Saturday 30 November 2019

Women's Work Is Poison!

The National Australia Banks Independent Schools Survey was released this week and it found that

'girls were doing old-fashioned "housewife" chores to earn their pocket money'
When will parents learn that 'women's' work is not okay!

Cleaning, laundry, ironing, cooking, etc....these things are only allowable when they occur outside of the home and are being done for money. Then 'women's' work becomes glamorous. However inside of the home they are poison!

Unless boys do them. Or is it that poisoning boys is a good thing?

Of course if these jobs are done for money outside of the home then no poisoning occurs. It's their professional knowledge that makes them immune, or is it the money?

Hard to say.

What you should remember is this, any work that women did in the past is poison, any work men have done is glamorous. Always remember that men and women are equal and in no way different. However if a women does a job that women traditionally did then that job is poison, if she does a job that men traditionally did then that is fantastic and in absolutely no way poisonous.  Of course men should be encouraged to do more women's work...even though this is poisonous. Don't forget that men and women are equal and in no way different.

Of course this would all be much easier if women stopped being women and became men. And of course if men stopped being men and became women. You see the problem today is that women are still women and men are still men and that creates inequality....even though men and women are equal and in no way different. Of course once women are men and men are women, problem solved!


If non of this makes sense, that means, your still sane.


Upon Hope Blog - A Traditional Conservative Future
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Friday 29 November 2019

Creepy Report

A report has been released in the Victorian Parliament, news.com.au reported it under this headline - Victorian sex creep bureaucrats under reported. The report prepared by the Auditor-General states that within the Victorian public service 1400 people had experienced sexual harassment in the last 12 months.

  Those who were most likely to be a victim were women aged 15 to 24, those earning less than $75,000 a year, and those from a minority such as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander or LGBTQI, according to the report.
Who's sexually harassing the LGBTQI people? I mean shouldn't sexual harassment be sexual in some way? Either other LGBTQI people are doing the harassing or sexual harassment means whatever they want it to mean. Which is both true and somewhat lessens the seriousness of the whole thing.

“I have witnessed a manager saying that the only good place for a female is in a porn movie,” one person told the audit.
Another said, “He pressed his penis against me when I was bending over to pick something up, and he asked me, ‘Is that your preferred position?’”
In 2018, 61% of Victorian public servants were women, 24% of Victorian public servants were born overseas. 20% of Victorian public servants speak a language other than English at home!

 Workers in the Department of Justice who were working with offenders were the most likely to experience sexual harassment.

Wow really!!!!

So convicted criminals don't follow rules...I really don't know what to say.

Is sexual harassment a serious problem or is it simply intersectionality?

I think we all know the answer.


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Wednesday 27 November 2019

A Question Regarding Liberals

All of the major political parties in the West are Liberal parties, they support Liberalism. In the churches, businesses, charities, media, schools and universities the majority view is a Liberal one. Liberalism is the mainstream philosophy.

Liberalism believes in the Autonomous Individual, who is the end point of Liberalism. The utopia. A person who is entirely self made and self serving. Living life without consequences , free from restraint, free to live their life without restrictions. Because the Autonomous Individual is fully human, something that, according to Liberalism, you and I are not. In short the Autonomous Individual is a better person than you or I. They are perfect people, living under a perfect system of government within a perfect economic system.

Now if someone put the above paragraph into their campaign literature, would you vote for them?

Do you believe that it is possible to create perfect people living under a perfect system of government within a perfect economic system?

Who could?

Which leads me to my question, I understand Liberalism, but Liberals, those who support Liberalism.

Are they so stupid that they do not understand the philosophy they profess to believe, or are they so evil that they entirely understand it and they are prepared to lie and cheat to achieve what they believe?   

Because their is no third option.

I have meet Liberals who are intelligent, but who are stupid when it comes to Liberalism, they have no idea what it's aims are. I have met Liberals who are evil, who entirely understand Liberalism's end point and who will do whatever it takes to further it's goals. But the majority of them I don't know.

