Category Archives: Liberal

It takes a village to make a wrestler.

Though the fans of Appalachian Mountain Wrestling (AMW) may not appreciate The Progressive Liberal Daniel Richards for the far left ideology he brings to the ring, Richards appreciates the fans, and the promotion that gave him a platform to become an overnight internet sensation. Just a month ago, AMW had a couple hundred followers on their YouTube channel, with maybe twice that many views on the episode that caught the eye of Deadspin at the end of June.

Were approaching 50,000 the last time I checked, Daniel Richards said, in an interview this week with Paste. Our subscribers have gone up by a hundred, which proportionally is significant. We had 230-something before, and now were approaching 350 or more. Thats big for a little independent promotion like us.

Its a metaphor for the whirlwind month Richards has had. Part-time wrestler Daniel Richards by night, successful realtor Daniel Harnsberger by day, the 36-year-old has found himself at the center of a media whirlwind all thanks to his unusual gimmick: a true blue, die hard, yellow dog liberal decked out in Democratic donkeys and a shirt covered in Hillary Clintonphotos, hitting the mat with conservative foes deep in the heart of Trump Country.

To me its only made it more exciting and more enjoyable, Richards said of the extra attention. I think its brought a little extra fanfare which of course is a great thing. I dont know if it means Ill strike it rich, but it certainly helps. Even if it means a few extra hours of work, maintaining his businesses and new bookings in the wake of his newfound national notoriety. I still have my real estate businesses to tend to, and thats been harder. At the end of the day Im not going to fail, its just been less sleep for this liberal.

Though Richardss on-camera relationship with the AMW roster, and certainly with their passionately conservative fans, is combative, he paints a more bipartisan picture of AMWs perspective on his moment in the spotlight.

Everyone knows whats going on. I think at the end of the day everyone there realizes its a good thing for everybody, and theres not been an interview of any significance that Ive done where I havent promoted AMW, Richards said. I think I know that. Its not like Ive gotten a big head about this, Beau [James] hasnt. Beau and I, with all the coverage weve gotten, were still the same two people we were before. Maybe itd be looked at negatively if I was being an arrogant prick or something, but Im not.

Beau James, Richardss mentor and a man with more than twenty years of experience in the world of wrestling, went to a great deal of effort to smooth Richardss path in the locker room when he first joined the AMW ranks, and Richards has mentioned in previous interviews James would feed him his lines and coach him on the gimmick in front of other wrestlers to make sure they knew Richards wasnt just showing up to stir the pot.

When asked if that was still the case, Richards explained, That was at first, because Im an outsider to fans, I still am. But when I first came there I was an outsider to that locker room. So to make sure that I didnt have instant heat in the dressing room, Beau made sure that people heard him giving me the direction. If Id just come out and said that stuff, itd be understandable, itd be like who is this jerk? To put it mildly.

So that was definitely done with my best interest in mind, and I appreciate that. But thats the beauty of working for someone like Beau, because Beau is a wealth of knowledge and has the experience to understand a dynamic like that. Hes been around 28 years, wrestled all over the country, and rubbed elbows with some of the greatest wrestlers in the entire business. So Im a beneficiary of his education, and Im fortunate that hes passing down part of it to me.

Not to say that Richards isnt as liberal as his gimmicka gimmick topped off by a cross-arm neckbreaker finisher called the Liberal Agenda. Though he may not be quite as pompous as his Daniel Richards persona, Harnsberger is a proud liberal, and just as outspoken about it, a rarity in an entertainment business dominated by a family of wealthy Republican donors and a Trump cabinet member.

Harnsberger is surprised by everyone elses surprise at his liberal leanings, but is quick in interviews to confirm theyre all his. Its shocking to me that everyone is shocked, even Chris Hayes on his shows said, you know, at first we thought this was a conservative playing a liberal, then we figured out hes an actual liberal! And Im like, yes!

In the radio interviews they quickly find it out, and Im pleased the feedback I get is, well, you know what youre talking about. I dont know every nuance of every policy but I do follow the news. I think its more important than ever to follow the news, not only because of the time and the President that were living in and under, just being in wrestling, I think its important to keep a pulse on whats going on in the world.

What is it like, then, to feel so passionately about your politics and climb into a ring where you know theyll get booed nine shows out of ten?

Im a villainized version of myself because the fans, Harnsberger said. Beau could book me any way possible to try to get me loved by the fans, but if I just have the name The Progressive Liberal Daniel Richards, that alone Im just gonna get heat. Its just heat with those people there. Itd be a tough go.

So thats why Im villainized, and I play off of it, but I think thats how you would go in real life. If you went to work and people were talking shit to you, you would justI guess some people would wilt, but thats not me. I would fire back. And thats me. I antagonize them in the ring and then in my interviews, I try to. Theyre so narrow-minded over there, including one of the wrestlers who thinks that if youre liberal, youre gay. And first of all, theres nothing wrong if that is the case, Im not, but I dont really care that they think I am, so Ill throw in a lot of extra flamboyance I maybe wouldnt otherwise. Its just to egg them on because they dont like it. Thats fine. Theyre on the wrong side of history, and you know, Im not.

Theres a level of nuance there even most big name wrestlers often missbeing a progressive character without going out of your way to make your progressive views the problem, and instead, just accepting the responses as they come. For Harnsberger, being Daniel Richards means putting a little salt and pepper on the person he is when he wakes up in the morning, but not making his ideals the butt of the joke. (More big name wrestlers could take a hint from Harnsberger in this regard.)

He doesnt go out of his way to engage fans in political debate after matches, though, and has an old-school view of keeping kayfabe. I try to stay away from any interactions from fans, he said, Because theres nothing I hate more than watching someone whos trying to be a heel and at the end of the night theyre glad-handing fans and holding babies, and I see that a lot.

After a movies over, Tom Hanksisnt coming out like, oh, this thing was all fake. It doesnt happen. And I dont want to compromise the hard work Ive put in, especially with my character, to kill the suspension of disbelief Ive worked so hard for.

He did admit, though, that I printed some pictures, Im selling those bad boys.

