QED

Dumb, Sodomy and the Cash

roz ward mugThe founder and coordinator of the Safe Schools Coalition Australia (SSCA) is an avowed Marxist who lives in a fantasy world where communism supports free love and LGBTI lifestyles. The ascension of Roz Ward (left) to the position of sexuality commissar for Australian schools is therefore an unforgivable indictment of federal and state governments. Her rise to power reflects very poorly on both Christopher Pyne and Simon Birmingham — two Liberal Party progressivists — under whose stewardship as federal ministers of education this destructive ideological juggernaut was smuggled into the national school curriculum.

Indeed, it appears that Australia is entering into a Brave New LGBTI World dominated by orifice politics, courtesy of a federal Coalition government so desperate to suck up to the progressivist elites that it is happy to sacrifice the physical and mental health of a generation of young Australians.

Ward is at the core of a coalition of organizations seeking to radically subvert the most intimate areas of social and personal relationships in the name of Marxism and LGBTI ideology. With funding since 2010 from the Victorian government, Ward set up the Safe Schools Coalition Victoria, which was a joint initiative of the Foundation for Young Australians (FYA) and Gay & Lesbian Health Victoria. This became the basis of the SSCA. It has since received $8 million in federal funding and is now convened by the FYA, which boasts of 93 supporter organizations and 515 member schools; it claims also to have trained 15,102 staff and have access to 403,392 school students. Under its auspices SSCA now has branches in every state and territory, and its campaign is to be rolled out to all schools in the country, aimed at 12- and 13-year-old children. Its services are to be delivered by diverse sexual-health, family-planning, and AIDS organizations. In Victoria it is delivered by Gay & Lesbian Health Victoria at La Trobe University, where Ward is based.

Despite her power and influence, Ward’s academic qualifications are very basic. She doesn’t possess a doctorate or any qualifications in medicine, but holds only a BA (Hons), and an MA in Gender Studies from the University of Sussex in the UK. According to its website this MA focusses on the contribution of feminist theory to analysing sexual identity and the social construction of gender; gender as an embodied social relation and experience; and the political aspects of gender and feminist research. It appears to offer little or no training in conventional medicine, psychology or psychiatry, preferring the study of such subjects as Feminism and Film; Queering Popular Culture; The Cinematic Body; Race Critical Theory; and Embodiment and Institutionalisation of Violence.

This academic concentration on feminist theory and cultural studies, rather than on medicine and psychology, was reflected in the construction of the Safe Schools campaign, which quite avoided consultation with child psychiatrists and paediatricians, and other professionals who possess expert medical knowledge of sexuality and gender-identity issues.

In Australia, Ward became a member of the far-left Socialist Alternative organization, giving full expression to her Marxist-LGBTI ideology in her address last March to the 2015 Marxism Conference in Melbourne (her full sermon can be heard here). As several commentators have observed,  this speech puts the Safe Schools program into its ideological context as part of a far-left strategy to initiate a sexual revolution within Australian schools. It is therefore, “extraordinary that politicians have not examined the ideological context of the SSCA program”, given the immense sensitivity of the issues at stake.

In her address on “The Role of the Left in the Struggle for LGBTI Rights”, Ward followed the standard Marxist line in blaming all social and personal problems on capitalist exploitation, arguing that capitalism promotes a ‘myth’ that there is a biological basis for gender identification and imposes arbitrary cultural and moral constraints on sexuality that inhibit sexual freedom. It does this, she says, to facilitate the exploitation of the working class (with which Ward absurdly identifies):

To smooth the operation of capitalism the ruling class has benefited, and continues to benefit, from oppressing our bodies, our relationships, sexuality and gender identities alongside sexism, homophobia and transphobia.

Consequently, she claims in paranoiac fashion:

LBGTI oppression and heteronormativity are woven into the fabric of capitalism [and] push to fit people into gender constructs that promote heterosexuality … Alongside sexism, homophobia and transphobia both serve to break the spirits of ordinary people, to consume our thoughts, to make us accept the status quo …

According to Ward, capitalism makes us “keep living or aspiring to live, or feel like we should live, in small social units and families”. There, she complains, “we must reproduce and take responsibility for those people in those units” – a diabolical presumption apparently.

