This question simply asks- to what esteem do you place each of the political parties, and why?

What are your reservations about each party and candidate?

What policies do you support- and which parties would you expect them from? And on the flipside, which policies would be deal-breakers?

How competent would you assume the parties are?
How honest would you assume each party is?
Have past decisions/actions/candidates swayed your view on them?
And how would these weigh your decision on the ballot paper?

Try to actually name at least FOUR parties- you can bunch them together as all the same if you want, I just want a broader list to be considered in the discussion in some way (not just "The two majors, the Greens and the rest"- similarly, Independents are rather unrelated to each other- except the Australian Independents Coalition).

And remember, no party is out of bounds- if you want to talk about One Nation, Family First or a socialist/libertarian party, go for it.
In fact, if you know of a party that few others know about, bring them up for discussion too!

For a start I did not contribute to the thread that asks do politicians do anything.
I can not bring myself to beleive anyone can ask that question, and refuse not say that is childlike.
I am from the ALP, my place is center unity, the NSW right.
However I do actualy try to see all sides.
I find senators who are independent get far more power for far less votes than major partys.
That the familly first senator is miss useing his power and we will be better once the well named but useless party fades away.
In contributing to this thread, for a moment think about a greens controled senate.
Hear honestly their wants and wishs, just review what they wanted from the ETS.
Turnbull love him or hate him was closer to a true Liberal than those who deposed him.
His party in time, must/will return to its roots and be popular again.
Nationals?
A miners party now nothing more and soon to be an add on to Liberals.

The problem with Turnbull is he's more shallow and crooked than a degree of liberalist/conservative. His entire political life has been about using dubious spin, and his practices have been even less impressive (like milking taxpayers to cover his wife's renting expenses)- it suggests a man more interested in riding the gravy train than anyone actually wanting to do something for the country.
In fact, it was his appointment that became the last straw for me to stop voting for the Liberals- actually no, it was the NT intervention plan that did it for me.

As for Labor- again, too many strikes also- Keating's reign, Carr flogging off state assets to MacBank (and mysteriously joining their ranks soon after) and the Lane Cove Tunnel, among many other things state level, and Federally Conroy's internet censorship filter, along with compensating the coal industry and 'big Australia' sealed it federally.

Greens have impressed me more and more over the years- it seems they've actually started to get their act together and filled the space left by the Democrats. Opposing privatization is a plus, as well as the parliamentary pay rises (either which way I see it, it was a lot more than all of the other candidates who hopped straight aboard).

Democrats seemed to appeal in all the wrong ways- it tried to be a grassroots democratic party, but was staffed by WAY too many openly bigotted small-L liberals and people rather less enthusiastic about CIR in practice- so no support from me.

One Nation was a similar story- many of their policies were good, a REALLY grassroots democrats party on the conservative side was appealing- but too many racists on board, too much fuss on 'multiculturalism', and give off rather indifferent vibes to Indigenous concerns (although I doubt they're as hostile as the libs are)

On the note of the Senate, it simply highlights a big flaw of the representative system, in that the handful of minor seats basically make the decisions alone, while the majors simply vote among party lines.

Labour and liberal are virtually the same, differing only in their rhetoric. Their policies are decocted from opinion polls and have no idealistic component at all; idealism is for rhetorical purposes only. Liberal and Labor are in the business of winning elections--the slightly painful decisions they are sometimes forced to make are equally pragmatic; necessary evils calculated to count towards a future poll or to counter a current electoral issue that demands attention--prevarication being always the preferred option. The major parties thus precisely mirror the electoral majority in as much as this can be said to embody a political bias: it is in favour broadly of wealth generation at any cost. Politicians are corrupt because the electorate is corrupt and demands it.
The Greens, Family First et al at least stand for something; their primary function as minor parties, however, is to facilitate conscience votes for those who are rightly sickened by our rapacious system. The minor parties will continue to do well on the fringes, so long as their policies are never achieved. Should they ever break hegemony, they would transcend their mandate and cease to stand for anything, except of course for rhetorical purposes.
Such is democracy.

The trouble with Australia today is a lack of real teachers at law schools and in churches. If we had any fair dinkum lawyers in Australia, or even one, and he became a Supreme Court Judge,we would put all politicians in their place.

Any fair dinkum lawyer would know S 22 of the Australian Courts Act 1828 requires that every Act of a politician, has to be measured against the Constitution on which we all agreed. The Constitution is made under a Royal Identifier, and it was attached to it by the Master of the Rolls in the United Kingdom, after it received Royal Assent. The Master of the Rolls was a Justice of the Supreme Court of England.

