Philosophy
An Open Letter To Mr. Alexander Downer
This open letter assumes the reader has also read the Australian Financial Review column by Alexander Downer dated 4 Dec 2022 found here . Start there and follow with this Open Letter. 27 January 2023 Dear Mr. Downer, I read your Australian Financial Review column dated 4 December 2022 with great interest. As a former State and Federal Executive member of the Liberal...
How Christianity Informs Classical Liberalism
In my last two articles, I showed how George Orwell’s 1984 seems to be coming true, how the size of government grows ever larger and how rent-seekers are not only doing what they’ve always done but are getting much better at it. How this happens without sparking a popular uprising, I invoke the fable of 'the shrinking forest'. I...
The Tree of Liberty
If you look at the evolution of the political landscape over the last few decades, you’ll notice some things just don’t seem to add up. Not that long ago, populism was at the heartland of left-wing ideology. Occupy Wall Street, fighting ‘big pharma’ and ending the military-industrial complex were the biggest political and social movements of the 2010s – all...
Look What Happens When You Abandon Philosophy!
I’ve said it before a hundred times. I’ll say it again. Political philosophy matters. There’s no point telling me that philosophy is for intellectuals only. No! Philosophy is the bedrock on which policies are created. Everyday, regular Australians instinctively know this even if they’re not philosophy wonks. Here’s the proof. When the Liberal Party of Australia publishes Our Beliefs, it just doesn’t sound right. It feels...
5 Quotes From Lord Jonathan Sumption
These five quotes are from a speech delivered on 13 October 2022 in Australia by The Right Honourable Lord Jonathan Sumption, former senior judge of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. They go to explaining how our citizens invite authoritarianism, the cost of this, and what has held back despotism to date … “In modern conditions, risk-aversion and the fear...
Why Liberty Is Losing and What To Do About It
SETTING THE SCENE You could be forgiven for feeling despair at the state of Australian politics right now. Ditto for the West as a whole. Unfortunately, despair doesn’t take us where we need to go. There are four forces pulling us in the wrong direction at the moment. The quick summary is that the Liberty-Authority war is raging but Liberty is losing too...
What John Stuart Mill Says We Should Do Next
On Saturday, before the polls closed, I correctly predicted the Victorian election result. My forecast wasn’t genius. I’ve just been around politics a long, long time and see the perennial rules of the game. Knowing the result is the easy part. Discerning ‘why’, well, that’s another level of understanding again. TV, newspaper and social media pundits are already misconstruing the ‘why’. Even the Victorian...
Yeeks! The Numbers Don’t Lie
You and I can surely agree on a couple of points: First, free enterprise in a competitive market does 95% better in servicing the needs and desires of citizens than government. Better efficiency, better service delivery, better products, better time-frames, more innovation and less waste. Second, the free markets aren’t perfect. Businesses with whom you trade may become insolvent. Sometimes fraud...
On The Word ‘Liberal’
I’m a liberal. I’m a liberal in the 18th and 19th Century British sense of the word. I believe in free enterprise, laissez-faire economics, democracy, free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, free movement, the individual, human rights and freedom to live life as the individual sees fits as long as another individual isn’t harmed in the process. As with...
