just drink the cool aid
Life
Does the Australian Federal Government just think the Australian public is as smart as your average domestic sheep (i.e. quite dumb) or are we actually that stupid?
- Don't panic over climate change: Minister:
The reality is that these changes will happen over time, they're talking about a 30 to 50-year time span," he said.
Oh. That's no problem then. Let's go buy another 4WD. - Terrorism threat justifies cutting civil liberties: Ruddock. Yes. We are the government. Trust us. I like how the Government will happily use the UN Human Rights Commission to support their case while simultaneously contravening it and supporting any states that do so. Not that Labor's panacea, a department of homeland defence, will be any better. It could even weaken our security by providing a single point of failure rather than using a more robust layered approach. As Thomas Jefferson said:
A society that will trade a little order for a little freedom will lose both, and deserve neither.
- Meanwhile, decreased media diversity will erode our democracy further. At least in the future we will not even know how our government is screwing us over.
Actually, we must be that dumb. When a sensible decision is made to stop the life support, sorry, I think the correct newspeak terminology is pull the feeding tube, for a person in a coma who is unlikely to recover, the brother-in-law says his family is shocked by the advocate's ruling
. Maybe we should be keeping all these people alive, that way we keep the family and the religous right happy and will have a Matrix-esque power supply on-hand for when the planet finally dies.
In any case, can we please get some real leaders here? Thanks.
Comments
Dear Michael J Gratton,
Please run for Parliament.
Yours sincerely,
Jaded of Newtown.
Posted by: ann on July 27, 2005 04:36 PM
Love the Jefferson quote. He's usually good for a snippet of worthwhile advice. Another fine one in the same vein: "I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it."
Posted by: Craig Turner on July 27, 2005 06:06 PM
Me again. I've been interested in Jefferson for a while but haven't gotten around to reading much on him until today. Here's a beauty:
"""
Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. State churches that use government power to support themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of the church tends to make the clergy unresponsive to the people and leads to corruption within religion. Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state,' therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.
"""
He would be outraged at the modern US. I'm intrigued by strict constitutionalist types like Timothy MvVeigh (probably less him than people with similar ideas who don't make themselves well-known by slaughtering fellow citizens) because as far as I am able to tell in my quite limited readings to date, those sort of strict-constitution fringe politics are the closest thing Jefferson (a stand-out founding father) has to a political legacy. And they're not that close - Jefferson envisiaged a nation based on agriculturalists not industry and commerce. If anyone has any better informed opinions than these, please feel free to continue the discussion to my email, firstname@website.
Posted by: Craig Turner on July 28, 2005 02:06 PM
Yeah, but it's kind of odd that the guy had 187 slaves while he's talking about the inconveniences of a lack of freedom.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson
Posted by: Dave Hill on July 28, 2005 09:31 PM