Daily Archives: March 5, 2017

Atlas Shrugged | Ayn Rand | Conservative Book Club

Posted: March 5, 2017 at 4:45 pm

Several years ago, Miss Ayn Rand wrote The Fountainhead. Despite a generally poor press, it is said to have sold some four hundred thousand copies. Thus, it became a wonder of the book trade of a kind that publishers dream about after taxes. So Atlas Shrugged had a first printing of one hundred thousand copies. It appears to be slowly climbing the best-seller lists.

The news about this book seems to me to be that any ordinarily sensible head could not possibly take it seriously, and that, apparently, a good many do. Somebody has called it: Excruciatingly awful. I find it a remarkably silly book. It is certainly a bumptious one. Its story is preposterous. It reports the final stages of a final conflict (locale: chiefly the United States, some indefinite years hence) between the harried ranks of free enterprise and the looters. These are proponents of proscriptive taxes, government ownership, labor, etc., etc. The mischief here is that the author, dodging into fiction, nevertheless counts on your reading it as political reality. This, she is saying in effect, is how things really are. These are the real issues, the real sides. Only your blindness keeps you from seeing it, which, happily, I have come to rescue you from.

Since a great many of us dislike much that Miss Rand dislikes, quite as heartily as she does, many incline to take her at her word. It is the more persuasive, in some quarters, because the author deals wholly in the blackest blacks and the whitest whites. In this fiction everything, everybody, is either all good or all bad, without any of those intermediate shades which, in life, complicate reality and perplex the eye that seeks to probe it truly. This kind of simplifying pattern, of course, gives charm to most primitive storyknown as: The War between the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness. In modern dress, it is a class war. Both sides to it are caricatures.

The Children of Light are largely operatic caricatures. Insofar as any of them suggests anything known to the business community, they resemble the occasional curmudgeon millionaire, tales about whose outrageously crude and shrewd eccentricities sometimes provide the lighter moments in boardrooms. Otherwise, the Children of Light are geniuses. One of them is named (the only smile you see will be your own): Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastian dAntonio. This electrifying youth is the worlds biggest copper tycoon. Another, no less electrifying, is named: Ragnar Danesjold. He becomes a twentieth-century pirate. All Miss Rands chief heroes are also breathtakingly beautiful. So is her heroine (she is rather fetchingly vice president in charge of management of a transcontinental railroad).

So much radiant energy might seem to serve a eugenic purpose. For, in this story as in Mark Twains, all the knights marry the princessthough without benefit of clergy. Yet from the impromptu and surprisingly gymnastic matings of the heroine and three of the heroes, no childrenit suddenly strikes youever result. The possibility is never entertained. And, indeed, the strenuously sterile world of Atlas Shrugged is scarcely a place for children. You speculate that, in life, children probably irk the author and may make her uneasy. How could it be otherwise when she admiringly names a banker character (by what seems to me a humorless master-stroke): Midas Mulligan? You may fool some adults; you cant fool little boys and girls with such stuffnot for long. They may not know just what is out of line, but they stir uneasily. The Children of Darkness are caricatures, too; and they are really oozy. But at least they are caricatures of something identifiable. Their archetypes are Left-Liberals, New Dealers, Welfare Statists, One Worlders, or, at any rate, such ogreish semblances of these as may stalk the nightmares of those who think little about people as people, but tend to think a great deal in labels and effigies. (And neither Right nor Left, be it noted in passing, has a monopoly of such dreamers, though the horrors in their nightmares wear radically different masks and labels.)

In Atlas Shrugged, all this debased inhuman riffraff is lumped as looters. This is a fairly inspired epithet. It enables the author to skewer on one invective word everything and everybody that she fears and hates. This spares her the playguy business of performing one service that her fiction might have performed, namely: that of examining in human depth how so feeble a lot came to exist at all, let alone be powerful enough to be worth hating and fearing. Instead, she bundles them into one undifferentiated damnation.

Looters loot because they believe in Robin Hood, and have got a lot of other people believing in him, too. Robin Hood is the authors image of absolute evilrobbing the strong (and hence good) to give to the weak (and hence no good). All looters are base, envious, twisted, malignant minds, motivated wholly by greed for power, combined with the lust of the weak to tear down the strong, out of a deepseated hatred of life and secret longing for destruction and death. There happens to be a tiny (repeat: tiny) seed of truth in this. The full clinical diagnosis can be read in the pages of Friedrich Nietzsche. (Here I must break in with an aside. Miss Rand acknowledges a grudging debt to one, and only one, earlier philosopher: Aristotle. I submit that she is indebted, and much more heavily, to Nietzsche. Just as her operatic businessmen are, in fact, Nietzschean supermen, so her ulcerous leftists are Nietzsches last men, both deformed in a way to sicken the fastidious recluse of Sils Maria. And much else comes, consciously or not, from the same source.) Happily, in Atlas Shrugged (though not in life), all the Children of Darkness are utterly incompetent.

So the Children of Light win handily by declaring a general strike of brains, of which they have a monopoly, letting the world go, literally, to smash. In the end, they troop out of their Rocky Mountain hideaway to repossess the ruins. It is then, in the books last line, that a character traces in the dir, over the desolate earth, the Sign of the Dollar, in lieu of the Sign of the Cross, and in token that a suitably prostrate mankind is at last ready, for its sins, to be redeemed from the related evils of religion and social reform (the mysticism of mind and the mysticism of muscle).

