To Binoy Kampfmark.

The UN has become an overly expensive, bloated, corrupt, and politically correct organisation that has become almost completely irrelevant. But since your own job with the Australian government is similar to the UN's, it is hardly surprising that you are sympathetic to the overpaid, bloated UN fat cats.

The UN's refugee policy consists of demanding that everybody in the Third World has a fundamental human right to enter the western world and have the populations of the west support them. That does not go down well with the western populations, which is why all over the western world, the people are voting for anti immigration and anti "refugee" parties.

The UN's Human Rights policy is a joke. To start with, there are two policies. One for "humans", and one for "indigenous humans", with the indigenous humans being more equal than just plain, ordinary humans. And then there is the fact that in the sacred cause of non discrimination, such well known champions of human rights such as Cuba and Saudi Arabia were members of the Human Rights council. And you wonder why westerners laugh at the UN?

Then there was the little matter of the former head of the UN Kofi Annan's son making millions for himself by breaking the UN's oil sanctions on Iraq.

Then we get down to finances. The UN's primary purpose seems to be to never stop criticising the western countries who fund it. The last I heard, most of the third world countries were either well and truly in arrears, or they just never paid their dues.

Lastly we come down to the fact that so many UN diplomats in New York openly float the law and park their cars anywhere they choose, knowing that their UN status makes them untouchable. And these are the characters who want to tell the rest of us how we should conduct our lives?

Australia is a sovereign nation and we do not need thousands of corrupt, lawless, and out of touch foreigners from dysfunctional societies telling us how to run our country.

I have a warm glow that glimmers in the corner of my otherwise hard heart for this author. :-)

But I also have a corresponding warm glow that glimmers in the corner of my otherwise hard heart for Pauline Hanson too; and Clive Palmer also, who is now in judgement and sentencing, all at the one, before the tribunal of the great and honourable (dis) Rupert Murdoch's Australian newspaper.
(Why do I waste a thousand dollars of fun-money a year, on this overweighted ideological "dia-tribune" (yahoo for poetic licence), of Neo Liberal economic propaganda)?

The crime of these two renegades, as best as I can conclude from the atrocious bigoted one-eyed view of life, through the eyes of the editor of the Australian, is an audacious and now tenuous, hold on another reality, opposed to the elite and over pampered life and times of the monied and ruling gluttonous, political classes swinging on leather lounges in Canberra, sucking up the good life in the LNP and Labor Party. Your days are numbered.

Thank you Pauline and Clive, you do Australia and Australians especially, a great service.

About time the the democratic servant of the god-blessed US of A got a tar and feathering. Britain and the great dollars bought freedom without German naziness and now the excitable natives are restless.
Queensland is an Asian Raghead swamp and bulldozers will clear-fell the green bogs , the mosques and coral pinkie lotus smokers.

Beware, I'm growing to like you "Nicknamenick"...

@Binoy Kampmark: "... he occupies the ground of the conspiracy theorist and fearful citizen, an individual who decided that there are facts not worth having, and others worth making up."

That was a great line! :-)

And what pray can we, the powerless plebs, do about that great behemoth Institution, the Liberal party of NSW?

Bursting at the seems with a populist membership crowing all up 4,000 souls from a state voter registry of 4,837,870 (in 2013) there is nothing to stop this out of control juggernaut whose entrenched institutional power apparently Rules the Nation like Princedom via Canberra (and not NSW alone).

That equates to a party Membership (developing ideas and policy platforms and handing out how to vote cards) of 0.08% of voters.

That number is only slightly higher the drink driving limit! :-) Obscure sporting clubs have more members than the NSW Liberal Party.

And don't get me started on the Wentworth Forum and the North Sydney Forum (across the nation) that seeks donations from the 1% for specific Liberal politicians re-election.

Or to use a Roberts turn of phrase:
"Australian values and way of life are also at risk from insidious institutions such as the undemocratic unelected swill that is the NSW Branch of the Liberal Party."

(for comparison, there were ~40,000 members of the Labor Party in NSW in 2013 - The IPA is a non-profit company, which has a restricted membership of 54 people.)

a Crikey snippet fyi from 2013:

"Gone are the days when the major parties had well over 100,000 members each (the Liberals once pushed 200,000). Nowadays, no party has more than 50,000 members; anecdotes abound of sparse meetings, attended mainly by older people."

