This is an edited extract from a dinner speech to the Liberal Club of the University of Melbourne, delivered on 10 December 2021
About a decade ago, I sat down with a group of men, all a few years older than me, for dinner. We had all gone to the same primary school, we had all come from old Catholic Democratic Labor Party (DLP) families, we had all found that we had wound up working in, or on, China and that we had become largely secular in our beliefs.
I’d brought along copies of my book Thunder From the Silent Zone: Rethinking China and gave each of them a copy before we ordered our meal. To my fascination, one of them remarked, as he took my book in hand, “Of course, it’s well-known that you’re an extreme right-winger.” I was astonished. “It is?!” I exclaimed. “Well known to whom? Based on what?”
He didn’t answer my questions. I went on: “I’m pretty much a John Stuart Mill kind of chap. If that makes me an extreme right-winger, we’re in serious trouble!”
I think we are in fairly serious trouble, and I think we need to define our terms rather carefully if we are to get out of that trouble.
Mill made less of an impression on me as a young man than he should have done, or perhaps would have done if I’d had a liberal upbringing. It was Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Trotsky, Sartre and Camus who revolutionised my adolescent thinking after leaving Catholic secondary school. I had not had a liberal upbringing. I’d had a conservative Catholic one and I threw it over at the age of 18...
Blog
Related Posts
10
Oct
It’s time to take a stand against far-right politics
Political operatives on the far right have long spoken about their ambition to shift the “Overton window”. The aim is to ...
03
Oct
Agnosticism the ‘only rational choice’
Editor’s note: If you would like to submit a letter for possible publication, please email it to editor@rationalist.com.au. See our ...
07
Sep
Charity for the rich
Editor’s note: If you would like to submit a letter for possible publication, please email it to editor@rationalist.com.au. See our ...
07
Aug
When all meaning is thrown overboard
Editor’s note: If you would like to submit a letter for possible publication, please email it to editor@rationalist.com.au. See our ...
05
Jul
Do religious schools still have a place in modern society?
Editor’s note: If you would like to submit a letter for possible publication, please email it to editor@rationalist.com.au. See our ...
27
Jun
Michel Foucault’s philosophy still speaks to a world saturated with social media
Forty years after his death in Paris on June 25, 1984, many of Michel Foucault’s once radical ideas now seem self-evident. Even critics...
24
Jun
How asking the right question opens the path to deep knowledge
According to all the advice on how to win friends and influence people, I should start this essay by explaining how the following words...
03
Jun
Are renewable energy projects destroying our environment?
Editor’s note: If you would like to submit a letter for possible publication, please email it to editor@rationalist.com.au. See our ...
07
May
Scomo and the ‘Rapture gang’
Editor’s note: If you would like to submit a letter for possible publication, please email it to editor@rationalist.com.au. See our ...
17
Apr
It takes courage to take on trans issue
Editor’s note: If you would like to submit a letter for possible publication, please email it to editor@rationalist.com.au. See our ...
22
Mar
The proponents of post-liberalism
What is post-liberalism? That is no simple question, though the simplest responses are given by those who identify with it as a movemen...
11
Mar
People with ‘barrow to push’ on child transgenderism should butt out
Editor’s note: If you would like to submit a letter for possible publication, please email it to editor@rationalist.com.au. See our ...