Theres a band I really like called One-Eyed Doll, the lead singer, her names Kimberly Freeman. Ive seen them three times live, and shes so interactive and personal with her fans I think I take part of that and make it mine when it comes to interacting with fans of mine.

For Harnsberger, the key to the gimmickimparted to him by Beauis understanding the audience and rolling with the crowd response, without letting his gimmick get lost or changed by the added attention. Ive got bookings in the future where people are going to cheer for me because of where I am. Ive got a show in Annandale, Virginia, which is Northern Virginia, and Ill be cheered there, or Im pretty confident I will be. I look forward to that. I dont need cheers, boos dont hurt my feelings. Its just an interesting change of pace, just like all this has been.

The Progressive Liberal gimmick does give him some freedom to have fun toying with fans, though. We went out to Gray, Tennessee, to a festival, and people are just booing me and saying stuff. And I interact with them, but totally as a heel. Im considered smug and arrogant and all that so I play that up as Im setting up my table, Im like, Move, move, the most famous wrestler in the world, setting up! Gotta sell pictures!

I dont walk around thinking that, Ive certainly gotten a lot of notoriety out of it I did say in a post-match interview with Kyle [Maggard], on the live mic I said, How does it feel to be beaten by the most famous wrestler in the world? And at least for the first week I might have had a justifiable claim there. Thats not for me to say, but at least in the first week I had a justifiable claim.

Whether hes been the most famous wrestler or not, Harnsberger has stayed humble and up front about his origins, and in most interviews only has kind words for AMW, Maggard, James, and the other professionals who have helped him hone his craft and find a home for his gimmick.

The reason trickle-down economics doesnt work is because of people, Harnsberger said firmly, dipping back into the toes of the ideological waters that make him Daniel Richards even as he discusses his passion for AMW and appreciation for the help and support hes been given since he returned to the wrestling ring. Republicans say, oh the rich guys are gonna start paying everyone else more when you give them the tax break. And thats not what happens.

In my universe, I just feel like you use good things that have been given to you to lift other people up, but also recognize what got you there, and to me, thats all Im doing is giving props to people who deserve it. The Richmond Times-Dispatch followed me around for most of [Monday], they photographed me while I was working out, but I wanted my trainer Jennifer Rothemich to be there with me. Shes helped me with my diet, I broke my hand like my second match for AMW Jennifer helped me with that. I wanted her to be there so she could get a rub from it, at least people know hey, this gal is a personal trainer and it couldnt hurt her for sure.

Though Rothemich couldnt make the interview, Harnsberger said, I try to do that on all levels because its all a product its just a team effort. Were all independent contractors but truly, for this to work, everyones got to be involved and pitch in. I came up with a great gimmick, and its my idea and all that, but Beau helped me understand it better and then helped me understand my audience better. Its not a one-man show.

As for future opportunities, The Progressive Liberal has his eyes on one opponent for a potential future feud. I think theres a match that needs to happen between myself and Sam Adonis, an independent wrestler in Mexico who wrestles as an ardent supporter of President Trump. I knew about Sama friend of mine, she sent me an article about Sam and thats how I first knew about him. Now its funny, now that Im having my little run right now, people are putting us in the same light. Usually you see a story about me and theres a story linked about him in the related section.

A midterm election grudge match, maybe?

We need to have something and we need to do it now, strike while the irons hot. But well see. So Sam is one, the whole dynamic there if anything.

He still has an eye on the big fish of sports entertainment, the WWE. Thats where Ive wanted to go since I was a kid. I stepped away from the business and had this big hiatus that I think really killed my chances of having any kind of stardom, but I made my goal this year that I want to be on there for a one-time match. And that can happen! Well see. I wanted that and to be ranked in Pro Wrestling Illustrated, so well see if either happens.

C.K. Stewart is a freelance writer with a lot of opinions about comics, wrestling and wrestling comics. He can also be found at Newsarama or livetweeting terrible pay-per-views on Twitter @ckayfabe.

Read the rest here:

How "The Progressive Liberal" Dan Richards Became the Media's Favorite Wrestler - Paste Magazine

Malcolm Turnbull listens to the former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott. The push for Liberals preselection reform has been used by some as a proxy leadership war. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

The Liberal party will split unless the looming New South Wales convention on preselection rules allows ordinary members to vote for candidates, former party president candidate John Ruddick has warned.

Guardian Australia has confirmed Cory Bernardi will host a meeting in Sydney less than a week after the Liberal convention to allow his Australian Conservatives party to potentially capitalise on disaffected members.

It is understood Bernardis event, on 28 July, was sold out within days, having reached a venue capacity of 450 attendees. Australian Conservatives already has 4,000 members signed up in NSW out of a total party national membership base of 12,000.

Ruddick, a former candidate for Liberal party president, warned that if reforms contained in the Warringah motion from Tony Abbotts home branch were rejected, its supporters would leave the party. Ruddick quit the party, calling for plebiscites and membership-wide leadership ballots in 2015.

This is the grand final, Ruddick told Guardian Australia. If simple democratic reform embodied in the Warringah motion is rejected or watered down, I promise there will be a historic split in the Liberal party. The lobbyists can have the party logo, well take 80% of the party.

NSW remains one of only two state divisions of the Liberal party that do not routinely allow each party member a vote on preselections. Opponents of plebiscites say the change will allow branch stacking. Currently, preselections are voted on by a much smaller group of party delegates.

The convention at Rosehill racecourse at the weekend promises to spark heated debate over the future of the party and by extension its leadership, with 1,500 members attending following the close of registrations last week.

Liberal sources confirmed that supporters of the Warringah motion had paid for some 20-something hardship registrations for members who wanted to attend but could not afford it. The convention registration allows any members to pay for other members to attend the meeting opening the way for supporters and opponents of reform to stack the meeting.

The Liberal party futures convention arose from a push at the partys last annual general meeting to support the Warringah motion based on the Howard recommendations. Three years ago John Howards party reform report recommended a plebiscite system for choosing candidates in the lower houses of the NSW and federal parliament.

