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Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Why the truth? Falsities about God abound. Jesus is saying he is the true revelation of God. He didn’t just come to point to the truth. He is the truth; God incarnate. Being ill-equipped, I won’t venture more into theology. But the biblical passage underscores the centrality of truth in guiding how we assess the world and our place in it.
The truth is the enemy of those who practice deceit and who find their anchor not in truth but in an agenda. Whether Christian or not, a decent person wants to live in truth. Personally, I define my conservatism as falling out of my own search for truth – the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Let the chips fall where they may.
Here are some truths, among a much longer list. Admittedly, not logical or tautological, but truths in the sense that they correspond with the facts on the ground as we know them or should know them. Some abiding, some more profound than others; some specific to the moment.
# Christianity was instrumental in the development of Western civilisation and capitalism.
# Western civilisation is without peer.
# Capitalism is the only route to prosperity and freedom.
# Communism leads to impoverishment, despair and despotism.
# Islam inspires fear, discrimination and violence.
# Open borders threaten the integrity of Western civilisation.
# There are only two biological sexes.
# The traditional family is the ideal setting to rear children.
# Gay marriage is an artefact.
# An unborn life is a separate being.
# Cops do not disproportionately kill African-Americans.
# Police, properly constituted, stand between civilised people and thugs.
# Racism is not behind the relative economic disadvantage of black people in Western countries.
# The notion of “white privilege” is a hateful proposition precisely because it keeps people of colour down by making them into victims.
Proclaiming these truths, or just some of them, is extremely prejudicial for many people living within notionally free Western nations. They might be sacked; be cancelled; be shunned; forced to recant. They might even be threatened by physical violence. It is completely understandable that they don’t speak up.
It is less understandable that those charged with upholding our values by speaking the truth exhibit the characteristics of craven appeasers or useful idiots. I am thinking particularly of leading, so-called, centre-right politicians and of Christian clerics – right up to the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Overall, their silence is deafening.
Mind you, sometimes silence is better than the alternative. Not hard to find the great and good in the UK referring to those trying to protect statues from the mob, absent the police, as being “far right” or “fascist.” One of these is Sir Nicholas Soames, former Conservative minister and Winston Churchill’s grandson. He also reportedly condemned the “unspeakable and cowardly” actions of anarchists and far-left activists who had “hijacked” the Black Lives Matter protest movement and defaced Churchill’s statue. How dumb can you get? Brownshirts hijacked by Brownshirts!
Those calling the shots in Black Lives Matter (BLM), in Antifa, in GetUp! in MoveOn and in other Marxist organisations, and also numbers of academics, commentators and journalists sympathetic to their cause, are far from silent or dumb. They know the facts and are not morons. But like their authoritarian Islamist cousins they practice taqiyya. Lying is their second nature and they are not shy about it because they are not called out.
No ordinary person of any decency or sense would buy their bill of goods so they hide its horror behind mindless slogans. And that seems to work among many of those who should be leading the counter charge. It is easy to find so-called conservatives, like Soames, going along with the fiction that protecting black lives is a laudable part of the BLM agenda. In truth, BLM doesn’t give a fig about black lives or anybody’s lives. They are interested in power.
The objective of Marxists is to undermine our peace and security, our traditions, our values, our culture and our economy. Chaos, they believe, furthers their insidious agenda to take power. Bear in mind, there are more ways to gain illegitimate power than through armed insurrection. And chaos? What is chaos but the breakdown of civilised rules of discourse and conduct? And we have already regressed too far down that path.
Public universities and public broadcasting have been taken over by leftist groupthink; as largely, I suspect, have public services. Public-service cities, like Canberra and Washington DC, are shoo-ins for left-wing parties. The defence forces must be wilting under the withering onslaught of political correctness, feminism, transgenderism and the LGBTQ brigade. Police have shown themselves willing to obey instructions to march little old ladies off park benches yet be passive when it comes to controlling Marxist mobs. How hard would it be under the guise of dismantling and reforming the police to end up with the kind of Stasi police force the Left wants?
It is past time to fight back. But where do the leaders come from? Not from senior clerics. Not from the pantywaists who occupy most of the centre-right parliamentary seats; whether here, in the US or elsewhere. We are left with Trump, I believe, as in 1940, when we had only Churchill. But, ignoring the Left, have a look at the way conservative commentators constantly snipe at Trump; white-anting his standing. They can’t give him any credit without including a sanctimonious personal insult, in order to establish their own moral credentials. Talk about cutting off your nose…
The only comment our illustrious leader, ScoMo, has to make about these riots was that ‘he is more interested in building things up than tearing them down’, or words to that effect.