Those who are stupid can be worked on their 'faith' can be shattered. Those who are evil should be identified and avoided, you cannot convert them.

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Tuesday 26 November 2019

The Superannuation Fail

In the 1980's the Australian Government had a look at future financing as it understood that age demographics were changing. To put it another way, people were living longer and that would have a longer affect on both tax revenue and upon expenditure. But the biggest problem was the size of the baby boomer population.

When old age pensions were introduced in Australia in 1909, every pensioner was outnumbered by 5 workers. That ratio is now heading towards 1 retiree for every 2 workers. To pay for that in 1992 the Australian Government introduced compulsory Superannuation. Superannuation was once only available to senior executives, it was a payment, normally 10%, of a man's salary that was invested and was only available upon his retirement. So that not only did they get a salary but they got a large lump sum payment upon retirement.

So if a worker for example has a salary of $50,000 then around $5,000 dollars is paid into that workers superannuation. That money is on top of their salary.

The Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia announced in July that the average person was way behind in what they should have in their superannuation. To comfortably retire a single person should have at least $545,000 and a couple $640,000.

Currently the average man aged 30-34 has $35,768 and the average women has $30,129, the industry advice is to have by 34, $93,000.

The average man aged 45-49 has $99,305 and the average women in that age bracket has $65,796. The industry says that they should have $257,000.

Why is the average person so far behind?

1) The system is complex
A person can put in up to an additional $1000 a year into their superannuation without any issue. It is possible to put in more money but if it is considered excessive then it is taxed at a rate of 31.5%. That is just one example, it gets much more complex.

2) Money in superannuation is 'dead' money
 Superannuation is, except in very rare circumstances, not available until a person retires. Therefore people have little attachment or engagement with it. It's very important once you retire but until then it may as well not exist as it cannot help you.

3) The system was designed for an economy with Full Employment.
Today we not only don't have full employment but we have the gig economy. Mass unemployment, mass underemployment, university education and immigration. Anyone who has experienced unemployment, or underemployment or who is university educated, or who is an immigrant cannot get the full benefit of superannuation. The system was designed for a person to be employed from 18-retirement. Today that is rare.

Superannuation is a good idea, I think it is good policy. But today even the good ideas are failing.

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Monday 25 November 2019

Mixed Bag - Melbourne Traditionalists Episode Seventeen

In this episode David Hiscox from https://www.xyz.net.au/ and I talk about a mixed bag of subjects, including the Richmond Save Injecting Room, why drugs should stay illegal, no nut November among other topics.


Length: 26 minutes


Click on the link and enjoy!
Episode Seventeen


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Saturday 23 November 2019

Youtube Troubles

These troubles are divided into two parts.

Last Monday, the 18th of November, David Hiscox  and I did a new podcast. I tried to upload it the same day, however I forgot to press 'publish' and it timed out. I'm afraid the real problem is I'm Boomer Tech and I'm not even a Boomer!

So I had to wait until Friday to start again. By Friday the entire upload interface had changed. As far as I can tell I'm doing everything correctly, Youtube disagrees, so no upload yet. 

The other trouble is potential, Youtube has recently announced that it has a few changes coming. The big one is Coppa (Children Online Privacy Protection Act), a law passed in 1998 to protect children online. The U.S. Government has decided that Youtube has not been doing it's job and is now going to monitor Youtube and it's content creators. And issue large fines if it feels it is warranted. The real problem is that the law is very vague. As the Melbourne Traditionalists podcast is clearly not for children, I don't see this affecting us much.

Another change is in it's new terms of service there is a clause stating that channels that don't make money can be deleted by Youtube for not making money. Youtube has never made more money than it spends and it has been trying to fix this for years and clearly this is an attempt to do that. However, again it is quite vague about what it will mean in practice. At first glance it means that we will be deleted. Honestly I don't think that will happen. I read one article that said that it was code for any, including political, content that it doesn't like can be deleted. The article did not approve or disapprove of this, but the commentors on the article most certainly did approve. 

