To The Australian Luke Slattery is unfair to conservatives ("To Menzies, ordinary Australians were anything but", 8/11) in referring to an alleged "tendency on the right to vaunt pecuniary values over all others." This entirely ignores the idealism that is essential to right wing political theory in many contexts. Whether one looks at centre right men like T. S. Eliot or Russell Kirk, or hard right spokesmen such as John Tyndall or Kevin McDonald, one sees a clear distaste for those who pursue "the golden calf" of personal financial profit. It is a Confucian respect for the ways of the elders that drives conservatism, a love of the tried and the true. Where the hard right errs, we may feel, is in proposing solutions to political questions that have really been superannuated by history. Nothing can stop the mixing of peoples that is now under way.
Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic