Tag Archives: Leftism

News

Socialist Hugo Chavez begins to use his new dictatorial powers

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Are Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez very different?
Are Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez very different?

In Venezuela, Obama’s buddy Chavez is enjoying his new decree powers.

Excerpt:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez made his first use of new decree powers on Sunday to create a $2.3 billion fund for reconstruction after widespread flooding that left more than 130,000 people homeless.

The South American OPEC member nation’s socialist leader has infuriated opposition parties and been criticized as a dictator for assuming fast-track powers for the next 18 months that will enable him to rule by decree and bypass parliament.

Chavez has justified the measure as necessary to enable the government to respond to recent torrential rains that swept away houses, smashed bridges and roads, and also killed around 40 people in the nation of 29 million.

But critics say the president has cynically exploited the disaster as an excuse to outwit opposition parties who were due to take a larger share of seats — 40 percent — in the incoming National Assembly which convenes on January 5.

The problem with socialists is that they think that the people who actually make money will just keep on making money even though the government keeps confiscating a larger and larger share of it. Think about it. People on the left in academia, in government, or in the voluntary poor (single mothers, drug addicts) are basically subsisting by confiscating the wealth produced by others in business who have to start and run businesses or work in those businesses. They actually have contempt for people who take risks and take responsibility, because they think that those people are “stupid”.

What you have is one group of people with a tenuous grasp on reality who are acting as parasites on an increasingly over-taxed and over-regulated host. Eventually, the host gives up working – why work if you are constantly being abused by taxes and regulations? And that is why the policies of Obama and Chavez lead to catastrophes like North Korea and Zimbabwe. They don’t understand that their ability to spend money depends on the very people they hate the most, and understand the least.

I actually had one woman in academia recently telling me how she deserved to receive more money from businesses and workers to support her Ph.D studies in a non-engineering and non-scientific field. She also thought that the Comedy Channel was more reliable than Fox News. I produced two studies from UCLA and Harvard showing that Fox News was dead center in terms of news bias. I produced a survey showing that mainstream journalists donate almost exclusively to Democrats. She produced no evidence, but urged me to show more “critical thinking”. “Critical thinking” is the word that people on the left use to mean uncritical acceptance of whatever counter-factual assertions their inexperienced professors tell them about the world. They have to believe in these high-minded delusions – otherwise they cannot get research money, scholarships, or degrees. That is called “critical thinking”. And they want you to pay more to support them in their “critical thinking” so that they can have money to research how up is down, left is right, and hot is cold.

News

Department of Homeland Security to counter global warming threat

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From the Heritage Foundation think tank, my favorite think tank – but I also like the Family Research Council. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano just can’t speak in public without destroying any remaining confidence Americans have left in her agency. CNS News reports that at a conference devoted to “environmental justice”, Secretary Napolitano announced that the Department of Homeland Security would be creating the “Climate Change and Adaptation Task Force” to mitigate the affects of global warming on security and response operations. No…really.

According to CNS, Napolitano said the task force would examine: 1) “How will FEMA work with state and local partners to plan for increased flooding or wildfire or hurricane activity that is more serious than we’ve seen before?” 2) “What assistance can the Coast Guard bring to bear to assist remote villages in, for example, Alaska which already have been negatively affected by changes up in the Arctic?” 3) “How can we focus on how climate change is going to affect our rural citizenry including those who live along our borders both northern and southern?”, and 4) how will the Coast Guard or border services react to rising water levels.

[…]But let’s pretend that global warming does indeed pose an imminent national security threat, do the goals of this “task force” even make sense? No.

First, it’s built on the faulty premise that we are facing increased hurricane activity, flooding and wildfires due to global warming. Casual or not, the numbers simply don’t add up. In fact, we’ve had two consecutive hurricane seasons that were historically quiet. But again, pretending the premise is correct, wouldn’t the department be prepared for a greater-than-average number of response activities simply based on resource potential rather than adding some political cause to it all?

This alone proves that the intent of the “task force” is to make a silly political statement; otherwise Secretary Napolitano currently has her department vastly unprepared for no valid reason.

Secondly, the Coast Guard can already offer the specific assistance to Americans with which it is mandated. If our neighbors in the Arctic region are experiencing any of the issues that liberals attach to global warming — i.e. land loss, water-levels rising, extreme temperatures — what exactly would be the Coast Guard’s new mission? They perform rescue operations, but surely Napolitano doesn’t expect water levels to rise so fast that Alaskans can’t slowly back away?

