Everybody knows about the relaxed attitude towards cannabis in the Netherlands, but not as many knows about the progressive heroin policy in Switzerland. For the past fourteen years, heroin addicts have been able to receive their drug on prescription. It’s been a huge successs for both addicts and the wider community. “Thanks to this policy we don’t have open drug scenes anymore,” says a spokesperson for the Swiss Social Democratic Party in an article published by the Huffington Post.

Tomorrow, on 30 November 2008, voters will decide in a referendum whether or not to make the current policy permanent. The latest opinion polls suggest the Swiss will vote in favour of prescription heroin. I think it would be a great if they do.

I found this is the New York Times:

For sale: a vast tunnel complex in central London. Former tenants include Britain’s secret service, the famous hot line between America and the Soviet Union during the cold war and 400 tons of government documents. The asking price is $7.4 million.

I remember fantasizing about living underground as a young and very peculiar teenager. I think I got the idea from a film—I can’t remember which one.

Never trust a person with a website. At least that’s true for Belgian politicians.

When you’re Arianna Huffington you don’t have to be polite to the little people.

When nothing else works in a debate with atheists and sceptics, theologians and religious apologists often turn to the argument that people need faith in divinity to cope with evil. “If we accepted the atheist claim that there is no God, how do we explain the sacrifice of a mother who lost her child?” a Swedish theologian once asked me during seminar. I don’t remember my exact response, but I acknowledged that he was partly right; to explain the death of a child with science and rationality seem both heartless and inadequate compared to consolatory ideas about greater meaning and God’s will. Problematic for apologists, however, is that evil and heartbreak are so often caused by religion. In the—still ongoing—terror assault on Mumbai, innocent people are being killed indiscriminately in the name of God. Newspapers tell their stories:

Gunjun Nagpal had been celebrating her 31st birthday at the Golden Dragon restaurant in the Taj Mahal hotel when two gunmen sprayed her table with bullets. She, her mother and her father were killed instantly. Kamal Nagpal, Gunjun’s cousin, said her family had been wiped out. “My sister is hanging on for dear life. She’s the only one left. We are victims but who is bringing the war [to India]?”

The terrorists most surely think they are doing God’s work and that the people they kill are legitimate victims for a greater good. I cannot stop but thinking that it’s somewhat perverted that priests and rabbis will give them right when comforting the survivors in the days to come.

Commie hippies and reactionary environmentalists will observe “Buy Nothing Day” tomorrow, so I suggest friends of trade and liberty shop more than usual. I will head to the mall for my annual Christmas shopping.

(Seen in the picture is a Bristol hippie on Buy Nothing Day 2007.)

A few days ago, I criticized a Swedish blogger for only posting pictures of feminine-looking men. Now I thought I would show him and everyone else what a truly beautiful man looks like. Here is a picture of 42-year-old actor Matthew Fox, best known as “Jack” in the TV-series Lost. He is a man, and he is better looking than any of the young men the gay media thinks we all like to dream about. Youth is overrated; and in my opinion, so are the clean-shaven faces and the hairless bodies so many desire.

Indian authorities say 125 people have been killed and 327 people have been injured in the ongoing Islamist terror attack on Mumbai so far. Hundreds of innocent people are still trapped inside the buildings kept by the terrorist.

Imagine what the world could be like without religion.

I got an email from a reader in New Zealand. He wants to know if there are any other Swedish blogs in English. I know of only two: The Local’s newsblog and Johan Norberg’s bilingual blog.

Are there any Swedish blogs in English I have missed? Please let us know.

Mamma Mia! is Britain’s fastest-selling DVD ever. People simply cannot get enough of ABBA. Amazing.

“I no longer recognize marriage,” Tom Ackerman writes on his blog. “It’s a new thing I’m trying. Turns out it’s fun.”

He’s right—it is funny:

Yesterday I called a woman’s spouse her boyfriend.

She says, correcting me, “He’s my husband.”
“Oh,” I say, “I no longer recognize marriage.”

