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This article has been incorporated into the briefings document, humans killing humans.
the web address for the article above is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour0611.php#milgram_281206
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losing your history: pot-pourri of ‘interesting things’
some history of trickle down
“[...] There are those who believe that if you only legislate to make the
well-to-do prosperous their prosperity will leak through on those below.
The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the
masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up through every
class which rests upon them.”
William Jennings Bryan, 1896 (Cross of Gold speech)
There was much talk about a ‘trickle down economy’
during the Reagan era, but very little mention of a ‘trickle up economy’.
It’s strange how long it takes people to learn.
This poor analysis of “them and us”, typical of marxist dogma, continues to muddle thinking. All parts of society are interdependant in optimising production. Binary approaches to economics project adversarial malfunctions on human behaviour.
chesterton? well not quite
“It’s drowning all your old rationalism and scepticism, it’s coming in like a sea;
and the name of it is superstition. [...] It’s the first effect of not believing in God that you
lose your common sense and can’t see things as they are. ”
[The Oracle of the Dog, in The Incredulity of Father
Brown]
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
Or, as Cammaerts paraphrases it:
“The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything.”
and here is a precedent for the oft-quoted aphorism of John Adams
“Matters of fact, which as Mr Budgell somewhere observes, are very
stubborn things”.
The Will of Matthew Tindal (1733) p. 23, Matthew Tindal (1657–1733), English deist
Note, like the Chesterton item above, this is usually misquoted or given
slipped precedence.
“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our
inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state
of facts and evidence.”
Argument in Defense of the Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials,
December 1770 , John Adams (1735 - 1826), US diplomat & politician
The Complete Father
Brown
by G.K. Chesterton
Penguin Books Ltd, 1986, 014009766X
$17.62
[amazon.com] {advert}
£8.83
[amazon.co.uk] {advert}
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the web address for the article above is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour0611.php#pot_pourri_261206
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some amazing figures of u.s. democrat selfishness and foolishness
“[...] Republican and Democratic views drew closer once the war began.
Majorities of Republicans, Democrats, and independents supported the
action through the first two months of the war. Then, sometime during May
and June 2003, the trendline of Democratic support fell below 50 percent.
It never recovered. Support for the war among independents trended above
50 percent until sometime between January and March 2004. It, too, never
recovered. During all this time, however, the trendline in Republican
support never sank below 75 percent.
“The partisan gap on support for the Iraq war, Jacobson goes on, "reaches
an average of about 63 percentage points in the last quarter of 2004
before narrowing a bit to an average of about 58 percent during 2005." He
found that the most radical divergence occurred in an October 2004 Los
Angeles Times poll question that asked "whether Bush had made the right
decision to go to war, in light of the CIA's report that Saddam had no WMD
and no active program to produce them." Ninety percent of the Republicans
who answered this question said the war remained the right decision. Ten
percent of Democrats agreed.
“More than anything else, the 2004 presidential election was about the war.
National Election Survey data show that a person's vote was inextricably
tied to whether he thought the war in Iraq had or had not been worth the
cost. "In total," Jacobson continues, "89 percent of Democrats and 82
percent of Republicans and independents" cast votes consonant with their
stance on the war. The polarization trend continued throughout the 2006
election campaign. A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center for the
People and the Press in early November 2006 found that 77 percent of
Republicans still agreed that the United States "made the right decision"
to use military force against Iraq. Just 20 percent of Democrats agreed
that it was the right decision.”
—
“[...] This was the case when respondents were asked whether they would
approve of using U.S. troops to protect oil supplies (10 percent of
Democrats said yes versus 41 percent of Republicans), to spread democracy
(7 percent versus 53 percent), to destroy a terrorist base (57 percent
versus 95 percent), to intervene in a humanitarian disaster such as a
genocide or civil war (56 percent versus 61 percent), and to protect
American allies under attack (76 percent versus 92 percent) [...].”
What really interests me is more Democrats are more greedy for oil than
they are for democracy, while Republicans show the reverse tendency;
and that only three-qarters of Democrats would even wish to defend Americans
under attack, let alone act to stop genocide or other disasters.
So much for the pseudo-moral posturing of the Left.
“Even more striking is the apparent polarization on democracy promotion.
The 2006 Transatlantic Trends survey asked whether the European Union and
the United States should help establish democracy in other countries.
