The cultural wars start in the schools, and that is why many parents home school their children. But, does this harm children’s education, given that many parents are not professional teachers?
From America:

“In 1997, a study of 5,402 homeschool students from 1,657 families was released. It was entitled, “Strengths of Their Own: Home Schoolers Across America.” The study demonstrated that homeschoolers, on the average, out-performed their counterparts in the public schools by 30 to 37 percentile points in all subjects. A significant finding when analyzing the data for 8th graders was the evidence that homeschoolers who are homeschooled two or more years score substantially higher than students who have been homeschooled one year or less.

     The subtle pleasures of diversity: camel beauty contests!
  http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2018/01/23/twelve-camels-disqualified-from-saudi-beauty-competition-for-using-botox/

“A beauty contest in Saudi Arabia disqualified twelve camels after their owners were found to have used Botox to make them look more handsome, Reuters revealed.
The King Abdulaziz Camel Festival in Riyadh expelled the camels and their owners for violating the competition’s rules, updated last year.

     The Australian people are more passive and apathetic than they should be about immigration, given the social harms that it produces. All criticisms are washed away by the government by saying: “we have border control!” Well, we do not, when tens of thousands of legal migrants arrive in Australia, to compete with locals for jobs, and if they create any jobs, they take more than they make.

     In the US, people support overall lower legal immigration, and want the rate capped at 500,000 per year, instead of the current annual rate of 1.3 million:
  https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jan/22/shock-poll-us-wants-massive-cuts-legal-immigration/

     The march of secularism seem unstoppable, with religion falling into disarray. But, is it? Lee Ellis et al., believe that from a biological perspective, this trend is only short-term, and in the longer term, the rule of fertility, will, rule:
  https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40806-017-0090-z

“For over a century, social scientists have predicted declines in religious beliefs and their replacement with more scientific/naturalistic outlooks, a prediction known as the secularization hypothesis. However, skepticism surrounding this hypothesis has been expressed by some researchers in recent decades. After reviewing the pertinent evidence and arguments, we examined some aspects of the secularization hypothesis from what is termed a biologically informed perspective.

     Colonel Jeff cooper, the father of American pistolcraft, some say, was as manly as they come, and this John Wayne toughness was reflexed in his writings in Guns & Ammo magazine, “Cooper’s corner,” and in his numerous books, including his modern version of The Art of War, Principles of Personal Defense:
  https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Personal-Defense-Jeff-Cooper/dp/1581604955

     This book is recommended reading as society heads ever-closer to chaotic violence from multiple causes of degeneracy. One interesting Cooper article appeared in Special Weapons magazine, 1984, “The Fighting Rifle, Forgotten but Not Gone.” Cooper, who while in the marines trained soldiers, came to profoundly dislike the M16, with its .22 round, the 5.56 X 45 mm. He described this round as a “poodle shooter,” and inferior to past weapons:

     Germaine Greer was one of the founders of second wave feminism in Australia, during the radical 1960s era, where Left wing uni types thought that the revolution was right around the corner. It was, but was not what they thought. Greer has  been critical of some aspects of the contemporary gender agenda, saying that trans women are not women:
  http://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-34625512/germaine-greer-transgender-women-are-not-women

     Now, however, she has thrown a spanner in the works of the #MeToo campaign of sexual harassment, saying that women have left things “too late’:

     Throughout much of the Middle East, it is downright dangerous to openly profess belief and faith in Jesus Christ:
  http://www.breitbart.com/jerusalem/2018/01/16/report-middle-east-christians-on-the-eve-of-destruction/

“Egypt, Jordan, Syria and the Palestinian territories are amongst the most dangerous places on earth for Christians, according to a new report. Although Christians claim the area as their Biblical heartland alongside Israel, persecution and discrimination, especially in the past 15 years, means they now constitute no more than three to four per cent per cent of the region’s population, down from 20 per cent a century ago.

To THE AGE          Your scornful description of the decision of the British people to leave the European Union as ‘nativist populism’ (15/1) ignores the big issues behind it: the protection of the monarchy, the retention of national identity, the resumption of a great legal tradition and a return to greater liberty. It is shocking but not surprising that certain powerful individuals and groups are doing everything possible to annul the Brexit result. Other members of the EU had their votes to leave overruled by political chicanery. It is to be hoped that British character and integrity will prevail against it. Better to be poor and free than wealthy and corrupt.
  NJ, Belgrave, Vic

To THE AUSTRALIAN          Rebecca Weisser is right to say (‘Look, Mr Keating, they are fleeing their republics’, 15/1) that ‘republics are less stable than monarchies precisely because they are not bound by tradition.’ She could have added that tradition is based in reverence for the sacred and that, without that reverence, public morality wanes and ruthless unselfishness grows.

     Australia, as a nation, as a people, needs, more than anything else a renewed awareness of, and respect for, the holy. Not a return to antiquated dogmatism, but a profound reform of the spirit. Yes, this is mysterious, but it is also the truth. We must shed the post-Enlightenment prejudice that logical reason is humanity’s best guide to building fruitful community. It can neither explain why the universe exists nor inspire the human heart nor satisfy the longings of the human soul. A constitutional monarchy is the best guarantee of national wellbeing.
  NJ, Belgrave, Vic

To THE AUSTRALIAN          In opposition to Fred Chaney’s claim (‘They were first, and they survived - we should listen’, 17/1) that Aboriginals should be recognised as ‘first nations within the nation’, that is no longer true in present time or acceptable to the majority of Australians who will not tolerate any proposal that might lead to dismemberment of our constitutional unity as the nation of Australia.
Also questionable is his assertion that the ‘collective identities’ of these ‘first nations’ have survived here.

     The considerable intermarriage of Aboriginals with persons of other ethnicity, as well as the dubious definitions of ‘Aboriginality’ promoted since the first Whitlam government (allowing part-Aboriginals to be viewed as Aboriginals), suggest that there is a gradual merging taking place of different ethnicities, which is good for national harmony.

     There has been debate about whether there is an “Africa crime crisis” in Australia, with victims saying that there is, and the government and police denying it:
  http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/state-politics/no-african-gang-crisis-wrong-says-victim-val/news-story/608233a6f6a2082c218be556fd13a8c8

     Here though is the real situation summed up in a hard-hitting article:

     An agreement has been struck between Japan and Australia to conduct military exercises out of Darwin, as part of a regional strategy to counter China’s growing military might:
  http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/defence/military-deal-with-japan-to-counter-chinas-might/news-story/25ec275dec028bad99b9e41bbc98a4eb

“The wide-ranging agreement, which will also allow military equipment and ammunition to be transported far more easily between the countries, will be progressed during the Prime Minister’s trip to Tokyo next week, as Australia faces a growing row with China over government criticism of Beijing’s Pacific aid. After official Chinese media branded Australia an “arrogant overlord’’ in the Pacific this week, Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa Aiono Sailele Malielegaoi yesterday added to the diplomatic storm, saying he was shocked by International Development Minister Concetta Fierravanti-Wells’ public criticism of China’s Pacific aid and demanded a formal apology from Canberra. “I think she should apologise — and apologise very soon to stop the further damage in the relationship between Australia and Pacific leaders,” Mr Tuilaepa told The Weekend Australian.

“Since good-looking politicians win more votes, a beauty advantage for politicians on the left or on the right is bound to have political consequences. We show that politicians on the right look more beautiful in Europe, the United States and Australia. Our explanation is that beautiful people earn more, which makes them less inclined to support redistribution. Our model of within-party competition predicts that voters use beauty as a cue for conservatism when they do not know much about candidates and that politicians on the right benefit more from beauty in low-information elections. Evidence from real and experimental elections confirms both predictions.”

  http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272716302201

     The MSM has been beside itself, doing cartwheels over Trump’s alleged description of places like Haiti as “sh*thole countries.” Trump denies that he used this turn of phrase, but he did indicate that he would like more people from places like Norway. Behind this is a weak racial identity, which the deranged cosmopolitan liberal/Left smelt immediately and pounced on. Writing on the national identity significance of Trump’s remarks, and the savage response by liberals, Patrick J. Buchanan had this to say:

“Still, by contrasting Norway as a desirable source of immigrants, as opposed to Haiti, El Salvador and Africa, Trump tabled a question that is roiling the West, the answer to which will decide its fate. Trump is saying with words, as he has with policies, that in taking in a million people a year, race, religion and national origin matter, if we are to preserve our national unity and national character.

