Yearly Archives: 2014

David Horowitz and the fight against the left

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The single most important characteristic I share with David Horowitz is that I, too, was a red-diaper baby that shifted from the radical left to the conservative right side of politics. Encounter Press is in the process of issuing the collected conservative writings of David Horowitz. The emphasis is, of course, on the word, “conservative” since his previous writings were entirely on the left where he was amongst its leadership group and was for many years the editor of Ramparts when I was one of its subscribers. This is from a column at Powerline where they discuss this publishing venture under the heading, David Horowitz: Who are our Enemies. From Horowitz’s article explaining why he is publishing these books:

It is for this conservative audience — a constituency on whom the American future depends — that I undertook to put together The Black Book of the American Left. It is first of all a narrative map of the battles fought over the last 40 years and — it must be said – lost, almost every one. The Black Book contains a record as complete as any likely to be written of the struggle to resist a Communist-inspired Left that was not defeated in the Cold War but took advantage of the Soviet defeat to enter the American mainstream and conquer it, until today its members occupy the White House.

It is an often overlooked but immensely significant fact that during the Cold War the vast majority of American progressives supported the Communist enemy, working as apologists, appeasers, and enablers for a global movement openly dedicated to the destruction of their country. At the time, the progressive movement was much smaller than it is now and was opposed by mainstream Democrats whom progressives referred to derisively as “Cold War Liberals.” In 1968, progressive activists staged a riot at the Democratic Party convention. The riot was overtly designed to destroy the electoral chances of Hubert Humphrey, regarded as the Cold War Liberal in Chief because of his support for the Vietnam War.

The Progressive Party, was formed in 1948 to challenge the cold war liberalism of Harry Truman and was in fact controlled by the Communist Party. The so-called New Left that emerged in the Sixties did not represent a clean break with communism and was not, in fact, a “new” left but a continuation of the old. It developed a modernized, deceptive political rhetoric — calling itself “populist” and even “liberal” — but it was mobilized behind the same malicious anti-individualist, anti-capitalist, and anti-American agendas as the Communist movement from which it sprang.

After the convention riot of 1968, this neo-Communist Left marched off the streets and into the Democratic party, and over the next decades took commanding positions in the party’s congressional apparatus, and eventually its national leadership. As it acquired power, it gradually shifted its self- identification from “liberal” to the bolder “progressive,” a designation shared by most leaders of the Democratic Party today. The betrayal of the Vietnamese by the “Watergate” Democrats, the appeasement of Latin American Communists (now firmly entrenched throughout the hemisphere and allied with our enemy Iran), the betrayal of the Iraqis and the sabotage of the war on terror, the traducing of the civil-rights movement and its transformation into a mob led by the racial extortionists Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton (the latter now the president’s chief adviser on race), the subversion of the modern research university and the conversion of its liberal-arts divisions into doctrinal institutes for training American youth in the radical party line known as political correctness, the rise of a campus fascism aligned with Islamic Jew haters and genocidal terrorists, the political undermining of the public-health system during the AIDS epidemic which led to half a million avoidable deaths — all these were crucial battles lost during the 40 years that preceded the White House reign of Barack Obama. All are documented in the pages of these volumes in week-by-week accounts of the arguments and conflicts that accompanied them.

When the Money Runs Out – the government’s guide to policy

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Simultaneously reading today’s papers on the Commission of Audit report and the Economist and The Financial Times 2013 book of the year, Stephen D. King’s When the Money Runs Out: the End of Western Affluence, I can see what the latest fashion in economic policy has become. Here I heave a sigh of despair. This from page 54 sums it up:

With poorly performing asset markets and much lower prospective economic growth, our entitlements are about to take a hammering. On current plans, only wishful thinking on economic growth stops government debt from spiralling out of control in the decades ahead. If the wishful thinking proves to be wrong, we will be in serious trouble.

