Sunday May 8 2016
Greeting me first thing yesterday morning on Facebook was a comment by a friend on one of my posts:
John, despite me being a lefty, I’m waiting for you to say something positive about the opposition. Surely there must be something. Try and be more non-biased, please.
I reply:
Andrea there was a time when the LNP had some soul. People like Fraser and a few others still carried the residue of true Liberalism. The small ‘L’ types. It was a time when I thought that losing an election wasn’t the end of the world. That if you believed in democracy then you had to respect the other party’s right to win.
However Abbott took them so far right that I cannot see any redeeming features what so ever. I am sitting thinking about policy areas and I cannot think of anything positive to say. Fact is I cannot think of one positive thing to say about The Coalition. They have governed abominably.
Their denial of climate change appalls and infuriates me and their opposition to equality of opportunity in anything and everything simply disgusts me.
I’m sorry to disappoint. I will try harder because I am not generally speaking biased. At least I don’t think I am. Perhaps it’s just that I love my country too much and it shows.
She replies:
To be honest I agree with a lot of what you say, but I’m trying to also look for the good in the bad and bad in the good, if you know what I mean. So I guess what I’ve seen of your posts has been looking a little like the flip-side of a Murdoch-type Liberal bias. However like you said you’ve tried hard to find something positive in the Libs and haven’t been able to find anything, so that’s fair enough.
I’m upset enough to take Zach (our dog) for a longer walk than normal and do some critical self-analysis.
Music has always held a special place in my heart. I have a collection of over 600 CDs and 150 live concert DVDs. I play piano (badly) and have composed a number of songs. I have no bias to any particular genre of music and appreciate it all.
Books are like children to me and I have a family of hundreds. I treat them with a fatherly love but I show no bias or favour to any. I have read the political thoughts of Hasluck, Menzies, Howard and Costello and many others on the right. Again my reading has no bias. Fiction and text books comfortably interchange.
In the AFL I support two teams, so I could hardly be called biased. And I have played a variety of sports.
But of course my friend is referring to ‘Political Bias.’ So It got me thinking about, what ‘Political Bias’ actually is.
I would say it is either an inability or unwillingness to want to understand an opposing point of view.
In my defence on that count I plead not guilty. I have studied conservative ideology and rejected it. I have studied current conservative policy from Climate Change to the NBN and rejected it all. Not because of any biased view, but rather because I have studied each on its merits. A biased person rejects everything out of hand and is incapable of objective reasoning. Anyway I will let others judge. Who knows, next thing someone will say I’m a communist and that Karl Marx’s grave is a communist plot.
My thought for the day.
“Question everything. What you see, what you feel, what you hear and what you are told until you understand the truth of it. Faith is the residue of things not understood and can never be a substitute for fact”.
PS. It all starts tomorrow. If I’m biased let me know.
