In defense of freedom, democracy and civilised humanity is an increasingly intolerant Western world.
I am a poet, a Word Artist.
I consider Patrick J Buchanan the world’s greatest living writer.
I offer this brilliant metaphor alone as proof: “To save Americans from contracting a virus that may kill 1-3% of those infected, we have put America on a ventilator.”
What will we lose and what can we save?
Shutdowns are man’s way to fight a disease.
God Bless American Freedom.
And save us from us.
Geoff Fox, Down Under, 14 April, 2020
Happy Birthday Tulsi.
Late on America’s Easter Sunday, I say that I miss your candidacy.
It should have been a resurrection for your party.
You gave the Democrats what my political heroes Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul gave and give the Republicans: uncompromising modern anti-war integrity.
But only a tiny number of Democrat primary voters embraced your presidential bid.
Why has the party of Bobby and Jack Kennedy become a party for Hawks?
I wish you well, Tulsi.
Peace.
Geoff Fox , Down Under, Easter Sunday,, 2 p.m. Hawaian time.
God Bless Donald Trump.
This pandemic is the great test of his leadership and he knows it.
He is stating facts that other leaders do not have the courage to articulate.
“Staying at home causes death too.”
“We’ve got to get our country healed.”
“Our country wasn’t built to be shut down.”
POTUS 45 has an incredibly difficult job and monumentally hard decisions to make.
Will Western economies survive the wait for a vaccine?
Will the countries which achieve herd immunity first, at the cost of many deaths, be the strongest countries in the world?
Only God knows for certain what is best.
Human beings just do the best we can.
We are not perfect but there are simple facts we cannot ignore:
And death precedes any resurrection.
Geoff Fox, Easter Sund.ay, 2020, Down Under
All around the western world, the established way of living is threatened with collapse.
Such a collapse would not be directly caused by this virus which kills many mostly elderly people. (As we know the virus now.)
Social collapse is threatening us because of the human reaction of fear to that virus.
Human fear of death, especially agonizing death.
Unable to breathe. Like Jesus on the cross.
This understandable human fear has lead people en masse to act as if, by stopping working, they can stop the virus.
They cant. Not based on what we know now.
Viruses are part of life. We live with them. And sometimes die from them.
If people cannot accept a level of death which creates herd immunity, then the only method available to current human health care to stop a virus like this is an effective vaccine widely available. That usually takes years.
What would Jesus do?
I dont know.
What did Jesus do when faced with the prospect of death?
He accepted it.
At The Last Supper, no attempt was made by twelve people to detain Judas and prevent the betrayal which Jesus knew was coming. Jesus accepted his fate. He told Judas to do what Judas was meant to do.
Jesus carried his own Cross in agony with failing strength for as long as he could. He accepted his fate.
He accepted death.
How many people now show the courage and integrity of Republican Dan Patrick in Texas?
As a 62 year old man for whom contracting Corona-virus would mean a 3% risk of death, based on what we know now, I say this:
I want to work.
I want more people to return to work.
I fear that the western way of life cannot afford or survive months and months of so many people not working.
Governments cant afford the economic support people want under a harsh regime of so-called “social distancing”. (It is not social. It is anti-social.)
Economic collapse of The West means collapse of societies based, historically, on the values Jesus died for.
That is too big a risk to take.
Too high a price to pay.
Death is a part of our God-given life.
True passion for life demands that people learn from the passion of death.
It wasn’t easy for Jesus and it wont be easy for us.
Sometimes choosing life means choosing death.
Geoff Fox, Good Friday, 2020
I make this statement as the proud grandson of two distinguished Christian theologians, Professor Arthur Clampett Fox and senior Presbyterian leader, Rev Julian Ralph Blanchard, who finished life in the Uniting Church.
I make this statement because I know how badly justice and western traditions have been trashed in Daniel Andrews’ Victoria.
I make this statement as a poet proud of the power of metaphor in the English language which I love.
Cardinal George Pell was crucified.
Socialist Left misleader Daniel Andrews MUST resign.
Geoff Fox, 8th April, 2020, The Police State Of Maribyrnong
In almost all fields of human endeavour important in my life, freedom and discipline are inseparable partners for success.
Without freedom, both creativity and the ability to assess the truth are dead.
Without discipline, there is none of the strength and perseverance needed to protect freedom and develop its benefits.
So while this world is rushing to say “Please Stay Safe”,
I feel impelled to add, “Please Stay Free.
So we can stay strong.”
