I love the end-of-year children’s performances – the massed choir and orchestra, glorious music and singing, the polished dances, glittering costumes and shining faces of children, excited to be involved showcasing the year’s efforts. For a grandparent, delight is manifold: there is at once joy in the moment, affirmation of the value of life and hope and promise in the future – an exemplar of Christmas.
Hope in Crises
Experiences such as these are invaluable in restoring hope at a time when so many countries lurch towards crisis, a tipping point – for the countries, for democracy, for freedom of speech, religious freedom, parental rights, as the 30% expert elite insiders try to assert their will over the 70% of we outsiders.
Author Mathew Lesh in his book Democracy in a Divided Australia, shows how this country (and others) is no longer divided politically between left and right, Labor and Coalition, but across parties between the educated elite, powerful insiders in government and institutions, and the powerless “outsiders” who tend to be subject to every more narrowing regulation leaving little freedom or choice. Satisfaction of the needs at the lower level of the Maslow hierarchy achieved through growing prosperity and comfort seems to have stirred ambitions in the faithless. Self-actualization at higher levels of Mazlow’s hierarchy are sought by doing zealous work for new age ‘moral’ causes and make-work schemes that impinge upon the daily lives of people merely trying to go about their business.
For instance, British who voted for Brexit see democracy betrayed by the deal with unelected European bureaucrats, who refuse to return control to the British people. For weeks ‘yellow shirts’ in Paris protested the high cost of fuel as a result of the virtue signaling President Macron’s climate change tax not voted for, which they cannot afford. Ukraine struggles under the yoke of an invasive Russia, which once more must fence off people to “win” loyalty, land and water. China draws a long bow to assert towards global dominance by stifling democracy and dissent at home and encroaching upon the lives and opinions of Chinese abroad by buying power, land theft, direct intrusion and menace to relatives at home. The failed bureaucracy of the United Nations appears to have become merely a platform for failed states, forever berating and punishing democracies trying to do the right thing by accepted global rules.
Need for hope in Australia
What has all this to do with us in Australia? You might ask. Quite a bit, when the same pervasive patterns of behaviour also infect our bureaucracies and agencies, especially those tied to international bodies like the UN, or protocols and threats of catastrophes on migration and what is now known as Climate Change (as distinct from previous brand iterations as “environment”, “greenhouse”, then “global warming”, evolving for better marketing as alarming catastrophes prove baseless).
In the same way failed bureaucracies at home beat up on people trying to do the right thing. Why, for instance, would a farmer be fined a $million for building too wide a fire break, when recent Queensland fires were said to be caused by failure to affect adequate clearing.
As well we have our own failed bureaucracies that are supposed to protect and support people like us, our families and our assets. This year’s Royal Commission into financial services in Australia revealed banks and insurance companies’ appalling contempt for customers in the ripping off of their savings, overcharging, even of the dead. Furthermore agencies like ASIC and APRA dismally failed in their job of oversight. Again in the financial sector, the Australian Tax Office (ATO) has shown contempt for business in the way it handles alleged debt, sending to the wall many firms who do not have the resources to fight the weight of government, even when the government is wrong.
In every instance the cost of bureaucrats failing to do their job properly runs to $billions. We could balance the budget in an instant if they all performed to reasonable standards as expected by the taxpayers and customers.
Expert intrusion
As if these non-performances were not enough, ordinary Australian outsiders are daily assailed by the ‘insider’ expert class who believe they know what’s best for us. Predictably, though same sex marriage passed into law a year ago allowing those of the LGBQTI community to marry the person they love, it is not enough. The law has been taken as licence to intrude into the minds, bodies, classrooms and families with advocacy for gender fluidity. Ninety-nine percent of the population must be subjugated to the 1% of those of indeterminate or fluid gender or be charged with criminal offence. Sex is no longer male or female but transient to be assigned as one wishes at any stage of life. Good luck with that!
Despite the efforts of many dedicated teachers, schools have become propaganda factories through which to push elitist theory, as shown by the children’s political demonstrations on populist topics of climate change, anti-Adani and refugees. Add to these the “black armband” history of colonization that demonises western civilisation. Truth, the only factor on which a future can be built, is sadly missing in this capture of young minds. There is little hope when young people are being terrorised and fearful.
Is there a need for God?
As Australia has become more secular, the Judaeo –Christian traditions on which our culture, civilization and prosperity have been built are trashed in favour of failed socialism that cost over 100 million lives in recent history.
Democracy is imperfect because we are imperfect. Yet as a system of governance it towers above dictatorships that rely for survival on crushing, starving and limiting its people. God of faith is supplanted by an all-powerful supreme being who must be adulated. Think Kim Jong Un, Putin.
In Australia the faithless elite assume the power of God (or Kim Jong Un) on issues of climate change, refugees, Adani, gender and aborigines, claiming the high moral ground, virtue signaling, demanding adherence to the “faith” and shaming and de-platforming anyone daring to pose a different perspective, even within their own family.
With so many contending for honours, it seems people do need a God in secular Australia. Pity the new versions have none of the truth, love, respect, good will or hope offered by the traditional One, especially at Christmas.
That is why hope for the future shines through in the gleaming, excited faces of children who have worked hard (with their parents) all year to achieve so much. Congratulations and best Christmas wishes to you all! You have done your job faithfully and deserve the rewards. Peace and joy be with you.