Menzies House

In Defence of Cory Bernardi

Bill Muehlenberg suggests Tony Abbott took a knee-jerk reaction to Senator Bernardi's controversial statement about bestiality.

Editor's Note: For all our new readers today please note that Menzies House is an opinion website which publishes a wide variety of pieces, including numerous pieces in favour of same sex marriage and some advocating for an abolition of the Cth Marriage act, as well as pieces against. The fact that a piece is published here does NOT necessarily mean its contents are endorsed by any member of the editorial board - Tim Andrews, Managing Editor. 

South Australian Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi has just been hung out to dry by his own party. Why? Because he had the guts to tell the truth, and his PC political mates were too chicken and too spineless to back him up. He was speaking on the homosexual marriage bill, and had the courage to suggest where all this might lead.

He had given a very good speech in the Senate outlining his concerns about homosexual marriage and how children especially will be impacted. His entire speech is well worth reading (see link below). He also spoke of where this was all heading. He said in part:

“If we are prepared to redefine marriage so that it suits the latest criterion that two people who love each other should be able to get married irrespective of their gender and/or if they are in a sexual relationship, then what is the next step? The next step, quite frankly, is having three people or four people that love each other being able to enter into a permanent union endorsed by society—or any other type of relationship. For those who say that I am being alarmist in this, there is the polyamory community who were very disappointed when the Greens had to distance themselves from their support for numerous people getting together and saying they want to enter into a permanent union. They were disappointed because they were misled that this was about marriage equality and opening up marriage to all people who love each other.

“There are even some creepy people out there—and I say ‘creepy’ deliberately—who are unfortunately afforded a great deal more respect than I believe they deserve. These creepy people say it is okay to have consensual sexual relations between humans and animals. Will that be a future step? In the future will we say, ‘These two creatures love each other and maybe they should be able to be joined in a union.’ It is extraordinary that these sorts of suggestions are put forward in the public sphere and are not howled down right at the very start. We can talk about people like Professor Peter Singer who was, I think, a founder of the Greens or who wrote a book about the Greens. Professor Singer has appeared onQ&A on the ABC, the national broadcaster. He has endorsed such ideas as these.

When the Nanny State Starts Attacking Nannies

Bill Muehlenberg says we live in an age where we see evidence of cultural decline, the erosion of values...

OK, just a very short and sweet post here. I have written before about the nanny state and how big government feeds on itself, getting bigger and badder. Bureaucracies mushroom, egos expand, and freedoms lessen and shrink. The ever-increasing state gets more and more irrational as it thinks it must intrude into every area of life.

The trouble with soft totalitarianism is that it soon mushrooms into hard totalitarianism. Today’s bureaucracy on steroids becomes tomorrow’s Stazi or KGB. So keeping the state in check is an on-going work, one which must constantly and doggedly be engaged in. Or as has been said before, “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance”.

On School Chaplains and Religious Freedom

Bill Muehlenberg looks at today's High Court decision on school chaplain funding, and asks whether it might not be time for Christian organisations to start refusing taxpayer funding:

A High Court ruling has declared that government funding of the school chaplaincy program is invalid according to the Australian constitution. This ruling raises many issues and many questions, and is a very important decision indeed.

One news report covers the story this way:

The High Court has ruled that the national school chaplaincy program is constitutionally invalid because it exceeds the Commonwealth’s funding powers. In a landmark decision that could cast doubt on other areas of Commonwealth funding, the court this morning upheld a challenge to the scheme by Queensland father Ron Williams.

The Howard government introduced the scheme in 2007, offering schools up to $20,000 a year to introduce or extend chaplaincy services. One of Australia’s leading constitutional lawyers George Williams said the implications of the case were massive and could potentially affect any program directly funded by the federal government.

The ruling came about as a result of a challenge a Toowoomba father made about the chaplaincy program. The ramifications of this decision may well be far reaching, and it is too early to tell just what all the implications of this will be.

The report continues:

Universities No Place For Tolerance and Genuine Choice

Bill Muehlenberg discusses how the radical left is trying to shut down free speech by pro-lifers at the University of Sydney:

If you want to go to a place where there is genuine learning, searching for truth, and openness of mind, then you better stay away from most Western universities nowadays. They can be the most closed, censorious and intolerant places around.

