Category Archives: Politics

R.G. Menzies — a very ‘clubbable’ prime minister

Posted on by

It is perhaps not well known that Robert G. Menzies immensely enjoyed the social life of the clubs he was a member of. He had membership in three during his career: the West Brighton, the Savage, and the K.K. They provided a clean relaxing break from his busy life first in the law and then in politics. Sir John Bunting, Menzies’ Cabinet Secretary and Secretary to the Prime Minister’s Department, devoted several pages to Menzies’ ‘clubbability’ in his book R.G. Menzies: A Portrait. Those pages are reproduced below.

Edmund Burke’s Club is organizing a dinner to commemorate the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta (15th June 1215) and the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo (18th June 1815) at Melbourne’s Savage Club for the 16th of June 2015. As with the very enjoyable dinner on the eve of our Edmund Burke conference, the dinner will take its lead from R.G. Menzies.

MENZIES was a considerable club man. But that straight away needs an explanation, because the clubs he most used were not of the usually understood variety. There are various dictionary definitions of clubs. For what are now understood as the traditional clubs, the Concise Oxford formula seems to go closest: ‘body of persons combined for social purposes, and having premises for resort, meals, temporary residence etc.’ Clubs of this sort, modelled on British precedent, have always existed in Australia. They are social clubs obviously, but they are also clubs that people join for business and professional reasons. These were not really for Menzies. He visited them often enough, and the equivalent clubs elsewhere, and, as a guest, was perfectly at home and happy. But although he was in them, he was not of them, nor of their style. His main choices, in his home city of Melbourne, fell on three quite other clubs: the Savage, the West Brighton and the K.K. These were clubs for the inner Menzies. (I omit, which would be at my peril if he were to know, the Melbourne Scots, but it does not, I think, come into this narrative.) Continue reading →

Report on Edmund Burke conference and May meeting

Posted on by

The meeting of 1 May reviewed the Edmund Burke Conference that took place on 28 February 2015. Members were of the opinion that the conference was well organized. and that on the day all went according to plan. The attendees found the presentations interesting and instructive, as befitted an organization devoted to the study of Edmund Burke’s thought.  The numbers were moderate, but it was noted that our means of attracting interested participants were limited. All agreed that members should work at the promotion of such an occasion well beforehand. There was also the consideration that Edmund Burke’s Club is a little more than two-years-old. The pleasing development was that the limited promotion attracted a number of members from states outside Victoria.

The pre-conference dinner at the Savage Club which included a reception and a number of readings and interventions was considered a resounding success. The Club is looking at the possibility of organizing another dinner along the same lines for later in the year.

After the review of the conference, Gerard Wilson gave a presentation on Burke’s ideas on religion and state and society. When the meeting finished, attendees repaired to the nearby RACV Club bistro for supper. It was a very enjoyable evening. Photos of the meeting and the conference will be posted shortly.

Gerard Wilson’s presentation here: Burke on religion meeting 1 May 2015

Thomas More – fictionalising history for political purposes

Posted on by

Deconstructing History

‘[Hilary] Mantel has chosen to make [St Thomas] More the singular object of her anti-Catholic vitriol. More does not appear in the book other than in a damning light; no one speaks anything but ill of him and he is not allowed a redeeming feature’

WOLF HALL AND THE REAL ST THOMAS MORE

By  Graham Hutton

THE FIRST of a trilogy of novels about Thomas Cromwell by the successful English writer Hilary Mantel, ‘Wolf Hall’ has experienced a phenomenal success winning huge critical acclaim, selling over 1.2million copies and winning the Mann Booker prize. It has now been turned into a stage play and at both Stratford-upon-Avon and London’s West End this play, too, has been such a success that it is being described with such hyperboles as ‘a landmark’ and ‘a phenomenon’. No doubt the forthcoming TV series will reach even more people. Unfortunately, whatever the literary merits of the book, its popularity is something which Catholics can only regret. The great work of recent historians of the English Reformation such as Eamon Duffy, Christopher Haigh and Richard Rex, has done much to clear away the obfuscations of traditional English historiography around the medieval Church and the reformation. Continue reading →

The meaning of ‘holocaust’ – another opportunity for the leftist media

Posted on by

The Macquarie (Australian) Dictionary meaning of the word ‘holocaust’:

holocaust/ˈhɒləkɒst/ (say ‘holuhkost), /-kɔst/ (say -kawst)

noun 1.  great or wholesale destruction of life, especially by fire.

2.  an offering devoted wholly to burning; a burnt offering.