By way of relief, Ward insists,

Marxism offers the hope and the strategy needed to create a world where human sexuality, gender and how we relate to our bodies can blossom in extraordinarily new and amazing ways that we can only try to imagine today.

To support this claim Ward cites sexual policies introduced in the Soviet Union after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. These included the use of gender neutral language and the abolition of any fixed age of consent, amongst many other anti-family measures designed to achieve a collectivist utopia.

It is at this point that Ward’s argument and the entire Marxist-LGBTI ideology plunges into fantasy and absurdity. In fact, as the historical record shows, the utopian plans of the Russian communists that Ward so admires brought only tragedy and disaster. It all began with Lenin, as Orlando Figes describes in A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924 (1996). Frustrated by his inability to create a communist paradise, Lenin had called upon I. P. Pavlov, the infamous scientific expert on programming animal behaviour, and demanded that he extend his methods to the entire human population:

“I want the masses of Russia to follow a Communistic pattern of thinking … There was too much individualism [and] communism does not tolerate individualistic tendencies. They are harmful. They interfere with our plans. We must abolish individualism”, Lenin declared.

“So”, asked Pavlov, “you want me to standardize the population of Russia? Make them all behave the same way?”

“Exactly!” replied Lenin. “Man can be corrected. Man can be made what we want him to be”.

Consequently, as Geoffrey Hosking explains in A History of the Soviet Union (1985):

“In the 1920s the regime tried to weaken the family as a ‘bourgeois institution’ [by passing new laws according to which] any stable cohabitation … could be considered a family … Abortion was available on demand [and] a partner to a marriage could obtain a divorce simply by requesting it”.

The result was an astronomical increase in the number of broken homes and abortions (in 1934 in Moscow there were only 57,000 live births compared to 154,000 abortions), while large numbers of women died from botched procedures. Meanwhile, the number of orphans skyrocketed, and they roamed the streets, starving, dying of disease, and forming criminal gangs that attacked people and stormed apartment blocks.

Very quickly, this anti-family policy combined with the demographic catastrophes of the Great Terror and Great Famine to decimate the workforce and cripple Soviet society, forcing a policy reversal that leaves present-day Marxist-LGBTI fantasists high and dry. Suddenly, Soviet propaganda broadcasts declared that:

The state cannot exist without the family. Marriage has a positive value … So-called ‘free love’ is a bourgeois invention … Moreover, marriage receives its full value for the state only if there is progeny, and the consorts experience the highest happiness of parenthood.

The institution of marriage was once more promoted, divorce was made very difficult, abortions were prohibited, and there was no tolerance for LGBTI issues. Indeed, in the schools, the revolutionary cultural obsessions were dumped from the curriculum and the focus returned to teaching skills. School uniforms were reintroduced and pigtails made compulsory for girls. Indeed, right throughout Soviet society there was a return to traditional values and educational topics and methods, as the regime realized that it could not survive if society disintegrated under the impact of dysfunctional Marxist theories.

Nevertheless, vast numbers of single mothers and fatherless children were produced, and this situation was greatly exacerbated when the Great Patriotic war with Germany wiped out much of an entire generation of young men. Women were particularly oppressed as they struggled as single mothers while also working full-time and living in often pitiful accommodation. Ultimately, Soviet society never fully recovered (and hasn’t to this day) from what became a major demographic deficit caused by the communist policies presently advocated by the principle architect of the Safe Schools campaign. All of this happened because the Russian people became the tragic victims of the “engineers of the human soul”, as Stalin approvingly called the fanatical progressivist ideologues who imposed insane Marxist policies on the Soviet population.

