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The cover story in this weeks New Scientist is about how genetics determines political opinions.
However, the story did have some odd assumptions. ‘Liberals’, who the New Scientist seemed to be defining as people who vote Democrat, were described as people who are “open to new ideas”. However, the basic characteristic of such a ‘liberal’ is that they are not “open to new ideas”. For example, they continue to support spending ever more taxpayers money on health, education and welfare programs, regardless of the evidence that this does not work and disregarding any argument for reforms.
‘Liberals’ have a set of assumptions that they never question – for if they questioned them they would no longer be liberals.
- More government Welfare State spending – good, anyone who opposes this hates the poor.
- Government support for the arts – good, anyone who opposes this is a philistine.
- Anti discrimination regulations – good, anyone who opposes them is a bigot.
- Anti trust regulations – good, anyone who opposes them is in the pay of big business.
And so on and so on.
So any group of ‘scientists’ who accept the assumption that “liberals are open to new ideas” are not scientists at all. Still I suppose the dream of finding an ‘anti-Progressive’ gene (or combination of genes) will continue – so they can seek to exterminate us. But then that might be interpreted as proving another finding of the studies “conservatives fear death more than liberals”.
Hard to square this with the fact that conservatives are more likely to join the armed forces than liberals are. But then I think this form of ‘science’ (depending as it does on ‘surveys’ and so on) is best described as ‘crapology’.
If only I was a American voter – what wonderful things I would be get for voting for the correct person.
Former Governor Romney has been busy for weeks telling everyone that he will restore “every job” lost in the Michigan Auto industry if they vote him – and not by anything difficult like taking away the government granted power of the United Auto Workers union. No, all that is needed is more taxpayers money for scientific research and ‘Mitt’ Romney’s own management skills if he becomes President. After all there is no basic difference between a business enterprise and the government, so if one can run a business one can “run the country”, right?
Senator Hillary Clinton has added another 150 billion Dollars of government spending on top of the all the other hundreds of billions of Dollars the Senator has already promised – again if only people will vote for her.
And it is only January. What will the candidates be promising by November – eternal life?
Former Governor ‘Mitt’ Romney ran a series of ‘contrast ads’ against former Governor Mike Huckabee in Iowa.
The ads claimed that Mike Huckabee had vastly increased government spending and taxation in Arkansas (whereas he claims to have cut taxes) and that he went around handing out every possible government benefit to illegal immigrants – whereas he pretends to be tough on illegal immigration. Every word of the Romney attacks on Huckabee was true – so why did they not work?
It is a simple matter – the source of the attacks. ‘Mitt’ Romney also increased taxes when he was Governor of Massachusetts, although he called the taxes “fees” (hence one of his nicknames, Governor “Fee Fee”). True he did not increase taxes nearly as much as Mike Huckabee did, but…
And on government spending – Governor Romney left Massachusetts with a new entitlement program. Universal health care – the costs and fines connected with this program will go up and up over time, as such things always do. And “but my plan is not as bad as the Hillary Clinton plan” is not really a good defence.
As for “tough on illegal immigration”. Governor Romney was indeed tough on illegal immigration – for about two weeks before he left office. Governor Romney ordered the State Police in Massachusetts to enforce Federal immigration law as a move to impress Republican voters as he was already running his campaign for President – and knowing that the incoming Democrat Governor would drop the whole thing. Governor Romney also made a great show of vetoing some State government spending – knowing that these “cuts” would be reversed by the incoming Democrat.
So why did not Romney’s attacks work on Huckabee?
Simple – people who are not wearing any clothes do not get any credit for pointing out that other people are naked.
One of the first things I learnt, indeed was taught – with hard words, when I first stuck my British nose in American politics is that one should never predict caucus meetings, especially when the polls are close, because “anything can happen on caucus night”.
However, I now find myself predicting the Iowa caucus – indeed I have even found myself writing about it in on-line games I am involved in, which must make me seem even odder than I do normally. I am not predicting the Republican side – my emotions are too involved in that. But I do find myself predicting the Democrat side – in direct contradiction to the first rule I was taught. Therefore I am almost certainly making a fool of myself. However, I can not see Senator Hillary Clinton losing.
Take the line of policy.
