9/2/2010 -
British class war based on a denial of reality
Inequality in Britain isn't down to class but brains
The National Equality Panel, set up by the Government to examine inequality in Britain, published its findings last week. And surprise, surprise: it found that there is a lot of inequality in Britain. People from poorer backgrounds do not usually achieve as much as people from richer ones.
That this is a basic fact of life in the UK is certainly true – although it is not true, as the NEP report claims, that we are significantly more unequal than most other Western countries. The differences are marginal. Even in the places it cites as egalitarian utopias, Sweden and Denmark, it is still the case that who your parents are has a very significant effect on how your life works out.
Indeed, no country anywhere comes close to the egalitarian ideal of ensuring that everyone, irrespective of their background, has exactly the same chance to succeed. And there is a very straightforward reason: people everywhere care more about themselves and their immediate families than they care about everyone else. We all devote our efforts and ingenuity to promoting our own and our families' interests rather than those of "society as a whole"; when the two conflict, we prioritise the former. That's why every attempt to achieve a society in which each person is treated in exactly the same way not only requires state coercion of the most extreme kind, but also always ends in abject failure.
The authors of the NEP report have noticed that our fondness for ourselves and our kin stands in the way of making Britain more equal. They do not want to endorse that tendency, because that might mean endorsing the inequalities that it helps to create. So instead, they imply that inequality in Britain derives less from our concern for our families than from prejudice and snobbery: people at the bottom of the social ladder are being held back because those who are higher up treat them unjustly – and if they were given a fair chance by those who select from applicants for university places or for well-paid jobs, they would do much better.
That belief is certainly widely held. But to what extent is it actually true? The most striking thing about this report is what it leaves out. In common with the other two studies of equality commissioned by the Government in the last 18 months, it does not say a single word about a factor that should at least be considered in any explanation of why some people are more successful than others: their greater intelligence. There is a mass of data which shows that the measurement which best predicts how a child will do in later life is not its parents' income, but its IQ score at the age of 10 or 11. It's not a perfect correlation – but it's a far better guide than any of the variables that the NEP report considered, such as class, gender, ethnic or religious group, or whether you went to a private school rather than the local comprehensive.
Around half of the variation between two people's income and status at work is explained by differences in their IQ. Studies of twins separated at birth and raised in very different families indicate that between 50 and 60 per cent of an individual's IQ score is down to their genes. The remainder can be affected by how you are brought up. It can be boosted if you are also raised by intelligent parents, or diminished if they don't provide an environment which is sufficiently stimulating. So smart children, born to smart parents, have a double advantage – which may be why they do so well.
Recognising the role that intelligence plays in differing levels of achievement does not mean endorsing every inequality in British society. Clearly, many of them are without any justification at all: examples include the income of some bankers and the abysmal condition of some state schools. But identifying ways for the state to tackle inequality requires accurately identifying its causes. This report fails that test, and so can't provide any useful advice on what should be done. Still, don't expect that to stop the Government constructing policies based on its claims.
SOURCE
Former British council chief, 84, arrested for assault for waving walking stick at feral youths
Sick British policing again. They hate middle class Britain
For several months, 84-year-old Graham Powell and his wife have felt frightened and 'under siege' in their own home. The couple say a gang of youths has waged a campaign of harassment against them - vandalising their car, subjecting them to verbal abuse and violence - without censure from the police. So Mr Powell was surprised when he waved his walking stick to remonstrate with one of the teenagers - and was promptly arrested on suspicion of assault.
The former council chief was forced to spend six hours in a police station being questioned by officers after the 15-year-old claimed he had been struck. Now facing a possible court appearance, Mr Powell has written to the chief constable of the force to demand answers over why no action was taken to protect him and his 74-year-old wife from the 'feral' youths.
He said yesterday: 'My wife and myself are under siege from up to ten local youths aged between 11 and 15 and the police are doing nothing about it. 'I have identified the youths but despite my complaints the police do not seem to be taking it seriously. 'It is outrageous that these feral youths believe they are beyond the law. Instead of them being arrested I am now facing standing in the dock.'
