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The advent of a new year is a good time to review the one gone by, to sum it up and balance one’s moral and ethical scorecard. Is the ledger mostly in the black or is red ink splashed all over? Was I a reasonably decent human or an idiot? A genius or a schlemiel? Was I treated well by others? Did I treat others the way I would want to be treated? It does feel like a regular corporate performance review, with the difference being that, as long as we are still alive, there’s always the chance to make things right.
This festive season was unusual for many reasons. The closely placed succession of Hanukkah, Christmas and New Year’s Eve parties offered plenty of opportunities for enjoying the unhealthy and sedentary, eating oily or sugary foods (Christmas puddings, stollen, latkes…) and drinking alcohol in amounts considered prejudicial by the moralisers who seem to be popping up at every corner, dubious statistics in hand. (I especially enjoyed having my red wine consumption made the subject of a stern tut-tutting by a chain smoking GP.) Most important, the past weeks offered an opportunity to talk with friends, relatives, children and whoever else came along to celebrate at the festive table. That is where the long-ignored obvious struck and, most importantly, sank in.
Contrary to the long-held convention of not discussing politics, religion and, yes, money, discussions around many a table or a backyard barbeque inevitably turned to Brexit and The Donald’s election victory. In all these exchanges I was a pitiful minority of one, tolerated while treated with the sort of polite and indulgent condescension usually reserved for small children and the mentally unwell or, in my case, a conservative old codger. This patronising came dangerously close to contempt for my presumed moral turpitude: who else but the morally deficient could defend the outrage of those in the UK and America voting other than the way their presumed betters wished and expected? My long-suffering wife succeeded in transmitting the ‘please keep your mouth shut’ signal. All it took for this well-trained husband of 43 years to do as bid was a well-aimed kick under the table. She Who Must Be Obeyed was indeed obeyed, but not before I noticed some peculiarities of the discourse that prompted the thoughts you are reading now.
The Left’s near-total dominance of the political stage in Australia is no news to me, of course. However, the personal experience of being all but openly branded a bigot, a racist and a dangerously unhinged anencephalic, who is also a misogynist, a homophobe and, given a chance, a potential mass-murder of Muslims left me quite shocked. Needless to say – I am none of those things. But perceptions matter and people, like myself, of conservative political leanings are branded morally inadequate precisely on the basis of our convictions, as Quadrant Online contributor Bill Wyndham noted some months ago.
Like all previous generations, ours is faced with the evergreen problem of seemingly unbridgeable conflict of opinion between parents and their children, an inter-generational clash of weltanschauungs. This kind of a conflict is inevitable, as old as humanity itself. Children cannot be carbon copies of their parents; the world is evolving in directions sometimes inimical to parental liking. That is normal. That is how it is and I am not too fussed about that.
This inevitability of societal change reminds me of an excruciatingly funny cartoon. Picture two long-haired hippy parents, equipped with customary guitars, joints and bandanas, sitting on the floor, agog, listening to their child’s angst, formerly their exclusive domain, and telling them, “You are way too old to understand!” O tempora o mores! However, the aim of this piece is not to entertain because there’s nothing funny about the totality of the thorough indoctrination of our population, especially of our youth. It is so near to being complete that any degree of a dissent is regarded as being akin to a crime against humanity.
There used to be a gaping chasm between the beliefs, convictions and responses of the young and those of their more conservative parents. Things are changing though. The truism, ‘If you are 20 and not a Communist, you have no heart; if at 40 you are still a Communist, you have no brain’ still holds true. However, as far as I can see, the timescale to enlightenment is growing longer, so that people who are old enough to know better still espouse the same leftist garbage as in their teens. Whether this is the result of an unwillingness to go against the flow, a manifestation of true belief or, perhaps, a simple desire to avoid harsh words and inter-generational conflict is hard to say. Whatever the reason, the Left’s narrative is now dominant, regarded by those who subscribe to it as what is, or should be, the societal norm.
During this festive season, I was confronted with the stark realisation that our children have absorbed the teachings and beliefs of those whom we, us conservatives, regard with shoulder-shrugging, eyeball-rolling sighs. It is no longer enough to react this way. The changing civic climate brings all of us to the situation which was existing in pre-revolutionary Russia, when not to be on the side of the Revolution meant universal ostracism and contempt, never mind the subsequent horrors inflicted on those who declined to bow before their new masters.
Largely silent at my wife’s command (except for those few moments when I could no longer bite my tongue), I observed the flow of festive-table discourse and was struck by the inability of the young to think independently, their unwillingness to deviate from authorised dogma, be it about global warming, an Australian Republic, immigration and all the many sacred cows of the politically correct. All of these and many other topics were discussed exclusively from the Left’s viewpoint and any variance led to immediate accusations of, you guessed it, bigotry, racism and any other ‘ism’ most suited at any particular moment to silence a dissenting opinion. In the end, I withdrew from discussion, marveling instead at the fine work academia, schools, mass media and our political class had done in placing beyond the pale the free, polite and logical exchange of views. Some sober thoughts emerged between mouthfuls of pudding and I’d like to share them with Quadrant Online readers.
- The Jesuits have long claimed that a child given unto their guidance until the age of seven will be theirs for life. How did it happen that we allowed our children to be instructed at government-run schools, wherein they are tirelessly indoctrinated in the Left’s ideological framework? Worse than that, why did we allow it to happen with barely a murmur of dissent?
- While we adults of older generations were exchanging views in the voice of reason (some of us anyway), how is that the propagandists of our school systems’ classrooms were allowed to inculcate no opinions and beliefs but their own. How is that even governments deferred to these chalk-dusted commissars of political correctness? Where did the Safe Schools programme come from and how was it allowed to spread everywhere? Why is that only the catastropharian view of climate change is taught, never balanced nor presented as but one perspective among a spectrum of views.
- While we were preaching to the converted — ie., each other — the Left was proselytizing and increasing its constituency everywhere, including via the imported beliefs of immigrants whose view of the relationship between creed and state are at odds with our secular liberties and political traditions.
- While we were proud to deal with facts and figures in our arguments, the Left traded in emotion and used all the manipulative techniques at its disposal to make those lessons stick.
- While we were talking in respectful whispers at civilized conferences, the Left was screaming their heads off on university campuses, which became hot-beds of radicalism and know-nothing nihilism.
- While we understood that democracy is the rule of law, to be honoured by so-called progressives and conservatives alike, the Left promoted mob rule and the howling down of those it knew to the fetid depths of its arrogance should not be allowed to be heard. The support for ‘unfreedom’ remains one of the Left’s articles of faith — a platform from which it is a surprisingly small step to dictatorship and tyranny.
- While we were telling all and sundry that people are responsible for their lives, the Left was fostering a nation of victims. Thus do see women, for example, taking loud 0ffence at what should be normal, civil discourse. A Quadrant contributor not so long wrote an article that incurred the wrath of social-media feminists; their response was not to request equal space, which would have been given, but to web-search the email address of his boss and blitz him an co-workers with slanders and demands that he be fired. He survived the assault but to this day remains shaken by the experience.
- While we were supporting the family as a cornerstone of civilisation, the Left advocated the concepts of ‘free love’, ‘if it feels good do it’, and ‘sex is as natural as drinking a glass of water’, bringing the institution of family close to extinction.
- While we were extolling freedom of speech as the most precious fruit of liberty’s tree, the Left has done its worst to shut it down with Section 18C, projecting a bogus bigotry onto its opponents for fear of open criticism of its inane fantasies and contempt for the common sense.
