Listing Details
| ID: | 1048 |
| Title: | A Western Heart |
| URL: | http://awesternheart.blogspot.com/ |
| Category: | Society: Politics |
| Description: | International politics from a group of writers. |
| The Breivik salute - Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:07:00 +0000 |
 I did not immediately comment on this because I thought it would be obvious to everyone -- but apparently not. When Breivik last faced court over his massacre he gave a salute as he came into the courtroom. His lawyer, Geir Lippestad, said was 'some kind of Right-wing extremist greeting.' It was not, of course. It was a COMMUNIST salute. The Communist salute is a clenched-fist salute while the Fascist salute is with an open hand. What the significance is we can only speculate. While it is true that he mostly read and cited conservative sources in the buildup to his actions, that was rather inevitable given his dissatisfaction with Muslims. Only conservatives have the guts to call a spade a spade where Muslims are concerned. Breivik's other ideas could perfectly well be Leftist. And his desire to restore traditional Norwegian society is in keeping with that idea. Norway is a very Leftist place and it was only their failure to deal with the Muslim problem that caused the Social Democrats to lose votes in the last election. We may note, for example, that a doctor was recently denied employment at a Norwegian hospital because he did not believe in the Theory of Evolution. Seehere. Pretty extreme. That it was Leftists whom Breivik killed makes no odds. Rival Leftist groupings have a long history of killing one-another. The ice-pick in the head that Trotsky got from Stalin is a case in point.  |
| IQ, conservatism and racism - Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:06:00 +0000 |
On 22nd JanuaryI commented on claims by two Canadian psychologists to the effect that conservatives and racists have low IQs. One look at the study told me that it was brainless so I just reproducedthe journal abstractand pointed out two of the things that made it brainless. I didn't see any point in a detailed look at the paper. The study has however become much celebrated in Green/Left quarters, with the ineffableMonbiotin the vanguard. Monbiot's entry into the discussion has however energized a few ripostes from conservatives, with the most amusing point being that after Leftists telling us for decades that IQ scores are meaningless they suddenly have done an 180 degree turn and treat them as highly meaningful! I thought I might add something to what I regard as the two best conservative responses to the original article. The first is inThe Telegraphand makes a number of good points, all of which are worth reading. I want to say more about just one of them: The point that IQ was measured during childhood (10 or 11 years of age) and that such measures are unreliable. That is however a matter of degree and of purpose. They are accurate enough to be a useful guide to who will benefit from a selective (more demanding) education, for instance. An interesting aspect of scores at that age, however, is what I callthe chimpanzee effect. In brief, this effect is that dummies mature faster so a relatively high score in childhood can lead to a relatively low score in adulthood. So it is quite possible that the high scorers in the data used by the Canadian authors became relatively low scorers later on. So if the high scorers in that body of data were later found to be liberals, it is quite possible that the same people were dummies in later life! So the data could be said to show the opposite of what the authors claim. The data could be said to suggest that it was the liberals who were the dummies. That is all just speculation, however, The truth is that the data are incapable of telling us which way around it went at all. That little point is really just a bit of fun, however. The second article bystatistician Briggsis by far the most pointed. Briggs had a strong enough stomach to read the whole article. And when he did, he basically found that the authors had misrepresented their results. The correlations with IQ were in fact negligible. They were statistically significant but statistical significance is only a correction for small sample size and the sample sizes in the data used by the Canadians were large. So statistical significance is irrelevant. It is other forms of significance we have to look at. Let me put it this way: What the Canadians found was (roughly) that out of 100 high IQ people, 51 would be liberals and 49 would be conservatives. Such a near-even split means of course that IQ is essentially irrelevant to ideology, or is not a socially or scientifically significant predictor of ideology. Now we come to "racism". The correlations between conservatism and racism were more substantial. Briggs rightly detects the flaw in that. The correlation is between WHAT THE AUTHORS SAY is conservatism and racism and there is no external validation of either measure. So all I want to do is draw attention tosomething I set out long ago: That even eminent Leftist psychologists have NO IDEA what conservatism is. A much noted paper in the field even identified Stalin, Khrushchev and Castro as conservatives! Can you get any madder than that? So it is no wonder that when they use their questionnaires to predict how people will vote, they find that "conservatives" AS IDENTIFIED BY THEM are just as likely to vote Democrat as Republican (for instance). How clueless can you get? What is going on of course is that Leftist psychologists swallow hook line and sinker of Leftist propaganda about conservatives. They believe that conservatives really are as Leftist propaganda describes them. It would appear that they never bother to talk to any actual conservatives to find out what they really think. By contrast, I am a conservative so a questionnaire that I devised based on a thorough knowledge of what conservatism actually is, did what the Leftist questionnaires could not: Provided a substantial prediction of vote. Seehere. So once again the arrogance and ignorance of the Left has led them to a false understanding of reality and scientific work that is futile and useless. The work by the two Canadian authors certainly tells us NOTHING about the correlations with conservatism. I have written more extensivelyelsewhereabout the relationship between conservatism and IQ. For reference, the Canadian study is:"Bright Minds and Dark Attitudes: Lower Cognitive Ability Predicts Greater Prejudice Through Right-Wing Ideology and Low Intergroup Contact" by Gordon Hodson and Michael A. Busseri  |
| Fascist social workers in Austria too - Wed, 08 Feb 2012 05:50:00 +0000 |
But I guess they've had more practice in the "Ostmark des Deutschen Reichs" Social workers seize a baby after his GRANDmother failed to pay a TRAFFIC fine! A total abuse of power. Even hate-filled British social workers have not gone that far yet. Though give them time, I guess A mother has spoken of her struggle to be reunited with her baby after authorities seized him because the child's grandmother faced jail over an unpaid speeding fine. Social workers in Austria took one-year-old Jonas Leitner from Ann-Kathrin, two months ago, insisting she would not be able to cope if her mother, Heidi, 50, who helped with babysitting, was imprisoned over the £800 ticket. But authorities have still not reunited mother and son, despite the fact Heidi quickly paid off the debt. Distraught Ann-Kathrin, 18, now has even missed her child's first steps and understands he is with his second foster family, while social workers process the case. Ann-Kathrin said: 'When they took him into care we rushed to borrow the money from family and friends and paid off the fine. 'But they didn't bring him back. It's now been seven weeks and apparently he's already with the second foster family. I don't know why they changed from the first family.’ Social workers in Wels in the province of Upper Austria have refused to discuss the case. Spokesman Josef Gruber said the decision had not been taken lightly and that they were unable to comment on individual cases. The young mother has now got a lawyer, Ronald Gabl, who has made a request at court for the child to be handed back. He said: ‘Quite apart from the fact that the child was taken away because of the traffic offence, the question is how did social workers find out about the speeding ticket and was that a breach of data protection laws.’ Ann-Kathrin, who lives with the boy's father, Andreas, said they would have been able to manage even if her mother had gone to jail over the unpaid ticket. Gran Heidi said: ‘Of course a young mother needs support but they were managing fine. The youngster even has his own room. ‘When I realised it was a problem the fine was paid within two hours but it didn't seem to make any difference. ‘Now we're only allowed to see him once a week for an hour. The only exception was on his birthday on 26 January and we were allowed an extra hour. ‘It has had a devastating effect on my daughter- she missed her baby's first Christmas and his first tooth. Apparently he is also now walking.' SOURCE  |