Historian and poet Robert Conquest was a communist in his early life until he saw the light. Light is the operative word. Communism, leftism more broadly, survives only in the shadow of ignorance. Apropos, Conquest’s first law:
“Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.” Or, the version I like: “Everybody is reactionary on subjects he knows about.”
The more you search for the truth and the more you know, the more conservative you become. That’s why people become more conservative as they grow older. It’s not a function of aging per se. It’s a function of gaining knowledge and experience.
Numbers of commentators opposing the Voice are exactly right. The more people get to know about the Voice, the more they dislike it. This is precisely why the Prime Minister and the hapless Linda Burney, and the various self-styled Aboriginals who populate the Yes campaign, deflect questions about how the Voice will be formed, what it will do, and how it will close the so-called gap.
Never mind, they protest. Nothing to worry about. Australians will get to see what they’ve voted for, after they’ve voted. Nancy Pelosi springs to mind. “We have to pass the [Obamacare] bill so that you can find out what is in it,” she said in 2010 without a hint of its absurdity. It’s a mistake to think this is dimwittedness. There is no leftist plan that can survive open scrutiny. They subconsciously know that and therefore do their best to nurture ignorance.
You might object. Surely they believe in what they’re doing? Yes, but it’s their imagined utopian ends which besots and preoccupies them. Accordingly, they close their minds to facts which might derail their plans. And, at the same time, do their best to keep any such facts out of the public square.
Fortunately, the Coalition’s eventual opposition to the Voice and the effectiveness of Warren Mundine and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price in making the No case have exposed the discriminatory nature and deleterious consequences of enshrining the Voice in the Constitution. They have armed voters with a level of insight which would have been otherwise hidden from them. Hence, the ‘conservative’ option of voting No appears to be winning the day. The more light; the less leftism.
Listen to Chris Bowen on “climate change.” His mind is impervious to facts. The wind, sun and batteries cannot power a modern economy. Any remotely feasible number of batteries cannot hold enough power to bridge gaps when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. In any event, to carpet the required land area with wind and solar erections is impracticable and simply won’t happen. Only so much ugliness will be borne by those affected. Green hydrogen simply cannot be produced economically at scale. Renewable energy has shown itself around the world to be the most expensive form of energy. None of this has a chance of penetrating Bowen’s mind. He sees Australia becoming a “green energy superpower.” That’s his utopian vision, inconvenient facts be damned.
Wherever you look, leftism strives to keep people ignorant. Covid is a case study. And a case study too, in the way governments which are not avowedly conservative drift left when it suits them. Conquest’s second law is applicable: “Any organization not explicitly and constitutionally right-wing will sooner or later become left-wing.”
Some generous people give governments the benefit of the doubt at the beginning of the pandemic. That’s a mistake. It was clear in March 2020 (even to non-epidemiologist me – here’s my Quadrant piece to prove it) that the virus threatened only those with serious underlying conditions; perforce, mainly the aged. An integral part of the tyrannical lockdown policies was a determined effort to shut down more considered views and to cancel those who held them. This authoritarian approach to quashing dissenting views carried over to questions about the usefulness of masks and about the effectiveness and risks of the vaccines. An open marketplace of competing views and ideas is poisonous to leftists.
There’s lot more examples. I haven’t even mentioned the determined effort to supress biological reality in order to press transgender rights. Another of the fact-free causes du jour of leftism.
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