That Dollar Sign is not merely provocative, though we sense a sophomoric intent to raise the pious hair on susceptible heads. More importantly, it is meant to seal the fact that mankind is ready to submit abjectly to an elite of technocrats, and their accessories, in a New Order, enlightened and instructed by Miss Rands ideas that the good life is one which has resolved personal worth into exchange value, has left no other nexus between man and man than naked selfinterest, than callous cash-payment. The author is explicit, in fact deafening, about these prerequisites. Lest you should be in any doubt after 1,168 pages, she assures you with a final stamp of the foot in a postscript:

And I mean it. But the words quoted above are those of Karl Marx. He, too, admired naked self-interest (in its time and place), and for much the same reasons as Miss Rand: because, he believed, it cleared away the cobwebs of religion and led to prodigies of industrial and cognate accomplishment. The overlap is not as incongruous as it looks. Atlas Shrugged can be called a novel only by devaluing the term. It is a massive tract for the times. Its story merely serves Miss Rand to get the customers inside the tent, and as a soapbox for delivering her Message. The Message is the thing. It is, in sum, a forthright philosophic materialism. Upperclassmen might incline to sniff and say that the author has, with vast effort, contrived a simple materialist system, one, intellectually, at about the stage of the oxcart, though without mastering the principle of the wheel. Like any consistent materialism, this one begins by rejecting God, religion, original sin, etc., etc. (This books aggressive atheism and rather unbuttoned higher morality, which chiefly outrage some readers, are, in fact, secondary ripples, and result inevitably from its underpinning premises.) Thus, Randian Man, like Marxian Man, is made the center of a godless world.

At that point, in any materialism, the main possibilities open up to Man. 1) His tragic fate becomes, without God, more tragic and much lonelier. In general, the tragedy deepens according to the degree of pessimism or stoicism with which he conducts his hopeless encounter between human questioning and the silent universe. Or, 2) Mans fate ceases to be tragic at all. Tragedy is bypassed by the pursuit of happiness. Tragedy is henceforth pointless. Henceforth mans fate, without God, is up to him, and to him alone. His happiness, in strict materialist terms, lies with his own workaday hands and ingenious brain. His happiness becomes, in Miss Rands words, the moral purpose of his fife.

Here occurs a little rub whose effects are just as observable in a free-enterprise system, which is in practice materialist (whatever else it claims or supposes itself to be), as they would be under an atheist socialism, if one were ever to deliver that material abundance that all promise. The rub is that the pursuit of happiness, as an end in itself, tends automatically, and widely, to be replaced by the pursuit of pleasure, with a consequent general softening of the fibers of will, intelligence, spirit. No doubt, Miss Rand has brooded upon that little rub. Hence in part, I presume, her insistence on man as a heroic being With productive achievement as his noblest activity. For, if Mans heroism (some will prefer to say: human dignity) no longer derives from God, or is not a function of that godless integrity which was a root of Nietzsches anguish, then Man becomes merely the most consuming of animals, with glut as the condition of his happiness and its replenishment his foremost activity. So Randian Man, at least in his ruling caste, has to be held heroic in order not to be beastly. And this, of course, suits the authors economics and the politics that must arise from them. For politics, of course, arise, though the author of Atlas Shrugged stares stonily past them, as if this book were not what, in fact, it is, essentiallya political book. And here begins mischief. Systems of philosophic materialism, so long as they merely circle outside this worlds atmosphere, matter little to most of us. The trouble is that they keep coming down to earth. It is when a system of materialist ideas presumes to give positive answers to real problems of our real life that mischief starts. In an age like ours, in which a highly complex technological society is everywhere in a high state of instability, such answers, however philosophic, translate quickly into political realities. And in the degree to which problems of complexity and instability are most bewildering to masses of men, a temptation sets in to let some species of Big Brother solve and supervise them.

One Big Brother is, of course, a socializing elite (as we know, several cut-rate brands are on the shelves). Miss Rand, as the enemy of any socializing force, calls in a Big Brother of her own contriving to do battle with the other. In the name of free enterprise, therefore, she plumps for a technocratic elite (I find no more inclusive word than technocratic to bracket the industrial-financial-engineering caste she seems to have in mind). When she calls productive achievement mans noblest activity, she means, almost exclusively, technological achievement, supervised by such a managerial political bureau. She might object that she means much, much more; and we can freely entertain her objections. But, in sum, that is just what she means. For that is what, in reality, it works out to. And in reality, too, by contrast with fiction, this can only head into a dictatorship, however benign, living and acting beyond good and evil, a law unto itself (as Miss Rand believes it should be), and feeling any restraint on itself as, in practice, criminal, and, in morals, vicious (as Miss Rand clearly feels it to be). Of course, Miss Rand nowhere calls for a dictatorship. I take her to be calling for an aristocracy of talents. We cannot labor here why, in the modern world, the pre-conditions for aristocracy, an organic growth, no longer exist, so that the impulse toward aristocracy always emerges now in the form of dictatorship.

Nor has the author, apparently, brooded on the degree to which, in a wicked world, a materialism of the Right and a materialism of the Left first surprisingly resemble, then, in action, tend to blend each with each, because, while differing at the top in avowed purpose, and possibly in conflict there, at bottom they are much the same thing. The embarrassing similarities between Hitlers National Socialism and Stalins brand of Communism are familiar. For the world, as seen in materialist view from the Right, scarcely differs from the same world seen in materialist view from the Left. The question becomes chiefly: who is to run that world in whose interests, or perhaps, at best, who can run it more efficiently?

Something of this implication is fixed in the books dictatorial tone, which is much its most striking feature. Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal. In addition, the mind which finds this tone natural to it shares other characteristics of its type. 1) It consistently mistakes raw force for strength, and the rawer the force, the more reverent the posture of the mind before it. 2) It supposes itself to be the bringer of a final revelation. Therefore, resistance to the Message cannot be tolerated because disagreement can never be merely honest, prudent, or just humanly fallible. Dissent from revelation so final (because, the author would say, so reasonable) can only be willfully wicked. There are ways of dealing with such wickedness, and, in fact, right reason itself enjoins them. From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: To a gas chambergo! The same inflexibly self-righteous stance results, too (in the total absence of any saving humor), in odd extravagances of inflection and gesture-that Dollar Sign, for example. At first, we try to tell ourselves that these are just lapses, that this mind has, somehow, mislaid the discriminating knack that most of us pray will warn us in time of the difference between what is effective and firm, and what is wildly grotesque and excessive. Soon we suspect something worse. We suspect that this mind finds, precisely in extravagance, some exalting merit; feels a surging release of power and passion precisely in smashing up the house. A tornado might feel this way, or Carrie Nation.