And if you doubt that the wise heads of Treasury and the Government have not been reading this book, this is how it is described by the publisher:

It’s not just the end of an age of affluence, he shows. We have made promises to ourselves that are achievable only through ongoing economic expansion. The future benefits we expect—pensions, healthcare, and social security, for example—may be larger than tomorrow’s resources. And if we reach that point, which promises will be broken and who will lose out? The lessons of history offer compelling evidence that political and social upheaval are often born of economic stagnation. King addresses these lessons with a multifaceted plan that involves painful—but necessary—steps toward a stable and just economic future.

And so here we are.

I am the last person in the world to argue that wasteful and unproductive spending can go on forever. Cut waste. Live within your means. Do what is required to cut non-value-adding expenditure. But this book is half the story of what needs doing or possibly even less, just as the Commission of Audit doesn’t to my mind get there either. So far I have not come across a single sentence in the book that indicates the importance of the “private sector”, “the role of business” or “entrepreneurial activity”. The words don’t show up in the index and nothing in the contents goes anywhere near these issues. It is all about government policy, the financial system, the level of entitlements and containing outlays on entitlements. Nothing about what is needed for growth, and as the subtitle suggests, “The End of Affluence”, is entirely pessimistic about our economic possibilities.

And if you follow the guidelines found in the book, you would have to agree. We can no longer afford our way of life, our living standards must contract and therefore the only thing governments can do is cut various entitlement programs but strangely leave public sector infrastructure spending more or less as it is. No discussion of cuts to public waste, those useless money-losing operations that are everywhere absorbing our scarce savings for a negative return. If the real economy is discussed at any point along the way, I have not come across it. It’s all money, finance and interest rates. Encouraging business investment, cost containment, reducing government regulation – of these there’s not a word.

You want growth, cut back on government take up of resources. I love the headline on this story because of its cluelessness: UK AUSTERITY TO STAY DESPITE GROWTH PICK-UP. This is re-stated in the first para:

Austerity will remain the U.K. government’s mantra, Treasury chief George Osborne said Wednesday — even as he lauded the stronger than expected economic recovery.

The people who write such stories think “austerity”, the name its enemies give to cutting back on public sector waste, is bad for the economy, and because of their Keynesian mindset can only be harmful. They have no idea that it is the austerity itself that has led to the higher than expected growth. They cannot even understand what possible connection there could be. Moreover, a return to a stronger economy is not a warrant for higher public spending. The lesson that ought to learned and understood is that non-value-adding outlays slow an economy down. Reducing those outlays allow the economy to re-adjust towards faster growth. And already the Treasurer is talking about personal tax cuts in the lead-up to the next UK election. If only the same would happen here.

What’s the matter with our own economic managers in this country? If they really do want to take Australia down into some kind of American never-ending recession, then maintain or possibly even increase public sector outlays, raise taxes and do next nothing to encourage private sector growth. That way, the money most surely will run out but it didn’t have to be that way at all.

The Machal

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A video about the Machal, the pilots who comprised the Israeli airforce in 1948. A miraculous story, at the link a trailer for a film I intend to see.

My Uncle Harold was there, not as a flyer but as part of the ground crew, as he had been during the war in Europe along with my Uncle Percy. Bless them both.

The film is Above and Beyond. And as one of those interviewed said, a thousand years from now, as Jews look back on their history from what will then be 6774, the two moments they will remember of our present era are the Holocaust and the creation of the state of Israel. What else they will be compelled to remember of events during this coming one thousand years fills me with enormous fears.

Does the American media really want to live in a wasteland?

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Here it is. The media in the US (and Australia for that matter) must either decide whether they wish to live in a wasteland run by the party of the left rather than live in a secure and prosperous nation run by the more conservative party of the right. The President and the Democratic Party are ruining what the United States once was and turning it into an impotent backwater.

