Aug. 15, 2006: #1

Sacha's love letter: His father gave us the Charter of Rights. So what is Sacha Trudeau doing writing obsequious agitprop for a communist thug? , Jonathan Kay, Aug. 15, 06
www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/issuesideas/story.ht
ml?id=1fd67d79-e2da-4009-9eb0-5c2ca91a3b0a

[....] Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, this messianic propaganda style has survived in just two places -- North Korea and Cuba. Or so I thought, until I woke up on Sunday and spotted a museum-quality specimen devoted to Fidel Castro on the pages of the Toronto Star. Had I seen it in The Onion, I would have thought it a fine parody. But the persistently earnest author -- none other than Alexandre ("Sacha") Trudeau -- apparently meant every word.

[....] Throughout the 20th century, there were many other ideologues who preferred "reason, revolution and virtue" to the boring give-and-take of democratic politics and due process. Their ranks included not only murdering despots such as Lenin, Mao and Castro himself, but also starry-eyed fellow travellers and apologists such as Sartre, Fanon and Trudeau pere. Thankfully, the failure of the Soviet experiment has driven both tribes into history's dustbin.

Sacha is a rare exception. Yet from the casual way he throws out his nauseating obsequies, he doesn't appear to understand just how historically discredited his message has become. He is more than naive -- he is ignorant. [....]

Lengthy and worth reading.



Gunter Grass

Another public intellectual and moralist bites the dust.

A useful idiot -- re: Gunter Grass: Herr Conscience, Robert Fulford, Aug. 14, letter, Aug. 15, 06 by Allan MacRae, Calgary
www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/editorialsletters
/story.html?id=f2c3a647-bab2-4573-bebc-ce75fbba6636

[....] The basement bar of the Metropole Hotel in East Berlin was full of beautiful Stasi hookers -- readily available, but with the caveat that you could expect to be recorded on video, and be blackmailed later into purchasing shoddy East German equipment.

That Grass, who lived in West Germany, did not condemn this vile persecution of the East German populace, and indeed was an apologist for the East German regime, is unforgivable. There is a special place in hell for "useful idiots" like Gunter Grass, and some Canadian politicians like Stephen Lewis and Ed Broadbent may share that uncomfortable accommodation.

Fulford on Gunter Grass

Gunter Grass: Herr Conscience , Robert Fulford, Aug. 14, 06
www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/issuesideas/story.ht
ml?id=acbf04de-f593-49a9-8f7b-fc12be619603

[....] He's never hidden his membership in the Hitler Youth.

But the SS is another matter entirely. It carried out the most obscene crimes of the Nazis and marked forever anyone who belonged. [....]

The SS (it stands for Schutzstaffel, meaning "protective echelon") began as Hitler's private guard and turned into a national police force that ran concentration camps, murdered political opponents and aroused terror in every corner of Germany. It expanded to include the Waffen-SS, an elite combat force that won a reputation for unscrupulous ferocity. The Nuremberg war crimes tribunal declared the SS a criminal organization.

[....] Grass was no communist, but he looked benignly on communist East Germany and favoured appeasing the Soviets. He believed the U.S. started the Cold War. He was the kind of Western intellectual Lenin meant when he used the phrase "useful idiots."

There will be more details in Gunter Grass's autobiography, While Peeling the Onion, out in September. [Note below. Another source calls it "Peeling the Onion".]



Freedom of speech, the Left & John Ray

Stanley Kurtz: Message for the Belgian Government, The Corner, Aug. 14, 06
corner.nationalreview.com/post
/?q=MWYyMTZhN2EwMjRlMmE3ZTQ0NTVlOTFjNTAyNWRjYTM=

A number of us here in the United States have witnessed, with growing concern, reports of the government of Belgium's harassment of the weblog, "The Brussels Journal." We consider The Brussels Journal to be an invaluable source of information and opinion on matters European. By no means are all of us necessarily in agreement with everything that appears on The Brussels Journal. Nor are all of us by any means traditional Christians. Nonetheless, Americans recognize The Brussels Journal as one of the few web-based sources of European news and opinion from a conservative and Christian point of view, and we consider it essential that all sides of political and cultural questions be permitted a place in public debate. [....]