The impact is obvious. I tried it on a man who has been in a relationship for years,

“How’s your longtime companion, Jill?”
“She’s my wife!”
“Yeah, well, my beliefs don’t recognize marriage.”

Fun. And instant, eyebrow-raising recognition. Suddenly the majority gets to feel what the minority feels. In a moment they feel what it’s like to have their relationship downgraded, and to have a much taken-for-granted right called into question because of another’s beliefs.

Just replace the words husband, wife, spouse, or fiancé with boyfriend, girlfriend, special friend, or longtime companion.

In the past decade or so, environmentalists have scared us with horror stories about our planet rapidly warming up. Unless we immediately replaced those light bulbs and refrained from air travel, we were doomed to fry for our sins. The only problem was that the nightmare scenario painted by alarmists never seemed to materialize. Put simply: the thermometers refuse to confirm the global warming. Bummer!

In an article published today, Bjørn Lomborg writes that the global temperature is actually dropping:

The most obvious point about global warming is that the planet is heating up. It has warmed about 1 degree Celsius over the past century, and is predicted by the United Nations’ climate panel (IPCC) to warm between 1.6 and 3.8 degrees during this century, mainly owing to increased carbon dioxide. An average of all 38 available standard runs from the IPCC shows that models expect a temperature increase in this decade of about 0.2 degrees.

But this is not at all what we have seen. And this is true for all surface temperature measures, and even more so for both satellite measures. Temperatures in this decade have not been worse than expected; in fact, they have not even been increasing. They have actually decreased by between 0.01 and 0.1 degrees per year. On the most important indicator of global warming, temperature development, we ought to hear that the data are actually much better than expected.

Likewise, and arguably much more importantly, the heat content of the world’s oceans has been dropping for the past four years where we have measurements. Whereas energy in terms of temperature can disappear relatively easily from the light atmosphere, it is unclear where the heat from global warming should have gone—and certainly this is again much better than expected.

Is there a link between cleanliness and wickedness? Well, a new study by Simone Schnall of the University of Plymouth suggests “washing with soap and water makes people view unethical activities as more acceptable and reasonable than they would if they had not washed themselves”. From The Economist:

Physical purification ... produces a more relaxed attitude to morality. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Pontius Pilate is portrayed in the Bible as washing his hands of the decision to crucify Jesus. Something to think about for those who feel that purification rituals bring them closer to God.

(Via the blog of the clean-scrubbed Niclas Berggren.)

This is promising:

President-elect Barack Obama has yet to attend church services since winning the White House earlier this month, a departure from the example of his two immediate predecessors.

On the three Sundays since his election, Obama has instead used his free time to get in workouts at a Chicago gym.

I was too pessimistic in my earlier entry on this subject. I was also wrong about one thing: Venezuela’s democratic opposition won five—not three— constituencies in yesterday’s local elections. There is more good news still:

In all, pro-Chávez candidates won 17 of the 22 states up for grabs. Many of his victories were in relatively sparsely populated rural states, but also reflected his support in most of the country.

The losses were Mr. Chávez’s second setback at the polls in the past year, after the defeat of a proposed constitutional overhaul last December that would have enhanced his powers. The results will put opponents of Mr. Chávez in charge of areas with more than a third of Venezuela’s 26 million people.

This is the trend we see in many countries: rural people vote for politicians with the most authoritarian and illiberal image, whereas urban people vote for democrats, liberals, and libertarian conservatives. Hopefully, we are seeing the beginning of the end of the Chávez regime.

And now to something more disturbing.

A Venezuelan friend emailed a while ago. He explained that the rural areas voting heavily for Chávez to the most part are the same areas the regime has stripped of all independent media. The poor in the countryside only have access to state media, which is controlled by Chávez loyalists. State television in Venezuela airs several hours of Chávez speeches and propaganda shows daily. In the election campaign, state media spent hours humiliating the opposition by broadcasting wiretapped private phone calls and demeaning gossip. According to my friend, one state-owned local radio station had a former girlfriend of the opposition leader talking about the politician’s impotence and acne problem while a Chávez supporter cracked jokes about it. The show was rerun every day the past week. Neither the opposition leader nor his campaign spokesperson were given the opportunity to respond.