Now Australia has its own Marxist-LGBTI engineers of the soul, like Ward and her comrades. Fanatically committed to promoting the sexual interests, values, and behaviours of a tiny minority, such apparatchiks look forward to nothing less that the transformation of society into an LGBTI playground populated by the children of heterosexual folk who choose to marry in the traditional fashion and procreate. In this brave new LGBTI world our new progressivist masters can reign supreme and run amok, promoted and generously funded by state largesse, and protected by draconian laws promulgated, to its eternal shame, by a Liberal government.

 

35 thoughts on “Dumb, Sodomy and the Cash

  • Mr Johnson says:

    “In this brave new LGBTI world our new progressivist masters can reign supreme and run amok, promoted and generously funded by state largesse, and protected by draconian laws promulgated, to its eternal shame, by a Liberal government.”

    Malcolm Turnbull expected that he’d take the conservatives of Australia hostage – like, who else are they going to vote for?, he whispered to JulieB at his Potts Point mansion? He was determined to give the Liberal Party some serious cosmetic surgery to remake it as a centre Left entity. But you can’t blame him, after all, his political view of the world is shaped by an Everest sized ego, and also living in the borough of Wentworth that takes some of the wealthiest suburbs in the Eastern Suburbs. You only have to see Malcolm in the pages of the Wentworth Courier, flanked by Mercedes driving, middle aged doctor’s wives whose skin is tighter than a set of new kettle drums, to know that carbon taxes, open borders and same sex anything are all de-rigour.

    Now add to this mix, some sexual reengineering of the classroom via Safe Schools, and ask yourself, did you expect Malcolm’s Liberals to take a Conservative position on it (bipartisan political support, and parents not needed)? But watch and wait – the Great Communicator has no stomach for a fight, and now that Abbott et al, are asking questions, Malcolm is likely to fold, and he’ll dump Birmingham in it, just like he did to poor Scott on the GST. It aint’ over yet.

    • aertdriessen@gmail.com says:

      Yes, who are we going to vote for? I won’t be voting for Turnbull. My suggestion is that the conservative side of the Liberals join with the National and the left/green side of the libs join Labour. That will give us a distinct choice again

  • Jody says:

    The LGBTI agenda is the Trojan Horse to ‘normalize’ sexual behaviours which were, until quite recently, deemed to be deviant or maladjusted. At best they should be considered marginalized behaviours but let’s not forget that bullying isn’t confined to sexual orientation or marginalized behaviours. I was bullied in high school because I have a long nose and because I liked serious classical music when I was 14! Mostly I just laughed it off and just maybe I unwittingly encouraged them because I was already quite opinionated.

    Thing is; we need to instill in our young people RESILIENCE. This does not require the hectoring of those pushing an open sexual agenda. It requires parents to build the internal self-belief to withstand the herd, to march to the beat of one’s own drum, to develop a system of values which will defy the onslaught of inadequate bullies who want everybody brought low so that they can feel better about themselves. “Safe Schools” has as much to do with anti-bullying programs as a fish does to a bicycle.

    In my experience as a highschool teacher I learned that many bullying victims are often their own worst enemies; many of them will be kids who lack interpersonal skills and have an ingrained victim mentality (resorting to tears easily and running to the teacher) which the other kids just don’t like. Frequently they’re sooks or spoilt kids who won’t mesh with the group. For example, kids involved in team sports are rarely bullied. They are seen as contributors and lifters, not whiners and leaners – or the dreaded ‘teachers’ pet’. So, bullying can be a two-way street. I had a beautiful, sensitive boy in Year 7 who left the school because of being bullied. He was humourless and detached, but highly intelligent. He lived in his own little world. It is certain the school did not protect this child from bullying, despite anti-bullying initiatives. But no “awareness” campaign of any shape or size whatsoever could have prevented this student from being disliked by quite regular kids who were friends of the chief antagonist/bully – a not-very-bright girl from a dysfunctional background who responded comprehensively to my disciplinarian methods in the classroom. That was the one place the young boy was safe from bullying in our school and the parents wrote to me afterwards and said so.

