What is "Progressivism"?

Progressivism is, like many other mass movements, tribalist, and based lies, arrogance, hatred, and hypocrisy.

1. It rests on fabricated, though emotionally appealing narratives, in order to generate support. The world is heating up. White people are racist. Recycling cardboard boxes is beneficial. America "rushed" to war in Iraq. Women earn 59% of what men earn -- and, for good measure, this non-fact is attributed to "sexism". Worse, these narratives are arrogantly stated as axioms, and the burden falls on others to "disprove" them.

2. They arrogantly know what is best for you, and will make you pay for it. Public schools. Restrictions on commerce. Penalties and prohibitions against improving your property. They also rely very heavily on the guilt-generating illusion of attempting to help the "other". In other words, "How can you possibly enjoy 'X' when someone, anyone, else is suffering with 'Y'?" And their solution to this "problem" is to take your property and control your behavior.

3. Their "causes" are never in support of anyone; their causes are instead are based on who they hate and are intended to incite. Example: Their 1990s boycotts against South Africa were ostensibly to support the black victims of the apartheid system, but they displayed an utter disregard for the routine slaughters and famines elsewhere in Africa. Conclusion: Their real "cause" was hating white people. Example: They display hypersensitivity to the "plight" of the "Palestinian" people when Israel defends itself against their attacks -- but are indifferent to the far larger number of Palestinian Arabs who are murdered by other Arabs. Conclusion: Their real "cause" is hating Jews.

4. Philosophy and logic are absent, and are instead replaced by base-instinct universal "wants". For example, they want clean air -- as if anyone else wants dirty air. They want "peace", as if anyone (at least in the western world) wants senseless wars. They want "health care", as though anyone else wants to be sick. Even their "positions" are meaningless: Discrimination against gays was fine when one of theirs (President Clinton) signed the Defense of Marriage Act. And war was fine when he authorized (without Congressional approval) the bombing of a European country (Serbia) that was no threat to the United States -- and when he launched missiles at Iraq. Similarly, their objections to the budget deficit under President Bush vanished when said deficit was to become much larger under President Obama.

5. Their support rests on dependency. They create entitlements (actually, coercive government-enforced claims against others) that leave the "beneficiaries" dependent on oppressive government. The main progressive entitlement is welfare for old people; i.e., Social Security. But after being compelled to make "contributions" to this "fund" for their entire working lives, who would want to vote for dismantling it? Who would, after being compelled to pay for Medicare for year after year, would vote to deny themselves this "benefit" when it becomes their turn to collect? What parent, after paying years of real-estate taxes, would want to abolish "free" government schools and subsidized state colleges? And so progressivism oozes along, growing, and using democracy as a weapon to further itself.

What is "Racism"?

Aside from being used to demonize those with whom you disagree, so-called "racism" is a catch-all term that includes many different concepts. Here's a list that elaborates, bearing in mind that the word "race" itself is poorly defined (and, in our belief, does not exist at all).

1. Racism. This is the belief that there are innate and immutable biological differences that differentiate between all members of different races, and that these differences nearly classify races into different species. Usually, racism involves pseudo-scientific theories that reinforce the racist's beliefs.

2. Prejudice. This is pre-judging an individual based on their race, but without a basis in biological (or any other) theories. Unlike racists, they may not "know" why people of different races behave differently, and they may not care why they act differently, but they nevertheless perceive a difference -- and will act on it. It is also possible for a prejudiced person to change their assessment of individuals within a race once they get to know them. A true racist must be prejudiced, but a prejudiced person need not be a racist. Generally, this is more benign that racism.

3. Bigotry. With a foundation in racism and/or prejudice, the bigot's group is "best".

4. Visceral attraction/revulsion. This is the sense of certain aspects of races that vary in each individual, and that these aspects can be inherently good or bad. Examples include people on dating sites that exclude/include certain races because of some perceived inherent quality.

