{"id":286,"date":"2006-07-08T11:38:42","date_gmt":"2006-07-08T01:38:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/?p=286"},"modified":"2006-07-08T11:38:42","modified_gmt":"2006-07-08T01:38:42","slug":"you-can-be-paternal-if-youre-my-dad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/?p=286","title":{"rendered":"You can be paternal- if you’re my Dad"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/div>\n

Tony Abbott has drawn the ire of Papa John<\/a> through his public assertion that Aboriginal culture requires an application of good old colonial paternalism<\/a> to bring it right. The only reason Howard is upset about this is because while paternalism is a core tenet of most all his policies, Johnny at least knows better than to spell it out in plain English.<\/p>\n

Abbott’s entire way of being is built around authoritarian and paternalistic structures. Abbott wasn’t silly enough to use the word ‘paternalism’ back when he was losing the RU486 debate<\/a>, but that was clearly his starting point.<\/p>\n

Paternalism presumes that a group of people are incapable of managing their affairs and require someone who knows better to set them on the right path for their own good. Such a generalised assessment of an entire class of people is unlikely to be right from the get-go. Someone also has to be appointed- or may appoint themself- to be the father figure.<\/p>\n

Authoritarianism and paternalism in small and wisely measured doses are fine- as long as they are directed at your own young children<\/em>. Neither have any application outside the family home- and especially not in matters of public policy. Those of us with enough on the ball to manage our own affairs are reasonably deeply resentful of any manner of paternalism in government.<\/p>\n

When Tony Abbott was elected to public office, he apparently took that to mean he was given the right to treat us all like children.<\/p>\n

Wrong, camel breath.<\/p>\n

-weez<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tony Abbott has drawn the ire of Papa John through his public assertion that Aboriginal culture requires an application of good old colonial paternalism to bring it right. The only reason Howard is upset about this is because while paternalism is a core tenet of most all his policies, Johnny at least knows better than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}