Thanks, ScoMo! That’s really going to stop these Marxist mobs dead in their tracks!!
What a sick joke the ‘man’ is.
Peter Smith,
Great article. Concise and to the point. The opening paragraph honoures Jesus Christ as the author of absolute truth. Your list of truths, corresponding with facts, is spot on. Another fact, especially pertinent to the current turmoil, is the spiritual reality illustrated in Ephesians 6:12: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places”.
You are spot-on Peter. Something has got to change, otherwise things are going to become very grim.
.
The answer lies firmly between Genesis and Revelation.
.
Another “biblical passage (that) underscores the centrality of truth in guiding how we assess the world and our place in it” is Psalm 50: 22-23.
.
Now consider this, ye that forget God,
lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver.
Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me:
and to him that ordereth his conversation aright
will I shew the salvation of God.
Religion aside, I place blame on educational institutions that have largely vacated fields like ethics, morals, etiquette, compassion and the like, abandoning the young pupils of today, plus for their parents and their teachers. In Australia we oldies have seen more golden times and we largely know how to recreate them, but nobody asks. So sad. Geoff
Hi Peter, so why don’t you mention the other Quadrant writers who do stand up to the Left?
I agree that something must be done. However, whatever solution is to be found, it’s futile and unfair to blame the Prime Minister for not doing “enough” without some clear concept of ends and means. We’re back to the question of how long is a piece of string.
Morrison, like most modern Liberal Prime Ministers, does not enjoy a majority in both houses. He does not enjoy a partisan media prepared to support the most idiotic schemes that ALP leaders usually enjoy, at least until the most egregious nonsense, eg pink batts, forces even the most radical of leftist journalists to bail out before their own parachutes go up in the flames of public outrage.
The moment the PM voices any proposal that threatens the status quo of the institutions currently under leftist control or, as has happened even here in this relatively sane forum, he takes any action that smacks of authoritarianism, the baying mobs will go for his jugular.
People who argue that politicians should “do something” must specify when, where and how this should be done. Otherwise, it’s just so much hot air.
Neither Morrison nor any other Prime Minister has the necessary power, even if they had the will.
Who among you readers remembers the 1999 IPA dinner in Melbourne to mark the 10th anniversary of the Fall of the Wall? (Bliss was it in that Carlton restaurant to be alive…) Who among you remembers the PM John Howard’s keynote speech at the 50th anniversary dinner of this magazine in Sydney? He promised to start the long march back through the ABC and the universities to reclaim territory too long ceded to the forces of darkness. We all applauded, though my table members looked askance at one another in deep scepticism. That was 2006, the year before his government fell along with conservative governance in general and probably for good. President Trump has, at best, 4 more years of unique and lonely resistance to offer. Face it, people: the next generation have bought the Zeitgeist in app form and can’t shift their mesmeric gaze. We’ve lost the long game; the culture war the Left started in 1919 and patiently pursued, gaining numbers and money and power as it went. What to do? Buy land, horses, sheep and chooks and escape the cities to join me in the last redoubt which, for want of a better name, let’s call “Australia”.
Trevor, change for the good will happen eventually. We just have to make sure we leave enough signposts for how to get back to where we once were, for our children and grandchildren to follow, before we fall off the twig. Calling out the lies in the press and the overstatement of dangers be it climatic or Covid, outlining the mind-manipulation that has gone on – that’s one way we can leave both a protest and a way back. Do not give in to these usurpers of our heritage who wish to destroy and dominate: that is the message of historical experience that we must leave. The next generations will have to clear up the mess that they, not us, have allowed to fill their heads.
Doubting Thomas. Here is Morrison:
“Australia, when it was founded as a settlement, as NSW, was on the basis that there be no slavery, while slave ships continued to travel around the world…Yeah sure, it was a pretty brutal settlement, my forefathers and foremothers were on the first and second fleets, it was a pretty brutal place, but there was no slavery in Australia.” Uniformed criticism descends and the PM responds saying that he “deeply regrets and apologises for any offence caused by his comments.” Says it all really. We should expect more from our Liberal leaders than to wilt at the first hint of grapeshot. Did you catch Frydenberg’s limp performance on Bolt on the Marxist Black Lives Matter crowd. It goes on and on. No-one stands up. By no-one I mean of those vested with power.