"There are more Scouts than Liberals, there are more Freemasons than ALP members, and there are more people in the Rebels Motorcycle Club than in Katter’s Australian Party (although membership may overlap on that one)"

"Crikey found the Freemasons were far more open and transparent on their membership than the Liberals, Nationals or Labor."

The Greens (nationally) have 9500

http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/07/18/the-partys-over-which-clubs-have-the-most-members/
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Posted by LEGO: "Australia is a sovereign nation and we do not need thousands of corrupt, lawless, and out of touch foreigners from dysfunctional societies telling us how to run our country."

That's very true. We as a nation do not need that nor seek it. I cannot even imagine one Australian citizen who would disagree with such a self-evident truism.

However, maybe LEGO really meant or wanted to say:

Australia is a sovereign democratic based nation and we do not need thousands of corrupt, untrustworthy, psychopathic, narcissistic and out of touch fundamentalist bigoted white men and women Christian zealots, mainly from dysfunctional families, telling us how to run our country.

Yes.

Certainly Hanson's and Roberts' sensible comments on the Islamic terrorism threat are more accurate than the splutterings of Herr Doktor Kampoy Bismarck.

I find myself agreeing in part with the Author's analysis. Yet am far from comfortable or content with the idea of over 50 million displaced person want to relocate themselves and their sometimes, entirely incompatible inculcated cultures and stone age eye for an eye violent reprisals here!

I believe a better answer has to be a war on poverty, wherever it exists! If average minimum incomes rise above $7500.00 A year, the birth rate seems to stabilize at around 2.5 children per fertile couple?

An outcome assisted by universal female oriented education, particularly in those stone age violent cultures where it seems to be absent?

As The minimum wage rises above $5-60,000.00 per, population outcomes also seems to reduce to less than replacement numbers, which also reduces competition for various resources, water, arable land etc! And where our good international citizen activities ought to be aimed at!

What we need is an international Jury of elected and responsible officials, who would have the power to order cruise missiles be flown in the bedroom windows of these problematic personalities, while they're asleep in their beds, to allow peace and reconciliation to replace the butchery and bastardry that so marks the problematic administrations, who create the dislocation and displaced persons problems!

Even so, the way to reduce poverty wherever it exists is through the allocation of clean cheap energy. Boing can assemble a 20 million dollar airplane a day in their factory! And given the will, the world could combine their for charity resources to build, clean, safe, cheap liquid salt reactors, on a similar mass production scale!

Then gift them to the poorest nations to power their schools, desalinate/recycle their water, irrigate their fields and carry their surplus produce to market, via electrified trains, trolley buses and ferries etc! And power up their fledgling cottage industries or more complex manufacture/recycling!

And we should contribute to that effort as our means dictate, be in from inside the UN or outside of it, if that is the best way to conduct the only war or resettlement plan worth fighting!
Alan B.

I entirely agree with Senator Roberts' and his accurate description of the UN, even though Binoy Kampark associates Mr. Roberts with the "loony bin" (what ignorant, defamatory language from a person who calls himself an academic!).

I doubt that many Australians would be much interested in Australia being an "internation citizen". They care about their country more than the globalising, internationalising and self-serving politicians do.

We would be better off without the dictatorial, anti-Western UN. Remember, though, that the Australian Marxist politician, Evatt, was one of the main instigators of the thing. Very embarrassing!

we know Thomas you would rather the righteous lesbians, feminist and gw zealots indoctrinating our kids with perversion and lies. Throw in a few emasuclated males just to balance the scales. Just turn on the abc any night to see Thomas's ideal. Keep your bucket handy.

A serious question!

Do any here think this kid will ever grow up enough to add two thoughts together & come up with an intelligent answer?

Thank you for demonstrating your racist bigotry of white Christian people, Thomas O'Reilly. I feel "insulted,intimidated. offended, and humiliated". But don't worry, you won't get sued by me. Our Human Rights organisations would never dream of using 18C to defend white people. Just like you, they hate white Christians too. Especially the ones who don't have a university education. What did Clinton call us? Deplorables." That does not worry me a bit. My uncle Clate was a "rat of Tobruk" and he and his mates liked the name.

