetrates it, and believe in free speech for everyone. By contrast, the Radical Left openly advocates violence and actively tries to shut down speakers with whom it disagrees.
As to Donald Trump, he’s been in the public spotlight for more than four decades, and during that time there has never been a hint of bigotry attributed to him — i.e., not until he did the unthinkable and became a president intent on draining the swamp in Washington. For committing such an unforgivable sin, he is now compared to Adolf Hitler and Kim Jong-un.
All this is once again a reminder of the overarching problem when it comes to racism —identity politics, which is a cowardly tool the Radical Left never tires of using. It’s also important to understand that the key to the success of the Radical Left when it comes to identity politics is the support it receives from Republican toadies like Marco Rubio, John McCain, Mitch McConnell, and Paul Ryan. If Republicans had the moral courage to hang together like the Democrats do, identity politics would be overwhelmed and buried under the facts.
Disgusting is the only way I can describe the total disregard for the facts surrounding Charlottesville by the FNM, toady Republicans, and, of course, all liberals. The FNM has reached yet another new low in its false portrayal of the Charlottesville rioting and Donald Trump’s response to it, and it is yet another example of The Big Lie that Joseph Goebbels so openly spoke about:
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
Goebbels would have loved the big lie that is being perpetuated about Charlottesville. David Webb had it right when he used the term “intellectual cowardice,” because it perfectly describes the immoral folks who are pushing a false narrative about the violence in Charlottesville — the same folks who gave us that never-to-be-forgotten whopper, “Hands up, don’t shoot.”
SOURCE
******************************
For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
***************************
22 August, 2017
U.S. Has 3.5 Million More Registered Voters Than Live Adults — A Red Flag For Electoral Fraud
Elections: American democracy has a problem — a voting problem. According to a new study of U.S. Census data, America has more registered voters than actual live voters. It's a troubling fact that puts our nation's future in peril.
The data come from Judicial Watch's Election Integrity Project. The group looked at data from 2011 to 2015 produced by the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey, along with data from the federal Election Assistance Commission.
As reported by the National Review's Deroy Murdock, who did some numbers-crunching of his own, "some 3.5 million more people are registered to vote in the U.S. than are alive among America's adult citizens. Such staggering inaccuracy is an engraved invitation to voter fraud."
Murdock counted Judicial Watch's state-by-state tally and found that 462 U.S. counties had a registration rate exceeding 100% of all eligible voters. That's 3.552 million people, who Murdock calls "ghost voters." And how many people is that? There are 21 states that don't have that many people.
Nor are these tiny, rural counties or places that don't have the wherewithal to police their voter rolls.
California, for instance, has 11 counties with more registered voters than actual voters. Perhaps not surprisingly — it is deep-Blue State California, after all — 10 of those counties voted heavily for Hillary Clinton.
Los Angeles County, whose more than 10 million people make it the nation's most populous county, had 12% more registered voters than live ones, some 707,475 votes. That's a huge number of possible votes in an election.
But, Murdock notes, "California's San Diego County earns the enchilada grande. Its 138% registration translates into 810,966 ghost voters."
State by state, this is an enormous problem that needs to be dealt with seriously. Having so many bogus voters out there is a temptation to voter fraud. In California, where Hillary Clinton racked up a massive majority over Trump, it would have made little difference.
But in other states, and in smaller elections, voter fraud could easily turn elections. A hundred votes here, a hundred votes there, and things could be very different. As a Wikipedia list of close elections shows, since just 2000 there have been literally dozens of elections at the state, local and federal level decided by 100 votes or fewer.
And, in at least two nationally important elections in recent memory, the outcome was decided by a paper-thin margin: In 2000, President Bush beat environmental activist and former Vice President Al Gore by just 538 votes.
Sen. Al Franken, the Minnesota Democrat, won his seat by beating incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman in 2008. Coleman was initially declared the winner the day after the election, with a 726-vote lead over Franken. But after a controversial series of recounts and ballot disqualifications, Franken emerged weeks later with a 225-seat victory.
Franken's win was enormous, since it gave Democrats filibuster-proof control of the Senate. So, yes, small vote totals matter.
We're not saying here that Franken cheated, nor, for that matter, that Bush did. But small numbers can have an enormous impact on our nation's governance. The 3.5 million possible fraudulent ballots that exist are a problem that deserves serious immediate attention. Nothing really hinges on it, of course, except the integrity and honesty of our democratic elections.
SOURCE
*****************************
Trump-Endorsed Immigration Bill Would Save Taxpayers Trillions
Earlier this month, President Donald Trump endorsed the RAISE (Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment) Act introduced by Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and David Perdue, R-Ga., a bill to reform the merit-based immigration system and limit low-skill immigration.
Low-skill immigration is very costly to U.S. taxpayers. For example, a legal immigrant without a high school degree typically receives $4 in government benefits for every $1 he pays in taxes.
By limiting future low-skill immigration, the RAISE Act has the potential to save U.S. taxpayers trillions of dollars in future years.
There are 12.8 million low-skill legal immigrants with a high school degree or less currently residing in the U.S. The households headed by these low-skill legal immigrants impose a net fiscal cost (total government benefits received minus total taxes paid) of $150 billion each year.
The $150 billion tax burden is equivalent to a $1.04 tax on every gallon of gas purchased by U.S. motorists every year for the foreseeable future.
The RAISE Act seeks to curtail future fiscal costs linked to low-skill immigration by eliminating chain migration, the visa lottery, and the current low-skill worker allotment. It also caps the future flow of refugees and asylees.
Nearly 400,000 legal immigrants enter the U.S. through these channels each year. The majority of these appear to be low-skill.
The bill’s reforms to chain migration are particularly important.
Chain migration starts with a foreign citizen who is given a green card. This individual is allowed to bring in his or her nuclear family consisting of a spouse and minor children.
Once the original immigrant and his or her spouse become U.S. citizens, they can petition for their parents, adult sons and daughters, and adult siblings and brothers- and sisters-in-law to also enter.
This second group can bring their minor children. Once they become citizens, the brothers- and sisters-in-law and parents can petition for their siblings, in-laws, and parents to legally enter the U.S.
The RAISE bill limits future chain migration. Each future migrant can bring only nuclear family members.
Parents can be brought to the country on a guest visa but will not be given access to government benefits or citizenship status. The sponsors must demonstrate that they have purchased insurance to cover the future medical costs of the parent.
The U.S. tax and benefit system is redistributive—it provides extensive benefits to less skill/low-wage individuals while asking them to pay comparatively less in taxes. On average, low-skill individuals, whether non-immigrants, legal immigrants, or illegal immigrants, impose substantial costs on U.S. taxpayers.
The report’s calculation of government benefits is comprehensive—it includes routine government services such as police and fire protection, highways and sewers; public education costs; benefits from over 80 means-tested welfare programs such as Medicaid, food stamps, the earned income tax credit, and housing vouchers; and other government direct benefits, including Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance.
The report also provides a comprehensive analysis of taxes paid at the federal, state, and local levels, including personal income taxes, FICA taxes, sales taxes, excise taxes, property, and business taxes.
Having estimated the government benefits received and the total taxes paid, the report then analyzes the fiscal balance (total government benefits received minus total taxes paid) for immigrants and non-immigrants with different levels of education.
The report shows that less educated individuals, whether immigrants or non-immigrants, receive far more in government benefits than they pay in taxes.
In particular, the report provides 75-year projections for the fiscal balance of immigrants and their immediate descendants based on the immigrant’s education level. It measures future cost in "net present value."
Based on the National Academy of Sciences’ estimates, the average low-skill immigrant (with a high school degree or less) who enters the country imposes a net present value on taxpayers of negative $142,000.
This means the government would need to immediately raise a lump sum of $142,000 and put it in a high-yield bank account to cover the future net fiscal cost (total benefits minus total taxes) of that immigrant.
The National Academy of Sciences’ cost figures represent a mixture of costs for legal and illegal immigrants. The RAISE Act is focused directly on low-skill legal immigrants.
Since low-skill legal immigrants receive more benefits, their fiscal impact is greater than similar illegal immigrants. The net present value for a legal immigrant with a high school degree or less is around negative $170,000, and the undiscounted long-term fiscal cost (benefits minus taxes) would be around $476,000 in constant 2012 dollars.
Over the last decade and a half, an average of 470,000 low-skill adult immigrants (both legal and illegal) have arrived in the U.S. each year. The net present value of this inflow is around negative $67 billion per year.
Of course, in the next year another 470,000 would arrive, requiring another lump sum payment of $800 per taxpaying household. The year after, another 470,000 will arrive, requiring another $800 per taxpaying household, and so on.
Fiscal costs can also be analyzed per decade. Under existing government laws and policies, an estimated 4.7 million low-skill immigrants (both legal and illegal) are likely to enter the U.S. over the next decade.
The fiscal net present values of these immigrants to the taxpayers will be around negative $670 billion. In other words, government would need to immediately raise taxes by $670 billion to cover the future costs.
Of course, the government will not actually raise taxes in this manner—instead, the future costs will be hidden and passed on to future taxpayers.
The future net outlays (benefits given less taxes paid) for the inflow of 4.7 million low-skill immigrants will be around $1.9 trillion (in constant 2012 dollars).
Over half these costs are linked to future low-skill legal immigration. By limiting future legal low-skill immigration, the RAISE Act could save at least $1 trillion.
Additional large savings could be achieved by limiting future illegal immigration. These saving figures apply to only a single decade of low-skill immigration. Similar savings would occur by limiting low-skill immigration in subsequent decades.
Opponents of such reforms argue that such immigration increases the gross domestic product.
It is true that immigration increases the GDP, but as Harvard immigration economist George Borjas explains, 98 percent of the increase "goes to the immigrants themselves in the form of wages and benefits."
Metaphorically speaking, low-skill immigrants increase the economic pie, but they eat nearly all the increase themselves.
Low-skill immigration reduces the wages of similar U.S.-born workers. An immigration-induced increase in the low-skill labor force of 10 percent can reduce the wages of low-skill non-immigrant labor by 3 to 10 percent.
Some studies show wage losses as high as 17 percent. Black male wages and employment are especially hard hit. By reducing wages of less skilled non-immigrants, low-skill immigration increases economic inequality in the U.S., redistributing income from the least advantaged Americans to the more affluent.
Finally, low-skill immigration shifts the political balance in the nation.
According to Cooperative Congressional Election Survey, the political alignment of immigrants is far to the left that of non-immigrants. Immigrants in general are twice as likely to identify with and register as Democrats than as Republicans.
This pattern is somewhat more pronounced among immigrants without a high school degree who are almost three times as likely to register as Democrats than as Republicans.
Low-skill immigration imposes large fiscal costs on U.S. taxpayers. It drives down the wages and employment of the disadvantaged American workers (especially black males), and it arbitrarily shifts the political balance in the U.S.
The RAISE Act would appropriately address these problems.
SOURCE
******************************
For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
***************************
21 August, 2017
A very small update:
I will probably have to delete this post some time -- but -- I have just spent several hours drinking hard likker with my son. He drinks Bourbon. I drink gin. And we have decided that -- much as we love Mr Trump -- Steve Bannon is the man who really speaks for us. We understand that he is not the right man for political compromise but we are still grateful to have a man of great influence who represents us!
An update to an update:
I failed to mention that my son had a bottle of a single-malt whisky from Islay -- that a good friend had given him for his birthday. So I got a wee dram of that at one stage. And it was exactly the peaty taste that you expect from Islay.
The pedagogue in me comes out even in my cups, however, so I note that Islay is in the Inner Hebrides due west of Glasgow -- hence the famous song about Islay: "Westering home":
21 August, 2017
Why did the police stay idle during the Charlottesville mayhem?
There are common police methods to deal with such situations and have been for decades. That they were not used suggests instructions from on high, most likely from Democrat governor McAuliffe. Did McAuliffe WANT mayhem so he could puff up himself by condemning it?
There’s the role police are supposed to play in upholding the law and preventing violence.
It’s a thankless job most of the time, and police must walk a fine line between respecting peaceful First Amendment activity and maintaining the peace, while not overstepping the limits of the Fourth Amendment.
For whatever reason—which only the police and government officials are privy to—the police failed to do their job at the Charlottesville demonstration, a charge levied by both the Alt Right and the counterdemonstrators.
The same police who in the past have responded to any acts of disorder or disobedience with the full power of their uniform and weapons were curiously lax in the face of outright violence.
As a Rolling Stone reporter recounted, "Unlike other events I’ve covered where anti-fascist protesters face off with white supremacists, the police make no effort to cordon the two groups off from each other to prevent violent clashes before they happen."
Despite the fact that 1,000 first responders (including 300 state police troopers and members of the National Guard)—many of whom had been preparing for the downtown rally for months—had been called on to work the event, despite the fact that police in riot gear surrounded Emancipation Park on three sides, and despite the fact that Charlottesville had had what reporter David Graham referred to as "a dress rehearsal of sorts" a month earlier when 30 members of the Ku Klux Klan were confronted by 1000 counterprotesters, police failed to do their jobs.
In fact, as the Washington Post reports, police "seemed to watch as groups beat each other with sticks and bludgeoned one another with shields… At one point, police appeared to retreat and then watch the beatings before eventually moving in to end the free-for-all, make arrests and tend to the injured."
"Police Stood By As Mayhem Mounted in Charlottesville," reported ProPublica.
"Could Police Have Prevented Bloodshed in Charlottesville?" asked The Atlantic.
"Police Response Inadequate at Charlottesville Rally," concluded U.S. News.
"There was no police presence," a peaceful activist explained. "We were watching people punch each other; people were bleeding all the while police were inside of barricades at the park, watching. It was essentially just brawling on the street and community members trying to protect each other."
Cornel West echoed this sentiment. "The police didn’t do anything in terms of protecting the people of the community, the clergy," he told The Washington Post.
So what should the police have done differently?
For starters, the police should have established clear boundaries—buffer zones—between the warring groups of protesters and safeguarded the permit zones.
Instead, as eyewitness accounts indicate, police established two entrances into the permit areas of the park and created barriers "guiding rallygoers single-file into the park" past lines of white nationalists and antifa counterprotesters.
This is where the worst of the violence between protesters took place.
By 8:40 am protesters had already started gathering in the downtown area. Police failed to separate them.
By 10 am, a "mob of white supremacists formed a battle line across from a group of counter-protesters." Police looked on and did nothing.
By 11 am, the general unrest had dissolved into all-out disorder. Police did not step in.
All the while protesters were throwing urine-filled water bottles, pepper spray and smoke bombs, and clobbering one another with flag poles and shields, Brian Moran, Virginia’s secretary of public safety and homeland security, watchedfrom a command post overlooking the downtown area and did nothing.
Moran watched while fights broke out and police stood by and failed to intervene.
Only at 11:22 am, after hours of brawling and confrontations between the protesters, did Moran take action by calling on Governor Terry McAuliffe to declare a state of emergency. Only then did police mobilize to declare the gathering an unlawful assembly, "cutting off the rally before it officially began," and begin clearing demonstrators out of the park.
There were other models that could have been followed.
As investigative reporter Sarah Posner notes, "At a neo-Nazi rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, just days before the November election, police employed this tactic with success – while the rally attendees and anti-fascist protesters taunted each other over a barrier of police, they were blocked from coming into physical contact. But in Charlottesville, the police inaction creates a sense of pandemonium."
A good strategy, advises former federal prosecutor Miriam Krinsky, is to make clashes less likely by separating the two sides physically, with officers forming a barrier between them. "Create a human barrier so the flash points are reduced as quickly as possible," she said.
In Cleveland, the site of the GOP presidential convention, "Trump diehards, Revolutionary Communists, Wobblies, and Alex Jones disciples" faced off in a downtown plaza. Yet as The Atlantic reports, "Just as confrontations between the groups seemed near to getting out of hand, police swooped into the square in huge numbers, using bicycles to create cordons between rival factions. The threat of violence soon passed, and no pepper spray or tear gas was needed."
For that matter, consider that Charlottesville police established clear boundaries just a month earlier in which they maintained clear lines of demarcation at all times between KKK protesters and counterprotesters. Indeed, the primary violence at the July 8 Klan rally came when police used tear gas and pepper spray to force protesters to disperse.
SOURCE
******************************
ACLU Blames Cops for Charlottesville Violence
Ronald Bailey
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA: Those fights erupted despite the fact that state, city, and police officials mobilized 1,000 first responders, including 300 state police and National Guard members, to control the protests. Many of the cops wore riot gear, carried shields, and were backed by armored vehicles.
Corinne Geller, a spokeswoman for the Virginia State Police, has said the plan was to keep the two sides separated. "There were physical barriers to separate those opposing sides and law enforcement as well, however individuals chose to assemble on the streets," she told The Wall Street Journal. "We are not in a position to tell people where to assemble."
So what happened?
"It is the responsibility of law enforcement to ensure safety of both protesters and counter-protesters. The policing on Saturday was not effective in preventing violence," said Virginia ACLU chief Claire G. Gastanaga in a statement. "I was there and brought concerns directly to the secretary of public safety and the head of the Virginia State Police about the way that the barricades in the park limiting access by the arriving demonstrators and the lack of any physical separation of the protesters and counter-protesters on the street were contributing to the potential of violence.
They did not respond. In fact, law enforcement was standing passively by, seeming to be waiting for violence to take place, so that they would have grounds to declare an emergency, declare an 'unlawful assembly' and clear the area."
Here's what I saw as a reporter. First, a disclaimer: I am not a policeman, a lawyer, or a frequent participant in public protests. Second, nobody is ever justified in punching people for their political beliefs, no matter how much I detest their views.
That being said, I noticed a great difference in how the cops and barricades were deployed when a month earlier I covered a KKK rally at Charlottesville's Stonewall Jackson statue. At that rally, double-fenced metal barricades separated the Klansmen from the counterprotesters. This created a no-man's-land where a line of police stood, keeping each side from coming into physical contact with each other. Police evidently had no problem telling the Kluxers where to assemble. I stood within 20 feet of the KKK during their whole demonstration, and a not single rock, bottle, or any other missiles were thrown by either them or the hundreds of counterprotesters. And no one got punched or bashed with clubs either.
This past weekend, by contrast, police deployed a single line of metal barricades which could easily be reached across. They placed no police between the racists and the counterprotesters. When I got to the park, the police and National Guard all appeared to be standing on the sides and behind—not in-between, as they did at the KKK rally.
The state of emergency had apparently been called just as I approached the park, and riot police were marching in to clear out the area. A line of police behind shields basically pressed the neo-Nazis and neo-Confederates down Market Street between crowds of counterprotesters who had lined the street. Despite the dangerous decision to remove them by that route, I am happy to report that I saw only a few scuffles break out between the racists and the counterprotesters.
It is hard to believe that the police were less prepared at this event than at the Stonewall Jackson rally. Sadly, Gastanaga's assertions ring true.
SOURCE
******************************
Ted Cruz "owns" the NYT
After Cuban-American U.S. Senators Cruz and Marco Rubio forcefully denounced white nationalists and called for a full Federal investigation into Saturday’s fatal attack in Charlottesville, Virginia, a New York Times reporter made the mistake of trying to pick a Twitter fight with Cruz.
“Sorry to be cynical, but most of all Rubio and Ted Cruz to me seem mostly to be doing a tremendous job of posturing for 2020,” tweeted reporter Eric Lipton Sunday.
Big mistake: “Gosh, you’re right,” Cruz shot back. “Because Nazis & the Klan have such love for Cuban-Americans. If only we worked for a paper that shilled for Stalin….”
Cruz continued, “I know it’s hard to understand. Too many schools don’t teach NYT’s shameful history covering up Soviet atrocities.”
Cruz “attached a link to the Wikipedia article on Walter Duranty, a New York Times journalist who ignored the famine suffered under Josef Stalin in his Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting from the USSR,” The Washington Examiner reports.
Lipton did not respond to his pants-down whipping from Cruz.
SOURCE
*******************************
TRUMP APPROVAL GOES UP AND PEOPLE AGREE WITH HIM ON CHARLOTTESVILLE
Well ain’t this a bitch for the left wing media and riot instigators? Since Charlottesville, the media has been in total meltdown mode blaming Trump for the violence over the past weekend
But in a repeat of myriad Trump campaign controversies, voters didn’t share the same level of outrage as the elites. The latest wave of polling shows that the president’s overall job-approval rating has inched upwards since the controversy, that a sizable majority of Americans support maintaining Confederate memorials instead of tearing them down, and that a notable minority agree with the president’s use of “both sides” language during Tuesday’s press conference.
More HERE
****************************
Please boycott and do NOT use $1 and $20 bills depicting slave owners on them. Send to me. I will dispose of them properly. Thank you.
******************************
For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
***************************
20 August, 2017
There are none so blind as those who will not see
A typical bit of obtuseness from the Leftist media below. They refuse to see that Trump was commenting on the diverse makeup of the Charlottesville marchers and pretend that he was calling the extremist minority "good people". There were among the marchers a small minority who displayed swastika and KKK symbols but the great majority did not. They were there simply to protest the escalating attack on historic statues. Trump has consistently commented on that mix but the media simply ignore it, misleading many Republicans as a result.
But it suits the Leftist media to pretend that all the marchers were white supremacists. Given that assumption, what they say has some force. But it is an unproven assumption. None of the marchers interviewed made any supremacist claims. Instead they complained that traditional American culture was being suppressed by Leftist political correctness. They simply wanted liberty from oppression.
So Trump was right. There were sincere and reasonable people on both sides and he refused to tar them all with the "supremacist" brush. It is a legitimate area of disagreement over whether symbols from an unhappy past should be preserved but that disagreement was grievously amplified by a small number of extremists on both sides
After President Trump’s defiant and roundly criticized remarks about a violent rally by white nationalists and neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Va., Americans are confronting profoundly uncomfortable questions.
Was he giving a sign that he subscribes to the ideology of white supremacy? Or was he attempting to enable the movement because it feeds his political base?
At an angry press conference Tuesday, Trump blamed “both sides’’ — white nationalists and their counterprotesters — for the violence that left one protester dead. He called those who were marching to Nazi chants “very fine people.” And he pulled a page from the white supremacist playbook when he referred to the removal of Confederate monuments as a changing of American “history” and “culture.”
Beyond the immediate shock his statements caused, an intensifying chorus of academics, politicians, and a biographer said years of accumulating evidence indicates that the Trump on display Tuesday was indeed the real Donald Trump, someone who is at the very least accepting of ethnic hatred and white bigotry.
SOURCE
********************************
President Trump Again makes himself perfectly clear
He again defies the abusive and unproven media assertion that all the marchers were "white supremacists". Sad that it takes the president to correct a crazed media
Ignoring the outcry over his response to the Charlottesville protests, President Trump on Thursday further waded into the controversy, calling it "foolish" to remove "our beautiful statues and monuments."
In three mid-morning tweets, the president wrote:
"Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments. You.....
"...can't change history, but you can learn from it. Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson - who's next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish! Also...
"...the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!"
While Trump sees them as objects of beauty and history, some other Americans view the statues as monuments to traitors and symbols of hatred, racism, etc.
The newly ignited, not-so-civil war of words has dominated the headlines since Saturday, when critics say Trump failed to properly denounce the white supremacists who rallied against the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue from a public park in Charlottesville.
In later comments, Trump said not everyone who rallied against the removal of the statue was "bad."
“If you look, they were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee," Trump said on Tuesday. "I'm sure in that group there were some bad ones. The following day, it looked like they had some rough, bad people -- neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you want to call them.
"But you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest, because you know -- I don't know if you know, they had a permit. The other group didn't have a permit.
"So, I only tell you this, there are two sides to a story. I thought what took place was a horrible moment for our country, a horrible moment. But there are two sides to the country,” Trump said.
SOURCE
*********************************
When Liberals Club People, It's With Love in Their Hearts
Ann Coulter
Apparently, as long as violent leftists label their victims “fascists,” they are free to set fires, smash windows and beat civilians bloody. No police officer will stop them. They have carte blanche to physically assault anyone they disapprove of, including Charles Murray, Heather Mac Donald, Ben Shapiro, me and Milo Yiannopoulos, as well as anyone who wanted to hear us speak.
Even far-left liberals like Evergreen State professor Bret Weinstein will be stripped of police protection solely because the mob called him a “racist.”
If the liberal shock troops deem local Republicans “Nazis” — because some of them support the duly elected Republican president — Portland will cancel the annual Rose Festival parade rather than allow any Trump supporters to march.
They’re all “fascists”! Ipso facto, the people cracking their skulls and smashing store windows are “anti-fascists,” or as they call themselves, “antifa.”
We have no way of knowing if the speakers at the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally last weekend were “Nazis,” “white supremacists” or passionate Civil War buffs, inasmuch as they weren’t allowed to speak. The Democratic governor shut the event down, despite a court order to let it proceed.
We have only visuals presented to us by the activist media, showing some participants with Nazi paraphernalia. But for all we know, the Nazi photos are as unrepresentative of the rally as that photo of the drowned Syrian child is of Europe’s migrant crisis. Was it 1 percent Nazi or 99 percent Nazi?
As the “Unite the Right” crowd was dispersing, they were forced by the police into the path of the peace-loving, rock-throwing, fire-spraying antifa. A far-left reporter for The New York Times, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, tweeted live from the event: “The hard left seemed as hate-filled as alt-right. I saw club-wielding ‘antifa’ beating white nationalists being led out of the park.”
That’s when protestor James Fields sped his car into a crowd of the counter-protesters, then immediately hit reverse, injuring dozens of people, and killing one woman, Heather Heyer.
This has been universally labeled “terrorism,” but we still don’t know whether Fields hit the gas accidentally, was in fear for his life or if he rammed the group intentionally and maliciously.
With any luck, we’ll unravel Fields’ motives faster than it took the Obama administration to discern the motives of a Muslim shouting “Allahu Akbar!” while gunning down soldiers at Fort Hood. (Six years.)
But so far, all we know is that Fields said he was “upset about black people” and wanted to kill as many as possible. On his Facebook page, he displayed a “White Power” poster and “liked” three organizations deemed “white separatist hate groups” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. A subsequent search of his home turned up bomb-making materials, ballistic vests, rifles, ammunition and a personal journal of combat tactics.
Actually, none of that is true. The paragraph above describes, down to the letter, what was known about Micah Xavier Johnson, the black man who murdered five Dallas cops a year ago during a Black Lives Matter demonstration. My sole alteration to the facts is reversing the words “black” and “white.”
President Obama held a news conference the next day to say it’s “very hard to untangle the motives.” The New York Times editorialized agnostically that many “possible motives will be ticked off for the killer.” (One motive kind of sticks out like a sore thumb to me.)
In certain cases, the media are quite willing to jump to conclusions. In others, they seem to need an inordinate amount of time to detect motives.
The media think they already know all there is to know about James Fields, but they also thought they knew all about the Duke lacrosse players, “gentle giant” Michael Brown and those alleged gang-rapists at the University of Virginia.
Waiting for facts is now the “Nazi” position.
Liberals have Republicans over a barrel because they used the word “racist.” The word is kryptonite, capable of turning the entire GOP and 99 percent of the “conservative media” into a panicky mass of cowardice.
This week, Mitt Romney and Sen. Marco Rubio — among others — instructed us that masked liberals hitting people with baseball bats are pure of heart — provided they first label the likes of Charles Murray or some housewife in a “MAGA” hat “fascists.”
Luckily, the week before opening fire on Republicans, critically injuring House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, Bernie Sanders-supporter James Hodgkinson had used the vital talisman, calling the GOP “fascist.” So you see, he wasn’t trying to commit mass murder! He was just fighting “Nazis.” Rubio and Romney will be expert witnesses.
And let’s recall the response of Hillary Clinton to the horrifying murder of five Dallas cops last year. The woman who ran against Trump displayed all the moral blindness currently being slanderously imputed to him.
