Tuesday, June 29, 2004

 

THERE ARE ELITES AND ELITES

A column here by David Brooks points out that America's highly educated elite is divided between the professions and the business managers, with the former usually Democrat and the latter usually Republican. He omits to say that both are graduates of roughly the same universities. So how come the first lot have stayed true to what they learnt at university and the business-people have not? Easy. It's a lot harder life in business -- dog eat dog -- so illusions don't last long. It's yet another example of how experience teaches conservatism.

posted by JR 3:17 PM

 

THE ACADEMIC ELITE AGAIN

I have just noticed something interesting in this academic survey of Canadian university professors by Nakhaie & Brym. Professors rated themselves on a scale of 1 to 7 in terms of Right to Left -- meaning that a score of 3.5 would mean neither Right nor Left. Table 5 shows that the only subgroups that averaged below 3.5 (i.e. were slightly Rightist) were professors of accounting, finance and mechanical engineeering. Professors in all other disciplines tended Left. The most far-Left group was, of course, the sociologists -- the most meaningless of all the disciplines. I taught in a university school of sociology for 12 years so I have some cause to know the emptiness of most sociology. Leftism sure is pervasive in academe. I explain why here.

posted by JR 3:12 PM

Sunday, June 27, 2004

 

THE LEFTIST ELITE SEEN CLOSE UP

The death of Right and wrong by Tammy Bruce seems to be a very good book. The author is, surprisingly, a lesbian, pro-choice feminist but is still horrified by what she has seen in the feminist and homosexual scene that she used to inhabit. She says that there is a powerrful Leftist elite that scorns all notions of right and wrong and is motivated by "malignant narcissism". Narcissists are people who are deeply in love with themselves and hence the ultimate egotists so that certainly confirms my view that Leftists are primarily ego motivated. From the blurb:


"If you believe children should be seduced into warped sexual behavior by the Gay Elite, if you think confessed murderers should be set free by defense attorneys who know how to wield the race card, if you feel promiscuous gay men should be empowered to spread AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, don’t read this book. But if you’ve always suspected that factions on the Left are trying to destroy the values that define our civilization, this book proves it. In this world, the Gay Elite exploit our children—under the guise of tolerance and education—to satisfy their sexual obsessions. In this world, the Black Elite laud convicted murderers as community heroes and award-winning “artists.” Ms. Bruce smashes the facades of “Tolerance,” “Understanding,” and other Leftist slogans to reveal the ugly truth of their agenda. As a gay activist and former president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization of Women, she witnessed firsthand the Left’s attempts to undermine our millennia-old code of morals and values, aided by politically biased media and academia".

posted by JR 4:54 PM

Friday, June 25, 2004

 

PEOPLE ARE "RIFF RAFF" TO GREENIES


"Step outside the anthropocentric view of life and one possible value of mosquitoes is population control. Mosquitoes have historically kept human populations down worldwide, and still do in much of the third world. The problem is that they do this by facilitating pestilence and death, so this is not going to enhance their status, among human beings at least.

Mosquitoes may also keep some other animal populations down by spreading disease - something we might be able to see the value of. And other creatures - some fish, frogs birds and bats - eat them. It's possible that if we were able to wipe out mosquitoes, some other species might either suffer from lack of food, or explode in numbers because the burden of disease was lifted.

Another value of mosquitoes, perverse to some, obvious to others, is that they "keep out the riffraff," meaning human beings. Concentrations of pests offer protection to wilderness areas. The tsetse fly, which causes livestock disease as well as human sleeping sickness, has kept humans away from some wildlife refuges and has been called "Africa's best conservationist." Of course, this view has been described by others as ecological imperialism."

More here. (Via Matthew Cowie)

posted by JR 9:20 AM

Thursday, June 24, 2004

 

GOOD FOLK LED BY PSYCHOPATHS

The acid-tongued Julie Burchill has a column in The Guardian which makes a point that I often make -- saying that the mass of supporters for Leftist causes are decent but naive folk led astray by a small group of bloodthirsty psychopaths. As an only partly reformed Leftist herself, she is in a position to have some insight. Excerpt:

"Women who love psychopaths can generally be divided into two groups: the silly and the sinister. And, as Christopher Hitchens pointed out, this also pretty much describes the anti-war marchers - except he said the silly led by the sinister. Myself, I'm using "silly" in its "holy fool" meaning - ie more too-good-for-this-world than stupid, though I can't vouch for Hitch. So before you all get your Friends Forever gift sets out and go wild with the Quink, do yourselves a favour and learn how to take a compliment; most of you anti-war types, you're far better people than me.

The 90% of my friends who are anti-war are absolute smashers. But when people are very good, they often can't comprehend how very wicked a few people are capable of being. They think the papers are making up stuff, like Saddam having his enemies put feet-first through a meat-grinder, because they wouldn't do it! They honestly think he's a human being just like us and that we should and could all sit down over a plate of Hobnobs and talk it out - meet in the middle, maybe. (Perhaps put your enemies only halfway through the meat-grinder, then get them out and offer them a pampering pedicure?)

