STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
Political Paralysis Spreads to Australia?
By Staff News & Analysis - August 25, 2010

Australia's independent "kingmaker" MPs Wednesday called for detailed cost analysis of pre-election promises as they weigh up which party to put into power after polls failed to produce a winner. Tony Windsor, Bob Katter and Rob Oakeshott, suddenly in the spotlight after the closest election in decades, made the surprise demand as they prepared for talks with Prime Minister Julia Gillard and opposition leader Tony Abbott. … Windsor warned he would not support either party if he did not see enough "goodwill", potentially sending Australia's 14 million voters back to the polls in a matter of months. "If there is no goodwill displayed by both leaders and their party members, and if we can't see a future in terms of some longevity… of the parliament itself, I won't support either of them," he said. "There's a third option (other than Labor and the coalition), and that's another poll." The Australian Electoral Commission's latest running tally gives Labor 70 seats and the coalition 71, with both short of the 76 needed for a majority and relying on the independents and lone Greens MP Adam Bandt. – AFP

Dominant Social Theme: While democracy is messy, it is the best system that the West has got and we will muddle through.

Free-Market Analysis: We have spent time in the past several years analyzing the ongoing unraveling of the power elite's "democracy" meme. This of course is a widespread perception now; in America has even caused a new political movement – the Tea Party movement. Many people in America and throughout the West are increasingly dissatisfied with their political choices. The dominant social theme of course is that one must vote for those individuals or parties that best represent one's belief system and professional and personal preferences.

What is both odd and compelling about this political promotion is that it dovetails with the larger political programming that people in the West receive over time. One could make the argument that the entire academic system is geared to inculcate a certain set of beliefs. This is a pervasive system found not just in America or Britain but throughout Europe and in Australia too. The belief system, curiously, from what we can tell, is prevalent in Japan and China. The only place where it is not widely accepted is within Muslim society.

What is the belief structure? It is a somewhat complex one but can be summed up as follows: "People are destroying the planet and only global governance by wise men can ensure the future of the human race." We would argue this is the perhaps the biggest dominant social theme of all and it is one that every other power elite fear-based promotion stems from. It is the biggest meme because it encapsulates what may be the ultimate goal of the power elite, which is apparently to extend Western dominance (by banking entities) throughout the entire world, including Asia and the Muslim world as well.

In the West, the various sub-themes that connect to this largest-of-all promotion are also fear-based: Peak oil, global warming, Islam-as-terror-storm, over-population, looming economic chaos, widespread financial fraud, environmental degradation, plagues, hurricanes, etc. – all of these memes are presented by the powers-that-be as having only one solution, more and better and larger government.

One may accept the totality of the above promotional menu, but most people are apt to pick and choose. The media itself and various think tanks and the professional "thinking" class that includes professors, pundits and politicos provide yet another layer of promotion by organizing the elite's fear-based themes in opposition to one another. Thus, segmented and cleverly organized sub-meme menus are offered for Western consumption.

The organization tends to run along resource-based lines. Democrats and Labour often adopt those fear-based promotions that emphasize resource depletion and over-population. The antidote of course is seen as more government to prevent the depredations of the free-market and to ensure that "resources" are left untouched for future generations. Republicans and Tories seem to focus on defense issues and protection of the realm, often over resource issues. Exterior threats are seen as necessitating the modern Western state, which will provide the bulwark and (military) safety that will ensure the security of the nation and of the larger West itself.

The system is a clever one because no matter what concerns people have decided to hold, the solution ends up being more state control, and even global governance. This is why US politicians such as Ron Paul (R-Tex) are so threatening to the current process. Ron Paul and others increasingly are able to point out that the two-party system inevitably only calls for one solution – more state control. The Libertarian alternative, of course, emphasizes free-markets and less state control.

What we long ago predicted was that as the Internet itself began to expose the difficulties with government and governance in general, people would begin to get fed up with the statist alternatives that they were being offered and would begin to consider non-statist (free-market) ones. We didn't know what the result would be, but we think we are seeing the effects now.

What is increasingly clear to us is that people's increased disaffection for political choices is beginning to put the proverbial sand in the gearbox of modern Western democracy. In Britain and now in Australia, the choices have obviously proven increasingly difficult for the electorate to make. The results are "hung" governments that may have little mandate to govern. We would argue that something similar might take place in America during the upcoming Congressional elections in November.

After Thoughts

At some point, there may well be an upswelling of support generally for LESS government. If it catches hold, it would surely be a reversal of a trend that has been in place throughout the West for decades, if not a century or longer. It is no longer beyond the realm of possibility, we would argue.

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