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If the Left’s continuing assault on what remains of our civilisation is the big problem of our time, a lesser irritation is that the Left itself is dead boring. All that tedious complaining, like fractious infants. You get the impression the complaining is as important to the Leftist as the succession of fads complained about – a long list now, stretching back through the years via the inglorious but thoroughly merited dismissal of Whitlam to the days of “Pig Iron Bob” daubed on railway bridges.
Not having an inspiring vision of life, the Left reduces the whole realm of human experience to tight little categories so alien to traditional ways of thinking that it has had to invent ugly neologisms to denote them – sexism, racism, sundry phobias. These serve as the building blocks with which the earnest Leftist constructs his ethical views. Things are good or bad – no, you can’t say good or bad, the Left considers moral absolutes a relic of outmoded Judeo-Christianity – approved or disapproved of according to the absence or presence of one or more of these categories.
Annoyingly, Leftists have infected everyone with this tiresome grievance-classification jargon, thus straitjacketing public and much private discourse within Leftist concepts. That’s fine for Leftists, whose conversational range is limited to their current hobbyhorses but pretty ho-hum for the rest of us. Get stuck at a Leftist dinner party and instead of a feast of reason and flow of soul you’ll get an orgy of virtue-signalling variations on the usual dreary repertoire: the awfulness of Trump, the wickedness of letting the Barrier Reef “die”, the iniquity of Murdoch and his myrmidons and so on, until you slide off your chair comatose, at which point the company, misattributing the cause of your narcolepsy, is catapulted by association into lamenting the shocking toll of binge-drinking as reported in the Age (which is now a fanzine for the Left with boring Leftist articles for boring Leftist letter-to-the-editor writers).
Leftists, letter-writers or not, are boring because they are predictable. They have what the Oxford don Lord David Cecil called “package-deal opinions”. Know what a Leftist thinks on any one thing and you know what he thinks about everything else, or everything within the range of his awareness, which is usually not extensive. (There’s no point in asking him what he thinks of abstrusities, say the Shakespeare-Earl-of-Oxford theory or Victorian Gothic stained glass, because he won’t understand what you’re talking about.)
Leftists are boring because they never say anything stimulating or challenging. They stick to what they know is OK to other Leftists. Take Alan Joyce and his announcement that Qantas is in favour of “gay marriage” (as though an airline were a sentient being capable of opinions). What he deserves for this utterance is to be sacked for alienating a substantial number of potential passengers. What he gets is a gong for, inter alia, his contribution to “diversity”. What diversity? If he’d said something really diverse, such as that Qantas opposes Section 18C – or, really sticking his neck out, that Qantas supports leaving the marriage laws as they are – he might have merited this signal expression of his sovereign’s esteem. But to say anything of that sort would have been to break ranks with our opinion controllers.
There’s something comic in the Joyce affair, with a captain of industry turning from his performance charts to become a gender warrior. It’s like Roz Ward trying to pilot an Airbus. But the Left wouldn’t know that it’s funny because, like all bores, it has no sense of humour. How could a Leftist laugh at something that saner generations have found hilarious such as the books of P. G. Wodehouse with their cast of servants, tough aunts and pining lovers? The Leftist reader would find the first an example of capitalist exploitation, the second of authorial misogyny and the third “homophobic” because of the “binary” nature of the love. Leftists didn’t get the wit of Bill Leak, who made them incandescent with uncomprehending rage, but they love Michael Leunig’s silly doodles because his palaeo-anarchist platitudes speak to their simple hearts. Leftist “humour” as witnessed at “comedy festivals” and on the ABC is nothing more than vulgarity with a public subsidy.
Leftists are boring because they relate everything to themselves. The old Left of fairness and compassion for the underdog has gone. The new Left is about posing as compassionate at no cost to oneself, preferably towards some “victim” safely at arm’s length – an Aboriginal township-dweller or an “asylum seeker” over on Manus Island. And if an asylum seeker who’s been let in throws bombs in a crowded street the Leftist can live with that too, and make excuses for it, as long as it’s not in some sacred Leftist space like the Wheeler Centre.
Leftists’ self-centredness means they reject objectivity. The Leftist woman is ipso facto a feminist, judging everything from a feminist point of view, not because she’s weighed the arguments but because she is a woman. The Leftist male is a feminist too because he’s terrified of being thought an aggressor. Literature is evaluated according to the sex of the writer. Forgotten lady artists of dubious ability are disinterred and hailed as geniuses suppressed by “patriarchy”. Canberra, it turns out, was designed by a woman with her husband as assistant.
