That was 1974. Today the two in the middle with the flag and the matches represent something like half of the American population.
One of the top 100 moments in major league baseball history
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Category Archives: Philosophical and speculative
Hitler’s favourite religion
Hitler, like virtually all socialists, was an atheist. But religion did have its uses, with some religions more useful than others.
‘It’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion,” Hitler complained to his pet architect Albert Speer. “Why did it have to be Christianity, with its meekness and flabbiness?” Islam was a Männerreligion—a “religion of men”—and hygienic too. The “soldiers of Islam” received a warrior’s heaven, “a real earthly paradise” with “houris” and “wine flowing.” This, Hitler argued, was much more suited to the “Germanic temperament” than the “Jewish filth and priestly twaddle” of Christianity.
And how did it matter?
Muslims fought on both sides in World War II. But only Nazis and Islamists had a political-spiritual romance. Both groups hated Jews, Bolsheviks and liberal democracy. Both sought what Michel Foucault, praising the Iranian Revolution in 1979, would later call the spiritual-political “transfiguration of the world” by “combat.” The caliph, the Islamist Zaki Ali explained, was the “führer of the believers.” “Made by Jews, led by Jews—therewith Bolshevism is the natural enemy of Islam,” wrote Mahomed Sabry, a Berlin-based propagandist for the Muslim Brotherhood in “Islam, Judaism, Bolshevism,” a book that the Reich’s propaganda ministry recommended to journalists.
Moreover, the tentacles from the 1940s reach into the present and the likely future.
Haj Amin al-Husseini, the founder of Palestinian nationalism, is notorious for his efforts to persuade the Nazis to extend their genocide of the Jews to the Palestine Mandate. The Mufti met Hitler and Himmler in Berlin in 1941 and asked the Nazis to guarantee that when the Wehrmacht drove the British from Palestine, Germany would establish an Arab regime and assist in the “removal” of its Jews. Hitler replied that the Reich would not intervene in the Mufti’s kingdom, other than to pursue their shared goal: “the annihilation of Jewry living in Arab space.” The Mufti settled in Berlin, befriended Adolf Eichmann, and lobbied the governments of Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria to cancel a plan to transfer Jews to Palestine. Subsequently, some 400,000 Jews from these countries were sent to death camps. . . .
Fearing Muslim uprisings, the Allies did not try the Mufti as a war criminal; he died in Beirut in 1974, politically eclipsed by his young cousin, Mohammed Abdul Raouf al-Qudwa al-Husseini, better known as Yasser Arafat. Meanwhile, at Munich, the surviving SS volunteers, joined by refugees from the Soviet Union, formed postwar Germany’s first Islamic community, its leaders an ex-Wehrmacht imam and the erstwhile chief imam of the Eastern Muslim SS Division. In the 1950s, some of Munich’s Muslim ex-Nazis worked for the intelligence services of the U.S., tightening the “green belt against Communism.”
The most important lesson from history is how unpredictable it is. The likelihood that Christianity will be the dominant religion of Europe a century from now is already looking very unlikely and becoming less likely by the day.
An interview with Australia’s human rights commissioner – enough to make your skin crawl
Just the introduction to this interview with Jillian Triggs is enough to make the skin crawl:
After the government’s attempts to trash her reputation and to ignore most of the 16 recommendations in The Forgotten Children report, she’s just back from Geneva where the United Nations review of our human rights record found we’d regressed. Australia, the review found, continues to be in breach of its human rights obligations.
Triggs’ reputation has been self-trashing with no outside assistance required. The interview shows an astonishing level of arrogant ignorance, the basic setting for pretty well everyone on the left. It also shows a fantastic ignorance of the philosophy of Edmund Burke, who understood perfectly well in the 1790s the dangers in trying to implement some abstract set of human rights, which were part of his reflections on the Revolution in France. A bit from Burke, which she would have no comprehension of:
The foundation of government is . . . laid, not in imaginary rights of men, (which at best is a confusion of judicial with civil principles,) but in political convenience, and in human nature; either as that nature is universal, or as it is modified by local habits and social aptitudes.
Some highlights from the interview.
We’ve had, in my view, very poor leadership on this issue for the past 10 to 15 years, from the “children overboard” lie. They’ve been prepared to misstate the facts and conflate asylum-seeker issues with global terrorism. What I’m saying applies equally to Labor and Liberal and National parties. [Where are the Greens?] They’ve used this in bad faith to promote their own political opportunistic positions. . . .