The lawyer politicians have stopped using and requiring Royal Identifiers, on Acts, and our government is deficient for that. It virtually amounts to the creation of a new religion, that is parochial and not universal, and the books it uses as its catechism are all written by lawyers.

None of these New Bibles are written by educated men or women. To be educated its is neccessary to do at least three years at University, and then attend a church like Hillsong, or even an Anglican Church and become familiar with the Constitution and what underpins it and makes it universally authoritarian.

Politicians would make us slaves, but the Holy Bible contains the seeds of freedom. Its freedom comes from the Holy Spirit and only a jury can access these blessings.

Its an interesting question

I vote, according to my conscience, for a major party, although I do enjoy the “colour” minor parties and independent members can inject into politics.

The Democrats were a minor force, for a while and have since waned. It is always difficult to sustain the pretence of “independence” when ones leader is caught in bed (literally) with a senior minister of government.

Nowadays Senators Xenophon and Fielding add their own colour and input to the political foray and the Greens, of course maintain their presence (although many would say in the shallow end of the gene pool).

Imho the ”hustings” present an even more colourful vista of differing political hues. I always had a soft spot for the UK “monster raving loonie party” of whom, Screaming Lord Sutch was a consistent candidate for a parliamentary seat (and consistently lost his deposit).

The presence of such diversity is the essence of the democratic process. We might not like who eventually wins an election but at least we are assured the full diversity of beliefs and values were allowed their chance, unlike the “mono-party” systems, favoured by some “collectivists“.

Have a look at the experience and potential of Rev Dr Gordon Moyes at: http://www.gordonmoyes.com/ in NSW State Parliament

George Washington wanted to ban political parties because they weren't democratic. He lost the argument with his 'enlightened' peers. Real democracy lasted in the US only thirty years before Big Money took over running things through the parties. It's still there today. The joke is that they've become the main game in our pseudo-democracies in the West, including Australia's. It shows what an uneducated, unbright lot the mob is and how damned near impossible it is to make a decent democracy work. Shows how easily most people can be led by a wire through the snout.

I don't vote. That's how I maintain my self respect. One day we'll do it right. Maybe. Until then, let the kids play, I say. Yes, even if they kill themselves, because there's no stopping them with good sense arguments.

Don't forget Sock that any wisdom is bogged down by compulsory voting, compulsory preferencing of all candidates, back-room exchange of votes, and various other mechinations to twist and water down votes to go the way of the majors- even our (few) referendums have been wide open to rigging.

I'd imagine if our system alone were more like Switzerland we'd probably be doing better.

But some very interesting points.

Good reply, King. The Swiss is precisely the system I had
in mind in making a comment on ours. They have a far longer
record of political stability than we do. Well, they weren't
a military dictatorship for many decades in the 1700s and 1800s
as we were. And they have all the right conditions for being a
thinking race - snowbound for months of the year, bright races
on all frontiers, a tradition of calm introspection and so on.
Hitler said that the closer you get to the tropics the less the
brain functions. LOL. But hey, there might be truth in it.

We have the technology now to enable every citizen to vote on
every issue they consider of interest to them. A green or red
button on your TV enables us to have a say on how we're run.
It's even better than parish pump democracy Jefferson established.
But the very idea is anathema to an Australian party politician.

I've tested it in various areas, and I've concluded that the reason
we never get better served politically than we do is because there's
a closet fascist gene in all the descendants of the first settlers in
Australia. We of all countries in the world had a chance to do
something to set an example to the rest of the world and we blew it
big time. I mean big time.

I don't want to depress or alarm anybody, so I'll go looking for
some good news to report. Back soon, with a bit of luck.

Pete the Believer has it right with lawyers and their dreadful
influence on our law making. A Canadian ex-Dep PM lamented that
Canada's problem is that far too many of its politicians come out
of the same privileged class of cunning word, idea and law manipulators.
I think the boatful out to the edge of the continental shelf is
still the best remedy for that. I volunteer to cast the first
stone please, pretty please.

I part company with Pete though on the Hillsong thing. Holy smoke.
I was outraged to see the failed PM Peter Whatsisname front up
and do his thing there. Good grief. God doesn't work that way in
politics. If he were real he'd exect us to solve problems by our
wits and hearts, not delegate it to some charismatic ratbag. If I
sound a bit strident on this it's because if we're talking democracy
here, let's at least admit that the Godsquad get far more say and
influence than their numbers justify. 80% of us are in favour of laws
that allow euthanasia for those who wish to terminate their lives
with dignity.

