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The Gospel According To Wind And Sun!

Lyle Shelton is planning to join the ranks of politicians by standing for the Australian Conservatives. As his leader, Cory Bernardi, told us, “Lyle brings a wealth of political and campaign experience having headed up the no campaign last year that saw millions of Australians stand up against political correctness.”

Now, I would have thought that running one losing campaign doesn’t constitute a wealth of experience. But then I also thought those voting “No” against marriage equality were voting against the idea of same sex marriage. Apparently not. They were voting against “political correctness”.

The anti-PC brigade has always confused me. On one hand, they argue that it’s stifling free speech and people should be allowed to say what they like. On the other, they argue that people shouldn’t be allowed to criticise people who are making statements that are “politically incorrect”. Apparently, I should be allowed to call you names but if you say that I’m offending you, you shouldn’t be allowed to speak.

Similarly, I find Shelton’s latest tweet a little perplexing:

Apart from the inconsistency of someone standing for Australian Conservatives using the American “sidewalk”, I find the concept of “counselling” a rather euphemistic term. Are these people trained counsellors who will be helping people clarify their thoughts about a pregnancy? Or will is there another agenda? After all, Lyle suggests that the “counselling” is “life-saving” which tends to suggest that it’s not going to end with: “Well, so long as you’re happy you’ve made the right decision. Good luck with the procedure!”

Of course, we could accept Shelton at his word and agree that respectful free speech and counselling should be allowed everywhere. For example, while I’m not a member of the “radical Greens left”, I am one of those who thinks that we should be doing something to help save mankind…

I specifically didn’t say “save the planet” because I suspect that the planet doesn’t need saving. It’s the humans – and a few other species – that’ll be wiped out. The planet will continue just fine and the cockroaches will adapt and become the rulers of the earth.  Although, some may argue that the cockroaches have already taken over…

Ok, that may be a little controversial. And not just because I said “mankind” which is politically incorrect.

Anyway, Lyle has tweeted in the past that he intends to be “relentless against the Green religion”.

So, if being Green is a religion, well, I may not qualify as one its acolytes. However, if we take Lyle at his word, then maybe all those attending churches, synagogues and mosques are in need of some intervention. After all, standing outside as people attend and trying to give them life-saving sidewalk counselling could be considered in their best interests.

I’m not advocating harassment or bullying. Just respectful singing of “Kumba Ya”, “We Will Not Be Moved” and “Jesus Had Two Fathers And He Was OK”, as well as the odd bit of respectful free speech where they call out to Lyle telling him that he’ll burn in hell for his refusal to embrace Green ideology.

Surely he’d have no problem with that. Surely he’d consider any attempt to stop it just as unfair as the exclusion zones around abortion clinics.

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21 comments

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  1. babyjewels10

    Lyle Shelton and Cory Bernardi. What a couple of complete nongs.

  2. jai Ritter

    I can’t even take this lunatic seriously.

  3. paul walter

    Hot air and sunstroke.

  4. Ricardo29

    I hope Lyle’s election campaign is as successful as his mustering of the “No” vote was.

  5. Bellissimo111

    I think Lyle is a shameless attention-seeker and confused hypocrite – he should make a really super MP in the current parliament.

  6. johno

    Lyle is a sad case, that is for sure. Seem to have a big chip on his shoulder re greens.

  7. Miriam English

    Lyle Shelton is an idiot. Apparently he’s lost his website and is accusing anti-religious forces for doing it. It turns out that the twit broke the rules by registering it in someone else’s name and it was cancelled for that reason.

    I never understood why some Christians seem to hate the natural world and align themselves instead with polluting coal and other dirty technologies. That always struck me as weird. They believe the natural world is directly created by their god, so surely that should lead them to study the natural world obsessively and do everything they could to protect it. Instead, their actions indicate they are either hypocrites, or fools… or both.

    Green religion? No. But if it did ever somehow become a religion it would still be better than the anti-life filth that Shelton and his halfwit fellows promote.

  8. Steve Flora

    Hear, hear, Miriam English !!

  9. LOVO

    Lyle, like ALL right wing snake oil salesmen, is in ‘it’ for the money. Christianity is his ‘bottle of Dr’s Good’…he’s an charlatan in emperors clothes….he’s the sorta bloke that needs an 150 m exclusion zone put around him for the sake of Australia’s sanity. 😤
    One wonders why, how and where do idiots like him come from….he is truly Bizzaro.