I find myself saying pompous things like, “Please don’t break the rules here in the camp. If you do they declare you noncompliant and you end up staying longer or they are spiteful to you. Please be patient.” You can hear I’m not saying anything very comforting. The government has used the word unlawful [in relation to asylum seekers] and George Orwell understood the power of language very well. In the department you have a minister saying, “You will call these people ‘illegals’.” It’s shocking that Australia would come to that depth of abuse of power. . . .
A shocking phenomenon is Australians don’t even understand their own democratic system. They are quite content to have parliament be complicit with passing legislation to strengthen the powers of the executive and to exclude the courts. They have no idea of the separation of powers and the excessive overreach of executive government. . . .
“I must stay calm, I must keep my answers measured, moderate and evidence-based, I mustn’t be rattled by them and I mustn’t react with the same lack of courtesy that they show to me.” The reality was that they could suffer no harm from this, whereas if I gave the wrong answers, I could lose my case and I just had to keep control of myself. I knew we had the law right and the facts right. I knew that anger was under the surface. I knew I could have responded and destroyed them – I could have said, “You’ve asked me a question that demonstrated you have not read our statute. How dare you question what I do?” . . .
Some parliamentarians, and surprising ones, a Nationals MP, says “Come and give us a seminar.” Another one asked me to come up and work in parliament with the members of a particular committee that she was on. Terrific! But they listened to me and do you know, the response of some of them was, “Well, we had no idea Australia had signed up to these treaties. We should withdraw from them!”
I’ve just turned 70 and I’ve been doing this for a long time and I’m so confident about the law and about the evidence for the law not being respected that I feel very sure-footed in going forward on these other issues. My resilience and determination and experience for a long time in the law give me the determination to get through the remaining 15 months to continue to speak out. When you see that you are being bullied by people who you know are not coming from a good place, you know you don’t have to give in to them. They are cowards and the moment you stand up to them they crumble, and they did crumble. And several now have been seen off long before me. They’re not used to a woman aged 70 standing up to them. They can’t quite believe it. If I were 40 looking for a career opportunity, I probably wouldn’t do what I’ve done because it would have queered the pitch for me professionally. But why do I care now? I can do what I’m trained to do and they almost can’t touch me. And I’ll continue to do that work when I’ve finished with this position.
The whole interview is a reminder of how lacking in balance these people are. Read the whole thing. Quite a revelation in the mindset of the left.
America today has the lowest ratio of education to years of schooling in history
A kind of before and after. This is the before: Bernie is my comrade
And this is the after still to come to the US but a genuine model of a Bernie future: Yellow Water, Dirty Air, Power Outages: Venezuela Hits a New Low
The only thing one learns from history is that no one ever learns from history.
Mantoux and his criticisms of Keynes
The issue of Keynes’s complicity on the road leading to World War II has been raised in another post. So I have now added my own contribution.
At this stage, there is no point discussing the rights and wrongs of the Treaty of Versailles. But there is no doubt that Keynes’s The Economic Consequences of the Peace was one of those Al Gore-type treatises of incontrovertible truth that brought out into the open a particular variety of criticism. The book was, as you would expect, a non-starter in France but a runaway best seller in Germany. It helped solidify grievances inside Germany that did help foster World War II but how far you can go is impossible to say, although I would say it was close to none at all. On how much Keynes mattered, the book that has had lasting significance was an attack on Keynes by the French economist, Etienne Mantoux, in his Carthaginian Peace: the Economic Consequences of Mr. Keynes, which you can download here. Mantoux had also published a trenchant attack on The General Theory right after its publication, whose English translation can be found in Henry Hazlitt’s The Critics of Keynesian Economics.
What is indisputable is that The Carthaginian Peace made Keynes an international superstar so that by the time he published The General Theory in 1936 he was far and away the most famous economist in the world. Without the first book, the second book would likely have been a nine-day wonder, about as influential as any of the other Depression-era texts written at the time.”>a post that has brought my name into the issue.
The greatest moral challenge of our time
It’s all excellent, but the best part may be where one of those scientifically-ignoramus politicians sneers at the speaker for being a philosopher. Her answer is quite instructive as well: “try running for the Senate on your platform”. That is her philosophy and it has nothing to do with what is right or moral. Just what sells.
Who has to read when you already know everything?