Mr and Mrs Powell say they have been virtual prisoners in their flat at Caldicot near Newport, South Wales. A series of incidents which Mr Powell has listed in his letter includes their car rear lights being smashed, and tyres let down. His wife, a former Mayor of Caldicot, has been trapped in her garage twice by youths who have jammed the door shut and on another occasion a teenager tried to drive her car away as she cleaned it.
Mr Powell, a Labour councillor and former leader of Gwent County Council, said yesterday: 'I have lived here peacefully for 31 years until recently. 'We are constantly being verbally abused whenever we step outside, youths peer into our living room and ring our door bell. 'Our kitchen window has been smeared with eggs and drawing pins have been placed upright under our doormat. 'During the recent wintry weather our letter box was filled with ice and our back door barricaded with snow. They have also threatened to cut the brake pipes on my car.'
The former railway guard also spoke of his recollection of the confrontation which led to his arrest. He said: 'I remonstrated with the youth after my wife caught him fiddling with one of the letter boxes. 'He told me to mid my own 'effing' business and punched me on the arm and tried to run up the stairs of the flats. 'I poked my walking stick through the rails to stop him and he forced the stick down with his arm. 'A few seconds later two heavy plant pots were thrown at me narrowly missing my head.'
The grandfather added: 'I was amazed when the police accused me of assault and kept me in the police station for six hours. 'I am on police bail and have to report back at the beginning of next month. My letter to the chief constable is a plea for help.' He said in his open letter to Mick Giannasi, Chief Constable of Gwent Police: 'My wife and I are desperately in need of your help in common with all those who find themselves in a similar situation. 'The problem is feral youths who appear to be beyond the law despite the ample legislation which Parliament has enacted to deal with them. 'We are constantly harassed by a group of youths who seem to be able to do what they like without fear of the law or any form of sanction or punishment.'
Comparing his situation to the experience of Fiona Pilkington, who killed herself and her disabled daughter after they were subjected to a similar catalogue of abuse, he continued: 'The boys seem to get bolder each time they do something and find nothing happens to them. 'We are left constantly wondering what his going to happen next - is it going to be a lighted petrol-soaked rag through a door or window? 'I have dialled 999 several times and officers have visited me but there has been no real action. 'Surely it is not acceptable that elderly people should feel in a state of siege in their own homes and live in fear of that the next day is going to bring.'
A spokesman for Gwent Police said: 'An 84-year-old-man was arrested following an incident on suspicion of assault. 'He was released on police bail pending further enquiries.' She added: 'Any report of crime made to Gwent Police will be fully investigated and the appropriate course of action taken. 'It would be inappropriate for us to comment further about reports made or correspondence received from a particular individual.'
SOURCE
Top Democrat goes to bat for racism
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers of Michigan is outraged about the dozen staffers who accompanied U.S. Agency for International Development Director Rajiv Shah to a recent meeting on Capitol Hill. You should understand, though, that Conyers was not upset because Shah brought too many staffers along for the meeting with the 42 members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Nor was he upset because any of those staffers displayed a lack of competence. No, Conyers was "alarmed and chagrined" because, as he told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a subsequent letter, "none of the approximately dozen staff he brought with him were African American."
Conyers further informed Clinton that "this is so serious an error in judgment that it warrants his immediate demotion to a subordinate position at AID." That Conyers expects Clinton and her boss in the White House not only to demote Shah, but also to hand out federal jobs on the basis of skin color was made clear in his declaration in the same letter that "it is well known that there has long been an under-representation of minorities in key positions within the State Department. I am confident this administration will immediately begin addressing this problem."
The Michigan Democrat has thus unintentionally cast a glaring light on a key aspect of what is wrong in Washington -- too often, skin color counts more than competence. Conyers is far from alone in demanding that important jobs in the federal government be given to individuals because their skin color fits somebody's idea of the right racial mix of government workers, not because they are most qualified.
Federal officials reflexively claim people are employed in the federal civil service solely on the basis of merit principles, but the reality is government personnel management practices are besotted with multicultural obsessions about recruiting and promoting a work force that "looks like America." There are legions of human resources specialists, personnel directors, and employment lawyers devoted to keeping the bureaucratic wheels of diversity grinding. This is reverse discrimination, pure and simple.
