The Premier of New South Wales (NSW) has resigned following the announcement that the Australian state’s Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) is investigating her conduct between 2012 and 2018 that “constituted or involved a breach of public trust”. Reuters has the story.
Berejiklian’s shock resignation comes as the state, which has an economy larger than Singapore, Thailand or Malaysia, battles the biggest Covid outbreak in the country and is poised to begin ending months-long lockdowns as Australia sets to reopen international borders in November.
Berejiklian said the issues being investigated were “historical matters” but she felt compelled to resign because of the long time frames likely to be involved in the investigation. She also said the state needed certainty over its leadership amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“I state categorically I have always acted with the highest level of integrity,” she said at a news conference.
The ICAC said in a statement on its website that it will hold further public hearings as part of its ongoing investigation, Operation Keppel, on October 18th.
That investigation has already heard Berejiklian was once in a secret relationship with a state legislator who is the focus of its corruption investigation. …
Berejiklian is the second NSW premier to resign because of an ICAC investigation. NSW leader Barry O’Farrell quit in 2014 after giving evidence in which he forgot to tell the commission he had accepted a gift of a $3,000 bottle of Grange wine.
Berejiklian said she had told ministers in her Government if they were the subject of an integrity investigation they should stand aside until their name was cleared, but in her case, as Premier this wasn’t an option. She will leave parliament as soon as a by-election can take place. …
Berejiklian gave evidence at an ICAC hearing 12 months ago, and denied any wrong doing.
ICAC on Friday said the scope of its investigation had widened and includes whether between 2012 and 2018 Berejiklian “engaged in conduct that constituted or involved a breach of public trust by exercising public functions in circumstances where she was in a position of conflict between her public duties and her private interest” as she was in a personal relationship with the then NSW MP Daryl Maguire.
The potential breach involved grant funding promised to community organisations in Maguire’s electorate of Wagga Wagga, and whether she failed to report, or encouraged, corrupt conduct by Maguire. Maguire’s legal representative declined to comment.
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I suspect the answer is because they are not very nice people.
They’re extremely illiberal.
One of the most surprising was Dominic Lawson, previously a defender of liberty, he became an especially evil Branch Covidian, comparing lockdown opponents to Harold Shipman.
Perhaps covid had softened Lawson’s brain?
He’s the quintessential “run with the hare, hunt with the hounds” type, and, like Neil, Morgan and the rest of the motley, are supremely hypocritical and dishonest. When I read a lot of his stuff in the ST, it’s a wonder that they pay for his rantings and ravings.
In that family, apples don’t fall far from the tree.
Perhaps he is. I hadn’t noticed until he became a Branch Covidian and I shall never buy the paper again.
‘comparing lockdown opponents to Harold Shipman.’
Surely the NHS jabbers bare the comparison to Shipman as both killed large numbers of people?
Hancock murdered thousands more than Shipman
Please refer to the former Health Secretary by his proper name of Fart Hancockwomble.
At the time, January 03 2021, I had to look it up, there were few jabs administered then.
Evil camouflaged and justified as being for the greater good is the worst of all evil, and its perpetrators and apologists are evil, psychopaths and tyrants.
You are probably correct in that observation. Some of them can’t practice what they preach.
They’re not liberals, except when it comes to sex, then it’s anything goes. Liberal is the wrong label for too many of them, ie the radical Left.
The real classic liberals, eg, Dave Rubin, Joe Rogan, Russell Brand, now have more in common with the so-called right, ie, conservatives, than with the loony Left, who are determined to destroy everything in the West.
A long but really interesting essay. You can see that the ‘establishment’ in the UK & US & I suppose the EU, having decided that the lumpen proletariat weren’t trust worthy enough not to elect Trump, or to reject Brexit, that agency had to be removed from them. Hence, decision making were retained within a narrow group of apparatchiks, all left of centre who, like the left in general, hate the working class.