The 21% Churchianity brigade muscled in and got their way with anti-
democraticians like Howard to overturn the NT law and set back
the hopes in the six states. Undemocratic parties listen to
minority squeaky wheels and we pretend we're democratic. Sorry.
The same goes for the republic and the same cunning little
manipulator of words, ideas and laws. 80% of us are now in favour
of a republic (76% under Adolph Howard) and waddawee get? I can
think of dozens like these disgraceful examples. Are we morons,
or what? Something's wrong if this is considered normal is a
chest-beating democracy, surely?

If we could junk the party system and and adopt a democratic system
of public consultation the party boys despise (because it diminishes
the power they got into politics to wield) we wouldn't legitimise or
institutionalise this de facto gerrymander that blights our
governance.

What would I suggest to replace parties? Something sensible
that can work - not soon but NOW. Follow Tamworth's lead and
elect a worthy independent with qualities we expect in our
political defenders. Tony Windsor showed he had what was needed
on all fronts - in the head, in the pants and so on.

When you vote for Tony you know pretty well what he's going to
do on your behalf. But so he knows what's going on in the myriad
minds in his electorate, he could benefit from reading his
voter blog/opinion register on all the matters to be dealt with
in parliament that week. His time and his staff's time is better
spent doing that than most things our present pollies do.

In time, we needn't expect more of our wo/man than to just explain
his brief in the debates and to vote with integrity. Politicians
would be relieved of all the intrigues and nonsense that wastes our
money and their lives. While we transfer across to that system, we
politely dispense with the old colonies (NSW, Victoria etc) and go
back to our county system set up at first settlement, after Mother
Englands's example. We have County Government, which sends one
rep to Canberra to vote on federal matters, to initiate new federal
bills and so on. The main guts of government is done at County level
- hospitals, schools, police and so on.

The only problem with all this, apart from cutting back on the terrible
waste of over-government, is that State of Origin would obviously
go for a Burtons, so we'd have to find an alternative to prevent
war between the northern counties and the rest of civilisation as
we know it here, if any.

Excellent posts Sock, I entirely agree.

Our system of democracy (and by extension, the UK's Westminster system) is by far the system that still qualifies as a democracy on the flimsiest grounds.
We:
-Don't actually get to directly vote for our government, prime minister, or anyone (except Senators, to our credit).
-Have a voting system that virtually requires a party to form government at the expense of independents
-Can actually be barred from voting for parties by virtue of geography
-Have our votes support candidates we didn't actually vote for via preferencing, backroom deals
-Disqualify any vote that wasn't for the individual party that got the most votes.
-Are governed (with considerable power) by a government that not only does not actually have majority support, even if 70% of the voters did not even vote for them.
-Our highest office is appointed
-We have absolutely zero right to hold our politicians accountable except by trying to heckle their local electorate to think about everyone else once every 3 years.
-Have no CIR and are rarely consulted in referendums
-Have election dates decided by the party in power

Most other democracies actually do the opposite of many- if not almost all of each of these things (and seem to be getting a lot more done). Sadly we happen to be descended from the country whose entire history had consisted of being ruled under some of the most stratified systems in the world.

Personally, the Swiss system puts ours to shame.

Just one point on preferencing - We do not need to follow the party deal on preference it is our democratic choice to place numbers where we want to preference. We also can work the system we have.

Why have parties at all when there's little or no difference between the two majors – the only parties allowed to get control? It means a whole lot of people not represented in the actual running of their public affairs. The Labor Party claims as its difference to the Big Business party that it looks after the common mortals first and the wheeler-dealers second, even a close second (to avoid the socialist taint). When the global melt-down occurred due to the obscene misconduct of the deregulated banks, a group whose privileges rely on government license, not divine decree, PM Rudd promised to rein in the carpetbaggers and put some responsibility back into the system.

This weekend we learn that he's not going to do that at all. He's going to deregulate further to give the banks even greater license to go into feeding frenzies that wreck all our lives. Bravo Australia!
This is non-government – the sort you have in the jungle, where animals born lucky get to eat all those less endowed. Parties aren't about government. They're about unfair distribution of God's bounty to the clever and the devious and the greedy. It's about furthering a partisan cause at the expense of 'the enemy' amongst their fellow citizens – fellow Australians who share a common birthright. The greasy pole has always been the best measure of merit in Australia, especially if you're amongst those granted the right sort of gloves and spiked boots needed to make the climb effortlessly.

Parties are factionalised groups in a jungle, not democracy. Our 'Robin Hood folk heroes' only come out from under their logs when the game is up for them and it's too late to do any robbing of the rich to give to the poor. For decades I was a supporter of the Democrats largely because they weren't a party by the usual definition. Their constituency was everyone who votes. The demise of the Dems is the biggest blot on our political landscape in our miserable 200 year record of social hooliganism.

