Leftism

Discovering Their Own Prejudice

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So, a white, Catholic, leftist, college student dresses as a Muslim woman in small-town Alabama to examine predjuces against Muslims. [h/t Instapundit] Instead she finds:
 

“I expected people to say, ‘What is this terrorist doing here? We don’t want your kind here,’ ” said Woldt, a 22-year-old blue-eyed Catholic, recalling her anticipation before stepping into a local barbecue joint. “I thought I wouldn’t even be served.”
 
Instead, Woldt’s experiment in social anthropology opened her own eyes. Apart from the initial glances reserved for any outsider who might venture through a small-town restaurant’s doors, her experience was a pleasant one.

What Woldt discovered was not the prejudices of the small-town, southern, white American but instead the prejudices and  stereotypes  of  contemporary  leftist  academia. Woldt expected to find prejudice not because she had already seen it but because her education indoctrinated her to expect it in others. This little incident opens a window on the insular, elitist and bigoted world of leftists in  contemporary  academia.  

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A Fanatic

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Winston Churchill famously wrote that a fanatic

is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject

I thought that as I read about the terrible fires sweeping through Australia. In an area north of Melbourne, fires have killed 100 people, per this BBC article.

The death toll from fires in southern Australia has reached at least 108, the worst in the country’s history

There are many reasons for these fires, including the fact that Australia is a very dry continent and that they have had a serious drought. But here is the most proximate cause from that same article

Arsonists responsible for lighting the fires could be charged with murder, police have said… The BBC’s Nick Bryant in Sydney said police suspect that in at least one case fires have been restarted by arsonists after being extinguished by firefighters

Thus not only are at least some of the fires being started by arsonists, but they are even being RESTARTED by arsonists after being extinguished.

So what is the response of the greens, when faced with a significant humanitarian tragedy (100+ dead, and many more seriously burned, not to mention the destruction of entire towns that have been burned to the ground with the associated destruction and dislocation), KNOWING that drought and arson were significant contributing factors?

The leader of the Green party, Bob Brown said summer fires would get worse unless Australia and other nations showed more leadership on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. “It’s a sobering reminder of the need for this nation and the whole world to act and put at a priority our need to tackle climate change,” he said.

That is the definition of a fanatic, tone deaf to the sensitivities of the dead, the reality of the situation, and unable to change the topic.

More Leftist Dual Models

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This post and the subsequent  discussion  at Reason demonstrate the behavior that I discussed in my Tale of Two Poverties post, i.e., leftists often advance two  contradictory  models of the same behavior depending on the argument they need to sell at any particular moment.  

In this case we see two instances of the behavior in the Obama’s advocacy of increased tobacco taxes, as described in the  article,  and then in the comments we see reliably leftist commenter “Joe” calling payroll taxes a regressive “tax”.

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A Tale of Two Poverties

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In course of a single conversation, a leftist will tell you  two opposing stories about the life of the poor in America. One minute they will tell that for a poor, unskilled, person of color, America is a cruel and oppressive place with so many structural impediments to success that no ordinary person can hope to better themselves without significant help from the government. Literally, the next minute, America is a boundless land of opportunity in which such a disadvantaged person can work their way up the income ladder with no special help from the government.

Why this tale of two poverties? Why is it the best of times and worst of times to be poor in America? Simple, when the conversation is about native-born poor, America as a land of opportunity is a cruel hoax which frustrates people’s dreams no matter how hard they struggle. When the conversation is about illegal immigration, America is obviously the land of opportunity for anyone no matter how poor they start out. This contradiction not only highlights the intellectual incoherence of leftism but also reveals the selfish motives that  drive leftists to make such fallacious arguments in the first place.  

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The Necessity of Torture

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So Obama has decided to keep rendition and the torture it implies as part of U.S. covert operations. Surprise, Surprise. Turns out that instead of being a sign of pure personal evil, at least threatening to torture spies and illegal  combatants  is a necessary tool for even the most “enlightened” individuals.  

Of course, anyone who spent any time actually studying the matter instead of trying to score rhetorical points out of selfish political motives knew that something like this is needed and as always has been.  

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