[…]President Obama has also reallocated considerable resources at NASA, from its original mission of human exploration to global warming research. And other agencies like the Departments of Energy, Commerce and the EPA are also diverting considerable taxpayer dollars to fight global warming and increase economic burdens on our country while ignoring other urgent and pressing priorities. But the misplaced focus of DHS is particularly worrisome given its critical mandate.

Leftists have serious problems with the identification of evil as… evil. Instead, they’ll try to paint free-market conservatives and social conservatives as threats to national security, or point to scary weather as a threat to national security. They don’t dare deal with real threats from evil groups and individuals – that would make the evil people feel bad. And leftists don’t want evil people to feel bad. Leftists are committed to the notion of “moral equivalence” – that all groups that are deemed “evil” are actually equivalent morally to the groups that are “good”.

Polemics

How progressive academics make a living in the racism industry

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Better read this quick before it gets taken down. (H/T Blazing Cat Fur)

Excerpt:

It is well known that progressives have been able for decades now to exercise their control through domination of hiring committees and the imposition of politically correct speech codes designed to exterminate dissent. Dr. Li is not some isolated figure fighting for racial justice; he belongs to a department dedicated to teaching students to “think critically about the world around them” and “committed to link the aims of the discipline with the mission of the University of Saskatchewan”. Saskatchewan, like many universities in Canada, officially calls itself a “progressive university” committed to “employment equity” for women and visible minorities.

Of the 15 full-time faculty members teaching in Dr. Li’s department, eight are females, and three of the males, together with Dr. Li, are visible minorities of Asian origin. What is more, most of these members have research interests that touch on race, ethnicity, multiculturalism and social inequality. Among the many socialistic colleges, programs, and departments housed in Saskatchewan are: “Discrimination and Harassment Prevention,” “Family Medicine,” “Indian Teacher Education Program,” “Native Studies,” “Women’s and Gender Studies”.

A similar set of facts can be adduced for all the academics cited in this article. Jeffrey Reitz, who claims that white people tend to trivialize the experiences of minorities as unimportant, is director of ethnic and immigration studies at the University of Toronto, housed in a department in which the research and teaching areas are singularly left-oriented in character: “health and mental health,” “networks and community,” “gender and family,” “crime and socio-legal studies,” “immigration and ethnic relations,” “stratification, work, and labour markets.” Constance Backhouse, who wants universities to “take the lead” in dismantling the “mythology” that Canada is a “race-less” society, belongs to the faculty of law at the University of Ottawa, wherein the “Message from the Dean” states categorically and imperially that research and teaching are expected to be pursued “in a progressive atmosphere where issues of social justice are at the forefront of student and faculty concerns”.

This influence of progressives over our universities may explain why few of the specialists cite any solid evidence to substantiate their claims. Working within an audience of true believers, they have grown accustomed to soft-ball questions and easy endorsements. Pretty much all the “evidence” cited is anecdotal, based on “feelings”, and in no way the foundation for making a “systemic racism” allegation.

[…]The universities of Canada have worked like a gold mine for progressives. Many of the professors cited in the article have multiple research grants, contracts with government departments, awards for research and teaching, are fellows of the Royal Academy and, in at least one case, is a member of the Order of Canada. I could go on for pages citing their academic honours. University Affairs might have done its readers a greater service publishing an article entitled “The Racism Industry in Academia.”

One would think that after decades of widespread employment equity and the creation of entire departments and programs dedicated to the grievances and resentments of minorities and women, these academics would have some achievements to call for. Then again, why give up on what has been a most remunerative profession? Can these specialists do anything else? They don’t care much for Western high culture. Their research and teaching interests stand in direct opposition to the Greek discovery of rational argumentation, the Roman legacy in jurisprudence, the invention of polyphonic music in medieval France, the invention of linear perspective painting in Renaissance Italy, the invention of the novel in modern Europe, the calibration of uncertainty in Europe (1565-1657), the rise of Galilean and Newtonian science, and indeed the invention of Liberalism and Democracy.

What really matters for progressives is not equality of opportunity as a right but equality as a fact and equality as a result.

This is why I recommend that all subsidies from non-science/non-engineering areas of the university be CUT OFF – it’s too politicized right now, and they are just not interested in critical thinking and truth.