We reap what we sow.

Bravo Sock Ratteez!
I couldn't agree more. I'd only add, a la Squeers above, that democracy ultimately means rule by the dark human heart. Democracy ought to be answerable first to humanistic ethics, and "then" to the will of the people.

Mitch, you've opened a can of worms there mate. Nobody in a proletariat wants to hear that the scrubbers don't know Jack Schitt about nuthin' - even when it's true. Lenin realised what he was up against, and it more or less put the kybosh on Communism right from the outset. What followed wasn't what Marx prescribed. Thomas Jefferson had the same distressing epiphany in the newly created USA before him. The Nazarine had it as he stood before the poor distressed Pilate. Welcome to reality, boys!

The rabble doesn't have a clue what is needed, any more than a submarine crew has an idea what to do to in an undersea shoot-out to the death with another sub or destroyer. All they can hope for is a Captain who likes them and knows what they would hope he can do for them. We're all undersea mariners, and we all hope that we have a Captain on board who isn't a prick. The Navy has been told by Head Office (The White House and Congress) that what it does is IMPORTANT, so it has put in place measures to ensure that it has a reasonable chance of getting good Captains on subs, and other boats where so many lives depend on the quality of their decisions.

This is to be contrasted with politics, where the party disease has taken hold and choked all the hopes submariner/voters might have. The Americans have think-tank Colleges to determine finer points not appreciated by rabbles in an atmosphere of mob rule. We don't have them. But we need them, constituted not of people who can achieve party pre-selection but have an AO or similar recognition for services to their country. A board of such people would act as a hedge against bad captaincy of the type we've suffered for two centuries. (continued below)

(Continued from above)

The Navy ship analogy is not quaint or flippant. Very few in a democracy know what's at stake in the struggle to make their lives half tenable. We just haven't bothered to thrash out the additional things that need doing to get a better result than the swill we've been getting out of politics. Politicians are servants of the people. Parties have become all-powerful because there's no connection between the ordinary voter and the party.

We've lost control of our parliament, and politicians committed to party before their country will always vote to maintain that anomaly - as they've done so consistently for more than a century. The way things are, all you have to do is join a party, like Joe Tripodi did, and bully your way round long enough until you can call all the shots, no matter how empty you are of noble content or ethical intent. We're at a stage in history where we have to graduate to a new level, and we have monkeys in charge of the process. Good one, Australia

I personally believe that a mechanism could be initiated that discerns certain anti-democratic conduct by legislators as treason. I can't see it happening in the present climate. But I didn't expect the Soviet Union to collapse like a cardboard box either. We're making all the same old mistakes they made, and the clock is ticking.

The extended navel analogy puts me on my guard, Sock Ratteez (curious spelling); I have two navel brothers and a brother in law, including a submariner, whose patriotic zeal disturbs me. I side with Gore Vidal who, differing with Samuel Johnson, said that patriotism was the "first" refuge of a scoundrel.
The sad truth is that no human can be trusted. The human heart, or helm, is finally answerable to default drives, it seems; ethics and morals are impositions, like nylon restraints. AO's signify nothing but charming (and dangerous) naivety. Democracy is run by default, if you take my meaning.
What we need is a god, or perhaps a computer programme that spells out appropriate ethics. These are then observed by default. Democratic action, via the electorate "and" its representatives (which would, and does, amount to the same thing) would then be a matter of fine tuning, the fundamentals being in place.
We have to stop blaming our parliaments--their members represent their constituents with great felicity.
I am all for anti-democratic behaviour since democracy, in its current condition, signifies a popular doctrine of corrupted self-interest.
Care for a Socratic dialectic?

By all means. I didn't mean the naval analogy in the literal sense but the psychological, where we need to satisfy all sorts of diverse world views with the actions of someone who represents our political interests. I've never felt represented in Australia. When I was in France under Mitterand, I felt represented, even if a lot of stuff came out on him that wasn't very encouraging.

The essential problem is that there are a lot of scared people who want protection, forming two camps - poor and rich - and a minority of idiots who say they can deliver, also divided into two camps. I say we don't need the protection. We can organise our affairs without the fear the way the Quakers do, by reaching an agreement, not barely one-third of one, the way we do in our pretend 'democracy'. Quakers don't open the doors of the hall till everyone has has exhausted their argument and seen what the others were on about. A feeling of the meeting is what prevails as law.

