|
April 11, 2003
In this piece Margo Kingston spots something. This is the first paragraph:
"A man with a job to do speaks bluntly of the savages war makes of men as the man who ordered him to do this, at a summit with Tony Blair, mourns the loss of fallen Allied soldiers sacrificed to this war of 'liberation' and pointedly fails to mention the innocent Iraqis also sacrificed. He knows that his mighty force has just dumped four giant bombs on a restaurant in a suburban area on the chance Saddam might be there. Up to 14 innocents are dead."
What is troubling is the lack of compassion for the suffering of the Iraqi people. by President Bush. Yet the Anglo-Americans are fighting the war on behalf of the Iraqi people. So why no compassion? The lack is one of legitimacy. It highlights the way the US has transformed from republic to empire. The new ethos is respect for our power. Might is right. What is promised is democracy for Iraq, but the experience of reconstructing Afghanistan is sobering.
Margo's second paragraph is not the one about John Howard talking in terms of sweet nothings. It is about the Labor Party:
"The opposition, which failed the Australian people so terribly in failing to hold Howard accountable for his big lie before the war that he had not already committed us to it, is now irrelevant, reduced to public brawling about the failings of a leader before it's even decided on a replacement. This is an opposition which failed to insist that a decision for war without the backing of the Australian people stripped a Prime Minister of legitimacy, an opposition which failed to argue a sustained, powerful competing vision for Australia at the time we needed it most. It is cowed, broken, unable to rise to the occasion on at a time when it was imperative that it did so."
The good old light on the hill that guided them through the late twentieth century has gone out. This is a party that is rotting inside. It too has lost political legitimacy and has become concerened with power for its own sake.
Political legitimacy is important. When it is discarded as irrelevant, as Gerard Henderson did this morning on Radio National Breakfast, it returns to bite you hard.
|
Gary,
Here we have, i think, a classic case of the same approx. set of data, and two totally different conclusions. Political legitimacy is important [cut to course outline] you say.
Of course it is important. Show where Howard does NOT have political legitimacy!
Three points:
1)take a look at the questions being asked in public opinion polls
2) look at the sample size.
3) since when has the government been required to slavishly *follow* public opinion? For instance explain the apparent public acceptance of capital punishment, but the rejection of this by both major parties.
We [you/me llberals/conservatives] are looking at recent events with different lenses, and that is the problem that interests me a bit at the moment. The French people seem to have been completely misled by thei media, which might offer a clue. Perhaps we are not reading enought of the opposition arguments enough.
Serious attempt to engage, but maybe we are talking past each other
Alan