True I can dress it up by saying “I am reasoning from logical axioms” (or some such fancy langauge), but really I am often just stating the obvious – stuff that everyone could work out (stuff that one has to contradict one’s self in order to try and deny).

It is less difficult that (for example) going out and discovering new things about the universe.

libertarianism is radical

No kidding…

“If you could find that many libertarians” – OUCH, more than a grain of truth there.

Actually I think there is a serious point hiding in the joke. Jews (or people of part Jewish background) have a sort of “perpetual outsideness” to the society around us (unless the Jew was born and lives in Israel) so the “distance” between the Jew and the society gives rise to attraction to intellectual ways of explaining the society (people who are totally comfortable with their society tend to feel no great desire to explain it – but no Jew, or part Jew, can be TOTALLY confortable, can feel no sense of “apartness” at all).

So Jews are likely to be found in disproportionate numbers in radical movements – not just Communism but libertarianism also (libertarianism is radical if you compare what libertarians want to what presently exists).

After all my father is a good example of this – once a Maxist, he did not just become “mainstream”, he became a radical free market person (in this I am just a slightly more “extreme” version of him – accept I did not have the Marxist stage).

As for doubt – yes I doubt everything apart from what I hold would be a logical contradiction to doubt (such as my own existance – for their to be a doubt there must be a doubter, no I do not believe the Hume inspired “refutations” of Descartes work at all on this point – with there nonsense talk about how a thought does not mean a thinker, yes it does).

“But do you doubt one the very existance of God” – yes I do (faith and certainty are not the same thing).

And before anyone says “I bet that gets you into trouble with Tea Party people” “question everything – even the very existance of God” is one of Glenn Beck’s favourate quotations.

“But what about athiests”.

Randian objectivists (open and strong athiests) have been welcome from the start.

As usual what the left thinks it knows about conservatives is very far from the truth.

They are sceptics.

Second, doubt everting, not just statism – everything, including liberty. In fact, doubt is the key to liberty.

of every 10 Communists 5 are Jews

How many are there out of 10 libertarians (if you can even find that many)?:-)

However, sadly many people of Jewish or part Jewish origins have no doubts about leftist doctrine – they take what they are taught to its “logical” conclusion without any doubts concerning the basic “facts” and assumptions they have been taught.

The old American joke (and it is a joke – it is not meant as a serious piece of political sociology) that “of every 100 Jews only 5 are Communists – but of every 10 Communists 5 are Jews” has a grain of truth in it.

And, of course, for every Bill Ayers (not an out of the mainstream figure – after all he wrote one of the standard teacher training works used in many American teacher training establishments) who take leftist doctrine to its extreme (Communist) conculusions, there are many people who just accept the Progressive interventionist doctrines, absorb them via hard intellectual work (for which Jews are known) and then present them in their own work – in examinations and other such.

Then off to get the good job and be a “success”.

Of course from Ludwig Von Mises onwards (right to David Friedman and others) there is a minority tradition in Jewish intellectual life, that does indeed question the basic assumptions that support the ever growing level of statism.

From Classic F.M. to the Daily Telegraph (and, no, Sandhu did NOT write the review).

The H.Q. of the media left may be the BBC (hardly a book exists in a British bookshop unless a BBC leftist praises it – or writes it), but the cultural control of the left goes all over most of the media (including the entertainment media).

But then, after all, the left control the schools and the universities – indeed teaching in a broader sense.

In the present issue of BBC History Today the young (and not so young) readers are informed that wicked Roman Christians brought Pagan Britons and Saxons together, and that a “social revolution” of “egalitarianism” was forged, led by such “Red Monks” as Gildas.

Do not laugh – I laughed, till I remembered that children at schools all over the country (including many private schools).

Remember the point that Ludwig Von Mises made so often – it is the “good student” who becomes the Marxist, for he or she is the student who listens to what the teacher is saying (rather than looking out the window or whatever) and read the textbooks – and takes the ideas to their logical conclusions.

It really is true – it is often the hardest working and most intelligent (in the sense of intelligence as problem solving and information absorbing) who become the radical leftists.

“But Paul they should question the fundemental facts and assumptions they are taught”.

As young children?

I did, but that is freakish thing to do.

People who make a success in life are not “paranoid” types who think to themselves (as children) “I suspect that this stuff just is not true” It is NOT intelligence – it is something else, “paranoia” is not the right word for it, but I am not sure what is the correct word.

I would rather have ten Mary Riddells than all the subtle cultural stuff (such as the obituary example).

Look at the work of Sukhdev Sandhu (one of the reasons I stopped subscribing to the D.T. years ago) – he and the other film critics do not ARGUE against conservative and libertarian ideas, they just assme we are shit and treat us with endless contempt filled sneering.

What do you think does more damage – Mary Riddell openly comming out with leftist ARGUMENT, or the culture people (such as Sandhu – but he just a typical example) poisoning the wells of the culture (or of the perception of culture) against us?

I hold that it is the cultural work that does the real damage – especially over the long term.