Perhaps this was the true sin of Boris & his cabinet, who, having benefitted from the vote of the proletariat in voting for Brexit then voting Boris into power with an 80 seat majority, abandoned them & caved in to the blob.
Really good point. Boris would be enjoying meteoric success were it not for him stupidly imagining the country would rally behind him in his quest for green virtue.
He was blind (deliberately or otherwise) to the national pride engendered by Brexit and essentially dragged us straight back into the clutches of the EU.
Except he was always of the globalist mindset, pro immigration, etc. He talked a good game but has spectacularly failed to deliver. He’s been closer in policy decisions to the progressive Left Democrats in the US than to conservatives such as Desantis. He was and still is following the same policies that are destroying America, and the UK.
His enthusiasm for Turkey to be admitted to the EU shows his Turkish origin and his wish to be surrounded here by Turkish immigrants.
Difficult if not impossible for Doris to recognise or empathise with any of our national pride since he is not one of us, being a Turk born in New York.
Surely the only problem is one of semantics? ‘Liberal’ doesn’t actually mean ‘liberal’
I had similar thoughts, although I was contrasting ‘Liberal’ with Libertarian.
Classic Liberals are largely where Libertarians are now, to the right of the Tories.
The Libertarian party has ditched its demands to drop any type of state intervention, now recognising a reformed NHS and welfare state is valuable and necessary.
I think the most important thing to aspire to is distancing government from business. We are where we are because every party has embraced science and technology and its turned into crony capitalism, verging on fascism as the wealthy elite are almost running the show now.
I’m not sure how that’s achieved unless we get a movement demanding it.
I would say that it is now fascism as the governments are now making political decisions & interventions to benefit the 100 WEF corporations, behind which the real fascist dictators are hiding.
Certainly looks like you’ve put your finger on the real issue.
“Liberal individualism has an innate tendency towards authoritarianism”
Liberal can mean either leftist/radical/socialist, or it can mean tolerant, anti-authoritarian, moderate individualist. In modern times the former was usually the American sense and the latter the English sense, but as in most things the American has come to overwhelm the English in our culture in the past few decades.
I want to live in a liberal society in the latter sense, but not in the former sense. The former sense absolutely has the innate authoritarianism the author mentions.
Yes, I suppose an American would call Jeremy Corbyn a liberal
Definitely.
Jeremy Corbyn voted against lockdown and probably was sensible enough not to take the vac., although it would be none of my business to ask him that question.
I’d describe him as part of ‘the old left’. The Big Brother Watch video ‘Pandemic Police State’ interviewed his colleague Dawn Butler MP. Her views on lockdown were near-identical to those of, er, Steve Baker MP. Both were dead against it.
“Jeremy Corbyn voted against lockdown“
Jeremy Corbyn was a full on zero covid nutter who spent the vital Feb/March 2020 period accusing sensible folk of being “eugenicists” who were going to kill masses of people because they didn’t think we should panic, and he was still a zero covid nutter in January 2021 when he was a signatory of the Socialist Campaign Group’s Self-Declaration of Incompetence by Virtue of Insanity:
https://labouroutlook.org/2021/01/30/socialist-campaign-group-calls-for-urgent-new-strategy-to-save-lives-zerocovid-covid19uk/
“With Britain passing the horrific milestone of 100,000 Covid deaths this week, members of the Socialist Campaign Group have called on the Government to adopt the Zero Covid strategy that has effectively eliminated the virus in many Pacific and East Asian countries.“
Signed by
Diane Abbott MP
Tahir Ali MP
Apsana Begum MP
Christine Blower, House of Lords
Pauline Bryan, House of Lords
Richard Burgon MP
Dawn Butler MP
Ian Byrne MP
Dan Carden MP
Shami Chakrabarti, House of Lords
Katy Clark, House of Lords
Jeremy Corbyn MP
Bryn Davies, House of Lords
Mary Kelly Foy MP
John Hendy, House of Lords
Ian Lavery MP
Rebecca Long-Bailey MP
John McDonnell MP
Ian Mearns MP
Grahame Morris MP
Kate Osborne MP
Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Lloyd Russell-Moyle MP
Zarah Sultana MP
Jon Trickett MP
Claudia Webbe MP
Mick Whitley MP
Nadia Whittome MP
Beth Winter MP
Tony Woodley, House of Lords.
