Monday, May 23, 2022

Dumb column by legal academic

Here's James Allen, in the Spectator (Australian edition, which has always been trash), complaining about the weekend election:

The only way to show your displeasure with your own side of politics – because you can’t even stay home when there’s also compulsory voting – is to preference the other side. I did that this past Saturday, practising what I preached.

As a law professor (and one who appears to unfortunately decided to call Australia his permanent home), I would have thought he would be more careful to explain that, yes, you have to "vote", but you can always "vote" for no one. Or cop the fine of (I believe) $20 and stay in bed all day.

But he also bemoans this:

Many may not like that fact, but it’s already happened in Canada, Britain, and America. Our voting system merely slowed it down here. The truth is that the well-off rich (and I generalise of course) now vote solidly Left – maybe because they can afford to and like to virtue-signal? They vote more like Canberra public servants than anything else.

He may like to consider other possibilities:  such as "the rich" having an education level high enough to see through the culture war/conspiracy denial of reality, not to mention authoritarian and wannabe be fascist bent of current American brand of conservatism, and reject it.

Look, I pointed out back in 2019 that to Allen, evidence is optional.   He encapsulates what has gone  completely wrong with the Right.

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