It should be clear to all reasonable people that the vast majority of Americans today reject the racism that denies jobs to individuals because their skin is the "wrong" color or, for that matter, because their gender, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, or economic status is deemed unacceptable by some arbitrary measure. The noble objective of the 1964 Civil Rights Act has been fulfilled in moving America beyond such considerations to a place where the only issue would be whether an individual is the most qualified for a given job. Thanks to the mentality epitomized by Conyers, our government keeps being dragged back into the past.
SOURCE
Keeping Blacks Poor
How the Democratic party stands between its most loyal constituents and the jobs they need
Never mind the jobless recovery: For a great many black Americans, it’s been a jobless eternity, in good times and in bad. Why?
The first answer many economists will give to that question is: the minimum wage. Milton Friedman, a Nobel laureate who spent much of his career showing how government programs reliably end up hurting those they are intended to help, was scathing on the subject, calling the minimum wage “one of the most, if not the most, anti-black laws on the statute books.” And he’s not alone: A congressional survey of economic research on the subject, “50 Years of Research on the Minimum Wage,” has a string of conclusion lines that read like an indictment, the first three counts being: “The minimum wage reduces employment. The minimum wage reduces employment more among teenagers than adults. The minimum wage reduces employment most among black teenage males.” Other items on the bill: “The minimum wage hurts small businesses generally. The minimum wage causes employers to cut back on training. The minimum wage has long-term effects on skills and lifetime earnings. The minimum wage hurts the poor generally. The minimum wage helps upper-income families. The minimum wage helps unions.” Helping the affluent and high-wage union workers at the expense of the young, the poor, the unskilled, and small businesses: That amounts to a lot of different kinds of injustice, and it also amounts to a wealth transfer from blacks to whites.
This is a disparity with its roots in history, but the roots don’t go back to Reconstruction or the heyday of the Ku Klux Klan. They go back only to the 1960s. In 1954, young black men were in fact more likely to be employed than were their white counterparts, according to the economists Nabeel al-Salam, Aline Quester, and Finis Welch. The Fair Labor Standards Act, which established the minimum wage, had been passed in 1938, but wartime economic regimentation had postponed its full impact. “Marginal but employed blacks were the first ones to be laid off,” says Prof. Paul D. Moreno of Hillsdale College, a labor historian. Originally modest in its scope, the act was repeatedly revised, both raising the minimum wage and expanding the range of businesses required to pay it. The act originally was restricted to interstate enterprises, but by 1961 the meaning of “interstate commerce” had been so greatly stretched that ordering a box of paper clips from an out-of-state supplier was enough to get a business covered by the minimum wage. As the application of the act grew, so did the disparity in black and white employment rates. Blacks, who had been employed mostly in smaller enterprises, often family-owned, found themselves competing on a straight dollar-per-hour basis with white entry-level workers who were on the whole better educated, better connected — and white. The racial realities of the time meant that the sorts of jobs affected by minimum-wage laws were the ones that were most open to blacks.
And it’s not just that the minimum wage prices some low-productivity workers out of the labor market: It’s that it prevents entry into the labor market in the first place for the most marginal would-be workers. If Will the candy hustler’s real economic output is worth $6.67 an hour, his implied wage on the subway, he’s unemployable with a $7.25 minimum wage. He can sell candy on the subway, but he can’t sell candy for Big Candy Corp., make connections, learn what it’s like to go to an office every day and have a boss, get references, get promoted, and sign up for the tuition-reimbursement program. And that, not the paltry lost income of a minimum-wage job, is the price he pays. Very few American workers actually earn the minimum wage — about 1 percent, in fact — but the minimum-wage job is a gateway into the labor force for many young workers. The value of your first job isn’t the money you earn from it: It’s your second job, and your third. With the right experience and network, a candyman like Will can do well for himself. But without that first job, he has a much higher chance of becoming a statistical blip on the long-term unemployment charts than a middle manager at Hershey or a salesman at Cadbury.
