This is an excellent piece by Barry Jones in The Australian in which he highlights the extraordinarily dangerous attitude currently being promoted as the “new normal” by politicians and their lackeys in the western world, in which objectivity, rationality and informed debate are completely subsumed by “faith”, expedience and knee-jerk reactivity:
We live in an era of instinctive, reactive and ill-informed leaders and followers, marked by contempt for truth, living by the dictum that the end justifies the means. It hardly matters whether that view is driven by cynicism or ideology.
Jones urges a return to the era of the public intellectual, where serious issues are put on trial in a public arena through relatively spin-free, objective debate.
Activists in public life - politicians, academics and journalists - must make a commitment to restoring the primacy of reason, rejecting a paranoid view of history and telling truth to power. As he lay dying, Leo Tolstoy reaffirmed his commitment to rationality: “Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two plus two does not make six.”
The piece is light on detailed suggestions of how we can turn the situation around - like many progressives and rationalists, he is good at identifying the problem but not so good on suggesting realistic ways in which it can be addressed. Nevertheless, it is well worth a read.
While we’re on the subject, the ABC persists in referring to David Hicks as a “convicted terrorism supporter” in its reports. Hicks, of course, has never been before a legitimate court of law and has never been convicted of anything, other than a guilty plea he entered before an illegal and non-judicial tribunal which had through its agents been torturing him and depriving him of human rights for several years.
“Hicks, of course, has never been before a legitimate court of law and has never been convicted of anything, other than a guilty plea he entered before an illegal and non-judicial tribunal which had through its agents been torturing him and depriving him of human rights for several years.”
Torture? Deprivation? Right. That is why he showed up in Australia with a tan and a little chubbier and joking. I guess they make them fat in that torture chamber.
The man was held for 5 years with out trial which is not good but sometimes convicted murderers can be held for a couple of years before they are trialled. The important point is that there is significant enough evidence against him. Even confessed his crimes to his father in letter form.