There’s a world out there

obama and ferguson

No charges to be laid so we will waste this place. Obama almost sounds like a real president. Everyone knew what was coming so a very brave decision. From Drudge:

Obama begs for calm as rioters set fires in Ferguson…
No indictments… Details…
‘Duty of grand jury to separate fact from fiction’…
Eyewitness told police Brown charged cop ‘like football player head down’…
Prosecutor: Democrat…
Michael Brown’s mother collapses outside station…
Looting…
Cars vandalized, gunshots… STATE SENATOR: THIS IS RACE WAR…
Suburb Enlists Private Security Contractors…
LIVE: STREET FEED… LIVE: KMOX RADIO…
POLICE SCANNER UPDATES…
Store Robbed by Brown Looted…
NYPD Commissioner Sprayed With Fake Blood…
FOXNEWS Reporter In Ferguson Attacked…
VIDEO: WATCH CUOMO CRY; CNN CREW SWEPT UP IN GAS…
MSNBC Anchor Chased Off Air By Gunfire…

UPDATE: A president who reaps what he sows. The photo will in many ways be his legacy. Every single outcome he said he wished to achieve are ashes, from peace internationally, domestic prosperity and improved race relations. He has consistently applied the presumptions of the left to every agenda and they have all gone deeply wrong. Other than being elected twice, I cannot think of a single success that may be associated with his years in office.

Ideologically eyeless in Gaza

We went to see the film, The Green Prince, last night at the Jewish International Film Festival. I have never been so stunned in my life. It was a Hamas propaganda piece tailored for Jews which became evident within the first sixty seconds and never let up for a moment. But what was the truly stunning part was the way in which the audience in general and the people we sat for coffee with afterwards, were so easily taken in by what ought to have been obvious beyond argument, that this was a film that in no way was friendly to the continuation of the state of Israel.

You don’t have to know much spycraft to understand the nature of double agents. To have the son of the leader of Hamas as one of your agents is quite a coup, but how do you know whether he is or isn’t, even when he does give you low grade information of some value? That is Espionage 101. You decide, which is more likely? That the son of the Hamas leader has a genuine desire to help Israel against his family, his nation and his religion, or that he found some gullible Israeli agent who swallowed his story whole. To help you think about it, you might find this article of some help: ‘Son of Hamas’ Denounced as a Phony: Pro-Israeli former terrorist Walid Shoebat accuses Mosab Hassan Yousef of duping the West. In the article, we find translations of what our Green Prince was saying to audiences in his own language:

Speaking on Al-Arabiya, Mosab said: “During my tours in universities and even churches, [I found] the real support for Israel stems from the church in the West. … We need to understand the difference between “revenge” and “resistance” and once the Palestinians do, we will have our victory against Israel. Israel is the problem and as an occupation it needs to end. … There are many ways to do this besides the cowardly explosive operations.”

He adds that he “suffered under all the problems of murder and the criminal operations that were carried out by the Israeli occupation against my people, my family, myself, and against humanity.”

When Mosab was being interviewed on Christian-Arabic television station Al Hayat, the presenter asked a caller what he would do if he were in Mosab’s position and could prevent dozens of school children from being killed by turning in a Hamas man to Israel. When the caller vacillated, Mosab spoke:

If I was in your shoes, you should not report it to Israel. I do not encourage anyone to give information to Israel or collaborate with Israel. If anyone hears me right now and they are in relation to Israeli security I advise them to work for the interest of their own people — number one — and do not work with the [Israeli] enemy against the interest of our people. They should collaborate with the Palestinian Authority only.

It really does make me furious how naive some people are. It is just as Shoebat says:

“Mosab is now touring churches to end Israel’s lifeline. Many Jews and Christians in the West are unable to determine friend from foe in the Mideast; they are not able to read what is said in Arabic. They must seek translations, and must be aware of double agents like Mosab.”

You would think they would at least have been a little jaundiced, not so easily taken in. But if a crude piece of propaganda is so invisible to most people – which I suppose why even now Obama is given the benefit of the doubt by so many who should fear him like the plague – the dangers for potential catastrophe merely multiply. My darkest suspicion, however, is that most people most of the time sympathise with their ideological enemies more than they know and can no longer even hear what is being said to them because they have actually joined the other side but do not know it themselves.

You can see why UKIP is starting to win seats

BEFORE . . .

white van

How insufferable these people are! This was the front page of The Age a couple of days ago: UK Tories slam Tony Abbott on climate policy.

The attitude of Prime Minister Tony Abbott to the global challenges of climate change is “eccentric”, “baffling” and “flat earther”, according to a group of senior British Conservatives.