5. Utopian Racialism. This is the idea, endorsed by racists and the prejudiced, that coercive racial intervention by the state is required to achieve their idea of proper racial representation. Examples range from school and neighborhood "integration" to "affirmative action" to genocide.

6. Statistical Discrimination. This is a conscious decision to tentatively treat individuals in a certain manner because, lacking more detailed information, only group characteristics are available. It is different from prejudice because, unlike prejudice, it does not make assumptions about individuals. Instead, it says, "I do not know enough about you to make an intelligent assessment. So, for the time being, my optimal guess about you as an individual can only be based on generalizations about your group." It also says, "I prefer to (not) work/socialize with large numbers of people belonging to Group "X" because, on average, that group has been demonstrated to exhibit a certain type of behavior.

Are Slavery Reparations a Smart Idea?

Are slavery reparations a smart idea?

No.

1. Some people (who happened to white) enslaved others (who happened to be black). How does this lead to, generations later, other people (who happen to be black) having a claim on the money of other people (who happen to be white)?

2. Having a claim on someone's money is the same as having a claim on the work they did to produce value. That is, reparations are also slavery. Therefore, legitimizing reparations is identical to legitimizing slavery. But if slavery is legitimized, then by what basis can anyone claim a right to the slavery known as "reparations" -- other than "you have something, so I'm taking it"?

For argument's sake, let's accept the fiction that white people's wealth (including white people who recently migrated to the USA) is somehow related to the slavery of black people many generations ago -- and that black people (even if they do not have American ancestry) have a claim on all white people:

3. If blacks have a claim on whites, then it's a safe assumption that Jews have a claim on Germans. But blacks also have a claim on (white) American Jews. So, would it be efficient to simply bypass the Jews and have Germans pay American blacks directly? Or do Jews have a bigger claim on Germans than blacks have on Jews? How does one calculate this?

4. Care to sort out the Balkans to figure out who owes what to whom?

5. Exactly how does one calculate the amount to be turned over, even in relatively clear cases? It would require the rewriting of history to estimate, among many possible outcomes, what would have happened if slavery had not occurred. Would American blacks otherwise be affluent? Or would there be no American blacks, as their ancestors would have been left in Africa?

And now, let's assume that we do have the ability to develop alternative outcomes, had slavery not happened:

6. The American enslavement of blacks, as we learned above, was not unique. Throughout history, each group had its turn to enslave (and murder) people in other groups. At which point do we rewrite history? At the start of American slavery? Or when man began to walk upright? Or in 1970? The selection of a start date changes everything, as the enslaved of yesterday might have been the slave owners on the day before.

Conclusion: Any group, any injustice, and any date can be selected to justify a claim of some people on others. If you go in with your mind made up that people in some category should take things from people in a different category, then it is a simple matter to choose your favorite history to justify anything.

What is "Heritage"?

In everyday use, "heritage" usually refers to a culturally inherited trait that the individual receives from his parents. And so, there's American heritage, Irish heritage, Korean heritage, Jewish heritage, the poorly-defined Latino/Hispanic heritage, Black heritage, and, of course, never a White heritage.

(Does "White Heritage" sound disturbing? If so, then are the other heritages also disturbing?)

In general, it sounds simple: If your parents are of Heritage X, then you are also of Heritage X. Of course, it can get a little more complicated: If Mom is Heritage X and Dad is Heritage Y, then you can "claim" two heritages. Or maybe you would just claim one and ignore the other. (To illustrate, people with a black parent and a white parent usually seem to lean towards a black heritage.)

Now, what if your mom claims Heritages A and B, and dad claims Heritages C and D? Or worse, what if...

Mom = A, B, C, and D, and

Dad = E, F, G, and H?

Well, if any one of those eight heritages is "Native American", then you can open a casino. Otherwise, you would probably select your favorite heritage -- perhaps based on affinity with a group that has many accomplished members, or perhaps based on a group that has many members who claim victimhood, or...whatever your preference is.

