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7 November 2003
Australia's first political prisoners are released as a first step to
redress one of the greatest injustices in Australian political history
The dominant
politically correct class in Australia has not known whether to pour public
scorn on the ignorance of those who say Pauline Hanson and David Ettridge
have been political prisoners or to beam quietly with pleasure that their
ignorance has been laid bare before the eyes the more enlightened members of
society – meaning themselves, of course. But few political events have shown
up more starkly the difference in the manner of political and moral thinking
between the PC class and the rest of us.
The rest of us think it's an appalling
miscarriage of justice that two people could be sentenced to three years
jail for transgressing an arbitrary technical definition of what constitutes
a political party for the purposes of an election. That it is thoroughly
arbitrary (if the thick heads of the PC class can't work it out for
themselves) is evident, for example, in the different requirements for a
Queensland election and a federal election.
The PC mind, as it tries to get over the
shocking proposition that there exists a legitimate manner of moral thinking
that does not correspond with theirs, says simply that Pauline Hanson and
David Ettridge transgressed the written law of Queensland and had to pay the
consequences. Forget about the circumstances. This justification has been
spouted by all manner of PC people on television, on the radio and in the
newspapers. Once again, it was claimed that Pauline Hanson got what she
deserved. Here are two letters from The Australian to illustrate the
attitude:
The
jailing of Hanson may rekindle interest in Australia in her particular brand
of stupidity but here in South-East Asia the news is greeted with an
increased sense of Australian justice and fairness. T.R (The Australian,
25 August 2003)
Those
who are expressing sympathy for Pauline Hanson should recognize that she has
committed a crime against Australian society. Our political system is
democratically efficient, partly because laws protect the integrity of its
legislatures. They require a candidate to meet reasonable
requirements…Hanson attempted to pervert one of the protections of our
parliamentary democracy. The judge should have given her a longer sentence.
G.D. (The Australian, 28 August 2003)
These two PC minds ignore the fact that
Pauline Hanson's One Nation party won 11 seats in the 1998 Queensland
election and in the federal election of the same year secured one million
votes. What party could have a more legitimate basis for existence? But
these people would evidently not see it in a million years. They are sad
representatives of the workings of the politically correct mind with its
ignorance, bigotry and vindictiveness.
Now a third grader should see the fallacy in
their basic argument. It is assuming what's at issue: that the Queensland
law is a good law, and that the instruments for protecting our democratic
order are functioning efficiently and with integrity. In other words, it's a
pathetic example of question-begging. Furthermore, there is a very good
political explanation why the judge and her like-minded supporters in the
judiciary, legislature, academia and media did not blanch at the verdict and
the sentence. You see, in their minds their will is the law. There is a
distinct philosophical background to this. Let me try to explain in short
space.
The ordinary person understands that the law
is there to achieve justice. If it does not achieve justice then it must be
changed – or at the very least it must be reviewed. For centuries theorists
in jurisprudence, understanding that law and morality were two different
things, thought that human law (the written law of man) had to correspond
with the eternal laws of God. In other words, the written law should
correspond with the objective moral principles discoverable by the correct
use of the individual’s reason.
For the ordinary person this is just a formal
way of saying that for a law to be good it must accord with common sense
justice. For the ordinary person the law that sent Pauline Hanson to jail
for three years is an appallingly bad and thus unjust law.
Formerly, when the PC mind did not prevail to
the extent it now does, such a law would never have made it to the books and
if it had, those responsible would never have brought Pauline Hanson to
court under it and, if against the morality of the time they had, the judge
(with the duty to pronounce just verdicts) would have used her discretion
and dismissed the case. But the Queensland DDP did bring the charges, and
the judge Patsy Wolfe did pronounce her sentence – because the people of the
DDP and the judge belong to a class that have rejected the ordinary person's
idea of justice.
There is a long epistemological and
metaphysical story involved here but basically these people don't believe
that objective moral principles exist with which the written law must
correspond. Moral principles are achieved through consensus within society.
In other words, law and morality are the same. The principles of law and
morality issue from the will of the people – the 'people' being in reality
the class that rules. The written law tells us what moral principles the
ruling class has decided on.
For the DDP and Patsy Wolfe, Pauline Hanson
transgressed a law that had issued from the will of the ruling class and in
the particular instance there was nothing more to be said. All their
supporters, as I have pointed out, thought the same. But Pauline Hanson's
guilt was far far worse than this single transgression (as the first
representative letter
writer implies). For years now, she has been transgressing the will of the
ruling elite as expressed in their laws and promulgated dogma and she needed
to be stopped.
Pauline Hanson's imprisonment is
straightforwardly political. It was in accordance with the views of the
politically correct ruling class whose membership flows over all boundaries
of society’s instruments and departments of government. Peter Beattie’s
fulsome declarations about his confidence in the separation of powers is
just so much disingenuous waffle.
If Pauline Hanson is considering entering
politics again, she had still better watch out – as do the rest of us who
think moral principles are prior to the will of any individual or group who
have usurped power in society and consider the dictates of their will
unchallengeable.
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