Welcome to East Berlin - I mean Melbourne.
Time to Play Dirty? Lessons from the David Starkey Affair
Written by Paul Collits
Cancel culture is all around. It crushes rational debate and destroys freedom of thought and speech. The latest victim is the eminent British historian David Starkey, caught up cruelly in the Black Lives Matter debate. His cancellation raises important questions for how those who value freedom fight against leftist revolutionary thought and practice.
The re-emergence of Mark Latham has been one of the most interesting developments in recent Australian politics. Latham's common sense centrism and his push-back against the ruling elites has struck a chord with voters of all stripes. Populism, perhaps, but also, maybe, a much needed reality check in these troubled and inauthentic times.
The modern culture wars have their genesis in a most unfortunate marriage of convenience between two intellectual and political movements. The proponents of economic liberty and the cultural marxists who emerged in the 1960s found common cause in radical individualism, in the 1980s. And we have all suffered since.
Do we inhabit times where it is "no country for old men"? For old virtues? For Judea Christian conceptions of good and evil? Cormack McCarthy's epic novel, and its stunning if gruesome movie adaptation by the Coen Brothers, offer valuable lessons for our crazy and evil postmodern world.
The Covid crisis has thrown up many conundrums, and ideological positions. The politicisation of death is distressing, so called "Covid death porn". But there are other dimensions to this, not least the other, less reported Covid porn epidemic. Returning to real science is critical, as is moral and political perspective.
There is a theory of politics called the "Overton Window". It explains a lot about modern politics in the age of madness and badness. It does not explain everything, but it offers fresh insights into the way our modern, diminished politcs function.