“Rolf Wolff, dean of the school of business at Gothenburg University, called on the government to nationalize Volvo Cars to safeguard the pool of knowledge on which the Swedish auto industry is based,” The Local writes. This is complete madness. The Swedish car industry has failed, but that’s not the taxpayers’ responsibility. I’m a strong advocate of the separation of state and commerce.

Read Rolf Wolff’s article in full here.

Pastor Ed Young challenged the married couples in his Texan congregation to have sex every day for a week. That’s the kind off worship I like.

Yesterday’s local elections in Venezuela offer both good and bad news. After a dirty campaign—which included Hugo Chávez using the government intelligence agency to record his opponents’ private communication for him to broadcast on state television—the regime loyalists won all but three provinces. However, the Chávez camp did not manage to win some of the most populous cities in the land, which means the capital will be run by the democratic opposition.

Ironically, Chávez was quick to give his critics right by making it obvious that Venezuelan socialism is all about the president’s delusions of grandeur:

President Hugo Chavez’s opponents made important gains in Venezuela’s local elections, capturing the Caracas mayor’s office and three of the most populous states, but his allies won a strong majority.

With more than 95 percent of votes counted, pro-Chavez candidates kept gubernatorial posts in 17 states, while the opposition won five states. Chavez trumpeted his party’s domination of Sunday’s vote as a sign to continue driving Venezuela toward “21st-century socialism.”

“The people are telling me: ‘Chavez continue down the same road,’” he said, hinting that he has not abandoned plans for constitutional changes that would expand his powers, push the economy toward socialism and allow him to run for re-election indefinitely.

(The italics are mine.)

In European leftist media, Israeli fear of Islamist terror is often portrayed as somewhat irrational and paranoid, and it is always said to be self-inflicted. Israel is the bad guy no matter what. But honestly, would any of these journalists be comfortable with a situation where their country’s outspoken enemy triple its missile arsenal in only two years? I think not.

A life-size statue of mad mass-murderer Che Guevara will be on display in New York until 1 May 2009. I think this portrait makes the man’s character more justice.

This story has everything. No novelist could make this up.

Two lesbian women, who belong to “a blood-drinking vampire subculture”, killed a teenage girl. They were caught and sent to the same prison, where they now are known for snogging in public, demanding raw meat to eat, and feeding off each other.

Makes HBO’s True Blood seem naturalistic and down-to-earth.

I found this comment on Gawker and post it here because I think it’s quite funny:

If my boyfriend bought me a house, I’d be okay with it, but I’d passive aggressively bitch about the problems with the house for the rest of our relationship.

OK, it’s Sunday, it’s freezing cold outside, there’s nothing but reruns on television, and I’m bored. My apologies for taking it out on you with this nonsense blogging. I realize that some mindless blogging won’t help. What I need is someone to nag. Perhaps it would be a good idea to buy one of those abused and traumatized dogs Animal Rescue sell off cheap to do-gooders with no lives. It’s about time I realize I’m one of these people. If I do get a dog, I will name the bitch Katrine Kielos and train it to attack pram-pushing women. That would add more drama to my dull winter Sundays.

From the New York Times:

New evidence from radar surveys by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter strongly suggest that the lobes are pure ice in the form of glaciers, buried under a thin layer of soil and rock. If so, there may be an enormous amount of ice on Mars apart from the poles, potentially providing a convenient resource for human missions.

With this much water, I’m sure human life on Mars will became a reality in only a generation or two. Cool.

Burundi’s parliament has approved a new penal law that makes gay people criminals.

I say no.

But people have different ideas about cybersex. I just read about a British woman divorcing her husband after she caught him having virtual sex with a prostitute in Second Life. In my humble opinion, the woman is an idiot. Internet sex is about fantasizing and allowing yourself to “do” things you may not want to do in real life. It’s only a problem if it replaces real-life sex. Of course, no one should stay in an unhappy relationship no matter what is the cause. But people who are jealous of their partner’s masturbation objects are doomed to be unhappy in all relationships—they better get over it or join their partner online. I’ve heard threesomes and swingers’ parties are frequent in Second Life.

