Malcolm Lambert’s Crusade and Jihad traces 1600 years of the history of Islam and Christianity, and the clashing ideologies of jihad and the Crusader movement. In particular, Lambert examines why the latter faded away, while the former remains a dynamic and often violent force in the world. Crusade and Jihad: Origins, history and aftermath Malcolm Lambert …
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In this second post critically examining arguments against a same-sex marriage plebiscite, A Devil's Curmudgeon looks at the constitutional and parliamentary arguments.
The campaign against the promised same-sex marriage plebiscite is anti-democratic and infantilises its opponents. It's also sadly symptomatic of what gay-rights activist Andrew Sullivan calls "the obvious and ugly intolerance of parts of the gay movement". The bizarrely anti-democratic idea that the possible hurt feelings of one segment of the polity should override the democratic process is the authoritarianism of the offended.
So-called "fact-checking" websites, despite their self-proclaimed neutrality, are in practice "less often a referee than a fan with a rooting interest". So it was that, when Pauline Hanson's maiden speech to the Australian Senate was greeted with a flurry of "fact-checking", the usual standard of bias and bad logic prevailed.
Andrew Bolt is the devil made flesh for the Australian left. Marxist academic Martin Hirst plays much the same role for the right. So when each, separately, got into trouble over freedom of speech issues, their enemies from each respective side greeted the news with open glee. But sometimes you have to defend even the Devil. Because if you deny the benefit of the law to the Devil, you leave yourself nowhere to hide.
A Devil's Curmudgeon 