Before one can solve a problem one has to know the true facts of the matter.  It is striking how such torrents of people write ‘authoritatively’ about Islam when they have not bothered to study the facts about it – such as what, in unvarnished form, the Koran and Hadiths actually say rather than what they are said to say.

Is Holocaust Denial really a crime?  If it is, then how much greater a crime is the consistent pretending-away of thirteen centuries of unprovoked, bloody Islamic Jihad?  A Jihad which is still continuing around the world, particularly in Indonesia and Sudan but extending to Holland, the US and of course, Madrid.

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The Melbourne Age newspaper is on the warpath. It is a war against traditional, masculine fatherhood.

In the past four days the Age has run three major articles calling for men to lay down their briefcases so that they might change more nappies.

Why this special plea to men to do less paid work? As I outlined in some detail in my article on The Old Father, liberals don’t like the idea of traditional gender roles. Such roles are inherited, rather than being chosen by our own will and reason, and are therefore thought of by liberals as being an impediment to individual freedom.

So liberals think it’s important that we throw off traditional fatherhood and motherhood roles. Instead there is to be one gender-neutral “parent” role, based on hands-on motherhood tasks.

That’s why Sushi Das, in her Age article, asserts that,

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This post is a rather roughly thrown together response to John’s interesting trawl through David Gelernter’s piece in The Weekly Standard, The Inventor of Modern Conservatism.

There is no disputing that Gelernter is correct about Benjamin Disraeli’s status as an inventor, as are all the many historians and students of politics who have wiseacred to the same end.  The issue is not one of historical accuracy nor even one, solely, of etymological accuracy.  I am not claiming that Disraeli’s invention lies in the ascription of the word “Conservatism” to his new politic of the right in mid-Victorian England.  I am claiming that he invented the historical precedents by which he could carry-over the terms and conventions of Conservatism into his own new Establishment.  In so doing, he indeed became the first neoconservative.  But in substance it was an act of anti-Conservatism and an act, as Martin Hutchinson emphasises in his truly exceptional and recently published opus Great Conservatives, of legerdemain.

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Is there a way to make sense of the political spectrum? I think there is. The terms “left” and “right” do make sense as distinctions within mainstream liberalism.

It works this way. All liberals start off with a belief that the individual should be self-created by their own will and reason. This means that liberals have to clear away unchosen impediments to individual will, such as race, gender and class.

But this leaves a fundamental problem. How can you possibly regulate a society made up of millions of individual wills, each pursuing their own selfish desires? This is the question asked by Australian liberal Clive Hamilton, in his essay The Disappointment of Liberalism. He writes that,

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Here’s to Madame Catherine Gachet, not only a beautiful woman but a maker of the intensely sweet and flowery, white wine of Barsac, in the Gironde … and a skilled marketeer.  For, Madame Gachet has identified her product’s unique selling point and it isn’t the suppleness and finish of a fruit drink.  Nope, it’s the eternal soul of French life: chic with a subtle hint of sexuality.

Unfortunately, it’s just not plain and self-abnegating enough for the French government.  Under the latter’s strict advertising codes for purveyors of France’s greatest technical triumph no joie de vivre may be associated with the pleasures of the vine - no beautiful people, no romance, no excitement, until recently not even a simple description of the product’s taste.  Health and Safety are everywhere, it seems, and set upon the great task of saving the hapless Frenchman from a bibulous end.

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... Spain’s annual influx of immigrants vastly exceeds expectations. The government reckons between 800,000 and 1,000,000 ‘indocumentados’ - most of them Latin Americans and Moroccans - arrived in Spain last year…

One million illegals.  In one year.  To an ancient European state with a population of forty million.  And this is merely the upper end of a government estimate - government estimates on immigration not being known for over-statement.

The story, circularised by the Independent’s E-Mail Newsletter, is truly alarming for all Europeans.  The Spanish government is granting legal status to these people once they have been in the country for three years.  After that they can go anywhere in the EU.

But the most staggering aspect of the influx is not its size but the feeble and supine surrender of Spain’s politicians, both Conservative and Socialist.  How “unfortunate” that their liberal laws force them to set the migrants free.  How sad and, frankly, inevitable that by their rules they must accept undocumented migrants’ claims to come from countries which, of course, never have a repatriation agreement with Spain.  How regrettable that in all of this not a moment’s consideration can be spared for the interests and desires of their own people.

This situation is not supportable.  Something is going to break.

It’s not uncommon to find thinkers within the Australian Liberal Party who want to create a fusion between liberalism and conservatism.

The former Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, is one such figure within the Liberal Party who has argued for such a fusion. In his book Common Ground he claims first that,

“As its name implies, ours is a liberal government holding liberal principles.”

He then sets out a typically right-liberal view of liberal principles, in which the market is held to be a better regulator of society than the state. He rejects the idea that “because something is considered desirable it should be provided by the state”, preferring that it be provided “by voluntary action on the part of individuals joining freely together, and by the mechanism of the market”.

So, if Mr Fraser believes in right-liberal “principles and values”, what role is left for conservatism? His answer is significant. He explains that,

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A short time ago in this forum I was inspired by some recent reading to make a longish comment on the “Race Does Not Exist” (RDNE) debate. My own views on this are that this issue is too important to be left to experts who should be on tap, not on top. Also the issue is not wholly a scientific debate and the scientific view should be welcome but is not the deciding factor. The reading that has got me going is the Jay Klein and Naoyuki Takahata book mentioned below and “The Restitution of Man: C S Lewis and the Case against Scientism by Michael Aeschliman.

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