Friday 27 May 2011

Orwellian perspicacity

Interesting quote from George Orwell who though himself aligned with the 'left-wing', despised the poseurs amongst them. I too was viewed as 'left wing' in South Africa merely because I actively opposed apartheid. Context changes perception.
What sickens me about left-wing people, especially the intellectuals, is their utter ignorance of the way things actually happen. I was always struck by this when I was in Burma and used to read anti- imperialist stuff.
The unreality of many left-wing 'luvvies' is what makes them both amusing and dangerous. Amusing in that it is sometimes difficult to imagine that (intelligent?) people can be so unreasonable, and dangerous because they promote and champion ideological policies that usely end with tragic consequences.

Wednesday 25 May 2011

'Big Mother'

Consider the following statement, out of the rabid mouth of Robert Manne (a so-called public intellectual?):
"For the rest of my life — and for the rest of my children’s lives — the issue will be whether humans have the capacity to act on climate change, it seems to me. I don’t think any other issue is even remotely as significant now.”
Of course no other issue is as important to those of his ilk...this whole apocalyptic approach is custom built for the closet totalitarianist to manipulate, through fear, the naive majority into giving away their freedoms and the free market economy to settle for 'Big Mother', that is; a government that cuddles, smothers and looks after all your needs (even ones you never realised you had)! All very comfortable until you disagree with Her dictates at which time she generally turns into the 'Big Shrew' and wallops you back into line. (You can check out but you can never leave!)

Fortunately the voters appear to have woken up to the reality that Utopian dreams such as those which the communist/socialist/Greens have promulgated all carry with them dire 'unintended consequences' such as economic disaster and its subsequent food, shelter and comfort deficiencies.

I trust we as an intelligent citizenry might roundly kick out this inept government and its potentially catastrophic ideologies at the next election, and regain the path to prosperity and a quiet and peaceful existence for the foreseeable future.

Nuts about climate change

Welcome to the wonderful world of the coming Apocalypse:
William Happer, the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton University wrote recently:
In 2009 a conference of “ecopsychologists” was held at the University of West England to discuss the obvious psychological problems resident in those who do not adhere to the global warming dogma. The premise of these psychologists was that scientists and members of the general population who express objective doubt about the propagated view of global warming are suffering from a kind of mental illness. We know from the Soviet experience that a society can find it easy to consider dissidents to be mentally deranged and act accordingly.
When Governments introduce unpopular measures (like a carbon dioxide tax) they say that it is for our benefit and for the better future of our children. But the sacrifice is required now, and utopia never arrives.

Thursday 12 May 2011

Towards a Marxist economy

The true ideology behind the Gillard government is beginning to emerge. For those who believe in freedom of choice, free enterprise and abhor bureaucracy this article by Paul Sheehan is an eye opener.
''They are deliberately creating an administrative nightmare,'' said Phillips. ''The Gillard government is moving to tie up contract work in so much red tape and complexity that the practical ability to be self-employed will evaporate. They want people to be employees, not self-employed.''
In a separate punitive measure, the government has also targeted the smallest of small businesses: one-person operations reporting business income of less than $50,000 a year. The government is removing the 25 per cent tax offset these business operators receive. It will affect about 400,000 self-employed.

Sunday 8 May 2011

New Age 'Science'

Welcome to our brave new world's definition of science:
"It appears that the only science that now counts is of the postmodern variety—which is to say the “science” of the IPCC, in which consensus opinion (a scientific abhorrence), statistical chicanery and computer fantasising dominate over traditional empirical analysis." (Bob Carter)
This Post Modern obsession with consensus is beginning to affect every aspect of our existence and not in a good way. Where has individual responsibility gone?
I am all for agreement reached after intelligent discussion but pressure to conform because of 'majority opinion' is manipulative and smacks of argumentation by authority.
I believe political correctness is the method by which the new POMO political 'commissars' are promoting their consensus philosophy. They humiliate, intimidate and manipulate with the intention of achieving what  Theodore Dalrymple articulates as:
When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies,
or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for
all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.”
The media, much of academia and many in politics are promoters of this new approach...think of Oakeshotts 'new paradigm', and the radical programs behind the Greens.
Incidentally, Lemmings are really good at consensus action.