A fascinating story with the title, University students are struggling to read entire books. Books are so slow motion, and require such concentration, why should anyone be surprised? But there were two bits at the end that addd to the pleasure of the story. First, there was this from someone who was described as “chair of Universities UK’s mental well-being working group”:
“I think most students do thoroughly enjoy the challenge of reading,” said Ms Francis. “I remember having to read Derrida and thinking I’d lost the plot – but these materials are supposed to be engaging and difficult.”
Yes, lost the plot, but more to the point how distorted a worldview must ultimately arrive if you finally think you have unscrambled Derrida. In fact, it leads very nicely into the very last quote in the article:
Lizzy Kelly, a history student at Sheffield added: “Students might be more inclined to read what academics want them to if our curricula weren’t overwhelmingly white, male and indicative of a society and structures we fundamentally disagree with because they don’t work for us.”
Our future leaders. She already knows at 19 what is best. A history student, yet, with no sense of history. Why she even needs to go to a university is beyond me.
Depravity is now part of the curriculum
From Andrew Bolt which has the lead in, “The Andrews Government is mad, you know”. It’s about an article from The Oz today which I saw but skipped over. It is no longer safe to skip a thing if you are going to keep up with each new step into depravity. This is the story, Year 8 kids to study sex ads under ‘domestic violence’ curriculum, and I will just repeat the same quote from Andrew:
Students as young as 12 will study sexualised personal ads and write their own advertisements seeking the “perfect partner’’ as part of a new school curriculum supposed to combat family violence.
The classroom material includes an example ad from a “lustful, sexually generous’’ person seeking “sexy freak out with similarly intentioned woman’’.
Another ad — to be analysed by Year 8 students aged 12 and 13 — is from a “30-year-old blonde bombshell, wild and sexy, living in the fast lane’’.
“Can you keep up?’’ it asks.
A third example cites a “hot gay gal 19yo’’ who is seeking an “outgoing fem 18-25 into nature, sport and night-life for friendship and relationship’’.
Children are instructed to “write your own personal ad for the perfect partner’’.
The Building Respectful Relationships material, which is meant to prevent family violence, is replacing religious education lessons during class time in Victorian state schools this year. The Andrews Labor government yesterday announced it would spend $21.8 million over the next two years to expand the program to kindergarten and primary schools as part of its $572m package to combat family violence. The funding will target 120 “lighthouse schools’’ and train thousands of teachers, and up to 4000 childcare workers, to teach the respectful relationships program.
Are there really people in our departments of education who think this makes sense? Our students may need a safe space at school after all, but unfortunately, they may need it to keep themselves safe from their teachers.
Susie Kates
I thought this was exactly right:
The secret — and don’t worry, I’m not disclosing anything the feminists haven’t already figured out — is monogamous pair-bonding. Each man has to find exactly one woman and close the deal. Happily ever after, ’til death do you part, the whole package.
You don’t know it when you are young, specially in the way the world is now structured, where the sexual wilderness looks like a continuous adventure. But that is the true happiness, if you can find it.
Susie Kates, my one true love.
AND NOW LET ME ADD THIS: Written by a woman so don’t blame me: What Women Really Want Is The Patriarchy. Lots to choose from so you should read it all, but I will restrict myself to this:
As much as stuff is nice, many women still crave a stable, mutual, satiating romantic relationship with an assertive, authentic, direct man. This is normal. . . .
Women can have careers, be independent, strong, and happy, but if they want to do all this and attract the kind of man they really crave, they need to throw out the hallmarks of feminism that claim their male peers are domineering, stupid, misogynist authoritarians who will make their lives miserable. If anything, the opposite is true. The direct, honest, responsible, hard-working man many a woman desires can be just the type she’ll find, once she ditches the ideology that told her she didn’t need that to be happy in the first place.
Just remember, she wrote this and not me. I am merely an innocent bystander reporting while you decide. Found at Instapundit if you are looking for who to blame where, so it says in the comments, that this article has been banned on Facebook. I wonder why and who did it?
Self interest – nothing quite like it for clearing the mind
From Millennials Like Socialism — Until They Get Jobs.
A Reason-Rupe poll found that while millennials still on their parents’ health-insurance policies supported the idea of paying higher premiums to help cover the uninsured (57 percent), support flipped among millennials paying for their own health insurance with 59 percent opposed to higher premiums.
When tax rates are not explicit, millennials say they’d prefer larger government offering more services (54 percent) to smaller government offering fewer services (43 percent). However when larger government offering more services is described as requiring high taxes, support flips and 57 percent of millennials opt for smaller government with fewer services and low taxes, while 41 percent prefer large government.
Law of Markets 