Next problem: If your parents are from Germany, and you are born in Chile and then move to America, then what's your heritage? If you say "Chile", then that means that your heritage can be both inherited from your parents and formed by your residence. (And, presumably, your children can claim heritages of Germany and Chile -- and whatever heritages their other parent happened to claim.)

Can heritages extend beyond nationalities? Can one also have an Islamic heritage? Or a gay heritage? If so, that means that heritages can be formed by:

A) Where your parents were born
B) Where you are born
C) Your parent's beliefs
D) Your beliefs
E) Your parent's lifestyle
F) Your lifestyle

Pick and choose any or all?

And when one considers that heritages can grow exponentially from one generation to the next (by a power of 2) , then that's a lot of heritages to be burdened with.

Another problem: Adoptions. If a baby is adopted by a Jewish family, then can the baby claim a Jewish heritage? If that same baby is discovered to have Catholic genetic parents, can the baby also claim a Catholic heritage? Can a Chinese baby adopted into an Irish family also claim a Chinese heritage? If "yes", then on what basis? Genetics? That would imply that cultural traits are transmitted genetically.

And besides, how could a baby possibly have any heritage (let alone a religious heritage) when the only things it can understand are eating, eliminating, and screaming?

In a world of constant migration and "intermarriage", the idea of heritage is obsolete, as it is just optional membership in tribe tribe of your choosing. And in a period of relative enlightenment and education, heritage demands that individual thought and behavior be subordinate to irrelevant tribal rituals. And in a world that recognizes individual accomplishment, heritage assigns credit and blame based on other people in "your" group.

And in a powerful state, heritages are used to coercively take (and kill) for the benefit of other heritages.

Heritage seems like a pretty bad idea.

Is Immigration Harmful?

This is like asking, "Are more births harmful?"

And that's because the answer is: It depends on who is being born.

If you know beforehand that a rapist will be born (yes, rapists were babies too at one time), then in that case, you might say, "It will be harmful if this person is born."

Similarly, if you know that a potential immigrant is a rapist, then you might say, "Perhaps this person should not be let in."

The main point, so far, is that how one arrives here, through birth or immigration, is irrelevant. So, immigrants can be a welcome addition -- or not. They can be better than natives: Is there anyone who would not "trade in" one thousand American prison inmates in exchange for one thousand random people from Japan? Or, immigrants can be worse than natives -- flight schools were recently a good source of such people.

Of course, one difference between immigrants and births is that it is considered immoral to sterilize a parent if there's a good chance that they would give birth to a criminal. But it is acceptable to have immigration quotas. The thinking is: Citizens have an absolute right to procreate, even if they are psychopaths -- but foreigners do not have a right to establish residence wherever they choose, even when they are "model citizens" and pay their own way.

All that said, immigrants build things, make things, and provide services for us. And not just by being day laborers, but also by being software designers, pharmaceutical researchers, architects, etc. In general, it's a good idea to have lots of immigration.

But there are three decent arguments against immigration:

1. Immigrants might take advantage of our generous welfare system and make us poorer.

2. Their lifestyles might conflict with ours, and too many immigrants (whatever that number is) from different cultures might prolong the time required for their assimilation. (This problem might be overstated, though, as a March 2007 study shows that "Hispanics" assimilate like other groups, and are in fact more patriotic than some "native" groups.)

3. Immigrants might include people who might willfully harm others.

So, there is a two-part solution:

1. Encourage productive people to immigrate (and honor their foreign professional certifications), and

2. Prevent bad people and too many "different cultured" people from immigrating.

All of which leaves us with minimizing opposing errors: Increasing #1 raises the risks associated with #2, and reducing #2 increases the risks associated with not having #1.

How can this be accomplished? Country quotas and background checks are a start, but are clearly not perfect. But is there any evidence that the government even understands the issues?

Should I Die for My Country?

This is a timely question, given the recent conduct of the kidnapped British sailors who immediately cooperated with, and allowed themselves to be humiliated by, their Iranian captors.

