John Smith wrote on Jul 4^th, 2021 at 5:27pm:


What are your imperfections (being educated or widely read and being thoughtful obviously aren't fault of yours)?

If you could identify a single idea of Petersen's that you disagree with and could explain why you disagree with it - well, then you wouldn't be you. But until then you are just stuck being the know-nothing snarler.

Bertie wrote on Jul 5^th, 2021 at 1:31pm:


x2 Agatha ... but let's not mention ID names in the sense that it could provoke discord

Omitting any unwitting provocation, as I believe it was in your case, you have described the West exactly as I feel about it, but then again, that's how the West is anyway ... welcoming, but as long as it's not recognized as an enemy, or an easy target ... this is where things have gone wrong of late

Far too many of us are taking it for granted, but it's so ingrained in us, we go about our business without properly realizing we still live in a foundational and fundamental Western cultural society. What would we do without it?, that is the question. It's not only second nature to us, it goes to our very core of being, it would be very difficult to erase it from our souls

Here's some lite entertainment from a man in the street .. err railway station, that demonstrates in a small way what you have been saying, and what we all subconsciously or otherwise believe ....

Bertie wrote on Jul 4^th, 2021 at 5:23pm:


There's your mistake.  Individuals are self-interested first, by nature; the task of government is to adjudicate between those self-interests, to avoid anarchy.

And as for development, China has built the world's largest HS rail network, while rich countries like Oz and the US haven't built one kilometre of track...and Biden still can't get his infrastructure proposals through Congress...so much for "oppressing" individuals...

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Only sweeter for comfortable conservatives like yourself, who are not caught up in the systemic poverty of our neoliberal economic systems with eg, its absurd NAIRU dogma.

Nor the disastrous effects of the cultural destruction of black cultures ....which had to happen, but which we now must solve, as opposed to blaming the victims of that cultural destruction for their present poverty. 

If you want to learn about a way forward re this last point, see the youtube video of the discussion between Bill Mitchell and Noel Pearson.








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Bertie wrote on Jul 6^th, 2021 at 5:26pm:


On the contrary, many nations are now looking to understand how China has achieved the fastest rate of poverty reduction in history. [Hint: it's a combination of free-market and state-planning principles]. resulting in high rates of satisfaction with government in China, cf increasing polarization in Western democracies (although in Oz the choice is between tweedle-dum and treedlr-dee; both parties are useless, unable to close the disgraceful "aboriginal gap' nor entrenched poverty among other groups.

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Enemies? you mean people with ideas which could actually improve peoples' lives...but comfortable conservatives like yourself don't want to learn.

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Depends on the quality of the "free-speech". Iran is a deluded theocracy, China is not.

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Science and art are as lively in China as in the West.

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while you prefer a system in which entrenched poverty is accepted as normal

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Well ok; and China is quite happy to leave you with your fake "freedom" delusions, China is not forcing its system onto anyone else outside of Chinese sovereignty, because China knows it will achieve - by 2049 -  a prosperous socialist society you will be begging to emulate....

Bias_2012 wrote on Jul 9^th, 2021 at 9:09pm:


By "had to happen", I mean the natural tendency in history of technologically superior cultures to subsume those who cannot resist militarily, nothing to do with MY self-interest.

NorthOfNorth wrote on Jul 10^th, 2021 at 1:25pm:


?? i was referring to native cultures being subsumed by technologically superior (mostly European) cultures.  (Again your blind democracy ideology results in your failure to understand the point being made .....or you are just wasting time spinning more delusional  narratives).
FYI, half the world is studying the success of the CCP, while the other half is shocked by the increasing hyper-partisanship in the world's most powerful democracy.

thegreatdivide wrote on Jul 10^th, 2021 at 1:17pm:


Well now we have China subsuming cultures who can't resist militarily. You take an interest in China don't you? Where did they get their high technology from? All the theories and formulae for their space craft, for example, originated in Germany. A successful guidance system for rockets was developed by Von Braun and his scientists (leaving aside Nazism). China and every other rocket launching nation has copied that technology

The Japanese learned all about Western technology and used it in their war effort

Russia was able to short-cut their jet engine development when Roll Royce foolishly sold them some of their operational engines. The Russians were handed the British jet engine technology on a plate, and replicated it

There may not have been any of that technology benefiting Eastern cultures had it not been for the freedoms and liberties granted by modern Western nations to individual inventors and scientists

It’s a point made by Ed West at Unherd where he argues that the period from the 1960s until recently, where free thinking and open debate prevailed, was actually an aberration. We are now returning to a society in which censorious bullies are in charge.

West gives the example of the Black Lives Matter movement. ‘In 2020, almost all the major institutions in the US, aside from the actual President, were loudly vocal along with corporations, charities and NGOs in their support for the BLM protests. Parts of the media were sympathetic to the point of actively playing down some of the violence, the phrase “mostly peaceful protests” becoming an example of American journalism’s Pravda-like bias.’

Of course, there are very many topics that can be added to the list of obligatory opinions, with penalties for any deviations from the Left’s agreed positions. Climate change is real; climate science is settled; the world must achieve net zero emissions by 2050, if not earlier; the wealthy must pay more tax; tax competition is a race to the bottom; minimum wages should be much higher; immigration should be unrestricted; developed economies should accept many more refugees; gender is a social construct and the list goes on.

Ed West makes the point that the Left once had to rely on moral relativism to make its arguments. ‘Relativism is a position you employ when you’re weak, to be abandoned when you win. On a wide range of issues, including race and gender, the Right has been more relativist for some time. Before the 1968 revolution those outside of power (the Left) argued for moral relativism, those in power (the Right) argued for moral absolutism. Now it is the opposite.’




Many Western politicians want to  give away the West. They must be stopped.