  10. Lotharsson

    Yep, Lyle also repeatedly told a bunch of porkies during the marriage equality process, even after they were pointed out. (I got blocked from the ACL Facebook page after repeatedly pointing out that some of his positions seemed to clash with the Bible, with the porkies being the most obvious for violating one of the Ten Commandments.)

    So he’s not an actual follower of Christ, and neither are the two archbishops who repeatedly made similar false claims, which means that “he’s in it for the money and/or the power and/or the influence” looks quite plausible.

  11. Miriam English

    The eagerness of religious extremists to lie for Jesus (or Mohammad, or Krishna, or Shiva, or Buddha) has always baffled me.

  12. johno

    Not only all of the above he is also very unaustralian for using the term sidewalk over footpath.

  13. Terence Mills

    So, Cori Bernardi believes that a vote in favour of equality before the law for all citizens is an exercise in political correctness.

    Tony Abbott believes that a Vice Chancellor standing up for academic autonomy and independence is an exercise in political correctness.

    Can we please define what exactly is political correctness as I am confused !

  14. Lotharsson

    Terence, political correctness is anything that doesn’t kowtow to existing privilege and power, and is therefore inconvenient to those in possession of that privilege or power 😉

    And/or:

    Political correctness is any thing, behaviour or value exhibited by anyone EXCEPT one’s fellow travellers that can be demonised in propaganda designed to rile up low-information/reactionary right-wing voters 😉

  15. DrakeN

    Terence, it would be quite lovely, but extremely surprising, if politicians would ever demonstrate political correctness.
    The use of “politically correct” was always derogatory, a way to disparage conscience and empathy.
    Similarly SJW, Social Justice Warrior, as used to demean as weak and as ‘losers’ those who wish to create a more socially responsible society from the adversarial ‘dog eat dog’ morass which currently exists in Western “civilisation”.
    Such expressions, signifying the diametric opposite of what the words actually mean, are typically used to massage language in order to serve the ignoble purposes of the abusers.
    They become ‘memes’, undermining attempts to create equity by those opposed to the domination of society by the avaricious and power hungry cohorts which currently control us.

  16. Vikingduk

    As you say, Rossleigh, the planet doesn’t need us at all, something the functioning idiots fail to realise. It is us that need a healthy functioning planet, not to continue on our insane fluckwittery, but to sooner rather than later realise we are just another species of animal with the ability to be caretakers rather than destroyers.

    My cynicism, my sadness, says to me that chaos and destruction will happen long before we wake the fluck up. That we so willingly trash this beautiful planet, that so many destroyers, hypocrites, religious ideologues and out and out arseholes have the major media promoting their agenda never ceases to astound me.

    Nevertheless, we go on with what remains of hope and perhaps eventually realise we are the caretakers and not the destroyers.

    Make art not war.

  17. LOVO

    I’ve always viewed the term ‘politically correct’ to mean … ‘being responsible.’

  18. Peter F

    For centuries indigenous people lived on this continent in a simple way in balance with nature. I expect this may have been imposed by nature itself. White man turns up and believes that nature will accept his attempt at domination for the next few centuries. What fools we are.

  19. Miriam English

    Peter F, the original settlers here were no less fools than the later European ones. Their less technologically powered civilisation meant that they destroyed the country more slowly, but they did damage it deeply. Using fire over thousands of years to alter the landscape discarded the nutrients as smoke instead of letting them fertilise the ground. As a result Australia has some of the weakest soils in the world. There is some evidence that the arid land in Australia’s center was, if not created, then worsened by destruction of forests around the border of the continent (see the conveyor-belt theory of inland rainfall). Also, being normal, destructive humans, they did what humans everywhere do on reaching a new land: they exterminated all the megafauna and most of the smaller species.

    Yes, the white-skinned invaders have done much worse, stripping the country of most of its remaining forest in an incredibly short time and poisoning air and water. We are monsters. But the darker-skinned invaders were no angels either. They were only less destructive because they didn’t have the technology. Now indigenous people go fishing in aluminium motorboats, and hunt with motor vehicles and rifles, ravaging the wildlife like they never could because they have the technology.

    Please understand I’m not specifically blaming dark-skinned people. I am absolutely against all racism. I am saying they are just like all humans. We are a slightly crazy species. We need to learn how to control that insanity, not pretend there were any humans exempt from it, living in balance with nature.

  20. LOVO

    One wonders if’n todays world is, indeed, in balance. …though, perhaps, an evolving balance. … a neo-balance, if you will….a balance that doesn’t include..us.
    But, hey, thats nature for ya

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