    Awareness campaigns can NEVER replace DISCIPLINE, RULES and EXPECTATIONS from home and school. This ‘Safe Schools’ initiative (laughable use of that word) is the result of what you get in a society when everything else FAILS. (And I notice Cory Bernardi has been ‘seconded’ to the UN for 3 months!!!)

    • aertdriessen@gmail.com says:

      I didn’t know that you were a teacher in your previous life Jody so I’m noting your comments. Watching Q&A on this topic one could be forgiven for thinking that when vulnerable kids get bullied, they get bullied by everyone. As far as I know, bullying is carried out by a few. And, as you point out, there are many other reasons for getting bullied and the only one I don’t see on your list is being overweight. I would have thought that the most cost-effective way to deal with bullying (given their small number) is to move them rather than change the world as we know it for the rest of the pupils. Furthermore, do kids at that age even recognise that they have a gender identity issue?

      • Jody says:

        I remember a fairly small number of kids who fitted the ‘gender identity issue’. One would have probably gone on to become a ‘tranny’ because he had that androgynous look. In almost every case the boys were friendly with a girl or groups of girls and enjoyed a normal school life; the latter androgynous student appeared friendly with boys (interestingly, his brother was a boy I’d define as homosexual at just 14) and he seemed not yet aware of what lay ahead (from what I could tell). There were some very few ostentatiously effeminate boys and mostly they appeared to fit in because they were in the school play, the rock eisteddfod and anything else creative. I remember less girls who might have been homosexual, though one in senior English did stand out as intelligent, confident, warm and friendly. She had magnificent parents!! Some other ‘butch’ girls I occasionally noticed were sometimes angry and it occurred to me that they probably weren’t yet aware of what lay ahead. But I cannot remember any student accusing another of being ‘gay’ or mocked for being so, except in the lowest classes where ‘he’s a poofter, miss’ became a point of hilarity (for me) because it was a good general term of abuse when the really bad kids were trying to have a go at another less-bad kid!! (Honestly, you did have to laugh at students a lot of the time – they’re often unwittingly very funny!)

        If you asked the Head Teacher of Welfare about these issues you’d almost certainly get a different response. But from a class teacher’s point of view – and we did spend time outside class with kids on playground and bus duty and sport – I didn’t see any real gender abuse. Many kids are ‘different’ for a huge variety of reasons. The worst bullies were either kids from dysfunctional homes with poor self-image or terribly spoilt brats who thought the world revolved around them.

        And behaviour within the student body was considerably better in Catholic schools!!!

  • DRW says:

    Hopefully these Progressives won’t survive the purge in the looming Election when conservative voters vote informal.

  • en passant says:

    Merv,
    Great analysis of the Orwellian use of language. ‘Safe Schools’ is a social engineering strategy to make schools unsafe for any opinion or view that does not agree with the approved one. What would happen to the Year-7 child who spoke out after the training session in animal sex and said “I think that is disgusting and unnatural!” Which aboriginal gulag or paedophile ring would he be assigned to – or would he have his gender compulsorily reassigned. Under the tyranny of these destroyers of normality contrary opinions are the really revolutionary ones.
    Societies and cultures die and are replaced by more astute, realistic and vigorous ones when they have the resources, wealth and leisure to lose sight of the basic truths that we must produce our own food, machinery, goods by exploiting the resources available. We must be prepared to defend ourselves from all enemies internal and external and we must look to the future by educating the next generation in the reality of science, engineering, technology, rather than ‘gender studies’, cultural relativity and Kumbayah. Germany, Sweden and France make great case studies of what we must avoid, but as we have been thoroughly infil-traitored by the Lite-Green Leftists, the future does not look to be a positive one without an unlikely conservative revolution as the voters have all been through the indoctrination program called ‘school’.

    • Jody says:

      As somebody wrote elsewhere this morning, “Great; in schools we now have replaced Science, Maths and Engineering with breast binding and penis tucking”. That says it all.

      • Mr Johnson says:

        You learn something new every day – I used to think penis tucking was one of the ways you folded a handkerchief, and breast-binding was to stop the chicken drying out in the oven!

