How Did the Political Left Get it so Wrong?

At some point in the past few decades, the word ‘conservative’ became a pejorative slur. That’s because the few conservatives prepared to identify as such in public refused to bow down to the new orthodoxy of the left.

Now it seems that almost every one of the left’s sacred cows is being slaughtered on the altar of common sense.

Consider some of the hardest fought battles over the past 30 years: climate change, big government, welfare dependency and multiculturalism. Then reflect on the left’s arrogance in dismissing any challenge or warning about the possible negative implications of their world view.

Every passing day provides further evidence of the folly of the left policy agenda and the falsehoods it is built upon.

In respect to climate change, the planet stubbornly refuses to warm, the polar bears are inconveniently (for the eco-zealots) still with us and the green jobs have failed to materialise. The government-funded computer models predicting apocalypse are repeatedly wrong. It is clear they have often been based on doctored data and ‘curve fitted’ to suit the preferred political outcome. Despite this, we are still expected to respect the ‘authority’ of these new style snake oil salesmen purporting to be experts.

Perhaps the worst offenders are the political leaders who use enviro-cred as an excuse to get their hands on more taxpayers’ money. We have been told repeatedly that Spain and California are great examples of economies creating green jobs and stunning models of what the new world should be. Both are now effectively broke, with Spain recording 23 per cent unemployment and businesses fleeing California in record numbers.

The leftists will say it isn’t the green policies that caused this economic calamity but that conveniently ignores the hundreds of billions of dollars in government subsidies wasted on uneconomic utopian green dreams.

Then reality hit (or should I say that green socialism was mugged in the same way that all socialism is); sooner or later you run out of someone else’s money to spend.

Throughout history it has been demonstrated that any government that becomes too big eventually is forced to accrue a level of debt that cannot be sustained. This is usually a result of their attempts to buy the support of the public by making them increasingly reliant on the largesse of the state. Handouts, subsidies and ever-increasing social welfare programs are continually introduced to placate almost any hardship or redress some perceived ‘social injustice’.

Naturally, this is part of the leftist program to place the state as the primary benevolent institution on which dependence would grow, replacing individual self-determination with ‘bureaucrat knows best’.

Thus the cycle of welfare dependency grows in sync with the growth of government, neither of which are sustainable. As more is given by government, they are also forced to take more from those still striving to make an independent living.

When the taxpayer-filled ATM is empty, the government borrows, thereby mortgaging the future earnings of successive generations until it can no longer stand.

This is exactly what is eventuating in places like Greece. The entitlement mentality of lifetime pensions, state jobs and inefficient state-owned industries has left the entire country in an invidious position. Default on debts means austerity for many years to come. Budget cuts will generate a similar downturn and wholesale societal reform could lead to a revolution. The end result could be the collapse of the Euro and the European Union in their current forms.

Of course, the conservatives warned about the folly of centralising European bureaucracy and the monetary union of disparate economies when they were first proposed. These voices of common sense were condemned as flat-Earthers and isolationists by the left theoreticians.

Interestingly, I suspect none of these wreckers will apologise for being so wrong, instead justifying their blind stupidity on a failure to create even greater centralisation of power.

Trust me; that will be their next proposal.

So too are the intellectual elite blind to the failure of their policy of multiculturalism. Any critical examination of Europe confirms this judgment but somehow, here in Australia the result will be different.

How do I know that? Well, the left and the apologists keep telling us how wonderful we have it here in Australia with everyone getting along splendidly. This conveniently ignores the race riots, demands for legal plurality and loss of freedom of speech lest anyone actually be offended by some hard truths.

Sorry, it’s not that no-one can be offended anymore because offence only goes one way. Feel free to say whatever you like about a white Christian man – apparently they have no feelings. A pro-life woman is also fair game for public abuse but anyone supporting the killing of unborn children or noticeably ‘of the left’ is off limits in this new public blood sport.

We should be appalled that recent racial unrest was actually fuelled by government and union staffers linked to the most powerful political office in the land.

These are the same types so captured by political correctness that they are unable or unwilling to see the difference between the policy approach of decades past with the cultural and moral relativism that is practised today. The level of naïveté, fear or downright stupidity attached to broaching the most important issue confronting our future – social cohesiveness – is simply staggering.

The vitriolic abuse and lies directed at those who are prepared to stand up for the national interest and make the case that things are different is nothing short of a disgrace.

None is so offensive as the epithet of racism. It now seems everyone who has an opinion contrary to the left orthodoxy or even believes in upholding the rule of law can be condemned as a racist in an attempt to silence them.

Are you worried about sharia law and hate speech in mosques? Then you are a racist (yes, I ask ‘what race’ too!). What about if you are a policeman asking to see the niqab-clad face of an offending driver? Be prepared to be called a racist.

Do you have an opinion on the tent embassy that doesn’t involve praise? You must be a racist. How about flying our national flag? You got it, you’re a racist too.

Even police fining a famous tennis player for road rule transgressions can be subject to accusations that he was a target because they didn’t consider him Australian. I think that’s code for ‘racism’.

In these areas, and many more, the conservative voice of common sense and warning has proved prophetic. However, the price of being right is that those who are wrong intensify their personal attacks because their policy arguments cannot be credibly sustained.

Unfortunately, these voices are given credibility by too much of the mainstream media.

That is the position we now find ourselves in. Speaking up for the truth, based on the experience of previous generations, is to become a target of the vituperative left.

Thus the conservative is marginalised, not so much for the beliefs that they share, but for the crime of publicly exposing the hollow and discredited agenda of our new style socialists – and daring to be right.

I believe that will change as more people become aware that they have been misled, deceived and downright lied to by the political left. The only question will be how to redress the damage that has already been done and hope that it won’t be too late.