In an interview on CNN about the slaughter that had taken place roughly 12 hours earlier, Hillary barely paused to acknowledge the five dead officers — much less condemn the shooting — before criticizing police for their “implicit bias” six times in about as many minutes.
What she really wanted to talk about were the two recent police shootings of black men in Baton Rouge and Minneapolis, refusing to contradict Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton’s claim that the Minneapolis shooting was based on racism.
Officers in both cases were later found innocent of any wrongdoing. Either the Left has had a really bad streak of luck on its police brutality cases, or bad cops are a lot rarer than it thinks.
Some people would not consider the mass murder of five white policemen by an anti-cop nut in the middle of a BLM protest a good jumping-off point for airing BLM’s delusional complaints about the police. It would be like responding to John Hinckley Jr.‘s attempted murder of President Reagan by denouncing Jodie Foster for not dating him.
Or, to bring it back to Charlottesville, it would be as if Trump had responded by expounding on the kookiest positions of “Unite the Right” — just as Hillary’s response echoed the paranoid obsessions of the cop-killer. Trump would have quickly skipped over the dead girl and railed against black people, Jews and so on.
That is the precise analogy to what Hillary did as the bodies of five Dallas cops lay in the morgue.
Thank God Donald J. Trump is our president, and not Mitt Romney, not Marco Rubio and not that nasty woman.
SOURCE
*******************************
Upcoming Boston rally shows where the aggression comes from
The city plans to dispatch more than 500 police officers to patrol Saturday’s “Boston Free Speech” rally on Boston Common Saturday, and city officials vowed to shut it down if it turns violent, as they prepared for what is one of the first big demonstrations since the violence in Charlottesville, Va., last week.
Authorities fear white supremacists will attend, and two of the rally’s keynote speakers have ties to extremist elements — including one who attended the Charlottesville rally.
Rally organizers have maintained the event is open to all political views and not a forum for hate groups, and the permit issued by the city is for only 100 people. But tens of thousands of counterprotesters are expected to show up to denounce racism and anti-Semitism.
SOURCE
*******************************
For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
***************************
18 August, 2017
A Korean triumph for Trump
The media were hysterical at Trump's strong threat to North Korea. But it worked. Kim Jong Un backed down. The media response? Crickets. Kim just ignored Obama but having a real man in the White House made a difference. It pushed the world back from nuclear war. See here
*******************************
Summary of recent events
Black people who were never slaves fighting white people who were never Nazis over a confederate statue erected by Dems. Media blames Trump!
******************************
Virginia State Police Say They Didn't Find Caches of Weapons in Charlottesville
Another lying Democrat
Contradicting statements by Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, the Virginia State Police say they did not find caches of weapons stashed around Charlottesville in advance of last Saturday's deadly white nationalist rally.
In an interview Monday on the Pod Save the People podcast, hosted by Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson, McAuliffe claimed the white nationalists who streamed into Charlottesville that weekend hid weapons throughout the town.
SOURCE
*************************
Senator Tim Kaine? says:
Charlottesville violence was fueled by one side: white supremacists spreading racism, intolerance & intimidation. Those are the facts.
So what caused this violence?
*****************************
Trump's reward
*****************************
Progressives Use Violence to Whitewash History
The awful violence this past weekend in Charlottesville is the inevitable culmination of the Left’s goal of achieving the complete eradication of opposing viewpoints. Whitewashing history (pardon the pun) and engaging in political violence are tools to that end.
As the Dallas Morning News observantly noted, “History is not easily compartmentalized. It isn’t simply right versus wrong, black versus white, or blue versus gray. But there’s an entire crowd of folks who want to do just that because they believe it is all those things, and most egregiously, they believe there is an individual right for all to go through life unoffended.”
Dr. Lee Cheek, senior fellow of the Alexander Hamilton Institute, concurred, noting, “The events in Charlottesville have no connection to understanding the political traditions of the American South, and everything to do with battles among professional ideologues without any attachment or knowledge of the historical situation.”
Millions of Southerners are proud of their heritage for reasons that have nothing to do with slavery. They revere Confederate General Robert E. Lee, who stated in 1856, five years before the commencement of the War Between the States, “Slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil in any country.” Lee is heralded as a brilliant military strategist who served America faithfully in the Mexican War and as Superintendent of West Point. However, when called upon by President Abraham Lincoln to lead Union forces against the seceding South, he declined, incapable of bearing arms against his family, friends and home state. He accepted the commission as commander of Confederate forces in order to defend his beloved state of Virginia. Following the war, Lee worked tirelessly to convince his fellow Southerners to seek peace and reconciliation.
None of this matters to the Left, though. There is no understanding of the complexities of history, no appreciation for context. Slavery has existed throughout human history, regardless of color or nationality. In fact, there are more people enslaved worldwide today than ever before, including slavery practiced by Muslims. Mohammad owned slaves. One wonders if American progressives will now call for banning all things Islamic.
Indeed, how far will this go? Historical monuments of the Confederacy are being removed in Memphis, Lexington, Baltimore, New Orleans and elsewhere to appease angry leftists. These fascists even desecrated an Atlanta monument dedicated to unity and reconciliation.
Violent leftists have rioted in recent years in Brooklyn, Baltimore, Chicago, Ferguson, Charlotte, Berkeley, DC, Oakland and other cities, destroying businesses, setting cars on fire, and dragging people from their cars and beating them, declaring their right to do so because of past and current “injustices” — such as hearing words they don’t like.
As detestable as the KKK and white supremacists are, they have a right to speak and to peaceably assemble. Our First Amendment was written specifically to protect unpopular speech, and we show our own intolerance by silencing those with whom we disagree. The violence in Charlottesville would not likely have occurred had not the leftist agitators shown up looking to pick a fight, though the murderous Nazi thug is obviously responsible for his own actions.
So again we ask, how far does this go?
Do we eliminate all monuments to Democrat/progressive hero Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who opposed anti-lynching legislation, turned a blind eye to the Nazi eradication of Jews, and imprisoned 100,000 Japanese-Americans? What about progressive icon and racist Woodrow Wilson, who re-segregated the federal workforce?
Progressives have already declared war on Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, who owned slaves but sought to prohibit slavery in the newly formed nation. They now call for taking down the Jefferson Memorial.
Even Lincoln, author of the Emancipation Proclamation, is not immune to leftist hatred. The Lincoln Memorial was desecrated Tuesday. Is that because Lincoln, a staunch opponent of slavery, was willing to save it in order to preserve the Union, or because he also believed in the superiority of the white race?
If we truly want to rid our nation of its shameful history regarding racism, let’s start by abolishing the racist Democrat Party. After all, it was the Democrats who waged war to preserve slavery, founded the KKK, enacted Jim Crow laws, and fought against Republican efforts to pass the Civil Rights Act.
Democrat President Andrew Jackson owned slaves and signed the Indian Removal Act of 1830.
It was Harry Truman who wrote to his wife, “I think one man is just as good as another so long as he’s not a n—er or a Chinaman.”
It was the Democrat Party that praised Senator and former KKK Exalted Cyclops Robert Byrd until his death a few years ago, a man who filibustered the Civil Rights Act for 14 hours. It was Lyndon Johnson, a virulent racist but a political pragmatist, who told two Southern Democrat governors his signing of the Civil Rights Act would “have those n—ers voting Democrat for 200 years.” And it’s Johnson’s “Great Society” that has yielded today’s urban poverty plantations, where blacks slaughter other blacks without too much notice from the Leftmedia.
What about Bill Clinton, whining of the upstart Obama, “A few years ago, this guy would have been carrying our bags”? Or the absolute devotion of Democrats to Planned Parenthood, founded by eugenicist Margaret Sanger for the express purpose of exterminating blacks through abortion and sterilization? According to Tuskegee University, the KKK lynched 3,446 blacks in 86 years. Planned Parenthood is a white supremacist’s dream, killing more blacks in two weeks than the KKK killed in a century. And the Democrat Party fights to ensure that $500 million a year in taxpayer funds is funneled to Planned Parenthood to kill all of those black babies.
Surely we could at least agree to remove the Seattle monument to Vladimir Lenin? Anyone? Anyone?
How far do we go? Are we willing to engage in violence and oppression of opposing viewpoints? If so, then Charlottesville will only be the beginning.
SOURCE
******************************
More Leftist violence. Where is the media uproar about this?
Is it only Leftist lives that matter?
A West Goshen, Pennsylvania man shot his GOP neighbor twice in the head and killed him late Monday night. Clayton Carter, an unhinged anti-Trump fanatic, shot his neighbor twice in the head on his neighbor’s property.
Clayton Carter has anti-Trump signs sprinkled on his lawn. He has a history of arguments with his neighbors.
The victim G. Brooks Jennings was murdered while his wife watched Clayton stand over her husband and shoot him in the head.
ABC6 reported:
A man is under arrest, accused of killing his next door neighbor in West Goshen, Chester County. Police have charged Clayton Carter, 51, in the shooting death of G. Brooks Jennings.
More HERE
***************************
On the lighter side
Under the heading, "A Conservative manifesto from England", I have just put up in my sidebar a link to some quotations from Jacob Rees-Mogg, a very old-fashioned and very popular Conservative member of the House of Commons in London. He is noted for his humorous speeches. His comment on small businessmen cracked me up. See here
*******************************
For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
***************************
17 August, 2017
Trump tells it like it is
Is he the only one who is immune to the tidal wave of media hysteria and lies? He is immensely valuable if he is. Anyone who has seen the graphics coming out of Charlottesville must be aware of the violent attacks on the marchers by Antifa but that seems to be unmentionable to the Left. Trump saw it and tells what he saw. He will not let pass the claim that the Left were peaceful. Ever since the French revolution, the Left have NEVER been peaceful unless they had to be. So it's a sad day when it needs the President to tell people what the media will not. I am pleased to say that I have been saying much the same as Trump on my various blogs
Donald Trump launched an extraordinary and angry defense of his performance in the wake of the Charlottesville riots Tuesday in a free-wheeling, finger-pointing confrontation with the press at Trump Tower.
He lashed out at his critics following a botched response to the weekend's Charlottesville murder, insisting that a violent 'alt-left' mob came to protests ready for war but a dishonest news media is shielding them from blame.
The president even defended elements of the far-right protest, claiming some were 'fine people' protesting against the removal of Confederate symbols.
'You had some fine people. But you also had trouble makers,' he said during a Q&A session in the lobby of Trump Tower – an event that was supposed to be a press event about infrastructure projects.
'You see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and the baseball bats,' he said, describing what he said had happened in the Virginia college town.
While the vehicular homicide of a liberal protester, allegedly by a neo-Nazi who is now charged with her murder, has grabbed the nation's attention, Trump insisted that 'you had a lot of bad people in the other group too.'
His aides had expected him to address infrastructure and the press conference began with praise for his new plan to make it simpler to build, but quickly veered off course.
He offered the comment as a defense of his Saturday statement in which he ad-libbed that there had been 'bigotry and violence on many sides.'
Those words prompted a second statement on Monday that more forcefully denounced white supremacists.
'What about the alt-left that came charging at the, as you say, the alt-right?' he asked reporters on Tuesday, answering questions with questions. 'Do they have any semblance of guilt?'
'Let me ask you this: What about the fact that they came charging with clubs in their hands, swinging clubs. Do they have any problem? I think they do.'
'And you had a group on one side that was bad and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent,' Trump said. 'And nobody wants to say that.' 'But I'll say it right now.'
'I think there's blame on both sides,' he added as he attacked the political press. 'And I have no doubt about it, and you don't have any doubt about it either.'
Trump's reference to the 'alt-left' is a nod to so-called 'Antifa' protesters, short for 'anti-fascist,' a movement that has seen its own violent protests aimed at conservatives.
But Ku Klux Klansmen and white nationalists in Nazi regalia stole the spotlight over the weekend. The protest was explicitly planned as 'Unite the Right' and sought permission under that name.
Behind the scenes, Trump aides reacted with a range of emotions that ranged from fist-pumping to head-shaking. 'That's our president,' one White House official aligned with the populist, nationalist wing of the Trump camp, told DailyMail.com. The aide was glad that Trump 'said the truth, no matter what the reporters think.'
Another, from a different wing, however, was shell-shocked. 'That wasn't in the plan. None of it was supposed to happen,' the aide said.
There was equal shock among some of the most senior Republicans. Florida Senator Marco Rubio tweeted a lengthy statement about the danger of suggesting anyone other than neo-Nazis shares the blame for Saturday's violence
'The organizers of events which inspired & led to #charlottesvilleterroristattack are 100% to blame for a number of reasons,' he wrote in a series of tweets. 'They are adherents of an evil ideology which argues certain people are inferior because of race, ethnicity or nation of origin.'
'When entire movement built on anger & hatred towards people different than you, it justifies & ultimately leads to violence against them. These groups today use SAME symbols & same arguments of #Nazi & #KKK, groups responsible for some of worst crimes against humanity ever.
'Mr. President, you can't allow #WhiteSupremacists to share only part of blame. They support idea[s] which cost nation & world so much pain. The #WhiteSupremacy groups will see being assigned only 50% of blame as a win. We can not allow this old evil to be resurrected.'
House Speaker Paul Ryan didn't fault Trump directly, but made it clear that he agreed with Trump's statement on Monday condemning neo-Nazis. 'We must be clear. White supremacy is repulsive,' Ryan tweeted. 'This bigotry is counter to all this country stands for. There can be no moral ambiguity.'
Florida Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen struck a more aggressive chord. 'Blaming "both sides" for #Charlottesville?! No,' she tweeted. 'Back to relativism when dealing with KKK, Nazi sympathizers, white supremacists? Just no.'
Trump's words were quickly denounced by Democrats as an attempt to draw moral equivalence between Nazis and liberal activists. 'As a Jew, as an American, as a human, words cannot express my disgust and disappointment. This is not my President,' tweeted Hawaii Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz. 'There has to be room for people of all political stripes among the coalition of the sane. We all need to take our country back together.'
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, issued a scathing statement saying that Trump's 'continued talk of blame 'on many sides' ignores the abhorrent evil of white supremacism, and continues a disturbing pattern of complacency around acts of hate from this President, his Administration and his campaign for the presidency.'
'There is only one side to be on when a white supremacist mob brutalizes and murders in America. The American people deserve a president who understands that,' she said.
Conservative columnist Ann Coulter was quick to defend Trump, however, 'Nearly the entire quisling 'conservative' media immediately caved to the B.S. left-wing media narrative on Charlottesville. NOT TRUMP!' she tweeted.
Trump insisted Tuesday that many on the political right who gathered in Charlottesville were peaceful protesters themselves who aimed to save a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee from the scrap heap.
The city is removing it in line with many others across the old South, under pressure to renounce ties to slavery.
'Not all of those people were white supremacists by any stretch. Those people were also there because they wanted to protest the taking down of a statue,' he said.
Trump's claim at the 15-minute question-and-answer in Trump Tower that leftists 'came charging with clubs in their hands, swinging clubs' has some basis in reports of what happened in Charlottseville.
The Washington Post on Monday described the situation in Charlottesville on Friday night, at the statue of Thomas Jefferson on the lawn of UVA as around 250 white far-right protesters met a group of 30 counter-protesters - and that both sides were armed in some form.
'Within moments, there was chaos. Shoves. Punches. Both groups sprayed chemical irritants,' the paper reported.
The next day, it said, armed anti-right wing protesters were present in Emancipation Park from around 8.30am.
'Members of anti-fascist groups yelled at the rallygoers. Many of them also carried sticks and shields,' the paper said.
And the New York Times reported that not all the anti-far-right protesters were violent. It noted the presence of a group called Redneck Revolt, which had up to 20 people present carrying rifles and which describes itself as 'a pro-worker, anti-racist organization that focuses on working class liberation from the oppressive systems which dominate our lives' and claims to be inspired by John Brown, the anti-slavery rebel.
Trump challenged reporters to imagine the nation stripped of symbols of its slave-owning Founding Fathers, while conceding that local communities should ultimately decide the fate of statuary dedicated to Confederate war heroes.
'George Washington was a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner? So will George Washington now lose his status?' he asked.
'Are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think Thomas Jefferson? You like him? Okay, good. Are we going to take down the statue? Because he was a major slave owner.'
'You're changing history, you're changing culture,' Trump carped, saying of the right's more thoughtful, permitted protesters that 'the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.'
'You had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest.'
Speaking of James Alex Fields Jr., the 20-year-old white nationalist accused of running down a woman with his car as fellow racists egged him on, Trump called him 'a disgrace to himself, his family and his country.'
He wouldn't say if the murder was an act of terrorism, calling the question a quibble over 'legal semantics.' But 'the driver of the car is a murderer,' Trump said without naming him. 'And what he did is a terrible, horrible thing.'
He also defended his chief strategist Steve Bannon, whom Democrats and some news outlets regularly clobber as a racialist at the very least who guided the Breitbart News to prominence by kowtowing to alt-right bigots and at worst is a white supremacist.
'He's a good man. He's not a racist, I can tell you that,' the president said, while not offering the embattled Bannon his full-throated approval as he fights to keep his job. 'He's a good person, and I think frankly the press treats him very unfairly,' he said.
Trump said Tuesday that his widely panned insistence on Saturday that there had been bigotry and violence 'on many sides' – an ad-libbed line that prompted Monday's do-over – was a prudent step to make sure his statement didn't get ahead of the facts as investigators knew them.
'I'd do it the same way,' he declared. 'And you know why? Because I want to make sure when I make a statement that the statement is correct. And ... there was no way of making a correct statement that early.' 'I had to see the facts, unlike a lot of reporters.'
Trump claimed that on Saturday he was unaware that David Duke, the infamous former Klan leader, was present at the scene of the riot.
'I wanted to see the facts,' he said again. 'And the facts as they started coming out were very well-stated.'
'In fact, everybody said, "His statement was beautiful; if he would have made it sooner, that would have been good." I couldn't have made it sooner because I didn't know all of the facts. Frankly, people still don't know all of the facts.'
SOURCE
********************************
What motivated the fatal car collision?
A reader writes:
I've seen the videos of the "car plowing into the crowd". Several things become evident to anyone watching the video. First the car was slowly following other cars down a street with protestors crowding both sides, at one point someone steps off behind his car and swings at it, despite the distance you can hear the impact.
That evidently startles the drivers who then plows into the demonstrators who had stepped between his car and the previous car. A number of other protestors mobbed the car at that point striking it and attempting to break out its windows. The driver quickly backed up striking those who had jumped behind his car which is where the majority of those who were struck got hurt.
By that time it was apparent that there was no way he would be safe in that violent crowd. Those are all points his lawyer is going to be raising when this goes to trial.
***************************
For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
***************************
16 August, 2017
Facing the reality of HiTech
Here is the reality:
"In 2014, tech companies Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, Apple, and others, released corporate transparency reports that offered detailed employee breakdowns. In May, Google said 17% of its tech employees worldwide were women, and, in the U.S., 1% of its tech workers were black and 2% were Hispanic. June 2014 brought reports from Yahoo! and Facebook. Yahoo! said that 15% of its tech jobs were held by women, 2% of its tech employees were black and 4% Hispanic. Facebook reported that 15% of its tech workforce was female, and 3% was Hispanic and 1% was black. In August, Apple reported that 80% of its global tech staff was male and that, in the U.S., 54% of its tech jobs were staffed by Caucasians and 23% by Asians. Soon after, USA Today published an article about Silicon Valley's lack of tech-industry diversity, pointing out that it is largely white or Asian, and male. "Blacks and Hispanics are largely absent," it reported, "and women are underrepresented in Silicon Valley — from giant companies to start-ups to venture capital firms".
It's an unbudgeable gap. The companies concerned are very politically correct and have made great efforts to alter the pattern of their employment -- but with negligible success. The industry concerned runs on IQ and the level of IQ required is just not generally available outside white and Asian males.
The only way to get more women and minority employees in the sector would be to drop recruitment standards. And doing that would rapidly hand the entire industry over to China. China already has an IQ advantage over America so will probably take charge eventually anyway but the innovativeness of American firms is so far keeping America in the lead. Doing anything to degrade the performance of the sector would be fatal. My software developer son has been to China three times recently in order to teach computer people there some skills they did not currently have and he has only one word for the Chinese: "Unbeatable".
What I think outsiders don't get is how complex computer programming is. It requires the utmost attention to detail and constant creativity to find a way ahead through the task. For some of us that comes easily but for most people it just cannot be done. Many years ago, I tried to teach FORTRAN to sociology students at a major university but in the end none of them really "got" it. They were smart but not that smart. And the composition of silicon valley firms is a loud announcement of where the required level of talent is mostly to be found. The Leftist preoccupation with equality is just madness in that sphere. It could very easily become destructive madness. Reality is unco-operative with Leftist dreams -- JR
****************************
It is a caricature of what happened in Charlottesville to call Trump and his supporters racists
Since Trump’s ascendancy, there have been repeated outbreaks of violence, mostly perpetrated by Antifa against ordinary Republicans and other conservatives, either at pro-Trump rallies or on other public platforms. These people have been either stopped from speaking or physically attacked by Antifa and other left-wing demonstrators.
Such attacks on mainstream conservatives have been ignored, downplayed or even endorsed by Democrats and their media acolytes.
In June the House Republican whip, Steve Scalise, was shot and almost killed by a Bernie Sanders-supporting Democrat who opened fire on a group of Republicans at a baseball practice. A New Jersey Democratic party activist, James Devine, posted on his Facebook page that he had “little sympathy” for Scalise because he opposed gun restriction policies. Another Democratic party official in Nebraska was fired after saying he was “glad” that Scalise had been shot.
The real target is mainstream American values and culture
The Democratic establishment dismisses such people as mavericks with no significance for the left-wing causes they support. Yet a double standard operates against President Trump, who is held to be personally defined by the unacceptable nature of a tiny minority of his supporters.
The fact that the former Ku Klux Klan “grand wizard” David Duke, who was at Charlottesville, claims to support Trump’s agenda (that is, when he’s not in the next breath condemning him) is being used to smear Trump himself as a white supremacist.
It is grotesque to equate Trump’s pledge to “make America great again”, which was endorsed by the 63 million Americans who voted for him, with the bigotry of white supremacism. The former is driven by people wanting to uphold core American values they deeply cherish and share with each other. The latter is driven by loathing of racial and ethnic groups deemed to be inferior.
In last year’s presidential campaign Hillary Clinton was endorsed by Will Quigg, “grand dragon” of the Ku Klux Klan’s California chapter. He claimed she had a “hidden agenda” and that if elected she would come out for gun ownership and sealing America’s borders. Quigg’s support of Clinton was rightly dismissed as either mischief-making or barking mad. Yet when such people support Trump, this is held to define him.
The left’s real target is not the far right but mainstream conservatives who want to uphold American values and culture: the people who brought Trump to power. Defending national identity, however, is denounced by western progressives as white racism.
The result is an unholy alliance between the left and the far right. A white supremacist called Richard Spencer invented the blanket term “alt-right” to associate his ilk with conservatives seeking merely to defend American identity and core values. Through this tactic, Spencer intended to boost the far right and simultaneously smear and thus destroy regular conservatives.
The left has seized upon this smear with unbridled joy, routinely using the “alt-right” term to try to destroy the national identity agenda by bracketing it with white supremacism. The result is a powerful boost for the far right. From deserved obscurity, they suddenly find the left are transmitting their every utterance to the world. The phrase “useful idiots” comes inescapably to mind.
Charlottesville was but the latest front in what has become America’s cultural civil war. It won’t, alas, be the last.
SOURCE
*****************************
ObamaCare Is Dumping Millions of Middle Class to Insure More Poor
While Democrats and Republicans fret over millions "losing" coverage to reform, the actual law is taking its toll.
Barack Obama and the Democrats’ “Affordable” Care Act was never really about making the cost of health care more affordable. It was never about giving Americans greater access to health care. ObamaCare was always a scheme designed to give the government greater power to control and redistribute Americans’ wealth, essentially taking from the middle class to give it the poor — and to insurance companies.
While Democrats like to point to the increasing numbers of individuals receiving ObamaCare’s subsidized insurance coverage, they are ignoring a dirty little secret. The number of Americans with unsubsidized individual coverage has decreased precipitously. From March 2016 to March 2017, some 2.6 million fewer people had unsubsidized policies, an overall decrease of 15% in one year alone.
But the unsubsidized coverage bleed is not limited to the individual market. Since 2013, the year before ObamaCare began subsidizing plans, the number of individuals with employment-based coverage has decreased by almost three million.
Doug Badger of National Review describes the issue:
The narrative nevertheless endures. Believing it requires indifference to millions of people who can no longer afford individual policies and to millions more who may forfeit their policies with the next round of rate hikes. For many of them, Obamacare has been a serial nightmare, producing policy cancellations, skyrocketing premiums and deductibles, and a narrowing choice of doctors before finally leaving them uninsured.
Obamacare is insuring more poor people and uninsuring millions of middle-income people. That suits the Democratic party and many congressional Republicans just fine. They measure social progress in the number of people receiving government assistance. Those struggling to pay their own way evoke little sympathy. Lawmakers of both parties, whose consciences were lacerated by CBO’s theory that millions would “lose” coverage under the GOP’s “repeal and replace” legislation (most of those “losses” the result of people voluntarily dropping insurance once the individual mandate was repealed) are unmoved that millions actually have lost coverage under the law they fought to preserve.
Obama was a leftist who was bound and determined to foist his socialism onto the American people. Health care was his means to that end, and so far too many Americans and their representatives in Congress are content to sell their freedom for the mirage of greater security and health.
SOURCE
************************************
Problems with AG Jeff Sessions
The two big issues I have with Sessions are his intention to escalate the so-called war on drugs, and his support for civil asset forfeiture.
The war on drugs is misnamed. It is not a war on inanimate objects, it is a war on American citizens who make choices some people in government don’t like. As for civil asset forfeiture–government’s ability to take people’s property without even accusing them of a crime–I honestly don’t see any defense for it that is compatible with basic principles of due process and liberty.
Sessions seems to have gained a bit of support from Trump for his attack on sanctuary cities, I’m sorry to see. My sorrow here has nothing to do with sanctuary cities and everything to do with the war on drugs and civil asset forfeiture. I don’t feel I’m being extreme in expressing dissatisfaction with an attorney general who has so little respect for individual rights.
SOURCE
******************************
CA: More Costs Flowing from Dam Negligence
National Water Quality Month is turning out rather dry in California, but trouble will soon be washing up in court. Farmers and business owners have filed more than 90 claims against the state government for causing a total of $1.7 billion in losses from the spillway failure at Oroville Dam back in February. Might they have a case?
As we noted, the failure of the spillway prompted the evacuation of 200,000 people, hardly a frivolous move, because if the spillway collapsed it could have caused complete failure of the dam, built in 1968.
As it turned out, government engineers knew for decades that the dirt spillway was unreliable but failed to reinforce it with concrete. As Representative John Garamendi (D–Walnut Grove) famously put it, the dirt spillway “worked fine until it had to be used, in which case it didn’t work so well.” State water bosses also failed to add gates above the spillway, which would have allowed the reservoir to rise another ten feet. Governor Jerry Brown claimed to be unaware of these problems and proclaimed, “stuff happens and we respond.”
SOURCE
***************************
For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
***************************
15 August, 2017
Should Trump have condemned the "white supremacists" at the Charlottesville fracas?
He probably should have -- if there were any there. The only evidence that I have seen put forward so far is that there was a peaceful torchlit procession at another time in another place. I guess we have to call that media logic. No court would convict anybody of anything on such flimsy "evidence". And can the marchers be collectively condemned for the deeds of one man in a car? I think the difficulties in so doing are obvious.
Nonetheless the media and some RINOs are criticizing Trump's statesmanlike response of condemning all violence from all sides.
