The Techniques of the Left

Our good friends on the political left do not have any facts or reason to back up their perverse policy prescriptions. If they had relied on facts or reason in the first place, they would never have come to such ridiculous ideas that have been shown time after time in the laboratory of the real world to be doomed to failure.

The left rely on two primary techniques to advance their agenda: (1) Telling outright lies about their opponents, and (2) Smearing their opponents with ad hominem arguments. They rarely if ever try to present any facts to try to refute their opponents, nor do they try to use reason. Thus, for example, when political opponents of president 0bama express opposition to his policies, such as the failed $800 billion 'stimulus', or the government health care takeover, they don't try to counter our arguments. Instead, they use the inconsequential fact that 0bama's father was African, in order to falsely accuse us of racism.

These techniques are used in the most glaringly obvious and pathetic manner in an essay by Johann Hari in Slate, about 1 1/2 years ago. I had never read the essay until today, nor had I ever heard of Mr. Hari. But no matter. I think I will derive a great deal of enjoyment in the future by citing his essays, of which he has written many. In this essay, he tells many falsehoods about and engages in a great deal of smearing of one of the most eloquent defenders of capitalism and individual freedom: Ayn Rand. The title of his essay: How Ayn Rand Became an American Icon:
The perverse allure of a damaged woman.

A few choice excerpts:

She opposed democracy on the grounds that "the masses"—her readers—were "lice" and "parasites" who scarcely deserved to live.

Johann puts the derogatory "the masses" (a marxist term) into quotation marks as if Rand actually used it in her writings. I am not aware of any instances of Rand using it. Likewise, I am not aware of her ever calling anyone 'lice' or 'parasites'.

Rand did not oppose democracy. I have never read any argument of hers against it, ever. Many on the left do not make a distinction between socialism and democracy. They contend that a nation cannot be democratic unless it has a government-controlled economy. And thus, since Rand opposes socialism, she must also be opposed to democracy. Some of the chattering classes of the left take this view to such extremes that they praise the dictatorship of the Castro brothers in Cuba as 'democratic'.

Johann has little or no understanding of free-market economics nor of Rand's advocacy thereof. In order to denigrate the book, he resorts to outright lies of what Rand has written. For example, in reference to a fictitious train crash dramatized in Atlas Shrugged, Johann says:

One of the strikers deliberately causes a train crash, and Rand makes it clear she thinks the murder victims deserved it, describing in horror how they all supported the higher taxes that made the attack necessary.

The train crash was not caused by any of the strikers, nor was it a murder. It was caused by an incompetent employee of the railroad who was following orders from political bosses who were using their influence to get special favors. The victims of the crash were not supporting higher taxes. Rand was dramatizing how the passengers on the train supported political policies that led to their undoing. There was no attack.

Her heroes are a cocktail of extreme self-love and extreme self-pity: They insist they need no one, yet they spend all their time fuming that the masses don't bow down before their manifest superiority.

Once again we get the marxist terminology falsely attributed to Rand. And Johann claims the heroes are 'fuming that the masses don't bow down'. I wonder if he bothered to read the oath the strikers in Atlas Shrugged took when they decided to withdraw from society:

I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine (Atlas Shrugged, p. 731).

Above all, Johann is baffled by the large number of people who find Rand's work to be informative and enlightening:

What I do find incomprehensible is that there are people—large numbers of people—who see her writing not as psychopathy but as philosophy, and urge us to follow her. Why? What in American culture did she drill into?

I can answer that question:

1. Rand has shown that the nihilistic, post-modern philosophical systems in vogue for most of the 20th century were the basis for perverse political-economic systems including socialism, nazism, and communism.

2. Rand provided an ethical defense of free enterprise and limited government, as opposed to the socialists who claim that capitalism is based merely on greediness and material comfort.

3. Rand hammered another nail into the coffin of of the long-refuted notion that socialism is in any way compatible with democracy.

Johann, if anyone is guilty of psychopathy, it is the political/economic ideas that you espouse and your methods for promoting them.

The leader of the National Socialist German Worker's Party's 122nd birthday is today. Just like 0bama, Pelosi, Reid, Frank, et al, Hitler believed in unlimited government power over people's lives. And if those in the USA got their way, the results would be similar to what happened in Nazi Germany.

A little known fact: Many leftists in the USA, UK, and France openly supported Nazi Germany up until June, 1941.

Lady Gaga released her new single Judas today. Check the Billboard Hot 100 next week. It will be at #1.

Those of you who keep predicting that the Gaga is just a flash in the pan had better get used to her. She will be cranking out hits for years to come.

David Evans: Climate Models Go Cold An Australian climatologist explains how the government gravy train has corrupted the science:

The debate about global warming has reached ridiculous proportions and is full of micro-thin half-truths and misunderstandings. I am a scientist who was on the carbon gravy train, understands the evidence, was once an alarmist, but am now a skeptic. Watching this issue unfold has been amusing but, lately, worrying. This issue is tearing society apart, making fools out of our politicians.

Let's set a few things straight. The whole idea that carbon dioxide is the main cause of the recent global warming is based on a guess that was proved false by empirical evidence during the 1990s. But the gravy train was too big, with too many jobs, industries, trading profits, political careers, and the possibility of world government and total control riding on the outcome. So rather than admit they were wrong, the governments, and their tame climate scientists, now outrageously maintain the fiction that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant.

Judas: 4-19-11

Elizabeth Taylor, circa 1956. Photo by Roddy McDowall of Planet of the Apes fame.

