Comrades vs. Liberty

Saving the damselfish

One of the interesting things to emerge during the past two weeks was the struggle the Left had in trying to establish its credentials. Murdoch’s wicked Australian newspaper had set a homework-question in the form of writing a simple essay on the topic “What’s Left?”. And the boys and girls of the party of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” were in a tad of bother trying to state just what it was that they actually stood for. 

In asking the question “What’s Left?” The Australian was left with the awful realisation that the overall answer was possibly, or almost certainly, “Not Much”. 

The stumbling block was Liberty. It hardly got a mention, comrades. 

The most interesting article in the first week of The Australian’s series of “What’s Left” opinion pieces was undoubtedly that written by Robert Manne. 

His opening sentence certainly nailed the issue (if the actual question was meant to be “What is the Left?”), when he said “The French Revolution unleashed two great values: liberty and equality.” Although whether the killers organising the Terror deserve the credit is a rather dubious notion. 

The concepts of liberty and equality were certainly around a few thousand years before the loony-Left took up their spots to the left of the President’s chair, in Paris, during the chaos and slaughter of the French Revolution. 

Manne continued; “The turbulent history of the past century might best be seen as the story of the rejection or realisation of these values by Left and Right.” Well just who is winning on the Liberty/Equality/Fraternity front he may well ask? 

Without doubt the greatest difficulty the Left has with the idea of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity is the “Liberty” bit. Whether it was Napoleon, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler (he was a National Socialist), Mao, Pol Pot, the Korean Kims or the vast variety of leftist ideologues that inhabit Leftland, the idea of liberty — or freedom of thought, speech, movement and ideas — always gets in the way of the socialist agenda. When the questions get tough the censor moves in. 

So what has this to do with damselfish? 

The latest cause of the Left is, without doubt climate change. And the latest evidence of that change is, apparently, damselfish. Researchers from James Cook University claim that climate change will alter the acidity of oceans and this will affect reef-fish. In particular the ears of damselfish. The little critters use their “ears” to “find their way around coral reefs”. They listen for the pounding surf. 

Damselfish are just the latest in “proof-positive” that climate change is here and it is getting to a reef near you. Another group of university researchers have found that damselfish get more aggressive with the rise of sea-water temperature. Gee! Damn those pesky damsels. 

In the brave new world of Liberty and Equality —so much the moral high-ground seized by Leftist intellectuals— you would imagine that the freedom to question the damselfish theories — as evidence to climate change, would be a given. The liberty to ask a few questions, say from a non-scientist’s perspective. Questions like what did Damsels do in past times when seas were more acid; when seas levels were lower; when seas were higher; when there was more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — when there was less? 

Those super sensitive damselfish have managed to survive as a species for hundreds, if not millions of years, with the ever changing moods of climate and oceans. They survive the smashing of their coral-reef homes by cyclones, hurricanes and tornadoes. 

Unfortunately in today’s Leftland, the right, the liberty, the freedom to question the evidence of advocates of climate-catastrophe is a freedom too far. Question climate-change-science at your peril. 

As shown in Quadrant TV, leading Left super-ideologue Clive Hamilton has no problem suggesting censorship of both the ABC and The Australian newspaper, when it comes to their questioning of climate change, even in the mildest manner possible, as far as the ABC is concerned. 

Clive Hamilton isn’t the only Leftist who froths at any voice given to climate rationalists. It would be hard to find anyone belonging to Doomed Planet Inc. who isn’t a censor at heart. It’s so easy to win an argument this way. 

Liberty in the form of freedom of expression, freedom of speech, freedom of thought — what ever you wish to call it — is a freedom too hard fought to be mugged by the Left.