Let’s have no more apologetics for that scumbag.
In March 2021, he was listed as voting in the same lobby as David Davis MP or Chris Chope MP, or indeed Graham Stringer MP.
Unless there are two Jeremy Corbyns, he appears to have changed his views somewhat between January and March. If in Jan. 2021 anyone had voted for the loony zero-COVID idea, it’s excusable for them to change their mind after two months.
Too little, too late. When it mattered, and when he might have made a difference, he was pushing in the wrong direction.
You might feel inclined to give him a second chance, but I’m not, any more than I’m going to give the likes of Johnson a second chance, and he’s never going to be significant in British politics again anyway.
Yesterday’s man, and one of the Guilty Men of the British covid panic
I see the MP found guilty of harassment after threatening to throw acid over a suspected love rival is on the list
Corbyn is also anti NATO, strongly pro Russia, anti globalist, and is sympathetic to a range of what would be termed conspiracy theories.
So he has has a surprising amounting common with members of this forum!
He was also pro squatting in the 70s when protesting with squatters against the council redeveloping Maida Vale south of Harrow Road.
Although wether the large council estate was an improvement rather than renovating the Edwardian houses is debatable.
Would that be the Dawn Butler who bought a house in her Brent constituency to be nearer Westminster that is exactly the same distance away as her east London home is. Who then put in an invoice for a jacuzzi on expenses & when turned down turned all girlish & said how complicated it all was filling in expenses for oneself.
Don’t you mean leftist collectivism, because that is what has been at play. I like George Galloway, but at the start of the pseudo pandemic he was pushing this ideology so I stopped listening to him. After seeing some of his recent videos he doesn’t seem to cover the so called pandemic, or gene therapy jabs. I can’t see him being against the Truckers in Canada though I’ve not heard his opinion on it. With the war in Ukraine, that seems to occupy most of his videos now.
Galloway’s always been good on foreign policy, not so much domestic politics, for me, though a lot of the old left, since they were ousted from power by the Blairite left and became outsiders, have adopted some good populist positions.
Regardless, I usually enjoy listening to Galloway even if I disagree with much of his underlying politics, because he’s a good and interesting speaker.
Recently he seems to have taken a stand for free speech with his political “opposites” like Laurence Fox, which is very encouraging.
Thanks for that explanation, I was wondering about the current use of this word for a long time. Being English, I understand liberal to mean moderate and tolerant, not radical.
I do not want this English usage to be overwhelmed by another Americanism
Two nations, divided by a common language
The only thing most of them are liberal with is their illiberality.
Liberals are essentially left wing.
Political divisions are based on your attitude to freedom and equality. Both of these are good things, on their own. However, if you allow lots of freedom, you end up with a very unequal society, and you can only get a perfectly equal society by removing all freedoms – so they are two sides of a see-saw.
When someone looks at any political issue, if they chose freedom over equality they are right-wing – if they prefer equality to freedom they are left-wing.
Except the left isn’t interested in equality, but in equity, which is nit the same.
Equality means treating everyone the same, regardless of race, creed, sex, etc. The
Equality of opportunity versus equality of outcome.
eg, Anyone can take part in a 100 metre race. The best/fastest person wins.
Equity means everyone has to reach the finish line at the same time, regardless of individual ability. If one person is faster than someone else, it has to be because the loser was oppressed by the faster person.
What gives you the idea that ‘the left’ are best described as being to the left politically?
