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January 6, 2007
It is a cynical, humorous l view, but an accurate one:
Alan Moir
This is especially so with respect to political philosophy. Few are the debates in the public sphere about political philosophy. There is little understanding of the way that political philosophy--primarily liberalism---underpins current political debates. There is not much interest is the way that the flaws of liberalism as a political philosophy have given rise to conservatism, as Marxism faded away in the 1980s to be replaced by poststructuralism in the liberal academy.
Most of the debates in Australia take place within liberalism. The current form of liberalism places an emphasis on the sovereignty of the individual, private property rights are seen as essential to individual liberty and an unfettered market is held to be the most efficient mechanism for satisfying human needs. This classical liberalism challenges social liberalism, which embraced central planning of the economy by the state, social welfare and social democracy. The classical (or laissez faire economic) liberals considered such measures to be an unjust imposition upon liberty, as well as a hindrance to economic development and prosperity:
Political debate in Australia largely takes place within that liberal horizon. Conservatism transgresses that liberal limit, but it remains fairly crude, as it blames all of Australia's woes and problems on the Left of 1968. Keith Windschuttle, in the 2006 Sir John Latham Memorial Lecture, stated:
The reasons why so many Australians today want to think so badly of their own country are hard to pin down. I don’t pretend to understand them all. But it is clear that, for the past thirty years, the Evangelical Left has bloated itself on such a diet of myth, propaganda and atrocity stories about Australian history, about our role in the contemporary world, and especially about our chief ally and best friend, the United States, that it no longer believes in or cares about objective truth.The result is that the critics have seriously deceived themselves about Australian values and the Australian people. Some of their most articulate and influential members have reached the stage where they now openly despise Australia and the majority of Australians. If enough of their opponents do not stand up to argue how wrong they are, this national self-hatred could eventually infect the entire body politic.
What Windshuttle doesn't say is that the Left in Australia is mostly social liberal and firmly withinthe Australian political tradition.
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C'mon all ye saints and sinners do Mourn
Bow ya heads and toast to a Pub without Warne