Hopefully with some help I will be able to fix my Youtube problem early this week. 

In regards to the potential problems we will continue on as we have been until they become actual problems. 

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Thursday 21 November 2019

The Road To Power - A Book Review

The Road To Power is the second book from Sanne Wijker over at A Thrifty Homemaker. It tells the story of Eric Ericsson and his adventures. Even though the story has rayguns in it, it's really an old fashioned swashbuckling tale. With political intrigue and some romance thrown in with assassinations, successful and unsuccessful, a plenty. Once you think the story is about to settle down onto one path it switches tack and moves along. It is never dull, with a fast moving pace pushing the story forward.

I enjoyed the story and recommend it to anyone who likes a bit of political intrigue mixed with adventure. Here is a very brief snippet which I think sums up the main character quite well.

She shook her head indignantly. "Surely you understand what Haakon will do to you if he hears of this? You are playing with fire."
"That's what I like to do, play with fire! Have been doing it all my life." (Page 113)
Playing with fire is I hope her next book title, as it perfectly encapsulates the type of adventure story that Sanne likes to write.

To Find my review of her first book: The Long Way Home - Book Review

You can also get The Road To Power as an ebook at Lulu.


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Wednesday 20 November 2019

Full Employment - A History

Between 1945 and 1975 in most of the Western world there existed a policy of full employment. While what that exactly meant was different from country to country and at different times. In Australia it meant an unemployment rate of under 2% and long term unemployment being regarded as anything longer than 3 months. Most other countries had much the same aims.

The reason that full employment was such an issue was due to the Great Depression. It is hard at this distance for most people to understand just how traumatic those times were. It wasn't just how hard life was, that people couldn't afford to buy things or that men didn't have jobs. It was the trauma, they had been told that hard work and following the rules were the correct way to live life. During that time non of that matter, good men lost their jobs and became destitute. He had to send his wife and his children away so that they could live under someone else's roof. And for him he had to join the soup kitchen or become a tramp and travel from place to place to try to gain any work he could.

Those people who did not become destitute knew that it could happen to them. They had to bring in family members and house them and feed them. Housewives would get men knocking on the door asking for food and asking for work, chopping wood, gardening, any work. In the countries less affected 1 in every 5 men were unemployed. In the most affected countries that number was 1 in every 3 men. In 1940 in Britain while the Battle of Britain was being fought there were still more than 1,000,000 men unemployed. In the same year the unemployment rate in America was 15%, that's 8,000,000 men unemployed.The effects of the Great Depression were both deep and long.

By 1942 nearly every country had a labour shortage. Those men that had been unemployed were now in the military or in war related work. This was financed by high wages, high taxes and high enforced saving. Those enforced savings were driven by a low consumer economy during the war as most manufacturing was directed towards the war, which meant that there wasn't that much to spend your money on. Added to it were war bonds which were compulsory to buy and then there were war bond drives to encourage people to buy even more war bonds. This meant that at the end of the war people had good savings. This is important as those savings drove the post war boom and financed full employment.

During the war people started to ask themselves questions, how is it that in peacetime there was mass unemployment but during the war everyone had jobs? If peace was superior to war why was it that during war unemployment vanished? People knew how hard war was, they were living it, so why couldn't full employment which existed during the war also exist during peace time?

These questions were asked by many people, including by those in power. Politicians, Government workers, Businessmen, Unionists and of course ordinary people, all wanted to know how to stop a depression returning when the war ended. Full employment became a key position on which the post war economy was to be based. While most Western countries were not that interested in Communism, they were interested in Socialism. The idea that the Government should run the economy, manage it. Full employment is not a Socialist idea but in the post war period it was. What is remarkable about full employment is how nearly every political, economic and social group supported it. No one wanted a return to the depression.