This list is far from complete and I am certain readers could extend it. The most depressing thought is that we have lost the battle of ideas to the heirs of Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Vladimir Lenin and Rosa Luxembourg. That these ideas have been discredited by universal failure and the rivers of blood they spawned matters not at all to their advocates. Winning matters. Control matters. Power for the sake of power matters.
So why is conservatism such a hard sell? Yes, as noted above, the Left’s long march through the institutions has placed its preachers in every pulpit, but there is another reason as well: conservatives are fighting the right war with the wrong tactics. Conservatives do not target such human failings as jealousy, envy, immediate gratification urges and the resentment of success. On a neurophysiological level, conservatives appeal to the pre- and frontal cortex, where the ability to reason resides. The Left, by contrast, appeals to the limbic system, which is responsible for emotions.
Am I suggesting that we should debase our principles by pandering to baser emotions? No, not at all.
What I am saying is that, rather than preaching to our own conservative choir, we need to fight for the truth — fight with the same gusto and determination that characterises the Left. That means teaching our young a real history of the world and of our country, in particular the irresponsibility of the Left and its awful consequences. Take the plight of some Aborigines, for example. We can no longer tolerate the glib simplicity of attributing violence and hopelessness to the First Fleet; rather, we need to highlight — to scream if necessary — that it is a result of a fostered culture of victimhood which denies personal responsibility and underwrites dysfunction with sit-down money and excuses.
To do this, we must confront the teachers and academics whose stock in trade are these and so many other intellectual toxins. Speak up and oppose, say, the Safe Schools agenda and, yes, sure as eggs you will be branded a homophobe, but so what? You’re not a homophobe and you know you’re not, so your conscience is clear. The enmity of the appalling, far from being a gag, should be worn as a badge of honour.
This year, 2017, marks the centenary of the Bolsheviks’ takeover in Moscow and the mass loss of human life and dignity that followed. My hope is that this date will be both a milestone and a cue to teach our young that the seemingly lofty ideas so beloved by the Left are nothing but the tools of slavery and oppression. The task, the necessity and, indeed, the destiny of a healthy conservatism is the inoculation of our young against the malignant virus of totalitarianism and its bodyguard of lies, which the Left spreads with every breath. The only way to do it is through active knowledge of true history.
Will mine be a cry in the wilderness? I hope not.
Dr Michael Galak and his family came to Australia as refugees from the Soviet Union in 1978
Thank you for this depressing walk down group-think road. My 4 children all went to Catholic schools and 3 of them onto university. Not one of them is a Lefty and wouldn’t tolerate its craven ideologies for a mega-second. My sister’s family are all Lefties and they disavow my adult childrens’ politics – particularly the independent businessman and the other who works for the Coalition. My extended family is comprised mostly of public servants and this explains at lot of the intellectual insouciance which passes for ‘political thinking’. These people you describe have largely outsourced their political ‘beliefs’ to the herd. Be under no illusion about that!! From my experience in teaching I can tell you the vast majority may be decent but are not terribly bright. From them education ceases when they leave the school grounds or ride off the university campus.
Life is a succession of learning stages, intellectual inquiry and development, success or failure, and the ability to empathize with others. The Left cannot do any of that without going back to look at the songsheet to see what their response ought to be.
Bottom line: thank God for private school education!! At last people are listening to me about this.
What disgusts me is that Communism, Marxism, still retain intellectual credibility amongst the Left and academics. Hitler and the Nazis, Mussolini, Franco (incidentally a hero for the Peronists who are supposedly lefties) do not retain any credibility amongst the so called right or conservatives. The support of the ideology of Mao and Pol Pot (this ideology has resulted in brutal repression and mass murderers everywhere) is as much of a denouncing of leftism today as needs to be seen. Even more so given their use of the Spanish Inquisition to attack liberal Protestant Christians etc. Burke identified this bloodlust in leftist thought in the 18th century.
Perhaps Hitler and Mussolini do not retain or indeed have any credibility amongst those on the right is because they were socialists. The Italian term “fascism” is derived from “fascio” meaning a bundle of rods, ultimately from the Latin word fasces. This was the name given to political organisations in Italy known as “fasci”, groups similar to guilds or syndicates and applied mainly to organisations on the political Left. In 1919, Benito Mussolini, a socialist, founded the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento in Milan, which became the Partito Nazionale Fascista (National Fascist Party) two years later. What does the acronym Nazi stand for? They are only to the right of Stalin who created the term for the nationalist socialists as opposed to the wanna-be international socialists.
As it happens, I also grew up under the brutal tyranny of Soviet communism, not in the Soviet Union but in post WWII Hungary. There, too, people had to be careful of what they were saying and in whose company, not because of deluded, politically correct youth but because of the armies of spies supplying information to the secret police. Such spies were often perfectly decent people being blackmailed by the secret service into informing on friends and even family on account of some “indiscretion” they had on record. Many committed suicide. Most of relatively genuine news of the world came via Radio Free Europe and other wireless services, jammed viciously by the authorities. My father was hard of hearing and listened with his better ear against the fabric of the radio speaker, while I was tasked to patrol the yard and the street lest anyone else might be listening as well. It was a gravely serious crime to listen to western propaganda. It is painfully sad that today’s brainwashed youth are fiercely defending the vile philosophy that tortured much of the world for many decades.
I remember you telling us of some of your experiences in Soviet Hungary. The irony is that Hungary, under Orban, is leading the charge against the dictatorialism of the EU, with regards to forced allocations of illegal refugees in particular. His now famous (or infamous, depending on your leanings) ‘Time for resistance’ speech is reminiscent of nationalist resistance against the soviets, back in 1956, when I was but a boy. Australia has never experienced the upheavals The Poles, Hungarians and Czechs have been through, though George Orwell gave us a taste of this in his 1984.
It will be very interesting observing what 2017 may bring us.
I confess, Warty, to being rather chuffed with what Viktor Orban is doing – bravely and resolutely resisting the the all-powerful European Commission – even though I am now a proud Australian, having been graciously accepted by this wonderful country almost 60 years ago. As a matter of interest, Orban was the first national leader to endorse Trump well before the election and the first to congratulate him when he won.
One reason was that when Robert Menzies wanted to rapidly expand the universities there were not enough high quality Australian academics available to fill all the new posts. What happened was that advertisements were placed in the UK and applications were received from a lot of UK also rans, second or third quality academics, rejects in the UK, and these were hired to fill the positions. They got tenure. Many or the majority were imbued with the far left ideologies, such as Communism, the Fabian society etc. Only the Economics faculties in Australia were successfully defended as their Marxist tendencies are so stupid economically that no University was silly enough to employ anyone thick/incompetent enough to theoretically follow that line.
They then colonised the Arts faculties and such and the Teachers Colleges (Now CCAE)and selectively hired and promoted only those in the same political camp as themselves. This tends to be self perpetuating. They marked down and indirectly or directly persecuted those who did not toe the line. Many a student has told me exactly this even now with my own family, who have just been through.
Since the collapse of Communism many still belong to the Communist party but on the Secret List of course, far larger than the open party ever was and spout Derrida and such and all the absurd French philosophers that are the heir of Marx et al.
The Universities desperately need a good flushing out. Take out the trash. Our very survival may depend on it.
