Welcome to the next three yearsBy RODNEY CROOMEFamily First a sign Lucky Country is going the American way As hard as it is to read the opinion pages of the Australian, it's necessary. Howard cheerleaders like Greg Sheridan (Australian, 23.10.04) give us an insight into the prejudices and rationalisations of Australia's ascendant neo-cons. Sheridan and friends have clearly decided it's time to mainstream Family First as a legitimate, even necessary, part of the Australian polity. The re-invention starts with language. Family First is labelled "inclusive, reassuring", even though the Party declared Queensland Liberal candidate, Ingrid Tall, to be unfriendly to families and therefore unworthy of their preferences, simply on the basis of her homosexuality. Instead of referring to "fundamentalism", Sheridan uses more dignified terms like "Bible-based evangelical Christianity" (NB the deferential deployment of capital letters). The word "secular" on the other hand has become a near insult in Sheridan's vocabulary. As part of bringing the Christian right in from the cold Sheridan then goes on to give both America's fundamentalists and Australia's history of religious politicos an extreme make over. Cop this: "The American Christian Right is much demonised in the Australian media, but within the US it is a perfectly normal, mainstream force. It has not turned the US into a theocracy nor curtailed civil liberties. It has injected a strong values discussion into national politics." No curtailment of civil liberties? What about marriage equality and abortion and birth control and affirmative action and illegal immigrants and ...? If these people haven't turned the US into a theocracy it's not because they don't want to, and haven't tried, it's because other people are battling desperately to stop them. As for values, the Christian right is about rules, injunctions and strictures, not values. No-one has a monopoly on "values", least of all haters. Sheridan strays just as far from the facts in trying to invent an Australian pedigree for Family First. Brian Harradine was not "really a Christian right Senator". He may have been socially conservative but he was not an evangelical, and he was definitely not a free marketeer. His views on the labour and the market were well left of centre. Fred Nile is closer to Family First, but he is more of an old style moralist, who wears his faith on his sleeve. He's too honest and forthright to find a place in today's slick Christian corporate and political machine. Perhaps most galling is Sheridan's claim that: "There is nothing even remotely threatening to the traditional Australian way about a political movement that takes its inspiration from Christian values. Indeed we are only two generations away from a time when all mainstream political movements did." If they were alive today, the socialist founders of the Australian Labor Party would spit tobacco at that assertion. So would many of the old-fashioned conservatives for whom religion was a strictly private matter. The suggestion that Lord's Word had something to do with how they voted, let alone how the country should be run, would have made my religious grandparents scoff. In Old Australia religion was for Sunday, and (outwardly) sex. Politics like economics was about the very pragmatic business of material well-being. If the two ever faced-off it was on the battle ground of sectarianism. But most people knew that to be about humanity's limits not God's Grace (deferential capitals intended). In short, Australia has not "been pregnant with a Christian Right for years". This movement was born in the US, from which it has been imported to meet the needs of some Australians for certainty and purpose in what they see an increasingly uncertain and confusing world. It is a recent movement responding to entirely contemporary needs. Sheridan does at least concede the American origins of the Christian right. Being born in the USA is not necessarily a bad thing, he seems to be saying, unless we're talking about the US-style political tactics adopted by Mark Latham and the ALP. They're all bad. Not surprisingly he ignores all the US-style political tactics adopted by John Howard, including attacks on small "l" liberal institutions, demonisation of minorities, scare mongering, pandering to theo-cons, and, of course, a ban on same sex marriages. Sheridan's conservatives are too true blue to be political plagiarists, even though in fact they out plagiarise Labor by a mile. This partisan hypocrisy is boring and annoying. But it is nothing next to Sheridan's religious double standard. After September 11 Sheridan and his ilk were the first to condemn Islamic fundamentalism as the greatest danger since the end of the Cold War. Forget poverty, corruption, tyranny and dodgy western interference in third world politics; the real cause of terrorism were all those nasty "Islamo-fascists" who wanted to re-shape the world in their own image. Remember how evil they were because they took away women's rights, censored the media, persecuted homosexuals and generally imposed their narrow "Koran-based" views on everyone else? But now, short of blowing things up, it's okay for fundamentalist Christians to propose many of the things fundamentalist Muslims have been vilified for. Why? Because they live next door, speak the same langauge and wear the same cloths as us? Because they spring from a more familiar religious tradition? No, it's because they're a natural conservative constituency which Howard wants back. Welcome to the next three years.
Go to
RAPID RESPONSE EMAIL: What do you think? Tuesday, October 26, 2004 |