Full employment was part of what was called the post war consensus, the idea that had been encouraged by the Great Depression and the war that while we may have differences in reality we are on the same side. And it was popular with nearly every group, it was regarded as not simply good policy but common sense. Although full employment had an ally that was never in any original plan. That ally was the Cold War. During the war there were no plans to disband the military or to end building weapons, but there was an idea that those things would play a small part in the post war world. People wanted peace, however the Cold War meant that larger military's then planned existed and so did massive industries to supply those military's. Which increased employment.

During the 1940's, 50's and 60's full employment was hardly criticized, in some quarters it was taboo to question it. During that time it worked and it was seen to work. But slowly it was criticized because like all the works of man it was not perfect, it did have flaws and over time those flaws became bigger and easier to see.

Business which had suffered greatly during the depression, now thought of the depression as ancient history. They wanted to save money on wages by introducing technology. Full employment got in the way.

Unions went in two different directions at the same, one became more militant which would lead to a massive backlash against unions. The second agreed that the big economic issues had been settled, now the big questions were about racism and sexism, the cultural issues. The union movement lost it's focus and helped to destroy what it had achieved and it has never recovered from this mistake.

Politicians understood how popular full employment was but they were faced with a rather big problem. High taxes were not popular and while full employment could exist without high taxes, that would take the issue out of their hands and give it to private enterprise, who were losing interest in the issue.

The Bureaucracy kept the faith longer than most but as the world moved around them they were forced to align themselves with everyone else.

Among Classical Liberals there was a growing disquiet that the post war economy was not a Liberal economy. In this they were correct. In the 1950's what was a small but growing revolt started, it's aim was to return Liberalism to it's original ideas. By the 1970's it was starting to win that fight.

 In the 1970's four massive changes would end full employment. The first was that the money that had been saved during the war had been spent. The only reason it had ever existed was because people were forced to save, when the war ended no matter how good people were at saving that money was slowly but surely being depleted.

The second issue was immigration, each decade the pressure from immigration increased. Full employment cannot work in an open system, it can only operate in a closed system. An open system means that new things can be added to the system, a closed system means that you can only use what is already in the system. Immigration is an open system and open systems increase competition. In this case that competition is for jobs.

The third issue was tariff's. In the post war economy free trade was dead. It died in the depression, although it had been dying since the First World War. Tariffs were popular as they protected local companies and local jobs from competition.

The fourth issue was women, particularly Feminism. The 1950's are famous for it's housewives, the 1970's are famous for the liberated women. It is not a coincidence that full employment existed in the 1950's but began to end in the 1970's. Women worked in the 1950's and since the 1890's the percentage of women working has increased every decade. But the 1970's was a tipping point, as were the policies that encouraged the employment of women at the expense of male employment.

Today we do not have full employment, instead we have mass unemployment. Quite the shift.

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Tuesday 19 November 2019

IVF and Childlessness

Yesterday the 18th November 2019 there was a public meeting on whether in the state of Victoria children should be born via IVF with three parents. The egg from one women transplanted into a second women's womb after being fertilized by a mans sperm. Biologically a child from such a procedure would have two mothers and one father, three parents.

In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) is where fertilization of the egg is done outside of the body, instead of being fertilized inside of the body during sex as is the normal practice. This has been possible since 1977. I have always heard nothing but praise for IVF, ironically I heard more criticism from the media than in real life. However I have always found it disquieting, although to be honest I haven't thought much about it. I didn't want to, artificially creating life just doesn't seem right.

When it first came into being it was portrayed as something that allows infertile couples to have children. Since then it has allowed all kinds of people to have children, including single women and homosexuals. Which are always put forward as a great advance. However in my eyes this continued pushing of boundaries is starting to turn my disquiet into opposition. This is how the enemy operate, by continually pushing things further and further.

Now the argument is being put forward to create a child with three parents, I say no to Frankenstein babies!