As a former trendy lefty myself, what got me on the path to thinking straight, was this hatred that people like yourself have for your own race and culture. And this from a white demographic which claimed it was staunchly anti racist.

Another thing which pushed me towards the tipping point, was the fact that those who preached the loudest about equality were the biggest social snobs around, who looked down their noses at the plebs, while claiming that they were their champions. Sort of socialite socialists.

Next came their claims of being the champions of peace, tolerance, and rational discussion, and this from people who rioted at every G7 conference, threw Bags of urine at anybody who dared to attend a One Nation meeting, and screamed "Xenophobia!" and "homophobia!" at every person who opposed their point of view.

Just in case you haven't noticed, the peasants are revolting. In the USA, Britain, Germany, France, Holland, Denmark, and Italy, people are fed up of political correctness and having their democratic institutions perverted by a bunch of elitists who have this uncanny knack to get everything wrong. The times, they are, a changin', Thomas. And you are on the wrong side of history.

The trendies have made a complete muck of the world. Paratroopers are now guarding the streets of the western worlds most revered cities because people like yourself got it wrong. Middle class German girls who welcomed "refugees" are now too scared to walk the streets of their own cities. The middle class fraulines are feeling like Christian Scientists with appendicitis

Binoy KAMPMARK...sounds to me he likes to find imperfections, both imaginary and genuine with everything and everybody in this great Nation of ours. Therefore one wonders why he even bothers to remain here ? Surly there must be some other dysfunctional Country that could employ his great intellect to show them the way to resolve all their national difficulties.

As an uneducated 'dumb-bum' I'm quite content with my country with all it's problems, secure in the knowledge we have both the personnel and the necessary wherewithal to fix it, without some intellectual lightweight from Selwyn College, in Cambridge, coming here criticizing and whinging about every damn thing this great Nation has to offer !

Your recent commentary on 'Long Tan' day contained in your 'OZ MOSES' Site didn't escape me either. As a veteran myself, who was badly treated upon my own repatriation, your audacity to even criticize those events touching on that special day, a day that's held sacred by all Vietnam Veterans, is utterly egregious and disrecpectful. Still what can you expect from some superficial intellectual, of so little merit.

Most Australians, unless they turned on the telly and were told on Sunrise, or via the MSM, would not know a buffalo was up them until it pulled out and then turned around to see the horns behind them.

Global Exit - 'Glexit'...what a great name for Australia and Australians generally!

Sad though it is, Ms Hanson & her buddy David Ettridge became Australia's first political prisoners since the crew at Canada Bay - see: http://www.concordheritage.asn.au/concord-history/french-canadian-exiles-1840

Herr Abbott and his cronies are probably, as we speak, somewhere lurking in the shadows whilst Clive Palmer is being stitched up...wait until this one gets into the High Court !

Lego...more's the pity there weren't a few more 'Rats of Tobruk' still left alive to challenge the "Rats in Armani Suits" we see infesting society today.

There is but one planet earth and we are all citizens of it!

When it comes to trade and commerce there aren't any real borders; ditto terrorism, where a portion of a sovereign nation can winter/recover/rearm on home territory, with complete impunity? Then slip across porous borders to continue their murderous activities with every spring thaw!

We hear all this talk of sovereignty, by the offenders, expecting possible reprisals, but none when they are the trespassing offenders?

Moreover, our toothless tigers/international institutions seem powerless to enforce international law, save by cooperating nation states!

This bring me to the Hague, the international court and the nomination of a new crime against environment? Where CEO's, politicians and corporate lackeys can be held to account and prosecuted for any number of things leading to environmental harm?

Some of which could be achieved by the promulgation of false or misleading information; or the human Toll caused by coal fired power?

13,000 deaths annually in the US alone and 100,000 per for the rest of the world?

Most of which would seem to be the result of the inhalation of particulates as small as 1.5 microns, created by burning environmentally damaging coal?

Currently nobody seems to be held to account for mineral dust/smoke related harm or tragedy, dusted lungs or death?

Virtual fly by night operations change hands frequently allowing those responsible to abrogate any semblance of it, with spurious excuses for obnoxious business practice or management shortcomings, with nonsense like, I had a sore foot, and that consumed all my attention!?

Bound to happen when it is placed far too frequently in the oral orifice?

Personally I can't wait for the court of international justice to put the purveyors of false and misleading information contributing to ongoing environmental harm, in the dock!