If the schools themselves are not enforcing fascist PC measures and ideologies, then you can be sure that plenty of students will be doing this. And we have a perfect example of this coming from the University of Sydney. For the first time ever a pro-life group just managed to scrape in there.

And already the tolerance brigade is spitting chips and blowing gaskets. Here is how one report has covered this story:

“The board of the student union at the oldest university in Australia has voted 6-5 to approve the nation’s first-ever pro-life student society

“The decision has been met with outrage by stunned pro-abortion students (one of whom described the pro-life society as ‘f***ed’ and ‘bulls***’), who have begun organising events, petitions and constitutional amendments which would ban pro-life groups from ever again gaining approval at the university.

“Yesterday, Friday June 1, the board of the University of Sydney Union (USU) approved the registration of LifeChoice Sydney, a nonpartisan, nonsectarian pro-life advocacy group which aims to ‘promote the dignity of human life from conception to natural death’ at Sydney University. The Ukulele society was also approved at the same meeting.

“Outraged students have begun composing a motion calling for the USU board to rescind the registration of LifeChoice, censure the board members who voted in favour of their registration, and amend the USU constitution to read: ‘The Board shall be forbidden from registering or providing any funding, resources, publicity or use of Union premises to a group discriminatory on the basis of sex, sexuality, gender diversity, class, race and ethnicity or disability, including any group which opposes a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion.’

“Meanwhile, an online petition has been created on the website of activist group GetUp!, demanding that the USU overturn its decision to approve the group. ‘This isn’t about freedom of speech or equal opportunity,’ the petition reads. ‘This is about funding and giving legitimacy to a group whose sole target is women. This “LifeChoice” Society is an attack on women’s rights and by allowing its formation the Union is failing its students and undermining the inclusiveness it seeks to promote.’

More Mean Green Madness

Bill Muehlenberg discusses the ugly consequences of radical environmentalism:

Way back in 1982 American sociologist Robert Nisbet remarked that environmentalism has become the third great redemptive movement in human history, following Christianity and Marxism. Indeed it already has its notions of sin, guilt and redemption, its sacred texts and venerated leaders. And like all false religions, radical environmentalism has its share of zealots.

This in part is what Nisbet said about environmentalism in his book Prejudices: A Philosophical Dictionary:

“‘From the Gospel of Capitalist Efficiency to the Gospel of Utopianism’ would serve very well as subtitle here. It is entirely possible that when the history of the twentieth century is finally written, the single most important social movement of the period will be judged to be environmentalism. Beginning early in the century as an effort by a few far-seeing individuals in America to bring to bring about the prudent use of natural resources in the interest of extending economic growth as far into the future as possible, the environmentalist cause has become today almost a mass movement, its present objective little less than the transformation of government, economy, and society in the interest of what can only be properly called the liberation of nature from human exploitation.

“Environmentalism is now well on its way to becoming the third great wave of redemptive struggle in Western history, the first being Christianity, the second modern socialism. In its way, the dream of a perfect physical environment has all the revolutionary potential that lay both in the Christian vision of mankind redeemed by Christ and in the socialist, chiefly Marxian, prophecy of mankind freed from social injustice.”

Now, thirty years on, this is even far more true. Radical environmentalism has become a pseudo-religion, and this has wide-ranging consequences. Consider three recent news items which clearly speak to this. The first has to do with how “climate change” has become an article of religious belief, and facts and evidence need not get in the way of devotion to the cause.

Continue reading "More Mean Green Madness " »

Bill Muehlenberg comments on proposed changes to restrict freedom of speech in Australia:

The Australian Labor/Green government has proven to be no friend of freedom. Along with the various Labor state governments, we have seen many freedoms being whittling away. All sorts of legislation, such as vilification laws, anti-discrimination laws, and so on, have all taken their toll on freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and freedom of religion.

Now things are set to get a whole lot worse. The government has just released some proposals, based on a 400-page report by former leftist judge Ray Finkelstein. It wants to seek draconian powers to clamp down on the media, including even such things as blog sites and Facebook. Bloggers such as Andrew Bolt and myself for example could be directly targeted and silenced.

A report in the Weekend Australian makes for frightening reading. It begins this way:

“Print and online news will come under direct federal government oversight for the first time under proposals issued yesterday to create a statutory regulator with the power to prosecute media companies in the courts.