Hey. PT Adolph Hitler was never right wing. He led the National Socialist Party of Germany. That he was right wing was the greatest lie if the 20th century.
Confront the youngsters with that fact and they echoke. Point out that the greatest mass murders of all time were all left wingers and they sit silently. Cite the records of the heroes of their ideology Mao, Pol, Stalin, and Castro. They sit and sulk. Dare them to google them. Repeat the truth whenever you see them.
They either avoid you or doubts surface. Hound them and tell them all their teachers were full of lies and wouldn’t face the truth about the effect of their ideology and point out they are doing the same.
Then point out capitalism has caused more people to move out of poverty than any other system. They can google that too if they have the guts to be self critical rather than gutless ideological stooges.
That works, my sons mates now actually have respect for me and actually read a little outside the ‘curriculum’.
My son is very successful and I point out to them how working for others especially governments limit their ability to earn there fore limiting their success. Most are professionals and all want more money and status symbols.
I suspect it doesn’t matter a great deal whether some call Hitler right wing and Stalin left wing, and some that they may both have been left wing (Hitler because of the name of his party, as opposed to his policies). The fact is that all of them were totalitarian, all were pathologically authoritarian, and prepared to ‘disappear’ any who dared to disagree with them. Today, we think of the particularly vague terms ‘left wing’, ‘right wing’ and more recently ‘alt-right’ as being forms of ‘name-calling’, too generalised to have any significant meaning, but which give the name-callers that transitory feeling of satisfaction that they actually know what they are talking about, and just who the enemy is.
Some attempt to narrow down their name-calling to specific beliefs, viz the right wingers, led by Cory Bernardi or Tony Abbott, believe all asylum seekers should be turned around and despatched whence they came; or that Aboriginals ought to be encouraged to integrate; SSM advocates should be gay-bashed as in the good old days etc. Whilst left wingers would like open borders; self determination and, well, SSM. Mention right wing or its apparent opposite and these ideas flash though mind in so many micro seconds, and feelings of righteous rage dutifully flare the nostrils and we feel justified in the stance we take, yet fail to examine the respective issues in the depth they perhaps deserve.
I’m reminded of the superstitious mobs of the Middle Ages, hilariously parodied by Monty Python: “We found a witch! We found a witch!”. “How do you know she’s a witch?” “She looks like one.”
Their hypocrisy becomes a self evident truth.
Those who have degrees without a job are just sad and bitter that the other great lie, the epitome of all successful education is the Uni Degree and empowers, is evidenced by their inability to find empowering work. I point out all work is empowering and it is that their expectations have been raised by leftie educators who don’t understand needs of the real world.
My comment at QoL at:
“Michael,
I think it has always been so. In the 1960’s I was educated in Scotland. The single blot in my fine education was my utter rejection of the ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ myth. He was a fool, a drunk, an autocrat, and a military and political incompetent. In the impossibly unlikely event that he had won the war and his father reinstated as King, Britain would never have risen to become a world power and built the Colonial Empire it did (trigger warning!! Thumb-sucking begin.) I was banished from History and forced to take Geography instead.
University in Australia in the 1970’s was worse with strict limits placed on texts we should research, contrarian opinions were frowned on and the ultimate sin of reading (and quoting) unauthorised texts was actively discouraged. The fact that every prediction the experts made never happened has done nothing to sully their (in)credibility. My favourite remains that there would not be a drop of oil left by 2000.
Without the rise of an Oz Trump who dictatorially sweeps away the pseudo-sciences, tramples on the Left-lumpun proletariat and frees the language, our opinions, the economy and provides a broad liberal vision for the future then we are set firmly on the well-travelled road of Argentina, Cuba, Venezuela and (probably not quite to the extreme of) North Korea. But give the Left a chance and another generation of indoctrinated proles.
Agenda-30 is the roadmap. An example of the tools is closing of the Hazelwood coal-fired power station in Victoria. This act of green-inspired vandalism will result in a severe shortage of electricity on the eastern seaboard during peak periods.
The good news is that fortunately this will lead our young to an enriched understanding of the delights of poverty, rationing and shortages. With luck, it may lead to a shortage of food (as has happened in super-rich Venezuela). To the sound of loud cheering, this will be followed by the closure of all productive manufacturing, resulting in economic collapse, rationing of essential items, critical shortages and the centralisation of all power in the hands of the royal political elites. Nirvana for the indoctrinated who sneered at you.
It is what the people of Oz want. Let them have it, I say.
Oh, did I mention that I moved overseas to a vigorous society that is forging ahead by ignoring the world and by being very nationalistic. And, No, it is not Syria, but 5-years ago it might have been.
Tell them to prove the link between human action and global warming. They can’t nobody can.
Tell them marriage is a crock. It doesn’t work for most and was according to Voltaire, the work of Priests (and other paedophes) while it was god who created sex, all sex. Ask them why do they need governments or priests to sanction their relationships? Tell the Liberal Party ended theWhite Australia policy, introduced multiculturalism and initiated pensions (Widows).
They scoff but are ignorant, tell them so. Some get angry enough to actually google it. They are the silent ones. They’ll see the truth. The abusers have closed minds. A great accusation that works more in the minds of the truth seekers.
One factor for how we got into this awful situation is the failure of the mainstream centre-right party in Australia, the Liberal Party, to resist the trend of recent decades – let alone actually try to reverse it.
Exhibit One of that failure is on the Quadrant website right now, and in the current (Jan-Feb 2017) issue of the printed magazine, under the by-line of Dominic Perrottet, a Liberal Party minister in the NSW government (“Why We Need a Conservative Spring”). He sets himself up as a standard-bearer for Australian conservatism, and offers some empty reassurance (“We are not conservatives because we believe in doing the same things, only slower; we are conservatives because we believe in different things.”)
Among the “different things” he believes in: “We should be pushing for environmental stewardship, pioneering new models of service delivery and defining an agenda for the poor. And we should be addressing stagnating wages, providing twenty-first-century healthcare and a delivering a world-class education system.” Exactly how is that supposed to be different from the Left’s agenda? Exactly how is that going to deal with the current crisis, as outlined by Dr Galak?
As for Perrottet’s opposition to 18C in the article (“it is a Liberal government that is presiding over this system and seems unwilling or unable to end it”), it sits rather uncomfortably with the fact that Perrottet was a member of the Baird cabinet that made a submission to the federal government in 2014 that strongly backed the retention of 18C.
With friends like that …
The Liberal Party has been taken over by left wing lying operatives of which Turnbull is the biggest.
Michael: thanks for a splendid article. You have confirmed, from your personal experience, what I have read about the effect of totalitarian regimes in Russia and Eastern Europe, and have heard from people who, like yourself and Bill Martin, have lived in the workers’ paradises that the Australian Left admired so much.
If you haven’t already read them, I recommend two books on the subject: Anne Applebaum’s Iron Curtain: the Crushing of Eastern Europe, and Stephen Koch’s Double Lives: Stalin, Willi Munzenberg and the Seduction of the Intellectuals.
I have a couple of comments about your essay.
First: my wife was a teacher for more than 20 years, we have many family members and friends who are, or were, teachers, and I had quite a lot of contact with the teachers at the (Catholic) school which my children attended. Almost without exception they were dedicated to their profession, and had no interest in Leftist ideology. My only criticism of them is that they are too passive, and fail to reject the agendas, such as Safe Schools and gender fluidity, which the radical Left is imposing on the education system. I am also dismayed that parents in Victoria are not resisting those measures.
