Saturday, August 20, 2005

HAPPINESS AND MONEY

Happiness seems mainly to be a stable personality trait. We tend to be born as either happy or miserable people. And no prizes for guessing who the miserable ones are. There is a long history of evidence showing that conservatives are happier. The most recent is from Gallup: "Even when accounting for partisan differences in marital status and household income, Republicans are significantly more likely than Democrats and independents to be very happy." Leftists are miserable sods, to put it plainly -- but you just have to hear their constant whining about everything in our society to know that.

How happy we are does NOT seem to depend strongly on external circumstances, though it does of course depend to SOME degree on what happens to us. So one person will be happy in circumstances that would make another person miserable. I know. I have observed perfectly cheerful people among the street-sleepers of Bombay. Some people are almost always happy. Some people are almost always whining. Some people just have happy natures and some do not. So looking at what it is that makes people happy is largely futile. In statisticians' terms, you are looking for variance in something that is invariant. Or, putting it another way, correlations with something that is invariant will NECESSARILY be zero. So if you are interested in running a public policy that respects other people, you need to look at what they CHOOSE, not at what makes them happy. And most people choose (for instance) more money rather than less.

And I think that this article shows beyond doubt that degree of happiness is a stable disposition: "Most people who live with serious disability or illness, such as kidney failure, appear to adapt well and maintain a healthy outlook on life, new research reports. This trend may be surprising to some -- the report also found that people without serious illnesses tended to underestimate the level of happiness in these patients. "We think it is encouraging that for at least some illnesses, life seems to (eventually) go on and that people come to experience good and even normal mood levels," study author Dr. Jason Riis of Princeton University in New Jersey told Reuters Health. "We cannot adapt to anything. But we are generally more resilient than we think," he said. In the Journal of Experimental Psychology, Riis and his colleagues note that this is not the first study to show that people can adjust to good and bad life events. For instance, a nearly 30-year old study found that paraplegics were not that much less happy than lottery winners."

And some more evidence that happiness is a personality trait: "In a boost for exam-flunkers everywhere, a study published yesterday in the British Medical Journal found the levels of satisfaction with life recorded by 550 Scottish men and women aged 84-85 were unaffected by their mental abilities, either when they were young or much later.... The study group, all born in Lothian, Scotland, in 1921, were remarkable for the fact they had all undergone tests of mental ability when they were about 11 years old, and the records had been preserved. The tests were repeated a few years ago, when they were about 79. They each ranked their happiness on a scientifically validated satisfaction scale."

In recent years, Left-leaning economists such as Ross Gittins have discovered the academic psychology literature on happiness -- and it seems to have given them some relief. The research shows, of course, that higher incomes do not automatically buy you more happiness. Any observer of Hollywood knew that long ago and I guess people have in fact known it for about 4,000 years. In 1 Timothy 6:10 St. Paul probably went a bit too far in saying that "The love of money is the root of all evil" but you get the idea. And the whole story of Job in the Old Testament runs along similar lines. But these days, "If money does not make you happier, then take it away!" is the Leftist reasoning. So that old bit of wisdom has found a new use as the latest pathetic excuse to hike taxes. There is another dummo academic (Richard Layard) reported here who points to the fact that getting richer does not necessarily make you happier and who thinks therefore that government meddling is indicated.

So why are SHOULD we worry about giving everyone higher incomes if that will not make them any happier? The simple answer: "Because almost everybody WANTS higher incomes" does not seem to have occurred to everybody yet. They seem to think that if money will not necessarily make you happy then governments should not bother with efforts to get more of it to you. But satisfaction, comfort, convenience, leisure options, security etc are not the same as happiness. The strongest external influence on how happy you are is probably your relationships with others. Given satisfaction with your relationships, you will probably remain roughly as happy through a wide range of incomes. But you will still want more of the things that money can buy if you can get them. So you will still say "Yes, please" to the possibility of more money.

There is a reply to Gittins on the economic issues here but it should also be noted that money does have SOME influence. As this article reports: "A new survey of national wellbeing has found the people happiest about their lives are those earning more than $150,000 a year. Those least happy earn less than $15,000 a year".

And this article also tends to show that there are ways in which money can buy happiness: "Two studies released yesterday shed new light on the importance of economic circumstances, and undermine earlier findings that poor people are just as happy as the rich. Money doesn't buy Happiness - or Does It? by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, at Melbourne University, shows that when wealth - not just income - is measured, the rich are indeed happier than the poor. Earlier research that focused only on income found very little difference in the reported happiness of high-income and low-income people. Mark Wooden, the study's co-author, said: "This has led some people to say money is not that important, relative to other things." However, when people's assets were taken into account - the value of their houses, cars, art works, even stamp collection - a different picture emerged."

This is a big subject so I will undoubtedly have more to say on it later. Maybe tomorrow.

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ELSEWHERE

British coverup coming apart: "A clerk at the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) was suspended last night for allegedly leaking secret documents about the Stockwell Underground shooting of an innocent man to a television station. The suspension will come as a severe blow to the credibility of the commission, which is handling its first big inquiry since it was opened 18 months ago to replace investigations by police themselves".

The Bush boom: "Why President Bush seemingly gets no credit for the strong economy is one of the enduring political mysteries of our time.... Most polls show the president’s economic approval rating around 40 percent or even less. Scott Rasmussen, who does extensive consumer and investor polling, shows that the confidence ratings of both are about 15 percent lower than in late 2003. Meanwhile, a splendid group of economic data points show clearly the effectiveness of the president’s marginal tax-rate reductions of two years ago. The tax-cut package was in large part directed at stock market and business capital formation, both hard hit a few years back. This was the correct target. Share prices have recovered about 70 percent in recent years, with a number of widely tracked indexes, like the NYSE and the S&P small- and mid-cap indexes, now trading at all-time highs. The economy itself is growing at about 4 percent per annum since the tax cuts, with business investment leading the surge".

Great progress in China: "The major reform achievement has been in privatizing state enterprises. The private sector accounts for 70% of gross domestic product. There are 200 large state companies -- basically, they are in utilities, some in heavy industries, some in resource industries. Traditionally, this is where governments have invested. China Mobil and China Telecom are huge, but these are natural monopolies. Even France and Britain had those large state companies for a long time. If you take these away, China is a private-sector economy"

Whew! I have just finished the big job of cleaning out my blogroll -- deleting links that no longer work or links that led to blogs that are no longer regularly updated. If anybody thinks I have unfairly deleted them, let me know.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

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" (Nationalsozialistisch)


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

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Friday, August 19, 2005

FRANK SULLOWAY: A VERY STRANGE PSYCHOLOGIST

In 2003, there was published in one of the premier journals of psychology an article about conservatism that attracted widespread attention -- most of it derisive. There is a summary of it here. It purported to be a meta-analysis -- a survey of the existing evidence on its topic. It came to the hilarious conclusion that people like Stalin, Khrushchev and Castro were conservatives! As political psychology is my major area of academic expertise, I replied to it immediately here -- pointing out that the authors had not the slightest understanding of what conservatism actually was and pointing out what a strange "meta-analysis" it was -- seeing that it ignored the majority of published academic research papers relevant to its topic. It was, in other words, a champion effort at ignoring any evidence that did not suit its authors.

Most of the authors of the paper seemed to have some UC Berkeley affiliations and one of the authors was Frank Sulloway, who is better known for his theory that birth order is a powerful explanation of political attitudes and behaviour. Firstborns are conservatives and later-borns are the rebels, apparently. Perhaps because of their love of simplistic theories, psychologists generally took this wacky theory seriously. I doubt that there are many readers here who cannot think of examples from among their own friends and relatives who contradict that theory. I can certainly think of some later-borns among my relatives who are so far Right they are almost out of sight. So a suspicion that Sulloway was picking and choosing his cases in the evidence for his birth-order theory certainly springs immediately to mind. And given that he and his colleagues did just that in the article I alluded to initially above, that suspicion firms up immediately into an assumption for me.

And that Sulloway's birth-order theory is very vulnerable to critical assessments of the evidence for it is also shown by Sulloway's extraordinary behaviour when other researchers began to question it. He resorted to threats of lawsuits to suppress the criticisms! As far as I know, this is completely unheard of in science. Criticism is the lifeblood of science. If it were not for criticism of the existing theories were would be no advances in knowledge and we would still believe that the sun revolved around the earth, rather than vice versa.

And, as this article says: "For example, the greatest revolutionary of our time is Che Guevara. He was a firstborn, and Sulloway says that supports his theory. Huh? Mao Tse-tung was a firstborn. Sulloway says that supports his theory. Maximilien Robespierre, leader of the French Revolution, the symbol of revolutionary rebellious behavior, was also a firstborn, and Sulloway says he, too, supports his theory." And look at those facts in the light of something Sulloway said in his New Yorker profile: "If anyone ever, ever discovers a radical revolution led by firstborns and opposed by laterborns, then I'm out of business"

The only amazing thing is that there are still many psychologists who support Sulloway. It shows how much Left-leaning social scientists love their oversimplifications. There is a big article giving an extensive history of the whole affair here. The bit I liked best was this: "In an effort to refute his critics, Sulloway worked with Stanford statisticians and Berkeley researchers to double-check both his findings and the way he carried out his statistical treatment. A large part of the research involved what is known as meta-analysis". In other words, he relied on another Berkeley "meta-analysis" to back up his claims. Given what I know of the dishonesty and incompetence of the other Berkeley meta-analysis I have mentioned, that really puts the last nail in the coffin of Sulloway's theory for me.

