Janet Albrechtsen, Chairman Rudd, the call to debate, the stimulus war and the real war in Afghanistan

Chairman Rudd really set the pigeons amongst the commentariat cats when he launched Tom Keneally's "Australians: Origins to Eureka" back in August.

The offending passage?

More broadly, I believe the time has now come to move beyond the arid intellectual debates of the history wars and the culture wars of recent years.

Time to leave behind us the polarisation that began to infect every discussion of our nation’s past.

To go beyond the so-called “black armband” view that refused to confront some hard truths about our past, as if our forebears were all men and women of absolute nobility, without spot or blemish.

But time, too, to go beyond the view that we should only celebrate the reformers, the renegades and revolutionaries, thus neglecting or even deriding the great stories of our explorers, of our pioneers, and of our entrepreneurs. (the full speech is here).

The commentariat are still brooding about it, outraged that they should be silenced when they want to chew the cultural and history wars cud for years to come, perhaps for ever more. Take Janet Albrechtsen in Labor's way of silencing debt dissent as a typical broadside:

To suggest that debate should end on any contentious topic is the same as saying we should suspend our thinking. Yet a few weeks ago, the PM was at it again, saying we must now draw a line under those debates that concern our history. In a shot across the bow at former prime minister John Howard, Rudd said we should "move beyond the arid intellectual debates of the history wars and the culture wars of recent years".

Put aside for the moment that the PM has forgotten that one of the first warriors to kick off the history wars was one P.J.Keating with his Redfern speech in December 1992. Instead, think where we would be without the debates that followed. There was nothing arid about them, as historians, politicians and the Australian people debated the legitimacy of both the black-arm band view of history and the "three cheers" alternative. The debate led to a more balanced view, one that will go on being debated and discussed.

Which, if you can decode commentariat code, probably means nah nah, you started it first, and we won, because we're more balanced and open to debate. And of course it wouldn't do just to blame one P. J. Keating as one of the first warriors, but to wheel in that honorary right wing trophy on any indigenous discourse, Noel Pearson:

And there was nothing arid about those, such as Noel Pearson, who passionately questioned the victimhood mentality that infected indigenous politics as a result of the temporary supremacy of the black arm-band view. With the economy booming, it was only right that the country debated these and other issues such as national identity, multiculturalism, education and the like. On each issue, our thinking was improved and trickled down, sadly sometimes too slowly, into our schools, giving children more and better information.

Our thinking was improved? Says it all really, though it's sad that as usual the children in the schools continue to suffer, unaware the history wars have been won and they've been listening to gibberish.

As opposed to the excellent information I was given in school, which tended to the terra nullius side of the British arrival, with the few "dirty" blacks allowed in for an education neatly tucked away in a portable building on the other side of the oval.

Never mind. Dame Slap is determined to have her debates, her wars and her warriors. Cue martial music as she castigates the frightened chickens:

It is indeed peculiar that one side of politics has a tendency to call for debates to end. Notice too how the same side bemoans debates as too combative. What are they frightened of? As Geoffrey Blainey said last month when questioned about the history wars, "if people who belong to one side are willing to look at the other point of view and even if they disagree with it, listen carefully and likewise the same goes for the other side. It's a matter of listening as much as talking." Amen to that. With the country now facing very different economic conditions, let the Stimulus Wars begin.

Well indeed where would Albrechtsen be without a war? Which makes it all the funnier that her indignation will probably now expand in leaps and bounds when she reads Chairman Rudd's speech for the launch of Paul Kelly's book "The March of the Patriots" at Parliament House on Monday the 7th:

This is a monumental account that will become a benchmark for future research on this period of Australian history, and it provides perspective that could only come about through Paul’s proximity to those in power through this period.

Whatever perspective people take, this book will no doubt help shape that debate for a long time to come.

It is an honour to launch March of Patriots.

Let the debate begin. (the full speech is here).

Let the debate begin? How dare you Chairman Rudd, calling for a debate. We won't be silenced in this way. I intend to debate your call for a debate at once. Hang on, I'm confused. If I now debate you, I'm dancing to your tune. It would seem silence is the only dignified response.

Silence? How dare you attempt to silence me? I will speak out long and loudly, and any rhetorical attempt to silence me will be met with verbal abuse.

Well the Ruddser's impudence certainly got under the skin of shadow Chairman Malcolm Turnbull, who accused the Ruddster of breathtaking dishonesty and the most graceless and ungracious political speech he had ever heard, worthy of a general secretary of the Communist Party at a Communist Party conference. Or words to that effect, as Bullers fainted at the sheer audacity of its dishonesty.

We expect the commentariat to twitter about this for weeks, and if not for months, then certainly for years, since they always love a good war, and the smell of napalm on political skin fresh in the morning air as they surf on the corpses of political waves. Or some such, as any viewer of Apocalypse Now will remember.

Gee launching books and calling for the silencing of debate, or demanding a debate, seems like a new kind of Xtreem Sport. Bare knuckles and blood.

The rest of Dame Slap's column is dedicated to her newfound stimulus war, but it also happens to be as dull as ditchwater, and just a kind of ghostly shadowing of shadow Chairman Turnbull's continuing, valiant, but flailing and failing attempt to land a glove on Chairman Rudd, by saying we should stop the spending now, in the hope that the economy will then finally collapse on its ass, and so will Chairman Rudd's poll figures.

So let's move on, since speaking of wars, one of the more titillating reports from the front comes from Jeff Sparrow's How the pundits got it oh so wrong on Afghanistan.

The cheeky lad takes the unusual, unfair, deviant and devious tactic of going way back in time and finding out what the pundits were predicting about how things would go down in Afghanistan. And eight years later ...?

Funnily enough, none of them seemed to guess the ugly (need we add profoundly undemocratic) mess now unfolding before our eyes. Sparrow gives Piers Akerman a hearty serve, then rounds on Paul Kelly with savagery, then takes out Michael Duffy, the original inspiration for these pages. Sparrow also knocks over Andrew Bolt, before delivering a sound thrashing to that professional dolt Greg Sheridan.

And then he draws this conclusion, after comparing all their blathering in 2001 with the unfolding reality of 2009:

What can you say? The politicians who followed through on this insane plan eventually had to face the electorate, which is why, in part, the Republicans are such a discredited rabble. And yet, eight years on, Sheridan’s still at his desk, still a tremendously serious commentator.

Think of a building worker whose constructions consistently fell down. He or she would be drawing dole faster than you can mouth “individual responsibility”, “industrial flexibility” or any other conservative watchword. Yet with the commentariat, it’s different.

Part bully pulpit, part sheltered workshop, punditry never apologies (sic), never explains. If anything, our emirs of error all have higher profiles now than in 2001. You can’t turn on Insiders, that shouting match in a formaldehyde jar, without finding Akerman, Duffy, Bolt or Sheridan opining on the issues of the day. They’re on the radio, they’re on the TV, and they’re still all over the press.

It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry.

Well some will cry, but I say laugh and dance, partly because crying can affect eye liner but mainly because if you read the commentariat as an epic comedy of idiocy, it avoids temporary insanity. And you don't get drawn into their various cries for war, whether it's cultural, historical, stimulatory, or the actual ugly business of killing people as a way of converting them to a cause.

Which I guess is a polite way of saying Janet Albrechtsen can shove her stimulus war where the sun finds it hard to gain any decent purchase. I'm already stimulated enough ...