Death of democracy is now a live threat
Democracy is going through a rough time. It is openly challenged by autocratic states like China, Russia and Iran. In the West’s oldest democracies, it is challenged from within by growing numbers who have lost faith in it as a form of government.
The Washington polling organisation Pew Research Centre has been tracking attitudes to democracy across the world for some 30 years. Britain has one of the highest levels of dissatisfaction with democracy in the world, at 69 per cent. Only Greece and Bulgaria are more disillusioned. A recent survey of political engagement in the UK found that a narrow majority wanted a strongman in power, someone who would sort things out without having to worry too much about parliament, judges, democratic debate or other impediments to decisive action.
Britain is not unique. Authoritarian figures have come to power with public support in many democracies: Donald Trump in the US, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Viktor Orban in Hungary and Giorgia Meloni in Italy. In France and Germany, authoritarian parties are beating at the gates. Australia does quite well in the Pew Research surveys, with only 41 per cent dissatisfied, but it cannot expect to be immune from the anti-democratic tide that is engulfing the West.
Democracy is a system of collective self-government. Its survival depends on two things. One is an effective institutional framework for discovering the values and desires of a majority of citizens: parliaments, elections, free media, and so on. The other is respect for the rule of law and a culture of tolerance and pluralism, without which democracy cannot survive. People have to be willing to accept democratic decisions that they do not like.
It is because these qualities are not natural to human beings that some form of autocracy has always been the default condition of mankind. In the West, democracy has a short history. It emerged in very special circumstances just two centuries ago, in very different circumstances to those that obtain today. Respect for personal autonomy was at its height and the capacities of the state were limited.
Towards the end of his long life, John Adams, one of the founders of American democracy, warned that “democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes and exhausts itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” In using the word suicide he was making an important point. Democracies fail from within. They are rarely overwhelmed by powerful external forces such as invasion or insurrection. They fail because people spontaneously lose interest in democracy and turn to more authoritarian forms of government.
Why has democratic sentiment weakened in so much of the world? The answer is complex, and not necessarily the same everywhere. But it is possible to point to three main enemies of democracy: economic insecurity, fear, and intolerance.
Historically, democracies have always depended on economic optimism. Except in two short periods, the US has enjoyed continuously rising levels of prosperity – both absolutely and relative to other countries – until quite recently. Other countries’ fortunes have been more chequered but the trajectory has generally been upwards.
Australia’s good fortune since World War II seems likely to be the main reason for its relatively high level of support for democracy. Today, the outlook is darker. We face problems of faltering growth, relative economic decline and capricious patterns of inequality. People measure their wellbeing against their expectations. Half a century of post-war expansion raised those expectations to stratospheric levels.
The shattering of optimism is a dangerous moment in the life of any community. Disillusionment with the promise of progress was a major factor in the 30-year crisis of Europe that began in 1914. That crisis was characterised by a general resort to totalitarianism. In the 1930s, Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany were widely regarded as models for the future, just as China sometimes is today.
When democracy cannot guarantee a continuously rising level of wellbeing for its citizens, people begin to reject it. This is particularly true of the young, who see their future clouding over while their parents’ generation are still enjoying the fruits of the good years. Authoritarian systems rarely do better, but that tends to be discovered too late.
Then there is the empire of fear. Historically, people who are sufficiently frightened of some external peril, such as invasion, violent crime or epidemic disease, have generally been willing to submit to an authoritarian regime that offers to protect them. Today, this is a bigger problem than it has been in the past because of the ever wider range of perils, physical, economic and psychological, from which people demand protection.
Of course, democracies can confer despotic powers on the state in emergencies without losing their democratic character. But there comes a point at which the systematic application of coercion is no longer consistent with collective self-government. If we hold governments responsible for everything that goes wrong, they will take away our autonomy so nothing can go wrong. If we call on the state to use its awesome power to defend us from the ordinary perils of human existence, we will end up doing it most of the time.
Finally, there is the mounting tide of intolerance. The campaigns of suppression conducted by pressure groups against unfashionable or “incorrect” opinions on controversial issues such as race, gender reassignment, same-sex relationships or climate change are a symptom of the narrowing of our intellectual world.
Demonstrations, such as those organised by the followers of Trump in Washington, Extinction Rebellion in Britain, or climate-change activists on the streets of Sydney, are all based on the idea that the campaigners’ point of view is the only legitimate one. No democratic outcome can therefore be tolerated which fails to give effect to it. On this view of the world, it is perfectly acceptable to bully people and disrupt their lives until they submit, instead of resorting to persuasion or ordinary democratic procedures.
This is the mentality of terrorists, but without the violence. Once we start telling ourselves that it is more important to get our way, democratic decision-making is done for. The result is the abandonment of political engagement and a general resort to direct action; that is, force.
Those who engage in direct action always believe that the end justifies the means, but they rarely confront the implications.
Since we are never likely to agree on controversial issues, what holds us together as societies is not consensus. It is precisely the methods by which we resolve our differences. It is a common respect for constitutional procedures, whether or not we like the outcome.