“The historic change to media law would break with tradition by using government funds to replace an industry council that acts on complaints, in a move fiercely opposed by companies as a threat to the freedom of the press. The proposals, issued yesterday by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, also seek to widen the scope of federal oversight to cover print, online, radio and TV within a single regulator for the first time.

“Bloggers and other online authors would also be captured by a regime applying to any news site that gets more than 15,000 hits a year, a benchmark labelled ‘seriously dopey’ by one site operator. The head of the review, former Federal Court judge Ray Finkelstein, rejected industry warnings against setting up a new regulator under federal law with funding from government.

“The major newspaper companies were unanimous in opposing a statutory regulator under federal law, with Kerry Stokes’s Seven West Media declaring it was inconsistent with the notion of a free press. Media companies also warned that government funding for the new regulator would undercut the workings of a healthy democracy, with APN News & Media bluntly opposing any increase in regulation.”

Not surprisingly the Greens are fully in favour of such restrictive and freedom-inhibiting measures: “Greens leader Bob Brown urged the government to establish its new media watchdog so it could enforce standards across print, online, radio and television platforms by the end of the year.”

Bill Muehlenberg gives us his take on the Labor Leadership battle:

In what must be one of the most ugly, most repulsive, most unedifying, and most deplorable public punch-ups in Australian history, we all have to endure the sad saga of two Labor leaders unleashing their fury and venom on each other. What a horrific sight, so much so that even the international press is amazed at this ugly spectacle.

What a wretched debacle the Federal Labor Party has degenerated into. It has simply lost the plot big time. All we are left with here are two colossal egos and power-hungry maniacs seeking to do whatever it takes to gain total control – even it its means destroying the Labor Party (which is fine by me), but more importantly, even if it means destroying the nation.

Both leaders seem hell-bent on laying waste the country and its citizenry, in this vicious, bitter and twisted battle for supremacy. The truth is, most Australians are sick to death of these political games, and most would be sick to death about these two inept, corrupt and contemptible public personas.

This battle is not unlike the Alien vs Predator films. Both creatures were ugly killers and the enemies of humanity. Most film-goers were quite happy to see them destroy each other, instead of destroying more human beings. A pox on both their houses is the common viewpoint on all this.

So too here. Let both these miscreants be consigned to the flames. We want our country back. We want an election, and we want it now. We are fed up with all the lies, the deception, the back-stabbing, the political intrigue, the power trips and the out-of-control egos.

Bill Muehlenberg 

Hot on the heels of my public debate with a leading Muslim last week, plenty more examples of what I warned about in my talk are coming to light. Indeed, there are far too many to choose from, so let me just highlight three examples of how the religion of peace is not quite living up to its own PR.

The first two examples come out of the UK. The first has to do with the very worrying trend of a rise in ‘honour’ crimes. As the Guardian reported this week, women are experiencing a big rise in attacks associated with honour killings and retaliation.

The article begins this way:

“The number of women and girls in the UK suffering violence and intimidation at the hands of their families or communities is increasing rapidly, according to figures revealing the nationwide scale of ‘honour’ abuse for the first time.

“Statistics obtained under the Freedom of Information Act about such violence – which can include threats, abduction, acid attacks, beatings, forced marriage, mutilation and murder – show that in the 12 police force areas for which comparable data was available, reports went up by 47% in just a year.

“The figures, shared with the Guardian by the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation (Ikwro), also reveal that a small number of forces – including four in Scotland – are still not collecting data on how often such violence occurs.

“The 39 police forces that gave Ikwro figures recorded 2,823 incidents in 2010. Ikwro estimates that another 500 crimes in which police were involved were committed in the 13 force areas that did not provide data. But this is likely to be only the tip of the iceberg, campaigners say, as so many incidents go unreported because of victims’ fears of recriminations.”

The article also contains the story of one such poor woman:

The War On Media Freedom

Bill Muehlenberg comments on proposed changes to restrict freedom of speech in Australia:

The Australian Labor/Green government has proven to be no friend of freedom. Along with the various Labor state governments, we have seen many freedoms being whittling away. All sorts of legislation, such as vilification laws, anti-discrimination laws, and so on, have all taken their toll on freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and freedom of religion.

