Can a No-voicer Reason with Yes-Liberals and Pinkos? By Paul Walker

As one of the younger writers at Alor.org blog, I must confess that before seeing the light and becoming a conservative, I was a Leftist, mainly through university. I was thus interested in the take made by Peter Baldwin “The Progressive Case Against the Voice,” Quadrant Special Digital Edition, August 2023. Can one reason with the liberal Left at the universities, and white-anting the entire society now, against the Voice? How does one overcome the high moral groundism, and pseudo anti-racism supremacy that the liberal Left get from parading the Voice virtues?

If there are ways,  it cannot be through the use of conservative arguments as the liberal-Left simply reject the entire paradigm. So, most of the arguments considered in other articles in the Quadrant special edition, will fail against this folk. But, as Baldwin notes, here are considerations that should phase the liberal Left, although I have my doubts.

For a start, the Voice is by definition racially discriminatory; the liberal Left will say, so what, it is just good old-fashioned affirmative action? But, the Voice proposal conflicts with another holy of holies, the UN’s International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). Article 1 defines racial discrimination as: “... any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.” Any affirmative action programs should be temporary, according to the UN, but the Voice will be permanent, contrary to the spirit of the UN. Shocking, indeed.

Baldwin then goes on to outline how progressives of today have moved right away from the UN view, being influenced by Critical Race Theory and cultural Marxism, to see a socially constructed view of race as part of identity. Of course, except for whites, I might add. Indeed, as Baldwin says, this paradigm sees being white as a big problem, and there is endless wailing about the evils of whiteness. The person who runs the ABC’s religion and ethics website, Scott Stephens. says, “being white” is a “tremendous or even radical sin”. It is obvious from this point of view that the Voice, if successful will be the first step in the deconstruction of traditional Australia, with the demand for a truth-telling commission, perhaps trials, and certainly substantial reparations. In the US there are already figures of multi billion dollars being tossed around for reparations. And the idea of  “truth’ will be taken through postmodernist lenses, of all being relative, so that Western science, evidence and facts are just one more “narrative.” Fancy trying to save one’s farm, or freedom before such an Orwellian truth commission?

Baldwin concludes: “To insist on some sanitised, idealised understanding of indigenous culture, to base policies on this flimsy foundation, and to persist with this course in the face of overwhelming evidence that it harms the very people the ideologues claim to advocate for? And to vilify any genuine truth-tellers as “native informants”, race and identity traitors? Or, to face realities honestly, to adjust policy accordingly, with the overriding goal of improving the life chances of some of the most impoverished and severely disadvantaged people in the country? As to culture, Jacinta Price in a speech made back in 2016, spoke eloquently against the culture-as-prison mentality favoured by the identarian race ideologues: “Why is it that we should remain stifled and live by 40,000-year-old laws when the rest of the world has had the privilege of evolution within their cultures, so that they may survive in a modern world?” That is the genuinely progressive view, if the word means anything at all.”

Unfortunately, I think most of  the liberal Left are too well served and fed by the present system, and will reject the sensible view of Senator Price. So, convincing today’s progressives, who really are degenerates whose aim is to destroy Western civilisation, will be next to impossible. One can try, but time is best spent seeking out the unconverted; friends, neighbours and the sensible salt of the Earth.