The Iraqi War: the views and perspective of the Left and the Politically Correct class are all over the media as usual...

In the present crisis over Iraq and Saddam Hussein, it does not matter which instrument or avenue of the media the Australian citizen tunes into, the message of the Left and the Politically Correct is almost exclusively what one hears. This is no surprise, of course. The Politically Correct class gained control of the media years ago. The reporting of the Howard Government's decisions on Iraq and the war that has just begun is merely a repeat of more than thirty years of entrenched bias. In saying this I am saying nothing any reflective person could dispute. This raises the question of what the right of free speech actually means in our allegedly democratic society.

It may surprise a lot of media hacks and footsloggers that the current understanding of 'rights' is the result of one particular analysis of the concept of human and civil rights. What prevails in the unreflective minds of most media people and those they influence with regard to rights, is the scheme of individual subjective rights based on a materialist metaphysics and proposed according to the rationalistic method. I am sorry to have to inform the PC-class that there are other ways of analysing the concept of rights. It is not my purpose in this comment to engage in a theoretical exposition of the difference between such a concept of rights and that drawn, for example, from a classical realist metaphysics. I want to raise briefly a point about rights that Edmund Burke raised more than two hundred years ago, and is just as compelling today as it was then.

The right of free speech, as understood rationalistically, is a right that is argued abstractly. Its defence pays no attention to concrete circumstances. You have a right in the abstract and that's the end of it. The behaviour of people must be adjusted (according to the defenders of rationalistic abstract rights) to the abstract principle. What is the result in the concrete (in actual circumstances) of such a concept in Australia? The result is that only one particular view predominates, that of the Left and the PC-class. There are in the concrete two major reasons for this.

Firstly, if you express a view that is contrary to the dogma and prevailing ideas of the PC-class you are bullied, ridiculed, marginalised and in the extreme ostracised. You are branded publicly as a morally corrupt person. In many cases, if your views are public enough, you are subjected to the violence of the 'Peace Activists'. In a word, you are made to shut up. Prime Minister John Howard is one of the clearest cases of sustained PC bullying, attempted marginalisation and 'Peace Activist' violence. In his case, though, because he has had the courage to stick to his principles through the years and reach the office of Prime Minister, he has not been made to shut up – at least not yet.

Secondly, it is in the nature of the Conservative to eschew violent, indulgent, disordered behaviour. A right of free speech, properly understood, must allow legitimate views to be broadcast fairly and politely in a spirit of good will - without threat of violence or intimidation. Above all, according to the Conservative, proper order in society must be maintained if any right at all is to be effective. Freedom, said Burke, inheres in good order. The elected or appointed authorities in our democratic society have the responsibility and duty to ensure proper order exists. This does not happen. Agitating political groups of the Left, hand-in-hand with an exploitative media, go their own way. They have free rein.

One of the most disgraceful, exploitative and hypocritical media actions of recent years was the decision by the irresponsible juvenile Editor of Murdoch's Australian, Michael Stutchbury, to paste over the front page of that Murdoch instrument a full-colour photo of three fourteen-year-old girls with 'make love not war' scrawled all over their bare midriffs. He knew what would attract the eyes of a leering readership. That raises a question for the half-attentive.

Where was that unrelenting, unforgiving, uncompromising fanatic, Hetty Johston, of Bravehearts who is so zealous in protecting the rights of children - the one that played such a critical role in the media assassination of the Governor-General, Dr Peter Hollingworth? Or was she protecting a 'right' as understood by the PC-class?

This is just the point: the conservative citizenship in modern Australian society EFFECTIVELY has no rights. It has only those choices of action that will not provoke the bullying, ridicule, marginalisation, branding or violence of the Politically Correct class. I wonder what would happen if all those long-suffering, voiceless Australian citizens (those that elected John Howard) truly woke up to the fact that they EFFECTIVELY have no rights.