Displaying items by tag: Culture Wars

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.

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.

The Cancel Jesus Project is well and truly underway.  The killing of the statues proceeds apace.  The attentions of the revolutionaries have already turned to Christian icons.  Killing God is an old project.  We are now witnessing the final phase.

There is a madness to crowds, as writers such as Douglas Murray have observed, with great perception.  To explain the modern world's predicament only as a problem of madness is to miss a big point.  The problem of evil.  Christians understand this.  It is time for the world to catch up.

Australia's battle of ideas - the culture war - seems lost, to the forces of progressive liberalism.  Those who would fight this battle seem preoccupied with getting the Liberal party into office, and keeping it there.  While the bigger battles go by, without a fight.  Understanding where we are going wrong is the first task in understanding the war we are in.

Chesterton once said that the non believer in God doesn't believe in nothing - he is prone to believe in anything.  Observing the current political madness in the world only confirms Chesterton's wisdom.  Whether it is the mad wokeness of the new revolutionaries, or the crazy hysteria over Covid 19, it seems to be everywhere.  There is a madness to crowds.  Not just in Victoria.

The Covid lockdown has infringed the rights and liberties of ordinary Australians in ridiculous ways while leftists have been able to turn up at protest rallies for this, that and the other.  Spot the tilt to the left, facilitated by the State?  The double standards are palpable.

First they came for the explorers.  Statues' live matter.  The culture war has ramped up in these Covid times, perhaps unexpectedly.  It behooves those of us with an affection for tradition and freedom to, first, understand the war we are in, and then to comprehend what needs to be done to fight back.

The Covid scare has taken even further the tendency for politicians, ideologues and interest groups of all stripes to politicise death.  Already seen during tragedies and natural disasters, political actors rush to embrace crises, and they now even sometimes make them up.  Death counts are now a part of daily political life, and the new currency of political debate.  This is an unseemly development.

The ruling class is real, and it dominates our culture.  It is also embedded in the modern, intrusive, all-powerful state.  The current COVID scare provides a perfect case study of the sources and consequences of our democratic dilemma.  The people have seemingly handed over their sovereignty to the State, without noticing what this surrender means.