I further think that IVF has decreased the number of babies in our society, instead of increasing that number. The best thing for individuals and society is for people to have babies. And the best time to do that is when individuals are at their most fertile. Which is when they are in their early 20's. Instead of encouraging people to have children as late in their fertile life as possible. The idea that IVF is available has resulted in people putting off having children as there is always a medical procedure to fall back on. How many women waited until it was too late?

I have heard many women over the years talk about their life 'schedule'. Everything timed and in it's place, career, marriage and children, each to take place at a certain time and in a certain order. Life however, rarely if ever works like that. Events, great and small occur, we change as individuals in both mind and body. Life is unpredictable.

Children are one of those unpredictable things. I always thought that I would have children, but I do not. So when the argument is made that being childless is a hardship, I agree. It leaves a hole in your life, in your heart and in your soul. Sadly being childless is not unheard of, either now or in the past. There are many reasons why people do not have children even though it is better to have them. Some of those reasons are biological, some are circumstantial. For those who have not had children, or cannot have children we need to be supportive of those who can. Of those who have had children.

Science, like the economy exist to serve our needs, not their own needs and sometimes just because something can be done does not mean it should be done. If IVF is to continue to exist it must be more than simply good science, it must be good. And good means that it makes our lives better and not worse.

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Monday 18 November 2019

Sardines On Trains

If you catch public transport in Melbourne your used to knowing what it's like to be a sardine. Packed in as tight as you can be. And every year you get to hear the Premier, whoever it happens to be, tell us all about how things are getting better.

I'm surprised that only 10% of peak hour trains are considered overcrowded. Each train has a capacity of 900 people, that means that no train is supposed to have 901 passengers. But in peak times, particularly in the afternoon and early evenings, 1 in 10 trains is carrying more people than the train is designed to carry.

In 2019, 14,700,00 more trips have taken place than in 2014. It's not your imagination, we really are becoming a third world city in every way. While the trains are filled from the outer suburbs, if you are in the inner suburbs and your trying to catch a train, good luck. Because once a train is at capacity you are unlikely to be able to even force your way onto one.

In 2017 trains in Melbourne were reconfigured so that they could fit more people in. Seats were removed so that each train could carry 900 passengers instead of 798. $50,000,000,000 ($50 billion) is being spent to expand and improve the transport system in Melbourne. Immigration is the key driver in this mess and as there are no plans to end it, that money is only the tip of the iceberg. Never ending growth, never ending congestion, never ending sardines.


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Saturday 16 November 2019

1400 Years Was Too Optimistic

Only two days ago I wrote about how at the rate of employment growth in June we should see the end of unemployment in 1424 years. It turns out that was wildly optimistic.

Economists have been expecting a jobs surge, sadly that turned out not to be the case. Instead of a jobs surge, the Australian economy lost 19,000 jobs in October. The expectation was that 16,000 jobs would be added to the economy.

This year there has been a constant stream of 'expect good news on the economy' stories that have turned out to be spin and nothing more. A recession is on it's way and talking up a bad economy is one sign of that. So is unemployment going up.

Something that I haven't been seeing much on is underemployment, people who have jobs but not enough hours to live on. It turns out that that is also being tracked.

For October 2019
Unemployment was at 5.3%
Underemployment was at 8.5%
Under-utilisation was at 13.8%

Of course under-utilisation is a combination of unemployment and underemployment. That means 1,800,000 are in need of either a job or more hours.

Then to add to the picture it is getting harder to get a job as more people are applying for jobs. In the past few months there has been a 30% increase. Things are getting harder.

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Friday 15 November 2019

Fugitive From Justice

'An ice addict who dragged a women from her car at gunpoint after leading police on a high-speed chase has been jailed for 14 years'

Sounds fair. I include this to highlight the case of Australia's most wanted man, Graham Gene Potter. He failed to appear in court back in 2010 for conspiracy to commit murder. How does someone on such a charge get bail? He is also wanted for importing 4.4 tonnes of ecstasy into Australia.

