KATHERINE DEVES'S TRANS WOMEN COMMENTS IGNITED ANOTHER ROUND OF CULTURE WARS – AND...
0Katherine Deves's trans women comments ignited another round of culture wars – and added another nail in the coffin of democracy
America's second president John Adams famously said: 'Remember. democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes. exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.' A bit rash. perhaps — and Adams was more philosopher than politician. a man given to bold statements. More than two centuries after he said that. American democracy is still standing. still offering what another president. Abraham Lincoln. called the 'last best hope of Earth'. But it is wobbling. Americans have lost faith in their democracy. It is a nation riven with tribal political warfare. Division and corrosive. hope sapping inequality. It appears. at times. as a nation ungovernable. It is not alone. Democracy is not dead but it is weakened. Freedom House. which measures the health of democracies globally. now counts 15 straight years of democratic decline. At the same time the political strongman. the autocrat and populist have exploited genuine fear and anxiety to govern not over division but because of it. Yes. democracies are committing suicide. We are not immune. Australia is one of the world's robust democracies but we are falling prey to the American disease of incessant culture wars that inflame passions and obscure reason. As the philosopher and politician Edmund Burke once said: 'The wild gas. the fixed air is plainly broke loose.' We have seen that this week with the debate — or is that panic? — over transgender women in sport. This isn't about trans women in sport Now. there is a genuine discussion to have here. Clearly sports organisations need consistency and clarity based on science. The science about whether transgender women continue to have an advantage is embryonic and far from reaching a consensus. But the noise this issue has generated far exceeds the dilemma itself. Simply. there is not yet a critical number of transgender athletes over running women's sport. At the last summer Olympics. there were more than 11.000 athletes and fewer than half a dozen were transgender. Read more But this isn't about transgender women in sport. The comments — often incendiary — of Liberal candidate for the Sydney seat of Warringah. Katherine Deves. have ignited another round of culture wars. As usual. people have lined up to choose their side. claim moral superiority and fight battles of identity. It happens across the political spectrum. left and right. It happens across many issues. This is just the latest. Cultural warriors on the right talk about freedom of speech and being silenced. Those on the left talk about hate speech and 'safe spaces'. In a world of 'cancel culture'. each wants to cancel the other. What we don't do is disagree well. The media. with some exceptions. doesn't help. Debate is framed around points of difference and conflict: polarise and divide. This is not what democracy was designed for. Yes. it is meant to be a contest of ideas. Yes. it is meant to be vigorous. The so called 'middle ground' is far too often where politics goes to die. But what has happened to the vision of John Stuart Mill. who sought to build liberty around softening the edges of the extreme to narrow the difference between us? Not to found a meaningless middle. but to put reason above rancour. Culture wars fill column inches — at great cost Ours is a politics without grace. The public is disillusioned. Primary votes for the major parties are in the 30s and polls show younger people. especially. have lost faith in democracy. It tells us something is broken. Today it is transgender sport. Earlier in the year it was religious freedom. Then. like now. a genuine issue about contested rights and how to live respectfully and fully with our differences was waylaid by a focus on bigotry and discrimination. Like the transgender issue. we reached for the extremes to make our respective cases. The secular left sought to characterise people of faith as being hate filled ideologues. Conservative religious groups...
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