Dress Codes and Conservatism

Dress Codes and Conservatism

Recently European Scientists landed a space probe onto a comet. It is quite an achievement to land a moving object onto another moving object. But one of the scientists received alot of criticism for what he was wearing. Feminists complained that his shirt, featuring scantly clad women was sexist, Conservatives responded by complaining about the Feminists.

Here is a Feminist article showing what he was wearing and their criticism, http://mashable.com/2014/11/13/esa-scientist-sexist-shirt/

Now my first reaction was to think the Feminists were overreacting, then I saw how he was dressed.  I thought he was dressed disgracefully. A shirt with scantly clad women is not something any respectable person should wear to a press conference. It is a shirt you might wear socially, but it is not formal wear and it is not acceptable to give an interview in. Remember he was not a random person approached on the street, he was being interviewed as part of his job. 

Sadly I was not very happy with comments from many "Conservatives", who basically said "who cares what he's wearing". Someone commented on one site, I assume someone who is not a Conservative, that they remembered a time when Conservatives would have been appalled by what he was wearing and that we were no better than cheerleaders supporting our team instead of our values. Sadly I agree.

Once upon a time we would have been appalled but now we are no better than Liberals. Who cares what he's wearing it's his choice they say. What was wrong with a boring white shirt, a lab coat, a suit or even a jumper? 

I haven't even mentioned his tattoos, in fact I haven't heard anyone else criticise his tattoos at all. It's all about personal choice it seems. Standards, we don't have them anymore, they aren't important. His tattoos, like his shirt are disgraceful!  

Then I read what the Feminists thought. They didn't do any better. Their idea was that a bad choice of shirt stops women from becoming Scientists. Typical Feminist insight, women can do anything as long as nothing upsetting stops them.....pathetic.

Once Conservatives believed in standards, that included in how people dressed. We believed that people should dress modestly and in attire that was appropriate for the occasion. Shouldn't we still believe that?

Upon Hope Blog - A Traditional Conservative Future

Another Article You Might Like?

Unified Liberalism

How Not to Run a Conservative Party - Pauline Hanson and One Nation

 How Not to Run a Conservative Party - Pauline Hanson and One Nation

This week Pauline Hanson announced she would rejoin the party that she helped create, One Nation. For those of you who have never heard of Pauline Hanson, or were too young or have simply forgotten the details let me give you a short history.

Pauline Hanson was an Australian politician who was kicked out of the Liberal party, the main Right Liberal party in Australia. She joined the party in 1995 and was endorsed to run as a candidate in less than a year, and she won a seat in the Federal Parliament. But in her maiden speech to Parliament she said something that scared the living daylights out of nearly everyone else in the Parliament. She attacked multiculturalism and mass immigration. When the party told her to change, she didn't and within a year she had been expelled from the Liberal Party. In 1997 she then co-founded a new political party called One Nation.

One Nation attracted alot of attention and in it's first election it won 18% of the vote, but due to Australia's electoral laws the party didn't win a single seat in Parliament. At the next election it's vote was down to 5%. At the most recent election that it ran candidates in, the Queensland state election, it had less than 0.1% of the vote.

In 2003 she and others within One Nation were convicted of electoral fraud for claiming more members than existed. She was sentenced to three years imprisonment but she only served three months before she was acquitted by the Court of Appeal. As you can see it's quite a story even in the short version I've given.

Here are some links to follow if your interested in finding out more.
wikipedia Pauline Hanson

abc pauline hanson-returns-to-one-nation Particularly check out the different views in the comments.

one nation

But I'm not writing about Pauline Hanson as such, what I'm going to write about is why things went wrong. I should point out that I never supported Pauline Hanson or One Nation, even though I agreed with much of what she said. So why didn't I support her?

