Category Archives: Politics

Conference on Edmund Burke

Posted on by

A DIFFERENT WAY OF POLITICAL REASONING
Conference on Edmund Burke, Melbourne, 28th February 2015

Edmund Burke’s Club (Aust) Inc is organizing a conference on the life and thought of Edmund Burke for Saturday 28th February 2015. The theme of the conference will be Edmund Burke’s concept of political reason. The sessions will cover Burke’s political career from the time he left Dublin to enter the political world in London through to his last days when he maintained his rage against revolutionary France and rightly warned that their slogan Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité would end in subjecting France to a rigid military dictatorship. And so it happened.

The mode of Burke’s reasoning will be followed through the major issues he dealt with: the fight for Irish relief; the misuse and abuse of power, especially by the British throne; the conflict with the American colonies; the impeachment of Warren Hastings and the abuse of British rule in India; and the attack on the natural rights theory of Revolutionary France. The influence of some of the philosophers of the British Enlightenment on Burke’s thinking will also be considered.

The conference will be of keen interest to those who want to deepen their understanding of the man who is claimed to be the father of modern conservative thought. The keynote speaker will be Professor Garrett Ward Sheldon, The John Morton Beaty Professor of Political and Social Sciences, University of Virginia College at Wise. More details about the conference will be announced in the coming weeks. Any enquiries can be addressed to Gerard Wilson on 0419 002 163 or edmundburkesclub@bigpond.com

See update on conference HERE

The cream of Labor’s rabble turns up to honour their hero

Posted on by

It was meant to be a gala event with the cream, the giants, the grand worthies of the Labor Party assembling to honour their saint and hero Gough Whitlam. But the cream, the giants and the grand worthies turned out to be your grossest, most vulgar rabble. When conservative Prime Minister Abbott arrived at Sydney’s Town Hall to pay respects despite being on the other side of the political field, the Labor rabble booed long and hard. Just as they unloose their foul mouths whenever they come across anyone that does not meekly fall in with their malignant policies.

‘The governments now in office are the heirs of the May ’68 generation, which is now at the apex of its political and cultural power’
Benigno Blanco, president of the Foro Español de la Familia in an interview with the Observatory of Cardinal Van Thuan

UTS’s Watergate – will it go before the courts?

Posted on by

Activist charged over Frances Abbott record hacking, but how serious will ‘they’ consider it?

Report by CHRISTIAN KERR, The Australian

FREYA Newman, the student charged over the computer hacking that led to records of the $60,000 scholarship granted to the Prime Minister’s daughter being leaked to online magazine New Matilda, is part of a new wave of activists who have seized control of the University of Technology, Sydney, student association.

Ms Newman is the association’s women’s officer.

The co-author of the New Matilda article, veteran activist-­journalist Wendy Bacon, has a long association with the university. Although formally retired, Ms Bacon remains involved with its Centre for Independent Journalism as a professorial fellow.

Ms Newman, who is a third-year communications student, touched on a range of hot-button issues in her campaign material for election as women’s officer.

The 20-year-old promised “cross-collective action”, calling for on-campus action on asylum-seekers and action to build links with outside groups, greater ­engagement with Aboriginal and anti-racism groups and the ­creation of “gender and sexuality-based discussion groups and/or events’’.

Ms Newman also boasted about her role in preventing an anti-abortion group affiliating with the UTS union.

She lists her research interests on the academia.edu website as indigenous or Aboriginal studies, settler colonialism and its ­legacies, sovereignty, colonialism, indigenous studies, imperialism and empire. Ms Newman also adds postcolonial feminism, critical race theory, transnational feminism, critical disability studies, feminist disability and gender studies to this list.

She was working as a part-time night librarian at the Whitehouse Institute when computer files were allegedly accessed. The institute has handed over CCTV footage and email evidence.

Ms Newman has been charged with one count of accessing restricted data held in a computer.

1789: The ‘progressives’ celebrate an obscenity

Posted on by

We have just passed the anniversary of the most obscene and determining event of the modern era. That event flung the Western World into a dizzying irresistible ride that has left millions upon millions dead and European Civilization on the point of collapse.

On the 14th of July 1789, the Paris rabble stormed the Bastille to release a few incapable and mad inmates. Far from the prisoners and their ferocious unkempt liberators being the true symbol of that political act, they have been raised to hallowed heights by those who talk the talk of democracy but work to impose a totalitarian ideology on the world. Continue reading →

Burke vs Paine – Then and Now

Posted on by

Jesse Norman, author of one of the most recent biographies of Edmund Burke – and one of the best – reviews The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Left and Right, by Yuval Levin, (Basic Books) HERE. Norman’s book is Edmund Burke: Prophet, Politician and Philosopher, parts of which have been discussed on this website. Norman’s review of Levin’s book is highly recommended.

Report: Meeting of Edmund Burke’s Club (Australia) Inc. 7 February 2014

Posted on by

gerardwilsonbig

A Commentary on Edmund Burke: Philosopher, Politician, Prophet

The meeting of Edmund Burke’s Club at the Savage Club, Melbourne, on 7 February was largely taken up by Gerard Wilson’s commentary on Part One of Jesse Norman’s  recent book, Edmund Burke: Philosopher, Politician, Prophet. The commentary was twice as long as the normal presentation which, the President said, could not be avoided because of the material to be covered. Despite the length of the presentation most people found a full coverage Burke’s life and political career interesting and said they were looking forward to the text being posted on the EBC website. The text is now posted: A REVIEW Edmund Burke Philosopher, Politician, Prophet

What is Really Going on in Syria?

Posted on by

When the conflict in Syria broke out some two years ago, most ordinary Australians who followed the media reports and typically have only a vague idea of the motivations driving the deadly conflicts in the Islamic world, would surely have gained the impression that Bashar al-Assad was the big baddie in the conflict. I deliberately use the word ‘baddie’ because the media often represent such conflicts in the simple terms of a Saturday matinee western. Who the baddie is and who the goodies are in the matinee often depends on what the leftist class voice has decided. Continue reading →

Geoffrey Robertson Returns on a Visit to the Colony

Posted on by

Geoffrey Robertson, human rights celebrity lawyer and Australian expatriate (in London) swanned into Australia again this last week to promote a new book. We must expect much the same from this visit: the Robertson superior waltz while he lectures the Australian population about that esoteric thing called law which he neatly divides into the good represented by Julian Assange and the bad represented by Pope Benedict XVI; the fawning adulation of the ABC and Fairfax journalists who bow, scrape and tug the forelock to so much awesome legal intelligence; and the reaction of those wretched outcast conservatives who have to hold their hand over their mouth in response to his emetic hypocrisy, anti-religious bigotry, sanctimony, and sweeping ideological condemnations. Continue reading →