But a very small proportion of people on those marches, they're not nice at all. They know what Big Boss Man's done and it doesn't seem to worry them. They seriously believe a few hanging chads and dodgy votes are a worse crime against humanity than having children raped in front of their parents and vice versa if those parents should disagree with one. They think George Bush and Tony Blair are a worse threat to world peace than Saddam Hussein. And, on the qt, they quite like Saddam".

posted by JR 7:36 AM

Sunday, June 20, 2004

 

A good excerpt from True Blue NZ: "One way to understand American politics better is to realize how definitions have changed. For example, today's liberals aren't -- liberals, that is. Most of them are authoritarian elitists who think people are too stupid to govern themselves. They have adopted their own ideas of how to run the country, and, rather than sell those ideas, they seek to impose their ideas. Like all authoritarians, these elitists believe that any idea of theirs is revealed truth because it's their idea.... The authoritarian streak in today's pseudo-liberals can be seen in their viciousness in attacking all who disagree with them, a common tactic used by communists, Nazis and fascists. They seek not to engage in a discussion of competing ideas but rather to exclude their opponents from the debate by branding them as members of unacceptable groups. Thus, Americans concerned about immigration, always a legitimate topic for debate, are depicted by the pseudo-liberals as bigots or nativists. In other words, there is to be no discussion of the subject. The pseudo-liberal position is correct, and all who disagree are evil heretics."

posted by JR 4:31 PM

 

Crispus notes that two thirds of blacks support voucher programs to give themselves school choice and aptly remarks: "It is immoral for liberals to block these initiatives, as they recently did in D.C.'s pilot program (where there were twice as many applicants as slots). Yet it falls under liberals' general elitist rule: the masses are asses. Only we can decide what's best for you peons, not you.

posted by JR 3:46 PM

Sunday, June 13, 2004

 

Andrew Bolt points to the deplorable record of siding with tyranny that intellectuals have. It wouldn't have anything to do with intellectuals themselves wanting to be tyrants, would it? Excerpt: "We are reminded of the three wars America and its friends have fought in the past 60 years against totalitarianism -- the fascism of the Nazis, the communism of the Soviet Union, and the Islamic fascism sponsored by regimes such as Iran's. And, each time, which class of people in the West tended to side with these enemies of humanity, in thought, deed or omission? Who? The intellectuals of the Left -- the folk who contrast the messy world of free people with the disciplined perfection of steel dreams and paper plans, and find freedom ugly. Before World War II, many sophisticates in Britain and France urged against confronting Hitler. It would just goad him, they said. And didn't he have reasonable claims?"

posted by JR 5:44 PM

Friday, June 11, 2004

 

A CONSERVATIVE CONTRAST

Jeff Jacoby sums up Ronald Reagan's humility best. A small excerpt: "But one trait has gone largely unmentioned: His remarkable humility.... But if no man was his better, neither was he the better of any man. That instinctive sense of the equality of all Americans never left him -- not even when he was the one with fame and power. I don't think I have ever heard a story about Reagan in which he came across as arrogant or supercilious. In a number of reminiscences this week, former staffers have described what it was like to work for the president. Several have recalled how, even when they were at the bottom of the pecking order, he never made them feel small or unworthy of notice. To the contrary: He noticed them, talked to them, made them feel special. Reagan climbed as high as anyone in our age can climb. But it wasn't ego or a craving for honor and status that drove him, and he never lost his empathy for ordinary Americans -- or his connection with them"

posted by JR 10:02 AM

Wednesday, June 09, 2004

 

Compassion versus Leftist elitism: "[UK] Health secretary John Reid angered health campaigners and anti-smoking groups when he said yesterday that smoking is one of the few pleasures left for the poor on sink estates and working men's clubs.Mr Reid said that the middle classes were obsessed with giving instruction to people from lower socio-economic backgrounds and that smoking was not one of the worst problems facing poorer people.'I just do not think the worst problem on our sink estates by any means is smoking, but that it is an obsession of the learned middle class,' he said. 'What enjoyment does a 21-year-old single mother of three living in a council sink estate get? The only enjoyment sometimes they have is to have a cigarette.'"

posted by JR 8:36 PM

Friday, June 04, 2004

 

AMERICA'S LEFT-LEANING ELITE DICTATORS

Government by judges: "As an American in remission, I have a romantic fondness for the notion of constitutional government, which of course doesn't exist and never will again in the United States if it ever did. Face it: The constitution is deader than a doorknob. I mean a doorknob with melanoma and clogged arteries.... Courts run the country these days. The will of the people is irrelevant. When did you last hear of anything of lasting import being done by Congress? I can't either. But almost every week you read about some federal judge, or that ratpack of pompous drones on the Supreme Court, who have... defunded the Boy Scouts, or invented a constitutional right to abortion, or imposed integration, or outlawed the public expression of Christianity, or made it impossible to stop immigration. They tell you who you can hire, who you can sell your house to, what your children will be taught. They serve to impose what could never be legislatively enacted. The judges are out of control. They're at it again. Marriage doesn't mean what it has always meant. It means what some over-promoted nonentity wants it to mean. And the country will obey. Roll over. Bark. Fetch".

posted by JR 9:04 AM

 

Leftist elitism again: Dick McDonald reproduces an excerpt from a WSJ article in which the head of Fox News replies to an attack on Fox: "John S. Carroll, the editor of the Los Angeles Times, recently gave a speech at the University of Oregon, in which he attacked Bill O'Reilly, Fox News Channel and me, the chairman of Fox News. However, Mr. Carroll obviously did not feel particularly restricted by facts, truth or sources.... In fact, the Fox News Channel today has 53% of the audience share of cable news. CNN and MSNBC divide up the rest. According to Mr. Carroll, that proves most Americans are therefore stupid and gullible. It's that elite, arrogant, condescending, self-serving, self-righteous, biased and wrong-headed view of Americans that causes viewers and readers to distrust media people like John Carroll."

posted by JR 8:41 AM