  • Patrick McCauley says:

    I so hope that ‘we’ can win this one. I need a line in the sand … this far but no further sort of line (like a border) .. I’m at the point where I’m thinking ‘love Australia, or leave it’ … it, (Australia) is becoming something in which I cannot live and perhaps cannot survive .. and I cannot escape my white male gender which is so hated and vilified … in the poems and songs and novels of our literati … in the histories of of our universities.

    In the video on the SSC site, Ms Ward presents a lecture on video titled ‘Homework is so Gay’ in which she explains why using the word “Gay” in the schoolyard common usage sense – to mean something ‘bad or broken or not good’ – was an insult to ‘Gay’ people (thus it was ‘homophobic language’ and thus ‘bullying’). Apparently she has forgotten about the Wordsworth meaning of the word ‘gay’ before it was appropriated to describe homosexual people ? …. or she is just another cultural Marxist Feminist from the Socialist Alliance who completely ignore the contest of ideas and the utter hypocrisy of her position.

    She presents the video dressed as a man. She has a man’s haircut with a bit of androgyny thrown in. I had to look twice to confirm her gender – as she spoke her voice was clearly female. Why should I wish to confirm the gender of someone presenting a lecture to me ? … because a teacher (an educator) has to have ‘integrity’ … and if I can sense some lack of authenticity in the a teacher, I am more skeptical of the content. Students are always fully alert to the possibility of destroying teachers. So when I noticed that Ms Ward was dressed as a man … that she had deliberately set out to look male … I found it an unnecessary provocation, and unnecessary distraction … I kind of passive aggression … a sort of selfishness, which somehow placed her display of her sexuality and her massive individuality, above the content of her lecture and desire to communicate it to the general public. She seems to be addressing an only Gay audience … and that any heterosexuals viewing … well, we just have to suck it up.

    I hate everything about this social engineering program which has been bullied into existence by the Victorian Left Gay Lobby. I hope it is counterproductive … and shocks clear thinking ordinary citizens into action and produces a polarising effect which will also sink the ‘Marriage Equality” plebiscite.How can the same community be allowing (funding) this ‘grooming’ program at the very same time as the Royal Commission is revealing paedophilia running rampant through the very same schools ten or twenty years ago?? …. I share Merv Bendle’s outrage completely and applaud him for his excellent articles describing this monstrous intrusion into the minds of our children. Even when this program is ditched and burnt – the outrage of the idea of it will persist.

    • Jody says:

      I will fully support my children if they decide to take their children out of State school education, even if I have to provide the funding gap for them myself in the Catholic or Private system. My son has already been down to the local primary school to protest loudly about NAIDOC propaganda brought home via a colouring-in exercise and promulgating aboriginal rights agenda. Of course, all totalitarian regimes understand that the first line of attack in propaganda is with children.

      We need to see the parents of Australia voting with their children’s feet. But I’m cynical enough to believe that many will continue with free education because of the material benefits it brings in terms of their discretionary spending elsewhere.

    • gardner.peter.d says:

      I understand you may not like the changes in Australia. However it could be far worse. UK is building up a huge problem: a combination of Islamification and the sort of policies advocated by Roz Ward. It is worse because before these two strands get to fight it out the state is now running a schools inspection program aiming to identify would-be Jihadists. Any child who, for example, says they believe in traditional marriage or they don’t support same-sex marriage is marked as a potential terrorist. Professing Christianity is guaranteed to invite further more rigorous questioning. Opposition to membership of the EU is now also a cause of suspicion.

      My younger brother and his wife educated the last two of their five children at home, and they scored brilliantly in their A levels. One of my elder brother’s grand-daughters has just decided also to educate her three children at home. The proportion of home-educated children, I’m told, is increasing. Of course Cameron – the British Malcolm Turnbull – sacked Michael Gove because his successful improvements in education inevitably caused resentment among the lefties who dominate UK education.

      • gardner.peter.d says:

        I logged out by mistake! I was about to add that rather than emigrate you should consider setting up as a private tutor to save Australian children from their schools.