The LGBTQIXYZ Left (notice that in the order of initials it’s still “ladies first”, which is either a pleasantly chivalric survival or the result of lesbian pushiness) is exclusively obsessed by self, so can never understand that the rest of the world is not agog to hear its eternal laments about “heteronormative” oppression. For selfish Leftist gays, it’s always other people who are out of step. Opposition to their campaign to remake society to their own prescription is opposition to “inclusivity”. Parents who object to their children being brainwashed at school with mendacious and unscientific notions of gender “fluidity” are denounced as culpably “cisnormative” with no rights in the matter. If even an experienced paediatrician dares to suggest that some brattish child “identifying” as the opposite sex is undergoing a temporary phase and should not be delivered into the clutches of surgeons he is “transphobic” and the child’s “wishes” should be “respected”. By contrast, Leftist same-sex parents take a very proprietorial attitude to the children they’ve browbeaten a craven society into allowing them to adopt. They regard them as a possession with interests subordinate to their own; otherwise why would they ignore survey after survey that show children are better off with a father and a mother?
Leftists are tediously inconsistent. You could write a book on this but let one glaring example suffice. Leftists worry incessantly about the effect of “global warming” on unborn generations but, for their own convenience, gladly consign unwanted members of the generation due to be born in the next nine months to be flushed away on an industrial scale.
And yet Leftists are insufferably self-righteous. On and on they go, in Fairfax editorials, on television, bleating and cursing on Twitter in an unceasing stream of vilely and violently expressed abuse of everyone who doesn’t think as they do, perpetually pointing out the mote in the eye of other people while ignoring the whole structure of beams, purlins, rafters and walls in their own that make up the edifice of their hatred and lack of charity, of their unwillingness even to try to understand that there might be a justification for a contrary opinion. To the Left, disagreement is the product of malevolence or stupidity.
Yet when it comes to stupidity, Leftists themselves aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed. One sign of this is that they are no good at reasoned argument. Hence their fondness for meaningless statements. Remember Obama’s vacuous electoral reiterations of “Yes, we can” (with hindsight would that be, “No, you couldn’t”?), or Julia’s silly speech blaming her plummeting reputation not on her own manifest ineptitude but on “misogyny”, and how the Left received these pronouncements as though they were pearls of Ciceronian oratory?
Rather than debate, Leftists assert. “Coal is bad”, “Wind is good”, a bit like a well known television commercial for cured meats. If assertion doesn’t get them their way they go on demonstrations and threaten violence, shouting slogans in mindless unison like a combination of Nuremberg rally and primary-school children of the rote era learning the multiplication table. Conservatives don’t go on demonstrations, a Leftist habit that became fashionable here with the moratoriums (moronatoriums one might say) of the 1970s. Conservatives might make an individual stand for what they believe – Enoch Powell and Margaret Court spring to mind – but would never dream of subsuming their identity in the assembly line of shrieking clones that is a Leftist mob.
Dullness, obtuseness, tediousness are not innocuousness. Adolf Hitler was a dull little man and look what he unleashed. As Hitler should have been, so the Left should be confronted and opposed while there is time, before we all risk being bored to death, or at least into submission.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDg8sP_atIA
Love it – try his interview with Mark Steyn as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4obxH2vSms
Have seen it all! Peterson and Steyne; champions. Obviously Canada has some superior intellects. Jordan Peterson fascinates me; his intensity, passion and insight. When I sent some of these links to left-leaning sisters they were revolted. I don’t understand this at all; Peterson isn’t discussing politics but PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY.
“LGBTQIXYZ” is fine, but I loved the way Latham snuck “LGBTIWTF” into an article in the Daily Telegraph. Thought it would be taken up widely, but not seen it since, other than in my own missives.
Another appealing option was LGBTIQWERTY
Yes yes … thoroughly boring leftists who have stolen the arts, education (Primary, Secondary and Tertiary) the Public Service (all the jobs in which the gov’t pays the wages) … leaving me (and you?) unemployable, unlovable, and isolated .. unless of course you happen to have a lifetime’s worth of very good and interesting ‘conservative’ friends with which to socialize. I fear that ‘conservatives’ must live in isolated enclaves of one person households way out bush … there do not seem to be many to find in the inner cities. I fear we live the lives of the ‘occupied’ … that in every facet of most Australian lives, ‘the left’ is dominant … even in the Christian Churches no solice is to be found for the conservative. It amazes me that the Liberal Party gets any votes at all in a general election.
