ttbn,
I didn't like Keatinge as PM either but what he said the other night was not about politics. It was about dumb-crap Australian Journalists dragging Australia towards a serious conflict with people who are unsurprisingly, getting just as pi$$ed off with the Journos as we all are.

AC,

You the Putin lapdog must be desperate to try and shift this discussion to Iraq. WTF does this thread have to do with Iraq? The US is not fighting the war just supporting the brave Ukrainians against the illegal and unprovoked invasion of their country.

Putin is now a war criminal and will be arrested if he steps out of Russia and into most countries. More arrest warrants are going to be issued.

The Chinese must be laughing their heads off at Australians !

It's great that ShadowMinister has mentioned western philosophers to provide a background to PolSci and perhaps Realpolitik.

I found it interesting that Existentialist Philosophy describes very different systems of thought- Sartre very different from Nietzsche. I found Sartre to be scary. I would consider that Communism is the antithesis of existence- consuming the universe itself in a terrible whirlpool- one wonders how the universe can exist where the possibility of anti-existence exists.

I suspect that both are somewhat consistent in conclusion within their founding assumptions- the objections are often more interesting reading.

Amusing to think of Chomsky telling people not to listen given a linguist-ian- like an author telling people not to read. But Chomsky has recently been objecting to some woke paradigms- to his credit- I'm not sure if it makes up for harm done

Sorry ShadowMinister was quoting Keating- I suppose that Keating was shifting the blame to his teachers- this was often done with errant princes- maybe this is a good argument to have better teachers- and to turn our eyes to the role and potential of The Academy both for bad and good. Perhaps The Academy has too much power. Why did they create the Lyceum? To create the ideal philosopher ruler- but humans are not. Returning to first principles Plato acknowledges that society needs to nurture individuals (not families)- but Confucius saw the family as the atom of society. Maybe this is the reason the Roman's declined into Kingdoms based on powerful families.

Penny wise and pound foolish