Even if that takes years and they have to cool their heels in a jail cell? Getting thinner by the minute?

If released on account of insufficient conclusive proof, may well return to find themselves a liability to former friends and virtually unemployable/destitute? And poetic justice?
Alan B.

@runner: "we know Thomas you would rather the righteous lesbians, feminist and gw zealots indoctrinating our kids with perversion and lies."

And you KNOW this how runner? You do Tarot readings or are you channel from God speaking in 'Tongues' - where thou get all this 'secret knowledge' from?

More likely is that you are a Chinese Spy who has bugged my home. That ain't true either. You're just another delusions liar imo.

@LEGO: "Thank you for demonstrating your racist bigotry of white Christian people"

What 'bigotry' was that Lego? I displayed none. Can you not handle satirical irony nor grasp the concept of context when people say things to you? Apparently not.

re: " I feel "insulted,intimidated. offended, and humiliated". But don't worry, you won't get sued by me."

Oh no please, if you feel I am breach of 18C please please DO take me to court and sue me. You might learn something in the process. If not suing you for making false statements about me which is known as Defamation. Get your facts right and you do not have a problem.

You're not as smart as you give yourself credit for LEGO. Dunning-Krugar Effect in live on OLO!

Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments.
http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1999-15054-002

re: "Sort of socialite socialists." HUH?

For your edification:
I have never supported a Carbon Tax or ETS

I don't support $4+ Billion a year in Tax rebates going to property investors who operate their business on a 25% Loss year on year - that's a welfare entitlement and not a targeted strategy to boost employment or grow the economy.

I don't support Socialist Tax Rebates to the rich to indulge themselves in $10,000 per child per year in Childcare fees.

I don't support the LNPs Socialist Welfare handed over to Corporations as Direct Action to reduce their carbon footprint.

Energy efficiency is a net positive to ROI strategies and Shareholder Profits already.

Pollution is a killer and destructive of the Commonwealth of this nation. Unnecessary pollution is an unnecessary killer.
-

Socialist? Huh?

Ever heard of James Hardie or asbestos?

Government of the State is there to protect The People from such abuses and harm - not enable them. Politics is irrelevant.

Meanwhile Taxpayer Funded Medicare continues to pay for the harm done by those JH Shareholders who profited by their immorality for decades and became richer on their harm done.

I do not support Welfare for the rich in Private health Insurance Rebates so that I and every other taxpayer can subsidize their $300 runners, Gym membership and weekly massages.

Especially when those Rebates do not save one penny in the costs of Medicare or the PBS payed by and demanded to be Universal by almost all Taxpayers (at least those with functional minds who don't suffer from Anti-Social Personality Disorder or Narcissism.

Politics is all about and only ever about Morals and nothing else.
Australia is not a For-Profit Corporation, it is a Non-Profit Commonwealth country and a society of real living people with basic needs.

I totally agree wit Hockey's mention of those who have a sense of ENTITLEMENT but who are actually LEANERS upon the public purse provided by the Taxpayers of this country. Past and present.

The problem I have is that the current Political lunacy in this nation is targeting the wrong leaners who are GOUGING the system with their RORTS and their FRAUD upon the Taxpayers via the ATO that was setup by the Howard/Costello Regime.

The fascist Regime of how to speak with forked tongue, look after your powerfully rich voter base and get away with it while pissing up this Commonwealth's wealth up against a wall.

Perhaps you and those like you might feel much more at home in the Court of Henry the VIII's Castle?

Oh, the good ol' days.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business-jan-june13-makingsense_06-21/

If you cannot work out what that little video is about then try reading a bit from some of these authors one day:
http://robert-louis-stevenson.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens
http://www.biography.com/people/lewis-carroll-9239598
http://www.biography.com/people/george-orwell-9429833
http://www.cmgww.com/historic/twain/about/bio.htm
or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare
-

The EU is crumbling. Brexit will not be the last exit. Let's hope the same thing happens to the United Nations.

To Thomas O'Reilly.

The bigotry you attributed toward white Christian Australians, in which you stereotyped them as "corrupt, untrustworthy, psychopathic, narcissistic" ..... "from dysfunctional families."