Second: I spent all of my working life in Academe and the public sector, and was relieved to be able to leave a few years ago. As a heterosexual middle-class male of Anglo-Saxon ancestry, I often felt that I was responsible for all evil. I was also dismayed at the behaviour of the females in the Commonwealth Public Service, too many were control freaks who wanted to cleanse the public sector of persons such as myself.
Third: I am an independent historian, I do a lot of research, and have a number of friends and acquaintances in the profession. It is now difficult to find a publisher for anything that is politically incorrect, or against the leftist view of Australia’s history, you must never say anything critical about females, Aborigines and the working class.
I fear that things may get worse, very few of my children’s generation do any serious reading, they just take whatever is on Facebook and the social media. I am impressed, however, at the proliferation of websites such as Quadrant Online and the Catallaxy Files in Australia, and conservative websites in Britain and America.
> “As a heterosexual middle-class male of Anglo-Saxon ancestry, I often felt that I was responsible for all evil”
Obviously not responsible, but the accusation is sufficient unto anyway, isn’t it ?
One reason for the bombast with which some of the current generation of teachers seek to indoctrinate the young with their own idiotic views is that they actually believe themselves to be “professionals.” Not only do they believe it, but they are taught to believe it in the course of the Dip Ed. My first wife (a trainee teacher at the time) told me she had an assignment to complete under the title: “Why teachers are professionals.” This is peculiar, since there are only four professions: Architecture, the Church, Law and Medicine. Professions have four defining characteristics, all of which must be present: i. an arcane body of knowledge known only to the members of the profession; ii. entry to and exit from the profession is regulated by the members, not any external body; iii. self-interest is subordinate to the interests of the client/patient/congregation; and iv. an ethical code enforced by the members.
Teachers fail to meet either of the first two criteria. And true it is that lawyers and doctors need to know less law french, latin and greek than previously, and tribunals are starting to encroach on point two (ii) for both of them. But even when the Court of Appeal stopped the admission to practice of Wendy Bacon, it was the Bar Association which brought the proceedings to Court for the public benefit.
Despite all this, Universities and schools persist with an ongoing and bizarre attempt to elevate school teaching to a fictitious level it can never attain. Quite simply, there is no “arcane body of knowledge” involved in finger painting, PE, or even differential calculus. It is the stuff ordinary people learn at every school in the country every day.
Ironically Wendy Bacon became a journalist and then a teacher of journalism, thereby proving that neither of those capers qualify either.
No Warty it does matter. The National Socialist Party of Germany was sicialist and definitely left wing in its policies… as. Was Hitler. Read their history and policy … it is all there. You are starting sound like one of those leftie deniers clouding the truth.
Now to just ram home the point.
List the right wing mass murdering dictators?
And Warty you have swallowed all the leftie lies and stereotyping about what conservatives and liberal minded people believe
Hmm! You do me grievous mental harm, O Keith. Rampant leftie I have not been since the 1970s before I discovered what brains were for. Now, what would you call Franco? Or the Portuguese leader, António de Oliveira Salazar? His death had a profound effect on my country of birth, Rhodesia, as it opened up a new front, enabling terrorists to penetrate our borders.
Michael, you would be welcome at my humble table any time!
The young dont read enough, barely read anything other than the little shiny plastic thing that sits permanently under their noses.
ArthurB: That is mostly my experience at Catholic schools, too, and as a casual teacher there. Though I do remember one conversation with a Deputy (HS) about ‘bread and circuses’, the discussion had a strong moral thread and didn’t exist in a vacuum. It was mostly about social decline and how governments and its cohorts can distract people by facilitating and encouraging cheap entertainment and propaganda. I have actively encouraged my son to enrol his children in Catholic schools and he sees the wisdom of this because of his own education and the very agitprop his son brings home from 2nd Class every day. Both he and I are tired of indoctrination which permeates through the schools through the curriculum. With Catholic schools AT LEAST they learn about personal responsibility. And also these schools are generally kinder, less aggressive places to be. A strong parent body is essential to schooling because many parents are weak and will readily take on the views of others in the absence of their own. I belonged to the Parents and Friends Federation when mine were at school and I was VERY outspoken. The ‘soft left’ approach of not forcing people to pay school fees was my first target; I wondered how they could demand fees from me – a parent of 4 – and provide a ‘get out of jail free’ card to others on the basis of, well, what exactly we never established. So, the Catholic system finds one group subsidizing another in the usual socialist way. But when you pay on the day yourself and the school never has to chase you this does provide it’s own kind of clout away!!! 3 kids were found with drugs at our school and when I asked the Principal what was happening with them he said “I don’t know”. My answer was, “I know my children will walk out the gate if they remain”.
GONE.
I too find myself the outcast, the uncle who holds unfashionable opinions. Surrounded by organic farmers and other disreputable types of get up persuasion.
At my ageing mothers request I refrained from comment so as to not upset the family day, taking a leaf from my favourite kids movie, “Just smile and wave boys”, I sit silent whilst all condemned a litany of evils wrought by those holding a conservative viewpoint.
I allow my views to be restricted in this manner for the sake of the day and my dear old mum, perhaps I shouldn’t but she is a nice old bird who loves all of her kids, grand kids and great grand kids and just wants to see us all get along and I see no point in taking that away from her.
I am aware it is that attitude that strident lefties rely on but on balance the old girls enjoyment on one of the few days a year all of us are together is premium.
When I rock up in my new Mercedes AWD for my son’s wedding this is sure to throw a cat amongst the pigeons. Especially when the bride’s parents have just bought a Bentley! I CAN’T WAIT!!!
Rob,
Perhaps you should consider that the Leftoid Rabble that have infected your family should be asked to shut up so as not to offend YOU.
As I am capable of managing my emotions I am hardly offended by others holding a differing viewpoint but rather find myself expressing a honest wish to explain how I have experienced the worlds function and perhaps through sharing my views save some of my loved ones some of the hard lessons I have endured.
At xmas and weddings I refrain from holding forth, for family harmony. I don’t always succeed, but I am a work in progress.
I would say that on that basis, Donald Trump would have to reside on the political left. And there was I thinking he was on the right. 😉
As far as all of Michael Gulak’s other stuff is concerned, the big divider as far as my own experience goes was the Vietnam War. And the issues there were stark: one side right, one side wrong. That was where the modern Australian and American Lefts were born.
Fact is that in the mid 19th Century, the French did to Vietnam what the Imperial Japanese tried to do to Australia (and the rest of SE Asia) in the mid-20th. And if the Vietnamese were wrong to fight the French occupation of their country, then Australia was likewise wrong to have membership of an alliance set up to block and defeat the Japanese. You can’t have one but not the other.
The French emerged from WW2 flat broke, so the Americans bankrolled their war against Ho’s Viet Minh. Then when the French collapsed, the Americans (with the aid of Mao) attempted to hijack the Vietnamese anticolonial revolution, and a very dirty 10,000 days of war resulted. Many former soldiers, Americans and Australians these days go back to Vietnam in an attempt to find forgiveness for what they did. The most prominent of these was the former US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. (Google up Mcnamara, The Fog of War.)
But don’t forget this all fitted the so-called “domino theory” – the international fear of Communism following the horrors of the Soviet and then Chinese experiences. It was a powerful force and created fear throughout the civilized world.