Ruddick and Abbotts federal electorate conference president, Walter Villatora have long campaigned for reforms reflected in the Warringah motion. While Abbott commissioned the Howard report, he did not act on it as prime minister, but he has taken up the issue since he was dumped as leader.

As a result and combined with the former prime ministers constant attacks on Malcolm Turnbull, the push for reform has been used by some as a proxy leadership war. While Turnbull has said in the past he supported reform, the NSW division is controlled by moderate members who generally support Turnbull over Abbott.

But other high-profile members, including the assistant cities minister, Angus Taylor, and the retired major general Jim Molan, have also pushed for change. Weeks ago, Taylor urged a reform convention not to turn the process into a proxy war for other issues.

It is not about conservatives versus progressives, Taylor said. We are the trustees of two great philosophical traditions in this party conservatism and liberalism, [Edmund] Burke and [John Stuart] Mill.

And it is not about Malcolm Turnbull versus Tony Abbott. This issue is too important for the future of our party to be seen through the lens of personality.

Even if the Warringah motion passes, it is not binding on the NSW division and would need approval from the state executive, which has resisted the push for plebiscites to date.

If fully implemented, the Warringah motion would see a transition to plebiscites beginning with open seats not held by the Liberals, or where a Liberal member is retiring effectively grandfathering sitting members.

Read more:

Liberals warned party will split if NSW preselection reforms rejected - The Guardian

Detroit, for many years a Democrat stronghold

In his 2004 speech at the Democratic National Convention, then-Sen. Barack Obama famously declared, Theres not a liberal America and a conservative America theres the United States of America.

He was wrong.

Because recent presidential elections have made it clear there are, in fact, a liberal America and conservative America.

Fifteen states have voted for the Democratic candidate in every presidential election since 2000, while 22 states have voted Republican in every election since that time.

That means only 13 of the 50 states have swung since the turn of the century. But five of those states New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan are typically Democratic states that only voted for a Republican once in that time, while two other states, Indiana and North Carolina, are typically Republican states that only voted for a Democrat during the Obama wave of 2008.

Although liberal states and conservative states are both populated by Americans, their citizens hold increasingly divergent views.

Americans today are polarized to a degree not seen since the Civil War, lamented David Kupelian, WNDs vice president and managing editor. The president gives a speech in Poland defending Western values the Christian faith, freedom, strong families and is viciously attacked by the left as a white supremacist and racist. To most Americans, thats simply insane but thats where the left is today.

This growing political-cultural divide has at its core two profoundly different worldviews radically different views of who and what man is, and what his responsibility is toward God and his fellow man which in turn determines wildly divergent views as to what constitutes morality, fairness, justice, equality, what kind of government we need, indeed what constitutes good and evil.

Many Americans seek to move to a place where more people share their values. Paul Chabot, a Republican who ran unsuccessfully for a U.S. House seat in his native California in 2014 and 2016, relocated to Texas along with his family after his latest defeat.

He then founded Conservative Move, a company that endeavors to help conservatives move out of liberal sections of the country and find a new home in North Texas.

From the companys founding in May through the beginning of July, Chabot said he received about a thousand expressions of interest, three-quarters of them from Californians, according to The Guardian.

Gina Loudon, a cable TV host and psychology, political and social analyst, lives in California and has considered leaving the state for greener pastures. In an April WND column, she wrote about how the California legislature tried to pass a bill to eliminate her husbands job, in which he fought for the rights of non-union workers.

My family and I have personally been targeted by Jerry Brown and his take-no-prisoners approach to political savagery, Loudon told WND. So indeed, we have considered moving to a state that is friendlier to business and diversity of opinion. Not to mention, taxation in Democrat-controlled states is a much heavier burden. Additionally, we know that Democrat-controlled states and cities have much higher crime rates due to their restrictive gun laws that endanger their citizens.

However, its an oversimplification to say conservative Americans live in the red states and liberal Americans live in the blue states.

An examination of a county-level electoral map from any recent presidential election yields a surprising observation: the vast majority of counties in America lean Republican. Even in reliably Democratic states like Oregon, Washington, Minnesota and New York, the Republican candidate wins the majority of counties.

In fact, Donald Trump won more than 2,600 counties in 2016 while Hillary Clinton won fewer than 500, according to TIME. A county-level electoral map makes the United States appear to be a sea of GOP, with the Democrat counties concentrated mainly on the East and West coasts and the Southwest.

So how did Clinton win the popular vote while winning less than one-sixth of the counties? The counties she won were predominantly high-population urban counties, while Trump won mainly lower-population rural and suburban counties.

The liberal/conservative divide in America has become largely an urban/rural divide. Its a phenomenon Kupelian explored in his most recent book, The Snapping of the American Mind.

Although obviously there are many exceptions, generally speaking, the stunning truth in todays America is that our big cities are liberal-left while the rest of the country is basically center-right, Kupelian said.

Get David Kupelians culture war blockbusters: The Marketing of Evil, How Evil Works and his latest, The Snapping of the American Mind signed and personalized at the WND Superstore.

It only takes a major city or two to turn a state Democrat, given that whoever wins a plurality of votes in a state receives all the electoral votes (in 48 of the 50 states).

Hillary Clinton only captured two counties in Nevada, but those two counties included the cities of Las Vegas and Reno, so Clinton won the state. In Minnesota, she won the counties surrounding Minneapolis/St. Paul, Duluth and only a few others, yet carried the state. In Illinois, she won the counties surrounding Chicago and scarcely more, yet won the state by 17 points. In Virginia, Clinton captured the counties near Washington, D.C., and a smattering of other counties surrounding large Virginia cities, and she captured the state by five points.

In The Snapping of the American Mind, Kupelian quoted journalist Josh Kron, who wrote the following in The Atlantic shortly after the 2012 election:

The gap is so stark that some of Americas bluest cities are located in its reddest states. Every one of Texas major cities Austin, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio voted Democratic in 2012, the second consecutive presidential election in which theyve done so. Other red-state cities that tipped blue include Atlanta, Indianapolis, New Orleans, Birmingham, Tucson, Little Rock, and Charleston, S.C. ironically, the site of the first battle of the Civil War. In states like Nevada, the only blue districts are often also the only cities, like Reno and Las Vegas.