For example, going on television and saying that people should vote for Senator Clinton because if they did she would “cure autism – I have been working on this for many years” and “cure cancer – a women came to one of my campaign events with a bald head from cancer treatment, but she had painted her head in support of me and I will not let her, and all the other people who have placed all their hopes and dreams in me, down”. Or the Christmas ad – Senator Clinton with lots of presents wrapped in ribbons saying things like “universal pre K.”, “alternative energy”, “universal healthcare” and so on. With the Senator indicating how all these presents would be given if she won.
I may think that such an behaviour is terrible and disgusting, indeed a sign of a maniac with delusions of Godhood – but Democrat voters will love it. But it is not just this, it is organization.
For example, what other Democrat will have five thousand cars on Thursday to take people to caucus events – and this is just the full time cars not the ad hoc help. And then there are all the child minders in special centres who will “take care of the children” whilst the parents are at caucus – I trust that nothing bad will happen to the children if the parents vote the wrong way. The campaign has just such a huge organization and such an unlimited amount of money I do not see how Senator Hillary Clinton can lose.
Hundreds hacked or burned to death in Kenya, in response to and election that may well have been rigged. Shootings and suicide bombing by Islamic radicals in many parts of the world. And news of record prison suicides and savage violence here in Britain. And, of course, the centralization and growth of government. Less wildly violent than the preceding, but hardly welcome and based on the same principle – the threat of violence.
Yesterday Cyprus and Malta became part of the Euro Zone. Thus further centralizing power in the hands of the EU and the magic circle of politically connected banks and other business enterprises that depend on the credit money which, in the end, comes from the European Union Central Bank. In this way competition between government currencies, and the possibility, that some might expand the credit/supply less than others, is reduced.
The smoking ban in France is also coming into force, although I hope the French resist. Although other Europeans seem in a passive mood – in “Belgium” the Flemish Liberal party leader is back as Prime Minister although he lost the General Election way back in June – but there is no resistance. And in Switzerland the Swiss People’;s Party got the highest vote of any party for many decades yet its leader is out of office and the Social Democrats, who got only 20% of the vote, remain in office – but there is not resistance. In both cases “Parliament had a vote” is the defence, and it is true it did.
And, of course, it is yet another year of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. Things have come to a strange pass when President George Walker Bush is what pro-freedom people have to rely on – the wild spender facing even wilder spenders, the regulator facing more fanatical regulators.
In Britain also we have regulations being presented as freedom. Prime Minister Brown promises more regulations and calls them a “Constitution for the National Health Service” and there are yet more bans and regulations in other areas.
One can only hope that 2008 does not carry on as it has started.
This morning Fox and Friends concentrated on three candidates in relation the Iowa caucuses on Thursday night: the two lead candidates in the polls, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney – and John McCain… this was in spite of the fact that Senator McCain is not in Iowa (he is in New Hampshire) and that Fred Thompson is ahead of John McCain is most of Iowa polls.
This is a part of pattern: last night Fred Thompson was on Fox News Sunday, but in the panel discussion, later in the show, the panellists ignored Fred Thompson. He is attacked by people, including me, for not going on enough television shows – but when he does go on what he says is ignored, so perhaps I see why he does not clamour to go on. Yesterday morning Fox and Friends, like the rest of the media, was busy laughing at Fred Thompson’s comments about not being obsessed with politics: “If one is not passionate about campaigning one should not run for office,” was the message of the media.
But what sort of person is passionate about the political process? Not getting things done – but the process of gaining votes. Of going around pretending to be close personal friends with lots and lots of people one has never met before?
Fred Thompson is in the middle of a 40 town Iowa tour – so he is hardly lazy. And he does go on television shows – thus dealing with critics, such as myself, who attacked him for not going on enough shows. But what sort of person would enjoy all this?
A lunatic. Someone who was interested in office for its own sake – not as a means to reduce the size and scope of government.
What the media, including Fox News (the only non-leftist news station and, therefore, of vital importance in the Republican nomination process), are saying is that Fred Thompson is too sane to be President. It is not enough to produce detailed policies for dealing with the entitlement program Welfare State (a cancer that is destroying the United States and the rest of the Western World), or producing a new optional flat tax (individuals could continue to use the existing system if they wished to) to deal with the nightmare of complexity that the income tax has become.
