Left meltdown

Dan Nolan at Menzies House: 

The Left: Hoist by their own petard

Were you to take at face value the grotesque outpouring of utter vitriol from the left-aligned members of the twitter cognoscenti, you would have thought Tony Abbott had taken up a policy of punching babies, burning down forests and beheading immigrants personally. At least, that’s what most sane people would take from the insane out roar of fury currently flitting around the twittersphere. Catherine Deveny, much reviled or revered for her candour even went as far as to state she would be committing suicide if Tony Abbott became PM. Though this does frivolously deal with the serious issue of suicide, such a statement is as utterly vulgar as it is utterly idiotic. You’d think the fact that Australians obviously thought both sides were pretty equal but wanted to put the boot into Labor for how they treated Kevin Rudd would be something people would be able to have a rational discussion about.

Though it is a trend for the blood to boil in all manners of politics, but these attacks on Mr Abbott seem to stem from the old-fashioned geek term of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt). Abbott is portrayed as some manner of religious fundamentalist, and insane free-marketer ‘brutopian’ fantasist, or as a complete idiot who will burn this country to the ground with a gigantic grin from ear to ear. Whilst his religious beliefs differ substantially from mine, I don’t find them disgusting or repugnant as most of the virulently atheist crowd do on twitter, simply because he tends to keep them to himself, or at least not vote entirely informed by them. To put it simply, he’s a fairly moderate Catholic, interested in issues of Social Justice, and as a Catholic, issues of contraception and abortion.

It’s utter idiocy to speculate that we’re going to move back to the 1950’s because he’s now a potential candidate for PM. The ‘insane free-marketeer’, well that’s spoken to by his track record, he seems to be quite economically liberal (small-l) particularly in issues of the maternity leave scheme. Lastly, the cry that he’s in any way an idiot is unfathomable, given his quite impressive intellectual track record, in particular his Rhodes Scholarship. I’ve yet to meet a Rhodes Scholar who wasn’t less than whip-crack smart, and I’d challenge anyone to point to one that is in the slightest bit intellectually deficient.

Read Dan Nolan’s “The Left: Hoist by their own petard” at Menzies House