  • brian.doak@bigpond.com says:

    Full support for this heavy hitting attack by Merv Bendle on the Marxist sexual revolution for our schools. Labor and Labor’s Penny Wong must be held accountable for providing most of the $8 million for this militant attack on traditional sensible values.

    Unfortunately the newly installed Liberal and first openly gay member of the House of Representatives, North Sydney MP Trent Zimmerman, is not offering to support conservative heterosexual norms. When questioned on the homosexual marriage issue and whether all Australians should have a say by plebiscite he is reported as saying ” If I had of been in the parliament when the decision for a plebiscite was put forward, I would not have voted for it. I would have pushed for a free vote”. That is, would have voted for parliamentarians to change the law on marriage without consulting the Australian people. Let’s say what we think of all this at the next election!

  • Mr Johnson says:

    One question for the road, filed under the heading of: “the coming collision of cultures” – I wonder how many Muslim schools have picked this up to include in their curriculum?

    • Jody says:

      Not many. But I wonder why FGM, under-age marriage and compulsory head and face covering isn’t included in the “Safe Schools program? I wonder if I wonder?

  • Keith Kennelly says:

    Mr Johnson

    Malcolm’s a weak excuse for a leader. Everybody is now aware of that. Especially his supporters. He has no economic narrative and hos lefties agenda is starting to surface.

    I can see Abbott returning.

  • Keith Kennelly says:

    DRW

    A much better approach than voting informal.
    Vote for labor in the Lower House and Conservative in the Senate.

    Should mean an end of Turnbull and an impotent Shorten or Albanese as PM, facing a hostile Senate.

    That would be a win win. And hilarious.

  • Keith Kennelly says:

    Here is a senario.

    Shorten is elected PM.
    Malcolm resigns from Parliament.
    Tony is re elected as Leader of Opposition, then mercilessly crucifies Shorten till he is replaced by Albanese, who can’t get supply, and is required, by the Constitution and the Governor General, to go to an election where he is rounded beaten in a massive landslide by Abbott who at last, because of the media’s confusion about who to support, wins the admiration and respect of the greater population by getting rid of the debt, bolstering our defense capabilities and gets rid of all funding for minorities who want to usurp the roles of parents, employers and parliaments . See easy.

    • Jody says:

      I think you’re far more likely to see that scenario with Scott Morrison with PM, to be honest. He’s got the chops and he’s VERY CONSERVATIVE and a ‘can do’ man!!

      • en passant says:

        Morrison turned out to be just as treacherous as 54 other ‘conservative’ Liberal Party infil-traitors. His just desserts are never to be trusted again and never to be PM

        • Jody says:

          Well, I disagree. He’s one of the very few with the chops to stand up and say it like it is. And he gets the job done!! There are so few of these people in politics.

          And he’s got to get stuck into Labor over punishing the middle class AGAIN AND AGAIN with more taxes – this time increased capital gains, negative gearing only for new properties (Oh, right, they’ll all be in the Sydney western suburbs chasing the same tenants and rents; intelligent, NOT), reduced superannuation concessional taxes for people earning over a certain amount and resumption of taxation on super funds for the over 60 on earnings of $75,000 (NOTE; They do not say PER MEMBER – there’s big difference).

          No more punishing the middle class to fund Labor’s pet projects, like Safe Schools, Gonski and other gravy trains. These are the bones you need to pick, not with ScoMo!!! He’s a champion.

  • denandsel@optusnet.com.au says:

    Merv, I can only repeat what I posted to a previous article of yours on this topic. – “Although I am an atheist I still say thank god that most homosexuals and the majority of the LGBTI brigade are in reality genetic dead ends because they usually don’t breed. That said, it is frightening for the continuation of civilisation that they via their leftist friends in the media have so much influence/say in how our children are educated, or more accurately indoctrinated.
    The nuclear family is the foundation stone of western civilisation [i.e. a semi-capitalist society] and that is why leftists everywhere are doing their best to weaken/destroy marriage as a social construct and via that, families.”
    Thank you again for daring to fight in the ‘culture/education’ war.
    Dennis B

    • Mr Johnson says:

      I agree Denandsel, and we’ve always known that the media enablers are boosting the gay-Left agenda. The problem we currently face is the usual progressive/Left politicians who are also culpable are now being abetted by so called Conservatives. This is giving us a ‘nowhere to turn’ situation.