Conservatives in the arts and the churches have learned to keep their mouths shut when opening them is futile. Not all churches, of course. Perhaps the Liberal Party gets votes because it’s leftist? But, no, a genuine leftist wouldn’t be caught dead voting Liberal, even if the Liberals were offering a full neo-Marxist agenda. Once the Left has labelled you non grata, that you remain. But a lot of former Liberal voters aren’t voting Liberal any more. So watch this space.
Quite a spray here from Christopher Akehurst. But note that the new fashion is to bless the ‘Old Left’ with a bit more than faint praise. It’s this damned ‘New Left’ with all its ‘isms’ and ‘phobias’ that is the problem. Much harder to accommodate to.
However, Akehurst is none the less on the money. It was the Vietnam War, out of which the US and its Australian ally for the first time in their history, learned what it is like to be on the losing (and antidemocratic) side. Donald (‘Let’s make America great again’) Trump is still trying to lead a recovery from that.
The Vietnam War began as a colonial war, and never lost its colonialist base and origin. But on their way to their historic loss, the rebadged colonialists created the ‘New Left’ in America, Australia and elsewhere. So chickens have come home to roost big time, perhaps best seen in Robert S. McNamara, The Fog of War, available on YouTube.
Christopher Akehurst’s rather dull, boring and predictable litany of complaint comes back to the fact that the ‘conservative’ side shot itself in the foot over Vietnam: and made a massive contribution to the creation of the New Left, which has been moved in on by various parties and diverted away from its earlier cause of “fairness and compassion for the underdog”: which needless to add, was always deplored by the Old Right.
“Leftists are boring because they relate everything to themselves”
How true! At a dinner last night with some medico friends of ours, the conversation turned to why they had their children in Catholic schools. The answer was strikingly simple. It’s where their kids will learn that they are not the centre of the universe and where they will learn that it’s best to treat others as you would have them treat you.
Which brings me to the disturbing report that our vainglorious PM has stated that should he be removed as PM he will leave Parliament, knowing of course that this will bring down the Liberal (ha ha he he) government. Now that is the “Left” at its very best! The only thing that matters to Malcolm is Malcolm!
Here are two men, same political party. One is treacherously “rolled” by those he counted as “friends”, accepts the public humiliation, wears the constant abuse (which it is) of a malicious and often deceitful press but yet fights on regardless for what he believes to be true. I see no move to make him PM and even those who professed to be ideological compatriots have turned out to be depressingly weak and spineless men and women. He has just stepped out into the future with flags unfurled and flying!
I’m not commenting about what he believes to be true because that is a minefield of insufferable debates over mere words and opinions. I am commenting only on “character”.
His successor through what is now revealed as long term malice, came to power through his own and other’s treachery. Now that there are perceived threats to his own grip on power he immediately makes threats. If he is not PM and is rolled by his colleagues ass he rolled his colleague, then to hell with the party and to hell with the nation. He would rather bring down his own party and throw the nation into turmoil.
I have seen all I there is to see. The sooner MT goes, the better for the Liberal Party (or what’s left of it) and the better for the nation even if there needs be some short term to medium term pain with “honest” leftists on the treasury benches. And as for the once great Liberal Party? A tree sometimes needs a very severe pruning to bear some good fruit.
Yep – true to Leftist form! It was never about “us the people” – it was always about him.
Would that be anything like Peter Costello who got the huff because he wasn’t leader and left the parliament and the party without direction? Or the completely ruthless Paul Keating who spent his entire time as Treasurer trying to get Hawke’s job? He didn’t stay on after his election loss either. I know of no Prime Minister who ever has.
Stop conflating arguments so that they seem like Malcolm Turnbull is the first treacherous person to hit the political stage. Reserve that judgment for Bill Shorten, if you will. I still have a mental image of him on the phone trying to unseat Rudd during that period of high dudgeon. Abbott is yesterday’s news because, as Mattias Cormann says, everything he’s saying now is inconsistent with what he did as Prime Minister. Case closed. It’s the younger generation which will be running things. And Turnbull’s best chance of neutralizing the gargoyle that is Abbott is to adopt some few of his suggestions!!
Left and Right: both ambitious, ruthless and self-interested. I guess you could say the Right is more honest about this because they don’t pretend to care for others as the Left does.
Agree about Catholic schools and that’s why I sent all my 4 there. That and far better discipline and pastoral care.
> “Left and Right: both ambitious, ruthless and self-interested”
Yes … been said quite a few times, of course. Nothing changes.
