REALITY-editing Greg Sheridan would be a part-time job and I’m not volunteering to do it. Nor, to be more serious, have I the inclination to make of a serious middling thinker like Sheridan a piñata for copy’s sake. That would be tiresome and – inasmuch as it presupposed immutable ineptitude – churlish. I draw attention to his latest errors because they encapsulate in a productively illustrative way a certain woolly orientation to politics, history and national security which cannot be allowed to take root on the right. In a column about what conservatives in the 2020s should and shouldn’t do to revive their fortunes, The Australian’s foreign editor makes several good observations but no good suggestions. One of the former is that few Liberals have “any respect or consideration for the party” and that such fractiousness makes winning harder for the team. Indeed. Too many cross the emerald and crimson aisles, especially when their ‘honourable stand’ is sure to be rewarded with as much outer glory as inner peace. No Liberal has ever been condemned by the beautiful and noisy people for going it alone on a controversial issue. That’s because they never bolt in the name of free speech, balanced budgets or pruning the public service.
The loyalty comparison Sheridan makes with the ALP, however, is wrong: “Since World War II, the only Labor leader I can think of who completely repudiated his old party is Mark Latham.” No, it is more accurate to say that Latham was the only one honest enough to roll his swag. H.V. Evatt and E.G. Whitlam repudiated Labor culturally. Paul Keating only stays to dust his Great Man of History niche in the pantheon. Bill Hayden stopped seeing himself as a prince of the party decades ago and converted to Catholicism. The last captain of the FPLP who would have been welcomed ’neath the Barcaldine tree was Ben Chifley and he died 72 years ago. Vain splitters like Julian Leeser may be bad but phony stayers like Kevin Rudd are spiritually worse. The rarity is the Labor MP who hasn’t repudiated what the party is supposed to be, and for whom. This, then, being the woeful nature of today’s political contest – the heartless versus the soulless – it follows that the defect that afflicts the Liberal Party is the habitual propensity to heritage-list ideas and institutions so white-anted – or so bad ab initio – they ought to be razed. The same can also be said of noodle-spined Tories and RINOs. Unwilling to fight for truth, they prefer – to avoid being caricatured as radicals – dawdling along beaten via medias to shack up with a lie. Thus Sheridan patronises Moira Deeming for “poor judgement” – she dared to show up for women at a protest – and counsels the right to “speak with moderation” about “trans folks who are transitioning.” The relativist who thinks a man can become a woman is the neocon who thinks Ukraine is now Lady Liberty.
“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961
Increasingly, the institutions endangering lawful governance in so-called Western democracies are those nominally responsible for ‘national security.’ But rather than essay how, for example, the US Intelligence Community and the FBI worked assiduously to oust Donald Trump from office and rig the 2020 presidential election, Sheridan instead disparages the appalled. This is ‘my country right or wrong’ crossbred with the Nuremberg Defence and was motivated on this occasion by the arrest of Jack Teixeira whose Discord-Pentagon Papers confirmed that Washington disdainfully spies on allies and is losing its proxy war against Russia. Sheridan denounces “lunar right” Republicans and “Trump supporters” for lionising Teixeira and being disloyal to “national security institutions.” He makes no comment on the latter’s impudent crimes. Conservatives everywhere, he insists, “should respect institutions.” Leaving aside that this seems, at the very least, Jesuitical for a supporter of homosexual ‘marriage’ – real marriage being the institutional fount of natural law itself – it is also historically ridiculous. Nobody in a democracy – least of all the traditionalist – is obliged to respect unaccountable gestapos waging unauthorised war on foreigners, citizens, presidential candidates and even the perduring Christian cultures of entire nations. On the contrary, they are duty-bound to bring them by peaceful means either to heel or to the ground.
Why?
The left doesn’t when it suits themselves.
Libs and nationals are an example of what happens when you are too scared to lose any fight. You end up losing them all anyway.
The libs and the nats and labor are winning big time.
They are not out to destroy each other but the nation itself and you
YOU are losing.
Why?
You’re falling for their theatre.
Sheridan and Bolt 2 peas in the same “pod”!
He’s funny!
Poll: 71% of Republicans Want Trump to Be President Again (26 Apr)
So yeah normal conservatives are now the “lunar right” in Sheridan’s eyes. Okaaay.
Maybe the straight jacket should be on him, not us.
Yes; and given even the scant level of background-information available, Sheridan surely could not have been so silly as to think Teixeira, unilaterally, betrayed the ‘national security institutions’. Alternatively, being not silly would then suggests that Sheridan is himself in league with the security institutions and is willing to peddle their preferred narrative of a solitary novice having magically unaccountable access to Top Secret information – all in the public domain for weeks on end before, pow, a swoop. At any rate, someone like Sheridan reflects either an inclination for gullibility and in turn a readiness to impose false belief onto others; or it reflects a willingness to go along with false information and, in turn, bad faith in passing on that information – yes, to those who are ‘ falling for their theatre’ while kept in suspended disbelief.
