A different way to look at things
Recently Injustice Gilganixon moved from the centre of politics, back to the centre-left. This moved occurred before the repulsive behaviour of anarchists at the g20 summit, and was reversed immediately afterwards.
I'm attempting a shift of my own. I don't mean changing my position from what could vaguely be described as Labor Right, I mean ceasing to divide people into such categories to begin with. I think most of the people one would meet on the street only give a crap about politics during an election year, or when something is going on the directly affects them, like Industrial Relations. The rest of the time, they go to work, spend time with their families and generally try to have a nice life.
They cannot be accurately slotted anywhere into the left-right spectrum, and leaving them out altogether makes the whole categorisation process rather pointless.
I am changing to a different spectrum, with smart at one end and dumb at the other.
Even this is flawed as there are people who are simultaneously capable of staggering genius and shocking stupidity. Ideas and policies, rather than people, tend to fit in with this spectrum better.
From the left:
Devotion to public education and hospitals is smart. A sick, slack jawed population is of little use for any purpose.
Multiculturalism is dumb, but first a disclaimer:
Accepting migrants from all corners of the globe is great. It is not multiculturalism. Having an Indian restaurant across the road from a Chinese resturant in the outer suburbs is awesome. It is not multiculturalism. Having my corner store run by Russians, who took over from Chinese, who took over from Germans is magnificent. They were all hard working, decent people. It is not multiculturalism. Having Chinese New Year festivals, Greeks diving into the ocean to recover a crucifix and Germans getting tore up in the parklands makes our community a more interesting place. It is not multiculturalism.
Multiculturalism means allowing people in your society to follow mutually exclusive sets of values and principles, side by side. In practice, it requires the country to have no culture of its own, and to be no greater than the sum of its parts. Any national culture that develops (against all odds) must be subservient to any new arrivals. We have socially progressive people who lose their shit over Christmas decorations in shopping centres. They say it is culturally insensitive.
Leaders of non Christian groups- to their credit- say that it doesn't bother them. I appreciate that but it really doesn't matter, we don't just turf our own traditions to satisfy new people. Any disagreement they might have should be considered unfortunate, but ultimately immaterial.
Enough about multiculturalism and the Left
From the Right.
I like very much that the budget is in surplus. I am impressed that the Commonwealth Government has finally dragged itself out of debt. Prudent economic management is smart because it leaves us with enough cash to satisfy our needs, and minimises our exposure to risk. It also puts us in a good position to borrow if we really have to (Think long term infrastructure loans, rather than short term overdrafts to fund Centrelink.)
Not investing enough in Higher Education, research and development and trade skills is dumb. This is not Right generally, just Howard Government specifically. They're not encouraging Australia to be intelligent or innovative. For example, nobody overseas is saying
"Hey do you know how Australia generates power? They burn heaps of coal, how cool is that? How did they ever think of that?. That's just awesome." or
"Do you know how they earn foreign exchange? They pull shit out of the ground and export it, losing it forever, they rip up old growth forest and sell it to Japanese paper mills. God damn it must have taken a genius to think of that. It must be all the reality TV they watch."
I like to talk to intelligent people of all kinds, I don't like to encourage others to be fools, like the Labor's anti GST campaign did, or Howard's interest rates scare in 2004.
Stupidity is the new enemy, and it must be fought on all fronts.
I'm attempting a shift of my own. I don't mean changing my position from what could vaguely be described as Labor Right, I mean ceasing to divide people into such categories to begin with. I think most of the people one would meet on the street only give a crap about politics during an election year, or when something is going on the directly affects them, like Industrial Relations. The rest of the time, they go to work, spend time with their families and generally try to have a nice life.
They cannot be accurately slotted anywhere into the left-right spectrum, and leaving them out altogether makes the whole categorisation process rather pointless.
I am changing to a different spectrum, with smart at one end and dumb at the other.
Even this is flawed as there are people who are simultaneously capable of staggering genius and shocking stupidity. Ideas and policies, rather than people, tend to fit in with this spectrum better.
From the left:
Devotion to public education and hospitals is smart. A sick, slack jawed population is of little use for any purpose.
Multiculturalism is dumb, but first a disclaimer:
Accepting migrants from all corners of the globe is great. It is not multiculturalism. Having an Indian restaurant across the road from a Chinese resturant in the outer suburbs is awesome. It is not multiculturalism. Having my corner store run by Russians, who took over from Chinese, who took over from Germans is magnificent. They were all hard working, decent people. It is not multiculturalism. Having Chinese New Year festivals, Greeks diving into the ocean to recover a crucifix and Germans getting tore up in the parklands makes our community a more interesting place. It is not multiculturalism.
Multiculturalism means allowing people in your society to follow mutually exclusive sets of values and principles, side by side. In practice, it requires the country to have no culture of its own, and to be no greater than the sum of its parts. Any national culture that develops (against all odds) must be subservient to any new arrivals. We have socially progressive people who lose their shit over Christmas decorations in shopping centres. They say it is culturally insensitive.
Leaders of non Christian groups- to their credit- say that it doesn't bother them. I appreciate that but it really doesn't matter, we don't just turf our own traditions to satisfy new people. Any disagreement they might have should be considered unfortunate, but ultimately immaterial.
Enough about multiculturalism and the Left
From the Right.
I like very much that the budget is in surplus. I am impressed that the Commonwealth Government has finally dragged itself out of debt. Prudent economic management is smart because it leaves us with enough cash to satisfy our needs, and minimises our exposure to risk. It also puts us in a good position to borrow if we really have to (Think long term infrastructure loans, rather than short term overdrafts to fund Centrelink.)
Not investing enough in Higher Education, research and development and trade skills is dumb. This is not Right generally, just Howard Government specifically. They're not encouraging Australia to be intelligent or innovative. For example, nobody overseas is saying
"Hey do you know how Australia generates power? They burn heaps of coal, how cool is that? How did they ever think of that?. That's just awesome." or
"Do you know how they earn foreign exchange? They pull shit out of the ground and export it, losing it forever, they rip up old growth forest and sell it to Japanese paper mills. God damn it must have taken a genius to think of that. It must be all the reality TV they watch."
I like to talk to intelligent people of all kinds, I don't like to encourage others to be fools, like the Labor's anti GST campaign did, or Howard's interest rates scare in 2004.
Stupidity is the new enemy, and it must be fought on all fronts.
posted by Mr Schrempp @ 10:00 pm
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