If you want another example of the way Left-leaning psychologists cling on to absurd and vastly oversimplified theories, see here

Reference:
Jost, J.T., Glaser, J., Kruglanski, A.W., & Sulloway, F.J. (2003). Political conservatism as motivated social cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 129(3), 339-375. (PDF)

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ELSEWHERE

Civilization goes back a long way in Europe too: "Bulgarian archaeologists have unearthed about 15,000 tiny golden pieces that date back to the end of the third millennium B.C. - a find they said Wednesday matches the famous treasure of Troy. The golden ornaments, estimated to be between 4,100 and 4,200 years old, have been unearthed gradually during the past year from an ancient tomb near the central village of Dabene, about 75 miles east of the capital, Sofia, said Vasil Nikolov, an academic consultant on the excavations. "This treasure is a bit older than Schliemann's finds in Troy, and contains much more golden ornaments," Nikolov said. Heinrich Schliemann, an amateur German archaeologist, discovered the site of ancient Troy in 1868 and directed ambitious excavations that proved he was right. The treasure consists of miniature golden rings, some so finely crafted that the point where the ring is welded is invisible with an ordinary microscope."

The joke that is American border control: "New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson declared a state of emergency Friday in four counties along the Mexican border. The declaration said the region "has been devastated by the ravages and terror of human smuggling, drug smuggling, kidnapping, murder, destruction of property and the death of livestock. ... "[It] is in an extreme state of disrepair and is inadequately funded or safeguarded to protect the lives and property of New Mexican citizens." New Mexico shares 180 miles of border with the Mexican state of Chihuahua. "The situation is out of hand," Richardson said Friday night on CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight," noting that one 54-mile stretch is particularly bad.... In announcing the state of emergency, Richardson -- a Democrat who served in President Clinton's Cabinet -- criticized the "total inaction and lack of resources from the federal government and Congress" in helping protect his state's residents along the border. "There's very little response from the Border Patrol," he said on CNN. "They're doing a good job, but they don't have the resources."

Your good old taxpayer-funded U.N. again: "The United Nations bankrolled the production of thousands of banners, bumper stickers, mugs, and T-shirts bearing the slogan "Today Gaza and Tomorrow the West Bank and Jerusalem," which have been widely distributed to Palestinian Arabs in the Gaza Strip, according to a U.N. official. The U.N. support of the Palestinian Authority's propaganda operation in the midst of the Israeli evacuation of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip has provoked outrage from Israeli and Jewish leaders, who are blaming Turtle Bay for propagating an inflammatory message that they say encourages Palestinian Arab violence".

British blogger, Snowball thinks it was only partly a bungle when British police repeatedly shot an innocent Brazilian electrician on a London underground train. He thinks they were intent on assassinating someone inconvenient to them. The original police story certainly does seem to be coming apart.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

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" (Nationalsozialistisch)


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

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Thursday, August 18, 2005

THE UNABOMBER GOT IT WRONG ABOUT LEFTISTS

From time to time people claim that my account of Leftist psychology is similar to that put forward by the well-known "Unabomber". I generally ignore such comments as they result from a pervasive confusion in modern psychology about the nature and benefits of self-esteem -- which for a time was almost idolized. As I say elsewhere:

"The self-esteem gurus would no doubt argue that Hitler had to have LOW self-esteem to perpetrate his anti-social evils. If, however, the self-proclaimed "leader" (Fuehrer) of the "master-race" (Herrenvolk) was short of self-esteem, what meaning could the concept have? If Hitler had low self-esteem, how would we ever recognize high self-esteem? We would need some pretty circular definitions, I suspect.

This does however highlight the seeming paradox that many of those who seem to have very high self-regard also often seem to a have high need for that self-regard to be reinforced. The person with excess ego also seems to have a high ego-need. This is hardly surprising, however. There is much in the world and in life that tells each of us about our inadequacies, failures and mistakes so any person who has a high level of self-love has a lot of attacks on that self-love to fend off, counteract and defend against. The higher one's self-love, the more there is to attack and the more one will have a need to get it justified in some way. Humility would make life a lot simpler and realism a lot easier. It is no wonder that the inflated ego of the Leftist makes him/her an habitual denier of reality.


My account of Leftist psychology concedes that Leftism can arise from a number of causes but highlights the above "big ego" syndrome as dominant among Leftist intellectuals and ideologues. So my claim is that Leftists have BIG egos -- i.e. they think extraordinarily well of themselves. They think they are beneath any requirements of proof for what they say etc. But I also point out that this will ordinarily be a large disjunction from reality so the Leftist will need a lot of propping up for his ego. Nasty things like evidence contradicting his theories will lead to irrational denial and abuse of anybody mentioning the inconvenient facts.

The Unabomber, by contrast claimed that Leftists have LOW self-esteem. I quote:

"The two psychological tendencies that underlie modern leftism we call "feelings of inferiority" and "oversocialization." Feelings of inferiority are characteristic of modern leftism as a whole, while oversocialization is characteristic only of a certain segment of modern leftism; but this segment is highly influential.

By "feelings of inferiority" we mean not only inferiority feelings in the strict sense but a whole spectrum of related traits: low self-esteem, feelings of powerlessness, depressive tendencies, defeatism, guilt, self-hatred, etc. We argue that modern leftists tend to have some such feelings (possibly more or less repressed) and that these feelings are decisive in determining the direction of modern leftism. When someone interprets as derogatory almost anything that is said about him (or about groups with whom he identifies) we conclude that he has inferiority feelings or low self-esteem. This tendency is pronounced among minority rights advocates"


So as far as I can see, the Unabomber theory is exactly the reverse of the truth!

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ELSEWHERE

An Australian senator has just given a speech in parliament in which he lists innumerable examples of bias on the part of our major public broadcaster -- with biased treatment of stories about Israel and Iraq being the most prominent of course. America's PBS has to some extent been reined in recently but the Australian equivalent is still a Leftist propaganda machine. Give the Senator some feedback. He needs it, and he appreciates it. His email address is senator.santoro@aph.gov.au

A GOP President doesn't veto GOP legislation: How surprising!: "Like pardons and executive orders, vetoes are among the cherished privileges of the Oval Office. Ike liked them. So did presidents Truman and Cleveland - and both Roosevelts. But apparently not George W. Bush. In fact, well into the fifth year of his presidency, he has yet to issue a single veto. It's a streak unmatched in modern American history"

A very unfree country: "On Monday, May 9, a man named Mike Fisher, from the town of Newmarket, New Hampshire, performed an act for which he will pay dearly under penalty of law. He engaged in a consensual commercial transaction with another willing individual. He performed a manicure. Mike Fisher, outlaw, enemy of the realm, planted himself outside the state Board of Cosmetology, invited his customer to join him, and committed the unpardonable sin of performing a manicure without a license granted by the very agents who work inside... He had already been "spoken to" by state Attorney General Kelley Ayotte the week before. When Ms. Ayotte asked him not to perform his "stunt," Mike nicely said he fully intended to provide the service to anyone who was interested in hiring him. When he kept his word, he was promptly arrested by the Concord, New Hampshire, police. Mike spent the night in jail, because he was unwilling to pay for either the license or the mandatory "training" required to get it. Instead, he studied and trained himself, advertised to others that he was going to offer his services at a low price, and willingly accepted a customer, under the watchful eyes of agents of the Granite State".

Mentally deficient TSA screeners: "Infants have been stopped from boarding planes at airports throughout the U.S. because their names are the same as or similar to those of possible terrorists on the government's 'no-fly list.' It sounds like a joke, but it's not funny to parents who miss flights while scrambling to have babies' passports and other documents faxed. Ingrid Sanden's 1-year-old daughter was stopped in Phoenix before boarding a flight home to Washington at Thanksgiving."

"Anti-ACLU" fights for religion in public life: "For years, the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups have fought to remove any trace of religion from government and public life, and for years they've won. Now the ACLU is facing a challenge from groups such as the Alliance Defense Fund, one of several Christian law firms formed in the 1990s. From its base in Phoenix, the ADF says its goal is to defend religious liberty, the sanctity of human life and the traditional family against any person or group who attacks those principles."

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

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" (Nationalsozialistisch)


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

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Wednesday, August 17, 2005

TOLERANCE IS A TWO-WAY STREET

There are editorials and opinion pieces like the one below popping up all over the world lately. The one below is by Des Houghton and appeared in the Brisbane "Courier Mail" on Saturday August 13, 2005

I'm getting a little tired of do-gooders preaching the virtues of multiculturalism. would like to see them espouse the virtues of integration with similar vigour. I'm not saying multiculturalism is a dirty word. But there is a risk that by over-stressing its benefits we may encourage some minorities to think their extreme beliefs are superior to the values of this country's majority.

More than 90 per cent of us still proclain a Christian heritage. We have welcomed no fewer than six million migrants since World War II, and more are arriving every day. The peaceful integration of migrants into Australian society is one of our enduring national achievements. I have friends whose parents were born in Italy, Greece, Lebanon, Italy and China, who retain many of the values of their parents' homeland while embracing the values of this grand land.

Most of us now have friends and colleagues from other cultures who have enriched our lives. We welcome newcomers, provided they come through our front door. And we need not apologise to any one for our record on immigration. This country's tolerance of different religious beliefs, social mores and political views is at the heart of what it means to be Australian and no one understands this more than migrants who have sworn allegiance under the Southern Cross.

For years, however, any politician wishing to court public approval - especially in metropolitan regions - has nailed his colours to the mast of multiculturalism. Terrified of appearing "racist", our dripping wet liberal commentators, ignorant schoolteachers and simpering politicians have bent over backwards to appease minorities.

Prove to me that this kind of "multiculturalism" has not encouraged branch stacking by political parties and electoral pork-barrelling that verges on corruption.

