Jonah Goldberg and his Critics

Here's a reply from Jonah Goldberg, author of Liberal Fascism, in the wake of some negative reviews of his book.

I posted a glowing review of this book on ILSA, and it really cannot be emphasised enough what an insightful and important piece of work it is.

All emphases in bold are mine.


Obama’s Playbook, in Paperback
Liberal Fascism and its critics

JONAH GOLDBERG

In the greatest hoax of modern history, Russia’s ruling ‘socialist workers party,’ the Communists, established them selves as the polar opposites of their two socialist clones, the National Socialist German Workers Party (quicknamed ‘the Nazis’) and Italy’s Marxist-inspired Fascisti, by branding both as ‘the fascists,’” writes Tom Wolfe. “This spin of all spins,” he says, has played “havoc” upon Western political discourse ever since. I’m fond of that insight not only because I agree with it, or because it is from a blurb for my book Liberal Fascism, which has just come out in paperback (with a new afterword on Barack Obama, who fits so seamlessly into my thesis that he reminds me of the replacement shark in Jaws II). I repeat Wolfe’s pithy summation of the knot I tried to cut because it helps explain the liberal response to the book.

The initial reaction — or pre-reaction, since Liberal Fascism was attacked several years before it came out — was simply to declare its thesis so absurd that no serious person should bother to crack its spine. The “spin of all spins” had solidified into conventional wisdom among mainstream liberals, and questioning it amounted to secular heresy.

Some liberals tried to debunk the book more systematically, but for the most part they just confirmed that the “spin of all spins” was exactly that. Consider University of Texas historian David Oshinsky’s review for the New York Times. He began by quickly summarizing the main points of my argument: The Left uses the term “fascist” to demonize its enemies; fascism was a left-wing phenomenon; Mussolini was a socialist; American Progressivism was disturbingly fascistic, and FDR’s New Deal had fascistic elements as well. Only when he reached this last point did Oshinsky offer a clear dissent, writing, “Goldberg is less convincing here because he can’t get a handle on Roosevelt’s admittedly elusive personality.” Well, okay. But I don’t get to Roosevelt for more than 130 pages, at which point I’ve already overturned the liberal applecart. It was a remarkable concession.

A more thorough effort — and an omnibus of left-wing desperation — appeared in The New Republic, from journalist Michael Tomasky. He too assured readers that they didn’t need to bother with “one of the most tedious and inane — and ultimately self-negating — books” he’d ever read. But then he picked up a new argument, which subsequently became popular with critics on the left: We knew all this before. Tomasky insisted, for instance, that “we all understand that Mussolini showed little to no interest in oppressing Jews until quite late in his career.” Everyone was already well aware, Tomasky wrote, that Wilson was a would-be fascist and that “the Nazi program was in some respects a left-wing program. . . . It was not called National Socialism for nothing.” Liberals should be congratulated for keeping all of this so tightly under wraps for so long.



Tomasky also compared apples to apples to prove that one of them was an orange. Guffawing at my argument that Hitler was a “Man of the Left,” he observed that one of the first things Hitler did was crack down on independent labor unions. True enough, the Nazis rolled them up into the German Labor Front (DAF — from its German name, “Deutsche Arbeitsfront”). The Nazis defended the DAF by arguing that it gave labor a seat at the table of government (a frequent demand from progressives to this day, and one satisfied, in part, by an outcome not all that dissimilar to the DAF: the UAW’s joint ownership, with the U.S. government, of GM). Whether that defense was true is a worthy debate topic, but either way Tomasky’s example does not serve his critique. After all, how did independent labor unions fare under Stalin? Mao? Castro? Are these men also not of the Left?

Sociologist Michael Mann, reviewing Liberal Fascism in the Washington Post, wrote, “What really distinguished fascists from other mainstream movements of the time were proud, ‘principled’ — as they saw it — violence and authoritarianism.” If you say so. But again: How opposed to violence and authoritarianism were Messrs. Stalin, Mao, and Castro? Time and again liberals take an aspect of Nazism and say, “This proves Nazism was right-wing.” On almost every count — genocide, racism, discrimination, suppression of free speech, militarism — the most famously left-wing regimes in history have acted in identical fashion. But the actions of those regimes are deemed irrelevant, whereas the actions of Nazis are taken as proof of the right-wing nature of Nazism.

Which invites the most basic question: Since when is violence, or racism, or authoritarianism, inherently right-wing — particularly in the sense of the Anglo-American Right? Tomasky, Mann, and the rest prove the continuing truth of George Orwell’s observation in 1946 that fascism had come to mean “anything not desirable.”

Other critics argued that, while it’s true there were progressive aspects of fascism, there are no fascistic aspects of progressivism. Here is Mann again: “[Goldberg] is right to note that fascist party programs contained active social welfare policies to be implemented through a corporatist state, so there were indeed overlaps with Progressives and with New Dealers. But so, too, were there overlaps with the world’s Social Democrats and Christian Democrats, as well as with the British Conservative Party from Harold Macmillan in the 1930s to Prime Minister Ted Heath in the 1970s, and even with the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations. Are they all to earn the f-word?”

Yes and no. One of the book’s main points, stated again and again, is that fascism was not some obscure outlier among ideologies. It was mainstream, and part of the general fad for collectivism and statism. That a bipartisan political class looked favorably on fascism in the 1920s, and that from the 1930s onward the establishment advocated statist and corporatist policies that resembled fascist ones in significant ways, are hardly claims I dispute. These and similar claims are precisely what I try to demonstrate (which is why I included a chapter called “We’re All Fascists Now,” and offered a lengthy critique of George W. Bush and compassionate conservatism). My purpose was not to make an ad hominem, “f-word” attack (although one might excuse liberals for thinking that’s what I was up to, so accustomed are they to using the word “fascism” as a cudgel).

The point is rather that we’ve been taught to be ever vigilant about fascism, yet we’ve defined the word in a way that makes us expect the threat from the wrong direction. That’s why I didn’t write a book about “statism,” as some libertarian critics have claimed: Debunking the bogeyman of “right-wing fascism” is the book’s central idea. And it’s rather startling that the Left, which has argued for so long that economics is the fons et origo of all political morality, simply does not care that fascist economics and progressive economics overlap considerably, while fascism and the free market are at opposite ends of the political spectrum.

This myopia stems, I believe, from the “team” nature of leftism. For too many on the left, intellectual history is a story not of ideas, but of allegiances and coalitions. That’s why the Left has come to believe that Communism and Nazism were opposites when in fact they were rivals. Ever since Stalin issued his “theory of social fascism,” “fascism” has meant “traitor to the cause” or “heretic” more than it has been a substantive description of anyone’s ideology. Trotsky became a “fascist” not because he changed his mind about Bolshevism but because he was deemed disloyal to Stalin.