As you might expect he has a long criminal history, what you might not expect is that he served 15 years for murder. Now up to this point you would think that it was drug related. However he murdered a 19 year old women and decapitated her on his Bucks night (Stag or Bachelor night in other countries).

That is why he is rated so highly on the most wanted list.

Of course if we lived in a land with justice he would have been hanged and non of this would be an issue.

14 years for an ice addict and 15 years for murder!

Information leading to his arrest is worth $100,000.

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Thursday 14 November 2019

Smaller Than Expected

I mentioned this last week on the Melbourne Traditionalists Podcast but I had not noted it here. This news is a few months old but still of interest.

Back in May, during the Australian election, there had been a few news stories on the leap in jobs. Thousands of jobs had been created that month and they wondered if it was a turning point, if we were about to see an economic boom. Sadly that was not the case. The following quotes are from the HeraldSun, Friday, July 19, 2019.


'Australia's jobless rate held steady at 5.2 per cent last month despite an election related boost to employment receding, official figures show.'

'The number of employed people rose by a smaller than expected 500 in June to 12.87 million, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said.'

12,870,000 people employed in Australia and in June the economy added 500 jobs!

That's a 0.0038% increase in the number of jobs in Australia.

The good news is that at this rate the employment problem will be solved in 1424 years!


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Wednesday 13 November 2019

Joker Movie Review - Melbourne Traditionalists Episode Sixteen

In this episode (only a few days after our last) David Hiscox from XYZ and I review the movie 'Joker'. Two very different reviews of the same movie!


Length: 32 minutes

Click on the link and enjoy!
Episode Sixteen

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Monday 11 November 2019

The Eightieth Month

This has been a good month with numbers on the rise, I have been writing a good mix of topical articles and political philosophy. Which I'm happy about, I'm also happy that the Melbourne Traditionalists Podcast has had 16 episodes so far. Things are moving in the right direction.

I put up a link to this article Setting up a Conservative group at thezman and it has been read 168 times since then. Yet blogger tells me that I have had 38 visitors from his referred URL and 43 from his site. How do you reconcile those numbers?

This month I have had 4,860 visitors from the 11th October to the 11th November. My worst day was the 15th October when I had 47 visitors, my best day was the 17th October when I had 470 visitors.



October - November
EntryPageviews
United States
1525
Netherlands
1009
Australia
670
France
328
United Kingdom
286
Ukraine
198
Canada
145
Germany
101
Unknown Region
98
Russia
56


September - October
EntryPageviews
United States
1087
Australia
706
Netherlands
243
France
143
Unknown Region
106
Indonesia
79
Germany
78
Russia
64
Ukraine
61
United Kingdom
59

The United States, the Netherlands, France, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, Germany are all up.

Australia and Unknown Region are down.

Canada has reentered the top 10 and Indonesia has left.

I have also had visitors from the following countries: Ireland, Belgium, Finland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Poland, Bulgaria, Israel, U.A.E., Pakistan, India, China,  South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, New Zealand, Mexico, El Salvador, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Argentina

I look forward to seeing you all again
Mark Moncrieff

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Sunday 10 November 2019

Unemployment in Australia - Melbourne Traditionalists Episode Fifteen

In this episode David Hiscox from https://www.xyz.net.au/ and I discuss how the geniuses that run Australia can have mass immigration and mass unemployment at the same time.


Length: 28 minutes


Click on the link and enjoy
Episode Fifteen



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Saturday 9 November 2019

Freedom Versus Tyranny

When we talk about freedom and tyranny we are nearly always talking about the peoples relationship to the government. Once a population gets above a few hundred people who are related then government becomes necessary. It's function is to govern, in other words to regulate, the relationship between people and groups of people. It further serves to protect those under it's rule from external as well as internal threats.