In welcoming migrants we also have opened the door to a few extremists who use our democracy to espouse an abhorrent political order which preaches violence and subjugates women. In Dubai recently I went to the mosque and took an introductory course in the six pillars of Islam. It was fascinating. To its true believers, Islam means peace. We must not fear Muslims; only a very small number of them are hellhounds bent on destroying the West.

When John Howard meets Muslim leaders next week he must remind them that while we value their cultural traditions, they must also respect ours. He must also make it clear that migrants of all faiths are welcome, but that our national unity and stability demands a high level of integration, not segregation. This can be achieved with tolerance. Tolerance is the core of civilisation, and it is a two-way street.

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ELSEWHERE

McDonald's bombing mastermind jailed for life: "An Indonesian court today sentenced the alleged mastermind of 2002 bombing of a McDonald's restaurant to life in prison, saying the Islamic militant planned the attack that came just weeks after the Bali nightclub attacks. Agung Abdul Hamid, 38, was found guilty of being the "field co-ordinator and financier" of the early evening bombing that killed three people in the South Sulawesi provincial capital of Makassar. The dead and injured were all Indonesians."

Arlene Peck thinks that Australians are less tolerant of the Islamists than people in the U.S. and U.K. are.

More hate-speech from San Francisco's Mark Morford: "I have never been to a big creepy megachurch. This is my first confession. I have never been to, say, Lakewood Church in Houston, the biggest glossiest megachurch of all, which just dumped a staggering $75 million to renovate the former stadium for the Houston Rockets and turn it into a massive pulsing swaying arm-raisin' eye-glazed weirdly repressed House o' Jesus. ... I mention all this because megachurches are the latest phenomenon, the hottest trend in the Christian godfearin' biz, arena-scaled piety polished up and bloated out and aimed like a giant homophobic cannon straight at the gloomy face of a new and improved God ... But you really don't need to attend one of these surreal spectacles to realize that most of us should kneel down right now in heartfelt gratitude that we have never been forced to endure, say, the all-paunchy-married-male revue of a Promise Keepers rally, or the bizarre pious cheerleading of a Harvest Crusade in L.A."

Nutty Swedes: "In the last four years, 50% of those who have been refused asylum in Sweden have gone underground and have simply vanished from the Board of Migration's statistics. And of the half who have actually been sent home, a full 20% have come straight back to Sweden to try their luck again. That is in accordance with the rules of the Geneva Convention, which states that asylum seekers who have been deported to their homeland have the right to return and have their case tried again. Each time they return must be treated as a new case..... In 2004, a total of 2,026 supervised deportations cost 148.3 million kronor, up 34% on the year before. The rise is blamed on the increasing demands for more staff to help take people out of the country. One deportation requires at least two people, said Tina Hendriksson, a finance inspector at the Prison Service's transport office. "Lately more people have been needed. That's because those who are deported are in poor psychological or physical condition, or simply don't want to be expelled," she told Dagens Nyheter. "We have also been forced to charter whole planes to a greater extent than earlier," added G"ran Stenbeck, head of the transport office. In fact, the transport office chartered 92 planes in 2004 - sometimes for just one person - at a total cost of 12.5 million kronor".

Clueless Norwegians: "New figures from Norway's immigration authority (Utlendingsdirektoratet, UDI) indicate that nearly 7,000 would-be refugees disappeared from asylum centers in 2003 alone. Another 1,136 have disappeared so far this year, reports newspaper Stavanger Aftenblad. Around 60 percent of those who left the asylum centers, which aren't run as locked institutions, are between 18 and 34 years of age. Around 20 percent are younger than 18. No one can say what has happened to those who applied for asylum but left with no forwarding address while their cases were being processed".

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

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" (Nationalsozialistisch)


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

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Tuesday, August 16, 2005

TUESDAY ROUNDUP

Once again I list what I think were the best posts on my various blogs in the preceding week.

On Dissecting Leftism I offer an historically-based definition of conservatism

On Majority Rights I note a surprising victory in Britain -- where race-relations law was applied to protect whites from discrimination too.

On Greenie Watch I cast a skeptical eye on the story about Siberia heating up

On Blogger News I look at the controversy over whether the earth's atmosphere in getting warmer -- as measured by satellites and weather balloons.

On Political Correctness Watch I note that it is now officially incorrect in Britain to portray Osama bin Laden as a bad guy!

On Education Watch I look at whether American High School students really are poorly educated or whether they are just lazy.

On Socialized Medicine I note a striking example of how bureaucrats cover up the failures of public medicine

On Gun Watch I have a post called "All the news that's fit to slant" which notes how even FALLING deaths from gun use can be reported as bad news in the media.

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ELSEWHERE

Offensive British class-consciousness: "British Airways faced a fresh row last night over flying with empty seats while refusing to take passengers still stranded at Heathrow airport by last week's wildcat strike... Around 600 frustrated travellers were still waiting for their flights last night and BA admitted that the backlog would take until tomorrow to clear. However, the airline refused to say how many flights had departed with empty seats in first and business class because of its refusal to offer an upgrade to marooned economy-class customers.

