Author Archives: admin

Treason and sedition – the worst of civil offences

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Yesterday I was reflecting that treason and sedition have always been considered the worst of civil offences, punishable by death. It was not with reference to Muslims in Western countries on this occasion. Then I came across the following on a Facebook page:

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared. The traitor is the carrier of the plague. You have unbarred the gates of Rome to him.”

A quote attributed to Marcus Tullius Cicero – 107 BC – 43 BC. And so history repeats itself, so it would seem.

Gerard Wilson

Report of the Annual General Meeting 6 November 2015

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The Annual General Meeting of Edmund Burke’s Club welcomed quite a few new attendees whom the President Gerard Wilson warmly welcomed before beginning the business of the meeting. A special welcome was given to Dominick Bondar, Vice-President of Sydney University Liberal Club, who had just become the Club’s newest member. The President then gave an account – and an assessment – of the Club’s activities over the previous year.

Our membership not only remained steady but increased slightly. For various reasons we lost some but gained others. Our meetings with the supper afterwards continued to be thoroughly enjoyed by all who attended. The presentations stimulated much discussion which carried over to the supper. Continue reading →

Teaching cultural self-loathing

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University courses make student teachers hostile towards the West

Scott Morrison is right to describe Muslim school kids walking out on the national anthem as pathetic, but he is wrong to point the finger at teachers. The problem does not begin with schools but in univer­sities where budding educators are encouraged to embrace profound antipathy towards the West.

In universities across the Western world, students training to become teachers are commonly taught critical theory or postcolonialism as a part of arts degrees in education. Both subjects inculcate in students deep hostility to the Western world, its culture, creed and citizens. They were inspired by neo-Marxism, whose forefather Herbert Marcuse was a key figure leading the revolution against Western civilisation in universities and manufacturing the rise of radical minority groups to censor non-leftist thought in public life.

Continue reading →

What did Burke say exactly about good men, bad men and the triumph of evil?

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The quotation most frequently attributed to Edmund Burke is not something Burke said though it sounds like Burke. The correct quotation from the Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, and found on the home page of this website, is different. Professor David Bromwich of Yale University explains why the difference is important:

‘When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.’ This great sentence is the germ of the most famous quotation wrongly ascribed to Burke: ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’ The sentiment extractable from the corrupt version is pompous, canting, and demonstrably false, for evil is not a disembodied thing; it has its origin in acts by specifiable agents. Nor is it true that ‘the only thing necessary’ for the triumph of evil is the inaction of good men. There must also be an extended occasion of public fears for bad men to play upon, and there must be a catalysing event. The bad men themselves must be unusually excited, active, conscious of each other’s presence, aware of the inlets for increasing power, and unimpeded by the indifferent mass of people. Burke’s sentence is careful to say flatly what the triumph-of-evil apothegm leaves mysterious. Bad men do combine but, as the word combine suggests, their alliance may be impersonal and almost mechanical, a reflex of ambition and appetite, or the product of a theory. By contrast, association, through constant intercourse with other persons, leaves room for correction and improvement in the corps and a concern for the public good. Yet it matters that the defence of principle, when its cost is high, should achieve a public notability, so that interim defeats may prepare for an eventual triumph. The sacrifice of a party is important because it is so visible, compared to the obscure sacrifice of an unconnected person. Consistency of opinion, which is both a cause and a consequence of regular association, makes all the difference between a contemptible and worthy struggle.

The intellectual Life of Edmund Burke: From the Sublime and Beautiful to American Independence, David Bromwich, pp. 175-176

Furor Abbottus – a reality sapping mental and emotional disorder

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Furor poeticus is Latin for ‘poetic frenzy’. The term goes back to the Ancient Greeks and refers to a poet’s being transported to a state in which he would channel the gods’ thoughts and feelings. During his Trinity College days, with some humour, Edmund Burke borrowed the term to describe his youthful fixation on poetry and history. He called those phases his furor poeticus and furor historicus.

The idea of a frenzied psychological state came to mind when I read a report on msn.com with the headline: Bureaucrats refuse to reveal Abbott’s alcohol preferences despite FOI request. It seems that all this year Labor Senator Penny Wong has been after an account of the brands and types of alcohol Tony Abbott drank while prime minister. After the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet was forced by a Freedom of Information request to come up with a pile of receipts, Wong’s desired information was blacked out. She ‘likened this lack of transparency to an episode of ABC comedy Utopia.’ Continue reading →

A fair portrait of Tony Abbott

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Andrew Bolt’s portrait of Tony Abbott which appeared shortly after Abbott’s carefully planned assassination is not only objectively fair. It is true – true about Abbot’s qualities as a person, true about his loyalty, true about his achievements, true about the enormous obstacles that stood in the way of his administration, and true about the media’s unrestrained and shameless politicking to tear him down. When one is confronted yet again by a detailed account of Abbott’s demise, depicting Abbott as master of his own fall, one should return to this piece to be reminded of reality and not fantasy.