It is not even enough to have a long record of service, going back to Watergate and taking down a corrupt Governor of Tennessee in the 1970’s. And having one of the most Conservative voting records in the United States Senate – before leaving it in disgust at how the system did not allow real reform.
No – someone has to enjoy the prospect for office for its own sake, not to reduce the size and scope of government and restore a Federal Republic. One must enjoy the whole process of politics – i.e. be crazy. Or one must pretend to enjoy it – i.e. be a liar.
And then people complain that politicians are either crazy or corrupt. When they shoo away anyone who comes along who is neither crazy or corrupt.
First Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman, came on. Senator Lieberman, said that Republican John McCain was the best person on the struggle with radical Islam and national security issues generally, so he would be supporting him to become President of the United States – specifically by helping in the New Hampshire primary.
This was a big story as Joe Lieberman, is not only a long standing Democrat but was Democratic party candidate for President back in 2000, and ran for the Democrat nomination for President in 2004. However, both Senator Lieberman, and Senator McCain said that the political parties should work together to solve domestic problems. Which rather misses the point that people do not agree on what to do or not do – which is why they are different political parties in the first place.
Later Fred Thompson came on. He talked about the various things he had worked on in his days in the United States Senate and his lifelong conservative record, but he did not really attack anyone. When specifically asked why people should vote for him rather than Mike Huckabee, Fred Thompson did say that people should look at Governor Huckabee’s record and compare it with his.
This is no good at all – the Iowa Caucus is on January 3rd, it is bit late to still be relying on responsible voters doing research. Fred needed to say something like the following:
“I have a more conservative voting record than John McCain here are the stats….. and I have produced serious plans for a flat tax and for entitlement reform – he just talks about earmarks. And as for Mike Huckabee, he is a liar who claims to have cut taxes when in fact he had one of the worst records on tax and government spending of any Governor in the United States – an F grade from the Cato Institute”.
But it is not Fred Thompson’s nature to talk like that – which means….
Then in a first for Fox and Friends, Senator Hillary Clinton came on. It seems the death-to-Fox campaign is over, at least till after the election.
Senator Clinton informed the viewers that she would not only end the war in Iraq, but that she would also, if elected President, cure autism and cancer. On autism Senator Clinton stated that she had “worked for many years” on a cure and would get it done if elected President. And on cancer Senator Clinton told the story of how a lady suffering from cancer had come to one of her campaign events.
“All her hair had fallen out because of the treatment, but she had painted her head in my support – she had put all her faith in me, and when I am elected President I will not let her, or all the other people who place all their faith and dreams in me, down”.
No one on Fox and Friends seemed to regard Senator Clinton’s claims to be able to cure autism and cancer and to give everyone else all their hopes and dreams as in any way odd. I guess the Senator just meant that she would throw more taxpayers money at all these problems – but that is not what she actually said.
It was also mentioned on Fox and Friends that Newsweek had a lead story – this being that Mike Huckabee’s son had killed a dog in 1998.
So ended a few hours in the campaign.
CNN people get paid a lot of money, and no one pays me anything to engage in media politics. Yet I could rig a debate much less crudely than they did. It would be easy – I would simply pick questions, from the thousands of suggestions, that would make the Republicans look bad. I would not pick Democrat activists to ask the questions, on the contrary I would pick Republicans or real independents. There is no need to present Democrats as Republicans or undecided people.
For example, on the Log Cabin (i.e. homosexual) Republican question – I would have picked a real Log Cabin Republican, not got an Obama supporter. Nor would I have got two John Edwards supporters in to pretend to be undecideds. And I certainly would not have got a person who is on two of Senator Clinton’s committees to ask a “when did you stop beating your wife” question (about why the evil Republican candidates did not think American men and women in uniform “were not professional enough to work with gays”) – and then given him a come back after the replies so that he could denounce the Republicans again.
It was just so crude, as were the “we did not know who these people were” lies afterwards. After all the “General” was not a random face on the internet – he had been carefully chosen and had been flown in. Why are the CNN people paid so much money, when then can not even rig a debate with any skill?
Only on the “gun control” stuff did they get close to doing the rigging game well. The people chosen to ask the questions were chosen because of their aggressive manner (which seems to have a been their real manner – i.e. they were not actors putting on a show). The subtext being “people who are against gun control are nasty”.