Anyway, most people would probably be ashamed to say anything other than "yes" to this question -- or at least they would say that they would die for their country under the right conditions.

But consider this question: How many people would unhesitatingly drown themselves so that some strangers can stay alive in the proverbial lifeboat? What's the difference between the two situations?

Maybe the lifeboat question should have several similar versions:

Version 1: Would you drown yourself to save six strangers on a boat that sprung a leak?

Version 2: Would you drown yourself to save six countrymen on a boat that was being attacked by a foreign country?

Version 3: Would you drown yourself to save six countrymen from the foreign ship if you could also kill the attackers on that ship?

The likelihood of a "yes" answer (and a "yes" action) would no doubt increase from Version 1 to Version 3.

So: What are the differences between the three versions? There are two:

1. The number of lives saved increases from six to an ambiguous future number if the enemy is attacked.

2. A collective is being saved.

Of the above two differences, the second is probably more influential. One way of seeing that is to pretend that you are sitting in front of three buttons, each of which will instantly kill you if pressed.

Button #1 says: "Push me to save six people, somewhere in the world, from being killed today."

Button #2 says: "Push me to save six of your people who are about to be killed by your group's enemies."

Button #3 says: "The future of your people is at stake. Push me to save six of them AND to kill those who are about to kill them."

In the emotionless confines of a room with buttons, and with the anonymity of the decision, it seems unlikely that any button would be pressed. But Button #1 would probably receive the fewest presses.

So, here are the conclusions:

A) Your group's "life" can be more important that your own life; it's the threatened group that matters, not the threatened individuals.

B) The actual number of people you save is probably not important. (Replace the six people with six hundred people, and see if it makes any difference.)

C) People who value their own lives more than anything else ought to be grateful that there are others who are willing to sacrifice.

D) People who are willing to sacrifice for their group ought to be grateful that there are others who place their own lives first. (Would you want to see cancer researchers enlist for front-line duty?)

E) If you voluntarily took an oath to defend your country, and you cooperate with the enemy and not even apologize for it afterwards, then you probably have very little group allegiance -- but more importantly, you are also a disgraceful fraud.

Does Poverty Cause Crime?

No, not in any meaningful sense.

The answer is qualified because, under laboratory conditions, where all other factors are isolated, there might, in some cases, be an association between poverty and crime. And even then, and association between two variables doesn't imply that one caused the other.

In any case, there are three things worth noting:

1. There is no correlation between crime and poverty associated with time.

If poverty caused crime, then crime would have been out of control during the Great Depression. In fact, if there was a direct relationship between the two, then the ever-increasing affluence of the United States should have caused a corresponding drop in crime over the last few decades. But crime grew very rapidly in the 1960s, and in fact corresponded with the billions of dollars spent by the "Great Society" to end poverty. It can almost make one think that that there was a correlation between the growth of welfare payments and the increases in crime.

2. There is no correlation between crime and poverty associated with place.

Chinatowns are among the poorest areas in the United States, but have little crime. Similarly, rural areas are poorer than urban areas, but have less crime. And West Virginia is one of the poorest, but also has relatively little crime.

3. Crime is cultural

Income levels are useless for predicting crime, but cultural patterns (assisted by biology) are excellent for predicting crime. As a proxy for culture, variables such as "ethnic group" or "race", gender, and age will yield fairly reliable results; a population comprised of people who are black, male, and young will generate more crime than a population who is white, female, and old, while controlling for affluence. (For that matter, black-male-young will generate more crime than black-female-young, white-male-young, or any other group where even one of the three black-male-young variables are changed.)

After the bulk of crime is explained by cultural patterns, there is probably a residual explanation that correlates with wealth. That is, among any cultural group, crime declines as wealth goes up. That might mean that "poverty" causes crime, or it might mean that criminals tend to be the sort of people who do not get rich, or it might mean that there is a third variable that makes some populations both poor and criminal. For example, it might be that while being poor might not have much influence on making criminals, being poor in the presence of rich people might "produce" criminals.