Hey Thomas, I am the racist around here, so I can make racist stereotypes about particular groups of people that I don't like. But you can't. If I had labelled negroes or Muslims "corrupt, untrustworthy, psychopathic, from dysfunctional families", I am certain that you would have instantly grasped my statement as racist. But reverse the accusation towards white Christians, and it flies right over your head.

It is just these sorts of leftist contradictions and double standards that I became aware of as a young man, which originally got me thinking straight. You claim that you are non racist, and then quite plainly make a racist statement about white Christian people. And when this fact is pointed out to you, you can't even see it. You are so used to making racist statements about the white Christian people that you so obviously despise, and you are so certain in your own mind that you are a morally superior anti racist, that you think it is perfectly normal to make a racist statement about white Christians.

Just for your own edification, psychologists have noted that some people exhibit inconsistencies of thoughts,which they are completely unaware of. You will be happy to know that your particular condition has a name for it. Psychologists and psychiatrists call it "cognitive dissonance." Orwell called it "double think."

Now, you can discreetly visit a psychiatrist, and he or she should be able to help you. Or, you can do it yourself. Go into a dark corner and just keep thinking, that if it is racism to label coloured people with negative stereotypes, it is also racist to label white people the same way.

You can do it, Thomas. If you are intelligent enough to grasp these leftist inconsistencies which you have unthinkingly inculcated into your head, you might start thinking straight yet.

Be careful Thomas, I'm beginning to like you and your return fire posts!
Alan B.

I'll bet he doesn't "return fire" on my last one to him, Alan B. He just dropped a giant clanger, and he knows it.

That's the problem with thinking that you are better than the working class, and being a finger wagging, evangelical moral puritan. You have to live up to the moral declarations that you demand that the lowly bogans, rednecks, and "deplorables" live up to.

Always taking the high moral ground can make you a great target.

My favourite hobby is deprogramming arrogant young (and dumb) trendy lefties, and Tommy now has a giant problem. I am going to cut and paste his racist statement about white Christian people in my "clangers" file, and every time Tommy sneers at us racists and "Islamophobes", you can bet I am going to throw his statement right back in his face.

By forcing naïve young lefties to confront the contractions and double standards of their leftist thinking, is one of the best ways to deprogram them.

Hey Alan B.
"Be careful Thomas, I'm beginning to like you and your return fire posts!"

I was thinking the same thing.

"confirmation bias
noun

the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories."

Two words, two nouns, actually. A Wiki made up.

Thomas O'Reilly! Where aaaarrrre youuuuuuuuu?

Damn, another one who cuts and runs when his contradictions are pointed out to him/her.

Maybe I just put a hole in his "confirmation" bias"?

A 2014 Pew report found that, between 2011 and 2014, more than a million Mexican-Americans had returned to live in Mexico, compared to 870,000 Mexicans who had entered the US in that time.

This might be the result of strict enforcement of illegal Mexican immigrants into the US, but it could also be that Mexican immigrants have found that the US is no longer a more preferable place to live than Mexico.

While Trump's Mexican wall might lull his followers into a false sense of security about Mexicans taking their jobs, it will not block out the enormous social problems afflicting the US.

Never mind, LEGO, you've still got your little friends who think that abuse is argument. What a little champion...

Don't know where Killarney got the idea if "srtict enforcement" over illegal Mexicans going into the U.S. They have been flooding in and staying for years, particularly during the Obama years. Obama prefers people with a similar coloured skin to his own over white people, the racist pig. Hopefully, Trump will get the chance to send them all back and see to it they stay there,

Sorry, people. I posted my above comment to the wrong article.

@Thomas O'Reilly, Saturday, 17 September 2016 2:01:53 PM

"I totally agree with Hockey's mention of those who have a sense of ENTITLEMENT but who are actually LEANERS upon the public purse provided by the Taxpayers of this country. Past and present.

The problem I have is that the current Political lunacy in this nation is targeting the wrong leaners who are GOUGING the system with their RORTS and their FRAUD upon the Taxpayers..."

I am much inclined to agree Thomas, and suspect that you might be referring (inter alia) to that well-known lurk of "Privatizing Profits And Socializing Losses".

If that is so, then another way of putting that is: Leaning in the "right" direction.

See for example: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/privatizing-profits-and-socializing-losses.asp

Oh, hello Craig. Long time no see. If I remember correctly, you don't like white people either, just like your friend Thomas O'Reilly. But I think that you are more discriminating in your racism though, aren't you Craig? It's just old white men you despise.