But the rest of the presentation was pathetic.
As for the candidates:
Mike Huckabee is supposed to have done really well. For example, he turned a how would you control government spending question into an attack on the IRS.
And Fred Thompson is supposed to have done really badly. For example he gave specific policy ideas on tax, social security and the rest of the entitlement programs.
I would turn the judgement of “really well” and “really badly” on its head – perhaps that explains why no one pays me to be involved in media politics.
I do not often look at, and never buy, the Financial Times newspaper. Partly, and perhaps unfairly, because of the Marxists it used to employ and partly because the main relatively free market voice in the newspaper is that of Samuel Britton – a man who supported the exchange rate fixing ERM of the European Union. A very bitter political dispute in Britain some years ago, about which people on opposite sides still carry a lot hatred to this day – well if they are unforgiving people like me they do.
However, I happened to see a copy of the Financial Times a few days ago and had a brief look at it.
There was an article by Lawrence Summers suggesting three steps to avoid an American recession. The three steps were basically “more subsides, more subsidies and more subsides”. People who owned money on their houses were to be helped by the government (via various “private” entities it controls), the banks who are suffering a “credit crunch” were to be helped as well, and the whole system was to get more money also.
Why not just print the money and throw it into the streets at random? Or if computers must be used, just tell everyone they have ten per cent more money in their bank accounts?
Perhaps because following a Major Douglas style approach is too open and public. The political merit of complex and private subsidies, as supported by Lord Keynes, is that it both gets powerful private special interests on the side of the credit-money expansion and keeps things from the attention of the general public. Of course one must not ask too many questions about what caused the credit money bubble in the first place – just a bit of vague talk about “animal spirits” or “speculation” will do. As Mr Summers says “the time to worry about bad debts is over” – we must “keep the credit flowing”.
So the way to deal with a credit-money bubble is to increase the amount of credit-money. Well the Federal Reserve, and the rest of the system, have been playing this game a long time – the last serious effort to let the system clear itself out was in the early 1980’s when Paul Volker was head of the Fed. And with the basic situation, the entitlement programs and so on, so vulnerable now I do not see much chance of people of power accepting a clear out – till it is forced on them by events.
As for the Financial Times, articles like the one by Mr Summers reminded me why it is a good idea not to buy it.
I did look at the article directly below Mr Summers’ article. It was about how the Democrats should not give any “hint” that they are hoping for defeat in Iraq – which is odd as many of the Democrats have been doing everything short of conducting a Black Mass to Satan in the hope of that there would be defeat in Iraq. The article also said that the Democrats have a “winner” in their idea of the United States government organizing health care for 300 million people.
Enough said.
As predicted for many months Mr Kevin Rudd and the ALP have won the Australian elections. The upside of this has already become apparent in the comic value that Mr Rudd has provided – at least for us in the rest of the world, who have heard stuff like his so many times before.
In his acceptance speech Mr Rudd came out with a lot of fatuous waffle about how everyone should believe in the future, create the future, even “embrace” the future. It was like listening Harold Wilson in about 1964. For Americans it must have been like hearing Bill Clinton do one of his JFK impressions about futurism – if I am allowed to steal a word from the Italians.
Then, of course, Mr Rudd came out with a lot of backward looking polices:
Soldiers to run away from Iraq, as if it was 2003 and it was possible for the West to avoid involvement – and totally ignoring the events of the last year that mean it now looks like we are going to win the war. The idea seems to be to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Sign up for Kyoto – as if it was sometime in the 1990s. There was, of course, no mention of reducing regulations on the expansion of the nuclear industry. In short the concern with C02 emissions was a pose – and an excuse for various new taxes and regulations.
And, of course, more money for his friends, and fellow ALP members, in the schools and universities – the people who, along with the media types they produce, worked so hard to get him elected. More money and, vague, “reform” will mean better education – pass the sick bag. Mr Rudd did not actually say “education, education, education” but he might as well have.
Some of my friends in Australia are a bit down in the dumps about the election result, although they all predicted it, but my message to them is simple – if you can not do anything about the farce you might as well enjoy it.
There will be plenty of laughs over the next three years.
