Guess it was too hard after all. Instead we get Unlike Rudd, Costello has a moral compass.
That's right, you need a really good metal detector to work out barking mad Christians from ordinary common or garden Queensland Christians.
You see, Costello has a moral compass because he's nice to indigenous folk, walked across the bridge, and was happy to say sorry. But he's also been to Alice Springs - actually stayed there for weeks - and knows the whole stolen generations thing is nonsense. And the welfare system was just bunkum.
As opposed to the intervention in the NT - the sort of thing that only a Liberal government could deploy - which has worked out tremendously well. A most dramatic and positive step.
The Rudd government, on the other hand, is a one term wonder. And that's not because of its unconvincing response to the international credit crisis. No, no, no, says the sublime Pearson.
At least as compelling, to my mind, is the unforced error that last week saw the federal Government alienate en masse the evangelical Christian constituency by reversing a policy prohibiting foreign aid being spent on abortions in the Third World.
So that's how the Brazilian doctors got the money to abort a nine year old? The Ruddster gave it to them?
No, no, no. It's not that at all, it's just a moral disgrace on the part of the cowardly Ruddster. Ron Boswell says so, Joe de Bruyn says so. Rudd falterd under pressure from filthy evil secular atheists within his party. What a cop out, what a dung beetle.
Cue Jim Wallace, former commander of the Special Air Service (that eminently qualifies him to speak on women's rights) who now heads that bizarre body, the Australian Christian Lobby (who believe all women would best be served by virgin births not involving sordid sex? No sorry guys, just joking. Who believe all women are best off in the home having lots of babies?)
Yep, those noble Christian souls feel betrayed, and they're going to campaign against Rudd at the next election (before that, they were so solidly pro-Labor that they marched up and down the street, shouting Ho Ho Ho Chi Ruddster).
Pearson sees this as the end for the Ruddster. He's crossed the line and he's going down, not that the ratbag media would understand.
To the majority of young people with bachelors' degrees in media studies, abortion rarely rates as a problem. They see it as a women's rights issue or a privacy question, long ago conclusively settled in favour of individual women, with scant acknowledgment of the rights of the unborn. In embracing a radical secularist agenda, they risk losing touch with the fundamental values and motivations of many in their audiences and more broadly in the things that interest them, as opposed to the concerns that mainly preoccupy journalists.
What a hoot. It seems it all comes down to young folk with bachelors' degrees in media studies (and probably half of them being women have degrees in womens' rights issues). Oh you young folk get prepared for a life time in hell. You radical secularists you. You're out of touch with the mainstream. The Pell Pearson SSPX mainstream that is.
Well as Pearson choses to reference Blind Spot: When Journalists Don't Get Religion in support of his delusion about secular journalists wearing blinkers, can I just reference Frank Rich's excellent column The Culture Warriors Get Laid Off, which is of course written by a humane, intelligent journalist, so wtf would he know (hah, especially as he writes for that vile reprehensible secularist rag The New York Times, which is going down for its Satanism and is full no doubt of young people with media degrees instead of a good theological degree in third century papist semantics).
Here, at last, is one piece of good news in our global economic meltdown: Americans have less and less patience for the intrusive and divisive moral scolds who thrived in the bubbles of the Clinton and Bush years. Culture wars are a luxury the country - the G.O.P. included - can no longer afford ... In our tough times, when any happy news can be counted as a miracle, a 40- year exodus for these ayatollahs can pass for an answer to America's prayers.
Rich's hymn to secularism is a nice contrast to the cheek of Pearson. It seems media students will somehow miss the theological dimensions that explain present concerns such as al-Qa'ida, the demoralisation of Europe, the rise of Christianity in the global south and some seemingly mysterious but utterly predictable outcomes in domestic politics.
But here's the thing you prat. Fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam are at one - a perfect unison of minds - when it comes to this kind of treatment of women, and their bodies. The delusion you share is that you will get to some kind of heaven or some kind of hell, but the reality is that the heaven and the hell you create is here on earth. Get you gone you collective bunch of ayatollah loons.
That's right. FU fundie Islamics and FU fundie Christians. Bugger off, and leave the matter of women's bodies and minds to women (or to media students with appropriate degrees).
By the way, Christopher, you still haven't answered that question. Tell me exactly what you would do with a nine year old girl, lithe and frail, and likely to die if delivering twins produced by the alleged sexual assaults of the girl's step-father, begun at the age of six.
I know how an Islamic fundie would respond. How would a fundie Christian of the Catholic persuasion respond? Ah that's right, it's all about the rights of the unborn. Die, nine year old, die and ascend to heaven. So tell me Christopher, how then is the rise of Christianity in the global south any different to the rise of Islamic madness in the middle East?
And Peter Costello's very own special moral compass? Hanging around with fundies who think Victoria's bushfires were caused by Victorian abortion law reform.
A pox on the lot of you.
1 comment:
Rich's piece has made my entire week, and it's only Monday. So the culture warriors only come out to play in boom times, this is truly heartening. Of course if they do all disappear from the landscape, you can take credit, just as Howard and Costello did for the boom years.
I've come to think the right of politics has been hijacked by extremists. I'm not sure many on the Right have realised this, and that it's damaging their own long-term cause. John Valder et al certainly realised it with their "Not Happy John" campaign, and even Fraser was appalled by most of what happened under Howard.
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