The media can say it’s not us, it’s the people who decide. But say what they like, the massively left-leaning media have shaped the political debate so that the common sense of the past is now seen as extremism. But they, too, will live in the wilderness they have helped to create. It will give no satisfaction to anyone else that they will have to share this tumbledown shambles of a nation with everyone else, but they will.

Obviously a joke

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The kind of nonsense you find on the web all the time. Who could take any of this seriously? Via Instapundit:

The following is the God’s-honest truth from the perspective of an imperfect man who was taught chivalry, respect, and love for women. Opinions are solely his and the hundreds of other imperfect men he’s spoken to about this subject in one way or another.

1. We think it’s stupid when feminists think it’s cool to not know how to cook. We don’t give more respect to a woman who thinks keeping her home organized and tidy is weakness. We find a woman who hates babies and children kind of off-putting, even if we don’t currently want a child. We don’t think it’s edgy. We think it’s silly that they think this somehow makes women strong and independent. Our mothers did all the above and more, and we recognize her as super strong. Do they think they’re better than our Mom? NO ONE is better than our Mom.

2. No, we don’t think women can do most physical jobs just as good as us. We’re built for tougher physical exertion than you. We have more muscle mass than you do. On a base level it insults us that feminists claim your strength is equal to ours when we clearly see it isn’t. You have strengths and we acknowledge them, even find them sexy in some regards, but physically demanding tasks generally require a body built for it. It’s why construction sites, ranches, and other physically-demanding jobs primarily consist of men. Women are physically weaker than us, and it hacks us off that feminists only want to recognize that fact in a courtroom.

3. We want to wear the pants in the relationship, and we want you to wear the pretty sundress. Believe us, WE invented pants and have regretted it ever since. They aren’t that great.

4. There’s no “wage gap” between our sexes. If you get paid less than a man it’s probably because he’s been there longer, or works harder, or has a higher title than you. Men do a lot to climb the ladder to make a better living, and often times it’s to make a better living for you. Don’t buy the feminist lie that the literal man is keeping you down.

There is no grand evil patriarchal scheme. There are too many women CEO and managers making more than men out there to give credence to this claim. Also, if a woman gets paid less than a man for doing the same amount of work, then why would a business ever hire a man?

5. We’re wired for destruction. Boys play games that mimic violence of their own accord. We’re not taught that like feminists like to claim. We’re hyperactive because we’re built to hunt, kill, conquer, and protect later in life. We get a rush out of doing these things.

We think it’s stupid that feminists think that’s stupid. We think girl stuff is boring. We don’t think feminine stuff is bad, it’s just boring to us.

Shoes: Boring

Makeup: Boring

Clothes: Boring

Gossip: Boring

Home and Garden Magazines: Boring

Shopping: Boring

Underwear: Boring… unless we get to see it on you, and even then our goal is to get it off you.

Also, if masculinity is so evil then how come feminists are constantly trying to put themselves on level with it? Why do you want to be like us, but not let us be us?

6. Yeah, we’re wussies when we’re sick. There is nothing better than being taken care of by a woman. We love the gentleness and reassuring touch that only a woman has. Even science says you make more thorough and caring doctors.

On top of that you look like an angel when you’re caring for us. It inspires us to get better, to regain our strength so we can get back to being strong for you. We find the feminist concept that it’s a bad thing for a woman to be caring and gentle utterly ridiculous and a waste of natural girl power.

You don’t see us asking our bros to run fingers through our hair with our head in their laps or put vapor rub on our chest…you know…outside comedic reasons.

7. We live in a wam-bam-thank-you-ma’am promoted culture where young girls are fed the feminist lie that it’s empowering to dress like a skank and make a guy do everything in his power to take you home, and even let him succeed at it. Then feminists tell you that it’s not your fault that you can’t seem to land a good guy because men are dogs.

NEWSFLASH: IT IS YOUR FAULT!