Jody:
From Robert McNamara’s 1995 book “In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam”:
1. We misjudged then — and we have since — the geopolitical intentions of our adversaries … and we exaggerated the dangers to the United States of their actions. [ie, it was a war of national liberation, NOT of ‘aggression from the North’ expansionism.-IM ]
2. We viewed the people and leaders of South Vietnam in terms of our own experience … We totally misjudged the political forces within the country.
3. We underestimated the power of nationalism to motivate a people to fight and die for their beliefs and values. [The US, despite having overwhelming fire and bombing power, lost the war. Repeat: IT LOST. -IM]
4. Our misjudgments of friend and foe, alike, reflected our profound ignorance of the history, culture, and politics of the people in the area, and the personalities and habits of their leaders.
5. We failed then — and have since — to recognize the limitations of modern, high-technology military equipment, forces, and doctrine. We failed, as well, to adapt our military tactics to the task of winning the hearts and minds of people from a totally different culture. [Donald Trump’s pitch to ‘make America great again’ is one of return to that halcyon 30-year period between Hiroshima and the fall of Saigon when America stood all-powerful and not yet totally humiliated .-IM]
6. We failed to draw Congress and the American people into a full and frank discussion and debate of the pros and cons of a large-scale military involvement … before we initiated the action. [That happened, but not the way the American Establishment envisaged – IM]
7. After the action got under way, and unanticipated events forced us off our planned course … we did not fully explain what was happening, and why we were doing what we did.
8. We did not recognize that neither our people nor our leaders are omniscient. Our judgment of what is in another people’s or country’s best interest should be put to the test of open discussion in international forums. We do not have the God-given right to shape every nation in our image or as we choose.
9. We did not hold to the principle that U.S. military action … should be carried out only in conjunction with multinational forces supported fully (and not merely cosmetically) by the international community.
10. We failed to recognize that in international affairs, as in other aspects of life, there may be problems for which there are no immediate solutions … At times, we may have to live with an imperfect, untidy world.
11. Underlying many of these errors lay our failure to organize the top echelons of the executive branch to deal effectively with the extraordinarily complex range of political and military issues.
In addition to this apologia, McNamara in The Fog of War is shown being told in no uncertain terms by his Vietnamese interlocutor (a former NLF commander) that his ignorance was abysmal for one in such a high position. The US Administration and McNamara’s assumption that the war was about stopping a (Chinese) communist takeover of all of Vietnam was laughable, given that the Vietnamese had been fighting the Chinese for the last 1,000 years in order to preserve their independence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fog_of_War#Robert_McNamara.27s_11_lessons_from_Vietnam
McNamara was obviously having a ‘mea culpa’ experience, but your points conveniently overlook the historical catastrophe of communism – which promised to crawl unmolested down through Asia like a taipan. I don’t swallow for a second the idea that people of each country could fight and die to stop it. What you’ve listed in your points is strategic and diplomatic errors – not practical concerns such as the destruction of communism.
I did see the documentary “The Fog of War” and it was interesting, but ultimately one man’s view. And the Vietnam War was America’s ‘best interest’ as well as that of south Vietnam. And what about Pol Pot in Cambodia? How successful were the people there trying to defend themselves?
Jody:
Communism and socialism have been economic failures, and nobody can defend either on economic grounds. That needs to be stated, and up front, to head off misunderstandings.
BUT (and it is a big one) Asian communism, and particularly Ho Chi Minh’s version of it, grew in reaction to European colonialism, and out of the hierarchical military structure and organisation needed for the creation and maintenance of an anti-colonialist guerrilla army.
Nobody much these days tries to defend colonialism: certainly not against the values of modern western liberal democracy. Colonialists are never democrats. Nor are they liberal. If their regimes are to be maintained, they cannot afford to be, and they have no shortage of rationalisations as to why their regimes are/were a GOOD THING. Asian communism, as it existed, developed as a reaction to the colonialist regimes, and Vietnam provides the world’s clearest example.
Ho Chi Minh as I recall took inspiration from the American constitution and the history of America’s revolutionary war against the British. But unfortunately, those who seek power under democratic constitutions are rarely, if ever, democrats themselves. That needs to be emphasised: politicians are seekers after power and pyramid-climbers first, and democrats second (or third, fourth …. whatever.) Thus the democratically elected US President Eisenhower saw nothing wrong with the US working to prevent the Vietnam-wide election called for under the 1954 Geneva Agreement (itself an outcome of the disaster experienced by the French at Dien Bien Phu). And he did it, as he wrote later, because American intelligence told him that if that election were held, Ho Chi Minh would get around 80% of the popular vote.
The Americans gave military support to the French in their war on the Vietnamese. Then when the French collapsed, they decided that their own best interest lay in splitting the country in two, and accordingly installed their own anti-democratic stooge Ngo Dinh Diem into power in Saigon. Then in true Mafia style, after Diem disobeyed one too many of their instructions, they had him rubbed out in a coup d’etat.
Whatever the American war in Vietnam was about, it was never a war for democracy. To the contrary, it was a war to prevent democracy, and Australia, despite its own strong grassroots democratic tradition, fought on the wrong side in it.
Ian,
You need help. Your analysis of the history of Vietnam & its wars is, well, … fiction & unbalanced. I suggest that you read Karnow’s 700-page ‘Vietnam’ before commenting further.
I have to say: What an amazing polymath you are! Climate change, where you do not know what you want but will endlessly argue that we must wreck Australia to get there.
As to your opinions and your history of Viet Nam: “.. if the Vietnamese were wrong to fight the French occupation of their country, then Australia was likewise wrong to have membership of an alliance set up to block and defeat the Japanese. You can’t have one but not the other.” Actually, this incredible logic indicates you are probably beyond help. Find a nice place and check yourself in soon.
“…the Americans (with the aid of Mao) attempted to hijack the Vietnamese anticolonial revolution, and a very dirty 10,000 days of war resulted. Oh dear, another classic Macdougallism thought-bubble.
So the Americans were ‘colonial’, rather than trying (rightly or wrongly) to stem the Communist ideology taking over South Viet Nam? That is great news nobody knew before you exposed it for the world to understand! Well done. New history rewritten every day.
“a very dirty 10,000 days of war resulted” Hmm, so this war was dirtier than most every other war? Name three wars less ‘dirty’ AND a quick paragraph as to why this one was ‘dirty’ would help enlighten everyone, though more likely it would just expose your vapid thought processes to daylight. You know what might happen if the recesses of your thought-bubbles are hit by sunlight, so best not to risk it.
“Many former soldiers, Americans and Australians these days go back to Vietnam in an attempt to find forgiveness for what they did.”
You KNOW this for a fact do you?
Do you think it might be possible that those who return do so as tourists, just as many WW2 soldiers visit the scenes of their battles in Europe?
Define ‘many’ out of the 50,000 Australians who served there. A number to the nearest 100 will do. I predict this will be another unanswered question, but I will hopefully be pleasantly surprised when you provide a number with error bars.
Also, what was it they did that you think they are attempting ‘to find forgiveness for’? Enlighten us all as to why they need to find forgiveness.
How many do you know of who did things for which they need forgiveness? More likely this was just another Macdougallism thought-bubble, but I will await your expose of ‘many’ war crimes.
You know, of course, that about 300 former Australian servicemen have moved to Vung Tau? They are not there for ‘forgiveness’, but because they find it a better place to live than the sadly declining Australia.
