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Britain, Stop Culturally Appropriating Marx

Written by:
10 May 2018
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Okay, this might be a little crazy, but we think we’ve stumbled across a solution to the record debt forecast in Tuesday’s budget: Cut. Spending. Check out what just a 1% cut in federal spending across the board would do to the national debt over the next 4 years:
The 2018-19 federal budget released on Tuesday hit record levels of debt ($561 billion), taxes ($473 billion), and spending ($484 billion). As Daniel Wild told Simon Breheny on a live broadcast on the IPA’s Facebook page immediately after the budget was delivered, “if you want to deliver permanent and sustainable reductions in taxes then there needs to be permanent reductions in spending”:
If you thought The New York Times celebrating Karl Marx’s birthday last week was bad, you won’t want to see this. The British Labour party’s treasury spokesman John McDonnell spoke at a Marx 200 Conference on “Marxism as a force for change today“.

Maybe that force is why this influential British think tank has suggested that every Brit be gifted £10,000 for turning 25-years-old. And yesterday the British parliament rejected a law that would have effectively ended 300 years of press freedom in Britain…  by just 9 votes.

This is a birthday I’m much more interested in! Tuesday was Friedrich Hayek’s birthday. This piece from Cato‘s David Boaz from 2015 explained why Hayek is the most important economist of the 20th Century.

Even the New York Times has realised something is going on. The NYT’s Bari Weiss penned a fascinating 3,700 word study of the “Intellectual Dark Web” of “iconoclastic thinkers, academic renegades and media personalities” sweeping the internet, featuring Jordan Peterson, Douglas Murray, and Dave Rubin. ​

The left has generously provided the world with their latest rules for avoiding offence: eating tacos and drinking tequila on the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo are “textbook examples of cultural appropriation“. But don’t show you’re upset if you’re a white woman – your tears probably mean you are avoiding accountability, according to The Guardian.

There are a number of exciting events occurring over the next fortnight happening across Australia featuring IPA speakers:

  • If you’re a Generation Liberty Member in Perth next Wednesday or in Brisbane on 21 May come along to “The Great Debate: Capitalism vs Socialism” (Perth details here, Brisbane details here).
  • Generation Liberty members in Melbourne on Friday 18th can see IPA Director Janet Albrechtsen and Research Fellow Matthew Lesh discuss “The Danger of Identity Politics”, details here.
  • Dr Bella d’Abrera is delivering a lecture at Campion College in Sydney next Thursday about “How Identity Politics is Corrupting our Youth,” details here.

Featuring Andrew Bolt, Georgina Downer, IPA

“That’s the thing with Marxism – great idea, let’s ignore the practise. That’s the divide between many on the left and many conservatives. You’re not conservative because you’re following a particular disciple, you just know the difference between an idea and the practice of that idea.”

– Andrew Bolt

Article of the week:

If you want to understand the radical left’s attacks on cultural appropriation, you have to read David Frum’s piece from The Atlantic on Tuesday. He explains how they don’t understand that every culture on earth is an appropriation of cultures that came before it.

IPA Staff Pick:

Each week an IPA staff member shares what they have enjoyed recently. Today: Scott Hargreaves

Jonah Goldberg’s “Conservatives in the Mist” article from 2003 is as relevant now as it was 15 years ago. The simile refers to the breathless investigative reporting of the right from mainstream journalists. Once you have read the original piece you should read what Goldberg said last weekabout clueless reporting from publications like Vanity Fair in the aftermath of Kanye West’s supposed “red-pilling”.

Here’s what else the IPA said this week:

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Morgan Begg

Morgan Begg

Morgan Begg is the Director, Research at the Institute of Public Affairs