Category Archives: Politics on the left

The moral standards of the left

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As everyone understands, there are no actual moral standards on the left. There are moral standards observed by the conservative side of politics that can be used to discredit politicians on the right among voters on the right. On the left, however, power is all and what you do personally makes no difference at all. Watching the rise and rise of Hillary Clinton, along with Bill, would be beyond any measure difficult to understand if you thought honest and ethical behaviour actually mattered. Such behaviour simply could not happen on the conservative side of politics, not least because the left media would never let up on any of it.

So here is an interesting test case brought to us by Donna Laframboise: Will Rajendra Pachauri Be Held Accountable by Green Activists?, which comes with the subheading, “The environmental movement routinely demands accountability from third parties. When will it acknowledge the creepy sexual misconduct of one of its leaders?” The answer is obvious and the answer is never. Being on the left means you never have to say you’re sorry.

When a 74-year-old global thinker, leader, and statesman whose very name is synonymous with climate change and the environment is declared guilty of flagrant sexual harassment of a 29-year-old female subordinate, you’d think calls for him to be held accountable would be deafening. Particularly from folks in the ‘I demand accountability’ business.

But perhaps the green movement has missed the latest developments. Here, therefore, are some current headlines to bring it up to date:

India Today: TERI panel finds RK Pachauri guilty of sexually harassing colleague
Hans India: RK Pachauri guilty of sexual harassment, finds TERI panel
New Indian Express: TERI Declares Pachauri Guilty of Harassment
One India: TERI report finds RK Pachauri guilty of sexual harassment
Deccan Chronicle: TERI’s internal panel finds RK Pachauri guilty in sexual harassment case

There are no moral standards on the left. We on the right think sexual harassment is wrong so they use even fake examples against our representatives – Clarence Thomas for example. But when the real thing is proved beyond all possible measure of doubt – Bill Clinton and the Gap dress – they stand by their man. The kinds of none issues that were used against Mitt Romney – who drove from Boston to the Canadian border with his dog in a cage on the roof of a car – would be insane except for the fact that this is exactly what was used to alienate some votes from Republicans. When Obama admitted to actually eating dog, somehow this never seemed to matter.

I actually thought that Pachauri had been taken down by this scandal. That he is still there and continues to lead the IPCC with no demands that he step down truly is astounding. He had resigned as I had thought, so I will go back to Donna’s original point which is where is all the criticism from the green side of politics for such behaviour.

FURTHER COMMENT: When I look at the ethics of the left, I am of course looking at political morality and not personal, which can be quite different. The great moral monsters of the last hundred years or so have had socialism as the basis for their power. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot, and etc. Personal morality is something different but is a dangerous mix with the politics of the left. Gerard Henderson’s article today on Persecutors of Pell raises many an interesting point about how this issue is being used as a political weapon. I found this particularly interesting, mostly because I did not know any of it.

The ABC, under the direction of managing director and editor-in-chief Mark Scott, has been pursuing Pell for years. In 2013 Four Corners edited its Unholy Silence program to Pell’s disadvantage by cutting out a crucial comment where he explained his role in the Catholic Church in Australia. Scott, in private correspondence, subsequently supported this act of censorship. . . .

Meanwhile Scott, who joined the board of Knox Grammar School Council in late 2007 and became deputy chairman in mid-2013, has declined to answer several questions as to what he did, or did not do, with respect to auditing child sexual abuse at the school.

As evidence to the royal commission demonstrates, there was a nest of pederast teachers at Knox Grammar and offending continued up until at least 2003 and the issue did not become public until 2009, some time after Scott joined the board. As far as I am aware, Scott’s association with Knox Grammar has not been reported on the ABC. Of course, I’m not suggesting Spigelman or Scott are responsible for biased reporting, or that they in any way condone pederasts, just that they should have stepped in or made a public statement demanding balance and admonishing rogue clergy.

Who is really surprised that this has not happened? But more to the point, who is surprised that this is such a quiet issue, left unreported at the ABC? The left weaponises morality but is far from even-handed in how these moral judgements are applied.

[My thanks to TM for passing the story along]

Scott of the Aunt Arctic

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Aunt Arctic in the sense of the kind of welcome given to conservatives at the ABC. It seems that it has come to the attention of the MD of the ABC that there are people in the community who believe that Q&A has a bias towards the left. According to the story, therefore, ABC: Mark Scott to review Q&A amid left-bias claims. He must be worried that not even Malcolm will be able to get him that one-year extension to his contract as they look for a replacement. But for sheer obtuseness, it is hard to beat this:

Asked by Coalition senator James McGrath why Monday-night panel show Q&A consistently leans to the Left, Mr Scott said it was not the first time he had heard that “depiction” and agreed to conduct a survey or “sampling” of the topics discussed.

Mark, it’s not just Q&A and it’s not just the topics discussed. I wonder if he has ever heard that depiction about the whole of the ABC, although given the circles he seems to travel in, possibly not.