Father Coughlin was, in the words of the liberal Catholic intellectual Fr. John Ryan, “on the side of the angels” when he supported the New Deal as “Christ’s Deal.” He was anathematized as a fascist and right-winger only after he broke with FDR — despite the fact that he attacked FDR from the left. Those who actually subscribed to modern conservative ideas during this period did not admire or support fascism. For instance, Albert Jay Nock, the John the Baptist of modern conservatism, was consistently opposed to all variants of statism, whatever their “trade names.”

If you see intellectual history as a history of ideas, things are much clearer. Suppose one had to give a Martian a field guide to 20th-century Earthling ideology. I would broadly define “left-wing” as statist, collectivist, egalitarian (within a defined group, be it based on class, race, or nationality), enamored of the Romantic spiritualization of the political, and hostile to tradition, religious orthodoxy, natural rights, and Lockean individualism. I would define “right-wing,” particularly within the Anglo-American tradition, as pro-market, favoring limited government, respectful of religion and tradition, and protective of the individual and his rights. By any remotely similar definition, fascism belongs on the left — and, to date, not a single critic of the book has even come close to rebutting this basic point.

Tomasky, besotted with the team mentality, simply equated liberalism with the good guys. It is thus axiomatic that liberals cannot have anything to do with fascism, because “fascist” is the team name for the bad guys. He wrote: “However much or little Goldberg knows about fascism, he knows next to nothing about liberalism. Anybody familiar with Liberalism 101 grasps that there is something deep within liberalism, from its earliest beginnings, that prevents it from degenerating into fascism, and that is its explicit recognition that the state must serve both common purposes and individual liberty.” He added that whenever the pursuit of common purposes “crosses the line into coercion, well, that is where liberals — I mean liberals who know something about liberalism — get off the train, and do their noncoercive best to derail it.” Never mind that contemporary liberalism is shot through with coercion; this abracadabra definition exonerates it of every coercive thing government has ever done.

Diehard fans of left-wing ideology might like this stuff, but it is not for intellectuals who presumably have graduated from Liberalism 101. It does, however, reveal one reason liberals are blind to their mistakes, as well as to their tendency to airily dismiss concerns about the expansion of government power when they are in charge.

Which brings us to today. Barack Obama, benefiting from a cult of personality and a sacralized conception of his movement and of politics generally (“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for”), is expanding the role of the state at breakneck pace. During the campaign, he pledged his indebtedness to the very Progressives who are in the crosshairs of my book, and his wife insisted that her husband would fix our broken souls and make us work. His administration boasted that it would exploit the financial crisis as best it could.

And it has. In little more than 100 days, Obama has nationalized banks and the auto industry (admittedly with some help from George W. Bush) and abrogated contracts, and he is now pursuing nationalized health care and a takeover of the student-loan business (the better to force young people to “volunteer”). Nancy Pelosi, meanwhile, insists that global warming demands that “every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory.” None of this amounts to jackboots smashing a face, but neither does it fall entirely short of coercion. And so far, liberals show no interest in derailing the Obama train. They’re too busy stoking its furnace.

More on Privilege

The subject of white privilege has been raising it's head some more lately, and there's been something about the issue I haven't quite been able to put my finger.

And then, while reading this re-posted article on another blog it struck me.

The article raises the subject of 'white male' privilege and tackles the subject from that perspective, but I realised that what was nagging me was that therein lie two entirely separate issues.

Male privilege is something real and tangible and manifests itself in the so-called "glass ceiling", and the suspicion, however idiotic, that a successful woman must have used her feminine wiles to get where she is (the view of South African upstart Julius Malema regarding Western Cape premier Helen Zille springs to mind). But I don't intend to intrude on feminist territory here.

You see, while from a British perspective Male Privilege is something worth discussing under the heading of 'Equal Opportunity', White Privilege, at least in Britain, is not. And the reason is as follows:

Of course white people will be priviliged in white countries.

And black people are privileged in black countries. If you don't believe me, go to South Africa.

What is wrong, or in need of correction, about a certain people being privileged in a country that they themselves designed?

Someone who is of the majority will always been considered 'normal' in a way that outsiders aren't and can never be. And that is the case in every nation on earth.

White countries, largely being liberal democracies, however, have gone some way toward being inclusive to minorities in a way that most of the world's nations have not. Under capitalism, that great leveller, it is entirely possible to succeed in spite of being a minority, as thousands of members of minority groups can attest.

White privilege may exist in Europe and America, but the opportunities for non-whites are, in fact, great.

White privilege should also imply that, say, a Polish immigrant in Britain has rights and opportunities in line with white Britons compared to, say, Nigerians. Is this the case?
Well, not really. Both are largely treated the same by native British people, illustrating that to be native is to be 'in the club' and to not, is not.

The real privilege gap is between those who play by the rules of Western society and those who don't. And this is learnt behaviour, as many West Indians and Asians who live in Britain know. Many have assimilated completely, while still retaining what cultural distinctiveness they want, and are recogniseably British.

So what is really lacking in people who believe White, Male Privilege is such an evil thing, even in modern Britain, is a healthy dose of perspective. People who have a tradition of behaving a certain way in a certain context are going to do better in societies that value those traditions and ways of doing things. Period.

Trying to play rugby on a soccer field is just going to get you sent off!

This is from the Boston Globe from way back in 2007 but has its origins in sociologist Robert Putnam's discovery that all is not well in the Multicult.

I've added a question mark to the title, because it seems to me that "diversity" has more down-sides than up, at least for the native population. Sure, diversity is great if you are one of the diverse, having moved from a third world hellhole to a modern European state, but if you are from the European country, what is the benefit of having your city and neighbourhood transformed, other than having a greater variety of restaurants to choose from?

If you read tourist brochure about any part of London you will likely read about how "diverse" the area is. This statement will be followed by a description of all the types of foods you can buy, and how many exotic carpets are for sale at the market.

But we have had exotic products for thousands of years. Anyone familiar with the archaeology of the British Isles can tell you that artefacts including glass beads and trinkets have made their way to the region from the Mediterranean and beyond since man first learned to trade shiny things. This is nothing new! And importing objects and importing people are two entirely different things, although human traffickers may beg to differ.

I sit here genuinely and sincerely asking the question, what has diversity done for us?

I am hoping someone can tell me because I will gladly listen. When you strip away the fawning and cooing over the subject, there is very little substance to the Multicult argument, leaving me to conclude that the liberal love of diversity is a lot less of the "look at diversity - see how great it is! let's all have some of that!" and a lot more of the "well it's here now so we better look like we're enjoying it."