We struggle to be just. For we cannot help feeling at least a sympathetic pain before the sheer labor, discipline, and patient craftsmanship that went to making this mountain of words. But the words keep shouting us down. In the end that tone dominates. But it should be its own antidote, warning us that anything it shouts is best taken with the usual reservations with which we might sip a patent medicine. Some may like the flavor. In any case, the brew is probably without lasting ill effects. But it is not a cure for anything. Nor would we, ordinarily, place much confidence in the diagnosis of a doctor who supposes that the Hippocratic Oath is a kind of curse.

Review from The National Review, by Whittaker Chambers

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Atlas Shrugged | Ayn Rand | Conservative Book Club

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Will: Novel posits scary view of current course – The Columbian

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George F. Will

Although Americas political system seems unable to stimulate robust, sustained economic growth, it at least is stimulating consumption of a small but important segment of literature. Dystopian novels are selling briskly Aldous Huxleys Brave New World (1932), Sinclair Lewis It Cant Happen Here (1935), George Orwells Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1949), Ray Bradburys Fahrenheit 451 (1953), and Margaret Atwoods The Handmaids Tale (1985), all warning about nasty regimes displacing democracy.

There is, however, a more recent and pertinent presentation of a grim future. Last year, in her 13th novel, The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047, Lionel Shriver imagined America slouching into dystopia merely by continuing current practices.

Shriver, who is fascinated by the susceptibility of complex systems to catastrophic collapses, begins her story after the 2029 economic crash and the Great Renunciation, whereby the nation, like a dissolute Atlas, shrugged off its national debt, saying to creditors: Its nothing personal. The world is not amused, and Americans subsequent downward social mobility is not pretty.

Florence Darkly, a millennial, is a single mother but such mothers now outnumber married ones. Newspapers have almost disappeared, so print journalism had given way to a rabble of amateurs hawking unverified stories and always to an ideological purpose. Mexico has paid for an electronic border fence to keep out American refugees. Her Americans are living, on average, to 92, the economy is powered by the whims of the retired, and, desperate to qualify for entitlements, these days everyone couldnt wait to be old. People who have never been told no are apoplectic if they cant retire at 52. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are ubiquitous, so shaking hands is imprudent.

Soldiers in combat fatigues, wielding metal detectors, search houses for gold illegally still in private hands. The government monitors every movement and the IRS, renamed the Bureau for Social Contribution Assistance, siphons up everything, on the you-didnt-build-that principle: Morally, your money does belong to everybody. The creation of capital requires the whole apparatus of the state to protect property rights, including intellectual property.

Social order collapses when hyperinflation follows the promiscuous printing of money after the Renunciation. This punishes those who had a conscientious, caretaking relationship to the future. Government salaries and Medicare reimbursements are linked to an inflation algorithm that didnt require further action from Congress. Even if a Snickers bar eventually cost $5 billion, they were safe.

In a Reason magazine interview, Shriver says, I think it is in the nature of government to infinitely expand until it eats its young. In her novel, she writes:

The state starts moving money around. A little fairness here, little more fairness there. Eventually social democracies all arrive at the same tipping point: where half the country depends on the other half. Government becomes a pricey, clumsy, inefficient mechanism for transferring wealth from people who do something to people who dont, and from the young to the old which is the wrong direction. All that effort, and youve only managed a new unfairness.

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Will: Novel posits scary view of current course - The Columbian

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Middlebury College Investigating Violent Protests at Libertarian’s Speech – Wall Street Journal (subscription)

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Wall Street Journal (subscription)
Middlebury College Investigating Violent Protests at Libertarian's Speech
Wall Street Journal (subscription)
Officials at Middlebury College, a liberal-arts school in Vermont, said Saturday that they were investigating a violent protest that erupted after a libertarian scholar's speech about Donald Trump's election and the white-working class. The lecture by ...
Libertarian author Charles Murray shouted down by Middlebury College studentsWashington Times
Guest lecturer calls protesting students 'seriously scary'News On 6
Another campus, another speaker, another riotWND.com
Reading Eagle -YouTube -Southern Poverty Law Center -Middlebury Campus
all 113 news articles »

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Being Libertarian, Liberty Link Media Group Announce Strategic Media Partnership – Being Libertarian

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Being Libertarian, Liberty Link Media Group Announce Strategic Media Partnership
Being Libertarian
Being Libertarian LLC is proud to announce that it will, through its media division, Being LibertTV, be entering into a comprehensive, strategic, long-term relationship with Liberty Link Media Group, the popular venture started by Nicholas Veser and ...

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Being Libertarian, Liberty Link Media Group Announce Strategic Media Partnership - Being Libertarian

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Much to be gained from Golden Rule – Jackson Clarion Ledger

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Becky Vaughn-Furlow, Business Columnist 5:00 p.m. CT March 4, 2017

The AFLAC duck is seen in an image released by the company. Linda Kaplan Thayer's small advertising firm won the Aflac contract. Aflac contacted her to pitch an idea for an ad campaign because of referrals by influential individuals she had been kind to by taking the time to give them free advice over lunch.(Photo: AP Photo/Aflac)

Being kind or being nice is not being passive or being a pushover. Instead it is the epitome of ethical behavior. Treating other people like you would like to be treated, whether it is co-workers, customers or managers, does pay off in all relationships, including professional relationships, personal relationships, at home and on the job.