Trump should stay in the race right until the moment Biden secures the Dem primary, then pull out. That would create some impressive brain explosions.
Guess who? Hint – no prizes are on offer.
Mother’s Day, May 14th 2023, will be an interesting concept for the ‘real’ conservatives like the ‘Sheridan Sheet’ to cover.
Thus Sheridan accuses Moira Deeming of “poor judgement”
Sure.
If she was pulling that stunt in the Labor Party, he wouldn’t have to say anything, since she’s already be expelled and Party apparatchiks would be leaking stuff.
… and counsels the right to “speak with moderation” about “trans folks who are transitioning.”
Tongue in cheek there.
Sheridan is a Labor hack.
Albanese, the “former” Trot is far to the Right of anywhere the Liberal Party has ever been.
She didn’t pull any stunt.
No, he was being very serious.
You would need to show how for this assertion to have legs, Ed.
What is a Democrat?
Without the US “national security institutions” Sheridan is nothing. They made him. He is their unwitting agent.
Appointing a Board to review RBA interest rate decisions?
Pretty Right Wing, I’d say, and not something the Liberal Party would consider in a million years.
How about material support for the Nazis in Ukraine?
Not a dickybird from anyone in Labor about that.
$368 Billion for the Americans to build something in 20 years time?
Sounds pretty Rightish to me.
Appointed Kevin “no Fly zone in Libya and Syria” Rudd Ambassador to Washington?
Even Turnbull refused to appoint Rudd.
So, yeah, Albanese is leading a Right Wing Government.
sure Ed, I agree.
But Albanese is a communist dedicated to the destruction of what used to be called conservative and that includes capitalism.
The Trotskyites in America joined the Republican Party in the 1950s and had taken it over as the NeoCons by Dubya’s time.
Which wasn’t that hard, since the Republican Party had only ever stood for War.
Taking the Liberal Party over wasn’t worth their trouble over here, so they took the easy option and invaded the Labor Party.
It worked.
Grandpa Ed Simpson is back on the Happy Baccy.
Go easy on the crack pipe Ed … it’s not conducive to wellness.
Albo is going in balls deep … sending our money to contribute to the Ukrainian Gallipoli fiasco.
https://theconversation.com/albanese-announces-100-million-in-military-aid-for-ukraine-pledging-support-for-as-long-as-it-takes-186291
You can’t get more leftist than a site calling itself “The Conversation” which has also announced that anyone disagreeing with them must be banned.
Well written C.L., by the way
Appreciate the historical sweep.
100%
Trots are far left authoritarians who believe in continual revolution to keep it pure.
Albo is going in balls deep … sending our money to contribute to the Ukrainian Gallipoli fiasco.
Yeah …that’s what I said.
Trots are far left authoritarians who believe in continual revolution to keep it pure.
The NeoCons who have ruled the Republican Party for 30 years are far left authoritarians?
Google: Leo Strauss
Nobody in a democracy – least of all the traditionalist – is obliged to respect unaccountable gestapos waging unauthorised war on foreigners, citizens, presidential candidates and even the perduring Christian cultures of entire nations. On the contrary, they are duty-bound to bring them by peaceful means either to heel or to the ground.Nice to see that you’ve come around on Putin CL.
Looks like no one is interviewing you on TV Ed, after regurgitating this rubbish. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2003/05/shac-m23.html
The World Socialist Website, eh, Buccaneer?
On Trotskyism.
Yeah, pard, that’s real credible [heh heh].
Yeah, the socialists really stand up for conservatives all the time. It’s all over the web, you’d have to be pretty incurious to think the garbage your spewing here is anything other than fiction. Since you provided no actual reference and just suggested a google search, I added a couple of parameters and worked out you’re full of shit. But I think we already knew that from the vast majority of your previous posts.
This one was a good one to quote because we all know that given a choice between defending a conservative and defending a trot, the socialists will always go for the bigger ideological foe first.
Bit defensive there, Buccaneer?
You wouldn’t be a Trot yourself, by any chance?
Grandpa Ed Simpson
Lame, even by your low standards.
I think you can safely suspect I’ve filed the ice pick under schadenfreude, on the other hand, you seem to have a case of the verbal trots yourself
Not much institutional respect among the Putin crowd so beloved around here. https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1652399267179565057?s=46&t=e4FzRYX6R3soaVKNA4P3Aw
Nix
Never seen any evidence to support your allegations about “Putin lovers”.