That's democracy, not the never-ending series of bun-fights and catastrophes we wallow in. But I think we err in seeing the world as a problem to be fixed. It's not the problem to be fixed. We are that problem, and we are the only fixers we can count on to solve our problem, using the world as a foil. That's not recognised, which is why we're advancing backwards.

Sorry so long replying Sock Ratteez.
What you say sounds interesting, but just off the top of my head the problem appears to me to be that communitarianism is untenable in the overwhelming global context of market capitalism. It's an illusion to think that any group, state or nation can be self-determining. Given the prevailing economic winds, all cultures and countries must trim their sails to their best advantage. It's a charming illusion to think we can take democracy back to Athens when it's no longer the determining force behind policy. National policies are determined more or less automatically, by pragmatic realism. Domestic policies are the endless civil renegotiations that fulfil the fantasy for citizens that their mores and institutions mean something. They don't. Democratic values, work ethics, humanism, indeed belief systems generally, are tolerated, nay encouraged, because they incite the vast majority to police themselves and thus form a highly efficient engine of wealth. Meanwhile all governments abuse their cultures' ostensible values as a matter of course during global negotiations. They are slaves to Mammon, not ideals. Ideals are observed in the breach and patronised during elections.
The electorate is mostly the same, however each member may rationalise matters; thus I say our politicians precisely mirror us.
So, we can have a go at running things ourselves--shifting the furniture--we might even change a few things; all to the good, if that's what it takes to keep us orderly and in harness!

I agree we need a civilian think tank; but how would it be set up? And how do you prevent it becoming a discordant rabble? That's the beauty of libertarianism; it discourages organised thought in favour of naive egotism!

That's alright. I got sent off for excessive possession of the ball, so it didn't matter. Literal communitarianism in the old Quaker or Jeffersonian style can't be revived as a solo act, but its principles can be transposed into new media, indeed will have to be. Horse and buggy market Capitalism lingers because we have no imagination, hate change and remain convinced that greed is good even if it will kill us. Will we go for broke?

When things look hopeless enough, the change will come, maybe without us even feeling violated (as in 'revoluted' if there's such a word). Unfortunately, it'll see a lot of casualties. The current 'determining force/s behind policy' will be irrelevant in the new conditions we've created on our Capitalistic romp in the china shop.

The people I know who think Marx was wrong haven't read him. Marx described the alienation of man from himself that would bring him undone. In Australia, those who don't know are given higher status and greater influence than those who do. It's a nice leveller, you see. Keeps the smart-alecs at bay, and lets the serious, practical types do all the moving and shaking unhindered. The practice comes at a terrible price. The 'don't knows' have done their thing, and we'll reap what they've sown for us.

I can't speak for the present reality you refer to. It's deck-chairs on the Titanic to me, alas: interesting, but hollow, souless and mindless. Our condition is not one we can fix with mere good intentions. We fear material poverty (which can be sustained with few problems as so many of us prove daily) like the plague while tolerating (indeed mindlessly celebrating) our (psychic, or psychological) poverty that verges on spiritual bankruptcy.

What doth it profith a man/society to have abundant moolah in an asylum we inaptly call 'civilisation'? Therein lies the problem: we don't know what makes us civilised anymore. We've forgotten. I worked in a university and saw the wisdom (the humanities) being junked to make way for "real subjects" like marketing and management.

A sombre tune, Sock Ratteezz, as was mine. I'm doing a PhD very much on this topic, on the vestiges of Marxism as seen through the eyes of a few scattered survivors: Eagleton, Jameson, Critchley, Zizek and others, so these issues we're alluding to are of great interest--and genuine concern. I'm presenting at a conference later this year on the subject "Thinking the World in the 21st Century"--though I haven't written the paper yet--maybe I can address some of these issues we've raised. We shall have to compare notes some time.

Sock,

not a bad rave but not a lot of new or solutions either.
I would suggest that the main flaw I see in schools of thought is that none seem to take much account of human nature, "one size fits no-one"
so to speak. Likewise, pragmatism has tends to be the leaving an open window. through which the Vandals climb through and trash the best of interiors leaving a hollow, worthless shell.
Neither can they predict outcomes with reliability.... kinda like an intellectual economics.

What is missing is contingency tree i.e. if this happens then go to a. if that happens go to b. scenario rather than the rigidity of one size fits no one.

BTW my experience as an attender the 'friends'(Quakers) don't do it quite as you explained.

As Ms A. Roy put it, choice of Leader(party) is little like choosing a detergent (in side the flashy package they tend to be the same the flaw is "the system".