Geoff Fox, 6th April, 2020, Terra Nullius
“The only thing new on this earth is the history you don’t know.” – Harry Truman
The Marshall Plan is famous as an act of extraordinary generosity from America which restored prosperity to a war ravaged Europe.
It was signed into law by President Truman on the 3rd of April 1948.
The plan was conceived and put in place after the damage was done and the situation had been fully assessed.
It worked.
Now we see people in a health crisis calling it a war and spending enormous sums of money to prevent as yet unknown damage and simultaneously ceasing the economic activities which could generate the income to pay for what is being spent.
Does that order of doing things and that way of speaking of things make any sense?
What makes more sense to me as words for reflection by all of us now are these words of George C Marshall himself:
“The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it.”
“A political problem thought of in military terms eventually becomes a military problem.”
The more I reflect on The Greatest Generation, the more I believe this modern world still has a lot to learn.
Lest We Forget
Geoff Fox, 3rd April, 2020, Down Under
Woodrow Wilson is considered a father of globalism. His own presidency did not end well.
He was elected as America’s 28th president (POTUS 28) in 1912 on a platform called The New Freedom advocating limited government.
In 1916, Wilson won a second term with the campaign slogans, “He kept us out of war.” and “America First”. He swept the South and the West (except Oregon) but lost the Northeast and most of the Midwest.
In the space of five months, by April 2nd 1917, German attacks on American and international shipping lead POTUS 28 to ask Congress to declare war on Germany, saying:
“The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make.”
The declaration passed 373 to 50 in The House and 82 to 6 in The Senate.
In 1919, Wilson spoke words about World War One heroes, which make for an interesting comparison with the following generation’s achievements in World War Two, “The Americans who went to Europe to die are a unique breed…. (They) crossed the seas to a foreign land to fight for a cause which they did not pretend was peculiarly their own, which they knew was the cause of humanity and mankind. These Americans gave the greatest of all gifts, the gift of life and the gift of spirit.”—speech at Suresnes Cemetery, May 30, 1919.
Wilson’s presidency ended with the President himself in poor health (but still hoping for a third term), the treaty of Versailles (making World War Two inevitable), American GDP falling and a constitutional amendment imposing nationwide Prohibition.
Idealism doesn’t always work.
What price freedom?
Geoff Fox, 2nd April, 2020, Down Under
Is this going to be the month in which The West locks itself into an economically and therefore socially suicidal path of lock-downs?
Or will the savage restrictions now being placed on people’s lives across the world produce health results better than the negative consequences?
I dont pretend to have the answers but I want things to be described accurately.
The coronavirus health crisis is not a war.
It is a pandemic which appears to threaten mostly elderly lives.
Of course we want to save the lives of our oldest and often wisest people if we can.
But earlier eras had a much better sense than many modern people of the extent to which Western ideals of democracy and freedom are worthy of sacrifice.
Too few people are now showing the courage of Dan Patrick.
Boris Johnson’s attempt to speak of the value of herd immunity has not survived.
In my eyes, Donald Trump deserves huge credit for admitting that the character of his people is suited to freedom not lock-down.
Any rational human action has to include knowing who we are.
Our future is no joke. Our culture could be at stake.
Can we at least have a full and open discussion of these ideas?
For my own part, as a sixty-two year old man, I state unequivocally that I would rather take a greater risk of dying from corona-virus in a free society than finish life in a country where fear shuts down freedom or in an economy destroyed if too many people stay locked too long in their homes.
Just saying what I think. Do I still have that right?
Who else feels the same?
Geoff Fox, 1 p.m., 1st April, 2020, Down Under
Dwight D Eisenhower died on March 28, 41 years ago.
Now, when some people are describing a health crisis involving the deadly coronavirus as a war, perhaps we should ponder some of the great general and two-term president’s thoughts on war and on how people should live:
“War settles nothing.”
“I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”
“We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.”
“The purpose is clear. It is safety with solvency. The country is entitled to both.”
“The problem in defence is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.”
“We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.”
“Only Americans can hurt America.”
As a 62 year old man in Australia, I am more scared of living in a country plunged into a great depression by worldwide desperate spending now, than I am of the approximately 3% chance that coronavirus would kill me, if I catch it.
I salute the honesty of Texas Lt Governor Dan Patrick and for his stand on this question.
Geoff Fox, 28th March, 2020, Down Under
FREEDOM, DEMOKRASI AND CIVILISED HUMANITY 