Now things are set to get a whole lot worse. The government has just released some proposals, based on a 400-page report by former leftist judge Ray Finkelstein. It wants to seek draconian powers to clamp down on the media, including even such things as blog sites and Facebook. Bloggers such as Andrew Bolt and myself for example could be directly targeted and silenced.

A report in the Weekend Australian makes for frightening reading. It begins this way:

“Print and online news will come under direct federal government oversight for the first time under proposals issued yesterday to create a statutory regulator with the power to prosecute media companies in the courts.

“The historic change to media law would break with tradition by using government funds to replace an industry council that acts on complaints, in a move fiercely opposed by companies as a threat to the freedom of the press. The proposals, issued yesterday by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, also seek to widen the scope of federal oversight to cover print, online, radio and TV within a single regulator for the first time.

“Bloggers and other online authors would also be captured by a regime applying to any news site that gets more than 15,000 hits a year, a benchmark labelled ‘seriously dopey’ by one site operator. The head of the review, former Federal Court judge Ray Finkelstein, rejected industry warnings against setting up a new regulator under federal law with funding from government.

“The major newspaper companies were unanimous in opposing a statutory regulator under federal law, with Kerry Stokes’s Seven West Media declaring it was inconsistent with the notion of a free press. Media companies also warned that government funding for the new regulator would undercut the workings of a healthy democracy, with APN News & Media bluntly opposing any increase in regulation.”

Not surprisingly the Greens are fully in favour of such restrictive and freedom-inhibiting measures: “Greens leader Bob Brown urged the government to establish its new media watchdog so it could enforce standards across print, online, radio and television platforms by the end of the year.”

It’s Alien vs Predator

Bill Muehlenberg gives us his take on the Labor Leadership battle:

In what must be one of the most ugly, most repulsive, most unedifying, and most deplorable public punch-ups in Australian history, we all have to endure the sad saga of two Labor leaders unleashing their fury and venom on each other. What a horrific sight, so much so that even the international press is amazed at this ugly spectacle.

What a wretched debacle the Federal Labor Party has degenerated into. It has simply lost the plot big time. All we are left with here are two colossal egos and power-hungry maniacs seeking to do whatever it takes to gain total control – even it its means destroying the Labor Party (which is fine by me), but more importantly, even if it means destroying the nation.

Both leaders seem hell-bent on laying waste the country and its citizenry, in this vicious, bitter and twisted battle for supremacy. The truth is, most Australians are sick to death of these political games, and most would be sick to death about these two inept, corrupt and contemptible public personas.

This battle is not unlike the Alien vs Predator films. Both creatures were ugly killers and the enemies of humanity. Most film-goers were quite happy to see them destroy each other, instead of destroying more human beings. A pox on both their houses is the common viewpoint on all this.

So too here. Let both these miscreants be consigned to the flames. We want our country back. We want an election, and we want it now. We are fed up with all the lies, the deception, the back-stabbing, the political intrigue, the power trips and the out-of-control egos.

Creeping Sharia, Yet Again

Bill Muehlenberg 

Hot on the heels of my public debate with a leading Muslim last week, plenty more examples of what I warned about in my talk are coming to light. Indeed, there are far too many to choose from, so let me just highlight three examples of how the religion of peace is not quite living up to its own PR.

The first two examples come out of the UK. The first has to do with the very worrying trend of a rise in ‘honour’ crimes. As the Guardian reported this week, women are experiencing a big rise in attacks associated with honour killings and retaliation.

The article begins this way:

“The number of women and girls in the UK suffering violence and intimidation at the hands of their families or communities is increasing rapidly, according to figures revealing the nationwide scale of ‘honour’ abuse for the first time.

“Statistics obtained under the Freedom of Information Act about such violence – which can include threats, abduction, acid attacks, beatings, forced marriage, mutilation and murder – show that in the 12 police force areas for which comparable data was available, reports went up by 47% in just a year.

“The figures, shared with the Guardian by the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation (Ikwro), also reveal that a small number of forces – including four in Scotland – are still not collecting data on how often such violence occurs.

“The 39 police forces that gave Ikwro figures recorded 2,823 incidents in 2010. Ikwro estimates that another 500 crimes in which police were involved were committed in the 13 force areas that did not provide data. But this is likely to be only the tip of the iceberg, campaigners say, as so many incidents go unreported because of victims’ fears of recriminations.”

The article also contains the story of one such poor woman: