132 search results for " merit"

The Prime Minister of Australia is behaving each day more like a paternal ruler. He now wants us to download a phone app that will allow the State to trace our every move.  As reported by the media, the Morrison government is initially aiming for a 40 per cent take-up of control of ‘people’s movements and the people they come in contact with’.[1] Paternalism is government action that limits a person’s liberty with the intent of promoting “their own good” regardless of the will of the person. It implies a disregard for the will of a person and involves behaviour…

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Mark Latham has slammed the NSW Government’s “diversity and inclusion” staffing policies in the public service, and the new LGBTIQ Network, branding it a policy of “exclusion and division.” NSW Government bureaucrats admitted on Monday that their policy does not reflect a number of groups in the community, despite affirming that a world-class public service ought to “reflect the diversity of the community it serves.” The NSW One Nation leader accused the state government of adopting a “very selective diversity” policy, which excludes Christians, heterosexuals, homeless, public housing tenants, the unemployed and low-income earners. “The CHULIPS are totally left out…

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In a salient display of a free press and journalistic independence, the Australian government-owned national broadcaster has taken the Australian government’s Federal Police to court to block them reading documents seized when officers executed a search warrant. Who grants search warrants? Is it the Prime Minister, any elected official or bureaucrat in their employ? No. It’s a judge, or a trusted and accountable registrar with their delegated power who Federal Police had to persuade of the merits of their application for the warrant to search. Australian and international media have howled with indignant outrage at the notion they and their…

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Thousands of pro-life advocates turned out in Adelaide on Saturday to march against the state’s latest proposed abortion bill that would fully decriminalise abortion in South Australia. More than 3,000 people participated in the “Walk for Life” event which was hosted by the pro-life group Love Adelaide. Participants rallied outside Parliament House to offer a voice for the voiceless and stand against the Attorney-General’s plan to legalise abortion up to birth. The Abortion Law Reform Bill was initiated in December 2018 by Green’s MLC Tammy Franks who proposed completely deregulating abortion in South Australia by moving it from the Criminal…

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Is moderation a virtue? So often when I ask people what their political ideology is, they’ll say something along the lines of right-leaning, centre-right, or fiscally conservative but socially inept. Okay, maybe a variation on that last one. Still, the more significant point remains that more and more individuals and political figures are self-describing as centrists. There are a few reasons that this affinity for moderation is taking hold. Partially this could be because it makes some people feel like they’re smarter than others who cannot rise above partisanship to analyse issues on merit. Another may be that more and…

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The Daily Mail Australia is reporting Wilson Gavin died after suffering critical injuries in suicide about 7am this morning at Chelmer Railway station. I am, was, friends with Wilson. He has nothing to apologise for and is a hero we all should take notes from. He hated no one, and dearly loved his Roman Catholic Church, taking his religion very seriously. He loved the Queen and our Commonwealth, and passionately advocated for conservative principles as the best ideas for all of his fellow Australians. Like the stranger in the parable of the Good Samaritan, he thought it his Christian imperative to practically…

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Gene Veith once wrote, ‘secularists are genuinely unable to tell the difference between art that has aesthetic merit and art that has none.’ His words were part of both a critique and lament of the ‘State of the Arts’ and what the world of art has become. Calling art ‘the plaything of the rich’, ‘art is now considered to be whatever the artist does.’ Art has become a slave to the post-modern mind. Under the foppish, vain lordship of the unhinged, vague emptiness of moral relativity, art has lost all meaning. An ‘impersonal, dehumanised’ and desensitised public, is no longer…

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The story goes that a student of philosophy was asked in an exam to prove a chair which had been placed where everyone could see it at the front of the exam hall did not exist. Students were expected to discuss the 20th-century philosophers who posited ideas about subjective human existence and questioned our relationship with reality. But this two word complete response, if the urban legend is to be believed, received top marks for its reflection of the possibility the chair was an illusion of the examiner’s mind. If you’re a person who tends to vote right of centre…

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The Trudeau era and its burgeoning “progressive” totalitarianism got an extension this week as Canadians voted. Consequently, Canadian Liberals were reinstated, winning 157 seats, against the Conservatives who secured 121. Conservatives scored a narrow loss, winning the popular vote at 34.4%, but not securing enough seats to win a majority. [i] In an opinion piece for Crisis Magazine, Canadian Professor Emeritus at St. Jerome’s University, Donald, DeMarco, presented a grim analysis of Canada’s Trudeaun landscape. DeMarco expressed concern about apathy, and a general lack of awareness at the slow erosion of hard-won, tried and true, classical liberal freedoms, stating that…

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Avi Yemini was banned from Twitter after a tweet addressed to climate change activist Greta Thunberg was flagged as being in breach of Twitter’s EULA. Yemini’s criticism wasn’t without merit. He was responding to Greta’s widely publicised, scripted speech, performed before the UN summit on Climate Change. Her performance appeared manufactured and forced. Emotionally distraught, Greta appeared to be intimidated and scared. She repeated the words ‘’How dare you” as part of her claim that the UN (aka the world) had “stolen her dreams and childhood with empty words”, and that “people are suffering, people are dying” and that “entire…