But the fact that there was a peaceful torchlit procession through the University of Virginia the night before the fracas proves only one thing and even for that we have to make an unproven assumption. If the marchers on the two occasions were the same (an assumption), it shows that the marchers were peaceful until attacked by Antifa goons. Antifa protesters came equipped with bats, sticks, and flame throwers. The marchers were entitled to hit back at the Antifa goons and they did. It was not they who turned up with violent intent.
And a parade of torches proves nothing. I have some of those torches myself, which I use to light up backyard feasts at night. In a parade, they are just an attention-getting device and have been used by many groups in many places in a perfectly peaceful and non-ideological manner. Google "torchlit procession" if you doubt it.
And the march was organised to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. So was probably comprised overwhelmingly of Southern patriots honoring their forefathers rather than any "racist" cause.
History is written by the victors so most people still believe the propaganda that the North/South war was fought to free the slaves. Yet, in his famous letter to Horace Greeley, Lincoln himself said that slavery was not the issue. "The union" was the basic cause. 600,000 young Americans had to die to preserve Yankee dominance over the South. So Southerners have cause to remember and honor their forebears.
In my view it is the Leftist thugs of Antifa whom Trump should have particularly condemned. They turned a peaceful march into a violent occasion.
******************************
How the Liberal Media Created Charlottesville
John Hawkins
I wish I could say that it’s a shock that someone died in Charlottesville, but I’ve been predicting just this sort of thing in radio appearances for months. The liberal media is dying to blame it all on Donald Trump, but it should look in the mirror.
To begin with, the liberal media is almost entirely responsible for growing the Alt-Right merger of hate groups and internet trolls. Most people are well aware of the stifling political correctness that reached an apex under Barack Obama. People are sick and tired of being attacked and scolded by the humorless left-wing thought police every time they stray from the latest liberal doctrine. That created a large group of people who enjoyed tweaking social justice warriors and some of them realized the easiest way to do that was with racial slurs.
Every time some doofus leaves a noose on a college campus or says the N-word, it’s treated like a national crisis. If you’re an anonymous troll who enjoys getting people to react to everything you say, that’s a FEATURE, not a bug. All you have to do is say something racially offensive and all these people who studiously try to ignore you will go out of their minds.
That racial element gave the Nazis, white supremacists and KKK mouth-breathers a way to connect with the more socially adept trolls making the Pepe the Frog memes. Of course, the media liberals fueled them as well with their hypocrisy. They painted EVERY white supporter of Donald Trump or the Republican Party as a racist even as they ignored and defended the vicious anti-white rhetoric that has become commonplace on the Left.
Just to give you a quick example of that, there was a hashtag that trended on Twitter after the attack called #ThisIsNotUS. It started out as a way for white liberals to virtue signal, but it quickly turned into an all too typical attack on white people, America and Trump voters. Here are some of the most popular comments from the hashtag…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
#ThisIsNotUs Then who is it? 63% of white men & 53% of white women voted for KKK-endorsed Trump. The majority of EVERY OTHER ETHNICITY didn’t
If you are white and you are trying to say #ThisIsNotUs you are part of the problem.
If you're earnestly tweeting #ThisIsNotUS, know that the you might as well have been one of the white supremacists walking w/ tiki torches.
Every white person that tweets #ThisIsNotUs is being complicit in not addressing the rampant racism and bigotry that in their community
#ThisIsNotUS? Easy to say so. Unfortunately you can't have the Black, Brown, Asian, Jewish, Muslim or LGTBQ "experience" to know #THISISYOU
Gaga, prime example of a white woman using tag #ThisIsNotUs like this country wasn’t built on slavery & racism. THIS HAS ALWAYS BEEN AmeriKa
#ThisIsNotUs is how white people try to absolve themselves from their complicity in white supremacy; it v much is you, your inaction fuels it
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The biggest talking point white supremacists have are comments like these. Would that be true if the mainstream media actually treated these comments with the same sort of contempt it has for the Alt-Right?
Nope.
Yet these sort of comments are MAINSTREAM on the Left. Let me repeat that. They are MAINSTREAM on the Left.
On the other hand, white supremacists are nothing on the Right. David Duke is a joke. Richard Spencer? Let me tell you a little story about Richard Spencer. I was walking around CPAC and noticed an enormous gaggle of media surrounding someone I didn’t recognize, who didn’t seem to be drawing a crowd of regular attendees. As it turns out, the massive group of media people weren’t following a big name. They were following Richard Spencer, who was later kicked out of the conference, presumably because the organizers never wanted him there in the first place.
Yet Richard Spencer, like David Duke before him, is treated like some kind of rock star by the media liberals even though he’s a nobody in the conservative movement. Why? Because they don’t care about conservative opinion. They don’t care about conservative views. They care about creating propaganda that paints the Right as a bunch of hood-wearing, Nazi-saluting scumbags. So, they treat Richard Spencer like a rock star.
This creates a sort of Kim Kardashian effect. Ninety five percent of any influence Spencer has comes from the fact that anything he does is a big deal to the media. Why were Spencer and Duke able to gather even 500 Tiki torch-waving idiots in Charlottesville? Because the media would cover everything they did with bated breath. It gave them a chance to feel important, to feel like they were making an impact. In fact, white supremacists have started to believe its own BS because they keep hearing it from the media.
The hardcore racists out there are pariahs everywhere except in the mainstream media, where they’re treated as incredibly important.
On the other hand, the same mainstream media that has elevated the Alt-Right has been silent as violence has increasingly become a mainstay at liberal protests, including the counter-protest of this event. A few shops getting looted or people getting hurt doesn’t stop the media from describing a liberal event as a peaceful protest. Even the counter-protests in Charlottesville were widely described as “peaceful.” Yet, protesters chanted “From the Midwest to the South, punch a Nazi in the mouth,” a female reporter was punched by one of those counter-protesters, the organizer of the rally was hit, and other people were attacked. That’s not peaceful. That’s something LIBERAL POLITICIANS should be asked to condemn.
In other words, Nazi and KKK members are HORRIBLE. The violent liberal counter-protesters are ALSO horrible. James Alex Fields, Jr? Who appears to have marched at the rally before plowing into a crowd? I condemn what he did. I also condemn the Bernie supporter who shot up a congressional Republican softball game.
Additionally, I will condemn the next person on the Left or the Right who kills someone over politics, which seems inevitable when you have opposing sides carrying shields and weapons to political rallies. Those condemnations don’t make a damn bit of difference as long as the liberal media keeps elevating white supremacists and excusing the violence of the Alt-Left. I’m genuinely sorry people are dying at political rallies, but it would be surprising if the death at Charlottesville were the last one. Their blood will be on the hands of the liberal media.
SOURCE
**************************
Rainbow Mafia: Dubious Economics to Further Agenda
Socially conservative laws are labeled as dangerous for business, while leftist prerogatives are an economic boon.
The Texas Association of Business has been a vocal critic of a proposed transgender bathroom bill — one that would restrict the use of public bathrooms to an individual’s biological sex rather than one’s self-declared gender identity. It’s similar to the law that was passed last year in North Carolina. So why would a business advocacy group oppose a common-sense law that protects the vast majority of the population? Because it fears an economic backlash to the tune of an estimated $8.5 billion in lost business should the bill become law.
In Florida, a small-business advocacy group called Florida Competes has been actively and aggressively pushing for the state to make sexual orientation and gender identity a protected class under the Florida Civil Rights Act. The advocacy group maintains that this change would boost Florida’s economy by some $5 billion and add at least 36,000 jobs over the next decade.
What’s driving this connection between business revenue and leftist “social justice”? Call it the Rainbow Mafia’s economic carrot-and-stick approach. Across the country, these single-minded pressure groups have been promoting their agenda by pouring money into a “network of small-business coalitions that routinely make doom-and-gloom economic prognostications about socially conservative legislation.” To put it simply, they find “experts” to study the issue and then declare that any legislation which impedes their agenda is backward, bad for business and harmful for economic growth.
But even lefty PolitiFact rated the Texas Association of Business prognostication as “mostly false.” Politicians seem to be especially susceptible to these dubious doom-and-gloom “studies” because they’re terrified of being blamed for any ill economic effects. Their constituents, however, would be far better served by an adherence to principled and untainted sources of information.
SOURCE
***************************
For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
***************************
14 August, 2017
Leftist hate never stops
Whom would you pick?
Liberals always complain that Conservatives try to dictate the way women dress. However, ‘feminist’ Joan Walsh did just that. While Ivanka Trump is fighting for women, Walsh is demanding that Ivanka change her clothes because she looks too ‘girly’.
“I mean, I don’t mean to sound sexist — it can be dangerous to comment on what women wear — but the fact that she sat in for her father in a dress that was so incredibly ornamental was such a contradiction in terms. And I think that what we see is that in patriarchal, authoritarian societies, daughters have great value — they are property,” said Walsh.
“And the message that she is sending about her own value, about her place in the White House, and about the place of women in this administration, I think, are really pretty frightening,” said Walsh.
“So you can’t be a feminist and be girlie at the same time?” asked Thomas Roberts. “You can be a feminist and be girlie. We all have our girlie days, but I think showing up, taking your father’s seat in a pink dress with big bows on the sleeves is really an interesting message,” said Walsh.
SOURCE
*******************************
Candidate Set To Be First Female Navy SEAL Quits After A Week Of Training
Reality sets in
A woman who enlisted to become the first ever female Navy SEAL quit after one week of training, reports Task and Purpose.
"The unidentified female candidate dropped out in early August during a three-week course in San Diego that began July 24. It was the first assessment of potential SEAL officers before they can be sent on to more grueling courses, according to the website, which cited 'multiple Naval Special Warfare Command sources,'" reports The Washington Examiner.
Before former President Barack Obama's rule change, which took effect in January of 2016, women were not allowed in United States Military combat roles. "?But there were no female applicants in the 18 months since that historic change until now," reported CNN at the end of July, referring to the enlistment of the unidentified candidate.
There is still one remaining female candidate attempting to join the Navy's special operations teams; this unidentified woman is training for the Special Warfare Combatant-Craft Crewman (SWCC) program.
As previously reported by The Daily Wire, women, generally speaking, are unqualified for combat. Moreover, sex-integrated units have been found to be far less effective and more injury-prone than all-male units.
SOURCE
********************************
THE GOOGLE GULAG
The internet cannot remain in the hands of a corporation that hates free speech.
Let me Google that for you.
James Damore is an FIDE chess master who studied at Princeton, MIT and Harvard. He had been working as a software engineer at Google for four years.
Danielle Brown is the new Vice President of Diversity at Google. She has an MBA from the University of Michigan and campaigned for Hillary.
She had been working at Google for a few weeks.
James Damore wrote a memo suggesting that Google should pursue ideological diversity, end discriminatory efforts to achieve identity politics diversity and be honest about gender differences. Danielle responded by denouncing his paper. “It’s not a viewpoint that I or this company endorses, promotes or encourages.”
Brown and Google CEO Sundar Pichai made some vague noises about free speech. And fired him.
“This has been a very difficult time.” That’s how Pichai began his letter to Google employees. Some might have thought that he was about to discuss a massive data breach, not an employee writing something that he disagreed with.
It was a difficult time because leftists at Google had to confront the horror of an original thinker in their ranks. Some were so traumatized by his intrusion into their safe space that they threatened to quit.
And so Damore was fired for “advancing harmful gender stereotypes”. What were these stereotypes?
That the gender gap in coding could be explained because women are more interested in people and men are more interested in things. Women were more cooperative and he suggested and that the gender gap could be reduced by making “software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming.”
Google could have disagreed with him. And left it at that. Instead it was, “Off with his head.”
Pichai claimed that some Google employees were “hurting”. Social media accounts were full of bizarre claims that leftist employees were “afraid” to come to work. But the only actual casualty was Damore.
It’s never the oppressed leftists crying to friendly media outlets who suffer. Only their targets.
James Damore is what most people think of when they imagine a Google employee. A brilliant original thinker with interests spread across the scientific and technological spectrum. But Danielle Brown is what Google actually is: a Hillary Clinton supporter who handled diversity at Intel and Google.
Google is a search engine monopoly that makes its money from search ads. It began with a revolutionary idea from young engineers much like Damore. Then the engineers became billionaires. And the company that began in a garage hired a Vice President of Diversity to get rid of the brilliant young engineers.
The idea that made Google some twenty years ago was PageRank. It was ahead of its time in utilizing social technology to rate the relevance of a page. The idea has since been cannibalized as Google’s search algorithm favors its own products. And increasingly it also favors its own political views.
As the company swings left, it isn’t interested in the “wisdom of crowds”, only in its own agenda.
Google has embedded partisan attacks on conservatives into its search and news territories under the guise of “fact checks”. It has fundamentally shifted results for terms such as “Jihad” to reflect Islamist propaganda rather than the work of counterterrorism researchers such as Robert Spencer. And it wasn’t the first time. Google had been previously accused of manipulating search results during Brexit.
Censorship has long been a problem on YouTube. And it will now officially be caging “controversial” videos using a method developed by Jigsaw. Formerly Google Ideas, Jigsaw is Google’s left-wing incubator developing social justice tech.
The Southern Poverty Law Center guided Google’s censorship of Islamic search results. But there’s no reason to think that it will stop there until Google has completely cannibalized PageRank and replaced it with ProgRank in which search results will be dominated by left-wing sites in one category after another. First Autocomplete results and then actual search results will be censored and suppressed.
Google’s treatment of conservative users mirrors its internal treatment of conservative employees.
Internally, Google is a toxic environment where conservatives are threatened, blacklisted and even physically assaulted. Damore’s case went public. Countless other conservatives were forced out of Google and blacklisted by left-wing activists without their cases ever receiving public attention.
Once upon a time, James Damore would have represented what was best about Google. But Google doesn’t need brilliant minds. It needs to find more ways to squeeze ad dollars out of its monopoly. The pretense that it’s a hub of innovation is the meaningless default brand for a Bay Area tech company.
Damore was working on Google’s search infrastructure. And there’s little doubt that he was wasted there. Google’s search has grown more useless even as the company’s search revenues have grown. Google’s goal is to streamline and shape search results for a mobile environment by giving users what it thinks they want rather than what they are actually searching for. Google isn’t just politically left-wing, its product mindset has become all about forcing users to do what it thinks they should be doing.
Google’s efforts to get a foothold in social media have repeatedly failed because of this mindset.
Damore, like so many of us, wasn’t thinking the way that Google thought he should be thinking. And so it dealt with the problem by getting rid of him. When users search for results that Google doesn’t like, it guides them to what it thinks they should be looking for. If they persist, then the results vanish. If they upload videos it doesn’t like, they get censored. That’s the totalitarian left-wing Google model in action.
Google is approaching the ecological dead end of its technological niche. There’s not much else to do except make fringe investments that are little more than disguised advertising and build more free apps to feed into its own ad business while driving traffic to them through its search and Android leverage.
If the business model ever fails or the government takes a closer look at its abuses, then it’s all over.
Meanwhile its Google.org philanthropy can fund pro-crime and anti-police causes. Google Ideas, now known as Jigsaw, can try to get involved in the Syrian Civil War. And the herd of leftists it hired can police internal messaging by spamming angry social justice memes and waiting for an actual engineer to contradict them. That’s what happened to James Damore. It’s happened to plenty of others before him.
When Google fired Damore, it sent a very clear message. The message wasn’t tolerance, but intolerance.
It said that its Vice President of Diversity knows more about biology than a researcher who received his biology degree in the top 3% of his class. It announced that there is no room for original thinking, heterodoxy or genius at Google. And it went even without saying, no room for anyone to the right.
When asked at a shareholder meeting whether conservatives would feel welcome at Google, Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt replied, “The company was founded under the principles of freedom of expression, diversity, inclusiveness.” But freedom of expression no longer comes before diversity. It’s breathing in the toxic fumes of fake inclusiveness and watching diversity vanish down the highway.
“Viewpoint diversity is arguably the most important type of diversity,” James Damore had argued.
But that’s not what the left means by diversity. At Google and everywhere else it means a plurality of people from different backgrounds, races, genders and sexual identities who agree with us.
It’s an artificial consensus that displaces the old democratic values of individualism and freedom. Instead it imposes a system of safe spaces that treat any dissent as an act of violence against the oppressed.
The gates of the internet cannot remain in the hands of a corporation intolerant of free speech. Google’s monopoly doesn’t only threaten the free market. It threatens freedom of expression on the internet.
It’s not just about James Damore. It’s about all of us.
SOURCE
*******************************
Jobs
For anybody who has not got it already, Trump's personal Facebook page is here. The latest announcement is that there have been over 1 million new jobs created since Trump took office. See the video of Aug. 9th.. While the media are obsessing about Russia, Trump is delivering the miracle he promised. So who's dumb now? He knows the important stuff. The Left don't. Trump encourages and supports the people who make America tick. Obama despised them as "bitter clingers". Trump is a great blessing to America.
***************************
For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
***************************
13 August, 2017
Google Manifesto: Does Biology Explain Gender Disparities in Tech?
An article under the above heading appeared in Live Science, in reply to the claims of James Damore of Google fame. As one would expect from Left-dominated mainstream academe the answer given is broadly "No".
What they trot out is all old chestnut stuff that basically aims at a straw man. What psychometricians assert is only a TENDENCY. There is no claim that men generally are good at tech and women not. The research finding is that there is a big overlap in male and female abilities. Abilities differ only at the margins. So the various arguments put forward about exceptional female abilities are pointless. In various times and places you can find women who do math and tech well. And the "No" article is mainly just a trotting out of such examples.
What is of interest is the GENERAL TENDENCY in mental abilities, not a parade of anecdotes about tribes in India etc. And the way to measure a general tendency is to apply a valid and reliable test of problem-solving ability to a representative population sample. And the finding from such studies is that at the top of the IQ range in Western populations, there are always many more men than women. And if we look at mathematical ability only, the gap is even larger. You can theorize yourself blue in the face about why that is so -- "patriarchy" and all the rest -- but there remains there a clear and firm difference in ability that you have to deal with.
It is perfectly reasonable that some populations somewhere have undergone selective pressures which make females better at the top of the range but that does not alter the reality in Western society.
So on the basis of measured facts rather than a lot of speculation, Damore was perfectly right. You will always get a substantial number of women who are good at tech and mathemstics but they will be greatly outnumbered by men.
In the circumstances, it matters little if the differences are inborn nor not but the way such differences have consistently shown up for around a hundred years certainly suggest something inborn -- or at least something very resistant to change. And the various genetic studies -- now including DNA findings -- do show that most of IQ and its component abilities is genetically determined.
So Google's frenetic efforts to introduce "equality" into its workforce were pushing uphill from the beginning. Such efforts were doomed to failure. Damore's greatest offence may have been to point that failure out.
That despite great efforts Google could not equalize the number of its employees in stat/math applications would seem good confirmation of what the tests show. Despite its great efforts to swing the results in the way it wanted, Google ended up finding exactly what the IQ and other tests predicted. A psychometrician would call Google's experiment good validation of the tests. Google showed that the tests were right.
*********************************
Trump Attacked for N. Korea Remarks, But Liberals, Media Okay With Similar Words by Truman, Clinton
Although Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Democrat lawmakers, and many members of the media were quick to criticize President Donald Trump’s “fire and fury” remarks towards North Korea, they were wrong to suggest that no other U.S. president had used such tough rhetoric about another country.
For instance, comments made by Democratic President Harry Truman, after the first atomic bomb was dropped on Japan, were arguably much harsher than what Trump said.
On Tuesday, in response to Communist North Korea threatening to bomb the island of Guam where U.S. troops are stationed, President Trump said, “North Korea best not make anymore threats to the United States, they will be met with fire and fury, like the world has never seen.”
“He [Kim Jong-un] has been very threatening, beyond a normal statement,” said Trump. “And as I said, they will be met with fire, fury, and frankly power - the likes of which the world has never seen before.”
CNN anchor Jake Tapper criticized the president’s statement, saying “this is a time when words should be chosen and measured carefully. The White House sources tell us that the president spoke extemporaneously when he made that statement about ‘fire and fury.’ Perhaps now might not be the best time to improvise.”
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) also disapproved of Trump’s remarks during an interview on KTAR radio: "I take exception to the president's comments because you gotta’ be able to do what you say you're going to do…. In other words, the old walk softly but carry a big stick, Teddy Roosevelt's saying, which I think is something that should've applied because all it's going to do is bring us closer to a serious confrontation,” said McCain, who is a strong opponent of President Trump.
“I think this is very, very, very serious,” he said. “The great leaders I've seen don't threaten unless they're ready to act and I'm not sure President Trump is ready to act…. It's the classic Trump in that he overstates things.”
In addition, many Democrats attacked the president’s comments. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said that, "President Trump is not helping the situation with his bombastic comments,” and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called Trump’s “fire and fury” quote “reckless rhetoric.”
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) concurred with her Democrat colleagues, going as far as to say that the president’s remarks “demonstrates weakness” and are “recklessly belligerent.”
However, former Democratic Presidents Harry Truman and Bill Clinton have made similar and even stronger comments during times when the security of the United States was being threatened.
In 1993, The New York Times reported: “On his weekend visit to South Korea, President Clinton warned that if North Korea developed and used an atomic weapon, ‘we would quickly and overwhelmingly retaliate.’ ‘It would mean the end of their country as they know it,’” he said.
Democratic President Truman also used harsh language in 1945 when facing the ongoing threat posed by Japan. “It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East,” said Truman in a statement on August 6, 1945, after the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. (The second bomb was dropped on Aug. 9, 1945.)
“We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city,” said Truman, the only U.S. president to order a nuclear strike on largely civilian targets. “We shall destroy their docks, their factories, and their communications. Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan’s power to make war.”
“If they do not accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air the like of which has never been seen on this earth,” said Truman. “Behind this air attack will follow sea and land forces in such number and power as they have not yet seen and with the fighting skill of which they are already well aware.”
Neither McCain, Feinstein, Pelosi, Tapper, or other members of the liberal media have said the comments by Clinton and Truman were too harsh or dangerous.
SOURCE
********************************
Union Foolishly Persists, Wasting Time and Resources
In 2011, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) and its co-conspirators started invading Maryland Walmart stores and harassing customers and staff. Perhaps the UFCW thought it could get away with its outrageous behavior in a union-friendly state or that the federal courts would weigh in on its behalf. But, either way, it was in for a series of surprises.
The UFCW claims that it launched this campaign of harassment to improve working conditions for Walmart employees and that it does not wish to represent Walmart workers itself. Of course, since the UFCW is at least as honest as any unscrupulous used car salesman, its claims may or may not be accurate.
During this campaign, which went on for several years, the UFCW would assemble “flash mobs” to block traffic, block check-out lanes, sing, dance, scream, use bullhorns indoors, litter, confront managers, force their way into management meetings, etc. UFCW protesters would then refuse to leave as they were instructed to do by Walmart managers. The police would be called, and they would order the protesters to leave.
In response to this harassment, Walmart lawyers repeatedly sent cease and desist letters to the UFCW; and the union stubbornly refused to honor them. So, in March of 2013, Walmart filed an unfair labor practice complaint with the National Labor Relations Board accusing the union of coercing Walmart employees to join the union.
In September of 2013, Walmart filed a lawsuit against the UFCW for trespassing and nuisance in Maryland’s Anne Arundel County. The UFCW filed a motion to dismiss the case, which was denied. Walmart requested a preliminary injunction preventing the union from trespassing on company property; the UFCW argued that the state’s trespassing law was preempted by federal labor law. Rejecting the union’s argument, the court issued a preliminary injunction just before Black Friday in 2013 and a permanent injunction in early 2015.
The permanent injunction prohibited UFCW from entering Walmart property in Maryland for the purpose of “picketing, patrolling, parading, demonstrations, chanting, ‘flash mobs,’ handbilling, solicitation, customer disruptions, manager delegations or confrontations, or associate engagement for a non-shopping purpose.” The injunction also prohibited
“Interfering with, obstructing or blocking Walmart’s and its customers’ access to, and use of, easements and/or right-of-ways granted by Walmart across or upon apron sidewalks and parking lots adjacent to stores for which Walmart has a “building only” lease; and engaging in any nuisance conduct off Walmart’s private property which disrupts and/or interferes with Walmart customers’ or associates’ access to, or ability to move around or exit, Walmart private property…”
Hoping for a more favorable ruling, the UFCW appealed the circuit court’s decision to the Maryland Court of Special Appeals. That court unanimously affirmed the lower court’s ruling.
Still not able to accept that it was wrong, the UFCW appealed to the highest court in the state, the Court of Appeals. Late last month, the court handed down its decision. Once again, the UFCW’s arguments were found to be without merit, and the Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed the ruling of the Court of Special Appeals. In other words, the UFCW’s lawyers could not persuade even one of the seven judges on the Court of Appeals – whether appointed by a Republican or a Democrat – to side with the union.
For over three years, the UFCW spent its members’ money paying lawyers to fight a losing battle with Walmart in Maryland courts, and the union has absolutely nothing to show for it. Of course, the union tried its shenanigans at Walmart stores in a number of other states. And judges from California to Ohio to Florida also told the UFCW to stop trespassing on Walmart property.
SOURCE
******************************
Hopes rise for diabetes patients as trial jab brings the disease to a halt
A twice-monthly injection can stop type 1 diabetes in its tracks, according to an early-stage study that raises hopes of a vaccine for the disease.
Scientists have found the first strong evidence that the previously untreatable disorder can be halted by reining in attacks from the immune system.
Combined with advanced blood tests that spot the disease before symptoms appear, the approach has the potential to prevent most of the 16,000 new cases diagnosed in Britain each year.
SOURCE
*******************************
For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
***************************
11 August, 2017
How America Lost Its Mind
There is a looong article in "The Atlantic". Under the above title. It can however be summarized briefly. KURT ANDERSEN argues that as many as a majority of Americans have always believed silly things. From my knowledge of history, I am inclined to agree. And if you don't know much history, Andersen gives you a grand tour of it.
He attributes this flexibility of belief to the general freedoms that Americans have. The land of the free is, by extension, the land of freedom to believe anything that you want to. Again, I think there is something in that.
But towards the end of his article Andersen comes of course to TRUMP. And you can guess what he thinks of Trump. Trump has no reality contact at all, according to Andersen. He is mad. Leftist thinking and assumptions and customs and procedures have become so entrenched in public discourse that to blast through it all sounds mad to Andersen -- or at least morally defective.
And from Trump's success he concludes that Americans generally have reached new heights of derangement. But how to explain that fall? The obvious culprit is the internet, which allows all sorts of craziness to spread without check or hindrance. And, as a secondary cause, Andersen cherry-picks a few things that some Republicans have said that seem particularly corrupting to the search for truth. Christianity in particular seems to him a major form of brain-rot.
What he is completely blind to, however, is the total disregard for the truth on the political Left. And that is not controversial. The Left themselves tell us that. They say: "there is no such thing as right and wrong". And they live that belief. Almost any Leftist argument is one big exerise in cherry-picking. What a Leftist polemicist writes normally sounds right and reasonable -- until you hear the stuff that the Leftist has omitted from his argument. Telling only one side of the story is the Leftist specialty. It is so very common that I get the impression that they can do no other.
Conservative polemic, by contrast, usually START OUT with the Leftist argument and then puts forward contrary information. Conservatives keep trying to refute Leftists with facts -- a quite futile operation. The fine-honed psychological defence mechanisms of the Left -- denial, projection, compartmentalization etc. -- are only one way that they protect themselves from acknowledging inconvenient facts.
Mostly, they do their best to ensure that they never even hear a conservative presentation in the first place. I have seen them literally get up and run away from a conservative presentation of facts that Leftists normally omit from their consideration. And, of course, they make huge efforts to censor or disrupt conservative speech so that they don't have to hear it in the first place. And if a speaker of conservative arguments can be got at and punished for his speech, they will do that too -- ask James Damore of Google about that.
