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The campaign against global warming has been heating up, and the latest protests have focused on works of art. Like the burning of books, assaults on paintings seemed to express contempt for human culture at its noblest. But as more details became public, the reality seemed more complex.
Liberal democracies seem increasingly threadbare, insufficiently creating just outcomes for vulnerable people. We need a rejuvenation of stable and fair democracies in which integrity and trust are evident. To that end, I suggest we revisit the liberal egalitarianism of 20th century American philosopher John Rawls.
What would the world have been like today if the Reformation had not happened? Would it really have been a better Church and a better world? And how, indeed, can we evaluate these enormous historical events?
The one thing lacking in much of the debate about the travails of the Essendon Football Club and the brief tenure of its CEO was a proper respect. That lack of respect may merit reflection. Respect begins with persons, not with principles and opinions.
Two weeks ago, Bishop Hilton Deakin died. My memories of him are inextricably tied to the Mass he celebrated in 1999 at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne, certainly the most emotionally charged event that I have seen there, following the violence orchestrated by the Indonesian military following the Referendum on Independence in East Timor. During the struggle for Independence, many East Timorese had joined the Catholic Church.
Governments have, with little opposition, passed laws that privilege individual choice on issues related to abortion, contraception, gender equality and marriage. If we regard unrestrained individual choice as the fullest expression of human development, we shall necessarily relativise and erode social bonds.
In the last few weeks, we have been drowned, smothered or mired in words that have striven for solemnity. Such occasions as the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the various Grand Finals are held to transcend the everyday and so to demand elegiac or epic words. It is easy to laugh at the manifest failures to reach those heights, whether by Poets Laureate who should have known better, or by excitable journalists. There is, however, something endearingly human in the attempt.
Recently many people have expressed disquiet about the trend to authoritarian rule throughout the world. They have good reason for doing so. In the world we are entering, the freedom of citizens in the State depends on the will of Governments that will have no enforceable obstacle to withdrawing such freedoms on suspicion of future misconduct and not just for punishment of past, proven misconduct.
July marked the tenth anniversary since offshore refugee processing was introduced in Australia, a step that marked a change in Australian policy from an uneasy balance between respect for people in need and the pressure to deter further arrivals. The principle of deterrence is deeply corrupting because it is based on the conviction that it is acceptable to punish one group of people in order to deter others.
Joel Birnie’s short and admirable book provokes reflection both on what should have mattered in the relationships between colonial invaders and Indigenous peoples in the nineteenth century and on what matters in the relationships that constitute Australia today.
To say that democracy is under threat is now a truism. And to sustain democracy is a complex task. People need to believe in it and experience its benefits. This demands a deep grounding, founded on our shared human dignity and on our shared responsibility to shape our own lives within the community on which we depend.
The policy of the Labor Government can be described as steady as she goes. This does not mean that it will simply follow the policies of the previous government. Its reading is that the ship of state has been becalmed, responding haphazardly to the political winds with no sense of direction or destination. It had become the ship of fools. The new Government then has committed itself to show that there are captain on board and a competent, disciplined crew that can work together.
109-120 out of 200 results.