Posted on 12/24/2004 1:49:59 PM PST by naturalman1975
It can get pretty lonely as a conservative columnist, but it's good to see some in the groovy Left are having a re-think.
WE conservatives must cheer up and face the truth -- we're now winning the culture wars.I know, it will be hard to adjust to frowning less.
Nor is it the conservative thing to unbutton and feel part of a crowd. To feel popular. That's for the other side -- the people in love with collectives and mobs.
We prefer to feel like lone beacons in a gathering storm, or Horatio on the bridge. We like shaking our head in despair at the folly of our fellow citizens, and muttering warnings of the rise of the barbarians.
The better educated of us will at moments of high stress murmur a bit of Kipling. You know, "If you can keep your head when all about you/Are losing theirs and blaming it on you" then something something something and: "What is more -- you'll be a man, my son!"
Those educated more at the movies will fancy themselves as the Lone Ranger, or Gary Cooper in High Noon, upholding the right on lawless streets whence all but he had fled. Being individualists, we're vain that way, measuring our courage by our loneliness.
But conservatives are also into facing facts, the harsher the better. And the facts this year are that we should cheer up. Too many barbarians may have got through the gates, but those gates at last are closing. A bit.
So here's some of the news this year that has me going to Christmas lunch with the smug comfort of having heard even ideological foes say things that conservatives were thought evil for saying a few years ago.
This month even Warren Mundine, an Aborigine and vice-president of the Labor Party, said the campaign for a "sorry" for the "stolen generations" was a distraction that was "not going to change a person's life in Wilcannia".
And he rightly condemned the New Tribalism that forces Aborigines to own tribal land collectively, rather than as individuals able to sell, develop or borrow against their own dirt.
More good news. Victoria's Socialist Left Education Minister, Lynne Kosky, now wants what I called for five years ago -- bureaucrats to intervene in failing schools, helping staff to shape up or ship out. Principal included.
This year I've also had more emails from students who no longer tolerate the ravings of activist teachers and lecturers. Even better, I now get emails from senior lecturers and professors, too, complaining of the faddish radicalism of their colleagues.
A Monash University associate professor of communications, Peter Murphy, even attacked our "Left-leaning media" in The Age this month, warning "their group-think has become self-righteous and homogenous". Get off my turf, Murphy. That's my speech.
Oh, the good news keeps coming. The usual Leftist commentators, even Professor Robert Manne, now concede they are out of touch and Labor would do well to ignore their pet causes.
Labor itself admits it needs to talk more about the economy and less about the green agenda. And Greens leader Bob Brown won 25 per cent fewer votes for his party than he'd predicted before the election.
In the Senate is now a Christian-based party, and more politicians than before -- the Governor-General, too -- have explicitly acknowledged their faith. We can even discuss abortion.
Militant secularists are in retreat, and we're this year wishing each other "Merry Christmas" with extra vim. Even the Islamic Council of Victoria is defending Christmas against the true heathens, and I doubt Melbourne City Council will dare put up such tacky, sterile decorations again.
And for the first time, sillier Australian Research Council grants for academics on wild frolics have been rejected by the federal Education Minister, while the artist-feeding Australia Council has scrapped the grants committee which funded the nuttier political stunts, such as the Escape from Woomera video game.
Also good is that the latest Melbourne Festival was free of crotch-grabbing schlock, Cowes has scrapped its booze-and-barf New Year's Eve debauch and local Muslim groups no longer publish calls to jihad and Jew-hatred on their English-language web sites.
And, of course, John Howard was voted back in, as was George W. Bush. At this rate, the ABC will beg me to join Media Watch.
Yes, ho, ho, ho. Christmas joke. In fact, the Left itself has become a joke, providing cheap laughs for an increasing number of conservative columnists -- including the ones on The Age -- who were once invisible.
See how much fun Team America World Police pokes at the Left -- and how well the movie is doing.
So I'm enjoying myself. I may now be the Not-Quite-So Lone Ranger, but at least I've got more Tontos to talk to than I ever expected.
The author claims that we're sinning the culture wars, so why do I feel like we're bailing like crazy just to keep afloat?
And I can't resist bringing Kiplings quote into the 21st century: "If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you" then you must be a mooslim, my son!"
Cheers
Merry Christmas to you too!
Most enjoyable article. Merry Christmas to you and yours.
"sinning the culture wars...."
Must be some kind of Freudian thing ;'}
Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas bump for the Aussies.
God bless Australia. A true friend through thick and thin.
Merry Christmas to you also -- from a beautiful, sparkling, frosty night in Connecticut. And thanks for keeping us posted with news and commentary from Australia -- it's one of the things that makes FR so fun.
You're welcome. I think it might be helpful for sometimes for conservatives in American to see evidence that many (though not all, of course) of the issues you are dealing with are being seen in other nations as well. You do have allies out there - both in a military sense and in many case, in a cultural sense.
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