It pays off in businesses. If you don't believe it, just check out Chick-fil-A's financial success. Employees of the very successful restaurant chain are trained to say "please" and "thank you." These are simple things that are the secret to the company's success. According to a report, Chick-fil-A employees said "thank you" in 95.2 percent of drive-thru encounters, based on data from 2,000 restaurant visits to 15 restaurant chains. In 2015 Chick-fil-A generated more revenue per restaurant than any other fast food chain in the U.S. Average sales per restaurant were nearly $4 million.

RELATED: Vaughn-Furlow: Customer service is not dead

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Superior customer service drives higher sales per unit and far outpaces other chains like KFC, Pizza Hut and Dominos with more than twice as many U.S. locations. One of the big differences is hiring the right kind of employees who embrace the company's culture, followed by the amount of time and money spent on training employees.

Kindness emerges from those who are confident, compassionate and comfortable with themselves. Kind individuals are loving and giving out of the goodness of their heart. It is in their nature to care and exhibit kindness with no ulterior motives. Niceness is being pleasant or agreeable to others, sometimes conforming to what they believe society expects or sees as "nice." The "nice" person is often focused on doing nice things in order to be perceived by others as being a nice person. I think the defining difference is that people can be trained and instructed to be nice but the exhibiting of kindness comes from the heart and is a core value.

The kind treatment of people is unfortunately undervalued in many businesses and other organizations. It is one of the most important qualities of a healthy workplace culture. It inspires a higher level of employee engagement. When the leadership of an organization possesses this quality it filters down through the entire business, enhances teamwork and results in excellent customer service.

Being kind is a trait missing in so many people, being replaced by arrogance and egotistical behavior. It is not a sign of weakness but instead a true sign of strength demonstrated by positive deeds and actions. It shows the deep-down motivation from the heart. No one wants to work in or do business with an organization that is arrogant or ruthless.

An example of how kindness has paid off is the story of the creation of the famous Aflac duck. It was introduced in 1999 by Linda Kaplan Thaler's small advertising firm. As it turned out, Aflaccontacted her to pitch an idea for an ad campaign because of two referrals by individuals who were influential people she had been kind to by taking the time to give them free advice over lunch. Thaler won the lucrative contract, and the Aflacduck has since become a TV sensation allbecause of thekindness being shown with no ulterior motive. The firm now has over 700 employees and accounts worldwide.

To get it down to each of us, think about places you like to shop and go back to because of the way you are treated. On the other hand, there are businesses you avoid because of poor customer service and rude treatment. We often pay more for products and services from the places where we feel appreciated and are treated well. And on top of that, we share with our friends, family, neighbors, anyone who will listen, about the bad experiences at businesses we don't patronize anymore. The referrals we make from being treated well are more valuable to a business than many dollars spent in advertising. There is nothing more valuable as a personal testimony.

Can you make a commitment to altruistic behavior to improve your customer service? We never know how much a customer or person we come in contact with needs a smile, a kind word or a listening ear. A phone call, card, email or text sent to someone who is ill, lonely or otherwise going through difficult times has such a positive impact and it takes so little effort, time or money.

When you are kind to others it will help you with your attitude and somehow lighten the load of your own burdens. Some of the kindest people I know are themselves dealing with inner struggles that most people are not aware of. You have read that it takes more muscles to frown than to smile. Try placing a small mirror in a place you can see yourself as you answer the phone. A smile comes across on the phone in your voice tone even though the customer can't see you.

You have the ability to satisfy the customer and gain satisfaction in a job well done as well asincrease customer loyalty. Keep in mind, customers are the reason you have a job. Enjoy making a difference in the customer experience and increase your value and success of your business.

Contact Becky Vaughn-Furlow at bvaughnfurlow@gmail.com.

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Liberal and Labor on a knife edge in WA, while things look up for One Nation – The Sydney Morning Herald

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Despite a late poll slump, scrappy organisation and the selection of "fruitcakes" as candidates, One Nation remains in a position to seize the balance of power in Western Australia's upper house, largely due to the enduring strength of Pauline Hanson's political brand, less than a week before the state election.

A ReachTEL poll commissioned by Fairfax last week showed that the Labor opposition was leading Colin Barnett's Liberal government by 52-48 on a two-party-preferred basis.

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A poll of around 1700 residents shows the WA state election is set to be a tight contest.

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A Camillo man has been charged with evading police through a number of Perth suburbs in the dramatic chase captured by WA Police's air-wing.

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Trevor Gleeson says Matt Knight is a 50-50 chance to play in Sunday's final against Illawarra.

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Trevor Gleeson says Matt Knight is a 50-50 chance to play in Sunday's final against Illawarra.

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Winner of over 70 international awards, Matilda the musical makes it way to Perth.

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Mother Nature put on an impressive display overnight, with a massive thunder and lightning storm. Vision: Today Perth News.

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Perth barrister Lloyd Rayney speaks to the media ahead of his defamation case against the state government Vision: Network Ten.

A poll of around 1700 residents shows the WA state election is set to be a tight contest.

But the Liberal Party's controversial preference deal with One Nation, which is polling at 8.5 per cent, could leave Ms Hanson's party with the balance of power in the upper house.

Dr Martin Drum, a senior lecturer in politics at the University of Notre Dame, said such a result suggests that should One Nation learnfrom its mistakes and should Ms Hanson continue to operate as effectively as she has in recent months, One Nation could wreak havocfor the Liberal and National parties in other state and federal elections in the future.

When the WA campaign began One Nation was polling at just over 13 per cent. The slump since then appears to have been inflicted by the quality of its local candidates, some of whom have proved to be "fruitcakes" saidDr Drum. "When they are in the headlines, it is normally for the wrong reasons."

Dr Drum notedthat polling throughout the campaign has shown discontent with both major parties, with Liberal losses not all flowing to Labor.

He said given that One Nation failed to find enough candidates to run in all the state's contestable seats and because some candidates appear not to have been closely vetted the scope of its impact in this environment was unpredictable.

