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Like Jordan Peterson’s reputation, Lionel Shriver’s conservative credentials were burnished by leftist idiocy. In Peterson’s case it was his interview on the UK’s Channel 4 by Cathy Newman. In Shriver’s case it was Yassmin Abdel-Magied walking out of the Brisbane Writers’ Festival in 2016 in protest at Shriver’s views on identity politics and cultural appropriation.
Neither Peterson nor Shriver are my kind of conservatives and, to be fair, I am sure they would not claim to be or would want to be. That’s fine. What I would like to say is that conservative warriors are now needed more than ever. Much less useful are prominent notables on the conservative side who come over all reasonable in the face of those intent on our destruction.
Peterson lost his standing with me when he suggested that Brett Kavanagh should first win his confirmation to the Supreme Court but then immediately resign to clear his name. That was a ridiculous suggestion, to put it extremely mildly. Clearly Peterson has no idea about the enemy we face.
I caught Shriver on Q&A last week. True, I could only stand five minutes or so before turning it off. Any longer spent watching Q&A is injurious to my peace of mind. Nevertheless, I saw enough to sense that Shriver was trying hard to appear “reasonable” to other panellists and to the usual green-leftist ABC audience. Hint for Shriver: Prostration is pointless. They’ll always despise you. Look to, say, Michelle Malkin for a role model.
Did I get a false impression of Shriver’s demeanour? I think not. The following evening I attended the Bonython Lecture in Sydney, where she explained that her engagement, front and backstage, with other Q&A panellists was civil; and, furthermore, she made a point of extolling the need for civility generally in political debate.
I want to be clear. Come the witching hour I believe I will find myself on the same side of the barricades as Peterson and Shriver. After all, where else could we be? But I would like to think that we can avoid arriving at the witching hour. And we won’t if our side is populated by those falling over themselves to be civil.
Civility is paramount among people of sound mind and goodwill. Those of the new progressive Left don’t qualify. They need to be fought, not reasoned with. Reasoning with a poisonous serpent is useless. You have to chop its head off. And, being religiously minded, I choose the metaphor of a serpent advisedly.
Go to the US to see the progressive Left at its most transparent. It’s here in Australia, in the UK and in Europe in full-enough measure, but only in America has it the chutzpah to stand in the spotlight. Anyone who caught any of CNN’s seven-hour town-hall meeting on the “climate crisis” with the top ten Democrat presidential candidates would know what I mean. They have no shame.
They tell blatant lies, like Hurricane Dorian is a product of climate change, which are easily exposed. Yet they will simply go on repeating them. It is lying in the name of saving the planet. Taqiya for Gaia. The destruction of America’s economy, and, with it, Western civilisation, is collateral damage apparently. Or is that all part of the plan? It surely must be.
Run down the list (in no particular order and without attempting to be exhaustive): the ‘green new deal’, pulling down border security, providing free health insurance to illegal immigrants, publicly funding abortion up till the moment of birth, slashing military spending, funding more and more ‘free stuff’ through greatly increased taxation (and, no doubt, through untrammelled money printing as per leftist modern monetary theory[i]), persecuting those with the temerity to practice Christian beliefs, marginalising the traditional family, insidiously siding with Palestinians over Israel, and hiking minimum wages to add to the rampant unemployment which will follow, as night follows day, from the other ruinous environmental and economic policies.
Quite simply America as we know it would cease to exist. It would be crippled. America stands between Western civilisation and the Islamic and the Chinese-communist barbarians. We would fall as other civilisations have fallen. At some point the Islamists and Chinese would turn on each other. But, by that time, we would be vassal states watching the big boys duke it out. I will go back to my start.
I am generally polite and civil, even after a few drinks. But I ask this question. How civil is it proper to be to those who espouse policies which, if ever enacted, would put our grandchildren’s lives at risk?
[i] “Unmasking Modern Monetary Theory” in the July/August issue of Quadrant.
Peter,
Oz is a lost cause. We have no Trump, Farage or Petersen, though fortunately we do have Hanson, Latham and Bolt (and Quadrant).
Best to do as I have done: flee overseas to any land that is on the rise and watch with sadness as Oz and NZ sink into oblivion
And I came here, escaping from what this country is now turning into. Work that one out if you can.
You say the progressives may have an ulterior motive: the total destruction of the West and all it’s achievements. There is no doubt about it, they are out to destroy us. What sane person would ruin a good energy system and replace it with one that everybody knows does not work? What sane person would seek to destroy their armed services in the name of gender equality? What sane person would advocate the scrapping of their nuclear deterrent when more countries, mainly communist, are building more nukes? What sane person says we could be the food bowl of Asia then star vges irrigators of water while it sends vast quantities to Lake Alexandrina to evaporate?
They are not insane but they are all socialists striving for a new and improved communism. They want voters to have less power and governments to have more. They want women in jobs that even women do not want. They detest debate and shut down alternative opinion. There is no maybe about it Peter, these people want power and all of it.
I bought hard and electronic copies of Petersons “12 Rules…”.
I pulled up when I read “we all have twice as many female ancestors as male”.
“All” is an unambiguous English word meaning every one of us, and I call “BS” on that basis. I give him mathematical leeway on “twice”, mathematically maybe 1.5-2.5, and have read a number of article arguing that most of us have more female ancestors than male and understand the reasoning, but do not accept even the 1.5-2.5 range for ALL of us.
Then I read “Dogs are predators. So are cats. They kill things and eat them. It’s not
pretty. But we’ll take them as pets and care for them, and give them their
medication when they’re sick, regardless. Why? They’re predators, but it’s
just their nature. They do not bear responsibility for it. They’re hungry,
not evil.”
I again call BS; neither cats nor dogs kill only if hungry; surely we all know that – how many birds are killed by cats “for fun”? Recently I rescued a dog with a bung leg from 3 other dogs who were seemingly killing him – were they going to eat him? Were the 13,000 or so Australians who present at Emergency each year because of dog attacks viewed by the dog as food?
Their attacks and killings may be intuitive rather than because they are “evil”, but I’d contest that and say acting on their their instinct makes them “evil” But because “they’re hungry”? BS.
So I stopped reading.
Ain’t got a stammer, but no editing facility to get rid of the “their their”, and the spell-checker, unlike even my basic email checker, does not pick it up.