The love of diversity is an attempt to lock the stable door after the horse has bolted. Media reports on Ireland's new annual diversity love-in "Africa Day" found little to say about the contributions of Africans to Irish society beyond "adding colour" which must be a little insulting to say the least.

Economic Argument for Immigration

One economic argument goes along the lines that unskllled immigrants work for less, and so we benefit from their willingness to take low-paid jobs. Well, there is a lot wrong with this argument.

Firstly, we wouldn't "need" extra labour if we weren't paying our own citizens not to work!

Secondly, would we mind paying 2p extra for a loaf of bread -for those are the sort of margins we're talking about- to know it was produced using properly-paid labour? We'll pay a lot extra for "fair-trade" coffee but not for goods fairly produced in our own country? British employers and food producers could begin their own "fair trade" label. And that's a serious suggestion, and would help to combat exploitation of cheap labour.

Thirdly, these immigrants are not working for 50 pence a day. Their living costs are the same as yours and mine, and at best they are working marginally under the minimum wage to undercut local labour.

Fourthly, this is not the "free sale of labour" that a Classical Liberal such as myself would happily advocate. Illegal immigrants are by definition compelled to work for such wages through fear of deportation. There is nothing 'free' about it.


Maybe this missed the point somewhat, for Immigration and Diversity are not the same thing. Many immigrants (even illegal ones such as the great Ayn Rand) adapt to their host society and contribute greatly. Diversity is the opposite of this adaptation, because it implies that the immigrants should maintain their difference and not assimilate. how does this benefit them?

Many immigrants own their own businesses, and in doing so often employ only family members and compatriots, often for free or at illegally low wages. How is this a good thing? These businesses compete unfairly with those that pay their employees properly, thus rewarding bad behaviour.

So, people, what is the upside of diversity?

The downside of diversity

A Harvard political scientist finds that diversity hurts civic life. What happens when a liberal scholar unearths an inconvenient truth?

(Illustration/ Keith Negley)

By Michael Jonas | August 5, 2007

IT HAS BECOME increasingly popular to speak of racial and ethnic diversity as a civic strength. From multicultural festivals to pronouncements from political leaders, the message is the same: our differences make us stronger.

But a massive new study, based on detailed interviews of nearly 30,000 people across America, has concluded just the opposite. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam -- famous for "Bowling Alone," his 2000 book on declining civic engagement -- has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.

"The extent of the effect is shocking," says Scott Page, a University of Michigan political scientist.

The study comes at a time when the future of the American melting pot is the focus of intense political debate, from immigration to race-based admissions to schools, and it poses challenges to advocates on all sides of the issues. The study is already being cited by some conservatives as proof of the harm large-scale immigration causes to the nation's social fabric. But with demographic trends already pushing the nation inexorably toward greater diversity, the real question may yet lie ahead: how to handle the unsettling social changes that Putnam's research predicts.

"We can't ignore the findings," says Ali Noorani, executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition. "The big question we have to ask ourselves is, what do we do about it; what are the next steps?"

The study is part of a fascinating new portrait of diversity emerging from recent scholarship. Diversity, it shows, makes us uncomfortable -- but discomfort, it turns out, isn't always a bad thing. Unease with differences helps explain why teams of engineers from different cultures may be ideally suited to solve a vexing problem. Culture clashes can produce a dynamic give-and-take, generating a solution that may have eluded a group of people with more similar backgrounds and approaches. At the same time, though, Putnam's work adds to a growing body of research indicating that more diverse populations seem to extend themselves less on behalf of collective needs and goals.

His findings on the downsides of diversity have also posed a challenge for Putnam, a liberal academic whose own values put him squarely in the pro-diversity camp. Suddenly finding himself the bearer of bad news, Putnam has struggled with how to present his work. He gathered the initial raw data in 2000 and issued a press release the following year outlining the results. He then spent several years testing other possible explanations.

When he finally published a detailed scholarly analysis in June in the journal Scandinavian Political Studies, he faced criticism for straying from data into advocacy. His paper argues strongly that the negative effects of diversity can be remedied, and says history suggests that ethnic diversity may eventually fade as a sharp line of social demarcation.

"Having aligned himself with the central planners intent on sustaining such social engineering, Putnam concludes the facts with a stern pep talk," wrote conservative commentator Ilana Mercer, in a recent Orange County Register op-ed titled "Greater diversity equals more misery."

Putnam has long staked out ground as both a researcher and a civic player, someone willing to describe social problems and then have a hand in addressing them. He says social science should be "simultaneously rigorous and relevant," meeting high research standards while also "speaking to concerns of our fellow citizens." But on a topic as charged as ethnicity and race, Putnam worries that many people hear only what they want to.

"It would be unfortunate if a politically correct progressivism were to deny the reality of the challenge to social solidarity posed by diversity," he writes in the new report. "It would be equally unfortunate if an ahistorical and ethnocentric conservatism were to deny that addressing that challenge is both feasible and desirable."

. . .

Putnam is the nation's premier guru of civic engagement. After studying civic life in Italy in the 1970s and 1980s, Putnam turned his attention to the US, publishing an influential journal article on civic engagement in 1995 that he expanded five years later into the best-selling "Bowling Alone." The book sounded a national wake-up call on what Putnam called a sharp drop in civic connections among Americans. It won him audiences with presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and made him one of the country's best known social scientists.

Putnam claims the US has experienced a pronounced decline in "social capital," a term he helped popularize. Social capital refers to the social networks -- whether friendships or religious congregations or neighborhood associations -- that he says are key indicators of civic well-being. When social capital is high, says Putnam, communities are better places to live. Neighborhoods are safer; people are healthier; and more citizens vote.

The results of his new study come from a survey Putnam directed among residents in 41 US communities, including Boston. Residents were sorted into the four principal categories used by the US Census: black, white, Hispanic, and Asian. They were asked how much they trusted their neighbors and those of each racial category, and questioned about a long list of civic attitudes and practices, including their views on local government, their involvement in community projects, and their friendships. What emerged in more diverse communities was a bleak picture of civic desolation, affecting everything from political engagement to the state of social ties.

Putnam knew he had provocative findings on his hands. He worried about coming under some of the same liberal attacks that greeted Daniel Patrick Moynihan's landmark 1965 report on the social costs associated with the breakdown of the black family. There is always the risk of being pilloried as the bearer of "an inconvenient truth," says Putnam.