Like you I detest lily-livered people who feel a need to apologise ‘for any offence’. But that’s the reality of the situation modern conservative politicians are in (even pretend ones), whether we like it or not. Had he not apologised, he’d still be fighting the media until the next election comes around. They don’t give a fig that there never has been any slavery in Australia, and that his statement was historically accurate. But, had it been a Labor politician who had made such a statement, the media would have ignored any outcry, and defended the speaker. Not to have apologised would have jeopardised his election chances.
That’s his reality, and Australia’s tragedy.
Personally, I doubt that the situation can be reversed as Elizabeth hopes. In my now very lengthy lifetime, every toxic trend that has been imported, particularly those from the US, has marched merrily along unhindered by official action, sinking ever lower into their own slime.
By now, the intellectual contradictions of post-modernism should have killed it years ago. But here we are with people on the one hand insisting that we respect and submit to the thoroughly dodgy science of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming while, in almost the same breath, demanding that we ignore, even deny, the thoroughly well supported biological science that insist that there are only two sexes.
When the chips are down, and our choice is between a lily-livered Coalition government and a Green-Labor alternative, I’ll forgive Morrison his trespasses because the alternative is too horrible to contemplate.
You echo, Doubting Thomas, the dictum of William Gladstone: “Damn your principles; follow the party!” Realpolitik is your cup of tea no less than WG’s. And last year’s election was the “nearest run thing you ever saw in your life” (to borrow a description from another British PM who was all principle and no politician – a failure, in other words). Mr Morrison continues to walk a tightrope strung above a sea of volatile voters to deliver us a government of Anyone-But-the Hard Left. It will have to do. There is no-one else in the “conservative” camp to capture the public ear and change the mood of the times.
I believe the West has already changed to a degree irremediable in the short to long term. Those many of you familiar with the work of Rod Dreher will know what I mean when I suggest “The Benedict Option” is the likely future of not only Christianity but also conservative principles in this New Dark Age that is upon us. Prudence, modesty, charity and ‘oikophilia’ or love of home are tenets of a Burkean, organic and instinctive conservatism that will be tended and kept alive by a minority as Europe and the Anglophone countries sink into the mire of soft totalitarianism that Cultural Marxists have long worked towards. Mind you, “men who have stopped believing in God don’t believe in nothing, they believe in anything”. Chesterton has raised the stakes to a double or nothing revival…over to you, QO correspondents.
New strategies are required of those who wish to defend Christianity, Christian values and/or the traditional Western or specifically British values that we have inherited.
I have just been reading a short history of the Alleged Lunatics Friendly Society (1845-1863), established in England to fight for the rights of persons improperly confined in Lunatic Asylums, often at the instigation of relatives who wanted them out of the way. This Society is an example of many established in the UK to pursue reforms during the politically turbulent Victorian era. Great battles for social progress and democratic liberties were fought in parliament and the press. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of societies were formed by concerned citizens to pursue change in many areas.
The Alleged Lunatics Friend Society, based on a pattern replicated in reform societies throughout Britain, had three features that I believe should be replicated here. First, it concentrated on one specific issue. Secondly, it systematically collected evidence for its case and developed the relevant arguments, producing documents encapsulating this material. Thirdly it relentlessly publicised the cause in the press, and directly with influential citizens, with politicians and with government. Note the word ‘relentlessly’.
Now the fact remains that this approach was extremely labor-intensive. It required the unpaid services of passionate advocates and skilled communicators. On most issues the effort had to be maintained consistently over at least a decade. There were persistent campaigns, for example, for medical reform generally, through reform of the teaching and practice of medicine, that started in the 1820s and eventually bore fruit thirty years later with the Medical Act of 1858. That’s a whole generation.
The Alleged Lunatics Friend Society, which probably never had more than about forty members, saw many of its objectives put in place (though the contribution of the Society was not even acknowledged by the authorities who actually implemented the reforms in the end). Although small, the Society gained influence by seeking support on specific issues from other prominent activists, such as Thomas Wakley, the medical reformer who famously founded a private medical journal, The Lancet, to publicise his cause.
Evangelical Christians today are concerned about many issues on which they are more or less united, such as opposition to abortion or the transgender movement. The Australian Christian Lobby has been quite effective in pursuing a broad range of issues of this type and has notched up significant achievements. But its broad scope also results in considerable lack of focus.
