As a retired farmer who fought with the family during the Great Depression to semi-socialise our grain industry and get rid of Big Biz at the time in order to stay on the land, one feels stuck in the realm of Big Biz once again.

We depression farm kids who most never completed primary school in order to replace workers whom the family could not afford to pay, and whom in their retirement still rely on the farm to pay their pensions, so to speak, after help paying for their grandkids to go to high school, now find their progeny joining big business backed lobby groups such as the Farmers and Graziers, rather than the Cockies Unions which became our lifelines during the Great Depression.

Not that we should grizzle having done well since WW2, mostly through war-caused shortages and some say more during the after-war carry on of Keynesian economics which got us out of the Depression.

The point is, in the case of another frightening economic downturn as happened in 1929 when Big Biz buyers such as Bunge and Dreyfus disappeared out of the picture - and are now really back again with neo-freemarketism, the only thing a college education might give in the case of another big eco'-crash, is the chance of getting another job besides cockyin'. Though we might wonder, even about religion helpin' a bit?

Let's have a few opinions from you younger ones.

Thanks bushbred, for the invite.

I know its off topic, but i wanted to respond.

May say, i know you (so to speak). Elsewhere in my thread you can locate me. I was a good horseman in those days. Educated by your generation to be proper in the saddle; and schooled by the best in horsemanship and military discipline. Oh to be there again, what glory.

Moving on, i am an 'X'er not a 'Y'er so i will be centrist for the occassion.

I agree with you on the Keynsian economic period, and the antiquated position it now leaves us in. But i do beleive there is an attempt to either pluralise systems, or at least to alter the Keynsian problem. Too, i agree that unionsim served its purpose; but i know that they haved moved well on from those days.

Certainly, the land was our blessed saviour as we rode the woolly jumper to exhaltation. And as then now, the land still is not a social significance. Perhaps it is to do with God, (for he can be found eveywhere), money and just plain simply people. We all need our comforts, both bodily and shelter.

I think that in time, as modernity and science grow, we will all naturally gravitate to city centers. The systems of sustainance are all there, and by then a FIFO model of mega-food production will be in place.

For what its worth, i think we are on the right track there. But it will be at the expense of rural community. Short of natural doom, this wont change, and indeed wont need to.

I actually want to respond to the article, which I thought was thoughtful and rather good.
I very much enjoyed the authors careful separation of values and religion, which I think is becoming dangerously confused in this country. Some so-called religious values are little better than bigotry and, worse, are being propounded in schools that are being supported by tax payers money.
I, for one, strenuously object to my money supporting a nearby prestigious private anglican girl's school where the chaplain has warned the girls to avoid athiests, humanists and public school students because they will introduce them to drugs, sex and crime! As an agnostic humanist who sends my children to public school ( no drugs, sex or crime so far), I want to march up there and ask for my tax dollars back.

Ena... if that teacher is indeed saying those things, then someone needs to complain. If a secular teacher told their students to avoid fundamentalist christians (and I think in the cases of the most extreme Christians, that wouldn't be such bad advice) the teacher would be hoisted by their petards.

Put simply - don't like the idea of private schools having an edge over public ones. If they want to charge to admit students and do it their way, then fine, but if the school is going to have a financial advantage over public ones then it should be entirely fee driven.

Don't get me wrong - I'm happy for government funding to go toward private, fee based schools provided the end result is equal funding between all the schools.
But if it's to be superior facilities then I think they have to do that themselves. That's just being fair to those who can't afford it, and those who can and wish to take advantage of it.

From Bushbred

Gooday, Gadget, nice to make your acquaintance. Also glad you can see my point without sounding difficult. Though have done well in a long retirement, having been overseas studying International Relations and Third World Problems - my experience during the Depression helping the family from going broke, is still never much out of my mind.

Probably that is why I still have a special interest in the works of Emile Zola, who not only wrote about 19th century French agrarian socialism, but also the Realpolitik and the Balance of Power theories of the great German thinker and leader Bismarck. Even today historians still say that if Bismarck had been alive just prior to WW1, Germany would never had begun the war. Further it is also said that if WW1 had never happened neither would have WW2. It is also so interesting that Maynard Keynes
who attended the Treaty of Versailles, did give warning about forgiveness being far better for the future than revenge.

Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, have both been quoted as saying the same thing.

There is also that resurrected saying by Dr Henry Searle, known as From Deserts the Prophets Come, a kind of misused praise about commonsense coming from the outback, but as you hinted at, it is too much of the romantic and not of the scientific - but still - we might guess that it will only be time that will tell.

Cheers, Mate.

George C, WA - Mandurah

PS Apologies to the author and editor for the digression. BB

The most 'fundamental' religious value is "Love The Lord your God with all your heart and mind and strength"

Not all members of the community feel comfortable with this for a variety of reasons. This religious value, can only truly apply to Christians and Jews. Though, if another faith did have such a value, then it would be legitimate for them also. Perhaps Islam has this value.

This is one value which can never ever become state policy, because it is a matter of the individual heart and will. If,however a Theocracy was established along the lines of ancient Israel using the Mosaic law as its constitution, then it could be in fact 'enforced' in the sense of regularly asking people "Who is on the Lords side"?
As Joshua once said to Moses in this regard "As for me and my house, we are with the Lord".

But Israelite Theocracy, has served its purpose, and is no longer relevant. The Messiah has come, he has brought the New Covenant

"I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.

34 No longer will a man teach his neighbor,
or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,'
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,"
declares the LORD(Jeremiah31)

Another value, which all can accept, while religious is equally socially beneficial.

"You shall love your neighbour as yourself"

This idea forms the foundation of most social structures in Western societies.

I think it is at least reasonable, for such societies to show the connection between this value and its Author. Specially as expressed in Christs life and teaching. No one need be asked to 'believe' but they can at least be 'informed' :)
...And that is a role for Education.