I was talking about people’s basic political attitudes. It must be obvious to anyone by now that no politician has ANY firmly held political principles beyond wanting to get into power. Both Labour (under Blair) and the Conservatives (under Johnson) have shown themselves happy to adopt the basic philosophies and practices of the other side if it will get them elected.
Political parties are now all full of semi-religious activists and petty dictators – all trying to be Napoleon. There is no principle in any of them…
I think as far as where British politics is concerned the entire concept of what was once liberalism has become completely lost. The so called Liberal Democrats are a classic example of how principles can be sacrificed for the sake of expediency.
I found the article unreadable due to the chopping and changing of what “liberal” meant throughout
Because they are not really liberals?
They’re most very illiberal.
Maybe you don’t need a conspiracy of hostile elites to explain this, but it helps, and given the plethora of evidence penned by their own organisations, it’s pretty clear one exists. We ignore it at our peril.
What the author describes is the morality of altruism, the morality behind every totalitarian ideology.
I switched over to Talk TV last night to mike graham and Ian Collins smearing people who are worried about the WHO and the WEF as conspiracy nutters. As you say, we ignore these psychopaths at our peril.
The WEF could write a whole magazine-worth of articles, set up an entire website of information, put out a video montage of politicians and princes, write a book, etc, etc, and the likes of Collins and Graham, both of whom should know better, will still deny any of it’s true.T
Talk about having your head up your own rear end…
Everything is in the public domain for the WEF plans. All the treatments for covid were in medical publications, obscure ones admittedly, but all readily available. They rely on the rest of us to not notice until it’s too late, so that they can get away with the implementation, aided & abetted by useful idiots in the MSM.
Those worried about the WHO includes Julia Hartley Brewer and Matt Ridley. I wonder if Mike Graham is going to tell JHB that she’s a conspiracy nutter?
We need a new phrase instead of “conspiracy theory.” How about “spoiler alert”?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SjwWtQ-OoCw
Julia Hartley-Brewer slams ‘terrifying’ WHO Pandemic Pact
Child shoots hand up, is it because they became irrelevant a long, long time ago and now realise that they are never going to have any super powers and so instead they’ve become really annoying?
Because ‘Liberal’now mean’ “Liberal Fascist ‘- a term first coined by eugenecist H G Wells
Ref: “Liberal Fascism” by Jonah Goldberg which everyone really ought to have read years ago, as it tells us exactly where we are going (wrong) and how we got here.
A very good essay. As a political philosophy liberalism becomes incoherent. An absolutist liberal will become illiberal. A consistent liberal must at the same time allow those who would practice totalitarianism. Liberalism was once concern with protecting religious freedoms, but now religious freedoms are being suppressed for the sake of sexual liberalism. Some voices must be silenced because it might hurt someone’s feelings.
We should just not use the word “black” to designate “white”, that’s all. But it’s funny how simpletons fall for it and essentially stage attacks against themselves in the process.
This is an excellent article. Long and certainly no light read, but very informative.
Some people want power and control over the rest of us. They’ll use existing philosophies, political movements, organized religions, clubs, groups, anything as long as it helps them establish themselves.
That’s why the tradition in Britain is to simply limit anyone’s power over anyone else, then it doesn’t matter if a Tony Blair pretends to be a Labour man. Or if the Conservative Party is full of woke dreamers.
We are lost because we keep expecting others to solve our problems. We need a movement to reestablish individual freedom and the associated responsibilities that go with it. I don’t care what illiberal liberals think. I just want to be left in peace like most people.
They refer to themselves as ‘Elite’. Nuff said.
And they use warm and fluffy language. But it’s not about what they say, but what they do.
“Her analysis suggests liberal individualism has latent in it a tendency to totalitarianism”
Bollocks!
Collectivism is totalitarian, not individualism.
The entire article is pretentious balderdash.
The response to Covid was the result of mediaevalist philosophy reviving the ancient mediaeval superstition of lockdown, environmentalism is mediaevalist philosophy.