When it comes to sneery one liners, two can play at that game, Craig.

Personally, I prefer reasoned arguments, but I think that is beyond most trendy lefties. Binoy Kampmark's article is about Australian "tribalism." Naturally, Binoy would never consider trendy lefties as a tribe. Nor would he consider the Australian bureaucrat tribe (with himself a prominent member), supporting the right of other Australian bureaucrats in his tribe, to well paid, plum UN jobs in New York, to be a conflict of interest.

Trendy lefties love big government, Craig. I think that the reason for that is because most of them work in the public service. They think that any social problem can be solved if you throw enough taxpayer money at it. But if throwing heaps of taxpayer money at the problem is not fixing the problem, then reason for that is because you are not throwing enough taxpayer money at it. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, their own particular wages, pension plans, and superannuation plans continue to grow.

Are you in the Public Service yourself?

You seem to be confused LEGO. Your little friends are the ones over in that dungheap in the corner.

Another deep, insightful, well reasoned post by Craig Minns.

I am glad you are on the trendy lefty side, Craig.

Aha, so my darling attention-seeking LEGO has got the working class, lowly bogan, redneck chip on his shoulder?

That should mean then that I'm the real 'deplorable' elitist moralising high brow uber intelligent academic dipstick latte swilling watermelon leftist socialist union loving commie bastard in a suede suit trying to steal all his hard earned cash and left over wheat bix he has worked so hard for out under the burning midday sun all his life... while I am the parasite sucking the lifeblood from all the good hard working people of the 'burbs and the country towns.

The nym 'LEGO', kinda brings a new bright colourful aspect to the notions from that old classic 'as thick as brick'.

I really don't mind if you sit this one out, but I really like Jethro Tull.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvBpW0ksE-k :-)
-

Wow LEGO, you really did hit a nerve there with Thomas O'Reilly. So much so he actually used intelligent & academic adjacent in a sentence, proving he doesn't have a clue.

I guess it must be because of the rapid expansion of the university sector that there are just so many incompetents in academia today. I certainly don't remember quite so many total fools there back when I was doing my BSc. Of course I did not have much to do with the idiots doing arts & humanities. They spent so much time marching for some cause, blocking city streets, we rarely saw them on campus.

In fact most of the academics were reasonably smart, even if a bit inclined to be rather fond of unearned entitlements. Obviously it is the latter that has been carried forward as a tradition today.

Hi Hasbeen, this is fun, isn't it?

I have a feeling that both Craig and Thomas have previously written sniffy posts declaring that the posting of insults on OLO is absolutely wrong. I could be wrong on that. I am just relying on memory here. But anyhoo, you can bet that I am going to cut and paste their recent responses in my "clangers" file, and if they do write something like that in future, I am going to throw it right back in their faces.

And yes, you are right. I have always had the impression that when my opponents suddenly start getting really nasty and tossing insults and abuse around, then that is a good sign. I definitely have them rattled and their emotional reaction proves it.

A few clever insults are OK, the audience loves it, and it keeps them entertained. But when your opponent simply says something along the lines that you belong "on a dung heap", or that I "dance around in white robes with the KKK", that's not clever at all. It is the act of a person who's overly inflated self esteem has just had a pin stuck in it, and they feel the need to lash out in response.

Thomas, I myself was once a young, trendy lefty like yourself. My own opinion is, that most young trendy lefties like myself grow out of the leftist worldview as they get older. My job is to accelerate that process.

I realised quite quickly, that there were many aspects of leftism which were self evidently wrong, contradictory, and could only be supported through the use of the most glaring double standards. One of the double standards I picked up on very early, was that the very same people who were most noted for pushing the socialist line that "class" did not exist, and that all people were equal, were the biggest social snobs around. The very terms "bogans" and "rednecks" are pejorative terms used by socialite socialist snobs to denote their social inferiors.

My opinion is, that like myself, young people have a compulsive need to think that morally, they are good people, and intelligent people.. The leaders of the Left use that deep emotional need to control young people's thinking. They present themselves as a new class of people who are extremely intelligent and morally beyond reproach. All that a young person needs to do to be accepted as one of this new Brahmin caste of moral and intellectual superiors, is to conform to the strict ideological orthodoxies which define this class.