The famous Flynn effect, of a rise in IQ levels now seems to be reversing across the West:

“The IQ gains of the 20th century have faltered. Losses in Nordic nations after 1995 average at 6.85 IQ points when projected over thirty years. On Piagetian tests, Britain shows decimation among high scorers on three tests and overall losses on one. The US sustained its historic gain (0.3 points per year) through 2014. The Netherlands shows no change in preschoolers, mild losses at high school, and possible gains by adults. Australia and France offer weak evidence of losses at school and by adults respectively. German speakers show verbal gains and spatial losses among adults. South Korea, a latecomer to industrialization, is gaining at twice the historic US rate.

     This is one of those link, look and like posts, where you have to see it to believe it:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcjxSThD54

     Here Canadian free-speech academic Jordan Peterson takes apart some of the leading feminist myths of the Left, such as the gender pay gap, which has become an item of faith for the chattering class. Even the MSM is admitting that Peterson utterly destroyed his opponent’s arguments:
  https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/01/watch-cathy-newmans-catastrophic-interview-with-jordan-peterson/

     While young tigers at our universities put up posters on round cement structures telling us about the joys of communism/socialism, and how great the Russian revolution was, the reality of socialism is seen in every socialist experiment. Venezuela is the latest failure:

  http://collapse.news/2018-01-16-starving-venezuelans-ransack-food-banks-slaughter-grazing-cattle.html 
  http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/how-the-collapse-of-venezuela-really-happened-part-2_01182018 
  http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/socialist-dystopia-starving-venezuelans-loot-as-runaway-inflation-forces-pillaging-for-food_01172018

     I am just a bit too old to be a baby boomer, but I grew up with them, went to university with them, and hated them in the 1960s, all their self-righteousness, selfishness and lack of humility. Indeed, it turns out that this generation, who have essentially set Western civilisation on fire with their greed, do not want to leave anything for their children at all:
  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/pensions/article-5263603/More-half-50s-prefer-spend-not-leave-money.html

“The majority of over-50s would rather spend their money now than give it to their kids, research by life insurer SunLife has found.
Fifty six per cent of those babyboomers surveyed said that they wanted to keep hold of their hard-earned cash instead of passing it on to someone else, and 62 per cent said that the money was ‘there to be spent’.
This is despite one in 20 people saying they are relying on their parent’s cash, with one in ten complaining that their parents are having too much fun with their ‘inheritance’."

     The Neo Con artists and globalists who are so desperate to start a war with Russia, maybe because the “Christian” wing thinks that this will bring on a return of Christ, as in the 1970s book, The Late Great Planet Earth, need to seriously read this:
  https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01-18/pentagon-document-confirms-existence-russian-doomsday-torpedo

“A leaked copy of the Pentagon’s Nuclear Posture Review states that Russia is developing a “new intercontinental, nuclear-armed undersea autonomous torpedo.” The existence of the weapon, known as Kanyon to the Pentagon and “Ocean Multipurpose System Status-6” to Russia, was first leaked by Russian television in November 2015. A test involving the Sarov-class submarine mothership was leaked in December 2016. The Nuclear Posture Review report, dated January 2018, lists the weapon as part of Russia’s underwater nuclear arsenal….

To THE AGE          Jenna Price asks (‘Day of atonement needed’, 24/1) why we should not change the date of Australia Day ‘if most Indigenous Australians want it’. One reason is that they are only a tiny minority and there is evidence, as in the recent Research Now poll, that the great majority of Australians support the present arrangement, being proud of our intrepid forebears who pioneered the land and of the culture and civilization they brought here.

     A second reason is that she provides no proof that most “Indigenous Australians” actually want the change; and a third is that her terminology is suspect, since many such Australians carry some settler blood, while we of British ethnicity who were born here are also indigenous, in the essential meaning of the word. Her comparison of Good Friday and Yom Kippur is interesting. All human beings have shortcomings (‘sin’) and we are wise to acknowledge our own. However, hijacking this spiritual truth to support one-eyed political propaganda, as Price does, is regrettable.
  NJ, Belgrave, Vic