How the pathetic British police "get tough": "Police have expressed regret for the treatment of a great-grandmother who was woken by officers at 4am, arrested and kept in custody for 13 hours. Eileen Kearsey, 79, says she was treated like a suspected terrorist when police followed up a complaint made two months earlier by her neighbour. She was eventually released without charge at 5pm the next day, after being questioned, fingerprinted and having a DNA sample taken."

Virginia: Court sustains loyalty oath in schools : "A federal appeals court yesterday upheld a Virginia law requiring public schools to lead a daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance Edward Myers of Sterling, a father of three, claimed the reference to 'one nation under God' in the Pledge was an unconstitutional promotion of religion. A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, ruling that the Pledge is a patriotic exercise, not an affirmation of religion similar to a prayer. 'Undoubtedly, the pledge contains a religious phrase, and it is demeaning to persons of any faith to assert that the words 'under God' contain no religious significance,' Judge Karen Williams wrote. 'The inclusion of those two words, however, does not alter the nature of the pledge as a patriotic activity.' Myers and his attorney, David Remes, said they have not discussed whether to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court."

Leftist blogger Balletshootz has an interesting essay about political leadership in which he traces Democrat failure to their namby-pamby and vacillating ways. I think he has a point, though the constant comparisons of GWB to a chimp are pretty juvenile. The Left never seem to have enough of making that comparison, which doesn't say much for the depth of their ideas. I liked this quote: "Along the far left, the rhetoric is too shrill in tone and anti-authoritarian in attitude to signal fitness for any kind of leadership. These are the howls of the malcontented, the powerless, the wounded animals flailing for attention."

Leftists hate the truth: "I think it was Barbara Walters who unwittingly gave away the leftist media's secret the other night while supposedly heaping high praise on the newly dead Peter Jennings. Between gushes of admiration and sighs of sorrow not seen since the apostles lost their Lord, Walters waxed poetic about this Canadian-born socialist whose mother had raised him to hate America. On and on she went until, near the end, she offered the highest praise a leftist could fathom: "What made Peter great was that he knew there was no such thing as the truth." If there is no such thing as the truth then what was Jennings using as the basis for his reporting? Republicans know. He made it up".

A thought-provoking article from Paul Sheehan: "It's time someone praised and defended reckless teenage girls and young women who behave badly, dress provocatively, engage in risky sex, and get pregnant. They are the normal ones. The rest of us are the deviants. They are behaving in the most natural way. The rest of us are mutants.... Children are the most important asset in our culture, so society should be structured around this central reality. Instead, we are structuring society around consumerism - a treadmill of bigger homes, more possessions, more holidays, more glamour - for which we run the risk of becoming impoverished. When the pattern of peak reproduction at peak fertility is broken, as it is now, women are forced by economic circumstances or social pressure to postpone pregnancy. Collective fertility inevitably falls, usually below replacement level. Societies such as Australia's and most in Western Europe now depend on imported fertility. Immigrants".

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

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" (Nationalsozialistisch)


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

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Monday, August 15, 2005

ASIANS -- SOME COMMENTS FOR WHITE NATIONALISTS:

I have lived my entire life in a highly multicultural society so I am acutely aware of racial and ethnic differences. I grew up in an Australian country-town (Innisfail) that was only half Anglo. The rest were Italians, Spaniards, Greeks, Maltese, Yuogoslavs, Chinese, Sikhs, TIs (Melanesians) and Aborigines (blacks). And when with that perspective I look at my fellow Anglo-Australians I see people of admirable restraint, fortitude, good humour and moderation in all things. But that is only the majority. There is also a minority who are shitheads and morons.

Now I could sound like an uncomprehending elitist in saying that. Maybe I am just wiping off working class people and glorifying middle class people like myself. It is however if anything the reverse. If anything I find something like three times as much good sense in the workers as I do in the bourgeoisie. But there are shitheads in both camps. And I find that even the difficult cases among the workers are not much of a problem to me personally. Because I was born into an Australian working class family, working class thinking and conventional wisdom is an open book to me. I know all the key words and key phrases and I defer to no-one in my knowledge and enjoyment of the brilliant Australian slanguage. And I certainly did put all that to the test when I spent a couple of years as a boarding house proprietor in a "depressed" area (Ipswich) of Brisbane. I was really dealing with the hard cases there. A significant number of them in fact came to me directly from "the big house" (jail). Yet such is the power of a shared culture that I was in all cases able to handle to my satisfaction the people concerned. I always knew the right words to use. The people concerned were a considerable problem to others (and to themselves) but they were well within my capacity to handle -- though the time I threw a druggie through a closed door was approaching my limits. Words are wasted on druggies. So there is no doubt that I am as much an insider to basic Anglo-Australian culture as anyone ever will be. I am of my culture and I appreciate it and enjoy it.

