Theodore Dalrymple: The Persistence of Ideology - Grand ideas still drive history.

City Journal ^ | Winter 2009 | Theodore Dalrymple

[neverdem]

Ideological politics: the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem salutes Bosnian Muslim recruits to the Waffen-SS in 1943.

In a way, Islamo-Leninism sounds better than Islamofascism.

[Falconspeed]

Feminists continued to see every human problem as a manifestation of patriarchy, civil rights activists as a manifestation of racism, homosexual-rights activists as a manifestation of homophobia, anti-globalists as a manifestation of globalization, and radical libertarians as a manifestation of state regulation.

It is sad how a selfish, insecure person thinks that the solution to his personal problem will lead to world peace. Gosh. Whatever happened to "minding your own business"? Fortunately, selfish, insecure people are powerless.

[CowboyJay]

Most ideologies start off as observations of cause-and-effect relationships. Some evolve into legitimate scientific hypotheses and theorems. The problem is when these theories become insulated from criticism, and are considered above reproach. They then become ideology. Once that happens, radicalism ensues.

Moderation in everything. Even moderation.

[Blind Eye Jones]

ping

[GOP Poet]

bookmark

[Billthedrill]

Brilliant stuff. A self-ping for later comment.

[Brad from Tennessee]

[The environmentalist ideology threatens to make serious inroads into the rule of law in Britain. This past September, six environmentalists were acquitted of having caused $50,000 worth of damage to a power station—not because they did not do it but because four witnesses, including a Greenlander, testified to the reality of global warming.]

[One recalls the disastrous 1878 jury acquittal in St. Petersburg of Vera Zasulich for the attempted assassination of General Trepov, on the grounds of the supposed purity of her motives. The acquittal destroyed all hope of establishing the rule of law in Russia and ushered in an age of terrorism that led directly to one of the greatest catastrophes in human history.]

I'd like to see a rebirth of the Know Nothing Party.

[livius]

By contrast, ideologists have few fears about finding their daily bread.

This is why our American radicals have always come from the upper economic classes. Look at our the powers behind the throne in the US, Bill Ayers and his lovely wife Bernardine Dohrn, for example. In fact, having known a number of SDS and other radicals in New York in the 1960s, I can say that virtually all of them were from extremely well-off families, and I'm sure this was true in Europe, too.

[livius]

One recalls the disastrous 1878 jury acquittal in St. Petersburg of Vera Zasulich for the attempted assassination of General Trepov, on the grounds of the supposed purity of her motives. The acquittal destroyed all hope of establishing the rule of law in Russia and ushered in an age of terrorism that led directly to one of the greatest catastrophes in human history.

This was one of the most interesting observations in this very interesting article.

You will recall that many of our radicals - including Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn - went virtually unpunished when they were finally apprehended. Judges looked for any way to dismiss charges against them and to give them trivial sentences if they had to be tried and found guilty. It was because they were somehow special, they were not just thugs, they had ideals that excused anything they did.

Oddly enough, trying to impose one's ideology through terrorism was once considered a very grave crime and subject to more severe punishments. But the left in the US spent decades, starting with Sacco and Vanzetti, trying to legitimize left wing radicals - and they succeeded.

[ClearCase_guy]

Bump for later

[Malesherbes]

Yes, Islamo-Leninism is probably more accurate. But because of our own “trahison des clercs,” Leninism still has intellectual appeal. Fascism, on the other hand, is rejected by our “clercs,” and so the term “Islamo-Fascism” is a stronger negative.

[Yardstick]

*Bump*

[Brad from Tennessee]

[It was because they were somehow special, they were not just thugs, they had ideals that excused anything they did.]

True. Also, the Johnson-Nixon-Ford administration wanted to avoid the circus that occurred in Chicago when the YIPies and others were tried for crossing state lines to incite riot.

Part of the wisdom of attempting to deny terrorists public trials is that the event will be used by defendants, their counsel and witnesses to affect public perception and recruit more minions from around the world.

[Tolik]

Theodore Dalrymple BUMP!

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[Blind Eye Jones]

The body or husk of Soviet Russia died — the tower toppled — but the spirit of communism that it projected toward the west lives on and continues to do damage. The ghost of Marx walks the land and now wants to save the rain forests, wants clean energy, wants to save the whale and reduce global warming. It wants disenfranchised minorities to become majorities with a multicultural task force: multisexual, multiracial, multilingual, etc., all multitasking to remake the tower of Babel into a Paradise. This will be man’s ultimate and crowning achievement to himself. Marx’s ghost is here to rebuilt the tower God, Reagan and the Pope once knocked down.