That’s why economists call barriers like the minimum wage “cutting the bottom rung off the ladder.” What’s less often appreciated, though, is the network effect: A guy who’s never gotten on the ladder himself cannot give you a hand up. Job-hunting is almost always an exercise in social networking: A friend of your dad helps you get a summer job, an old colleague recommends you for a position with his new firm. C up in the Bronx does not have a network like that: His friends and family are not in a position to tip him off about a job because they do not have jobs themselves, and, in some cases, never have. He doesn’t have any former coworkers to recommend him for a new and better job. All he has is economically insulated politicians telling him that no job is better than a job that doesn’t meet their political requirements.
The damage done by the minimum wage is real, but it’s not the only impediment to black employment, and maybe not even the most serious one when it comes to the big cities. Black workers in Philadelphia, for example, have long complained about being excluded from the overwhelmingly white building-trades unions, the carpenters’ and electrical-workers’ guilds that are run by a largely Irish-American coterie headed by Pat Gillespie at the Building Trades Council and John J. Dougherty Jr. (“Johnny Doc”) at the IBEW Local 98. Their unions are 80 percent white and 99 percent male, and the numbers are similar in other cities. Irritatingly for the Philadelphia politicians who are beholden to them, 70 percent of the building-trades unions’ members live out in the suburbs rather than in the city. Wilson Goode Jr., a member of the Philadelphia city council, has made black workers’ exclusion from the unions a keynote issue. He’s a deep-dipped liberal, an affirmative-action supporter and a conventional urban Democrat in almost every respect, but he has noticed the strange fact that progressive programs sold as tools to help the city’s largely black working class mostly end up putting money in the pockets of well-off white people in the suburbs. Philadelphia is a city with real black political power, but in a contest between a black city councilman working to secure good jobs for his constituents and the white union chieftains who have been running Philadelphia as a personal fiefdom since time immemorial, Wilson Goode Jr. found out who the boss is, and it’s not him.
When the unions were salivating over the prospect of an expansive new project at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, Councilman Goode asked them for information about the racial composition of their work forces, and for a commitment to meet certain diversity goals. They more or less laughed at him — and got the work, anyway. “The issue of lack of diversity within the building trades came up during the convention-center project. There was no plan for opportunity in terms of diversity,” Goode says. “We made a request from the building trades that they submit their demographics to city council, and actually set goals for expanding diversity within their unions. Interesting enough, the carpenters’ union and electrical-workers’ union, which did not comply, went on to work on the project, anyway. The goals that were set within those building-trade unions were not taken seriously.” In fact, Goode says, the only times when black workers have gotten a fair shake on big projects have been those few occasions when the work is not held hostage by the labor mafia — for instance, a couple of open-shop weatherization projects conducted under the authority of the Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation. Goode pressed to make the convention-center project open-shop, a proposal that was immediately crushed. “Going open-shop did not seem politically feasible,” Goode says, with understatement. “The other option is the creation of new unions that have more people of color, more women, and more Philadelphia residents. And that’s probably even less politically feasible.”
The problem in the labor unions isn’t really old-fashioned racism of the white-sheets and Jim Crow variety: Philadelphia is a city with plenty of poisonous racial politics, but it’s not remarkable for them — worse than Atlanta, probably, but not as bad as Boston. What’s really happening in the unions is a kind of expansive ethnic nepotism. Unions tend to find good positions and lots of work for people who are friends and family of current union members. Indeed, many in the building trades start on the path to union membership early in life. If those unions are dominated by Irish Americans, it’s no surprise that a lot of the plums are going to the Kellys and Murphys, and not the Jacksons and Washingtons or the Garcias and Colóns. As The Economist puts it, “Blacks are also at a disadvantage when it comes to relying on friends and family connections to find jobs; there is not the same network of family businesses that whites and Latinos have. Some studies have found that this factor may explain as much as 70% of the difference in black and white unemployment rates, and may also explain the difference between black and Latino jobless rates. Among young men, for instance, the near-20% Hispanic unemployment rate is much closer to that for whites (17%) than blacks (30%).” The problem, of course, is self-perpetuating: The more blacks are out of work, and the longer they’re out of work, the less of a network black job-seekers are going to have. And they can’t count on the unions to help them out.