Sixty-four percent of Republicans said they should; 35 percent of
Democrats agreed. The pollsters told respondents to imagine an
authoritarian regime in which there is no political or religious freedom.
They asked whether the United States and the European Union should take
certain actions with regard to such a regime. Asked whether they would
support Europe and the United States sending military forces to remove the
authoritarian regime, 65 percent of Democrats said they would not support
such a policy; 37 percent of Republicans said they would not do so.”
—
“[...] In 2004 the pollster Scott Rasmussen asked respondents whether
America is "generally fair and decent." Eighty-three percent of
respondents planning to vote for George W. Bush agreed with that
sentiment; only 46 percent of those planning to vote for John Kerry
thought so. Rasmussen also asked whether respondents thought the world
would be better off if other nations were more like the United States. The
data were similar: Eighty-one percent of those planning to vote for Bush
thought so; just 48 percent of Kerry voters agreed. When Rasmussen asked
the "fair and decent" question again in November 2006, he found similar
results.”
Is it possible that Democrats just don’t like America?
the web address for the article above is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour0611.php#selfishness_241206
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some interesting figures on victimhood in the usa or among ‘blacks’
“[...] Although the unemployment rate among African Americans (in 2002,
approximately 11% [15]) has typically been twice the rate among
European Americans (app. 5% in the same year[17]), it is still
comparable to rates found in France and Spain [18], [5], and is
slightly higher than the overall rate of the European Union [6]. When
compared to populations outside of the United States and European
Union, the collective affluence of African Americans is even more
striking and disproportionate. Based on worker income alone (excluding
purchasing power parity and extra wealth, both of which would
accentuate the comparative affluence of African Americans), African
Americans produced $586 billion in 2004[7],[8], slightly smaller than
the GDP of Brazil in 2006 (even though Brazil's population is about 5
times the size of the African American one) [9], and approximately 80%
the size of Russia's 2005 GDP (even though Russia's population is
nearly 4 times the size of the African American one [10]. In 2004 this
amount would have been ranked as the 15th largest GDP internationally
(out of 177 ranked) [11], compared to a population ranking of 33 in
2005[12].
“In 2005, the populations of Poland and African Americans were roughly
equal, but the 2004 earnings of the latter group would have been nearly
2.5 times the size of the former's GDP in 2005[13]. In 2005, the
Ukraine's population was approximately 10% larger than the African
American population, but its GDP was over 8 times smaller than the 2004
earnings of the latter group. Argentina, arguably the most developed
country in Latin American (with an overwhelmingly European population
(97%)), has an unemployment rate slightly higher than that of African
Americans as a group, the poverty rate is almost twice the rate [14],
and the 2004 earnings of African American workers were nearly 3.5 times
the size of Argentina's 2005 GDP, even though Argentina's population is
slightly larger than the African American population [15]. In Mexico,
whose human development index is comparable to those of most former
Second World countries, and whose economy ranks as a mid-income one,
the poverty rate is twice the rate of African Americans as a group
[16], and even though its 2005 population was nearly 3 times the
population of African Americans, Mexico's GDP from the same year
exceeded the 2004 earnings of African American workers by only
25%[17] [...] ”
the web address for the article above is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour0611.php#afro_americans_141206
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on the circus surrounding the ipswich slimeball
There is a fine lesson in sense and nonsense to be had watching this circus in Suffolk, England.
- The reporters, the psychologists etc are talking almost invariable bollox
while the police are talking sound measured sense.
This should be highly instructive to those taken in by psycho-babble
- Is this circus a ‘good thing’ on balance?
- It gives hints to would-be loonies.
- Imitation is a damned nuisance in human behaviour.
- Public assistance is obviously useful.
I’d like thoughts on the second issue.
the web address for the article above is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour0611.php#ipswich_circus_131206
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george the robot learns to hunt people! - but so innocent is the report
“ "George, go hide," Schultz orders the robot in a cluttered room at the
naval research lab. George's "head" rotates around several times. Computer
codes zip by on the monitor as George is thinking.
“Finally, George announces in a mechanical, definitely non-human voice: "I
will hide now."
“He ducks behind some boxes and declares: "I made it to the goal."
“Schultz finds George easily. George has a harder time spotting Schultz,
but eventually succeeds.”
—
“[...] George is not a breakthrough. He's an off-the-shelf robot reprogrammed at the Navy Center for Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence, which Schultz directs.”
What a surprise.
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