While me and mine could seriously do with a lot more discipline, it is EXTREMELY difficult for us to resist sexual temptation. We think about it constantly, and it’s everywhere we look nowadays. From a man’s perspective I can honestly tell you that it’s MADDENING. It’s not because we’re pigs, we’re wired that way, and while we’re physically attracted to easy half-naked women, we sure don’t respect you mentally.

In fact, I hate to burst the feminist bubble, but respect isn’t what comes to mind at all. We hold these women to the level of “useful tool.” This is done very subconsciously, and men aren’t very good at fighting instinct, nor should we in the face of an easy woman. We’re taught as boys that putting value in something cheap ends badly.

8. We fully believe we’re dumber than you in many ways. In fact we hope our woman is smarter than us when it comes to day-to-day things, but we also fully believe we’re smarter in many ways too. Sadly it’s become politically correct to say women are smarter, and a man can’t argue that without a woman nearby getting angry. Men believe women to be very intelligent, intuitive thinkers. We believe you make great leaders.

That said, intelligence comes in a variety of flavors, and we think circles around women in many ways. We’re primarily responsible for technological and scientific breakthroughs. We’re highly logical, creative thinkers. The pop-culture portrayal that we’re close to the intelligence of apes is both insulting and laughable.

Do women outwit men? All the freaking time. They outwit them while they drive cars utilizing internal combustion engines around high-rises, guided by traffic lights that harness electricity. Men are pretty stupid, huh feminists?

9. You can’t tell a man to respect you like he would another man, because you’re not another man. Weirdly that’s something the feminist has a hard time with. We’re naturally competitive and recognize manly respect through manly occurrences whether it be from masculine acts, masculine chats, or masculine urges mental and sexual.

This doesn’t mean we don’t welcome the feminine to take part in these things, but it will never mean the same to you as it does to us. Even a girl inclined towards masculine activity retains too many feminine traits to truly bond with us on the level feminists are demanding us to.

We are different from you.

10. Ladies, let me crush a silly idea that feminists have made popular: You don’t need to “elevate” yourself to where men are. You don’t need to be “just as good.” Men are not on a platform above you where the sun shines richer and we reap a bountiful supply of deserved ego. We’re not better or worse than you, we’re just not the same. Our needs diverge and intersect with yours because we’re tied to each other, but this doesn’t mean we need to be equal on every ground.

Feminists say they want “equality.” That’s a lie. What they want is neutrality if not dominance for themselves. Nature can’t and won’t abide the feminist idea of masculine and feminine, and honestly neither will us men. We honestly find the idea laughable and stupid. I’m willing to bet most women do too.

A hairshirt budget

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Well, get ready for it, an experiment in democratic politics, an unpopular budget aimed at no constituency at all:

Radical reforms to health and education will be outlined today in a searing assessment of federal finances that also calls for the family home to be included in the asset test for the age pension.

Action on the asset test is a key recommendation in a far-reaching review that identifies huge cuts to “middle-class welfare” to prevent budget spending climbing to $690 billion within a ­decade.

Tony Abbott will also be urged to scrap federal agencies and ­delegate more services to the states as part of a blueprint from his commission of audit that is ­already sparking resistance from key cabinet ministers.

The closely held report stops short of calling for the dismantling of federal health and education departments but warns of a massive cost to taxpayers from the duplicated effort between Canberra and the states.

In a deeply controversial finding, the commission identifies billions of dollars in savings from including the family home in the eligibility test for the age pension, arguing it is unfair for ordinary workers to subsidise pensions for the wealthy.

How is it possible that so many people failed to understand the reality?

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Benjamin Netanyahu speaking on Holocaust Remembrance Day:

I have said many times in this place that we must identify an existential threat in time and take action in time. Tonight, on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, I ask myself: why, in the years preceding the Holocaust, did the overwhelming majority of world leaders and Jewish leaders fail to detect the danger in time? In retrospect, all the warning signs were there: the strengthening of the Nazi regime year after year; the horrific anti-Semitic propaganda which grew stronger with each passing month; and the murderous attacks on Jews which began as a trickle and transformed into a huge wave.