We might learn much from the great reformers and reform societies of the Victorian era, whose work changed not only the treatment of the mentally ill, but the whole system of medical teaching and practice. In the broad field of political and social reform, the Victorians formed countless small societies, campaigning successfully for the temperance cause, for worker’s rights and so on.
Those wanting reform today must become activists like the Victorians. They must organise to promote their cause. They must address specific issues. And they must be in it for the long haul.
To take one issue, there is an absolute moral obligation to roll back the horrendous abortion laws in Australia. This will probably take more than one generation of sustained activism, systematic campaigning, publishing, lobbying and so on. The question is whether advocates of abortion law reform can muster the drive, energy and commitment of the reformers of the Victorian era.
Trevor Bailey – 15th June 2020; great comment. Although I would argue that it started around 452 AD, not long after the Council of Chalcedon set the high-water mark.
Peter Smith, you speak for a great many people, in my opinion. I for one recoil from pictures like those of police in Australia “taking a knee”. In America, 16% of murdered whites are killed by blacks, 8% of murdered blacks are killed by whites, and 89% of murdered blacks are killed by blacks, according to the US FBI website. In Australia, the 1991 Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody found that fewer Aborigines than Whites, pro-rata, died in custody. We need to be careful about the message the present activists are trying to make, that blacks are overwhelmingly victims.
Peter, you say we should fight back. Yes! Where are those of us who would call out for peaceful demonstrations in defence of truth and decency, to protect free speech and our supposed democratic principles. At least let us write letters to politicians and the media, as well as here in Quadrant.
I have, today, sent the following to the Prime Minister and some other Government members:
Re: Weak and Unprincipled Government
I, and a great many other Australians, are concerned that the Government is allowing activist and ‘woke’ members of society to rule the roost. These are the people who would tear down Western civilization and rewrite history to suit their, usually, left-leaning and ‘green’ ideologies.
The Government seems paralysed by the present ‘protest’ movements about ‘black lives matter’. The Prime Minister has been reported as saying he is not interested in the tearing down of statues and the like. Rather, he is focussed on jobs. This is an abrogation of what clearly are his responsibilities to protect Australian democracy, standards, culture, and the rule of law. The evidence is absolute. Proportionately more white prisoners die in custody than do Aborigines. While many more Aborigines than whites are in gaol as a proportion of their respective population numbers, the reason is that the Government continues allowing and supporting Aborigines to live in remote communities that have no prospect of being viable even with the present massive and disproportionate Government financial support. The dysfunction of most remote communities is obvious to any visitor. Traditional Aboriginal culture, of which most people seem to have little to no knowledge, and ‘sit-down’ money, are the bases for this dysfunction. Many of these Aborigines admit there is no incentive to change their ways. My paper on the subject ”Aborigines, the Constitution and the Voice” can be read at https://www.scribd.com/document/458064355/ for a better understanding of what might be wrong.
Similarly, the Government must bring the ABC to heel. The biased news and opinion productions of the ABC are heavily biased and are structured to ‘brain wash’ the public into accepting a left-leaning and ‘green’ agenda. Indeed, The Weekend Australian newspaper last weekend reported that the ABC Media Watch program was “actively campaigning to constrain reporting on climate change, border protection, corona virus research and coverage of Donald Trump”. Society is at the mercy of such influence because few avenues exist for countervailing views and the Government tends to kowtow to these activists for the corrupt reason of staying in power at any cost.
Yet again, the activist High Court is subverting the Government by making judgements that change the law to suit its own ideologies. This was so in the Mabo case and in the recent declaration that Aboriginality (as is so loosely defined) overrides immigration policy and, presumably, any other related policies and laws. The Government must stop such actions and legislate to override such activist rulings.
I plead for the political parties that presently participate in forming Government policies to wake up and take control of our society. If such parties would take a Statesman-like role in defending our Constitution, and what should continue to be largely our Anglo-Celtic culture, the majority of Australians would rally behind them. Unless done, society will continue to fragment and lose direction. Anarchy will be the way forward.
I would hope many people would be able to write better letters; ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’.
The three main sources of Leftists in Australia are the Public Service, the education sector and the large corporations. They have in common multi-layered organisational structures that provide secure incomes, privileges and status for their employees, along with an internal social hierarchy based on expertise.
A large proportion of the Australian workforce spends its entire working life in these structures. No wonder they have no interest in democracy, or traditional ideas of individual liberty. To them, government by experts is as natural as breathing. Money descends into their bank accounts like rain. They think this is how the world works.