But much as I am at home among my own people, I am still delighted at the sterling qualities I find in Asians. I find scarcely any shitheads among them. And I put my money where my mouth is. I actually share my large house with Asians -- mostly South Asians. None of them are of course flawless human beings but when I think of their relaxed good humour, their intelligence and their unfailing politeness and restraint I cannot see that they are inferior to anyone or that they are anything but an asset to any environment they inhabit.

Now somebody will want to tell me that it is different in England. And it certainly is different superficially. The way just about EVERY small business in London is run by South Asians is pretty amazing (though the way English shop-assistants treat their customers makes it a lot less amazing). And when I am in England and I walk into one of those Asian shops I am greeted with the wariness and reserve that experience has taught the proprietors concerned. But I only have to exchange half a dozen words with the people concerned before all that changes. Because I genuinely like and admire Indians, that message gets through almost as fast as a bullet and it is soon smiles all round. I remember once when I was in an Indian shop in London and some old English prick was telling the Indian proprietor how great the English were and how the world owed them a living. As I walked out, I "accidentally" shouldered him hard enough to knock him over. I felt embarrassed that a fine Sikh gentleman had to put up with such crassness from the prick concerned.

And nor am I talking about immigrant Indians only. I have also lived in Bombay and I can only admire the cheerfulness, enterprise and good humour of the street-people there.

I certainly don't think that all races are equal any more than I think all people are equal but I also think it is absurd to say that there is something special about someone just because his skin is pink. Each case must be judged on its individual merits but it seems to me that on any non-racial scale of values the Asians average out well ahead. And we live in a century that will see that proven. Ironically, the poison that has held the Asians back so far is of Western origin -- socialism. If any people are instinctive capitalists it is the Indians and Chinese.

And the claim that Asian cultures are tribal is a grave misconception. Asian culture is a culture of reciprocity. So if you treat them well or do them a good turn you generate enormous feelings of obligation in return. So when I walk into an Indian shop where I am known and buy three samoosas for my lunch I will occasionally get a fourth one popped into the bag as a gesture of goodwill. What is problematical about a culture like that?

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ELSEWHERE

Sanity creeping in to the TSA at long last: "The federal agency in charge of aviation security is considering major changes in how it screens airline passengers, including proposals that an official said would lift the ban on carrying razorblades and small knives as well as limit patdown searches. The Transportation Security Administration will meet later this month to discuss the plan, which is designed to reduce checkpoint hassles for the nation's 2 million passengers. It comes after TSA's new head, Edmund S. "Kip" Hawley, called for a broad review in hopes of making airline screening more passenger-friendly. An initial set of staff recommendations drafted Aug. 5 also proposes that passengers no longer have to routinely remove their shoes during security checks. Instead, only passengers who set off metal detectors, are flagged by a computer screening system or look "reasonably suspicious" would be asked to do so, a TSA official said Saturday. Any of the changes proposed by the staff, which also would allow scissors, ice picks and bows and arrows on flights, would require Hawley's approval, this official said, requesting anonymity because there has been no final decision".

Arizona: Challenge to law on illegals dismissed: "A lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Proposition 200 in Arizona, which prohibits illegal aliens from receiving some public benefits, has been dismissed by a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The suit, brought by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and Friendly House, a Phoenix-based nonprofit social service agency, was dismissed by U.S. Appeals Court Judges Alfred T. Goodwin, Johnnie B. Rawlinson and Thomas M. Reavley, sitting as a visiting judge. The panel said the plaintiffs had not shown they had been injured by implementation of the new law. 'The appeal is dismissed for want of jurisdiction. The district court record reveals that there was no case or controversy between plaintiffs and the state of Arizona when pleadings were before the district court,' the panel said."

An interesting argument here in favour of splitting Germany up into East and West again. The still socialistic East keeps Leftist politicians in power in the country as a whole. Rather like the way the socialistic North keeps Labour politicians in power in Britain as a whole.

Chris Brand has just done some new posts with lots of news about the increasing media acceptance of IQ

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

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" (Nationalsozialistisch)


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

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Sunday, August 14, 2005

THE MOST MORONIC ARM OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT

Or the most visibly moronic anyway

The obnoxious TSA again: "No, I haven't got some great alternative but do I need to in order to notice that there's something amiss with the way the matter is dealt with? Here a coat must come off, there it doesn't matter; here you should remove your glasses, there it's unnecessary. Here the wrist watch needs to be put into that little tray, there it can stay on your wrist. And it goes on like that, from one airport to the next. And if you assume you have a clue what the next one will demand of you, you are in for a surprise. And for threatening looks, even words, should you make mention of the fact. Yes, words. Several times, after I make polite mention of the inconsistency of their procedures, a gruff TSA official has told me to 'shut up.' Other times I have been told that if I say another word, I will be arrested. And I do not mean a word like, 'I am about to carry some bombs on this plane,' but, rather, 'Why is there no consistency in how this procedure is being administered?'"