In future, could you please begin your inane posts with “Once upon a time …” and provide as a standard part of every reply the answer to the two questions that would win you the Nobel Prize for Climatology:
1. What is the ideal average global temperature? and
2. What is the ideal concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere?
I dont think that former Australian Vietnam War Veterans visit Vietnam as Tourists. To return to the location of a terrifying battle where a friend for life was killed is not Tourism
Go and have a look at the photos in the Saigon war museum, you can see there how ‘Dirty’ the war was
Time also for you to get off your high horse EP
Exuberan,
I am a Vietnam veteran, who does not ride a high (or low) horse.
My question to Ian was: what makes this war ‘dirtier’ than any other. Consider it now posed to you too.
Agent Orange
exuberan:
I don’t bother myself these days with responding the garbage posted here by ‘en passant’, or whatever his real name is. If you visit https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2016/11/derailing-marrakech-express/#comment-20295 you will realise why.
Michael,
Your article hit the spot as far as family politics is concerned so I apologise that the execrable Ian MacD has hijacked it, but his ramblings need to be eternally countered, boring as it is to do so. Unlike your experience of keeping quiet for the sake of appeasement and ‘peace in our time’, everything that poor Ian MacD spews must be challenged. I suggest that for once people take Mac’s advice and read the comment stream at the url he referred to above. Let me help with just one extract:
” The unanswered questions that Ian MacD cannot or will not answer are as follows. What is so hard about telling us all the Holy Climate Grail you seek:
1. What is the ideal global average temperature we seek? As we are at 15C and we want to restrict warming to 1.5C it surely must be 16.5C? If so what is the basis for that figure an why is it better than any other figure? Oh, there isn’t any basis? Of course not, as there does not need to be any basis or rational reason as this is not how post-modern science is done. Personal view? 20C would be great, but I am sure Ian MacD can tell us why this is not a good idea. Just joking …
2. What is the ideal concentration of CO2? We are at 400ppm and at 250ppm plants starve and stop growing, so you would think the post-modern cultists would determine that it must be somewhere in-between these two numbers. Well, you would think …, but this is not how post-modern science is done. Actually, the answer is 2,000ppm+ as the combination of warmth and CO2 fertiliser will green the Earth.”
Read the rest at the referred site.
You see, Ian is continuing his unbroken record of being a broken record by repeating the same myths and never, evaaaa being right.
1. Ian said if I liked 20C then I should live in the Sahara. ANSWER: I live on the tropical coast surrounded by greenery where the temperature does not evaaaa drop to 20C. WRONG.
2. The sea levels are rising, so we will all have to head for higher ground (unless we fry and die first). The foundations of my new home are being laid 1.5M above high tide. ANSWER: A photo I took 46 years ago shows no noticeable difference between then and now. I’ll take my chances … WRONG.
3. Ian will fight with all his might for an outcome he cannot name. ANSWER: I offer no opinion about someone who does that … except that they are WRONG.
4. Ian called me a racist. This is his lowest blow so far as my wife of 41 years is Asian. When this was pointed out to this clown, like any Leftoid Troll he doubled down, refused to apologise and repeated his defamation. Repeat the allegation again Ian and I will sue you as this affects my family and my reputation.
Ian jokingly writes: “We in the centre can only look on, scratching our heads.” Centre? Centre of what? Trolltown? Clan Macougallism?, Mindless Macdougall Myths? Minion Madness Moaners? Who knows what he is the centre of outside of his own mind?
As usual, Ian MacD. throws out a false, unsubstantiated statement, then when challenged fails to substantiate his thought-bubble. He is a fact free zone, so naturally he failed to answer the questions raised in my previous comment above. Ian said:
“Many former soldiers, Americans and Australians these days go back to Vietnam in an attempt to find forgiveness for what they did.”
You KNOW this for a fact do you? Name some of them who need forgiveness …
Do you think it might be possible that those who return do so as tourists, just as many WW2 soldiers visit the scenes of their battles in Europe an WW1 Diggers returned to Gallipoli?
Define ‘many’ out of the 50,000 Australians who served in Vietnam. A number to the nearest 100 will do. I predict this will be another unanswered question, but I will hopefully be pleasantly surprised when you provide a number with error bars that “many” represents.
Also, what was it they did that you think they are attempting ‘to find forgiveness for’? Enlighten us all as to why Vietnam veterans need to find forgiveness.
How many do you know of who did things for which they need forgiveness? More likely this was just another Macdougallism thought-bubble, but I will await your expose of ‘many’ war crimes.” Like every other thought-bubble I have burst, this will remain unanswered, but Ian MacD will press on regardless to his next bubble. It is what he does.
Exuberan,
My apologies for including you in this answer as I do not in any way consider you to be in the same class as Ian MacD.
So your answer requires a serious reply.
What makes Agent Orange ‘dirtier’ than poison gas, for instance, or a flamethrower, or an IED, or a bullet from a sniper you never saw?
AO was aimed at defoliating jungle cover and not at killing humans. The potential side-effects were either not known, or were of less concern than more pressing matters … I was one of those surveyed in the 1980’s concerning Agent Orange. I reported no known effects. DVA continues to pay for an annual blood test, so I will let you know if something happens one day.
I was also a ‘Dapsone’ guinea pig (without my consent), so Google that anti-malarial drug when you have some time. More recently, another anti-malarial drug has been creating havoc with OUR side, so Agent Orange was just one of several missteps, but not intentionally so.
The Australian involvement in Vietnam strengthened our ties to the other SEAsian countries who feared the spread of communism from Vietnam.
They did not want the communist domination.
That is the great ignored fact about the Vietnam War.
The other fact. Vietnam is now communist in name only.
So not only did we contain the spread of communism it could be argued we in the longer term have once again won the peace.
And remember too; the Americans fought in Korea to save that country from falling to Communism. What a wonderful country South Korea now is!!!!
It is only the churches/priest who support marriage. There have been a few who challenged marriage and the church dogma over the centuries.
Voltaire for one said ‘God created sex and the priests marriage.
I reckon in Births, Deaths and Marriage only one is unnatural. Why do you need the Establishment or The Priests to sanction your relationships?
Warty you may think you are not left wing, and indeed may even project and individualistic attitude but you still have your left wing goggles on.
Your way of expressing your ideas is exactly how lefties express theirs.
You use generalisations, associations and exaggerations in explaining how right your attitudes are.
True liberals/conservatives arrive at views independently. Those who ride along with the crowd are not liberal/conservatives.
You choke and fret too much over the alleged menace of The Left!
The Left does not exist (4th Internationalist excepted).
‘Leftism’ is largely a state of mind (as is ‘rightism’).
All closed minds across the spectrum, but especially leftists, have the following diseases of the mind, jaundiced attitudes:
• irrationalism;
• relativism;
• radical subjectivism;
• rejection of reason, reality, objectivity, science, progress;
• mysticism;
• pessimism;
• Malthusianism;
• vulgar materialists
• unhistorical;
• ochlocracy (mob rule, sheep mentality);
• narcissism.
Everything else is Ok, though?
Great article Michael. Inevitable though that debate would bend toward political philosophies.
Bryce M. highlights the inadvertent seeding of low grade universities in Australia during the Menzies era with the propagators of leftist bents. Back then, we saw the last of politicians like John Gorton and Sir John McEwen who put loyalty to the nation foremost. Distinguished Public Service leaders of the calibre of Richard Woolcott are no longer providing frank and fearless advice to the Government. Instead, the Diplomatic Corps is replete with the ‘rainbow’ crowd.
