The Australian

I have been amazed daily at the quality of this newspaper. The scope of its coverage of national and world events and the strength of its opinion pieces are second to none in this country. Especially the past fortnight I have deeply appreciated the depth of analysis and variety of commentators published in the opinion section and elsewhere. From journalists to academics to politicians, we've read the clearest commentary on the protest-riots in Sydney, the terrorist attacks on the embassy in Libya and all the "muslim anger" in between. Today's opinion piece from The Australian's own Janet Albrechtsen on the global threat of blasphemy laws to free speech is one such "full-throated defence of western values". As she says, "...defaulting to lazy moral relativism, looks like appeasement to radical Muslims, who will demand only more and more special rules..."

We must make the case for our Enlightenment ideals. The post-modern, deconstructionist tool of contemporary academia should be put back in the box where it belongs. It may be usefully employed to critique conceptual categories and rethink the status quo, but its overuse has lead to an undervaluing and undermining of the roots of our intellectual culture. Without upholding the very bases for the development and maintenance of the West's philosophical discourses and humanistic political systems we will lose them.

Those values and ideals articulated in the founding documents of Western, and now global, political institutions are devalued when we are charmed by the sophistry of arguments for the equality of cultures. In many western countries, policies of multiculturalism have lead to a weakening of the once commonly held values that bind our societies. Without some values we at least tacitly agree on, what can possibly keep us peacefully living and working together?

I intend to take up a number of the topics raised in this and my previous posts as well as those implicated in recent world affairs. I don't know yet how much time I will actually have for this blog, and there are many fine news and opinion sources out there—which I intend to provide links to—that deal with the issues that concern me (and in a far more thoroughgoing and articulate way than I am capable of). So I will finish up this post as it started, as a plug for The Australian. Like my left-leaning friends, who sometimes baulk at the mere mention of this paper, you may not always agree with the opinions aired within its pages, but you must concede it is the standard bearer for the mainstream press in Australia, and as such it cannot be ignored. Thank Christ and Janet Albrechtsen (amongst others) for that.