Because winning a states electoral votes requires only a simple majority, a single city can change the entire game. Blue cities in swing states that ended up going for Obama last Tuesday include Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Denver, the cities of Florida, and the cities of Ohio.

In Krons article, which was titled Red State, Blue City: How the Urban-Rural Divide Is Splitting America, he pointed out the days when city and country residents of a given state shared a common worldview are over. The political dividing lines drawn along state and regional borders, as in pre-Civil War times, have vanished.

The new political divide is a stark division between cities and what remains of the countryside, Kron wrote. Not just some cities and some rural areas, either virtually every major city (100,000-plus population) in the United States of America has a different outlook from the less populous areas that are closest to it. The difference is no longer about where people live, its about how people live: in spread-out, open, low-density privacy or amid rough-and-tumble, in-your-face population density and diverse communities that enforce a lower-common denominator of tolerance among inhabitants.

Kupelian, for his part, contends people dont make cities liberal cities actually make people liberal.

As I explain in The Snapping of the American Mind, just living in a big city tends to make one liberal, he said. Quite literally, the attitudes, beliefs, assumptions and worldview of ones surrounding world tend to get inside a person. A microcosm of this phenomenon can be seen in our universities. Many Christian, homeschooled, conservative kids who go to college these days soon become enamored of progressive leftist ideas. After all, thats what everybody else thinks can they all be wrong? Besides, who wants to be rejected and ostracized as an outcast or racist?

Loudon, who coauthored the book What Women Really Want, does not think its healthy for people to divide themselves up by ideology.

Tribalism is terrible and we know this, she insisted. It isnt good for the republic and it isnt good for civil discourse. If you want to control people, divide them up into little parcels, separate them by ideology and emotion, create a victim status, and give them something to make them think they need you. Then you can control them.

Kupelian believes major cities offer a preview of what the rest of America will look like if Democrats have their way.

If you want to know what America will look like in the future under the enlightened leadership of progressive Democrats, look at our big cities, which have been run by progressive Democrats for the last century, Kupelian wrote in The Snapping of the American Mind. According to National Review:

Baltimore has seen two Republicans sit in the mayors office since the 1920s and none since the 1960s. Like St. Louis, it is effectively a single-party political monopoly from its schools to its police department. Philadelphia has not elected a Republican mayor since 1948. The last Republican to be elected mayor of Detroit was congratulated on his victory by President Eisenhower. Atlanta, a city so corrupt that its public schools are organized as a criminal conspiracy against its children, last had a Republican mayor in the 19th century.

Black urban communities face institutional failure across the board every day. American cities are by and large Democratic-party monopolies, monopolies generally dominated by the so-called progressive wing of the party. The results have been catastrophic.'

Get David Kupelians culture war blockbusters: The Marketing of Evil, How Evil Works and his latest, The Snapping of the American Mind signed and personalized at the WND Superstore.

Originally posted here:

City vs. country: The new liberal vs. conservative - WND.com

James Duncan Gordon Davidson OBE MVO, naval officer, farmer and politician. Born: 10 January, 1927 in Chatham, Kent. Died: 29 June,2017 in Newtonmore, aged 90

As he once observed, with a considerable degree of understatement, life is full of surprises none more so than finding yourself on the wrong end of a Kalashnikov, dancing with the Queen and two princesses or being mooted as a potential leader of the Liberal Party.

For James Davidson the first came courtesy of a period in Moscow at the height of the Cold War, by which time he had already served King George VI and family as a naval officer, the latter followed his election as MP for West Aberdeenshire.

In a brilliantly multi-faceted life he also became a hill farmer, television presenter, organiser of Scotlands premier agricultural event The Royal Highland Show, climbed the Eiger and was a single parent to three young children.

Seemingly unstoppable, in retirement he became a healthy living campaigner, studied otters in Chile, created a childrens book and completed his first parachute jump all proof of his abilities not only as a master of reinvention but as a formidable operator.

His unusually varied life began in the port of Chatham where his father, a naval captain, was commissioning a destroyer. He spent his first two years in Malta and was schooled at various establishments before becoming a cadet at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth in 1940, aged 13. Two key influencers were the sight of the battleships Nelson and Rodney, along with the cruiser Hood, off Nairn in 1938, and the film Sons of the Sea.

Still just 17 when he joined his first ship, in the final year of the Second World War, he served on HMS Anson, part of the Home Fleet at Scapa Flow, patrolling off the Danish and Norwegian coasts. He later joined the cruiser Newfoundland as a senior midshipman, sailing to join the British Pacific Fleet and reaching Manus in the Admiralty Isles the day Germany surrendered.

As the war with Japan continued he saw action in Operation Wewak, covering Australian troops landing on New Guinea, and in Operation Inmate, an attack on the Japanese stronghold of Truk in the Caroline Islands. He went on to serve on HMS Whimbrel, escorting a fleet train of tankers and store ships off the Japanese coast, and was 500 miles from Hiroshima when news of the first atomic bomb blast came through on August 7, 1945: Even now, more than half a century later, I wonder about the morality of that terrible act of destruction, he later wrote.

That, and the bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, ended the war. He was on Whimbrel at Tokyo harbour for the Japanese surrender on September 2 where he witnessed 250 Allied aircraft filling the skies, a vast array of Allied ships and despairing Japanese, heads in their hands.

On the way home he happened to read some General Election pamphlets which galvanised his Liberal views. At 19 he became a sub-lieutenant on HMS Vanguard, a battleship fitted out for the Royal cruise to South Africa, when he danced with the then Queen Elizabeth and Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. He entertained them at gun room parties and attended Princess Elizabeths 21st birthday party before being posted to HMS Wren in the Persian Gulf.

Unsure his future lay at sea, he secretly applied to do a BSc at Aberdeen University but was told he had another seven years to serve before he could leave the Navy. Making the best of it, he decided to brush up on the Russian he had learned as a cadet and qualified, through the Navy, to study Russian at Cambridge, with six months in Paris when he lived with a family of Georgian princesses.

After passing the Civil Service Commissioners interpreter exams he was appointed assistant naval attach to the British Embassy in Moscow, taking up the post in 1952 after a year as Boys Training Officer for a Rosyth-based squadron of frigates.

The handsome 25-year-old lived in a dacha in the Perlovka forest, constantly tailed and in the glare of anti-Western propaganda. His encounter with a Kalashnikov-toting soldier came one Sunday afternoon when, during a forest walk, he was held at gunpoint until 3am, accused of entering an unmarked forbidden zone and of being an unacceptable person.

In Russia he saw Stalin both alive and lying in state, travelled widely taking discreet photos, including images of submarine construction on the Volga, and married Kit Jamieson, the beautiful secretary to the Canadian Charg dAffaires. In 1954 they were the first westerners since the Second World War to leave the Soviet Union via the Trans-Siberian Railway and Nakhodka, shadowed incessantly by an operative from the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

During a spell as third in command on a destroyer he inherited a farm that had been in his family for nearly 200 years and duly applied to go on the retired list. In 1956 he moved north to the property at Tillychetly near Alford, Aberdeenshire, He taught himself the agricultural business, took a correspondence course at night and was subsequently elected to the North-east Area executive of the National Farmers Union. He also supported the West Aberdeenshire Liberal Association and enormously expanded its branch network.

Adopted as the seats prospective Liberal Parliamentary candidate, he lost out in the 1964 general election but in 1966 became the first Liberal in 35 years to win the seat. Jo Grimond appointed him spokesman on Defence and Foreign Affairs and he was nominated as the Liberal Party vice-chairman of the Great Britain-USSR Association. However the Russians refused to accept him, hinting he had been a spy. After Grimond decided to retire as leader he privately asked Davidson if he would consider standing for the role. By this time Davidsons wife was suffering mental health issues and the prospect was unthinkable.

The couple split up and Davidson did not stand in the 1970 election, turning down the offer of a peerage and a seat in the House of Lords. Forging a new career he became chief executive of the Royal Highland & Agricultural Society of Scotland, responsible to a mammoth board of 52 directors, running the Royal Highland Show and establishing the Exhibition Centre at Ingliston. Meanwhile he had also been recruited as presenter of the Grampian Television programme, Country Focus, which he fronted from 1970 to 1982.

Divorced in 1973 and awarded custody of his three children, he married his second wife Janet with whom he had a son.

Awarded the MVO after serving the Royals on Vanguard, he was further honoured with an OBE for services to agriculture in 1984. He retired in 1992 and, shocked by Scotlands terrible record of heart disease and cancer, immediately busied himself establishing The Flower of Scotland campaign to promote a healthy lifestyle. He recruited rugby legend David Sole as a trustee and was supported by stars including Sean Connery and Evelyn Glennie, plus the British Medical Association and the World Health Organisation. He developed a book and video, distributed free to every Scottish secondary school, spoke at almost 130 schools across the country and raised 10,000 with a parachute jump.

Having retired to Newtonmore, he was founder chairman of the local community Woodland Trust. A passionate climber, he had climbed widely in Scotland and the Alps, including ascents of the Matterhorn and Eiger, and was a committed conservationist, tracking and tagging otters in Chile at the age of 74.

A former president of the Clan Davidson Association, he also wrote and illustrated a colouring book for children and titles including Scots and the Sea and his autobiography Thinker, Sailor, Shepherd, Spy?

Devoted to Janet, whom he met more than half a century ago, he is survived by her, their son Calum and his elder children Sandy, Ros and Polly.

ALISON SHAW

The rest is here:

Obituary: James Davidson, naval officer who became farmer, Liberal MP and television presenter - The Scotsman

Asked what he thought of Western civilization, Mohandas Gandhi is said to have answered that it would be a good idea. Debate about liberal democracy in the Trump era is suffused with similar pessimism about Western achievement, bordering on self-damaging despair. The liberal mix of capitalism and democracy is denounced for yielding social inequality, cronyist kleptocracy and sheer governmental incompetence - failings that opened the door to Donald Trumps dispiriting presidency and that may be entrenched by it in turn. In the wake of the recent Group of 20 summit, some went so far as to claim that the chief threat to Americans was not from the aggressively illiberal despots of Russia, North Korea, China or the Islamic theocracies. Rather, it was from Trump which is to say, from the perverse fruit of our own system. The enemy is us.

This intellectual bandwagon needs to be stopped. Liberalism faces two challenges on the one hand, external enemies; on the other, an internal crisis of self-confidence and it is time we all acknowledged that the external threat is more severe. However bad Trump may be, he is not Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong Un. And although it is true that liberalism faces an internal crisis Ive done my bit to contribute to the alarmism it is worth remembering how liberalism got started two centuries ago.

As Edmund Fawcett has argued in his magisterial history of liberalism, the creed originated as a set of principles for managing bewildering change. For most of human history, economic growth and social evolution proceeded at a snails pace, but between 1776 and the first decades of the 19th century, revolutions both political and industrial caused everything to speed up. Liberalism skeptical of central power, respectful of diverse beliefs, comfortable with vigorous disagreement offered a means of handling the resulting tumult. If headlong technological and economic dislocation made political conflict unavoidable, humanity needed a way to contain it, civilize it a way to hang on to timeless standards of humanity while providing an escape valve for argument and change.

Seen in this light, todays technological and economic convulsions the part-time jobs of the gig economy, the menacing shadow of the robots - are not signs that the liberal system is in crisis. To the contrary, they are signs that liberalism is more essential than ever. We are in the midst of another industrial revolution, which will create winners and losers and bitter political arguments and Trump is testament to that. Liberalism will not end these conflicts; only absolutist doctrines create political silence. But liberalism will set the rules of the game that allow the conflict to be managed. For now, Trump is expressing the frustration of a part of the country, but liberal checks and rules of process are containing the impact.