The halcyon years for Australia were post-WW2 to about ‘Woodstock’ when the rot began. Politicians became more subject to influence from increasingly powerful lobbying interests, with ‘Official Lobbying’ becoming the route to the powerful. Lessons were learned from the Mafia.
Immigration policy was/is strongly influenced by groups like the Committee on Community Relations and Commonwealth Immigration Advisory Council comprising mainly recent immigrants who have de facto control of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection.
With unfettered prodigious growth of immigration and increasing focus by politicians on the demands of the rich and powerful, bureaucracies were able to grow and increase their power base in virtual unfettered fashion to the extent that some heads of departments are now paid more than twice as much as the Prime Minister and are unsackable. These are the nests of political correctness.
The question begged is ‘Who really controls Australia?’
It is certainly not the politicians in my view regardless of which political party holds Office. Clearly, they do not govern for the interests of the people at large and really dance to the demands of somewhat ‘faceless’ influences.
For some decades now, my view has been there is some form of ‘Inner Sanctum’ or ‘Deep State’ that is manipulating the direction of the nation. The identities involved may be heads of Public Service departments, affluent lobbyists and those who have achieved high Office. Perhaps a way to shake their tree would be to publicly identify them on a standing website as supporters of leftist ideals!
PLEASE READ THIS!!!!!! IT’S ABSOLUTELY BLOODY WONDERFUL:
https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2017/01/lefts-biggest-problem-now
Thanks for that, Jody.
I agree with the author – the most entertaining thing Trump has done so far (apart from winning) is to neuter the MSM. The author of the article is correct. The LeftMSM is not completely irrelevant now, just completely impotent … and without a clue how to deal with this. The LeftMSM have lost power and the only thing on their little vainglorious minds is how to get it back … the means don’t matter to them, just the end play. Which eludes them absolutely, confoundedly, discombobulatingly. So, much much outright laughter.
We’ve all been laughing uproariously about it all day today – the whole family!!!
Jody: thanks for the link, it is an interesting article.
Unfortunately, the article refers only to the USA, and while I am full of joy at what the Donald is doing to the Leftists, I suspect that it will still be business as usual here. Another four weeks and Q&A will be back, Tony refreshed by his WEB and stacking the panel with Leftists, with an audience allegedly reflecting voting patterns, but obviously composed of the Green/Left. We may have the pleasure of seeing Terri Butler (your favourite, and a cert for a ministry when Labor wins the next election). Does Oz have the equivalent of a Trump who can challenge the Left hegemony here? I doubt it.
I read a few American conservative websites, some of them are brilliant. On one of them I saw Tucker Carlson (I think I have spelt the name correctly) interviewing Leftists, and it is great to watch him in action. I note that the commercial TV channels here avoid politics, according to Graham Richardson (in one of his columns in the Oz) the punters switch the channel whenever a politician makes an appearance. The consequence is that the (alleged) current affairs programs are tabloid trash, with stories about the usual villains (heartless bureaucrats, love rats, shonky tradesmen etc etc). The Project has no serious analysis, it is just politics as entertainment, with Squalid Ali telling us that Islamic terrorism is only an irritant, nothing serious.
Seriously, I think this will filter through to Australian politics very soon, if it isn’t here already!! I’m confident; the movement away from pc in the USA and the Brexit vote gives me reason to hope…..
Trump has solved a problem that besets politicians in the democracies. The only way they can get their message to most is via the media which has been captured by the Left. Trump by usingTwitter, has snookered them. They are unable to control the conversation as for example you see in the ABC interviews. If Australian politicians had sense they would do the same and let the Hansard record be the only information available to the journalists in the Press Gallery.. I’m loving it, watching leftist journalists running around like headless chooks in the face of the Trump strategy.
Very Good … and I particularly want our Poetry back … as well as our literature. No more Stone Country romanticising Aboriginal warriors like a fetish … making them fall in love with old feminist academics … or Barracudas with homosexual sub plots and anti Oz hatefulness from those still resentful.No more bullshit Rabbit Proof Fence stories mutilated from the original by ambitious film makers. No more liberation war cries published for their race and their gender and their sexuality without magic … wallowing in over freighted language and obscurity and code … that end up meaning nothing and saying nothing … and freezing out the ordinary person with sanctimony and virtue signalling. Give the Oz deplorables back their poems and their stories. Lets hear about what we love and hate again … just like we did before there were university degrees in creative writing. Lets hear the howl of the post feminist man – the progressive anti fem woman – Lets break down the barriers between the sexes again – nothing has worked better than the patriarchal family – re-instate fatherhood – dare to challenge the Aboriginal race with more than survival – expect forgiveness. Expose the frailty of the left wings constructed myths and histories like never before.
Don do they also exhibit a tendency to generalise?
This article describes my own experience if I dare to open my mouth on Muslim immigration, welfare, Trump and all the rest. Our public education system has been captured by the Left, tolerating no dissent, and the MSM continue their soft propaganda every minute. Even polite disagreement with Leftist orthodoxies means dinner invitations dry up, friendships die and one is confronted with condescending looks from those possessed of their infallible moral and intellectual superiority. Seeing the sanctimonious tyranny of leftist-insider millionaire movie stars and musicians threatening anyone who dares perform at President Trump’s inauguration with career suicide, my anger seethes. An 11 year old at a family function ran to show me a book her primary teacher had told her to read because it described how the Australian Government was treating asylum seekers – The Boy in The Striped Pyjamas – a Nazi concentration camp.
@Ian MacDougall Disagree with your last comments. Communism is a vile, abhorrent, violent ideology which relies upon repression, coercion, murder – and economic or physical deprivation. Many Asian countries on the Indian sub-continent remain basket cases with violent, repressive regimes. Only now I watched a report of the Rohingas being murdered in Myanmar when violence, authoritarianism and the police state exist in a lot of these countries and are the norm. This is what the US was fighting for with Vietnam. The US would have won that war – easily – if their hands hadn’t been tied behind their backs with the nightly news dragging events into America living rooms and the left tut-tutting. The Left thinks war can be civilized and that you cannot do the uncivilized. In turn, you only turn your own society into a violent, aggressive and uncivilized one if you don’t protect it by using those strategies to defeat the enemies of freedom. The ULTIMATE irony of modern America.
Jody, until now I had never realised how shaky the Right’s position was. All the Left needs to ‘tie the hands’ of its political opponents is the mantra “tut-tut.”
Well I hate to have to be the one who tells you this but………………….the secret cat is out of the secret bag now.
We in the centre can only look on, scratching our heads.
You have to fight evil with evil. And many who opposed the War in Australia actually belonged to the community party. Remember Tom Uren?
Not to mention Jim Cairns.
With respect, your position is anything but ‘centrist’. These people can see BOTH sides of an argument.
The worst thing the leftie msm ever did to hurt themselves was to engineer the election of an ineffective left wing community organiser who had a dubious voting record in the senate, who claimed to be a great orator, who was ineffective on the world stage, who ignored the needs of American mainstream, who supported all the usual leftie issues and. Who had question marks over his loyalties and citizenship.
It has become more and more apparent to the whole world how decisive the Obamas were over the past 8 years.
The msm were complicit in supporting this charlatan and the world has been oaken up to them. Now how do they ever expect to regain their credibility.
Trump talks direct to the people, he does not need the msm and the Democrats would be stupid to continue to rely on them.