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Activists trying to rally Australians around the idea of Indigenous Australian representation in Parliament have tied their argument in knots. Their message is vague, and their reliance on the simplistic slogan, “Indigenous voice” provides little clarity about what direction they’re advocating Australians take. As a result, the push for an “Indigenous voice” has been interpreted as one of two things: a) call for another advisory group, or b) a call for an entirely new governing body.[i] The latter can only be interpreted as a push for a ‘third branch of Government’, and the former, as a push to return to…

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To criticise and insult people is a somewhat precarious activity. In fact, for one sinner to have the temerity to criticise another seems particularly galling, and liable to do more harm than good. Therefore, it is not altogether surprising that one should hear praise, especially at funerals, that a certain person ‘never said a bad word about anyone’. It reflects a sentiment which is not without truth, but there is also truth in Richard Baxter’s barbed comment, cited by J. C. Ryle in discussing the parable of the talents (Matt.25:14-30),  ‘To do no harm is the praise of a stone,…

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We often hear pro-abortion advocates use the slogan, “My body, my choice.” This commonly used mantra suggests two things: First, that a mother ought to have the “right” to kill her own unborn baby if she chooses because after all, it’s her body, not yours. And who are you to tell a woman what she can and can’t do with her own body, anyway? Second, the phrase, perhaps unintentionally, implies that if the baby inside the mother is not her body, then the choice as to whether the baby lives or dies is not hers to make. If it’s her…

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Google is set to release 53 gender-fluid emojis in an attempt to make the emoji keyboard more universal and gender inclusive. According to Fast Company, Google will be the first tech company to fill the space between male and female emoji symbols, and “acknowledge gender as something that is fluid rather than binary.” “It’s like we’re all at the pool and it’s like the water is cold,” Jennifer Daniel, director of Android emojis at Google said. “Some people want to go swimming, but we’ll wait for someone to swim first. We just dove in first.” Daniel went on to say,…

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Former White House adviser, Oliver McGee, has shared footage on social media of former Vice President Joe Biden saying he wants “unrelenting immigration” to turn white America into an “absolute minority.” “WOW! Joe Biden caught on tape,” McGee said. “He doesn’t want the American people to see this. He wants unrelenting immigration until whites are America’s minority!” “Immigration is based on MERIT, NOT COLOR of one’s skin,” McGee added. The comments were made during a 2015 introductory three-day summit addressing violent extremism following a string of Islamic terror attacks throughout Western nations. “I’m proud of the American record on culture and…

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Albert Camus asserted any action which acts decisively against injustice and oppression, is to be considered as being part of what he called the ‘generosity of rebellion.’ This concept is largely summarised as being any action: “which unhesitatingly gives the strength of its love and refuses injustice without a moment’s delay. Its merit lies in making no calculations, distributing everything that it possesses to life and to living men and women. It is thus prodigal in its gift to the men and women to come.” While it is an overstatement, if used solely as a definition for homeschooling, I don’t…

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Karl Barth and Roger Scruton make unlikely conversation partners. Barth, was a Reformed Swiss theologian, who held up the distinction between theology and philosophy, and Scruton, is a British philosopher, talks theology, but knows his limits on the subject. The meeting between the two takes place in Barth’s On Religion and Scruton’s, The West and All the Rest. Together they provide a telescopic view of modern religio-politics and the socio-political landscape of contemporary Western society. One big theme for Scruton is the relationship between the ‘social contract’ and Creed communities (or communities bound by religious law). One clear example of…

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Teen Vogue, a popular online magazine targeted at teenage girls, told their young readers this month, abortion procedures are safer than giving birth. “Abortion is actually very safe,” the magazine stated in a piece titled 5 Abortion Myths and the Truth About Them. “In fact, it’s a safer procedure than getting a colonoscopy, and it’s safer than giving birth.” The U.S. based publication also linked young readers to a study which claimed the risk of death associated with childbirth is approximately 14 times higher than that with abortions. What the article fails to mention is that every successful abortion results…

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The problem with Australian politics is the paradox of a lack of clear choices and a context of unprecedented polarisation. If I can even be so naive as to suggest there is only one problem, or even only one main problem, optimism about political debate and futures could be greatly improved simply by the major parties clearly distinguishing themselves from each other. There’s a common frustration about both parties being nearly indistinguishable. MPs in the parties often feel this is unfair, especially those further from the centre, and their feelings are not without merit. But neither are the comparisons. For…

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Context and explanation meant absolutely nothing to the outraged leftist media complex collaborating with self-interested politicians when accusing Senator Fraser Anning of Nazi levels of racism for saying the words “final solution”. Senator Anning declared, “In the days of Menzies, immigrants arriving here were not allowed to apply for welfare and that attracted exactly the right sort of hard-working people this country needed. We should go back to that and ban all immigrants receiving welfare for the first five years after they arrive. The final solution to the immigration problem is, of course, a popular vote.” Turnbull called the reference…

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