In January an article that the party's candidate for the crucial seat of Pilbara, David Archibald, held by the National Party's leader Brendon Grylls, wrote in the musty conservative journal Quadrant was dusted off and republished to a broad audience.

Listing lifestyle choices that the government should defund, he began with "ugly" single mothers.

"The first that springs to mind is single motherhood," Mr Archibald wrote.

"These are women too lazy to attract and hold a mate, undoing the work of possibly 3 million years of evolutionary pressure.

"This will result in a rapid rise in the portion of the population that is lazy and ugly."

On Friday One Nation's candidate for another crucial seat, Kalamunda, on the eastern fringe of Perth, suddenly quit, citing a preference deal between One Nation and the Liberal Party.

"I've had enough," Ray Gould, told ABC radio.

"I'm talking to voters and they say, 'We like Pauline Hanson but she's done a deal with the Liberals and she can't be trusted'.

"I don't think I'll even get 4 per cent of the vote because she's messing with the voters' heads."

Kalamunda could help decide which party wins government. It is held by the Liberal Party with a margin of 10.3 per cent, which is almost exactly the size of the swing Labor needs to win governmentand, according to recent polling, just about the size of the swing that polling suggests we might see on election day.

The Liberal Party has faced criticism for cutting a deal with One Nation that will see it giving preferences to the insurgent outlier in the upper house in return for One Nation's preferences in the lower house.

Speaking on ABC TV on Sunday morning, during an interview in which she backed a cut to weekend penalty rates, voiced her support for the Russian President Vladimir Putin and cast doubt on the safety of vaccines, Ms Hanson was frank in support of the agreement.

"I have no problem with saying that because it is our best chance of getting One Nation candidates selected to the floor of Parliament. Of course, who is not going to do it?"

The deal has increased tensions between the Liberal Party and its National Party coalition partners, and demonstrated how seriously the Liberal Party takes the One Nation threat.

Some observers believe Mr Barnett has effectively sacrificed the lower house seat of Perth, where voters have expressed anger at the deal, in order to stave off One Nation challenges in rural and regional seats.

In the aftermath of a mining boom thatsome analysts consider to have been wasted, the election is being fought over bread and butter economic issues such as unemployment and debt. This has pitted the state's giant resources and agricultural sectors against one another, in turn increasing tension between the coalition partners.

The National Party under Mr Grylls is pushing to increase a state production tax on iron ore from 25 cents a tonne to $5, a proposal being fought by WA's Chamber of Minerals and Energy.

The Chamber's chief executive, Reg Howard-Smith, has been watching the electorate closely in the lead-up to the election.

"We've been close to the ground over the last few months and the feedback we've got is that everyone is concerned about jobs," he said.

"Resource sector jobs, but jobs more generally always comes at the top of the order."

Although the tax increase would generate an extra $3 billion in revenue for state coffers, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton have argued it would cost jobs in the Pilbara and across WA.

Mr Howard-Smith also believes the tax rise,which would require legislation to overhaul state agreements with the two companies, would damage the investment attractiveness of the state.

"We've had fantastic support across the sector for this campaign we're running about iron ore and that's focused on two companies, but the reason is there are many, many people who can remember the RSPT [Resource Super Profits Tax]," he said.

"When the RSPT was announced, on that Saturday the Dockers and the Eagles were to play I never got to that game capital dried up instantly."

But Mr Howard-Smith was also concerned about a Nationals plan to give companies payroll tax breaks for workers in the Pilbara who were not fly-in, fly-out (FIFO), an idea which could cost jobs everywhere but in Mr Grylls' own electorate.

Mr Howard-Smith said the plan would devastate small towns in the south-west like Busselton and Manjimup where many FIFO workers choose to live, and where the Liberal Party holds a swathe of crucial seats.

"If you're coming out of Busselton and you've made the choice to live there but to maintain your job you have to travel to the Pilbara, then it's clearly a matter of choice," he said.

"Manjimup only has a small number of FIFO workers, in the twenties, but by the time you look at families and everything else, the contribution they make is significant.

"Rio reached out to those workers in Manjimup. At the time the timber industry was closing there were some good operators who they took on, so it just doesn't make any sense.

"They would have the most mature FIFO model, so you have a lot of people coming out of Busselton, a number from Albany, Geraldton, and Broome and Broome is essentially Aboriginal employment.

"That's working extremely well and I don't think the National party policy is realistic for one moment."

Unions have been quick to link the Liberal Party to One Nation.On Sunday the Victorian CFMEU leader John Setka tweeted in reference to the penalty rates decision, "Pauline Hanson is just another Liberal who hates workers!"

MsHanson herself travelled to Western Australia to begin a week's campaigning on Sunday, with an itinerary planned to include stops in Perth and towns in the south-west as well as regional centres including Port Hedland, Karratha, Kalgoorlie and Geraldton.

The Labor leader Bill Shorten is expected to join the campaign later in the week.

So far the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, whose last WA visit was not warmly received, has no plans to make the trip.

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Liberal and Labor on a knife edge in WA, while things look up for One Nation - The Sydney Morning Herald

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Leaving the EU is the start of a liberal insurgency – The Guardian

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Nigel Farage with Donald Trump. Brexit means that power can be dispersed outward and downwards. Photograph: Gerald Herbert/AP

What is Nigel Farage so cross about? We won the EU referendum, for goodness sake. Since 23 June, Ive been walking on sunshine. My mood has been a state of Zen-like bliss.

Alongside Boris Johnson, David Owen, Gisela Stuart and all of those involved in the official Vote Leave campaign, I spent the referendum arguing that leaving the EU would be an opportunity to make Britain more open, outward-looking and globally competitive. It is becoming increasingly clear to me that this is where Brexit is going to take us.