Personally, I’m not much for cybersex. I prefer pictures of male beauty. (My husband can relax; I won’t leave him for Ryan Phillippe anytime soon.)

A Long Island school has renamed itself Barack Obama Elementary School in honour of the president-elect’s historic rise to the presidency, CBS News reports.

I second Eugene Volokh’s opinion. It seems a bit premature.

Does graffiti make you a delinquent person? A new Dutch study led by Kees Keizer of the University of Groningen suggests it just might:

His [Dr Keizer] group’s first study was conducted in an alley that is frequently used to park bicycles. As in all of their experiments, the researchers created two conditions: one of order and the other of disorder. In the former, the walls of the alley were freshly painted; in the latter, they were tagged with graffiti (but not elaborately, to avoid the perception that it might be art). In both states a large sign prohibiting graffiti was put up, so that it would not be missed by anyone who came to collect a bicycle. All the bikes then had a flyer promoting a non-existent sports shop attached to their handlebars. This needed to be removed before a bicycle could be ridden.

When owners returned, their behaviour was secretly observed. There were no rubbish bins in the alley, so a cyclist had three choices. He could take the flyer with him, hang it on another bicycle (which the researchers counted as littering) or throw it to the floor. When the alley contained graffiti, 69% of the riders littered compared with 33% when the walls were clean.

Australian authorities have launched a radio advertising campaign designed to “stop people calling an ambulance for ‘crises’ such as broken fingernails, dropped pillows or pizza cravings”. It gets worse:

Paramedics are reporting increasing instances of callers faking symptoms so they can be taken by ambulance to hospital, only to skip off to the nearest shopping centre after enjoying a free ride.

What’s wrong with people?!

When reading conservative media, one might get the impression that the gay lobby runs everything in America. This map, however, gives the true picture. Forty states have laws discriminating against the gay minority. The gay lobby is nowhere to be seen.

Map copied from the Freedom to Marry website.

A self-proclaimed “leading thinker in stuff about robots” offers some tips on how to solve the big social problem with robots running amok and killing people. Here’s the highlight of his extensive list:

• Make sure all robots have prominent big red buttons on them that deactivates them.
• Never give the robots artificial intelligence by merging the minds of different serial killers.
• Have a limit of five weapons per robot.
• Never give the robots access to time machines.
• Don’t have the robots’ programming give them a hundred points per person they kill.
• Never make a robot monkey.
• Install Vista on the robots so no killing spree can last longer than a few minutes without them needing to reboot.
• Make sure killbots have a preset killing limit.

Print out and save the list for the next time you build a robot.

The Times has the list:

1. Kim Jong-il
2. Ferdinand Marcos
3. Nicolae Ceausescu
4. Saparmurat Niyazov
5. Idi Amin
6. Joseph Stalin
7. Mohammed Reza Pahlavi
8. Saddam Hussein
9. Mobutu Sese Soku
10. Suharto

My personal “favourite” (if that’s the appropriate word) is the Ugandan autarch Idi Amin, whose craziness brought him to claim the style of King of Scotland.

A number of philosophers of religion had hoped Albert Einstein’s E=mc² formula would be proven wrong to leave room for divine powers. But he was right: mass can be converted into energy, and energy can be converted into mass.

I have never heard of anyone dying from too much deodorant—until now.

Lisa Malkiewicz wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Times. I take the liberty of posting it here because I share her dream and think she expresses what many people feel about contemporary religion:

I’m a straight married mommy, and I’m sick of the claims by supporters of Proposition 8 that they aren’t “against” homosexuals and that the proposition didn’t take away anyone’s rights.

Proposition 8 was discrimination, pure and simple, and the powerful institutions and people who backed it are bullies. Honest, loving, tax-paying Californians were stripped of their rights by a misinformed majority vote.