The problem is multiculturalism and mass immigration, not any particular race or group. She was too focused on them and not enough on us. Here was a point that she and One Nation made over and over again, they knew what they were against but they they didn't know what they were for. They were against mass immigration, but what happened if they won office? It seemed their policy was 'well their here now we have to put up with them , but not one more!'. There was a negativity to their policies and not much that was positive, that would improve things. Stopping mass immigration is great, I support that, but what happens then?

It often seemed that they wanted exactly what the Left always accuses us of, wanting to return to the past. I don't want to live in the past, the past got us here and I really don't like it here. But so many of their policies were trying to step back in time with no real idea of what happens next.

They presented themselves as Conservative but they were a party of reaction, they reacted to the world around them and they did not really have an ideology. They were not a party of Conservatism  because they didn't believe in men and women being distinct and having different roles within society. They endorsed women as candidates, most famously Pauline Hanson herself. A women who seeks political power is a Feminist, no matter what she says.

One Nation rose on the back of Pauline Hanson's personality and message. Without her the party would never have existed. Unfortunately Pauline Hanson was totally aware of this and she exploited it. A number of growing political groups joined One Nation as they wanted much the same things as she did. But anyone with any personality, popularity or organisational ability was found and expelled. This was Pauline Hanson's party and she wasn't sharing it with anyone else. That meant that when she lost her popularity, so did the party. Just as it rose because of Pauline Hanson so did it fall.

This meant that the party was always very amateurish. Pauline Hanson herself is terrible in interviews, but if she has ever received any training it sure doesn't show. Until quite recently the website was still the same as it was when put up in the 1990's, it is now quite good. Currently on their website they have this: "Immigration and Multiculturalism - have we ever been asked?"

Absolutely correct, we have never been asked and it is wrong. But then in an article talking about former Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam who died recently this is said: "Multiculturalism was forced upon Australia by Whitlam without anyone being asked if we wanted it. I am not talking about a multi-racial society, which is what we are, and should be".

When were we asked if we wanted to be a multi-racial society? Both were forced on us but one is terribly wrong and the other is terribly right, if you can work that one out good luck, because I sure can't.

One Nation is an example of how not to run a political party or a political movement. It has particular relevance to Conservatives as here is a party that many of us would find many things we agreed with, but that wasn't enough. Only when we have worked out what we stand for and what we want from the future can we hope to successfully fight. It is not enough to simply be against something.

Upon Hope Blog - A Traditional Conservative Future
Another Article You Might like?
Living on debt aka stealing from the future

Why Divorce is Bad

Why Divorce is Bad

Recently there was a divorce scare in my family. The couple in question had some problems and the wife decided that they should separate and she moved out. Fortunately after a few months they patched things up and they are now back together in the family home.

But as you can imagine it got me thinking again on this topic.

I was 5 when no fault divorce was made law in Australia, I've known many divorced people, including my own parents. I often heard when I was young, when divorce was also in a sense young, that it was better for people to divorce if they were unhappy and that it was better for the children as they didn't have to live with two parents who hated each other. But over the years my experience of seeing divorce and divorced people was quite different, I learnt that divorce was responsible for alot of human misery.

But if divorce is so bad why do people get divorced?

When a man wants a divorce, 9 times out of 10 another women is involved. You would think that a man who was abused, cheated on, belittled or humiliated would divorce, but they tend to stay married. Men tend to be doubtful that the grass is greener in the other field, unless he has found out it really is greener. Men's natural pessimism makes them stick it out, even when things are bad.

Women are much more complex, they divorce for the most serious as well as the most trivial reasons. Women have been granted divorces for everything from their husband confessed to being a serial killer to I want to be free. If my wife confessed to being a serial killer I think I'd want a divorce as well, if she "wanted to be free" I'd tell her she was pathetic. Sadly in no fault divorce any reason is good enough no matter how trivial.