After releasing the initial results in 2001, Putnam says he spent time "kicking the tires really hard" to be sure the study had it right. Putnam realized, for instance, that more diverse communities tended to be larger, have greater income ranges, higher crime rates, and more mobility among their residents -- all factors that could depress social capital independent of any impact ethnic diversity might have.

"People would say, 'I bet you forgot about X,'" Putnam says of the string of suggestions from colleagues. "There were 20 or 30 X's."

But even after statistically taking them all into account, the connection remained strong: Higher diversity meant lower social capital. In his findings, Putnam writes that those in more diverse communities tend to "distrust their neighbors, regardless of the color of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television."

"People living in ethnically diverse settings appear to 'hunker down' -- that is, to pull in like a turtle," Putnam writes.

In documenting that hunkering down, Putnam challenged the two dominant schools of thought on ethnic and racial diversity, the "contact" theory and the "conflict" theory. Under the contact theory, more time spent with those of other backgrounds leads to greater understanding and harmony between groups. Under the conflict theory, that proximity produces tension and discord.

Putnam's findings reject both theories. In more diverse communities, he says, there were neither great bonds formed across group lines nor heightened ethnic tensions, but a general civic malaise. And in perhaps the most surprising result of all, levels of trust were not only lower between groups in more diverse settings, but even among members of the same group.

"Diversity, at least in the short run," he writes, "seems to bring out the turtle in all of us."

The overall findings may be jarring during a time when it's become commonplace to sing the praises of diverse communities, but researchers in the field say they shouldn't be.

"It's an important addition to a growing body of evidence on the challenges created by diversity," says Harvard economist Edward Glaeser.

In a recent study, Glaeser and colleague Alberto Alesina demonstrated that roughly half the difference in social welfare spending between the US and Europe -- Europe spends far more -- can be attributed to the greater ethnic diversity of the US population. Glaeser says lower national social welfare spending in the US is a "macro" version of the decreased civic engagement Putnam found in more diverse communities within the country.

Economists Matthew Kahn of UCLA and Dora Costa of MIT reviewed 15 recent studies in a 2003 paper, all of which linked diversity with lower levels of social capital. Greater ethnic diversity was linked, for example, to lower school funding, census response rates, and trust in others. Kahn and Costa's own research documented higher desertion rates in the Civil War among Union Army soldiers serving in companies whose soldiers varied more by age, occupation, and birthplace.

Birds of different feathers may sometimes flock together, but they are also less likely to look out for one another. "Everyone is a little self-conscious that this is not politically correct stuff," says Kahn.

. . .

So how to explain New York, London, Rio de Janiero, Los Angeles -- the great melting-pot cities that drive the world's creative and financial economies?

The image of civic lassitude dragging down more diverse communities is at odds with the vigor often associated with urban centers, where ethnic diversity is greatest. It turns out there is a flip side to the discomfort diversity can cause. If ethnic diversity, at least in the short run, is a liability for social connectedness, a parallel line of emerging research suggests it can be a big asset when it comes to driving productivity and innovation. In high-skill workplace settings, says Scott Page, the University of Michigan political scientist, the different ways of thinking among people from different cultures can be a boon.

"Because they see the world and think about the world differently than you, that's challenging," says Page, author of "The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies." "But by hanging out with people different than you, you're likely to get more insights. Diverse teams tend to be more productive."

In other words, those in more diverse communities may do more bowling alone, but the creative tensions unleashed by those differences in the workplace may vault those same places to the cutting edge of the economy and of creative culture.

Page calls it the "diversity paradox." He thinks the contrasting positive and negative effects of diversity can coexist in communities, but "there's got to be a limit." If civic engagement falls off too far, he says, it's easy to imagine the positive effects of diversity beginning to wane as well. "That's what's unsettling about his findings," Page says of Putnam's new work.

Meanwhile, by drawing a portrait of civic engagement in which more homogeneous communities seem much healthier, some of Putnam's worst fears about how his results could be used have been realized. A stream of conservative commentary has begun -- from places like the Manhattan Institute and "The American Conservative" -- highlighting the harm the study suggests will come from large-scale immigration. But Putnam says he's also received hundreds of complimentary emails laced with bigoted language. "It certainly is not pleasant when David Duke's website hails me as the guy who found out racism is good," he says.

In the final quarter of his paper, Putnam puts the diversity challenge in a broader context by describing how social identity can change over time. Experience shows that social divisions can eventually give way to "more encompassing identities" that create a "new, more capacious sense of 'we,'" he writes.

Growing up in the 1950s in a small Midwestern town, Putnam knew the religion of virtually every member of his high school graduating class because, he says, such information was crucial to the question of "who was a possible mate or date." The importance of marrying within one's faith, he says, has largely faded since then, at least among many mainline Protestants, Catholics, and Jews.

While acknowledging that racial and ethnic divisions may prove more stubborn, Putnam argues that such examples bode well for the long-term prospects for social capital in a multiethnic America.

In his paper, Putnam cites the work done by Page and others, and uses it to help frame his conclusion that increasing diversity in America is not only inevitable, but ultimately valuable and enriching. As for smoothing over the divisions that hinder civic engagement, Putnam argues that Americans can help that process along through targeted efforts. He suggests expanding support for English-language instruction and investing in community centers and other places that allow for "meaningful interaction across ethnic lines."

Some critics have found his prescriptions underwhelming. And in offering ideas for mitigating his findings, Putnam has drawn scorn for stepping out of the role of dispassionate researcher. "You're just supposed to tell your peers what you found," says John Leo, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. "I don't expect academics to fret about these matters."

But fretting about the state of American civic health is exactly what Putnam has spent more than a decade doing. While continuing to research questions involving social capital, he has directed the Saguaro Seminar, a project he started at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government that promotes efforts throughout the country to increase civic connections in communities.

"Social scientists are both scientists and citizens," says Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College, who sees nothing wrong in Putnam's efforts to affect some of the phenomena he studies.

Wolfe says what is unusual is that Putnam has published findings as a social scientist that are not the ones he would have wished for as a civic leader. There are plenty of social scientists, says Wolfe, who never produce research results at odds with their own worldview.

"The problem too often," says Wolfe, "is people are never uncomfortable about their findings."

Michael Jonas is acting editor of CommonWealth magazine, published by MassINC, a nonpartisan public-policy think tank in Boston

Norway's Elections Exhibit Country's Stupid Electoral System

Norway's parliamentary elections in September saw the return of the so-called Red-Green coalition of three parties, even though the opposition received more votes.

Even I don't understand their system, but Google it if you want the details. The ruling coalition ended up with 86 seats, where 85 was needed for a majority.