So the Left do their level best to ensure that the whole truth will never come out. But that inevitably fails. There are some channels of communication that let people know how much falsehood there is in Leftist writing. People listen to the mainstream TV channels and mainstram newpapers only to find eventually that none of it could he trusted. Just one man -- Rupert Murdoch -- has cracked the TV and newspaper bubble. With Fox news, The New York post and the Wall St Journal, Murdoch has made widely available information that would once not have come to the attention of the general public. And enough people take in Murdoch's information to use it in everyday discussions. So even people who themselves absorb no Murdoch input will often hear of it by word of mouth. And there are of course radio talkers and blogs that also evade the Leftist straitjacket on information.
So now that people have a growing awareness that they have been systematically deceived, one must expect a certain cynicism to set in. People begin to ask the age-old question: "What is truth?" And the answers to that will often be not very sophisticated. People will seize on any belief that seems plausible to them. So I agree that we now live in an age of heightened irrationality. The lying Left have propelled us into it.
And the rise of Trump is explainable in the same way. His distancing himself from the conventional authorities and calling them a "swamp" coincides very well with how many people have been perceiving all the deception that flow from such authorities. He offers a way out of the intellectual morass that the Left have created.
And even his manner of speech offers hope. He speaks in extremely simple English: Short sentences using very common words. He comes across even in his manner of speaking as a plain and simple man -- most unlike the smooth pieties of most media figures. He really does seem different -- mainly because he is. And even his famous inattention to detail corresponds with how most Americans operate: They go for the broad outline with no time for details.
So. Yes. We do live in times where finding the truth can be a big challenge. But there is after all a fairly easy way to do it if you have time. You just have to read both sides of every question. Do that and you will soon see which side is offering a balanced account of reality.
Also: Reality is the ultimate test of whether your theories are right or wrong. If they are wrong you will not get the results you expect. If they are right you may make a big breakthrough, as Trump has done with a couple of hundred thousand new jobs being created every month and a big rise on the stockmarket. The economy could do with a bit more more "madness" like that.
***********************************
Indonesia to bust sanctions on Russia
Indonesia said Tuesday it would trade palm oil, coffee and tea for Russian fighter jets, saying it wanted to capitalise on international sanctions on Moscow as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was due to arrive for a visit.
Indonesia and Russia signed a memorandum of understanding to exchange 11 Russian-made Sukhoi fighters for key commodities in Moscow last week, a spokesman for Indonesia's trade ministry said.
"The idea was proposed last year and some people suggested Indonesia should trade the jets with our main commodities," spokesman Marolop Nainggolan told AFP.
The EU and US have targeted Russia with sanctions for alleged meddling in the US presidential election and its annexation of Ukraine's Crimea.
However, Indonesian Trade Minister Enggartiasto Lukita has said the sanctions, which have forced Russia to seek new markets to import from, could be good news for Jakarta.
"It's an opportunity which should not be lost from our grasp," he said in Moscow last week.
The deal, to be carried out between Russia's Rostec and PT Perusahaan Perdagangan Indonesia, could be an opening for a further bilateral trade deal that extended to energy and aviation, Lukita said.
The exact timeframe and value of the exchange were not clear.
Details of the barter came as Lavrov was to begin his two-day visit to Southeast Asia's biggest economy later Tuesday.
SOURCE
********************************
Tillerson Says Not to Worry, Pacific Air Forces Ready to 'Fight Tonight'
I think Tillerson is right. Kim just wants attention but he will not do anything that will draw a major assault on him
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson addressed reporters on his flight to Guam Wednesday, telling them not to worry about Kim Jong Un's latest threat.
Soon after the United Nations issued new sanctions as punishment for North Korea's newest ballistic missile test, a Washington Post report surfaced revealing that the regime now has the ability to miniaturize nuclear weapons to fit on to ICBMs. President Trump issued a warning to North Korea, telling the nation they would face "fire and fury" should they continue to threaten the U.S. Just a few hours after those remarks, North Korea reportedly issued a threat against Guam.
It is all plenty to concern Americans. Yet, Tillerson said North Korea is only making a knee jerk reaction to the new sanctions and suggested Kim Jong Un is all bark, no bite.
"I think Americans should sleep well at night, have no concerns about this particular rhetoric of the last few days," he said.
In fact, Tillerson concluded the president used the exact right tone in his message for North Korea and succeeded in getting his message across.
"In response to that, North Korea's rhetoric is just ratcheted up, louder and louder and more threatening," Tillerson noted. "So I think the president, what the president is doing is sending a strong message to North Korea in language that Kim Jong Un would understand, because he doesn't seem to understand diplomatic language."
However, should North Korea's threats be more than rhetoric, the Pacific Air Forces said they are "ready to fight tonight."
The secretary of state said he has no plans to take Guam off of his schedule.
SOURCE
*****************************
ABC settled 'pink slime' lawsuit for $177 million, leaving the beef company feeling 'vindicated'
Disney paid Beef Products Inc. (BPI) $US177 million to settle the 'pink slime' lawsuit that claimed a story ABC ran in 2012 misled viewers and caused hundreds of layoffs.
On Wednesday, Walt Disney Co's quarterly earnings report revealed that the company spent $US177 million "in connection with the settlement of litigation" last quarter.
The case could have resulted in a verdict of as much as $US5.7 billion if BPI had won. In late June, ABC announced it had reached an "amicable resolution" with BPI.
BPI's attorney, Dan Webb, said the settlement "vindicated" the company and its "lean finely textured beef," the product that ABC dubbed "pink slime" in its 2012 reports, according to Hytrek.
"Although we have concluded that continued litigation of this case is not in the company's interests, we remain committed to the vigorous pursuit of truth and the consumer's right to know about the products they purchase," ABC said in a statement.
Lawyers made their opening arguments less than a month ago in a trial that could have resulted in a verdict of as much as $US5.7 billion if BPI had won.
In the suit, BPI alleged that ABC misled viewers by calling its lean finely textured beef "pink slime." LFTB is a common ingredient in beef products and is safe to eat, which ABC noted in its reports. However, even with assurances that the ingredient, made from the trimmings of a cow and treated with ammonia to kill bacteria, wasn't dangerous, the phrase "pink slime" turned off customers, the lawsuit claimed.
"They ignored the proper name," Webb said in his opening argument, according to The Hollywood Reporter. "When you have a major news organisation that is calling the product 'slime,' witnesses will say they can't imagine anything worse. It connotes something disgusting, inedible."
BPI said it had to close three plants and lay off 700 workers because of the "pink slime" backlash.
ABC's attorney argued that the "pink slime" reports brought to light that BPI and other ground-beef producers were using a beef product that most customers were unaware they were eating.
SOURCE
*******************************
Note:
I noted recently that I have reposted the comprehensive survey of Nazi docrine that I originally wrote in conjunction with Michael Miller. At that time, I had not completely reinstated the graphics in the chapter dealing with Nazi gun control. I have however now done that and you can go directly to that chapter by clicking here
*******************************
For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
***************************
10 August, 2017
Socialist paint?
A few excerpts below. One wonders if the Democratic Socialists of America are as democratic as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. But we learn that they have plenty of money and they still think Israel controls Gaza
Things are looking up for the Democratic Socialists of America. With a membership of 25,000, it is now the largest socialist group in America since the Second World War. And last weekend in Chicago, it held its largest convention, by a considerable margin, in its history.
Membership has more than tripled in a year, gaining a large boost from the candidacy of Bernie Sanders and an even bigger one from the election of Donald Trump. Something like 1,500 people joined on Nov. 9, 2016, alone — about average for an entire year before now, Joseph Schwartz, a longtime member of DSA's National Political Committee, told The Week. That sharp surge in new recruits — most of whom are fairly young — has created a fairly stark age bifurcation among members. Somewhat akin to Sanders campaign, there is an old guard of people who have been carrying the left-wing torch for years, and a recent surge of new members radicalized by the recession and the haplessness of the Democratic Party.
There were moments of acrimonious debate over a few topics, but ultimately most of the major proposals were adopted with large majorities. Among other things, delegates voted to create a formal harassment and grievance policy, to endorse the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (directed at ending the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza), to leave the Socialist International, to create a labor organizing committee, and to endorse Medicare for all as a major priority.
The DSA also took paints to make up for its shortcomings, particularly its demographics. The group is quite a bit more white, male, and educated than America writ large. Convention delegates were about 40 percent female and 20 percent minority, according to DSA statistics — not exactly the "Bernie bros" of the liberal imagination, but neither as diverse as they would like.
Perhaps surprisingly for a socialist organization, there was also an emphasis on money. A presentation on DSA's finances emphasized that while the organization is flush, it will take hard work to keep it that way.
SOURCE
******************************
The entire National Security Council staff should be fired
So, apparently, the President’s conversations with foreign leaders, including the President of Mexico and Prime Minister of Australia, were recorded and/or transcribed by National Security Council staff, subsequently classified and then illegally leaked to the Washington Post.
This might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. And not for President Donald Trump, who ultimately makes personnel decisions at the White House, but for those who may have finally, simply gone too far.
For goodness’ sake, the President cannot even have a conversation with leaders in Mexico about the wall or Australia about dumping their refugees into the U.S. without it being leaked by his own staff to sabotage the administration’s policies on immigration and refugees.
There is a clear pattern. The leaks are all in the direction of opposing Trump’s agenda.
Under the Constitution, we have one executive for a reason. That includes the conduct of foreign relations. To the extent that the leaks make it more difficult for the President to discharge his constitutional responsibilities dealing with foreign leaders, they undermine national security.
Other examples include attempts to carry on relations and to ratchet down tensions with Russia. Then-incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s conversation with former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak was intercepted in December and then leaked to the Washington Post in January.
Some of the content of Trump’s meeting with Kislyak and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov — including discussion of active global terrorist threats affecting both countries — in the Oval Office was leaked to the Washington Post in May.
Some of the substance of the conversation of Trump’s senior advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner with Kislyak during the transition period on Nov. 16, 2016 was leaked to the Washington Post from intercepted communications by U.S. intelligence agencies.
These are all clearly designed to sabotage the President’s attempts at détente with Russia, something he campaigned on in 2016. As if Trump was the first president to ever attempt that. You have to basically ignore Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Carter and Reagan — most of the Cold War — who at various intervals, set the stage for first dialogue, establishing direct lines of communication to deescalate the possibility of nuclear exchange, then limiting strategic arms and finally, reducing them. These used to be heralded as diplomatic accomplishments. Now every well-intentioned overture is treated as collusion and treason.
Incidentally, these three issues, Trump’s positions on the wall with Mexico, refugees and Russia were part of what set him apart on foreign policy from the other candidates who ran in 2016. Here’s the key. Taking those positions, Trump won the majority of the Electoral College in November. Trump deserves the chance to pursue those policies under the Constitution. Instead, he is being undermined by his own staff at the White House. This is unacceptable and inexcusable.
That is why Trump must simply fire the National Security Council staff in its entirety and start from scratch. Nobody can be trusted. There’s just no other way to be certain that the leaks will stop.
In addition, it is long overdue that Trump cut all former presidents and their designees out of the loop of classified information under federal rules and by revising Executive Order 13526, something Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning called for in early March, saying “They have no need to know.”
The case for doing so now appears all but irrefutable, particularly after it was revealed by Circa.com’s Sara Carter on August 3 that in late April that National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster had granted a continued security clearance to former National Security Advisor Susan Rice — weeks after it was reported by Bloomberg View’s Eli Lake that she was at the heart of the unmasking scandal by the former Obama administration targeting the opposition party during the 2016 election campaign.
Despite the fact that Rice had been fingered in the unmasking scandal weeks earlier, according to Carter, “Trump was not aware of the letter or McMaster’s decision, according to two Senior West Wing officials and an intelligence official, who spoke to Circa on condition that they not be named.”
McMaster cannot keep control of the National Security Council, and Americans for Limited Government’s Manning said that means it’s time for him to go: “The only option President Trump has is to clean house at the National Security Council, starting at the top with General McMaster. The threat posed to the country by the National Security Council leaking requires immediate and swift action.”
This is the part where the American people can hope that perhaps Trump has simply been playing dumb with McMaster, carrying on like he has no clue what’s happening with the leaks or why, and in the meantime has developed a strategy to survive these machinations. Hopefully the gloves are about to come off.
SOURCE
***************************
China bows to Trump pressure, votes against North Korea in U.N.
Under pressure from the Trump administration to rein in its nuclear neighbor, Communist China voted Saturday in favor of a United Nations resolution banning exports from North Korea until Pyongyang ceases its nuclear weapons program.
While Communist China has voted in favor of sanctions on North Korea in the past, China often sides with North Korea in international talks, fearful sanctions will destabilize the regime and create a crisis on its border.
The BBC reports:
China’s foreign minister has told his North Korean counterpart that Pyongyang should stop carrying out nuclear and missile tests, hours after fresh sanctions were agreed by the United Nations Security Council.
Wang Yi said he urged Ri Yong-ho to abide by UN resolutions in a meeting on Sunday in the Philippines.
He did not say how Mr Ri replied.
Saturday’s resolution banning North Korean exports and limiting investments in the country was passed unanimously.
Mr Wang said sanctions were needed, but “are not the final goal”, and he urged dialogue. He said he told North Korea to remain calm, and not provoke the international community with more tests…
…Beijing has often protected Pyongyang from harmful resolutions in the past.
Russia, which the US has also criticised for its economic links with North Korea, also voted for the sanctions.
This new resolution is far more stringent, in the wake of Pyongyang testing new intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the interior of the United States. While North Korea is impoverished due to its Marxist government, it is rich in minerals. Exports of iron, coal and other mined goods to China — banned under the resolution — are largely its only source of income,
Communist China’s support comes after the Trump administration has stepped up U.S. rhetoric critical of Beijing’s international aggression.
SOURCE
************************************
Google should have Googled labor law
Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement in reaction to Google’s firing of engineer James Damore after he communicated his views on how the company’s politically correct culture was harming its work environment and products offering:
“Google should have Googled labor law. Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act gives employees the right to engage in ‘concerted activities for the purpose of … mutual aid or protection’ of fellow employees and under Section 8 it is illegal for an employer to ‘interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed.’ James Damore was attempting to improve working conditions at the company he worked at and communicated his views to fellow employees, taking direct aim at what he viewed as Google’s PC culture. By firing James Damore, who apparently had filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, Google may have created significant legal jeopardy for itself.
“An adverse ruling by the NLRB that Google engaged in an unfair labor practice could result in its entire diversity-driven, politically correct inquisition to now be subjected to federal oversight, potentially being ordered to end the unfair practice and to revise company policies as a remedy. There is a lot we do not know. There could be hundreds of witnesses who if they had similar findings as Damore could tear the underbelly of Silicon Valley’s left-wing bias wide open for the nation to see. This would provide the impetus for opening up Google’s personnel policies and how they are creating a hostile working environment for those who don’t toe the left-wing company line.”
SOURCE
*******************************
For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
***************************
9 August, 2017
Women beware: President Trump and the promise of violence (?)
Angela McRobbie, a Professor of Communications writes below. She has a vivid imagination and no balance at all. She intuits a promise of violence from Trump while ignoring the actual violence that Leftists repeatedly dish out to Trump supporters.
And her claim that Trump is authoritarian shows scant awareness of the meaning of words. Which is authoritarian, to impose lot of regulations on what people can do or to abolish a lot of such regulations? To anybody except a professor of communications and other people similarly handicapped, it would be obvious that the Left are the authoritarians and Trump is the liberator. Or is she simply so poorly informed that she is unaware of how many regulations Trump has abolished? However you look at it she is not much of a professor of anything
When Emily Maitlis of BBC Newsnight landed her first (and possibly as it transpired, her last) interview with the then-incoming Head of Communications for the White House, Anthony “the Mooch” Scaramucci, she could have had little idea beyond her briefing notes what to expect. What viewers actually saw and heard wasn’t just a bad omen of things to come, but an exercise in that peculiar blend of undisguised contempt and ferocious masculine-driven competition that has become a decisive marker of the violent underpinnings of Donald Trump and his administration. Women beware.
Scaramucci rose to the occasion of having a well-trained and well-mannered BBC female journalist in front of him by attempting to cut her down to size. He repeatedly pointed and stabbed his finger at Maitlis. He seemed to want to pat her on the arm, perhaps intending to infantilise her as ‘just a girl.’ Eventually he did touch her on the hand, thereby breaking all the normal etiquette and disarming her for a moment. Successful working women like Maitlis might have gotten to the top, but she still needed to be reminded of the ‘natural’ pecking order.......
Trump’s particular brand of authoritarianism relies on the popularity of various media genres to give it legitimacy, even in adversity, and even when the White House is struggling to meet any of its policy objectives.
SOURCE
******************************
A Convention of States to Restore the American Tradition
Hundreds of articles and blog posts since the COS movement emerged a few years ago deal with the impossibility of reform from those who profit so well from DC corruption. Other posts, like those scattered about this ArticleVBlog, examined the historic foundations of free government from the 17th century English philosophers down to our Revolution and Constitution.
When taken together, all the events and ideas which shaped the American psyche since publication of the King James Bible in 1611 may be grouped together by the term, ‘Tradition’. Today, I appeal to that which gets little attention, but is so necessary to our survival – the American Tradition. The spark for this squib is F.A. Hayek’s The Fatal Conceit (1988). Tradition, as related by Hayek, resides between instinct and reason. Instinct and reason are distinct from tradition. No amount of reason can produce tradition.
Why is tradition so important? Tradition, customs, and norms of behavior called morals enable and are necessary to the continued existence of the civil society. Unlike totalitarian regimes, republics rest on the common, shared attitudes of the people toward that personal sphere of movement unhindered by anyone else, which we call liberty.
Tradition isn’t genetically passed on to us. We weren’t born with it. Neither can reason alone create tradition. Traditions are the societal, shared notions of right and wrong, of acceptable and unacceptable behavior. These unwritten laws are mostly the ‘thou shalt nots’ which tame the primitive instincts in everyone. If citizens, families, and their organic associations outside of government comprise society, civil society is one in which tradition guides and directs their peaceful and productive lives. An American Tradition left unmolested by the Left, particularly the Supreme Court, limits violence and assaults on our persons and freedom far more effectively than statutory laws.
Civil society is orderly because the rules of human conduct, such as those dealing with property, honesty, contract, exchange, trade, competition, gain and privacy are observed, not in fear of police arrest for violation, but because tradition commands obedience. The source for these evolved norms are time-out-of-mind. They are neither instinctive nor derived from reason. 1
Even though the individual depends on these constraints for his life, he usually doesn’t understand how they function or how they benefit him. He desires so much of what he sees, but is not permitted to grasp. Disliking these constraints so much, we can hardly be said to have selected them; rather, these constraints selected us; they enabled us to survive. 2
The American Tradition and its resulting extended order did not arise all at once; these rules of civil and personal conduct did not spread because men understood them, but simply because they enabled us to prosper more successfully than other cultures.3 Learning how to behave is more the source than the result of insight, reason, and understanding. Man must be taught to be wise, rational and good. He wasn’t born that way. Intellect did not create our morals, but rather human interactions governed by our morals make possible the growth of reason and those capabilities associated with it.4 Is it any wonder the majority of prison inmates grew up in fatherless homes?
In the final chapter, an agnostic Hayek relates why religion is the guardian of tradition. Custom and tradition are more likely to guide society when supported by religious beliefs, the main function of which is to restrain our animal impulses. Acceptance of supernatural beings that could punish transgressions led to observance of the restraints. The belief in some religions that ancestors watched over and would judge the actions of the living is a powerful inducement to follow traditional and religious norms. 5
We owe it partly to mystical and religious beliefs, (particularly to Christianity) that beneficial traditions have been preserved and transmitted at least long enough to enable those groups following them to grow, and to have the opportunity to spread by natural selection. This means that, like it or not we owe the persistence of certain practices and the civilization that resulted from them, in part to support from beliefs which are not verifiable, testable, or the result of rational argumentation.
Regardless of one’s views, even agnostics and atheists should recognize the harm done by the loss of nonfactual beliefs. This loss has deprived mankind of a powerful support in the long development of the extended order. The religious view that morals were determined by processes incomprehensible to many of us is truer than the rationalist delusion that man, by exercising his intelligence, invented morals that gave him the power to achieve more than he could ever foresee. 6
Learning societal norms begins with the family. In their demented way, Islamic families do just that. While despotic rulers in Islamic societies crush liberty, they leave families to patriarchal absolutism. From their religion and customs, fathers are tyrants and may kill their children without fear of civil penalty. It is why muslims are typically far more attached to their traditions than we Americans are to ours. The American Tradition recognizes the distinction between religion and state; Islam doesn’t. The Islamic culture renders its adherents incapable of absorbing the American Tradition. Islam and the American Tradition are mutually exclusive.
While the goals of a COS are to reduce the size and scope of government, the essence of the state-driven amendment process is restoration of the American tradition, in which self-evident truths are made real once again through re-federalization of our national government. Restoration of the American Tradition, the real exercise of unalienable rights, supported along the way by Christianity, are only possible when the states return to the senate, AND have appellate review of supreme court decisions. (See Mark Levin’s Liberty Amendments.)
Conversely, without a COS, what remains of the American Tradition, and with it, the republic, are doomed to destruction by two enemies. First is the spread of the Islamic Tradition, Sharia. Sharia has no place in the West, not just because it is brutal, degenerate, and disgusting; if allowed to expand, it will displace and overwhelm free government Traditions everywhere.
Second, home-grown enemies also threaten the American Tradition. Last week I called out Obama’s Army, Organizing for America (OFA). They exist to reverse the American Revolution, to overturn the American Tradition. OFA believes they can supplant the American Tradition with the conclusions of Leftist ‘reason’: social justice.
Listen to the shudder you feel when singing the Star Spangled Banner or standing at attention when Boy Scouts parade the colors. It is the American Tradition calling out for salvation. We are the many; our oppressors are the few. Government is the playground of politicians, but the Constitution is ours. Be proactive. Restore the American Tradition. Join Convention of States.
SOURCE
****************************
Another prophet who is so blinded by his theories that he fails to see reality
David Stockman headed the Office of Management and Budget under Ronald Reagan but he shows below that he has no understanding of Trump. By conventional theories, the Trump economy should be tanking. But it is not. Employment and all sorts of positive indices are up under Trump, He is already a big success and that should feed on itself and grow. Doom is not yet
What will be the trigger that finally sends the establishment after Trump?
Ultimately, the hammer of fiscal crisis and a crashing stock market will break any remaining loyalty of the GOP elders as they smell the 2018 elections turning into a replay of the rout of 1974.
And then the Donald will be gone, and well before August 2018, too. I told an audience in Vancouver last Friday that it could happen by February.
The bottom line is that the Swamp is so undrainable that it will end up making mincemeat of Donald Trump.
Needless to say, the ultimate causes of his demise are anchored deep in the failing status quo.
America is so addicted to war, debt and central bank driven false prosperity that even the most resourceful and focused challenger would be taken down by its sheer inertia.
But the Donald is so undisciplined, naïve, out-of-touch, thin-skinned, unfocused and megalomaniacal that he is making it far easier for the Swamp critters than they deserve. To a very considerable extent, in fact, he is filling out his own bill of indictment.
Moreover, he is totally clueless about how to manage his presidency or cope with the circling long knives of the Deep State which are hell bent on removing him from office.
Accordingly, the single most important thing to know about the present risk environment is that it is extreme and unprecedented.
In essence, the Donald is the ultimate bull in an exceedingly fragile China shop — and an already badly wounded one at that.
SOURCE
*****************************
Another book showing that the Nazis were Leftist
The Left loves accusing the right of being fascists — but the Nazis, the National Socialists, were left-wing, not right-wing! Dinesh D’Souza is back to destroy the Democrat Party in his latest book, The Big Lie: Exposing The Nazi Roots of the American Left.
The Conservative Book Club’s Editor in Chief, Christopher Malagisi, interviewed D’Souza about the American Left and how much of their tactics can be traced to the Nazis, based on D’Souza’s research.
SOURCE
*******************************
For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
***************************
8 August, 2017
Principles over Personalities
Terry Paulson puts an argument below that I mostly agree with but his comments on free trade are naive. There are three reasons why Trump's restrictive attitudes to trade are right
1). He's got the voters behind him. So opposing him on that would be an electoral disaster. He largely won office on his skepticism about the "exporting" of jobs. He has a degree in economics and he has held his view on trade from long before he ran for political office. So his views are well-considered and of long standing. One must consider that he is on to something.
2). The major argument in favour of free trade is its economic efficiency: It delivers lowest prices. But there are also non-economic arguments to be considered. Economics is not everything. Economists have long recognized a variety of those arguments: The infant industry argument, the national security argument and the "Australian" case. None of those arguments are at issue in the present case but the lesson should be learned that economics-only arguments have long been recognized as too simplistic even by economists. In Trump's case, he is arguing that social stability is being risked by too-rapid industrial change and that change should therefore be reined in and partially reversed. And if a conservative cannot oppose change and argue for stability, who can?
3). Even the economic argument is shaky and may only apply when all other things are equal. The strongest argument there is the 19th century experience. During the 19th century, America prospered mightily behind HIGH trade walls. There was nothing approaching free trade then. Might not a similar prospering happen again under Trump? Given the surge in employment that has already taken place since his election, it looks like that is in fact already happening. How embarrassing to many it will be if Trump's "dumb" policies deliver a win-win: Prosperity plus stability!
With Republicans in control of the executive and legislative branch, critical things can and should get done. Should Republican principles be more important than presidents in guiding our policy priorities in Washington? Certainly.
US Senator Jeff Flake from Arizona has just published a controversial new book, Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principles. Although some question Flake’s own priorities and voting record, he calls for putting principles ahead of personalities. Losers don’t legislate, but legislation must serve a purpose. He writes, “If this was our Faustian bargain, then it was not worth it. If ultimately our principles were so malleable as to no longer be principles, then what was the point of political victories in the first place?”
Like many conservatives, Flake believes that Trump appointed an exceptional Supreme Court justice. His positions on cutting regulations and initiating a tax policy that lowers rates and broadens the base are easy to embrace and support. But Flake feels that Trump strays from conservative principles on curtailing free trade. Free trade serves our citizens, our businesses, and keeps important allies in our trade orbit in an expanding global economy.
Republicans have lost in elections when they stray from the principles that guide them. In 2001, President George W. Bush came into the Presidency and pushed for “No child left behind” and a prescription drug entitlement plan. He promoted his “caring conservative” version of bigger, better government, and the principle of smaller government was pushed aside. In the mid-term elections, the GOP lost the Senate.
Our Founding Fathers wisely built checks and balances into our Constitutional structure. It’s time for Republicans in Congress to assert their role and let Republican principles be their primary guide. They should support and work with Trump whenever they can. They should work with Democrats willing to build on common ground, but they should not follow Trump where he departs from what we stand for. Winners legislate; it’s time they assert their priorities.
In the coming months, I will focus on the six primary principles that California Republicans have said unites them: smaller government and less government regulations; lower taxes on small businesses and individuals; a strong military and homeland security; sustain the American Dream through personal freedom and responsibility; promote educational excellence through school choice; and support a free-enterprise, free-trade economy. It’s time Congress and President Trump get busy delivering on what matters most.
SOURCE
********************************
Network denies axing Tim Allen’s popular sitcom over Trump support
US television network ABC has denied that it cancelled comedian Tim Allen’s popular sitcom Last Man Standing due to its conservative politics.
Fans of the show — and Allen himself — were angered when ABC announced in May that one of its most-watched scripted series, a solid ratings draw, was being brought to an end.