I am sick of claims that homosexuality is bad for families. Contrary to what church leaders say, homosexuality is not an abomination. Ignorant, hateful doctrine that turns parents against their own children is an abomination.

I dream of a day when churches preach love and tolerance, and then match their actions to their words.

I dream of a day when only the marriage of church and state is banned.

“President-elect Barack Obama will not move for months, and perhaps not until 2010, to ask Congress to end the military’s decades-old ban on open homosexuals in the ranks,” the Washington Times writes. Perhaps I’m too much of a pessimist, but I wouldn’t be surprised if nothing comes of this.

Shocking activism at Murray State University in Kentucky:

On Friday, members of the Murray State Alliance performed live homosexual acts on campus in the Free Speech Zone. Many students were shocked, but not necessarily as the name the event implies.

Students performed acts such as reading, studying and hanging out to raise awareness about the lifestyle of gay members of the Murray State campus.

Public reading and drinking coffee—it’s that homosexual lifestyle.

As a devout Anglophile with a superb satellite dish, I watch a lot of British television. Right now, a government-sponsored organization promoting organ donation runs a campaign called “Tell a Friend”. According to the campaign advert, it’s a big problem that many people don’t share their opinions on organ donation with friends and relatives. This, in turn, results in ill people in need of a liver or heart transplant die while on a waiting list. By telling our friends what we think about donating our organs, we just might help a fellow human being in the future.

When I read through my list of favourite bloggers a while ago, I noticed that Jonas Morian has posted a video clip of a similar campaign. This one from California. He posted it because he wants his readers to register their wishes with the Swedish Council for Organ and Tissue Donation. That’s a good idea. I did so a few years ago because I didn’t want to leave that decision to my husband or parents. Besides, if it were up to them, they would probably approve of organs being taken from my body the minute I give up breath. I don’t want that. In fact, I don’t like the very idea of organ donation.

My friends and relatives know how I feel. But by expressing my thoughts online, all they have to do is search my blog if ever in doubt.

Oh, and while on the subject—I don’t want anyone else’s internal organ in my body either! I would rather die than wake up with body parts from some dead person. Now you know.

The International Herald Tribune brings good news for Islamists and revolutionary anti-Semites worldwide:

Iran has now produced roughly enough nuclear material to make, with added purification, a single atom bomb, according to nuclear experts analyzing the latest report from global atomic inspectors.

What I fear the most about Barack Obama in the White House is that Iran will be given free hands to develop nuclear weapons. I can think of nothing else that would jeopardize world peace more than that. I have said it repeatedly on this blog: someone must put an end to Iran’s plans before it’s too late.

Reb Bradley is a pastor and an author who specializes in helping parents raise their children to become superstitious conservatives. He is worried about so many young Americans being liberals. He thinks good, old conservative parents have failed when their children grow up to be men and women with political and social ideas different from earlier generations. To help parents bring up a new generation of traditional dogmatists who put deity before humanity, he has written a book wittily entitled Born Liberal, Raised Right. The book will help readers deal with such burning topics as:

• Why America has suffered such moral decline in the last 50 years.
• Why so many children raised in good homes grow up with values so different from their parents.
• Why so many young conservatives voted for Obama in this last election.
• Why the crime rate began to grow when parents began applying the wisdom of Dr Spock.

To illustrate the nightmarish situation of young should-be conservatives voting for the evil Mr Obama instead of God’s favourite, the publisher has picked a cover picture of a toddler wearing a Che Guevara playsuit. Good choice, because, as we all know, there has never been anyone so eager to embrace liberalism as the Marxist rebel who set out to rid Cuba of American intellectuals, domestic entrepreneurship, man-on-man action, and Hollywood’s moral decline.

Seriously, I know that the Americans have distorted political terminology beyond recognition, but I simply cannot stop laughing when conservative Americans illustrate liberalism with the world’s most famous communist. It’s like illustrating Christianity with a picture of Buddha.

I photographed this sticker I found on the bus an hour ago.

