Where’s the Australian Ron Paul?

For a group of individuals stuck in a feckless nonsensical political debate about which shade of grey we should nominate, one who appears to be in the pocket of the workers, the other who appears to be in the pocket of the people who own the workers, we don’t really see any manner of radical thinking coming out of our country from a classical liberal perspective. Apart for a bunch of Hayek-quoting gestapo Young Libs who’d as soon garotte you for using the word ‘fraternity’ as question your bank balance, we seem to be stuck in an ever increasing spiral of mediocrity. Now, I’m one of those young types whose first real exposure to politics was during the Charisma Bounty days of Keating and Clinton. Keating who’d call it as he saw it and Clinton who preferred other actions in response to sights, both stellar examples of master political knowledge compared to the race to the middle we’re currently faced with.

In fact the last serious event of pure political inspiration was a large segment of the young right trying to figure out exactly what commandments Kevin Rudd’s trip to the Stripper Store broke as well as adamantly protesting that Howard had never even heard of the concept and could only spell the word ‘stripper’ if he was pressured very sternly and had Janette holding his hand. Even then, that was about as politically motivating as the aftermath of a barium enema frugally sprinkled with hundreds and thousands.

It seems throughout the last couple of decades the only party that’s made a decent strive towards classical liberal tendencies was the Australian Democrats, purely by coincidence in that they self-destructed, moving us one step closer to minarchism.

The only motivations and inspirations for the young on both sides being the utterly nepotistic and ethically unscrupulous rewards spewed upon them for toeing the party line (In the case of Young Labor large endowments from Unions which constitute most of their budget, from the Libs side, nubile women-flesh to be consumed and discarded after crushing their idealism with arse-slapping and cringeworthy sex under the context of being a true ‘blueblood’ [without undergoing blue-balls, it would seem]). The hackery just seems to continuously extend beyond the confines of human imagination until it erupts in an orgiastic fountain of arrested development.

The fact that the parties are so similar and their policies are so incredibly similar (However the Libs seem determined to continue this drugs war as some kind of moral crusade which will inevitably fail. I feel this is the first time the Libs have ever felt so proud about spending so much money on something so incredibly foolish [if we keep those repugnant workchoices ads out of our vision for just a moment]) just goes to show how much Australian politics have stagnated. The most irritating thing being that the only forms of social and political reforms that seem to be developing are growing like a strangling tendril from the greens and the other loonies. We’ve had policies on drugs decriminalisation, Environmental responsibility (again a hot button issue, but for the most part one that shouldn’t be divided on political grounds, I can argue for energy efficiency and investing into efficient and alternate technologies due to the massive amounts of profit to be made and money to be saved) and international law reforms. Excusing for a moment that most of their concepts are based on closing the borders, printing money and writing hundreds of new laws for ‘funsies’, it seems as if society is willing to live in a perpetual state of political stagnation brought upon through having this continuous incumbent. Most of the people who have just become able to vote don’t know much about any system that ISN’T under Howard. As such the beat rides on and we become completely satisfied with the same rehashed nonsense and political rhetoric that holds no real answers for anyone.

What it comes down to is this, where is the political individual who is going to reform or at least REINVIGORATE the current system we’re in? Where is the ardent Austrian who is going to throw the factual smackdown onto the audience of these debates and provide some people with hope about achieving some level of reducing government in general and getting the government out of our lives? Where’s the person motivating young people such as myself to get up and get serious about political issues? I understand that my own views aren’t that widely represented in Australia in their entirety, but where’s the person who argues for free trade AND gay rights? Where’s the person who wants to leave the Iraq war but not raid the future’s fund? Where is the person who wants to reduce the level of governmental approval and beauracracy so that the development of key infrastructure can begin ASAP from the pockets of industry players and NOT the government?

Where’s the person who can really, truly make us believe something more than our ballot being equally useful both as a pile of ash, or with a 1 marked on it?