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Struggling to laud Lord Downer? Look to Ceaucescu
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Janet Albrechtsen on the retirement of Alexander Downer: Alexander Downer, our longest serving foreign minister, will announce his retirement from politics this week. When he departs, the Liberal Party will lose one of this country’s staunchest defenders of individual liberty and conservatism. Sure, the Left will cheer his departure. Let them. It will be a sign of Downer’s contribution to conservative politics in Australia if his departure is applauded by his critics. Various Romanian state writers on the occasion of Nicolai Ceaucescu’s 62nd birthday, 1979: Always fighting, always watching the man who is mounting guard on the country’s righteous rule. Her presence is designed to foster and to turn loving speech into facts. Albrechtsen On Downer: Downer has always preferred a robust free market of ideas. Start with his maiden speech in February 1985, where he called for national leadership based on a definable set of values, rather than a craving for popularity. And finish with his comments to The Australian at the weekend to mark his departure, where he criticised the current mood that favours symbolism over substance. Downer will go down in history as one of this nation’s best advocates of conservative principles. Downer may have been born into a prominent Liberal Party family — his father, Sir Alexander Downer was a former Liberal Party cabinet minister — but he developed a passion for politics and ideas that, if we are honest, rarely accompanies a silver spoon. Few were more effective in defending the Liberal Party and Howard Government policy. And for a former diplomat, Downer was refreshingly free of verbose, say-nothing diplomatic-speak. Various Romanian state writers on Ceaucescu: Comrade Ceausescu has become the symbol of the noblest ideals of freedom, peace, and progress for our party and for our people. Moreover, for all Communists and for all citizens, the presence at the head of our party and our state of comrade. Nicolae Ceausescu represents the secure guarantee that these ideals and aspirations will be put into practice; it represents the certitude of our continually ascendant road; it represents the firm conviction that the victories achieved up to now will be supplemented by other, even richer ones, that Romania will unabatedly continue along the path outlined by the party program, the path of socialism and communism. Albrechtsen On Downer: Perhaps that explains why the man who may have gone down in political history as the shortest-serving leader of the Liberal Party — for his eight month stint in 1994 at the age of 43 – will now be remembered as Australia’s longest serving foreign minister. And his achievements as foreign minister, pursuing Australia’s national interest at every step, make a mockery of Keating’s jibe. All of which stands him in good stead for his new role — the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Cyprus. But don’t for a moment think that Downer will be stepping aside from the wider debates in Australia. And thank goodness for that. Various Romanian state writers on Ceaucescu: Union and fraternity are written on the tricolor. But who amalgamates the will of the nation. And animates young and old alike? |
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9 Comments
Does that mean that I should assume that you are “with humour” …..now, John?
All,
I’m new to Crikey. This is the first article I clicked on. If this is what passes for comment & debate, I’m glad it’s a free trial.
Any journo whose sole occupation is to egage in boosterism for either side of polotics, is not worth the ink. I stopped read albrechtsen or the shanahans years ago.
I foolishly thought the comments would be about downer, not the booster. I’ll try eslswhere.
John,
It is hardly sarcasm if it is completely irrelevant to the subject material. There is no similarity between her column and the Romanian government propoganda to be able to make the connection.
Nic,
It might have gone past you. It is a thing called sarcasm. People with humour sometimes employ it.
and Nic….I am using it now.
Clearly Nic, your assessment of Janet Albrechtsen’s freedom and Independence as an individual, does not comment on the quality, relevance or anything approaching reality let alone balance of the content of her now infamous role and efforts to bludgeon Australian public opinion to support narrow, self interested, self serving, born to rule, pathetic excuses for representatives as those she writes in support of and agitates for. It might well be considered, that if honesty were considered to have relevance in public life, Albrechtsen has all the intent and purpose of Husein’s imagined WMDs.( That is to say, as imagined in the mind of Alexander Downer ).
I think all the noble intent in the world will amount to nothing for John in your efforts to help James evolve and join the dots when confronted with sarcastic irony.
On the topic of Orwellian state control. News Ltd…… Sean, I must contend has both sides of the dispatch box confined to the role of middle ranking serfs.
It must be great to be able to allow ones self to not only be told what to think, but how strongly to think it. One might even be able to remain blissful to the fact that our future survival as a species is being driven out by such self interested forces!!
JamesK
Stick with me…I can work with you on this…….you might learn something.
I think it’s about the only response you can make to propaganda concerning an unconvincing, appalling, effete hack of a politician with totally compromised values, by comparing the propaganda of Janet Albrechtsen to the ‘anonymous’ Romanian propaganda writers. (The Anglosphere has celebrity propagandists! Hooray!)
Basically, it’s Big Brother and 1984 on both sides of the aisle…
Janet Albrechtsen in a free and independent newspaper writing about a former government minister (whose party is now in opposition) is compared to anonymous unsourced Romanian state writers in a communist dictatorship writing about the leader of the government while he was still in power. I’m sorry, I cannot see any link between the two. What possible point is served by this garbage?
Think of it as adolescent humour Nic and it sorta makes some sense. From a sober perspective it is as you say “garbage” or perhaps puerile or properly quintessentially Guy Rundlesque. Welcome to Crikey.