[Late Latin holocaustum, from Greek holokauston a burnt offering, properly neuter of holokaustos burnt whole]
–holocaustic /hɒləˈkɒstɪk/ (say holuh’kostik), adjective

The word frequently appears in the Bible referring to burnt offerings. After the Second World the word was used to describe the attempted genocide of Jews. It is a word that has powerful literary use as an image to convey terrible and purposeful destruction. See HERE

The leftist media’s confected outrage over Prime Minister Abbott’s use of the word ‘holocaust’ as an image should once more convey to Menzies’ people how vicious and unconscionable the left are in their attempt to destroy the prime minister. There is no tactic, no lie that is too great or too low for them to employ in their unrelenting political campaign. Menzies’ people should be well aware of who their enemy is. Andrew Bolt shows how transparent the leftist media’s tactic is: Abbott hanged for what the gallery forgave Keating and Bob Brown.

 

The Left can take a break – 2GB is doing the job for them

Posted on by

The ABC and the Fairfax Group are so shamelessly prejudiced in their reporting that it is embarrassing even to the conservative observer. The conservative prides himself on staying connected with the concrete multifarious circumstances of political issues and applying prudential judgement to their solution. So the sort of embarrassment we feel at people with their heads constantly in an ideological delirium mindlessly regurgitating the overdone rhetoric is the sort that we feel listening to someone singing horribly out of tune before a cringing audience.

Of course, any embarrassment the conservative expresses is of no account to the narrow-minded bigoted left. They keep at it, no matter what, doing and saying anything that is going to damage the people they judge out of line with their ideological dogma. Foremost among those out of line, their worst ideological nightmare, is Tony Abbott. They cannot bring to themselves ever to say anything good about him. No matter what the prime minister does, there will always be a way to cast it in a manner that will deliver the maximum damage to the man for whom they have an obsessive pathological hatred. It is the way of the mind infected with Marxism – whether of the Leninist, Frankfurt School or of the Gramsci sort. Tony Abbott is the objectification of all that the Marxist wants removed from society. There can be no compromise. He must be eliminated and the manner of assassination does not matter. Continue reading →

Australia in regression

Posted on by

During this last week of Australia’s parliament, many Australians must have been sitting with their heads in their hands despairing that commonsense would ever appear in Australia’s political discourse. The Greens determined to lead the nation into social, economic and political collapse were mouthing their usual poison. The Labour Party has resorted to an all-out Alinsky-style assault on the government’s budget program regardless of the ensuing economic ruin. To top off the Greens/Labour alliance of insanity, the ordinary person possessed of reason was constantly tortured by the antics of the most ignorant irresponsible people that faults in the electoral system have ever allowed into Australian government. A Jacqui Lambie shows just how brittle our democratic system is. Glen Lazarus retired from football as a highly respected champion. His ignorance and irresponsibility is destroying all that. His wife should call him home before he makes a complete ass of himself. Paul Kelly describes below the worst of the week’s happenings. Australia weep.  Continue reading →

CONSTITUTING THE CONSTITUTION:

Posted on by

UNDERSTANDING THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION THROUGH THE BRITISH CULTURAL CONSTITUTION
by GARRETT WARD SHELDON

Garrett Headshot 8x11

Professor Sheldon provides an explanation of the differences between the concepts of a written, a codified and an unwritten constitution. An understanding of these differences is essential for students of constitutionalism. The essay is aimed at American students but is nevertheless of interest to those who have forgotten or never knew the background of their constitutional monarchy

Reference is often made to the legal, philosophical, and historical progenitors of the American Constitution in ideas derived from Great Britain, such as the writings of John Locke or William Blackstone, and familiar documents like the Magna Carta or The Petition of Right of 1628. Perhaps an even more significant constitutional heritage may be found in our inheritance of the British appreciation for the customary or cultural foundations of fundamental law. This appreciation for what is often termed the “organic” constitution, beholden philosophically to Aristotle, Aquinas, and Burke, emphasizes how a society or nation is “constituted,” and the implications of that social constitution for the written or codified document. In this respect, the example of British constitutionalism may be helpful in understanding the proper approach to American constitutional interpretation. Read on here

Why Victorians should re-elect the Coalition

Posted on by

Josh Frydenberg outlines the case for re-electing Victoria’s Coalition government:

VICTORIAN’S PATH TO GROWTH

Victoria’s path to growth

THE 3.8 million voters in Victoria face a stark choice. If they re-elect Denis Napthine, they get another four years of strong economic management, record spending on health and education, and an ­effective federal-state partnership on infrastructure.

If they elect Daniel Andrews, they’ll return to the budget blowouts, infrastructure white elephants and union intimidation on work sites, symptomatic of the Bracks-Brumby years.

History shows the last one-term government in Victoria was John Cain Sr’s Labor government in 1955. Just as Napthine took over from Ted Baillieu mid-term, so Rupert Hamer took over from Henry Bolte in 1972 and went on to retain government in 1973, holding office for another eight years.

But history as predictor takes you only so far. Polls indicate a close race and the election is complicated by a major redistribution of electoral boundaries resulting in the abolition of two safe ­Coalition seats and the creation of two safe Labor ones. Five seats held by Labor MPs have become notionally Liberal. While the ­Coalition is well placed to win several of these seats, the redistribution has, as election expert Antony Green observed, removed the traditional advantage of ­incumbency Continue reading →