Thomas Sugrue: Leftist Moonbat of the Week

The left see a racist under every rock. It's the basis of their entire worldview and essential to the perpetuation of their perverse governmental policies. They can't argue with conservatives or libertarians over the basic principles of free enterprise and equal protection under the law. So they are always levelling false accusations of racism against those who disagree with them on any issue, whether the issue has anything to do with race or not.

Thomas Sugrue is a professor of history and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, a very prestigious institution. He has written an Op-Ed in the New York Times, lamenting racial segregation and white flight in Detroit and its suburbs:

When white Detroiters could not win by fighting, they fled to the suburbs. Indeed, for a half-century beginning in the 1950s, Detroit lost nearly half of its population, almost all whites. Those who left the city cited various reasons: desire for a little green space, new housing, better schools, freedom from crime. Few of them acknowledged the racial motive behind white flight, that words like “freedom from crime” were code for moving away from blacks.

In other words, when a white person doesn't like it when someone sticks a gun in their face, steals their car, or breaks into their home, they must be racist towards blacks. Now get a load of what Sugrue says about blacks who move out of Detroit:

What, then, accounts for blacks’ move to the suburbs in the last decade? Like whites, blacks have long looked for alternatives to Detroit, with its high crime, poor services and scarce job opportunities.

Sugrue's complete lack of any logic whatsoever staggers the mind. So are those blacks who moved out of Detroit to get away from crime also racist against blacks? The absurdity and hypocrisy that the left will stoop to in order to press their agenda have no limits.

This shows how low higher education has sunk. Sugrue has a PhD from Harvard University and is a tenured, full professor at the University of Pennsylvania, one of the leading research institutions in the world. Yet the basis of his research is immature race-baiting, totally unsupported by the facts.

Update: Professor Sugrue has told us by email that he is honoured.

0bama Considering the 'Mistress of Disaster' for FBI Director

One thing you can count on with His Holiness: He will always make the worst possible choice for all important federal appointments in his administration. He chose Eric Holder, a terrorist sympathizer, to be Attorney General. He chose Timothy Geithner, a tax evader, to be Secretary of the Treasury. And now, he's considering Jamie Gorelick to be director of the FBI! This is the same Jamie who:

1. As deputy Attorney General in the Clinton Administration, set up the 'wall' between the FBI and intelligence agencies that allowed Mohammed Atta and the other 18 9/11 terrorists to operate undetected while they planned to murder 3,000 on 9/11.

2. As vice-chairman of Fannie Mae from 1997 to 2003, earned over $26 million while causing it to invest in questionable mortgages and engage in fraudulent accounting. It has cost the US taxpayers hundreds of billions to bail out Fannie Mae and led to a massive recession which we have yet to climb out of.

3. Is currently representing Duke university in a lawsuit filed against it by the former lacrosse players who were falsely accused and expelled from the university for a rape that never happened.

Elizabeth Taylor: 1932 - 2011

Global Warming: The Lysenkoism of the 21st Century

Trofim Lysenko was a Soviet agronomist who espoused a Lamarckist theory of genetics: Adaptations of a living organism to their environment could be transmitted to their offspring. Thus, if the ancestors of today's giraffes stretched their necks in order to reach the food supply, this trait would then be passed on to their offspring.

The Lamarckist theories were contrary to the Mendelian genetics and Darwinian theories of evolution. Yet Lysenko succeeded in convincing Soviet dictators Stalin and Kruschev that his theories were correct. They sponsored his research and suppressed contradictory theories and the scientists who promoted them. Many of the dissenting scientists were fired from their jobs, arrested, imprisoned, and even executed.

Lysenko applied his genetic theories to Soviet agricultural practices and they were put into widespread practice throughout the Soviet bloc and in Maoist China. The results were disastrous. Agricultural output plummeted but the government-controlled press was constantly heralding the triumphs of Lysenko's methods!

In spite of the poor results and the mass famines that resulted from Lysenko, the methods continued to be used for several decades in the Soviet Union until 1965 when Kruschev was deposed and in China until 1976 when Mao died.

The entire episode reminds me of the global warming hoax. It is based on fraudulent science. There has been massive government sponsorship of the research of the climate-change alarmists, but little to none of the skeptics'. Many of the alarmists have advocated government sanctions or even arrest and imprisonment for skeptics. The leftist-dominated media have helped promote the fraud.

It may take time, but just like Lysenkoism, some day the global warming myth will be revealed to all as the fraud it is. And there will be hell to pay.

Best Description of 0bama I Have Ever Read

From Instapunk:

Until November 2012, we're just taking our lumps, the inevitable fallout of a truly wretched president who is as indecisive and ignorant of his responsibilities as he is supremely confident of his superiority to the people, the democratic process, and the complexities of the globe.

Ignore Sarah Palin Week

A leftwing group are trying to ignore Sarah Palin this week. If you wish to join them in ignoring her, you may sign their online petition here.

But it ain't gonna happen. The poor wretches on the left are too damn obsessed with Sarah to be successful. They have the same chance of ignoring her as I have of ignoring Lady Gaga.

Some Things Never Change

Remember how things were in 1980, just before Reagan was elected?

1. Turmoil in the middle east
2. High inflation
3. Surging oil prices
4. A Federal Reserve run by a Keynesian who didn't realize that his outdated ideas were debunked decades ago
5. Federal government run by Democrats who were spending, taxing, and regulating without limits
6. Stubbornly high unemployment
7. A generally pessimistic mood in the country. Many people thinking that the USA's best days were all in the past
8. A clueless president who thought that all we have to do is be nice to other countries and they will be nice to us too

The only thing we don't have today from the above list is high inflation, but that may change soon too --- for the worse.