The transition from democracy to authoritarian rule is deceptively smooth. The outward forms are unchanged, but the substance is gone. Democracy is not formally abolished.
Instead, it is quietly redefined. It ceases to be a method of collective self-government but becomes something different, a set of values like communism, nationalism, or human rights.
The question whose values are to prevail can be resolved only by the crude exercise of power by the dominant ideology.
Will democracy resist these pressures in the next century? A generation ago it would have seemed strange even to ask the question. Today, it is a real issue.
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Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt And State Freedom Caucus Leaders Vow No Sex-Change Mutilation Of Minors
Oklahoma has become the first state to ban puberty blockers for children under 18, as Republican Governor Kevin Stitt announced he will withhold hospital funds until doctors stop prescribing the life-altering drugs to youth who aren’t old enough to vote, buy cigarettes or alcoholic beverages.
The UK’s Daily Mail reported Stitt signed a bill that effectively bans gender- reassignment drugs from being prescribed to minors at the state's main children's hospital.
The action blocks COVID relief funds from Oklahoma Children's Hospital at OU Health until it stops providing puberty blockers and hormone therapy to under-18s.
Gov. Stitt said Tuesday: “By signing this bill today we are taking the first step to protect children from permanent gender transition surgeries and therapies.
“It is wildly inappropriate for taxpayer dollars to be used for condoning, promoting, or performing these types of controversial procedures on healthy children.”
Oklahoma Children's Hospital currently offers life-altering drugs to teenagers under 18 with parental approval. It is thought that around 100 minors are currently receiving treatment, reported the Daily Mail.
Stitt also called for the Republican-controlled state Legislature to ban some of those gender-affirming treatments statewide when it returns in February.
He said in a statement that he wanted a prohibition on “all irreversible gender transition surgeries and hormone therapies” on minors.
Stitt’s actions came after Alabama tried to make it a felony for doctors to prescribe puberty blockers to minors with a punishment of up to 10 years in prison.
But that move was blocked by a federal judge just a few days after it took effect in April.
Tennessee has banned doctors from providing the drugs to pre-pubescent minors, but older teens can still access the drugs.
Oklahoma Children's Hospital currently offers sex-change interventions, such as puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and help finding surgeons who perform sex-change surgeries for people up to age 24.
Despite criticism and threats from the Far-Left Governor Stitt stood tall and also called on the Republican-led legislature to ban certain sex-change interventions outright when it returns to session in February.
The Daily Mail reported the Governor said, “We cannot turn a blind eye to what's happening all across our nation, and as governor I will not allow life-altering transition surgeries on minor children in the state of Oklahoma.”
At the same time Governor Stitt announced the Oklahoma ban, state legislators who are members of state Freedom Caucuses released a letter denouncing the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Children's Hospital Association for calling for the censorship of opponents of the genital mutilation of minors and supporting the use of these barbaric procedures on young children.
Signed by the leaders of the South Carolina Freedom Caucus, the Nevada Freedom Caucus, South Dakota Freedom Caucus, the Arizona Freedom Caucus, the Illinois Freedom Caucus, the Mississippi Freedom Caucus, and the Georgia Freedom Caucus, the letter said in part:
...with your advocacy of childhood genital mutilation, your call to investigate those who disagree with you, and your request for Big Tech to suppress constitutionally protected free speech that challenges your leftist ideology, you have lost whatever credibility you had left.
Though many children cannot choose between which toys they want to play with on any given day, your organizations and the depraved doctors that follow you are suggesting to kids, not even of grade school age, that they can determine what they will do with their God-given gender. They are ultimately pushing, and deciding for, these young children to take action which will result in irrevocable and irreparable harm. This so-called “gender affirming care” is both morally and ethically repugnant. Simply put, performing vaginoplasties, phalloplasties, double mastectomies or providing puberty blocking drugs to children as young as four is child abuse and we will not tolerate it. Furthermore, it is incredibly alarming that many of these atrocities are occurring at taxpayer-funded medical institutions. As members of our state freedom caucuses and our state legislatures, we unequivocally declare that these procedures are outside the scope of the proper use of funds we have allocated to our respective hospitals. We will fulfill our duty to stand in the gap and stop harm to any child by unnatural and
irreversible procedures. As state legislators, we are particularly charged with ensuring taxpayer-funded institutions take no part in furthering ethically and morally repugnant agendas inconsistent with the values of our states.
Collectively, and across the country, we will be pursuing a path to ensure no minors can receive these barbaric procedures. This includes calling on our governors to denounce this practice and using all available tools to end it. If proven non-compliant, these facilities will face repercussions for practices inconsistent with the values of the citizens of our states. This mutilation cannot and will not be tolerated in any form.
We applaud Governor Stitt of Oklahoma and the state Freedom Caucus leaders listed below for their leadership and opposition to this form of medically facilitated child abuse. We urge CHQ readers and friends to call their state legislators and governors to demand they follow suit
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With “gender affirmation” poised to be a $5 billion industry, Planned Parenthood wants in on the action
Perhaps the greatest lie ever told by Planned Parenthood is that it does what it does because it cares about people. Perhaps some misguided people who work for Planned Parenthood do earnestly want to help people, but the overall theme of the abortion mill from its inception is to prey on the vulnerable and be a scourge of society. Now, Planned Parenthood — which has started advertising that it will supply puberty blockers — is looking to add the gender confused to its list of victims.
