Freedom and Individualism

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-01-01/burdon-dont-leave-it-to-politicians-to-change-the-world/5180862

"The Abbott Government has done a remarkable job resurrecting a rhetoric of "freedom" and the "individual" which Australian politics has not seen since the Howard years. More broadly, it is reminiscent of Thatcher and her famous quip that "there is no such thing as society", only a collection of individuals.

According to this ideology, individual freedom is more important than the common good of society. Moreover, the individual is seen as separate from and superior to the ecological community. Two recent actions from the Commonwealth Attorney General George Brandis illustrate this perspective."

No one is free or has freedom without funds, income. This focus of the LNP on these concepts is really just a reinforcement of all that I have been saying about their ideology. This is really just old-fashioned laissez-faire, free-market, neoliberal ideology and you can substitute any of these into much of the rhetoric issuing from any of their mouths. Only those who have disposable income above and beyond that required to sustain life under present socioeconomic circumstances can have any modicum of       'individual freedom'. The wage slaves generated by the semi-free market can have no freedom nor the mortgage slaves generated by the housing bubble. These segments of society are generated and exacerbated by neoliberal ideology practiced and promoted by the LNP. They have successfully sold it to just enough of the electorate to gain office by manipulation of the media and the creation of myths through deliberate misinformation and repetition.         

Thatcherism and Reaganomics have been tried and gave us a global financial crisis and a series of crises, noted by the experts in the centre, including the ongoing consumption crisis, the emissions crisis, and the wealth gap crisis. Business as usual is not an option, yet that is what we are getting. Conservative parties around the world stand for the preservation of the status-quo. The status-quo will generate at least a six degree world by 2100, capable of supporting perhaps a human population of one billion people. It is a death sentence for at least 6 billion people in other words.

In the meantime the largest coal mine in the world has been approved for Queensland, arguably corruptly considering it is owned and operated by a federal MHR, and the Russians are intent on  finding and taking oil from the Arctic Ocean. A six degree or higher world will not be averted unless most of the fossil fuels remaining in the ground are left there. These changes need to happen NOW. They can not possibly happen under conservative governments. The USA has gone down the progressive road. France turned left with the election of a socialist president. When it came our turn to elect a government to lead us through these challenges, we stuck our heads back in the sand and retreated into the false comfort of this sort of conservative fairy world. I am forced to use the term 'we' for the electorate. I did not vote for these bozos and neither did many.

The "limits to growth" are being reached. It appears that the intelligentsia and the public service in this country will be able to constrain the willful damage this government is intent on inflicting on us and we await a leader of sufficient stature from the ranks of the progressive sections of our political elite.