Displaying items by tag: political leadership

Once upon a time there was a politician called John McEwen.  He threatened to lead his Country Party out of a Coalition Government if the Liberals chose a leader he didn't like.  Today our very liberty is at stake.  Where are the modern day John McEwens willing to use hard power to make governments turn back?

The journalist Niki Savva has been stalking Tony Abbott for what seems like decades.  Suddenly noticing a current absence of political leadership, Savva has broken the habit of a lifetime and actually praised Abbott.  As an Opposition leader.  She still misses plenty.

Whether the distinguished former Nationals' leader John Anderson would do more good for his country back in parliament or continuing his polished podcast interviews with global thought leaders is a moot point, now that his eternally disappointing party has rejected his Senate bid.  What looks like a bad outcome might not be.

The nightmare of Covid hysteria and the crushing of freedom it has caused only grow afresh during an expected, relatively mild winter outbreak of an equally expected, overblown "variant".  Two questions are endlessly repeated by those who worry about these things.  One, how the hell did we get here?  And two, why did we give up our freedom without a fight?  The ground was long prepared for this.

Individual rights, traditionally conceived, exist prior to, and separate from, the State.  Not any more, in the age of Covid and lockdown, all that we previously accepted about government has been discarded.  And we did it.  It is a Faustian bargain.

The first and principal duty of government is to protect the nation's citizenry.  Political philosophers back as far as Thomas Hobbes have understood this.  When governments embrace the culture of death, epitomised by abortion and euthanasia, they abrogate their most basic responsibility.  Worse, they abandon the most vulnerable in society.  No amount of post-modernist sophistry will ever change this.

Americans face, as they always say, their most important election in a generation.  Assessing the merits of any president isn't always easy.  Assessing the merits of Donald Trump is a whole other thing.

It is fashionable to deride the Middle Ages.  "Medieval" is normally an insult, a term of abuse.  A new book begs to differ.  Pondering the lessons of the book, one is drawn to massive contrasts between our own age and that of "the medievals".  And the contrasts are mostly not in our favour.

Politicians are said to love "killer facts".  And to want to "follow the science".  Sadly, those running our Covid policy responses seem not to want to do either.

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.