The left are nutters – British Labour division
Reply
Monthly Archives: September 2019
An explanation for Democrat insanity
I have to admit being depressed by today’s news which this article – Why the Democrats Have Gone Insane – has helped alleviate a bit. If the insanity of it all gets to you as well, read the whole thing, but this struck me as exactly how I think. From the final para:
Indeed the whole spectacle might be amusing in a macabre sort of way if there weren’t important things going on in the world. The president is engaged in negotiations of tremendous significance with the Chinese and trying to neuter as much as possible the violent mullahs of Iran, but the Democrats don’t care. In fact, they would prefer he fail and seem to be doing everything in their power to make it so. To call that UnAmerican is an understatement. Actually, it’s despicable and deeply immoral, not just for the citizens of this country, but for the world.
Nothing matters to the left other than whether it will get them power. Yet what do they use that power for? See Hilary Clinton for as good (bad) an example as you might not hope to see. Any good they do for the people who elect them is incidental to their actual motives in running for office.
Maybe this will provide another perspective.
They really might impeach Trump after all
The worst political class in history. Only seek to protect themselves. Public interest seems far far from anything they do. Joe Biden used his influence as Vice President to gain a financial payoff for his son. The Democrats being as corrupt as they are see nothing there worth mentioning, but on this basis they may try to impeach PDT. This is from Powerline for some background.
Trump, for his part, pushed his chips into the middle of the table by announcing that he will release an unredacted transcript of his conversation with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, tomorrow. I think we can assume that the transcript will not reflect particularly badly on Trump.
The Ukraine “scandal,” whatever it proves to be, has serious potential to boomerang on the Democrats, since we know for sure that Joe Biden, as vice president, did precisely the worst thing that Trump can be accused of. By his own account, he pulled a $1 billion loan guarantee to force Ukraine’s government to fire a prosecutor who was investigating a company that paid Biden’s son Hunter $600,000 a year for…what? Influence, presumably. Hunter had nothing else to sell.
The rest is from the pro-Democrat Drudge.
Republican Senate Passes Unanimous Resolution Demanding Whistleblower Complaint...
White House preparing to release... Developing...
Executive privilege battle looms...
More Dems back impeachment...
186 and counting...
Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton... and Trump?
FRESHMEN: These allegations are threat to all we have sworn to protect...
NAPOLITANO: IS IT A CRIME?
President will now go to war against intelligence community...
Pelosi, tepid no more!
'Witch Hunt garbage'...
RISKY!
The worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time
I have been working away at my next book which is on classical economics, which was the highpoint of economic theory, from whence economics has been in precipitous decline since falling into the hands of socialists and academics (did I just repeat myself there?). As it happens, I have just today been working on the chapter on the role of government according to the classics. Here’s the first para of the chapter:
It is almost impossible any longer to know what a modern economist believes about the economic judgements found among economists prior to the publication of The General Theory. Possibly the most incorrect judgement is the belief that classical economists were opposed to public spending and insisted on an extremely limited role for government regulation or expenditure.
There is a lot in the chapter but let me start with this quote from The Principles of Political Economy by J. Shields Nicholson published in 1901. Don’t know who he is? You’ll have to buy the book, but very respectable, a man of the establishment of his own time. He is here summarising the almost-two previous pages on how Adam Smith understood the role of government.
“Thus, according to the actual teaching of Adam Smith, if competition leads to injustice or oppression, the State ought to intervene, and if self-interest is inadequate to provide various institutions for the satisfaction of actual needs, the State ought to provide for their erection and maintenance.” (Nicholson 1901: 179-180)
This is the kind of statement that you will never find in an economics text today, which is not something I say in any kind of positive way. But what I really want to deal with is his view of the people who get elected to Parliament.
“The assumption that government is all-wise and all-powerful is so far removed from the truth as to be of little use even for the purposes of abstract reasoning. With the best intentions, governments may ruin their legislation by ignorance and their administration by feebleness. And very frequently the intentions are not the best, if by best we mean that the public interests, with the due regard to the future as well as the present, are always dominant. The government, even of the most democratic states, must be formed of persons who are themselves liable to errors of judgment and errors of passion. And to a considerable extent they are supposed to carry out the mandate of their electors. The electors are open to all kinds of persuasion, as well as to the persuasion of justice and reason…. In the most advanced democracies, laws are still made and unmade in the interests of powerful classes and sometimes against the interests of considerable minorities. Officials are still appointed for all sorts of reasons apart from merit and efficiency, and are removed, or not removed, on a similar diversity of excuses.” (Nicholson 1901: 249)
Then follows my own comment on what Nicholson has written:
One cannot quote the whole of Nicholson, but it is as engaging today as Mill’s Principles is now a formidable challenge to a modern reader. Yet they both speak from the same script, with Nicholson frequently referring to Mill’s Principles even with the first edition having been published more than half a century before his own book was published. And in his views on the role of government, he was doing no more than following Mill who did much to outline just how crucial government was in the management of an economy. And in this, he spoke for the entire classical tradition.