“The building trades were the most notorious for their discrimination,” says Professor Moreno of Hillsdale, “along with the railroad brotherhoods, which were in a class by themselves in terms of how exclusive they were. If you look at the data, especially in the building trades, and compare them to the steelworkers or the autoworkers, the worst discrimination is in the building trades. In unions that have a lot of black membership, black workers got into those industries before the unions did. Henry Ford was hiring blacks before the UAW organized them. Steelmakers, same thing. Even in the UAW and the steelworkers, they have the problem of discrimination within the unions when it comes to training for skilled work, promotions, and issues of seniority.” And it’s been that way for generations: In fact, Moreno estimates that if the National Labor Relations Board had properly enforced anti-discrimination rules against the unions starting back in the 1930s — when they were first required to do so — then there would have been no demand for affirmative action later. Instead, the NLRB became a classic captured bureaucracy, seeing its role only as empowering the labor unions while turning a blind eye to the ugly racial discrimination in their ranks.
Democrats will defend everything from partial-birth abortion to distributing gay porn in the classroom, but some subjects are too hot for them to touch: The effect of their minimum-wage enthusiasm on black unemployment is one, and racial discrimination by their organized-labor constituents is another. You’d think that the Democrats would put jobs for blacks at the top of their list — after all, black voters pull the “D” lever about 90 percent of the time. But political calculations are perverse things: Black voters are a cheap date for Democrats, who know that they can sell out the interests of their most loyal constituency with impunity. One of Barack Obama’s first actions in office was to gut a hugely popular school-choice program in Washington, D.C., that benefited black students almost exclusively, and he did so at the behest of the one of the most destructive unions in the country, one that has done more to undermine the future of black Americans than any other and whose members have inflicted more damage on black Americans than Bull Connor and George Wallace ever dreamed of. But the teachers’ unions represent one in ten delegates to the Democratic National Convention, so they have job security — something many, if not most, of the young black men in their classes will never have.
SOURCE
ObamaNet: The Coming Online Censorship
Perhaps the Obama administration and Democratic majority overestimated their ability to sell the American people on proposed radical changes to our political and economic systems, as the federal health care takeover has ground to a near halt, and an increasing number of administration officials are being exposed for far-left statists with a sinister, unconstitutional agenda.
But those in power show no signs of being bothered by something as trivial as the will of the people, and could very well continue down a planned path of disaster, moving on from health care to tackle a vital instrument of free speech. ObamaCare has turned into a nightmarish legislative struggle; will ObamaNet be the next?
Most people have never heard of Cass Sunstein, despite conservative alarm at his 2009 appointment to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. The Harvard-educated regulatory czar has, in addition to proposing other ludicrous ideas, called for a hunting ban in the U.S., claimed that exposure to sunlight is unhealthy, and proposed that Americans celebrate April 15 as a sort of tax holiday. As if those aren’t enough, Sunstein is also an advocate of a federally enforced Internet “fairness doctrine.”
Claiming that the uncensored World Wide Web, on which anyone can write or read the content of his or her choice, is a threat to level-headed democratic government, he wants to impose a 24-hour cooling off period for emails (to prevent the sending of angry missives), and create mandatory “electronic sidewalks,” which would display links to opposing views alongside all opinion-based content. Somehow, it seems unlikely that these state-controlled sidewalks would link to tea party or libertarian websites.
In addition, the constitutional law professor has stated that, “under imaginable conditions,” conspiracy theories might be banned, such as those related to the Kennedy assassination, or Obama’s country of birth, and has suggested a tax, “financial or otherwise,” on those who propagate such theories. What sort of tax would fall under “otherwise?” Body parts, perhaps? Fingers for bloggers; tongues for talk radio hosts?
That’s quite a stretch, but in all seriousness, Sunstein believes the federal government should decide which conspiracy theories are appropriate, and then take action to counter those deemed to be nonfactual, marginal, or dangerous. Such an ideology, if legislated into reality, would depend on filtering substantial portions of the Web, as Communist China does with its “Great Firewall,” and would constitute a blatant violation of the First Amendment. The United States could become what is called an Internet black hole, joining the ranks of Cuba, North Korea, and Iran.
