AJFA the posts below the piece by Andrew Bolt don't exactly help Mirko's case though.

R0bert

The author makes some pretty vitriolic statements about the Left based on one act by a shoe throwing activist. I am surprised the article was approved given the personal attacks on people who do not share the author's right wing agenda.

Raising the self-righteousness of the Left without acknowledging the same of the Right is self-serving and dishonest. Just look at the latest trends and self righteousness in the rhetoric of the Tea Party movement. To ignore the real threats that this movement poses to democracy, fairness and egalitarian society is one-eyed and dangerous. Palin made a comment recently about the Conservatives "taking back their Government" as if the Right assumes ownership of government when government is for the people, not any one group with only corporate interests at heart.

The author need hold no fear about the Left in Australia - it is non-existent and there is not much to distinguish between the Coalition and the ALP on most fronts. This fear-mongering trend is concerning in only that it pushes the agenda further to the Right than is desirable while fighting off imaginary enemies of the Left.

Ho Hum

The new left:-

Realizes the futility of open protest and social anarchy ; the lessons learned by the left in Vietnam were simply that wars are stopped from within the ranks of those on the front line in the armed forces. Protest was not the catalyst to caseation of war in Vietnam, mutiny was.

The problem we in Australia have is the foolish and slavish following of traditions by military personnel to false notions of Nationalism based on a belief in the fantasy of the ANZAC’s.

The answer from the right to this weakness is the raising of private armies.

AJFA,

We all know what the shoe throwing symbolised - disgust and contempt at Howard's role as a minion of the U.S. neocons that cooked up the platform for the invasion of Iraq.
It's not a matter of "hating" Howard. It's a matter of having our stomachs turned by the sheer lack of foresight and wisdom - and by the sycophantic display of servile flattery regularly acted out by him during his fawning contacts with the Bush Administration.

Poirot

Put simply;

Howard was the “Puppet Dictator of the Puppet State”

I'm a proud supporter of the left and I firmly believe this author has no idea what he's talking about. He is arrogant, ignorant and totally uneducated. Such people should not be allowed to voice their views. He should probably be locked up.