April 2023 Volume LXVII, Number 4, No. 595
Towards Spirituality: Catholicism from Napoleon to now
It’s an Adelaide Thing
Girard, Shakespeare and the Origins of Violence
Not a Battle, Not a War, But Definitely Defiance
The New Rhodesians
Thought-Deranging Tyranny: The New Religion of Woke
Contents
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When Pius VII excommunicated Bonaparte in 1807 for annexing the Papal States, he reciprocated by putting him under house arrest in Savona, where he remained for five years. Such was the difficult beginning of the modern Church which John T McGreevy explores in his fine book Catholicism: A Global History from the French Revolution to Pope FrancisMarch 3, 2024
5 mins
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'Now before you answer, Chief Superintendent, I must caution you that you are not obliged to answer a question in a way that may incriminate you of having committed some offence. Should you choose to say nothing in accordance with that right, then so be it.'February 11, 2024
10 mins
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How do you stage Shakespeare in the Age of Woke? Well, If you're Bell Shakespeare doing The Comedy of Errors, you emphasise gender and colour-blind casting and forfeit the play's easy laughs in favour of soft-focused confusion. We won’t find Shakespeare’s relevance by softening his edges, as did the Bell production, by implementing a sex-change and making Luciana a camp maleFebruary 8, 2024
21 mins
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How, in the absence of a thorough and impartial inquiry into the primary records, did we get a public memorial commemorating an event -- the so-called Battle of Yering -- about which such extraordinary claims are made? Examine the evidence and that notion, along with a purported three-year war between the Wurundjeri and Victoria's early settlers, falls in a heap of half-truths and no truth at allMay 10, 2023
30 mins
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Pick up any journal article on the subject from any university. If you can get through the langue de bois and the scholastic lexicon you will find the same themes that have trickled downward into Australia's popular media, the school system, the press: white privilege and whiteness, and how to deconstruct them. I am astonished, but less and less so, by the enthusiasm with which many Australians greet their own impending deconstructionMay 3, 2023
9 mins
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Wokery revels in the worst, most vicious and fanatical elements of the religious mentality, minus faith's redeeming sensibility and virtues. Humility and unworthiness, essential components of the Christian’s vocation, are beyond the ken of the woke, who put their virtue on exhibition while lamenting the shortcomings of the unanointedMay 2, 2023
29 mins
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'We’re thinking of moving to Kentucky,' an old friend confessed recently, such a move from Manhattan likely to lift his child's chances of being admitted to an Ivy League university. It turns out that a rich white kid from poor-as-dirt hillbilly country is a lot more interesting to college admissions officers than a rich white kid from the Upper East SideApril 27, 2023
11 mins
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The current focus is on the Stolen Generations, cultural dispossession, oppression, harm and trauma. Many academics and media outlets seem either puzzlingly unaware of this development or convinced that this perspective needs to be embedded still more deeply. It is a belief that should ring alarm bells about indoctrinationApril 26, 2023
21 mins
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We are not to forget our war dead, nor those who serve today. On Anzac Day we are not Narcissus looking into a pool of war dead and seeing only our own reflection in some way. It is about them, the war dead and war injured, and about the tragedy and indelible losses of war, and of a commitment to the better world.April 25, 2023
7 mins
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A long weekend at the end of autumn. The first football matches of the season; people go to theatres and to church; country horse racing is popular and extra train services are running; workers parade through the city behind colourful union banners to mark the Eight Hour Day. These are unremarkable days except for the date. It is April 25, 1915April 24, 2023
13 mins
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Michael Bay is one of the most commercially successful directors in Hollywood but his films haven’t been well received by 'serious' film critics. The disdain evinced for his engrossing account of 2012's murderous attacks by Islamicist militants on the US compound is further proof that his naysayers should not be taken too seriouslyApril 22, 2023
16 mins
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Since the 1970s radical theories of education have generated a rainbow alliance of theoretical sects: neo-Marxism, postmodernism, deconstruction, post-colonialism, environmentalism, feminist, gender, queer theory ... the list goes on. What unites them is a a deep-seeded hostility to freedom, democracy, reason, debate, objectivity and truthApril 20, 2023
27 mins
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Convicts weren't the reason for the First Fleet's expensive and hastily organised voyage to Botany Bay, but they were vital to the success of the campaign that stopped the French getting there first. They provided a critical mass of travel-ready occupiers at a time when Eurocentric law required actual occupation, not just a flag-raising, to secure title to new landsApril 19, 2023
22 mins
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There is not much in the way of plot, compelling characters or dramatic story telling in Duncan Smith's novel Conquest by Concept. That said, the reader will find summarised through the dialogue most of the arguments one needs to counter the smelly little orthodoxies of our timeApril 18, 2023
12 mins
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Who knew a near-lifetime of smoking, drinking and eating whatever I pleased would somehow advance the whole cardiac drama timeline?Thus it was that wife Nadia drove a barely-ambulatory me to hospital as intermittent pain radiated across my jaw and both arms tingled. Sensibly, she had scotched my intention to crawl between the sheets and sleep it off. Seriously, that was my plan. It would have been a very long sleepApril 16, 2023
