How others live

There was a gangland war in Melbourne from 1998 to 2010 which ended when there were hardly any crims left standing. Of the 36 deaths, 10 are believed to have been ordered by Carl Williams.

Williams's widow Roberta has been giving evidence about the murder of her husband. Here is what she had to say:

Roberta Williams told the Supreme Court that though he [her husband Carl] had admitted several murders, and had once shot at her while she was pregnant, her former husband was a placid man.

...She also said that while she had never seen Williams with a pistol, he shot at her at Christmas in 2000 because she found him at a girlfriend's house.

Roberta then married him.

I'm not writing this to make a political point. I'm just astonished at how differently some people live.

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Why the attacks on Gillard?

The headline in the Melbourne Age today was "Labor win if Rudd was leader". It's yet another attempt to push the idea of replacing the current PM, Julia Gillard, with the former one, Kevin Rudd.

Why is the liberal media keen on Rudd? I'm not privy to the editorial decision making at The Age, but there seem to be two complaints levied against Gillard: first, that she is insisting on a tougher, offshore processing of asylum seekers and, second, that she is not 'flexible' enough in meeting the needs of big business.

In other words, at places like The Age she is being attacked for not being enough of a radical liberal on the policies that currently matter to left and right liberals. There are those in the liberal establishment who yearn, instead, for Kevin Rudd, a politician who was dumped as PM by his own party for being so electorally unpopular and who is recovering from heart surgery.

I'm not a fan of Gillard, but I do consider Rudd to be a worse option. Rudd was the politician who set immigration at record levels and who pushed for the creation of a EU style federation of Australia/Pacific nations.

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What a start to life

The child welfare system at work in Australia:

A SIX-year-old boy placed in the care of a lesbian foster couple was dressed in girl's clothes and the humiliating pictures were posted on the couple's Facebook page.

One of the women was preparing for a sex change to become a man at the time, while her girlfriend was undergoing fertility treatment.

The boy and his 12-year-old sister have since been moved but former Children's Court magistrate Barbara Holborow yesterday called for a full inquiry into the decision to put them there. "Oh my God, what are we doing?" Ms Holborow, who has fostered eight children, said.

Families Minister Pru Goward has demanded a full explanation from child welfare service Barnardos, which had recruited the couple.

"I am seeking advice from Barnardos to confirm that care arrangements were appropriate and the wellbeing of the children was paramount," Ms Goward said yesterday.

The children's story, described as one of the saddest in the state, has been revealed in a Supreme Court judgment posted last month in Children's Law news compiled by the NSW Children's Court.

Their mother had tried but failed in the Supreme Court to win back custody of her son, given the pseudonym Campbell by the court.

His current foster parents want to adopt him.

Campbell was taken into care in November 2006 at the age of 18 months along with his four stepbrothers and two stepsisters after complaints of physical and mental abuse at the hands of the parents.

Campbell and his sister Abby, then 12, were placed with the lesbian couple in early 2009. The placement did not work out for Abby and after she was moved, Campbell was dressed in girl's clothes and his photograph placed on the couple's Facebook page.

The boy has his family broken up by parental abuse, traumatic enough in itself, and is then placed in a foster family with two lesbian women, one of whom is transsexual.

You would need to be strong to get through that start to life.

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Big names speak out

Something I've noticed lately is the trend for big name celebrities from the 1970s and 80s to come out against aspects of liberal modernity.

John Cleese is one. The famous comedian has complained that open borders have turned London into a city that is "no longer English' and that:

I mean, I love having different cultures around. But when the parent culture kind of dissipates, you're left thinking, "Well, what's going on?

In response, the former mayor of London, "Red Ken" Livingstone, defended the demographic transformation by arguing that,

To stay competitive, London must be what New York is to the U.S., a global centre of business, culture and innovation, none of which can be achieved without people of all nations working and living here.

Ken Livingstone is supposedly a socialist - but here he is defending open borders on the ground that it will benefit big business interests.

It's the kind of thing that rock musician Roger Daltrey can't stand about left-wing politicians:



Roger Daltrey



A lifelong Labour voter, he’s disgusted by the last Government. ‘I was appalled at what Labour did to the working class — mass immigration, where people were allowed to come here and undercut our working class,’ says Roger.