Far from heralding a retreat into insularity, Brexit is shaping up to be the beginning of a liberal revolution. Having taken back control of our country, we will at last be able to tackle some of the public policy failures that have festered under successive governments for more than a generation.

Yes, we will see an end to the free movement of people between European Union member states and the United Kingdom. But I suspect we will see a sensible policy that will allow labour mobility, with parliament controlling the total numbers of migrants each year. It is perfectly possible to imagine a scenario under which UK firms would be allowed to hire EU nationals provided they paid them enough to preclude the possibility that they might claim in-work benefits. Doing so would help rebalance the low-wage, low-productivity economic model that the UK has by default come to depend upon.

Ministers seem to be feeling their way towards a new national consensus on issues where the leave and remain sides were once at odds; universities must continue to be able to collaborate with institutions across the EU, drawing on the brightest and best brains.

From telecoms to intelligence gathering, we need to ensure that we continue to cooperate with the rest of Europe, despite not being in the EU.

The great repeal bill, which will convert all existing EU legislation into UK law, might be better described as the great transfer bill. It will not of itself remove many regulations, but enable us to decide if we wish to retain or reform such rules and free ourselves from some of the constraints various legal rulings over the past 40 years have imposed on our ability to make our own law. Doing all that might initially change little, but it will awaken within our democracy the idea dormant for so long that we mightdo things better. In the run up to the next general election, we might see parties publish manifesto that give us real choice, not more tweedledumb versus tweedledee options. Any genuinely insurgent politician or party ought to revel in the possibility of meaningful change that leaving brings with it. Brexit is often bracketed alongside the election of Donald Trump and the rise of the new radical populist movements in many western countries. But to me the EU referendum result was a safety valve. Trump or Geert Wilders in the Netherlands is where you end up when you ignore legitimate public concerns and there isnt a safety valve.

Throughout history oligarchy has emerged in societies in which power was previously dispersed: in the late Roman republic, and in early modern times in the Venetian and then the Dutch republics. Each time, the emergence of oligarchy was always accompanied by an anti-oligarch insurgent reaction.Many of todays new radical movements arent oligarchs, but an anti-oligarchy insurgency. Trump is no American Caesar about to cross some constitutional Rubicon.

Yet such insurgents often ended up unwittingly assisting the oligarchs. In Rome the Gracchi brothers, with their Trump-like concern about cheap migrant labour, caused so much civil strife that an all-powerful emperor seemed a better bet. In Venice, the anti-oligarch rebel Bajamonte launched an unsuccessful coup and in doing so gave the elite a pretext to create a new, superpowerful executive arm of government, the Council of Ten. Created to respond to the crisis for six weeks, it ran the republic for the next 600 years.The Dutch anti-oligarch De Witt was so inept, he paved the way for the return of a strong stadtholder, or king.

So, too, today. If chaotic, angry insurgents such as Frances Marine Le Pen and the rightwing populist Alternative for Germany party are the alternative, then being governed by remote, unaccountable elites sitting in central banks and Brussels doesnt seem so unattractive after all. But Brexit isnt anything like that. It is the beginning of a liberal insurgency. Brexit means that we take back control from the supranational elite. Power can be dispersed outward and downwards. Those who make public policy might once more answer to the public.

Cheer up it might even mean that there is less space for anger in our politics too.

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Liberal Men and Blurred Lines – The Good Men Project (blog)

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Meanwhile, this week, Casey Affleck received an Academy Award for Best Actor for Hacksaw, despite continued complaintsfrom several women that he sexually terrorized them on the set of Im Still Here. Where are the legions of liberal men expressing disgust that the MPAA would honor Affleck with one of their highest honors?

And while liberals joined conservatives in recoiling in disgust from Yiannopoulos speaking wistfully of being molested as a teen,liberal darling George Takeis similar reflectionsgot something of a shrug.

To be clear, there are important distinctions between Yiannopouloss comments and Takeis: Yiannopoulos offered them in a greater context of questioning the arbitrariness of age of consent laws and promoting man-boy sexual mentorship, while Takei was being asked to relate a story from the gossip mill to Howard Stern, and didnt suggest that everyone should experience what he did.

But even if Takei seemed uncomfortable relating the story (at least three separate times, all when prompted), he was laughing. The effect of the laughing, the optics, says that he was making light of an incident that was unarguably molestation. For that, people who would champion against molestation should at least question his presentation. We cannot look away from the reality that George Takei called being sexually assaulted delicious.

Forty years ago, Polish director Roman Polanski was accused of raping a 13-year-old girl. He fled the country and has not returned since. The general feeling in Hollywood is frustration with the US and California authoritiesfor not just dropping the charges because, hey, its Roman!

Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange has been living in the Ecuadorean embassy for five years, dodging Swedish prosecutors over rape allegations. His supporters, many of whom are liberal and progressive men, insist the rape allegations are a conspiracy to shut him up.

When Conservative pick Clarence Thomas was accused of sexually harassing his then-subordinate Anita Hill, liberal males tried to use that to keep him from the Supreme Court. But when Bill Cosby was accused of drugging and raping multiple women, responses from men across the political spectrum were far more muted and ambivalent.

And the list goes on.

On the one hand, it is understandable that some of the incidents involving conservative men spark more condemnation than equivalent acts from liberal men. Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) was a crusader against gay rights prior to his arrest for soliciting sex in an airport bathroom. The liberal outrage, in this case is not over the solicitation (so what?) but over the blatant hypocrisy. You want to pick up guys in public bathrooms? Fine. But dont then act like gay sex is evilor other people are the predators.

Liberal males are quick to hide behind meta claims. When we mocked Melania Trumps nude pics, we claimed it was about the Rights hypocrisy of having criticized Michelle Obama for not being classy enough. When Obama bares her arms, its a conservative outrage; when 1984 Miss America Vanessa Williams bared everything, it was a conservative outrage.When nude pics of Melania Trump surface, though, thats a shrug.