In a response to Obama’s victory, an al-Qaida spokesperson called the president-elect—along with secretaries of state Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice—“house Negroes”, the Huffington Post reports.

But wait! I thought al-Qaida wanted peace and harmony between all people and opposed all racism. That’s what the radical segments of the Socialist Left in Europe has said since they began rallying against the United States and its allies after 11 September 2001. I feel cheated.

Added at 20:23: Oh, I just remembered. “House Negro” is what Swedish socialists habitually call Nyamko Sabuni, the Minister for Integration and Gender Equality. However, hardcore communist bloggers have explained that calling a black person “house Negro” is not racist—if the phrase is pronounced by a communist or Islamist, that is.

Gunnar Bergström, one of the many prominent Swedish Marxists who defended the slaughter of innocent Cambodians in the name of communism, has apologized for his mistakes. Better late than never, I suppose.

On his official website, the next president of the United States has published a list of reforms to make America better for gays and lesbians:

• Expand Hate Crimes Statutes: In 2004, crimes against LGBT Americans constituted the third-highest category of hate crime reported and made up more than 15 percent of such crimes. Barack Obama cosponsored legislation that would expand federal jurisdiction to include violent hate crimes perpetrated because of race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, or physical disability. As a state senator, Obama passed tough legislation that made hate crimes and conspiracy to commit them against the law.
• Fight Workplace Discrimination: Barack Obama supports the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and believes that our anti-discrimination employment laws should be expanded to include sexual orientation and gender identity. While an increasing number of employers have extended benefits to their employees’ domestic partners, discrimination based on sexual orientation in the workplace occurs with no federal legal remedy. Obama also sponsored legislation in the Illinois State Senate that would ban employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
• Support Full Civil Unions and Federal Rights for LGBT Couples: Barack Obama supports full civil unions that give same-sex couples legal rights and privileges equal to those of married couples. Obama also believes we need to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and enact legislation that would ensure that the 1,100+ federal legal rights and benefits currently provided on the basis of marital status are extended to same-sex couples in civil unions and other legally-recognized unions. These rights and benefits include the right to assist a loved one in times of emergency, the right to equal health insurance and other employment benefits, and property rights.
• Oppose a Constitutional Ban on Same-Sex Marriage: Barack Obama voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment in 2006 which would have defined marriage as between a man and a woman and prevented judicial extension of marriage-like rights to same-sex or other unmarried couples.
• Repeal Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell: Barack Obama agrees with former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Shalikashvili and other military experts that we need to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. The key test for military service should be patriotism, a sense of duty, and a willingness to serve. Discrimination should be prohibited. The U.S. government has spent millions of dollars replacing troops kicked out of the military because of their sexual orientation. Additionally, more than 300 language experts have been fired under this policy, including more than 50 who are fluent in Arabic. Obama will work with military leaders to repeal the current policy and ensure it helps accomplish our national defense goals.
• Expand Adoption Rights: Barack Obama believes that we must ensure adoption rights for all couples and individuals, regardless of their sexual orientation. He thinks that a child will benefit from a healthy and loving home, whether the parents are gay or not.

Remarkable.

Hillary Clinton has accepted the offer from president-elect Barack Obama to become the new Secretary of State, the Guardian reports. It’s an excellent choice. Few American politicians are better known internationally. Mrs Clinton is a divisive figure domestically, but in global politics, she is not.

With the help of Cuban-backed intelligence services, Venezuelan ruler Hugo Chávez has recorded his opponents’ private conversations, which the regime now broadcast on state television to humiliate the opposition:

Government wiretaps of opposition politicians usually remain secret, restricted to the ears of spooks and ministers. But in democracy Venezuela-style, everyone gets to listen in.

President Hugo Chávez has filled the airwaves with tapped conversations of his political foes to embarrass and apparently intimidate them in the run-up to regional elections. State TV has broadcast the recordings, enhanced with comic sound effects, in a barrage of attack adverts that would make even Karl Rove blush.

The prime target has been Manuel Rosales, an opposition leader who is tipped to become mayor of Maracaibo, Venezuela's second city. One advert features him discussing buying expensive jewellery, along with sound and visual effects of rings and a Cartier watch.