Planned Parenthood was founded with the destruction of others as its purpose. Its founder, Margaret Sanger, was a eugenicist. Her vision for creating these abortion clinics was at least in part to exterminate babies of color. Sickeningly, she thought the purging of black people would bring about a more perfect human race. She wrote about this in her book The Negro Project, which advocated for “the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extinction, of defective stocks [black Americans] — those human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization.”
Planned Parenthood’s leaders have been well documented in their willingness to sink to the depths of human depravity for a few extra dollars. Recall Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical research, who was caught via undercover camera seeking baby body parts. Also recall that Planned Parenthood didn’t get in trouble — the reporters who broke the story did, thanks to then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris.
Planned Parenthood is perhaps the most dangerous because of its savvy marketing. Even its name sounds harmless, non controversial, and rolls off the tongue. That marketing bring us to the issue at hand: tricking gender-confused teens and their parents into buying puberty blockers.
The video starts with a teen who has an actual medical condition: intersex. Intersex individuals are lumped in with LGBTQ as a justification for the T. But that’s shrewd marketing — start with an actual medical condition that needs medication to help with puberty complications like intersex and then neatly slide in gender dysphoria (a mental illness) and compare puberty blockers to medication prescribed to help people who are intersex. Planned Parenthood also makes the incredible false claim that puberty blockers are harmless.
Puberty blockers are definitively not harmless. They cause irreversible damage such as voice deepening, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, infertility, increased cancer risk, and thrombosis. Notice how none of these side effects was listed in the ad. Instead, this teen-targeted ad promises that they can stop puberty without consequences and that they are the ones who get to choose their gender. There is a literal rainbow in the ad; all it’s lacking is the Pied Piper in the background and a flying unicorn.
“Gender affirmation” is a big-bucks industry. Society is pressuring parents to bow to this ideology, and children’s hospitals are providing the lucrative service. The Daily Wire reports: “The industry surrounding transgender surgeries is expected to reach $5 billion by the end of the decade. According to a recent report from Grand View Research, the sector saw a $1.9 billion valuation last year and is forecast to expand at a compound annual growth rate of more than 11% through 2030.”
Of course, Planned Parenthood wouldn’t miss this money-making opportunity. This is just one more clue that the organization is out to exploit the most vulnerable in society. The vulnerable are the easiest to dupe into giving up something precious — and also paying for it.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/91864-planned-parenthood-looks-to-cash-in-2022-10-07
******************************************************Australia: Gillard 'cool anger' drove misogyny speech
Words uttered in anger are rarely wise and this is a good example of that. The speech so pissed off male voters that her party's popularity dropped like a stone. Seeing the disaster, her own party promptly booted her out of the top job. Feminists sometimes seem to forget that men have a vote too
Nearly a decade since [former Prime Minister] Gillard declared in Australian parliament she would not be lectured by then-opposition leader Tony Abbott on sexism and misogyny, she has reflected on the speech that attracted global attention.
The former Labor leader said her chief-of-staff Ben Hubbard asked if she was sure she wanted to respond to an opposition bid to remove then-lower house speaker Peter Slipper, who had sent sexist text messages about women's genitalia.
"I wandered over to the adviser's box and I said to the advisers there, 'I'm going to take this, I'm going to do the reply'," she told a 5000-strong crowd in Sydney on Wednesday night.
"And Ben said to me 'are you sure?'. Because normally I used to hold myself above the tactics of the opposition on any given day.
"Yes I am sure because I am sick of this s***."
Ms Gillard said for many years she felt the speech was her constant companion.
"Wherever I went it was walking with me alongside me," she said.
"But I've come to realise that it's not my companion, it's yours because it's become your anthem of defiance when you are subjected to a sexist slur."
The former prime minister was joined by an eclectic bunch of women who shared their impressions of the speech.
Others beamed in via video message, including New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
The latter said the response to misogynistic attacks on Australia's first female prime minister had reverberated around the chamber, parliament, the nation and the world.
"With such an economy of words Julia captured and channelled the indignities and obstacles so many women had faced their whole lives," Mr Albanese said.
"Julia spoke to every woman and for every woman who had been excluded and bullied and harassed or worse.
"Australian women recognised themselves in the speech. That's what made it so powerful and that is why it will endure."
Ms Gillard said the unplanned speech was fuelled by a cool anger. "I felt analytical. I knew precisely what I wanted to say," she said. "And I felt empowered, not embattled, not cowed. "And that is the spirit of the misogyny speech."
Ms Gillard believes that a decade after the October 9, 2012 speech, sexist and misogynist behaviour is not tolerated as much as it was during her prime ministership.
The former prime minister, who serves as chair of leading mental health awareness body, Beyond Blue, appeared on stage in Melbourne and Sydney over two nights.
https://au.news.yahoo.com/gillard-cool-anger-drove-misogyny-163151168.html
****************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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