I also contend that your intelligentsia depiction is fraught with problems in that it ignores several pertinent points. The first that people fall into a continuoum not two classes that is a flaw in Marx. Statistics show fairly convincingly that an distribution is a bell curve with 2/3 within two std. devs from the mean.
"The great hopeless unwashed" are about 30% of the whole.

I also agree that communitarianism is doomed in that it would encourage tribalism which doesn't go well for thinking of the whole as does altruistic humanism. However the latter has its own set of issues. this tends to confirm my original assertion about schools.

I ran at the 2007 federal election as an independent as was quite proud.

Why not because i only got about 2500 votes but i was there to give a voice to my electorate, something that doesnt get done.

All we get is the party line as these idiots in government are nothing but sheep as they do as they are told.

Do it for the party or get out.

So when this next election comes round i will be there again, as i believe put your money where your mouth is.

This in itself is something all those in the parties do not believe as it is our money they use to get there for their retirement package.

This is the problem now nobody in government has the balls to do the right thing and really fight for the people in their electorate.

A sombre tune it is, perhaps, but as I think I said, the problem isn't 'out there' so much as 'in here'. Confucius remarked that 'what the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small mans seeks is in others.' No superior man can improve the conduct of the small men, or wish them away, so the 'out there' problem will never go away. It's an illusion; like democracy, communism, capitalism - anything that is unauthentic and runs on hypocrisy.

Since so few can accept that sombre view of our mess, they're obliged to solve the unsolvable much as Plato said our situation is hopeless but we have no choice but to act as though it were not (ie, pretend). His world was collapsing around his ears as ours is, and for very similar reasons. He was and we are living through what Robert Nisbet ('Twilight of Authority'-1981) described as one of the rare major collapses of authority. Another occurred to put paid to the medieval period when God was dismissed after fifteen overs.

Ours is a double wammy: (i) we haven't developed the skills (the love) needed to maintain our psychic integrity, and (ii) our physical life support system has suffered the same contempt and neglect. Apart from a few of the unwashed paying their taxes under duress, most things done nowadays are crimes committed against our collective selves, both psychic and physical. Capitalism is the organising 'philosophy' of that movement. We've become in great part desensitized to the signs of self-destruction, and, on a mere hunch something is wrong, seek solutions in our theory books on what one political party or another might do to save our bacon.

All bacon ends up in the pot one way or the other. We dismissed Marx, and the great irony of our collapse is that he foresaw it, and offered some friendly good advice.

I take the point about the Quaker ritual, Ex (if I may call you that). I referred to the traditional one that has been so eroded of late to mean little or nothing anymore. Again, it's the principles I see in such things, not the neglected and dilapidated reality of it in the hands of what amount to careless drunks.

In truth, we don't know how to get serious about reality. It involves discovering that it's a mirage that fades when you approach it. That's the shame as I see it (that we don't get exposure to such ideas). We've legislated in our hearts and minds not to engage in such womanish crap. Not when there's a buck out there to be got and a few derros to be rolled to get at it.

I don't think any of this is sombre. We have made these conditions in exactly the same way we make fridges and motor cars - by imagining them into being. What we don't yet understand is the collective nature of that imagining and that it lies behind the Genesis fable, as a clue.

Max Planck twigged to it as early as 1900. The quantum physicists backed him up. But with all the crackers going off during the twentieth century, none of us got to hear what it all meant for our tenure on this planet or our 'existence' in the cosmos. I think I may have strayed off topic here, but no matter which topic one picks now, it's either real or imaginary by the measure of these quantum discoveries.

Politics (and hence parties and all the -isms) without the self-realised person capable of love is doomed to a lot of gabbing and no real progress toward a solution. To me, the solution is for us all to realise there isn't a problem. There's nothing to be so afraid of that we need to kill each other off, using 'democracy' or any other fraudulent '-cy or -ism we clutch at like a Bible.

Sock Ratteezz,
I can't speak for anyone else, but for myself the problem is the context within which I would speak. Who speaks? Confucius wasn't familiar, I don't think, with Lacan's revision of Freud. In a poststructural age there is no self, let alone a "superior man". The self is a narcissus, domesticated by our symbolic order and taunted by the "real" that's lost forever. The popular notion of individualism is beneath contempt, yet cherished by the ignorant masses. The foundations upon which we propound our childish belief systems and intellectual hubris are thin air. The political context, against which we describe our arabesque reliefs, is nothing but an abstraction, an economic operating system we're in awe of that, apparently, can't be circumvented.
Now I'm interested in this notion of "love", "agape" I presume you mean, which also has no provenance in a non or politically anti-foundational age--just more evidence of human arrogance. And all this philosophical emasculation is the product of French Theorists--I haven't even mentioned Derrida and Foucault--who I like to liken to "crock" (how apt) and their "lost patrol".
We need a solution to the impasse, but you seem to suggest this is to be found in some retrieval of lost values?
It's refreshing to come across some unabashed conviction, I must say, but can it stand up to scrutiny?