The big news, however, was that Norway's Fremskrittspartiet or Progress Party won over 600,000 votes, or 22.9% of the popular vote. The anti-immigration party has largely ridden the wave of public disgust at immigration numbers in Norway, which has reached a situation where 10% of the population are foreign born.

10 Per Cent. And most of the new arrivals are from such peaceful, prosperous nations as Afghanistan, Iraq, Eritrea and Somalia. Needless to say, rape statistics and "domestic violence" i.e. Honour Killings have skyrocketed. The FrP's popularity stood at 30% in March this year. Voters, it seems, have short memories.


However, what takes the biscuit in this election is that a centre- right coalition was ruled out early on by two centrist parties, the Christian Democrats (KrF) and the Liberals (Venstre), effectively condemning the country to more left wing nonsense.

The Conservatives took 462,000 votes (17.2%), giving the Right 71 seats, or 7 more than Labour.

The Socialist Left (SV) and Centre Party won the day, however, although less than 13% of voters supported them. They've gone back in government with Labour thanks to the indecisiveness of the KrP and Venstre.

Quisling's ghost is alive and well in Norway.

Thanks too, to an electoral system that gives three parties a majority of seats with only 47.8% of the popular vote!

Brit Teens Reveal Their Greatest Heroes

from the Guardian.

Martin Luther King, Moses and Simon Cowell are three of our all-time greatest leaders, according to today's teenagers. England footballer John Terry, Gurkha champion Joanna Lumley and business guru Lord Sugar also made the top 10. X Factor judge Cowell won the same percentage of the vote as Mother Teresa and Henry VIII, in the survey commissioned by the Prince's Trust. Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela came in the top three with King. According to the survey, 70% of teenagers say they are more likely be inspired by someone they know than by a celebrity.

MOSES???

Notice that MLK, Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela are actually the top three, although the prose attempts to hide this fact.

Bear in mind too that these kids come from the land of Winston Churchill, Admiral Nelson, and the Duke of Wellington (ok he was Irish but you get my meaning). Modern historiography emphasises the failings and failures of our former heroes with the result that we now eschew our greatest and best in favour of celebrities. Are we that horrified by our past?

On the other hand, it is good to see Joanna Lumley and Alan Sugar on the list, because it shows that, in spite of what adults think, teenagers do occasionally glance up from their Playstations and crack pipes to examine the issues of the day.

Lest I collapse into despair, I am forced to interpret the results as follows. Nearly all black and Asian teens surveyed picked one of the top three (on the assumption that they have fewer options as role models), whereas the majority white kids were more selective and had a more diverse range of candidates to choose from, thus diluting the results.

World's Most Offensive Product on Sale Now.

Mohammed Meatmaster Condoms

Have a Porking Good Time

Sadly, this author cannot review the product until it becomes available in XXXL. Watch this space!

German Rap Music from the 80s. - Die Da

I'd forgotten how terrible, and yet brilliant, this song is!

Free Hijabs For All!

I had an interesting discussion with a female ex-Muslim friend of mine in Cape Town a while back. She told me that according to Islam, while the head must be covered, it is optional to cover up the whole face. Indeed, if the lady in question believes her features will be a temptation to men, she can decide to cover up for the good of society, rather like this devout young women shown here.
I found this explanation interesting, and laughed off the idea until I realised its implications. The theory goes that Muslim men must isolate themselves from tempting and delicious fantasies by covering up their women; thereby making it the woman's problem. Indeed, her fault.

The assumption is that Muslim men are so lacking in restraint, so unable to defer their gratification, that the mere sight of a woman's face is enough to cause chaos, nay, to tear asunder the very fabric of society.

And then I realised that IT'S TRUE.

The statistics are frightening. Sweden is now the rape capital of Europe and it's mostly down to our good East-facing friends in the Islamic community. When they aren't throwing their wives out of windows, they're picking on the local female population, who have done nothing more than live under a government that likes to import these savages.

So while the Swedish government is happily paying for these desert rats to hack off their sons' foreskins, the Swedes may consider investing in universal hijab provision for all women. Just in case.

Why Sweden is F*cked

Here's a face to remember; Mona Sahlin, leader of Sweden's Social Democrats. Part of an interview with her is reproduced at Gates of Vienna, and I've posted it here because it illustrates the kind of loopy thinking that has turned Sweden into a multicultural, er, paradise.

She wants to let in air and freedom into the people’s home.

Seldom has a Social Democrat leader been so challenged as Mona Sahlin. In twelve days she will lead the party congress that will pave the way for a red-green [a social democrat, green, and former communist conglomeration of parties] victory in 2010. Where is the vision?

“I want to paint the people’s home in the colors of the rainbow,” she says in an interview with Sydsvenskan. [see how that worked out for South Africa]

The first thing I ask Mona Sahlin, when we settle down in her shocking pink sofa is her feelings for the expression people’s home [folkhem, a.k.a. welfare state].

“I love that expression,” she says.

“It expresses that if a family feels uncomfortable it affects the whole family. We need each other. There are no darlings or stepchildren,” explains Mona Sahlin. [but there are barbaric, raping cousins]

In an interview in Sydsvenskan last summer the editorial writer Katrine Kielos of Aftonbladet accused the Social Democrat party leadership of being stuck in the people’s home nostalgia and of talking to people as if they were stupid.

“My vision of the people’s home is certainly not nostalgia, but the desire to change things,” says Mona Sahlin.

“The whole idea of the deliberation we carried out in the party was saying ‘come on, we must look ahead’. Because the people’s home is in need of modernization.

Normative Multiplicity“I want to repaint the house and rearrange the garden to get more freedom and air. Knock out partition walls. The old people’s home has become rather stuffy.” [That's what Hitler said when he planned to extend his livingroom]

In Mona Sahlin’s rainbow-colored people’s home there will be neither room for homophobia nor xenophobia.

But her vision also involves a reconsideration of the Social Democrat policy in key areas.

The people’s home is no longer a concept that the Social Democrats have a monopoly on.

The Sweden Democrats’ siren-call of a blond and blue-eyed welfare state, Mona Sahlin dismisses as “a cheap trick of a xenophobic party.”

But even the Conservatives [Moderaterna] say that they now want to become a state-bearing party in which everyone will feel at home.

“The Social Democracy is strongest when we can show that the welfare system means something for everybody. Not only to those who just currently have lost their jobs, or are sick or on parental leave. But actually for everybody. People see the effects that policy has on others. And how are the opportunities for their own kids to get a job? Or their old mum or dad to get decent health care.”

And she herself states that she was both impressed and inspired by Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, where the Democrats using Twitter and emails influenced millions of Americans to engage in the work.

