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STAR OF BETHLEHEM ALWAYS OUTSHINES HUMAN FOLLY News today that the forty eight hour “crackdown” by the Australian and New Zealand police on alcohol abuse in public has produced numerous arrests, and injuries to 29 police. I have limited sympathy. Having experienced police brutality at first hand in New South Wales three years ago, having been mishandled and degraded by thugs female and male who should not be wearing police uniforms, I shed few tears for police injured on the job, unless the officer is clearly trying to prevent serious and obvious harm to society and the miscreant clearly harming someone else or property (the Glenn McNally tragedy for example). The police are heavily armed with guns, tasers and capsicum spray and usually working in pairs if not in a pack, with powerful cars and other vehicles. By contrast, drunken revellers merely lolling about in the street are weakened, tired, and unable to think straight or exercise physical coordination. As crimes, many instances of public drunkenness are best solved not by good footage of chasing criminals and bundling them into vans, but by deeper surgery to society. Why do (mostly) young people drink to excess especially round Christmastide? There is an atmosphere of “term’s finished”, and all normal yearlong behaviour in society is suspended. Is this really a good message to intensify? Have we not reached saturation point on shopping and Santa Claus and priapism (on or off the golf course), and enforced jollity (which is achieved very quickly and artificially with large quantities of spirits and beer) - all of which tend to end in exhaustion and tears and melancholy? Education levels in white/Western societies are now so low that we have a large underclass unable to contain their emotions, usually violent ones, for want of any abiding discipline running through family and workplace lives. You cannot expect the police to straighten all of this out, particularly when magistrates give higher sentences for rape than for manslaughter, and tend to let people off altogether for being female, famous or supposedly frail. There is widespread public support for the reintroduction of the birch, a public whipping, for a lot of criminal offences today. To punish, for example, cruelty to animals, old people and children, for graffiti, for stealing and for white collar embezzlement. It’s not because we are brutal or retributive for fun, we do not know what else to do to bring society back to where crimes that were once rare, be rare again, instead of happening daily in our cities. We do not need more foolishly directed “kindness and sympathy” towards the wicked when the unfortunate in society are less than properly cared for. Public drunkenness could easily be recriminalised, It would save all this ridiculous posturing by PC’s darling, the American-born Premiere of NSW, Mrs Keneally, trying to act tough; by police chiefs trying to shore up their own jobs and divert attention from the serious troubles in the force (particularly the failure and quitting rates of many policewomen and men); a thousand cops on the streets, a legion of German Shepherds, doesn’t that make you a BIT nervous, doesn’t it bring out the Stauffenberg or Kolbe in you, never mind the Bonhoeffer so beloved by weak-faced Rudd- doesn’t it make you realise we are submitting to dictatorship every time we get sucked into a “police crackdown” , a “lockdown”, or a “zero tolerance” approach to things that, rather, need to be solved by long term planning and reversal of “progressive liberal education” and “re-education of society”? Any fool of a politician or police officer can arrest a thousand people or issue a thousand infringement notices, it does not mean crime, or alcohol consumption, is anywhere near under control. Very well, we could isolate the worst instances of drunkenness and punish people swiftly and hard by birching them, for damaging property or hurting other people after drinking too much. But consider what is the proximate cause of this drunkenness; do we need pubs open at all hours? They could well close at midnight across the state. By that hour, there is every cause for reasonable people to be home and having a quiet nightcap. Even chamomile tea! In fact do we need Christmas parties in their current form? They seem to produce regular misery for some, such as high profile and talented radio host Chris Smith, now confessing to a bipolar alcoholic personality, although it is hard to say how much damage he did to anyone but himself. We put alcohol and blonde bimbos all over the entertainment scene and we wonder why some people use both for quick, greedy, desperate recreation. Where are the holders of Responsible Service of Alcohol certificates on these occasions? Where are the inspectors from the Department of Racing and Gaming? We ban innocent toy golliwogs, but not tasteless displays of and invitations to excessive public consumption of food, alcohol and “entertainment”. We must bring reasonable consumption of alcohol back into family life, so that children learn that a glass of beer or a glass of wine or a gin and tonic are good and normal things for responsible adults to enjoy in moderation- but that everything in life done to excess tends to produce harm. Make families, not politically correct schoolmarms, educate the children of this society again. Just as they should do with sex and woodwork and homecrafts and hobbies. Whatever you take from its rightful place in the home and put in the public domain, will cause confusion and mayhem ultimately. It goes almost without saying that Schoolies Week on the Gold Coast should be closed down too, choked off on grounds of simple bad example to young people and incitement to do things they will have plenty of time to learn about at university or in their first years of the workforce (when they are paying for their own pleasures and mistakes). It seems that a lot of weak parents fund, equip and almost condone their children’s participation in Schoolies Week no matter the consequences. Let school-leavers help with fruit harvesting on the land instead. We are chronically short of labour where it is really needed, in agriculture; let us educate young people to provide it at a low cost to our farmers to whom they owe so much. Police would then be freed to do more important jobs, solving existing crimes - not mopping up new ones. Or is the money the youngsters bring to the Gold Coast just too good not to catch? Some people are finding refuge in alcohol partly because of collective depression, in other words, modern life is just so oppressive to them every day. The Government massively interfering in their lives, legislating, threatening, bullying, fining, taxing, all in the name of creating a “fairer” and more “just” society. No matter how many statutes and police officers, we have even more children out of control, wives and partners unsupportive, bosses and work colleagues psychologically hostile or potentially treacherous, Australian work prospects for many about to be damaged by carbon tax proposals. It is little wonder some people pour themselves more drink than is good for them, to forget- for a few hours - the things that are deeply wrong with society. We need a massive return to tradition. Traditions of saving, of quiet preparation for Christmas, in reflection as much as in deed, making presents instead of buying them, expecting nothing and giving as much as possible, not confusing Advent with Christmas itself, not confusing Santa with Jesus, not confusing human vanity with God’s immeasurable power and generosity about to be given to us and celebrated in the Twelve Days of Christmas. Abandon anything which threatens your quiet and humble love of God, your peace and tranquillity, your time with the people who matter to you, and the community around you. We do not need police and dogs, any more than the Holy Land needed Roman legionaries cataloguing, cruelling, census-recording and controlling two thousand years ago, in the midst of the Christmas Story. Gather the people who are dear to you and recount that Story. A quiet glass of cheer may be raised by all together to welcome Him, cradled in that poor but Peace-giving Manger, into our own homes.
Happy Christmas. 14TH DECEMBER AD 2009 |
Editorial