Traditionalists know that freedom is not opened-ended, that true freedom exists within boundaries. The freedom I enjoy in my home is different to the freedom I enjoy outside of it. The freedom I enjoy in my own country is different to the freedom that I might enjoy in someone else's. That the boundaries that restrict me, in reality protect me and in that protection I can enjoy my freedom.

The Liberal view is that freedom is absolute, that more freedom is better and that no restrictions is best. However that describes not freedom, but anarchy. The absence of rules and laws. Here my freedoms would not be protected, there is nothing to protect me or my freedoms. Under anarchy anything goes. And I cannot protest as I cannot call upon any law or custom to defend my freedoms. There are non. Nothing defends my freedom.

The government is not the only institution that can restrict our freedom, but it is only the biggest and most powerful institution that can do so. Over the last century or so, governments have become more and more powerful. More interfering in our lives. They can take from us nearly anything that they want. The whole time denying that they have such power.

Tyranny is any cruel or unjust use of power, now most people would say that it must be ongoing. One bad decision or action might be cruel or unjust but it would not rise to the level of tyranny. However once it became a part of the system of government then it would be tyranny.

Freedom is when the government serves the interests of the people. Tyranny is when the people serve the interests of the government.

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Friday 8 November 2019

Alexei Leonov Is Dead

Most of you will have never heard of Alexei Leonov and if you have you might not have known that he has died. He died on the 11th October 2019 in Moscow. So who was he?

He was the first man to walk in space back on the 18th March 1965 and he was outside of his space capsule for 12 minutes. 

Born in 1934 in Siberia, he was 14 when he moved with his family to Kalingrad, the former German city of Konigsberg. He joined the Soviet Air Force in 1957 and in 1960 was selected to be one of the first 20 pilots to be trained as Cosmonauts. In 1965 he went into space aboard the Voskhod 2, from which he did his space walk. For his space walk he was made a Hero of the Soviet Union.

On the 22nd January 1969 he was part of a parade celebrating the return of Cosmonauts from the Soyuz 4 and 5 missions. A deserter from the Soviet Army fired on the vehicle he was in killing the driver and slightly wounding a number of the Cosmonauts. Leonov wrote later that the Premier of the Soviet Union Leonid Brezhnev told him that the gunman had fired at the wrong car, the attack had been directed at Brezhnev.

In 1975 he was the Commander Soyuz 19, which rendezvoused with an American space craft to undertake the first joint Soviet-American space mission. He was made a Hero of the Soviet Union a second time for this mission.

He stayed in the Soviet and then Russian space program until he retired as Chief Cosmonaut and a Major-General in 1992. 

He is also well regarded as an artist and in Arthur C. Clarkes book 2010, the main space ship is named 'Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov.

A brave man as all pioneers must be is gone, let us not forget his achievements.

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Wednesday 6 November 2019

Parenting, There's An App For That!

The Australian government has funded the development of an App, child 360 from an organisation called Emerging Minds. Which was released last month. Parents are being encouraged to set up profiles of each of their children from birth to teenagers. The idea is that this App will help to monitor a child's mental health.

Shouldn't monitoring a child's well being, mental or otherwise, be part of a parents normal role?

Why does an App like this need to exist?

It all has that rather ugly Big Brother vibe to it. The government monitoring the child and their parents. However the problem of rising mental health problem is a real one. Modern life is driving us all mad.

'They are more connected online than ever before, but young Victorians are experiencing high levels of loneliness and social isolation that is putting them at risk of anxiety and depression, research has found.' (Herald Sun, Tuesday, October 1, 2019, page 11)

We can expect this to increase as loneliness and social isolation is the plan. The Autonomous Individual demands it!

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Tuesday 5 November 2019

Ideology Is Religion

Russel Kirk said in the 1950's that Conservatism was not an Ideology. So what is an Ideology?

