Displaying items by tag: Culture Wars

Politicians are said to love "killer facts".  And to want to "follow the science".  Sadly, those running our Covid policy responses seem not to want to do either.

Conspiracy theory has been invoked by Victorian Police commanders to tarnish the reputations of citizens who object to totalitarianism.  What is conspiracy theory?  It is worth unpacking in these weird times.  It turns out that many conspiracy theories are respectable.  Indeed, they explain much of the world.

The British are surprised at the submissive reaction of Australians and New Zealanders to our governments' vicious lockdown measures in response to what is, for most, a mild Covid challenge.  This invites the question - are we in the Antipodes any more supine before the power of the Covid State than the Brits are?

At a time of epic fails by political leaders, oppositions, bureaucracies, and, alas, churches, we need an epic fail by our media like a hole in the head.  Yet that is what we have now.  Amid all the Covid disasters, our media have lost the plot.  They are not doing their core jobs of speaking truth to power and calling out stupidity, and we are all the poorer for it.

It has been said that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.  Well, on any number of fronts, people in liberal democracies are currently "doing nothing", as our freedoms and the quality of our governance ever decline.  And evil is winning.

The response of governments to the Covid "crisis" has been a revelation.  They have grabbed supreme power and have diminished freedoms and crushed the economy.  How did they get away with it, with such little push-back from we-the-people?  They had six strategies.  Strategies that appear to have worked.

The enemies of freedom are coming for the past.  Exposing the fallacies of their claims, and the poverty of their understanding of history, is an urgent and ongoing task.  But it may not be enough.

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.