Menzies House

The chilling creed of the radical libertarians

John Ballantyne discusses three radical libertarians who pushed the idea of freedom to ridiculous extremes.

Who today remembers the novelist and philosopher of radical individualism, Ayn Rand? Quite a few people, apparently. Although she has been dead for almost four decades, her books continue to sell in large numbers, and her ideas are still highly influential in corporate board-rooms and free-market think-tanks.

Her creed of radical libertarianism has a certain superficial attractiveness, with its call for smaller government, lower taxation and greater personal freedom. Many conservatives, particularly in the United States, and increasingly in Australia, look to radical libertarians as their natural allies.

Yet this creed, as we shall see, has a dark side, which is hostile to many Judaeo-Christian values and civilised norms.

Julia Gillard downplays her radical past

Gillard's radical political history may come back to haunt us all, writes John Ballantyne.

Don't say we haven't been warned.

Our new Prime Minister is not the mainstream, centrist leader that the media want us to think she is. Julia Gillard comes with a lot of ideological baggage from her radical-left past.

For several years she has played down her past political affiliations, attempted to mainstream herself and altogether presented an agreeable image to the public.

So appealing is she that she has won plaudits from across the political spectrum, even from conservatives such as Christopher Pearson and Janet Albrechtsen.

Labor and the Communist Party by John Ballantyne

John Ballantyne writes on the revelation that a former Hawke Government minister was allegedly a card-carrying communist and examines the proven communist links of Labor's former deputy leader Dr H.V. Evatt and former deputy PM Dr Jim Cairns.

Newly published evidence that a number of senior left-wing Labor identities were also secret members of the Communist Party has come like a "bombshell revelation", according to former New South Wales premier Bob Carr.

Mr Carr was referring to a recent study published by left-wing journalist and broadcaster Mark Aarons, whose father, uncle and grandfather held prominent positions in the Communist Party of Australia (CPA). Mr Aarons' book, entitled The Family File (published by Black, Inc.), is the result of his investigation of the many volumes of files kept on members of his family over many decades by the Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation (ASIO).

In addition to chronicling his family's history of radical activism, Mr Aarons has brought to light evidence that several senior left-wing Labor figures had clandestine ties with the CPA during the Cold War.