The story is told of the founder of Dubai, Sheikh Rashid, who, when asked about the future of his country replied:
“My grandfather rode a camel. My father rode a camel. I drive a Mercedes. My son drives a Land Rover, and my grandson will drive a Land Rover.”
“But my great-grandson will ride a camel.”
“Why would that be?”, he was asked.
He replied, “Hard times create strong men, strong men create easy times, easy times create weak men, weak men create difficult times.”
Many great empires have risen and fallen within relatively brief periods of time – Persian, Trojan, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Ottoman, British – all have come and gone.
Most were not conquered by external enemies but rotted from within.
Members of what has been called ‘The Greatest Generation’ – those born between 1900 and 1930 – fought and won two World Wars, survived the Great Depression and defeated communism. They also created the most prosperous era (1950–1990) the world had ever known.
Strength gave rise to prosperity. With prosperity came easy times.
We know what came next because we are now living in those difficult times.
The foundation of all prosperity is energy, and it will be the destruction of our energy system in pursuit of so-called renewables that will result in our great-grandchildren riding camels.
But there is still time to change course.
It’s been said, ‘there are no bad soldiers, only bad generals’.
Or, ‘better a mob of sheep led by a lion, than a mob of lions led by a sheep’.
It has not gone unnoticed that the last few referendums – or referenda to be more precise – haven’t gone the way they were supposed to go. The Voice here in Australia, the Irish referendum on the role of women in the home and the makeup of the family, and of course Brexit, all went against what the prevailing government of the day wanted.
As we know, it was once the case that the people would demand that their governments pass new laws to fix some social ill.
These days, it is the government that demands that the people pass new laws, via referendum, to further the government’s agenda.
This does not bode well for the future of referendums.
As German playwright Bertolt Brecht once said, ‘Some party hack has decreed that the people had lost the government’s confidence. If that is the case, would it not be simpler if the government simply dissolved the people and elected another people?’
Don’t give them any ideas.
As the Irish referendum demonstrated, people are not yet ready to give up on the principle that the nuclear family – mum, dad and the kids – is the basic unit of society and the foundation of freedom.
As journalist Virginia Tapscott says, “The chasm between what the top end of town thought was good for women and what grassroots women actually want was wider than anyone could have predicted.”
It is why we at the Australian Family Party believe the family should be the state’s top priority, particularly when it comes to concerns over social media.
Interviewed by The Weekend Australian Magazine, American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, Professor of Ethical Leadership at the New York University Stern School of Business, says of the experiment with the smartphone:
“There’s never been anything this big that we’ve done to children. It is affecting the majority of children, not just in the United States, but in all the English-speaking countries and in Scandinavia. And while I cannot say that growing up on a smartphone is as bad as being lead poisoned or sent to work in a factory when you’re young, what I can say is that as a choice we made about how to raise our children thinking it was OK, this is the biggest blunder we have ever made.”
As this website has said many times, the family is the best place to build relationships and learn who to trust, who not to trust, who to communicate with, and who not to communicate with.
Let’s face it (pun intended), Facebook friends are not real friends, they are not family. Real family is mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.
The family is the one institution which can combat the lawlessness of the digital jungle and its predators. It is more powerful than the tech titans and the cyber-bullies and their algorithms.
It is time to strengthen the family – before those camels arrive.
Endnote 1: Dunstan by-election
At the South Australian State election held two years ago, Liberal Premier Steven Marshall defeated the Labor candidate Cressida O’Hanlon by just 260 votes.
At the recent by-election caused by the resignation of Steven Marshall, the same Labor candidate defeated the Liberal candidate Anna Finizio by 360 votes.
For a sitting Premier to garner just a handful more votes than a newbie candidate (out of more than 20,000 votes) says something.
There was essentially no difference between Labor’s result and the Liberals’ result between 2022 and 2024. Each dropped 3% to the Greens who increased their vote by 6% – from 13% to 19%.
Our candidate, Nicole Hussey, received 440 primary votes (2.0%).
The Australian Family Party’s primary aim in contesting the by-election and preferencing the Liberal candidate was to support Opposition Leader David Speirs for his commitment to traditional values of family, faith and freedom.
As we are fond of saying, ‘every bit helps’, hence our encouragement to others of like-mind to support an Opposition Leader of like-mind following four years of decidedly anti-family, faith and freedom rule.
A big thank you also goes out to all our volunteers who worked the early voting centre and on election day.
Endnote 2: Church & State Conference
For those who can’t get enough of this stuff, don’t forget to register for Dave Pellowe’s Church & State Conference in Hobart/Launceston/Perth/Adelaide. Register here.
Thank you for your support.