8 mins
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A certain historiography endorses change for its own sake and at any cost. It looks on the past as nothing but monstrous injustices and varieties of oppression, of which the present is the legatee and some small, evil portion of the population the beneficiary. The question then is this: does one choose one’s politics because of one’s history, or one’s history because of one’s politics?April 15, 2023
8 mins
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If the COVID hysteria teaches us anything -- and the full measure of its lessons are many -- it is that good ideas are not improved while bad ideas survive and are pursued ever more fanatically. Meanwhile, intelligent critics of whatever is the current official orthodoxy, who should be prized and consulted, are instead demonised, circumvented, shunned and punished. What chance, do you think, this wisdom will be absorbed the next time mass panic sets in?April 14, 2023
10 mins
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In the UK, as now revealed in excruciating detail, ministers and COVID 'experts' revelling in their 15 minutes created a monstrous fear in the general public. That hysteria might have been -- should have been -- reined in with explanation and information, but that wouldn't have been good politics. Thus, when the Chief Medical Officer advised loosening restrictions, it was the PM’s media advisers who vetoed the move for being 'too far ahead of public opinion'April 11, 2023
11 mins
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Why were the early Christian so eager to transfer blame for the crucifixion of Jesus from the Roman governor to the Jews? The answer is that it made sense. During the 300 years in which the new religion attempted to gain a footing, it was expedient to cite evidence that a Roman official had acted as an advocate for the one seen as the Messiah. If this meant the Jews needed to be seen in a poor light then so be itApril 7, 2023
13 mins
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In Australia, recognising the trouble an immature brain can inflict on its holder, the legal age for consensual sex is at least sixteen; for driving, sixteen; for joining the army, seventeen; and for drinking alcohol and for gambling, eighteen. In contrast, in guidelines from the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, there is no age limit for so-called 'affirmation therapy' involving puberty blockers, mastectomies, chemical castration and worseApril 6, 2023
24 mins
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When Voice advocates laid down their Uluru agenda for Aboriginal self-determination, a non-negotiable demand was that Australia undergo a process of 'truth-telling'. This brings to mind 1984 and Orwell’s central character at the Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith, whose job it was to send history down the memory hole while rewriting the past to accord with Big Brother's latest political narratives and objectivesApril 2, 2023
12 mins
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In Iran, homosexuality is banned, but sex-reassignment surgery to turn would-be homosexuals into pro-forma heterosexuals is subsidised by the government. What could be more 'right-wing' than that? Boys will be girls and girls will be boys, but is the Australian establishment’s wholehearted embrace of transsexuality really just a return to reactionary conservatism? Only an April fool could sayApril 1, 2023
8 mins
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Skin Balm— a double haiku (Once) Cold grey southern air. […]March 31, 2023
1 mins
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Less Is More Rip that carpet up from […]
March 31, 2023
1 mins
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Missing Most in Missed Moments for Helena Qi Hong Each […]
March 31, 2023
1 mins
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Lines on an Anatomy, on taking a Shower My […]
March 31, 2023
1 mins
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Headless Pigeon There’s a headless pigeon outside our house […]
March 31, 2023
1 mins
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Bunny Book She is frightened of the bunnies although they […]
March 31, 2023
2 mins
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April The swaying gums whisper their scent and darting […]
March 31, 2023
1 mins
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The Angel Descends to the City of Dis (Dante, […]
March 31, 2023
2 mins
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Hospital for Stephen I From the high hospital window […]
March 31, 2023
3 mins
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Greek Tragedy Ruin justice … And your bloodline will weaken, […]
March 31, 2023
2 mins
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Hiroshige, Kanagawa third station in 53 Stations of the Tōkaidō, […]
March 31, 2023
1 mins
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Walking Past a Trishaw Zombified, globalised, rumbling nightlife Surrounds him, […]
March 31, 2023
2 mins
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Sophia Tolstoy Our bodies are long barges of silence. We […]
March 31, 2023
1 mins
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Aversion May every act of non-contrition Rebound upon you, you […]
March 31, 2023
1 mins
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The Waiting Wind across the plateau. Sleet and snavelled snow. […]
March 31, 2023
1 mins
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Crucifix Floreat It is a simple silver altar crucifix But […]
March 31, 2023
1 mins
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Someone said: “The dead writers are remote from us because […]
March 30, 2023
21 mins
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In order to access my computer to write this review […]
March 30, 2023
6 mins
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The Divided Self is Graeme Hetherington’s ninth poetry collection since […]
March 30, 2023
10 mins
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Eleven days after Joe Biden won the presidential election, the […]
March 30, 2023
9 mins
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“One World, One Dream” was the motto for the 2008 […]
March 30, 2023
19 mins
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Sir: Douglas Drummond (March 2023) makes a strong case for […]
March 30, 2023
6 mins