Aspirants to this class need only to memorise the slogans and a few shallow arguments presented to them by their leftist leaders, and then their self esteem can bask in the glow that they are smart and intelligent. This is why deprogramming them can be so hard. Their opinions are linked to their self esteem. Attack their opinions, and you attack their self esteem, that they are both smart and morally superior.

The only thing going for us deprogrammers is, that so much leftist thinking is so very obviously very wrong, contradictory, and the result of double standards. So it is not too hard to chip away at whatever shallow arguments a young trendy lefty presents, until hopefully, you can reach their tipping point.

Fellas, whether you wallow down there in the muck and slime or choof off and clean yourselves up so you can join everyone up here in the fresh air and sunshine is all up to you.

@Craig Minns, funny/sad isn't it? :-)

@Hasbeen: "Wow LEGO, you really did hit a nerve there"

<shaking my head> Yeah, right. In your dreams maybe.

As is so typical of reactionary social media 'pundits' where so much simply sails over the tops of their heads. Endless misunderstandings, whinging, blaming, venting and fighting shadows.

@LEGO, well I think you tend to twist everything others say into a very myopic worldview and belief system that does not fit the reality. I'll suggest y'all go to my prior comments and read them again. You may need the help of a 'translator' though. :-)

Quoting Thomas:
"I am no "leftie". I am a Moderate. I 'fit' the great silent majority of Australians. Moderate in views, behaviour, typically law abiding, hard working, family orientated and respectful/tolerant of our fellow Australians."
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18530&page=0#329996
and
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18533&page=0#330035
and
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18530&page=0#329936

"There is no Ideology of the Moderate." Prof Lakoff, Lingusist and Cognitive Scientist

Who also said: "Reason is 98% Subconscious Metaphor in Frames & CULTural Narratives"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vm0R1du1GqA

I'm humbly suggest LEGO that you are not a real 'Conservative' nor on the 'Right' of politics but instead an extreme fundamentalist radical operating at a Subconscious level of entrenched belief who only assumes you must be right and on the 'right', and therefore anyone who disagrees with you must be a delusional leftie.

Have you ever paused long than a moment to consider you could be 'wrong'?

re Lego's Hubris above: "My job is to accelerate that process." and "for us deprogrammers" and "so very obviously very wrong"

and "There can be no meaningful debate unless both debaters make their positions clear." and "any intention of debating honestly, or in good faith"
from here: here: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18530&page=0#330048

Like LEGO you're very colourful but you're also a Legend in your own Lunchtime! :-)

Maybe 'Dirty Harry' Callahan would be a someone you would understand better than I?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZstgDZoLkA and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uki4lrLzRaU :-)
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LEGO - How could you win a 'debate' when you do not know what others really said in the first place? You can't.

Hearing clearly what others have said and mean is a critically important skill.

I don't know what you believe but I know this: You have no idea what I (and others) really think about matters because I have seen you get it wrong repeatedly.

But do carry on telling everyone (and me) who they are, what they are, what they think, and putting words in their mouth they never said or meant. That's called the Strawman Fallacy.

Do not ever let me or anyone tell you what to do think or say because it's your human right to be self-righteous, if you wish! :-)

btw ':-)' denotes a genuine smile and/or pointing out a harmless "joke" - philosophy in action iow :-)

If ever you'd like to expand your knowledge about philosophy/logic, psychology or effective communication drop me a note.

eg Logical fallacies are like tricks or illusions of thought, and they're often very sneakily used by politicians and the media to fool people. Don't be fooled, and do not do use them yourself. http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com

Rather than judge mislabel others perhaps consider this rhetorical question: 'What would you like to have happen?'

Meanwhile slow down a little, re-read what was said at least 3 times before hitting the "reply button'?

It's a good rule of thumb on social media 'discussion' because it is only 'text' and not face to face or 'body language.'

It's also good to slow down the machinations of the 'mind'. Walk the dog, look at the sky and the horizon, listen to the birds, sit under a tree for a few hours, relax and allow Truth to percolate itself quietly up and out of the stormy inner seas.

This may help on playing repeat mode over a few days: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gvo-CCtC3Zs

Please lay down your 'weapons' because the war you imagine is illusory (ie not real): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzEwCc4WVKs

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