That is called "envy". And although envy is part of everyone's character, the decision to act on it is nevertheless an individual choice. No one needs to be a criminal.

Am I Discriminating Against Minorities?

Let's say that you own a building with ten apartments in a city where 20% of the population is "minority", and that none of your apartments are rented to minorities. Does that make you a "racist"?

In fact, if you were to randomly select tenants for your building, there is an 11% chance of that outcome. And, for that matter, there is a 36% chance that your building would be under-represented with minorities; i.e., a situation where they occupy either none (0%), or only one (10%), apartment. This is not conclusive evidence of discrimination.

[If you like probabilities, then you are probably aware that this is a result of a binomial calculation. There's a simple calculator that does the work for you here.]

Now, let's say that 50% of landlords in this city have no minority tenants; the probability of that happening by chance is about zero. Now, since the expected frequency of such an outcome is only 11%, than means that something is "wrong" with about 80% of the landlords. And all you have to do is figure out which 80% might be discriminating -- or, as is typically the case:

A) Punish 100% of landlords, innocent or guilty, and then,

B) Compel all landlords to have renting quotas.

And it is at that point when you will be discriminating -- against the majority. Is there any reason why that is better than discriminating against the minority?

And worse, the above example assumes that the lack of minority tenants is due to active discrimination. But would active discrimination also explain the lack of male kindergarten teachers? Or young people in hospitals?

If you want to see whether you are discriminating, look at the neighbors you chose to live near and look at the spouse you selected -- and then look in the mirror and ask yourself if you are guilty.

How Can I Write In A Gender-Neutral Manner?

By using "his" instead of:

- His or hers
- Their
- One's
- The person's

His dog -- and not his or her dog. their dog, one's dog, or the person's dog.

In many languages, most nouns are considered either masculine or feminine. This categorization, to us, seems to be a vestige of some long-forgotten and primitive way of looking at the world. Why is a fork considered masculine in Burpian? And why is a hat considered feminine in Blemish? It seems nonsensical.

Or is it? Certainly, sophisticated languages such as French that routinely genderize neutral words could not possibly be considered nonsensical -- or "sexist". Then, why should English be singled out for its occasional genderizing of gender-neutral or gender-ambiguous objects?

Just as words like "turnip" and "cardboard" have genders in other languages by custom, English usually uses "he" to describe gender neutrality or ambiguity.

And yet, watch as people trip over themselves with semantic distractions with sentences like, "I hope that he or she will honor my receipt". Instead of making your point about getting a refund, you have distracted your audience to instead focus on the pronoun construction.

Like any other language (or actually, more than most other languages), English has lots of odd grammar and vocabulary rules -- in addition to seemingly illogical idioms. But fortunately, we all understand how words ending in "ough" are pronounced, we all understand that "goed" is not the past tense of "go", we all understand that "long in the tooth" means "getting old", and we all understand that "he" does not necessarily imply that the subject is male. It's a feature of the language, and not a "statement" about women.

People interested in interpreting innocuous language patterns as political expressions of victimhood might feel otherwise, though.

Should the Government Sanction Homosexual Marriages?

No, the government should not sanction homosexual marriages.

That answer would upset many people.

But those who object to that answer would probably feel better if the phrase was appended with, "...and neither should the government sanction any marriages."

There, all better. Homosexual marriages would still be unrecognized, but with universal un-recognition, it's now palatable. It makes you wonder whether the demands for gay marriage are more related to A) A desire to be married, or B) Envy of heterosexuals.

Regardless, why should any association between two (or more) people be the business of the government? If the minister (or priest or rabbi or Fred's Marriages Inc.) make the relationship "official", then what interest could the government have...besides the IRS?

