Freedom for all people
THERE are things I wish for my children and grandchildren.
Like a world where the forests are green and the whales and elephants and all the beasts are thriving.
Where every representative seeks the common good with sincerity.
Where there is justice: crime is punished and honesty is rewarded.
Where unborn humans are treasured more than cane toads: where politicians do not applaud laws that allow babies to be sliced up and discarded.
Where aged persons are lovingly cared for: where politicians do not congratulate themselves on laws permitting coercion into doing themselves away.
Where no one need starve or be outcast, yet those who work hard or do well are not demonised or vilified … or plundered.
Where an adult can identify as what they like, but it is entirely their own affair and everyone else doesn’t need to celebrate it, the dictionaries are not rewritten, or birth certificates falsified and all amenities reconstructed.
Where it is not an issue if there are women’s hospitals, or prisons or shelters or sporting teams, and business is not threatened for being impartial.
Where people can believe in God and worship in peace. Where those who subscribe to moral codes or creeds for the most part live like it.
Where those without their faith can still respect it, not curse, detract, shout down, spit on or mock them, let alone round them up for “reeducation”.
Where children are blithe and happy, not bullets in a war of attrition nor prisoners of every minority with a peeve.
Where freedom is priceless. And that may mean freedom to express any viewpoint, however distasteful. Just so as what is said will be respectably and decently worded. Because false ideas can be debated and refuted. But who decides what can be said if there is censorship? Only an unelected, smug minority. Or the commissars, or the ayatollahs.
Where every person gets treated equally and in accordance with their character, without regard to their complexion or accent. If they have integrity good, and if not, then not.
Where the internet is a beacon for truth, not a megaphone for bedlam. Well, there is more could be said.
I think Australia once used to be one country where many of these ideas were commonplace, in fact where many of these things happened to some degree. But not any more.
Who agrees?
ROGER DALTON,
North Ward.