The left may have fun with Ian Smith, the former Prime Minister of Rhodesia, having died on November 20th – the same day as Franco in 1975, and Primo de Rivera back in 1936.
There was a BBC Radio Four discussion on Mr Smith today, but I do not know whether any mention was made of the date of his death – I turned the show off after it became clear that all the participants in the discussion hated Ian Smith and, more importantly, had no interest in truth.
The obituary of Ian Smith in today’s Economist did not make any joke about the date of his death, it just contented itself with accusing him of ‘tyranny’ and saying the government he headed, and the whole of the Rhodesian effort, was “rather squalid”.
However, both the BBC show and the Economist obituary said that Ian Smith had delayed black majority rule for “fifteen years” (1965 to 1980) – this is false.
Some background:
Under the 1923 Constitution of Southern Rhodesia there were educational and property qualifications on voting – which meant that the vast majority of voters (although not all of them) were white. Even under the Constitution drawn up under Ian Smith in 1969 only eight of the members of House of Assembly were to be directly elected by blacks who do not meet the educational and property qualifications (although another eight were to be chosen by tribal chiefs) – whereas the mainly white voters who did meet the qualifications got to elect fifty members. It is true that the Senate was more balanced – with a minimum of ten Senators (out of 23) being elected by the tribal chiefs. But the Senate only had delaying powers.
However, Ian Smith accepted the 1971 deal proposed by the British government headed by Edward Heath – a deal that would have speeded up the process by which more blacks got the vote on an equal basis with whites. But after widespread protests about how it was wrong to link voting with property ownership at all (oh silly Aristotle for thinking that majority rule can only work when the majority are property owners) this proposal was withdrawn – which Mr Smith regarded as a betrayal (one of many). Ian Smith said many times that he would never accept “majority rule” if this meant the rule of non property owners, i.e. the tribal masses, but in the end he did accept it – and his acceptance was not in 1980…so the “fifteen years” is false.
In March 1978 Ian Smith accepted majority rule in a deal with some of the black leaders, including Ndabaningi Sithole, the founder of African nationalism in Rhodesia, and Bishop Abel Muzorewa – who had played a leading role in sinking the 1971 deal. It is true that under the 1978 deal the new ‘Zimbabwe Rhodesia’ would reserve a third of the seats in Parliament for the mainly white property owners, and it is also true that there were other constitutional protections.
Ian Smith also hoped to be Minister of Defence under a black Prime Minister, but after the elections of 1979 he had to make do with being Minister without Portfolio – a white Defence Minister yes – but not old burnt face, seems to have been the position of the new government.
However, the British government, in spite of the Conservatives having said during the British elections of May 1979 that they would support the internal settlement) undermined the deal and demanded, at the Lancaster House talks, that Prime Minister Muzorewa and the whole government be removed and the country be placed under British control for new elections. Thus Bishop Muzorewa was humiliated in the eyes of his tribe, who made up the majority of the population, and with the British in charge there was nothing to prevent intimidation winning the elections for the most radical elements – as Ian Smith predicted would happen.
So the new Prime Minister in 1980 was the Marxist terrorist Comrade Bob – on the grounds that he was from the majority tribe, unlike the rival terrorist leader, and had the best organized intimidation.
Both the BBC and the Economist choose to date majority rule from this date.
As for the picture presented of Ian Smith as being unwilling to compromise and as having learnt nothing from his experiences in World War II, the Economist obituary makes the latter claim, I do not know whether the BBC show claimed it as well – I do not know for the reason I explained above, well I think what I have already explained casts doubt on this picture.
In this weeks edition of The Economist, the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, is attacked for ‘spending’ money by promising to reduce taxation in a targeted way so that people can better afford to send their children to independent schools. We are also told that “professionals and economists” (no names are given) hold that the money would be better spent on increasing the government school budget even more.
So tax reductions are ‘spending money’, as if all money belonged to the government and allowing taxpayers to keep a bit more of their own money is ‘spending’ it, and the solution to the problems of government education is to increase government spending on it even more than it has already been increased.
In recent times I have attacked the Economist for pretending to be pro free market whilst, when one reads it closely, not really being so. Articles like the one on the Australian elections mean I can no longer fairly make this charge. The Economist having now ‘come out’ as an openly leftist publication.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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