Support for such totalitarian tactics should come as no surprise to those who have uncovered similar ideas in the speeches and writings of Obama’s other hand-picked czars, who have significantly more power over policy decisions than any individual member of Congress, but it is still tempting to pinch one’s self. Surely, Internet censorship and suppression of free speech is only the province of foreign regimes, science fiction plots, and bad dreams. Right?
Don’t bet on it. This administration has shown little regard for the Constitution in its push for ObamaCare, and even less for public opinion. The increased power of the Executive Branch might mean that regulatory affairs, relating to the Internet and other forms of communications technology, could be kept out of Congress in the future, and controlled behind the scenes. It will bear a different name, and be kept as far under the radar as possible, but the coming of ObamaNet is imminent. It is up to the defenders of free speech to prevent it.
SOURCE
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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.
American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.
For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.
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11/2/2010 - Keeping Blacks Poor - the "minimum wage" law |
| Posted by Robert |
| I wonder how much support the minimum wage law would retain if people (properly) called it the "Keep Blacks from taking the Jobs of Whites" act, after what I read somewhere was in the actual minutes of debate on the original Bacon-Davis Act, which established a minimum legal wage as of the start of 1931. I'm quite sure it's not coincidence that 1930 was the last year that unemployment among blacks was lower than among whites. |
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Examining political correctness around the world and its stifling of liberty and sense. Chronicling a slowly developing dictatorship
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Gender is a property of words, not of people. Using it otherwise is just another politically correct distortion -- though not as pernicious as calling racial discrimination "Affirmative action"
Postmodernism is fundamentally frivolous. Postmodernists routinely condemn racism and intolerance as wrong but then say that there is no such thing as right and wrong. They are clearly not being serious. Either they do not really believe in moral nihilism or they believe that racism cannot be condemned!
Postmodernism is in fact just a tantrum. Post-Soviet reality in particular suits Leftists so badly that their response is to deny that reality exists. That they can be so dishonest, however, simply shows how psychopathic they are.
Juergen Habermas, a veteran leftist German philosopher stunned his admirers not long ago by proclaiming, "Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization. To this day, we have no other options [than Christianity]. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter."
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 amedment 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.
Consider two "jokes" below:
Q. "Why are Leftists always standing up for blacks and homosexuals?
A. Because for all three groups their only God is their penis"
Pretty offensive, right? So consider this one:
Q. "Why are evangelical Christians like the Taliban?
A. They are both religious fundamentalists"
The latter "joke" is not a joke at all, of course. It is a comparison routinely touted by Leftists. Both "jokes" are greatly offensive and unfair to the parties targeted but one gets a pass without question while the other would bring great wrath on the head of anyone uttering it. Why? Because political correctness is in fact just Leftist bigotry. Bigotry is unfairly favouring one or more groups of people over others -- usually justified as "truth".
One of my more amusing memories is from the time when the Soviet Union still existed and I was teaching sociology in a major Australian university. On one memorable occasion, we had a representative of the Soviet Womens' organization visit us -- a stout and heavily made-up lady of mature years. When she was ushered into our conference room, she was greeted with something like adulation by the local Marxists. In question time after her talk, however, someone asked her how homosexuals were treated in the USSR. She replied: "We don't have any. That was before the revolution". The consternation and confusion that produced among my Leftist colleagues was hilarious to behold and still lives vividly in my memory. The more things change, the more they remain the same, however. In Sept. 2007 President Ahmadinejad told Columbia university that there are no homosexuals in Iran.
It is widely agreed (with mainly Lesbians dissenting) that boys need their fathers. What needs much wider recognition is that girls need their fathers too. The relationship between a "Daddy's girl" and her father is perhaps the most beautiful human relationship there is. It can help give the girl concerned inner strength for the rest of her life.
The love of bureaucracy is very Leftist and hence "correct". Who said this? "Account must be taken of every single article, every pound of grain, because what socialism implies above all is keeping account of everything". It was V.I. Lenin
On all my blogs, I express my view of what is important primarily by the readings that I select for posting. I do however on occasions add personal comments in italicized form at the beginning of an article.
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.
I imagine that the the RD is still sending mailouts to my 1950s address!
Germaine Greer is a stupid old Harpy who is notable only for the depth and extent of her hatreds
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