BAD BOY STILL

I suspect that I am seen by some as the bad boy of Australian conservative blogging -- too "extreme"! I think that I am unlikely to change, however. I have just been looking at a few things I wrote over a quarter of a century ago in my book Conservatism as heresy. Somewhat to my surprise, I find that I was pulling few punches then too. Here is an excerpt from Chapter 1 -- which is a reprint of something that originally appeared in Nation Review in 1973. I was discussing the now thoroughly laughable Zero Population Growth movement:

If any further evidence for the obsessional neuroticism of this movement were needed, it could be found in the amazing way it treats the entire world population as an undifferentiated, featureless gruel. Because the world population is expanding steadily, it is argued that we in Australia should therefore limit our numbers.

This is to regard Australian as being in the same situation as Bangladesh -- which we most evidently are not. If love of sweeping generalizations were the basis of comparison, the ZPG movement could well be compared with Hitler's Nazism.

Sound familiar? Lots of conservatives started out as Leftists. I don't think I have changed a bit.