Oh where is Australia’s Trump. Henry Ergus put his finger on how Trumps 15% business tax and his allowing people to work as registered business will impact on the Australian economy.
Simple it will benefit business to return their investments to the US and those with the skills Trumps America needs will migrate there. With our high taxes and fear of reform we’ll lose so much both investment and skill.
Our economy will contract,our borrowing will increase and our tax base will shrink.
While more than 50% of our population are drawing thier income from the government(as its income shrinks and borrowings increase with interest rates on those rising) we really will be a banana republic.
How long? Watch our credit rating plummet.
Keith,
You are absolutely right. As usual, Oz is following the USA, so what we need is to cut off SA from all ‘foreign’ interstate electricity, stop subsidising their fantasies and watch them implode. They make a perfect Green Case Study.
From the ashes will arise our own Trump, King Arthur or a new society … The Oz I knew when I arrived here was rated 4th in the world as the place to live. What is it now? 21st and continuing to slide as we seek to become the Venezuela of the South and a target for a hostile takeover. It is the vision our current crop of treasonous politicians salivate over.
It’s not just the politicians it is the legions of educated graduates who ‘know’ everything who in my opinion dominate debate in this land by bullying.
In my experience I’ve found regardless of political persuasion they invariably they talk to each other about issues they think relevant in voices most of us don’t understand.
They abuse, use condescension and authoritive voices to stifle anyone who dares challenge their educated informed views.
Most have never read the great philosophers, who to a man, agree all philosophy is based in emotion and comes from the wider community. Communities that these elitists are not exposed too and who they don’t understand.
Trump and brexit epitomise the reaction against the elites.
When a politician stands up in this country and espouses less salary, fewer perks, less extravagance from politicians, fewer and less expensive public servants, means testing and caps on benefits, policies which include returning jobs to Australia as well as less focus on all the trendy issues then they will win government in this country in a landslide.
You seem to have a grudge against anybody with a university education. I think you’d like to meet my children who do not fit your stereotype but who think independently, as do their friends. They, like I, know that education is a lifetime endeavour.
You’ve made some apposite comments about Obama. I wondered when the American people would elect an African-American President. They did and for a time it seemed they’d finally grown up. He is actually a part European who demonstrates no value in the “European” part of his genetic make-up. Sadly, the election of a part-European President saw the nation looking at itself in the mirror, admiring what it saw there, and largely forgetting about the business of government. Were this not the case we would have seem at least SOME political satire during his tenure, but the throne sniffers were in charge.
And I might abandon my plans to shift my businesses to the US.
Thank you all respondents for your comments.
I am grateful and not a little humbled by your interest and participation.
Best wishes to you and yours in 2017.
Michael; I have to say again my heartiest praise on an excellent piece and my apologies for excluding mention of the ‘new Australians’, mostly from a shattered Europe, who were so grateful for the opportunity to restart their lives afresh in Australia and were immensely proud of the tag we then bestowed upon them.
Alas; the quality of immigration subsequently decayed when so-called ‘Multiculturalism’ was spawned by Al Grassby and propagated with vigour by Malcolm Fraser, Amanda Vanstone, Kevin Andrews, et al.
Off topic, but I respectfully draw everybody’s attention to the outstanding piece in ‘The Australian’ of 9th January by Richard Woolcott, arguably Australia’s finest former Diplomat, titled: ‘Australia must be more sensitive in dealings with Indonesia’. (See: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/australia-must-be-more-sensitive-in-dealings-with-indonesia/news-story/b71e52c40ad8de2a0a8d77fb266fc392)
He makes these key points.
‘Australia’s relations with Indonesia, as well as our ties with China, the US, Japan, India and Russia are asymmetrical in that they are more important to us than relations with Australia are to them.
And we are not doing as well in our engagement with Indonesia as the rhetoric and spin from ministerial offices would have us believe…Indonesia will never accept our “turn back the boats” policy.
Indonesia would also be unimpressed by any provocative action by Australia in the South China Sea.
I believe we need a fundamental change in our national psyche to focus more on Asia than on our traditional links with the US, Britain and Europe. Many Indonesians see Australians as part of the “Anglosphere”…They also find our close involvement in the conflicts in the Middle East damaging and inconsistent with our claimed focus on the Asian and southwest Pacific.
The late Sabam Siagian, a former Indonesian ambassador to Australia and editor-in-chief of The Jakarta Post, told me last year that thinking Indonesians find it difficult to accept Australia as a “true strategic partner”. Australia, he added, needs to “speed up its transition to the changed global and regional situation and become an independent nation that stands on its own two feet”.’
I think we have seen enough of polarized political philosophical argument in foregoing posts.
To QoL Editors; I respectfully suggest constructive debate could be fostered (on other threads) by focusing on the abject failings of Australia’s foreign dealings and how the US brainwashed commentariat are doing the nation a great disservice by rigidly propagandizing adherence to tired alliances. It is also long overdue that the cloak of so-called ‘bipartisanship’ was shed from the Parliament and open public debate re-instituted on vital national issues.
Woolcott is arguably a fine diplomat ? Then I argue that his most public characteristic is Sneercott.
For example:
> “Indonesia will never accept our “turn back the boats” policy”
Without any mention of the bribery that Indonesian police and army personnel engage in to allow overloaded boats of dubious sea worthiness to leave the various coastal ports for Xmas Island to begin with.
Two characteristics of those who engage in public look-at-me’s: bottomless hypocrisy and beclowning.
And likewise, Michael.
This is all very gloomy. I too have been called all manner of things by people I thought were friends simply for voting for Brexit and none even enquired as to my reasons for doing so. It was enough that I had voted that way to be condemned as racist, xenophobic, homophobic, climate denier and fascist. One who did not so condemn me and did ask me about my reasoning explained to me that although I believed democracy can only operate effectively at the level of the nation state and therefore national parliaments should be supreme, the young today don’t care about the nation state. All they want is to be able to travel and work wherever they like and therefore the end of the nation state is inevitable; furthermore they have no interest in the history of how such freedoms came about and no knowledge of the fact that travel in, at least western Europe, and many other countries of the western world was pretty easy even before the EU existed.
Time for some cheer. There is a very funny Australian film, Children of the Revolution, 1996 by Peter Duncan, starring Judy Davis, Sam Neill. It tells the story of an Australian admirer of communism who, almost by accident, has a son by Jo Stalin himself and what happens next in Australia. It’s an absolute hoot. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115886/?ref_=nv_sr_1
I feel your pain Michael.
I’ve worked in mining and oil & gas all my life.
At first, there was nothing controversial about this.
Recently this has become the most despised activity in Australia.
It’s not a problem with family, thankfully, because I’m upfront and unapologetic and they know I’ll remind them at great length about how mining and hydrocarbons make their lives possible if they start on me.
But in their wider social circles, my occupation causes shock and horror. Shock that I appear to be a normal human who they were having pleasant conversation with only moments before. Horror when I tell them mining and drilling are good.
That what I think about “this fracking” that the media has told them about is irrelevant, since it’s a minor procedure with fewer dangers than building a house or a railway. If you think it’s an issue, you’ve already taken a side.
Shortly after, I’m excluded and avoided. They didn’t really want my opinion after all, they just wanted a witch to burn.
Truth does come out, eventually. It takes time, often blood too. But it becomes plain to see. When that happens, political correctness will be defeated by the youngest generation. They will rebel againt the dogmas which don’t match the reality. We are not there yet.