Our politicians are attempting to manufacture a society in which citizens FEAR criticising those who govern them. Mocking politicians, which was once considered a hallmark of a “free democracy,” is increasingly being portrayed as a threat to democracy itself. But the REAL threat to freedom isn’t public criticism of those in power. It’s the fear of punishment for daring to criticise them. When citizens are afraid to speak freely, debate is stifled and “democracy” just becomes an excuse to blame the voters themselves for the state’s despotic and destructive rule.

The West is redefining free speech from the right to speak, even at the risk of offence, to a supposed right not to be offended. But offence is subjective and infinitely expandable, so whoever polices it holds tyrannical power. Once the state decides which opinions are too offensive, speech becomes a privilege granted at its discretion, and citizens begin to self-censor out of fear. A free society protects the right to offend. A tyrannical one protects the power to punish it.

There’s a danger in taking your inheritance for granted. What one generation neglects, another can be persuaded to despise. For those of Anglo-Celtic descent, heritage can become so familiar that it rarely attracts conscious thought. Family names, customs, churches and national traditions form the background of ordinary life. Like a fish unaware of the water until it is lifted out, we can take belonging for granted until it is threatened. For many years, it seemed too obvious to need defending. But that indifference left a dangerous void. A people who cease explaining their own history leave it open for others to explain it for them. Today, we are told that Anglo-Celtic peoples have no distinct identity of their own—that anyone from anywhere can simply become English, Scottish, Irish, American, Australian, Canadian, and so on. Yet when historical guilt is assigned, ancestry suddenly matters again. An inheritance supposedly too indistinct to preserve becomes distinct enough to condemn. But it’s this social pressure that is today producing precisely the opposite of its intended effect. Tell people repeatedly that they have no heritage worth preserving, no particular people they belong to, no history to identify with, and you give them every reason to investigate it. Demand that they apologise for their ancestors, and they may begin asking what those ancestors believed, why they believed it, how they lived, and what kind of world they intended to leave for their descendants. Read: caldronpool.com/p/the-anglo-…

"Growing up in Western Sydney in the early 2000s, my neighbourhood was genuinely Australian. Almost all my street friends were of multi-generational Australian stock, and later on one Australian-born Indian. The same was true of my soccer club and church. Even outside of church, almost everybody in my life shared the same Christian faith, that which formed Australia’s culture from the beginning. Fast forward almost two decades, and living only a few minutes’ drive from where I grew up, it is the opposite. I know almost none of my neighbours. Almost all of them are recent arrivals from various parts of India. We have nothing in common: not ancestry, culture, religion, and barely even the English language. The same is true for the wider town. Where I once had a strong community, formed of common blood and faith, I now have only strangers. This commonality remains solely with people far outside of my town, even as far as regional NSW, where I like to visit just to feel like I am in Australia again, like I am truly home and with my own people. But according to Archbishop Kanishka Raffel—my Archbishop, as I am an Anglican—and Rabbi Benjamin Elton, this destruction of kinship and community built over two centuries is not the problem. In fact, it is those who complain about it that are the problem. The Archbishop & Rabbi recently co-authored a piece called ‘A plea to keep faith in our cultural diversity’; a title that is fascinating in itself, which I will address later. In it, they attack Pauline Hanson’s recent call to restore a 'monoculture' in Australia, providing a three-fold response: that Australia was never a 'monoculture,' that the problem is not multiculturalism as such, only certain applications thereof, and that Judeo-Christian teaching requires us to 'love the stranger.' Being a young Australian man at the receiving end of replacement migration, the article read to me like a prolonged insult, especially as it came from my own episcopal head. Why this is so will be made clear as I dispatch of the arguments." @TheOtherPaul2 Read more: caldronpool.com/p/love-your-…