Many heterosexuals find the thought of homosexual sex disgusting. But then, there are undoubtedly many homosexuals who find heterosexual sex disgusting. And there are many (probably most, actually) homosexuals and heterosexuals who find dead-animal necrophilia disgusting. But as long as no one is compelled to participate in acts that they don't like, then why should anyone care about what others do? And most of all, why should the government care? Why should they be in the marriage business?

Or was that already answered?

Is There Really Such a Thing as Racism?

No, because there is no such thing as "race".

The genetic differences between groups of people with varying physical characteristics are negligible, and in fact are exceeded by the genetic variation within each of these groups. In fact, so-called "racial markers" such as skin color, hair texture, and eye shapes can just as easily be replaced by "races" that are defined by hair color (i.e., the "red-haired people"), eye color, height, etc.

For that matter, common skin hues can be found among people who share few other similarities; i.e., people from the Indian subcontinent, Africa, and Australia Aboriginals.

That said, groups that have been geographically isolated tend to share similar physical characteristics and a similar culture. Most often, when people talk about "race", they are in fact referring to a culture that is shared among people who coincidentally share some general physical characteristics. In fact, some groups with a common culture have been called a "race" when they don't even share well-defined physical characteristics; Jews and "Hispanics" come to mind, as both groups span the entire spectrum of human appearance.

The idea of "race" is appealing because people like to categorize things, even if categorizations are inappropriate. For example, a person with a "white" parent and a "black" parent is considered "black" -- like politicians Obama and Rangel. Why aren't they considered white? At one time, they might have been called "mulattoes", but now they are "black". Are these changing labels the product of scientific breakthroughs in biology? Or are they just social conventions? And how about their children, and their children's children? What are they? Fact is, they might fall into many categories of (sub) culture, intelligence, language, etc., but their race, like everyone else's race, is undefined.

Is Religious Discrimination Ethical?

You bet.

Very often, people talk will say that it is improper to discriminate against anyone on account of their race, ethnicity, or religion. Setting the first two aside, what exactly is wrong with discrimination based on religion? In fact, isn't religious discrimination precisely what religious people practice on non-believers?

In practice, most religions demand discrimination favoring their religion, and therefore demand discrimination against other religions. Therefore, banning religious discrimination would require banning religion itself.

But more to the point, religion is a set of beliefs and behavioral systems based on those beliefs. Should we be prohibited from treating people according to what they believe? If my religion requires me to get drunk on the job, does that mean that employers have no right to discriminate against me? And if my religion commands me to kill people who do not share my religion, is it discrimination to scrutinize me when I enter airports?

Why Does The World Hate America?

For the same reasons that they hate the Jews: A convenient target to scapegoat for their own (imagined) problems.

Here's a recent article from The Telegraph called Hatred of America Unites the World. Before you read it, look at our version below where we replaced "Americans" with "Jews". With some minor country-specific references that we deleted, and despite some statistics that are a bit off, it reads very well.

Americans are the New Jews.

Hatred of Jews Unites the World

By Niall Ferguson, Sunday Telegraph

Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 25/02/2007

Being hated is no fun. Few of us are like those pantomime villains who glory in the hisses and boos of an audience. And few people hate being hated more than Jews. I wish I had a dollar for every time I've been asked the plaintive question: "Why do they hate us?" and another for each of the different answers I've heard. It's because of our foreign policy. It's because of their extremism. It's because of our arrogance. It's because of their inferiority complex. Jews really hate not knowing why they're hated.

But who hates Jews the most? You might assume that it's people in countries that Israel has recently attacked or threatened to attack. Jews themselves are clear about who their principal enemies are. Asked by Gallup to name the "greatest enemy" of the Jews today, 26 per cent of those polled named Iran, 21 per cent named Iraq and 18 per cent named North Korea. Incidentally, that represents quite a success for George W. Bush's concept of the "Axis of Evil". Six years ago, only 8 per cent named Iran and only 2 per cent North Korea.