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Liberal Men and Blurred Lines - The Good Men Project (blog)

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NSW by-elections: Liberal Party pre-selection delays mean head start for other candidates – ABC Online

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By Jean Kennedy

Posted March 05, 2017 16:52:49

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has defended the Liberal Party's pre-selection process, despite conceding a head start to political rivals in two looming by-elections.

The seats of North Shore and Manly will up for grabs on April 8.

Both of the Sydney electorates had been held by high-profile Liberal candidates on safe margins: former health minister Jillian Skinner won North Shore in 1994 and former premier Mike Baird had represented Manly since 2007.

However, the seats also have long histories of being held by independents and the duo's retirement from politics has cracked the contests open.

Today, the Greens unveiled Clara Williams-Roldan, 25, as their candidate for Manly while Mosman Councillor Carolyn Corrigan, who is standing as an independent, is also on the campaign trail.

The Liberal Party will announce its candidate for Manly on March 13 and North Shore on March 15.

The ABC understands both contests have been plagued by powerplays and disputes within the Liberal Party.

The delays have not been helped by the NSW Liberal Party's complicated pre-selection process, in which a special panel picks candidates.

But Ms Berejiklian said she respected local party members' rights to choose their candidates.

"I think local residents in this community, and all communities, know our track record as a Government, they know my track record, and I'm looking forward to welcoming the candidates next week," she said.

There will also be a by-election in the central coast electorate of Gosford on April 8.

The ABC has confirmed Labor will not stand candidates in the Manly and North Shore by-elections.

Liesl Tesch, the Labor candidate for Gosford, was not picked by rank-and-file pre-selection.

Speaking in Manly, federal Greens leader Richard Di Natale was keen to challenge the Premier in one of her key policy areas housing affordability.

"Young people are being screwed over," he said.

"Here's an opportunity to elect somebody to represent young people across this state and to ensure they have a voice in the state parliament."

Topics: government-and-politics, political-parties, liberals, state-parliament, parliament, electoral-system, elections, greens, sydney-2000, manly-2095, gosford-2250, nsw

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The Shift: From Liberal-Conservative to Globalist-Nationalist – American Thinker

Posted: at 4:43 pm

Last July, with Donald Trump on the verge of sealing up the Republican Party's presidential nomination, Ross Douthat authored a column in the New York Times about the new political battlefield. "[P]erhaps we should speak no more of left and right, liberals and conservatives," the token trad wrote. "From now on the great political battles will be fought between nationalists and internationalists, nativists and globalists."

Douthat's sentiment was echoed at the recent CPAC gathering, where President Trump's chief strategist, Steven Bannon, explained the difference between economic populists like himself and the jet-setting Davos crowd. "[W]e're a nation with an economy," he preached to the crowd. "Not an economy just in some global marketplace with open borders, but we are a nation with a culture and a reason for being."

It's true that we in the West are undergoing a political reorganization. The past two years have seen an explosion of nationalist political parties and personalities. The terms "liberal" and "conservative," in the popular context, are beginning to lose relevance. What's replacing them isn't so much party difference, but class.

The lines of separation between the elites and provincials has never been clearer. On big, nation-defining issues trade agreements, wars, transnational partnerships, necessary credentials for high office the divide cuts evenly. Those moneyed, cloistered, and comfortable welcome globalization and all its attendant benefits. Those who aren't so well off don't.

But class separation doesn't get to the heart of the difference between one end of the widening gulf and the other. The nationalist-globalist frame stems from something different, something more epistemological.

Politics really comes down to a value judgement: how does society best organize its collective life?

For nationalists, love of country, its inhabitants, and its unique character guides law-making. Government is formed solely for the benefit of citizens. High-minded psalms to the brotherhood of man have little place in policy.

The globalists are devoted to the biggest community on Earth: worldwide humanity. To the globally minded activist, there is no difference between the man next door and the man in a hut in Cambodia. Each is due equal consideration when it comes to the law.

In his recent New York Times column, David Brooks hits on this difference by singing a dirge to the enlightened universalism he sees as the cornerstone of the West. "The Enlightenment included thinkers like John Locke and Immanuel Kant who argued that people should stop deferring blindly to authority for how to live," he explains. But the anti-enlightenment movements of today "don't think truth is to be found through skeptical inquiry and debate."

Who are these intellect-eschewing dunderheads? Donald Trump, of course. But also Nigel Farage and Brexit backers, Marine Le Pen of France, Geert Wilders of the Netherlands, and Viktor Orbn of Hungary. Each has cultivated popular support by appealing not to passionless debate, but to deep love of country and, more pointedly, familiarity.

These decidedly anti-intellectual voters act based not on cool reasoning. They go the polls not to impose their abstract philosophy on the world. They protect what is theirs, what is close, what they identify with.

To contrast this limited view of life with the liberal is to compare soil with sky. Wide open and infinite, the sky is spaceless. It doesn't shift and sift like dirt through your fingers. It can't be seen and felt like solid earth.

The nationalist is necessarily parochial, attached to his specific time and place. The globalist takes the opposite approach. Not starting from below but above, he takes an all-encompassing view of mankind and sets to reshape the world in its image. The leftist global crusader is a firm believer in what Michael Brendan Dougherty calls "the idea of eternal human progress and moral arcs bending across the universe."

The idea of unstoppable progression demands much from its acolytes. Do national borders impede immigrants looking for a better life? Then all barriers must be eliminated. Do some people prefer those who share their faith, culture, skin color, and history to those who don't? Then they must be made to take a more universal view toward man and be shamed for their bigotry. Does the preservation of national wealth deprive poorer countries of prosperity? Then wealth must be redistributed, be it in the form of trade, military occupation, or direct financial transfer.