Very interesting but surely what has taken place in this country is very simple.
The public sector, including a para-statal prime contractor commercial sector, has captured the government.
The only way back is to shrink the size of government, massively reduce regulation, to allow smaller companies to thrive.
A great deal of the size of government is there simply to interface and comply with undemocratic impositions from supranational organisations: WHO, OECD, IMF and so on.
In short the remedy we need is a strong and reforming Prime Minister of free market liberal conviction.
Instead we have had Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May and Bunter.
And there is nothing better on the horizon.
Ultimately weak government leads to war…….
Very well put.
“The public sector, including a para-statal prime contractor commercial sector, has captured the government.
The only way back is to shrink the size of government, massively reduce regulation, to allow smaller companies to thrive.”
Sadly, I don’t think it’s as simple as that. What you refer to as “para-statal prime contractor commercial sector” seems based on our recent experience to be the inevitable result of partially reducing regulations in a generally state-dominated society, which is basically what Margaret Thatcher’s governments mostly did (and I voted for her party and have no regrets in doing so, given the situation and alternatives at the time).
I think there needs to be active advantaging of small businesses,along with other sources of independent-minded self-reliance (family, community, farms, faith etc) against big business as well as the big state.
Not sure how to achieve it, but that kind of decentralisation of power and authority and promotion of self-confidence and self-reliance (and hopefully common sense) seem to me to be what’s needed.
In other words, I agree with what you state as the goal here, but doubt the proposed means will work.
The keyword here is “self-described”. For the linguistically challenged, the current policies have as much to do with liberalism as Hitler’s policies had to do with socialism. But paradoxically it has become fashion among (dumb) political opponents – like those who frequent this site – to blame “liberalism” for extremely non-liberal (i.e. authoritarian) policies, pouring oil into the fire.
“to blame “liberalism” for extremely non-liberal (i.e. authoritarian) policies”
See comments above about the distinct meanings of the term liberal in modern American/English. Eg:
noun
The former has nothing to with being non-authoritarian, but being non-authoritarian is the essence of the latter.
Sadly like many words the meaning has been corrupted by the Left for their own self-aggrandisement.
Number 2 is the correct definition of liberal. Number 1 is the corruption by the delusional for self -congratulatory purposes particularly in the US.
See my reply to rayc on this.
As far as my own experience and recollection goes, it origjnates mostly in being used as a descriptive term for both leftists and true liberals in the US, by non-liberals/leftists.
Yes, and this deliberate hijacking and skewing of an original meaning of a word to mean the opposite is the whole trick here. We’ve seen exactly this same method applied many times during the past two years.
This goes back decades at least, in the US where it seems to originate. Americans were abusing both leftists and true liberals as “liberals” back in the sixties and probably before that.
In the UK we had a Liberal Party that was distinct from the socialist Labour Party, which tended to militate against it for a while, but the American usage was creeping into British usage by at least the late C20th, by my own experience.
Once we understand that ‘liberal’ (in its current sense) is just a cover-word for Communist, everything is explained. Communism found a ready market among intellectuals – Cambridge Five of the Cold War era – and ‘On the other hand, Covid culture has brought to the surface the usually subterranean core of the liberal project, which is not merely political but anthropological: to remake man. ‘
That is Marx’s take on Humanity, that because of false consciousness – brainwashing by the capitalists to consume, and consider personal material well-being to be a measure of self-worth – Mankind needs to be re-educated to put the collective of individuals of intrinsic equal worth, before his own selfish needs.
What has changed is our institutions, particularly the political class, have been colonised by people who think this way… covert Communists (who do not self-identify as such, but by nature that is surely what they are) and there is no competition from those for whom rule of law, individualism, limited government, democratic accountability, self-responsibility, self-reliance is inbred.
We have a uni-party State = tyranny. Only one way to fix that.