Another advert plays a conversation with Rosales negotiating the purchase of cattle, to a backdrop of mooing sounds and cartoon pictures of coins.

Other politicians, as well as journalists and diplomats, have found private conversations, as well as photographs and video images, broadcast on state TV.

Things like this only happen in totalitarian countries. And no one is more totalitarian than Hugo Chávez. None of his many socialist fans in Europe would accept a liberal or conservative government to do to them what the Chávez regime does to liberals and conservatives in Venezuela. But it is well known that socialists are only democrats in opposition.

As from 1 January 2009, transvestism, sadomasochism, fetishism, and gender identity disorder will be struck from Sweden’s official list of medical diagnoses.

An artwork by Douglas Coupland. I want the motif on my duvet cover.

On 27 October, the Hubble Space Telescope photographed two galaxies more than 400 million light-years from Earth. This is only one in a long line of photographed galaxies, but what makes this picture especially interesting is that the shape of the galaxies suggests an unimaginably large collision took place quite recently, i.e. only a few billion years ago. Scientists think the ring of stars was formed after the galaxy on the left passed through the galaxy on the right.

(Image by NASA and ESA.)

Only one in three prefers the opposition leader.

I don’t mind the annual Gay Pride events that take place every summer. I never participate in the parades though. I prefer to be the quiet spectator. (My body dressed in nothing but briefs is best kept out of the public eye.) However, I wouldn’t mind protest against the injustice of discrimination, so had I been in America today, I would probably have joined one of the 300 rallies demanding marriage equality.

(I pray to the non-existing God that these rallies won’t be taken over by leftist loons and meaningless arguing with the craziest elements of American Christianity.)

British newspaper The Economist asks the question in an article headline. My answer would be that he acts as a socialist due to conservatism’s lack of direction. In other words, the French president is no Marxist, but as conservatism is more an attitude than a political theory, his politics derives from France’s socialist mindset. Being conservative in France is to talk and behave like a Marxist much in the same way being a conservative in America is to talk and behave like a devout Christian. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to Edmund Burke’s thoughts on evolutionary history per se, but I do think the lack of ideological direction is a problem for conservatism. That is why conservatives must always be judge by their friends. Conservative politicians need some libertarian entourage.

I know, this is gallows humour, but I think Mark Oppenheimer’s take on the fact the elderly tend to vote against gay rights is funny. The article asks the question which minority group will see one of their own in the Oval Office next:

Yes, I know, we may already have had a gay president—Lincoln is a much-nominated candidate for closeted commander in chief—but if we’re talking about an openly gay president, it won’t be for a while. Still, we know what to do to improve a gay candidate’s chances: murder an old person. Younger generations are far more tolerant of homosexuality; we know, for example, that voters under 30 opposed California’s Proposition 8. When the time comes, voters may feel more comfortable with a lesbian president than with a gay man, given the stereotypes about lesbian monogamy and domesticity. Top candidate: a young woman, a college freshman somewhere in the progressive Midwest, maybe Wisconsin or Minnesota, who just worked her ass off for Barack Obama and is planning her run in 2048.

Harry S. Truman in his inaugural address on 20 January 1949:

Communism is based on the belief that man is so weak and inadequate that he is unable to govern himself, and therefore requires the rule of strong masters.

Democracy is based on the conviction that man has the moral and intellectual capacity, as well as the inalienable right, to govern himself with reason and fairness.

Communism subjects the individual to arrest without lawful cause, punishment without trial, and forced labour as the chattel of state. It decrees what information he shall receive, what art he shall produce, what leaders he shall follow, and what thoughts he shall think.

Democracy maintains that government is established for the benefit of the individual, and is charged with the responsibility of protecting the rights of the individual and his freedom in the exercise of those abilities.

It’s brilliant and spot-on. Anyone who claims that communism is anything but an elitist ideology with no respect for people knows nothing about it.

(Seen in picture is Truman’s official presidential portrait painted by Greta