In retrospect, there is a direct line connecting the racial laws and the gas chambers.

Very few world leaders understood the enormity of the threat to humanity posed by Nazism. Churchill was one of them. Few among our leaders, primarily Jabotinsky, warned against the imminent destruction facing our nation, but they were widely criticized and their warnings were disregarded, and they were treated as merchants of doom and war mongers.

So I ask: How is it possible that so many people failed to understand the reality? The bitter and tragic truth is this: it is not that they did not see it. They did not want to see it. And why did they choose not to see the truth? Because they did not want to face the consequences of that truth.

During the 1930′s, when the Nazis were gaining momentum, the influence of the trauma of the First World War was still fresh. Twenty years earlier, the people of the West experienced a terrible trench war, a war which claimed the lives of 16 million people. Therefore, the leaders of the West operated on the basis of one axiom: avoid another confrontation at any cost, and thus they laid the foundation for the most terrible war in human history. This axiom of avoiding conflict at any cost, this axiom was adopted not only by the leaders. The people themselves, primarily the educated ones, shared it too.

In 1933, for example, the year Hitler rose to power, there was a meeting of the Oxford University student organization – an institute from which generations of British leaders had emerged. Following a heated debate, the students voted for a resolution stating that they “would under no circumstances fight for their King and Country”. This resolution passed by an overwhelming majority only ten days after Hitler entered the Chancellery of Germany.

And believe me: that message reverberated in Berlin.

This example illustrates the West’s feeble attitude vis-à-vis the rise of Nazism.

Month after month, year after year, more and more information was received in London, Paris and Washington regarding the capabilities and intentions of the Nazi regime. The picture was becoming clear to everybody. However, “they have eyes, but cannot see; they have ears, but cannot hear.”

When you refuse to accept reality as it is, you can deny it. And this is precisely what the leaders of the West did. They dismissed the murderous Nazi rhetoric as internal German politics; they downplayed the seriousness of the danger of the military build-up of the Nazis, claiming that it was the result of the natural will of a proud nation, that it should be taken into consideration, that it should be accepted.

The reality was clear, but it was cloaked in a bubble of illusions. This bubble was burst by the stealth attack by the Nazis on Europe. And the price of the illusion and desire was very heavy because by the time the leaders of the West finally acted, their people paid a terrible price. World War II claimed the lives not of 16 million people, the unimaginable number of victims during World War I, but of 60 million, including one third of our people, who were butchered by the Nazi beast.

Citizens of Israel, my brothers and sisters,

Has the world learned from the mistakes of the past? Today, we are again facing clear facts and a tangible threat.

Iran is calling for our destruction. It is developing nuclear weapons. This is the reason it is building underground bunkers for the enrichment of uranium. This is the reason it is establishing a plutonium-producing heavy water facility. This is the reason it continues to develop inter-continental ballistic missiles that can carry nuclear warheads to threaten the entire world.

Today, just like then, there are those who dismiss Iran’s extreme rhetoric as one that serves domestic purposes. Today, just like then, there are those who view Iran’s nuclear ambitions as the result of the natural will of a proud nation – a will that should be accepted.

And just like then, those who make such claims are deluding themselves. They are making an historic mistake.

We are currently in the midst of fateful talks between Iran and the world powers. This time too, the truth is evident to all: Iran is seeking an agreement that will lift the sanctions and leave it as a nuclear threshold state, in other words, the capability to manufacture nuclear weapons within several months at most.

Iran wants a deal that will eliminate the sanctions and leave their nuclear capabilities intact. Such a deal, which will enable Iran to be a nuclear threshold state, will bring the entire world to the threshold of an abyss.

I hope that the lessons of the past will be learned and that the desire to avoid confrontation at any cost will not lead to a deal that will exact a much heavier price in the future.

