The Sydney Trads have come up with a great idea, which is to run a symposium discussing the place of conservatism in Australian politics following the replacement of Tony Abbott as PM.
I haven't read all of the contributions yet, but have just read Frank Salter's. It is generally very good. I won't give too much away, but his starting point is to reject the idea that the Abbott Government was a consistently conservative one. His way forward is for conservatives to build social movements, which he describes (briefly) as "a networked infrastructure of researchers and writers, magazines, websites, forums, seminars, news and documentaries."
Dear Mark, Thanks for the review. I recommend the other symposium entries as well.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I notice your in-progress E-booklet, Chapter 5, on "Nation & Ethnicity". Insightful treatment of Andrew Bolt unconscious radicalism regarding identity. Also, you wrote:
"Friedman justifies discriminating in favour of our family, but not our conationals, on this basis:
We would be miserable if we could not treat our friends, spouses, and siblings with special consideration; but is this necessarily true of our conationals?
That doesn't seem to me to be a very principled or persuasive response to the liberal dilemma."
I agree. As if ethnic diversity does not produce misery! Also, co-ethnics are genetic kin, with remarkably high genetic similarity, typically equivalent to first cousins. See my book, On Genetic Interests.
Bottom line: Australia (and America) don't have real conservative parties or strong social movements.