David Burchell, and a jolly exercise in reducing whale blubber to oil so that we can see the shining light on the hill ...

(Above: eek!)

And so to David Burchell, for whom fatuous blather has become a fine art, and if we may, we'd like to quote a large chunk of his thoughts, rendered down and distilled from whale blubber into a fine smokeless and odourless oil in Languishing in a sea of torpor ... and only a tad transformed and enhanced for easier digestion:

Commonly what we call idealism is simply code for a style of political histrionics, modelled on the religious zeal of the old professional classes of the 19th century, and passed down the generations through their chosen medium of the universities, the modern equivalents of churches. Not infrequently it produces a style of politics laced with gloomy zealotry, blithe intolerance and sublime overconfidence, composed of cardboard cut-out verities and an abstract compassion for humanity.

In fact there never was a time - other, perhaps, than the rancorous days of the 1950s - when the Liberal Party was driven primarily by the raw savour of idealism: by and large, it has always been a party of worldly pragmatists. If you doubt it, you need only read the actual words of Robert Gordon Menzies' now-sacralised The Forgotten People speech to see how prosaic was the man's life-philosophy and how unheroic his self-conception.

Listen to these deliberately bland but still strangely beautiful phrases: "I do not believe that the real life of this nation is to be found either in great luxury hotels and the petty gossip of so-called fashionable suburbs, or in the officialdom of the organised masses. It is to be found in the homes of people who are nameless and unadvertised, and who, whatever their individual religious conviction or dogma, see in their children their greatest contribution to the immortality of their race. The home is the foundation of sanity and sobriety; it is the indispensable condition of continuity; its health determines the health of society as a whole."

Rather, the problem lies in the attitude, so natural to the young and young-at-heart, that equates idealism and extremism, and presumes that only those who desire to tear up the existing order root and branch can actually be said to have a heart.

Actually, there is a moral dignity to moderation, when it is understood not simply as series of technocratic compromises but, rather, as a serious philosophy of public life. Moderation of this kind constitutes a balancing and tempering of rival interests and principles to attain goals that can sincerely be described as national.

Currently the Liberal party gives off an air of purely oppositional, what have you got so I can be agin it torpor. It needs to infuse some passion in its pragmatism - to remember that balancing a worthy cause with the protection of the lifestyles of ordinary people has always been a serious moral endeavour.

The old moralists regarded excessive political zeal, like its religious cousin, as a species of illness. On their view, the least dangerous form of political division restricted itself to balancing differing social interests. A party system based chiefly on the clash of so-called principles, by contrast, encouraged extremes of purely abstract zealotry. In the same spirit, the Liberal party today needs to balance the needs of different interests in its broad constituency, and to ensure that no single group prevails.

The alternative is not idealism but, rather, government by and for the zealots, born out of the narrow, club-like moral universe of "people like us".

Notice any differences to the original, distil any sense or meaning from the whole?

Well indeedy do, I have to admit that I substituted any references to the Labor party with references to the Liberal party, and instead of Ben Chifley's Light on the Hill speech, I dobbed in Bob Menzies to carry the can for Liberal middle class values with his Forgotten People speech.

The universal applicability, and the profound vacuity otherwise is entirely attributable to David Burchell.

These days the mention of race might strike an odd note, but what the heck, Ming the Merciless was peddling the same kind of cornbread as Ben Chifley. It was only in the rancorous nineteen fifties that his raw savour of idealism, his political histrionics and religious zeal got a tad out of hand with his desire to ban the Communist party.

In the same speech Menzies went on to say:

Are the universities mere technical schools, or have they as one of their functions the preservation of pure learning, bringing in its train not merely riches for the imagination but a comparative sense for the mind, and leading to what we need so badly - the recognition of values which are other than pecuniary?

Sadly Menzies had no idea that universities would become breeding grounds for merchants of blather like David Burchell, who can never say what they mean, perhaps because they have no idea what they mean to say ... outside of the Liberal party tending to be four legs good and given a free pass to Luna Park, and the Labor party deserving of tedious, pompous, half-assed never-ending dissection and two legs bad analysis ...

You could if you like repeat the thought experiment for the entire Burchell column, as he meanders through predictable haunts and thoughts involving the Greens and Bob Brown and the new-found enthusiasm for Anna Bligh and the concomitant denigration of Julia Gillard by comparison with Bligh, but the nub of the intellectual void and the blather is in the last half of the column ...

And besides there's only so much Burchell anyone should asked to read, even if it's been befuddled a little more than usual by the addition of some ersatz meaninglessness to add to the general tone of "people like us" tosh ...

What on earth did he think he was offering? What insight did he think was embedded in his tortured musings? Did he need to add to the sea of torpor on a hot humid day?

Oh okay, it's just another day in the salt mines with The Australian's commentariat columnists.

And if you happen to think the transformed, over-written Burchell's analysis of the Liberal party is on the money, please take a Bex, never mind the kidney/liver disease, with a cup of tea, and have a good lie down ... Next thing you know you'll be thinking he has some useful insights into the Labor party, or even more alarmingly, the world at large ...

And finally for more on the thousand and one practical uses of whale blubber and whale oil, not just for the light on the hill but also for street lighting, go here.

Now there's an interesting topic and an interesting insight into the nineteenth century ...

(Below: a fine example of a decent middle class man not given to pomp or pageantry or even Sir Edward Elgar).