W W W W World Wide Web Witness Inc. Home Page Volume What is New
Chapter 2
THE PRICE OF FREEDOM AND THE NECESSITY FOR LIBERTY
See The Australian Good Friday, 2014, p. 6.
See News 470, and Freedom, the Nation, the Internet and the Next Generation and
DIVINE INFORMATION AND HUMAN MISINFORMATION
There are times when even the most strained endeavour to appreciate efforts to muzzle the mouth and tie up the spirit of man in terms of various cultural preferences beyond the laws of slander and libel, that is, to make truth a pawn of preference, can have the task similar to that of mounting Mt Everest on a scooter.
How freedom, within that code, liberty to speak about religion or race in terms which may offend some, or delight others, which may elevate or reduce, when the procedures are sincere and relate to conviction held on grounds that can be presented: how this freedom can be sacrificed like a lamb to the knife of personal emotional bliss or contentment, is a mystery. But it does explain the arrival of dictators, in their binding the mouths of critics by exempting whole areas of thought from use as they ascend the throne first of cultural, then of military, then of personal imperial power, finally engaging the equivalent of thought police.
As to race, it is foolish to slander races, as if to universalise a trend; but there is need to be able to see a trend, especially if supported by statistics, WITHOUT mischievously misapplying this to a given individual. The latter is racism. There is little point in it, except for revenge or some other unwisdom; but if you wish to make a point, present a view, seek a revision of what appear errors in government, its ways, or those of other authorities, for example, or in attitudes on this score, why is it to be made sacrosanct, as if by a religious intrusion, contrary to Commonwealth law ? Ideas about what is sacrosanct, held for ultimate reasons vested in the breast, or the culture corner of the mind, matters of value and perspective, when THESE come to be imposed in terms of relative popularity and the like, are quite simply a matter ultimately of religion. It concerns the ultimate outcomes, incomes and nature of life.
Force this, as in much is now done in this, our land, and you are apt to come to a ludicrous, illegal because unconstitutional outcome. Someone's religion is being forced: green, red, blue, culturally creative, desecrative of this or that, but FORCED.
It is then a matter of exempted or pre-empted religious superintendence as if by a police State. To protect people from acrid and unbased rancour is one thing, for which laws exist. To protect them lest they have some susceptibility or sensitivity is another matter entirely, and makes some preferred psychology the master of truth, replacing room for consideration, which has no need for a muzzle-mouth ferocity abiding in the shadows, ready to dictate. When such 'protection' is actually religious correction and direction in terms of the kingdom of culture, then the State drivels and shrivels.
It is by no means race which is the principal concern here, but rather the truth about any topic and liberty to pursue it without the hounds of harassment making ninnies of those seeking to review. The chief example, exemplified above, is the stamp on religion which is cause for concern; and the race issue confined here to that particular aspect of it. Thus, any law which makes any one race more empowered with legal weapons of attack, if someone is offensive about it (or deemed to be so), is a racist law. It is unequal, subjecting truth to desire. It should not be.
Whether the issue be a particular people, or religion, or philosophy, like aggressive naturalism, currently given illegal and hideous dominance in schools, sections of the community or sectors of thought should not be given protection about their state or status beyond demonstrable truth, and all that may be said in pursuit of it. Things and issues should be methodically taught, not thrust home with educational rampancy, where issues are bypassed like a rocket beyond the moon. Hiding from scientific method with authoritarian pronouncements on major issues has become common and invasive educationally. You can be generous to any; but not with the sacrifice of truth. Imperious dismissal of protest (as has frequently in this land occurred) should not be confused with rational treatment of materials.
If you EVER abandon freedom in this kind of area, short of repentance, your nation is as good as gone, a state of cultural captives. What happens after that tends in much, to be relatively incidental. Funk argument and you fetch folly.
The efforts to remove the horrors of trussing mankind up with cultural desires from this or that sector, are good in kind; and the protection of any group should never be purchased at the price of freedom to seek and speak truth as it is considered, however vast the contention about the end result. Australia, one hopes, is also for adults, not only for children under nursery rules, or those who would impose this type of situation.
This in no way diminishes the ludicrousness of making foolish generalisations about races; but it does point out that sacrifice of truth and its modes in free pursuit, is too heavy a price to pay for the satisfaction of feelings of offence through any topic, which may come from reasons virtuous or gratuitous, self-serving or genuine, factitious and fanciful or realistic. When you cannot contend for a view because it may hurt someone, then consider that the racist Nazi program too needed protection to let its racism theories (sensitive to their dispute or overthrow) dominate nicely.
Niche markets for avoidance of insult or hurt feelings are expensive and for the sponsored. This land is not under sponsorship from other owners, and if it moves that way, to satisfy the cry of this or that ideology or group, by the blunt instrument of law, this can readily become like murder: the disruption of the very course of pursuit of truth in any issue. Truth and its pursuit may then readily be displaced and replaced in part or whole, by a grievance procedure which prejudges issues in KIND, rather than letting them find their own place, with the free use of reason not religiously bound in advance by some cultural idea that makes of itself a religion in itself, a category of ultimates imposed for some on others. Trying to force everyone in a democracy the more especially, to have the same ideas/words/view/values/understanding in the field of religion is like rigor mortis. It may be long in coming, but when it comes, it is exceedingly conspicuous.
The Christian contribution includes the Christ, not domineering by simple harassing power, but mangled by culturally captive sectional powers in the crucifixion and risen in pure power beyond them; and in this, to the point, we value the necessity to present what is here, not hounded by objections based on cultural or personal pre-judgments, but with a distinguished liberty fully matched by a similar liberty for all others that do not advocate violence to the persons of others or to invade institutions (which in itself, is scarcely a reason). Let the truth be freely found without interventions by Caesar or his representatives. It is well able to stand.
As a nation, we have already travelled far in that vastly undesired direction. We narrowly escaped that protection racket. Let us travel that way no further, but open up the grounds of a free society, not slenderly like a connoisseur with food, but with a ready appetite. If anyone personally does not want more on a topic, it is easy to say so, clearly. Hidden prejudice, like hidden love and hate, is a whole jungle; why enter it! It is full of possibilities and needs the light of free enquiry.
See The gods of naturalism have no go! TMR Ch. 8, and Secular Myths and Sacred Truth, esp. Ch. 3.