The group, including Prime Minister David Cameron’s Minister for Energy and a former Thatcher Minister and chairman of the Conservative Party, says Mr Abbot’s position on climate change represents a betrayal of the fundamental ideals of Conservatism and those of his political heroine, Margaret Thatcher.

In a series of wide-ranging, separate interviews on UK climate change policy with The Age, they warn that Australia is taking enormous risks investing in coal and will come under increasing market and political pressure to play its part in the global battle against climate change.

I never read about such people without thinking they are intrinsically dull witted. To be taken in by such obvious flim flan is not a recommendation for someone in public life.

And then there’s Labour. The picture shows a white van in front of a house with the flag of St George all across the front. The flag is the flag of England; the white van is a common symbol of the working class English typically used in a snide sort of way. And it was posted by the Labour shadow attorney-general – who no longer is the shadow attorney-general – as an example of the idiocy she seemed to find in the English for loving England. The complete story:

A little background is needed here: In England, “White van man” is a contemptuous term for a delivery driver, who is seen as representative of the working class. Class hatreds are ferocious in England but are usually denied. The other thing you need to know is that the St George flag has become a common emblem for English patriotism and opposition to immigration. And the party expected to win the by-election (UKIP) is an anti-immigration pary, so the picture in effect said: “Only the despised working class vote for UKIP”. And for a Labour Party MP to show contempt for the workers is fatal. In only a matter of hours she had to resign from her front-bench job. She is a former barrister (Trial Lawyer), who sent her children to private schools — so it is highly probable that her tweet did indeed reflect snobbish views.

People are quite partial to their own countries, which carry their own traditions and history. Progressive internationalists of all parties may yet – I can only hope – find themselves up against a buzzsaw of opposition to the many attempts by our political elites to open our borders and sever these connections with our own past.

. . . AND AFTER

ukip rochester result

The trade off for political and economic freedom

How prophetic this really does look. From Aldous Huxley in 1946:

“Nor does the sexual promiscuity of Brave New World seem so very distant. There are already certain American cities in which the number of divorces is equal to the number of marriages. In a few years, no doubt, marriage licenses will be sold like dog licenses, good for a period of twelve months, with no law against changing dogs or keeping more than one animal at a time. As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends compensatingly to increase. And the dictator (unless he needs cannon fodder and families with which to colonize empty or conquered territories) will do well to encourage that freedom. In conjunction with the freedom to daydream under the influence of dope and movies and the radio, it will help to reconcile his subjects to the servitude which is their fate.”

Via Stacy McCain

Progressive internationalism and open borders

I wrote a post on January 7 this year, Progressive Internationalism in the modern world, which more or less tells you where we are at. Our global elites, from whatever gated communities they may happen to reside in, have decided that a world of open borders is the best hope for mankind and have been doing as much as possible for a very long time to achieve this end. Wars are caused by the existence of the nation state, they assume, and there has therefore been every effort made to break down our national borders. The most remarkable part about Obama’s decision to open the US border to any and all who might wish to come is the absence of genuine outrage. From this distance, I hardly notice a thing. The nation state is now the enemy of our elites, and if you live in one, you may be sure the efforts will remain relentless to break those borders down. Given the horrendous results of open borders across the first world, yet with no apparent ability for citizens to resist, I am not hopeful but I am not also yet in complete despair. Here then is the post I wrote in January.

The communist international was succeeded by what has been called Progressive Internationalism, a quasi-one-world government ideology that is almost as dangerous as the communist ideology it has succeeded. Here is a definition of sorts found in a review of a book by someone by name of Alan Dawley. The book was titled, Changing the World: American Progressives in War and Revolution and this is from the review:

Despite their diverse interests and affiliations, he argues, progressives were fundamentally driven by a hope that the promotion of social justice and revitalization of public life in the United States would form the core of an international campaign. ‘In a world knit together by far-flung markets and the international state system,’ Dawley explains, ‘progressives confronted social problems that crossed national boundaries, and their solutions did the same’. . . .

Taking a strongly anti-militarist and anti-imperialist stance, they argued that social justice was a prerequisite for peace at home and abroad. In the aftermath of wartime violations, the resolute defense of civil liberties soon became the ‘shining light of progressive politics’. Returning to a hardheaded analysis of corporate power, progressives renewed their focus on the working class and defined imperialism as ‘a structural component of American political economy, not an aberrant policy’. Seen most clearly in the third party campaigns of Robert La Follette and Henry Wallace, progressivism moved toward the left of the political spectrum. Never able to recover the political power it once held, progressivism would nevertheless persist in movements seeking to ‘address the wrongs of the capitalist market and the failures of the international system’.