Liberalism has, if you'll excuse the pun, liberalised divorce laws from something that only God through the Church could grant, to something only Parliament could grant, to today where there are thousands of Judges around the world who's only job is to grant divorces and deal with the legal aftermath. But from Liberalism's point of view it makes total sense. If the aim of Liberalism is the autonomous individual, and it is, then people have to be free to make as many choices as they possibly can and they need to be protected from the consequences of those choices. And as marriage is a choice so should being unmarried.

Liberalism has very high and mighty ideals, but sadly most of them tend to boil down to "I can do anything I want, simply because I want to". Morals, loyalty, the good of others, the good of society are all absent because they interfere with choice.

Divorce is simply another way for Liberalism to create autonomous individuals. Because when you think about it marriage is a real problem for Liberalism. Married people are dependent upon each other, when they aren't a marriage doesn't tend to last.

The premise of divorce is that if your married and you have problems, you can fix those problems through divorce. It turns out that in nearly all cases that premise is wrong. Because the real reason they have problems is because of life. Life creates problems, each of us has been mistreated in life and it affects how we think of ourselves and how we relate to others, that's natural. Unfortunately so are disappointments and money worries, as is conflict. Our spouse will disappoint us, they will be stupid, we will fight with them, sometimes most annoyingly they will be right and all of this is natural.

But many people believe that marriage is about happiness and that our partners job is to make us happy. So if we are unhappy then our partner is responsible. And instead of pushing our way through bad times, we instead decide that the problem is our partner. That if we got rid of them we'd finally be happy. It is all about self.

When a divorce takes place it destroys not only a marriage but a family. Husband and wife are not simply two people, by joining together they become a family. Children add to that family. But divorce means that all of that is gone.

One of the things that people learn first hand about divorce is that it is a great destroyer of wealth. All the assets of a marriage now need to be divided. How do you divide a house? Either one party gets control and deprives the other or the house is sold. Money is divided, meaning that if a couple have $10,000 in the bank and it is divided equally, then we now have two bank accounts of $5000. Each making less interest then if it was a lump sum. That happens to all money, bonds, superannuation, etc.

Husbands, in most cases, earn more than wives, that means that after a divorce a women's standard of living drops and stays down. A mans standard of living also falls, but in time it will most likely improve. A women loses her husbands income and while she will find others it will rarely match let alone better what she had while married.

Couples save more money then men and men save more money then women. Partly that's because they make more money, but partly it's about thinking of the future. Couples see a future, men think about the future and women tend to be more focused on the here and now. That means that over time women are poorer than men and men are poorer than couples. You'll find exceptions of course but as a general rule it holds up. Financially it's a mess.

I haven't even mentioned children. Most people believe that their children are the most important thing in the world. But in a divorce either one parent loses their children or the children get to become the rope in a tug of war. I struggle to give advice on what to do about children to people I know who have gone through a divorce. Is it better to fight and for everyone to get hurt, and they do get hurt or is it better to not fight and just give up? Does that lead to less hurt or more? Is there any way to have a divorce and not end up with hurt parents and children? I've never seen a way. Here divorce isn't bad, it's bloody evil!

And at the end is the personal cost, no matter who started it or who gets the most, no one really wins. Every divorce is a failure, a betrayal and a heartache. The man loses, the women loses, the children definitely lose and society loses. Divorce is bad.

Upon Hope Blog - A Traditional Conservative Future
Another Article You Might Like?
Homosexual Marriage

The Twentieth Month & My 200th Post!

The Twentieth Month & My 200th Post!

This month started with me being sick and then when I got better I had to work 13 days in a row. By the time I got home I was ready for bed, so the blog suffered as I tended to go to bed. Fortunately that deadline is over so I can resume a more normal rate of posts.

Even though I was not posting, it still nearly two weeks before numbers started to drop off. My worst day was the 31st October when I only had 22 visitors. The only day in the twenties and I only had one day in the thirties. My best day was only two days ago on the 9th November when I had 120 visitors.

