Liberalism's "Seven Deadly Sins"?

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Here's an article worth the read: "7 Reasons Why Liberals Are Incapable of Understanding The World" by John Hawkins.

Here's an extract from each point, with my favourite, #3, in full.

1) Liberalism creates a feedback loop. It is usually impossible for a non-liberal to change a liberal's mind about political issues because liberalism works like so: only liberals are credible sources of information.

2) Liberals sources of information are ever present.

3) Liberals emphasize feeling superior, not superior results. Liberalism is all about appearances, not outcomes. What matters to liberals is how a program makes them FEEL about themselves, not whether it works or not. Thus a program like Headstart, which sounds good because it's designed to help children read, makes liberals feel good about themselves, even though the program doesn't work and wastes billions. A ban on DDT makes liberals feel good about themselves because they're "protecting the environment" even though millions of people have died as a result. For liberals, it's not what a program does in the real world; it's about whether they feel better about themselves for supporting it.

4) Liberals are big believers in moral relativism.

5) Liberals tend to view people as parts of groups, not individuals.

6) Liberals take a dim view of personal responsibility.

7) Liberals give themselves far too much credit just for being liberal.

I'm sure conservatives are sinners too. I'll leave it up to liberal readers of the Ball Bounces to point out our sins. Be that as it may, the facts of life are conservative -- which brings us full-circle back to the article's title.

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Mark Steyn: Celebrating Diversity By Pretending Everyone's Just Like You

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In one phrase Mark Steyn eviscerates the pretensions and delusions of leftist liberals: "...celebrating diversity by pretending everyone's just like you".

Article scores 5 out of 5 on the Ballometer literary scale.

Welfare Muslims and the Accommodating West

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No need to plot the overthrow of the West. The West is plotting its own demise -- thanks to delusional leftist social policies.

One Iranian immigrant to Sweden expressed astonishment at his new country’s policies: “In Sweden my family encountered a political system that seemed very strange. The interpreter told us that Sweden is a country where the government will put a check into your mailbox each month if you don’t work. She explained that there was no reason to get a job.”

The statistics from Norway are even more shocking. According to a University of Oslo study, “non-Western immigrants” are ten times as likely to be on social assistance as native Norwegians.

In Germany, Muslims are four times as likely to be receiving welfare as non-Muslims. 

Etc.

A lot of the spending involves welfare fraud. Apparently honesty, one of the bedrock judeo-christian virtues upon which our society was built, is not highly valued among the followers of Mohammed.

Couple this with the fact that Muslims are having babies and we are not, and if even half this article is true, we are in deep doo-doom.

Remind me again why multiculturalism is considered a good thing for Canada and the West?

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Jimmy Carter Is George Costanza In Political Drag

Cover of Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter's political commentary is useful when forming one's own opinions. Here's how it works: find out what he thinks, and think the opposite.

Jimmy Carter says the Muslim Brotherhood is nothing to worry about.

This means we should all be very worried about the Muslim Brotherhood.

Jimmy Carter is a brilliant man, but his liberal instincts do him a disservice.

Like Seinfeld's George Costanza, his instincts are almost always wrong.

Unlike George, he hasn't learned to speak and do the opposite.

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The Muslim Brotherhood? Don't Worry, Be Happy

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Who's Afraid Of The Muslim Brotherhood?

Not the Globe and Mail's Doug Saunders, writing to the tune of "Don't Worry, Be Happy".

It was not until the fourth day of Egypt’s mass protests, long after the then-peaceful crowds had swelled into the hundreds of thousands, that the Brothers marched into Cairo’s Tahrir Square. They kept to themselves, taking over an otherwise empty corner. You could distinguish them, those in the square told me, by their propensity toward beards and head scarves, and by their chants of “Allahu Akbar.”

For an opposing view there's Ayaan Hirsi, "Uh-oh, the Muslim Brotherhood is rising -- but Egyptians can stop it".  One article written by "been there, done that" Ayann Hirsi is worth ten written by a western writer like Doug Saunders.

For another opposing view, there's  Michael Youssef's "Who Are The Muslim Brotherhood?"

The Muslim Brotherhood has spent the past 40 years forming chapters all over the world, including many European capitals and the United States. Until 2001, the Muslim Brotherhood’s publication in London Risalat Al-Ikhwan declared on the front page, “Our mission: world domination.” In 2004, the former Brotherhood Supreme Guide, Mohammed Akef, declared his “complete faith that Islam will invade Europe and America.”

Ah, but this is all so 2004 you say. Read on.

The current logo that adorns the Muslim Brotherhood’s paraphernalia is comprised of two swords crossing each other with the words “Get Ready” underneath — an indication that they’re getting ready for Islamic Jihad. I’m writing all this to answer a question a reporter asked me recently, “Why should we in America care about what happens in Egypt?” To the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt and Jordan are small steps toward their ultimate goal: world domination....

For years, journalists — Muslim journalists — have been warning the world of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Jihadi intentions. But people, particularly the Western liberal leftist media [read: Doug Saunders], have chosen to ignore these warnings. 

These are the guys that the Globe and Mail's Doug Saunders thinks are peachy-fine.

Let me put it this way, any group whose lead-off pitch is a cry of “Allahu Akbar” is automatically deserving of western fear if not revulsion.

Let's end with, from NewsRealBlog, the Muslim Brotherhood's Creed: "God is our objective, the Koran is our Constitution, the Prophet is our leader, struggle is our way, and death for the sake of God is the highest of our aspirations."

But, don't worry, be happy.

