One of the great joys about not trying to appease the baying woke mob is that over time, you get to be right more often than not.
The trendies who follow any of the latest hash tack activism or side with whatever woke proposal is being put forward only want the short term sugar hit of being popular. The principle behind it doesn’t matter to them.
We’ve seen that with a whole bunch of actions from BLM, sexualising children, Covid Keiths and Karens, the Brittany Higgins saga and dozens more.
There’s usually more to the story than first proffered and it’s only readily identifiable if you add first principles to your assessment of it.
BLM for example was used to justify and excuse looting and riots. That’s never acceptable on first principles.
Bruce Lehrmann is entitled to the presumption of innocence but was condemned by a baying mob who abandoned first principles.
Teaching kids that cutting off their genitals is ok is a grotesque abandonment of the principle of parental responsibility and the do no harm mantra of medicine.
I could go on.
But this week saw another reminder of the hypocrisy of pick and choose principles when the NSW ICAC found Gladys Berejiklian corrupt and derelict in her public duties as Premier.
That was no surprise to anyone who critically examined the evidence available a couple of years back.
At the time, there were few who publicly said she needed to resign. I can recall Mark Latham, Sky News Andrew Clennell and me being three.
Most everyone else made all sorts of lame excuses mostly revolving around the ‘Gladys was in love’ and ‘she’s such a nice person’ themes.
They were both patronising and pathetic.
Those pushing that barrow were undermining the principle that women are equal to me. They have autonomy and can choose their own path.
That a Premier didn’t have the moral fibre to do the right thing shouldn’t be excused on the basis of his or her emotional state.
As I wrote on my website this week – it’s like dismissing a woman’s performance with the antiquated and insulting ‘she’s having an attack of the vapours’.
Incredibly, some are still at it – even after the damning ICAC findings.
It may be that’s because they know Gladys and think she's a nice person.
She probably is. She’s also probably not a bad person but that doesn’t mean she is incapable of doing bad things.
Evidently she’s very capable of doing corrupt things and they are all deliberate choices. They weren’t accidents of over sites.
Peter Dutton was quoted as saying:
“She chose a bum, basically, and he was a bad guy. I think that she has paid a big price for that.
Her integrity is not in question. She’s not a corrupt person, that’s not the person that I know.”
He’s wrong. Her integrity has been questioned and has been left wanting. She’s been found to be corrupt.
No amount of wishful thinking or friendship can take away the damning testimony she herself gave or the evidence the ICAC gathered.
It’s an unpleasant truth that even nice people can do dodgy things.
The motivation for doing them can be a mitigation but it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be have their conduct excused.
Nowhere is that principle more important than in politics.
Berejiklian won’t be the last to meet this fate. I suspect there’ll be a few to come in the Federal space in the years ahead.