‘It’s fine to say everybody can come into your country, but everybody should work towards a standard of living expected by people who live here. Not come here, live 20 to a room, pay no tax, send money home and undercut every builder in London. They slaughtered the working class in this country. I hate them for it because it is always the little man who is hurt badly. It’s terrible. It frustrates me.

‘We have got to stop pandering to people because we won’t be able to afford to keep this going. At the very least, it should be a pre-requisite that people have to learn English.

Like John Cleese, Roger Daltrey isn't really making principled criticisms of liberal society here. Unfortunately, he cedes the principle at stake by saying that "it's fine to say that everyone can come into your country" - before then making some good specific criticisms of how that has played out in reality.

Pop star Gary Numan is so disenchanted with the growing thug culture in England that he's considering moving. The final straw was when his wife and children were surrounded and menaced by a local gang:

It was the latest in a string of incidents that have all served to make Numan deeply uneasy about the changes he perceives in British society. A combination of the recent riots and various instances of drunken, aggressive behaviour he has witnessed while touring has led him to contemplate a new life in Santa Monica, California.

'I've always considered myself to be fiercely patriotic,' Numan says. 'I love Britain – its history and the down-to-earth attitude people have. Until recently, I'd never have entertained the thought of leaving

What can we make of such comments? They show that it's not only traditionalists like ourselves who are disconcerted by the changes being made to Western societies. The alienation is being felt even amongst those who were prominent within the culture a generation ago.

The problem, though, is that none of the complaints go far enough. Gary Numan's solution is to relocate to another Western country with its own crime issues. Roger Daltrey is politically articulate, but as mentioned he cedes a lot of ground when arguing against the effects of open borders. And John Cleese has in recent years supported the Liberal Democrats in England and Barack Obama in the US, so he doesn't really seem to have connected the changes in society he dislikes to the political forces pushing those changes onto society.

If you are serious about opposing the alienating trends within modern society, then you have to make a serious effort to recognise the political beliefs which have brought them about - and then learn to effectively counter those beliefs.

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Juliet Jeske: Why me?

Juliet Jeske is an American comedienne. She worked most recently with a sketch comedy group Turn Left as part of a "Laughing Liberally" series. This series is described as follows:

"Laughing Liberally: This Ain't No Tea Party" mixes humor, musical numbers, video, and political satire to spread understanding of liberal ideas, advance progressive values and provoke the Tea Party ..."Laughing Liberally" proves liberals do indeed do it better.

"Laughing Liberally" is a political comedy project that entertains you while promoting progressive ideas. Comedy is something the Left does better than the Right - so let's use it!

OK, like many comedians she's a left-liberal. The problem is that liberalism has left her life in a very serious mess. Two years ago her husband left her. She became depressed, went on medication and has just recently tried dating again. But she can't cope with the new hook up dating culture. She has written a column for the Huffington Post describing the pressure to hook up when dating men (it's worth reading here).

She writes that she wants something more traditional. What she wants is the love and security of marriage and the chance to be a mother. She feels that she has been robbed of this by her divorce:

I was cheated of the chance of having children and being a mother. I know I might still have time left, but dating at age 38 is difficult as half of the eligible men already have children and don’t want more. And in my current state I couldn’t afford to raise a child on my own, as I can barely take care of myself. There are times on the subway or in the park that even the sight of a young mother with her child will send me spiraling. Suddenly tears come from nowhere and I can’t make them stop. Why is she so lucky to have the one thing that I will never get to experience? I am constantly told that I shouldn’t give up hope but I haven’t been able to sustain a relationship for any length of time and every other man who I find compatible is already a father and doesn’t want more children. I had to end therapy because literally every single session was the same conflict, the same fear, the same resentment over probably losing the chance to be a parent. When my therapist suggested I go back on medication, and then tried to get me to justify what I consider a fairly innate human desire to procreate I couldn’t take it anymore and ceased the sessions.

What's interesting, though, is that Juliet Jeske hasn't really reconsidered her politics. She writes:

My politics are liberal, but my personal life is extremely conservative ...Which is sort of why the divorce has been so difficult. My marriage gave me support, stability, a companion that I loved very deeply and most importantly a sense of calm.

I don't think she's correct to describe her personal life as extremely conservative. Still, her politics don't match up with the values that are important to her own life. She is betraying what is most important to her (marriage and motherhood) with the politics she chooses to follow.

It's a disconnect that is shared by so many in the West. There are so many Westerners earnestly preaching a liberal politics they picked up at high school and uni despite the fact that it will undermine what they hold to be good in their own lives.