On and on the reduction goes until all human distinctions are replaced by the universal, homogeneous, and thus bland and uninteresting man. When the liberal-globalist achieves this sterile paradise, he'll be left with mannequins for men, able to recite facile tropes about joyful togetherness. This "thin view of man," to use the words of Polish philosopher Ryszard Legutko, can be an anti-civilizing force if left unchecked.

What is the contra to thin humanity? Thick, obviously. And what does thick entail? It means an acceptance of complexity, of the infinitudes of thought and emotion within every individual. "Across a room," writes Ted McAllister, "a conservative might spy a sack of rapidly degenerating amino acids, but rather than thinking of the elements that make up the body he sees, he wonders about this creature's past, its network of relationships, its relationship with books."

Here's where the paradox sets in: while the nationalist-conservative takes a simple approach to living, his narrow vision accepts the inner complexity of the individual. He doesn't purport to have a theory for how all should be governed. Rather, the good he sees is best for his family, his community, his country. Going any farther impedes on the right of another nation-dweller to determine his future path.

The political clash before the West has its basis in distance. How far a man is willing to go to impose his will usually determines his political allegiance. For those who would stop at their country's defined border, the influence is growing. How far it grows will be determined by those who think of their persuasive power as limitless.

Last July, with Donald Trump on the verge of sealing up the Republican Party's presidential nomination, Ross Douthat authored a column in the New York Times about the new political battlefield. "[P]erhaps we should speak no more of left and right, liberals and conservatives," the token trad wrote. "From now on the great political battles will be fought between nationalists and internationalists, nativists and globalists."

Douthat's sentiment was echoed at the recent CPAC gathering, where President Trump's chief strategist, Steven Bannon, explained the difference between economic populists like himself and the jet-setting Davos crowd. "[W]e're a nation with an economy," he preached to the crowd. "Not an economy just in some global marketplace with open borders, but we are a nation with a culture and a reason for being."

It's true that we in the West are undergoing a political reorganization. The past two years have seen an explosion of nationalist political parties and personalities. The terms "liberal" and "conservative," in the popular context, are beginning to lose relevance. What's replacing them isn't so much party difference, but class.

The lines of separation between the elites and provincials has never been clearer. On big, nation-defining issues trade agreements, wars, transnational partnerships, necessary credentials for high office the divide cuts evenly. Those moneyed, cloistered, and comfortable welcome globalization and all its attendant benefits. Those who aren't so well off don't.

But class separation doesn't get to the heart of the difference between one end of the widening gulf and the other. The nationalist-globalist frame stems from something different, something more epistemological.

Politics really comes down to a value judgement: how does society best organize its collective life?

For nationalists, love of country, its inhabitants, and its unique character guides law-making. Government is formed solely for the benefit of citizens. High-minded psalms to the brotherhood of man have little place in policy.

The globalists are devoted to the biggest community on Earth: worldwide humanity. To the globally minded activist, there is no difference between the man next door and the man in a hut in Cambodia. Each is due equal consideration when it comes to the law.

In his recent New York Times column, David Brooks hits on this difference by singing a dirge to the enlightened universalism he sees as the cornerstone of the West. "The Enlightenment included thinkers like John Locke and Immanuel Kant who argued that people should stop deferring blindly to authority for how to live," he explains. But the anti-enlightenment movements of today "don't think truth is to be found through skeptical inquiry and debate."

Who are these intellect-eschewing dunderheads? Donald Trump, of course. But also Nigel Farage and Brexit backers, Marine Le Pen of France, Geert Wilders of the Netherlands, and Viktor Orbn of Hungary. Each has cultivated popular support by appealing not to passionless debate, but to deep love of country and, more pointedly, familiarity.

These decidedly anti-intellectual voters act based not on cool reasoning. They go the polls not to impose their abstract philosophy on the world. They protect what is theirs, what is close, what they identify with.

To contrast this limited view of life with the liberal is to compare soil with sky. Wide open and infinite, the sky is spaceless. It doesn't shift and sift like dirt through your fingers. It can't be seen and felt like solid earth.

The nationalist is necessarily parochial, attached to his specific time and place. The globalist takes the opposite approach. Not starting from below but above, he takes an all-encompassing view of mankind and sets to reshape the world in its image. The leftist global crusader is a firm believer in what Michael Brendan Dougherty calls "the idea of eternal human progress and moral arcs bending across the universe."

The idea of unstoppable progression demands much from its acolytes. Do national borders impede immigrants looking for a better life? Then all barriers must be eliminated. Do some people prefer those who share their faith, culture, skin color, and history to those who don't? Then they must be made to take a more universal view toward man and be shamed for their bigotry. Does the preservation of national wealth deprive poorer countries of prosperity? Then wealth must be redistributed, be it in the form of trade, military occupation, or direct financial transfer.

On and on the reduction goes until all human distinctions are replaced by the universal, homogeneous, and thus bland and uninteresting man. When the liberal-globalist achieves this sterile paradise, he'll be left with mannequins for men, able to recite facile tropes about joyful togetherness. This "thin view of man," to use the words of Polish philosopher Ryszard Legutko, can be an anti-civilizing force if left unchecked.

What is the contra to thin humanity? Thick, obviously. And what does thick entail? It means an acceptance of complexity, of the infinitudes of thought and emotion within every individual. "Across a room," writes Ted McAllister, "a conservative might spy a sack of rapidly degenerating amino acids, but rather than thinking of the elements that make up the body he sees, he wonders about this creature's past, its network of relationships, its relationship with books."

Here's where the paradox sets in: while the nationalist-conservative takes a simple approach to living, his narrow vision accepts the inner complexity of the individual. He doesn't purport to have a theory for how all should be governed. Rather, the good he sees is best for his family, his community, his country. Going any farther impedes on the right of another nation-dweller to determine his future path.

The political clash before the West has its basis in distance. How far a man is willing to go to impose his will usually determines his political allegiance. For those who would stop at their country's defined border, the influence is growing. How far it grows will be determined by those who think of their persuasive power as limitless.

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