“That we intend to swedenize,” says Mona Sahlin. [Gotta love the Newspeak..]

The mandate of the campaigners will not only be to package the socialist message, but also to convey the image of a credible red-green government alternative.

Mona Sahlin now diplomatically says that there are “three parties of equal merits to form a government together.” [even political parties are "equal" now]

“I is very easy for me to talk, laugh and solve political problems together with both Lars Maria and Peter, says Mona Sahlin.

[Lars Ohly, the Left Party, former Communists; Maria Wetterstrand and Peter Eriksson, both spokespersons for the Environmental Party the Greens]



Here's another snapshop of Mona - and no, I didn't Photoshop this..

Afghanistan To Host 2018 World Cup

Football pundits have enthusiastically welcomed FIFA's decision to host the 2018 in the next most dangerous place they can think of.


The troubled Asian nation will host the world's most popular sporting event, despite expectations of a sharp decrease in fan numbers after the 2010 and 2014 World Cups, which may significantly thin the numbers of international supporters. In fact, says Ahmed Ahdinajab, chairman of Afghanistan's only football team, the Kabul Jihadists, the country's infrastructure - described by FIFA as "stone age" -is more than capable of supporting the few fans who make it to the country.

"Both of Kabul's hotels will be rebuilt over the next eight years", added Ahdinajab, "and electricity and water are expected toward the end of 2017".

The decision is seen as a logical follow-on from the idea of holding the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, one of the world's most violent and murderous countries, with the subsequent 2014 event taking place in Brazil, where police are still reeling from another day of gang violence in Rio de Janeiro, where a police helicopter was downed by some of the city's heavily-armed warlords.

FIFA spokeperson Helmut Polischer was quoted as saying,
"Ja, We think that holding this prestigious competition in developing countries will help to bring opportunities to those countries to benefit from this exciting World Cup."

"And after South Africa and Brazil, Afghanistan was the most dangerous place FIFA could think of."

Some Great Quotes

Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.

Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.

I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph.

If my critics saw me walking over the Thames they would say it was because I couldn't swim.

It is not the creation of wealth that is wrong, but the love of money for its own sake.

No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions; he had money as well.

There can be no liberty unless there is economic liberty.

There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families.

To cure the British disease with socialism was like trying to cure leukaemia with leeches.

The trouble with Socialism is, sooner or later you run out of other people's money.

- Margaret Thatcher


An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.

Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.

Where liberty is, there is my country.

- Benjamin Franklin


Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

If government were a product, selling it would be illegal.

The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.

The good news is that, according to the Obama administration, the rich will pay for everything. The bad news is that, according to the Obama administration, you're rich.

The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.

The weirder you're going to behave, the more normal you should look. It works in reverse, too. When I see a kid with three or four rings in his nose, I know there is absolutely nothing extraordinary about that person.

There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.

You can't get rid of poverty by giving people money.

- P.J. O'Rourke

Islamists in London Threaten Geert Wilders With "Islamic Punishment"

Gee, wonder what that is?

Well worth a watch, courtesy of Red Squirrel.

Another Man for Women's Rights.

Because of my gender I cannot be a feminist, I can only be a "pro-feminist". If this seems a bit unfair, let's remember that fairness is a very complicated idea and one that's impossible to even identify, let alone enforce. So, for now I'm happy to be a pro-feminist.

I've been bashing the feminists for a while now, and it's time to make peace.

Having chatted with friends of mine who can vaguely be described as Feminists, and following some interesting Femblogs, I come to the realisation that you don't have to be a rabid Lefty to take an interest in Women's Rights. It sure as hell seems like that sometimes, with Feminists attacking other women who happen to be more conservative, and the assumption that to be a proper feminist you have also be against lots of other things too, like "Racism".

Last week was Feminism in London 09, and no, I did not attend. But a quick glance at the website reveals that the first workshop of the day was entitled "Racism and sexism: what are the issues for black and minority ethnic women?"

Now, you may well ask, what has Sexism to do with Racism?
Well there is only a connection if you are a leftist of some kind, because my dictionary doesn't conflate the two in any way, BUT if you are a Lefty, then the relationship is immediately obvious: If you're not white and you're not male, then you have a common enemy (i.e. the evil white male).

Furthermore, while Sexism has a very clear and obvious definition, Racism doesn't. Racism means you are against immigration, in it's British context at least. But shouldn't feminists be against immigration? That seems logical to me. Islamic and African men are not known for their tolerance towards women. Just Google "honour killings" to see what I mean, while South Africa's rape statistics will make your blood boil and quickly turn you into a "Racist" (Whatever That Means).

Ask Sweden's many victims of rape at the hands of that country's immigrant population. Norway, too, has finally admitted that it's a problem. Personally I think that every rape victim in those countries, and their families, needs to head down to parliament (the Storting is right in the heart of Oslo, people) and demand the resignation (and the balls on a platter) of every liberal, pro-immigration MP- who in my opinion are DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE for bringing these vile creatures to their shores.

I think that is a profoundly pro-feminist sentiment. But I suspect many Feminists would consider it Racist (WTM). And that is sad, actually. Immigration means importing intolerance and brutality towards women. As I pointed out here, this kind of all-activists-on-the-same-side mentality is counterproductive and in my view detrimental to women's rights.

Lest it be suspected that I believe white men to be angels when it comes to women's rights, let me state clearly that I have a realistic perspective on this. A close female friend of mine was almost raped by a white man at university in South Africa- she fought him off - another was raped by her own father, while a third was in the process of being raped by a white man in the United States, until a black homeless man rescued her. Having said that, the rape statistics from both the U.S. and South Africa show a strong racial bias (towards blacks), but that is a subject for another discussion.

For now let me just say that these issues affect men, too, just not in the same way. Having a relationship with a woman who has been abused is difficult and complicated because of the abuse she has suffering, and the resulting need to build up trust again can be a painful process for both partners. The minority of men who are abusers are animals, not men. A real man does not do these things, and that message has got to be put across strongly and forcefully to enhance and uphold women's rights.

In South Africa, among black Africans, this belief is turned on its head. Men there believe it is a woman's duty to have sex with them, and if she says no then he must put her in her place for challenging his masculinity. "Corrective Rape" is now a reality for many women in SA, see also here, particularly for lesbians, or those even suspected of being gay. Not the most enlightened bunch, we can conclude.

The belief, too, that Feminists must also be Socialists nicely conflates, albeit artificially, Patriarchy with Capitalism. This suits the Left neatly, but what might not suit Feminists is the fact that some of the world's great women are/were conservative, for example Margaret Thatcher and Ayn Rand. According to one woman I interviewed, Thatcher was "bad for women". Surely a powerful woman is a feminist icon? Not so, it seems.