Allen’s character, an outspoken conservative, echoed the political positions of the 64-year-old actor, a Republican who attended President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
The announcement sparked a firestorm of criticism on social media, with Allen tweeting that he had been “stunned and blindsided” by Disney-owned ABC’s decision.
Meanwhile a petition on Change.org that attracted more than 300,000 signatures claimed the comedy was cancelled because it was the only entertainment program that was not constantly shoving “liberal ideals down the throats of the viewers.”
“Politics had absolutely nothing to do with it,” ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey told the Television Critics Association press tour in Los Angeles.
Tim Allen and Nancy Travis in a scene from Last Man Standing.
Tim Allen and Nancy Travis in a scene from Last Man Standing.Source:Supplied
“We have actors on our shows who have all sorts of political views. Tim Allen is a valuable part of the Disney family and has been for a very long time.” She described Last Man Standing as a “high quality show” but added that the network had not been able to find room in the schedules for a seventh season.
A month before the cancellation Allen had spoken about Trump’s inauguration on late-night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live, saying that he was “almost afraid” to say he had been at the event.
“You gotta be real careful around here,” Allen said. “You get beat up if you don’t believe what everybody else believes. This is like ’30s Germany.”
SOURCE
**************************
Hostility toward religion is on the rise in the United States, according to a new report
The report, recently released by the Family Research Council, shows an increase in the number of incidents involving “religious freedom violations” since the first report was released in July 2014. The original report spanned over a decade and contained 90 incidents. In the past three years, 69 new incidents have been added.
“The recent spike in government-driven religious hostility is sadly not surprising, especially considering the Obama administration’s antagonism toward biblical Christianity,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, in a statement. “The report underscores the legitimacy of the actions taken by the Trump administration to end the policies and practices in federal agencies that fan the flames of this religious intolerance.”
Perkins added the report’s findings also show “the growing courage of Christians, especially young Christians, to defend both their faith and their freedoms.”
The report found that antagonism toward religious beliefs on sexuality was fueling much of the increase:
Hostility to religious beliefs on natural marriage and human sexuality … [included] 42 incidents in the report’s first edition. In the time since then, 48 new incidents have been added to these sections. Thus, the number of these religious freedom violations more than doubled …
In the introduction to the report, the Family Research Council writes that the attacks on religious teaching on marriage and sexuality “is the product of more insidious forces which ultimately will erode civil liberties for all Americans, even if they hold a different viewpoint than our own.”
Included in the religious liberty violations listed in the report was one about a survey distributed by a major financial firm.
In 2014, JPMorgan Chase, a vocal advocate of LGBT rights, sent out a survey to its employees asking a number of questions. The survey asked if the employee was “disabled, had family members that were disabled, if they were LGBT, or if they were allies of the LGBT movement.” Employees that answered negatively the final question could be interpreted as being at odds with the beliefs of the firm.
In February 2016, Edie and David Delorme received death threats after declining to make a cake for a same-sex wedding. The Delormes, who are devout Baptists, have previously refused to create cakes that go against their religious convictions, including those “that support alcohol, tobacco, gambling, or convey sexually inappropriate images,” according to the report.
Rather than accepting a list of nearby bakeries that would create the same-sex wedding cake instead, the couple complained to the media, bringing on harsh attacks against the Delormes.
“The bakery received threats of violence on social media and Yelp,” the Family Research Council wrote. “Though the bakery was never threatened with a lawsuit, they remain a target of criticism by LGBT activists.”
Another area of extreme hostility concerns Catholic churches, schools, and hospitals who have been operating in accordance with the Catholic Church’s teaching.
One example occurred in September 2016 when Kate Drumgoole, a guidance counselor and coach at a Catholic high school in New Jersey, was fired when the administration learned that she was in a same-sex relationship.
Drumgoole, citing discrimination, sued the archdiocese and Paramus Catholic High School despite having previously signed the archdiocese’s “Policies on Professional and Ministerial Conduct.” By signing it, teachers acknowledge the requirement that they “act in accordance with the ‘discipline, norms and teachings of the Catholic Church.’”
“Religious liberty is the exercise of our inherent, natural rights. It is not limited to freedom to worship, rather, it means that we are free to live consistently with our beliefs in the public square,” says Melanie Israel, a research associate in the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation.
“Individuals and organizations should be able to maintain their ability to abide by their religious convictions when they carry out their work, including serving the poor, educating the next generation, or running a business.”
SOURCE
*******************************
For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
***************************
7 August, 2017
Leftist hate out in the open
Nearly a half-million people turned out at the Women’s March in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 21, 2017 to “send a bold message” to the incoming presidential administration. It probably never occurred to them that they might be marching for something worse than that which they were marching against.
New York Times editor Bari Weiss, in a column Tuesday bearing the headline “When Progressives Embrace Hate,” took a close look at the women who organized the effort. And what’s behind the curtain is not pretty.
If anyone doubts that “hate” is an accurate term, take a look at what Weiss writes about the four women— Tamika Mallory, Bob Bland, Carmen Perez and Linda Sarsour—behind the march.
Actually, check that. Let the women tell you themselves, which is precisely what Weiss does. She starts with Sarsour:
“Nothing is creepier than Zionism,” she wrote in 2012. And, oddly, given her status as a major feminist organizer, there are more than a few that seem to make common cause with anti-feminists, like this from 2015: “You’ll know when you’re living under Shariah law if suddenly all your loans and credit cards become interest-free. Sound nice, doesn’t it?” She has dismissed the anti-Islamist feminist Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the most crude and cruel terms, insisting she is “not a real woman” and confessing that she wishes she could take away Ms. Ali’s vagina — this about a woman who suffered genital mutilation as a girl in Somalia.
This seems insensitive and, well, stupid. But is it “hateful”? Hold on; we’re just getting started.
More recently, Weiss points out, the official Twitter account of the Women’s March tweeted out support for Assata Shakur. When Jake Tapper pointed out on Twitter that Shakur is a fugitive cop killer, Sarsour accused the CNN correspondent of joining “the ranks of the alt-right to target me online.”
“Since when did criticizing a domestic terrorist become a signal issue of the far right?” Weiss asks. “Last I checked, that position was a matter of basic decency and patriotism.”
Sadly, it only gets weirder from here. Weiss turns her attention to Perez and Mallory.
“Ms. Mallory, in addition to applauding Assata Shakur as a feminist emblem, also admires Fidel Castro, who sheltered Ms. Shakur in Cuba. She put up a flurry of posts when Mr. Castro died last year. ‘R.I.P. Comandante! Your legacy lives on!’ she wrote in one. She does not have similar respect for American police officers. ‘When you throw a brick in a pile of hogs, the one that hollers is the one you hit,’ she posted on Nov. 20.
Ms. Perez also expressed her admiration for a Black Panther convicted of trying to kill six police officers: ‘Love learning from and sharing space with Baba Sekou Odinga.’”
If praising cop killers and dictators is not enough for you, alas, we’re still not done.
Weiss shows that Mallory and Perez also gush over Louis Farrakhan, the man who praised Hitler on national television as “a very great man” and called Judaism a “gutter religion.” Oh, he is also an unapologetic racist who said that “white people deserve to die.”
Regardless of your political or ideological persuasion, I recommend reading Weiss’ article in its entirety.
What’s striking is that the vitriol is so transparent. These women were not surreptitiously recorded or accused of saying vile things; they were publicly praising cop killers, mass murders, and unapologetic racists.
This is not to suggest that hate is confined to the left; we know it’s not. Nor is the goal to impugn the many fine people who marched in the Women’s March earlier this year. I, like most people, know people who were there. They were without exception good people who believed they were marching for unity.
But the true character—and the true motivations—of those who organized the Women’s March needs to be exposed. The New York Times did just that, and they deserve credit.
Read the article. Read what Mallory, Perez, and Sarsour stated publicly. Then ask yourself if you believe it’s truly unity and peace they seek.
SOURCE
************************************
Trump vs. MS-13
Leave the poor misunderstood gangsters alone, cries the Left
President Trump’s intensifying crackdown on transnational crime gang MS-13 is being met with fierce resistance by the Left.
Understanding the leftist mind is an inexact science but the complaints seem to center around the idea that in the Trump era trying to eliminate an ethno-culturally non-diverse criminal organization is somehow racist, no matter how horrifying and brutal the group’s crimes against innocent Americans may be. The Left habitually sides with antisocial causes, putting partisanship over the interests of the American people. Left-wingers promote so-called sanctuary cities which are magnets for illegal aliens and the crime that accompanies them. They don’t care about the damage such policies do to American society.
Although it may sound like hyperbole to some, leftists hate Donald Trump and everything he stands for, so if Trump comes out against rapists and serial killers, for example, the Left will defiantly take a stand in favor of rapists and serial killers.
Racist left-wing journalist Jamelle Bouie of Slate argues that MS-13 is nothing to be afraid of. It’s all hype. He writes that the president’s speeches on MS-13 and illegal aliens employ words to "make white people afraid."
"Trump wasn’t just connecting immigrants with violent crime,” according to the in-your-face Black Lives Matter supporter. “He was using an outright racist trope: that of the violent, sadistic black or brown criminal, preying on innocent (usually white) women."
The massive pile of corpses generated by MS-13 suggests otherwise.
Trump’s clampdown on MS-13 is "emboldening them, because this gives them the opportunity to tell immigrants, 'What are you gonna do? Are you going to report us? They're deporting other innocent people ... [so] they're going to associate you with us by you coming forward,'" says Walter Barrientos, Long Island coordinator for the far-left Make the Road, which CNN describes as an immigrant advocacy group.
"'So what are you going to do? Who's going to protect you?' And that's what really strikes many of us."
Make the Road is heavily funded by George Soros's philanthropies, National Council of La Raza, as well as by other left-wing funders, including the Tides Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund Inc., Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Surdna Foundation, and the Robin Hood Foundation.
What on earth could generate such apoplexy among left-wingers?
President Trump told law enforcement officials on Friday at the Van Nostrand Theatre in Ronkonkoma, N.Y., that his administration will bring MS-13 to heel.
"Together, we're going to restore safety to our streets and peace to our communities, and we're going to destroy the vile criminal cartel, MS-13, and many other gangs. But MS-13 is particularly violent. They don’t like shooting people because it's too quick, it's too fast … they like to knife them and cut them, and let them die slowly because that way it's more painful, and they enjoy watching that much more. These are animals."
Since January 2016, “MS-13 gang members have brutally murdered 17 beautiful, young lives in this area on Long Island alone.” Gang members “kidnap, they extort, they rape and they rob,” the president said.
"They prey on children. They shouldn’t be here. They stomp on their victims. They beat them with clubs. They slash them with machetes, and they stab them with knives. They have transformed peaceful parks and beautiful, quiet neighborhoods into bloodstained killing fields. They're animals."
Trump declared that it is “the policy of this administration to dismantle, decimate and eradicate MS-13,” and praised law enforcement for “liberating our American towns.”
To finish the job, Trump called for more than doubling U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) staff focused on enforcement and deportations.
"Right now, we have less than 6,000 Enforcement and Removal Officers in ICE. This is not enough to protect a nation of more than 320 million people. It's essential that Congress fund another 10,000 ICE officers -- and we're asking for that -- so that we can eliminate MS-13 and root out the criminal cartels from our country."
And Trump laid the blame for the rise of MS-13 where much of it belongs: on former President Obama. The Obama administration “enacted an open-door policy to illegal migrants from Central America. ‘Welcome in. Come in, please, please.’"
Under Obama’s policies, “MS-13 surged into the country,” Trump said. “In the three years before I took office,” the president added, “more than 150,000 unaccompanied alien minors arrived at the border and were released all throughout our country into United States’ communities -- at a tremendous monetary cost to local taxpayers and also a great cost to life and safety.”
Mara Salvatrucha, commonly called MS-13, reportedly operates in 42 states and in the District of Columbia, as well as Canada, Mexico, and Central America. Its motto is “kill, rape, control.”
Although often described as a Salvadoran criminal organization, that doesn’t tell the whole story. MS-13 was founded by Salvadoran immigrants in Los Angeles in the 1980s who came to the U.S. after the various Central American civil wars of the period.
According to investigative reporter Ines Rivera, MS-13 grew out of the Salvadoran Civil War (1979 – 1992) in which tens of thousands perished. During that conflict,
Many died or saw their loved ones killed in death squads, civilian massacres, beheadings, and in the crossfire. A reality often not talked about is the fact that many of the soldiers in the war were children. Using firearms, blunt objects or machetes, Ms-13 members have been known to leave their victims with their limbs severed, at times decapitating them as well; this kind of violence is a characteristic that distinguishes them from other gangs.
No matter how despicable and loathsome MS-13 may be, there are plenty of activists on the Left who side with the group over America’s 45th president.
Vox’s Dara Lind idiotically proclaimed Trump’s address to police as “the most chilling speech of his presidency,” and accused him of “explicitly encouraging police violence.”
Lind sided with MS-13, implying Trump was spewing racism by “[r]eturning to the theme of scary immigrant criminals” so he could provide “tough talk before an adoring crowd.” She gave MS-13 a pass, mocking Trump for addressing in “gory” detail “the methods by which MS-13 members supposedly torture and kill Americans.”
Then there was the disgraceful recent performance by so-called Republican pundit Margaret Hoover on CNN.
The crackdown on MS-13 was part of a racially coded law enforcement sweep, she maintains.
“Trump was there to highlight the existence of criminal gangs,” and what Trump “was actually doing is he was highlighting the existence of a criminal gang that is South American, El Salvadorian,” said Hoover, whom Breitbart News describes as “one of many Republican useful idiots CNN trots out to bash Trump and his supporters in exchange for pats on the head and cheers of affirmation from Democrats and liberal media elites.”
Ignoring the specific threat posed by MS-13, Hoover said that Trump was focusing attention on the group because there “are individuals from other countries, sometimes there are citizens of the country, sometimes they’re not, of course Americans citizens get caught up and every violent criminal who is here should be deported, and they are on borrowed time.”
Trump’s attacks on the gang are a sop to "white supremacists," Hoover said.
In other words, Trump is a bigot so of course he is trying to hurt minorities, in this case, members of MS-13.
Sane Americans sympathize with the president’s goal of taking a strong stand against the vile butchers of MS-13, regardless of whether they approved of President Trump.
That’s what patriots do. But on the Left there aren’t many of those remaining.
SOURCE
*******************************
For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
***************************
6 August, 2017
The Marxist model
I have received the following comments from an American reader. I think they nail Leftism well
Marx himself did not believe in Marxism. He laughed at people who believed in it.
If we want to understand how the great totalitarian machine is able to morph and shift and change with the times, we must go to its soul. At bottom Marxism is a strategy behind which stands a pathological desire for absolute power and global destruction.
The outward phenomenon of Marxism is merely the intellectual camouflage of the politically self-actualized psychopath. Here is the outward expression of his rationalization for murder, for seizing power.
This outward expression has changed time and time again, but its spiritual essence is always the same.
And we always seem to miss the point of it. We always seem to address the inner thoughts and intentions of people who are assumed to believe or not believe in a set of “principles.”
But this is an error. We do not understand these people at all! The communist does not take ideas seriously. He is serious only about power and strategy.
A mask is not an idea. A strategy is not a principle. These are tools, weapons, methods.
Marx did not believe in his tools. He used them, and his followers used them, until the tools of the hour no longer served their purpose.
Then the old tools, the old weapons, were discarded for a new set of weapons – “new lies for old.”
Those who talk about belief or disbelief are only talking about the superficial shell of the thing, which can be replaced with a new shell – a new outward appearance.
If Marx did not believe in Marxism, then the true Marxist should not believe in it either. It is a sorry swindler who believes in his own swindle.
Behind the shell of the communist's outward pretenses we find the same core phenomenon: the malevolent soul of the destroyer, the envious lusting for power and revenge, the hatred of the good for being the good.
And in this soul’s self-affirmation we find, curiously, a reformulation of the same old totalitarian themes; the same old bag of tricks for debasing and leveling humanity.
All that being said, the outward shell of the supposedly debunked Marxism is by no means out of the game. Out-and-out communism could return to power at any time.
The various outer shells – the rationales and swindles – may change and shift as circumstances require; yet the driving force from within remains ever constant, ever alert to new opportunities. Marxism is strategy, not belief.
That is why Mao Zedong said, “Marxism is better than a machine gun.”
One does not believe in a machine gun. One uses it, merely, to neutralize an enemy.
One must keep in mind the usefulness, in this regard, of ideological mortars and howitzers and atomic bombs – the whole arsenal of political correctness.
Via email
*****************************
Trump endorses GOP bill to slash legal immigration by more than half
"They're not going to come in and immediately go and collect welfare"
At the White House on Wednesday President Donald Trump unveiled a major overhaul of the U.S. immigration system. Trump endorsed GOP legislation that aims to slash legal immigration levels by more than half and introduce a “merit-based” system that prioritizes high-skilled immigrants for entry.
Standing next to Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and David Perdue, R-Ga., the president said the RAISE Act (Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment Act) would be the “biggest change in 50 years” to the U.S immigration system.
“The RAISE Act will reduce poverty, increase wages and save taxpayers billions and billions of dollars,” Trump said. The current immigration system, according to Trump, “has not been fair to our people, to our citizens, to our workers.”
“This legislation demonstrates our passion for struggling American families,” he added.
The two Republican senators “have been working closely” with White House adviser Stephen Miller, who is “known for his hawkish stance on immigration,” according to Politico. Miller is also one of the key architects of the president’s travel ban of citizens from six Muslim-majority countries.
The merit-based system the legislation proposes would “increase the number of green cards — which allow for permanent residency in the U.S. — that are granted on the basis of merit to foreigners in a series of categories including outstanding professors and researchers, those holding advanced degrees, and those with extraordinary ability in a particular field,” according to Politico.
While many economists and business leaders have supported a merit-based approach to immigration, similar to the processes in Canada and Australia, the plan to “slash the number of green cards from 1 million a year to 500,000 over the next decade” poses a major risk to the economy, economists said. The Post elaborated:
The RAISE Act will face plenty of opposition from congressional Democrats, and even some Republicans, as well as immigrants rights groups and business leaders. “[T]he bill’s prospects are dim in the Senate, where Republicans hold a narrow majority and would have difficulty getting 60 votes to prevent a filibuster,” the Post reported.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has already expressed concern over the bill’s drastic cuts to immigration, arguing the cuts would be “devastating” to his state’s economy. “I’ve always supported merit-based immigration. I think we should always want to attract the best and brightest to the United States,” Graham tweeted. “Unfortunately other part of proposal reduces legal immigration by half including many immigrants who work legally in Ag, tourism, & service.”
Todd Schulte, the president of Mark Zuckerberg’s immigration reform advocacy group FWD.us, has said that the immigration slashes “would severely harm the economy and actually depress wages for Americans,” which is the exact opposite of the rhetoric touted by the Trump administration about economic growth.
“President Trump has always been correct when he repeatedly said he does NOT want to cut legal immigration. Not only do immigrants help grow the economy overall, but immigrants drive up wages for the overwhelming majority of Americans, and significantly so in areas and industries with more immigrants, where wage growth has outpaced the country overall,” Schulte said, according to a press release.
SOURCE
****************************
Republicans as Democrats lite
Veronique de Rugy
Despite a mountain of historical evidence that the Republican Party doesn’t seriously stand for smaller government and individual liberty, I maintained some hope that this time would be different. With the GOP’s retaking control of Congress and the White House, I actually thought Obamacare could be repealed and maybe even replaced with free market health care reforms. But though the night is still young in terms of the GOP’s latest return to power, Republicans have quickly demonstrated that I should have trusted my usual pessimism, because it’s clear that they’re not guided by any principled support for limited government.
Though a few congressional Republicans sincerely believe in markets and freedom, the party is largely dominated by pretenders and outright statists. One need only look back to when Republicans last controlled Washington. Republicans and the George W. Bush administration massively increased spending and the federal debt.
Military spending skyrocketed to pay for dubious wars. Corporate welfare, including farm subsidies, thrived. The federal government became more involved in what should be local matters, such as education. And civil liberties were trampled on under the guise of “homeland security.” The GOP not only failed to tackle unsustainable growth in federal entitlement programs but also expanded them by creating Medicare Part D.
An amazing thing happened, though, when Barack Obama was elected and the Democrats regained control of Congress. Republicans suddenly remembered the horrors of federal overspending, mounting debt and the endless intrusion by the federal government into every aspect of our lives. Republicans lambasted the notion that Keynesian-style big-government spending would boost the economy. They decried Obamacare and the Democrats’ love for “socialized medicine.” They bemoaned continuous growth in federal debt and conveniently laid the problem at Obama’s feet.
Then another amazing thing happened: Donald Trump was elected, and the GOP was once again in charge. Almost immediately, Republicans began touting increased military and infrastructure spending to create jobs and spur the economy — the very Keynesian-inspired policies they attacked when advocated by Democrats. Even the small number of federal program terminations proposed by the Trump administration were too much for congressional Republicans. Nope — when it comes to the federal budget and yet another looming brush-up against the federal debt ceiling, Republicans reveal that they’re content to maintain an untenable status quo, despite all the lip service paid to the dangers of big government over the years.
Yes, as part of the failed attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare, the GOP did include Medicaid reforms intended to slow the spending growth for the federal/state entitlement program that provides health care for those with lower incomes. There are many problems with the program, which is in dire need of reform. But the same can be said about Medicare and Social Security, which congressional Republicans — and Trump, for that matter — have made clear they won’t touch. (Remember then-vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s emotional attack on President Obama for allegedly cutting Medicare during the 2012 campaign?)
What about the GOP’s supposedly bread-and-butter issue of tax reform? Regardless of how big or small the positive economic feedback to any tax cuts would be, the bottom line is that serious, permanent spending cuts must be part of the equation. But as we have repeatedly seen, Republicans are so unwilling to shrink the size of government that they already waved the white flag and are actively advocating a new source of revenue to “pay for” tax reform. Indeed, I fear that the recent fight over the inclusion of a border adjustment tax to generate revenues is only the beginning. At the rate we’re going, it may not be long until the GOP gets on board with a value-added tax or carbon tax!
For all of the GOP’s deriding of Democrats over the years for being “tax-and-spenders,” the sad reality is Republicans are on their way to earning the same label. We might only be six months into the return of Republican rule, but it’s already looking as if this second go-round of Republican control in Washington this century could end up being as disastrous — if not more — than the first one. But as the saying goes, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. I don’t intend to be fooled twice, and I hope I’m not alone.
SOURCE
*******************************
For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
***************************
4 August, 2017
“TRUMP?! HOW DID THIS HAPPEN??”
An answer from Brendan O’Neill
It happened because you banned super-size sodas. And smoking in parks. And offensive ideas on campus.
Because you branded people who oppose gay marriage ‘homophobic’, and people unsure about immigration ‘racist’.
Because you treated owning a gun and never having eaten quinoa as signifiers of fascism.
Because you thought correcting people’s attitudes was more important than finding them jobs.
Because you turned ‘white man’ from a description into an insult.
Because you used slurs like ‘denier’ and ‘dangerous’ against anyone who doesn’t share your eco-pieties.
Because you treated dissent as hate speech and criticism of Obama as extremism.
Because you talked more about gender-neutral toilets than about home repossessions.
Because you beatified Caitlyn Jenner.
Because you policed people’s language, rubbished their parenting skills, took the piss out of their beliefs.
Because you cried when someone mocked the Koran but laughed when they mocked the Bible.
Because you said criticising Islam is Islamophobia.
Because you kept telling people, “You can’t think that, you can’t say that, you can’t do that”.
Because you turned politics from something done by and for people to something done to them, for their own good.
Because you treated people like shit. And people don’t like being treated like shit.
Trump happened because of you.
SOURCE
************************************
Must not call out Leftist elitism
Liberal fans of William Shatner admonished the legendary television star on Sunday after publicly stating that 'Social Justice Warriors' (SJW) in America stand for 'inequality.'
Shatner, who became a household name for his work on 'Star Trek' more than 50 years ago, took to Twitter to express his disdain for SJWs that compare themselves to activists in the reform movement of the 1960s.
'Why is it that SJW's think they can align themselves with those that demanded social reform in the ['60s]?' Shatner wrote.
'SJWs stand for inequality, where they are superior to any one else, hence my use of Misandry and Snowflake,' he added.
Some in the progressive movement in the US see the terms 'SJW' or 'snowflake' as a derogatory attacks.
Social Justice activists, most prominent on college campuses, have been accused of using illiberal means to make their views known including shutting down public speaking events by guest lecturers and personalities by force.
The tweets by Shatner, 86, garnered a wave of criticism, with many social media users reproaching the actor for his views.
'So speaks an elderly white man secure and sheltered in his fame, wealth, and privilege. I expected better of you,' one person wrote. 'You are so wrong about this... I don't even know where to begin,' another social media user posted.
Shatner's comments also led to online media personalities writing features over his rebuke of the SJWs.
Gizmodo writer Matt Novak claimed Shatner had 'aligned himself with the so-called alt-right,' a nationalist white-supremacy movement, in an article which featured Shatner in Nazi regalia, an image taken from an episode of Star-Trek
Shatner, whose grandparents fled the antisemitic pogroms of Eastern Europe, is Jewish.
Matthew Rozsa of Salon also took Shatner to task, claiming in an article that: 'It seems pretty clear that there has been a decline in Shatner’s character, at least when it comes to his past support for equal rights.'
'That doesn’t mean that we should struggle with cognitive dissonance over how the man who courageously opposed racism in 1968 can now argue for right-wing establishment views in 2017,' he added.
Shatner has been a vocal supporter of equal rights since becoming a public figure more than five decades ago. In 2013, Shatner publicly stated that he was 'appalled by some of the immature, horrifically racist, sexist (and) homophobic' rhetoric posted by users on the social media site Reddit.
SOURCE
*******************************
Jeff Sessions Set to Block Millions in Funding to Sanctuary Cities
The Department of Justice announced last week that sanctuary jurisdictions will lose access to certain federal law enforcement grants in 2017 if they prohibit officials from communicating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, if they block ICE from interviewing jail inmates, or if they fail to notify ICE of the pending release of criminal aliens ICE is seeking to deport.
These particular grants, known as the Byrne Justice Assistance Grants, are the largest source of federal criminal justice funds for state, local, and tribal authorities.
This move is helping fulfill one early promise of the Trump administration: to impose consequences on the most egregious of the more than 300 sanctuary jurisdictions.
It is significant because a large share of the funds awarded in this program go to sanctuary jurisdictions. For example, according to Justice Department records, the four largest grants, and seven out of the top 10 recipients of the Byrne/JAG grants are sanctuaries.
Under the new rules announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, these four top grant-getters (New York City; Cook County, Illinois; Los Angeles; and Philadelphia) are likely to be disqualified from these grants in the future if they maintain their current policies toward ICE.
These cities received more than $10 million in grants in 2016.
Ten sanctuaries are already at risk of debarment based on an initiative launched last year by Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that controls the Justice Department’s budget.
Last year, the department notified 10 of the worst sanctuaries that their Justice Department law enforcement grants could be pulled if they did not come into compliance with the federal law prohibiting sanctuary policies.
The jurisdictions are California; Connecticut; Cook County, Illinois; Chicago; Milwaukee County; New York City; New Orleans; Philadelphia; Miami-Dade County, Florida; and Las Vegas.
A few months later, Miami-Dade County reversed its sanctuary policy and began cooperating fully with ICE.
In April 2017, the Justice Department sent letters to nine of the jurisdictions (all but Connecticut) reminding them that by a deadline of June 30, they had to send documentation of compliance with the law or lose certain funding (and potentially face clawbacks of previously awarded funding).
The documentation of “alleged compliance” is currently under review and the results are expected soon. Sessions has said their statements will be reviewed carefully: “It is not enough to assert compliance, the jurisdictions must actually be in compliance.”
