What has really struck me about the change is the way that it has been discussed in the media. Here is a good example from the Melbourne Age newspaper:
OPENING up combat roles to women in the Australian Defence Force should provide the impetus for more women to be promoted to the highest military ranks, according to Defence Minister Stephen Smith.
The comment came after yesterday's historic announcement that all military roles - up to and including those in elite special forces units - will be open to women within five years.
Currently, women make up 18.5 per cent of the Defence Force, but only 4.5 of the senior ranks in all three services. The highest ranked woman in the force is Air Vice-Marshal Margaret Staib, the commander in charge of logistics.
Mr Smith also said he hoped the changes would lead to women being better represented at senior ranks - including the chiefs of the three services and the chief of the Defence Force.
The thinking of liberal moderns is remarkably atrophied. Here we have a truly significant change in society and the only thing that truly interests our liberal moderns is career advancement and non-discrimination. It's particularly striking in this case because what is at stake is something that concerns life and death - both of individual soldiers and of a nation - which you might think would broaden the outlook of liberals in deciding the matter, but that doesn't seem to register with them at all. The only thing they can see is some brass stars on a uniform that a woman might be denied and that is held to decide the issue no matter what. It is a kind of ideological tunnel vision.
Anyway, I will register my protest at this site, no matter how futile my protest might be. It is ultimately a masculine duty to protect and a woman's to embody gentler virtues. When I see my wife's body, I do not see a warrior design. She is soft with fine, delicate limbs. She is emotionally sensitive. In comparison I am angular and muscular and stern. It seems perverse to me to suggest that my wife should go out to fight a war whilst I stay at home. That is not what is written in our natures, which is why women have not generally been in the front line of combat throughout human history.
No doubt there are exceptions to the rule: tough, nuggety women who really do want to experience combat rather than just eyeing off an officer's position. But it's not reasonable to demoralise the male instinct to protect just to placate such women.
What will happen if there is ever a serious threat to Australia? The message being sent to men is this: there is nothing masculine about fighting to defend your country. You have no particular reason as men to sign up. You are not the protectors of the women and children of your society - the women can defend themselves.
And if men don't sign up and there is conscription? Then how will the liberal state manage to run a double standard and conscript only men to fight? Isn't the liberal state committing itself, in principle, to conscripting young women? But how will that go down? Would fathers really passively allow their daughters to be conscripted to die violently in combat?
If there are answers to such issues they won't come from liberals. Liberals won't even have considered the problems in any serious way. The little prism through which liberals see the world is too narrow for that. All that liberals can see when it comes to this issue is how things affect female careerism. Doesn't matter to them how young women die, or if children are left motherless, or if men are less inclined to serve. That just isn't thought to be what matters.
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