Diver,

Well, LEGO does write: "When faced with such stupidity, ordinary, usually apathetic members of the population begin to get angry and hit back."

"Usually apathetic" - that was his point, that what he calls extremist behaviour makes 'usually apathetic' people react against it. It doesn't necessarily make THEM extremist, simply more actively hostile to some dumb-arse extremist activity.

How young or old a nation is depends on how people use or abuse its history: Germany and Italy were unified as single nations only in the mid-late nineteenth century. In that sense, they are very young nations, barely much older than Australia on the same criteria. But both could claim to be the inheritors and locus of the Holy Roman Empire, going back 1200 years to Charlemagne on one hand, and nearly three thousand years to the birth of Rome on the other.

But in both of those cases, ancient Romans and ancient Germans would have known what territory came under their control, and its boundaries, topography and extent. Strictly, nobody knew of the 'boundaries' of Australia until Flinders circumnavigated the place. Certainly, Aboriginal people roamed over it at great distances - they were nomadic foragers, after all - but nobody would have been able, due to traditional hostility between groups, to traverse the continent, let along travel right round it, across hundreds of rivers, and through the clan-territories of hundreds of alien groups.

Cheers,

Joe

And if a pollie has the guts to not acknowledge welcome to country or sorry day they are labelled--

Dear George,

You quoted Graham "If such a small issue can create such a disproportionate response it is a sign of just how fractured our society has become under pressure from grievance merchants and left- and right-wing identitarians who want to give special privileges to particular groups."

How true. The furore over the rather innocuous twitter post of Yasmin Abdel-Magied is a case in point. The gnashing of teeth and renting of garments was astounding.

Dear Uncle Joe,

Request: please stop with your infuriating politeness...

Lego’s text could be the example of Anatole France’s dictum that the popular success of a book almost always rests upon a misunderstanding between author and reader.

However, using German history as example (as you did), and drawing on that comparison to configure the madness we are now witnessing, in a strange struggle between what some call left and right of politics, and which I prefer to align to a war between conservatives and arch liberals, which takes into account all the useful idiots accumulated across football fields and sporting venues in the West as a small example used by GY here: a sporting mans example of Dadaism in art and applicable to 1919 onwards in Germany, as the struggle between extreme left and a soon to be extreme right, fought it out while the Greater German population partied on!

Spengler’s nailed it for the left with his strength in his ability to expound socialism agreeably. In his hands it became, not a Marxist bogey but instead a bourgeois phenomenon. That one is called credibility reinforcing; so too are high paid useful idiots being used up to project a credible view of the obvious madness of cultural engineering in our time.

God save our gracious Queen!

Dan.

To Diver Dan.

My foot is uninjured, and I think that Loudmouth did a sterling job of explaining with infuriating politeness, the simple concepts I was imparting, that you were unable to grasp. Unlike Loudmouth, politeness is not my strong point.

The terms "Left" and "Right" can sometimes be difficult to define as some people can exhibit both qualities on different issues. So too, the term "conservative" and "liberal" are relative terms like "near" and "far."

Yesterday's "conservatives" can become today's "liberals". And yesterday's liberal's" can become today's "conservatives." Take the concept of Freedom of Speech. This had for a very long time been a feature of Leftist "progressive" thought. But today, it is the Left which generally champions political censorship, and the Right which are the progressives championing free speech.

As old Bob Dylan once wailed, "And the first one now will later be last, for the times, they are, a changin'".

Modern Art is largely crap. It is so unpopular, that about the only way that "modern" artists can make a living is through government "arts" grants, which fill entire government warehouses with unsellable "art." In Sydney, the "Modern Art" museum could only attract around two visitors a day, before it was moved to Circular Quay, where even a vegan hot dog stand could attract good business.

Australia's most popular and successful artist, Ken Done, is exhibited nowhere in any art gallery in Australia.

If you want to see a modern art outrage, just watch what happens when France's President turns a bunch of left wing architects on Notre Dame cathedral to "improve" it. Stainless steel and acres of glass, that will look like a giant pimple on a pretty face.

Lego.

I think it may be too early in the morning for you.

I'm amused you feel you must stump-up as the defender of the insipid loudmouth.
He is quite capable of obsequious self defence, as boring as it usually is!
I must admit though, I prefer your own style, straight up and honest.

Your comments are actually readable; a reason I decided to energise myself with a response to your original text above, (which you ignored until our mutual mate Joe stuck his bib in).

I was impressed with your piece because it was analytical. Although I didn't necessarily agree with all your conclusions; ie.. the conclusions I “thought” you arrived at.

Taking this comment from your text:
*…Yesterday's "conservatives" can become today's "liberals". And yesterday's liberal's" can become today's "conservatives…*
Not difficult to agree with that. But if you take my view of left and right as being inappropriate to describe today's political scene, and substitute left and right with conservative V liberal, you may find as I do, less difficulty in explains away Turnbull and his treacherous lot.

That type of character becomes slippery when viewed through the lens of left and right.
But makes total sense as a liberal, especially in view of his hyper liberal homosexual son, sitting in a high rise in Singapore, and sniping away in tandem at the Liberal Party his Father once led as Prime Minister.
Turnbull, in his own eyes, is justified to feel cheated with his rejection by the Conservatives.

And I look at the length I've gone to here in explaining a critical point, and haven't addressed the basic point you made, which I want to, but will wait for your motivating influence before moving on, least I present as does poor Joe.

Dan.