Search: Professor , expressions of racism

Check what John Jay Ray has written on leftists, racism and free speech, among other topics.



John Jay Ray has more than one homepage, list here.

MONOGRAPH on Leftism
jonjayray.tripod.com/leftism2.html

What appears below is an attempt to analyse most aspects of Leftist political thinking and display the psychological and sociological roots of such thinking in an historical context. Such a large subject requires a lot of pages but there is also a much briefer article giving just the basics of the theory here . See also my blog for daily updates to the story. Parts of the account given here have also appeared in . Front Page Magazine [....]

THE MOTIVATIONS OF POLITICAL LEFTISTS By John J. Ray (M.A.;Ph.D.)
University of New South Wales, Australia
Summary

It is now clear that Rightists are not opposed to change but that "Western" Leftists seek it eagerly -- so attitude to social change is the defining characteristic of the political Left rather than of the political Right. Rightism ("conservatism") and Leftism are not opposites or mirror images, however, so Rightists in general are neither for nor against change. The archetypal Leftist in the economically successful "Western" democracies (a "liberal" in contemporary North American terms) is a keen advocate of change not for its own sake but rather to fulfil his/her ego needs -- needs for self-advertisement, self-promotion, excitement, influence and ultimately power. And the prime source of power is the state, so Leftists love the state. Leftists/liberals do nonetheless dislike neo-liberal (pro-market) change because it threatens their access to power. The old Soviet system showed that, once they have gained power, Leftists suddenly become very opposed to change. Change is just an instrument they use to gain their ultimate goal of power. And why is power sought so single-mindedly? Why the single-minded egotism? At its deepest level, Leftism appears to be psychopathic -- with the psychopathic disregard for all norms, morals, standards and ethics in the ruthless quest for personal praise and satisfaction.

It is because of their quest for power that Leftists come into conflict with conservatives. History shows that what has always motivated conservatives is resistance to government power -- in particular government encroachment on individual rights and liberties. So conservatives may either favour or oppose change to promote that cause.

A description of the political attitude domain in terms of two dimensions rather than a single Left/Right dimension is rejected on both empirical and theoretical grounds. The pervasiveness and evolutionary origins of egotism and reality denial generally are also briefly considered.

(A short index to this monograph can be found Here
jonjayray.tripod.com/leftism2.html#1343

How enjoyable to read what Ray has written after a surfeit of the activists and social do-gooders of this world. Stephen Lewis and tribe, take note!

Dissecting Leftism -- "Most Leftists are haters hiding behind a mask of compassion. Unfortunately, the mask fools a lot of people... " , John Ray's blog out of Australia -- excerpts from two articles.
dissectleft.blogspot.com/

August 15, 2006
IRAN AS A NEW NAZI GERMANY

Top Leftist an ex-Nazi: "It's enough to make an old man cry. Just days before publication of his long-awaited autobiography entitled Peeling the Onion, Gunter Grass, bleeding-heart figurehead of the German Left, has confessed he was once a member of the Nazi SS. [....]

Two comments on that website:

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

August 14, 2006 [....]

BRITISH RETHINK ON IMMIGRATION? -- excerpt below

Sitting in his two- bedroom house just outside Bucharest, the Romanian capital, last week, Irinel Spatara, 42, was dreaming of a better life. He is one of the tens of thousands planning to travel to Britain when Romania and Bulgaria join the European Union.... However, it emerged yesterday that the ambitions of Spatara and others may be thwarted. John Reid, the home secretary, is said to be lobbying for possible restrictions on arrivals from the two countries seeking work. His rethink follows internal estimates by the government that 60,000-140,000 Romanians and Bulgarians could arrive in Britain in the first year after accession. A leaked government report warned last month of the increasing strain on schools, housing and the National Health Service.

Reid's move comes after one of the most significant changes in immigration policy since Labour came to power. After years of the government insisting that immigration was an unqualified good for the economy and there was "no obvious limit" to the numbers the country could hold, Reid suddenly announced last week that it was time for the country to discuss possible quotas. This has delighted the government's critics. They say previous attempts to encourage a "mature debate" about immigration levels have often been quashed with accusations of racism. [....]

More here

Ray's Homepages -- and there are several.