11th October - 11th November

Entry	Pageviews
United States	696
Australia	220
Ukraine	213
Poland	86
United Kingdom	78
France	74
Germany	39
China	33
Canada	24
Romania	23

11th September-11th October

Entry	Pageviews
United States	631
Australia	189
France	151
Ukraine	147
United Kingdom	72
Germany	65
Netherlands	51
Canada	49
Romania	43
Indonesia	34

The United States, Australia, the Ukraine are up. The Ukraine was for most of the month in second place, only in the last few days has Australia gone up and the total Ukraine numbers gone down and stabilised.

Poland has entered the top 10 and gone into 4th place and  China has reentered the top 10.

The United Kingdom is slightly down. However France has dropped by half. Germany, Canada and Romania are all down, Canada even dropped out of the top 10 but made a comeback.

Indonesia and the Netherlands have dropped out of the top 10.

I have also received visitors from the following countries Ireland, Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Austria, Spain, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Serbia, Israel, U.A.E, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Hong Kong, Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, New Zealand, Brazil.

I look forward to seeing you again.

Mark Moncrieff 

Remembrance - A Battle We Won

Remembrance - A Battle We Won

Here we are at the first Remembrance Day to occur on the Centenary of the First World War. Ceremonies will be held to remember those who served and particularly those who died. The act of remembrance is very strong, people want to remember, they want to keep faith with the past and they will get that chance. They will be able to remember.

But there was a time when the act of remembrance was challenged, when we were told to break faith with the past. That remembrance glorified war and in fact lead to more wars. That the only way to live a life of peace was to reject war and everything associated with war, including remembrance.

War has always been controversial, it's cost can be enormous, treasure, property and life's destroyed. Years taken way from field and craft, from husbands and wives, from children, parents and friends. People do not live forever and that time cannot be returned. It requires sacrifice and hardship to wage war and people live in fear and doubt.

Liberalism, Socialism, Communism and Anarchism all say that war is bad, that war kills the common man and allows the rich to profit. But their commitment to peace is conditional, For the more extreme, revolution is alright, as it is war fought for the right reasons, the liberation of man. Liberalism also has it's conditions, it will fight for what it believes whether it is free trade in the Opium Wars or the rights of little countries as in the First World War. But deep down there is the idea that each war is an exception, a once off that will bring peace closer once this one ends. War is bad and as man progresses towards the new man, war will become obsolete. As useful to man as cave painting and just as primitive.

The Romans built monuments to glorify their victories, the Vikings had their sagas as did other peoples. But Christianity believe's in glorifying God, not man. Those killed in war had few memorials built to honour them. For many reason that attitude changed during the 1800's and particularly from the 1840's. From that time memorials to those who died and medals to those who lived started to become the norm. Most people came to think of those things as good, but a minority always believed that they glorified not the dead but war. Some saw remembrance as a rival to Christianity.

After the the carnage of the First World War the broad Left renewed their idea that war is bad. While at the same time supporting the Russian Revolution. But most people rejected the idea that war was a thing of the past. They did however believe that peace was better than war but they never accepted that in a world of cold winds walking around naked was any kind of defence. The Second World War produced the atomic bomb and the fear of this new weapon helped spread the idea that war should be rejected. The interesting thing I find about the atomic bomb is how consistently it was portrayed. All powerful, there was no defence against it. Never were the limitations of the atomic bomb talked about. It gave a false image and it pushed nihilistic ideas. That there is no hope, that man is doomed, that man is stupid and suicidal.

These ideas all got wrapped up together in the early 1960's, watch some war movies from the period and you'll notice them on display. One of the best war movies of the period is Zulu, make in 1964, theres a scene in which a young very frightened soldier ask's "why us?", a very 1960's question. The 1960's saw the spread of these ideas, that war was bad and outdated. That everything associated with war in any way helped advance war. Soldiers were bad, the military was bad, uniforms were bad, veterans organisations were bad, veterans reunions were bad, some even went as far as to say veterans themselves were bad!