Does the TSA take the prize for bureaucratic stupidity? "Pretend you work for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). You're a high muckety-muck at Houston Hobby Airport, and you've learned that a flight with 136 passengers and 5 crew will make an emergency landing there. It seems some passengers discovered a note in their seat pocket claiming a bomb was on board. You're responsible for getting these 141 souls off the plane before they're blown to kingdom come. Do you: 1. prepare to evacuate them ASAP when the plane touches down; or 2. find your airport's most isolated runway, order the plane to land there, and then leave everyone aboard for an excruciating hour. We can all guess which option the TSA brainiacs chose when Southwest Airlines Flight 21 was diverted to Houston Hobby last Friday."

Still no precautions against another Lockerbie: "Nearly four years after 9/11, Americans flying on passenger planes remain vulnerable to another terrorist attack in the air because of lax screening of the millions of tons of cargo loaded into the belly of aircraft, a three-month CNN investigation shows. While screening of passengers and their luggage has been shored up dramatically since hijackers commandeered four planes and crashed them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, little has changed regarding the security of cargo, according to an FAA inspector and the vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission."

DHS might let air passengers keep shoes on: "The Department of Homeland Security is seeking new security screening technology that would allow air travelers to board flights without removing their shoes. The department also is testing a privacy-sensitive version of an X-ray machine that has drawn complaints because although it is able to detect weapons beneath clothes, the initial version also provided a nude image of travelers. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is asking companies to develop a machine that can examine shoes while still on passengers' feet. Agency officials hope to begin testing this winter. The agency also is testing a version of the contentious backscatter X-ray machines that will outline the human form while screening for weapons, unlike the current design that shows a realistic image of naked bodies."

More like perverts than security people: "Consider if one is looking for a needle in haystacks, and haystacks are passing through one's presence on an hourly basis. Would anyone grab a random handful of each haystack that passed by and expect to find said needle by examining in minute detail each piece of hay in that handful? Of course not. Yet most air travelers think an invasive search of a 45-year-old man traveling with his wife and kids, or running a rod down the skin-tight top between the breasts of a pretty 16-year-old blond girl with a tan and painted nails (all 20 of them -- I counted) makes them safer. I might join the march in the streets protesting this idiocy, but of course I'd be the only one on parade. My fellow citizens might even be provoked by my lack of support for our nation's hardworking security people."

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ELSEWHERE

Big victory for Arnie (and California): "In a victory for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, California's Supreme Court overturned two lower courts on Friday and put back on the ballot a voter initiative that will determine who draws up California's state legislative districts. If voters approve Proposition 77 in November, it would take the responsibility for drawing the state's political map out of the hands of California's Democratic-controlled legislature and give it to a panel of retired judges. Schwarzenegger hopes the idea will enable more moderate politicians to win legislative districts that in the past have been carefully divided into Democratic and Republican strongholds. A legal battle erupted long before the election because its sponsors changed the language of the petition voters signed in 17 places before submitting it to state officials. Two lower courts ruled that the changes tainted the process but California's top court disagreed in a 4-2 decision, saying the changes were unlikely to have misled those who signed the petition.... The ruling ordered election officials to proceed with putting Proposition 77 on the November ballot."

A Leftist repents: "What he and a large part of the mainstream liberal-left don't and won't confront is that they have become the fellow travellers of the psychopathic far-right.... If you start by refusing to look Baathism or Islamism in the face, the logic of blaming everything on Tony Blair and George W Bush pushes you into making ever more excuses for the extreme right.... good motives of tolerance and respect for other cultures have had the unintended consequence of leading a large part of post-modern liberal opinion into the position of 19th-century imperialists. It is presumptuous and oppressive to suggest that other cultures want the liberties we take for granted, their argument runs. So it may be, but believe that and the upshot is that democracy, feminism and human rights become good for whites but not for browns and brown-skinned people who contradict you are the tools of the neo-conservatives. On the other hand when confronted with a movement of contemporary imperialism - Islamism wants an empire from the Philippines to Gibraltar - and which is tyrannical, homophobic, misogynist, racist and homicidal to boot, they feel it is valid because it is against Western culture. It expresses its feelings in a regrettably brutal manner perhaps, but that can't hide its authenticity.

Immigration and the welfare state: "More and more of my constituents are asking me when Congress will address the problem of illegal immigration. The public correctly perceives that neither political party has the courage to do what is necessary to prevent further erosion of both our border security and our national identity. As a result, immigration may be the sleeper issue that decides the 2008 presidential election. The problem ... will not be solved easily, but we can start by recognizing that the overwhelming majority of Americans -- including immigrants -- want immigration reduced, not expanded. Amnesty for illegal immigrants is not the answer. ... We must end welfare state subsidies for illegal immigrants. ... Without a welfare state, we would know that everyone coming to America wanted to work hard and support himself."

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

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" (Nationalsozialistisch)


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

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