Cory Bernardi Vs. Western Civilisation

According to this article,

THE pillars of Western society are under threat, and Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi has a plan to prop them up.   

      
Unfortunately, when Cory Bernardi and people like him talks about "Western society" or "Western Civilisation," they invariably mean white, Christian, straight, and patriarchal. It is an extremely limiting view of a complex historical movement. And Western Civilisation is a movement; it has travelled a long way from what we commonly take is its origins. It is not a static state of affairs, and this is the great mistake made by conservative thinkers and politicians.

When I talk of Western Civilisation I mean the more than 2500 years of intellectual and cultural change; I mean a reverence and re-engagement with what, for pragmatic reasons, we take as the zero-point of Western Civilisation: Classical Greece; I mean the Dark Ages and the closing of the Western mind, the attitudes of which time we still seem to struggle against; I mean the Renaissance; I mean the Enlightenment; I mean the Scientific, Industrial, and Democratic Revolutions. In short, I mean the 2500-plus years of the struggle of reason and the imagination against prejudice and oppression. That is Western Civilisation.

Bernardi-ism, like so much that is inane about conservatism, is grounded upon a misreading of history prompted by personal grievance, the loss of aristocracy. Western Civilisation is about progress and self-criticism; the Bernardian world-view is grounded on the anxiety that self-criticism often threatens us with, and it replaces self-criticism with self-certainty. The "six f-words" at the heart of Bernardi's plan - Faith, Family, Flag, Free enterprise, Federation and Freedom - are emblematic of this self-certainty. What they are also emblematic of is the vague simplifications of an anxious ideology; it is an ideology that requires homogeneity and stasis to survive. Western Civilisation is about change, progress, and adaptation. In short, Western Civilisation evolves, and that is its greatest strength. Conservatism, such as Bernardi's version, in asserting "traditional values," does not take a proper account of Western history.

Pronominal Poetics: "This Is How It Goes."

In adopting the poetic stance we adopt the posture of reading the poem (and there is a definite posture to reading); the articulatory or verbal gestures of the poem become our own. The standing is also a pointing or an indicating. As the poem nods or winks or grins or raises a subtle eyebrow, so do we, the reader. This is how it goes.

“This” is a pronoun; it points to where it stands. This is where it stands. This is how it goes. Not “that,” which points to the past or to some other place. This is the present, for the poetic experience is always in the present. When we adopt the poetic stance we are always adopting it here and now. If “this” is the poetic experience, then “it” is the poem.

The poem is a pronominal object that points elsewhere; it stands for the complex of sounds and associations that constitute the poetic experience; in essence, the poem is pronominal for the poetic experience. The poem, the “it,” points to “you” and “me” the reader, and it points to the poetic experience that you and I will have. “This” is the experience of “it.” This is how it goes. It is an experience.

“Is” is the pure copula, connecting the subject to its predicate, connecting “this” to “how it goes.” The pure copula has no content except to signify existence, that “this” and “it” are connected. But “this” is how it goes. “This” is the “how,” the “how” of “it.” “How” is a conjunction. “How” connects the pronoun “this” to the pronoun “it” and its existence is asserted by the pure copula “is.” “How” is the “manner in which” of “this,” how it goes.

“Goes” is the verb, simple present tense and intransitive. “To go” means to move, to go from one place to another. “This,” the poetic experience, is “how,” the manner in which, “it,” the poem, goes. This is how it goes. But “it” goes nowhere but within the reader, for whom “this” is the experience of “it,” here and now, the manner in which the poem moves within you and me.

In adopting the poetic stance, we adopting the standing of the poem, its posture, the way it stands in relation to other things, what “it” is about. “This” is how the poem goes about being about what it is within the reader’s adoption of the poetic stance. The reader stands for the poem by adopting its stance, and what the poem stands for becomes what the reader stands for. This is how it goes.