"the good old days" of European dominance and privilege,
Paul1405,
You lament the loss of your mob's dominance a lot more than the Europeans do ! It shines through via hatred in just about every one of your posts.

"your mob's dominance", pray tell Indy, what mob is that? I identify as an Australian, born and bred, nothing more or nothing less. The fact I oppose an ardent racists such as yourself, doesn't make me lesser of an Australian than anyone else. I believe you are of some undisclosed nationality from a distant land, possibly Alabama in 1950.

ttbn, age has nothing to do with it, David who posts on this Forum from time to time is, I believe in his 90's, yet is a progressive thinker, susceptible to modern ideas and has a very positive outlook. Unlike you who is the most negative poster on the Forum, always whinging and whining, down on all those who are not like you, fortunatly you being part of a minuscule minority, the half a percent mob. Following your active flirtation with the a far right fascists and his party, and its quick removal from the political landscape by the voting public, you nowdays launch into bitter attacks on all moderate progressives. Of course you never attack the extremes of the right, Hanson and Palmer, just content to silently support such fools.

While you were "crying in your beer", I attended a fringe festival on the weekend where the talents of young, and the not so young, were on display. I have nothing but confidence that tomorrows generation will improve the world, and not drag it down as an old naysayer like you would have us believe.

Proud Boy Jose' as one who supported far right violence in Washington January 6th wake up fella, you are in the company other ratbags who call me Marxists, I call you a NAZI. Your belief that Marxists are everywhere is laughable.

If "age has nothing to do with it", Paul, why are you always trying to belittle me and other blokes by calling us "old farts"? You are an ageist who abuses people for being old. Perhaps you are so far into la la land that you can’t remember what you have said to and about people.

If 90 year old David wasn't a Lefty like you, you would be calling him an old fart, too.

As for me being 'negative' - bullshite! Having opinions different from yours is not negative. I'm very positive and sincere about what I think.

Your problem , I believe, comes from your own ageing and regret for a long gone youth when people might have taken notice of you - where they now laugh at you behind your back, if not yet to your face. That will come, too. We all know about old women being described as 'mutton dressed up as lamb'. There is the psychological equivalent in males, and you are it. You probably think you are still amusing to young women, who laugh at you, or think that you are a dirty old man.

Rubbishing people who are old, who, unlike you, appreciate being old and wouldn't want to go through the traumas of youth again for quids, will not help your personal problems, you poor, sad fellow.

Dear Paul,

The Western civilization narrative of the past as
David Brooks points out and what most of us grew
up with was an accumulation of great ideas and innovations,
which we acquired from the Egyptians, through Athens,
Magna Carta, The Age of Faith, the Rennaissance, and the
Declaration of the Rights of Man.

There were certain great figures like Socrates,
who helped propel nations to higher reaches
of the humanistic ideal.

This Western narrative came with certain values.
It set a standard for what great
statesmanship looked like. It set a framework within which
political argument could happen and most importantly provided
a set of common goals.

However, beginning decades ago many people, especially in
institutions of higher learning began to question the
Western civilization narrative.

Today we have many who blame
academia for teaching a "darker" view of history, one that
stresses a history of oppression dealing with things like
the slave trade, racism, and imperial militarism.

This unfortunately reflects a lack of understanding the
perspective of the courses at institutions of higher learning
that deal with global history.

Yes the courses do deal
with oppression but they do not neglect the economic,
political and cultural contributions that Western colonial
rulers also made. They try to present a more balanced viewpoint.

What should be concerning to us all is the fact that over the
past few years there have been negative changes. We have
entered the age of authoritarian men - from Putin, Xi-jinping,
Kim-Jong-un (and Donald Trump).

Institutionalized party-based authoritarian regimes like
China and Russia are turning into premodern cults of
personality. Unstable and dangerous.

When Donald Trump was running for office he violated every norm
of statesmanship built up over many centuries and many Americans
did not notice or care.

In Europe new political parties are rising up - and heaven
help us if they grow. As David Brooks says:

"... If you think that the whole idea of Western civilization
is reactionary and oppressive, wait until you get a load
of the world that comes after it."

Australia's academia, unless it has changed recently, is largely incapable of answering questions about where western civilisation is heading in these more difficult times

The climate con and Net Zero politics are helping to transition us from democratic capitalism to feudal serfdom and contributing to the downfall of the West, at enormous cost to the working and middle classes, with loss of manufacturing jobs, and increasing prices, particularly in housing and energy. There are constant threats to food supplies with attacks on farmers and carping on what we should be eating. The piffle about a few hundred thousand new jobs that ‘might’ be created by unreliable energy is absurd, given that our workforce is approximately 13 million.

Technocratic elites are establishing themselves as our rulers, and have never-before-seen in the West totalitarianism and abuse of freedoms afforded to the elites by Covid 19 and a total lack of opposition.

Our government doesn’t have the guts to tell us just how worse off we will be, but a UK report does admit that the costs will ultimately “pass through to households”. We are already paying for subsidies to unreliable energy and Big Business, and to people with the highest incomes, who emit 3 times as much CO2 as the lowest income earners.

Taking action on climate change simply means taking away jobs, cars, housing, electricity and food from the lowest income earners.

The West has already started to change fundamentally.