Serendipity Monday: Leftist Myth Explosion Day

Today saw a number of classic Leftist narratives had the bottom knocked out of them. Get it here and now, because you're not going at get it anywhere else, and it's hardly likely ever to be told again.

Miraculously there's no one addressing the objectively false Rousseau clarion call that has has it for two and a half centuries that "the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer".

Has the giant face-saving operation begun? Not being a poet, there's no good way to express the irony of the situation ... [sarc] "a pause", is that what it is, is it? and they never tell you it hasn't 'warmed' in a decade [/sarc]. The very idea is giving the game away. If it really is the climate that's gone haywire, present winter conditions should be meaningless!

Telegraph: "Big freeze could signal global warming 'pause'"

The Arctic conditions which have brought Britain to a standstill over the past week could be the start of a "pause" in global warming, some scientists believe. (...) >>>

The following notion always was an insult to the poor, whose interests they always claim to have at heart ...

Wall Street Journal : "A Crime Theory Demolished", by Heather MacDonald

If poverty is the root cause of lawlessness, why did crime rates fall when joblessness increased? The recession of 2008-09 has undercut one of the most destructive social theories that came out of the 1960s: the idea that the root cause of crime lies in income inequality and social injustice. As the economy started shedding jobs in 2008, criminologists and pundits predicted that crime would shoot up, since poverty, as the "root causes" theory holds, begets criminals. Instead, the opposite happened. (...) >>>

As of "Game Change" by journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann hitting the bookstores we know for a fact that Democrats are expert projectionists (not that we needed any confirmation). The louder they accuse the opponents of transgression, the more they are guilty of it themselves - the true masters of hypocrisy!

Guanabee: "Harry Reid, Bill Clinton Busted For Making Racist Comments In Game Change"

juxtapose that to ...

Newsbusters: "Reid After Trent Lott's Resignation In 2002: 'He Had No Alternative'"

Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in 2002 agreed with former Sen. Trent Lott's (R-Miss.) decision to resign his leadership role after Lott made what some felt were racist remarks at former Sen. Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party. "He had no alternative," said Reid at the time claiming, "If you tell ethnic jokes in the backroom, it's that much easier to say ethnic things publicly. I've always practiced how I play." (...) >>>

Here's an interesting mental exercise that explodes the myth that the Palestinian question is at the heart of all problems besetting the Middle East (actually, it's the Near East) ...

The Huffington Post: "It's Not About Israel", by David Harris

(...) There are those in the international community who claim that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the root cause of the Middle East's problems. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been among the most prominent of these voices. (...) True, genuine peace between Israel and the Palestinians would remove one of the long-standing conflicts in the Middle East. Moreover, to state the painfully obvious, peace would serve the best interests of those involved.

But the suggestion made by Prime Ministers Blair, Erdogan and others that such a settlement is a necessary precondition for wider peace in the Middle East and would take the wind out of radical Islam's sails is unsupported by the facts. Let's assume for a moment that Israel did not exist. Would that have changed the basic story line of the bulk of events in the Middle East? (...) >>>

Students of Marxism have long been aware that it's actually very hard to get the unwashed masses to revolt. They usually suffer from a false, bourgeois consciousness, or they're just too plain lazy. The Russian Revolution required World War I and countless agitators to set it off and even then no one really expected it. Which is why the Leftist intellentsia that think this stuff up, take refuge to upper and middle class brats. Consider ...

Frank Owen's Paintbrush: "The Pantybomber and the middle-class nature of terrorism"

(...) What I find interesting is that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and his alleged crime present further evidence that terrorism is an essentially middle-class endeavour. Perhaps even upper-middle-class, if we are going to get specific about it.

- Caption: Lenin at the All-Russia Subbotnik in the Kremlin - May 1 1920 -

Abdulmutallab is an extreme example in that his background is especially wealthy and privileged. Not quite at the same level of spoilt bratness as Osama bin Laden, but getting there. However, research suggests that most recruits to terrorism come from relatively well-off families and are educated to at least degree level, which makes them decisively middle-class. (...) >>>

The following article is pulling the rug from under one of postmodernism's many fallacies. The relativist belief that all faiths are equally valid, is equally offensive to all religions ...

The Washington Post: "Brit Hume's Tiger Woods remarks shine light on true intolerance", by Michael Gerson

(...) The root of the anger against Hume is his religious exclusivity -- the belief, in Shuster's words, that "my faith is the right one." For this reason, according to Shales, Hume has "dissed about half a billion Buddhists on the planet."

But this supposed defense of other religious traditions betrays an unfamiliarity with religion itself. Religious faiths -- Christian, Buddhist, Zoroastrian -- generally make claims about the nature of reality that conflict with the claims of other faiths. Attacking Christian religious exclusivity is to attack nearly every vital religious tradition.

It is not a scandal to believers that others hold differing beliefs. It is only a scandal to those offended by all belief. Though I am not a Buddhist or a Muslim, I am not "dissed" when a Muslim or a Buddhist advocates his views in public.Hume's critics hold a strange view of pluralism. (...) >>>

That's today's harvest of follies, folks. Let's give it a rest. Perhaps more rug pulling and myth exploding tomorrow.