According to my Heinemann Australian Dictionary (1976) it is "the organized system of beliefs or way of thinking of a person or group: 'fascist, communist and democratic ideologies' "

Which I think is inadequate, the word is nearly always implied to have a political meaning, here however it could also mean Catholicism or any number beliefs that are not political. While I will not give a short answer I will give a more complete answer. And to avoid argument I will reinforce the implied meaning that Ideologies are political in nature.

The first thing that all of the Ideologies have in common is that they all have their begins in Christianity. There are none that start outside of Christianity. Therefore all are European. Further all are Protestant in origins. And all of the Ideologies are Heresies. Because each rejects God.

The second commonality is that after God is rejected, man is made capable of the things that once only God could achieve. Man replaces God, in effect man becomes God.

Thirdly just as Ideology replaces God so it also by necessity replaces religion. If man is God then Christianity and by default all other religions, are false religions. As Marx put it 'the opium of the masses', a pipe dream that is illegitimate and that needs to be exposed as illegitimate. So that the truth faith can replace it, the faith of the Ideology.

Fourthly as God is now illegitimate so is his offer of life after death. Anything that is supernatural is to be regarded as false. Only the material world that you and I live in is real, all other worlds and states of being are to be rejected. It is impossible to prove that the supernatural exists, so it is best to reject it all. Only that which we can see is real.

Fifthly, if the material world is the only world that we can exist in then we must build the promised perfect life, not in heaven but here on Earth. Heaven on Earth is now the aim of each and every Ideology.

Sixth heaven on Earth requires perfection. So man, his government and his economy are all perfectible.

Seventh, Ideology is a religion, Each and every one. It has it's God, Man. It has it's priests and it's doctrine. It has it's true faith and it's heretics and it's unbelievers. It has it's message and it spreads it.

Anarchism, Communism, Fascism, Libertarianism, Liberalism, Nazism....they are all religions.

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Monday 4 November 2019

Why Trans-Humanism is Wrong

Trans-Humanism is the idea that Humans can be more than human through the use of technology. That humans and computers can become one and that through technology we can live forever. And with this 'singularity' the problems that have plagued humanity will be quickly done away with.

Like all utopianism it's all good with no downside...and of course complete and utter rubbish!

This month a British scientist, Dr. Peter Scott-Morgan has become the first cyborg. A cyborg is a human robot hybrid. Dr. Scott-Morgan is dying and he has undergone a series of operations to become a cyborg, what he has called Peter 2.0. He even sent out a tweet saying 'I'm not dying, I'm transforming, Oh how I love science.'.

The sad truth is that when Dr. Scott-Morgan dies he will be dead and any machine that has his image and his voice and that seems to 'think' just like he did is not. Because he's dead. The argument is that yes but this is only the first cyborg and in time they will get better. To which I say maybe, but I hope not.

Trans-Humanism is the mad in the mad scientist stereotype, the idea that God and nature got it wrong but that's alright because they can fix it. That they can end death and end human misery. Why does our society allow such things to be experimented with? Why do we fund it? Why aren't these people in jail?

Because Liberalism loves the idea that we can live forever. It too believes that utopia is within reach. It see's this as another branch of it's endeavours. If people choose to become cyborgs then they are braver than you or I. Such a '' person' would be self made and not confined to the way that nature has so cruelly forced them to adopt. Trans-Humanism, like Transgenderism allows the individual to transcend the boundaries that nature has assigned to them. By becoming a cyborg or a transgender you are, by Liberalisms way of thinking,  becoming more fully human.

Trans-Humanism is the extinction of the entire human race. By turning people into cyborgs we become extinct. What it means to be human is extinguished. It is quite literally inhuman.

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Friday 1 November 2019

Sir Wilfred Kent Hughes - Melbourne Traditionalists Episode Fourteen

In this episode I talk to David Hiscox about his Great Grandfather Sir Wilfred Kent Hughes. Minister in Sir Robert Menzies Government of the 1950's. A very interesting man, soldier and politician.


Length: 28 minutes


Click on the link and enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8FF8pcg0CY


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