Anyone who has worked with these liberals at a university or similar will know that these people are only nice when everything is going their way.
That project can come to fruition, it seems, only with a highly illiberal form of government, paradoxically enough.
Much like a comment I remember from Monty Python. As I recall, it was the Pope saying:
“If you are in charge of a religion based on tolerance and love, you need to be a vicious authoritarian bastard to get anything done…”
Well the opening passage is drivel, so no need to read the rest.
Short version: Another ‘murican blissfully unaware of anything outside of the USA who believes that states are an evil conspiracy to be overcome writes the usual load of tosh.
Hobbes background was the Thirty Years War in central Europe, were civil society pretty much broke down and was replaced with a brutal anarchy of marauding bands of armed men nominally serving this or that local noble. To avoid such a state, he advocates in favour of an absolutist monarchy were some souvereign, by virtue of being the most powerful noble, violently suppresses all other would-be military actors and relatively poweless citizens who can’t raise armies of their own can thus live their lives in peace and security, instead of being tortured to death to make them hand over their valuables. That was about a real situation and not some idle, theoretical speculation about the nature of man.
Someone who is capable of writing Hobbes was a liberal without realizing how nonsensical this is (presumably along the following rationale: I’m ignorant about European history. Hobbes advocated for a strong state for some reason I don’t understant and don’t want to know. I have states [because I hate paying taxes]. I hate liberal who love states. Therefore, Hobbes is a closet-liberal) will probably find evidence of the tooth fairy next.
They may self describe as liberals, in business I think I would describe them as smarmy bas***ds.
It is all about ‘The Greater Good’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u8vd_YNbTw
I don’t think there is a simple explanation for this. My own theory is twofold, firstly that what we know as political liberalism somehow became co-opted by the globalists. The second observation is borne out from what I was seeing in the days of New Labour with the insidious rise of political correctness, which can best be described as a function creep in so far as where our public institutions were concerned. I witnessed then that liberals didn’t like losing the argument, a view that was further reinforced by the intolerance shown towards leave voters in the EU Referendum of 2016. The liberal classes like to be seen as occupying the moral high ground, which I believe would account for most of the virtue signalling pantomime we have witnessed over the past two years.
Attempt at answering the question: That’s because these US liberals are anything but liberal. They’re just misgendered as liberal because they think it’s an inalienable human right to have sex with everyone and anything one could conceivably have sex with. This makes them more liberal in this respect than traditional Christians who believe that sex is principally amoral and verboten, except between a single man and the single woman he’s married to with the intent of begetting children. Or claim to believe that.
In all other matters, the principal individual virtue of so-called US liberals is cowardice. Hence, they’re obviously keen to protected by a powerful state from everything which could conceivable harm them in the slightest. Eg, ordinary bad weather or people expressing uncommon opinions.
The true tragedy is that there seems to be no demand for classical liberalism any more – only two opposing camps of progressive authoritarians and conservative authoritarians, the fight between which occurs on the grounds which you described (i.e. societal norms) while they both agree that authoritarianism and suppression of opposing views is the way to go forward.
In the photo at the top of the article, I reckon the only person who thinks for himself is the guy with his fist raised.
Liberal is the wrong label for them.
The real liberals have more in common with conservatives and are not cheerleaders for the new world order.
Those referred to in the article are not liberals. They’re progressives, and have always been inclined towards authoritarianism.
“We want total freedom to be who we want to be, and we will beat you into submission if you don’t agree with us.”
Or: inside every progressive is a totalitarian screaming to get out.
Progressive is also a bad term, as progress generally has positive connotations. In reality they are deeply regressive, as in wishing to create a feudal-like state where higher authorities (formerly the Church, now state-church) dictate to its child-like loyal subjects how they may or may not behave.
I don’t recognize the appellation ‘liberal’. I vehemently defy their argot and specious argument, inveterate liars they cannot help themselves. In all of their spiel the truth is creased up in the gutter and as the left do – spat at and urinated on.
