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Po-mo Wombats
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Po-mo Wombats In another spectacular demonstration of the juvenile behaviour of the Australian Cricket Team, Shane Watson has used an excuse one might normally expect from a 4 year old to explain his behaviour in the Third Test in Perth; �Chris Gayle made me do it.� This from a man who plays for a team that is supposed to prize its mental toughness; a team dedicated to proving this mental toughness by ruthlessly sledging its opponents. Suddenly, with the boot on the other foot, Watson has proven he has the mental toughness of a souffl�. This infantile excuse made the rest of his statement on the incident seem disingenuous at best; it certainly made it noticeable that rather than promising to fix his increasingly erratic temper he simply said it was, �Something I have to look at.� The whole thing seems like a public relations attempt to distract the public from the fact that the Australian Cricket Team is full of spoiled brats. Unfortunately it is not just cricket that has a bit of a player image problem. Players from the Newcastle Knights Rugby League club have been embroiled in a drug scandal involving an outlaw bikie gang, not to mention the sex and booze scandals that engulfed the Sydney Roosters and Cronulla Sharks earlier this year. And if we�re talking player behaviour we should drop in a mention for Tiger Woods. It seems that rather than reporting the latest scores, the back page of the newspapers are being reserved for the latest sporting scandal; that is if it hasn�t already featured on the front page. When did we, as a society, get conned into accepting these dipsticks and morons as somebody our should emulate? How did we come to accept as an exemplar of our culture somebody who gets so drunk he can�t open his hotel door and so shits in the hallway? The Australian legal system has been incredibly lenient with some of these people; a cricket player who attempted to resist arrest and assaulted a<b> police officer </font></b>got a bigger fine from his team than he did from the courts. Another footballer, having initially claimed that his room mate was responsible for �glassing� his girlfriend, subsequently has his conviction overturned when his girlfriend changes her story for the third time and nobody gets charged for obstructing justice! No wonder these guys think that they can behave as they wish. Never mind the links with organised crime or the unexplained role you played in a mate�s death or the drug problem you have or the way you skip out on �last chance� rehab to take up with a for five days: Don�t worry about it- you too can be one of the big draw cards of the AFL. And it is not limited to sports; film and music stars and wafer thin models whose collective behaviour might be best likened to rutting pigs- if you overlooked some of the better qualities of pigs. National heroes are being made out of petty criminals and pathological murderers who attempted to justify their actions with some vague appeal to socialist principles. We have a society that is so warped that fictional characters who revel in brutalities and perversities beyond measure are being hailed as heroes and icons, their next appearance eagerly anticipated for the buckets of gore and the lack of morality. What happened to the real heroes? In speaking of institutions, we should be aware that we are talking of more than courts, executive departments and parliaments; we are also talking about those underlying principles that underscore the existence of these outer representations. Our courts and their traditions remind us of the long held belief of equality before the law; our parliament and its traditions remind us of the long held belief that government is supposed to serve the people, not the other way around. These traditions, far from signalling an obeisance to an alien dynasty, are a reminder of the ties we have to a legal concept steadily built over the course of centuries to ensure our liberty and equality; concepts often bought with the blood of our forefathers long before this land was discovered. Far from being ashamed of such connections, we should be proud of the fact our efforts here in the last two centuries have matched and often outstripped the development of this concept in its native soil, fulfilling the dreams of our ancestors. Such anchors, as the concept implies, serve to steady us and make sure that we don�t drift too far from safety; indeed the metaphor is particularly apt for we can raise the anchor and move when wanted or drag the anchor when needed. Unfortunately the left do not realise the presence of the anchor and only see the chains. The philosophy of the post-modern left is that there are no absolutes; truth, good, evil, duty, etc are all relativistic concepts. Far from being a tool of enlightenment and freedom, this philosophy ensures that the state and its interests are the pre-eminent consideration. This is obviously at odds with the concepts of equality before the law and the necessity of the state to answer the needs of the people. Since our system of government is built on these very principles, it is necessary for the po-mo left to undermine the institutions that serve to protect these principles. Removing the protection of individual liberties ensures that the decisions of the state, regardless of how they are arrived at, are complied with. If, for example, the state decides that a minority deserves special consideration for a past injustice it can direct the courts and police to be selective in its behaviours. This violates the concept of equality before the law; but without the institutional memory embodied in its traditions the courts become a function of the state and have to comply. The state can also direct the health services to withhold treatment to those who the state feels are undeserving; fat people are fat because of personal lapses ergo fat people should not make calls on the state�s health services. Demonising our heroes serves two purposes; firstly it �proves� the validity of their philosophy. Despite the higher principles that often drove these people it would be fair to say that most had elements to their characters that we would find abhorrent if they were alive today. What the po-mo left chooses to ignore is that these people were representatives of their times, not ours. What often gets lost is how enlightened would we be today without their contribution, regardless of the baggage they themselves carried. Such demonising can only serve to �prove� that they are both good and evil; moral and amoral. But the more important factor is to undermine the contribution that they have made to our institutions- undermine the people who have developed our institutions then you effectively undermine the institution itself. Po-mo left propagandists would have us believe that the very first Australian Parliament was completely full of racists and bigots and that the legitimacy of every Australian Parliament since is somehow blighted by the White Australia policy. In fact the Bill was vigorously opposed on all sides of the political divide and only passed because the Labor Party voted as a bloc. Many supported the Bill out of genuine economic consideration, abhorred by the accusations of racism. Far from being an unmitigated blight on Australian Parliaments, the calibre and theme of many of the speeches would shame today�s parliamentarians. Another po-mo criticism of these early parliaments was their apparent subservience to Britain; in fact quite a few Bills, including that which established the WAP and the Royal Australian Navy were passed over the objections of the British. By demonising men such as Barton, Fisher and Deakin, the po-mo left have robbed us of many a fine role model. Every society needs heroes; exemplars of the traits we like to believe are unique to our culture. In demonising our heroes of the past the po-mo left has undermined the value of our institutions and the underlying ideals they represent; they have corrupted the traits that helped to build a nation. Mateship has become corrupted into nepotism; the fair-go has been corrupted into the subsidising of dead-beats; justice has been corrupted into a form of social therapy; the classless society has been corrupted into a pantheon of special interest groups. In making the state the answer to all questions, the po-mo Left has elevated regulation from without at the expense of individual responsibility. The individual is increasingly challenged in their daily tasks not with the question of right or wrong but whether they will be caught or not. As Australia descends into its socialist nirvana, is it any wonder that the heroes have become self-interested and self-absorbed? Is it any wonder that the heroes are less representative of the higher ideals and more representative of what they can get away with?  In truth is there no beauty? I am not in love; but i am open to persuasion. |
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I am not screaming murder. I was simply making the point that these people are our new 'heroes' whilst the left demonises people who actually did something- like found a country or defend it. In truth is there no beauty? I am not in love; but i am open to persuasion.
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