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In its long history of facilitating clamorous argument, liberalism has succumbed, unsurprisingly, to repeated neuroses. In 1956 Nikita Khrushchev boasted of the superiority of state-directed industrialization, telling a group of Westerners, we will bury you; some in the West made the mistake of believing him, especially when the Soviet Union launched the first-ever space satellite the following year. In the 1960s, U.S. democracy was rocked by political assassinations, violence at the 1968 Democratic National Convention and a bubbling up of radical challenges to the system. Amid the stagflation of the 1970s, a business school dean sounded a warning about an end-to-Western-capitalism syndrome; and no less a figure than the U.S. president lectured the nation on its moral turpitude. All these episodes generated existential crises, just as Trump today leads people to doubt the resilience of our system. But pessimists should note that liberalism emerged robustly from those moments of self-doubt.

Whats more, pessimists should remember that, if a few dice had settled differently, the current conversation would be completely different. Absent strong proof to the contrary, Trumps election must be accepted as legitimate, but a small swing in a few places would have put the status quo candidate in the White House.

Similarly, Britains Brexit referendum was decided 52 to 48 percent; and a recent poll suggested that the voters now have doubts. In France, to cite a contrary example, the ambitious liberal Emmanuel Macron was lucky to face a bevy of weak opponents, and France was even luckier that Macron emerged out of nowhere, clad in white. The point is that political outcomes often hinge on quirks of fortune. None of these events should be interpreted as durable signals that liberalism is either moribund or resurgent.

Finally, it pays to remember that the two disasters that discredited the liberal establishment the 2008 financial crisis and the Iraq War were not errors that flowed from liberalism itself. There was nothing liberal about taxpayer backstops for private financial risk-taking, nor about the failure to temper the objective of Iraqi regime change with a sober calculation of available resources. These episodes do hold lessons for our democracy avoid cronyism, avoid hubris but they absolutely do not show that liberalism is wanting. To the contrary, liberalism arose during the first industrial revolution. We need it to navigate the second industrial revolution as it roils around us now.

Courtesy of The Washington Post

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FORUM: The crisis of confidence that's roiling liberalism - New Haven Register

For at least a couple of decades now, the words liberal international order have been used by mainstream strategic thinkers in the United States as a codeword for a world led by the United States.

Under that concept, all nations (ideally) operate in a rational manner, wedded to the rule of law and free from excessive statism in daily life and the economy often with the involvement of multilateral institutions.

Putin gets blamed

For quite a while now, these same U.S. voices have professed great indignation about the venerable liberal international order being shredded.

They are crystal clear about who is to blame for that: none other than Russias President Vladimir Putin.

There is no doubt that Putin plays all sorts of dirty games all over the globe and often uses what is left of international order and international law in the most cynical manner.

But that does not mean that Putin is the one responsible for shredding the liberal international order.

The problem with the very convenient Its Putins fault argument is that it has never been Putins job to preserve or support that order.

Anybody who believes that only betrays his own naivet or wishful thinking. The Russian, as well as the Chinese, governments interest clearly lies in establishing a non-U.S. centric world order.

Somebody else is a far bigger culprit

The big problem with U.S. policymakers loudly broadcasting their disappointment with Putins supposed shredding of the liberal international order is their damning silence on the United States own role in tearing that order apart.

Whatever the deficiencies of Western powers in global affairs, one of their presumed advantages, at least according to their own advertising, is that they are rational and responsible powers wedded to upholding the rule of law.

It is on that basis, in the Wests own doctrine, that its actions on the global stage have legitimacy.

The truth is that it wasnt Putin or even Trump now as much as George W. Bush and his reckless foreign policy cowboys remember Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, all names that should live in infamy who did most of the shredding of that liberal international order.

They committed acts of war that were clearly criminal in nature. Their only saving grace was and is that they have a U.S. passport.

The incredible legal gymnastics that they resorted to cover their tracks as best they could was continued under the Obama Administration, although in a much milder form.

Still, Obama did not break with his predecessors Bush league approach. Deliberately obscure mandates in Iraq simply changed topic, gone were the torture memos, in where drone strike memos.

Put yourself into the shoes of a Russian or Chinese policymaker for a moment and ask any one of these four questions:

1. What could possibly be the Russians and Chinese incentive to act responsibly (and legally), after the United States, the chief sermonizer of goodness in world affairs, under Bush IIs (and also, in part, under Obamas tutelage) had lowered its own behavioral standards so much?

2. Can the Russians and Chinese really afford not to behave in the same callous, reckless, mean and demeaning way as the Americans did in Iraq?

3. Are the Russians and Chinese supposed not to give in to the imperial temptation when they feel that need at a given moment and the U.S. government itself is showing little restraint?

4. Why should the Russians and the Chinese hold themselves to a higher standard in international affairs than the United States?

After all, it was the U.S. government with its wars of will argument over a decade ago that degraded the existing terms of reference for international behavior. That inevitably had effects on others.

If America can do it

The Russians and Chinese, with good reason from their vantage point, only demand equal rights to abuse the international system.

The way in which the Americans are proliferating the its Putins fault argument at the present time so mindlessly and so intensely for all of Putins faults does nothing to resurrect the international order.

Quite the opposite. It is yet another double standard, where other nations are held to a standard by the Americans the gross violation of which committed by themselves they have simply conveniently forgotten.

Collective amnesia may be a very self-serving way to try and wash ones hands of ones own crimes. But it is hardly a credible way to reestablish an order that prides itself on being rational and consistent.

Read more from the original source:

The liberal international order: Just who shredded it? - Salon

Brooke Patterson, the Liberal National party member who moved the motion to call for a ban on headscarves for children under the age of 10. Photograph: Darren England/AAP

The Liberal National party state conference in Queensland has overwhelmingly voted against a limited Muslim immigration ban but has voted to call for headscarves to be banned for young children.

The main resolution had called for the federal government to ban immigration from countries with sharia law, with those in favour saying it was was culturally incompatible with Australian values.

However, those arguing against it said that immigrants should be judged on a case-by-case basis and are often fleeing persecution under sharia in those countries.

Ultimately the resolution was defeated by what the LNP president, Gary Spence, described as an overwhelming majority of attendees.

An emergency resolution calling for a general ban on clothing that obscures the face was also defeated, however a second emergency resolution calling for a ban on headscarves for children under the age of 10 was passed.