Friday 6 May 2011

The individual matters

During the time of Socrates in Athens important decisions were decided by a show of hands. For the city, the opinion of the majority was equated with truth and I believe that the current, poll driven political environment is developing in much the same way.
Some might say that this is the way democracy works but it is not. Truth is never determined by consensus. In a representative democracy the individual matters. Totalitarianism depends on the absence of individual moral courage because as Marilynne Robinson states: “In a democracy, abdications of conscience are never trivial. They demoralise politics, debilitate candour, and disrupt thought.”
Socrates defined a correct belief held without understanding the why behind it as a true opinion, and he contrasted it unfavourably with knowledge which he defined as not only knowing why something was true, but also why its alternatives were false.

It was why the powers that be demanded his death.

For those of us who believe in an absolute truth the future poses a challenge. We owe it to ourselves and others to embrace the self examined life.

American hatefest

I have just read Bob Ellis's 'ode to osama' via Tim Blair's blog http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/1418100.html and after recovering from the 'Pythonesque' absurdity of it plus the turgid hatred unleashed against America, I clicked on to the comment section. (Consider the moniker this 'Richard Cranium' has chosen for him/her/itself, it speaks volumes about the person behind it...and don't give me the irony excuse, this persons comments show zero grasp of the concept):
Foucault's Member : 06 May 2011 12:51:57am
Thank you Bob for another intelligent, insightful, thought-provoking and wise article, and good on the ABC for providing a neutral forum for opinions that should be seeing more daylight than the everyday hubub of the news cycle allows. Also good to see you diving in to occasionally reply to and challenge the odd comment to back up their statements.
Welcome to cuckooland people, all in all most of the comments make Bob's article look positively literary.
Since when does the ABC provide a neutral forum?
Fortunately the citizens who inhabit and massage each others egos in this fictional Orwellian 'paradise' (dare I mention the unspeakable?) have isolated themselves from the real world  by occupying an imagined world of: Global warming, human/animal matrimony, Marxist taxing (redistribution 101), baby/old people killing, and a frugivorous diet, et al.  That is: a ridiculously reductionist world marching resolutely back into the stone age. Of course the bored socialites who comprise a large portion of these moronic Morlocks would take their botox injections, mobile phones (for tweeting) Prado handbags and Jimmy Choo shoes along for the ride...just in case they meet the newest 'celebrity' along the way!

Monday 2 May 2011

Mephistopholes rules

If my life's trajectory were not dictated by a benevolent faith I would be gnashing my teeth at the gigantic hypocrisy evidenced by the main-stream-media (MSM) regarding the 'conflict' (WAR!) in Libya.
What we are witnessing in the atrocious acts such as beheading and public executions would have the MSM frothing at the mouth and hyperventilating had this 'conflict' been instigated by any conservative government in the Western block.
But because it has been engendered by St Obama, St Rudd, the hapless Sarkozy and the left wing 'conservative' Cameron, the media are as quiet as the proverbial church mouse, and when they do speak up it is to excuse the 'excesses' as 'understandable' or to promote the nascent 'democracy' emerging in the middle East.
What the evidence suggests however is that the very same radicals who are hell bent on destroying the West are those who are equally hell bent on securing another Talibanesque stronghold in Libya. Instead of one Qaddafi we are looking at a future dominated by a whole nation of Gaddafi's who are being facilitated by a bunch of spineless, misguided and Utopianist beaurocractic morons in the West who are their own citizens worst enemies ( all done in the name of compassion of course).
Such moral blindness leads me to the conclusion that mephistopholes is busy contractually with a whole bunch of Faustian bargains.