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Political Assassination: Blaming The Right

NPR and other leftist news outlets are blaming the right -- Sarah Palin in particular -- for Arizona's nut-case political assassination. Oh, they don't come right out and say it; they do it under the guise of "what others are saying".  But it's there. And it's there because it's where they're at.   It fits their world-view and their agendas. They are hoping -- oh, how they are hoping -- this guy turns out to be a tea-partier.

Fact is, when they were suggesting it, they had no idea if this guy was fueled by intemperate right-wing rhetoric. Just like NYC's Mayor Bloomberg, and his wishful hope that the Muslim attack in NY was some white guy disaffected with Obama's healthcare. Another leftist wishful hope dashed.

During the bad, evil Bush presidency I recall hearing more than one high-profile liberal suggesting that America would be better if Bush was "offed". Don't recall hearing any NPR concern or editorializing then about the dangers of intemperate leftist rhetoric.

Here's what we do know at this point in time:

* the guy has been described as far-left by a classmate. Oops.

* the guy hates God.  Hey -- didn't the last guy who shot up a bunch of people - the darwinist killer -- also hate God?

If NPR and these other outlets want to hawk an agenda, why not this one: the common theme behind the latest public killing sprees: ardent atheism.

At least this one has, you know, a bit of empirical evidence to support it.

And that's the way the Ball bounces.

PS -- No photo on this post. I'm in Africa and internet resources appear to be strictly rationed.  I'm getting 0.5 - 2.0 kbps -- and that's when it's not flat-lining on zero!

Quote of the Day: "Tear Down The UN and Pour Salt in the Foundations"

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"... the best solution to the UN would be to dismantle its agencies, tear down its buildings and pour salt in the foundations so this kind of contamination can never again infect the world. -- Lorne Gunter, National Post

Pour salt in the foundations -- bwahahaha!

Good one, Lorne.

The UN -- beloved by western leftists and corrupt 3rd world despots alike.

The best thing about the UN was its starring role in North by Northwest and its location in New York, New York, USA.

And that's the way the Ball bounces.

PS -- voice your opinion on the latest BallBounces UN poll.

West Australia Environmentalism

The West Australia Dept. of the Environment has decreed the land in the picture above a "watercourse".  It is shown Winter 2010 at "peak flow".

The sign has been added for effect.

It's good to know the environmentalists are alive and well and living in west Australia.  They may be flowing upstream but they've got their feet planted firmly on the watercourse ground.

h/t JoNova.

Iran Goes Nuclear

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Moral equivalencers, multiculturalists, appeasers, one-world idealists and leftists generally will be glad to hear that an Islamic state, Iran, is going nuclear.

After all if the US (which according to Obamavision is "just another nation") is nuclear, why shouldn't Iran be? If the West is nuclear, why not the Islamic world?  We're all the same, right?

Actually, in going nuclear, Iran is almost entirely indebted to western, non-Islamic technology and know-how.

Israel, which can't afford the luxury of western self-delusion, "is not amused".

Keep your eyes on the Middle-East. When you see hostile nations of the world surrounding Israel, God's time-piece, head for the hills. In the meantime, pray for the peace of Jerusalem and the security of Israel.

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California's Prop 8 Decision and the Illusion of Liberal Neutrality

Judge Walker’s decision, he tells us, is based on the principle that the state ought not to “enforce ‘profound and deep convictions accepted as ethical and moral principles’” or to “mandate [its] own moral code.” But that is, of course, precisely what Walker himself has done. His position rests on the question-begging assumption that “same-sex marriages” are no less true marriages than heterosexual ones are, and that the only remaining question is whether to allow them legally. 

What we’re seeing here is just one more application of the fraudulent principle of “liberal neutrality,” by which the conceit that liberal policy is neutral between the moral and metaphysical views competing within a pluralistic society provides a smokescreen for the imposition of a substantive liberal moral worldview, on all citizens, by force....

That “liberal neutrality” is a fraud is blindingly obvious to everyone except (some) liberals themselves. ...

Edward Feser

I think I disagree with the ProFeser on this one.  I think most liberals do believe that their view is the only possible reasonable one and therefore the only possibly correct one.

At any rate, if one believes that children have the presumptive natural right to know the love of their father and mother, same-sex marriage rights [as part of the "rights" trajectory which seeks to gloss over the fundamental differences between same-sex vs. opposite-sex unions] negate this right. I was orphaned and adopted, and I know that not knowing my father and my mother has left me with a permanent grievous sense of loss and emptiness that no amount of sociological-happy-gloss can fix.

Update: For more on this Prop 8 and why it matters, go here.

Globe Warming Strays Into the Delusional Realm

I picked up this gem concerning next week's G8 summit.

"next week’s G8 summit... would require leaders to agree to prevent global temperatures rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius..."

More and more I feel like I'm living in some alternate universe where the world has gone mad.

World leaders are not content to merely control man's minor contribution to the temperature of the globe; the goal now is to control temperature in absolute terms. Gives new meaning to the phrase, "you shall be as gods".

* * *

The developed nations of the world will need to cooperate if they intend to meet this ambitious goal. Here are my suggestions for divvying up the responsibility for controlling world temperatures:

* The US will be in charge of controlling solar activity, including sunspots and flares

* The EU will be in charge of controlling world-wide volcanic activity

* Asia will be in charge of controlling El Ninos

* India will be responsible for putting a cork in methane gas levels produced by animals, especially cattle

* Canada's role will be to grumble and complain about anything/everything the US is doing while benefiting from US defense, US protection of international waters, US acting as an inhibitor to hostile nations aggression, US market proximity to Canada, etc.