Hi again Chris Lewis,

I appreciate the respect and interest you have to not just respond to most comments but also to have an interest to respond, most authors seem to be above lowly little people who post comments.

Anyway, I want to clarify my position on Leftists as being extreme, religious like and highly irrational, even a bad bunch of people.

Most of my reasons for this opinion come from how Leftists tend to act and treat people.

For example, the average case will have 100% of the time something goes wrong involving westerners and non-westerners (especially third-world peoples) the Leftist will NEVER consider the possibility that anything but the "White", "westerner" is fully and entirely responsible for whatever it is. For some reason the "coloured" masses of the world are never considered to be able to be criticised or debated with by a Leftist.

It is almost as if they must assume ONLY white people have any agency thus responsibility and further that the "others" (e.g. indigenous Australians) are NEVER pressed for answers to problems or never asked to explain WHY and never asked to act different in future,

In fact only in the most extreme examples such as the Taliban's cruelty will any Leftist even speak ill of a non-white.

Ask yourself why the refugees killed in Manus Island by natives rioting and mocking the natives' culture, did Left media forces immediately lay blame with the Australian government policy that rejected them forcing that nation to take the refugees. Why didn't the Left tell the Natives who killed the people to back off, grow up and stop being violent?

To not even involve them in the discussions, like also with Indonesia regarding Australia and refugees going through Indonesia our nation NEVER directly involved Indonesia as anything remotely resembling an active agent involved and able to make decisions that affect the outcome.

Instead the Left blames our government for actually not taking ALL refugees instantly so that none are left to be in Indonesian hands etc.
Why not scorn Indonesia for cruelty and barbarism?

. . . continued . . .

Domestically a good example is found with how Left constantly bombard and harass the Christian church and clergy etc. yet NEVER do they EVER dare to confront Muslims (or any other religion involving mostly non-whites) over their mistreatment of women and gays due to religious scripture the same as Christians.

Even the Christians the Left attack are carefully targeted to be ALWAYS whites westerners.I have never seen a Greek-Orthodox church or function etc. attacked like the USA ministers etc.

Our society instantly attackes and ridicules even sacking a prominent person from a position IF found to have engaged in such behaviour (e.g. John Brodgen sacked from NSW Opposition leader because he referred to Bob Carr's wife as a Asian"mail order bride"); whereas a leader of an entire Lebanese Muslim community in Sydney can openly in religious speech refer to a scantily clad western women as being "to blame" if a man decides to rape her since he says such a women is like "raw meat for a wild cat". That comment and dozens of others were NEVER mentioned in media by anyone except a few "right-wing" journalists etc. and even they were scorned as racists to bringing attention to the issue.

This is clear mistreatment of people for reasons of race and culture and ethnicity. I CALL this RACISM.

Non-whites are never made to explain their actions and apologize for bad behaviour. Half our nation is non-whites, non-western descended YET we are forbidden from debating openly with these groups since through Leftist force our nation seems to fear that these cultures are not able to reason or have a civilized discussion.

This is evidence that the Leftists (who are most extreme at defending these groups) MUST assume that the non-whites peoples of the world are somehow "subhuman", "incapacitated" and "malformed" perhaps even "disabled" (e.g. downs syndrome) because most people tend to not scream at the disabled person if they break a glass etc. as we all assume that they do not know better and are not capable of any more.

BIGOTS!

the fact I chose to study the humanities does not mean my opinion is anything special. It is just one opinion of maybe 16 million that decide Aust govts.

yes, many academics will never say anything bad against ordinary people or other nations; it is always the elite fault's or the coalition, or the US.

Well, we should have fair dinkum debate about all issues. Too many academics confine themselves to their own isolated world, but nothing should be immune from debate.

That is what my wish of Australia's humanities. As i suggest, a thorough debate should accommodate aspects of policies associated with the left and right and representative in the community.

I don't wish to have a humanities sector that agrees, but I want scholars that can address various concerns that exist in the real world, whether it be from a left or right perspective

Jottiikii:
"the LEFT can be either gullible young people naïve and uneducated who have "Herd/Pack mentality" OR older more seasoned people who can be quite direct and active in their behaviour which I have learned often involved lies, extreme prejudice and outright Nazi-religious type closed-mindedness and fervour"

Good grief is there no end to this kind of garbage opinion!

There is no blasted Left in Australia. The left intelligentsia is a poor excuse for the proletariat and the whole movement amounts to nothing more than political correctness. It just so happens that so-called left-wing critique makes sense and should be considered on merit, rather than caricatured and demonised by ignoramuses.
I'm also tired of being called a Marxist, which I'm bloody well not, though I agree with Marx's critique of capitalism. My experience is similar to Chris Lewis' modest self-appraisal; I've been a blue collar worker since I was 14, then a so-called "mature-age student," and now I'm a poor-man's academic making a crust on the odd contract and my own small business.
It's just simplistic calling the Humanities left-wing. Take history; the post-modern critique isn't a "black armband" view or leftist; it's based on the recognition of bias and imperial fictions, which Windshcuttle and Quadrant shamelessly try to defend. Similarly, Literary critique is based on the same recognition, of the hegemonic nature of aesthetics--which have no empirical foundation. So-called leftism is merely the deconstruction of conservative constructions on reality. It is the right that's full of self-serving lies and delusion, and sadly its propoganda exerts enormous influence on its ignorant constituency.

The further problem with academia in my view is privatisation, competition and the dumbing-down that's designed to get maximum numbers into courses--many of these students having no right to be there based on merit. And sadly, the humanities is the repository where underachievers are more likely to fudge their way through.
Universities should be publicly funded, but the bar raised considerably.
On the other hand, unromantic history should be taught in school. Though it's in the conservatives interests to keep the masses patriotically credulous.
Wake up to yourselves!

Squeers "It's just simplistic calling the Humanities left-wing. Take history; the post-modern critique isn't a "black armband" view or leftist; it's based on the recognition of bias and imperial fictions, which Windshcuttle and Quadrant shamelessly try to defend. Similarly, Literary critique is based on the same recognition, of the hegemonic nature of aesthetics--which have no empirical foundation. So-called leftism is merely the deconstruction of conservative constructions on reality. It is the right that's full of self-serving lies and delusion, and sadly its propoganda exerts enormous influence on its ignorant constituency."

The problem here is that the post-modernist/post-structuralist movement will not turn its critical eye upon its own valuations. They only ever, as you point out, criticise conservative values. Therefore, the criticism mounted against the Humanities and Social Sciences is justified. It has become a political arm of the Greens, Socialist Alliance, and a section of the Labor party.

Until the post-structuralists begin to deconstruct and criticise their own moral projections, all the criticisms here will be entirely justified.

Aristocrat,
if you consider the implications you'll see that your position makes no sense. It's not a matter of contending ideologies. Conservatism stands here for the status quo. It's not left against right, it's progressivism against the establishment. It's not even a progressive agenda, it's a progressive critique. Conservatism is old money, but the so-called "left" is not new money; it has currency itself in the dock (but please don't reify my metaphors).
If anything, what's designated the left is far too reflective; it interrogates itself to the point where its relativism is self-defeating.
"the criticism mounted against the Humanities and Social Sciences [I wouldn't dignify it with the term criticism]" is reactionary, nothing more. It is unselfreflective and inflexible, and unless you have a peerage and an interest in the establishment, you are but the dupe of its sophistries.
Our so-called "left" indeed is not radical at all, but merely a symptom of our society's schizophrenia, its super-ego.
Hegemone is not merely a word we bandy about; it's the reason you don't get it..