The only politician I have ever had time for was John Grey Gorton, and he earned that. Not because he wasn’t self-centred, or altruistic, or a pants man or whatever. But he carried out one good policy initiative that really helped me and very many like me, as well as advancing the interests of the country as a whole. He also indirectly supplied me with a day (in the Southern Highlands of Papua) of the most unexpected but exquisite comedy/drama that anyone could wish for in their life. I believe he meant the former – a useful, clever policy on development of specific university access. I much doubt he meant the second occasion (the day in the sunshine of high entertainment); I doubt he ever knew or understood almost any of the detail surrounding the political drama he occasioned. But entertainment of the very highest order it was. One really could not have made that stuff up.
So the current bureaucratic/political order is boring, destructive in its’ self-centred ineptness. Worth no further electrons on my screen.
Hi Jody
Just a couple of points;
MT is not the first treacherous person to hit the political stage and I never said he was. I’m just making the point that treachery is wrong and it’s wrong every time someone is treacherous no matter who they are. The reason I particularly detest it in politicians and particularly leaders is because they are unavoidable role models for the “nation”. If moral relativism is the norm in our leaders, then all of us are to be pitied. And moral relativism is has become the norm – it’s called “pragmatism” by this crop of no hopers.
So what if TA has changed his mind? Who hasn’t! He tried to accommodate so called “moderates” in his cabinet and that was his greatest mistake. In the war for hearts and minds it’s always best to distinguish what is negotiable from what is not negotiable. Abbott is right – the Libs don’t stand for anything and have nothing to fight for so we the voting public may as well have Labor who are far better at spending money we just don’t have or we may as well vote for PHON or Australian Conservatives if we still hold some well tried values dear and worth fighting for.
You’re right it will be younger generations that will be running things but that in itself does not mean that they will run things well. Indeed they could end up being a great disaster, particularly if they are the product of the current state run education system! That’s why it would be good for seasoned, older players stay around as long as they possibly can so that can impart some of what Aristotle called “phronesis” or practical wisdom.
And finally, I agree with you wholeheartedly. If MT wants to neutralise TA he should adopt some of his suggestions. Unfortunately that would require a “change of mind” and a backtracking on long held “convictions” and it might also mean he might not be considered a nice, urbane, inner-city type of guy by the self proclaimed (but generally deluded) “latte glitterati” and mercy! We couldn’t have that could we – it would just prove that TA was right about some things all along!
I agree with some of your sentiments, but I think Abbott a complete dud as he has no people skills and these are required to sell messages. That doesn’t mean Talkbull has them either; he hasn’t, otherwise people would talk to him on public transport!
But, you must bear in mind that the government is dealing with an intransigent, left wing Senate which sees itself as the government now – the the lower house mere administrators. Ergo, the only way to get things through and not completely waste 3 years is to do ‘whatever it takes’ (as Richo is so fond of saying). So, some blame but not all.
Whether or not the younger generations run things successfully or not is immaterial to me; I’ll be in my pine overcoat. It’s the hear and now which concerns me. The government will lose the election and they deserve to do so; just as the people deserve Shorten and his spend and tax mentality because, after all, THEY will be paying for it. Not us.
(1) William McMahon stayed on for 10 years after he lost the PMship to Edward Whitlam.
(2) Although Whitlam was not PM at the time of the 1975 election, having been dismissed 32 days previously, many regard him as a defeated PM, and he stayed on as Leader of the Opposition.
(3) Not only did Keating not stay on after his election loss, he fittingly became the first MP to resign other than on account of sickness and not have the courtesy to proffer his resignation to the speaker in person.
The author – an adroit wordsmith – indulged in, and probably very much enjoyed the frivolous verbosity. In the end he has rather overdone it, making the reading of it increasingly tedious as one reads on, the validity of the argument notwithstanding.
Agreed: I could only get a quarter way through, and though I didn’t necessarily disagree with C. Akehurst, it had regressed into a rant, undoing any sense of inspiration whatsoever. As a whole the readers were rather kind to him I thought.
Jody
The differences between what Peter did and what Malcon threatens is that Costello leaving did not keave a hung ungovernable parliament and certainly did not carry with it the spitefulness in Malcon’s threat.
Neither did he run for leadership. He probably didn’t have the numbers and in all likelihood understood the Machaevillian nature and ambition of Malcon.
He was always pretty clever in his ability to read his colleagues. And His colleagues probably wouldn’t have wanted him to stay.
So why would he have subjected himself to the crap Tony suffered.
‘I know of no other PM who had.’
Seriously, Jody. If you think Malcon was talking about leaving after an election loss you are totally wrong. Or are you simply trying to champion Malcom thinking that will stop Abbott?
Adopt Abbotts suggestions. Are you joking?
Mind you Malcons behaviour would be consistent.
All malcon has ever done is endorse either Abbitts policies or adopt and legislate labor policy.