How do you replace a heritage of assimilation and civil liberties with diversity and repression of free speech? First, promote the mere giving of offence as subject to prosecution. After that, count on professional panderers like Bob Carr to agree that ethnic voting blocs need those special protections and, of course, lots of handouts
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing in itself, but an overdose of arrogance makes it infinitely more so. Doubt that? Just lend an ear to the oracular pronouncements on global climate by those whose greatest skill is not comprehension but a talent for hogging the microphone
The frightening aspect of this whole controversy about the Act's restrictions on free speech is the realisation that a large section of the political class, the media and professional multiculturalists not only dislike personal freedom, they actively detest it
Here's a way for defenders of Section 18 to demonstrate that the loathsome gag on freedom of speech might be worth keeping: They could prosecute their bigoted friends. You know, the March In Marchers with their placards calling for the assassination of a conservative Prime Minister
While there has been no trace of the vanished Malaysian jetliner, there is no shortage of explanatory theories as to its fate. A fire, stampeding passengers and explosive decompression all mesh with the known facts. If that is indeed what happened, all aboard were dead long before impact
That the alarmists' predictions of soaring temperatures have proven consistently at odds with reality comes as no surprise. What should shock and appall taxpayers underwriting these lab-coated exercises in error is just how grossly out of whack the predictions for Australia have been
When your child is being conditioned to dismiss you as a hopeless crank for doubting the warmist dogma, when art classes produce apocalyptic visions of ecological collapse and lesson plans are inspired by the infallibility of Al Gore, it is a typical day in an Australian classroom
On paper democracy is gaining ground around the world. How curious, not to mention dangerous, that the popular will is now so often violated by unelected judges and courts in the very countries where the rule of the ballot box was born, as James Allan laments in his new book
The shrieking, howling, shout-you-down left likes to present itself as motivated only by the yearning to right injustice and make life more fair for all. 'Fair', especially, for second-raters whose instinct is to smash what they could never build themselves
The gay lobby should step very carefully in joining with the left in marginalising those holding traditional values. Should real discrimination based on sexual preference ever again raise its ugly head, they may well find conservatives to be their most effective supporters and protectors
Had the Romans adopted our current law's determination to save the sensitive and litigious from distress, the Pharisees would not have had to tolerate the enmity and harsh words of an upstart preacher from Galilee
With all the talk of late about the return of knights and dames to Australia, …
New Matilda has published a review of Quadrant contributor Hal Colebatch's "Australia’s Secret War: How unionists sabotaged our troops in World War II". It won't tell you much about the book, but you will be in no doubt about the author, Adam Brereton
In bemoaning Tony Abbott's decision to restore Imperial honours, a stunned and baffled commentariat overlooked two things. First, the move was needed to rectify a long-standing anomaly. Second, very few Australians share the outrage that engulfed left-canted newsrooms and think tanks
Get 'em young and fill their heads with warmist propaganda -- that seems to the unofficial motto of Britain's education establishment, which has just been warned by the Home Secretary that peddling propaganda as fact is a punishable offence
It came crashing out of the blue in Western Australia's re-staged Senate election -- that fuming, smoking, reeking bundle of adolescent incoherence known as The Greens and their policies. The big loser in Saturday's vote was Labor, and who can be surprised by that? With the Greens' Scott Ludlam tailoring his campaign to attract Labor's disaffected ferals -- 'Abbott is a homophobe', 'Abbott hates women' etc etc ad nauseum -- where else could Labor's hard-left contingent turn? Zeg's wonders where it will all lead.
Want your, er, highly innovative research to get lots of attention, the sort that keeps those grants coming? You could do worse than start with some kind words from a peer-reviewer whose work is glowingly cited in your own paper. After that, apply for the next batch of grants
Congenital liar Craig Thomson, who believed that the job of representing the best interests of …
You could argue that Russia's seizure of the Crimea was a popularly endorsed manifestation of robust democracy. Be that as it may, the notion that the invaded's unarmed renditions of their national anthem represents an effective response is clearly lacking