So, to conclude, I am in favour of women's rights; I don't think women should be paid less than men for doing the same job. I don't think women should be kept in the kitchen, and I also don't think women who choose home life over their career should be made to feel like lesser women for it by Feminists. I don't feel threatened by successful women, and have had several as employers. I believe a system of government that treats people as individuals rather than as a collective entity can only benefit women.

Why Obama Won't Serve A Second Term

This just in from the Cato Institute, an interesting analysis of how the Republican Resurgence should see them in power in 2013. Not everyone's cup of tea perhaps, but I'm very sleep-deprived today...

DAVID BOAZ TIMES-DISPATCH COLUMNIST

Published: October 11, 2009

American voters have been demonstrating a lack of confidence in both parties lately. George W. Bush nearly destroyed the Republican Party, but Barack Obama is giving it a chance at resurrection.

Karl Rove dreamed that he and Bush, like strategist Mark Hanna and President William McKinley in 1896, would create a generation of Republican dominance. Instead, he delivered both Congress and the presidency to the Democrats.

Bush turned off libertarian-leaning moderates and independents with his profligate spending, his excessive social conservatism, and the foundering war in Iraq.

Some of those independents voted Democratic in 2006 and 2008, figuring that the Democrats would be more tolerant and could hardly be more profligate. And what are they now seeing?

President Obama is exceeding all their fears on fiscal and economic issues. After promising a "net spending cut" during the campaign and denouncing "the most fiscally irresponsible administration in history," he has sent federal spending and the deficit soaring into the stratosphere. And voters simply don't believe his claim that he can extend health insurance to 47 million more people and extend mandated coverage without added costs.

Independents who turned against the Republicans are likely to become equally disillusioned with Obama, and there's already some evidence of that in the polls.

Support for "smaller government with fewer services" has risen in the ABC News/Washington Post poll, and independents prefer it by 61 percent to 35 percent, a margin three times as large as a year ago.

The number of people who see Obama as an "old-style tax and spend Democrat" has risen by 11 percentage points.

Voters are turning against a year's worth of takeovers, bailouts, and new spending programs. Ironically, the first four months of those programs were actually Bush's doing. But Obama "owns" the whole shebang now.

In a July USA Today poll, a majority oppose Obama's health care efforts and 59 percent say he's spending too much. In an ABC News/Washington Post poll the same month, only 25 percent "strongly approve" of his health care plans, and 33 percent strongly disapprove.

Obama remains personally popular, even as support for his programs drops. But his honeymoon may turn out to be as passionate, yet brief, as a Hollywood marriage.

Despite the growing disillusionment with Democratic spending plans, polls still show that voters prefer that Democrats control Congress after next year's elections. However, the latest poll shows a three-point Democratic lead, down from seven points in July and nine points in April. And that margin is far smaller than the massive 19-point lead Democrats held over Republicans in June 2008. So in less than a year and a half, the Democratic margin has fallen from 19 points to three, the party's smallest lead since 2004.

Republicans still face the challenge of uniting their party around economic issues of lower taxes and less spending, rather than driving away moderates, professionals, and rugged-individualist Westerners with their socially conservative crusades.

In usually Republican Virginia, gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell saw his lead cut in half when The Washington Post uncovered a document in which he had proposed that Republicans seek to "punish" homosexuality and declare working women "detrimental to the family."

One big problem for Republicans in 2006 and 2008 was that their own voters were embarrassed and disillusioned, while Democratic activists were energized. In 2010, as in 1994, it looks like conservatives and Republicans will be the energized, determined part of the electorate. The GOP is raising more money than the Democrats this year, a rare accomplishment for the minority party. One advantage for Democrats is that in 1994, no one saw the Republican surge coming. This time, people do.

Charlie Cook, the dean of political prognosticators, may have been a bit too strong when he said that the growing fears of moderate and independent voters that "Washington was taking irreversible actions that would drive mountainous deficits higher, . . . that government was taking on far more than it could competently handle and far more than the country could afford, [and] expanding too far, too fast" should "terrify" Democrats. But they are no doubt worried.

Canada's Governor General Not Queen, says PM

Canada's Haitian-born Governor General Michaelle Jean referred to herself as "head of state" - twice- at an executive meeting of UNESCO, prompting a rebuke from Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Jean, who sees herself as representative of Canada's multiculturalism, would no doubt serve her country better and represent "the promises and possibilities of that ideal of society" if she could get her own job description right.

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper has sent a clear message to Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean that she should not call herself Canada's head of state.

"Queen Elizabeth II is Queen of Canada and Head of State," the Prime Minister's Office said in a statement issued to Canwest News Service on Thursday. "The Governor General represents the Crown in Canada."

The extraordinary reminder from the country's head of government to its top viceregal representative follows an uproar over Jean's use of the phrase "head of state" when referring to herself during a speech in Paris on Monday.

Twice during the Governor General's address at an executive meeting of UNESCO — the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization — she called herself Canada's head of state.

Her speech focused on promoting cultural diversity as a way to help achieve international harmony.

"I, a francophone from the Americas, born in Haiti, who carries in her the history of the slave trade and the emancipation of blacks, at once Quebecoise and Canadian, and today before you, Canada's head of state, proudly represents the promises and possibilities of that ideal of society," she said.

Later in the speech, while discussing the importance of education, Jean described meeting "remarkable young people" in the many places "that I have travelled as head of state."

But the "head of state" position — as surprised constitutional experts and perturbed officials with the Monarchist League of Canada quickly pointed out to Canwest News Service — is held exclusively by the Queen.

The statement issued Thursday by Harper's office struck one expert — constitutional expert David Smith, University of Saskatchewan professor emeritus of political science — as history-making.

"I can't recall that ever happening before," said Smith, now at the University of Regina and co-editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Canadian Politics.

The full story can be found here.

News for the West: White South Africans Living in Poverty

Yes - there are over 800,000 of them. White, Afrikaans-speaking South Africans living in temporary accommodation, some of them shacks, many of whom have little or no access to government services.
This story from CensorBugbear Reports sheds some light on these forgotten people.

What's the difference, you might say? Don't blacks live like that, you might ask?
Valid questions, but you have to remember how black South Africans are able to get access to government services - through threats of violence, which is a tactic these Afrikaners are unwilling to employ.

Aha, you might say - now the shoe is on the other foot and they don't like it!
I've heard that one plenty - and let me tell you you have a warped sense of justice if you're thinking it. Were these people wealthy living under Apartheid? hardly. Have they oppressed anyone? No; they are the poor, the "working class". Whom could they oppress?

