We should thank Squeers for helping Chris prove his case. Squeers' attitude is typical of the leftist academic: full of righteous indignation, treating Australians generally with contempt, (or anyone with an opposing view for that matter), all the while being funded by the very people he/she dislikes.

I've recently become an advocate of turning a number of university departments into user-pay systems. Not only would this save a lot of money, it would make students think very, very hard before enrolling in a course where employment outcomes are close to zero.

Squeers, it is impossible to make much sense out of your post and what exactly you mean jumbling up economics, psychology and religion and even words. You ask me to say who these "true conservative progressives" are but while I did use those three words in a sentence, not having used them in that order they had a completely different meaning. I said that many "progressives" were the true conservatives.

An example of a so-called progressive who is really a conservative is Bob Brown. As a conservationist it is explicit in his view of the natural world, and when you listen to his vision for social, intellectual and material life it is implicitly present.

This site demonstrates the regressive back to the "glorious" past, nature of those on the right side of the culture wars divide.

http://westerncivilisation.ipa.org.au

Including the old time presumed "certainties" of Christianity. Never mind that Christianity provided the "religious" justifications for the entire Western colonial misadventure. The Papal (paypal)Bulls of 1455 and 1493 set the template for the next 500 years.

Plus the book Britain's Empire by Richard Gott gives a thorough-going description of the never-ending blood soaked gore-fest of the British Empire. All in the name of bringing "jesus", "god" and "civilization" to the "uncivilized heathen savages".

Meanwhile it seems to me that the most regressive "back to the past" Australian academic is Greg Melleuish. Everything he writes is a lament for lost presumed "certainties".

Although he is not an academic it seems to me that Keith Windschuttle is an exemplar of this back to the certainties and presumed superior values of the past regressive mind-set too.

I'd say anyone who thought colonialism was a byproduct of Christianity has a severe bias problem. The papal bulls you instance were to settle territorial disputes between two powers who had gone out and colonised, not to encourage them to colonise. They postdate rather than predate.

I have no idea whether you are an academic or not, but this is the sort of analysis that is seriously misguided, but might earn you a distinction or high distinction from someone not interested in ascertaining the facts but in bolstering their world view.

Unfortunately that is what happens too frequently in the humanities in universities.