Last Tuesday’s announcement makes clear that the Justice Department is not looking merely at bare minimal compliance with the letter of Section 1373, the federal law that prohibits policies that block communication between local officials and federal immigration agencies, which many sanctuaries dubiously claim to meet.
It also signals that if a jurisdiction feels constrained by the legal controversies surrounding detainers (see discussion here), they can still demonstrate satisfactory cooperation by giving ICE 48 hours advance notice of criminal alien releases.
The following jurisdictions have extreme sanctuary policies that, if maintained, are likely to lead to disqualification from Byrne/JAG grants under the new rules: New York City; Chicago; Cook County, Illinois; Philadelphia; San Francisco County, California; Orleans County, Louisiana; Newark, New Jersey; Travis County, Texas; Taos County, New Mexico; Lycoming County, Pennsylvania; and Butler County, Pennsylvania.
Some jurisdictions have milder versions of sanctuary policies that may not lead to disqualification from grants under the Justice Department rules announced Tuesday.
For example, the following jurisdictions do not honor detainers but already provide ICE with adequate notification of criminal alien releases: Chesterfield County, Virginia; Erie County, Pennsylvania; Bedford County, Pennsylvania; Montgomery County, Pennsylvania; and Lebanon County, Pennsylvania.
Under the new rules, these counties and others may still maintain eligibility for grants if they continue to cooperate fully with ICE.
A new map shows the jurisdictions that are most likely to fail to meet the new requirements, those that likely can meet requirements with their current policies, and a large number that could go either way.
The Byrne/JAG grants are one of three programs now off limits to sanctuaries. Last year, Culberson imposed requirements for basic compliance on the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, which offers partial reimbursement for the costs of incarcerating illegal aliens, and the Community Oriented Policing grant program.
How much money is at stake in the Byrne/JAG program? The Trump administration reportedly is seeking $380 million for the program in 2018.
SOURCE
*******************************
Stalin lives: Huffington Post Writer Calls For “Purge” of Conservatives
Huffington Post contributor and author Dan Arel, who last week advocated violence against Mike Cernovich, has called for a “purge” of conservatives while also labeling Dave Rubin, a gay Jewish man, “Nazi f**king trash”.
The exchange began when I tweeted about YouTube’s temporary removal of Jordan Peterson’s channel, remarking, “The purge begins.”
“Oh Paul, when the left begins its purge, it will be much different than this…” responded Arel, meaning that the “purge” would be something different to just silencing free speech.
When asked to clarify what he meant and whether it constituted a threat of violence, Arel deleted the tweet.
After being called out on the tweet, Arel began to backtrack, subsequently claiming that by “purge” he meant to ban conservatives from the Internet, although his initial deleted tweet suggested an alternative to censorship.
On Sunday, Arel also tweeted an endorsement of violence against Mike Cernovich, remarking that a troll who physically approached Cernovich should have assaulted him. That tweet was subsequently deleted too.
SOURCE
*******************************
For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
***************************
3 August, 2017
HITLER NOTE
Around 15 years ago, I was contacted by Michael Miller, who was in the process of compiling a very comprehensive set of historical notes which would cover all the major aspects of Nazi doctrine. He asked me to do the chapter on Nazi socialism. The resultant site was a very useful one that quite a few people consulted from time to time. A couple of years ago, however, the free website hosting the material deleted it all. "Free" websites are like that in my experience. I did however keep a full backup of everything and I have now reloaded it all here. I have also put a link to it towards the bottom of my sidebar here. I have lost touch with Michael Miller.
************************************
New Report Exposes Thousands of Illegal Votes in 2016 Election
A new bombshell study released by the Government Accountability Institute shows why President Donald Trump’s Advisory Commission on Election Integrity has such an important job ahead of it.
The institute concluded in its report that thousands of votes in the 2016 election were illegal duplicate votes from people who registered and voted in more than one state.
The Government Accountability Institute, founded by Peter Schweizer, author of “Clinton Cash,” seeks to “investigate and expose crony capitalism, misuse of taxpayer monies, and other governmental corruption or malfeasance.”
Over the last few months, the institute sought to obtain “public voter information” from every state in order to search for duplicate votes. This is the same type of information the president’s election integrity commission has requested.
With this report, we may have a clue as to why some states are resisting providing this data.
The Government Accountability Institute was able to obtain voter registration and voter history data from only 21 states because while some states shared it freely, “others impose exorbitant costs or refuse to comply with voter information requests.”
These 21 states represent “about 17 percent of all possible state-to-state comparison combinations.”
The institute compared the lists using an “extremely conservative matching approach that sought only to identify two votes cast in the same legal name.” It found that 8,471 votes in 2016 were “highly likely” duplicates.
Extrapolating this to all 50 states would likely produce, with “high-confidence,” around 45,000 duplicate votes.
The institute obtained this level of confidence by matching not only names and birthdays—which can be the same for different individuals—but also by contracting with companies, such as Virtual DBS, that have commercial databases to further cross-check these individuals using their Social Security numbers and other information.
According to the Government Accountability Institute’s experts, “the probability of correctly matching two records with the same name, birthdate, and Social Security number is close to 100 percent.” In fact, “using these match points will result in virtually zero false positives.”
The probability of 45,000 illegal duplicate votes is the low end of the spectrum, and it does not even account for other types of fraud such as ineligible voting by noncitizens and felons and absentee ballot fraud.
To put this number of fraudulent votes in perspective, Hillary Clinton won New Hampshire by fewer than 3,000 votes out of over 700,000 cast. Just this number of duplicate votes alone has the power to swing state results and, in turn, elections.
Unfortunately, New Hampshire refused to turn over its data for this study.
There have been other razor-tight elections in recent years. In 2000, the presidency was decided by 537 votes out of a total of 105 million cast. In 2008, Al Franken won his Minnesota Senate race by a mere 312 votes. He ended up being the deciding vote that gave this country Obamacare.
Though the institute did not look at the 2008 elections in this study, there is little doubt that the 2016 numbers show that duplicate voting and voter fraud are a real problem that can have serious consequential effects.
The Government Accountability Institute also used the state of Rhode Island as a test case. Over 30 percent of all registered voters in Rhode Island have no Social Security or driver’s license number on file.
While it is legal to register without providing this information, the institute notes that “confirming the identities of some of these voters is impossible using only the data contained in the state’s voter registration system.”
Without this “uniquely identifying information … there is no way to confirm a voter’s identity or citizenship … ” This shows the vulnerabilities that are ripe for any person or group wanting to take advantage of them.
The institute also found more than 15,000 voters registered at prohibited addresses “such as post office boxes, UPS stores, federal post offices, and public buildings.” In some cases, more than 100 voters “were registered to the same UPS store locations.”
They also found voters whose registered addresses were “gas stations, vacant lots, abandoned mill buildings, basketball courts, parks, warehouses, and office buildings.”
The institute tried to bring some of these problems to the attention of Rhode Island election officials as part of its test case. It provided officials with a list of 225 voters who “were registered using prohibited addresses.”
But Rhode Island refused to do anything about the problem beyond sending a letter to the voters. If a voter did not respond, the state refused to take any further action.
Instead, in an obvious attempt to deter the Government Accountability Institute, the state said that the institute would have to file a “voter challenge” and would be subject to a misdemeanor penalty if it filed a “false challenge.”
The fact that these election officials did not want to thoroughly investigate possible voter fraud illustrates one of the problems in this area: Too many election officials don’t want to know about these problems, and refuse to do anything when it is brought to their attention.
The Government Accountability Institute points out that the quality of the voter registration data in some states is very poor, with missing and obviously incorrect information. The institute found 45,880 votes cast by individuals whose dates of birth were more than 115 years before the election.
Several hundred votes were cast by individuals whose registration birthdates “indicated they were under 18 years old at the time of the election,” although some of these were through provisional ballots.
All of this is just the latest evidence that we have serious, substantive problems in our voter registration system across the country and that voter fraud is, without a doubt, real.
The Heritage Foundation has a database that is being constantly updated. It documents nearly 1,100 proven instances of voter fraud, including cases where elections were overturned because of proven fraud.
This kind of work, which the Government Accountability Institute has done, will be invaluable to the Election Integrity Commission as it researches the registration and voting process and looks for ways to fix its vulnerabilities and security problems, enhance our democratic process, and make sure every eligible American votes and is not disenfranchised by illegal votes.
Election integrity and public confidence in the election process are fundamental to preserving our democratic republic.
SOURCE
*********************************
The Obamacare Facts That Liberals Don’t Want You to Know
Perhaps too often, Americans take the findings of independent government agencies—whether executive or congressional—as fact.
The Congressional Budget Office, which has impacted the health care debate, has consistently said that repealing Obamacare would lead to around 22 to 23 million Americans losing their insurance by 2026.
This has been a frequent talking point for those that would like to keep President Barack Obama’s signature health care law.
But a recent commentary by health care expert Avik Roy pointed out how this number may be misleading at best.
Roy wrote in Forbes that according to leaked information he received from a congressional staffer, this 22 million number is in fact mostly coming from the projection of a repeal of the individual mandate.
The individual mandate is one of the most controversial parts of Obamacare that essentially forces Americans to buy health insurance, or receive a fine. Republican-backed repeal proposals to repeal universally aim to eliminate this regulation.
Roy wrote that “of the 22 million fewer people who will have health insurance in 2026 under the Senate [health care] bill, 16 million will voluntarily drop out of the market because they will no longer face a financial penalty for doing so: 73 percent of the total.”
Unlike the progressive narrative that repealing Obamacare will lead to tens of millions of Americans getting booted from their plans, it shows that nearly three-quarters of those leaving their plans will voluntarily withdraw from the ones they have.
An enormous 73 percent of the 22 million number will simply stop buying the product they are forced to purchase under current law.
This important fact has been mostly left out of the debate, as the CBO has not been entirely transparent with how its numbers are calculated. So far, the CBO has essentially refused to explain the primary reason so many Americans will go uninsured.
The CBO has been consistently praised for its purportedly unbiased analysis. A recent commentary for Wired said that “since its inception four decades ago, the CBO has occupied a rarified space in which the objectivity of data reigns.”
Americans are simply given a presumably nonpartisan number that pours out of the inner sanctums of a tight-knit agency as they debate the merits of policy that impacts all Americans and generations to come.
But in the messy space of politics, opaqueness of methodology can return skewed or incomplete results.
Drew Gonshorowski, a health care expert for The Heritage Foundation, wrote about the CBO’s transparency problem in The Hill. He wrote:
The CBO could better serve legislators, media and researchers if their models and methods were made public. Lifting this veil would allow more discussion around the effects of various proposals without having to wait for an explicit CBO score … [And] maybe one of the most important aspects of such a change, this would allow legislators to have real conversations about the effects of their legislation, publicly, with less delay.
Reps. Mark Walker, R-N.C., and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, wrote in a commentary for the Washington Examiner how often CBO projections have been wrong and why it’s wrong for Congress to “blindly follow” its estimates.
For instance, they noted how the original 2010 CBO projections for Obamacare claimed that “21 million Americans would enroll in the insurance exchanges by 2016.” The real number ended up being around 10 million and is one of the reasons the market is so unstable.
The American people deserve an open debate on one of the most important policy issues of our generation.
It is a debate over the priorities and outcomes of a health care system that favors the individual and the family over the collective—one that throws vast decision-making power to government and bureaucracies, or is limited and placed closest to the hands of the people.
This is why transparency over potential policy outcomes is so essential.
SOURCE
*******************************
For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
***************************
2 August, 2017
10 Milton Friedman quotes that will make liberals melt with rage
It’s Milton Friedman Day! Born July 31, 1912, the Nobel Prize winner and libertarian economist revolutionized the world and was a major influence on the economic policies of U.S. President Ronald Reagan and U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He also served as an economic adviser to Barry Goldwater in 1964.
In honor of his birthday, here are 10 Milton Friedman quotes that will make liberals melt with rage.
1) The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.
2) If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand.
3) I am favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it’s possible.
4) We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.
5) One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.
6) There is no place for government to prohibit consumers from buying products the effect of which will be to harm themselves.
7) With some notable exceptions, businessmen favor free enterprise in general but are opposed to it when it comes to themselves.
8) The society that puts equality before freedom will end up with neither. The society that puts freedom before equality will end up with a great measure of both.
9) The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another.
10) If a tax cut increases government revenues, you haven’t cut taxes enough.
SOURCE
****************************
What caused the Middle East to flare up?
The culprit is Obama and his policies of appeasement, betrayal and retreat.
During the eight years of the Obama administration, half a million Christians, Yazidis and Muslims were slaughtered in the Middle East by ISIS and other Islamic jihadists, in a genocidal campaign waged in the name of Islam and its God. Twenty million others were driven into exile by these same jihadist forces. Libya and Yemen became terrorist states. America - once the dominant foreign power and anti-jihadist presence in the region – was replaced by Russia, an ally of the monster regimes in Syria and Iran, and their terrorist proxies. Under the patronage of the Obama administration, Iran - the largest and most dangerous terrorist state, with the blood of thousands of Americans on its hands - emerged from its isolation as a pariah state to re-enter the community of nations and become the region’s dominant power, arming and directing its terrorist proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and Yemen.
These disasters are a direct consequence of the policies of appeasement and retreat of the Obama administration. Beyond that, they are a predictable result of the Democratic Party’s long-standing resistance to the so-called war on terror, and its sabotage of George Bush’s efforts to enforce 17 UN Security Council resolutions in Iraq, aimed at maintaining international order and peace in the Middle East.
In fact, the primary cause of the disasters in the Middle East is the Democratic Party’s sabotage of the War in Iraq. Democrats first voted to authorize the armed overthrow of Iraq’s terror regime but within three months of its inception reversed their position 180 degrees and declared the war “immoral, illegal & unnecessary.” The reason for the Democrats’ reversal on the war had nothing to do with the war itself or the so-called absence of weapons of mass destruction, but was rather a political response to the fact that an anti-war Democrat, Howard Dean, was running away with their presidential nomination. It was this that caused John Kerry and his party to forget that the war was about Saddam’s defiance of 17 UN Security Council resolutions, and refusal to allow the UN inspectors to carry out their efforts to ascertain whether he had destroyed his nuclear and chemical arsenals.
Beginning in June 2003, Democrats began claiming – falsely – that Bush had lied to secure their support for the war. “Bush lied, people died,” became the left’s slogan to cripple the war effort. Bush couldn’t have lied because Democrats had access to every bit of intelligence information on Iraq that he did. But this false narrative began what became a five-year campaign to demonize America’s commander-in-chief and undermine his efforts to subdue the terrorists and pacify the region.
The Democrats’ anti-war crusade climaxed with the election of Barack Obama, a leftwing activist and vocal opponent of the war, and of the majority of Senate Democrats who voted for it. At the time of Obama’s election, America and its allies had won the war and subdued the terrorists by turning the Sunnis in Anbar province against them. But the new commander-in-chief refused to use American forces to secure the peace, and instead set out to withdraw all American military personnel from Iraq. This was a fatal step that created a power vacuum, which was quickly filled by Iran and ISIS.
Obama’s generals had advised him to maintain a post-war force of 20,000 troops in country along with the military base America had built in Baghdad. But Obama had made military withdrawal the centerpiece of his foreign policy and ignored his national security team’s advice. Had he not done so, American forces would have been able to effectively destroy ISIS at its birth, saving more than 500,000 lives and avoiding the creation of nearly 20 million refugees in Syria and Iraq.
Instead of protecting Iraq and the region from the Islamic terrorists, Obama surrendered the peace, turning Iraq over to Iran and the terrorists, and betraying every American and Iraqi who had given their lives to keep them out. The message of the Obama White House – to be repeated through all eight years of his tenure - was that America was the disturber of the peace, and not “radical Islamic terrorism” – words he refused to utter. Instead he even removed the phrase “war on terror” from all official statements and replaced it with “overseas contingency operations.”
Second among the causes of the Middle East’s human tragedy was Obama’s support for the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad whom his secretaries of state, Clinton and Kerry both endorsed as a democratic reformer on the very eve of his savage war against his own people. This was followed by Obama’s refusal to enforce the red line he drew to prevent Assad from using chemical weapons on the Syrian population. When Assad did use them, Obama averted his eyes and papered over his culpability by arranging a phony deal with Russia to remove Assad’s chemical arsenal. Six years later, Assad was again using chemical weapons on Syrian civilians, the exposing Obama’s ruse.
This capitulation to the Syrian tyrant was a powerful reiteration of Obama’s signature message: The United States is the problem and is therefore committed to taking itself out of the picture. In other words, anti-American dictators and genocidal maniacs in the Middle East can have their way.
The third cause of the Middle Eastern morass was Obama’s failure, early on in his Obama administration, to support the green revolution in Iran, when its brave citizens poured into the streets in 2009 to protest a rigged election and the totalitarian regime. Obama’s silence was in effect support for the Jew-hating and America-hating regime, into whose ruling group Secretary of State Kerry’s daughter soon married. Obama’s betrayal of the Iranian people was a reiteration of his signature message to the region: America no longer cares to support freedom, and is willing to support its enemies, even those who kill Americans in the name of Islam.
The fourth cause of the Middle Eastern morass was Obama’s intervention in Egypt - his overthrow of an American ally, Hosni Mubarak, and his open support for the Muslim Brotherhood, the spawner of al-Qaeda and Hamas and the chief sponsor of the Islamic jihad against the West. Obama’s support for the Brotherhood was so strong that when it was overthrown by the Egyptian military following massive protests of the Egyptian people, the White House opposed the new regime of the pro-American General, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Through these policies, Obama alienated America’s most important Arab ally in the Middle East and opened the door to Russia’s influence in the region, and to the Kremlin’s alliance with its most barbaric regimes, Syria and Iran.
The fifth cause of the terrorist upsurge that has shattered the peace of the Middle East was Obama’s unauthorized, illegal intervention in Libya and murder of its ruler Gaddafi – a ruthless dictator no doubt – but a dedicated enemy of al-Qaeda with whom he was actively at war. The result of this naked American aggression, whose chief advocates were Hillary Clinton and Samantha Power, was a Libya devoured by the terrorist wolves who now rule it – a failed state and a haven for the bloodthirsty savages of al-Qaeda and ISIS.
The sixth reason the Middle East is now in flames is Obama’s policy of what he calls “strategic patience” but is in effect strategic cowardice and worse. Obama’s failure to act decisively against ISIS – to take only one example - allowed the Islamic State (which Obama has even refused to concede is Islamic), to become the largest terrorist force ever, and to provide its armed missionaries with a free hand to destroy the oldest Christian community in the world in Iraq, exterminating 200,000 members of the faith, while driving many more into exile.
By way of contrast and showing what the Obama White House could have done, sixth months into the Trump administration, the ISIS stronghold of Mosul is liberated and Raqqa is about to fall, spelling the end of the Islamic State. The blood of those slaughtered Christians, as well as the Yazidis and Muslims, is squarely on the head of Barack Obama and his White House enablers – the Democratic Party and the Democrats’ kept press.
The seventh cause of the humanitarian crisis in the Middle East – and the one with the most long-lasting consequences - is Obama’s embrace of the terrorist regime in Iran. Iran has killed more Americans than any other enemy of this country. Its kill list goes back to the Marine bombing of 1983 and includes the supply of every I.E.D. in Iraq used to blow up several thousand American soldiers.
Yet Obama built his entire Middle East policy around the so-called “deal” with Iran, which provides that nation with a path to nuclear weapons, and has no realistic inspection or enforcement mechanisms. The “Iran deal” lifted the sanctions that had been placed on a regime whose leaders were so openly contemptuous of Obama that they led chants of “Death to America” in the middle of the negotiations. The Iran deal brought America’s mortal enemy out of international isolation, provided it with the opportunity to acquire nuclear weapons, turned a blind eye to its ballistic missile development and stuffed its war chest with $200 billion in cash payments used to fund its weapons programs, and to support terrorist armies, including Hizbollah, Hamas and the Yemenite Houthis, busy creating havoc throughout the Middle East.
The Obama regime’s role in the human disasters in the Middle East is a warning about what happens when American leaders sympathize with our enemies, hamstring our armed forces and abandon our responsibilities to help maintain the peace and defend freedom in a fractious, authoritarian and bloody-minded world. The Obama administration’s enabling of the most barbaric forces in the Middle East is a national disgrace, and the most shameful episode in America’s post-World War II experience.
The path to rectifying these disasters and to stopping Islamic genocides of “infidels” in the Middle East, is first of all to restore America’s active presence in the region, taking a firm stance against radical Islamic terrorism. This is an effort which, thankfully, the Trump administration has already begun. Second, it is to make America’s policy firmly and consistently anti-terrorist, which the Trump administration has not yet done. This would mean, for example, cutting off all funds to the terrorist Palestinian Authority and the Hamas government in Gaza, and halting all “peace” negotiations until the Palestinians renounce terror and support Israel’s right to exist.
The lesson to remember in all this is that despite its human weaknesses and flaws, America is still the only great power in the world today that cares about human dignity and decency and has the wherewithal to defend them and the peace.
SOURCE
*******************************
For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
***************************
1 August, 2017
More nonsense research on IQ. Are high IQ people more racist?
Maybe I am missing something but I think that the research below has simply shown that people who are good at recognizing patterns are good at recognizing patterns.
It is true that the Raven's IQ test is a test of pattern recognition. Pattern recognition is a major part of IQ. So the geniuses below did a study in which people were presented with some graphics that were patterned in a certain way. They then tested the people who had been shown the patterned graphics to find out if they had seen and learned the pattern in the graphics. Some had seen it. Some had not.
They found that high scorers on the Ravens pattern recognition test were more likely to have learned the pattern that had been presented to them in the graphics of the experiment. People who were good at detecting one lot of patterns were good at detecting other patterns. In other words, they confirmed that good pattern recognition was part of IQ -- which we already knew.
So what the heck is going on? Why did this tomfoolery get published? It is because pattern recognition is RACIST! If you see a pattern in people who cry "Allahu Akhbar" when they kill other people and conclude that Muslims might be more dangerous than others, that is PREJUDICE. I would argue that it is POSTJUDICE -- judging from experience -- but that makes me a racist apparently. Recognizing patterns is BIAS! You are not allowed to learn from experience
A new study complicates the narrative that only unintelligent people are prejudiced. The paper, published recently in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, suggests smart people are actually more at risk of stereotyping others.
The study consisted of a series of experiments, all of which suggested that people who performed better on a test of pattern detection—a measure of cognitive ability—were also quicker to form and apply stereotypes.
First, researchers from New York University showed 271 participants a series of pictures of red, blue, and yellow cartoon aliens with different facial features, paired with a statement of either a nice behavior (“gave another alien a bouquet of flowers”) or a rude one (“spat in another alien’s face”):
Most of the pairings were random, but two were skewed so that keen observers might pick up on a pattern: 80 percent of the blue aliens were paired with unfriendly behaviors, and 80 percent of the yellow aliens were paired with nice ones. The subjects didn’t know if the statements about the aliens were true or false. In this way, the study tried to mimic how people actually form prejudices about certain groups, like through anecdotes in the media or through portrayals in TV shows.
Later, the subjects were asked to pick which alien had committed a given behavior from a lineup:
The participants then took a test called the Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices, a pattern-based exam that’s a common measure of human intelligence.
The participants who were better pattern detectors were more likely to make stereotypical errors: They tended to ascribe the friendly behaviors to the wrong yellow alien, and the unfriendly behaviors to the wrong blue alien. Meanwhile, they were less likely to ascribe the behavior to a different-colored alien.
A second study showed similar results, but for measures of implicit bias. That is, smarter participants were quicker to stereotype the aliens in the course of a word-sorting task, even if they didn’t realize they were doing it.
Next, the researchers tried it with human faces, showing a new set of participants a series of computer-generated pictures of men with either wide or narrow nose bridges:
Here too, 80 percent of the narrow nose-bridge men were paired with friendly behaviors, while 80 percent of the wide nose-bridge men were supposedly unfriendly. The participants were then partnered with a new set of pictures of men for a trust game using fake money. Again, superior pattern detectors gave more money to the characters with narrow nose bridges, suggesting they had learned the stereotype about friendliness and employed it in judging the new men.
These depressing results suggest there’s a downside to being smart—it makes you risk reading too much into a situation and drawing inappropriate conclusions.
SOURCE
*******************************
The Democrats' “Rising Star”. A look at the radical record of Kamala Harris
The pictures of Harris generally make her look quite light-skinned. Yet she is of Southern Indian and Jamaican descent. Do picture editors deliberately lighten her skin? If so, is that not racism?
As House and Senate Democrats press forward with their quest to destroy Donald Trump's presidency by any means necessary, they are simultaneously focused on finding someone in their ranks who could be an effective presidential candidate for their own party in 2020. Fifty-three-year-old Kamala Harris, who served as the Attorney General of California from 2011-16 and then filled the vacant U.S. Senate seat that had been occupied for a quarter-century by Barbara Boxer, is someone whom they will undoubtedly look at very closely. To be sure, Harris possesses all the qualifications necessary to be a Democratic leader, insofar as she is a far leftist in the mold of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — but without the baggage of Obama's extensive ties to domestic terrorists, anti-Semites, and America-hating Marxists, or of Hillary's status as a money-grubbing thief who feloniously violated the Espionage Act more times than anyone can count.
Consider, for instance, Harris's stance on immigration. In December 2012, during her tenure as California's Attorney General, she issued a memo informing all the executives of law-enforcement agencies statewide that they could “make their own decisions about whether to fulfill” Immigration & Customs Enforcement detainers, which are temporary holds that federal immigration authorities place on municipal prisoners who are suspected of being eligible for deportation.
After an illegal alien named Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez — a convicted felon who had been deported from the United States on five separate occasions — was released from prison in April 2015 and subsequently murdered a 32-year-old San Francisco woman named Kathryn Steinle, Harris backed up the city sheriff's decision to release Lopez-Sanchez without first calling immigration authorities.
During Harris's Senate run in 2016, her campaign website stated that “everyone should have access to public education, public health, and public safety regardless of their immigration status”; that Harris, if elected, would “fight for comprehensive immigration reform that creates a fair pathway to citizenship” for America's “11 million undocumented immigrants”; that she would “protect President Obama’s immigration executive actions,” which shielded several million illegals from deportation; and that the U.S. had a duty to “responsibly resettle refugees” from Syria and other war-torn, terrorism-infested nations around the world.
But then again, America's national security has never been high on Kamala Harris's list of priorities. In September 2015, for instance, she spoke out in support of the nuclear deal that the Obama administration had negotiated with the government of Iran — an agreement that allowed the Islamist regime in Tehran to enrich uranium, build advanced centrifuges, purchase ballistic missiles, fund terrorism, and be guaranteed of having a near-zero breakout time to the development of a nuclear bomb approximately a decade down the road. But by Harris's reckoning, the accord represented “the best available option for blocking Iran from developing nuclear weapons capability and to avoid potentially disastrous military conflict in the Middle East.”
In 2015 as well, Harris launched an investigation of journalist/anti-abortion activist David Daleiden, who had recently made headlines by releasing undercover videos demonstrating that Planned Parenthood routinely violated federal law by collecting and selling fetal tissue and body parts. As National Review reports: “The basis for investigating Daleiden was his appearing to have used a fake California driver’s license to hide his identity from Planned Parenthood, and the suspicion that he violated Planned Parenthood’s privacy. Those trivial allegations were enough for Harris to have eleven police officers raid Daleiden’s house, confiscate his computers and hard drives, some private documents, and all the yet-unreleased Planned Parenthood footage Daleiden had shot over two years. When Daleiden called his lawyer, Harris’s raiders tried to confiscate his phone too.”
It should be noted that Harris is no disinterested observer in matters involving Planned Parenthood and the abortion movement at large. When she ran for the Senate in 2016, for instance, her campaign website featured a petition to “protect” the “important work” of Planned Parenthood, which, along with its affiliates and employees, contributed at least $30,000 to the Harris campaign. Other pro-abortion groups and their affiliates, meanwhile, donated at least $50,000 more.