Are those feelings of antagonism reciprocated? Up to a point. According to a poll by Gallup's Centre for Muslim Studies, 52 per cent of Iranians have an unfavourable view of Jews. But that figure is down from 63 per cent in 2001. And it's significantly lower than the degree of antipathy towards the Jews felt in Jordan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Two thirds of Jordanians and Pakistanis have a negative view of Jews and a staggering 79 per cent of Saudis. Sentiment has also turned hostile in Lebanon, where 59 per cent of people now have an unfavourable opinion of Jews, compared with just 41 per cent a year ago. No fewer than 84 per cent of Lebanese Shiites say they have a very unfavourable view of Jews.

These figures suggest a paradox in the Muslim world. It's not Jew's enemies who hate the Jews most, it's people in countries that are supposed to be Jew's friends, if not allies.

The paradox doesn't end there. The Gallup poll (which surveyed 10,000 Muslims in 10 different countries) also revealed that the wealthier and better-educated Muslims are, the more likely they are to be politically radical. So if you ever believed that anti-Western sentiment was an expression of poverty and deprivation, think again. Even more perplexingly, Islamists are more supportive of democracy than Muslim moderates. Those who imagined that the Middle East could be stabilised with a mixture of economic and political reform could not have been more wrong. The richer these people get, the more they favour radical Islamism. And they see democracy as a way of putting the radicals into power.

The paradox of unfriendly allies is not confined to the Middle East. Last week was not a good week for Jew-philes in Europe. Anti-Semitism is nothing new in European politics, to be sure, particularly on the Left. But there is something novel going on here, which extends to traditionally pro-Jewish constituencies.

Back in 1999, 83 per cent of British people surveyed by the State Department Office of Research said that they had a favourable opinion of Jews. But by 2006, according to the Pew Global Attitudes Project, that proportion had fallen to 56 per cent. British respondents to the Pew surveys now give higher favourability ratings to Germans (75 per cent) and Japanese (69 per cent) than to the Jews - a remarkable transformation in attitudes, given the notorious British tendency to look back both nostalgically and unforgivingly to the Second World War. It's also very striking that Britons recently polled by Pew regard the Jewish presence in The Middle East as a bigger threat to world peace than Iran or North Korea (a view which is shared by respondents in France, Spain, Russia, India, China and throughout the Middle East).

Nor is Britain the only disillusioned ally. Perhaps not surprisingly, two thirds of Jews believe that Israel's foreign policy considers the interests of others. But this view is shared by only 38 per cent of Germans and 19 per cent of Canadians. More than two thirds of Germans surveyed in 2004 believed that Jewish leaders wilfully lied about the previous year's Hezbollah invasion, while a remarkable 60 per cent expressed the view that Jews' true motive was "to control Middle Eastern oil". Nearly half (47 per cent) said it was "to dominate the world".

The truly poignant fact is that when Jews themselves are asked to rate foreign countries, they express the most favourable views of none other than Britain, Germany and Canada.

Back in the 1990s, Madeleine Albright pompously called Israel "the indispensable nation". Today it seems to have become the indefensible nation, even in the eyes of its supposed friends.

There are, admittedly, a few scraps of good news in the international polls. There is overwhelming European opposition to Iran's acquiring nuclear weapons. And there is a surprising amount of hostility towards the Palestinian radicals of Hamas in both France and Germany. But look again at some of Jew's supposed allies. One in four Indians, two out of five Egyptians and one out of every two Pakistanis favour a nuclear-armed Iran. A third of Britons, half of all Indians and three quarters of Egyptians welcomed the success of Hamas in last year's Palestinian elections.

It's not for nothing that they say it's lonely at the top.

Is it OK to Drink Beer with a Straw?

Absolutely.

And it is also OK to drink a glass of water with a straw.

But in the case of beer, a straw can penetrate the undesirable head, and thereby make the experience more efficient.

Assuming, of course, that beer is worth drinking. In fact, a case can be made that even most beer-drinkers do not like beer: If they did like beer, then why don't they drink non-alcoholic beer instead of Coke?