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This is the Mark Latham column from Tuesdays Telegraph I referred to yesterday. Brilliant in its cut through. Below is a cut paste of the cogent bits and the full column below that…(no link available)

“….The British conservative commentator and Harvard history professor Niall Ferguson has provided a neat description of the modern political divide. Writing in The Australian two weekends ago, he described himself as “a fully paid-up member of the rootless cosmopolitan class” — a global citizen, holding two passports, speaking three languages and owning four houses, “none of them in the town where (he was) born”. Leftist elites want a world in which every citizen speaks and thinks exactly like them. On the other side of the divide, “seething with resentment against us”, Ferguson opined, “are the citizens of the nation state. You have one passport, if that.

This divide, the global elites versus local try-hards, goes a long way to explaining recent developments in politics, such as the Brexit vote, the Trump phenomenon in the US and the re-emergence of Hansonism in Australia. The try-hards feel like they are losing the battle for freedom and cultural autonomy against the elites.
For the first time, Western nations are being subjected to widespread social engineering, much of it publicly funded. The problem with progressivism of this kind is its moral vanity. Instead of creating a society of equal opportunity, where people are encouraged to become more self-sufficient and free thinking, Leftist elites believe the only nation worth having is one in which every citizen speaks and thinks like them. Having lost every conventional debate for the past 40 years on economic, foreign and social policy, the Left, cleverly, has worked out it can run cultural propaganda through the institutions of government and mass media.
To live a suburban or regional life today is to feel hounded by the weight of political correctness. People who work hard and obey the law are reluctant to speak truthfully about the things around them for fear of being labelled bigots. Decent people are being made to feel indecent.

For the non-elites living in flatland suburbs and regions, their only weapon in defending their freedoms is their vote. And it’s been wasted on civility conservatives. That’s why voters have turned to rough-nuts like Trump and the Brexit brigade. The rougher they sound, the more politically incorrect they become, the more they rip and tear at the Left and Right-wing centres of establishment power, the more the public believe they will honour their promises and take to the elites with a big stick…”

FULL COLUMN BELOW

The British conservative commentator and Harvard history professor Niall Ferguson has provided a neat description of the modern political divide. Writing in The Australian two weekends ago, he described himself as “a fully paid-up member of the rootless cosmopolitan class” — a global citizen, holding two passports, speaking three languages and owning four houses, “none of them in the town where (he was) born”. Leftist elites want a world in which every citizen speaks and thinks exactly like them. On the other side of the divide, “seething with resentment against us”, Ferguson opined, “are the citizens of the nation state. You have one passport, if that. You hate the few words of French you learned at school. And you live within driving distance of your parents or your children.” That’s a good enough description of my life, and millions of other Australians who live by the practicalities of raising a family, cooking our own meals and taking pride in the appearance of our homes and the orderliness of our existence. You could say, we’re local and we’re proud of it. Ferguson, by contrast, is a perpetual tourist, even in his own house. My idea of a good journey is to drive over the hill into the district where I live, knowing I’ll sleep in my own bed that night. This divide, the global elites versus local try-hards, goes a long way to explaining recent developments in politics, such as the Brexit vote, the Trump phenomenon in the US and the re-emergence of Hansonism in Australia. The try-hards feel like they are losing the battle for freedom and cultural autonomy against the elites. Not surprisingly, they are looking outside the two-party-system for saviours and solutions. Think of it this way: Western nations have never been more affluent and technologically advanced. In theory, this should be a golden age of freedom, as self-reliant citizens go about their business without the hectoring presence of big government and identity politics. Yet the opposite is true. The elites, mainly from the Left, have misused their institutional power. Everywhere we look in the education system and media (social and mainstream), so-called progressives are advancing their agenda for open borders, ethnic nihilism, language control, segregationist “safe spaces” and gender indoctrination programs such as Safe Schools and Respectful Relationships. These are relatively recent issues, placed on the public agenda not because society has changed for the worse, but because the Left wants each of us to change, to live our lives in their image. For the first time, Western nations are being subjected to widespread social engineering, much of it publicly funded. The problem with progressivism of this kind is its moral vanity. Instead of creating a society of equal opportunity, where people are encouraged to become more self-sufficient and free thinking, Leftist elites believe the only nation worth having is one in which every citizen speaks and thinks like them. Having lost every conventional debate for the past 40 years on economic, foreign and social policy, the Left, cleverly, has worked out it can run cultural propaganda through the institutions of government and mass media. Its mantra is to rant against “white male privilege”, ignoring the evidence of hundreds of thousands of disadvantaged white males. For the average person, this rhetoric is horrifying. To live a suburban or regional life today is to feel hounded by the weight of political correctness. People who work hard and obey the law are reluctant to speak truthfully about the things around them for fear of being labelled bigots. Decent people are being made to feel indecent. Hillary Clinton has called them a “basket of deplorables”. What should have been a new era of freedom has become an age of repression. In the past, when faced with the authoritarianism of the Left, people turned to the major institutions of conservatism for protection. But these are failing on every front. In the US, for instance, the foreign policy/defence establishment has fouled its own nest with its overreach in Iraq and the resultant rise of IS. Wall Street is still in disgrace following the global financial crisis. The big banks in Australia are regarded with similar distrust. Internationally, the media’s reputation for fair, evidence based reporting has disintegrated. With the avalanche of bias against Trump’s candidacy, we are witnessing the public death of independent journalism. Right-wing politicians have been equally ineffective. They have been playing by the old rules of public civility — thinking that well-rounded vowels, genteel speech and calls for restraint are enough to halt the Left’s cultural revolution. In the fight for freedom, the anti-Trump Republican forces in the US, flag-bearers like Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, John McCain and Marco Rubio, have been as useful as pockets in your underpants. Malcolm Turnbull is no different in this country, an ineffectual, pontificating windbag. Even Tony Abbott, a selfdescribed junkyard dog conservative, appeared muted during his time as prime minister. Despite his clear mandate to repeal the anti-free speech 18C provision, he went to water. Then there’s Mike Baird, who wanted to add to the age of cultural repression by making dog racing in NSW a criminal offence. These are what I call ‘‘civility conservatives’’, who campaign for liberty in the style of a gentlemanly character wandering aimlessly around a Jane Austen novel. For the non-elites living in flatland suburbs and regions, their only weapon in defending their freedoms is their vote. And it’s been wasted on civility conservatives. That’s why voters have turned to rough-nuts like Trump and the Brexit brigade. The rougher they sound, the more politically incorrect they become, the more they rip and tear at the Left and Right-wing centres of establishment power, the more the public believe they will honour their promises and take to the elites with a big stick. And I for one cheer them on. Not for their entire policy platform, but for the bold, glorious middle finger they flicking at the Niall Fergusons and Hillary Clintons of the world. The politics of insurgency has never been so popular.