Joining a world where nobody thinks, nobody cares

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It’s the stupidity that really gets you in the end. This is the personal story of a young scholar who got fed up with her own side of politics and went looking to make friends among the conservatives at Cambridge. I don’t really want to spoil the surprise by telling you anything other than its title, How I tried to quit the liberal guilt machine and failed. But it is so picture perfect that it is almost a parody, except none of us could imagine a mindset like hers. This is how it starts:

Being a leftie is like being a Catholic, in that it’s a constant stream of neverending guilt. We’re expected to constantly atone for our privilege, which, like original sin, we can never be rid of. And we don’t even get the cool artwork. If you have otherwise normal liberal friends, every few weeks they’ll post something online akin to cult propaganda. It’s a combination of an assertion and a warning that anyone who disbelieves is, in their words, “not a decent human being”. This is fine when you agree with the party line completely, but that kind of conformity of thought is neither healthy nor desirable.

I didn’t used to mind when people bent the facts to promote their liberal opinions — as long as the message prevails!-, but after many years of anecdotal evidence, appeals to emotion, contempt of logic, I realized there was only so much zealotry I could tolerate. They sounded to me like mad evangelists who’d just had the realization that capitalism might be unfair. As an ambitious person, I felt like I was being held personally responsible for the problems of income inequality. And as someone who spent some time living in the USA, I was pretty tired of apologizing for Jeb Bush, the war in Iraq and gun ownership. The final straw was the slew of unfair criticism towards Silicon Valley, and the left’s lack of respect for and understanding of technology.

So I tried to quit the liberal guilt machine. I would make some new friends who would be conservatives. There was a whole world out there, I thought, where nobody thinks, nobody cares, everyone genuinely believes they deserve the good things they have in life. At this point came a problem; I didn’t know anyone conservative.

The rest is at the link.

Ann Coulter on the Decline and Fall of the United States

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adios america ann coulter

51% of those voting in America today will pretend not to know what she means. It is even possible they may not even actually know. The US is on its final lap and it is hard to see how it can survive as anything much better than a Venezuela, although it has a lot more capital left to run down. A decade from now it will be a wreck. The economic slide is of course more than evident, but the cultural and political decline is even more pronounced but is left unstated. When it becomes impossible to say the truth as you see it because a swarm of locusts will arrive to pick your personal status clean so that you never work again, no one says anything because there is no advantage for any individual to throw their future over the cliff on some suicide mission that can achieve absolutely no good at all.

These are quotes that are to be discussed as part of “What Would You Ask Ann Coulter?” with the questioner as likely to be as obtuse as any other left media presenter anywhere.

Here’s a look-back at some of her more…memorable quotes:

“It would be a much better country if women did not vote” May 2003, The Guardian

“I’m more of a man than any liberal” July 2007, to Bill O’Reilly on John Edwards

“Young people are idiots” March 2014, AnnCoulter.com

“Foreigners shouldn’t be allowed on American television” June 2014, discussing the World Cup

“Today’s immigrants aren’t coming here to breathe free, they’re coming to live for free” May 2015, ‘Adios, America‘

UPDATE: The interview with Ann is at the link.

What makes you think global warming types care about facts?

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alan moran climate change the facts

I am happy to find that the facts are with the sceptics, but I wouldn’t be all that sure that the politics are as well. Tim Blair wrote a brief note the other day on He Continues to Believe, the he being Chris Bowen and the belief being climate change. Here’s the core:

Evidently enjoying his time in opposition and wishing to extend it, Labor’s Chris Bowen revives the carbon tax:

We continue to believe firstly that climate change is real.

Secondly, that it’s caused by humankind and thirdly, the best way of dealing with it is a price on carbon.

We continue to believe that, and that will be reflected in our detailed policy that we announce and seek a mandate to implement.

Really, Chris? A mandate for the carbon tax? That’ll be a first. Of course, this is less about saving the planet than it is about saving inner-city Labor seats from metastasising Greens. Look for Labor in coming elections to form an alliance with the Arts Party. Whatever; here’s some timely news for Bowen on the sainted occasion of his carbon quest renewal:

Updated data from NASA satellite instruments reveal the Earth’s polar ice caps have not receded at all since the satellite instruments began measuring the ice caps in 1979. Since the end of 2012, moreover, total polar ice extent has largely remained above the post-1979 average. The updated data contradict one of the most frequently asserted global warming claims – that global warming is causing the polar ice caps to recede.

Whatever Chris does or does not believe – and he may be as sceptical as any of us – he knows where the votes are. The biggest mistake is to believe that carbon taxes and global warming hysteria is election poison. I watch the Coalition’s climate man in action, and no sceptic he. Facts on the left are mere confetti, to be tossed in the air when you have some and ignored when you don’t.

Media principles

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The great danger for Western civilisation is that the media have with honourable exceptions been captured by the left. The result is that:

1. The media never criticise parties of the left under any circumstances

2. The media find every possible fault they can with actions taken by or statements made by representatives of the parties of the right – or even by people who can be made to appear as representatives of the parties of the right

3. The media, as with the left in general, are beyond hypocrisy. There are no principles, only tactical advantage. The media, like the left, are totally consistent, bearing in mind they have no fixed values themselves but seek only power and wealth.