I do understand very well what the ambitions are of the Alinskyites, cultural Marxists, critical theorists, the victimhood pedlars of this poisonous dogma. Laying bogus claim to the moral high ground as they shoot down from the salient on all those who and rightly do seek to pick argument in their flimsy, unable to withstand the merest critique of their baleful credo. Now reference here, Alinsky’s “rules for radicals” – its basic but it works, repetition, changing the goalposts and yakking non sequiturs. For sure, not many people can withstand the onslaught – in avalanche of shouty lies, deforming the argument and insinuating pus filled half truths of the left mantras. Oh sure they know how to argue and beat down. If they’re not succeeding in shutting down the argument. Out comes the old shiv under the ribs – perennials, waycist, denier, white boy, alt right – whatever. The <s>liberals</s> left are decent?
Their greatest lie, ‘we must have a debate’, unless the left can frame the very narrowest terms of reference, always ‘debate’ is, the last thing ever on their minds. All because other than throwing taxpayer’s money at problems or providing solutions to manufactured idiocies ie heat pumps to solve a crisis which doesn’t exist man made warbling. Know it, the left, throw them all together, collectively – they just haven’t got a clue, no answers, no debate just lots and lots of vituperative hot air and cant.
From Pol Pot to Mao and Tony Blair, Mutti, Olaf and the clown ‘running Italy’, economically Italy is on its knees see the devastation some baneful men can wreak. OK some were backed by the gun. Tony Blair, incredibly is still courted in the UK only God could explain that. He caused some similar chaos and death, only through a compliant media and spinning an avalanche of lies ‘WMDs’ for one. Ask yourselves, why do people put up with and vote for this wrecking and all because the left are the suave, smooth communicators of their filth, a mess of lies and deceits – they’re well practiced.
at it.
How do they get away with it? All because the left are never challenged laughing at the proles stiffing them for their overpaid stipends. Moreover when you challenge, from HR exec to piffling politician, council officer, to talking head experts, immediately you begin to see through their inanely threadbare waffle. Never let the opportunity to question them the left go to waste.
They aren’t liberals they are progressive globalists, they are at the other end of the political spectrum to an actual genuine liberal.
A liberal says live and let live, these progressive globalists say do as I say not as I do, juct look at the fat drunk Boris and his parties.
the man in the pic above looks like he’s saying “cmon, lets av it”
“Why Did Self-Described ‘Liberals’ Become Cheer Leaders for the Rise of Covid Totalitarianism?”
Because they’re herd thinkers who enjoy Telling Other People What To Do.
Probably one of the most boring threads ever.
Anything written by Matthew Crawford is a mandatory read.
Very hard to see how the writer can justify claiming lockdown is a specifically liberal response, when the most severe lockdown happened in an aggressively non liberal country – China.
Whereas a country usually regarded as hyper liberal – Sweden – is taken as a hero for its hands off approach.
In fact there isn’t much of a correlation between nature of government and covid response. (Except perhaps for a slight trend for populist leaders with autocratic tendencies to resist lockdown – eg Bolsinaro, Erdogan, Trump and Modi.)
The article is all theory with insufficient connection to what actually happened.
It also requires a certain human type which, fittingly enough, looks like a caricature of the medieval personality: a credulous, fearful person. This brings us to the Hobbesian anthropological program.
No. This describes the ‘Enlightenment’ largely irrational and un-enlightened. ‘Scientism’ comes from the ‘Age of Reason’ itself entirely unreasonable. Better Burke than Locke. Better constitutional division of powers than the Atheist Chuch of Reason of 1789 in Paris.
Everyone misses the obvious. No faith, no real education, no understanding of the past, no critical thinking. Mass formation, mass beliefs. This is how you get Rona fascism. From Thomas Paine, Comte, Robespierre, Darwin, Freud, to Anthon Fauci. A straight bloody line.