Reject the past, break faith with the old that is the only way to create a new and better world. How do we know it's a better world? Because it's new, everything new is better, everything old is bad. Veterans reunions came under attack, sometimes physical attack. The attitude developed that once the old died out then the young would reject the past, they would move on. Remembrance was a generational thing, not something for the entire nation. But then in the 1980's things turned. A new generation reached back into the past and embraced it. They weren't warmongers, nor did they seek to glorify war. War was real, it existed, but it wasn't viewed as the best outcome.

So what changed between the 1940's to the 60's and then again in the 80's? Society changed, but so did the economy. Between the 1940's and the 1960's the economy of the west was booming. Full employment, high home ownership, stable marriage, children and stable political and economic conditions. Wars were still fought, even large ones and of course the Cold War was in full swing. But for the average person life was good. Certainly it was better than it had been before the 1940's and nearly everyone benefited. But from the 1970's onwards things changed. Full employment was over, as was stable marriage. Life got harder and people knew it, no matter what they were told they experienced unemployment and the increase in employment insecurity.

When times were good and seemed to be unlimited then things like suffering and sacrifice seem silly, even stupid. When things turned and became harder those things had meaning again. It's only a small taste of what happen's during war, but it was a taste. It increased the empathy of people.

But there is a second reason, Multiculturalism. At first it was promised that this new policy wouldn't have any effect on traditional national events, it would just gives others a chance to do the same. But as time went on it became obvious that that wasn't true. The Government was supporting some people over others. It encourage some activities and discouraged others. Over time people began to see that here was something that would be hard to deny, remembrance. It was a way of showing national pride in a way that wasn't considered "hateful". Here the majority could still feel proud and show others how proud they were of their country, of their heroes and of their sacrifice.

Governments have at times tried to back away, but each time it has created the oppose effect. People want to remember, they want to be proud of their history, they want to be connected to the past. And here is one way of doing that. Remembrance is something that they tried to take from us, but we refused to allow it. Our passive resistance won this fight.

Upon Hope Blog - A Traditional Conservative Future
Another Article You Might Like?
7 of 20 Constitutional Restrictions

Why isn't there more Racism?

Why isn't there more Racism?

Last week I read an article at an Australian online news site that said that 10% of Australians think racism is Australia's biggest problem. Which I think is absurd, but I had been thinking about a connected issue. Why don't I see or hear much racism? 

It is an article of faith amongst the Left as well as amongst Left-Liberals that all white Western countries are racist. I'm a white man, I'm working class, I'm Conservative and I live in a very multicultural area, if anyone was in the epicentre of racist thought and deed you would think I'll be pretty close. But instead it is very rare to see or hear any. In fact I do not remember seeing any racism at all. People being abused, threatened or otherwise harassed because of their race. I'm not saying it hasn't happened, after all it's a big world out there, but I have not seen it. 

I used to live in the same house as a Chinese man, I asked him if he felt safe in Australia. He said Australia was a very safe country. He was always out and about doing things and he never told us about any racial problems. Although he did complain about other things, as did we. Last week I was waiting for a bus and a muslim women came out of a females only gym. She felt so safe she was still fixing her face covering as she walked down the street. 

As for hearing racism, I have heard more than I've seen. But even that is very mild and in recent years I've heard less than I used to and even that wasn't much. When I hear people talking about this subject they make it out to be like every racist comment is a speech by Hitler, when in reality it is most often a single comment. It's hard to even tell if thats how the person really feels or whether it's just a random thought. In short the charge of racism is grossly overused.

Of course the broad Left likes to say that any thoughts of racism are unacceptable, but thats why most people think they are idiots.

If racism is so rare why do the broad Left see it so often? The main reason is that they think of racism as something different to what you and I do. We think of racism as an action or words that are negative solely or predominately that because of a persons race or ethnicity. But the broad Left defines racism as anyone noticing that race exists. They believe that everyone is equal and that people should not have any distinguishing features, no race, no sex, just a random autonomous individual. Of course people do have distinguishing features such as race and sex, so to the broad Left racism is everywhere. Everywhere they look they notice people noticing that race exists.  