Mitch,

Can it stand up to scrutiny indeed? In whose eyes would this scrutinising be conducted? It has to be the self for there is nothing else. The mob is an illusion amongst others we take seriously as entitities. And if it gets down to that, is it the false or the real self we're dealing with? There is no meaning to life other than what we can personally bring to it. Politics (and hence political parties, political discourse etc) are just bleatings of the lesser or false self - as you suggested, perhaps the narcissistic manifestation.

This is not sombreness but light in darkness. Senator Mason inducted me into the Democrats with a trick question to see which self of mine he was dealing with. Other parties just want your unquestioning loyalty and commitment to do their dirty work. Don Chipp chucked success in politics for principle. He alone in the Libs could see through the illusion. Nobody in Labor has got that sophisticated yet. Consider this: no politician finishes his career a success. Name one whose achievements didn't turn to sand. I've asked myself why that is so. Each of us has to wrestle with that particular gorilla in establishing what one does to give the cosmos its meaning.

Love is a mysterious thing; more mysterious than death. Agape probably comes closest of all the inadequate human attempts to define it. When Robert Louis Stevenson said that we're not here to succeed (but rather to fail, and in good spirits), he meant we're here to learn to love. Political agitation of any sort is groping in another direction. Compare Gandhi's politics to say Mussolini's.

Parties are at the latter end, which is why the Dems were so special, not as the party of the fairies at the bottom of the garden but the party that loved (before it was hijacked by air-headed women, and I exclude Janine Haines from that group). It served all, not just one or another axe-grinder's blinkered view. Fear is the villain.

By scrutiny, Sock Ratteezz, I mean can this agape be validated, or must it be taken on faith of some kind? Do you evoke a love that can mysteriously bind humanity together? Or a love that can be nurtured and cultivated in an individual self(not to say "soul")--a suitable vessel? Is this love, whether universal benign force or innate potential (peculiar to savants--Jesus, Buddha, Ghandi? Or a clerisy?), more than a human conceit--however wholesome its manifestation? Can it prevail, in other words, in the context of the benighted self it occupies--in company with the negative human drives with which it is forced to consort? Can it perhaps overcome them? Can this loving self see beyond its immurement in sensory reality, that is can it compose itself other than via our symbolic order--with all its chimeras and twisted logic? How can it be anything but of this world?
Indeed, we've not yet interrogated this "real" self. Is there a self that's somehow self-created--beginning as a blank slate, drawing all its experience from the world, yet somehow ending up aloof or independent? Moreover, all that sensory input is mediated by language. Language cannot describe the world, it merely rationalises it. There's (perhaps) no direct experience of the world, "language goes all the way down" according to Rorty". The sense we make of experience is pre-given. The sense of self is nurtured in us from birth so that we seldom question it. But what is it, is it anything if it isn't something pre-existing--a soul?
All of this is what I mean by "can it stand up to scrutiny?"
I don't say here what my own views are on the matter.
The integrity of a politics or ethics is of course similarly problematic.
'Tis a puzzlement!-)

It seems to me, that both you gentlemen still don't acknowledge, that untill you can define all the key principals,then any subsequent philosophic architecture is constructed on an unknown. Further to that, one could say currently unknowable, and therefore doomed to failure. Specifically, the principal nature of mankind.

There is no true me, or anyone else, other than in a never repeatable instantaneous temporal sense. Not unlike physics uncertainty principal, but unlike the sub atomic , time and circumstances change change the individual. Logically, having once observed/defined the individual, it can't be defined as the same again due to both changing *condition and circumstances*.

I would suggest that it is this *uncertainty* that renders any philosophy irrelevant given it must, by definition be without its key constant (the individual) and thereby its key principal. I argue, furthermore, ultimately without its primary purpose.

As previously stated, all schools of thought/philosophy to exist are obliged to *assume* that nature of the collective (humanity) is both knowable and known. But as I indicated, if the individual is unknown, then like the afore mentioned uncertainty principal also applies to the collective and as such can only be statistically known. Which implies *absolute* inaccuracy, therefore, confirming my previous posted 'open window scenario', and further, necessitates pragmatics inserted, to compensate for the inaccuracies/conflicts with reality.

The conclusion, is then inevitable, the resulting theoretical architecture is, practically speaking, rendered sterile hulk that no longer mirrors the contrived *wisdom* (of which you speak) and ultimately moot.

