Useful Idiot Balancing Act

In response to this Theconversation contribution

https://theconversation.com/radicalisation-and-the-lone-wolf-what-we-do-and-dont-know-35540

I commented as follows:-

Is this the WORST-timed BAD-taste JOKE in the "don't mention the war" genre of all time?

Or have the PC police so completely erased reality from the academic "mind" that rampaging elephants can pass them by unnoticed?

On the occasion of a MUSLIM (don't censor) immigrant claiming to be an ISLAMIC (don't) cleric, who equates Australian soldiers with Nazis if they fight any muslims, and who flies islamic flags; and on a day when muslim terrorists murder 132 children, the latest in a pattern of islamic terrorist acts since 1970, Aly chooses to parse her way around the elephants and go for "balance". She "balances" the necessity to use the word islamic twice by finding occasion to use "white supremacist" twice, and the necessity to post a photo of the Australian islamic killer of the week (in a benign pose Australian flags and all) with a photo of a Norwegian anti-muslim killer of 2012. And, lest we jump to racist conclusions she qualifies any suggestion that the I or M words should in any way be linked with the terrorist (if you'll excuse the expression) acts that have occurred all around the world since 1970, to stress that "adopted causes" are never the "singular cause" but "complex and varied".

Hang on a minute! Maybe this is not a case of Politically Correct Parallel Universe or Academic Postmodern Lobotomisation. Is this a cunning bid for a grant to study to the complex and varied causes of the islamophobic superstition that terrorism in the name of islam might have something to do with islam?

My comment was posted on Wednesday, but by the following morning it had been removed.

Triumph of Les Misérables

What Les Miserables offers is the experience of fighting for something of supreme value, be it as lofty as "the right to be free" or as personalised as a child's doll, and of the panoply of emotions that may result depending on the outcome of the fight. But maybe the full impact of this emotional tour de force cannot be experienced from the screen version without first experiencing the written and staged versions.
Triumph of Les Misérables, by John Dawson

The Racial Discrimination Act is racist

In a clear cut violation of the right to freedom of speech, The Federal Court of Australia found journalist Andrew Bolt guilty of breaching the Racial Discrimination Act. Bolt’s crime was comments he made that “offended, insulted, humiliated or intimidated” people, the said comments being made “because of the race, colour or ethnic origin of [those] fair-skinned Aboriginal people”.

The offending comments were made in Bolt’s column in the Herald Sun on April 15th and August 21^st 2009. In those columns Bolt questioned why some fair skinned people identify themselves as Aborigines and implied it was because "it's so hip to be black" and because there were material advantages in being black.

Contrary to the attempts of some left-wing commentators to obfuscate the crucial issue of freedom of speech, the judgment against Bolt was not made because of some inconsequential inaccuracies in his columns. Reference to these errors was made in relation to a peripheral (section 18D) issue, the judgment itself was based on the (section 18C) prohibition of acts that are “reasonably likely” to “offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate” people in a manner related to their race.

A right to freedom of speech that doesn’t offend anybody is not a right to anything meaningful at all. No one anywhere ever needs to defend his right to say what everyone likes to hear. It is precisely comments that offend, insult or humiliate someone that must be defended by the right to freedom of speech. Offended people have every right to avoid listening to or reading offending comments, but they have no legitimate right to use the force of law to stop such comments being said or written, or to stop other people listening to or reading them.

Read more here  

Ironically, it is the cultural apartheid enshrined in this Racial Discrimination Act that has injected racism back into Australia's legal system. It divides Australians into racial groups and hands each the means of censoring what anyone from any other group may say about them – by warning that they may be “reasonably likely” to be offended by speech they want to censor. Under this law feelings trump reality; multiculturalism trumps liberty, and race trumps individual rights….
Offended feelings are a small price to pay for freedom of speech, because without it no other freedom can be protected. In the name of equality before the law, justice, and liberty, the deceptively named Racial Discrimination Act must be repealed.
 

The Racial Discrimination Act is Racist, by John Dawson

Communalism claws individualism

Paul Keating once told me, the problem with your mob is you're like crabs in a bucket. If one of you starts climbing out and gets his claws on the rim, about to pull himself over the top to freedom, the other mob will be pulling him back down into the bucket. You all end up cooked.          Noel Pearson

Individualism versus communalism, by Noel Pearson

Individualism = liberty = reason = progress = prosperity.

Communalism = tribalism = conformity = stagnation = destitution

Stolen or Rescued?

The number of Aboriginal children in state care far exceeds the number taken in the 1920s and 30s. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,25964264-5006784,00.html . This means that either: another generation of Aboriginal children is being stolen; or more Aboriginal children than ever need to be rescued from neglect and abuse; or there never was a stolen generation, just rescued children. Given the fact that no one has been able to produce a credible list of children ever stolen for racist reasons, my guess is the latter. Which means that the apology was a cynical sham. 

Next time a posturing PM wants to say sorry to Aborigines let it be for a real sin, like abandoning assimilation in favour of separate development for Aborigines on their “homelands”. This absurd attempt to resurrect an ancient culture by providing native title, amenities and welfare streams to isolated settlements produced a catastrophe worth apologising for. Imagine where outback Aborigines might be by now if governments, educators, and cultural leaders had encouraged Aborigines instead to move to where farmers, miners and businessmen could offer them jobs and accommodation? Maybe, just maybe, Aborigines might have been persuaded to trade-in their politically correct tribal life for a politically incorrect but safe and private space in which to raise their children and educate them for a life in the modern world. 

“Oh no”, you say, “who are we to paternalistically impose our materialism, individualism and modernity on Aborigines? What they want is to rejuvenate their spiritualism, collectivism and traditionalism?” To hell they do!