The chaos of politics

While both the ideology of Liberal and Labor Parties has been affected by Enlightenment thinking, often to their detriment, the Liberal Party is more so. Liberalism comes straight from the sunny humanism of John Lock and Jean-Jacques Rousseau and from American writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson with his essay on self reliance. Think of Scott Morrison's slogan "Those who have a go will get a go." A great idea until you think of all those people who find themselves in a situation in which it is impossible to "have a go". Labor would take them with us, Liberals would, presumably, leave them to rot.

One would think that the Liberal Party would have some attachment to conservatism in a good way, that, for example, it would be ill at ease with liberal abortion laws and voluntary assisted dying thus conserving long held views by the Church and the judiciary. However, no political party in Australia will make a sound about these issues because of the overwhelming popular support of liberalisation. Where the nation goes, there the government must follow.

One would also expect a conservative government to back well-established public institutions like the ABC and the CSIRO.

Menzies was conservative in a good way. During the WWII when the Japanese bombed Darwin and were on their way to Port Moresby on the Kokoda track, prime minister John Curtin supported hateful propaganda against them. Menzies "lambasted the Government's use of hatred at an instrument of war." (Ham, Kokoda p296)

But alas, those days have gone, both for the Labor party and the Liberals, they both have largely abandoned at least some of their roots.

Democracy itself tends to distort well-founded policy. For example, many countries have an estates tax that acts to reduce the wealth gulf between the rich and the poor and to aid government in acting for the good of the community. But since it has been labelled the "death tax" it has become political poison to even mention it. Likewise, the relabelling of the refugee crisis as an issue of "border security."

It is amazing how easily the electorate is swayed when its own safety is allegedly threatened. The only amelioration of this lies in public education, not in maths and natural science but in the arts. For the humanities are studied because they make us more human and more able to see through the false barriers to good governance that political parties have erected all over the place for them to remain in power.

Theology is part of the humanities, and it properly sits at the head of them. The study of theology trains us to think systematically about what constitutes the human and is a very good foundation for life in politics. Alas, this is a path rarely taken with the consequence that political life has become debased as is obvious to anyone who is aware of the goings on in Canberra.

Without a clear view of what humans are for, governments have no view of the future, they have no plan for the development of a community that strives towards the good. Most of their time is taken up in holding on to power while the nation languishes.