4. Deterioration in every aspect of life is allowed to take place without comment if someone on the left can be held responsible for the damage.

5. No one on the conservative side of politics is permitted to repair any damage caused by the left without intensive criticisms over the harm such repair is doing to particular individuals. Fairness is not based on any standard but only on who is making the change. If the change is made by a party of the right, it is be definition unfair and will be opposed to the fullest extent.

You will be arrested, you will be prosecuted and you will be jailed

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This is lifted straight from Tim Blair.

Labor’s Bill Shorten spoke at a press conference earlier today:

JOURNALIST: There were three Aussie jihadis trying to come home at the moment, should the Government be helping them to do that?

SHORTEN: Well first of all let me just state the principle that Australians shouldn’t be going overseas to fight in these causes or these battles. We’ll get an update about the national security and about what’s happened with these people reported in the media in the last couple of hours.

JOURNALIST: I guess our justice system is based on belief in rehabilitation and shouldn’t that apply to everybody?

SHORTEN: Well fundamentally we believe in rehabilitation, there’s the law of the land and we’ll seek a briefing from the Government.

JOURNALIST: What sort of punishment do you think though they should receive if they were to come home? A jail term?

SHORTEN: There are laws in place, I’m not going to play judge and jury and again we’ll ask the Government to update us with what’s happening with these matters that have just been coming through in the last couple of hours.

Contrast Shorten’s pathetic timidity with the Prime Minister’s more direct approach:

“We have seen with our own eyes on TV the mass executions, the beheadings, the crucifixions, the sexual slavery. This is a gruesome, ghastly, medieval barbarism which has erupted in the modern world. The last thing any Australian should do is join it.

“The Australian people expect their country to be safe and someone who has been a terrorist abroad could very easily become a terrorist here in Australia.

“If you go abroad to join a terrorist group and you seek to come back to Australia, you will be arrested, you will be prosecuted and jailed.”

And Shorten wonders why Labor’s poll advantage is eroding.

People who vote for the left are unconcerned with facts

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You would think that Hillary Clinton could not possible survive the revelations that have come out about her. But that would only be true if the kinds of people who vote for her were ever remotely concerned with facts and outcomes. How is this as demonstrating that she is a liar and that she has been playing everyone for fools. This is John Hinderaker on The Truth on Benghazi Slowly emerges:

The attack was planned ten or more days prior on approximately 01 September 2012. The intention was to attack the consulate and to kill as many Americans as possible to seek revenge for U.S. killing of Aboyahiye ((ALALIBY)) in Pakistan and in memorial of the 11 September 2001 atacks on the World Trade Center buildings.

Here is the test. What actual fact about Hillary Clinton could stop your typical Democrat LIV actually marking the ballot in her favour? What actual policy difference could get these same people to vote for a non-socialist? They are Raiders fans, and there is nothing more to say.

This one’s easy – was she right or was Cormann right?

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I don’t watch TV so I don’t have to put up with any of it. Helps me keep a perfect calm in the midst of life. But there’s the interview above, and here is her comment below:

Alberici said she doesn’t “understand the hoo-ha” about her post-budget interview with Finance Minister Mathias Cormann in which she accused the government of making up “nonsense” figures that “you continue to trot out”.

“I was just trying to bring facts to the table – that’s what we are supposed to do. I don’t think doing a challenging interview is biased. I think the opposite: we should be challenging everyone who is in front of us.”

The moment that matters is around 3:30. If she was right, then she has a point. If she was wrong, then she should apologise. In any case, she should be civil to a Minister of the Crown. Watching it for the first time, I have to say it was a perfectly normal interview and I thought Cormann answered everything as well as one could hope. But arguing about budget facts is unfair, since no one watching will know one way or the other.

But the question remains: who was right about the figures?

THE ANSWER: The answer that has most satisfied my curiosity was provided by Ray. A fine piece of investigative journalism, unlike the sort of common garden invective dished up by the ABC.

Cormann quoted a figure of $667 billion. Alberici said that was made up and the correct figure was $370 billion. However, the only reference to $370 billion I can find in PEFO is the projected face value of Commonwealth securities as at 2016-17. The $667 billion reference from Cormann relates to the projected face value of Commonwealth securities in 2023-24. Since PEFO contained no estimate for this out to 2023-24, Alberici has no basis to her claim that Cormann was wrong.

By the way if we really want to compare apples with apples, MYEFOs projection for the face value of Commonwealth securities in 2016-17 was $440 billion.

Irrational voting

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democrat birds

The cartoon makes the point I am not quite able to in words. What cannot be explained is this: that it makes no difference to a voter on the left that their own country might end up like Greece of Venezuela. Voting for the left is an emotion largely based on hatred and not hope because it cannot be in any way based on a rational desire for a better future.