I call on the leaders of the world powers to insist on a full dismantling of Iran’s capability to manufacture nuclear weapons, and to persist until this goal is achieved.

In any event, the people of Israel are strong. When faced with an existential threat, the situation of our people today is entirely different than it was during the Holocaust.

Today, we have a sovereign Jewish state. As Prime Minister of Israel, I do not hesitate to speak the truth to the world, even when faced with so many blind eyes and deaf ears. It is not only my right, it is my duty. It is a duty I am mindful of at all times, but particularly on this day, in this place.

On the eve of the Holocaust, there were Jews who avoided crying out to the world’s nations out of fear that the fight against the Nazis would become a Jewish problem. Others believed that if they kept silent, the danger would pass. The kept silent and the disaster struck. Today, we are not afraid to speak the truth to world leaders, as is written in our Bible: “I will speak of your testimonies before kings, and I will not be ashamed…listen, for I will speak noble thoughts; the opening of my lips will reveal right things.”

Unlike our situation during the Holocaust, when we were like leaves on the wind, defenseless, now we have great power to defend ourselves, and it is ready for any mission. This power rests on the courage and ingenuity of the soldiers of the IDF and our security forces. It is this power that enabled us, against all odds, to build the State of Israel.

Look at the remarkable achievements we have made in our 66 years of independence. All of us together – scientists, writers, teachers, doctors, entrepreneurs, employees, artists, farmers – the entire people of Israel, each one in their own field – together we have built a glorious state. The spirit of the people of Israel is supreme, our accomplishments tremendous. Seven decades after the destruction of the Holocaust, the State of Israel is a global wonder.

On this day, on behalf of the Jewish people, I say to all those who sought to destroy us, to all those who still seek to destroy us: you have failed and you will fail.

The State of Israel is stronger than ever. It is a state that seeks peace with all its neighbors – a state with a will of iron to ensure the future of its people.

“The people will arise like a lion cub and raise itself like a lion; it will not lie down until it consumes prey, and drinks the blood of the slain.” (Numbers 23:24; Jeremiah 23:6).

[From Powerline]

Four Prime Ministers in Four Years?

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They bring down a budget with a tax increase they said they’d never have and their re-election chances go from 90% to 10%.

Their expertise is politics but mine is economics. Economically it would be idiocy, the worst imaginable mistake. The politics we shall see for ourselves but bad economics cannot be good politics.

If Bill becomes PM in 2017, we will have had four Prime Ministers in four years.

The tax increases will be in aid of paying for the NBN, the NDIS, Labor’s stimulus debts and other gross mistakes. You are doing what no ALP Prime Minister would ever do. They just leave this to you so that they can return in three years with the by-then-fresh promise of honest government. We will not lie to you, unlike the Libs, we tell the truth where it counts. As he resigns from Parliament, the Prime Minister may have that warm inner glow that he did the right thing, or at least the right thing as he saw it. For the rest of us, all we will see is that he could have been there for a decade and barely made it to three. And the media will make another Coalition unelectable for as far as the eye can see.

America in the eyes of its domestic enemies

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This is the text that comes with the trailer:

Having made the second-highest-grossing political documentary of all time, the team behind 2016: Obama’s America is now, as promised, following up with America. Sending up some fireworks of his own to rival the ones 2016 generated, producer-writer and kind-of host Dinesh D’Souza says of his new docu, “We answer the central moral challenge of America’s critics, which is that America’s greatness is based on theft, plunder and oppression.” Listen for other red-button phrases from interviewees describing the USA as “the new evil empire” and a “predatory colonial power” as well as referring to Mount Rushmore as “a symbol of oppression and genocide to our people.” Director John Sullivan’s film comes out two years after its predecessors — hitting theaters on the Fourth of July.

It is these enemies who are now running America. There are some who believe that America can be restored to what it once was. But then I think of D’Souza’s up coming trial and I say to myself, it’s all over for America, all over.