[Defiant]

ideologists have few fears about finding their daily bread. Their difficulty with life is less concrete. Their security gives them the leisure, their education the need, and no doubt their temperament the inclination, to find something above and beyond the flux of daily life.

Conservatism is an ideology, but one of leaving people alone as much as possible to be free and independent. Conservative ideology does not generally fall into this trap of attracting the egotistic and bored people into its clutches. I would therefore clarify this author's thesis by noting that it is leftist, collectivist or authoritarian ideologies that he is talking about. The US constitution is a blueprint for avoiding such schemes--by limiting government and dividing power. I am ideological in my view of the world, but it is reality-based, not boredom-based or power-based.

[Defiant]

How right you are. It is indeed ironic that the forces unleashed by Stalin in the 20s and 30s, designed to bring down western culture and society, finally, after 3 or 4 generations, succeeded. They moved America, and the west, to a godless, craven, vulgar, ill-educated and un-cohesive society which is ripe for the support of a socialist tyrant wannabe, whether it be Hillary or Obama or Pelosi. Using radical groups, and slowly worming their way into schools, universities, churches, government bureaucracies, foundations, town councils, news media, hollywood, and every institution of a free society, they have debased the country in the truest meaning of that word.

If only Stalin could be here to see it, he would be so proud. His red diaper baby has grown up.

[Excellence]

bfl

[neverdem]

I'd like to see a rebirth of the Know Nothing Party.

It's already here.

Global Cooling and the Madness of Davos

So we asked the US Department of Energy. They tell us that all of humanity contributes 3% of the worlds C02. They also say that C02 is responsible for only 9% of the greenhouse gases. So multiply 3% of 9% and you get 1/370, or in other words all of humanity’s CO2 ‘footprint’ constitutes about 1/370th of the earths greenhouse gases. Humans are relatively insignificant, and real climate scientists know this but it does not pay to say so.

Interestingly, when I now clicked on that title at Google News on OpEdNews, it now defaults to OpEdNews homepage, a leftwing website. I originally found the article by searching for "global cooling" on Google News. So I did a title search on the web and found it here:

Global Cooling and the Madness of Davos

I couldn't verify that human activity accounts for just three percent of the worlds C02. Here's a DOE source that saya it's a wopping fourteen percent of the increase in CO2. /s

Q. What percentage of the CO2 in the atmosphere has been produced by human beings through the burning of fossil fuels?

Anthropogenic CO2 comes from fossil fuel combustion, changes in land use (e.g., forest clearing), and cement manufacture. Houghton and Hackler have estimated land-use changes from 1850-2000, so it is convenient to use 1850 as our starting point for the following discussion. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations had not changed appreciably over the preceding 850 years (IPCC; The Scientific Basis) so it may be safely assumed that they would not have changed appreciably in the 150 years from 1850 to 2000 in the absence of human intervention.

In the following calculations, we will express atmospheric concentrations of CO2 in units of parts per million by volume (ppmv). Each ppmv represents 2.13 X1015 grams, or 2.13 petagrams of carbon (PgC) in the atmosphere. According to Houghton and Hackler, land-use changes from 1850-2000 resulted in a net transfer of 154 PgC to the atmosphere. During that same period, 282 PgC were released by combustion of fossil fuels, and 5.5 additional PgC were released to the atmosphere from cement manufacture. This adds up to 154 + 282 + 5.5 = 441.5 PgC, of which 282/444.1 = 64% is due to fossil-fuel combustion.

Atmospheric CO2 concentrations rose from 288 ppmv in 1850 to 369.5 ppmv in 2000, for an increase of 81.5 ppmv, or 174 PgC. In other words, about 40% (174/441.5) of the additional carbon has remained in the atmosphere, while the remaining 60% has been transferred to the oceans and terrestrial biosphere.

The 369.5 ppmv of carbon in the atmosphere, in the form of CO2, translates into 787 PgC, of which 174 PgC has been added since 1850. From the second paragraph above, we see that 64% of that 174 PgC, or 111 PgC, can be attributed to fossil-fuel combustion. This represents about 14% (111/787) of the carbon in the atmosphere in the form of CO2.

I couldn't follow that explanation, but the point is the world is a huge carbon sink.

P.S. Parts per million can be expressed as either units of volume or mass.

Whatever Happened to Global Warming?

Some noteworthy articles about politics, foreign and military affairs, IMHO, FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.

[neverdem]

Now I get what they wrote. Divide the atmosphere into one million units of volume. Each unit of volume has a mass of 2.13 petagrams of carbon (PgC) in the atmosphere.