That’s the theory. And if you would like to hear these very thoughts put into print just this week, here is an article by Conrad Black in The National Post dated 4 January 2014. The title is, “Conrad Black: What would Woodrow Wilson say?” This is a sample of what he thinks Woodrow Wilson would say:

Wilson was the greatest prophet of the Twentieth Century, in many ways surpassing and even presaging Gandhi and Mandela: He was the first person to inspire the masses of the world with the vision of enduring peace, and of the acceptance and imposition of international law and of postcolonial institutions indicative of the equal rights of all nationalities and the common interest of all peoples.

How’s that for utopian moonshine! Gandhi and Mandela are about as far as possible from my mind as standards by which I would like the world to run. And it was FDR, according to Black, who continued this progressive internationalist agenda:

It devolved upon a junior member of Wilson’s administration, Franklin D. Roosevelt, when he was president during the world war that Wilson sought to avoid, to revive the idea of a world organization, involve the opposing domestic political party fully in its creation, and have it in place even before that war ended in 1945.

FDR took the best of Wilson and of his chief rival, distant cousin (and uncle-in-law) Theodore Roosevelt, and united the latter’s ‘big stick’ with the former’s ‘new freedom.’ FDR was determined that the UN would not be reduced to a mere talking shop. He intended that it would serve to disguise in collegiality the fact that the United States, with half the world’s economic product and a monopoly on atomic weapons, effectively ruled the world, and would reassure his fractious and long-isolationist countrymen that the world was now a much safer place than it had been.

How weirdly wrong FDR was and how strange to see this vision being given such a positive review today when we know just how dangerous the UN has become. Black of course recognises that the hopes that had been vested in the United Nations have come to nothing, but this does not seem to have shaken him from his belief in a policy agenda through which Western civilisation is again placed under intense threat and may well this time succumb. I would be in a let’s-circle-the-wagons mode if it were at all possible. The following passage present our present reality, but here expressed by Black:

In 2013, the United Nations General Assembly elected China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, and Russia, countries that have no regard for human rights at all, as members of the UN Human Rights Council; selected Hezbollah (a designated terrorist organization) apologist Jean Ziegler as senior advisor to the Council; and elected Mauritania, a primitive country that tolerates slavery, as Council vice-chair. Meanwhile, Richard Falk, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, blamed the Boston Marathon bombing on ‘the American global domination project’ and ‘Tel Aviv.’ Of the UN General Assembly’s 25 resolutions condemning individual countries in 2013, all but four were against the exemplary democracy, Israel, which only seeks recognition of the basis on which the United Nations founded it: as a Jewish state and homeland for the Jewish people. The United Nations also elected the racist, terrorist-infested charnel house and Iranian proxy of Syria to its Special Committee on Decolonization; appointed Zimbabwe (a regime so odious it has been expelled from the Commonwealth, failing to clear an almost subterranean hurdle) to host its world tourism summit; and elected Iran president of its 2013 Conference on Disarmament, even as that country strove to put the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to the shredder.

In this world with these kinds of international agents playing such prominent roles, progressive internationalism is a form of self-destructive madness and cultural suicide. Who wouldn’t like to live in the kind of world these Progressive Internationalists imagine. But no one does because such a world is as utopian as your standard Marxist piece of rubbish, so why anyone would want to project this agenda knowing what we know is beyond me.

Open borders USA

The wrap up from The Daily Mail, ‘We’re not going to deport you’: Obama announces amnesty for millions of ‘anchor baby’ parents and illegal immigrant children – as long as they’ve been in US for five years. The headline points:

Obama addressed the nation to outline a new executive order that will allow millions of illegal immigrants to remain in the country

New plan has enraged Republicans who say he lacks the constitutional authority to pick and choose which to deport

Illegal immigrants can’t apply for months and no one who arrived after January 1, 2010 is eligible

President acknowledges that it’s a temporary fix and demands help from Congress to make it permanent

Anyone who takes advantage of the program will have to pass criminal and national security background checks, pay their taxes, pay a fee and prove their eligibility

Two Republican aides complained about an ‘amnesty’ for people who came to the US illegally and then had children here – calling their children ‘anchor babies’

And from Obama’s speech:

Now let’s be clear about what it isn’t,’ the president cautioned.

‘This deal does not apply to anyone who has come to this country recently. It does not apply to anyone who might come to America illegally in the future. It does not grant citizenship, or the right to stay here permanently, or offer the same benefits that citizens receive – only Congress can do that.’

‘All we’re saying is we’re not going to deport you.