And so far as leaving things to the market, you will not find a single economic writer today who is as resolute in wishing to see the market succeed and who is as fulsome in their support for liberty and prosperity that only free markets and democratic governments can bring as were Mill and Nicholson, and indeed the whole of the classical tradition going right back to Adam Smith.
Equality of men and women demonstrated
And this.
Liars and swindlers
The left is always dishonest. Everything they do is tactical in pursuit of power. I used to be among them and for much of my career worked to defeat them, mostly in dealing with the union movement, many of whose leaders were as deranged as Jeremy Corbyn, in the same way as pretty well the whole of the phalanx of Democratic Party candidates for president. These people are only viable because for most people it is virtually unbelievable that people can be so openly deceitful, nor can they believe that such great intellectuals who populate the opinion pages of our newspapers, or run national broadcasting operations like the ABC, are actually as ignorant as they really are.
Do you ever see Venezuela in the news? Who, besides people like me, ever bring it up as the cautionary tale it is? For myself, I never take leaders on the left as actually speaking their true beliefs, but only what they believe will actually gull enough people into giving them power. If being kind to refugees, high taxation on the wealthy, free stuff for everyone, is what works, that is what they’ll say. If you do not already know the left’s attitude to World War II from September 1939, until June 1941, which then just changed in an instant when the Soviet Union was attacked, then you really ought to look into it. It is how the left always operates. Remember Kevin Rudd the economic conservative?
No leftist government has any idea how to run an economy, or maintain a free society. Put them into power and they will ruin you. And like Maduro in Venezuela, or Lenin/Stalin in Russia, or Mao in China, once they are in and democratic options are finally suppressed, you will never get them out. Which leads me to this, which is from Powerline reporting on a poll conducted by The Sun in the UK, reporting what the members of the Labour Party in Britain believe. A complete disaster, but even as insane as all of this is, they only put it up because they believe it will bring them political power. And they believe it because some wildly large proportion of the people who live in our democracies actually believe these kinds of policies are optimal. Add in saving us from climate change and you can see where we are at.
If, like me, you have wondered how a left-wing loony like Jeremy Corbyn can remain in control of the Labour Party, this poll, reported in the Sun, suggests the answer: Labour is a party of left-wing loonies.
Marxist zealots have seized control at every level since Jeremy Corbyn became leader — and are poisoning the debate with their hardline views.
For example: only a small minority of Labourites believe that a country has any right to control its own borders.
Labourites are overwhelmingly ashamed to be British:
Members of the party don’t think Labour has an anti-Semitism problem. Most believe that idea is a creation of the press, or of Corbyn’s political enemies. There could be a reason for this: a majority of Labourites say that if Brexit goes ahead, the U.K. should do no trade deals with Israel (Russia fares considerably better), and, in a not unrelated finding, most Labourites are tolerant of terrorism. In fact, only 29% blame terrorism on terrorists:
It goes on and on. An overwhelming majority think a general strike would be a terrific way to bring down a Tory government. Any Tory government. And by 51% to 40%, Labour party members, in this survey, want the government to “take broader control of broadcast media.” Of course they do.
It is a frightening picture. Labour must never again be permitted to govern the U.K. One wonders, though, how different a comparable poll of American Democrats would be.
This is the kind of brew we found ourselves dealing with at our own election in May. I’m not so sure that Malcolm didn’t have pretty well the same attitudes. We in the West are at an ideological death’s door but we haven’t gone through, at least not yet.
And here I’ve just had my passport renewed
A perhaps culturally inappropriate post. I really shouldn’t make fun of Canadians.
And one for our American neighbours to the south, well to the south of Canada anyway.
With thanks to Powerline and Small Dead Animals.
War of words, so far
On one side: Iran warns of ‘all-out war’ if US retaliates in wake of Saudi oil facility bombings.
And then the other: Trump warns Iran of ‘severe’ defeat if military conflict broke out.
This is the real thing. The Americans, or at least the American President does not want war. But if the Iranians, along with the Deep State, insist, they will have one. And if they do, I expect it to be over in a week with a lot of damage but not very many civilian casualties. But I’d still rather not have a war. Two Clauswitz quotes come to mind:
“Kind-hearted people might of course think there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat the enemy without too much bloodshed, and might imagine this is the true goal of the art of war. Pleasant as it sounds, it is a fallacy that must be exposed: War is such a dangerous business that mistakes that come from kindness are the very worst.”
“Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult. The difficulties accumulate and end by producing a kind of friction. This tremendous friction is everywhere in contact with chance, and brings about effects that cannot be measured, just because they are largely due to chance. Moreover, every war is rich in unique episodes.”
The only way the Democrats can win the next election is if the US enters a war which then goes badly. That is why the Deep State has brought us to this point.
The children’s crusade
“In climate change, the left has found an emergency big enough to justify taking control of everything.”
I went along myself yesterday to the demo in Treasury Gardens, and truth to tell, I found it boring. It was so clearly a Marxist, anti-capitalist, pro-socialist network of the kind I had been part of in my long-ago youth, right down to:
What do we want?
Climate change action!
When do we want it?
Now!
Fifty years later, even the lines are the same although the issue is different. Except it’s all so new and exciting for these ignorant and uninformed students who have not an independent or educated thought in their heads – I’d like to see how they’re going in their maths and chemistry courses. Every statement from the podium was a cliche, so much so that within ten minutes the cheers simply evaporated and everyone just got to talking to the people they were with. No one any longer cared what the speakers had to say.
The point I was trying to make yesterday is that it is all very well to be speaking among ourselves on our side of the fence but useless if we cannot force these climate totalitarians to engage in a dialogue. The Conversation – in my view out of weakness and not strength – now seeks to shut down debate on climate change within its confines. There is, of course, nothing that these ignoramuses say that we are unaware of. They, on the other hand, are unaware of every bit of the counter-arguments that have been made on our side. They are certainly unaware of the massive evidence proving that they are almost certainly wrong. This, from Cut and Paste at The Oz yesterday, is typical of the attitude they have:
Climate warrior/worrier Tim Flannery confesses to failure, Guardian Australia website, Tuesday:
Each year the situation becomes more critical. In 2018, global emissions of greenhouse gases rose by 1.7 per cent, while the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere jumped by 3.5 parts per million — the largest ever observed increase. No climate report or warning, no political agreement nor technological innovation has altered the ever-upward trajectory of the pollution. This simple fact forces me to look back on my 20 years of climate activism as a colossal failure … My children, and those of many prominent polluters and climate denialists, will probably live to be part of that grim winnowing — a world that the Alan Joneses and Andrew Bolts of the world have laboured so hard to create … As I have become ever more furious at the polluters and denialists, I have come to understand they are threatening my children’s wellbeing as much as anyone who might seek to harm a child.
The dams are full and he mentions not a world. His failure was to be WRONG!!! And you know who is really “threatening my children’s wellbeing as much as anyone who might seek to harm a child”? And not just my children, but every one of those children all around the world who showed up to show off their ignorant concerns before returning to their comfortable, well-provisioned homes of first-world high consumption. Not only do these cruel and thoughtless airheads jeopardise their own futures, both economically and politically, but do so to an even greater extent for their counterparts in the less prosperous parts of the planet. My disgust at these people, especially for their adult leaders who corral these students into these ignorant jaunts in the park, is almost unbounded.
The question I wanted to raise in my post yesterday is to ask how we can make the climate people engage in dialogue so that everyone can hear both sides of the argument being presented at the same time with rebuttals and replies. How do we have a true Q&A? The ABC is filled with leftwing dolts who pander to their own side and ignore the other. You can have The Outsiders and Andrew Bolt who reflect our views, while also discussing both sides, but only viewed among ourselves.
The Conversation has turned into The Monologue. And they don’t care. Like all pseudo-academics of their kind, they already know the truth so do not have to discuss anything with anyone who disagrees. This decision ought to be seen as a great intellectual scandal, that a website designed for academics to discuss issues amongst themselves has shut down one half of the debate. They are the true terrorists, the actual fascists, the genuine Nazis. They are the people you read about in 1984.
I would say we cannot let them get away with it, except I don’t know what to do so that they do not get away with it. Really, what is to be done?
“Friends, mates and allies”
Scott Morrison arrives around 23 minutes in. Advance Australia Fair at around 27 minutes, with a 21(?)-gun salute. The Star Spangled Banner at around 29:00. Inspection of the Guard and then meeting the crowd, which PDT does appear to enjoy. Bugle, fife and drum band next in colonial uniforms. PDT begins speech at 38:30. The warmest speech you may ever hear a foreign leader give about Australia and our relationship. It’s the real thing.
Scott Morrison follows from around 45:00 in. Also the real thing. “Friends, mates and allies” was said by the President but it could have been said by either.
Law of Markets 