Loss of PM Abbott is a time of Sorrow
by ANDREW BOLT

NOW Tony Abbott is gone I can finally tell the truth about him. Folks, you made a big mistake with this bloke. No, no. The mistake wasn’t that you voted for him. In fact, you got one of the finest human beings to be Prime Minister.

In many ways he seemed too moral for the job, yet he achieved more in two years than the last two Labor prime ministers achieved in six. Compare. Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard left us with record deficits after blowing billions on trash — on overpriced school halls, “free” insulation that killed people, green schemes that collapsed, “stimulus” checks to the dead. Continue reading →

The invincible ignorance of some journalists concerning George Pell

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Nobody should miss Gerard Henderson’s Media Watch Dog each Friday. An ongoing feature of Media Watch Dog is Gerard’s highlighting of the ABC’s anti-Catholic sectarianism. This favourite expression of the ABC’s poisonous prejudice against anything with the slightest whiff of conservatism is most manifest in their obsession with Cardinal George Pell who for the ABC is the religious equivalent of Tony Abbott. The ABC can take pride in its being at the head of the current revival of anti-Catholic sectarianism, a disease that came to Australia on the First Fleet and was ably promoted by the likes of the flogging parson Samuel Marsden and Presbyterian minister John Dunmore Lang. This is one Tradition the ABC has loyally kept up. The following is Gerard’s most recent exposition of the ABC’s primitive anti-religious bigotry.

BISHOP GEOFFREY ROBINSON FAILS TO FULFILL THE ABC’S PROPHECIES

The ABC was quite excited on the morning of retired Bishop Geoffrey Robinson’s appearance before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse – Tuesday 25 August 2015.

Fr Robinson is a long-time critic of Cardinal George Pell – both before and after Pell became the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney. Some ABC producersdecided to preview Geoffrey Robinson’s appearance before the Royal Commission – focusing on what the retired bishop might say about Cardinal Pell.

On Radio National Breakfast, Fran (“I’m an activist”) Kelly interviewed Francis Sullivan from the Truth, Justice and Healing Council.  Mr Sullivan is a public critic of George Pell.  Needless to say, it was not long before the Cardinal was introduced into the discussion.  Let’s go to the transcript: Continue reading →

Understanding Islam I

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Fr Paul Stenhouse MSC PhD, an acknowledged expert on Islam and the Middle East, is currently presenting a five-part series on Islam in the ANNALS. The first part appeared in the March 2015 issue. With Fr Stenhouse’s kind permission the first part is reproduced here: Understanding Islam I

Some leftist pairs

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Bill Muehlenberg has posted a piece – The Media, the ABC, and Leftist Propaganda – on his website that expresses views that most conservative have long had about the Left and their control of the media. Among true and useful information is the following list of media/politics pairs which (he says) he has referenced from Larry Pickering’s website.

Perhaps Pickering can get out his investigative trowel and give us a list of the Left’s ever-changing relationships. For example, we know that Julia Gillard has teamed up with at least three men of the Left. It would be interesting to know what sort of standards the Left maintain in their ‘romantic’ relationships:

Greg Combet (Labor) partnered to Juanita Phillips (ABC).
Gai Brodtmann (Labor) married to Chris Uhlmann (ABC).
David Feeney (Labor) married to Liberty Sanger (guest commentator on ABC).
Barry Cassidy (ABC) former speech writer for Bob Hawke (Labor) from 1986-1991 married to Heather Ewart (ABC).…
Maxine McKew (ABC) married to Bob Hogg (former ALP national secretary).
Virginia Trioli (ABC) married to Russell Skelton (The Age).
Mark Kenny (Fairfax) married to Virginia Haussegger (ABC).
Christine Wallace (ABC & Fairfax) married to Michael Costello (former Chief of Staff to Labor’s Kim Beazley).
Annabel Crabb (former Fairfax journalist now with the ABC).
Tony Jones (ABC) married to Sarah Ferguson (ABC). Coincidentally Jones took over the Lateline role from Maxine McKew (from ABC presenter to Labor politician).
David Penberthy (journalist) married to Kate Ellis (Labor).
Paul Kelly (former Fairfax journalist) formerly married to Ros Kelly (Labor).
Kerry O’Brien (ABC) former press secretary to Gough Whitlam.
Mark Colvin (ABC) married to Michelle McKenzie (Leichhardt deputy-mayor and Greens Councillor).
Denis Atkins (ABC Insiders regular) married to Melanie Christensen (ABC Canberra).
Paul Barry (ABC) married to Lisa McGregor (ABC).
The lamentable Mike Carlton (formerly Fairfax) and Morag Ramsay (ABC).
Andrew Fraser (Fairfax) and Catriona Jackson (formerly Fairfax and Labor press secretary).

Gerard Wilson

Crooks and corruption

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Larry Pickering is evidently not afraid of being sued. His piece on Slater & Gordon makes interesting reading:

SLATER & GORDON TO THE RESCUE!
… crooks need the best crooked lawyers

Labor and corrupt unions’ favourite corrupt law firm, Slater & Gordon, is under an ongoing ASIC investigation concerning a, a’hem, “book-keeping error” totalling $90 million. Read on here.