The Eureka Stockade was a revolt over high taxes on independent miners, and the myth that it was all about the union movement needs to be busted. That’s why the IPA made this short documentary, featuring Dr Bella d’Abrera, ‘Australia’s own Tea Party Revolution‘:
The video was covered at the Herald Sun yesterday and even the Ballarat Trades Hall shared it! They accused us of “sanitising history” because we failed to mention “class struggle”. Silly us. The video is vol. 3 of The British Heritage of our Freedoms: The Untold Stories series, from the IPA’s Foundations of Western Civilisation Program.
Liu Xiaobo, a huge voice for freedom in Red China, died last week under guard in a Chinese hospital. The Cato Institute on Monday republished this piece from September 2016 by Tom Palmer on the heroism and resilience of Liu in the face of monstrous tyranny.
Not even the loveable Winnie the Pooh can escape communist oppression! This week the Chinese government censored images of the Bear of Very Little Brain because people think he resembles president Xi Jinping. Meanwhile in the International Business Times, the great Dan Hannan slammed the decision to erect a statue of Communist Manifesto co-author Friedrich Engels in Manchester this week.
This is what a society with too much red tape looks like. In California, a man threatened to call the police on a young girl for running a lemonade stand without a business licence. In December 2015 John Roskam wrote in the AFR about an 11 year old girl in WA whose lemonade stand was shut down by her local council.
If you’re like me, you’ve probably heard academics use the word “intersectionality” and thought “huh?” Thankfully this fascinating 3,000 word essay by Elizabeth Corey at First Things explains how it seeks to destroy the family and reduce individuals to their group identity. But let’s not be too hard on academia: this unintentionally hilarious article outlines the trauma of academics having summer holidays!
Article of the week:
Following this piece in The New York Times on Friday asking ‘When is speech violence?‘, Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff – who famously wrote ‘The Coddling of the American Mind‘ in September 2015 – explained in this excellent 2,600 word piece in The Atlantic on Tuesday why it is such a bad idea to tell students words can cause violence.
IPA Staff Pick:
Each week an IPA staff member shares what they have enjoyed recently. Today: James Bolt
Game of Thrones made its long-awaited return to TV this week, and boy am I excited (I’ll even defend the Ed Sheeran cameo). Even if you’re not a fan of the show, you’ll love Reason TV’s new video ‘Game of Thrones: Libertarian edition‘ – it is hilarious.
Here’s what else the IPA said this week:
- John Roskam, What is wrong with the Liberal Party? – Sky News PVO
- Chris Berg, Medicare details available on dark web is just tip of the data breach iceberg – The Canberra Times
- Brett Hogan, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook – FreedomWatch
- Brett Hogan, Uranium: The fuel that must not be named – FreedomWatch
- James Bolt and Peter Gregory, Episode 19 with Jennifer Marohasy and Renee Gorman – The Young IPA Podcast (available on SoundCloud here)