  • IainC says:

    Roz Ward is an avowed Marxist. Hence, by definition, mutatis mutandis and ipso facto, s/he is 1. A fascist 2. A hyper-reactionary 3. An accessory to genocide in at least 3 countries 4. A sociopath 5. In possession of the social conscience of a ravenous piranha 6. In possession of the morality of a paedophile ring organising a children’s party 7. A Nazi who has simply changed the name of the Party. Therefore why is s/he 1. A recipient of Government funding 2. Getting a respectful hearing 3. Supported by the Labor Party 4. Not treated with the same contemptuous manner as a Nazi or a paedophile organising a children’s party.

  • ian.macdougall says:

    A request: could someone be so obliging as to define the word ‘progressive’ and show how and why it is distinct from ‘conservative’?
    ‘Progressive’ is obviously a term of abuse around here. But why?
    As I see it, stubborn ‘conservatism’ would have preserved such institutions as black slavery in the USA.
    NB: I ask this in my capacity as a swinging voter.

    • bemartin39@bigpond.com says:

      It is surprising, Ian, that you seek this clarification. At any rate, here goes my version.

      Conservatives endeavour to conserve those societal customs and institutions which served society well over time and are exceedingly cautious in their contemplations to modify them. They invariably err on the side of caution. The institution of the nuclear family is one of the key conservative values. They also believe that in spite of a myriad of imperfections, free market capitalism is by far the preferable alternative to any other economic system ever tried or proposed. Likewise, they are keen supporters of democratic, representative government and the freedom of individuals to manage their own affairs with the least possible intervention by governments.

      Progressives tend to be motivated by the desire to tear down existing societal customs and institutions and replace them with new, untested alternatives, sometimes simply because they are old but often in the aid of hidden, sinister agendas, such as world governance and minority issues. They hold, even if not always openly declare, that the welfare of people would be better served under the guidance and control of a coercive government than when allowed to make most decisions themselves. Their most fatal fallacy is believing that there are human beings in their ranks who are so completely incorruptible that, given absolute power over others, they would be unfailingly fair and even handed towards all, without ever using their position to further their material or ideological interest.

      That, I think, covers it pretty well Ian. And by the way, I’m sure there are a whole lot of swinging voters in both camps.

    • rh@rharrison.com says:

      I can’t hope to compete with Bill Martin’s eloquent description of conservatism. However, I would just like to add a point on the abolition of slavery in the English-speaking world.

      The abolition of the slave trade in the UK (1807) was enacted by a cross-party government with both Tory and Whig ministers, so the Tory (Conservative) Party can justly claim a share of the credit for it (the Whigs’ successors are the Liberals, now a spent force in the UK).

      The abolition of slavery in the US was, of course, achieved under the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, a member of the Republican Party. After the Civil War, the Democratic Party’s support rested heavily on white Southerners, and until the 1960s the Democrats strongly supported the segregationist policies that discriminated against blacks.

      Although the alignment of conservatism with the Conservative Party in the UK and the Republican Party in the US is far from exact, there is a substantial relationship between them, and those parties’ roles in the abolition of slavery should be acknowledged in any discussion of the relationship between conservatism and slavery.

  • ian.macdougall says:

    Most enlightening and well expressed, Bill. Many thanks for that.
    Bit busy at the moment, but I’ll get back to you. Watch this space.

    • denandsel@optusnet.com.au says:

      Ian, the term ‘progressive’ is like many other terms that have been altered in an ‘Orwellian’ manner to mean the opposite of what the original intended. Hence American ‘liberals’ are in reality just socialists, ‘progressives’ are amongst the most regressive/repressive people in society even though the term ‘progressive’ implies progress or improvement, ‘Gay’ once meant happy and carefree but thanks to leftist Orwellian it has now been seconded to apply to the homosexual grievance industry. There are too many other examples to be listed here but I am sure you can add your own.