But all this lack of racism worries me, why is it that with such a large change in demographics is racism so quiet? Is this because people are too intimidated? Is it because people have given up? Is it that people are no longer racist?

When I talk to people they are quietly angry, sadly that means passive. I worry that this is the lull before the storm and that this effort to suppress how people feel will lead to bad things and not just in Australia. Traditional Conservatives do not support multiculturalism or mass immigration, but we also do not support mob rule or other extreme methods of fixing the problems caused by multiculturalism or mass immigration. That doesn't mean we don't have answers, they just aren't the rule of the mob. 

Upon Hope Blog - A Traditional Conservative Future

Another Article You Might Like?

Fascism, Why we are not Fascists

Remigration, a Policy Idea

Remigration, a Policy Idea

Earlier this year I was talking to a friend about immigration and he told me that whether I liked it or not they are here now. The implication being that immigrants are here forever. I didn't accept what he said then and since then I've been thinking of a policy that if implemented would turn things around. That policy has been mentioned by Generation Identitaire, which is where the term "remigration" comes from.

Their idea is that just because a foreign population has arrived that does not mean that they will be there forever. After all when we think about immigration that is the assumption that nearly everyone makes. But their point is valid, just because they have arrived does not mean that they will stay. However that is the end of their idea, but it was enough for me.

Why do Immigrants come here?

Do they want better scenery? Do they love us? Do they want to be a part of us? Do they love our culture? Our way of life? Some do.

But most come here because we have a better standard of living than they did in their homeland. So what they really love about us is our money. If that's true, and I don't see any reason for it not being true in most cases, why don't we pay them to leave?

Of course we could not have our current levels of immigration, we would need either a small or zero immigration policy. It has been suggested by others that we have a replacement immigration policy, whereby immigrants are let into the country one for one as people permanently leave. However my policy is here.

We would also need secure borders, where those who violate immigration law are either removed back to their country of origin or imprisoned and then returned. Any wishy washy approach would make this an endless drain on resources.

My proposal is that anyone who has a lawful right to live in Australia, citizen or permanent resident, who also has the right of return to their ancestral home be offered A$100,000 to return to that country. In return they sign a legal pledge that they renounce their Australian citizenship or permanent residence and that they not return to Australia for 5 years and that any travel to Australia after that not be longer than 60 days in any year. Any longer stay needing the authority of the Minister of Immigration. If  any stay lasted longer than 60 days without the Ministers approval or they returned within 5 years then they are liable for the return of the A$100,000 and to be subject to any criminal punishment that breaking Australia's immigration law may invoke.

The only people not eligible would be those people who do not have a right to return to any ancestral homeland. What may surprise many people is that many countries allow people to return even generations after their family left. Some countries believe you never leave, if you are of that nationality, then you always will be.

One criticism is the expense, for A$10 billion dollars, 100,000 people can be paid to leave. But if that person was an Afghan that money would be more than 140 times the per capita income of the average Afghan, that makes someone a very big fish in a small pond. In Indonesia that would be more than 25 times the per capita income. For the United Kingdom that would be more than twice the per capita income.

This money effectively becomes an indirect form of foreign aid, it simply goes directly into the economy instead of being used up by Government. So it can be paid for out of funds currently devoted to foreign aid and to multicultural pursuits.

Another criticism that could be made is that it is racist, unfortunately the world economy is uneven and an African would benefit to a much bigger degree than someone of European descent. Racist I don't think so, but it certainly is discriminatory, of course many things in life are.

It even gives people choice, not everyone who immigrates is happy with the decision and here is a chance to help them find their way home.

Upon Hope Blog - A Traditional Conservative Future
Another Article You Might Like?
Marriage, Just a Piece of Paper