In environmental matters as well, Harris does not deviate one iota from left-wing orthodoxy. In 2016, she was one of 17 Attorneys General who joined “AGs United for Clean Power” (AGUCP), a group launched by former Vice President Al Gore. AGUCP's objective is to file criminal fraud charges against fossil-fuel companies (and their supporters) that fail to explicitly endorse the notion that greenhouse gas emissions associated with human industrial activity are chiefly responsible for potentially catastrophic “climate change.” Most notably, Harris and New York AG Eric Schneiderman together launched an investigation into ExxonMobil for allegedly funding research that questioned the validity of climate-change alarmism.
When Harris subsequently ran for the Senate, her campaign website assured voters that she would “stand up to the climate change deniers and fight to pass national climate change legislation that promotes innovation like establishing a carbon tax or creating a cap-and-trade market for carbon pollution.”
That same campaign website also vowed that Harris would seek to:
“make the minimum wage a living wage and tie it to inflation” – notwithstanding the reams of evidence that minimum-wage hikes invariably lead to increased unemployment among young people and unskilled, low-income workers;
“support President Obama's “plan for making community colleges free” – with no explanation as to how a new entitlement like this could be justified in light of the fact that we are a nation already bearing the crushing burden of a $20 trillion fiscal operating debt, and at least $220 trillion in unfunded future liabilities;
support “expanding access to Head Start [and] Early Head Start, and creating national universal pre-kindergarten” — even though large bodies of empirical evidence have exposed Head Start as an ineffective, virtually useless boondoggle;
“make it a priority to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act,” legislation rooted in the thoroughly discredited notion that “women earn about 21 percent less” than equally qualified, equally credentialed men in the workforce;
end “mass incarceration” by “roll[ing] back draconian sentencing laws for nonviolent drug offenses” — a proposal founded on the baseless premise that America's criminal-justice system discriminates against nonwhites;
“end federal bans on student loans, food stamps, housing, and voting rights for ex-offenders”; and
“stop voter suppression” measures like Voter ID laws.
When President Trump nominated Judge Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court four months ago, Harris said: “Judge Gorsuch has consistently valued legalisms over real lives. I won't support his nomination.” As the American Thinker aptly pointed out at that time: “'[L]egalisms' (aka what the law actually says) are the very basis of the rule of law. When [Harris] touts 'real lives,' [and] not the law, as the proper basis for SCOTUS rulings, she openly endorses a political system based on favoritism, not the rule of law.”
Kamala Harris has frequently been called one of the Democratic Party's “rising stars.” Given her steadfast commitment to open borders, her utter contempt for the rule of law, her low regard for American national security, her radical stance in favor of unrestricted taxpayer-funded abortion rights, her endorsement of environmental policies that would cripple the American economy while doing nothing to promote clean air or water, her support for massive government deficit spending as the all-purpose solution for every social and political challenge facing mankind, one can only conclude that Harris is, indeed, a rising Democrat star. With credentials like these, what else could she possibly be?
SOURCE
*******************************
For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
***************************
BACKGROUND NOTES:
Home (Index page)
Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party. And now a "Deplorable"
When it comes to political incorrectness, I hit the trifecta. I talk about race, IQ and social class. I have an academic background in all three subjects but that wins me no forgiveness
At its most basic psychological level, conservatives are the contented people and Leftists are the discontented people. And both are largely dispositional, inborn -- which is why they so rarely change
As a good academic, I first define my terms: A Leftist is a person who is so dissatisfied with the way things naturally are that he/she is prepared to use force to make people behave in ways that they otherwise would not.
So an essential feature of Leftism is that they think they have the right to tell other people what to do
The Left have a lot in common with tortoises. They have a thick mental shell that protects them from the reality of the world about them
Leftists are the disgruntled folk. They see things in the world that are not ideal and conclude therefore that they have the right to change those things by force. Conservative explanations of why things are not ideal -- and never can be -- fall on deaf ears
Leftists aim to deliver dismay and disruption into other people's lives -- and they are good at achieving that.
German has a word that describes most Leftists well: "Scheinheilig" - A person who appears to be very kind, soft natured, and filled with pure goodness but behind the facade, has a vile nature. He is seemingly holy but is an unscrupulous person on the inside.
There are two varieties of authoritarian Leftism. Fascists are soft Leftists, preaching one big happy family -- "Better together" in other words. Communists are hard Leftists, preaching class war.
Socialism is the most evil malady ever to afflict the human brain. The death toll in WWII alone tells you that
You do still occasionally see some mention of the old idea that Leftist parties represent the worker. In the case of the U.S. Democrats that is long gone. Now they want to REFORM the worker. No wonder most working class Americans these days vote Republican. Democrats are the party of the minorities and the smug
Definition of a Socialist: Someone who wants everything you have...except your job.
Let's start with some thought-provoking graphics
Israel: A great powerhouse of the human spirit
The difference in practice
The United Nations: A great ideal but a sordid reality
Alfred Dreyfus, a reminder of French antisemitism still relevant today
Eugenio Pacelli, a righteous Gentile, a true man of God and a brilliant Pope
Leftism in one picture:
The "steamroller" above who got steamrollered by his own hubris. Spitzer is a warning of how self-destructive a vast ego can be -- and also of how destructive of others it can be.
R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. Allende had just burnt the electoral rolls so it wasn't hard to see what was coming. Pinochet 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
Leftist writers usually seem quite reasonable and persuasive at first glance. The problem is not what they say but what they don't say. Leftist beliefs are so counterfactual ("all men are equal", "all men are brothers" etc.) that to be a Leftist you have to have a talent for blotting out from your mind facts that don't suit you. And that is what you see in Leftist writing: A very selective view of reality. Facts that disrupt a Leftist story are simply ignored. Leftist writing is cherrypicking on a grand scale
So if ever you read something written by a Leftist that sounds totally reasonable, you have an urgent need to find out what other people say on that topic. The Leftist will almost certainly have told only half the story
We conservatives have the facts on our side, which is why Leftists never want to debate us and do their best to shut us up. It's very revealing the way they go to great lengths to suppress conservative speech at universities. Universities should be where the best and brightest Leftists are to be found but even they cannot stand the intellectual challenge that conservatism poses for them. It is clearly a great threat to them. If what we say were ridiculous or wrong, they would grab every opportunity to let us know it
A conservative does not hanker after the new; He hankers after the good. Leftists hanker after the untested
Just one thing is sufficient to tell all and sundry what an unamerican lamebrain Obama is. He pronounced an army corps as an army "corpse" Link here. Can you imagine any previous American president doing that? Many were men with significant personal experience in the armed forces in their youth.
A favorite Leftist saying sums up the whole of Leftism: "To make an omelette, you've got to break eggs". They want to change some state of affairs and don't care who or what they destroy or damage in the process. They think their alleged good intentions are sufficient to absolve them from all blame for even the most evil deeds
In practical politics, the art of Leftism is to sound good while proposing something destructive
Leftists are the "we know best" people, meaning that they are intrinsically arrogant. Matthew chapter 6 would not be for them. And arrogance leads directly into authoritarianism
Leftism is fundamentally authoritarian. Whether by revolution or by legislation, Leftists aim to change what people can and must do. When in 2008 Obama said that he wanted to "fundamentally transform" America, he was not talking about America's geography or topography but rather about American people. He wanted them to stop doing things that they wanted to do and make them do things that they did not want to do. Can you get a better definition of authoritarianism than that?
And note that an American President is elected to administer the law, not make it. That seems to have escaped Mr Obama
That Leftism is intrinsically authoritarian is not a new insight. It was well understood by none other than Friedrich Engels (Yes. THAT Engels). His clever short essay On authority was written as a reproof to the dreamy Anarchist Left of his day. It concludes: "A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means"
Inside Every Liberal is a Totalitarian Screaming to Get Out
Insight: "A man's admiration for absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him." —Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)
Leftists think of themselves as the new nobility
Many people in literary and academic circles today who once supported Stalin and his heirs are generally held blameless and may even still be admired whereas anybody who gave the slightest hint of support for the similarly brutal Hitler regime is an utter polecat and pariah. Why? Because Hitler's enemies were "only" the Jews whereas Stalin's enemies were those the modern day Left still hates -- people who are doing well for themselves materially. Modern day Leftists understand and excuse Stalin and his supporters because Stalin's hates are their hates.
Hatred has long been a central pillar of leftist ideologies, premised as they are on trampling individual rights for the sake of a collectivist plan. Karl Marx boasted that he was “the greatest hater of the so-called positive.” In 1923, V.I. Lenin chillingly declared to the Soviet Commissars of Education, “We must teach our children to hate. Hatred is the basis of communism.” In his tract “Left-Wing Communism,” Lenin went so far as to assert that hatred was “the basis of every socialist and Communist movement.”
If you understand that Leftism is hate, everything falls into place.
The strongest way of influencing people is to convince them that you will do them some good. Leftists and con-men misuse that
Leftists believe only what they want to believe. So presenting evidence contradicting their beliefs simply enrages them. They do not learn from it
Psychological defence mechanisms such as projection play a large part in Leftist thinking and discourse. So their frantic search for evil in the words and deeds of others is easily understandable. The evil is in themselves.
Leftists who think that they can conjure up paradise out of their own limited brains are simply fools -- arrogant and dangerous fools. They essentially know nothing. Conservatives learn from the thousands of years of human brains that have preceded us -- including the Bible, the ancient Greeks and much else. The death of Socrates is, for instance, an amazing prefiguration of the intolerant 21st century. Ask any conservative stranded in academe about his freedom of speech
Thomas Sowell: “There are no solutions, only trade-offs.” Leftists don't understand that -- which is a major factor behind their simplistic thinking. They just never see the trade-offs. But implementing any Leftist idea will hit us all with the trade-offs
"The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley"[go oft astray] is a well known line from a famous poem by the great Scottish poet, Robert Burns. But the next line is even wiser: "And leave us nought but grief and pain for promised joy". Burns was a Leftist of sorts so he knew how often their theories fail badly.
Mostly, luck happens when opportunity meets preparation.
Most Leftist claims are simply propaganda. Those who utter such claims must know that they are not telling the whole story. Hitler described his Marxist adversaries as "lying with a virtuosity that would bend iron beams". At the risk of ad hominem shrieks, I think that image is too good to remain disused.
Conservatives adapt to the world they live in. Leftists want to change the world to suit themselves
Given their dislike of the world they live in, it would be a surprise if Leftists were patriotic and loved their own people. Prominent English Leftist politician Jack Straw probably said it best: "The English as a race are not worth saving"
In his 1888 book, The Anti-Christ Friedrich Nietzsche argues that we should treat the common man well and kindly because he is the backdrop against which the exceptional man can be seen. So Nietzsche deplores those who agitate the common man: "Whom do I hate most among the rabble of today? The socialist rabble, the chandala [outcast] apostles, who undermine the instinct, the pleasure, the worker's sense of satisfaction with his small existence—who make him envious, who teach him revenge. The source of wrong is never unequal rights but the claim of “equal” rights"
Why do conservatives respect tradition and rely on the past in many ways? Because they want to know what works and the past is the chief source of evidence on that. Leftists are more faith-based. They cling to their theories (e.g. global warming) with religious fervour, even though theories are often wrong
Thinking that you "know best" is an intrinsically precarious and foolish stance -- because nobody does. Reality is so complex and unpredictable that it can rarely be predicted far ahead. Conservatives can see that and that is why conservatives always want change to be done gradually, in a step by step way. So the Leftist often finds the things he "knows" to be out of step with reality, which challenges him and his ego. Sadly, rather than abandoning the things he "knows", he usually resorts to psychological defence mechanisms such as denial and projection. He is largely impervious to argument because he has to be. He can't afford to let reality in.
A prize example of the Leftist tendency to projection (seeing your own faults in others) is the absurd Robert "Bob" Altemeyer, an acclaimed psychologist and father of a Canadian Leftist politician. Altemeyer claims that there is no such thing as Leftist authoritarianism and that it is conservatives who are "Enemies of Freedom". That Leftists (e.g. Mrs Obama) are such enemies of freedom that they even want to dictate what people eat has apparently passed Altemeyer by. Even Stalin did not go that far. And there is the little fact that all the great authoritarian regimes of the 20th century (Stalin, Hitler and Mao) were socialist. Freud saw reliance on defence mechanisms such as projection as being maladjusted. It is difficult to dispute that. Altemeyer is too illiterate to realize it but he is actually a good Hegelian. Hegel thought that "true" freedom was marching in step with a Left-led herd.
What libertarian said this? “The bureaucracy is a parasite on the body of society, a parasite which ‘chokes’ all its vital pores…The state is a parasitic organism”. It was VI Lenin, in August 1917, before he set up his own vastly bureaucratic state. He could see the problem but had no clue about how to solve it.
It was Democrat John F Kennedy who cut taxes and declared that “a rising tide lifts all boats"
Leftist stupidity is a special class of stupidity. The people concerned are mostly not stupid in general but they have a character defect (mostly arrogance) that makes them impatient with complexity and unwilling to study it. So in their policies they repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot; They fail to attain their objectives. The world IS complex so a simplistic approach to it CANNOT work.
Seminal Leftist philosopher, G.W.F. Hegel said something that certainly applies to his fellow Leftists: "We learn from history that we do not learn from history". And he captured the Left in this saying too: "Evil resides in the very gaze which perceives Evil all around itself".
"A man who is not a socialist at age 20 has no heart; A man who is still a socialist at age 30 has no head". Who said that? Most people attribute it to Winston but as far as I can tell it was first said by Georges Clemenceau, French Premier in WWI -- whose own career approximated the transition concerned. And he in turn was probably updating an earlier saying about monarchy versus Republicanism by Guizot. Other attributions here. There is in fact a normal drift from Left to Right as people get older. Both Reagan and Churchill started out as liberals
Funny how to the Leftist intelligentsia poor blacks are 'oppressed' and poor whites are 'trash'. Racism, anyone?
MESSAGE to Leftists: Even if you killed all conservatives tomorrow, you would just end up in another Soviet Union. Conservatives are all that stand between you and that dismal fate. And you may not even survive at all. Stalin killed off all the old Bolsheviks.
A Conservative manifesto from England -- The inimitable Jacob Rees-Mogg
MYTH BUSTING:
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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
Just the name of Hitler's political party should be sufficient to reject the claim that Hitler was "Right wing" but Leftists sometimes retort that the name "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" is not informative, in that it is the name of a dismal Stalinist tyranny. But "People's Republic" is a normal name for a Communist country whereas I know of no conservative political party that calls itself a "Socialist Worker's Party". Such parties are in fact usually of the extreme Left (Trotskyite etc.)
Most people find the viciousness of the Nazis to be incomprehensible -- for instance what they did in their concentration camps. But you just have to read a little of the vileness that pours out from modern-day "liberals" in their Twitter and blog comments to understand it all very well. Leftists haven't changed. They are still boiling with hate
Hatred as a motivating force for political strategy leads to misguided decisions. “Hatred is blind,” as Alexandre Dumas warned, “rage carries you away; and he who pours out vengeance runs the risk of tasting a bitter draught.”
Who said this in 1968? "I am not, and never have been, a man of the right. My position was on the Left and is now in the centre of politics". It was Sir Oswald Mosley, founder and leader of the British Union of Fascists
The term "Fascism" is mostly used by the Left as a brainless term of abuse. But when they do make a serious attempt to define it, they produce very complex and elaborate definitions -- e.g. here and here. In fact, Fascism is simply extreme socialism plus nationalism. But great gyrations are needed to avoid mentioning the first part of that recipe, of course.
Three examples of Leftist racism below (much more here and here):
Jesse Owens, the African-American hero of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, said "Hitler didn't snub me – it was our president who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram." Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt never even invited the quadruple gold medal-winner to the White House
Beatrice Webb, a founder of the London School of Economics and the Fabian Society, and married to a Labour MP, mused in 1922 on whether when English children were "dying from lack of milk", one should extend "the charitable impulse" to Russian and Chinese children who, if saved this year, might anyway die next. Besides, she continued, there was "the larger question of whether those races are desirable inhabitants" and "obviously" one wouldn't "spend one's available income" on "a Central African negro".
Hugh Dalton, offered the Colonial Office during Attlee's 1945-51 Labour government, turned it down because "I had a horrid vision of pullulating, poverty stricken, diseased nigger communities, for whom one can do nothing in the short run and who, the more one tries to help them, are querulous and ungrateful."
The Zimmerman case is an excellent proof that the Left is deep-down racist
Defensible and indefensible usages of the term "racism"
The book, The authoritarian personality, authored by T.W. Adorno et al. in 1950, has been massively popular among psychologists. It claims that a set of ideas that were popular in the "Progressive"-dominated America of the prewar era were "authoritarian". Leftist regimes always are authoritarian so that claim was not a big problem. What was quite amazing however is that Adorno et al. identified such ideas as "conservative". They were in fact simply popular ideas of the day but ones that had been most heavily promoted by the Left right up until the then-recent WWII. See here for details of prewar "Progressive" thinking.
Leftist psychologists have an amusingly simplistic conception of military organizations and military men. They seem to base it on occasions they have seen troops marching together on parade rather than any real knowledge of military men and the military life. They think that military men are "rigid" -- automatons who are unable to adjust to new challenges or think for themselves. What is incomprehensible to them is that being kadaver gehorsam (to use the extreme Prussian term for following orders) actually requires great flexibility -- enough flexibility to put your own ideas and wishes aside and do something very difficult. Ask any soldier if all commands are easy to obey.
It would be very easy for me to say that I am too much of an individual for the army but I did in fact join the army and enjoy it greatly, as most men do. In my observation, ALL army men are individuals. It is just that they accept discipline in order to be militarily efficient -- which is the whole point of the exercise. But that's too complex for simplistic Leftist thinking, of course
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a war criminal. Both British and American codebreakers had cracked the Japanese naval code so FDR knew what was coming at Pearl Harbor. But for his own political reasons he warned no-one there. So responsibility for the civilian and military deaths at Pearl Harbor lies with FDR as well as with the Japanese. The huge firepower available at Pearl Harbor, both aboard ship and on land, could have largely neutered the attack. Can you imagine 8 battleships and various lesser craft firing all their AA batteries as the Japanese came in? The Japanese naval airforce would have been annihilated and the war would have been over before it began.
FDR prolonged the Depression. He certainly didn't cure it.
WWII did NOT end the Great Depression. It just concealed it. It in fact made living standards worse
FDR appointed a known KKK member, Hugo Black, to the Supreme Court
Joe McCarthy was eventually proved right after the fall of the Soviet Union. To accuse anyone of McCarthyism is to accuse them of accuracy!
The KKK was intimately associated with the Democratic party. They ATTACKED Republicans!
High Level of Welfare Use by Legal and Illegal Immigrants in the USA. Low skill immigrants receive 4 to 5 dollars of benefits for every dollar in taxes paid
People who mention differences in black vs. white IQ are these days almost universally howled down and subjected to the most extreme abuse. I am a psychometrician, however, so I feel obliged to defend the scientific truth of the matter: The average African adult has about the same IQ as an average white 11-year-old and African Americans (who are partly white in ancestry) average out at a mental age of 14. The American Psychological Association is generally Left-leaning but it is the world's most prestigious body of academic psychologists. And even they have had to concede that sort of gap (one SD) in black vs. white average IQ. 11-year olds can do a lot of things but they also have their limits and there are times when such limits need to be allowed for.
The association between high IQ and long life is overwhelmingly genetic: "In the combined sample the genetic contribution to the covariance was 95%"
The Dark Ages were not dark
Judged by his deeds, Abraham Lincoln was one of the bloodiest villains ever to walk the Earth. See here. And: America's uncivil war was caused by trade protectionism. The slavery issue was just camouflage, as Abraham Lincoln himself admitted. See also here
At the beginning of the North/South War, Confederate general Robert E. Lee did not own any slaves. Union General Ulysses L. Grant did.
Was slavery already washed up by the tides of history before Lincoln took it on? Eric Williams in his book "Capitalism and Slavery" tells us: “The commercial capitalism of the eighteenth century developed the wealth of Europe by means of slavery and monopoly. But in so doing it helped to create the industrial capitalism of the nineteenth century, which turned round and destroyed the power of commercial capitalism, slavery, and all its works. Without a grasp of these economic changes the history of the period is meaningless.”
Did William Zantzinger kill poor Hattie Carroll?
Did Bismarck predict where WWI would start or was it just a "free" translation by Churchill?
Conrad Black on the Declaration of Independence
Malcolm Gladwell: "There is more of reality and wisdom in a Chinese fortune cookie than can be found anywhere in Gladwell’s pages"
Some people are born bad -- confirmed by genetics research
The dark side of American exceptionalism: America could well be seen as the land of folly. It fought two unnecessary civil wars, would have done well to keep out of two world wars, endured the extraordinary folly of Prohibition and twice elected a traitor President -- Barack Obama. That America remains a good place to be is a tribute to the energy and hard work of individual Americans.
“From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time.” ? Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution Of Liberty
IN BRIEF:
The 10 "cannots" (By William J. H. Boetcker) that Leftist politicians ignore:
*You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
* You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
* You cannot help little men by tearing down big men.
* You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
* You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
* You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money.
* You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
* You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.
* You cannot build character and courage by destroying men's initiative and independence.
* And you cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.
A good short definition of conservative: "One who wants you to keep your hand out of his pocket."
Beware of good intentions. They mostly lead to coercion
A gargantuan case of hubris, coupled with stunning level of ignorance about how the real world works, is the essence of progressivism.
The U.S. Constitution is neither "living" nor dead. It is fixed until it is amended. But amending it is the privilege of the people, not of politicians or judges
It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong - Thomas Sowell
Leftists think that utopia can be coerced into existence -- so no dishonesty or brutality is beyond them in pursuit of that "noble" goal
"England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution" -- George Orwell
Was 16th century science pioneer Paracelsus a libertarian? His motto was "Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest" which means "Let no man belong to another who can belong to himself."
"When using today's model of society as a rule, most of history will be found to be full of oppression, bias, and bigotry." What today's arrogant judges of history fail to realize is that they, too, will be judged. What will Americans of 100 years from now make of, say, speech codes, political correctness, and zero tolerance - to name only three? Assuming, of course, there will still be an America that we, today, would recognize. Given the rogue Federal government spy apparatus, I am not at all sure of that. -- Paul Havemann
Economist Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973): "The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office."
It's the shared hatred of the rest of us that unites Islamists and the Left.
American liberals don't love America. They despise it. All they love is their own fantasy of what America could become. They are false patriots.
The Democratic Party: Con-men elected by the ignorant and the arrogant
The Democratic Party is a strange amalgam of elites, would-be elites and minorities. No wonder their policies are so confused and irrational
Why are conservatives more at ease with religion? Because it is basic to conservatism that some things are unknowable, and religious people have to accept that too. Leftists think that they know it all and feel threatened by any exceptions to that. Thinking that you know it all is however the pride that comes before a fall.
The characteristic emotion of the Leftist is not envy. It's rage
Leftists are committed to grievance, not truth
The British Left poured out a torrent of hate for Margaret Thatcher on the occasion of her death. She rescued Britain from chaos and restored Britain's prosperity. What's not to hate about that?
Something you didn't know about Margaret Thatcher
The world's dumbest investor? Without doubt it is Uncle Sam. Nobody anywhere could rival the scale of the losses on "investments" made under the Obama administration
"Behind the honeyed but patently absurd pleas for equality is a ruthless drive for placing themselves (the elites) at the top of a new hierarchy of power" -- Murray Rothbard - Egalitarianism and the Elites (1995)
A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. -- G. Gordon Liddy
"World socialism as a whole, and all the figures associated with it, are shrouded in legend; its contradictions are forgotten or concealed; it does not respond to arguments but continually ignores them--all this stems from the mist of irrationality that surrounds socialism and from its instinctive aversion to scientific analysis... The doctrines of socialism seethe with contradictions, its theories are at constant odds with its practice, yet due to a powerful instinct these contradictions do not in the least hinder the unending propaganda of socialism. Indeed, no precise, distinct socialism even exists; instead there is only a vague, rosy notion of something noble and good, of equality, communal ownership, and justice: the advent of these things will bring instant euphoria and a social order beyond reproach." -- Solzhenitsyn
"The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left." -- Ecclesiastes 10:2 (NIV)
My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government. -- Thomas Jefferson
"Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power" -- Bertrand Russell
Evan Sayet: The Left sides "...invariably with evil over good, wrong over right, and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success." (t=5:35+ on video)
The Republicans are the gracious side of American politics. It is the Democrats who are the nasty party, the haters
Wanting to stay out of the quarrels of other nations is conservative -- but conservatives will fight if attacked or seriously endangered. Anglo/Irish statesman Lord Castlereagh (1769-1822), who led the political coalition that defeated Napoleon, was an isolationist, as were traditional American conservatives.
Some wisdom from the past: "The bosom of America is open to receive not only the opulent and respectable stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment." —George Washington, 1783
Some useful definitions:
If a conservative doesn't like guns, he doesn't buy one. If a liberal doesn't like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.
If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat. If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone.
If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation. A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him.
If a conservative doesn't like a talk show host, he switches channels. Liberals demand that those they don't like be shut down.
If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn't go to church. A liberal non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced. (Unless it's a foreign religion, of course!)
If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it. A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his.
There is better evidence for creation than there is for the Leftist claim that “gender” is a “social construct”. Most Leftist claims seem to be faith-based rather than founded on the facts
Leftists are classic weak characters. They dish out abuse by the bucketload but cannot take it when they get it back. Witness the Loughner hysteria.
Death taxes: You would expect a conscientious person, of whatever degree of intelligence, to reflect on the strange contradiction involved in denying people the right to unearned wealth, while supporting programs that give people unearned wealth.
America is no longer the land of the free. It is now the land of the regulated -- though it is not alone in that, of course
The Leftist motto: "I love humanity. It's just people I can't stand"
Why are Leftists always talking about hate? Because it fills their own hearts
Envy is a strong and widespread human emotion so there has alway been widespread support for policies of economic "levelling". Both the USA and the modern-day State of Israel were founded by communists but reality taught both societies that respect for the individual gave much better outcomes than levelling ideas. Sadly, there are many people in both societies in whom hatred for others is so strong that they are incapable of respect for the individual. The destructiveness of what they support causes them to call themselves many names in different times and places but they are the backbone of the political Left
Gore Vidal: "Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little". Vidal was of course a Leftist
The large number of rich Leftists suggests that, for them, envy is secondary. They are directly driven by hatred and scorn for many of the other people that they see about them. Hatred of others can be rooted in many things, not only in envy. But the haters come together as the Left. Some evidence here showing that envy is not what defines the Left
Leftists hate the world around them and want to change it: the people in it most particularly. Conservatives just want to be left alone to make their own decisions and follow their own values.
The failure of the Soviet experiment has definitely made the American Left more vicious and hate-filled than they were. The plain failure of what passed for ideas among them has enraged rather than humbled them.
Ronald Reagan famously observed that the status quo is Latin for “the mess we’re in.” So much for the vacant Leftist claim that conservatives are simply defenders of the status quo. They think that conservatives are as lacking in principles as they are.
Was Confucius a conservative? The following saying would seem to reflect good conservative caution: "The superior man, when resting in safety, does not forget that danger may come. When in a state of security he does not forget the possibility of ruin. When all is orderly, he does not forget that disorder may come. Thus his person is not endangered, and his States and all their clans are preserved."
