Mount Migently Manifesto

Dec 22, 2012 | Arts, Australian Values, Citizenship, Cultural Values, Democracy, Economic Values, Education, Immigration, Indigenous, Legal, Lifestyle & Life, Love, Media Values, OzPol Values, Racism, Religious Values, Science Values, Values

Mount Migently Manifesto

 Australian Values

 

Australian values have lately been enthusiastically asserted by some Australians and Sir Roger has been much impressed – in much the same way a washed-up prize fighter feels the repeated impressions of his opponents’ fists in his guts.

These assertions of “Australian values” tend to be energetically debated:

in Melbourne with French and Indian visitors to Australia on trains, buses and trams,

in university college meetings in Sydney,

in the halls, offices and party rooms of Parliament House in Canberra

and particularly on commercial radio breakfast programs everywhere. 

Sir Roger was reeling from the onslaught and disheartened by the proponents’ ignorance, illogic, idiocy and illiteracy; by their fear, spite, narrow-minded prejudice, stupidity and frankly pre-agricultural social views. 

Someone had omitted to convey to them that for their brain to operate as advertised it is necessary to update the database regularly and to calibrate it with reality. 

Someone had omitted to explain to them that the texts on which their ethics are based and with which they (selectively) justify much of their self-righteous bombast are not actually sacred but were all simple rulebooks written thousands of years ago to enable the social control of brutal sand tribes, to suit their primitive times and conditions, calm their existential terrors, alleviate their ontological horrors, excuse their ignorance and justify their brutality. 

Someone had failed to explain to them that the foundation myths, the stories of Australia on which they hang their narrative of Australian culture, are just that. Myths. It never happened, Bruce.

It’s just like when your girlfriend lied to you – you weren’t the first. 

Dismayed by the galloping erosion of the humane, generous, fair and tolerant values of his Australia Sir Roger therefore repaired to the mountain top seeking counsel and wisdom from the winds,  the silence and the intelligences of the cosmos. 

Sir Roger was generously granted that counsel and has returned from the mountain top bearing enlightenment. 

Over the next few days and weeks he will share with his world these insights into the best of human and Australian values. 

 

 

Denying Gay Marriage for Power’s Sake

Jun 29, 2011 | Australian Values, Cultural Values, Democracy, Legal, Lifestyle & Life, Love, OzPol Values, Religious Values, Values

Denying Gay Marriage for Power’s Sake

Sir Roger does not wish to marry a man but . . .

 

To put it another way, while Sir Roger and Dorothy have many good friends in common, Dorothy and Sir Roger are not Facebook buddies. And Sir Roger does not think that his personal preference for his own life is of any moment or interest whatever in what another human “should” or should not do or be permitted to do, particularly in the area of human personal relationships. It is quite simply none of Sir Roger’s bloody business. Sir Roger’s opinion is irrelevant. So, very much, is Julia Gillard’s. Even more so is Tony Abbott’s.

Sir Roger was shocked this evening, however, to hear a Labor Party heavy claiming on the 7.30 Report that Labor shouldn’t approve gay marriage because if it did Labor would lose 10-15 seats in Queensland.

So stuff doing what’s right. It’s all about staying in power.

Now, Sir Roger can understand that a political party would argue that you have to win seats to form government.

The question is, to form government to do what exactly?

The answer can’t be to form government in order to stay in government. Nor can it be simply to keep the other mob out. There is no vision, leadership, or social progress in that. It is morally bankrupt.

The point of winning the privilege of forming a government is so that you can do good things, so that you can do what’s right, not just so that you can be in power. You don’t sacrifice what’s right on the altar of Power.

This Labor backroom zombie has, like almost the entirety of the Labor machine, lost sight of what it’s all really about and what really matters. It’s people like him — once again, basically the entire Labor machine — who are responsible for the decline of the party. They’re not going anywhere. They’re just clinging to power.

The other question is, why a gay or lesbian person would want to be “Married”, other than the financial/legal benefits? If they want to publicly affirm their love for each other in front of their friends they can do that already and more cheaply than a full-on wedding. Why would they want to ape the straight community’s rituals? Why would they want to be just like stuffy old straight people, or like Mum and Dad? It would surely be easier to pass legislation that confers non-discriminatory economic/legal rights on all people. If the big problem for straight people is just calling it “marriage”, why not just call it something else?

Of course, legislation that confers equal, non-gender-specific economic/legal rights on all people in whatever combination of relationship, where it is not in law now ought to be.

But as Sir Roger says, it’s none of his bloody business and the government(s) should stand away and get out of our bedrooms. Their job is to manage infrastructure like education, police, power and health and not to legislate morals. After all, being politicians they can hardly claim the high moral ground. In most cases in every party they are among the least moral and most dishonest (let’s just say “sleazy”) members of the community they are supposed to serve.

Just look at Tony Abbott.