  • Jody says:

    I’ve been thinking overnight more about this tremendously damaging “Queer Politics” (as Jennifer Oriel so eloquently described it this week in The Oz). I’m an over-60 adult and I find myself questioning the motivations of other adults – friends or otherwise. I find myself subliminally asking myself is somebody is gay based on his/her behaviour. Even watching “Millionaire Hotseat” when a person has a same gender friend in the audience I wonder if that person is gay. On and on it goes. It does my head in because I don’t care if they’re gay – but I DO care that I’m asking the question and suspicious of people in a way I never EVER used to be.

    WHAT IN THE WORLD IS THIS KIND OF THING GOING TO DO to the current generation of children is this “Queen Politics” is taken into schools? It is serious head-destroying stuff!! Those in the media supporting this “Queer Politics” are – HONESTLY – just not bright enough or experienced enough to understand what they’re advocating or the consequences!!

    In short, not only do I disapprove based on how my head has been done in by CONSTANT references to homosexuality, it is actually something HORRIFIC to contemplate in schools. Somebody needs to be held accountable for this!!! It WILL have consequences for our society.

  • ian.macdougall says:

    Bill:

    Progressives tend to be motivated by the desire to tear down existing societal customs and institutions and replace them with new, untested alternatives, sometimes simply because they are old but often in the aid of hidden, sinister agendas, such as world governance and minority issues. They hold, even if not always openly declare, that the welfare of people would be better served under the guidance and control of a coercive government than when allowed to make most decisions themselves. Their most fatal fallacy is believing that there are human beings in their ranks who are so completely incorruptible that, given absolute power over others, they would be unfailingly fair and even handed towards all, without ever using their position to further their material or ideological interest.

    Can you quote some such ‘progressive’ identity, authority or talking head on this, and/or perhaps provide an example?
    ‘Progressive’ to my mind implies goal-directed development. For example, I would guess that political identities as diverse as Karl Marx, BA Santamaria and Osama bin Laden would judge each successive political development by the yardstick of whether or not it moved the world closer to their recognised and preferred goal of history: World Socialism, World Catholicism (either before or after the Second Coming) or the Universal Caliphate respectively.
    As far as I am concerned, there is no end goal of overall human political and economic development, but individuals and groups have them
    For example, the generally-recognised goal of scientific progress is the most complete understanding possible of the inner workings of nature and its systems.
    But many a small-boat fisherman in the waters of the Northern Hemisphere has steered south by constantly keeping the North Star over the stern. We know what we are leaving behind and what only few of us wish to return to (eg feudalism), but human progress: technical, scientific, economic, has directions favoured by definite interest groups and factions, has no inbuilt direction-finding mechanism of its own. Call this if you wish the Antigravitational Theory of Historical Development: considering what we have left behind in the ‘old country’we are pushed by a force of repulsion. We steer away from institutionalised and inherited privilege and rule, which is why, for example, we see North Korea as such a basket case. But we can have only the vaguest idea of what is coming up ahead.

    The institution of the nuclear family is one of the key conservative values. They also believe that in spite of a myriad of imperfections, free market capitalism is by far the preferable alternative to any other economic system ever tried or proposed. Likewise, they are keen supporters of democratic, representative government and the freedom of individuals to manage their own affairs with the least possible intervention by governments.

    How can individual ‘progressives’ attack anyone’s nuclear family but their own: except with words?
    Freedom is indivisible. Freedom of exchange of goods and services is inseparable from freedom of ideas and exchange of them. Here in the Western World, freedom in all the marketplaces together has increased pretty well uniformly and at first glance, independently.
    (Lack of this in the Islamic world due to stranglehold over education exercised by its clerics, has kept things pretty stagnant there for centuries.)
    But some peoples’ freedom in any particular sphere can come at the expense of the freedom of others. Examples provided on request.

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