They have been left behind by Affirmative Action programmes where they have been replaced by South Africans of the majority skin colour. They are, whatever way you slice it, victims of racial discrimination.

The government wants to move them to temporary accommodation in Munsieville, shared with black South Africans. The people have objected, claiming they will be victimised and their women raped.

So, sceptic, answer me this :

Having already been victims of government discrimination and racism in relation to employment, in what way will this be different at the hands of ordinary black township-dwellers?

The Samosa, the White Male and Angry Feminists

The Samosa is a recently-launched online magazine in the UK, and has set itself at the forefront of the multicultural project. According to its, er, website, the Samosa "works to promote voices and talent from all British communities". Very nice.

Unfortunately, whether or not you are in love with the multicultural programme, you are paying for the Samosa, funded as it is in part by a generous £15,000 grant from the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, itself funded by the British taxpayer.

Furthermore,
"The Samosa is a platform for the promotion of human rights, equality and is non sectarian. This is a core non-negotiable founding principle for all content, journalism and reportage."

Also very nice. One would think that is such a high-minded publication all points of view would be welcomed, and no one group would ever come under attack or be criticised for expressing reasonable sentiments. Not so.

Laurie Penny, a feminist British journalist for the Morning Star (Communist Party-linked rag) and left wing blogger, features on the main page of the Samosa with a piece entitled "My country, left or right", which actually sounds quite encouraging until you read the subheading:
"Political hand-wringing over the ethnicity of Britain’s babies simple reveals the pervasiveness of racist attitudes"

This is in reference to quite a reasonable and well-thought-out article by Melanie McDonagh in the Daily Telegraph about how native Britons are having fewer babies than recent immigrants. Her blog reply to Melanie, however, was the politely titled "Reproductive freedom and racial paranoia: or, why Melanie McDonagh can fuck right off." for which I'm not going to post a link.

The Samosa article is similar to this but more polite. If you read Melanie's article, it is hard to see what's wrong with it at all. She merely observes that middle-class Brits aren't having as many babies as working-class Brits or foreigners - she doesn't use the word "white" at all in fact. However, this does not stop leftwing critics from reading the word "white", as of course, all right-wingers speak in code. Where Melanie suggests that a middle class baby-boom is required, Laurie reads "in other words", in classic code-busting language, "the darkies and the foreigns are reproducing, and they simply must be stopped."

Only a lefty could interpret those words in such a way, but intellectual honesty and civilised debate is not to be expected from the loony left. I recently had a conversation with a former university friend of mine, also rather a left wing lady, although not as loony nor as ignorant as some. Let's call her Mary. Mary was incensed about an article in the Irish Independent by Ian O'Doherty, which you can read here.

Truth is, the article is rubbish, as is Ian, and although he mentions the vilifications of the white male, he does so poorly and glibly in reference to TV advertising, where he claims men are portrayed as idiots.

However, the angry feminist screams could immediately be heard. Had he offended women? Well, no more than usual. But his real crime this time was to suggest, merely suggest, that white males could be victimised in any way at any time. He asked what the reaction would have been had Michael Moore's Stupid White Men been called "Stupid Black Women" instead.

Cue the horrified righteous indignation. IOD also suggested that white males don't like to complain about these things the way other groups do, because they just, well, take it like men. Oh no, say the screaming feminists, that's evidence of 'macho patriarchy' in action. So our privilege means that not only can we be criticised openly, but we can't complain - but not for the reasons we think we shouldn't complain, but because we have to acknowledge our privilege instead. Make any sense?

Laurie Penny wrote a similar attack on 'white male privilege', entitled "More on Those Stupid White Men". My friend Mary seems to believe white men are "privileged" and thus ineligible for any kind of victim status. Ever.

This stems from the belief that we are all part of a group, rather than standing as individuals. After all, 'feminists' are a group, so are 'gays', and 'blacks', therefore because we see the world in terms of interest groups, then White Males must be one too. The bastards. And because we are part of that group, we are all Capitalists, Imperialists, 'Homophobes', "Sexists", and of course "Racists". Nothing like generalising, is there?

However, it seems it is acceptable to generalise about the White Male. Despite the fact that we White Males have never considered ourselves a coherent group with our own interests. We are in competition with one another, we've fought wars with each other, we go out of our way to organise ourselves in opposition to other groups of White Males.

Yet, because of our critics' preoccupation with Indentity Politics and interest groups, we are such a group. A minority group too, comprising as we do a rapidly shrinking 7% or so of the world's population. But that doesn't matter because we are privileged, and as such have not earned our disproportionate influence.

So, screaming feminists (with whom I do not generally have a problem unless they are also socialist nazis), of the sort represented by Laurie and Mary, believe that the White Male can at no time and for no reason claim to be offended or discriminated against in any way. Even when we blatantly are, for example through Affirmative Action programmes or through our disproportionate status as murder victims, both in the USA and in South Africa.

The White Male must take the kicking, but when the White Male raises his head to suggest this may not be entirely in keeping with the spirit of equality, the shrieking fems point and scream and cry sexist! racist! pig! You who have brought only suffering to this world with your vile concepts of individual rights, your belief in the goodness of humanity through liberal democracy, and your hateful but unique notions of tolerance! Bow down, White Male.

These feminist screams are in favour of "equality", but not for the White Male. This offers no intellectual contradiction for an ideology that believes in both equality legislation and discriminative affirmative action. This is because the White Male is assumed to already have all the equality he needs. In spite of the vast differences in wealth and status that exist between white males, from the splendour of Monte Carlo and Beverly Hills to the shack-dwelling Boers of the Transvaal and the poor Scots-Irish of the backwoods of the American South.

But that doesn't matter, because we're all privileged.

Boycott Nestle!! Again.

My university boycotted Nestle products during the 1990s, and for me the biggest tragedy of this was the realisation that the Swiss bastards had taken over Rowntree, makers of some of the world's finest bars, such as Yorkie and Aero. The issue was the distribution of milk products to African mothers to feed their endless hordes of screaming young - powdered milk which had to be diluted with filthy African sewage-water.

There was of course nothing wrong with the milk, just the polluted sludge that passes for water in many parts of Africa - but somehow Nestle got the rough end of the stick for it anyway (of course, why blame the Africans?)

Anyway, this time it's different. Nestle has admitted to going into business with Grace Mugabe, Queen of Zimbabwe and owner of six confiscated farms, including the Gushungo Dairy Estate, through which she sells a million litres of stolen milk to Nestle every year.

So, give up the Yorkies. Tough as it will be, I won't touch one again. And I'll likely stay away from Cuckoo clocks and those useless knives as well.