I've watched a few videos of Juliet Jeske doing stand up comedy. She adopts the mocking tone of the radical leftist and she poses as a sexual radical. She wants to shock and to tear down and to dissolve standards and yet at the same time she wants the very traditional goods of a stable marriage, a hard working husband who will provide material security and motherhood. And when both don't come together she asks "Why me?"

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The state of delusion

In Australia the different states put slogans on car number plates. Often the slogans say something distinctive about the state, e.g. "Queensland - the sunshine state" or "South Australia - the festival state" or "Victoria - the garden state".

A minister in the Baillieu Liberal Government here in Victoria, Nick Kotsiras, wants a new number plate slogan for Victoria. His suggestion? "Victoria - The Multicultural Capital".

Is multiculturalism really something distinctive to Victoria? Nick Kotsiras believes it to be so:

"That's who we are, I don't think we should step back," he told the Herald Sun.

"If we are supportive of it, then we should yell it out nice and loud to the rest of the world that we are the multicultural capital.

"We are different to other states and more importantly we are different to other countries," he said.

That sounds delusional. Multiculturalism has been adopted just about everywhere throughout the Western world. If Mr Kotsiras got out and travelled to New York or Sydney or London he'd find that multiculturalism existed in those places too.

So why would Mr Kotsiras assert something so dubious? I think it's because there are moderns who want things both ways. They want to support multiculturalism but they also want a meaningful communal identity. They "solve" the problem with the pretence that their own society is somehow uniquely multicultural. The emotional or psychological need of wanting it to be so overrides common sense.

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Moxie girls

Dalrock has a post about a brand of dolls called Moxie girls that are marketed with slogans like these:

Playful, silly, and creative, Lexa thinks life is meant to be fun, which means being yourself no matter what!

Every girl has the strength to do something amazing. Anything is possible as long as you stay true to yourself & never give up on your dreams.

I'm going to read some political philosophy into these affirmations. The assumption behind the slogans is that we each have a true self which is fulfilled through some definite end. We do, it seems, have a telos after all.

I have a theory about this, one which I have to admit is untested and highly speculative. If you go back far enough, to the time of philosophical realism, it was thought that there were essences to forms of life. Each form of life would imperfectly fulfil its given essence. That was its telos - its proper end.

Liberals hate - utterly hate - this kind of philosophical realism. They see it as limiting individual autonomy by defining individuals in terms of the unchosen categories they belong to.

And so liberals want individuals to be self-defined through the choices they make. But there's a major problem. If I can choose to define myself equally in any direction, then what I choose will seem subjective and arbitrary and therefore meaningless. What is the benefit of such free choice, if it makes no difference what I choose? It's all very disenchanting.

How can liberals get around this problem? Well, they can claim that one choice is better than another if it makes us happy. Or if it is in line with our self-interest (which injects a certain rationality into our decisions). Or if it is pleasurable (hedonism). Or if it helps perpetuate our genes (again, this gives the appearance of rationality).

But none of this is all that persuasive. It all seems superficial, particularly compared to the more traditional belief that there is a proper end to our being, a realisation of self that fulfils who we are.

So my theory is this. A certain strand in modern thought contains a hidden, modified form of philosophical realism. Yes, the idea that forms of life have an essence has been rejected. But what remains is the idea that individuals (rather than forms of life) have their own unique essence. Essences have been individualised.

So there does exist an "essential self" for our Moxie girls to be true to - one which brings them to some proper end to their lives: their "dream" which is conceived of as a career achievement in a high status creative field such as being a film director, a fashion designer or a song writer.

One problem with this solution to merely arbitrary and subjective choice is that the annointed end has to be both mundane but not mundane. Your proper end cannot be sorting the mail, it has to be something that is notably self-expressive - it has to be "amazing". But that is unavailable to 99% of people.

If you think that I'm reading too much into some feminist inspired dolls, well - you might be right. But even in serious works of liberal philosophy there is a vague assumption at work that self-directed choice has as its ultimate end the realisation of self in a certain kind of career - such as being a violinist, or an aid doctor in Africa.

Anyway, the philosophical problem remains. You cannot impress upon people that they must be authentically themselves, if at the same time you also hold that the self is something that we define or create by ourselves. How can there be an authentic self, if my self is something that I can define however I want?

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