The delegate moving the motion to adopt the resolution, Brooke Patterson from the Southport State Electoral Council, said she was a P&C member at a local school and had been asked to design appropriate uniforms for young girls that incorporated sexual modesty coverings.

We need to debate this now, otherwise in three months there will be a Muslim uniform in state schools in Queensland, Patterson said.

Another delegate, Wendy Ko from the Surfers Paradise SEC, argued against the resolution, saying the Liberal National party should be in favour of freedom of religion.

We shouldnt even be having this discussion, Ko said. I dont think anyone has the right to tell an Islamic family how to raise their daughter.

Ultimately the resolution was passed.

The Queensland Labor government frontbencher Leeanne Enoch later on Sunday said she was disappointed by that result.

I think its absolutely appalling, we live in a multicultural society, Enoch told reporters. Theyre talking about what children should wear in schools that is the dark ages.

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Liberal National party conference calls for ban on headscarves for children under 10 - The Guardian

LIBERAL, Kan. Sunday nights series finale between the Hays Larks and Liberal Bee Jays has been postponed due to poor playing conditions at Brent Gould Field following weekend rains. The game, which has big implications on the Jayhawk League championship, will be made up at 6 pm Monday.

This is the second time in three days a game has been delayed in the series. Fridays opener was postponed and made up as part of a Saturday doubleheader which saw the Larks win game one 8-3 in eight innings and drop the second contest 2-1.

The Larks currently sit atop the Jayhawk League standings by one-game lead over the Bee Jays and Derby. The Twins close out their series in Dodge City Sunday night then play three next week at home against Great Bend. Liberal was scheduled to host Oklahoma City next week, but will receive three forfeit wins after the Indians folded following their game on Thursday. The Larks close with three at home against El Dorado starting Tuesday.

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Larks series finale in Liberal postponed; makeup set for Monday - hays Post

Updated July 16, 2017 10:03:54

The WA Liberals did something this week that's becoming increasingly core business for an opposition in modern day politics - it released a whistleblower website.

Launched without fanfare, it was a seemingly innocuous act, until the site was revealed to have significant flaws.

The original website, registered to Opposition Leader Mike Nahan, urged anyone aware of misconduct by public officers, including ministers and MPs, to submit their details via an online form, and promised it would be "100 per cent confidential."

The problem was that within minutes of the ABC revealing the new website on social media, people quickly began raising concerns about the site's security.

Those concerns spiralled overnight and by the next day the Acting Premier Roger Cook was out in front of the TV cameras warning the website was "potentially illegal."

"The Attorney-General has today sought advice from the State Solicitor's Office to get advice in relation to the legality of the website," Mr Cook said.

He labelled it a cheap political stunt and was quick to point out there were more appropriate avenues available to report misconduct, such as the Corruption and Crime Commission.

The Corruption and Crime Commissioner John McKechnie agreed.

"If you suspect corruption, come directly to us, we have the people and the tools to deal with it," he said.

The list of those lining up to criticise the website continued to grow throughout the day, with various cyber security experts happy to pass judgement.

That included the University of Western Australia's Centre for Software Practice David Glance, who said data submitted to the website was not encrypted and was therefore vulnerable.

He ran a simple security check on the site and gave it a big F for fail.

He also said he suspected the site was vulnerable to hacking attempts which would reveal submissions, and he warned potential whistleblowers to steer clear of it.

"It seems to have been put up with the minimum amount of thought put into it," he said.

The Opposition was quickly forced into defensive mode and sought advice on how to improve its site from the Public Sector Commission - an agency tasked with enhancing integrity and efficiency in the public service.

Within hours Dr Nahan was out saying the Opposition had taken steps to improve the site's confidentiality and was now encrypting the data.

It had also been updated to remove a note saying whistleblowers were afforded additional safeguards under the Public Interest Disclosure Act.

The site's declared purpose was also expanded to include a call for whistleblowers to report "broken election promises" and "any politicisation of the public sector."

Dr Nahan vigorously defended the site, saying it was about holding the Government to account.

"This Government has in its short period in government been very secretive," he said.

"It's making a whole range of decisions without providing adequate information as the basis for the decision, the outcome and the cost of those decisions and there are many of those decisions," he said.

He said the Government's reaction was "over the top."

"When someone reacts by going to the lawyers they have something to hide," he said.

The problem for Dr Nahan is that it wasn't just the Government that saw the site as a poorly orchestrated political stunt that backfired.

Some of his own colleagues were privately questioning the political judgement of his office for making it public without due diligence.

There's no doubt the WA Liberals appear to be struggling to come to terms with being in Opposition - their own MPs privately concede it.

Gone are the numerous highly paid staff, and other trappings that being in government allows.

Gone are the departmental staff at the Liberals immediate disposal to provide expertise and advice, and the resources to pay expensive marketing companies to set them up sophisticated and secure websites with all the bells and whistles.

The WA Liberals now have just 13 MPs in the Lower House and have to stare across the chamber into a sea of red.

There's no doubt the enormity of the task of holding the Government to account must be daunting.

Just six of their front benchers have any experience in opposition and most of them aren't even in the Lower House.

The Opposition's leadership team of Dr Nahan and his deputy Liza Harvey are not even part of that six and before losing the election had absolutely no experience in opposition.

While some Liberals may argue these factors contributed to the website blunder, others say there is still no excuse for a simple lack of due diligence.

Being in opposition is hard work and requires all members of the team to be pulling their weight, focused and helping to hold a government to account.

It appears this is yet to dawn on some of the WA Liberal MPs.

The WA Liberals' massively depleted ranks and little experience on the opposition benches makes the task ahead over the next four years an unenviable one.

A day after "website-gate" the Opposition Leader's office sent the ABC an email showing it had now run its own security check on the updated site and it now scored an A+.

There are plenty in the Liberal Party who are likely to believe that's the only A+ the Opposition's notched up since losing the election.