To which Senator Jeff Sessions has replied:

President Obama’s executive amnesty will provide an estimated 5 million illegal immigrants with the exact benefits Congress rejected, in violation of federal law. His order will grant them social security numbers, government-issued ID’s, legal status and work permits. Illegal immigrants will now be able to take jobs and benefits directly from struggling Americans in a time of high unemployment and low wages. They will be able to take jobs from Americans in all occupations, ranging from truck drivers to power company workers to jobs with city government. Many illegal immigrants will also be able to obtain green cards and become permanent residents, allowing them access to almost all federal programs, to receive citizenship and sponsor foreign relatives to join them in the U.S.

In addition to providing formal amnesty benefits for 5 million illegal immigrants, President Obama has also eliminated virtually all enforcement with respect to the other nearly 7 million illegal immigrantsin the United States. As the president’s own former ICE Director, John Sandweg said: “if you are a run-of-the-mill immigrant here illegally, your odds of getting deported are close to zero.”

All you have to do is get into the country from anywhere on globe — whether through the border or by overstaying a visa — and you are free to remain, take jobs and receive benefits. This year alone, the White House has released into the United States more than 100,000 illegal immigrants who simply showed up at the border and demanded entry.

Seems like the way to run a bus station but not a nation state.

UPDATE: Iowahawk began with:

If he’s gonna pretend to make the law, we should pretend to obey it.

This is the subsequent twitter feed.

I just thought it was a long sleeved shirt

matt taylor pic

The funny thing is, I didn’t even notice the tattoos until they were mentioned by Boris Johnson. I’m sure you all know the back story by now:

Those politically-correct Earthlings who ensured Taylor was “bombarded across the Internet with a hurtling dustcloud of hate” should be ashamed of themselves, Johnson wrote. After all, Taylor may study heavenly bodies, but he is not a priest.

“He is a space scientist with a fine collection of tattoos, and if you are an extrovert space scientist, that is the kind of shirt that you are allowed to wear,” Johnson wrote.

Personally I think he should have worn a white shirt, narrow tie and a dark suit. You just can’t be too careful nowadays. He will obviously never work again after the controversy he caused.

This is the most productive time of my life

It doesn’t have to be this way for everyone but this is far and away the most productive part of my life and I see no reason that this might not go on for a while yet. What brings this to mind is an article on early retirement in academia. It is written by a woman who made the choice to opt for early retirement five years ago and believes that people who remain at their post are harming the prospects for the next generation of academics.

The inconvenient truth is that faculty who delay retirement harm students, who in most cases would benefit from being taught by someone younger than 70, even younger than 65. The salient point is not that younger professors are better pedagogues (sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t), but that they are more likely to be current in their fields and to bring that currency into their teaching.

Septuagenarian faculty members also cost colleges more than younger faculty—in the form of higher salaries, higher health-care costs, and higher employer-matched retirement contributions. Even if these costs pale in comparison to paying for bloated administrations, it’s wrong to pretend they don’t matter.

Worst of all, their presence stifles change. I’m not talking about mindless change for change’s sake, but the kind of change necessary to keep an institution thriving. A healthy university consists of departments with a balanced mix of new hires (full of energy, ambition, and fresh ideas), middle-aged faculty members at the height of their productivity, and older faculty with wisdom and a deep understanding of the evolving mission of their departments and universities. Disrupt that balance, and the foundation of an institution’s strength is undermined.

What she writes may be true in some cases but not in others. It is astonishing to me but I am amongst the leading anti-Keynesian economists in the world and am the world’s authority on Say’s Law. I also find myself, and this to my great surprise, amongst the leading scholars on the economics of John Stuart Mill, which has only taken place by accident. I still publish both books and articles and I run one of the most innovative classrooms you will find anywhere. Most importantly, I feel I am still in the conversation on the issues that matter to me, and that if I could not add my voice to the views of others, there would be something missing from out modern discussions on economic theory and policy. And it is precisely because so many disagree with what I have to say that makes my presence all the more valuable.

And being amongst economists, I am surrounded by people who are very good at mathematics but in my view have almost no idea how an economy works. The questions they ask and then answer in the articles many of them write seem trivial to me and the conclusions when they reach them of almost no value, as far as I can tell, for anyone who might need to make a decision about anything.

There may well be some faculty who hang on too long but the net result is that students are able to meet and learn from a range of people with different presuppositions about life and their own subject area. Once upon a time it was understood that scholars remained scholarly all their lives. Picking one example, that is only seen through her own eyes of someone who is past his use-by-date is just one more example of ageism, which as I get older I see more often for myself. Speaking personally, I hope to continue for a little while yet.