The shallow thinkers of the Left sometimes claim that conservatives want to impose their own will on others in the matter of abortion. To make that claim is however to confuse religion with politics. Conservatives are in fact divided about their response to abortion. The REAL opposition to abortion is religious rather than political. And the church which has historically tended to support the LEFT -- the Roman Catholic church -- is the most fervent in the anti-abortion cause. Conservatives are indeed the one side of politics to have moral qualms on the issue but they tend to seek a middle road in dealing with it. Taking the issue to the point of legal prohibitions is a religious doctrine rather than a conservative one -- and the religion concerned may or may not be characteristically conservative. More on that here
Some Leftist hatred arises from the fact that they blame "society" for their own personal problems and inadequacies
The Leftist hunger for change to the society that they hate leads to a hunger for control over other people. And they will do and say anything to get that control: "Power at any price". Leftist politicians are mostly self-aggrandizing crooks who gain power by deceiving the uninformed with snake-oil promises -- power which they invariably use to destroy. Destruction is all that they are good at. Destruction is what haters do.
Leftists are consistent only in their hate. They don't have principles. How can they when "there is no such thing as right and wrong"? All they have is postures, pretend-principles that can be changed as easily as one changes one's shirt
A Leftist assumption: Making money doesn't entitle you to it, but wanting money does.
"Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money -- only for wanting to keep your own money." --columnist Joe Sobran (1946-2010)
Leftist policies are candy-coated rat poison that may appear appealing at first, but inevitably do a lot of damage to everyone impacted by them.
A tribute and thanks to Mary Jo Kopechne. Her death was reprehensible but she probably did more by her death that she ever would have in life: She spared the world a President Ted Kennedy. That the heap of corruption that was Ted Kennedy died peacefully in his bed is one of the clearest demonstrations that we do not live in a just world. Even Joe Stalin seems to have been smothered to death by Nikita Khrushchev
I often wonder why Leftists refer to conservatives as "wingnuts". A wingnut is a very useful device that adds versatility wherever it is used. Clearly, Leftists are not even good at abuse. Once they have accused their opponents of racism and Nazism, their cupboard is bare. Similarly, Leftists seem to think it is a devastating critique to refer to "Worldnet Daily" as "Worldnut Daily". The poverty of their argumentation is truly pitiful
The Leftist assertion that there is no such thing as right and wrong has a distinguished history. It was Pontius Pilate who said "What is truth?" (John 18:38). From a Christian viewpoint, the assertion is undoubtedly the Devil's gospel
Even in the Old Testament they knew about "Postmodernism": "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" - Isaiah 5:20 (KJV)
Was Solomon the first conservative? "The hearts of men are full of evil and madness is in their hearts" -- Ecclesiastes: 9:3 (RSV). He could almost have been talking about Global Warming.
Leftist hatred of Christianity goes back as far as the massacre of the Carmelite nuns during the French revolution. Yancey has written a whole book tabulating modern Leftist hatred of Christians. It is a rival religion to Leftism.
"If one rejects laissez faire on account of man's fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action." - Ludwig von Mises
The naive scholar who searches for a consistent Leftist program will not find it. What there is consists only in the negation of the present.
Because of their need to be different from the mainstream, Leftists are very good at pretending that sow's ears are silk purses
Among intelligent people, Leftism is a character defect. Leftists HATE success in others -- which is why notably successful societies such as the USA and Israel are hated and failures such as the Palestinians can do no wrong.
A Leftist's beliefs are all designed to pander to his ego. So when you have an argument with a Leftist, you are not really discussing the facts. You are threatening his self esteem. Which is why the normal Leftist response to challenge is mere abuse.
Because of the fragility of a Leftist's ego, anything that threatens it is intolerable and provokes rage. So most Leftist blogs can be summarized in one sentence: "How DARE anybody question what I believe!". Rage and abuse substitute for an appeal to facts and reason.
Because their beliefs serve their ego rather than reality, Leftists just KNOW what is good for us. Conservatives need evidence.
Absolute certainty is the privilege of uneducated men and fanatics. -- C.J. Keyser
Hell is paved with good intentions" -- Boswell's Life of Johnson of 1775
"Almost all professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously conceited, and derive their happiness from their conceit" -- Erasmus
THE FALSIFICATION OF HISTORY HAS DONE MORE TO IMPEDE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT THAN ANY ONE THING KNOWN TO MANKIND -- ROUSSEAU
"Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him" (Proverbs 26: 12). I think that sums up Leftists pretty well.
Eminent British astrophysicist Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington is often quoted as saying: "Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." It was probably in fact said by his contemporary, J.B.S. Haldane. But regardless of authorship, it could well be a conservative credo not only about the cosmos but also about human beings and human society. Mankind is too complex to be summed up by simple rules and even complex rules are only approximations with many exceptions.
Politics is the only thing Leftists know about. They know nothing of economics, history or business. Their only expertise is in promoting feelings of grievance
Socialism makes the individual the slave of the state -- capitalism frees them.
Many readers here will have noticed that what I say about Leftists sometimes sounds reminiscent of what Leftists say about conservatives. There is an excellent reason for that. Leftists are great "projectors" (people who see their own faults in others). So a good first step in finding out what is true of Leftists is to look at what they say about conservatives! They even accuse conservatives of projection (of course).
The research shows clearly that one's Left/Right stance is strongly genetically inherited but nobody knows just what specifically is inherited. What is inherited that makes people Leftist or Rightist? There is any amount of evidence that personality traits are strongly genetically inherited so my proposal is that hard-core Leftists are people who tend to let their emotions (including hatred and envy) run away with them and who are much more in need of seeing themselves as better than others -- two attributes that are probably related to one another. Such Leftists may be an evolutionary leftover from a more primitive past.
Leftists seem to believe that if someone like Al Gore says it, it must be right. They obviously have a strong need for an authority figure. The fact that the two most authoritarian regimes of the 20th century (Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia) were socialist is thus no surprise. Leftists often accuse conservatives of being "authoritarian" but that is just part of their usual "projective" strategy -- seeing in others what is really true of themselves.
"With their infernal racial set-asides, racial quotas, and race norming, liberals share many of the Klan's premises. The Klan sees the world in terms of race and ethnicity. So do liberals! Indeed, liberals and white supremacists are the only people left in America who are neurotically obsessed with race. Conservatives champion a color-blind society" -- Ann Coulter
Politicians are in general only a little above average in intelligence so the idea that they can make better decisions for us that we can make ourselves is laughable
A quote from the late Dr. Adrian Rogers: "You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."
The Supreme Court of the United States is now and always has been a judicial abomination. Its guiding principles have always been political rather than judicial. It is not as political as Stalin's courts but its respect for the constitution is little better. Some recent abuses: The "equal treatment" provision of the 14th amendment was specifically written to outlaw racial discrimination yet the court has allowed various forms of "affirmative action" for decades -- when all such policies should have been completely stuck down immediately. The 2nd. amendment says that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed yet gun control laws infringe it in every State in the union. The 1st amendment provides that speech shall be freely exercised yet the court has upheld various restrictions on the financing and display of political advertising. The court has found a right to abortion in the constitution when the word abortion is not even mentioned there. The court invents rights that do not exist and denies rights that do.
"Some action that is unconstitutional has much to recommend it" -- Elena Kagan, nominated to SCOTUS by Obama
Frank Sulloway, the anti-scientist
The basic aim of all bureaucrats is to maximize their funding and minimize their workload
A lesson in Australian: When an Australian calls someone a "big-noter", he is saying that the person is a chronic and rather pathetic seeker of admiration -- as in someone who often pulls out "big notes" (e.g. $100.00 bills) to pay for things, thus endeavouring to create the impression that he is rich. The term describes the mentality rather than the actual behavior with money and it aptly describes many Leftists. When they purport to show "compassion" by advocating things that cost themselves nothing (e.g. advocating more taxes on "the rich" to help "the poor"), an Australian might say that the Leftist is "big-noting himself". There is an example of the usage here. The term conveys contempt. There is a wise description of Australians generally here
Some ancient wisdom for Leftists: "Be not righteous overmuch; neither make thyself over wise: Why shouldest thou die before thy time?" -- Ecclesiastes 7:16
Jesse Jackson: "There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery -- then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved." There ARE important racial differences.
Some Jimmy Carter wisdom: "I think it's inevitable that there will be a lower standard of living than what everybody had always anticipated," he told advisers in 1979. "there's going to be a downward turning."
Heritage is what survives death: Very rare and hence very valuable
Big business is not your friend. As Adam Smith said: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty or justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary
How can I accept the Communist doctrine, which sets up as its bible, above and beyond criticism, an obsolete textbook which I know not only to be scientifically erroneous but without interest or application to the modern world? How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia, who with all their faults, are the quality of life and surely carry the seeds of all human achievement? Even if we need a religion, how can we find it in the turbid rubbish of the red bookshop? It is hard for an educated, decent, intelligent son of Western Europe to find his ideals here, unless he has first suffered some strange and horrid process of conversion which has changed all his values. -- John Maynard Keynes
Some wisdom from "Bron" Waugh: "The purpose of politics is to help them [politicians] overcome these feelings of inferiority and compensate for their personal inadequacies in the pursuit of power"
"There are countless horrible things happening all over the country, and horrible people prospering, but we must never allow them to disturb our equanimity or deflect us from our sacred duty to sabotage and annoy them whenever possible"
The urge to pass new laws must be seen as an illness, not much different from the urge to bite old women. Anyone suspected of suffering from it should either be treated with the appropriate pills or, if it is too late for that, elected to Parliament [or Congress, as the case may be] and paid a huge salary with endless holidays, to do nothing whatever"
"It is my settled opinion, after some years as a political correspondent, that no one is attracted to a political career in the first place unless he is socially or emotionally crippled"
Two lines below of a famous hymn that would be incomprehensible to Leftists today ("honor"? "right"? "freedom?" Freedom to agree with them is the only freedom they believe in)
First to fight for right and freedom,
And to keep our honor clean
It is of course the hymn of the USMC -- still today the relentless warriors that they always were. Freedom needs a soldier
If any of the short observations above about Leftism seem wrong, note that they do not stand alone. The evidence for them is set out at great length in my MONOGRAPH on Leftism.
3 memoirs of "Supermac", a 20th century Disraeli (Aristocratic British Conservative Prime Minister -- 1957 to 1963 -- Harold Macmillan):
"It breaks my heart to see (I can't interfere or do anything at my age) what is happening in our country today - this terrible strike of the best men in the world, who beat the Kaiser's army and beat Hitler's army, and never gave in. Pointless, endless. We can't afford that kind of thing. And then this growing division which the noble Lord who has just spoken mentioned, of a comparatively prosperous south, and an ailing north and midlands. That can't go on." -- Mac on the British working class: "the best men in the world" (From his Maiden speech in the House of Lords, 13 November 1984)
"As a Conservative, I am naturally in favour of returning into private ownership and private management all those means of production and distribution which are now controlled by state capitalism"
During Macmillan's time as prime minister, average living standards steadily rose while numerous social reforms were carried out
"Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see." --?Arthur Schopenhauer
JEWS AND ISRAEL
The Bible is an Israeli book
There is a view on both Left and Right that Jews are "too" influential. And it is true that they are more influential than their numbers would indicate. But they are exactly as influential as their IQs would indicate
To me, hostility to the Jews is a terrible tragedy. I weep for them at times. And I do literally put my money where my mouth is. I do at times send money to Israeli charities
My (Gentile) opinion of antisemitism: The Jews are the best we've got so killing them is killing us.
"And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed" -- Genesis 12:3
"O pray for the peace of Jerusalem: They shall prosper that love thee" Psalm 122:6.
If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy -- Psalm 137 (NIV)
Israel, like the Jews throughout history, is hated not for her vices but her virtues. Israel is hated, as the United States is hated, because Israel is successful, because Israel is free, and because Israel is good. As Maxim Gorky put it: “Whatever nonsense the anti-Semites may talk, they dislike the Jew only because he is obviously better, more adroit, and more willing and capable of work than they are.” Whether driven by culture or genes—or like most behavior, an inextricable mix—the fact of Jewish genius is demonstrable." -- George Gilder
To Leftist haters, all the basic rules of liberal society — rejection of hate speech, commitment to academic freedom, rooting out racism, the absolute commitment to human dignity — go out the window when the subject is Israel.
I have always liked the story of Gideon (See Judges chapters 6 to 8) and it is surely no surprise that in the present age Israel is the Gideon of nations: Few in numbers but big in power and impact.
Is the Israel Defence Force the most effective military force per capita since Genghis Khan? They probably are but they are also the most ethically advanced military force that the world has ever seen
If I were not an atheist, I would believe that God had a sense of humour. He gave his chosen people (the Jews) enormous advantages -- high intelligence and high drive -- but to keep it fair he deprived them of something hugely important too: Political sense. So Jews to this day tend very strongly to be Leftist -- even though the chief source of antisemitism for roughly the last 200 years has been the political Left!
And the other side of the coin is that Jews tend to despise conservatives and Christians. Yet American fundamentalist Christians are the bedrock of the vital American support for Israel, the ultimate bolthole for all Jews. So Jewish political irrationality seems to be a rather good example of the saying that "The LORD giveth and the LORD taketh away". There are many other examples of such perversity (or "balance"). The sometimes severe side-effects of most pharmaceutical drugs is an obvious one but there is another ethnic example too, a rather amusing one. Chinese people are in general smart and patient people but their rate of traffic accidents in China is about 10 times higher than what prevails in Western societies. They are brilliant mathematicians and fearless business entrepreneurs but at the same time bad drivers!
Conservatives, on the other hand, could be antisemitic on entirely rational grounds: Namely, the overwhelming Leftism of the Diaspora Jewish population as a whole. Because they judge the individual, however, only a tiny minority of conservative-oriented people make such general judgments. The longer Jews continue on their "stiff-necked" course, however, the more that is in danger of changing. The children of Israel have been a stiff necked people since the days of Moses, however, so they will no doubt continue to vote with their emotions rather than their reason.
I despair of the ADL. Jews have enough problems already and yet in the ADL one has a prominent Jewish organization that does its best to make itself offensive to Christians. Their Leftism is more important to them than the welfare of Jewry -- which is the exact opposite of what they ostensibly stand for! Jewish cleverness seems to vanish when politics are involved. Fortunately, Christians are true to their saviour and have loving hearts. Jewish dissatisfaction with the myopia of the ADL is outlined here. Note that Foxy was too grand to reply to it.
Fortunately for America, though, liberal Jews there are rapidly dying out through intermarriage and failure to reproduce. And the quite poisonous liberal Jews of Israel are not much better off. Judaism is slowly returning to Orthodoxy and the Orthodox tend to be conservative.
The above is good testimony to the accuracy of the basic conservative insight that almost anything in human life is too complex to be reduced to any simple rule and too complex to be reduced to any rule at all without allowance for important exceptions to the rule concerned
Amid their many virtues, one virtue is often lacking among Jews in general and Israelis in particular: Humility. And that's an antisemitic comment only if Hashem is antisemitic. From Moses on, the Hebrew prophets repeatedy accused the Israelites of being "stiff-necked" and urged them to repent. So it's no wonder that the greatest Jewish prophet of all -- Jesus -- not only urged humility but exemplified it in his life and death
"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here. For roughly two centuries now, antisemitism has, throughout the Western world, been principally associated with Leftism (including the socialist Hitler) -- as it is to this day. See here.
Karl Marx hated just about everyone. Even his father, the kindly Heinrich Marx, thought Karl was not much of a human being
Leftists call their hatred of Israel "Anti-Zionism" but Zionists are only a small minority in Israel
Some of the Leftist hatred of Israel is motivated by old-fashioned antisemitism (beliefs in Jewish "control" etc.) but most of it is just the regular Leftist hatred of success in others. And because the societies they inhabit do not give them the vast amount of recognition that their large but weak egos need, some of the most virulent haters of Israel and America live in those countries. So the hatred is the product of pathologically high self-esteem.
Their threatened egos sometimes drive Leftists into quite desperate flights from reality. For instance, they often call Israel an "Apartheid state" -- when it is in fact the Arab states that practice Apartheid -- witness the severe restrictions on Christians in Saudi Arabia. There are no such restrictions in Israel.
If the Palestinians put down their weapons, there'd be peace. If the Israelis put down their weapons, there'd be genocide.
ABOUT
Many people hunger and thirst after righteousness. Some find it in the hatreds of the Left. Others find it in the love of Christ. I don't hunger and thirst after righteousness at all. I hunger and thirst after truth. How old-fashioned can you get?
The kneejerk response of the Green/Left to people who challenge them is to say that the challenger is in the pay of "Big Oil", "Big Business", "Big Pharma", "Exxon-Mobil", "The Pioneer Fund" or some other entity that they see, in their childish way, as a boogeyman. So I think it might be useful for me to point out that I have NEVER received one cent from anybody by way of support for what I write. As a retired person, I live entirely on my own investments. I do not work for anybody and I am not beholden to anybody. And I have NO investments in oil companies, mining companies or "Big Pharma"
UPDATE: Despite my (statistical) aversion to mining stocks, I have recently bought a few shares in BHP -- the world's biggest miner, I gather. I run the grave risk of becoming a speaker of famous last words for saying this but I suspect that BHP is now so big as to be largely immune from the risks that plague most mining companies. I also know of no issue affecting BHP where my writings would have any relevance. The Left seem to have a visceral hatred of miners. I have never quite figured out why.
I imagine that few of my readers will understand it, but I am an unabashed monarchist. And, as someone who was born and bred in a monarchy and who still lives there (i.e. Australia), that gives me no conflicts at all. In theory, one's respect for the monarchy does not depend on who wears the crown but the impeccable behaviour of the present Queen does of course help perpetuate that respect. Aside from my huge respect for the Queen, however, my favourite member of the Royal family is the redheaded Prince Harry. The Royal family is of course a military family and Prince Harry is a great example of that. As one of the world's most privileged people, he could well be an idle layabout but instead he loves his life in the army. When his girlfriend Chelsy ditched him because he was so often away, Prince Harry said: "I love Chelsy but the army comes first". A perfect military man! I doubt that many women would understand or approve of his attitude but perhaps my own small army background powers my approval of that attitude.
I imagine that most Americans might find this rather mad -- but I believe that a constitutional Monarchy is the best form of government presently available. Can a libertarian be a Monarchist? I think so -- and prominent British libertarian Sean Gabb seems to think so too! Long live the Queen! (And note that Australia ranks well above the USA on the Index of Economic freedom. Heh!)
The Australian flag with the Union Jack quartered in it
Throughout Europe there is an association between monarchism and conservatism. It is a little sad that American conservatives do not have access to that satisfaction. So even though Australia is much more distant from Europe (geographically) than the USA is, Australia is in some ways more of an outpost of Europe than America is! Mind you: Australia is not very atypical of its region. Australia lies just South of Asia -- and both Japan and Thailand have greatly respected monarchies. And the demise of the Cambodian monarchy was disastrous for Cambodia
Throughout the world today, possession of a U.S. or U.K. passport is greatly valued. I once shared that view. Developments in recent years have however made me profoundly grateful that I am a 5th generation Australian. My Australian passport is a door into a much less oppressive and much less messed-up place than either the USA or Britain
Following the Sotomayor precedent, I would hope that a wise older white man such as myself with the richness of that experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than someone who hasn’t lived that life.
IQ and ideology: Most academics are Left-leaning. Why? Because very bright people who have balls go into business, while very bright people with no balls go into academe. I did both with considerable success, which makes me a considerable rarity. Although I am a born academic, I have always been good with money too. My share portfolio even survived the GFC in good shape. The academics hate it that bright people with balls make more money than them.
I have no hesitation in saying that the single book which has influenced me most is the New Testament. And my Scripture blog will show that I know whereof I speak. Some might conclude that I must therefore be a very confused sort of atheist but I can assure everyone that I do not feel the least bit confused. The New Testament is a lighthouse that has illumined the thinking of all sorts of men and women and I am deeply grateful that it has shone on me.
I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age. Conservatism is in touch with reality. Leftism is not.
I imagine that the RD are still sending mailouts to my 1950s address
Most teenagers have sporting and movie posters on their bedroom walls. At age 14 I had a map of Taiwan on my wall.
"Remind me never to get this guy mad at me" -- Instapundit
It seems to be a common view that you cannot talk informatively about a country unless you have been there. I completely reject that view but it is nonetheless likely that some Leftist dimbulb will at some stage aver that any comments I make about politics and events in the USA should not be heeded because I am an Australian who has lived almost all his life in Australia. I am reluctant to pander to such ignorance in the era of the "global village" but for the sake of the argument I might mention that I have visited the USA 3 times -- spending enough time in Los Angeles and NYC to get to know a fair bit about those places at least. I did however get outside those places enough to realize that they are NOT America.
"Intellectual" = Leftist dreamer. I have more publications in the academic journals than almost all "public intellectuals" but I am never called an intellectual and nor would I want to be. Call me a scholar or an academic, however, and I will accept either as a just and earned appellation
A small personal note: I have always been very self-confident. I inherited it from my mother, along with my skeptical nature. So I don't need to feed my self-esteem by claiming that I am wiser than others -- which is what Leftists do.
As with conservatives generally, it bothers me not a bit to admit to large gaps in my knowledge and understanding. For instance, I don't know if the slight global warming of the 20th century will resume in the 21st, though I suspect not. And I don't know what a "healthy" diet is, if there is one. Constantly-changing official advice on the matter suggests that nobody knows
Leftists are usually just anxious little people trying to pretend that they are significant. No doubt there are some Leftists who are genuinely concerned about inequities in our society but their arrogance lies in thinking that they understand it without close enquiry
My academic background
My full name is Dr. John Joseph RAY. I am a former university teacher aged 65 at the time of writing in 2009. I was born of Australian pioneer stock in 1943 at Innisfail in the State of Queensland in Australia. I trace my ancestry wholly to the British Isles. After an early education at Innisfail State Rural School and Cairns State High School, I taught myself for matriculation. I took my B.A. in Psychology from the University of Queensland in Brisbane. I then moved to Sydney (in New South Wales, Australia) and took my M.A. in psychology from the University of Sydney in 1969 and my Ph.D. from the School of Behavioural Sciences at Macquarie University in 1974. I first tutored in psychology at Macquarie University and then taught sociology at the University of NSW. My doctorate is in psychology but I taught mainly sociology in my 14 years as a university teacher. In High Schools I taught economics. I have taught in both traditional and "progressive" (low discipline) High Schools. Fuller biographical notes here
I completed the work for my Ph.D. at the end of 1970 but the degree was not awarded until 1974 -- due to some academic nastiness from Seymour Martin Lipset and Fred Emery. A conservative or libertarian who makes it through the academic maze has to be at least twice as good as the average conformist Leftist. Fortunately, I am a born academic.
Despite my great sympathy and respect for Christianity, I am the most complete atheist you could find. I don't even believe that the word "God" is meaningful. I am not at all original in that view, of course. Such views are particularly associated with the noted German philosopher Rudolf Carnap. Unlike Carnap, however, none of my wives have committed suicide
Very occasionally in my writings I make reference to the greats of analytical philosophy such as Carnap and Wittgenstein. As philosophy is a heavily Leftist discipline however, I have long awaited an attack from some philosopher accusing me of making coat-trailing references not backed by any real philosophical erudition. I suppose it is encouraging that no such attacks have eventuated but I thought that I should perhaps forestall them anyway -- by pointing out that in my younger days I did complete three full-year courses in analytical philosophy (at 3 different universities!) and that I have had papers on mainstream analytical philosophy topics published in academic journals
As well as being an academic, I am an army man and I am pleased and proud to say that I have worn my country's uniform. Although my service in the Australian army was chiefly noted for its un-notability, I DID join voluntarily in the Vietnam era, I DID reach the rank of Sergeant, and I DID volunteer for a posting in Vietnam. So I think I may be forgiven for saying something that most army men think but which most don't say because they think it is too obvious: The profession of arms is the noblest profession of all because it is the only profession where you offer to lay down your life in performing your duties. Our men fought so that people could say and think what they like but I myself always treat military men with great respect -- respect which in my view is simply their due.
A real army story here
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day and there is JUST ONE saying of Hitler's that I rather like. It may not even be original to him but it is found in chapter 2 of Mein Kampf (published in 1925): "Widerstaende sind nicht da, dass man vor ihnen kapituliert, sondern dass man sie bricht". The equivalent English saying is "Difficulties exist to be overcome" and that traces back at least to the 1920s -- with attributions to Montessori and others. Hitler's metaphor is however one of smashing barriers rather than of politely hopping over them and I am myself certainly more outspoken than polite. Hitler's colloquial Southern German is notoriously difficult to translate but I think I can manage a reasonable translation of that saying: "Resistance is there not for us to capitulate to but for us to break". I am quite sure that I don't have anything like that degree of determination in my own life but it seems to me to be a good attitude in general anyway
I have used many sites to post my writings over the years and many have gone bad on me for various reasons. So if you click on a link here to my other writings you may get a "page not found" response if the link was put up some time before the present. All is not lost, however. All my writings have been reposted elsewhere. If you do strike a failed link, just take the filename (the last part of the link) and add it to the address of any of my current home pages and -- Voila! -- you should find the article concerned.
COMMENTS: I have gradually added comments facilities to all my blogs. The comments I get are interesting. They are mostly from Leftists and most consist either of abuse or mere assertions. Reasoned arguments backed up by references to supporting evidence are almost unheard of from Leftists. Needless to say, I just delete such useless comments.
You can email me here (Hotmail address). In emailing me, you can address me as "John", "Jon", "Dr. Ray" or "JR" and that will be fine -- but my preference is for "JR" -- and that preference has NOTHING to do with an American soap opera that featured a character who was referred to in that way
DETAILS OF REGULARLY UPDATED BLOGS BY JOHN RAY:
"Tongue Tied"
"Dissecting Leftism"
"Australian Politics"
"Education Watch International"
"Political Correctness Watch"
"Greenie Watch"
Western Heart
BLOGS OCCASIONALLY UPDATED:
"Marx & Engels in their own words"
"A scripture blog"
"Recipes"
"Some memoirs"
To be continued ....
Coral reef compendium.
Queensland Police
Australian Police News
Paralipomena (3)
Of Interest
Dagmar Schellenberger
My alternative Wikipedia
BLOGS NO LONGER BEING UPDATED
"Food & Health Skeptic"
"Eye on Britain"
"Immigration Watch International".
"Leftists as Elitists"
Socialized Medicine
OF INTEREST (2)
QANTAS -- A dying octopus
BRIAN LEITER (Ladderman)
Obama Watch
Obama Watch (2)
Dissecting Leftism -- Large font site
Michael Darby
Paralipomena (2)
AGL -- A bumbling monster
Telstra/Bigpond follies
Optus bungling
Vodafrauds (vodafone)
Bank of Queensland blues
There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)
Some more useful links
Alt archives for "Dissecting Leftism" here or here
Longer Academic Papers
Johnray links
Academic home page
Academic Backup Page
General Backup
General Backup 2
Selected reading
MONOGRAPH ON LEFTISM
CONSERVATISM AS HERESY
Rightism defined
Leftist Churches
Leftist Racism
Fascism is Leftist
Hitler a socialist
Leftism is authoritarian
James on Leftism
Irbe on Leftism
Beltt on Leftism
Lakoff
Van Hiel
Sidanius
Kruglanski
Pyszczynski et al.
Cautionary blogs about big Australian organizations:
TELSTRA
OPTUS
AGL
Bank of Queensland
Queensland Police
Australian police news
QANTAS, a dying octopus
Main academic menu
Menu of recent writings
basic home page
Pictorial Home Page
Selected pictures from blogs (Backup here)
Another picture page (Best with broadband. Rarely updated)
Note: If the link to one of my articles is not working, the article concerned can generally be viewed by prefixing to the filename the following:
http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/42197/20151027-0014/jonjayray.comuv.com/
OR: (After 2015)
https://web.archive.org/web/20160322114550/http://jonjayray.com/