Topics: government-and-politics, liberals, wa

First posted July 16, 2017 08:23:36

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Liberal whistleblower website blunder exposes struggle to adapt to opposition - ABC Online

The owner, founder and customers of Shanghais best-known liberal bookshop are counting down the days to its closure as ideological control in China becomes stricter.

The Jifeng Bookstores last branch in the city, which opened at the Shanghai Library metro station four years ago, is due to shut its doors at the end of January, when its lease expires.

Long regarded a cultural landmark in Chinas financial capital, Jifeng is known for its high-quality academic books on politics, philosophy, law and history, topics that are also explored by well-known scholars at regular seminars held in a large room at the shop.

Taobao tightens rules over sale of books and magazines published outside China

Yu Miao, who bought a majority stake in Jifeng five years ago from founder Yan Bofei, said the library had decided to resume the premises for its own use and he had encountered non-commercial interference that had stymied efforts to find an alternative location.

Some projects, including cultural/creative centres, invited us to open a bookshop at a favourable price or even rent-free, said Yu, an entrepreneur in his mid-40s. But the local culture departments made it clear they did not want Jifeng to move in when the landlord attempted to apply for a licence.

Yan opened the first Jifeng Bookstore at Shanghais South Shaanxi Road metro station in 1997 and went on to open seven other branches in the following 14 years. But rising rents and decreasing sales due to competition from cut-price online booksellers eventually forced their closure.

The selection of books for sale on Jifengs rows of black, wooden bookshelves still reflects Yans tastes. The former Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences philosophy researcher, now in his 60s, said every book has values and a stance, as did the booksellers who chose them, and he highly recommended speeches on liberalism, propositions such as constitutionalism and solid research on current politics.

Our original target was very simple: we wanted to disseminate some progressive knowledge, he said. But those simple thoughts were misunderstood and probably regarded [by the authorities] as a base for opponents.

Jifengs existence has been threatened before, in 2008 and 2012, when high rents at South Shaanxi Road prompted doubts about its future and public campaigns of support. A slogan from the 2008 campaign complained that the metro station could only accommodate Haagen-Dazs, not [German philosopher Juergen] Habermas.

Echoes of 1950s persecution in Chinas crackdown on liberal voices

But the Chinese authorities have further strengthened ideological control since Xi Jinping became Communist Party general secretary in 2012.

Zhang Xuezhong, a Shanghai-based scholar, said Jifengs impending closure was in line with a series of moves by the Chinese authorities to tighten ideological control.

It has a negative impact on Shanghais image as an international hub but the authorities are more concerned about political stability, he said. They dont want to see freer social or cultural events.

Jifeng used to hold seminars at its old South Shaanxi Road headquarters but the frequency picked up after the move to the Shanghai Library metro station in 2013, with 150 to 200 events held every year. Objections by the authorities have resulted in roughly half a dozen cancellations a year.

Five seminars were called off last year, on topics ranging from the South China Sea to constitutionalism and the fate of entrepreneurs and intellectuals in modern China.

Two seminars cancelled this year were to have been led by historian Qin Hui and law professor Tong Zhiwei. Qin planned to give a lecture on issues arising from globalisation while Tong was scheduled to talk about reform of the mainlands supervision system.

Chinas top colleges to face ideological inspections

Qin, a history professor at Beijings Tsinghua University, attracted attention at the end of 2015 when his book Out of Imperialism, on the history of Chinas attempts to form a government that abided by the constitution, was pulled from mainland bookshop shelves without a reason being given.

Government pressure appears to be mounting, with five seminars called off in less than two weeks.

After we send out the notices on seminars, the authorities would pay attention to them and call me if they think it is inappropriate, Yu said. They would say the topic or the speaker has some problems, but not explain those problems.

Chow Po-chung, an associate professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who has held two seminars at Jifeng, said he opted for milder topics so they could proceed smoothly.

I know some seminars by scholars were halted previously, he said. I planned to talk about political philosophy and freedom but picked a mild, literary topic as I worried it would be halted.

Yu said the authorities had accused the bookstore of engaging in enlightenment in recent years.

Maybe they have concerns about such a place, where people can discuss and rethink many social issues, and whether this will break through what they promote and the constraints on thought they impose on you, he said.

Chow said the seminars had also supported the growth of civil society and the pursuit of a better society.

All the actions of civil society need moral resources and knowledge, including overseas experiences, historical references and learning from philosophy, he said, The question is where the knowledge comes from and where we can discuss it. You can see theres almost no place in Shanghai apart from Jifeng.

Yu Shiyi, a Jifeng fan whos studying for a masters degree at East China Normal University, said the bookshops closure would leave a hole in many peoples lives.

Xi calls for more thought control on Chinas campuses

For many of Jifengs readers, it has become a part of their life and attending its seminars on the weekend has become indispensable, just like eating and watching movies, he said. Its very disappointing for intellectuals.

Jifeng fans have expressed their feelings about its closure in notes posted on a big board at the entrance to the bookshop, which also counts down the number of days it has left.

The days were busy and repetitive at the metro station but time could stop because of the bookstore. I wish it could become an eternal landmark, just like one of my old friends who never separate, one note read.

Another said: Persist in independent thinking and a sense of democracy. Jifeng promoted social progress. Will always support you.

Jifeng is holding a series of 20 seminars before its closure, with topics including Chinese philanthropy, education and Chinas 1911 revolution, but some of its posts about them on the WeChat messaging service and Weibo microblog platform have been censored.

If all goes according to plan, Jifeng will not disappear from the mainland market altogether, with Yu Miao planning to open Jifeng Bookstores in other cities in eastern China. But, he said, until he saw the authorities reaction to the Jifeng sign going up on the opening day of a new shop, he would not know whether those plans would ultimately bear fruit. The plans were already in place when Jifeng announced on April 23 World Book Day that the days of its Shanghai store were numbered.

And Yu Miao said he would be willing to open a Jifeng store in Shanghai again if the authorities relaxed their grip, because such a venue was essential for society and culture to develop.

Lets see how long the contrariness and absurdity can be maintained, he said. In my opinion, it wont last for long.

See the rest here:

Why Shanghai's best-known liberal bookshop is closing down - South China Morning Post