It is for this reason that the contingency tree is the only apparent workable architecture.

Thanks for the input, Examinator.
"It seems to me, that both you gentlemen still don't acknowledge, that untill you can define all the key principals,then any subsequent philosophic architecture is constructed on an unknown".
I thought that was just the point I was making? Indeed, it's not just the self that's problematic, but all our "logical" inferences. Scrutiny itself is not subject to scrutiny! Such anti-foundational thinking has a long history from Hume to Richard Rorty. It's all very fascinating, and it would do some OLOers good to ponder some of their dunderheaded assertions in this light. The problem is that deconstruction has neutered political theory and praxis. The philosophical Lost Patrol has not only rendered Marxism vulgar, but Culturalism (it's effeminate progeny) is persuaded of its own servile emasculation. The hegemonic order is held theoretically invulnerable, so cultural theorists spend their time tinkering with its innards, trying to make us equitable societies (a "long revolution"). But they can't reform capitalism's exploitative means of production, nor its rapacious raison d'etra. We cannot be an ethical society, with enlightenment values (if we would have them), until we reform our "whole" culture, from the outside in and the inside out.
What's encouraging, is that we feel this ethical drive so strongly. Can we then theorise an ethical foundation? That's the challenge.

If you join a local bowling or tennis club committee – any old committee will do, really – you'll see why party politics is all we can expect in the present world climate of thought. The herd never deviates from that norm because it requires revolt with all the fears and trepidation that implies. Control is trusted to a faction with a ruthless charismatic leader or benign warlord with devoted lieutenants.

There's a closet fascist in the breast of the average human being. It prevents him embracing anything noble by way of political systems designed to give everyone a genuine fair go. The Quakers are a rare exception because they have a common cosmic rallying point that eliminates the worldly traps the rest of us fall into. Ordinary mortals want worldly advantage, and political ideology is the reductionist means to get it.

The rest of us don't mind musing about how tolerant and fair we are at a barby with a few sherbets on board, but the fact is we have a natural disdain for fairness. It's socialism. It's not in our genes, so it's foreign to us jungle animals. We've never been conditioned to be fair in a capitalist society where winning and profiting are all.

To conclude my answer to the thread's question, I have esteem only for what leads us to wisdom and civility, and most political parties aren't even in that ball park. We can easily redo the Constitution to ensure we only get Peter Andrens and Tony Windsors in Canberra. But it requires guts, imagination and a desire to live as opposed to vegetate. We have none of these vital ingredients.

Psychologist Erich Fromm's insight is illuminating. This life is a birthing process, he said, and most of us opt for death before the process gets under way. We avoid life because it might hurt. Thus we maximise the hurt and end it all in total confusion with no positive result. All to do again! No political party has ever shown any interest in this problem that I'm aware of – other than the Democrats

Sock Ratteez,
I know Fromm's stuff well, I was reading him long before I went to university, along with Hesse and Jung--though I'm bound to say I think they were naive. I certainly don't think anything you've said is dunderheaded. I hope I didn't give that impression. Nothing is settled for me.
I was also sad to see the Democrat's demise, btw.

Mitch,

Fromm's 'The Art of Loving' was far from naïve in my book. I found the man to be a genius. Love as it pertains to your political party question isn't adopted as a conscious strategy. One doesn't love at will, on demand, as though it can be arranged like a street demo. It's a state of mind; of humility and awe. One taps into a universal vein. You ask how can it be anything but of this world? Nothing is really 'of this world' beyond our shifty-eyed mental engagement, which is bamboozled.

The sci-fi writer Phillip K Dick put it the best way I've seen: "We're aliens here. This isn't our home. We're here (in this foreign borstal) to fashion the sort of world we want and to be what we seek to be. And we'll get just what we fashion and what we seek." Language isn't needed to cope with the implications of that insight. Rorty is way off the mark, I think, but his Mum loves him. The ego is what's conditioned from birth by those who imagine they love us, with our connivance.

We're conditioned to want to know the right answer but since we range from apes to angels (Disraeli) there can be no right (or wrong) answer, only varying degrees of initiation. Telling will never do the trick (pearls before swine). We're impervious to it because of the misalignment of states of psychic evolution between parties. I found my truths with men we call existentialists. Sartre chose communism as a field of action to create his existential meaning. I liked what the Dems stood for and did.

Australia has a lot of things to be utterly ashamed of, and the passing of the Chipp's party will be seen to be one of them, especially considering what has endured on the parliamentary benches. He made the pack of hyenas look dignified for a short while.